12524	----	Proofreading Team. _S.P.E._ _TRACT No. V_ THE ENGLISHING OF FRENCH WORDS By Brander Matthews THE DIALECTAL WORDS IN BLUNDEN'S POEMS etc. by Robert Bridges _At the Clarendon Press_ MDCCCCXXI FRENCH WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE I The English language is an Inn of Strange Meetings where all sorts and conditions of words are assembled. Some are of the bluest blood and of authentic royal descent; and some are children of the gutter not wise enough to know their own fathers. Some are natives whose ancestors were rooted in the soil since a day whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary; and some are strangers of outlandish origin, coming to us from all the shores of all the Seven Seas either to tarry awhile and then to depart for ever, unwelcome sojourners only, or to settle down at last and found a family soon asserting equality with the oldest inhabitants of the vocabulary. Seafaring terms came to us from Scandinavia and from the Low Countries. Words of warfare on land crossed the channel, in exchange for words of warfare at sea which migrated from England to France. Dead tongues, Greek and Latin, have been revived to replenish our verbal population with the terms needed for the sciences; and Italy has sent us a host of words by the fine arts. The stream of immigrants from the French language has been for almost a thousand years larger than that from any other tongue; and even to-day it shows little sign of lessening. Of all the strangers within our gates none are more warmly received than those which come to us from across the Straits of Dover. None are more swiftly able to make themselves at home in our dictionaries and to pass themselves off as English. At least, this was the case until comparatively recently, when the process of adoption and assimilation became a little slower and more than a little less satisfactory. Of late French words, even those long domiciled in our lexicons, have been treated almost as if they were still aliens, as if they were here on sufferance, so to speak, as if they had not become members of the commonwealth. They were allowed to work, no doubt, and sometimes even to be overworked; but they laboured as foreigners, perhaps even more eagerly employed by the snobbish because they were foreigners and yet held in disrepute by the more fastidious because they were not truly English. That is to say, French words are still as hospitably greeted as ever before, but they are now often ranked as guests only and not as members of the household. Perhaps this may seem to some a too fanciful presentation of the case. Perhaps it would be simpler to say that until comparatively recently a foreign word taken over into English was made over into an English word, whereas in the past two or three centuries there has been an evident tendency to keep it French and to use it freely while retaining its French pronunciation, its French accents, its French spelling, and its French plural. This tendency is contrary to the former habits of our language. It is dangerous to the purity of English. It forces itself on our attention and it demands serious consideration. II In his brief critical biography of Rutebeuf, M. Clédat pointed out that for long years the only important literature in Europe was the French, and that the French language had on three several occasions almost established itself as the language of European civilization--once in the thirteenth century, again in the seventeenth, and finally when Napoleon had made himself temporarily master of the Continent. The earlier universities of Europe were modelled on that of Paris, where Dante had gone to study. Frederick the Great despised his native tongue, spoke it imperfectly, and wrote his unnecessary verses in French. Even now French is only at last losing its status as the accredited tongue of diplomacy. The French made their language in their own image; and it is therefore logical, orderly, and clear. Sainte-Beuve declared that a 'philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French'. As the French are noted rather for their intelligence than for their imagination, they are the acknowledged masters of prose; and their achievement in poetry is more disputable. As they are governed by the social instinct, their language exhibits the varied refinements of a cultivated society where conversation is held in honour as one of the arts. The English speech, like the English-speaking peoples, is bolder, more energetic, more suggestive, and perhaps less precise. From no language could English borrow with more profit to itself than from French; and from no language has it borrowed more abundantly and more persistently. Many of the English words which we can trace to Latin and through Latin to Greek, came to us, not direct from Rome and Athens, but indirectly from Paris. And native French words attain international acceptance almost as easily as do scientific compounds from Greek and Latin. _Phonograph_ and _telephone_ were not more swiftly taken up than _chassis_ and _garage_. But _chassis_ and _garage_ still retain their French pronunciation, or perhaps it would be better to say they still receive a pronunciation which is as close an approximation to that of the French as our unpractised tongues can compass. And in thus taking over these French words while striving to preserve their Frenchiness, we are neglectful of our duty, we are imperilling the purity of our own language, and we are deserting the wholesome tradition of English--the tradition which empowered us to take at our convenience but to refashion what we had taken to suit our own linguistic habits. 'Speaking in general terms,' Mr. Pearsall Smith writes, in his outline history of the English language, 'we may say that down to about 1650 the French words that were borrowed were thoroughly naturalized in English, and were made sooner or later to conform to the rules of English pronunciation and accent; while in the later borrowings (unless they have become very popular) an attempt is made to pronounce them in the French fashion.' From Mr. Smith's pages it would be easy to select examples of the complete assimilation which was attained centuries ago. _Caitiff, canker_, and _carrion_ came to us from the Norman dialect of French; and from their present appearance no one but a linguistic expert would suspect their exotic ancestry, _Jury, larceny, lease, embezzle, distress,_ and _improve_ have descended from the jargon of the lawyers who went on thinking in French after they were supposed to be speaking and writing in English. Of equal historical significance are the two series of words which English acquired from the military vocabulary of the French,--the first containing _company, regiment, battalion, brigade, division_, and _army_; and the second consisting of _marshal, general, colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant_, and _corporal_. (Here I claim the privilege of a parenthesis to remark that in Great Britain _lieutenant_ is generally pronounced _leftenant_, than which no anglicization could be more complete, whereas in the United States this officer is called the _lootenant_, which the privates of the American Expeditionary Force in France habitually shortened to '_loot_'--except, of course, when they were actually addressing this superior. It may be useful to note, moreover, that while 'colonel' has chosen the spelling of one French form, it has acquired the pronunciation of another.) Dr. Henry Bradley in the _Making of English_ provides further evidence of the aforetime primacy of the French in the military art. '_War_ itself is a Norman-French word, and among the other French words belonging to the same department which became English before the end of the thirteenth century' are _armour, assault, banner, battle, fortress, lance, siege, standard_, and _tower_--all of them made citizens of our vocabulary, after having renounced their allegiance to their native land. Another quotation from Dr. Bradley imposes itself. He tells us that the English writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries felt themselves at liberty to introduce a French word whenever they pleased. 'The innumerable words brought into the language in this way are naturally of the most varied character with regard to meaning. Many of them, which supplied no permanent need of the language, have long been obsolete.' This second sentence may well give us heart of hope considering the horde of French terms which invaded our tongue in the long years of the Great War. If _camion_ and _avion, vrille_ and _escadrille_ supply no permanent need of the language they may soon become obsolete, just as _mitrailleuse_ and _franc-tireur_ slipped out of sight soon after the end of the Franco-Prussian war of fifty years ago. A French modification of the American 'gatling' was by them called a _mitrailleuse_; and nowadays we have settled down to the use of _machine-gun_. A _franc-tireur_ was an irregular volunteer often incompletely uniformed; and when he was captured the Prussians shot him as a guerrilla. It will be a welcome relief if _camouflage_, as popular five years ago as _fin-de-siècle_ twenty-five years ago, shall follow that now unfashionable vocable into what an American president once described as 'innocuous desuetude'. Perhaps we may liken _mitrailleuse_ and _franc-tireur, vrille_ and _escadrille, brisance_ and _rafale_, to the foreign labourers who cross the frontier to aid in the harvest and who return to their own country when the demand for their service is over. III The principle which ought to govern can be stated simply. English should be at liberty to help itself freely to every foreign word which seems to fill a want in our own language. It ought to take these words on probation, so to speak, keeping those which prove themselves useful, and casting out those which are idle or rebellious. And then those which are retained ought to become completely English, in pronunciation, in accent, in spelling, and in the formation of their plurals. No doubt this is to-day a counsel of perfection; but it indicates the goal which should be strived for. It is what English was capable of accomplishing prior to the middle of the seventeenth century. It is what English may be able to accomplish in the middle of the twentieth century, if we once awaken to the danger of contaminating our speech with unassimilated words, and to the disgrace, which our stupidity or laziness must bring upon us, of addressing the world in a pudding-stone and piebald language. Dr. Bradley has warned us that 'the pedantry that would bid us reject the word fittest for our purpose because it is not of native origin ought to be strenuously resisted'; and I am sure that he would advocate an equally strenuous resistance to the pedantry which would impose upon us words of alien tongue still clad in foreign uniform. Mark Twain once remarked that 'everybody talks about the weather and nobody does anything about it'. And many people think that we might as well hope to direct the course of the winds as to order the evolution of our speech. Some words have proved intractable. In the course of the past two centuries and a half, scores and even hundreds of French words have domiciled themselves in English without relinquishing their French characteristics. Consider the sad case of _élite_ (which Byron used a hundred years ago), of _encore_ (which Steele used two hundred years ago) of _parvenu_ (which Gifford used in 1802), of _ennui_ (which Evelyn used in 1667), and of _nuance_ (which Walpole used in 1781). No one hesitates to accept these words and to employ them frequently. _Ennui_ and _nuance_ are two words which cannot well be spared, but which we are unable to reproduce in our native vocalization. Their French pronunciation is out of the question. What can be done? Can anything be done? We may at least look the facts in the face and govern our own individual conduct by the results of this scrutiny. There is no reason why we should not accept what is a fact; and it is a fact that _ennui_ has been adopted. So long ago as 1805 Sidney Smith used it as a verb and said that he had been _ennuied_. Why not therefore frankly and boldly pronounce it as English--_ennwee_? Why not forswear French again and pronounce _nuance_ without trying vainly to preserve the Gallic nasality of the second n--_newance_? And as for a third necessary word, _timbre_. I can only register here my complete concurrence with the opinion expressed in Tract No. 3 of the Society for Pure English--that the 'English form of the French sound of the word would be approximately _tamber_; and this would be not only a good English-sounding word, like _amber_ and _chamber_, but would be like our _tambour_, which is _tympanum_, which again is _timbre_'. Why should not _séance_ (which was used by Charles Lamb in 1803) drop its French accent and take an English pronunciation--_see-ance_? Why should not _garage_ and _barrage_ rhyme easily with _marriage_? _Marriage_ itself came to us from the French; and it sets a good example to these two latest importations. Logic would suggest this, of course; but then logic does not always guide our linguistic practices. And here, again, I am glad to accept another suggestion which I find in Tract No. 3, that _naivety_ be recognized and pronounced as an English word, and that 'a useful word like _malaise_ could with advantage reassume the old form "malease" which it once possessed'. I have asked why these thoroughly acclimated French words should not be made to wear our English livery; and to this question Dr. Bradley supplied an answer when he declared that 'culture is one of the influences which retard the process of simplification'. A man of culture is likely to be familiar with one or more foreign languages; and perhaps he may be a little vain of his intimacy with them. He prefers to give the proper French pronunciation to the words which he recognizes as French; and moreover as the possession of culture, or even of education, does not imply any knowledge of the history of English or of the principles which govern its growth, the men of culture are often inclined to pride themselves on this pedantic procedure. It is, perhaps, because the men of culture in the United States are fewer in proportion to the population that American usage is a little more encouraging than the British. Just as we Americans have kept alive not a few old words which have been allowed to drop out of the later vocabulary of the United Kingdom, so we have kept alive--at least to a certain extent--the power of complete assimilation. _Restaurant_, for example, is generally pronounced as though its second syllable rhymed with 'law', and its third with 'pant'. _Trait_ is pronounced in accordance with its English spelling, and therefore very few Americans have ever discovered the pun in the title of Dr. Doran's book, 'Table Traits, and something on them'. I think that most Americans rhyme _distrait_ to 'straight' and not to 'stray'. _Annexe_ has become _annex_; _programme_ has become _program_--although the longer form is still occasionally seen; and sometimes _coterie_ and _reverie_ are 'cotery' and 'revery'--in accord with the principle which long ago simplified _phantasie_ to _fantasy_. _Charade_ like _marmalade_ rhymes with _made_. _Brusk_ seems to be supplanting _brusque_ as _risky_ is supplanting _risqué_. _Elite_ is spelt without the accent; and it is frequently pronounced _ell-leet_. _Clôture_ is rarely to be discovered in American newspapers; _closure_ is not uncommon; but the term commonly employed is the purely English 'previous question'. In the final quarter of the nineteenth century an American adaptation of a French comic opera, 'La Mascotte', was for two or three seasons very popular. The heroine of its story was believed to have the gift of bringing luck. So it is that Americans now call any animal which has been adopted by a racing crew or by an athletic team (or even by a regiment) a _mascot_; and probably not one in ten thousand of those who use the word have any knowledge of its French origin, or any suspicion that it was transformed from the title of a musical play. I regret, however, to be forced to confess that I have lately been shocked by a piece of petty pedantry which seems to show that we Americans are falling from grace--at least so far as one word is concerned. Probably because many of our architects and decorators have studied in Paris there is a pernicious tendency to call a 'grill' a _grille_. And I have seen with my own eyes, painted on a door in an hotel _grille_-room; surely the ultimate abomination of verbal desolation! I may, however, record to our credit one righteous act--the perfect and satisfactory anglicizing of a Spanish word, whereby we have made 'canyon' out of _cañon_. And I cannot forbear to adduce another word for a fish soup, _chowder_, which the early settlers derived from the French name of the pot in which it was cooked, _chaudière_.[1] [Footnote 1: No doubt all these variations of American from British usage will be duly discussed in Professor George Philip Krapp's forthcoming _History of the English Language in America_.] IV As the military vocabulary of English is testimony to the former leadership of the French in the art of war, so the vocabulary of fashion and of gastronomy is evidence of the cosmopolitan primacy of French millinery and French cookery. But most of the military terms were absorbed before the middle of the seventeenth century and were therefore assimilated, whereas the terms of the French dressmaker and of the French cook, chef, or _cordon bleu_, are being for ever multiplied in France and are very rarely being naturalized in English-speaking lands. So far as these two sets of words are concerned the case is probably hopeless, because, if for no other reason, they are more or less in the domain of the gentler sex and we all know that 'A woman, convinced against her will, Is of the same opinion still.' The terms of the motor-car, however, and those of the airplane, are in the control of men; and there may be still a chance of bringing about a better state of affairs than now exists. While the war correspondents were actually in France, and while they were often forced to write at topmost speed, there was excuse for _avion_ and _camion, vrille_ and _escadrille_, and all the other French words which bespattered the columns of British and American, Canadian and Australian newspapers. I doubt if there was ever any necessity for _hangar_, the shed which sheltered the airplane or the airship. _Hangar_ is simply the French word for 'shed', no more and no less; it does not indicate specifically a shed for a flying-machine; and as we already had 'shed' we need not take over _hangar_. When we turn from the gas-engine on wings to the gas-engine on wheels, we find a heterogeny of words in use which bear witness to the fact that the French were the first to develop the motor-car, and also to the earlier fact that they had long been renowned for their taste and their skill as coach-builders. As the terminology of the railway in England is derived in part from that of the earlier stage-coach--in the United States, I may interject, it was derived in part from that of the earlier river-steamboat--so the terminology of the motor-car in France was derived in part from that of the pleasure-carriage. So we have the _landaulet_ and _limousine_ to designate different types of body. I think _landaulet_ had already acquired an English pronunciation; at least I infer this because I cannot now recall that I ever heard it fall from the lips of an English-speaking person with its original French pronunciation of the nasal _n_. And _limousine_, being without accent and without nasal _n_ can be trusted to take care of itself. There are other technical terms of the motor-car industry which present more difficult problems. _Tonneau_ is not troublesome, even if its spelling is awkward. There is _chauffeur_ first of all; and I wish that it might generally acquire the local pronunciation it is said to have in Norfolk--_shover_. Then there is _chassis_. Is this the exact equivalent of 'running gear'? Is there any available substitute for the French word? And if _chassis_ is to impose itself from sheer necessity what is to be done with it? Our forefathers boldly cut down _chaise_ to 'shay'--at least my forefathers did it in New England, long before Oliver Wendell Holmes commemorated their victory over the alien in the 'Deacon's Masterpiece', more popularly known as the 'One Horse Shay'. And the men of old were even bolder when they curtailed _cabriolet_ to 'cab', just as their children have more recently and with equal courage shortened 'taximeter vehicle' to 'taxi', and 'automobile' itself to 'auto'. Unfortunately it is not possible to cut the tail off _chassis_, or even to cut the head off, as the men of old did with 'wig', originally 'periwig', which was itself only a daring and summary anglicization of _peruke_. Due to the fact that the drama has been more continuously alive in the literature of France than in that of any other country, and due also, it may be, to the associated fact that the French have been more loyally devoted to the theatre than any other people, the vocabulary of the English-speaking stage has probably more unassimilated French words than we can discover in the vocabulary of any of our other activities. We are none of us surprised when we find in our newspaper criticisms _artiste, ballet, conservatoire, comédienne, costumier, danseuse, début, dénoûment, diseuse, encore, ingénue, mise-en-scène, perruquier, pianiste, première, répertoire, revue, rôle, tragédienne_--the catalogue stretches out to the crack of doom. Long as the list is, the words on it demand discussion. As to _rôle_ I need say nothing since it has been considered carefully in Tract No. 3; I may merely mention that it appeared in English at least as early as 1606, so that it has had three centuries to make itself at home in our tongue. _Conservatoire_ and _répertoire_ have seemingly driven out the English words, which were long ago made out of them, 'conservatory' and 'repertory'. What is the accepted pronunciation of _ballet_? Is it _bal-lett_ or _ballay_ or _bally_? (If it is _bally_, it has a recently invented cockney homophone.) For _costumier_ and _perruquier_ I can see no excuse whatever; although I have observed them frequently on London play-bills, I am delighted to be able to say that they do not disgrace the New York programmes, which mention the 'costumer' and the 'wigmaker'. 'Encore' was used by Steele in 1712; it was early made into an English verb; and yet I have heard the verb pronounced with the nasal _n_ of the original French. Here is another instance of English taking over a French word and giving it a meaning not acceptable in Paris, where the playgoers do not _encore_, they _bis_. Why should we call a nondescript medley of dialogue and dance and song a _revue_, when _revue_ in French is the exact equivalent of 'review' in English? Why should we call an actress of comic characters a _comédienne_ and an actress of tragic characters a _tragédienne_, when we do not call a comic actor a _comédien_ or a tragic actor a _tragédien_? Possibly it is because 'comedian' and 'tragedian' seem to be too exclusively masculine--so that a want is felt for words to indicate a female tragedian and a female comedian. Probably it is for the same reason that a male dancer is not termed a _danseur_ while a female dancer is termed a _danseuse_. Then there is _diseuse_, apparently reserved for the lady who recites verse, no name being needed apparently for the gentleman who recites verse--at least, I am reasonably certain that I have never seen _diseur_ applied to any male reciter. _Mise-en-scène_ is another of the French terms which has suffered a Channel-change. In Paris it means the arrangement of the stage-business, whereas in London and in New York it is employed rather to indicate the elaboration of the scenery and of the spectacular accessories. An even more extraordinary misadventure has befallen _pianiste_, in that it is sometimes used as if it was to be applied only to a female performer. And this blunder is of long standing; but I remember as lately as forty years ago seeing an American advertisement of Teresa Carreño which proclaimed her to be 'the greatest living _lady_ pianiste'. I have also detected evidences of a startling belief of the illiterate that _artiste_ is the feminine of 'artist'. Nevertheless I found recently in a volume caricaturing the chief performers of the London music-halls a foot-note which explained that these celebrities were therein entitled _artistes_--because 'an artist creates, an _artiste_ performs'. Still to be analysed are _première_ for 'first performance' or 'opening night' and _debut_ for 'first appearance'; and I fear that it is beyond expectation that these alien words will speedily drop their alien accents and their alien pronunciations. The same must be said also of _dénoûment_ and of _ingénue_--French words which really fill a gap in our vocabulary and which are none the less abhorrent to our speech habits. The most that is likely to happen is that they may shed their accents and more or less approximate an English pronunciation, _dee-noo-meant_, perhaps, and _inn-je-new_, an approximation which will be sternly resisted by the literate. I well remember one occasion when I overheard scorn poured upon a charming American actress who had happened to mention the date of her own _deb-you_ in New York. V _Encore_ and _mise-en-scène_ are only two of a dozen or a score of French words not infrequently used in English and misused by being charged with meanings not strictly in accord with French usage. 'Levee' is one; the French say _lever_. _Nom de plume_ is another; the French say _nom de guerre_. _Musicale_ also is rarely, if ever, to be found in French, at least I believe it to be the custom in Paris to call an 'evening with music' a _soirée musicale_. If _musicale_ is too serviceable to demand banishment, why should it not drop the _e_ and become _musical_? When Theodore Roosevelt, always as exact as he was vigorous in his use of language, was President of the United States, the cards of invitation which went out from the White House bore 'musical' in one of their lower corners; so that the word, if not the King's English, is the President's English. To offset this I must record with regret that the late Clyde Fitch once wrote a one-act play about a manicurist, and as this operator on the finger-nails was a woman he entitled his playlet, the _Manicuriste_; and he did this in spite of the fact that, as a writer fairly familiar with French, he ought to have known the proper term--_manucure_. Then there is _double-entendre_, implying a secondary meaning of doubtful delicacy. Dryden used it in 1673, when it was apparently good French, although it has latterly been superseded in France by _double-entente_--which has not, however, the somewhat sinister suggestion we attach to _double-entendre_. I noted it in Trench's 'Calderon' (in the 1880 reprint); and also in Thackeray; and both Calderon and Thackeray were competent French scholars. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to consider _née_, put after the name of a married woman and before the family name of her father. The Germans have a corresponding usage, Frau Schmidt, _geboren_ Braun. There is no doubt that _née_ is convenient, and there is little doubt that it would be difficult to persuade the men of culture to surrender it or even to translate it. To the literate 'Mrs. Smith, born Brown', might seem discourteously abrupt. But the French word is awkward, nevertheless, since the illiterate often take it as meaning only 'formerly', writing 'Mrs. Smith, _née_ Mary Brown', which implies that this lady had been christened before she was born. And there is a tale of a profiteer's wife who wrote herself down as 'Mrs. John Smith, New York, _née_ Chicago'. Yet the French themselves are not always scrupulous to follow _née_ with only the family name of the lady. No less a scholar than Gaston Paris dedicated his _Poètes et Penseurs_ to 'Madame James Darmesteter, _née_ Mary Robinson'. Perhaps this is an instance of the modification of the strict meaning of a word by convention because of its enlarged usefulness when so modified. Gaston Paris must be allowed all the rights and privileges of a master of language; but his is a dangerous example for the unscholarly, who are congenitally careless and who are responsible for _soubriquet_ instead of _sobriquet_, for _à l'outrance_ instead of _à outrance_, and for _en déshabille_ instead of _en déshabillé_. The late Mrs. Oliphant in her little book on Sheridan credited him with _gaieté du coeur_. It was long an American habit to term a railway station a _dépot_ (totally anglicized in its pronunciation--_deep-oh)_; but _dépôt_ is in French the name for a storehouse, and it is not--or not customarily--the name of a railway station. It was also a custom in American theatres to give the name of _parquette_-seats to the chairs which are known in England as 'stalls'; and in village theatres _parquette_ was generally pronounced 'par-kay'. There are probably as many in Great Britain as in the United States who speak the French which is not spoken by the French themselves. Affectation and pretentiousness and the desire to show off are abundant in all countries. They manifest themselves even in Paris, where I once discovered on a bill of fare at the Grand Hotel _Irisch-stew à la française_. This may be companioned by a bill of fare on a Cunard steamer plying between Liverpool and New York, whereon I found myself authorized to order _tartletes_ and _cutletes_. When I called the attention of a neighbour to these outlandish vocables, the affable steward bent forward to enlighten my ignorance. 'It's the French, sir,' he explained; '_tartlete_ and _cutlete_ is French.' That way danger lies; and when we are speaking or writing to those who have English as their mother-tongue there are obvious advantages in speaking and writing English, with no vain effort to capture Gallic graces. Readers of Mark Twain's _Tramp Abroad_ will recall the scathing rebuke which the author administered to his agent, Harris, because a report which Harris had submitted was peppered, not only with French and German words, but also with savage plunder from Choctaw and Feejee and Eskimo. Harris explained that he intruded these hostile verbs and nouns to adorn his page, and justified himself by saying that 'they all do it. Everybody that writes elegantly'. Whereupon Mark Twain, whose own English was as pure as it was rich and flexible, promptly read Harris a needed lesson: 'A man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, "Get the translations made yourselves if you want it--this book is not written for the ignorant classes".... The writer would say that he uses the foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English. Very well, then, he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book.' The result of these straight-forward and out-spoken remarks is set forth by Mark Twain himself: 'When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting agent. I can be dreadfully rough on a person when the mood takes me.' VI This sermon might have been made even broader in its application. It is not always only the ignorant who are discommoded by a misguided reliance on foreign words as bestowers of elegance; it is often the man of culture, aware of the meaning of the alien vocable but none the less jarred by its obtrusion on an English page. The man of culture may have his attention disturbed even by a foreign word which has long been acclimatized in English, if it still retains its unfriendly appearance. I suppose that _savan_ has established its citizenship in our vocabulary; it is, at least, domiciled in our dictionaries[2]; but when I found it repeated by Frederic Myers, in _Science and a Future Life_, to avoid the use of 'scientist', the French word forced itself on me, and I found myself reviving a boyish memory of a passage in Abbott's _Life of Napoleon_ dealing with Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt and narrating the attacks of the Mamelukes, when the order was given to form squares with '_savans_ and asses in the center'. An otherwise fine passage of Ruskin's has always been spoilt for me by the wilful incursion of two French words, which seem to me to break the continuity of the sentence: 'A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages; may not be able to speak any but his own; may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance from words of modern _canaille_; remembers all their ancestry, their intermarriages, distantest relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they hold, among the national _noblesse_ of words, at any time and in any country.' Are not _canaille_ and _noblesse_ distracting? Do they not interrupt the flow? Do they not violate what Herbert Spencer aptly called the Principle of Economy of Attention, which he found to be the basis of all the rules of rhetoric? Since I have made one quotation from Ruskin, I am emboldened to make two from Spencer, well known as his essay on 'Style' ought to be:--'A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him, requires part of his power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further part; and only that part which remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived.'--'Carrying out the metaphor that language is the vehicle of thought, there seems reason to think that in all cases the friction and inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency; and that in composition, the chief, if not the sole thing to be done, is to reduce this friction and inertia to the smallest possible amount.' _Savan_ and _canaille_ and _noblesse_ may be English words; but they have not that appearance. They have not rooted themselves in English earth as _war_ has, for instance, and _cab_ and _wig_. To me, for one, they increase the friction and the inertia; and yet, of course, the words themselves are not strange to me; they seem to me merely out of place and in the way. I can easily understand why Myers and Ruskin wanted them, even needed them. It was because they carried a meaning not easily borne by more obvious and more hackneyed nouns. 'The words of our mother tongue', said Lowell in his presidential address to the Modern Language Association of America, 'have been worn smooth by so often rubbing against our lips and our minds, while the alien word has all the subtle emphasis and beauty of some new-minted coin of ancient Syracuse. In our critical estimates we should be on our guard against its charm.' Since I have summoned myself as a witness I take the stand once more to confess that Alan Seeger's lofty lyric, 'I have a rendezvous with Death' has a diminished appeal because of the foreign connotations of 'rendezvous'. The French noun was adopted into English more than three centuries ago; and it was used as a verb nearly three centuries ago; it does not interfere with the current of sympathy when I find it in the prose of Scott and of Mark Twain. Nevertheless, it appears to me unfortunate in Seeger's noble poem, where it forces me to taste its foreign flavour. Another French word, _bouquet_, is indisputably English; and yet when I find it in Walt Whitman's heartfelt lament for Lincoln, 'O Captain, my Captain', I cannot but feel it to be a blemish:-- 'For you _bouquets_ and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shore's a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.' It may be hypercriticism on my part, but _bouquet_ strikes me as sadly infelicitous; and a large part of its infelicity is due to its having kept its French spelling and its French pronunciation. It is not in keeping; it diverts the flow of feeling; it is almost indecorous--much as a quotation from Voltaire in the original might be indecorous in a funeral address delivered by an Anglican bishop in a cathedral. [Footnote 2: _Savan_ is quite obsolete in British use, and is not in the _Century Dictionary_ or in Webster, 1911. _Savant_ is common, and often written without italics, but the pronunciation is never anglicized.--H.B.] VII There are several questions which writers and speakers who give thought to their expressions will do well to ask themselves when they are tempted to employ a French word or indeed a word from any alien tongue. The first is the simplest: Is the foreign word really needed? For example, there is no benefit in borrowing _impasse_ when there exists already in English its exact equivalent, 'blind-alley', which carries the meaning more effectively even to the small percentage of readers or listeners who are familiar with French. Nor is there any gain in _résumé_ when 'summary' and 'synopsis' and 'abstract' are all available. The second question is perhaps not quite so simple: Is the French word one which English has already accepted and made its own? We do not really need _questionnaire_, since we have 'interrogatory', but if we want it we can make shift with 'questionary'; and for _concessionnaire_ we can put 'concessionary'. To balance 'employer' there is 'employee', better by far than _employé_, which insists on a French pronunciation. Matthew Arnold and Lowell, always apt and exact in their use of their own tongue, were careful to prefer the English 'technic' to the French _technique_, which is not in harmony with the adjectives 'technical' and _polytechnic_. So 'clinic' seems at last to have vanquished its French father _clinique_, as 'fillet' has superseded _filet_; and now that 'valet' has become a verb it has taken on an English pronunciation. Then there is _littérateur_. If a synonym for 'man of letters' is demanded why not find it in 'literator', which Lockhart did not hesitate to employ in the _Life of Scott_. It is pleasant to believe that _communard_, which was prevalent fifty years ago after the burning of the Tuileries, has been succeeded by 'communist' and that its twin-brother _dynamitard_ is now rarely seen and even more rarely heard. Perhaps some of the credit may be due to Stevenson, who entitled his tale the _Dynamiter_ and appended a foot-note declaring that 'any writard who writes _dynamitard_ shall find in me a never-resting fightard'. The third question may call for a little more consideration: Has the foreign word been employed so often that it has ceased to be foreign even though it has not been satisfactorily anglicized in spelling and pronunciation? In the _Jungle Book_ Mr. Kipling introduces an official who is in charge of the 'reboisement' of India; and in view of the author's scrupulosity in dealing with professional vocabularies we may assume that this word is a recognized technical term, equivalent to the older word 'afforestation'. What is at once noteworthy and praiseworthy is that in Mr. Kipling's page it does not appear in italics. And in Mr. Pearsall Smith's book on the English language one admiring reader was pleased to find 'débris' also without italics, although with the retention of the French accent. Perhaps the time is not far distant when the best writers will cease to stigmatize a captured word with the italics which are a badge of servitude and which proclaim that it has not yet been enfranchised into our language. The fourth question is the most perplexing: If the formerly foreign word has been taken over and if it can therefore be utilized without hesitancy, can it be made to form its plural in accord with the customs of English. Here those who seek to make the English language truly English and to keep it truly pure, will meet with sturdy resistance. It will not be easy to persuade the literate, the men of culture, to renounce the _x_ at the end of _beaux_ and _bureaux_ and to spell these plurals 'beaus' and 'bureaus'. And yet no one doubts that 'beau' and 'bureau' have both won the right to be regarded as having attained an honourable standing in our language. VIII 'De Quincey once said that authors are a dangerous class for any language'--so Professor Krapp has reminded us in his book on _Modern English_, and he has explained that De Quincey meant 'that the literary habit of mind is likely to prove dangerous for a language ... because it so often leads a speaker or writer to distrust natural and unconscious habit, even when it is right, and to put in its stead some conscious theory of literary propriety. Such a tendency, however, is directly opposed to the true feeling for idiomatic English. It destroys the sense of security, the assurance of perfect congruity between thought and expression, which the unliterary and unacademic speaker and writer often has, and which, with both literary and unliterary, is the basis for all expressive use of language'. And since I have borrowed the quotation from Professor Krapp I shall bring this rambling paper to an end by borrowing another, from the _Toxophilus_ of Roger Ascham (1545). 'He that will wryte well in any tongue must folowe this council of Aristotle, to speake as the common people do, to think as wise men do. Many English writers have not done so, but using straunge wordes as latin, french, and Italian, do make all things darke and harde. Once I communed with a man whiche reasoned the englyshe tongue to be enryched and encreased thereby, sayinge--Who wyll not prayse that feaste where a man shall drinke at a diner bothe wyne, ale and beere? Truly, quod I they all be good, every one taken by hym selfe alone, but if you put Malmesye and sacke, read wine and whyte, ale and beere, and al in one pot, you shall make a drynke neyther easie to be knowen nor yet holsom for the body.' BRANDER MATTHEWS. NOTES The word #laches#, which is not noticed in the above paper, is one of a list of words sent to us by a correspondent who suggests that it is the business of our society to direct the public as to their pronunciation. Like other examples given by Mr. Matthews, _laches_ seems to be at present in an uncertain condition; and as it is used only by lawyers they will be able to decide its future. What seems clear about it is that the two contending pronunciations are homophones, one with _latches_ the other with _lashes_. The A having been Englished its closing T seems natural; and _latches_ (from _lachesse_) is thus an exact parallel with _riches_ (from _richesse_). But there seems no propriety in the SS being changed to Z. The pronunciation _látchess_ would save it from its awkward and absurd homophone _latches_, and would be in order with _prowess, largess, noblesse_, &c. Moreover, since _laches_ is used only as the name of a quality (= negligence) and never (like _riches_), as a plural, to connote special acts of negligence, the pronunciation _latchess_ would be correct as well as convenient; and the word would be better spelt with double S: _lachess_. Of the word #levee# the _O.E.D._ says, 'All our verse quotations place the stress on the first syllable. In England this is the court pronunciation, and prevails in educated use. The pronunciation' with the accent on the second syllable 'which is given by Walker, is occasionally heard in Great Britain, and appears to be generally preferred in the U.S.', but the dictionary does not quote Burns 'Guid-mornin' to your Majesty! May Heav'n augment your blisses, On ev'ry new birthday ye see, A humble poet wishes! My bardship here, at your levee, On sic a day as this is, Is sure an uncouth sight to see, Amang thae birthday dresses Sae fine this day.' So that it would seem that the Scotch and American pronunciation of this word is more thoroughly Englished than our own: and the prejudice which opposes straightforward common-sense solutions, however desirable they may be, is brought home to us by the fact that almost all Englishmen would be equally shocked by the notion either of spelling this word as they pronounce it, _levay_, or of pronouncing it, like Burns, as they spell it, _levee_. ENGLISH WORDS IN FRENCH It would be instructive if we could give a parallel account of what the French do when they adopt an English word into their language. _Le Dictionnaire des Anglicismes_, lately published by Delagrave, has two hundred pages, and is much praised by a reviewer in the _Mercure de France_, Feb. 15, p. 246: but it does not give the current French pronunciations of the English words. The reviewer writes: 'Ce qui me gène bien davantage, c'est que M. Bonnaffé supprime, partout, avec rigueur, la façon française de prononcer le mot anglais. Était-il superflu de dire comment nous articulons _shampooing_? Nous n'avons, je crois, qu'une forme orale pour _boy_, petit domestique, parce qu'il est dû à l'oreille; mais nous sommes partagés quant à _boy-scout_, qui est arrivé par tracts et par journaux. L'anglais donne un mot _high-life_, le français en fait cinq: _haylayf, aïlaïf, ichlif, ijlif, iglif_.' p. 247. It would seem from _high-life_ that English words in French sometimes look as strange as French words do when represented in make-shift English phonetics. On p. 228 of the same _Mercure_ there is notice of 'un petit manuel de conversation' in which 'Toutes les nuances de la "phonetic pronunciation" sont notées, à l'usage des Américains désireux de se faire comprendre en français. Cette notation (says the reviewer) m'a tellement amusé que je ne puis résister au plaisir d'en citer quelques exemples: Av-nü' day Shawn Zay-lee-zay', Plass de la Kown-kord' to Plass der lay-twal. Fown-ten day Zeen-noh-sawn,--Oh-pay-râ Kum-meek,--Foh-lee Bair-zhair,--Bool-vâr day Kâ-pu-seen,--Beeb-lee-oh-tech Sant Zhun-vee-ayv',--Lay Zan-vâ-leed,--May-zown' der Veck-tor' U-goh',--Hub-bay-leesk',--Rü San Tawn-twan, &c., &c....' There would seem to be errors in this 'citation'. Vecktor should be Veektor? and H looks like a misprint for L in Hub-bay-leesk. -tech was probably -teck. Bonnaffé's book is noticed in _The Modern Language Review_ of last January. ON THE DIALECTAL WORDS IN EDMUND BLUNDEN'S POEMS[3] [Footnote 3: _The Waggoner and other Poems_, by Edmund Blunden, pp. 70. Sidgwick and Jackson. London, 1920.] In the original prospectus of the S.P.E., reprinted in Tract I, and again in III, p. 9, one of the objects of the Society is stated to be the 'enrichment and what is called regeneration of the language from the picturesque vocabularies of local vernaculars'. Since a young poet, Mr. Edmund Blunden, has lately published a volume in which this particular element of dialectal and obsolescent words is very prominent, it will be suitable to our general purpose to consider it as a practical experiment and examine the results. The poetic diction and high standard of his best work give sufficient importance to this procedure; and though he may seem to be somewhat extravagant in his predilection for unusual terms, yet his poetry cannot be imagined without them, and the strength and beauty of the effects must be estimated in his successes and not in his failures. In the following remarks no appreciation of the poetry will be attempted: our undertaking is merely to tabulate the 'new' words, and examine their fitness for their employment. The bracketed numbers following the quotations give the page of the book where they occur. The initials _O.E.D._ and _E.D.D._ stand for the _Oxford English Dictionary_ and the _English Dialect Dictionary_ (Wright). 1. 'And churning owls and goistering daws'. (1) Here _churning_ is a mistake; we are sorry to begin with an animadversion, but the word should be _churring_. #Churr# is an echo-word, and though there may be examples of echo-words which have been bettered by losing all trace of their simple spontaneous origin, this is not one. It is like _burr, purr,_ and _whirr_; and these words are best spelt with double R and the R should be trilled. The absurdity of not trilling this final R is seen very plainly in _burr_, because that word's definition is 'a rough sounding of the letter R.' This is not represented by the pronunciation b[schwa]:. What that 'southern English' pronunciation does indicate is the vulgarity and inconvenience of its degradations. _Burr_ occurs in these poems: 'There the live dimness burrs with droning glees'. (23) #Burr# is, moreover, a bad homophone and cannot neglect possible distinctions: the Oxford Dictionary has eight entries of substantives under _burr._ Our author also uses _whirr_: 'And the bleak garrets' crevices Like whirring distaffs utter dread', (26) and again of the noise of wind in ivy, on p. 54, and 'The damp gust makes the ivy whir', (48) _whir_ rhyming here with _executioner_. Since _churring_ (in the first quotation) would automatically preserve its essential trill, the intruder _churning_ is the more obnoxious; and unless the R can be trilled it would seem better for poets to use only the inflected forms of these words, and prefer _churreth_ to _churrs_. If _churn_ is anywhere dialectal for _churr_, it must have come from the common mistake of substituting a familiar for an unknown word: and this is the worst way of making homophones. 2. 'goistering daws'. #Goister# or #gauster# is a common dialect verb; the latter form seems the more common and is recognized in the Oxford Dictionary, where it is defined 'to behave in a noisy boisterous fashion ... in some localities to laugh noisily'. If jackdaws are to appropriate a word to describe their behaviour, no word could be better than _goistering_, and we prefer _goister_ to _gauster_. Its likeness to _boisterous_ will assist it, and we guess that it will be accepted. In the little glossary at the end of the book _goistering_ is explained as _guffawing_. That word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy vulgarity and mere needless jabber of the daw. 3. 'A dor flew by with crackling cry'. (7) This to the ear is 'A daw flew by with crackling cry'; and though our poet's glossary tells us that dor = dor-hawk or nightjar, it really is not so. A dor is a beetle so called from its making a _dorring_ noise, and the name, like _churr_ and _burr_, is better with its double R and trill. _Dor-hawk_ may be a name for the _nightjar_, but properly _dorr_ is not; and if it were, it would be forbidden by _daw_ so long as it neglected its trill. Note also the misfortune that four lines below we read 'The pigeons flaunted round his door', where the full correct pronunciation of _door_ (d[open o][schwa]) will not quite protect it. The whole line quoted from p. 7 is obscure, because a nightjar would never be recognized by the description of a bird that utters a crackling cry when flying. That it then makes a sound different from its distinctive whirring note is recorded. T.A. Coward writes 'when on the wing it has a soft call co-ic, and a sharper and repeated alarm quik, quik, quik.' It is doubtful whether _crackling_ can be accepted. 4. 'The grumping miller picked his way'. (8) #Grumping# is a good word, which appears from the dictionaries to be a common-speech term that is picking its way into literature. 5. 'The golden nobs and pippens swell'. (12) #nob# is _knob_. Golden-nob is 'a variety of apple'; see _E.D.D._: and as a special name, which the passage implies, it should be hyphened. 6. 'where the pollards frown, Notched, dumb, surly images of pain'. (13) #Notched.# This word well describes the appearance of old pollard willows after they have been cropped; but its full propriety may escape notice. A very early use of the verb _to notch_ was to cut or crop the hair roughly, and _notched_ was so used. The Oxford Dictionary quotes Lamb, 'a notched and cropt scrivener'. Then _pollard_ itself is from _poll_, and means an animal that has lost its horns as well as a tree that has been 'pollarded'. 7. 'In elver-peopled crevices'. (19) We are grateful for #elver#. This form has carefully differentiated itself from _eel-fare_, which means the passage of the young eels up the rivers, and has come to mean the _eel-fry_ themselves. 8. 'For Sussex cries from primrose lags and breaks'. (22) _E.D.D._, among many meanings of #lag#, explains this as a Sussex and Somerset term for 'a long marshy meadow usually by the side of a stream'. Since the word seems as if it might be used for anything somewhere, we cannot question its title to these meadows, but we doubt its power to retain possession, except in some favoured locality. 9. 'And chancing lights on willowy waterbreaks'. (22) We have to guess what a _waterbreak_ is, having found no other example of the word. 10. 'Of hobby-horses with their starting eyes'. (23) #Hobby-horse# as a local or rustic name for dragon-fly can have no right to general acceptance. 11. 'Stolchy ploughlands hid in grief.' (24) #Stolchy# is so good a word that it does not need a dictionary. Wright gives only the verb _stolch_ 'to tread down, trample, to walk in the dirt'. The adjective is therefore primarily applicable to wet land that has become sodden and miry by being _poached_ by cattle, and then to any ground in a similar condition. Since _poach_ is a somewhat confused homophone, its adjective _poachy_ has no chance against _stolchy_. 12. 'I whirry through the dark'. (24) #Whirry# is another word that explains itself, and perhaps the more readily for its confusion (in this sense) with _worry_, see _E.D.D._ where it is given as adjective and verb, the latter used by Scott in 'Midlothian'. 'Her and the gude-man will be whirrying through the blue lift on a broom-shank.' In the _Century Dictionary_, with its pronunciation hwér'i, it is described as dialectal form of _whirr_ or of _hurry_, to fly rapidly with noise, also transitive to hurry. 13. 'No hedger brished nor scythesman swung'. (25) and 'The morning hedger with his brishing-hook'. (62) These two lines explain the word #brish#. _O.E.D._ gives _brish_ as dialectal of _brush_, and so _E.D.D._ has the verb _to brush_ as dialect for trimming a tree or hedge. Brush is a difficult homophone, and it would be useful to have one of its derivative meanings separated off as _brish_. 14. 'A hizzing dragonfly that daps Above his mudded pond'. (28) #Hizzing# is an old word now neglected. Shakespeare has 'To have a thousand with red burning spits Come hizzing in upon 'em'.--_Lear_, III. vi. 17. and there are other quotations in _O.E.D._ 15. #Dap# is used again, 'the dapping moth'. (45.) This word is well known to fishermen and fowlers, meaning 'to dip lightly and suddenly into water' but is uncommon in literature. 16. 'The glinzy ice grows thicker through'. (28) Author's glossary explains #glinzy# as slippery. _E.D.D._ gives this word as _glincey_ and derives from French _glincer_ as _glisser_, to slide or glide. _Glinzy_ and _glincey_ carry unavoidable suggestion of _glint_. Compare the words in No. 19. _Glissery_ would be convincing. 17. 'The green east hagged with prowling storm'. (30) In _O.E.D._ #hagged# is given as monopolized by the sense of 'bewitched', or of 'lean and gaunt', related to haggard. This does not suit. The intention is probably an independent use of the p.p. of the transitive verb 'to hag'; defined as 'to torment or terrify as a hag, to trouble as the nightmare'. 18. 'where with the browsing thaive'. (31) #Thaive# is a two-year-old ewe. Wright gives _theave_ or _theeve_ as the commoner forms, and in the Paston letters it is _theyve_, which perhaps confirms _thaive_, rhymed here with 'rave'. Certainly it is most advisable to avoid _thieves_, the plural of thief, although _O.E.D._ allows this pronunciation and indeed puts it first of the alternatives. 19. 'On the pathway side ... the glintering flint'. (32) _O.E.D_. gives #glinter# as a 'rare' word. We have _glinting, glistening, glittering_, and _glistering_, and Scotch _glisting_. 20. 'The wind tangs through the shattered pane'. (34) Echo-words, like ting-tang, ding-dong, &c., must have their liberty; but of #tang# it should be noted that, though the verb may raise no inconvenience, yet the substantive has a very old and well-established use in the sense of a projecting point or barb (especially of metal), or sting, and that this demands respect and recognition. It is something less than prong, and is the proper word for the metal point that fixes the strap of a buckle. The homophonic ambiguity is notorious in Shakespeare's 'She had a tongue with a tang', where, as the _O.E.D._ suggests, the double sense of sting and ring were perhaps intended. 21. 'The grutching pixies hedge me round'. (37) _Grudge_ and #grutch# are the same word. The use of the obsolete form would therefore be fanciful if there were no difference in the sense; but there is a useful distinction: because grudge has entirely lost its original sense of murmuring, making complaint, and is confined to the consciousness and feeling of discontent, whereas _grutch_ is recognized as carrying the old meaning of grumble. Thus Stevenson as quoted in _O.E.D._, 'The rest is grunting and grutching'. It is a very useful word to restore, but it may, perhaps, at this particular time find _grouse_ rather strongly entrenched. 22. 'Where the channering insect channels'. (46) This is, of course, our old friend The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, The channerin' worm doth chide', and it looks like an attempt to define what is there meant, viz. that the worm made a #channering# noise in burrowing through the wood. The notion is perhaps admissible, though we cannot believe the sound to be audible. 23. 'The lispering aspens'. (53) #Lispering.# We should be grateful for this word. _O.E.D._ quotes it from Clare's poems. 24. 'Of shallows with the shealings chalky white'. (64) #Sheal# is a homophone, 1. a shepherd's hut or shanty; 2. a peascod or seed-shell. Of the first, _shiel_ and _shieling_ are common forms; the second is dialectal; _E.D.D._ gives #shealing# as the husk of seeds. If this be the meaning in our quotation, the appearance described is unrecognized by the present annotator. 25. 'Dull streams Flow flagging in the undescribed deep fourms Of creatures born the first of all, long dead'. (67) #Fourm#, explained as a 'hare's lurking place', commonly called _form_, widely used and understood because the lair has the shape or form of the animal that lay in it. But perhaps it was originally only the animal's seat or form, as we use the word in schools. _Form_ has so many derivative senses that it would be an advantage to have this one thus differentiated both in spelling and sound. 26. 'Toadstools twired and hued fantastically'. (68) Though the word #twired# is not explained in Mr. Blunden's glossary and the meaning is not evident from the context, we guess that he is using it here of shape, in the sense of 'contorted', which would range with the quotation from Burton (given in some dictionaries) 'No sooner doth a young man see his sweetheart coming, but he ... slickes his haire, twires his beard [&c.]'. Here _twires_, as latest edition of _O.E.D._ suggests, may be a misprint for _twirls_. Older dictionaries give wrong and misleading definitions of this word; and a spurious _twire_, to sing, was inferred from a misreading 'twierethe' for 'twitereth' in Chaucer's _Boethius_, III m. 2. Modern authorities only allow _twire_, to peep, as in Shakespeare's 28th Sonnet, 'When sparkling stars twire not, thou gildst the even' (whence some had foolishly supposed that _twire_ meant twinkle) and in Ben Jonson, _Sad Shepherd_, II. 1, 'Which maids will twire at, 'tween their fingers'. The verb is still in dialectal use: _E.D.D._ explains it 'to gaze wistfully or beseechingly'. 27. 'The tiny frogs Go yerking'. (69) #Yerk.# The intrans. verb is to kick as a horse. The trans. verb is quoted from Massinger, Herrick, and Burns, who has 'My fancy yerkit up sublime': i.e. roused, lashed. 28. 'There seems no heart in wood or wide'. (8) #Wide# as a subst. is hardly recognized. Tennyson is quoted, 'The waste wide of that abyss', but as _waste_ is a recognized substantive the authority is uncertain. In the above examples we have taken such words as best answered our purpose, neglecting many which have almost equal claims. The richness of the vocabulary in unusual words and in words carrying unusual meanings forbids complete examination; as will be seen by a rough classification of some of those which we have passed over. To begin with the words which our author uses well, we will quote as an example all the passages in which #writhe# occurs. The transitive verb which is perhaps in danger of neglect is very valuable, and it is well employed. These passages will also fully exhibit the general quality of Mr. Blunden's diction. 'But no one loves the aguish mist That writhes its way at eventide Along the copse's waterside'. (3) 'But now the sower's hand is writhed In livid death '. (25) 'To-morrow's brindled shouting storms with flood The purblind hollows with a leaden rain And flat the gleaning-fields to choking mud And writhe the groaning woods with bursts of pain'. (42) 'The lispering aspens and the scarfed brook-grasses With wakened melancholy writhe the air'. (53) #Dimpling# is well and poetically used in 'While the woodlark's dimpling rings In the dim air climb'. (21) and also _quag_ (verb) (2), _seething_ (3), _channelled_ (9), _bunch_ (11), _jungled_ (11), _rout_ (verb) (12), _fluster_ (13), _byre_ (13), _plash_ (shallow water) (19), _tantalise_ (neut. v.) (36), _hutched_ (43), _flounce_ (44), _rootle_ (45), _shore_ (verb) (59). _Lair_ (verb) (43) does not seem a useful word. Next, words somewhat obscurely or fancifully used are _starving_ (1), _stark_ (10), _honeycomb_ (15), _cobbled_ (of pattens) (16), _lanterned_ (24), _well_ (49), _bergomask_ (for village country dances?) (25), _belvedere_ (of the spider's watch tower) (26). While the following seem to us incorrectly used: _mumbling_ (23) used of wings; the word is confined to the mouth whether as a manner of eating or of speaking: _crunch_ (28) where the frosts crunch the grass: whereas they only make it crunchable. _maligns_ (54) used as a neuter verb without precedent, _chinked_ (58) of light passing through a chink: and note the homophone chink, used of sound. And then the line 'The blackthorns clung with heapen sloes' (55) contains two reprehensible liberties, because _clung_ in its original proper sense means congealed or shrivelled; to _cling_ was an intransitive verb meaning to adhere together: its modern use is to stick fast [to something]--and secondly, _heapen_ is not a grammatical form; the p.p. is _heaped_. Again, in the line 'He well may come with baits and trolls', (11) we do not know whether _trolls_ has something to do with pike-fishing, or merely means the reel on the rod. In that sense it lacks authority(?), moreover it is a homophone, used by our poet in 'And trolls and pixies unbeknown'. (18) Finally, there are a good many English country names for common plants, for example, Esau's-hands, Rabbits'-meat, Bee's balsams, Pepper-gourds, Brandy-flowers, Flannel-weed, and Shepherd's rose; and some of these are excellent, and we very much wish that more of our good English plant-names could be distinctively attached. We will not open the discussion here, except to say that the casual employment of local names is of no service because so many of these names are common to so many different plants. Our author's #Rabbits'-meat#, for instance, is applied to _Anthriscus sylvestris_, _Heracleum Spondylium_, _Oxalis Acetosella_ and _Lamium purpureum_; all of which may be suitable rabbits' food. But each one of these plants has also a very wide choice of other names: thus _Anthriscus sylvestris_, besides being _Rabbits-meat_ may be familiarly introduced as Dill, Keck, Ha-ho, or Bun, and by some score of other names showing it to be disputed for by the ass, cow, dog, pig and even by the devil himself to make his oatmeal. _Heracleum Spondylium_, alias Old Rot or Lumper-scrump, provides provender for cow, pig, swine, and hog, and also material for Bear's breeches. _Oxalis Acetosella_ is even richer in pet-names. After Rabbits'-meat, sheep-sorrel, cuckoo-spice, we find Hallelujah! Lady's cakes, and God Almighty's bread-and-cheese. These are selected from fifty names. _Lamium purpureum_ is not so polyonymous. With Tormentil, Archangel, and various forms of Dead-nettle, we find only Badman's Posies and Rabbits'-meat. The worst perplexity is that well-known names, which one would think were securely appropriated, are often common property. Our authority for the above details--the _Dictionary of English Plant-names_, by James Britten and Robert Holland--tells us that _Orchis mascula_, the 'male orchis', is also called Cowslip, Crowsfoot, Ragwort, and Cuckoo-flower. This plant, however, seems to have suggested to the rustic mind the most varied fancies, similitudes of all kinds from 'Aaron's beard' to 'kettle-pad'. * * * * * The Committee of the S.P.E. invite the membership of all those who are genuinely interested in the objects of the Society and willing to assist in its work. The Secretary will be glad to receive donations of any amount, great or small, which will be duly acknowledged and credited in the Society's banking account. Members who wish to have the tracts of the Society forwarded to them as they are issued, should ensure this by sending a subscription of 10_s_. to the Secretary, who will then supply them for the current year of their subscription. The four tracts published in the last year were thus sent to a number of subscribers; and it would greatly assist the Society if all these would renew their subscriptions, and if others would subscribe for our forthcoming publications in the same manner. All donations and subscriptions should be sent to the Hon. Secretary, L. PEARSALL SMITH, 11 ST. LEONARD'S TERRACE, S.W. 3. The prospectus of the Society will be found in Tract I, and further details in Tracts III and IV. 
29125	----	Transcriber's Note The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. BRIEF REFLECTIONS RELATIVE TO THE EMIGRANT FRENCH CLERGY: EARNESTLY SUBMITTED TO THE HUMANE CONSIDERATION OF THE LADIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. _BY THE AUTHOR OF_ EVELINA AND CECILIA. London: PRINTED BY T. DAVISON, FOR THOMAS CADELL, IN THE STRAND. 1793. [Price one Shilling and Sixpence.] [Asterism] _The profits of this Publication are to be wholly appropriated to the Relief of the_ EMIGRANT FRENCH CLERGY. APOLOGY. However wide from the allotted boundaries and appointed province of Females may be all interference in public matters, even in the agitating season of general calamity; it does not thence follow that they are exempt from all public claims, or mere passive spectatresses of the moral as well as of the political oeconomy of human life. The distinct ties of their prescriptive duties, which, pointed out by Nature, have been recognised by reason, and established by custom, remove, indeed, from their view and knowledge all materials for forming public characters. The privacy, therefore, of their lives is the dictate of common sense, stimulated by local discretion. But in the doctrine of morality the reverse is the case, and their feminine deficiencies are there changed into advantages: since the retirement, which divests them of practical skills for public purposes, guards them, at the same time, from the heart-hardening effects of general worldly commerce. It gives them leisure to reflect and to refine, not merely upon the virtues, but the pleasures of benevolence; not only and abstractedly upon that sense of good and evil which is implanted in all, but feelingly, nay awefully, upon the woes they see, yet are spared! It is here, then, in the cause of tenderness and humanity, they may come forth, without charge of presumption, or forfeiture of delicacy. Exertions here may be universal, without rivality or impropriety; the head may work, the hand may labour; the heart may suggest, indiscriminately in all, in men without disdain, in women without a blush: and however truly of the latter to withdraw from notice may be in general the first praise, in a service such as this, they may with yet more dignity come forward: for it is here that their purest principles, in union with their softest feelings, may blend immediate gratification with the most solemn future hopes.----And it is here, in full persuasion of sympathy as well as of pardon, that the Author of these lines ventures to offer to her countrywomen a short exhortation in favour of the emigrant French Clergy. BRIEF REFLEXIONS RELATIVE TO THE EMIGRANT FRENCH CLERGY. The astonishing period of political history upon which our days have fallen, robs all former times of wonder, wearies expectation, sickens even hope! while the occurrences of every passing minute have such prevalence over our minds, that public affairs assume the interest of private feelings, affect domestic peace, and occupy not merely the most retired part of mankind, but even mothers, wives, and children with solicitude irresistible. Yet the amazement which has been excited, though stupendous, though terrific, by the general events that in our neighbour kingdom have convulsed all order, and annihilated tranquility, is feeble, is almost null, compared with that produced by the living contrast of virtue and of guilt exhibited in the natives of one and the same country; virtue, the purest and most disinterested, emanating from the first best cause, religion; and guilt, too heinous for any idea to which we have hitherto given definition. The emigrant FRENCH CLERGY, who present us with the bright side of this picture, are fast verging to a situation of the most necessitous distress; and, notwithstanding the generous collections repeatedly raised, and the severest oeconomy unremittingly exercised in their distribution, if something further is not quickly obtained, all that has been done will prove of no avail, and they must soon end their hapless career, not by paying the debt of nature, but by famine. That the kingdom at large, in its legislative capacity, will ere long take into consideration a more permanent provision for these pious fugitives, there is every reason to infer from the national interest, which has universally been displayed in their cause. To preserve them in the mean time is the object of present application. So much has already so bountifully been bestowed in large donations, that it seems wanting in modesty, if not in equity, to make further immediate demands upon heads of houses, and masters of families. Which way, then, may these destitute wanderers turn for help? To their own country they cannot go back; it is still in the same state of lawless iniquity which drove them from it, still under the tyrannic sway of the sanguinary despots of the Convention. What then remains? Must their dreadful hardships, their meek endurance, their violated rights, terminate in the death of hunger? No! there is yet a resource; a resource against which neither modesty nor equity plead; a resource which, on the contrary, has every moral propensity, every divine obligation, in its favour: this resource is FEMALE BENEFICENCE. Already a considerable number of Ladies have stept forward for this Christian purpose. Their plan has been printed and dispersed. It speaks equally to the heart and to the understanding; it points out wretchedness which we cannot dispute, and methods for relief of which we cannot deny the feasibility. The Ladies who have instituted this scheme desire not to be named; and those who are the principal agents for putting it in execution, join in the same wish. Such delicacy is too respectable to be opposed, and ostentation is unnecessary to promulgate what modest silence may recommend to higher purposes. There are other records than those of newspapers, and lists of subscribers; records in which to see one fair action, one virtuous exertion, one self-denying sacrifice entered, may bring to its author, _that peace which the world cannot give_, and a joy more refined than even the praise of the worthy. Such names, nevertheless, will ultimately be sought, for what now is benevolence will in future become honour; and female tradition will not fail to hand down to posterity the formers and protectresses of a plan which, if successful, will exalt for ever the female annals of Great Britain. The minutest scrutinizer into the rights of charity cannot here start one objection that a little consideration will not supersede. No votaries of pleasure, ruined by extravagance and luxury, forfeit pity in censure by imploring your assistance; no slaves of idleness, no dupes of ambition, invite reproof for neglected concerns in soliciting your liberality. The objects of this petition are reduced, indeed, from affluence to penury, but the change has been wrought through the exaltation of their souls, not through the depravity of their conduct. Whatever may be their calls upon our tenderness, their claims, to every thinking mind, are still higher to our admiration. Driven from house and home, despoiled of dignities and honours, abandoned to the seas for mercy, to chance for support, many old, some infirm, all impoverished? with mental strength alone allowed them for coping with such an aggregate of evil! Weigh, weigh but a moment their merits and their sufferings, and what will not be sooner renounced than the gratification of serving so much excellence. It is to _itself_ the liberal heart does justice in doing justice to the oppressed; they are its own happiest feelings which it nourishes, in nourishing the unfortunate. By addressing myself to females, I am far from inferring that charity is exclusively their praise; no, it is a virtue as manly as it is gentle; it is christian, in one word, and ought therefore to be universal. But the pressure of present need is so urgent, that the ladies who patronize this plan are content to spread it amongst their own sex, whose contributions, though smaller, may more conveniently be sudden, and whose demands for wealth being less serious, may render those contributions more general[1]. Nor are the misfortunes we would now mitigate so foreign to our "business and bosoms" as we may lightly suppose: all Europe is involved by the circumstances which occasioned them, and with indignation as strong, though with sensations less acute, has watched their wonderful progress[2]. Whatever by unbelievers may be urged in defence of what they style the _religion of nature_, its inefficacy, even for the exclusive purposes of morality, is now surely exposed beyond all theory or controversy: and the _religion of God_ has received a testimony as clear of its _moral_ influence, by the atrocious acts of the Convention since it has been cast aside, as of its _divine_, in the voluntary sacrifices offered up at its shrine by those who still adhere to its holy doctrines. And shall we, with our arms, our treasures, our dearest blood, resist the authors of these wrongs, yet forbear to protect their victims? All ages have furnished examples of individuals who have been distinguished from their contemporaries by actions of Heroism: but to find a similar instance of a whole body of men, thus repelling every allurement of protection and preferment, of home, country, friends, fortune, possessions, for the still calls of piety, and private dictates of conscience, precedent may be defied, and the annals of virtue explored in vain. Shall we deem it a misfortune to be burthened with beings such as these? No; let us, more justly, conclude it a blessing. Prosperity is apt to be forgetful, to confound what it possesses with what it deserves; but the claims we here feel to give, awaken us to remember the abundance we have received. Thankfully, and not disdainfully, let us bow down to an admonition thus mildly instilled through the medium of borrowed experience. What a contrast to the terrible lesson given to the distracted country which offers it! where both crimes and afflictions are of such enormous magnitude, as to engross the whole civilized earth between resentment and compassion! Already we look back on the past as on a dream, too wild in its horrors, too unnatural in its cruelties, too abrupt in its succession of terrors, even for the exaggerating pencil of the most eccentric and gloomy imagination; surpassing whatever has been heard, read, or thought; and admitting no similitude but to the feverish visions of delirium! so marvellous in fertility of incident, so improbable in excess of calamity, so monstrous in impunity of guilt! the witches of Shakespeare are less wanton in absurdity, and the demons of Milton less horrible in denunciations. Of the present nothing can be said but, _what is it_?--It is gone while I write the question. The future--the consequences--what judgment can pervade? The scenery is so dark, we fear to look forward. Experience offers no direction, observation no clue; the mystery is as impervious, the obscurity as tremendous, as that we would vainly penetrate for our destinies in the world to come. Ah! might the veil but drop to clearness as refulgent! Let us not, however, destroy the rectitude of our horror of these enormities, by mingling it with implacable prejudice; nor condemn the oppressed with the oppressor, the slaughtered with the assassin. Are we not all the creatures of one Creator? Does not the same sun give us warmth? And will not _the days of the years of our pilgrimage_ be as short as theirs? It is an offence to Religion, an injury to Providence, to suppose That vast tract of land wholly seized by evil spirits; though licentiousness, rapacity, ambition, and irreligion have given rulers to it, of late, abhorrent to all humanity. We are too apt to consider ourselves rather as a distinct race of beings, than as merely the emulous inhabitants of rival states; but ere our detestation leads to the indiscriminate proscription of a whole people, let us look at the Emigrant French Clergy, and ask where is the Englishman, where, indeed, the human being, in whom a sense of right can more disinterestedly have been demonstrated, or more nobly predominate? O let us be brethren with the good, wheresoever they may arise! and let us resist the culpable, whether abroad or at home. The world, in all its varied stores of good, contains nothing that can vie with Philanthropy--that soft _milk of human kindness_, that benign spirit of social harmony, that genuine emblem of practical Religion! seeking some extenuation from goodness even amongst the fallen, accepting some apology from temptation even amongst the sinful; lenient in its judgments, conciliating in its awards, forgiving in its wrath! and receiving in bosom-serenity all the solace it humanely expands. But while to the individual we talk of alms, and plead distress, sickness, infirmity; to the community we may be bolder, juster, firmer, and talk of duties. Flourishing and happy ourselves, shall we see cast upon our coasts virtue we scarce thought mortal, sufferers whose story we could not read without tears, martyrs that remind us of other days--and let them perish? Behold age unhonoured, disease unattended, strangers unfed? and not till they are no more, till the compassionating hand of Death has closed their miseries, learn to do them justice? _then_, when we can only lament,--not _now_, when we may also succour? Is it to that period we must wait to enquire, to exclaim "How came they to this pass?" Anticipate the answer, anticipate the historians of times to come: will they not say, "These holy men, who died for want of bread, were Priests of the Christian Religion. They had committed no sin, they had offended against no law: they refused to take an oath which their consciences disapproved; their piety banished them from their country; and the land in which they sought refuge received, admired, relieved--neglected, forgot, and finally permitted them to starve! "And what was this land? some wild, uncultivated spot, where yet no arts had flourished, no civilization been spread, no benefits reciprocated? no religion known? Where novelty was the only passport, and where kindness was the short-lived offspring of curiosity? Unhappy men! to have struck on such inhospitable shores, amidst a race so unapprized of all social, all relative ties, as to confer favours only where they may be expected in return, unconscious, or unreflecting that every unoffending man is a brother! "Or--were they thrown on some bleak northern strand, where life is mere existence, where the genial board has never welcomed the wearied traveller, where freezing cold benumbs even the soft affections of the heart, and where, from the first great law of self-preservation, compassion is monopolized by internal penury and want? Ill-fated passengers! it was not here, in the chill atmosphere of personal misery, your woes should have sought redress; the commiseration which is your due can only be conceived by those who have known the height from which ye have fallen, who have enjoyed the same affluence, and blessed Heaven for similar peace and joy--" But no; this, at least, has not been their doom--nor will this, I trust, be their fate. No land of barbarians has been insensible to their worth, no ruthless region of the north has blighted sensibility for their misfortunes from ignorance of milder life: the land to which they sailed was Great Britain; in the fulness of its felicity, in the meridian of its glory, not more celebrated for arts and arms, than beloved for indulgent benevolence, and admired for munificence of liberality. Here, then, ye reverend fathers, blest at least in the choice of your asylum, here rest your weary limbs, _till the wicked cease from troubling_! secure of the kindest, and, when once your exigency is known, the most effectual succour. Calm, therefore, your harrassed spirits, repose your shattered frames, look around you with fearless reliance; you will see a friend in every beholder, you will find a sympathizer in every auditor. It ought also, to be remembered, that though the money now gathered will be paid into foreign hands, it is wholly among ourselves it will be expended; it is all and entirely our own by immediate circulation. Yet--were it not--what is it but a refined species of usury? a hoard lodged beyond all reach of bankruptcy? a store for futurity? exempt from the numerous losses and disappointments of those who mistake the blessing of wealth to consist in its power of selfish appropriation? Whoever bestows, whether promptly from impulse, or maturely from principle, will alike be content with the recompence of doing good: but in justice, in delicacy to the uncommon objects of this unexampled contribution, we should suggest what cannot fail to pass in their own minds, and anticipate what we cannot doubt will be the result of their restored powers: that those who survive the anarchy by which they are desolated, who live to see their country rescued from its present despotic tyrants, will still be strangers to repose, even at the natal home for which now every earthly sigh is heard, till, with their restituted property, they have cleared their dignity of character from every possible aspersion of calumny, and returned--not to their benefactors--whose accounts, far more nobly, will be settled elsewhere!----but to the poor of the kingdom at large, that bounty which has sustained them in banishment and woe. Who is there that can look forward without emotion to the period of their recal and departure? With what blessings and what prayers will their hearts overflow! "Farewell, they will cry, ye friends of the unhappy! ye protectors of the houseless! ye generous rich, who thus benignly have worked for us! Ye patient poor who thus unrepiningly have seen us supported! Blest be your kingdom! Long live your virtuous sovereign? Be heavenly peace your portion! and never may ye know the sorrows of national divisions!" Yet, to many it may appear, that where so much has been done, nothing more can be required. This is rather a mistake from failure in reflexion than in benevolence. To such, it is sufficient to ask, "Why gave ye at all?" The answer is obvious; to save a distressed herd of fellow-creatures from want. And are they less worth saving now, their helplessness, unhappily, being the same? Was the novelty of their appearance and situation a plea more forcible than acquaintance with their merits? than the view of their harmless lives, their inoffensive manners, their patient resignation to the evils of their lot? But--_are we to give_, ye cry, _for ever_? Ah! rather, and for more generously, reverse the question, and, in _their_ names exclaim, "Must we _receive_ for ever? will the epoch never arrive when our injuries may be redressed, and our sufferings allowed the soft recompence of manifesting our gratitude?" O happy donors! compare but thus your subjects for murmuring with the feelings of your receivers! and do not, because ye see them, bowed down by adversity, thus lowly grateful for the pittance that grants them bread and covering, imagine them so unlike the human race to which they belong, that sometimes, in bitterness of spirit, they can forbear the piercing recollection of better days; days, when beneficence flourished from their own deeds, when anguish and poverty were relieved by their own hands! Still a little nearer let us bring reflexion home, and entreat those who having done much, would do no more, to suppose themselves, for a moment only, placed in _l'Eglise des Carmes_, in Paris, on the 2d of September, 1792, in full sight of the hapless assemblage of this pious fraternity, who there sought sanctuary--not for the crimes they had committed, but for the duty they had discharged to their consciences, not from just punishment of guilt, but from fury against innocence. Here, then, behold these venerable men, collected in a body, enclosed within walls dedicated to holy offices, bewailing the flagitious actions of their country-men, yet devout, composed, earnest in prayer, and incorruptible in purity. Now, then, in mental retrospection, witness the unheard-of massacre that ensued! Behold the ruffians that invade the sacred abode, each bearing in his hand some exterminating weapon; in his eye, a more than fiend-like ferocity. Can it be you they seek, ye men of peace? unarmed, defenceless, and sanctuarised within the precincts of your own religious functions!----Incredible!-- Alas, no!--behold them reviled--chaced--assaulted. They demand their offence? They are answered by staves and pikes. They fly to the altar--to that altar where, so lately, salvation seemed to hang upon their benediction.-- Here, at least, are they not safe? At this sanctified spot will not some reverence revive? some devotion rekindle? Will not the fell instruments of destruction fall guiltless from the shaking hands of their contrite pursuers? Will not remorse seize their inmost souls, and vibrate through the hallowed habitation, in one universal cry of, "O men of God! live yet--so forgive--and pray for us!"--Ah, deadly shame! indelible disgrace! not here, not even here, could compunction or humanity find a friend-- "Would not those white hairs move pity?"-- No!--the murderers dart after them: the pious suppliants kneel--but they rise no more! They pray--and their prayers ascend to heaven, unheard on earth! Groans resound through the vaulted roof--Mangled carcases strew the consecrated ground--derided, while wounded; insulted, while slaughtered--they are cleft in twain--their savage destroyers joy in their cries----Blood, agony, and death close the fatal scene! And ye, O ye who hear it, revere the immortal faith that, proof against this consummate barbarity, preferred its most baneful rage, to uttering one deviating word! And then, while your hearts bleed fresh with sympathy, will ye not call out, "O could they have been rescued! had pitying Heaven but spared the final blow, and, snatching them from their dread assassins, cast them, despoiled, forlorn, friendless, on this our happy isle, with what transport would we have welcomed and cherished them! sought balm for their lacerated hearts, and studied to have alleviated their exile, by giving to it every character of a second and endearing home. Our nation would have been honoured by affording refuge to such perfection; every family would have been blessed with whom such pilgrims associated; our domestics would have vied with each other to shew them kindness and respect; our poor would have contributed their mite to assist them; our children would have relinquished some enjoyment to have fed them!" Let not reflection stop here, nor this merciful regret be unavailing: extend it a little farther, and mark the question to which it leads: can ye, wish this for those who are gone, and not practice it for those who remain? Sufferers in the same cause, bred in the same faith, and firm in the same principles; the banished men now amongst us would have shared a similar fate, if seized upon the same spot. Venerate them, then, O Christians of every denomination, as the representatives of those who have been slain; and let the same generous feeling which would call to life those murdered martyrs, protect their yet existing brethren, and save them, at every risk, and by every exertion, from an end as painful and more lingering; as unnatural, though less violent. Come forth, then, O ye Females, blest with affluence! spare from your luxuries, diminish from your pleasures, solicit with your best powers; and hold in heart and mind that, when the awful hour of your own dissolution arrives, the wide-opening portals of heaven may present to your view these venerable sires, as the precursors of your admission. FINIS. FOOTNOTES: [1] The females of that miserable country whence these meritorious outcasts are driven, had the happiness, in former and better times, of exercising a charity as decisive for life or death as that which the females of Great Britain are now conjured to perform. St. Vincent de Paule, _aumonier général des galeres_, to whom France owes the chief of its humane establishments, instituted amongst the rest, the Foundling Hospital of Paris. His fund for its endowment failing, after repeated remonstrances for further general alms, which though not unsuccessful, proved insufficient, he gathered together a congregation of females, before whom he presented the innocent little objects of his prayers. His address to them was at once simple and sublime: "I call not upon you, he cried, as Christians, nor even as fellow creatures; I call upon you solely and singly to pronounce sentence as judges. To the largesses you have already bestowed, these orphans owe their natural existence: but those largesses are exhausted, and without a further supply, their existence is at an end. You are their judges--pronounce, then, their fate; do you ordain them to live? do you doom them to die?" [2] 5000 French ecclesiastics _live_ in Switzerland, 4000 in the ecclesiastical State, 15,000 in Spain, more than 20,000 in Germany, Holland, and the Austrian Netherlands; and shall 6000 be suffered to _die_ in England? N.B. _A Translation of this Tract is preparing for the press by_ M. D'ARBLAY. PLANS and ADVERTISEMENTS, proposed to the LADIES OF GREAT BRITAIN for the relief of the Emigrant French Clergy, may be had at the Publisher's. 
37774	----	CONSIDERATIONS ON RELIGION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION, WITH REMARKS ON THE _SPEECH_ OF _M. DUPONT_, DELIVERED IN THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF FRANCE. TOGETHER WITH AN ADDRESS TO THE LADIES, &c. OF _GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND_. [Decoration] BY HANNAH MORE. FIRST _AMERICAN_ EDITION. PRINTED AT _BOSTON_, BY WELD AND GREENOUGH. SOLD at the MAGAZINE OFFICE, No. 49, State Street. MDCCXCIV. [Decoration] A PREFATORY ADDRESS TO THE LADIES, &c. of GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND, IN BEHALF OF THE FRENCH EMIGRANT CLERGY. [Decoration] If it be allowed that there may arise occasions so extraordinary, that all the lesser motives of delicacy ought to vanish before them; it is presumed that the present emergency will in some measure justify the hardiness of an Address from a private individual, who, stimulated by the urgency of the case, sacrifices inferior considerations to the ardent desire of raising further supplies towards relieving a distress as pressing as it is unexampled. We are informed by public advertisement, that the large sums already so liberally subscribed for the Emigrant Clergy, are almost exhausted. Authentic information adds, that multitudes of distressed Exiles in the island of Jersey, are on the point of wanting bread. Very many to whom this address is made have already contributed. O let them not be weary in well-doing! Many are making generous exertions for the just and natural claims of the widows and children of our brave seamen and soldiers. Let it not be said, that the present is an _interfering_ claim. Those to whom I write, have bread enough, and to spare. You, who fare sumptuously every day, and yet complain you have little to bestow, let not this bounty be subtracted from another bounty, but rather from some superfluous expense. The beneficent and right minded want no arguments to be pressed upon them; but I write to those of every description. Luxurious habits of living, which really furnish the distressed with the fairest grounds for application, are too often urged as a motive for withholding assistance, and produced as a plea for having little to spare. Let her who indulges such habits, and pleads such excuses in consequence, reflect, that by retrenching _one_ costly dish from her abundant table, the superfluities of _one_ expensive desert, _one_ evening's public amusement, she may furnish at least a week's subsistence to more than one person,[A] as liberally bred perhaps as herself, and who, in his own country, may have often tasted how much more blessed it is to give than to receive--to a minister of God, who has been long accustomed to bestow the necessaries he is now reduced to solicit. Even your young daughters, whom maternal prudence has not yet furnished with the means of bestowing, may be cheaply taught the first rudiments of charity, together with an important lesson of economy: They may be taught to sacrifice a feather, a set of ribbons, an expensive ornament, an idle diversion. And if they are thus instructed, that there is no true charity without self denial, they will _gain_ more than they are called upon to _give_: For the suppression of one luxury for a charitable purpose, is the exercise of two virtues, and this without any pecuniary expense. Let the sick and afflicted remember how dreadful it must be, to be exposed to sufferings, without one of the alleviations which mitigate _their_ affliction. How dreadful it is to be without comforts, without necessaries, without a home--_without a country_! While the gay and prosperous would do well to recollect, how suddenly and terribly those for whom we plead, were, by the surprising vicissitudes of life, thrown from equal heights of gaiety and prosperity. And let those who have husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, or friends, reflect on the uncertainties of war, and the revolution of human affairs. It is only by imagining the possibility of those who are dear to us being placed in the same calamitous circumstances, that we can obtain an adequate feeling of the woes we are called upon to commiserate. In a distress so wide and comprehensive, many are prevented from giving by that common excuse--"That it is but a drop of water in the ocean." But let them reflect, that if all the individual drops were withheld, there would be no ocean at all; and the inability to give much ought not, on any occasion, to be converted into an excuse for giving nothing. Even moderate circumstances need not plead an exemption. The industrious tradesman will not, even in a political view, be eventually a loser by his small contribution. The money raised is neither carried out of our country, nor dissipated in luxuries, but returns again to the community; to our shops and to our markets, to procure the bare necessaries of life. Some have objected to the difference of _religion_ of those for whom we solicit. Such an objection hardly deserves a serious answer. Surely if the superstitious Tartar hopes to become possessed of the courage and talents of the enemy he slays, the Christian is not afraid of catching, or of propagating the error of the sufferer he relieves.--Christian charity is of no party. We plead not for their faith, but for their wants. And let the more scrupulous, who look for desert as well as distress in the objects of their bounty, bear in mind, that if these men could have sacrificed their conscience to their convenience, they had not now been in this country. Let us shew them the purity of _our_ religion, by the beneficence of our actions. If you will permit me to press upon you such high motives (and it were to be wished that in every action we were to be influenced by the highest) perhaps no act of bounty to which you may be called out, can ever come so immediately under that solemn and affecting description, which will be recorded in the great day of account--_I was a stranger and ye took me in_.---- [Decoration] _The following is an exact Translation from a_ SPEECH _made in the National Convention at Paris, on Friday the 14th of December, 1792, in a Debate on the Subject of establishing Public Schools for the Education of Youth, by Citizen_ DUPONT, _a Member of considerable Weight; and as the Doctrines contained in it were received with unanimous Applause, except from two or three of the Clergy, it may be fairly considered as an Exposition of the Creed of that Enlightened Assembly. Translated from_ Le Moniteur _of Sunday the 16th of December, 1792_. [Decoration] What! Thrones are overturned! Sceptres broken! Kings expire! And yet the Altars of GOD remain! (Here there is a murmur from some Members; and the Abbé ICHON demands that the person speaking may be called to order.) Tyrants, in outrage to nature, continue to burn an impious incense on those Altars! (Some murmurs arise, but they are lost in the applauses from the majority of the Assembly.) The Thrones that have been reversed, have left these Altars naked, unsupported, and tottering. A single breath of enlightened reason will now be sufficient to make them disappear; and if humanity is under obligations to the French nation for the first of these benefits, the fall of Kings, can it be doubted but that the French people, now sovereign, will be wise enough, in like manner, to overthrow those Altars and _those Idols_ to which those Kings have hitherto made them subject? _Nature_ and _Reason_, these ought to be the gods of men! These are my gods! (Here the Abbé AUDREIN cried out, "There is no bearing this;" and rushed out of the Assembly.--A great laugh.) Admire _nature_--cultivate _reason_. And you, Legislators, if you desire that the French people should be happy, make haste to propagate these principles, and to teach them in your primary schools, instead of those fanatical principles which have hitherto been taught. The tyranny of Kings was confined to make their people miserable in this life--but those other tyrants, the Priests, extend their dominion into another, of which they have no other idea than of eternal punishments; a doctrine which some men have hitherto had the good nature to believe. But the moment of the catastrophe is come--all these prejudices must fall at the same time. _We must destroy them, or they will destroy us._--For myself, I honestly avow to the Convention, _I am an atheist_! (Here there is some noise and tumult. But a great number of members cry out, "What is that to us--you are an honest man!") But I defy a single individual, among the twenty-four millions of Frenchmen, to make against me any well grounded reproach. I doubt whether the Christians, or the Catholics, of which the last speaker, and those of his opinion, have been talking to us, can make the same challenge.--(Great applauses.) There is another consideration--Paris has had great losses. It has been deprived of the commerce of luxury; of that factitious splendour which was found at courts, and invited strangers hither. Well! We must repair these losses.--Let me then represent to you the times, that are fast approaching, when our philosophers, whose names are celebrated throughout Europe, PETION, SYEYES, CONDORCET, and others--surrounded in our Pantheon, as the Greek philosophers where at Athens, with a crowd of disciples coming from all parts of Europe, walking like the Peripatetics, and teaching--this man, the system of the universe, and developing the progress of all human knowledge; that, perfectioning the social system, and shewing in our decree of the 17th of June, 1789, the seeds of the insurrections of the 14th of July and the 10th of August, and of all those insurrections which are spreading with such rapidity throughout Europe--So that these young strangers, on their return to their respective countries, may spread the same lights, and may operate, _for the happiness of Mankind_, similar revolutions throughout the world. (Numberless applauses arose, almost throughout the whole Assembly, and in the Galleries.) [Decoration] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: Mr. Bowdler's letter states, that about Six Shillings a week included the expenses of each Priest at Winchester.] [Decoration] REMARKS ON THE SPEECH of Mr. DUPONT, ON THE SUBJECTS OF Religion and Public Education. [Decoration] It is presumed that it may not be thought unseasonable at this critical time to offer to the Public, and especially to the more religious part of it, a few slight observations, occasioned by the late famous Speech of Mr. Dupont, which exhibits the Confession of Faith of a considerable Member of the French National Convention. Though the Speech itself has been pretty generally read, yet it was thought necessary to perfix it to these Remarks, lest such as have not already perused it, might, from an honest reluctance to credit the existence of such principles, dispute its authenticity, and accuse the remarks, if unaccompanied by the Speech, of a spirit of invective and unfair exaggeration. At the same time it must be confessed, that its impiety is so monstrous, that many good men were of opinion it ought not to be made familiar to the minds of Englishmen; for there are crimes with which even the imagination should never come in contact. But as an ancient nation intoxicated their slaves, and then exposed them before their children, in order to increase their horror of intemperance; so it is hoped that this piece of impiety may be placed in such a light before the eyes of the Christian reader, that, in proportion as his detestation is raised, his faith, instead of being shaken, will be only so much the more strengthened. This celebrated Speech, though delivered in an assembly of Politicians, is not on a question of politics, but on one as superior as the soul is to the body, and eternity to time. The object here, is not to dethrone kings, but HIM by whom kings reign. It does not here excite the cry of indignation that _Louis_ reigns, but that _the Lord God omnipotent reigneth_. Nor is this the declaration of some obscure and anonymous person, but an exposition of the Creed of a public Leader. It is not a sentiment hinted in a journal, hazarded in a pamphlet, or thrown out at a disputing club: but it is the implied faith of the rulers of a great nation. Little notice would have been due to this famous Speech, if it had conveyed the sentiments of only _one_ vain orator; but it should be observed, that it was heard, received, _applauded_, with two or three exceptions only--a fact, which you, who have scarcely believed in the existence of atheism, will hardly credit, and which, for the honour of the eighteenth century, it is hoped that our posterity, being still more unacquainted with such corrupt opinions, will reject as totally incredible. A love of liberty, generous in its principle, inclines some good men still to savour the proceedings of the National Convention of France. They do not yet perceive that the licentious wildness which has been excited in that country, is destructive of all true happiness, and no more resemble liberty, than the tumultuous joys of the drunkard, resemble the cheerfulness of a sober and well regulated mind. To those who do not know of what strange inconsistences man is made up; who have not considered how some persons, having at first been hastily and heedlessly drawn in as approvers, by a sort of natural progression, soon become principals;--to those who have never observed by what a variety of strange associations in the mind, opinions that seem the most irreconcileable meet at some unsuspected turning, and come to be united in the same man;--to all such it may appear quite incredible, that well meaning and even pious people should continue to applaud the principles of a set of men who have publicly made known their intention of abolishing Christianity, as far as the demolition of altars, priests, temples, and institutions, _can_ abolish it; and as to the religion itself, this also they may traduce, and for their own part reject, but we know, from the comfortable promise of an authority still sacred in this country at least, that _the gates of hell shall not prevail against it_. Let me not be misunderstood by those to whom these slight remarks are principally addressed; that class of well intentioned people, who favour at least, if they do not adopt, the prevailing sentiments of the new Republic. You are not here accused of being the wilful abetters of infidelity. God forbid! "we are persuaded better things of you, and things which accompany salvation." But this _ignis fatuus_ of liberty and universal brotherhood, which the French are madly pursuing, with the insignia of freedom in one hand, and the bloody bayonet in the other, has bewitched your senses, and is in danger of misleading your steps. You are gazing at a meteor raised by the vapours of vanity, which these wild and infatuated wanderers are pursuing to their destruction; and though for a moment you mistake it for a heaven-born light, which leads to the perfection of human freedom, you will, should you join in the mad pursuit, soon discover that it will conduct you over dreary wilds and sinking bogs, only to plunge you in deep and inevitable ruin. Much, very much is to be said in vindication of your favouring in the first instance their political projects. The cause they took in hand seemed to be the great cause of human kind. Its very name insured its popularity. What English heart did not exult at the demolition of the Bastile? What lover of his species did not triumph in the warm hope, that one of the finest countries in the world would soon be one of the most free? Popery and despotism, though chained by the gentle influence of Louis XVIth, had actually slain their thousands. Little was it then imagined, that anarchy and atheism, the monsters who were about to succeed them, would soon slay their ten thousands. If we cannot regret the defeat of the two former tyrants, what must they be who can triumph in the mischiefs of the two latter? Who, I say, that had a head to reason, or a heart to feel, did not glow with hope, that from the ruins of tyranny, and the rubbish of popery, a beautiful and finely framed edifice would in time have been constructed, and that ours would not have been the only country in which the patriot's fair idea of well understood liberty, and of the most pure and reasonable, as well as the most sublime and exalted Christianity might be realized? But, alas! it frequently happens that the wise and good are not the most adventurous in attacking the mischiefs which they perceive and lament. With a timidity in some respects virtuous, they fear attempting any thing which may possible aggravate the evils they deplore, or put to hazard the blessings they already enjoy. They dread plucking up the wheat with the tares, and are rather apt, with a spirit of hopeless resignation, "To bear the ills they have, "Than fly to others that they know not of." While sober minded and considerate men, therefore, sat mourning over this complicated mass of error, and waited till God, in his own good time, should open the blind eyes; the vast scheme of reformation was left to that set of rash and presumptuous adventurers, who are generally watching how they may convert public grievances to their own personal account. It was undertaken, not upon the broad basis of a wise and well digested scheme, of which all the parts should contribute to the perfection of one consistent whole: It was carried on, not by those steady measures, founded on rational deliberation, which are calculated to accomplish so important an end; not with a temperance which indicated a sober love of law, or a sacred regard for religion; but with the most extravagant lust of power, and the most inordinate vanity which perhaps ever instigated human measures; a lust of power which threatens to extend its desolating influence over the whole globe; a vanity of the same destructive species with that which stimulated the celebrated incendiary of Ephesus, who being weary of his native obscurity and insignificance, and prefering infamy to oblivion, could contrive no other road to fame and immortality, than that of setting fire to the exquisite Temple of Diana. He was remembered indeed, as he desired to be, but only to be execrated; while the seventh wonder of the world lay prostrate through his crime. It is the same over ruling vanity which operates in their politics, and in their religion, which makes Kersaint[B] boast of carrying his destructive projects from the Tagus to the Brazils, and from Mexico to the shores of the Ganges; which makes him menace to outstrip the enterprises of the most extravagant hero of romance, and almost undertake with the marvelous celerity of the nimbly footed Puck, "To put a girdle round about the earth "In forty minutes."---- It is the same vanity, still the master passion in the bosom of a Frenchman, which leads Dupont and Manuel to undertake in their orations to abolish the Sabbath, exterminate the Priesthood, erect a Pantheon for the World, restore the Peripatetic Philosophy, and in short revive every thing of ancient Greece, except the pure taste, the wisdom, the love of virtue, the veneration of the laws, and that degree of reverence which even virtuous Pagans professed for the Deity. It is surely to be charged to the inadequate and wretched hands into which the work of reformation fell, and not to the impossibility of amending the civil and religious institutions of France, that all has succeeded so ill. It cannot be denied, perhaps, that a reforming spirit was wanted in that country; their government was not more despotic, than their church was superstitious and corrupt. But though this is readily granted, and though it may be unfair to blame those who in the _first outset_ of the French Revolution, rejoiced even on religious motives; yet it is astonishing, how any pious person, even with all the blinding power of prejudice, can think without horror of the _present_ state of France. It is no less wonderful how any rational man could, even in the beginning of the Revolution; transfer that reasoning, however just it might be, when applied to France, to the case of England. For what can be more unreasonable, than to draw from different, and even opposite premises, the same conclusion? Must a revolution be equally necessary in the case of two sorts of Government, and two sorts of Religion, which are the very reverse of each other? opposite in their genius, unlike in their fundamental principles, and widely different in each of their component parts. That despotism, priestcraft, intolerance, and superstition, are terrible evils, no candid Christian it is presumed will deny; but, blessed be God, though these mischiefs are not yet entirely banished from the face of the earth, they have scarcely any existence in this country. To guard against a real danger, and to cure actual abuses, of which the existence has been first plainly proved, by the application of a suitable remedy, requires diligence as well as courage; observation as well as genius; patience and temperance as well as zeal and spirit. It requires the union of that clear head and sound heart which constitute the true patriot. But to conjure up fancied evils, or even greatly to aggravate real ones, and then to exhaust our labour in combating them, is the characteristic of a distempered imagination and an ungoverned spirit. Romantic crusades, the ordeal trial, drowning of witches, the torture, and the Inquisition, have been justly reprobated as the foulest stain of the respective periods, in which, to the disgrace of human reason, they existed; but would any man be rationally employed, who should now stand up gravely to declaim against these as the predominating mischiefs of the present century? Even the whimsical Knight of La Mancha himself, would not fight wind mills that were pulled down; yet I will venture to say, that the above named evils are at present little more chimerical than some of those now so bitterly complained of among us. It is not, as Dryden said, when one of his works was unmercifully abused, that the piece has not faults enough in it, but the critics have not had the wit to fix upon the right ones. It is allowed that, as a nation, we have faults enough, but our political critics err in the objects of their censure. They say little of those real and pressing evils resulting from our own corruption, which constitute the actual miseries of life; while they gloomily speculate upon a thousand imaginary political grievances, and fancy that the reformation of our rulers and our legislators is all that is wanting to make us a happy people. The principles of just and equitable government were, perhaps, never more fully established, nor public justice more exactly administered. Pure and undefiled religion was never laid more open to all, than at this day. I wish I could say we were a religious people; but this at least may be safely asserted, that the great truths of religion were never better understood; that Christianity was never more completely stripped from all its incumbrances and disguises, or more thoroughly purged from human infusions, and whatever is debasing in human institutions. Let us in this yet happy country, learn at least one great and important truth, from the errors of this distracted people. Their conduct has awfully illustrated a position, which is not the less sound for having been often controverted, That no degree of wit and learning; no progress in commerce; no advances in the knowledge of nature, or in the embellishments of art, can ever thoroughly tame that savage, the natural human heart, without RELIGION. The arts of social life may give a sweetness to the manners and language, and induce, in some degree, a love of justice, truth, and humanity; but attainments derived from such inferior causes are no more than the semblance and the shadow of the qualities derived from pure Christianity. Varnish is an extraneous ornament, but true polish is a proof of the solidity of the body; it depends greatly on the nature of the substance, is not superinduced by accidental causes, but in a good measure proceeding from internal soundness. The poets of that country, whose style, sentiments, manners, and religion the French so affectedly labour to imitate, have left keen and biting satires on the Roman vices. Against the late proceedings in France, no satirist need employ his pen; that of the historian will be quite sufficient. Fact will put fable out of countenance; and the crimes which are usually held up to our abhorrence in works of invention, will be regarded as flat and feeble by those who shall peruse the records of the tenth of August, of the second and third of September, and of the twenty first of January. If the same astonishing degeneracy in taste, principle, and practice, should ever come to flourish among us, Britons may still live to exult in the desolation of her cities, and in the destruction of her finest monuments of art; she may triumph in the peopling of the fortresses of her rocks and her forests; may exult in being once more restored to that glorious state of _liberty and equality_, when all subsisted by rapine and the chace; when all, O enviable privilege! were equally savage, equally indigent, and equally naked; may extol it as the restoration of reason, and the triumph of nature, that they are again brought to feed on acorns, instead of bread. Groves of consecrated misletoe may happily succeed to useless corn fields; and Thor and Woden may hope once more to be invested with all their bloody honours. Let not any serious readers feel indignation, as if pains were ungenerously taken to involve their religious, with their political opinions. Far be it from me to wound, unnecessarily, the feelings of people whom I so sincerely esteem; but it is much to be suspected, that certain opinions in politics have a tendency to lead to certain opinions in religion. Where so much is at stake, they will do well to keep their consciences tender, in order to do which they should try to keep their discernment acute. They will do well to observe, that the same restless spirit of innovation is busily operating under various, though seemingly unconnected forms. To observe, that the same impatience of restraint, the same contempt of order, peace, and subordination, which makes men bad citizens, makes them bad Christians; and that to this secret, but almost infallible connexion between religious and political sentiment, does France owe her present unparalleled anarchy and impiety. There are doubtless in that unhappy country multitudes of virtuous and reasonable men, who rather silently acquiesce in the authority of their present turbulent government, than embrace its principles or promote its projects from the sober conviction of their own judgment. These, together with those conscientious exiles whom this nation so honourably protects, may yet live to rejoice in the restoration of true liberty and solid peace to their native country, when light and order shall spring from the present darkness and confusion, and the reign of chaos shall be no more. May I be permitted a short digression on the subject of those exiles? It shall only be to remark, that all the boasted conquests of our Edwards and our Henrys over the French nation, do not confer such substantial glory on our own country, as she derives from having received, protected, and supported, among multitudes of other sufferers, at a time and under circumstances so peculiarly disadvantageous to herself, _three thousand priests_, of a nation habitually her enemy, and of a religion intolerant and hostile to her own. This is the solid triumph of true Christianity; and it is worth remarking, that the deeds which poets and historians celebrate as rare and splendid actions, and sublime instances of greatness of soul, in the heroes of the Pagan world, are but the ordinary and habitual virtues which occur in the common course of action among Christians; quietly performed without effort or exertion, and with no view to renown; but resulting naturally and necessarily from the religion they profess. So predominating is the power of an example we have once admired, and set up as a standard of imitation, and so fascinating has been the ascendency of the Convention over the minds of those whose approbation of French politics commenced in the earlier periods of the Revolution, that it extends to the most trivial circumstances. I cannot forbear to notice this in an instance, which, though inconsiderable in itself, yet ceases to be so when we view it in the light of a symptom of the reigning disease. While the fantastic phraseology of the new Republic is such, as to be almost as disgusting to sound taste, as their doctrines are to sound morals, it is curious to observe how deeply the addresses, which have been sent to it from the Clubs[C] in this country, have been infected with it, as far at least as phrases and terms are objects of imitation. In other respects, it is but justice to the French Convention to confess, that they are hitherto without rivals and without imitators; for who can aspire to emulate that compound of anarchy and atheism which in their debates is mixed up with the pedantry of school boys, the jargon of a cabal, and the vulgarity and ill-breeding of a mob? One instance of the prevailing cant may suffice, where an hundred might be adduced; and it is not the most exceptionable.--To demolish every existing law and establishment; to destroy the fortunes and ruin the principles of every country into which they are carrying their destructive arms and their frantic doctrines; to untie or cut asunder every bond which holds society together; to impose their own arbitrary shackles where they succeed, and to demolish every thing where they fail.--This desolating system, by a most unaccountable perversion of language, they are pleased to call by the endearing name of _fraternization_; and fraternization is one of the favourite terms which their admirers have adopted. Little would a simple stranger, uninitiated in this new and surprising dialect, imagine that the peaceful terms of fellow-citizen and of brother, the winning offer of freedom and happiness, and the warm embrace of fraternity, were only watch-words by which they in effect, Cry havoc, And let slip the dogs of war. In numberless other instances, the fashionable language of France at this day would be as unintelligible to the correct writers of the age of Louis the XIVth, as their fashionable notions of liberty would be irreconcileable with those of the true Revolution Patriots of his great contemporary and victorious rival, William the Third. Such is indeed their puerile rage for novelty in the invention of new words, and the perversion of their taste in the use of old ones, that the celebrated Vossius, whom Christine of Sweden oddly complimented by saying, that he was so learned as not only to know whence all words came, but whither they were going, would, _were he admitted to the honours of a sitting_, be obliged to confess, that he was equally puzzled to tell the one, or to foretel the other. If it shall please the Almighty in his anger to let loose this infatuated people, as a scourge for the iniquities of the human race; if they are delegated by infinite justice to act, as storm and tempest fulfilling his word; if they are commissioned to perform the errand of the destroying lightning or the avenging thunder-bolt, let us try at least to extract personal benefit from national calamity; let every one of us, high and low, rich and poor, enter upon this serious and humbling inquiry, how much his own individual offences have contributed to that awful aggregate of public guilt, which has required such a visitation. Let us carefully examine in what proportion we have separately added to that common stock of abounding iniquity, the description of which formed the character of an ancient nation, and is so peculiarly applicable to our own--_Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness_. Let every one of us humbly inquire, in the self-suspecting language of the disciples to their Divine Master--_Lord, is it I?_ Let us learn to fear the fleets and armies of the enemy, much less than those iniquities at home which this alarming dispensation may be intended to chastize. The war which the French have declared against us, is of a kind altogether unexampled in every respect; insomuch that human wisdom is baffled when it would pretend to conjecture what may be the event. But this at least we may safely say, that it is not so much the force of French bayonets, as the contamination of French principles, that ought to excite our apprehensions. We trust, that through the blessing of GOD we shall be defended from their open hostilities, by the temperate wisdom of our Rulers, and the bravery of our fleets and armies; but the domestic danger arising from licentious and irreligious principles among ourselves, can only be guarded against by the personal care and vigilance of every one of us who values religion and the good order of society. GOD grant that those who go forth to fight our battles, instead of being intimidated by the number of their enemies, may bear in mind, that "there is no restraint with GOD to save by many or by few." And let the meanest of us who remains at home remember also, that even he may contribute to the internal safety of his country, by the integrity of his private life, and to the success of her defenders, by following them with his fervent prayers. And in what war can the sincere Christian ever have stronger inducements to pray for the success of his country, than in this? Without entering far into any political principles, the discussion of which would be in a great measure foreign to the design of this little tract, it may be remarked, that the unchristian principle of revenge is not our motive to this war; conquest is not our object; nor have we had recourse to hostility, in order to effect a change in the internal government of France[D]. The present war is undoubtedly undertaken entirely on defensive principles. It is in defence of our King, our Constitution, our Religion, our Laws, and consequently our _Liberty_, in the sound and rational sense of that term. It is to defend ourselves from the savage violence of a crusade, made against all Religion, as well as all Government. If ever therefore a war was undertaken on the ground of self-defence and necessity--if ever men might be literally said to fight _pro_ ARIS _et focis_, this seems to be the occasion. The ambition of conquerors has been the source of great and extensive evils: Religious fanaticism of still greater. But little as I am disposed to become the apologist of either the one principle or the other, there is no extravagance in asserting, that they have seemed incapable of producing, even in ages, that extent of mischief, that comprehensive desolation, which _philosophy, falsely so called_, has produced in three years. Christians! it is not a small thing--it is _your life_. The pestilence of irreligion which you detest, will insinuate itself imperceptibly with those manners, phrases, and principles which you admire and adopt. It is the humble wisdom of a Christian, to shrink from the most distant approaches to sin, to abstain from the very appearance of evil. If we would fly from the deadly contagion of Atheism, let us fly from those seemingly remote, but not very indirect paths which lead to it. Let France choose this day whom she will serve; _but, as for us and our houses, we will serve the Lord_. And, O gracious and long suffering God! before that awful period arrives, which shall exhibit the dreadful effects of such an education as the French nation are instituting; before a race of men can be trained up, not only without the knowledge of THEE, but in the contempt of THY most holy law, do THOU, in great mercy, change the heart of this people as the heart of one man. Give them not finally over to their own corrupt imaginations, to their own heart's lusts. But after having made them a fearful example to all the nations of the earth, what a people _can_ do, who have cast off the fear of THEE, do THOU graciously bring them back to a sense of that law which they have violated, and to participation of that mercy which they have abused; so that they may happily find, while the discovery can be attended with consolation, that _doubtless there is a reward for the righteous; verify, there is a_ GOD _who judgeth the earth_. THE END. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote B: See his Speech, enumerating their intended projects.] [Footnote C: See the Collection of Addresses from England, &c. Published by Mr. Mc. KENZIE, _College Green_, DUBLIN.] [Footnote D: See the Report of Mr. Pitt's Speech in the House of Commons on Feb. 12, 1793.] * * * * * Transcriber's note Printer errors have been changed and are listed below. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. Characters that could not be displayed directly in Latin-1 are transcribed as follows: _ - italics The following changes have been made to the text: Page 18: Changed "involve their religous" to "involve their religious". Page 18: Changed "in order to which they" to "in order to do which they". 
12199	----	Proofreading Team THE CHASE OF SAINT-CASTIN AND OTHER STORIES OF THE FRENCH IN THE NEW WORLD BY MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD [Illustration] 1894 THE CHASE OF SAINT-CASTIN. The waiting April woods, sensitive in every leafless twig to spring, stood in silence and dim nightfall around a lodge. Wherever a human dwelling is set in the wilderness, it becomes, by the very humility of its proportions, a prominent and aggressive point. But this lodge of bark and poles was the color of the woods, and nearly escaped intruding as man's work. A glow lighted the top, revealing the faint azure of smoke which rose straight upward in the cool, clear air. Such a habitation usually resounded at nightfall with Indian noises, especially if the day's hunting had been good. The mossy rocks lying around, were not more silent than the inmates of this lodge. You could hear the Penobscot River foaming along its uneasy bed half a mile eastward. The poles showed freshly cut disks of yellow at the top; and though the bark coverings were such movables as any Indian household carried, they were newly fastened to their present support. This was plainly the night encampment of a traveling party, and two French hunters and their attendant Abenaquis recognized that, as it barred their trail to the river. An odor of roasted meat was wafted out like an invitation to them. "Excellent, Saint-Castin," pronounced the older Frenchman. "Here is another of your wilderness surprises. No wonder you prefer an enchanted land to the rough mountains around Béarn. I shall never go back to France myself." "Stop, La Hontan!" The young man restrained his guest from plunging into the wigwam with a headlong gesture recently learned and practiced with delight. "I never saw this lodge before." "Did you not have it set up here for the night?" "No; it is not mine. Our Abenaquis are going to build one for us nearer the river." "I stay here," observed La Hontan. "Supper is ready, and adventures are in the air." "But this is not a hunter's lodge. You see that our very dogs understand they have no business here. Come on." "Come on, without seeing who is hid herein? No. I begin to think it is something thou wouldst conceal from me. I go in; and if it be a bear trap, I cheerfully perish." The young Frenchman stood resting the end of his gun on sodden leaves. He felt vexed at La Hontan. But that inquisitive nobleman stooped to lift the tent flap, and the young man turned toward his waiting Indians and talked a moment in Abenaqui, when they went on in the direction of the river, carrying game and camp luggage. They thought, as he did, that this might be a lodge with which no man ought to meddle. The daughter of Madockawando, the chief, was known to be coming from her winter retreat. Every Abenaqui in the tribe stood in awe of the maid. She did not rule them as a wise woman, but lived apart from them as a superior spirit. Baron La Hontan, on all fours, intruded his gay face on the inmates of the lodge. There were three of them. His palms encountered a carpet of hemlock twigs, which spread around a central fire to the circular wall, and was made sweetly odorous by the heat. A thick couch of the twigs was piled up beyond the fire, and there sat an Abenaqui girl in her winter dress of furs. She was so white-skinned that she startled La Hontan as an apparition of Europe. He got but one black-eyed glance. She drew her blanket over her head. The group had doubtless heard the conference outside, but ignored it with reticent gravity. The hunter of the lodge was on his heels by the embers, toasting collops of meat for the blanketed princess; and an Etchemin woman, the other inmate, took one from his hand, and paused, while dressing it with salt, to gaze at the Frenchman. La Hontan had not found himself distasteful to northwestern Indian girls. It was the first time an aboriginal face had ever covered itself from exposure to his eyes. He felt the sudden respect which nuns command, even in those who scoff at their visible consecration. The usual announcement made on entering a cabin--"I come to see this man," or "I come to see that woman,"--he saw was to be omitted in addressing this strangely civilized Indian girl. "Mademoiselle," said Baron La Hontan in very French Abenaqui, rising to one knee, and sweeping the twigs with the brim of his hat as he pulled it off, "the Baron de Saint-Castin of Pentegoet, the friend of your chief Madockawando, is at your lodge door, tired and chilled from a long hunt. Can you not permit him to warm at your fire?" The Abenaqui girl bowed her covered head. Her woman companion passed the permission on, and the hunter made it audible by a grunt of assent. La Hontan backed nimbly out, and seized the waiting man by the leg. The main portion of the baron was in the darkening April woods, but his perpendicular soles stood behind the flap within the lodge. "Enter, my child," he whispered in excitement. "A warm fire, hot collops, a black eye to be coaxed out of a blanket, and full permission given to enjoy all. What, man! Out of countenance at thought of facing a pretty squaw, when you have three keeping house with you at the fort?" "Come out, La Hontan," whispered back Saint-Castin, on his part grasping the elder's arm. "It is Madockawando's daughter." "The red nun thou hast told me about? The saints be praised! But art thou sure?" "How can I be sure? I have never seen her myself. But I judge from her avoiding your impudent eye. She does not like to be looked at." "It was my mentioning the name of Saint-Castin of Pentegoet that made her whip her head under the blanket. I see, if I am to keep my reputation in the woods, I shall have to withdraw from your company." "Withdraw your heels from this lodge," replied Saint-Castin impatiently. "You will embroil me with the tribe." "Why should it embroil you with the tribe," argued the merry sitter, "if we warm our heels decently at this ready fire until the Indians light our own? Any Christian, white or red, would grant us that privilege." "If I enter with you, will you come out with me as soon as I make you a sign?" "Doubt it not," said La Hontan, and he eclipsed himself directly. Though Saint-Castin had been more than a year in Acadia, this was the first time he had ever seen Madockawando's daughter. He knew it was that elusive being, on her way from her winter retreat to the tribe's summer fishing station near the coast. Father Petit, the priest of this woodland parish, spoke of her as one who might in time found a house of holy women amidst the license of the wilderness. Saint-Castin wanted to ask her pardon for entering; but he sat without a sound. Some power went out from that silent shape far stronger than the hinted beauty of girlish ankle and arm. The glow of brands lighted the lodge, showing the bark seams on its poles. Pale smoke and the pulse of heat quivered betwixt him and a presence which, by some swift contrast, made his face burn at the recollection of his household at Pentegoet. He had seen many good women in his life, with the patronizing tolerance which men bestow on unpiquant things that are harmless; and he did not understand why her hiding should stab him like a reproach. She hid from all common eyes. But his were not common eyes. Saint-Castin felt impatient at getting no recognition from a girl, saint though she might be, whose tribe he had actually adopted. The blunt-faced Etchemin woman, once a prisoner brought from northern Acadia, now the companion of Madockawando's daughter, knew her duty to the strangers, and gave them food as rapidly as the hunter could broil it. The hunter was a big-legged, small-headed Abenaqui, with knees over-topping his tuft of hair when he squatted on his heels. He looked like a man whose emaciated trunk and arms had been taken possession of by colossal legs and feet. This singular deformity made him the best hunter in his tribe. He tracked game with a sweep of great beams as tireless as the tread of a modern steamer. The little sense in his head was woodcraft. He thought of nothing but taking and dressing game. Saint-Castin barely tasted the offered meat; but La Hontan enjoyed it unabashed, warming himself while he ate, and avoiding any chance of a hint from his friend that the meal should be cut short. "My child," he said in lame Abenaqui to the Etchemin woman, while his sly regard dwelt on the blanket-robed statue opposite, "I wish you the best of gifts, a good husband." The Etchemin woman heard him in such silence as one perhaps brings from making a long religious retreat, and forbore to explain that she already had the best of gifts, and was the wife of the big-legged hunter. "I myself had an aunt who, never married," warned La Hontan. "She was an excellent woman, but she turned like fruit withered in the ripening. The fantastic airs of her girlhood clung to her. She was at a disadvantage among the married, and young people passed her by as an experiment that had failed. So she was driven to be very religious; but prayers are cold comfort for the want of a bouncing family." If the Etchemin woman had absorbed from her mistress a habit of meditation which shut out the world, Saint-Castin had not. He gave La Hontan the sign to move before him out of the lodge, and no choice but to obey it, crowding the reluctant and comfortable man into undignified attitudes. La Hontan saw that he had taken offense. There was no accounting for the humors of those disbanded soldiers of the Carignan-Salières, though Saint-Castin was usually a gentle fellow. They spread out their sensitive military honor over every inch of their new seigniories; and if you chucked the wrong little Indian or habitant's naked baby under the chin, you might unconsciously stir up war in the mind of your host. La Hontan was glad he was directly leaving Acadia. He was fond of Saint-Castin. Few people could approach that young man without feeling the charm which made the Indians adore him. But any one who establishes himself in the woods loses touch with the light manners of civilization; his very vices take on an air of brutal candor. Next evening, however, both men were merry by the hall fire at Pentegoet over their parting cup. La Hontan was returning to Quebec. A vessel waited the tide at the Penobscot's mouth, a bay which the Indians call "bad harbor." The long, low, and irregular building which Saint-Castin had constructed as his baronial seat was as snug as the governor's castle at Quebec. It was only one story high, and the small square windows were set under the eaves, so outsiders could not look in. Saint-Castin's enemies said he built thus to hide his deeds; but Father Petit himself could see how excellent a plan it was for defense. A holding already claimed by the encroaching English needed loop-holes, not windows. The fort surrounding the house was also well adapted to its situation. Twelve cannon guarded the bastions. All the necessary buildings, besides a chapel with a bell, were within the walls, and a deep well insured a supply of water. A garden and fruit orchard were laid out opposite the fort, and encompassed by palisades. The luxury of the house consisted in an abundant use of crude, unpolished material. Though built grotesquely of stone and wood intermingled, it had the solid dignity of that rugged coast. A chimney spacious as a crater let smoke and white ashes upward, and sections of trees smouldered on Saint-Castin's hearth. An Indian girl, ruddy from high living, and wearing the brightest stuffs imported from France, sat on the floor at the hearth corner. This was the usual night scene at Pentegoet. Candle and firelight shone on her, on oak timbers, and settles made of unpeeled balsam, on plate and glasses which always heaped a table with ready food and drink, on moose horns and gun racks, on stores of books, on festoons of wampum, and usually on a dozen figures beside Saint-Castin. The other rooms in the house were mere tributaries to this baronial presence chamber. Madockawando and the dignitaries of the Abenaqui tribe made it their council hall, the white sagamore presiding. They were superior to rude western nations. It was Saint-Castin's plan to make a strong principality here, and to unite his people in a compact state. He lavished his inherited money upon them. Whatever they wanted from Saint-Castin they got, as from a father. On their part, they poured the wealth of the woods upon him. Not a beaver skin went out of Acadia except through his hands. The traders of New France grumbled at his profits and monopoly, and the English of New England claimed his seigniory. He stood on debatable ground, in dangerous times, trying to mould an independent nation. The Abenaquis did not know that a king of France had been reared on Saint-Castin's native mountains, but they believed that a human divinity had. Their permanent settlement was about the fort, on land he had paid for, but held in common with them. They went to their winter's hunting or their summer's fishing from Pentegoet. It was the seat of power. The cannon protected fields and a town of lodges which Saint-Castin meant to convert into a town of stone and hewed wood houses as soon as the aboriginal nature conformed itself to such stability. Even now the village had left home and gone into the woods again. The Abenaqui women were busy there, inserting tubes of bark in pierced maple-trees, and troughs caught the flow of ascending sap. Kettles boiled over fires in the bald spaces, incense of the forest's very heart rising from them and sweetening the air. All day Indian children raced from one mother's fire to another, or dipped unforbidden cups of hands into the brimming troughs; and at night they lay down among the dogs, with their heels to the blaze, watching these lower constellations blink through the woods until their eyes swam into unconsciousness. It was good weather for making maple sugar. In the mornings hoar frost or light snows silvered the world, disappearing as soon as the sun touched them, when the bark of every tree leaked moisture. This was festive labor compared with planting the fields, and drew the men, also. The morning after La Hontan sailed, Saint-Castin went out and skirted this wide-spread sugar industry like a spy. The year before, he had moved heartily from fire to fire, hailed and entertained by every red manufacturer. The unrest of spring was upon him. He had brought many conveniences among the Abenaquis, and taught them some civilized arts. They were his adopted people. But he felt a sudden separateness from them, like the loneliness of his early boyhood. Saint-Castin was a good hunter. He had more than once watched a slim young doe stand gazing curiously at him, and had not startled it by a breath. Therefore he was able to become a stump behind the tree which Madockawando's daughter sought with her sap pail. Usually he wore buckskins, in the free and easy life of Pentegoet. But he had put on his Carignan-Salières uniform, filling its boyish outlines with his full man's figure. He would not on any account have had La Hontan see him thus gathering the light of the open woods on military finery. He felt ashamed of returning to it, and could not account for his own impulses; and when he saw Madockawando's daughter walking unconsciously toward him as toward a trap, he drew his bright surfaces entirely behind the column of the tree. She had taken no part in this festival of labor for several years. She moved among the women still in solitude, not one of them feeling at liberty to draw near her except as she encouraged them. The Abenaquis were not a polygamous tribe, but they enjoyed the freedom of the woods. Squaws who had made several experimental marriages since this young celibate began her course naturally felt rebuked by her standards, and preferred stirring kettles to meeting her. It was not so long since the princess had been a hoiden among them, abounding in the life which rushes to extravagant action. Her juvenile whoops scared the birds. She rode astride of saplings, and played pranks on solemn old warriors and the medicine-man. Her body grew into suppleness and beauty. As for her spirit, the women of the tribe knew very little about it. They saw none of her struggles. In childhood she was ashamed of the finer nature whose wants found no answer in her world. It was anguish to look into the faces of her kindred and friends as into the faces of hounds who live, it is true, but a lower life, made up of chasing and eating. She wondered why she was created different from them. A loyalty of race constrained her sometimes to imitate them; but it was imitation; she could not be a savage. Then Father Petit came, preceding Saint-Castin, and set up his altar and built his chapel. The Abenaqui girl was converted as soon as she looked in at the door and saw the gracious image of Mary lifted up to be her pattern of womanhood. Those silent and terrible days, when she lost interest in the bustle of living, and felt an awful homesickness for some unknown good, passed entirely away. Religion opened an invisible world. She sprang toward it, lying on the wings of her spirit and gazing forever above. The minutest observances of the Church were learned with an exactness which delighted a priest who had not too many encouragements. Finally, she begged her father to let her make a winter retreat to some place near the headwaters of the Penobscot. When the hunters were abroad, it did them no harm to remember there was a maid in a wilderness cloister praying for the good of her people; and when they were fortunate, they believed in the material advantage of her prayers. Nobody thought of searching out her hidden cell, or of asking the big-legged hunter and his wife to tell its mysteries. The dealer with invisible spirits commanded respect in Indian minds before the priest came. Madockawando's daughter was of a lighter color than most of her tribe, and finer in her proportions, though they were a well-made people. She was the highest expression of unadulterated Abenaqui blood. She set her sap pail down by the trough, and Saint-Castin shifted silently to watch her while she dipped the juice. Her eyelids were lowered. She had well-marked brows, and the high cheek-bones were lost in a general acquiline rosiness. It was a girl's face, modest and sweet, that he saw; reflecting the society of holier beings than the one behind the tree. She had no blemish of sunken temples or shrunk features, or the glaring aspect of a devotee. Saint-Castin was a good Catholic, but he did not like fanatics. It was as if the choicest tree in the forest had been flung open, and a perfect woman had stepped out, whom no other man's eye had seen. Her throat was round, and at the base of it, in the little hollow where women love to nestle ornaments, hung the cross of her rosary, which she wore twisted about her neck. The beads were large and white, and the cross was ivory. Father Petit had furnished them, blessed for their purpose, to his incipient abbess, but Saint-Castin noticed how they set off the dark rosiness of her skin. The collar of her fur dress was pushed back, for the day was warm, like an autumn day when there is no wind. A luminous smoke which magnified the light hung between treetops and zenith. The nakedness of the swelling forest let heaven come strangely close to the ground. It was like standing on a mountain plateau in a gray dazzle of clouds. Madockawando's daughter dipped her pail full of the clear water. The appreciative motion of her eyelashes and the placid lines of her face told how she enjoyed the limpid plaything. But Saint-Castin understood well that she had not come out to boil sap entirely for the love of it. Father Petit believed the time was ripe for her ministry to the Abenaqui women. He had intimated to the seignior what land might be convenient for the location of a convent. The community was now to be drawn around her. Other girls must take vows when she did. Some half-covered children, who stalked her wherever she went, stood like terra-cotta images at a distance and waited for her next movement. The girl had just finished her dipping when she looked up and met the steady gaze of Saint-Castin. He was in an anguish of dread that she would run. But her startled eyes held his image while three changes passed over her,--terror and recognition and disapproval. He stepped more into view, a white-and-gold apparition, which scattered the Abenaqui children to their mothers' camp-fires. "I am Saint-Castin," he said. "Yes, I have many times seen you, sagamore." Her voice, shaken a little by her heart, was modulated to such softness that the liquid gutturals gave him a distinct new pleasure. "I want to ask your pardon for my friend's rudeness, when you warmed and fed us in your lodge." "I did not listen to him." Her fingers sought the cross on her neck. She seemed to threaten a prayer which might stop her ears to Saint-Castin. "He meant no discourtesy. If you knew his good heart, you would like him." "I do not like men." She made a calm statement of her peculiar tastes. "Why?" inquired Saint-Castin. Madockawando's daughter summoned her reasons from distant vistas of the woods, with meditative dark eyes. Evidently her dislike of men had no element of fear or of sentimental avoidance. "I cannot like them," she apologized, declining to set forth her reasons. "I wish they would always stay away from me." "Your father and the priest are men." "I know it," admitted the girl, with a deep breath like commiseration. "They cannot help it; and our Etchemin's husband, who keeps the lodge supplied with meat, he cannot help it, either, any more than he can his deformity. But there is grace for men," she added. "They may, by repenting of their sins and living holy lives, finally save their souls." Saint-Castin repented of his sins that moment, and tried to look contrite. "In some of my books," he said, "I read of an old belief held by people on the other side of the earth. They thought our souls were born into the world a great many times, now in this body, and now in that. I feel as if you and I had been friends in some other state." The girl's face seemed to flare toward him as flame is blown, acknowledging the claim he made upon her; but the look passed like an illusion, and she said seriously, "The sagamore should speak to Father Petit. This is heresy." Madockawando's daughter stood up, and took her pail by the handle. "Let me carry it," said Saint-Castin. Her lifted palm barred his approach. "I do not like men, sagamore. I wish them to keep away from me." "But that is not Christian," he argued. "It cannot be unchristian: the priest would lay me under penance for it." "Father Petit is a lenient soul." With the simplicity of an angel who would not be longer hindered by mundane society, she took up her pail, saying, "Good-day, sagamore," and swept on across the dead leaves. Saint-Castin walked after her. "Go back," commanded Madockawando's daughter, turning. The officer of the Carignan-Salières regiment halted, but did not retreat. "You must not follow me, sagamore," she remonstrated, as with a child. "I cannot talk to you." "You must let me talk to you," said Saint-Castin. "I want you for my wife." She looked at him in a way that made his face scorch. He remembered the year wife, the half-year wife, and the two-months wife at Pentegoet. These three squaws whom he had allowed to form his household, and had taught to boil the pot au feu, came to him from many previous experimental marriages. They were externals of his life, much as hounds, boats, or guns. He could give them all rich dowers, and divorce them easily any day to a succeeding line of legal Abenaqui husbands. The lax code of the wilderness was irresistible to a Frenchman; but he was near enough in age and in texture of soul to this noble pagan to see at once, with her eyesight, how he had degraded the very vices of her people. "Before the sun goes down," vowed Saint-Castin, "there shall be nobody in my house but the two Etchemin slave men that your father gave me." The girl heard of his promised reformation without any kindling of the spirit. "I am not for a wife," she answered him, and walked on with the pail. Again Saint-Castin followed her, and took the sap pail from her hand. He set it aside on the leaves, and folded his arms. The blood came and went in his face. He was not used to pleading with women. They belonged to him easily, like his natural advantages over barbarians in a new world. The slopes of the Pyrenees bred strong-limbed men, cautious in policy, striking and bold in figure and countenance. The English themselves have borne witness to his fascinations. Manhood had darkened only the surface of his skin, a milk-white cleanness breaking through it like the outflushing of some inner purity. His eyes and hair had a golden beauty. It would have been strange if he had not roused at least a degree of comradeship in the aboriginal woman living up to her highest aspirations. "I love you. I have thought of you, of nobody but you, even when I behaved the worst. You have kept yourself hid from me, while I have been thinking about you ever since I came to Acadia. You are the woman I want to marry." Madockawando's daughter shook her head. She had patience with his fantastic persistence, but it annoyed her. "I am not for a wife," she repeated. "I do not like men." "Is it that you do not like me?" "No," she answered sincerely, probing her mind for the truth. "You yourself are different from our Abenaqui men." "Then why do you make me unhappy?" "I do not make you unhappy. I do not even think of you." Again she took to her hurried course, forgetting the pail of sap. Saint-Castin seized it, and once more followed her. "I beg that you will kiss me," he pleaded, trembling. The Abenaqui girl laughed aloud. "Does the sagamore think he is an object of veneration, that I should kiss him?" "But will you not at least touch your lips to my forehead?" "No. I touch my lips to holy things." "You do not understand the feeling I have." "No, I do not understand it. If you talked every day, it would do no good. My thoughts are different." Saint-Castin gave her the pail, and looked her in the eyes. "Perhaps you will some time understand," he said. "I lived many wild years before I did." She was so glad to leave him behind that her escape was like a backward blow, and he did not make enough allowance for the natural antagonism of a young girl. Her beautiful free motion was something to watch. She was a convert whose penances were usually worked out afoot, for Father Petit knew better than to shut her up. Saint-Castin had never dreamed there were such women. She was like a nymph out of a tree, without human responsiveness, yet with round arms and waist and rosy column of neck, made to be helplessly adored. He remembered the lonesome moods of his early youth. They must have been a premonition of his fate in falling completely under the spell of an unloving woman. Saint-Castin took a roundabout course, and went to Madockawando's lodge, near the fort. All the members of the family, except the old chief, were away at the sugar-making. The great Abenaqui's dignity would not allow him to drag in fuel to the fire, so he squatted nursing the ashes, and raked out a coal to light tobacco for himself and Saint-Castin. The white sagamore had never before come in full uniform to a private talk, and it was necessary to smoke half an hour before a word could be said. There was a difference between the chatter of civilized men and the deliberations of barbarians. With La Hontan, the Baron de Saint-Castin would have led up to his business by a long prelude on other subjects. With Madockawando, he waited until the tobacco had mellowed both their spirits, and then said,-- "Father, I want to marry your daughter in the French way, with priest and contract, and make her the Baroness de Saint-Castin." Madockawando, on his part, smoked the matter fairly out. He put an arm on the sagamore's shoulder, and lamented the extreme devotion of his daughter. It was a good religion which the black-robed father had brought among the Abenaquis, but who had ever heard of a woman's refusing to look at men before that religion came? His own child, when she was at home with the tribe, lived as separate from the family and as independently as a war-chief. In his time, the women dressed game and carried the children and drew sledges. What would happen if his daughter began to teach them, in a house by themselves, to do nothing but pray? Madockawando repeated that his son, the sagamore, and his father, the priest, had a good religion, but they might see for themselves what the Abenaqui tribe would come to when the women all set up for medicine squaws. Then there was his daughter's hiding in winter to make what she called her retreats, and her proposing to take a new name from some of the priest's okies or saint-spirits, and to be called "Sister." "I will never call my own child 'Sister,'" vowed Madockawando. "I could be a better Christian myself, if Father Petit had not put spells on her." The two conspirators against Father Petit's proposed nunnery felt grave and wicked, but they encouraged one another in iniquity. Madockawando smiled in bronze wrinkles when Saint-Castin told him about the proposal in the woods. The proper time for courtship was evening, as any Frenchman who had lived a year with the tribe ought to know; but when one considered the task he had undertaken, any time was suitable; and the chief encouraged him with full consent. A French marriage contract was no better than an Abenaqui marriage contract in Madockawando's eyes; but if Saint-Castin could bind up his daughter for good, he would be glad of it. The chapel of saplings and bark which first sheltered Father Petit's altar had been abandoned when Saint-Castin built a substantial one of stone and timber within the fortress walls, and hung in its little tower a bell, which the most reluctant Abenaqui must hear at mass time. But as it is well to cherish the sacred regard which man has for any spot where he has worshiped, the priest left a picture hanging on the wall above the bare chancel, and he kept the door repaired on its wooden hinges. The chapel stood beyond the forest, east of Pentegoet, and close to those battlements which form the coast line here. The tide made thunder as it rose among caverns and frothed almost at the verge of the heights. From this headland Mount Desert could be seen, leading the host of islands which go out into the Atlantic, ethereal in fog or lurid in the glare of sunset. Madockawando's daughter tended the old chapel in summer, for she had first seen religion through its door. She wound the homely chancel rail with evergreens, and put leaves and red berries on the walls, and flowers under the sacred picture; her Etchemin woman always keeping her company. Father Petit hoped to see this rough shrine become a religious seminary, and strings of women led there every day to take, like contagion, from an abbess the instruction they took so slowly from a priest. She and the Etchemin found it a dismal place, on their first visit after the winter retreat. She reproached herself for coming so late; but day and night an influence now encompassed Madockawando's daughter which she felt as a restraint on her freedom. A voice singing softly the love-songs of southern France often waked her from her sleep. The words she could not interpret, but the tone the whole village could, and she blushed, crowding paters on aves, until her voice sometimes became as distinct as Saint-Castin's in resolute opposition. It was so grotesque that it made her laugh. Yet to a woman the most formidable quality in a suitor is determination. When the three girls who had constituted Saint-Castin's household at the fort passed complacently back to their own homes laden with riches, Madockawando's daughter was unreasonably angry, and felt their loss as they were incapable of feeling it for themselves. She was alien to the customs of her people. The fact pressed upon her that her people were completely bound to the white sagamore and all his deeds. Saint-Castin's sins had been open to the tribe, and his repentance was just as open. Father Petit praised him. "My son Jean Vincent de l'Abadie, Baron de Saint-Castin, has need of spiritual aid to sustain him in the paths of virtue," said the priest impressively, "and he is seeking it." At every church service the lax sinner was now on his knees in plain sight of the devotee; but she never looked at him. All the tribe soon knew what he had at heart, and it was told from camp-fire to camp-fire how he sat silent every night in the hall at Pentegoet, with his hair ruffled on his forehead, growing more haggard from day to day. The Abenaqui girl did not talk with other women about what happened in the community. Dead saints crowded her mind to the exclusion of living sinners. All that she heard came by way of her companion, the stolid Etchemin, and when it was unprofitable talk it was silenced. They labored together all the chill April afternoon, bringing the chapel out of its winter desolation. The Etchemin made brooms of hemlock, and brushed down cobwebs and dust, and laboriously swept the rocky earthen floor, while the princess, standing upon a scaffold of split log benches, wiped the sacred picture and set a border of tender moss around it. It was a gaudy red print representing a pierced heart. The Indian girl kissed every sanguinary drop which dribbled down the coarse paper. Fog and salt air had given it a musty odor, and stained the edges with mildew. She found it no small labor to cover these stains, and pin the moss securely in place with thorns. There were no windows in this chapel. A platform of hewed slabs had supported the altar; and when the princess came down, and the benches were replaced, she lifted one of these slabs, as she had often done before, to look into the earthen-floored box which they made. Little animals did not take refuge in the wind-beaten building. She often wondered that it stood; though the light materials used by aboriginal tribes, when anchored to the earth as this house was, toughly resisted wind and weather. The Etchemin sat down on the ground, and her mistress on the platform behind the chancel rail, when everything else was done, to make a fresh rope of evergreen. The climbing and reaching and lifting had heated their faces, and the cool salt air flowed in, refreshing them. Their hands were pricked by the spiny foliage, but they labored without complaint, in unbroken meditation. A monotonous low singing of the Etchemin's kept company with the breathing of the sea. This decking of the chapel acted like music on the Abenaqui girl. She wanted to be quiet, to enjoy it. By the time they were ready to shut the door for the night the splash of a rising tide could be heard. Fog obliterated the islands, and a bleak gray twilight, like the twilights of winter, began to dim the woods. "The sagamore has made a new law," said the Etchemin woman, as they came in sight of the fort. Madockawando's daughter looked at the unguarded bastions, and the chimneys of Pentegoet rising in a stack above the walls. "What new law has the sagamore made?" she inquired. "He says he will no more allow a man to put away his first and true wife, for he is convinced that God does not love inconstancy in men." "The sagamore should have kept his first wife himself." "But he says he has not yet had her," answered the Etchemin woman, glancing aside at the princess. "The sagamore will not see the end of the sugar-making to-night." "Because he sits alone every night by his fire," said Madockawando's daughter; "there is too much talk about the sagamore. It is the end of the sugar-making that your mind is set on." "My husband is at the camps," said the Etchemin plaintively. "Besides, I am very tired." "Rest yourself, therefore, by tramping far to wait on your husband and keep his hands filled with warm sugar. I am tired, and I go to my lodge." "But there is a feast in the camps, and nobody has thought of putting a kettle on in the village. I will first get your meat ready." "No, I intend to observe a fast to-night. Go on to the camps, and serve my family there." The Etchemin looked toward the darkening bay, and around them at those thickening hosts of invisible terrors which are yet dreaded by more enlightened minds than hers. "No," responded the princess, "I am not afraid. Go on to the camps while you have the courage to be abroad alone." The Etchemin woman set off at a trot, her heavy body shaking, and distance soon swallowed her. Madockawando's daughter stood still in the humid dimness before turning aside to her lodge. Perhaps the ruddy light which showed through the open fortress gate from the hall of Pentegoet gave her a feeling of security. She knew a man was there; and there was not a man anywhere else within half a league. It was the last great night of sugar-making. Not even an Abenaqui woman or child remained around the fort. Father Petit himself was at the camps to restrain riot. It would be a hard patrol for him, moving from fire to fire half the night. The master of Pentegoet rested very carelessly in his hold. It was hardly a day's sail westward to the English post of Pemaquid. Saint-Castin had really made ready for his people's spring sowing and fishing with some anxiety for their undisturbed peace. Pemaquid aggressed on him, and he seriously thought of fitting out a ship and burning Pemaquid. In that time, as in this, the strong hand upheld its own rights at any cost. The Abenaqui girl stood under the north-west bastion, letting early night make its impressions on her. Her motionless figure, in indistinct garments, could not be seen from the river; but she discerned, rising up the path from the water, one behind the other, a row of peaked hats. Beside the hats appeared gunstocks. She had never seen any English, but neither her people nor the French showed such tops, or came stealthily up from the boat landing under cover of night. She did not stop to count them. Their business must be with Saint-Castin. She ran along the wall. The invaders would probably see her as she tried to close the gate; it had settled on its hinges, and was too heavy for her. She thought of ringing the chapel bell; but before any Abenaqui could reach the spot the single man in the fortress must be overpowered. Saint-Castin stood on his bachelor hearth, leaning an arm on the mantel. The light shone on his buckskin fringes, his dejected shoulders, and his clean-shaven youthful face. A supper stood on the table near him, where his Etchemin servants had placed it before they trotted off to the camps. The high windows flickered, and there was not a sound in the house except the low murmur or crackle of the glowing backlog, until the door-latch clanked, and the door flew wide and was slammed shut again. Saint-Castin looked up with a frown, which changed to stupid astonishment. Madockawando's daughter seized him by the wrist. "Is there any way out of the fort except through the gate?" "None," answered Saint-Castin. "Is there no way of getting over the wall?" "The ladder can be used." "Run, then, to the ladder! Be quick." "What is the matter?" demanded Saint-Castin. The Abenaqui girl dragged on him with all her strength as he reached for the iron door-latch. "Not that way--they will see you--they are coming from the river! Go through some other door." "Who are coming?" Yielding himself to her will, Saint-Castin hurried with her from room to room, and out through his kitchen, where the untidy implements of his Etchemin slaves lay scattered about. They ran past the storehouse, and he picked up a ladder and set it against the wall. "I will run back and ring the chapel bell," panted the girl. "Mount!" said Saint-Castin sternly; and she climbed the ladder, convinced that he would not leave her behind. He sat on the wall and dragged the ladder up, and let it down on the outside. As they both reached the ground, he understood what enemy had nearly trapped him in his own fortress. "The doors were all standing wide," said a cautious nasal voice, speaking English, at the other side of the wall. "Our fox hath barely sprung from cover. He must be near." "Is not that the top of a ladder?" inquired another voice. At this there was a rush for the gate. Madockawando's daughter ran like the wind, with Saint-Castin's hand locked in hers. She knew, by night or day, every turn of the slender trail leading to the deserted chapel. It came to her mind as the best place of refuge. They were cut off from the camps, because they must cross their pursuers on the way. The lord of Pentegoet could hear bushes crackling behind him. The position of the ladder had pointed the direction of the chase. He laughed in his headlong flight. This was not ignominious running from foes, but a royal exhilaration. He could run all night, holding the hand that guided him. Unheeded branches struck him across the face. He shook his hair back and flew light-footed, the sweep of the magnificent body beside him keeping step. He could hear the tide boom against the headland, and the swish of its recoiling waters. The girl had her way with him. It did not occur to the officer of the Carignan regiment that he should direct the escape, or in any way oppose the will manifested for the first time in his favor. She felt for the door of the, dark little chapel, and drew him in and closed it. His judgment rejected the place, but without a word he groped at her side across to the chancel rail. She lifted the loose slab of the platform, and tried to thrust him into the earthen-floored box. "Hide yourself first," whispered Saint-Castin. They could hear feet running on the flinty approach. The chase was so close that the English might have seen them enter the chapel. "Get in, get in!" begged the Abenaqui girl. "They will not hurt me." "Hide!" said Saint-Castin, thrusting her fiercely in. "Would they not carry off the core of Saint-Castin's heart if they could?" She flattened herself on the ground under the platform, and gave him all the space at her side that the contraction of her body left clear, and he let the slab down carefully over their heads. They existed almost without breath for many minutes. The wooden door-hinges creaked, and stumbling shins blundered against the benches. "What is this place?" spoke an English voice. "Let some one take his tinder-box and strike a light." "Have care," warned another. "We are only half a score in number. Our errand was to kidnap Saint-Castin from his hold, not to get ourselves ambushed by the Abenaquis." "We are too far from the sloop now," said a third. "We shall be cut off before we get back, if we have not a care." "But he must be in here." "There are naught but benches and walls to hide him. This must be an idolatrous chapel where the filthy savages congregate to worship images." "Come out of the abomination, and let us make haste back to the boat. He may be this moment marshaling all his Indians to surround us." "Wait. Let a light first be made." Saint-Castin and his companion heard the clicks of flint and steel; then an instant's blaze of tinder made cracks visible over their Heads. It died away, the hurried, wrangling men shuffling about. One kicked the platform. "Here is a cover," he said; but darkness again enveloped them all. "Nothing is to be gained by searching farther," decided the majority. "Did I not tell you this Saint-Castin will never be caught? The tide will turn, and we shall get stranded among the rocks of that bay. It is better to go back without Saint-Castin than to stay and be burnt by his Abenaquis." "But here is a loose board in some flooring," insisted the discoverer of the platform. "I will feel with the butt of my gun if there be anything thereunder." The others had found the door, and were filing through it. "Why not with thy knife, man?" suggested one of them. "That is well thought of," he answered, and struck a half circle under the boards. Whether in this flourish he slashed anything he only learned by the stain on the knife, when the sloop was dropping down the bay. But the Abenaqui girl knew what he had done, before the footsteps ceased. She sat beside Saint-Castin on the platform, their feet resting on the ground within the boards. No groan betrayed him, but her arms went jealously around his body, and her searching fingers found the cut in the buckskin. She drew her blanket about him with a strength of compression that made it a ligature, and tied the corners in a knot. "Is it deep, sagamore?" "Not deep enough," said Saint-Castin. "It will glue me to my buckskins with a little blood, but it will not let me out of my troubles. I wonder why I ran such a race from the English? They might have had me, since they want me, and no one else does." "I will kiss you now, sagamore," whispered the Abenaqui girl, trembling and weeping in the chaos of her broken reserve. "I cannot any longer hold out against being your wife." She gave him her first kiss in the sacred darkness of the chapel, and under the picture of the pierced heart. And it has since been recorded of her that the Baroness de Saint-Castin was, during her entire lifetime, the best worshiped wife in Acadia. THE BEAUPORT LOUP-GAROU. October dusk was bleak on the St. Lawrence, an east wind feeling along the river's surface and rocking the vessels of Sir William Phips on tawny rollers. It was the second night that his fleet sat there inactive. During that day a small ship had approached Beauport landing; but it stuck fast in the mud and became a mark for gathering Canadians until the tide rose and floated it off. At this hour all the habitants about Beauport except one, and even the Huron Indians of Lorette, were safe inside the fort walls. Cattle were driven and sheltered inland. Not a child's voice could be heard in the parish of Beauport, and not a woman's face looked through windows fronting the road leading up toward Montmorenci. Juchereau de Saint-Denis, the seignior of Beauport, had taken his tenants with him as soon as the New England invaders pushed into Quebec Basin. Only one man of the muster hid himself and stayed behind, and he was too old for military service. His seignior might lament him, but there was no woman to do so. Gaspard had not stepped off his farm for years. The priest visited him there, humoring a bent which seemed as inelastic as a vow. He had not seen the ceremonial of high mass in the cathedral of Upper Town since he was a young man. Gaspard's farm was fifteen feet wide and a mile long. It was one of several strips lying between the St. Charles River and those heights east of Beauport which rise to Montmorenci Falls. He had his front on the greater stream, and his inland boundary among woods skirting the mountain. He raised his food and the tobacco he smoked, and braided his summer hats of straw and knitted his winter caps of wool. One suit of well-fulled woolen clothes would have lasted a habitant a lifetime. But Gaspard had been unlucky. He lost all his family by smallpox, and the priest made him burn his clothes, and ruinously fit himself with new. There was no use in putting savings in the stocking any longer, however; the children were gone. He could only buy masses for them. He lived alone, the neighbors taking that loving interest in him which French Canadians bestow on one another. More than once Gaspard thought he would leave his farm and go into the world. When Frontenac returned to take the paralyzed province in hand, and fight Iroquois, and repair the mistakes of the last governor, Gaspard put on his best moccasins and the red tasseled sash he wore only at Christmas. "Gaspard is going to the fort," ran along the whole row of Beauport houses. His neighbors waited for him. They all carried their guns and powder for the purpose of firing salutes to Frontenac. It was a grand day. But when Gaspard stepped out with the rest, his countenance fell. He could not tell what ailed him. His friends coaxed and pulled him; they gave him a little brandy. He sat down, and they were obliged to leave him, or miss the cannonading and fireworks themselves. From his own river front Gaspard saw the old lion's, ship come to port, and, in unformed sentences, he reasoned then that a man need not leave his place to take part in the world. Frontenac had not been back a month, and here was the New England colony of Massachusetts swarming against New France. "They may carry me away from my hearth feet first," thought Gaspard, "but I am not to be scared away from it." Every night, before putting the bar across his door, the old habitant went out to survey the two ends of the earth typified by the road crossing his strip of farm. These were usually good moments for him. He did not groan, as at dawn, that there were no children to relieve him of labor. A noble landscape lifted on either hand from the hollow of Beauport. The ascending road went on to the little chapel of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, which for thirty years had been considered a shrine in New France. The left hand road forded the St. Charles and climbed the long slope to Quebec rock. Gaspard loved the sounds which made home so satisfying at autumn dusk. Faint and far off he thought he could hear the lowing of his cow and calf. To remember they were exiled gave him the pang of the unusual. He was just chilled through, and therefore as ready for his own hearth as a long journey could have made him, when a gray thing loped past in the flinty dust, showing him sudden awful eyes and tongue of red fire. Gaspard clapped the house door to behind him and put up the bar. He was not afraid of Phips and the fleet, of battle or night attack, but the terror which walked in the darkness of sorcerers' times abjectly bowed his old legs. "O good Ste. Anne, pray for us!" he whispered, using an invocation familiar to his lips. "If loups-garous are abroad, also, what is to become of this unhappy land?" There was a rattling knock on his door. It might be made by the hilt of a sword; or did a loup-garou ever clatter paw against man's dwelling? Gaspard climbed on his bed. "Father Gaspard! Father Gaspard! Are you within?" "Who is there?" "Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène. Don't you know my voice?" "My master Sainte-Hélène, are you alone?" "Quite alone, except for my horse tied to your apple-tree. Let me in." The command was not to be slighted. Gaspard got down and admitted his visitor. More than once had Sainte-Hélène come to this hearth. He appreciated the large fire, and sat down on a chair with heavy legs which were joined by bars resting on the floor. "My hands tingle. The dust on these, flint roads is cold." "But Monsieur Sainte-Hélène never walked with his hands in the dust," protested Gaspard. The erect figure, bright with all the military finery of that period, checked even his superstition by imposing another kind of awe. "The New England men expect to make us bite it yet," responded Sainte-Hélène. "Saint-Denis is anxious about you, old man. Why don't you go to the fort?" "I will go to-morrow," promised Gaspard, relaxing sheepishly from terror. "These New Englanders have not yet landed, and one's own bed is very comfortable in the cool nights." "I am used to sleeping anywhere." "Yes, monsieur, for you are young." "It would make you young again, Gaspard, to see Count Frontenac. I wish all New France had seen him yesterday when he defied Phips and sent the envoy back to the fleet. The officer was sweating; our mischievous fellows had blinded him at the water's edge, and dragged him, to the damage of his shins, over all the barricades of Mountain Street. He took breath and courage when they turned him loose before the governor,--though the sight of Frontenac startled him,--and handed over the letter of his commandant requiring the surrender of Quebec." "My faith, Monsieur Sainte-Hélène, did the governor blow him out of the room?" "The man offered his open watch, demanding an answer within the hour. The governor said, 'I do not need so much time. Go back at once to your master and tell him I will answer this insolent message by the mouths of my cannon.'" "By all the saints, that was a good word!" swore Gaspard, slapping his knee with his wool cap. "Neither the Iroquois nor the Bostonnais will run over us, now that the old governor is back. You heard him say it, monsieur?" "I heard him, yes; for all his officers stood by. La Hontan was there, too, and that pet of La Hontan's, Baron de Saint-Castin's half-breed son, of Pentegoet." The martial note in the officer's voice sunk to contempt. Gaspard was diverted from the governor to recognize, with the speechless perception of an untrained mind, that jealousy which men established in the world have of very young men. The male instinct of predominance is fierce even in saints. Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène, though of the purest stock in New France, had no prejudice against a half-breed. "How is Mademoiselle Clementine?" inquired Gaspard, arriving at the question in natural sequence. "You will see her oftener now than when you had to ride from the fort." The veins looked black in his visitor's face. "Ask the little Saint-Castin. Boys stand under windows and talk to women now. Men have to be reconnoitering the enemy." "Monsieur Anselm de Saint-Castin is the son of a good fighter," observed Gaspard. "It is said the New England men hate his very name." "Anselm de Saint-Castin is barely eighteen years old." "It is the age of Mademoiselle Clementine." The old habitant drew his three-legged stool to the hearth corner, and took the liberty of sitting down as the talk was prolonged. He noticed the leaden color which comes of extreme weariness and depression dulling Sainte-Hélène's usually dark and rosy skin. Gaspard had heard that this young man was quickest afoot, readiest with his weapon, most untiring in the dance, and keenest for adventure of all the eight brothers in his noble family. He had done the French arms credit in the expedition to Hudson Bay and many another brush with their enemies. The fire was burning high and clear, lighting rafters and their curious brown tassels of smoked meat, and making the crucifix over the bed shine out the whitest spot in a smoke-stained room. "Father Gaspard," inquired Sainte-Hélène suddenly, "did you ever hear of such a thing as a loup-garou?" The old habitant felt terror returning with cold feet up his back and crowding its blackness upon him through the windows. Yet as he rolled his eyes at the questioner he felt piqued at such ignorance of his natural claims. "Was I not born on the island of Orleans, monsieur?" Everybody knew that the island of Orleans had been from the time of its discovery the abode of loups-garous, sorcerers, and all those uncanny cattle that run in the twilights of the world. The western point of its wooded ridge, which parts the St. Lawrence for twenty-two miles, from Beauport to Beaupré, lay opposite Gaspard's door. "Oh, you were born on the island of Orleans?" "Yes, monsieur," answered Gaspard, with the pride we take in distinction of any kind. "But you came to live in Beauport parish." "Does a goat turn to a pig, monsieur, because you carry it to the north shore?" "Perhaps so: everything changes." Sainte-Hélène leaned forward, resting his arms on the arms of the chair. He wrinkled his eyelids around central points of fire. "What is a loup-garou?" "Does monsieur not know? Monsieur Sainte-Hélène surely knows that a loup-garou is a man-wolf." "A man-wolf," mused the soldier. "But when a person is so afflicted, is he a man or is he a wolf?" "It is not an affliction, monsieur; it is sorcery." "I think you are right. Then the wretched man-wolf is past being prayed for?" "If one should repent"-- "I don't repent anything," returned Sainte-Hélène; and Gaspard's jaw relaxed, and he had the feeling of pin-feathers in his hair. "Is he a man or is he a wolf?" repeated the questioner. "The loup-garou is a man, but he takes the form of a wolf." "Not all the time?" "No, monsieur, not all the time?" "Of course not." Gaspard experienced with us all this paradox: that the older we grow, the more visible becomes the unseen. In childhood the external senses are sharp; but maturity fuses flesh and spirit. He wished for a priest, desiring to feel the arm of the Church around him. It was late October,--a time which might be called the yearly Sabbath of loups-garous. "And what must a loup-garou do with himself?" pursued Sainte-Hélène. "I should take to the woods, and sit and lick my chaps, and bless my hide that I was for the time no longer a man." "Saints! monsieur, he goes on a chase. He runs with his tongue lolled out, and his eyes red as blood." "What color are my eyes, Gaspard?" The old Frenchman sputtered, "Monsieur, they are very black." Sainte-Hélène drew his hand across them. "It must be your firelight that is so red. I have been seeing as through a glass of claret ever since I came in." Gaspard moved farther into the corner, the stool legs scraping the floor. Though every hair on his body crawled with superstition, he could not suspect Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène. Yet the familiar face altered strangely while he looked at it: the nose sunk with sudden emaciation, and the jaws lengthened to a gaunt muzzle. There was a crouching forward of the shoulders, as if the man were about to drop on his hands and feet. Gaspard had once fallen down unconscious in haying time; and this recalled to him the breaking up and shimmering apart of a solid landscape. The deep cleft mouth parted, lifting first at the corners and showing teeth, then widening to the utterance of a low howl. Gaspard tumbled over the stool, and, seizing it by a leg, held it between himself and Sainte-Hélène. "What is the matter, Gaspard?" exclaimed the officer, clattering his scabbard against the chair as he rose, his lace and plumes and ribbons stirring anew. Many a woman in the province had not as fine and sensitive a face as the one confronting the old habitant. Gaspard stood back against the wall, holding the stool with its legs bristling towards Sainte-Hélène. He shook from head to foot. "Have I done anything to frighten you? What is the matter with me, Gaspard, that people should treat me as they do? It is unbearable! I take the hardest work, the most dangerous posts; and they are against me--against me." The soldier lifted his clenched fists, and turned his back on the old man. The fire showed every curve of his magnificent stature. Wind, diving into the chimney, strove against the sides for freedom, and startled the silence with its hollow rumble. "I forded the St. Charles when the tide was rising, to take you back with me to the fort. I see you dread the New Englanders less than you do me. She told her father she feared you were ill. But every one is well," said Sainte-Hélène, lowering his arms and making for the door. And it sounded like an accusation against the world. He was scarcely outside in the wind, though still holding the door, when Gaspard was ready to put up the bar. "Good-night, old man." "Good-night, monsieur, good-night, good-night!" called Gaspard, with quavering dispatch. He pushed the door, but Sainte-Hélène looked around its edge. Again the officer's face had changed, pinched by the wind, and his eyes were full of mocking laughter. "I will say this for a loup-garou, Father Gaspard: a loup-garou may have a harder time in this world than the other beasts, but he is no coward; he can make a good death." Ashes spun out over the floor, and smoke rolled up around the joists, as Sainte-Hélène shut himself into the darkness. Not satisfied with barring the door, the old habitant pushed his chest against it. To this he added the chair and stool, and barricaded it further with his night's supply of firewood. "Would I go over the ford of the St. Charles with him?" Gaspard hoarsely whispered as he crossed himself. "If the New England men were burning my house, I would not go. And how can a loup-garou get over that water? The St. Charles is blessed; I am certain it is blessed. Yet he talked about fording it like any Christian." The old habitant was not clear in his mind what should be done, except that it was no business of his to meddle with one of Frontenac's great officers and a noble of New France. But as a measure of safety for himself he took down his bottle of holy water, hanging on the wall for emergencies, and sprinkled every part of his dwelling. Next morning, however, when the misty autumn light was on the hills, promising a clear day and penetrating sunshine, as soon as he awoke he felt ashamed of the barricade, and climbed out of bed to remove it. "The time has at last come when I am obliged to go to the fort," thought Gaspard, groaning. "Governor Frontenac will not permit any sorcery in his presence. The New England men might do me no harm, but I cannot again face a loup-garou." He dressed himself accordingly, and, taking his gathered coin from its hiding-place, wrapped every piece separately in a bit of rag, slid it into his deep pocket, and sewed the pocket up. Then he cut off enough bacon to toast on the raked-out coals for his breakfast, and hid the rest under the floor. There was no fastening on the outside of Gaspard's house. He was obliged to latch the door, and leave it at the mercy of the enemy. Nothing was stirring in the frosted world. He could not yet see the citadel clearly, or the heights of Levis; but the ascent to Montmorenci bristled with naked trees, and in the stillness he could hear the roar of the falls. Gaspard ambled along his belt of ground to take a last look. It was like a patchwork quilt: a square of wheat stubble showed here, and a few yards of brown prostrate peavines showed there; his hayfield was less than a stone's throw long; and his garden beds, in triangles and sections of all shapes, filled the interstices of more ambitious crops. He had nearly reached the limit of the farm, and entered his neck of woods, when the breathing of a cow trying to nip some comfort from the frosty sod delighted his ear. The pretty milker was there, with her calf at her side. Gaspard stroked and patted them. Though the New Englanders should seize them for beef, he could not regret they were wending home again. That invisible cord binding him to his own place, which had wrenched his vitals as it stretched, now drew him back like fate. He worked several hours to make his truants a concealing corral of hay and stakes and straw and stumps at a place where a hill spring threaded across his land, and then returned between his own boundaries to the house again. The homesick zest of one who has traveled made his lips and unshaven chin protrude, as he smelled the good interior. There was the wooden crane. There was his wife's old wheel. There was the sacred row of children's snow-shoes, which the priest had spared from burning. One really had to leave home to find out what home was. But a great hubbub was beginning in Phips's fleet. Fifes were screaming, drums were beating, and shouts were lifted and answered by hearty voices. After their long deliberation, the New Englanders had agreed upon some plan of attack. Gaspard went down to his landing, and watched boatload follow boatload, until the river was swarming with little craft pulling directly for Beauport. He looked uneasily toward Quebec. The old lion in the citadel hardly waited for Phips to shift position, but sent the first shot booming out to meet him. The New England cannon answered, and soon Quebec height and Levis palisades rumbled prodigious thunder, and the whole day was black with smoke and streaked with fire. Gaspard took his gun, and trotted along his farm to the cover of the trees. He had learned to fight in the Indian fashion; and Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène fought the same way. Before the boatloads of New Englanders had all waded through tidal mud, and ranged themselves by companies on the bank, Sainte-Hélène, who had been dispatched by Frontenac at the first drumbeat on the river, appeared, ready to check them, from the woods of Beauport. He had, besides three hundred sharpshooters, the Lorette Hurons and the muster of Beauport militia, all men with homes to save. The New Englanders charged them, a solid force, driving the light-footed bush fighters. But it was like driving the wind, which turns, and at some unexpected quarter is always ready for you again. This long-range fighting went on until nightfall, when the English commander, finding that his tormentors had disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared in the morning, tried to draw his men together at the St. Charles ford, where he expected some small vessels would be sent to help him across. He made a night camp here, without any provisions. Gaspard's house was dark, like the deserted Beauport homes all that night; yet one watching might have seen smoke issuing from his chimney toward the stars. The weary New England men did not forage through these places, nor seek shelter in them. It was impossible to know where Indians and Frenchmen did not lie in ambush. On the other side of the blankets which muffled Gaspard's windows, however, firelight shone with its usual ruddiness, showing the seignior of Beauport prostrate on his old tenant's bed. Juchereau de Saint-Denis was wounded, and La Hontan, who was with the skirmishers, and Gaspard had brought him in the dark down to the farmhouse as the nearest hospital. Baron La Hontan was skillful in surgery; most men had need to be in those days. He took the keys, and groped into the seigniory house for the linen chest, and provided lint and bandages, and brought cordials from the cellar; making his patient as comfortable as a wounded man who was a veteran in years could be made in the first fever and thirst of suffering. La Hontan knew the woods, and crept away before dawn to a hidden bivouac of Hurons and militia; wiry and venturesome in his age as he had been in his youth. But Saint-Denis lay helpless and partially delirious in Gaspard's house all Thursday, while the bombardment of Quebec made the earth tremble, and the New England ships were being splintered by Frontenac's cannon; while Sainte-Hélène and his brother themselves manned the two batteries of Lower Town, aiming twenty-four-pound balls directly against the fleet; while they cut the cross of St. George from the flagstaff of the admiral, and Frenchmen above them in the citadel rent the sky with joy; while the fleet, ship by ship, with shattered masts and leaking hulls, drew off from the fight, some of them leaving cable and anchor, and drifting almost in pieces; while the land force, discouraged, sick, and hungry, waited for the promised help which never came. Thursday night was so cold that the St. Charles was skimmed with ice, and hoarfrost lay white on the fields. But Saint-Denis was in the fire of fever, and Gaspard, slipping like a thief, continually brought him fresh water from the spring. He lay there on Friday, while the land force, refreshed by half rations sent from the almost wrecked fleet, made a last stand, fighting hotly as they were repulsed from New France. It was twilight on Friday when Sainte-Hélène was carried into Gaspard's house and laid on the floor. Gaspard felt emboldened to take the blankets from a window and roll them up to place under the soldier's head. Many Beauport people were even then returning to their homes. The land force did not reëmbark until the next night, and the invaders did not entirely withdraw for four days; but Quebec was already yielding up its refugees. A disabled foe--though a brave and stubborn one--who had his ships to repair, if he would not sink in them, was no longer to be greatly dreaded. At first the dusk room was packed with Hurons and Montreal men. This young seignior Sainte-Hélène was one of the best leaders of his time. They were indignant that the enemy's last scattering shots had picked him off. The surgeon and La Hontan put all his followers out of the door,--he was scarcely conscious that they stood by him,--and left, beside his brother Longueuil, only one young man who had helped carry him in. Saint-Denis, on the bed, saw him with the swimming eyes of fever. The seignior of Beauport had hoped to have Sainte-Hélène for his son-in-law. His little Clementine, the child of his old age,--it was after all a fortunate thing that she was shut for safety in Quebec, while her father depended for care on Gaspard. Saint-Denis tried to see Sainte-Hélène's face; but the surgeon's helpers constantly balked him, stooping and rising and reaching for things. And presently a face he was not expecting to see grew on the air before him. Clementine's foot had always made a light click, like a sheep's on a naked floor. But Saint-Denis did not hear her enter. She touched her cheek to her father's. It was smooth and cold from the October air. Clementine's hair hung in large pale ringlets; for she was an ashen maid, gray-toned and subdued; the roughest wind never ruffled her smoothness. She made her father know that she had come with Beauport women and men from Quebec, as soon as any were allowed to leave the fort, to escort her. She leaned against the bed, soft as a fleece, yielding her head to her father's painful fondling. There was no heroism in Clementine; but her snug domestic ways made him happy in his house. "Sainte-Hélène is wounded," observed Saint-Denis. She cast a glance of fright over her shoulder. "Did you not see him when you came in?" "I saw some one; but it is to you that I have been wishing to come since Wednesday night." "I shall get well; they tell me it is not so bad with me. But how is it with Sainte-Hélène?" "I do not know, father." "Where is young Saint-Castin? Ask him." "He is helping the surgeon, father." "Poor child, how she trembles! I would thou hadst stayed in the fort, for these sights are unfit for women. New France can as ill spare him as we can, Clementine. Was that his groan?" She cowered closer to the bed, and answered, "I do not know." Saint-Denis tried to sit up in bed, but was obliged to resign himself, with a gasp, to the straw pillows. Night pressed against the unblinded window. A stir, not made by the wind, was heard at the door, and Frontenac, and Frontenac's Récollet confessor, and Sainte-Hélène's two brothers from the citadel, came into the room. The governor of New France was imposing in presence. Perhaps there was no other officer in the province to whom he would have galloped in such haste from Quebec. It was a tidal moment in his affairs, and Frontenac knew the value of such moments better than most men. But Sainte-Hélène did not know the governor was there. The Récollet father fell on his knees and at once began his office. Longueuil sat down on Gaspard's stool and covered his face against the wall. He had been hurt by a spent bullet, and one arm needed bandaging, but he said nothing about it, though the surgeon was now at liberty, standing and looking at a patient for whom nothing could be done. The sterner brothers watched, also, silent, as Normans taught themselves to be in trouble. The sons of Charles Le Moyne carried his name and the lilies of France from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. Anselm de Saint-Castin had fought two days alongside the man who lay dying. The boy had an ardent face, like his father's. He was sorry, with the skin-deep commiseration of youth for those who fall, whose falling thins the crowded ranks of competition. But he was not for a moment unconscious of the girl hiding her head against her father from the sight of death. The hope of one man forever springing beside the grave of another must work sadness in God. Yet Sainte-Hélène did not know any young supplanter was there. He did not miss or care for the fickle vanity of applause; he did not torment himself with the spectres of the mind, or feel himself shrinking with the littleness of jealousy; he did not hunger for a love that was not in the world, or waste a Titan's passion on a human ewe any more. For him, the aching and bewilderment, exaltations and self-distrusts, animal gladness and subjection to the elements, were done. Clementine's father beckoned to the boy, and put her in his care. "Take her home to the women," Saint-Denis whispered. "She is not used to war and such sight as these. And bid some of the older ones stay with her." Anselm and Clementine went out, their hands just touching as he led her in wide avoidance of the figure on the floor. Sainte-Hélène did not know the boy and girl left him, for starlight, for silence together, treading the silvered earth in one cadenced step, as he awaited that moment when the solitary spirit finds its utmost loneliness. Gaspard also went out. When the governor sat in his armchair, and his seignior lay on the bed, and Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène was stretched that way on the floor, it could hardly be decent for an old habitant to stand by, even cap in hand. Yet he could scarcely take his eyes from the familiar face as it changed in phosphorescent light. The features lifted themselves with firm nobility, expressing an archangel's beauty. Sainte-Hélène's lips parted, and above the patter of the reciting Récollet the watchers were startled by one note like the sigh of a wind-harp. The Montreal militia, the Lorette Hurons, and Beauport men were still thronging about, overflowing laterally upon the other farms. They demanded word of the young seignior, hushing their voices. Some of them had gone into Gaspard's milk cave and handed out stale milk for their own and their neighbors' refreshment. A group were sitting on the crisp ground, with a lantern in their midst, playing some game; their heads and shoulders moving with an alacrity objectless to observers, so closely was the light hemmed in. Gaspard reached his gateway with the certainty of custom. He looked off at both ends of the world. The starlit stretch of road was almost as deserted as when Quebec shut in the inhabitants of Beauport. From the direction of Montmorenci he saw a gray thing come loping down, showing eyes and tongue of red fire. He screamed an old man's scream, pointing to it, and the cry of "Loup-garou!" brought all Beauport men to their feet. The flints clicked. It was a time of alarms. Two shots were fired together, and an under officer sprung across the fence of a neighboring farm to take command of the threatened action. The camp of sturdy New Englanders on the St. Charles was hid by a swell in the land. At the outcry, those Frenchmen around the lantern parted company, some recoiling backwards, and others scrambling to seize their guns. But one caught up the lantern, and ran to the struggling beast in the road. Gaspard pushed into the gathering crowd, and craned himself to see the thing, also. He saw a gaunt dog, searching yet from face to face for some lost idol, and beating the flinty world with a last thump of propitiation. Frontenac opened the door and stood upon the doorstep. His head almost reached the overhanging straw thatch. "What is the alarm, my men?" "Your excellency," the subaltern answered, "it was nothing but a dog. It came down from Montmorenci, and some of the men shot it." "Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène," declared Frontenac, lowering his plumed hat, "has just died for New France." * * * * * Gaspard stayed out on his river front until he felt half frozen. The old habitant had not been so disturbed and uncomfortable since his family died of smallpox. Phips's vessels lay near the point of Orleans Island, a few portholes lighting their mass of gloom, while two red lanterns aloft burned like baleful eyes at the lost coast of Canada. Nothing else showed on the river. The distant wall of Levis palisades could be discerned, and Quebec stood a mighty crown, its gems all sparkling. Behind Gaspard, Beauport was alive. The siege was virtually over, and he had not set foot off his farm during Phips's invasion of New France. He did not mind sleeping on the floor, with his heels to the fire. But there were displacements and changes and sorrows which he did mind. "However," muttered the old man, and it was some comfort to the vague aching in his breast to formulate one fact as solid as the heights around, "it is certain that there are loups-garous." THE MILL AT PETIT CAP August night air, sweet with a half salt breath from the St. Lawrence, met the miller of San Joachim as he looked out; but he bolted the single thick door of the mill, and cast across it into a staple a hook as long as his body and as thick as his arm. At any alarm in the village he must undo these fastenings, and receive the refugees from Montgomery; yet he could not sleep without locking the door. So all that summer he had slept on a bench in the mill basement, to be ready for the call. All the parishes on the island of Orleans, and on each side of the river, quite to Montmorenci Falls, where Wolfe's army was encamped, had been sacked by that evil man, Captain Alexander Montgomery, whom the English general himself could hardly restrain. San Joachim du Petit Cap need not hope to escape. It was really Wolfe's policy to harry the country which in that despairing summer of 1759 he saw no chance of conquering. The mill was grinding with a shuddering noise which covered all country night sounds. But so accustomed was the miller to this lullaby that he fell asleep on his chaff cushion directly, without his usual review of the trouble betwixt La Vigne and himself. He was sensitive to his neighbors' claims, and the state of the country troubled him, but he knew he could endure La Vigne's misfortunes better than any other man's. Loopholes in the hoary stone walls of the basement were carefully covered, but a burning dip on the hearth betrayed them within. There was a deep blackened oven built at right angles to the fireplace in the south wall. The stairway rose like a giant's ladder to the vast dimness overhead. No other such fortress-mill was to be found between Cap Tourmente and the citadel, or indeed anywhere on the St. Lawrence. It had been built not many years before by the Seminaire priests of Quebec for the protection and nourishment of their seigniory, that huge grant of rich land stretching from Beaupré to Cap Tourmente, bequeathed to the church by the first bishop of Canada. The miller suddenly dashed up with a shout. He heard his wife scream above the rattle of the mill, and stumbling over basement litter he unstopped a loophole and saw the village already mounting in flames. The mill door's iron-clamped timbers were beaten by a crowd of entreating hands, and he tore back the fastenings and dragged his neighbors in. Children, women, men, fell past him on the basement floor, and he screamed for help to hold the door against Montgomery's men. The priest was the last one to enter and the first to set a shoulder with the miller's. A discharge of firearms from without made lightning in the dim inclosure, and the curé, Father Robineau de Portneuf, reminded his flock of the guns they had stored in the mill basement. Loopholes were soon manned, and the enemy were driven back from the mill door. The roaring torch of each cottage thatch showed them in the redness of their uniforms,--good marks for enraged refugees; so they drew a little farther westward still, along the hot narrow street of San Joachim du Petit Cap. At an unoccupied loophole Father Robineau watched his chapel burning, with its meagre enrichments, added year by year. But this was nothing, when his eye dropped to the two or three figures lying face downward on the road. He turned himself toward the wailing of a widow and a mother. The miller's wife was coming downstairs with a candle, leaving her children huddled in darkness at the top. Those two dozen or more people whom she could see lifting dazed looks at her were perhaps of small account in the province; but they were her friends and neighbors, and bounded her whole experience of the world, except that anxiety of having her son Laurent with Montcalm's militia. The dip light dropped tallow down her petticoat, and even unheeded on one bare foot. "My children," exhorted Father Robineau through the wailing of bereaved women, "have patience." The miller's wife stooped and passed a hand across a bright head leaning against the stair side. "Thy mother is safe, Angèle?" "Oh, yes, Madame Sandeau." "Thy father and the children are safe?" "Oh, yes," testified the miller, passing towards the fireplace, "La Vigne and all his are within. I counted them." "The saints be praised," said his wife. "Yes, La Vigne got in safely," added the miller, "while that excellent Jules Martin, our good neighbor, lies scalped out there in the road."[1] "He does not know what he is saying, Angèle," whispered his wife to the weeping girl. But the miller snatched the candle from the hearth as if he meant to fling his indignation with it at La Vigne. His worthy act, however, was to light the sticks he kept built in the fireplace for such emergency. A flame arose, gradually revealing the black earthen floor, the swarm of refugees, and even the tear-suspending lashes of little children's eyes. La Vigne appeared, sitting with his hands in his hair. And the miller's wife saw there was a strange young demoiselle among the women of the côte, trying to quiet them. She had a calm dark beauty and an elegance of manner unusual to the provinces, and even Father Robineau beheld her with surprise. "Mademoiselle, it is unfortunate that you should be in Petit Cap at this time," said the priest. "Father, I count myself fortunate," she answered, "if no worse calamity has befallen me. My father is safe within here. Can you tell me anything about my husband, Captain De Mattissart, of the Languedoc regiment, with General Montcalm?" "Madame, I never saw your husband." "He was to meet me with escort at Petit Cap. We landed on a little point, secretly, with no people at all, and my father would have returned in his sailboat, but my husband did not meet us. These English must have cut him off, father." "These are not times in which a woman should stir abroad," said the priest. "Monsieur the curé, there is no such comfortable doctrine for a man with a daughter," said a figure at the nearest loophole, turning and revealing himself by face and presence a gentilhomme. "Especially a daughter married to a soldier. I am Denys of Bonaventure, galloping hither out of Acadia at her word of command." The priest made him a gesture of respect and welcome. "One of the best men in Acadia should be of advantage to us here. But I regret madame's exposure. You were not by yourselves attempting to reach Montcalm's camp?" "How do I know, monsieur the curé? My daughter commanded this expedition." Denys of Bonaventure shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms with a smile. "We were going to knock at the door of the curé of Petit Cap," said the lady. "There was nothing else for us to do; but the English appeared." Successive shots at the loopholes proved that the English had not yet disappeared. Denys seized his gun again, and turned to the defense, urging that the children and women be sent out of the way of balls. Father Robineau, on his part, gave instant command to the miller's wife, and she climbed the stairs again, heading a long line of distressed neighbors. The burrs were in the second story, and here the roaring of the mill took possession of all the shuddering air. Every massive joist half growing from dimness overhead was hung with ghostly shreds of cobweb; and on the grayish whiteness of the floor the children's naked soles cut out oblongs dotted with toe-marks. Mother Sandeau made her way first to an inclosed corner, and looked around to invite the attention of her followers. Such violence had been done to her stolid habits that she seemed to need the sight of her milk-room to restore her to intelligent action. The group was left in half darkness while she thrust her candle into the milk-room, showing its orderly array of flowered bowls amidst moist coolness. Here was a promise of sustenance to people dependent for the next mouthful of food. "It will last a few days, even if the cows be driven off and killed!" said the miller's good wife. But there was the Acadian lady to be first thought of. Neighbors could be easily spread out on the great floor, with rolls of bedding. Her own oasis of homestead stood open, showing a small fireplace hollowed in one wall, two feet above the floor; table and heavy chairs; and sleeping rooms beyond. Yet none of these things were good enough to offer such a stranger. "Take no thought about me, good friend," said the girl, noticing Mother Sandeau's anxiously creased face. "I shall presently go back to my father." "But, no," exclaimed the miller's wife, "the priest forbids women below, and there is my son's bridal room upstairs with even a dressing-table in it. I only held back on account of Angèle La Vigne," she added to comprehending neighbors, "but Angèle will attend to the lady there." "Angèle will gladly attend to the lady anywhere," spoke out Angèle's mother, with a resentment of her child's position which ruin could not crush. "It is the same as if marriage was never talked of between your son Laurent and her." "Yes, neighbor, yes," said the miller's wife appeasingly. It was not her fault that a pig had stopped the marriage. She gave her own candle to Angèle, with a motherly look. The girl had a pink and golden prettiness unusual among habitantes. Though all flush was gone out of her skin under the stress of the hour, she retained the innocent clear pallor of an infant. Angèle hurried to straighten her disordered dress before taking the candle, and then led Madame De Mattissart up the next flight of stairs. The mill's noise had forced talkers to lift their voices, and it now half dulled the clamp of habitante shoes below, and the whining of children longing again for sleep. Huge square wooden hoppers were shaking down grain, and the two or three square sashes in the thickness of front wall let in some light from the burning côte. The building's mighty stone hollows were as cool as the dew-pearled and river-vapored landscape outside. Occasional shots from below kept reverberating upward through two more floors overhead. Laurent's bridal apartment was of new boards built like a deck cabin at one side of the third story. It was hard for Angèle to throw open the door of this sacred little place which she had expected to enter as a bride, and the French officer's young wife understood it, restraining the girl's hand. "Stop, my child. Let us not go in. I came up here simply to quiet the others." "But you were to rest in this chamber, madame." "Do you think I can rest when I do not know whether I am wife or widow?" The young girls looked at each other with piteous eyes. "This is a terrible time, madame." "It will, however, pass by, in some fashion." "But what shall I do for you, madame? Where will you sit? Is there nothing you require?" "Yes, I am thirsty. Is there not running water somewhere in this mill?" "There is the flume-chamber overhead," said Angèle. "I will set the light here, and go down for a cup, madame." "Do not. We will go to the flume-chamber together. My hands, my throat, my eyes burn. Go on, Angèle, show me the way." Laurent's room, therefore, was left in darkness, holding unseen its best furniture, the family's holiday clothes of huge grained flannel, and the little yellow spinning-wheel, with its pile of unspun wool like forgotten snow. In the fourth story, as below, deep-set swinging windows had small square panes, well dusted with flour. Nothing broke the monotony of wall except a row of family snow-shoes. The flume-chamber, inclosed from floor to ceiling, suggested a grain's sprouting here and there in its upright humid boards. As the two girls glanced around this grim space, they were startled by silence through the building, for the burrs ceased to work. Feet and voices indeed stirred below, but the sashes no longer rattled. Then a tramping seemed following them up, and Angèle dragged the young lady behind a stone pillar, and blew out their candle. "What are you doing?" demanded Madame De Mattissart in displeasure. "If the door has been forced, should we desert our fathers?" "It is not that," whispered Angèle. And before she could give any reason for her impulse, the miller's head and light appeared above the stairs. It was natural enough for Angèle La Vigne to avoid Laurent's father. What puzzled her was to see her own barefooted father creeping after the miller, his red wool night-cap pulled over dejected brows. These good men had been unable to meet without quarreling since the match between Laurent and Angèle was broken off, on account of a pig which Father La Vigne would not add to her dower. Angèle had a blanket, three dishes, six tin plates, and a kneading-trough; at the pig her father drew the line, and for a pig Laurent's father contended. But now all the La Vigne pigs were roasted or scattered, Angèle's dower was destroyed, and what had a ruined habitant to say to the miller of Petit Cap? Father Robineau had stopped the mill because its noise might cover attacks. As the milder ungeared his primitive machinery, he had thought of saving water in the flume-chamber. There were wires and chains for shutting off its escape. He now opened a door in the humid wall and put his candle over the clear, dark water. The flume no longer furnished a supply, and he stared open-lipped, wondering if the enemy had meddled with his water-gate in the upland. The flume, at that time the most ambitious wooden channel on the north shore, supported on high stilts of timber, dripped all the way from a hill stream to the fourth story of Petit Cap mill. The miller had watched it escape burning thatches, yet something had happened at the dam. Shreds of moss, half floating and half moored, reminded him to close the reservoir, and he had just moved the chains when La Vigne startled him by speaking at his ear. The miller recoiled, but almost in the action his face recovered itself. He wore a gray wool night-cap, and its tassel hung down over one lifted eyebrow. "Pierre Sandeau, my friend," opened La Vigne with a whimper, "I followed you up here to weep with you." "You did well," replied the miller bluntly, "for I am a ruined man with the parish to feed, unless the Seminaire fathers take pity on me." "Yes, you have lost more than all of us," said La Vigne. "I am not the man to measure losses and exult over my neighbors," declared the miller; "but how many pigs would you give to your girl's dower now, Guillaume?" "None at all, my poor Pierre. At least she is not a widow." "Nor ever likely to be now, since she has no dower to make her a wife." "How could she be a wife without a husband? Taunt me no more about that pig. I tell you it is worse with you: you have no son." "What do you mean? I have half a dozen." "But Laurent is shot." "Laurent--shot?" whispered the miller, relaxing his flabby face, and letting the candle sink downward until it spread their shadows on the floor. "Yes, my friend," whimpered La Vigne. "I saw him through my window when the alarm was given. He was doubtless coming to save us all, for an officer was with him. Jules Martin's thatch was just fired. It was bright as sunrise against the hill, and the English saw our Laurent and his officer, no doubt, for they shot them down, and I saw it through my back window." The miller sunk to his knees, and set the candle on the floor; La Vigne approached and mingled night-cap tassels and groans with him. "Oh, my son! And I quarreled with thee, Guillaume, about a pig, and made the children unhappy." "But I was to blame for that, Pierre," wept La Vigne, "and now we have neither pig nor son!" "Perhaps Montgomery's men have scalped him;" the miller pulled the night-cap from his own head and threw it on the floor in helpless wretchedness. La Vigne uttered a low bellow in response, and they fell upon each other's necks and were about to lament together in true Latin fashion, when the wife of Montcalm's officer called to them. She stood out from the shadow of the stone column, dead to all appearances, yet animate, and trying to hold up Angèle whose whole body lapsed downward in half unconsciousness. "Bring water," demanded Madame De Mattissart. And seeing who had overheard the dreadful news, La Vigne ran to the flume-chamber, and the miller scrambled up and reached over him to dip the first handful. Both stooped within the door, both recoiled, and both raised a yell which echoed among high rafters in the attic above. The miller thought Montgomery's entire troop were stealing into the mill through the flume; for a man's legs protruded from the opening and wriggled with such vigor that his body instantly followed and he dropped into the water. His beholders seized and dragged him out upon the floor; but he threw off their hands, sprang astride of the door-sill, and stretched himself to the flume mouth to help another man out of it. La Vigne ran downstairs shrieking for the priest, as if he had seen witchcraft. But the miller stood still, with the candle flaring on the floor behind him, not sure of his son Laurent in militia uniform, but trembling with some hope. It was Madame De Mattissart's cry to her husband which confirmed the miller's senses. She knew the young officer through the drenching and raggedness of his white and gold uniform; she understood how two wounded men could creep through any length of flume, from which a miller's son would know how to turn off the water. She had no need to ask what their sensations were, sliding down that slimy duct, or how they entered it without being seen by the enemy. Let villagers talk over such matters, and shout and exclaim when they came to hear this strange thing. It was enough that her husband had met her through every danger, and that he was able to stand and receive her in his arms. Laurent's wound was serious. After all his exertions he fainted; but Angèle took his head upon her knee, and the fathers and mothers and neighbors swarmed around him, and Father Robineau did him doctor's service. Every priest then on the St. Lawrence knew how to dress wounds as well as bind up spirits. Denys of Bonaventure, notwithstanding the excitement overhead, kept men at the basement loopholes until Montgomery had long withdrawn and returned to camp. He then felt that he could indulge himself with a sight of his son-in-law, and tiptoed up past the colony of women and children whom the priest had just driven again to their rest on the second floor; past that sacred chamber on the third floor, and on up to the flume loft. There Monsieur De Bonaventure paused, with his head just above the boards, like a pleasant-faced sphinx. "Accept my salutations, Captain De Mattissart," he said laughing. "I am told that you and this young militia-man floated down the mill-stream into this mill, with the French flag waving over your heads, to the no small discouragement of the English. Quebec will never be taken, monsieur." Long ago those who found shelter in the mill dispersed to rebuild their homes under a new order of things, or wedded like Laurent and Angèle, and lived their lives and died. Yet, witnessing to all these things, the old mill stands to-day at Petit Cap, huge and cavernous; with its oasis of home, its milk-room, its square hoppers and flume-chamber unchanged. Daylight refuses to follow you into the blackened basement; and the shouts of Montgomery's sacking horde seem to linger in the mighty hollows overhead. [Footnote 1: Wolfe forbade such barbarities, but Montgomery did not always obey. It was practiced on both sides.] WOLFE'S COVE. The cannon was for the time silent, the gunners being elsewhere, but a boy's voice called from the bastion:-- "Come out here, mademoiselle. I have an apple for you." "Where did you get an apple?" replied a girl's voice. "Monsieur Bigot gave it to me. He has everything the king's stores will buy. His slave was carrying a basketful." "I do not like Monsieur Bigot. His face is blotched, and he kisses little girls." "His apples are better than his manners," observed the boy, waiting, knife in hand, for her to come and see that the division was a fair one. She tiptoed out from the gallery of the commandant's house, the wind blowing her curls back from her shoulders. A bastion of Fort St. Louis was like a balcony in the clouds. The child's lithe, long body made a graceful line in every posture, and her face was vivid with light and expression. "Perhaps your sick mother would like this apple, Monsieur Jacques. We do not have any in the fort." The boy flushed. He held the halves ready on his palm. "I thought of her; but the surgeon might forbid it, and she is not fond of apples when she is well. And you are always fond of apples, Mademoiselle Anglaise." "My name is Clara Baker. If you call me Mademoiselle Anglaise, I will box your ears." "But you are English," persisted the boy. "You cannot help it. I am sorry for it myself; and when I am grown I will whip anybody that reproaches you for it." They began to eat the halves of the apple, forgetful of Jacques's sick mother, and to quarrel as their two nations have done since France and England stood on the waters. "Don't distress yourself, Monsieur Jacques Repentigny. The English will be the fashion in Quebec when you are grown." It was amusing to hear her talk his language glibly while she prophesied. "Do you think your ugly General Wolfe can ever make himself the fashion?" retorted Jacques. "I saw him once across the Montmorenci when I was in my father's camp. His face runs to a point in the middle, and his legs are like stilts." "His stilts will lift him into Quebec yet." The boy shook his black queue. He had a cheek in which the flush came and went, and black sparkling eyes. "The English never can take this province. What can you know about it? You were only a little baby when Madame Ramesay bought you from the Iroquois Indians who had stolen you. If your name had not been on your arm, you would not even know that. But a Le Moyne of Montreal knows all about the province. My grandfather, Le Moyne de Longueuil, was wounded down there at Beauport, when the English came to take Canada before. And his brother Jacques that I am named for--Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène--was killed. I have often seen the place where he died when I went with my father to our camp." The little girl pushed back her sleeve, as she did many times a day, and looked at the name tattooed in pale blue upon her arm. Jacques envied her that mark, and she was proud of it. Her traditions were all French, but the indelible stamp, perhaps of an English seaman, reminded her what blood was in her veins. The children stepped nearer the parapet, where they could see all Quebec Basin, and the French camp stretching its city of tents across the valley of the St. Charles. Beneath them was Lower Town, a huddle of blackened shells and tottering walls. "See there what the English have done," said Clara, pointing down the sheer rock. "It will be a long time before you and I go down Breakneck Stairs again to see the pretty images in the church of Our Lady of Victories." "They did that two months ago," replied Jacques. "It was all they could do. And now they are sick of bombarding, and are going home. All their soldiers at Montmorenci and on the point of Orleans are embarking. Their vessels keep running around like hens in a shower, hardly knowing what to do." "Look at them getting in a line yonder," insisted his born enemy. "General Montcalm is in front of them at Beauport," responded Jacques. The ground was moist underfoot, and the rock on which they leaned felt damp. Quebec grayness infused with light softened the autumn world. No one could behold without a leap of the heart that vast reach of river and islands, and palisade and valley, and far-away melting mountain lines. Inside Quebec walls the children could see the Ursuline convent near the top of the slope, showing holes in its roof. Nearly every building in the city had suffered. Drums began to beat on the British ships ranged in front of Beauport, and a cannon flashed. Its roar was shaken from height to height. Then whole broadsides of fire broke forth, and the earth rumbled with the sound, and scarlet uniforms filled the boats like floating poppies. "The English may be going home," exulted Clara, "but you now see for yourself, Monsieur Jacques Repentigny, what they intend to do before they go." "I wish my father had not been sent with his men back to Montreal!" exclaimed Jacques in excitement. "But I shall go down to the camps, anyhow." "Your mother will cry," threatened the girl. "My mother is used to war. She often lets me sleep in my father's tent. Tell her I have gone to the camps." "They will put you in the guard-house." "They do not put a Repentigny in the guard-house." "If you will stay here," called the girl, running after him towards the fortress gate, "I will play anything you wish. The cannon balls might hit you." Deaf to the threat of danger, he made off through cross-cuts toward the Palace Gate, the one nearest the bridge of boats on the St. Charles River. "Very good, monsieur. I'll tell your mother," she said, trembling and putting up a lip. But nothing except noise was attempted at Beauport. Jacques was so weary, as he toiled back uphill in diminishing light, that he gratefully crawled upon a cart and lay still, letting it take him wherever the carter might be going. There were not enough horses and oxen in Canada to move the supplies for the army from Montreal to Quebec by land. Transports had to slip down the St. Lawrence by night, running a gauntlet of vigilant English vessels. Yet whenever the intendant Bigot wanted to shift anything, he did not lack oxen or wheels. Jacques did not talk to the carter, but he knew a load of king's provisions was going out to some favorite of the intendant's who had been set to guard the northern heights. The stealings of this popular civil officer were common talk in Quebec. That long slope called the Plains of Abraham, which swept away from the summit of the rock toward Cap Rouge, seemed very near the sky. Jacques watched dusk envelop this place. Patches of faded herbage and stripped corn, and a few trees only, broke the monotony of its extent. On the north side, overhanging the winding valley of the St. Charles, the rock's great shoulder was called Côte Ste. Geneviève. The bald plain was about a mile wide, but the cart jogged a mile and a half from Quebec before it reached the tents where its freight was to be discharged. Habit had taken the young Repentigny daily to his father's camp, but this was the first time he had seen the guard along the heights. Montcalm's soldiers knew him. He was permitted to handle arms. Many a boy of fifteen was then in the ranks, and children of his age were growing used to war. His father called it his apprenticeship to the trade. A few empty houses stood some distance back of the tents; and farther along the precipice, beyond brush and trees, other guards were posted. Seventy men and four cannon completed the defensive line which Montcalm had drawn around the top of the rock. Half the number could have kept it, by vigilance. And it was evident that the officer in charge thought so, and was taking advantage of his general's bounty. "Remember I am sending you to my field as well as to your own," the boy overheard him say. Nearly all his company were gathered in a little mob before his tent. He sat there on a camp stool. They were Canadians from Lorette, anxious for leave of absence, and full of promises. "Yes, monsieur, we will remember your field." "Yes, Captain Vergor, your grain as soon as we have gathered ours in." "It shall be done, captain." Jacques had heard of Vergor. A few years before, Vergor had been put under arrest for giving up Fort Beauséjour, in Acadia, to the English without firing a shot. The boy thought it strange that such a man should be put in charge of any part of the defensive cordon around Quebec. But Vergor had a friend in the intendant Bigot, who knew how to reinstate his disgraced favorites. The arriving cart drew the captain's attention from his departing men. He smiled, his depressed nose and fleshy lips being entirely good-natured. "A load of provisions, and a recruit for my company," he said. "Monsieur the captain needs recruits," observed Jacques. "Society is what I need most," said Vergor. "And from appearances I am going to have it at my supper which the cook is about to set before me." "I think I will stay all night here," said Jacques. "You overwhelm me," responded Vergor. "There are so many empty tents." "Fill as many of them as you can," suggested Vergor. "You are doubtless much away from your mother, inspecting the troops; but what will madame say if you fail to answer at her roll call to-night?" "Nothing. I should be in my father's tent at Montreal, if she had been able to go when he was ordered back there." "Who is your father?" "Le Gardeur de Repentigny." Vergor drew his lips together for a soft whistle, as he rose to direct the storing of his goods. "It is a young general with whom I am to have the honor of messing. I thought he had the air of camps and courts the moment I saw his head over the side of the cart." Many a boy secretly despises the man to whose merry insolence he submits. But the young Repentigny felt for Vergor such contempt as only an incompetent officer inspires. No sentinels were stationed. The few soldiers remaining busied themselves over their mess fires. Jacques looked down a cove not quite as steep as the rest of the cliff, yet as nearly perpendicular as any surface on which trees and bushes can take hold. It was clothed with a thick growth of sere weeds, cut by one hint of a diagonal line. Perhaps laborers at a fulling mill now rotting below had once climbed this rock. Rain had carried the earth from above in small cataracts down its face, making a thin alluvial coating. A strip of land separated the rock from the St. Lawrence, which looked wide and gray in the evening light. Showers raked the far-off opposite hills. Leaves showing scarlet or orange were dulled by flying mist. The boy noticed more boats drifting up river on the tide than he had counted in Quebec Basin. "Where are all the vessels going?" he asked the nearest soldier. "Nowhere. They only move back and forth with the tide." "But they are English ships. Why don't you fire on them?" "We have no orders. And besides, our own transports have to slip down among them at night. One is pretty careful not to knock the bottom out of the dish which carries his meat." "The English might land down there some dark night." "They may land; but, unfortunately for themselves, they have no wings." The boy did not answer, but he thought, "If my father and General Levis were posted here, wings would be of no use to the English." His distinct little figure, outlined against the sky, could be seen from the prisoners' ship. One prisoner saw him without taking any note that he was a child. Her eyes were fierce and red-rimmed. She was the only woman on the deck, having come up the gangway to get rid of habitantes. These fellow-prisoners of hers were that moment putting their heads together below and talking about Mademoiselle Jeannette Descheneaux. They were perhaps the only people in the world who took any thought of her. Highlanders and seamen moving on deck scarcely saw her. In every age of the world beauty has ruled men. Jeannette Descheneaux was a big, manly Frenchwoman, with a heavy voice. In Quebec, she was a contrast to the exquisite and diaphanous creatures who sometimes kneeled beside her in the cathedral, or looked out of sledge or sedan chair at her as she tramped the narrow streets. They were the beauties of the governor's court, who permitted in a new land the corrupt gallantries of Versailles. She was the daughter of a shoemaker, and had been raised to a semi-official position by the promotion of her brother in the government. Her brother had grown rich with the company of speculators who preyed on the province and the king's stores. He had one motherless child, and Jeannette took charge of it and his house until the child died. She was perhaps a masculine nourisher of infancy; yet the upright mark between her black eyebrows, so deep that it seemed made by a hatchet, had never been there before the baby's death; and it was by stubbornly venturing too far among the parishes to seek the child's foster mother, who was said to be in some peril at Petit Cap, that Jeannette got herself taken prisoner. For a month this active woman had been a dreamer of dreams. Every day the prison ship floated down to Quebec, and her past stood before her like a picture. Every night it floated up to Cap Rouge, where French camp fires flecked the gorge and the north shore stretching westward. No strict guard was kept over the prisoners. She sat on the ship's deck, and a delicious languor, unlike any former experience, grew and grew upon her. The coaxing graces of pretty women she never caricatured. Her skin was of the dark red tint which denotes a testy disposition. She had fierce one-sided wars for trivial reasons, and was by nature an aggressive partisan, even in the cause of a dog or a cat. Being a woman of few phrases, she repeated these as often as she had occasion for speech, and divided the world simply into two classes: two or three individuals, including herself, were human beings; the rest of mankind she denounced, in a voice which shook the walls, as spawn. One does not like to be called spawn. Though Jeannette had never given herself to exaggerated worship, she was religious. The lack of priest and mass on the prison transport was blamed for the change which came over her. A haze of real feminine softness, like the autumn's purpling of rocks, made her bones less prominent. But the habitantes, common women from the parishes, who had children and a few of their men with them, saw what ailed her. They noticed that while her enmity to the English remained unchanged, she would not hear a word against the Highlanders, though Colonel Fraser and his Seventy-Eighth Highland regiment had taken her prisoner. It is true, Jeannette was treated with deference, and her food was sent to her from the officer's table, and she had privacy on the ship which the commoner prisoners had not. It is also true that Colonel Fraser was a gentleman, detesting the parish-burning to which his command was ordered for a time. But the habitantes laid much to his blue eyes and yellow hair, and the picturesqueness of the red and pale green Fraser tartan. They nudged one another when Jeannette began to plait her strong black locks, and make a coronet of them on her sloping head. She was always exact and neat in her dress, and its mannishness stood her in good stead during her month's imprisonment. Rough wool was her invariable wear, instead of taffetas and silky furs, which Quebec women delighted in. She groomed herself carefully each day for that approach to the English camp at Point Levi which the tide accomplished. Her features could be distinguished half a mile. On the days when Colonel Fraser's fezlike plumed bonnet was lifted to her in the camp, she went up the river again in a trance of quiet. On other days the habitantes laughed, and said to one another, "Mademoiselle will certainly break through the deck with her tramping." There was a general restlessness on the prison ship. The English sailors wanted to go home. The Canadians had been patient since the middle of August. But this particular September night, as they drifted up past the rock, and saw the defenses of their country bristling against them, the feeling of homesickness vented itself in complaints. Jeannette was in her cabin, and heard them abuse Colonel Fraser and his Highlanders as kidnapers of women and children, and burners of churches. She came out of her retreat, and hovered over them like a hawk. The men pulled their caps off, drolly grinning. "It is true," added one of them, "that General Montcalm is to blame for letting the parishes burn. And at least he might take us away from the English." "Do you think Monsieur de Montcalm has nothing to do but bring you in off the river?" demanded Jeannette. "Mademoiselle does not want to be brought in," retorted one of the women. "As for us, we are not in love with these officers who wear petticoats, or with any of our enemies." "Spawn!" Jeanette hurled at them. Yet her partisan fury died in her throat. She went up on deck to be away from her accusers. The seamed precipice, the indented cove with the child's figure standing at the top, and all the panorama to which she was so accustomed by morning light or twilight passed before her without being seen by her fierce red-rimmed eyes. Jeannette Descheneaux had walked through the midst of colonial intrigues without knowing that they existed. Men she ignored; and she could not now account for her keen knowledge that there was a colonel of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders. Her entanglement had taken her in the very simplicity of childhood. She could not blame him. He had done nothing but lift his bonnet to her, and treat her with deference because he was sorry she had fallen into his hands. But at first she fought with silent fury the power he unconsciously held over her. She felt only the shame of it, which the habitantes had cast upon her. Nobody had ever called Jeannette Descheneaux a silly woman. In early life it was thought she had a vocation for the convent; but she drew back from that, and now she was suddenly desolate. Her brother had his consolations. There was nothing for her. Scant tears, oozing like blood, moistened her eyes. She took hold of her throat to strangle a sob. Her teeth chattered in the wind blowing down river. Constellations came up over the rock's long shoulder. Though it was a dark night, the stars were clear. She took no heed of the French camp fires in the gorge and along the bank. The French commander there had followed the erratic motions of English boats until they ceased to alarm him. It was flood tide. The prison ship sat on the water, scarcely swinging. At one o'clock Jeannette was still on deck, having watched through the midnight of her experience. She had no phrases for her thoughts. They were dumb, but they filled her to the outermost layer of her skin, and deadened sensation. Boats began to disturb her, however. They trailed past the ship with a muffled swish, all of them disappearing in the darkness. This gathering must have been going on some time before she noticed it. The lantern hanging aloft made a mere warning spot in the darkness, for the lights on deck had been put out. All the English ships, when she looked about her, were to be guessed at, for not a port-hole cast its cylinder of radiance on the water. Night muffled their hulls, and their safety lights hung in a scattered constellation. In one place two lanterns hung on one mast. Jeannette felt the pull of the ebbing tide. The ship gave way to it. As it swung, and the monotonous flow of the water became constant, she heard a boat grate, and directly Colonel Fraser came up the vessel's side, and stood on deck where she could touch him. He did not know that the lump of blackness almost beneath his hand was a breathing woman; and if he had known, he would have disregarded her then. But she knew him, from indistinct cap and the white pouch at his girdle to the flat Highland shoes. Whether the Highlanders on the ship were watching for him to appear as their signal, or he had some private admonition for them, they started up from spots which Jeannette had thought vacant darkness, probably armed and wrapped in their plaids. She did not know what he said to them. One by one they got quickly over the ship's side. She did not form any resolution, and neither did she hesitate; but, drawing tight around her the plaidlike length of shawl which had served her nearly a lifetime, she stood up ready to take her turn. Jeannette seemed to swallow her heart as she climbed over the rail. The Highlanders were all in the boat except their colonel. He drew in his breath with a startled sound, and she knew the sweep of her skirt must have betrayed her. She expected to fall into the river; but her hand took sure hold of a ladder of rope, and, creeping down backward, she set her foot in the bateau. It was a large and steady open boat. Some of the men were standing. She had entered the bow, and as Colonel Fraser dropped in they cast off, and she sat down, finding a bench as she had found foothold. The Highland officer was beside her. They could not see each other's faces. She was not sure he had detected her. The hardihood which had taken her beyond the French lines in search of on whom she felt under her protection was no longer in her. A cowering woman with a boatload of English soldiers palpitated under the darkness. It was necessary only to steer; both tide and current carried them steadily down. On the surface of the river, lines of dark objects followed. A fleet of the enemy's transports was moving towards Quebec. To most women country means home. Jeannette was tenaciously fond of the gray old city of Quebec, but home to her was to be near that Highland officer. Her humiliation passed into the very agony of tenderness. To go wherever he was going was enough. She did not want him to speak to her, or touch her, or give any sign that he knew she was in the world. She wanted to sit still by his side under the negation of darkness and be satisfied. Jeannette had never dreamed how long the hours between turn of tide and dawn may be. They were the principal part of her life. Keen stars held the sky at immeasurable heights. There was no mist. The chill wind had swept the river clear like a great path. Within reach of Jeannette's hand, but hidden from her, as most of us are hidden from one another, sat one more solitary than herself. He had not her robust body. Disease and anxiety had worn him away while he was hopelessly besieging Quebec. In that last hour before the 13th of September dawned, General Wolfe was groping down river toward one of the most desperate military attempts in the history of the world. There was no sound but the rustle of the water, the stir of a foot as some standing man shifted his weight, and the light click of metal as guns in unsteady hands touched barrels. A voice, modulating rhythm which Jeannette could not understand, began to speak. General Wolfe was reciting an English poem. The strain upon his soul was more than he could bear, and he relieved it by those low-uttered rhymes. Jeannette did not know one word of English. The meaning which reached her was a dirge, but a noble dirge; the death hymn of a human being who has lived up to his capacities. She felt strangely influenced, as by the neighborhood of some large angel, and at the same time the tragedy of being alive overswept her. For one's duty is never all done; or when we have accomplished it with painstaking care, we are smitten through with finding that the greater things have passed us by. The tide carried the boats near the great wall of rock. Woods made denser shade on the background of night. The cautious murmur of the speaker was cut short. "Who goes there?" came the sharp challenge of a French sentry. The soldiers were silent as dead men. "France!" answered Colonel Fraser in the same language. "Of what regiment?" "The Queen's." The sentry was satisfied. To the Queen's regiment, stationed at Cap Rouge, belonged the duty of convoying provisions down to Quebec. He did not further peril what he believed to be a French transport by asking for the password. Jeannette breathed. So low had she sunk that she would have used her language herself to get the Highland colonel past danger. It was fortunate for his general that he had the accent and readiness of a Frenchman. Again they were challenged. They could see another sentry running parallel with their course. "Provision boats," this time answered the Highlander. "Don't make a noise. The English will hear us." That hint was enough, for an English sloop of war lay within sound of their voices. With the swift tide the boats shot around a headland, and here was a cove in the huge precipice, clothed with sere herbage and bushes and a few trees; steep, with the hint of a once-used path across it, but a little less perpendicular than the rest of the rock. No sentinel was stationed at this place. The world was just beginning to come out of positive shadow into the indistinctness of dawn. Current and tide were so strong that the boats could not be steered directly to shore, but on the alluvial strip at the base of this cove they beached themselves with such success as they could. Twenty-four men sprung out and ran to the ascent. Their muskets were slung upon their backs. A humid look was coming upon the earth, and blurs were over the fading stars. The climbers separated, each making his own way from point to point of the slippery cliff, and swarms followed them as boat after boat discharged its load. The cove by which he breached the stronghold of this continent, and which was from that day to bear his name, cast its shadow on the gaunt, upturned face of Wolfe. He waited while the troops in whom he put his trust, with knotted muscles and panting breasts, lifted themselves to the top. No orders were spoken. Wolfe had issued instructions the night before, and England expected every man to do his duty. There was not enough light to show how Canada was taken. Jeannette Descheneaux stepped on the sand, and the single thought which took shape in her mind was that she must scale that ascent if the English scaled it. The hope of escape to her own people did not animate her labor. She had no hope of any sort. She felt only present necessity, which was to climb where the Highland officer climbed. He was in front of her, and took no notice of her until they reached a slippery wall where there were no bushes. There he turned and caught her by the wrist, drawing her up after him. Their faces came near together in the swimming vapors of dawn. He had the bright look of determination. His eyes shone. He was about to burst into the man's arena of glory. The woman, whom he drew up because she was a woman, and because he regretted having taken her prisoner, had the pallid look of a victim. Her tragic black eyes and brows, and the hairs clinging in untidy threads about her haggard cheeks instead of curling up with the damp as the Highlandman's fleece inclined to do, worked an instant's compassion in him. But his business was not the squiring of angular Frenchwomen. Shots were heard at the top of the rock, a trampling rush, and then exulting shouts. The English had taken Vergor's camp. The hand was gone from Jeannette's wrist,--the hand which gave her such rapture and such pain by its firm fraternal grip. Colonel Fraser leaped to the plain, and was in the midst of the skirmish. Cannon spoke, like thunder rolling across one's head. A battery guarded by the sentinels they had passed was aroused, and must be silenced. The whole face of the cliff suddenly bloomed with scarlet uniforms. All the men remaining in the boats went up as fire sweeps when carried by the wind. Nothing could restrain them. They smelled gunpowder and heard the noise of victory, and would have stormed heaven at that instant. They surrounded Jeannette without seeing her, every man looking up to the heights of glory, and passed her in fierce and panting emulation. Jeannette leaned against the rough side of Wolfe's Cove. On the inner surface of her eyelids she could see again the image of the Highlandman stooping to help her, his muscular legs and neck showing like a young god's in the early light. There she lost him, for he forgot her. The passion of women whom nature has made unfeminine, and who are too honest to stoop to arts, is one of the tragedies of the world. Daylight broke reluctantly, with clouds mustering from the inverted deep of the sky. A few drops of rain sprinkled the British uniforms as battalions were formed. The battery which gave the first intimation of danger to the French general, on the other side of Quebec, had been taken and silenced. Wolfe and his officers hurried up the high plateau and chose their ground. Then the troops advanced, marching by files, Highland bagpipes screaming and droning, the earth reverberating with a measured tread. As they moved toward Quebec they wheeled to form their line of battle, in ranks three deep, and stretched across the plain. The city was scarcely a mile away, but a ridge of ground still hid it from sight. From her hiding-place in one of the empty houses behind Vergor's tents, Jeannette Descheneaux watched the scarlet backs and the tartans of the Highlanders grow smaller. She could also see the prisoners that were taken standing under guard. As for herself, she felt that she had no longer a visible presence, so easy had it been for her to move among swarms of men and escape in darkness. She never had favored her body with soft usage, but it trembled now in every part from muscular strain. She was probably cold and hungry, but her poignant sensation was that she had no friends. It did not matter to Jeannette that history was being made before her, and one of the great battles of the world was about to be fought. It only mattered that she should discern the Fraser plaid as far as eye could follow it. There is no more piteous thing than for one human being to be overpowered by the god in another. She sat on the ground in the unfloored hut, watching through broken chinking. There was a back door as well as a front door, hung on wooden hinges, and she had pinned the front door as she came in. The opening of the back door made Jeannette turn her head, though with little interest in the comer. It was a boy, with a streak of blood down his face and neck, and his clothes stained by the weather. He had no hat on, and one of his shoes was missing. He put himself at Jeannette's side without any hesitation, and joined her watch through the broken chinking. A tear and a drop of scarlet raced down his cheek, uniting as they dripped from his chin. "Have you been wounded?" inquired Jeannette. "It isn't the wound," he answered, "but that Captain Vergor has let them take the heights. I heard something myself, and tried to wake him. The pig turned over and went to sleep again." "Let me tie it up," said Jeannette. "He is shot in the heel and taken prisoner. I wish he had been shot in the heart. He hopped out of bed and ran away when the English fired on his tent. I have been trying to get past their lines to run to General Montcalm; but they are everywhere," declared the boy, his chin shaking and his breast swelling with grief. Jeannette turned her back on him, and found some linen about her person which she could tear. She made a bandage for his head. It comforted her to take hold of the little fellow and part his clotted hair. "The skin of my head is torn," he admitted, while suffering the attempted surgery. "If I had been taller, the bullet might have killed me; and I would rather be killed than see the English on this rock, marching to take Quebec. What will my father say? I am ashamed to look him in the face and own I slept in the camp of Vergor last night. The Le Moynes and Repentignys never let enemies get past them before. And I knew that man was not keeping watch; he did not set any sentry." "Is it painful?" she inquired, wiping the bloody cut, which still welled forth along its channel. The boy lifted his brimming eyes, and answered her from his deeper hurt:-- "I don't know what to do. I think my father would make for General Montcalm's camp if he were alone and could not attack the enemy's rear; for something ought to be done as quickly as possible." Jeannette bandaged his head, the rain spattering through the broken log house upon them both. "Who brought you here?" inquired Jacques. "There was nobody in these houses last night, for I searched them myself." "I hid here before daybreak," she answered briefly. "But if you knew the English were coming, why did you not give the alarm?" "I was their prisoner." "And where will you go now?" She looked towards the Plains of Abraham and said nothing. The open chink showed Wolfe's six battalions of scarlet lines moving forward or pausing, and the ridge above them thronging with white uniforms. "If you will trust yourself to me, mamoiselle," proposed Jacques, who considered that it was not the part of a soldier or a gentleman to leave any woman alone in this hut to take the chances of battle, and particularly a woman who had bound up his head, "I will do my best to help you inside the French lines." The singular woman did not reply to him, but continued looking through the chink. Skirmishers were out. Puffs of smoke from cornfields and knolls showed where Canadians and Indians hid, creeping to the flank of the enemy. Jacques stooped down himself, and struck his hands together at these sights. "Monsieur de Montcalm is awake, mademoiselle! And see our sharpshooters picking them off! We can easily run inside the French lines now. These English will soon be tumbled back the way they came up." In another hour the group of houses was a roaring furnace. A detachment of English light infantry, wheeled to drive out the bushfighters, had lost and retaken it many times, and neither party gave up the ready fortress until it was set on fire. Crumbling red logs hissed in the thin rain, and smoke spread from them across the sodden ground where Wolfe moved. The sick man had become an invincible spirit. He flew along the ranks, waving his sword, the sleeve falling away from his thin arm. The great soldier had thrown himself on this venture without a chance of retreat, but every risk had been thought of and met. He had a battalion guarding the landing. He had a force far in the rear to watch the motions of the French at Cap Rouge. By the arrangement of his front he had taken precautions against being outflanked. And he knew his army was with him to a man. But Montcalm rode up to meet him hampered by insubordinate confusion. Jeannette Descheneaux, carried along, with the boy, by Canadians and Indians from the English rear to the Côte Ste. Geneviève, lay dazed in the withered grass during the greater part of the action which decided her people's hold on the New World. The ground resounded like a drum with measured treading. The blaze and crash of musketry and cannon blinded and deafened her; but when she lifted her head from the shock of the first charge, the most instantaneous and shameful panic that ever seized a French army had already begun. The skirmishers in the bushes could not understand it. Smoke parted, and she saw the white-and-gold French general trying to drive his men back. But they evaded the horses of officers. Jacques rose, with the Canadians and Indians, to his knees. He had a musket. Jeannette rose, also, as the Highlanders came sweeping on in pursuit. She had scarcely been a woman to the bushfighters. They were too eager in their aim to glance aside at a rawboned camp follower in a wet shawl. Neither did the Highlanders distinguish from other Canadian heads the one with a woman's braids and a faint shadowing of hair at the corners of the mouth. They came on without suspecting an ambush, and she heard their strange cries--"Cath-Shairm!" and "Caisteal Duna!"--when the shock of a volley stopped the streaming tartans. She saw the play of surprise and fury in those mountaineer faces. They threw down their muskets, and turned on the ambushed Canadians, short sword in hand. Never did knight receive the blow of the accolade as that crouching woman took a Highland knife in her breast. For one breath she grasped the back of it with both hands, and her rapt eyes met the horrified eyes of Colonel Fraser. He withdrew the weapon, standing defenseless, and a ball struck him, cutting the blood across his arm, and again he was lost in the fury of battle, while Jeannette felt herself dragged down the slope. She resisted. She heard a boy's voice pleading with her, but she got up and tried to go back to the spot from which she had been dragged. The Canadians and Indians were holding their ground. She heard their muskets, but they were far behind her, and the great rout caught her and whirled her. Officers on their horses were borne struggling along in it. She fell down and was trampled on, but something helped her up. The flood of men poured along the front of the ramparts and down to the bridge of boats on the St. Charles, or into the city walls through the St. Louis and St. John gates. To Jeannette the world was far away. Yet she found it once more close at hand, as she stood with her back against the lofty inner wall. The mad crowd had passed, and gone shouting down the narrow streets. But the St. Louis gate was still choked with fugitives when Montcalm appeared, reeling on his horse, supported by a soldier on each side. His white uniform was stained on the breast, and blood dripped from the saddle. Jeannette heard the piercing cry of a little girl: "Oh heavens! Oh heavens! The marquis is killed!" And she heard the fainting general gasp, "It is nothing, it is nothing. Don't be troubled for me, my children." She knew how he felt as he was led by. The indistinctness of the opposite wall, which widened from the gate, was astonishing. And she was troubled by the same little boy whose head she had tied up in the log house. Jeannette looked obliquely down at him as she braced herself with chill fingers, and discerned that he was claimed by a weeping little girl to whom he yet paid no attention. "Let me help you, mademoiselle," he urged, troubling her. "Go away," said Jeannette. "But, mademoiselle, you have been badly hurt." "Go away," said Jeannette, and her limbs began to settle. She thought of smiling at the children, but her features were already cast. The English child held her on one side, and the French child on the other, as she collapsed in a sitting posture. Tender nuns, going from friend to foe, would find this stoical face against the wall. It was no strange sight then. Canada was taken. Men with bloody faces were already running with barricades for the gates. Wailing for Montcalm could be heard. The boy put his arm abound the girl and turned her eyes away. They ran together up towards the citadel: England and France with their hands locked; young Canada weeping, but having a future. THE WINDIGO. The cry of those rapids in Ste. Marie's River called the Sault could be heard at all hours through the settlement on the rising shore and into the forest beyond. Three quarters of a mile of frothing billows, like some colossal instrument, never ceased playing music down an inclined channel until the trance of winter locked it up. At August dusk, when all that shaggy world was sinking to darkness, the gushing monotone became very distinct. Louizon Cadotte and his father's young seignior, Jacques de Repentigny, stepped from a birch canoe on the bank near the fort, two Chippewa Indians following with their game. Hunting furnished no small addition to the food supply of the settlement, for the English conquest had brought about scarcity at this as well as other Western posts. Peace was declared in Europe; but soldiers on the frontier, waiting orders to march out at any time, were not abundantly supplied with stores, and they let season after season go by, reluctant to put in harvests which might be reaped by their successors. Jacques was barely nineteen, and Louizon was considerably older. But the Repentignys had gone back to France after the fall of Quebec; and five years of European life had matured the young seignior as decades of border experience would never mature his half-breed tenant. Yet Louizon was a fine dark-skinned fellow, well made for one of short stature. He trod close by his tall superior with visible fondness; enjoying this spectacle of a man the like of whom he had not seen on the frontier. Jacques looked back, as he walked, at the long zigzag shadows on the river. Forest fire in the distance showed a leaning column, black at base, pearl-colored in the primrose air, like smoke from some gigantic altar. He had seen islands in the lake under which the sky seemed to slip, throwing them above the horizon in mirage, and trees standing like detached bushes on a world rim of water. The Ste. Marie River was a beautiful light green in color, and sunset and twilight played upon it all the miracles of change. "I wish my father had never left this country," said young Repentigny, feeling that spell cast by the wilderness. "Here is his place. He should have withdrawn to the Sault, and accommodated himself to the English, instead of returning to France. The service in other parts of the world does not suit him. Plenty of good men have held to Canada and their honor also." "Yes, yes," assented Louizon. "The English cannot be got rid of. For my part, I shall be glad when this post changes hands. I am sick of our officers." He scowled with open resentment. The seigniory house faced the parade ground, and they could see against its large low mass, lounging on the gallery, one each side of a window, the white uniforms of two French soldiers. The window sashes, screened by small curtains across the middle, were swung into the room; and Louizon's wife leaned on her elbows across the sill, the rosy atmosphere of his own fire projecting to view every ring of her bewitching hair, and even her long eyelashes as she turned her gaze from side to side. It was so dark, and the object of their regard was so bright, that these buzzing bees of Frenchmen did not see her husband until he ran up the steps facing them. Both of them greeted him heartily. He felt it a peculiar indignity that his wife's danglers forever passed their good-will on to him; and he left them in the common hall, with his father and the young seignior, and the two or three Indians who congregated there every evening to ask for presents or to smoke. Louizon's wife met him in the middle of the broad low apartment where he had been so proud to introduce her as a bride, and turned her cheek to be kissed. She was not fond of having her lips touched. Her hazel-colored hair was perfumed. She was so supple and exquisite, so dimpled and aggravating, that the Chippewa in him longed to take her by the scalp-lock of her light head; but the Frenchman bestowed the salute. Louizon had married the prettiest woman in the settlement. Life overflowed in her, so that her presence spread animation. Both men and women paid homage to her. Her very mother-in-law was her slave. And this was the stranger spectacle because Madame Cadotte the senior, though born a Chippewa, did not easily make herself subservient to anybody. The time had been when Louizon was proud of any notice this siren conferred on him. But so exacting and tyrannical is the nature of man that when he got her he wanted to keep her entirely to himself. From his Chippewa mother, who, though treated with deference, had never dared to disobey his father, he inherited a fond and jealous nature; and his beautiful wife chafed it. Young Repentigny saw that she was like a Parisian. But Louizon felt that she was a spirit too fine and tantalizing for him to grasp, and she had him in her power. He hung his powderhorn behind the door, and stepped upon a stool to put his gun on its rack above the fireplace. The fire showed his round figure, short but well muscled, and the boyish petulance of his shaven lip. The sun shone hot upon the Sault of an August noon, but morning and night were cool, and a blaze was usually kept in the chimney. "You found plenty of game?" said his wife; and it was one of this woman's wickedest charms that she could be so interested in her companion of the moment. "Yes," he answered, scowling more, and thinking of the brace on the gallery whom he had not shot, but wished to. She laughed at him. "Archange Cadotte," said Louizon, turning around on the stool before he descended; and she spread out her skirts, taking two dancing steps to indicate that she heard him. "How long am I to be mortified by your conduct to Monsieur de Repentigny?" "Oh--Monsieur de Repentigny. It is now that boy from France, at whom I have never looked." "The man I would have you look at, madame, you scarcely notice." "Why should I notice him? He pays little attention to me." "Ah, he is not one of your danglers, madame. He would not look at another man's wife. He has had trouble himself." "So will you have if you scorch the backs of your legs," observed Archange. Louizon stood obstinately on the stool and ignored the heat. He was in the act of stepping down, but he checked it as she spoke. "Monsieur de Repentigny came back to this country to marry a young English lady of Quebec. He thinks of her, not of you." "I am sure he is welcome," murmured Archange. "But it seems the young English lady prefers to stay in Quebec." "She never looked at any other man, madame. She is dead." "No wonder. I should be dead, too, if I had looked at one stupid man all my life." Louizon's eyes sparkled. "Madame, I will have you know that the seignior of Sault Ste. Marie is entitled to your homage." "Monsieur, I will have you know that I do not pay homage to any man." "You, Archange Cadotte? You are in love with a new man every day." "Not in the least, monsieur. I only desire to have a new man in love with me every day." Her mischievous mouth was a scarlet button in her face, and Louizon leaped to the floor, and kicked the stool across the room. "The devil himself is no match at all for you!" "But I married him before I knew that," returned Archange; and Louizon grinned in his wrath. "I don't like such women." "Oh yes, you do. Men always like women whom they cannot chain." "I have never tried to chain you." Her husband approached, shaking his finger at her. "There is not another woman in the settlement who has her way as you have. And see how you treat me!" "How do I treat you?" inquired Archange, sitting down and resigning herself to statistics. "Ste. Marie! St. Joseph!" shouted the Frenchman. "How does she treat me! And every man in the seigniory dangling at her apron string!" "You are mistaken. There is the young seignior; and there is the new English commandant, who must be now within the seigniory, for they expect him at the post to-morrow morning. It is all the same: if I look at a man you are furious, and if I refuse to look at him you are more furious still." Louizon felt that inward breaking up which proved to him that he could not stand before the tongue of this woman. Groping for expression, he declared,-- "If thou wert sickly or blind, I would be just as good to thee as when thou wert a bride. I am not the kind that changes if a woman loses her fine looks." "No doubt you would like to see me with the smallpox," suggested Archange. "But it is never best to try a man too far." "You try me too far,--let me tell you that. But you shall try me no further." The Indian appeared distinctly on his softer French features, as one picture may be stamped over another. "Smoke a pipe, Louizon," urged the thorn in his flesh. "You are always so much more agreeable when your mouth is stopped." But he left the room without looking at her again. Archange remarked to herself that he would be better natured when his mother had given him his supper; and she yawned, smiling at the maladroit creatures whom she made her sport. Her husband was the best young man in the settlement. She was entirely satisfied with him, and grateful to him for taking the orphan niece of a poor post commandant, without prospects since the conquest, and giving her sumptuous quarters and comparative wealth; but she could not forbear amusing herself with his masculine weaknesses. Archange was by no means a slave in the frontier household. She did not spin, or draw water, or tend the oven. Her mother-in-law, Madame Cadotte, had a hold on perennially destitute Chippewa women who could be made to work for longer or shorter periods in a Frenchman's kitchen or loom-house instead of with savage implements. Archange's bed had ruffled curtains, and her pretty dresses, carefully folded, filled a large chest. She returned to the high window sill, and watched the purple distances growing black. She could smell the tobacco the men were smoking in the open hall, and hear their voices. Archange knew what her mother-in-law was giving the young seignior and Louizon for their supper. She could fancy the officers laying down their pipes to draw to the board, also, for the Cadottes kept open house all the year round. The thump of the Indian drum was added to the deep melody of the rapids. There were always a few lodges of Chippewas about the Sault. When the trapping season and the maple-sugar making were over and his profits drunk up, time was the largest possession of an Indian. He spent it around the door of his French brother, ready to fish or to drink whenever invited. If no one cared to go on the river, he turned to his hereditary amusements. Every night that the rapids were void of torches showing where the canoes of white fishers darted, the thump of the Indian drum and the yell of Indian dancers could be heard. Archange's mind was running on the new English garrison who were said to be so near taking possession of the picketed fort, when she saw something red on the parade ground. The figure stood erect and motionless, gathering all the remaining light on its indistinct coloring, and Archange's heart gave a leap at the hint of a military man in a red uniform. She was all alive, like a whitefisher casting the net or a hunter sighting game. It was Archange's nature, without even taking thought, to turn her head on her round neck so that the illuminated curls would show against a background of wall, and wreathe her half-bare arms across the sill. To be looked at, to lure and tantalize, was more than pastime. It was a woman's chief privilege. Archange held the secret conviction that the priest himself could be made to give her lighter penances by an angelic expression she could assume. It is convenient to have large brown eyes and the trick of casting them sidewise in sweet distress. But the Chippewa widow came in earlier than usual that evening, being anxious to go back to the lodges to watch the dancing. Archange pushed the sashes shut, ready for other diversion, and Michel Pensonneau never failed to furnish her that. The little boy was at the widow's heels. Michel was an orphan. "If Archange had children," Madame Cadotte had said to Louizon, "she would not seek other amusement. Take the little Pensonneau lad that his grandmother can hardly feed. He will give Archange something to do." So Louizon brought home the little Pensonneau lad. Archange looked at him, and considered that here was another person to wait on her. As to keeping him clean and making clothes for him, they might as well have expected her to train the sledge dogs. She made him serve her, but for mothering he had to go to Madame Cadotte. Yet Archange far outweighed Madame Cadotte with him. The labors put upon him by the autocrat of the house were sweeter than mococks full of maple sugar from the hand of the Chippewa housekeeper. At first Archange would not let him come into her room. She dictated to him through door or window. But when he grew fat with good food and was decently clad under Madame Cadotte's hand, the great promotion of entering that sacred apartment was allowed him. Michel came in whenever he could. It was his nightly habit to follow the Chippewa widow there after supper, and watch her brush Archange's hair. Michel stood at the end of the hearth with a roll of pagessanung or plum-leather in his fist. His cheeks had a hard garnered redness like polished apples. The Chippewa widow set her husband carefully against the wall. The husband was a bundle about two feet long, containing her best clothes tied up in her dead warrior's sashes and rolled in a piece of cloth. His armbands and his necklace of bear's-claws appeared at the top as a grotesque head. This bundle the widow was obliged to carry with her everywhere. To be seen without it was a disgrace, until that time when her husband's nearest relations should take it away from her and give her new clothes, thus signifying that she had mourned long enough to satisfy them. As the husband's relations were unable to cover themselves, the prospect of her release seemed distant. For her food she was glad to depend on her labor in the Cadotte household. There was no hunter to supply her lodge now. The widow let down Archange's hair and began to brush it. The long mass was too much for its owner to handle. It spread around her like a garment, as she sat on her chair, and its ends touched the floor. Michel thought there was nothing more wonderful in the world than this glory of hair, its rings and ripples shining in the firelight. The widow's jaws worked in unobtrusive rumination on a piece of pleasantly bitter fungus, the Indian substitute for quinine, which the Chippewas called waubudone. As she consoled herself much with this medicine, and her many-syllabled name was hard to pronounce, Archange called her Waubudone, an offense against her dignity which the widow might not have endured from anybody else, though she bore it without a word from this soft-haired magnate. As she carefully carded the mass of hair lock by lock, thinking it an unnecessary nightly labor, the restless head under her hands was turned towards the portable husband. Archange had not much imagination, but to her the thing was uncanny. She repeated what she said every night:-- "Do stand him in the hall and let him smell the smoke, Waubudone." "No," refused the widow. "But I don't want him in my bedroom. You are not obliged to keep that thing in your sight all the time." "Yes," said the widow. A dialect of mingled French and Chippewa was what they spoke, and Michel knew enough of both tongues to follow the talk. "Are they never going to take him from you? If they don't take him from you soon, I shall go to the lodges and speak to his people about it myself." The Chippewa widow usually passed over this threat in silence; but, threading a lock with the comb, she now said,-- "Best not go to the lodges awhile." "Why?" inquired Archange. "Have the English already arrived? Is the tribe dissatisfied?" "Don't know that." "Then why should I not go to the lodges?" "Windigo at the Sault now." Archange wheeled to look at her face. The widow was unmoved. She was little older than Archange, but her features showed a stoical harshness in the firelight. Michel, who often went to the lodges, widened his mouth and forgot to fill it with plum-leather. There was no sweet which Michel loved as he did this confection of wild plums and maple sugar boiled down and spread on sheets of birch bark. Madame Cadotte made the best pagessanung at the Sault. "Look at the boy," laughed Archange. "He will not want to go to the lodges any more after dark." The widow remarked, noting Michel's fat legs and arms,-- "Windigo like to eat him." "I would kill a windigo," declared Michel, in full revolt. "Not so easy to kill a windigo. Bad spirits help windigos. If man kill windigo and not tear him to pieces, he come to life again." Archange herself shuddered at such a tenacious creature. She was less superstitious than the Chippewa woman, but the Northwest had its human terrors as dark as the shadow of witchcraft. Though a Chippewa was bound to dip his hand in the war kettle and taste the flesh of enemies after victory, there was nothing he considered more horrible than a confirmed cannibal. He believed that a person who had eaten human flesh to satisfy hunger was never afterwards contented with any other kind, and, being deranged and possessed by the spirit of a beast, he had to be killed for the safety of the community. The cannibal usually became what he was by stress of starvation: in the winter when hunting failed and he was far from help, or on a journey when provisions gave out, and his only choice was to eat a companion or die. But this did not excuse him. As soon as he was detected the name of "windigo" was given him, and if he did not betake himself again to solitude he was shot or knocked on the head at the first convenient opportunity. Archange remembered one such wretched creature who had haunted the settlement awhile, and then disappeared. His canoe was known, and when it hovered even distantly on the river every child ran to its mother. The priest was less successful with this kind of outcast than with any other barbarian on the frontier. "Have you seen him, Waubudone?" inquired Archange. "I wonder if it is the same man who used to frighten us?" "This windigo a woman. Porcupine in her. She lie down and roll up and hide her head when you drive her off." "Did you drive her off?" "No. She only come past my lodge in the night." "Did you see her?" "No, I smell her." Archange had heard of the atmosphere which windigos far gone in cannibalism carried around them. She desired to know nothing more about the poor creature, or the class to which the poor creature belonged, if such isolated beings may be classed. The Chippewa widow talked without being questioned, however, preparing to reduce Archange's mass of hair to the compass of a nightcap. "My grandmother told me there was a man dreamed he had to eat seven persons. He sat by the fire and shivered. If his squaw wanted meat, he quarreled with her. 'Squaw, take care. Thou wilt drive me so far that I shall turn windigo.'" People who did not give Archange the keen interest of fascinating them were a great weariness to her. Humble or wretched human life filled her with disgust. She could dance all night at the weekly dances, laughing in her sleeve at girls from whom she took the best partners. But she never helped nurse a sick child, and it made her sleepy to hear of windigos and misery. Michel wanted to squat by the chimney and listen until Louizon came in; but she drove him out early. Louizon was kind to the orphan, who had been in some respects a failure, and occasionally let him sleep on blankets or skins by the hearth instead of groping to the dark attic. And if Michel ever wanted to escape the attic, it was to-night, when a windigo was abroad. But Louizon did not come. It must have been midnight when Archange sat up in bed, startled out of sleep by her mother-in-law, who held a candle between the curtains. Madame Cadotte's features were of a mild Chippewa type, yet the restless aboriginal eye made Archange uncomfortable with its anxiety. "Louizon is still away," said his mother. "Perhaps he went whitefishing after he had his supper." The young wife yawned and rubbed her eyes, beginning to notice that her husband might be doing something unusual. "He did not come to his supper." "Yes, mama. He came in with Monsieur de Repentigny." "I did not see him. The seignior ate alone." Archange stared, fully awake. "Where does the seignior say he is?" "The seignior does not know. They parted at the door." "Oh, he has gone to the lodges to watch the dancing." "I have been there. No one has seen him since he set out to hunt this morning." "Where are Louizon's canoemen?" "Jean Boucher and his son are at the dancing. They say he came into this house." Archange could not adjust her mind to anxiety without the suspicion that her mother-in-law might be acting as the instrument of Louizon's resentment. The huge feather bed was a tangible comfort interposed betwixt herself and calamity. "He was sulky to-night," she declared. "He has gone up to sleep in Michel's attic to frighten me." "I have been there. I have searched the house." "But are you sure it was Michel in the bed?" "There was no one. Michel is here." Archange snatched the curtain aside, and leaned out to see the orphan sprawled on a bearskin in front of the collapsing logs. He had pushed the sashes inward from the gallery and hoisted himself over the high sill after the bed drapery was closed for the night, for the window yet stood open. Madame Cadotte sheltered the candle she carried, but the wind blew it out. There was a rich glow from the fireplace upon Michel's stuffed legs and arms, his cheeks, and the full parted lips through which his breath audibly flowed. The other end of the room, lacking the candle, was in shadow. The thump of the Indian drum could still be heard, and distinctly and more distinctly, as if they were approaching the house, the rapids. Both women heard more. They had not noticed any voice at the window when they were speaking themselves, but some offensive thing scented the wind, and they heard, hoarsely spoken in Chippewa from the gallery,-- "How fat he is!" Archange, with a gasp, threw herself upon her mother-in-law for safety, and Madame Cadotte put both arms and the smoking candle around her. A feeble yet dexterous scramble on the sill resulted in something dropping into the room. It moved toward the hearth glow, a gaunt vertebrate body scarcely expanded by ribs, but covered by a red blanket, and a head with deathlike features overhung by strips of hair. This vision of famine leaned forward and indented Michel with one finger, croaking again,-- "How fat he is!" The boy roused himself, and, for one instant stupid and apologetic, was going to sit up and whine. He saw what bent over him, and, bristling with unimaginable revolutions of arms and legs, he yelled a yell which seemed to sweep the thing back through the window. Next day no one thought of dancing or fishing or of the coming English. Frenchmen and Indians turned out together to search for Louizon Cadotte. Though he never in his life had set foot to any expedition without first notifying his household, and it was not the custom to hunt alone in the woods, his disappearance would not have roused the settlement in so short a time had there been no windigo hanging about the Sault. It was told that the windigo, who entered his house again in the night, must have made way with him. Jacques Repentigny heard this with some amusement. Of windigos he had no experience, but he had hunted and camped much of the summer with Louizon. "I do not think he would let himself be knocked on the head by a woman," said Jacques. "White chief doesn't know what helps a windigo," explained a Chippewa; and the canoeman Jean Boucher interpreted him. "Bad spirit makes a windigo strong as a bear. I saw this one. She stole my whitefish and ate them raw." "Why didn't you give her cooked food when you saw her?" demanded Jacques. "She would not eat that now. She likes offal better." "Yes, she was going to eat me," declared Michel Pensonneau. "After she finished Monsieur Louizon, she got through the window to carry me off." Michel enjoyed the windigo. Though he strummed on his lip and mourned aloud whenever Madame Cadotte was by, he felt so comfortably full of food and horror, and so important with his story, that life threatened him with nothing worse than satiety. While parties went up the river and down the river, and talked about the chutes in the rapids where a victim could be sucked down to death in an instant, or about tracing the windigo's secret camp, Archange hid herself in the attic. She lay upon Michel's bed and wept, or walked the plank floor. It was no place for her. At noon the bark roof heated her almost to fever. The dormer windows gave her little air, and there was dust as well as something like an individual sediment of the poverty from which the boy had come. Yet she could endure the loft dungeon better than the face of the Chippewa mother who blamed her, or the bluff excitement of Monsieur Cadotte. She could hear his voice from time to time, as he ran in for spirits or provisions for parties of searchers. And Archange had aversion, like the instinct of a maid, to betraying fondness for her husband. She was furious with him, also, for causing her pain. When she thought of the windigo, of the rapids, of any peril which might be working his limitless absence, she set clenched hands in her loosened hair and trembled with hysterical anguish. But the enormity of his behavior if he were alive made her hiss at the rafters. "Good, monsieur! Next time I will have four officers. I will have the entire garrison sitting along the gallery! Yes, and they shall be English, too. And there is one thing you will never know, besides." She laughed through her weeping. "You will never know I made eyes at a windigo." The preenings and posings of a creature whose perfections he once thought were the result of a happy chance had made Louizon roar. She remembered all their life together, and moaned, "I will say this: he was the best husband that any girl ever had. We scarcely had a disagreement. But to be the widow of a man who is eaten up--O Ste. Marie!" In the clear August weather the wide river seemed to bring its opposite shores nearer. Islands within a stone's throw of the settlement, rocky drops in a boiling current, vividly showed their rich foliage of pines. On one of these islands Father Dablon and Father Marquette had built their first mission chapel; and though they afterwards removed it to the mainland, the old tracery of foundation stones could still be seen. The mountains of Lake Superior showed like a cloud. On the ridge above fort and houses the Chippewa lodges were pleasant in the sunlight, sending ribbons of smoke from their camp fires far above the serrated edge of the woods. Naked Indian children and their playmates of the settlement shouted to one another, as they ran along the river margin, threats of instant seizure by the windigo. The Chippewa widow, holding her husband in her arms, for she was not permitted to hang him on her back, stood and talked with her red-skinned intimates of the lodges. The Frenchwomen collected at the seigniory house. As for the men of the garrison, they were obliged to stay and receive the English then on the way from Detour. But they came out to see the boats off with the concern of brothers, and Archange's uncle, the post commandant, embraced Monsieur Cadotte. The priest and Jacques Repentigny did not speak to each other about that wretched creature whose hoverings around the Sault were connected with Louizon Cadotte's disappearance. But the priest went with Louizon's father down the river, and Jacques led the party which took the opposite direction. Though so many years had passed since Father Dablon and Father Marquette built the first bark chapel, their successor found his work very little easier than theirs had been. A canoe was missing from the little fleet usually tied alongshore, but it was not the one belonging to Louizon. The young seignior took that one, having Jean Boucher and Jean's son to paddle for him. No other man of Sault Ste. Marie could pole up the rapids or paddle down them as this expert Chippewa could. He had been baptized with a French name, and his son after him, but no Chippewa of pure blood and name looked habitually as he did into those whirlpools called the chutes, where the slip of a paddle meant death. Yet nobody feared the rapids. It was common for boys and girls to flit around near shore in birch canoes, balancing themselves and expertly dipping up whitefish. Jean Boucher thrust out his boat from behind an island, and, turning it as a fish glides, moved over thin sheets of water spraying upon rocks. The fall of the Ste. Marie is gradual, but even at its upper end there is a little hill to climb. Jean set his pole into the stone floor of the river, and lifted the vessel length by length from crest to crest of foam. His paddles lay behind him, and his arms were bare to the elbows, showing their strong red sinews. He had let his hair grow like a Frenchman's, and it hung forward shading his hatless brows. A skin apron was girded in front of him to meet waves which frothed up over the canoe's high prow. Blacksmith of the waters, he beat a path between juts of rock; struggling to hold a point with the pole, calling a quick word to his helper, and laughing as he forged his way. Other voyagers who did not care to tax themselves with this labor made a portage with their canoes alongshore, and started above the glassy curve where the river bends down to its leap. Gros Cap rose in the sky, revealing its peak in bolder lines as the searchers pushed up the Ste. Marie, exploring mile after mile of pine and white birch and fantastic rock. The shaggy bank stooped to them, the illimitable glory of the wilderness witnessing a little procession of boats like chips floating by. It was almost sunset when they came back, the tired paddlers keeping near that shore on which they intended to land. No trace of Louizon Cadotte could be found; and those who had not seen the windigo were ready to declare that there was no such thing about the Sault, when, just above the rapids, she appeared from the dense up-slope of forest. Jacques Repentigny's canoe had kept the lead, but a dozen light-bodied Chippewas sprung on shore and rushed past him into the bushes. The woman had disappeared in underbrush, but, surrounded by hunters in full chase, she came running out, and fell on her hands, making a hoarse noise in her throat. As she looked up, all the marks in her aged aboriginal face were distinct to Jacques Repentigny. The sutures in her temples were parted. She rolled herself around in a ball, and hid her head in her dirty red blanket. Any wild beast was in harmony with the wilderness, but this sick human being was a blot upon it. Jacques felt the compassion of a god for her. Her pursuers were after her, and the thud of stones they threw made him heartsick, as if the thing were done to the woman he loved. "Let her alone!" he commanded fiercely. "Kill her!" shouted the hunters. "Hit the windigo on the head!" All that world of northern air could not sweeten her, but Jacques picked her up without a thought of her offensiveness and ran to his canoe. The bones resisted him; the claws scratched at him through her blanket. Jean Boucher lifted a paddle to hit the creature as soon as she was down. "If you strike her, I will kill you!" warned Jacques, and he sprung into the boat. The superstitious Chippewas threw themselves madly into their canoes to follow. It would go hard, but they would get the windigo and take the young seignior out of her spell. The Frenchmen, with man's instinct for the chase, were in full cry with them. Jean Boucher laid down his paddle sulkily, and his son did the same. Jacques took a long pistol from his belt and pointed it at the old Indian. "If you don't paddle for life, I will shoot you." And his eyes were eyes which Jean respected as he never had respected anything before. The young man was a beautiful fellow. If he wanted to save a windigo, why, the saints let him. The priest might say a good word about it when you came to think, also. "Where shall I paddle to?" inquired Jean Boucher, drawing in his breath. The canoe leaped ahead, grazing hands stretched out to seize it. "To the other side of the river." "Down the rapids?" "Yes." "Go down rough or go down smooth?" "Rough--rough--where they cannot catch you." The old canoeman snorted. He would like to see any of them catch him. They were straining after him, and half a dozen canoes shot down that glassy slide which leads to the rocks. It takes three minutes for a skillful paddler to run that dangerous race of three quarters of a mile. Jean Boucher stood at the prow, and the waves boiled as high as his waist. Jacques dreaded only that the windigo might move and destroy the delicate poise of the boat; but she lay very still. The little craft quivered from rock to rock without grazing one, rearing itself over a great breaker or sinking under a crest of foam. Now a billow towered up, and Jean broke it with his paddle, shouting his joy. Showers fell on the woman coiled in the bottom of the boat. They were going down very rough indeed. Yells from the other canoes grew less distinct. Jacques turned his head, keeping a true balance, and saw that their pursuers were skirting toward the shore. They must make a long detour to catch him after he reached the foot of the fall. The roar of awful waters met him as he looked ahead. Jean Boucher drove the paddle down and spoke to his son. The canoe leaned sidewise, sucked by the first chute, a caldron in the river bed where all Ste. Marie's current seemed to go down, and whirl, and rise, and froth, and roar. "Ha!" shouted Jean Boucher. His face glistened with beads of water and the glory of mastering Nature. Scarcely were they past the first pit when the canoe plunged on the verge of another. This sight was a moment of madness. The great chute, lined with moving water walls and floored with whirling foam, bellowed as if it were submerging the world. Columns of green water sheeted in white rose above it and fell forward on the current. As the canoemen held on with their paddles and shot by through spume and rain, every soul in the boat exulted except the woman who lay flat on its keel. The rapids gave a voyager the illusion that they were running uphill to meet him, that they were breasting and opposing him instead of carrying him forward. There was scarcely a breath between riding the edge of the bottomless pit and shooting out on clear water. The rapids were past, and they paddled for the other shore, a mile away. On the west side the green water seemed turning to fire, but as the sunset went out, shadows sunk on the broad surface. The fresh evening breath of a primitive world blew across it. Down river the channel turned, and Jacques could see nothing of the English or of the other party. His pursuers had decided to land at the settlement. It was twilight when Jean Boucher brought the canoe to pine woods which met them at the edge of the water. The young Repentigny had been wondering what he should do with his windigo. There was no settlement on this shore, and had there been one it would offer no hospitality to such as she was. His canoemen would hardly camp with her, and he had no provisions. To keep her from being stoned or torn to pieces he had made an inconsiderate flight. But his perplexity dissolved in a moment before the sight of Louizon Cadotte coming out of the woods towards them, having no hunting equipments and looking foolish. "Where have you been?" called Jacques. "Down this shore," responded Louizon. "Did you take a canoe and come out here last night?" "Yes, monsieur. I wished to be by myself. The canoe is below. I was coming home." "It is time you were coming home, when all the men in the settlement are searching for you, and all the women trying to console your mother and your wife." "My wife--she is not then talking with any one on the gallery?" Louizon's voice betrayed gratified revenge. "I do not know. But there is a woman in this canoe who might talk on the gallery and complain to the priest against a man who has got her stoned on his account." Louizon did not understand this, even when he looked at the heap of dirty blanket in the canoe. "Who is it?" he inquired. "The Chippewas call her a windigo. They were all chasing her for eating you up. But now we can take her back to the priest, and they will let her alone when they see you. Where is your canoe?" "Down here among the bushes," answered Louizon. He went to get it, ashamed to look the young seignior in the face. He was light-headed from hunger and exposure, and what followed seemed to him afterwards a piteous dream. "Come back!" called the young seignior, and Louizon turned back. The two men's eyes met in a solemn look. "Jean Boucher says this woman is dead." Jean Boucher stood on the bank, holding the canoe with one hand, and turning her unresisting face with the other. Jacques and Louizon took off their hats. They heard the cry of the whip-poor-will. The river had lost all its green and was purple, and purple shadows lay on the distant mountains and opposite ridge. Darkness was mercifully covering this poor demented Indian woman, overcome by the burdens of her life, aged without being venerable, perhaps made hideous by want and sorrow. When they had looked at her in silence, respecting her because she could no longer be hurt by anything in the world, Louizon whispered aside to his seignior,-- "What shall we do with her?" "Bury her," the old canoeman answered for him. One of the party yet thought of taking her back to the priest. But she did not belong to priests and rites. Jean Boucher said they could dig in the forest mould with a paddle, and he and his son would make her a grave. The two Chippewas left the burden to the young men. Jacques Repentigny and Louizon Cadotte took up the woman who, perhaps had never been what they considered woman; who had missed the good, and got for her portion the ignorance and degradation of the world; yet who must be something to the Almighty, for he had sent youth and love to pity and take care of her in her death. They carried her into the woods between them. THE KIDNAPED BRIDE. (For this story, little changed from the form in which it was handed down to him, I am indebted to Dr. J.F. Snyder of Virginia, Illinois, a descendant of the Saucier family. Even the title remains unchanged, since he insisted on keeping the one always used by his uncle, Mathieu Saucier. "Mon Oncle Mathieu," he says, "I knew well, and often sat with breathless interest listening to his narration of incidents in the early settlement of the Bottom lands. He was a very quiet, dignified, and unobtrusive gentleman, and in point of common sense and intelligence much above the average of the race to which he belonged; but, like all the rest of the French stock, woefully wanting in energy and never in a hurry. He was a splendid fiddler, and consequently a favorite with all, especially the young folks, who easily pressed him into service on all occasions to play for their numerous dances. He died at Prairie du Pont, in 1863, at the age of eighty-one years. His mother, Manette Le Compt, then a young girl, was one of the bridesmaids of the kidnaped bride.") Yes, the marshes were then in a chain along the foot of the bluffs: Grand Marais, Marais de Bois Coupé, Marais de l'Ourse, Marais Perdu; with a rigolé here and there, straight as a canal, to carry the water into the Mississippi. You do not see Cahokia beautiful as it was when Monsieur St. Ange de Bellerive was acting as governor of the Illinois Territory, and waiting at Fort Chartres for the British to take possession after the conquest. Some people had indeed gone off to Ste. Grenevieve, and to Pain Court, that you now call Sah Loui', where Pontiac was afterwards buried under sweetbrier, and is to-day trampled under pavements. An Indian killed Pontiac between Cahokia and Prairie du Pont. When he rose from his body and saw it was not a British knife, but a red man's tomahawk, he was not a chief who would lie still and bear it in silence. Yes, I have heard that he has been seen walking through the grapevine tangle, all bleached as if the bad redness was burned out of him. But the priest will tell you better, my son. Do not believe such tales. Besides, no two stories are alike. Pontiac was killed in his French officer's uniform, which Monsieur de Montcalm gave him, and half the people who saw him walking declared he wore that, while the rest swore he was in buckskins and a blanket. You see how it is. A veritable ghost would always appear the same, and not keep changing its clothes like a vain girl. Paul Le Page had a fit one night from seeing the dead chief with feathers in his hair, standing like stone in the white French uniform. But do not credit such things. It was half a dozen years before Pontiac's death that Celeste Barbeau was kidnaped on her wedding day. She lived at Prairie du Pont; and though Prairie du Pont is but a mile and a half south of Cahokia, the road was not as safe then as it now is. My mother was one of the bridesmaids; she has told it over to me a score of times. The wedding was to be in the church; the same church that now stands on the east side of the square. And on the south side of the square was the old auberge. Claudis Beauvois said you could get as good wines at that tavern as you could in New Orleans. But the court-house was not built until 1795. The people did not need a court-house. They had no quarrels among themselves which the priest could not settle, and after the British conquest their only enemies were those Puants, the Pottawattamie Indians, who took the English side, and paid no regard when peace was declared, but still tormented the French because there was no military power to check them. You see the common fields across the rigolé. The Puants stole stock from the common fields, they trampled down crops, and kidnaped children and even women, to be ransomed for so many horses each. The French tried to be friendly, and with presents and good words to induce the Puants to leave. But those Puants--Oh, they were British Indians: nothing but whipping would take the impudence out of them. Celeste Barbeau's father and mother lived at Prairie du Pont, and Alexis Barbeau was the richest man in this part of the American Bottom. When Alexis Barbeau was down on his knees at mass, people used to say he counted his money instead of his beads; it was at least as dear to him as religion. And when he came au Caho',[1] he hadn't a word for a poor man. At Prairie du Pont he had built himself a fine brick house; the bricks were brought from Philadelphia by way of New Orleans. You have yourself seen it many a time, and the crack down the side made by the great earthquake of 1811. There he lived like an estated gentleman, for Prairie du Pont was then nothing but a cluster of tenants around his feet. It was after his death that the village grew. Celeste did not stay at Prairie du Pont; she was always au Caho', with her grandmother and grandfather, the old Barbeaus. Along the south bank of this rigolé which bounds the north end of Caho' were all the pleasantest houses then: rez-de-chaussée, of course, but large; with dormer windows in the roofs; and high of foundation, having flights of steps going up to the galleries. For though the Mississippi was a mile away in those days, and had not yet eaten in to our very sides, it often came visiting. I have seen this grassy-bottomed rigolé many a time swimming with fifteen feet of water, and sending ripples to the gallery steps. Between the marais and the Mississippi, the spring rains were a perpetual danger. There are men who want the marshes all filled up. They say it will add to us on one side what the great river is taking from us on the other; but myself--I would never throw in a shovelful: God made this world; it is good enough; and when the water rises we can take to boats. The Le Compts lived in this very house, and the old Barbeaus lived next, on the corner, where this rigolé road crosses the street running north and south. Every house along the rigolé was set in spacious grounds, with shade trees and gardens, and the sloping lawns blazed with flowers. My mother said it was much prettier than Kaskaskia; not crowded with traffic; not overrun with foreigners. Everybody seemed to be making a fête, to be visiting or receiving visits. At sunset the fiddle and the banjo began their melody. The young girls would gather at Barbeau's or Le Compt's or Pensonneau's--at any one of a dozen places, and the young men would follow. It was no trouble to have a dance every evening, and on feast days and great days there were balls, of course. The violin ran in my family. Celeste Barbeau would call across the hedge to my mother,-- "Manette, will Monsieur Le Compt play for us again to-night?" And Monsieur Le Compt or anybody who could handle a bow would play for her. Celeste was the life of the place: she sang like a lark, she was like thistledown in the dance, she talked well, and was so handsome that a stranger from New Orleans stopped in the street to gaze after her. At the auberge he said he was going au Pay,[2] but after he saw Celeste Barbeau he stayed in Caho'. I have heard my mother tell--who often saw it combed out--that Celeste's long black hair hung below her knees, though it was so curly that half its length was taken up by the natural crêping of the locks. The old French women, especially about Pain Court and Caho', loved to go into their children's bedrooms and sit on the side of the bed, telling stories half the night. It was part of the general good time. And thus they often found out what the girls were thinking about; for women of experience need only a hint. It is true old Madame Barbeau had never been even au Kaw;[3] but one may live and grow wise without crossing the rigolés north and south, or the bluffs and river east and west. "Gra'mère, Manette is sleepy," Celeste would say, when my mother was with her. "Well, I will go to my bed," the grandmother would promise. But still she sat and joined in the chatter. Sometimes the girls would doze, and wake in the middle of a long tale. But Madame Barbeau heard more than she told, for she said to her husband:-- "It may come to pass that the widow Chartrant's Gabriel will be making proposals to Alexis for little Celeste." "Poor lad," said the grandfather, "he has nothing to back his proposals with. It will do him no good." And so it proved. Gabriel Chartrant was the leader of the young men as Celeste was of the girls. But he only inherited the cedar house his mother lived in. Those cedar houses were built in Caho' without an ounce of iron; each cedar shingle was held to its place with cedar pegs, and the boards of the floors fastened down in the same manner. They had their galleries, too, all tightly pegged to place. Gabriel was obliged to work, but he was so big he did not mind that. He was made very straight, with a high-lifted head and a full chest. He could throw any man in a wrestling match. And he was always first with a kindness, and would nurse the sick, and he was not afraid of contagious diseases or of anything. Gabriel could match Celeste as a dancer, but it was not likely Alexis Barbeau would find him a match in any other particular. And it grew more unlikely, every day that the man from New Orleans spent in Caho'. The stranger said his name was Claudis Beauvois, and he was interested in great mercantile houses both in Philadelphia and New Orleans, and had come up the river to see the country. He was about fifty, a handsome, easy man, with plenty of fine clothes and money, and before he had been at the tavern a fortnight the hospitable people were inviting him everywhere, and he danced with the youngest of them all. There was about him what the city alone gives a man, and the mothers, when they saw his jewels, considered that there was only one drawback to marrying their daughters to Claudis Beauvois: his bride must travel far from Caho'. But it was plain whose daughter he had fixed his mind upon, and Alexis Barbeau would not make any difficulty about parting with Celeste. She had lived away from him so much since her childhood that he would scarcely miss her; and it was better to have a daughter well settled in New Orleans than hampered by a poor match in her native village. And this was what Gabriel Chartrant was told when he made haste to propose for Celeste about the same time. "I have already accepted for my daughter much more gratifying offers than any you can make. The banns will be put up next Sunday, and in three weeks she will be Madame Beauvois." When Celeste heard this she was beside herself. She used to tell my mother that Monsieur Beauvois walked as if his natural gait was on all fours, and he still took to it when he was not watched. His shoulders were bent forward, his hands were in his pockets, and he studied the ground. She could not endure him. But the customs were very strict in the matter of marriage. No French girl in those days could be so bold as to reject the husband her father picked, and own that she preferred some one else. Celeste was taken home to get ready for her wedding. She hung on my mother's neck when choosing her for a bridesmaid, and neither of the girls could comfort the other. Madame Barbeau was a fat woman who loved ease, and never interfered with Alexis. She would be disturbed enough by settling her daughter without meddling about bridegrooms. The grandfather and grandmother were sorry for Gabriel Chartrant, and tearful over Celeste; still, when you are forming an alliance for your child, it is very imprudent to disregard great wealth and by preference give her to poverty. Their son Alexis convinced them of this; and he had always prospered. So the banns were put up in church for three weeks, and all Cahokia was invited to the grand wedding. Alexis Barbeau regretted there was not time to send to New Orleans for much that he wanted to fit his daughter out and provide for his guests. "If he had sent there a month ago for some certainties about the bridegroom it might be better," said Paul Le Page. "I have a cousin in New Orleans who could have told us if he really is the great man he pretends to be." But the women said it was plain Paul Le Page was one of those who had wanted Celeste himself. The suspicious nature is a poison. Gabriel Chartrant did not say anything for a week, but went along the streets haggard, though with his head up, and worked as if he meant to kill himself. The second week he spent his nights forming desperate plans. The young men followed him as they always did, and they held their meeting down the rigolé, clustered together on the bank. They could hear the frogs croak in the marais; it was dry, and the water was getting low. Gabriel used to say he never heard a frog croak afterwards without a sinking of the heart. It was the voice of misery. But Gabriel had strong partisans in this council. Le Maudit Pensonneau offered with his own hand to kill that interloping stranger whom he called the old devil, and argued the matter vehemently when his offer was declined. Le Maudit was a wild lad, so nervous that he stopped at nothing in his riding or his frolics; and so got the name of the Bewitched.[4] But the third week, Gabriel said he had decided on a plan which might break off this detestable marriage if the others would help him. They all declared they would do anything for him, and he then told them he had privately sent word about it by Manette to Celeste; and Celeste was willing to have it or any plan attempted which would prevent the wedding. "We will dress ourselves as Puants," said Gabriel, "and make a rush on the wedding party on the way to church, and carry off the bride." Le Maudit Pensonneau sprung up and danced with joy when he heard that. Nothing would please him better than to dress as a Puant and carry off a bride. The Cahokians were so used to being raided by the Puants that they would readily believe such an attack had been made. That very week the Puants had galloped at midnight, whooping through the town, and swept off from the common fields a flock of Le Page's goats and two of Larue's cattle. One might expect they would hear of such a wedding as Celeste Barbeau's. Indeed, the people were so tired of the Puants that they had sent urgently to St. Ange de Bellerive asking that soldiers be marched from Fort Chartres to give them military protection. It would be easy enough for the young men to make themselves look like Indians. What one lacked another could supply. "But two of us cannot take any part in the raid," said Gabriel. "Two must be ready at the river with a boat. And they must take Celeste as fast as they can row up the river to Pain Court to my aunt Choutou. My aunt Choutou will keep her safely until I can make some terms with Alexis Barbeau. Maybe he will give me his daughter, if I rescue her from the Puants. And if worst comes to worst, there is the missionary priest at Pain Court; he may be persuaded to marry us. But who is willing to be at the river?" Paul and Jacques Le Page said they would undertake the boat. They were steady and trusty fellows and good river men; not so keen at riding and hunting as the others, but in better favor with the priest on account of their behavior. So the scheme was very well laid out, and the wedding day came, clear and bright, as promising as any bride's day that ever was seen. Claudis Beauvois and a few of his friends galloped off to Prairie du Pont to bring the bride to church. The road from Caho' to Prairie du Pont was packed on both sides with dense thickets of black oak, honey locust, and red haws. Here and there a habitant had cut out a patch and built his cabin; or a path broken by hunters trailed towards the Mississippi. You ride the same track to-day, my child, only it is not as shaggy and savage as the course then lay. And as soon as Claudis Beauvois was out of sight, Gabriel Chartrant followed with his dozen French Puants, in feathers and buckskin, all smeared with red and yellow ochre, well mounted and well armed. They rode along until they reached the last path which turns off to the river. At the end of that path, a mile away through the underbrush, Paul and Jacques Le Page were stationed with a boat. The young men with Gabriel dismounted and led their horses into the thicket to wait for his signal. The birds had begun to sing just after three o'clock that clear morning, for Celeste lying awake heard them; and they were keeping it up in the bushes. Gabriel leaned his feathered head over the road, listening for hoof-falls and watching for the first puff of dust in the direction of Prairie du Pont. The road was not as well trodden as it is now, and a little ridge of weeds grew along the centre, high enough to rake the stirrup of a horseman. But in the distance, instead of the pat-a-pat of iron hoofs began a sudden uproar of cries and wild whoops. Then a cloud of dust came in earnest. Claudis Beauvois alone, without any hat, wild with fright, was galloping towards Cahokia. Gabriel understood that something had happened which ruined his own plan. He and his men sprung on their horses and headed off the fugitive. The bridegroom who had passed that way so lately with smiles, yelled and tried to wheel his horse into the brush; but Gabriel caught his bridle and demanded to know what was the matter. As soon as he heard the French tongue spoken he begged for his life, and to know what more they required of him, since the rest of their band had already taken his bride. They made him tell them the facts. The real Puants had attacked the wedding procession before it was out of sight of Prairie du Pont, and had scattered it and carried off Celeste. He did not know what had become of anybody except himself, after she was taken. Gabriel gave his horse a cut which was like a kick to its rider. He shot ahead, glad to pass what he had taken for a second body of Indians, and Le Maudit Pensonneau hooted after him. "The miserable coward. I wish I had taken his scalp. He makes me feel a very good Puant indeed." "Who cares what becomes of him?" said Gabriel. "It is Celeste that we want. The real Puants have got ahead of us and kidnaped the bride. Will any of you go with me?" The poor fellow was white as ashes. Not a man needed to ask him where he was going, but they all answered in a breath and dashed after him. They broke directly through the thicket on the opposite side of the road, and came out into the tall prairie grass. They knew every path, marais, and rigolé for miles around, and took their course eastward, correctly judging that the Indians would follow the line of the bluffs and go north. Splash went their horses among the reeds of sloughs and across sluggish creeks, and by this short cut they soon came on the fresh trail. At Falling Spring they made a halt to rest the horses a few minutes, and wash the red and yellow paint off their hands and faces; then galloped on along the rocky bluffs up the Bottom lands. But after a few miles they saw they had lost the trail. Closely scouting in every direction, they had to go back to Falling Spring, and there at last they found that the Indians had left the Bottom and by a winding path among rocks ascended to the uplands. Much time was lost. They had heard, while they galloped, the church bell tolling alarm in Cahokia, and they knew how the excitable inhabitants were running together at Beauvois' story, the women weeping and the men arming themselves, calling a council, and loading with contempt a runaway bridegroom. Gabriel and his men, with their faces set north, hardly glanced aside to see the river shining along its distant bed. But one of them thought of saying,-- "Paul and Jacques will have a long wait with the boat." The sun passed over their heads, and sunk hour by hour, and set. The western sky was red; and night began to close in, and still they urged their tired horses on. There would be a moon a little past its full, and they counted on its light when it should rise. The trail of the Puants descended to the Bottom again at the head of the Grand Marais. There was heavy timber here. The night shadow of trees and rocks covered them, and they began to move more cautiously, for all signs pointed to a camp. And sure enough, when they had passed an abutment of the ridge, far off through the woods they saw a fire. My son (mon Oncle Mathieu would say at this point of the story), will you do me the favor to bring me a coal for my pipe? (The coal being brought in haste, he put it into the bowl with his finger and thumb, and seemed to doze while he drew at the stem. The smoke puffed deliberately from his lips, while all the time that mysterious fire was burning in the woods for my impatience to dance upon with hot feet, above the Grand Marais!) Oh, yes, Gabriel and his men were getting very close to the Puants. They dismounted, and tied their horses in a crabapple thicket and crept forward on foot. He halted them, and crawled alone toward the light to reconnoitre, careful not to crack a twig or make the least noise. The nearer he crawled the more his throat seemed to choke up and his ears to fill with buzzing sounds. The camp fire showed him Celeste tied to a tree. She looked pale and dejected, and her head rested against the tree stem, but her eyes kept roving the darkness in every direction as if she expected rescue. Her bridal finery had been torn by the bushes and her hair was loose, but Gabriel had never seen Celeste when she looked so beautiful. Thirteen big Puants were sitting around the camp fire eating their supper of half-raw meat. Their horses were hobbled a little beyond, munching such picking as could be found among the fern. Gabriel went back as still as a snake and whispered his orders to his men. Every Frenchman must pick the Puant directly in front of him, and be sure to hit that Puant. If the attack was half-hearted and the Indians gained time to rally, Celeste would suffer the consequences; they could kill her or escape with her. If you wish to gain an Indian's respect you must make a neat job of shooting him down. He never forgives a bungler. "And then," said Gabriel, "we will rush in with our knives and hatchets. It must be all done in a moment." The men reprimed their flintlocks, and crawled forward abreast. Gabriel was at the extreme right. When they were near enough he gave his signal, the nasal singing of the rattlesnake. The guns cracked all together, and every Cahokian sprung up to finish the work with knife and hatchet. Nine of the Puants fell dead, and the rest were gone before the smoke cleared. They left their meat, their horses, and arms. They were off like deer, straight through the woods to any place of safety. Every marksman had taken the Indian directly in front of him, but as they were abreast and the Puants in a circle, those four on the opposite side of the fire had been sheltered. Le Maudit Pensonneau scalped the red heads by the fire and hung the scalps in his belt. Our French people took up too easily, indeed, with savage ways; but Le Maudit Pensonneau was always full of his pranks. Oh, yes, Gabriel himself untied Celeste. She was wild with joy, and cried on Gabriel's shoulder; and all the young men who had taken their first communion with Gabriel and had played with this dear girl when she was a child, felt the tears come into their own eyes. All but Le Maudit Pensonneau. He was busy rounding up the horses. "Here's my uncle Larue's filly that was taken two weeks ago," said Le Maudit, calling from the hobbling place. "And here are the blacks that Ferland lost, and Pierre's pony--half these horses are Caho' horses." He tied them together so that they could be driven two or three abreast ahead of the party, and then he gathered up all the guns left by the Indians. Gabriel now called a council, for it had to be decided directly what they should do next. Pain Court was seven miles in a straight line from the spot where they stood; while Cahokia was ten miles to the southwest. "Would it not be best to go at once to Pain Court?" said Gabriel. "Celeste, after this frightful day, needs food and sleep as soon as she can get them, and my aunt Choutou is ready for her. And boats can always be found opposite Pain Court." All the young men were ready to go to Pain Court. They really thought, even after all that had happened, that it would be wisest to deal with Alexis Barbeau at a distance. But Celeste herself decided the matter. Gabriel had not let go of her. He kept his hand on her as if afraid she might be kidnaped again. "We will go home to my grandfather and grandmother au Caho'," said Celeste. "I will not go anywhere else." "But you forget that Beauvois is au Caho'?" said one of the young men. "Oh, I never can forget anything connected with this day," said Celeste, and the tears ran down her face. "I never can forget how willingly I let those Puants take me, and I laughed as one of them flung me on the horse behind him. We were nearly to the bluffs before I spoke. He did not say anything, and the others all had eyes which made me shudder. I pressed my hands on his buckskin sides and said to him, 'Gabriel.' And he turned and looked at me. I never had seen a feature of his frightful face before. And then I understood that the real Puants had me. Do you think I will ever marry anybody but the man who took me away from them? No. If worst comes to worst, I will go before the high altar and the image of the Holy Virgin, and make a public vow never to marry anybody else." The young men flung up their arms in the air and raised a hurrah. Hats they had none to swing. Their cheeks were burnt by the afternoon sun. They were hungry and thirsty, and so tired that any one of them could have flung himself on the old leaves and slept as soon as he stretched himself. But it put new heart in them to see how determined she was. So the horses were brought up, and the captured guns were packed upon some of the recovered ponies. There were some new blankets strapped on the backs of these Indian horses, and Gabriel took one of the blankets and secured it as a pillion behind his own saddle for Celeste to ride upon. As they rode out of the forest shadow they could see the moon just coming up over the hills beyond the great Cahokian mound. It was midnight when the party trampled across the rigolé bridge into Cahokia streets. The people were sleeping with one eye open. All day, stragglers from the wedding procession had been coming in, and a company was organized for defense and pursuit. They had heard that the whole Pottawattamie nation had risen. And since Celeste Barbeau was kidnaped, anything might be expected. Gabriel and his men were missed early, but the excitement was so great that their unexplained absence was added without question to the general calamity. Candles showed at once, and men with gun barrels shining in the moonlight gathered quickly from all directions. "Friends, friends!" Celeste called out; for the young men in buckskin, with their booty of driven horses, were enough like Puants to be in danger of a volley. "It is Celeste. Gabriel Chartrant and his men have killed the Indians and brought me back." "It is Celeste Barbeau! Gabriel Chartrant and his men have killed the Indians and brought her back!" the word was passed on. Her grandfather hung to her hand on one side of the horse, and her grandmother embraced her knees on the other. The old father was in his red nightcap and the old mother had pulled slippers on her bare feet. But without a thought of their appearance they wept aloud and fell on the neighbors' necks, and the neighbors fell upon each others' necks. Some kneeled down in the dust and returned thanks to the saints they had invoked. The auberge keeper and three old men who smoked their pipes steadily on his gallery every day took hold of hands and danced in a circle. Children who had waked to shriek with fear galloped the streets to proclaim at every window, "Celeste Barbeau is brought back!" The whole town was in a delirium of joy. Manette Le Compt, who had been brought home with the terrified bridesmaids and laughed in her sleeve all day because she thought Gabriel and his men were the Puants, leaned against a wall and turned sick. I have heard her say she never was so confused in her life as when she saw the driven horses, and the firearms, and those coarse-haired scalps hanging to Le Maudit Pensonneau's belt. The moon showed them all distinctly. Manette had thought it laughable when she heard that Alexis Barbeau was shut up in his brick house at Prairie du Pont, with all the men and guns he could muster to protect his property; but now she wept indignantly about it. The priest had been the first man in the street, having lain down in all his clothes except his cassock, and he heartily gave Celeste and the young men his blessing, and counseled everybody to go to bed again. But Celeste reminded them that she was hungry, and as for the rescuers, they had ridden hard all day without a mouthful to eat. So the whole town made a feast, everybody bringing the best he had to Barbeau's house. They spread the table and crowded around, leaning over each, other's shoulders to take up bits in their hands and eat with and talk to the young people. Gabriel's mother sat beside him with her arm around him, and opposite was Celeste with her grandfather and grandmother, and all the party were ranged around. The feathers had been blown out of their hair by that long chase, but their buckskins were soiled, and the hastily washed colors yet smeared their ears and necks. Yet this supper was quite like a bridal feast. Ah, my child, we never know it when we are standing in the end of the rainbow. Gabriel and Celeste might live a hundred years, but they could never be quite as happy again. Paul and Jacques Le Page sat down with the other young men, and the noise of tongues in Barbeau's house could be heard out by the rigolé. It was like the swarming of wild bees. Paul and Jacques had waited with the boat until nightfall. They heard the firing when the Puants took Celeste, and watched hour after hour for some one to appear from the path; but at last concluding that Gabriel had been obliged to change his plan, they rowed back to Caho'. Claudis Beauvois was the only person who did not sit up talking until dawn. And nobody thought about him until noon the next day, when Captain Jean Saucier with a company of fusileers rode into the village from Fort Chartres. That was the first time my mother ever saw Captain Saucier. Your uncle François in Kaskaskia, he was also afterward Captain Saucier. I was not born until they had been married fifteen years. I was the last of their children. So Celeste Barbeau was kidnaped the day before my mother met my father. Glad as the Cahokians were to see them, the troops were no longer needed, for the Puants had gone. They were frightened out of the country. Oh, yes, all those Indians wanted was a good whipping, and they got it. Alexis Barbeau had come along with the soldiers from Prairie du Pont, and he was not the only man who had made use of military escort. Basil Le Page had come up from New Orleans in the last fleet of pirogues to Kaskaskia. There he heard so much about the Puants that he bought a swift horse and armed himself for the ride northward, and was glad when he reached Fort Chartres to ride into Cahokia with Captain Saucier. You might say Basil Le Page came in at one end of Cahokia and Claudis Beauvois went out at the other. For they knew one another directly, and it was noised in a minute that Basil said to his cousins Paul and Jacques:-- "What is that notorious swindler and gambler doing here? He left New Orleans suddenly, or he would be in prison now, and you will see if he stops here long after recognizing me." Claudis Beauvois did not turn around in the street to look at any woman, rich or poor, when he left Cahokia, though how he left was not certainly known. Alexis Barbeau and his other associates knew better how their pockets were left. Oh, yes, Alexis Barbeau was very willing for Celeste to marry Gabriel after that. He provided for them handsomely, and gave presents to each of the young men who had helped to take his daughter from the Puants; and he was so ashamed of the son-in-law he had wanted, that he never could endure to hear the man's name mentioned afterward. Alexis and the tavern-keeper used--when they were taking a social cup together--to hug each other without a word. The fine guest who had lived so long at the auberge and drank so much good wine, which was as fine as any in New Orleans, without expense, was as sore a memory to the poor landlord as to the rich landowner. But Celeste and Gabriel--my mother said when they were married the dancing and fiddling and feasting were kept up an entire week in Caho'. [Footnote 1: To Cahokia.] [Footnote 2: To Peoria.] [Footnote 3: To Kaskaskia.] [Footnote 4: Cahokian softening of cursed.] PONTIAC'S LOOKOUT. Jenieve Lalotte came out of the back door of her little house on Mackinac beach. The front door did not open upon either street of the village; and other domiciles were scattered with it along the strand, each little homestead having a front inclosure palisaded with oaken posts. Wooded heights sent a growth of bushes and young trees down to the pebble rim of the lake. It had been raining, and the island was fresh as if new made. Boats and bateaux, drawn up in a great semicircle about the crescent bay, had also been washed; but they kept the marks of their long voyages to the Illinois Territory, or the Lake Superior region, or Canada. The very last of the winterers were in with their bales of furs, and some of these men were now roaring along the upper street in new clothes, exhilarated by spending on good cheer in one month the money it took them eleven months to earn. While in "hyvernements," or winter quarters, and on the long forest marches, the allowance of food per day, for a winterer, was one quart of corn and two ounces of tallow. On this fare the hardiest voyageurs ever known threaded a pathless continent and made a great traffic possible. But when they returned to the front of the world,--that distributing point in the straits,--they were fiercely importunate for what they considered the best the world afforded. A segment of rainbow showed over one end of Round Island. The sky was dull rose, and a ship on the eastern horizon turned to a ship of fire, clean-cut and poised, a glistening object on a black bar of water. The lake was still, with blackness in its depths. The American flag on the fort rippled, a thing of living light, the stripes transparent. High pink clouds were riding down from the north, their flush dying as they piled aloft. There were shadings of peacock colors in the shoal water. Jenieve enjoyed this sunset beauty of the island, as she ran over the rolling pebbles, carrying some leather shoes by their leather strings. Her face was eager. She lifted the shoes to show them to three little boys playing on the edge of the lake. "Come here. See what I have for you." "What is it?" inquired the eldest, gazing betwixt the hairs scattered on his face; he stood with his back to the wind. His bare shins reddened in the wash of the lake, standing beyond its rim of shining gravel. "Shoes," answered Jenieve, in a note triumphant over fate. "What's shoes?" asked the smallest half-breed, tucking up his smock around his middle. "They are things to wear on your feet," explained Jenieve; and her red-skinned half-brothers heard her with incredulity. She had told their mother, in their presence, that she intended to buy the children some shoes when she got pay for her spinning; and they thought it meant fashions from the Fur Company's store to wear to mass, but never suspected she had set her mind on dark-looking clamps for the feet. "You must try them on," said Jenieve, and they all stepped experimentally from the water, reluctant to submit. But Jenieve was mistress in the house. There is no appeal from a sister who is a father to you, and even a substitute for your living mother. "You sit down first, François, and wipe your feet with this cloth." The absurdity of wiping his feet before he turned in for the night tickled François, though he was of a strongly aboriginal cast, and he let himself grin. Jenieve helped him struggle to encompass his lithe feet with the clumsy brogans. "You boys are living like Indians." "We are Indians," asserted François. "But you are French, too. You are my brothers. I want you to go to mass looking as well as anybody." Hitherto their object in life had been to escape mass. They objected to increasing their chances of church-going. Moccasins were the natural wear of human beings, and nobody but women needed even moccasins until cold weather. The proud look of an Iroquois taking spoils disappeared from the face of the youngest, giving way to uneasy anguish. The three boys sat down to tug, Jenieve going encouragingly from one to another. François lay on his back and pushed his heels skyward. Contempt and rebellion grew also in the faces of Gabriel and Toussaint. They were the true children of François Iroquois, her mother's second husband, who had been wont to lounge about Mackinac village in dirty buckskins and a calico shirt having one red and one blue sleeve. He had also bought a tall silk hat at the Fur Company's store, and he wore the hat under his blanket when it rained. If tobacco failed him, he scraped and dried willow peelings, and called them kinnickinnick. This worthy relation had worked no increase in Jenieve's home except an increase of children. He frequently yelled around the crescent bay, brandishing his silk hat in the exaltation of rum. And when he finally fell off the wharf into deep water, and was picked out to make another mound in the Indian burying-ground, Jenieve was so fiercely elated that she was afraid to confess it to the priest. Strange matches were made on the frontier, and Indian wives were commoner than any other kind; but through the whole mortifying existence of this Indian husband Jenieve avoided the sight of him, and called her mother steadily Mama Lalotte. The girl had remained with her grandmother, while François Iroquois carried off his wife to the Indian village on a western height of the island. Her grandmother had died, and Jenieve continued to keep house on the beach, having always with her one or more of the half-breed babies, until the plunge of François Iroquois allowed her to bring them all home with their mother. There was but one farm on the island, and Jenieve had all the spinning which the sheep afforded. She was the finest spinner in that region. Her grandmother had taught her to spin with a little wheel, as they still do about Quebec. Her pay was small. There was not much money then in the country, but bills of credit on the Fur Company's store were the same as cash, and she managed to feed her mother and the Indian's family. Fish were to be had for the catching, and she could get corn-meal and vegetables for her soup pot in partial exchange for her labor. The luxuries of life on the island were air and water, and the glories of evening and morning. People who could buy them got such gorgeous clothes as were brought by the Company. But usually Jenieve felt happy enough when she put on her best red homespun bodice and petticoat for mass or to go to dances. She did wish for shoes. The ladies at the fort had shoes, with heels which clicked when they danced. Jenieve could dance better, but she always felt their eyes on her moccasins, and came to regard shoes as the chief article of one's attire. Though the joy of shoeing her brothers was not to be put off, she had not intended to let them keep on these precious brogans of civilization while they played beside the water. But she suddenly saw Mama Lalotte walking along the street near the lake with old Michel Pensonneau. Beyond these moving figures were many others, of engagés and Indians, swarming in front of the Fur Company's great warehouse. Some were talking and laughing; others were in a line, bearing bales of furs from bateaux just arrived at the log-and-stone wharf stretched from the centre of the bay. But all of them, and curious women peeping from their houses on the beach, particularly Jean Bati' McClure's wife, could see that Michel Pensonneau was walking with Mama Lalotte. This sight struck cold down Jenieve's spine. Mama Lalotte was really the heaviest charge she had. Not twenty minutes before had that flighty creature been set to watch the supper pot, and here she was, mincing along, and fixing her pale blue laughing eyes on Michel Pensonneau, and bobbing her curly flaxen head at every word he spoke. A daughter who has a marrying mother on her hands may become morbidly anxious; Jenieve felt she should have no peace of mind during the month the coureurs-de-bois remained on the island. Whether they arrived early or late, they had soon to be off to the winter hunting-grounds; yet here was an emergency. "Mama Lalotte!" called Jenieve. Her strong young fingers beckoned with authority. "Come here to me. I want you." The giddy parent, startled and conscious, turned a conciliating smile that way. "Yes, Jenieve," she answered obediently, "I come." But she continued to pace by the side of Michel Pensonneau. Jenieve desired to grasp her by the shoulder and walk her into the house; but when the world, especially Jean Bati' McClure's wife, is watching to see how you manage an unruly mother, it is necessary to use some adroitness. "Will you please come here, dear Mama Lalotte? Toussaint wants you." "No, I don't!" shouted Toussaint. "It is Michel Pensonneau I want, to make me some boats." The girl did not hesitate. She intercepted the couple, and took her mother's arm in hers. The desperation of her act appeared to her while she was walking Mama Lalotte home; still, if nothing but force will restrain a parent, you must use force. Michel Pensonneau stood squarely in his moccasins, turning redder and redder at the laugh of his cronies before the warehouse. He was dressed in new buckskins, and their tawny brightness made his florid cheeks more evident. Michel Pensonneau had been brought up by the Cadottes of Sault Ste. Marie, and he had rich relations at Cahokia, in the Illinois Territory. If he was not as good as the family of François Iroquois, he wanted to know the reason why. It is true, he was past forty and a bachelor. To be a bachelor, in that region, where Indian wives were so plenty and so easily got rid of, might bring some reproach on a man. Michel had begun to see that it did. He was an easy, gormandizing, good fellow, shapelessly fat, and he never had stirred himself during his month of freedom to do any courting. But Frenchmen of his class considered fifty the limit of an active life. It behooved him now to begin looking around; to prepare a fireside for himself. Michel was a good clerk to his employers. Cumbrous though his body might be, when he was in the woods he never shirked any hardship to secure a specially fine bale of furs. Mama Lalotte, propelled against her will, sat down, trembling, in the house. Jenieve, trembling also, took the wooden bowls and spoons from a shelf and ladled out soup for the evening meal. Mama Lalotte was always willing to have the work done without trouble to herself, and she sat on a three-legged stool, like a guest. The supper pot boiled in the centre of the house, hanging on the crane which was fastened to a beam overhead. Smoke from the clear fire passed that richly darkened transverse of timber as it ascended, and escaped through a hole in the bark roof. The Fur Company had a great building with chimneys; but poor folks were glad to have a cedar hut of one room, covered with bark all around and on top. A fire-pit, or earthen hearth, was left in the centre, and the nearer the floor could be brought to this hole, without danger, the better the house was. On winter nights, fat French and half-breed children sat with heels to this sunken altar, and heard tales of massacre or privation which made the family bunks along the wall seem couches of luxury. It was the aboriginal hut patterned after his Indian brother's by the Frenchman; and the succession of British and American powers had not yet improved it. To Jenieve herself, the crisis before her, so insignificant against the background of that historic island, was more important than massacre or conquest. "Mama,"--she spoke tremulously,--"I was obliged to bring you in. It is not proper to be seen on the street with an engagé". The town is now full of these bush-lopers." "Bush-lopers, mademoiselle!" The little flaxen-haired woman had a shrill voice. "What was your own father?" "He was a clerk, madame," maintained the girl's softer treble, "and always kept good credit for his family at the Company's store." "I see no difference. They are all the same." "François Iroquois was not the same." As the girl said this she felt a powder-like flash from her own eyes. Mama Lalotte was herself a little ashamed of the François Iroquois alliance, but she answered, "He let me walk outside the house, at least. You allow me no amusement at all. I cannot even talk over the fence to Jean Bati' McClure's wife." "Mama, you do not understand the danger of all these things, and I do. Jean Bati' McClure's wife will be certain to get you into trouble. She is not a proper woman for you to associate with. Her mind runs on nothing but match-making." "Speak to her, then, for yourself. I wish you would get married." "I never shall," declared Jenieve. "I have seen the folly of it." "You never have been young," complained Mama Lalotte. "You don't know how a young person feels. "I let you go to the dances," argued Jenieve. "You have as good a time as any woman on the island. But old Michel Pensonneau," she added sternly, "is not settling down to smoke his pipe for the remainder of his life on this doorstep." "Monsieur Pensonneau is not old." "Do you take up for him, Mama Lalotte, in spite of me?" In the girl's rich brunette face the scarlet of the cheeks deepened. "Am I not more to you than Michel Pensonneau or any other engagé? He is old; he is past forty. Would I call him old if he were no more than twenty?" "Every one cannot be only twenty and a young agent," retorted her elder; and Jenieve's ears and throat reddened, also. "Have I not done my best for you and the boys? Do you think it does not hurt me to be severe with you?" Mama Lalotte flounced around on her stool, but made no reply. She saw peeping and smiling at the edge of the door a neighbor's face, that encouraged her insubordinations. Its broad, good-natured upper lip thinly veiled with hairs, its fleshy eyelids and thick brows, expressed a strength which she had not, yet would gladly imitate. "Jenieve Lalotte," spoke the neighbor, "before you finish whipping your mother you had better run and whip the boys. They are throwing their shoes in the lake." "Their shoes!" Jenieve cried, and she scarcely looked at Jean Bati' McClure's wife, but darted outdoors along the beach. "Oh, children, have you lost your shoes?" "No," answered Toussaint, looking up with a countenance full of enjoyment. "Where are they?" "In the lake." "You didn't throw your new shoes in the lake?" "We took them for boats," said Gabriel freely. "But they are not even fit for boats." "I threw mine as far as I could," observed François. "You can't make anything float in them." She could see one of them stranded on the lake bottom, loaded with stones, its strings playing back and forth in the clear water. The others were gone out to the straits. Jenieve remembered all her toil for them, and her denial of her own wants that she might give to these half-savage boys, who considered nothing lost that they threw into the lake. She turned around to run to the house. But there stood Jean Bati' McClure's wife, talking through the door, and encouraging her mother to walk with coureurs-de-bois. The girl's heart broke. She took to the bushes to hide her weeping, and ran through them towards the path she had followed so many times when her only living kindred were at the Indian village. The pine woods received her into their ascending heights, and she mounted towards sunset. Panting from her long walk, Jenieve came out of the woods upon a grassy open cliff, called by the islanders Pontiac's Lookout, because the great war chief used to stand on that spot, forty years before, and gaze southward, as if he never could give up his hope of the union of his people. Jenieve knew the story. She had built playhouses here, when a child, without being afraid of the old chief's lingering influence; for she seemed to understand his trouble, and this night she was more in sympathy with Pontiac than ever before in her life. She sat down on the grass, wiping the tears from her hot cheeks, her dark eyes brooding on the lovely straits. There might be more beautiful sights in the world, but Jenieve doubted it; and a white gull drifted across her vision like a moving star. Pontiac's Lookout had been the spot from which she watched her father's bateau disappear behind Round Island. He used to go by way of Detroit to the Canadian woods. Here she wept out her first grief for his death; and here she stopped, coming and going between her mother and grandmother. The cliff down to the beach was clothed with a thick growth which took away the terror of falling, and many a time Jenieve had thrust her bare legs over the edge to sit and enjoy the outlook. There were old women on the island who could remember seeing Pontiac. Her grandmother had told her how he looked. She had heard that, though his bones had been buried forty years beside the Mississippi, he yet came back to the Lookout every night during that summer month when all the tribes assembled at the island to receive money from a new government. He could not lie still while they took a little metal and ammunition in their hands in exchange for their country. As for the tribes, they enjoyed it. Jenieve could see their night fires begin to twinkle on Round Island and Bois Blanc, and the rising hubbub of their carnival came to her like echoes across the strait. There was one growing star on the long hooked reef which reached out from Round Island, and figures of Indians were silhouetted against the lake, running back and forth along that high stone ridge. Evening coolness stole up to Jenieve, for the whole water world was purpling; and sweet pine and cedar breaths, humid and invisible, were all around her. Her trouble grew small, laid against the granite breast of the island, and the woods darkened and sighed behind her. Jenieve could hear the shout of some Indian boy at the distant village. She was not afraid, but her shoulders contracted with a shiver. The place began to smell rankly of sweetbrier. There was no sweetbrier on the cliff or in the woods, though many bushes grew on alluvial slopes around the bay. Jenieve loved the plant, and often stuck a piece of it in her bosom. But this was a cold smell, striking chill to the bones. Her flesh and hair and clothes absorbed the scent, and it cooled her nostrils with its strange ether, the breath of sweetbrier, which always before seemed tinctured by the sun. She had a sensation of moving sidewise out of her own person; and then she saw the chief Pontiac standing on the edge of the cliff. Jenieve knew his back, and the feathers in his hair which the wind did not move. His head turned on a pivot, sweeping the horizon from St. Ignace, where the white man first set foot, to Round Island, where the shameful fires burned. His hard, set features were silver color rather than copper, as she saw his profile against the sky. His arms were folded in his blanket. Jenieve was as sure that she saw Pontiac as she was sure of the rock on which she sat. She poked one finger through the sward to the hardness underneath. The rock was below her, and Pontiac stood before her. He turned his head back from Round Island to St. Ignace. The wind blew against him, and the brier odor, sickening sweet, poured over Jenieve. She heard the dogs bark in Mackinac village, and leaves moving behind her, and the wash of water at the base of the island which always sounded like a small rain. Instead of feeling afraid, she was in a nightmare of sorrow. Pontiac had loved the French almost as well as he loved his own people. She breathed the sweetbrier scent, her neck stretched forward and her dark eyes fixed on him; and as his head turned back from St. Ignace his whole body moved with it, and he looked at Jenieve. His eyes were like a cat's in the purple darkness, or like that heatless fire which shines on rotting bark. The hoar-frosted countenance was noble even in its most brutal lines. Jenieve, without knowing she was saying a word, spoke out:-- "Monsieur the chief Pontiac, what ails the French and Indians?" "Malatat," answered Pontiac. The word came at her with force. "Monsieur the chief Pontiac," repeated Jenieve, struggling to understand, "I say, what ails the French and Indians?" "Malatat!" His guttural cry rang through the bushes. Jenieve was so startled that she sprung back, catching herself on her hands. But without the least motion of walking he was far westward, showing like a phosphorescent bar through the trees, and still moving on, until the pallor was lost from sight. Jenieve at once began to cross herself. She had forgotten to do it before. The rankness of sweetbrier followed her some distance down the path, and she said prayers all the way home. You cannot talk with great spirits and continue to chafe about little things. The boys' shoes and Mama Lalotte's lightness were the same as forgotten. Jenieve entered her house with dew in her hair, and an unterrified freshness of body for whatever might happen. She was certain she had seen Pontiac, but she would never tell anybody to have it laughed at. There was no candle burning, and the fire had almost died under the supper pot. She put a couple of sticks on the coals, more for their blaze than to heat her food. But the Mackinac night was chill, and it was pleasant to see the interior of her little home flickering to view. Candles were lighted in many houses along the beach, and amongst them Mama Lalotte was probably roaming,--for she had left the door open towards the lake,--and the boys' voices could be heard with others in the direction of the log wharf. Jenieve took her supper bowl and sat down on the doorstep. The light cloud of smoke, drawn up to the roof-hole, ascended behind her, forming an azure gray curtain against which her figure showed, round-wristed and full-throated. The starlike camp fires on Round Island were before her, and the incessant wash of the water on its pebbles was company to her. Somebody knocked on the front door. "It is that insolent Michel Pensonneau," thought Jenieve. "When he is tired he will go away." Yet she was not greatly surprised when the visitor ceased knocking and came around the palisades. "Good-evening, Monsieur Crooks," said Jenieve. "Good-evening, mademoiselle," responded Monsieur Crooks, and he leaned against the hut side, cap in hand, where he could look at her. He had never yet been asked to enter the house. Jenieve continued to eat her supper. "I hope monsieur your uncle is well?" "My uncle is well. It isn't necessary for me to inquire about madame your mother, for I have just seen her sitting on McClure's doorstep." "Oh," said Jenieve. The young man shook his cap in a restless hand. Though he spoke French easily, he was not dressed like an engagé, and he showed through the dark the white skin of the Saxon. "Mademoiselle Jenieve,"--he spoke suddenly,--"you know my uncle is well established as agent of the Fur Company, and as his assistant I expect to stay here." "Yes, monsieur. Did you take in some fine bales of furs to-day?" "That is not what I was going to say." "Monsieur Crooks, you speak all languages, don't you?" "Not all. A few. I know a little of nearly every one of our Indian dialects." "Monsieur, what does 'malatat' mean?" "'Malatat'? That's a Chippewa word. You will often hear that. It means 'good for nothing.'" "But I have heard that the chief Pontiac was an Ottawa." The young man was not interested in Pontiac. "A chief would know a great many dialects," he replied. "Chippewa was the tongue of this island. But what I wanted to say is that I have had a serious talk with the agent. He is entirely willing to have me settle down. And he says, what is the truth, that you are the best and prettiest girl at the straits. I have spoken my mind often enough. Why shouldn't we get married right away?" Jenieve set her bowl and spoon inside the house, and folded her arms. "Monsieur, have I not told you many times? I cannot marry. I have a family already." The young agent struck his cap impatiently against the bark weather-boarding. "You are the most offish girl I ever saw. A man cannot get near enough to you to talk reason." "It would be better if you did not come down here at all, Monsieur Crooks," said Jenieve. "The neighbors will be saying I am setting a bad example to my mother." "Bring your mother up to the Fur Company's quarters with you, and the neighbors will no longer have a chance to put mischief into her head." Jenieve took him seriously, though she had often suspected, from what she could see at the fort, that Americans had not the custom of marrying an entire family. "It is really too fine a place for us." Young Crooks laughed. Squaws had lived in the Fur Company's quarters, but he would not mention this fact to the girl. His eyes dwelt fondly on her in the darkness, for though the fire behind her had again sunk to embers, it cast up a little glow; and he stood entirely in the star-embossed outside world. It is not safe to talk in the dark: you tell too much. The primitive instinct of truth-speaking revives in force, and the restraints of another's presence are gone. You speak from the unseen to the unseen over leveled barriers of reserve. Young Crooks had scarcely said that place was nothing, and he would rather live in that little house with Jenieve than in the Fur Company's quarters without her, when she exclaimed openly, "And have old Michel Pensonneau put over you!" The idea of Michel Pensonneau taking precedence of him as master of the cedar hut was delicious to the American, as he recalled the engagé's respectful slouch while receiving the usual bill of credit. "One may laugh, monsieur. I laugh myself; it is better than crying. But it is the truth that Mama Lalotte is more care to me than all the boys. I have no peace except when she is asleep in bed." "There is no harm in Madame Lalotte." "You are right, monsieur. Jean Bati' McClure's wife puts all the mischief in her head. She would even learn to spin, if that woman would let her alone." "And I never heard any harm of Michel Pensonneau. He is a good enough fellow, and he has more to his credit on the Company's books than any other engagé now on the island." "I suppose you would like to have him sit and smoke his pipe the rest of his days on your doorstep?" "No, I wouldn't," confessed the young agent. "Michel is a saving man, and he uses very mean tobacco, the cheapest in the house." "You see how I am situated, monsieur. It is no use to talk to me." "But Michel Pensonneau is not going to trouble you long. He has relations at Cahokia, in the Illinois Territory, and he is fitting himself out to go there to settle." "Are you sure of this, monsieur?" "Certainly I am, for we have already made him a bill of credit to our correspondent at Cahokia. He wants very few goods to carry across the Chicago portage." "Monsieur, how soon does he intend to go?" "On the first schooner that sails to the head of the lake; so he may set out any day. Michel is anxious to try life on the Mississippi, and his three years' engagement with the Company is just ended." "I also am anxious to have him try life on the Mississippi," said Jenieve, and she drew a deep breath of relief. "Why did you not tell me this before?" "How could I know you were interested in him?" "He is not a bad man," she admitted kindly. "I can see that he means very well. If the McClures would go to the Illinois Territory with him--But, Monsieur Crooks," Jenieve asked sharply, "do people sometimes make sudden marriages?" "In my case they have not," sighed the young man. "But I think well of sudden marriages myself. The priest comes to the island this week." "Yes, and I must take the children to confession." "What are you going to do with me, Jenieve?" "I am going to say good-night to you, and shut my door." She stepped into the house. "Not yet. It is only a little while since they fired the sunset gun at the fort. You are not kind to shut me out the moment I come." She gave him her hand, as she always did when she said good-night, and he prolonged his hold of it. "You are full of sweetbrier. I didn't know it grew down here on the beach." "It never did grow here, Monsieur Crooks." "You shall have plenty of it in your garden, when you come home with me." "Oh, go away, and let me shut my door, monsieur. It seems no use to tell you I cannot come." "No use at all. Until you come, then, good-night." Seldom are two days alike on the island. Before sunrise the lost dews of paradise always sweeten those scented woods, and the birds begin to remind you of something you heard in another life, but have forgotten. Jenieve loved to open her door and surprise the east. She stepped out the next morning to fill her pail. There was a lake of translucent cloud beyond the water lake: the first unruffled, and the second wind-stirred. The sun pushed up, a flattened red ball, from the lake of steel ripples to the lake of calm clouds. Nearer, a schooner with its sails down stood black as ebony between two bars of light drawn across the water, which lay dull and bleak towards the shore. The addition of a schooner to the scattered fleet of sailboats, bateaux, and birch canoes made Jenieve laugh. It must have arrived from Sault Ste. Marie in the night. She had hopes of getting rid of Michel Pensonneau that very day. Since he was going to Cahokia, she felt stinging regret for the way she had treated him before the whole village; yet her mother could not be sacrificed to politeness. Except his capacity for marrying, there was really no harm in the old fellow, as Monsieur Crooks had said. The humid blockhouse and walls of the fort high above the bay began to glisten in emerging sunlight, and Jenieve determined not to be hard on Mama Lalotte that day. If Michel came to say good-by, she would shake his hand herself. It was not agreeable for a woman so fond of company to sit in the house with nobody but her daughter. Mama Lalotte did not love the pine woods, or any place where she would be alone. But Jenieve could sit and spin in solitude all day, and think of that chill silver face she had seen at Pontiac's Lookout, and the floating away of the figure, a phosphorescent bar through the trees, and of that spoken word which had denounced the French and Indians as good for nothing. She decided to tell the priest, even if he rebuked her. It did not seem any stranger to Jenieve than many things which were called natural, such as the morning miracles in the eastern sky, and the growth of the boys, her dear torments. To Jenieve's serious eyes, trained by her grandmother, it was not as strange as the sight of Mama Lalotte, a child in maturity, always craving amusement, and easily led by any chance hand. The priest had come to Mackinac in the schooner during the night. He combined this parish with others more or less distant, and he opened the chapel and began his duties as soon as he arrived. Mama Lalotte herself offered to dress the boys for confession. She put their best clothes on them, and then she took out all her own finery. Jenieve had no suspicion while the little figure preened and burnished itself, making up for the lack of a mirror by curves of the neck to look itself well over. Mama Lalotte thought a great deal about what she wore. She was pleased, and her flaxen curls danced. She kissed Jenieve on both cheeks, as if there had been no quarrel, though unpleasant things never lingered in her memory. And she made the boys kiss Jenieve; and while they were saddened by clothes, she also made them say they were sorry about the shoes. By sunset, the schooner, which had sat in the straits all day, hoisted its sails and rounded the hooked point of the opposite island. The gun at the fort was like a parting salute, and a shout was raised by coureurs-de-bois thronging the log wharf. They trooped up to the fur warehouse, and the sound of a fiddle and the thump of soft-shod feet were soon heard; for the French were ready to celebrate any occasion with dancing. Laughter and the high excited voices of women also came from the little ball-room, which was only the office of the Fur Company. Here the engagés felt at home. The fiddler sat on the top of the desk, and men lounging on a row of benches around the walls sprang to their feet and began to caper at the violin's first invitation. Such maids and wives as were nearest the building were haled in, laughing, by their relations; and in the absence of the agents, and of that awe which goes with making your cross-mark on a paper, a quick carnival was held on the spot where so many solemn contracts had been signed. An odor of furs came from the packing-rooms around, mixed with gums and incense-like whiffs. Added to this was the breath of the general store kept by the agency. Tobacco and snuff, rum, chocolate, calico, blankets, wood and iron utensils, fire-arms, West India sugar and rice,--all sifted their invisible essences on the air. Unceiled joists showed heavy and brown overhead. But there was no fireplace, for when the straits stood locked in ice and the island was deep in snow, no engagé claimed admission here. He would be a thousand miles away, toiling on snow-shoes with his pack of furs through the trees, or bargaining with trappers for his contribution to this month of enormous traffic. Clean buckskin legs and brand-new belted hunting-shirts whirled on the floor, brightened by sashes of crimson or kerchiefs of orange. Indians from the reservation on Round Island, who happened to be standing, like statues, in front of the building, turned and looked with lenient eye on the performance of their French brothers. The fiddler was a nervous little Frenchman with eyes like a weasel, and he detected Jenieve Lalotte putting her head into the room. She glanced from figure to figure of the dancers, searching through the twilight for what she could not find; but before he could call her she was off. None of the men, except a few Scotch-French, were very tall, but they were a handsome, muscular race, fierce in enjoyment, yet with a languor which prolonged it, and gave grace to every picturesque pose. Not one of them wanted to pain Lalotte's girl, but, as they danced, a joyful fellow would here and there spring high above the floor and shout, "Good voyage to Michel Pensonneau and his new family!" They had forgotten the one who amused them yesterday, and remembered only the one who amused them to-day. Jenieve struck on Jean Bati' McClure's door, and faced his wife, speechless, pointing to the schooner ploughing southward. "Yes, she's gone," said Jean Bati' McClure's wife, "and the boys with her." The confidante came out on the step, and tried to lay her hand on Jenieve's shoulder, but the girl moved backward from her. "Now let me tell you, it is a good thing for you, Jenieve Lalotte. You can make a fine match of your own to-morrow. It is not natural for a girl to live as you have lived. You are better off without them." "But my mother has left me!" "Well, I am sorry for you; but you were hard on her." "I blame you, madame!" "You might as well blame the priest, who thought it best not to let them go unmarried. And she has taken a much worse man than Michel Pensonneau in her time." "My mother and my brothers have left me here alone," repeated Jenieve; and she wrung her hands and put them over her face. The trouble was so overwhelming that it broke her down before her enemy. "Oh, don't take it to heart," said Jean Bati' McClure's wife, with ready interest in the person nearest at hand. "Come and eat supper with my man and me to-night, and sleep in our house if you are afraid." Jenieve leaned her forehead against the hut, and made no reply to these neighborly overtures. "Did she say nothing at all about me, madame?" "Yes; she was afraid you would come at the last minute and take her by the arm and walk her home. You were too strict with her, and that is the truth. She was glad to get away to Cahokia. They say it is fine in the Illinois Territory. You know she is fond of seeing the world." The young supple creature trying to restrain her shivers and sobs of anguish against the bark house side was really a moving sight; and Jean Bati' McClure's wife, flattening a masculine upper lip with resolution, said promptly,-- "I am going this moment to the Fur Company's quarters to send young Monsieur Crooks after you." At that Jenieve fled along the beach and took to the bushes. As she ran, weeping aloud like a child, she watched the lessening schooner; and it seemed a monstrous thing, out of nature, that her mother was on that little ship, fleeing from her, with a thoughtless face set smiling towards a new world. She climbed on, to keep the schooner in sight, and made for Pontiac's Lookout, reckless of what she had seen there. The distant canvas became one leaning sail, and then a speck, and then nothing. There was an afterglow on the water which turned it to a wavering pavement of yellow-pink sheen. In that clear, high atmosphere, mainland shores and islands seemed to throw out the evening purples from themselves, and thus to slowly reach for one another and form darkness. Jenieve had lain on the grass, crying, "O Mama--François--Toussaint--Gabriel!" But she sat up at last, with her dejected head on her breast, submitting to the pettiness and treachery of what she loved. Bats flew across the open place. A sudden rankness of sweetbrier, taking her breath away by its icy puff, reminded her of other things, and she tried to get up and run. Instead of running she seemed to move sidewise out of herself, and saw Pontiac standing on the edge of the cliff. His head turned from St. Ignace to the reviving fires on Round Island, and slowly back again from Round Island to St. Ignace. Jenieve felt as if she were choking, but again she asked out of her heart to his,-- "Monsieur the chief Pontiac, what ails the French and Indians?" He floated around to face her, the high ridges of his bleached features catching light; but this time he showed only dim dead eyes. His head sunk on his breast, and Jenieve could see the fronds of the feathers he wore traced indistinctly against the sky. The dead eyes searched for her and could not see her; he whispered hoarsely to himself, "Malatat!" The voice of the living world calling her name sounded directly afterwards in the woods, and Jenieve leaped as if she were shot. She had the instinct that her lover must not see this thing, for there were reasons of race and religion against it. But she need not have feared that Pontiac would show himself, or his long and savage mourning for the destruction of the red man, to any descendant of the English. As the bushes closed behind her she looked back: the phosphoric blur was already so far in the west that she could hardly be sure she saw it again. And the young agent of the Fur Company, breaking his way among leaves, met her with both hands; saying gayly, to save her the shock of talking about her mother:-- "Come home, come home, my sweetbrier maid. No wonder you smell of sweetbrier. I am rank with it myself, rubbing against the dewy bushes." 
10946	----	THREE FRENCHMEN IN BENGAL [Illustration: THE GANGES VALLEY AND THE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS IN BENGAL, 1756 (_After Rennell_.)] THREE FRENCHMEN IN BENGAL OR _THE COMMERCIAL RUIN OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS IN 1757_ BY S.C. HILL, B.A., B.Sc. OFFICER IN CHARGE OF THE RECORDS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA AUTHOR OF "MAJOR-GENERAL CLAUD MARTIN" _WITH MAPS AND PLANS_ 1903 TO MY DEAR WIFE PREFACE This account of the commercial ruin of the French Settlements, taken almost entirely from hitherto unpublished documents, originated as follows. Whilst engaged in historical research connected with the Government Records in Calcutta, I found many references to the French in Bengal which interested me strongly in the personal side of their quarrel with the English, but the information obtainable from the Indian Records alone was still meagre and incomplete. A few months ago, however, I came across Law's Memoir in the British Museum; and, a little later, when visiting Paris to examine the French Archives, I found not only a copy of Law's Memoir, but also Renault's and Courtin's letters, of which there are, I believe, no copies in England. In these papers I thought that I had sufficient material to give something like an idea of Bengal as it appeared to the French when Clive arrived there. There is much bitterness in these old French accounts, and much misconception of the English, but they were written when misconception of national enemies was the rule and not the exception, and when the rights of non-belligerents were little respected in time of war. Some of the accusations I have checked by giving the English version, but I think that, whilst it is only justice to our Anglo-Indian heroes to let the world know what manner of men their opponents were, it is equally only justice to their opponents to allow them to give their own version of the story. This is my apology, if any one should think I allow them to say too much. The translations are my own, and were made in a state of some perplexity as to how far I was bound to follow my originals--the writings of men who, of course, were not literary, and often had not only no pretension to style but also no knowledge of grammar. I have tried, however, to preserve both form and spirit; but if any reader is dissatisfied, and would like to see the original papers for himself, the courtesy of the Record officials in both Paris and London will give him access to an immense quantity of documents as interesting as they are important. In the various accounts that I have used there are naturally slightly different versions of particular incidents, and often it is not easy to decide which is the correct one. Under the circumstances I may perhaps be excused for not always calling attention to discrepancies which the reader will detect for himself. He will also notice that the ground covered in one narrative is partly traversed in one or both of the others. This has been due to the necessity of treating the story from the point of view of each of the three chief actors. I may here mention that the correspondence between Clive and the princes of Bengal, from which I have given some illustrative passages, was first seen by me in a collection of papers printed in 1893 in the Government of India Central Printing Office, Calcutta, under the direction of Mr. G.W. Forrest, C.I.E. These papers have not yet been published, but there exists a complete though slightly different copy of this correspondence in the India Office Library (Orme MSS. India XI.), and it is from the latter copy that I have, by permission, made the extracts here given. The remaining English quotations, when not from printed books, have been taken chiefly from other volumes of the Orme MSS., a smaller number from the Bengal and Madras Records in the India Office, and a few from MSS. in the British Museum or among the Clive papers at Walcot, to which last I was allowed access by the kindness of the Earl of Powis. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to M. Omont of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, to Mr. W. Foster of the Record Department of the India Office, and to Mr. J.A. Herbert of the British Museum, for their kind and valuable assistance. S.C. HILL. _September_ 6, 1903. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE QUARREL WITH THE ENGLISH II. M. RENAULT, CHIEF OF CHANDERNAGORE III. M. LAW, CHIEF OF COSSIMBAZAR IV. M. COURTIN, CHIEF OF DACCA INDEX MAPS AND PLANS THE GANGES VALLEY AND THE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS IN BENGAL, 1756. (_After Rennell_) _Frontispiece_ MAP OF THE RIVER HUGLI FROM BANDEL TO FULTA. (_After Rennell_) _To face page_ FORT D'ORLÉANS, CHANDERNAGORE, 1749. (_Mouchet_) MUXADABAD, OR MURSHIDABAD. (_After Rennell_) DACCA, OR JEHANGIR-NAGAR. (_After Rennell_) [Illustration: MAP OF THE RIVER HUGLI FROM BANDEL TO FULTA. (_After Rennell_.)] THREE FRENCHMEN IN BENGAL CHAPTER I THE QUARREL WITH THE ENGLISH Writing in 1725, the French naval commander, the Chevalier d'Albert, tells us that the three most handsome towns on the Ganges were Calcutta, Chandernagore, and Chinsurah, the chief Factories of the English, French, and Dutch. These towns were all situated within thirty miles of each other. Calcutta, the latest founded, was the greatest and the richest, owing partly to its situation, which permitted the largest ships of the time to anchor at its quays, and partly to the privilege enjoyed by the English merchants of trading freely as individuals through the length and breadth of the land. Native merchants and native artisans crowded to Calcutta, and the French and Dutch, less advantageously situated and hampered by restrictions of trade, had no chance of competing with the English on equal terms. The same was of course true of their minor establishments in the interior. All three nations had important Factories at Cossimbazar (in the neighbourhood of Murshidabad, the Capital of Bengal) and at Dacca, and minor Factories at Jugdea or Luckipore, and at Balasore. The French and Dutch had also Factories at Patna. Besides Calcutta, Chandernagore, and Chinsurah, the only Factory which was fortified was the English Factory at Cossimbazar. During the long reign of the usurper, Aliverdi Khan,[1] that strong and politic ruler enforced peace among his European guests, and forbade any fortification of the Factories, except such as was necessary to protect them against possible incursions of the Marathas, who at that time made periodical attacks on Muhammadans and Hindus alike to enforce the payment of the _chauth_,[2] or blackmail, which they levied upon all the countries within their reach. In Southern India the English and French had been constantly at war whenever there was war in Europe, but in Bengal the strength of the Government, the terror of the Marathas, and the general weakness of the Europeans had contrived to enforce a neutrality. Still there was nothing to guarantee its continuance if the fear of the native Government and of the Marathas were once removed, and if any one of the three nations happened to find itself much stronger than the others. The fear of the Marathas had nearly disappeared, but that of the Government still remained. However, it was not till more than sixty years after the foundation of Calcutta that there appeared any possibility of a breach of peace amongst the Europeans in Bengal. During this time the three Factories, Calcutta always leading, increased rapidly in wealth and importance. To the Government they were already a cause of anxiety and an object of greed. Even during the life of Aliverdi Khan there were many of his counsellors who advised the reduction of the status of Europeans to that of the Armenians, i.e. mere traders at the mercy of local officials; but Aliverdi Khan, whether owing to the enfeeblement of his energies by age or to an intelligent recognition of the value of European commerce, would not allow any steps to be taken against the Europeans. Many stories are told of the debates in his _Durbar_[3] on this subject: according to one, he is reported to have compared the Europeans to bees who produce honey when left in peace, but furiously attack those who foolishly disturb them; according to another he compared them to a fire[4] which had come out of the sea and was playing harmlessly on the shore, but which would devastate the whole land if any one were so imprudent as to anger it. His wisdom died with him, and in April, 1756, his grandson, Siraj-ud-daula, a young man of nineteen,[5] already notorious for his debauchery and cruelty, came to the throne. The French--who, of all Europeans, knew him best, for he seems to have preferred them to all others--say his chief characteristics were cruelty, rapacity, and cowardice. In his public speeches he seemed to be ambitious of military fame. Calcutta was described to him as a strong fortress, full of wealth, which belonged largely to his native subjects, and inhabited by a race of foreigners who had grown insolent on their privileges. As a proof of this, it was pointed out that they had not presented him with the offerings which, according to Oriental custom, are the due of a sovereign on his accession. The only person who dared oppose the wishes of the young Nawab was his mother,[6] but her advice was of no avail, and her taunt that he, a soldier, was going to war upon mere traders, was equally inefficacious. The records of the time give no definite information as to the tortuous diplomacy which fanned the quarrel between him and the English, but it is sufficiently clear that the English refused to surrender the son of one of his uncle's _diwans_,[7] who, with his master's and his father's wealth, had betaken himself to Calcutta. Siraj-ud-daula, by the treacherous promises of his commanders, made himself master of the English Factory at Cossimbazar without firing a shot, and on the 20th of June, 1756, found himself in possession of Fort William, the fortified Factory of Calcutta.[8] The Governor, the commandant[9] of the troops, and some two hundred persons of lesser note, had deserted the Fort almost as soon as it was actually invested, and Holwell, one of the councillors, an ex-surgeon, and the gallant few who stood by him and continued the defence, were captured, and, to the number of 146, cast into a little dungeon,[10] intended for military offenders, from which, the next morning, only twenty-three came out alive. The English took refuge at Fulta, thirty miles down the river, where the Nawab, in his pride and ignorance, left them unmolested. There they were gradually reinforced from Madras, first by Major Kilpatrick, and later on by Colonel Clive and Admiral Watson. About the same time both French and English learned that war had been declared in Europe between England and France in the previous May, but, for different reasons, neither nation thought the time suitable for making the fact formally known. Towards the end of December the English, animated by the desire of revenge and of repairing their ruined fortunes, advanced on Calcutta, and on the 2nd of January, 1757, the British flag again floated over Fort William. The Governor, Manik Chand, was, like many of the Nawab's servants, a Hindu. Some say he was scared away by a bullet through his turban; others, that he was roused from the enjoyment of a _nautch_--a native dance--by the news of the arrival of the English.[11] Hastening to Murshidabad, he reported his defeat, and asserted that the British they had now to deal with were very different from those they had driven from or captured in Calcutta. The English were not satisfied with recovering Calcutta. They wished to impress the Nawab, and so they sent a small force to Hugli, which lies above Chandernagore and Chinsurah, stormed the Muhammadan fort, burnt the town, and destroyed the magazines, which would have supplied the Nawab's army in an attack on Calcutta. The inhabitants of the country had never known anything so terrible as the big guns of the ships, and the Nawab actually believed the men-of-war could ascend the river and bombard him in his palace at Murshidabad. Calling on the French and Dutch for aid, which they refused, he determined to try his fortune a second time at Calcutta. At first, everything seemed the same as on the former occasion: the native merchants and artisans disappeared from the town; but it was not as he thought, out of fear, but because the English wished to have them out of the way, and so expelled them. Except for the military camp to the north of the city, where Clive was stationed with his little army, the town lay open to his attack. Envoys from Calcutta soon appeared asking for terms, and the Nawab pretended to be willing to negotiate in order to gain time while he outflanked Clive and seized the town. Seeing through this pretence Watson and Clive thought it was time to give him a lesson, and, on the morning of the 5th of February, in the midst of a dense fog, Clive beat up his quarters. Though Clive had to retire when the whole army was roused, the slaughter amongst the enemy had been immense; and though he mockingly informed the Nawab that he had been careful to "injure none but those who got in his way," the Nawab himself narrowly escaped capture. The action, however, was in no sense decisive. Most of the Nawab's military leaders were eager to avenge their disgrace, but some of the chief nobles, notably his Hindu advisers, exaggerated the loss already incurred and the future danger, and advised him to make peace. In fact, the cruelty and folly of the Nawab had turned his Court into a nest of traitors. With one or two exceptions there was not a man of note upon whom he could rely, and he had not the wit to distinguish the faithful from the unfaithful. Accordingly he granted the English everything they asked for--the full restoration of all their privileges, and restitution of all they had lost in the sack of Calcutta. As the English valued their losses at several hundreds of thousands, and the Nawab had found only some £5000 in the treasury of Fort William, it is clear that the wealth of Calcutta was either sunk in the Ganges or had fallen as booty into the hands of the Moorish soldiers. Siraj-ud-daula, though he did not yet know it, was a ruined man when he returned to his capital. His only chance of safety lay in one of two courses--either a loyal acceptance of the conditions imposed by the English or a loyal alliance with the French against the English. From the Dutch he could hope for nothing. They were as friendly to the English as commercial rivals could be. They had always declared they were mere traders and would not fight, and they kept their word. After the capture of Calcutta the Nawab had exacted heavy contributions from both the French and Dutch; but France and England were now at war, and he thought it might be possible that in these circumstances the restoration of their money to the French and the promise of future privileges might win them to his side. He could not, however, decide finally on either course, and the French were not eager to meet him. They detested his character, and they preferred, if the English would agree, to preserve the old neutrality and to trade in peace. Further, they had received no supplies of men or money for a long time; the fortifications of Chandernagore, i.e. of Fort d'Orléans, were practically in ruins, and the lesser Factories in the interior were helpless. Their military force, for attack, was next to nothing: all they could offer was wise counsel and brave leaders. They were loth to offer these to a man like the Nawab against Europeans, and he and his Court were as loth to accept them. Unluckily for the French, deserters from Chandernagore had served the Nawab's artillery when he took Calcutta, and it was even asserted that the French had supplied the Nawab with gunpowder; and so when the English heard of these new negotiations, they considered the proposals for a neutrality to be a mere blind; they forgot the kindness shown by the French to English refugees at Dacca, Cossimbazar, and Chandernagore, and determined that, as a permanent peace with the Nawab was out of the question, they would, whilst he hesitated as to his course of action, anticipate him by destroying the one element of force which, if added to his power, might have made him irresistible. They continued the negotiations for a neutrality on the Ganges only until they were reinforced by a body of 500 Europeans from Bombay, when they sent back the French envoys and exacted permission from the Nawab to attack Chandernagore. Clive marched on that town with a land force of 4000 Europeans and Sepoys, and Admiral Watson proceeded up the river with a small but powerful squadron. Thus began the ruin of the French in Bengal. The chief French Factories were, as I have said, at Chandernagore, Cossimbazar, and Dacca. The Chiefs of these Factories were M. Renault, the Director of all the French in Bengal; M. Law, a nephew of the celebrated Law of Lauriston, the financier; and M. Courtin. It is the doings and sufferings of these three gallant men which are recorded in the following chapters. They had no hope of being able to resist the English by themselves, but they hoped, and actually believed, that France would send them assistance if they could only hold out till it arrived. Renault, whose case was the most desperate, perhaps thought that the Nawab would, in his own interest, support him if the English attacked Chandernagore; but knowing the Nawab as well as he did, and reflecting that he had himself refused the Nawab assistance when he asked for it, his hope must have been a feeble one. Still he could not, with honour, give up a fortified position without attempting a defence, and he determined to do his best. When he failed, all that Law and Courtin could expect to do was to maintain their personal liberty and create a diversion in the north of Bengal when French forces attacked it in the south. It was not their fault that the attack was never made. I shall make no mention of the fate of the Factories at Balasore and Jugdea. At these the number of Frenchmen was so very small that resistance and escape were equally hopeless. Patna lay on the line of Law's retreat, and, as we shall see, he was joined by the second and other subordinate officers of that Factory. The chief, M. de la Bretesche, was too ill to be moved, but he managed, by the assistance of his native friends, to secure a large portion of the property of the French East India Company, and so to finance Law during his wanderings. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Aliverdi Khan entered Muxadavad or Murshidabad as a conqueror on the 30th of March, 1742. He died on the 10th of April, 1756. (_Scrafton_.)] [Footnote 2: Literally the fourth part of the Revenues. The Marathas extorted the right to levy this from the Emperor Aurengzebe, and under pretext of collecting it they ravaged a large portion of India.] [Footnote 3: Court, or Court officials and nobles.] [Footnote 4: Such fires are mentioned in many Indian legends. In the "Arabian Nights" we read of a demon changing himself into a flaming fire.] [Footnote 5: His age is stated by some as nineteen, by others as about twenty-five. See note, p. 66.] [Footnote 6: Amina Begum.] [Footnote 7: _Diwan_, i.e. Minister or Manager.] [Footnote 8: The English at Dacca surrendered to the Nawab of that place, and were afterwards released. Those at Jugdea and Balasore escaped direct to Fulta.] [Footnote 9: Captain George Minchin.] [Footnote 10: Known in history as the Black Hole of Calcutta.] [Footnote 11: Both stories may be true. Manik Chand was nearly killed at the battle of Budge Budge by a bullet passing through his turban, and the incident of the _nautch_ may have happened at Calcutta, where he certainly showed less courage.] [Illustration: FORT D'ORLÉANS, CHANDERNAGORE, 1749. (_Mouchet._)] CHAPTER II M. RENAULT, CHIEF OF CHANDERNAGORE The French East India Company was founded in 1664, during the ministry of M. Colbert. Chandernagore, on the Ganges, or rather that mouth of it now known as the River Hugli, was founded in 1676; and in 1688 the town and territory were ceded to France by the Emperor Aurengzebe. I know of no plan of Chandernagore in the 17th century, and those of the 18th are extremely rare. Two or three are to be found in Paris, but the destruction of the Fort and many of the buildings by the English after its capture in 1757, and the decay of the town after its restoration to the French, owing to diminished trade, make it extremely difficult to recognize old landmarks. The Settlement, however, consisted of a strip of land, about two leagues in length and one in depth, on the right or western bank of the Hugli. Fort d'Orléans lay in the middle of the river front. It was commenced in 1691, and finished in 1693.[12] Facing the north was the Porte Royale, and to the east, or river-side, was the Water Gate. The north-eastern bastion was known as that of the Standard, or Pavillon. The north-western bastion was overlooked by the Jesuit Church, and the south-eastern by the Dutch Octagon. This last building was situated on one of a number of pieces of land which, though within the French bounds, belonged to the Dutch before the grant of the imperial charter, and which the Dutch had always refused to sell. The Factory buildings were in the Fort itself. To the west lay the Company's Tank, the hospitals, and the cemetery. European houses, interspersed with native dwellings, lay all around. M. d'Albert says that these houses were large and convenient, but chiefly of one story only, built along avenues of fine trees, or along the handsome quay. D'Albert also mentions a chapel in the Fort,[13] the churches of the Jesuits and the Capucins, and some miserable _pagodas_ belonging to the Hindus, who, owing to the necessity of employing them as clerks and servants, were allowed the exercise of their religion. In his time the Europeans numbered about 500. There were besides some 400 Armenians, Moors[14] and Topasses, 1400 to 1500 Christians, including slaves, and 18,000 to 20,000 Gentiles, divided, he says, into 52 different castes or occupations. It is to be supposed that the European houses had improved in the thirty years since d'Albert's visit; at any rate many of those which were close to the Fort now commanded its interior from their roofs or upper stories, exactly as the houses of the leading officials in Calcutta commanded the interior of Fort William. No other fact could be so significant of the security which the Europeans in Bengal believed they enjoyed from any attack by the forces of the native Government. The site of the Fort is now covered with native huts. The Cemetery still remains and the Company's Tank (now known as Lal Dighi), whilst Kooti Ghat is the old landing-place of Fort d'Orleans. As regards the European population at the time of the siege we have no definite information. The Returns drawn up by the French officials at the time of the capitulation do not include the women and children or the native and mixed population. The ladies,[15] and it is to be presumed the other women also, for there is no mention of women during the siege, retired to the Dutch and Danish settlements at Chinsurah and Serampore a few days before, and the native population disappeared as soon as the British army approached. The Returns therefore show only 538 Europeans and 66 Topasses. The Governor or Director, as already mentioned, was Pierre Renault: his Council consisted of MM. Fournier, Caillot, Laporterie, Nicolas, and Picques. There were 36 Frenchmen of lesser rank in the Company's service, as well as 6 surgeons. The troops were commanded by M. de Tury and 10 officers. There were also 10 officers of the French East India Company's vessels, and 107 persons of sufficient importance for their _parole_ to be demanded when the Fort fell. Apparently these Returns do not include those who were killed in the defence, nor have we any definite information as to the number of French sepoys, but Eyre Coote[16] says there were 500. The story of the siege is to be gathered from many accounts. M. Renault and his Council submitted an official report; Renault wrote many letters to Dupleix and other patrons or friends; several of the Council and other private persons did the same.[17] M. Jean Law, whose personal experiences we shall deal with in the next chapter, was Chief of Cossimbazar, and watched the siege, as it were, from the outside. His straightforward narrative helps us now and then to correct a mis-statement made by the besieged in the bitterness of defeat. On the English side, besides the Bengal records, there are Clive's and Eyre Coote's military journals, the Logs of the British ships of war, and the journal of Surgeon Edward Ives of His Majesty's ship _Kent_. Thus this passage of arms, almost the only one in Bengal[18] in which the protagonists were Europeans, is no obscure event, but one in which almost every incident was seen and described from opposite points of view. This multiplicity of authorities makes it difficult to form a connected narrative, and, in respect to many incidents, I shall have to follow that account which seems to enter into the fullest or most interesting detail. It will now be necessary to go back a little. After the capture of Calcutta in June, 1756, the behaviour of the Nawab to all Europeans was so overbearing that Renault found it necessary to ask the Superior Council of Pondicherry for reinforcements, but all that he received was 67 Europeans and 167 Sepoys. No money was sent him, and every day he expected to hear that war had broken out between France and England. "Full of these inquietudes, gentlemen, I was in the most cruel embarrassment, knowing not even what to desire. A strong detestation of the tyranny of the Nawab, and of the excesses which he was committing against Europeans, made me long for the arrival of the English in the Ganges to take vengeance for them. At the same time I feared the consequences of war being declared. In every letter M. de Leyrit[19] impressed upon me the necessity of fortifying Chandernagore as best I could, and of putting the town in a state of security against a surprise, but you have only to look at Chandernagore to see how difficult it was for us, absolutely destitute as we were of men and money, to do this with a town open on all sides, and with nothing even to mark it off from the surrounding country."[20] He goes on to describe Fort d'Orléans-- "almost in the middle of the settlement, surrounded by houses, which command it, a square of about 600 feet,[21] built of brick, flanked with four bastions, with six guns each, without ramparts or glacis. The southern curtain, about 4 feet thick, not raised to its full height, was provided only with a battery of 3 guns; there was a similar battery to the west, but the rest of the west curtain was only a wall of mud and brick, about a foot and a half thick, and 8 or 10 feet high; there were warehouses ranged against the east curtain which faced the Ganges, and which was still in process of construction; the whole of this side had no ditch, and that round the other sides was dry, only 4 feet in depth, and a mere ravine. The walls of the Fort up to the ramparts were 15 feet high, and the houses, on the edge of the counterscarp, which commanded it, were as much as 30 feet." Perhaps the Fort was best defended on the west, where the Company's Tank[22] was situated. Its bank was only about twelve feet from the Fort Ditch. This use of tanks for defensive purposes was an excellent one, as they also provided the garrison with a good supply of drinking water. A little later Clive protected his great barracks at Berhampur with a line of large tanks along the landward side. However, this tank protected one side only, and the task of holding such a fort with an inadequate garrison was not a hopeful one even for a Frenchman. It was only his weakness which had made Renault submit to pay the contribution demanded by the Nawab on his triumphant return from Calcutta in July of the previous year, and he and his comrades felt very bitterly the neglect of the Company in not sending money and reinforcements. One of his younger subordinates wrote to a friend in Pondicherry:[23]-- "But the 3-1/2 lahks that the Company has to pay to the Nawab, is that a trifle? Yes, my dear fellow, for I should like it to have to pay still more, to teach it how to leave this Factory, which is, beyond contradiction, the finest of its settlements, denuded of soldiers and munitions of war, so that it is not possible for us to show our teeth." The wish was prophetic. Like the English the French were forbidden by the Nawab to fortify themselves. Renault dared not pay attention to this order. He had seen what had happened to the English by the neglect of proper precautions, and when things were at their worst, the Nawab had to seek his alliance against the English, grant him leave to fortify Chandernagore, and, later on, even to provide him with money under the pretence that he was simply restoring the sum forcibly extorted from him the previous year.[24] Trade was at a standstill, and Renault was determined that if the enemies of his nation were destined to take the Company's property, they should have the utmost difficulty possible in doing so. He expended the money on provisions and ammunition. At the same time, that he might not lose any chance of settling affairs peaceably with the English, he refused to associate himself with the Nawab, and entered upon negotiations for a neutrality in the Ganges. To protect himself if these failed, he began raising fortifications and pulling down the houses which commanded the Fort or masked its fire. He could not pull down the houses on the south of the Fort, from which Clive subsequently made his attack, partly for want of time, partly because the native workmen ran away, and partly because of the bad feeling prevalent in the motley force which formed his garrison.[25] The most fatal defect of all was the want of a military engineer. The person who held that position had been sent from France. He was a master mason, and had no knowledge of engineering. It had been the same story in Calcutta. Drake's two engineers had been a subaltern in the military and a young covenanted servant. Renault had to supervise the fortifications himself. "I commenced to pull down the church and the house of the Jesuit fathers, situated on the edge of the Ditch, also all the houses of private persons which masked the entire north curtain. The wood taken from the ruins of these served to construct a barrier extending from bastion to bastion and supporting this same north curtain, which seemed ready to fall to pieces from old age." This barrier was placed four feet outside the wall, the intervening space being filled in with earth. "Also in front of Porte Royale" (i.e. outside the gate in the avenue), "the weakest side of the Fort, I placed a battery of 3 guns, and worked hard at clearing out and enlarging the Ditch, but there was no time to make it of any use as a defence. A warehouse on which I put bales of _gunny_[26] to prevent cannon balls from breaking in the vaults of the roof, served it as a casemate." The east or river curtain was left alone. The French were, in fact, so confident that the ships of war would not be able to force their way up the river, and that Clive would not therefore think of attacking on that side, that the only precaution they took at first was the erection of two batteries outside the Fort. It is a well-known maxim in war that one should attack at that point at which the enemy deems himself most secure, and it will be seen that all Clive's efforts were aimed at preparing for Admiral Watson to attack on the east. As regards artillery Renault was better off. "The alarm which the Prince" (Siraj-ud-daula) "gave us in June last having given me reason to examine into the state of the artillery, I found that not one of the carriages of the guns on the ramparts was in a serviceable condition, not a field-piece mounted, not a platform ready for the mortars. I gave all my attention to these matters, and fortunately had time to put them right." To serve his guns Renault had the sailors of the Company's ship, _Saint Contest_, whose commander, M. de la Vigne Buisson, was the soul of the defence. About this time he received a somewhat doubtful increase to his garrison, a crowd of deserters from the English East India Company's forces. The latter at this time were composed of men of all nationalities, English, Germans, Swiss, Dutch, and even French. Many of them, and naturally the foreigners especially, were ready to desert upon little provocation. The hardships of service in a country where the climate and roads were execrable, where food and pay were equally uncertain, and where promises were made not to be kept, were provocations which the best soldiers might have found it difficult to resist. We read of whole regiments in the English and French services refusing to obey orders, and of mutinies of officers as well as of men. The one reward of service was the chance of plunder, and naturally, then, as soon as the fighting with the Nawab had stopped for a time, the desertions from the British forces were numerous. Colonel Clive had more than once written to Renault to remonstrate with him for taking British soldiers into his service. Probably Renault could have retorted the accusation with justice--at any rate, he went on enlisting deserters; and from those who had now come over he formed a company of grenadiers of 50 men, one of artillery of 30, and one of sailors of 60, wisely giving them a little higher pay than usual, "to excite their emulation." One of these was a man named Lee,-- "a corporal and a deserter from the _Tyger_, who pledged himself to the enemy that he would throw two shells out of three into the _Tyger_, but whilst he was bringing the mortars to bear for that purpose, he was disabled by a musket bullet from the _Kent's_ tops. He was afterwards sent home a prisoner to England."[27] As might be expected the younger Frenchmen were wild with delight at the chance of seeing a good fight. Some of them had been much disappointed that the Nawab had not attacked Chandernagore in June, 1756. One of them wrote[28]-- "I was charmed with the adventure and the chance of carrying a musket, having always had" (what Frenchman hasn't?) "a secret leaning towards a military life. I intended to kill a dozen Moors myself in the first sortie we made, for I was determined not to stand like a stock on a bastion, where one only runs the risk of getting wounds without having any of the pleasure of inflicting them." If not the highest form of military spirit, this was at any rate one of which a good commander might make much use. Renault took advantage of this feeling, and from the young men of the colony, such as Company's servants, ships' officers, supercargoes, and European inhabitants,[29] he made a company of volunteers, to whom, at their own request, he gave his son, an officer of the garrison, as commander. One of the volunteer officers writes:-- "I had the honour to be appointed lieutenant, and was much pleased when I saw the spirit of emulation which reigned in every heart. I cannot sufficiently praise the spirit of exactitude with which every one was animated, and the progress which all made in so short a time in the management of their arms. I lay stress on the fact that it was an occupation entirely novel to them, and one of which the commencement always appears very hard, but they overcame all difficulties, and found amusement in what to others would appear merely laborious." All this time Renault was watching the war between the English and the Moors. In January the English sailed up the Hugli, passed Chandernagore contemptuously without a salute, burned the Moorish towns of Hugli and Bandel, ravaged the banks of the river, and retired to Calcutta. Up to this the Nawab had not condescended to notice the English; now, in a moment of timidity, he asked the intervention of the French as mediators.[30] Renault eagerly complied, for had his mediation been accepted, he would have inserted in the treaty a clause enforcing peace amongst the Europeans in Bengal; but the English refused to treat through the French. This could have only one meaning. Renault felt that his course was now clear, and was on the point of offering the alliance which the Nawab had so long sought for, when he received orders from M. de Leyrit forbidding him to attack the English by land. As M. Law writes, if Renault had been free to join the Nawab with 500 Europeans, either Clive would not have ventured a night attack on the Nawab's camp, or, had he done so, the event would probably have been very different. Under the circumstances, all that Renault could do was to continue his fortifications. It was now that he first realized that Admiral Watson would take part in the attack. "As the ships of war were what we had most to fear from, we constructed on the river bank a battery of 6 guns, four of which covered the approach to the Fort. From the foot of the battery a bank twenty-two feet high stretching to the Fort, was begun, so as to protect the curtain on this side from the fire of the ships, _but it was not finished_. We had also to attend to the inhabited portion of the town; it was impossible to do more, but we determined to protect it from a surprise, and so ditches were dug across the streets and outposts established."[31] It was this waste of valuable time upon the defence of the town that a capable engineer would have saved Renault from the mistake of committing. Had he limited his efforts to strengthening the walls of the Fort and cleared away the surrounding houses, he would have been not only stronger against the attack of the land force, but also in a much better position to resist the ships. The issue of the Nawab's attack on Calcutta has already been told. He was so depressed by his failure that he now treated Renault with the greatest respect, and it was now that he gave him the sum of money--a lakh of rupees, then worth £12,500--which he spent on provisions and munitions of war. Renault says:-- "The Nawab's envoy further gave me to understand that he was, in his heart, enraged with the English, and continued to regard them as his enemies. In spite of this we saw clearly from the treaty just made" (with the English) "that we should be its victims, and knowing Siraj-ud-daula's character, his promise to assist me strongly if the English attacked us did not quiet my mind. I prepared for whatever might happen by pressing on our preparations and collecting all kinds of provisions in the Fort." The Nawab and the English concluded a treaty of peace and alliance on the 9th of February, 1757. Renault mentions no actual treaty between the Nawab and the French, but the French doctor referred to in a note above asserts that the Nawab demanded that the Council should bind itself in writing, "to oppose the passage of the English past Chandernagore.... It was merely engaging to defend ourselves against the maritime force of the English ... because Chandernagore was the only place on this coast against which they could undertake any enterprise by water. _This engagement was signed_ and sent to the Nawab three days after he had made peace with the English. The Council received in reply two privileges, the one to coin money with the King's stamp at Chandernagore, the other liberty of trade for individual Frenchmen on the same footing as the Company, and 100,000 rupees on account of the 300,000 which he had extorted the previous year." It does not matter whether this engagement was signed or not.[32] As a Frenchman thus mentions it, the rumour of its signature must have been very strong. It is probable that the English heard of it, and believed it to be conclusive proof of the secret understanding between the Nawab and the French. The privilege of individual trade was particularly likely to excite their commercial jealousy, for it was to this very privilege in their own case that the wealth and strength of Calcutta were due. Such a rumour, therefore, was not likely to facilitate negotiations. Nevertheless, Renault sent MM. Fournier and Nicolas, the latter of whom had many friends amongst the English, to Calcutta, to re-open the negotiations for a neutrality. These negotiations seemed to be endless. The most striking feature was Admiral Watson's apparent vacillation. When the Council proposed war he wanted peace, when they urged neutrality he wanted war. Clive went so far as to present a memorial to the Council, saying it was unfair to continue the negotiations if the Admiral was determined not to agree to a treaty. It seems as if the Council wanted war, but wished to throw the responsibility upon the Admiral. On the other hand the Admiral was only too eager to fight, but hesitated to involve the Company in a war with the French and the Nawab combined, at a moment when the British land forces were so weakened by disease that success might be considered doubtful. He had also to remember the fact that the Council at Chandernagore was subordinate to the Council at Pondicherry, and the latter might, whenever convenient to the French, repudiate the treaty. However, in spite of all difficulties, the terms were agreed to, the draft was prepared, and only the signatures were wanting, when a large reinforcement of Europeans arrived from Bombay, and the Admiral received formal notification of the declaration of war, and orders from the Admiralty to attack the French.[33] This put an immediate end to negotiations, and the envoys were instructed to return to Chandernagore. At the same time the English determined to try and prevent the Nawab from joining the French. Whilst the Admiral was making up his mind fortune had favoured the English. The Nawab, in fear of an invasion of Bengal by the Pathans, had called upon the British for assistance, and on the 3rd of March Clive's army left Calcutta _en route_ for Murshidabad. The Admiral now pointed out to the Nawab that the British could not safely leave Chandernagore behind them in the hands of an enemy, and Clive wrote to the same effect, saying he would wait near Chandernagore for a reply. On the 10th of March the Nawab wrote a letter to the Admiral, which concluded with the following significant words:-- "You have understanding and generosity: if your enemy with an upright heart claims your protection, you will give him life, but then you must be _well_ satisfied of the innocence of his intentions: if not, whatever you think right, that do." Law says this letter was a forgery,[34] but as the Nawab did not write any letters himself, the only test of authenticity was his seal, which was duly attached. The English believed it to be genuine, and the words quoted could have but one meaning. Admiral Watson read them as a permission to attack the French without fear of the Nawab's interference. He prepared to support Clive as soon as the water in the Hugli would allow his ships to pass up, and, it must be supposed, informed Clive of the letter he had received. At any rate, he so informed the Council. Clive reached Chandernagore on the 12th, and probably heard on that day or the next from Calcutta. On the 13th he sent the following summons--which Renault does not mention, and did not reply to--to Chandernagore:-- "SIR, "The King of Great Britain having declared war against France, I summons you in his name to surrender the Fort of Chandernagore. In case of refusal you are to answer the consequences, and expect to be treated according to the usage of war in such cases. "I have the honour to be, sir, "Your most obedient and humble servant, "ROBERT CLIVE." It is important, in the light of what happened later, to notice that Clive addresses Renault as a combatant and the head of the garrison. In England we have recently seen men eager to vilify their own nation. France has produced similar monsters. One of them wrote from Pondicherry:-- "The English having changed their minds on the arrival of the reinforcement from Bombay, our gentlemen at Chandernagore prepared to ransom themselves, and they would have done so at whatever price the ransom had been fixed provided anything had remained to them. That mode of agreement could not possibly suit the taste of the English. It was rejected, and the Council of Chandernagore had no other resource except to surrender on the best conditions they could obtain from the generosity of their enemy. This course was so firmly resolved upon that they gave no thought to defending themselves. The military insisted only on firing a single discharge, which they desired the Council would grant them. It was only the marine and the citizens who, though they had no vote in the Council, cried out tumultuously that the Fort must be defended. A plot was formed to prevent the Director's son, who was ready to carry the keys of the town to the English camp, from going out. Suddenly some one fired a musket. The English thought it was the reply to their summons. They commenced on their side to fire their artillery, and that was how a defence which lasted ten whole days was begun." How much truth is contained in the above paragraph may be judged by what has been already stated. It will be sufficient to add that Clive, receiving no answer to his summons, made a sudden attack on a small earthwork to the south-west of the fort at 3 A.M. on the 14th of March. For two whole days then, the English had been in sight of Chandernagore without attacking. The French ladies had been sent to Chinsurah and Serampore, so that the defenders had nothing to fear on their account. Besides the French soldiers and civilians, there were also about 2000 Moorish troops present, whom Law says he persuaded the Nawab to send down as soon as the English left Calcutta. Other accounts say that Renault hired them to assist him. The Nawab had a strong force at Murshidabad ready to march under one of his commanders, Rai Durlabh Ram; but the latter had experienced what even a small English force could do in the night attack on the Nawab's camp, and was by no means inclined to match himself a second time against Clive; accordingly, he never got further than five leagues from Murshidabad. Urgent messages were sent from Chandernagore as soon as the attack began. M. Law begged of the Nawab to send reinforcements. Mr. Watts, the English Chief, and all his party in the _Durbar_, did their utmost to prevent any orders being issued. The Nawab gave orders which he almost immediately countermanded. Renault ascribes this to a letter which he says Clive wrote on the 14th of March, the very day of the attack, promising the Nawab to leave the French alone, but it is not at all likely that he did so. It is true Clive had written to this effect on the 22nd of February; but since then much had happened, and he was now acting, as he thought and said, with the Nawab's permission. On the 16th of March he wrote to Nand Kumar, Faujdar[35] of Hugli, as follows:-- "The many deceitful wicked measures that the French have taken to endeavour to deprive me of the Nawab's favour (tho' I thank God they have proved in vain, since his Excellency's friendship towards me is daily increasing) has long made me look on them as enemies to the English, but I could no longer stifle my resentment when I found that ... they dared to oppose the freedom of the English trade on the Ganges by seizing a boat with an English _dustuck_,[36] and under English colours that was passing by their town. I am therefore come to a resolution to attack them. I am told that some of the Government's forces have been perswaded under promise of great rewards from the French to join them against us; I should be sorry, at a time when I am so happy in his Excellency's favour and friendship, that I should do any injury to his servants; I am therefore to desire you will send these forces an order to withdraw, and that no other may come to their assistance."[37] What Clive feared was that, though the Nawab might not interfere openly, some of his servants might receive secret orders to do so, and on the 22nd of March he wrote even more curtly to Rai Durlabh himself:-- "I hear you are arrived within 20 miles of Hughly. Whether you come as a friend or an enemy, I know not. If as the latter, say so at once, and I will send some people out to fight you immediately.... Now you know my mind."[38] When diplomatic correspondence was conducted in letters of this kind, it is easy to understand that the Nawab was frightened out of his wits, and absolutely unable to decide what course he should take. There was little likelihood of the siege being influenced by anything he might do. The outpost mentioned as the object of the first attack was a small earthwork, erected at the meeting of three roads. It was covered by the Moorish troops, who held the roofs of the houses around. As the intention of the outposts was merely to prevent the town from being surprised, and to enable the inhabitants to take shelter in the Fort, the outpost ought to have been withdrawn as quickly as possible, but, probably because they thought it a point of honour to make a stout defence wherever they were first attacked, the defenders stood to it gallantly. Renault sent repeated reinforcements, first the company of grenadiers, then at 9 o'clock the company of artillery, and at 10 o'clock, when the surrounding houses were in flames, and many of the Moors had fled, a company of volunteers. With these, and a further reinforcement of sixty sailors, the little fort held out till 7 o'clock in the evening, when the English, after three fruitless assaults, ceased fire and withdrew. Street fighting is always confusing, and hence the following vague description of the day's events from Captain Eyre Coote's journal:-- "Colonel Clive ordered the picquets, with the company's grenadiers, to march into the French bounds, which is encompassed with an old ditch,[39] the entrance into it a gateway with embrasures on the top but no cannons, which the French evacuated on our people's advancing. As soon as Captain Lynn, who commanded the party, had taken possession, he acquainted the Colonel, who ordered Major Kilpatrick and me, with my company of grenadiers, to join Captain Lynn, and send him word after we had reconnoitred the place. On our arrival there we found a party of French was in possession of a road leading to a redoubt that they had thrown up close under their fort, where they had a battery of cannon, and upon our advancing down the road, they fired some shots at us. We detached some parties through a wood, and drove them from the road into their batteries with the loss of some men; we then sent for the Colonel, who, as soon as he joined us, sent to the camp for more troops. We continued firing at each other in an irregular manner till about noon, at which time the Colonel ordered me to continue with my grenadier company and about 200 sepoys at the advance post, and that he would go with the rest of our troops to the entrance, which was about a mile back. About 2 o'clock word was brought me that the French were making a sortie. Soon after, I perceived the sepoys retiring from their post, upon which I sent to the Colonel to let him know the French were coming out. I was then obliged to divide my company, which consisted of about 50 men, into 2 or 3 parties (very much against my inclination) to take possession of the ground the sepoys had quitted. We fired pretty warmly for a quarter of an hour from the different parties at each other, when the French retreated again into their battery. On this occasion I had a gentleman (Mr. Tooke[40]), who was a volunteer, killed, and 2 of my men wounded. The enemy lost 5 or 6 Europeans and some blacks. I got close under the battery, and was tolerably well sheltered by an old house, where I continued firing till about 7 o'clock, at which time I was relieved, and marched back to camp." The defenders were much exhausted, as well by the fighting as by the smoke and heat from the burning houses and the heat of the weather, for it was almost the hottest season of the year. It seemed probable that the English would make another attack during the night, and as the defenders already amounted to a very large portion of the garrison, it was almost impossible to reinforce them without leaving the Fort itself in great danger, if Clive managed to approach it from any other quarter. Renault called a council of war, and, after taking the opinion of his officers in writing to the effect that the outposts must be abandoned, he withdrew the defenders at 9 o'clock, under cover of the darkness: The French had suffered a loss of only 10 men killed and wounded. Clive mentions that, at the same time, all the other outposts and batteries, except those on the river side, were withdrawn. Mustering his forces in the Fort, Renault found them to be composed of 237 soldiers (of whom 117 were deserters from the British), 120 sailors, 70 half-castes and private Europeans, 100 persons employed by the Company, 167 Sepoys and 100 _Topasses_. Another French account puts the total of the French garrison at 489, but this probably excludes many of the private people.[41] On the 15th the English established themselves in the town, and drove out the Moors who had been stationed on the roofs of the houses. This gave them to some extent the command of the interior of the Fort, but no immediate attack was made on the latter. A French account[42] says this was because-- "all their soldiers were drunk with the wine they had found in the houses. Unfortunately we did not know of this. It would have been the moment to make a sortie, of which the results must have been favourable to us, the enemy being incapable of defence." During the night of the 15th the Fort was bombarded, and on the morning of the 16th the British completed the occupation of the houses deserted by the Moors. The latter not being received into the Fort, either fled or were sent away. They betook themselves to Nand Kumar, the Faujdar of Hugli, announcing the capture of the town. Nand Kumar, who is said to have had an understanding with the British, sent on the message to Rai Durlabh and the Nawab, with the malicious addition that the Fort, if it had not already fallen, would fall before Rai Durlabh could reach it. This put an end to all chance of the Nawab interfering. The French spent the day in blocking a narrow passage formed by a sandbank in the river, a short distance below the town. They sank-- "four large ships and a hulk,... and had a chain and boom across in order to prevent our going up with the squadron. Captain Toby sent his 2nd lieutenant, Mr. Bloomer, that night, who cut the chain and brought off a sloop that buoyed it up."[43] It was apparently this rapid attack on the position that accounts for the timidity of the pilots and boatmen, who, Renault tells us, hurried away without staying to sink two other ships which were half laden, and which, if sunk, would have completely blocked the passage. Even on the ships which were sunk the masts had been left standing, so as to point out their position to the enemy. Besides the ships sunk in the passage, there were at Chandernagore the French East Indiaman the _Saint Contest_ (Captain de la Vigne Buisson), four large ships, and several small ones. The French needed all the sailors for the Fort, so they sank all the vessels they could not send up the river except three, which it was supposed they intended to use as fire-ships. Clive, in the meantime, was advancing cautiously, his men erecting batteries, which seemed to be very easily silenced by the superior gunnery of the Fort. His object was partly to weary out the garrison by constant fighting, and partly to creep round to the river face, so as to be in a position to take the batteries which commanded the narrow river passage, as soon as Admiral Watson was ready to attack the Fort. Later on, the naval officers asserted he could not have taken the Fort without the assistance of the fleet. He said he could, and it is certain that if he had had no fleet to assist him his mode of attack would have been a very different one. Early in the siege the French were warned from Chinsurah to beware of treachery amongst the deserters in their pay, and on the 17th of March a number of arrows were found in the Fort with labels attached, bearing the words:-- "Pardon to deserters who will rejoin their colours, and rewards to officers who will come over to us." These were seized by the officers before the men could see them, but one of the officers themselves, Charles Cossard de Terraneau, a sub-lieutenant of the garrison, took advantage of the offer to go over to the English. This officer had served with credit in the South of India, and had lost an arm in his country's service. The reason of his desertion is said to have been a quarrel with M. Renault. M. Raymond, the translator of a native history of the time by Gholam Husain Khan,[44] tells a story of De Terraneau which seems improbable. It is to the effect that he betrayed the secret of the river passage to Admiral Watson, and that a few years later he sent home part of the reward of his treachery to his father in France. The old man returned the money with indignant comments on his son's conduct, and De Terraneau committed suicide in despair. As a matter of fact, De Terraneau was a land officer,[45] and therefore not likely to be able to advise the Admiral, who, as we shall see, solved the riddle of the passage in a perfectly natural manner, and the Probate Records show that De Terraneau lived till 1765, and in his will left his property to his wife Ann, so the probability is that he lived and died quietly in the British service. His only trouble seems to have been to get himself received by his new brother officers. However, he was, so Clive tells us, the only artillery officer the French had, and his desertion was a very serious matter. Renault writes:-- "The same night, by the improved direction of the besiegers' bombs, I had no doubt but that he had done us a bad service." On the 18th the French destroyed a battery which the English had established near the river, and drove them out of a house opposite the south-east bastion. The same day the big ships of the squadron--the _Kent_ (Captain Speke), the _Tyger_ (Captain Latham), and the _Salisbury_ (Captain Martin), appeared below the town. The _Bridgewater_ and _Kingfisher_ had come up before. Admiral Watson was on board the _Kent_, and Admiral Pocock on the _Tyger_. The fleet anchored out of range of the Fort at the Prussian Gardens, a mile and a half below the town, and half a mile below the narrow passage in which the ships had been sunk. On the 19th Admiral Watson formally announced the declaration of war,[46] and summoned the Fort to surrender. The Governor called a council of war, in which there was much difference of opinion. Some thought the Admiral would not have come so far without his being certain of his ability to force the passage; indeed the presence of so many deserters in the garrison rendered it probable that he had secret sources of information. As a matter of fact, it was only when Lieutenant Hey, the officer who had brought the summons, and, in doing so, had rowed between the masts of the sunken vessels, returned to the _Kent_, that Admiral Watson knew the passage was clear. Renault and the Council were aware that the Fort could not resist the big guns of the ships, and accordingly the more thoughtful members of the council of war determined, if possible, to try and avoid fighting by offering a ransom. This apparently gave rise to the idea that they wished to surrender, and an English officer says:-- "Upon the Admiral's sending them a summons ... to surrender, they were very stout; they gave us to understand there were two parties in the Factory, the Renaultions and the anti-Renaultions. The former, which they called the great-wigg'd gentry, or councillors, were for giving up the Fort, but the others vowed they would die in the breach. To these high and lofty expressions the Admiral could give no other answer than that in a very few days, or hours perhaps, he would give them a very good opportunity of testifying their zeal for the Company and the Grand Monarque." The offer of ransom was made, and was refused by the Admiral. Renault says, he-- "insisted on our surrendering and the troops taking possession of the Fort, _promising, however, that every one should keep his own property_. There was not a man amongst us who did not prefer to run the risk of whatever might happen to surrendering in this fashion, without the Fort having yet suffered any material damage, and every one was willing to risk his own interests in order to defend those of the Company. Every one swore to do his best." The Admiral could not attack at once, owing to the state of the river, but to secure his own position against any counter-attack, such as was very likely with a man like Captain de la Vigne in the Fort, he sent up boats the same night, and sank the vessels which it was supposed the French intended to use as fire-ships; and the next day Mr. John Delamotte, master of the _Kent_, under a heavy fire, sounded and buoyed the passage for the ships. The army, meanwhile, continued its monotonous work ashore, the soldiers building batteries for the French to knock to pieces, but succeeding in Clive's object, which was "to keep the enemy constantly awake."[47] Sometimes this work was dangerous, as, for instance, on the 21st, when a ball from the Fort knocked down a verandah close to one of the English batteries, "the rubbish of which choked up one of our guns, very much bruised two artillery officers, and buried several men in the ruins."[48] By the 22nd Clive had worked his way round to the river, and was established to the north-east and south-east of the Fort so as to assist the Admiral, and on the river the Admiral had at last got the high tide he was waiting for. Surgeon Ives tells the story as follows:[49]-- "The Admiral the same evening ordered lights to be placed on the masts of the vessels that had been sunk, with blinds towards the Fort, that we might see how to pass between them a little before daylight, and without being discovered by the enemy. "At length the glorious morning of the 23rd of March arrived." Clive's men gallantly stormed the battery covering the narrow pass,[50] "and upon the ships getting under sail the Colonel's battery, which had been finished behind a dead wall," to take off the fire of the Fort when the ships passed up, began firing away, and had almost battered down the corner of the south-east bastion before the ships arrived within shot of the Fort. "The _Tyger_, with Admiral Pocock's flag flying, took the lead, and about 6 o'clock in the morning got very well into her station against the north-east bastion. The _Kent_, with Admiral Watson's flag flying, quickly followed her, but before she could reach her proper station, the tide of ebb unfortunately made down the river, which occasioned her anchor to drag, so that before she brought up she had fallen abreast of the south-east bastion, the place where the _Salisbury_ should have been, and from her mainmast aft she was exposed to the flank guns of the south-west bastion also. The accident of the _Kent's_ anchor not holding fast, and her driving down into the _Salisbury's_ station, threw this last ship out of action, to the great mortification of the captain, officers, and crew, for she never had it in her power to fire a gun, unless it was now and then, when she could sheer on the tide. The French, during the whole time of the _Kent_ and _Tyger's_ approach towards the Fort, kept up a terrible cannonade upon them, without any resistance on their part; but as soon as the ships came properly to an anchor they returned it with such fury as astonished their adversaries. Colonel Clive's troops at the same time got into those houses which were nearest the Fort, and from thence greatly annoyed the enemy with their musketry. Our ships lay so near to the Fort that the musket balls fired from their tops, by striking against the _chunam_[51] walls of the Governor's palace, which was in the very centre of the Fort, were beaten as flat as a half-crown. The fire now became general on both sides, and was kept up with extraordinary spirit. The flank guns of the south-west bastion galled the _Kent_ very much, and the Admiral's aide-de-camps being all wounded, Mr. Watson went down himself to Lieutenant William Brereton, who commanded the lower deck battery, and ordered him particularly to direct his fire against those guns, and they were accordingly soon afterwards silenced. At 8 in the morning several of the enemy's shot struck the _Kent_ at the same time; one entered near the foremast, and set fire to two or three 32-pound cartridges of gunpowder, as the boys held them in their hands ready to charge the guns. By the explosion, the wad-nets and other loose things took fire between decks, and the whole ship was so filled with smoke that the men, in their confusion, cried out she was on fire in the gunner's store-room, imagining from the shock they had felt from the balls that a shell had actually fallen into her. This notion struck a panic into the greater part of the crew, and 70 or 80 jumped out of the port-holes into the boats that were alongside the ship. The French presently saw this confusion on board the _Kent_, and, resolving to take the advantage, kept up as hot a fire as possible upon her during the whole time. Lieutenant Brereton, however, with the assistance of some other brave men, soon extinguished the fire, and then running to the ports, he begged the seamen to come in again, upbraiding them for deserting their quarters; but finding this had no effect upon them, he thought the more certain method of succeeding would be to strike them with a sense of shame, and therefore loudly exclaimed, 'Are you Britons? You Englishmen, and fly from danger? For shame! For shame!' This reproach had the desired effect; to a man they immediately returned into the ship, repaired to their quarters, and renewed a spirited fire on the enemy. "In about three hours from the commencement of the attack the parapets of the north and south bastions were almost beaten down; the guns were mostly dismounted, and we could plainly see from the main-top of the _Kent_ that the ruins from the parapet and merlons had entirely blocked up those few guns which otherwise might have been fit for service. We could easily discern, too, that there had been a great slaughter among the enemy, who, finding that our fire against them rather increased, hung out the white flag, whereupon a cessation of hostilities took place, and the Admiral sent Lieutenant Brereton (the only commissioned officer on board the _Kent_ that was not killed or wounded) and Captain Coote of the King's regiment with a flag of truce to the Fort, who soon returned, accompanied by the French Governor's son, with articles of capitulation, which being settled by the Admiral and Colonel, we soon after took possession of the place." So far then from the besiegers' side; Renault's description of the fight is as follows:-- "The three largest vessels, aided by the high-water of the equinoctial tides, which, moreover, had moved the vessels sunk in the narrow passage, passed over the sunken ships, which did not delay them for a moment, to within half pistol shot of the Fort, and opened fire at 6 a.m. Then the troops in the battery on the bank of the Ganges, who had so far fired only one discharge, suddenly found themselves overwhelmed with the fire from the tops of the ships, abandoned it, and had much difficulty in gaining the Fort.... I immediately sent the company of grenadiers, with a detachment of the artillery company as reinforcements, to the south-eastern bastion and the Bastion du Pavillon, which two bastions face the Ganges; but those troops under the fire of the ships, joined to that of the land batteries, _rebuilt the same night_, and of more than 3000 men placed on the roofs of houses which overlooked the Fort, almost all took flight, leaving two of their officers behind, one dead and the other wounded. I was obliged to send immediately all the marine and the inhabitants from the other posts. "The attack was maintained with vigour from 6 a.m. to 10.30, when all the batteries were covered with dead and wounded, the guns dismounted, and the merlons destroyed, in spite of their being strengthened with bales of cloth. No one could show himself on the bastions, demolished by the fire of more than 100 guns; the troops were terrified during this attack by the loss of all the gunners and of nearly 200 men; the bastions were undermined, and threatened to crumble away and make a breach, which the exhaustion of our people, and the smallness of the number who remained, made it impossible for us to hope to defend successfully. Not a soldier would put his hand to a gun; it was only the European marine who stood to their duty, and half of these were already killed or disabled. A body of English troops, lying flat on the ground behind the screen which we had commenced to erect on the bank of the Ganges, was waiting the signal to attack. Seeing the impossibility of holding out longer, I thought that in the state in which the Fort was I could not in prudence expose it to an assault. Consequently I hoisted the white flag and ordered the drums to beat a parley." According to an account written later by a person who was not present at the siege, Renault lost his Fort by a quarter of an hour. This writer says the tide was rapidly falling, and, had the eastern defences of the Fort been able to resist a little longer, the ships would have found their lower tiers of guns useless, and might have been easily destroyed by the French. Suppositions of this kind always suppose a stupidity on the part of the enemy which Renault had no right to count upon. Admiral Watson must have known the strength of the fortress he was about to attack before he placed his ships in a position from which it would be impossible to withdraw them whenever he wished to do so. The flag of truce being displayed, Captain Eyre Coote was sent ashore, and returned in a quarter of an hour with the Governor's son bearing "a letter concerning the delivery of the place." Articles were agreed upon, and about 3 o'clock in the afternoon Captain Coote, with a company of artillery and two companies of grenadiers, took possession of the Fort. Before this took place there occurred an event the consequences of which were very unfortunate for the French. Everything was in a state of confusion, and the deserters, who formed the majority of the garrison, expecting no mercy from the Admiral and Clive, determined to escape. Rushing tumultuously to the Porte Royale, their arms in their hands, they forced it to be opened to them, and, finding the northern road to Chinsurah unguarded, made the best of their way in that direction. They were accompanied by a number of the military and marine, as well as by some of the Company's servants and private persons who were determined not to surrender. As all this took place after the hoisting of the white flag and pending the conclusion of the capitulation, the English considered it a breach of the laws of warfare, and when later on the meaning of the capitulation itself was contested they absolutely refused to listen to any of the representations of the French. In all about 150 persons left the Fort. They had agreed to reassemble at a place a little above Hugli. The English sent a small force after them, who shot some and captured others, but about 80 officers and men arrived at the rendezvous in safety. The pursuit, however, was carried further, and Law writes:-- "Constantly pursued, they had to make forced marches. Some lost their way; others, wearied out, were caught as they stopped to rest themselves. However, when I least expected it, I was delighted to see the officers and many of the soldiers arrive in little bands of 5 and 6, all naked, and so worn out that they could hardly hold themselves upright. Most of them had lost their arms." This reinforcement increased Law's garrison from 10 or 12 men to 60, and secured the safety of his person, but the condition of the fugitives must have been an object lesson to the Nawab and his _Durbar_ which it was not wise for the French to set before them. A naval officer writes:-- "From the letters that have lately passed between the Nawab and us, we have great reason to hope he will not screen the French at all at Cossimbazar or Dacca. I only wish the Colonel does not alarm him too much, by moving with the army to the northward, I do assure you he is so sufficiently frightened that he had rather encounter the new Mogul[52] himself than accept our assistance, though he strenuously begged for it about three weeks ago. He writes word he needs no fuller assurance of our friendship for him, when a single letter brought us so far on the road to Murshidabad as Chandernagore."[53] The escape of the French from Chandernagore is of interest, as it shows the extraordinary condition of the country. It is probable that the peasantry and gentry were indifferent as to whether the English or the French were victorious, whilst the local authorities were so paralyzed by the Nawab's hesitation that they did not know which side to assist. Later on we shall find that small parties, and even solitary Frenchmen, wandered through the country with little or no interference, though the English had been recognized as the friends and allies of the new Nawab, Mir Jafar. To return, however, to Renault and the garrison of Chandernagore. The capitulation proposed by Renault and the Admiral's answers were to the following effect:-- 1. The lives of the deserters to be spared. _Answer_. The deserters to surrender absolutely. 2. Officers of the garrison to be prisoners on parole, and allowed to keep their effects. _Answer_. Agreed to. 3. Soldiers of the garrison to be prisoners of war. _Answer_. Agreed to, on condition that foreigners may enter the English service. 4. Sepoys of the garrison to be set free. _Answer_. Agreed to. 5. Officers and crew of the French Company's ship to be sent to Pondicherry. _Answer_. These persons to be prisoners of war according to articles 2 and 3. 6. The Jesuit fathers to be allowed to practise their religion and retain their property. _Answer_. No European to be allowed to remain at Chandernagore, but the fathers to be allowed to retain their property. 7. All inhabitants to retain their property. _Answer_. This to be left to the Admiral's sense of equity. 8. The French Factories up-country to be left in the hands of their present chiefs. _Answer_. This to be settled by the Nawab and the Admiral. 9. The French Company's servants to go where they please, with their clothes and linen. _Answer_. Agreed to. It is evident that the capitulation was badly drawn up. Civilians who had taken part in the defence, as had all the Company's servants, might be justly included in the garrison, and accordingly Admiral Watson and Clive declared they were all prisoners of war, and that article 9 merely permitted them to reside where they pleased on _parole_. On the other hand, Renault and the French Council declared that, being civilians, nothing could make them part of the garrison, and therefore under article 9 they might do what they pleased. Accordingly, they expressed much surprise when they were stopped at the Fort gates by one of Clive's officers, and forced to sign, before they were allowed to pass, a paper promising not to act against Britain directly or indirectly during the course of the war. Another point of difficulty was in reference to article 7. The town had been in the hands of the British soldiers and sepoys for days. Much had been plundered, and both soldiers and sailors were wild for loot. They considered that the Admiral was acting unjustly to them in restoring their property to civilians who had been offered the chance of retaining it if they would avoid unnecessary bloodshed by a prompt surrender. Instead of this, the defence was so desperate that one officer writes:-- "Our losses have been very great, and we have never yet obtained a victory at so dear a rate. Perhaps you will hear of few instances where two ships have met with heavier damage than the _Kent_ and _Tyger_ in this engagement."[54] Clive's total loss was only about 40 men killed and wounded, but the loss on the ships was so great, that before the Fort surrendered the besiegers had lost quite as many men as the besieged, and it was by no means clear to the common mind what claim the French had to leniency. Even English officers wrote:-- "The Messieurs themselves deserve but little mercy from us for their mean behaviour in setting fire to so many bales of cloth and raw silk in the Fort but a very few minutes before we entered, and it grieves us much, to see such a number of stout and good vessels sunk with their whole cargoes far above the Fort, which is a great loss to us and no profit to them. Those indeed below, to hinder our passage were necessary, the others were _merely through mischief_. But notwithstanding this they scarcely ask a favour from the Admiral but it is granted." The result was that the soldiers on guard began to beat the coolies who were helping the French to secure their goods, until they were induced by gifts to leave them alone, and much plundering went on when the soldiers could manage to escape notice. On one day three black soldiers were executed, and on another Sergeant Nover[55] and a private soldier of the 39th Regiment were condemned to death, for breaking open the Treasury and stealing 3000 rupees. Another theft, which was not traced, was the holy vessels and treasure of the Church. Many individual Frenchmen were ruined. Of one of these Surgeon Ives narrates the following pleasing incident:-- "It happened unfortunately ... that Monsieur Nicolas, a man of most amiable character, and the father of a large family, had not been so provident as the rest of his countrymen in securing his effects within the Fort, but had left them in the town; consequently, upon Colonel Clive's first taking possession of the place, they had all been plundered by our common soldiers; and the poor gentleman and his family were to all appearance ruined. The generous and humane Captain Speke,[56] having heard of the hard fate of Monsieur Nicolas, took care to represent it to the two admirals in all its affecting circumstances, who immediately advanced the sum of 1500 rupees each. Their example was followed by the five captains of the squadron, who subscribed 5000 between them. Mr. Doidge added 800 more, and the same sum was thrown in by another person who was a sincere well-wisher to this unfortunate gentleman; so that a present of 9600 rupees, or £1200 sterling was in a few minutes collected towards the relief of this valuable Frenchman and his distressed family. One of the company was presently despatched with this money, who had orders to acquaint Monsieur Nicolas that a few of his English friends desired his acceptance of it, as a small testimony of the very high esteem they had for his moral character, and of their unfeigned sympathy with him in his misfortunes. The poor gentleman, quite transported by such an instance of generosity in an enemy, cried out in a sort of ecstasy, 'Good God, they axe friends indeed!' He accepted of the present with great thankfulness, and desired that his most grateful acknowledgements might be made to his unknown benefactors, for whose happiness and the happiness of their families, not only his, but the prayers of his children's children, he hoped, would frequently be presented to heaven. He could add no more; the tears, which ran plentifully down his cheeks, bespoke the feelings of his heart: and, indeed, implied much more than even Cicero with all his powers of oratory could possibly have expressed." This, however, was but a solitary instance; the state of the French was, as a rule, wretched in the extreme, and Renault wrote:-- "The whole colony is dispersed, and the inhabitants are seeking an asylum, some--the greatest part--have gone to Chinsurah, others to the Danes and to Calcutta. This dispersion being caused by the misery to which our countrymen are reduced, their poverty, which I cannot relieve, draws tears from my eyes, the more bitter that I have seen them risk their lives so generously for the interests of the Company, and of our nation." In such circumstances there was but one consolation possible to brave men--the knowledge that, in the eyes of friend and foe, they had done their duty. The officers of the British army and navy all spoke warmly of the gallant behaviour of the French, and the historian Broome, himself a soldier and the chronicler of many a brave deed, expresses himself as follows:-- "The conduct of the French on this occasion was most creditable and well worthy the acknowledged gallantry of that nation. Monsieur Renault, the Governor, displayed great courage and determination: but the chief merit of the defence was due to Monsieur Devignes" (Captain de la Vigne Buisson), "commander of the French Company's ship, _Saint Contest_. He took charge of the bastions, and directed their fire with great skill and judgment, and by his own example inspired energy and courage into all those around him." Renault himself found some consolation in the gallant behaviour of his sons. "In my misfortune I have had the satisfaction to see my two sons distinguish themselves in the siege with all the courage and intrepidity which I could desire. The elder brother was in the Company's service, and served as a volunteer; the younger, an officer in the army, was, as has been said above, commandant of the volunteers." Others who are mentioned by Renault and his companions as having distinguished themselves on the French side, were the Councillors MM. Caillot, Nicolas, and Picques, Captain de la Vigne Buisson and his son and officers, M. Sinfray (secretary to the Council), the officers De Kalli[57] and Launay, the Company's servants Matel, Le Conte Dompierre, Boissemont and Renault de St. Germain, the private inhabitant Renault de la Fuye, and the two supercargoes of Indiamen Delabar and Chambon. Caillot (or Caillaud) was wounded. The official report of the loss of Chandernagore was drawn up on the 29th of March, 1757. The original is in the French Archives, and Caillaud's signature shows that he was still suffering from his wound. Sinfray we shall come across again. He joined Law at Cossimbazar and accompanied him on his first retreat to Patna. Sent back by Law, he joined Siraj-ud-daula, and commanded the small French contingent at Plassey. When the battle was lost he took refuge in Birbhum, was arrested by the Raja, and handed over to the English. The immediate gain to the English by the capture of Chandernagore was immense. Clive wrote to the Select Committee at Madras:-- "I cannot at present give you an account to what value has been taken;[58] the French Company had no great stock of merchandize remaining, having sold off most of their Imports and even their investment for Europe to pay in part the large debts they had contracted. With respect to the artillery and ammunition ... they were not indifferently furnished: there is likewise a very fine marine arsenal well stocked. In short nothing could have happened more seasonable for the expeditious re-establishment of Calcutta than the reduction of Charnagore" (i.e. Chandernagore). "It was certainly a large, rich and thriving colony, and the loss of it is an inexpressible blow to the French Company."[59] The French gentlemen, after having signed under protest the document presented to them by Clive, betook themselves to Chinsurah, where they repudiated their signatures as having been extorted by force, subsequent to, and contrary to, the capitulation. They proceeded to communicate with Pondicherry, their up-country Factories, and the native Government; they also gave assistance to French soldiers who had escaped from Chandernagore. Clive and the Calcutta Council were equally determined to interpret the capitulation in their own way, and sent Renault an order, through M. Bisdom, the Dutch Director, to repair to the British camp. Renault refused, and when Clive sent a party of sepoys for him and the other councillors, they appealed to M. Bisdom for the protection of the Dutch flag. M. Bisdom informed them somewhat curtly that they had come to him without his invitation, that he had no intention of taking any part in their quarrels, that he would not give them the protection of his flag to enable them to intrigue against the English, and, in short, requested them to leave Dutch territory. As it was evident that the British were prepared to use force, Renault and the Council gave in, and were taken to Calcutta, where, for some time, they were kept close prisoners. It was not till the Nawab had been overthrown at Plassey, that they were absolutely released, and even then it was only that they might prepare for their departure from Bengal. Renault surmises, quite correctly, that this severity was probably due to the fear that they would assist the Nawab. The following incident during Renault's captivity shows how little could be expected from the Nawab towards a friend who was no longer able to be of use to him. After the capture of Chandernagore the English Council called on the Nawab to surrender the French up-country Factories to them. Siraj-ud-daula had not even yet learned the folly of his double policy. On the 4th of April he wrote to Clive:-- "I received your letter and observe what you desire in regard to the French factories and other goods. I address you seeing you are a man of wisdom and knowledge, and well acquainted with the customs and trade of the world; and you must know that the French by the permission and _phirmaund_[60] of the King[61] have built them several factories, and carried on their trade in this kingdom. I cannot therefore without hurting my character and exposing myself to trouble hereafter, deliver up their factories and goods, unless I have a written order from them for so doing, and I am perswaded that from your friendship for me you would never be glad at anything whereby my fame would suffer; as I on my part am ever desirous of promoting" [yours]. "Mr. Renault, the French. Governor being in your power, if you could get from him a paper under his own hand and seal to this purpose; 'That of his own will and pleasure, he thereby gave up to the English Company's servants, and empowered them to receive all the factories, money and goods belonging to the French Company without any hindrance from the Nawab's people;' and would send this to me, I should be secured by that from any trouble hereafter on this account. But it is absolutely necessary you come to some agreement about the King's duties arising from the French trade.... I shall then be able to answer to his servants 'that in order to make good the duties accruing from the French trade I had delivered up their factories into the hands of the English.'"[62] Clive replied on the 8th of April:-- "Now that I have granted terms to Mr. Renault, and that he is under my protection, it is contrary to our custom, after this, to use violence; and without it how would he ever of his own will and pleasure, write to desire you to deliver up his master's property. Weigh the justice of this in your own mind. Notwithstanding we have reduced the French so low you, contrary to your own interest and the treaty you have made with us, that my enemies should be yours, you still support and encourage them. But should you think it would hurt your character to deliver up the French factories and goods, your Excellency need only signify to me your approbation and I will march up and take them."[63] The more we study the records of the time, the more clearly we realize the terrible determination of Clive's character, and we almost feel a kind of pity for the weak creatures who found themselves opposed to him, until we come across incidents like the above, which show the depths of meanness to which they were prepared to descend. As to Renault's further career little is known, and that little we should be glad to forget. Placed in charge of the French Settlement at Karical, he surrendered, on the 5th of April, 1760, to what was undoubtedly an overwhelming British force, but after so poor a defence that he was brought before a Court Martial and cashiered. It speaks highly for the respect in which he had been held by both nations that none of the various reports and accounts of the siege mention him by name. Even Lally, who hated the French Civilians, though he says he deserved death,[64] only refers to him indirectly as being the same officer of the Company who had surrendered Chandernagore to Clive. We shall now pass to what went on in Siraj-ud-daula's Court and capital. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: Journal of M. d'Albert.] [Footnote 13: Evidently the Parish Church of St. Louis. Eyre Coote tells us the French had four guns mounted on its roof.] [Footnote 14: In early accounts of India the Muhammadans are always called _Moors_; the Hindus, _Gentoos_ or _Gentiles_. The _Topasses_ were Portuguese half-castes, generally employed, even by native princes, as gunners.] [Footnote 15: Captain Broome says there were fifty European ladies in the Fort. The French accounts say they all retired, previous to the siege, to Chinsurah and Serampore.] [Footnote 16: Captain, afterwards Sir, Eyre Coote.] [Footnote 17: The fullest account is one by Renault, dated October 26, 1758.] [Footnote 18: The only one, excepting the battle of Biderra, between the English and Dutch.] [Footnote 19: Governor of Pondicherry and President of the Superior Council.] [Footnote 20: Eyre Coote, in his "Journal," mentions an old ditch, which surrounded the settlement.] [Footnote 21: One hundred toises, or 600 feet; but Eyre Coote says 330 yards, the difference probably due to the measurement excluding or including the outworks.] [Footnote 22: Tanks, or artificial ponds, in Bengal are often of great size. I have seen some a quarter of a mile long.] [Footnote 23: Letter to M. de Montorcin, Chandernagore, August 1 1756. Signature lost.] [Footnote 24: The Nawab, in July, 1756, extorted three lakhs from the French and even more from the Dutch.] [Footnote 25: British Museum. Additional MS. 20,914.] [Footnote 26: A kind of fibre used in making bags and other coarse materials.] [Footnote 27: Surgeon Ives's Journal.] [Footnote 28: Letter to De Montorcin.] [Footnote 29: Both English and French use this word "inhabitant" to signify any resident who was not official, military, or in the seafaring way.] [Footnote 30: This he did through the Armenian Coja Wajid, a wealthy merchant of Hugli, who advised the Nawab on European affairs. _Letter from Coja Wajid to Clive, January 17, 1757_.] [Footnote 31: A French doctor, who has left an account of the Revolutions in Bengal, says there were eight outposts, and that the loss of one would have involved the loss of all the others, as they could be immediately cut off from the Fort, from which they were too distant to be easily reinforced. The doctor does not sign his name, but he was probably one of the six I mentioned above. Their names were Haillet (doctor), La Haye (surgeon-major), Du Cap (second), Du Pré (third), Droguet (fourth), and St. Didier (assistant).] [Footnote 32: M. Vernet, the Dutch Chief at Cossimbazar, wrote to the Dutch Director at Chinsurah that he could obtain a copy of this treaty from the Nawab's secretaries, if he wished for it.] [Footnote 33: See page 79 (and note).] [Footnote 34: See note, p. 89.] [Footnote 35: Governor.] [Footnote 36: A document authorising the free transit of certain goods, and their exemption from custom dues, in favour of English traders.--_Wilson_.] [Footnote 37: Orme MSS. India XI., p. 2744, No. 71.] [Footnote 38: Orme MSS. India XI., p. 2750, No. 83.] [Footnote 39: Still visible, I believe, in parts. The gateway certainly exists.] [Footnote 40: Mr. Tooke was a Company's servant. He had distinguished himself in the defence of Calcutta in 1756, when he was wounded, and, being taken on board the ships, escaped the dreadful ordeal of the Black Hole.] [Footnote 41: Neither of these accounts agree with the Capitulation Returns.] [Footnote 42: British Museum. Addl. MS. 20,914.] [Footnote 43: Remarks on board His Majesty's ship _Tyger_, March 15th.] [Footnote 44: His maternal grandfather was a cousin of Aliverdi Khan.] [Footnote 45: Malleson explains this by saying that De Terraneau was employed in the blocking up of the passage, but the story hardly needs contradiction.] [Footnote 46: This announcement seems superfluous after fighting had been going on for several days, but it simply shows the friction between the naval and military services.] [Footnote 47: Clive's journal for March 16th. Fort St. George, Sel. Com. Cons., 28th April, 1757.] [Footnote 48: Eyre Coote's journal.] [Footnote 49: The passages interpolated are on the authority of a MS. in the Orme Papers, entitled "News from Bengal."] [Footnote 50: Accounts of this detail differ. One says it was stormed on the 21st, but if so the French would have been more on their guard, and would surely have strengthened the second battery in front of the Fort.] [Footnote 51: Lime plaster made extremely hard.] [Footnote 52: The Emperor at Delhi, who was supposed to be about to invade Bengal.] [Footnote 53: Orme MSS. O.V. 32, p. 11.] [Footnote 54: Orme MSS. O.V. 32, p. 10.] [Footnote 55: Sergeant Nover was pardoned in consideration of previous good conduct. _Letter from Clive to Colonel Adlercron, March_ 29, 1757.] [Footnote 56: Captain Speke was seriously and his son mortally wounded in the attack on Chandernagore.] [Footnote 57: I cannot identify this name in the Capitulation Returns. Possibly he was killed.] [Footnote 58: Surgeon Ives says the booty taken was valued at £130,000.] [Footnote 59: Orme MSS. India X., p. 2390. Letter of 30th March, 1757.] [Footnote 60: _Firman_, or Imperial Charter.] [Footnote 61: The Mogul, Emperor, or King of Delhi, to whom the Bengal Nawabs were nominally tributary.] [Footnote 62: Orme MSS. India XI. pp. 2766-7, No. 111.] [Footnote 63: Ibid., p. 2768, No. 112.] [Footnote 64: Memoirs of Lally. London, 1766.] [Illustration: MUXADABAD, OR MURSHIDABAD. (_After Rennell_.)] CHAPTER III M. LAW, CHIEF OF COSSIMBAZAR A few miles out of Murshidabad, capital of the Nawabs of Bengal since 1704, when Murshid Kuli Khan transferred his residence from Dacca to the ancient town of Muxadabad and renamed it after himself, lay a group of European Factories in the village or suburb of Cossimbazar.[65] Of these, one only, the English, was fortified; the others, i.e. the French and Dutch, were merely large houses lying in enclosures, the walls of which might keep out cattle and wild animals and even thieves, but were useless as fortifications. In 1756 the Chief of the English Factory, as we have already seen, was the Worshipful Mr. William Watts; the Dutch factory was under M. Vernet,[66] and the French under M. Jean Law. The last mentioned was the elder son of William Law, brother of John Law the financier, who settled in France, and placed his sons in the French service. French writers[67] on genealogy have hopelessly mixed up the two brothers, Jean and Jacques François. Both came to India, both distinguished themselves, both rose to the rank of colonel, one by his services to the French East India Company, and one by the usual promotion of an officer in the King's army. The only proof that the elder was the Chief of Cossimbazar is to be found in a few letters, mostly copies, in which his name is given as Jean or John. As a usual rule he signed himself in the French manner by his surname only, or as Law of Lauriston. His experiences during the four years following the accession of Siraj-ud-daula were painful and exciting, and he has recorded them in a journal or memoir[68] which has never yet been published, but which is of great interest to the student of Indian history. For us it has the added charm of containing a picture of ourselves painted by one who, though a foreigner by education, was enabled by his birth to understand our national peculiarities. In the present chapter I shall limit myself almost entirely to quotations from this memoir. Law was by no means an admirer of Aliverdi Khan's successor,-- "Siraj-ud-daula, a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five,[69] very common in appearance. Before the death of Aliverdi Khan the character of Siraj-ud-daula was reported to be one of the worst ever known. In fact, he had distinguished himself not only by all sorts of debauchery, but by a revolting cruelty. The Hindu women are accustomed to bathe on the banks of the Ganges. Siraj-ud-daula, who was informed by his spies which of them were beautiful, sent his satellites in disguise in little boats to carry them off. He was often seen, in the season when the river overflows, causing the ferry boats to be upset or sunk in order to have the cruel pleasure of watching the terrified confusion of a hundred people at a time, men, women, and children, of whom many, not being able to swim, were sure to perish. When it became necessary to get rid of some great lord or minister, Siraj-ud-daula alone appeared in the business, Aliverdi Khan retiring to one of his houses or gardens outside the town, so that he might not hear the cries of the persons whom he was causing to be killed." So bad was the reputation of this young prince, that many persons, among them Mr. Watts, imagined it impossible that the people would ever tolerate his accession. The European nations in Bengal had no regular representatives at the Court of the Nawab; and the Chiefs of the Factories at Cossimbazar, though now and then admitted to the _Durbar_, transacted their business mainly through _wakils_, or native agents, who, of course, had the advantage of knowing the language and, what was of much greater importance, understood all those indirect ways in which in Eastern countries one's own business is forwarded and that of one's rivals thwarted. Then, as now, the difficulty of dealing with native agents was to induce these agents to express their own opinions frankly and clearly.[70] So far from the English Chief being corrected by his _wakil_, we find the latter, whilst applying to other nobles for patronage and assistance, studiously refraining from making any application to Siraj-ud-daula when English business had to be transacted at Court. The English went even further:-- "On certain occasions they refused him admission into their factory at Cossimbazar and their country houses, because, in fact, this excessively blustering and impertinent young man used to break the furniture, or, if it pleased his fancy, take it away. But Siraj-ud-daula was not the man to forget what he regarded as an insult. The day after the capture of the English fort at Cossimbazar, he was heard to say in full _Durbar_, 'Behold the English, formerly so proud that they did not wish to receive me in their houses!' In short, people knew, long before the death of Aliverdi Khan, that Siraj-ud-daula was hostile to the English." With the French it was different:-- "On the other hand, he was very well disposed towards us. It being our interest to humour him, we had received him with a hundred times more politeness than he deserved. By the advice of Rai Durlabh Ram and Mohan Lal, we had recourse to him in important affairs. Consequently, we gave him presents from time to time, and this confirmed his friendship for us. The previous year (1755) had been a very good one for him, owing to the business connected with the settlement of the Danes in Bengal. In fact, it was by his influence that I was enabled to conclude this affair, and Aliverdi Khan allowed him to retain all the profit from it, so I can say that I had no bad place in the heart of Siraj-ud-daula. It is true he was a profligate, but a profligate who was to be feared, who could be useful to us, _and who might some day be a good man_. Nawajis Muhammad Khan[71] had been at least as vicious as Siraj-ud-daula, and yet he had become the idol of the people." Law, therefore, had cultivated the young Nawab. Mr. Watts, on the other hand, was not only foolish enough to neglect him, but carried his folly to extremes. He was not in a position to prevent his accession, and ought therefore to have been careful by the correctness of his behaviour to show no signs of being opposed to it. So far from this, he is strongly suspected of having entered into correspondence with the widow of Nawajis Khan, who had adopted Siraj-ud-daula's younger brother[72] and was supporting his candidature for the throne, and also with Saukat Jang, Nawab of Purneah and cousin of Siraj-ud-daula, who was trying to obtain the throne for himself. Still further, he advised Mr. Drake, Governor of Calcutta, to give shelter to Kissendas, son of Raj Balav (Nawajis Khan's _Diwan_), who had fled with the treasures in his charge when his father was called to account for his master's property. Contrary to Mr. Watts's expectations, Aliverdi Khan's last acts so smoothed the way for Siraj-ud-daula, and the latter acted with such decision and promptitude on his grandfather's death, that in an incredibly short time he had all his enemies at his feet, and was at leisure to attend to state business, and especially the affairs of the foreign Settlements. Aliverdi Khan had always been extremely jealous of allowing the European nations to erect any fortifications, but, during his last illness, all of them, expecting a contested succession, during which, owing to complications in Europe, they might find themselves at war with each other in India, began to repair their old walls or to erect new ones. This was exactly what Siraj-ud-daula wanted. His first care on his accession had been to make himself master of his grandfather's and uncle's treasures. To these he had added those of such of his grandfather's servants as he could readily lay hands on. Other wealthy nobles and officers had fled to the English, or were suspected of having secretly sent their treasures to Calcutta. It was also supposed that the European Settlements, and especially Calcutta, were filled with the riches accumulated by the foreigners. Whilst, therefore, the Nawab was determined to make all the European nations contribute largely in honour of his accession, and in atonement for their insolence in fortifying themselves without his permission, he had special reasons for beginning with the English. In the mean time, however, he had first to settle with his cousin, Saukat Jang, the Nawab of Purneah, so he contented himself with sending orders to the Chiefs of the Factories to pull down their new fortifications. Law acted wisely and promptly. "I immediately drew up an _Arzi_, or Petition, and had one brought from the Council in Chandernagore of the same tenour as my own. These two papers were sent to Siraj-ud-daula, who appeared satisfied with them. He even wrote me in reply that he did not forbid our repairing old works, but merely our making new ones. Besides, the spies who had been sent to Chandernagore, being well received and satisfied with the presents made them, submitted a report favourable to us, so that our business was hushed up." The English behaved very differently, and their answer, which was bold if not insolent in tone,[73] reached the Nawab at the very moment when he had received the submission of the Nawab of Purneah. Law adds:-- "I was assured that the Nawab of Purneah showed him some letters which he had received from the English. This is difficult to believe, but this is how the match took fire. "Accordingly, no sooner had the Nawab heard the contents of the answer from the English, than he jumped up in anger, and, pulling out his sword, swore he would go and exterminate all the Feringhees.[74] At the same time he gave orders for the march of his army, and appointed several Jemadars[75] to command the advance guard. As in his first burst of rage he had used the general word Feringhees, which is applied to all Europeans, some friends whom I had in the army, and who did not know how our business had ended, sent to warn me to be on my guard, as our Factory would be besieged. The alarm was great with us, and with the English, at Cossimbazar. I spent more than twenty-four hours in much anxiety; carrying wood, provisions, etc., into the Factory, but I soon knew what to expect. I saw horsemen arrive and surround the English fort, and at the same time I received an official letter from the Nawab, telling me not to be anxious, and that he was as well pleased with us as he was ill pleased with the English." Cossimbazar surrendered without firing a shot, owing to the treacherous advice of the Nawab's generals, and Siraj-ud-daula advanced on Calcutta. It was with the greatest difficulty that Law escaped being forced to march in his train. "The remains of the respect which he had formerly felt for Europeans made him afraid of failure in his attack on Calcutta, which had been represented to him as a very strong place, defended by three or four thousand men. He wrote to me in the strongest terms to engage the Director of Chandernagore to give him what assistance he could in men and ammunition. 'Calcutta is yours,' he said to our agent in full _Durbar_; 'I give you that place and its dependencies as the price of the services you will render me. I know, besides, that the English are your enemies; you are always at war with them either in Europe or on the Coromandel Coast, so I can interpret your refusal only as a sign of the little interest you take in what concerns me. I am resolved to do you as much good as Salabat Jang[76] has done you in the Deccan, but if you refuse my friendship and the offers I make you, you will soon see me fall on you and cause you to experience the same treatment that I am now preparing for others in your favour.' He wished us to send down at once to Calcutta all the ships and other vessels which were at Chandernagore. After having thanked him for his favourable disposition towards us, I represented to him that we were not at war with the English, that what had happened on the Coromandel Coast was a particular affair which we had settled amicably, and that the English, in Bengal having given us no cause of offence, it was impossible for us, without orders either from Europe or Pondicherry, to give him the assistance he asked for. Such reasons could only excite irritation in the mind of a man of Siraj-ud-daula's character. He swore he would have what he wanted whether we wished it or not, and that, as we lived in his country, his will ought to be law to us. I did my best to appease him, but uselessly. At the moment of his departure his sent us word by one of his uncles that he still counted on our assistance, and he sent me a letter for the Governor of Pondicherry, in which he begged him to give us the necessary orders. I thought to myself this was so much time gained." The Nawab captured Calcutta without any open assistance from the French, and, though he set free most of the prisoners who survived the Black Hole, he sent Holwell and three others before him to Murshidabad. Law, who had already sheltered Mrs. Watts and her family, and such of the English of Cossimbazar as had been able to escape to him, now showed similar kindness to Holwell and his companions. Of this he says modestly:-- "The gratitude Mr. Holwell expresses for a few little services which I was able to render him makes me regret my inability to do as much to deserve his gratitude as I should have liked to do."[77] He also, apparently with some difficulty, obtained consent to M. Courtin's request for the release of the English prisoners at Dacca; for-- "Siraj-ud-daula, being informed that there were two or three very charming English ladies at Dacca, was strongly tempted to adorn his harem with them." Law's success in these matters is a striking instance of his personal influence, for Siraj-ud-daula was by no means any longer well disposed towards the French and Dutch. "The fear of drawing on his back all the European nations at once had made him politic. At first he pretended to be satisfied with the reply sent by the Governor of Chandernagore, and assured him that he would always treat us with the greatest kindness. He said the same to the Dutch, but when Calcutta was taken the mask fell. He had nothing more to fear. Scarcely had he arrived at Hugli when he sent detachments to Chandernagore and Chinsurah to summon the commandants to pay contributions, or to resolve to see their flags taken away and their forts demolished. In short, we were forced to yield what the Nawab demanded; whilst he, as he said, was content with having punished a nation which had offended him, and with having put the others to ransom to pay for the expenses of the expedition. We saw the tyrant reappear in triumph at Murshidabad, little thinking of the punishment which Providence was preparing for his crimes, and to make which still more striking, he was yet to have some further successes." It may be here pointed out that, not only did the Nawab not insist on the destruction of the French and Dutch fortifications, but he did not destroy the fortifications of Calcutta. This proves that if the English had shown the humility and readiness to contribute which he desired, he would have left them in peace at the first, or, after the capture of Calcutta, have permitted them to resettle there without farther disturbance. In short, the real necessity of making the European nations respect his authority, instead of guiding him in a settled course, merely provided a pretext for satisfying his greed. This is the opinion, not only of the French and English who were at Murshidabad when the troubles began, but of the English officials who went there later on and made careful inquiries amongst all classes of people in order to ascertain the real reason of Siraj-ud-daula's attack upon the English. His avarice was to prove the Nawab's ruin. "Siraj-ud-daula was one of the richest Nawabs that had ever reigned. Without mentioning his revenues, of which he gave no account at the Court of Delhi, he possessed immense wealth, both in gold and silver coin, and in jewels and precious stones, which had been left by the preceding three Nawabs. In spite of this he thought only of increasing his wealth. If any extraordinary expense had to be met he ordered contributions, and levied them with extreme rigour. Having never known himself what it was to want money, he supposed that, in due proportion, money was as common with other people as with himself, and that the Europeans especially were inexhaustible. His violence towards them was partly due to this. In fact, from his behaviour, one would have said his object was to ruin everybody. He spared no one, not even his relatives, from whom he took all the pensions and all the offices which they had held in the time of Aliverdi Khan. Was it possible for such a man to keep his throne? Those who did not know him intimately, when they saw him victorious over his enemies and confirmed as Nawab by a _firman_[78]from the Great Mogul, were forced to suppose that there was in his character some great virtue which balanced his vices and counteracted their effects. However, this young giddy-pate had no talent for government except that of making himself feared, and, at the same time, passed for the most cowardly of men. At first he had shown some regard for the officers of the army, because, until he was recognized as Nawab, he felt his need of them. He had even shown generosity, but this quality, which was quite opposed to his real character, soon disappeared, to make place for violence and greed, which decided against him all those who had favoured his accession in the hope that he would behave discreetly when he became Nawab." Owing to the general disgust felt at Murshidabad for the Nawab, his cousin, Saukat Jang, Nawab of Purneah, thought the opportunity favourable for reviving his claims, and, early in October, Siraj-ud-daula, hearing of his contemplated rebellion, invaded his country. "Every one longed for a change, and many flattered themselves it would take place. In fact, it was the most favourable opportunity to procure it. The result would have been happiness and tranquillity for Bengal. Whilst contributing to the general good--which even the Dutch might have interested themselves in--we could have prevented the misfortunes which have since happened to us. Three or four hundred Europeans and a few sepoys would have done the business. If we could have joined this force to the enemies of Siraj-ud-daula we should have placed on the throne another Nawab--not, indeed, one wholly to our taste, but, not to worry about trifles, one to the liking of the house of Jagat Seth,[79] and the chief Moors and Rajas. I am sure such a Nawab would have kept his throne. The English would have been re-established peaceably, they would certainly have received some compensation, and would have had to be satisfied whether they liked it or not. The neutrality of the Ganges assured, at least to the same extent as in the time of Aliverdi Khan, the English would have been prevented from invading Bengal, and from sending thither the reinforcements which had contributed so much to their success on the Madras Coast. All this depended on us, but how could we foresee the succession of events which has been as contrary to us as it has been favourable to the English? As it was, we remained quiet, and the rash valour of the young Nawab of Purneah, whilst it delivered Siraj-ud-daula from the only enemy he had to fear in the country, made it clear to the whole of Bengal that the change so much desired could be effected only by the English." Mir Jafar and other leaders of the Nawab's army were about to declare in favour of Saukat Jang when Ramnarain,[80] Naib of Patna, arrived to support Siraj-ud-daula. Whilst the malcontents were hesitating what to do, Saukat Jang made a rash attack on the Nawab's army, and was shot dead in the fight. "Behold him then, freed by this event from all his inquietudes; detested, it is true, but feared even by those who only knew him by name. In a country where predestination has so much power over the mind, the star of Siraj-ud-daula was, people said, predominant. Nothing could resist him. He was himself persuaded of this. Sure of the good fortune which protected him, he abandoned himself more than ever to those passions which urged him to the commission of every imaginable form of violence. "It can be guessed what we had to suffer, we and the Dutch, at Cossimbazar. Demand followed demand, and insult followed insult, on the part of the native officers and soldiers; for they, forming their behaviour on that of their master, thought they could not sufficiently show their contempt for everything European. We could not go outside of our Factories without being exposed to annoyance of one kind or another." Every one in the land turned wistful eyes towards the English, but they lay inactive at Fulta, and it seemed as if help from Madras would never come. The English, therefore, tried to bring about a revolution favourable to themselves at Murshidabad, and began to look for persons who might be induced to undertake it; but this was not easy, as the Moor nobles had little acquaintance with the Europeans. Of the Hindus in Bengal-- "the best informed were the bankers and merchants, who by their commercial correspondence had been in a position to learn many things. The house of Jagat Seth, for instance, was likely to help the English all the more because to its knowledge of them it joined several causes of complaint against Siraj-ud-daula. Up to the death of Aliverdi Khan it had always enjoyed the greatest respect. It was this family which had conducted almost all his financial business, and it may be said that it had long been the chief cause of all the revolutions in Bengal. But now things were much changed. Siraj-ud-daula, the most inconsiderate of men, never supposing that he would need the assistance of mere bankers, or that he could ever have any reason to fear them, never showed them the slightest politeness. He wanted their wealth, and some day or other it was certain he would seize it. These bankers, then, were the persons to serve the English. They could by themselves have formed a party, and, even without the assistance of any Europeans, have put another Nawab upon the throne and re-established the English, but this would have required much time. Business moves very slowly amongst Indians, and this would not have suited the English. The bankers also were Hindus, and of a race which does not like to risk danger. To stimulate them to action it was necessary for the English to commence operations and achieve some initial successes, and as yet there seemed no likelihood of their doing so. To negotiate with Siraj-ud-daula for a peaceful re-establishment was quite as difficult, unless they were inclined to accept the very hardest conditions, for the Nawab had now the most extravagant contempt for all Europeans; a pair of slippers, he said, is all that is needed to govern them." Just as it seemed likely that the English would have to stoop to the Nawab's terms, they received news of the despatch of reinforcements from Madras. About the same time, it became known to both French and English that France and England had declared war against each other in the preceding May.[81] The English naturally said nothing about it, and the French were too eager to see the Nawab well beaten to put any unnecessary obstacles in their way. The negotiations with the friends of the Europeans at Murshidabad were quietly continued until Admiral Watson and Colonel Clive arrived. A rapid advance was then made on Calcutta, which was captured with hardly any resistance. Siraj-ud-daula was so little disturbed by the recapture of Calcutta that the French thought everything would terminate amicably, but, possibly owing to the reputation of Watson and Clive, who had so long fought against the French,[82] they thought it likely that, if the English demanded compensation for their losses, the Nawab would allow them to recoup themselves by seizing the French Settlements. M. Renault, therefore, wrote to Law to make sure that, in any treaty between the Nawab and the English, an article should be inserted providing for the neutrality of the Ganges; but the French, at present, were needlessly alarmed. The English had no intention of creeping quietly back into the country. Watson and Clive addressed haughty letters to the Nawab, demanding reparation for the wrongs inflicted on the English; and the Admiral and the Council declared war in the name of the King and the Company. This possibly amused the Nawab, who took no notice of their letters; but it was a different matter when a small English force sailed up the Hugli, passed Chandernagore unopposed by the French, captured the fort of Hugli, burnt Hugli[83] and Bandel towns, and ravaged both banks of the river down to Calcutta. The French were in an awkward position. The English had passed Chandernagore without a salute, which was an unfriendly, if not a hostile act; whilst the Nawab thought that, as the French had not fired on them, they must be in alliance with them. Law had to bear the brunt of this suspicion. His common sense told him that the English would never consent to a neutrality, and he wrote to Renault that it was absolutely necessary to join the Moors. "The neutrality was by no means obligatory, as no treaty existed. In fact, what confidence could we have in a forced neutrality, which had been observed so long only out of fear of the Nawab, who for the general good of the country was unwilling to allow any act of hostility to be committed by the Europeans? Much more so when the English were at war with the Nawab himself. If they managed to get the better of him, what would become of this fear, the sole foundation of the neutrality?" So Law wrote to Renault, begging him, if he could not persuade the English to sign a treaty of neutrality at once, to make up his mind and join the Nawab. We have seen why Renault could do neither, and Law, writing after the event says, generously enough:-- "I am bound to respect the reasons which determined M. Renault as well as the gentlemen of the Council, who were all much too good citizens not to have kept constantly in their minds the welfare of our nation and the Company. People always do see things differently, and the event does not always prove the correctness or incorrectness of the reasons which have decided us to take one or the other course." As soon as the Nawab heard of the plundering of Hugli he set out for Calcutta, but to blind the English he requested M. Renault to mediate between them. The English refusal to treat through the French had the effect of clearing up matters between the latter and the Nawab; but he could not understand why the French would not actively assist him. Certain, at any rate, that he had only the English to deal with, he foolishly played into their hands by marching to fight them on their own ground, whereas, if he had remained idle at a little distance, merely forbidding supplies to be sent them, he could have starved them out of Calcutta in a few months. As I have said before, Clive attacked his camp on the 5th of February, and so terrified him that he consented to a shameful peace, in which he forgot all mention of the neutrality of the Ganges. Law tells a curious story to the effect that what frightened the Nawab most of all was a letter from Admiral Watson, threatening to make him a prisoner and carry him to England. Watson's letter is extant, and contains no such threat, but it is quite possible that it was so interpreted to the Nawab. Though the Nawab had assured the English that he would have the same friends and enemies as they, and had omitted to mention the French in the treaty, he now, of his own accord, gave the French all that the English had extorted from him. This act could not be kept secret. "A great fault at present, and which has always existed, in the management of affairs in India, especially in Bengal, is that nothing is secret. Scarcely had the Nawab formed any project when it was known to the lowest of his slaves. The English, who were suspicious, and who had for friends every one who was an enemy of Siraj-ud-daula, whom all detested, were soon informed of his proposals to M. Renault and of the letters written on both sides." Yet Law thinks it was only the European war and the fear that Renault intended an alliance with the Nawab that induced the English to proceed to extremities:-- "The dethronement of the Nawab had become an absolute necessity. To drive us out of Bengal was only a preliminary piece of work. A squadron of ours with considerable forces might arrive. Siraj-ud-daula might join his forces to it. What, then, would become of the English? They needed for Nawab a man attached to their interests. Besides, this revolution was not so difficult to carry out as one might imagine. With Chandernagore destroyed, nothing could be more easy; but even if we were left alone the revolution could have been effected by the junction of the English with the forces which would have been produced against Siraj-ud-daula by the crowd of enemies whom he had, and amongst whom were to be counted the most respectable persons in the three provinces.[84] This statement demands an explanation. I have already spoken of the house of Jagat Seth, or rather of its chiefs, who are named Seth Mahtab Rai and Seth Sarup Chand, bankers of the Mogul, the richest and most powerful merchants who have ever lived. They are, I can say, the _movers_ of the revolution. Without them the English would never have carried out what they have. I have already said they were not pleased with Siraj-ud-daula, who did not show them the same respect as the old Nawab Aliverdi Khan had done; but the arrival of the English forces, the capture of the Moorish forts, and the fright of the Nawab before Calcutta, had made a change which was apparently in their favour. The Nawab began to perceive that the bankers were necessary to him. The English would have no one except them as mediators, and so they had become, as it were, responsible for the behaviour of both the Nawab and the English. Accordingly after the Peace there was nothing but kindness and politeness from the Nawab towards them, and he consulted them in everything. At the bottom this behaviour of his was sheer trickery. The Seths were persuaded that the Nawab who hated the English must also dislike the persons whom the English employed. Profiting by the hatred which the Nawab had drawn on himself by his violence, and distributing money judiciously, they had long since gained over those who were nearest to the Nawab, whose imprudence always enabled them to know what he had in his heart. From what came to the knowledge of the Seths it was easy to guess what he intended, and this made them tremble, for it was nothing less than their destruction, which could be averted only by his own. The cause of the English had become that of the Seths; their interests were identical. Can one be surprised to see them acting in concert? Further, when one remembers that it was this same house of bankers that overthrew Sarfaraz Khan[85] to enthrone Aliverdi Khan, and who, during the reign of the latter, had the management of all important business, one must confess that it ought not to be difficult for persons of so much influence to execute a project in which, the English were taking a share."[86] Law could not persuade Renault to act, and without his doing so the game was nearly hopeless. Still, he worked at forming a French party in the Court. By means of Coja Wajid, an Armenian merchant of Hugli, whose property had been plundered by the English, he obtained an interview with the Nawab, and persuaded him to send the 2000 soldiers who were with Renault at the beginning of the siege. More would have been despatched but for the apparent certainty that the treaty of neutrality would be signed. In fact, Renault was so worried that, on the complaint of Watson and Clive that Law was exciting the Nawab against the English, he wrote Law a letter which caused the latter to ask to be recalled from Cossimbazar, and it was only at Renault's earnest request that he consented to remain at his post. Law continued forming his party. "It would appear from the English memoirs that we corrupted the whole _Durbar_ at Murshidabad to our side by presents and lies. I might with justice retort this reproach. As a matter of fact, except Siraj-ud-daula himself, one may say the English had the whole _Durbar_ always in their favour. Without insisting on this point, let us honestly agree, since the English themselves confess it, that we were, like them, much engaged in opposing corruption to corruption in order to gain the friendship of scoundrels so as to place ourselves on equal terms with our enemies. This has always happened, and ought not to cause surprise in a Court where right counts for nothing and, every other motive apart, one can never be successful except by the weight of what one puts in the balance of iniquity. For the rest, right or wrong, it is certain that the English were always in a position to put in more than we could. "Fear and greed are the two chief motives of Indian minds. Everything depends on one or the other. Often they are combined towards the same object, but, when they are opposed, fear always conquers. A proof of this is easily to be seen in all the events connected with, the revolution in Bengal. When, in 1756, Siraj-ud-daula determined to expel the English, fear and greed combined to make him act. As soon as he had himself proved the superiority of the English troops, fear took the upper hand in his mind, grew stronger day by day, and soon put him in a condition in which he was unable to follow, and often even to see, his true interests. "I mention the Nawab first. His hatred for the English certainly indicated friendship for us. I think so myself, but we have seen what was his character and his state of mind in general. I ask, in all good faith, whether we could expect any advantage from his friendship? This person, cowed by fear, irresolute and imprudent, could he alone be of any use to us? It was necessary for him to be supported by some one who had his confidence and was capable by his own firmness of fixing the irresolution of the Prince. "Mohan Lal, chief _Diwan_ of Siraj-ud-daula, was this man, the greatest scoundrel the earth has ever borne, worthy minister of such a master, and yet, in truth, the only person who was really attached to him. He had firmness and also sufficient judgment to understand that the ruin of Siraj-ud-daula must necessarily bring on his own. He was as much, detested as his master. The sworn enemy of the Seths, and capable of holding his own against them, I think those bankers would not have succeeded so easily in their project if he had been free to act, but, unfortunately for us, he had been for some time, and was at this most critical moment dangerously ill. He could not leave his house. I went to see him twice with Siraj-ud-daula, but it was not possible to get a word from him. There is strong reason to believe he had been poisoned. Owing to this, Siraj-ud-daula saw himself deprived of his only support. "Coja Wajid, who had introduced me to the Nawab, and who, it would be natural to suppose, was our patron, was a great merchant of Hugli. He was consulted by the Nawab only because, as he had frequented the Europeans and especially the English, the Nawab imagined he knew them perfectly. He was one of the most timid of men, who wanted to be polite to everybody, and who, had he seen the dagger raised, would have thought he might offend Siraj-ud-daula by warning him that some one intended to assassinate him.[87] Possibly he did not love the Seths, but he feared them, which was sufficient to make him useless to us. "Rai Durlabh Ram, the other _Diwan_ of the Nawab, was the man to whom I was bound to trust most. Before the arrival of Clive he might have been thought the enemy of the English. It was he who pretended to have beaten them and to have taken Calcutta. He wished, he said, to maintain his reputation; but after the affair of the 5th of February, in which the only part he took was to share in the flight, he was not the same man; he feared nothing so much as to have to fight the English. This fear disposed him to gradually come to terms with the Seths, of whose greatness he was very jealous. He also hated the Nawab, by whom he had been ill-used on many occasions. In short, I could never get him to say a single word in our favour in the _Durbar_. The fear of compromising himself made him decide to remain neutral for the present, though firmly resolved to join finally the side which appeared to him to be the strongest." This, then, was the French party, whose sole bond was dislike to the Seths, and the members of which, by timidity or ill-health, were unable to act. It was different with their enemies. "The English had on their side in the _Durbar_ the terror of their arms, the faults of Siraj-ud-daula, the ruling influence and the refined policy of the Seths, who, to conceal their game more completely, and knowing that it pleased the Nawab, often spoke all the ill they could think of about the English, so as to excite him against them and at the same time gain his confidence. The Nawab fell readily into the snare, and said everything that came into his mind, thus enabling his enemies to guard against all the evil which otherwise he might have managed to do them. The English had also on their side all the chief officers in the Nawab's army--Jafar All Khan, Khodadad Khan Latty, and a number of others who were attached to them by their presents or the influence of the Seths, all the ministers of the old Court whom Siraj-ud-daula had disgraced, nearly all the secretaries,[88] the writers[89] of the _Durbar_, and even the eunuchs of the harem. What might they not expect to achieve by the union of all these forces when guided by so skilful a man as Mr. Watts?" With such enemies to combat in the Court itself, Law heard that the English were marching on Chandernagore. By the most painful efforts he obtained orders for reinforcements to be sent to the French. They-- "were ready to start, the soldiers had been paid, the Commandant[90] waited only for final orders. I went to see him and promised him a large sum if he succeeded in raising the siege of Chandernagore. I also visited several of the chief officers, to whom I promised rewards proportionate to their rank. I represented to the Nawab that Chandernagore must be certainly captured if the reinforcements did not set out at once, and I tried to persuade him to give his orders to the Commandant in my presence. 'All is ready,' replied the Nawab, 'but before resorting to arms it is proper to try all possible means to avoid a rupture, and all the more so as the English have just promised to obey the orders I shall send them.'[91] I recognized the hand of the Seths in these details. They encouraged the Nawab in a false impression about this affair. On the one hand, they assured him that the march of the English, was only to frighten us into subscribing to a treaty of neutrality, and on the other hand they increased his natural timidity by exaggerating the force of the English and by representing the risk he ran in assisting us with reinforcements which would probably not prevent the capture of Chandernagore if the English were determined to take it, but would serve as a reason for the English to attack the Nawab himself. They managed so well that they destroyed in the evening all the effect I had produced in the morning. "I resolved to visit the bankers. They immediately commenced talking about our debts, and called my attention to the want of punctuality in our payments. I said that this was not the question just now, and that I came to them upon a much more interesting matter, which, however, concerned them as well as us with respect to those very debts for which they were asking payment and security. I asked why they supported the English against us. They denied it, and, after much explanation, they promised to make any suggestions I wished to the Nawab. They added that they were quite sure the English would not attack us, and that I might remain tranquil. Knowing that they were well acquainted with the designs of the English, I told them I knew as well as they did what these were, and that I saw no way of preventing them from attacking Chandernagore except by hastening the despatch of the reinforcements which the Nawab had promised, and that as they were disposed to serve me, I begged them to make the Nawab understand the same. They replied that the Nawab wished to avoid any rupture with the English, and they said many other things which only showed me that, in spite of their good will, they would do nothing for us. Ranjit Rai, who was their man of business as well as the agent of the English, said to me in a mocking tone, 'You are a Frenchman; are you afraid of the English? If they attack you, defend yourselves! No one is ignorant of what your nation has done on the Madras Coast, and we are curious to see how you will come off in this business here.' I told him I did not expect to find such a warlike person in a Bengali merchant, and that sometimes people repented of their curiosity. That was enough for such a fellow, but I saw clearly that the laugh would not be on my side. However, every one was very polite, and I left the house." Law thinks the Seths honestly believed that the English march on Chandernagore was merely intended to frighten the French, and, as a proof of their friendliness, narrates a further incident of this visit:-- "The conversation having turned on Siraj-ud-daula, on the reasons he had given the Seths to fear him, and on his violent character, I said I understood clearly enough what they meant, and that they certainly wanted to set up another Nawab. The Seths, instead of denying this, contented themselves with saying in a low voice that this was a subject which should not be talked about. Omichand, the English agent[92] (who, by the way, cried 'Away with them!' wherever he went), was present. If the fact had been false, the Seths would certainly have denied it, and would have reproached me for talking in such a way. If they had even thought I intended to thwart them, they would also have denied it, but considering all that had happened, the vexations caused us by the Nawab and our obstinate refusals to help him, they imagined that we should be just as content as they were to see him deposed, provided only the English would leave us in peace. In fact, they did not as yet regard us as enemies." Law was, however, ignorant that Clive had already promised, or did so soon after, to give the property of the French Company to the Seths in payment of the money the French owed them; but he now for the first time fully realized the gravity of the situation. The indiscretion of the Seths showed him the whole extent of the plot, and the same evening he told the Nawab, but-- "the poor young man began to laugh, not being able to imagine I could be so foolish as to indulge in such ideas." And yet, whilst he refused to believe in the treason of his officers, the Nawab indulged at times in the most violent outbreaks of temper against them. "Siraj-ud-daula was not master of himself.[93] It would have needed as much firmness in his character as there was deceitfulness to make the latter quality of use to him. At certain times his natural disposition overmastered him, especially when in his harem surrounded by his wives and servants, when he was accustomed to say openly all that was in his heart. Sometimes this happened to him in full _Durbar_." The same evening, also, Mr. Watts came to the _Durbar_, and the matter of the neutrality was talked over. The Nawab wished the two gentlemen to pledge their respective nations to keep the peace, but Mr. Watts skilfully avoided giving any promise, and suggested the Nawab should write to the Admiral. Law, seeing that further delay was aimed at, exclaimed that the Admiral would pay as little respect to this letter as to the Nawab's previous ones. "'How?' said the Nawab, looking angrily at me instead of at Mr. Watts: 'who am I then?' All the members of his Court cried out together that his orders would certainly be attended to." As Law expected, Chandernagore was attacked before the Admiral's reply was received. Law received the news on the 15th, and hurried to the Nawab. Reinforcements were ordered and counter-ordered. At midnight the Nawab's eunuch came to inform Law that the English had been repulsed with loss, and on the morning of the 16th the Nawab's troops were ordered to advance, but when the same day news came that the French had withdrawn into the Fort, every one cried out that the Fort must fall, and that it was mere folly to incense the English by sending down troops. They were immediately recalled. Then news arrived that the Fort was holding out, and Rai Durlabh Ram was ordered to advance. Again there came a false report that the Fort had fallen. Law knew Rai Durlabh was a coward, and his whole reliance was on the second in command, Mir Madan:-- "a capable officer, and one who would have attacked the enemy with pleasure." This Mir Madan is said to have been a Hindu convert to Muhammadanism. Native poems still tell of the gallantry with which he commanded the Hindu soldiers of the Nawab. He was one of the first to fall at Plassey, and though it cannot be said that his death caused the loss of the battle, it is certain that it put an end to all chance of the victory being contested. Law was at his wits' end. It was no time to stick at trifles, and, that he might know the worst at once, he intercepted Mr. Watts's letters. From them he gathered that the English intended to march straight upon Murshidabad. He set about fortifying the enclosure round the French Factory, and, as he had only 10 or 12 men, he induced the Nawab to send him a native officer with 100 musketeers. He soon learned that the reported English advance was merely the pursuit of the fugitives from Chandernagore, who were mentioned in the last chapter. By the end of March he had 60 Europeans:-- "of whom the half, in truth, were not fit to serve; but what did that matter? The number was worth 120 to me outside the fort, since rumour always delights in exaggeration." Of the sepoys also, whom the English set free, some 30 found their way to Law, and so far was he now from being afraid of Mr. Watts, that it was the latter who had to ask the Nawab's protection. The vacillation which had marked the Nawab's conduct previous to the fall of Chandernagore still continued. He protected Law, but would not help him with money. "Further, at the solicitation of my enemies, the Nawab sent people to pull down the earthworks I had erected. He even wished the native agent of the English to be present. In my life I have never suffered what I did that day. To the orders of the Nawab I replied that so long as I was in the Factory no foreigner should touch my fortifications, but that to keep my agreement with him I was ready to withdraw and to make over the Factory to him, with which he could afterwards do as he liked, and for which I should hold him responsible. At the same time, I made my whole troop arm themselves, and, having had my munitions loaded on carts for several days previous, I prepared to depart with the small amount of money which belonged to me and to a few other individuals. The Nawab's officer, seeing my resolution, and fearing to do anything which, might not be approved, postponed the execution of his orders, and informed the Nawab of what was happening. He replied that he absolutely forbade my leaving the Factory, and ordered the pioneers to be sent away; but at the same time he informed me that it was absolutely necessary for me to pull down the earthworks, that under the present circumstances he had himself to do many things contrary to his own wishes, that by refusing to obey I should draw the English upon him and upon us, that we could not defend ourselves and must therefore submit, that I should not be troubled any more, and that, finally, he would give me money enough to build in brick what I had wished to make in earth. I knew well the value of his promises, but I was forced to humour him. It did not suit me to abandon the Factory altogether, so I set my workmen to pull down what I had built, and the same night the work was finished." The English now tried to win over the French soldiers, and had some success, for many of them were deserters from the British forces, and they quickly saw how precarious was the shelter which Law could afford them; but the Nawab could not be persuaded to force Law to surrender, and, though he agreed to leave the country, Law declared he would not do even that unless he received passports and money. On the 8th of April he received passports, and was promised that if he would go to Phulbari, near Patna, he should there receive all he wanted. He was allowed four or five days to make his preparations. "I profited by this interval to persuade the only man who dared speak for us to got to action. This was the Nazir Dalal, a man of no importance, but at the same time a man in whom the Nawab appeared to have some confidence. As he was constantly at the Factory, I had opportunities of telling him many things of particular interest to the Nawab, and I believed that by politeness and presents I had brought him over to our interests. A little later, however, I learned that he received quite as much from the English as from us. He told the Nawab all that he learned from me, _viz._ the views of the English and of the Seths, and the risk he himself was running, and he brought to his notice that the English were steadily increasing their garrison at Cossimbazar by bringing up soldiers who pretended they were deserters and wished to pass over to the Trench. By this trick, indeed, many soldiers had passed through the Moorish camp without being stopped. There was also talk of an English fleet preparing to come up and waiting only for the Nawab's permission. The Nazir Dalal represented to him that the trading boats might be loaded with ammunition, and that they ought to be strictly searched, and the casks and barrels opened, as guns and mortars might be found in them. The Nawab opened his eyes at information of this kind, and promptly sent the Nazir Dalal to tell me not to leave. This order came on the 10th of April. I accordingly passed my garrison in review before the Nawab's agent, and a statement showing the monthly pay of each officer and soldier was sent to the Nawab, who promised to pay them accordingly." On the 12th of April Law received a sudden summons to attend the _Durbar_ the next day. "After some reflection, I determined to obey. I thought that by taking presents I could avoid the inconveniences I feared, so I arranged to start early on the morning of the 13th with five or six persons well armed. A slight rain detained us till 10 o'clock. On leaving I told my people that M. Sinfray was their commandant, and ordered him, if I did not return by 2 o'clock, to send a detachment of forty men to meet me. We arrived at the Nawab's palace about midday. He had retired to his harem. We were taken into the Audience Hall, where they brought us a very bad dinner. The Nawab, they said, would soon come. However, 5 o'clock had struck and he had not yet dressed. During this wearisome interval I was visited by some of the _Diwans_, among others by the _Arzbegi._[94] I asked him why the Nawab had called me. He replied with an appearance of sincerity that as the Nawab was constantly receiving complaints from the English, about the numerous garrison we had in our Factory, he had judged it proper to summon both Mr. Watts and myself in order to reconcile us, and that he hoped to arrange matters so that the English should have nothing to fear from us nor we from them. He added that the Nawab was quite satisfied with my behaviour, and wished me much good. At last the _Durbar_ hour arrives. I am warned. I pass into a hall, where I find Mr. Watts and a number of _Diwans_. The agent of the Seths is present Compliments having passed, one of the _Diwans_ asks me if I have anything particular to say to Mr. Watts. I answer that I have not. Thereupon Mr. Watts addresses me in English: 'The question is, sir, whether you are prepared to surrender your Factory to me and to go down to Calcutta with all your people. You will be well treated, and will be granted the same conditions as the gentlemen of Chandernagore. This is the Nawab's wish.' I reply I will do nothing of the kind, that I and all those with me are free, that if I am forced to leave Cossimbazar I will surrender the Factory to the Nawab, and to no one else. Mr. Watts, turning round to the _Diwans_, says excitedly, that it is impossible to do anything with me, and repeats to them word for word all that has passed between us. "From that moment I saw clearly that the air of the Court was not healthy for us. It was, however, necessary to put a good face on matters. The _Arzbegi_ and some others, taking me aside, begged me to consider what I was doing in refusing Mr. Watts's propositions, and said that as the Nawab was determined to have a good understanding with the English, he would force me to accept them. They then asked what I intended to do. I said I intended to stay at Cossimbazar and to oppose, to the utmost of my power, the ambitious designs of the English. 'Well, well, what can you do?' they replied. 'You are about a hundred Europeans; the Nawab has no need of you; you will certainly be forced to leave this place. It would be much better to accept the terms offered you by Mr. Watts.' The same persons who had begged me to do this then took Mr. Watts aside. I do not know what they said to each other, but a quarter of an hour after they went into the hall where the Nawab was. "I was in the utmost impatience to know the result of all these parleyings, so much the more as from some words that had escaped them I had reason to think they intended to arrest me. "Fire or six minutes after Mr. Watts had gone to the Nawab, the _Arzbegi_, accompanied by some officers and the agents of the Seths and the English, came and told me aloud, in the presence of some fifty persons of rank, that the Nawab ordered me to submit myself entirely to what Mr. Watts demanded. I told him I would not, and that it was impossible for the Nawab to have given such an order. I demanded to be presented to him. 'The Nawab,' they said, 'does not wish to see you.' I replied, 'It was he who summoned me; I will not go away till I have seen him.' The _Arzbegi_ saw I had no intention of giving way, and that I was well supported, for at this very moment word was brought of the arrival of our grenadiers, who had been ordered to come and meet me. Disappointed at not seeing me appear, they had advanced to the very gates of the palace. The _Arzbegi_, not knowing what would be the result of this affair, and wishing to get out of the scrape and to throw the burden of it on to the Seths' agent, said to him, 'Do you speak, then; this affair concerns you more than us.' The Seths' agent wished to speak, but I did not give him time. I said I would not listen to him, that I did not recognize him as having any authority, and that I had no business at all with him. Thereupon the _Arzbegi_ went back to the Nawab and told him I would not listen to reason, and that I demanded to speak to him. 'Well, let him come,' said the Nawab, 'but he must come alone.' At the same time he asked Mr. Watts to withdraw and wait for him in a cabinet. The order to appear being given me, I wish to go--another difficulty! The officers with me do not wish to let me go alone! A great debate between them and the Nawab's officers! At last, giving way to my entreaties, and on my assuring them that I have no fears, I persuade them to be quiet and to let me go. "I presented myself before the Nawab, who returned my salute in a kindly manner. As soon as I was seated, he told me, in a shamefaced way, that I must either accept Mr. Watts's proposals, or must certainly leave his territories. _Your nation is the cause_, he said, _of all the importunities I now suffer from the English. I do not wish to put the whole country in trouble for your sake. You are not strong enough to defend yourselves; you must give way. You ought to remember that when I had need of your assistance you always refused it. You ought not to expect assistance from me now_. "It must be confessed that, after all our behaviour to him, I had not much to reply. I noticed, however, that the Nawab kept his eyes cast down, and that it was, as it were, against his will that he paid me this compliment. I told him I should be dishonoured if I accepted Mr. Watts's proposals, but that as he was absolutely determined to expel us from his country, I was ready to withdraw, and that as soon as I had the necessary passports I would go towards Patna. At this every one in concert, except the Nawab and Coja Wajid, cried out that I could not take that road, that the Nawab would not consent to it. I asked what road they wished me to take. They said I must go towards Midnapur or Cuttack. I answered that the English might at any moment march in that direction and fall upon me. They replied I must get out of the difficulty as best I could. The Nawab, meanwhile, kept his face bent down, listening attentively, but saying nothing. Wishing to force him to speak, I asked if it was his intention to cause me to fall into the hands of my enemies? 'No, no,' replied the Nawab, 'take what road you please, and may God conduct you.' I stood up and thanked him, received the betel,[95] and went out." Gholam Husain Khan says that the Nawab was much affected at parting with Law, as he now believed in the truth of his warnings against the English and the English party,-- "but as he did not dare to keep him in his service for fear of offending the English, he told him that at present it was fit that he should depart; but that if anything new should happen he would send for him again. '_Send for me again?_' answered Law. '_Rest assured, my Lord Nawab, that this is the last time we shall see each other. Remember my words: we shall never meet again. It is nearly impossible_." Law hurried back to his Factory, and by the evening of the 15th of April he was ready to depart. The same day the Nawab wrote to Clive:-- "Mr. Law I have put out of the city, and have wrote expressly to my Naib[96] at Patna to turn him and his attendants out of the bounds of his Subaship, and that he shall not suffer them to stay in any place within it."[97] At the end of April the Nawab wrote to Abdulla Khan, the Afghan general at Delhi, that he had supplied Law with Rs.10,000. Clive was quickly informed of this. On the morning of the 16th the French marched through Murshidabad with colours flying and drums beating, prepared against any surprise in the narrow streets of the city. Mr. Watts wrote to Clive:-- "They had 100 Europeans, 60 Tellingees, 30 _hackerys_" (i.e. bullock-waggons) "and 4 elephants with them."[98] Close on their track followed two spies, sent by Mr. Watts to try and seduce the French soldiers and sepoys. Law left a M. Bugros behind in charge of the French Factory. Shortly after leaving Cossimbazar, Law was reinforced by a party of 45 men, mostly sailors of the _Saint Contest_, who had managed to escape from the English. On the 2nd of May the French arrived at Bhagulpur, the Nawab writing to them to move on whenever he heard they were halting, and not to go so fast when he heard they were on the march. "To satisfy him we should have been always in motion and yet not advancing; this did not suit us. It was of the utmost importance to arrive at some place where I could find means for the equipment of my troop. We were destitute of everything." These contradictory orders, and even letters of recall, reached Law on his march, but though he sent back M. Sinfray with letters to M. Bugros and Coja Wajid--which the latter afterwards made over to Clive--he continued his march to Patna, where he arrived on the 3rd of June, and was well received by Raja Ramnarain, and where he was within four or five days' march or sail from Sooty, the mouth of the Murshidabad or Cossimbazar river, and therefore in a position to join the Nawab whenever it might be necessary. In the mean time fate had avenged Law on one of his lesser enemies. This was that Ranjit Rai, who had insulted him during his interview with the Seths. The latter had pursued their old policy of inciting the English to make extravagant demands which they at the same time urged the Nawab to refuse. To justify one such demand, the English produced a letter in the handwriting of Ranjit Rai, purporting to be written at the dictation of the Seths under instructions from the Nawab. The latter denied the instructions, and the Seths promptly asserted that the whole letter was a forgery of their agent's. "The notorious Ranjit Rai was driven in disgrace from the _Durbar_, banished, and assassinated on the road. It was said he had received 2 lakhs from the English to apply his masters' seal unknown to them. I can hardly believe this. This agent was attached to the English only because he knew the Seths were devoted to them." This incident warned the Seths to be more cautious, but still the plot against the Nawab was well known in the country. Renault, who had been at this time a prisoner in Calcutta, says:-- "Never was a conspiracy conducted as publicly and with such indiscretion as this was, both by the Moors and the English. Nothing else was talked about in all the English settlements, and whilst every place echoed with the noise of it, the Nawab, who had a number of spies, was ignorant of everything. Nothing can prove more clearly the general hatred which was felt towards him."[99] M. Sinfray had returned to Murshidabad, but could not obtain an interview with the Nawab till the 8th of June, when he found him still absolutely tranquil; and even on the 10th the Nawab wrote to Law to have no fears on his account; but this letter did not reach Law till the 19th. "I complained of the delay in the strongest terms to Ramnarain, who received the packets from the Nawab, but it was quite useless. The Nawab was betrayed by those whom he thought most attached to him. The Faujdar of Rajmehal used to stop all his messengers and detain them as long as he thought fit." This officer was a brother of Mir Jafar.[100] The Seths and the English had long found the chief difficulty in their way to be the choice of a man of sufficient distinction to replace Siraj-ud-daula on the throne. At this moment the Nawab himself gave them as a leader Mir Jafar Ali Khan, who had married the sister of Aliverdi Khan, and was therefore a relative of his. Mir Jafar was _Bukshi_, or Paymaster and Generalissimo of the Army, and his influence had greatly contributed to Siraj-ud-daula's peaceful accession. He was a man of good reputation, and a brave and skilful soldier. It was such a person as this that the Nawab, after a long course of petty insults, saw fit to abuse in the vilest terms in full _Durbar_ and to dismiss summarily from his post. He now listened to the proposals of the Seths, and towards the end of April terms were settled between him and the English.[101] The actual conclusion of the Treaty took place early in June, and on the 13th of that month Mr. Watts and the other English gentlemen at Cossimbazar escaped under the pretence of a hunting expedition and joined Clive in safety. As soon as he heard of this, the Nawab knew that war was inevitable, and it had come at a moment when he had disbanded half his army unpaid, and the other half was grumbling for arrears. Not only had he insulted Mir Jafar, but he had also managed to quarrel with Rai Durlabh. Instead of trying to postpone the conflict until he had crushed these two dangerous enemies, he begged them to be reconciled to him, and put himself in their hands. Letter after letter was sent to recall Law, but even the first, despatched on the 13th, did not reach Law till the 22nd, owing to the treachery of the Faujdar of Rajmehal. Law's letter entreating the Nawab to await his arrival certainly never reached him, and though Law had started at the first rumour of danger, before getting the Nawab's letter, he did not reach Rajmehal till the 1st of July. The Nawab had been captured in the neighbourhood a few hours before the arrival of his advance-guard. Gholam Husain Khan says that Law would have been in time had the Nawab's last remittance been a bill of exchange and not an order on the Treasury, for-- "as slowness of motion seems to be of etiquette with the people of Hindustan, the disbursing of the money took up so much time that when M. Law was come down as far Rajmehal, he found that all was over." Law, who was nothing if not philosophical, remarked on this disappointment:-- "In saving Siraj-ud-daula we should have scored a great success, but possibly he would have been saved for a short time only. He would have found enemies and traitors wherever he might have presented himself in the countries supposed to be subject to him. No one would have acknowledged him. Forced by Mir Jafar and the English to flee to a foreign country, he would have been a burden to us rather than an assistance. "In India no one knows what it is to stand by an unfortunate man. The first idea which suggests itself is to plunder him of the little[102] which remains to him. Besides, a character like that of Siraj-ud-daula could nowhere find a real friend." Siraj-ud-daula, defeated by Clive at Plassey on the 23rd of June, was, says Scrafton,-- "himself one of the first that carried the news of his defeat to the capital, which he reached that night." His wisest councillors urged him to surrender to Clive, but he thought this advice treacherous, and determined to flee towards Rajmehal. When nearly there he was recognized by a Fakir,[103] whose ears he had, some time before, ordered to be cut off. The Fakir informed the Faujdar, who seized him and sent him to Murshidabad, where Miran, Mir Jafar's son, put him to death on the 4th of July. It was necessary for Law to withdraw as quickly as possible if he was to preserve his liberty. Clive and Mir Jafar wrote urgent letters to Ramnarain at Patna to stop him, but Ramnarain was no lover of Mir Jafar, and he was not yet acquainted with Clive, so he allowed him to pass. Law says:-- "On the 16th of July we arrived at Dinapur, eight miles above Patna, where I soon saw we had no time to lose. The Raja of Patna himself would not have troubled us much. By means of our boats we could have avoided him as we pleased, for though our fleet was in a very bad condition, still it could have held its own against the naval forces of Bengal, i.e. the Indian forces, but the English were advancing, commanded by Major Coote. As the English call themselves the masters of the aquatic element, it became us the less to wait for them, when we knew they had stronger and more numerous boats than we had. Possibly we could have outsailed them, but we did not wish to give them the pleasure of seeing us flee. On the 18th instant an order from the Raja instructed me in the name of Mir Jafar to halt--no doubt to wait for the English--whilst another on his own part advised me to hurry off. Some small detachments of horsemen appeared along the bank, apparently to hinder us from getting provisions or to lay violent hands on the boatmen. On this we set sail, resolved to quit all the dependencies of Bengal. In spite of ourselves we had to halt at Chupra, twenty-two miles higher up, because our rowers refused to go further: prayers and threats all seemed useless. I thought the English had found some means to gain them over. The boats did not belong to us, but we should have had little scruple in seizing them had our Europeans known how to manage them. Unfortunately, they knew nothing about it. The boats in Bengal have no keel, and consequently do not carry sail well. So we lost two days in discussion with the boatmen, but at last, by doubling their pay, terms were made, and five days after, on the 25th of July, we arrived at Ghazipur, the first place of importance in the provinces of Suja-ud-daula, Viceroy of the Subahs of Oudh, Lucknow, and Allahabad." Before Law left Rajmehal on his return to Patna, the Faujdar tried to stop him on pretence that Mir Jafar wished to reconcile him to the English. Law thought this unlikely, yet knowing the native proclivity for underhand intrigue, he wrote him a letter, but the answer which he received at Chupra was merely an order to surrender. Law says:-- "I had an idea that he might write to me in a quite different style, _unknown to the English_. I knew the new Nawab, whom I met at the time I was soliciting reinforcements to raise the siege of Chandernagore. He had not then taken up the idea of making himself Nawab. He appeared to me a very intelligent man, and much inclined to do us service, pitying us greatly for having to work with a man so cowardly and undecided as Siraj-ud-daula." Law thought his communication-- "was well calculated to excite in his mind sentiments favourable to us, but if it did, Mir Jafar let none of them appear. The Revolution was too recent and the influence of the English too great for him to risk the least correspondence with us." From Clive, on the other hand, he received a letter,-- "such as became a general who, though an enemy, interested himself in our fate out of humanity, knowing by his own experience into what perils and fatigues we were going to throw ourselves when we left the European Settlements." This letter, dated Murshidabad, July 9th, was as follows:-- "As the country people are now all become your enemies, and orders are gone everywhere to intercept your passage, and I myself have sent parties in quest of you, and orders are gone to Ramnarain, the Naib of Patna, to seize you if you pursue that road, you must be sensible if you fall into their hands you cannot expect to find them a generous enemy. If, therefore, you have any regard for the men under your command, I would recommend you to treat with us, from whom you may expect the most favourable terms in my power to grant."[104] Law does not say much about the hardships of his flight; but Eyre Coote, who commanded the detachment which followed him, had the utmost difficulty in persuading his men to advance, and wrote to Clive that he had never known soldiers exposed to greater hardships. At Patna Eyre Coote seized the French Factory, where the Chief, M. de la Bretesche, was lying ill. The military and other Company's servants had gone on with Law, leaving in charge a person variously called M. Innocent and Innocent Jesus. He was not a Frenchman, but nevertheless he was sent down to Calcutta. From Patna Eyre Coote got as far as Chupra, only to find Law safe beyond the frontier at Ghazipur, and nothing left for him to do but to return. From now on to January, 1761, Law was out of the reach of the English, living precariously on supplies sent from Bussy in the south, from his wife at Chinsurah, and from a secret store which M. de la Bretesche had established at Patna unknown to the English, and upon loans raised from wealthy natives, such as the Raja of Bettiah. He believed all along that the French would soon make an effort to invade Bengal, where there was a large native party in their favour, and where he could assist them by creating a diversion in the north. I shall touch on his adventures very briefly. His first halt was at Benares, which he reached on the 2nd of August, and where the Raja Bulwant Singh tried to wheedle and frighten him into surrendering his guns. He escaped out of his hands by sheer bluff, and went on to Chunargarh, where he received letters from Suja-ud-daula, Nawab of Oudh, a friend of Siraj-ud-daula's, whom he hoped to persuade into invading Bengal. On the 3rd of September he reached Allahabad, and here left his troop under the command of M. le Comte de Carryon, whilst he went on to Lucknow, the capital of Oudh. It is only at this moment that Law bethinks him of describing his troop. It consisted of 175 Europeans and 100 sepoys drilled in European fashion. The officers were D'Hurvilliers, le Comte de Carryon (who had brought a detachment from Dacca before Law left Cossimbazar), Ensign Brayer (who had commanded the military at Patna), Ensign Jobard (who had escaped from Chandernagore), and Ensign Martin de la Case. He also entertained as officers MM. Debellême (Captain of a French East Indiaman), Boissemont, and La Ville Martère, Company's servants (these three had all escaped from Chandernagore), Dangereux and Dubois (Company's servants stationed at Cossimbazar), Beinges (a Company's servant stationed at Patna), and two private gentlemen, Kerdizien and Gourbin. Besides these, MM. Anquetil du Perron,[105] La Rue, Desjoux, Villequain, Desbrosses, and Calvé, served as volunteers. His chaplain was the Reverend Father Onofre, and he had two surgeons, Dubois and Le Page. The last two were probably the surgeons of Cossimbazar and Patna. He had also with him M. Lenoir, second of Patna, whose acquaintance with the language and the people was invaluable. Law seems to have been always able to recruit his sepoys, but he had no great opinion of them. "In fact it may be said that the sepoy is a singular animal, especially until he has had time to acquire a proper sense of discipline. As soon as he has received his red jacket and his gun he thinks he is a different man. He looks upon himself as a European, and having a very high estimation of this qualification, he thinks he has the right to despise all the country people, whom he treats as Kaffirs and wretched negroes, though he is often just as black as they are. In every place I have been I have remarked that the inhabitants have less fear of the European soldier, who in his disorderly behaviour sometimes shows an amount of generosity which they would expect in vain from a sepoy." Law has left the following description of Lucknow:-- "Lucknow, capital of the Subah[106] so called, is 160 miles north of Allahabad, on the other side of the Ganges, and about 44 miles from that river. The country is beautiful and of great fertility, but what can one expect from the best land without cultivation? It was particularly the fate of this province and of a large portion of Oudh to have been exhausted by the wars of Mansur Ali Khan.[107] That prince at his death left the Treasury empty and a quantity of debts. Suja-ud-daula, his successor, thought he could satisfy his creditors, all of them officers of the army, by giving them orders upon several of the large estates. This method was too slow for these military gentlemen. In a short time every officer had become the Farmer,[108] or rather the Tyrant, of the villages abandoned to him. Forcible executions quickly reimbursed him to an extent greater than his claim, but the country suffered. The ill-used inhabitants left it, and the land remained uncultivated. This might have been repaired. The good order established by Suja-ud-daula commenced to bring the inhabitants back when an evil, against which human prudence was powerless, achieved their total destruction. For two whole years clouds of locusts traversed the country regularly with the Monsoon,[109] and reduced the hopes of the cultivator to nothing. When two days from Lucknow, we ourselves saw the ravages committed by this insect. It was perfect weather; suddenly we saw the sky overcast; a darkness like that of a total eclipse spread itself abroad and lasted a good hour. In less than no time we saw the trees under which we were camped stripped of their leaves. The next day as we journeyed we saw that the same devastation had been produced for a distance of ten miles. The grass on the roads and every green thing in the fields were eaten away down to the roots. This recurrent plague had driven away the inhabitants, even those who had survived the exactions of the military. Towns and villages were abandoned; the small number of people who remained--I am speaking without exaggeration--only served to augment the horror of this solitude. We saw nothing but spectres. "The state of the people of Lucknow city, the residence of the Nawab, was hardly better. The evil was perhaps less evident owing to the variety of objects, but from what one could see from time to time nature did not suffer less. The environs of the palace were covered with poor sick people lying in the middle of the roads, so that it was impossible for the Nawab to go out without causing his elephant to tread on the bodies of several of them, except when he had the patience to wait and have them cleared out of the way--an act which would not accord with Oriental ideas of grandeur. In spite of this there were few accidents. The animal used to guide its footsteps so as to show it was more friendly to human beings than men themselves were." At Lucknow Suja-ud-daula greeted him with a sympathetic interest, which Law quaintly likens to that shown by Dido for Aeneas, but money was not forthcoming, and Law soon found that Suja-ud-daula was not on sufficiently good terms with the Mogul's[110] Vizir[111] at Delhi to risk an attack on Bengal. On the 18th of October he returned to Allahabad, with the intention of going to Delhi to see what he could do with the Vizir, but as it might have been dangerous to disclose his object, he pretended he was going to march south to Bussy in the Deccan, and obtained a passport from the Maratha general, Holkar. This took some time, and it was not till March, 1758, that he started for Delhi. He reached Farukhabad without difficulty, and on the 21st entered the country of the Jats. On the evening of the 23rd a barber, who came into their camp, warned the French they would be attacked. The next day the Jats, to the number of 20,000, attacked them on the march. The fight lasted the whole day, and the French fired 6000 musket shots and 800 cannon. The cannon-balls were made of clay moulded round a pebble, and were found sufficiently effective in the level country. Soon after they arrived at Delhi, only to find the Marathas masters of the situation and in actual possession of the person of the Shahzada, or Crown Prince.[112] The Prince was friendly, gave Law money, and eagerly welcomed the idea of attacking Bengal, but he was himself practically a prisoner. The Vizir, too, could do nothing, and would give no money. The Marathas amused him with promises, and tried to trap him into fighting their battles. No one seemed to know anything about what had happened in Bengal. He spoke to several of the chief men about the English. "I felt sure that, after the Revolution in Bengal, they would be the only subject of conversation in the capital. The Revolution had made much noise, but it was ascribed entirely to the Seths and to Rai Durlabh Ram. Clive's name was well known. He was, they said, a great captain whom the Seths had brought from very far at a great expense, to deliver Bengal from the tyranny of Siraj-ud-daula, as Salabat Jang had engaged M. Bussy to keep the Marathas in order. Many of the principal persons even asked me what country he came from. Others, mixing up all Europeans together, thought that I was a deputy from Clive. It was useless for me to say we were enemies, that it was the English who had done everything in Bengal, that it was they who governed and not Jafar Ali Khan, who was only Nawab in name. No one would believe me. In fact, how could one persuade people who had never seen a race of men different from their own, that a body of two or three thousand Europeans at the most was able to dictate the law in a country as large as Bengal?" Law could do nothing at Delhi, and it was only by bribing the Maratha general that he obtained an escort through the Jat country to Agra. Most of his soldiers were glad to be off, but about 60 Europeans deserted with their arms to Delhi, where the Vizir offered them pay as high as 50 rupees a month. M. Jobard was nearly killed by some of them when he tried to persuade them to return to duty, but, a few months after, more than half rejoined Law. From Agra, Law went to Chatrapur in Bundelkand, where apparently, though he does not say so, he was in the service of the Raja Indrapat. His stay lasted from the 10th of June, 1758, to February, 1759. In order to keep on good terms with the inhabitants, who were almost all Hindus, Law forbade his men to kill cattle or any of the sacred birds, or to borrow anything without his permission, and at the same time severely punished all disorderly behaviour. The people having never heard of Christians, thought the French must be a kind of Muhammadans, but they could not make out from what country they came. Seeing them drink a red wine of which they had a few bottles, they thought they were drinking blood, and were horrified, but the good behaviour of the men soon put them on friendly terms. Early in 1759 the Shahzada at last invaded Bengal, and on the 5th of February Law marched to join him; but the invasion was badly managed, and was an absolute failure. On the 28th of May Law was back at Chatrapur. The only result of the invasion was that the lands of a number of Rajas in Bihar were plundered by Miran, son of Mir Jafar, and the English. These Rajas were all Hindus. "They had an understanding with Ramnarain. All these Rajas, of whom there is a great number in the dependencies of Bengal, united to each other by the same religion, mutually support each other as much as they can. They detest the Muhammadan Government, and if it had not been for the Seths, the famous bankers, with whom they have close connections, it is probable that after the Revolution in which Siraj-ud-daula was the victim, they would all have risen together to establish a Hindu Government, from which the English would not have obtained all the advantages they did from the Muhammadan." In 1759 the Dutch risked a quarrel with the English. They refused, however, any assistance from Law, who, far away as he was, heard all about it. They were defeated at Biderra on the 25th of November. The effect of this was to reduce Bengal to such tranquillity that Clive considered it safe to visit England. The Shahzada, however, thought the opportunity a favourable one for another invasion, and on the 28th of February, 1760, Law again started to join him. Patna was besieged, and, according to Broome, was very nearly captured, owing to Law's skill and the courage of his Frenchmen. In fact, the French were on the ramparts, when Dr. Fullerton and the English sepoys arrived just in time to drive them back.[113] The siege was raised, and the Prince's general, Kamgar Khan, led the army about the country with apparently no object but that of plunder. This suited the Marathas, but did not suit Law. On one occasion he was ordered with his own troops and a body of Marathas to capture the little fort of Soupy. The French stormed it at three o'clock in the morning, but found that the Marathas, who had carefully avoided the breach, had swarmed the walls, where there was no one to oppose them, and were carrying off the plunder. "My chief occupation and that of the officers, for more than five hours during which we stayed in Soupy, was to keep our soldiers and sepoys from bayoneting the Marathas, who, without having incurred the least danger, had, by their cleverness and lightness, carried off more than twenty times as much as our own men, observing among themselves a kind of order in their plundering, very like that of monkeys when they strip a field." In fact, Law had a personal altercation with the Maratha commander about a young and beautiful Hindu woman, whom the Maratha wished to seize, but whom Law was determined to restore unhurt to her relations, who lived in a village close by. For the capture of the fort, Law received from the Shahzada various high-sounding titles and the right to have the royal music played before him; but as he could not afford to entertain the native musicians, he allowed the privilege to sleep. In 1760 Mr. Vansittart assumed the Governorship of Bengal, and his first act was to complete the project begun by his predecessor, Mr. Holwell, namely, the dethronement of Mir Jafar. This was effected on the 20th of October, 1760; the ex-Nawab went quietly to Calcutta, and Mir Kasim reigned in his stead. The Shahzada had now become Emperor by the death of his father, and had assumed the title of Shah Alam. He was still hanging with his army round Patna, and Mir Kasim and the English determined to bring him to book. Kamgar Khan continued to lead the Imperial army aimlessly about the country, and in January, 1761, found himself near the town of Bihar. He had 35 to 40 thousand cavalry, maintained chiefly by plunder, but his only musketeers and artillery were those commanded by Law, i.e. 125 Europeans and 200 sepoys, with 18 guns of small calibre. The British commander, Major Carnac, had 650 Europeans and 5 to 6 thousand sepoys, with 12 guns. Mir Kasim had some 20,000 cavalry, and the same number of musketeers, all good troops, for "everybody was paid in the army of Kasim Ali Khan."[114] On the 14th of January, scouts brought word of the approach of the English. The Emperor consulted Law, who advised a retreat, but he was not deficient in courage, and determined to fight. The next day was fought the battle of Suan.[115] "At the dawn of day we heard that the enemy were on the march, and that they would quickly appear. No disposition of our army had yet been made by Kamgar Khan, who, in fact, troubled himself very little about the matter. It was at first decided to re-enter the camp, so I put my men as much as possible under shelter behind a bank, along which I placed my guns in what I thought the most useful positions. About 6 or 7 o'clock the enemy were seen advancing in good order, crossing a canal[116] full of mud and water, the passage of which might have been easily contested had we been ready soon enough; but everything was neglected. For some time we thought the enemy were going to encamp by the canal, but, seeing that they were still advancing, the order was given to go and meet them. The whole army was quickly out of the camp, divided into several bodies of cavalry, at the head of which were, on their elephants, the Emperor, the Generalissimo Kamgar Khan, and other principal chiefs. Scarcely were we out of the camp when we were halted to await the enemy, everything in the greatest confusion; one could see no distinction between right, left, and centre, nothing that had the appearance of an army intending to attack or even to defend itself. "An aide-de-camp brought me an order to march ahead with all my troop, and to place myself in a position which he pointed out, a good cannon-shot away. Abandoned to ourselves we should have been exposed to all the fire of the English, artillery and even to be outflanked by the enemy and captured at the first attack. We advanced a few paces in obedience to the order, but, seeing no one move to support us, I suspected they wanted to get rid of us. I therefore brought back my men to where I had first placed them, on a line about 200 paces in front of the army. "The enemy advanced steadily. The English at their head with all their artillery were already within range of our guns. They quickly placed their pieces in two batteries to the right and left, and kept up a very lively cross fire. In a very short time, having killed many men, elephants, and horses--amongst others one of mine--they caused the whole of the Prince's army to turn tail. Kamgar Khan, at their head, fled as fast as he could, without leaving a single person to support us. The enemy's fire, opposed to which ours was but feeble, continued steadily. We were forced to retire, and did so in good order, having had some soldiers and sepoys killed and one gun dismounted, which we left on the field of battle. We regained the village, which sheltered us for a time. The enemy started in pursuit. Unluckily, as we issued from the village, our guns traversing a hollow road, we were stopped by ditches and channels full of mud, in which the guns stuck fast. As I was trying to disengage them the English reached us, and surrounded us so as to cut off all retreat. Then I surrendered with 3 or 4 officers and about 40 soldiers who were with me, and the guns. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th of January, 1761, a moment whose malign influence it was as it were impossible to resist, since it was that of the surrender of Pondicherry,[117] a place 300 leagues away from us." Gholam Husain Khan has left a graphic description of this incident. "Monsieur Law, with the small force and the artillery which he could muster, bravely fought the English themselves, and for some time he made a shift to withstand their superiority. Their auxiliaries consisted of large bodies of natives, commanded by Ramnarain and Raj Balav, but the engagement was decided by the English, who fell with so much effect upon the enemy that their onset could not be withstood by either the Emperor or Kamgar Khan. The latter, finding he could not resist, turned about and fled. The Emperor, obliged to follow him, quitted the field of battle, and the handful of troops that followed M. Law, discouraged by this flight and tired of the wandering life which they had hitherto led in his service, turned about likewise and followed the Emperor. M. Law, finding himself abandoned and alone, resolved not to turn his back. He bestrode one of his guns and remained firm in that posture, waiting the moment for his death. This being reported to Major Carnac, he detached himself from his main body with Captain Knox and some other officers, and he advanced to the man on the gun, without taking with him either a guard or any Telingas[118] at all. Being arrived near, this troop alighted from their horses, and, pulling their caps from their heads, they swept the air with them, as if to make him a _salam_; and this salute being returned by M. Law in the same manner, some parley followed in their own language. The Major, after paying high encomiums to M. Law for his perseverance, conduct, and bravery, added these words: 'You have done everything that could be expected from a brave man; and your name shall be undoubtedly transmitted to posterity by the pen of history; now loosen your sword from your loins, come amongst us, and abandon all thoughts of contending with the English.' The other answered that, if they would accept of his surrendering himself just as he was he had no objection, but that as to surrendering himself with the disgrace of being without his sword, it was a shame he would never submit to, and that they might take his life if they were not satisfied with that condition. The English commanders, admiring his firmness, consented to his surrendering himself in the manner he wished; after which the Major, with his officers, shook hands with him in their European manner, and every sentiment of enmity was instantly dismissed on both sides. At the same time that commander sent for his own _palky_, made him sit in it, and he was sent to the camp. M. Law, unwilling to see or to be seen, in that condition, shut up the curtains of the _palky_ for fear of being recognized by any of his friends at camp, but yet some of his acquaintances, hearing of his having arrived, went to him; these were Mir Abdulla and Mustapha Ali Khan. The Major, who had excused him from appearing in public, informed them that they could not see him for some days, as he was too much vexed to receive any company. Ahmed Khan Koreishi, who was an impertinent talker, having come to look at him, thought to pay his court to the English by joking on this man's defeat--a behaviour that has nothing strange [in it] if we consider the times in which we live and the company he was accustomed to frequent; and it was in that notion of his, doubtless, that with much pertness of voice and air he asked him this question: '_And Bibi Lass,[119] where is she_?' The Major and the officers present, shocked at the impropriety of the question, reprimanded him with a severe look and very severe expressions. 'This man,' they said, 'has fought bravely, and deserves the attention of all brave men; the impertinences which you have been offering him may be customary amongst your friends and your nation, but cannot be suffered in ours, who has it for a standing rule never to offer an injury to a vanquished foe.' Ahmed Khan, checked by this reprimand, held his tongue, and did not answer a word. He tarried about one hour more in his visit, and then went away much abashed; and although he was a commander of importance, and one to whom much honour had always been paid, no one did speak to him any more, or made a show of standing up at his departure. This reprimand did much honour to the English; and it must be acknowledged, to the honour of those strangers, that as their conduct in war and battle is worthy of admiration, so, on the other hand, nothing is more modest and more becoming than their behaviour to an enemy, whether in the heat of action or in the pride of success and victory. These people seem to act entirely according to the rules observed by our ancient commanders and our men of genius." Gholam Husain Khan says the victory was decided by the English; the following quotation from Major Carnac's Letter to the Select Committee at Calcutta, dated the 17th of January, 1761, shows how the courage of the British forces saved them from a great disaster. "It gives me particular pleasure to inform you that we have not lost a man in the action, but a few of the Nawab's troops who had got up near our rear suffered considerably from the explosion of one of the French tumbrils. It seems the enemy had lain a train to it in hopes of it's catching while our Europeans were storming the battery, but fortunately we were advanced two or three hundred yards in the pursuit before it had effect, and the whole shock was sustained by the foremost of the Nawab's troops who were blown up to the number of near four hundred, whereof seventy or eighty died on the spot."[120] Law continues:-- "The next morning, as the English army started in pursuit of the Emperor Shah Alam, Major Carnac, from whom, I must mention in passing, I received all possible marks of attention and politeness, sent me to Patna, where in the English Chief, Mr. McGwire, I found an old friend, who treated me as I should certainly have treated him in like circumstances. I was in need of everything, and he let me want for nothing." Thus ended Law's attempt to maintain the French party in Bengal. All hopes of a French attack in force on Calcutta had long since disappeared, and, under the circumstances, his capture was fortunate for himself and his comrades. Most of the latter were gradually picked up by the English. Law was sent to Calcutta, and left Bengal in 1762. He was now only forty-two years of age. On his arrival in France he found his services much appreciated by his countrymen, and was made a Chevalier of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis, and a Colonel of Infantry. Later on he was appointed Commissary for the King, Commandant of the French Nation in the East Indies, and Governor of Pondicherry. Law's account of his adventures was commenced at Paris in 1763.[121] There exist letters written by him to the historian Robert Orme, dated as late as 1785, which show the strong interest he always retained in the affairs of Bengal, where with adequate resources he might have played a much more distinguished part. We have seen a town besieged by a foreign army; we have seen the Court of a great Prince distracted by internal dissensions and trembling at the approach of a too-powerful enemy, and now we shall pass to the quiet retreats of rural Bengal, which even their remoteness could not save from some share in the troubles of the time. In those days, even more than at present, the rivers were the great highways of the country, but it needs personal acquaintance with them to enable us to realize the effect they produce upon the mind of a European. As a rule comparatively shallow, in the dry weather they pursue a narrow winding course in the middle of a sandy waste, but in the Rains they fill their beds from side to side, overtop the banks, and make the country for miles around a series of great lakes, studded with heavily wooded islands. Amidst these one can wander for days hardly seeing a single human being, and hearing nothing but the rushing of the current and the weird cries of water-birds; at other times the prow of one's boat will suddenly push itself through overhanging branches into the very midst of a populous village. At first all is strange and beautiful, but after a short time the feeling grows that every scene is a repetition; the banks, the trees, the villages, seem as if we have been looking at them for a thousand years, and the monotony presses wearily on mind and heart. It was in a country of this kind that Courtin and his little band of Frenchmen and natives evaded capture for nearly nine months, and it adds to our admiration for his character to see how his French gaiety of heart unites with his tenderness for his absent wife, not only to conceal the deadly monotony of his life in the river districts during the Rains, and the depressing and disheartening effect of the noxious climate in which he and his companions had to dwell, but also to make light of the imminent danger in which he stood from the unscrupulous human enemies by whom he was surrounded. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 65: From certain letters it appears that, strictly speaking, the English Factory alone was at Cossimbazar, the French being at Saidabad, and the Dutch at Calcapur. Both Saidabad and Calcapur were evidently close to Cossimbazar, if not parts of it.] [Footnote 66: George Lodewijk Vernet, Senior Merchant.] [Footnote 67: The historian Malleson also confuses the two brothers.] [Footnote 68: The best copy I have seen is that in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum.] [Footnote 69: Gholam Husain Khan says that Siraj-ud-daula was born in the year in which Aliverdi Khan obtained from the Emperor the _firman_ for Bihar. This, according to Scrafton, was 1736, and the connection of his birth with this auspicious event was the prime cause of his grandfather's great reference for him.] [Footnote 70: See note, p. 88.] [Footnote 71: Uncle of Siraj-ud-daula, who died so shortly before the death of Aliverdi Khan, that it was supposed he was poisoned to ensure Siraj-ud-daula's accession.] [Footnote 72: Fazl-Kuli-Khan. _Scrafton_.] [Footnote 73: Law says; "The rumour ran that M. Drake replied to the messengers that, since the Nawab wished to fill up the Ditch, he agreed to it provided it was done with the heads of Moors. I do not believe he said so, but possibly some thoughtless young Englishman let slip those words, which, being heard by the messengers, were reported to the Nawab."] [Footnote 74: Europeans. Properly, Franks or Frenchmen. This term was generally applied by Europeans to the half-caste descendants of the Portuguese.] [Footnote 75: Captains or generals: a term of somewhat indefinite meaning.] [Footnote 76: In alliance with Salabat Jang, Bussy temporarily acquired a large territory for the French.] [Footnote 77: "After Mr. Law had given us a supply of clothes, linen, provisions, liquors, and cash, we left his Factory with grateful hearts and compliments." _Holwell_. Letter to Mr. Davis, February 28, 1757.] [Footnote 78: Imperial Charter.] [Footnote 79: For an explanation of the influence of the Seths, see pp. 84, 85, and note.] [Footnote 80: Ramnarain is an interesting character. He appears to have been one of the most faithful of the adherents of the house of Aliverdi Khan and on its extinction of the English connection. His gallantry in battle is referred to by Colonel Ironside. _Asiatic Annual Register_, 1800.] [Footnote 81: The official intimation reached Admiral Watson in January, 1757, but apparently not the formal orders from the Admiralty. See page 30.] [Footnote 82: In a letter to the Secret Committee, London, dated October 11, 1756, Clive writes: "I hope we shall be able to dispossess the French of Chandernagore." So it is evident that he came with this intention to Bengal.] [Footnote 83: Clive describes Hugli as "the second city in the kingdom." _Letter to Lord Hardwicke, Feb_. 23, 1757.] [Footnote 84: Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.] [Footnote 85: Hearing that Seth Mahtab Rai was to marry a wonderfully beautiful woman, he forced the Seths to let him see the young lady. _Scrafton_.] [Footnote 86: "If one is to believe certain English writers, the Seths were an apparently insurmountable obstacle to the project because of the money we owed them, as if in their perilous position these bankers would not be inclined to sacrifice something to save the greater part. Besides, we shall see by what follows that they sacrificed nothing." _Law_. The extraordinary influence of these people was due not so much to their dealings with the head of the State as to the fact that native princes generally make payments, not in cash, but in bonds. It therefore depends on the bankers what any man shall get for his bonds. In this way an official, even when paid by the State, may be ruined by the bankers, who are merely private persons.] [Footnote 87: "In India it is thought disrespectful to tell a great man distinctly the evil which is said of him. If an inferior knows that designs are formed against the life of his superior, he must use circumlocutions, and suggest the subject in vague terms and speak in enigmas. It is for the great man to divine what is meant. If he has not the wit, so much the worse for him. As a foreigner, I was naturally more bold and said what I thought to Siraj-ud-daula. Coja Wajid did not hesitate to blame me, so that for a long time I did not know what to think of him. This man finally fell a victim to his diplomacies, perhaps also to his imprudences. One gets tired of continual diplomacy, and what is good in the beginning of a business becomes in the end imprudence." _Law_.] [Footnote 88: "Witness the letter written to the English Admiral Watson, by which it is pretended the Nawab authorized him to undertake the siege of Chandernagore. The English memoir" (by _Luke Scrafton_) "confesses it was a surprise, and that the Secretary must have been bribed to write it in a way suitable to the views of Mr. Watts. The Nawab never read the letters which he ordered to be written; besides, the Moors never sign their names; the envelope being closed and well fastened, the Secretary asks the Nawab for his seal, and seals it in his presence. Often there is a counterfeit seal." _Law_. From this it may be seen that the Nawab could always assert that his Secretary had exceeded his instructions, whilst it was open to his correspondent to assert the contrary.] [Footnote 89: The clerks.] [Footnote 90: "This was the boaster Rai Durlabh Ram, who had already received much from me, but all the treasures of the Universe could not have freed him from the fear he felt at having to fight the English. He had with him as his second in command a good officer, Mir Madan, the only man I counted upon." _Law_.] [Footnote 91: Referring to Clive's letter of the 7th of March, saying he wished to attack Chandernagore, but would await the Nawab's orders at that place.] [Footnote 92: By "agent" Law must mean simply an agent in the plot.] [Footnote 93: Scrafton, in his "Reflections" (_pp. 40 and 50_), says, Siraj-ud-daula indulged in all sorts of debauchery; but his grandfather, in his last illness, made him swear on the Koran to give up drinking. He kept his oath, but probably his mind was affected by his previous excesses.] [Footnote 94: Arzbegi, i.e. the officer who receives petitions.] [Footnote 95: A preparation of betel-nut (areca-nut) is used by the natives of Hindustan as a digestive. When offered to a guest, it is a sign of welcome or dismissal. When sent by a messenger, it is an assurance of friendship and safe conduct.] [Footnote 96: The Governor of Patna was Raja Ramnarain, a Hindu, with the rank of Naib only. It was considered unsafe to entrust so important a post to a Muhammadan, or an officer with the rank of Nawab.] [Footnote 97: Orme MSS. India XI., p. 2779, No. 120.] [Footnote 98: Ibid., India IX., p. 2294.] [Footnote 99: Letter from Renault to Dupleix. Dated Chandernagore, Sept. 4, 1757.] [Footnote 100: Broome (p. 154) gives his name as Mir Daood.] [Footnote 101: The Council signed the Treaty with Mir Jafar on the 19th of May, but Mr. Watts's first intimation of his readiness to join the English is, I believe, in a letter dated the 26th of April. Mir Jafar signed the Treaty early in June.] [Footnote 102: So Suja-ud-daula, Nawab of Oudh, plundered the Nawab Mir Kasim, when the English drove him from Bengal in 1763.] [Footnote 103: Broome (p. 154) says "a fakier, named Dana Shah, whose nose and ears he had ordered to be cut off thirteen months before, when on his march against the Nawaub of Purneah."] [Footnote 104: Orme MSS., India Office, and Clive correspondence at Walcot, vol. iv.] [Footnote 105: The celebrated traveller. He quickly quarrelled with and left them.] [Footnote 106: Province.] [Footnote 107: Nawab of Oudh and father of Suja-ud-daula.] [Footnote 108: I.e. the receiver of the rent or revenue.] [Footnote 109: The regular winds of the various seasons are called monsoons, and are named after the point of the compass from which they blow.] [Footnote 110: Alamgir II.] [Footnote 111: Imad-ul-mulk, Ghazi-ud-din Khan.] [Footnote 112: Ali Gauhar, born 1728. On the death of his father, November 29, 1759, he assumed the name or title of Shah Alam.] [Footnote 113: The old English Factory at Patna was re-opened by Mr. Pearkes, in July, 1757. See his letters to Council, dated 12th and 14th July, 1757.] [Footnote 114: Kasim Ali had a much better army than any of his predecessors. Though it was not trained in the European manner, several of the chief officers were Armenians, who effected great reforms in discipline. Three years later it made a really good fight against the English.] [Footnote 115: The battle is generally known as that of Gaya, but was fought at Suan. The site is marked in Rennell's map of South Bihar. It lies about six miles west of the town of Bihar, on the river Banowra.] [Footnote 116: The Banowra River.] [Footnote 117: The French capital on the Madras coast. Surrendered to Eyre Coote.] [Footnote 118: Sepoys, so called from the Telingana district in Madras, where they were first recruited.] [Footnote 119: Mrs. Law. _Bibi_ is the equivalent of mistress or lady. _Lass_ was the native version of Law. Mrs. Law's maiden name was Jeanne Carvalho.] [Footnote 120: Bengal Select Com. Consultations, 28th January, 1761.] [Footnote 121: "A part of these Memoirs was written at Paris in 1703, and part at sea in 1764, during my second voyage to India, but several of the notes were added later." _Law_.] CHAPTER IV M. COURTIN, CHIEF OF DACCA Jacques Ignace, son of François Courtin, Chevalier, Seigneur de Nanteuil, and of Catherine Colin, is, I believe, the correct designation of the gentleman who appears in all the records of the French and English East India Companies as M. Courtin, Chief of the French Factory at Dacca. In June 1756, when Siraj-ud-daula marched on Calcutta, he sent word to his representative, the Nawab Jusserat Khan at Dacca, to seize the English Factory, and make prisoners of the Company's servants and soldiers. The English Factory on the site of the present Government College, was-- "little better than a common house, surrounded with a thin brick wall, one half of it not above nine foot high." The garrison consisted "of a lieutenant" (Lieutenant John Cudmore), "4 serjeants, 3 corporals, and 19 European soldiers, besides 34 black Christians[122] and 60 _Buxerries_."[123] [Illustration: DACCA, OR JEHANGIR NAGAR. (_After Rennell_.)] On the 27th of June Jusserat Khan sent on the Nawab's order by the English _wakil_, or agent, to Mr. Becher, the English Chief, and informed him of the capture of Fort William and the flight of Mr. Drake. Thinking this was merely a trick to frighten them into surrender, the Dacca Council requested Mr. Scrafton, third in Council, to write to M. Courtin, chief of the French Factory, for information. In reply M. Courtin sent them a number of letters which he had received from Chandernagore, confirming the bad news from Calcutta. Taking into consideration the unfortified condition of the Factory, and that Dacca was only four days by river from Murshidabad whilst it was fourteen from Calcutta, it seemed idle to hope to defend it even when assistance could be expected from the latter place, and, now that it was certain that Calcutta itself had fallen, any attempt at defence appeared rather "an act of rashness than of bravery." It was therefore resolved to obtain the best terms they could through the French. The next day M. Fleurin, second of the French Factory--M. Courtin[124] was not well acquainted with the English language--came to inform them that the Nawab of Dacca agreed that the ladies and gentlemen should be allowed to retire to the French Factory on M. Courtin giving his word that they would there await the orders of Siraj-ud-daula as to their future fate. The soldiers were to lay down their arms, and be prisoners to the Nawab. This amicable arrangement was entirely due to M. Courtin's good offices, and he was much congratulated on the tact he had shown in preventing the Nawab from using violent measures, as he seemed inclined to do at first. As the Nawab would not allow the English to take away any of their property, except the clothes they were wearing, they were entirely dependent upon the French for everything, and were treated with the greatest kindness. The Council wrote:-- "The French have behaved with the greatest humanity to such as have taken refuge at their Factory, and the tenour of their conduct everywhere to us on this melancholy occasion has been such as to merit the grateful acknowledgment of our nation." For some two months the English remained in the French Factory, M. Law, at Cossimbazar, warmly soliciting their release from Siraj-ud-daula. This he obtained with difficulty, and at last Mr. Becher and his companions sailed in a sloop provided by M. Courtin for Fulta, where they arrived safely on the 26th of August. When Calcutta had been recaptured by the English, M. Courtin, like a good business man, sent in a bill for the costs of the sloop to the Council at Calcutta, and the Consultations of the 16th of May, 1757, duly notify its payment. The English did not regain possession of the Factory at Dacca till the 8th of March, by which time the declaration of War between France and England was known, and the likelihood of troubles in Bengal was very apparent. As we have seen, the English were successful in their attack on Chandernagore, but the whole country was aware that the Nawab was only the more enraged with them, and his local officers might at any moment be instructed to take vengeance on Englishmen found defenceless up country. On the 23rd of March, Messrs. Sumner and Waller wrote from Dacca that Jusserat Khan had refused to restore the Factory cannon, and to pass their goods without a new _parwana_[125] from Murshidabad. It was therefore still very doubtful whether he would assist the English or the French at Dacca, and though the English obtained the _parwana_ they wanted early in May, on the 9th the Council at Calcutta sent them orders to do the best they could for their own security, and informed them they had sent an armed sloop to Luckipore to cover their retreat. They immediately sent down all the goods they could, but as matters became quieter again they soon resumed business, and appear to have had no further trouble. It may be imagined that M. Courtin and his friends, knowing that the English had demanded the surrender of the French Factories, had a very uncomfortable experience all this time.[126] Unfortunately no Records of the French Factories in Bengal are now to be found, and I had despaired of obtaining any information about the expulsion from Dacca, when, in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, I came on a MS. entitled, "_Copy of a letter from M. Courtin from India, written to his wife, in which are given in detail the different affairs which he had with the Moors from the 22nd of June, 1757, the day of his evacuation of Dacca, to the 9th of March, 1758_."[127] M. Courtin had married a Madame Direy, widow of a French Company's servant, and the letter shows she was fortunately in France at the time of her husband's troubles. As was natural, but inconveniently enough for us, Courtin does not think it necessary to trouble her with unintelligible and unpronounceable Indian names. Where possible, I shall fill them in from the English Records, otherwise I shall interrupt the course of the letter as little as possible. It runs as follows:-- "Calcapur,[128] April 20, 1758. "Word must have reached thee in France of the loss of Chandernagore, which was taken from us by the English on the 23rd of March, 1757, after eleven days' siege. I was then at Dacca, and expecting every day to see M. Chevalier return from his journey to the King of Assam. Judge, my dear wife, of the chagrin and embarrassment into which I was thrown by this deplorable event. The English had had no idea of attacking Chandernagore until they had recovered Calcutta from the Moors, taken the Moorish village at Hugli, and forced the Moors to agree to a most shameful peace. This was not, as thou wilt see, sufficient for them, for Siraj-ud-daula had offended them too deeply for them to stop when once they found themselves on a good road; but unfortunately we were an obstacle in the way of their vengeance, otherwise I believe they would have observed the neutrality which had been always so carefully maintained by the European nations in the country of the Ganges, in spite of all the wars which took place in Europe. Many of the French from Chandernagore--officers, Company's servants, and others--had taken refuge at Cossimbazar with M. Law, who formed there a party which opposed the English in various ways. The English, however, forced Siraj-ud-daula, against his true interest and in spite of his promise to protect us, to abandon us, and to make M. Law leave his Factory and go to Patna. This imprudent act was the ruin of the Prince and put the final touch to our misfortunes, whilst it has made the English masters of Bengal, and has filled their coffers with wealth. "I held on at Dacca till the 22nd of June. I was troubled as little as was possible in such circumstances, owing, I think, to the gratitude which the English felt for the services I had rendered them in Dacca the year before. I had all the more reason to think this was so because, after the misfortune which befell Chandernagore, they had often offered to secure to me all my effects and merchandise in Murshidabad [?]--they were worth a million--provided I made over to them the French Factory and all that belonged to the Company, and would myself leave for Pondicherry in the following October. They said I should not be considered a prisoner of war, and should not require to be exchanged. "These were, no doubt, very good terms, and most advantageous to me; but should I not have been dishonoured for ever if I had had a soul so servile and base as to accept them? I would have been covered with ignominy in my own eyes, and without doubt in those of all the world. I therefore thought it my duty to reject them. "Things were on this footing when, at the beginning of June, I learned that the English, having got rid of M. Law, were marching upon Murshidabad with all their forces to achieve the destruction of a Prince who was already half ruined by his own timidity and cowardice, and still further weakened by the factions formed against him by the chief members of his own family--a Prince detested by every one for his pride and tyranny, and for a thousand dreadful crimes with which he had already soiled his reputation though he was barely twenty-five years old. "I knew only too well what was preparing against him, and I was also most eager to find some honourable means of escape for myself. M. Chevalier's absence troubled me greatly, and I did not like to leave him behind me. At last he arrived on the 16th or 17th. I had taken the precaution to provide myself with a _parwana_, or passport, signed by Siraj-ud-daula, allowing me to go where I pleased. That Prince had recalled M. Law to him, but too late, for I felt certain he could not rejoin him in time to save him or to check the progress of his enemies. I was in a hurry therefore to go and help to save him if that were possible, taking care, however, to choose a route by which I could escape if, as I thought probable, he should have succumbed beforehand to the efforts of the English, and the treason of his subjects. "It was then the 22nd of June when I started with about 35 boats,[129] MM. Chevalier, Brayer [possibly a relation of the M. Brayer who commanded at Patna], Gourlade, the surgeon, and an Augustine Father, Chaplain of the Factory, 8 European soldiers, of whom several were old and past service, 17 topass gunners, 4 or 5 of the Company's servants, and about 25 or 30 peons.[130] There, my dear wife, is the troop with which thou seest me start upon my adventures.[131] To these, however, should be added my Christian clerks, my domestics, and even my cook, all of whom I dressed and armed as soldiers to assist me in what I expected to be a losing game, and which, in fact, had results the most disastrous in the world for my personal interests. "It was not till seven or eight days after I had set out with this fine troop that I learned there had been a battle at Plassey between the English and the Nawab, in which the latter had been defeated and forced to flee, and that Jafar Ali Khan, his maternal uncle,[132] had been enthroned in his place. This report, though likely enough as far as I could judge, did not come from a source so trustworthy that I could rely on it with entire faith. Accordingly I did not yet abandon the route which I had proposed to myself; in fact, I followed it for some days more, and almost as far as the mouth of the Patna River.[133] There I learned, beyond possibility of doubt, that Siraj-ud-daula had been captured, conducted to Murshidabad, and there massacred; that he had just missed being rejoined by M. Law, who was coming to meet him, and could easily have done so if he had followed the instructions given him and had been willing to march only three hours longer; and that the English had sent a body of troops towards Patna to capture or destroy M. Law if possible." We have seen in a previous chapter the real reasons why Law was unable to rejoin Siraj-ud-daula in time for the battle. "I now saw that a junction with him had become impossible, unless I determined to run the most evident risk of losing my liberty and all I had." It appears that Courtin had the Company's effects, as well as his own private property and that of his companions, on board his little fleet. "This made me change my route immediately. The mountains of Tibet[134] appeared to me a safe and eminently suitable asylum until the arrival in the Ganges of the forces which we flattered ourselves were coming. I therefore directed my route in this direction, but found myself suddenly and unexpectedly so close to Murshidabad that for two days together we heard the sound of the guns fired in honour of the revolution which had taken place. It is easy to judge into what alarm this unexpected and disagreeable proximity threw me. However, we arrived safely, on the 10th of July, at the capital of the Raja of Dinajpur, who wished to oppose our passage." This was the Raja Ram Nath, whom Orme describes as "a Raja, who with much timidity, was a good man." "We made it in spite of him, threatening to attack him if he showed any further intention of opposing us. I do not know what would have happened if he had had a little firmness, for we learned afterwards that he had always in his service a body of 5000 infantry and cavalry. The persons whom he sent to us had at first suggested that I should pretend I was English, assuring me that by that means all difficulties would be removed; but I thought this trick too much beneath a man of honour for me to make use of it, and, in fact, I objected to pass for anything but what I really was. "I found here a French soldier, who had been at the battle of Plassey, where the brave Sinfray,[135] at the head of 38 Frenchmen, had fought like a hero for a long time, and had retreated only at the order of Siraj-ud-daula, who, seeing himself betrayed and the battle lost, sent him word to cease fighting. This worthy gentleman afterwards took refuge in Birbhum, the Raja of which country betrayed him, and disgracefully handed him over to the English in October last." Courtin is somewhat unfair to the Raja (apparently a Muhammadan, as he was called Assaduzama Muhammad),[136] for this Prince was an ally of the English, and had offered Clive the assistance of his forces before the battle of Plassey. It could be no treachery on his part to pick up fugitives from the battle, like Sinfray, and hand them over to his allies. I may as well quote one of the Raja's letters to Clive, received 28th October, 1757:-- "Before your letter arrived the French were going through, some woods in my country. I knew they were your enemies, therefore I ordered my people to surround them. The French being afraid, some said they were English, and some Dutch. In the meantime I received your letter that if I could apprehend them I should send them to you, therefore I have sent them. Surajah Dowlat has plundered my country so much, that there is hardly anything left in it."[137] Courtin continues:-- "To return to my journey and my adventures. I now found myself outside of Bengal and in sight of the mountains of Tibet, a month having elapsed since my departure from Dacca. I was only two or three days distant from these mountains, and my intention, as thou hast seen above, was to go there; but I was prevented by the murmurs of my people, especially the boatmen, who already began to desert in small parties. Accordingly I accepted an offer made me on the part of the Raja of Sahibgunj, to give me a site for a fort, and to aid me with everything I might want. I descended the river again for a little, and near this site, which was on the river bank, I commenced a fort, but the thickness of the forest forced me to abandon it, and I entered a little river close by, which conducted me to a marsh, on the borders of which I found an elevated site admirably situated and in a very agreeable neighbourhood.[138] This belonged to the same Raja, and with his consent I again set to work, and that with such promptitude that in less than a month my fortress commenced to take form, and visibly progressed owing to the extraordinary efforts I made to complete it. It was triangular, with a bastion at each angle. At two of the angles I had found superb trees with very heavy foliage, and on the third I erected the mast of my boat and hoisted our flag. All three bastions had four embrasures, a fine entrance gate opening on the marsh, and a little open turret above, A small entrance gate led to the open country. The curtains were carefully pierced for musketry, and strengthened outside with a trellis work of bamboo, and finished off with banquettes on the ramparts. An excellent powder magazine was built in the same way, and, being situated in the interior of the fort, was quite safe from any accident. "As I had brought workmen of all kinds with me, the work went on well, especially as the care of our health made us all industrious. I was not without cannon, and I mounted on our ramparts two Swedish guns, which afterwards proved our safety and preservation.[139] Also being provided with the requisites for making gunpowder, I very soon had nearly 3000 lbs. weight of very good quality. "Hardly anything remained to complete my fortress, which I had named 'Bourgogne,' except to provide it with a glaçis. It was already furnished with a market which was sufficiently flourishing, when to my misfortune I received the false information that our forces, which were said to be considerable, were ready to enter the Ganges, and that there was certain news of the arrival of a very strong squadron at Pondicherry.[140] On the 8th September there broke out at Purneah, and in the province of that name, a Evolution headed by a person named Hazir Ali Khan,[141] who, having seized the capital, at once wrote to me to join him, and assist him against the English and Jafar Ali Khan.[142] "These two events made me stop everything else and devote myself entirely to getting my boats out of the little river by which I had entered the marsh, and which was now almost quite dried up. I succeeded in doing so after some time, by means of ditches which I cut from the marsh, but this took me more than a month and considerable labour, as I was about two leagues from the great river. To complete my misfortunes, my troop was attacked by sickness, which raged with a violence such as I had scarcely ever seen. It cost me nine soldiers, of whom three were Europeans. The latter were luckily replaced some days after by the same number who joined me.[143] Poor M. Brayer and M. Gourlade had been during almost the whole campaign in the most pitiable condition, especially the former, who I thought a thousand times must have died. As for me, the powders _d'Aillot_ preserved me from the pestilential air, and cured me from the effects of a fall in my _bajarow_,[144] caused by the clumsiness of my boatmen. I narrowly escaped breaking my ribs and back. "Before quitting Fort Bourgogne I must tell thee, my dear wife, that I often played there a very grand rôle. I was called the 'Fringuey Raja,' or 'King of the Christians.' I was often chosen as arbiter amongst the little princes in my neighbourhood, who sent me ambassadors. My reputation spread so wide, and the respect that I gained was so great, that the King of Tibet did not disdain to honour me with an embassy of nearly eight hundred persons, whom I entertained for nine whole days, and whose chiefs I dismissed with presents suitable to their rank, their king, our nation, and the idea which I wished to leave behind me in this country of the European name. The presents which were made me consisted of five horses, some bags of scent, three or four pieces of china, pieces of gilt paper, and a sabre like those used by the Bhutiyas, or people of Tibet, who are men as strong and robust as those of Bengal are feeble. Though pagans like the latter, they eat all kinds of things, and live almost like the Tartars, from whom they are descended. They have no beards, and are clothed in a fashion which is good enough, but which looks singular. They are very dirty. The complexion of those whom I saw was very dark, but I know it is not the same in the interior of the country and in the mountains, where all are as fair as the Chinese, who are said to be their neighbours. I took some trouble to form an alliance and to make a party amongst them. They appeared very willing, but I soon had occasion to convince myself that not only were they not fitting persons for my designs, but also that they were playing with me. It is not that they do not make raids upon the lower country, but they make these only in the cold weather, always withdrawing at the commencement of the hot, without trying to make any permanent conquests. "There, then, my reign is finished, or nearly so, for the good news that I continued to receive (though always without foundation, as I learned afterwards), joined to the entreaties of Hazir All Khan and to the unhealthy air which continued to decimate my poor little troop, induced me at last to abandon my fort, to embark again upon my boats, and to reapproach Bengal, from which I had hitherto been travelling away. The second day after my departure was marked by a very annoying accident, namely the loss of one of my largest boats, on which was my library and a quantity of my effects. These were quickly drawn out of the water, but were none the less ruined for the Company and for me. From that moment commence my misfortunes. The sixth day--I had passed three in the salvage of the effects on my boat--I received a _pattamar_ (messenger), who informed me that the English and the troops of Jafar Ali Khan were at Purneah, from which they had chased Hazir Ali Khan and wholly destroyed his faction." From Broome we see that this was in the middle of December, 1757. It was now that Clive first heard what Courtin was attempting. He immediately sent orders direct, and also through the Nawab, to Kasim Ali Khan, Faujdar of Rungpore, and to Raja Ram Nath of Dinajpur, to seize the French. "It was almost impossible for me to reascend the river because of the dry banks and the strong currents which would have put my boats in danger. However, I found myself in the country of Rungpore, which was a dependency of Bengal. I determined nevertheless to remain where I was, flattering myself the English would not come to look for me, nor the Nawab or the ruler of the province think of disturbing themselves about me, as I was doing no harm in the country, and as I was very strict in observing proper order and discipline. I was so confident on this latter head that I did not think of throwing up now entrenchments, and occupied myself only with hunting and walking whilst I awaited the arrival of the French forces. However, one day, towards the middle of January, a secret rumour came to me that Kasim Ali Khan, Faujdar of Rungpore, was coming to attack me. I sent out scouts, who reported that all was tranquil in his town, and that, far from wishing to come and look for a quarrel, he was in fear lest I should march against his town, which was three days' journey from where I was. Doubtless my men deceived me or did not take the trouble to go to Rungpore, for on the 15th of the same month, at 3 p.m., on the opposite side of the river to that on which we were, there appeared a body of soldiers, cavalry and infantry, about 600 in number, who approached so near my fleet that I no longer doubted the correctness of the first advice which had been given me. I ordered a discharge of three guns on this troop, which was so well directed that the enemy were forced to take themselves off and to encamp a little further from me. Next day the commander sent me a present of some fruit, and an intimation that he only wished to see me quit his country. He knew I could not do this without risk, and, according to the custom of the infidels, he gave me the strongest possible assurances of my safety and tranquillity. I took care not to trust to them; I was then, as I said above, without entrenchments and without defence, so in the evening I set to work at surrounding myself with a ditch, the mud taken out of which would serve me for embrasures. I was short of provisions, which made me very anxious, and I was still more so when I learned that the enemy were trying to cut me off from provisions on all sides, and that their intention was to capture me by famine or treachery. Their number quickly increased to 3000 men, of whom a part came over to my side of the river, and harassed my people whenever they went out for provisions. This forced me to detach. MM. Chevalier and Gourlade, with about 10 men, some peons and boatmen, against one of their little camps, where there were about 150 men, foot and horse. Our men received their fire, stormed the camp, and destroyed it after having put every one to flight. There was not a single person wounded on our side. This little advantage gave me time to make a good provision of rice and other things in the villages near my entrenchments. I cleared out these villages and drove out the inhabitants, but I was still in need of a quantity of things necessary to life. To procure these, I tried to frighten the enemy by cannonading their chief camp on the other side of the river. This only resulted in making them withdraw altogether beyond the reach of my guns, not with the idea of going away, but of starving me out, and, as I learned later, to give time for a reinforcement of artillery which they were expecting to arrive. They had already 4 or 5 guns, but their calibre was small compared with mine, as I was able to see from the balls which fell in my camp when it was entrenched only on the land side. "The 19th of January, early in the morning, I sent across the river a number of workmen, supported by a little detachment under M. Gourlade, to cut down a grove of bamboos which masked my guns, and to burn down some houses which were also in their way. I forbade them to engage the enemy, and all went well until some topasses and peons advanced too far towards the enemy's camp, and I heard discharges so loud and frequent on both sides, that I ordered a retreat to be beaten in my entrenchments, to make my people recross the river. I fired my guns continually to facilitate this and to cover the movement. In this skirmish I had only one soldier wounded, and I do not know whether the enemy had any losses. This day more than 1500 shots were fired on both sides. Some of the guns which the enemy brought up troubled us greatly, as we were not entrenched on the water side. Several balls fell at my side or passed over my head. This determined me to set all my people at work the next night with torches, to put us under cover on this side also." [It was apparently this fight which Kasim Ali reported to Clive on the 24th of January:-- "I wrote expressly to my people to go and take them" (the French) "and they went immediately and found them ready to fight. On both sides there were cannon and _jenjalls_.[145] A _nulla_[146] was between them, which the French crost, and advancing upon my people, fought with great intrepidity: but luckily, three or four of them being killed, they retired into their fort."[147]] "The Moors saw, from my manoeuvre, how important it was for them to seize the ground which I had intended to clear, and, contrary to my expectation, established themselves on it the same evening without my being able to hinder them, keeping themselves always well hidden behind the bamboos, where they had nothing to fear from my artillery, and still less from my musketry. Like me they worked at night, and, having as many prisoners or other workmen at their command as they wanted, I saw, with regret, next morning the progress which they had made opposite me. I could not dislodge them without risking everything. Weak as I was, I thought it wiser not to hazard anything more in sorties, but to hold myself always on the defensive. "Sheikh Faiz Ulla (that was the name of the Moorish general) sent me one of his men next day with a present and proposals of peace, the first condition of which was, of course, that I should quit his country, and as, since the dry weather had set in, a very large and dangerous bank had formed in the river seven or eight leagues below me, he offered me one or two thousand workmen to assist in making a passage for my boats. The shocking treachery used by the Moors being well known to me, I refused to accept his offers except on his furnishing me with hostages for his good faith. He first proposed himself, but with such a strong escort that it was not difficult to see that it was a trap which he was setting for me, so as to seize and massacre us. After many debates between our emissaries, he consented to come to my _bajarow_, he and his servants, and that all of them should serve as hostages until I was quite out of the domains of his master. "I loyally agreed to this arrangement and made preparations in consequence, but at 7 in the morning on the 23rd of January, the day I expected the hostages, I was awakened by a cannon-shot quickly followed by a second, the ball of which pierced the _rezai_[148] at the foot of my bed from side to side, and made a great noise. For a long time I had been accustomed to sleep fully dressed, so I was able to go out quickly and give orders in the entrenchments. The treachery and perfidy of the enemy were too manifest; nevertheless, I forbade a single shot to be fired with musket or cannon, and simply recommended my people to be on their guard on the land side. The enemy kept up a continuous and very lively fire until 4 o'clock in the evening. I considered that it would be useless for me to reply, and wished to see how far they would push their insolence. That day we picked up 40 cannon-balls, and our whole loss was one boatman slightly wounded in the leg. From 4 o'clock till night the enemy's fire was continued, but at long intervals. It began again the next morning. I suffered this as on the previous day for a couple of hours, at the end of which. I fired several shots and silenced it. My firing seemed to trouble the enemy more than I expected it would. One of my boats was sunk by a cannon-ball, several were pierced through, and my _rezai_, which used to serve me as a coat, was much damaged. "The succeeding days passed much in the same manner until the 3rd of February, when, on the same bank and to the north above my fleet, I saw a new entrenchment, which had been thrown up during the preceding night. Its batteries enfiladed mine along their whole length. It was necessary either to risk everything by making a sortie in order to destroy it, or to arrange terms. I determined on the latter, which appeared to me all the more necessary, as I was beginning to be in want of everything, and as I had just received letters which deprived me of all hope of the arrival of our forces in Bengal until April or May. I therefore informed Sheikh Faiz Ulla that I was ready to enter upon negotiations, and the same day he sent me some of his people, with whom I agreed to leave my entrenchments and go down the river. I consented to do this without hostages, but, that it might be done in security, I promised them a sum of money for themselves as well as for their general. This arrangement being agreed to by Sheikh Faiz Ulla, he sent me word that, in order that he might not appear to betray his master, it would be necessary for me next morning to open the fiercest fire possible on his camp; that he would reply; that on both sides it should be with the intention of doing as little hurt as possible; that I should pretend it was to force him to give me a passport, which he would send me in the evening; and that I should then send him the money I had promised. All these precautions were only to assist his rascality, and they appeared to me all the more surprising, as he had already repeatedly informed me that he had his master's permission to give me a passport, and to let me go where I pleased. But of what are these Moors not capable? Without being blind to the continuance of his perfidy, I flattered myself that it might happen that he would not trouble me on my march when he had received my money. "However this might be, my cannon fired from 10 in the morning till 3 in the evening. Our people, perceiving that the enemy were firing in earnest, did not spare them any more than they spared us, and that which was at first, on our side, only a pretence, finally became serious. At 4 o'clock I received an envoy, who brought me the passport, and to whom I paid the money. He assured me that I might embark my artillery the next morning, and set out the day after without the slightest apprehension of being interfered with, I took my precautions, and, in fear of treachery, kept on shore my two Swedish guns. At last, at seven in the morning, my boats started, having on board only the sick and helpless, and I set out by land with my two guns and the rest of my troop, at the head of which I put myself." This triumph of time and treachery was reported by Sheikh Faiz Ulla's master, Kasim Ali, to Clive, on the 14th of February:[149]-- "I before wrote you that I had sent forces to fight the French, that they had a fort and strong intrenchments, and that we had a battle with them.... ever since I wrote you last we have been fighting, my people have behaved well, and I make no doubt but you have heard it from other people. God knows what pains and trouble I have taken in this affair. The French being shut up in their fort and undergoing much fatigue by always fighting, and likewise being in want of provisions were obliged to run away in their boats by night, and went towards the Dinajpur country. My people being always ready to fight followed them.... They can go no other way but through the Dinajpur country. I have therefore wrote expressly to the Rajah to stop the passage." About this time, though Courtin does not mention it till later, he began to see what the inevitable end must be. He could not cut his way through to join Law, and with the whole country in arms against him he was too weak to hold out for any length of time. Accordingly he sent messengers secretly to Mr. Luke Scrafton, at Murshidabad. It was Scrafton, as I have said above, who wrote to Courtin for assistance when the Nawab of Dacca wanted to take their Factory and imprison the English. Courtin now wrote to him to save him from falling into the hands of the natives, and, on the 18th of February, Scrafton wrote to the Select Committee at Calcutta for the necessary permission.[150] We now rejoin Courtin:-- "What was my surprise, at the end of an hour and a half, to see that we were followed by a body of four or five hundred men, with two guns drawn by oxen. I pretended not to notice, and continued my march, but at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, seeing this troop approach, within range of my pieces, I pointed them at the Moors, and put my force in a position of defence. Their rascality followed its usual course, and they sent me word that I had nothing to fear, that they would not march so close to me any more, and that they followed me only to preserve the peace and to hinder my people, especially the stragglers, from committing any disorder. I received this excuse for what it was worth, and pretended to be content with, it, seeing clearly that they were looking for an opportunity to surprise and destroy us. "Several accidents happening to the boats of the rearguard prevented my troop and myself from rejoining the main body of the fleet till far on in the night. I found it anchored in the most disadvantageous position possible, and in the morning I saw at a distance of one-eighth of a league the same body of troops, that had followed me the day before, establishing and settling itself. A moment later I learned that Sheikh Faiz Ulla was on the opposite bank with his army and his artillery, that he intended to wait for me in a narrow place called Choquova,[151] at the foot of which my boats must pass, and that he was diligently making entrenchments there. My embarrassment was then extreme. I found myself surrounded on all sides; I was without any provisions, destitute of the most necessary articles of life. In this perplexity I saw only the most cruel alternatives, either to surrender or to fight to the death so as to perish with our arms in our hands. The latter appeared to be less dreadful than the former. "After repeated consultations, we determined it would be best to risk the passage of the fleet by Choquova. We thought that possibly we should find provisions there, and that certainly the position could not be worse (for defence) than that in which we then found ourselves. The passage was carried out in three hours' time without confusion or disorder, by means of my Swedish guns on the boat which led the van. What was our delight to find, not only a better position than that which we had quitted, but one that was almost completely entrenched by nature, and had villages full of rice to the right and left of it. "Next day I collected provisions in abundance, cleared the country round for a quarter of a league, and did my best to ameliorate my condition. The enemy were disconcerted by my boldness. They pretended as usual, in order to deceive me the more easily, that they were not surprised at my march. They feared rightly that if I commenced new entrenchments all their trouble would begin again. Besides, I had completely protected myself from the possibility of surprise. _Pourparlers_ for an accommodation were renewed and lasted three days, at the end of which it was agreed that I should continue my march, that two hostages should be given me for my safety, and that the army with its guns should retire from Choquova, and should be sent a long way ahead across country, and as, at half a league from this place, the river was no longer navigable because of the bank which had formed in it, I should be supplied with people to facilitate my passage. Thou wilt notice, my dear wife, that in all the negotiations I had for various reasons and on several occasions proposed to suspend all hostilities until an answer could be received from Jafar All Khan and the English, to whom I said I would write to come to some accommodation with them, offering to send my letter open. This was repeatedly refused, but the refusal did not prevent my asking for the honours of war. My letters were despatched secretly by my own messengers. "At last, on the 23rd, I quitted, though with regret (always expecting treachery), my new position, and approached the shallow or bank mentioned. It was night when I arrived. In spite of this I could understand, from the dreadful noise made by the waters, that I should have difficulty in traversing this dangerous passage even with the assistance promised me. I was only too well convinced of the truth of this when day broke, and I saw that I had again been betrayed. There was nothing to be seen of the work which the Moors had engaged to do to lessen the difficulty of the passage. However, I did not hesitate to put out with my lighter boats, firmly resolved, if they arrived safely, to sacrifice the larger, with all that was upon them, to my safety, and thus to effect my retreat during the night. With the exception of two, which were lost, they all arrived safely. During this piece of work, which took up the whole day, I dissimulated my intentions in the presence of my hostages, merely letting them see I was somewhat surprised to find that, contrary to the promise given, there were no workmen, but that the army, which ought to have been withdrawn, was still close to us. Their excuses were vague and unsatisfactory. One of them, who, no doubt, knew the enemy's plans, asked permission to go to their camp, promising to come back the next day. Though his demand accorded with my designs, I agreed to it only after much persuasion, warning him not to break his _parole_ to return the next morning very early. This he swore to do. As a rule these people think nothing of an oath. I did not intend to wait for him, which his comrade clearly perceived, for, seeing that he himself had been sacrificed by his master's perfidy, he approved of the resolution I had taken to set out by night, and swore that he had acted in good faith, and was ignorant of the treachery that had been concocted. 'You can,' he said to me, 'have my throat cut. You would be justified in doing so; but I will not quit you, even if you give me permission. If I went to my own people, they would say that I had disclosed to you the trick which you have yourself discovered, and would certainly show me less mercy than I have experienced from you.' After this I contented myself with having him closely watched. "Orders being given to the remaining boats to start by night, I mounted on horseback to carry certain necessaries to my detachment on land, which was already a little in advance and had crossed a small river with the guns. I had only three blacks with me, and none of us knew the way. The night was dark, and we wandered from it. I narrowly escaped being drowned with my horse, and at last we lost ourselves entirely. If we had been met by any horsemen, nothing would have been easier than for them to capture me, our arms and cartridges being all soaked with water. Luckily I heard our drums beating, and this told us in what direction we could safely go. "My intention was to march by land with my troops and guns. They objected to this, as I was wet to the skin and had a cold on the chest, which hardly allowed me to speak; so I went back to the boats, though with much regret, and resolved to manage so as not to lose sight of my detachment. I was in constant anxiety about the latter till 8 o'clock the next day, when we all came together, except one soldier topass, who, by his own fault, had remained on a big boat which we had abandoned, and a _manjhi_,[152] who was drowned in one of the two little ones which had sunk. "Finding myself in the territory of the Raja of Dinajpur, I imagined I had nothing to do with any one except him, and that Sheikh Faiz Ulla and his army would not think of following me through a country which, though tributary to the Nawab of Bengal, still in no way belonged to Faiz Ulla's master. The hostage who remained with me, and to whom I spoke about the matter,[153] did not altogether dissuade me from this idea, but counselled me to continue my march and to get farther away, which I did till 6 o'clock in the evening. What was my surprise when, at 9 o'clock, my scouts reported that the enemy were pursuing me, and were not more than a league away at the most. I could not advance during the night for fear of running on the banks or shallows with which the river was filled, and which might cause the loss of my boats and of my people. Accordingly, I did not set out till the morning, and always remained myself in the rear (of the fleet). I had stopped to wait for my land detachment and the guns, and was at some distance from the rest of my little fleet, when, about half-past nine, I heard several musket shots fired. In an instant I was surrounded by the enemy. M. Chevalier, who conducted the land detachment, fortunately perceived my situation, and, seeing my danger, brought up the two guns and fired about 20 shots, which disengaged me, and gave me time to regain my boats by swift rowing. I had with me only Pedro and the Moorish hostage mentioned before. Then I landed with MM. Brayer, Gourlade, and in general every one who was strong enough to defend himself. At the same time I ordered the boats to go on. In this skirmish our loss was only one man slightly wounded in the ear by a musket-ball. "My little fleet _en route_, we marched by land on the bank opposite to that on which was, the main body of the enemy, who had only cavalry, which we did not trouble ourselves about It was not the same, however, with the boats. At the end of an hour the boatmen abandoned them in a sudden panic, and hurried tumultuously to join me. When my people were collected, I would have tried to go and recapture my boats, which the enemy had not delayed to seize; but not only would this have been a rash undertaking with so small a force against 3000 men, but also there was a little river which formed an island between my boats and me, and so prevented the passage of my guns This determined me to abandon the boats, and to retreat to Dinajpur, where I hoped to find an asylum with the Raja whilst I waited for a reply to my letters to Jafar All Khan and the English. We marched till 1 o'clock in the afternoon without being harassed or disquieted--no doubt because during this time Sheikh Faiz Ulla and his people were occupied in plundering the boats. We were now not very far from Dinajpur, when we met a body of the Raja's cavalry, the commander of which begged me to take another road so as not to pass through his town. Accordingly he gave me a guide, with whom we marched till half-past five, when we arrived at a great _gunge_ (market place) at the extremity of Dinajpur. There they lodged us in a great thatched building. The want of provisions had caused us to suffer very much in this retreat." This was the battle of Cantanagar. Kasim Ali described it as follows to Clive:-- "My people and the French had a battle, and the latter finding themselves much, beat, they run away, and left their boats. They went to Oppoor" "and begged protection of the Kajah's people.... Bahadur Sing came and told my people to go a little further off, and they would deliver them up, but they put us off from day to day."[154] About the time he was writing this, Clive was writing to say that he had received Courtin's offer of surrender, and that Kasim Ali was to cease hostilities and allow the French to come to him with their boats and necessaries. Kasim Ali had received orders to the same effect from Mr. Scrafton, who informed him he was sending an officer to accept their surrender. This did not however prevent Kasim Ali from trying to get hold of them, which accounts for the following letter from Raja Ram Nath to Clive:[155]-- "The French are now coming from another country by boats to go towards Muxadavad, and Kasim Ali Khan's people have followed them, out of his own country into mine. They have left their boats among Kasim Ali Khan's people and are now travelling to Jangepors" (? Tangepur). "When I heard this I sent people with all expedition to look after them, and I now hear that they have surrounded them. The French want the Nawab's and your orders and _call for justice_[156] from you. They have hoisted the Nawab's[157] and your colours, have put on your cloaths (?) and want to go to Muxadavad. Kasim Ali Khan's people want to carry them to Rungpore but they refuse to go, and say that if one of us is taken they will destroy themselves.[158] I am a poor Zemindar who pays revenues[159] and ready to obey your orders. If the Rungpore people should take them by force, and they should kill themselves, it would be a troublesome affair." To return to Courtin's letter. "The Raja of Dinajpur did not fail to be embarrassed by the favour which he had shown to us. Fear was the only motive which influenced him. He sent word to me to depart by night under an escort of 200 of his people, who would conduct me to Murshidabad. I was very nearly accepting his suggestion, but the hunger and thirst, from which we suffered greatly, prevented me. So I postponed giving him a final answer till the next morning, and then, after full reflection, decided not to move from the place to which. I had been conducted until I received an answer to the letters sent to Murshidabad. I thought this all the wiser, as I was informed that nothing would induce my enemies to approach or attack me in my asylum.[160] The place was so retired and so well provided with storehouses, that I found there a greater appearance of security than in the open country or the escort offered by the Raja, as his men were subordinate to the same Prince as the people who composed the army of Sheikh Faiz Ulla, and were likely enough to abandon me or to join my enemies in overwhelming me. My conjectures were well founded, as, several days after, this same Raja, prompted by Sheikh Faiz Ulla, sent me word that he could not answer for what might happen to me if I were attacked; that his troops, being subject to Murshidabad like those of Kasim All Khan, could not support me, nor fire on the latter. Finally he sent a certain priest of his faith, a grave man, who came to suggest to us that our best course was to leave Dinajpur and gain the open country, otherwise we were lost. He said that he knew for certain that if I were so obstinate as to persist in wishing to remain there, orders had been given to attack us, cut our throats, and send our heads to Murshidabad. This person wished to terrify us so as to rid the Raja of us, as he was dying with fright lest war should be made in the very heart of his town. I replied that I was resolved to defend myself against any one who attacked me, to set fire to everything I found within my reach, to kill as many people as I could, and to die on my guns when I had used up all my ammunition; that this was also the intention of my companions, who preferred to die thus, like brave men, rather than to be exposed to the ignominies and indignities that we should undergo if we allowed ourselves to be made prisoners by the people of Kasim All Khan. The timid Raja, threatened by both parties, found himself in the utmost embarrassment, for Sheikh Faiz Ulla, at the gates of his town, put, as it were, his country under contribution, and demanded from him, with all imaginable insolence, that he should deliver us up to him, a thing which the Raja found difficult to do. "Some days passed in this way, during which we had frequent alarms, but the letters I received from Murshidabad filled every one with perplexity. The English sent me people on their own account. One of my private friends,[161] whom I had been so fortunate as to oblige on a similar occasion, wrote me not to trouble myself about my boats or my effects, but to come at once to him, and he would see that they restored or paid for my property, and that they gave me all that I might need. The orders received by Sheikh Faiz Ulla and the Raja at the same time, ordered the one to leave me in peace and the other to furnish me with everything I wanted. This put my mind in a condition of serenity to which it had long been a stranger, and threw my enemies into much confusion. They proposed that I should resume possession of my boats. I knew, with absolute certainty, that they had been half looted, still I accepted them on condition they were brought to Dinajpur. They did not wish, to do this; but next morning after reflection they consented, when, in my turn, I declined, and asked only for provisions and other things necessary for my journey. This they had the harshness to refuse, doubtless because they thought that I, being destitute of everything, would have to go down by whatever route they pleased. I would not trust them in anything, fearing treachery. "At last, without linen, without clothes, except what we had on our bodies, on the 1st of March, the seventeenth day after our retreat[162] we set out with our arms and our two Swedish guns to go to Murshidabad to the English, from whom I had demanded the honours of war." We learn from the correspondence between Mr. Scrafton and Clive, that Drake, the cowardly Governor of Calcutta, very naturally could not understand what was meant by this claim to the honours of war.[163] "My guns were conducted by land by a small detachment, the command of which I gave to M. Chevalier, and we embarked on some small boats belonging to the Raja, in which we had hardly room to move. "I was not yet at the end of my troubles, for on the 3rd of March, after dinner, as I was getting back into my boat, one of the boatmen, wishing to put down a gun, managed to let it off, and sent a bullet through my left shoulder. It passed through the clavicle between the sinew and the bone. Luckily the blow was broken by a button which the bullet first struck; still it passed almost completely through the shoulder and lodged under the skin, which had to be opened behind the shoulder to extract it and also the wad. However unfortunate this wound was, I ought to be very thankful to God that it was so safely directed, and for the further good fortune of finding with one of my people sufficient ointment for the surgeon, who was quite destitute of all necessaries, to dress my shoulder until the ninth day after, when we arrived at Murshidabad.[164] This wound caused me much suffering for the first few days, but, thanks to the Lord, in thirty-two or thirty-three days it was quite healed and without any bad effects. "We rested ourselves from our fatigue till the 20th at my friend's house, when, with his concurrence and in response to their offers, I went to the Dutch gentlemen at Cossimbazar, where M. Vernet, their chief and an old friend of mine, received us with the greatest kindness. It is from their Settlement that I write to thee, my dear wife. Until the ships sail for England I shall continue to write daily, and tell thee everything that is of interest.[165] "August 10, 1758. "My dear wife, I resume my narrative to tell thee that my boats have been restored by the English, as well as all the goods that had not been plundered by Sheikh Faiz Ulla and his people, except the munitions of war. Still, so much of the merchandise, goods and silver, has disappeared that I am ruined for ever, unless the English, who have promised to cause everything to be restored, are able to make the Moors give them up. The English have at length decided on our fate in a way altogether honourable to us. We are not prisoners of war, and so we are not subject to exchange; but we are bound by certain conditions, which they think necessary to their security, and which only do me honour. What has flattered me even more is that the two Swedish guns which I had with me on my campaign have actually been given to me as a present by the commander of the English troops, who is also Governor of Calcutta, with the most complimentary expressions." Courtin had written to Clive, asking permission to go down to Pondicherry. Clive replied on the 15th of July, 1758, granting permission. His letter concludes:-- "I am at this moment sending an order to the Captain Commandant of our troops to restore to you your two guns. I am charmed at this opportunity of showing you my appreciation of the way in which you have always behaved to the English, and my own regard for your merit."[166] Courtin continues:-- "Saved from so many perils and sufficiently fortunate to have won such sensible marks of distinction from our enemies, ought not this, my dear wife, to make me hope that the gentlemen of the French Company will do their utmost to procure me some military honour, in order to prove to the English that my nation is as ready as theirs to recognize my services?[167] "Now, my dear wife, I must end this letter so that it may be ready for despatch. For fear of its being lost I will send in the packet another letter for thee. "Do not disquiet thyself regarding my health. Thanks to God I am now actually pretty well. I dare not talk to thee of the possibility of our meeting. Circumstances are not favourable for thee to make another voyage to the Indies. That must depend upon events, thy health, peace, and wishes, which, in spite of my tender longing for thee, will always be my guide. "If the event of war has not been doubly disastrous to me, thou shouldst have received some small remittances, which I have sent, and of which I have advised thee in duplicate and triplicate. If the decrees of the Lord, after my having endured so many misfortunes and sufferings, have also ordained my death before I am in a position to provide what concerns thee, have I not a right to hope that all my friends will use their influence to induce the Company not to abandon one who will be the widow of two men who have served it well, and with all imaginable disinterestedness? "For the rest I repeat that, thanks to God, I am fairly well. "I kiss thee, etc., etc." One would be glad to be assured that Courtin re-established his fortune. If he is, as I suppose, the Jacques Ignace Courtin, who was afterwards _Conseiller au Conseil des Indes_, we may be satisfied he did so; but French East India Company Records are a hopeless chaos at the present moment, and all that one can extract from the English Records is evidence of still further suffering. From Murshidabad or Cossimbazar, Courtin went down to Chandernagore, whence the majority of the French inhabitants had already been sent to the Madras Coast. The Fort had been blown up, and the private houses were under sentence of destruction, for the English had determined to destroy the town, partly in revenge for the behaviour of Lally, who, acting under instructions from the French East India Company, had shown great severity to the English in Southern India, partly because they did not think themselves strong enough to garrison Chandernagore as well as Calcutta, and feared the Moors would occupy it if they did not place troops there, and partly because they dreaded its restoration to France--which actually happened--when peace was made. At any rate Courtin found the remnants of his countrymen in despair, and in 1759 he wrote a letter[168] to Clive and the Council of Calcutta, from which I quote one or two paragraphs:-- "With the most bitter grief I have received advice of the sentence you have passed on the French Settlement at Chandernagore, by which all the buildings, as well of the Company as of private persons, are to be utterly demolished. "Humane and compassionate as you are, Sirs, you would be sensibly affected--were your eyes witnesses to it as mine have been--by the distress to which this order has reduced the hearts of those unhappy inhabitants who remain in that unfortunate place, particularly if you knew that there is nothing left to the majority of them beyond these houses, on whose destruction you have resolved. If I may believe what I hear, the motive which incites you is that of reprisal for what has happened at Cuddalore and Madras: it does not become me to criticize either the conduct of M. Lally, our general, who, by all accounts, is a man very much to be respected by me, or your reasons, which you suppose sufficient. Granting the latter to be so, permit me, Sirs, to address myself to your generosity and humanity, and those admirable qualities, so universally esteemed by mankind, will encourage me to take the liberty to make certain representations. "All upbraidings are odious, and nothing is more just than the French proverb which says, to remind a person of favours done him cancels the obligation. God forbid, Sirs, I should be guilty of this to you or your nation by reminding you for a moment, that these houses, now condemned by you, served you as an asylum in 1756, and that the owners, whom you are now reducing to the greatest distress and are plunging into despair, assisted you to the utmost of their power, and alleviated your misfortunes as much as they were able. But what am I saying? Your nation is too polished to need reminding of what is just. Therefore excuse my saying that this reason alone is sufficient to cancel the law of retaliation which you have resolved to execute, and to make you revoke an order which, I am sure, you could not have given without much uneasiness of mind. I cast myself at your feet, imploring, with the most ardent prayers, that compassion, which I flatter myself I perceive in your hearts, for these poor creatures, whom you cannot without remorse render miserable. If you really, Sirs, think I too have had the happiness to be of some use to you and your nation, whilst Chief at Dacca, and that I have rendered you some services, I only beg that you would recollect them for one moment, and let them induce you to grant the favour I request for my poor countrymen. I shall then regard it as the most happy incident in my life, and shall think myself ten thousand times more indebted to you. "If, Sirs, you have absolutely imperative reasons for reprisal, change, if you please, the object of them. I offer myself a willing victim, if there must be one, and, if blood were necessary, I should think myself too happy to offer mine a sacrifice. But as these barbarous methods are not made use of in nations so civilized as ours, I have one last offer to make, which is to ransom and buy all the private houses at Chandernagore, for which I will enter into whatever engagements you please, and will give you the best security in my power." The last words seem to imply that Courtin had recovered his property, at least to a great extent; but his pathetic appeal was useless in face of national necessities, and so far was Chandernagore desolated that, in November of the same year, we read that the English army, under Colonel Forde, was ambushed by the Dutch garrison of Chinsurah "amongst the buildings and ruins of Chandernagore." From Chandernagore Courtin went to Pondicherry, where he became a member of the Superior Council. He was one of the chiefs of the faction opposed to Lally, who contemptuously mentions a printed "Memorial" of his adventures which Courtin prepared, probably for presentation to the Directors of the French East India Company.[169] When, in January, 1761, Lally determined to capitulate, Courtin was sent to the English commander on the part of the Council. Still later we find his name attached to a petition, dated August 3, 1762, presented to the King against Lally.[170] This shows that Courtin had arrived in France, so that his elevation to the Council of the Company is by no means improbable. To any one who has lived long in India it seems unnatural that in old days the small colonies of Europeans settled there should have been incited to mutual conflict and mutual ruin, owing to quarrels which originated in far-off Europe, and _which were decided without any reference to the wishes or interests of Europeans living in the colonies_. The British Settlements alone have successfully survived the struggle. The least we can do is to acknowledge the merits, whilst we commiserate the sufferings, of those other gallant men who strove their best to win the great prize for their own countrymen. Of the French especially it would appear that their writers have noticed only those like Dupleix, Bussy, and Lally, who commanded armies in glorious campaigns that somehow always ended to the advantage of the British, and have utterly forgotten the civilians who really kept the game going, and who would have been twice as formidable to their enemies if the military had been subordinate to them. The curse of the French East India Company was Militarism, whilst fortunately for the English our greatest military hero in India, Lord Clive, was so clear-minded that he could write:-- "I have the liberty of an Englishman so strongly implanted in my nature, that I would have the Civil all in all, in all times and in all places, cases of immediate danger excepted." How much might have been achieved by men like Renault, Law, and Courtin, if they had had an adequate military force at their disposal! They saw, as clearly as did the English, that Bengal was the heart of India, and they saw the English denude Madras of troops to defend Bengal, whilst they themselves were left by the French commanders in a state of hopeless impotence. On the other hand, owing to the English Company's insistence that military domination should be the exception and not the rule, British civilians and British soldiers have, almost always, worked together harmoniously. It was this union of force which gave us Bengal in the time of which I have been writing, and to the same source of power we owe the gradual building up of the great Empire which now dominates the whole of India. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 122: Probably Portuguese half-castes.] [Footnote 123: Matchlock men. Consultations of the Dacca Council, 27th June, 1756. Madras Select Committee Proceedings, 9th November, 1756.] [Footnote 124: When Courtin was sent by Count Lally with the proposals for the surrender of Pondicherry he had to take an interpreter with him. _Memoirs of Lally_, p. 105.] [Footnote 125: I.e. official order.] [Footnote 126: I cannot ascertain where M. Fleurin was at this moment. If at Dacca, then Courtin must have left him behind.] [Footnote 127: MSS. Français, Nouvelles Acquisitions, No. 9361. This is unfortunately only a copy, and the dates are somewhat confused. Where possible I have corrected them.] [Footnote 128: Calcapur, the site of the Dutch Factory. See note, p. 64.] [Footnote 129: From a map by Rennell of the neighbourhood of Dacca it appears that the French Factory was on the River Bourigunga. There are still several plots of ground in Dacca town belonging to the French. One of them, popularly known as Frashdanga, is situated at the mouth of the old bed of the river which forms an island of the southern portion of the town; but I do not think this is the site of the French Factory, as the latter appears to have been situated to the west of the present Nawab's palace.] [Footnote 130: Now used in the sense of messengers or office attendants.] [Footnote 131: Orme says (bk. viii. p. 285) that Courtin started with 30 Europeans and 100 sepoys. From Law's "Memoir" we see that M. de Carryon took 20 men to Cossimbazar before Law himself left. This accounts for the smallness of Courtin's force.] [Footnote 132: Jafar Ali Khan married the sister of Aliverdi Khan, Siraj-ud-daula's grandfather.] [Footnote 133: I think he must mean the mouth of the Murshidabad River.] [Footnote 134: Courtin means the lower ranges of the Himalayas, inhabited by the Nepaulese, Bhutiyas, etc. His wanderings therefore were in the districts of Rungpore and Dinajpur.] [Footnote 135: Sinfray, Secretary to the Council at Chandernagore, was one of the fugitives who, as mentioned above, joined Law at Cossimbazar.] [Footnote 136: Assaduzama Muhammad was nephew to Kamgar Khan, the general of Shah Alam. _Holwell. Memorial to the Select Committee_, 1760.] [Footnote 137: Orme MSS. India XI., p. 2859, No. 246.] [Footnote 138: Orme says the Fort was on the River Teesta, but Rennell marks it more correctly a little away from the river and about fifteen miles south of Jalpaiguri.] [Footnote 139: These guns Courtin calls "pièces à la minute." The proper name should be "canon à la suédoise" or "canon à la minute." They were invented by the Swedes, who used 3-pounders with improved methods for loading and firing, so as to be able to fire as many as ten shots in a minute. The French adopted a 4-pounder gun of this kind in 1743. The above information was given me by Lieut.-Colonel Ottley Perry, on the authority of Colonel Colin, an artillery officer on the French Headquarters Staff.] [Footnote 140: This squadron, under the command of Mons. Bouvet, actually did arrive.] [Footnote 141: This rebellion was really conducted by Ukil Singh, the Hindoo _Diwan_ of Hazir Ali.] [Footnote 142: Mir Jafar, Jafar Ali, Mir Jafar Ali Khan, are all variations of the name of the Nawab whom the English placed on the throne after the death of Siraj-ud-daula.] [Footnote 143: Law says that the French soldiers who wandered the country in this way were accustomed to disguise themselves as natives and even as Brahmins, when they wished to avoid notice.] [Footnote 144: A kind of native house-boat.] [Footnote 145: A heavy gun fired from a rest or stand.] [Footnote 146: A ditch or ravine.] [Footnote 147: Orme MSS. India XI., p. 2901, No. 374.] [Footnote 148: A thick quilt used as a covering when in bed, or sometimes like a blanket to wrap oneself in.] [Footnote 149: Orme MSS. India XL, p. 2915, No. 417.] [Footnote 150: Bengal Select Com. Consultations, 22nd February, 1758.] [Footnote 151: I have not been able to identify this place.] [Footnote 152: A boatman.] [Footnote 153: See note, p. 88.] [Footnote 154: Orme MSS. India XI., p. 2923, No. 432.] [Footnote 155: Orme MSS. India XL, p. 2926, No. 438.] [Footnote 156: This expression is characteristically Indian, and is used when any one, finding himself oppressed, appeals to some great personage for protection.] [Footnote 157: The Nawab's flag was the usual Turkish crescent.] [Footnote 158: Another Indian expression. The last resource against oppression or injustice in India is to commit suicide by starvation or some violent means, and to lay the blame on the oppressor. This is supposed to bring the curse of murder upon him.] [Footnote 159: This means simply that the Raja was not an independent ruler. The sovereign owning all land, _land revenue_ and _rent_ meant the same thing.] [Footnote 160: This seems to want explanation. Probably Courtin had got into some sort of house used for religious ceremonies, such as are often found in or close to the market-places of great landowners.] [Footnote 161: He probably refers to Mr. Luke Scrafton.] [Footnote 162: I.e. from his entrenchments.] [Footnote 163: "Courtin and his party arrived here the 10th. They are 6 soldiers, Dutch, German and Swede, such as took service with the French when our Factory at Dacca fell into the hands of Surajeh Dowleit, 4 gentlemen, some Chitagon (_sic_) fellows and about 20 peons. Courtin, on his way hither, has, by mischance, received a ball through his shoulder. They demanded _honneurs de la guerre_, which Drake has not understood" (_Scrafton to Clive, March_ 12, 1758).] [Footnote 164: According to Orme, Courtin's force was reduct from 30 to 11 Europeans, and from 100 to 30 sepoys.] [Footnote 165: The manuscript I translate from contains only the postscript of the 10th of August.] [Footnote 166: A translation. Clive generally wrote to French officers in their own language.] [Footnote 167: Such honours were not uncommonly granted. Law was made a Colonel, so was another French partisan named Madec. On the other hand, when a French gentleman had the choice, he often put his elder son in the Company's service and the younger in the army. Law's younger brother was in the army. Renault's elder son was in the Company and the younger in the army.] [Footnote 168: Appended to "Bengal Public Proceedings," May 31, 1759.] [Footnote 169: I do not know whether this "Memorial" still exists, but see "Memoirs of Count Lally," p. 53.] [Footnote 170: "Memoirs of Count Lally," p. 367.] INDEX Abdulla Khan Admiralty, the English Aeneas Afghan General, the _See_ Abdulla Khan Agra Ahmed Khan Koreishi Alamgir II., Emperor, assassinated November 29, 1759 Ali Gauhar _See_ Shah Alam Aliverdi Khan his opinion of Europeans sister of Allahabad Amina Begum, mother of Siraj-ud-daula Anquetil du Perron, M. Anti-Renaultions "Arabian Nights" Archives, French _Areca-nut_ Armenian officers Armenians _Arz-begi_ (Gholam Ali Khan) _Arzi_ _Asiatic Annual Register_ Assaduzama Muhammad, Raja of Birbhum Assam, King of Audience Hall, the Augustine Father Aurengzebe Bahadur Singh Bahar _See_ Bihar _Bajarow_ Balasore Bandel Bankers, influence of Indian Banowra River Barber, a native Battle of the 5th of February Becher, Mr. Richard Beinges, M. Benares Bengal Nawabs of records revolution in rivers of Bengali merchant Berhampur _Betel_ Bettiah, Raja of Bhagulpur Bhutiyas Bibi Lass _See_ Mrs. Law Bibliothèque Nationale Biderra, battle of Bihar, Hindu Rajas of map of south province of town of Birbhum Raja of _See_ Assaduzama Muhammad Bisdom, Adrian, Director of the Dutch in Bengal Black Hole, the Bloomer, Lieut. Boissemont, M. Bombay Bourigunga River Bouvet, M. Brahmins Brayer, Ensign M., one of Courtin's companions Brereton, Lieut. William _Bridgewater_, H.M.S. (Captain Smith) British. _See_ English civilians Museum, MS. Department Broome, Captain A., Author of the "Rise and Progress of the Bengal Army" (Calcutta, 1850) Budge Budge, battle of Bugros, M. _Bukshi_ Bulwant Singh, Raja of Benares Bundelkand or Bundelcund Bussy, M. _Buxerries_ Caillot, or Caillaud Calcapur Calcutta English Council at Calvé, M. Cannon balls of clay Cantanagar, battle of Capitulation of Chandernagore, dispute as to terms of Capucins, church of Carnac, Major John Carryon, M. le Comte de Carvalho, Jeanne. _See_ Mrs. Law Cause of Siraj-ud-daula's attack on the English Chambon, M Chandernagore booty taken at cemetery at council at deserters from garrison of possibility of its capture by English land forces alone terms of capitulation of Chatrapur _Chauth_ Chevalier, M. Chinese Chinsurah Chittagong Choquova Christian clerks Christians Chunargarh _Chunam_ Chupra or Chapra. Cicero Civil Power, the Clive, Lieut.-Colonel Robert (Lord Clive) Coja Wajid Colbert, M. Colin, Catherine Colonel Coote, Captain (Sir) Eyre Coromandel, Coast of, _See_ Madras Coast Cossimbazar Cossimbazar River Courtin, François, Jacques Ignace Courtin, Mrs. _See_ Madame Direy Courtin's Memorial Cuddalore Cudmore, Lieut. John Cuttack Dacca; Council at; Government College at; Nawab of; Palace of present Nawab _D'Aillot_, powders D'Albert, M. le Chevalier Dana Shah Danes Dangereux, M. Davis, Mr. Debellême, M. le Capitaine De Carryon, M. le Comte Deccan De Kalli, M. Delabar, M. De la Bretesche, M. Delamotte, Mr. John De la Vigne Buisson; M. le Capitaine; jun. De Leyrit, M. Delhi De Montorcin, M. Desbrosses, M. Deserters, English; French Desjoux, M. De Terraneau, Ann.; Lieut. Charles Cossard; senior De Tury; M., Commandant of Chandernagore D'Hurvilliers, M. Dido Dinajpur; Raja of Dinapur Direy, Madame, _See_ Mrs. Courtin _Diwan_ Doctor, French Doidge, Mr. Drake, Roger, jun.; President of the Council at Calcutta Droguet, M. Dubois; M., French Company's servant; M., Sturgeon Major Du Cap, M. Dupleix, Marquis Du Pré, M. Durbar, The _Dustuck_ Dutch; Director. _See_ M. Bisdom; Octagon, the East India Company, English; Forces East India Company, French Elephants, gentleness of Engineers, want of England English; _See_ British; agent of; ladies at Dacca; Records; trade privileges of Eunuchs Europe Europeans Europeans, generosity and courage of, Fakir, _See_ Dana Shah Farmers of estates, Farukhabad, _Faujdar_, Fazl-kuli-khan, Feringhees, _Firman_, Fleurin, M., Forde, Colonel, Fort Bourgogne, d'Orleans, William, Fournier, M., France, King of, Frashdanga, French, civilians, ladies, mistaken for Muhammadans, proverb, soldiers, up-country factories, Fringuey Raja, Fullerton, Dr. William, Fulta, Ganges river, _See_ Hugli River Gaya, Gentiles, or Gentoos, Germans, Ghazipur, Gholam Husain Khan, Gourbin, M. Gourlade, M., Grand Monarque, the, Great Britain, King of, _Gunge_, _Gunny_, _Hackerys_, Haillet, M., Hardwicke, Lord, Hazir Ali Khan, Hey, Lieut., Himalayas, Hindu advisers of the Nawab, Hindu Rajas, women, ill-treatment of--by Siraj-ud-daula, Hindus, the, Hindustan, Holkar, Holwell, John Zephaniah, Governor, Honours of war, Hugli, Faujdar of, _See_ Nand Kumar fort, River, town, Imad-al-Muluk, Ghazi-ud-din Khan, India, Southern, Indian expressions, characteristic, minds, motives of, ways of business, Indies, The, Indrapat, Raja of Bundelkand, _Inhabitants_, Innocent, or Innocent Jesus, Ironside, Colonel Gilbert, Ives, Surgeon Edward, author of "A Voyage from England to India in 1754, with, a narrative of the operations of the squadron and army in India, under Watson and Clive, 1755-1757; Also a Journey from Persia to England," (London, 1799) Jafar Ali Khan. _See_ Mir Jafar Ali Khan Jagat Seth, family of _See_ Seths Jalpaiguri Jats, the _Jemadars_ Jesuit Church, the Fathers, the Jobard, M. Jugdea _See_ Luckipore Jusserat Khan, Nawab of Dacca Kaffirs Kamgar Khan Karical Kasim Ali Khan, Nawab of Bengal _See_ Mir Kasim Kasim Ali Khan, Faujdar of Rungpore _Kent_, H.M.S. Kerdizien, M. Khodadad Khan Latty Kilpatrick, Major James King _See_ Mogul _Kingfisher_, H.M.S. Kissendas, son of Raj Balav Knox, Captain Ranfurlie Kooti Ghat Koran, the La Haye, M. Lal Dighi Lally, Count Memoirs of Laporterie, M. La Rue, M. Latham, Captain Launay, M. La Ville Martère, M. Law, Jacques François Jean, of Lauriston Madame Jeanne John, of Lauriston, the Financier William Law's Memoir Le Conte Dompierre Lee, Corporal Le Noir, M. Le Page, M., Second Surgeon Locusts Luckipore _See_ Jugdea Lucknow Lynn, Captain McGwire, Mr. William Madec, Colonel Madras Coast _See_ Coromandel Malleson, Colonel G.B., Author of "History of the French in India from the Founding of Pondicherry in 1674 to the Capture of that Place in 1761" (London, 1868) Manik Chand, Raja _Manjhi_ Maratha Commander Law's altercation with General, the Marathas Martin, Captain Martin de la Case, Ensign Matel, M. Midnapur Militarism Minchin, Captain George, Captain-Commandant of Calcutta Mir Abdulla Miran, son of Mir Jafar Mir Daood, brother of Mir Jafar, and Faujdar of Rajmehal Mir Jafar Ali Khan, made Nawab by the English after Plassey Mir Kasim, or Kasim Ali Khan, son-in-law and successor of Mir Jafar army of Mir Madan Mogul _See_ King Mohan Lal, favourite of the Nawab Monsoon Moor hostages nobles Moorish colours forts soldiers treachery Moors Muhammadhans Murshidabad _See_ Muxadabad or Cossimbazar River Murshid Kuli Khan Mustapha Ali Khan Mutinies Muxadabad _See_ Murshidabad _Naib_ Nand Kumar, Faujdar of Hugli Native indifference to the quarrels of the Europeans _Nautch_ Naval officer, an English Nawab, the _See_ Siraj-ud-daula Hindu advisers and servants of Nawajis Muhammad Khan, uncle of Siraj-ud-daula Nawajis Muhammad Khan's widow Nazir Dalal, the Negroes Nepaulese Neutrality in the Ganges News from Bengal Nicolas, M.F. Nover, Sergeant Nullah Omichand Onofre, Reverend Father Oppoor Orissa Orme Papers or MSS. Orme, Robert, historian Oudh Nawab of. _See_ Suja-ud-daula Pagodas or Hindu Temples Paris _Parwana_ Pathans Patna Naib of River _Pattamar_ Pavilion, Bastion du Pearkes, Mr. Paul Richard Pedro _Peons_ Perry, Lieut.-Colonel Ottley Phulbari Picques, M. Pilots, French Plassey, battle of Pocock, Admiral (Sir) George Pondicherry Superior Council of Porte Royale, the Portuguese half-castes Predestination Priest, Hindu Probate Records (Mayor's Court, Calcutta) Prussian Gardens Purneah Nawab of. _See_ Saukat Jang Raj Durlabh Ram, Raja Rains, the Raj Balav, Raja Rajas, Hindu Rajmehal Faujdar of. _See_ Mir Daood Ramnarain, Raja, Naib or Deputy Governor of Patua Ram Nath, Raja of Dinajpur Ranjit Rai, agent of the Seths Raymond, M. Renault, Pierre, Director of Chandernagore (Malleson calls him Renault de St. Germain, but he never signs himself as such) Renault, de St. Germain, eldest son of Pierre Renault Renault, Lieut., second son of Pierre Renault Renault, de la Fuye, M. Renaultions, the Rennell, Major James, geographer _Rezai_, Royal Music, the Rungpore Raja of. _See_ Kasizn All Khan Sahibgunj, Raja of Saidabad. _Saint Contest_, the St. Didier, M. St. Louis, Order of Parish Church of Salabat Jang _Salisbury_, H.M.S. Sarfaraz Khan, Nawab of Bengal, defeated and killed in battle by Aliverdi Khan in 1742 Saukat Jang, Nawab of Purneah and cousin of Siraj-ud-daula Scrafton, Mr. Luke, Author of "Reflections on the Government of Indostan" (London, 1770) Scrafton's "Reflections" Select Committee at Calcutta at Madras Sepoys, 10. _See_ Telingas French Law's opinion of Serampore, Danish Settlement Seth Mahtab Rai, grandson of Jagat Seth Seth Sarup Chand, grandson of Jagat Seth Seths, agent of _See_ Ranjit Rai Seths: the family of Jagat Seth Shah, Alam _See_ Ali Gauhar Shahzada or Crown Prince _See_ Shah Alam Sheikh Faiz Ulla Sinfray, M. Siraj-ud-daula _See_ Nawab cause of his attack on the English his aunt, widow of Nawajia Khan his mother _See_ Amina Begum his younger brother _See_ Fazl-kuli-khan Slippers, a pair of Sooty Soupy, fort of Speke, Captain Spies employed by the English, by the Nawab Suan, battle of Subah Suja-ud-daula, Nawabof Oudh Summer, Mr. William Brightwell Surgeons, French Swedes Swedish guns Swiss Tangepur, or Tanjipur, Tanks used for military purposes Tartars Teesta River Telingas or Tellingees Tibet king of, Toby, Captain--of the _Kingfisher_ Tooke, Mr. William Topasses Treaty between the English and Mir Jafar between the English and Siraj-ud-daula between the French and Siraj-ud-daula Turkish Crescent, the _Tyger_, H.M.S. Ukil Singh Vansittart, Governor Henry Vernet, M. George, Lodewjk Villequain, M. Vizir, The Volunteers, English French _Wakils_ Walcot, Clive Correspondence at Waller, Mr. Samuel War, Declaration of, between England and France Water Gate, the Watson, Admiral Charles Watts, Mrs. Amelia the Worshipful Mr. William Zemindar, collector of revenue THE END 
4222	----	Laperouse by Ernest Scott DEDICATION To my friend T.B.E. CONTENTS I. FAMILY, YOUTH and INFLUENCES. II. THE FRENCH NAVAL OFFICER. III. THE LOVE STORY OF LAPEROUSE. IV. THE VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION. V. THE EARLY PART OF THE VOYAGE. VI. LAPEROUSE IN THE PACIFIC. VII. AT BOTANY BAY. VIII. THE MYSTERY, AND THE SECRET OF THE SEA. IX. CAPTAIN DILLON'S DISCOVERY. X. THE FAME OF LAPEROUSE. FOREWORD All Sydney people, and most of those who have visited the city, have seen the tall monument to Laperouse overlooking Botany Bay. Many have perhaps read a little about him, and know the story of his surprising appearance in this harbour six days after the arrival of Governor Phillip with the First Fleet. One can hardy look at the obelisk, and at the tomb of Pere Receveur near by, without picturing the departure of the French ships after bidding farewell to the English officers and colonists. Sitting at the edge of the cliff, one can follow Laperouse out to sea, with the eye of imagination, until sails, poops and hulls diminish to the view and disappear below the hazy-blue horizon. We may be sure that some of Governor Phillip's people watched the sailing, and the lessening, and the melting away of the vessels, from just about the same place, one hundred and twenty four years ago. What they saw, and what we can imagine, was really the end of a romantic career, and the beginning of a mystery of the sea which even yet has not lost its fascination. The story of that life is surely worth telling, and, we trust, worth reading; for it is that of a good, brave and high-minded man, a great sailor, and a true gentleman. The author has put into these few pages what he has gleaned from many volumes, some of them stout, heavy and dingy tomes, though delightful enough to "those who like that sort of thing." He hopes that the book may for many readers touch with new meaning those old weatherworn stones at Botany Bay, and make the personality of Laperouse live again for such as nourish an interest in Australian history. ILLUSTRATIONS. (Not included in etext) Portrait of Laperouse, with Autograph Laperouse's Coat of Arms The Laperouse Family Comte de Fleurieu Louis XVI Giving Instructions to Laperouse Australia as known at the time of Laperouse's visit The BOUSSOLE and ASTROLABE Chart of Laperouse's Voyage in the Pacific Massacre of Captain de Langle's Party Tomb of Pere Receveur Monument to Laperouse at Botany Bay Admiral Dentrecasteaux Map of Vanikoro Island Relics of Laperouse Life of Laperouse Chapter I. FAMILY, YOUTH and INFLUENCES Jean-Francois Galaup, Comte De Laperouse, was born at Albi, on August 23, 1741. His birthplace is the chief town in the Department of Tarn, lying at the centre of the fruitful province of Languedoc, in the south of France. It boasts a fine old Gothic cathedral, enriched with much noble carving and brilliant fresco painting; and its history gives it some importance in the lurid and exciting annals of France. From its name was derived that of a religious sect, the Albigeois, who professed doctrines condemned as heretical and endured severe persecution during the thirteenth century. But among all the many thousands of men who have been born, and have lived, and died in the old houses of the venerable city, none, not even among its bishops and counts, has borne a name which lives in the memory of mankind as does that of the navigator, Laperouse. The sturdy farmers of the fat and fertile plain which is the granary of France, who drive in to Albi on market days, the patient peasants of the fields, and the simple artisans who ply their primitive trades under the shadow of the dark-red walls of St. Cecile, know few details, perhaps, about the sailor who sank beneath the waters of the Pacific so many years ago. Yet very many of them have heard of Laperouse, and are familiar with his monument cast in bronze in the public square of Albi. They speak his name respectfully as that of one who grew up among their ancestors, who trod their streets, sat in their cathedral, won great fame, and met his death under the strange, distant, southern stars. His family had for five hundred years been settled, prominent and prosperous, on estates in the valley of the Tarn. In the middle of the fifteenth century a Galaup held distinguished office among the citizens of Albi, and several later ancestors are mentioned honourably in its records. The father of the navigator, Victor Joseph de Galaup, succeeded to property which maintained him in a position of influence and affluence among his neighbours. He married Marguerite de Resseguier, a woman long remembered in the district for her qualities of manner and mind. She exercised a strong influence over her adventurous but affectionate son; and a letter written to her by him at an interesting crisis of his life, testifies to his eager desire to conform to his mother's wishes even in a matter that wrenched his heart, and after years of service in the Navy had taken him far and kept him long from her kind, concerning eyes. Jean-Francois derived the name by which he is known in history from the estate of Peyrouse, one of the possessions of his family. But he dropped the "y" when assuming the designation, and invariably spelt the name "Laperouse," as one word. Inasmuch as the final authority on the spelling of a personal name is that of the individual who owns it, there can be no doubt that we ought always to spell this name "Laperouse," as, in fact, successors in the family who have borne it have done; though in nearly all books, French as well as English, it is spelt "La Perouse." In the little volume now in the reader's hands, the example of Laperouse himself has been followed. On this point it may be remarked concerning another navigator who was engaged in Australian exploration, that we may lose touch with an interesting historical fact by not observing the correct form of a name. On maps of Tasmania appears "D'Entrecasteaux Channel." It was named by and after Admiral Bruny Dentrecasteaux, who as commander of the RECHERCHE and ESPERANCE visited Australian waters. We shall have something to say about his expedition towards the close of the book. Now, Dentrecasteaux sailed from France in 1791, while the Revolution was raging. All titles had been abolished by a decree of the National Assembly on July 19th, 1790. When he made this voyage, therefore, the Admiral was not Bruny D'Entrecasteaux, a form which implied a territorial titular distinction; but simply Citizen Dentrecasteaux. The name is so spelt in the contemporary histories of his expedition written by Rossel and Labillardiere. It would not have been likely to be spelt in any other way by a French officer at the time. Thus, the Marquis de la Fayette became simply Lafayette, and so with all other bearers of titles in France. Consequently we should, by observing this little difference, remind ourselves of Dentrecasteaux' period and circumstances. That, however, is by the way, and our main concern for the present is with Laperouse. As a boy, Jean-Francois developed a love for books of voyages, and dreamt, as a boy will, of adventures that he would enjoy when he grew to manhood. A relative tells us that his imagination was enkindled by reading of the recent discoveries of Anson. As he grew up, and himself sailed the ocean in command of great ships, he continued to read all the voyaging literature he could procure. The writings of Byron, Carteret, Wallis, Louis de Bougainville, "and above all Cook," are mentioned as those of his heroes. He "burned to follow in their footsteps." It will be observed that, with one exception, the navigators who are especially described by one of his own family as having influenced the bent of Laperouse were Englishmen. He did not, of course, read all of their works in his boyhood, because some of them were published after he had embraced a naval career. But we note them in this place, as the guiding stars by which he shaped his course. He must have been a young man, already on the way to distinction as an officer, when he came under the spell of Cook. "And above all Cook," says his relative. To the end of his life, down to the final days of his very last voyage, Laperouse revered the name of Cook. Every Australian reader will like him the better for that. Not many months before his own life ended in tragedy and mystery, he visited the island where the great English sailor was slain. When he reflected on the achievements of that wonderful career, he sat down in his cabin and wrote in his Journal the passage of which the following is a translation. It is given here out of its chronological order, but we are dealing with the influences that made Laperouse what he was, and we can see from these sincere and feeling words, what Cook meant to him: "Full of admiration and of respect as I am for the memory of that great man, he will always be in my eyes the first of navigators. It is he who has determined the precise position of these islands, who has explored their shores, who has made known the manners, customs and religion of the inhabitants, and who has paid with his blood for all the light which we have to-day concerning these peoples. I would call him the Christopher Columbus of these countries, of the coast of Alaska, and of nearly all the isles of the South Seas. Chance might enable the most ignorant man to discover islands, but it belongs only to great men like him to leave nothing more to be done regarding the coasts they have found. Navigators, philosophers, physicians, all find in his Voyages interesting and useful things which were the object of his concern. All men, especially all navigators, owe a tribute of praise to his memory. How could one neglect to pay it at the moment of coming upon the group of islands where he finished so unfortunately his career?" We can well understand that a lad whose head was full of thoughts of voyaging and adventure, was not, as a schoolboy, very tame and easy to manage. He is described as having been ardent, impetuous, and rather stubborn. But there is more than one kind of stubbornness. There is the stupid stubbornness of the mule, and the fixed, firm will of the intelligent being. We can perceive quite well what is meant in this case. On the other hand, he was affectionate, quick and clever. He longed for the sea; and his father, observing his decided inclination, allowed him to choose the profession he desired. It may well have seemed to the parents of Laperouse at this time that fine prospects lay before a gallant young gentleman who should enter the Marine. There was for the moment peace between France and England. A truce had been made by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. But everybody knew that there would be war again soon. Both countries were struggling for the mastery in India and in North America. The sense of rivalry was strong. Jealousies were fierce on both sides. In India, the French power was wielded, and ever more and more extended, by the brilliant Governor Dupleix; whilst in the British possessions the rising influence was that of the dashing, audacious Clive. In North America the French were scheming to push their dominion down the Ohio-Mississippi Valley from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, in the rear of the line of British colonies planted on the seaboard from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Florida. The colonists were determined to prevent them; and a young man named George Washington, who afterwards became very famous, first rose into prominence in a series of tough struggles to thwart the French designs. The points of collision between the two nations were so sharp, feeling on either side was so bitter, the contending interests were so incapable of being reconciled, that it was plain to all that another great war was bound to break out, and that sea power would play a very important part in the issue. The young Laperouse wanted to go to sea, and his father wanted him to distinguish himself and confer lustre on his name. The choice of a calling for him, therefore, suited all the parties concerned. He was a boy of fifteen when, in November, 1756, he entered the Marine service as a royal cadet. He had not long to wait before tasting "delight of battle," for the expected war was declared in May, and before he was much older he was in the thick of it. Chapter II. THE FRENCH NAVAL OFFICER. Laperouse first obtained employment in the French navy in the CELEBRE, from March to November, 1757. From this date until his death, thirty-one years later, he was almost continuously engaged, during peace and war, in the maritime service of his country. The official list of his appointments contains only one blank year, 1764. He had then experienced close upon seven years of continuous sea fighting and had served in as many ships: the CELEBRE, the POMONE, the ZEPHIR, the CERF, the FORMIDABLE, the ROBUSTE, and the SIX CORPS. But the peace of Paris was signed in the early part of 1763. After that, having been promoted to the rank of ensign, he had a rest. It was not a popular peace on either side. In Paris there was a current phrase, "BETE COMME LA PAIX," stupid as the peace. In England, the great Pitt was so indignant on account of its conditions that, all swollen and pinched with gout as he was, he had himself carried to the House of Commons, his limbs blanketted in bandages and his face contorted with pain, and, leaning upon a crutch, denounced it in a speech lasting three hours and forty minutes. The people cheered him to the echo when he came out to his carriage, and the vote favourable to the terms of the treaty was carried by wholesale corruption. But all the same, Great Britain did very well out of it, and both countries--though neither was satisfied--were for the time being tired of war. For Laperouse the seven years had been full of excitement. The most memorable engagement in which he took part was a very celebrated one, in November, 1759. A stirring ballad has been written about it by Henry Newbolt:-- "In seventeen hundred and fifty-nine When Hawke came swooping from the West, The French King's admiral with twenty of the line Came sailing forth to sack us out of Brest." Laperouse's ship, the FORMIDABLE, was one of the French fleet of twenty-one sail. What happened was this. The French foreign minister, Choiseul, had hatched a crafty plan for the invasion of England, but before it could be executed the British fleet had to be cleared out of the way. There was always that tough wooden wall with the hearts of oak behind it, standing solidly in the path. It baffled Napoleon in the same fashion when he thought out an invasion plan in the next century. The French Admiral, Conflans, schemed to lure Sir Edward Hawke into Quiberon Bay, on the coast of Brittany. A strong westerly gale was blowing and was rapidly swelling into a raging tempest. Conflans, piloted by a reliable guide who knew the Bay thoroughly, intended to take up a fairly safe, sheltered position on the lee side, and hoped that the wind would force Hawke, who was not familiar with the ground, on to the reefs and shoals, where his fleet would be destroyed by the storm and the French guns together. But Hawke, whose name signally represents the bold, swift, sure character of the man, understood the design, took the risk, avoided the danger, and clutched the prey. Following the French as rapidly as wind and canvas could take him, he caught their rearmost vessels, smashed them up, battered the whole fleet successively into flight or splinters, and himself lost only two vessels, which ran upon a shoal. Plodding prose does scant justice to the extraordinary brilliancy of Hawke's victory, described by Admiral Mahan as "the Trafalgar of this war." We cannot pass on without quoting one of Mr. Newbolt's graphic verses:-- "'Twas long past the noon of a wild November day When Hawke came swooping from the west; He heard the breakers thundering in Quiberon Bay, But he flew the flag for battle, line abreast. Down upon the quicksands, roaring out of sight, Fiercely blew the storm wind, darkly fell the night, For they took the foe for pilot and the cannon's glare for light, When Hawke came swooping from the West." "They took the foe for pilot:" that is a most excellent touch, both poetical and true. The FORMIDABLE was the first to be disposed of in the fight. She was an 80-gun line-of-battle ship, carrying the flag of Admiral du Verger. Her position being in the rear of the squadron, she was early engaged by the RESOLUTION, and in addition received the full broadside of every other British ship that passed her. The Admiral fell mortally wounded, and two hundred on board were killed. She struck her colours at four o'clock after receiving a terrible battering, and was the only French ship captured by Hawke's fleet. All the others were sunk, burnt, or beached, or else escaped. The young Laperouse was amongst the wounded, though his hurts were not dangerous; and, after a brief period spent in England as a prisoner of war, he returned to service. An amusing rhyme in connection with this engagement is worth recalling. Supplies for Hawke's fleet did not come to hand for a considerable time after they were due, and in consequence the victorious crews had to be put on "short commons." Some wag--it is the way of the British sailor to do his grumbling with a spice of humour--put the case thus:-- "Ere Hawke did bang Monsieur Conflans, You sent us beef and beer; Now Monsieur's beat We've nought to eat, Since you have nought to fear." An interesting coincidence must also be noted. Thirty-five years later, only a few leagues from the place where Laperouse first learnt what it meant to fight the British on the sea, another young officer who was afterwards greatly concerned with Australasian exploration had his introduction to naval warfare. It was in 1794 that Midshipman Matthew Flinders, on the BELLEROPHON, Captain Pasley, played his valiant little part in a great fleet action off Brest. Both of these youths, whose longing was for exploration and discovery, and who are remembered by mankind in that connection, were cradled on the sea amidst the smoke and flame of battle, both in the same waters. During the next twenty-five years Laperouse saw a considerable amount of fighting in the East and West Indies, and in Canadian waters. He was commander of the AMAZON, under D'Estaing, during a period when events did not shape themselves very gloriously for British arms, not because our admirals had lost their skill and nerve, or our seamen their grit and courage, but because Governments at home muddled, squabbled, starved the navy, misunderstood the problem, and generally made a mess of things. We need not follow him through the details of these years, but simply note that Laperouse's dash and good seamanship won him a high reputation among French naval officers, and brought him under the eye of the authorities who afterwards chose him to command an expedition of discovery. One incident must be recorded, because it throws a light on the character of Laperouse. In 1782, whilst serving under Admiral Latouche-Treville in the West, he was ordered to destroy the British forts on the Hudson River. He attacked them with the SCEPTRE, 74 guns. The British had been engaged in their most unfortunate war with the American Colonies, and in 1781, in consequence of wretchedly bad strategy, had lost command of the sea. The French had been helping the revolted Americans, not for love of them, but from enmity to their rivals. After the capitulation of the British troops at Yorktown, a number of loyalists still held out under discouraging conditions in Canada, and the French desired to dislodge them from the important waterway of the Hudson. Laperouse found little difficulty in fulfilling his mission, for the defence was weak and the garrisons of the forts, after a brief resistance, fled to the woods. It was then that he did a thing described in our principal naval history as an act of "kindness and humanity, rare in the annals of war." Laperouse knew that if he totally destroyed the stores as well as the forts, the unfortunate British, after he had left, would perish either from hunger or under the tomahawks of the Red Indians. So he was careful to see that the food and clothing, and a quantity of powder and small arms, were left untouched, for, as he nobly said, "An enemy conquered should have nothing more to fear from a civilised foe; he then becomes a friend." Some readers may like to see the verses in which a French poet has enshrined this incident. For their benefit they are appended:-- "Un jour ayant appris que les Anglais en fuite Se cachaient dans un bois redoutant la poursuite, Tu laissas sur la plage aux soldats affames, Par la peur affoles, en haillons, desarmes, Des vivres abondantes, des habits et des armes; Tu t'eloignas apres pour calmer leurs alarmes, Et quand on s'etonnait: 'Sachez qu' un ennemi Vaincu n'a rien a craindre, et devient un ami.'" The passage may be rendered in English thus: "One day, having heard that the fleeing English were hidden in a forest dreading pursuit, you left upon the shore for those soldiers--famished, ragged, disarmed, and paralysed by fear--abundance of food, clothes and arms; then, to calm their fears, you removed your forces to a distance; and, when astonishment was expressed, you said: 'Understand that a beaten enemy has nothing to fear from us, and becomes a friend.'" Chapter III. THE LOVE STORY OF LAPEROUSE. "My story is a romance"--"Mon histoire est un roman"--wrote Laperouse in relating the events with which this chapter will deal. We have seen him as a boy; we have watched him in war; we shall presently follow him as a navigator. But it is just as necessary to read his charming love story, if we are to understand his character. We should have no true idea of him unless we knew how he bore himself amid perplexities that might have led him to quote, as peculiarly appropriate to his own case, the lines of Shakespeare:-- "Ay me! for ought that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth," During the period of his service in the East Indies, Laperouse frequently visited Ile-de-France (which is now a British possession, called Mauritius). Then it was the principal naval station of the French in the Indian Ocean. There he met a beautiful girl, the daughter of one of the subordinate officials at Port Louis. Louise Eleonore Broudou is said to have been "more than pretty"; she was distinguished by grace of manner, charm of disposition, and fine, cultivated character. The young officer saw her often, admired her much, fell in love with her, and asked her to marry him. Mademoiselle loved him too; and if they two only had had to be consulted, the happy union of a well-matched pair might have followed soon. It signified little to Laperouse, in love, that the lady had neither rank nor fortune. But his family in France took quite a different view. He wrote to a favourite sister, telling her about it, and she lost no time in conveying the news to his parents. This was in 1775. Then the trouble began. Inasmuch as he was over thirty years of age at this time, it may be thought that he might have been left to choose a wife for himself. But a young officer of rank in France, under the Old Regime, was not so free in these matters as he would be nowadays. Marriage was much more than a personal affair. It was even more than a family affair. People of rank did not so much marry as "make alliances"--or rather, submit to having them made for them. It was quite a regular thing for a marriage to be arranged by the families of two young people who had never even seen each other. An example of that kind will appear presently. The idea that the Comte de Laperouse, one of the smartest officers in the French King's navy, should marry out of his rank and station, shocked his relatives and friends as much as it would have done if he had been detected picking pockets. He could not, without grave risk of social and professional ruin, marry until he had obtained the consent of his father, and--so naval regulations required--of his official superiors. Both were firmly refused. Monsieur de Ternay, who commanded on the Ile-de-France station, shook his wise head, and told the lover "that his love fit would pass, and that people did not console themselves for being poor with the fact that they were married." (This M. de Ternay, it may be noted, had commanded a French squadron in Canada in 1762, and James Cook was a junior officer on the British squadron which blockaded him in St. John's Harbour. He managed to slip out one night, much to the disgust of Colville, the British Admiral, who commented scathingly on his "shameful flight.") The father of Laperouse poured out his forbidding warnings in a long letter. Listen to the "tut-tut" of the old gentleman at Albi:-- "You make me tremble, my son. How can you face with coolness the consequences of a marriage which would bring you into disgrace with the Minister and would lose you the assistance of powerful friends? You would forfeit the sympathies of your colleagues and would sacrifice the fruit of your work during twenty years. In disgracing yourself you would humiliate your family and your parents. You would prepare for yourself nothing but remorse; you would sacrifice your fortune and position to a frivolous fancy for beauty and to pretended charms which perhaps exist only in your own imagination. Neither honour nor probity compels you to meet ill-considered engagements that you may have made with that person or with her parents. Do they or you know that you are not free, that you are under my authority?" He went on to draw a picture of the embarrassments that would follow such a marriage, and then there is a passage revealing the cash-basis aspect of the old gentleman's objection: "You say that there are forty officers in the Marine who have contracted marriages similar to that which you propose to make. You have better models to follow, and in any case what was lacking on the side of birth, in these instances, was compensated by fortune. Without that balance they would not have had the baseness and imprudence to marry thus." Poor Eleonore had no compensating balance of that kind in her favour. She was only beautiful, charming and sweet-natured. Therefore, "tut-tut, my son!" In the course of the next few months Laperouse covered himself with glory by his services on the AMAZON, the ASTREE, and the SCEPTRE, and he hoped that these exploits would incline his father to accede to his ardent wish. But no; the old gentleman was as hard as a rock. He "tut-tutted" with as much vigour as ever. The lovers had to wait. Then his mother, full of love for her son and of pride in his achievements, took a hand, and tried to arrange a more suitable match for him. An old friend of the family, Madame de Vesian had a marriageable daughter. She was rich and beautiful, and her lineage was noble. She had never seen Laperouse, and he had never seen her, but that was an insignificant detail in France under the old Regime. If the parents on each side thought the marriage suitable, that was enough. The wishes of the younger people concerned were, it is true, consulted before the betrothal, but it was often a consultation merely in form, and under pressure. We should think that way of making marriages most unsatisfactory; but then, a French family of position in the old days would have thought our freer system very shocking and loose. It is largely a matter of usage; and that the old plan, which seems so faulty to us, produced very many happy and lasting unions, there is much delightful French family history to prove. Laperouse had now been many months away from Ile-de-France and the bright eyes of Eleonore. He was extremely fond of his mother, and anxious to meet her wishes. Moreover, he held Madame de Vesian in high esteem, and wrote that he "had always admired her, and felt sure that her daughter resembled her." These influences swayed him, and he gave way; but, being frank and honest by disposition, insisted that no secret should be made of his affair of the heart with the lady across the sea. He wrote to Madame de Vesian a candid letter, in which he said:-- "Being extremely sensitive, I should be the most unfortunate of men if I were not beloved by my wife, if I had not her complete confidence, if her life amongst her friends and children did not render her perfectly happy. I desire one day to regard you as a mother, and to-day I open my heart to you as my best friend. I authorise my mother to relate to you my old love affair. My heart has always been a romance (MON COEUR A TOUJOURS ETE UN ROMAN); and the more I sacrificed prudence to those whom I loved the happier I was. But I cannot forget the respect that I owe to my parents and to their wishes. I hope that in a little while I shall be free. If then I have a favourable reply from you, and if I can make your daughter happy and my character is approved, I shall fly to Albi and embrace you a thousand times. I shall not distinguish you from my mother and my sisters." He also wrote to Monsieur de Vesian, begging him not to interfere with the free inclinations of his daughter, and to remember that "in order to be happy there must be no repugnance to conquer. I have, however," he added, "an affair to terminate which does not permit me to dispose of myself entirely. My mother will tell you the details. I hope to be free in six weeks or two months. My happiness will then be inexpressible if I obtain your consent and that of Madame de Vesian, with the certainty of not having opposed the wishes of Mademoiselle, your daughter." "I hope to be free"--did he "hope"? That was his polite way of putting the matter. Or he may have believed that he had conquered his love for Eleonore Broudou, and that she, as a French girl who understood his obligations to his family, would--perhaps after making a few handkerchiefs damp with her tears--acquiesce. So the negotiations went on, and at length, in May, 1783, the de Vesian family accepted Laperouse as the fiance of their daughter. "My project is to live with my family and yours," he wrote. "I hope that my wife will love my mother and my sisters, as I feel that I shall love you and yours. Any other manner of existence is frightful to me, and I have sufficient knowledge of the world and of myself to know that I can only be happy in living thus." But in the very month that he wrote contracting himself--that is precisely the word--to marry the girl he had never seen, Eleonore, the girl whom he had seen, whom he had loved, and whom he still loved in his heart, came to Paris with her parents. Laperouse saw her again. He told her what had occurred. Of course she wept; what girl would not? She said, between her sobs, that if it was to be all over between them she would go into a convent. She could never marry anyone else. "Mon histoire est un roman," and here beginneth the new chapter of this real love story. Why, we wonder, has not some novelist discovered these Laperouse letters and founded a tale upon them? Is it not a better story even told in bare outline in these few pages, than nine-tenths of the concoctions of the novelists, which are sold in thousands? Think of the wooing of these two delightful people, the beautiful girl and the gallant sailor, in the ocean isle, with its tropical perfumes and colours, its superb mountain and valley scenery, bathed in eternal sunshine by day and kissed by cool ocean breezes by night--the isle of Paul and Virginia, the isle which to Alexandre Dumas was the Paradise of the World, an enchanted oasis of the ocean, "all carpeted with greenery and refreshed with cooling streams, where, no matter what the season, you may gently sink asleep beneath the shade of palms and jamrosades, soothed by the babbling of a crystal spring." Think of how he must have entertained and thrilled her with accounts of his adventures: of storms, of fights with the terrible English, of the chasing of corsairs and the battering of the fleets of Indian princes. Think of her open-eyed wonder, and of the awakening of love in her heart; and then of her dread, lest after all, despite his consoling words and soft assurances, he, the Comte, the officer, should be forbidden to marry her, the maiden who had only her youth, her beauty, and her character, but no rank, no fortune, to win favour from the proud people who did not know her. The author is at all events certain of this: that if the letters had seen the light before old Alexandre Dumas died, he would have pounced upon them with glee, and would have written around them a romance that all the world would have rejoiced to read. But while we think of what the novelists have missed, we are neglecting the real story, the crisis of which we have now reached. Seeing Eleonore again, his sensitive heart deeply moved by her sorrow, Laperouse took a manly resolution. He would marry her despite all obstacles. He had promised her at her home in Ile-de-France. He would keep his promise. He would not spoil her beautiful young life even for his family. But there was the contract concerning Mademoiselle de Vesian. What of that? Clearly Laperouse was in a fix. Well, a man who has been over twenty-five years at sea has been in a fix many times, and learns that a bold face and tact are good allies. Remembering the nature of his situation, it will be agreed that the letter he wrote to his mother, announcing his resolve, was a model of good taste and fine feeling: "I have seen Eleonore, and I have not been able to resist the remorse by which I am devoured. My excessive attachment to you had made me violate all that which is most sacred among men. I forgot the vows of my heart, the cries of my conscience. I was in Paris for twenty days, and, faithful to my promise to you, I did not go to see her. But I received a letter from her. She made no reproach against me, but the most profound sentiment of sadness was expressed in it. At the instant of reading it the veil fell from my eyes. My situation filled me with horror. I am no better in my own eyes than a perjurer, unworthy of Mademoiselle de Vesian, to whom I brought a heart devoured by remorse and by a passion that nothing could extinguish. I was equally unworthy of Mademoiselle Broudou, and wished to leave her. My only excuse, my dear mother, is the extreme desire I have always had to please you. It is for you alone, and for my father, that I wished to marry. Desiring to live with you for the remainder of my life, I consented to your finding me a wife with whom I could abide. The choice of Mademoiselle de Vesian had overwhelmed me, because her mother is a woman for whom I have a true attachment; and Heaven is my witness to-day that I should have preferred her daughter to the most brilliant match in the universe. It is only four days since I wrote to her on the subject. How can I reconcile my letter with my present situation? But, my dear mother, it would be feebleness in me to go further with the engagement. I have doubtless been imprudent in contracting an engagement without your consent, but I should be a monster if I violated my oaths and married Mademoiselle de Vesian. I do not doubt that you tremble at the abyss over which you fear that I am about to fall, but I feel that I can only live with Eleonore, and I hope that you will give your consent to our union. My fortune will suffice for our wants, and we shall live near you. But I shall only come to Albi when Mademoiselle de Vesian shall be married, and when I can be sure that another, a thousand times more worthy than I am, shall have sworn to her an attachment deeper than that which it was in my power to offer. I shall write neither to Madame nor Monsieur de Vesian. Join to your other kindnesses that of undertaking this painful commission." There was no mistaking the firm, if regretful tone, of that letter; and Laperouse married his Eleonore at Paris. Did Mademoiselle de Vesian break her heart because her sailor fiance had wed another? Not at all! She at once became engaged to the Baron de Senegas--had she seen him beforehand, one wonders?--and married him in August! Laperouse was prompt to write his congratulations to her parents, and it is diverting to find him saying, concerning the lady to whom he himself had been engaged only a few weeks before, that he regretted "never having had the honour of seeing her!" But there was still another difficulty to be overcome before Laperouse and his happy young bride could feel secure. He had broken a regulation of the service by marrying without official sanction. True, he had talked of settling down at Albi, but that was when he thought he was going to marry a young lady whom he did not know. Now he had married the girl of his heart; and love, as a rule, does not stifle ambition. Rather are the two mutually co-operative. Eleonore had fallen in love with him as a gallant sailor, and a sailor she wanted him still to be. Perhaps, in her dreams, she saw him a great Admiral, commanding powerful navies and winning glorious victories for France. Madame la Comtesse did not wish her husband to end his career because he had married her, be sure of that. Here Laperouse did a wise and tactful thing, which showed that he understood something of human nature. Nothing interests old ladies so much as the love affairs of young people; and old ladies in France at that time exercised remarkable influence in affairs of government. The Minister of Marine was the Marquis de Castries. Instead of making a clean breast of matters to him, Laperouse wrote a long and delightful letter to Madame la Marquise. "Madame," he said, "mon histoire est un roman," and he begged her to read it. Of course she did. What old lady would not? She was a very grand lady indeed, was Madame la Marquise; but this officer who wrote his heart's story to her, was a dashing hero. He told her how he had fallen in love in Ile-de-France; how consent to his marriage had been officially and paternally refused; how he had tried "to stifle the sentiments which were nevertheless remaining at the bottom of my heart." Would she intercede with the Minister for him and excuse him? Of course she would! She was a dear old lady, was Madame la Marquise. Within a few days Laperouse received from the Minister a most paternal, good natured letter, which assured him that his romantic affair should not interfere with his prospects, and concluded: "Enjoy the pleasure of having made someone happy, and the marks of honour and distinction that you have received from your fellow citizens." Such is the love story of Laperouse. Alas! the marriage did not bring many years of happiness to poor Eleonore, much as she deserved them. Two years afterwards, her hero sailed away on that expedition from which he never returned. She dwelt at Albi, hoping until hope gave way to despair, and at last she died, of sheer grief they said, nine years after the waters of the Pacific had closed over him who had wooed her and wedded her for herself alone. Chapter IV. THE VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION. King Louis XVI of France was as unfortunate a monarch as was ever born to a throne. Had it been his happier lot to be the son of a farmer, a shopkeeper, or a merchant, he would have passed for an excellent man of business and a good, solid, sober, intelligent citizen. But he inherited with his crown a system of government too antiquated for the times, too repressive for the popular temper to endure, and was not statesman enough to remodel it to suit the requirements of his people. It was not his fault that he was not a great man; and a great man--a man of large grasp, wide vision, keen sympathies, and penetrating imagination--was needed in France if the social forces at work, the result of new ideas fermenting in the minds of men and impelling them, were to be directed towards wise and wholesome reform. Failing such direction, those forces burst through the restraints of law, custom, authority, loyalty and respect, and produced the most startling upheaval in modern history, the Great French Revolution. Louis lost both his crown and his head, the whole system of government was overturned, and the way was left open for the masterful mind and strong arm needed to restore discipline and order to the nation: Napoleon Bonaparte. Louis was very fond of literature. During the sad last months of his imprisonment, before the guillotine took his life, he read over 230 volumes. He especially liked books of travel and geography, and one of his favourite works was the VOYAGES of Cook. He had the volumes near him in the last phase of his existence. There is a pleasant drawing representing the King in his prison, with the little Dauphin seated on his knee, pointing out the countries and oceans on a large geographical globe; and he took a pride in having had prepared "for the education of Monsieur le Dauphin," a History of the Exploration of the South Seas. It was published in Paris, in three small volumes, in 1791. The study of Cook made a deep impression on the King's mind. Why, he asked himself, should not France share in the glory of discovering new lands, and penetrating untraversed seas? There was a large amount of exploratory work still to be done. English navigators were always busy sailing to unknown parts, but the entire world was by no means revealed yet. There were, particularly, big blank spaces at the bottom of the globe. That country called by the Dutch New Holland, the eastern part of which Cook had found--there was evidently much to be done there. What were the southern coasts like? Was it one big island-continent, or was it divided into two by a strait running south from the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria? Then there was that piece of country discovered by the Dutchman Tasman, and named Van Diemen's Land. Was it an island, or did it join on to New Holland? There were also many islands of the Pacific still to be explored and correctly charted, the map of Eastern Asia was imperfect, and the whole of the coastline of North-Western America was not accurately known. The more Louis turned the matter over in his mind, the more he studied his globes, maps and books of voyages, the more convinced he was that France, as a maritime nation and a naval Power, ought to play an important part in this grand work of unveiling to mankind the full extent, form, nature and resources of our planet. He sent for a man whose name the Australian reader should particularly note, because he had much to do with three important discovery voyages affecting our history. Charles Claret, Comte de Fleurieu, was the principal geographer in France. He was at this time director of ports and arsenals. He had throughout his life been a keen student of navigation, was a practical sailor, invented a marine chronometer which was a great improvement on clocks hitherto existing, devised a method of applying the metric system to the construction of marine charts, and wrote several works on his favourite subject. A large book of his on discoveries in Papua and the Solomon Islands is still of much importance. As a French writer--an expert in this field of knowledge--has written of Fleurieu, "he it was who prepared nearly all the plans for naval operations during the war of 1778, and the instructions for the voyages of discovery--those of Laperouse and Dentrecasteaux--for which Louis XVI had given general directions; and to whose wise and well-informed advice is due in large part the utility derived from them." It was chiefly because of Fleurieu's knowledge of geography that the King chose him to be the tutor of the Dauphin; and in 1790 he became Minister of Marine. Louis XVI and Fleurieu talked the subject over together; and the latter, at the King's command, drew up a long memorandum indicating the parts of the globe where an expedition of discovery might most profitably apply itself. The King decided (1785) that a voyage should be undertaken; two ships of the navy, LA BOUSSOLE and L'ASTROLABE, were selected for the purpose; and, on the recommendation of the Marquis de Castries--remember Madame la Marquise!--Laperouse was chosen for the command. All three of the men who ordered, planned and executed the voyage, the King, the scholar, and the officer, were devoted students of the work and writings of Cook; and copies of his VOYAGES, in French and English, were placed in the library of navigation carried on board the ships for the edification of the officers and crews. Over and over again in the instructions prepared--several times on a page in some places--appear references to what Cook had done, and to what Cook had left to be done; showing that both King Louis and Fleurieu knew his voyages and charts, not merely as casual readers, but intimately. As for Laperouse himself, his admiration of Cook has already been mentioned; here it may be added that when, before he sailed, Sir Joseph Banks presented him with two magnetic needles that had been used by Cook, he wrote that he "received them with feelings bordering almost upon religious veneration for the memory of that great and incomparable navigator." So that, we see, the extent of our great sailor's influence is not to be measured even by his discoveries and the effect of his writings upon his own countrymen. He radiated a magnetic force which penetrated far; down to our own day it has by no means lost its stimulating energy. In the picture gallery at the Palace of Versailles, there is an oil painting by Mansiau, a copy of which may be seen in the Mitchell Library, Sydney. It is called "Louis XVI giving instructions to Monsieur de Laperouse for his voyage around the world." An Australian statesman who saw it during a visit to Paris a few years ago, confessed publicly on his return to his own country that he gazed long upon it, and recognised it as being "of the deepest interest to Australians." So indeed it is. A photograph of the picture is given here. The instructions were of course prepared by Fleurieu: anyone familiar with his writings can see plenty of internal evidence of that. But Louis was not a little vain of his own geographical knowledge, and he gave a special audience to Laperouse, explaining the instructions verbally before handing them to him in writing. They are admirably clear instructions, indicating a full knowledge of the work of preceding navigators and of the parts of the earth where discovery needed to be pursued. Their defect was that they expected too much to be done on one voyage. Let us glance over them, devoting particular attention to the portions affecting Australasia. The ships were directed to sail across the Atlantic and round Cape Horn, visiting certain specified places on the way. In the Pacific they were to visit Easter Island, Tahiti, the Society Islands, the Friendly and Navigator groups, and New Caledonia. "He will pass Endeavour Strait and in this passage will try to ascertain whether the land of Louisiade (the Louisiade Archipelago), be contiguous to that of New Guinea, and will reconnoitre all this part of the coast from Cape Deliverance to the Island of St. Barthelomew, east-northeast of Cape Walsh, of which at present we have a very imperfect knowledge. It is much to be wished that he may be able to examine the Gulf of Carpentaria." He was then to explore the western shores of New Holland. "He will run down the western coast and take a closer view of the southern, the greater part of which has never been visited, finishing his survey at Van Diemen's Land, at Adventure Bay or Prince Frederick Henry's, whence he will make sail for Cook's Strait, and anchor in Queen Charlotte's Sound, in that Strait, between the two islands which constitute New Zealand." That direction is especially important, because if Laperouse had not perished, but had lived to carry out his programme, it is evident that he would have forestalled the later discoveries of Bass and Flinders in southern Australia. What a vast difference to the later course of history that might have made! After leaving New Zealand he was to cross the Pacific to the north-west coast of America. The programme included explorations in the China Sea, at the Philippines, the Moluccas and Timor, and contemplated a return to France in July or August, 1789, after a voyage of about three years. But although his course was mapped out in such detail, discretion was left to Laperouse to vary it if he thought fit. "All the calculations of which a sketch is given here must be governed by the circumstances of the voyage, the condition of the crews, ships and provisions, the events that may occur in the expedition and accidents which it is impossible to foresee. His Majesty, therefore, relying on the experience and judgment of the sieur de Laperouse, authorises him to make any deviation that he may deem necessary, in unforeseen cases, pursuing, however, as far as possible, the plan traced out, and conforming to the directions given in the other parts of the present instructions." A separate set of instructions had regard to observations to be made by Laperouse upon the political conditions, possibilities of commerce, and suitability for settlement, of the lands visited by him. In the Pacific, he was to inquire "whether the cattle, fowls, and other animals which Captain Cook left on some of the islands have bred." He was to examine attentively "the north and west coasts of New Holland, and particularly that part of the coast which, being situated in the torrid zone, may enjoy some of the productions peculiar to countries in similar latitudes." In New Zealand he was to ascertain "whether the English have formed or entertain the project of forming any settlement on these islands; and if he should hear that they have actually formed a settlement, he will endeavour to repair thither in order to learn the condition, strength and object of the settlement." It is singular that the instructions contain no reference to Botany Bay. It was the visit paid by Laperouse to this port that brought him into touch with Australian history. Yet his call there was made purely in the exercise of his discretion. He was not directed to pay any attention to eastern Australia. When he sailed the French Government knew nothing of the contemplated settlement of New South Wales by the British; and he only heard of it in the course of his voyage. Indeed, it is amazing how little was known of Australia at the time. "We have nothing authentic or sufficiently minute respecting this part of the largest island on the globe," said the instructions concerning the northern and western coasts; but there was not a word about the eastern shores. The reader who reflects upon the facts set forth in this chapter will realise that the French Revolution, surprising as the statement may seem, affected Australian history in a remarkable way. If Louis XVI had not been dethroned and beheaded, but had remained King of France, there cannot be any doubt that he would have persisted in the investigation of the South Seas. He was deeply interested in the subject, very well informed about it, and ambitious that his country should be a great maritime and colonising Power. But the Revolution slew Louis, plunged France in long and disastrous wars, and brought Napoleon to the front. The whole course of history was diverted. It was as if a great river had been turned into a fresh channel. If the navigator of the French King had discovered southern Australia, and settlement had followed, it is not to be supposed that Great Britain would have opposed the plans of France; for Australia then was not the Australia that we know, and England had very little use even for the bit she secured. Unthinking people might suppose that the French Revolution meant very little to us. Indeed, unthinking people are very apt to suppose that we can go our own way without regarding what takes place elsewhere. They do not realise that the world is one, and that the policies of nations interact upon each other. In point of fact, the Revolution meant a great deal to Australia. This country is, indeed, an island far from Europe, but the threads of her history are entwined with those of European history in a very curious and often intricate fashion. The French Revolution and the era of Napoleon, if we understand their consequences, really concern us quite as much as, say, the gold discoveries and the accomplishment of Federation. Chapter V. THE EARLY PART OF THE VOYAGE. The expedition sailed from Brest rather sooner than had at first been contemplated, on August 1, 1785, and doubled Cape Horn in January of the following year. Some weeks were spent on the coast of Chili; and the remarks of Laperouse concerning the manners of the Spanish rulers of the country cover some of his most entertaining pages. He has an eye for the picturesque, a kindly feeling for all well-disposed people, a pleasant touch in describing customs, and shrewd judgment in estimating character. These qualities make him an agreeable writer of travels. They are fairly illustrated by the passages in which he describes the people of the city of Concepcion. Take his account of the ladies: "The dress of these ladies, extremely different from what we have been accustomed to see, consists of a plaited petticoat, tied considerably below the waist; stockings striped red, blue and white; and shoes so short that the toes are bent under the ball of the foot so as to make it appear nearly round. Their hair is without powder and is divided into small braids behind, hanging over the shoulders. Their bodice is generally of gold or silver stuff, over which there are two short cloaks, that underneath of muslin and the other of wool of different colours, blue, yellow and pink. The upper one is drawn over the head when they are in the streets and the weather is cold; but within doors it is usual to place it on their knees; and there is a game played with the muslin cloak by continually shifting it about, in which the ladies of Concepcion display considerable grace. They are for the most part handsome, and of so polite and pleasing manners that there is certainly no maritime town in Europe where strangers are received with so much attention and kindness." At this city Laperouse met the adventurous Irishman, Ambrose O'Higgins, who by reason of his conspicuous military abilities became commander of the Spanish forces in Chili, and afterwards Viceroy of Peru. His name originally was simply Higgins, but he prefixed the "O" when he blossomed into a Spanish Don, "as being more aristocratic." He was the father of the still more famous Bernardo O'Higgins, "the Washington of Chili," who led the revolt against Spanish rule and became first president of the Chilian Republic in 1818. Laperouse at once conceived an attachment for O'Higgins, "a man of extraordinary activity," and one "adored in the country." In April, 1786, the expedition was at Easter Island, where the inhabitants appeared to be a set of cunning and hypocritical thieves, who "robbed us of everything which it was possible for them to carry off." Steering north, the Sandwich Islands were reached early in May. Here Laperouse liked the people, "though my prejudices were strong against them on account of the death of Captain Cook." A passage in the commander's narrative gives his opinion on the annexation of the countries of native races by Europeans, and shows that, in common with very many of his countrymen, he was much influenced by the ideas of Rousseau, then an intellectual force in France-- "Though the French were the first who, in modern times, had landed on the island of Mowee, I did not think it my duty to take possession in the name of the King. The customs of Europeans on such occasions are completely ridiculous. Philosophers must lament to see that men, for no better reason than because they are in possession of firearms and bayonets, should have no regard for the rights of sixty thousand of their fellow creatures, and should consider as an object of conquest a land fertilised by the painful exertions of its inhabitants, and for many ages the tomb of their ancestors. These islands have fortunately been discovered at a period when religion no longer serves as a pretext for violence and rapine. Modern navigators have no other object in describing the manners of remote nations than that of completing the history of man; and the knowledge they endeavour to diffuse has for its sole aim to render the people they visit more happy, and to augment their means of subsistence." If Laperouse could see the map of the Pacific to-day he would find its groups of islands all enclosed within coloured rings, indicating possession by the great Powers of the world. He would be puzzled and pained by the change. But the history of the political movements leading to the parcelling out of seas and lands among strong States would interest him, and he would realise that the day of feeble isolation has gone. Nothing would make him marvel more than the floating of the Stars and Stripes over Hawaii, for he knew that flag during the American War of Independence. It was adopted as the flag of the United States in 1777, and during the campaign the golden lilies of the standard of France fluttered from many masts in co-operation with it. Truly a century and a quarter has brought about a wonderful change, not only in the face of the globe and in the management of its affairs, but still more radically in the ideas of men and in the motives that sway their activities! The geographical work done by Laperouse in this part of the Pacific was of much importance. It removed from the chart five or six islands which had no existence, having been marked down erroneously by previous navigators. From this region the expedition sailed to Alaska, on the north-west coast of North America. Cook had explored here "with that courage and perseverance of which all Europe knows him to have been capable," wrote Laperouse, never failing to use an opportunity of expressing admiration for his illustrious predecessor. But there was still useful work to do, and the French occupied their time very profitably with it from June to August. Then their ships sailed down the western coast of America to California, struck east across the Pacific to the Ladrones, and made for Macao in China--then as now a Portugese possession--reaching that port in January, 1787. The Philippines were next visited, and Laperouse formed pleasant impressions of Manilla. It is clear from his way of alluding to the customs of the Spanish inhabitants that the French captain was not a tobacco smoker. It was surprising to him that "their passion for smoking this narcotic is so immoderate that there is not an instant of the day in which either a man or woman is without a cigar;" and it is equally surprising to us that the French editor of the history of the voyage found it necessary to explain in a footnote that a cigar is "a small roll of tobacco which is smoked without the assistance of a pipe." But cigars were then little known in Europe, except among sailors and travellers who had visited the Spanish colonies; and the very spelling of the word was not fixed. In English voyages it appears as "seegar," "segar," and "sagar." Formosa was visited in April, northern Japan in May, and the investigation of the north-eastern coasts of Asia occupied until October. A passage in a letter from Laperouse to Fleurieu is worth quoting for two reasons. It throws some light on the difficulties of navigation in unknown seas, and upon the commander's severe application to duty; and it also serves to remind us that Japan, now so potent a factor in the politics of the East and of the whole Pacific, had not then emerged from the barbarian exclusiveness towards foreigners, which she had maintained since Europe commenced to exploit Asia. In the middle of the seventeenth century she had expelled the Spaniards and the Portugese with much bloodshed, and had closed her ports to all traders except the Chinese and the Dutch, who were confined to a prescribed area at Nagasaki. Intercourse with all other foreign peoples was strictly forbidden. Even as late as 1842 it was commanded that if any foreign vessel were driven by distress or tempestuous weather into a Japanese port, she might only remain so long as was necessary to meet her wants, and must then depart. Laperouse knew of this jealous Japanese antipathy to foreign visitors, and, as he explains in the letter, meant to keep away from the country because of it. He wrote:-- "The part of our voyage between Manilla and Kamchatka will afford you, I hope, complete satisfaction. It was the newest, the most interesting, and certainly, from the everlasting fogs which enveloped the land in the latitudes we traversed, the most difficult. These fogs are such that it has taken one hundred and fifty days to explore a part of the coast which Captain King, in the third volume of Cook's last voyage, supposes might be examined in the course of two months. During this period I rested only ten days, three in the Bay of Ternai, two in the Bay de Langle, and five in the Bay de Castries. Thus I wasted no time; I even forebore to circumnavigate the island of Chicha (Yezo) by traversing the Strait of Sangaar (Tsugaru). I should have wished to anchor, if possible, at the northern point of Japan, and would perhaps have ventured to send a boat ashore, though such a proceeding would have required the most serious deliberation, as the boat would probably have been stopped. Where a merchant ship is concerned an event of this kind might be considered as of little importance, but the seizure of a boat belonging to a ship of war could scarcely be otherwise regarded than as a national insult; and the taking and burning of a few sampans would be a very sorry compensation as against the people who would not exchange a single European of whom they were desirous of making an example, for one hundred Japanese. I was, however, too far from the coast to include such an intention, and it is impossible for me to judge at present what I should have done had the contrary been the case. "It would be difficult for me to find words to express to you the fatigue attending this part of my voyage, during which I did not once undress myself, nor did a single night pass without my being obliged to spend several hours upon deck. Imagine to yourself six days of fog with only two or three hours of clear weather, in seas extremely confined, absolutely unknown, and where fancy, in consequence of the information we had received, pictured to us shoals and currents that did not always exist. From the place where we made the land on the eastern coast of Tartary, to the strait which we discovered between Tchoka (Saghalien) and Chicha, we did not fail to take the bearing of every point, and you may rest assured that neither creek, port, nor river escaped our attention, and that many charts, even of the coasts of Europe, are less exact than those which we shall bring with us on our return." "The strait which we discovered" is still called Laperouse Strait on most modern maps, though the Japanese usually call it Soya Strait. It runs between Yezo, the large northerly island of Japan, and Saghalien. Current maps also show the name Boussole Strait, after Laperouse's ship, between Urup and Simusir, two of the Kurile chain of small islands curving from Yezo to the thumblike extremity of Kamchatka. At Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka the drawings of the artists and the journals of the commander up to date were packed up, and sent to France overland across Asiatic Russia, in charge of a young member of the staff, J. B. B. de Lesseps. He was the only one of the expedition who ever returned to Europe. By not coming to Australia he saved his life. He published a book about his journey, a remarkable feat of land travel in those days. He was the uncle of a man whose remarkable engineering work has made Australia's relations with Europe much easier and more speedy than they were in earlier years: that Ferdinand de Lesseps who (1859-69) planned and carried out the construction of the Suez Canal. The ships, after replenishing, sailed for the south Pacific, where we shall follow the proceedings of Laperouse in rather closer detail than has been considered necessary in regard to the American and Asiatic phases of the voyage. Chapter VI. LAPEROUSE IN THE PACIFIC. On the 6th December, 1787, the expedition made the eastern end of the Navigator Islands, that is, the Samoan Group. As the ships approached, a party of natives were observed squatting under cocoanut trees. Presently sixteen canoes put off from the land, and their occupants, after paddling round the vessels distrustfully, ventured to approach and proffer cocoanuts in exchange for strings of beads and strips of red cloth. The natives got the better of the bargain, for, when they had received their price, they hurried off without delivering their own goods. Further on, an old chief delivered an harangue from the shore, holding a branch of Kava in his hand. "We knew from what we had read of several voyages that it was a token of peace; and throwing him some pieces of cloth we answered by the word 'TAYO,' which signified 'friend' in the dialect of the South Sea Islands; but we were not sufficiently experienced to understand and pronounce distinctly the words of the vocabularies we had extracted from Cook." Nearly all the early navigators made a feature of compiling vocabularies of native words, and Cook devoted particular care to this task. Dr. Walter Roth, formerly protector of Queensland aboriginals a trained observer, has borne testimony as recently as last year (in THE TIMES, December 29, 1911) that a list of words collected from Endeavour Strait blacks, and "given by Captain Cook, are all more or less recognisable at the present day." But Cook's spellings were intended to be pronounced in the English mode. Laperouse and his companions by giving the vowels French values would hardly be likely to make the English navigator's vocabularies intelligible. The native canoes amused the French captain. They "could be of use only to people who are expert swimmers, for they are constantly turned over. This is an accident, however, at which they feel less surprise and anxiety than we should at a hat's blowing off. They lift the canoe on their shoulders, and after they have emptied it of the water, get into it again, well assured that they will have the same operation to perform within half an hour, for it is as difficult to preserve a balance in these ticklish things as to dance upon a rope." At Mauna Island (now called Tutuila) some successful bargaining was done with glass beads in exchange for pork and fruits. It surprised Laperouse that the natives chose these paltry ornaments rather than hatchets and tools. "They preferred a few beads which could be of no utility, to anything we could offer them in iron or cloth." Two days later a tragedy occurred at this island, when Captain de Langle, the commander of the ASTROLABE, and eleven of the crew were murdered. He made an excursion inland to look for fresh water, and found a clear, cool spring in the vicinity of a village. The ships were not urgently in need of water, but de Langle "had embraced the system of Cook, and thought fresh water a hundred times preferable to what had been some time in the hold. As some of his crew had slight symptoms of scurvy, he thought, with justice, that we owed them every means of alleviation in our power. Besides, no island could be compared with this for abundance of provisions. The two ships had already procured upwards of 500 hogs, with a large quantity of fowls, pigeons and fruits; and all these had cost us only a few beads." Laperouse himself doubted the prudence of sending a party inland, as he had observed signs of a turbulent spirit among the islanders. But de Langle insisted on the desirableness of obtaining fresh water where it was abundant, and "replied to me that my refusal would render me responsible for the progress of the scurvy, which began to appear with some violence." He undertook to go at the head of the party, and, relying on his judgment, the commander consented. Two boats left the ship at about noon, and landed their casks undisturbed. But when the party returned they found a crowd of over a thousand natives assembled, and a dangerous disposition soon revealed itself amongst them. It is possible that the Frenchmen had, unconsciously, offended against some of their superstitious rites. Certainly they had not knowingly been provoked. They had peacefully bartered their fruits and nuts for beads, and had been treated in a friendly fashion throughout. But the currents of passion that sweep through the minds of savage peoples baffle analysis. Something had disturbed them; what it was can hardly be surmised. One of the officers believed that the gift of some beads to a few, excited the envy of the others. It may be so; mere envy plays such a large part in the affairs even of civilised peoples, that we need not wonder to find it arousing the anger of savages. Laperouse tells what occurred in these terms:-- "Several canoes, after having sold their ladings of provisions on board our ships, had returned ashore, and all landed in this bay, so that it was gradually filled. Instead of two hundred persons, including women and children, whom M. de Langle found when he arrived at half past one, there were ten or twelve hundred by three o'clock. He succeeded in embarking his water; but the bay was by this time nearly dry, and he could not hope to get his boats afloat before four o'clock, when the tide would have risen. He stepped into them, however, with his detachment, and posted himself in the bow, with his musket and his marines, forbidding them to fire unless he gave orders. "This, he began to realise, he would soon be forced to do. Stones flew about, and the natives, only up to the knees in water, surrounded the boats within less than three yards. The marines who were in the boats, attempted in vain to keep them off. If the fear of commencing hostilities and being accused of barbarity had not checked M. de Langle, he would unquestionably have ordered a general discharge of his swivels and musketry, which no doubt would have dispersed the mob, but he flattered himself that he could check them without shedding blood, and he fell a victim to his humanity. "Presently a shower of stones thrown from a short distance with as much force as if they had come from a sling, struck almost every man in the boat. M. de Langle had only time to discharge the two barrels of his piece before he was knocked down; and unfortunately he fell over the larboard bow of the boat, where upwards of two hundred natives instantly massacred him with clubs and stones. When he was dead, they made him fast by the arm to one of the tholes of the long boat, no doubt to secure his spoil. The BOUSSOLE'S long-boat, commanded by M. Boutin, was aground within four yards of the ASTROLABE'S, and parallel with her, so as to leave a little channel between them, which was unoccupied by the natives. Through this all the wounded men, who were so fortunate as not to fall on the other side of the boats, escaped by swimming to the barges, which, happily remaining afloat, were enabled to save forty-nine men out of the sixty-one." Amongst the wounded was Pere Receveur, priest, naturalist and shoemaker, who later on died of his injuries at Botany Bay, and whose tomb there is as familiar as the Laperouse monument. The anger of the Frenchmen at the treachery of the islanders was not less than their grief at the loss of their companions. Laperouse, on the first impulse, was inclined to send a strongly-armed party ashore to avenge the massacre. But two of the officers who had escaped pointed out that in the cove where the incident occurred the trees came down almost to the sea, affording shelter to the natives, who would be able to shower stones upon the party, whilst themselves remaining beyond reach of musket balls. "It was not without difficulty," he wrote, "that I could tear myself away from this fatal place, and leave behind the bodies of our murdered companions. I had lost an old friend; a man of great understanding, judgment, and knowledge; and one of the best officers in the French navy. His humanity had occasioned his death. Had he but allowed himself to fire on the first natives who entered into the water to surround the boats, he would have prevented his own death as well as those of eleven other victims of savage ferocity. Twenty persons more were severely wounded; and this event deprived us for the time of thirty men, and the only two boats we had large enough to carry a sufficient number of men, armed, to attempt a descent. These considerations determined my subsequent conduct. The slightest loss would have compelled me to burn one of my ships in order to man the other. If my anger had required only the death of a few natives, I had had an opportunity after the massacre of sinking and destroying a hundred canoes containing upwards of five hundred persons, but I was afraid of being mistaken in my victims, and the voice of my conscience saved their lives." It was then that Laperouse resolved to sail to Botany Bay, of which he had read a description in Cook's Voyages. His long-boats had been destroyed by the natives, but he had on board the frames of two new ones, and a safe anchorage was required where they could be put together. His crews were exasperated; and lest there should be a collision between them and other natives he resolved that, while reconnoitring other groups of islands to determine their correct latitude, he would not permit his sailors to land till he reached Botany Bay. There he knew that he could obtain wood and water. On December 14 Oyolava (now called Upolu) was reached. Here again the ships were surrounded by canoes, and the angry French sailors would have fired upon them except for the positive orders of their commander. Throughout this unfortunate affair the strict sense of justice, which forbade taking general vengeance for the misdeeds of particular people, stands out strongly in the conduct of Laperouse. He acknowledged in letters written from Botany Bay, that in future relations with uncivilised folk he would adopt more repressive measures, as experience taught him that lack of firm handling was by them regarded as weakness. But his tone in all his writings is humane and kindly. The speculations of Laperouse concerning the origin of these peoples, are interesting, and deserve consideration by those who speak and write upon the South Seas. He was convinced that they are all derived from an ancient common stock, and that the race of woolly-haired men to be found in the interior of Formosa were the far-off parents of the natives of the Philippines, Papua, New Britain, the New Hebrides, the Friendly Islands, the Carolines, Ladrones, and Sandwich Groups. He believed that in those islands the interior of which did not afford complete shelter the original inhabitants were conquered by Malays, after which aboriginals and invaders mingled together, producing modifications of the original types. But in Papua, the Solomons and the New Hebrides, the Malays made little impression. He accounted for differences in appearance amongst the people of the islands he visited by the different degrees of Malay intermixture, and believed that the very black people found on some islands, "whose complexion still remains a few shades deeper than that of certain families in the same islands" were to be accounted for by certain families making it "a point of honour not to contaminate their blood." The theory is at all events striking. We have a "White Australia policy" on the mainland to-day; this speculation assumes a kind of "Black Australasia policy" on the part of certain families of islanders from time immemorial. The Friendly Islands were reached in December, but the commander had few and unimportant relations with them. On the 13th January, 1788, the ships made for Norfolk Island, and came to anchor opposite the place where Cook was believed to have landed. The sea was running high at the time, breaking violently on the rocky shores of the north east. The naturalists desired to land to collect specimens, but the heavy breakers prevented them. The commander permitted them to coast along the shore in boats for about half a league but then recalled them. "Had it been possible to land, there was no way of getting into the interior part of the island but by ascending for thirty or forty yards the rapid stream of some torrents, which had formed gullies. Beyond these natural barriers the island was covered with pines and carpeted with the most beautiful verdure. It is probable that we should then have met with some culinary vegetables, and this hope increased our desire of visiting a land where Captain Cook had landed with the greatest facility. He, it is true, was here in fine weather, that had continued for several days; whilst we had been sailing in such heavy seas that for eight day, our ports had been shut and our dead-lights in. From the ship I watched the motions of the boats with my glass; and seeing, as night approached, that they had found no convenient place for landing, I made the signal to recall them, and soon after gave orders for getting under way. Perhaps I should have lost much time had I waited for a more favourable opportunity: and the exploring of this island was not worth such a sacrifice." At eight in the evening the ships got under way, and at day-break on the following morning sail was crowded for Botany Bay. Chapter VII. AT BOTANY BAY. When, in 1787, the British Government entrusted Captain Arthur Phillip with a commission to establish a colony at Botany Bay, New South Wales, they gave him explicit directions as to where he should locate the settlement. "According to the best information which we have obtained," his instructions read, "Botany Bay appears to be the most eligible situation upon the said coast for the first establishment, possessing a commodious harbour and other advantages which no part of the said coast hitherto discovered affords." But Phillip was a trustworthy man who, in so serious a matter as the choice of a site for a town, did not follow blindly the commands of respectable elderly gentlemen thousands of miles away. It was his business to found a settlement successfully. To do that he must select the best site. After examining Botany Bay, he decided to take a trip up the coast and see if a better situation could not be found. On the 21st January, 1788, he entered Port Jackson with three boats, and found there "the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security." He fixed upon a cove "which I honoured with the name of Sydney." and decided that that was there he would "plant." Every writer of mediaeval history who has had occasion to refer to the choice by Constantine the Great of Byzantium, afterwards Constantinople, as his capital, has extolled his judgment and prescience. Constantine was an Emperor, and could do as he would. Arthur Phillip was an official acting under orders. We can never sufficiently admire the wisdom he displayed when, exercising his own discretion, he decided upon Port Jackson. True, he had a great opportunity, but his signal merit is that he grasped it when it was presented, that he gave more regard to the success of his task than to the letter of his instructions. While he was making the search, the eleven vessels composing the First Fleet lay in Botany Bay. He returned on the evening of the 23rd, and immediately gave orders that the whole company should as soon as possible sail for Port Jackson, declaring it to be, in King's quaint words, "a very proper place to form an establisht. in." To the great astonishment of the Fleet, on the 24th, two strange ships made their appearance to the south of Solander Point, a projection from the peninsula on which now stands the obelisk in memory of Cook's landing. What could they be? Some guessed that they were English vessels with additional stores. Some supposed that they were Dutch, "coming after us to oppose our landing." Nobody expected to see any ships in these untraversed waters, and we can easily picture the amazement of officers, crews, and convicts when the white sails appeared. The more timid speculated on the possibility of attack, and there were "temporary apprehensions, accompanied by a multiplicity of conjectures, many of them sufficiently ridiculous." Phillip, however, remembered hearing that the French had an expedition of discovery either in progress or contemplation. He was the first to form a right opinion about them, but, wishing to be certain, sent the SUPPLY out of the bay to get a nearer view and hoist the British colours. Lieutenant Ball, in command of that brig, after reconnoitring, reported that the ships were certainly not English. They were either French, Spanish or Portuguese. He could distinctly see the white field of the flag they flew, "but they were at too great a distance to discover if there was anything else on it." The flag, of course, showed the golden lilies of France on a white ground. One of the ships, King records, "wore a CHEF D'ESCADRE'S pennant," that is, a commodore's. This information satisfied Phillip, who was anxious to lose no time in getting his people ashore at Sydney Cove. He, therefore, determined to sail in the SUPPLY on the 25th, to make preliminary arrangements, leaving Captain Hunter of the SIRIUS to convoy the Fleet round as soon as possible. The wind, just then, was blowing too strong for them to work out of the Bay. Meanwhile, Laperouse, with the BOUSSOLE and the ASTROLABE, was meeting with heavy weather in his attempt to double Point Solander. The wind blew hard from that quarter, and his ships were too heavy sailers to force their passage against wind and current combined. The whole of the 24th was spent in full sight of Botany Bay, which they could not enter. But their hearts were cheered by the spectacle of the pennants and ensigns on the eleven British vessels, plainly seen at intervals within, and the prospect of meeting Europeans again made them impatient to fetch their anchorage. The SIRIUS was just about to sail when the French vessels entered the Bay at nine in the morning of January 26, but Captain Hunter courteously sent over a lieutenant and midshipman, with his compliments and offers of such assistance as it was in his power to give. "I despatched an officer," records Laperouse, "to return my thanks to Captain Hunter, who by this time had his anchor a-peak and his topsails hoisted, telling him that my wants were confined to wood and water, of which we could not fail in this Bay; and I was sensible that vessels intended to settle a colony at such a distance from Europe could not be of any assistance to navigators." The English lieutenant, according to Laperouse, "appeared to make a great mystery of Commodore Phillip's plan, and we did not take the liberty of putting any questions to him on the subject." It was not the business of a junior officer to give unauthorised information, but perhaps his manner made a greater mystery of the Governor's plans than the circumstances required. It was at Kamchatka that the French had learnt that the British were establishing a settlement in New South Wales; but Laperouse, when he arrived at Botany Bay, had no definite idea as to the progress they had made. According to Lieutenant-Colonel Paterson, he expected to find a town built and a market established. Instead of that he found the first colonists abandoning the site where it was originally intended that they should settle, and preparing to fix their abode at another spot. But after he had seen something of Botany Bay he expressed himself as "convinced of the propriety and absolute necessity of the measure." The later relations between the English and French were of the most pleasant kind. It does not appear from the writings of those who have left records that Phillip and Laperouse ever met, or that the latter ever saw the beginnings of Sydney. His ships certainly never entered Port Jackson. But we learn from Captain Tench that "during their stay in the port" (i.e. in Botany Bay) "the officers of the two nations had frequent opportunities of testifying their mutual regard by visits and other interchanges of friendship and esteem;" and Laperouse gratified the English especially "by the feeling manner in which he always mentioned the name and talents of Captain Cook." Not only in what he wrote with an eye to publication, but in his private correspondence, Laperouse expressed his gratification at the friendly relations established. He spoke of "frequent intercourse" with the English, and said that "to the most polite attentions they have added every offer of service in their power; and it was not without regret that we saw them depart, almost immediately upon our arrival, for Port Jackson, fifteen miles to the northward of this place. Commodore Phillip had good reason to prefer that port, and he has left us sole masters of this bay, where our long-boats are already on the stocks." The fullest account is given in the journal of Lieutenant King, afterwards (1800-6) Governor of New South Wales. On February 1 Phillip sent him in a cutter, in company with Lieutenant Dawes of the Marines, to visit Laperouse, "and to offer him whatever he might have occasion for." King relates that they were "received with the greatest politeness and attention by Monsieur de Laperouse and his officers." He accepted an invitation to remain during the day with the French, to dine with the Commodore, and to return to Port Jackson next morning. The complete history of the voyage was narrated to him, including of course the tragic story of the massacre of de Langle and his companions. After dinner on the BOUSSOLE, King was taken ashore, where he found the French "quite established, having thrown round their tents a stockade, guarded by two small guns." This defence was needed to protect the frames of the two new longboats, which were being put together, from the natives; and also, it would appear, from a few escaped convicts, "whom he had dismissed with threats, giving them a day's provision to carry them back to ye settlement." Laperouse himself, in his history--in the very last words of it, in fact--complains that "we had but too frequent opportunities of hearing news of the English settlement, the deserters from which gave us a great deal of trouble and embarrassment." We learn from King a little about the Pere Receveur--a very little, truly, but sufficient to make us wish to know more. From the circumstance that his quarters were on the ASTROLABE, and that, therefore, he was not brought very much under the notice of Laperouse, we read scarcely anything about him in the commander's book. Once during the voyage some acids used by him for scientific purposes ignited, and set fire to the ship, but the danger was quickly suppressed. This incident, and that of the wounding of Receveur at Manua, are nearly all we are told about him from the commander. But he struck King as being "a man of letters and genius." He was a collector of natural curiosities, having under his care "a great number of philosophical instruments." King's few lines, giving the impression derived from a necessarily brief conversation, seem to bring the Abbe before us in a flash. "A man of letters and genius": how gladly we would know more of one of whom those words could be written! Receveur died shortly before Laperouse sailed away, and was buried at the foot of a tree, to which were nailed a couple of boards bearing an inscription. Governor Phillip, when the boards fell down, had the inscription engraved on a copper plate. The tomb, which is now so prominent an object at Botany Bay, was erected by the Baron de Bougainville in 1825. The memorials to the celebrated navigator and the simple scholar stand together. King, in common with Tench, records the admiring way in which Laperouse spoke of Cook. He "informed me that every place where he has touched or been near, he found all the astronomical and nautical works of Captain Cook to be very exact and true, and concluded by saying, 'Enfin, Monsieur Cook a tant fait qu'il ne m'a rien laisse a faire que d' admirer ses oeuvres.'" (In short, Mr. Cook has done so much that he has left me nothing to do but to admire his works). There is very little more to tell about those few weeks spent at Botany Bay before the navigator and his companions "vanished trackless into blue immensity," as Carlyle puts it. A fragment of conversation is preserved by Tench. A musket was fired one day, and the natives marvelled less at the noise than at the fact that the bullet made a hole in a piece of bark at which it was aimed. To calm them, "an officer whistled the air of 'Malbrook,' which they appeared highly charmed with, and greeted him with equal pleasure and readiness. I may remark here," adds the Captain of Marines, "what I was afterwards told by Monsieur de Perousse" (so he mis-spells the name) "that the natives of California, as throughout all the isles of the Pacific Ocean, and in short wherever he had been, seemed equally touched and delighted with this little plaintive air." It is gratifying to be able to record Captain Tench's high opinion of the efficacy of the tune, which is popularly known nowadays as "We won't go home till morning." One has often heard of telling things "to the Marines." This gallant officer, doubtless, used to whistle them, to a "little plaintive air." It was the practice of Laperouse to sow seeds at places visited by his ships, with the object of experimenting with useful European plants that might be cultivated in other parts of the world. His own letters and journal do not show that he did so at Botany Bay; but we have other evidence that he did, and that the signs of cultivation had not vanished at least ten years later. When George Bass was returning to Sydney in February, 1798, at the end of that wonderful cruise in a whaleboat which had led to the discovery of Westernport, he was becalmed off Botany Bay. He was disposed to enter and remain there for the night, but his journal records that his people--the six picked British sailors who were the companions of his enterprise--"seemed inclined to push for home rather than go up to the Frenchman's Garden." Therefore, the wind failing, they took to the oars and rowed to Port Jackson, reaching home at ten o'clock at night. That is a very interesting allusion. The Frenchman's Garden must have been somewhere within the enclosed area where the Cable Station now stands, and it would be well if so pleasant a name, and one so full of historical suggestion, were still applied to that reserve. It may be well to quote in full the passage in which Laperouse relates his experience of Botany Bay. He was not able to write his journal up to the date of his departure before despatching it to Europe, but the final paragraphs in it sufficiently describe what occurred, and what he thought. Very loose and foolish statements have occasionally been published as to his object in visiting the port. In one of the geographical journals a few years ago the author saw it stated that there was "a race for a Continent" between the English and the French, in which the former won by less than a week! Nonsense of that sort, even though it appears in sober publications, issued with a scientific purpose, can emanate only from those who have no real acquaintance with the subject. There was no race, no struggle for priority, no thought of territorial acquisition on the part of the French. The reader of this little book knows by this time that the visit to Botany Bay was not originally contemplated. It was not in the programme. What would have happened if Laperouse had safely returned home, and if the French Revolution had not destroyed Louis XVI and blown his exploration and colonisation schemes into thin air, is quite another question; but "ifs" are not history. You can entirely reconstruct the history of the human race by using enough "ifs," but with that sort of thing, which an ironist has termed "Iftory," and is often more amusing than enlightening, more speculative than sound, we have at present nothing to do. Here is the version of the visit given by Laperouse himself:-- "We made the land on the 23rd January. It has little elevation, and is scarcely possible to be seen at a greater distance than twelve leagues. The wind then became very variable; and, like Captain Cook, we met with currents, which carried us every day fifteen minutes south of our reckoning; so that we spent the whole of the 24th in plying in sight of Botany Bay, without being able to double Point Solander, which bore from us a league north. The wind blew strong from that quarter, and our ships were too heavy sailers to surmount the force of the wind and the currents combined; but that day we had a spectacle to which we had been altogether unaccustomed since our departure from Manilla. This was a British squadron, at anchor in Botany Bay, the pennants and ensigns of which we could plainly distinguish. All Europeans are countrymen at such a distance from home, and we had the most eager impatience to fetch the anchorage; but the next day the weather was so foggy that it was impossible to discern the land, and we did not get in till the 26th, at nine in the morning, when we let go our anchor a mile from the north shore, in seven fathoms of water, on a good bottom of grey sand, abreast of the second bay. "The moment I made my appearance in the entrance of the Bay, a lieutenant and midshipman were sent aboard my vessel by Captain Hunter, commanding the British frigate SIRIUS. They offered from him all the services in his power; adding, however, that, as he was just getting under way to proceed to the northward, circumstances would not allow him to furnish us with provision, ammunition or sails; so that his offers of service were reduced to good wishes for the future success of our voyage. "I despatched an officer to return my thanks to Captain Hunter, who by this time had his anchor a-peak, and his topsails hoisted; telling him that my wants were confined to wood and water, of which we could not fail in this Bay; and I was sensible that vessels intended to settle a colony at such a distance from Europe, could not be of any assistance to navigators. "From the lieutenant we learnt that the English squadron was commanded by Commodore Phillip, who had sailed from Botany Bay the previous evening in the SUPPLY, sloop, with four transports, in search of a more commodious place for a settlement further north. The lieutenant appeared to make a great mystery of Commodore Phillip's plan, and we did not take the liberty of putting any questions to him on the subject; but we had no doubt that the intended settlement must be very near Botany Bay, since several boats were under sail for the place, and the passage certainly must be very short, as it was thought unnecessary to hoist them on board. The crew of the English boat, less discreet than their officer, soon informed our people that they were only going to Port Jackson, sixteen miles north of Point Banks, where Commander Phillip had himself reconnoitred a very good harbour, which ran ten miles into the land, to the south-west, and in which the ships might anchor within pistol-shot of the shore, in water as smooth as that of a basin. We had, afterwards, but too frequent opportunities of hearing news of the English settlement, the deserters from which gave us a great deal of trouble and embarrassment." Pieced together thus is nearly all we know about Laperouse during his visit to Botany Bay. It is not much. We would gladly have many more details. What has become of the letter he wrote to Phillip recommending (according to King) the Pacific Islands as worthy of the attention of the new colony, "for the great quantity of stock with which they abound"? Apparently it is lost. The grave and the deep have swallowed up the rest of this "strange eventful history," and we interrogate in vain. We should know even less than we do were it not that Laperouse obtained from Phillip permission to send home, by the next British ship leaving Port Jackson, his journal, some charts, and the drawings of his artists. This material, added to private letters and a few miscellaneous papers, was placed in charge of Lieutenant Shortland to be delivered to the French Ambassador in London, and formed part of the substance of the two volumes and atlas published in Paris. * * * * * It may be well to cite, as a note to this chapter, the books in which contemporary accounts of the visit of Laperouse and his ships to Botany Bay are to be found. Some readers may thereby be tempted to look into the original authorities. Laperouse's own narrative is contained in the third and fourth volumes of his "Voyage autour du Monde," edited by Milet-Mureau (Paris, 1797). There are English translations. A few letters at the end of the work give a little additional information. Governor Phillip's "Voyage to Botany Bay" (London, 1789) contains a good but brief account. Phillip's despatch to the Secretary of State, Lord Sydney, printed in the "Historical Records of New South Wales," Vol. I., part 2, p. 121, devotes a paragraph to the subject. King's Journal in Vol. II. of the "Records," p. 543-7, gives his story. Surgeon Bowes' Journal, on page 391 of the same volume, contains a rather picturesque allusion. Hunter's "Voyage to Botany Bay" (London, 1793) substantially repeats King's version. Captain Watkin Tench, of the Marines, has a good account in his "Narrative of an Expedition to Botany Bay" (London, 1789), and Paterson's "History of New South Wales" (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1811) makes an allusion to the French expedition. Chapter VIII. THE MYSTERY, AND THE SECRET OF THE SEA. The BOUSSOLE and the ASTROLABE sailed from Botany Bay on March 10, 1788. After recording that fact we might well inscribe the pathetic last words of Hamlet, "the rest is silence." We know what Laperouse intended to do. He wrote two letters to friends in France, explaining the programme to be followed after sailing from Botany Bay. They do not agree in every particular, but we may take the last letter written to express his final determination. According to this, his plan was to sail north, passing between Papua ( New Guinea) and Australia by another channel than Endeavour Strait, if he could find one. During September and October he intended to visit the Gulf of Carpentaria, and thence sail down the west and along the south of Australia, to Tasmania, "but in such a manner that it may be possible for me to stretch northward in time to arrive at Ile-de-France in the beginning of December, 1788." That was the programme which he was not destined to complete--hardly, indeed, to enter upon. Had he succeeded, his name would have been inscribed amongst the memorable company of the world's great maritime explorers. As it is, the glint on his brow, as he stands in the light of history, is less that of achievement than of high promise, noble aims, romance and mystery. One of the letters sent from Sydney concluded with these words: "Adieu! I shall depart in good health, as are all my ship's company. We would undertake six voyages round the world if it could afford to our country either profit or pleasure." They were not the last words he wrote, but we may appropriately take them as being, not merely his adieu to a friend, but to the world. Time sped on; the date given for the arrival at Ile-de-France was passed; the year 1789 dawned and ticked off the tally of its days. But nothing was heard of Laperouse. People in France grew anxious, one especially we may be sure--she who knew so well where the ships would anchor in Port Louis if they emerged out of the ocean brume, and who longed so ardently that renewed acquaintance with scenes once sweetly familiar would awaken memories meet to give wings to speed and spurs to delay. Not a word came to sustain or cheer, and the faint flush of hope faded to the wan hue of despair on the cheek of love. By 1791 all expectation of seeing the expedition return was abandoned. But could not some news of its fate be ascertained? Had it faded out of being like a summer cloud, leaving not a trace behind? Might not some inkling be had, some small relics obtained, some whisper caught, in those distant isles, "Where the sea egg flames on the coral, and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legend to the lazy, locked lagoon." France was then in the throes of her great social earthquake; but it stands to the credit of the National Assembly that, amidst many turbulent projects and boiling passions, they found time and had the disposition to cause the fitting out of a new expedition to search for tidings of those whose disappearance weighed heavily on the heart of the nation. The decree was passed on February 9, 1791. Two ships, the RECHERCHE and the ESPERANCE, were selected and placed under the command of Dentrecasteaux. He had already had some experience in a part of the region to be searched, had been a governor of Ile-de-France, and during a South Sea voyage had named the cluster of islands east of Papua now called the D'Entrecasteaux Group. The second ship was placed under the command of Captain Huon Kermadec. The Huon River in Tasmania, and the Kermadec Islands, N.E. of New Zealand, are named after him. Fleurieu again drew up the instructions, and based them largely upon the letter from Laperouse quoted above, pointing out that remains of him would most probably be found in the neighbourhood of coasts which he had intended to explore. It was especially indicated that there was, south of New Holland, an immense stretch of coastline so far utterly unknown. "No navigator has penetrated in that part of the sea; the reconnaissances and discoveries of the Dutch, the English and the French commenced at the south of Van Diemen's Land." Thus, for the second time, was a French navigator directed to explore the southern coasts of Australia; and had Dentrecasteaux followed the plan laid down for him he would have forestalled the discoveries of Grant, Bass and Flinders, just as Laperouse would have done had his work not been cut short by disaster. It has to be remembered that the instructions impressed upon Dentrecasteaux that his business primarily was not geographical discovery, but to get news of his lost compatriots. But even so, is it not curious that the French should have been concerned with the exploration of Southern Australia before the English thought about it; that they should have had two shots at the task, planned with knowledge and care, officially directed, and in charge of eminently competent navigators; but that nevertheless their schemes should have gone awry? They made a third attempt by means of Baudin's expedition, during the Napoleonic Consulate, and again were unsuccessful, except in a very small measure. It almost seems as if some power behind human endeavours had intended these coasts for British finding--and keeping. The full story of Dentrecasteaux' expedition has not yet been told. Two thick books were written about it, but a mass of unpublished papers contain details that were judiciously kept out of those volumes. When the whole truth is made known, it will be seen that the bitter strife which plunged France in an agony of blood and tears was not confined to the land. The ships did not visit Sydney. Why not? It might have been expected that an expedition sent to discover traces of Laperouse would have been careful to make Botany Bay in the first instance, and, after collecting whatever evidence was available there, would have carefully followed the route that he had proposed to pursue. But it would seem that an European settlement was avoided. Why? The unpublished papers may furnish an answer to that question. Neither was the south coast of Australia explored. That great chance was missed. Some excellent charting--which ten years later commanded the cordial admiration of Flinders--was done by Beautemps-Beaupre, who was Dentrecasteaux' cartographer, especially round about the S.W. corner of the continent. Esperance Bay, in Western Australia, is named after one of the ships of this expedition. But from that corner, his ships being short of fresh water, Dentrecasteaux sailed on a direct line to Southern Tasmania, and thence to New Zealand, New Caledonia, and New Guinea. Touch with the only European centre in these parts was--apparently with deliberation--not obtained. Dentrecasteaux died while his ships were in the waters to the north of New Guinea. He fell violently ill, raving at first, then subsiding into unconsciousness, a death terrible to read about in the published narrative, where the full extent of his troubles is not revealed. Kermadec, commander of the ESPERANCE, also died at New Caledonia. After their decease the ships returned to France as rapidly as they could. They were detained by the Dutch at Sourabaya for several months, as prisoners of war, and did not reach Europe till March, 1796. Their mission had been abortive. Five French Captains who brought expeditions to Australia at this period all ended in misfortune. Laperouse was drowned; de Langle was murdered; Dentrecasteaux died miserably at sea; Kermadec, the fourth, had expired shortly before; and Baudin, the fifth, died at Port Louis on the homeward voyage. Nor is even that the last touch of melancholy to the tale of tragedy. There was a young poet who was touched by the fate of Laperouse. Andre Chenier is now recognised as one of the finest masters of song who have enriched French literature, and his poems are more and more studied and admired both by his own countrymen and abroad. He planned and partly finished a long poem, "L'Amerique," which contains a mournful passage about the mystery of the sea which had not then been solved. A translation of the lines will not be attempted here; they are mentioned because the poet himself had an end as tragic, though in a different mode, as that of the hero of whom he sang. He came under the displeasure of the tyrants of the Red Terror through his friends and his writings, and in March, 1794, the guillotine took this brilliant young genius as a victim. J'accuserai les vents et cette mer jalouse Qui retient, qui peut-etre a ravi Laperouse so the poem begins. How strangely the shadow of Tragedy hangs over this ill-starred expedition; Louis XVI the projector, Laperouse and de Langle the commanders, Dentrecasteaux and Kermadec the searchers, Andre Chenier the laureate: the breath of the black-robed Fury was upon them all! Chapter IX. CAPTAIN DILLON'S DISCOVERY. The navigators of all nations were fascinated by the mystery attaching to the fate of Laperouse. Every ship that sailed the Pacific hoped to obtain tidings or remains. From time to time rumours arose of the discovery of relics. One reported the sight of wreckage; another that islanders had been seen dressed in French uniforms; another that a cross of St. Louis had been found. But the element of probability in the various stories evaporated on investigation. Flinders, sailing north from Port Jackson in the INVESTIGATOR in 1802, kept a sharp lookout on the Barrier Reef, the possibility of finding some trace being "always present to my mind." But no definite news came. A new French voyage of exploration came down to the Pacific in 1817, under the command of Louis de Freycinet, who had been a lieutenant in Baudin's expedition in 1800-4. The purpose was not chiefly to look for evidence concerning Laperouse, though naturally a keen scrutiny was maintained with this object in view. An extremely queer fact may be mentioned in connection with this voyage. The URANIE carried a woman among the crew, the only one of her sex amidst one hundred men. Madame de Freycinet, the wife of the commandant, joined at Toulon, dressed as a ship's boy, and it was given out in the newspapers that her husband was very much surprised when he found that his wife had managed to get aboard in disguise. But Arago, one of the scientific staff, tells us in his Memoirs, published in 1837, that--as we can well believe--Freycinet knew perfectly who the "young and pretty" boy was, and had connived at her joining the ship as a lad, because she wanted to accompany her husband, and the authorities would have prevented her had they known. She continued to wear her boy's dress until after the ships visited Gibraltar, for Arago informs us that the solemn British Lieutenant-Governor there, when he saw her, broke into a smile, "the first perhaps that his features had worn for ten years." If that be true, the little lady surely did a little good by her saucy escapade. But official society regarded the lady in trousers with a frigid stare, so that henceforth she deemed it discreet to resume feminine garments. It does not appear that she passed for a boy when the expedition visited Sydney, and of course no hint of Madame's presence is given in the official history of the voyage. We now reach the stage when the veil was lifted and the mystery explained. In 1813 the East India Company's ship HUNTER, voyaging from Calcutta to Sydney, called at the Fiji Islands. They discovered that several Europeans were living on one of the group. Some had been shipwrecked; some had deserted from vessels; but they had become accustomed to the life and preferred it. The HUNTER employed a party of them to collect sandal wood and beche-de-mer, one of her junior officers, Peter Dillon, being in charge. A quarrel with natives occurred, and all the Europeans were murdered, except Dillon, a Prussian named Martin Bushart, and a seaman, William Wilson. After the affray Bushart would certainly have been slain had he remained, so he induced the captain of the HUNTER to give him a passage to the first land reached. Accordingly Bushart, a Fiji woman who was his wife, and a Lascar companion, were landed on Barwell Island, or Tucopia. Thirteen years later Peter Dillon was sailing in command of his own ship, the ST. PATRICK, from Valparaiso to Pondicherry, when he sighted Tucopia. Curiosity prompted him to stop to enquire whether his old friend Martin Bushart was still alive. He hove to, and shortly after two canoes put off from the land, bringing Bushart and the Lascar, both in excellent health. Now, Dillon observed that the Lascar sold an old silver sword guard to one of the ST. PATRICK'S crew in return for a few fish hooks. This made him inquisitive. He asked the Prussian where it came from. Bushart informed him that when he first arrived at the island he saw in possession of the natives, not only this sword guard, but also several chain plates, iron bolts, axes, the handle of a silver fork, some knives, tea cups, beads, bottles, a silver spoon bearing a crest and monogram, and a sword. He asked where these articles were obtained, and the natives told him that they got them from the Mannicolo (or Vanikoro) cluster of islands, two days' canoe voyage from Tucopia, in the Santa Cruz group. "Upon examining the sword minutely" wrote Dillon, "I discovered, or thought I discovered, the initials of Perouse stamped on it, which excited my suspicion and made me more exact in my inquiries. I then, by means of Bushart and the Lascar, questioned some of the islanders respecting the way in which their neighbours procured the silver and iron articles. They told me that the natives of Mannicolo stated that many years ago two large ships arrived at their islands; one anchored at the island of Whanoo, and the other at the island of Paiou, a little distance from each other. Some time after they anchored, and before they had any communication with the natives, a heavy gale arose and both vessels were driven ashore. The ship that was anchored off Whanoo grounded upon the rocks. "The natives came in crowds to the seaside, armed with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows, and shot some arrows into the ship, and the crew in return fired the guns and some musketry on them and killed several. The vessel, continuing to beat violently against the rocks, shortly afterwards went to pieces. Some of the crew took to their boats, and were driven on shore, where they were to a man murdered on landing by the infuriated natives. Others threw themselves into the sea; but if they reached the shore it was only to share the fate of their wretched comrades, so that not a single soul escaped out of this vessel." The ship wrecked on Paiou, according to the natives' story, was driven on a sandy beach. Some arrows were fired into her, but the crew did not fire. They were restrained, and held up beads, axes, and toys, making a demonstration of friendliness. As soon as the wind abated, an old chief came aboard the wrecked ship, where he was received in friendly fashion, and, going ashore, pacified his people. The crew of the vessel, compelled to abandon her, carried the greater part of their stores ashore, where they built a small boat from the remains of the wreck. As soon as this craft was ready to sail, as many as could conveniently be taken embarked and sailed away. They were never heard of again. The remainder of the crew remained on the island until they died. Such was the information collected by Captain Peter Dillon in 1826. He took away with him the sword guard, but regretted to learn that the silver spoon had been beaten into wire by Bushart for making rings and ornaments for female islanders. When he reached Calcutta, Dillon wrote an account of his discovery in a letter to the government of Bengal, and suggested that he should be sent in command of an expedition to search the Vanikoro cluster in the hope of finding some old survivor of Laperouse's unhappy company, or at all events further remains of the ships. He had prevailed upon Martin Bushart to accompany him to India, and hoped, through this man's knowledge of the native tongue, to elicit all that was to be known. The Government of British India became interested in Dillon's discovery, and resolved to send him in command of a ship to search for further information. At the end of 1826 he sailed in the RESEARCH, and in September of the following year came within sight of the high-peaked island Tucopia. The enquiries made on this voyage fully confirmed and completed the story, and left no room for doubt that the ships of Laperouse had been wrecked and his whole company massacred or drowned on or near Vanikoro. Many natives still living remembered the arrival of the French. Some of them related that they thought those who came on the big ships to be not men but spirits; and such a grotesque bit of description as was given of the peaks of cocked hats exactly expressed the way in which the appearance of the strangers would be likely to appeal to the native imagination:--"There was a projection from their foreheads or noses a foot long." Furthermore, Dillon's officers were able to purchase from the islands such relics as an old sword blade, a rusted razor, a silver sauce-boat with fleur-de-lis upon it, a brass mortar, a few small bells, a silver sword-handle bearing a cypher, apparently a "P" with a crown, part of a blacksmith's vice, the crown of a small anchor, and many other articles. An examination of natives brought out a few further details, as for example, a description of the chief of the strangers, "who used always to be looking at the stars and the sun and beckoning to them," which is how a native would be likely to regard a man making astronomical observations. Dillon, in short had solved the forty years' mystery. The Pacific had revealed her long-held secret. It happened that a new French expedition in the ASTROLABE, under the command of Dumont-D'Urville, was in the southern hemisphere at this time. While he lay at Hobart on his way to New Zealand, the captain heard of Dillon's discoveries, and, at once changing his plans, sailed for the Santa Cruz Islands. He arrived there in February, 1828, and made some valuable finds to supplement those of the English captain. At the bottom of the sea, in perfectly clear water, he saw lying, encrusted with coral, some remains of anchors, chains, guns, bullets, and other objects which had clearly belonged to the ships of Laperouse. One of his artists made a drawing of them on the spot. They were recovered, and, together with Dillon's collection, are now exhibited in a pyramid at the Marine Museum at the Louvre in Paris, in memory of the ill-fated commander and crew who perished, martyrs in the great cause of discovery, a century and a quarter ago. It is interesting to note that descendants of Captain Dillon are residents of Sydney to this day. Chapter X. THE FAME OF LAPEROUSE. Intellectually, and as a navigator, Laperouse was a son of James Cook, and he himself would have rejoiced to be so described. The allusions to his predecessor in his writings are to be numbered by scores, and the note of reverent admiration is frequently sounded. He followed Cook's guidance in the management of his ships, paying particular attention to the diet of his crews. He did not succeed in keeping scurvy at bay altogether, but when the disease made its appearance he met it promptly by securing fresh vegetable food for the sufferers, and was so far successful that when he arrived in Botany Bay his whole company was in good health. The influence of the example and experience of Cook may be illustrated in many ways, some of them curious. We may take a point as to which he really had little to fear; but he knew what had occurred in Cook's case and he was anxious that the same should not happen to him. The published story of Cook's first South Sea Voyage, as is well known, was not his own. His journal was handed over to Dr. Hawkesworth, a gentleman who tried to model his literary style on that of Dr. Johnson, and evolved a pompous, big-drum product in consequence. Hawkesworth garnished the manly, straightforward navigator's simple and direct English with embellishments of his own. Where Cook was plain Hawkesworth was ornate; where Cook was sensible Hawkesworth was silly; where Cook was accurate, Hawkesworth by stuffing in his own precious observations made the narrative unreliable, and even ridiculous. In fact, the gingerbread Johnson simply spoiled Cook. Dr. Johnson was by no means gratified by the ponderous prancings of his imitator. We learn from Boswell that when the great man met Captain Cook at a dinner given by the President of the Royal Society, he said that he "was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnavigator, who set me right as to many of the exaggerated accounts given by Dr. Hawkesworth of his voyages." Cook himself was annoyed by the decorating of his story, and resented the treatment strongly. Laperouse knew this, and was very anxious that nobody in France should Hawkesworthify him. He did not object to being carefully edited, but he did not want to be decorated. He wrote excellent French narrative prose, and his work may be read with delight. Its qualities of clarity, picturesqueness and smoothness, are quite in accord with the fine traditions of the language. But, as it was likely that part of the history of his voyage might be published before his return, he did not want it to be handed over to anybody who would trick it out in finery, and he therefore wrote the following letter: "If my journal be published before my return, let the editing of it by no means be entrusted to a man of letters; for either he will sacrifice to the turn of a phrase the proper terms which the seaman and man of learning would prefer, but which to him will appear harsh and barbarous; or, rejecting all the nautical and astronomical details, and endeavouring to make a pleasing romance, he will for want of the knowledge his education has not allowed him to acquire, commit mistakes which may prove fatal to those who shall follow me. But choose an editor versed in the mathematical sciences, who is capable of calculating and comparing my data with those of other investigators, of rectifying errors which may have escaped me, and of guarding himself against the commission of others. Such an editor will preserve the substance of the work; will omit nothing that is essential; will give technical details the harsh and rude, but concise style of a seaman; and will well perform his task in supplying my place and publishing the work as I would have done it myself." That letter is a rather singular effect of Laperouse's study of Cook, which might be illustrated by further examples. The influence of the great English sailor is the more remarkable when we remember that there had been early French navigators to the South Seas before Laperouse. There was the elder Bougainville, the discoverer of the Navigator Islands; there was Marion-Dufresne, who was killed and eaten by Maoris in 1772; there was Surville--to mention only three. Laperouse knew of them, and mentioned them. But they had little to teach him. In short and in truth, he belonged to the school of Cook, and that is an excellent reason why English and especially Australian people should have an especial regard for him. The disastrous end of Laperouse's expedition before he had completed his task prevented him from adequately realising his possibilities as a discoverer. As pointed out in the preceding pages, if he had completed his voyage, he would in all probability have found the southern coasts of Australia in 1788. But the work that he actually did is not without importance; and he unquestionably possessed the true spirit of the explorer. When he entered upon this phase of his career he was a thoroughly experienced seaman. He was widely read in voyaging literature, intellectually well endowed, alert-minded, eager, courageous, and vigorous. The French nation has had no greater sailor than Laperouse. De Lesseps, the companion of his voyage as far as Kamchatka, has left a brief but striking characterisation of him. "He was," says this witness, "an accomplished gentleman, perfectly urbane and full of wit, and possessed of those charming manners which pertained to the eighteenth century. He was always agreeable in his relations with subordinates and officers alike." The same writer tells us that when Louis XVI gave him the command of the expedition he had the reputation of being the ablest seaman in the French navy. Certainly he was no common man to whose memory stands that tall monument at Botany Bay. It was erected at the cost of the French Government by the Baron de Bougainville, in 1825, and serves not only as a reminder of a fine character and a full, rich and manly life, but of a series of historical events that are of capital consequence in the exploration and occupation of Australia. It will be appropriate to conclude this brief biography with a tribute to the French navigator from the pen of an English poet. Thomas Campbell is best remembered by such vigorous poems as "Ye Mariners of England," and "The Battle of the Baltic," which express a tense and elevated British patriotism. All the more impressive for that very reason is his elegy in honour of a sailor of another nation, whose merits as a man and whose charm as a writer Campbell had recognised from his boyhood. The following are his. LINES WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF LAPEROUSE'S "VOYAGES" Loved Voyager! whose pages had a zest More sweet than fiction to my wondering breast, When, rapt in fancy, many a boyish day I tracked his wanderings o'er the watery way, Roamed round the Aleutian isles in waking dreams, Or plucked the fleur-de-lys by Jesso's streams, Or gladly leaped on that far Tartar strand, Where Europe's anchor ne'er had bit the sand, Where scarce a roving wild tribe crossed the plain, Or human voice broke nature's silent reign,-- But vast and grassy deserts feed the bear, And sweeping deer-herds dread no hunter's snare. Such young delight his real records brought, His truth so touched romantic springs of thought, That, all my after life, his fate and fame Entwined romance with Laperouse's name. Fair were his ships, expert his gallant crews, And glorious was the emprise of Laperouse-- Humanely glorious! Men will weep for him, When many a guilty martial fame is dim: He ploughed the deep to bind no captive's chain-- Pursued no rapine--strewed no wreck with slain; And, save that in the deep themselves lie low, His heroes plucked no wreath from human woe. 'Twas his the earth's remotest bounds to scan, Conciliating with gifts barbaric man-- Enrich the world's contemporaneous mind, And amplify the picture of mankind. Far on the vast Pacific, 'midst those isles O'er which the earliest morn of Asia smiles, He sounded and gave charts to many a shore And gulf of ocean new to nautic lore; Yet he that led discovery o'er the wave, Still finds himself an undiscovered grave. He came not back! Conjecture's cheek grew pale, Year after year; in no propitious gale His lilied banner held its homeward way, And Science saddened at her martyr's stay. An age elapsed: no wreck told where or when The chief went down with all his gallant men, Or whether by the storm and wild sea flood He perished, or by wilder men of blood. The shuddering fancy only guess'd his doom, And doubt to sorrow gave but deeper gloom. An age elapsed: when men were dead or gray, Whose hearts had mourned him in their youthful day, Fame traced on Vanikoro's shore at last, The boiling surge had mounted o'er his mast. The islesmen told of some surviving men, But Christian eyes beheld them ne'er again. Sad bourne of all his toils--with all his band To sleep, wrecked, shroudless, on a savage strand! Yet what is all that fires a hero's scorn Of death?--the hope to live in hearts unborn. Life to the brave is not its fleeting breath, But worth--foretasting fame that follows death. That worth had Laperouse, that meed he won. He sleeps--his life's long stormy watch is done. In the great deep, whose boundaries and space He measured, fate ordained his resting place; But bade his fame, like th' ocean rolling o'er His relics, visit every earthly shore. Fair Science on that ocean's azure robe Still writes his name in picturing the globe, And paints (what fairer wreath could glory twine?) His watery course--a world-encircling line. 
46345	----	[Transcribers notes: The only changes made in this text are obvious printer's errors. Everything else remains unchanged. Words in _italics_ and =bold= denoted thus] SIR QUIXOTE OF THE MOORS =BUCKRAM SERIES.= 75c. each. SIR QUIXOTE OF THE MOORS. A Scotch Romance. By JOHN BUCHAN. LADY BONNIE'S EXPERIMENT. A quaint pastoral. By TIGHE HOPKINS. KAFIR STORIES. Tales of adventure. By WM. CHAS. SCULLY. THE MASTER-KNOT. And "Another Story." By CONOVER DUFF. THE TIME MACHINE. The Story of an Invention. By H. G. WELLS. THE PRISONER OF ZENDA. (_21st Ed_.) By ANTHONY HOPE. A stirring romance. THE INDISCRETION OF THE DUCHESS. By ANTHONY HOPE. (_8th Edition_.) TENEMENT TALES OF NEW YORK. By J. W. SULLIVAN. SLUM STORIES OF LONDON. (_Neighbors of Ours_.) By H. W. NEVINSON. THE WAYS OF YALE. (_5th Edition_.) Sketches, mainly humorous. By H. A. BEERS. A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. (_5th Edition_.) American stories. By HENRY A. BEERS. JACK O'DOON. (_2d Edition_.) An American novel. By MARIA BEALE. QUAKER IDYLS. (_5th Edition_.) By MRS. S. M. H. GARDNER. A MAN OF MARK. (_6th Edition_.) A South American tale. By ANTHONY HOPE. SPORT ROYAL. (_2d Edition_.) And Other Stories. By ANTHONY HOPE. THE DOLLY DIALOGUES. (_7th Edition_.) By ANTHONY HOPE. A CHANGE OF AIR. (_8th Edition_.) By ANTHONY HOPE. With portrait. JOHN INGERFIELD. (_5th Edition_.) A love tragedy. By JEROME K. JEROME. =HENRY HOLT & CO., NEW YORK.= [Illustration:"_He came at me with his sword in a great heat._"--P. 131.] SIR QUIXOTE OF THE MOORS _BEING SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF THE SIEUR DE ROHAINE_ BY JOHN BUCHAN [Illustration: logo] NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1895 COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J. TO GILBERT MURRAY WHATSOEVER IN THIS BOOK IS NOT WORTHLESS IS DEDICATED BY HIS FRIEND. PREFACE. The narrative, now for the first time presented to the world, was written by the Sieur de Rohaine to while away the time during the long period and painful captivity, borne with heroic resolution, which preceded his death. He chose the English tongue, in which he was extraordinarily proficient, for two reasons: first, as an exercise in the language; second, because he desired to keep the passages here recorded from the knowledge of certain of his kins-folk in France. Few changes have been made in his work. Now and then an English idiom has been substituted for a French; certain tortuous expressions have been emended; and in general the portions in the Scots dialect have been rewritten, since the author's knowledge of this manner of speech seems scarcely to have been so great as he himself thought. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. ON THE HIGH MOORS, 1 II. I FARE BADLY INDOORS, 27 III. I FARE BADLY ABROAD, 58 IV. OF MY COMING TO LINDEAN, 76 V. I PLEDGE MY WORD, 100 VI. IDLE DAYS, 134 VII. A DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS, 155 VIII. HOW I SET THE SIGNAL, 174 IX. I COMMUNE WITH MYSELF, 202 X. OF MY DEPARTURE, 222 SIR QUIXOTE OF THE MOORS. CHAPTER I. ON THE HIGH MOORS. Before me stretched a black heath, over which the mist blew in gusts, and through whose midst the road crept like an adder. Great storm-marked hills flanked me on either side, and since I set out I had seen their harsh outline against a thick sky, until I longed for flat ground to rest my sight upon. The way was damp, and the soft mountain gravel sank under my horse's feet; and ever and anon my legs were splashed by the water from some pool which the rain had left. Shrill mountain birds flew around, and sent their cries through the cold air. Sometimes the fog would lift for a moment from the face of the land and show me a hilltop or the leaden glimmer of a loch, but nothing more--no green field or homestead; only a barren and accursed desert. Neither horse nor man was in any spirit. My back ached, and I shivered in my sodden garments, while my eyes were dim from gazing on flying clouds. The poor beast stumbled often, for he had traveled far on little fodder, and a hill-road was a new thing in his experience. Saladin I called him--for I had fancied that there was something Turkish about his black face, with the heavy turban-like band above his forehead--in my old fortunate days when I bought him. He was a fine horse of the Normandy breed, and had carried me on many a wild journey, though on none so forlorn as this. But to speak of myself. I am Jean de Rohaine, at your service; Sieur de Rohaine in the province of Touraine--a gentleman, I trust, though one in a sorry plight. And how I came to be in the wild highlands of the place called Galloway, in the bare kingdom of Scotland, I must haste to tell. In the old days, when I had lived as became my rank in my native land, I had met a Scot,--one Kennedy by name,--a great man in his own country, with whom I struck up an intimate friendship. He and I were as brothers, and he swore that if I came to visit him in his own home he would see to it that I should have the best. I thanked him at the time for his bidding, but thought little more of it. Now, by ill fortune, the time came when, what with gaming and pleasuring, I was a beggared man, and I bethought me of the Scot's offer. I had liked the man well, and I considered how it would be no ill thing to abide in that country till I should find some means of bettering my affairs. So I took ship and came to the town of Ayr, from which 'twas but a day's ride to the house of my friend. 'Twas in midsummer when I landed, and the place looked not so bare as I had feared, as I rode along between green meadows to my destination. There I found Quentin Kennedy, somewhat grown old and more full in flesh than I remembered him in the past. He had been a tall, black-avised man when I first knew him; now he was grizzled,--whether from hard living or the harshness of northern weather I know not,--and heavier than a man of action is wont to be. He greeted me most hospitably, putting his house at my bidding, and swearing that I should abide and keep him company and go no more back to the South. So for near a month I stayed there, and such a time of riot and hilarity I scarce remember. _Mon Dieu_, but the feasting and the sporting would have rejoiced the hearts of my comrades of the Rue Margot! I had already learned much of the Scots tongue at the college in Paris, where every second man hails from this land, and now I was soon perfect in it, speaking it all but as well as my host. 'Tis a gift I have, for I well remember how, when I consorted for some months in the low countries with an Italian of Milan, I picked up a fair knowledge of his speech. So now I found myself in the midst of men of spirit, and a rare life we led. The gentlemen of the place would come much about the house, and I promise you 'twas not seldom we saw the morning in as we sat at wine. There was, too, the greatest sport at coursing and hunting the deer in Kennedy's lands by the Water of Doon. Yet there was that I liked not among the fellows who came thither, nay, even in my friend himself. We have a proverb in France that the devil when he spoils a German in the making turns him into a Scot, and for certain there was much boorishness among them, which to my mind sits ill on gentlemen. They would jest at one another till I thought that in a twinkling swords would be out, and lo! I soon found that 'twas but done for sport, and with no evil intent. They were clownish in their understanding, little recking of the feelings of a man of honor, but quick to grow fierce on some tittle of provocation which another would scarce notice. Indeed, 'tis my belief that one of this nation is best in his youth, for Kennedy, whom I well remembered as a man of courage and breeding, had grown grosser and more sottish with his years, till I was fain to ask where was my friend of the past. And now I come to that which brought on my departure and my misfortunes. 'Twas one night as I returned weary from riding after a stag in the haugh by the river, that Quentin cried hastily, as I entered, that now he had found something worthy of my attention. "To-morrow, Jock," says he, "you will see sport. There has been some cursed commotion among the folk of the hills, and I am out the morrow to redd the marches. You shall have a troop of horse and ride with me, and, God's death, we will have a taste of better work!" I cried out that I could have asked for naught better, and, indeed, I was overjoyed that the hard drinking and idleness were at an end, and that the rigors of warfare lay before me. For I am a soldier by birth and by profession, and I love the jingle of steel and the rush of battle. So, on the morrow, I rode to the mountains with a score of dragoons behind me, glad and hopeful. _Diable!_ How shall I tell my disappointment? The first day I had seen all--and more than I wished. We fought, not with men like ourselves, but with women and children and unarmed yokels, and butchered like Cossacks more than Christians. I grew sick of the work, and would have none of it, but led my men to the rendezvous sullenly, and hot at heart. 'Twas well the night was late when we arrived, else I should have met with Kennedy there and then, and God knows what might have happened. The next day, in a great fit of loathing, I followed my host again, hoping that the worst was over, and that henceforth I should have something more to my stomach. But little I knew of the men with whom I journeyed. There was a cottage there, a shepherd's house, and God! they burned it down, and the man they shot before his wife and children, speaking naught to him but foul-mouthed reproaches and jabber about some creed which was strange to me. I could not prevent it, though 'twas all that I could do to keep myself from a mad attack. I rode up to Quentin Kennedy. "Sir," I said, "I have had great kindness at your hands, but you and I must part. I see that we are made of different stuff. I can endure war, but not massacre." He laughed at my scruples, incredulous of my purpose, until at last he saw that I was fixed in my determination. Then he spoke half kindly: "This is a small matter to stand between me and thee. I am a servant of the king, and but do my duty. I little thought to have disloyalty preached from your lips; but bide with me, and I promise that you shall see no more of it." But my anger was too great, and I would have none of him. Then--and now I marvel at the man's forbearance--he offered me money to recompense me for my trouble. 'Twas honestly meant, and oft have I regretted my action, but to me in my fury it seemed but an added insult. "Nay," said I angrily; "I take no payment from butchers. I am a gentleman, if a poor one." At this he flushed wrathfully, and I thought for an instant that he would have drawn on me; but he refrained, and I rode off alone among the moors. I knew naught of the land, and I must have taken the wrong way, for noon found me hopelessly mazed among a tangle of rocks and hills and peat-mosses. Verily, Quentin Kennedy had taken the best revenge by suffering me to follow my own leading. In the early hours of my journey my head was in such a whirl of wrath and dismay, that I had little power to think settled thoughts. I was in a desperate confusion, half angry at my own haste, and half bitter at the coldness of a friend who would permit a stranger to ride off alone with scarce a word of regret. When I have thought the matter out in after days, I have been as perplexed as ever; yet it still seems to me, though I know not how, that I acted as any man of honor and heart would approve. Still this thought was little present to me in my discomfort, as I plashed through the sodden turf. I had breakfasted at Kennedy's house of Dunpeel in the early morning, and since I had no provision of any sort with me, 'twas not long ere the biting of hunger began to set in. My race is a hardy stock, used to much hardships and rough fare, but in this inclement land my heart failed me wholly, and I grew sick and giddy, what with the famishing and the cold rain. For, though 'twas late August, the month of harvest and fruit-time in my own fair land, it seemed more like winter. The gusts of sharp wind came driving out of the mist and pierced me to the very marrow. So chill were they that my garments were of no avail to avert them; being, indeed, of the thinnest, and cut according to the fashion of fine cloth for summer wear at the shows and gallantries of the town. A pretty change, thought I, from the gardens of Versailles and the trim streets of Paris to this surly land; and sad it was to see my cloak, meant for no rougher breeze than the gentle south, tossed and scattered by a grim wind. I have marked it often, and here I proved its truth, that man's thoughts turn always to the opposites of his present state. Here was I, set in the most uncharitable land on earth; and yet ever before my eyes would come brief visions of the gay country which I had forsaken. In a gap of hill I fancied that I descried a level distance with sunny vineyards and rich orchards, to which I must surely come if I but hastened. When I stooped to drink at a stream, I fancied ere I drank it that the water would taste like the Bordeaux I was wont to drink at the little hostelry in the Rue Margot; and when the tasteless liquid once entered my mouth, the disenchantment was severe. I met one peasant, an old man bent with toil, coarse-featured, yet not without some gleams of kindness, and I could not refrain from addressing him in my native tongue. For though I could make some shape at his barbarous patois, in my present distress it came but uneasily from my lips. He stared at me stupidly, and when I repeated the question in the English, he made some unintelligible reply, and stumbled onward in his way. I watched his poor figure as he walked. Such, thought I, are the _canaille_ of the land, and 'tis little wonder if their bodies be misshapen, and their minds dull, for an archangel would become a boor if he dwelt here for any space of time. But enough of such dreams, and God knows no man had ever less cause for dreaming. Where was I to go, and what might my purpose be in this wilderness which men call the world? An empty belly and a wet skin do not tend to sedate thinking, so small wonder if I saw little ahead. I was making for the end of the earth, caring little in what direction, weary and sick of heart, with sharp anger at the past, and never a hope for the morrow. Yet, even in my direst days, I have ever found some grain of expectation to console me. I had five crowns in my purse; little enough, but sufficient to win me a dinner and a bed at some cheap hostelry. So all through the gray afternoon I looked sharply for a house, mistaking every monstrous bowlder for a gable-end. I cheered my heart with thinking of dainties to be looked for; a dish of boiled fish, or a piece of mutton from one of the wild-faced sheep which bounded ever and anon across my path. Nay, I was in no mood to be fastidious. I would e'en be content with a poor fare, provided always I could succeed in swallowing it, for my desire soon became less for the attainment of a pleasure than for the alleviation of a discomfort. For I was ravenous as a hawk, and had it in my heart more than once to dismount, and seek for the sparse hill-berries. And, indeed, this was like to have been my predicament, for the day grew late and I came no nearer a human dwelling. The valley in which I rode grew wider, about to open, as I thought, into the dale of a river. The hills, from rising steeply by the wayside, were withdrawn to the distance of maybe a mile, where they lifted their faces through the network of the mist. All the land between them, save a strip where the road lay, was filled with a black marsh, where moor birds made a most dreary wailing. It minded me of the cries of the innocents whom King Herod slew, as I had seen the dead represented outside the village church of Rohaine in my far-away homeland. My heart grew sore with longing. I had bartered my native country for the most dismal on earth, and all for nothing. Madman that I was, were it not better to be a beggar in France than a horse-captain in any other place? I cursed my folly sorely, as each fresh blast sent a shiver through my body. Nor was my horse in any better state--Saladin, whom I had seen gayly decked at a procession with ribbons and pretty favors, who had carried me so often and so far, who had always fared on the best. The poor beast was in a woeful plight, with his pasterns bleeding from the rough stones and his head bent with weariness. Verily, I pitied him more than myself, and if I had had a crust we should have shared it. The night came in, black as a draw-well and stormy as the Day of Doom. I had now no little trouble in picking out the way from among the treacherous morasses. Of a sudden my horse would have a forefoot in a pool of black peat-water, from which I would scarce, by much pulling, recover him. A sharp jag of stone in the way would all but bring him to his knees. So we dragged wearifully along, scarce fearing, caring, hoping for anything in this world or another. It was, I judge, an hour after nightfall, about nine of the clock, when I fancied that some glimmer shot through the thick darkness. I could have clapped my hands for joy had I been able; but alas! these were so stiff, that clapping was as far from me as from a man with the palsy. "Courage!" said I, "courage, Saladin! There is yet hope for us!" The poor animal seemed to share in my expectations. He carried me quicker forward, so that soon the feeble gleam had grown to a broad light. Inn or dwelling, thought I, there I stay, for I will go not a foot further for man or devil. My sword must e'en be my _fourrier_ to get me a night's lodging. Then I saw the house, a low, dark place, unillumined save for that front window which shone as an invitation to travelers. In a minute I was at the threshold. There, in truth, was the sign flapping above the lintel. 'Twas an inn at length, and my heart leaped out in gratitude. CHAPTER II. I FARE BADLY INDOORS. I dropped wearily from my horse and stumbled forward to the door. 'Twas close shut, but rays of light came through the chinks at the foot, and the great light in the further window lit up the ground for some yards. I knocked loudly with my sword-hilt. Stillness seemed to reign within, save that from some distant room a faint sound of men's voices was brought. A most savory smell stole out to the raw air and revived my hunger with hopes of supper. Again I knocked, this time rudely, and the door rattled on its hinges. This brought some signs of life from within. I could hear a foot on the stone floor of a passage, a bustling as of many folk running hither and thither, and a great barking of a sheep-dog. Of a sudden the door was flung open, a warm blaze of light rushed forth, and I stood blinking before the master of the house. He was a tall, grizzled man of maybe fifty years, thin, with a stoop in his back that all hill-folk have, and a face brown with sun and wind. I judged him fifty, but he may have been younger by ten years, for in that desert men age the speedier. His dress was dirty and ragged in many places, and in one hand he carried a pistol, which he held before him as if for protection. He stared at me for a second. "Wha are ye that comes dirlin' here on sic a nicht?" said he, and I give his speech as I remember it. As he uttered the words, he looked me keenly in the face, and I felt his thin, cold glance piercing to the roots of my thoughts. I liked the man ill, for, what with his lean figure and sour countenance, he was far different from the jovial, well-groomed fellows who will give you greeting at any wayside inn from Calais to Bordeaux. "You ask a strange question, and one little needing answer. If a man has wandered for hours in bog-holes, he will be in no mind to stand chaffering at inn doors. I seek a night's lodging for my horse and myself." "It's little we can give you, for it's a bare, sinfu' land," said he, "but such as I ha'e ye're welcome to. Bide a minute, and I'll bring a licht to tak' ye to the stable." He was gone down the passage for a few seconds, and returned with a rushlight encased against the wind in a wicker covering. The storm made it flicker and flare till it sent dancing shadows over the dark walls of the house. The stable lay round by the back end, and thither poor Saladin and his master stumbled over a most villainous rough ground. The place, when found, was no great thing to boast of--a cold shed, damp with rain, with blaffs of wind wheezing through it; and I was grieved to think of my horse's nightly comfort. The host snatched from a rack a truss of hay, which by its smell was old enough, and tossed it into the manger. "There ye are, and it's mair than mony a Christian gets in thae weary days." Then he led the way back into the house. We entered a draughty passage with a window at one end, broken in part, through which streamed the cold air. A turn brought me into a little square room, where a fire flickered and a low lamp burned on the table. 'Twas so home-like and peaceful that my heart went out to it, and I thanked my fate for the comfortable lodging I had chanced on. Mine host stirred the blaze and bade me strip off my wet garments. He fetched me an armful of rough homespuns, but I cared little to put them on, so I e'en sat in my shirt and waited on the drying of my coat. My mother's portrait, the one by Grizot, which I have had set in gold and wear always near my heart, dangled to my lap, and I took this for an evil omen. I returned it quick to its place, the more so because I saw the landlord's lantern-jaw close at the sight, and his cold eyes twinkle. Had I been wise, too, I would have stripped my rings from my fingers ere I began this ill-boding travel, for it does not behoove a gentleman to be sojourning among beggars with gold about him. "Have ye come far the day?" the man asked, in his harsh voice. "Ye're gey-like splashed wi' dirt, so I jalouse ye cam ower the _Angels Ladder_." "Angel's ladder!" quoth I, "devil's ladder I call it! for a more blackguardly place I have not clapped eyes on since I first mounted horse." "_Angel's Ladder_ they call it," said the man, to all appearance never heeding my words, "for there, mony a year syne, an holy man of God, one Ebenezer Clavershaws, preached to a goodly gathering on the shining ladder seen by the patriarch Jacob at Bethel, which extended from earth to heaven. 'Twas a rich discourse, and I have it still in my mind." "'Twas more likely to have been a way to the Evil One for me. Had I but gone a further step many a time, I should have been giving my account ere this to my Maker. But a truce to this talk. 'Twas not to listen to such that I came here; let me have supper, the best you have, and a bottle of whatever wine you keep in this accursed place. Burgundy is my choice." "Young man," the fellow said gravely, looking at me with his unpleasing eyes, "you are one who loves the meat that perisheth rather than the unsearchable riches of God's grace. Oh, be warned while yet there is time. You know not the delights of gladsome communion wi' Him, which makes the moss-hags and heather-bushes more fair than the roses of Sharon or the balmy plains of Gilead. Oh, be wise and turn, for now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation!" _Sacré!_ what madman have I fallen in with, thought I, who talks in this fashion. I had heard of the wild deeds of those in our own land who call themselves Huguenots, and I was not altogether without fear. But my appetite was keen, and my blood was never of the coolest. "Peace with your nonsense, sirrah," I said sternly; "what man are you who come and prate before your guests, instead of fetching their supper? Let me have mine at once, and no more of your Scripture." As I spoke, I looked him angrily in the face, and my bearing must have had some effect upon him, for he turned suddenly and passed out. A wench appeared, a comely slip of a girl, with eyes somewhat dazed and timorous, and set the table with viands. There was a moor-fowl, well-roasted and tasty to the palate, a cut of salted beef, and for wine, a bottle of French claret of excellent quality. 'Twas so much in excess of my expectation, that I straightway fell into a good humor, and the black cloud of dismay lifted in some degree from my wits. I filled my glass and looked at it against the fire-glow, and dreamed that 'twas an emblem of the after course of my life. Who knew what fine things I might come to yet, though now I was solitary in a strange land? The landlord came in and took away the remnants himself. He looked at me fixedly more than once, and in his glance I read madness, greed, and hatred. I feared his look, and was glad to see him leave, for he made me feel angry and a little awed. However, thought I, 'tis not the first time I have met a churlish host, and I filled my glass again. The fire bickered cheerily, lighting up the room and comforting my cold skin. I drew my chair close and stretched out my legs to the blaze, till in a little, betwixt heat and weariness, I was pleasantly drowsy. I fell to thinking of the events of the day and the weary road I had traveled; then to an earlier time, when I first came to Scotland, and my hopes were still unbroken. After all this I began to mind me of the pleasant days in France; for, though I had often fared ill enough there, all was forgotten but the good fortune; and I had soon built out of my brain a France which was liker Paradise than anywhere on earth. Every now and then a log would crackle or fall, and so wake me with a start, for the fire was of that sort which is common in hilly places--a great bank of peat with wood laid athwart. Blue, pungent smoke came out in rings and clouds, which smelt gratefully in my nostrils after the black out-of-doors. By and by, what with thinking of the past, what with my present comfort, and what with an ever hopeful imagination, my prospects came to look less dismal. 'Twas true that I was here in a most unfriendly land with little money and no skill of the country. But Scotland was but a little place, after all. I must come to Leith in time, where I could surely meet a French skipper who would take me over, money or no. You will ask, whoever may chance to read this narrative, why, in Heaven's name, I did not turn and go back to Ayr, the port from which I had come? The reason is not far to seek. The whole land behind me stank in my nostrils, for there dwelt Quentin Kennedy, and there lay the scene of my discomfiture and my sufferings. Faugh! the smell of that wretched moor road is with me yet. So, with thinking one way and another, I came to a decision to go forward in any case, and trust to God and my own good fortune. After this I must have ceased to have any thoughts, and dropped off snugly to sleep. I wakened, at what time I know not, shivering, with a black fire before my knees. The room was black with darkness, save where through a chink in the window-shutter there came a gleam of pale moonlight. I sprang up in haste and called for a servant to show me to my sleeping room, but the next second I could have wished the word back, for I feared that no servant would be awake and at hand. To my mind there seemed something passing strange in thus leaving a guest to slumber by the fire. To my amazement, the landlord himself came to my call, bearing a light in his hand. I was reasonably surprised, for though I knew not the hour of the night, I judged from the state of the fire that it must have been far advanced. "I had fallen asleep," I said, in apology, "and now would finish what I have begun. Show me my bed." "It'll be a dark nicht and a coorse, out-bye," said the man, as he led the way solemnly from the room, up a rickety stair, down a mirk passage to a chamber which, from the turnings of the house, I guessed to be facing the east. 'Twas a comfortless place, and ere I could add a word I found the man leaving the room with the light. "You'll find your way to bed in the dark," quoth he, and I was left in blackness. I sat down on the edge of the bed, half-stupid with sleep, my teeth chattering with the cold, listening to the gusts of wind battering against the little window. 'Faith! thought I, this is the worst entertainment I ever had, and I have made trial of many. Yet I need not complain, for I have had a good fire and a royal supper, and my present dis-comfort is due in great part to my own ill habit of drowsiness. I rose to undress, for my bones were sore after the long day's riding, when, by some chance, I moved forward to the window and opened it to look on the night. 'Twas wintry weather outside, though but the month of August. The face of the hills fronting me were swathed in white mist, which hung low even to the banks of the stream. There was a great muttering in the air of swollen water, for the rain had ceased, and the red waves were left to roll down the channel to the lowlands and make havoc of meadow and steading. The sky was cumbered with clouds, and no clear light of the moon came through; but since 'twas nigh the time of the full moon the night was not utterly dark. I lingered for maybe five minutes in this posture, and then I heard that which made me draw in my head and listen the more intently. A thud of horses' hoofs on the wet ground came to my ear. A second, and it was plainer, the noise of some half-dozen riders clearly approaching the inn. 'Twas a lonesome place, and I judged it strange that company should come so late. I flung myself on the bed in my clothes, and could almost have fallen asleep as I was, so weary was my body. But there was that in my mind which forbade slumber, a vague uneasiness as of some ill approaching, which it behooved me to combat. Again and again I tried to drive it from me as mere cowardice, but again it returned to vex me. There was nothing for it but that I should lie on my back and bide what might come. Then again I heard a sound, this time from a room beneath. 'Twas as if men were talking softly, and moving to and fro. My curiosity was completely aroused, and I thought it no shame to my soldierly honor to slip from my room and gather what was the purport of their talk. At such a time, and in such a place, it boded no good for me, and the evil face of the landlord was ever in my memory. The staircase creaked a little as it felt my weight, but it had been built for heavier men, and I passed it in safety. Clearly the visitors were in the room where I had supped. "Will we ha'e muckle wark wi' him, think ye?" I heard one man ask. "Na, na," said another, whom I knew for mine host, "he's a foreigner, a man frae a fremt land, and a' folk ken they're little use. Forbye, I had stock o' him mysel', and I think I could mak' his bit ribs crack thegither. He'll no' be an ill customer to deal wi'." "But will he no' be a guid hand at the swird? There's no yin o' us here muckle at that." "Toots," said another, "we'll e'en get him intil a corner, where he'll no git leave to stir an airm." I had no stomach for more. With a dull sense of fear I crept back to my room, scarce heeding in my anger whether I made noise or not. Good God! thought I, I have traveled by land and sea to die in a moorland alehouse by the hand of common robbers! My heart grew hot at the thought of the landlord, for I made no doubt but it was my jewels that had first set his teeth. I loosened my sword in its scabbard; and now I come to think of it,'twas a great wonder that it had not been taken away from me while I slept. I could only guess that the man had been afraid to approach me before the arrival of his confederates. I gripped my sword-hilt; ah, how often had I felt its touch under kindlier circumstances--when I slew the boar in the woods at Belmont, when I made the Sieur de Biran crave pardon before my feet, when I----But peace with such memories! At all events, if Jean de Rohaine must die among ruffians, unknown and forgotten, he would finish his days like a gentleman of courage. I prayed to God that I might only have the life of the leader. But this world is sweet to all men, and as I awaited death in that dark room, it seemed especially fair to live. I was but in the prime of my age, on the near side of forty, hale in body, a master of the arts and graces. Were it not passing hard that I should perish in this wise? I looked every way for a means of escape. There was but one--the little window which looked upon the ground east of the inn. 'Twas just conceivable that a man might leap it and make his way to the hills, and so baffle his pursuers. Two thoughts deterred me; first, that I had no horse and could not continue my journey; second, that in all likelihood there would be a watch set below. My heart sank within me, and I ceased to think. For, just at that moment, I heard a noise below as of men leaving the room. I shut my lips and waited. Here, I concluded, is death coming to meet me. But the next moment the noise had stopped, and 'twas evident that the conclave was not yet closed. 'Tis a strange thing, the mind of man, for I, who had looked with despair at my chances a minute agone, now, at the passing of this immediate danger, plucked up heart, clapped my hat on my head, and opened the window. The night air blew chill, but all seemed silent below. So, very carefully I hung over the ledge, gripped the sill with my hands, swung my legs into the air, and dropped. I lighted on a tussock of grass and rolled over on my side, only to recover myself in an instant and rise to my feet, and, behold, at my side, a tall man keeping sentinel on horseback. At this the last flicker of hope died in my bosom. The man never moved or spake, but only stared fixedly at me. Yet there was that in his face and bearing which led me to act as I did. "If you are a man of honor," I burst out, "though you are engaged in an accursed trade, dismount and meet me in combat. Your spawn will not be out for a little time, and the night is none so dark. If I must die, I would die at least in the open air, with my foe before me." My words must have found some answering chord in the man's breast, for he presently spoke, and asked me my name and errand in the countryside. I told him in a dozen words, and at my tale he shrugged his shoulders. "I am in a great mind," says he, "to let you go. I am all but sick of this butcher work, and would fling it to the winds at a word. 'Tis well enough for the others, who are mongrel bred, but it ill becomes a man of birth like me, who am own cousin to the Maxwells o' Drurie." He fell for a very little time into a sort of musing, tugging at his beard like a man in perplexity. Then he spoke out suddenly: "See you yon tuft of willows by the water? There's a space behind it where a horse and man might stand well concealed. There is your horse," and he pointed to a group of horses standing tethered by the roadside; "lead him to the place I speak of, and trust to God for the rest. I will raise a scare that you're off the other airt, and, mind, that whenever you see the tails o' us, you mount and ride for life in the way I tell you. You should win to Drumlanrig by morning, where there are quieter folk. Now, mind my bidding, and dae't before my good will changes." "May God do so to you in your extremity! If ever I meet you on earth I will repay you for your mercy. But a word with you. Who is that man?" and I pointed to the house. The fellow laughed dryly. "It's easy seen you're no acquaint here, or you would ha'e heard o' Long Jock o' the Hirsel. There's mony a man would face the devil wi' a regiment o' dragoons at his back, that would flee at a glint from Jock's een. You're weel quit o' him. But be aff afore the folk are stirring." I needed no second bidding, but led Saladin with all speed to the willows, where I made him stand knee-deep in the water within cover of the trees, while I crouched by his side. 'Twas none too soon, for I was scarce in hiding when I heard a great racket in the house, and the sound of men swearing and mounting horse. There was a loud clattering of hoofs, which shortly died away, and left the world quiet, save for the broil of the stream and the loud screaming of moorbirds. CHAPTER III. I FARE BADLY ABROAD. All this has taken a long time to set down, but there was little time in the acting. Scarce half an hour had passed from my waking by the black fire till I found myself up to the waist in the stream. I made no further delay, but, as soon as the air was quiet, led Saladin out as stilly as I could on the far side of the willows, clambered on his back (for I was too sore in body to mount in any other fashion), and was riding for dear life along the moor road in the contrary direction to that from which I had come on the night before. The horse had plainly been well fed, since, doubtless, the ruffians had marked him for their own plunder. He covered the ground in gallant fashion, driving up jets and splashes of rain water from the pools in the way. Mile after mile was passed with no sound of pursuers; one hill gave place to another; the stream grew wider and more orderly; but still I kept up the breakneck pace, fearing to slacken rein. Fifteen miles were covered, as I judged, before I saw the first light of dawn in the sky, a red streak in a gray desert; and brought my horse down to a trot, thanking God that at last I was beyond danger. I was sore in body, with clammy garments sticking to my skin, aching in back and neck, unslept, well-nigh as miserable as a man could be. But great as was my bodily discomfort, 'twas not one tittle to compare with the sickness of my heart. I had been driven to escape from a hostel by a window like a common thief; compelled to ride,--nay, there was no use in disguising it,--to flee, before a pack of ill-bred villains; I, a gentleman of France, who had ruffled it with the best of them in my fit of prosperity. Again and again I questioned with myself whether I had not done better to die in that place, fighting as long as the breath was in my body. Of this I am sure, at any rate, that it would have been the way more soothing to my pride. I argued the matter with myself, according to the most approved logic, but could come no nearer to the solution. For while I thought the picture of myself dying with my back to the wall the more heroical and gentleman-like, it yet went sore against me to think of myself, with all my skill of the sword and the polite arts, perishing in a desert place at the hand of common cutthroats. 'Twas no fear of death, I give my word of honor; that was a weakness never found in our race. Courage is a virtue I take no credit for; 'tis but a matter of upbringing. But a man loves to make some noise in the earth ere he leaves it, or at least to pass with blowings of the trumpet and some manner of show. To this day I cannot think of any way by which I could have mended my conduct. I can but set it down as a mischance of Providence, which meets all men in their career, but of which no man of spirit cares to think. The sun rose clear, but had scarce shone for an hour, when, as is the way in this land, a fresh deluge of rain came on, and the dawn, which had begun in crimson, ended in a dull level of gray. I had never been used with much foul weather of this sort, so I bore it ill. 'Twas about nine of the morning when I rode into the village of Drumlanrig, a jumble of houses in the lee of a great wood, which runs up to meet the descending moorlands. Some ragged brats, heedless of the weather, played in the street, if one may call it by so fine a name; but for the most part the houses seemed quite deserted. A woman looked incuriously at me; a man who was carrying sacks scarce raised his head to view me; the whole place was like a dwelling of the dead. I have since learned the reason, which was no other than the accursed butchery on which I had quarreled with Quentin Kennedy, and so fallen upon misfortune. The young and manly were all gone; some to the hills for hiding, some to the town prisons, some across the seas to work in the plantations, and some on that long journey from which no man returns. My heart boils within me to this day to think of it--but there! it is long since past, and I have little need to be groaning over it now. There was no inn in the place, but I bought bread from the folk of a little farm-steading at one end of the village street. They would scarce give it to me at first, and 'twas not till they beheld my woebegone plight that their hearts relented. Doubtless they took me for one of the soldiers who had harried them and theirs, little guessing that 'twas all for their sake that I was in such evil case. I did not tarry to ask the road, for Leith was too far distant for the people in that place to know it. Of this much I was sure, that it lay to the northeast, so I took my way in that direction, shaping my course by the sun. There was a little patch of green fields, a clump of trees, and a quiet stream beside the village; but I had scarce ridden half a mile beyond it when once more the moor swallowed me up in its desert of moss and wet heather. I was now doubly dispirited. My short exhilaration of escape had gone, and all the pangs of wounded pride and despair seized upon me, mingled with a sort of horror of the place I had come through. Whenever I saw a turn of hill which brought the _Angel's Ladder_ to my mind, I shivered in spite of myself, and could have found it in my heart to turn and flee. In addition, I would have you remember, I was soaked to the very skin, my eyes weary with lack of sleep, and my legs cramped with much riding. The place in the main was moorland, with steep, desolate hills on my left. On the right to the south I had glimpses of a fairer country, woods and distant fields, seen for an instant through the driving mist. In a trice France was back in my mind, for I could not see an acre of green land without coming nigh to tears. Yet, and perhaps 'twas fortunate for me, such glimpses were all too rare. For the most part, the way was along succession of sloughs and mires, with here a piece of dry, heathy ground, and there an impetuous water coming down from the highlands. Saladin soon fell tired, and, indeed, small wonder, since he had come many miles, and his fare had been of the scantiest. He would put his foot in a bog-hole and stumble so sharply that I would all but lose my seat. Then, poor beast, he would take shame to himself, and pick his way as well as his weary legs would suffer him. 'Twas an evil plight for man and steed, and I knew not which to pity the more. At noon, I came to the skirts of a long hill, whose top was hidden with fog, but which I judged to be high and lonesome. I met a man--the first I had seen since Drumlanrig--and asked him my whereabouts. I learned that the hill was called Queen's Berry, and that in some dozen miles I would strike the high road to Edinburgh. I could get not another word out of him, but must needs content myself with this crumb of knowledge. The road in front was no road, nothing but a heathery moor, with walls of broken stones seaming it like the lines of sewing in an old coat. Gray broken hills came up for a minute, as a stray wind blew the mist aside, only to disappear the next instant in a ruin of cloud. From this place I mark the beginning of the most wretched journey in my memory. Till now I had had some measure of bodily strength to support me. Now it failed, and a cold shivering fit seized on my vitals, and more than once I was like to have fallen from my horse. A great stupidity came over my brain; I could call up no remembrance to cheer me, but must plod on in a horror of darkness. The cause was not far distant--cold, wet, and despair. I tried to swallow some of the rain-soaked bread in my pouch, but my mouth was as dry as a skin. I dismounted to drink at a stream, but the water could hardly trickle down my throat so much did it ache. 'Twas as if I were on the eve of an ague, and in such a place it were like to be the end of me. Had there been a house, I should have craved shelter. But one effect of my sickness was, that I soon strayed woefully from my path, such as it was, and found myself in an evil case with bogs and steep hillsides. I had much to do in keeping Saladin from danger; and had I not felt the obligation to behave like a man, I should have flung the reins on his neck and let him bear himself and his master to destruction. Again and again I drove the wish from my mind--"As well die in a bog-hole or break your neck over a crag as dwine away with ague in the cold heather, as you are like to do," said the tempter. But I steeled my heart, and made a great resolve to keep one thing, though I should lose all else--some shreds of my manhood. Toward evening I grew so ill that I was fain, when we came to a level place, to lay my head on Saladin's neck, and let him stumble forward. My head swam, and my back ached so terribly that I guessed feverishly that someone had stabbed me unawares. The weather cleared just about even, and the light of day flickered out in a watery sunset. 'Twas like the close of my life, I thought, a gray ill day and a poor ending. The notion depressed me miserably. I felt a kinship with that feeble evening light, a kinship begotten of equality in weakness. However, all would soon end; my day must presently have its evening; and then, if all tales were true, and my prayers had any efficacy, I should be in a better place. But when once the night in its blackness had set in, I longed for the light again, however dismal it might be. A ghoulish song, one which I had heard long before, was ever coming to my memory: "La pluye nous a debuez et lavez, Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz; Pies, corbeaux----" With a sort of horror I tried to drive it from my mind. A dreadful heaviness oppressed me. Fears which I am ashamed to set down thronged my brain. The way had grown easier, or I make no doubt my horse had fallen. 'Twas a track we were on, I could tell by the greater freedom with which Saladin stepped. God send, I prayed, that we be near to folk, and that they be kindly; this prayer I said many times to the accompaniment of the whistling of the doleful wind. Every gust pained me. I was the sport of the weather, a broken puppet tossed about by circumstance. Now an answer was sent to me, and that a speedy one. I came of a sudden to a clump of shrubbery beside a wall. Then at a turn of the way a light shone through, as from a broad window among trees. A few steps more and I stumbled on a gate, and turned Saladin's head up a pathway. The rain dripped heavily from the bushes, a branch slashed me in the face, and my weariness grew tenfold with every second. I dropped like a log before the door, scarce looking to see whether the house was great or little; and, ere I could knock or make any call, swooned away dead on the threshold. CHAPTER IV. OF MY COMING TO LINDEAN. When I came to myself I was lying in a pleasant room with a great flood of sunlight drifting through the window. My brain was so confused that it was many minutes ere I could guess in which part of the earth I was laid. My first thought was that I was back in France, and I rejoiced with a great gladness; but as my wits cleared the past came back by degrees, till I had it plain before me, from my setting-out to my fainting at the door. Clearly I was in the house where I had arrived on the even of yesterday. I stirred, and found my weakness gone, and my health, save for some giddiness in the head, quite recovered. This was ever the way of our family, who may be in the last desperation one day and all alive and active the next. Our frames are like the old grape tendrils, slim, but tough as whipcord. At my first movement someone arose from another part of the room and came forward. I looked with curiosity, and found that it was a girl, who brought me some strengthening food-stuff in a bowl. The sunlight smote her full in the face and set her hair all aglow, as if she were the Madonna. I could not see her well, but, as she bent over me, she seemed tall and lithe and pretty to look upon. "How feel you?" she asked, in a strange, soft accent, speaking the pure English, but with a curious turn in her voice. "I trust you are better of your ailment." "Yes, that I am," I said briskly, for I was ashamed to be lying there in good health, "and I would thank you, mademoiselle, for your courtesy to a stranger." "Nay, nay," she cried, "'twas but common humanity. You were sore spent last night, both man and horse. Had you traveled far? But no," she added hastily, seeing me about to plunge into a narrative; "your tale will keep. I cannot have you making yourself ill again. You had better bide still a little longer." And with a deft hand she arranged the pillows and was gone. For some time I lay in a pleasing inaction. 'Twas plain I had fallen among gentlefolk, and I blessed the good fortune which had led me to the place. Here I might find one to hear my tale and help me in my ill-luck. At any rate for the present I was in a good place, and when one has been living in a nightmare, the present has the major part in his thoughts. With this I fell asleep again, for I was still somewhat wearied in body. When I awoke 'twas late afternoon. The evil weather seemed to have gone, for the sun was bright and the sky clear with the mellowness of approaching even. The girl came again and asked me how I fared. "For," said she, "perhaps you wish to rise, if you are stronger. Your clothes were sadly wet and torn when we got you to bed last night, so my father has bade me ask you to accept of another suit till your own may be in better order. See, I have laid them out for you, if you will put them on." And again, ere I could thank her, she was gone. I was surprised and somewhat affected by this crowning kindness, and at the sight of so much care for a stranger whose very name was unknown. I longed to meet at once with the men of the house, so I sprung up and drew the clothes toward me. They were of rough gray cloth, very strong and warm, and fitting a man a little above the ordinary height, of such stature as mine is. It did not take me many minutes to dress, and when once more I found myself arrayed in wholesome garments I felt my spirit returning, and with it came hope, and a kindlier outlook on the world. No one appeared, so I opened my chamber door and found myself at the head of a staircase, which turned steeply down almost from the threshold. A great window illumined it, and many black-framed pictures hung on the walls adown it. At the foot there was a hall, broad and low in the roof, whence some two or three doors opened. Sounds of men in conversation came from one, so I judged it wise to turn there. With much curiosity I lifted the latch and entered unbidden. 'Twas a little room, well furnished, and stocked to the very ceiling with books. A fire burned on the hearth, by which sat two men talking. They rose to their feet as I entered, and I marked them well. One was an elderly man of maybe sixty years, with a bend in his back as if from study. His face was narrow and kindly; blue eyes, like a Northman, a thin, twitching lip, and hair well turned to silver. His companion was scarce less notable--a big, comely man, dressed half in the fashion of a soldier, yet with the air of one little versed in cities. I love to be guessing a man's station from his looks, and ere I had glanced him over, I had set him down in my mind as a country _laird_, as these folk call it. Both greeted me courteously, and then, as I advanced, were silent, as if waiting for me to give some account of myself. "I have come to thank you for your kindness," said I awkwardly, "and to let you know something of myself, for 'tis ill to be harboring folk without names or dwelling." "Tush!" said the younger; "'twere a barbarity to leave anyone without, so travel-worn as you. The Levite in the Scriptures did no worse. But how feel you now? I trust your fatigue is gone." "I thank you a thousand times for your kindness. Would I knew how to repay it!" "Nay, young man," said the elder, "give thanks not to us, but to the Lord who led you to this place. The moors are hard bedding, and right glad I am that you fell in with us here. 'Tis seldom we have a stranger with us, since my brother at Drumlanrig died in the spring o' last year. But I trust you are better, and that Anne has looked after you well. A maid is a blessing to sick folk, if a weariness to the hale." "You speak truly," I said, "a maid is a blessing to the sick. 'Tis sweet to be well tended when you have fared hardly for days. Your kindness has set me at peace with the world again. Yesterday all was black before me, and now, I bethink me, I see a little ray of light." "'Twas a good work," said the old man, "to give you hope and set you right with yourself, if so chance we have done it. What saith the wise man, 'He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls'? But whence have you come? We would hear your story." So I told them the whole tale of my wanderings, from my coming to Kennedy to my fainting fit at their own threshold. At the story of my quarrel they listened eagerly, and I could mark their eyes flashing, and as I spake of my sufferings in the desert I could see sympathy in their faces. When I concluded, neither spake for a little, till the elder man broke silence with: "May God bless and protect you in all your goings! Well I see that you are of the upright in heart. It makes me blithe to have you in my house." The younger said nothing but rose and came to me. "M. de Rohaine," he said, speaking my name badly, "give me your hand. I honor you for a gentleman and a man of feeling." "And I am glad to give it you," said I, and we clasped hands and looked into each other's eyes. Then we stepped back well satisfied. For myself I love to meet a man, and in the great-limbed young fellow before me I found one to my liking. "And now I must tell you of ourselves," said the old man, "for 'tis fitting that a guest should know his entertainers. This is the manse of Lindean, and I am the unworthy man, Ephraim Lambert, whom God hath appointed to watch over his flock in this place. Sore, sore are we troubled by evil men, such as you have known; and my folk, from dwelling in decent cots, have to hide in peat-hags and the caves of the hills. The Lord's hand is heavy upon this country; 'tis a time of trial, a passing through the furnace. God grant we be not found faithless! This home is still left to us, and thankful we should be for it; and I demand that you dwell with us till you have settled on your course. This man," he went on, laying his hand on the shoulder of the younger, "is Master Henry Semple of Clachlands, a fine inheritance, all ridden and rieved by these devils on earth, Captain Keith's dragoons. Henry is of our belief, and a man of such mettle that the Privy Council was fain to send down a quartering of soldiers to bide in his house and devour his substance. 'Twas a thing no decent man could thole, so off he comes here to keep us company till the wind blows by. If you look out of the window over by the side of yon rig of hill, ye'll get a glimmer of Clachlands chimneys, reeking with the smoke of their evil preparations. Ay, ay, lads, burn you your peats and fill up the fire with logs till the vent's choked, but you'll burn brawly yourselves some fine day, when your master gives you your wages." He looked out as he spoke, and into his kindly eyes came a gleam of such anger and decision as quite transfigured his face and made it seem more like that of a troop captain than a peaceful minister. And now Master Semple spoke up: "God send, sir, they suffer for no worse a crime than burning my peats and firewood. I should count myself a sorry fellow if I made any complaint about a little visitation, when the hand of the Lord is smiting so sorely among my fellows. I could take shame to myself every time I eat good food or sleep in a decent bed, to think of better men creeping aneath the lang heather like etherts, or shivering on the cauld hill-side. There'll be no such doings in your land, M. de Rohaine? I've heard tell of folk there like us, dwelling in the hills to escape the abominations of Rome. But perhaps," and he hesitated, "you are not of them?" "No," said I, "I am of your enemies by upbringing; but I dearly love a brave man, where-ever I meet him. 'Tis poor religion, say I, which would lead one to see no virtue in those of another belief. There is one God above all." "Ay, you speak truly," said the old man; "He has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. But I yearn to see you of a better way of thinking. Mayhap I may yet show you your errors?" "I thank you, but I hold by 'every man to his upbringing.' Each man to the creed of his birth. 'Tis a poor thing to be changing on any pretext. For, look you, God, who appointed a man his place of birth, set him his religion with it, and I hold if he but stick to it he is not far in error." I spoke warmly, but in truth I had thought all too little about such things. One who has to fight his way among men and live hardly, has, of necessity, little time for his devotions, and if he but live cleanly, his part is well done. _Mon Dieu!_ Who will gainsay me? "I fear your logic is faulty," said Master Semple, "but it is mighty inhospitable to be arguing with a guest. See, here Anne comes with the lamp, and supper will soon be ready." The girl came in as he spake, bearing a great lamp, which she placed on a high shelf, and set about laying the table for supper. I had noticed her little at first sight, for I was never given to staring at maids; but now, as she moved about, I found myself ever watching her. The ruddy firelight striving with the serene glow of the lamp met and flickered about her face and hair. She was somewhat brown in skin, like a country maiden; but there was no semblance of rusticity in her fair features and deep brown eyes. Her hair hung over her neck as brown as the soft fur of a squirrel, and the fire filled it with fantastic shadows. She was singularly graceful in figure, moving through the room and bending over the table with a grace which 'twas pretty to contemplate. 'Twas strange to note that when her face was averted one might have guessed her to be some village girl or burgher's daughter; but as soon as she had turned her imperial eyes on you she looked like a queen in a play. Her face was a curious one, serious and dignified beyond her years and sex, yet with odd sparkles of gayety dancing in her eyes and the corners of her rosy mouth. Master Semple had set about helping her, and a pretty sight it was to see her reproving and circumventing his clumsiness. 'Twas not hard to see the relation between the two. The love-light shone in his eye whenever he looked toward her; and she, for her part, seemed to thrill at his chance touch. One strange thing I noted, that, whereas in France two young folks could not have gone about the business of setting a supper-table without much laughter and frolic, all was done here as if 'twere some solemn ceremonial. To one who was still sick with the thought of the black uplands he had traversed, of the cold, driving rain and the deadly bogs, the fare in the manse was like the apple to Eve in the garden. 'Twas fine to be eating crisp oaten cakes, and butter fresh from the churn, to be drinking sweet, warm milk--for we lived on the plainest; and, above all, to watch kindly faces around you in place of marauders and low ruffians. The minister said a lengthy grace before and after the meal; and when the table was cleared the servants were called in to evening prayer. Again the sight pleased me--the two maids with their brown country faces seated decently by the door; Anne, half in shadow, sitting demurely with Master Semple not far off, and at the table-head the white hairs of the old man bowed over the Bible. He read I know not what, for I am not so familiar with the Scriptures as I should be, and, moreover, Anne's grave face was a more entrancing study. Then we knelt, and he prayed to God to watch over us in all our ways and bring us at last to his prepared kingdom. Truly, when I arose from my knees, I felt more tempted to be devout than I have any remembrance of before. Then we sat and talked of this and that, and I must tell over all my misfortunes again for mademoiselle's entertainment. She listened with open wonder, and thanked me with her marvelous eyes. Then to bed with a vile-smelling lamp, in a wide, low-ceilinged sleeping room, where the sheets were odorous of bog-myrtle and fresh as snow. Sleep is a goddess easy of conquest when wooed in such a fashion. CHAPTER V. I PLEDGE MY WORD. Of my life at Lindean for the next three days I have no clear remembrance. The weather was dry and languid, as often follows a spell of rain, and the long hills which huddled around the house looked near and imminent. The place was so still that if one shouted it seemed almost a profanation. 'Twas so Sabbath-like that I almost came to dislike it. Indeed, I doubt I should have found it irksome had there not been a brawling stream in the glen, which kept up a continuous dashing and chattering. It seemed the one link between me and that far-away world in which not long agone I had been a dweller. The life, too, was as regular as in the king's court. Sharp at six I was awakened, and ere seven we were assembled for breakfast. Then to prayers, and then to the occupations of the day. The minister would be at his books or down among his people on some errand of mercy. The church had been long closed, for the Privy Council, seeing that Master Lambert was opposed to them, had commanded him to be silent; and yet, mark you, so well was he loved in the place that they durst set no successor in his stead. They tried it once and a second time, but the unhappy man was so taken with fear of the people that he shook the dust of Lindean off his feet, and departed in search of a more hospitable dwelling. But the minister's mouth was shut, save when covertly, and with the greatest peril to himself, he would preach at a meeting of the hill-folk in the recesses of the surrounding uplands. The library I found no bad one--I who in my day have been considered to have something of a taste in books. To be sure there was much wearisome stuff, the work of old divines, and huge commentaries on the Scriptures, written in Latin and plentifully interspersed with Greek and Hebrew. But there was good store of the Classics, both prose and poetry,--_Horace_, who has ever been my favorite, and _Homer_, who, to my thinking, is the finest of the ancients. Here, too, I found a _Plato_, and I swear I read more of him in the manse than I have done since I went through him with M. Clerselier, when we were students together in Paris. The acquaintance which I had formed with Master Semple speedily ripened into a fast friendship. I found it in my heart to like this great serious man--a bumpkin if you will, but a man of courage and kindliness. We were wont to take long walks, always in some lonely part of the country, and we grew more intimate in our conversation than I should ever have dreamed of. He would call me John, and this much I suffered him, to save my name from the barbarity of his pronunciation; while in turn I fell to calling him Henry, as if we had been born and bred together. I found that he loved to hear of my own land and my past life, which, now that I think of it, must have had no little interest to one dwelling in such solitudes. From him I heard of his father, of his brief term at the College of Edinburgh, which he left when the strife in the country grew high, and of his sorrow and anger at the sufferings of those who withstood the mandate of the king. Though I am of the true faith, I think it no shame that my sympathy was all with these rebels, for had I not seen something of their misery myself? But above all, he would speak of _la belle Anne_ as one gentleman will tell another of his love, when he found that I was a willing listener. I could scarce have imagined such warmth of passion to exist in the man as he showed at the very mention of her name. "Oh!" he would cry out, "I would die for her; I would gang to the world's end to pleasure her! I whiles think that I break the first commandment every day of my life, for I canna keep her a moment out of my thoughts, and I fear she's more to me than any earthly thing should be. I think of her at nicht. I see her name in every page of the Book. I thought I was bad when I was over at Clachlands, and had to ride five miles to see her; but now I'm tenfold worse when I'm biding aside her. God grant it be not counted to me for sin!" "Amen to that," said I. 'Tis a fine thing to see the love of a maid; but I hold 'tis a finer to witness the passion of a strong man. Yet, withal, there was something sinister about the house and its folk which to me was the fly in the ointment. They were kindness and charity incarnate, but they were cold and gloomy to boot, lacking any grace or sprightliness in their lives. I find it hard to write this, for their goodness to me was beyond recompense; yet I must set it down, since in some measure it has to do with my story. The old man would look at me at times and sigh, nor did I think it otherwise than fitting, till I found from his words that the sighs were on account of my own spiritual darkness. I have no quarrel with any man for wishing to convert me, but to sigh at one's approach seems a doleful way of setting about it. Then he would break out from his wonted quietness at times to rail at his foes, calling down the wrath of Heaven to blight them. Such a fit was always followed by a painful exhaustion, which left him as weak as a child, and shivering like a leaf. I bitterly cursed the state of a country which could ruin the peace of mind of a man so sweet-tempered by nature, and make him the sport of needless rage. 'Twas pitiful to see him creep off to his devotions after any such outbreak, penitent and ashamed. Even to his daughter he was often cruelly sharp, and would call her to account for the merest trifle. As for Master Henry, what shall I say of him? I grew to love him like my own brother, yet I no more understood him than the Sultan of Turkey. He had strange fits of gloom, begotten, I must suppose, of the harsh country and his many anxieties, in which he was more surly than a bear, speaking little, and that mainly from the Scriptures. I have one case in my memory, when, had I not been in a sense his guest, I had scarce refrained from quarreling. 'Twas in the afternoon of the second day, when we returned weary from one of our long wanderings. Anne tripped forth into the autumn sunlight singing a catch, a simple glee of the village folk. "Peace, Anne," says Master Henry savagely; "it little becomes you to be singing in these days, unless it be a godly psalm. Keep your songs for better times." "What ails you?" I ventured to say. "You praised her this very morning for singing the self-same verses." "And peace, you," he says roughly, as he entered the house; "if the lass hearkened to your accursed creed, I should have stronger words for her." My breath was fairly taken from me at this incredible rudeness. I had my hand on my sword, and had I been in my own land we should soon have settled it. As it was, I shut my lips firmly and choked down my choler. Yet I cannot leave with this ill word of the man. That very night he talked with me so pleasingly, and with so friendly a purport, that I conceived he must have been scarce himself when he so insulted me. Indeed, I discerned two natures in the man--one, hard, saturnine, fanatically religious; the other, genial and kindly, like that of any other gentleman of family. The former I attributed to the accident of his fortune; the second I held to be the truer, and in my thoughts of him still think of it as the only one. But I must pass to the events which befell on the even of the third day, and wrought so momentous a change in the life at Lindean. 'Twas just at the lighting of the lamp, when Anne and the minister and myself sat talking in the little sitting room, that Master Henry entered with a look of great concern on his face, and beckoned the elder man out. "Andrew Gibb is here," said he. "And what may Andrew Gibb be wanting?" asked the old man, glancing up sharply. "He brings nae guid news, I fear, but he'll tell them to none but you; so hasten out, sir, to the back, for he's come far, and he's ill at the waiting." The twain were gone for some time, and in their absence I could hear high voices in the back end of the house, conversing as on some matter of deep import. Anne fetched the lamp from the kitchen and trimmed it with elaborate care, lighting it and setting it in its place. Then, at last, the minister returned alone. I was shocked at the sight of him as he re-entered the room. His face was ashen pale and tightly drawn about the lips. He crept to a chair and leaned his head on the table, speaking no word. Then he burst out of a sudden into a storm of pleading. "O Lord God," he cried, "thou hast aye been good to us, thou has kept us weel, and bielded us frae the wolves who have sought to devour us. Oh, dinna leave us now. It's no' for mysel' or Henry that I care. We're men, and can warstle through ills; but oh, what am I to dae wi' the bit helpless lassie? It's awfu' to have to gang oot among hills and bogs to bide, but it's ten times waur when ye dinna ken what's gaun to come to your bairn. Hear me, O Lord, and grant me my request. I've no' been a' that I micht have been, but oh, if I ha'e tried to serve thee at a', dinna let this danger overwhelm us!" He had scarcely finished, and was still sitting with bowed head, when Master Henry also entered the room. His eyes were filled with an austere frenzy, such as I had learned to look for. "Ay, sir," said he, "'tis a time for us a' to be on our knees. But ha'e courage, and dinna let us spoil the guid cause by our weak mortal complaining. Is't no' better to be hunkering in a moss-hole and communing with the Lord than waxing fat like Jeshurun in carnal corruption? Call on God's name, but no' wi' sighing, but wi' exaltation, for He hath bidden us to a mighty heritage." "Ye speak brave and true, Henry, and I'm wi' your every word. But tell me what's to become o' my bairn? What will Anne dae? I once thought there was something atween you----" He stopped abruptly and searched the face of the young man. At his words Master Semple had started as under a lash. "Oh, my God," he cried, "I had forgotten! Anne, Anne, my dearie, we canna leave ye, and you to be my wife. This is a sore trial of faith, sir, and I misdoubt I canna stand it. To leave ye to the tender mercies o' a' the hell-hounds o' dragoons--oh, I canna dae't!" He clapped his hand to his forehead and walked about the room like a man distraught. And now I put in my word. "What ails you, Henry? Tell me, for I am sore grieved to see you in such perplexity." "Ails me?" he repeated. "Aye, I will tell ye what ails me"; and he drew his chair before me. "Andrew Gibb's come ower frae the Ruthen wi' shure news that a warrant's oot against us baith, for being at the preaching on Callowa' Muir. 'Twas an enemy did it, and now the soldiers are coming at ony moment to lay hands on us and take us off to Embro'. Then there'll be but a short lease of life for us; and unless we take to the hills this very nicht we may be ower late in the morning. I'm wae to tak' sae auld a man as Master Lambert to wet mosses, but there's nothing else to be dune. But what's to become o' Anne? Whae's to see to her, when the dragoons come riding and cursing about the toon? Oh, it's a terrible time, John. Pray to God, if ye never prayed before, to let it pass." Mademoiselle had meantime spoken never a word, but had risen and gone to her father's chair and put her arms around his neck. Her presence seemed to cheer the old man, for he ceased mourning and looked up, while she sat, still as a statue, with her grave, lovely face against his. But Master Semple's grief was pitiful to witness. He rocked himself to and fro in his chair, with his arms folded and a set, white face. Every now and then he would break into a cry like a stricken animal. The elder man was the first to counsel patience. "Stop, Henry," says he; "it's ill-befitting Christian folk to set sic an example. We've a' got our troubles, and if ours are heavier than some, it's no' for us to complain. Think o' the many years o' grace we've had. There's nae doubt the Lord will look after the bairn, for he's a guid Shepherd for the feckless." But now of a sudden a thought seemed to strike Henry, and he was on his feet in a twinkling and by my side. "John," he almost screamed in my ear, "John, I'm going to ask ye for the greatest service that ever man asked. Ye'll no' say me nay?" "Let me hear it," said I. "Will _you_ bide wi' the lass? You're a man o' birth, and I'll swear to it, a man o' honor. I can trust you as I would trust my ain brither. Oh, man, dinna deny me! It's the last hope I ha'e, for if ye refuse, we maun e'en gang to the hills and leave the puir thing alane. Oh, ye canna say me nae! Tell me that ye'll do my asking." I was so thunderstruck at the request that I scarce could think for some minutes. Consider, was it not a strange thing to be asked to stay alone in a wild moorland house with another man's betrothed, for Heaven knew how many weary days? My life and prospects were none so cheerful for me to despise anything, nor so varied that I might pick and choose; but yet 'twas dreary, if no worse, to look forward to any length of time in this desolate place. I was grateful for the house as a shelter by the way, yet I hoped to push on and get rid, as soon as might be, of this accursed land. But was I not bound by all the ties of gratitude to grant my host's request? They had found me fainting at their door, they had taken me in, and treated me to their best; I was bound in common honor to do something to requite their kindness. And let me add, though not often a man subject to any feelings of compassion, whatever natural bent I had this way having been spoiled in the wars, I nevertheless could not refrain from pitying the distress of that strong man before me. I felt tenderly toward him, more so than I had felt to anyone for many a day. All these thoughts raced through my head in the short time while Master Henry stood before me. The look in his eyes, the pained face of the old man, and the sight of Anne, so fair and helpless, fixed my determination. "I am bound to you in gratitude," said I, "and I would seek to repay you. I will bide in the house, if so you will, and be the maid's protector. God grant I may be faithful to my trust, and may he send a speedy end to your exile?" So 'twas all finished in a few minutes, and I was fairly embarked upon the queerest enterprise of my life. For myself I sat dazed and meditative; as for the minister and Master Semple, one-half of the burden seemed to be lifted from their minds. I was amazed at the trusting natures of these men, who had habited all their days with honest folk till they conceived all to be as worthy as themselves. I felt, I will own, a certain shrinking from the responsibility of the task; but the Rubicon had been crossed and there was no retreat. * * * * * Of the rest of that night how shall I tell? There was such a bustling and pother as I had never seen in any house since the day that my brother Denis left Rohaine for the Dutch wars. There was a running and scurrying about, a packing of food, a seeking of clothes, for the fugitives must be off before the first light. Anne went about with a pale, tearful face; and 'twas a matter of no surprise, for to see a father, a man frail and fallen in years, going out to the chill moorlands in the early autumn till no man knew when, is a grievous thing for a young maid. Her lover was scarce in so dire a case, for he was young and strong, and well used to the life of the hills. For him there was hope; for the old man but a shadow. My heart grew as bitter as gall at the thought of the villains who brought it about. How shall I tell of the morning, when the faint light was flushing the limits of the sky, and the first call of a heath-bird broke the silence! 'Twas sad to see these twain with their bundles (the younger carrying the elder's share) creep through the heather toward the hills. They affected a cheerful resolution, assumed to comfort Anne's fears and sorrow; but I could mark beneath it a settled despair. The old man prayed at the threshold, and clasped his daughter many times, kissing her and giving her his blessing. The younger, shaken with great sobs, bade a still more tender farewell, and then started off abruptly to hide his grief. Anne and I, from the door, watched their figures disappear over the crest of the ridge, and then went in, sober and full of angry counsels. * * * * * The soldiers came about an hour before mid-day--a band from Clachlands, disorderly ruffians, commanded by a mealy-faced captain. They were a scurrilous set, their faces bloated with debauchery and their clothes in no very decent order. As one might have expected, they were mightily incensed at finding their bird flown, and fell to cursing each other with great good-will. They poked their low-bred faces into every nook in the house and outbuildings; and when at length they had satisfied themselves that there was no hope from that quarter, they had all the folk of the dwelling out on the green and questioned them one by one. The two serving-lasses were stanch, and stoutly denied all knowledge of their master's whereabouts--which was indeed no more than the truth. One of the two, Jean Crichope by name, when threatened with ill-treatment if she did not speak, replied valiantly that she would twist the neck of the first scoundrelly soldier who dared to lay finger on her. This I doubt not she could have performed, for she was a very daughter of Anak. As for Anne and myself, we answered according to our agreement. They were very curious to know my errand there and my name and birth; and when I bade them keep their scurvy tongues from defiling a gentleman's house, they were none so well pleased. I am not a vain man, and I do not set down the thing I am going to relate as at all redounding to my credit; I merely tell it as an incident in my tale. The captain at last grew angry. He saw that the law was powerless to touch us, and that nought remained for him but to ride to the hills in pursuit of the fugitives. This he seemed to look upon as a hardship, being a man to all appearance more fond of the bottle and pasty than a hill gallop. At any rate he grew wroth, and addressed to Anne a speech so full of gross rudeness that I felt it my duty to interfere. "Look you here, sir," said I, "I am here, in the first place, to see that no scoundrel maltreats this lady. I would ask you, therefore, to be more civil in your talk or to get down and meet me in fair fight. These gentlemen," and I made a mocking bow to his company, "will, I am assured, see an honest encounter." The man flushed under his coarse skin. His reputation was at stake. There was no other course open but to take up my challenge. "You, you bastard Frenchman," he cried, "would you dare to insult a captain of the king's dragoons? I' faith, I will teach you better manners;" and he came at me with his sword in a great heat. The soldiers crowded round like children to see a cock-fight. In an instant we crossed swords and fell to; I with the sun in my eyes and on the lower ground. The combat was not of long duration. In a trice I found that he was a mere child in my hands, a barbarian who used his sword like a quarter-staff, not even putting strength into his thrusts. "Enough!" I cried; "this is mere fooling;" and with a movement which any babe in arms might have checked, twirled his blade from his hands and sent it spinning over the grass. "Follow your sword, and learn two things before you come back--civility to maids and the rudiments of sword-play. Bah! Begone with you!" Some one of his men laughed, and I think they were secretly glad at their tyrant's discomfiture. No more need be said. He picked up his weapon and rode away, vowing vengeance upon me and swearing at every trooper behind him. I cared not a straw for him, for despite his bravado I knew that the fear of death was in his cowardly heart, and that we should be troubled no more by his visitations. CHAPTER VI. IDLE DAYS. I have heard it said by wise folk in France that the autumn is of all seasons of the year the most trying to the health of a soldier; since, for one accustomed to the heat of action and the fire and fury of swift encounter, the decay of summer, the moist, rotting air, and the first chill preludes of winter are hard to stand. This may be true of our own autumn days, but in the north country 'twas otherwise. For there the weather was as sharp and clear as spring, and the only signs of the season were the red leaves and the brown desolate moors. Lindean was built on the slope of the hills, with the steeps behind it, and a vista of level land to the front: so one could watch from the window the red woods of the low country, and see the stream, turgid with past rains, tearing through the meadows. The sun rose in the morning in a blaze of gold and crimson; the days were temperately warm, the afternoons bright, and the evening another procession of colors. 'Twas all so beautiful that I found it hard to keep my thoughts at all on the wanderers in the hills and to think of the house as under a dark shadow. And if 'twas hard to do this, 'twas still harder to look upon Anne as a mourning daughter. For the first few days she had been pale and silent, going about her household duties as was her wont, speaking rarely, and then but to call me to meals. But now the pain of the departure seemed to have gone, and though still quiet as ever, there was no melancholy in her air; but with a certain cheerful gravity she passed in and out in my sight. At first I had had many plans to console her; judge then of my delight to find them needless. She was a brave maid, I thought, and little like the common, who could see the folly of sighing, and set herself to hope and work as best she could. The days passed easily enough for me, for I could take Saladin and ride through the countryside, keeping always far from Clachlands; or the books in the house would stand me in good stead for entertainment. With the evenings 'twas different. When the lamp was lit, and the fire burned, 'twas hard to find some method to make the hours go by. I am not a man easily moved, as I have said; and yet I took shame to myself to think of the minister and Master Henry in the cold bogs, and Anne and myself before a great blaze. Again and again I could have kicked the logs off to ease my conscience, and was only held back by respect for the girl. But, of a surety, if she had but given me the word, I would have been content to sit in the fireless room and enjoy the approval of my heart. She played no chess; indeed, I do not believe there was a board in the house; nor was there any other sport wherewith to beguile the long evenings. Reading she cared little for, and but for her embroidery work I know not what she would have set her hand to. So, as she worked with her threads I tried to enliven the time with some account of my adventures in past days, and some of the old gallant tales with which I was familiar. She heard me gladly, listening as no comrade by the tavern-board ever listened; and though, for the sake of decency, I was obliged to leave out many of the more diverting, yet I flatter myself I won her interest and made the time less dreary. I ranged over all my own experience and the memory of those tales which I had heard from others--and those who know anything of me know that that is not small. I told her of exploits in the Indies and Spain, in Germany and the Low Countries, and in far Muscovy, and 'twas no little pleasure to see her eager eyes dance and sparkle at a jest, or grow sad at a sorrowful episode. _Ma vie!_ She had wonderful eyes--the most wonderful I have ever seen. They were gray in the morning and brown at noonday; now sparkling, but for the most part fixedly grave and serene. 'Twas for such eyes, I fancy, that men have done all the temerarious deeds concerning womankind which history records. It must not be supposed that our life was a lively one, or aught approaching gayety. The talking fell mostly to my lot, for she had a great habit of silence, acquired from her lonely dwelling-place. Yet I moved her more than once to talk about herself. I heard of her mother, a distant cousin of Master Semple's father; of her death when Anne was but a child of seven; and of the solitary years since, spent in study under her father's direction, in household work, or in acts of mercy to the poor. She spoke of her father often, and always in such a way that I could judge of a great affection between them. Of her lover I never heard, and, now that I think the matter over, 'twas no more than fitting. Once, indeed, I stumbled upon his name by chance in the course of talk, but as she blushed and started, I vowed to fight shy of it ever after. As we knew well before, no message from the hills could be sent, since the moors were watched as closely as the gateway of a prison. This added to the unpleasantness of the position of each of us. In Anne's case there was the harassing doubt about the safety of her kinsfolk, that sickening anxiety which saps the courage even of strong men. Also, it rendered my duties ten times harder. For, had there been any communication between the father or the lover and the maid, I should have felt less like a St. Anthony in the desert. As it was, I had to fight with a terrible sense of responsibility and unlimited power for evil, and God knows how hard that is for any Christian to strive with. 'Twould have been no very hard thing to shut myself in a room, or bide outside all day, and never utter a word to Anne save only the most necessary; but I was touched by the girl's loneliness and sorrows, and, moreover, I conceived it to be a strange way of executing a duty, to flee from it altogether. I was there to watch over her, and I swore by the Holy Mother to keep the very letter of my oath. And so the days dragged by till September was all but gone. I have always loved the sky and the vicissitudes of weather, and to this hour the impression of these autumn evenings is clear fixed on my mind. Strangely enough for that north country, they were not cold, but mild, with a sort of acrid mildness; a late summer, with the rigors of winter underlying, like a silken glove over a steel gauntlet. One such afternoon I remember, when Anne sat busy at some needlework on the low bench by the door, and I came and joined her. She had wonderful grace of body, and 'twas a pleasure to watch every movement of her arm as she stitched. I sat silently regarding the landscape, the woods streaking the bare fields, the thin outline of hills beyond, the smoke rising from Clachlands' chimneys, and above all, the sun firing the great pool in the river, and flaming among clouds in the west. Something of the spirit of the place seemed to have entered into the girl, for she laid aside her needlework after a while and gazed with brimming eyes on the scene. So we sat, feasting our eyes on the picture, each thinking strange thoughts, I doubt not. By and by she spoke. "Is France, that you love so well, more beautiful than this, M. de Rohaine?" she asked timidly. "Ay, more beautiful, but not like this; no, not like this." "And what is it like? I have never seen any place other than this." "Oh, how shall I tell of it?" I cried. "Tis more fair than words. We have no rough hills like these, nor torrents like the Lin there; but there is a great broad stream by Rohaine, as smooth as a mill-pond, where you can row in the evenings, and hear the lads and lasses singing love songs. Then there are great quiet meadows, where the kine browse, where the air is so still that one can sleep at a thought. There are woods, too--ah! such woods--stretching up hill, and down dale, as green as spring can make them, with long avenues where men may ride; and, perhaps, at the heart of all, some old chateau, all hung with vines and creepers, where the peaches ripen on the walls and the fountain plashes all the summer's day. Bah! I can hardly bear to think on it, 'tis so dear and home-like;" and I turned away suddenly, for I felt my voice catch in my throat. "What hills are yonder?" I asked abruptly, to hide my feelings. Anne looked up. "The hills beyond the little green ridge you mean?" she says. "That will be over by Eskdalemuir and the top of the Ettrick Water. I have heard my father speak often of them, for they say that many of the godly find shelter there." "Many of the godly!" I turned round sharply, though what there was in the phrase to cause wonder I cannot see. She spoke but as she had heard the men of her house speak; yet the words fell strangely on my ears, for by a curious process of thinking I had already begun to separate the girl from the rest of the folk in the place, and look on her as something nearer in sympathy to myself. Faugh? that is not the way to put it. I mean that she had listened so much to my tales that I had all but come to look upon her as a countrywoman of mine. "Are you dull here, Anne?" I asked, for I had come to use the familiar name, and she in turn would sometimes call me Jean--and very prettily it sat on her tongue. "Do you never wish to go elsewhere and see the world?" "Nay," she said. "I had scarce thought about the world at all. Tis a place I have little to do with, and I am content to dwell here forever, if it be God's will. But I should love to see your France, that you speak of." This seemed truly a desire for gratifying which there was little chance; so I changed the subject of our converse, and asked her if she ever sang. "Ay, I have learned to sing two or three songs, old ballads of the countryside, for though my father like it little, Henry takes a pleasure in hearing them. I will sing you one if you wish it." And when I bade her do so, she laid down her work, which she had taken up again, and broke into a curious plaintive melody. I cannot describe it. 'Twould be as easy to describe the singing of the wind in the tree-tops. It minded me, I cannot tell how, of a mountain burn, falling into pools and rippling over little shoals of gravel. Now 'twas full and strong, and now 'twas so eerie and wild that it was more like a curlew's note than any human thing. The story was about a knight who sailed to Norway on some king's errand and never returned, and of his lady who waited long days at home, weeping for him who should never come back to her. I did not understand it fully, for 'twas in an old patois of the country, but I could feel its beauty. When she had finished the tears stood in my eyes, and I thought of the friends I had left, whom I might see no more. But when I looked at her, to my amazement, there was no sign of feeling in her face. "'Tis a song I have sung often," she said, "but I do not like it. 'Tis no better than the ringing of a bell at a funeral." "Then," said I, wishing to make her cheerful, "I will sing you a gay song of my own country. The folk dance to it on the Sunday nights at Rohaine, when blind René plays the fiddle." So I broke into the "May song," with its lilting refrain. Anne listened intently, her face full of pleasure, and at the second verse she began to beat the tune with her foot. She, poor thing, had never danced, had never felt the ecstasy of motion; but since all mankind is alike in nature, her blood stirred at the tune. So I sang her another chanson, this time an old love ballad, and then again a war song. But by this time the darkness was growing around us, so we must needs re-enter the house; and as I followed I could hear her humming the choruses with a curious delight. "So ho, Mistress Anne," thought I, "you are not the little country mouse that I had thought you, but as full of spirit as a caged hawk. Faith, the town would make a brave lass of you, were you but there!" From this hour I may date the beginning of the better understanding--I might almost call it friendship--between the two of us. She had been bred among moorland solitudes, and her sole companions had been solemn praying folk; yet, to my wonder, I found in her a nature loving gayety and mirth, songs and bright colors--a grace which her grave deportment did but the more set off. So she came soon to look at me with a kindly face, doing little acts of kindness every now and then in some way or other, which I took to be the return which she desired to make for my clumsy efforts to please her. CHAPTER VII. A DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS. The days at Lindean dragged past, and the last traces of summer began to disappear from the face of the hills. The bent grew browner, the trees more ragged, and the torrent below more turgid and boisterous. Yet no word came from the hills, and, sooth to tell, we almost ceased to look for it. 'Twas not that we had forgotten the minister and Master Semple in their hiding, for the thought of them was often at hand to sadden me, and Anne, I must suppose, had many anxious meditations; but our life at Lindean was so peaceful and removed from any hint of violence that danger did not come before our minds in terrible colors. When the rain beat at night on the window, and the wind howled round the house, then our hearts would smite us for living in comfort when our friends were suffering the furious weather. But when the glorious sun-lit morning had come, and we looked over the landscape, scarce free from the magic of dawn, then we counted it no hardship to be on the hills. And rain came so seldom during that time, and the sun so often, that the rigor of the hill-life did not appal us. This may account for the way in which the exiles slipped from our memories for the greater part of the day. For myself I say nothing--'twas but natural; but from Anne I must confess that I expected a greater show of sorrow. To look at her you would say that she was burdened with an old grief, so serious was her face; but when she would talk, then you might see how little her heart was taken up with the troubles of her house and the care for her father and lover. The girl to me was a puzzle, which I gave up all attempting to solve. When I had first come to Lindean, lo! she was demure and full of filial affection, and tender to her lover. Now, when I expected to find her sorrowful and tearful at all times, I found her quiet indeed, but instinct with a passion for beauty and pleasure and all the joys of life. Yet ever and anon she would take a fit of solemnity, and muse with her chin poised on her hand; and I doubt not that at such times she was thinking of her father and her lover in their manifold perils. One day the rain came again and made the turf plashy and sodden, and set the Lin roaring in his gorge. I had beguiled the morning by showing Anne the steps of dancing, and she had proved herself a ready pupil. To pleasure her I danced the sword-dance, which can only be done by those who have great dexterity of motion; and I think I may say that I acquitted myself well. The girl stood by in wonderment, looking at me with a pleasing mixture of surprise and delight. She had begun to look strangely at me of late. Every now and then when I lifted my head I would find her great eyes resting on me, and at my first glance she would withdraw them. They were strange eyes--a mingling of the fawn and the tiger. As I have said, in a little time she had acquired some considerable skill, and moved as gracefully as though she had learned it from her childhood, while I whistled bars of an old dancing tune. She had a little maid who attended her,--Eff she called her,--and the girl stood by to watch while Anne did my bidding. Then when we were all wearied of the sport, I fell to thinking of some other play, and could find none. 'Twas as dull as ditch-water, till the child Eff, by a good chance, spoke of fishing. She could get her father's rod and hooks, she said, for he never used them now; and I might try my luck in the Lin Water. There were good trout there, it seemed, and the choice time of taking them was in the autumn floods. Now I have ever been something of a fisherman, for many an hour have I spent by the big fish pond at Rohaine. So I got the tackle of Eff's father--rude enough it was in all conscience--and in the early afternoon I set out to the sport. Below the house and beyond the wood the Lin foams in a deep gully, falling over horrid cascades into great churning pools, or diving beneath the narrow rocks. But above the ravine there is a sudden change. The stream flows equably through a flat moor in sedgy deeps and bright shimmering streams. Thither I purposed to go, for I am no lover of the awesome black caldrons, which call to a man's mind visions of drowned bodies and pits which have no ending. On the moor with the wind blowing about one 'twas a pleasure to be, but faugh! no multitude of fish was worth an hour in that dismal chasm. I had not great success, and little wonder, for my leisurely ways were ill suited for the alert mountain fish. My time was spent in meditating on many things, but most of all on the strange case in which I found myself. For in truth my position was an odd one as ever man was in. Here was I bound by my word of honor to bide in the house and protect its inmates till that indefinite time when its master might return. There was no fear of money, for the minister had come of a good stock, and had more gear than is usual with one of his class. But 'twas an evil thing to look forward to--to spend my days in a lonely manse, and wait the end of a persecution which showed no signs of ending. But the mere discomfort was nothing had it not been for two delicate scruples which came to torment me. _Imprimis_, 'twas more than any man of honor could do to dwell in warmth and plenty, while his entertainers were languishing for lack of food or shivering with cold in the hags and holes of the mountains. I am a man tolerably hardened by war and travel, yet I could never abide to lie in bed on a stormy night or to eat my food of a sharp morning when I thought of the old man dying, it might be, unsheltered and forlorn. _Item_, there was the matter of the girl; and I cannot tell how heavy the task had come to lie on my shoulders. I had taken the trust of one whom I thought to be a staid country lass, and lo! I had found her as full of human passion as any lady of the court. 'Twas like some groom who offers to break a horse, and finds it too stiff in temper. I had striven to do my duty toward her and make her life less wearisome, and I had succeeded all too well. For I marked that in the days just past she had come to regard me with eyes too kindly by half. When I caught her unawares, and saw the curious look on her face, I could have bitten my tongue out with regret, for I saw the chasm to whose brink I had led her. I will take my oath there was no thought of guile in the maid, for she was as innocent as a child; but 'tis such who are oftentimes the very devil, since their inexperience adds an edge to their folly. Thinking such thoughts, I fished up the Lin Water till the afternoon was all but past, and the sunset began to glimmer in the bog-pools. My mind was a whirl of emotions, and no plan or order could I conceive. But--and this one thing I have often marked, that the weather curiously affected my temper--the soft evening light brought with it a calm which eased me in the conflict. 'Tis hard to wrangle in spirit when the west is a flare of crimson, and later when each blue hill stands out sharp against the yellow sky. My way led through the great pine wood above the Lin gorge, thence over a short spit of heath to the hill path and the ordered shrubbery of the manse. 'Twas fine to see the tree stems stand out red against the gathering darkness, while their thick ever-green heads were blazing like flambeaux. A startled owl drove past, wavering among the trunks. The air was so still that the light and color seemed all but audible, and indeed the distant rumble of the falling stream seemed the interpretation to the ears of the vision which the eyes beheld. I love such sights, and 'tis rarely enough that we see them in France, for it takes a stormy upland country to show to its full the sinking of the sun. The heath with its dead heather, when I came on it, seemed alight, as happens in March, so I have heard, when the shepherds burn the mountain grass. But in the manse garden was the choicest sight, for there the fading light seemed drawn to a point and blazing on the low bushes and coarse lawns. Each window in the house glowed like a jewel, but--mark the wonder--when I gazed over the country there was no view to be seen, but only a slowly creeping darkness. 'Twas an eerie sight, and beautiful beyond telling. It awed me, and yet filled me with a great desire to see it to the full. So I did not enter the house, but turned my steps round by the back to gain the higher ground, for the manse was built on a slope. I loitered past the side window, and gained the place I had chosen; but I did not bide long, for soon the show was gone, and only a chill autumn dusk left behind. So I made to enter the house, when I noticed a light as of firelight dancing in the back window. Now, I had never been in that room before, so what must I do in my idle curiosity but go peeping there. The room was wide and unfurnished, with a fire blazing on the hearth. But what held me amazed were the figures on the floor. Anne, with her skirts kilted, stood erect and agile as if about to dance. The girl Eff sat by the fireplace, humming some light measure. The ruddy light bathed the floor and walls and made all distinct as noonday. 'Twas as I had guessed. In a trice her feet began to move, and soon she was in the middle of the first dance I had taught her, while _la petite_ Eff sang the tune in her clear, low voice. I have seen many dancers, great ladies and country dames, village lasses and burgher wives, gypsies and wantons, but, by my honor, I never saw one dance like Anne. Her body moved as if by one impulse with her feet. Now she would bend like a willow, and now whirl like the leaves of the wood in an autumn gale. She was dressed, as was her wont, in sober brown, but sackcloth could not have concealed the grace of her form. The firelight danced and leaped in her hair, for her face was turned from me; and 'twas fine to see the snow of her neck islanded among the waves of brown tresses. With a sudden swift dart she turned her face to the window, and had I not been well screened by the shadows, I fear I should have been observed. But such a sight as her face I never hope to see again. The solemnity was gone, and 'twas all radiant with youth and life. Her eyes shone like twin stars, the even brown of her cheeks was flushed with firelight, and her throat and bosom heaved with the excitement of the dance. Then she stopped exhausted, smiled on Eff, who sat like a cinder-witch all the while, and smoothed the hair from her brow. "Have I done it well?" she asked. "As weel as he did it himsel'," the child answered. "Eh, but you twae would make a bonny pair." I turned away abruptly and crept back to the garden path, my heart sinking within me, and a feeling of guilt in my soul. I was angry at myself for eavesdropping, angry and ashamed. But a great dread came on me as I thought of the girl, this firebrand, who had been trusted to my keeping. Lackaday for the peace of mind of a man who has to see to a maid who could dance in this fashion, with her father and lover in the cold hills! And always I called to mind that I had been her teacher, and that my lessons, begun as a harmless sport to pass the time, were like to breed an overmastering passion. _Mon Dieu!_ I was like the man in the Eastern tale who had raised a spirit which he was powerless to control. And just then, as if to point my meditations, I heard the cry of a plover from the moor behind, and a plaff of the chill night-wind blew in my face. CHAPTER VIII. HOW I SET THE SIGNAL. When I set out to write this history in the English tongue, that none of my own house might read it, I did not know the hard task that lay before me. For if I were writing it in my own language, I could tell the niceties of my feelings in a way which is impossible for me in any other. And, indeed, to make my conduct intelligible, I should forthwith fall to telling each shade of motive and impulse which came to harass my mind. But I am little skilled in this work, so I must needs recount only the landmarks of my life, or I should never reach the end. I slept ill that night, and at earliest daylight was awake and dressing. The full gravity of the case was open to me now, and you may guess that my mind was no easy one. I went down to the sitting room, where the remains of the last night's supper still lay on the table. The white morning light made all things clear and obtrusive, and I remember wishing that the lamp was lit again and the shutters closed. But in a trice all meditations were cast to the winds, for I heard the door at the back of the house flung violently open and the sound of a man's feet on the kitchen floor. I knew that I was the only one awake in the house, so with much haste I passed out of the room to ascertain who the visitor might be. In the center of the back room stood a great, swart man, shaking the rain from his clothes and hair, and waiting like one about to give some message. When he saw me he took a step forward, scanned me closely, and then waited my question. "Who in the devil's name are you?" I asked angrily, for I was half amazed and half startled by his sudden advent. "In the Lord's name I am Andrew Gibb," he responded solemnly. "And what's your errand?" I asked further. "Bide a wee and you'll hear. You'll be the foreigner whae stops at the manse the noo?" "Go on," I said shortly. "Thae twae sants, Maister Lambert and Maister Semple, 'ill ha'e made some kind o' covenant wi' you? At ony rate, hear my news and dae your best. Their hidy-hole at the heid o' the Stark Water's been betrayed, and unless they get warning it'll be little you'll hear mair o' them. I've aye been their freend, so I cam' here to do my pairt by them." "Are you one of the hill-men?" "Na, na! God forbid! I'm a douce, quiet-leevin' man, and I'd see the Kirk rummle aboot their lugs ere I'd stir my shanks frae my ain fireside. But I'm behauden to the minister for the life o' my bairn, whilk is ower lang a story for ye to hear; and to help him I would rin frae Maidenkirk to Berwick. So I've aye made it my wark to pick up ony word o' scaith that was comin' to him, and that's why I'm here the day. Ye've heard my news richt, ye're shure?" "I've heard your news. Will you take any food before you leave?" "Na; I maun be off to be back in time for the kye." "Well, good-day to you, Andrew Gibb," I said, and in a minute the man was gone. Now, here I must tell what I omitted to tell in a former place--that when the exiles took to the hills they bade me, if I heard any word of danger to their hiding-place, to go by a certain path, which they pointed out, to a certain place, and there overturn a little cairn of stones. This was to be a signal to them for instant movement. I knew nothing of the place of their retreat, and for this reason could swear on my oath with an easy conscience; but this scrap of enlightenment I had, a scrap of momentous import for both life and death. I turned back to the parlor in a fine confusion of mind. By some means or other the task which was now before me had come to seem singularly disagreeable. The thought of my entertainers--I am ashamed to write it--was a bitter thought. I had acquired a reasonless dislike to them. What cause had they, I asked, to be crouching in hill-caves and first getting honest gentlemen into delicate and difficult positions, and then troubling them with dangerous errands. Then there was the constant vision of the maid to vex me. This was the sorest point of all. For, though I blush to own it, the sight of her was not altogether unpleasing to me; nay, to put it positively, I had come almost to feel an affection for her. She was so white and red and golden, all light and gravity, with the shape of a princess, the mien of a goddess, and, for all I knew the heart of a dancing-girl. She carried with her the air of comfort and gayety, and the very thought of her made me shrink from the dark moors and ill-boding errand as from the leprosy. There is in every man a latent will, apart altogether from that which he uses in common life, which is apt at times to assert itself when he least expects it. Such was my honor, for lo! I found myself compelled by an inexorable force to set about the performance of my duty. I take no credit for it, since I was only half willing, my grosser inclination being all against it. But something bade me do it, calling me poltroon, coward, traitor, if I refused; so ere I left the kitchen I had come to a fixed decision. To my wonder, at the staircase foot I met Anne, dressed, but with her hair all in disorder. I stood booted and cloaked and equipped for the journey, and at the sight of me her face filled with surprise. "Where away so early, John?" says she. "Where away so early, Mistress Anne?" said I. "Ah, I slept ill, and came down to get the morning air." I noted that her eyes were dull and restless, and I do believe that the poor maid had had a sorry night of it. A sharp fear at my heart told me the cause. "Anne," I said sullenly, "I am going on a hard errand, and I entreat you to keep out of harm's way till I return." "And what is your errand, pray?" she asked. "Nothing less than to save the lives of your father and your lover. I have had word from a secret source of a great danger which overhangs them, and by God's help I would remove it." At my word a light, half angry and half pathetic, came to her eyes. It passed like a sungleam, and in its place was left an expression of cold distaste. "Then God prosper you," she said, in a formal tone, and with a whisk of her skirts she was gone. I strode out into the open with my heart the battlefield of a myriad contending passions. I reached the hill, overturned the cairn, and set out on my homeward way, hardly giving but one thought to the purport of my errand or the two fugitives whom it was my mission to save, so filled was my mind with my own trouble. The road home was long and arduous; and more, I had to creep often like an adder lest I should be spied and traced by some chance dragoon. The weather was dull and cold, and a slight snow, the first token of winter, sprinkled the moor. The heather was wet, the long rushes dripped and shivered, and in the little trenches the peat-water lay black as ink. A smell of damp hung over all things, an odor of rotten leaves and soaked earth. The heavy mist rolled in volumes close to the ground and choked me as I bent low. Every little while I stumbled into a bog, and foully bedaubed my clothes. I think that I must have strayed a little from the straight path, for I took near twice as long to return as to go. A swollen stream delayed me, for I had to traverse its bank for a mile ere I could cross. In truth, I cannot put down on paper my full loathing of the place. I had hated the moors on my first day's journey, but now I hated them with a tenfold hatred. For each whiff of sodden air, each spit of chill rain brought back to my mind all the difficulty of my present state. Then I had always the vision of Anne sitting at home by the fire, warm, clean, and dainty, the very counter of the foul morasses in which I labored, and where the men I had striven to rescue were thought to lie hidden. My loathing was so great that I could scarce find it in my heart to travel the weary miles to the manse, every step being taken solely on the fear of remaining behind. To make it worse, there would come to vex me old airs of France, airs of childhood and my adventurous youth, fraught for me with memories of gay nights and brave friends. I own that I could have wept to think of them and find myself all the while in this inhospitable desert. 'Twould be near mid-day, I think, when I came to the manse door, glad that my journey was ended. Anne let me in, and in a moment all was changed. The fire crackled in the room, and the light danced on the great volumes on the shelves. The gray winter was shut out and a tranquil summer reigned within. Anne, like a Lent lily, so fair was she, sat sewing by the hearth. "You are returned," she said coldly. "I am returned," I said severely, for her callousness to the danger of her father was awful to witness, though in my heart of hearts I could not have wished it otherwise. As she sat there, with her white arms moving athwart her lap, and her hair tossed over her shoulders, I could have clasped her to my heart. Nay, I had almost done so, had I not gripped my chair, and sat with pale face and dazed eyes till the fit had passed. I have told you ere now how my feelings toward Anne had changed from interest to something not unlike a passionate love. It had been a thing of secret growth, and I scarcely knew it till I found myself in the midst of it. I tried to smother it hourly, when my better nature was in the ascendant, and hourly I was overthrown in the contest I fought against terrible odds. 'Twas not hard to see from her longing eyes and timorous conduct that to her I was the greater half of the world. I had but to call to her and she would come. And yet--God knows how I stifled that cry. At length I rose and strode out into the garden to cool my burning head. The sleet was even grateful to me, and I bared my brow till hair and skin were wet with the rain. Down by the rows of birch trees I walked, past the rough ground where the pot-herbs were grown, till I came to the shady green lawn. Up and down it I passed, striving hard with my honor and my love, fighting that battle which all must fight some time or other in their lives and be victorious or vanquished forever. Suddenly, to my wonder, I saw a face looking at me from beneath a tuft of elderberry. I drew back, looked again, and at the second glance I recognized it. 'Twas the face of Master Henry Temple of Clachlands--and the hills. 'Twas liker the face of a wild goat than a man. The thin features stood out so strongly that all the rest seemed to fall back from them. The long, ragged growth of hair on lip and chin, and the dirt on his cheeks, made him unlike my friend of the past. But the memorable change was in his eyes, which glowed large and lustrous, with the whites greatly extended, and all tinged with a yellow hue. Fear and privation had done their work, and before me stood their finished product. "Good Heavens, Henry! What brings you here, and how have you fared?" He stared at me without replying, which I noted as curious. "Where is Anne?" he asked huskily. "She is in the house, well and unscathed. Shall I call her to you?" "Nay, for God's sake, nay! I am no pretty sight for a young maid. You say she is well?" "Ay, very well. But how is the minister?" "Alas, he is all but gone. The chill has entered his bones, and even now he may be passing. The child will soon be an orphan." "And you?" "Oh, I am no worse than the others on whom the Lord's hand is laid. There is a ringing in my head and a pain at my heart, but I am still hale and fit to testify to the truth. Oh, man, 'twill ill befa' those in the day of judgment who eat the bread of idleness and dwell in peace in thae weary times." "Come into the house; or nay, I will fetch you food and clothing." "Nay, bring nought for me. I would rather live in rags and sup on a crust than be habited in purple and fare sumptuously. I ask ye but one thing: let the maid walk in the garden that I may see her. And, oh, man! I thank ye for your kindness to me and mine. I pray the Lord ilka night to think on ye here." I could not trust myself to speak. "I will do as you wish," I said, and without another word set off sharply for the house. I entered the sitting room wearily, and flung myself on a chair. Anne sat sewing as before. She started as I entered, and I saw the color rise to her cheeks and brow. "You are pale, my dear," I said; "the day is none so bad, and 'twould do you no ill to walk round the garden to the gate. I have just been there, and, would you believe it, the grass is still wondrous green." She rose demurely and obediently as if my word were the law of her life. "Pray bring me a sprig of ivy from the gate-side," I cried after her, laughing, "to show me that you have been there." I sat and kicked my heels till her return in a miserable state of impatience. I could not have refused to let the man see his own betrothed, but God only knew what desperate act he might do. He might spring out and clasp her in his arms; she, I knew, had not a shred of affection left for him; she would be cold and resentful; he would suspect, and then--what an end there might be to it all! I longed to hear the sound of her returning footsteps. She came in soon, and sat down in her wonted chair by the fire. "There's your ivy, John," said she; "'tis raw and chilly in the garden, and I love the fireside better." "'Tis well," I thought, "she has not seen Master Semple." Now I could not suffer him to depart without meeting him again, partly out of pity for the man, partly to assure my own mind that no harm would come of it. So I feigned an errand and went out. I found him, as I guessed, still in the elder-bush, a tenfold stranger sight than before. His eyes burned uncannily. His thin cheeks seemed almost transparent with the tension of the bones, and he chewed his lips unceasingly. At the sight of me he came out and stood before me, as wild a figure as I ever hope to see--clothes in tatters, hair unkempt, and skin all foul with the dirt of the moors. His back was bowed, and his knees seemed to have lost all strength, for they tottered against one another. I prayed that his sufferings might not have turned him mad. At the first word he spake I was convinced of it. "I have seen her, I have seen her!" he cried. "She is more fair than a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Oh, I have dreamed of her by night among the hills, and seen her face close to me and tried to catch it, but 'twas gone. Oh, man, John, get down on your knees, and pray to God to make you worthy to have the charge of such a treasure. Had the Lord not foreordained that she should be mine, I should ne'er have lifted up my eyes to her, for who am I?" "For God's sake, man," I broke in, "tell me where you are going, and be about it quick, for you may be in instant danger." "Ay," says he, "you are right. I must be gone. I have seen enough. I maun away to the deserts and caves of the rocks, and it may be lang, lang ere I come back. But my love winna forget me. Na, na; the Lord hath appointed unto me that I shall sit at his right hand on the last, the great day, and she shall be by my side. For oh, she is the only one of her mother; she is the choice one of her that bare her; the daughters saw her and blessed her; yea, the queens and concubines, and they praised her." And with some like gibberish from the Scriptures he disappeared through the bushes, and next minute I saw him running along the moor toward the hills. These were no love-sick ravings, but the wild cries of a madman, one whose reason had gone forever. I walked back slowly to the house. It seemed almost profane to think of Anne, so wholesome and sane, in the same thought as this foul idiot; and yet this man had been once as whole in mind and body as myself; he had suffered in a valiant cause; and I was bound to him by the strongest of all bonds--my plighted word. I groaned inwardly as I shut the house-door behind me and entered into the arena of my struggles. CHAPTER IX. I COMMUNE WITH MYSELF. Twas late afternoon when I re-entered, and ere supper was past 'twas time to retire for the night. The tension of these hours I still look back on as something altogether dreadful. Anne was quiet and gentle, unconscious of what had happened, yet with the fire of passion, I knew too well, burning in her heart. I was ill, restless, and abrupt, scarce able to speak lest I should betray my thoughts and show the war that raged in my breast. I made some excuse for retiring early, bidding her goodnight with as nonchalant an air as I could muster. The door of my bedroom I locked behind me, and I was alone in the darkened room to fight out my battles with myself. I ask you if you can conceive any gentleman and man of honor in a more hazardous case. Whenever I tried to think on it, a mist came over my brain, and I could get little but unmeaning fantasies. I must either go or stay. So much was clear. If I stayed--well, 'twas the Devil's own work that was cut for me. There was no sign of the violence of the persecution abating. It might be many months, nay years, before the minister and Master Semple might return. If they came back no more, and I had sure tidings of their death, then indeed I might marry Anne. But 'twas so hazardous an uncertainty that I rejected it at once. No man could dwell with one whom he loved heart and soul so long a time on such uncertain chances and yet keep his honor. Had the maid been dull and passive, or had I been sluggish in blood, then there might have been hope. But we were both quick as the summer's lightning. If they came back, was not the fate of the girl more hard than words could tell? The minister in all likelihood would already have gone the way of all the earth; and she, poor lass, would be left to the care of a madman for whom she had no spark of liking. I pictured her melancholy future. Her pure body subject to the embraces of a loathsome fanatic, her delicate love of the joys of life all subdued to his harsh creed. Oh, God! I swore that I could not endure it. Her face, so rounded and lovely, would grow pinched and white, her eyes would lose all their luster, her hair would not cluster lovingly about her neck, her lithe grace would be gone, her footsteps would be heavy and sad. He would rave his unmeaning gibberish in her ears, would ill-treat her, it might be; in any case would be a perpetual sorrow to her heart. "Oh, Anne," I cried, "though I be damned for it, I will save you from this!" If I left the place at once and forever, then indeed my honor would be kept, but yet not all; for my plighted word--where would it be? I had sworn that come what may I should stand by the maid and protect her against what evil might come to the house. Now I was thinking of fleeing from my post like a coward, and all because the girl's eyes were too bright for my weak resolution. When her lover returned, if he ever came, what story would she have to tell? This, without a doubt: "The man whom you left has gone, fled like a thief in the night, for what reason I know not." For though I knew well that she would divine the real cause of my action, I could not suppose that she would tell it, for thereby she would cast grave suspicion upon herself. So there would I be, a perjured traitor, a false friend in the eyes of those who had trusted me. But more, the times were violent, Clachlands and its soldiery were not far off, and once they learned that the girl was unprotected no man knew what evil might follow. You may imagine how bitter this thought was to me, the thought of leaving my love in the midst of terrible dangers. Nay, more; a selfish consideration weighed not a little with me. The winter had all but come; the storms of this black land I dreaded like one born and bred in the South; I knew nothing of my future course; I was poor, bare, and friendless. The manse was a haven of shelter. Without it I should be even as the two exiles in the hills. The cold was hard to endure; I dearly loved warmth and comfort; the moors were as fearful to me as the deserts of Muscovy. One course remained. Anne had money; this much I knew. She loved me, and would obey my will in all things; of this I was certain. What hindered me to take her to France, the land of mirth and all pleasant things, and leave the North and its wild folk behind forever? With money we could travel expeditiously. Once in my own land perchance I might find some way to repair my fortunes, for a fair wife is a wonderous incentive. There beneath soft skies, in the mellow sunshine, among a cheerful people, she would find the life which she loved best. What deterred me? Nothing but a meaningless vow and some antiquated scruples. But I would be really keeping my word, I reasoned casuistically with myself, for I had sworn to take care of Anne, and what way so good as to take her to my own land where she would be far from the reach of fanatic or dragoon? And this was my serious thought, _comprenez bien_! I set it down as a sign of the state to which I had come, that I was convinced by my own quibbling. I pictured to myself what I should do. I would find her at breakfast in the morning. "Anne," I would say, "I love you dearly; may I think that you love me likewise?" I could fancy her eager, passionate reply, and then----I almost felt the breath of her kisses on my cheek and the touch of her soft arms on my neck. Some impulse led me to open the casement and look forth into the windy, inscrutable night. A thin rain distilled on the earth, and the coolness was refreshing to my hot face. The garden was black, and the bushes were marked by an increased depth of darkness. But on the grass to the left I saw a long shaft of light, the reflection from some lit window of the house. I passed rapidly in thought over the various rooms there, and with a start came to an end. Without a doubt 'twas Anne's sleeping room. What did the lass with a light, for 'twas near midnight? I did not hesitate about the cause, and 'twas one which inflamed my love an hundredfold. She was sleepless, love-sick maybe (such is the vanity of man). Maybe even now my name was the one on her lips, and my image the foremost in her mind. My finger-tips tingled, as the blood surged into them; and I am not ashamed to say that my eyes were not tearless. Could I ever leave my love for some tawdry honor? _Mille tonneres!_ the thing was not to be dreamed of. I blamed myself for having once admitted the thought. My decision was taken, and, as was always my way, I felt somewhat easier. I was weary, so I cast myself down upon the bed without undressing, and fell into a profound sleep. How long I slept I cannot tell, but in that brief period of unconsciousness I seemed to be living ages. I saw my past life all inverted as 'twere; for my first sight was the horror of the moors, Quentin Kennedy, and the quarrel and the black desolation which I had undergone. I went through it all again, vividly, acutely. Then it passed, and I had my manhood in France before my eyes. And curiously enough, 'twas not alone, but confused with my childhood and youth. I was an experienced man of the world, versed in warfare and love, taverns and brawls, and yet not one whit jaded, but fresh and hopeful and boylike. 'Twas a very pleasing feeling. I was master of myself. I had all my self-respect. I was a man of unblemished honor, undoubted valor. Then by an odd trick of memory all kinds of associations became linked with it. The old sights and sounds of Rohaine: cocks crowing in the morning; the smell of hay and almond-blossom, roses and summer lilies; the sight of green leaves, of the fish leaping in the river; the plash of the boat's oars among the water-weeds--all the sensations of childhood came back with extraordinary clarity. I heard my mother's grave, tender speech bidding us children back from play, or soothing one when he hurt himself. I could almost believe that my father's strong voice was ringing in my ear, when he would tell stories of the chase and battle, or sing ballads of long ago, or bid us go to the devil if we pleased, but go like gentlemen. 'Twas a piece of sound philosophy, and often had it been before me in Paris, when I shrank from nothing save where my honor as a gentleman was threatened. In that dream the old saying came on me with curious force. I felt it to be a fine motto for life, and I was exulting in my heart that 'twas mine, and that I had never stained the fair fame of my house. Suddenly, with a start I seemed to wake to the consciousness that 'twas mine no more. Still dreaming, I was aware that I had deceived a lover, and stolen his mistress and made her my bride. I have never felt such acute anguish as I did in that sleep when the thought came upon me. I felt nothing more of pride. All things had left me. My self-respect was gone like a ragged cloak. All the old, dear life was shut out from me by a huge barrier. Comfortable, rich, loving, and beloved, I was yet in the very jaws of Hell. I felt myself biting out my tongue in my despair. My brain was on fire with sheer and awful regret. I cursed the day when I had been tempted and fallen. And then, even while I dreamed, another sight came to my eyes--the face of a lady, young, noble, with eyes like the Blessed Mother. In my youth I had laid my life at the feet of a girl, and I was in hopes of making her my wife. But Cecilia was too fair for this earth, and I scarcely dared to look upon her she seemed so saint-like. When she died in the Forest of Arnay, killed by a fall from her horse, 'twas I who carried her to her home, and since that day her face was never far distant from my memory. I cherished the image as my dearest possession, and oftentimes when I would have embarked upon some madness I refrained, fearing the reproof of those grave eyes. But now this was all gone. My earthy passion had driven out my old love; all memories were rapt from me save that of the sordid present. The very violence of my feeling awoke me, and I found myself sitting up in bed with a mouthful of blood. Sure enough, I had gnawed my tongue till a red froth was over my lips. My heart was beating like a windmill in a high gale, and a deadly sickness of mind oppressed me. 'Twas some minutes before I could think; and then--oh, joy! the relief! I had not yet taken the step irremediable. The revulsion, the sudden ecstasy drove in a trice my former resolution into thinnest air. I looked out of the window. 'Twas dawn, misty and wet. Thank God, I was still in the land of the living, still free to make my life. The tangible room, half lit by morning, gave me a promise of reality after the pageant of the dream. My path was clear before me, clear and straight as an arrow; and yet even now I felt a dread of my passion overcoming my resolve, and was in a great haste to have done with it all. My scruples about my course were all gone. I would be breaking my oath, 'twas true, in leaving the maid, but keeping it in the better way. The thought of the dangers to which she would be exposed stabbed me like a dart. It had almost overcome me. "But honor is more than life or love," I said, as I set my teeth with stern purpose. Yet, though all my soul was steeled into resolution, there was no ray of hope in my heart--nothing but a dead, bleak outlook, a land of moors and rain, an empty purse and an aimless journey. I had come to the house a beggar scarce two months before. I must now go as I had come, not free and careless as then, but bursting shackles of triple brass. My old ragged garments, which I had discarded on the day after my arrival, lay on a chair, neatly folded by Anne's deft hand. It behooved me to take no more away than that which I had brought, so I must needs clothe myself in these poor remnants of finery, thin and mud-stained, and filled with many rents. CHAPTER X. OF MY DEPARTURE. I passed through the kitchen out to the stable, marking as I went that the breakfast was ready laid in the sitting room. There I saddled Saladin, grown sleek by fat living, and rolling his great eyes at me wonderingly. I tested the joinings, buckled the girth tight, and led him round to the front of the house, where I tethered him to a tree and entered the door. A savory smell of hot meats came from the room and a bright wood fire drove away the grayness of the morning. Anne stood by the table, slicing a loaf and looking ever and anon to the entrance. Her face was pale as if with sleeplessness and weeping. Her hair was not so daintily arranged as was her wont. It seemed almost as if she had augured the future. A strange catch--coming as such songs do from nowhere and meaning nothing--ran constantly in my head. 'Twas one of Philippe Desportes', that very song which the Duke de Guise sang just before his death. So, as I entered, I found myself humming half unwittingly: "Nous verrons, bergère Rosette, Qui premier s'en repentira." Anne looked up as if startled at my coming, and when she saw my dress glanced fearfully at my face. It must have told her some tale, for a red flush mounted to her brow and abode there. I picked up a loaf from the table. 'Twas my one sacrifice to the gods of hospitality. 'Twould serve, I thought, for the first stage in my journey. Anne looked up at me with a kind of confused wonder. She laughed, but there was little mirth in her laughter. "Why, what would you do with the loaf?" said she. "Do you seek to visit the widows and fatherless in their affliction?" "Nay," said I gravely. "I would but keep myself unspotted from the world." All merriment died out of her face. "And what would you do?" she stammered. "The time has come for me to leave, Mistress Anne. My horse is saddled at the door. I have been here long enough; ay, and too long. I thank you with all my heart for your kindness, and I would seek to repay it by ridding you of my company." I fear I spoke harshly, but 'twas to hide my emotion, which bade fair to overpower me and ruin all. "Oh, and why will you go?" she cried. "Farewell, Anne," I said, looking at her fixedly, and I saw that she divined the reason. I turned on my heel, and went out from the room. "Oh, my love," she cried passionately, "stay with me; stay, oh, stay!" Her voice rang in my ear with honeyed sweetness, like that of the Sirens to Ulysses of old. "Stay!" she cried, as I flung open the house-door. I turned me round for one last look at her whom I loved better than life. She stood at the entrance to the room, with her arms outstretched and her white bosom heaving. Her eyes were filled with an utterable longing, which a man may see but once in his life--and well for him if he never sees it. Her lips were parted as if to call me back once more. But no word came; her presence was more powerful than any cry. I turned to the weather. A gray sky, a driving mist, and a chill piercing blast. The contrast was almost more than my resolution. An irresistible impulse seized me to fly to her arms, to enter the bright room again with her, and sell myself, body and soul, to the lady of my heart. My foot trembled to the step backward, my arms all but felt her weight, when that blind Fate which orders the ways of men intervened. Against my inclination and desire, bitterly, unwilling, I strode to my horse and flung myself on his back. I dared not look behind, but struck spurs into Saladin and rode out among the trees. A fierce north wind met me in the teeth, and piercing through my tatters, sent a shiver to my very heart. I cannot recall my thoughts during that ride: I seem not to have thought at all. All I know is that in about an hour there came into my mind, as from a voice, the words: "Recreant! Fool!" and I turned back. THE END. _Twenty-first Edition._ (_Buckram Series_.) 75c. =THE PRISONER OF ZENDA.= By ANTHONY HOPE. "A glorious story, which cannot be too warmly recommended to all who love a tale that stirs the blood. Perhaps not the least among its many good qualities is the fact that its chivalry is of the nineteenth, not of the sixteenth century; that it is a tale of brave men and true, and of a fair woman of to-day. The Englishman who saves the king ... is as interesting a knight as was Bayard.... The story holds the reader's attention from first to last."--_Critic._ _Fifth Edition._ 12_mo_. _Scarlet Cloth._ $1.50. =THE HONORABLE PETER STIRLING= By PAUL LEICESTER FORD. "Mr. Ford is discreet and natural ... a very good novel."--_Nation._ "One of the strongest and most vital characters that have appeared in our fiction."--_Dial._ "Commands our very sincere respect ... there is no glaring improbability about his story ... the highly dramatic crisis of the story.... The tone and manner of the book are noble.... A timely, manly, thoroughbred, and eminently suggestive book."--_Atlantic Monthly._ "A fine, tender love story."--_Literary World._ "The book is sure to excite attention and win popularity."--_Boston Advertiser._ =HENRY HOLT & CO., New York.= In the Buckram Series. 18mo, with frontispieces by W. B. Russell. 75 cents each. =KAFIR STORIES. By WILLIAM CHARLES SCULLY.= "He writes of South Africa with the sure knowledge, the sympathy, and almost with the vigor that Mr. Kipling bestows upon his Hindu stories.... His strongly picturesque and eventful tale of adventure and warfare ... there is no false sentiment ... the narrative of their long march, their triumphs, their betrayal and finally their brave death is thrilling."--_N. Y. Times._ "An extraordinary piece of work.... South Africa may be said to have her Kipling in him."--_Miss Gilder in N. Y. World._ "There is a fascination about them ... unlike any of the hundreds of volumes of short stories that have been given us during the past few years."--_Boston Times._ =THE MASTER-KNOT AND "ANOTHER STORY." By CONOVER DUFF.= Two tales told in letters. The first shows how "the master-knot of human fate" strangely linked two lovers in a Long Island house party with a quarry riot in Ohio. The second is full of breezy humor and describes New York life, uptown, in the park, and at the opera. "Happily imagined and neatly worked out ... a high order of work."--_New York Times._ "Whoever has written these stories has a delicate touch and a keen insight ... very cleverly told indeed, and the uncertainty is kept up to the last moment ... happy in its strength and delicacy. Altogether a precious little book, dealing with worldly people, who can be unconventional and loyal and consistently American."--_Philadelphia Ledger._ =HENRY HOLT & CO.,= =29 West 23d Street, New York.= 
4077	----	CHRONICLES OF CANADA Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton In thirty-two volumes Volume 2 THE MARINER OF ST MALO A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier By STEPHEN LEACOCK TORONTO, 1915 CONTENTS I EARLY LIFE II THE FIRST VOYAGE--NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR III THE FIRST VOYAGE--THE GULF OF ST LAWRENCE IV THE SECOND VOYAGE--THE ST LAWRENCE V THE SECOND VOYAGE--STADACONA VI THE SECOND VOYAGE--HOCHELAGA VII THE SECOND VOYAGE--WINTER AT STADACONA VIII THE THIRD VOYAGE IX THE CLOSE OF CARTIER'S CAREER ITINERARY OF CARTIER'S VOYAGES BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE In the town hall of the seaport of St Malo there hangs a portrait of Jacques Cartier, the great sea-captain of that place, whose name is associated for all time with the proud title of 'Discoverer of Canada.' The picture is that of a bearded man in the prime of life, standing on the deck of a ship, his bent elbow resting upon the gunwale, his chin supported by his hand, while his eyes gaze outward upon the western ocean as if seeking to penetrate its mysteries. The face is firm and strong, with tight-set jaw, prominent brow, and the full, inquiring eye of the man accustomed both to think and to act. The costume marks the sea-captain of four centuries ago. A thick cloak, gathered by a belt at the waist, enwraps the stalwart figure. On his head is the tufted Breton cap familiar in the pictures of the days of the great navigators. At the waist, on the left side, hangs a sword, and, on the right, close to the belt, the dirk or poniard of the period. How like or unlike the features of Cartier this picture in the town hall may be, we have no means of telling. Painted probably in 1839, it has hung there for more than seventy years, and the record of the earlier prints or drawings from which its artist drew his inspiration no longer survives. We know, indeed, that an ancient map of the eastern coast of America, made some ten years after the first of Cartier's voyages, has pictured upon it a group of figures that represent the landing of the navigator and his followers among the Indians of Gaspe. It was the fashion of the time to attempt by such decorations to make maps vivid. Demons, deities, mythological figures and naked savages disported themselves along the borders of the maps and helped to decorate unexplored spaces of earth and ocean. Of this sort is the illustration on the map in question. But it is generally agreed that we have no right to identify Cartier with any of the figures in the scene, although the group as a whole undoubtedly typifies his landing upon the seacoast of Canada. There is rumour, also, that the National Library at Paris contains an old print of Cartier, who appears therein as a bearded man passing from the prime of life to its decline. The head is slightly bowed with the weight of years, and the face is wanting in that suggestion of unconquerable will which is the dominating feature of the portrait of St Malo. This is the picture that appears in the form of a medallion, or ring-shaped illustration, in more than one of the modern works upon the great adventurer. But here again we have no proofs of identity, for we know nothing of the origin of the portrait. Curiously enough an accidental discovery of recent years seems to confirm in some degree the genuineness of the St Malo portrait. There stood until the autumn of 1908, in the French-Canadian fishing village of Cap-des-Rosiers, near the mouth of the St Lawrence, a house of very ancient date. Precisely how old it was no one could say, but it was said to be the oldest existing habitation of the settlement. Ravaged by perhaps two centuries of wind and weather, the old house afforded but little shelter against the boisterous gales and the bitter cold of the rude climate of the Gulf. Its owner decided to tear it down, and in doing so he stumbled upon a startling discovery. He found a dummy window that, generations before, had evidently been built over and concealed. From the cavity thus disclosed he drew forth a large wooden medallion, about twenty inches across, with the portrait of a man carved in relief. Here again are the tufted hat, the bearded face, and the features of the picture of St Malo. On the back of the wood, the deeply graven initials J. C. seemed to prove that the image which had lain hidden for generations behind the woodwork of the old Canadian house is indeed that of the great discoverer. Beside the initials is carved the date 1704.. This wooden medallion would appear to have once figured as the stern shield of some French vessel, wrecked probably upon the Gaspe coast. As it must have been made long before the St Malo portrait was painted, the resemblance of the two faces perhaps indicates the existence of some definite and genuine portrait of Jacques Cartier, of which the record has been lost. It appears, therefore, that we have the right to be content with the picture which hangs in the town hall of the seaport of St Malo. If it does not show us Cartier as he was,--and we have no absolute proof in the one or the other direction,--at least it shows us Cartier as he might well have been, with precisely the face and bearing which the hero-worshipper would read into the character of such a discoverer. The port of St Malo, the birthplace and the home of Cartier, is situated in the old province of Brittany, in the present department of Ille-et-Vilaine. It is thus near the lower end of the English Channel. To the north, about forty miles away, lies Jersey, the nearest of the Channel Islands, while on the west surges the restless tide of the broad Atlantic. The situation of the port has made it a nursery of hardy seamen. The town stands upon a little promontory that juts out as a peninsula into the ocean. The tide pours in and out of the harbour thus formed, and rises within the harbour to a height of thirty or forty feet. The rude gales of the western ocean spend themselves upon the rocky shores of this Breton coast. Here for centuries has dwelt a race of adventurous fishermen and navigators, whose daring is unsurpassed by any other seafaring people in the world. The history, or at least the legend, of the town goes back ten centuries before the time of Cartier. It was founded, tradition tells us, by a certain Aaron, a pilgrim who landed there with his disciples in the year 507 A.D., and sought shelter upon the sea-girt promontory which has since borne the name of Aaron's Rock. Aaron founded a settlement. To the same place came, about twenty years later, a bishop of Castle Gwent, with a small band of followers. The leader of this flock was known as St Malo, and he gave his name to the seaport. But the religious character of the first settlement soon passed away. St Malo became famous as the headquarters of the corsairs of the northern coast. These had succeeded the Vikings of an earlier day, and they showed a hardihood and a reckless daring equal to that of their predecessors. Later on, in more settled times, the place fell into the hands of the fishermen and traders of northern France. When hardy sailors pushed out into the Atlantic ocean to reach the distant shores of America, St Malo became a natural port and place of outfit for the passage of the western sea. Jacques Cartier first saw the light in the year 1491. The family has been traced back to a grandfather who lived in the middle of the fifteenth century. This Jean Cartier, or Quartier, who was born in St Malo in 1428, took to wife in 1457 Guillemette Baudoin. Of the four sons that she bore him, Jamet, the eldest, married Geseline Jansart, and of their five children the second one, Jacques, rose to greatness as the discoverer of Canada. There is little to chronicle that is worth while of the later descendants of the original stock. Jacques Cartier himself was married in 1519 to Marie Katherine des Granches. Her father was the Chevalier Honore des Granches, high constable of St Malo. In all probability he stood a few degrees higher in the social scale of the period than such plain seafaring folk as the Cartier family. From this, biographers have sought to prove that, early in life, young Jacques Cartier must have made himself a notable person among his townsmen. But the plain truth is that we know nothing of the circumstances that preceded the marriage, and have only the record of 15199 on the civil register of St Malo: 'The nuptial benediction was received by Jacques Cartier, master-pilot of the port of Saincte-Malo, son of Jamet Cartier and of Geseline Jansart, and Marie Katherine des Granches, daughter of Messire Honore des Granches, chevalier of our lord the king, and constable of the town and city of Saint-Malo.' Cartier's marriage was childless, so that he left no direct descendants. But the branches of the family descended from the original Jean Cartier appear on the registers of St Malo, Saint Briac, and other places in some profusion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The family seems to have died out, although not many years ago direct descendants of Pierre Cartier, the uncle of Jacques, were still surviving in France. It is perhaps no great loss to the world that we have so little knowledge of the ancestors and relatives of the famous mariner. It is, however, deeply to be deplored that, beyond the record of his voyages, we know so little of Jacques Cartier himself. We may take it for granted that he early became a sailor. Brought up at such a time and place, he could hardly have failed to do so. Within a few years after the great discovery of Columbus, the Channel ports of St Malo and Dieppe were sending forth adventurous fishermen to ply their trade among the fogs of the Great Banks of the New Land. The Breton boy, whom we may imagine wandering about the crowded wharves of the little harbour, must have heard strange tales from the sailors of the new discoveries. Doubtless he grew up, as did all the seafarers of his generation, with the expectation that at any time some fortunate adventurer might find behind the coasts and islands now revealed to Europe in the western sea the half-fabled empires of Cipango and Cathay. That, when a boy, he came into actual contact with sailors who had made the Atlantic voyage is not to be questioned. We know that in 1507 the Pensee of Dieppe had crossed to the coast of Newfoundland and that this adventure was soon followed by the sailing of other Norman ships for the same goal. We have, however, no record of Cartier and his actual doings until we find his name in an entry on the baptismal register of St Malo. He stood as godfather to his nephew, Etienne Nouel, the son of his sister Jehanne. Strangely enough, this proved to be only the first of a great many sacred ceremonies of this sort in which he took part. There is a record of more than fifty baptisms at St Malo in the next forty-five years in which the illustrious mariner had some share; in twenty-seven of them he appeared as a godfather. What voyages Cartier actually made before he suddenly appears in history as a pilot of the king of France and the protege of the high admiral of France we do not know. This position in itself, and the fact that at the time of his marriage in 1519 he had already the rank of master-pilot, would show that he had made the Atlantic voyage. There is some faint evidence that he had even been to Brazil, for in the account of his first recorded voyage he makes a comparison between the maize of Canada and that of South America; and in those days this would scarcely have occurred to a writer who had not seen both plants of which he spoke. 'There groweth likewise,' so runs the quaint translation that appears in Hakluyt's 'Voyages,' 'a kind of Millet as big as peason [i.e. peas] like unto that which groweth in Bresil.' And later on, in the account of his second voyage, he repeats the reference to Brazil; then 'goodly and large fields' which he saw on the present site of Montreal recall to him the millet fields of Brazil. It is possible, indeed, that not only had he been in Brazil, but that he had carried a native of that country to France. In a baptismal register of St Malo is recorded the christening, in 1528, of a certain 'Catherine of Brezil,' to whom Cartier's wife stood godmother. We may, in fancy at least, suppose that this forlorn little savage with the regal title was a little girl whom the navigator, after the fashion of his day, had brought home as living evidence of the existence of the strange lands that he had seen. Out of this background, then, of uncertainty and conjecture emerges, in 1534, Jacques Cartier, a master-pilot in the prime of life, now sworn to the service of His Most Christian Majesty Francis I of France, and about to undertake on behalf of his illustrious master a voyage to the New Land. CHAPTER II THE FIRST VOYAGE--NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR It was on April 20, 1534, that Jacques Cartier sailed out of the port of St Malo on his first voyage in the service of Francis I. Before leaving their anchorage the commander, the sailing-masters, and the men took an oath, administered by Charles de Mouy, vice-admiral of France, that they would behave themselves truly and faithfully in the service of the Most Christian King. The company were borne in two ships, each of about sixty tons burden, and numbered in all sixty-one souls. The passage across the ocean was pleasant. Fair winds, blowing fresh and strong from the east, carried the clumsy caravels westward on the foaming crests of the Atlantic surges. Within twenty days of their departure the icebound shores of Newfoundland rose before their eyes. Straight in front of them was Cape Bonavista, the 'Cape of Happy Vision,' already known and named by the fishermen-explorers, who had welcomed the sight of its projecting headlands after the weary leagues of unbroken sea. But approach to the shore was impossible. The whole coastline was blocked with the 'great store of ice' that lay against it. The ships ran southward and took shelter in a little haven about five leagues south of the cape, to which Cartier gave the name St Catherine's Haven, either in fond remembrance of his wife, or, as is more probable, in recognition of the help and guidance of St Catherine, whose natal day, April 30, had fallen midway in his voyage. The harbourage is known to-day as Catalina, and lies distant, as the crow flies, about eighty miles north-westward of the present city of St John's in Newfoundland. Here the mariners remained ten days, 'looking for fair weather,' and engaged in mending and 'dressing' their boats. At this time, it must be remembered, the coast of Newfoundland was, in some degree, already known. Ships had frequently passed through the narrow passage of Belle Isle that separates Newfoundland from the coast of Labrador. Of the waters, however, that seemed to open up beyond, or of the exact relation of the Newfoundland coastline to the rest of the great continent nothing accurate was known. It might well be that the inner waters behind the inhospitable headlands of Belle Isle would prove the gateway to the great empires of the East. Cartier's business at any rate was to explore, to see all that could be seen, and to bring news of it to his royal master. This he set himself to do, with the persevering thoroughness that was the secret of his final success. He coasted along the shore from cape to cape and from island to island, sounding and charting as he went, noting the shelter for ships that might be found, and laying down the bearing of the compass from point to point. It was his intent, good pilot as he was, that those who sailed after him should find it easy to sail on these coasts. From St Catherine's Harbour the ships sailed on May 21 with a fine off-shore wind that made it easy to run on a course almost due north. As they advanced on this course the mainland sank again from sight, but presently they came to an island. It lay far out in the sea, and was surrounded by a great upheaval of jagged and broken ice. On it and around it they saw so dense a mass of birds that no one, declares Cartier, could have believed it who had not seen it for himself. The birds were as large as jays, they were coloured black and white, and they could scarcely fly because of their small wings and their exceeding fatness. The modern enquirer will recognize, perhaps, the great auk which once abounded on the coast, but which is now extinct. The sailors killed large numbers of the birds, and filled two boats with them. Then the ships sailed on rejoicing from the Island of Birds with six barrels full of salted provisions added to their stores. Cartier's Island of Birds is the Funk Island of our present maps. The ships now headed west and north to come into touch with land again. To the great surprise of the company they presently met a huge polar bear swimming in the open sea, and evidently heading for the tempting shores of the Island of Birds. The bear was 'as great as any cow and as white as a swan.' The sailors lowered boats in pursuit, and captured 'by main force' the bear, which supplied a noble supper for the captors. 'Its flesh,' wrote Cartier, 'was as good to eat as any heifer of two years.' The explorers sailed on westward, changing their course gradually to the north to follow the broad curve of the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland. Jutting headlands and outlying capes must have alternately appeared and disappeared on the western horizon. May 24, found the navigators off the entrance of Belle Isle. After four hundred years of maritime progress, the passage of the narrow strait that separates Newfoundland from Labrador remains still rough and dangerous, even for the great steel ships of to-day. We can imagine how forbidding it must have looked to Cartier and his companions from the decks of their small storm-tossed caravels. Heavy gales from the west came roaring through the strait. Great quantities of floating ice ground to and fro under the wind and current. So stormy was the outlook that for the time being the passage seemed impossible. But Cartier was not to be baulked in his design. He cast anchor at the eastern mouth of the strait, in what is now the little harbour of Kirpon (Carpunt), and there day after day, stormbound by the inclement weather, he waited until June 9. Then at last he was able to depart, hoping, as he wrote, 'with the help of God to sail farther.' Having passed through the Strait of Belle Isle, Cartier crossed over to the northern coast. Two days of prosperous sailing with fair winds carried him far along the shore to a distance of more than a hundred miles west of the entrance of the Strait of Belle Isle. Whether he actually touched on his way at the island now known as Belle Isle is a matter of doubt. He passed an island which he named St Catherine, and which he warned all mariners to avoid because of dangerous shoals that lay about it. We find his track again with certainty when he reaches the shelter of the Port of Castles. The name was given to the anchorage by reason of the striking cliffs of basaltic rock, which here give to the shore something of the appearance of a fortress. The place still bears the name of Castle Bay. Sailing on to the west, Cartier noted the glittering expanse of Blanc Sablon (White Sands), still known by the name received from these first explorers. On June 10 the ships dropped anchor in the harbour of Brest, which lies on the northern coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence among many little islands lining the shore. This anchorage seems to have been known already in Cartier's time, and it became afterwards a famous place of gathering for the French fishermen. Later on in the sixteenth century a fort was erected there, and the winter settlement about it is said to have contained at one time as many as a thousand people. But its prosperity vanished later, and the fort had been abandoned before the great conflict had begun between France and Great Britain for the possession of North America. Cartier secured wood and water at Brest. Leaving his ships there for the time being, he continued his westward exploration in his boats. The careful pilot marked every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage that he was induced to land and plant a cross there in honour of St Servan. Beyond this again was an island 'round like an oven.' Still farther on he found a great river, as he thought it, which came sweeping down from the highlands of the interior. As the boats lay in the mouth of the river, there came bearing down upon them a great fishing ship which had sailed from the French port of La Rochelle, and was now seeking vainly for the anchorage of Brest. Cartier's careful observations now bore fruit. He and his men went in their small boats to the fishing ship and gave the information needed for the navigation of the coast. The explorers still pressed on towards the west, till they reached a place which Cartier declared to be one of the finest harbours of the world, and which he called Jacques Cartier Harbour. This is probably the water now known as Cumberland Harbour. The forbidding aspect of the northern shore and the adverse winds induced Cartier to direct his course again towards the south, to the mainland, as he thought, but really to the island of Newfoundland; and so he now turned back with his boats to rejoin the ships. The company gathered safely again at Brest on Sunday, June 14, and Cartier caused a mass to be sung. During the week spent in exploring the north shore, Cartier had not been very favourably impressed by the country. It seemed barren and inhospitable. It should not, he thought, be called the New Land, but rather stones and wild crags and a place fit for wild beasts. The soil seemed worthless. 'In all the north land,' said he, 'I did not see a cartload of good earth. To be short, I believe that this was the land that God allotted to Cain.' From time to time the explorers had caught sight of painted savages, with heads adorned with bright feathers and with bodies clad in the skins of wild beasts. They were roving upon the shore or passing in light boats made of bark among the island channels of the coast. 'They are men,' wrote Cartier, 'of an indifferent good stature and bigness, but wild and unruly. They wear their hair tied on the top like a wreath of hay and put a wooden pin within it, or any other such thing instead of a nail, and with them they bind certain birds' feathers. They are clothed with beasts' skins as well the men as women, but that the women go somewhat straighter and closer in their garments than the men do, with their waists girded. They paint themselves with certain roan colours. Their boats are made with the bark of birch trees, with the which they fish and take great store of seals, and, as far as we could understand since our coming thither, that is not their habitation, but they come from the mainland out of hotter countries to catch the said seals and other necessaries for their living.' There has been much discussion as to these savages. It has been thought by some that they were a southern branch of the Eskimos, by others that they were Algonquin Indians who had wandered eastward from the St Lawrence region. But the evidence goes to show that they belonged to the lost tribe of the 'Red Indians' of Newfoundland, the race which met its melancholy fate by deliberate and ruthless destruction at the hands of the whites. Cabot had already seen these people on his voyage to the coast, and described them as painted with 'red ochre.' Three of them he had captured and taken to England as an exhibit. For two hundred years after the English settlement of Newfoundland, these 'Red Indians' were hunted down till they were destroyed. 'It was considered meritorious,' says a historian of the island, 'to shoot a Red Indian. To "go to look for Indians" came to be as much a phrase as to "look for partridges." They were harassed from post to post, from island to island: their hunting and fishing stations were unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as curiosities to the rabble at fairs in the western towns of Christian England at twopence apiece.' So much for the ill-fated savages among whom Cartier planted his first cross. On June 15, Cartier, disappointed, as we have seen, with the rugged country that he found on the northern shore, turned south again to pick up the mainland, as he called it, of Newfoundland. Sailing south from Brest to a distance of about sixty miles, he found himself on the same day off Point Rich on the west coast of Newfoundland, to which, from its appearance, he gave the name of the Double Cape. For three days the course lay to the south-west along the shore. The panorama that was unfolded to the eye of the explorer was cheerless. The wind blew cold and hard from the north-east. The weather was dark and gloomy, while through the rifts of the mist and fog that lay heavy on the face of the waters there appeared only a forbidding and scarcely habitable coast. Low lands with islands fringed the shore. Behind them great mountains, hacked and furrowed in their outline, offered an uninviting prospect. There was here no Eldorado such as, farther south, met the covetous gaze of a Cortez or a Pizarro, no land of promise luxuriant with the vegetation of the tropics such as had greeted the eyes of Columbus at his first vision of the Indies. A storm-bound coast, a relentless climate and a reluctant soil-these were the treasures of the New World as first known to the discoverer of Canada. For a week Cartier and his men lay off the coast. The headland of Cape Anguille marks the approximate southward limit of their exploration. Great gales drove the water in a swirl of milk-white foam among the rocks that line the foot of this promontory. Beyond this point they saw nothing of the Newfoundland shore, except that, as the little vessels vainly tried to beat their way to the south against the fierce storms, the explorers caught sight of a second great promontory that appeared before them through the mist. This headland Cartier called Cape St John. In spite of the difficulty of tracing the storm-set path of the navigators, it is commonly thought that the point may be identified as Cape Anguille, which lies about twenty-five miles north of Cape Ray, the south-west 'corner' of Newfoundland. Had Cartier been able to go forward in the direction that he had been following, he would have passed out between Newfoundland and Cape Breton island into the open Atlantic, and would have realized that his New Land was, after all, an island and not the mainland of the continent. But this discovery was reserved for his later voyage. He seems, indeed, when he presently came to the islands that lie in the mouth of the Gulf of St Lawrence, to have suspected that a passage here lay to the open sea. Doubtless the set of the wind and current revealed it to the trained instinct of the pilot. 'If it were so,' he wrote, 'it would be a great shortening as well of the time as of the way, if any perfection could be found in it.' But it was just as well that he did not seek further the opening into the Atlantic. By turning westward from the 'heel' of Newfoundland he was led to discover the milder waters and the more fortunate lands which awaited him on the further side of the Gulf. CHAPTER III THE FIRST VOYAGE--THE GULF OF ST LAWRENCE On June 25 Cartier turned his course away from Newfoundland and sailed westward into what appeared to be open sea. But it was not long before he came in sight of land again. About sixty miles from the Newfoundland shore and thirty miles east from the Magdalen Islands, two abrupt rocks rise side by side from the sea; through one of them the beating surf has bored a passage, so that to Cartier's eye, as his ships hove in sight of them, the rocks appeared as three. At the present time a lighthouse of the Canadian government casts its rays from the top of one of these rocky islets, across the tossing waters of the Gulf. Innumerable sea-fowl encircled the isolated spot and built their nests so densely upon the rocks as to cover the whole of the upper surface. At the base of one of these Bird Rocks Cartier stopped his ships in their westward course, and his men killed great numbers of the birds so easily that he declared he could have filled thirty boats with them in an hour. The explorers continued on their way, and a sail of a few hours brought them to an island like to none that they had yet seen. After the rock-bound coast of the north it seemed, indeed, a veritable paradise. Thick groves of splendid trees alternated with beautiful glades and meadow-land, while the fertile soil of the island, through its entire length of about six miles, was carpeted with bright flowers, blossoming peas, and the soft colours of the wild rose. 'One acre of this land,' said Cartier, 'is worth more than all the New Land.' The ships lay off the shore of the island all night and replenished the stores of wood and water. The land abounded with game; the men of St Malo saw bears and foxes, and, to their surprise they saw also great beasts that basked upon the shore, with 'two great teeth in their mouths like elephants.' One of these walruses,--for such they doubtless were,--was chased by the sailors, but cast itself into the sea and disappeared. We can imagine how, through the long twilight of the June evening, the lovely scene was loud with the voices of the exultant explorers. It was fitting that Cartier should name this island of good omen after his patron, the Seigneur de Brion, admiral of France. To this day the name Brion Island,--corrupted sometimes to Byron Island,--recalls the landing of Jacques Cartier. From this temporary halting-place the ships sailed on down the west coast of the Magdalen Islands. The night of June 28 found them at anchor off Entry Island at the southern end of the group. From here a course laid to the south-west brought the explorers into sight of Prince Edward Island. This they supposed to be, of course, the mainland of the great American continent. Turning towards the north-west, the ships followed the outline of the coast. They sailed within easy sight of the shore, and from their decks the explorer and his companions were able to admire the luxuriant beauty of the scene. Here again was a land of delight: 'It is the fairest land,' wrote Cartier, 'that may possibly be seen, full of goodly meadows and trees.' All that it lacked was a suitable harbour, which the explorers sought in vain. At one point a shallow river ran rippling to the sea, and here they saw savages crossing the stream in their canoes, but they found no place where the ships could be brought to anchor. July 1 found the vessels lying off the northern end of Prince Edward Island. Here they lowered the boats, and searched the shore-line for a suitable anchorage. As they rowed along a savage was seen running upon the beach and making signs. The boats were turned towards him, but, seized with a sudden panic, he ran away. Cartier landed a boat and set up a little staff in the sand with a woollen girdle and a knife, as a present for the fugitive and a mark of good-will. It has been asserted that this landing on a point called Cap-des-Sauvages by Cartier, in memory of the incident, took place on the New Brunswick shore. But the weight of evidence is in favour of considering that North Cape in Prince Edward Island deserves the honour. As the event occurred on July 1, some writers have tried to find a fortunate coincidence in the landing of the discoverer of Canada on its soil on the day that became, three hundred and thirty-three years later, Dominion Day. But the coincidence is not striking. Cartier had already touched Canadian soil at Brest, which is at the extreme end of the Quebec coast, and on the Magdalen Islands. Cartier's boats explored the northern end of prince Edward Island for many miles. All that he saw delighted him. 'We went that day on shore,' he wrote in his narrative, 'in four places, to see the goodly sweet and smelling trees that were there. We found them to be cedars, yews, pines, white elms, ash, willows, With many other sorts of trees to us unknown, but without any fruit. The grounds where no wood is are very fair, and all full of peason [peas], white and red gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries, and wild corn, even like unto rye, which seemed to have been sowed and ploughed. This country is of better temperature than any other land that can be seen, and very hot. There are many thrushes, stock-doves, and other birds. To be short, there wanteth nothing but good harbours.' On July 2, the ships, sailing on westward from the head of Prince Edward Island, came in sight of the New Brunswick coast. They had thus crossed Northumberland Strait, which separates the island from the mainland. Cartier, however, supposed this to be merely a deep bay, extending inland on his left, and named it the Bay of St Lunario. Before him on the northern horizon was another headland, and to the left the deep triangular bay known now as Miramichi. The shallowness of the water and the low sunken aspect of the shore led him to decide, rightly, that there was to be found here no passage to the west. It was his hope, of course, that at some point on his path the shore might fold back and disclose to him the westward passage to the fabled empires of the East. The deep opening of the Chaleur Bay, which extended on the left hand as the ships proceeded north, looked like such an opening. Hopes ran high, and Cartier named the projecting horn which marks the southern side of the mouth of the bay the Cape of Good Hope. Like Vasco da Gama, when he rounded South Africa, Cartier now thought that he had found the gateway of a new world. The cheery name has, however, vanished from the map in favour of the less striking one of Point Miscou. Cartier sailed across the broad mouth of the bay to a point on the north shore, now known as Port Daniel. Here his ships lay at anchor till July 12, in order that he might carry on, in boats, the exploration of the shore. On July 6, after hearing mass, the first boat with an exploring party set forth and almost immediately fell in with a great number of savages coming in canoes from the southern shore. In all there were some forty or fifty canoes. The Indians, as they leaped ashore, shouted and made signs to the French, and held up skins on sticks as if anxious to enter into trade. But Cartier was in no mind to run the risk of closer contact with so numerous a company of savages. The French would not approach the fleet of canoes, and the savages, seeing this, began to press in on the strangers. For a moment affairs looked threatening. Cartier's boat was surrounded by seven canoes filled with painted, gibbering savages. But the French had a formidable defence. A volley of musket shots fired by the sailors over the heads of the Indians dispersed the canoes in rapid flight. Finding, however, that no harm was done by the strange thunder of the weapons, the canoes came flocking back again, their occupants making a great noise and gesticulating wildly. They were, however, nervous, and when, as they came near, Cartier's men let off two muskets they were terrified; 'with great haste they began to flee, and would no more follow us.' But the next day after the boat had returned to the ships, the savages came near to the anchorage, and some parties landed and traded together. The Indians had with them furs which they offered gladly in exchange for the knives and iron tools given them by the sailors. Cartier presented them also with 'a red hat to give unto their captain.' The Indians seemed delighted with the exchange. They danced about on the shore, went through strange ceremonies in pantomime and threw seawater over their heads. 'They gave us,' wrote Cartier, 'whatsoever they had, not keeping anything, so that they were constrained to go back again naked, and made us signs that the next day they would come again and bring more skins with them.' Four more days Cartier lingered in the bay. Again he sent boats from the ships in the hope of finding the westward passage, but to his great disappointment and grief the search was fruitless. The waters were evidently landlocked, and there was here, as he sadly chronicled, no thoroughfare to the westward sea. He met natives in large numbers. Hundreds of them--men, women, and children--came in their canoes to see the French explorers. They brought cooked meat, laid it on little pieces of wood, and, retreating a short distance, invited the French to eat. Their manner was as of those offering food to the gods who have descended from above. The women among them, coming fearlessly up to the explorers, stroked them with their hands, and then lifted these hands clasped to the sky, with every sign of joy and exultation. The Indians, as Cartier saw them, seemed to have no settled home, but to wander to and fro in their canoes, taking fish and game as they went. Their land appeared to him the fairest that could be seen, level as a pond; in every opening of the forest he saw wild grains and berries, roses and fragrant herbs. It was, indeed, a land of promise that lay basking in the sunshine of a Canadian summer. The warmth led Cartier to give to the bay the name it still bears--Chaleur. On July 12 the ships went north again. Their progress was slow. Boisterous gales drove in great seas from the outer Gulf. At times the wind, blowing hard from the north, checked their advance and they had, as best they could, to ride out the storm. The sky was lowering and overcast, and thick mist and fog frequently enwrapped the ships. The 16th saw them driven by stress of weather into Gaspe Bay, where they lay until the 25th, with so dark a sky and so violent a storm raging over the Gulf that not even the daring seamen of St Malo thought it wise to venture out. Here again they saw savages in great numbers, but belonging, so Cartier concluded, to a different tribe from those seen on the bay below. 'We gave them knives,' he wrote, 'combs, beads of glass, and other trifles of small value, for which they made many signs of gladness, lifting their hands up to heaven, dancing and singing in their boats.' They appeared to be a miserable people, in the lowest stage of savagery, going about practically naked, and owning nothing of any value except their boats and their fishing-nets. He noted that their heads were shaved except for a tuft 'on the top of the crown as long as a horse's tail.' This, of course, was the 'scalp lock,' so suggestive now of the horrors of Indian warfare, but meaning nothing to the explorer. From its presence it is supposed that the savages were Indians of the Huron-Iroquois tribe. Cartier thought, from their destitute state, that there could be no poorer people in the world. Before leaving the Bay of Gaspe, Cartier planted a great wooden cross at the entrance of the harbour. The cross stood thirty feet high, and at the centre of it he hung a shield with three fleurs-de-lis. At the top was carved in ancient lettering the legend, 'VIVE LE ROY DE FRANCE.' A large concourse of savages stood about the French explorers as they raised the cross to its place. 'So soon as it was up,' writes Cartier, 'we altogether kneeled down before them, with our hands towards heaven yielding God thanks: and we made signs unto them, showing them the heavens, and that all our salvation depended only on Him which in them dwelleth; whereat they showed a great admiration, looking first at one another and then at the cross.' The little group of sailors kneeling about the cross newly reared upon the soil of Canada as a symbol of the Gospel of Christ and of the sovereignty of France, the wondering savages turning their faces in awe towards the summer sky, serene again after the passing storms,--all this formed an impressive picture, and one that appears and reappears in the literature of Canada. But the first effect of the ceremony was not fortunate. By a sound instinct the savages took fright; they rightly saw in the erection of the cross the advancing shadow of the rule of the white man. After the French had withdrawn to their ships, the chief of the Indians came out with his brother and his sons to make protest against what had been done. He made a long oration, which the French could not, of course, understand. Pointing shoreward to the cross and making signs, the chief gave it to be understood that the country belonged to him and his people. He and his followers were, however, easily pacified by a few gifts and with the explanation, conveyed by signs, that the cross was erected to mark the entrance of the bay. The French entertained their guests bountifully with food and drink, and, having gaily decked out two sons of the chief in French shirts and red caps, they invited these young savages to remain on the ship and to sail with Cartier. They did so, and the chief and the others departed rejoicing. The next day the ships weighed anchor, surrounded by boat-loads of savages who shouted and gesticulated their farewells to those on board. Cartier now turned his ships to the north-east. Westward on his left hand, had he known it, was the opening of the St Lawrence. From the trend of the land he supposed, however, that, by sailing in an easterly direction, he was again crossing one of the great bays of the coast. This conjecture seemed to be correct, as the coastline of the island of Anticosti presently appeared on the horizon. From July 27 until August 5 the explorers made their way along the shores of Anticosti, which they almost circumnavigated. Sailing first to the east they passed a low-lying country, almost bare of forests, but with verdant and inviting meadows. The shore ended at East Cape, named by Cartier Cape St Louis, and at this point the ships turned and made their way north-westward, along the upper shore of the island. On August 1, as they advanced, they came in sight of the mainland of the northern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, a low, flat country, heavily wooded, with great mountains forming a jagged sky-line. Cartier had now, evidently enough, come back again to the side of the great Gulf from which he had started, but, judging rightly that the way to the west might lie beyond the Anticosti coast, he continued on his voyage along that shore. Yet with every day progress became more difficult. As the ships approached the narrower waters between the west end of Anticosti and the mainland they met powerful tides and baffling currents. The wind, too, had turned against them and blew fiercely from the west. For five days the intrepid mariners fought against the storms and currents that checked their advance. They were already in sight of what seemed after long searching to be the opening of the westward passage. But the fierce wind from the west so beat against them that the clumsy vessels could make no progress against it. Cartier lowered a boat, and during two hours the men rowed desperately into the wind. For a while the tide favoured them, but even then it ran so hard as to upset one of the boats. When the tide turned matters grew worse. There came rushing down with the wind and the current of the St Lawrence such a turmoil of the waters that the united strength of the thirteen men at the oars could not advance the boats by a stone's-throw. The whole company landed on the island of Anticosti, and Cartier, with ten or twelve men, made his way on foot to the west end. Standing there and looking westward over the foaming waters lashed by the August storm, he was able to realize that the goal of his search for the coast of Asia, or at least for an open passage to the west, might lie before him, but that, for the time being, it was beyond his reach. Turning back, the party rejoined the ships which had drifted helplessly before the wind some twelve miles down the shore. Arrived on board, Cartier called together his sailing-master, pilots, and mates to discuss what was to be done. They agreed that the contrary winds forbade further exploration. The season was already late; the coast of France was far away; within a few weeks the great gales of the equinox would be upon them. Accordingly the company decided to turn back. Soon the ships were heading along the northern shore of the Gulf, and with the boisterous wind behind them were running rapidly towards the east. They sailed towards the Newfoundland shore, caught sight of the Double Cape and then, heading north again, came to Blanc Sablon on August 9. Here they lay for a few days to prepare for the homeward voyage, and on August 15 they were under way once more for the passage of Belle Isle and the open sea. 'And after that, upon August 15,' so ends Cartier's narrative, 'being the feast of the Assumption of our Lady, after that we had heard service, we altogether departed from the port of Blanc Sablon, and with a happy and prosperous weather we came into the middle of the sea that is between Newfoundland and Brittany, in which place we were tossed and turmoiled three days long with great storms and windy tempests coming from the east, which with the aid and assistance of God we suffered: then had we fair weather, and upon the fifth of September, in the said year, we came to the port of St Malo whence we departed.' CHAPTER IV THE SECOND VOYAGE--THE ST LAWRENCE The second voyage of Jacques Cartier, undertaken in the years 1535 and 1536, is the exploit on which his title to fame chiefly rests. In this voyage he discovered the river St Lawrence, visited the site of the present city of Quebec, and, ascending the river as far as Hochelaga, was enabled to view from the summit of Mount Royal the imposing panorama of plain and river and mountain which marks the junction of the St Lawrence and the Ottawa. He brought back to the king of France the rumour of great countries still to be discovered to the west, of vast lakes and rivers reaching so far inland that no man could say from what source they sprang, and the legend of a region rich with gold and silver that should rival the territory laid at the feet of Spain by the conquests of Cortez. If he did not find the long-sought passage to the Western Sea, at least he added to the dominions of France a territory the potential wealth of which, as we now see, was not surpassed even by the riches of Cathay. The report of Cartier's first voyage, written by himself, brought to him the immediate favour of the king. A commission, issued under the seal of Philippe Chabot, admiral of France, on October 30, 1534, granted to him wide powers for employing ships and men, and for the further prosecution of his discoveries. He was entitled to engage at the king's charge three ships, equipped and provisioned for fifteen months, so that he might be able to spend, at least, an entire year in actual exploration. Cartier spent the winter in making his preparations, and in the springtime of the next year (1535) all was ready for the voyage. By the middle of May the ships, duly manned and provisioned, lay at anchor in the harbour of St Malo, waiting only a fair wind to sail. They were three in number--the Grande Hermine of 120 tons burden; a ship of 60 tons which was rechristened the Petite Hermine, and which was destined to leave its timbers in the bed of a little rivulet beside Quebec, and a small vessel of 40 tons known as the Emerillon or Sparrow Hawk. On the largest of the ships Cartier himself sailed, with Claude de Pont Briand, Charles de la Pommeraye, and other gentlemen of France, lured now by a spirit of adventure to voyage to the New World. Mace Jalobert, who had married the sister of Cartier's wife, commanded the second ship. Of the sailors the greater part were trained seamen of St Malo. Seventy-four of their names are still preserved upon a roll of the crew. The company numbered in all one hundred and twelve persons, including the two savages who had been brought from Gaspe in the preceding voyage, and who were now to return as guides and interpreters of the expedition. Whether or not there were any priests on board the ships is a matter that is not clear. The titles of two persons in the roll--Dom Guillaume and Dom Antoine--seem to suggest a priestly calling. But the fact that Cartier made no attempt to baptize the Indians to whom he narrated the truths of the Gospel, and that he makes no mention of priests in connection with any of the sacred ceremonies which he carried out, seem to show that none were included in the expedition. There is, indeed, reference in the narrative to the hearing of mass, but it relates probably to the mere reading of prayers by the explorer himself. On one occasion, also, as will appear, Cartier spoke to the Indians of what his priests had told him, but the meaning of the phrase is doubtful. Before sailing, every man of the company repaired to the Cathedral Church of St Malo, where all confessed their sins and received the benediction of the good bishop of the town. This was on the day and feast of Pentecost in 1535, and three days later, on May 19, the ships sailed out from the little harbour and were borne with a fair wind beyond the horizon of the west. But the voyage was by no means as prosperous as that of the year before. The ships kept happily together until May 26. Then they were assailed in mid-Atlantic by furious gales from the west, and were enveloped in dense banks of fog. During a month of buffeting against adverse seas, they were driven apart and lost sight of one another. Cartier in the Grande Hermine reached the coast of Newfoundland safely on July coming again to the Island of Birds. 'So full of birds it was,' he writes, 'that all the ships of France might be loaded with them, and yet it would not seem that any were taken away.' On the next day the Grande Hermine sailed on through the Strait of Belle Isle for Blanc Sablon, and there, by agreement, waited in the hope that her consorts might arrive. In the end, on the 26th, the two missing ships sailed into the harbour together. Three days more were spent in making necessary repairs and in obtaining water and other supplies, and on the 29th at sunrise the reunited expedition set out on its exploration of the northern shore. During the first half of August their way lay over the course already traversed from the Strait of Belle Isle to the western end of Anticosti. The voyage along this coast was marked by no event of especial interest. Cartier, as before, noted carefully the bearing of the land as he went along, took soundings, and, in the interest of future pilots of the coast, named and described the chief headlands and landmarks as he passed. He found the coast for the most part dangerous and full of shoals. Here and there vast forests extended to the shore, but otherwise the country seemed barren and uninviting. From the north shore Cartier sailed across to Anticosti, touching near what is now called Charleton Point; but, meeting with head winds, which, as in the preceding year, hindered his progress along the island, he turned to the north again and took shelter in what he called a 'goodly great gulf full of islands, passages, and entrances towards what wind soever you please to bend.' It might be recognized, he said, by a great island that runs out beyond the rest and on which is 'an hill fashioned as it were an heap of corn.' The 'goodly gulf' is Pillage Bay in the district of Saguenay, and the hill is Mount Ste Genevieve. From this point the ships sailed again to Anticosti and reached the extreme western cape of that island. The two Indian guides were now in a familiar country. The land in sight, they told Cartier, was a great island; south of it was Gaspe, from which country Cartier had taken them in the preceding summer; two days' journey beyond the island towards the west lay the kingdom of Saguenay, a part of the northern coast that stretches westwards towards the land of Canada. The use of this name, destined to mean so much to later generations, here appears for the first time in Cartier's narrative. The word was evidently taken from the lips of the savages, but its exact significance has remained a matter of dispute. The most fantastic derivations have been suggested. Charlevoix, writing two hundred years later, even tells us that the name originated from the fact that the Spaniards had been upon the coast before Cartier, looking for mines. Their search proving fruitless, they kept repeating 'aca nada' (that is 'nothing here') in the hearing of the savages, who repeated the words to the French, thus causing them to suppose this to be the name of the country. There seems no doubt, however, that the word is Indian, though whether it is from the Iroquois Kannata, a settlement, or from some term meaning a narrow strait or passage, it is impossible to say. From Anticosti, which Cartier named the Island of the Assumption, the ships sailed across to the Gaspe side of the Gulf, which they saw on August 16, and which was noted to be a land 'full of very great and high hills.' According to the information of his Indian guides, he had now reached the point beyond which extended the great kingdom of Saguenay. The northern and southern coasts were evidently drawing more closely together, and between them, so the savages averred, lay a great river. 'There is,' wrote Cartier in his narrative, 'between the southerly lands and the northerly about thirty leagues distance and more than two hundred fathoms depth. The said men did, moreover, certify unto us that there was the way and beginning of the great river of Hochelaga, and ready way to Canada, which river the farther it went the narrower it came, even unto Canada, and that then there was fresh water which went so far upwards that they had never heard of any man who had gone to the head of it, and that there is no other passage but with small boats.' The announcement that the waters in which he was sailing led inward to a fresh-water river brought to Cartier not the sense of elation that should have accompanied so great a discovery, but a feeling of disappointment. A fresh-water river could not be the westward passage to Asia that he had hoped to find, and, interested though he might be in the rumoured kingdom of Saguenay, it was with reluctance that he turned from the waters of the Gulf to the ascent of the great river. Indeed, he decided not to do this until he had tried by every means to find the wished-for opening on the coast of the Gulf. Accordingly, he sailed to the northern shore and came to the land among the Seven Islands, which lie near the mouth of the Ste Marguerite river, about eighty-five miles west of Anticosti,--the Round Islands, Cartier called them. Here, having brought the ships to a safe anchorage, riding in twenty fathoms of water, he sent the boats eastward to explore the portion of the coast towards Anticosti which he had not yet seen. He cherished a last hope that here, perhaps, the westward passage might open before him. But the boats returned from the expedition with no news other than that of a river flowing into the Gulf, in such volume that its water was still fresh three miles from the shore. The men declared, too, that they had seen 'fishes shaped like horses,' which, so the Indians said, retired to shore at night, and spent the day in the sea. The creatures, no doubt, were walruses. It was on August 15 that Cartier had left Anticosti for the Gaspe shore: it was not until the 24th that, delayed by the exploring expeditions of the boats and by heavy fogs and contrary winds, he moved out from the anchorage at the Seven Islands to ascend the St Lawrence. The season was now far advanced. By this time, doubtless, Cartier had realized that the voyage would not result in the discovery of the passage to the East. But, anxious not to return home without having some success to report, he was in any case prepared to winter in the New Land. Even though he did not find the passage, it was better to remain long enough to explore the lands in the basin of the great river than to return home without adding anything to the exploits of the previous voyage. The expedition moved westward up the St Lawrence, the first week's sail bringing them as far as the Saguenay. On the way Cartier put in at Bic Islands, and christened them in honour of St John. Finding here but scanty shelter and a poor anchorage, he went on without further delay to the Saguenay, the mouth of which he reached on September 1. Here this great tributary river, fed from the streams and springs of the distant north, pours its mighty waters between majestic cliffs into the St Lawrence--truly an impressive sight. So vast is the flood that the great stream in its wider reaches shows a breadth of three miles, and in places the waters are charted as being more than eight hundred and seventy feet deep. Narrowing at its mouth, it enters the St Lawrence in an angry flood, shortly after passing the vast and frowning rocks of Cape Eternity and Cape Trinity, rising to a height of fifteen hundred feet. High up on the face of the cliffs, Cartier saw growing huge pine-trees that clung, earthless, to the naked rock. Four canoes danced in the foaming water at the river mouth: one of them made bold to approach the ships, and the words of Cartier's Indian interpreters so encouraged its occupants that they came on board. The canoes, so these Indians explained to Cartier, had come down from Canada to fish. Cartier did not remain long at the Saguenay. On the next day, September 2, the ships resumed their ascent of the St Lawrence. The navigation at this point was by no means easy. The river here feels the full force of the tide, whose current twists and eddies among the great rocks that lie near the surface of the water. The ships lay at anchor that night off Hare Island. As they left their moorings, at dawn of the following day, they fell in with a great school of white whales disporting themselves in the river. Strange fish, indeed, these seemed to Cartier. 'They were headed like greyhounds,' he wrote, 'and were as white as snow, and were never before of any man seen or known.' Four days more brought the voyagers to an island, a 'goodly and fertile spot covered with fine trees,' and among them so many filbert-trees that Cartier gave it the name Isle-aux-Coudres (the Isle of Filberts), which it still bears. On September 7 the vessels sailed about thirty miles beyond Isle-aux-Coudres, and came to a group of islands, one of which, extending for about twenty miles up the river, appeared so fertile and so densely covered with wild grapes hanging to the river's edge, that Cartier named it the Isle of Bacchus. He himself, however, afterwards altered the name to the Island of Orleans. These islands, so the savages said, marked the beginning of the country known as Canada. CHAPTER V THE SECOND VOYAGE--STADACONA At the time when Cartier ascended the St Lawrence, a great settlement of the Huron-Iroquois Indians existed at Quebec. Their village was situated below the heights, close to the banks of the St Charles, a small tributary of the St Lawrence. Here the lodges of the tribe gave shelter to many hundred people. Beautiful trees--elm and ash and maple and birch, as fair as the trees of France--adorned the banks of the river, and the open spaces of the woods waved with the luxuriant growth of Indian corn. Here were the winter home of the tribe and the wigwam of the chief. From this spot hunting and fishing parties of the savages descended the great river and wandered as far as the pleasant country of Chaleur Bay. Sixty-four years later, when Champlain ascended the St Lawrence, the settlement and the tribe that formerly occupied the spot had vanished. But in the time of Cartier the Quebec village, under its native name of Stadacona, seems to have been, next to Hochelaga, the most important lodgment of the Huron-Iroquois Indians of the St Lawrence valley. As the French navigators wandered on the shores of the Island of Orleans, they fell in with a party of the Stadacona Indians. These, frightened at the strange faces and unwonted dress of the French, would have taken to flight, but Cartier's two Indians, whose names are recorded as Taignoagny and Domagaya, called after them in their own language. Great was the surprise of the natives not only to hear their own speech, but also to recognize in Taignoagny and Domagaya two members of their own tribe. The two guides, so far as we can judge from Cartier's narrative, had come down from the Huron-Iroquois settlements on the St Lawrence to the Gaspe country, whence Cartier had carried them to France. Their friends now surrounded them with tumultuous expressions of joy, leaping and shouting as if to perform a ceremonial of welcome. Without fear now of the French they followed them down to their boats, and brought them a plentiful supply of corn and of the great pumpkins that were ripening in their fields. The news of the arrival of the strangers spread at once through the settlement. To see the ships, canoe after canoe came floating down the river. They were filled with men and women eager to welcome their returned kinsmen and to share in the trinkets which Cartier distributed with a liberal hand. On the next day the chief of the tribe, the lord of Canada, as Cartier calls him, Donnacona by name, visited the French ships. The ceremonial was appropriate to his rank. Twelve canoes filled with Indian warriors appeared upon the stream. As they neared the ships, at a command from Donnacona, all fell back except two, which came close alongside the Emerillon. Donnacona then delivered a powerful and lengthy harangue, accompanied by wondrous gesticulations of body and limbs. The canoes then moved down to the side of the Grande Hermine, where Donnacona spoke with Cartier's guides. As these savages told him of the wonders they had seen in France, he was apparently moved to very transports of joy. Nothing would satisfy him but that Cartier should step down into the canoe, that the chief might put his arms about his neck in sign of welcome. Cartier, unable to rival Donnacona's oratory, made up for it by causing the sailors hand down food and wine, to the keen delight of the Indians. This being done, the visitors departed with every expression of good-will. Waiting only for a favourable tide, the ships left their anchorage, and, sailing past the Island of Orleans, cast anchor in the St Charles river, where it flows into the St Lawrence near Quebec. The Emerillon was left at anchor out in the St Lawrence, in readiness for the continuance of the journey, but the two larger vessels were moored at the point where a rivulet, the Lairet, runs into the St Charles. It was on the left bank of the Lairet that Cartier's fort was presently constructed for his winter occupancy. Some distance across from it, on the other side of the St Charles, was Stadacona itself. Its site cannot be determined with exactitude, but it is generally agreed that it was most likely situated in the space between the present Rue de la Fabrique and the Cote Sainte-Genevieve. The Indians were most friendly. When, on September 14, the French had sailed into the St Charles, Donnacona had again met them, accompanied by twenty-five canoes filled with his followers. The savages, by their noisy conduct and strange antics, gave every sign of joy over the arrival of the French. But from the first Cartier seems to have had his misgivings as to their good faith. He was struck by the fact that his two Indian interpreters, who had rejoined the ranks of their countrymen, seemed now to receive him with a sullen distrust, and refused his repeated invitations to re-enter his ships. He asked them whether they were still willing to go on with him to Hochelaga, of which they had told him, and which it was his purpose to visit. The two Indians assented, but their manner was equivocal and inspired Cartier with distrust. The day after this a great concourse of Indians came again to the river bank to see the strangers, but Donnacona and his immediate followers, including Taignoagny and Domagaya, stood apart under a point of land on the river bank sullenly watching the movements of the French, who were busied in setting out buoys and harbour-marks for their anchorage. Cartier, noticing this, took a few of his sailors, fully armed, and marched straight to where the chief stood. Taignoagny, the interpreter, came forward and entered upon a voluble harangue, telling the French captain that Donnacona was grieved to see him and his men so fully armed, while he and his people bore no weapons in their hands. Cartier told Taignoagny, who had been in France, that to carry arms was the custom of his country, and that he knew it. Indeed, since Donnacona continued to make gestures of pleasure and friendship, the explorer concluded that the interpreter only and not the Indian chief was the cause of the distrust. Yet he narrates that before Donnacona left them, 'all his people at once with a loud voice cast out three great cries, a horrible thing to hear.' The Indian war-whoop, if such it was, is certainly not a reassuring sound, but Cartier and Donnacona took leave of one another with repeated assurances of good-will. The following day, September 16, the Indians came again. About five hundred of them, so Cartier tells us, gathered about the ships. Donnacona, with 'ten or twelve of the chiefest men of the country,' came on board the ships, where Cartier held a great feast for them and gave them presents in accordance with their rank. Taignoagny explained to Cartier that Donnacona was grieved that he was going up to Hochelaga. The river, said the guide, was of no importance, and the journey was not worth while. Cartier's reply to this protest was that he had been commanded by his king to go as far as he could go, but that, after seeing Hochelaga, he would come back again. On this Taignoagny flatly refused to act as guide, and the Indians abruptly left the ship and went ashore. Cartier must, indeed, have been perplexed, and perhaps alarmed, at the conduct of the Stadacona natives. It was his policy throughout his voyages to deal with the Indians fairly and generously, to avoid all violence towards them, and to content himself with bringing to them the news of the Gospel and the visible signs of the greatness of the king of France. The cruelties of the Spanish conquerors of the south were foreign to his nature. The few acts of injustice with which his memory has been charged may easily be excused in the light of the circumstances of his age. But he could not have failed to realize the possibilities of a sudden and murderous onslaught on the part of savages who thus combined a greedy readiness for feasting and presents with a sullen and brooding distrust. Donnacona and his people were back again on the morrow, still vainly endeavouring to dissuade the French from their enterprise. They brought with them a great quantity of eels and fish as presents, and danced and sang upon the shore opposite the ships in token of their friendship. When Cartier and his men came ashore, Donnacona made all his people stand back from the beach. He drew in the sand a huge ring, and into this he led the French. Then, selecting from the ranks of his followers, who stood in a great circle watching the ceremony, a little girl of ten years old, he led her into the ring and presented her to Cartier. After her, two little boys were handed over in the same fashion, the assembled Indians rending the air with shouts of exultation. Donnacona, in true Indian fashion, improved the occasion with a long harangue, which Taignoagny interpreted to mean that the little girl was the niece of the chief and one of the boys the brother of the interpreter himself, and that the explorer might keep all these children as a gift if he would promise not to go to Hochelaga. Cartier at once, by signs and speech, offered the children back again, whereupon the other interpreter, Domagaya, broke in and said that the children were given in good-will, and that Donnacona was well content that Cartier should go to Hochelaga. The three poor little savages were carried to the boats, the two interpreters wrangling and fighting the while as to what had really been said. But Cartier felt assured that the treachery, if any were contemplated, came only from one of them, Taignoagny. As a great mark of trust he gave to Donnacona two swords, a basin of plain brass and a ewer--gifts which called forth renewed shouts of joy. Before the assemblage broke up, the chief asked Cartier to cause the ships' cannons to be fired, as he had learned from the two guides that they made such a marvellous noise as was never heard before. 'Our captain answered,' writes Cartier in his narrative, 'that he was content: and by and by he commanded his men to shoot off twelve cannons into the wood that was hard by the people and the ships, at which noise they were greatly astonished and amazed, for they thought the heaven had fallen upon them, and put themselves to flight, howling, crying and shrieking, so that it seemed hell was broken loose.' Next day the Indians made one more attempt to dissuade Cartier from his journey. Finding that persuasion and oratory were of no avail, they decided to fall back upon the supernatural and to frighten the French from their design. Their artifice was transparent enough, but to the minds of the simple savages was calculated to strike awe into the hearts of their visitors. Instead of coming near the ships, as they had done on each preceding day, the Indians secreted themselves in the woods along the shore. There they lay hid for many hours, while the French were busied with their preparations for departure. But later in the day, when the tide was running swiftly outward, the Indians in their canoes came paddling down the stream towards the ships, not, however, trying to approach them, but keeping some little distance away as if in expectation of something unusual. The mystery soon revealed itself. From beneath the foliage of the river bank a canoe shot into the stream, the hideous appearance of its occupants contrasting with the bright autumn tints that were lending their glory to the Canadian woods. The three Indians in the canoe had been carefully made up by their fellows as 'stage devils' to strike horror into Cartier and his companions. They were 'dressed like devils, being wrapped in dog skins, white and black, their faces besmeared as black as any coals, with horns on their heads more than a yard long.' The canoe came rushing swiftly down the stream, and floated past the ships, the 'devils' who occupied the craft making no attempt to stop, not even turning towards the ships, but counterfeiting, as it were, the sacred frenzy of angry deities. The devil in the centre shouted a fierce harangue into the air. No sooner did the canoe pass the ships than Donnacona and his braves in their light barques set after it, paddling so swiftly as to overtake the canoe of the 'devils' and seize the gunwale of it in their hands. The whole thing was a piece of characteristic Indian acting, viewed by the French with interest, but apparently without the faintest alarm. The 'devils,' as soon as their boat was seized by the profane touch of the savages, fell back as if lifeless in their canoe. The assembled flotilla was directed to the shore. The 'devils' were lifted out rigid and lifeless and carried solemnly into the forest. The leaves of the underbrush closed behind them and they were concealed from sight, but from the deck of the ship the French could still hear the noise of cries and incantations that broke the stillness of the woods. After half an hour Taignoagny and Domagaya issued from among the trees. Their walk and their actions were solemnity itself, while their faces simulated the religious ecstasy of men who have spoken with the gods. The caps that they had worn were now placed beneath the folds of their Indian blankets, and their clasped hands were uplifted to the autumn sky. Taignoagny cried out three times upon the name of Jesus, while his fellow imitated and kept shouting, 'Jesus! the Virgin Mary! Jacques Cartier!' Cartier very naturally called to them to know what was the matter; whereupon Taignoagny in doleful tones called out, 'Ill news!' Cartier urged the Indian to explain, and the guide, still acting the part of one who bears tidings from heaven, said that the great god, Cudragny, had spoken at Hochelaga and had sent down three 'spirits' in the canoe to warn Cartier that he must not try to come to Hochelaga, because there was so much ice and snow in that country that whoever went there should die. In the face of this awful revelation, Cartier showed a cheerful and contemptuous scepticism. 'Their god, Cudragny,' he said, must be 'a fool and a noodle,' and that, as for the cold, Christ would protect his followers from that, if they would but believe in Him. Taignoagny asked Cartier if he had spoken with Jesus. Cartier answered no, but said that his priests had done so and that Jesus had told them that the weather would be fine. Taignoagny, hypocrite still, professed a great joy at hearing this, and set off into the woods, whence he emerged presently with the whole band of Indians, singing and dancing. Their plan had failed, but they evidently thought it wiser to offer no further opposition to Cartier's journey, though all refused to go with him. The strange conduct of Donnacona and his Indians is not easy to explain. It is quite possible that they meditated some treachery towards the French: indeed, Cartier from first to last was suspicious of their intentions, and, as we shall see, was careful after his return to Stadacona never to put himself within their power. To the very end of his voyage he seems to have been of the opinion that if he and his men were caught off their guard, Donnacona and his braves would destroy the whole of them for the sake of their coveted possessions. The stories that he heard now and later from his guides of the horrors of Indian war and of a great massacre at the Bic Islands certainly gave him just grounds for suspicion and counselled prudence. Some writers are agreed, however, that the Indians had no hostile intentions whatever. The new-comers seemed to them wondrous beings, floating on the surface of the water in great winged houses, causing the thunder to roll forth from their abode at will and, more than all, feasting their friends and giving to them such gifts as could only come from heaven. Such guests were too valuable to lose. The Indians knew well of the settlement at Hochelaga, and of the fair country where it lay. They feared that if Cartier once sailed to it, he and his presents--the red caps and the brass bowls sent direct from heaven--would be lost to them for ever. Be this as it may, no further opposition was offered to the departure of the French. The two larger ships, with a part of the company as guard, were left at their moorings. Cartier in the Emerillon, with Mace Jalobert, Claude de Pont Briand, and the other gentlemen of the expedition, a company of fifty in all, set out for Hochelaga. CHAPTER VI THE SECOND VOYAGE--HOCHELAGA Nine days of prosperous sailing carried Cartier in his pinnace from Stadacona to the broad expansion of the St Lawrence, afterwards named Lake St Peter. The autumn scene as the little vessel ascended the stream was one of extreme beauty. The banks of the river were covered with glorious forests resplendent now with the red and gold of the turning leaves. Grape-vines grew thickly on every hand, laden with their clustered fruit. The shore and forest abounded with animal life. The woods were loud with the chirruping of thrushes, goldfinches, canaries, and other birds. Countless flocks of wild geese and ducks passed overhead, while from the marshes of the back waters great cranes rose in their heavy flight over the bright surface of the river that reflected the cloudless blue of the autumn sky. Cartier was enraptured with the land which he had discovered,--'as goodly a country,' he wrote, 'as possibly can with eye be seen, and all replenished with very goodly trees.' Here and there the wigwams of the savages dotted the openings of the forest. Often the inhabitants put off from shore in canoes, bringing fish and food, and accepting, with every sign of friendship, the little presents which Cartier distributed among them. At one place an Indian chief--'one of the chief lords of the country,' says Cartier--brought two of his children as a gift to the miraculous strangers. One of the children, a little girl of eight, was kept upon the ship and went on with Cartier to Hochelaga and back to Stadacona, where her parents came to see her later on. The other child Cartier refused to keep because 'it was too young, for it was but two or three years old.' At the head of Lake St Peter, Cartier, ignorant of the channels, found his progress in the pinnace barred by the sand bars and shallows among the group of islands which here break the flow of the great river. The Indians whom he met told him by signs that Hochelaga lay still farther up-stream, at a distance of three days' journey. Cartier decided to leave the Emerillon and to continue on his way in the two boats which he had brought with him. Claude de Pont Briand and some of the gentlemen, together with twenty mariners, accompanied the leader, while the others remained in charge of the pinnace. Three days of easy and prosperous navigation was sufficient for the journey, and on October 2, Cartier's boats, having rowed along the shores of Montreal island, landed in full sight of Mount Royal, at some point about three or four miles from the heart of the present city. The precise location of the landing has been lost to history. It has been thought by some that the boats advanced until the foaming waters of the Lachine rapids forbade all further progress. Others have it that the boats were halted at the foot of St Mary's current, and others again that Nun Island was the probable place of landing. What is certain is that the French brought their boats to shore among a great crowd of assembled savages,--a thousand persons, Cartier says,--and that they were received with tumultuous joy. The Indians leaped and sang, their familiar mode of celebrating welcome. They offered to the explorers great quantities of fish and of the bread which they baked from the ripened corn. They brought little children in their arms, making signs for Cartier and his companions to touch them. As the twilight gathered, the French withdrew to their boats, while the savages, who were loath to leave the spot, lighted huge bonfires on the shore. A striking and weird picture it conjures up before our eyes,--the French sailors with their bronzed and bearded faces, their strange dress and accoutrements, the glare of the great bonfires on the edge of the dark waters, the wild dances of the exultant savages. The romance and inspiration of the history of Canada are suggested by this riotous welcome of the Old World by the New. It meant that mighty changes were pending; the eye of imagination may see in the background the shadowed outline of the spires and steeples of the great city of to-day. On the next day, October 3, the French were astir with the first light of the morning. A few of their number were left to guard the boats; the others, accompanied by some of the Indians, set out on foot for Hochelaga. Their way lay over a beaten path through the woods. It brought them presently to the tall palisades that surrounded the group of long wooden houses forming the Indian settlement. It stood just below the slope of the mountain, and covered a space of almost two acres. On the map of the modern city this village of Hochelaga would be bounded by the four streets, Metcalfe, Mansfield, Burnside, and Sherbrooke, just below the site of McGill University. But the visit of Cartier is an event of such historic interest that it can best be narrated in the words of his own narrative. We may follow here as elsewhere the translation of Hakluyt, which is itself three hundred years old, and seems in its quaint and picturesque form more fitting than the commoner garb of modern prose. Our captain [so runs the narrative], the next day very early in the morning, having very gorgeously attired himself, caused all his company to be set in order to go to see the town and habitation of these people, and a certain mountain that is somewhere near the city; with whom went also five gentlemen and twenty mariners, leaving the rest to keep and look to our boats. We took with us three men of Hochelaga to bring us to the place. All along as we went we found the way as well beaten and frequented as can be, the fairest and best country that can possibly be seen, full of as goodly great oaks as are in any wood in France, under which the ground was all covered over with fair acorns. After we had gone about four or five miles, we met by the way one of the chiefest lords of the city, accompanied with many more, who, as soon as he saw us, beckoned and made signs upon us, that we must rest in that place where they had made a great fire and so we did. After that we rested ourselves there awhile, the said lord began to make a long discourse, even as we have said above they are accustomed to do in sign of mirth and friendship, showing our captain and all his company a joyful countenance and good will, who gave him two hatchets, a pair of knives and a cross which he made him to kiss, and then put it about his neck, for which he gave our captain hearty thanks. This done, we went along, and about a mile and a half farther, we began to find goodly and large fields full of such corn as the country yieldeth. It is even as the millet of Brazil as great and somewhat bigger than small peason [peas], wherewith they live as we do with ours. In the midst of those fields is the city of Hochelaga, placed near and, as it were, joined to a very great mountain, that is tilled round about, very fertile, on the top of which you may see very far. We named it Mount Royal. The city of Hochelaga is round compassed about with timber, with three courses of rampires [stockades], one within another, framed like a sharp spire, but laid across above. The middlemost of them is made and built as a direct line but perpendicular. The rampires are framed and fashioned with pieces of timber laid along on the ground, very well and cunningly joined together after their fashion. This enclosure is in height about two rods. It hath but one gate of entry thereat, which is shut with piles, stakes, and bars. Over it and also in many places of the wall there be places to run along and ladders to get up, all full of stones, for the defence of it. There are in the town about fifty houses, about fifty paces long, and twelve or fifteen broad, built all of wood, covered over with the bark of the wood as broad as any board, very finely and cunningly joined together. Within the said houses there are many rooms, lodgings and chambers. In the midst of every one there is a great court in the middle whereof they make their fire. Such is the picture of Hochelaga as Cartier has drawn it for us. Arrived at the palisade, the savages conducted Cartier and his followers within. In the central space of the stockade was a large square, bordered by the lodges of the Indians. In this the French were halted, and the natives gathered about them, the women, many of whom bore children in their, arms, pressing close up to the visitors, stroking their faces and arms, and making entreaties by signs that the French should touch their children. Then presently [writes Cartier] came the women again, every one bringing a four-square mat in the manner of carpets, and spreading them abroad in that place, they caused us to sit upon them. This done the lord and king of the country was brought upon nine or ten men's shoulders (whom in their tongue they call Agouhanna), sitting upon a great stag's skin, and they laid him down upon the foresaid mats near to the captain, every one beckoning unto us that he was their lord and king. This Agouhanna was a man about fifty pears old. He was no whit better apparelled than any of the rest, only excepted that he had a certain thing made of hedgehogs [porcupines], like a red wreath, and that was instead of his crown. He was full of the palsy, and his members shrunk together. After he had with certain signs saluted our captain and all his company, and by manifest tokens bid all welcome, he showed his legs and arms to our captain, and with signs desired him to touch them, and so we did, rubbing them with his own hands; then did Agouhanna take the wreath or crown he had about his head, and gave it unto our captain That done, they brought before him divers diseased men, some blind, some crippled, some lame, and some so old that the hair of their eyelids came down and covered their cheeks, and laid them all along before our captain to the end that they might of him be touched. For it seemed unto them that God was descended and come down from heaven to heal them. Our captain, seeing the misery and devotion of this poor people, recited the Gospel of St John, that is to say, 'IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD,' touching every one that were [sic] diseased, praying to God that it would please Him to open the hearts of the poor people and to make them know His Holy Word, and that they might receive baptism and christendom. That done, he took a service-book in his hand, and with a loud voice read all the passion of Christ, word by word, that all the standers-by might hear him; all which while this poor people kept silence and were marvellously attentive, looking up to heaven and imitating us in gestures. Then he caused the men all orderly to be set on one side, the women on another, and likewise the children on another, and to the chiefest of them he gave hatchets, to the others knives, and to the women beads and such other small trifles. Then where the children were he cast rings, counters and brooches made of tin, whereat they seemed to be very glad. Before Cartier and his men returned to their boats, some of the Indians took them up to the top of Mount Royal. Here a magnificent prospect offered itself, then, as now, to the eye. The broad level of the island swept towards the west, luxuriant with yellow corn and autumn foliage. In the distance the eye discerned the foaming waters of Lachine, and the silver bosom of the Lake of the Two Mountains: 'as fair and level a country,' said Cartier, 'as possibly can be seen, being level, smooth, and very plain, fit to be husbanded and tilled.' The Indians, pointing to the west, explained by signs that beyond the rapids were three other great falls of water, and that when these were passed a man might travel for three months up the waters of the great river. Such at least Cartier understood to be the meaning of the Indians. They showed him a second stream, the Ottawa, as great, they said, as the St Lawrence, whose north-westward course Cartier supposed must run through the kingdom of Saguenay. As the savages pointed to the Ottawa, they took hold of a silver chain on which hung the whistle that Cartier carried, and then touched the dagger of one of the sailors, which had a handle of copper, yellow as gold, as if to show that these metals, or rather silver and gold, came from the country beyond that river. This, at least, was the way that Cartier interpreted the simple and evident signs that the Indians made. The commentators on Cartier's voyages have ever since sought some other explanation, supposing that no such metals existed in the country. The discovery of the gold and silver deposits of the basin of the Ottawa in the district of New Ontario shows that Cartier had truly understood the signs of the Indians. If they had ever seen silver before, it is precisely from this country that it would have come. Cartier was given to understand, also, that in this same region there dwelt another race of savages, very fierce, and continually at war. The party descended from the mountain and pursued their way towards the boats. Their Indian friends hung upon their footsteps, showing evidences of admiration and affection, and even carried in their arms any of the French who showed indications of weariness. They stood about with every sign of grief and regret as the sails were hoisted and the boats bearing the wonderful beings dropped swiftly down the river. On October 4, the boats safely rejoined the Emerillon that lay anchored near the mouth of the Richelieu. On the 11th of the same month, the pinnace was back at her anchorage beside Stadacona, and the whole company was safely reunited. The expedition to Hochelaga had been accomplished in twenty-two days. CHAPTER VII THE SECOND VOYAGE--WINTER AT STADACONA On returning to his anchorage before Quebec, Cartier found that his companions whom he had left there had not been idle. The ships, it will be remembered, lay moored close to the shore at the mouth of the little river Lairet, a branch of the St Charles. On the bank of the river, during their leader's absence, the men had erected a solid fortification or rampart. Heavy sticks of lumber had been set up on end and joined firmly together, while at intervals cannon, taken from the ships, had been placed in such a way as to command the approach in all directions. The sequel showed that it was well, indeed, for the French that they placed so little reliance on the friendship of the savages. Donnacona was not long in putting in an appearance. Whatever may have been his real feelings, the crafty old chief feigned a great delight at the safe return of Cartier. At his solicitation Cartier paid a ceremonial visit to the settlement of Stadacona, on October 13, ten days after his return. The gentlemen of the expedition, together with fifty sailors, all well armed and appointed, accompanied the leader. The meeting between the Indians and their white visitors was similar to those already described. Indian harangues and wild dancing and shouting were the order of the day, while Cartier, as usual, distributed knives and trinkets. The French were taken into the Indian lodges and shown the stores of food laid up against the coming winter. Other objects, too, of a new and peculiar interest were displayed: there were the 'scalp locks' of five men--'the skin of five men's heads,' says Cartier,--which were spread out on a board like parchments. The Indians explained that these had been taken from the heads of five of their deadly enemies, the Toudamani, a fierce people living to the south, with whom the natives of Stadacona were perpetually at war. A gruesome story was also told of a great massacre of a war party of Donnacona's people who had been on their way down to the Gaspe country. The party, so the story ran, had encamped upon an island near the Saguenay. They numbered in all two hundred people, women and children being also among the warriors, and were gathered within the shelter of a rude stockade. In the dead of night their enemies broke upon the sleeping Indians in wild assault; they fired the stockade, and those who did not perish in the flames fell beneath the tomahawk. Five only escaped to bring the story to Stadacona. The truth of the story was proved, long after the writing of Cartier's narrative, by the finding of a great pile of human bones in a cave on an island near Bic, not far from the mouth of the Saguenay. The place is called L'Isle au Massacre to-day. The French now settled down into their winter quarters. They seem for some time to have mingled freely with the Indians of the Stadacona settlement, especially during the month which yet remained before the rigour of winter locked their ships in snow and ice. Cartier, being of an observing and accurate turn of mind, has left in his narrative some interesting notes upon the life and ideas of the savages. They had, he said, no belief in a true God. Their deity, Cudragny, was supposed to tell them the weather, and, if angry, to throw dust into their eyes. They thought that, when they died, they would go to the stars, and after that, little by little, sink with the stars to earth again, to where the happy hunting grounds lie on the far horizon of the world. To correct their ignorance, Cartier told them of the true God and of the verities of the Christian faith. In the end the savages begged that he would baptize them, and on at least one occasion a great flock of them came to him, hoping to be received into the faith. But Cartier, as he says, having nobody with him 'who could teach them our belief and religion,' and doubting, also, the sincerity of their sudden conversion, put them off with the promise that at his next coming he would bring priests and holy oil and cause them to be baptized. The Stadacona Indians seem to have lived on terms of something like community of goods. Their stock of food--including great quantities of pumpkins, peas, and corn--was more or less in common. But, beyond this and their lodges, their earthly possessions were few. They dressed somewhat scantily in skins, and even in the depth of winter were so little protected from the cold as to excite the wonder of their observers. Women whose husbands died never remarried, but went about with their faces smeared thick with mingled grease and soot. One peculiar custom of the natives especially attracted the attention of their visitors, and for the oddity of the thing may best be recorded in Cartier's manner. It is an early account of the use of tobacco. 'There groweth also,' he wrote, 'a certain kind of herb, whereof in summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great account of it, and only men use it, and first they cause it to be dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks, wrapped in a little beast's skin made like a little bag, with a hollow piece of wood or stone like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of fire upon it, at the other end suck so long that they fill their bodies full of smoke till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the funnel of a chimney. They say that it doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and, having put it in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper.' In spite of the going and coming of the Indians, Cartier from first to last was doubtful of their intentions. Almost every day in the autumn and early winter some of them appeared with eels and fish, glad to exchange them for little trinkets. But the two interpreters endeavoured to make the Indians believe that the things given them by the French were of no value, and Donnacona did his best to get the Indian children out of the hands of the French. Indeed, the eldest of the children, an Indian girl, escaped from the ships and rejoined her people, and it was only with difficulty that Cartier succeeded in getting her back again. Meanwhile a visiting chief, from the country farther inland, gave the French captain to understand that Donnacona and his braves were waiting only an opportunity to overwhelm the ships' company. Cartier kept on his guard. He strengthened the fort with a great moat that ran all round the stockade. The only entry was now by a lifting bridge; and pointed stakes were driven in beside the upright palisade. Fifty men, divided into watches, were kept on guard all night, and, at every change of the watch, the Indians, across the river in their lodges of the Stadacona settlement, could hear the loud sounds of the trumpets break the clear silence of the winter night. We have no record of the life of Cartier and his followers during the winter of their isolation among the snows and the savages of Quebec. It must, indeed, have been a season of dread. The northern cold was soon upon them in all its rigour. The ships were frozen in at their moorings from the middle of November till April 15. The ice lay two fathoms thick in the river, and the driving snows and great drifts blotted out under the frozen mantle of winter all sight of land and water. The French could scarcely stir from their quarters. Their fear of Indian treachery and their ignorance of the trackless country about them held them imprisoned in their ships. A worse peril was soon added. The scourge of scurvy was laid upon them--an awful disease, hideous in its form and deadly in its effect. Originating in the Indian camp, it spread to the ships. In December fifty of the Stadacona Indians died, and by the middle of February, of the hundred and ten men that made up Cartier's expedition, only three or four remained in health. Eight were already dead, and their bodies, for want of burial, lay frozen stark beneath the snowdrifts of the river, hidden from the prying eyes of the savages. Fifty more lay at the point of death, and the others, crippled and staggering with the onslaught of disease, moved to and fro at their tasks, their fingers numbed with cold, their hearts frozen with despair. The plague that had fallen upon them was such as none of them had ever before seen. The legs of the sufferers swelled to huge, unsightly, and livid masses of flesh. Their sinews shrivelled to blackened strings, pimpled with purple clots of blood. The awful disease worked its way upwards. The arms hung hideous and useless at the side, the mouth rotted till the teeth fell from the putrid flesh. Chilled with the cold, huddled in the narrow holds of the little ships fast frozen in the endless desolation of the snow, the agonized sufferers breathed their last, remote from aid, far from the love of women, and deprived of the consolations of the Church. Let those who realize the full horror of the picture think well upon what stout deeds the commonwealth of Canada has been founded. Without the courage and resource of their leader, whose iron constitution kept him in full health, all would have been lost. Cartier spared no efforts. The knowledge of his situation was concealed from the Indians. None were allowed aboard the ships, and, as far as might be, a great clatter of hammering was kept up whenever the Indians appeared in sight, so that they might suppose that Cartier's men were forced by the urgency of their tasks to remain on the ships. Nor was spiritual aid neglected. An image of the Virgin Mary was placed against a tree about a bow-shot from the fort, and to this all who could walk betook themselves in procession on the Sunday when the sickness was at its height. They moved in solemn order, singing as they went the penitential psalms and the Litany, and imploring the intercession of the Virgin. Thus passed the days until twenty-five of the French had been laid beneath the snow. For the others there seemed only the prospect of death from disease or of destruction at the hands of the savages. It happened one day that Cartier was walking up and down by himself upon the ice when he saw a band of Indians coming over to him from Stadacona. Among them was the interpreter Domagaya, whom Cartier had known to be stricken by the illness only ten days before, but who now appeared in abundant health. On being asked the manner of his cure, the interpreter told Cartier that he had been healed by a beverage made from the leaves and bark of a tree. Cartier, as we have seen, had kept from the Indians the knowledge of his troubles, for he dared not disclose the real weakness of the French. Now, feigning that only a servant was ill, he asked for details of the remedy, and, when he did so, the Indians sent their women to fetch branches of the tree in question. The bark and leaves were to be boiled, and the drink thus made was to be taken twice a day. The potion was duly administered, and the cure that it effected was so rapid and so complete that the pious Cartier declared it a real and evident miracle. 'If all the doctors of Lorraine and Montpellier had been there with all the drugs of Alexandria,' he wrote, 'they could not have done as much in a year as the said tree did in six days.' An entire tree--probably a white spruce--was used up in less than eight days. The scourge passed and the sailors, now restored to health, eagerly awaited the coming of the spring. Meanwhile the cold lessened; the ice about the ships relaxed its hold, and by the middle of April they once more floated free. But a new anxiety had been added. About the time when the fortunes of Cartier's company were at their lowest, Donnacona had left his camp with certain of his followers, ostensibly to spend a fortnight in hunting deer in the forest. For two months he did not return. When he came back, he was accompanied not only by Taignoagny and his own braves, but by a great number of savages, fierce and strong, whom the French had never before seen. Cartier was assured that treachery was brewing, and he determined to forestall it. He took care that his men should keep away from the settlement of Stadacona, but he sent over his servant, Charles Guyot, who had endeared himself to the Indians during the winter. Guyot reported that the lodges were filled with strange faces, that Donnacona had pretended to be sick and would not show himself, and that he himself had been received with suspicion, Taignoagny having forbidden him to enter into some of the houses. Cartier's plan was soon made. The river was now open and all was ready for departure. Rather than allow himself and his men to be overwhelmed by an attack of the great concourse of warriors who surrounded the settlement of Stadacona, he determined to take his leave in his own way and at his own time, and to carry off with him the leaders of the savages themselves. Following the custom of his age, he did not wish to return without the visible signs of his achievements. Donnacona had freely boasted to him of the wonders of the great country far up beyond Hochelaga, of lands where gold and silver existed in abundance, where the people dressed like the French in woollen clothes, and of even greater wonders still,--of men with no stomachs, and of a race of beings with only one leg. These things were of such import, Cartier thought, that they merited narration to the king of France himself. If Donnacona had actually seen them, it was fitting that he should describe them in the august presence of Francis I. The result was a plot which succeeded. The two ships, the Grande Hermine and the Emerillon, lay at anchor ready to sail. Owing to the diminished numbers of his company, Cartier had decided to abandon the third ship. He announced a final ceremony to signalize the approaching departure. On May 3, 1536, a tall cross, thirty-five feet high was planted on the river bank. Beneath the cross-bar it carried the arms of France, and on the upper part a scroll in ancient lettering that read, 'FRANCISCUS PRIMUS DEI GRATIA FRANCORUM REX REGNAT' Which means, freely translated, 'Francis I, by the grace of God King of the French, is sovereign.' Donnacona, Taignoagny, Domagaya and a few others, who had been invited to come on board the ships, found themselves the prisoners of the French. At first rage and consternation seized upon the savages, deprived by this stratagem of their chief. They gathered in great numbers on the bank, and their terrifying howls and war-cries resounded throughout the night. But Donnacona, whether from simplicity or craft, let himself be pacified with new presents and with the promise of a speedy return in the year following. He showed himself on the deck of the captain's ship, and his delighted followers gathered about in their canoes and swore renewed friendship with the white men, whom they had, in all likelihood, plotted to betray. Gifts were exchanged, and the French bestowed a last shower of presents on the assembled Indians. Finally, on May 6, the caravels dropped down the river, and the homeward voyage began. The voyage passed without incident. The ships were some time in descending the St Lawrence. At Isle-aux-Coudres they waited for the swollen tide of the river to abate. The Indians still flocked about them in canoes, talking with Donnacona and his men, but powerless to effect a rescue of the chief. Contrary winds held the vessels until, at last, on May 21, fair winds set in from the west that carried them in an easy run to the familiar coast of Gaspe, past Brion Island, through the passage between Newfoundland and the Cape Breton shore, and so outward into the open Atlantic. 'On July 6, 1536,' so ends Cartier's chronicle of this voyage, 'we reached the harbour of St Malo, by the Grace of our Creator, whom we pray, making an end of our navigation, to grant us His Grace, and Paradise at the end. Amen.' CHAPTER VIII THE THIRD VOYAGE Nearly five years elapsed after Cartier's return to St Malo before he again set sail for the New World. His royal master, indeed, had received him most graciously. Francis had deigned to listen with pleasure to the recital of his pilot's adventures, and had ordered him to set them down in writing. Moreover, he had seen and conversed with Donnacona and the other captive Indians, who had told of the wonders of their distant country. The Indians had learned the language of their captors and spoke with the king in French. Francis gave orders that they should be received into the faith, and the registers of St Malo show that on March 25, 1538, or 1539 (the year is a little uncertain), there were baptized three savages from Canada brought from the said country by 'honnete homme [honest man], Jacques Cartier, captain of our Lord the King.' But the moment was unsuited for further endeavour in the New World. Francis had enough to do to save his own soil from the invading Spaniard. Nor was it until the king of France on June 15, 1538, made a truce with his inveterate foe, Charles V, that he was able to turn again to American discovery. Profoundly impressed with the vast extent and unbounded resources of the countries described in Cartier's narrative, the king decided to assume the sovereignty of this new land, and to send out for further discovery an expedition of some magnitude. At the head of it he placed Jean Francois de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, whom, on January 15, 1540, he created Lord of Norumbega, viceroy and lieutenant-general of Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Baccalaos. The name Norumbega is an Indian word, and was used by early explorers as a general term for the territory that is now Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Baccalaos is the name often given by the French to Newfoundland, the word itself being of Basque origin and meaning 'codfish,' while Carpunt will be remembered as a harbour beside Belle Isle, where Cartier had been stormbound on his first voyage. The king made every effort to further Roberval's expedition. The Lord of Norumbega was given 45,000 livres and full authority to enlist sailors and colonists for his expedition. The latter appears to have been a difficult task, and, after the custom of the day, recourse was presently had to the prisons to recruit the ranks of the prospective settlers. Letters were issued to Roberval authorizing him to search the jails of Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen, and Dijon and to draw from them any convicts lying under sentence of death. Exception was made of heretics, traitors, and counterfeiters, as unfitted for the pious purpose of the voyage. The gangs of these miscreants, chained together and under guard, came presently trooping into St Malo. Among them, it is recorded, walked a young girl of eighteen, unconvicted of any crime, who of her own will had herself chained to a malefactor, as hideous physically as morally, whose lot she was determined to share. To Roberval, as commander of the enterprise, was attached Cartier in the capacity of captain-general and master-pilot. The letters patent which contain the appointment speak of him as our 'dear and well-beloved Jacques Cartier, who has discovered the large countries of Canada and Hochelaga which lie at the end of Asia.' Cartier received from Roberval about 31,300 livres. The king gave to him for this voyage the little ship Emerillon and commanded him to obtain four others and to arm and equip the five. The preparations for the voyage seem to have lasted throughout the winter and spring of the years 1540-41. The king had urged Cartier to start by the middle of April, but it was not until May 23, 1541, that the ships were actually able to set sail. Even then Roberval was not ready to leave. Cannon, powder, and a varied equipment that had been purchased for the voyage were still lying at various points in Normandy and Champagne. Cartier, anxious to follow the king's wishes, could wait no longer and, at length, he set out with his five ships, leaving Roberval to prepare other ships at Honfleur and follow as he might. From first to last the relations of Cartier and Roberval appear to need further explanation than that which we possess. Roberval was evidently the nominal head of the enterprise and the feudal lord of the countries to be claimed, but Cartier seems to have been restless under any attempt to dictate the actual plan to be adopted, and his final desertion of Roberval may be ascribed to the position in which he was placed by the divided command of the expedition. The expedition left St Malo on May 23, 1541, bearing in the ships food and victuals for two years. The voyage was unprosperous. Contrary winds and great gales raged over the Atlantic. The ships were separated at sea, and before they reached the shores of Newfoundland were so hard put to it for fresh water that it was necessary to broach the cider casks to give drink to the goats and the cattle which they carried. But the ships came together presently in safety in the harbour of Carpunt beside Belle Isle, refitted there, and waited vainly for Roberval. They finally reached the harbour of the Holy Cross at Stadacona on August 23. The savages flocked to meet the ships with a great display of joy, looking eagerly for the return of their vanished Donnacona. Their new chief, Agouhanna, with six canoes filled with men, women, and children, put off from the shore. The moment was a difficult one. Donnacona and all his fellow-captives, except only one little girl, had died in France. Cartier dared not tell the whole truth to the natives, and he contented himself with saying that Donnacona was dead, but that the other Indians had become great lords in France, had married there and did not wish to return. Whatever may have been the feeling of the tribe at this tale, the new chief at least was well pleased. 'I think,' wrote Cartier, in his narrative of this voyage, 'he took it so well because he remained lord and governor of the country by the death of the said Donnacona.' Agouhanna certainly made a great show of friendliness. He took from his own head the ornament of hide and wampum that he wore and bound it round the brows of the French leader. At the same time he put his arms about his neck with every sign of affection. When the customary ceremonies of eating and drinking, speech-making, and presentations had ended, Cartier, after first exploring with his boats, sailed with his ships a few miles above Stadacona to a little river where good anchorage was found, now known as the Cap Rouge river. It enters the St Lawrence a little above Quebec. Here preparations were at once made for the winter's sojourn. Cannon were brought ashore from three of the ships. A strong fort was constructed, and the little settlement received the pretentious name Charlesbourg Royal. The remaining part of the month of August 1541 was spent in making fortifications and in unloading the ships. On September 2 two of the ships, commanded by Mace Jalobert, Cartier's brother-in-law and companion of the preceding voyage, and Etienne Nouel, his nephew, were sent back to France to tell the king of what had been done, and to let him know that Roberval had not yet arrived. As on his preceding voyages, Cartier was greatly impressed by the aspect of the country about him. All round were splendid forests of oak and maple and cedar and beech, which surpassed even the beautiful woodlands of France. Grape vines loaded with ripe fruit hung like garlands from the trees. Nor was the forest thick and tangled, but rather like an open park, so that among the trees were great stretches of ground wanting only to be tilled. Twenty of Cartier's men were set to turn the soil, and in one day had prepared and sown about an acre and a half of ground. The cabbage, lettuce, and turnip seed that they planted showed green shoots within a week. At the mouth of the Cap Rouge river there is a high point, now called Redclyffe. On this Cartier constructed a second fort, which commanded the fortification and the ships below. A little spring supplied fresh water, and the natural situation afforded a protection against attack by water or by land. While the French laboured in building the stockades and in hauling provisions and equipments from the ships to the forts, they made other discoveries that impressed them more than the forest wealth of this new land. Close beside the upper fort they found in the soil a good store of stones which they 'esteemed to be diamonds.' At the foot of the slope along the St Lawrence lay iron deposits, and the sand of the shore needed only, Cartier said, to be put into the furnace to get the iron from it. At the water's edge they found 'certain leaves of fine gold as thick as a man's nail,' and in the slabs of black slate-stone which ribbed the open glades of the wood there were veins of mineral matter which shone like gold and silver. Cartier's mineral discoveries have unfortunately not resulted in anything. We know now that his diamonds, still to be seen about Cap Rouge, are rock crystals. The gold which he later on showed to Roberval, and which was tested, proved genuine enough, but the quantity of such deposits in the region has proved insignificant. It is very likely that Cartier would make the most of his mineral discoveries as the readiest means of exciting his master's interest. When everything was in order at the settlement, the provisions landed, and the building well under way, the leader decided to make a brief journey to Hochelaga, in order to view more narrowly the rapids that he had seen, and to be the better able to plan an expedition into the interior for the coming spring. The account of this journey is the last of Cartier's exploits of which we have any detailed account, and even here the closing pages of his narrative are unsatisfactory and inconclusive. What is most strange is that, although he expressly says that he intended to 'go as far as Hochelaga, of purpose to view and understand the fashion of the saults [falls] of water,' he makes no mention of the settlement of Hochelaga itself, and does not seem to have visited it. The Hochelaga expedition, in which two boats were used, left the camp at Cap Rouge on September 7, 1541. A number of Cartier's gentlemen accompanied him on the journey, while the Viscount Beaupre was left behind in command of the fort. On their way up the river Cartier visited the chief who had entrusted his little daughter to the case of the French at Stadacona at the time of Cartier's wintering there. He left two young French boys in charge of this Indian chief that they might learn the language of the country. No further episode of the journey is chronicled until on September 11 the boats arrived at the foot of the rapids now called Lachine. Cartier tells us that two leagues from the foot of the bottom fall was an Indian village called Tutonaguy, but he does not say whether or not this was the same place as the Hochelaga of his previous voyage. The French left their boats and, conducted by the Indians, walked along the portage path that led past the rapids. There were large encampments of natives beside the second fall, and they received the French with every expression of good-will. By placing little sticks upon the ground they gave Cartier to understand that a third rapid was to be passed, and that the river was not navigable to the country of Saguenay. Convinced that further exploration was not possible for the time being, the French returned to their boats. As usual, a great concourse of Indians had come to the spot. Cartier says that he 'understood afterwards' that the Indians would have made an end of the French, but judged them too strong for the attempt. The expedition started at once for the winter quarters at Cap Rouge. As they passed Hochelay--the abode of the supposed friendly chief near Portneuf--they learned that he had gone down the river ahead of them to devise means with Agouhanna for the destruction of the expedition. Cartier's narrative ends at this most dramatic moment of his adventures. He seems to have reached the encampment at Cap Rouge at the very moment when an Indian assault was imminent. We know, indeed, that the attack, which, from certain allusions in the narrative, seems presently to have been made, was warded off, and that Cartier's ships and a part at least of his company sailed home to France, falling in with Roberval on the way. But the story of the long months of anxiety and privation, and probably of disease and hostilities with the Indians, is not recorded. The narrative of the great explorer, as it is translated by Hakluyt, closes with the following ominous sentences: 'And when we were arrived at our fort, we understood by our people that the savages of the country came not any more about our fort, as they were accustomed, to bring us fish, and that they were in a wonderful doubt and fear of us. Wherefore our captain, having been advised by some of our men which had been at Stadacona to visit them that there was a wonderful number of the country people assembled together, caused all things in our fortress to be set in good order.' And beyond these words, Cartier's story was never written, or, if written, it has been lost. CHAPTER IX THE CLOSE OF CARTIER'S CAREER Great doubt and uncertainty surround the ultimate fate of Roberval's attempted colony, of which Cartier's expedition was to form the advance guard. Roberval, as already seen, had stayed behind in France when Cartier sailed in 1541, because his equipment was not yet ready for the voyage. Nor does he seem to have finally started on his expedition for nearly a year after the departure of Cartier. It has been suggested that Roberval did set sail at some time in the summer of 1541, and that he reached Cape Breton island and built a fort there. So, at least, a tradition ran that was repeated many years later by Lescarbot in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France. If this statement is true, it must mean that Roberval sailed home again at the close of 1541, without having succeeded in finding Cartier, and that he prepared for a renewed expedition in the spring of the coming year. But the evidence for any such voyage is not conclusive. What we know is that on April 16, 1542, Roberval sailed out of the port of Rochelle with three tall ships and a company of two hundred persons, men and women, and that with him were divers gentlemen of quality. On June 8, 1542, his ships entered the harbour of St John's in Newfoundland. They found there seventeen fishing vessels, clear proof that by this time the cod fisheries of the Newfoundland Banks were well known. They were, indeed, visited by the French, the Portuguese, and other nations. Here Roberval paused to refit his ships and to replenish his stores. While he was still in the harbour, one day, to his amazement, Cartier sailed in with the five ships that he was bringing away from his abandoned settlement at Charlesbourg Royal. Cartier showed to his superior the 'diamonds' and the gold that he was bringing home from Canada. He gave to Roberval a glowing account of the country that he had seen, but, according to the meagre details that appear in the fragment in Hakluyt's Voyages, he made clear that he had been compelled to abandon his attempt at settlement. 'He could not with his small company withstand the savages, which went about daily to annoy him, which was the cause of his return into France.' Except what is contained in the few sentences of this record we know nothing of what took place between Roberval and Cartier. But it was quite clear that the latter considered the whole enterprise as doomed to failure. It is more than likely that Cartier was dissatisfied with Roberval's delay, and did not care to continue under the orders of a leader inferior to himself in capacity. Be this as it may, their final parting stands recorded in the following terms, and no historical document has as yet come to light which can make the exact situation known to us. 'When our general [Roberval], being furnished with sufficient forces, commanded him [Cartier] to go back with him, he and his company, moved as it seems with ambition, because they would have all the glory of the discovery of those parts themselves, stole privily away the next night from us, and, without taking their leaves, departed home for Brittany.' The story, it must be remembered, comes from the pen of either Roberval or one of his associates. The subsequent history of Roberval's colony, as far as it is known, can be briefly told. His ships reached the site of Charlesbourg Royal late in July 1542. He landed stores and munitions and erected houses, apparently on a scale of some magnitude, with towers and fortifications and with great kitchens, halls, and living rooms. Two ships were sent home in the autumn with news of the expedition, their leader being especially charged to find out whether the rock crystals carried back by Cartier had turned out to be diamonds. All the other colonists remained and spent the winter in this place. In spite of their long preparation and of their commodious buildings, they seem to have endured sufferings as great as, or even greater than, those of Cartier's men at Stadacona seven years before. Supplies of food ran short, and even in the autumn before the stern winter had begun it was necessary to put the whole company on carefully measured rations. Disease broke out among the French, as it had broken out under Cartier, and about fifty of their number perished before the coming of the spring. Their lot was rendered more dreadful still by quarrelling and crime. Roberval could keep his colonists in subjection only by the use of irons and by the application of the lash. The gibbet, reared beside the fort, claimed its toll of their number. The winter of their misery drew slowly to its close. The ice of the river began to break in April. On June 5, 1543, their leader, Roberval, embarked on an expedition to explore the Saguenay, 'leaving thirty persons behind in the fort, with orders that if Roberval had not returned by the first of July, they were to depart for France.' Whither he went and what he found we do not know. We read that on June 14. certain of his company came back with messages to the fort: that five days later still others came back with instructions that the company at the fort were to delay their departure for France until July 19. And here the narrative of the colony breaks off. Of Roberval's subsequent fate we can learn hardly anything. There is some evidence to show that Cartier was dispatched from France to Canada to bring him back. Certain it is that in April 1544 orders were issued for the summons of both Cartier and Roberval to appear before a commission for the settling of their accounts. The report of the royal auditors credits Cartier apparently with a service of eight months spent in returning to Canada to bring Roberval home. On the strength of this, it is thought likely that Cartier, returning safely to France in the summer of 1542, was sent back again at the king's command to aid in the return of the colonists, whose enterprise was recognized as a failure. After this, Roberval is lost to sight in the history of France. Certain chroniclers have said that he made another voyage to the New World and perished at sea. Others have it that he was assassinated in Paris near the church of the Holy Innocents. But nothing is known. Cartier also is practically lost from sight during the last fifteen years of his life. His name appears at intervals in the local records, notably on the register of baptisms as a godfather. As far as can be judged, he spent the remainder of his days in comfortable retirement in his native town of St Malo. Besides his house in the seaport he had a country residence some miles distant at Limoilou. This old house of solid and substantial stone, with a courtyard and stone walls surrounding it, is still standing. There can be no doubt that the famous pilot enjoyed during his closing years a universal esteem. It is just possible that in recognition of his services he was elevated in rank by the king of France, for in certain records of St Malo in 1549, he is spoken of as the Sieur de Limoilou. But this may have been merely the sort of courtesy title often given in those days to the proprietors of small landed estates. It was sometimes the custom of the officials of the port of St Malo to mark down in the records of the day the death of any townsman of especial note. Such an entry as this is the last record of the great pilot. In the margins of certain documents of September 1, 1557, there is written in the quaint, almost unreadable penmanship of the time: 'This said Wednesday about five in the morning died Jacques Cartier.' There is no need to enlarge upon the greatness of Cartier's achievements. It was only the beginning of a far-reaching work, the completion of which fell to other hands. But it is Cartier's proud place in history to bear the title of discoverer of a country whose annals were later to be illumined by the exploits of a Champlain and a La Salle, and the martyrdom of a Brebeuf; which was to witness, for more than half a century, a conflict in arms between Great Britain and France, and from that conflict to draw the finest pages of its history and the noblest inspiration of its future; a country upon whose soil, majestic in its expanse of river, lake, and forest, was to be reared a commonwealth built upon the union and harmony of the two great races who had fought for its dominion. Jacques Cartier, as much perhaps as any man of his time, embodied in himself what was highest in the spirit of his age. He shows us the daring of the adventurer with nothing of the dark cruelty by which such daring was often disfigured. He brought to his task the simple faith of the Christian whose devout fear of God renders him fearless of the perils of sea and storm. The darkest hour of his adversity in that grim winter at Stadacona found him still undismayed. He came to these coasts to find a pathway to the empire of the East. He found instead a country vast and beautiful beyond his dreams. The enthusiasm of it entered into his soul. Asia was forgotten before the reality of Canada. Since Cartier's day four centuries of history have hallowed the soil of Canada with memories and associations never to be forgotten. But patriotism can find no finer example than the instinctive admiration and love called forth in the heart of Jacques Cartier by the majestic beauty of the land of which he was the discoverer. ITINERARY OF CARTIER'S VOYAGES Adapted from Baxter's 'Memoir of Jacques Cartier' VOYAGE OF 1534 April 20 Monday Cartier leaves St Malo. May 10 Sunday Arrives at Bonavista. " 21 Thursday Reaches Isle of Birds. " 24 Sunday Enters the harbour of Kirpon. June 9 Tuesday Leaves Kirpon. " 10 Wednesday Enters the harbour of Brest. " 11 Thursday St Barnabas Day. Hears Mass and explores coast in boats. " 12 Friday Names St Anthoine, Servan; plants cross and names river St Jacques, and harbour Jacques Cartier. " 13 Saturday Returns to ships. " 14 Sunday Hears Mass. " 15 Monday Sails toward north coast of Newfoundland. " 16 Tuesday Follows the west coast of Newfoundland and names the Monts des Granches. June 17 Wednesday Names the Colombiers, Bay St Julien, and Capes Royal and Milk. " 18 Thursday Stormy weather to 24th; explores coast between Capes Royal and Milk. " 24 Wednesday Festival of St John the Baptist. Names Cape St John. " 25 Thursday Weather bad; sails toward the west and and south-west; discovers Isles Margaux, Brion, and " 26 Friday Cape Dauphin. " 27 Saturday Coasts toward west-south-west. " 28 Sunday Reaches Cape Rouge. " 29 Monday Festival of St Peter. Names Alezay and Cape St Peter, and continues course west-south-west. " 30 Tuesday Towards evening describes land appearing like two islands. July 1 Wednesday Names Capes Orleans and Savages. " 2 Thursday Names Bay St Leonarius. " 3 Friday Continues northerly course and names Cape Hope. " 4 Saturday Arrives at Port Daniel; remains there until 12th. July 16 Thursday Enters Gaspe Bay, and remains until 25th on account of storm. " 22 Wednesday Lands and meets savages. " 24 Friday Plants a cross. " 25 Saturday Sets sail with good wind toward Anticosti. " 27 Monday Approaches coast. " 28 Tuesday Names Cape St Louis. " 29 Wednesday Names Cape Montmorency and doubles East Cape of Anticosti. Aug. 1 Saturday Sights northern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. " 8 Saturday Approaches west coast of Newfoundland. " 9 Sunday Arrives at Blanc Sablon, and makes preparations to return home. " 15 Saturday Festival of the Assumption. Hears Mass and sets sail for France. Sept. 5 Saturday Arrives at St Malo. SECOND VOYAGE, 1535 May 16 Sunday First Pentecost. The crew commune at Cathedral and receive Episcopal Benediction. " 19 Wednesday Departure from St Malo. " 26 Wednesday Contrary winds. June 25 Friday Ships separated by storm. July 7 Wednesday Cartier reaches the Isle of Birds. " 8 Thursday Enters Strait of Belle Isle. " 15 Thursday Reaches the rendezvous at Blanc Sablon. " 26 Monday Ships meet. " 29 Thursday Follows north coast and names Isles St William. " 30 Friday Names Isles St Marthy. " 31 Saturday Names Cape St Germain. Aug. 1 Sunday Contrary winds; enters St Nicholas Harbour. " 8 Sunday Sails toward the southern coast. " 9 Monday Contrary wind; turns toward north and stops in Bay St Lawrence. " 13 Friday Leaves Bay St Lawrence, approaches Anticosti, and doubles the western point. " 15 Sunday Festival of the Assumption. Names Anticosti, Isle of the Assumption. " 16 Monday Continues along coast. " 17 Tuesday Turns toward the north. " 19 Thursday Arrives at the Seven Islands. " 20 Friday Ranges coast with his boats. " 21 Saturday Sails west, but obliged to return to the Seven Islands owing to head winds. Aug. 24 Tuesday Leaves the Seven Islands and sets sail toward south. " 29 Sunday Martyrdom of St John Baptist. Reaches harbour of Isles St John. Sept. 1 Wednesday Quits the harbour and directs his course toward the Saguenay. " 2 Thursday Leaves the Saguenay and reaches the Bic Islands. " 6 Monday Arrives at Isle-aux-Coudres. " 7 Tuesday Reaches Island of Orleans. " 9 Thursday Donnacona visits Cartier. " 13 Monday Sails toward the River St Charles. " 14 Tuesday Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Reaches entrance of St Charles River. " 15 Wednesday Plants buoys to guide his ships. " 16 Thursday Two ships are laid up for the winter. " 17 Friday Donnacona tries to dissuade Cartier from going to Hochelaga. " 18 Saturday Donnacona's stratagem to deter Cartier from going to Stadacona. " 19 Sunday Cartier starts for Hochelaga with his pinnace and two boats. Sept. 28 Tuesday Enters Lake St Peter. " 29 Wednesday Leaves his pinnace, and proceeds with his boats. Oct. 2 Saturday Arrives at Hochelaga. " 3 Sunday Lands and visits town and mountain, which he named Mount Royal, and leaves Sunday. " 4 Monday Regains his pinnace. " 5 Tuesday Takes his way back to Stadacona. " 7 Thursday Stops at Three Rivers, and plants cross upon an island. " 11 Monday Arrives at the anchorage beside Stadacona. " 12 Tuesday Donnacona visits Cartier. " 13 Wednesday Cartier and some of his men visit Stadacona. 1536 April 16 Sunday Easter Sunday. The river clear of ice. " 22 Saturday Donnacona visits Cartier with large number of savages. " 28 Friday Cartier sends Guyot to Stadacona. May 3 Wednesday Festival of the Holy Cross. A cross planted; Cartier seizes Donnacona. May 5 Friday The people of Stadacona, bring provisions for Cartier's captives. " 6 Saturday Cartier sails. " 7 Sunday Arrives at Isle-aux-Coudres. " 15 Monday Exchanges presents with the savages. " 22 Monday Reaches Isle Brion. " 25 Thursday Festival of the Ascension. Reaches a low, sandy island. " 26 Friday Returns to Isle Brion. June 1 Thursday Names Capes Lorraine and St Paul. " 4 Sunday Fourth of Pentecost. Names harbour of St Esprit. " 6 Tuesday Departs from the harbour of St Esprit. " 11 Sunday St Barnabas Day. At Isles St Pierre. " 16 Friday Departs from Isles St Pierre and makes harbour at Rougenouse. " 19 Monday Leaves Rougenouse and sails for home. July 6 Friday Reaches St Malo. THIRD VOYAGE, 1541 May 23 Monday Cartier leaves St Malo with five ships. Aug. 23 Tuesday Arrives before Stadacona. " 25 Thursday Lands artillery. Sept. 2 Friday Sends two of his ships home. " 7 Wednesday Sets out for Hochelaga. " 11 Sunday Arrives at Lachine Rapids. (The rest of the voyage is unknown.) BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE A Great many accounts of the voyages of Jacques Cartier have been written both in French and in English; but the fountain source of information for all of these is found in the narratives written by Cartier himself. The story of the first voyage was written under the name of 'Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534.' The original manuscript was lost from sight for over three hundred years, but about half a century ago it was discovered in the Imperial Library (now the National Library) at Paris. Its contents, however, had long been familiar to English readers through the translation which appears in Hakluyt's 'Voyages,' published in 1600. In the same collection is also found the narrative of the second voyage, as translated from the 'Bref Recit' written by Cartier and published in 1545, and the fragment of the account of the third voyage of which the rest is lost. For an exhaustive bibliography of Cartier's voyages see Baxter, 'A Memoir of Jacques Cartier' (New York, 1906). An exceedingly interesting little book is Sir Joseph Pope's 'Jacques Cartier: his Life and Voyages' (Ottawa, 1890). The student is also recommended to read 'The Saint Lawrence Basin and its Borderlands,' by Samuel Edward Dawson; papers by the Abbe Verreau, John Reade, Bishop Howley and W. F. Ganong in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada;' the chapter, 'Jacques Cartier and his Successors,' by B. F. de Costa, in Winsor's 'Narrative and Critical History of America,' and the chapter 'The Beginnings of Canada,' by Arthur G. Doughty, in the first volume of 'Canada and its Provinces' (Toronto, 1913). 
21543	----	[Frontispiece: Jacques Cartier] French Pathfinders in North America By William Henry Johnson Author of "The World's Discoverers," "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," etc. _With Seven Full-Page Plates_ Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1912 Copyright, 1905, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. All rights reserved {v} FOREWORD The compiler of the following sketches does not make any claim to originality. He has dealt with material that has been used often and again. Still there has seemed to him to be a place for a book which should outline the story of the great French explorers in such simple, direct fashion as might attract young readers. Trying to meet this need, he has sought to add to the usefulness of the volume by introductory chapters, simple in language, but drawn from the best authorities and carefully considered, giving a view of Indian society; also, by inserting numerous notes on Indian tribal connections, customs, and the like subjects. By selecting a portion of Radisson's journal for publication he does not by any means range himself on the side of the scholarly and gifted writer who has come forward as the champion of that picturesque scoundrel, and seriously proposes {vi} him as the real hero of the Northwest, to whom, we are told, is due the honor which we have mistakenly lavished on such commonplace persons as Champlain, Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle. While the present writer is not qualified to express a critical opinion as to the merits of the controversy about Radisson, a careful reading of his journal has given him an impression that the greatest part is so vague, so wanting in verifiable details, as to be worthless for historical purposes. One portion, however, seems unquestionably valuable, besides being exceedingly interesting. It is that which recounts his experiences on Lake Superior. It bears the plainest marks of truth and authenticity, and it is accepted as historical by the eminent critic, Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites. Therefore it is reproduced here, in abridged form; and on the strength of it Radisson is assigned a place among the Pathfinders. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE INDIAN RACE . . . 3 II. SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE . . . . . . . . . 15 III. THE IROQUOIS LEAGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 IV. ACHIEVEMENTS OF FRENCHMEN IN THE NORTH OF AMERICA . . 45 V. JACQUES CARTIER, THE DISCOVERER OF CANADA . . . . . . 53 VI. JEAN RIBAUT: THE FRENCH AT PORT ROYAL, IN SOUTH CAROLINA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 VII. RENÉ DE LAUDONNIÈRE: PLANTING A COLONY ON THE ST. JOHN'S RIVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 VIII. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN IN NOVA SCOTIA . . . . . . . . . 101 IX. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN (_continued_): THE FRENCH ON THE ST. LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT LAKES . . . . . . . 119 X. JESUIT MISSIONARY PIONEERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 XI. JEAN NICOLLET, LOUIS JOLIET, AND FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE; THE DISCOVERERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI . . . . 169 XII. PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON AND MÉDARD CHOUART EXPLORE LAKE SUPERIOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 XIII. ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE, THE FIRST EXPLORER OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI . . . . . . . . . . 225 XIV. LA SALLE AND THE FOUNDING OF LOUISIANA . . . . . . . 26l [SUPPLEMENT: THE EXECUTION OF HIS PLAN BY BIENVILLE] 278 XV. FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 XVI. THE VÉRENDRYES DISCOVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS . . . . . 313 BOOKS FOR REFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS JACQUES CARTIER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ From the original painting by P. Riis in the Town Hall of St. Malo, France Indian Family Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 FORT CAROLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 From De Bry's "Le Moyne de Bienville" SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 From the Ducornet portrait FORT OF THE IROQUOIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 From Laverdière's "Oeuvres de Champlain" THE MURDER OF LA SALLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 From Hennepin's "A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America" LE MOYNE DE BIENVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 From the original painting in the possession of J. A. Allen, Esq., Kingston, Ont. FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 From Carver's "Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America" {3} French Pathfinders in North America Chapter I THE ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE INDIAN RACE America probably peopled from Asia.--Unity of the American Race.--The Eskimo, possibly, an Exception.--Range of the Several Groups. In an earlier volume, "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," the probable origin of the native races of America has been discussed. Let us restate briefly the general conclusions there set forth. It is the universal opinion of scientific men that the people whom we call Indians did not originate in the Western World, but, in the far distant past, came upon this continent from another--from Europe, some say; from Asia, say others. In support of the latter opinion it is pointed out that Asia and America once were connected by a broad belt of land, now sunk {4} beneath the shallow Bering Sea. It is easy, then, to picture successive hordes of dusky wanderers pouring over from the old, old East upon the virgin soil of what was then emphatically a new world, since no human beings roamed its vast plains or traversed its stately forests. Human wave followed upon wave, the new comers pushing the older ones on. Some wandered eastward and spread themselves in the region surrounding Hudson Bay. Others took a southeast course and were the ancestors of the Algonquins, Iroquois, and other families inhabiting the eastern territory of the United States. Still others pushed their way down the Pacific coast and peopled Mexico and Central America, while yet others, driven no doubt by the crowding of great numbers into the most desirable regions of the isthmus, passed on into South America and gradually overspread it. Most likely these hordes of Asiatic savages wandered into America during hundreds of years and no doubt there was great diversity among them, some being far more advanced in the arts of life than others. But the essential thing to notice is that they were _all of one blood_. Thus their descendants, however different they may {5} have become in language and customs, constitute one stock, which we call the _American Race_. The peoples who reared the great earth-mounds of the Middle West, those who carved the curious sculptures of Central America, those who built the cave-dwellings of Arizona, those who piled stone upon stone in the quaint pueblos of New Mexico, those who drove Ponce de Leon away from the shores of Florida, and those who greeted the Pilgrims with, "Welcome, Englishmen!"--all these, beyond a doubt, were of one widely varying race. To this oneness of all native Americans there is, perhaps, a single exception. Some writers look upon the Eskimo as a remnant of an ancient European race, known as the "Cave-men" because their remains are found in caves in Western Europe, always associated with the bones of arctic animals, such as the reindeer, the arctic fox, and the musk-sheep. From this fact it seems that these primitive men found their only congenial habitation amid ice and snow. Now, the Eskimo are distinctly an arctic race, and in other particulars they are amazingly like these men of the caves who dwelt in Western Europe when it had a climate like that of Greenland. The lamented {6} Dr. John Fiske puts the case thus strongly: "The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from antler, used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the Cave-men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the Pleistocene caves of France and England, they would be indistinguishable in appearance from the remains of the Cave-men which are now found there." Further, these ancient men had an astonishing talent for delineating animals and hunting scenes. In the caves of France have been found carvings on bone and ivory, probably many tens of thousands of years old, which represent in the most life-like manner mammoths, cave-bears, and other animals now extinct. Strangely enough, of all existing savage peoples the Eskimo alone possess the same faculty. These circumstances make it probable that they are a remnant of the otherwise extinct Cave-men. If this is so, their ancestors probably passed over to this continent by a land-connection then existing between Northern Europe and Northern America, of which Greenland is a survival. From the Eskimo southward to Cape Horn {7} we find various branches of the one American race. First comes the _Athapascan_ stock, whose range extends from Hudson Bay westward through British America to the Rocky Mountains. One branch of this family left the dreary regions of almost perpetual ice and snow, wandered far down toward the south, and became known as the roaming and fierce Apaches, Navajos, and Lipans of the burning southwestern plains. Immediately south of the Athapascans was the most extensive of all the families, the _Algonquin_. Their territory stretched without interruption westward from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to the Rocky Mountains, on both banks of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. It extended southward along the Atlantic seaboard as far, perhaps, as the Savannah River. This family embraced some of the most famous tribes, such as the Abnakis, Micmacs, Passamaquoddies, Pequots, Narragansetts, and others in New England; the Mohegans, on the Hudson; the Lenape, on the Delaware; the Nanticokes, in Maryland; the Powhatans, in Virginia; the Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and Chippeways, in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys; and the Shawnees, on the Tennessee. {8} This great family is the one that came most in contact and conflict with our forefathers. The Indians who figure most frequently on the bloody pages of our early story were Algonquins. This tribe has produced intrepid warriors and sagacious leaders. Its various branches represent a very wide range of culture. Captain John Smith and Champlain, coasting the shores of New England, found them closely settled by native tribes living in fixed habitations and cultivating regular crops of corn, beans, and pumpkins. On the other hand, the Algonquins along the St. Lawrence, as well as some of the western tribes, were shiftless and roving, growing no crops and having no settled abodes, but depending on fish, game, and berries for subsistence, famished at one time, at another gorged. Probably the highest representatives of this extensive family were the Shawnees, at its southernmost limit. Like an island in the midst of the vast Algonquin territory was the region occupied by the _Huron-Iroquois_ family. In thrift, intelligence, skill in fortification, and daring in war, this stock stands preëminent among all native Americans. It included the Eries and Hurons, in Canada; {9} the Susquehannocks, on the Susquehanna; and the Conestogas, also in Pennsylvania. But by far the most important branch was the renowned confederacy called the Five Nations. This included the Senecas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Mohawks. These five tribes occupied territory in a strip extending through the lake region of New York. At a later date a kindred people, the Tuscaroras, who had drifted down into Carolina, returned northward and rejoined the league, which thereafter was known as the Six Nations. This confederacy was by far the most formidable aggregation of Indians within the territory of the present United States. It waged merciless war upon other native peoples and had become so dreaded, says Dr. Fiske, that at the cry "A Mohawk!" the Indians of New England fled like sheep. It was especially hostile to some alien branches of its own kindred, the Hurons and Eries in particular. South of the Algonquins was the _Maskoki_ group of Indians, of a decidedly high class, comprising the Creeks, or Muskhogees, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, and, later, the Seminoles. They occupied the area of the Gulf States, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. The {10} building of the Ohio earthworks is by many students attributed to the ancestors of these southern tribes, and it was they who heroically fought the Spanish invaders. The powerful _Dakota_ family, also called Sioux, ranged over territory extending from Lake Michigan to the Rocky Mountains and covering the most of the valley of the Missouri. The _Pawnee_ group occupied the Platte valley, in Nebraska, and the territory extending thence southward; and the _Shoshonee_ group had for its best representatives the renowned Comanches, the matchless horsemen of the plains. On the Pacific coast were several tribes, but none of any special importance. In the Columbia and Sacramento valleys were the lowest specimens of the Indian race, the only ones who may be legitimately classed as savages. All the others are more properly known as barbarians. In New Mexico and Arizona is a group of remarkable interest, the _Pueblo Indians_, who inhabit large buildings (pueblos) of stone or sun-dried brick. In this particular they stand in a class distinct from all other native tribes in the United States. They comprise the Zuñis, Moquis, Acomans, and others, having different languages, {11} but standing on the same plane of culture. In many respects they have advanced far beyond any other stock. They have specially cultivated the arts of peace. Their great stone or adobe dwellings, in which hundreds of persons live, reared with almost incredible toil on the top of nearly inaccessible rocks or on the ledges of deep gorges, were constructed to serve at the same time as dwelling-places and as strongholds against the attacks of the roaming and murdering Apaches. These people till the thirsty soil of their arid region by irrigation with water conducted for miles. They have developed many industries to a remarkable degree, and their pottery shows both skill and taste. These high-class barbarians are especially interesting because they have undergone little change since the Spaniards, under Coronado, first became acquainted with them, 364 years ago. They still live in the same way and observe the same strange ceremonies, of which the famous "Snake-dance" is the best known. They are, also, on a level of culture not much below that of the ancient Mexicans; so that from the study of them we may get a very good idea of the people whom Cortes found and conquered. {15} Chapter II SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE Mistakes of the Earliest European Visitors as to Indian Society and Government.--How Indian Social Life originated.--The Family Tie the Central Principle.--Gradual Development of a Family into a Tribe.--The Totem. The first white visitors to America found men exercising some kind of authority, and they called them kings, after the fashion of European government. The Spaniards even called the head-chief of the Mexicans the "Emperor Montezuma." There was not a king, still less an emperor, in the whole of North America. Had these first Europeans understood that they were face to face with men of the Stone Age, that is, with men who had not progressed further than our own forefathers had advanced thousands of years ago, in that dim past when they used weapons and implements of stone, and when they had not as yet anything like written language, they would have been saved many blunders. They would not have called native chiefs by such high-sounding titles as "King {16} Powhatan" and "King Philip." They would not have styled the simple Indian girl, Pocahontas, a princess; and King James, of England, would not have made the ludicrous mistake of being angry with Rolfe for marrying her, because he feared that when her father died, she would be entitled to "the throne," and Rolfe would claim to be King of Virginia! The study of Indian life has this peculiar interest, that it gives us an insight into the thinking and acting of our own forefathers long before the dawn of history, when they worshiped gods very much like those of the Indians. All the world over, the most widely separated peoples in similar stages of development exhibit remarkably similar ideas and customs, as if one had borrowed from the other. There is often a curious resemblance between the myths of some race in Central Africa and those of some heathen tribe in Northern Europe. The human mind, under like conditions, works in the same way and produces like results. Thus, in studying pictures of Indian life as it existed at the Discovery, we have before us a sort of object-lesson in the condition of our own remote ancestors. Now, the first European visitors made serious {17} errors in describing Indian life. They applied European standards of judgment to things Indian. A tadpole does not look in the least like a frog. An uninformed person who should find one in a pool, and, a few weeks later, should find a frog there, would never imagine that the tadpole had changed into the frog. Now, Indian society was in what we may call the tadpole stage. It was quite unlike European society, and yet it contained exactly the same elements as those out of which European society gradually unfolded itself long ago. Indian society grew up in the most natural way out of the crude beginnings of all society. Let us consider this point for a moment. Suppose human beings of the lowest grade to be living together in a herd, only a little better than beasts, what influence would first begin to elevate them? Undoubtedly, parental affection. Indeed, mother-love is the foundation-stone of all our civilization. On that steadfast rock the rude beginnings of all social life are built. Young animals attain their growth and the ability to provide for themselves very early. The parents' watchful care does not need to be long exercised. The offspring, so soon as it is weaned, is quickly {18} forgotten. Not so the young human being. Its brain requires a long time for its slow maturing. Thus, for years, without its parents' care it would perish. The mother's love is strengthened by the constant attention which she must so long give to her child, and this is shared, in a degree, by the father. At the same time, their common interest in the same object draws them closer together. Before the first-born is able to find its own food and shelter other children come, and so the process is continually extended. Thus arises the _family_, the corner-stone of all life that is above that of brutes. But the little household, living in a cave and fighting hand to hand with wild beasts and equally wild men, has a hard struggle to maintain itself. In time, however, through the marriage of the daughters--for in savage life the young men usually roam off and take wives elsewhere, while the young women stay at home--instead of the original single family, we have the grown daughters, with their husbands, living still with their parents and rearing children, thus forming a group of families, closely united by kinship. In the next generation, by the same process continued, we have a dozen, perhaps twenty, families, {19} all closely related, and living, it may be, under one shelter, the men hunting and providing food for the whole group, and the women working together and preparing the food in common. Moreover, they all trace their relationship through their mothers, because the women are the home-staying element. In our group of families, for instance, all the women are descendants of the original single woman with whom we began; but the husbands have come from elsewhere. This is no doubt the reason why among savages it seems the universal practice to trace kinship through the mother. Again, in such a little community as we have supposed, the women, being all united by close ties of blood, are the ruling element. The men may beat their wives, but, after all, the women, if they join together against any one man, can put him out and remain in possession. These points it is important to bear in mind, because they explain what would otherwise appear very singular features of Indian life. For instance, we understand now why a son does not inherit anything, not so much as a tobacco-pipe, at his father's death. He is counted as the mother's child. For the same reason, if the {20} mother has had more than one husband, and children by each marriage, these are all counted as full brothers and sisters, because they have the same mother. Such a group of families as has been supposed is called a _clan_, or in Roman history a _gens_. It may be small, or it may be very numerous. The essential feature is that it is a body of people united by the tie of common blood. It may have existed for hundreds of years and have grown to thousands of persons. Some of the clans of the Scotch Highlands were quite large, and it would often have been a hopeless puzzle to trace a relationship running back through many generations. Still, every Cameron knew that he was related to all the other Camerons, every Campbell to all the other Campbells, and he recognized a clear duty of standing by every clansman as a brother in peace and in war. We see thus that the clan organization grows naturally out of the drawing together of men to strengthen themselves in the fierce struggle of savage life. The clan is simply an extension of the family. The family idea still runs through it, and kinship is the bond that holds together all the members. {21} Now, this was just the stage of social progress that the Indians had reached at the Discovery. Their society was organized on the basis of the clan, and it bore all the marks of its origin. Indians, however, have not any family names. Something, therefore, was needed to supply the lack of a common designation, so that the members of a clan might know each other as such, however widely they might be scattered. This lack was supplied by the clan-symbol, called a _totem_. This was always an animal of some kind, and an image of it was often rudely painted over a lodge-entrance or tattooed on the clansman's body. All who belonged to the clan of the Wolf, or the Bear, or the Tortoise, or any other, were supposed to be descended from a common ancestress; and this kinship was the tie that held them together in a certain alliance, though living far apart. It mattered not that the original clan had been split up and its fragments scattered among several different tribes. The bond of clanship still held. If, for example, a Cayuga warrior of the Wolf clan met a Seneca warrior of the same clan, their totem was the same, and they at once acknowledged each other as brothers. {22} Perhaps we might illustrate this peculiar relation by our system of college fraternities. Suppose that a Phi-Beta-Kappa man of Cornell meets a Phi-Beta-Kappa man of Yale. Immediately they recognize a certain brotherhood. Only the tie of clanship is vastly stronger, because it rests not on an agreement, but on a real blood relationship. According to Indian ideas, a man and a woman of the same clan were too near kindred to marry. Therefore a man must always seek a wife in some other clan than his own; and thus each family contained members of two clans. The clan was not confined to one neighborhood. As it grew, sections of it drifted away and took up their abode in different localities. Thus, when the original single Iroquois stock became split into five distinct tribes, each contained portions of eight clans in common. Sometimes it happened that, when a clan divided, a section chose to take a new totem. Thus arose a fresh centre of grouping. But the new clan was closely united to the old by the sense of kinship and by constant intermarriages. This process of splitting and forming new clans had gone on for a long time among the Indians--for how {23} many hundreds of years, we have no means of knowing. In this way there had arisen groups of clans, closely united by kinship. Such a group we call a _phratry_. A number of these groups living in the same region and speaking a common dialect constituted a larger union which we sometimes call a _nation_, more commonly a _tribe_. This relation may be illustrated by the familiar device of a family-tree, thus: [Illustration: Indian Family Tree.] {24} Here we see eleven clans, all descended from a common stock and speaking a common dialect, composing the Mohegan Tribe. Some of the smaller tribes, however, had not more than three clans. The point that we need to get clear in our minds is that an Indian tribe was simply a huge family, extended until it embraced hundreds or even thousands of souls. In many cases organization never got beyond the tribe. Not a few tribes stood alone and isolated. But among some of the most advanced peoples, such as the Iroquois, the Creeks, and the Choctaws, related tribes drew together and formed a confederacy or league, for mutual help. The most famous league in Northern America was that of the Iroquois. We shall describe it in the next chapter. It deserves careful attention, both because of its deep historical interest, and because it furnishes the best-known example of Indian organization. {27} Chapter III THE IROQUOIS LEAGUE History of the League.--Natural Growth of Indian Government.--How Authority was exercised, how divided.--Popular Assemblies.--Public Speaking.--Community Life. Originally the Iroquois people was one, but as the parent stock grew large, it broke up into separate groups. Dissensions arose among these, and they made war upon one another. Then, according to their legend, Hayawentha, or Hiawatha, whispered into the ear of Daganoweda, an Onondaga sachem, that the cure for their ills lay in union. This wise counsel was followed. The five tribes known to Englishmen as the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas--their Indian names are different and much longer--buried the hatchet and formed a confederacy which grew to be, after the Aztec League in Mexico, the most powerful Indian organization in North America. It was then known as "The Five Nations." {28} About 1718, one of the original branches, the Tuscaroras, which had wandered away as far as North Carolina, pushed by white men hungry for their land, broke up their settlements, took up the line of march, returned northward, and rejoined the other branches of the parent stem. From this time forth the League is known in history as "The Six Nations," the constant foe of the French and ally of the English. The Indian name for it was "The Long House," so called because the wide strip of territory occupied by it was in the shape of one of those oblong structures in which the people dwelt. When the five tribes laid aside their strife, the fragments of the common clans in each re-united in heartiest brotherhood and formed an eightfold bond of union. On the other hand, the Iroquois waged fierce and relentless war upon the Hurons and Eries, because, though they belonged to the same stock, they refused to join the League. This denial of the sacred tie of blood was regarded by the Iroquois as rank treason, and they punished it with relentless ferocity, harrying and hounding the offending tribes to destruction. Indian government, like Indian society, was just such as had grown up naturally out of the {29} conditions. It was not at all like government among civilized peoples. In the first place, there were no written laws to be administered. The place of these was taken by public opinion and tradition, that is, by the ideas handed down from one generation to another and constantly discussed around the camp-fire and the council-fire. Every decent Indian was singularly obedient to this unwritten code. He wanted always to do what he was told his fathers had been accustomed to do, and what was expected of him. Thus there was a certain general standard of conduct. Again, the men who ruled, though they were formally elected to office, had not any authority such as is possessed by our judges and magistrates, who can say to a man, "Do thus," and compel him to obey or take the consequences. The influence of Indian rulers was more like that of leading men in a civilized community: it was chiefly personal and persuasive, and it was exerted in various indirect ways. If, for example, it became a question how to deal with a man who had done something violently opposed to Indian usage or to the interest of the tribe, there was not anything like an open trial, but the chiefs held a secret council and discussed the case. If they {30} decided favorably to the man, that was an end of the matter. On the other hand, if they agreed that he ought to die, there was not any formal sentence and public execution. The chiefs simply charged some young warrior with the task of putting the offender out of the way. The chosen executioner watched his opportunity, fell upon his victim unawares, perhaps as he passed through the dark porch of a lodge, and brained him with his tomahawk. The victim's family or clan made no demand for reparation, as they would have done if he had been murdered in a private feud, because public opinion approved the deed, and the whole power of the tribe would have been exerted to sustain the judgment of the chiefs. According to our ideas, which demand a fair and open trial for every accused person, this was most abhorrent despotism. Yet it had one very important safeguard: it was not like the arbitrary will of a single tyrant doing things on the impulse of the moment. Indians are eminently deliberative. They are much given to discussing things and endlessly powwowing about them. They take no important step without talking it over for days. Thus, in such a case as has been supposed, there was general concurrence in the {31} judgment of the chiefs, because they were understood to have canvassed the matter carefully, and their decision was practically that of the tribe. This singular sort of authority was vested in two kinds of men; sachems, who were concerned with the administration of the tribal affairs at all times, and war-chiefs, whose duty was limited to leadership in the field. The sachems, therefore, constituted the real, permanent government. Of these there were ten chosen in each of the five tribes. Their council was the governing body of the tribe. In these councils all were nominally equals. But, naturally, men of strong personality exercised peculiar power. The fifty sachems of the five tribes composed the Grand Council which was the governing body of the League. In its deliberations each tribe had equal representation through its ten sachems. But the Onondaga nation, being situated in the middle of the five, and the grand council-fire being held in its chief town, exercised a preponderating influence in these meetings. Besides the Grand Council and the tribal council, there were councils of the minor chiefs, and councils of the younger warriors, and even councils of the women, for a large part of an Indian's {32} time was taken up with powwowing. Besides these formal deliberative bodies, there were gatherings that were a sort of rude mass-meeting. If a question of deep interest was before the League for discussion, warriors flocked by hundreds from all sides to the great council-fire in the Onondaga nation. The town swarmed with visitors. Every lodge was crowded to its utmost capacity; temporary habitations rose, and fresh camp-fires blazed on every side, and even the unbounded Indian hospitality was strained to provide for the throng of guests. Thus, hour after hour, and day after day, the issue was debated in the presence of hundreds, some squatting, some lying at full length, all absolutely silent except when expressing approval by grunts. The discussion was conducted in a manner that would seem to us exceedingly tedious. Each speaker, before advancing his views, carefully rehearsed all the points made by his predecessors. This method had the advantage of making even the dullest mind familiar with the various aspects of the subject, and it resulted in a so thorough sifting of it that when a conclusion was reached, it was felt to be the general sense of the meeting. From this account it will be evident that public {33} speaking played a large part in Indian life. This fact will help us to account for the remarkable degree of eloquence sometimes displayed. If we should think of the Indian as an untutored savage, bursting at times into impassioned oratory, under the influence of powerful emotions, we should miss the truth very widely. The fact is, there was a class of professional speakers, who had trained themselves by carefully listening to the ablest debaters among their people, and had stored their memories with a large number of stock phrases and of images taken from nature. These metaphors, which give to Indian oratory its peculiar character, were not, therefore, spontaneous productions of the imagination, but formed a common stock used by all speakers as freely as orators in civilized society are wont to quote great authors and poets. Among a people who devoted so much time to public discussion, a forcible speaker wielded great influence. One of the sources of the power over the natives of La Salle, the great French explorer, lay in the fact that he had thoroughly mastered their method of oratory and could harangue an audience in their own tongue like one of their best speakers. The subject of the chiefship is a very {34} interesting one. As has already been explained, a son did not inherit anything from his father. Therefore nobody was entitled to be a chief because his father had been one. Chiefs were elected wholly on the ground of personal qualities. Individual merit was the only thing that counted. Moreover, the chiefs were not the only men who could originate a movement. Any warrior might put on his war-paint and feathers and sing his war-song. As many as were willing might join him, and the party file away on the war-path without a single chief. If such a voluntary leader showed prowess and skill, he was sure to be some day elected a chief. It is very interesting to reflect that just this free state of things existed thousands of years ago among our own ancestors in Europe. At that time there were no kings claiming a "divine right" to govern their fellow men. The chiefs were those whose courage, strength, and skill in war made them to be chosen "rulers of men," to use old Homer's phrase. If their sons did not possess these qualities, they remained among the common herd. But there came a time when, here and there, some mighty warrior gained so much wealth in cattle and in slaves taken in battle, that {35} he was able to bribe some of his people and to frighten others into consenting that his son should be chief after him. If the son was strong enough to hold the office through his own life and to hand it to his son, the idea soon became fixed that the chiefship belonged in that particular family. This was the beginning of kingship. But our aborigines had not developed any such absurd notion as that there are particular families to which God has given the privilege of lording it over their fellow men. They were still in the free stage of choosing their chiefs from among the men who served them best. We may say with confidence that there was not an emperor, or a king, or anything more than an elective chief in the whole of North America. Not only had nobody the title and office of a king among the Indians; nobody had anything like kingly authority. Rulership was not vested in any one man, but in the council of chiefs. This feature, of course, was very democratic. And there was another that went much further in the same direction: almost all property was held in common. For instance, the land of a tribe was not divided among individual owners, but {36} belonged to the whole tribe, and no part of it could be bartered away without the entire tribe's consent. A piece might be temporarily assigned to a family to cultivate, but the ownership of it remained in the whole tribe. This circumstance tended more than anything else to prevent the possibility of any man's raising himself to kingly power. Such usurpations commonly rest upon large accumulations of private property of some kind. But among a people not one of whom owned a single rood of land, who had no flocks and herds, nor any domestic animals whatever, except dogs, and among whom the son inherited nothing from his father, there was no chance for anybody to gain wealth that would raise him above his fellows. Thus we see that an Indian tribe was in many respects an ideal republic. With its free discussion of all matters of general interest; with authority vested in a body of the fittest men; with the only valuable possession, land, held by the whole tribe as one great family; in the entire absence of personal wealth; and with the unlimited opportunity for any man possessing the qualities that Indians admire to raise himself to influence, there really was a condition of affairs very like {37} that which philosophers have imagined as the best conceivable state of human society for preserving individual freedom. Even the very houses of the Indians were adapted to community-life. They were built, not to shelter families, but considerable groups of families. One very advanced tribe, the Mandans, on the upper Missouri, built circular houses. But the most usual form, as among the Iroquois, was a structure very long in proportion to its width. It was made of stout posts set upright in the earth, supporting a roof-frame of light poles slanting upward and fastened together at their crossing. Both walls and roof were covered with wide strips of bark held in place by slender poles secured by withes. Heavy stones also were laid on the roof to keep the bark in place. At the top of the roof a space of about a foot was left open for the entrance of light and the escape of smoke, there being neither windows nor chimneys. At either end was a door, covered commonly with a skin fastened at the top and loose at the bottom. In the winter-season these entrances were screened by a porch. In one of these long houses a number of families lived together in a way that carried out in {38} all particulars the idea of one great household. Throughout the length of the building, on both sides, were partitions dividing off spaces a few feet square, all open toward the middle like wide stalls in a stable. Each of these spaces was occupied by one family and contained bunks in which they slept. In the aisles, between every four of these spaces, was a fire which served the four families. The number of fires in a lodge indicated, quite nearly, the number of persons dwelling in it. To say, for instance, a lodge of five fires, meant one that housed twenty families. This great household lived together according to the community-idea. The belongings of individuals, even of individual families, were very few. The produce of their fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and sunflowers was held as common property; and the one regular meal of the day was a common meal, cooked by the squaws and served to each person from the kettle. The food remaining over was set aside, and each person might help himself to it as he had need. If a stranger came in, the squaws gave him to eat out of the common stock. In fact, Indian hospitality grew out of this way of living in common. A single family would frequently have been "eaten out of {39} house and home," if it had needed to provide out of its own resources for all the guests that might suddenly come upon it. We are apt to think of the Indian as a silent, reserved, solitary being. Nothing could be further from the truth. However they may appear in the presence of white men, among themselves Indians are a very jolly set. Their life in such a common dwelling as has been described was intensely social in its character. Of course, privacy was out of the question. Very little took place that was not known to all the inmates. And we can well imagine that when all were at home, an Indian lodge was anything else than a house of silence. Of a winter evening, for instance, with the fires blazing brightly, there was a vast deal of boisterous hilarity, in which the deep guttural tones of the men and the shrill voices of the squaws were intermingled. Around the fires there were endless gossiping, story-telling, and jesting. Jokes, by no means delicate and decidedly personal, provoked uproarious laughter, in which the victim commonly joined. A village, composed of a cluster of such abodes standing without any order and enclosed by a stockade, was, at times, the scene of almost {40} endless merry-making. Now it was a big feast; now a game of chance played by two large parties matched against each other, while the lodge was crowded almost to suffocation by eager spectators; now a dance, of the peculiar Indian kind; now some solemn ceremony to propitiate the spirits who were supposed to rule the weather, the crops, the hunting, and all the interests of barbarian life. At all times there was endless visiting from lodge to lodge. Hospitality was universal. Let a visitor come in, and it would have been the height of rudeness not to set food before him. To refuse it would have been equally an offence against good manners. Only an Indian stomach was equal to the constant round of eating. White men often found themselves seriously embarrassed between their desire not to offend their hosts and their own repugnance to viands which could not tempt a civilized man who was not famished. It seems strange to think of the women as both the drudges and the rulers of the lodge. Yet such they were. This fact arose from the circumstance already mentioned, that descent was counted, not through the fathers, but through the mothers. The home and the children were {41} the wife's, not the husband's. There she lived, surrounded by her female relatives, whereas he had come from another clan. If he proved lazy or incompetent to do his full share of providing, let the women unite against him, and out he must go, while the wife remained. The community idea, which we have seen to be the key to Indian social life, showed itself in universal helpfulness. Ferocious and pitiless as these people were toward their enemies, the women even more ingeniously cruel than the men, nothing could exceed the cheerful spirit with which, in their own rough way, they bore one another's burdens. It filled the French missionaries with admiration, and they frequently tell us how, if a lodge was accidentally burned, the whole village turned out to help rebuild it; or how, if children were left orphans, they were quickly adopted and provided for. It is equally a mistake to glorify the Indian as a hero and to deny him the rude virtues which he really possessed. {45} Chapter IV ACHIEVEMENTS OF FRENCHMEN IN THE NORTH OF AMERICA The Difference between Spanish and French Methods.--What caused the Difference.--How it resulted. A singular and picturesque story is that of New France. In romantic interest it has no rival in North America, save that of Mexico. Frenchmen opened up the great Northwest; and for a long time France was the dominant power in the North, as Spain was in the South. When the French tongue was heard in wigwams in far western forests; when French goods were exchanged for furs at the head of Lake Superior and around Hudson Bay; when French priests had a strong post as far to the West as Sault Ste. Marie, and carried their missionary journeyings still further, who could have foreseen the day when the flag of republican France would fly over only two rocky islets off the coast of Newfoundland, and to her great rival, Spain, of all {46} her vast possessions would remain not a single rood of land on the mainland of the world to which she had led the white race? At the period with which we are occupied these two great Catholic powers seemed in a fair way to divide North America between them. Their methods were as different as the material objects which they sought. The Spaniard wanted _Gold_, and he roamed over vast regions in quest of it, conquering, enslaving, and exploiting the natives as the means of achieving his ends. The Frenchman craved _Furs_, and for these he trafficked with the Indians. The one depended on conquest, the other on trade. Now trade cannot exist without good-will. You may rob people at the point of the sword, but to have them come to you freely and exchange with you, you must have gained their confidence. Further, there was a deep-lying cause for this difference of method. Wretched beings may be worked in gangs, under a slave-driver, in fields and mines. This was the Spanish way. But hunting animals for their skins and trapping them for their furs is solitary work, done by lone men in the wilderness, and, above all, by men who are free to come and go. You {47} cannot make a slave of the hunter who roams the forests, traps the brooks, and paddles the lakes and streams. His occupation keeps him a wild, free man. Whatever advantage is taken of him must be gained by winning his confidence. Thus the object of the Frenchman's pursuit rendered necessary a constantly friendly attitude toward the Indians. If he displeased them, they would cease to bring their furs. If he did not give enough of his goods in exchange, they would take a longer journey and deal with the Dutch at Albany or with the English at their outlying settlements. In short, the Spaniard had no rival and was in a position allowing him to be as brutal as he pleased. The Frenchman was simply in the situation of a shopkeeper who has no control over his customers, and if he does not retain their good-will, must see them deal at the other place across the street. There is no doubt that this difference of conditions made an enormous difference between the Spanish and the French attitude toward the Indians. The Spaniards were naturally inclined to be haughty and cruel toward inferior races, while the French generally showed themselves friendly and mingled freely with the natives in {48} new regions. But the circumstance to which attention has here been called tended to exaggerate the natural disposition of each. Absolute power made the Spaniard a cruel master: the lack of it drove the Frenchman to gain his ends by cunning and cajolery. The consequence was, that while the Spaniard was dreaded and shunned, and whole populations were wiped out by his merciless rule, the Frenchman was loved by the Indians. They turned gladly to him from the cold Englishman, who held himself always in the attitude of a superior being; they made alliances with him and scalped his enemies, white or red, with devilish glee; they hung about every French post, warmed themselves by the Frenchman's fire, ate his food, and patted their stomachs with delight; and they swarmed by thousands to Quebec, bringing their peltries for trade, received gewgaws and tinsel decorations from the Governor, and swore eternal allegiance to his master, the Sun of the World, at Versailles. In a former volume, "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," we have followed the steps of Spain's dauntless leaders in the Western World. We have seen Balboa, Ponce, Cortes, Soto, {49} Coronado, making their way by the bloody hand, slaying, plundering, and burning, and we have heard the shrieks of victims torn to pieces by savage dogs. In the present volume quite other methods will engage our attention. We shall accompany the shrewd pioneers of France, as they make their joyous entry into Indian villages, eat boiled dog with pretended relish, sit around the council-fire, smoke the Indian's pipe, and end by dancing the war-dance as furiously as the red men. {53} Chapter V JACQUES CARTIER, THE DISCOVERER OF CANADA Jacques Cartier enters the St. Lawrence.--He imagines that he has found a Sea-route to the Indies.--The Importance of such a Route.--His Exploration of the St. Lawrence.--A Bitter Winter.--Cartier's Treachery and its Punishment.--Roberval's Disastrous Expedition. How early the first Frenchmen visited America it is hard to say. It has been claimed, on somewhat doubtful evidence, that the Basques, that ancient people inhabiting the Pyrenees and the shores of the Bay of Biscay, fished on the coast of Newfoundland before John Cabot saw it and received credit as the discoverer of this continent. So much, at any rate, is certain, that within a very few years after Cabot's voyage a considerable fleet of French, Spanish, and Portuguese vessels was engaged in the Newfoundland fishery. Later the English took part in it. The French soon gained the lead in this industry {54} and thus became the predominant power on the northern shores of America, just as the Spaniards were on the southern. The formal claim of France to the territory which she afterward called New France was based on the explorations of her adventurous voyagers. Jacques Cartier was a daring mariner, belonging to that bold Breton race whose fishermen had for many years frequented the Newfoundland Banks for codfish. In 1534 he sailed to push his exploration farther than had as yet been attempted. His inspiration was the old dream of all the early navigators, the hope of finding a highway to China. Needless to say, he did not find it, but he found something well worth the finding--Canada. Sailing through the Straits of Belle Isle, he saw an inland sea opening before him. Passing Anticosti Island, he landed on the shore of a fine bay. It was the month of July, and it chanced to be an oppressive day. "The country is hotter than the country of Spain," he wrote in his journal. Therefore he gave the bay its name, the Bay of Chaleur (heat). The beauty and fertility of the country, the abundance of berries, and "the many goodly meadows, full of {55} grass, and lakes wherein great pleanty of salmons be," made a great impression on him. On the shore were more than three hundred men, women, and children. "These showed themselves very friendly," he says, "and in such wise were we assured one of another, that we very familiarly began to traffic for whatever they had, till they had nothing but their naked bodies, for they gave us all whatsoever they had." These Indians belonged undoubtedly to some branch of the Algonquin family occupying all this region. Cartier did not scruple to take advantage of their simplicity. At Gaspé he set up a cross with the royal arms, the fleur-de-lys, carved on it, and a legend meaning, "Long live the King of France!" He meant this as a symbol of taking possession of the country for his master. Yet, when the Indian chief asked him what this meant, he answered that it was only a landmark for vessels that might come that way. Then he lured some of the natives on board and succeeded in securing two young men to be taken to France. This villainy accomplished, he sailed for home in great glee, not doubting that the wide estuary whose mouth he had entered was the opening of the long-sought passage to Cathay. In France {56} his report excited wild enthusiasm. The way to the Indies was open! France had found and France would control it! Natural enough was this joyful feeling. The only water-route to the East then in use was that around the Cape of Good Hope, and it belonged, according to the absurd grant of Pope Alexander the Sixth, to Portugal alone. Spain had opened another around the Horn, but kept the fact carefully concealed. In short, the selfish policy of Spain and Portugal was to shut all other nations out of trading with the regions which they claimed as theirs; and these tyrants of the southern seas were not slow in enforcing their claims. Spain, too, had ample means at her disposal. She was the mightiest power in the world, and her dominion on the ocean there was none to dispute. At that time Drake and Hawkins and those other great English seamen who broke her sea-power had not appeared. This condition of affairs compelled the northern nations, the English, French, and Dutch, to seek a route through high latitudes to the fabled wealth of the Indies. It led to those innumerable attempts to find a northeast or a northwest passage of which we have read elsewhere. (See, in "The World's Discoverers," {57} accounts of Frobisher, Davis, Barentz, and Hudson, and of Nordenskjold, their triumphant successor.) Now, Francis the First, the French monarch, a jealous rival of the Spanish sovereign, was determined to get a share of the New World. He had already, in 1524, sent out Verrazano to seek a passage to the East (See a sketch of this very interesting voyage in "The World's Discoverers"), and now he was eager to back Cartier with men and money. Accordingly, the next year we find the explorer back at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, this time with three vessels and with a number of gentlemen who had embarked in the enterprise, believing that they were on their way to reap a splendid harvest in the Indies, like that of the Spanish cavaliers who sailed with the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. Entering, on St. Lawrence's day, the Gulf which he had discovered in the previous year, he named it the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The river emptying into it he called Hochelaga, from the Indian name of the adjacent country. Then, guided by the two young natives whom he had kidnapped the year before, whose home, though they had been seized near its mouth, was high up the river, he sailed up the {58} wide stream, convinced that he was approaching China. In due time Stadaconé was reached, near the site of Quebec, and Cartier visited the chief, Donnaconna, in his village. The two young Indians who acted as guides and interpreters had been filling the ears of their countrymen with marvelous tales of France. Especially, they had "made great brags," Cartier says, about his cannon; and Donnaconna begged him to fire some of them. Cartier, quite willing to give the savages a sense of his wonderful resources, ordered twelve guns fired in quick succession. At the roar of the cannon, he says, "they were greatly astonished and amazed; for they thought that Heaven had fallen upon them, and put themselves to flight, howling and crying and shrieking as if hell had broken loose." Leaving his two larger vessels safely anchored within the mouth of the St. Charles River, Cartier set out with the smallest and two open boats, to ascend the St. Lawrence. At Hochelaga he found a great throng of Indians on the shore, wild with delight, dancing and singing. They loaded the strangers with gifts of fish and maize. At night the dark woods, far and near, were {59} illumined with the blaze of great fires around which the savages capered with joy. The next day Cartier and his party were conducted to the great Indian town. Passing through cornfields laden with ripening grain, they came to a high circular palisade consisting of three rows of tree-trunks, the outer and the inner inclining toward each other and supported by an upright row between them. Along the top were "places to run along and ladders to get up, all full of stones for the defence of it." In short, it was a very complete fortification, of the kind that the Hurons and the Iroquois always built. Passing through a narrow portal, the Frenchmen saw for the first rime a group of those large, oblong dwellings, each containing several families, with which later travelers became familiar in the Iroquois and the Huron countries. Arriving within the town, the visitors found themselves objects of curious interest to a great throng of women and children who crowded around the first Europeans they had ever beheld, with expressions of wonder and delight. These bearded men seemed to them to have come down from the skies, children of the Sun. {60} Next, a great meeting was held. Then came a touching scene. An aged chief who was paralyzed was brought and placed at Cartier's feet, and the latter understood that he was asked to heal him. He laid his hands on the palsied limbs. Then came a great procession of the sick, the lame, and the blind, "for it seemed unto them," says Cartier, "that God was descended and come down from Heaven to heal them." We cannot but recall how Cortes and his Spaniards were held by the superstitious Aztecs to have come from another world, and how Cabeza de Vaca was believed to exercise the power of God to heal the sick. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America.") Cartier solemnly read a passage of the Scriptures, made the sign of the cross over the poor suppliants, and offered prayer. The throng of savages, without comprehending a word, listened in awe-struck silence. After distributing gifts, the Frenchmen, with a blast of trumpets, marched out and were led to the top of a neighboring mountain. Seeing the magnificent expanse of forest extending to the horizon, with the broad, blue river cleaving its way through. Cartier thought it a domain worthy or a prince and called the eminence _Mont Royal_. {61} Thus originated the name of the future city of Montreal, built almost a century later. By the time that he had returned to Stadaconé the autumn was well advanced, and his comrades had made preparations against the coming of winter by building a fort of palisades on or near the site where Quebec now stands. Soon snow and ice shut in the company of Europeans, the first to winter in the northern part of this continent. A fearful experience it was. When the cold was at its worst, and the vessels moored in the St. Charles River were locked fast in ice and burled in snow-drifts, that dreadful scourge of early explorers, the scurvy, attacked the Frenchmen. Soon twenty-five had died, and of the living but three or four were in health. For fear that the Indians, if they learned of their wretched plight, might seize the opportunity of destroying them outright, Cartier did not allow any of them to approach the fort. One day, however, chancing to meet one of them who had himself been ill with the scurvy, but now was quite well, he was told of a sovereign remedy, a decoction of the leaves of a certain tree, probably the spruce. The experiment was tried with success, and the sick Frenchmen recovered. {62} At last the dreary winter wore away, and Cartier prepared to return home. He had found neither gold nor a passage to India, but he would not go empty-handed. Donnaconna and nine of his warriors were lured into the fort as his guests, overwhelmed by sturdy sailors, and carried on board the vessels. Then, having raised over the scene of this cruel treachery the symbol of the Prince of Peace, he set sail for France. In 1541 Cartier made another, and last, voyage to Canada. On reaching Stadaconé he was besieged by savages eagerly inquiring for the chiefs whom he had carried away. He replied that Donnaconna was dead, but the others had married noble ladies and were living in great state in France. The Indians showed by their coldness that they knew this story to be false. Every one of the poor exiles had died. On account of the distrust of the natives, Carder did not stop at Stadaconé, but pursued his way up the river. While the bulk of his party made a clearing on the shore, built forts, and sowed turnip-seed, he went on and explored the rapids above Hochelaga, evidently still hoping to find a passage to India. Of course, he was disappointed. He returned to the place {63} where he had left his party and there spent a gloomy winter, destitute of supplies and shunned by the natives. All that he had to show for his voyage was a quantity of some shining mineral and of quartz crystals, mistaken for gold and diamonds. The treachery of the second voyage made the third a failure. Thus ended in disappointment and gloom the career of France's great pioneer, whose discoveries were the foundation of her claims in North America, and who first described the natives of that vast territory which she called New France. Another intending settler of those days was the Sieur de Roberval. Undismayed by Cartier's ill-success, he sailed up the St. Lawrence and cast anchor before Cap Rouge, the place which Cartier had fortified and abandoned. Soon the party were housed in a great structure which contained accommodations for all under one roof, so that it was planned on the lines of a true colony, for it included women and children. But few have ever had a more miserable experience. By some strange lack of foresight, there was a very scant supply of food, and with the winter came famine. Disease inevitably followed, so that before spring {64} one-third of the colony had died. We may think that Nature was hard, but she was mild and gentle, in comparison with Roberval. He kept one man in irons for a trifling offence. Another he shot for a petty theft. To quarreling men and women he gave a taste of the whipping-post. It has even been said that he hanged six soldiers in one day. Just what was the fate of this wretched little band has not been recorded. We only know that it did not survive long. With its failure closes the first chapter of the story of French activity on American soil. Fifty years had passed since Columbus had made his great discovery, and as yet no foothold had been gained by France anywhere, nor indeed by any European power on the Atlantic seaboard of the continent. {67} Chapter VI JEAN RIBAUT THE FRENCH AT PORT ROYAL, IN SOUTH CAROLINA The Expedition of Captain Jean Ribaut.--Landing on the St. John's River.--Friendly Natives.--The "Seven Cities of Cibola" again!--The Coast of Georgia.--Port Royal reached and named.--A Fort built and a Garrison left.--Discontent and Return to France. No doubt the severe winters of Canada determined Admiral Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots, or French Protestants, to plant the settlement which he designed as a haven of refuge from persecution, in the southern part of the New World. Accordingly, on the first day of May, 1562, two little vessels under the command of Captain Jean Ribaut found themselves off the mouth of a great river which, because of the date, they called the River of May, now known as the St. John's. {68} When they landed, it seemed to the sea-worn Frenchmen as if they had set foot in an enchanted world. Stalwart natives, whom Laudonnière, one of the officers, describes as "mighty and as well shapen and proportioned of body as any people in the world," greeted them hospitably.[1] Overhead was the luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation, giant oaks festooned with gray moss trailing to the ground and towering magnolias opening their great white, fragrant cups. No wonder they thought this newly discovered land the "fairest, fruitfullest, and pleasantest of all the world." One of the Indians wore around his neck a pearl "as great as an acorne at the least" and gladly exchanged it for a bauble. This set the explorers to inquiring for gold and gems, {69} and they soon gathered, as they imagined, from the Indians' signs that the "Seven Cities of Cibola" [2]--again the myth that had led Coronado and his Spaniards to bitter disappointment!--were distant only twenty days' journey. Of course, the natives had never heard of Cibola and did not mean anything of the kind. The explorers soon embarked and sailed northward, exploring the coast of Georgia and giving to the rivers or inlets the names of rivers of France, such as the Loire and the Gironde. On May 27 they entered a wide and deep harbor, spacious enough, it seemed to them, "to hold the argosies of the world." A royal haven it seemed. Port Royal they named it, and Port Royal it is called to this day. They sailed up this noble estuary and entered Broad River. When they landed the frightened Indians fled. Good reason they had to dread the sight of white men, for this was the country of Chicora (South Carolina), the scene of one of those acts of brutal treachery of which the Spaniards, of European nations, were the most frequently all guilty. Forty-two years before, Lucas Vasquez de {70} Ayllon, a high official of San Domingo, had visited this coast with two vessels. The simple and kindly natives lavished hospitality on the strangers. In return, the Spaniards invited them on board. Full of wondering curiosity, the Indians without suspicion explored every part of the vessels. When the holds were full of sight-seers, their hosts suddenly closed the hatches and sailed away with two ship-loads of wretched captives doomed to toil as slaves in the mines of San Domingo. But Ayllon's treachery was well punished. One of his vessels was lost, and on board the other the captives refused food and mostly died before the end of the voyage. On his revisiting the coast, six years later, nearly his entire following was massacred by the natives, who lured them to a feast, then fell upon them in the dead of night. Treachery for treachery! The Frenchmen, however, won the confidence of the Indians with gifts of knives, beads, and looking-glasses, coaxed two on board the ships, and loaded them with presents, in the hope of reconciling them to going to France. But they moaned incessantly and finally fled. These Europeans, however, had not done {71} anything to alarm the natives, and soon the latter were on easy terms with them. Therefore, when it was decided to leave a number of men to hold this beautiful country for the King, Ribaut felt sure of the Indians' friendly disposition. He detailed thirty men, under the command of Albert de Pierria, as the garrison of a fort which he armed with guns from the ship. It would delight us to know the exact site of this earliest lodgment of Europeans on the Atlantic coast north of Mexico. All that can be said with certainty is that it was not many miles from the picturesque site of Beaufort. Having executed his commission by finding a spot suitable for a colony, Ribaut sailed away, leaving the little band to hold the place until he should return with a party of colonists. Those whom he left had nothing to do but to roam the country in search of gold, haunted, as they were, by that dream which was fatal to so many of the early ventures in America. They did not find any, but they visited the villages of several chiefs and were always hospitably entertained. When supplies in the neighborhood ran low, they made a journey by boat through inland water-ways to two chiefs on the Savannah River, who furnished {72} them generously with corn and beans; and when their storehouse burned down, with the provisions which they had just received, they went again to the same generous friends, received a second supply, and were bidden to come back without hesitation, if they needed more. There seemed to be no limit to the good-will of the kindly natives.[3] Their monotonous existence soon began to pall on the Frenchmen, eager for conquest and gold. They had only a few pearls, given them by the Indians. Of these the natives undoubtedly possessed a considerable quantity, but not baskets heaped with them, as the Spaniards said. {73} Roaming the woods or paddling up the creeks, the Frenchmen encountered always the same rude fare, hominy, beans, and fish. Before them was always the same glassy river, shimmering in the fierce midsummer heat; around them the same silent pine forests. The rough soldiers and sailors, accustomed to spend their leisure in taverns, found the dull routine of existence in Chicora insupportable. Besides, their commander irritated them by undue severity. The crisis came when he hanged a man with his own hands for a slight offence. The men rose in a body, murdered him, and chose Nicholas Barré to succeed him. Shortly afterward they formed a desperate resolve: they would build a ship and sail home. Nothing could have seemed wilder. Not one of them had any experience of ship-building. But they went to work with a will. They had a forge, tools, and some iron. Soon the forest rang with the sound of the axe and with the crash of falling trees. They laid the keel and pushed the work with amazing energy and ingenuity, caulked the seams with long moss gathered from the neighboring trees and smeared the bottoms and sides with pitch from the pines. The {74} Indians showed them how to make a kind of cordage, and their shirts and bedding were sewn together into sails. At last their crazy little craft was afloat, undoubtedly the first vessel built on the Atlantic seaboard of America. They laid in such stores as they could secure by bartering their goods, to the Indians, deserted their post, and sailed away from a land where they could have found an easy and comfortable living, if they had put into the task half the thought and labor which they exerted to escape from it. Few voyages, even in the thrilling annals of exploration, have ever been so full of hardship and suffering as this mad one. Alternate calms and storms baffled, famine and thirst assailed the unfortunate crew. Some died outright; others went crazy with thirst, leaped overboard, and drank their fill once and forever. The wretched survivors drew lots, killed the man whom fortune designated, and satisfied their cravings with his flesh and blood. At last, as they were drifting helpless, with land in sight, an English vessel bore down on them, took them all on board, landed the feeblest, and carried the rest as prisoners to Queen Elizabeth. [1] These people were of the Timucua tribe, one that has since become entirely extinct, and that was succeeded in the occupation of Florida by the warlike Seminoles, an off-shoot of the Creeks. They belonged to the Muskoki group, which Included some of the most advanced tribes on our continent. These Southern Indians had progressed further in the arts of life than the Algonquins and the Iroquois, and were distinguished from these by a milder disposition. Gentle and kind toward strangers, they were capable of great bravery when defending their homes or punishing treachery, as the Spanish invaders had already learned to their cost. They dwelt in permanent villages, raised abundant crops of corn, pumpkins, and other vegetables, and, amid forests full of game and rivers teeming with fish, lived in ease and plenty. [2] See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America." [3] These were Edistoes and Kiowas. The fierce Yemassees came into the country later. The kindness of the Southern Indians, when not provoked by wanton outrage, is strikingly illustrated in the letter of the famous navigator, Giovanni Verrazzano (See "The World's Discoverers"), who visited the Atlantic seaboard nearly about the same time as the kidnapper Ayllon. Once, as he was coasting along near the site of Wilmington, N. C., on account of the high surf a boat could not land, but a bold young sailor swam to the shore and tossed a gift of trinkets to some Indians gathered on the beach. A moment later the sea threw him helpless and bruised at their feet. In an instant he was seized by the arms and legs and, crying lustily for help, was borne off to a great fire--to be roasted on the spot, his shipmates did not doubt. On the contrary, the natives warmed and rubbed him, then took him down to the shore and watched him swim back to his friends. {77} Chapter VII RENÉ DE LAUDONNIÈRE PLANTING A COLONY ON THE ST. JOHN'S RIVER René de Laudonnière's Expedition to the St. John's.--Absurd Illusions of the Frenchmen.--Their Bad Faith to the Indians, and its Fatal Results.--The Thirst for Gold, and how it was rewarded.--Buccaneering.--A Storm-cloud gathers in Spain.--Misery in the Fort on the St. John's.--Relieved by Sir John Hawkins.--Arrival of Ribaut with Men and Supplies.--Don Pedro Menendez captures Fort Caroline and massacres the Garrison and Shipwrecked Crews.--Dominique de Gourgues takes Vengeance. The failure at Port Royal did not discourage Admiral Coligny from sending out another expedition, in the spring of 1564, under the command of Rene de Laudonnière, who had been with Ribaut in 1562. It reached the mouth of the St. John's on the 25th of June and was joyfully greeted by the kindly Indians. The lieutenant, Ottigny, strolling off into the woods with a few men, met some Indians and was conducted to their village. There, he {78} gravely tells us, he met a venerable chief who told him that he was two hundred and fifty years old. But, after all, he might probably expect to live a hundred years more, for he introduced another patriarch as his father. This shrunken anatomy, blind, almost speechless, and more like "a dead carkeis than a living body," he said, was likely to last thirty or forty years longer. Probably the Frenchman had heard of the fabled fountain of Bimini, which lured Ponce de Leon to his ruin, and the river Jordan, which was said to be somewhere in Florida and to possess the same virtue, and he fancied that the gourd of cool water which had just been given him might come from such a spring.[1] {79} This example shows how credulous these Frenchmen were, moving in a world of fancy, the glamour of romantic dreams about the New World still fresh upon them, visions of unmeasured treasures of silver and gold and gems floating through their brains. It would make a tedious tale to relate all their follies, surrounded as they were by a bountiful nature and a kindly people, and yet soon reduced to abject want. In the party there were brawling soldiers and piratical sailors, with only a few quiet, decent artisans and shop-keepers, but with a swarm of reckless young nobles, who had nothing to recommend them but a long name, and who expected to prove themselves Pizarros in fighting and treasure-getting. Unfortunately, the kind of man who is the backbone of a colony, "the man with the hoe," was not there. This motley crew soon finished a fort, which stood on the river, a little above what is now called St. John's Bluff and was named Fort {80} Caroline, in honor of Charles the Ninth. Then they began to look around, keen for gold and adventure. The Indians had shown themselves hostile when they saw the Frenchmen building a fort, which was evidence that they had come to stay. Laudonnière quieted the chief Satouriona by promising to aid him against his enemies, a tribe up the river, called the Thimagoas. Next, misled by a story of great riches up the river, he actually made an alliance with Outina, the chief of the Thimagoas. Thus the French were engaged at the same time to help both sides. But the craze for gold was now at fever-heat, and they had little notion of keeping faith with mere savages. Outina promised Vasseur, Laudonnière's lieutenant, that if he would join him against Potanou, the chief of a third tribe, each of his vassals would reward the French with a heap of gold and silver two feet high. So, at least, Vasseur professed to understand him. The upshot of the matter was that Satouriona was incensed against the French for breaking faith with him. And to make the situation worse, when he went, unaided, and attacked his enemies and brought back prisoners, the French {81} commander, to curry favor with Outina, compelled Satouriona to give up some of his captives and sent them home to their chief. All this was laying up trouble for the future. Not a sod had the Frenchmen turned in the way of tilling the soil. The river flowing at their feet teemed with fish. The woods about them were alive with game. But they could neither fish nor hunt. Starving in a land of plenty, ere long they would be dependent for food on these people who had met them so kindly, and whom they had deliberately cheated and outraged. Next we find Vasseur sailing up the river and sending some of his men with Outina to attack Potanou, whose village lay off to the northwest. Several days the war-party marched through a pine-barren region. When it reached its destination the Frenchmen saw, instead of a splendid city of the "kings of the Appalachian mountains," rich in gold, just such an Indian town, surrounded by rough fields of corn and pumpkins, as the misguided Spaniards under Soto had often come upon. The poor barbarians defended their homes bravely. But the Frenchmen's guns routed them. Sack and slaughter followed, with the burning of the town. Then the victors {82} marched away, with such glory as they had got, but of course without a grain of gold. At Fort Caroline a spirit of sullenness was growing. Disappointment had followed all their reckless, wicked attempts to get treasure. The Indians of the neighborhood, grown unfriendly, had ceased to bring in food for barter. The garrison was put on half-rations. Men who had come to Florida expecting to find themselves in a land of plenty and to reap a golden harvest, would scarcely content themselves with the monotonous routine of life in a little fort by a hot river, with nothing to do and almost nothing to eat. It was easy to throw all the blame on Laudonnière. [Illustration: Fort Caroline] "Why does he not lead us out to explore the country and find its treasures? He is keeping us from making our fortunes," the gentlemen adventurers cried. Here again we are reminded of the Spaniards under Narvaez and Soto, who struggled through the swamps and interminable pine-barrens of Florida, cheered on by the delusive assurance that when they came to the country of Appalachee they would find gold in abundance. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America.") {83} Another class of malcontents took matters into their own hands. They were ex-pirates, and they determined to fly the "jolly Roger" once more. They stole two pinnaces, slipped away to sea, and were soon cruising among the West Indies. Hunger drove them into Havana. They gave themselves up and made their peace with the Spanish authorities by telling of their countrymen at Fort Caroline. Now, Spain claimed the whole of North America, under the Pope's grant. Moreover, Philip of Spain had but lately commissioned as Governor of Florida one Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a ruthless bigot who would crush a Protestant with as much satisfaction as a venomous serpent. Imagine the effect upon his gloomy mind of the news that reached him in Spain, by the way of Havana, of a band of Frenchmen, and, worst of all, heretics settled in Florida, his Florida! Meanwhile the men at Fort Caroline, all unconscious of the black storm brewing in Spain, continued their grumbling. They had not heard of the fate of the party who had sailed away, and now nearly all were bent on buccaneering. One day a number of them mutinied, overpowered the {84} guard, seized Laudonnière, put him in irons, carried him on board a vessel lying in the river, and compelled him, under threat of death, to sign a commission for them to cruise along the Spanish Main. Shortly afterward they sailed away in two small vessels that had been built at Fort Caroline. After their departure, the orderly element that remained behind restored Laudonnière to his command, and things went on smoothly for three or four months. Then, one day, a Spanish brigantine was seen hovering off the mouth of the river. It was ascertained that she was manned by the mutineers, now anxious to return to the fort. Laudonnière sent down a trusty officer in a small vessel that he had built, with thirty soldiers hidden in the hold. The buccaneers let her come alongside without suspicion and began to parley. Suddenly the soldiers came on deck, boarded, and overpowered them, before they could seize their arms. In fact, they were mostly drunk. After a short career of successful piracy, they had suddenly found themselves attacked by three armed vessels. The most were killed or taken, but twenty-six escaped. The pilot, who had been carried away against his will, cunningly steered {85} the brigantine to the Florida coast; and, having no provisions, they were compelled to seek succor from their old comrades. Still they had wine in abundance, and so they appeared off the mouth of the river drunk, and, as we have seen, were easily taken. A court-martial condemned the ringleader and three others to be shot, which was duly done. The rest were pardoned. In the meantime the men in the fort had been inquiring diligently in various directions. There was still much talk of mysterious kingdoms, rich in gold. Once more they were duped into fighting his battles by the wily Outina, who promised to lead them to the mines of Appalachee. They defeated his enemies, and there was abundant slaughter, with plenty of scalps for Outina's braves, but, of course, no gold. The expected supplies from France did not come. The second summer was upon them, with its exhausting heat. The direst want pinched them. Ragged, squalid, and emaciated, they dragged themselves about the fort, digging roots or gathering any plant that might stay the gnawings of hunger. They had made enemies of their neighbors, Satouriona and his people; and Outina, for whom they had done so much, sent them only {86} a meagre supply of corn, with a demand for more help in fighting his enemies. They accepted the offer and were again cheated by the cunning savage. Laudonnière draws a pathetic picture of their misery. In the quaint old English translation of Richard Hakluyt it reads thus: "The effects of this hideous famine appeared incontinently among us, for our bones eftsoones beganne to cleave so neere unto the skinne, that the most part of the souldiers had their skinnes pierced thorow with them in many partes of their bodies." The thoughts of the famished men in Fort Caroline turned homeward with eager longing. They had still remaining one vessel and the Spanish brigantine brought by the mutineers. But they must have another. They began with furious haste to build one, everybody lending a hand. Then came a disastrous check. When things were well under way, the two carpenters, roaming away from the fort in search of food, were helping themselves to some ears of green corn in a field, when Indians fell upon them and killed them. In this desperate pass Laudonnière took a high-handed step. He sent a party up the river, seized {87} Outina, and brought him a prisoner to the fort. This had the desired effect. His people pleaded for his release. The Frenchmen agreed to give him up for a large supply of corn and sent a well-armed party to his village, with the captive chief. The Indians brought in the corn, and the Frenchmen released Outina, according to agreement. But when the former started from the village, each with a bag of corn on his shoulder, to march to their boats, which were at a landing two or three miles away, they were savagely attacked from both sides of the road. They were compelled to drop the corn and fight for their lives. Wherever there was opportunity for an ambuscade, arrows showered upon them from the woods. They kept up the running fight bravely, returning a steady fire, but probably made little impression on their hidden foes swarming under cover. By the time they reached the boats they had two men killed and twenty-two wounded, and but two bags of corn. It is evident that the social life of these Indians was organized on the community-system, just as we have seen it to be among the Iroquois, of the North. They could supply the Frenchmen with corn in considerable quantities, taking it out of a {88} stock kept for the whole community. Unlike the Iroquois, however, they lived by families, in individual houses. The distress at Fort Caroline was now extreme, owing to famine within and war without. In this dark hour, one day, four sails appeared, steering toward the mouth of the river. Was this the long-expected relief from France? Or were these Spanish vessels? Presently "the meteor flag of England" floated out on the breeze, and soon a boat brought a friendly message from the commander, the famous Sir John Hawkins. Being a strenuous Puritan, he was a warm sympathizer with the Protestants of France. Returning from selling a cargo of Guinea negroes to the Spaniards of Hispaniola--not at all a discreditable transaction in those days--he had run short of water and had put into the River of May, to obtain a supply. Touched by the pitiful condition of the Frenchmen, he opened his ship-stores, gave them wine and biscuit, and sold them other supplies very cheaply, taking cannon in payment. Then, smiling grimly at the two pitiful little craft in which they purposed sailing for France, he offered them all a free passage home. Laudonnière would not {89} accept a proposal so humiliating, but was very glad to buy a small vessel from Hawkins on credit. Just when all was in readiness to sail for home came news of an approaching squadron. It was an anxious hour. Were these friends or foes? If foes, the garrison was lost, for the fort was defenceless. Then the river was seen full of armed barges coming up. Imagine the wild joy of the garrison, when the sentry's challenge was answered in French! It was Ribaut. He had come at last, with seven ships, bringing not only soldiers and artisans, but whole families of settlers. One might imagine that Fort Caroline's dark days had passed. But it was not so. Ribaut had been there just a week when his vessels, lying outside the bar, were attacked, about dusk, by a huge Spanish galleon. The officers were on shore, and the crews cut the cables and put to sea, followed by the Spaniard firing, but not able to overhaul them. Ribaut, on shore, heard the guns and knew what they meant. The Spaniards had come! Before he left France he had been secretly notified of their intentions. The next morning Don Pedro Menendez in his great galleon ran back to the mouth of the {90} St. John's. But seeing the Frenchmen drawn up under arms on the beach and Ribaut's smaller vessels inside the bar, all ready for battle, he turned away and sailed southward to an inlet which he called San Augustin. There he found three ships of his unloading troops, guns, and stores. He landed, took formal possession of his vast domain--for the Florida of which he had been appointed Governor was understood by the Spaniards to extend from Mexico to the North Pole--and began to fortify the place. Thus, in September, 1565, was founded St. Augustine, the oldest town of the United States. One of the French captains, relying on the speed of his ship, had followed Menendez down the coast. He saw what was going on at St. Augustine and hastened back to report to Ribaut that the Spaniards were there in force and were throwing up fortifications. A brilliant idea came to the French commander. His dispersed ships had returned to their anchorage. Why not take them, with all his men and all of Laudonnière's that were fit for service, sail at once, and strike the Spaniards before they could complete their defences, instead of waiting for them to collect their full force and come and attack him, cooped {91} up on the St. John's? Such bold moves make the fame of commanders when they succeed, and when they fail are called criminal folly. Unhappily, Ribaut neglected to consider the weather. It was the middle of September, a season subject to terrific gales. Making all speed, he sailed away with every available man, leaving Laudonnière, sick himself, to hold dismantled Fort Caroline with disabled soldiers, cooks and servants, women and children. The French ships arrived safely off St. Augustine, just before the dawn, and narrowly missed taking Menendez himself, who was on board a solitary Spanish vessel which lay outside the bar. Just in the nick of time she escaped within the harbor. Before entering, the Frenchmen prudently reconnoitred the strange port. Meanwhile the breeze freshened into a gale, and the gale rose to a hurricane. The Frenchmen could no longer think of attacking, but only of saving themselves from immediate wreck. Down the coast they worked their way in a driving mist, struggling frantically to get out to sea, in the teeth of the hurricane remorselessly pushing them toward the deadly reefs. While his enemies were thus fighting for their {92} lives, Menendez executed a counter-stroke to that of the French captain. Through the raging gale, while every living thing cowered before driving sheets of rain, this man of blood and iron marched away with five hundred picked men. A French deserter from Fort Caroline and an Indian acted as guides, and twenty axemen cleared the way through the dense under-growth. What a march! Three days they tramped through a low, flooded country, hacking their way through tangled thickets, wading waist-deep through mud and water, for food and drink having only wet biscuit and rain-water, with a sup of wine; for lodging only the oozy ground, with not so much as a rag of canvas over their heads to shelter them from the torrents of rain. When they reached Fort Caroline their ammunition was wet and their guns useless. They were half-famished and drenched to the skin. Still they were willing to follow their leader in a rush on the fort, relying on cold steel. The night of September 19th the inmates of Fort Caroline listened to the dismal moaning and creaking of the tall pines, the roar of the blast, and the fitful torrents of rain beating on the cabin-roofs. {93} In the gray dawn of the 20th a trumpeter who chanced to be astir, saw a swarm of men rushing toward the ramparts. He sounded the alarm; but it was too late. With Spain's battle-cry, "Santiago! Santiago!" (St. James, her patron saint) the assailants swept over the ramparts and poured through a breach. They made quick work. The shriek of a helpless mother or the scream of a frightened infant was quickly hushed in death. When, however, the first fury of butchery had spent itself, Menendez ordered that such persons should be spared, and fifty were actually saved alive. Every male above the age of fifteen was, from first to last, killed on the spot. Laudonnière had leaped from his sick-bed and, in his night-shirt, rallied a few men for resistance. But they were quickly killed or dispersed, and he escaped to the woods, where a few half-naked fugitives were gathered. Some of these determined to go back and appeal to the humanity of the Spaniards. The mercy of wolves to lambs! Seeing these poor wretches butchered, the others felt that their only hope was in making their way to the mouth of the river, where lay two or three light craft which Ribaut had left. {94} Wading through mire and water, their naked limbs cut by the sedge and their feet by roots, they met two or three small boats sent to look out for fugitives, and were taken aboard half dead. After two or three days of vain waiting for the reappearance of the armed ships, the little flotilla sailed for France, carrying Laudonnière and the other fugitives, some of whom died on the voyage from wounds and exposure. The Spaniards had Fort Caroline, with one hundred and forty-two dead heretics heaped about it and a splendid booty in armor, clothing, and provisions--all the supplies lately brought by Ribaut from France. Everybody has read how Menendez hanged his few prisoners on trees, with the legend over them, "I do this not as to Frenchmen, but to Lutherans." Meanwhile Ribaut and his ships had been blown down the coast, vainly struggling to keep away from the reefs, and were finally wrecked, one after another, at various distances to the south of St. Augustine. Let us pass quickly over the remainder of this sickening story. One day, after Menendez had returned to St. Augustine, Indians came in, breathless, {95} with tidings that the crew of a wrecked vessel, struggling northward, had reached an arm of the sea (Matanzas Inlet), which they had no means of crossing. Immediately Menendez started out with about sixty men in boats and met them. The starving Frenchmen, deceived by his apparent humanity in setting breakfast before them, surrendered, and, having been ferried over the inlet in small batches, were led back into the sand-hills and butchered. About two weeks later word was brought to Menendez of a second and larger party of Frenchmen who had reached the same fatal spot. Ribaut himself was among them. Not knowing of the horrible fate of his countrymen, he tried to make terms with the Spaniards. While he was parleying with Menendez, two hundred of his followers marched away, declaring that they would rather take chances with the Indians than with these white men whom they distrusted. Ribaut, having surrendered with the remaining hundred and fifty, was led away behind the sandhills and his hands were tied. Then he knew that he had been duped, and calmly faced his doom. "We are of earth," he said, "and to earth must return! Twenty years more or less matter little." {96} As before, the deluded Frenchmen were brought over in tens, led away, tied, and, at a given signal, butchered. Some twenty days later, Menendez received tidings of a third band of Frenchmen, far to the southward, near Cape Canaveral. This was the party that had refused to surrender with Ribaut. When he reached the place, he saw that they had reared a kind of stockade and were trying to build a vessel out of the timbers of their wrecked ship. He sent a messenger to summon them to surrender, pledging his honor for their safety. Part preferred to take the chance of being eaten by Indians, they said, and they actually fled to the native villages. The rest took Menendez at his word and surrendered, and they had no reason to regret it. He took them to St. Augustine and treated them well. Some of them rewarded the pious efforts of the priests by turning Catholics. The rest were no doubt sent to the galleys. Everybody is familiar with the story of the vengeance taken by Dominique de Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine to insist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped and manned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} with the assistance of several hundred Indians, who hated the cruel Spaniards, captured Fort Caroline, slaughtered the garrison, hanged the prisoners, and put up over the scene of two butcheries the legend, "Not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers." Thus closed the last bloody act in the tragedy of French colonization in Carolina and Florida. A long period--one hundred and thirty-four years--was to pass before the French flag would again fly within the territory now embraced in the Southern States. [1] In "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 79, it has been mentioned that when Ponce de Leon fancied that he heard among the Indians of Porto Rico a story of a fountain having the property of giving immortality, this was because he had in his mind a legend that had long been current in Europe. Sir John Maundeville went so far as to say that he had visited these famous waters in Asia and had bathed in them. The legend was, however, much older than Maundeville's time. In the "Romance of Alexander the Great," which was very popular hundreds of years ago, it is related that Alexander's cook, on one of his marches, took a salt fish to a spring to wash it before cooking it. No sooner was the fish put into the water than it swam away. The cook secured a bottle of the magic water, but concealed his knowledge. Later he divulged his secret to Alexander's daughter, who thereupon married him. Alexander, when he learned the facts, was furious. He changed his daughter into a sea-nymph and his cook into a sea-monster. Being immortal, undoubtedly they are still disporting themselves in the Indian Ocean. For this story the writer is indebted to Professor George F. Moore, D.D., of the Harvard Divinity School. {101} Chapter VIII SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN IN NOVA SCOTIA How the Cod-fishery led to the Fur-trade.--Disastrous Failure of the First Trading-posts.--Champlain's First Visit to the New World.--His Second, and the Determination to which it led.--The Bitter Winter at St. Croix.--Champlain's First Voyage down the New England Coast.--Removal to Port Royal.--Abandonment of Port Royal. The disasters in Florida did not abate the activity of Frenchmen on the far northern coast of America. The earliest attraction was the cod-fishery. Then, as the fishing-folk grew familiar with Newfoundland and the continental shores, their attention was drawn to the skins worn by the natives. What prices they would bring in France! Here was a field that would make richer returns than rough and perilous fishing. In this way the fur-trade, which became the life of Canada, had its beginning. The first chapters of the story were gloomy and disheartening beyond description. The dreadful scurvy and the cruel cold scourged the newcomers. Party after party perished {102} miserably. The story of one of these is singularly romantic. When Sable Island[1] was reached, its leader, the Marquis de la Roche, landed forty ragamuffins, while he sailed on with the best men of his crew to examine the coast and choose a site for the capital of his promising domain. Alas! he never returned. A gale swept his little craft out to sea and drove him back to France. When he landed, the sun of his prosperity had set. Creditors swooped down upon him, political enemies rose in troops, and the "Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clapped in jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the forty promising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out of human knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineers set him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears his name,[2] or Narvaez and his brilliant expedition whose fate was a mystery until the appearance of four survivors, eight years afterward.[3] {103} Five years went by, and twelve uncouth creatures stood before Henry the Fourth, clad in shaggy skins, and with long, unkempt beards. They were the remnant of La Roche's jailbirds. He had at last gained a hearing from the King, and a vessel had been sent to Sable Island to bring home the survivors of his party. What a story they told! When months passed, and La Roche came not, they thought they were left to their fate. They built huts of the timbers of a wreck which lay on the beach--for there was not a tree on the island--and so faced the dreary winter. With trapping foxes, spearing seals, and hunting wild cattle, descendants of some which a certain Baron de Léry had left eight years before, they managed to eke out existence, not without quarrels and murders among themselves. At last the remnant was taken off by the vessel which Henry sent for them. Shaggy and uncouth as they looked, they had a small fortune in the furs which they had accumulated. This wealth had not escaped the notice of the thrifty skipper who brought them home, and he had robbed them. But the King not only compelled the dishonest sea-captain to disgorge his plunder, but aided {104} its owners with a pension in setting up in the fur-trade. Such dismal experiences filled more than fifty years of futile effort to colonize New France. Cold and scurvy as effectually closed the North to Frenchmen as Spanish savagery the South. Then, in this disheartening state of affairs, appeared the man who well deserves the title of the "Father of New France," since his courage and indomitable will steered the tiny "ship of state" through a sea of discouragements. Samuel de Champlain was born in 1567 at the small French seaport of Brouage, on the Bay of Biscay. In his pious devotion and his unquestioning loyalty to the Church, he was of the "Age of Faith," and he recalls Columbus. In his eager thirst for knowledge and his daring spirit of exploration, he was a modern man, while his practical ability in handling men and affairs reminds us of the doughty Captain John Smith, of Virginia. He came to manhood in time to take part in the great religious wars in France. After the conflict was ended, when his master, Henry the Great, was seated on the throne, Champlain's adventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. Since these were closed to Frenchmen by the jealousy {105} of the Spaniards, there was a degree of peril in the undertaking which for him was its chief charm. After two years he returned, bringing a journal in which he had set down the most notable things seen in Spanish America. It was illustrated with a number of the quaintest pictures, drawn and colored by himself. He also visited Mexico and Central America. His natural sagacity is shown in his suggesting, even at that early day, that a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama would effect a vast saving. [Illustration: Samuel de Champlain] In 1603, in two quaint little vessels, not larger than the fishing craft of to-day, Champlain and Pontgravé, who was interested in the fur-trade, crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the St. Lawrence. When they came to Hochelaga, on the site of Montreal, they found there only a few shiftless and roving Algonquins.[4] The explorers passed on and boldly essayed, but in vain, to ascend the rapids of St. Louis. When they sailed for France, however, a great purpose was formed in Champlain's mind. What {106} he had gathered from the Indians as to the great waters above, the vast chain of rivers and lakes, determined the scene of his future activity. His next venture in the New World was made in association with the Sieur de Monts, a Huguenot gentleman, who had obtained leave to plant a colony in Acadia (Nova Scotia). With a band of colonists--if we can apply that name to a motley assemblage of jailbirds and high-born gentlemen, of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers--they sailed for America in 1604. Thirty years of bloody warfare in France had but recently come to an end, and the followers of the two faiths were still full of bitter hatred. It is easy, therefore, to believe Champlain's report that monk and minister quarreled incessantly and sometimes came to blows over religious questions. This state of feeling came near to causing the death of an innocent man. After the New World had been reached, and when the expedition was coasting along the eastern shore of the Bay of Fundy, seeking a place for a settlement, one day a party went ashore to stroll in the woods. On reassembling, a priest named Nicolas Aubry was missing. Trumpets were sounded and cannon fired from the ships. All in vain. There {107} was no reply but the echo of the ancient forest. Then suspicion fell upon a certain Huguenot with whom Aubry had often quarreled. He was accused of having killed the missing priest. In spite of his strenuous denial of the charge, many persons firmly believed him guilty. Thus matters stood for more than two weeks. One day, however, the crew of a boat that had been sent back to the neighborhood where the priest had disappeared heard a strange sound and saw a small black object in motion on the shore. Rowing nearer, they descried a man waving a hat on a stick. Imagine their surprise and joy when they recognized Aubry! He had become separated from his comrades, had lost his way, and for sixteen days of misery and terror had kept himself alive on berries and wild fruits. The place finally selected for settlement was a dreary island near the mouth of the St. Croix River, which now forms the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. It had but one recommendation, namely, that it was admirably suited for defence, and these Frenchmen, reared in war-time, seem to have thought more of that single advantage than of the far more pressing needs of a colony. Cannon were landed, a {108} battery was built, and a fort was erected. Then buildings quickly followed, and by the autumn the whole party was well housed in its settlement, called Sainte Croix (Holy Cross). The river they named differently, but it has since borne the title of that ill-starred colony. When winter came, the island, exposed to the fierce winds blowing down the river, was fearfully cold. Ice floated by in great masses, frequently cutting off the settlers from the mainland and from their supplies of wood and water. The terror of those days, the scurvy, soon appeared, and by the spring nearly half of the seventy-nine men lay in the little cemetery. Of the survivors the greater number had no other desire than to flee from the scene of so much misery. They were cheered, however, when Pontgravé arrived from France with supplies and forty new men. In the hope of securing a more favorable site in a warmer latitude, Champlain, who already had explored a part of the coast and had visited and named the island of Mount Desert, set out in a small vessel with Monts and about thirty men on a voyage of discovery. They followed the shores of Maine closely, and by the middle of July were off Cape Ann. Then they entered {109} Massachusetts Bay. The islands of Boston Harbor, now so bare, Champlain describes as covered with trees. The aboriginal inhabitants of the region seem to have felt a friendly interest in the distinguished strangers. Canoe-loads of them came out to gaze on the strange spectacle of the little vessel, with its bearded and steel-clad crew. Down the South Shore the voyagers held their way, anchoring for the night near Brant Rock. A head wind drove them to take shelter in a harbor which Champlain called Port St. Louis, the same which, fifteen years afterward, welcomed the brave Pilgrims. The shore was at that time lined with wigwams and garden-patches. The inhabitants were very friendly. While some danced on the beach, others who had been fishing came on board the vessel without any sign of alarm, showing their fish-hooks, which were of barbed bone lashed to a slip of wood.[5] The glistening white sand of a promontory {110} stretching out into the sea suggested to Champlain the name which he bestowed, Cap Blanc (White Cape, now Cape Cod). Doubling it, he held his way southward as far as Nausett Harbor. Here misfortune met the party. As some sailors were seeking fresh water behind the sandhills, an Indian snatched a kettle from one of them. Its owner, pursuing him, was killed by his comrades' arrows. The French fired from the vessel, and Champlain's arquebuse burst, nearly killing him. In the meantime several Indians who were on board leaped so quickly into the water that only one was caught. He was afterward humanely released. This untoward incident, together with a growing scarcity of provisions, decided the voyagers to turn back. Early in August they reached St. Croix. Discouraged as to finding a site on the New England coast, Champlain and Monts began to look across the Bay of Fundy, at first called Le Fond de la Baye (the bottom of the bay). A traveler crossing this water from the west will see a narrow gap in the bold and rugged outline of the shore. Entering it, he will be struck with its romantic beauty, and he will note the {111} tide rushing like a mill-race, for this narrow passage is the outlet of a considerable inland water. The steamer, passing through, emerges into a wide, land-locked basin offering an enchanting view. Fourteen miles northward is Annapolis Harbor, shut in on every side by verdant hills. This is the veritable Acadia, the beautiful land of Evangeline, and here was made the first settlement of Frenchmen in North America that had any degree of permanence. The explorers had discovered and entered this enchanting basin in the previous summer. Now its beauty recurred to them, and they determined to remove thither. In their vessels they transported their stores and even parts of their buildings across the Bay of Fundy and laid the foundation of a settlement which they called Port Royal, afterward renamed by loyal Britons Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne. The season proved very severe, and in the spring it was decided to persevere in the project of planting a colony, if possible, in a warmer region. For the second time Champlain sailed down the New England coast. At Chatham Harbor, as the place is now called, five of the voyagers, contrary to orders, {112} were spending the night ashore. The word quickly passed around among the Indians that a number of the palefaces were in their power. Through the dark hours of the night dusky warriors gathered at the meeting-place, until they numbered hundreds. Then they stole silently toward the camp-fire where the unsuspecting Frenchmen lay sleeping. Suddenly a savage yell aroused them, and arrows fell in a shower upon them. Two never rose, slain where they lay. The others fled to their boat, fairly bristling with arrows sticking in them, according to the quaint picture which Champlain made. In the meantime, he, with Poutrincourt and eight men, aroused from their sleep by the horrid cries on the shore, had leaped from their berths, snatched their weapons, and, clad only in their shirts, pulled to the rescue of their comrades. They charged, and the dusky enemy fled into the woods. Mournfully the voyagers buried their dead, while the barbarians, from a safe distance, jibed and jeered at them. No sooner had the little party rowed back to the ship than they saw the Indians dig up the dead bodies and burn them. The incensed Frenchmen, by a treacherous device, lured some of the assailants within {113} their reach, killed them, and cut off their heads. Then, discouraged by the savage hostility of the natives, they turned homeward and, late in November, the most of the men sick in body and at heart, reached Port Royal. Thus ended disastrously Champlain's second attempt to find a lodgment on the New England coast. But he was not a man to be disheartened by difficulties. Soon the snows of another winter began to fall upon Port Royal, that lonely outpost of civilization. But let us not imagine that the little colony was oppressed with gloom. There were jolly times around the blazing logs in the rude hall, of winter evenings. They had abundant food, fine fresh fish, speared through the ice of the river or taken from the bay, with the flesh of moose, caribou, deer, beaver, and hare, and of ducks, geese, and grouse, and they had organized an "Order of Good Fellowship." Each member of the company was Grand Master for one day, and it was his duty to provide for the table and then to preside at the feast which he had prepared. This arrangement put each one on his mettle to lay up a good store for {114} the day when he would do the honors of the feast. The Indian chiefs sat with the Frenchmen as their guests, while the warriors and squaws and children squatted on the floor, awaiting the bits of food that were sure to come to them. In this picture we have an illustration of the ease with which the Frenchmen always adapted themselves to the natives. It was the secret of their success in forming alliances with the Indians, and it was in marked contrast with the harsh conduct of the English and the ruthless cruelty of the Spaniards. No Indian tribes inclined to the English, except the Five Nations, and these chiefly because their sworn enemies, the Algonquins of the St. Lawrence, were hand in glove with the French. None came into contact with the Spaniards who did not execrate them. But the sons of France mingled freely with the dusky children of the soil, made friends of them and quickly won numbers of them to learn their language and adopt their religion. From intermarriages of Frenchmen with Indian women there grew up in Canada a large class of half-breed "voyageurs" (travelers) and "coureurs de bois" (wood-rangers), who in times of peace were skilful hunters and pioneers, and in times {115} of war helped to bind fast the ties between the two races. In this pleasant fashion the third winter of the colony wore away with little suffering. Only four men died. With the coming of spring all began to bestir themselves in various activities, and everything looked hopeful. Alas! a bitter disappointment was at hand. News came from France that Monts's monopoly of the fur-trade had been rescinded. The merchants of various ports in France, incensed at being shut out from a lucrative traffic, had used money freely at court and had succeeded in having his grant withdrawn. All the money spent in establishing the colony was to go for nothing. Worst of all, Port Royal must be abandoned. Its cornfields and gardens must become a wilderness, and the fair promise of a permanent colony must wither. It was a cruel blow to Champlain and his associates, and not less so to the Indians, who followed their departing friends with bitter lamentations. [1] A low, sandy island, about one hundred miles southeast of Nova Scotia, to which it belongs. [2] See "The World's Discoverers," p. 140. [3] See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 206. [4] At the time of Champlain's coming on the scene, fierce war existed between the Algonquins and the Iroquois. This fact accounts for the disappearance of the thrifty Iroquois village, with its palisade and cornfields, which Cartier had found on the spot, sixty-eight years earlier. [5] These Massachusetts Algonquins evidently were of a higher type than their kinsmen on the St. Lawrence. Far from depending wholly on hunting and fishing, they lived in permanent villages and were largely an agricultural people, growing considerable crops. At the time of the coming of the Pilgrims, whom they instructed in corn-planting, this thrifty native population had been sadly wasted by an epidemic of small-pox. {119} Chapter IX SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN (_Continued_) THE FRENCH ON THE ST. LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT LAKES Champlain's Motives in returning to America.--How the Monopoly of the Fur-trade affected the Men engaged in it.--Fight with Free-traders at Tadoussac.--The Founding of Quebec.--The First Bitter Winter.--Champlain starts on an Exploration.--Discovery of Lake Champlain.--Fight with a Band of Iroquois.--Its Unfortunate Consequences.--Another Fight with Iroquois.--Montreal founded.--Champlain's most Important Exploration.--Lake Huron discovered.--A Deer Drive.--Defeated by Iroquois.--Champlain lost in the Woods.--His Closing Years and Death. Hitherto Champlain has appeared at a disadvantage, because he was in a subordinate capacity. Now we shall see his genius shine, because he is in command. In 1608 he returned to America, not, however, to Nova Scotia, but to the St. Lawrence. Three motives chiefly actuated him. The first was the unquenchable desire to find a water-way through our continent to China. When, in 1603, he {120} explored the St. Lawrence as far as the rapids beyond Montreal, what he heard from the Indians about the great inland seas created in his mind a strong conviction that through them was a passage to the Pacific, such as the early explorers, notably Henry Hudson (See "The World's Discoverers," p. 328), believed to exist. The next motive was exceedingly practical. Champlain was deeply impressed with the need of planting strongholds on the great streams draining the vast fur-yielding region, so as to shut out intruders and secure the precious traffic to his countrymen. Let France, he argued, plant herself boldly and strongly on the St. Lawrence, that great highway for the savage's canoe and the white man's ship, and she would control the fur-trade. The other idea active in his mind was an earnest desire for the conversion of the Indians. It is undeniable that France was genuinely interested in christianizing the natives of America. Some of the most heroic spirits who came to our country came with that object in view, and Champlain was too devoted a Catholic not to share the Church's concern on this point. So he came out, in the spring of 1608, in {121} command of a vessel furnished by the Sieur de Monts for exploration and settlement. When he reached the desolate trading-post of Tadoussac,[1] an incident occurred that illustrates the reluctance of men to submit to curtailment of their natural rights. If it was hard for men in France to submit patiently to being shut out of a lucrative business by the government's granting the sole right to particular persons, how far more difficult must it have been for men who were on the coasts or rivers of the New World, who had already been engaged in the traffic, and who had opportunities to trade constantly inviting them! An Indian, let us say, paddled alongside with a bundle of valuable furs, eager to get the things which the white men had and beseeching them to barter. But no; they must not deal with him, because they were not employed to buy and sell for the one man who controlled the business. Of course, many evaded the law, and there was a vast deal of illicit trading in the lonely forests of New France which the watchful eye of the {122} monopolist could not penetrate. Often there were violent and bloody collisions between his employees and the free-traders. Now, when Champlain reached Tadoussac he found his associate, Pontgravé, who had sailed a week ahead of him, in serious trouble. On arriving at Tadoussac, he had found some Basques driving a brisk trade with the Indians. These Basques were fierce fellows. They belonged to one of the oldest races in the world, a race that has inhabited the slopes of the Pyrenees, on both the Spanish and the French sides, so far back that nobody knows when it came thither; moreover, a sullen and vengeful race. They were also daring voyagers, and their fishing-vessels had been among the earliest to visit the New World, where their name for cod-fish, baccalaos, had been given to Newfoundland, which bears that title on the oldest maps. They had traded with the Indians long before any grant of monopoly to anybody, and they felt that such a grant deprived them of a long-established right. When Pontgravé showed the royal letters and forbade the traffic, these men swore roundly that they would trade in spite of the King, and backed {123} up their words by promptly opening fire on Pontgravé with cannon and musketry. He was wounded, as well as two of his men, and a third was killed. Then they boarded his vessel and carried away all his cannon, small arms, and ammunition, saying that they would restore them when they had finished their trading and were ready to return home. Champlain's arrival completely changed the situation. The Basques, who were now the weaker party, were glad to come to terms, agreeing to go away and employ themselves in whale-fishing. Leaving the wounded Pontgravé to load his ship with a rich cargo of furs, Champlain held his way up the St. Lawrence. A place where the broad stream is shut in between opposing heights and which the Indians called Kebec ("The Narrows"), seemed an ideal situation for a stronghold, being indeed a natural fortress. On this spot, between the water and the cliffs, where the Lower Town now stands, Champlain, in 1608, founded the city of Quebec. Its beginnings were modest indeed--three wooden buildings containing quarters for the leader and his men, a large storehouse, and a fort with two or three small cannon commanding the river. {124} The Basques, all this time, were sullenly brooding over the wrong which they conceived had been done them. One day Champlain was secretly informed of a plot among his men to murder him and deliver Quebec into their hands. He acted with his usual cool determination. Through the agency of the man who had betrayed them, the four ringleaders were lured on board a small vessel with a promise of enjoying some wine which was said to have been sent from Tadoussac by their friends, the Basques. They were seized, and the arch-conspirator was immediately hanged, while the other three were taken by Pontgravé back to France, where they were sentenced to the gallows. After these prompt measures Champlain had no more trouble with his men. Now he was left with twenty-eight men to hold Quebec through the winter. One would think that the cruel sufferings endured by Carder on the same spot, seventy-three years earlier, would have intimidated him. But he was made of stern stuff. Soon the rigors of a Canadian winter settled down on the little post. For neighbors the Frenchmen had only a band of Indians, half-starving and wholly wretched, as was the usual {125} winter condition of the roving Algonquins, who never tilled the soil or made sufficient provision against the cold. The French often gave them food which they needed sorely. Champlain writes of seeing some miserable wretches seize the carcass of a dog which had lain for months on the snow, break it up, thaw, and eat it. It proved a fearful winter. The scurvy raged among the Frenchmen, and only eight, half of them sick, remained alive out of the twenty-eight. Thus this first winter at Quebec makes the first winter of the Pilgrims at Plymouth seem, by comparison, almost a mild experience. With the early summer Pontgravé was back from France, and now Champlain, strenuous as ever, determined on carrying out his daring project of exploration, in the hope of finding a route to China. His plan was to march with a war-party of Algonquins and Hurons against their deadly foes, the Iroquois, thus penetrating the region which he wished to explore. Going up the St. Lawrence as far as the mouth of the Richelieu or Sorel River, and then ascending this stream, the party entered the enemy's country. On the way Champlain had opportunities of witnessing a most interesting ceremony. {126} At every camp the medicine-man, or sorcerer, pitched the magic lodge, of poles covered with dirty deerskin robes, and retired within to hold communion with the unseen powers, while the worshipers sat around in gaping awe. Soon a low muttering was heard, the voice of the medicine-man invoking the spirits. Then came the alleged answer, the lodge rocking to and fro in violent motion. Champlain could see that the sorcerer was shaking the poles. But the Indians fully believed that the Manitou was present and acting. Next they heard its voice, they declared, speak in an unearthly tone, something like the whining of a young puppy. Then they called on Champlain to see fire and smoke issuing from the peak of the lodge. Of course, he did not see any such thing but they did, and were satisfied.[2] {127} Soon the river broadened, and Champlain, first of all white men, gazed on the beautiful lake that bears his name. Now traveling became dangerous, and the party moved only in the night, for fear of suddenly encountering a band of the enemy, whom they hoped to surprise. Their plan was to traverse the length of Lake Champlain, then pass into Lake George and follow it to a convenient landing, thence carry their canoes through the woods to the Hudson River, and descend it to some point where they might strike an outlying town of the Mohawks.[3] {128} They were saved the trouble of so long a journey. One night, while they were still on Lake Champlain, they caught sight of dark objects moving on the water. A fleet of Iroquois canoes they proved to be. Each party saw the other and forthwith began to yell defiance. The Iroquois immediately landed and began to cut down trees and form a barricade, preferring to fight on shore. The Hurons remained in their canoes all night, not far off, yelling themselves hoarse. Indeed, both parties incessantly howled abuse, sarcasm, and threats at each other. They spoke the same language, the Hurons being a branch of the Iroquois family. When morning came the allies moved to the attack, Champlain encased in steel armor. He and two other Frenchmen whom he had with him, each in a separate canoe, kept themselves covered with Indian robes, so that their presence was not suspected. The party landed without any opposition and made ready for the fray. Soon the Iroquois filed out from their barricade and advanced, some two hundred in number, many of them carrying shields of wood covered with hide, others protected by a rude armor of tough twigs interlaced. [Illustration: Fort of the Iroquois] {129} As they confidently marched forward, imagine their amazement when the ranks of the enemy suddenly opened, and their steel-clad champion stepped to the front! It was an apparition that might well cause consternation among these men of the wilderness, not one of whom probably had ever seen a white man. What follows is thus described by Champlain: "I looked at them, and they looked at me. When I saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I leveled my arquebuse, which I had loaded with four balls, and aimed straight at one of the three chiefs. The shot brought down two and wounded another. On this, our Indians set up such a yelling that one could not have heard a thunder-clap, and all the while the arrows flew thick on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished and frightened to see two of their men killed so quickly, in spite of their arrow-proof armor." When one of Champlain's companions fired a shot from the woods, panic sized them, and they fled in terror. The victory was complete. Some of the Iroquois were killed, more were taken, and their camp, canoes, and provisions all fell into the lands of the visitors. {130} This fight, insignificant in itself, had tremendous consequences. Champlain had inconsiderately aroused the vengeance of a terrible enemy. From that day forth, the mighty confederacy of the Five Nations, embracing the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, was the deadly foe of the French. This circumstance gave to the English, in the long struggle for the supremacy of America, the aid of the craftiest, boldest, and most formidable native warriors on the continent. Another noteworthy thing is that this fight occurred in just the year in which Hudson ascended the river since named for him. His exploration, made in the interest of the Dutch, led to their planting trading-posts on the river.[4] {131} Previously the Iroquois had been at a disadvantage, because their enemies, the Hurons, could procure fire-arms from the French, whereas they had not any. But the Dutch traders on the Hudson soon began to sell guns to the Iroquois; and thus one of the first effects of the coming of white men into the wilderness was to equip these two savage races for a deadlier warfare. The next summer Champlain had another opportunity of taking a hand in a fight between Indians. A canoe came with the exciting news that, a few miles away in the woods, a band of Algonquins had surrounded an invading party of Iroquois who were making a desperate stand within an inclosure of trees. His Indians snatched their weapons and raced for the scene, shouting to Champlain to follow, but leaving him and four of his men to find their way as best they could. They were soon lost in the dense woods. The day was hot, and the air was full of mosquitoes. The Frenchmen struggled on through black mud and knee-deep water and over fallen trees and slimy logs, panting under their heavy corselets; but not a sound could they hear to guide them to the spot. At last two Indians running to the fight {132} overtook them and led them to the place where the Iroquois, within a circular barricade of trees and interlaced boughs, were fighting savagely. They had beaten off their assailants with heavy loss. When the Frenchmen came up, they received a flight of well-aimed arrows from the desperate defenders. One split Champlain's ear and tore through the muscles of his neck. Another inflicted a similar wound on one of his men. The Indians, seeing the Europeans' heads and breasts covered with steel, had aimed at their faces. But fire-arms soon changed the situation. The Frenchmen ran up close to the barricade, thrust their weapons through the openings, and poured dismay and death among the defenders. The Indian assailants, too, encouraged by this example, rushed in and dragged out the trees of the barricade. At the same time a boat's crew of fur-traders, who had been attracted by the firing, rushed upon the scene and used their guns with deadly effect. The Iroquois, surrounded and overwhelmed by numbers, fought to the last. The most were killed on the spot. Only fifteen survived and were taken prisoners. Thus the fiercest warriors of North America experienced a second disaster {133} which could not but result in deepening their hatred of the French. These early successes of Champlain were dearly paid for by his country-men long after he was dead. In the following spring (1611) Champlain did another memorable thing: he established a post, which afterward grew into a trading-station, at Montreal. Thus the two oldest and most historic towns of Canada owe their foundation to him. Champlain purposed accompanying a great force of Algonquins and Hurons in an inroad into the Iroquois country. The savage warriors, however, unwilling to wait for him, set out for their villages, taking with them an adventurous friar named Le Caron. But Champlain was not to be baulked by this circumstance. He immediately started on the track of the larger party, with ten Indians and two Frenchmen, one of whom was his interpreter, Etienne Brulé. He went up the Ottawa River, made a portage through the woods, and launched his canoes on the waters of Lake Nipissing, passing through the country of a tribe so sunk in degrading superstitions, that the Jesuits afterward called them "the Sorcerers." After resting here two days and feasting on {134} fish and deer, which must have been very welcome diet after the scant fare of the journey, he descended French River, which empties the waters of Nipissing into Lake Huron. On the way down, hunger again pinched his party, and they were forced to subsist on berries which, happily, grew in great abundance. At last a welcome sight greeted Champlain. Lake Huron lay before him. He called it the "Mer Douce" (Fresh-water Sea). Down the eastern shore of the Georgian Bay for more than a hundred miles Champlain took his course, through countless islets, to its lower end. Then his Indians landed and struck into a well-beaten trail leading into the heart of the Huron country, between Lakes Huron and Ontario. Here he witnessed a degree of social advancement far beyond that of the shiftless Algonquins on the St. Lawrence. Here were people living in permanent villages protected by triple palisades of trees, and cultivating fields of maize and pumpkins and patches of sunflowers. To him, coming from gloomy desolation, this seemed a land of beauty and abundance. The Hurons welcomed him with lavish hospitality, expecting that he would lead them to {135} victory. He was taken from village to village. In the last he found the friar Le Caron with his twelve Frenchmen. Now there were feasts and dances for several days, while the warriors assembled for the march into the Iroquois country. Then the little army set out, carrying their canoes until they came to Lake Simcoe. After crossing this there came another portage, after which the canoes were launched again on the waters of the river Trent. Down this they made their way until they came to a suitable spot for a great hunt. The Frenchmen watched the proceedings and took part in them with great zest. Five hundred men, forming an extended line, moved through the woods, gradually closing in toward a wooded point on which they drove the game. Then they swept along it to its very end. The frightened deer, driven into the water, were easily killed by the canoe-men with spears and arrows. Such a great hunt supplied the place of a commissary department and furnished food for many days. Out upon Lake Ontario the fleet of frail barks boldly ventured, crossed it safely, and landed on the shore of what is now New York State. Here the Indians hid their canoes. Now they were on the enemy's soil and must move cautiously. For {136} four days they filed silently through the woods, crossing the outlet of Lake Oneida, and plunged deep into the Iroquois country. One day they came upon a clearing in which some of the people of the neighboring villages were gathering corn and pumpkins. Some of the impetuous young Hurons uttered their savage yell and rushed upon them. But the Iroquois seized their weapons and defended themselves so well that they drove back their assailants with some loss. Only the Frenchmen, opening fire, saved the Hurons from worse disaster. Then the attacking party moved on to the village. This Champlain found to be far more strongly defended than any he had ever seen among the Indians. There were not less than four rows of palisades, consisting of trunks of trees set in the earth and leaning outward; and there was a kind of gallery well supplied with stones and provided with wooden gutters for quenching fire. Something more than the hap-hazard methods of the Hurons was needed to capture this stronghold, and Champlain instructed them how to set about it. Under his direction, they built a wooden tower high enough to overlook the palisades and {137} large enough to shelter four or five marksmen. When this had been planted within a few feet of the fortification, three arquebusiers mounted to the top and thence opened a deadly raking fire along the crowded galleries. Had the assailants confined themselves to this species of attack and heeded Champlain's warnings, the result would have been different. But their fury was ungovernable. Yelling their war-cry, they exposed themselves recklessly to the stones and arrows of the Iroquois. One, bolder than the rest, ran forward with firebrands to burn the palisade, and others followed with wood to feed the flame. But torrents of water poured down from the gutters quickly extinguished it. In vain Champlain strove to restore order among the yelling savages. Finding himself unable to control his frenzied allies, he and his men busied themselves with picking off the Iroquois along the ramparts. After three hours of this bootless fighting, the Hurons fell back, with seventeen warriors wounded.[5] Champlain himself was disabled by two wounds, {138} one in the knee and one in the leg, which hindered him from walking. Still he urged the Hurons to renew the attack. But in vain. From overweening confidence the fickle savages had passed to the other extreme. Nothing could inspire them to another assault. Moreover, Champlain had lost much of his peculiar influence over them. They had fancied that, with him in front, success was sure. Now they saw that he could be wounded, and by Indian weapons, and they had experienced a defeat the blame of which they undoubtedly laid at his door. His "medicine" [6] was not the sure thing they had thought it to be, and no words of his could raise their spirits. After a few days of ineffective skirmishing, they hastily broke up in retreat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while the Iroquois pursued and harassed the flanks and rear. Champlain was treated like the rest of the wounded. Each was carried in a rude basket made of green withes, on the back of a stout warrior. For days he traveled in this way, enduring, he says, greater torment than he had {139} ever before experienced, "for the pain of the wound was nothing to that of being bound and pinioned on the back of a savage." As soon as he could bear his weight, he was glad to walk. When the shore of Lake Ontario was reached, the canoes were found untouched, and the crest-fallen band embarked and recrossed to the opposite side. Now Champlain experienced one of the consequences of his loss of prestige. The Hurons had promised him an escort to Quebec. But nobody was willing to undertake the journey. The great war-party broke up, the several bands going off to their wonted hunting-grounds, and Champlain was left with no choice but to spend the winter with the Hurons. One of their chiefs invited him to share his lodge, and he was glad to accept this hospitality. Shortly afterward he met with a notable adventure. The Hurons were waiting for a hard frost to give them passage over the lakes and marshes that lay between them and their towns. Meanwhile they occupied themselves with hunting. One day Champlain was out with them. For ten days twenty-five men had been at work, preparing for a huge "drive." They had built a strong enclosure, from the opening of which {140} ran two diverging fences of posts interlaced with boughs, extending more than half a mile into the woods. At daybreak the most of the warriors formed a long line and, with shouts and the clattering of sticks, drove the deer toward the pound. The frightened animals rushed down the converging lines of fence into the trap, where they were easily killed. Champlain was enjoying watching the sport, when a strange bird lured him off, and he lost his way. The day was cloudy, there was no sun to guide him, and his pocket-compass he had left in camp. All his efforts to retrace his steps failed. At last night came on, and he lay down and slept, supperless, at the foot of a tree. The whole of the next day he wandered, but in the afternoon he came to a pond where there were some waterfowl along the shore. He shot some of these, kindled a fire, cooked his food, and ate with relish. It was dreary November weather, and a cold rain set in. He was without covering of any kind. But he was used to hardships, and he said his prayers and calmly lay down to sleep. Another day of bewildered wandering followed, and another night of discomfort. On the next {141} day he came upon a little brook. The happy thought came to him that, if he should follow this, it would lead him to the river, near which the hunters were encamped. This he did, and when he came in sight of the river, with a lighter heart he kindled his fire, cooked his supper, and bivouacked once more. The next day he easily made his way down the river to the camp, where there was great joy at his coming. The Indians had searched for him far and wide. From that day forth they never let him go into the forest alone. The scene of this adventure seems to have been somewhere to the north or north-east of the site of Kingston, Ontario. The Indians encamped here several weeks, during which they killed a hundred and twenty deer. When the hard cold came and the marshy country was solid with ice, they resumed their journey, with their sledges laden with venison. Champlain went on with them from village to village, until he reached the one in which he had left Brother Le Caron. When spring came, the Frenchmen traveled homeward by the same circuitous route by which they had come, by the way of Lake Huron and the Ottawa River. {142} Champlain's arrival at Quebec caused universal rejoicing. He was welcomed as one risen from the grave, for the Indians had reported him dead, and a solemn service of thanksgiving for his safety was held. Here closes the most adventurous period of his career. Though his heart was in the work of exploration, he was destined to spend his remaining years chiefly in nursing the feeble little colony at Quebec. He had not only to hold the balance even between monks and traders, but to guard the puny little colony against frequent Indian outbreaks. Eighteen years had passed since the foundation of Quebec, and still the population consisted of only one hundred and five persons, men, women, and children. Only two or three families supported themselves from the soil. All the rest were there either as priests or as soldiers or as traders bent on enriching themselves as quickly as possible and then returning to France. This was one of the greatest difficulties that Champlain had to contend with. The French at this time had little thought of anything else than developing a great trade, whereas the English colonists, with strong good sense, set themselves to tilling {143} the soil and to making true homes for themselves and their children's children. The result was that Canada long remained a sickly infant, while the English colonies were growing sturdily. An event that must have deeply tried Champlain was the surrender of Quebec by his government to the English. He actually spent some time in London as a prisoner, being treated with great consideration. Eventually, however, Quebec was restored to its former masters and Champlain to the governorship. Thus were spent the last years of his life. He died on Christmas day, in 1635. At his funeral all the little community, Jesuits, officers, soldiers, traders, and settlers, gathered to pay honor to the dead "Father of New France." He was a great soul, his faults chiefly those of a too confiding nature, always manly and sincere, a brave soldier and a true gentleman, unselfishly devoted to the work to which he had consecrated his life, and on the rude frontiers of the New World living in a spirit worthy of the best ages of chivalry. The Father of New France is worthily commemorated by a noble monument erected in 1898 and unveiled in the presence of distinguished {144} representatives of Canada, Great Britain, France, and the United States. It stands within the area once covered by Champlain's fort and presents the hero holding in his hand the King's open commission, while with bared head he salutes the child of his hopes, New France. [1] This place, at the confluence of the Saguenay with the St. Lawrence, was peculiarly well situated for the fur-trade. The Saguenay, having its head-waters far to the north in the dreary region near Hudson Bay, rich in furs, was the route by which the natives of that wild country brought their peltries to market. [2] The Indians were much given to various forms of divination by which they believed that they ascertained the will of the unseen powers. Jonathan Carver, who traveled much among the western tribes, about 1766, relates that once when he was with a band of Christinos, or Crees, on the north shore of Lake Superior, anxiously awaiting the coming of certain traders with goods, the chief told him that the medicine-man, or conjurer, or "clairvoyant" as we should say, would try to get some information from the Manitou. Elaborate preparations were made. In a spacious tent, brightly lighted with torches of pitch-pine, the conjurer, wrapped in a large elk-skin, and corded with about forty yards of elk-hide lariat--"bound up like an Egyptian mummy"--was laid down in the midst of the assembly, in full view of all. Presently he began to mutter, then to jabber a mixed jargon of several native tongues, sometimes raving, sometimes praying, till he had worked himself into a frenzy and foamed at the mouth. Suddenly he leaped to his feet, shaking off his bands "as if they were burnt asunder," and announced that the Manitou had revealed to him that, just at noon on the next day, there would arrive a canoe the occupants of which would bring news as to the expected traders. On the next day Carver and his Indian friends were on the bluff watching. At the appointed hour a canoe (undoubtedly sent by the conjurer) came into view and was hailed by the Indians with shouts of delight. It brought tidings of the early coming of the traders. [3] This was the established route used by the Indians. By it one could pass by water, with only the short carry between Lake George and the Hudson, all the way from the Great Lakes to the ocean. [4] The thrifty Hollanders at once saw the importance of securing the fur-trade of the region thus opened to them. To protect it, they first established at the mouth of the river, on Manhattan Island, the post out of which the city of New York has grown. Next they reared a fort on an island a little below Albany; and, in 1623, they built Fort Orange, on the site of Albany. It soon became a most important point, because, until Fort Stanwix, on the Mohawk, was built, it was the nearest white man's post to which the Indians of the great Iroquois confederacy might bring their peltries. We hear much of it in the early history. The great trading-stations were always on big rivers, because these drained a wide territory, and the supply of furs lasted long. As the French pushed further westward, as we shall see, important stations were opened on the Great Lakes. [5] We may wonder at so small a list of casualties. The fact is that, until the introduction of fire-arms, Indian open fighting was not very deadly. They might yell and screech and shoot arrows at each other for hours, with very little loss. Surprises and ambuscades were their most effective methods. [6] This word came into general use among French _voyageurs_ and, later, among white men generally, as the equivalent of an Indian word denoting mysterious power. {147} Chapter X JESUIT MISSIONARY PIONEERS Unselfishness of the Better Class of Jesuits.--Their Achievements in Exploration.--The Great Political Scheme of which they were the Instruments.--Indian Superstitions.--Danger!--The Touching Story of Isaac Jogues.--Ferocity of the Five Nations.--Ruin of the Hurons and of the Jesuit Missions among them. A class of men whose aims were singularly unselfish were the missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, mostly Jesuits, that is, members of the Society of Jesus. The first object of the best of them was to convert the Indians and establish a great branch of the Catholic Church in the wilds of America. There were others, however, whose first aim was to increase the power of France. These politician-priests were well represented by the famous Father Allouez who, while he preached the gospel to the Indians, took still greater pains to preach the glory of the French King, whose subjects he wished to make them. On one occasion, supported by a French officer and his {148} soldiers, drawn up under arms, he thus addressed a large assemblage of Indians gathered at Sault Ste. Marie: "When our King attacks his enemies, he is more terrible than the thunder: the earth trembles; the air and the sea are all on fire with the blaze of his cannon; he is seen in the midst of his warriors, covered over with the blood of his enemies, whom he kills in such numbers that he does not count them by the scalps, but by the streams of blood which he causes to flow. In each city he has storehouses where there are hatchets enough to cut down all your forests, kettles enough to cook all your moose, and beds enough to fill all your lodges. His house is higher than the tallest of your trees and holds more families than the largest of your towns. Men come from every quarter of the earth to listen to and admire him. All that is done in the world is decided by him alone." But we are not now concerned with such scheming priests. We wish to sketch very briefly the story of some of those faithful and single-hearted men who were true missionaries of religion. In their journeys into the wilds they often proved themselves pathfinders, penetrating {149} regions never before trodden by the foot of a white man. Many a tribe got its first impression of our race from these peaceful preachers. A mission priest, Le Caron, was the first white man who saw Lake Huron. Another, the heroic Jogues, was the first of our race to see Lake George. Thus the work of Catholic missionaries must have a large place in any truthful account of early New France. In fact, the history of Canada is for a long time the history of Jesuit activity. These men were in the habit of sending to their superiors in the Old World copious accounts of all that they saw or did. These reports, which are known as the "Jesuit Relations," form a perfect storehouse of information about early Canadian affairs and about the Indians with whom the French were in contact. These Jesuit priests commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to all the refinements of life--some of them of noble families--and we can only measure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize the contrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savagery into which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of such a man as {150} Father Le Jeune, cultivated and high-minded, exiling himself from his white brethren for a whole season, which he spent with a band of Algonquins, roaming the wintry forests with them, sharing their hunger and cold and filth, sometimes on the verge of perishing from sheer starvation, at other times, when game chanced to be plentiful, revolted by the gorging of his companions, at all times disgusted by their nastiness. "I told them again and again," he writes, "that if dogs and swine could talk, they would use just such speech;" a remark which shows, by the way, that the good friar did not think so highly of dumb animals as we do in these more enlightened days. But he had abundant charity, and he noted that underneath all this coarse rudeness there was genuine fellowship among these savages; that they cheerfully helped one another, and when food was scarce, fairly distributed the smallest portion among all. Such observations helped him to endure his lot with serenity, even when he was himself made the butt of the coarsest jokes. He survived his hard experiences and, after five months of roaming, exhausted and worn to a shadow, rejoined the brethren in the rude convent at Quebec. {151} There was much of this fine spirit about the best of the Jesuits. But, besides this individual devotion, there was another important circumstance: they were only private soldiers in a great army. They had no will of their own, for one of the first principles of the Order was absolute obedience. Wherever their superiors might send them they must go without a question. Whatever they might be ordered to do, they must do it without a murmur. It became the policy of the leading men of the Order in Canada to establish missionary posts among the Hurons who, living in fixed habitations, were more hopeful subjects than the roving Algonquins of the St. Lawrence region. It would be a great gain, they reasoned, if these people could be brought within the pale of the Church. At the same time that so many souls would be saved from everlasting flames, the immensely lucrative fur-trade of a vast region would be secured to the French, and the King would gain thousands of dusky subjects. Canada would flourish, the fur-traders would grow richer than ever, and France would be in the way of extending her rule ever farther and further over the western forests and waters--all through the {152} exertions of a few faithful and single-hearted men who went to preach religion. The three men chosen for the work among the Hurons were Fathers Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost. On their journey to their post, if they could have followed a direct line, they would have gone up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, traversed the length of the lake, and then by a short overland journey reached their destination. But this route would have exposed them to the ferocious Iroquois, whose country bordered Lake Ontario on the south. Therefore, it was necessary to take the long and circuitous canoe-voyage which Champlain had taken fifteen years earlier (_See map_). At last, after many pains and perils, half-dead with hunger and fatigue, they reached a village of the Huron country. Soon they settled down to the routine of their daily life, of which they have left us a very readable account. Every day they had numerous visitors, some from long distances, who came to gaze in silent wonder at their domestic arrangements. For instance, there was the clock. They squatted on the floor for hours, watching it and waiting to hear it strike. They thought it was alive and asked what it ate. {153} They listened in awe when it struck, sure that they heard the voice of a living being. "The Captain" they called it. Sometimes one of the French soldiers who accompanied the Jesuits, when "the Captain" had sounded his last stroke, would cry out, "Stop!" Its immediate silence proved that it heard and obeyed. "What does the Captain say?" the Indians sometimes asked. "When he strikes twelve times, he says, 'Hang on the kettle,' and when he strikes four times, he says, 'Get up and go home.'" This was a particularly happy thought; at the stroke of four their visitors would invariably rise and take themselves off. In spite of the lack of outward signs of success, the good men were making a conquest of the savage people's hearts. Their unwearied patience, their kindness, the innocence of their lives, and the tact with which they avoided every occasion of ill-will, did not fail to gain the confidence of those whom they sought to win, and chiefs of distant villages came to urge that they would take up their abode with them. Soon the Huron country contained no less than {154} six different points where faithful priests preached the gospel. The Fathers had abundant opportunities of observing the habits of the natives. They have left a most interesting description of the great Feast of the Dead, which was held at intervals of ten or twelve years, and the object of which was to gather into one great burying-place all the dead of the tribe, these being removed from their temporary resting-places on scaffolds and in graves. It was believed that the souls of the dead remained with their bodies until the great common burial, then they would depart to the spirit-world.[1] This practice, of a great common burial, explains the occurrence, in various parts of the country once occupied by the Hurons, of pits {155} containing the remains of many hundreds of persons all mixed together promiscuously, together with belts of wampum, copper ornaments, glass beads, and other articles. One of these deposits is said to have contained the remains of several thousand persons.[2] The story of Isaac Jogues is a good example both of the Jesuit missionaries' sufferings and of their fortitude. He had gone to Quebec for supplies and was returning to the Huron country with two young Frenchmen, Goupil and Couture, and a number of Hurons. Suddenly the war-whoop rang in their ears, and a fleet of Iroquois canoes bore down upon them from adjacent islands, with a terrific discharge of musketry. The Hurons for the greater part leaped ashore and fled. Jogues sprang into the bulrushes and could have got away. When he saw some of the converted Indians in the hands of their enemies, he determined to share their fate, came out from his hiding-place, and gave himself up. Goupil {156} was taken prisoner. Couture had got away, but the thought of the fate that probably awaited Jogues decided him to go back and cast in his lot with him. In the affray, however, he had killed an Iroquois. In revenge, the others fell upon him furiously, stripped off all his clothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed his fingers, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. Jogues broke from his guards, ran to his friend, and threw his arms about his neck. This so incensed the Iroquois that they turned upon him, beat him with their fists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and gnawed his fingers as they had done Couture's. Goupil next received the same ferocious treatment. The victorious Iroquois now started off with their captives for their country. Their route lay up the river Richelieu, through the length of Lake Champlain, and through the greater part of Lake George to a point where they were wont to leave it and cross over to the Hudson. There was picturesque scenery by the way. But what charm had the beauties of Lake Champlain and distant glimpses of the Adirondacks for the poor prisoners, harassed by the pain and fever of their wounds, in the day cruelly beaten by their captors and at {157} night so tormented by clouds of mosquitoes that they could not sleep? In time they passed the sites of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, sighted romantic Lake George, which these three lonely white men were the first of their race to see, and landed from their canoes at the place where afterward rose Fort William Henry, the scene of one of the most shocking tragedies of the Colonial Wars. Thirteen dreadful days the journey occupied, from the St. Lawrence to its termination at a palisaded town on the banks of the Mohawk. On Lake Champlain they had met a war-party of Iroquois, and the prisoners, for their delight, had been compelled to run the gauntlet between a double line of braves armed with clubs and thorny sticks. When Jogues fell drenched in blood and half-dead, he was recalled to consciousness by fire applied to his body. Couture's experience illustrates a singular trait of the ferocious Iroquois. There was nothing that they admired so much as bulldog courage; and though he had exasperated them by killing one of their warriors, they punished him only by subjecting him to excruciating tortures. His fortitude under these still further increased their admiration and they ended by adopting him {158} into the tribe. Many years later we read of him still living among the Mohawks. Jogues and Goupil they dragged from town to town, in each place exposing them on a scaffold and subjecting them to atrocities contrived to cause the utmost suffering without endangering life. Yet, in an interval between tortures, Jogues seized an opportunity to baptize some Huron prisoners with a few rain-drops gathered from the husks of an ear of green corn thrown to him for food. Three of the Hurons were burned to death, and the two Frenchmen expected the same fate. Goupil did indeed meet with his death, but in a different way. He was once seen to make the sign of the cross on the forehead of a grandchild of the Indian in whose lodge he lived. The old man's superstition was aroused, having been told by the Dutch that the sign of the cross came from the Devil. So he imagined that Goupil had bewitched the child. The next morning, as the two Frenchmen were walking together, talking of the glory of suffering for the sake of Christ, they met two young Indians, one of whom buried his hatchet in Goupil's head. Jogues gave absolution to his dying friend and then, kneeling calmly, bowed his neck to the blow {159} which he expected. Instead, he was ordered to get up and go home. For a time his life hung on a thread. He would have welcomed death. But the very indifference to it which he showed was probably the reason why the Iroquois spared him. Now he led an existence of horrible drudgery. After a while, as he showed no disposition to escape, he was allowed to come and go as he pleased. So he went from town to town, teaching and baptizing whenever he could get a chance. The gangs of prisoners whom the Iroquois brought home from the Huron country, and whom they almost invariably burned, furnished him an abundance of subjects to work on. Once it happened that he went with a party of Indians to a fishing-place on the Hudson. Thence some of them went up the river to Fort Orange, a miserable structure of logs, standing within the limits of the present city of Albany. The Dutch settlers there had heard of Jogues's captivity and, strenuous Protestants though they were, had striven to secure his release by offering goods to a large value. Now that he was among them, they urged him not to return to his captors, but to make his escape, since his death was certain, if he went back. They offered to smuggle him {160} on board a vessel that lay in the river and pay his way to France. He resolved to seize the tempting opportunity. It would make our story too long if we should tell at length the narrow escapes that he still experienced before he succeeded in getting away. At his first attempt to slip away at night, he was severely bitten by a savage dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He received nothing but kindness from the Dutch everywhere and, on his arrival at Manhattan (New York), was furnished by the Governor with a suit of clothes, instead of his tattered skins, and given a passage to Europe. At last he landed on the coast of Brittany. In due time he reached Paris, and the city was stirred {161} with the tale of his sufferings and adventures. He was summoned to court, and the ladies thronged about him to do him reverence, while the Queen kissed his mutilated hands. Would not one think that Jogues had had enough of the New World, with its deadly perils and cruel pains? But so it was not. His simple nature cared nothing for honors. His heart was over the water, among the savages whom he longed to save. Besides, he was only a private soldier in that great army, the Jesuit brotherhood, of which every member was sworn to act, to think, to live, for but one object, the advancement of religion as it was represented by the Order. And who was so fit for the work among the Indians as Jogues, who knew their language and customs? So, in the following spring we find him again on the Atlantic, bound for Canada. Two years he passed in peaceful labors at Montreal. Then his supreme trial came. Peace had been made between the French and the Mohawks, and Couture still lived among the latter, for the express purpose of holding them steadfast to their promises. But, for some reason, the French apprehended an outbreak of hostilities, and it was {162} resolved to send envoys to the Indian country. At the first mention of the subject to Jogues he shrank from returning to the scene of so much suffering. But the habit of implicit obedience triumphed, and he quickly announced his willingness to do the will of his superiors, which to him was the will of God. "I shall go, but I shall never return," he wrote to a friend. He started out with a small party carrying a load of gifts intended to conciliate the Iroquois, and followed the route that was associated in his mind with so much misery, up the Richelieu and Lake Champlain and through Lake George. At the head of this water they crossed over to the Hudson, borrowed canoes from some Indians fishing there, and dropped down the river to Fort Orange. Once more Jogues was among his Dutch friends. Glad as they were to see him, they wondered at his venturing back among the people who had once hunted him like a noxious beast. From Fort Orange he ascended the Mohawk River to the first Indian town. With what wonder the savages must have gazed at the man who had lived among them as a despised slave, and now had come back laden with gifts as the ambassador of a great power! They received {163} him graciously, and when his errand was done, he returned safe to Quebec. It would have been well for him if his superiors had contented themselves with what he had already done and suffered. But they had a grand scheme of founding a mission among the Iroquois. They knew its perils and called it "The Mission of Martyrs." To this post of danger Jogues was sent. The devoted man went without a murmur. On the way he met Indians who warned him of danger, and his Huron companions turned back, but he went on. Arrived among the Mohawks, he found a strong tide of feeling running against him. The accident that aroused it illustrates Indian superstitiousness. On his former visit, expecting to return, he had left a small box. From the first the Indians suspected it of being, like Pandora's box in the old mythology, full of all kinds of ills. But Jogues opened it and showed them that it contained only some harmless personal effects. After he was gone, however, some Huron prisoners wrought on their terror and at the same time reviled the French, declaring that the latter had almost ruined the Huron nation by their witchcraft and had brought on it drought, plague, pestilence, and famine. {164} The Iroquois were well-nigh wild with rage and fright. At any moment the small-pox or some other horror might step out of the little box and stalk abroad among them. The three clans that made up the tribe were divided. The clans of the Wolf and the Tortoise were for keeping the peace; but the clan of the Bear was for making war on the French. Just then, by ill fortune, Jogues, approaching the Mohawk villages, encountered a band of Bear warriors. They seized and dragged him to their town. Here he was savagely attacked and beaten with fists and clubs. In vain he reminded them that he had come on an errand of peace. They tortured him cruelly. The Wolf and Tortoise clans protested against this violation of the peace, but the others carried everything before them. The next day Jogues was bidden to a feast. He did not dare refuse to go. As he entered the lodge of the Bear chief, in spite of the efforts of an Indian who exposed his own life in trying to save him, a hatchet was buried in his brain. Thus died a singularly pure and unselfish man, a Pathfinder, too, for he was one of the three white men who first saw Lake George. Shortly after the death of Jogues, war broke {165} out again. Nothing could have exceeded the ferocity of the Five Nations. They boasted that they intended to sweep the French and their Indian friends off the face of the earth. No place seemed too remote for them. At the most unexpected moments of the day or the night they rose, as it seemed, out of the earth, and, with their blood-curdling war-whoop, fell upon their intended victims with guns and tomahawks. The poor Algonquins were in a state of pitiable terror. Nowhere were they safe. Even when they retired into the wilderness north of the St. Lawrence, they were tracked by their ruthless foes, slaughtered, burned, and drowned. We might go on and tell the story of other priests who all fell at the post of duty and died worthily. But of what use would it be to prolong these horrors? Enough to say that the Huron nation was almost annihilated, the feeble remnant left their country and went elsewhere, and the once promising work of the Jesuits among them ended in fire and blood. A small party of the Hurons accompanied the returning priests to the French settlements and became established, under French protection, near Quebec, at a place called New Lorette, or Indian {166} Lorette, and fought by the side of their white friends in later wars. There, to this day, their descendants, mostly French half-breeds, may be seen engaged in the harmless occupations of weaving baskets and making moccasins. Another band wandered away to the far Northwest, came into conflict with the warlike and powerful Sioux, and, driven back eastward, finally took up its abode near the sites of Detroit and Sandusky. Under the name of Wyandots, its descendants played a conspicuous part in our border wars. [1] The faith of the Indians in a future life was very sincere and strong. Jonathan Carver tells a touching story of a couple whom he knew who lost a little son of about four years. They seemed inconsolable. After a time the father died. Then the mother dried her tears and ceased her lamentations. When he asked her the reason of this, as it seemed to him, strange conduct, she answered that she and her husband had grieved excessively, because they knew that their little boy would be alone in the other world, without anybody to provide for his wants, but now, his father having gone to join him, her mind was at rest in the assurance that the little fellow would be well cared for and happy. [2] This usage seems to have been quite general. Jonathan Carver, in 1767, tells of a common burying-place of several bands of the Sioux, to which these roving people carefully brought their dead at a given time, depositing them with great solemnity. These bodies had previously been temporarily placed on rude scaffolds on the limbs of trees, awaiting the general interment. {169} Chapter XI JEAN NICOLLET, LOUIS JOLIET, AND FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE THE DISCOVERERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI Jean Nicollet's Voyage on the Wisconsin.--Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette are sent by Count Frontenac to follow the Course of the Mississippi.--On the Wisconsin.--The "Great Water" reached.--Hospitably entertained in an Indian Camp.--An Invaluable Gift.--The Mouth of the Missouri and the Mouth of the Ohio passed.--The Outlet of the Arkansas reached.--Hardships of the Return Voyage.--Death of Marquette.--Joliet's Mishap. A notable _coureur de bois_ (a French-Canadian wood-ranger) was Jean Nicollet. He had lived for years among the savages and had become thoroughly Indian in his habits. He was sent by the French Governor, about 1638, as an ambassador to the Winnebagoes, west of Lake Michigan. He had heard among his Indian friends of a strange people without hair or beard who came from beyond the Great Water to trade with the Indians on the Lakes. Who could these beardless men be but Chinese or Japanese? {170} So fully possessed was he by this idea that, in order to make a suitable appearance before the Orientals whom he expected to meet, he took along with him a robe of heavy Chinese silk, embroidered with birds and flowers. When he neared the Winnebago town, he sent a messenger ahead to announce his coming, and, having put on his gorgeous robe, followed him on the scene. Never did a circus, making its grand entry into a village in all the glory of gilded chariots and brass band, inspire deeper awe than this primitive ambassador, with his flaming robe and a pair of pistols which he fired continually. His pale face, the first that the Winnebagoes had ever seen, gave them a sense of something unearthly. The squaws and the children fled into the woods, shrieking that it was a manitou (spirit) armed with thunder and lightning. The warriors, however, stood their ground bravely and entertained him with a feast of one hundred and twenty beaver.[1] But if Nicollet did not succeed in opening relations with Cathay and Cipango (China and {171} Japan), he did something else that entitles him to be commemorated among the Pathfinders. He ascended Fox River to its head-waters, crossed the little divide that separates the waters flowing into the Lakes from those that empty into the Gulf of Mexico, and launched his canoe on the Wisconsin, the first white man, so far as we know, who floated on one of the upper tributaries of the mighty river. This was just about one hundred years after Soto had crossed it in its lower course. On his return, he reported that he had followed the river until he came within three days of the sea. Undoubtedly he misunderstood his Indian guides. The "Great Water" of which they spoke was almost certainly the Mississippi, for that is what the name means. The first undoubted exploration of the mighty river took place thirty-five years later. It was made by two men who combined the two aspects of Jesuit activity, the spiritual and the worldly. Louis Joliet was born in Canada, of French parents. He was educated by the Jesuits, and was all his life devoted to them. He was an intelligent merchant, practical and courageous. No better man could have been chosen for the work assigned him. {172} His companion in this undertaking was a Jesuit priest, Jacques Marquette, who was a fine example of the noblest qualities ever exhibited by his order. He was settled as a missionary at Michillimackinac, on Mackinaw Strait, when Joliet came to him from Quebec with orders from Count Frontenac to go with him to seek and explore the Mississippi. On May 17, 1673, in very simple fashion, in two birch-bark canoes, with five white _voyageurs_ and a moderate supply of smoked meat and Indian corn, the two travelers set out to solve a perplexing problem, by tracing the course of the great river. Their only guide was a crude map based on scraps of information which they had gathered. Besides Marquette's journal, by a happy chance we have that of Jonathan Carver, who traveled over the same route nearly a hundred years later. From him we get much useful and interesting information. At the first, the explorers' course lay westward, along the northern shore of Lake Michigan and into Green Bay. The Menomonie, or Wild-rice Indians, one of the western branches of the Algonquin family, wished to dissuade them from going further. They told of ferocious tribes, {173} who would put them to death without provocation, and of frightful monsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. The voyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across Lake Winnebago. At the approach to the lake are the Winnebago Rapids, which necessitate a portage, or "carry." Our voyagers do not mention having any trouble here. But, at a later time, according to a tradition related by Dr. R. G. Thwaites, this was the scene of a tragic affair. When the growing fur-trade made this route very important, the Fox Indians living here made a good thing out of carrying goods over the trail and helping the empty boats over the rapids. They eventually became obnoxious by taking toll from passing traders. Thereupon the Governor of New France sent a certain Captain Marin to chastise them. He came up the Fox River with a large party of _voyageurs_ and half-breeds on snow-shoes, surprised the natives in their village, and slaughtered them by hundreds. At another time the same man led a summer expedition against the Foxes. He kept his armed men lying down in the boats and covered with oilcloth like goods. Hundreds of red-skins {174} were squatting on the beach, awaiting the coming of the flotilla. The canoes ranged up along the shore. Then, at a signal, the coverings were thrown off, and a rain of bullets was poured into the defenceless savages, while a swivel-gun mowed down the victims of this brutality. Hundreds were slaughtered, it is said. On to the lower Fox River their course led the explorers. This brought them into the country of the Miamis, the Mascoutins, once a powerful tribe, now extinct, and the Kickapoos, all Algonquins of the West. A council was held, and the Indians readily granted their request for guides to show them the way to the Wisconsin. Through the tortuous and blind course of the little river, among lakes and marshes, they would have had great difficulty in making their way unaided.[2] When they came to the portage, where now stands the city of Portage,[3] with its short canal {175} connecting the two rivers, they carried their canoes across, and launched their little barks on the Wisconsin. Down this river they would float to the great mysterious stream that would carry them they knew not whither, perhaps to the Sea of Virginia (the Atlantic), perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion Sea (the Gulf of California). Whether they would ever return from the dim, undiscovered country into which they were venturing, who could say? It seems amazing that one hundred and thirty years after Soto had crossed the great river, intelligent Frenchmen were ignorant even of its outlet. It shows how successfully Spain had suppressed knowledge of the territory which she claimed. Down the quiet waters of the Wisconsin the voyagers glided, passing the thrifty villages of the Sacs and Foxes, then a powerful people, now almost extinct. On June 17, exactly one month from the day of their starting, their canoes {176} shot out into a rapid current, here a mile wide, and with joy beyond expression, as Marquette writes, they knew that they had achieved the first part of their undertaking. They had reached the "Great Water." What would have been the feelings of these unassuming voyagers, if they could have looked down the dim vista of time, and have seen the people of a great and prosperous commonwealth (Wisconsin), on June 17, 1873, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of their achievement! Strange sights unfolded themselves, as they made their way down the mighty stream and looked on shores that no eyes of a white man had ever beheld. What magnificent solitudes! Only think of it--more than a fortnight without seeing a human being! They used always extreme caution, as well they might, in view of the tales that had been told them of ferocious savages roaming that region. They went ashore in the evening, cooked and ate their supper, and then pushed out and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on watch till morning. After more than two weeks of this solitary voyaging, one day they saw a well-trodden path {177} that led to the adjacent prairie. Joliet and Marquette determined to follow it, leaving the canoes in charge of their men. After a walk of some miles inland, they came to an Indian village, with two others in sight. They advanced with beating hearts. What was their reception to be? When they were near enough to hear voices in the wigwams, they stood out in the open and shouted to attract attention. A great commotion ensued, and the inmates swarmed out. Then, to their intense relief, four chiefs advanced deliberately, holding aloft two calumets, or peace-pipes. They wore French cloth, from which it was evident that they traded with the French. These people proved to belong to the great Illinois tribe, the very people some of whom had met Marquette at his mission-station and had begged him, as he says, "to bring them the word of God." Now, after the pipe of peace had been duly smoked, he had the long-desired opportunity of delivering the message of salvation. He did not fail to add some words about the power and glory of Onontio (Count Frontenac). The head chief replied in a flowery speech, after the most approved fashion of Indian oratory, assuring his {178} guests that their presence made his tobacco sweeter, the river calmer, the sky more serene, and the earth more beautiful. He further showed his friendship by giving them a boy as a slave and, best of all, a calumet, or peace-pipe,[4] which was to serve as a commendation to the goodwill of other Indians. Invaluable the voyagers found it. The friendly chief also represented very strongly the danger of going further down the {179} Great Water and vainly tried to dissuade them. Feasting followed. After various courses, a dainty dish of boiled dog was served, then one of fat buffalo, much to the Frenchmen's relief. Throughout this entertainment the master of ceremonies fed the guests as if they had been infants, removing fish-bones with his fingers and blowing on hot morsels to cool them, before putting them into their mouths. This was the very pink of Indian courtesy. The two Frenchmen spent the night with their dusky friends and the next day were escorted to their canoes by several hundreds of them. This first encounter with Indians of the Mississippi Valley on their own soil seems to have taken place not far from the site of Keokuk. The voyagers' next sensation was experienced after passing the mouth of the Illinois River. Immediately above the site of the city of Alton, the flat face of a high rock was painted, in the highest style of Indian art, with representations of two horrible monsters, to which the natives were wont to make sacrifices as they passed on the river. The sight of them caused in the pious Frenchmen a feeling that they were in the Devil's country, for to Christians of the seventeenth century heathen {180} gods were not mere creatures of the imagination, but living beings, demons, high captains in Satan's great army. Soon the voyagers were made to fear for their safety by a mighty torrent of yellow mud surging athwart the blue current of the Mississippi, sweeping down logs and uprooting trees, and dashing their light canoes like leaves on an angry brook. They were passing the mouth of the Missouri. A few days later they crossed the outlet of the Ohio, "Beautiful River," as the Iroquois name means. All the time it was growing hotter. The picturesque shores of the upper river had given place to dense canebrakes, and swarms of mosquitoes pestered them day and night. Now they had a note of danger in meeting some Indians who evidently were in communication with Europeans, for they had guns and carried their powder in small bottles of thick glass. These Europeans could be none other than the Spaniards to the southward, of whom it behooved the Frenchmen to beware, if they did not wish to pull an oar in a galley or swing a pick in a silver-mine. Still there was a satisfaction in the thought that, having left one civilization thousands of miles behind them, {181} they had passed through the wilderness to the edge of another. These Indians readily responded to the appeal of the Frenchmen's calumet, invited them ashore, and feasted them. On toward the ocean, which they were falsely told was distant only ten days' journey, the voyagers sped, passing the point at which, one hundred and thirty-three years earlier, Soto, with the remnant of his army, had crossed the mighty river in whose bed his bones were destined to rest. Above the mouth of the Arkansas they were for a time in deadly peril from Indians. These were of the Mitchigamea tribe, who, with the Chickasaws and others of the Muskoki family, fought the Spaniards so valiantly. Canoes were putting out above and below, to cut off the explorers' retreat, while some young warriors on the shore were hastily stringing their bows, all animated doubtless by bitter memories of white men inherited from Soto's time. Once more the calumet saved its bearers. Marquette all the while held it aloft, and some of the elders, responding to its silent appeal, succeeded in restraining the fiery young men. The strangers were invited ashore, feasted, as usual, and entertained over night. They had some misgivings, but did not {182} dare refuse these hospitalities; and no harm befell them. The next stage of their journey brought them to a village just opposite the mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they were received in great state by the Arkansas Indians, notice of their coming having been sent ahead by their new friends. There was the usual speechmaking, accompanied by interminable feasting, in which a roasted dog held the place of honor. There was a young Indian who spoke Illinois well, and through him Marquette was able to preach, as well as to gain information about the river below. He was told that the shores were infested by fierce savages armed with guns. By this time it was evident that nothing was to be gained by going further. The explorers had ascertained beyond dispute that the Mississippi emptied its waters, not directly into the Atlantic, or into the Pacific, but into the Gulf of Mexico. If they went further, they ran the risk of being killed by Indians or falling into the hands of Spaniards. In either case the result of their discovery would be lost. Therefore they resolved to return to Canada. Just two months from their starting and one month from their {183} discovery of the Great Water they began their return. Their route was a different one from the original, for on reaching the mouth of the Illinois River they entered and ascended it. On the way, they stopped at a famous village of the Illinois tribe called Kaskaskia. Thence they were guided by a band of young warriors through the route up the Des Plaines River and across the portage to Lake Michigan. Coasting its shore, they reached Green Bay, after an absence of four months. Thus ended a memorable voyage. The travelers had paddled their canoes more than two thousand, five hundred miles, had explored two of the three routes leading into the Mississippi, and had followed the Great Water itself to within seven hundred miles of the ocean. They had settled one of the knotty geographical points of their day, that of the river's outlet. All this they had done in hourly peril of their lives. Though they experienced no actual violence, there was no time at which they were not in danger. In the end the voyage cost Marquette his life, for its hardships and exposures planted in his system the germs of a disease from which he {184} never fully recovered, and from which he died, two years later, on the shore of Lake Michigan. Joliet met with a peculiar misfortune. At the Lachine Rapids, just above Montreal, almost at the very end of his voyage of thousands of miles, his canoe was upset, two men and his little Indian boy were drowned, and his box of papers, including his precious journal, was lost. Undoubtedly his daily record of the voyage would have been very valuable, for he was a man of scholarship as well as of practical ability. But its accidental loss gave the greater fame to Marquette, whose account was printed. In recent years, however, he has been recognized as an equal partner with the noble priest in the great achievement. [1] These Winnebagoes were the most eastern branch of the great Dakota-Sioux family. Their ancestors were the builders, it is believed, of the Wisconsin mounds. [2] Carver says, "It is with difficulty that canoes can pass through the obstructions they meet with from the rice-stalks. This river is the greatest resort for wild fowl that I met with in the whole course of my travels; frequently the sun would be obscured by them for some minutes together." [3] This spot has a remarkable interest as the place where, within a very short distance, rise the waters that flow away to the eastward, through the Great Lakes, into the North Atlantic, and those that now southward to the Mississippi and the Gulf. It is, however, according to Carver, most uninviting in appearance, "a morass overgrown with a kind of long grass, the rest of it a plain, with some few oak and pine trees growing thereon. I observed here," he says, "a great number of rattlesnakes." [4] The following description of this very important article is taken from Father Hennepin: "This Calumet is the most mysterious Thing in the World among the Savages of the Continent of the Northern America: for it is used in all their most important Transactions. However, it is nothing else but a large Tobacco-pipe made of Red, Black, or White Marble: The Head is finely polished, and the Quill, which is commonly two Foot and a half long, is made of a pretty strong Reed, or Cane, adorned with Feathers of all Colours, interlaced with Locks of Women's Hair. They tie to it two wings of the most curious Birds they find, which makes their Calumet not unlike Mercury's Wand. "A Pipe, such as I have described it, is a Pass and Safe Conduct amongst all the Allies of the Nation who has given it; for the Savages are generally persuaded that a great Misfortune would befal 'em, if they violated the Publick Faith of the Calumet." The French never wearied of extolling the wonderful influence of this symbol of brotherhood. Says Father Gravier, writing of his voyage down the Mississippi, in 1700: "No such honor is paid to the crowns and sceptres of kings as they pay to it. It seems to be the God of peace and war, the arbiter of life and death." {187} Chapter XII PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON AND MÉDARD CHOUART EXPLORE LAKE SUPERIOR Who were the Coureurs de bois.--Radisson's Experiences as a Prisoner among the Iroquois.--He plays the Indian Warrior.--Escapes to the Dutch.--Makes his Way back to Canada.--He and his Brother-in-law set out for the Upper Lakes.--Fight with Iroquois.--Storm an Indian Fort.--Reach Lake Superior.--"The Pictured Rocks."--Keweenaw Point.--Long Overland Journey.--Summer and Feasting.--Winter and Famine.--Feasting again.--Fine Ducking.--Start for Home.--Reach Montreal with Great Fleet of Canoes. The early history of New France owes its romantic interest to the activity of four classes of men. Daring explorers, such as Cartier, Champlain, Joliet, Marquette, La Salle, plunged into the wilderness, penetrated remote regions, made great discoveries, and extended French influence and French trade as far to the west as the Mississippi and to the northeast as far as Hudson Bay. French Catholic missionaries said mass and preached their {188} faith in the heart of the forest primeval and at lonely posts on the shores of the Great Lakes. Able and brilliant Governors, such as Champlain and Frontenac, built forts at commanding points on the inland waters, and ruled, in a fashion, an area vastly greater than that of France itself. Of these three classes of men and their achievements we have had examples. We come now to speak of a fourth class who exercised a powerful influence on the destinies of New France. If we remember that the material object of French activity in America was _furs_, we shall easily understand that the men who were busied in the fur-trade were a very important part of the scanty population. They were of two kinds. There were merchants who "kept store" at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers, and other trading-posts, bartering their goods to the Indians for peltries. These were brought to them in large quantities in the early summer, when the ice had broken up, and fleets of canoes descended the St. Lawrence laden with skins. Then there was amazing stir at the sleepy little posts on the great river. Painted savages, howling and screeching, mostly half-drunk, swarmed about the stations, and at night the sky was red with the glare of their {189} fires. There was an enormous profit in the traffic, for the Indians had no idea of the cheapness of the goods which they took in exchange for their furs, nor of the high prices which these brought in Europe. It is no wonder that governors and other high officials were charged with having a secret interest in this very lucrative trade, and, for that reason, winking at violations of the King's orders regulating it. Even Jesuit missionaries sometimes were thought by their opponents to be more eager to share this money-making traffic than to win souls. But a more numerous class than these stationary traders were the so-called _coureurs de bois_, or wood-rangers. These were wild fellows whom the love of adventure lured into the wilderness not less strongly than the love of gain. They roamed the forests, paddled the streams and lakes, hunted and trapped, trafficked with the Indians wherever and whenever they pleased, often in violation of express orders, and smuggled their forbidden furs into the trading-posts. Sometimes they spent whole seasons, even years, among the savages, taking to wife red women. Lawless fellows as these were, they helped mightily to extend French influence and subdue the continent {190} to the white man's rule. Daring explorers, they penetrated remote regions, hobnobbed with the natives, and brought back accounts of what they had seen. One of their leaders, Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, whose name is borne by the city of Duluth, in Minnesota, was a conspicuous figure in the wild frontier life. He carried on a vast fur-trade, held his rough followers well in hand, led a small army of them in fighting the battles of his country, and even appeared at the French court at Versailles. The half-breed children of these _coureurs_, growing up in Indian wigwams, but full of pride in their French blood, became a strong link binding together the two races in friendly alliance and deciding the Indians, in time of war, to paint themselves and put on their feathers for the French rather than for the English. Therefore any account of pioneer Frenchmen should include a sketch of the _coureurs de bois_. To illustrate this type, one is here taken as an example who was born in France, and who was a gentleman by birth and education, but whose insatiable love of adventure led him to take up the _coureur's_ life, with all its vicissitudes. Withal, he {191} was a man of note in his day, played no inconsiderable part in opening up the wilderness, and suggested the formation of that vast monopoly, the Hudson Bay Fur Company. His journals, after lying for more than two hundred years in manuscript, have been published and have proved very interesting. They give such an inside picture of savage life, with its nastiness, its alternate gluttony and starving, and its ferocity, as it would be hard to find elsewhere, drawn in such English as the wildest humorist would not dream of inventing. Pierre Esprit Radisson was born at St. Malo, in France, and came to Canada in May, 1651. His home was at Three Rivers, where his relatives were settled. One day he went out gunning with two friends. They were warned by a man whom they met that hostile Indians were lurking in the neighborhood. Still they went on, forgetting their danger in the enjoyment of shooting ducks. Finally, however, one of the party said he would not go further, and the other joined him. This led Radisson to banter them, saying that he would go ahead and kill game enough for all. On he went, shooting again and again, until {192} he had more geese and ducks than he could carry home. Finally, after hiding some of his game in a hollow tree, he started back. When he came near the place where he had left his companions, imagine his horror at finding their bodies, "one being shott through with three boulletts and two blowes of an hatchett on the head, and the other run through in several places with a sword and smitten with an hatchett." Suddenly he was surrounded by Indians who rose, as it were, out of the ground and rushed upon him, yelling like fiends. He fired his gun, wounding two with the duck-shot, and his pistol, without hurting any one. The next moment he found himself thrown on the ground and disarmed, without a single blow. His courage had impressed the Indians so favorably that they treated him very kindly. When they pitched their camp, they offered him some of their meat, which smelt so horribly that he could not touch it. Seeing this, they cooked a special dish for him. He says it was a nasty mess, but, to show his appreciation, he swallowed some of it. This pleased his captors, and they further showed their good-will by untying him and letting him lie down comfortably {193} between two of them, covered with a red coverlet through which he "might have counted the starrs." The Indians traveled homeward in very leisurely fashion, stopping by the way for days at a time and making merry with Radisson, to whom they evidently had taken a strong liking. When they tried to teach him to sing, and he turned the tables by singing to them in French, they were delighted. "Often," he says, "have I sunged in French, to which they gave eares with a deepe silence." They were bent on making a thorough savage of him. So they trimmed his hair after their most approved fashion and plastered it with grease. He pleased his captors greatly by his good humor and his taking part in chopping wood, paddling, or whatever might be doing, and chiefly by his not making any attempt to escape. In truth, he simply was afraid of being caught and dealt with more severely. They were traveling the familiar route to the Iroquois country, and in time they came to a fishing-station, the occupants of which greeted the returning warriors uproariously. One of them struck Radisson, who, at a sign from his "keeper," clinched with him. The two fought {194} furiously, wrestling and "clawing one another with hands, tooth, and nails." The Frenchman was delighted that his captors encouraged him as much as their fellow tribesman. He came off best, and they seemed mightily pleased. The two men whom he had wounded at the time of his capture, far from resenting it, showed him "as much charity as a Christian might have given." Still things looked squally for Radisson, when he entered the native village of the party and saw men, women, and boys drawn up in a double row, armed with rods and sticks, evidently for the savage ordeal of running the gauntlet. He was on the point of starting, resolved to run his swiftest, when an old woman took him by the hand, led him away to her cabin, and set food before him. How different from being tortured and burned, which was the fate that he expected! When some of the warriors came and took him away to the council-fire, she followed and pleaded so successfully that he was given up to her, to be her adopted son, in the place of one who had been killed. Now nothing was too good for Radisson. The poor old woman had taken him to her heart, and {195} she lavished kindness on him. Her daughters treated him as a brother, and her husband, a famous old warrior, gave a feast in his honor, presenting him to the company under the name of Orinha, which was that of his son who had been killed. He enjoyed the savage life for a time, having "all the pleasures imaginable," such as shooting partridges and "squerells." But he soon grew home-sick and eager for an opportunity to escape. One offered itself unexpectedly. He had gone off on a hunt of several days with three Indians who invited him to join them. On the second day out, they picked up a man who was alone and invited him to go with them to their camp, which he gladly did. Imagine Radisson's surprise when this man, while the others were getting supper ready, spoke to him in Algonquin, that is, the language of the people who were allies of the French and mortal enemies of the Iroquois. Evidently he was a prisoner who had been spared and given his liberty. "Do you love the French?" he asked in a low tone. "Do you love the Algonquins?" Radisson returned. "Indeed I do love my own people," he {196} replied. "Why, then, do we live among these people? Let us kill these three fellows to-night with their own hatchets. It can easily be done." Radisson professes to have been greatly shocked. But in the end he fell in with the plan. The two treacherous villains, after eating a hearty supper with their intended victims, lay down beside them and pretended to sleep. When the three Iroquois were deep in slumber, they rose, killed them with tomahawks, loaded the canoe with guns, ammunition, provisions, and the victims' scalps, which the Algonquin had cut off as trophies, and started on the long journey to Three Rivers. Fourteen nights they had journeyed stealthily, lying in hiding all the day, for fear of meeting Iroquois on the war-path, and had reached a point but a few miles from Three Rivers, when, venturing to cross Lake St. Peter, a wide expansion of the St. Lawrence, by daylight, they encountered a number of hostile canoes. In vain they turned and paddled their hardest for the shore they had left. The enemy gained on them rapidly and opened fire. At the first discharge the Indian was killed and the canoe was so riddled that it was sinking, when the Iroquois ranged alongside and took Radisson out. {197} Now he was in trouble indeed. No more junketing! No more singing of jolly French songs to amuse his captors, but doleful journeying along with nineteen prisoners, one Frenchman, one Frenchwoman, and seventeen Huron men and women, the latter constantly chanting their mournful death-song. Through the day the poor wretches lay in the canoes, pinioned and trussed like fowls; and at night they were laid on the ground securely fastened to posts, so that they could not move hand or foot, while mosquitoes and flies swarmed about them. When the Iroquois country was reached, they furnished sport to the whole population, which turned out everywhere to greet them with tortures. This time Radisson did not wholly escape. But when, for the second time, he was on the point of running the gauntlet, for the second time his "mother" rescued him. His "father" lectured him roundly on the folly of running away from people who had made him one of the family. Still he exerted himself strenuously to save Radisson from the death penalty which hung over him, and succeeded in securing his release after he had been duly tortured. "Then," he says, "my father goes to seeke {198} rootes, and my sister chaws them and my mother applyes them to my sores as a plaster." After a month of this primitive surgery, he was able to go about again, free. The winter passed quietly and pleasantly. Then Radisson, anxious to show himself a thorough Iroquois, proposed to his "father" to let him go on a war-party. The old brave heartily approved, and the young renegade set off with a band for the Huron country. Now follows a dreary account of the atrocities committed. In the end the party, after perpetrating several murders, encountered a considerable number of the enemy, with the loss of one of their men severely wounded. They burned him, to save him from falling into the enemy's hands, and then fled the country. Their arrival at home, with prisoners and scalps, mostly of women and children, was an occasion of great honor, and Radisson came in for his full share. Being now allowed greater freedom, he improved it to run away to join the Dutch at Fort Orange (Albany). He tramped all the day and all the night without food, and at daylight found himself near a Dutch settler's cabin. The Dutch treated him with great kindness, gave him clothes and {199} shoes, and shipped him down the Hudson to "Menada" (Manhattan, New York), whence he sailed for Amsterdam. From that port he took ship for La Rochelle, in France, and thence back to Canada. To cover a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles, he had been obliged to travel about seven thousand! Hitherto we have seen Pierre Radisson figure as a mere _coureur de bois_. Now we shall see him in the more important role of a discoverer. Probably he and his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart, who styled himself the Sieur des Groseillers, in the course of their long trading journeys among the Indians, in 1658 reached the Mississippi. One important discovery they unquestionably made a few years later. That they were the first white men trading in the Lake Superior region is proved by Radisson's giving the first description of notable objects on the shores of the lake. His account of the memorable experiences of this journey, considerably abridged, fills the remainder of this chapter. One cannot but wonder that, until a very recent time, the name of this interesting discoverer has not even been mentioned by historical writers. {200} Here was a man who certainly was of considerable importance in his day, since he was one of two who suggested the formation of the famous Hudson Bay Fur Company, and yet who, until lately, never was spoken of by historians who recorded the achievements of Pathfinders in America. What was the cause of this singular neglect? Chiefly the fact that in his time Canada was full of adventurous _voyageurs_. The fur-trade was the great and only avenue to wealth, and it attracted the most daring spirits. These hardy fellows penetrated the wilderness in all directions, and it was chiefly they who made the northern portion of our country known to white men. Radisson and his brother-in-law, who was his constant companion, belonged to this class. Their journeys were not made for scientific, but for commercial, purposes. They were simply in quest of furs, and whatever discoveries they made were accidental. Thus, little account was made of them at the time. The chief reason, however, is that the importance of Radisson's journal escaped attention. It was mistaken for a mere record of wanderings. Places not being named--at that time they had no names but the Indian ones--close attention {201} to the descriptions in the narrative was needed in order to identify them and determine his route. Thus it came to pass that this singularly interesting journal remained unpublished, that is, practically unknown, for more than two hundred years. When, happily, the Prince Society of Boston recognized its value and printed it, in 1885, the writer at once took his rightful place among the Pathfinders. Radisson and his brother-in-law, in the spring of 1661, applied to the Governor of Canada for permission to go on a trading journey up the lakes. On his refusing, except on the condition of their taking with them two of his servants and giving them half of the profits, they slipped away at midnight without leave, having made an agreement with some Indians, probably Ojibways, of the Sault (Sault Ste. Marie, between Lake Huron and Lake Superior), that these would wait for them at Lake St. Peter, some miles above Three Rivers. The two parties met, as agreed, and began their long journey. After a few days they found traces of a party that had preceded them, their fires still burning. Judging from certain signs that these were not enemies, they exerted themselves to {202} overtake them. They found them to be a party of Indians from Lake Superior who had been to Montreal and were returning. The two bands united and now formed a considerable force, in fourteen canoes. This union proved a happy circumstance, for the next day they were attacked by a war-party of Iroquois who were lying in wait for the Lake Superior Indians, having observed their passage down the river. The Iroquois, who had fortified themselves, were evidently surprised to find themselves confronted by a far larger force than they expected. Radisson and an Indian were sent to scout and examine the fort. They found it to be a stockade surrounded by large rocks. The Iroquois made overtures for peace by throwing strings of wampum over the stockade, and that night they slipped away, leaving a free passage to Radisson's party. The next day, however, there was a brush with Iroquois, in which three were killed, as well as one of Radisson's party. The enemy were not in sufficient force to make a fight in the open and fell back into an old fort--for this region, being on the route to the upper lakes, was a constant battleground. Radisson's party gathered to attack it, {203} the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm. Darkness came on, and the assailants filled a barrel with gunpowder and, "having stoped the whole" (stopped the hole) and tied it to the end of a long pole, tried to push it over the stockade. It fell back, however, and exploded with so much force that three of the assailants themselves were killed. Radisson then made a sort of hand-grenade by putting three or four pounds of powder into a "rind of a tree" (piece of bark) with "a fusey [fuse] to have time to throw the rind." This he flung into the fort, having directed his Indians to follow up the explosion by breaking in with hatchet and sword. Meanwhile the Iroquois were singing their death-song. The grenade fell among them and burst with terrible execution. Immediately Radisson's party broke in, and there was a scene of confusion, assailants and assailed unable in the darkness to distinguish friend from foe. Suddenly there fell a tremendous downpour of rain, with pitchy darkness, which seemed so timely for the Iroquois that Radisson remarks, "To my thinking, the Devill himselfe made that storme to give those men leave to escape from our {204} hands." All sought shelter. When the storm was over the Iroquois had escaped. The victors found "11 of our ennemy slain'd and 2 only of ours, besides seaven wounded." There were also five prisoners secured. The bodies of their own dead were treated with great respect. "We bourned our comrades," says Radisson, "being their custome to reduce such into ashes being slained in batill. It is an honnour to give them such a buriall." At daybreak the party resumed their journey, rejoicing in "10 heads and foure prisoners, whom we embarqued in hopes to bring them into our country, and there to burne them att our own leasures for the more satisfaction of our wives." Meanwhile they allowed themselves a little foretaste of that delight. "We plagued those infortunate. We plucked out their nailes one after another." Probably, when Radisson says "we," he means the Indians only, not his brother and himself. Traveling on, the party espied a large force of Iroquois hovering near. Anticipating an attack, "we killed our foure prisoners, because they embarrassed us." "If ever blind wished the Light, we wished the obscurity of the night, which no {205} sooner approached but we embarqued ourselves without any noise and went along." Radisson thinks the Iroquois must have been encumbered with prisoners and booty: else they would not have let his party get away so easily. Fearing, however, to be pursued, these plied their paddles desperately "from friday to tuesday without intermission," their "feete and leggs" all bloody from being cut in dragging the canoes over sharp rocks in the shallows. After this terrible strain, being "quite spent," they were fain to rest, so soon as they felt themselves safe from pursuit. The party was following Champlain's old route, up the Ottawa River, across country to Lake Nipissing, then down its outlet, French River, to Lake Huron. After a hard and perilous journey, having "wrought two and twenty dayes and as many nights, having slept not one houre on land all that while," they came out on Lake Huron. Still trouble beset them, in the form of dearth of food. Game was scarce along the shore, and they were glad of such berries as they found. Radisson records that the "wildmen," as he always calls the Indians, showed themselves "far gratfuller then many Christians even to their {206} owne relations," for whenever they found a good patch of berries they always called him and his brother to get a full share. In due time they reached a strait full of islands (the St. Mary's River), where an abundance of fish relieved their hunger, and came to "a rapid that makes the separation of the lake that we call Superior, or upper" (Sault Ste. Marie).[1] Some of Radisson's Indian companions were now in their native region. They had promised the two Frenchmen that they "should make good cheare of a fish that they call Assickmack, wch signifieth a white fish," and so it proved.[2] {207} Game, also, was most abundant; and, after their long hardships and privations, the Frenchmen thought this country "like a terrestriall paradise." Having rested and enjoyed the abundance of food for a while, the party went on, "thwarted (crossed) in a pretty broad place and came to an isle most delightfull for the diversity of its fruits." Here they supped and enjoyed themselves until ten o'clock, when, the night being fine, they embarked again and before daylight reached the south shore of the lake. Here Radisson was shown a place where "many peeces of copper weare uncovered." He and his brother were about to take some specimens, when the Indians told them that they would find far larger quantities at a place to which they were going. The next evidence that we encounter of the accuracy of Radisson's narrative is his description of the hills of shifting sand that form a striking feature of this part of the coast. One of the Indians climbed an especially high one, and, Radisson says, "being there, did shew no more then a crow." These are the sand-hills, which the Indian legend, in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," says were thrown up by Pau-puk-keewis when he blew up a whirlwind. The sight of so much sand reminded Radisson of {208} "the wildernesses of Turkey land, as the Turques makes their pylgrimages" (the desert of Arabia). Next the voyagers came to a very "remarquable place, a banke of Rocks that the wildmen made a sacrifice to. They fling much tobacco and other things in its veneration." Radisson thus describes this striking object. "It's like a great Portall, by reason of the beating of the waves. [He means that the dashing of the water against the mass of rock has worn it away in the shape of an arch.] The lower part of that oppening is as bigg as a tower and grows bigger in the going upp. A shipp of 500 tuns could passe, soe bigg is the arch. I gave it the name of the portall of St. Peter, because my name is so called, and that I was the first Christian that ever saw it." The latter statement seems unquestionably true. But Radisson's name did not stick--unfortunately, for "St. Peter's Portal" would be a better-sounding and more significant name than the meaningless "Pictured Rocks," which is the common designation of this famous object. This natural arch affords a striking illustration of the wearing effect of water. The waves constantly washing and often beating in fury upon the line of sandstone cliffs has, in the course of ages, {209} hollowed this arch at the point where the rock was softest. The immense amount of material thus washed from the face of the cliffs has been thrown ashore, blown along the coast, and heaped up in the sand-hills which Radisson describes, and which are reliably reported to vary from one hundred to three hundred feet in height. A few days later the party came to a place where they made a portage of some miles, in order to save going around a peninsula jutting far out into the lake. "The way was well beaten," says Radisson, "because of the comers and goers, who by making that passage shortens their journey by 8 dayes." From this circumstance it is evident that our travelers were on a frequented route, and that the Indians knew enough of the geography of the country to avoid a canoe journey of several hundreds of miles, by carrying their light craft and their goods across the base of the peninsula, which is here very narrow, being almost cut in two by a chain of lakes and rivers.[3] {210} Radisson was told that "at the end of the point there is an isle all of copper." This is not very far from the truth, for this peninsula contains, about Keweenaw Point, the richest copper deposit in the world. In 1857 there was taken from one of the mines a mass of ore weighing 420 tons and containing more than ninety per cent of pure copper. Traveling on, the party met with some Christinos, or Crees, who joined it "in hopes," says Radisson, "to gett knives from us, which they love better then we serve God, which should make us blush for shame." In time they came to "a cape very much elevated like piramides," probably the "Doric Rock." In a certain "channell" they took "sturgeons of a vast bignesse and Pycks of seaven foot long," probably the well-known muscalonge.[4] Now the long canoe voyage had come to an end, and as the Indians said that five days' journey would be needed to bring them to their homes, and the two white men had heavy packs which they were loth to carry so long a distance, they {211} decided to remain where they were and let their red friends either come or send back for them. Then, being but two men, surrounded by wild tribes, they built themselves a little triangular log fort by the water-side, with its door opening toward the water. All around it, at a little distance, was stretched a long cord, to which were fastened some small bells, "which weare senteryes" (sentries), Radisson says.[5] Having thus fortified themselves with a perfect armory within, namely, "5 guns, 2 musquetons, 3 fowling-peeces, 3 paire of great pistoletts, and 2 paire of pocket ons, and every one his sword and daggar," they might feel reasonably safe in a country in which the natives as yet stood in awe of fire-arms. They had some friendly visitors, but would never admit more than one person at a time. Radisson says, in his droll way, "During that time we had severall alarums in ye night. The squerels and other small beasts, as well as foxes, came in and assaulted us." For food there was an abundance of fish and of "bustards" (wild geese), of which Radisson shot a great number. {212} When, after twelve days, some of their traveling companions reappeared, they were astounded at the sight of the fort and complimented the two Frenchmen by calling them "every foot devills to have made such a machine." They had brought a quantity of provisions, imagining the two white men to be famishing. But, lo! here was a supply of game more than sufficient for the whole party. The Indians wondered how it chanced that the Frenchmen's baggage was so greatly reduced. These accounted for it by saying that, fearing lest the sight of so much wealth should lead to their being murdered, they had taken a great part of their merchandise and sunk it in the water, committing it to the care of their "devill," who was charged "not to lett them to be wett nor rusted, wch he promised faithlesse" that he would do; all of which the simple creatures believed "as ye Christians the Gospell." Radisson explains that he and his brother had really burled the goods across the river. "We told them that lye," he says, "that they should not have suspicion of us." The two white men immensely enjoyed the profound deference paid them. When they started on their journey, "we went away," says Radisson, {213} "free from any burden, whilst those poor miserables thought themselves happy to carry our Equipage, for the hope that they had that we should give them a brasse ring, or an awle, or an needle." After traveling four days, our "2 poore adventurers for the honour of our countrey" were told that they were approaching their destination. Runners went ahead to warn the people of their coming. "Every one prepared to see what they never before have seene," that is, white men. Their entry into the village was made with due pomp, and they "destinated 3 presents, one for the men, one for the women, other for the children, to the end," says Radisson, "that we should be spoaken of a hundred years after, if other Europeans should not come in those quarters." These gifts having been received with great rejoicing, there followed feasting, powwowing in council, and a scalp-dance, all of which occupied three days and consumed, in good Indian fashion, the provisions which should have helped them to get through the fast approaching winter. Accordingly, we soon read of the horrors of famine, amid the gloomy wintry forests, the trees laden and the ground deeply covered with snow. Radisson gives a moving description of it. "It {214} grows wors and wors dayly. . . . Every one cryes out for hunger. Children, you must die. ffrench, you called yourselves Gods of the earth, that you should be feered; notwithstanding you shall tast of the bitternesse. . . . In the morning the husband looks upon his wife, the Brother his sister, the cozen the cozen, the Oncle the nevew, that weare for the most part found dead." So for two or three pages he goes on telling of the cruel suffering and of the various substitutes for nourishing food, such as bark ground and boiled; bones that had lain about the camp, picked clean by dogs and crows, now carefully gathered and boiled; then "the skins that weare reserved to make us shoose, cloath, and stokins," and at last even the skins of the tents that covered them. Radisson and his brother had long since eaten their dogs. About this time "there came 2 men from a strange countrey who had a dogg" the sight of which was very tempting. "That dogge was very leane and as hungry as we weare." Still the sight of him was more than mortal could bear. In vain the two Frenchmen offered an extravagant price for the poor beast; his owners would not part with him. Then they resolved {215} to "catch him cunningly." So Radisson watches his opportunity, prowling at night near the visitors' cabin, and when the dog comes out, snatches him up, stabs him, and carries him to his party, where he is immediately cut up and "broyled like a pigge." Even the snow soaked with his blood goes into the kettles. Radisson's description of the horrors of that fearful time will not fail to remind readers of Hiawatha of the poet Longfellow's picture of a famine in the same region in which Radisson was. The main features are the same. There is the bitter cold, O the long and dreary winter! O the cold and cruel winter! There is the gloomy, snow-laden forest, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted Through the forest, round the village. There are the pitiful cries of the helpless, starving ones, O the wailing of the children! O the anguish of the women! There is the hunter engaged in his bootless quest, {216} Vainly walked he through the forest, Sought for bird or beast and found none, Saw no track of deer or rabbit, In the snow beheld no footprints. Then came the two dread visitors, Famine and Fever, and fixed their awful gaze on Minnehaha, who Lay there trembling, freezing, burning At the looks they cast upon her, At the fearful words they uttered. Out into the forest rushes Hiawatha, crying frantically to Heaven, "Give me food for Minnehaha, For my dying Minnehaha!" Through the far-resounding forest, Through the forest vast and vacant Rang the cry of desolation, But there came no other answer Than the echo of the woodlands, "Minnehaha! Minnehaha!" All the day he roamed the gloomy depths of the wintry woods, still vainly seeking food. When he came home empty-handed, heavy-hearted, lo! the spirit of Minnehaha had fled to the Islands of the Blessed. Her body they laid in the snow, In the forest deep and darksome, Underneath the moaning hemlocks. {217} The singularly vivid descriptions of Indian life, with its alternations of human affection and fiendish cruelty, of daring and cowardice, of gorging and starving, make one of the most interesting features of Radisson's book. He lived the life himself and left such a picture of it as few white men could have drawn. Accordingly, he soon tells of feasting once more. What broke the famine was a storm of wind and rain that caused the snow to fall from the trees, cleared the forests, and formed, after a freeze, a crust on the snow that enabled the hunters to kill an abundance of game. Deer, with their sharp hoofs, broke through the crust "after they made 7 or 8 capers" (bounds), and were easily taken. There was other food, too, for there came a deputation of Indians to visit the white strangers, accompanied by their women "loaded of Oates, corne that growes in that country." He means wild rice, which formed the staple food of certain tribes. This was a gift, and at its presentation there were elaborate ceremonies, the account of which fills several pages. Still this was only the beginning, for the appointed time for a grand council was approaching, and soon there arrived deputations from eighteen different tribes, until five hundred {218} warriors were assembled. More feasting, more ceremonies, more honors to the white visitors, who received more beaver-skins than they could possibly carry away, and pledges of eternal friendship on both sides. Hardly were these rites ended, when there came fresh troops of savages, and all began over again. "There weare," says Radisson, "playes, mirths, and bataills for sport. In the publick place the women danced with melody. The yong men that indeavoured to gett a pryse [prize] indeavored to clime up a great post, very smooth, and greased with oyle of beare." Then followed a most interesting exhibition "in similitud of warrs," the young men going through the various motions of attack, retreat, and the like, without a word, all the commands being given by "nodding or gesture," the old men meanwhile beating furiously on drums made of "earthen potts full of water covered with staggs-skin." There followed a dance of women, "very modest, not lifting much their feete from the ground, making a sweet harmony." Finally, after more feasting, more "renewing of alliances," more exchange of gifts, in which, of course, the Frenchmen received valuable furs in {219} return for the merest trifles, the great assembly broke up, the red men filed off toward their distant villages, and the honored strangers started on their long homeward journey, with numerous sled-loads of peltry. All that summer they traveled among the numerous islands on the north shore of the great lake, enjoying an abundance of ducks, fish, and fresh meat. Radisson was amazed at "the great number of ffowles that are so fatt by eating of this graine [wild rice] that heardly they will move from it." He saw "a wildman killing 3 ducks at once with one arrow." When the final start was made for the French settlements, there were seven hundred Indians in 360 canoes, with a proportionately large quantity of beaver-skins. A stop was made at the River of Sturgeons, to lay in a store of food against the voyage. In a few days over a thousand of these fish were killed and dried. After they had started again, Radisson came near to parting unwillingly with the splendid fleet of canoes that he was guiding down to the French settlements. One day they espied seven Iroquois. So great was the dread of these formidable savages, that, though these seven took to their heels and {220} discarded their kettles, even their arms, in their flight, the sight of them threw the hundreds with Radisson into a panic. They were for breaking up and putting off their visit to Montreal for a year. Radisson pleaded hard, and, after twelve days of delay and powwowing, he succeeded in prevailing on all except the Crees to go on with him. Down the St. Mary's River into Lake Huron the great fleet of canoes went in long procession. Then, the wind being favorable, everybody hoisted some kind of sail, and they were driven along merrily until they came to the portage. This passed, they went on down the Ottawa River without misadventure as far as the long rapids. Then another panic seized the Indian fleet, this time on more reasonable grounds, for the party discovered the evidences of a slaughter of Frenchmen. Seventeen of these, with about seventy Algonquins and Hurons, had laid an ambush here for Iroquois, whom they expected to pass this way. Instead, the biter was bitten. The Iroquois, when they came, numbered many hundreds, and they overwhelmed and, after a desperate resistance, destroyed the little band of Frenchmen, with their allies. The appalling {221} evidences of this slaughter were terrible proof that the enemy were numerous in that neighborhood. Even Radisson and his brother were alarmed. They had much ado to persuade their Indian friends to go on with them. As last they succeeded and proudly led to Montreal the biggest canoe-fleet that had ever arrived there, "a number of boats that did almost cover ye whole River." It was a great triumph for the two daring _voyageurs_ to bring to market such a volume of trade and many Indians from distant tribes who never before had visited the French. They expected that this service would be recognized. Instead, the Governor put Groseillers in prison and fined both an enormous sum for going away without his leave. Incensed at this injustice, they determined on going to London and offering their services to the English King. This was the reason of Radisson's translating the notes of his travels into a language that was foreign to him, with such queer results as we have seen in the extracts that have been given. [1] Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites in his "Father Marquette" quotes the following description, written by a Jesuit missionary about eight years after Radisson's visit: "What is commonly called the Saut is not properly a Saut, or a very high water-fall, but a very violent current of waters from Lake Superior, which, finding themselves checked by a great number of rocks, form a dangerous cascade of half a league in width, all these waters descending and plunging headlong together." [2] It is interesting to learn that the whitefish, so much prized today, was held in equally high esteem so long ago, and even before the coming of the white men. The same writer quoted above by Dr. Thwaites tells of throngs of Indians coming every summer to the rapids to take these fish, which were particularly abundant there, and describes the method. The fisherman, he says, stands upright in his canoe, and as he sees fish gliding between the rocks, thrusting down a pole on the end of which is a net in the shape of a pocket, sometimes catches six or seven at a haul. [3] The great steamers of to-day follow this route, which the Indian's bark canoe frequented hundreds of years ago. This illustrates the interesting fact that, over all this continent, the Indians were the earliest pathmakers. Important railroads follow the lines of trails made by moccasined feet, and steamboats plough the waters of routes which the birch canoe skimmed for centuries. [4] Undoubtedly it was one of these "sturgeons of a vast bignesse" that, according to the legend, swallowed both Hiawatha and his canoe. We are now in Hiawatha's country, and we are constantly reminded by Radisson's descriptions of passages in Longfellow's beautiful poem. [5] This little structure has a peculiar interest, because of its being, in all probability, the first habitation of white men on the shores of Lake Superior. It seems to have stood on Chequamegon Bay. {225} Chapter XIII ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE, THE FIRST EXPLORER OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI La Salle's Early Association with the Jesuits.--His Domain in Canada.--He starts on an Exploring Expedition.--Disappears from View.--The Favor of Frontenac.--La Salle's Extraordinary Commission.--Niagara Falls.--The First Vessel ever launched on the Upper Lakes.--Great Hardships of the Journey.--Arrival in the Country of the Illinois.--Fort Crèvecoeur built.--Perilous Journey back to Canada.--La Salle starts again for the Illinois Country.--Iroquois Atrocities and Cannibalism.--La Salle goes as far as the Mississippi and returns.--Tonty's Perilous Experiences.--Boisrondet's Ingenuity saves his Life.--La Salle journeys down the Great River.--Interesting Tribes of Indians.--The Ocean!--Louisiana named.--Hardships of the Return Journey.--Fort St. Louis built. Robert Cavelier, more generally known as La Salle, at the first was connected with the Jesuits, but left the Society of Jesus and, at the youthful age of twenty-three, came to Canada to seek his fortune. He had an elder brother among the priests of St. Sulpice. These, being anxious to have a fringe of settlements outside of their own {226} as a sort of screen against Indian attacks, granted to La Salle a quite considerable tract a few miles from Montreal. Here he laid out a village surrounded by a palisade and let out his land to settlers for a trifling rent. With a view to exploration, he at once began to study the Indian languages. Like Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a passage to the Pacific and a new route for the commerce of China and Japan. The name which to this day clings to the place which he settled, La Chine (China), is said to have been bestowed by his neighbors, in derision of what they considered his visionary schemes. After two or three years La Salle, beginning his real life-work, sold his domain and its improvements, equipped a party, and started out into the wilderness. We trace his route as far as the Seneca country, in western New York. Then for two years we lose sight of him altogether. This time he passed among the Indians; and there is the best reason for believing that he discovered the Ohio River and, quite probably, the Illinois. When Joliet and Marquette ascertained that the outlet of the Great Water was in the Gulf of {227} Mexico, their discovery put an end to the fond hope of establishing a new route to East India and China by way of the Mississippi, but it inspired a brilliant thought in La Salle's mind. Why should France be shut up in Canada, with its poverty, its rigorous climate, its barren soil, covered with snow for half the year? Why not reach out and seize the vast interior, with its smiling prairies and thousands of miles of fertile soil, with the glorious Mississippi for a waterway? She already held the approach at one end, namely, through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Let her go forward on the path which lay open before her. To realize this splendid dream became the purpose of his life. The coming of Count Frontenac to Canada as its governor was a boon to La Salle. Both were essentially men of the world, with ambitions of their own. Both were strong men, daring, ardent, and resolute; and both heartily hated the Jesuits and were hated by them with equal fervor. Both, too, were men of small means who aimed at vast results. In short, they were kindred spirits. But the one was Governor of Canada, and the other was an almost penniless adventurer. This fact determined their relations. La Salle {228} became a partisan of Frontenac, siding with him against certain fur-traders and the Jesuits. Frontenac became the protector of La Salle, backing his schemes with his influence and giving him a strong recommendation to the King. Now, Frontenac had built a fort near the lower end of Lake Ontario, about the site of Kingston. It had the look of being a great public benefit, for it would help to hold the Iroquois in check and it would cut off trade from the English. On these grounds the expense of building it was justified. But the Jesuits and the fur-traders were opposed to it, the fur-traders because they foresaw the loss of a large part of their trade. Indians bringing their annual canoe-loads of peltry to market would not take the long trip to Montreal and Quebec, if they could barter them off at a much nearer point. They suspected, with good reason, that this new fort, erected ostensibly for the defence of the country, was really meant to cut off from them the trade that came down the Lakes and turn it into the hands of the Governor and those who might be in secret league with him. The feeling was very strong, and attempts were made to induce the King to have the {229} obnoxious fort demolished. Just then La Salle sailed for France with strong letters from Frontenac. Imagine the rage of his opponents when he returned not only master of the fort, but a titled man, the Sieur de La Salle, with the King's patent in his pocket giving him a princely grant of many square miles on the mainland and the adjacent islands! But how was a needy adventurer to raise the money to pay for the fort and to do all the high-sounding things that he had promised the King? He counted on raising money on the strength of his great expectations. He was not disappointed. His friends and relatives rejoicing in his good fortune, which they naturally hoped to share, lent large sums of money to enable him to carry out his agreement with his royal master. Now he began piling up a mass of debts that alone would have crushed a common man. He had, besides, a tremendous combination to fight, nearly all the merchants of the colony, backed by the influence of the Jesuits. Still La Salle might have settled down in his seigniory, commanded his soldiers, lorded it over his colony, controlled the trade of the Lakes, paid off his debts, and have grown enormously rich {230} within a few years from the profits of the fur-trade. But he flew at higher game than money, and cared for it only as it might serve his ambition. He was dreaming of the Gulf of Mexico and in imagination ruling a Southwestern New France many times larger than the old. Therefore he took ship again for France. This time he went crowned with success. He had done all and more than all that he had engaged to do. He had torn down the wooden fort and replaced it with one of stone, surmounted with nine cannon. He had erected a forge, a mill, a bakery, barracks, and officers' quarters. He had gathered about him a village of Iroquois, who were under the teaching of two Recollet friars. Some French families had been settled on farms. Land had been cleared and planted. Cattle, fowls, and swine had been brought up from Montreal. Four small vessels had been built for use on the lake and river. Altogether, French civilization was handsomely represented at this lonely outpost; and La Salle had shown what he was capable of doing as an organizer and ruler. Now he went to ask another grant. Fancy the dismay of his opponents when he came back, in the following year, with an {231} extraordinary commission that gave him authority to "labor at the discovery of the western parts of New France, through which, to all appearance, _a way may be found to Mexico_." The last words show its true purpose. Louis aimed a blow at his enemy, Spain, the mistress of Mexico, and La Salle was the arm through which he meant to strike. The document gave him authority to build forts wherever he saw fit, and to own and govern them under the same conditions as Fort Frontenac. In short, he had a roving commission to go wherever he pleased between the eastern end of Lake Ontario and the borders of Mexico, and to exercise the authority of a royal governor anywhere in all that vast region. But he must do all at his own expense, and he must do it all within five years. His most serious need was that of money. But, with his usual success in drawing other men's means into his schemes, he obtained a large sum, on which he was to pay interest at the rate of forty per cent. We can see that he was piling up debts fast enough to meet the wishes of his heartiest haters. Now La Salle was in a position to enter on his grand undertaking, the dream to which he {232} devoted his life. His first step was to send a party of men ahead in canoes to Lake Michigan, to trade with the Indians and collect provisions against his coming, while another party, one of whom was the famous Father Hennepin, started in a small vessel up Lake Ontario, to await La Salle's coming at Niagara. In due time they reached the Niagara River, and the earliest published account of the great cataract is Father Hennepin's.[1] This advance party had orders to begin a fort on the Niagara River, but the distrust of the Senecas proved to be an obstinate barrier. This famous tribe, occupying the Genesee Valley northward to the shore of Lake Ontario, while on the west its territory extended to Lake Erie, was fiercely jealous of white men's coming to plant themselves in their country. When La Salle arrived, however, with his usual tact in managing Indians, he succeeded in securing their consent to his putting up, not a fort, but a fortified warehouse at the mouth of the Niagara River and building a vessel above the Falls. {233} Now the first of a series of misfortunes befell him in the loss of the little vessel that had brought him to Niagara. She was freighted with the outfit for his great exploration and with goods for barter. But everything was lost, except only the anchors and cables intended for the vessel that was to be built. He bore the loss with his unvarying fortitude. At last all difficulties were so far overcome that the keel of the little vessel was laid. While the work was going on, Indians were hanging around watching it sullenly, and a squaw told the French that her people meant to burn it. The weather was cold, and the men of the party themselves had little heart in the enterprise. The loss of provisions in the wrecked vessel had put them on short allowance. Only the skill of two Mohegan hunters kept them supplied with food. It was hard work, too, for the builders needed to bring loads from the other vessel on their backs, a distance of some twelve miles. In spite of all these difficulties, the little craft was finished, and, at the opening of the ice in the spring, there glided down into the Niagara the first keel that ever cut the water of the Upper Lakes, the forerunner of to-day's enormous {234} tonnage. Her figure-head was a mythical monster, and her name the "Griffin," both taken from Frontenac's coat of arms. On August 7, the "Griffin" fired her cannon, spread her sails, and bore away up Lake Erie, carrying the expedition which La Salle hoped would make him master of the Mississippi Valley. The plan was to sail to the head of Lake Michigan, near the site of Chicago, then to march to the Illinois River; there to build another vessel, and in the latter to sail down the Mississippi, into the Gulf, and to the very West Indies--an enterprise of Titanic audacity. The first part of the voyage was delightful. We may wonder whether our voyagers saw one amazing sight which Jonathan Carver describes. "There are," he says, "several islands near the west end of it [Lake Erie] so infested with rattlesnakes that it is very dangerous to land on them. The lake is covered, near the banks of the islands, with the large pond-lily, the leaves of which lie on the water so thick as to cover it entirely for many acres together; and on each of these lay, when I passed over it, wreaths of water-snakes basking in the sun, which amounted to myriads!" On the shore were verdant prairies and fine {235} forests. When the voyagers entered Detroit River they saw herds of deer and flocks of wild turkeys, and the hunters easily kept the party supplied with venison and bear meat. On they sailed, across Lake St. Clair and out upon Lake Huron, passed within sight of the Manitoulins, and finally came to anchor in the cove of Mackinaw Strait, where were the famous trading-post and mission-station of Michillimackinac. At Green Bay La Salle found some of his men who had remained faithful and had collected a large store of furs. This circumstance caused him new perplexity. He had furs enough to satisfy his creditors, and he was strongly moved to go back to the colony and settle with them. On the other hand, he dreaded leaving his party, which would surely be tampered with by his enemies. Should his strong hand be withdrawn, the party probably would go to pieces. Finally he decided to remain with the expedition and to send the "Griffin" back with her valuable cargo to Fort Niagara and with orders to return immediately to the head of Lake Michigan. It was an unfortunate decision. The vessel's pilot was already under suspicion of having treacherously wrecked the vessel which perished on Lake {236} Ontario. The "Griffin" sailed and never was heard of again. Whether she foundered on the lake, was dashed on the shore, or was plundered and scuttled, La Salle never knew. He believed the latter to have been the case. Her loss was the breaking of an indispensable link in the chain. But La Salle was still ignorant of it, and he went on his way hopefully to the head of Lake Michigan. A hard time the men had in paddling the heavily laden canoes, subsisting on a scant ration of Indian corn, and at night dragging the canoes up a steep bank and making their cheerless camp. By the time that they reached the site of Milwaukee all were worn out. They were glad enough when they saw two or three eagles among a great gathering of crows or turkey-buzzards, and, hastening to the spot, they found the torn carcass of a deer, lately killed by wolves. However, as they neared the head of the lake, game became more abundant, and La Salle's famous Mohegan hunters had no difficulty in providing bear's meat and venison. Winter was fast setting in, and La Salle was anxious to go on to the Illinois towns before the warriors should go away on their usual winter {237} hunting. But he was compelled to wait for Tonty, an Italian officer of great courage and splendid loyalty who had come out to America as his lieutenant. With twenty men, he was making his way by land down the eastern shore. At last he appeared, with his men half-starved, having been reduced to living on acorns. But where was the "Griffin"? This was the place appointed for her meeting with the expedition. But there were no tidings of her fate. After waiting as long as he could, La Salle, with heavy forebodings, pushed on. Now the explorers shouldered their canoes and struck out across the frozen swamps. At last they came to a sluggish streamlet, the headwaters of the Kankakee. They launched their canoes on it and were carried, within a few days, into a prairie country strewn with the carcasses of innumerable buffalo, for this was a favorite hunting-ground of the Indians. But not one of the animals was in sight. The men were nearly starving and, at the best, discontented and sullen. Two lean deer and a few geese, all the game that the hunters had been able to secure within several days, were short commons for thirty-three men with appetites sharpened by traveling in the keen {238} December air. It was a God-send when they found a buffalo-bull mired fast. The famished men quickly despatched him, and by the efforts of twelve of their number dragged the huge carcass out of the slough. Down the Illinois River the voyagers traveled until they came in sight of wigwams on both sides of the river. La Salle expected trouble, for his enemies had been busy among the Illinois, stirring them up against him by representing that he had incited the Iroquois to make war upon them. He ordered his men to take their arms. Then the eight canoes in line abreast drifted down between the two wings of the encampment. There was great confusion on both banks. The women screeched, and the men yelled and seized their bows and war-clubs. La Salle knew well how to deal with Indians and that it was poor policy to show himself too eager for peace. He leaped ashore, followed by his men, arms in hand. The Indians were more frightened by his sudden appearance than disposed to attack him, as they at once showed by holding up a peace pipe. And soon they overwhelmed the strangers with lavish hospitality. These people, who formed one of the largest {239} branches of the Algonquin stock, were particular objects of hatred to the Iroquois. At one time they were driven across the Mississippi by these ruthless foes, who had traveled five or six hundred miles to attack them. There, probably, they encountered equally savage enemies, the Sioux. At all events, they returned to their old abode on the Illinois River, where La Salle found them. The deadly enmity of the Iroquois toward them burst out again shortly afterward, as we shall see. La Salle took advantage of the opportunity to assure his hosts that if the Iroquois attacked them, he would stand by them, give them guns, and fight for them. Then he shrewdly added that he intended building a fort among them and a big wooden canoe in which he would descend to the sea and bring goods for them. All this looked very plausible and won their hearts. The next day La Salle and his companions were invited to a feast and, of course, went. The host seized the opportunity of warning them against descending the Great Water. He told them that its banks were infested by ferocious tribes and its waters full of serpents, alligators, dangerous rocks, and whirlpools; in short, that they never would reach the ocean alive. {240} This harangue was interpreted to La Salle's men by two _coureurs de bois_ who understood every word of it. La Salle saw dismay overspreading the faces of his already disheartened men. But when his turn came to speak, he gave the Indians a genuine surprise. "We were not asleep," he said, "when the messenger of my enemies told you that we were spies of the Iroquois. We know all his lies and that the presents he brought you are at this moment buried in the earth under this lodge." This proof of what seemed more than human sagacity overwhelmed the Indians, and they had nothing more to say, little dreaming that La Salle had received secret information from a friendly chief. Nevertheless, the next morning, when La Salle looked about for his sentinels, not one of them was to be seen. Six of his men, including two of the best carpenters, upon whom he depended for building the vessel, had deserted. To withdraw his men from the demoralizing influences of the Indian camp, La Salle chose a naturally strong position at some distance down the river, fortified it, and built lodgings for the men, together with a house for the friars. This, the first habitation reared by white men in the {241} territory now comprised in the State of Illinois, stood a little below the site of Peoria and was called Fort Crèvecoeur. This name, Fort Break-Heart, was taken from that of a celebrated fortification in Europe. It was to be a heart-breaker to the enemy. La Salle believed in the doctrine of work as the best preventive of low spirits, and he kept his men at it. No sooner was the fort finished than he began to build the vessel. Two of his carpenters, we remember, had deserted. "Seeing," he says, "that if I should wait to get others from Montreal, I should lose a whole year, I said one day before my people that I was so vexed to find that the absence of two sawyers would defeat my plans, that I was resolved to try to saw the planks myself, if I could find a single man who would help me with a will." Two men stepped forward and said they would try what they could do. The result was that the work was begun and was pushed along so successfully that within two weeks the hull of the vessel was half finished. La Salle now felt free to make the unavoidable journey to Montreal, to look after his affairs. His men were in better heart, and the vessel was well on its way to completion. Leaving the {242} faithful Tonty in charge of the fort with its garrison, mostly of scoundrels, he set out with his trusty Mohegan and four Frenchmen. A few days earlier he had sent off Father Hennepin with two Frenchmen, to explore the lower part of the Illinois. In another place we shall read the story of their adventures. We shall not follow La Salle on his journey back to Canada. It was a terribly hard experience of sixty-five days' travel through a country beset with every form of difficulty and swarming with enemies, "the most arduous journey," says the chronicler, "ever made by Frenchmen in America." But there was a worse thing to come. When La Salle reached Niagara, he learned not only the certainty of the "Griffin's" loss, with her valuable cargo, but that a vessel from France freighted with indispensable goods for him had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and a party of twenty hired men on their way from Europe to join him had, on their arrival, been so disheartened by reports of his failure and death, that only four persisted in their purpose. This was but the beginning of a series of disasters. His agents at Fort Frontenac had plundered him; his creditors had seized his property; {243} several of his canoes loaded with furs had been lost in the rapids of the St. Lawrence; and a letter from Tonty, brought to him by two _voyageurs_, told him that nearly all the men, after destroying Fort Crèvecoeur, had deserted. What a blow! Fort Crèvecoeur, with its supplies, was the base of his great enterprise. Now it was destroyed, its garrison gone, and Tonty, with a few faithful men, alone remained of his costly expedition. But this lion-hearted man, whom no disasters could daunt, borrowed more money at ruinous rates of interest, captured a party of his deserters on Lake Ontario, killing two who resisted arrest and locking up the others at Fort Frontenac, and hastened off on the long journey to relieve Tonty in the Illinois country. When the party reached the Illinois River they beheld a stirring sight. Far and near, the prairie was alive with buffalo, while hundreds were plunging and snorting in the water. The opportunity was not to be lost. The voyagers landed and encamped for a hunt. For three days they gave themselves up to the excitement of the chase, killing twelve buffalo, besides deer, geese, and swans. Then, with an ample supply of dried and smoked meat, they re-embarked. {244} When they reached the site of the populous Illinois town, the place was desolate, not a human being in sight. Only heaps of ashes and charred poles and stakes showed where the lodges had stood. The whole meadow was blackened by fire. Hundreds of wolves skulked about the burial ground of the village. The ground was strewn with broken bones and mangled corpses. Every grave had been rifled, and the bodies had been thrown down from the scaffolds where many of them had been placed. It was evident what had happened. The Iroquois had made a descent, in some way had missed their prey, and had wreaked their vengeance on the dead. But where were Tonty and his men? There was no sign of their having been killed. Neither had any trace been observed of their passing up the river. It must be that they had escaped down the river with the Illinois in their flight. La Salle promptly determined what to do. Leaving a part of his men, he hid his baggage and started down the stream with a few trusty men carrying little besides their arms. When they reached the ruins of Fort Crèvecoeur, they found the vessel on the stocks untouched. {245} La Salle pushed on down to the mouth of the river, without finding a trace of his missing countrymen. Now the Great Water rolled before him. Once he had dreamed night and day of seeing it. But to see it under such circumstances as these,--what a mockery of his hopes! The one thought on his mind was to find and rescue Tonty. There was no sign of him here. To go further would have been useless, and La Salle turned back, paddling day and night, and rejoined his men whom he had left. Then all started northward. On their way down they had followed the Kankakee. Now they took the Des Plaines route. Near a bark cabin a bit of wood that had been cut with a saw showed that Tonty and his men had gone this way. If they had but left at the fork of the stream some sign of their passage, La Salle's party would have seen it on their way down, and all this anxiety would have been obviated. With his mind relieved, La Salle was glad to rest for a while at his little Fort Miami, situated at the mouth of the St. Joseph River. Tonty had passed through perilous straits. The desertion of the larger part of his men left him with but three fighting men and two friars. {246} Next came a tremendous war-party of Iroquois to attack the Illinois, in the midst of whom he was. For various reasons, the Illinois suspected that the Frenchmen had brought this trouble upon them and, but for Tonty's coolness, would have mobbed and murdered the little handful of white men. When the Iroquois began the attack, Tonty went among them, at the peril of his life, actually receiving a wound from an infuriated young warrior, and succeeded in stopping the fighting by telling the Iroquois that the Illinois numbered twelve hundred, and that there were sixty armed Frenchmen, ready to back them. The effect of this timely fabrication was magical. The Iroquois at once were for peace and employed Tonty to arrange a truce. That night the Illinois slipped away down the river. The Iroquois followed them, on the opposite shore, watching for an opportunity to attack. This did not offer itself, but they actually drove the Illinois out of their own country, after perpetrating a butchery of women and children. Meanwhile they had discovered Tonty's deception and were enraged. He had robbed them of a prey for which they had marched hundreds of miles. Only a wholesome fear of Count {247} Frontenac, of whom the Indians stood in great awe, kept them from falling on the little band. As it was, matters looked so stormy that the Frenchmen stood on the watch all night, expecting an attack. At daybreak the chiefs bade them begone. Accordingly they embarked in a leaky canoe and started up the river. At their first stop Father Ribourde strolled away. When he did not reappear his comrades became alarmed. Tonty and one of the men went in search of him. They followed his tracks until they came to the trail of a band of Indians who had apparently carried him off. They afterward learned that a roving band of Kickapoos, one of the worst specimens of the Algonquin stock, prowling around the Iroquois camp in search of scalps, had murdered the inoffensive old man and carried his scalp in triumph to their village. Another of their party came near to meeting with an untimely end, but his ingenuity saved his life. They had abandoned their worthless canoe and were making their way on foot, living on acorns and roots, when the young Sieur de Boisrondet wandered off and was lost. The flint of his gun had dropped out, and he had no bullets. {248} But he cut a pewter porringer into slugs, discharged his gun with a fire-brand, and thus killed wild turkeys. After several days he was so fortunate as to rejoin his party. The poor fellows suffered terribly from cold and hunger while making their way along the shore of Lake Michigan, but finally found a hospitable refuge among the Pottawattamies, of Green Bay, a friendly Algonquin tribe. La Salle's heart was as much as ever set on following the Great Water to the sea. But he had learned the difficulties in the way of building a vessel and had resolved to travel by canoe. The winter at Fort Miami was spent by him in organizing the expedition. With this view he gathered about him a number of Indians from the far East who had fled for safety to the western wilds after the disastrous issue of King Philip's War, chiefly Abenakis, from Maine, and Mohegans from the Hudson. These New England Indians, who had long been the deadly foes of the English Puritans, were happy in enrolling themselves under a Frenchman and were ready to go with La Salle anywhere. His plan was to form a great Indian confederation, like that of the Five Nations, and powerful enough to resist it. {249} With this powerful body of Indians, backed by a sufficient number of French guns, he could hold the Mississippi Valley against all enemies, white or red. When he had opened the route to the Gulf of Mexico by passing down the Great River and taking possession of its whole length in the name of the French King, there would be a new outlet for the immensely valuable fur-trade of all that vast area drained by it and its tributaries. Instead of the long journey down the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, trade would take the shorter and easier route to the Gulf of Mexico. But how could even La Salle fail to see the enormous difficulties in the way,--the hostility of remote tribes down the river; the sure opposition of Spain, which was supreme on and around the Gulf, and, most of all, the bitter enmity of the French in Canada? The scheme meant disaster to their interests, by turning a large part of their trade into another channel and setting up on the Mississippi a new and powerful rival of Canada, with La Salle at its head. All commercial Canada and nearly all official Canada were already incensed against him on the mere suspicion of his purposes. If they saw {250} these taking actual form, would they not rage and move heaven and earth, that is to say, Louis the Great,[2] to crush them? A man of less than La Salle's superhuman audacity would not in his wildest moments have dreamed of such a thing. He deliberately cherished the scheme and set himself calmly to executing it. On December 21, 1682, the expedition started from Fort Miami. It consisted of twenty-three white men, eighteen Indian warriors, and ten squaws, with three children. These New England savages had made a bloody record in their own country, knew well how to use guns, and were better adapted to the work in hand than raw Europeans, however brave, who had no experience of Indian warfare. On February 6 the voyagers saw before them the broad current of the Mississippi, full of floating ice. For a long distance they paddled their canoes down the mighty current without adventure. As they fared on day by day, they realized that they were entering a summer land. The warm air and hazy sunlight and opening flowers were in delightful contrast with the ice and snow from which they had emerged. Once {251} there seemed to be danger of an attack from Indians whose war-drum they could hear beating. A fog lifted, and the Indians, looking across the river, saw the Frenchmen at work building a fort. Peace signals were displayed from both sides, and soon the white men and their Indian allies from rugged New England were hobnobbing in the friendliest way with these dusky denizens of the southwestern woods. These were a band of the Arkansas, the same people who had treated Joliet and Marquette so handsomely. They lavished every kind attention on their guests and kept them three days. The friar, Membré, who chronicled the expedition, describes them as "gay, civil, and free-hearted, exceedingly well-formed and with all so modest that not one of them would take the liberty to enter our hut, but all stood quietly at the door." He adds, "we did not lose the value of a pin while we were among them." La Salle had now reached the furthest point of Joliet and Marquette's exploration. He reared a cross, took possession of the country in his master's name, and pushed on. On the western side of the river they visited the home of the Taensas Indians and were amazed at the degree {252} of social advancement which they found among them. There were square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, and arranged in regular order around an open area; and the King was attended by a council of sixty grave old men wearing white cloaks of the fine inner fibre of mulberry bark. The temple was a large structure, full of a dim, mysterious gloom, within which burned a sacred fire, as an emblem of the sun, watched and kept up unceasingly by two aged priests. Altogether, the customs and social condition of these people were more like those of the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans than those of the wild tribes with whom the explorers were familiar. When the chief visited La Salle he came in great state, preceded by women who bore white fans, and wearing a disk of burnished copper,--probably to indicate that he was a child of the Sun, for the royal family claimed this high lineage. The next day the Frenchmen visited a kindred tribe, the Natchez, among whom they observed similar usages. They were hospitably entertained and spent the night in their villages. Their chief town was some miles distant, near the site of the {253} city of Natchez. Here again La Salle planted a cross, less as a symbol of Christianity than of French occupation.[3] {254} Near the mouth of the Red River, in the neighborhood of the place where Soto had been buried, the voyagers, while attempting to follow some fleeing natives, received a shower of arrows from a canoe. La Salle, anxious to avoid a hostile encounter, drew his men off. No doubt the Indians of this region preserved proud traditions of their forefathers' pursuit of the escaping Spaniards, the remnant of Soto's expedition. On April 6 with what elation must La Salle have beheld the waters of the Gulf sparkling in the rays of the southern sun! The dream of years was realized. His long struggle and his hopes and failures and renewed efforts were crowned with success. One hundred and ninety years after Columbus's discovery, at enormous expense, he had led a party from the great fresh-water seas to the southern ocean, and had opened, he fondly believed, a new route for trade. But long years were to elapse ere his vision should become a reality. Proudly and hopefully, in full view of the sea, he reared a cross and a column bearing the arms {255} of France and, with the singing of hymns and volleys of musketry, solemnly proclaimed Louis, of France, to be the rightful sovereign "of this country of Louisiana," as he named it, "the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said Louisiana, and also to the mouth of the River of Palms" (the Rio Grande). A tremendous claim surely, the historian Parkman remarks, covering a region watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand war-like tribes, in short, an empire in itself, and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile! Alas! at that very time, La Salle's enemies in Canada had gained the upper hand and had secured the recall of his mainstay, Count Frontenac. This meant that he could do nothing more from Canada as a base of operations. On the return voyage the party had a hard time. There was the labor of paddling the canoes, day after day, against the strong current, under a blazing sun. Their supplies were exhausted, and they had little to eat but the flesh of alligators. In their extremity, they applied to {256} the Quinipissas, a little above the site of New Orleans, for corn. They got it, but had to repulse a treacherous attack at night. The Coroas, too, who at the first had shown themselves very friendly, were evidently bent on murdering the guests whom they entertained with pretended hospitality. Only the watchfulness of the Frenchmen and the terror inspired by their guns saved them from attack. Plainly these natives had grown suspicious. Then La Salle was seized with sickness which nearly cut him off, and which detained him for weeks. So soon as he was able to travel, he moved on by slow stages and, about the end of August, still weak and suffering, reached Fort Miami, from which he had started eight months before. Of course, he had come back empty-handed, and there was nothing substantial to show for the vast expense that had been incurred. His associates in Canada, who had advanced the money, must fain content themselves with the expectation that the future would repay them. In the meantime La Salle was carrying out his plan of founding a colony of French and Indians on the banks of the Illinois. Here he built Fort St. Louis on a cliff, probably the one now called {257} "Starved Rock," at the mouth of Vermilion River. Around its base, under its protection, were clustered the lodges of various Indian bands, of different tribes, while the Illinois, numbering several thousands, were encamped on the other side of the river. But La Salle soon found that, with the new governor, La Barre, inimical to him, he could get no supplies from Canada. The men whom he sent for goods were detained, and finally the Governor seized Fort Frontenac and put men in charge of it. La Salle had no resource but to appeal from the Governor's high-handed injustice to the King. He left Tonty in command of Fort St. Louis and departed for France. [1] The famous falls are first mentioned in the Jesuit "Relations" of 1648. Their name is of Iroquois origin and in the Mohawk dialect is pronounced Nyagarah. [2] The chosen emblem of the "Grand Monarch" was the Sun. [3] The Taensas and the Natchez were singularly interesting tribes. Their social organization did not differ radically from that of other Indians. But they had developed one peculiar feature: the principal clan had become a ruling caste, and the chiefs were revered as demi-gods and treated with extravagant honor, numerous human victims being sacrificed at the death of one. The following remarks about the Taensas and the Natchez are taken from Father Gravier's account of his voyage, in 1700, down the Mississippi:--"The Natchez and the Taensas practice polygamy, steal, and are very vicious, the girls and women more than the men and boys. The temple having been reduced to ashes last year by lightning, the old man who sits guardian said that the spirit was incensed because no one was put to death on the decease of the last chief, and that it was necessary to appease him. Five women had the cruelty to cast their children into the fire, in sight of the French who recounted it to me; and but for the French there would have been a great many more children burned." At their first coming, the French found a warm welcome among the Natchez, and Fort Rosalie in the Natchez country (built shortly after the founding of New Orleans) was the scene for many years of constant friendly reunions of the two races. But an arrogant and cruel commandant, by his ill-judged severity, at a time when the warlike Chickasaws were inciting the Natchez to rise, produced a fearful explosion. One day a solitary soldier appeared in the hamlet of New Orleans with fearful news. Fort Rosalie had been surprised, its garrison of over two hundred men massacred, and two hundred and fifty women and children taken prisoners. In the war that followed, the Choctaws sided with the French, the Chickasaws and Yazoos with the Natchez. Finally the French, under St. Dénis, won a complete victory, the women and children taken at Fort Rosalie were recaptured and brought to New Orleans, and the Natchez tribe was completely broken up. The prisoners were sent to die in the cruel slavery of the San Domingo sugar plantations, while a few who escaped the French were adopted into the Chickasaw nation. {261} Chapter XIV LA SALLE AND THE FOUNDING OF LOUISIANA La Salle leads an Expedition to seize the Mouth of the Mississippi.--A Series of Mishaps.--Landing at Matagorda Bay.--Fort St. Louis of Texas.--Seeking the Mississippi, La Salle explores the Interior of Texas.--Mounted Comanches.--La Salle starts out to go to Canada for Relief.--Interesting Experiences.--La Salle assassinated.--Tonty's Heroic Efforts to rescue him and his Party.--Supplement: The Founding of New Orleans. On a day in February, 1685, a party landed from one of three vessels lying off the entrance of Matagorda Bay, on the coast of Texas. They were under the command of La Salle. What was this extraordinary man doing there? In accordance with the plan which had long filled his mind, of planting French forts and colonies in the valley of the Great River and giving its trade an outlet into the Gulf of Mexico, he had come to establish a fort on the Mississippi. This, the first part of his plan, was very rational, if only he had the vast resources needed for such an undertaking. {262} But the second part was so crazy that we must suppose that his mind was beginning to give way. With a handful of Frenchmen and an army of fifteen thousand savages, which he professed to be able to muster and to march down the Mississippi, he had promised the King of France that he would conquer the northern province of Mexico, called New Biscay, and get possession of its valuable silver mines. Louis had cheerfully accepted this insane proposition--insane, if we consider the pitiful equipment that La Salle said would suffice, namely, two ships and two hundred men. Louis was indeed furiously jealous of the Spanish King's success in the New World and irritated by his arrogant treatment of the Gulf of Mexico as private property of Spain,--as completely a "closed sea" as if it had been a duck-pond in his palace yard. Moreover, there was war now between the two countries, and he would gladly seize an opportunity of striking his rival a blow in what seemed an exposed part. Besides, the risk would be small. If La Salle failed, the loss would be chiefly his; if he succeeded, a province of Mexico would be a shining jewel in the French crown. So here was La Salle, with an outfit {263} corresponding with his mad scheme--but three ships, only one a man-of-war, the "Joly," one a little frigate, the "Belle," and one a transport, the "Aimable"; for soldiers, the destined army of invasion, a parcel of rapscallions raked up from the docks and the prisons; for colonists some mechanics and laborers, priests and volunteers, with the usual proportion of "broken gentlemen," some peasant families looking for homes in the New World, and even some wretched girls who expected to find husbands in the land of promise. This ill-assorted little mob to seize and colonize the mouth of the Mississippi and to wrest a province from Spain! From the first everything had gone wrong. La Salle and the ship-captains, who could not endure his haughty manners, quarreled incessantly. A Spanish cruiser captured his fourth vessel, laden with indispensable supplies for the colony. Then he was seized with a dangerous fever; and while the vessels waited at San Domingo for him to be well enough to resume the voyage, his villains roamed the island and rioted in debauchery. Its destination being the mouth of the Mississippi, what was the expedition doing at Matagorda Bay, in Texas? This was the result of {264} another folly. Not a soul on board knew the navigation of the Gulf, so carefully had Spain guarded her secret. The pilots had heard much of the currents in those waters, and they made so excessive allowance for them that when land was sighted, instead of being, as they supposed, about Appalachee Bay, they were on the coast of Texas, probably about Galveston Bay. In the end it proved to be a fatal mistake, wrecking the enterprise. On New Year's day La Salle landed and found only a vast marshy plain. Clearly, this was not the mouth of the Great River. He returned on board, and the vessel stood westward along the coast, every eye on board strained to catch some indication of what they sought, whereas they were all the time sailing further from it. At one point where they stopped, some Indians, who doubtless were familiar with the sight of white men, swam out through the surf and came on board without any sign of fear. But, nobody knowing their language, nothing could be learned from them. After hovering for three weeks in sight of land, La Salle, perplexed beyond measure, but forced to decide because the captain of the man-of-war was impatient to land the men and to sail for {265} France, announced that they were at one of the mouths of the Mississippi and ordered the people and stores put ashore. Scarcely were they landed, when a band of Indians set upon some men at work and carried off some of them. La Salle immediately seized his arms, called to some of his followers, and started off in pursuit. Just as he was entering the Indian village, the report of a cannon came from the bay. It frightened the savages so that they fell flat on the ground and gave up their prisoners without difficulty. But a chill foreboding seized La Salle. He knew that the gun was a signal of disaster, and, looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails. Her captain, in violation of orders, and disregarding buoys which La Salle had put down, had undertaken to come in under sail and had ended by wrecking her. Soon she began to break up, and night fell upon the wretched colonists bivouacking on the shore, strewn with boxes and barrels saved from the wreck, while Indians swarmed on the beach, greedy for plunder, and needed to be kept off by a guard. What a situation, ludicrous, had it not been tragic! Instead of holding the key of the {266} Mississippi Valley, the expeditionists did not even know where they were. Instead of the fifteen thousand warriors who were expected to march with them to the conquest of New Biscay, the squalid savages in their neighborhood annoyed them in every possible way, set fire to the prairie when the wind blew toward them, stole their goods, ambushed a party that came in quest of the missing articles, and killed two of them. Next came sickness, due to using brackish water, carrying off five or six a day. When the captain of the little "Belle," the last remaining vessel--for the man-of-war had sailed for France--got drunk and wrecked her on a sand-bar, the situation was truly desperate. Nobody knew where they were, and the last means of getting away by water had perished. In the meantime La Salle had chosen a place for a temporary fort, on a river which the French called La Vache (Cow River), on account of the buffaloes in its vicinity, and which retains the name, in the Spanish form, Lavaca. La Salle returned from an exploration unsuccessful. He had found nothing, learned nothing; only, he knew now that he was not near the Mississippi. The summer had worn away, {267} steadily filling the graveyard, and, with the coming of the autumn, he prepared for a more extensive exploration. On the last day of October he started out with fifty men on his grand journey of exploration, leaving Joutel, his faithful lieutenant, in command of the fort, which contained thirty-four persons, including three Recollet friars and a number of women and girls. The winter passed not uncomfortably for the party in the fort. The surrounding prairie swarmed with game, buffaloes, deer, turkeys, ducks, geese, and plover. The river furnished an abundance of turtles, and the bay of oysters. Joutel gives a very entertaining account of his killing rattlesnakes, which his dog was wont to find, and of shooting alligators. The first time that he went buffalo-hunting, the animals were very numerous, but he did not seem to kill any. Every one that he fired at lumbered away, as if it were unhurt. After some time he found one dead, then others, and he learned that he had killed several. After their wont they had kept their feet while life lasted. Even the friars took a hand in buffalo-hunting. La Salle and his party, meanwhile, were roaming wearily from tribe to tribe, usually fighting {268} their way, always seeking the Mississippi. At last they came to a large river which at first they mistook for it. Here La Salle built a stockade and left some of his men, of whose fate nothing was afterward heard. Then he set out to return to Fort St. Louis, as he called his little fort on Lavaca. One day in March he reappeared with his tattered and footsore followers, some of them carrying loads of buffalo-meat. Surely the condition of affairs was dismal in the extreme. More than a year gone, and as yet the Frenchmen did not even know where they were. The fierce heat of another summer was near. Still La Salle, with his matchless courage, so soon as he recovered from a fit of illness, formed a desperate resolve. He would start out again, find the Mississippi, ascend that river and the Illinois to Canada, and bring relief to the fort. This time the party was composed of twenty men, some of them clad in deerskin, others in the garments of those who had died. On April 11 they started out. Months went by. Then, to the surprise of those in the fort, one evening La Salle reappeared, followed by eight men of the twenty who had gone out with him. One had been lost, {269} two had deserted, one had been seized by an alligator, and six had given out on the march and probably perished. The survivors had encountered interesting experiences. They had crossed the Colorado on a raft. Nika, La Salle's favorite Shawanoe hunter, who had followed him to France and thence to Texas, had been bitten by a rattlesnake, but had recovered. Among the Cenis Indians, a branch of the Caddo family, which includes the famed Pawnees, they met with the friendliest welcome and saw plenty of horses, silver lamps, swords, muskets, money, and other articles, all Spanish, which these people had obtained from the fierce Comanches, who had taken them in raids on the Mexican border. They also met some of the Comanches themselves and were invited to join them in a foray into New Mexico. But La Salle had, necessarily, long since given up his mad scheme of conquest and was thinking only of extricating himself from his pitiable dilemma. This seems to have been the first meeting of Frenchmen with mounted Indians of the plains. The possession of horses, which had strayed or been stolen from Spanish settlements, had transformed these wild rovers from foot-travelers, such {270} as Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado found them, having no other domestic animals than dogs, into matchless horsemen and the most dangerous brigands on the continent, capable of covering hundreds of miles in an incredibly short space of time. Splendid specimens of savage manhood, presenting the best type of the Shoshonee stock, they amply avenged the terror which the sight of mounted Spaniards at first struck into the hearts of the aborigines, by harrying the colonists and laying the border in blood and ashes, as they sometimes do to this day.[1] {271} From the Cenis villages, where they bought five horses, the Frenchmen went as far, perhaps, as the Sabine River, encamped there for two months, detained by La Salle's illness with fever, and then, on account of their weakened condition, returned to Fort St. Louis. {272} A deeper pall of gloom settled upon the little band of exiles. They had now been two years on that forlorn spot, and still they had not even found their way out. From one hundred and eighty their number had dwindled to forty-five. Clearly, there was but one thing to be done. If anybody was to remain alive, the journey to Canada must be accomplished, at all costs. This time La Salle determined to take Joutel with him, leaving Barbier in command of the little party in the fort. The New Year, 1687, came, and a few days later, with sighs and tears, the parting took place which many felt was for all time, and the travelers went away in mournful silence, with their meagre outfit packed on the horses, leaving Barbier to hold the fort with his little band of twenty persons, including all the women and children and a few disabled men. We shall not attempt to trace closely the movements of the travelers. For more than two months they journeyed in a northeasterly direction. At the best, they were in wretched plight, with nothing for shoes but raw buffalo-hide, which hardened about the foot and held it in the grip of a vise. After a while they bought dressed {273} deerskin from the Indians and made themselves moccasins. Rivers and streams they crossed, two or three at a time, in a boat made of buffalo-hide, while the horses swam after them. They met Indians almost daily and held friendly intercourse with them.[2] Once they saw a band of a hundred and fifty warriors attacking a herd of buffalo with lances, and a stirring sight it was. These warriors entertained the Europeans most handsomely. Says La Salle's brother, the priest Cavelier, "They took us straight to the cabin of their great chief or captain, where they first washed our hands, our heads, and our feet with warm water; after which they presented us boiled and roast meat to eat, and an unknown fish, cooked whole, that was six feet long, laid in a dish of its length. It was of a wonderful taste, and we preferred it to meat." Here the way-worn travelers were glad to buy thirty horses--enough to give every one of them a mount, and to carry their baggage besides--all for thirty knives, ten hatchets, and six dozen needles! {274} In one of the villages they witnessed the catching of an alligator twelve feet long on a large hook made of bone and baited with meat. The Indians amused themselves an entire day with torturing it. They would have been keenly disappointed, had they known how little this animal, so low in the scale of life as to be almost insensible to pain, suffered from their ingenious cruelty. The Colorado and the Trinity were reached. A deluge of rain kept them weather-bound for four or five days. It was a gloomy time. What added fuel to the flame was that La Salle had with him a young nephew, named Moranget, who presumed on his relation to the leader and behaved most overbearingly to the men. One day it chanced that some of the men were separated from the main body when Nika killed two buffaloes. They sent word to La Salle, in order that he might have the meat brought in on the horses. Accordingly, he dispatched his nephew, Moranget, with two other men, for that purpose. This was just the opportunity the malcontents desired. Besides, Moranget incensed them by flying into a passion because they had reserved certain portions of the meat for themselves, and by seizing the whole of it. They laid their plans {275} and, in the dead of the night, murdered him, La Salle's servant Saget, and his faithful Indian, Nika. Now they had to choose between killing La Salle and being killed by him, as soon as he should learn the facts. They laid an ambush for him, and when he came in the morning to look after the missing men, they shot him dead. Then the murderers stripped his body, dragged it into the bushes, and left it to be torn by buzzards. Thus died, in the prime of his manhood, one who had done more than any other toward the opening of our continent. He had traversed regions where white men were almost unheard of. He had launched the first vessel that ever floated on the vast inland seas above Niagara Falls. He had established the French in the Illinois region, opening the way for the possession of the Mississippi Valley. He had drawn hostile Indian tribes together into a league strong enough to resist the Long House. He had traveled thousands and thousands of miles on foot and by canoe. He had led the first party of white men from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. His foresight had grasped the commercial value of the Mississippi Valley, and, triumphing over enormous difficulties, he had opened the Great {276} West to our race. And now all his greatness was come to this, to die in the wilderness by an assassin's hand! After the death of the leader, a little party, among whom were Joutel and La Salle's brother, the friar Cavelier, after many strange experiences, finally made their way down the Arkansas River to the Mississippi. There, to their inexpressible joy, they found two of their countrymen who had been left there by Tonty. That brave man and loyal friend, when he received the news, by the way of France, of his former leader's disastrous landing, had at once, at his own expense, fitted out an expedition and led it down the Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi. Of course, he did not find La Salle or any trace of him there. He had then returned to his post, leaving some of his men at the mouth of the Arkansas. These escorted the survivors of La Salle's party to Canada, whence they sailed to France, having made one of the most remarkable journeys on record. They arrived in Europe, the sole known survivors of the expedition that had left France three years before. Louis the Great, when he heard the news of the failure of the enterprise, took no steps to {277} relieve the forlorn little band of exiles on the coast of Texas. Not so Tonty. That brave soul determined to rescue them, if possible. For the third time he voyaged down the Mississippi, turned up the Red River, and penetrated as far as the country of the Caddoes.[3] There he lost the most of his ammunition in crossing a river, his men mutinied and refused to go further, and he was compelled to turn back. On his way down the Red River he encountered a flood and traveled more than a hundred miles through country covered with water. The party slept on logs laid side by side and were reduced to eating their dogs. Few men who figure in our country's early story are more deserving of honorable remembrance than this man with one hand and with the heart of a lion. The French King neglected the exiles in Texas, but the Spanish King did not. He ordered a force sent from Mexico, to destroy the nest of invaders. When the Spanish soldiers arrived on the spot, not a human being was to be seen. The poor little fort was a ruin, and a few {278} skeletons were all that remained of its former inmates. The Indians in the neighborhood told a story of a band of warriors who had entrapped the garrison into opening the gates, on the plea of trading, and then had rushed in and massacred them. [Illustration: The Murder of La Salle] Thus ended, for the time, La Salle's brilliant scheme of colonizing Louisiana. Supplement to Chapter XIV The Executor of La Salle's Plan of Colonization.--First Experiences of the Settlers.--Bienville's Shrewdness in getting rid of the English.--New Orleans Founded.--Character of the Population.--Indian Wars. La Salle was dead, but his bright dream of France enthroned on the Mississippi, holding in her hand the sceptre of the great West, was too vital to die. It was growing more and more into the consciousness of sea-going Europe, that the nation holding the mouth of the Great River would grasp the key to the undeveloped wealth of the Western World. So it was that when France stretched forth her hand to seize the coveted prize, she found rivals in the field, Spain and {279} Great Britain struggling for a foothold, Spain already planted at Pensacola, the English nosing about the mouth of the Mississippi. The man who was destined to achieve what La Salle had been hindered from accomplishing only by the blunder of his pilots and the jealousy of his associates, was Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville. He was of that fine French Canadian stock that had already produced Joliet, the brave explorer, and he belonged to a family whose seven sons all won distinction, four of them dying in the service of their country. When he came on the enterprise in which he was destined to complete La Salle's unfinished work, he was a midshipman of twenty-two serving with his older brother, Iberville, who was winning renown as a brave and skilful naval captain. Though possessing none of La Salle's brilliancy of genius, and never called on to make those heroic exertions or to exhibit that amazing fortitude which were so conspicuous in the case of the great explorer, he still exhibited qualities which well fitted him for the task that fell to him, and which earned for him the title of "Father of Louisiana." To us it may seem strange that the first {280} reaching out of France toward the incredibly rich Mississippi Valley did not touch the valley itself, but made its lodgment on a sandy bluff overlooking a bay in the territory of what is now the State of Mississippi. So it was, however, and the fact only shows how little was grasped the true meaning of La Salle's gigantic scheme. In January, 1699, fifteen years after the great Pathfinder had made his misguided landing in Texas, a small fleet from Brest was hovering about the mouth of Mobile River seeking a place for settlement. It was commanded by Pierre LeMoyne d'Iberville. With him were his two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, and Father Anastase Douay, who had accompanied La Salle. One of the first spots which the Frenchmen visited bore evidences of a ghastly tragedy. So numerous were the human bones bleaching on the sandy soil that they called it Massacre Island (to-day Dauphin Island). It was surmised--and with some plausibility--that here had perished some portion of the ill-fated following of Pamphile de Narvaez. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 200.) Another island, farther to the west, chiefly impressed the visitors by the great number of {281} animals, of a species new to them, which they found there. Isle des Chats they called it, and as "Cat Island" it is known to this day. Had the Frenchmen been naturalists, they would have seen that there was more of the bear than of the cat about this creature, for it was none other than our sly friend, the raccoon. Leaving his vessels at anchor near the mouth of Mobile River, Iberville, with his brother Bienville and Father Douay, went in search of the mouth of the Mississippi. They found it and ascended the river a considerable distance. What assured them that they really were on the Great River was that they received from the Bayagoulas a letter which Tonty had left with them for La Salle, when he made, in 1686, that heroic journey all the way from the Illinois country to the Gulf, in the vain effort to succor his chief. Another interesting relic which the explorers are said to have seen, was a coat of mail shown to them by the Indians near the Red River, as once having belonged to a Spaniard. Though nearly one hundred and sixty years had gone by since Hernando de Soto's famous expedition, it is by no means improbable that this was a genuine relic of that enterprise. Naturally, the {282} Indians would have highly prized and would have kept, as a precious trophy, such a reminder of their forefathers' heroic stand against the dastardly invaders. The appearance on the river of the two English vessels, whose captain frankly said that he was seeking a place for a settlement, was conclusive evidence that France was none too early in reaching out for the prize that others coveted. Bienville has the credit of getting rid of the Britons by telling the officer that he might easily judge how numerous and strong were his master's, the French King's, subjects, in that region, from seeing them on the river in small boats--a piece of reasoning which was rather ingenious than ingenuous. It had its effect in sending away the Briton with "a flea in his ear." "English Turn," the name given to a great bend in the stream some miles below New Orleans, keeps alive the memory of that piece of shrewdness. Not far distant, by the way, is the field where, in 1815, the British regulars, under Sir Edward Pakenham, received a disastrous defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson and his American riflemen. Iberville planted his first settlement at Biloxi, {283} on Mississippi Sound. Other French posts were shortly afterward established on Cat Island, Dauphin Island, which is at the mouth of Mobile Bay, and at Mobile. A little later Bienville built a fort fifty-four miles above the mouth of the Great River, and he early began to insist that the future of the colony lay on its banks, not on the shores and sandy islands of the Gulf. But the time had not yet come when his ideas would prevail. The wretched colony must first go through a dismal experience of languishing, in consequence of which the seat of government was removed to Mobile, and of actual famine. At last, in 1718, Bienville, who by the death of his brother had succeeded to the direction of affairs, with twenty-five convicts from France and as many carpenters and some voyageurs from the Illinois River, founded the city of New Orleans. At the first the outlook was far from hopeful. The site was but a few feet above the sea-level and was subject to constant inundation. Most unfavorable reports went back to Mobile, which for five years longer remained the seat of government. The population, too, was rude and lawless, being made up of trappers, redemptioners having a period of years to serve, transported {284} females, inmates of the House of Correction, Choctaw squaws, and negro slave women--all, as an old writer says, "without religion, without justice, without discipline, without order, without police." Bienville, however, held firmly to his purpose and, in 1723, procured the royal permission to transfer the seat of government from Mobile to the new settlement on the banks of the Great River. Thus, at last, was La Salle's prophetic dream realized. France had become awake to the importance of concentrating her strength where it could be effective, rather than frittering it away on the shores of the Gulf. One of the most striking evidences of the warm interest which the King felt in the colony was his sending out, in 1728, a number of decent girls, each with a trunk filled with linen and clothing (from which they were called _filles à la cassette_, or girls with a chest), who were to be disposed of under the direction of the Ursuline nuns, in marriage to the colonists. Other consignments followed; and the homes thus established soon gave to the population of the city a more quiet and orderly character. [Illustration: Le Moyne de Bienville] Through various experiences, chiefly disastrous wars with the Natchez, that remarkable people {285} whom La Salle visited on his great exploration, and whom the French finally broke up and scattered, and with the Chickasaws in Mississippi, that hardy breed of warriors who had fought Soto so fiercely, and who now sent the Frenchmen back discomfited, Bienville in his later years lost much of his earlier prestige. But the fact remains that it was he who grasped the meaning of La Salle's plan, he who founded New Orleans, and he who guided the struggling colony through its perilous infancy. He well earned his title of "Father of Louisiana." [1] These matchless horsemen, probably unsurpassed in the world, are also great jockeys, passionately fond of horse-racing and deeply versed in all its tricks. The following laughable account of a race that he witnessed is given by Col. Dodge in his very entertaining book, "Our Wild Indians": "A band of Comanches once camped near Fort Chadbourne, in Texas. Some of the officers were decidedly 'horsey,' owning blood horses whose relative speed was well known. The Comanche chief was bantered for a race, and, after several days of manoeuvring, a race was made against the third best horse of the garrison, distance four hundred yards. "The Indians wagered robes and plunder of various kinds, to the value of sixty or seventy dollars, against money, flour, sugar, etc., to a like amount. At the appointed time the Indians 'showed' a miserable sheep of a pony, with legs like churns, a three-inch coat of rough hair stuck out all over the body; and a general expression of neglect, helplessness, and patient suffering struck pity into the hearts of all beholders. The rider was a stalwart buck of one hundred and seventy pounds, looking big and strong enough to carry the poor beast on his shoulders. He was armed with a huge club, with which, after the word was given, he belabored the miserable animal from start to finish. To the astonishment of all the whites, the Indian won by a neck. "Another race was proposed by the officers, and, after much 'dickering,' accepted by the Indians, against the next best horse of the garrison. The bets were doubled; and in less than an hour the second race was run by the same pony, with the same apparent exertion and with exactly the same result. "The officers, thoroughly disgusted, proposed a third race and brought to the ground a magnificent Kentucky mare, of the true Lexington blood. The Indians accepted the race and not only doubled bets as before, but piled up everything they could raise, seemingly almost crazed with the excitement of their previous success. The riders mounted, and the word was given. Throwing away his club, the Indian rider gave a whoop, at which the sheep-like pony pricked up his ears and went away like the wind almost two feet to the mare's one. The last fifty yards of the course was run by the pony with the rider sitting face to his tail, making hideous grimaces and beckoning to the rider of the mare to come on. "It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick and straight-race pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the south, and had lately won for his master six hundred ponies among the Kickapoos of the Indian Nation." [2] They learned from these Indians to handle skin-boats, or "bull-boats," such as we shall see were in constant use among the Mandans of the upper Missouri. [3] These people, sometimes called the Pawnee family, were scattered, in various wandering bands, from eastern Texas as far north as the Missouri. {289} Chapter XV FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN His Birth and Early Experiences.--His Description of Niagara Falls.--His Great Fraud.--His Real Achievement.--Captured by the Sioux.--Given to a Master.--Superstitious Fears of the Indians.--Goes with a Hunting Party.--Sees and names the Falls of St. Anthony.--Various Adventures.--Rescued and Freed. We come now to tell the story of a man who was neither great nor good, but was a most picturesque and entertaining scamp, and who withal deserves some small place among the Pathfinders. Imagine a burly friar, in robe of rough gray frieze, his head covered by a pointed hood, his otherwise bare feet protected by sandals, in his hand a stout cudgel, shuffling along on snow-shoes and dragging his scanty possessions on a sled, or, if it was summer, paddling his canoe from one lonely cabin to another, celebrating mass wherever he could get together a half-dozen people, telling them the gossip of the river, eating a robust meal, then pushing on to repeat the {290} experience elsewhere, and you will have a good picture of Father Louis Hennepin, a man whose books describing his travels, real or imaginary, had, in their day, the widest popularity in Europe. Though he was an unconscionable braggart, and though he had no scruples about falsifying facts, yet, as the first person to publish an account of the Falls of Niagara, and as the discoverer and namer of the Falls of St. Anthony, he is fairly entitled to a place in a collection like this. He was born in Belgium, about 1640, and in due time joined the Franciscan monks. When he tells us that he was so passionately fond of tales of adventure that he often skulked behind tavern-doors, though he was sickened by the tobacco smoke, eagerly hanging on the words of the old tars spinning yarns to each other, we do not wonder at finding him on his way to the land of wonders, the New World, making the voyage in company with La Salle. The wilderness, full of hardships and haunted by treacherous savages though it was, had a fascination for him, and we soon find him serving as an itinerant missionary on the frontier. His experience in this work recommended him for appointment as missionary at that loneliest of {291} outposts, La Salle's Fort Frontenac. When La Salle returned successful from his efforts to interest the court in his gigantic scheme of exploration, Father Hennepin was selected to accompany him as the representative of the Church. In preparation for the great undertaking, he was sent ahead with La Motte, an officer in La Salle's service, to Fort Frontenac, whence they proceeded in a small sailing vessel to Niagara River, under orders to build a fort that was intended to be a link in the chain of posts that La Salle purposed establishing. Niagara Falls--"a vast and prodigious Cadence of Water," he calls it--made a deep impression on the Father, and he proceeded to write in his journal this description, which, when it was printed, was the first published account of the cataract: "This wonderful Downfall is compounded of two great Cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with an Isle sloping along the middle of it. The Waters which fall from this vast height do foam and boil after the most hideous Manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; for when the wind blows from off the South, their dismal roaring may be heard above fifteen Leagues off." {292} The Seneca Indians, who regarded the Niagara River as belonging to themselves, were jealous of the intruders and raised so strong objections to the building of a fort, that La Motte and Hennepin made a journey to their chief town, in the hope of overcoming their opposition. Here they met with a hospitable reception from the savages, who, Hennepin says, "wash'd our Feet, which afterwards they rubb'd over with the Oil of Bears." They found here two faithful Jesuit missionaries--members of an order, by the way, not especially friendly to the one to which Hennepin belonged, the Franciscans--and, at their invitation, the father preached to the Indians. Next came a council with the elders of the tribe. These made a great impression on Hennepin, who writes, "The Senators of Venice do not appear with a graver countenance, and perhaps don't speak with more Majesty and Solidity than those ancient Iroquese." [1] With many cunning arguments and specious reasons, the white men stated their case through their interpreter, making much of the point that the new enterprise would open an easier {293} trade-route, by which goods could be brought and sold to the natives at rates lower than those of the Dutch, with whom these people were in the habit of dealing at Fort Orange (Albany). The wary old warriors accepted the presents offered them, listened to the speeches, and reserved their decision until the next day, when they plainly showed that they did not put much faith in the assurances of their white brethren. In the end, La Motte and Hennepin went away disappointed. La Salle, however, on his arrival, with his extraordinary skill in dealing with Indians, secured the concessions he needed and went on with his building and the subsequent exploration. It would be superfluous to repeat the story of the expedition, down to the building of Fort Crèvecoeur. It is not until this point that the journal of Father Hennepin becomes an independent narrative. From Fort Crèvecoeur La Salle dispatched the father, with two excellent men, Accau and Du Gay, to follow the Illinois River to its mouth and, on reaching the Mississippi, to turn northward and explore its upper waters. Accau, who was an experienced _voyageur_ (French for {294} traveler; a term applied to Canadians who traversed the forests and lakes, bartering with the Indians), was the real head of the expedition. But Hennepin, according to his wont, even when he was in company with so great a genius as La Salle, in his account always gives himself the foremost place. If Father Hennepin had published no other writings than his account of the journey on the Upper Mississippi, his reputation would be that of a traveler who left a most interesting record of his experiences, embellished with fanciful additions--a not uncommon practice, in those days--but in the main reliable. Unfortunately for his good name, he did something more which justly put such a blot upon his character that many persons refused to believe his story in any of its particulars. We must give a passing notice to this daring performance. Fourteen years after this expedition, when La Salle was dead, and with the evident purpose of robbing him of his just fame as the first white man who explored the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf, Hennepin for the first time put forth the astonishing statement that he and his two companions, on reaching the Great River, turned {295} south and followed its course all the way to the ocean, after which they ascended it and explored its upper waters--a truly marvelous achievement, if it were true, for three lonely men voyaging on an unknown stream among fierce savages. Even at the time of its publication, there were those who disallowed this amazing claim. "Why has he so long kept silence about this heroic feat?" they naturally asked. Hennepin had a ready answer: he was afraid of the wrath of La Salle, who would have been furious if any doubt had been cast upon his claim of being the first explorer. How, then, do we know the story to be false? In several ways. First, and chiefly, because what Hennepin alleged that he had done was simply impossible. In his first book, which was published, let us remember, during La Salle's lifetime, Hennepin said that he left the mouth of the Illinois on March 12, and that he was captured by the Sioux, near the mouth of the Wisconsin, five hundred miles above, on April 11. This looks reasonable, and no doubt it was true. But, in the second story, published fourteen years later, he stated that in that same interval of time he had descended the Mississippi {296} to the Gulf, then, returning, had traced its course as far as the mouth of the Wisconsin. One month to accomplish a distance of 3,260 miles! An average of over one hundred miles a day for three men paddling a canoe, up-stream for the greater part of the distance! Surely, we may dismiss the whole story as a colossal falsehood. But if he did not go below the mouth of the Illinois, how did Hennepin become possessed of the information which he gives in his usual interesting way about the places and peoples all the way down the river to the Gulf? His descriptions have all the appearance of truth. He "cribbed" them. We are able to put our finger on a source from which he drew without stint. It will be remembered that Father Membré accompanied La Salle on his descent of the Mississippi, in 1681. He kept a journal of their experiences. This journal was afterward published by another friar, Le Clerc, but was suppressed by the French government, because it gave offence to the Jesuits. A few copies, however, are in existence to this day. Those who have examined one of these say that Membré's journal is the original of Hennepin's stolen narrative, sometimes whole pages agreeing word for word. Hennepin seems {297} to have taken it bodily, with a few necessary alterations, such as would make himself, not La Salle, the hero of the expedition. This pirated account, written in Hennepin's picturesque style, met with great success in Europe and was translated into several languages. We are reminded of the sensation which was made by Amerigo Vespucci's fanciful tales of the New World. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 44.) One more question. If Hennepin lied in saying that he descended the Great River, how do we know that he really ascended it? Because this part of his story is confirmed by an independent witness. The famous trader and leader of fur-traders, Du Lhut, testified that he found Hennepin and his two companions prisoners among the Sioux and rescued them, precisely as we shall find Hennepin relating in his story of the expedition. We shall, therefore, reject the later-published account of the imaginary journey down the Mississippi and confine our attention to the probably authentic story of his adventures on the upper waters. Hennepin and his two associates followed the Illinois to its mouth and then turned their canoe {298} toward the head-waters of the Great River. For a time all went well. Game was abundant, and the travelers fared sumptuously on buffalo, deer, turkeys, and fish. Suddenly they encountered a war-party of Sioux in a number of canoes. These fierce rovers, members of the great Dakota family, whose range extended westward a thousand miles from the Mississippi, enjoyed a reputation which caused them to be called "the Iroquois of the West." Immediately they surrounded the Frenchmen with a hideous clamor. Hennepin held up the calumet; but one of them snatched it from him. Then he offered some fine Martinique tobacco, which somewhat mollified them. He also gave them two turkeys which were in the canoe. But, for all this, it was evident that the Sioux were about to treat their prisoners with their wonted ferocity. In fact, one of the warriors signified to the friar in dumb show that he was to be brained with a war-club. On the spot he hastened to the canoe and returned loaded with presents which he threw down before them. This had the effect of so far softening the savage breasts that the prisoners were given food and were allowed to rest in quiet that night. In quiet, indeed, but not sleeping, we may be {299} sure, for can a more trying situation be imagined than that of knowing that one's life or death is under debate, while one has not a chance to say a single word of defence or argument? Some of the Indians, they gathered, favored killing them on the spot and taking their goods. Others contended that when they all wished to attract French traders to come into their country and bring guns, blankets, and other such commodities, it would be unwise to discourage them by killing these prisoners. Imagine the Frenchmen's joy, when, in the early morning, a young warrior in full paint came to them, asked for the pipe which had previously been rejected, filled and smoked it, and then passed it to his companions to do the same. This pipe was the famous calumet, which we have seen to be so efficacious in the case of Joliet and Marquette. Smoking it was an intimation to the Frenchmen that there was to be peace. They were also informed that they would be taken by the Sioux to their village. Shortly afterward the friar had a comical experience. When he took out his breviary and began to read his morning devotions in a low tone, the savages gathered around him with looks {300} of terror and frantically signed to him to put away the book. They mistook it for some kind of a fetish, that is, an object inhabited by a powerful spirit, and his muttering they supposed to be a magic incantation. Then a happy thought struck him. He began to sing the service in a loud and cheerful voice. This delighted the savages, who fancied that the book was teaching him to sing for their entertainment. Now the journey up the river began. On the whole, the Frenchmen fared tolerably well. They took care always to sleep near the young warrior who had been the first to smoke the peace-pipe, and whom they regarded as their protector. The hostile party among the Indians was headed by a wily old fellow who frequently threw the prisoners into a panic by frenzied appeals to the warriors to let him avenge on the white men the death of his son, who had been killed by the Miamis. The Frenchmen invariably met this excitement by fresh gifts. Thus, while they were not openly robbed, they were gradually relieved of their earthly possessions by a sort of primitive blackmail. Day after day the paddles plied by sinewy arms drove the canoes up the stream. A lake {301} was passed, which later was called Lake Pepin, in honor of one of a party of their countrymen whom they met a short time afterward.[2] On the nineteenth day after their capture, the prisoners landed, along with their masters, on the spot where St. Paul now stands. The three Frenchmen's troubles now began in real earnest. First they must see their canoe broken to pieces, to prevent their escape, then the remainder of their goods divided. After this their captors started out for their abodes, which lay to the north, near the lake now called Mille {302} Lacs. It was a hard experience for the Frenchmen to tramp with these athletic savages, wading ponds and marshes glazed with ice and swimming ice-cold streams. "Our Legs," says Hennepin, "were all over Blood, being cut by the Ice." Seeing the friar inclined to lag, the Indians took a novel method of quickening his pace. They set fire to the grass behind him and then, taking him by the hands, they ran forward with him. He was nearly spent when, after five days of exhausting travel, they reached the homes of the Sioux. Entering the village, Hennepin saw a sight that curdled his blood. Stakes, with bundles of straws attached to them seemed in readiness for burning himself and his comrades. Imagine their amazement when, instead of being roasted, they were taken into a lodge and treated to a kind of whortle-berry pudding _à la sauvage_! The next matter of interest was a noisy wrangle among the warriors as to the distribution of the prisoners. To his great terror, Hennepin was assigned to Aquipagetin, the wily old villain who had insisted on the death of the Frenchmen and had persistently blackmailed them. "Surely now {303} my time has come," the friar said to himself. Instead, to his great surprise, he was immediately adopted by his new master as a son, to replace the one whom the Miamis had lately killed, a procedure quite in accordance with Indian custom. Hennepin thus found himself separated from his two countrymen, who had other masters, much to the relief of Accau, who heartily hated him. The friar was now conducted by his adopted father to his lodge, which stood on an island in a lake, was introduced as his son to some six or seven of his wives, was given a platter of fish and a buffalo-robe, and altogether was treated quite as a member of the family. Now he had a period of rest in the Sioux village. The Indians subjected him, greatly to his advantage, to a treatment such as seems to have been in very general use on this continent and to have been the most rational feature of Indian medical practice, which relied mainly on charms and incantations. It was administered by placing the patient in a tightly closed lodge and pouring water on heated stones, thus producing a dense vapor which induced copious sweating, after which he was vigorously rubbed. The Sioux had a certain respect for him, on {304} account of magic powers which he was supposed to possess, and his pocket-compass inspired them with unbounded awe. On his side, he made himself useful in various ways, such as shaving the children's heads and bleeding the sick. The children had good reason to be thankful for having the friar for their barber, since the native method, he says, was "by burning off the Hair with flat Stones, which they heat red-hot in the Fire." "Many a melancholy Day," says Hennepin, "did I pass among these Savages." His coarse, filthy food was often of the scantiest, and his work, which he was compelled to do with squaws and slaves--for, of course, no warrior would stoop to labor--was of the hardest. Besides his useful services, one thing that helped greatly to keep him alive was the superstition of his masters. One of his belongings inspired them with wholesome dread. "I had," he says, "an Iron Pot about three foot round, which had the Figure of a Lion on it, which during our Voyage served us to bake our Victuals in. This Pot the Barbarians durst never so much as touch, without covering their Hands first in something of Castor-Skin. And so great a Terror was it to the women, {305} that they durst not come or sleep in the Cabin where it was. They thought that there was a Spirit hid within, that would certainly kill them." At length the time came for the Indians to go on their annual hunt, and they took Hennepin along. His countrymen were also of the party, and thus he was again thrown with them. The friar gives this indignant account of their outfit: "Our whole Equipage consisted of fifteen or twenty Charges of Powder, a Fusil [gun], a little sorry Earthen Pot, which the Barbarians gave us, a knife between us both, and a Garment of Castor [beaver]. Thus we were equipped for a voyage of 250 Leagues." The whole band, some two hundred and fifteen in number, descended Rum River, the outlet of Mille Lacs, and encamped opposite its mouth, on the bank of the Mississippi. Food was scarce. The whole camp was on short rations, and the three Frenchmen could get little to eat but unripe berries. This condition of things was scarcely endurable, and Hennepin was happy in securing permission from the head chief, who always acted in a very friendly manner, to go with his countrymen to {306} the mouth of the Wisconsin, where he said that he had an appointment to meet some French traders who were coming thither with goods--a piece of pure invention which, however, served its purpose very well. Accau refused to go, preferring the savage life to traveling with the friar. But Du Gay gladly joined him, and the two set off in a small canoe that had been given them. They went swiftly down the river, and soon came to a famous cataract, between the sites of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which Hennepin called the Falls of St. Anthony, in honor of the saint whom he particularly reverenced, St. Anthony of Padua. The name remains to this day and keeps alive the memory of the eccentric friar.[3] {307} We shall not follow the travelers through their wanderings and adventures. Once, when they had been on very scant fare for several days, they were almost trampled by a herd of buffalo rushing down the bank to cross the river. Du Gay shot a young cow, and they feasted so bountifully that they were taken ill and could not travel for two days. In the meantime the weather was warm, their meat spoiled, and they were soon again nearly famished, depending on catfish and an occasional turtle. Hennepin thus describes one of their encounters: "I shewed Picard [Du Gay] a huge Serpent, as big as a Man's Leg, and seven or eight Foot long. She was working herself insensibly up a steep craggy Rock, to get at the Swallows Nests which are there in great Numbers. We pelted her so long with Stones, till at length she fell into the River. Her Tongue, which was in form of a Lance, was of an extraordinary Length, and her Hiss might be heard a great way." At last the two Frenchmen joined a band of hunters and among them found our friend Accau. {308} The hunt was very successful. But Hennepin's attention was drawn in another direction by a strange story of five "Spirits," that is to say, Europeans, who were in the neighborhood. A few days later he met them at a little distance below the Falls of St. Anthony. The leader of the party was one of the most notable men among the early pioneers. His name was Daniel Greysolon Du Lhut, or Du Luth. He was leagued with Count Frontenac and some others in the fur-trade and was equally noted for his success in that line of business, for his coolness and skill in managing Indians and rough _coureurs de bois_, and for his achievements as an explorer. He had come to the head of Lake Superior, where a city perpetuates his name, and thence had crossed to one of the tributaries of the Mississippi, when he heard of the three Frenchmen and came to meet them. The encounter was a joyful one on both sides, especially for the prisoners, whose release Du Lhut secured by gifts to the Sioux. [Illustration: Falls of St. Anthony] The eight Frenchmen now accompanied the Sioux back to Mille Lacs and were treated with great honor. Then they started east and, in due time, reached the Jesuit missions at Green {309} Bay. And here we take leave of Father Hennepin.[4] [1] Hennepin's language in the passages which have been quoted is given as it appears in an old English translation. [2] Jonathan Carver, who journeyed up the river in 1766, was the earliest traveler who made mention of ancient monuments in this region. He says that a few miles below Lake Pepin his attention was attracted by an elevation which had the appearance of an intrenchment. He had served in the recent war between Great Britain and France and had an eye to such matters. He says, "Notwithstanding it was now covered with grass, I could plainly discern that it had once been a breast-work of about four feet in height, extending the best part of a mile and sufficiently capacious to cover five thousand men." It was semi-circular in form, and its wings rested on the river, which covered the rear. His surmise that it was built for the purpose of defence is undoubtedly correct. He wonders how such a work could exist in a country inhabited by "untutored Indians" who had no military knowledge beyond drawing a bow. Since his time we have gained far more knowledge of the aborigines, and it is ascertained beyond reasonable question that, at one period, they reared extensive earth-works, probably for the permanent protection of their villages. [3] Jonathan Carver, who visited the Falls about a hundred years after Hennepin, and from whose works the accompanying illustration is taken, writes thus: "At a little distance below the falls stands a small island, of about an acre and a half, on which grow a great number of oak-trees, every branch of which, able to support the weight, was full of eagles' nests." These birds, he says, resort to this place in so great numbers because of its security, "their retreat being guarded by the Rapids, which the Indians never attempt to pass," and because of the abundant supply of food furnished by fish and animals "dashed to pieces by the falls and driven on the adjacent shore." About thirty mites below the Falls, he says, he visited a remarkable cave, called by the Indians Wakon-teebe, that is, the Dwelling of the Great Spirit. Within it he found "many Indian hieroglyphicks which appeared very ancient." Near it was a burying-place of the Sioux. [4] Hennepin relates that at the Falls of St. Anthony two of the men, to the great indignation of Du Lhut when he learned of it, stole two buffalo-robes which were hung on trees as offerings to the Great Spirit. Striking natural objects seem to have been regarded by the Indians as special manifestations of divinity. It is an interesting confirmation, that Jonathan Carver relates that, at the same place, a young warrior who accompanied him threw into the stream his pipe, his tobacco, his bracelets, his neck ornaments, in short, everything of value about him, all the while smiting his breast and crying aloud to the Great Spirit for his blessing. {313} Chapter XVI THE VÉRENDRYES DISCOVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS Vérendrye's Experience as a Fur-trader.--As a Soldier.--He returns to the Forests.--His Plan for reaching the Pacific.--Tremendous Difficulties in his Way.--He reaches the Mandans.--His Sons discover the Rocky Mountains.--Alexander Mackenzie follows the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean.--He achieves a Passage over the Mountains to the Pacific.--Note on Mandan Indians.--Mah-to-toh-pa's Vengeance.--Singular Dwellings of the Mandans.--Their Bloody Ordeal.--Skin-boats.--Catlin's Fanciful Theory. We have seen how the dream of a short route to China and the Indies inspired a long line of adventurous explorers. At the first it was hoped that the Mississippi afforded such a passage. When it was known beyond all doubt that the Great River flows into the Gulf, not the "Western Sea," longing eyes were turned toward the western part of the continent, in the hope that some stream would be found flowing into the Pacific which would carry the keels of commerce Indiaward. The huge barrier of the Rocky Mountains was {314} not known, and it was only in the effort to reach the Pacific by water that they were discovered. So important was the desired route considered that, in 1720, the French King sent out the noted historian of New France, Father Charlevoix, to explore westward and discover a way to the Pacific. He recommended two plans, either to follow the Missouri River to its head-waters or to push a chain of trading-posts gradually westward until the continent should be crossed. The former plan was the one actually carried out, eighty-three years later, by the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, which crossed the Rockies and followed the Columbia River to the ocean. The second plan was the easier and less expensive, and it was the earlier to be tried. Still several years elapsed before the effort was made. The hardy adventurer was Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye, son of the Governor of Three Rivers. Early experience as a fur-trader taught him to know the Indians and the hard life of the northern forests. Then came the war of the Spanish Succession, and, a loyal French subject, he left his fur-trade, hastened to Europe, asked to serve the King, and was given a commission as a lieutenant. The famous field of {315} Malplaquet came near to witnessing the end of his career. He lay on it for dead, gashed with the sabre and pierced with bullets. Still he recovered, returned to New France, and plunged again into the woods as a trader. Being placed in command of the French outpost on Lake Nipigon, where he also carried on a brisk trade, he heard many a tale from Indians who came with furs. One of these stories fired his imagination. It was of a great river flowing westward out of a lake into water in which there was a tide. Then the Indian drew a rough map on birch bark, a copy of which is still in existence. Could this be the long-desired route to the Pacific? He hoped it and was resolved to ascertain the truth. But first he must get leave and an outfit. Having made the long and dangerous journey in his birch-bark canoe, that is, gone from Lake Nipigon into Lake Superior, traversed the entire length of the lakes, and then descended the St. Lawrence to Quebec, he laid before the French governor, Beauharnais, his plan for reaching the Pacific by the net-work of lakes and rivers north and west of Lake Superior. The Governor approved, but Vérendrye, applying to the King for men and means, got nothing but a grant {316} of the monopoly of the fur-trade north and west of Lake Superior. He must raise the money himself. With difficulty and at exorbitant rates of interest, he obtained advances from Quebec merchants and set out, June 8, 1731, with his three sons and a nephew, LaJemeraye. At the close of the season he built his first fort, St. Pierre, on Rainy River. The next year he established his second fort, St. Charles, on the southwest shore of the Lake of the Woods. Terribly embarrassed by lack of money, he returned to Quebec and represented his deplorable situation. The Governor reported it to the King, but could get no more from him than the renewal of the fur-trade monopoly. Undaunted, Vérendrye persisted, though obliged to suspend exploration and devote himself for a while to trading, in order to secure money. There was enough to dishearten a man of less than heroic stuff. In 1736, his eldest son, with a Jesuit priest and twenty others, was surprised and massacred by the Sioux on an island in the Lake of the Woods. Also he was harassed by creditors and compelled repeatedly to make the long and tedious journey to Montreal. In spite of all these mishaps, he pushed his posts gradually westward and by 1738 {317} he had established six, viz., St. Pierre, on Rainy Lake; St. Charles, on the Lake of the Woods; Maurepas at the mouth of the Winnipeg River; Bourbon on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg; La Reine on Assiniboine River; and Dauphin on Lake Manitoba. In 1738 he made a bold push for the Pacific, with fifty persons, French and Indians. After many devious wanderings, seeking a band that could conduct him to the Western Ocean, he reached the Mandans, on the upper Missouri, the singularly interesting people among whom Lewis and Clark spent the winter sixty-six years later. But, having been robbed of the presents which he had provided, he was unable to get a guide to lead him further and was obliged to return. The journey was made in midwinter and was full of frightful hardships. His eldest surviving son, Pierre de la Vérendrye, full of his father's spirit, devoted himself to the same quest. He had with him his brother and two other men. They started from Fort La Reine, reached the Mandans, and pushed on to the West. All through the summer, autumn, and early winter they toiled on, going hither and yon, beguiled by the usual fairy-tales of tribesmen. {318} At last, on New Year's day, 1743, two hundred and fifty years after the Discovery, doubtless first of all white men, they saw the Rocky Mountains from the east. This probably was the Big Horn Range, one hundred and twenty miles east of the Yellowstone Park. Finding this tremendous obstacle across their path to the Pacific, they turned back. On July 12 they reached La Prairie, to the great joy of their father, who had given them up for lost. A later Governor of Canada not only ignored the heroic services of the Vérendryes, but seized their goods, turned over their posts to another, and reduced them to poverty. It was a long time before their work was taken up, and it remained for a man of another race to accomplish what they had so bravely striven for. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scotch Highlander by birth, was an energetic young agent of the Montreal Company in the Athabasca region. He determined to undertake certain explorations. In June, 1789, he set out from Fort Chippewyan, on the south shore of Lake Athabasca, with four birch canoes and a party of white men and several Indians, including a guide and interpreter. Going down Snake River, the explorers reached Great {319} Slave Lake, then entered a heretofore unknown river, the one which now bears the name of its discoverer, and followed it until, on July 12, they sighted the Arctic Ocean, filled with ice-floes, with spouting whales between. In October, 1792, he set out, determined this time to reach the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort Chippewyan, skirted the lake to Slave River, then ascended its southwest tributary, Peace River. He wintered on this stream in a trading-house which he had sent an advance party to build, employed in hunting and trading. In May, having sent back a large cargo of furs to Fort Chippewyan, he started up the river with a party of seven white men and two Indians. The voyagers traveled in a birch canoe twenty-five feet long, "but so light that two men could carry her on a good road three or four miles without resting." "In this slender vessel," he says, "we shipped provisions, goods for presents, arms, ammunition, and baggage, to the weight of thirty thousand pounds, and an equipage of ten people." The difficulties and dangers were tremendous. Paddling and pushing and poling up the rocky bed of a swift stream abounding in rapids, they made slow progress. More than once the canoe {320} was broken. Portages were often necessary. Again and again the crew, exhausted and their clothing in tatters, sullenly insisted that there was no choice but to turn back. But Mackenzie was a man of indomitable courage and all the persistency of the Scotch race. He had already shown this quality by taking the long journey and voyage from the wilds of Athabasca to London, in order to study the use of astronomical instruments, so that he might be qualified to make scientific observations. Now he would not hear of turning back. So the discouraged party, animated by Mackenzie, pushed on, climbed over the dividing mountains, and came upon the head-waters of a stream flowing westward, the one now called Fraser River. After following it for several days, they struck off through dense forests, sometimes on dizzy trails over snow-clad mountains, until they reached a rapid river. On this they embarked in two canoes with several natives, and thus reached the ocean--_the Pacific_! Vérendrye's dream was realized at last. The continent had been spanned from East to West. Twelve years later the same thing was done within the territory of the United States by Lewis {321} and Clark, at the head of an expedition sent out by President Jefferson. They spent the winter among the Mandan Indians, the interesting people with whom the Vérendryes had come in contact. A note is added in which some information is given about them. NOTE ON THE MANDANS These Indians first became known to white men through the expedition of the elder Vérendrye. They showed themselves hospitable and friendly to him, as they always have been to our race, and they aided his sons in their efforts to reach the Western Sea. Next we have quite full references to them in the journals of Lewis and Clark. These explorers were sent out by President Jefferson in 1803, immediately on the completion of the Louisiana Purchase, to get a better knowledge of the northern portion of the vast territory recently acquired, with a particular view to developing the fur-trade and to opening a route to the Pacific. All these ends were accomplished with a degree of success that made the enterprise one of the greatest achievements in our history. The explorers, having ascended the Missouri in their boats, and finding themselves, as winter came on, near the Mandan villages, {322} decided to remain there until the spring. Accordingly they passed the winter, 1803-4, among these interesting tribesmen. It being a part of their prescribed duty to keep full journals of all that they experienced or saw, they have left extended accounts of the people and their customs. Thirty-four years later George Catlin, a famous artist and student of Indian life, who spent many years in traveling among the wild tribes of the West and in describing them with pen, pencil, and brush, came among the Mandans. He was so much impressed with them as a singular and superior people that he remained among them a considerable time, painted many of their men and women, studied and made drawings of some of their singular ceremonies, and devoted a large part of his two volumes to a highly interesting account of what he saw among them. Catlin certainly was wholly free from the silly prejudice expressed in the familiar saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." His two volumes, "The North American Indians," furnish "mighty interesting reading." As we accompany him in his long journeys by canoe and on horseback and read his descriptions of the tribes he visited and the warriors and chiefs he learned to know, and of whom he has left us pictures, it is a satisfaction to feel that we are traveling with a man who looked on the Indian as a human being. Sometimes we are inclined to suspect that, in the enthusiasm of his artistic nature, he idealized his subject and viewed him with a degree of sentiment as remote from the truth in one direction as {323} was the hostile prejudice of the average white man in the other. We know that he either did not see or purposely ignored certain aspects of Indian life, notably the physical dirt and the moral degradation. When he comes to the Mandans, this disposition to make heroes of his subjects fairly runs away with him. No language is strong enough to do justice to his admiration of some of them. We easily let pass such phrases as the "wild and gentlemanly Mandans," for many observers have reported that there is a native dignity and courtesy about the true Indian. But there are other things which make it plain that Catlin, in his extravagant admiration, where his Indian friends were concerned was incapable of discriminating between the noble and the base. Here is an instance: A certain chief of the Mandans, Mah-to-toh-pa (the Four Bears), was very friendly to Catlin, who painted his portrait, and who speaks of him in terms of unbounded admiration. He gave his artist friend a handsomely embroidered deerskin shirt on which he had depicted in Indian fashion his various achievements. One, of which he was especially proud, he recounted at length to Catlin, acting it out before him, and he in turn relates it to his readers. Mah-to-toh-pa had a brother slain--in open fight, let us remember--by a Rickaree, who left his lance sticking in the dead man. Mah-to-toh-pa found the body, drew out the lance, and carried it to his village, where it was recognized as the property of a famous warrior named Won-ga-tap. He kept the bloodstained weapon, {324} vowing that some day he would with it avenge his brother's death. Four years passed by, and still he nursed his wrath. Then one day he worked himself up to a frenzy and went through the village crying that the day of vengeance had come. Off he started across the prairie alone, with a little parched corn in his pouch, went two hundred miles, traveling by night and hiding by day, until he reached the Rickaree village. Knowing it and the location of Won-ga-tap's lodge--which suggests that he had visited the place in some friendly relation--he entered at dusk and loitered about for a time, and then through rents in the covering watched Won-ga-tap smoke his last pipe and go to bed by the side of his wife. Then Mah-to-toh-pah went in, coolly seated himself by the smouldering fire, and, using the privilege of Indian hospitality, helped himself to meat that was in a kettle over the embers, and ate a hearty meal. "Who is that man who is eating in our lodge?" asked the wife several times. "Oh, let him alone. No doubt he is hungry," the easy-going Won-ga-tap answered. His meal finished, the intruder helped himself to his host's pipe, filled and lighted it, and began to smoke. When he had finished, he gently pushed the coals together with his toes, so that he got a better light and was able to discern the outline of his intended victim's body. Then he rose softly, plunged his lance into Won-ga-tap's heart, snatched off his scalp, and ran away with it and with the dripping lance. {325} In a moment the Rickaree camp was in an uproar. But before pursuers were started the assassin was far out on the plains. The darkness protected him, he successfully eluded pursuit, returned safely to his home, and entered the village, triumphantly exhibiting Won-ga-tap's scalp and the fresh blood dried on his lance. This story, which Catlin says is attested by white men who were in the Mandan village at the time, may stand as a notable instance of savage vengefulness and daring, cunning and treachery, but it will scarcely serve to make us believe in Catlin's "noble Mandan gentlemen," of whom he puts forward Mah-to-toh-pa as a conspicuous example. When we read Lewis and Clark's account of the Mandans, we are in quite another atmosphere, not that of romance but of simple reality. They spent several months among them, on the friendliest terms, and they speak kindly of them, but do not disguise the brutality of savage life. Between these two authorities we have ample information, from opposite points of view. The first thing that would impress a visitor with the fact that he had come among a peculiar people, is the character of their dwellings, absolutely unlike any used by any other tribe, either of the woods or plains, except their near neighbors and friends, the Minitarees. The lodge is a circular structure, set in an excavation about two feet deep. A framework of stout posts supports a roof of poles converging toward the centre, where an opening is left for the entrance of light and the escape of smoke. On these poles brush is spread, and over this {326} earth is laid to the depth of about two feet. In this earth grass grows abundantly, and thus a Mandan village presents the appearance of an assemblage of green mounds. Lewis and Clark were much impressed with the fearlessness of the Mandan women in crossing the Missouri, even when it was quite rough, in a tub-like boat consisting of a single buffalo-hide stretched under a frame-work of wicker.[1] Catlin saw the same boat in use, and it afforded him confirmation for a peculiar theory which he advanced. He was much surprised at the light complexion of the Mandans generally and at the fact that he actually saw some blue eyes and gray eyes among them and some whitish hair. These circumstances seemed to him to point clearly to an admixture of European blood. He wrote at a time when fanciful theories about the native Americans were much in vogue. He had read somewhere that a Welsh prince, Madoc, more than two hundred years before the time of Columbus, sailed away from his country with ten ships. By some unexplained process, he traced him to America. Then he supposed him to ascend the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Ohio and there to found a colony. This, being entirely cut off from communication with the mother country, was compelled to ally itself with the nearest Indians and took wives among them. From these unions sprang a mixed race, the Mandans, who eventually formed a {327} separate tribe and were gradually driven up the Missouri to the point where he found them. There is not any doubt of the large admixture of European blood among the Mandans, and it is easily accounted for. Catlin does not seem to have known of any white visitors before Lewis and Clark. But we have seen that the Vérendryes reached these people a full hundred years before Catlin's day. There is every reason for believing that, from that time, white hunters and traders never ceased to visit them. These Indians being, from the first, very hospitable and friendly, their villages were favorite resorts for fur-traders, who took up their abode among them for several years at a time and married there. One can easily see that, in the course of a hundred years, there would be several generations of mixed blood, and that, through inter-marriages, there would probably be few families whose color would not be lighter in consequence. The persons whose peculiar whitish hair Catlin noticed, undoubtedly were albinos, a class of persons in whom the natural coloring of the hair is wanting and the eyes are red or pink. The Mandans probably are nothing more than an interesting tribe of Indians who, through long intermingling with the white race, have undergone considerable lightening of their original color. A year after Catlin's visit his Mandan friends experienced a frightful calamity. A trading steamboat brought the small-pox to them, and, as happened in the case of many other tribes in the West, its ravages were fearful. Not being protected by vaccination, and knowing nothing {328} of the treatment of the disease, the poor creatures died horribly. Not a few, in the height of their fever, threw themselves into the Missouri and so found a quicker and easier death. Nearly the whole tribe perished. The remnant, along with that of their long-time friends and neighbors, the Minitarees, may be found to-day at Fort Berthold, in North Dakota. [1] We may remember that La Salle and his followers found Indians on the plains of Texas crossing rivers in boats made of buffalo-hide. {329} BOOKS FOR REFERENCE The Origin of the American aborigines is treated briefly by Dr. John Fiske in "The Discovery of America," Chapter I, and at great length and with wide research by Mr. E. J. Payne in his "History of the New World Called America." Their Distribution, also sketched by Dr. Fiske, is satisfactorily detailed by Dr. D. G. Brinton in his "Races and Peoples." Those who may wish to study Indian Social Life in its primitive conditions will do well to read the work of Baron de Lahontan, recently edited by Dr. R. G. Thwaites. He was among the earliest writers on aboriginal affairs, and his "New Voyages to North America" gives the results of travel and observation about the years 1683-1701. "Three Years' Travels through North America," by Jonathan Carver, relates an interesting experience among the Indians between the years 1766 and 1768. Some of his general remarks, however, are drawn from the preceding writer. An inexhaustible store of information on this subject is found in the famous "Jesuit Relations," which have been edited, in an English translation, by Dr. Thwaites. For ordinary readers, however, the very interesting treatment by Dr. Fiske, in the chapter already cited, and especially by {330} Mr. Francis Parkman, in the Introduction to his "The Jesuits in North America," will amply suffice. In the same chapters will be found a satisfactory account of the Iroquois League. Students, however, who may wish to go to the fountain-head are referred to Mr. Lewis Morgan, whose work, "The League of the Iroquois," is the accepted authority. As to Cartier, Ribaut, Laudonnière, Champlain, and La Salle, the writer has not gained any new light by referring to the original documents, and has drawn his material chiefly from that great master, Parkman, by whom the first four are treated in his "Pioneers of France in the New World," and the last-named in his "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West." The story of the Jesuit missionaries runs through what is practically a whole library, the "Jesuit Relations." Parkman, in a volume devoted to setting forth the nobler aspects of their work, "The Jesuits in North America," does ample justice to the heroism of the best of these pioneers. For Radisson the only authority is himself. His "Voyage," not published until after it had lain in manuscript two hundred and twenty-five years, and of which but two hundred and fifty copies are in existence, is one of the quaintest of books and "mighty interesting reading." The story of Joliet and Marquette's exploration is told most interestingly by Dr. Thwaites, in his "Father Marquette," and by Parkman, in his "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West." The observations of {331} Jonathan Carver, who went over a part of their route about one hundred years later, throw much interesting light on some of their experiences. Father Hennepin receives ample justice from Parkman in his account of the opening of the Great West. Readers, however, who may desire a first-hand acquaintance with the erratic friar will find curious, much of it stolen, reading in his "New Discovery in North America," his "Description of Louisiana," and his "Curious Voyage." In Dr. Thwaites's "Rocky Mountain Exploration" may be read the story of the heroic Vérendryes and dauntless Alexander Mackenzie. {335} INDEX ABNAKIS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. ACADIA, old name for Nova Scotia and adjacent region, 106. ACCAU, a companion of Father Hennepin in exploration, 293. ACOMANS, a tribe of Pueblo Indians, 10. ALEXANDER THE GREAT, story of fountain of immortality, 78, note. ALGONQUINS, one of the great divisions of the Indian race, 4, its range and its families, 7; close allies of the French, 114; shiftless and improvident, often relieved by them, 124; those of Massachusetts thriftier, 109, note. ALLOUEZ, FATHER, noted missionary; one of his speeches, 147. ANNAPOLIS, originally Port Royal; re-named for Queen Anne, 111. APACHES, an offshoot of Athapascan stock, 7. APPALACHEE, probably southwestern Georgia, supposed to be rich in gold, 82. ASSICKMACK, Indian name for whitefish, 206; much prized, 206, note. ATHAPASCANS, a native stock; one of the larger divisions of Indian race, 7. AUBRY, NICHOLAS, his perilous adventure, 106. AYLLON, LUCAS VASQUEZ DE, his treachery punished, 70. BASQUES, early activity of, on northern coasts of America, 53; resist the royal monopoly of fur-trade, 122. BAYAGOULAS, THE, a tribe on the Mississippi, 281. BERING SEA, probably once dry land, 3. BIENVILLE, JEAN BAPTISTE LEMOYNE DE, comes to Louisiana, 280; founds New Orleans, 183; adversity in closing years, 285. BILOXI, site of first French settlement on Gulf of Mexico, 282. BIMINI, fabled fountain of immortality, 78. BOISRONDET, SIEUR DE, narrow escape from starvation, 247. BRANT ROCK, Champlain's stop there, 109. BRÉBEUF, FATHER, an early French missionary, 152. BRETONS, THE, early frequented the Newfoundland fisheries, 54. BRULÉ, ÉTIENNE, Champlain's interpreter, 133. CALUMET, or peace-pipe, old description of, 178, note. CAP BLANC, name which Champlain gave to Cape Cod, 110. CAP ROUGE, fortified by Cartier; seat of Roberval's settlement, 63. CARTIER, JACQUES, his first voyage, 54; his duplicity, 55; believed that he had found sea-route to India, 56; in second voyage explored the St. Lawrence, 57; names Mont Royal (later Montreal), 60; his fearful experience, 61; his treachery, 62; his last voyage futile, 62. CARVER, JONATHAN, early traveler, describes remains of ancient fortification, 301, note; and Falls of St. Anthony, 306, note. CAT ISLAND (Ile des Chats), origin of name, 281. CATLIN, GEORGE, 322; his theory of the origin of the Mandans, 326. CAVELIER, ROBERT, SIEUR DE LA SALLE. _See_ La Salle. CAYUGAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. CENIS INDIANS, branch of Caddo (Pawnee) family, visited by La Salle, 269. CHALEUR, BAY OF, name how originating, 54. CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE, his birth, 104; takes part in the Religious Wars in France, 104; sails to the West Indies, 104; suggests a Panama Canal, 105; sails for Canada, 105; conceives a plan of colonization, 105; makes a settlement at mouth of St. Croix River, 107; cruel winter, 108; visits and names Mt. Desert, 108; explores New England coast, 108; welcomed by natives in Plymouth Harbor, 109; trouble with Indians at Nausett, 110; transfers settlement to Port Royal, 110; second voyage to New France, 119; seeks sea-route to China, 119; explores the St. Lawrence, 120; seeks to establish stronghold on the inland waters, 120; eager to promote conversion of the Indians, 120; overcomes resistance of Basques to fur-trade monopoly, 123; quells mutiny of his men, 124; great suffering in first winter at Quebec, 124; goes with war-party of Algonquins into Iroquois country, 125; hostile encounter on Lake Champlain, 128; disastrous results of his success, 130; his second fight with Iroquois, 131; founds Montreal, 133; second raid into Iroquois country, 133, names Lake Huron, 134; Iroquois palisaded town, 136; his unsuccessful attack on, 137; wounded, 138; lost in the woods, 140; returns to Quebec, 142; a prisoner at London, 143; dies, 143. CHARLEVOIX, FATHER, sent out to explore route to Pacific, 314. CHATHAM HARBOR, scene of Champlain's fight with Indians, 111. CHICAGO, La Salle near the site of, 236. CHICKASAWS, a branch of the Maskoki family, 181; hostile to the French, 253, note. CHICORA, native name of coast region of South Carolina, 69. CHIEFS, INDIAN, how chosen, 34. CHIPPEWAYS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. CHOCTAWS, a Maskoki tribe, 9, who sided with the French, 253, note. CHRISTINOS, or Crees, an Indian tribe on Lake Superior, 210. CLAN, a group of families of common blood, 20. COLIGNY, ADMIRAL, sends a second expedition to Florida, 77. COLUMBIA AND SACRAMENTO VALLEYS, Indians inhabiting, lowest specimens of the race, 10. COMANCHES, Indian tribe of Shoshonee stock, 10; visited by La Salle, 269; their fine horsemanship, 270; jockeying, 270, note. CONESTOGAS, a Huron-Iroquois tribe, 9. COPPER, in large quantities, seen by Radisson, 207. COROAS, Indian tribe on the Lower Mississippi, attack La Salle, 256. COUNCIL, An Indian, how conducted, 32. COUREURS DE BOIS, their origin and influence, 114; their mode of life, 189. COUTURE, a companion of Father Jogues, 156. CREEKS, a Maskoki tribe, 9. DAGONOWEDA, a sachem of the Onondagas, who proposed union, 17. DAKOTA, or SIOUX, the, a native stock; its range, 10. DANIEL, FATHER, an early French missionary, 152. DAVOST, FATHER, an early French missionary, 152. DES PLAINES RIVER, route used by Joliet and Marquette in returning, 183; followed by La Salle, 245. DISTRIBUTION of various Indian tribal families, 7. DIVINATION by Indian sorcerer, 126. DU GAY, a companion of Father Hennepin in exploration, 293. DU LHUT, DANIEL GREYSOLON, noted leader of coureurs, 190, his testimony to having found Hennepin among the Sioux, 297. DULUTH, CITY OF, for whom named, 190. DUTCH PROTESTANTS try to effect the release of Father Jogues, 159; ransom him and send him to Europe, 160. EMPEROR, none in North America, 15. ERIES, a Huron-Iroquois tribe, 8. ESKIMO, descendants, perhaps, of ancient "Cave-men," 5. EUROPEANS, their early mistakes as to Indian life, 16. FAMILY, THE, the root of all society, 18; the family-tie the central principle of Indian social life, 20. FILLES À LA CASSETTE sent out to New Orleans by Louis the Fourteenth, 284. FISHERIES, NEWFOUNDLAND, early attracted European visitors, 53. FISKE, The late Dr. John, his theory about the Eskimo, 6. FIVE NATIONS, THE, what tribes constituted, 9; only friends of the English, 114. FLORIDA, as understood by Spaniards; extent, 90. FORT CAROLINE, the fort built by Laudonnière on the St. John's, 82; great misery through want and sickness, 86; distress relieved by coming of Ribaut, 89; massacre, 90 _et seq._ FORT CRÈVECOEUR built, 240, origin of name, 240; destroyed, 242. FORT FRONTENAC (on site of Kingston) built, 228; turned over to La Salle, 229. FORT MIAMI, at mouth of St. Joseph River, 245, 256. FORT ORANGE, Dutch settlement on site of Albany, 159. FORT ROSALIE, on the Lower Mississippi; slaughter at, 253, note. FORT ST. LOUIS, at Lavaca, Texas, built, 266. FORT ST. LOUIS, on the Illinois, built, 256. FRANCE desirous of christianizing the natives, 120. FRENCH attitude to Indians; how necessarily different from the Spanish, 47. FRENCHMEN, what they achieved in North and Northwest, 45; their material object, Furs, 46; their conduct contrasted with Spaniards', 46. FRONTENAC, LOUIS DE BUADE, COUNT OF, comes to Canada, 227; makes alliance with La Salle, 227; opposed by fur-traders, 228; recalled, 255. FUNDY, BAY OF, how name originated, 110. FUR-TRADERS classified, 188. FURS, great object of French commercial activity, 188. GASPÉ, French sovereignty first asserted at, 55. GOUPIL, a companion of Father Jogues; his death, 158. GOURGUES, DOMINIQUE DE, takes ample vengeance on the Spaniards at Fort Caroline, 96. GOVERNMENT, INDIAN, what it was like, 29. GRAND COUNCIL of Iroquois League, how composed, 31. "GRIFFIN," THE, first vessel on the Upper Lakes, 233. GROSEILLERS, SIEUR DES, title assumed by Médard Chouart, co-explorer with Radisson of Lake Superior, 199. For rest, _see_ Radisson. GUNS sold to Iroquois by Dutch, 131. HAKLUYT, RICHARD, a chronicler of old explorations, 86. HAWKINS, SIR JOHN, founder of English African slave-trade, relieves the distressed Frenchmen, 88. HELPFULNESS, MUTUAL, characteristic of Indian life, 41. HENNEPIN, FATHER Louis, comes to Canada, 290; describes Niagara Falls, 291; describes a council of Senecas, 292; is sent to explore the Upper Mississippi, 293; his fraud, 294; captured by Sioux, 298; his experiences among the Sioux, 298 _et seq,_; sees and names Falls of St. Anthony, 306; rescued by Du Lhut, 308. HIAWATHA inspires the union of Iroquois tribes, 27. HIAWATHA, Poem of, recalled by Radisson's descriptions, 207, 210, 215. HOCHELAGA, Indian name for site of Montreal, 105. HOUSEHOLD life of Indians based on community-idea, 38; very sociable, 40. HOUSES, INDIAN, how built and arranged, 37. HUDSON BAY FUR COMPANY, its organization by whom suggested, 191. HURON-IROQUOIS, a native stock; its tribes, 8. HURON INDIANS, more advanced than Algonquins, 134; Champlain visits their country, 134. IBERVILLE, PIERRE LEMOYNE DE, comes to Louisiana, 280. ILE DES CHATS (Cat Island), why so called, 281. ILLINOIS INDIANS, branch of Algonquin Family, harassed by Iroquois and Sioux, 238, 244 _et seq._ INDIANS, probable origin of, 3; of one blood, 4. IROQUOIS, one of the great divisions of the Indian race, 4; IROQUOIS LEAGUE, 27 _et seq._, why relentless towards Hurons and Eries, 28. "JESUIT RELATIONS," Value of, as historical material, 149. JESUITS, Great activity of, in early history of Canada, 149; their policy to establish missions, 151. JOGUES, FATHER, Jesuit missionary, discovers Lake George, 149; his heroism, 158; his pathetic end, 164. JOLIET, Louis, 171; sent with Father Marquette to explore the Mississippi, 172; their route, 172 _et seq._, meet with friendly Illinois, 177; receive gift of peace-pipe, 178; pass Missouri and Ohio Rivers, 180; in danger, above mouth of Arkansas River, 181; saved by exhibiting peace-pipe, 181; start on return voyage, 182; what they accomplished, 183; Joliet's misfortune, 184; Marquette's death, 184. JOUTEL, a lieutenant of La Salle, in command of fort, 267. KANKAKEE RIVER, route followed by La Salle, 237. KASKASKIA, famous village of the Illinois, visited by Joliet and Marquette, 183. KEOKUK, site of, near place where Joliet and Marquette met friendly Illinois, 179. KEWEENAW POINT, its wealth in copper, 210. KICKAPOOS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. KING, none in North America, 15. "KING PHILIP," Mistake as to, 15. KINGSTON, Ontario, Fort Frontenac near the site of, 228. LA BARRE, successor of Frontenac as Governor of Canada, hostile to La Salle, 257. LA CHINE, how name originated, 226. LAKE CHAMPLAIN discovered by Champlain, 127. LAKE GEORGE, route through, the Indian thoroughfare, 127, note. LAKE NIPISSING, on the Ottawa River route, 133. LAKE PEPIN, for whom called, 301; remains of ancient fortification near, 301, note. LAKE SIMCOE, on route of Hurons to Iroquois country, 135. LAKE SUPERIOR explored by Radisson and Groseillers, 201 _et seq._ LA SALLE, SIEUR DE, early connection with the Jesuits, 225; comes to Canada, 225; goes exploring, 226; becomes a supporter of Frontenac, 227; goes to France and wins the King, 228; in command of Fort Frontenac, 229; his ambition, 229; visits France and procures extraordinary commission, 230; begins his great exploration, 231, builds stronghold at mouth of Niagara River, 232; builds first vessel launched on Upper Lakes, 233; sails on his great enterprise, 234; the "Griffin," 235; goes in canoes down Illinois River, 238; allies himself with the Illinois, 239; builds Fort Crèvecoeur, 240; reaches the Mississippi, 245; starts for the Gulf of Mexico, 250; adventures by the way, 251 _et seq._, reaches the Gulf, 254; bestows the name Louisiana, 254; hardships and hostility on return voyage, 255; goes to France, 257; appears on coast of Texas, 261, his purpose, 262; his difficulties and his dilemma, 263 _et seq._; mistake of his pilots, 264; loss of his vessels, 264, 265; loss of men by sickness and Indians, 266; builds fort at Lavaca, 266; vainly seeks the Mississippi, 266 _et seq._; sets out for Canada, 272; assassinated, 275; what he had achieved, 275; by whom his plan was carried out, 278 _et seq._ LAUDONNIÈRE, RENÉ DE, an officer under Ribaut, 68; goes in command of a second expedition to Florida, 77; seizes Outina, 86; releases him, 87; declines proposal of Hawkins to carry him and his men home, 88; buys a vessel from him, 89; escapes the massacre, 94. LAVACA, Texas, site of La Salle's fort, 266. LE CARON, friar, discoverer of Lake Huron, 133, 149. LE JEUNE, an early French missionary, winter's experience with hunting-party of Algonquins, 150. LENAPE, an Algonquin tribe, 7. LÉRY, BARON DE, an early adventurer, left cattle on Sable Island, 103. LEWIS AND CLARK sent out to explore route to Pacific, 321; winter among Mandans, 321, note. LIPANS, an offshoot of Athapascan stock, 7. LONG HOUSE, THE, Indian name of Iroquois League, 28. LOUISIANA, the name given by La Salle, 254. MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER, discovers Mackenzie River, 318; reaches the Pacific, 320. MANDANS, Indian tribe, first visited by Vérendrye, 317; by Lewis and Clark, 321, note; by George Catlin, 322; his enthusiasm about them, 323; his peculiar theory of their origin, 326; their singular dwellings, 325; story of a Mandan's revenge, 323. MANHATTAN ISLAND first occupied by Dutch as a trading-post, 130, note. MANITOU, Indian for "spirit," 126. MARQUETTE, FATHER, missionary and explorer. _See_ Joliet. MARRIAGE must not be between two persons of same clan, 22. MASCOUTINS, western Algonquins, 174. MASKOKI, a native stock; its tribes and its range, 9. MASSACRE ISLAND (Dauphin Island), why so called, 280. MATAGORDA BAY, Texas, scene of La Salle's landing, 261. MATANZAS INLET, French Huguenots butchered there by Menendez, 95. MAUNDEVILLE, SIR JOHN, story of fountain of immortality, 78, note. MAY, RIVER OF, now called the St. John's, 67. "MEDICINE," in what sense the word used, 138, note. MEMBRÉ, FATHER, accompanies La Salle down the Mississippi, 251, his description of the Arkansas Indians, 251. MENENDEZ, PEDRO, DE AVILES, appointed Spanish Governor of Florida, 83; attacks Ribaut's vessels off the St. John's, 89; founds St. Augustine, 90; surprises Fort Caroline, 92; massacres the garrison, 93, and shipwrecked crews of Ribaut's vessels, 94. MIAMIS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. MICHILLIMACKINAC, trading-post and mission-station, 235. MICMACS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. MILLE LACS, a lake in Minnesota, 301. MILWAUKEE, La Salle near the site of, 236. MISSIONARIES, ROMAN CATHOLIC, unselfish devotion of, 147 _et seq._ MISSISSIPPI RIVER, western boundary of Maskoki group, 9. MISSOURI RIVER, Mouth of, first seen by Joliet and Marquette, 180. MITCHIGAMEAS, a branch of the Maskoki family, 181. MOBILE settled, 283; first capital of Louisiana, 283. MOHAWKS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. MOHEGANS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. MONOPOLY OF FUR-TRADE, evils of, 122. "MONTEZUMA, EMPEROR," Mistake as to, 15. MONTREAL founded by Champlain, 133. MONTS, SIEUR DE, an associate of Champlain, 106. MOQUIS, a tribe of Pueblo Indians, 10. MUSKHOGEES (same as Creeks), a Maskoki tribe, 9. NANTICOKES, an Algonquin tribe, 7. NARRAGANSETTS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. NATCHEZ INDIANS visited by La Salle, 252; described by Father Gravier, 253, note; their subsequent history, 253, note. NAUSETT HARBOR, Champlain's trouble there with Indians, 110. NAVAJOES, an offshoot of Athapascan stock, 7. NEW BISCAY, northern province of Mexico, 262. NEW FRANCE, FATHER OF, title of Samuel de Champlain, 104. NEW ORLEANS founded, 283; early struggles, 285. NIAGARA FALLS described by Father Hennepin, 232. NICOLLET, JEAN, ambassador to Winnebagoes, 169; reaches Wisconsin River, 171. OHIO RIVER, Mouth of, first seen by Joliet and Marquette, 180. ONEIDAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. ONONDAGAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9; in what sense leading tribe, 31. ONONTIO, Indian name for French Governor, 177. ORATORS, Indian, how trained, 33. OTTAWA RIVER, Indian route followed by Champlain, 133. OTTIGNY, a lieutenant under Laudonnière, 77. OUTINA, an Indian chief, dupes the Frenchmen into fighting his battles, 85. PACIFIC, THE, reached by northern route, 320. PASSAMAQUODDIES, an Algonquin tribe, 7. PAWNEES, a native stock; its range, 10. PEORIA, the first habitation of white men in Illinois near the site of, 241. PEQUOTS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. PHRATRY, a group of clans, 23. "PICTURED ROCKS," THE, described by Radisson, 208. PIERRIA, ALBERT DE, left in command of the fort at Port Royal, 71; murdered by his own men, 73. POCAHONTAS, not a princess, 16. PONTGRAVÉ, an associate of Champlain, 105. PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia, settled, 108; abandoned, 115. PORT ROYAL, South Carolina, named by Ribaut, 69. PORT ST. LOUIS, name which Champlain gave to site of Plymouth, 109. PORTAGE, CITY OF, site described by Jonathan Carver, 174, note. POTTAWATTAMIES, a friendly Algonquin tribe, 248. POWHATANS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. PUEBLO INDIANS, THE, a native stock; some of its tribes, 10. QUEBEC (Indian, Kebec, "The Narrows"), founded by Champlain, 123, slow growth of, 142. QUINIPISSAS, Indian tribe above site of New Orleans, attack La Salle, 256. RADISSON, PIERRE ESPRIT, comes to Canada, 191; his adventure and capture, 191; his escape and re-capture, 196, his second escape, 198, why he is not better known, 200; starts for the Upper Lakes, 201; perilous adventures by the way, 201; enters Lake Superior, 206; describes the "Pictured Rocks," 208; builds a fort on Lake Superior, 211; describes a famine, 212; witnesses interesting games, 218; brings to Montreal an enormous canoe-fleet loaded with skins, 221; offers his services to the English King, 221. RIBAUT, CAPTAIN JEAN, his first expedition to America, 67; comes, with large colony, to Fort Caroline, 89; goes with his whole force to attack Menendez, at St. Augustine, 90; is overtaken by hurricane, driven down the coast and wrecked, 91; crews massacred, 91 _et seq._ RIBOURDE, FATHER, murdered, 247. RICHELIEU OR SOREL RIVER, route followed by Champlain, 115. ROBERVAL, SIEUR DE, vainly attempts to colonize Canada, 63. ROCHE, MARQUIS DE LA, story of his disastrous venture, 102. ROCKY MOUNTAINS, THE, western boundary of Dakota-Sioux, 10; discovered, 318. SABLE ISLAND, southeast of Nova Scotia, 102. SACS AND FOXES, Algonquin tribes, 7; slaughter of, 173. SACHEMS, who they were, 31. ST. ANTHONY, FALLS OF, discovered and named, 306. ST. AUGUSTINE founded, 90. ST. CROIX RIVER, Mouth of, place of Champlain's first settlement, 107. ST. JOHN'S BLUFF, site of first fort on the St. John's River, 79. ST. LAWRENCE, Gulf and River, why so named, 57. SAULT STE. MARIE, furthest western post of French missionaries, 45; a missionary's description of, 206, note. SAVANNAH RIVER, southern boundary of Algonquins, 7. SEMINOLES, a Maskoki tribe, 9. SENEGAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA, 69, note. SHAWNEES, an Algonquin tribe, 7. SHOSHONEES, a native stock; its range, 10. SIX NATIONS, THE, what tribes included, 9. STADACONÉ, Indian village, near site of Quebec, 58. "STARVED ROCK," probable site of La Salle's Fort St. Louis, 256. SUSQUEHANNOCKS, a Huron-Iroquois tribe, 9. TADOUSSAC, early post, well situated for fur-trade, 121. TAENSAS INDIANS visited by La Salle, 251; described, 253, note. THIMAGOAS, an Indian tribe in Florida, 80. THREE RIVERS, one of earliest French posts on the St. Lawrence, 191. THWAITES, DR. REUBEN GOLD, authority on colonial history, his judgment as to Radisson, Preface; recites tradition of slaughter of Sacs and Foxes, 173. TONTY, HENRI DE, La Salle's faithful lieutenant, 237; trying experiences in the Illinois country, 245 _et seq._; his efforts to rescue La Salle and his men, 276 _et seq._ TOTEM, a clan-symbol used by Indians, 21. TRENT RIVER, on route of Hurons to Iroquois country, 135. TRIBE, THE, an aggregation based on the family-tie, 23; in some aspects an ideal republic, 36. TUSCARORAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. VASSEUR, a lieutenant under Laudonnière, 80. VÉRENDRYE, PIERRE GAULTIER DE VARENNES DE LA, his early experiences, 314; his efforts to reach the Pacific, 315, establishes a chain of posts, 316; disappointed of reaching the Pacific, 317. VÉRENDRYE, PIERRE DE LA, son of former, discovers the Rocky Mountains, 318. "VERMILION SEA," old name for Gulf of California, 175. VERMILION RIVER, Rock at mouth of, probable site of La Salle's Fort St. Louis, 256. "VIRGINIA SEA," old name for the Atlantic, 175. VOYAGEURS, who they were, their influence, 114. WILD RICE, THE, or MENOMONIE, Indians, an Algonquin branch, welcome Joliet and Marquette, 172. WINNEBAGOES, branch of the Dakotas or Sioux, 170. YAZOOS, Indian tribe, hostile to the French, 253, note. ZUNIS, a tribe of Pueblo Indians, 10. 
63292	----	generously provided by Godfreys Book-shelf at http://www.shipbrook.net/jeff/bookshelf) FAMILIAR DIALOGVES, DIALOGVES FAMILIERS, FAMILIER DEIALOGS FOR for the Instruction pour l'instruction de dé Instruction of them, that be ceux qui sont of dem, dat by desirous to learne to desireux d'apprendre desireus tou lêrne speake English, and à parler Anglois, tou spék Inglish, perfectlye to & parfaitement le and perfetlé tou pronounce the same: prononcer: Mis pronónce dé sêm: Set forth by en lumiere par Set fòrs by Iames Bellot Iaques Bellot Iémes Bellot Gentlemen Gentil'home Gentilman of Caen. Cadomois. of Caen. Imprinted at Imprimé à Londres Imprinted at London by Thomas par Thomas London bei Thamus Vautrollier, Vautrollier, Vautrollier, dwelling in the demourant aux douelling in dé blacke-Friers. Black Friers. black-Freiers. 1586. 1586. 1586 To the most vertuous A tres-vertueux Sr. Tou dé most vertueus Sir, Marke de Bussy Marc de Bussy Escuier Sir, Mark de Bussy Esquier L, of Sr. de Beruille. Ia. Escoué,ier L. of Beruille, I. B. gent. Be. Gent. Cadom. Beruille. I. B. gent of Caen of Caen. health. Salut. health. THe experience hauing L'Experience m'aiant Dé experience hàuyng in the olde tyme iadis appris quel in dé aùld teìm learned vnto me what ennuy apporte à ceux lèrned ontou my houat sorow is for them qui sont reffugiez en soro is for dem dat that be refugiate in païs estranger, quand by refugiat in a a strange countrey, ilz ne peuuent strange contré, houen when they can not entendre le language dè can not onderstand vnderstand the du lieu auquel ilz dé langage of dat language of that sont exilez: & quand plàs in houitch dè by place in whiche they ilz ne peuuent se exeiled: and houen dè be exiled: and when faire entendre aux can not mêk dem tou they can not make habitans de la by onderstoud by them to be vnderstood contrée en laquelle spìtch tou dé by speach to the ilz se sont retirez: inhabiters of dat inhabiters of that i'ay esté (à ceste contré houêrin dê by contrey, wherein they cause) esmeu à reteired: ey hàf be retired: I haue compassion, tellement (dêrfòr) bin mouued bene (therefore) que pour tirer de tou compassion, so moued to compassion, peine, vne infinité dat for tou dràà out so that for to drawe de personnes, que noz of paìn, en infinit out of paine, an persecutions nomber of persons, dé infinite number of dernieres ont fait houitch aour làst persons, the whiche venir en ce païs, persecutions hàf our last persecutions I'ay trouué bon de càsed tou com in dis haue caused to come leur mettre en main contré, ey taùt goud in this contrey, I quelques petis tou pout intou dêr thought good to put dialogues en hands certain chart into their hands Francois, & Anglois, Deialogs in Franch, certeine short ésquelz (pour leur and Inglich, in Dialogues in French, plus ample houitch (for dêr and Englishe in which instruction) I'ay fuller (instruction) (for their fuller escrit l'Anglois, non ey hàf rouitin dé Instruction) I haue seulement selon que Inglish, not ònelé so written the English, les habitans du païs as dé inhabiters of not onely so as the l'Escriuent: Mais dé contré dou rouit inhabiters of the aussi ainsy qu'il it: Bout also, so às countrey do write it: est, & doit estre it is, and must by But also, so as it prononcé: Ce dont ilz pronounced: Houêrof is, and must be seront fais dê chàl by mêd pronounced: Whereof participans souz la partàkers onder dé they shall be made faueur de vostre fàueur of yor partakers vnder the vertueuse pieté à vertueus godlynes, fauour of your laquelle ie les tou dé houitch ey dou vertuous godlynesse, dedie, vous suppliant dedicat dem: to the which I doe les prendre en vostre Bisitching you tou dedicate them: protection. Et quand tàk dem onder yor beseching you to take & quand, de supporter protection: and tou them vnder your de ma temerité, aiant bêr àlso: ouis mey protection: and to osé tant presumer que ràchenes, houitch hàf beare also with my de vous presenter bin so bauld tou rashnesse, whiche ouurage tant rude, & presùm tou present haue bene so bolde to mal raboté: Et ce ontou you a ouorke so presume to present faisant, vous me rùd, and onefiled: vnto you a worke so donnerez occasion non And so, you chàl gife rude, and vnfiled: seulement de vous my occasion, not ònlé and so you shall geue dedier mon perpetuel tou dedicat ontou you me occasion, not seruice: Mais aussi mey perpetuall onely to dedicate de prier Dieu pour seruis: Bout àlso tou vnto you my vostre tres-heureux prê God, for yor mòst perpetuall seruice: accroissement en happy incréés in àl But also to pray God, toute grandeur & heìnes, and estats, for your most happy états auec vraye & ouis trù and encrease in all honorable felicité. honorable felicité. highnesse, and estates, with true, and honorable felicitie. To the faithfull AVX Lecteurs fideles. Tou dé fêtfull Readers. Réders. Health. Salut. Hêls. GEntle Reader, To the BEneuole lecteur, à GEntell Réder, tou dé ende that you stumble fin que vous ne end dat you stumble not about the choppiez en la not abaut dè réding, reading, and lecture, & and onderstending of vnderstanding of intelligence de ces déés littel Deialogs these little dialogues dressez houitch ey mèd for Dialogues whiche I pour vostre yor instructiòn: you made for your instruction, vous chàl mark, dat dòs instruction: you marquerez que les letters must by shall marke that lettres doiuent estre pronònced lòng those letters must be prononcées longues, houitch by noted ouis pronounced long qui sont notées d'vn an accent gràf, è: whiche be noted with accent graue, è: Vous you chàl remember an accent graue, è retiendez aussi, que àlso, dat dé letter, you shall remember la lettre, é, sur é houêropon dé vois also, that the laquelle la voix doit must by lifted op, is letter, é, whervppon estre esleuée, est nòted dus, é, you the voice must be notée ainsy, é: & chàl lèrne àlso, dat lifted vp, is noted mesme vous dé letter, E, houen thus, é, you shal apprendrez, que it must by prononced learne also, that ladite lettre, E, lòng, giuing onto it this letter, E, when quand il la faut dé sond of en, E, it must be pronounced prononcer longue, luy neuter (almost leik long, geuing vnto it donnant la voix d'vn ontou dé bêling of a the sounde of an E, é neutre, presque chip) is nòted dus, ê neuter (almost like semblable au Feinalé, you chàl vnto the baling of a béslement de la remember, dat dòs sheepe) is noted brebis) Est notée diptongs Ay, and Ey, thus, ê: Finally, you ainsy ê: finalement, aùt tou by pronònced shall remember, that vous retiendrez, que lòng, and dé maus those dipthonges, Ay, les dipthongues Ay, hàlf opin, leik dé, and Ey, ought to be et, ey doiuent estre E. neuter dé houitch pronounced long, and prononcées, longues, Deialogs, Ey prê dé the mouth halfe open, & la bouche à demy Christien Réder tou lyke the E. neuter ouuerte, comme le, E. recééf ìuen so the whiche Dialogues, neutre lesquelz acceptable, às dau dê I pray the Christian Dialogues ie prie did com aùt of a mòr Reader, to receaue tous fideles sufficient hand den euen so acceptable, Chrestiens, receuoir mein is, for a tokin as though they did autant acceptables, of dat goud ouil come out of a more que s'ilz partoient houitch ey bêr tou àl sufficient hand then de main plus dem houitch hou lif myne is, for a token suffisante que la in dé fêr of God: hom of that good will mienne, pour vn gage ey prê tou gif vs his which I bare to all de ceste bonne péés. them which do liue in affection que ie the feare of God: porte à tous ceux qui Whom I pray to geue viuent en la crainte vs his peace. de Dieu Auquel ie prie nous donner sa paix. So be it. Ainsi soit il. So be it. The rising in the Le leuer du matin. Dé reising in dé morning màrning. BArbara, Peter, BBarbe, Pierre, BArbara, Pìter, Stephen, Iames. Estienne, Iaques. Stìuin, Iémes. The Father. Le Pere. Dé Fàder. The Mother. La Mere. Dé Moder. Barbara. Barbe. Barbara. How now children, Comment enfans, Haù nau tchildren, will you not rise to voulez vous point ouil you not reis tou day? vous leuer dê? auiourd'huy? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. What ist a clock? Quelle heure est il? Houat ist a clak? Bar. Barbe. Bar. It is seuen a clock. Il est vij heures It is séuin a clak. Stephen. Estiene. Stìuin. I beleue you not. Ie ne vous croy Ey bilìf you not. point? Bar. Barbe. Bar. Why do you not beleue Pourquoy ne me croiez Houey dou you bilìf me? vous point? my? Steuen. Estienne. Stìuin. Because I am yet all Parce que ie suis Bycàs ey am yet àl sleepye and that I am encor' tout endormy slìpé, and dat ey am accustomed to awake stumé de m'esueiller acostuméd tou aouêk alwayes at fiue of tousiours à cinq àl ouês at feif of dé the clocke. heures. clak. Iames Iaques. Iéms. Beleue this bearer: Croiez ce porteur: à Bilìf dis bêrer: hy he is scant well grand peine est-il is scant ouel aouêkt awake at eight of the bien eueillé à huict at êct of dé clak, clocke, how then heures, comment donc haù den could hy by could he be awaket at s'éueuilleroit-il à aouêkt at feìf? fiue? cinq? Barbara. Barbe. Bar. You say true. Vous dites vray You sè tru. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. You will iest. Vous voulez rire. You ouil iest. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Rise quickely: it is Leuez vous tost Il Reis kouiklé: It is tyme to go to est temps d'aller à teim tou goe tou schoole: your maister l'escole Vostre scoùl: yor mêster will ierke you, if maistre vous batra, ouil ierk you, if you you can not say your sy vous ne scauez can not sè your lessons. dire voz lessons. lessons. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Oure maister hath no Nostre Maistre n'a Aour mêster has no roddes. point de verges. rads. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. I will carye him som. Ie luy en porteray. Ey ouil caré him some. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. It is needelesse for Il n'en est ià It is nìdles: for oui we will study well. besoin, car nous ouil studi ouel. estudirons bien. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. Geue me my hosen. Donnez moy mes Gif my mey hosen. chausses. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Which of them? Lesquelles? Houitch of dem? Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. My redd hoses. Mes chausses rouges. My red hoses. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. And to me my blacke Et à moy mes chausses And tou my mey blak ones. noires. ouones. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Bring me my whit Apportez moy mes Bring my mey houeit hoses, and a cleane chausses blanches, & hoses, and a clìn shyrt: Or els, bring vne chemise nette: ou chert: Or els, bring me my graye hoses, my bien m'apportez mes my mey grê hoses, mey greene dwblet and a chausses grises, mon grìn doublet, and a handkercher. pourpoint verd, & vn handkêrtcher. mouchoir. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Holde, here be your Tenez, voi-là voz Haùld, hiér by yor hosen. chausses. hòsin. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Here lacke some Il y faut des Hiér lak som poeints. pointes. esguillettes. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. You played them. Vous les auez iouées. You plêd dem. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. I haue not, they be Non ay, elles sont Ey haf not: dê by broken. rompues. bròkin. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Button your ierkin Boutonnez vostre Botton you ierkin Peter: where be your colet: Pierre Où sont Pìter houêr by yor garters? voz iartieres? guerters? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. I lost them. Ie les aye perdues. Ey làst dem. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. You deserue to be Vous meritez d'estre You desêrf tou by beaten: But you feare batu: mais vous ne béétin: Bout you féér nothing, why doe you craignez rien. Que ne nòting: houey dou you not gyrt you Stephen? vous iartez vous? not guert you? Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. I can not bowe downe. Ie ne me peux Ey can not baù daon. baisser. Barbara. Bar. Bar. Truely you are but a Vrayement vous Trùlé you àr bout a wagge, whiche lookes n'estes qu'vn poste ouag houitch loukes but for the death of qui ne demandez que bout for dé dêts of the day. la mort au iour. dé dê. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Geue me my Baillez moy mes Gif my mey double doublesoulshoes. souliers à double sòòl chous. semelle. Barbara. Bar. Bar. Here be them. Les voila. Hièr by dem. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Where is the showing Où est le Houêr is dé chouing horne? chause-pied? horn? Barbara. Bar. Bar. Take it vpon the Prenez-le sur la Tàk it opon dé tabel. table. table Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. Geue me my pantables, Donnez moy mes Gif me mey pantables, and my pompes: But mulles, & mes and mey pamps: Bout where be my sockes? escarpins: Mais où ouêr by mey sakes? sont mes chaussons? Barbara. Bar. Bar. Here be them, Les voy la. Hiér by dem, Iames, put on your Iaques, mettez vostre Iéms, Pout en yor hatte: make cleane chapeau, nettoyez hat, mêk clìn yor your cap: vostre cêp. Peter, where layde bonnet de nuit. Pìter, houêr lêd yor you your night cap? you neict kêp? Peter. Pier. Pìter. I left it vpon the Ie l'ay laissé sur le Ey left it oppon dé bedde. lict. béd. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Are you ready? Estes-vous prestz? àr you rédy? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. How should I be Comment seroy-ie Haù choùld ey by ready? You brought me prest? vous m'auez redy? you brààt my a a smock, in steade of apporté vne chemise à smok, in stéd of mey my shirt. femme, au lieu de ma shert. chemise. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. I forgat my selfe: Ie me suis oubliée: Ey forgat mey self: holde, here is your Tenez voila vostre haùld, hiér is yor shirt. chemise. shert. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Now you are a good Vous estés maintenant Naù you àr a goud wenche. vne bonne fille. ouentch. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Why doe you not put Que ne vous chaussez Houey dou you not on your showes? you vous? vous allez pout en your choùs? goe alwayes tousiours les you go alouês sleepe-shotte. souliers en slip-chat. pantoufle. Peter. Pierre. Pìter My showes be naught. Mes souliers ne Mey choùs by nààt. vallent rien. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Better is to haue a Il vaut mieux auoir Beter is tou hàf a bad excuse, then not vne mauuaise excuse bad excùs, den not at at all. que point du tout àl. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Now, we be ready: Maintenant, nous Naù, ouy by redy: Gif Geue us our sommes prests: donnez vs aour breakefast, breakefast, that we nous nostre desieuner dat ouy mê go to may goe to schoole. que nous allions à scoùl. l'escole. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Did you say your Auez-vous dit voz Did you sê yor prêrs? prayers? prieres? Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Not yet. Non pas encor' Not yet. Barbara. Bar. It is not well done: Ce n'est pas bien It is not ouel don: Pray God, then you fait. Priez Dieu, Prê God, den you chàl shall haue your puis vous aurez à haf yor brekfast. breakfast. desieuner. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Brother, it is for mon frere c'est à Broder, it is for you you to day to pray vous auiourd'huy à tou dê tou prê GOD: God: and my cosen prier Dieu: Et mon and mey cosin chàl shall pray GOD to cousin priera Dieu prê GOD tou màro: Den morowe: Then, it demain: puis ce sera it shàl by mey torne shalbe my turne to à moy à prier tou prê. pray. Sonneday Dimenche Sondê Monneday Lundy Mondê Twesday Mardy Tùsdê Weddenesday Mecredy Ouednesd Thursday Ieudy Tursdê Friday Vendredy Freidê Sathurday. Samedy. Saterdê. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Kneele downe all. Agenouillez vous Knìl daòn àl. tous. Stephen. Estienne Stìuin Our helpe be in the Nostre aide soit au Aouor help by in dé name of GOD, whiche Nom de Dieu, qui a nêm of GOD, houitch hath made heauen and fait le Ciel & la hàs mêd héuin, and earth. So be it. Terre. Ainsi soit il. yérs. So by it. OVr Father whiche art Nostre Pere qui es és AOuor Fàder houitch in heauen, halowed be Cieux. Ton Nom soit art in héuin, haloued thy name. Thy sanctifié, ton regne by dey nêm, dey kingdoms come. Thy aduienne Ta volunté kingdom com. Dey ouil will be done, in soit faite en la by don, in yêrs, as earth, as it is in terre, comme au ciel. it is in hèuin: Gif heauen. Geue us this Donne nous vs dis dê aouor dêlé day our dayly bread, auiourd'huy nostre bred, and forgif vs and forgeue vs our pain quotidien, & aouor offences, as offences, as we nous pardonne noz ouy forgif dem dat forgeue them that offences, comme nous trespas against vs: trespasse agaynst vs: pardonnons à ceux qui and let vs not by led And let vs not be led nous offencent: Et ne intou temptacion: into temptation: but nous induy point en Bout deleiuer vs from deliuer vs from tentation, mais nous ìuil: For dein is dé euill: For thine is, deliure du malin: Car kingdom, dé pauér, the kingdome, the à toy est le regne, and dé glory for euer power, and the glory la puissance, & la and euer. for euer and euer. gloire és siecles des siecles. Iames. Iaques. Iém. So be it. Ainsi soit il. So by it. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Let vs eate, and Mangeons, buuons Let vs éét, and drinke, recognoissans, que drink, acknòledging acknowledging, that tous biens sont de dat àl goudnes dou all goodnesse doe Dieu venans, Au nom com from God, In dé come from God, In the du Pere & du Filz, & nêm of dé Fàder, and name of the Father, du Saint Esprit. of dé son, and of dé and of the Sonne, and holy gost. of the holy Ghost. Iames. Iaques. Iém. So be it. Ainsi soit-il. So by it. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Now breake your fast, Desieunez maintenant, Naù bréék yor fast, then go aske your puis alléz demander den go ask yor Fàders fathers, and mothers benediction à voz and moders blessing. blessing. parens. Iames. Iaques Iéms. I pray you Father, Ie vous prie mon Ey prê you Fàder, prê pray to GOD to blesse pere, priez Dieu tou GOD tou bles my. me. qu'il me benye. The Father Le pere. Dé Fàder. God blesse you you my Dieu vous benye mon GOD bles you mey son. sonne. filz. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. I pray you mother, Ie vous prie ma Mere Ey prê you moder, gif geue me your donnez moy vostre my yor blessing. blessing. benediction. The Mother. La Mere. Dé Moder. God blesse you all, Dieu vous benye tous God bles you àl mey my children. mes enfans. tchildren. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Go to children. take Or sus enfans prenez Go tou tchildren. tàk your books and gos voz liures, & vous en yor bouks and go you you to schoole: But allez à l'Escolle: tou scoùl: Bout plê play not by the way. mais ne iouez pas en not bey dé ouê. chemin. Go you in peace and Allez en paix, & Go you in péés, and learne well, then you apprenez bien, lors lêrn ouel, den you shalbe called the vous serez appelez chàl by càled dé children of God. enfans de Dieu tchildren of God. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. Where is my booke? Où est mon liure. Houêr is mey bouk? Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Where did you put it? Où l'auez vous mis. Houêr did you pout it? Stephen. Estienne Stìuin. I layde it ysterday Ie le laissay hier Ey lêd it ysterdê vppon the window. sur la fenestre. oppon dè oueindo. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Take it then. Prenez l'y donc. Tàk it den. James. Iaques. Iém. Geue me my paper Donnez moy mon liure. Gif my mey pàper booke. bouk. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Hold, here is your Tenez voy-la vostre Haùld, hiér is yor paper, and your papier & vostre pàper, and yor inkehorne also. Escritoire aussi. ìnkhorne àlso. Iames. Iaques. Iém. There is neither Il n'y à ny plumes ny Dêr is nêder péns, pennes, nor ink. encre. nor ìnk. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. What did you with Qu'en auez vous fait? Houat did you ouis all? àl? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. He lost them, and he Il les à vendues, & à Hé làst dem and hé sold his penneknife. vendu son saùld his penkneif. trencheplume. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Truely, I will tell Vrayment, ie le diray Trùlé, Ey ouil tél it it to your mother. à vostre mere. tou yor moder. Iames. Iaques. Iém. I pray doe not tell Ie vous prie ne luy Ey prê dou not têl her, and I will loue dites point & ie vous hêr, and ey ouil lof you well. aymeray bien. you ouel. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Will ye doe so? Goe Ferez-vous? Allez, ie Ouìll y dou so, Go to, I will not tell ne luy diray point tou, Ey ouil not têl her: hér: Here is a peny to buy Voy-la vn denier pour Hiér is a peny tou you some quilles. vous achetter des bei you som quiles. casses. Iames. Iaques. Iém. I thanke ye, I will Grand-mercy, i'en Ey tànk y, ey ouil buy some as I go to achetteray en allant beì som, as ey go tou schoole. à l'écolle. scoùle. Barbara. Barbe. Bar. Well sayd, Goe in Vous dites bien, Ouel sèd, Go in Gods Gods name. Allez au nom de Dieu. nêm. To the market Au marché. Tou dé market. Ayles, Ralf, Alix, Raphael, êles, Ràlf, Androw, Simon, André, Simon, Andro, Seimon, The Draper, Le Drapier, Dé Dràper, The Poulterer, Le poullailler, Dé Paulterer, The Fishmonger, Le Poissonnier, The butcher, Le Boucher. Dé Boutcher. The Costardmonger. Le Fruitier. Dé Costardmonguer. Ayles. Alix. êles. Is it not tyme to goe Est-il point temps Is it not teìm tou go to the market? d'aller au marché? tou dé market? It is almost ten a Il est pres de dix It is àlmost ten a clocke: heures: clak: Goe I pray, and make Allez ie vous prie & Go ey prê and mêk hast to come agayne. vous hastez de hast tou com again. reuenir. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. I goe by and by: But I'y vay tantost Mais Ey go bey and bey: is it so late as you est-il bien si tard Bout is it so làt às say? que vous dites. you sê? Ayles Alix. êl. Yes truely, Goe Ouy vrayement, Allez Ys trùlé, Go kouiklé. quikely. tost. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. Good morow cosen Bon iour cousin Goud maro cosin Androw. André. Andro. Androw. André. Andro. And to you also cosen Et à vous aussi And tou you àlso Ralf. Cousin Raphael. cosin Ràlf. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. How doe you? Comment vous portez Haù dou you? vous? How is it with you? Comment vous est-il? Haù is it ouis you? Androw. André. And. Well thankes be to Bien Dieu mercy, Ouel tanks by tou God: So so. tellement quellement. God: So so. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. From whence come you? D'où venez vous? From houens com y? Androw. André. And. I come from home. Ie vien du logis. Ey com from hòm. Relf. Raphael. Ràlf. Whether goe you? Où allez-vous? Houéder go you? Androw. André. And. I go to the market. Ie m'en vay au Ey go tou dé market. marché. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. And I also: We shall Et moy aussi: Nous And ey àlso: Ouy chàl goe together, if you yrons ensemble si go tou guéder if you will. vous voulez. ouil. Androw. André. And. I am glad of your Ie suis ioyeux de Ey am glad of yor company: But before vostre compagnie, company: Bout bifòr we goe, it were good Mais auant que d'y ouy go, it ouêr goud to drinke a pinte of aller, il seroit bon tou drink a peint of wine. de boire vne pinte de ouein. vin. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. Whether shall we goe? Où yrons nous? Houéder chàl ouy go? Androw. André At the Byshops head, A la teste de At Bichops hêd, or at or at the Cardinals l'Euesque ou au dé Cardinals hat. hat. chappeau du Cardinal. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. Let vs goe: How Allons: Hau Simon, Let vs go: Haù Symon, shall we haue aurons nous vne pinte Seimon, chàl ouy hàf a pynte of wine well de vin bien tirée. a peint of ouein ouel drawen? drààn? Symon. Symon. Seimon. You be well come: Vous estés les You by ouel com: What wine will you tresbien venuz Quel Houat ouein ouil y drinke? Will you eate vin voulez vous drinke? Ouil y éét any thinke. boire? Voulez vous any tink? manger quelque chose. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf Geue vs of the best Donnez nous du Gif vs of dé best wine you haue: Geue meilleur vin que vous ouein you hàf: Gif vs vs some whitte wine. aiez. Donnez nous du som houeit ouein. vin blanc. Clairet wine. Du vin clairet Claret ouein. Red wine. Du vin rouge Red ouein. Frenche wine. Du vin francois Franch ouein. Gaskyne wine. Du vin de gascoigne. Gaskin ouein. New Renishe wine. Du vin de rin Nù Renich ouein. nouueau. Good sakke. De bon sec Goud Sek. Good Mamesie. De bonne maluoisie Goud Mamesi. Good Muscadene. De bonne muscadelle. Goud Muskadin. New wine. Du vin nouueau Nù ouein. Old wine. Du vin vieil. Aùld ouein. Androw. André. Andro. Bring vs a quart of Apportez nous vne Bring vs a kouart of your best Whitte quarte de vostre vin yor best houeit wine: For it is blanc car il est le oueìn: For it is wholesommer in the plus sain au matin: & haùlsommer in dé morning: and a role vn pain molet & du màrning: and a ròl, and some butter. beurre. and som bouter. Simon. Symon Seimon. You shall haue it: Vous l'aurez. Que You chùl hàf it. Haù How like you this vous semble de ce leik you dis oueìn? wine? vin? Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. I like it very well. Il me semble tres Ey leik it very ouel. bon. Androw. André Andro. This wine is faire Ce vin est beau & Dis oueìn is fêr, and and pure. pur. pùr. Simon. Symon Seimon. To you gosseppe Ralf. A vous compere Tou you gossif Ràlf. Raphael. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. I thanke ye, Ie vous remercye: Ey tànk y, Grammercy, Grammercy, good grand mercy mon bon goud broder. brother. frere. Androw. André Andro. Let vs dispach: Let Depeschons nous: Let vs dispatch: Let vs make hast, to faisons haste de vs mék hast, tou breake our fast. deieuner. bréék aouor fast. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. Pure some wine: Versez du vin. Pouòr som oueìn: Geue me some wine. Donnez moy vn peu de Gif my som oueìm. vin. Androw. André. Andro. The pot is emptie: Le pot est vuide il Dé pot is empté: Dêr There is no more: n'y en a plus. En is no mòr: Chàl ouy Shall we haue an aurons nous encores hàf an oder peint? other pynt? vne pinte. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. No, It is tyme to goe Nenny, il est temps No, It is teìm tou go to the market. d'aller au marché. tou dê market. Androw. André. Andro. When you please. Quand il vous plaira. Houen you pléés. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. How Simon. Hau Simon. Haù Stìuin. Simon. Simon. seimon. Doe you lacke any Vous faut-il quelque Dou you lak any tink? thinke? Doe you call? chose, appellez vous? Dou you càl? Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. What doe we owe? Que deuons nous? Houat dou ouy aù: What haue we to pay? Qu'auons nous à Houat hàf ouy tou pê? paier? What must you haue? Que vous faut il? Houat must you hàf? Let vs haue a Ayons vn conte: Let vs hàf a rékning: reakening: What is to pay? Qu'y à-il à payer? Houat is tou pê? Simon. Symon. Seimon. You haue to pay: you Vous auez à payer, You hàf tou pê. you owe, eight pence, and vous deuez viij aù, êct pens: and you you be well come. deniers & vous estes by ouel com. les bien venuz. Androw. André. Andro. Hold you money, Fare Tenez vostre argent à Haùld yor monné: Fare you well gossippe. Dieu compere. y ouel gossippe. Simon. Symon. Seimon. GOD be wy my frendes A Dieu mes amis à God bouei mey frinds: at your vostre commandement. At yor commundement. commaundement. Androw. André. Andro. Now let vs goe to the Maintenant allons au Naù let vs go tou dé market. marché market. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. Let vs go. Allons. Let vs go. The Poulter. Le poulailler. Dé Paulter. What doe you buye? Qu'achettez vous? Houat dou you beì? What doe you lacke? Que vous faut il? Houat dou you lak? Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. Showe me a coupell of Monstrez moy vne Chaù my a couple of good, and fatte couple de bons & gras goud, and fat rabits. rabettes. lapins. A fat Capon. Vn chapon gras. A fat kêpon. A good henne. Vne bonne poule. A goud hén. A fatte goose. Vne oye grasse. A fat goùs. A good goseling Vn bon oison A goud gaseling A dosen of larkes. Vne douzaine A dozéine of larks. d'allouettes. A stoke doue. Vn ramier. A stok douf. A Hayre. Vn lieure. A hêr. A mallart. Vn canard. A malart. A ducke. Vne cane. A douk. A drake. Vne cerceule A drêke. A crane. Vne grue A crêne. Vn moyneau } A sparrow. Vn passereau } A sparo. Vn moisou } A woodcoke. Vn videcoq A Oùdcok. A swanne. Vn cyne A souan. A blackbirde. Vn estourneau A blakbêrd. A Parret. vn perroquet A parret. The poult. Le poul. Dé Paul. Here be them, that be En voila qui sont Hiér by dem, dat be very good and fat. fort bons & gras. very goud and fat. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. They be very stale. Ilz sont vieux tuez. Dê by very stêl. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. Truely, they be very Veritablement ilz Trùlé dê by very nù. new. sont bien fraiz. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. How sell you them? Que les vendez vous? Haù sêl you dem? How much? Combien? Haù mutch? The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. Ten pence the couple. Dix deniers le Ten pens dé couple. couple. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. It is to much, C'est trop, It is tou mutch, you are to, deare, Vous estes trop cher. you àr tou, diéér. They be not worth so Ilz ne vallent pas Dê by not ouors so much. tant mutch. They be worth but a Ilz ne vallent qu'vn Dê by ouors bout a grote. gros. gràt. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. They be not mine for Ie ne les ay point Dê by not meìn for that price. They pour le pris. Ilz me dat preis, dê cost my coast me more. coustent d'auantage. mòr. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. Tell me your lowest Dites moy vostre Tel my yor lauest word. dernier mot ouord. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. Are you willing to Voulez vous acheter àr you ouilling tou buye? be? Ràlf. Yes, if you will, be Ouy si vous voulez, Ys, if you ouil, by reasonable. estre raisonnable. rêsonnabel. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. At one word: you A vn mot vous en At ouen ouord: you shall pay two grotes paierez deux gros. chàl pê tou gràtes for them. for dem. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. I will pay but six Ie n'en paieray que Ey ouil pê bout six pence for. six deniers pens for. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. I may not sell them Ie ne les peux vendre Ey mê not sel dem so. so. ainsi. Ralf. Raphael. Ràlf. Fare you well then. A Dieu donc. Far ouel den. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. Here ye Syr: Cast Escoutez Sire: mettez Hiér y Ser: Cast th'other penye. l'autre denier. toder peny. Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. I will pay no no more Ie n'en paieray non Eil pê no mòr for. for. plus. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. You are a very hard Vous estes vn homme You àr a very hard man: Well, you shall fort dur: Bien vous man: Ouel, you chàl haue them: les aurez. hàf dem: I sell this day. Ie vens auiourd'huy Ey sell dis dê Robin Robin-hoodes peners: au prix de houds peners: Chàl ey Shall I fleae them? Robin-hout. Les fléé dem? escorcheray ie? Ralf. Raph. Ràlf. Yea, here is your Ouy voila vostre Yé, hiér is yor money. argent. monné. God be wy Ser. A Dieu Sire. God bouey Ser. The Poul. Le poul. Dé Paul. Well come Ser, at Bien venu Monsieur à Ouel com Ser, at yor your commaundement. vostre commandement. commaundement. The Costerdmonger. Le fruitier Dê Costardmonger. BVuy you any apples? Acheté vous des BEy y any aples? pommes. Who buye of my Qui achette mes Hoù beì of mey aples? apples. pommes. Ayles Alix. êles. How many for a peny? Combien pour vn Haù many for a peny? denier? How sell you the Qu'en vendez vous le Haù sell y dé hundreth? Cent? hondred? The Cost. Le fruitier. Dé Cost. I sell them, twelfe a Ie les vends douze au Ey sell dem, touelf a peny. denier. peny. You shall pay two Vous en paierez deux You chàl pê tou shillings for the soulz du cent. chelings for dé hundreth. hondred. Ayles. Alix. êl. Haue you any Pepines. Auez vous des pommes Hàf you any pepins. de renette. The Cost. Le fruit. The Cost. The fayrest in Les plus belles de Dé fêrest in London. London. Londres. Ayles. Alix. êl. Shal I haue thirtie En auray-ie Trente au Chàl ey hàf serty for for a peny? denier? a peny? Or els, you shall Ou bien vous aurez vn Or els, you chàl hàf haue a shilling for soulz pour le cent de a chilling for dé the hundreth of your voz pommes de hundred of yor pepines. renette. pepins. The Cost. Le fruit. Dé Cost. Here ye, fayre mayde: Escoutez belle fille, Hiér y, fêr mêd, Ouil Will you haue them les voulez vous auoir y hàf, dem for twenty for twenty pence the pour vingt deniers le pens dé hundred? hundreth. Cent. Ayles. Alix. êl. I am at one word. Ie suis à vn mot Ey am at ouon ouord. The Cost. Le fruit. Dé Cost. Go to, you shall haue Or sus vous les aurez Go tou, you chàl hàf them: dem. Where will you haue Où les mettrez vous? Houêr ouil y hàf dem. them. Ayles. Alix. êl. Put them in myne Mettez les en mon Pout dem in mein apurne. deuanteau. êpurne. The Cost. Le fruit. Dé Cost. One, Two, Vne, Deux, Ouon, Tou, Three, Foure, Trois, Quatre, Trij, Faòr, Fiue, Sixe, Cinq, Six, Feìf, Six, Seuen, Eight, Sept, Huit, Seuin, êct, Nyne, Ten, Neuf, Dix, Nein, Ten, Eleuen, Twelfe, Onze, Douze, Aleuin, Touelf, Thirten. Treize, Tertin. Foureten. Quatorze, Fòrtin. Fiften. Quinze. Fiftin. Sixten. Saize. Sixtin. Seuenten. Dixsept. Seuentin. Eighten. Dixhuit. êcttin. Ninten. Dixneuf. Neintin. Twenty. Vint. Touenty. One and twenty. vint & vn. Ouon and touenty. Two and twenty. vint & deux. Tou and touenty. Three and twenty. vint & trois. Trìj and touenty. Foure and twenty. vint & quatre. Faòr and touenty. Fiue and twenty. vint & vinq. Feif and touenty. And here be foure, Et en voyla quatre, And hiér by faòr, whiche makes fiue qui font Cinq vints, houitch mêkes feif score and foure. & quatre. scòr, and faòr. Ayles. Alix. êl. You shall geue me one Vous m'en donnerez You chàl gif my ouon aboue. vne par dessus. abauf. The Cost. Le fruit. Dé Cost. Hold, here is, for Tenez, voyla pour Hauld, hiér is for you: vous: you: As you shall finde Comme vous les As you chàl feìnd them, come agayne. trouuerez reuenez. dem, com again. Ailes. Alix. êl. So I will. Ainsi feray-ie So ey ouil. The Draper. Le Drapier. Dé Drap. What lacke ye? Que vous defaut-il? Houat lak y? What doe ye buy. Qu'achattez vous. Houat dou y beìj? What will you haue. Que voulez vous Houat ouil you hàf, auoir. What will you buy. Que voullez vous Houat ouil you beìj. acchetter? What please you to Que vous plaist il Houat pléés you tou buy. acheter. beìj. What please you to Que vous plaist il Houat pléés you hàf. haue. auoir. What seeke y. Que cerchez vous. Houat sìjk y. Will you haue any Voullez vous auoir du Ouil y hàf any clàs. cloth. drap? Come in, I will show Entrez, ie vous en Com in, ey ouil chaù you some. monstreray. you som. Come hether Ser. Venez ça Monsieur, Com heder Ser. Come in, you shall Entrez, vous aurez Com in, you chàl hàf haue good cheape. bon marché. goud tchéép. See if I haue any Regardez si i'ay Sìj if ey hàf any thing that likes you. quelque chose qui ting dat leiks you. vous duise: I will vse you well. Ie vous feray bon Ey ouil ùs you oueil. marché. You shall finde me as Vous me trouuerez You chàl feind my as reasonable, or more, autant, ou plus rêsonable, or mòr as as any other, raisonable qu'vn any oder, autre, you shall see good vous voirrez de bonne you chàl sij goud wares. marchandise. ouêrs. Come in, if you Entrez, s'il vous Com in, if you pléés. please. plaist. Androw. André. Andro. God be here. Dieu soit ceans. God by hiér. The Drap. Le Drapier. Dé Drap. Well come Ser. Bien venu Monsieur. Ouel com Ser. Androw. André. Andro. Haue you any good Auez vous de bon drap Hàf you any goud bràd broade cloth. large. clàs. Haue you any fine Auez vous du Carisie Hàf you any feìn Caresie. bien fin. kêrsi. Haue you any Caresie Auez vous du creseau Hàf you any kêrsi Flanders deye. tainture de Flandres. Flanders deìj. Haue you any Cottun. Auez vous du rouleau. Hàf you any Cotton. Any Fryse. De la frise. Any freìs. Any rugette. De la reuesche. Any rouguet. Any stamell. De l'Estamet. Any Stamél. Any frisadoe. De la frisade. Any freisàdo. Any sardge. De la sarge. Any sêrge. Any skarlatte. De l'Escarlate. Any skêrlét. Any veluet. Du veloux. Any vêluet. Any granadoe silke. De la soye de Any grenàdo silk. Grenade. Any Spanishe silke. De la soye Any Spanich silk. d'Espaigne. Any satten. Du satin. Any saten. Any damaske. Du damas. Any Damask. Any taffettey. Du taffetas. Any tafeté. Any sarsenet. Du tierselin. Any sarsenet. Any grosgrayne. Du gros-grain. Any gròsgrain. Any chamelet. Du camelot. Any tchamelet. Any worstede. De l'Ostade. Any ouorsted. Any mokadoe. De la Moucade. Any mokado. Any braunched veluet. Du veloux figuré. Any branchd veluet. Any tuffte taffetey. Du taffetas Any touft tafeté. mouchetté. Any Welshe plaine. Du demy drap. Any ouêltch plêin. Any fustiane. De la futaine. Any fustian. Any buckeren. Du bou-gueren. Any boukeren. Any sacke cloth. Du droguet. Any sak clàs. Any holland. De la hollande. Any holland. Any trype veluet. De la tripe de Any treìp vêluet. veloux. Any tuffte veluet. Du veloux moucheté. Any touft vêluet. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. What collour will ye De quelle couleur Houat coleur ouil y haue. voulez vous auoir. hàf. Androw. André. Andro. What collour haue ye. De quelle couleur Houat couleur hàf y. auez vous. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. I haue fayre whitte. I'ay de beau blanc. Ey hàf fêr houeit. Blacke. Du noir Blak. Gray. Du gris. Grê. Fayre French taney. De beau tanay de Fêr Franch tàné. France. Violet. Du violet. Veielet. Greene. Du verd. Griin. Mingled collour. De la couleur meslée. Mingled couleur. Sheepes collour. De la couleur de Chips couleur. brebis. yallow. Du iaulne. yêlo. Blue. Du bleu. Blùù. Orenge collour. De l'orengé. Oringe couleur. Fayre straw collour. De belle couleur de Fére stràà couleur. foirre. Fayre purple collour. De belle couleur de Fêr purple, couleur. pourpre. I haue of all I'en ay de toutes Ey hàf of àl coleurs, collours, and of all couleurs, & à tous and of àl preices. prices. prix. Androw. André. Andro. Showe me some fayre Monstrez moy de beau Chaù my som fêr dark darke greene if you verd-brun si vous en grijn if you hàf any. haue any. auez. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. yea forsoth, I haue Ouy Monsieur, i'en yés farsoùs, ey hàf that which is very aye de fort beau & dat houitch is very fayre, and good. bon. fêr, and goud. There is no better in Il n'y en a point de Dêr is no better in this towne. meilleur en ceste dis tòn. ville. It is of good syse. Il est de bonne It is of goud seìs. laise. Vew it well. voiez le bien Veùù it ouel. Did you euer see En veites vous iamais Did you euer sij better. de meilleur? better. Androw. André. Andro. I haue sene better, I'en ay veu de Ey hàf sijn beter, and worse also. meilleur & de pire and ouors àlso. aussi. Haue you any better. En auez vous point de Hàf you any beter. meilleur. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. yes marye: But it is Sy ay bien mais il ys màry: Bout it is of more higher price. est de plus haut of mòr heier preis. prix. Androw. André. And. Let me haue the sight Monstrez le moy Let my hàf dé seit of of it. it. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. Here is of the best Voi-là du meilleur Hier is of dé best you did euer see. que vous veites dat you did euer sij. onques. Andro. André. And. It is good in did: Il est bon vrayement: It is goud in did: But showe me of the Mais monstrez moy du Bout chaù my of dé very best that you tres meilleur que very best dat you haue. vous aiez. hàf. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. It shalbe done. Hold, Il sera fait, tenez It chàl be don. here is of the best voyla du meilleur que Haùld, hiér is of dé that I haue. i'aye. best dat ey hàf. Androw. André. And. If you haue no Sy vous n'en auez de If you hàf no beter, better, you haue meilleur, vous n'auez you hàf nòting for nothing for me. rien pour moy. my. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. What say you to this Que dites vous de Houat sê you tou dis same. cestuy-cy? sêm. Androw. André. Andro. It is indifferent. Il est indifferent, It is indifferent. So, So. tellement quellement. So, so. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. I haue no better. Ie n'en ay point de Ey hàf no beter. meilleur. The collour is sure. La couleur en est Dé couleur is sùr. seure, It is in grayne. Il est taint en Dé couleur is in graine gràin. It will not stayne. Il ne d'eschargera It ouìl not stêin. point. And. André. And. How sell you the yard Combien en vendez Haù sell you dé yêrd of it? vous la verge. of it? How do you sell the Qu'en vendez vous la Haù dou you sel dé yard. verge. yêrd. How is it the yard. Combien la verge. Haù is it dé yêrd. What shall coast me Que m'en coustera Houat chàl còst my dé the elle? l'aune. êl. What shall I pay for Qu'en payeray ie de Houat chàl ey pê for the yard. la verge. dé yêrd. What shall I geue for Qu'en donneray ie de Houat chàl ey gif for the elle. l'aune. dé êl. What is worth the Que vault la verge de Houat is ouors dé yarde of this cloth. ce drap. yêrd of dis clàs. The Drap. Le Drap. Dé Drap. At one word, I would A vn mot ie le At ouon ouord, ey sell it fayne: for voudrois vendre douze ouold sel it fêin, twelue shillinges and solz huit deniers la for twelue chelins eight pence the yard. verge. and êct pens de yêrd. I sell it for fiften Ie le vends, quinze Ey sel it for fiftin shillings the yard. solz la verge. chelins dé yêrd. It shall caost you Il vous coustera It chàl còst you sixtene shillings, saize souds six sixtin chelins, and and sixe pence the deniers l'aune, six pens dé êl. elle. you shall pay a marke Vous en payrez vn You chàl pê à mark for the yarde of the marke de la verge. for dé yêrd, of dé same. sêm. it is well worth Il vaut bien onze It is ouel ouors eleuen shillings the souds la verge. aleuin chelins dé yard. yêrd. you shall geue me Vous m'en donnerez You chàl gif my twenty shillinges for vint souds de la touenty chelins for the yard. verge. dé yêrd. Androw. André. Andro. It is to much. C'Est trop. It is tou much. you are to deare. Vous estes trop cher. You àr tou dièr. you hold your wares Vous tenez vostre you haùld yor ouêrs, to high. denrée trop haut. tou heij. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. What is it worth of Que vaut-il de vostre Houat is it ouors of your money. argent. yor monné. Androw. André. Andro. I will geue nine I'en donneray neuf Ey ouil gif nein shillings for the souds de la verge. chelins for dé yêrd. yard. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. you offer me not that Vous ne m'en offrez You òffer my not dat it caost me. point ce qu'il me it còst my. couste. What will you geue. Qu'en baillerez vous. Houat ouil you gif. What will ye geue Qu'en voulez-vous Houat ouil y gif for. for. bailler. Tell me a good word, Dittes moy vn bon mot Tel my a goud ouord, that I may sell. à fin que ie vende. dat ey mê sêll. Androw. André. Andro. I will geue ten I'en bailleray dix Ey ouil gif ten shillinges sixe pence soudz six deniers de chelins six pens for for the yard. la verge. dé yêrd. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. I can not sell it for Ie ne le peux vendre Ey can not sêl it fòr that price. à ce prix dat preis. you offer me to much vous m'offrez trop de you òfer my tou mutch lost. perte. làst. Androw. André. Andro. Shall I haue it for L'auray-ie pour Chàl ey hàf it for foureten shillinges. quatorze souds. fòrtin chelins. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. No truely. Non certes. Nò trùlé. I should be a loser I'y serois perdant Il Ey choùld by a lòser by, it caost me more. me couste d'auantage. bey, it còst my mòr. It is better worth. Il vaut d'auantage. It is beter ouors. Androw. And. Andro. It is worth no more. C'est ce qu'il vaut. It is ouors no mòr. Will ye take sixten En voulez vous Ouil y tàk sixtin, shillinges for the prendre saize souds chelins for dé yêrd. yard. de la verge. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. It caost me more then Il me couste plus que It còst my mòr den you offer me. vous ne m'Offrez. you òffer my. Androw. And. Andro. You shall not sell it Vous ne le vendrez you chàl not sel it at your owne word. pas tout à vostre at yor ouòn ouord. mot. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. I could sell it for Ie ne le sçaurois Ey caùld sel it for no lesse. vendre à moins: no les. But bycause I am Mais par ce que ie Bout bycàs ey am desirous to sell: I desire de vendre Ie desireus tou sel: Eyl will bate out a rabattray vn soud de bét aut a chelin of shilling of my price. mon prix mey preis. Androw. And. Andro. At one word, I will A vn mot ie n'en At ouón ourd, ey ouil geue but seuenten donneray que dix-sept gif bout seuentin shillinges for. souds. chelins for. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. It is not mine for Il n'est pas mien à It is not mein for that price. ce prix, toutesfois dat preis: Neuerthelesse, you vous l'aurez. Neuerdéles, you chàl shal haue it. hàf it. Haw much will ye haue Combien en voullez Haù mutch ouil y hàf of it. vous. of it. Androw. And. Andro. I must haue three Il m'en faut trois Ey must hàf trij êls elles and a half. aulnes & demye and a hàlf. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. You shall haue what Vous aurez ce qu'il You chàl hàf houat you please. vous plaira. you pléés. One. Empreud. Ouon. Two. Deux. Toù. Three, and a halfe Trois & demye à bonne Trij, and a hàlf goud good measure. mesure. mésur. Androw. And. Andro. Make good measure I Faites bonne mesure Mêk goud mésur ey pray. ie vous prie. prê. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. Measure it your selfe Mesurez-le vous mesme Mésur it yor self if if you please. s'il vous plaist. you pléés. Androw. And. Andro. It is needelesse, I Il n'en est point de It is nijdles, Ey would trust you in besoin. Ie me fierois ouòld trust you in a greater matter. à vous en plus grande gréter mater. chose. How much must you Combien vous faut il Haù mutch must you haue in all. pour le tout. hàf in àl. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. Three elles, and a Les trois aulnes & Dé trij êls, and a halfe, come to foure demye font quatre hàlf, com tou faòr yardes, and two third verges deux tiers, yêrds, and toù têrd partes of the yard: ainsi à dixsept souds parts of dé yêrd: So So at seuenten la verge, le tout at seuintin chelins shillinges the yard, vaut trois liures dé yerd, dé haòl, the whole, comes to dixneuf souds quatre coms tou trij paund three pound nineten deniers. neintin chelins and shilinges and foure faòr pens. pence. Androw. André. Andro. You say true: Vous dites vray You sê tru: Here is your money. Voila vostre argent. Hiér is yor monné. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. God geue me a good Dieu me doint bonne God gif my a goud handsell, étrene. handsél, I do buy your I'achette vostre ey dou beì yor custome: challandise costum: I hope that you shall I'Espere que vous me Ey hòp dat you chàl bare me good lucke, porterez bon heur, et bêr my goud lok: and and that I shall haue que i'auray dat ey chàl hàf mòr more of your money. d'auantage de vostre of yor monné. argent. Androw. André. Andro. Dout not of is: Fare N'en doutez point à Daut not of it: Far ye well Syr. Dieu Sire. ouel Syr. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. God be wy Syr, at A Dieu Monsieur à God bouey Ser, at yor your commaundement. vostre commandement. commaundement. Androw. And. Andro. But I pray Syr. Mais ie vous prie Bout ey prê you Ser. Sire. Could you not mache Sçauriez vous Coùld you not match this collour? assortir ceste dis colleur. couleur. The Drap. Le drap. Dé Drap. yes forsoth, I can: Ouy Monsieur, Ie le Ye fersoùs, Ey can: peux: We must see: Il faut voir, Ouy must sij: Let me see: Here is Que ie voye, Voila du Let my sij, Hiér is the nearest that I plus sortable que dé nierest dat ey haue. i'ay. hàf. Androw. And. Andro. This like me not. Cestuy-cy ne me Dis leik my not. rauient point. The Drap. Le dra Dé Drap. I haue none other. Ie n'en ay point Ey hàf non oder. d'autre. Androw. And. ANdro. Fare ye well then. A Dieu donc. Far ouel den. The Fishmonger. Le poissonnier. Dé Fichmonguer. What doe you lake. Dequoy auez-vous Houat dy lak. affaire? Ra. Ra. Ra. What fishe haue you. Quel poisson auez Houat fich hàf you. vous. The Fish. Le Pois. Dé Fich. I haue good salt I'ay de bon poisson Ey hàf goud sàlt fish. salé. fich. Soles Des soles. Sòòls. A good plaise. Vne bonne plis. A goud plês. Viuers. Des viures. Veiuers. Rotches, or Des rouges. Rotches, or Gornettes. Gornettes. Whittinges. Des merlenc. Houeittings. Waisters. Des huistres. Ouêsters. Thurnebacke. De la Raye. Tornebak. Smeltes. De l'eperlenc. Smelts. Redde hering. Du hareng sor. Red hering. Whitte hering. Du hareng blanc. Houeit hering. Shrimpes. De la creuette. Cherimps. A loupster. Vn hommar. A laùpster. Crabbes. Des escreuices. Cràbs. A picke. Vn brochet. A pik. A pickerell. Vn brocheton. A pikerel. A millers thumbe. Vn gouion. A milers tombe. A saumond. Vn saumond. A Sàmon. A lamproye. Vne lamproye. A làmproê. Elles. Des anguilles. Iìles. A dorey. Vne dorée. A doré. A makerell. Vn maquereau. A makrél. A trouette. Vne trouite. A traut. Smal lamproyes. Des lamprions. Smàl làmproês. Moskels. Des mousles. Mouscles. Cockelles. Des coques. Cocles. A tenche. Vne tenche. A tentch. A carpe. Vne carpe. A kêrp. Kempes. Des pimperneaux. Kémps. A whale. Vne ballaine. A Houàl. And of sondry other Et de plusieurs And of sondré òder fishes. autres poissons. fiches. Ra. Ra. Ra. What shall I pay for Que payeray-ie pour Houat chàl ey pê for a quarteron of vn quarteron a kouartern of waisters, for this d'huistres, pour ce ouêsters: for dis side of salt fish. costé de poisson seìd of sàlt fich. salé, For this Thurnbacke, Pour cette raye & For dis tornbac, and and for half a pour demy cent for hàlf a hondred of hundreth of smelts. d'Eperlenc. smelts. The Fish. Le Poisson. Dé Fich. Will you haue but one Ne voulez vous auoir Ouil you hàf bout word. qu'vn mot. ouon ouord Ra. Ra. Ra. No. Non. Nò. The Fish. Le poiss. Dé Fich. you shall paye eight Vous en paierez huit you chàl pê êèct grotes for. gros. grates for. Ra. Ra. Ra. I shall not: I will Non feray, ie n'en Ey chàl not: Eyl pê pay, but fiue grotes paieray que cinq bout feif gràtes for. for. gros. The Fish. Le poiss. Dé Fich. you come not to buy. vous ne venez point you com not tou beì. pour acheter. Ra. Ra. Ra. But I doe: But you Sy fais, mais vous Bout ey dou: Bout you will sell your waeres voulez vendre vostre ouil sel yor ouérs to deare. denrée trop chere. tou diér. Will you take money. Voulez vous prendre Ouil y tàk mey monné. mon argent. The Fish. Le poiss. Dé Fich. yes, with other: Ouy, auec d'autre: yé, ouis oder: A word wye Syr. vn mot auec vous A ourd ouéy: Sèr. Sire. I will buy your I'acheteray vostre Ey ouil beì yor custume. chalandise. costum. Take all for two Prenez le tout pour Tàk àl for tou shillinges. deux solz. chelins. Ra. Ra. Ra. I will pay no more Ie n'en payeray non Eyl pê no mor for. for. plus. The Fish. Le Poiss. Dé Fich. I should be a looser I'y perdrois: Iettez Ey choùld by a louser by: Cast th'other two les autres deux by: Cast toder tou pence. deniers. pens. Ra Ra. Ra. I can not. Ie ne peux. Ey can not. The Fish. Le Poiss. Dé Fich. Take it in Gods name. Prenez le au nom de Tàk it in Gods nêm. Dieu. Ra. Ra. Ra. Hold here is your Tenez, voy-la vostre Haùld, hiér is yor monney. payement. monné. Fare you well. A Dieu. Far y ouel. The Butcher Le Boucher Dé Boutcher. What doe you buy? Qu'achetez vous. Houat dy beì. Come hether Syr. Venez ça Monsieur. Com heder Sér. What will you haue? Que voulez vous Houat ouil y hàf. auoir. What lake you? Dequoy auez vous Houat lak y. affaire. Simon. Simon. Seimon. A fatte shippes Vne chair de mouton A fat chips flech flesh. gras. A side of porke. Vn costé de pourceau. A seìd of pork. This breast of beefe. C'este poitrine de Dis brést of bif. beuf. A quarter of vealle. Vn quartier de veau. A kouarter of of véél. A nettes toung. Vne langue de beuf. a nets tòng. This roumpe of beefe. C'este queu de beuf. Dis ròmp of bif. A calfes plucke. Vne couroy de veau. a calfs pluk. Calfes feete. Des pieds de veau. Càlfes fit. Sheepes feete. Des pieds de mouton. Chips fit. A sheepes head. Vne teste de mouton. a chips hed. A sheepe gather. vne couroye de a chips gàder. mouton. A calfes leagge. vne iambe de veau. a càlfs lég. A shoulder of motton. vne espaule de a choùlder of mouton. moutton. A loygne of veale. vne longe de veau. a loueìn of véél. A quarter of lambe. vn quartier d'agneau. a kouarter of làmb. The butch. Le bou. Dé bout. I haue the beast I'ay la meilleure Ey hàf de best mét in meate in this towne viande de c'este dis tòòn, and dé and the fatest. ville, & la plus fatest. grasse. Choose. Choisissez. Tchoùs. Simon. Simon. Seimon. How sell you the Que vendez vous le Haù sèl y dé ouèct of waight of this beef. poids de ce beuf. dis bif. The bu. Le bou. Dé bout. Foureten pence the Quatorze deniers le Fortin pens dé ouèct, waight if you will. poids, si vous if you ouil. voulez. Simon. Symon. Seimon. I will pay for it I'en paieray douze Eil pê for it touelf twelfe pence at a deniers à vn mot. pens at a ouord. word. The butch. Le bou. Dé bout. You must come higher: Il vous faut monter You must com heier: plus haut For my wares is not Car ma marchandise For mey ouêr is not leane: See in an n'est point maigre: léén: Sìi in an oder other place, and if voiez en vn autre plàs, and if you dou you doe finde, fatter lieu & si vous feind, fater flech flesh then myne you trouuez de la chair den meìn, you chàl shall haue it at your plus grasse que la hàf it at yor preis. price. mienne vous l'aurez à vostre prix. Simon. Simon. Seimon. I am a man one at Ie suis homme à vn Ey am a man at ouon word. mot. ouord. The Butch. Le bou. Dé Bout. Take the wares Prenez la marchandise Tàk dé ouêr ouis aut without money, and as sans argent, & comme monné, and as you you shall finde it, vous la trouuerez chàl feind it, you you shall pay me for. vous paierez. chàl pê my for. Simon. Symon. Seimon. I thanke you: Take my Ie vous remercye, Ey tànk y: Tàk mey money if you may. prenez mon argent si monné if you mê. vous pouuez. The Butch. Le bou. Dé Bout. You shall haue it, vous l'aurez pour You chàl hàf it, for for the old l'amour de la vielle dé auld ackouintàns acquaintance sake: accointance: sêk: Will you haue all the vouléz vous auoir Ouil y hàf àl dé whole side. tout le costé. haùld seìd? Simon. Simon. Seimon. Yes, what doth it Ouy, combien est-ce Eys, houat dous it waight? qu'il poise? ouèèct? The Butch. le bou. Dé Bout. It waightes, fiue Il poise, Cinq poids, It ouèèctes, toù waightes, tho deux liures & demye à paonds, and a hàlf, poundes, and a halfe bon poidz. goud ouèèct. good waight. Simon. Symon. Seimon. Hold, here is fiue Tenez, voy-la cinq Haùld, hiér is fef shillinges and foure soulz quatre deniers, chelins and fòr pens. pence I pray GOD to graunt Ie prye Dieu qu'il Ey prê God tou grànt you a good market. vous doint vn bon you a goud market. marché. The Butch. Le bou. Dé Bout. Fare you well brother A Dieu mon frere Far y ouel broder Simon. Symon. Seimon. At your à vostre At yor commaundement. commaundement. commandement. At the table. A la Table. At dé tabel. THe maister. LE maistre. Dé mêster. The Mistresse. La Maistresse. Dé mistres. The neighbour. Le voisin. Dé nêbeur. The schoolemaister. Le maistre d'Escole. Dé scoùlmêster. The sonne. Le filz. Dé son. The daughter. La fille, Dé dààter. The man seruaunt. Le seruiteur. Dé man seruant. The mayde seruaunt. La seruante. Dé mêd seruant. The Maister. Le maistre. Dé mêster. Dicke. Richard. Dik. Richard. Richard. Rithard. Anone forsoth. What Tantost pour vray: Anen for sòùs. Houat is your pleasure. Quel est vostre is yor plêsur? plaisir? The Maist. Le mais. Dé mêst. Goe tell my neighbour va dire à mon voisin Go tel mey nêèbeur roper, that I pray le cordier que ie le roper, dat ey prê him him to come to morow prie de venir demain tou com tou màro tou to dine with me: And disner auec moy, & deìn ouis my: and from thence. Go thou de-là, t'en va prier from dèns, Gò dau desire my sonnes le Maistre d'escole deseìr mey sons scoùl schoolemaister, to de mon filz de nous mêster, tou bêr vs beare vs compaignie. faire compagnye. company. Richard. Rich. Ri. Well Syr. Bien Monsieur. Ouel Sér. Good euen maister Bon soir Monsieur le Goud ìuin mêster roper. cordier. Ròper. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé néèb. Good euen my frend. Bon soir mon amy. Goud ìuin mey frìnd. Rich. Richard. Ri. My maister deisireth Mon maistre vous prie Mey mêster deseires you to beare him de luy faire you to bêr him company to morow at compagnie, demain à company tou màro at dyner. disner. diner. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nèèb. How doth your Comment se portent Haù dous yor mèster, maister, and your vostre maistre, & and yor méstris? mistresse. vostre maitresse. Rich. Ric. Ri. They be in good Ilz sont en bonne Dê by in goud hels, health, thankes be to santé Dieu mercy. tànks by tou God. God. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nèèb. Where be them? Où sont-ilz? Houèr by dem? Rich. Ric. Rich. They be at home. Ils sont au logis. Dey by at hòm. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nèèb. Haue me recommaunded Recommandez moy Hàf my recommanded To him. à luy. To him. To her. à elle. To hèr. To them. à eux. Tou dem. And tell them, that I Et leur dittes, que And tel dem, dat ey will not misse. ie n'y failliray pas. ouil not mis. Rich. Rich. Ri. I will tell them so: Ie le leur diray Dieu Ey ouil tem dem so: God saue you Syr. vous gard Monsieur. God sàf y Ser. The school. Le M. d'E. Dé scoùlmè. And you also my Et vous aussi mon And you also mey frend: amy. frìnd. What newes? Quelles nouuelles? Houat nùùs? Rich. Richart. Ri. My maister, and my Mon maistre & ma Mey mêster, and mey mistresse desire you, maitresse vous prient mistres deseir you, to dine to morow with de disner demain auec tou dein tou màro, them. eux. ouis dem. The school. Le Mai. d'Ec. Dé schoùl. I trouble them euery Ie les trouble Ey troubel dem eury foote: But sence they tousiours, mais puis fout: Bout Sìns dê will haue it so: qu'ilz le veullent ouil hàf it so: ainsi, I will come. I'yray. Ey ouil com. Rich. Rich. Ri. Fare you well Syr. A Dieu Monsieur. Far y ouel Ser. The school. Le M. d'E. Dé scoùl. God be wy my frend A Dieu Richard mon God bouey mey frìnd Dicke. amy Dik. Haue me recommanded Recommandez moy à Hàf my recommanded to your maister, and vostre maistre, & à tou yor mêster, and to your mistresse vostre maistresse tou yor mestris àlso. also. aussy. Ri. Rich. Ri. I will tell them so. Ie leur diray ainsi. Ey ouil tel dem so. The maist. Le mai. Dé maist. Will they come? Viendront ilz. Ouil dé com? Ri. Rich. Ri. I Syr. Ouy Monsieur, Ey Ser. They promised so. ilz ont ainsi promis. Dê promised so. The neigh. Le voisin Dé nèèb. God be here. Dieu soit ceans. God by hiér. The mistresse. La Maistr. Dé mestr. Good morow neighbour. Bon iour mon voisin Goud màro nèèbeur. Here well come. Vous estés le bien Hiér ouel com. venu. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nèèb. I thanke ye Ie vous remercye, Ey tànk y mestris. mistresse. Madmoyselle. The school. Le M. D'Es. Dé scoùl. God saue all the Dieu gard toute la God sàf àl dé company. compagnye. company. The maist. Le maist. Dé mèst. Well come Syr. Bien venu, Monsieur. Ouel com Ser. The school. Le Maistre. Dé scoùl. I thanke you Syr. Ie vous remercye Ey tànk y Ser. Monsieur. The maist. La Maitresse. Dé mestris. Why is not come my Que n'est venue ma Houey is not com mey gossip your wife? commere vostre femme. gassip yor oueif? The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. She is very busie at Elle est fort Chy is very busé at home. empeschée au logis, hòm. She is gone forth. elle est allée Chy is gon fors. dehors, Shee is gone to the elle est allée au Chy is gon tou dé market. marché market. The mist. La maistresse. Dé mest. What to doe? Que faire. Houat tou dou. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé Scoùl. She is gone thether Elle y est allée Chy is gon déder tou to buy sone egges. achetter des oeufs. beì som égues. A pigge. Vn cochon. A pigge. Some nuttes. Des noix. Som nuts. Some peasen. Des poix. Som péésen. Som beanes. Des feues. Som bééns. Some aotte meale. Du gruau Som oatmèl. Some pudinges. Des boudins. Som poudings. som saucerlings. Des saucisses. Som sàcerlings Some apples. Des pommes. Some appels. Some peares. Des poires. som pèèrs. Some pease cottes. Des poix en gousse som péés cots. Som cherises. Des cerises. som tcherises. Some raisins. Du raisin. som rèsins. Some figges. Des figues. som figues. Some butter. Du beurre. som bouter. Some rise. Du ris. som reis. Some milke. Du laict. som milk. Some plummes. Des prunes. som plommes. Some prunes. Des pruneaux. som prùnes. Some almondes Des amandes. som àlmonds. Some turneps. Des naueaux. som turneps. A pye, or a pasty. Vn pasté. a pei, or a pasté. A caeke. Vn gasteau. a kêk. A custarde. Vn flan. a costard. Some oringes. Des orenges. som oringes. Some lymones. Des citrons. som leimons. A cabushe. Vn chou à pomme. a cabuch. A henne. Vne poulle. a hen. The mistr. La maistresse Dé mest. Be her affaires so Sont ses affaires si By hêr affêres so great that she may grandes qu'elle ne grét, dat chy mê not not come? puisse venir com? The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. I, in deede. Ouy en verité. Ey, in did. The mist. La maist. Dé mést. It shalbe then for an Ce sera donc pour vne It chàl by den for an other tyme. autre fois. oder teìm. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nêèb. Be it so. Il soit ainsi. Be it so. The maist. Le Maistre. Dé mést. You be all well come. Vous estés tous les You by àl ouel come: bien venuz: Much good may it do Bon prou vous face. Mitch gréty. to you. You see your fare. Vous voiez vostre You sìi yor fêr. chere. The mist. Le Mai. Dé mést. Pore here some Versez icy à boire. Pòr hiér som drink. drinke. To you Syr. I A vous Monsieur, ie Tou you Sèr. Ey recommaunde you my vous recommande mon recommànd you mey sonne. Filz. sonne. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. I thanke your Ie vous remercye, Ey tànk y mestris: mistresse: Madamoyselle. your some is Vostre filz m'est Yor son is altogether tout recommandé. àltougueder recommanded vnto me: C'est vn tres-gentil recommanded ontou my: He is a very prety enfant. He is a very prety child. tcheild. The mist. la Maistresse. Dé mést. But a very shroude Mais vn tres-mauuais Bout a very cheraùd boy. garçon. bouê. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nêèb. He is the mothers C'est le filz de la Hy is dé moders son. sonne. Mere. The mist. La més. Dé mèst. I loue him in deede. Ie l'aime voirement. Ey lof him did. The maist. Le Maistre. Dê mêst. What newes? Quelles nouuelles? Houat nùùs? The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nêèb. There is no other Il n'y a nulles Der is not oder nùùs, newes, but of the nouuelles, autres que bout of dé siknes, sickenesse and the de la maladie & de la and dé dêrs, houitch dearth, which be now cherté, qui sont by nàu a dês àlmost a dayes almost auiourd'huy presque teràut àl Fràns. throughout all par toute la France. Fraunce. The maist. Le Maistre. Dé mèst. It is Gods hand which C'est la main de It is Gods hand, reuengeth the iniurie Dieu, qui venge houitch reuengés dé done to his Church. l'iniure faite à son iniurie don tou his Eglise. Tchéurtch. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nêèb. you say true. Vous dites vray. you sê tru. The maist. Le Maistre. Dé mêst. I beleue, that there Ie croy qu'il en Ey bilìf, dat dêr scappes alwayes some eschappe tousiours skêps alouès som of of them. quelques vns. dem. The neigh. Le voi. Dé nègh. Few, or none at all. Peu ou point du tout. Feù, or non at àl. The maist. Le Mais. Dé mèst. Is the number of them Le nombre en est-il Is dé nomber of dem great, that are come grand, de ceux qui grét, dat àr com òuer ouer into this sont passez en ce into dis contré. countrey? païs The neigh. Le voi. Dé nèèb. Very great: and there Fort grand & y en a Very grêt: and dêr by be many of them beaucoup qui viuent many of dem houich whiche doe liue very bien à peine, tant dou lif very hard, so hard, so great is leur pauureté est grét is dêr pouerté. their pouertie. grande. The maist. Le Mai. Dé mèst. Truely, I take great vrayement i'ay grant Trùlé ey tàk grêt pitie of their pitié de leur pity of dèr miserable miserable estate: But miserable estat: Mais estêt: Bout ey hòp, I hope that God will i'espere que Dieu dat God ouil remember remember them: for he aura memoire d'eux, dem: For he néuer neuer forsaketh them Car il n'abandonne forsékes dem houitch which doe thrust in iamais, ceux qui dou trust in him. him. esperent en luy. The maist. Le maist. Dé mèst. Commen Syrs, let Ça messieurs, que Commen Sers, let eury euery one take rowme. chacun prenne place. ouon tàk roùm. Iames pray God. Iaques priez Dieu. Iéms, prê God. Iames, sonne. Iaques, filz. Iémes son. The eyes of all Toutes choses Dé eìs of al tings thinges do looke vp, regardent à toy, dou louk op, and and thrust in thee, O Seigneur, tu leur trust in dy, O Lord, Lord, thou geuest donnes viande en duë dau giuest dem mét in them meate in due saison: Tu ouures ta dùù sééson: dau season: Thou openest main, & remplis de openest dey hand and thy hand and fillest tes benedictions, filest ouis dey with thy blessing toute chose viuante blessing eury liuing euery liuyng thing: ting: Good Lord Blesse vs, Bon Seigneur beny Goud Lord bles vs, and all thy giftes, nous, & tous les dons and àl dey gifts, which we do receaue lesquelz nous houitch ouy dou recéf of thy bounteous receuons de ta large of dej bontieus liberality through liberalité, par Iesus libéralité, terau Iesu Christ our Lord. Christ nostre IESV Chreist aouor Seigneur. Lord. The maist. Le maist. Dé mêst. So be it. Ainsi soit il. So be it. Mary daugh. Marye fille. Mary dààht. Let vs eate, and Mangeons, Buuons, Let vs éét, and drinke, recognoissans, que drink, alknoledging, acknowledging, that tous biens, sont de dat àl goudnes dou all goodnesse doe Dieu venans. com of God. come of God. In the name of the Au nom du pere, & du In dé nêm of dé Father, and of the filz & du sainct fàder, and of dè son, sonne, and of the Esprit. and of dé holy gòst. holy ghost. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. It is a most true C'est vn dit tres It is a most tru saying. ueritable. sêing. The maist. Le maist. Dé mèst. You spend the tyme in Vous passez le temps You spend dé teìm in talking, and you eate en deuis & ne mangez tàlking and you éét nothing. point. nòting. Geue vs some whitte Donnez nous du pain Gif vs som houeit bread. blanc: bréd. Some manchet. Du pain de bouche. som haùsòld bréd: Bring the second Apportez le second Bring dé second course. seruice. couòrs. Goe fetche the Allez querir le Go fetch dé frut. fruite: dessert. Geue here a tarte, Baillez icy vne Gif hiér a tàrt, and and a custarde. tarte, & vne dariole. a costard. My frend, haue we not M'amye auons nous pas Mey frìnd, hàf ouy a cake. vn gasteau? not a kêk? The mist. La maist. Dé mest. Here is one. En voy-cy vn. Hiér is ouon. The maist. Le maist. Dé mést. you be very litle Vous estes You by very litle eaters: fort-petits mangeurs. ééters. Take away, and pore Ostez d'icy, & nous Tàk aouê, and pouòr vs some wine: versez du vin. vs som oueìn. My sonne come say Mon filz, venez dire Mey son, com sê graces. graces. graces. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. The kyng of eternall Le Roy de gloire Dé king of eternal glory, make vs eternelle, nous face glory, mêk vs partakers of his participans de sa partàkers of his heauenly table. celeste table. héuinlé tàble. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. So be it. Ainsi soit-il. So by it. Mary. Marie. Mêry. God saue his Dieu sauue son Eglise God sàf his vniuersal vniuersal Church our vniuerselle, nostre tchurch aouor Kuìn, Queene and the Royne, & royaume & and dé réélme, and Realme, and graunt vs nous doint paix, & grànt vs péés and peace, and truth in verité en Iesus trus in Chreist Christ Iesus. Christ. Iesus. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nèèb. So be it. Ainsi soit-il. So by it. The maist. Le maist. Dé mèst. God blesse you my Dieu vous benye mes God bles you mey children: enfans: tchildren: Syrs, come nere the Messieurs, approchez Sers, com niér dé fier. du feu. feier: There ayre of the l'air du feu est dé èèr of dé feier is fire is alwayes good. tousiours bon. àlouês goud. Make vs a good fire. Faites nous vn bon Mêk vs a goud feier. feu. Bring a byllet, or Apportez vne busche, Bring a bylet or tou. twayne. ou deux Now goe fetch a Fagot Maintenant allez Naù go fetch a faguet and some coales. querir vn fagot & du and som còles. cherbon. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. Syr, it is tyme to Monsieur, il est Ser, It is teìm tou goe. temps de se retirer. go. The maist. Le maist. Dé mèst. What hast haue you? Quelle haste auez Houat hàst, hàf you? vous. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. I must goe to my Il faut que i'aille à Ey must go tou mey schollers, to the end mes escoliers, afin scolers tou dé énd dê they leese no tyme. qu'ilz ne perdent lìjs no teìm. point le temps. The maist. Le maist. Dé mèst. You haue yet tyme Vous auez encores You hàf yet teìm enough. temps assez. enof. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. I pray you to geue me Ie vous prye me Ey prê you tou gif my leaue this once, an donner congé ceste lééf, dis ouons, an other tyme you shall fois, vne autre fois oder teìm you chàl commaund me. vous me commanderez. commaund my. The maist. Le maist. Dé mêst. Syr, you shalbe Monsieur, vous me Ser, you chàlby alwayes, well come to serez tousiours bien àlouès, ouel com tou me: venu: my: I would be loth to Ie serois bien marry Ey ould by làs tou let you from your de vous empescher de let you from yor goud good worke. vostre bonne oeuure. ouork. The school. Le M. d'Es. Dé scoùl. I thanke you sir: Grand mercy Monsieur: Ey tànk you ser: Goud Good euen mistresse. Bon soir ìuin méstris. Madamoiselle. The neigh. Le voisin. Dé nèèb. God be wy sir, and A Dieu Monsieur, & God boey ser, and you you also mistresse. vous aussi also méstris. Madamoiselle. I thanke you for your Ie vous remercie de Ey tànk y for yor good chere. vostre bonne chere. goud tchiér. The maist. Le maist. Dé mèst. It is not worth El' ne vaut pas le It is not ouors thankes, good euen remercier, Bon soir tànks: Goud ìuin neighbour, you are voisin, Vous estes le nèèbeur: you àr ouel well come. bien venu. com. The mistres. La maist. Dé mést. Fare ye well Syrs: We A Dieu Messieurs, Far ouel sers: Oui doe thanke you for nous vous remercions dou tànk y for yor your good company. de vostre bonne goud company. compagnye. Iames, Goe to Iaques allez à Iéms, Go tou scoùl schoole, with your l'Escole quand & ouis yor mèster. maister. vostre maistre. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Well mother, I goe. Bien ma mere i'y vay. Ouel moder ey go. At playing. Au Ieu. At plêing. PEter. PIerre. Pìter. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Thomas. Thomas. Tàmes. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. The scholemaister. Le precepteur. Dé scoùlemêster. The Vsher. Le sousmaistre. Dé Oucher. The seruaunt. Le seruiteur Dé seruant. The school. Le precep. Dé scoùl. What is it of the Quelle heure est il? Houat ist a clàk? clocke? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. It is almost two a Il est pres de deux It is àlmost toù a clocke. heures clak. Tyme to goe to play temps d'aller iouer Teìm tou go tou plê if it please you to s'il vous plaist nous if it pléés you tou geue vs leaue. donner congé. gif vs lééf. The school. Le precep. Dé scoùl. Children, Goe play: Enfans allez iouer: Tchildren, Go plê: But take heede that Mais gardez de Bout tàk hìjd dat you you hurt not one an blesser l'vn l'autre. heurt not ouon an other. oder. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. I thanke you maister. Grand mercy mon Ey tànk y mèster. Maistre. The Vsher. Le sousmai. Dé Oucher. Doe soe, that we here Faites que nous Dou so dat ouy hier no complaintes on ye. n'oyons nulle no complaints on y. plaintes de vous. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. We will play quitely. Nous iouerons Ouy ouil plê paisiblement. kouittlê. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. What game shal we A quel ieu iourons Houat gêm chàl ouy play at? nous. plé at? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Let vs play at dyce. Iouons aux dez. Let vs plê at deìs. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. I did neuer learne to Ie n'apprins iamais à Ey did neuer lêrn tou play at dyce. iouer aux dez. plê at deìs. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Let vs then play at Iouons donques aux Let vs den plê at tables. tables. tàbels. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. Our maister should Nostre Maistre n'en Aouor mêster choùld not be wel pleased seroit point content. not be ouel plêsed with all. ouis àl. Peter. Pier. Pìter. Shall we then play at Iourons nous donques Chàl ouy den plê at boules? aux boules. baùles? Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. No: But we shall play Non: mais nous Nò: Bout ouy chàl plê at tanyse, or els at iourons à la paume, at tanis, or èls at Cartes. ou bien aux cartes. kêrtes. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Let it be at Cartes, Aux cartes soit. Nous Let it by at kêrts we bestow our tyme in emploions nostre ouy bystaù aouor teìm vayn: and I feare temps en vain. Et in vaìn: and ey fêr much, that our crains beaucoup que mutch, dat aouor maister calles vs to nostre maistre nous mêster càls vs tou our bookes, before we appelle pour aller à aouor bouks, bifòr haue begon our game. noz liures, auant que ouy hàf bygon aouor nous aions Commencé gêm. nostre ieu. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Let vs then play for Iouons donques pour Let vs den plê for pynes. des esplingues. pines. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. Let it be so: But let Bien soit: Mais Let it by so: Bout vs hast to begin. hastons nous de let vs hàst tou commencer. byguin. Shall we play at Iourons nous à la Chàl ouy plê at Trumpe? Triomfe? Tromp. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Yea. Ouy. Yé. Stephen. Estienne. Stìuin. How shall we play? Comment iourons nous? Haù chàl ouy plê? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. The kyng shalbe worth Le roy vaudra six Dé king chàl by ouors six pynes, The esplingues, La Roine six pines. Dê Quìn, Queene, foure: quatre. faor: The knaue, two: and Le varlet deux & Dé kenéf, toù: and eche carte one: and chaque carte vne: & etch kêrt ouon: and who haue the asse qui aura l'ar, hoù chàl hàf dé às shall rubbe. pillera chàl rob. Thomas. Thomas. Tames. You say well: Vous dittes bien you say ouel: We will play my nous iouerons mon ouy ouil plê mey brother, and I frere & moy contre broder, and ey agaynst Stephen and Estiene & contre against Stìuin, and against you. vous. against you. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Will you haue it so Le voulez vous ainsi Ouil you hàf it so, Stephen? Estiene. Stìuin. Stephen. Estiene. Stìuin. Yea. Ouy. Yé. Thomas. Thomas. Tames. Let vs begin then. Commençons donc: Let vs begin den. Who shal deale? Qui donnera. Hoù chàl déél? Peter. Pierre. Pìter. The same shall deale, Celuy donnera qui Dé sêm chàl déél, dat that shall cut the couppera la plus chàl cout dé fêrest fayrest carte. haute carte kêrt. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Let vs see then: Who Voions donc qui Let vs sij den hoù shall deale. donnera. chàl déél. Stephen. Estiene. Stìuin. I must deale: for I Ie donneray: Car I'ay Ey must déél: for ey did cut a kyng. couppé vn Roy. did cout a kyng. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Deale twelue a peece. Donnez en à chacun Déél touelf a pìjs. douze. Thomas. Thomas. Tames. Nine for euery man is C'est assez de chacun Neìn for eury man is enough. neuf. enof. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Well deale then. Bien donnez donc. Ouel déél den. Stephen. Estiene. Stìuin. I dealt right. The I'ay donné Ey dêlt reict: Dé trumpe is. Of droitement, la tromp. Of cloubs. clubbes. triumphe est de trefles. Of hartes. De coeurs. Of harts. Of speades. De piques. Of spêds. Of dyamondes. De carreaux. Of deiamands. Peter. Pierre Pìter. I rubbe: But you Ie pille: Mais vous Ey rob: Bout you dealt all to them. leur auez tout donné. dêlt àl tou dem. Stephen. Estiene. Stìuin. I can not mende it: Ie n'y sçaurois que Ey can not mend it: faire. The cartes did rise Les cartes sont ainsi Dé kêrtes did reìs so. venues. so. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. You did not shufle Vous ne les auez pas You did not chofel them wel. bien meslées. dem ouel. Stephen. Estiene. Stìuin. But I haue. Sy ay. Bout ey hàf. Thomas. Thomas. Tames. You doe owe me euery Vous me deuez chacun You dou aù my eury man two pinnes, for deux esplingues, pour man toù pines, for dé the knaue that I le varlet que i'ay. knêf dat ey hàf. haue. Stephen. Estiene. Stìuin. Let see. Voions le. Let sij. Thomas. Thomas. Tames. Here it is. Voy-le-la. Hiêr it is. Iames Iaques. Iéms. And you do owe me Et vous m'en deuez And you dou aù my euery man ten, for chacun dix, pour le eury man ten, for dé the king, and the Roy & la Roine. king, and dé kuìn. Queene Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Show them. Monstrez-les. Chaù dem. Iames. Iaques. Iéms. Here be them. Les voyla. Hiér by dem. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Notwithstandyng all Neantmoins toutes voz Notouistanding àl yor your fayre cartes, I belles cartes, I'ay fêr kêrts, Ey hàf dé haue the game: And la partie: Et m'en guêm: and you dou aù you do owe me euery deuez chacun pour six my eury man, for six man, for six cartes. cartes kêrts. The seruaunt. Le ser. Dé seruant. Children, Come to you Enfans venez à voz Tchildren: Com tou bookes: The liures: le precepteur yor bouks: Dé schoolmaister doth vous attend à scoùlmêster dous taré tary for you in the l'Escole. for you in dê scoùl. schoole. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. We doe but begyn to Nous ne faisons que Ouy dou bout biguin play. commencer à iouer. tou plê. Do you call vs all Nous appellez vous Dou you càl vs ready? desia. àlredy. you ieste I beleue. Vous vous moquez You iest ey bilìf. comme ie croy. The seruaunt. Le ser. Dé seruant. I doe not: Non fay. Ey dou not: Come I pray you, Venez ie vous prye, Com ey prê, lest you least you be beaten. que ne soiez batus. by bétin. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. Let vs goe then, and Allons donc & nous Let vs go den and ouy we shall make an end acheuerons vne autre chàl mèk an énd an an other tyme. fois. oder teìm. Iames. Iaque. Iéms. Our maister commeth Nostre precepteur Aouor mêster coms himselfe for vs. vient luy mesme pour himselfe for vs. nous. The school. Le precep. Dé scoùl. Will you neuer be Serez vous iamais las Ouil you neuer be weary of playing: de iouer? ouéry of plêing: To your bookes, and A voz liures, et & Tou yor bouks, and learne well your aprenez bien voz lèrne ouel den go you lessons: Then goe you leçons, puis vous en hòm koueietlé. home quietly. allez au logis paisiblement. Peter. Pierre. Pìter. So shall we doe Aussi ferons nous mon So chàl ouy dou maister. maistre. mèster. Iames. Iaque. Iéms. Good euen maister. Bon soir mon Maistre. Goud ìuin mèster. The school. Le prece. Dé scoùl. Where is your cutsie? Où est vostre Houèr is yor keursi? reuerence you forget it Vous l'oubliez You forguet it alwayes: tousiours. alouês. Haue me recommaunded Recommandez moy à voz Hàf my recommanded to your parents, and parents: Et soiez icy tou yor pàrents, and be here to morow demain de bonne by hiér tou màro by betymes. heure. teìms. Vpon the way. Sur le chemin Oppon dé ouê. THe Gentelman. LE Gentilhomme. Dé Gentilman. The marchaunt man. Le Marchand. Dé martchandmand. The seruing man. Le seruiteur. Dé seruyng man The plowman. Le Laboureur. Dé plaùmann. The Inne keeper L'hostelier. Dé ìn kìper. The Gentel. Le Gen. Dé gent. Neadd, bring hether Edouard amene icy mon Néd, bring héder mey my horse, It is great cheual. Il est grand hors. It is grét teìm tyme to be goyng. temps de partir. tou by going. The seruing. Le ser. Dé seruyng. When you please: sir Quand il vous plaira, Houen you pléés: ser here is your horse. Monsieur voicy vostre hiér is yor hors. cheual. The gentel. Le gent. Dé gent. Let vs ride a a good Allons bon pas pour Let vs reìd a goud passe, to ouertake atteindre c'est homme pàs, tou ouertàk dat that man, which doth qui cheuauche là man, houitch dous ride there afore vs: deuant nous. Dieu reìd dêr afòr vs: God God saue you sir. gard. Sire. sàf y ser. The march. Le mar. Dé march. God blesse you Syr. Dieu vous benie God bles you Ser. Monsieur. The gentel. Le gent. Dé gent. Whether go you sir. Où allez vous Sire. Houéder go you Ser? The march. Le march. Dé march. I would fayne be in Ie voudrois estre en Ey oùld feìn by in Fraunce. France. Frans. The gentl. Le Gen. Dé gent. And I also. Et moy aussi. And ey also, But where about do Mais où vous pensez Bout houêr abaut dou you mynde to take vous embarquer? you meind tou tàk shipping? chippìng? The march. Le Mar. Dé march. At Rye, God willing. A la Rye, Dieu At Rey, God ouiling. aidant. The gentel. Le Gen. Dé gent. I would we were Ie voudrois que nous Ey oùld ouy ouêr dêr. there. y fussions. The march. Le Mar. Dé march. I hope we shalbe I'espere que nous y Ey hòp ouy chàl by there to morow serons demain de dêr tou màro byteìms. betymes. bonne heure. The gentel. Le Gent. Dé gent. Nedde, geue me a Edouard donné moy vne Nêd, gif my a ouan: waund: For I will not houssine car ie ne For ey ouil not speur spurre my horse veux point ésperonner mey hors. mon cheual. The ser. Le seru. Dé ser. Here is one sir. En voyla vne Hiér is ouon Ser. Monsieur. The gent. Le Gentle. Dé gent. Is is a hasell wanne? Est-ce vne houssine Is it a hàsel ouan. de coudre. Dé ser. Le ser. Dé ser. No Syr: It is a holly Non Monsieur: C'en Nò Ser: It is a hòly wanne. est vne de hous. ouan. The march. Le march. Dé march. But I pray you Syr: Mais ie vous prie Bout ey prê you Ser. Monsieur: Be we not out of our Sommes nous point By ouy not aut of way? hors de nostre aouor ouê. chemin. The gentl. Le gent. Dé gentle. I can not tell in Ie ne sçay vrayement. Ey can not tel in deede: did: This plowman, which Ce laboureur qui Dis ploùman houitch tilleth his grounde, laboure sa terre, tilés his grànd, ouil will set vs againe on nous remettra en set vs again on aouor our way, if we be out nostre chemin: si ouê, if ouy by aut of of the same. nous en sommes hors. dé sêm. Here ye my frend: Escoutez mon amy: Hiér y mey frìnd: Is this the ready way Est ce cy le droit Is dis dé red ouê tou to goe to Rye? chemin pour aller à go tou Reì? la Rie. The plow. Le labou. Dé plaù. Yes Syr: Ouy Monsieur: ys Ser: Keepe still on the Tenez tousiours à la Kìjp stil on dé reict right hand. main droite. hand. The gentle. Le gent. Dé gent. Is there neuer a Y à il point de lieu Is dêr neuer a haùs house here by, icy pres où nous hiér bey houêrin ouy wherein we may lodge. puissions loger. mê lodge? The plow. Le labou. Dé plaù. Yes forsoth: Ouy Monsieur: ys farsoùs: you haue two milles vous auez à deux you hàf toù meils hence, a very good milles d'icy, vne héns, a very goud ìn. Inne. fort bonne hostellerie. The gentl. Le gent. Dé gent. I thanke ye my frend. Grand mercy mon amy. Ey tànk y mey frìnd. God be here: Dieu soit ceans: God by hiér: Shall we lodge with Logerons nous ceans, Chàl ouy lodge ouy you, this night? pour meshuy? dis neict? Haue you any beadyng? Auez vous de bons Hàf you any goud lits. béding. Good stables? Bonnes estables. Goud stèbles? Good hay? and good Bon foin. Bonne Goud hê, and goud oates. auoyne. òòtes. The inkeeper. l'Hostellier. Dé ìnkìjper. You be very well come Vous estes les tres You by very ouell com Syrs. bien venuz Messieurs. Sèrs. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. I pray rubbe well our Ie vous prie frottes Ey prê, roub ouel horses and geue them bien noz cheuaulx: & aouor horses: and gif good litter: leur faites bonne dem goud litter. littiere: Bring some hay, and Apportez du foin, & Bring som hê, and som some oates. de l'auoyne. òòtes. The in. l'Host. Dé ìn. How much will you Combien en voulez Haù mutch ouil y hàf? haue. vous. The ser. Le seruit. Dé ser. Bring halfe a bushell Apportez, demy Bring hàlf a bouchel of oates for our boisseau d'auoine of òòtes, for aouor three horses and full pour noz trois trij horses, and ful the manger of hay. cheuaux, & du foin dé menger of hè. plain le rastelier. The in. l'Host. Dé ìn. You shal haue it. Vous l'aurez. You chàl hàf it. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. Nedd, pull of our Edouard, tire noz Ned, poul of aouor bootes, and make them botes, & les fay bouts, and mèk dem cleane and our nettes, & nos eperons clìn & aouor speurs spurres also: aussi. àlso: Let the bridle of my Qu'on pende la bride Let dé breidel of mey horse be hunged on de mon cheual, au hors by hangd on dé the pommel of his pommeau de sa selle. pommel of his saddel. sadle. The ser. Le ser. Dé ser. It hangeth there Elle y pend desia: It hangs dêr àlrédy: already? But there is Mais il y a vn de vos Bout dèr is ouon of one of your styruppes estriefz rompu, & you sterops bròkin, broken: and one of l'vne des sengles, and ouon of dé guerts the gyrtes ready to qui se rompt. rédy tou bréék. breake. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. Goe buy others, and Allez en achetter Go beì oders, and bring me a new d'autres, & bring my a nù gyrdle: For myne is m'apportez vne guerdel: For mein is worne. ceinture neuue: car ouorne. la mienne est vsée. Goe fetche Aller querir Go fetch A saddler. Vn sellier A sadeler. A spurrier. Vn eperonnier. A spurrier. A taylor. Vn tailleur. A têler. A shoemaker. Vn cordonnier. A choùmèker. A cabeller. Vn sauatier. A càbler. A hattemaker. Vn chappelier. A hatmèker. A capper. Vn bonnetier. A capper. A seamester. Vne lingere. A sémster. A habredasher. Vn mercier. A habredacher. A mercer. Vn grossier. A mèrcer. A grosser. vn epissier. A gròsser. An armourer. vn armeurier. An armurer. A cutteller. vn coutellier. A coutler. A chandeler. vn chandelier. A tchandler. A grinder. vn forbisseur. A greìnder. A carier. vn voiturier. A carier. A vintener. vn vinnotier. A vintner. A brewer. vn brasseur. A brùer. A cooke. vn cuisinier. A couk. A cooper. vn tonnelier. A coùper. A fishmonger. vn poissonnier. A fichmonguer. A butcher. vn boucher. A boutcher. A baker. vn drapier. A dràper. A draper. vn boulenger. A bèker. A pewterer. vn etamier. A peauterer. A peinter. vn peintre. A peinter. A smith. vn mareschal. A smit. A locksmith. vn serreurier. A loksmit. An yronmonger. vn feron. A yeynmonguer. A broker. vn courtier. A bròker. A poulterer. vn poullallier. A paùlterer. A goldsmith. vn orfeure. A gaùldsmit. A carpendore. vn charpentier. A kerpendor. A ioygner. vn menuisier. A ioeìner. A fruiterer. vn fruitier. A frùterer. A woodmonger. vn marchand de bois. A oudmonguer. A gyrdler. vn ceinturier. A guerdeler. A clockmaker. vn horloger. A clomêker. A coalier. vn cherbonnier. A còlier. A thinker. vn maignen. A tìnker. A glouer. vn gantier. A glouer. A ieweller. vn biblotier. A ioueller. The march. Le march. Dé march. Syr. Monsieur. Ser. Is it not tyme to goe Est-il point temps Is it not teìm tou go to bed: d'aller au lit. tou béd: We must be on horse Il nous faut estre à Ouy must by on hors backe to morow very cheual demain de bak to màro very earely. grand matin. êrlé. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. You say true. Vous dites verité. You sê trù. Myne host, let our Mon hoste, qu'on nous Meìn òòst, let aouor beds be made, and let face noz lits: Et que beds by mèd and let vs haue a fire made, nous ayons du feu, & vs hàf a feir mèd, & cleane shittes. des linceux netz. and clìn shìts. The host. l'Host. Dé òòst. It shalbe done. Il sera fait. It chàl by don. Syrs, your beds be Messieurs, voz lits Sèrs, yor beds by made: sont faitz: mêd: When it please you, quand il vous plaira Houen it pléés you, you may go to bed. aller au lit. you mê go tou bed. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. Nedd, take thou the Edouard, pren la Ned, tàk dau dé candell, and showe me chandelle, & kàndel, and chaù my light to the priuyes. m'esclaire aux leict tou dé priués. priuées. The ser. Le ser. Dé ser. When it please you Quand il vous plaira Houen it pléés you Syr. Monsieur. Sèr. The march. Le march. Dé march. Good euen Syr. Bonsoir Monsieur. Goud ìuin Sèr. THe gent. Le gent. Dé gent. God geue you good Dieu vous doint bonne God gif you goud night: nuit: neict: But it were good for Mais il seroit bon Bout it ouèr goud for vs to pray before we que nous priassions vs tou prê God bifòr go to bed. Dieu auant que ouy go tou béd. d'aller au lit. The march. Le march. Dé march. Let vs pray when you Prions, quand il vous Let vs prè houen you please. plaira. pléés. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. O Lord whiche art Seigneur qui es seul O Lord houitch art onely good, true and bon veritable ònlé goud, trù, gracious and gratieux & gracious and mercyfull, which misericordieux, qui mercyfull, houitch commaundeth them that commaunde à ceux qui commandés dem dat lof loue thy name, to ayment ton nom, de dey nêm, tou cast àl cast all feare, and mettre arriere d'eux fêr, and kèr from dem care from them, and toute crainte & and tou cast it on dy to cast it on thee sollicitude, & de promising most promising most s'en demettre sur mercyfullé dey self mercyfully thy selfe toy, promettant leur tou by dêr protecteur to be their protector estre against àl dêr enemis against all their misericordieusement and dêr refuge in enemies, and their protecteur contre dangers, dêr refuge in daungers: tous leurs enemis, & gouerneur in dé dê, their gouernour in leur refuge aux dêr leict in darknes, the way: their light daungers: leur and dêr ouatcheman in darkenesse, and gouuerneur de iour, àlso on dé neict: their watchman also leur lumiere en Neuer tou slip, bout on the night: Neuer obscurité, & mesme, tou ouatch continualé to slip, but to watch leur garde durant la for dé preseruyng of continually for the nuit: Non pas pour dé fêsful: ouy preseruyng of the dormir, ains à fin de bisìtch dy of dey faythfull: We veiller tousiours bontieus goundnés, O beseeche thee of thy pour la preseruation Lord, tou forgif vs, bounteous goodnesse, des fideles. Nous te houêrin ouy hàf O Lord, to gorgiue supplions par ta offended dy dis dê, vs, wherein we haue bonté infinie, and tou recéef vs in offended thee this Seigneur, nous dey protection dis day, & to receaue vs pardonner en ce que neict, dat ouy mê in thy protection t'auons offencé ce rest in koueietnes this night, what we iourd'huy, & de nous bòs of body and saùl: may rest in receuoir c'este nuit Graùnt aouor eìjs quietnesse both of en ta protection, à slip: Bout let aouor body, & soule: Graunt fin que nous harts ouatch our eyes sleepe: But reposions en paix, perpetuallé ontou dy, let our hartes watch tant corporellement dat dé ouêknes of dé perpetuallye vnto que spirituellement. flech càs vs not tou thee that the weknes Octroye le dormir à offend dy: Lord, let of the flesh, cause noz yeux mais fay que vs at àl teims fìjl vs not to offend noz coeurs veillent dey goudnes taoùoard thee: Lord, let vs at perpetuellement à vs dat ouy by at àl all times feele thy toy, à fin que teims stired tou prês goodnes toward vs, l'infirmité de nostre dy, and dat lèèt, that we be at all chair ne nous cause êrlé & at middê dey tymes styrred to de t'offencer fay prêses by in aouor prayse thee & that Seigneur que nous mausses and at late, early and at sentions tousiours ta midneict: Lord midday thy praise be bonté enuers nous, instruct vs in dey in our own mouthes àfin que nous soyons iudgements dat àl dé and at midnight: Lord tousiours esmeuz à te dês of aouor leif instruct vs in thy louer, & que tes bying léd in holines, iudgments, that al louanges soyent en & purité ouy mê by the dayes of our life noz bouches soir, & conducted at lêt, beyng lead in matin, & au millieu intou dé euerlastyng holines, & puritie, de la iournée, & à rest houitch dau hast we may be abducted at minuict: Seigneur promised bey dey late into the instruy nous en tes mercy, tou dem dat euerlastyng rest, iugemens àfin que obê dey ouord: Tou dy which thou hast tous les iours de O Lord, by honor, promised by thy mercy nostre vie estans prês and glory for to them that obey thy guidez en sainteté & euer. word: To thee O Lord, pureté, nous soyons be honor, prayse & finalement conduis en glory for euer. ton perdurable repos, lequel tu as par ta misericorde promis à ceux qui obeyssent à ta parolle: A toy Seigneur, soit honneur, louange & gloire à iamais. The march. Le mar. Dé march. So be it. Ainsy soit il. So be it. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. The peace of God, La paix de Dieu, qui Dé prês of God, which passeth all passe tout houitch passés àl vnderstandyng, keepe entendement, garde onderstandyng kìjp our hartes, and noz cueurs & noz aouor harts, and myndes, in the pensées, en la meinds, in dé knowledge and loue of cognoissance & amour knòledge and lof of God, and of his sonne de Dieu & de son Filz God, and of his son Iesus Christ our Iesus Christ nostre Iesus Chreist aouor Lord: and the Seigneur. Et la Lord: and dé blessing blessing of God all benediction de Dieu of God àlmeicty, dé mightie: The father, tout puissant, Le fàder, dé son, and dé the Sonne, and the Pere le Filz & le holy Gost, by amongst holy Ghost, be Sainct esprit, soit vs, and remeìn ouis amongest vs, and entre nous & demeure vs àlouês. remayne with vs tousiours auec nous. alwayes. The march. Le mar. Dé march. So be it. Ainsi soit-il. So by it. Now Syr, I byde you Maintenant Monsieur Naù Syr, ey beid you the good night. ie vous donne bonne dé goud neict. nuit. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. He that mayd the good Celuy qui feist les Hì dat mèd dé goud nights Graunt to geue bonnes nuits vous en neicts Grànt tou gif you foureten in stead doint quatorze pour you faòrtin in stéd of foure. quatre. of faòr. The ser. Le serui. Dé ser. Syr, Is it not yet Monsieur est-il point Sèr, Is it not yet tyme to goe? encor temps de teim tou go? partir. The gent. Le Gent. Dé gent. What is it of the Qu'elle heure est-il? Houat ist a clak. clocke. The ser. Le ser. Dé ser. It is almost fiue of Il est pres de cinq It is àlmost feìf a the clocke. heures. clak. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. Is it a fayre Le temps est-il beau. Is it a fêr ouêder? weather. The ser. Le ser. Dé ser. Very fayre Syr. Fort beau, Monsieur. Very fêr Sèr. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. Are you ready Syr? Estes vous prest àr you rédy Sèr? Let Let vs pray God? Sire? Prions Dieu. vs prê God. The mar. Le mar. Dé mar. When you please Syr. Quand il vous plaira Houen you pléés Sèr. Monsieur. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. O LORD good God, Seigneur bon Dieu, O Lord goud GOD eternall and Pere Eternel, & tout eternal, and àlmeicty almightie Father, puissant qui nous as fàder, houitch hast whiche hast by thy fait la grace de nous bey dey gràs, geided grace, guided and guider & conduire and conducted vs conducted vs vnder souz ta sainte onder dey holy thy holy protection sauuegarde iusques au protection tou dé to the begynnyng of commencement de ce biguinning of dis dê, this day, we most iour Nous te ouy most humblé humbly beseeche thee, supplions bisiitch dy, tou to keepe, and treshumblement nous kijp, and sustein vs susteine vs alwayes garder & soustenir àlouês bey dey vertu, by thy vertue, that tousiours par ta dat in dé sêm ouy mè in the same we may vertu à ce qu'en fàl intou no sin, fall into no sinne: iceluy nous ne Bout direct vs ràder But direct vs rather tombions en peché tou obè, and sèrf dy, to obey and serue ains au contraire, according tou dey thee accordyng to thy nous dirige à t'Obeyr holy ouil: Let àl holy will: Let all & seruir selon ta aouor tàuts by hòlé our thoughtes be sainte volonté soient lifted op ontou dy, wholly lifted vp vnto toutes noz pensées du and geìd so aouor thee, and guide so iour esleuées à toy, dìds, dat ouy mè sê, our wordes, and our & conduy tellement nor tìnk, nor dou any deedes, that we may noz parolles & ting contrary tou dey say, nor thinke, nor opperations que nous holy ouil: Hiér vs doe any thyng ne disions ne aouor GOD, and Fàder, contrary to thy holy pensions n'y facions and so replenich vs will: Here vs our chose contraire à t'a ouis dey gràs, and GOD, and Father, and sainte volonté: mercy, dat ouy so replenishe vs with Exauce nous nostre imploey àl dis dê in thy graces, and Dieu, nostre Pere, & ioè, & dat ouy mê mercy, that we employ nous remply tellement deleict in singuing all this day in ioye, de tes graces & of dey prèses, terauh and that we may delue misericordes, que Iesus Chreist dey son in singing of thy nous emploions tout aouor Lord. prayses, through ce iour en ioye & que Iesus Christ thy nous prenions plaisir sonne our Lord. à chanter tes louanges par Iesus Christ ton Filz nostre Seigneur. The mar. Le Mar. Dé mar. So be it. Ainsy soit-il. So by it. Now it is tyme to Maintenant il est Naù it is teìm tou goe. temps de partir. go. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. When you will, I am Quand vous voudrez ie Houen you ouil, Ey am ready: suis prest. rédy. I hope we shall haue I'espere que nous Ey hòp ouy chàl hàf, a fayre weather to aurons beau temps a fèr ouèder tou dê. day. auiourd'huy. The mar. Le Mar. Dé mar. God graunt it. Dieu le vueille. God grànt it. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. Nedd, bring my sword, Edouard, apporte mon Néd, bring mey souord my dagge, espée. Ma pistolle. mey dag. My harkebuse. Ma harquebuze, Mey harkebus. Bring heather our Ameine icy noz Bring héder aouor horses. cheuaux, horses. My mowile. Ma mule. Mey moueìl. Mine asse. Mon asne. mein às. Mine oxe. Mon beuf. Mein ox. My hogge. Mon pourceau. Mey hog. My dogge. Mon chien. Mey dog. My grayhunde. Mon leurier. Mey grèhond. The ser. Le Ser. Dé ser. Syr, here be your Monsieur voycy voz Sèr, hiér by yor horses and all that cheuaux & tout ce que horses, and àl dat you commaunded me. m'auez commandé you commanded my. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. Thou diddest forget Tu as oublié mon Dau didst forguet mey my head peece. morrion. héd pìjs. The ser. Le ser. Dé ser. I goe for it, Syr. Ie le vay querir, Ey go for it, Sèr. Monsieur. The gent. Le Gen. Dé gent. Myne host, let vs Mon hoste ayons vn Mein òòst, let vs hàf haue a reakenyng. conte. a rékening. Let vs reaken. Contons. Let vs réken. Reaken with vs. And Contez auec nous, & Réken ouis vs. And come for your monney. venez receuoir vostre com for yor monné. argent. The inkeeper. L'host. Dé ìnki. God saue you Syrs. Dieu vous gard God sàf y Sèrs. Messieurs. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. And you also myne Et vous aussi mon And you àlso mein host. hoste. hòòst. The in. L'host. Dé ìnk. Syrs, you doe owe, Messieurs vous deuez Sèrs, you dou aù, for for you and for your pour vous & pour voz yor men, and horses, men, and horses, gents & cheuaux faòr chelins and six foure shillings and quatre soudz & six pens: And you by ouel six pence: And you be deniers, & vous estés com. well come. les bien venuz. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. It is to much. C'est trop. It is tou mutch. The in. l'Host. Dé ìn. Truely Syr, all is Vrayement Monsieur Trùlé Sèr, àl is very very deare now a tout est fort cher diér nau a dès. dayes. maintenant. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. Hold you monney. Tenez vostre argent. Haùld yor monné. The mar. Le mar. Dé mar. Are you pleased myne Estes vous content àr you pléésd mein host. mon hoste. òòst. The in. l'Host. Dé ìn. Yea, forsooth: I Ouy, Monsieur, ie yé, fresoùs: Ey tànk thanke you. vous remercie. y. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. I pray you myne host Ie vous prie mon Ey prê you mein òòst, let vs on our right hoste mettez nous en sét vs on aouor reict way to Rye. nostre droit chemin ouê tou Reì. de la Rye. The in. l'Host. Dé ìn. Folow on this path Suyuez ce sentier Folò on dis pats til till you come to the iusques à ce que you com tou dé heì high way. Then keepe veniez au grand ouê: Den kìjp àlouês alwayes on the left chemin: Puis tenez on dé léft hand, hand, leauyng on the tousiours la main léuing on dé reict right hand, a high gauche, laissant à hand, a heì hedge dé hedge the whiche you main droite, vne houitch you chàl shall finde, about a haute haye que vous feìnd, abaut a meìl myle hence: trouuerez enuiron à hens: vn mille d'icy: Doubtlesse that way Sans doute, ce chemin Daùtles, dat ouê ouil will bryng you la vous conduira bring you strèct tou straight to Rye. droit à la Rye. Rie. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. How farre is to Rye? Combien y a il d'icy Haù far is tou Rìe? à la Rye. The in. l'Host. Dé ìn. There is about twenty Il y a enuiron vint Dêr is abaut touenty myles. milles. meils. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. Is it a fayre way? Le chemin est il Is it a fêr ouê? beau? The in. L'Host. Dé ìn. Yea Syr very fayre. Ouy, fort beau Yé Sèr, very fêr. Monsieur. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. I thanke you myne Grand mercy mon Ey tànk y mein òòst: host: hoste: I commit you to God. Ie vous recommandes à Ey commit you tou Dieu. God. The in. l'Host. Dé ìn. God be your speede Dieu vous conduye God by yor spìjd Syrs: Messieurs Sêrs: Fare you well, at A Dieu, à vostre Far yé ouel, at yor your commaundement. commandement. commandement. The gent. Le gent. Dé gent. LOrd GOD, we beseeche SEigneur Dieu, nous LOrd GOD, ouy bisìtch thee most humbly to te supplions dy most humblé tou by be our conductor in tres-humblement, nous aouor conducteur in this our voyage: So estre conducteur en dis aouor veiage So that (beyng by thy cestuy nostre voyage: dat (beyng bey dey bountifull mercy, si que nous (estans bontifull mercy, preserued in the same par ta preserued in dé sêm from all daungers, misericordieuse from all dangers, and and perils) we may bonté, preseruez en perils) ouy mê retorn returne in peace: iceluy de tous in péés: Bles vs goud Blesse vs good Lord, daungers & perils) Lord, and bring aouor and bryng our nous retournions en affêrs tou a goud affaires to a good paix: Beny nous bon end. Terauh Iesus ende. Through Iesus Seigneur, & meine noz Chreist dey son aouor Christ thy sonne our affaires à bonne fin. Lord. Tou hom by Lord. To whom be Par Iesus Christ ton giuin àl honeur and geuen all honor and filz nostre Seigneur: glory for euer. glory for euer. Auquel soit rendu tout honneur, & gloire à iamais. So be it. Ainsi soit-il. So by it. Bien commencer est vne chose bonne: Mais bonne fin l'Oeuure de loz couronne. Lós équitable. Au Lecteur sur le present traité, V. D. B. Sonet. Sçauoir bien proprement toute chose nommer, Par mots signifiants l'Essence, & la nature, C'est l'oeuure d'vn seul Dieu, ou d'vne ame tres-pure: Car Adam nomma tout parauant que pecher. Sçauoir accortement escrire, & remarquer, Les voix, les sons diuers, d'humaine creature, C'est certes, tesmoigner qu'on à prins nourriture, Des Muses au pourpris, & suiuy leur sentier: L'homme ignorant qui fuit leur sainte compagnie, Ingrat, n'imite rien que par haine & enuie: Voy-là pourquoi Bellot monstre en ce brief discours, Qu'il ne veut point haïr, & encores moins nuire: Des Muses nourrisson, il veut la France instruire A parler bon Anglois, pour nourrir paix tousiours. Transcriber's note Scribal abbreviations were resolved (e.g "lõg" transcribed as "long"). Spelling and punctuation were kept as in the original. All inconsistencies and typographical mistakes were retained, including missing, swapped or duplicated words or letters, unmatching translation or phonetics, inconsistent phonetics, missing or absurd punctuation or capitalization, and just ordinary typos. 
41217	----	Transcriber's Note: Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=. A more detailed note is located at the end of this book. Note de transcription: Le texte en gras est entouré par =le signe égal=. Une note plus détaillée se trouve à la fin du volume. ENGLISH-FRENCH AND FRENCH-ENGLISH DICTIONARY OF THE MOTOR CAR, CYCLE AND BOAT ENGLISH-FRENCH AND FRENCH-ENGLISH DICTIONARY OF THE MOTOR CAR, CYCLE, AND BOAT BY FREDERICK LUCAS NEW IMPRESSION [Illustration: Printer's logo] London E. & F. N. SPON, LIMITED, 67 HAYMARKET New York SPON & CHAMBERLAIN, 123 LIBERTY STREET 1915 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE The object of this work is to assist those interested in the motor industry and pastime to read the foreign technical literature devoted to the subject. I have translated into the respective languages the technical terms used in the various journals and the catalogues of the leading English and French makers. The work embodies all the component parts of the vehicles and machinery at present on the market, and should therefore be of service to the user, the manufacturer, and the patent agent. The technical terms which are peculiar to cycles are printed in italics. FREDERICK LUCAS. 9 GRACECHURCH STREET, LONDON, E.C. CONTENTS PAGE ENGLISH-FRENCH 1 FRENCH-ENGLISH 95 DICTIONARY OF THE MOTOR CAR, CYCLE, AND BOAT. ENGLISH-FRENCH. Accelerator Accélérateur. Accelerator control gear Mouvement de commande d'accélérateur. Accelerator pedal Pédale d'accélérateur. Accelerator rod Tige d'accélérateur. Accelerator rod spring Ressort de tige d'accélérateur. Accelerator rod washer Rondelle de tige d'accélérateur. Accelerator sector, or quadrant Secteur d'accélérateur. Accelerator shaft Arbre d'accélérateur. Accessories Accessoires. Accident Accident. Accumulator Accumulateur. Accumulator cap Bouchon d'accumulateur. Acetylene gas Gaz acétylène. Acetylene lamp Lanterne à acétylène. Acetylite Acétylite. Active material Matière active. Adhesion Adhésion. Adjust the ball-bearings, to Ajuster les roulements à billes. Adjustable bearings Coussinets ajustables. Adjustable cone bearings Coussinets à cônes réglables. Adjustable cup bearings Coussinets à cuvettes réglables. Adjustable seat Siège ajustable. Adjusting cone Cône de réglage. Adjusting nut Ecrou de réglage. Adjustment Réglage. Advance, sparking Avance à l'allumage. Air chamber Chambre à air. Air chimney Tube de prise d'air; cheminée d'aspiration. Air inlet pipe Tube de prise d'air. Air lever Manette d'admission d'air. Air nozzle for carburetter Tuyère de carburateur. Air piston Piston à air. Air port Prise d'air. Air pump Pompe à air. Air tight Etanche à l'air. Air tube Chambre à air. Air valve Soupape à air. Alcohol Alcool. Alight, to Descendre. Aluminium Aluminium. Amateur Amateur. Ammeter Ampèremètre. Amperage Ampérage. Ampere Ampère. Angle bar Cornière. Angle plate Equerre. Anneal, to Recuire. Apply the brake, to Freiner; serrer le frein. Apron Tablier. Arbor shaft Cardan. Arbor shaft system of Transmission à Cardan. transmission. Arm sling Brassière. Armature Induit. Artillery wheel Roue d'artillerie. Ascent, steep Montée rapide. Asbestos Amiante. Asbestos cloth Toile d'amiante. Asbestos cord Corde d'amiante. Asbestos millboard Carton d'amiante. Asbestos paper Papier d'amiante. Asbestos washer Rondelle d'amiante. Ash Frêne. Automatic Automatique. Axle Essieu; axe. Axle arm Fusée d'essieu. Axle box Boîte à graisse. Axle seat Portée de calage. B Back balance, crank Contrepoids de vilebrequin. _Backbone_ _Corps._ Back fire Allumage prématuré; choc en arrière. _Back fork_ _Fourche arrière._ _Back fork stays_ _Tirants de la fourche arrière._ _Back forks, end of_ _Pattes arrière._ Back hub Moyeu arrière. _Back hub adjusting cone_ _Cône de réglage du moyeu arrière._ _Back hub chain ring_ _Pignon de roue arrière._ _Back hub fixed cone_ _Cône fixe du moyeu arrière._ Back kick Choc en arrière. Back mudguard Garde-boue arrière. _Back mudguard stays_ _Tirants du garde-boue arrière._ _Back pedal, to_ _Contre-pédaler._ _Back-pedalling brake_ _Frein à contre-pédalage._ Back pressure Contre-pression. Back rim Jante de la roue arrière. _Back stay_ _Tube montant arrière._ Back step Marchepied d'arrière. Back tyre { Bandage de la roue arrière. { Pneumatique de la roue arrière. Back wheel Roue arrière. _Back wheel spindle nuts_ _Ecrous de moyeu arrière._ Back wing Aile d'arrière. Badge Insigne. Baffle plate Contre-plaque. Baffles, arranged as En chicanes. Bag Sac. Balance gear Mouvement différentiel. Balance weight Contre-poids. Ball Bille. Ball bearing axle Essieu à billes. Ball bearing axle arm nut Ecrou d'essieu à billes. Ball bearing axle washer Rondelle d'essieu à billes. Ball bearing thrust Butée à billes. Ball bearings Coussinets à billes. Ball for axle arm Bille pour fusée d'essieu. Ball for carburetter Bille pour carburateur. Ball for oil pump Bille pour pompe à huile. Ball, governor Boule de régulateur. _Ball head_ _Tête à billes._ Ball joint Joint à rotule. Ball lever Levier à boule. Ball race Rangée de billes. Ball race cup Cuvette à billes. Ball race of back axle Cuvette arrière d'essieu à billes. Ball race of front axle Cuvette avant d'essieu à billes. Ball valve Soupape à bille. Band Collier; bande. Band brake Frein à bande; frein à collier; frein à enroulement. Bank up the corners of the track, Relever les virages de la piste. to Ball bearing axle Essieu à billes. Bar of iron Barre de fer. Base Socle; base. Battery Batterie. Beaded edge of tyre cover Talon; bourrelet. Beam Traverse; poutrelle. Beam (breadth of boat) Largeur au maître-bau. Bearing Coussinet. Bearing block Palier. Bearing keep Chapeau de palier. Bearing spring Ressort de suspension. Beech Hêtre. Bell Timbre; grelot; sonnette; clochette. Bell crank Manivelle à cloche. Bell, dome of Calotte de timbre. Belt Courroie. Belt butt Crupon pour courroie. Belt, cemented Courroie collée. Belt, edged Courroie à talon. Belt fastener Agrafe de courroie. Belt, flat Courroie plate. Belt grease Enduit pour courroies. Belt lace Lacet; lanière. Belt, round Courroie ronde. Belt, sewn Courroie cousue. Belt, slack Courroie lâche. Belt, slipping of Glissement de la courroie. Belt, stretching of Allongement de la courroie. Belt, tight Courroie tendue. Belt tightener Tendeur pour courroie. Belt, to lengthen the Allonger la courroie. Belt, to shorten the Raccourcir la courroie. Belt, to throw off the Débrayer la courroie. Belt, to tighten the Tendre la courroie. Belt, to untwist the Détordre la courroie. Belt, twist Courroie torse. Belt, twisted Courroie tordue. Belt, V Courroie en V. Bending strain Effort de flexion. _Bent handle bar_ _Guidon cintré._ Bevel gear Engrenage conique. Bevel pinion Pignon d'angle. Bevel wheel Roue d'angle. Bevelled Biseauté. _Bicycle_ _Bicyclette._ _Bicyclist_ _Bicycliste._ Billing spanner Clef américaine à molette "Billing." _Bike_ _Bécane._ Birchwood Bouleau. Blacklead Mine de plomb. Blacksmith Forgeron. Blade (coil) Lame de bobine. _Blades, fork_ _Fourreaux de fourche._ Bleriot lamp Phare Blériot. Blind flange Bride borgne. Blind nut Ecrou borgne. Block Bloc; cale; sabot. Block chain Chaîne à blocs. Blowpipe Chalumeau. Blow through tap Robinet de purge. Body Caisse. Body spring Ressort d'essieu. Boil (on cover) Hernie; gerçure. Boiler Chaudière. Boiler, flash Générateur à vaporisation instantanée. Bolt Boulon. Bolt (of door) Verrou. Bolt and nut Boulon et écrou. Bonnet Entourage; capot couvre-moteur. Bonnet door Porte d'entourage. Bore Alésage. Boss Moyeu. _Bottom bracket_ _Pédalier._ _Bottom head cone_ _Cône du raccord inférieur avant._ _Bottom head cup_ _Raccord inférieur avant._ _Bottom stay_ _Tube de la fourche arrière._ _Bottom tube_ _Tube inférieur._ Bowden wire Câble flexible Bowden. Box Boîte. Box spanner Clef à douille. Box-wood Buis. Bracket, lamp Porte-lanterne. Bracket seat Strapontin. Brad Clou à parquet. Bradawl Poinçon. Braid Tresse. Brake Frein. _Brake adjusting clip_ _Collier de tube de frein._ Brake band Collier de frein; bande de frein. _Brake detachable clip_ _Collier de levier de frein._ Brake guide Guide de frein. Brake holder Serre-frein. Brake horse-power Force en chevaux effectifs; puissance au frein. Brakeless Sans frein. Brake lever Levier de frein. Brake lever connecting rod Bielle de levier de frein. Brake lever catch Cliquet du levier de frein. Brake lever handle spring Ressort du cliquet de levier de frein. Brake pedal spring Ressort de rappel de pédale de frein. _Brake plunger_ _Tube de frein._ Brake pulley Poulie de frein. Brake rod Tige de frein. Brake rod end Chape de tige de frein. Brake rod fork Fourchette de tige de frein. Brake screw Boulon, vis de frein; vis de mécanique. Brake segment Segment de frein. Brake spoon, or shoe Patin, sabot de frein. Brake spring Ressort de frein. Brake, to apply the Serrer le frein. Brake tube Tube de frein. Brake and clutch lever connecting Bielle de commande de débrayage rod et de frein. Brass Cuivre jaune; laiton. Braze, to Braser. Breadth Largeur. Break-down Panne. Break down, to Rester en panne. Breaking strain Charge de rupture. Bridge Pont. _Bridge, back fork_ _Tirant de la fourche arrière._ Bridge piece Culotte. Bridge piece for exhaust Culotte d'échappement. Bridge piece for inlet valve Culotte d'aspiration. Bright parts Parties polies. Broad Large. Brougham Coupé. Brush, dynamo Balai. Bucket seat Baquet. Buckled wheel Roue voilée; roue tordue. Buffer Tampon. Buffer guide Boisseau de butoir. Buffer head Tête de butoir. Buffer spring Ressort de choc. Bulb (glass) for accumulator cap Ampoule verre pour bouchon d'accumulateur. Bulge (on cover) Hernie; gerçure. Bulb of horn Poire de cornette. Bulk, in En vrac. Bumpy road Route cahotante. Burn well, to Brûler bien. Burner Brûleur. Burner cage Lanterne. Burner case Monture des brûleurs. Burner cup Cuvette de brûleur. Burner for acetylene lamp Bec. Burner guard, or hood Capuchon de brûleur. Burner mount Monture de brûleur. Burner needle Aiguille pour brûleur. Burner nipple Bec de brûleur. Burner tank Lampe. Burst, to Eclater; crever. Burst (tyre) Crevaison. Bush Douille; bague. Bushed Fourré; garni. Butt-ended spokes Rayons renforcés. Butterfly nut Ecrou à oreilles; papillon. Butterfly valve Soupape à papillon; papillon. Button Bouton. Butt-welded Soudé par rapprochement. C Cab Cab. Cam Came. Cam, ignition Came d'allumage. Cam shaft Arbre à cames. Cam shaft cover Couvercle d'arbre à cames. Cam shaft roller Galet d'arbre à cames. Camel hair belt Courroie poil de chameau. Candle Bougie. Candle lamp Lanterne à bougie. Canopy, removable Ballon démontable; couvercle démontable. Canvas Toile. Canvas for repairing cover Toile dissolutionnée; toile gommée. Cap Chapeau; bouchon. Cap for oil hole Bouche-trou. Cap for steering connecting rod Bouchon de bielle de commande de direction. Cap for water tank Bouchon d'emplissage de réservoir d'eau. Cap of draw link Chapeau de tension. Capacity (of tank) Contenance. Car Voiture. Car wheel Roue de voiture. Carbide Carbure de calcium. Carburetter Carburateur. Carburetter connecting rod Bielle de commande de carburateur. Carburetter float Flotteur de carburateur. Carburetter float cap Bouchon de dessus de carburateur. Carburetter float needle Aiguille de carburateur. Carburetter float spindle Axe de flotteur de carburateur. Carburetter hand regulator Régulateur à main de carburateur. Carburetter lever spring Ressort de rappel de levier de carburateur. Carburetter nipple Bec de carburateur. Carburetter piston Piston de carburateur. Carburetter piston rod end Chape de piston de carburateur. Carburetter piston spring Ressort de piston de carburateur. Carburetter valve Soupape de carburateur. Carburetter valve spring Ressort de la soupape de carburateur. Cardan Cardan. Cardan joint Joint Cardan. Carpet Tapis. Carriage builder Carrossier. Carriage clock Horloge de voiture. Carriage road Route carrossable. Carriage work Carrosserie. Carrier, luggage Porte-bagage. _Carrier tricycle_ _Tricycle porteur._ Carrying axle Essieu porteur. Carter gear case Carter. Carvel built A franc bord. Case Gaine; caisse. Cased Blindé. Case harden, to Cémenter. Casing Blindage. Cash prizes Prix en espèces. Cast iron Fonte. Cast steel Acier fondu. Castor oil Huile de ricin. Catalytic Catalytique. Catalysis Catalyse. Catch Cliquet; verrou. Catch for bonnet door Verrou d'entourage. Catch for change speed lever Verrou de levier de changement de vitesse. Caulk, to Calfater. Cedar Cèdre. Cell Elément. Celluloid Celluloïd. Cement (for tyres) Colle; mastic. Centaur cylinder Cylindre-culasse. Centering gauge Trusquin à centrer. Centering ring Bague de centrage. _Central driving tricycle_ _Tricycle à chaîne centrale._ Centre to centre D'axe en axe. Centre bearing Palier central. Centrifugal pump Pompe centrifuge; pompe turbine. Chain Chaîne. Chain adjustment Tension de chaîne. Chain adjusting rod; long end; Bielle de tension de chaîne; small end grand côté; petit côté. Chain, block Chaîne à blocs. Chain block Bloc de chaîne. Chain bolt and nut Boulon et écrou de chaîne. Chain brush Brosse à chaîne. Chain, double roller Chaîne à doubles rouleaux. Chain guard Garde-chaîne; couvre-chaîne. Chain link Maillon. _Chain ring lock nut_ _Contre-écrou du pignon arrière._ _Chain ring, back hub_ _Pignon de la roue arrière._ Chain, roller Chaîne à rouleaux. Chain roller Rouleau de chaîne. Chain, single roller Chaîne à simples rouleaux. _Chain wheel_ _Grand pignon._ Chain wheel Roue de chaîne. Chamois leather Peau de chamois. Champion Champion. Championship Championnat. Change speed connecting rod Bielle de changement de vitesse. Change speed gear Changement de vitesse. Change speed lever Levier de changement de vitesse. Change speed lever catch Cliquet du levier de changement de vitesse. Change speed lever catch fork Chape du cliquet de levier de changement de vitesse. Change speed lever rod Tige de levier de changement de vitesse. Change speed lever spring Ressort de levier de changement de vitesse. Change speed rod Tringle de changement de vitesse. Change speed shaft Arbre de changement de vitesse. Channel iron Fer en U. Charge, to Charger. Chassis Châssis. Check valve Soupape de retenue. Checker (in a race) Pointeur. Cheek Flasque. Chestnut Châtaigner. Chinese lantern Lampion; lanterne vénitienne. Chrome leather Cuir chrome. Chronometer Chronomètre. Circuit Circuit. Circuit, primary Circuit primaire. Circuit, secondary Circuit secondaire. Circuit, short Court circuit. Circuit, to close a Fermer un circuit. Circulation pump Pompe de circulation. Clamp Bride; pièce d'attache; presse patte. Clamp for fastening motor Pièce d'attache du moteur. Clasp brake Frein à mâchoires. Clean Propre. Clean, to Nettoyer. Clear, in the Dans l'oeuvre. Clearance Jeu. Clinch of the rim Crochets de la jante. Clincher built A clin. Clip Collier de serrage. Clip brake Frein à mâchoires. Clip for spring Bride de ressort. Close the circuit, to Fermer le circuit. Closure tyres Caoutchoucs auto-réparables. Cloth for cleaning Torchon. Club Cercle; société; club. Club costume Costume social. _Club, cycling_ _Société vélocipédique._ Club run Sortie officielle. Clutch Embrayage. Clutch cone Cône d'embrayage. Clutch cone spring Ressort de cône d'embrayage. Clutch fork Fourchette de débrayage. Clutch lever Levier d'embrayage; yatagan. Clutch lever pedal Pédale à levier de débrayage. Clutch lever roller Galet de débrayage. Clutch shaft Arbre d'embrayage. Clutch shaft spring Ressort d'arbre d'embrayage. Clutch sleeve Manchon. Clutch spring Ressort d'embrayage. Coach, house Remise. Cobble stones Pavé. Coefficient of friction Coefficient de friction. Coil Bobine; serpentin. Coil, electric Bobine électrique. Cog Dent; denture. Cog wheel Roue dentée; pignon. Cog wheel, larger Grand pignon. Cog wheel, smaller Petit pignon. Collapse, to (of tyres) S'affaisser; crever. Collar Bague. Collar for digger Bague de biellette de rappel de tige. Collision Collision. Colour Couleur. Combustion chamber Chambre de combustion; chambre d'explosion. Come off, to Se détacher. Commutator Distributeur d'allumage; distributeur de courant; collecteur. Commutator brush Balai de distributeur d'allumage. Commutator brush spring Ressort de balai de distributeur. Commutator bush Bague pour corps de distributeur d'allumage. Commutator cam shaft Axe portant la came de distributeur d'allumage. Commutator glass Glace de couvercle de distributeur d'allumage. Compass Boussole. Compensating spring Ressort compensateur. Compression relief Décompression. Compression relief lever Manette de commande; manette de compression; décompresseur. Compression stroke Temps de compression. Compression tap Robinet de compression. Compression valve Soupape de compression. Compression valve spring Ressort de soupape de compression. Concealed hinge Charnière avec cache-fente. Condenser Condenseur. Conductor Conducteur. Cone Cône. Cone bearings Coussinets à cônes. Cone clutch Embrayage à cônes. Connecting plug Interrupteur à cheville. Connecting rod Bielle. Connecting rod end Tête de bielle. Consolation race Course de consolation. Constant level carburetter Carburateur à niveau constant. Contact Contact. Contact breaker Trembleur; allumeur; rupteur. Contact breaker spring Ressort de trembleur. Contact screw Vis de contact. Containing case Bac. Contour map Carte avec profils. Control Commande. Controlling lever Manette de commande. Controlling wheel Roue de commande de marche. Convex Bombé. Cool, to Rafraîchir; refroidir. Cooler Refroidisseur. Cooler, beehive Refroidisseur nid d'abeilles. Cooling Refroidissement. Cooling flanges Ailettes. Cooling surface Surface de refroidissement. Copper Cuivre rouge. Copper plated Cuivré. Copper wire Fil de cuivre. Cord Corde; cordon. Core, iron Noyau de fer. Cork float Flotteur en liége; macaron. Cork handle Poignée en liége. Corner Coin. Corner plate Gousset. Cost of the trip Frais de voyage. Cotter Clavette. Cotton waste Déchets de coton. Countershaft Arbre intermédiaire. Countersunk head Tête fraisée; tête noyée. Counterweight Contre-poids. Cover (lid) Couvercle. Cover (tyre) Enveloppe; bandage. Cover for oil hole Bouche-trou. Cover 80 miles in a day, to Couvrir 80 milles dans la journée. Cover of contact breaker Couvercle d'allumage. Covers wired on Pneumatiques à tringles. Covers with beaded edges Pneumatiques à talon. Cow hide Peau de vache. _Crack rider_ _Coureur de première force._ Crank Manivelle; vilebrequin. _Crank bracket_ _Pédalier._ _Crank bracket adjusting collar_ _Collier de réglage des cuvettes de pédalier._ _Crank bracket axle_ _Axe du pédalier._ _Crank bracket barrel_ _Cuvette de pédalier._ Chain bolt and nut Boulon et écrou de chaîne. _Crank bracket cotter pin_ _Clavette de pédalier._ Crank case Carter; bâti de moteur. Crank case lubricator Graisseur de bâti. Crank cotter Clavette de manivelle. Crank disc Plateau de manivelle. Crank, left Manivelle gauche. Crank lever Levier coudé. Crank pin Bouton de manivelle. Crank, right Manivelle droite. Crank shaft Vilebrequin; arbre à manivelle. Crank starting handle Manivelle de mise en marche. Crank washer and nut Rondelle et écrou de manivelle. Crate Caisse à claire-voie. Crate, folding Caisse pliante. _Cross frame_ _Cadre en croix._ Cross head Crosse. Cross section Coupe transversale. Cross shaft Croisillon. Crossways Carrefour. _Crown, front fork_ _Couronne de fourche._ _Cup, bottom head_ _Raccord inférieur avant._ Cup (of bearings) Cuvette. _Cup, top head_ _Raccord supérieur avant._ Cup valve Soupape en champignon renversé. Current Courant. Current, high tension Courant de haute tension. Current, low tension Courant de basse tension. Current, strength of Force du courant. Curtain Rideau. Curve Courbe. Curved frame Châssis cintré. Cushioned seat Siège à coussins. Custom house Douane. Custom house officer Douanier. Customs pass Passavant. Customs receipt Quittance douanière. Customs seal Plomb de la douane. Customs ticket Carte de douane. Cut off valve Soupape de détente. Cut out Coupe-circuit. _Cycle_ _Velocipède_; _vélo_. _Cycle, to_ _Monter à vélo._ _Cycling_ _Velocipédie._ _Cyclist_ _Vélocipédiste_; _cycliste_. _Cyclometer_ _Compteur_; _cyclomètre_. Cylinder Cylindre. Cylinder full (of mixture) Cylindrée. Cylinder head Culasse. Cylinder head cover Couvercle de culasse. Cylinder head stay end Chape de tige entretoise de culasse. D D shackle Menotte. D valve Tiroir à coquille. Damage Dommage. Damage, to Endommager. Danger board Poteau avertisseur. Dangerous hill Descente dangereuse. Dash board Planche pare-crotte. Day's stage Etape journalière. Dead centre Point mort. De-clutch, to Débrayer. Deflate, to Dégonfler. Delivery pipe Tuyau de refoulement. Densimeter Densimètre. Design, to Etudier. Detachable Démontable; détachable. Detachable crank Manivelle détachable. Detailed plan Plan de détail. Detour Détour. Devil Béquille. Diagonal Diagonal, -e. Diagonal tube Tube diagonal. Diagram Diagramme; schéma. Diagrammatic arrangement Disposition schématique. Diameter Diamètre. Diaphragm Diaphragme. Diaphragm piston Piston à air. Diaphragm spring Ressort de piston à air. Differential brake Frein de différentiel. Differential brake bolt Axe du levier de frein de différentiel. Differential brake lever end Chape de frein de différentiel. Differential brake pedal Pédale de frein de différentiel. Differential brake segment Segment de frein de différentiel. Differential brake spring Ressort de rappel de frein de différentiel. Differential gear Mouvement différentiel. Differential gear box Boîte de différentiel. Diffuser Diffuseur. Digger fork Fourchette de rappel de tige. Digger rod Tige de rappel; culbuteur. Digger spring Ressort de rappel de tige. Direct drive on top speed Grande vitesse en prise directe. Direct spokes Rayons directs. Disc Disque. Discharge, to Décharger. Disengage, to Débrayer. Disengaging lever Levier de débrayage. Dish, to Emboutir. Dismantling Démontage. Dismount, to Descendre. Distance Distance. Distance between axles Ecartement des essieux. Distance run Distance parcourue. Distance, to Distancer. Distributor Distributeur. Divided axle Essieu brisé. Dog clutch Embrayage à griffes; manchon à griffes. Dome of bell Calotte de timbre. Door Porte; portière. Door handle Bouton de porte. Door lock Loqueteau de portière; serrure de portière. Door pillar Montant de porte. Dotted line Ligne pointillée. Double ball bearings Coussinets à double filet. Double branch spanner Clef à deux branches. Double butted spokes Rayons renforcés aux deux bouts. Double driving gear Mouvement différentiel. Double ended spanner Clef double. Double helical gear Engrenage à chevrons. Double male screwed Filetage double mâle. Double roller chain Chaîne à doubles rouleaux. _Down tube_ _Tube diagonal._ Dragon tongue Dard. Drain tap Robinet de vidange. Draught Courant d'air. Draught of water when empty Tirant d'eau à vide. Draught of water when loaded Tirant d'eau en charge. _Drawlink (chain)_ _Tension de chaîne._ _Drawlink cap_ _Chapeau de tension._ Dray Camion. _Dress guard_ _Garde-chaîne_; _garde-jupe_. Dressing room Vestiaire. Drill Foret. Drill a hole, to Faire un trou. Drip feed lubricator Graisseur compte-gouttes. Drip tap Purgeur continu. Drive, to Faire marcher. Driver Chauffeur; conducteur. Driving axle Essieu moteur. Driving power Force motrice. Driving pulley Poulie de transmission; poulie motrice. _Driving shaft_ _Axe de volant_; _axe moteur_. Driving shaft Arbre moteur. Driving wheel Roue motrice. Drop counter Compte-gouttes. Drop shackle Huit. Drum Tambour. Drum brake Frein à tambour. Dry battery Pile sèche. Dust Poussière. Dust cap tube Tube pare-poussière. Dust guard Pare-poussière. Dust proof Etanche à la poussière. Dust-shield, gauze Grille métallique; grille anti-poussière. Duty free Exempt de douane; en franchise. Duty, to pay Payer les droits d'entrée. Dynamo Dynamo. Dynamo brush Balai de dynamo. Dynamo wheel Volant de dynamo. E Easy gradient Pente faible. Easy running Très roulant. Ebonite Ebonite. Ebony Ebène. Eccentric Excentrique. Eccentric rod Tige d'excentrique. Eccentric sheave Disque d'excentrique. Eccentric strap Collier d'excentrique. Efficiency of motor Rendement du moteur. Elbow Coude. Electric Electrique. Electric coil Bobine électrique. Electric ignition Allumage électrique. Electric wire Fil électrique. Elliptic spring Ressort elliptique; ressort à pincette. Elm Orme. Elm, grey Orme blanc. Elm, rock Orme noir. Emery cloth Toile d'émeri. Emery paper Papier d'émeri. Enamel Email. Enamel, to Emailler. Enamelled plate Plaque émaillée. End elevation Elévation de bout. End of back forks Pattes arrière. Endless Belt Courroie sans fin. Endurance Endurance; fond. Engine Moteur. Engine shaft Arbre de moteur. Entrance fee Droit d'entrée. Entrance for a race Inscription pour une course. Erratic steering Direction erratique. Exhaust Echappement. Exhaust box Réservoir d'échappement; pot d'échappement. Exhaust fork Fourchette d'échappement. Exhaust fork guide Guide de fourchette d'échappement. Exhaust fork roller Galet de fourchette d'échappement. Exhaust fork roller bolt Axe de fourchette porte-galet d'échappement. Exhaust fork roller spring Ressort de fourchette porte-galet d'échappement. Exhaust gas Gaz de la décharge; gaz brûlé; gaz d'échappement. Exhaust lift cam Came d'échappement. Exhaust pipe Tube d'échappement. Exhaust port Lumière d'échappement. Exhaust pot Pot d'échappement. Exhaust steam Vapeur de décharge. Exhaust stroke Temps d'échappement. Exhaust tubing Tuyauterie d'échappement. Exhaust valve Soupape d'échappement. Exhaust valve cap Bouchon de soupape d'échappement. Exhaust valve flange Bride d'échappement. Exhaust valve fork Fourchette d'échappement. Exhaust valve guide Guide de soupape d'échappement. Exhaust valve lift Taquet de soulèvement de soupape d'échappement. Exhaust valve lift rod Tige de soulèvement d'échappement. Exhaust valve spring Ressort de soupape d'échappement. Exhaust valve stem Tige de soupape d'échappement. Exhibition Exposition. Exhibitor Exposant. Expanding pulley Poulie extensible. Expansion brake Frein à expansion. Expansion of steam Détente de vapeur. Expired, the patent has Le brevet est dans le domaine public. Explosion Explosion. Explosion chamber Chambre d'explosion. Explosion stroke Temps d'explosion. Explosive mixture Mélange tonnant. Extinguisher Extincteur. Extra nuts Ecrous de rechange. Extra price Plus-value. Extra strong tube Tube renforcé. Eye bolt Piton. F Fabric (of tyre cover) Toile. Face of slide valve Glace du tiroir. Faced in the lathe Dressé au tour. Fall, to Tomber. Fan Ventilateur. Fast Rapide. Fasten, to Attacher. Fastener for bonnet Fermeture d'entourage. Fat spark Etincelle chaude. Feat Exploit. Feat of skill Tour d'adresse. Feat of strength Tour de force. Feather Clavette. Feed Alimentation; débit. Feed heater Réchauffeur. Feed pipe Tube d'alimentation. Female cone Cône femelle. Ferrule Frette; virole. Ferry Bac. Ferry, to cross the Passer le bac. Fibre Fibre. Fibre cam Came fibre. Fibre, insulation Fibre isolante. File Lime. File, to Limer. Fillet Congé. Filter Filtre. Finger post Poteau indicateur. Fir Sapin. Fire tube Carneau. Firing nipple Bouchon d'inflammateur. Fitting Montage; agencement. Fixed cone Cône fixe. Fixed seat Siège fixe. Flame guard Pare-flamme; capuchon de lanterne. Flange Bride; collerette. Flanged collar Bague à collerette. Flanged shaft Arbre à plateaux. Flap door Trappe. Flap valve Clapet. Flash boiler Générateur à vaporisation instantanée. Flask Flacon. Flat, on the En palier. Flexible wire Câble flexible. Float Flotteur. Float chamber Boîte du flotteur; réservoir à flotteur. Float wire Tige de flotteur. Flooder Déversoir. Flush head Tête affleurée. Fluted rubber pedal Pédale à caoutchouc cannelé. Flying start Départ lancé. Fly wheel Volant. Foil Clinquant. Fold, to Plier. _Folding bicycle_ _Bicyclette pliante._ Folding seat Strapontin. _Folding tricycle_ _Tricycle compressible._ Foot Pied. Footpath Sentier; trottoir. Foot pump Pompe à pied. Foot rest Appui-pieds; repose-pied. Foot warmer Chaufferette. Foot warmer (hot water) Bouillotte. Force the pace, to Forcer le pas. Fore-carriage Avant-train. Forge Forge. Forgings Ebauchés. Fork Fourche; fourchette. Fork (of a road) Bifurcation. Form, in good En bonne forme. Forward and reverse lever Levier de changement de marche. Forward and reverse lever rod pin Axe de levier de changement de marche. Forward movement Marche en avant. Four cycle gas motor Moteur à quatre temps. Four way coil Bobine quadruple. _Frame_ _Cadre._ Frame Châssis. Frames (boat) Membrures. _Frame switch_ _Interrupteur de cadre._ _Free wheel_ _Roue libre._ _Free wheel, ratchet and pawl _Roue libre à cliquet._ clutch_ _Free wheel, roller clutch_ _Roue libre à galet._ French chalk Talc. Friction Frottement. Friction clutch Embrayage à friction. Friction plate Plateau de friction. Friction roller Galet de friction. Friction, to reduce the Réduire le frottement. Front apron } Tablier d'avant. Front board } _Front driver_ _Machine à roue motrice devant._ Front elevation Elévation de face. _Front fork_ _Fourche avant._ _Front fork blades_ _Fourreaux de fourche avant._ _Front fork crown_ _Couronne de fourche._ Front hub Moyeu avant. _Front hub adjusting cone_ _Cône de réglage du moyeu avant._ _Front hub fixed cone_ _Cône fixe du moyeu avant._ Front mudguard Garde-boue avant. _Front mudguard stays_ _Tirants du garde-boue avant._ Front rim Jante de la roue avant. Front seat Siège d'avant. _Front steerer_ _Tricycle à roue directrice devant._ Front steering bar Barre d'accouplement de direction. Front tyre Pneumatique } Bandage } de la roue avant. Caoutchouc } Front view Vue de face. Front wheel Roue avant. _Front wheel spindle nuts_ _Ecrous du moyeu avant._ Front wing Aile d'avant. Full on, to put the brake Serrer le frein à bloc. Funnel Entonnoir. Funnel, with fine strainer Entonnoir avec toile métallique fine. Funnel, with strainer Entonnoir avec grille. G Gaiter, tyre Manchon guêtre pour pneu. Garage Garage. Gas Gaz. Gas bag Ballon; poche à gaz. Gas lever Manette d'admission de gaz. Gas pipe to motor Tube d'alimentation. Gas pliers Pinces à gaz. Gas-tight Etanche au gaz. Gasket Tresse; limande de garniture; garcette. Gauge, measuring Jauge Gauge, pressure Manomètre. Gauze dust shield Grille métallique. Gauze filter Diaphragme; filtre en toile métallique. Gear Multiplication; développement; engrenage. Gear box Boîte de mouvement; boîte d'engrenages. Gear box bearings Coussinets de boîte de mouvement. Gear case Garde-chaîne; Carter; couvre-engrenages. Gear, double-driving Mouvement différentiel. Gear, in Engrené. Gear shaft Arbre de transmission; arbre de mouvement. Gear, to throw into Embrayer. Gear, to throw out of Débrayer. Gear up, to Multiplier. _Geared bicycle, ordinary_ _Bicycle multiplié._ Gearing, high Multiplication forte. General plan Plan de l'ensemble. General view Ensemble. German silver Maillechort. Gib Contre-clavette. Gill Ailette. Gimlet Vrille. Gland Presse-étoupe. Glass Glace; cristal; verre. Globe joint Joint à rotule. Goal, to reach the Gagner le poteau. Goggles Lunettes de route. Governed Commandé. Governor Régulateur. Governor ball Boule de régulateur. Governor ball fork Chape de boule de régulateur. Governor cam Came de régulateur. Governor hammer Marteau de came de régulateur. Governor hammer shaft Arbre porte-marteau de régulateur de moteur. Governor lever Levier de régulateur. Governor spring Ressort de régulateur. Governor wheel Roue de régulateur; volant de régulateur. Gradient Rampe; pente. Gradometer Indicateur de pentes. Grasshopper spring Ressort demi-pincette. Gravel Gravier. Grease Graisse. Grease, Stauffer } Graisse consistante. Grease, thick } Grease injector Seringue de graissage. Green light Feu vert. Green sheet (for lantern) Lame verte. Grid Grillage. Grind, to Roder; meuler. Groove Cannelure; rainure. Grooved pulley Poulie à gorge. Grooved shaft Arbre à rainures. Grooved wheel Roue à gorge; volant à gorge. Grounds, petrol Lie; sédiment. Gudgeon pin Goujon. Guide Guide; toc; coulisseau. Guide for clutch cone Toc d'embrayage. Guide for governor lever Toc de levier de régulateur. Gun clip Porte-fusil. Gunwale Plat-bord. Gusset Gousset. Gutter Caniveau. H Hair seat Siège en crin. Half-section Demi-coupe. Half-speed shaft Arbre à cames. Half-time gear Mouvement de réduction à 1/2. Hammer Marteau. Hand control spring Ressort d'appareil de commande d'allumage. Hand lever Levier à main. Hand pump Pompe à main. Hand pump lubricator Coup de poing. Handicap Course proportionelle. Handle Manette; poignée; manche. _Handle bar_ _Guidon._ _Handle bar stem_ _Tube plongeur du guidon._ _Handle bar switch_ _Poignée d'allumage du guidon._ Handle of oil pump Poignée de la pompe à huile. Hard pumped (tyre) Gonflé à bloc. Hardened steel Acier trempé. _Head and handlebar clip_ _Collier de serrage du guidon._ _Head and handlebar clip bolt and _Boulon et écrou du collier du nut_ guidon._ Headlight Phare. _Headlock_ _Arrêt de direction._ _Head locking nut_ _Contre-écrou de direction._ Head prop Goujon de capote. _Head socket_ _Douille de direction._ Header (of tubular boiler) Collecteur. Heat, the final La preuve finale; la belle. Heat, the first La première épreuve. Heats, to run three Faire trois épreuves. Heavy car Voiture lourde. Heavy oil Pétrole lourd. Heavy road Route pénible. Height Hauteur. Hemlock Hemlock. Hemp cord Corde chanvre. Hexagon-head bolt Boulon à 6 pans. Hickory Hickory. High speed trembler Rupteur à grande vitesse. Hill climbing trial Course de côte. Hill, to mount a Gravir une côte. Hilly Accidenté; montueux. Hind wheel Roue de derrière. Hinge Charnière; gond; compas. Hire, to Louer. Hired car Voiture de louage. Hitch Accroc; anicroche. Holding down bolt Boulon d'ancrage. Hole Trou. Hollow Creux; creuse. Hollow rim Jante creuse. Hollow tyre Caoutchouc creux. Honeycomb radiator Radiateur nid d'abeilles. Hood Capote; capuchon. Hook Crochet. Hook bolt Boulon à mentonnet. Hooter Corne d'appel. Horn Corne. Horn bracket Porte-trompette. Horn, bulb of Poire de cornet. Horn handle Poignée en corne. Hot air inlet Prise d'air chaud. House, to Remiser. Hub Moyeu. Hub brake Frein au moyeu. I Igniter Allumoir; appareil d'allumage. Ignition Allumage. Ignition cam Came d'allumage. Ignition, electric Allumage électrique. Ignition lever Manette d'allumage. Ignition, magneto Allumage magnéto-électrique; allumage par magnéto. Incandescent ignition Allumage à incandescence. Inch Pouce. Inclined water outlet Rampe de sortie d'eau. Index (cursor) Curseur. India-rubber Caoutchouc; gomme. Induction coil Bobine d'induction. Induction pipe Tube d'admission. Induction valve Soupape d'admission. Inflate, to Gonfler. Injector Injecteur. Inlet, petrol Orifice de remplissage. Inlet valve Soupape d'admission; soupape d'aspiration. Inlet valve cap Chapeau de soupape d'admission. Inlet valve cotter Clavette de soupape d'admission. Inlet valve flange Bride d'aspiration. Inlet valve seat Siège de soupape d'admission. Inlet valve spring Ressort de soupape d'admission. Inlet valve stem Tige de soupape d'admission. Inlet valve union Raccord d'aspiration. Inn Auberge. Inner tube Chambre à air. Inspection plate Plaque de regard. Insulate, to Isoler. Insulation Isolation. Insulator Isolateur. Interchangeable parts Pièces interchangeables. Intermediate shaft Arbre intermédiaire. Interruptor plug Interrupteur à cheville. Introducer (of club member) Parrain. Inverted or spray cone Cône renversé; champignon. Iron Fer. Ironmonger Quincaillier. Iron tyred wheel Roue ferrée. Irregularities of the road Déformations de la route. J Jack Vérin; cric. Japan, to Vernir. Jersey Tricot de laine. Jet condenser Condenseur à jet. Jet, petrol Gicleur; bec. Jockey pulley Poulie de tension. Joint Joint. Journal (of shaft) Tourillon. K Keel Quille. Keep Chapeau. Kerbstone Pierre de rebord. Key Clavette; clef. Key, to Caler. Key way Mortaise de clavette. Kick back Choc en arrière. Knapsack Sac. Knife Couteau. Knock A-coup. L Label Etiquette. Laced spokes Rayons tangents. _Lady cyclist_ _Vélocipédiste._ _Lady's bicycle_ _Bicyclette de dame._ _Lady's machine_ _Machine de dame._ Lamp Lanterne. Lamp bracket Porte-lanterne; porte-phare. Lamp oil Huile à brûler. Lamp side-lights Verres latéraux de lanterne. Lamp stump or socket Douille de lanterne. Landau Landau. Landaulet Landaulet. Landing place Débarcadère. Lap (in a race) Tour de piste. Lap-welded Soudé par recouvrement. Larch Mélèze. Latch Loquet. Lattice girder Poutre en treillis. Lead Plomb. Leak, to Fuir. Leakage Fuite. Leather Cuir. Leather seat Siège de cuir. _Leather top of saddle_ _Cuir de selle._ Left crank Manivelle gauche. Left handed screw Vis à filet gauche. Left, to the A gauche. Length available for carriage work Tablier. Length between perpendiculars Longueur de tête en tête. Length, to win by a Gagner d'une longueur. Lens Lentille. Level crossing Passage à niveau. Lever Levier. Lever brake Frein à levier. Liable to duty Passible de droits. Lift, valve Soulèvement; poussoir. Lifting jack Cric. Light Lumière. Light (adj.) Léger, légère. Light railway Voie légère. Light vehicle Voiture légère. Lignum vitæ Gaïac. Limousine Limousine. Linch pin Clavette; esse. Link Maillon; chaînon. Linoleum Linoleum. Linseed oil, boiled Huile de lin cuite. Live axle Essieu moteur. Lock Serrure; loqueteau. Lock nut Contre-écrou. Locksmith Serrurier. Long commutator spring Ressort de rappel de distributeur. Long distance race Course de fond. Long frame Châssis long. Longitudinal section Coupe longitudinale. Loose nut Ecrou desserré; écrou lâche. Loose road Chemin défoncé. Loose spoke Rayon desserré; rayon lâche. Loose tyre Caoutchouc décollé. Loosen a nut, to Dévisser un écrou. Loosen a screw, to Desserrer une vis. Lorry Camion. Lubricant Lubrifiant. Lubricate, to Lubrifier; graisser. Lubricating oil Huile à graisser. Lubrication Graissage. Hire, to Louer. Lubricator Graisseur. Lubricator ball seat Siège pour bille de graisseur. Lubricator glass Glace de graisseur. Lubricator pulley Poulie de graisseur. Lubricator screw for wheel cap Vis graisseur pour chapeau d'essieu. Lubricator tap Robinet pour alimentation de graisseur. Lubricator wheel Roue de commande de graisseur. Lug Oreille. Luggage Bagage. _Luggage carrier, handle bar_ _Porte-bagage de guidon._ Luggage guard Galerie. Luggage top Couvercle et galerie. Luggage van Fourgon des bagages. M Macadam Macadam. Macadamised road Chaussée en empierrement. Machine Machine. Magnet Aimant. Mahogany Acajou. Main axle Essieu principal. Main road Grande route. Maker Fabricant. Male cone Cône mâle. _Man's bicycle_ _Bicyclette d'homme._ Map Carte; plan. Maple Erable. Maple, rock Erable dur. Mask Masque. Master patent Brevet principal. Measurement over body Dimensions de la caisse. Mechanically operated Commandé mécaniquement. Member (club) Sociétaire. Membrane Membrane. Mercury Mercure. Mesh, to Engrener. Metal Métal. Metal polish Pâte à polir. Metalled road Route en pierres concassées. Methylated spirits Alcool dénaturé. Mica Mica. Mile, English Un mille anglais. Milestone Borne. Milled Molleté. Milled edge nut Ecrou molleté. Misfire Raté d'allumage. Mixing Mélange. Mixing chamber Chambre de mélange; boîte de mélange. Mixing tube Tube mélangeur. Mixture Mélange. Morocco Maroquin. Motive power Force motrice. Motor Moteur. Motor and gear Groupe moteur. Motor bearings Coussinets de moteur. _Motor bicycle_ _Motocyclette_; _bicyclette à moteur_. Motor boat Bateau à moteur. Motor car Automobile. _Motor cycle_ _Motocycle._ _Motor cyclist_ _Motocycliste._ Motor house Garage. Motor in front Moteur à l'avant. Motor launch Canot automobile. Motor piston Piston de moteur. _Motor quadricycle_ _Quadricycle à moteur._ _Motor tandem_ _Tandem à moteur._ _Motor tricycle_ _Motocycle_; _tricycle à moteur_. Motor under the seat Moteur sous le siège. Mount, to Monter. Mud Boue; crotte. Mudguard Garde-boue; garde-crotte. _Mudguard bridge_ _Tirant des tubes montants arrière._ _Mudguard stay_ _Tirant de garde-boue._ Multiple lubricator Graisseur à départs multiples. Multitubular radiator Radiateur multitubulaire. Mushroom cap Bouchon à champignon. Mushroom valve Soupape en champignon. N Nail Clou. Nail catcher Arrache-clous. Name plate Plaque d'identité. _Narrow tread bracket_ _Pédalier étroit._ Nave hoop Frette. Neat's foot oil Huile de pieds de boeuf. Neck plate, 4 slat Eventail à 4 branches. Needle Aiguille. Needle valve Pointeau. Nip, to Pincer. Nipping Pinçage. Nipple Bec; tétine. Nipple, spoke Ecrou de rayon. Noise Bruit. Noiseless Silencieux. Non-deflatable Indégonflable. Non-side-slipping Anti-dérapant. Non-skidding Anti-dérapant. Non-skidding band Bande anti-dérapante. Non-skidding protecting cover Contre-enveloppe anti-dérapante. Non-stretching belt Courroie inextensible. Non-trembler coil Bobine sans trembleur. Notch Cran. Notched quadrant Secteur denté. Nozzle Tuyère. Number Numéro. Number plate Plaque numérotée. Nut Ecrou. O Oak Chêne. Oak, live Chêne vert; yeuse. Oak, white Chêne blanc. Odometer Odomètre. Offset reducing coupling Manchon excentrique de réduction. Oil Huile. Oil bath Bain d'huile. Oil can Burette. Oil cup Godet à huile. Oil funnel Entonnoir à huile. Oil hole Trou de graissage. Oil lamp Lanterne à huile. Oil, lubricating Huile à graisser. Oil pipe to crank case Tube de la pompe à huile au moteur. Oil pipe to pump Tube du réservoir à la pompe à huile. Oil pump Pompe à huile. Oil reservoir } Réservoir à huile. Oil tank } Oil, to Huiler; graisser. Oil way Gouttière de graissage; rampe d'huile. Oiling Huilage. Omnibus Omnibus. Opening, exhaust Orifice d'échappement. Operated Commandé. Option of purchase Faculté d'achat. Order, to get out of Se détraquer. Ordinary car Voiture courante. _Ordinary geared bicycle_ _Bicycle multiplié._ Otto cycle A quatre temps. Outer cover of tyre Enveloppe. Outlet Sortie; départ. Over all Hors oeuvre. Overflow pipe Tube de trop-plein. Overhanging shaft Arbre en porte à faux. Overheating Echauffement. Overtake, to Dépasser. Oxide of lead Oxide de plomb. Oxide of zinc Oxide de zinc. P Pace Allure. Pace, to go a good Aller bon train. Pace, to increase the Accélérer. Pace-maker Entraîneur. Pack, to Emballer; garnir. Packing Emballage; garniture. Packing collar for pump Bague de garniture pour pompe. Padlock Cadenas. Panel Panneau. Para rubber Gomme de Para. Parabolic reflector Réflecteur parabolique. Paraffin Pétrole lampant; paraffine. Parcels van Voiture de livraison. Passport Passeport. Patch for repairing tyre Pastille pour réparation de pneu. Patent Brevet d'invention. Path, cycle Accotement; trottoir cyclable. Pattern Modèle; échantillon. Paved road Route pavée. Pavement Pavé. Pawl Linguet. _Peak, saddle_ _Bec de selle._ Pedal Pédale. _Pedal adjusting cone_ _Cône de réglage de pédale._ _Pedal adjusting nut_ _Ecrou de réglage de pédale._ _Pedal dust cap_ _Couvercle anti-poussiéreux de pédale._ _Pedal fastening nut_ _Ecrou d'axe de pédale._ Pedal gear Pédalier. Pedal pin Axe de pédale. _Pedal rubber_ _Caoutchouc pour pédales._ Pedal shaft Arbre de pédale. _Pedal washer_ _Rondelle de pédale._ Performance Performance. Permit Permis de circulation. Petrol Essence; pétrole. Petrol, a supply of Une provision de pétrole. Petrol can Bidon. Petrol cup Godet à pétrole. Petrol inlet Orifice de remplissage. Petrol jet Gicleur. Petrol pipe tap Robinet de tuyauterie à essence. Petrol tank Réservoir à essence; réservoir à pétrole. Petrol tank tap Robinet de réservoir à essence. Petrol warmer Réchauffeur. Petroleum Paraffine; pétrole. Petroleum lamp Lanterne à pétrole. Phaeton Phaeton. Pin Goupille. Pincers Tenailles. Pinch, to (tyre) Pincer. Pinching Pinçage. Pine Pin. Pinion Pignon. _Pillar, seat_ _Tige de selle._ Pin driver Chasse-goupille. Pin extractor Tire-goupille. Pipe from carburetter to mixing Tube du carburateur à la boîte de chamber mélange. Piping Tuyauterie. Piston Piston. Piston connecting rod Bielle de moteur. Piston pin Axe de piston. Piston rings Segments de piston. Piston rod Tige de piston. Pitch (screw-thread) Pas de vis. Pitch pine Pitch-pin. Pivot Pivot; tourillon. Plan looking upwards Plan vu de dessous. Planet wheel Roue planétaire. Planetary member Satellite. Planking Bordé. Plate Plaque. Plate clutch Embrayage à plateaux. Plate, to Nickeler. Platinum Platine. Platinum contact Contact platine. Platinum contact on trembler Contact platine de ressort de spring trembleur. Platinum tipped Tête platinée. Platinum tipped screw Vis platinée de contact. Platinum tube Tube de platine. Play Jeu. Pliers Pinces. Plotting scale Echelle de réduction. Pneumatic Pneumatique. Pneumatic tyre Caoutchouc pneumatique. Points, sparking plug Points de la bougie. Pole finder Indicateur de pôles. Pole, negative Pôle négatif. Pole piece Pièce polaire. Pole, positive Pôle positif. Polish, to Polir; astiquer. Poncelet 1 H.P. = 3/4 Poncelet. Porcelain Porcelaine. Post road Route postale. Pouch, tool Sacoche. Press, the La presse. Pressed steel Acier embouti. Pressure gauge Manomètre. Pricker Aiguille. Primary shaft Arbre primaire. Prize, to win a Gagner un prix. Projecting shaft Arbre en porte-à-faux. Projector Projecteur. Prop Tirette; renfort. Prop, fork Contrefourche. Propelling power Force motrice. Propeller Propulseur; hélice. Protecting band for tyre Protecteur de bandage; croissant de protection. Protecting cover Contre-enveloppe. Protector Protecteur. Public carriage road Grande route. Pulley Poulie. Pump Pompe. Pump, air Pompe à air. Pump bracket Support de pompe. Pump bracket stud Goujon de support de pompe. Pump clip Porte-pompe. Pump connection Raccord de pompe. Pump fan Roue à ailettes pour pompe. Pump, foot Pompe à pied. Pump, rotary Pompe rotative. Pump, stirrup Pompe à étrier. Pump, to (inflate) Gonfler. Pump tube Tube de pompe. Pump, tyre Pompe pour pneumatique. Pump union Raccord de pompe. Pump washer Rondelle pour pompe. Pump with clapper valve Pompe à battant. Puncture Perforation. Puncture proof Imperforable. Puncture, to Se perforer. Punctured tyre Pneu perforé. Purlin Panne. Q Quadrant Secteur. _Quadricycle_ _Quadricycle._ Quadruple gear wheel Roue quadruple. Quadruplet Quadruplette. R Race Course. Racing car Voiture de course. _Racing machine_ _Machine de course._ Racing man Coureur. Rack Crémaillère. Radiating fin } Ailette. Radiating flange } Radiator Radiateur. Radiator stay Tirant de radiateur. Ratchet Encliquetage; cliquet. Ratchet wheel Roue à cliquet. Rattan Rotin. Rattle, to Claquer. Rat-trap pedal Pédale à scie. Raw hide Cuir vert. Reaction spring Ressort de rappel. Record, to make a Etablir un record. Red light Feu rouge. Reed (horn) Anche. Reference mark Point de repère. Refill Recharge. Reflector Réflecteur. Regulations Règlement de circulation. Regulator Régulateur. Relief valve Soupape de trop plein. Removable Détachable; démontable. Renew, to Renouveler. Repair box Boîte nécessaire. Repair outfit Nécessaire de réparations. Repair, to Réparer. Repairer Mécanicien. Repairs, to do Faire des réparations. Re-rubbering Recaoutchouture. Reservoir Réservoir. Resin Résine. Retard sparking Retard à l'allumage. Re-tyring Recaoutchouture. Reverse movement Marche arrière. Reverse shaft Arbre de changement de marche. Reverse shaft spring Ressort d'arbre de changement de marche. _Reversible handle bar_ _Guidon réversible._ Reversing gear Changement de marche. Reversing lever Levier de changement de marche. Reversing thrust Butée de changement de marche. Revolution Tour. Revolution counter Compte-tours. Revolving seat Siège tournant. Ribbon road Route en lacets. Rideable hill Côte praticable. Rideable road Route praticable. Rifle clip Porte-fusil. Right crank Manivelle droite. Right handed screw Vis à filet droit. Right, go to the Prendre à droite. Rim Jante; couronne. Rim brake Frein sur jante. Rimer Alésoir. Ring Couronne; bague; anneau. Rivet Rivet. Rivet, to River. Rivet, chain Tourillon de chaîne. Road Route; voie; chemin. Road, bad Mauvaise route; voie impraticable. Road book Routier. Road broken up by traffic Chemin défoncé par le roulage. Road, carriage Route carrossable. Road, good Bonne route. Road map Carte routière. Road mender Cantonnier. _Roadster_ _Bicyclette de route._ Roadway Chaussée. Rod Tige. Rod for brake lever Tige de levier de frein. Rod for carburetter piston Tige de piston de carburateur Rod for clutch pedal Tige de pédale d'embrayage. Rod for differential brake Tige de frein de différentiel. Rod for single cylinder Tige entretoise de culasse. Roller Galet; rouleau. Roller bearings Coussinets à rouleaux. Roller chain Chaîne à rouleaux. Roof board Planche de toiture. Rope Corde. Rosewood Palissandre. Rotary pump Pompe rotative. Rotary valve Soupape rotative. Rough (forging) Ebauché. Round (on a track) Tour de piste. Roundabout way Détour. Row (radiator) Etage. Rubber Caoutchouc. Rubber pedal Pédale à caoutchouc. Rubber sleeve of valve Tube caoutchouc de valve. Runabout Voiturette. Rust Rouille. Rust, to Rouiller; se rouiller. Rust, to remove Dérouiller. Rut Ornière. S Saddle Selle. _Saddle clip_ _Serrage de selle._ _Saddle cover_ _Couvre-selle._ _Saddle, cushion_ _Selle à coussins._ _Saddle frame_ _Cadre de selle._ _Saddle lug_ _Raccord du pilier de selle._ _Saddle, peakless_ _Selle sans bec._ _Saddle pillar_ _Pilier de selle._ _Saddle, pneumatic_ _Selle pneumatique._ _Safety bicycle_ _Bicyclette._ Safety bolt Boulon de sécurité. Safety valve Soupape de sûreté. Sal ammoniac Sel ammoniac. Sand paper Papier de verre. Satin wood Bois de satin. Saw Scie. Screen, rotary Ecran rotatif. Screw Vis. Screw brake Frein à vis. Screw-cut, to Tarauder; fileter. Screw driver Tournevis. Screw for fastening Vis de fixation de vis de contact. platinum-tipped screw Screw for governor cam Vis de came de régulateur. Screw for horn bracket Vis de collier de trompette. Screw for piston pin Vis d'axe de piston. Screw for starting bush Vis de clavetage de la douille de mise en marche. Screw for steering Vis pour direction. Screw tap for burner Vis pointeau de brûleur. Screw tap for burner tank Vis pointeau de lampe de brûleur. Screw, to Visser. Screw wrench Clef anglaise. Scroll iron Main de ressort. Seamless tube Tube sans soudure. Seat Siège; place. Seat board Planche du siège. _Seat pillar_ _Pilier de selle_; _tube de selle_. Secondary shaft Arbre secondaire. Section iron Fer profilé. Sectional radiator Radiateur cloisonné. Sector Secteur. Sector support Support de secteur. Security bolt with spring and cap Boulon de sécurité à ressort et à chapeau. Security stud with wing nut Boulon de sécurité à oreilles. Segment Segment. Seize, to Gripper. Seizing Grippement. Self-propelling Automobile. Self-sealing tyre Pneumatique auto-réparable. _Semi-racer_ _Machine demi-course._ Set of wires Série de fils. Set screw Vis de rappel. Shackle Menotte; esse. Shade lines Traits de force. Shaft Arbre. Shearing strain Travail de cisaillement. Sheet iron Tôle de fer. Sheeting Tôlerie. Shoe, brake Sabot de frein. Shop Atelier. Short frame Châssis court. Shoulder Embase; épaulement. Show Exposition. Shutter Persienne; volet. Side board Planche latérale. Side door Portière latérale. Side elevation Elévation de côté. Side entrance Entrée sur le côté. Side plate of link Lame de maillon. Side rail for folding seat Accotoir de strapontin. Side slip Dérapage. Side slip, to Déraper. Side step Marchepied de côté. Side thrust Poussée oblique. Side timbers Ridelles. Side view Vue de côté. Sight feed lubricator Graisseur à débit visible; compte-gouttes. Silencer Silencieux; pot d'échappement. Silver plated Plaqué argent. Single ended spanner Clef simple. Single roller chain Chaîne à simples rouleaux. Single tube tyre Pneumatique à tube simple; pneumatique collé. Skid, to Patiner; déraper. Slack tyre Pneumatique dégonflé. Sleeve Manchon; douille. Slide Coulisse; glissière. Slide rod Tige de distribution. Slide rod guide Coulisseau de tige de distribution. Slide valve Tiroir. Slipping Glissement. Small connecting rod Biellette. Small plate Lame. _Smaller cog wheel_ _Petit pignon._ Smear, to Enduire; barboter. Snug Ergot. Snug, with Ergoté. Socket Manchon; douille. _Socket, head_ _Douille de direction._ Soft soap Savon noir. Solder, to Souder. Sole bar Longeron. Sole piece Semelle. Solid D'une seule pièce. Solid tyre Caoutchouc plein; bandage plein. Solid wheel Roue pleine. Spanner Clef. Spanner for steering gear Clef pour rotules de direction. Spare parts Pièces de rechange. Spark Etincelle. Spark gap Espace d'étincelle. Sparking Allumage. Sparking advance Avance à l'allumage. Sparking advance lever Manette d'avance à l'allumage. Sparking plug Bougie; inflammateur; tampon d'allumage. Sparking plug stud Goujon d'inflammateur. Sparking retard Retard à l'allumage. Specific gravity Gravité spécifique. Speed Vitesse. Speed, at full A toute vitesse. Speed gear box Boîte de vitesse. Speed indicator Indicateur de vitesse. Spindle, pinion Axe de pignon. Spindle, valve Tige de soupape. Spiral spring Ressort à boudin. Spirit Essence. Spirit lamp Lampe à alcool. Splash board Planche pare-crotte. Split Fendu. Split pin Goupille fendue. Split pulley Poulie en deux pièces. Split washer Rondelle Grover. Spoke Rai; rayon. Spoke nipple Ecrou de rayon. Spoke tightener Serre-rayon. Spoke washer Rondelle pour rais. Sponge Eponge. Spoon block Sabot forme cuiller. Spoon brake Frein à sabot; frein à patin. Sport Sport. Sprag Béquille. Sprag bracket Chape de béquille. Sprag pulley Poulie de béquille. Spray carburetter Carburateur à pulvérisation. Spray chamber Chambre de pulvérisation; chambre de diffusion. Spray nipple or nozzle Gigleur; bec. Spray vaporiser Vaporisateur à pulvérisation. Sprayer Diffuseur; cône renversé; champignon de pulvérisation. Spring Ressort. Spring box Boîte à ressort. Spring clutch Embrayage à ressort. _Spring frame_ _Cadre antivibrateur._ Spring of burner valve Ressort de vis pointeau de brûleur. Spring of compression valve Ressort de soupape de compression. Spring of contact breaker Ressort de trembleur. Spring seat Siège à ressorts. Sprocket axle support Support d'arbre de pignon de chaîne. Sprocket bolt Colonnette. Sprocket shaft Arbre de pignon de chaîne. Sprocket wheel Pignon de chaîne. Sprocket wheel washer Rondelle de pignon de chaîne. Spruce Spruce. Spur gear Engrenage droit. Spurt, to Donner un coup de collier. Square coil Bobine carrée. Squared shaft Arbre à carré. Stack of tubes Faisceau tubulaire. Stage, day's Etape journalière. Staggered En quinconces. Stand Support. Stand (for spectators) Tribune. Staple Gâche; crampon. Start, to Démarrer; mettre en marche. Starting Mise en marche; démarrage. Starting catch or bolt Verrou de mise en marche. Starting handle Manivelle de mise en marche. Starting handle axle Axe de manivelle de mise en marche. Starting pin Goupille de mise en marche. Starting pinion Pignon de mise en marche. Starting pinion bush Douille de pignon de mise en marche. Stay Tirant; entretoise. Stay rod Tige entretoise. Stay tube Tube tirant. Steel Acier. Steel, cold drawn Acier étiré à froid. Steel cord Corde en acier. Steel rim Jante en acier. Steel wire Fil d'acier. Steep ascent Montée rapide. Steep descent Descente rapide. Steep gradient Forte rampe. Steer, to Diriger. Steering Direction. Steering axle Essieu directeur. Steering bar Barre de direction. Steering collar Emplanture pour direction. Steering column Tube de direction; barre verticale de direction. Steering gear box Boîte de direction. Steering lever Levier de direction. _Steering lock_ _Arrêt de direction._ _Steering post_ _Tube intérieur de direction._ Steering quadrant Secteur de direction. Steering rod Bielle de commande de direction; tige de direction. Steering rod bolt Axe de bielle de direction. Steering sector Secteur pour direction. Steering shaft Arbre de direction. _Steering wheel_ _Roue directrice._ Steering wheel, hand Volant de direction. Stem (boat) Etrave. _Stem, handle bar_ _Tube plongeur de guidon._ Stem, valve Tige de soupape. Step Marchepied. Step bearing Crapaudine. Step pulley Poulie étagée. Step tread Palette de marchepied. Stern frame Cadre d'hélice. Stern post Etambot. Stern tube Tube d'arbre de l'hélice. Sticking plaster Taffetas. Stirrup pump Pompe à étrier. Stop Butoir. Stop, to S'arrêter. Stop valve Soupape d'arrêt. Stoppage Arrêt. Stopping place Etape. Straighten, to Redresser. Strap Courroie. Street Rue. Stroke of piston Course du piston. Stud Goujon. Stud bolt Colonnette. Stud, security Boulon de sécurité. Stud with projection Goujon ergot. Studded tread band Protecteur antidérapant à rivets. Stuffed Rembourré Stuffing box Presse-étoupe; boîte à garniture. Subscription Abonnement; cotisation. Suction Aspiration. Suction stroke Temps d'aspiration. Suction tubing Tuyauterie d'aspiration. Suction valve cap Bouchon d'aspiration. Suction valve flange Bride d'aspiration. Sulphuric acid Acide sulfurique. Superheater Surchauffeur. Support Support. Support for spring Main de support. Surface carburetter Carburateur par surface. Surface condenser Condenseur par surface. Syringe Seringue. Switch Interrupteur. Switch block Sabot d'interrupteur. Switch off, to Couper le circuit. Switch on, to Fermer le circuit. Swivel Emerillon. T Tack Pointe. Tail-board Tablier d'arrière. Tail board fastening (wagon) Fermeture de hayon. Tail board hook Crochet de tablier. Tail end shaft Arbre porte-hélice. Tallow wood Arbre à suif. Tandem Tandem. _Tandem safety_ _Bicyclette-tandem._ _Tandem tricycle_ _Tricycle tandem._ Tangent spokes Rayons tangents. Take to pieces, to Démonter. Tank Réservoir. Tap Robinet. Tap, screwing Taraud. Taper pin Goupille conique. Tappet Toc; broche d'entraînement. Tarpaulin Bâche. Tax plate Plaque de contrôle. Teak Teck. Tee Té. Telescopic pump Pompe télescope. Template Gabarit. Tenon Tenon. Terminal Borne. Thimble Cosse. Thong Lanière. Thread, to Fileter. Threaded pin Goupille filetée. Three way tap Robinet à trois voies. Three way water tap Robinet à trois débits pour circulation d'eau. Thread (screw) Filet. Throttle valve Soupape à papillon; étrangleur. Throw out of gear, to Débrayer. Thrust Poussée; butée. Thrust bearing Palier de butée. Thrust block Butée. Thrust collar Bague de butée. Thrust rod Bielle de poussée. Thrust screw Vis de poussée. Ticket of membership Certificat de membre. Ticking for covering cushions Toile treillis pour coussins. Tighten, to Serrer; tendre. Tightener, belt Tendeur pour courroie. Tiller Barre. Timekeeper Chronométreur. Timing gear Appareil d'avance à l'allumage. Timing sector or quadrant Secteur pour avance à l'allumage. _Toe clip_ _Rattrape de pédale_; _calepieds_. Tool bag Sacoche. Tool pouch Sacoche. Tommy bar Broche. Tonneau Tonneau. Tongs Tenailles; pinces. _Top head cup_ _Raccord supérieur avant._ Top part of diaphragm Cuvette de piston à air. Top shaft Arbre supérieur. _Top tube_ _Tube supérieur_; _tube horizontal_. Torque Torque. Tour Voyage; tournée. Touring Le tourisme. Touring car Voiture de tourisme. Tourist Touriste. Tow, to Remorquer. Track, racing Piste. Tractive power Effort de traction. Tractor Tracteur. Trade, the Le commerce. Trade mark Marque de fabrique. Traffic, heavy Encombrement de voitures. Trailer Voiturette remorque. Tread Chape; bande de roulement; croissant de protection. Trembler Trembleur; rupteur. Trembler coil Bobine à trembleur. _Tricycle_ _Tricycle._ Trip Voyage de plaisir. Trip rod Culbuteur. Trip rod collar Bague de culbuteur. Trip rod collar pin Goupille de bague de culbuteur. Triple gear wheel Roue triple. Triple inlet valve seat Siège triple de soupape d'aspiration. Trouser clip Pince-pantalon. True, to Rectifier. True a wheel, to Centrer une roue. Tube Tube. Tube expander Sertisseur. Tubular box spanner Clef en tube concentrique. Tubular steel shaft Arbre tube acier. Turning handle Poignée tournante. Turnpike road Route de grande communication. Turpentine Térébenthine. Tyre Caoutchouc; pneumatique; bandage. Tyre cement Colle; mastic. Tyre cover Enveloppe. Tyre pump Pompe à pneumatique. Tyre remover Démonte-pneu; démonte-bandage. Tyre solution Dissolution. Twin tap Robinet de mélange. Twist belt Courroie torse. _Two speed machine_ _Machine à deux vitesses._ Two to one gear Mouvement de dédoublement. Two to one shaft Arbre à cames. Two way tap Robinet à deux voies. U Unattached Indépendant. Underframe Châssis inférieur. Under stem of carburetter Dessous de carburateur. Uniform, club Costume social. Union Raccord. Union, cycling Union vélocipédique. Universal joint Joint universel; joint à rotule. Universal shackle Jumelle. Unpuncturable Imperforable. Unrideable Impraticable. Unrivet, to Dériver. Unscrew, to Dévisser. Up hill, to go Monter une côte. Upholstered Garni; capitonné. Upholstering Garniture. V V belt Courroie trapézoïdale; courroie en V. V block on trembler Bloc en V du trembleur. Valve, petrol inlet Clapet d'alimentation; pointeau d'arrivée d'essence. Valve Valve; soupape; clapet. Valve chain Chaînette de valve. Valve chamber Chambre de soupapes. Valve chamber cap Bouchon de chambre des soupapes. Valve cone Cône de soupape. Valve dust cap Bouchon de soupape. Valve lifter Lève-soupape. Valve plug (tyre) Obus. Valve seat Siège de soupape. Valve spindle } Tige de soupape. Valve stem } Valve, to grind a Meuler une soupape. Van Voiture de livraison. Van, large Fourgon de livraison. Vapourising carburetter Carburateur à évaporation. Variable speed Vitesse variable. Vehicle Véhicule. Ventilator Ventilateur. Vertical section Coupe verticale. Vibration Trépidation. Vice Etau. Victoria Victoria. Voltage Voltage. Voltmeter Voltmètre. Vulcanised fibre Fibre vulcanisée. Vulcanised rubber Caoutchouc vulcanisé. W Wagonette Wagonnette. Wallet Sacoche. Walnut Noyer. Warmer Réchauffeur. Warming pipe Tube-réchauffeur. Wash-board Fargue. Washer Rondelle. Waste oil screw Vis de purge pour l'huile de graissage. Waste oil tap Robinet de purge pour l'huile de graissage. Waste petrol screw Vis de purge pour carburateur. Waste petrol tap Robinet de purge pour carburateur. Watch holder Porte-montre. Water Eau. Water cap Bouchon de réservoir. Water circulation Circulation d'eau. Water circulation connection Tubulure pour circulation d'eau. Water cooling Refroidissement à l'eau. Water gauge Niveau d'eau. Water gauge glass Tube de niveau d'eau. Water jacket Culasse à eau; enveloppe d'eau. Water receiver round exhaust valve Poche d'eau autour de la soupape d'échappement. Waterproof Imperméable; étanche à l'eau. Waterproof bag Sac en toile caoutchoutée. Waterproof cape Pèlerine. Water tank Réservoir à eau; caisse à eau. Water tube Bouilleur. Watering cart Arrosoir; tonneau d'arrosage. Wear and tear Usure. Web (of a beam) Ame. Wedge Coin; cale. Weighing machine Bascule. Weight Poids. Weld, to Souder. Weldless Sans soudure. Well seat Siège profond. Wheel Roue. Wheel base Empattement. Wheel cap Chapeau de roue. Wheel cap spanner Clef pour essieux de voitures. Wheel gauge Ecartement des roues. Wheel guard Couvre-roues. Wheel iron head Embrasure de ressort. Wheel pulley Poulie jante. Whip Cravache. Whistle Sifflet. White light Feu blanc. Wick Mèche. Wind Vent. Wind, head Vent contraire. Wind shield Contrevent. Winding road Route en lacets. Window blind Store. Wing Aile. Winged nut Ecrou à oreilles. Winning post Poteau d'arrivée. Wipe contact Distributeur d'allumage. Wire clamp Serre-fil. Wire clamp for commutator Serre-fil pour distributeur d'allumage. Wire clamp for timing sector Serre-fil pour secteur d'avance à l'allumage. Wire drawing of steam Laminage de la vapeur. Wire gauze Toile métallique. Wire, iron Fil de fer. Wire rope Câble métallique. Wire seat Siège à tissu métallique. Wired on cover Enveloppe à tringles. Wooden rim Jante en bois. Wooden seat Siège de bois. Working drawing Dessin d'exécution. Working load Charge utile. Working parts Pièces mécaniques. Working pressure Pression effective. Workmanship Main d'oeuvre. Works Ateliers; fabrique; usine. Worm Filet; vis sans fin. Wrench, adjustable Clef anglaise. Wrist pin Axe d'assemblage. Wrought iron Fer forgé. Y Yew If. Yoke Etrier. Z Zinc Zinc. FRENCH-ENGLISH. Abonnement Subscription. Acajou Mahogany. _Acatène_ _Chainless._ Accélérateur Accelerator. Accessoires Accessories. Accidenté Hilly. Accotement Cycle path. Accotoir de strapontin Side rail for folding seat. Accumulateur Accumulator; storage battery. Acétylène Acetylene. Acétylite Acetylite. Acier embouti Pressed steel. Acier trempé Hardened steel. A-coup Knock. Affaisser, s' To collapse (of tyres). Agencement Fitting. Agrafe de courroie Belt fastener. Aiguille Needle; pricker. Aile Wing. Aile d'arrière Back wing. Aile d'avant Front wing. Ailette Gill; flange; fin. Ajouré With an opening. Alcool dénaturé Methylated spirits. Alésage Bore. Alésoir Rimer. Allumage Ignition; sparking. Allumage à incandescence Tube ignition. Allumage électrique Electric ignition. Allumage magnéto-électrique Magneto-ignition. Allumage par magnéto Magneto-ignition. Allumage prématuré Back fire. Allumeur Contact breaker. Allumoir Lighter; igniter. Ame Web. Amiante Asbestos. Ampérage Amperage. Ampère Ampere. Ampèremètre Ammeter. Ampoule verre Glass bulb. Anche Reed. Anti-dérapant Non-skidding. Arbre à cames Cam shaft. Arbre à carré Squared shaft. Arbre à plateaux Flanged shaft. Arbre d'accélérateur Accelerator shaft. Arbre de changement de vitesse Change speed shaft. Arbre de différentiel Differential shaft. Arbre de direction Steering shaft. Arbre d'embrayage Clutch shaft. Arbre de moteur Engine shaft; motor shaft. Arbre de mouvement Gear shaft. Arbre de pédale Pedal shaft. Arbre de pignon de chaîne Sprocket shaft. Arbre de ralentisseur Accelerator shaft. Arbre de transmission Gear shaft; counter shaft. Arbre en porte-à-faux Overhanging or projecting shaft. Arbre inférieur Clutch shaft; bottom shaft. Arbre intermédiaire Reverse shaft; counter shaft; intermediate shaft. Arbre porte-hélice Tail end shaft. Arbre porte-marteau de régulateur Governor hammer shaft. de moteur Arbre primaire Primary shaft. Arbre secondaire Secondary shaft. Arbre supérieur Top shaft. Arrache-clous Nail catcher. _Arrêt de direction_ _Headlock_; _steering lock_. Arrière-train After carriage. Arrivée d'essence Petrol inlet. Aspiration Suction. Astiquer To polish. Atelier Workshop. Attache Clamp. Automobile Self-propelling; motorcar. Autoréparateur, -rice Self-sealing. Avance à l'allumage Sparking advance. Avance à l'allumage, appareil d' Timing gear. Avant-train Fore-carriage. Axe Axle; bolt; pin; spindle. Axe d'articulation de direction Steering rod bolt. Axe d'assemblage Wrist pin. Axe de bielle de direction Steering rod bolt. Axe des abscisses Datum line. Axe de flotteur de carburateur Carburetter float spindle. Axe de fourchette porte-galet Exhaust fork roller bolt. d'échappement Axe de frein Brake pin. Axe de galet du levier Exhaust fork roller bolt. porte-galet de moteur. Axe de levier de changement de Forward and reverse lever rod pin. marche Axe de manivelle de mise en marche Starting handle axle. Axe des mâchoires du frein de Differential brake bolt. différentiel. Axe de pédale Pedal pin. Axe de pignon Pinion spindle. Axe de piston Piston pin; gudgeon pin. _Axe de volant_ _Driving shaft._ _Axe du pédalier_ _Crank axle._ Axe en axe, d' Centre to centre. _Axe moteur_ _Driving shaft._ Axe principal Main axle. Axe supportant les distributeurs Commutator cam shaft. d'allumage. B Bac d'accumulateur Containing case. Bâche Tarpaulin. Bague Collar; bush. Bague à collerette Flanged collar. Bague de biellette de rappel de Collar for digger. tige Bague de butée Thrust collar. Bague de captation Thrust collar. Bague de culbuteur Trip rod collar. Bague de centrage Centering ring. Bague de corps de distributeur Commutator bush. d'allumage _Bague de réglage de direction_ _Steering head lock nut._ Bain d'huile Oil bath. Balai Brush. Balai des distributeurs d'allumage Commutator brush. Ballon Gas bag; canopy. Ballon démontable Removable canopy. Bandage Tyre. Bandage plein Solid tyre. Bande anti-dérapante Non-skidding band. Bande de roulement Tread. Baquet Bucket seat. Barbotage Smearing. Barboter To smear or daub. Barre d'accouplement de direction Front steering bar. Barre franche Tiller. Bascule Weighing machine. Basse tension Low tension. Bateau à moteur Motor boat. Bâti de moteur Crank case. Batterie Battery. Batterie de piles sèches Dry battery. Bec Nipple; burner. _Bec de selle_ _Peak of saddle._ _Bécane_ _Bike._ Béquille Sprag; devil. _Bicycle multiplié_ _Ordinary geared bicycle._ _Bicyclette_ _Safety bicycle._ _Bicyclette à moteur_ _Motor bicycle._ _Bicyclette de dame_ _Lady's bicycle._ _Bicyclette d'homme_ _Man's bicycle._ _Bicyclette pliante_ _Folding bicycle._ _Bicycliste_ _Bicyclist._ Bidon Petrol can; oilcan. Bielle Connecting rod; rod. Bielle de changement de vitesse Change speed connecting rod. Bielle de commande de débrayage Brake and clutch lever connecting et de frein rod. Bielle de commande de direction Steering rod. Bielle de commande de frein Brake lever connecting rod. Bielle de commande de piston de Carburetter connecting rod. carburateur Bielle de moteur Piston connecting rod. Bielle de poussée Thrust rod. Bielle de rappel de tige Digger connecting rod. Bielle de tension de chaîne Chain adjusting rod. Biellette Small connecting rod. Bille Ball. Bille de carburateur Carburetter ball or valve. Bille de graisseur Lubricator ball. Biseauté Bevelled. Blindage Casing. Blindé Cased. Bloc Block. Bloc de chaîne Chain block. Bloc du trembleur Trembler block. Bloc, gonflé à Hard pumped (tyre). Bloc, serrer le frein à To put the brake full on. Bobine à trembleur Trembler coil. Bobine carrée Square coil. Bobine d'induction Induction coil. Bobine quadruple 4-way coil. Bobine sans trembleur Non-trembler coil. Bois d'arbre à suif Tallow wood. Boisseau de butoir Buffer guide. Boîte Box. Boîte à garniture Stuffing box. Boîte à graisse Axle box. Boîte à ressort Spring box. Boîte de différentiel Differential gear box. Boîte de direction Steering gear box. Boîte d'engrenages Gear box. Boîte de mélange Mixing chamber. Boîte de mouvement Gear box. Boîte de vitesse Speed gear box. Boîte du flotteur Float chamber. Boîte nécessaire Repair box. Bombé Convex. Bordé Planking. Borgne Blind. Borne Terminal. Bouche-trou Cap for oil hole. Bouchon Cap; plug; nipple. Bouchon à champignon Mushroom cap. Bouchon d'accumulateur Accumulator cap. Bouchon d'aspiration Suction valve cap. Bouchon de dessus de carburateur Carburetter float cap. Bouchon d'échappement Exhaust valve cap. Bouchon d'emplissage de réservoir Cap for water pipe. d'eau Bouchon d'inflammateur Firing nipple. Bouchon de réservoir Water cap. Bouchon du regard d'échappement Exhaust valve inspection cap. Bouchon de valve Valve cap. Bouchon de vidange Blow off plug. Bouchon registre de prise d'air Carburetter air cap. pour carburateur Bougie Sparking plug. Bouilleur Water tube. Bouillotte Footwarmer (water). Boule de régulateur Governor ball. Bouleau Birch-wood. Boulon Bolt. Boulon à mentonnet Hook bolt. Boulon d'ancrage Holding down bolt. Boulon de frein Brake screw. Boulon de sécurité Safety bolt; security stud. Boulon de sécurité à oreilles Security stud with wing nut. Boulon de sécurité à ressort et à Security stud with spring and cap. chapeau _Boulon du collier de direction_ _Head and handle bar clip bolt._ Boulon, 6 pans Hexagon head bolt. Boulon et écrou Bolt and nut. Boulon et écrou de chaîne Chain bolt and nut. _Boulon et écrou de la tige de _Seat pillar bolt and nut._ selle_ Bourrelet Beaded edge of tyre cover. Bouton Button. Bouton d'arrêt Stop button. Bouton de manivelle Crank pin. Bouton de porte Door handle. Braser To braze. Brassière Arm sling. Brevet d'invention Patent. Brevet principal Master patent. Bride Clamp; flange. Bride d'aspiration Inlet valve flange. Bride d'échappement Exhaust valve flange. Bride de ressort Clip for spring. Briquet Clamp. Broche Tommy bar; drift; gudgeon pin. Broche d'entraînement Tappet. Brosse à chaîne Chain brush. Brûleur Burner. Buis Box-wood. Burette Oil can. Butée Thrust block. Butée à billes Ball bearing thrust. Butée de changement de marche Reversing thrust. Butoir Stop. C Cab Cab. Câble Wire; rope. Câble flexible Flexible wire. Cache-poussière Dust cap. _Cadre_ _Frame._ _Cadre à ressorts_ _Spring frame._ _Cadre antivibrateur_ _Spring frame._ _Cadre de selle_ _Saddle frame._ _Cadre en croix_ _Cross frame._ Cadre d'hélice Stern frame. Caisse Body. Caisse à eau Water tank. Caisse pliante Folding crate. Cale Block; wedge. _Calepieds_ _Toe clip._ Caler To key. Calfater To caulk. Calotte de soupape d'aspiration Inlet valve cap. Calotte de timbre Dome of bell. Came Cam. Came d'allumage Ignition cam. Came d'échappement Exhaust lift cam. Came de régulateur Governor cam. Came fibre Fibre cam. Camion Dray; lorry. Caniveau Gutter. Canot automobile Motor launch. Caoutchouc India rubber; tyre. _Caoutchouc cannelé pour pédales_ _Fluted pedal rubber._ Caoutchouc creux Hollow tyre. Caoutchouc plein Solid tyre. Caoutchouc pneumatique Pneumatic tyre. _Caoutchouc pour pédales_ _Pedal rubber._ Capitonné Upholstered. Capot couvre-moteur Bonnet. Capote Hood. Capuchon Hood. Capuchon de brûleur Burner guard. Capuchon de lanterne Flame guard. Carburateur Carburetter. Carburateur à évaporation Vapourising carburetter. Carburateur à niveau constant Constant level carburetter. Carburateur à pulvérisation Spray carburetter. Carburateur par surface Surface carburetter. Carbure de calcium Carbide. Cardan Cardan; arbor shaft. Carneau Fire-tube. Carrefour Crossways. Carrosserie Carriage work. Carrossier Carriage builder. Carter Crank case; gear case. Carton d'amiante Asbestos millboard. Catalytique Catalytic. Catalyse Catalysis. Cèdre Cedar. Celluloïd Celluloid. Cémenter To case-harden. Centrer une roue To true a wheel. Chaîne Chain. Chaîne à blocs Block chain. Chaîne à doubles rouleaux Double roller chain. Chaîne à rouleaux Roller chain. Chaîne à simples rouleaux Single roller chain. Chaînette de valve Valve chain. Chaînon Link of chain. Chambre à air Air tube; inner tube. Chambre de combustion Combustion chamber. Chambre d'explosion Explosion chamber. Chambre de diffusion Spray chamber. Chambre de mélange Mixing chamber. Chambre de pulvérisation Spray chamber. Chambre de soupapes Valve chamber. Champignon Inverted cone. Champignon de pulvérisation Sprayer. Chanfreiner To chamfer. Changement de marche Reversing gear. Changement de vitesse Change speed gear. Chape Tread of tyre; end; bracket; fork. Chape de béquille Sprag bracket. Chape de boule de régulateur Governor ball fork. Chape du cliquet de levier de Change speed lever catch fork. changement de vitesse Chape de levier de frein Brake lever end. Chape de piston du carburateur Carburetter piston rod end. Chape de tige de frein Brake rod end. Chape de tige entretoise de Cylinder head stay end. culasse Chapeau Cap; keep. Chapeau de palier Bearing keep. Chapeau de roue Wheel cap. Chapeau de soupape Valve cap. _Chapeau de tension_ _Cap of draw-link._ Charge de rupture Breaking strain. Charge utile Working load. Charger To charge. Charnière Hinge. Charnière avec cache-fente Concealed hinge. Chasse-clous Nail-catcher. Chasse-goupille Pin driver. Châssis Chassis; frame. Châssis cintré Curved frame. Châssis court Short frame. Châssis inférieur Under-frame. Châtaignier Chestnut. Chaudière Boiler. Chaudière à vaporisation Flash boiler. instantanée Chaufferette Footwarmer. Chaussée Roadway. Chaussée en empierrement Macadamised road. Chemin Road. Chemin forain Wide thoroughfare. Cheminée d'aspiration Air chimney. Chêne Oak. Chêne blanc White oak. Chêne vert Live oak. Chevaux effectifs, force en Brake horse-power. Cheville de l'interrupteur Connecting plug. Chicanes, en Arranged as baffles. Choc en arrière Back fire; back kick. Circulation d'eau Water circulation. Cisaillement, travail de Shearing strain. Clapet Flap valve; valve. Clapet d'alimentation Feed valve. Claquer To rattle. Clavette Key; cotter; linch-pin. _Clavette de pédalier_ _Bottom bracket cotter pin._ Clavette de soupape d'admission Inlet valve cotter. Clef Spanner. Clef américaine à molette Billing spanner. "Billing." Clef anglaise Screw wrench. Clef à deux branches Double branch spanner. Clef à douille Box spanner. Clef de serrage Spanner. Clef double Double ended spanner. Clef en tube concentrique Tubular box spanner. Clef pour essieux de voitures Wheel cap spanner. Clef pour rotules de direction Spanner for steering gear. Clef simple Single ended spanner. Clin, à Clincher built. Clinquant Foil. Cliquet Catch; ratchet. Cliquet de levier de changement Change speed lever catch. de vitesse Cliquet de levier de frein Brake lever catch. Clochette Bell. Cloison Partition. Clou à parquet Brad. Coefficient de friction Coefficient of friction. Coin Wedge. Colle Cement (for tyres). Collecteur Commutator; header (of boiler). Collet Collar. Collier Band; strap. Collier d'excentrique Eccentric strap. Collier de frein Brake band; brake clip. _Collier de levier de frein_ _Brake detachable clip._ _Collier de réglage des cuvettes _Bottom, bracket adjusting de pédalier_ collar._ Collier de serrage Clip. _Collier de serrage de direction_ _Head and handle bar clip._ Collier de trompette Horn bracket. _Collier de tube de frein_ _Brake adjusting clip._ Colonnette Sprocket bolt; stud bolt. Commandé Operated; governed. Compas Hinge. Compte-gouttes Drip feed lubricator. Compte-tours Revolution counter. Condenseur à jet Jet condenser. Condenseur à surface Surface condenser. Cône Cone. Cône d'embrayage Clutch cone. _Cône de moyeu arrière_ _Back hub cone._ _Cône de moyeu avant_ _Front hub cone._ _Cône de pédale_ _Pedal cone._ Cône de réglage Adjusting cone. _Cône du raccord inférieur avant_ _Bottom head cone._ Cône femelle Female cone. _Cône fixe du moyeu arrière_ _Rear hub fixed cone._ _Cône fixe du moyeu avant_ _Front hub fixed cone._ Cône mâle Male cone. Cône renversé Inverted or spray cone. Congé Fillet. Contact platine Platinum contact. Contour Outline. Contre-clavette Gib. Contre-écrou Lock-nut. _Contre-écrou de direction_ _Head locking nut._ _Contre-écrou du pignon arrière_ _Chain ring lock nut._ Contre-enveloppe Protecting cover. Contrefourche Fork prop. _Contrepédaler_ _To back-pedal._ Contre-plaque Baffle plate. Contrepoids Balance weight. Contrepoids de vilebrequin Crank back-balance. Contre-pression Back pressure. Contrevent Wind shield. Corde Cord. Corde d'amiante Asbestos cord. Corde de chanvre Hemp cord. Corde en acier Steel cord. Cornet d'alarme Horn; hooter. Cornière Angle bar. Cosse Thimble. Costume social Club costume. Côte praticable Navigable hill. Coude Elbow. Coulisse Slide. Coulisseau Block; guide. Coulisseau de tige de distribution Slide rod guide. Coup, à- Knock. Coup de collier Spurt. Coup de poing Hand pump. Coupe Section. Coupé Brougham. Coupe-circuit Cut-out. Coupe longitudinale Longitudinal section. Coupe transversale Cross section. Coupe verticale Vertical section. Couper le circuit To switch off. Courant Current. Couronne Ring; crown; rim. Couronne de billes Ball race. _Couronne de fourche avant_ _Front fork crown._ Courroie Belt; strap. Courroie à talon Edged belt. Courroie collée Cemented belt. Courroie cousue Sewn belt. Courroie en =V= =V= belt. Courroie inextensible Non-stretching belt. Courroie poil de chameau Camel hair belt. Courroie sans fin Endless belt. Courroie torse Twist belt. Courroie trapézoïdale =V=-belt. Course du piston Stroke of piston. Course de côte Hill climbing trial. Course de fond Long distance race. Coussin Cushion. Coussinet Bearing. Coussinets à billes Ball bearings. Coussinets à cônes réglables Adjustable cone bearings. Coussinets à cuvettes réglables Adjustable cup bearings. Coussinets à double filet Double ball bearings. Coussinets ajustables Adjustable bearings. Coussinets à rouleaux Roller bearings. Coussinets de boîte de mouvement Gear box bearings. Coussinets de moteur Motor bearings. Couvercle Cover; canopy; top. Couvercle antipoussiéreux Dust cap. Couvercle d'allumage Cover of contact breaker. Couvercle d'arbre à cames Cam shaft cover. Couvercle de culasse Cylinder head cover. Couvercle démontable Removable canopy. Couvercle et galerie Luggage top. Couvre-chaîne Chain guard. Couvre-engrenages Gear case. Couvre-roues Wheel guard. _Couvre-selle_ _Saddle cover._ Crampon Staple. Crapaudine Step bearing. Crémaillère Rack. Crevaison Burst (tyre). Crever To burst; to collapse. Cran Notch. Cric Lifting jack. Cristal Glass. Crochet Bell fastener; hook. Crochet de tablier Tailboard hook. Crochets de la jante Clinch of the rim. Croisillon Cross shaft. Croissant de protection Protecting band; tread. Crosse Cross head. Crupon pour courroie Belt-butt. Cuir Leather. Cuir chrome Chrome leather. _Cuir de selle_ _Leather top of saddle._ Cuir vert Raw hide. Cuivré Copper plated. Cuivre jaune Brass. Cuivre rouge Copper. Culasse Cylinder head. Culasse à eau Water jacket. Culbuteur Trip rod; digger. Culotte Bridge piece. Culotte d'aspiration Bridge piece for inlet valve. Culotte d'échappement Bridge piece for exhaust. Curseur Index; cursor. Cuvette Ball race; cup (of bearings). Cuvette arrière d'essieu à billes Ball race for back axle. Cuvette avant d'essieu à billes Ball race for front axle. Cuvette de brûleur Burner cup or pan. _Cuvette de pédalier_ _Bottom bracket barrel._ Cuvette de piston à air Top part of diaphragm. Cylindre Cylinder. Cylindre-culasse Centaur cylinder. D Dard Dragon tongue. Débit Feed. Débrayer To disengage; to de-clutch. Débrayer la courroie To throw off the belt. Déchets de coton Cotton waste. Décompression Compression relief. Déformations de la route Irregularities of the road. Dégonfler To deflate. Démarrage Starting. Démarrer To start. Demi-coupe Half section. Démontable Detachable. Démonte-bandage } Tyre remover. Démonte-pneu } Démonter To take to pieces. Démonteur de bandage Tyre remover. Densimètre Densimeter. Dent de roue Cog. Denture Tooth; cog. Départ Outlet. Dérapage Side slip. Déraper To side slip; to skid. Descente dangereuse Dangerous hill. Désengrener To throw out of gear. Dessin d'exécution Working drawing. Dessous de carburateur Under stem of carburetter. Détente de vapeur Expansion of steam. Détraquer To get out of order. Développement Gear. Déversoir Flooder. Diaphragme Diaphragm. Diffuseur Sprayer. Dimensions de la caisse Measurement over body. Direction Steering; _head of a bicycle_. Disposition schématique Diagrammatic arrangement. Disque Disc. Disque d'excentrique Eccentric sheave. Dissolution Tyre solution. Distance Distance. Distance parcourue Distance run. Distributeur d'allumage } Distributeur de courant pour } Commutator; wipe contact. allumage } Domaine public, le brevet est The patent has expired. dans le Douille Bush; sleeve. _Douille de direction_ _Head socket._ Douille de lanterne Lamp stump. Douille de mise en marche Starting pinion bush. Douille de régulateur Governor sleeve. Dressé au tour Faced in the lathe. Dynamo Dynamo. E Ebauché Rough; forging. Ebène Ebony. Ecartement des essieux Distance between axles. Ecartement des roues Wheel gauge. Echappement Exhaust. Echauffement Overheating. Echelle de réduction Plotting scale. Eclater To burst (tyre). Ecrou Nut. Ecrou à encoches } Castle nut. Ecrou à entailles } Ecrou à oreilles Butterfly nut. Ecrou borgne Cap nut. _Ecrou d'axe de pédale_ _Pedal fastening nut._ Ecrou d'essieu à billes Ball bearing axle arm nut. Ecrou de rayon Spoke nipple. _Ecrou de réglage de pédale_ _Pedal adjusting nut._ _Ecrou du collier de direction_ _Head and handle bar clip nut._ _Ecrou du moyeu arrière_ _Back hub spindle nut._ _Ecrou du moyeu avant_ _Front hub spindle nut._ Ecrou molleté Milled edge nut. Effort de flexion Bending strain. Effort de traction Tractive power. Elément Cell. Elévation de bout End elevation. Elévation de côté Side elevation. Elévation de face Front elevation. Email Enamel. Emailler To enamel. Embase Shoulder. Embouti Dished; pressed. Embrasure de ressort Wheel iron head. Embrayage Clutch. Embrayage à cônes Cone clutch. Embrayage à friction Friction clutch. Embrayage à griffes Dog clutch. Embrayage à plateaux Plate clutch. Embrayage à ressort Spring clutch. Embrayer To throw into gear; to clutch. Emérillon Swivel. Empattement Wheel base. Emplanture pour direction Steering collar. Encliquetage Ratchet. Enduire To smear. Enduit pour courroies Belt grease; belt dressing. Engrenage Gear. Engrenage à chevrons Double helical gear. Engrenage conique Bevel gear. Engrenage de dédoublement Two to one gear. Engrenage droit Spur gear. Engrené In gear. Engrener To mesh (of cog wheels). Ensemble General view. Entonnoir Funnel. Entonnoir avec grille Funnel with strainer. Entonnoir avec toile métallique Funnel with fine strainer. fine Entourage Bonnet. Entrée sur le côté Side entrance. Entretoise Stay. _Entretoise des tubes montants _Mudguard bridge._ arrière_ _Entretoise fourche arrière_ _Back fork bridge._ Enveloppe Cover; outer cover of tyre. Enveloppe d'eau Water jacket. Enveloppe du vilebrequin Crank case. Enveloppe protectrice Protecting cover. Epaulement Shoulder. Equerre Angle plate. Erable Maple. Erable dur Rock maple. Ergoté With snug. Esse Linch-pin; shackle. Essence Petrol; spirit. Essieu Axle. Essieu à billes Ball bearing axle. Essieu brisé Divided axle. Essieu directeur Steering axle. Essieu droit Straight axle. Essieu coudé Crank axle. Essieu moteur Driving axle; live axle. Essieu porteur Carrying axle. Essieu tournant Live axle. Etage (radiateur) Row. Etambot Stern post. Etanche à la poussière Dust proof. Etape Stopping place. Etape journalière Day's stage. Etincelle Spark. Etincelle chaude Fat spark. Etiquette Label. Etiré à froid Cold drawn. Etoquiau Detent pin. Etrangler To throttle. Etranglement Throttling. Etrave Stem. Etrier Yoke. Etudier To design. Eventail à 4 branches 4 slat neck plate. Explosion prématurée Back fire. Exposant Exhibitor. Exposition Exhibition; show. Extincteur Extinguisher. F Fabrique Factory. Faisceau tubulaire Stack of tubes. Fargue Wash-board. Fendu Split. Fer en U Channel iron. Fer forgé Wrought iron. Fer profilé Section iron. Fermer le circuit To close the circuit. Fermeture Closing; fastening. Fermeture de hayon Tailboard fastening. Feu blanc White light. Feu rouge Red light. Feu vert Green light. Fibre Fibre. Fibre isolante Insulation fibre. Fil d'acier Steel wire. Fil de fer Iron wire. Fil électrique Electric wire. Filet Thread of a screw. Filetage double mâle Double male screwed. Filtre Filter. Flasque Cheek. Flotteur Float. Flotteur de carburateur Carburetter float. Fonte Cast iron. Forte rampe Steep gradient. Fou, folle Loose. _Fourche arrière_ _Back fork._ _Fourche avant_ _Front fork._ Fourchette Fork. Fourchette d'échappement Exhaust valve fork. Fourchette de rappel de tige Digger fork. Fourchette de tirage de levier de Brake rod fork. frein Fourchette porte-galet Exhaust roller fork. d'échappement Fourgon de livraison Large van. Fourré Bushed. Fourreau de fourche Fork blade. Franc-bord, à Carvel built. Frein Brake. Frein à bande Band brake. Frein à collier Band brake. _Frein à contre-pédalage_ _Back-pedalling brake._ Frein à enroulement Band brake. Frein à expansion Expansion brake. Frein à levier Lever brake. Frein à mâchoires Clasp brake; clip brake. Frein à patin Spoon brake. Frein à sabot Spoon brake. Frein à tambour Drum brake. Frein à vis Screw brake. _Frein du moyeu_ _Hub brake._ Frein sur jante Rim brake. Frein du différentiel Differential brake. Freiner To apply the brake. Frêne Ash. Frette Ferrule; nave hoop. Frottement Friction. Frottements à cônes Cone bearings. Fuite d'air Leakage of air. Fusée d'essieu Axle arm. G Gabarit Template. Gâche Staple. Gaïac Lignum vitæ. Gaine Case; sheath. Galerie Luggage guard. Galet Roller. Galet d'arbre à cames Cam shaft roller. Galet de chaîne Chain roller. Galet de débrayage Clutch lever roller. Galet de fourchette d'échappement Exhaust fork roller. Galet de friction Friction roller. Garage Garage; motor house. Garcette Gasket. Garde-boue Mudguard. Garde-boue arrière Back mudguard. Garde-boue avant Front mudguard. Garde-chaîne Chain guard; gear case. Garde-crotte Mudguard. _Garde-jupe_ _Dress guard._ Garni Upholstered; bushed. Garniture Lining; upholstering; packing. Gaz acétylène Acetylene gas. Gaz brûlé Burnt gas. Gaz de décharge } Exhaust gas. Gaz d'échappement } Générateur à vaporisation Flash boiler. instantanée Gerçure Boil; bulge on cover. Gicleur; gigleur Petrol jet. Glace Glass; window. Glace de couvercle de Commutator glass. distributeur d'allumage Glace de graisseur Lubricator glass. Glace du tiroir Face of slide valve. Glissement Slipping. Glissière Slide. Godet à huile Oil cup. Godet à pétrole Petrol cup. Gomme de Para Para rubber. Gonfler To inflate; to pump (tyres). Goujon Stud. Goujon de capote Head prop. Goujon d'inflammateur Sparking plug stud. Goujon de support de pompe Pump bracket stud. Goujon ergot Stud with projection. Goupille Pin. Goupille conique Taper pin. Goupille de bague de culbuteur Trip rod collar pin. Goupille de mise en marche Starting gear pin. Goupille fendue Split pin. Goupille filetée Threaded pin. Gousset Corner plate; gusset. Gouttières de graissage Oil ways. Grain Thrust block. Graissage Lubricator. Graisse Grease. Graisse consistante Stauffer grease; thick grease. Graisser To lubricate. Graisseur Lubricator. Graisseur à débit visible Sight feed lubricator. Graisseur à départs multiples Multiple lubricator. Graisseur compte-gouttes Drip feed lubricator. Graisseur coup de poing Hand pump lubricator. Graisseur de bâti Crank case lubricator. _Grand pignon_ _Chain wheel._ Grande route Public carriage road. Gravier Gravel. Grelot Bell. Griffe Dog. Grillage Grid. Grille anti-poussière } Gauze dust shield. Grille métallique } Grippement Friction; seizing. Gripper To seize. Groupe moteur Motor and gear. Guichet de prise d'air Air inlet flap or valve. Guide Guide. Guide de fourchette d'échappement Exhaust fork guide. Guide de frein Brake guide. Guide de soupape d'échappement Exhaust valve guide. _Guidon_ _Handle bar._ _Guidon cintré_ _Bent handle bar._ _Guidon réversible_ _Reversible handle bar._ H Haute tension High tension. Hayon Front or tail board of a wagon. Hélice Propeller. Hemlock Hemlock. Hernie Boil; bulge on cover. Hêtre Beech. Hickory Hickory. Horloge de voiture Carriage clock. Huilage Oiling. Huile Oil. Huile à graisser Lubricating oil. Huile de lin cuite Boiled linseed oil. Huile de pieds de boeuf Neat's foot oil. Huileur Oil hole. Huit Drop shackle. I If Yew. Imperforable Puncture proof. Imperméable à l'air Air tight. Indégonflable Non-deflatable. Indicateur de pentes Gradometer. Indicateur de pôles Pole finder. Indicateur de vitesse Speed indicator. Induit Armature. Inflammateur Sparking plug. Injecteur Injector. Insigne Badge. Interrupteur Switch. Interrupteur à cheville Connecting plug. _Interrupteur de cadre_ _Frame switch._ Isolateur Insulator. J Jante Rim. Jante creuse Hollow rim. Jante de la roue arrière Back rim. Jante de la roue avant Front rim. Jante en acier Steel rim. Jante en bois Wooden rim. Jauge Gauge. Jeu Play; clearance. Joint Joint. Joint à rotule Ball joint. Joint de Cardan Cardan joint. Jumelle Universal shackle. L Lacet Belt lace. Lâche Slack. Laiton Brass. Lame Small plate; blade. Lame à talon du rupteur Carpentier High speed trembler top plate. Lame de collier de frein ordinaire Segment of ordinary brake. Lame de maillon Side plate of link. Lame verte Green sheet. Laminage de la vapeur Wire drawing of steam. Lampe de brûleur Burner tank. Lampion Chinese lantern. Landau Landau. Landaulet Landaulet. Lanière Belt lace. Lanterne Lamp; burner cage; diaphragm. Lanterne à acétylène Acetylene lamp. Lanterne à bougie Candle lamp. Lanterne à huile Oil lamp. Lanterne à pétrole Petroleum lamp. Lanterne de queue Tail light. Largeur au maître-bau Beam. Lentille Lens (of lamp). Levier Lever. Levier à boule Ball lever. Levier à main Hand lever. Levier coudé Crank lever. Levier de changement de marche. Reversing lever. Levier de changement de vitesse. Change speed lever. Levier de débrayage Disengaging lever; clutch lever. Levier de direction Steering lever. Levier de frein Brake lever. Levier de ralentisseur Accelerator lever. Levier de régulateur Governor lever. Levier de tirage de frein Brake lever. Limande de garniture Gasket. Lime File. Limousine Limousine. Linguet Pawl. Linoleum Linoleum. Longeron Sole bar. Longueur de tête en tête Length between perpendiculars. Loquet Catch; latch. Loqueteau de portière Door lock. Lubrifiant Lubricant. Lubrifier To lubricate. Lumière d'échappement Exhaust port. Lunettes de route Goggles. M Macadam Macadam. Macaron Cork float. _Machine de route_ _Roadster._ Maillechort German silver. Maillon Link. Main de ressort Scroll iron. Main de support Support for spring. Manche Handle. Manchon Sleeve; socket. Manchon à griffes Dog clutch. Manchon excentrique de réduction. Offset reducing coupling. Manchon guêtre pour pneu Tyre gaiter. Manette Handle; hand lever. Manette à ressort Spring handle. Manette d'admission d'air Air lever. Manette d'admission de gaz Gas lever. Manette d'allumage Ignition lever. Manette d'avance à l'allumage Sparking advance lever. Manette de commande Controlling lever. Manette de compression Compression lever. Manivelle Crank; starting handle. Manivelle à cloche Bell crank. Manivelle de mise en marche Starting handle. Manivelle détachable Detachable crank. Manivelle droite Right crank. Manivelle gauche Left crank. Manneton Crank. Manomètre Pressure gauge. Marche Movement; motion. Marche arrière Reverse movement. Marche en avant Forward movement. Marchepied Step. Marchepied d'arrière Back step. Marchepied de côté Side step. Maroquin Morocco. Marteau Hammer. Masque Mask. Matière active Active material. Mèche Wick. Mélange Mixture; mixing. Mélange tonnant Explosive mixture. Mélèze Larch. Membrane Membrane. Membrures Boat frames. Menotte Shackle; dee shackle. Mentonnet Flange. Meuler To grind. Mine de plomb Blacklead. Mise en marche Starting. Modérateur Governor; regulator. Molleté Milled. Montant de porte Door pillar. Montée rapide Steep ascent. Montueux Hilly. Monture de brûleur Burner mount. Moteur Motor. Moteur à l'avant Motor in front. Moteur à quatre temps Four cycle gas motor. Moteur sous le siège Motor under the seat. _Motocycle_ _Motor cycle._ _Motocyclette_ _Motor bicycle._ _Motocycliste_ _Motor cyclist._ Mouvement de commande de Accelerator control gear. ralentisseur Mouvement de différentiel Differential gear; balance gear. Mouvement de réduction à 1/2 Two to one gear; half time gear. Moyeu Hub; boss. Moyeu de la roue arrière Rear hub. Moyeu de la roue avant Front hub. Multiplication Gear. Multiplication forte High gearing. Multiplier To gear up. N Nécessaire de réparations Repair outfit. Nickeler To plate. Noyau de fer Iron core. Noyer Walnut. O Obturateur Cap for oil hole. Obus Valve plug (tyre). Odomètre Odometer. OEuvre, dans l' In the clear. OEuvre, hors Over all. Omnibus Omnibus. Oreille Lug. Orifice d'échappement Exhaust opening. Orifice de remplissage Petrol inlet. Orme Elm. Orme blanc Grey elm. Orme noir Rock elm. Ornière Rut. P Palette de marchepied Step tread. Palier Bearing block. Palier central Centre bearing. Palier de butée Thrust bearing. Palier, en On the flat. Palissandre Rosewood. Panne Purlin; break-down. Panne, rester en To break down. Panneau Panel. Papier d'amiante Asbestos paper. Papier d'émeri Emery paper. Papier de verre Sand paper. Papillon Throttle valve; butterfly nut. Paraffine Paraffin. Pare-crotte Dash-board. Pare-flamme Flame guard. Pare-poussière Dust-guard. Pas de vis Pitch; thread of screw. Pastille pour réparation de pneu. Patch for repairing tyre. Pâte à polir Metal polish. Patin de frein Brake spoon or shoe. Patiner To skid. Patte d'attache Clamp. _Pattes arrière_ _End of back forks._ Pavé Cobble stones. Peau de vache Cowhide. Pédale Pedal. _Pédale à caoutchouc_ _Rubber pedal._ _Pédale à dents de scie_ _Rat-trap pedal._ Pédale à levier de débrayage Clutch pedal. _Pédale à scie_ _Rat-trap pedal._ Pédale au yatagan Clutch pedal. Pédale d'accélérateur Accelerator pedal. Pédale de débrayage Clutch pedal. Pédale de débrayage et frein Disengaging and brake pedal. Pédale de frein Brake pedal. Pédale de secteur d'accélérateur. Accelerator sector pedal. _Pédalier_ _Crank bracket_; _bottom bracket_. Pédalier Pedal gear. _Pédalier étroit_ _Narrow tread bracket._ Peinture aluminium Aluminium paint. Pente dure } Pente forte } Steep gradient. Pente raide } Pente douce } Easy gradient. Pente faible } Perforation Puncture. Perforer, se To puncture. Persienne Shutter. Pétrole lampant Paraffin; heavy oil. Pétrole lourd Heavy oil. Phaëton Phaeton. Phare Headlight. Pièce d'attache Clamp. Pièces de rechange Spare parts. Pièces interchangeables Interchangeable parts. Pièces mécaniques Working parts. Pièce polaire Pole piece. Pierre de rebord Kerbstone. Pignon Pinion. Pignon conique } Bevel wheel. Pignon d'angle } Pignon de chaîne Sprocket wheel. Pignon de dédoublement Gear wheel. _Pignon de la roue motrice_ _Rear hub chain ring._ Pignon de mise en marche } Starting pinion. Pignon de mise en train } Pignon droit Spur pinion. _Pignon, grand_ _Chain wheel._ Pile sèche Dry battery. _Pilier de selle_ _Saddle pillar._ Pin Pine. Pince Pliers. Pinçage Pinching (of tyre). Pincer To pinch. Piston Piston. Piston à air Air piston. Piston de carburateur Carburetter piston. Piston de moteur Motor piston. Pitch-pin Pitch pine. Piton Eye bolt. Pivot Pivot. Place Seat. Plan de détail Detailed plan. Plan de l'ensemble General plan. Plan de niveau Datum line. Plan vu de dessous Plan looking upwards. Planche de toiture Roof board. Planche du bout End board. Planche du siège Seat board. Planche latérale Side board. Planche pare-crotte Dash board; splash board. Planétaire Planetary. Plaque Plate. Plaqué argent Silver plated. Plaque de contrôle Tax plate. Plaque d'identité Identification plate. Plaque émaillée Enamelled plate. Plaque numérotée Number plate. Plat bord Gunwale. Plateau de friction Friction plate. Plateau de manivelle Crank disc. Plus-value Extra price. Pneu-cuir Tread. Pneumatique Tyre; cover. Pneumatique à talons Cover with beaded edges. Pneumatique à tringles Cover wired on. Pneumatique à tube simple Single tube tyre. Pneumatique auto-réparable Self sealing tyre. Pneumatique collé Single tube tyre. Pneumatique dégonflé Slack tyre. Pneumatique de la roue arrière. Back tyre. Pneumatique de la roue avant Front tyre. Poche à gaz Gas bag. Poche d'eau autour de la soupape Water receiver round exhaust d'échappement valve. Poignée Handle. _Poignée d'allumage du guidon_ _Handle bar switch._ Poignée de la pompe à huile Handle of oil pump. Poignée en corne Horn handle. Poignée en liège Cork handle. _Poignée tournante_ _Turning handle._ Point de repère Reference mark. Point mort Dead centre. Pointeau Needle valve. Pointeau d'arrivée d'essence Petrol inlet valve. Pointes de la bougie Points of sparking plug. Poire de cornette Bulb of horn. Pompe Pump. Pompe à air Air pump. Pompe à battant Pump with clapper valve. Pompe à étrier Stirrup pump. Pompe à huile Oil pump. Pompe à pied Foot pump. Pompe centrifuge Centrifugal pump. Pompe de circulation Circulation pump. Pompe pneumatique Tyre pump. Pompe rotative Rotary pump. Pompe télescope Telescopic pump. Pompe turbine Centrifugal pump; turbine pump. Poncelet 1 H.P. = 3/4 Poncelet. Porte Door. Porte à coulisse Sliding door. Porte-à-faux, arbre en Overhanging or projecting shaft. Porte-bagage Luggage carrier. Porte d'entourage Bonnet door. Porte-fusil Gun clip. Porte-lanterne Lamp bracket. Porte-montre Watch holder. Porte-phare Lamp bracket. Porte-pompe Pump clip. Portée de calage Axle seat. Portière Door. Portière latérale Side door. Pot d'échappement Exhaust box; exhaust pot; silencer. Poteau avertisseur Caution board. Poteau d'arrivée Winning post. Poteau indicateur Finger post. Poulie Pulley. Poulie de béquille Sprag pulley. Poulie de commande Driving pulley. Poulie de frein Brake pulley. Poulie de graisseur Lubricator pulley. Poulie de tension Jockey pulley. Poulie de transmission Driving pulley. Poulie étagée Step pulley. Poulie extensible Expanding pulley. Poulie jante Wheel pulley. Poulie motrice Driving pulley. Poussée Thrust. Poussée oblique Side thrust. Poussière Dust. Poussoir de soupape d'échappement. Exhaust valve lift. Poutre à treillis Lattice girder. Presse Clamp. Presse-étoupe Gland; stuffing box. Pression effective Working pressure. Prise d'air Air port; air inlet. Prise directe Direct drive. Propulseur Propeller. Protecteur Protector. Protecteur antidérapant à rivets. Studded tread band. Protecteur de bandage Protecting band for tyre. Puissance au frein Brake horse power. Purge Blow off. Purgeur continu Drip tap. Q _Quadricycle à moteur_ _Motor quadricycle._ Quadruplette Quadruplet. Quille Keel. Quinconces, en Staggered. R Raccord Union; pipe connection. Raccord d'aspiration Inlet valve union. Raccord de pompe Pump union. _Raccord du pilier de selle_ _Saddle lug_; _seat lug_. _Raccord inférieur avant_ _Bottom head cup._ Radiateur Radiator. Radiateur à alvéoles Honeycomb radiator. Radiateur cloisonné Sectional radiator. Radiateur multitubulaire Multitubular radiator. Radiateur nid d'abeilles Honeycomb radiator. Rafraîchir To cool. Rai Spoke. Rainure Groove. Ralentisseur; accélérateur Accelerator. Rallonge Extension piece. Rampe Guard. Rampe d'huile Oil-way. Rampe de sortie d'eau Inclined water outlet. Rampe, en On a gradient. Rangée de billes Ball race. Rappel, tige de Digger rod. Raté d'allumage Misfire. _Rattrape de pédale_ _Toe clip._ Rayon Spoke. Rayons directs Direct spokes. Rayons renforcés Butt ended spokes. Rayons renforcés aux deux bouts Double butted spokes. Rayons tangents Tangent spokes. Rebord de la fusée Collar. Recaoutchouture Re-tyring; re-rubbering. Recharge Refill. Réchauffeur Petrol warmer; warming pipe; feed heater. Rectifier To true. Recuire To anneal. Recuit Annealed. Réflecteur parabolique Parabolic reflector. Refoulement, tuyau de Delivery pipe. Refroidir To cool. Refroidissement à l'eau Water cooling. Refroidisseur Cooler. Refroidisseur nid d'abeilles Beehive cooler. Regard Inspection plate or cover. Réglage Adjustment. Réglement de circulation Regulations. Régulateur Governor; regulator. Régulateur à main fixé sur le Carburetter hand regulator. carburateur Rembourré Stuffed. Remiser une voiture To house a car. Remorquer To tow; to haul. Rendement du moteur Efficiency of motor. Renfort de fourche Prop for fork. _Repose-pied_ _Foot rest._ Réservoir Tank. Réservoir à eau Water tank. Réservoir à essence Petrol tank. Réservoir à flotteur Float chamber. Réservoir à huile Oil reservoir. Réservoir d'échappement Exhaust box. Réservoir de pétrole Petrol tank. Ressort Spring. Ressort à boudin Spiral spring. Ressort à pincette Elliptic spring. Ressort compensateur Compensating spring. Ressort d'appareil de commande Hand control spring. d'allumage Ressort de choc Buffer spring. Ressort d'embrayage Clutch spring. Ressort d'essieu Body spring. Ressort demi-pincette Grasshopper spring. Ressort de piston à air Diaphragm spring. Ressort de rappel Reaction spring. Ressort de rappel de distributeur Long commutator spring. Ressort de rappel de frein Brake spring. Ressort de rappel de levier de Carburetter lever spring. carburateur Ressort de rappel de tige Digger spring. Ressort de régulateur Governor spring. Ressort de soupape de robinet Petrol tap spring. Ressort de suspension Bearing spring. Ressort de tige de ralentisseur Accelerator rod spring. Ressort de trembleur Contact breaker spring. Ressort de vis pointeau des Burner valve spring. brûleurs Ressort elliptique Elliptic spring. Retard à l'allumage Retard sparking. Rideau Curtain. Ridelles Side timbers. Rivet Rivet. Robinet Tap. Robinet à deux voies Two-way tap. Robinet à trois débits pour Three-way water tap. circulation d'eau Robinet à trois voies Three-way tap. Robinet de compression Compression tap. Robinet de mélange Twin tap; mixing tap. Robinet de purge Blow through tap. Robinet de purge pour carburateur Waste petrol tap. Robinet de purge pour l'huile de Waste oil tap. graissage Robinet de réservoir Petrol tank tap. Robinet de tuyauterie à essence Petrol pipe tap. Robinet de vidange Drain tap. Robinet pour alimentation de Lubricator tap. graisseur Roder To grind. Rondelle Washer. Rondelle d'amiante Asbestos washer. Rondelle de pignon Sprocket wheel washer. Rondelle de réglage de pompe Pump washer. Rondelle Grover Split washer. Rondelle pour bossage de rais Spoke washer. Rotin Rattan. Rotule, joint à Globe joint; universal joint. Roulements à billes Ball bearings. Roue Wheel. Roue à ailettes pour pompe Pump fan. Roue à cliquet Ratchet wheel. Roue à gorge Grooved wheel. Roue d'angle Bevel wheel. Roue d'arrière Back wheel. Roue d'artillerie Artillery wheel. Roue d'avant Front wheel. Roue de chaîne Chain wheel. Roue de commande de graisseur Lubricator wheel. Roue de commande de marche Controlling wheel. Roue de régulateur Governor wheel. Roue de voiture Car wheel. Roue dentée Cog wheel. Roue directrice Steering wheel. Roue ferrée Iron tyred wheel. _Roue folle_ _Free wheel._ _Roue libre_ _Free wheel._ _Roue libre à billes_ _Ball bearing free wheel._ _Roue libre à cliquets_ _Free wheel, ratchet clutch._ _Roue libre à galets_ _Free wheel, roller clutch._ Roue motrice Driving wheel. _Roue motrice_ _Rear wheel._ Roue planétaire Planet wheel. Roue pleine Solid wheel. Roue quadruple Quadruple gear wheel. Roue triple Triple gear wheel. Roulant, très Easy running. Rouleau de chaîne Chain roller. Route Road. Route cahotante Bumpy road. Route carrossable Navigable road. Route défoncée Loose road. Route défoncée par le roulage Road broken up by traffic. Route de grande communication Turnpike road. Route départementale High road. Route en lacets Ribbon road; winding road. Route en pierres concassées Metalled road. Route nationale Main road. Route pavée Paved road. Route praticable Rideable road. _Routière_ _Roadster._ Rupteur Trembler; contact breaker. S Sabot Block. Sabot bois pour interrupteur Wooden switch block. Sabot de frein Brake spoon or shoe. Sabot forme cuiller Spoon block. Sac Bag. Sac en toile caoutchoutée Waterproof bag. Sacoche Tool bag. Sans-chaîne Chainless. Sapin Fir. Satellite Planetary member. Satin, bois de Satin wood. Schéma Diagram. Secours, boîte de Repair box. Secteur Sector; quadrant. Secteur denté Notched quadrant. Secteur de levier de ralentisseur Accelerator sector. Secteur pour avance à l'allumage Timing sector. Secteur pour direction Steering quadrant. Segment Segment. Segment de piston Piston ring. Selle Saddle. Semelle Sole piece. Série de fils Set of wires. Seringue Syringe. Seringue de graissage Grease injector. Serpentin Coil. _Serrage de selle_ _Saddle clip._ Serre-fil Wire clamp. Serre-rayon Spoke tightener. Serrer le frein To apply the brake. Sertisseur Tube expander. Siège Seat. Siège à coussins Cushioned seat. Siège ajustable Adjustable seat. Siège à ressorts Spring seat. Siège à tissu métallique Wire seat. Siège d'avant Front seat. Siège de bois Wooden seat. Siège de cuir Leather seat. Siège de soupape Valve seating. Siège en crin Hair seat. Siège fixe Fixed seat. Siège profond Well seat. Siège rembourré Stuffed seat. Siège tournant Revolving seat. Siège triple de soupape Triple inlet valve seat. d'aspiration Silencieux Exhaust box; silencer. Société Club. Socle Base. Soie de manivelle Crank pin. Sonnette Bell. Sortie Outlet. Soudé par rapprochement Butt welded. Soudé par recouvrement Lap welded. Soulèvement Lift. Soupape Valve. Soupape à air Air valve. Soupape à bille Ball valve. Soupape à papillon Butterfly valve; throttle valve. Soupape d'admission Inlet valve; induction valve. Soupape d'arrêt Stop valve. Soupape d'aspiration Inlet valve. Soupape de détente Cut-off valve. Soupape d'échappement Exhaust valve. Soupape de retenue Check valve. Soupape de sûreté Safety valve. Soupape de trop-plein Relief valve. Soupape en champignon Mushroom valve. Soupape en champignon renversé Cup valve. Soupape rotative Rotary valve. Spruce Spruce. Store Window blind. Strapontin Bracket seat; folding seat. Support Support. Support de pompe Pump bracket. Surchauffeur Superheater. Surface de refroidissement Cooling surface. Surface de roulement Tread. T Tablier Apron; length available for carriage work. Tablier d'arrière Tail board. Tablier d'avant Front apron; front board. Talc French chalk. Talon Beaded edge of tyre cover. Tambour Drum. Tambour de frein Brake drum. Tampon Plug; buffer. Tampon d'allumage Sparking plug. Tandem Tandem. Tandem à moteur Motor tandem. Tapis Carpet. Taquet de soulèvement de soupape Exhaust valve lifter. d'échappement Taraud Tap. Tasseau de bois Wood clamp; block. Té Tee. Teck Teak. Temps, à quatre Otto cycle. Temps d'aspiration Suction stroke. Temps de compression Compression stroke. Temps d'échappement Exhaust stroke. Temps d'explosion Explosion stroke. Tendeur Jockey pulley. Tendeur pour courroie Belt tightener. Tendre To tighten. Tenon Tenon; stud. Tension de chaîne Chain adjustment; _draw-link_. Térébenthine Turpentine. Tête Head; crown. Tête affleurée Flush head. Tête de bielle Connecting rod end. Tête de butoir Buffer head. _Tête de fourche avant_ _Front fork crown._ Tête fraisée Countersunk head. Tête noyée Countersunk head. Tête platinée Platinum tipped. Tétine Nipple. Thermosiphon Thermo syphon. Tiers-point Triangular file. Tige Rod; stem; spindle. Tige à fourchette Fork rod. Tige d'accélérateur Accelerator rod. Tige de butée de débrayage Rod for end of clutch shaft. Tige du cliquet de levier de Change speed lever rod. changement de vitesse Tige de distribution Slide rod. Tige d'excentrique Eccentric rod. Tige de flotteur Float wire. Tige de frein Brake rod. Tige de levier de frein Rod for brake lever. Tige de la pédale au yatagan Rod for clutch pedal. Tige de la soupape de compression Stem of compression valve. Tige de la soupape d'échappement Exhaust valve stem. Tige de piston Piston rod. Tige de poussoir d'échappement Exhaust valve lift rod. Tige de ralentisseur Accelerator rod. Tige de rappel de soupape Digger rod for exhaust valve. d'échappement _Tige de selle_ _Seat pillar._ Tige de soupape Valve spindle or stem. Tige de tirage de frein Brake rod. Tige entretoise Stay rod. Tige entretoise de culasse Rod for single cylinder. Timbre Bell. Tirant Stay. Tirant d'eau à vide Draught of water when empty. Tirant d'eau en charge Draught of water when loaded. _Tirant de la fourche arrière_ _Back fork bridge._ Tirant de radiateur Radiator stay. _Tirant des tubes montants_ _Mudguard bridge._ Tire-goupille Pin extractor. Tirette Prop. Tiroir Slide valve. Tiroir à coquille D valve. Toc Guide; tappet. Toc d'embrayage Guide for clutch cone. Toc de levier de régulateur Guide for governor lever. Toile Fabric (of tyre cover). Toile d'amiante Asbestos cloth. Toile d'émeri Emery cloth. Toile dissolutionnée Canvas for repairing cover. Toile gommée Canvas for repairing cover. Toile métallique Wire gauze. Toile treillis Ticking. Tôle Sheet of metal; sheet iron. Tôle emboutie Dished plate. Tôlerie Sheeting. Tonnant Explosive. Tonneau Tonneau. Tordre une roue To buckle a wheel. Torque Torque. Touche Interrupter plug; contact. Toucheau Contact piece. Tour d'adresse Feat of skill. Tour de force Feat of strength. Tournée Tour. Tournevis Screwdriver. Tourillon Journal; pivot. Tourillon de chaîne Rivet of chain. Tracteur Tractor. Train balladeur Balladeur train. Traits de force Shade lines. Transmission à Cardan Arbor shaft system of transmission. Trappe Flap door. Travail de cisaillement Shearing strain. Traverse Sole bar; beam. Trembleur Contact breaker; trembler. Trépidation Vibration. Tresse Gasket; braid. Tribune Stand. _Tricycle à chaîne centrale_ _Central gear tricycle._ _Tricycle à moteur_ _Motor tricycle._ _Tricycle à roue directrice _Front steerer tricycle._ devant_ _Tricycle compressible_ _Collapsible tricycle._ _Tricycle porteur_ _Carrier tricycle._ _Tricycle tandem_ _Tandem tricycle._ Tringle de changement de vitesse Change speed rod. Tringle de garde-boue Mudguard stay. Tringle de relevage Drag link. Tringles, à Wired on. Trottoir Footpath. Trottoir cyclable Cycle Path. Trou graisseur Oil hole. Trusquin à centrer Centering gauge. Tube Tube. Tube d'admission Induction pipe. Tube caoutchouc Rubber tube. Tube caoutchouc de valve Rubber sleeve of valve. Tube d'alimentation Gaspipe to motor; feed pipe. Tube d'arbre de l'hélice Stern tube. Tube d'échappement Exhaust pipe. Tube d'entrée d'air Air chimney. Tube de direction Steering column; _head socket_. Tube de frein Brake tube. _Tube de fourche arrière_ _Bottom stay._ Tube de la pompe à huile au moteur Oil pipe to crank case. Tube de niveau d'eau Water gauge glass. Tube de platine Platinum tube. Tube de prise d'air Air inlet pipe. Tube de trop-plein Overflow pipe. _Tube diagonal_ _Diagonal tube._ Tube du carburateur à la boîte de Pipe from carburetter to mixing mélange chamber. _Tube inférieur_ _Bottom tube._ _Tube intérieur de direction_ _Steering post._ Tube mélangeur Mixing tube. _Tube montant arrière_ _Back stay._ Tube pare-poussière Dust cap tube. _Tube plongeur du guidon_ _Handle bar stem._ Tube renforcé Extra strong tube. Tube sans soudure Seamless tube. _Tube supérieur_ _Top tube._ Tube tirant Stay tube. Tubulure Nozzle; connection. Tuyau Pipe. Tuyauterie Tubing. Tuyauterie d'aspiration Suction tubing. Tuyauterie d'échappement Exhaust tubing. Tuyère Nozzle. Tuyère de carburateur Air nozzle for carburetter. U Usine Factory. Usure Wear and tear. V Valve Valve. Vapeur de décharge Exhaust steam. Vaporisateur à pulvérisation Spray vaporiser. Vaporisation Steam production. Véhicule Vehicle. _Vélocipède_; _vélo_ _Cycle._ Ventilateur Ventilator; fan. Vérin Jack. Vernir To japan. Verre Glass. Verrou Catch; bolt. Verrou d'entourage Catch for bonnet door. Verrou de levier de changement de Catch for change speed lever. vitesse Verrou de mise en marche Starting catch or bolt. Victoria Victoria. Vilebrequin Crank; crank shaft. Virole Ferrule. Vis Screw. Vis à filet droit Right handed screw. Vis à filet gauche Left handed screw. Vis bouchon de purge Run off screw. Vis d'axe de piston Screw for piston pin. Vis de butée du rupteur Carpentier Screw for high speed trembler blade. Vis de came de moteur Screw for governor cam. Vis de clavetage de la douille de Screw for starting pin or bush. mise en marche Vis de collier de trompette Screw for horn bracket. Vis de contact Contact screw. Vis de couvercle de carburateur Screw for carburetter cover. Vis de fixation Fixing screw. Vis de fixation de la vis de Screw for fastening platinum contact tipped screw. Vis de marteau de came Governor hammer screw. Vis de mécanique Brake screw. Vis de poussée Thrust screw. Vis de purge pour carburateur Waste petrol screw. Vis de purge pour l'huile de Waste oil screw. graissage Vis de rappel Setscrew. Vis de réglage Setscrew. Vis de sûreté Setscrew. Vis fixant la lame platinée à Screw for high speed trembler top talon du rupteur Carpentier plate. Vis graisseur pour chapeau Lubricator screw for wheel cap. d'essieu Vis platinée de contact Platinum tipped screw. Vis pointeau de lampe de brûleur Screw tap for burner tank. Vis pointeau de support de brûleur Screw tap for burner. Vis pour direction Screw for steering. Vis pour ralentisseur Screw for accelerator. Vis sans fin Worm. Visiter To examine. Visser To screw. Vitesse en prise directe, grande Direct drive on top speed. Voie Road. Voie impraticable Bad road. Voie légère Light railway. Voilée, roue Buckled wheel. Voiture Car. Voiture courante Ordinary car. Voiture de course Racing car. Voiture de livraison Parcels van. Voiture de tourisme Touring car. Voiture légère Light vehicle. Voiture lourde Heavy vehicle. Voiturette Runabout. Voiturette remorque Trailer. Volant Fly-wheel; hand wheel. Volant à gorge Grooved wheel. Volant de direction Steering wheel. Volant de dynamo Dynamo wheel. Volant de pompe Pump wheel. Volant de régulateur Governor wheel. Volet Shutter. Voltmètre Voltmeter. Vrac, en In bulk. W Wagonnette Wagonette. Y Yatagan Clutch lever. Yeuse Live oak. Z Zinc Zinc. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, GREAT WINDMILL STREET, W., AND DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. * * * * * _SHORT LIST_ _August 1912_ A SHORT LIST OF SCIENTIFIC BOOKS PUBLISHED BY E. & F. N. SPON, Limited, 57 Haymarket, London, S.W. SOLE ENGLISH AGENTS for the Books of-- MYRON C. CLARK, NEW YORK SPON & CHAMBERLAIN, NEW YORK PAGE AGRICULTURE 2 ARCHITECTURE 2 ARTILLERY 5 AVIATION 5 BRIDGES AND ROOFS 6 BUILDING 2 CEMENT AND CONCRETE 7 CIVIL ENGINEERING 9 CURVE TABLES 12 DICTIONARIES 13 DOMESTIC ECONOMY 13 DRAWING 14 EARTHWORK 15 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 15 FOREIGN EXCHANGE 21 GAS AND OIL ENGINES 21 GAS LIGHTING 22 HISTORICAL; BIOGRAPHICAL 23 HOROLOGY 23 HYDRAULICS 24 INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY 25 INSTITUTIONS 56 INTEREST TABLES 28 IRRIGATION 28 LOGARITHM TABLES 29 MANUFACTURES 25 MARINE ENGINEERING 29 MATERIALS 31 MATHEMATICS 32 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 34 METALLURGY 37 METRIC TABLES 38 MINERALOGY AND MINING 39 MISCELLANEOUS 55 MODEL MAKING 41 MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING 46 NAVAL ARCHITECTURE 29 ORGANISATION 41 PHYSICS 42 PRICE BOOKS 43 RAILWAY ENGINEERING 44 SANITATION 46 STRUCTURAL DESIGN 6 TELEGRAPH CODES 48 USEFUL TABLES 53 WARMING; VENTILATION 48 WATER SUPPLY 49 WORKSHOP PRACTICE 50 ALL BOOKS ARE BOUND IN CLOTH UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED. _NOTE: The Prices in this Catalogue apply to books sold in the United Kingdom only._ AGRICULTURE. =Hemp.= A Practical Treatise on the Culture for Seed and Fibre. By S. S. BOYCE. 13 illus. 112 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1900_) _net_ 2 0 =Farm Drainage.= By H. F. FRENCH. 100 illus. 284 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1904_) _net_ 4 6 =Spices and How to Know Them.= By W. M. GIBBS. With 47 plates, including 14 in colours, 179 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 15 0 =Talks on Manures.= By J. HARRIS. New edition, 366 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1893_) _net_ 6 6 =Coffee=, its Culture and Commerce in all Countries. By C. G. W. LOCK. 11 plates, 274 pp. crown 8vo. (_1888_) 12 6 =Sugar, a Handbook for Planters and Refiners.= By the late J. A. R. NEWLANDS and B. E. R. NEWLANDS. 236 illus. 876 pp. demy 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 1 5 0 =Hops=, their Cultivation, Commerce and Uses. By P. L. SIMMONDS. 143 pp. crown 8vo. (_1877_) 4 6 =Estate Fences=, their Choice, Construction and Cost. By A. VERNON. Re-issue, 150 illus. 420 pp. 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 8 6 ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING. =Engineering Work in Public Buildings.= By R. O. ALLSOP. 77 illus. 168 pp. demy 4to. (_1912_) _net_ 12 6 =The Hydropathic Establishment and its Baths.= By R. O. ALLSOP. 8 plates, 107 pp. demy 8vo. (_1891_) 5 0 =The Turkish Bath=, its Design and Construction. By R. O. ALLSOP. 27 illus. 152 pp. demy 8vo. (_1890_) 6 0 =Public Abattoirs=, their Planning, Design and Equipment. By R. S. AYLING. 33 plates, 100 pp. demy 4to. (_1908_) _net_ 8 6 =The Builder's Clerk.= By T. BALES. Second edition, 92 pp. fcap. 8vo. (_1904_) 1 6 =Glossary of Technical Terms= used in Architecture and the Building Trades. By G. J. BURNS. 136 pp. crown 8vo. (_1895_) 3 6 =Chimney Design and Theory.= By W. W. CHRISTIE. Second edition, 54 illus. 200 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 12 6 =Approximate Estimates.= By T. E. COLEMAN. Third ed. 481 pp. ob. 32mo, leather. (_1907_) _net_ 5 0 =Stable Sanitation and Construction.= By T. E. COLEMAN. 183 illus. 226 pp. crown 8vo. (_1897_) 6 0 =House Plans= and Building Construction for General Contractors and House Builders. By M. M. DUSTMAN. 511 illus. 239 pp. oblong folio. (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 8 6 =Architectural Examples= in Brick, Stone, Wood and Iron. By W. FULLERTON. Third edition 245 plates, 254 pp. demy 4to. (_1908_) _net_ 15 0 =Bricklaying System.= By F. B. GILBRETH. 240 illus. 321 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 12 6 =Field System.= By F. B. GILBRETH. 194 pp. 12mo. leather. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 12 6 =The Building Trades Pocket Book.= Compiled by R. HALL. 12mo. With diary _net_ 1 0 =The Economics of Contracting.= By D. J. HAUER. 10 illus. viii. + 269 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 12 0 =The Clerk of Works' Vade Mecum.= By G. G. HOSKINS. Seventh edition, 52 pp. fcap. 8vo. (_1901_) 1 6 =Paint and Colour Mixing.= By A. S. JENNINGS. Fourth ed. 14 col. plates, 190 pp. 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 5 0 =A Handbook of Formulæ, Tables, and Memoranda for Architectural Surveyors.= By J. T. HURST. Fifteenth edition, 512 pp. royal 32mo, roan. (_1905_) _net_ 5 0 =Quantity Surveying.= By J. LEANING. Fifth ed. new impression, 936 pp. 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 1 5 0 =Builders' Quantities.= By H. M. LEWIS. 6 illus. 44 pp. cr. 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES No. 40.) (_1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Obstruction to Light.= A Graphic Method of determining Problems of Ancient Lights. By H. B. MOLESWORTH. 9 folding plates, 4to. (_1902_) _net_ 6 0 =Suburban Houses.= A series of practical plans. By J. H. PEARSON. 46 plates and 12 pp. text, crown 4to. (_1905_) _net_ 7 6 =Solid Bitumens=, their Physical and Chemical Properties. By S. F. PECKHAM. 23 illus. 324 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) 1 1 0 =Roman Architecture, Sculpture and Ornament.= By G. B. PIRANESI. 200 plates, reproduced in facsimile from the original. 2 vols. imperial folio, in wrappers. (_1900_) _net_ 2 2 0 =The Seven Periods of English Architecture=, defined and illustrated. By E. SHARPE. Third edition, 20 steel plates, royal 8vo. (_1888_) 12 6 =Our Factories, Workshops and Warehouses=, their Sanitary and Fire-Resisting Arrangements. By B. H. THWAITE. 183 ill. 282 pp. cr. 8vo. (_1882_) 9 0 =Elementary Principles of Carpentry.= By T. TREDGOLD AND J. T. HURST. Eleventh edition, 48 plates, 517 pp. crown 8vo. (_1904_) 12 6 =Treatise on the Design and Construction of Mill Buildings.= By W. G. TYRRELL. 652 illus. 490 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 17 0 =Practical Stair Building and Handrailing.= By W. H. WOOD. 32 plates, 91 pp. crown 4to. (_1894_) 10 6 =Spons' Architects' and Builders' Pocket Price-Book, Memoranda, Tables and Prices.= Edited by CLYDE YOUNG. Revised by STANFORD M. BROOKS. 16mo, leather cloth (size 6-1/2 in. by 3-3/4 in. by 1/2 in. thick). Issued annually in two Sections. =Prices and Diary=, in green cover, 239 pp. with Diary showing a week at an opening _net_ 2 6 =Memoranda and Tables=, in red cover. Illustrated, 372 pp. _net_ 2 6 ARTILLERY. =Guns and Gun Making Material.= By G. EDE. Crown 8vo. (_1889_) 6 0 =Treatise on Application of Wire to Construction of Ordnance.= By J. A. LONGRIDGE. 180 pp. 8vo. (_1884_) 1 5 0 =The Progress of Artillery: Naval Guns.= By J. A. LONGRIDGE. 8vo, sewed. (_1896_) 2 0 =The Field Gun of the Future.= By J. A. LONGRIDGE. 8vo, sewed. (_1892_) 2 6 AVIATION. =The Atmosphere=: its characteristics and dynamics. By F. J. B. CORDEIRO. 35 illus. 129 pp. small quarto. (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 10 6 =Theory and Practice of Model Aeroplaning.= By V. E. JOHNSON. 61 illus. 150 pp. crown 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 3 6 =The Gyroscope, An Experimental Study.= By V. E. JOHNSON. 34 illus. 40 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 22.) (_1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Natural Stability and the Parachute Principle in Aeroplanes.= By W. LE MAITRE. 34 ill. 48 pp. cr. 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES No. 39.) (_1911_) _net_ 1 6 =How to Build a 20-ft. Bi-plane Glider.= By A. P. MORGAN. 31 illus. 60 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 14.) (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 1 6 =Flight-Velocity.= By A. SAMUELSON. 4 plates, 42 pp. 8vo, sewed. (_1906_) _net_ 2 0 =Resistance of Air and the Question of Flying.= By A. SAMUELSON. 23 illus. 36 pp. 8vo, sewed. (_1905_) _net_ 2 0 =Aeroplanes in Gusts, Soaring Flight and Aeroplane Stability.= By S. L. WALKDEN. Demy 8vo. (_In the Press._) BRIDGES, ARCHES, ROOFS, AND STRUCTURAL DESIGN. =Strains in Ironwork.= By HENRY ADAMS. Fourth edition, 8 plates, 65 pp. crown 8vo. (_1904_) 5 0 =Designing Ironwork.= By HENRY ADAMS. Second series. 8vo, sewed. Part I. A Steel Box Girder. (_1894_) _net_ 0 9 " II. Built-up Steel Stanchions. (_1901_) _net_ 1 3 " III. Cisterns and Tanks. (_1902_) _net_ 1 0 " IV. A Fireproof Floor. (_1903_) _net_ 1 0 =Columns and Struts.= Theory and Design. By WM. ALEXANDER. 101 illus. xii + 265 pp. demy 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 10 6 =A Practical Treatise on Segmental and Elliptical Oblique or Skew Arches.= By G. J. BELL. Second edition, 17 plates, 125 pp. royal 8vo. (_1906_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Economics of Construction= in relation to Framed Structures. By R. H. BOW. Third thousand, 16 plates, 88 pp. 8vo. (_1873_) 5 0 =Theory of Voussoir Arches.= By Prof. W. CAIN. Third edition, 201 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 2 0 =New Formulæ for the Loads and Deflections= of Solid Beams and Girders. By W. DONALDSON. Second edition, 8vo. (_1872_) 4 6 =Plate Girder Railway Bridges.= By M. FITZMAURICE. 4 plates, 104 pp. 8vo. (_1895_) 6 0 =Pocket Book of Calculations= in Stresses. By E. M. GEORGE. 66 illus. 140 pp. royal 32mo, half roan. (_1895_) 3 6 =Strains on Braced Iron Arches= and Arched Iron Bridges. By A. S. HEAFORD. 39 pp. 8vo. (_1883_) 6 0 =Tables for Roof Framing.= By G. D. INSKIP. Second edition, 451 pp. 8vo, leather. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 12 6 =Stresses in Girder and Roof Frames=, for both dead and live loads, by simple Multiplication, etc. By F. R. JOHNSON. 28 plates, 215 pp. crown 8vo. (_1894_) 6 0 =A Graphical Method for Swing Bridges.= By B. F. LA RUE. 4 plates, 104 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1892_) _net_ 2 0 =Bridge and Tunnel Centres.= By J. B. MCMASTERS. Illustrated, 106 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1893_) _net_ 2 0 =Notes on Cylinder Bridge Piers= and the Well System of Foundations. By J. NEWMAN. 144 pp. 8vo. (_1893_) 6 0 =Calculation of Columns.= By T. NIELSEN. 4 plates, 36 pp. 8vo. cloth. (_1911_) _net_ 4 6 =A New Method of Graphic Statics= applied in the Construction of Wrought Iron Girders. By E. OLANDER. 16 plates, small folio. (_1887_) 10 6 =Steel Bar and Plate Tables.= Giving Weight of a Lineal Foot of all sizes of =L= and =T= Bars, Flat Bars, Plates, Square and Round Bars. By E. READ. On large folding card. (_1911_) _net_ 1 0 =Reference Book for Statical Calculations.= By F. RUFF. With diagrams, 140 pp. crown 8vo. (_1906_) _net_ 5 0 =Suspension Bridges and Cantilevers.= By D. B. STEINMANN. vii. + 185 pp. 18mo, boards. (VAN NOSTRAND SERIES, No. 127.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 2 0 =The Strength and Proportion of Riveted Joints.= By B. B. STONEY. 87 pp. 8vo. (_1885_) 5 0 =The Anatomy of Bridgework.= By W. H. THORPE. 103 illus. 190 pp. crown 8vo. (_1906_) _net_ 6 0 CEMENT AND CONCRETE. =Portland Cement=: its Manufacture, Testing and Use, By D. B. BUTLER. Second edition, 97 illus. 396 pp. demy 8vo. (_1905_) _net_ 16 0 =Theory of Steel-Concrete Arches= and of Vaulted Structures. By W. CAIN. Fourth edition, 27 illus. 212 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 2 0 =Reinforced Concrete Construction. Elementary Course.= By M. T. CANTELL. 65 illus. 135 pp. crown 8vo. (_1911._) _net_ 4 6 =Reinforced Concrete Construction. Advanced Course.= By M. T. CANTELL. 242 illus. xvi + 240 pp. super-royal 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 12 6 =Graphical Reinforced Concrete Design.= A series of Diagrams on sheets (measuring 17-1/2 in. by 22-1/2 in.) for Designing and Checking. With 48-page pamphlet. By J. A. DAVENPORT. Complete in roll. (_1911_) _net_ 5 0 =Cement Users' and Buyers' Guide.= By CALCARE. 115 pp. 32mo, cloth. (_1901_) _net_ 1 6 =Diagrams for Designing Reinforced Concrete Structures.= By G. F. DODGE. 31 illus. 104 pp. oblong folio. (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 17 0 =Cements, Mortars, and Concretes=; their Physical properties. By M. S. FALK. 78 illus. 176 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1904_) _net_ 10 6 =Concrete Construction, Methods and Cost.= By H. P. GILLETTE and C. S. HILL. 310 illus. 690 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Engineers' Pocket-Book of Reinforced Concrete.= By E. L. HEIDENREICH. 164 illus. 364 pp. crown 8vo, leather, gilt edges. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 12 6 =Concrete Inspection.= By C. S. HILL. 15 illus. 179 pp. 12mo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 4 6 =Practical Silo Construction.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 18 illus. 69 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 27.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Molding Concrete Chimneys, Slate and Roof Tiles.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 15 illus. 61 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 28.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Molding and Curing Ornamental Concrete.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 5 illus. 58 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 29.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Concrete Monuments, Mausoleums and Burial Vaults.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 18 illus. 65 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 31.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Concrete Floors and Sidewalks.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 8 illus. 63 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 32.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Molding Concrete Baths, Tubs, Aquariums and Natatoriums.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 16 illus. 64 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 33.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Concrete Bridges, Culverts and Sewers.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 14 illus. 58 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 34.) (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 1 6 =Constructing Concrete Porches.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 18 illus. 62 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 35.) _net_ 1 6 =Molding Concrete Flower-Pots, Boxes, Jardinières=, etc. By A. A. HOUGHTON. 8 illus. 52 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 36.) (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 1 6 =Molding Concrete Fountains and Lawn Ornaments.= By A. A. HOUGHTON. 14 illus. 56 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 37). (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 1 6 =Reinforced Concrete.= By E. MCCULLOCH. 28 illus. 128 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 6 6 =Concrete and Reinforced Concrete.= By H. A. REID. 715 illus. 884 pp. royal 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 21 0 =Theory and Design of Reinforced Concrete Arches.= By A. REUTERDAHL. 41 illus. 126 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 8 6 =Specification for Concrete Flags.= Issued by the INSTITUTION OF MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY ENGINEERS. Folio, sewed. (_1911_) _net_ 2 6 =Practical Cement Testing.= By W. P. TAYLOR. With 142 illus. 329 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 12 6 =Concrete Bridges and Culverts.= By H. G. TYRRELL. 66 illus. 251 pp. cr. 8vo, leather. _net_ 12 6 CIVIL ENGINEERING. CANALS, SURVEYING. (_See also_ IRRIGATION _and_ WATER SUPPLY.) =Practical Hints to Young Engineers Employed on Indian Railways.= By A. W. C. ADDIS. With 14 illus. 154 pp. 12mo. (_1910_) _net_ 3 6 =Levelling=, Barometric, Trigonometric and Spirit. By I. O. BAKER. Second edition, 15 illus. 145 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 2 0 =Punjab Rivers and Works.= By E. S. BELLASIS. 47 illus. 85 pp. folio, cloth. (_1911_) _net_ 8 0 =Notes on Instruments= best suited for Engineering Field Work in India and the Colonies. By W. G. BLIGH. 65 illus. 218 pp. 8vo. (_1899_) 7 6 =Practical Designing of Retaining Walls.= By Prof. W. CAIN. Fifth edition, 14 illus. 172 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 2 0 =Land Area Tables.= By W. CODD. Sheet mounted on linen, in cloth case, with explanatory booklet 3 6 =The Maintenance of Macadamised Roads.= By T. CODRINGTON. Second ed., 186 pp. 8vo. (_1892_) 7 6 =The Civil Engineers' Cost Book.= By MAJOR T. E. COLEMAN, R.E. xii. + 289 pp. Pocket size (6-1/2 in. × 3-5/8 in.), leather cloth. (_1912_) _net_ 5 0 =Retaining Walls in Theory and Practice.= By T. E. COLEMAN. 104 ill. 160 pp. cr. 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 5 0 =On Curved Masonry Dams.= By W. B. COVENTRY. 8vo, sewed. (_1894_) 2 0 =A Practical Method of Determining the Profile of a Masonry Dam.= By W. B. COVENTRY. 8vo, sewed. (_1894_) 2 6 =The Stresses on Masonry Dams= (oblique sections). By W. B. COVENTRY. 8vo, sewed. (_1894_) 2 0 =Handbook of Cost Data for Contractors and Engineers.= By H. P. GILLETTE. 1854 pp. crown 8vo, leather, gilt edges. (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Rock Excavation, Methods and Cost.= By H. P. GILLETTE. _New edition in preparation._ =High Masonry Dams.= By E. S. GOULD. With illus. 88 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1897_) _net_ 2 0 =Railway Tunnelling= in Heavy Ground. By C. GRIPPER. 3 plates, 66 pp. royal 8vo. (_1879_) 7 6 =Levelling and its General Application.= By T. HOLLOWAY. (_Third edition in preparation_) =Waterways and Water Transport.= By J. S. JEANS. 55 illus. 520 pp. 8vo. (_1890_) _net_ 9 0 =Table of Barometrical Heights to 20,000 Feet.= By LT.-COL. W. H. MACKESY. 1 plate, 24 pp. royal 32mo. (_1882_) 3 0 =Aid Book to Engineering Enterprise.= By E. MATHESON. Third edition, illustrated, 916 pp. medium 8vo, buckram. (_1898_) 1 4 0 =A Treatise on Surveying.= By R. E. MIDDLETON and O. CHADWICK. Third edition, royal 8vo. (_1911_) Part I. 11 plates 162 illus. 285 pp. 10 6 " II. 152 illus. and 2 plates, 340 pp. 10 6 =A Pocket Book of Useful Formulæ and Memoranda=, for Civil and Mechanical Engineers. By Sir G. L. MOLESWORTH and H. B. MOLESWORTH. With an Electrical Supplement by W. H. MOLESWORTH. Twenty-sixth edition, 760 illus. 901 pp. royal 32mo, French morocco, gilt edges. (_1908_) _net_ 5 0 =The Pocket Books of Sir G. L. Molesworth and J. T. Hurst=, printed on India paper and bound in one vol. Royal 32mo, russia, gilt edges _net_ 10 6 =Metallic Structures: Corrosion and Fouling and their Prevention.= By J. NEWMAN. Illustrated, 385 pp. crown 8vo. (_1896_) 9 0 =Scamping Tricks and Odd Knowledge= occasionally practised upon Public Works. By J. NEWMAN. New imp., 129 pp. cr. 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 2 0 =Co-ordinate Geometry= applied to Land Surveying. By W. PILKINGTON. 5 illus. 44 pp. 12mo. (_1909_) _net_ 1 6 =Pioneering.= By F. SHELFORD. Illustrated, 88 pp. crown 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 3 0 =Topographical Surveying.= By G. J. SPECHT. Second edition, 2 plates and 28 illus. 210 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1898_) _net_ 2 0 =Spons' Dictionary of Engineering=, Civil, Mechanical, Military and Naval. 10,000 illus. 4300 pp. super royal 8vo. (_1874, Supplement issued in 1881_). Complete, in 4 vols. _net_ 3 3 0 =Surveying and Levelling Instruments.= By W. F. STANLEY. (_Fourth edition in preparation_) =Surveyor's Handbook.= By T. U. TAYLOR. 116 illus. 310 pp. crown 8vo, leather, gilt edges. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 8 6 =Logarithmic Land Measurement.= By J. WALLACE. 32 pp. royal 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 5 0 =The Drainage of Fens and Low Lands= by Gravitation and Steam Power. By W. H. WHEELER. 8 plates, 175 pp. 8vo. (_1888_) 12 6 =Stadia Surveying=, the theory of Stadia Measurements. By A. WINSLOW. Fifth edition, 148 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 2 0 =Handbook on Tacheometrical Surveying.= By C. XYDIS. 55 illus. 3 plates, 63 pp. 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 6 0 CURVE TABLES. =Grace's Tables for Curves=, with hints to young engineers. 8 figures, 43 pp. oblong 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 5 0 =Railroad Curves and Earthwork.= By C. F. ALLEN. Third edition, 4 plates, 198 pp. 12mo, leather, gilt edges. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 8 6 =Data relating to Railway Curves and Superelevations=, shown graphically. By J. H. HAISTE. On folding card for pocket use _net_ 0 6 =Tables for setting-out Railway Curves.= By C. P. HOGG. A series of cards in neat cloth case 4 6 =Tables for setting out Curves= for Railways, Roads, Canals, etc. By A. KENNEDY and R. W. HACKWOOD. 32mo _net_ 2 0 =Spiral Tables.= By J. G. SULLIVAN. 47 pp. 12mo, leather. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 6 6 =Tables for Setting out Curves= from 101 to 5000 feet radius. By H. A. CUTLER and F. J. EDGE. Royal 32mo _net_ 2 0 =Tables of Parabolic Curves= for the use of Railway Engineers and others. By G. T. ALLEN. Fcap. 16mo 4 0 =Transition Curves.= By W. G. FOX. 18mo, boards. (_New York_) _net_ 2 0 DICTIONARIES. =Technological Dictionary in the English, Spanish, German and French Languages.= By D. CARLOS HUELIN Y ARSSU. Crown 8vo. Vol. I. ENGLISH-SPANISH-GERMAN-FRENCH. 609 pp. (_1906_) _net_ 10 6 Vol. II. GERMAN-ENGLISH-FRENCH-SPANISH. 720 pp. (_1908_) _net_ 10 6 Vol. III. FRENCH-GERMAN-SPANISH-ENGLISH. _In preparation._ Vol. IV. SPANISH-FRENCH-ENGLISH-GERMAN. 750 pp. (_1910_) _net_ 10 6 =Dictionary of English and Spanish Technical and Commercial Terms.= By W. JACKSON. 164 pp. fcap. 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 2 6 =English-French and French-English Dictionary of the Motor-Car, Cycle and Boat.= By F. LUCAS. 171 pp. crown 8vo. (_1905_) _net_ 2 0 =Spanish-English Dictionary of Mining Terms.= By F. LUCAS. 78 pp. 8vo.(_1905_) _net_ 5 0 =English-Russian and Russian-English Engineering Dictionary.= By L. MEYCLIAR. 100 pp. 16mo. (_1909_) _net_ 2 6 DOMESTIC ECONOMY. =Food Adulteration and its Detection.= By J. P. BATTERSHALL. 12 plates, 328 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1887_) 15 0 =Practical Hints on Taking a House.= By H. P. BOULNOIS. 71 pp. 18mo. (_1885_) 1 6 =The Cooking Range=, its Failings and Remedies. By F. DYE. 52 pp. fcap. 8vo, sewed. (_1888_) 0 6 =Spices and How to Know Them.= By W. M. GIBBS. With 47 plates, including 14 in colours, 179 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 15 0 =The Kitchen Boiler and Water Pipes.= By H. GRIMSHAW. 8vo, sewed. (_1887_) _net_ 1 0 =Cookery and Domestic Management=, including economic and middle class Practical Cookery. By K. MELLISH. 56 coloured plates and 441 illus. 987 pp. super-royal 8vo. (_1901_) _net_ 16 0 =Spons' Household Manual.= 250 illus. 1043 pp. demy 8vo. (_1902_) 7 6 Ditto ditto half-bound French morocco 9 0 DRAWING. =The Ornamental Penman's=, Engraver's and Sign Writer's Pocket Book of Alphabets. By B. ALEXANDER. Oblong 12mo, sewed 0 6 =Slide Valve Diagrams=: a French Method for their Construction. By L. BANKSON. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1892_) _net_ 2 0 =A System of Easy Lettering.= By J. H. CROMWELL. With Supplement by G. MARTIN. Eleventh edition, 36 pp. oblong 8vo. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 2 0 =Key to the Theory and Methods of Linear Perspective=, By C. W. DYMOND, F.S.A. 6 plates, 32 pp. cr. 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 20.) (_1910_) _net_ 1 6 =Plane Geometrical Drawing.= By R. C. FAWDRY. Illustrated, 185 pp. crown 8vo. (_1901_) _net_ 3 0 =Twelve Plates on Projection Drawing.= By O. GUETH. Oblong 4to. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 3 0 =Hints on Architectural Draughtsmanship.= By G. W. T. HALLATT. Fourth edition, 80 pp. 18mo. (_1906_) _net_ 1 6 =A First Course of Mechanical Drawing= (Tracing). By G. HALLIDAY. Oblong 4to, sewed 2 0 =A Text-Book of Graphic Statics.= By C. W. MALCOLM. 155 illus. 316 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 12 6 =Drawings for Medium-sized Repetition Work.= By R. D. SPINNEY. With 47 illus. 130 pp. 8vo. (_1909_). _net_ 3 6 =Mathematical Drawing Instruments.= By W. F. STANLEY. Seventh edition, 265 illus. 370 pp. crown 8vo. (_1900_) 5 0 =The Backbone of Perspective.= By T. U. TAYLOR. 40 illus. 56 pp. 18mo cloth. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 4 6 EARTHWORK. =Tables for Computing the Contents of Earthwork= in the Cuttings and Embankments of Railways. By W. MACGREGOR. Royal 8vo 6 0 =Tables for facilitating the Calculation of Earthworks.= By D. CUNNINGHAM. 120 pp. royal 8vo 10 6 =Grace's Earthwork Tables.= 36 double-page tables, 4to. (_1907_) _net_ 12 6 =Earthwork Slips and Subsidences= on Public Works. By J. NEWMAN. 240 pp. cr. 8vo. (_1890_) 7 6 =Diagrams for the Graphic Calculation of Earthwork Quantities.= By A. H. Roberts. Ten cards, fcap. in cloth case _net_ 10 6 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. =Practical Electric Bell Fitting.= By F. C. ALLSOP. Tenth edition, 186 illus. including 8 folding plates, 185 pp. crown 8vo. (_1903_) 3 6 =Telephones=: their Construction and Fitting. By F. C. ALLSOP. Eighth edition, new impression, 184 illus. 222 pp. crown 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 3 6 =Auto-Transformer Design.= By A. H. AVERY. 25 illus. 60 pp. 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 3 6 =Principles of Electric Power= (Continuous Current) for Mechanical Engineers. By A. H. BATE. 63 illus. 204 pp. crown 8vo. (_1905_) (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL) _net_ 4 6 =Practical Construction of Electric Tramways.= By W. R. BOWKER. 93 illus. 119 pp. 8vo. (_1903_) _net_ 6 0 =The Electric Motor and its Practical Operation.= By E. E. BURNS. 78 illus. vi + 91 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 7 0 =Electrical Ignition for Internal Combustion Engines.= By M. A. CODD. 109 illus. 163 pp. crown 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 3 0 =Design and Construction of Induction Coils.= By A. F. COLLINS. 155 illus. 272 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 12 6 =Plans and Specification for Wireless Telegraph Sets.= By A. F. COLLINS. Crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, NOS. 41 AND 42). (_New York, 1912_) _each net_ 1 6 PART I. An Experimental Set and a One to Five Miles Set. 37 illus. viii + 45 pp. PART II. A Five to Ten Mile Set and a Ten to Twenty Mile Set. 63 illus. viii + 72 pp. =Switchboard Measuring Instruments= for Continuous and Polyphase Currents. By J. C. CONNAN. 117 illus. 150 pp. 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 5 0 =Electric Cables, their Construction and Cost.= By D. COYLE and F. J. O. HOWE. With many diagrams and 216 tables, 466 pp. crown 8vo, leather. (_1909_) _net_ 15 0 =Management of Electrical Machinery.= By F. B. CROCKER and S. S. WHEELER. Eighth edition, 131 illus. 223 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 4 6 =Electric Lighting=: A Practical Exposition of the Art. By F. B. CROCKER. Royal 8vo. (_New York._) Vol. I. =The Generating Plant.= Sixth edition, 213 illus. 470 pp. (_1904_) _net_ 12 6 Vol. II. =Distributing Systems and Lamps.= Second edition, 391 illus. 505 pp. (_1905_) _net_ 12 6 =The Care and Management of Ignition Accumulators.= By H. H. U. CROSS. 12 illus. 74 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 19.) (_1910_) _net_ 1 6 =Elements of Telephony.= By A. CROTCH. 51 illus. 90 pp. cr. 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 21.) (_1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Elementary Telegraphy and Telephony.= By ARTHUR CROTCH. New impression, 238 illus. viii + 223 pp. 8vo. (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL.) (_1912_) _net_ 4 6 =Electricity and Magnetism in Telephone Maintenance.= By G. W. CUMMINGS. 45 illus. 137 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 6 6 =Grouping of Electric Cells.= By W. F. DUNTON. 4 illus. 50 pp. fcap. 8vo. (_1906_) _net_ 1 6 =Wireless Telegraphy for Intending Operators.= By C. K. P. EDEN. 20 illus. 80 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 24.) _In preparation._ =Magnets and Electric Currents.= By Prof. J. A. FLEMING. Second edition, 136 illus. 417 pp. crown 8vo. (_1902_) _net_ 5 0 =Notes on Design of Small Dynamo.= By GEORGE HALLIDAY. Second edition, 8 plates, 8vo. (_1895_) 2 6 =Practical Alternating Currents and Power Transmission.= By N. HARRISON. 172 illus. 375 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 10 6 =Making Wireless Outfits.= By N. HARRISON. 27 illus. 61 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 11.) (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 1 6 =Wireless Telephone Construction.= By N. HARRISON. 43 illus. 73 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 12.) (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 1 6 =Testing Telegraph Cables.= By Colonel V. HOSKIOER. Third edition, 11 illus. viii + 75 pp. crown 8vo. (_1889_) 4 6 =Long Distance Electric Power Transmission.= By R. W. HUTCHINSON. 136 illus. 345 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 12 6 =Theory and Practice of Electric Wiring.= By W. S. IBBETSON. 119 ill. 366 pp. cr. 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 5 0 =Practical Electrical Engineering for Elementary Students.= By W. S. IBBETSON. 61 illus. 155 pp. crown 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 3 6 =Form of Model General Conditions= recommended by THE INSTITUTION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS for use in connection with Electrical Contracts. _New edition in preparation._ =Telegraphy for Beginners.= By W. H. JONES. 19 illus. 58 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 2 0 =A Handbook of Electrical Testing.= By H. R. KEMPE. Seventh edition, 285 illus. 706 pp. demy 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 18 0 =Electromagnets=, their design and construction. By A. N. MANSFIELD. 36 illus. 155 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1901_) _net_ 2 0 =Telephone Construction, Methods and Cost.= By C. MAYER. With Appendices on the cost of materials and labour by J. C. SLIPPY. 103 illus. 284 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 12 6 =Storage Batteries, Stationary and Portable.= By J. P. NIBLETT. 22 illus. 80 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 2 6 =House Wiring.= By T. W. POPPE. 73 illus. 103 pp. 12mo, limp. (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 3 0 =Practical Electrics=: a Universal Handybook on Every Day Electrical Matters. Seventh edition, 126 illus. 135 pp. 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 13.) (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 1 6 =Electroplating.= By H. C. REETZ. 62 illus. 99 pp. crown 8vo. (NEW YORK, 1911) _net_ 2 0 =Wiring Houses for the Electric Light.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 40 illus. 85 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 25.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Induction Coils.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. Second edition, 79 illus. 285 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1901_) _net_ 4 6 =Electric Gas Lighting.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 57 illus. 101 pp. cr. 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 8). (_New York, 1901_) _net_ 1 6 =How to Install Electric Bells, Annunciators and Alarms.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 59 illus. 63 pp. crown 8vo, limp. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 2.) (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 1 6 =Modern Primary Batteries=, their construction, use and maintenance. By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 54 illus. 94 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 1.) (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 1 6 =Practical Engineers' Handbook on the Care and Management of Electric Power Plants.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 203 illus. 274 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 5 0 =Electrical Circuits and Diagrams=, illustrated and explained. By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, NOS. 3 AND 4.) (_New York_) No. 3, Part 1. _New edition in preparation._ No. 4, Part 2. 73 pp. (_1909_) _net_ 1 6 =Electrical Instruments and Testing.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. Third edition. 133 illus. 239 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 4 6 =Experimenting with Induction Coils.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 26 illus. 73 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 5.) (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 1 6 =Study of Electricity for Beginners.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 54 illus. 88 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 6.) (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 1 6 =Wiring Houses for the Electric Light=: Low Voltage Battery Systems. 44 illus. 86 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 25.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Low Voltage Electric Lighting with the Storage Battery.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 23 illus. 85 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 26.) (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 1 6 =Dry Batteries=: how to Make and Use them. By a DRY BATTERY EXPERT. With additional notes by N. H. SCHNEIDER. 30 illus. 59 pp. crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 7.) (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 1 6 =The Diseases of Electrical Machinery.= By E. SCHULZ. Edited, with a Preface, by Prof. S. P. THOMPSON. 42 illus. 84 pp. crown 8vo _net_ 2 0 =Electricity Simplified.= By T. O. SLOANE. Tenth edition, 29 illus. 158 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1901_) _net_ 4 6 =How to become a Successful Electrician.= By T. O. SLOANE. Third edition, 4 illus. 202 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1899_) _net_ 4 6 =Electricity=: its Theory, Sources and Applications. By J. T. SPRAGUE. Third edition, 109 illus. 658 pp. crown 8vo (_1892_) _net_ 7 6 =Telegraphic Connections.= By C. THOM and W. H. JONES. 20 plates, 59 pp. oblong 8vo. (_New York, 1892_) _net_ 3 6 =Dynamo Electric Machinery.= By Prof. S. P. THOMPSON. Seventh edition, demy 8vo. (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL.) Vol. I. =Continuous-Current Machinery.= With 4 coloured and 30 folding plates, 573 illus. 984 pp. (_1904_) _net_ 1 10 0 Vol. II. =Alternating Current Machinery.= 15 coloured and 24 folding plates, 546 illus. 900 pp. (_1905_) _net_ 1 10 0 =Design of Dynamos= (Continuous Currents). By Prof. S. P. THOMPSON. 4 coloured and 8 folding plates, 243 pp. demy 8vo. (_1903_) _net_ 12 0 =Schedule for Dynamo Design=, issued with the above. 6_d._ each, 4_s._ per doz., or 18_s._ per 100 _net_ =Curves of Magnetic Data for Various Materials.= A reprint on transparent paper for office use of Plate I from Dynamo Electric Machinery, and measuring 25 in. by 16 in. _net_ 0 7 =The Electromagnet.= By C. R. UNDERHILL. 67 illus. 159 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 6 6 =Practical Guide to the Testing of Insulated Wires and Cables.= By H. L. WEBB. Fifth edition, 38 illus. 118 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 4 6 =Wiring Rules.= With Extracts from the Board of Trade Regulations and the Home Office Regulations for Factories and Workshops. Issued by =The Institution of Electrical Engineers.= Sixth edition, 42 pp. 8vo, sewed. (_1911_) _net_ 0 6 FOREIGN EXCHANGE. =English Prices with Russian Equivalents= (at Fourteen Rates of Exchange). English prices per lb., with equivalents in roubles and kopecks per pood. By A. ADIASSEWICH. 182 pp. fcap. 32mo, roan. (_1908_) _net_ 1 0 =English Prices with German Equivalents= (at Seven Rates of Exchange). English prices per lb., with equivalents in marks per kilogramme. By ST. KOCZOROWSKI. 95 pp. fcap. 32mo, roan. (_1909_) _net_ 1 0 =English Prices with Spanish Equivalents.= At Seven Rates of Exchange. English prices per lb., with equivalents in pesetas per kilogramme. By S. LAMBERT. 95 pp. 32mo, roan. (_1910_) _net_ 1 0 =English Prices with French Equivalents= (at Seven Rates of Exchange). English prices per lb. to francs per kilogramme. By H. P. MCCARTNEY. 97 pp. 32mo, roan. (_1907_) _net_ 1 0 =Principles of Foreign Exchange.= By E. MATHESON. Fourth edition, 54 pp. 8vo, sewed. (_1905_) _net_ 0 3 GAS AND OIL ENGINES. =The Theory of the Gas Engine.= By D. CLERK. Edited by F. E. IDELL. Third edition, 19 illus. 180 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 2 0 =Electrical Ignition for Internal Combustion Engines.= By M. A. CODD. 109 illus. 163 pp. crown 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 3 0 =The Design and Construction of Oil Engines.= By A. H. GOLDINGHAM. Third edition, 112 illus. 260 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 10 6 =Gas Engine in Principle and Practice.= By A. H. GOLDINGHAM. New Impression. 107 illus. 195 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 6 6 =Practical Hand-Book on the Care and Management of Gas Engines.= By G. LIECKFELD. Third edition, square 16mo. (_New York, 1896_) 3 6 =Elements of Gas Engine Design.= By S. A. MOSS. 197 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 2 0 =Gas and Petroleum Engines.= A Manual for Students and Engineers. By Prof. W. ROBINSON. (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL.) _Third edition in preparation_ GAS LIGHTING. =Gas Analyst's Manual= (incorporating Hartley's "Gas Analyst's Manual" and "Gas Measurement"). By J. ABADY. 102 illus. 576 pp. demy 8vo. (_1902_) _net_ 18 0 =Gas Works=: their Arrangement, Construction, Plant and Machinery. By F. COLYER. 31 folding plates, 134 pp. 8vo. (_1884_) _net_ 8 6 =Transactions of the Institution of Gas Engineers.= Edited by WALTER T. DUNN, _Secretary_. Published annually. 8vo _net_ 10 6 =Lighting by Acetylene.= By F. DYE. 75 illus. 200 pp. crown 8vo. (_1902_) _net_ 6 0 =A Comparison of the English and French Methods of Ascertaining the Illuminating Power of Coal Gas.= By A. J. VAN EIJNDHOVEN. Illustrated, crown 8vo. (_1897_) 4 0 =Gas Lighting and Gas Fitting.= By W. P. GERHARD. Second edition, 190 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1894_) _net_ 2 0 =A Treatise on the Comparative Commercial Values of Gas Coals and Cannels.= By D. A. GRAHAM. 3 plates, 100 pp. 8vo. (_1882_) 4 6 =The Gas Engineers Laboratory Handbook.= By J. HORNBY. Third edition, revised, 70 illus. 330 pp. crown 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 6 0 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL. =Extracts from the Private Letters of the late Sir William Fothergill Cooke=, 1836-9, relating to the Invention and Development of the Electric Telegraph; also a Memoir by LATIMER CLARK. Edited by F. H. WEBB, Sec. Inst. E.E. 8vo. (_1895_) 3 0 =A Chronology of Inland Navigation= in Great Britain. By H. R. DE SALIS. Crown 8vo. (_1897_) 4 6 =A History of Electric Telegraphy= to the year 1837. By J. J. FAHIE. 35 illus. 542 pp. crown 8vo. (_1889_) 2 0 =History and Development of Steam Locomotion on Common Roads.= By W. FLETCHER. 109 illus. 288 pp. 8vo. 5 0 =Life as an Engineer=: its Lights, Shades, and Prospects. By J. W. C. HALDANE. New edition, 23 plates, 390 pp. crown 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 5 0 =Philipp Reis=, Inventor of the Telephone: a Biographical Sketch. By Prof. S. P. THOMPSON. 8vo, cloth. (_1883_) 7 6 =The Development of the Mercurial Air Pump.= By Prof. S. P. THOMPSON. Illustrated, royal 8vo, sewed. (_1888_) 1 6 HOROLOGY. =Watch and Clock Maker's Handbook=, Dictionary and Guide. By F. J. BRITTEN. Tenth edition, 450 illus. 492 pp. crown 8vo. (_1902_) _net_ 5 0 =The Springing and Adjusting of Watches.= By F. J. BRITTEN. 75 illus. 152 pp. crown 8vo. (_1898_) _net_ 3 0 =Prize Essay on the Balance Spring= and its Isochronal Adjustments. By M. IMMISCH. 7 illus. 50 pp. crown 8vo. (_1872_) 2 6 HYDRAULICS AND HYDRAULIC MACHINERY. (_See also_ IRRIGATION _and_ WATER SUPPLY.) =The Suction Caused by Ships= explained in popular language. By E. S. BELLASIS. 2 plates, 26 pp. 8vo, sewed. (_1912_) _net_ 1 0 =Hydraulics with Working Tables.= By E. S. BELLASIS. Second edition, 160 illus. xii + 311 pp. 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 12 0 =Pumps=: Historically, Theoretically and Practically Considered. By P. R. BJÖRLING. Second edition, 156 illus. 234 pp. crown 8vo. (_1895_) 7 6 =Pump Details.= By P. R. BJÖRLING. 278 illus. 211 pp. crown 8vo. (_1892_) 7 6 =Pumps and Pump Motors=: A Manual for the use of Hydraulic Engineers. By P. R. BJÖRLING. Two vols. 261 plates, 369 pp. royal 4to. (_1895_) _net_ 1 10 0 =Practical Handbook on Pump Construction.= By P. R. BJÖRLING. Second edition, 9 plates, 90 pp. crown 8vo. (_1904_) 5 0 =Water or Hydraulic Motors.= By P. R. BJÖRLING. 206 illus. 287 pp. crown 8vo. (_1903_) 9 0 =Hydraulic Machinery=, with an Introduction to Hydraulics. By R. G. BLAINE. Second edition, with 307 illus. 468 pp. 8vo. (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL.) (_1905_) _net_ 14 0 =Practical Hydraulics.= By T. BOX. Fifteenth edition, 8 plates, 88 pp. crown 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 5 0 =Pumping and Water Power.= By F. A. BRADLEY. 51 illus., vii + 118 pp. demy 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 4 6 =Hydraulic, Steam, and Hand Power Lifting and Pressing Machinery.= By F. COLYER. Second edition, 88 plates, 211 pp. imperial 8vo. (_1892_) _net_ 10 6 =Pumps and Pumping Machinery.= By F. COLYER. Vol. I. Second edition, 53 plates, 212 pp. 8vo (_1892_) _net_ 10 6 Vol. II. Second edition, 48 plates, 169 pp. 8vo. (_1900_) _net_ 10 6 =Construction of Horizontal and Vertical Waterwheels.= By W. CULLEN. Second edition, small 4to. (_1871_) 5 0 =Donaldson's Poncelet Turbine= and Water Pressure Engine and Pump. By W. DONALDSON. 2 plates, viii + 32 pp. demy 4to. (_1883_) 5 0 =Principles of Construction and Efficiency of Waterwheels.= By W. DONALDSON. 13 illus. 94 pp. 8vo. (_1876_) 5 0 =Practical Hydrostatics and Hydrostatic Formulæ.= By E. S. GOULD. 27 illus. 114 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 2 0 =Hydraulic and other Tables= for purposes of Sewerage and Water Supply. By T. HENNELL. Third edition, 70 pp. crown 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 4 6 =Tables for Calculating the Discharge of Water= in Pipes for Water and Power Supplies. Indexed at side for ready reference. By A. E. SILK. 63 pp. crown 8vo. (_1899_) 5 0 =Simple Hydraulic Formulæ.= By T. W. STONE. 9 plates, 98 pp. crown 8vo. (_1881_) 4 0 =A B C of Hydrodynamics.= By LT.-COL. R. DE VILLAMIL, R.E. (retd.). 48 illus. xi + 135 pp. demy 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 6 0 INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY AND MANUFACTURES. =Perfumes and their Preparation.= By G. W. ASKINSON. Translated from the Third German Edition by I. FUEST. Third edition, 32 illus. 312 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 12 6 =Brewing Calculations=, Gauging and Tabulation. By C. H. BATER. 340 pp. 64mo, roan, gilt edges. (_1897_) _net_ 1 6 =A Pocket Book for Chemists=, Chemical Manufacturers, Metallurgists, Dyers, Distillers, etc. By T. BAYLEY. Seventh edition, new impression, 550 pp. royal 32mo, roan, gilt edges. (_1912_) _net_ 5 0 =Practical Receipts= for the Manufacturer, the Mechanic, and for Home use. By Dr. H. R. BERKELEY and W. M. WALKER. New impression, 250 pp. demy 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 5 0 =A Treatise on the Manufacture of Soap and Candles=, Lubricants and Glycerine. By W. L. CARPENTER and H. LEASK. Second edition, 104 illus. 456 pp. crown 8vo. (_1895_) 12 6 =A Text Book of Paper Making.= By C. F. CROSS and E. J. BEVAN. Third edition, 97 illus. 411 pp. crown 8vo. (_1907_) _net_ 12 6 =C.B.S. Standard Units and Standard Paper Tests.= By C. F. CROSS, E. J. BEVAN, C. BEADLE and R. W. SINDALL. 25 pp. crown 4to. (_1903_) _net_ 2 6 =Pyrometry.= By C. R. DARLING. 60 illus. 200 pp. crown 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 5 0 =Soda Fountain Requisites.= A Practical Receipt Book for Druggists, Chemists, etc. By G. H. DUBELLE. Third edition, 157 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 4 6 =Spices and How to Know Them.= By W. M. GIBBS. 47 plates, including 14 in colours, 176 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 15 0 =The Chemistry of Fire= and Fire Prevention. By H. and H. INGLE. 45 illus. 290 pp. crown 8vo. (_1900_) 9 0 =Ice-Making Machines.= By M. LEDOUX and others. Sixth edition, 190 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 2 0 =Brewing with Raw Grain.= By T. W. LOVIBOND. 75 pp. crown 8vo. (_1883_) 5 0 =The Chemistry, Properties, and Tests of Precious Stones.= By J. Mastin. 114 pp. fcap. 16mo, limp leather, gilt top. (_1911_) _net_ 2 6 =Sugar, a Handbook for Planters and Refiners.= By the late J. A. R. NEWLANDS and B. E. R. NEWLANDS. 236 illus. 876 pp. 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 1 5 0 =Principles of Leather Manufacture.= By Prof. H. R. PROCTER. 101 illus. 520 pp. medium 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 18 0 =Leather Industries Laboratory Handbook= of Analytical and Experimental methods. By H. R. PROCTER. Second edition, 4 plates, 46 illus. 450 pp. demy 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 18 0 =Leather Chemists' Pocket Book.= A short compendium of Analytical Methods. By Prof. H. R. PROCTER. Assisted by Dr. E. STIASNY and H. BRUMWELL. (_In the Press_.) =Theoretical and Practical Ammonia Refrigeration.= By I. I. REDWOOD. Sixth thousand, 15 illus. 146 pp. square 16mo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 4 6 =Breweries and Maltings.= By G. SCAMMELL and F. COLYER. Second edition, 20 plates, 178 pp. 8vo. (_1880_) _net_ 6 0 =Factory Glazes for Ceramic Engineers.= By H. RUM-BELLOW. Folio. Series A, Leadless Sanitary Glazes. (_1908_) _net_ 2 2 0 =Spons' Encyclopædia of the Industrial Arts=, Manufactures and Commercial Products. 1500 illus. 2100 pp. super-royal 8vo. (_1882_) In 2 Vols, cloth _net_ 2 2 0 =The Absorption Refrigerating Machine.= By G. T. VOORHEES. 42 illus. 144 pp. narrow crown 8vo. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 8 6 =Tables for the Quantitative Estimation of the Sugars.= By E. WEIN and W. FREW. Crown 8vo. (_1896_) 6 0 =The Puering, Bating and Drenching of Skins.= By J. T. WOOD. 33 illus. xv + 300 pp. demy 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 12 6 =Workshop Receipts.= For the use of Manufacturers, Mechanics and Scientific Amateurs. NEW AND THOROUGHLY REVISED EDITION, crown 8vo. (_1909_) _each net_ 3 0 Vol. I. ACETYLENE LIGHTING _to_ DRYING. 223 illus. 532 pp. Vol. II. DYEING _to_ JAPANNING. 259 illus. 540 pp. Vol. III. JOINTING PIPES _to_ PUMPS. 256 illus. 528 pp. Vol. IV. RAINWATER SEPARATORS _to_ WIRE ROPE, SPLICING. 321 illus. 540 pp. =Practical Handbook on the Distillation of Alcohol from Farm Products.= By F. B. WRIGHT. Second edition, 60 illus. 271 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 4 6 =The Manufacture of Chocolate= and other Cacao Preparations. By P. ZIPPERER. Second edition, 87 illus. 280 pp. royal 8vo. (_1902_) _net_ 16 0 INTEREST TABLES. =The Wide Range Dividend and Interest Calculator=, showing at a glance the Percentage on any sum from One Pound to Ten Thousand Pounds, at any Interest, from 1% to 12-1/2%, proceeding by 1/4%. By A. STEVENS. 100 pp. super royal 8vo, cloth _net_ 6 0 Quarter morocco, cloth sides _net_ 7 6 =The Wide Range Income Tax Calculator=, showing at a glance the Tax on any sum from One Shilling to Thousand Pounds, at the Rate of 9_d._, 1/- and 1/2 in the Pound. By A. STEVENS. On folding card, imperial 8vo _net_ 1 0 IRRIGATION. =Punjab Rivers and Works.= By E. S. BELLASIS. 47 illus. 65 pp. folio, cloth. (_1911_) _net_ 8 0 =Irrigation Pocket Book.= By R. B. BUCKLEY. 419 pp. crown 8vo, leather cloth with rounded corners. (_1911_) _net_ 12 6 =The Design of Channels for Irrigation and Drainage.= By R. B. BUCKLEY. 22 diagrams, 56 pp. crown 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 2 0 =The Irrigation Works of India.= By R. B. BUCKLEY. Second edition, with coloured maps and plans. 336 pp. 4to, cloth. (_1905_) _net_ 2 2 0 =Irrigated India.= By Hon. ALFRED DEAKIN. With Map, 322 pp. 8vo. (_1893_) 8 6 =Indian Storage Reservoirs=, with Earthen Dams. By W. L. STRANGE. _Second edition in preparation_ =The Irrigation of Mesopotamia.= By Sir W. WILLCOCKS. 2 vols. 46 plates, 136 pp. (Text super-royal 8vo, plates folio). (_1911_) _net_ 1 0 0 =Egyptian Irrigation.= By Sir W. WILLCOCKS. _Third edition in preparation._ _A few copies of the First Edition (1889) are still to be had. Price_ 15_s. net._ =The Nile Reservoir Dam at Assuan=, and After. By Sir W. WILLCOCKS. Second edition, 13 plates, super-royal 8vo. (_1903_) _net_ 6 0 =The Assuân Reservoir and Lake Moeris.= By Sir W. WILLCOCKS. With text in English, French and Arabic. 5 plates, 116 pp. super-royal 8vo. (_1904_) _net_ 5 0 =The Nile in 1904.= By Sir W. WILLCOCKS. 30 plates, 200 pp. super-royal 8vo. (_1904_) _net_ 9 0 LOGARITHM TABLES. =Aldum's Pocket Folding Mathematical Tables.= Four-figure logarithms, and Anti-logarithms, Natural Sines, Tangents, Cotangents, Cosines, Chords and Radians for all angles from 1 to 90 degrees. And Decimaliser Table for Weights and Money. On folding card. _Net_ 4_d._ 20 copies, _net_ 6_s._ =Tables of Seven-figure Logarithms= of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108,000. By C. BABBAGE. Stereotype edition, 8vo _net_ 5 0 =Four-Place Tables of Logarithms and Trigonometric Functions.= By E. V. HUNTINGTON. Ninth thousand, 34 pp. square 8vo, limp buckram, with cut lateral index. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 3 0 =Short Logarithmic= and other Tables. By W. C. UNWIN. Fourth edition, small 4to 3 0 =Logarithmic Land Measurement.= By J. WALLACE. 32 pp. royal 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 5 0 =A B C Five-figure Logarithms with Tables, for Chemists.= By C. J. WOODWARD. Crown 8vo _net_ 2 6 =A B C Five-figure Logarithms= for general use, with lateral index for ready reference. By C. J. WOODWARD. Second edition, with cut lateral Index, 116 pp. 12mo, limp leather _net_ 3 0 MARINE ENGINEERING AND NAVAL ARCHITECTURE. =Marine Propellers.= By S. W. BARNABY. Fifth edition, 5 plates, 56 illus. 185 pp. demy 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 10 6 =Marine Engineer's Record Book=: Engines. By B. C. BARTLEY. 8vo, roan _net_ 5 0 =The Suction Caused by Ships and the Olympic-Hawke Collision.= By E. S. BELLASIS. 1 chart and 5 illus. in text, 26 pp. 8vo, sewed. (_1912_) _net_ 1 0 =Yachting Hints=, Tables and Memoranda. By A. C. FRANKLIN. Waistcoat pocket size, 103 pp. 64mo, roan, gilt edges _net_ 1 0 =Steamship Coefficients, Speeds and Powers.= By C. F. A. FYFE. 31 plates, 280 pp. fcap. 8vo, leather. (_1907_) _net_ 10 6 =Steamships and Their Machinery=, from first to last. By J. W. C. HALDANE. 120 illus. 532 pp. 8vo. (_1893_) 15 0 =Tables for Constructing Ships' Lines.= By A. HOGG. Third edition, 3 plates, 20 pp. 8vo, sewed (_1911_) _net_ 3 0 =Submarine Boats.= By G. W. HOVGAARD. 2 plates, 98 pp. crown 8vo. (_1887_) 5 0 =Tabulated Weights= of Angle, Tee, Bulb, Round, Square, and Flat Iron and Steel for the use of Naval Architects, Ship-builders, etc. By C. H. JORDAN. Sixth edition, 640 pp. royal 32mo, French morocco, gilt edges. (_1909_) _net_ 7 6 =Particulars of Dry Docks=, Wet Docks, Wharves, etc. on the River Thames. Compiled by C. H. JORDAN. Second edition, 7 coloured charts, 103 pp. oblong 8vo. (_1904_) _net_ 2 6 =Marine Transport of Petroleum.= By H. LITTLE. 66 illus. 263 pp. crown 8vo. (_1890_) 10 6 =Questions and Answers for Marine Engineers=, with a Practical Treatise on Breakdowns at Sea. By T. LUCAS. 12 folding plates, 515 pp. gilt edges, crown 8vo. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 8 0 =Reed's Engineers' Handbook to the Board of Trade Examinations= for certificates of Competency as First and Second Class Engineers. Nineteenth edition, 37 plates, 358 illus. 696 pp. 8vo _net_ 14 0 =Key to Reed's Handbook= _net_ 7 6 =Reed's Marine Boilers.= Second edition, crown 8vo _net_ 4 6 =Reed's Useful Hints to Sea-going Engineers.= Fourth edition, 8 plates, 50 illus. 312 pp. crown 8vo. (_1903_) _net_ 3 6 MATERIALS. =Practical Treatise on the Strength of Materials.= By T. BOX. Fourth edition, 27 plates, 536 pp. 8vo. (_1902_) _net_ 12 6 =Treatise on the Origin, Progress, Prevention and Cure of Dry Rot in Timber.= By T. A. BRITTON. 10 plates, 519 pp. crown 8vo. (_1875_) 7 6 =Solid Bitumens.= By S. F. PECKHAM. 23 illus. 324 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Lubricants, Oils and Greases.= By I. I. REDWOOD. 3 plates, ix + 54 pp. 8vo. (_1898_) _net_ 6 6 =Practical Treatise on Mineral Oils= and their By-Products. By I. I. REDWOOD. 67 illus. 336 pp. demy 8vo. (_1897_) 15 0 =Silico-Calcareous Sandstones=, or Building Stones from Quartz, Sand and Lime. By E. STOFFLER. 5 plates, 8vo, sewed. (_1901_) _net_ 4 0 =Proceedings of the Fifth Congress, International Association for Testing Materials.= English edition. 189 illus. 549 pp. demy 8vo. (_1910_). Paper _net_ 15 0 Cloth _net_ 18 0 MATHEMATICS. =Imaginary Quantities.= By M. ARGAND. Translated by PROF. HARDY. 18mo, boards. (_New York_) _net_ 2 0 =Text Book of Practical Solid Geometry.= By E. H. DE V. ATKINSON. Revised by MAJOR B. R. WARD, R.E. Second edition, 17 plates, 8vo. (_1901_) 7 6 =Quick and Easy Methods of Calculating=, and the Theory and Use of the Slide Rule. By R. G. BLAINE. Fourth edition, 6 illus. xii + 152 pp. 16mo, leather cloth. (_1912_) _net_ 2 6 =Symbolic Algebra=, or the Algebra of Algebraic Numbers. By W. CAIN. 18mo, boards. (_New York_) _net_ 2 0 =Nautical Astronomy.= By J. H. COLVIN. 127 pp. crown 8vo. (_1901_) _net_ 2 6 =Chemical Problems.= By J. C. FOYE. Fourth edition, 141 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1898_) _net_ 2 0 =Primer of the Calculus.= By E. S. GOULD. Second edition, 24 illus. 122 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1899_) _net_ 2 0 =Elementary Treatise on the Calculus= for Engineering Students. By J. GRAHAM. Third edition, 276 pp. crown 8vo. (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL.) (_1905_) 7 6 =Manual of the Slide Rule.= By F. A. HALSEY. Second edition, 31 illus. 84 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1901_) _net_ 2 0 =Reform in Chemical and Physical Calculations.= By C. J. T. HANSSEN. 4to. (_1897_) _net_ 6 6 =Algebra Self-Taught.= By P. HIGGS. Third edition, 104 pp. crown 8vo. (_1903_) 2 6 =A Text-book on Graphic Statics.= By C. W. MALCOLM. 155 illus. 316 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 12 6 =Galvanic Circuit investigated Mathematically.= By G. S. OHM. Translated by WILLIAM FRANCIS. 269 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1891_) _net_ 2 0 =Elementary Practical Mathematics.= By M. T. ORMSBY. Second edition, 128 illus. xii + 410 pp. medium 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 5 0 =Elements of Graphic Statics.= By K. VON OTT. Translated by G. S. CLARKE. 93 illus. 128 pp. crown 8vo. (_1901_) 5 0 =Figure of the Earth.= By F. C. ROBERTS. 18mo, boards. (_New York_) _net_ 2 0 =Arithmetic of Electricity.= By T. O'C. SLOANE. Thirteenth edition, 5 illus. 162 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1901_) _net_ 4 6 =Graphic Method for Solving certain Questions in Arithmetic or Algebra.= By G. L. VOSE. Second edition with 28 illus. 62 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 2 0 =Problems in Electricity.= A Graduated Collection comprising all branches of Electrical Science. By R. WEBER. Translated from the French by E. A. O'KEEFE. 34 illus. 366 pp. crown 8vo. (_1902_) _net_ 7 6 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. STEAM ENGINES AND BOILERS, ETC. =Engineers' Sketch Book of Mechanical Movements.= By T. W. BARBER. Fifth edition, 3000 illus. 355 pp. 8vo. (_1906_) _net_ 10 6 =The Repair and Maintenance of Machinery.= By T. W. BARBER. 417 illus. 476 pp. 8vo. (_1895_) 10 6 =Practical Treatise on Mill Gearing.= By T. BOX. Fifth edition, 11 plates, 128 pp. crown 8vo. (_1892_) 7 6 =The Mechanical Engineers' Price Book, 1912.= Edited by G. BROOKS. 176 pp. pocket size (6-1/2 in. by 3-3/4 in. by 1/2 in. thick), leather cloth, with rounded corners. (_1912_) _net_ 4 0 =Safety Valves.= By R. H. BUELL. Third edition, 20 illus. 100 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1898_) _net_ 2 0 =Machine Design.= By Prof. W. L. CATHCART. Part I. FASTENINGS. 123 illus. 291 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 12 6 =Chimney Design and Theory.= By W. W. CHRISTIE. Second edition, 54 illus. 192 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 12 6 =Furnace Draft=: its Production by Mechanical Methods. By W. W. CHRISTIE. 5 illus. 80 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 2 0 =The Stokers' Catechism.= By W. J. CONNOR. 63 pp. limp cloth. (_1906_) _net_ 1 0 =Treatise on the use of Belting= for the Transmission of Power. By J. H. COOPER. Fifth edition, 94 illus. 399 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1901_) _net_ 12 6 =The Steam Engine considered as a Thermodynamic Machine.= By J. H. COTTERILL. Third edition, 39 diagrams, 444 pp. 8vo. (_1896_) 15 0 =Fireman's Guide=, a Handbook on the Care of Boilers. By K. P. DAHLSTROM. Eleventh edition, fcap. 8vo, limp. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 16.) (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 1 6 =Heat for Engineers.= By C. R. DARLING. Second edition, 110 illus. 430 pp. 8vo. (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL.) (_1912_) _net_ 12 6 =Diseases of a Gasolene Automobile=, and How to Cure Them. By A. L. DYKE. 127 illus. 201 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 6 6 =Belt Driving.= By G. HALLIDAY. 3 folding plates, 100 pp. 8vo. (_1894_) 3 6 =Worm and Spiral Gearing.= By F. A. HALSEY. 13 plates, 85 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 2 0 =Commercial Efficiency of Steam Boilers.= By A. HANSSEN. Large 8vo, sewed. (_1898_) 0 6 =Corliss Engine.= By J. T. HENTHORN. Third edition, 23 illus. 95 pp. square 16mo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 23.) (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 1 6 =Liquid Fuel= for Mechanical and Industrial Purposes. By E. A. BRAYLEY HODGETTS. 106 illus. 129 pp. 8vo. (_1890_) 5 0 =Elementary Text-Book on Steam Engines and Boilers.= By J. H. KINEALY. Fourth edition, 106 illus. 259 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 8 6 =Centrifugal Fans.= By J. H. KINEALY. 33 illus. 206 pp. fcap. 8vo, leather. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 12 6 =Mechanical Draft.= By J. H. KINEALY. 27 original tables and 13 plates, 142 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 8 6 =The A B C of the Steam Engine=, with a description of the Automatic Governor. By J. P. LISK. 6 plates, crown 8vo. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 17.) (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 1 6 =Valve Setting Record Book.= By P. A. LOW. 8vo, boards 1 6 =The Lay-out of Corliss Valve Gears.= By S. A. MOSS. Second edition, 3 plates, 108 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 2 0 =Steam Boilers=, their Management and Working. By J. PEATTIE. Fifth edition, 35 illus. 230 pp. crown 8vo. (_1906_) _net_ 4 6 =Treatise on the Richards Steam Engine Indicator.= By C. T. PORTER. Sixth edition, 3 plates and 73 diagrams, 285 pp. 8vo. (_1902_) 9 0 =Practical Treatise on the Steam Engine.= By A. RIGG. Second edition, 103 plates, 378 pp. demy 4to. (_1894_) 15 0 =Power and its Transmission.= A Practical Handbook for the Factory and Works Manager. By T. A. SMITH. 76 pp. fcap. 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 2 0 =Drawings for Medium Sized Repetition Work.= By R. D. SPINNEY. With 47 illus. 130 pp. 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 3 6 =Slide Valve Simply Explained.= By W. J. TENNANT. Revised by J. H. KINEALY. 41 illus. 83 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1899_) _net_ 4 6 =Shaft Governors.= By W. TRINKS and C. HOOSUM. 27 illus. 97 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 2 0 =Treatise on the Design and Construction of Mill Buildings.= By H. G. TYRRELL. 652 illus. 490 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 17 0 =Slide and Piston Valve Geared Steam Engines.= By W. H. UHLAND. 47 plates and 314 illus. 155 pp. Two vols. folio, half morocco. (_1882_) 1 16 0 =How to run Engines and Boilers.= By E. P. WATSON. Fifth edition, 31 illus. 160 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1904_) 3 6 =Position Diagram of Cylinder with Meyer Cut-off.= By W. H. WEIGHTMAN. On card. (_New York_) _net_ 1 0 =Practical Method of Designing Slide Valve Gearing.= By E. J. WELCH. 69 diagrams, 283 pp. crown 8vo. (_1890_) 6 0 =Elements of Mechanics.= By T. W. WRIGHT. Eighth edition, illustrated, 382 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 10 6 METALLURGY. IRON AND STEEL MANUFACTURE. =Life of Railway Axles.= By T. ANDREWS. 8vo, sewed. (_1895_) 1 0 =Microscopic Internal Flaws in Steel Rails and Propeller Shafts.= By T. ANDREWS. 8vo, sewed. (_1896_) 1 0 =Microscopic Internal Flaws, Inducing Fracture in Steel.= By T. ANDREWS. 8vo, sewed. (_1896_) 2 0 =Practical Alloying.= A compendium of Alloys and Processes for Brassfounders, Metal Workers, and Engineers. By JOHN F. BUCHANAN. With 41 illus. 205 pp. 8vo, cloth. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 10 6 =Brassfounders' Alloys.= By J. F. BUCHANAN. Illustrated, 129 pp. crown 8vo. (_1905_) _net_ 4 6 =The Moulder's Dictionary= (Foundry Nomenclature). A concise guide to Foundry Practice. By JOHN F. BUCHANAN. New impression, 26 illus. viii + 225 pp. crown 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 3 0 =American Standard Specifications for Steel.= By A. L. COLBY. Second edition, revised, 103 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 5 0 =Pyrometry.= By C. R. DARLING. 60 illus. 200 pp. crown 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 5 0 =Galvanised Iron=: its Manufacture and Uses. By J. DAVIES. 139 pp. 8vo. (_1899_) _net_ 5 0 =Management of Steel.= By G. EDE. Seventh edition, 216 pp. crown 8vo. (_1903_) 5 0 =The Frodair Handbook for Ironfounders.= 160 pp. 12mo. (_1910_) _net_ 2 0 =Cupola Furnace.= A practical treatise on the Construction and Management of Foundry Cupolas. By E. KIRK. Third edition, 106 illus. 484 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 15 0 =Practical Notes on Pipe Founding.= By J. W. MACFARLANE. 15 plates, 148 pp. 8vo. (_1888_) 12 6 =Atlas of Designs concerning Blast Furnace Practice.= By M. A. PAVLOFF. 127 plates, 14 in. by 10-1/2 in. oblong, sewed. (_1902_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Album of Drawings relating to the Manufacture of Open Hearth Steel.= By M. A. PAVLOFF. Part I. Open Hearth Furnaces. 52 plates, 14 in. by 10-1/2 in. oblong folio, in portfolio. (_1904_) _net_ 12 0 =Metallography Applied to Siderurgic Products.= By H. SAVOIA. Translated by R. G. CORBET. 94 illus. 180 pp. crown 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 4 6 =Modern Foundry Practice.= Including revised subject matter and tables from SPRETSON'S "Casting and Founding." By J. SHARP. Second edition, New impression, 272 illus. 759 pp. 8vo. (_1911_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Roll Turning for Sections in Steel and Iron.= By A. SPENCER. Second edition, 78 plates, 4to. (_1894_) 1 10 0 METRIC TABLES. =French Measure and English Equivalents.= By J. BROOK. Second edition, 80 pp. fcap. 32mo, roan. (_1906_) _net_ 1 0 =A Dictionary of Metric and other useful Measures.= By L. CLARK. 113 pp. 8vo. (_1891_) 6 0 =English Weights, with their Equivalents in kilogrammes.= By F. W. A. LOGAN. 96 pp. fcap. 32mo, roan. (_1906_) _net_ 1 0 =Metric Weights with English Equivalents.= By H. P. MCCARTNEY. 84 pp. fcap. 32mo, roan. (_1907_) _net_ 1 0 =Metric Tables.= By Sir G. L. MOLESWORTH. Fourth edition, 95 pp. royal 32mo. (_1909_) _net_ 2 0 =Tables for Setting out Curves= from 200 metres to 4000 metres by tangential angles. By H. WILLIAMSON. 4 illus. 60 pp. 18mo. (_1908_) _net_ 2 0 MINERALOGY AND MINING. =Rock Blasting.= By G. G. ANDRE. 12 plates and 56 illus. in text, 202 pp. 8vo. (_1878_) 5 0 =Winding Plants for Great Depths.= By H. C. BEHR. In two parts. 8vo, sewed. (_1902_) _net_ 2 2 0 =Practical Treatise on Hydraulic Mining in California.= By A. J. BOWIE, Jun. Tenth edition, 73 illus. 313 pp. royal 8vo. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Tables for the Determination of Common Rocks.= By O. BOWLES. 64 pp. 18mo, boards. (VAN NOSTRAND SERIES, No. 125.) (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 2 0 =Manual of Assaying Gold, Silver, Copper and Lead Ores.= By W. L. BROWN. Twelfth edition, 132 illus. 589 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 10 6 =Fire Assaying.= By E. W. BUSKETT. 69 illus. 105 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 4 6 =Tin=: Describing the Chief Methods of Mining, Dressing, etc. By A. G. CHARLETON. 15 plates, 83 pp. crown 8vo. (_1884_) 12 6 =Gold Mining and Milling= in Western Australia, with Notes upon Telluride Treatment, Costs and Mining Practice in other Fields. By A. G. CHARLETON. 82 illus. and numerous plans and tables, 648 pp. super-royal 8vo. (_1903_) _net_ 1 5 0 =Miners' Geology and Prospectors' Guide.= By G. A. CORDER. 29 plates, 224 pp. crown 8vo. (_1907_) _net_ 5 0 =Blasting of Rock in Mines, Quarries, Tunnels, etc.= By A. W. and Z. W. DAW. Second edition, 90 illus. 316 pp. demy 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 15 0 =Handbook of Mineralogy=; determination and description of Minerals found in the United States. By J. C. FOYE. 180 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1886_) _net_ 2 0 =Our Coal Resources= at the End of the Nineteenth Century. By Prof. E. HULL. 157 pp. demy 8vo. (_1897_) 6 0 =Hydraulic Gold Miners' Manual.= By T. S. G. KIRKPATRICK, Second edition, 12 illus. 46 pp. crown 8vo. (_1897_) 4 0 =Economic Mining.= By C. G. W. LOCK. 175 illus. 680 pp. 8vo. (_1895_) _net_ 10 6 =Gold Milling=: Principles and Practice. By C. G. W. LOCK. 200 illus. 850 pp. demy 8vo. (_1901_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Mining and Ore-Dressing Machinery.= By C. G. W. LOCK. 639 illus. 466 pp. super-royal 4to. (_1890_) 1 5 0 =Miners' Pocket Book.= By C. G. W. LOCK. Fifth edition, 233 illus. 624 pp. fcap. 8vo, leather, gilt edges. (_1908_) _net_ 10 6 =Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones.= By J. MASTIN. 114 pp. fcap. 16mo, limp leather, gilt top. (_1911_) _net_ 2 6 =Tests for Ores, Minerals and Metals of Commercial Value.= By R. L. MCMECHEN. 152 pp. 12mo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 5 6 =Practical Handbook for the Working Miner and Prospector=, and the Mining Investor. By J. A. MILLER. 34 illus. 234 pp. crown 8vo. (_1897_) 7 6 =Theory and Practice of Centrifugal Ventilating Machines.= By D. MURGUE. 7 illus. 81 pp. 8vo. (_1883_) 5 0 =Examples of Coal Mining Plant.= By J. POVEY-HARPER. Second edition, 40 plates, 26 in. by 20 in. (_1895_) _net_ 4 4 0 =Examples of Coal Mining Plant, Second Series.= By J. POVEY-HARPER. 10 plates, 26 in. by 20 in. (_1902_) _net_ 1 12 6 MODELS AND MODEL MAKING. =How to Build a Model Yacht.= By H. FISHER. Numerous illustrations, 50 pp. 4to. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 4 6 =Model Engines and Small Boats.= By N. M. HOPKINS. 50 illus. viii + 74 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1898_) _net_ 5 9 =The Gyroscope, an Experimental Study.= By V. E. JOHNSON. 34 illus. 40 pp. crown 8vo, limp. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 22.) (_1911_) _net_ 1 6 =The Model Vaudeville Theatre.= By N. H. SCHNEIDER. 34 illus. 90 pp. crown 8vo, limp. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 15.) (_New York, 1910_) 1 6 =Electric Toy-Making.= By T. O. SLOANE. Fifteenth edition, 70 illus. 183 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 4 6 =Model Steam Engine Design.= By R. M. DE VIGNIER. 34 illus. 94 pp. crown 8vo, limp. (S. & C. SERIES, No. 9.) (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 1 6 =Small Engines and Boilers.= By E. P. WATSON. 33 illus. viii + 108 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1899_) _net_ 5 6 ORGANISATION. ACCOUNTS, CONTRACTS AND MANAGEMENT. =Organisation of Gold Mining Business=, with Specimens of the Departmental Report Books and the Account Books. By NICOL BROWN. Second edition, 220 pp. fcap. folio. (_1903_) _net_ 1 5 0 =Cost Keeping and Management Engineering.= A Treatise for those engaged in Engineering Construction. By H. P. GILLETTE and R. T. DANA. 184 illus. 346 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 15 0 =Manual of Engineering Specifications= and Contracts. By L. M. HAUPT. Eighth edition, 338 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1900_) _net_ 12 6 =Handbook on Railway Stores Management.= By W. O. KEMPTHORNE. 268 pp. demy 8vo. (_1907_) _net_ 10 6 =Depreciation of Factories=, Municipal, and Industrial Undertakings, and their Valuation. By E. MATHESON. Fourth edition, 230 pp. 8vo. (_1910_) _net_ 10 6 =Aid Book to Engineering Enterprise.= By E. MATHESON. Third edition, 916 pp. 8vo, buckram. (_1898_) 1 4 0 =Office Management.= A handbook for Architects and Civil Engineers. By W. KAYE PARRY. New impression, 187 pp. medium 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 5 0 =Commercial Organisation of Engineering Factories.= By H. SPENCER. 92 illus. 221 pp. 8vo. (_1907_) _net_ 10 6 PHYSICS. COLOUR, HEAT AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE. =The Entropy Diagram= and its Applications. By M. J. BOULVIN. 38 illus. 82 pp. demy 8vo. (_1898_) 5 0 =Physical Problems and their Solution.= By A. BOURGOUGNON. 224 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1897_) _net_ 2 0 =Heat for Engineers.= By C. R. DARLING. Second edition, 110 illus. 430 pp. 8vo. (FINSBURY TECHNICAL MANUAL.) (_1912_) _net_ 12 6 =The Colourist.= A method of determining colour harmony. By J. A. H. HATT. 2 coloured plates, 80 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 6 6 =Engineering Thermodynamics.= By C. F. HIRSCHFELD. 22 illus. 157 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 2 0 =Experimental Science=: Elementary, Practical and Experimental Physics. By G. M. HOPKINS. Twenty-third edition, 920 illus. 1100 pp. large 8vo. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Reform in Chemical and Physical Calculations.= By C. J. T. HANSSEN. Demy 4to. (_1897_) _net_ 6 6 =Introduction to the Study of Colour Phenomena.= By J. W. LOVIBOND. 10 hand coloured plates, 48 pp. 8vo. (_1905_) _net_ 5 0 =Practical Laws and Data on the Condensation of Steam in Bare Pipes=; to which is added a Translation of PECLET'S Theory and Experiments on the Transmission of Heat through Insulating Materials. By C. P. PAULDING. 184 illus. 102 pp. demy 8vo. (_New York, 1904_) _net_ 8 6 =The Energy Chart.= Practical application to reciprocating steam-engines. By Captain H. R. SANKEY. 157 illus. 170 pp. 8vo. (_1907_) _net_ 7 6 PRICE BOOKS. =The Mechanical Engineers' Price Book, 1912.= By G. BROOKS. 176 pp. pocket size (6-1/2 in. by 3-3/4 in. by 1/2 in. thick), leather cloth, with rounded corners. (_1912_) _net_ 4 0 =Approximate Estimates.= By T. E. COLEMAN. Third edition, 481 pp. oblong 32mo, leather. (_1907_) _net_ 5 0 =The Civil Engineers' Cost Book.= By MAJOR T. E. COLEMAN. xii. + 289 pp. pocket size (6-1/2 in. by 3-3/4 in.), leather cloth. (_1912_) _net_ 5 0 =Railway Stores Price Book.= By W. O. KEMPTHORNE. 500 pp. demy 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 10 6 =Handbook of Cost Data for Contractors and Engineers.= By H. P. GILLETTE. 1854 pp. cr. 8vo, leather, gilt edges. (_New York, 1910_) _net_ 1 1 0 =Spons' Architects' and Builders' Pocket Price-Book and Diary, 1912.= Edited by CLYDE YOUNG. Revised by STANFORD M. BROOKS. Illustrated, 239 pp. green leather cloth. With Diary showing a week at an opening. (Size 6-1/2 in. by 3-3/4 in. by 1/2 in. thick). Issued annually _net_ 2 6 RAILWAY ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT. =Practical Hints to Young Engineers Employed on Indian Railways.= By A. W. C. ADDIS. 14 illus. 154 pp. 12mo. (_1910_) _net_ 3 6 =Field and Office Tables=, specially applicable to Railroads. By C. F. ALLEN. 293 pp. 16mo, leather. (_New York, 1903_) _net_ 8 6 =Up-to-date Air Brake Catechism.= By R. H. BLACKALL. Twenty-third edit. 5 coloured plates, 96 illus. 305 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1908_) _net_ 8 6 =Prevention of Railroad Accidents, or Safety in Railroading.= By GEO. BRADSHAW. 64 illus. 173 pp. square crown 8vo. (_New York, 1912_) _net_ 2 6 =Simple and Automatic Vacuum Brakes.= By C. BRIGGS, G.N.R. 11 plates, 8vo. (_1892_) 4 0 =Notes on Permanent-way Material=, Plate-laying, ad Points and Crossings. By W. H. COLE. Sixth edition, revised, 44 illus. in 39 plates, 203 pp. crown 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 7 6 =Statistical Tables of the Working of Railways= in various countries up to the year 1904. By J. D. DIACOMIDIS. Second edition, 84 pp. small folio, sewed. (_1906_) _net_ 16 0 =Locomotive Breakdowns=, Emergencies and their Remedies. By GEO. L. FOWLER, M.E., and W. W. WOOD. Fifth edition, 92 illus. 266 pp. 12mo. (_New York, 1911_) _net_ 4 6 =Permanent-Way Diagrams.= By F. H. FRERE. Mounted on linen in cloth covers. (_1908_) _net_ 3 0 =Formulæ for Railway Crossings and Switches.= By J. GLOVER. 9 illus. 28 pp. royal 32mo. (_1896_) 2 6 =Setting out of Tube Railways.= By G. M. HALDEN. 9 plates, 46 illus. 68 pp. crown 4to. (_1907_) _net_ 10 6 =Railway Engineering, Mechanical and Electrical.= By J. W. C. HALDANE. New edition, 141 illus. xx + 583 pp. 8vo. (_1908_) 15 0 =The Construction of the Modern Locomotive.= By G. HUGHES. 300 illus. 261 pp. 8vo. (_1894_) 9 0 =Practical Hints for Light Railways= at Home and Abroad. By F. R. JOHNSON. 6 plates, 31 pp. crown 8vo. (_1896_) 2 6 =Handbook on Railway Stores Management.= By W. O. KEMPTHORNE. 268 pp. demy 8vo. (_1907_) _net_ 10 6 =Railway Stores Price Book.= By W. O. KEMPTHORNE. 487 pp. demy 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 10 6 =Railroad Location Surveys and Estimates.= By F. LAVIS. 68 illus. 270 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 12 6 =Pioneering.= By F. SHELFORD. Illustrated, 88 pp. crown 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 3 0 =Handbook on Railway Surveying= for Students and Junior Engineers. By B. STEWART. 55 illus. 98 pp. crown 8vo. (_1909_) _net_ 2 6 =Modern British Locomotives.= By A. T. TAYLOR. 100 diagrams of principal dimensions, 118 pp. oblong 8vo. (_1907_) _net_ 4 6 =Locomotive Slide Valve Setting.= By C. E. TULLY. Illustrated, 18mo _net_ 1 0 =The Railway Goods Station.= By F. W. WEST. 23 illus., xv + 192 pp. crown 8vo. (_1912_) _net_ 4 6 =The Walschaert Locomotive Valve Gear.= By W. W. WOOD. 4 plates and set of movable cardboard working models of the valves, 193 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 6 6 =The Westinghouse E.T. Air-Brake Instruction Pocket Book.= By W. W. WOOD. 48 illus. including many coloured plates, 242 pp. crown 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 8 6 SANITATION, PUBLIC HEALTH AND MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING. =Sewers and Drains for Populous Districts.= By J. W. ADAMS. Ninth edition, 81 illus. 236 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1902_) _net_ 10 6 =Engineering Work in Public Buildings.= By R. O. ALLSOP. 77 illus. ix + 158 pp. demy 4to. (_1912_) _net_ 12 6 =Public Abattoirs=, their Planning, Design and Equipment. By R. S. AYLING. 33 plates, 100 pp. demy 4to. (_1908_) _net_ 8 6 =Sewage Purification.= By E. BAILEY-DENTON. 8 plates, 44 pp. 8vo. (_1896_) 5 0 =Water Supply and Sewerage of Country Mansions= and Estates. By E. BAILEY-DENTON. 76 pp. crown 8vo. (_1901_) _net_ 2 6 =Sewerage and Sewage Purification.= By M. N. BAKER. Second edition, 144 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 2 0 =Sewage Irrigation by Farmers.= By R. W. P. BIRCH. 8vo, sewed. (_1878_) 2 6 =Sanitary House Drainage=, its Principles and Practice. By T. E. 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SNOW. Fourth edition, 52 illus. 216 pp. 8vo. (_New York, 1909_) _net_ 6 6 =Ventilation of Buildings.= By W. G. SNOW and T. NOLAN. 83 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1906_) _net_ 2 0 =Heating Engineers' Quantities.= By W. L. WHITE and G. M. WHITE. 4 plates, 33 pp. folio. (_1910_) _net_ 10 6 WATER SUPPLY. (_See also_ HYDRAULICS.) =Potable Water and Methods of Testing Impurities.= By M. N. BAKER. 97 pp. 18mo, boards. (_New York, 1905_) _net_ 2 0 =Manual of Hydrology.= By N. BEARDMORE. New impression, 18 plates, 384 pp. 8vo. (_1906_) _net_ 10 6 =Boiler Waters=, Scale, Corrosion and Fouling. By W. W. CHRISTIE. 77 illus. 235 pp. 8vo, cloth. (_New York, 1907_) _net_ 12 6 =Water Softening and Purification.= By H. COLLET. Second edition, 6 illus. 170 pp. crown 8vo. (_1908_) _net_ 5 0 =Treatise on Water Supply=, Drainage and Sanitary Appliances of Residences. By F. COLYER. 100 pp. crown 8vo. (_1899_) _net_ 1 6 =Purification of Public Water Supplies.= By J. W. HILL. 314 pp. 8vo. 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ROWELL, _Secretary_. * * * * * =The Proceedings of the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers.= Edited by THOMAS COLE, Assoc. M. Inst. C.E. _Secretary_. Published Annually, 8vo, cloth, 21_s._ _net_. * * * * * =The Transactions of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy.= Edited by C. MCDERMID, _Secretary_. Published Annually, boards, 21_s._ net, or half-bound, 25_s._ net. * * * * * =Transactions of the Institution of Gas Engineers.= Edited by WALTER T. DUNN, _Secretary_. Published Annually, 8vo, cloth, 10_s._ 6_d._ net. * * * * * =Proceedings of the International Association for Testing Materials.= (English Edition.) * * * * * =Transactions of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.= Published Annually, 8vo, cloth, 25_s._ net. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED. * * * * * Transcriber's Note: This book contains a dictionary plus a book advertisements section. The punctation has been homogenized in the dictionary but not in the advertisements. The spelling of some names in the dictionary can differ between the French/English part and the English/French part; this has not been fixed. The following typos have been fixed in the dictionary: * p55: corrected "concassés" into "concassées" ("Route en pierres concassées") * p68: corrected "Rétard" into "Retard" ("Retard à l'allumage.") Note de transcription: Ce livre contient un dictionnaire, plus une section publicités. La ponctuation a été homogénéisée dans le dictionnaire, mais pas dans les publicités. L'ortographe de certains mots diffère dans le dictionnaire entre les versions French/English et English/French; celle-ci n'a pas été corrigée. Les erreurs suivantes ont été corrigées: * p55: corrige «concassés» en «concassées» («Route en pierres concassées»), * p68: corrige «Rétard» en «Retard» («Retard à l'allumage.»). 
19369	----	Transcriber's Note: The Attribution and the Table of Contents are not part of the original book. _The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont_ By Robert Barr * * * * * CONTENTS 1. _The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds_ 2. _The Siamese Twin of a Bomb-Thrower_ 3. _The Clue of the Silver Spoons_ 4. _Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune_ 5. _The Absent-Minded Coterie_ 6. _The Ghost with the Club-Foot_ 7. _The Liberation of Wyoming Ed_ 8. _Lady Alicia's Emeralds_ APPENDIX: TWO SHERLOCK HOLMES PARODIES 1. The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs 2. The Adventure of the Second Swag * * * * * 1. _The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds_ When I say I am called Valmont, the name will convey no impression to the reader, one way or another. My occupation is that of private detective in London, but if you ask any policeman in Paris who Valmont was he will likely be able to tell you, unless he is a recent recruit. If you ask him where Valmont is now, he may not know, yet I have a good deal to do with the Parisian police. For a period of seven years I was chief detective to the Government of France, and if I am unable to prove myself a great crime hunter, it is because the record of my career is in the secret archives of Paris. I may admit at the outset that I have no grievances to air. The French Government considered itself justified in dismissing me, and it did so. In this action it was quite within its right, and I should be the last to dispute that right; but, on the other hand, I consider myself justified in publishing the following account of what actually occurred, especially as so many false rumours have been put abroad concerning the case. However, as I said at the beginning, I hold no grievance, because my worldly affairs are now much more prosperous than they were in Paris, my intimate knowledge of that city and the country of which it is the capital bringing to me many cases with which I have dealt more or less successfully since I established myself in London. Without further preliminary I shall at once plunge into an account of the case which riveted the attention of the whole world a little more than a decade ago. The year 1893 was a prosperous twelve months for France. The weather was good, the harvest excellent, and the wine of that vintage is celebrated to this day. Everyone was well off and reasonably happy, a marked contrast to the state of things a few years later, when dissension over the Dreyfus case rent the country in twain. Newspaper readers may remember that in 1893 the Government of France fell heir to an unexpected treasure which set the civilised world agog, especially those inhabitants of it who are interested in historical relics. This was the finding of the diamond necklace in the Château de Chaumont, where it had rested undiscovered for a century in a rubbish heap of an attic. I believe it has not been questioned that this was the veritable necklace which the court jeweller, Boehmer, hoped to sell to Marie Antoinette, although how it came to be in the Château de Chaumont no one has been able to form even a conjecture. For a hundred years it was supposed that the necklace had been broken up in London, and its half a thousand stones, great and small, sold separately. It has always seemed strange to me that the Countess de Lamotte-Valois, who was thought to have profited by the sale of these jewels, should not have abandoned France if she possessed money to leave that country, for exposure was inevitable if she remained. Indeed, the unfortunate woman was branded and imprisoned, and afterwards was dashed to death from the third storey of a London house, when, in the direst poverty, she sought escape from the consequences of the debts she had incurred. I am not superstitious in the least, yet this celebrated piece of treasure-trove seems actually to have exerted a malign influence over everyone who had the misfortune to be connected with it. Indeed, in a small way, I who write these words suffered dismissal and disgrace, though I caught but one glimpse of this dazzling scintillation of jewels. The jeweller who made the necklace met financial ruin; the Queen for whom it was constructed was beheaded; that high-born Prince Louis René Edouard, Cardinal de Rohan, who purchased it, was flung into prison; the unfortunate Countess, who said she acted as go-between until the transfer was concluded, clung for five awful minutes to a London window-sill before dropping to her death to the flags below; and now, a hundred and eight years later, up comes this devil's display of fireworks to the light again! Droulliard, the working man who found the ancient box, seems to have prised it open, and ignorant though he was--he had probably never seen a diamond in his life before--realised that a fortune was in his grasp. The baleful glitter from the combination must have sent madness into his brain, working havoc therein as though the shafts of brightness were those mysterious rays which scientists have recently discovered. He might quite easily have walked through the main gate of the Château unsuspected and unquestioned with the diamonds concealed about his person, but instead of this he crept from the attic window on to the steep roof, slipped to the eaves, fell to the ground, and lay dead with a broken neck, while the necklace, intact, shimmered in the sunlight beside his body. No matter where these jewels had been found the Government would have insisted that they belonged to the Treasury of the Republic; but as the Château de Chaumont was a historical monument, and the property of France, there could be no question regarding the ownership of the necklace. The Government at once claimed it, and ordered it to be sent by a trustworthy military man to Paris. It was carried safely and delivered promptly to the authorities by Alfred Dreyfus, a young captain of artillery, to whom its custody had been entrusted. In spite of its fall from the tall tower neither case nor jewels were perceptibly damaged. The lock of the box had apparently been forced by Droulliard's hatchet, or perhaps by the clasp knife found on his body. On reaching the ground the lid had flown open, and the necklace was thrown out. I believe there was some discussion in the Cabinet regarding the fate of this ill-omened trophy, one section wishing it to be placed in a museum on account of its historical interest, another advocating the breaking up of the necklace and the selling of the diamonds for what they would fetch. But a third party maintained that the method to get the most money into the coffers of the country was to sell the necklace as it stood, for as the world now contains so many rich amateurs who collect undoubted rarities, regardless of expense, the historic associations of the jewelled collar would enhance the intrinsic value of the stones; and, this view prevailing, it was announced that the necklace would be sold by auction a month later in the rooms of Meyer, Renault and Co., in the Boulevard des Italiens, near the Bank of the Crédit-Lyonnais. This announcement elicited much comment from the newspapers of all countries, and it seemed that, from a financial point of view at least, the decision of the Government had been wise, for it speedily became evident that a notable coterie of wealthy buyers would be congregated in Paris on the thirteenth (unlucky day for me!) when the sale was to take place. But we of the inner circle were made aware of another result somewhat more disquieting, which was that the most expert criminals in the world were also gathering like vultures upon the fair city. The honour of France was at stake. Whoever bought that necklace must be assured of a safe conduct out of the country. We might view with equanimity whatever happened afterwards, but while he was a resident of France his life and property must not be endangered. Thus it came about that I was given full authority to ensure that neither murder nor theft nor both combined should be committed while the purchaser of the necklace remained within our boundaries, and for this purpose the police resources of France were placed unreservedly at my disposal. If I failed there should be no one to blame but myself; consequently, as I have remarked before, I do not complain of my dismissal by the Government. The broken lock of the jewel-case had been very deftly repaired by an expert locksmith, who in executing his task was so unfortunate as to scratch a finger on the broken metal, whereupon blood poisoning set in, and although his life was saved, he was dismissed from the hospital with his right arm gone and his usefulness destroyed. When the jeweller Boehmer made the necklace he asked a hundred and sixty thousand pounds for it, but after years of disappointment he was content to sell it to Cardinal de Rohan for sixty-four thousand pounds, to be liquidated in three instalments, not one of which was ever paid. This latter amount was probably somewhere near the value of the five hundred and sixteen separate stones, one of which was of tremendous size, a very monarch of diamonds, holding its court among seventeen brilliants each as large as a filbert. This iridescent concentration of wealth was, as one might say, placed in my care, and I had to see to it that no harm came to the necklace or to its prospective owner until they were safely across the boundaries of France. The four weeks previous to the thirteenth proved a busy and anxious time for me. Thousands, most of whom were actuated by mere curiosity, wished to view the diamonds. We were compelled to discriminate, and sometimes discriminated against the wrong person, which caused unpleasantness. Three distinct attempts were made to rob the safe, but luckily these criminal efforts were frustrated, and so we came unscathed to the eventful thirteenth of the month. The sale was to begin at two o'clock, and on the morning of that day I took the somewhat tyrannical precaution of having the more dangerous of our own malefactors, and as many of the foreign thieves as I could trump up charges against, laid by the heels, yet I knew very well it was not these rascals I had most to fear, but the suave, well-groomed gentlemen, amply supplied with unimpeachable credentials, stopping at our fine hotels and living like princes. Many of these were foreigners against whom we could prove nothing, and whose arrest might land us into temporary international difficulties. Nevertheless, I had each of them shadowed, and on the morning of the thirteenth if one of them had even disputed a cab fare I should have had him in prison half an hour later, and taken the consequences, but these gentlemen are very shrewd and do not commit mistakes. I made up a list of all the men in the world who were able or likely to purchase the necklace. Many of them would not be present in person at the auction rooms; their bidding would be done by agents. This simplified matters a good deal, for the agents kept me duly informed of their purposes, and, besides, an agent who handles treasure every week is an adept at the business, and does not need the protection which must surround an amateur, who in nine cases out of ten has but scant idea of the dangers that threaten him, beyond knowing that if he goes down a dark street in a dangerous quarter he is likely to be maltreated and robbed. There were no less than sixteen clients all told, whom we learned were to attend personally on the day of the sale, any one of whom might well have made the purchase. The Marquis of Warlingham and Lord Oxtead from England were well-known jewel fanciers, while at least half a dozen millionaires were expected from the United States, with a smattering from Germany, Austria, and Russia, and one each from Italy, Belgium, and Holland. Admission to the auction rooms was allowed by ticket only, to be applied for at least a week in advance, applications to be accompanied by satisfactory testimonials. It would possibly have surprised many of the rich men collected there to know that they sat cheek by jowl with some of the most noted thieves of England and America, but I allowed this for two reasons: first, I wished to keep these sharpers under my own eye until I knew who had bought the necklace; and, secondly, I was desirous that they should not know they were suspected. I stationed trusty men outside on the Boulevard des Italiens, each of whom knew by sight most of the probable purchasers of the necklace. It was arranged that when the sale was over I should walk out to the boulevard alongside the man who was the new owner of the diamonds, and from that moment until he quitted France my men were not to lose sight of him if he took personal custody of the stones, instead of doing the sensible and proper thing of having them insured and forwarded to his residence by some responsible transit company, or depositing them in the bank. In fact, I took every precaution that occurred to me. All police Paris was on the _qui vive_, and felt itself pitted against the scoundrelism of the world. For one reason or another it was nearly half-past two before the sale began. There had been considerable delay because of forged tickets, and, indeed, each order for admittance was so closely scrutinised that this in itself took a good deal more time than we anticipated. Every chair was occupied, and still a number of the visitors were compelled to stand. I stationed myself by the swinging doors at the entrance end of the hall, where I could command a view of the entire assemblage. Some of my men were placed with backs against the wall, whilst others were distributed amongst the chairs, all in plain clothes. During the sale the diamonds themselves were not displayed, but the box containing them rested in front of the auctioneer and three policemen in uniform stood guard on either side. * * * * * Very quietly the auctioneer began by saying that there was no need for him to expatiate on the notable character of the treasure he was privileged to offer for sale, and with this preliminary, he requested those present to bid. Someone offered twenty thousand francs, which was received with much laughter; then the bidding went steadily on until it reached nine hundred thousand francs, which I knew to be less than half the reserve the Government had placed upon the necklace. The contest advanced more slowly until the million and a half was touched, and there it hung fire for a time, while the auctioneer remarked that this sum did not equal that which the maker of the necklace had been finally forced to accept for it. After another pause he added that, as the reserve was not exceeded, the necklace would be withdrawn, and probably never again offered for sale. He therefore urged those who were holding back to make their bids now. At this the contest livened until the sum of two million three hundred thousand francs had been offered, and now I knew the necklace would be sold. Nearing the three million mark the competition thinned down to a few dealers from Hamburg and the Marquis of Warlingham, from England, when a voice that had not yet been heard in the auction room was lifted in a tone of some impatience:-- 'One million dollars!' There was an instant hush, followed by the scribbling of pencils, as each person present reduced the sum to its equivalent in his own currency--pounds for the English, francs for the French, marks for the German, and so on. The aggressive tone and the clear-cut face of the bidder proclaimed him an American, not less than the financial denomination he had used. In a moment it was realised that his bid was a clear leap of more than two million francs, and a sigh went up from the audience as if this settled it, and the great sale was done. Nevertheless the auctioneer's hammer hovered over the lid of his desk, and he looked up and down the long line of faces turned towards him. He seemed reluctant to tap the board, but no one ventured to compete against this tremendous sum, and with a sharp click the mallet fell. 'What name?' he asked, bending over towards the customer. 'Cash,' replied the American; 'here's a cheque for the amount. I'll take the diamonds with me.' 'Your request is somewhat unusual,' protested the auctioneer mildly. 'I know what you mean,' interrupted the American; 'you think the cheque may not be cashed. You will notice it is drawn on the Crédit-Lyonnais, which is practically next door. I must have the jewels with me. Send round your messenger with the cheque; it will take only a few minutes to find out whether or not the money is there to meet it. The necklace is mine, and I insist on having it.' The auctioneer with some demur handed the cheque to the representative of the French Government who was present, and this official himself went to the bank. There were some other things to be sold and the auctioneer endeavoured to go on through the list, but no one paid the slightest attention to him. Meanwhile I was studying the countenance of the man who had made the astounding bid, when I should instead have adjusted my preparations to meet the new conditions now confronting me. Here was a man about whom we knew nothing whatever. I had come to the instant conclusion that he was a prince of criminals, and that a sinister design, not at that moment fathomed by me, was on foot to get possession of the jewels. The handing up of the cheque was clearly a trick of some sort, and I fully expected the official to return and say the draft was good. I determined to prevent this man from getting the jewel box until I knew more of his game. Quickly I removed from my place near the door to the auctioneer's desk, having two objects in view; first, to warn the auctioneer not to part with the treasure too easily; and, second, to study the suspected man at closer range. Of all evil-doers the American is most to be feared; he uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects, and will take greater risks in carrying them out than any other malefactor on earth. From my new station I saw there were two men to deal with. The bidder's face was keen and intellectual; his hands refined, lady-like, clean and white, showing they were long divorced from manual labour, if indeed they had ever done any useful work. Coolness and imperturbability were his beyond a doubt. The companion who sat at his right was of an entirely different stamp. His hands were hairy and sun-tanned; his face bore the stamp of grim determination and unflinching bravery. I knew that these two types usually hunted in couples--the one to scheme, the other to execute, and they always formed a combination dangerous to encounter and difficult to circumvent. There was a buzz of conversation up and down the hall as these two men talked together in low tones. I knew now that I was face to face with the most hazardous problem of my life. I whispered to the auctioneer, who bent his head to listen. He knew very well who I was, of course. 'You must not give up the necklace,' I began. He shrugged his shoulders. 'I am under the orders of the official from the Ministry of the Interior. You must speak to him.' 'I shall not fail to do so,' I replied. 'Nevertheless, do not give up the box too readily.' 'I am helpless,' he protested with another shrug. 'I obey the orders of the Government.' Seeing it was useless to parley further with the auctioneer, I set my wits to work to meet the new emergency. I felt convinced that the cheque would prove to be genuine, and that the fraud, wherever it lay, might not be disclosed in time to aid the authorities. My duty, therefore, was to make sure we lost sight neither of the buyer nor the thing bought. Of course I could not arrest the purchaser merely on suspicion; besides, it would make the Government the laughing-stock of the world if they sold a case of jewels and immediately placed the buyer in custody when they themselves had handed over his goods to him. Ridicule kills in France. A breath of laughter may blow a Government out of existence in Paris much more effectually than will a whiff of cannon smoke. My duty then was to give the Government full warning, and never lose sight of my man until he was clear of France; then my responsibility ended. I took aside one of my own men in plain clothes and said to him,-- 'You have seen the American who has bought the necklace?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Very well. Go outside quietly, and station yourself there. He is likely to emerge presently with the jewels in his possession. You are not to lose sight of either the man or the casket. I shall follow him and be close behind him as he emerges, and you are to shadow us. If he parts with the case you must be ready at a sign from me to follow either the man or the jewels. Do you understand?' 'Yes, sir,' he answered, and left the room. It is ever the unforeseen that baffles us; it is easy to be wise after the event. I should have sent two men, and I have often thought since how admirable is the regulation of the Italian Government which sends out its policemen in pairs. Or I should have given my man power to call for help, but even as it was he did only half as well as I had a right to expect of him, and the blunder he committed by a moment's dull-witted hesitation--ah, well! there is no use of scolding. After all the result might have been the same. Just as my man disappeared between the two folding doors the official from the Ministry of the Interior entered. I intercepted him about half-way on his journey from the door to the auctioneer. 'Possibly the cheque appears to be genuine,' I whispered to him. 'But certainly,' he replied pompously. He was an individual greatly impressed with his own importance; a kind of character with which it is always difficult to deal. Afterwards the Government asserted that this official had warned me, and the utterances of an empty-headed ass dressed in a little brief authority, as the English poet says, were looked upon as the epitome of wisdom. 'I advise you strongly not to hand over the necklace as has been requested,' I went on. 'Why?' he asked. 'Because I am convinced the bidder is a criminal.' 'If you have proof of that, arrest him.' 'I have no proof at the present moment, but I request you to delay the delivery of the goods.' 'That is absurd,' he cried impatiently. 'The necklace is his, not ours. The money has already been transferred to the account of the Government; we cannot retain the five million francs, and refuse to hand over to him what he has bought with them,' and so the man left me standing there, nonplussed and anxious. The eyes of everyone in the room had been turned on us during our brief conversation, and now the official proceeded ostentatiously up the room with a grand air of importance; then, with a bow and a flourish of the hand, he said, dramatically,-- 'The jewels belong to Monsieur.' The two Americans rose simultaneously, the taller holding out his hand while the auctioneer passed to him the case he had apparently paid so highly for. The American nonchalantly opened the box and for the first time the electric radiance of the jewels burst upon that audience, each member of which craned his neck to behold it. It seemed to me a most reckless thing to do. He examined the jewels minutely for a few moments, then snapped the lid shut again, and calmly put the box in his outside pocket, and I could not help noticing that the light overcoat he wore possessed pockets made extraordinarily large, as if on purpose for this very case. And now this amazing man walked serenely down the room past miscreants who joyfully would have cut his throat for even the smallest diamond in that conglomeration; yet he did not take the trouble to put his hand on the pocket which contained the case, or in any way attempt to protect it. The assemblage seemed stricken dumb by his audacity. His friend followed closely at his heels, and the tall man disappeared through the folding doors. Not so the other. He turned quickly, and whipped two revolvers out of his pockets, which he presented at the astonished crowd. There had been a movement on the part of every one to leave the room, but the sight of these deadly weapons confronting them made each one shrink into his place again. The man with his back to the door spoke in a loud and domineering voice, asking the auctioneer to translate what he had to say into French and German; he spoke in English. 'These here shiners are valuable; they belong to my friend who has just gone out. Casting no reflections on the generality of people in this room, there are, nevertheless, half a dozen "crooks" among us whom my friend wishes to avoid. Now, no honest man here will object to giving the buyer of that there trinket five clear minutes in which to get away. It's only the "crooks" that can kick. I ask these five minutes as a favour, but if they are not granted I am going to take them as a right. Any man who moves will get shot.' 'I am an honest man,' I cried, 'and I object. I am chief detective of the French Government. Stand aside; the police will protect your friend.' 'Hold on, my son,' warned the American, turning one weapon directly upon me, while the other held a sort of roving commission, pointing all over the room. 'My friend is from New York and he distrusts the police as much as he does the grafters. You may be twenty detectives, but if you move before that clock strikes three, I'll bring you down, and don't you forget it.' It is one thing to face death in a fierce struggle, but quite another to advance coldly upon it toward the muzzle of a pistol held so steadily that there could be no chance of escape. The gleam of determination in the man's eyes convinced me he meant what he said. I did not consider then, nor have I considered since, that the next five minutes, precious as they were, would be worth paying my life for. Apparently everyone else was of my opinion, for none moved hand or foot until the clock slowly struck three. 'Thank you, gentlemen,' said the American, as he vanished between the spring-doors. When I say vanished, I mean that word and no other, because my men outside saw nothing of this individual then or later. He vanished as if he had never existed, and it was some hours before we found how this had been accomplished. I rushed out almost on his heels, as one might say, and hurriedly questioned my waiting men. They had all seen the tall American come out with the greatest leisure and stroll towards the west. As he was not the man any of them were looking for they paid no further attention to him, as, indeed, is the custom with our Parisian force. They have eyes for nothing but what they are sent to look for, and this trait has its drawbacks for their superiors. I ran up the boulevard, my whole thought intent on the diamonds and their owner. I knew my subordinate in command of the men inside the hall would look after the scoundrel with the pistols. A short distance up I found the stupid fellow I had sent out, standing in a dazed manner at the corner of the Rue Michodière, gazing alternately down that short street and towards the Place de l'Opéra. The very fact that he was there furnished proof that he had failed. 'Where is the American?' I demanded. 'He went down this street, sir.' 'Then why are you standing here like a fool?' 'I followed him this far, when a man came up the Rue Michodière, and without a word the American handed him the jewel-box, turning instantly down the street up which the other had come. The other jumped into a cab, and drove towards the Place de l'Opéra.' 'And what did you do? Stood here like a post, I suppose?' 'I didn't know what to do, sir. It all happened in a moment.' 'Why didn't you follow the cab?' 'I didn't know which to follow, sir, and the cab was gone instantly while I watched the American.' 'What was its number?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'You clod! Why didn't you call one of our men, whoever was nearest, and leave him to shadow the American while you followed the cab?' 'I did shout to the nearest man, sir, but he said you told him to stay there and watch the English lord, and even before he had spoken both American and cabman were out of sight.' 'Was the man to whom he gave the box an American also?' 'No, sir, he was French.' 'How do you know?' 'By his appearance and the words he spoke.' 'I thought you said he didn't speak.' 'He did not speak to the American, sir, but he said to the cabman, "Drive to the Madeleine as quickly as you can."' 'Describe the man.' 'He was a head shorter than the American, wore a black beard and moustache rather neatly trimmed, and seemed to be a superior sort of artisan.' 'You did not take the number of the cab. Should you know the cabman if you saw him again?' 'Yes, sir, I think so.' Taking this fellow with me I returned to the now nearly empty auction room and there gathered all my men about me. Each in his notebook took down particulars of the cabman and his passenger from the lips of my incompetent spy; next I dictated a full description of the two Americans, then scattered my men to the various railway stations of the lines leading out of Paris, with orders to make inquiries of the police on duty there, and to arrest one or more of the four persons described should they be so fortunate as to find any of them. I now learned how the rogue with the pistols vanished so completely as he did. My subordinate in the auction room had speedily solved the mystery. To the left of the main entrance of the auction room was a door that gave private access to the rear of the premises. As the attendant in charge confessed when questioned, he had been bribed by the American earlier in the day to leave this side door open and to allow the man to escape by the goods entrance. Thus the ruffian did not appear on the boulevard at all, and so had not been observed by any of my men. Taking my futile spy with me I returned to my own office, and sent an order throughout the city that every cabman who had been in the Boulevard des Italiens between half-past two and half-past three that afternoon, should report immediately to me. The examination of these men proved a very tedious business indeed, but whatever other countries may say of us, we French are patient, and if the haystack is searched long enough, the needle will be found. I did not discover the needle I was looking for, but I came upon one quite as important, if not more so. It was nearly ten o'clock at night when a cabman answered my oft-repeated questions in the affirmative. 'Did you take up a passenger a few minutes past three o'clock on the Boulevard des Italiens, near the Crédit-Lyonnais? Had he a short black beard? Did he carry a small box in his hand and order you to drive to the Madeleine?' The cabman seemed puzzled. 'He wore a short black beard when he got out of the cab,' he replied. 'What do you mean by that?' 'I drive a closed cab, sir. When he got in he was a smooth-faced gentleman; when he got out he wore a short black beard.' 'Was he a Frenchman?' 'No, sir; he was a foreigner, either English or American.' 'Was he carrying a box?' 'No, sir; he held in his hand a small leather bag.' 'Where did he tell you to drive?' 'He told me to follow the cab in front, which had just driven off very rapidly towards the Madeleine. In fact, I heard the man, such as you describe, order the other cabman to drive to the Madeleine. I had come alongside the curb when this man held up his hand for a cab, but the open cab cut in ahead of me. Just then my passenger stepped up and said in French, but with a foreign accent: "Follow that cab wherever it goes."' I turned with some indignation to my inefficient spy. 'You told me,' I said, 'that the American had gone down a side street. Yet he evidently met a second man, obtained from him the handbag, turned back, and got into the closed cab directly behind you.' 'Well, sir,' stammered the spy, 'I could not look in two directions at the same time. The American certainly went down the side street, but of course I watched the cab which contained the jewels.' 'And you saw nothing of the closed cab right at your elbow?' 'The boulevard was full of cabs, sir, and the pavement crowded with passers-by, as it always is at that hour of the day, and I have only two eyes in my head.' 'I am glad to know you had that many, for I was beginning to think you were blind.' Although I said this, I knew in my heart it was useless to censure the poor wretch, for the fault was entirely my own in not sending two men, and in failing to guess the possibility of the jewels and their owner being separated. Besides, here was a clue to my hand at last, and no time must be lost in following it up. So I continued my interrogation of the cabman. 'The other cab was an open vehicle, you say?' 'Yes, sir.' 'You succeeded in following it?' 'Oh, yes, sir. At the Madeleine the man in front redirected the coachman, who turned to the left and drove to the Place de la Concorde, then up the Champs-Elysées to the Arch and so down the Avenue de la Grande Armée, and the Avenue de Neuilly, to the Pont de Neuilly, where it came to a standstill. My fare got out, and I saw he now wore a short black beard, which he had evidently put on inside the cab. He gave me a ten-franc piece, which was very satisfactory. 'And the fare you were following? What did he do?' 'He also stepped out, paid the cabman, went down the bank of the river and got on board a steam launch that seemed to be waiting for him.' 'Did he look behind, or appear to know that he was being followed?' 'No, sir.' 'And your fare?' 'He ran after the first man, and also went aboard the steam launch, which instantly started down the river.' 'And that was the last you saw of them?' 'Yes, sir.' 'At what time did you reach the Pont de Neuilly?' 'I do not know, sir; I was compelled to drive rather fast, but the distance is seven to eight kilometres.' 'You would do it under the hour?' 'But certainly, under the hour.' 'Then you must have reached Neuilly bridge about four o'clock?' 'It is very likely, sir.' The plan of the tall American was now perfectly clear to me, and it comprised nothing that was contrary to law. He had evidently placed his luggage on board the steam launch in the morning. The handbag had contained various materials which would enable him to disguise himself, and this bag he had probably left in some shop down the side street, or else someone was waiting with it for him. The giving of the treasure to another man was not so risky as it had at first appeared, because he instantly followed that man, who was probably his confidential servant. Despite the windings of the river there was ample time for the launch to reach Havre before the American steamer sailed on Saturday morning. I surmised it was his intention to come alongside the steamer before she left her berth in Havre harbour, and thus transfer himself and his belongings unperceived by anyone on watch at the land side of the liner. All this, of course, was perfectly justifiable, and seemed, in truth, merely a well-laid scheme for escaping observation. His only danger of being tracked was when he got into the cab. Once away from the neighbourhood of the Boulevard des Italiens he was reasonably sure to evade pursuit, and the five minutes which his friend with the pistols had won for him afforded just the time he needed to get so far as the Place Madeleine, and after that everything was easy. Yet, if it had not been for those five minutes secured by coercion, I should not have found the slightest excuse for arresting him. But he was accessory after the act in that piece of illegality--in fact, it was absolutely certain that he had been accessory before the act, and guilty of conspiracy with the man who had presented firearms to the auctioneer's audience, and who had interfered with an officer in the discharge of his duty by threatening me and my men. So I was now legally in the right if I arrested every person on board that steam launch. * * * * * With a map of the river before me I proceeded to make some calculations. It was now nearly ten o'clock at night. The launch had had six hours in which to travel at its utmost speed. It was doubtful if so small a vessel could make ten miles an hour, even with the current in its favour, which is rather sluggish because of the locks and the level country. Sixty miles would place her beyond Meulan, which is fifty-eight miles from the Pont Royal, and, of course, a lesser distance from the Pont de Neuilly. But the navigation of the river is difficult at all times, and almost impossible after dark. There were chances of the boat running aground, and then there was the inevitable delay at the locks. So I estimated that the launch could not yet have reached Meulan, which was less than twenty-five miles from Paris by rail. Looking up the timetable I saw there were still two trains to Meulan, the next at 10.25, which reached Meulan at 11.40. I therefore had time to reach St. Lazare station, and accomplish some telegraphing before the train left. With three of my assistants I got into a cab and drove to the station. On arrival I sent one of my men to hold the train while I went into the telegraph office, cleared the wires, and got into communication with the lock master at Meulan. He replied that no steam launch had passed down since an hour before sunset. I then instructed him to allow the yacht to enter the lock, close the upper gate, let half of the water out, and hold the vessel there until I came. I also ordered the local Meulan police to send enough men to the lock to enforce this command. Lastly, I sent messages all along the river asking the police to report to me on the train the passage of the steam launch. The 10.25 is a slow train, stopping at every station. However, every drawback has its compensation, and these stoppages enabled me to receive and to send telegraphic messages. I was quite well aware that I might be on a fool's errand in going to Meulan. The yacht could have put about before it had steamed a mile, and so returned back to Paris. There had been no time to learn whether this was so or not if I was to catch the 10.25. Also, it might have landed its passengers anywhere along the river. I may say at once that neither of these two things happened, and my calculations regarding her movements were accurate to the letter. But a trap most carefully set may be prematurely sprung by inadvertence, or more often by the over-zeal of some stupid ass who fails to understand his instructions, or oversteps them if they are understood. I received a most annoying telegram from Denouval, a lock about thirteen miles above that of Meulan. The local policeman, arriving at the lock, found that the yacht had just cleared. The fool shouted to the captain to return, threatening him with all the pains and penalties of the law if he refused. The captain did refuse, rung on full speed ahead, and disappeared in the darkness. Through this well-meant blunder of an understrapper those on board the launch had received warning that we were on their track. I telegraphed to the lock-keeper at Denouval to allow no craft to pass toward Paris until further orders. We thus held the launch in a thirteen-mile stretch of water, but the night was pitch dark, and passengers might be landed on either bank with all France before them, over which to effect their escape in any direction. It was midnight when I reached the lock at Meulan, and, as was to be expected, nothing had been seen or heard of the launch. It gave me some satisfaction to telegraph to that dunderhead at Denouval to walk along the river bank to Meulan, and report if he learnt the launch's whereabouts. We took up our quarters in the lodgekeeper's house and waited. There was little sense in sending men to scour the country at this time of night, for the pursued were on the alert, and very unlikely to allow themselves to be caught if they had gone ashore. On the other hand, there was every chance that the captain would refuse to let them land, because he must know his vessel was in a trap from which it could not escape, and although the demand of the policeman at Denouval was quite unauthorised, nevertheless the captain could not know that, while he must be well aware of his danger in refusing to obey a command from the authorities. Even if he got away for the moment he must know that arrest was certain, and that his punishment would be severe. His only plea could be that he had not heard and understood the order to return. But this plea would be invalidated if he aided in the escape of two men, whom he must know were wanted by the police. I was therefore very confident that if his passengers asked to be set ashore, the captain would refuse when he had had time to think about his own danger. My estimate proved accurate, for towards one o'clock the lock-keeper came in and said the green and red lights of an approaching craft were visible, and as he spoke the yacht whistled for the opening of the lock. I stood by the lock-keeper while he opened the gates; my men and the local police were concealed on each side of the lock. The launch came slowly in, and as soon as it had done so I asked the captain to step ashore, which he did. 'I wish a word with you,' I said. 'Follow me.' I took him into the lock-keeper's house and closed the door. 'Where are you going?' 'To Havre.' 'Where did you come from?' 'Paris.' 'From what quay?' 'From the Pont de Neuilly.' 'When did you leave there?' 'At five minutes to four o'clock this afternoon.' 'Yesterday afternoon, you mean?' 'Yesterday afternoon.' 'Who engaged you to make this voyage?' 'An American; I do not know his name.' 'He paid you well, I suppose?' 'He paid me what I asked.' 'Have you received the money?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I may inform you, captain, that I am Eugène Valmont, chief detective of the French Government, and that all the police of France at this moment are under my control. I ask you, therefore, to be careful of your answers. You were ordered by a policeman at Denouval to return. Why did you not do so?' 'The lock-keeper ordered me to return, but as he had no right to order me, I went on.' 'You knew very well it was the police who ordered you, and you ignored the command. Again I ask you why you did so.' 'I did not know it was the police.' 'I thought you would say that. You knew very well, but were paid to take the risk, and it is likely to cost you dear. You had two passengers aboard?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Did you put them ashore between here and Denouval?' 'No, sir; but one of them went overboard, and we couldn't find him again.' 'Which one?' 'The short man.' 'Then the American is still aboard?' 'What American, sir?' 'Captain, you must not trifle with me. The man who engaged you is still aboard?' 'Oh, no, sir; he has never been aboard.' 'Do you mean to tell me that the second man who came on your launch at the Pont de Neuilly is not the American who engaged you?' 'No, sir; the American was a smooth-faced man; this man wore a black beard.' 'Yes, a false beard.' 'I did not know that, sir. I understood from the American that I was to take but one passenger. One came aboard with a small box in his hand; the other with a small bag. Each declared himself to be the passenger in question. I did not know what to do, so I left Paris with both of them on board.' 'Then the tall man with the black beard is still with you?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Well, captain, is there anything else you have to tell me? I think you will find it better in the end to make a clean breast of it.' The captain hesitated, turning his cap about in his hands for a few moments, then he said,-- 'I am not sure that the first passenger went overboard of his own accord. When the police hailed us at Denouval--' 'Ah, you knew it was the police, then?' 'I was afraid after I left it might have been. You see, when the bargain was made with me the American said that if I reached Havre at a certain time a thousand francs extra would be paid to me, so I was anxious to get along as quickly as I could. I told him it was dangerous to navigate the Seine at night, but he paid me well for attempting it. After the policeman called to us at Denouval the man with the small box became very much excited, and asked me to put him ashore, which I refused to do. The tall man appeared to be watching him, never letting him get far away. When I heard the splash in the water I ran aft, and I saw the tall man putting the box which the other had held into his handbag, although I said nothing of it at the time. We cruised back and forward about the spot where the other man had gone overboard, but saw nothing more of him. Then I came on to Meulan, intending to give information about what I had seen. That is all I know of the matter, sir.' 'Was the man who had the jewels a Frenchman?' 'What jewels, sir?' 'The man with the small box.' 'Oh, yes, sir; he was French.' 'You have hinted that the foreigner threw him overboard. What grounds have you for such a belief if you did not see the struggle?' 'The night is very dark, sir, and I did not see what happened. I was at the wheel in the forward part of the launch, with my back turned to these two. I heard a scream, then a splash. If the man had jumped overboard as the other said he did, he would not have screamed. Besides, as I told you, when I ran aft I saw the foreigner put the little box in his handbag, which he shut up quickly as if he did not wish me to notice.' 'Very good, captain. If you have told the truth it will go easier with you in the investigation that is to follow.' I now turned the captain over to one of my men, and ordered in the foreigner with his bag and bogus black whiskers. Before questioning him I ordered him to open the handbag, which he did with evident reluctance. It was filled with false whiskers, false moustaches, and various bottles, but on top of them all lay the jewel case. I raised the lid and displayed that accursed necklace. I looked up at the man, who stood there calmly enough, saying nothing in spite of the overwhelming evidence against him. 'Will you oblige me by removing your false beard?' He did so at once, throwing it into the open bag. I knew the moment I saw him that he was not the American, and thus my theory had broken down, in one very important part at least. Informing him who I was, and cautioning him to speak the truth, I asked how he came in possession of the jewels. 'Am I under arrest?' he asked. 'But certainly,' I replied. 'Of what am I accused?' 'You are accused, in the first place, of being in possession of property which does not belong to you.' 'I plead guilty to that. What in the second place?' 'In the second place, you may find yourself accused of murder.' 'I am innocent of the second charge. The man jumped overboard.' 'If that is true, why did he scream as he went over?' 'Because, too late to recover his balance, I seized this box and held it.' 'He was in rightful possession of the box; the owner gave it to him.' 'I admit that; I saw the owner give it to him.' 'Then why should he jump overboard?' 'I do not know. He seemed to become panic-stricken when the police at the last lock ordered us to return. He implored the captain to put him ashore, and from that moment I watched him keenly, expecting that if we drew near to the land he would attempt to escape, as the captain had refused to beach the launch. He remained quiet for about half an hour, seated on a camp chair by the rail, with his eyes turned toward the shore, trying, as I imagined, to penetrate the darkness and estimate the distance. Then suddenly he sprung up and made his dash. I was prepared for this, and instantly caught the box from his hand. He gave a half turn, trying either to save himself or to retain the box; then with a scream went down shoulders first into the water. It all happened within a second after he leaped from his chair.' 'You admit yourself, then, indirectly responsible for his drowning, at least?' 'I see no reason to suppose that the man was drowned. If able to swim he could easily have reached the river bank. If unable to swim, why should he attempt it encumbered by the box?' 'You believe he escaped, then?' 'I think so.' 'It will be lucky for you should that prove to be the case.' 'Certainly.' 'How did you come to be in the yacht at all?' 'I shall give you a full account of the affair, concealing nothing. I am a private detective, with an office in London. I was certain that some attempt would be made, probably by the most expert criminals at large, to rob the possessor of this necklace. I came over to Paris, anticipating trouble, determined to keep an eye upon the jewel case if this proved possible. If the jewels were stolen the crime was bound to be one of the most celebrated in legal annals. I was present during the sale, and saw the buyer of the necklace. I followed the official who went to the bank, and thus learned that the money was behind the cheque. I then stopped outside and waited for the buyer to appear. He held the case in his hand.' 'In his pocket, you mean?' I interrupted. 'He had it in his hand when I saw him. Then the man who afterwards jumped overboard approached him, took the case without a word, held up his hand for a cab, and when an open vehicle approached the curb he stepped in, saying, "The Madeleine." I hailed a closed cab, instructed the cabman to follow the first, disguising myself with whiskers as near like those the man in front wore as I had in my collection.' 'Why did you do that?' 'As a detective you should know why I did it. I wished as nearly as possible to resemble the man in front, so that if necessity arose I could pretend that I was the person commissioned to carry the jewel case. As a matter of fact, the crisis arose when we came to the end of our cab journey. The captain did not know which was his true passenger, and so let us both remain aboard the launch. And now you have the whole story.' 'An extremely improbable one, sir. Even by your own account you had no right to interfere in this business at all.' 'I quite agree with you there,' he replied, with great nonchalance, taking a card from his pocket-book, which he handed to me. 'That is my London address; you may make inquiries, and you will find I am exactly what I represent myself to be.' The first train for Paris left Meulan at eleven minutes past four in the morning. It was now a quarter after two. I left the captain, crew, and launch in charge of two of my men, with orders to proceed to Paris as soon as it was daylight. I, supported by the third man, waited at the station with our English prisoner, and reached Paris at half-past five in the morning. The English prisoner, though severely interrogated by the judge, stood by his story. Inquiry by the police in London proved that what he said of himself was true. His case, however, began to look very serious when two of the men from the launch asserted that they had seen him push the Frenchman overboard, and their statement could not be shaken. All our energies were bent for the next two weeks on trying to find something of the identity of the missing man, or to get any trace of the two Americans. If the tall American were alive, it seemed incredible that he should not have made application for the valuable property he had lost. All attempts to trace him by means of the cheque on the Crédit-Lyonnais proved futile. The bank pretended to give me every assistance, but I sometimes doubt if it actually did so. It had evidently been well paid for its services, and evinced no impetuous desire to betray so good a customer. We made inquiries about every missing man in Paris, but also without result. The case had excited much attention throughout the world, and doubtless was published in full in the American papers. The Englishman had been in custody three weeks when the chief of police in Paris received the following letter:-- 'DEAR SIR,--On my arrival in New York by the English steamer _Lucania_, I was much amused to read in the papers accounts of the exploits of detectives, French and English. I am sorry that only one of them seems to be in prison; I think his French _confrère_ ought to be there also. I regret exceedingly, however, that there is the rumour of the death by drowning of my friend Martin Dubois, of 375 Rue aux Juifs, Rouen. If this is indeed the case he has met his death through the blunders of the police. Nevertheless, I wish you would communicate with his family at the address I have given, and assure them that I will make arrangements for their future support. 'I beg to inform you that I am a manufacturer of imitation diamonds, and through extensive advertising succeeded in accumulating a fortune of many millions. I was in Europe when the necklace was found, and had in my possession over a thousand imitation diamonds of my own manufacture. It occurred to me that here was the opportunity of the most magnificent advertisement in the world. I saw the necklace, received its measurements, and also obtained photographs of it taken by the French Government. Then I set my expert friend Martin Dubois at work, and, with the artificial stones I gave him, he made an imitation necklace so closely resembling the original that you apparently do not know it is the unreal you have in your possession. I did not fear the villainy of the crooks as much as the blundering of the police, who would have protected me with brass-band vehemence if I could not elude them. I knew that the detectives would overlook the obvious, but would at once follow a clue if I provided one for them. Consequently, I laid my plans, just as you have discovered, and got Martin Dubois up from Rouen to carry the case I gave him down to Havre. I had had another box prepared and wrapped in brown paper, with my address in New York written thereon. The moment I emerged from the auction room, while my friend the cowboy was holding up the audience, I turned my face to the door, took out the genuine diamonds from the case and slipped it into the box I had prepared for mailing. Into the genuine case I put the bogus diamonds. After handing the box to Dubois, I turned down a side street, and then into another whose name I do not know, and there in a shop with sealing wax and string did up the real diamonds for posting. I labelled the package "Books", went to the nearest post office, paid letter postage, and handed it over unregistered as if it were of no particular value. After this I went to my rooms in the Grand Hotel where I had been staying under my own name for more than a month. Next morning I took train for London, and the day after sailed from Liverpool on the _Lucania_. I arrived before the _Gascoigne_, which sailed from Havre on Saturday, met my box at the Customs house, paid duty, and it now reposes in my safe. I intend to construct an imitation necklace which will be so like the genuine one that nobody can tell the two apart; then I shall come to Europe and exhibit the pair, for the publication of the truth of this matter will give me the greatest advertisement that ever was. 'Yours truly, 'JOHN P HAZARD.' I at once communicated with Rouen and found Martin Dubois alive and well. His first words were:--'I swear I did not steal the jewels.' He had swum ashore, tramped to Rouen, and kept quiet in great fear while I was fruitlessly searching Paris for him. It took Mr. Hazard longer to make his imitation necklace than he supposed, and several years later he booked his passage with the two necklaces on the ill-fated steamer _Burgoyne_, and now rests beside them at the bottom of the Atlantic. Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear. 2. _The Siamese Twin of a Bomb-Thrower_ The events previously related in 'The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds' led to my dismissal by the French Government. It was not because I had arrested an innocent man; I had done that dozens of times before, with nothing said about it. It was not because I had followed a wrong clue, or because I had failed to solve the mystery of the five hundred diamonds. Every detective follows a wrong clue now and then, and every detective fails more often than he cares to admit. No. All these things would not have shaken my position, but the newspapers were so fortunate as to find something humorous in the case, and for weeks Paris rang with laughter over my exploits and my defeat. The fact that the chief French detective had placed the most celebrated English detective into prison, and that each of them were busily sleuth-hounding a bogus clue, deliberately flung across their path by an amateur, roused all France to great hilarity. The Government was furious. The Englishman was released and I was dismissed. Since the year 1893 I have been a resident of London. When a man is, as one might say, the guest of a country, it does not become him to criticise that country. I have studied this strange people with interest, and often with astonishment, and if I now set down some of the differences between the English and the French, I trust that no note of criticism of the former will appear, even when my sympathies are entirely with the latter. These differences have sunk deeply into my mind, because, during the first years of my stay in London my lack of understanding them was often a cause of my own failure when I thought I had success in hand. Many a time did I come to the verge of starvation in Soho, through not appreciating the peculiar trend of mind which causes an Englishman to do inexplicable things--that is, of course, from my Gallic standpoint. For instance, an arrested man is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. In England, if a murderer is caught red-handed over his victim, he is held guiltless until the judge sentences him. In France we make no such foolish assumption, and although I admit that innocent men have sometimes been punished, my experience enables me to state very emphatically that this happens not nearly so often as the public imagines. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred an innocent man can at once prove his innocence without the least difficulty. I hold it is his duty towards the State to run the very slight risk of unjust imprisonment in order that obstacles may not be thrown in the way of the conviction of real criminals. But it is impossible to persuade an Englishman of this. _Mon Dieu!_ I have tried it often enough. Never shall I forget the bitterness of my disappointment when I captured Felini, the Italian anarchist, in connection with the Greenwich Park murder. At this time--it gives me no shame to confess it--I was myself living in Soho, in a state of extreme poverty. Having been employed so long by the French Government, I had formed the absurd idea that the future depended on my getting, not exactly a similar connection with Scotland Yard, but at least a subordinate position on the police force which would enable me to prove my capabilities, and lead to promotion. I had no knowledge, at that time, of the immense income which awaited me entirely outside the Government circle. Whether it is contempt for the foreigner, as has often been stated, or that native stolidity which spells complacency, the British official of any class rarely thinks it worth his while to discover the real cause of things in France, or Germany, or Russia, but plods heavily on from one mistake to another. Take, for example, those periodical outbursts of hatred against England which appear in the Continental Press. They create a dangerous international situation, and more than once have brought Britain to the verge of a serious war. Britain sternly spends millions in defence and preparation, whereas, if she would place in my hand half a million pounds I would guarantee to cause Britannia to be proclaimed an angel with white wings in every European country. When I attempted to arrive at some connection with Scotland Yard, I was invariably asked for my credentials. When I proclaimed that I had been chief detective to the Republic of France, I could see that this announcement made a serious impression, but when I added that the Government of France had dismissed me without credentials, recommendation, or pension, official sympathy with officialism at once turned the tables against me. And here I may be pardoned for pointing out another portentous dissimilarity between the two lands which I think is not at all to the credit of my countrymen. I was summarily dismissed. You may say it was because I failed, and it is true that in the case of the Queen's necklace I had undoubtedly failed, but, on the other hand, I had followed unerringly the clue which lay in my path, and although the conclusion was not in accordance with the facts, it was in accordance with logic. No, I was not dismissed because I failed. I had failed on various occasions before, as might happen to any man in any profession. I was dismissed because I made France for the moment the laughing-stock of Europe and America. France dismissed me because France had been laughed at. No Frenchman can endure the turning of a joke against him, but the Englishman does not appear to care in the least. So far as failure is concerned, never had any man failed so egregiously as I did with Felini, a slippery criminal who possessed all the bravery of a Frenchman and all the subtlety of an Italian. Three times he was in my hands--twice in Paris, once in Marseilles--and each time he escaped me; yet I was not dismissed. When I say that Signor Felini was as brave as a Frenchman, perhaps I do him a little more than justice. He was desperately afraid of one man, and that man was myself. Our last interview in France he is not likely to forget, and although he eluded me, he took good care to get into England as fast as train and boat could carry him, and never again, while I was at the head of the French detective force, did he set foot on French soil. He was an educated villain, a graduate of the University of Turin, who spoke Spanish, French, and English as well as his own language, and this education made him all the more dangerous when he turned his talents to crime. Now, I knew Felini's handiwork, either in murder or in housebreaking, as well as I know my own signature on a piece of white paper, and as soon as I saw the body of the murdered man in Greenwich Park I was certain Felini was the murderer. The English authorities at that time looked upon me with a tolerant, good-natured contempt. Inspector Standish assumed the manner of a man placing at my disposal plenty of rope with which I might entangle myself. He appeared to think me excitable, and used soothing expressions as if I were a fractious child to be calmed, rather than a sane equal to be reasoned with. On many occasions I had the facts at my finger ends, while he remained in a state of most complacent ignorance, and though this attitude of lowering himself to deal gently with one whom he evidently looked upon as an irresponsible lunatic was most exasperating, I nevertheless claim great credit for having kept my temper with him. However, it turned out to be impossible for me to overcome his insular prejudice. He always supposed me to be a frivolous, volatile person, and so I was unable to prove myself of any value to him in his arduous duties. The Felini instance was my last endeavour to win his favour. Inspector Standish appeared in his most amiable mood when I was admitted to his presence, and this in spite of the fact that all London was ringing with the Greenwich Park tragedy, while the police possessed not the faintest idea regarding the crime or its perpetrator. I judged from Inspector Standish's benevolent smile that I was somewhat excited when I spoke to him, and perhaps used many gestures which seemed superfluous to a large man whom I should describe as immovable, and who spoke slowly, with no motion of the hand, as if his utterances were the condensed wisdom of the ages. 'Inspector Standish,' I cried, 'is it within your power to arrest a man on suspicion?' 'Of course it is,' he replied; 'but we must harbour the suspicion before we make the arrest.' 'Have confidence in me,' I exclaimed. 'The man who committed the Greenwich Park murder is an Italian named Felini.' I gave the address of the exact room in which he was to be found, with cautions regarding the elusive nature of this individual. I said that he had been three times in my custody, and those three times he had slipped through my fingers. I have since thought that Inspector Standish did not credit a word I had spoken. 'What is your proof against this Italian?' asked the Inspector slowly. 'The proof is on the body of the murdered man, but, nevertheless, if you suddenly confront Felini with me without giving him any hint of whom he is going to meet, you shall have the evidence from his own lips before he recovers from his surprise and fright.' Something of my confidence must have impressed the official, for the order of arrest was made. Now, during the absence of the constable sent to bring in Felini, I explained to the inspector fully the details of my plan. Practically he did not listen to me, for his head was bent over a writing-pad on which I thought he was taking down my remarks, but when I had finished he went on writing as before, so I saw I had flattered myself unnecessarily. More than two hours passed before the constable returned, bringing with him the trembling Italian. I swung round in front of him, and cried, in a menacing voice:-- 'Felini! Regard me! You know Valmont too well to trifle with him! What have you to say of the murder in Greenwich Park?' I give you my word that the Italian collapsed, and would have fallen to the floor in a heap had not the constables upheld him with hands under each arm. His face became of a pasty whiteness, and he began to stammer his confession, when this incredible thing happened, which could not be believed in France. Inspector Standish held up his finger. 'One moment,' he cautioned solemnly, 'remember that whatever you say will be used against you!' The quick, beady black eyes of the Italian shot from Standish to me, and from me to Standish. In an instant his alert mind grasped the situation. Metaphorically I had been waved aside. I was not there in any official capacity, and he saw in a moment with what an opaque intellect he had to deal. The Italian closed his mouth like a steel trap, and refused to utter a word. Shortly after he was liberated, as there was no evidence against him. When at last complete proof was in the tardy hands of the British authorities, the agile Felini was safe in the Apennine mountains, and today is serving a life sentence in Italy for the assassination of a senator whose name I have forgotten. Is it any wonder that I threw up my hands in despair at finding myself amongst such a people. But this was in the early days, and now that I have greater experience of the English, many of my first opinions have been modified. I mention all this to explain why, in a private capacity, I often did what no English official would dare to do. A people who will send a policeman, without even a pistol to protect him, to arrest a desperate criminal in the most dangerous quarter of London, cannot be comprehended by any native of France, Italy, Spain, or Germany. When I began to succeed as a private detective in London, and had accumulated money enough for my project, I determined not to be hampered by this unexplainable softness of the English toward an accused person. I therefore reconstructed my flat, and placed in the centre of it a dark room strong as any Bastille cell. It was twelve feet square, and contained no furniture except a number of shelves, a lavatory in one corner, and a pallet on the floor. It was ventilated by two flues from the centre of the ceiling, in one of which operated an electric fan, which, when the room was occupied, sent the foul air up that flue, and drew down fresh air through the other. The entrance to this cell opened out from my bedroom, and the most minute inspection would have failed to reveal the door, which was of massive steel, and was opened and shut by electric buttons that were partially concealed by the head of my bed. Even if they had been discovered, they would have revealed nothing, because the first turn of the button lit the electric light at the head of my bed; the second turn put it out; and this would happen as often as the button was turned to the right. But turn it three times slowly to the left, and the steel door opened. Its juncture was completely concealed by panelling. I have brought many a scoundrel to reason within the impregnable walls of that small room. Those who know the building regulations of London will wonder how it was possible for me to delude the Government inspector during the erection of this section of the Bastille in the midst of the modern metropolis. It was the simplest thing in the world. Liberty of the subject is the first great rule with the English people, and thus many a criminal is allowed to escape. Here was I laying plans for the contravening of this first great rule, and to do so I took advantage of the second great rule of the English people, which is, that property is sacred. I told the building authorities I was a rich man with a great distrust of banks, and I wished to build in my flat a safe or strong-room in which to deposit my valuables. I built then such a room as may be found in every bank, and many private premises of the City, and a tenant might have lived in my flat for a year and never suspected the existence of this prison. A railway engine might have screeched its whistle within it, and not a sound would have penetrated the apartments that surrounded it unless the door were open. But besides M. Eugène Valmont, dressed in elegant attire as if he were still a boulevardier of Paris, occupier of the top floor in the Imperial Flats, there was another Frenchman in London to whom I must introduce you, namely, Professor Paul Ducharme, who occupied a squalid back room in the cheapest and most undesirable quarter of Soho. Valmont flatters himself he is not yet middle-aged, but poor Ducharme does not need his sparse gray beard to proclaim his advancing years. Valmont vaunts an air of prosperity; Ducharme wears the shabby habiliments and the shoulder-stoop of hopeless poverty. He shuffles cringingly along the street, a compatriot not to be proud of. There are so many Frenchmen anxious to give lessons in their language, that merely a small living is to be picked up by any one of them. You will never see the spruce Valmont walking alongside the dejected Ducharme. 'Ah!' you exclaim, 'Valmont in his prosperity has forgotten those less fortunate of his nationality.' Pardon, my friends, it is not so. Behold, I proclaim to you, the exquisite Valmont and the threadbare Ducharme are one and the same person. That is why they do not promenade together. And, indeed, it requires no great histrionic art on my part to act the rôle of the miserable Ducharme, for when I first came to London, I warded off starvation in this wretched room, and my hand it was that nailed to the door the painted sign 'Professor Paul Ducharme, Teacher of the French Language'. I never gave up the room, even when I became prosperous and moved to Imperial Flats, with its concealed chamber of horrors unknown to British authority. I did not give up the Soho chamber principally for this reason: Paul Ducharme, if the truth were known about him, would have been regarded as a dangerous character; yet this was a character sometimes necessary for me to assume. He was a member of the very inner circle of the International, an anarchist of the anarchists. This malign organisation has its real headquarters in London, and we who were officials connected with the Secret Service of the Continent have more than once cursed the complacency of the British Government which allows such a nest of vipers to exist practically unmolested. I confess that before I came to know the English people as well as I do now, I thought that this complacency was due to utter selfishness, because the anarchists never commit an outrage in England. England is the one spot on the map of Europe where an anarchist cannot be laid by the heels unless there is evidence against him that will stand the test of open court. Anarchists take advantage of this fact, and plots are hatched in London which are executed in Paris, Berlin, Petersburg, or Madrid. I know now that this leniency on the part of the British Government does not arise from craft, but from their unexplainable devotion to their shibboleth--'The liberty of the subject.' Time and again France has demanded the extradition of an anarchist, always to be met with the question,-- 'Where is your proof?' I know many instances where our certainty was absolute, and also cases where we possessed legal proof as well, but legal proof which, for one reason or another, we dared not use in public; yet all this had no effect on the British authorities. They would never give up even the vilest criminal except on publicly attested legal evidence, and not even then, if the crime were political. During my term of office under the French Government, no part of my duties caused me more anxiety than that which pertained to the political secret societies. Of course, with a large portion of the Secret Service fund at my disposal, I was able to buy expert assistance, and even to get information from anarchists themselves. This latter device, however, was always more or less unreliable. I have never yet met an anarchist I could believe on oath, and when one of them offered to sell exclusive information to the police, we rarely knew whether he was merely trying to get a few francs to keep himself from starving, or whether he was giving us false particulars which would lead us into a trap. I have always regarded our dealings with nihilists, anarchists, or other secret associations for the perpetrating of murder as the most dangerous service a detective is called upon to perform. Yet it is absolutely necessary that the authorities should know what is going on in these secret conclaves. There are three methods of getting this intelligence. First, periodical raids upon the suspected, accompanied by confiscation and search of all papers found. This method is much in favour with the Russian police. I have always regarded it as largely futile; first, because the anarchists are not such fools, speaking generally, as to commit their purposes to writing; and, second, because it leads to reprisal. Each raid is usually followed by a fresh outbreak of activity on the part of those left free. The second method is to bribe an anarchist to betray his comrades. I have never found any difficulty in getting these gentry to accept money. They are eternally in need, but I usually find the information they give in return to be either unimportant or inaccurate. There remains, then, the third method, which is to place a spy among them. The spy battalion is the forlorn hope of the detective service. In one year I lost three men on anarchist duty, among the victims being my most valuable helper, Henri Brisson. Poor Brisson's fate was an example of how a man may follow a perilous occupation for months with safety, and then by a slight mistake bring disaster on himself. At the last gathering Brisson attended he received news of such immediate and fateful import that on emerging from the cellar where the gathering was held, he made directly for my residence instead of going to his own squalid room in the Rue Falgarie. My concierge said that he arrived shortly after one o'clock in the morning, and it would seem that at this hour he could easily have made himself acquainted with the fact that he was followed. Still, as there was on his track that human panther, Felini, it is not strange poor Brisson failed to elude him. Arriving at the tall building in which my flat was then situated, Brisson rang the bell, and the concierge, as usual, in that strange state of semi-somnolence which envelops concierges during the night, pulled the looped wire at the head of his bed, and unbolted the door. Brisson assuredly closed the huge door behind him, and yet the moment before he did so, Felini must have slipped in unnoticed to the stone-paved courtyard. If Brisson had not spoken and announced himself, the concierge would have been wide awake in an instant. If he had given a name unknown to the concierge, the same result would have ensued. As it was he cried aloud 'Brisson,' whereupon the concierge of the famous chief of the French detective staff, Valmont, muttered '_Bon_! and was instantly asleep again. Now Felini had known Brisson well, but it was under the name of Revensky, and as an exiled Russian. Brisson had spent all his early years in Russia, and spoke the language like a native. The moment Brisson had uttered his true name he had pronounced his own death warrant. Felini followed him up to the first landing--my rooms were on the second floor--and there placed his sign manual on the unfortunate man, which was the swift downward stroke of a long, narrow, sharp poniard, entering the body below the shoulders, and piercing the heart. The advantage presented by this terrible blow is that the victim sinks instantly in a heap at the feet of his slayer, without uttering a moan. The wound left is a scarcely perceptible blue mark which rarely even bleeds. It was this mark I saw on the body of the Maire of Marseilles, and afterwards on one other in Paris besides poor Brisson. It was the mark found on the man in Greenwich Park; always just below the left shoulder-blade, struck from behind. Felini's comrades claim that there was this nobility in his action, namely, he allowed the traitor to prove himself before he struck the blow. I should be sorry to take away this poor shred of credit from Felini's character, but the reason he followed Brisson into the courtyard was to give himself time to escape. He knew perfectly the ways of the concierge. He knew that the body would lie there until the morning, as it actually did, and that this would give him hours in which to effect his retreat. And this was the man whom British law warned not to incriminate himself! What a people! What a people! After Brisson's tragic death, I resolved to set no more valuable men on the track of the anarchists, but to place upon myself the task in my moments of relaxation. I became very much interested in the underground workings of the International. I joined the organisation under the name of Paul Ducharme, a professor of advanced opinions, who because of them had been dismissed his situation in Nantes. As a matter of fact there had been such a Paul Ducharme, who had been so dismissed, but he had drowned himself in the Loire, at Orleans, as the records show. I adopted the precaution of getting a photograph of this foolish old man from the police at Nantes, and made myself up to resemble him. It says much for my disguise that I was recognised as the professor by a delegate from Nantes, at the annual Convention held in Paris, which I attended, and although we conversed for some time together he never suspected that I was not the professor, whose fate was known to no one but the police of Orleans. I gained much credit among my comrades because of this encounter, which, during its first few moments, filled me with dismay, for the delegate from Nantes held me up as an example of a man well off, who had deliberately sacrificed his worldly position for the sake of principle. Shortly after this I was chosen delegate to carry a message to our comrades in London, and this delicate undertaking passed off without mishap. It was perhaps natural then, that when I came to London after my dismissal by the French Government, I should assume the name and appearance of Paul Ducharme, and adopt the profession of French teacher. This profession gave me great advantages. I could be absent from my rooms for hours at a time without attracting the least attention, because a teacher goes wherever there are pupils. If any of my anarchist comrades saw me emerging shabbily from the grand Imperial Flats where Valmont lived, he greeted me affably, thinking I was coming from a pupil. The sumptuous flat was therefore the office in which I received my rich clients, while the squalid room in Soho was often the workshop in which the tasks entrusted to me were brought to completion. * * * * * I now come to very modern days indeed, when I spent much time with the emissaries of the International. It will be remembered that the King of England made a round of visits to European capitals, the far-reaching results of which in the interest of peace we perhaps do not yet fully understand and appreciate. His visit to Paris was the beginning of the present _entente cordiale_, and I betray no confidence when I say that this brief official call at the French capital was the occasion of great anxiety to the Government of my own country and also of that in which I was domiciled. Anarchists are against all government, and would like to see each one destroyed, not even excepting that of Great Britain. My task in connection with the visit of King Edward to Paris was entirely unofficial. A nobleman, for whom on a previous occasion I had been so happy as to solve a little mystery which troubled him, complimented me by calling at my flat about two weeks before the King's entry into the French capital. I know I shall be pardoned if I fail to mention this nobleman's name. I gathered that the intended visit of the King met with his disapproval. He asked if I knew anything, or could discover anything, of the purposes animating the anarchist clubs of Paris, and their attitude towards the royal function, which was now the chief topic in the newspapers. I replied that within four days I would be able to submit to him a complete report on the subject. He bowed coldly and withdrew. On the evening of the fourth day I permitted myself the happiness of waiting upon his lordship at his West End London mansion. 'I have the honour to report to your lordship,' I began, 'that the anarchists of Paris are somewhat divided in their opinions regarding His Majesty's forthcoming progress through that city. A minority, contemptible in point of number, but important so far as the extremity of their opinions are concerned, has been trying--' 'Excuse me,' interrupted the nobleman, with some severity of tone, 'are they going to attempt to injure the King or not?' 'They are not, your lordship,' I replied, with what, I trust, is my usual urbanity of manner, despite his curt interpolation. 'His most gracious Majesty will suffer no molestation, and their reason for quiescence--' 'Their reasons do not interest me,' put in his lordship gruffly. 'You are sure of what you say?' 'Perfectly sure, your lordship.' 'No precautions need be taken?' 'None in the least, your lordship.' 'Very well,' concluded the nobleman shortly, 'if you tell my secretary in the next room as you go out how much I owe you, he will hand you a cheque,' and with that I was dismissed. I may say that, mixing as I do with the highest in two lands, and meeting invariably such courtesy as I myself am always eager to bestow, a feeling almost of resentment arose at this cavalier treatment. However, I merely bowed somewhat ceremoniously in silence, and availed myself of the opportunity in the next room to double my bill, which was paid without demur. Now, if this nobleman had but listened, he would have heard much that might interest an ordinary man, although I must say that during my three conversations with him his mind seemed closed to all outward impressions save and except the grandeur of his line, which he traced back unblemished into the northern part of my own country. The King's visit had come as a surprise to the anarchists, and they did not quite know what to do about it. The Paris Reds were rather in favour of a demonstration, while London bade them, in God's name, to hold their hands, for, as they pointed out, England is the only refuge in which an anarchist is safe until some particular crime can be imputed to him, and what is more, proven up to the hilt. It will be remembered that the visit of the King to Paris passed off without incident, as did the return visit of the President to London. On the surface all was peace and goodwill, but under the surface seethed plot and counterplot, and behind the scenes two great governments were extremely anxious, and high officials in the Secret Service spent sleepless nights. As no 'untoward incident' had happened, the vigilance of the authorities on both sides of the Channel relaxed at the very moment when, if they had known their adversaries, it should have been redoubled. Always beware of the anarchist when he has been good: look out for the reaction. It annoys him to be compelled to remain quiet when there is a grand opportunity for strutting across the world's stage, and when he misses the psychological moment, he is apt to turn 'nasty', as the English say. When it first became known that there was to be a Royal procession through the streets of Paris, a few fanatical hot-heads, both in that city and in London, wished to take action, but they were overruled by the saner members of the organisation. It must not be supposed that anarchists are a band of lunatics. There are able brains among them, and these born leaders as naturally assume control in the underground world of anarchy as would have been the case if they had devoted their talents to affairs in ordinary life. They were men whose minds, at one period, had taken the wrong turning. These people, although they calmed the frenzy of the extremists, nevertheless regarded the possible _rapprochement_ between England and France with grave apprehension. If France and England became as friendly as France and Russia, might not the refuge which England had given to anarchy become a thing of the past? I may say here that my own weight as an anarchist while attending these meetings in disguise under the name of Paul Ducharme was invariably thrown in to help the cause of moderation. My rôle, of course, was not to talk too much; not to make myself prominent, yet in such a gathering a man cannot remain wholly a spectator. Care for my own safety led me to be as inconspicuous as possible, for members of communities banded together against the laws of the land in which they live, are extremely suspicious of one another, and an inadvertent word may cause disaster to the person speaking it. Perhaps it was this conservatism on my part that caused my advice to be sought after by the inner circle; what you might term the governing body of the anarchists; for, strange as it may appear, this organisation, sworn to put down all law and order, was itself most rigidly governed, with a Russian prince elected as its chairman, a man of striking ability, who, nevertheless, I believe, owed his election more to the fact that he was a nobleman than to the recognition of his intrinsic worth. And another point which interested me much was that this prince ruled his obstreperous subjects after the fashion of Russian despotism, rather than according to the liberal ideas of the country in which he was domiciled. I have known him more than once ruthlessly overturn the action of the majority, stamp his foot, smite his huge fist on the table, and declare so and so should not be done, no matter what the vote was. And the thing was not done, either. At the more recent period of which I speak, the chairmanship of the London anarchists was held by a weak, vacillating man, and the mob had got somewhat out of hand. In the crisis that confronted us, I yearned for the firm fist and dominant boot of the uncompromising Russian. I spoke only once during this time, and assured my listeners that they had nothing to fear from the coming friendship of the two nations. I said the Englishman was so wedded to his grotesque ideas regarding the liberty of the subject he so worshipped absolute legal evidence, that we would never find our comrades disappear mysteriously from England as had been the case in continental countries. Although restless during the exchange of visits between King and President, I believe I could have carried the English phalanx with me, if the international courtesies had ended there. But after it was announced that members of the British Parliament were to meet the members of the French Legislature, the Paris circle became alarmed, and when that conference did not end the _entente_, but merely paved the way for a meeting of business men belonging to the two countries in Paris, the French anarchists sent a delegate over to us, who made a wild speech one night, waving continually the red flag. This aroused all our own malcontents to a frenzy. The French speaker practically charged the English contingent with cowardice; said that as they were safe from molestation, they felt no sympathy for their comrades in Paris, at any time liable to summary arrest and the torture of the secret cross-examination. This Anglo-French love-feast must be wafted to the heavens in a halo of dynamite. The Paris anarchists were determined, and although they wished the co-operation of their London brethren, yet if the speaker did not bring back with him assurance of such co-operation, Paris would act on its own initiative. The Russian despot would have made short work of this blood-blinded rhetoric, but alas, he was absent, and an overwhelming vote in favour of force was carried and accepted by the trembling chairman. My French _confrère_ took back with him to Paris the unanimous consent of the English comrades to whom he had appealed. All that was asked of the English contingent was that it should arrange for the escape and safe keeping of the assassin who flung the bomb into the midst of the English visitors, and after the oratorical madman had departed, I, to my horror, was chosen to arrange for the safe transport and future custody of the bomb-thrower. It is not etiquette in anarchist circles for any member to decline whatever task is given him by the vote of his comrades. He knows the alternative, which is suicide. If he declines the task and still remains upon earth, the dilemma is solved for him, as the Italian Felini solved it through the back of my unfortunate helper Brisson. I therefore accepted the unwelcome office in silence, and received from the treasurer the money necessary for carrying out the same. I realised for the first time since joining the anarchist association years before that I was in genuine danger. A single false step, a single inadvertent word, might close the career of Eugène Valmont, and at the same moment terminate the existence of the quiet, inoffensive Paul Ducharme, teacher of the French language. I knew perfectly well I should be followed. The moment I received the money the French delegate asked when they were to expect me in Paris. He wished to know so that all the resources of their organisation might be placed at my disposal. I replied calmly enough that I could not state definitely on what day I should leave England. There was plenty of time, as the business men's representatives from London would not reach Paris for another two weeks. I was well known to the majority of the Paris organisation, and would present myself before them on the first night of my arrival. The Paris delegate exhibited all the energy of a new recruit, and he seemed dissatisfied with my vagueness, but I went on without heeding his displeasure. He was not personally known to me, nor I to him, but if I may say so, Paul Ducharme was well thought of by all the rest of those present. I had learned a great lesson during the episode of the Queen's Necklace, which resulted in my dismissal by the French Government. I had learned that if you expect pursuit it is always well to leave a clue for the pursuer to follow. Therefore I continued in a low conversational tone:-- 'I shall want the whole of tomorrow for myself: I must notify my pupils of my absence. Even if my pupils leave me it will not so much matter. I can probably get others. But what does matter is my secretarial work with Monsieur Valmont of the Imperial Flats. I am just finishing for him the translation of a volume from French into English, and tomorrow I can complete the work, and get his permission to leave for a fortnight. This man, who is a compatriot of my own, has given me employment ever since I came to London. From him I have received the bulk of my income, and if it had not been for his patronage, I do not know what I should have done. I not only have no desire to offend him, but I wish the secretarial work to continue when I return to London.' There was a murmur of approval at this. It was generally recognised that a man's living should not be interfered with, if possible. Anarchists are not poverty-stricken individuals, as most people think, for many of them hold excellent situations, some occupying positions of great trust, which is rarely betrayed. It is recognised that a man's duty, not only to himself, but to the organisation, is to make all the money he can, and thus not be liable to fall back on the relief fund. This frank admission of my dependence on Valmont made it all the more impossible that anyone there listening should suspect that it was Valmont himself who was addressing the conclave. 'You will then take the night train tomorrow for Paris?' persisted the inquisitive French delegate. 'Yes, and no. I shall take the night train, and it shall be for Paris, but not from Charing Cross, Victoria, or Waterloo. I shall travel on the 8.30 Continental express from Liverpool Street to Harwich, cross to the Hook of Holland, and from there make my way to Paris through Holland and Belgium. I wish to investigate that route as a possible path for our comrade to escape. After the blow is struck, Calais, Boulogne, Dieppe, and Havre will be closely watched. I shall perhaps bring him to London by way of Antwerp and the Hook.' These amiable disclosures were so fully in keeping with Paul Ducharme's reputation for candour and caution that I saw they made an excellent impression on my audience, and here the chairman intervened, putting an end to further cross-examination by saying they all had the utmost confidence in the judgment of Monsieur Paul Ducharme, and the Paris delegate might advise his friends to be on the lookout for the London representative within the next three or four days. I left the meeting and went directly to my room in Soho, without even taking the trouble to observe whether I was watched or not. There I stayed all night, and in the morning quitted Soho as Ducharme, with a gray beard and bowed shoulders, walked west to the Imperial Flats, took the lift to the top, and, seeing the corridor was clear, let myself in to my own flat. I departed from my flat promptly at six o'clock, again as Paul Ducharme, carrying this time a bundle done up in brown paper under my arm, and proceeded directly to my room in Soho. Later I took a bus, still carrying my brown paper parcel, and reached Liverpool Street in ample time for the Continental train. By a little private arrangement with the guard, I secured a compartment for myself, although up to the moment the train left the station, I could not be sure but that I might be compelled to take the trip to the Hook of Holland after all. If any one had insisted on coming into my compartment, I should have crossed the North Sea that night. I knew I should be followed from Soho to the station, and that probably the spy would go as far as Harwich, and see me on the boat. It was doubtful if he would cross. I had chosen this route for the reason that we have no organisation in Holland: the nearest circle is in Brussels, and if there had been time, the Brussels circle would have been warned to keep an eye on me. There was, however, no time for a letter, and anarchists never use the telegraph, especially so far as the Continent is concerned, unless in cases of the greatest emergency. If they telegraphed my description to Brussels the chances were it would not be an anarchist who watched my landing, but a member of the Belgian police force. The 8.30 Continental express does not stop between Liverpool Street and Parkeston Quay, which it is timed to reach three minutes before ten. This gave me an hour and a half in which to change my apparel. The garments of the poor old professor I rolled up into a ball one by one and flung out through the open window, far into the marsh past which we were flying in a pitch dark night. Coat, trousers, and waistcoat rested in separate swamps at least ten miles apart. Gray whiskers and gray wig I tore into little pieces, and dropped the bits out of the open window. I had taken the precaution to secure a compartment in the front of the train, and when it came to rest at Parkeston Quay Station, the crowd, eager for the steamer, rushed past me, and I stepped out into the midst of it, a dapper, well-dressed young man, with black beard and moustaches, my own closely cropped black hair covered by a new bowler hat. Anyone looking for Paul Ducharme would have paid small attention to me, and to any friend of Valmont's I was equally unrecognisable. I strolled in leisurely manner to the Great Eastern Hotel on the Quay, and asked the clerk if a portmanteau addressed to Mr. John Wilkins had arrived that day from London. He said 'Yes,' whereupon I secured a room for the night, as the last train had already left for the metropolis. Next morning, Mr. John Wilkins, accompanied by a brand new and rather expensive portmanteau, took the 8.57 train for Liverpool Street, where he arrived at half-past ten, stepped into a cab, and drove to the Savoy Restaurant, lunching there with the portmanteau deposited in the cloak room. When John Wilkins had finished an excellent lunch in a leisurely manner at the Café Parisien of the Savoy, and had paid his bill, he did not go out into the Strand over the rubber-paved court by which he had entered, but went through the hotel and down the stairs, and so out into the thoroughfare facing the Embankment. Then turning to his right he reached the Embankment entrance of the Hotel Cecil. This leads into a long, dark corridor, at the end of which the lift may be rung for. It does not come lower than the floor above unless specially summoned. In this dark corridor, which was empty, John Wilkins took off the black beard and moustache, hid it in the inside pocket of his coat, and there went up into the lift a few moments later to the office floor, I, Eugène Valmont, myself for the first time in several days. Even then I did not take a cab to my flat, but passed under the arched Strand front of the 'Cecil' in a cab, bound for the residence of that nobleman who had formerly engaged me to see after the safety of the King. You will say that this was all very elaborate precaution to take when a man was not even sure he was followed. To tell you the truth, I do not know to this day whether anyone watched me or not, nor do I care. I live in the present: when once the past is done with, it ceases to exist for me. It is quite possible, nay, entirely probable, that no one tracked me farther than Liverpool Street Station the night before, yet it was for lack of such precaution that my assistant Brisson received the Italian's dagger under his shoulder blade fifteen years before. The present moment is ever the critical time; the future is merely for intelligent forethought. It was to prepare for the future that I was now in a cab on the way to my lord's residence. It was not the French anarchists I feared during the contest in which I was about to become engaged, but the Paris police. I knew French officialdom too well not to understand the futility of going to the authorities there and proclaiming my object. If I ventured to approach the chief of police with the information that I, in London, had discovered what it was his business in Paris to know, my reception would be far from cordial, even though, or rather because, I announced myself as Eugène Valmont. The exploits of Eugène had become part of the legends of Paris, and these legends were extremely distasteful to those men in power. My doings have frequently been made the subject of feuilletons in the columns of the Paris Press, and were, of course, exaggerated by the imagination of the writers, yet, nevertheless, I admit I did some good strokes of detection during my service with the French Government. It is but natural, then, that the present authorities should listen with some impatience when the name of Eugène Valmont is mentioned. I recognise this as quite in the order of things to be expected, and am honest enough to confess that in my own time I often hearkened to narratives regarding the performances of Lecocq with a doubting shrug of the shoulders. Now, if the French police knew anything of this anarchist plot, which was quite within the bounds of possibility, and if I were in surreptitious communication with the anarchists, more especially with the man who was to fling the bomb, there was every chance I might find myself in the grip of French justice. I must, then, provide myself with credentials to show that I was acting, not against the peace and quiet of my country, but on the side of law and order. I therefore wished to get from the nobleman a commission in writing, similar to that command which he had placed upon me during the King's visit. This commission I should lodge at my bank in Paris, to be a voucher for me at the last extremity. I had no doubt his lordship would empower me to act in this instance as I had acted on two former occasions. * * * * * Perhaps if I had not lunched so well I might have approached his lordship with greater deference than was the case; but when ordering lunch I permitted a bottle of Château du Tertre, 1878, a most delicious claret, to be decanted carefully for my delectation at the table, and this caused a genial glow to permeate throughout my system, inducing a mental optimism which left me ready to salute the greatest of earth on a plane of absolute equality. Besides, after all, I am the citizen of a Republic. The nobleman received me with frigid correctness, implying disapproval of my unauthorised visit, rather than expressing it. Our interview was extremely brief. 'I had the felicity of serving your lordship upon two occasions,' I began. 'They are well within my recollection,' he interrupted, 'but I do not remember sending for you a third time.' 'I have taken the liberty of coming unrequested, my lord, because of the importance of the news I carry. I surmise that you are interested in the promotion of friendship between France and England.' 'Your surmise, sir, is incorrect. I care not a button about it. My only anxiety was for the safety of the King.' Even the superb claret was not enough to fortify me against words so harsh, and tones so discourteous, as those his lordship permitted himself to use. 'Sir,' said I, dropping the title in my rising anger, 'it may interest you to know that a number of your countrymen run the risk of being blown to eternity by an anarchist bomb in less than two weeks from today. A party of business men, true representatives of a class to which the pre-eminence of your Empire is due, are about to proceed--' 'Pray spare me,' interpolated his lordship wearily, 'I have read that sort of thing so often in the newspapers. If all these estimable City men are blown up, the Empire would doubtless miss them, as you hint, but I should not, and their fate does not interest me in the least, although you did me the credit of believing that it would. Thompson, you will show this person out? Sir, if I desire your presence here in future I will send for you.' 'You may send for the devil!' I cried, now thoroughly enraged, the wine getting the better of me. 'You express my meaning more tersely than I cared to do,' he replied coldly, and that was the last I ever saw of him. Entering the cab I now drove to my flat, indignant at the reception I had met with. However, I knew the English people too well to malign them for the action of one of their number, and resentment never dwells long with me. Arriving at my rooms I looked through the newspapers to learn all I could of the proposed business men's excursion to Paris, and in reading the names of those most prominent in carrying out the necessary arrangements, I came across that of W. Raymond White, which caused me to sit back in my chair and wrinkle my brow in an endeavour to stir my memory. Unless I was much mistaken, I had been so happy as to oblige this gentleman some dozen or thirteen years before. As I remembered him, he was a business man who engaged in large transactions with France, dealing especially in Lyons and that district. His address was given in the newspaper as Old Change, so at once I resolved to see him. Although I could not recall the details of our previous meeting, if, indeed, he should turn out to be the same person, yet the mere sight of the name had produced a mental pleasure, as a chance chord struck may bring a grateful harmony to the mind. I determined to get my credentials from Mr. White if possible, for his recommendation would in truth be much more valuable than that of the gruff old nobleman to whom I had first applied, because, if I got into trouble with the police of Paris, I was well enough acquainted with the natural politeness of the authorities to know that a letter from one of the city's guests would secure my instant release. I took a hansom to the head of that narrow thoroughfare known as Old Change, and there dismissed my cab. I was so fortunate as to recognise Mr. White coming out of his office. A moment later, and I should have missed him. 'Mr. White,' I accosted him, 'I desire to enjoy both the pleasure and the honour of introducing myself to you.' 'Monsieur,' replied Mr. White with a smile, 'the introduction is not necessary, and the pleasure and honour are mine. Unless I am very much mistaken, this is Monsieur Valmont of Paris?' 'Late of Paris,' I corrected. 'Are you no longer in Government service then?' 'For a little more than ten years I have been a resident of London.' 'What, and have never let me know? That is something the diplomatists call an unfriendly act, monsieur. Now, shall we return to my office, or go to a café?' 'To your office, if you please, Mr. White. I come on rather important business.' Entering his private office the merchant closed the door, offered me a chair, and sat down himself by his desk. From the first he had addressed me in French, which he spoke with an accent so pure that it did my lonesome heart good to hear it. 'I called upon you half a dozen years ago,' he went on, 'when I was over in Paris on a festive occasion, where I hoped to secure your company, but I could not learn definitely whether you were still with the Government or not.' 'It is the way of the French officialism,' I replied. 'If they knew my whereabouts they would keep the knowledge to themselves.' 'Well, if you have been ten years in London, Monsieur Valmont, we may now perhaps have the pleasure of claiming you as an Englishman; so I beg you will accompany us on another festive occasion to Paris next week. Perhaps you have seen that a number of us are going over there to make the welkin ring.' 'Yes; I have read all about the business men's excursion to Paris, and it is with reference to this journey that I wish to consult you,' and here I gave Mr. White in detail the plot of the anarchists against the growing cordiality of the two countries. The merchant listened quietly without interruption until I had finished; then he said,--'I suppose it will be rather useless to inform the police of Paris?' 'Indeed, Mr. White, it is the police of Paris I fear more than the anarchists. They would resent information coming to them from the outside, especially from an ex-official, the inference being that they were not up to their own duties. Friction and delay would ensue until the deed was inevitable. It is quite on the cards that the police of Paris may have some inkling of the plot, and in that case, just before the event, they are reasonably certain to arrest the wrong men. I shall be moving about Paris, not as Eugène Valmont, but as Paul Ducharme, the anarchist; therefore, there is some danger that as a stranger and a suspect I may be laid by the heels at the critical moment. If you would be so good as to furnish me with credentials which I can deposit somewhere in Paris in case of need, I may thus be able to convince the authorities that they have taken the wrong man.' Mr. White, entirely unperturbed by the prospect of having a bomb thrown at him within two weeks, calmly wrote several documents, then turned his untroubled face to me, and said, in a very confidential, winning tone:--'Monsieur Valmont, you have stated the case with that clear comprehensiveness pertaining to a nation which understands the meaning of words, and the correct adjustment of them; that felicity of language which has given France the first place in the literature of nations. Consequently, I think I see very clearly the delicacies of the situation. We may expect hindrances, rather than help, from officials on either side of the Channel. Secrecy is essential to success. Have you spoken of this to anyone but me?' 'Only to Lord Blank,' I replied; 'and now I deeply regret having made a confidant of him.' 'That does not in the least matter,' said Mr. White, with a smile; 'Lord Blank's mind is entirely occupied by his own greatness. Chemists tell me that you cannot add a new ingredient to a saturated solution; therefore your revelation will have made no impression upon his lordship's intellect. He has already forgotten all about it. Am I right in supposing that everything hinges on the man who is to throw the bomb?' 'Quite right, sir. He may be venal, he may be traitorous, he may be a coward, he may be revengeful, he may be a drunkard. Before I am in conversation with him for ten minutes, I shall know what his weak spot is. It is upon that spot I must act, and my action must be delayed till the very last moment; for, if he disappears too long before the event, his first, second, or third substitute will instantly step into his place.' 'Precisely. So you cannot complete your plans until you have met this man?' '_Parfaitement._' 'Then I propose,' continued Mr. White, 'that we take no one into our confidence. In a case like this there is little use in going before a committee. I can see that you do not need any advice, and my own part shall be to remain in the background, content to support the most competent man that could have been chosen to grapple with a very difficult crisis.' I bowed profoundly. There was a compliment in his glance as well as in his words. Never before had I met so charming a man. 'Here,' he continued, handing me one of the papers he had written, 'is a letter to whom it may concern, appointing you my agent for the next three weeks, and holding myself responsible for all you see fit to do. Here,' he went on, passing to me a second sheet, 'is a letter of introduction to Monsieur Largent, the manager of my bank in Paris, a man well known and highly respected in all circles, both official and commercial. I suggest that you introduce yourself to him, and he will hold himself in readiness to respond to any call you may make, night or day. I assure you that his mere presence before the authorities will at once remove any ordinary difficulty. And now,' he added, taking in hand the third slip of paper, speaking with some hesitation, and choosing his words with care, 'I come to a point which cannot be ignored. Money is a magician's wand, which, like faith, will remove mountains. It may also remove an anarchist hovering about the route of a business man's procession.' He now handed to me what I saw was a draft on Paris for a thousand pounds. 'I assure you, monsieur,' I protested, covered with confusion, 'that no thought of money was in my mind when I took the liberty of presenting myself to you. I have already received more than I could have expected in the generous confidence you were good enough to repose in me, as exhibited by these credentials, and especially the letter to your banker. Thanks to the generosity of your countrymen, Mr White, of which you are a most notable example, I am in no need of money.' 'Monsieur Valmont, I am delighted to hear that you have got on well amongst us. This money is for two purposes. First, you will use what you need. I know Paris very well, monsieur, and have never found gold an embarrassment there. The second purpose is this: I suggest that when you present the letter of introduction to Monsieur Largent, you will casually place this amount to your account in his bank. He will thus see that besides writing you a letter of introduction, I transfer a certain amount of my own balance to your credit. That will do you no harm with him, I assure you. And now, Monsieur Valmont, it only remains for me to thank you for the opportunity you have given me, and to assure you that I shall march from the Gare du Nord without a tremor, knowing the outcome is in such capable custody.' And then this estimable man shook hands with me in action the most cordial. I walked away from Old Change as if I trod upon air; a feeling vastly different from that with which I departed from the residence of the old nobleman in the West End but a few hours before. * * * * * Next morning I was in Paris, and next night I attended the underground meeting of the anarchists, held within a quarter of a mile of the Luxembourg. I was known to many there assembled, but my acquaintance of course was not so large as with the London circle. They had half expected me the night before, knowing that even going by the Hook of Holland I might have reached Paris in time for the conclave. I was introduced generally to the assemblage as the emissary from England, who was to assist the bomb-throwing brother to escape either to that country, or to such other point of safety as I might choose. No questions were asked me regarding my doings of the day before, nor was I required to divulge the plans for my fellow-member's escape. I was responsible; that was enough. If I failed through no fault of my own, it was but part of the ill-luck we were all prepared to face. If I failed through treachery, then a dagger in the back at the earliest possible moment. We all knew the conditions of our sinister contract, and we all recognised that the least said the better. The cellar was dimly lighted by one oil lamp depending from the ceiling. From this hung a cord attached to an extinguisher, and one jerk of the cord would put out the light. Then, while the main entry doors were being battered down by police, the occupants of the room escaped through one of three or four human rat-holes provided for that purpose. If any Parisian anarchist does me the honour to read these jottings, I beg to inform him that while I remained in office under the Government of France there was never a time when I did not know the exit of each of these underground passages, and could during any night there was conference have bagged the whole lot of those there assembled. It was never my purpose, however, to shake the anarchists' confidence in their system, for that merely meant the removal of the gathering to another spot, thus giving us the additional trouble of mapping out their new exits and entrances. When I did make a raid on anarchist headquarters in Paris, it was always to secure some particular man. I had my emissaries in plain clothes stationed at each exit. In any case, the rats were allowed to escape unmolested, sneaking forth with great caution into the night, but we always spotted the man we wanted, and almost invariably arrested him elsewhere, having followed him from his kennel. In each case my uniformed officers found a dark and empty cellar, and retired apparently baffled. But the coincidence that on the night of every raid some member there present was secretly arrested in another quarter of Paris, and perhaps given a free passage to Russia, never seemed to awaken suspicion in the minds of the conspirators. I think the London anarchists' method is much better, and I have ever considered the English nihilist the most dangerous of this fraternity, for he is cool-headed and not carried away by his own enthusiasm, and consequently rarely carried away by his own police. The authorities of London meet no opposition in making a raid. They find a well-lighted room containing a more or less shabby coterie playing cards at cheap pine tables. There is no money visible, and, indeed, very little coin would be brought to light if the whole party were searched; so the police are unable to convict the players under the Gambling Act. Besides, it is difficult in any case to obtain a conviction under the Gambling Act, because the accused has the sympathy of the whole country with him. It has always been to me one of the anomalies of the English nature that a magistrate can keep a straight face while he fines some poor wretch for gambling, knowing that next race day (if the court is not sitting) the magistrate himself, in correct sporting costume, with binoculars hanging at his hip, will be on the lawn by the course backing his favourite horse. After my reception at the anarchists' club of Paris, I remained seated unobtrusively on a bench waiting until routine business was finished, after which I expected an introduction to the man selected to throw the bomb. I am a very sensitive person, and sitting there quietly I became aware that I was being scrutinised with more than ordinary intensity by someone, which gave me a feeling of uneasiness. At last, in the semi-obscurity opposite me I saw a pair of eyes as luminous as those of a tiger peering fixedly at me. I returned the stare with such composure as I could bring to my aid, and the man, as if fascinated by a look as steady as his own, leaned forward, and came more and more into the circle of light. Then I received a shock which it required my utmost self-control to conceal. The face, haggard and drawn, was none other than that of Adolph Simard, who had been my second assistant in the Secret Service of France during my last year in office. He was a most capable and rising young man at that time, and, of course, he knew me well. Had he, then, penetrated my disguise? Such an event seemed impossible; he could not have recognised my voice, for I had said nothing aloud since entering the room, my few words to the president being spoken in a whisper. Simard's presence there bewildered me; by this time he should be high up in the Secret Service. If he were now a spy, he would, of course, wish to familiarise himself with every particular of my appearance, as in my hands lay the escape of the criminal. Yet, if such were his mission, why did he attract the attention of all members by this open-eyed scrutiny? That he recognised me as Valmont I had not the least fear; my disguise was too perfect; and, even if I were there in my own proper person, I had not seen Simard, nor he me, for ten years, and great changes occur in a man's appearance during so long a period. Yet I remembered with disquietude that Mr. White recognised me, and here tonight I had recognised Simard. I could not move my bench farther back because it stood already against the wall. Simard, on the contrary, was seated on one of the few chairs in the room, and this he periodically hitched forward, the better to continue his examination, which now attracted the notice of others besides myself. As he came forward, I could not help admiring the completeness of his disguise so far as apparel was concerned. He was a perfect picture of the Paris wastrel, and what was more, he wore on his head a cap of the Apaches, the most dangerous band of cut-throats that have ever cursed a civilised city. I could understand that even among lawless anarchists this badge of membership of the Apache band might well strike tenor. I felt that before the meeting adjourned I must speak with him, and I determined to begin our conversation by asking him why he stared so fixedly at me. Yet even then I should have made little progress. I did not dare to hint that he belonged to the Secret Service; nevertheless, if the authorities had this plot in charge, it was absolutely necessary we should work together, or, at least, that I should know they were in the secret, and steer my course accordingly. The fact that Simard appeared with undisguised face was not so important as might appear to an outsider. It is always safer for a spy to preserve his natural appearance if that is possible, because a false beard or false moustache or wig run the risk of being deranged or torn away. As I have said, an anarchist assemblage is simply a room filled with the atmosphere of suspicion. I have known instances where an innocent stranger was suddenly set upon in the midst of solemn proceedings by two or three impetuous fellow-members, who nearly jerked his own whiskers from his face under the impression that they were false. If Simard, therefore, appeared in his own scraggy beard and unkempt hair it meant that he communicated with headquarters by some circuitous route. I realised, therefore, that a very touchy bit of diplomacy awaited me if I was to learn from himself his actual status. While I pondered over this perplexity, it was suddenly dissolved by the action of the president, and another substituted for it. 'Will Brother Simard come forward?' asked the president. My former subordinate removed his eyes from me, slowly rose from his chair, and shuffled up to the president's table. 'Brother Ducharme,' said that official to me in a quiet tone, 'I introduce you to Brother Simard, whom you are commissioned to see into a place of safety when he has dispersed the procession.' Simard turned his fishy goggle eyes upon me, and a grin disclosed wolf-like teeth. He held out his hand, which, rising to my feet, I took. He gave me a flabby grasp, and all the time his inquiring eyes travelled over me. 'You don't look up to much,' he said. 'What are you?' 'I am a teacher of the French language in London.' 'Umph!' growled Simard, evidently in no wise prepossessed by my appearance. 'I thought you weren't much of a fighter. The gendarmes will make short work of this fellow,' he growled to the chairman. 'Brother Ducharme is vouched for by the whole English circle,' replied the president firmly. 'Oh, the English! I think very little of them. Still, it doesn't matter,' and with a shrug of the shoulders he shuffled to his seat again, leaving me standing there in a very embarrassed state of mind; my brain in a whirl. That the man was present with his own face was bewildering enough, but that he should be here under his own name was simply astounding. I scarcely heard what the president said. It seemed to the effect that Simard would take me to his own room, where we might talk over our plans. And now Simard rose again from his chair, and said to the president that if nothing more were wanted of him, we should go. Accordingly we left the place of meeting together. I watched my comrade narrowly. There was now a trembling eagerness in his action, and without a word he hurried me to the nearest café, where we sat down before a little iron table on the pavement. 'Garçon!' he shouted harshly, 'bring me four absinthes. What will you drink, Ducharme?', 'A café-cognac, if you please.' 'Bah!' cried Simard; 'better have absinthe.' Then he cursed the waiter for his slowness. When the absinthe came he grasped the half-full glass and swallowed the liquid raw, a thing I had never seen done before. Into the next measure of the wormwood he poured the water impetuously from the carafe, another thing I had never seen done before, and dropped two lumps of sugar into it. Over the third glass he placed a flat perforated plated spoon, piled the sugar on this bridge, and now quite expertly allowed the water to drip through, the proper way of concocting this seductive mixture. Finishing his second glass he placed the perforated spoon over the fourth, and began now more calmly sipping the third while the water dripped slowly into the last glass. Here before my eyes was enacted a more wonderful change than the gradual transformation of transparent absinthe into an opaque opalescent liquid. Simard, under the influence of the drink, was slowly becoming the Simard I had known ten years before. Remarkable! Absinthe having in earlier years made a beast of the man was now forming a man out of the beast. His staring eyes took on an expression of human comradeship. The whole mystery became perfectly clear to me without a question asked or an answer uttered. This man was no spy, but a genuine anarchist. However it happened, he had become a victim of absinthe, one of many with whom I was acquainted, although I never met any so far sunk as he. He was into his fourth glass, and had ordered two more when he began to speak. 'Here's to us,' he cried, with something like a civilised smile on his gaunt face. 'You're not offended at what I said in the meeting, I hope?' 'Oh, no,' I answered. 'That's right. You see, I once belonged to the Secret Service, and if my chief was there today, we would soon find ourselves in a cool dungeon. We couldn't trip up Eugène Valmont.' At these words, spoken with sincerity, I sat up in my chair, and I am sure such an expression of enjoyment came into my face that if I had not instantly suppressed it, I might have betrayed myself. 'Who was Eugène Valmont?' I asked, in a tone of assumed indifference. Mixing his fifth glass he nodded sagely. 'You wouldn't ask that question if you'd been in Paris a dozen years ago. He was the Government's chief detective, and he knew more of anarchists, yes, and of Apaches, too, than either you or I do. He had more brains in his little finger than that whole lot babbling there tonight. But the Government being a fool, as all governments are, dismissed him, and because I was his assistant, they dismissed me as well. They got rid of all his staff. Valmont disappeared. If I could have found him, I wouldn't be sitting here with you tonight; but he was right to disappear. The Government did all they could against us who had been his friends, and I for one came through starvation, and was near throwing myself in the Seine, which sometimes I wish I had done. Here, garçon, another absinthe. But by-and-by I came to like the gutter, and here I am. I'd rather have the gutter and absinthe than the Luxembourg without it. I've had my revenge on the Government many times since, for I knew their ways, and often have I circumvented the police. That's why they respect me among the anarchists. Do you know how I joined? I knew all their passwords, and walked right into one of their meetings, alone and in rags. '"Here am I," I said; "Adolph Simard, late second assistant to Eugène Valmont, chief detective to the French Government." 'There were twenty weapons covering me at once, but I laughed. '"I'm starving," I cried, "and I want something to eat, and more especially something to drink. In return for that I'll show you every rat-hole you've got. Lift the president's chair, and there's a trap-door that leads to the Rue Blanc. I'm one of you, and I'll tell you the tricks of the police." 'Such was my initiation, and from that moment the police began to pick their spies out of the Seine, and now they leave us alone. Even Valmont himself could do nothing against the anarchists since I have joined them.' Oh, the incredible self-conceit of human nature! Here was this ruffian proclaiming the limitations of Valmont, who half an hour before had shaken his hand within the innermost circle of his order! Yet my heart warmed towards the wretch who had remembered me and my exploits. It now became my anxious and difficult task to lure Simard away from this café and its absinthe. Glass after glass of the poison had brought him up almost to his former intellectual level, but now it was shoving him rapidly down the hill again. I must know where his room was situated, yet if I waited much longer the man would be in a state of drunken imbecility which would not only render it impossible for him to guide me to his room, but likely cause both of us to be arrested by the police. I tried persuasion, and he laughed at me; I tried threats, whereat he scowled and cursed me as a renegade from England. At last the liquor overpowered him, and his head sunk on the metal table and the dark blue cap fell to the floor. * * * * * I was in despair, but now received a lesson which taught me that if a man leaves a city, even for a short time, he falls out of touch with its ways. I called the waiter, and said to him,-- 'Do you know my friend here?' 'I do not know his name,' replied the garçon, 'but I have seen him many times at this café. He is usually in this state when he has money.' 'Do you know where he lives? He promised to take me with him, and I am a stranger in Paris.' 'Have no discontent, monsieur. Rest tranquil; I will intervene.' With this he stepped across the pavement in front of the café, into the street, and gave utterance to a low, peculiar whistle. The café was now nearly deserted, for the hour was very late, or, rather, very early. When the waiter returned I whispered to him in some anxiety,-- 'Not the police, surely?' 'But no!' he cried in scorn; 'certainly not the police.' He went on unconcernedly taking in the empty chairs and tables. A few minutes later there swaggered up to the café two of the most disreputable, low-browed scoundrels I had ever seen, each wearing a dark-blue cap, with a glazed peak over the eyes; caps exactly similar to the one which lay in front of Simard. The band of Apaches which now permeates all Paris has risen since my time, and Simard had been mistaken an hour before in asserting that Valmont was familiar with their haunts. The present Chief of Police in Paris and some of his predecessors confess there is a difficulty in dealing with these picked assassins, but I should very much like to take a hand in the game on the side of law and order. However, that is not to be; therefore, the Apaches increase and prosper. The two vagabonds roughly smote Simard's cap on his prone head, and as roughly raised him to his feet. 'He is a friend of mine,' I interposed, 'and promised to take me home with him.' 'Good! Follow us,' said one of them; and now I passed through the morning streets of Paris behind three cut-throats, yet knew that I was safer than if broad daylight was in the thoroughfare, with a meridian sun shining down upon us. I was doubly safe, being in no fear of harm from midnight prowlers, and equally free from danger of arrest by the police. Every officer we met avoided us, and casually stepped to the other side of the street. We turned down a narrow lane, then through a still narrower one, which terminated at a courtyard. Entering a tall building, we climbed up five flights of stairs to a landing, where one of the scouts kicked open a door, into a room so miserable that there was not even a lock to protect its poverty. Here they allowed the insensible Simard to drop with a crash on the floor, thus they left us alone without even an adieu. The Apaches take care of their own--after a fashion. I struck a match, and found part of a bougie stuck in the mouth of an absinthe bottle, resting on a rough deal table. Lighting the bougie, I surveyed the horrible apartment. A heap of rags lay in a corner, and this was evidently Simard's bed. I hauled him to it, and there he lay unconscious, himself a bundle of rags. I found one chair, or, rather, stool, for it had no back. I drew the table against the lockless door, blew out the light, sat on the stool, resting my arms on the table, and my head on my arms, and slept peacefully till long after daybreak. Simard awoke in the worst possible humour. He poured forth a great variety of abusive epithets at me. To make himself still more agreeable, he turned back the rags on which he had slept, and brought to the light a round, black object, like a small cannon-ball, which he informed me was the picric bomb that was to scatter destruction among my English friends, for whom he expressed the greatest possible loathing and contempt. Then sitting up, he began playing with this infernal machine, knowing, as well as I, that if he allowed it to drop that was the end of us two. I shrugged my shoulders at this display, and affected a nonchalance I was far from feeling, but finally put an end to his dangerous amusement by telling him that if he came out with me I would pay for his breakfast, and give him a drink of absinthe. The next few days were the most anxious of my life. Never before had I lived on terms of intimacy with a picric bomb, that most deadly and uncertain of all explosive agencies. I speedily found that Simard was so absinthe-soaked I could do nothing with him. He could not be bribed or cajoled or persuaded or threatened. Once, indeed, when he talked with drunken affection of Eugène Valmont, I conceived a wild notion of declaring myself to him; but a moment's reflection showed the absolute uselessness of this course. It was not one Simard with whom I had to deal, but half a dozen or more. There was Simard, sober, half sober, quarter sober, drunk, half drunk, quarter drunk, or wholly drunk. Any bargain I might make with the one Simard would not be kept by any of the other six. The only safe Simard was Simard insensible through over-indulgence. I had resolved to get Simard insensibly drunk on the morning of the procession, but my plans were upset at a meeting of the anarchists, which luckily took place on an evening shortly after my arrival, and this gave me time to mature the plan which was actually carried out. Each member of the anarchists' club knew of Simard's slavery to absinthe, and fears were expressed that he might prove incapable on the day of the procession, too late for a substitute to take his place. It was, therefore, proposed that one or two others should be stationed along the route of the procession with bombs ready if Simard failed. This I strenuously opposed, and guaranteed that Simard would be ready to launch his missile. I met with little difficulty in persuading the company to agree, because, after all, every man among them feared he might be one of those selected, which choice was practically a sentence of death. I guaranteed that the bomb would be thrown, and this apparently was taken to mean that if Simard did not do the deed, I would. This danger over, I next took the measurements, and estimated the weight, of the picric bomb. I then sought out a most amiable and expert pyrotechnist, a capable workman of genius, who with his own hand makes those dramatic firework arrangements which you sometimes see in Paris. As Eugène Valmont, I had rendered a great service to this man, and he was not likely to have forgotten it. During one of the anarchist scares a stupid policeman had arrested him, and when I intervened the man was just on the verge of being committed for life. France trembled in one of her panics, or, rather, Paris did, and demanded victims. This blameless little workman had indeed contributed with both material and advice, but any fool might have seen that he had done this innocently. His assistance had been invoked and secured under the pretence that his clients were promoting an amateur firework display, which was true enough, but the display cost the lives of three men, and intentionally so. I cheered up the citizen in the moment of his utmost despair, and brought such proof of his innocence to the knowledge of those above me that he was most reluctantly acquitted. To this man I now went with my measurement of the bomb and the estimate of its weight. 'Sir,' said I, 'do you remember Eugène Valmont?' 'Am I ever likely to forget him?' he replied, with a fervour that pleased me. 'He has sent me to you, and implores you to aid me, and that aid will wipe out the debt you owe him.' 'Willingly, willingly,' cried the artisan, 'so long as it has nothing to do with the anarchists or the making of bombs.' 'It has to do exactly with those two things. I wish you to make an innocent bomb which will prevent an anarchist outrage.' At this the little man drew back, and his face became pale. 'It is impossible,' he protested; 'I have had enough of innocent bombs. No, no, and in any case how can I be sure you come from Eugène Valmont? No, monsieur, I am not to be trapped the second time.' At this I related rapidly all that Valmont had done for him, and even repeated Valmont's most intimate conversation with him. The man was nonplussed, but remained firm. 'I dare not do it,' he said. We were alone in his back shop. I walked to the door and thrust in the bolt; then, after a moment's pause, turned round, stretched forth my right hand dramatically, and cried,--'Behold, Eugène Valmont!' My friend staggered against the wall in his amazement, and I continued in solemn tones,--'Eugène Valmont, who by this removal of his disguise places his life in your hands as your life was in his. Now, monsieur, what will you do?' He replied,--'Monsieur Valmont, I shall do whatever you ask. If I refused a moment ago, it was because I thought there was now in France no Eugène Valmont to rectify my mistake if I made one.' I resumed my disguise, and told him I wished an innocent substitute for this picric bomb, and he at once suggested an earthenware globe, which would weigh the same as the bomb, and which could be coloured to resemble it exactly. 'And now, Monsieur Valmont, do you wish smoke to issue from this imitation bomb?' 'Yes,' I said, 'in such quantity as you can compress within it.' 'It is easily done,' he cried, with the enthusiasm of a true French artist. 'And may I place within some little design of my own which will astonish your friends the English, and delight my friends the French?' 'Monsieur,' said I, 'I am in your hands. I trust the project entirely to your skill,' and thus it came about that four days later I substituted the bogus globe for the real one, and, unseen, dropped the picric bomb from one of the bridges into the Seine. On the morning of the procession I was compelled to allow Simard several drinks of absinthe to bring him up to a point where he could be depended on, otherwise his anxiety and determination to fling the bomb, his frenzy against all government, made it certain that he would betray both of us before the fateful moment came. My only fear was that I could not stop him drinking when once he began, but somehow our days of close companionship, loathsome as they were to me, seemed to have had the effect of building up again the influence I held over him in former days, and his yielding more or less to my wishes appeared to be quite unconscious on his part. The procession was composed entirely of carriages, each containing four persons--two Englishmen sat on the back seats, with two Frenchmen in front of them. A thick crowd lined each side of the thoroughfare, cheering vociferously. Right into the middle of the procession Simard launched his bomb. There was no crash of explosion. The missile simply went to pieces as if it were an earthenware jar, and there arose a dense column of very white smoke. In the immediate vicinity the cheering stopped at once, and the sinister word 'bomb' passed from lip to lip in awed whispers. As the throwing had been unnoticed in the midst of the commotion, I held Simard firmly by the wrist, determined he should not draw attention to himself by his panic-stricken desire for immediate flight. 'Stand still, you fool!' I hissed into his ear and he obeyed trembling. The pair of horses in front of which the bomb fell rose for a moment on their hind legs, and showed signs of bolting, but the coachman held them firmly, and uplifted his hand so that the procession behind him came to a momentary pause. No one in the carriages moved a muscle, then suddenly the tension was broken by a great and simultaneous cheer. Wondering at this I turned my eyes from the frightened horses to the column of pale smoke in front of us, and saw that in some manner it had resolved itself into a gigantic calla lily, pure white, while from the base of this sprung the lilies of France, delicately tinted. Of course, this could not have happened if there had been the least wind, but the air was so still that the vibration of the cheering caused the huge lily to tremble gently as it stood there marvellously poised; the lily of peace, surrounded by the lilies of France! That was the design, and if you ask me how it was done, I can only refer you to my pyrotechnist, and say that whatever a Frenchman attempts to do he will accomplish artistically. And now these imperturbable English, who had been seated immobile when they thought a bomb was thrown, stood up in their carriages to get a better view of this aerial phenomenon, cheering and waving their hats. The lily gradually thinned and dissolved in little patches of cloud that floated away above our heads. 'I cannot stay here longer,' groaned Simard, quaking, his nerves, like himself, in rags. 'I see the ghosts of those I have killed floating around me.' 'Come on, then, but do not hurry.' There was no difficulty in getting him to London, but it was absinthe, absinthe, all the way, and when we reached Charing Cross, I was compelled to help him, partly insensible, into a cab. I took him direct to Imperial Flats, and up into my own set of chambers, where I opened my strong room, and flung him inside to sleep off his intoxication, and subsist on bread and water when he became sober. I attended that night a meeting of the anarchists, and detailed accurately the story of our escape from France. I knew we had been watched, and so skipped no detail. I reported that I had taken Simard directly to my compatriot's flat; to Eugène Valmont, the man who had given me employment, and who had promised to do what he could for Simard, beginning by trying to break him of the absinthe habit, as he was now a physical wreck through over-indulgence in that stimulant. It was curious to note the discussion which took place a few nights afterwards regarding the failure of the picric bomb. Scientists among us said that the bomb had been made too long; that a chemical reaction had taken place which destroyed its power. A few superstitious ones saw a miracle in what had happened, and they forthwith left our organisation. Then again, things were made easier by the fact that the man who constructed the bomb, evidently terror-stricken at what he had done, disappeared the day before the procession, and has never since been heard of. The majority of the anarchists believed he had made a bogus bomb, and had fled to escape their vengeance rather than to evade the justice of the law. Simard will need no purgatory in the next world. I kept him on bread and water for a month in my strong room, and at first he demanded absinthe with threats, then grovelled, begging and praying for it. After that a period of depression and despair ensued, but finally his naturally strong constitution conquered, and began to build itself up again. I took him from his prison one midnight, and gave him a bed in my Soho room, taking care in bringing him away that he would never recognise the place where he had been incarcerated. In my dealings with him I had always been that old man, Paul Ducharme. Next morning I said to him:--'You spoke of Eugène Valmont. I have learned that he lives in London, and I advise you to call upon him. Perhaps he can get you something to do.' Simard was overjoyed, and two hours later, as Eugène Valmont, I received him in my flat, and made him my assistant on the spot. From that time forward, Paul Ducharme, language teacher, disappeared from the earth, and Simard abandoned his two A's--anarchy and absinthe. 3. _The Clue of the Silver Spoons_ When the card was brought in to me, I looked upon it with some misgiving, for I scented a commercial transaction, and, although such cases are lucrative enough, nevertheless I, Eugène Valmont, formerly high in the service of the French Government, do not care to be connected with them. They usually pertain to sordid business affairs, presenting little that is of interest to a man who, in his time, has dealt with subtle questions of diplomacy upon which the welfare of nations sometimes turned. The name of Bentham Gibbes is familiar to everyone, connected as it is with the much-advertised pickles, whose glaring announcements in crude crimson and green strike the eye throughout Great Britain, and shock the artistic sense wherever seen. Me! I have never tasted them, and shall not so long as a French restaurant remains open in London. But I doubt not they are as pronounced to the palate as their advertisement is distressing to the eye. If then, this gross pickle manufacturer expected me to track down those who were infringing upon the recipes for making his so-called sauces, chutneys, and the like, he would find himself mistaken, for I was now in a position to pick and choose my cases, and a case of pickles did not allure me. 'Beware of imitations,' said the advertisement; 'none genuine without a facsimile of the signature of Bentham Gibbes.' Ah, well, not for me were either the pickles or the tracking of imitators. A forged cheque! yes, if you like, but the forged signature of Mr. Gibbes on a pickle bottle was out of my line. Nevertheless, I said to Armand:-- 'Show the gentleman in,' and he did so. To my astonishment there entered a young man, quite correctly dressed in the dark frock-coat, faultless waistcoat and trousers that proclaimed a Bond Street tailor. When he spoke his voice and language were those of a gentleman. 'Monsieur Valmont?' he inquired. 'At your service,' I replied, bowing and waving my hand as Armand placed a chair for him, and withdrew. 'I am a barrister with chambers in the Temple,' began Mr. Gibbes, 'and for some days a matter has been troubling me about which I have now come to seek your advice, your name having been suggested by a friend in whom I confided.' 'Am I acquainted with him?' I asked. 'I think not,' replied Mr. Gibbes; 'he also is a barrister with chambers in the same building as my own. Lionel Dacre is his name.' 'I never heard of him.' 'Very likely not. Nevertheless, he recommended you as a man who could keep his own counsel, and if you take up this case I desire the utmost secrecy preserved, whatever may be the outcome.' I bowed, but made no protestation. Secrecy is a matter of course with me. The Englishman paused for a few moments as if he expected fervent assurances; then went on with no trace of disappointment on his countenance at not receiving them. 'On the night of the twenty-third, I gave a little dinner to six friends of mine in my own rooms. I may say that so far as I am aware they are all gentlemen of unimpeachable character. On the night of the dinner I was detained later than I expected at a reception, and in driving to the Temple was still further delayed by a block of traffic in Piccadilly, so that when I arrived at my chambers there was barely time for me to dress and receive my guests. My man Johnson had everything laid out ready for me in my dressing-room, and as I passed through to it I hurriedly flung off the coat I was wearing and carelessly left it hanging over the back of a chair in the dining-room, where neither Johnson nor myself noticed it until my attention was called to it after the dinner was over, and everyone rather jolly with wine. 'This coat contains an inside pocket. Usually any frock-coat I wear at an afternoon reception has not an inside pocket, but I had been rather on the rush all day. 'My father is a manufacturer whose name may be familiar to you, and I am on the directors' board of his company. On this occasion I took a cab from the city to the reception I spoke of, and had not time to go and change at my rooms. The reception was a somewhat bohemian affair, extremely interesting, of course, but not too particular as to costume, so I went as I was. In this inside pocket rested a thin package, composed of two pieces of cardboard, and between them rested five twenty-pound Bank of England notes, folded lengthwise, held in place by an elastic rubber band. I had thrown the coat across the chair-back in such a way that the inside pocket was exposed, leaving the ends of the notes plainly recognisable. 'Over the coffee and cigars one of my guests laughingly called attention to what he termed my vulgar display of wealth, and Johnson, in some confusion at having neglected to put away the coat, now picked it up, and took it to the reception-room where the wraps of my guests lay about promiscuously. He should, of course, have hung it up in my wardrobe, but he said afterwards he thought it belonged to the guest who had spoken. You see, Johnson was in my dressing-room when I threw my coat on the chair in the corner while making my way thither, and I suppose he had not noticed the coat in the hurry of arriving guests, otherwise he would have put it where it belonged. After everybody had gone Johnson came to me and said the coat was there, but the package was missing, nor has any trace of it been found since that night.' 'The dinner was fetched in from outside, I suppose?' 'Yes.' 'How many waiters served it?' 'Two. They are men who have often been in my employ on similar occasions, but, apart from that, they had left my chambers before the incident of the coat happened.' 'Neither of them went into the reception-room, I take it?' 'No. I am certain that not even suspicion can attach to either of the waiters.' 'Your man Johnson--?' 'Has been with me for years. He could easily have stolen much more than the hundred pounds if he had wished to do so, but I have never known him to take a penny that did not belong to him.' 'Will you favour me with the names of your guests, Mr. Gibbes?' 'Viscount Stern sat at my right hand, and at my left Lord Templemere; Sir John Sanclere next to him, and Angus McKeller next to Sanclere. After Viscount Stern was Lionel Dacre, and at his right, Vincent Innis.' On a sheet of paper I had written the names of the guests, and noted their places at the table. 'Which guest drew your attention to the money?' 'Lionel Dacre.' 'Is there a window looking out from the reception-room?' 'Two of them.' 'Were they fastened on the night of the dinner party?' 'I could not be sure; very likely Johnson would know. You are hinting at the possibility of a thief coming in through a reception-room window while we were somewhat noisy over our wine. I think such a solution highly improbable. My rooms are on the third floor, and a thief would scarcely venture to make an entrance when he could not but know there was a company being entertained. Besides this, the coat was there less than an hour, and it appears to me that whoever stole those notes knew where they were.' 'That seems reasonable,' I had to admit. 'Have you spoken to any one of your loss?'; 'To no one but Dacre, who recommended me to see you. Oh, yes, and to Johnson, of course.' I could not help noting that this was the fourth or fifth time Dacre's name had come up during our conversation. 'What of Dacre?' I asked. 'Oh, well, you see, he occupies chambers in the same building on the ground floor. He is a very good fellow, and we are by way of being firm friends. Then it was he who had called attention to the money, so I thought he should know the sequel.' 'How did he take your news?' 'Now that you call attention to the fact, he seemed slightly troubled. I should like to say, however, that you must not be misled by that. Lionel Dacre could no more steal than he could lie.' 'Did he show any surprise when you mentioned the theft?' Bentham Gibbes paused a moment before replying, knitting his brows in thought. 'No,' he said at last; 'and, come to think of it, it appeared as if he had been expecting my announcement.' 'Doesn't that strike you as rather strange, Mr. Gibbes?' 'Really my mind is in such a whirl, I don't know what to think. But it's perfectly absurd to suspect Dacre. If you knew the man you would understand what I mean. He comes of an excellent family, and he is--oh! he is Lionel Dacre, and when you have said that you have made any suspicion absurd.' 'I suppose you caused the rooms to be thoroughly searched. The packet didn't drop out and remain unnoticed in some corner?' 'No; Johnson and myself examined every inch of the premises.' 'Have you the numbers of the notes?' 'Yes; I got them from the Bank next morning. Payment was stopped, and so far not one of the five has been presented. Of course, one or more may have been cashed at some shop, but none have been offered to any of the banks.' 'A twenty-pound note is not accepted without scrutiny, so the chances are the thief may find some difficulty in disposing of them.' 'As I told you, I don't mind the loss of the money at all. It is the uncertainty, the uneasiness caused by the incident which troubles me. You will comprehend how little I care about the notes when I say that if you are good enough to interest yourself in this case, I shall be disappointed if your fee does not exceed the amount I have lost.' Mr. Gibbes rose as he said this, and I accompanied him to the door assuring him that I should do my best to solve the mystery. Whether he sprang from pickles or not, I realised he was a polished and generous gentleman, who estimated the services of a professional expert like myself at their true value. I shall not set down the details of my researches during the following few days, because the trend of them must be gone over in the account of that remarkable interview in which I took part somewhat later. Suffice it to say that an examination of the rooms and a close cross-questioning of Johnson satisfied me he and the two waiters were innocent. I became certain no thief had made his way through the window, and finally I arrived at the conclusion that the notes were stolen by one of the guests. Further investigation convinced me that the thief was no other than Lionel Dacre, the only one of the six in pressing need of money at this time. I caused Dacre to be shadowed, and during one of his absences made the acquaintance of his man Hopper, a surly, impolite brute, who accepted my golden sovereign quickly enough, but gave me little in exchange for it. While I conversed with him, there arrived in the passage where we were talking together a huge case of champagne, bearing one of the best-known names in the trade, and branded as being of the vintage of '78. Now I knew that the product of Camelot Frères is not bought as cheaply as British beer, and I also had learned that two short weeks before Mr. Lionel Dacre was at his wits' end for money. Yet he was still the same briefless barrister he had ever been. On the morning after my unsatisfactory conversation with his man Hopper, I was astonished to receive the following note, written on a dainty correspondence card:-- '3 and 4 Vellum Buildings, 'Inner Temple, E.C. 'Mr. Lionel Dacre presents his compliments to Monsieur Eugène Valmont, and would be obliged if Monsieur Valmont could make it convenient to call upon him in his chambers tomorrow morning at eleven.' * * * * * Had the young man become aware that he was being shadowed, or had the surly servant informed him of the inquiries made? I was soon to know. I called punctually at eleven next morning, and was received with charming urbanity by Mr. Dacre himself. The taciturn Hopper had evidently been sent away for the occasion. 'My dear Monsieur Valmont, I am delighted to meet you,' began the young man with more of effusiveness than I had ever noticed in an Englishman before, although his very next words supplied an explanation that did not occur to me until afterwards as somewhat far-fetched. 'I believe we are by way of being countrymen, and, therefore, although the hour is early, I hope you will allow me to offer you some of this bottled sunshine of the year '78 from _la belle France_, to whose prosperity and honour we shall drink together. For such a toast any hour is propitious,' and to my amazement he brought forth from the case I had seen arrive two days before, a bottle of that superb Camelot Frères '78. 'Now,' said I to myself, 'it is going to be difficult to keep a clear head if the aroma of this nectar rises to the brain. But tempting as is the cup, I shall drink sparingly, and hope he may not be so judicious.' Sensitive, I already experienced the charm of his personality, and well understood the friendship Mr. Bentham Gibbes felt for him. But I saw the trap spread before me. He expected, under the influence of champagne and courtesy, to extract a promise from me which I must find myself unable to give. 'Sir, you interest me by claiming kinship with France. I had understood that you belonged to one of the oldest families of England.' 'Ah, England!' he cried, with an expressive gesture of outspreading hands truly Parisian in its significance. 'The trunk belongs to England, of course, but the root--ah! the root--Monsieur Valmont, penetrated the soil from which this wine of the gods has been drawn.' Then filling my glass and his own he cried:-- 'To France, which my family left in the year 1066!' I could not help laughing at his fervent ejaculation. '1066! With William the Conqueror! That is a long time ago, Mr. Dacre.' 'In years perhaps; in feelings but a day. My forefathers came over to steal, and, lord! how well they accomplished it. They stole the whole country--something like a theft, say I--under that prince of robbers whom you have well named the Conqueror. In our secret hearts we all admire a great thief, and if not a great one, then an expert one, who covers his tracks so perfectly that the hounds of justice are baffled in attempting to follow them. Now even you, Monsieur Valmont (I can see you are the most generous of men, with a lively sympathy found to perfection only in France), even you must suffer a pang of regret when you lay a thief by the heels who has done his task deftly.' 'I fear, Mr. Dacre, you credit me with a magnanimity to which I dare not lay claim. The criminal is a danger to society.' 'True, true, you are in the right, Monsieur Valmont Still, admit there are cases that would touch you tenderly. For example, a man, ordinarily honest; a great need; a sudden opportunity. He takes that of which another has abundance, and he, nothing. What then, Monsieur Valmont? Is the man to be sent to perdition for a momentary weakness?' His words astonished me. Was I on the verge of hearing a confession? It almost amounted to that already. 'Mr. Dacre,' I said, 'I cannot enter into the subtleties you pursue. My duty is to find the criminal.' 'Again I say you are in the right, Monsieur Valmont, and I am enchanted to find so sensible a head on French shoulders. Although you are a more recent arrival, if I may say so, than myself, you nevertheless already give utterance to sentiments which do honour to England. It is your duty to hunt down the criminal. Very well. In that I think I can aid you, and thus have taken the liberty of requesting your attendance here this morning. Let me fill your glass again, Monsieur Valmont.' 'No more, I beg of you, Mr. Dacre.' 'What, do you think the receiver is as bad as the thief?' I was so taken aback by this remark that I suppose my face showed the amazement within me. But the young man merely laughed with apparently free-hearted enjoyment, poured some wine into his own glass, and tossed it off. Not knowing what to say, I changed the current of conversation. 'Mr. Gibbes said you had been kind enough to recommend me to his attention. May I ask how you came to hear of me?' 'Ah! who has not heard of the renowned Monsieur Valmont,' and as he said this, for the first time, there began to grow a suspicion in my mind that he was chaffing me, as it is called in England--a procedure which I cannot endure. Indeed, if this gentleman practised such a barbarism in my own country he would find himself with a duel on his hands before he had gone far. However, the next instant his voice resumed its original fascination, and I listened to it as to some delicious melody. 'I need only mention my cousin, Lady Gladys Dacre, and you will at once understand why I recommended you to my friend. The case of Lady Gladys, you will remember, required a delicate touch which is not always to be had in this land of England, except when those who possess the gift do us the honour to sojourn with us.' I noticed that my glass was again filled, and bowing an acknowledgment of his compliment, I indulged in another sip of the delicious wine. I sighed, for I began to realise it was going to be very difficult for me, in spite of my disclaimer, to tell this man's friend he had stolen the money. All this time he had been sitting on the edge of the table, while I occupied a chair at its end. He sat there in careless fashion, swinging a foot to and fro. Now he sprang to the floor, and drew up a chair, placing on the table a blank sheet of paper. Then he took from the mantelshelf a packet of letters, and I was astonished to see they were held together by two bits of cardboard and a rubber band similar to the combination that had contained the folded bank notes. With great nonchalance he slipped off the rubber band, threw it and the pieces of cardboard on the table before me, leaving the documents loose to his hand. 'Now, Monsieur Valmont,' he cried jauntily, 'you have been occupied for several days on this case, the case of my dear friend Bentham Gibbes, who is one of the best fellows in the world.' 'He said the same of you, Mr. Dacre.' 'I am gratified to hear it. Would you mind letting me know to what point your researches have led you?' 'They have led me in a direction rather than to a point.' 'Ah! In the direction of a man, of course?' 'Certainly.' 'Who is he?' 'Will you pardon me if I decline to answer this question at the present moment?' 'That means you are not sure.' 'It may mean, Mr. Dacre, that I am employed by Mr. Gibbes, and do not feel at liberty to disclose the results of my quest without his permission.' 'But Mr. Bentham Gibbes and I are entirely at one in this matter. Perhaps you are aware that I am the only person with whom he has discussed the case beside yourself.' 'That is undoubtedly true, Mr. Dacre; still, you see the difficulty of my position.' 'Yes, I do, and so shall press you no further. But I also have been studying the problem in a purely amateurish way, of course. You will perhaps express no disinclination to learn whether or not my deductions agree with yours.' 'None in the least. I should be very glad to know the conclusion at which you have arrived. May I ask if you suspect any one in particular?' 'Yes, I do.' 'Will you name him?' 'No; I shall copy the admirable reticence you yourself have shown. And now let us attack this mystery in a sane and businesslike manner. You have already examined the room. Well, here is a rough sketch of it. There is the table; in this corner stood the chair on which the coat was flung. Here sat Gibbes at the head of the table. Those on the left-hand side had their backs to the chair. I, being on the centre to the right, saw the chair, the coat, and the notes, and called attention to them. Now our first duty is to find a motive. If it were a murder, our motive might be hatred, revenge, robbery--what you like. As it is simply the stealing of money, the man must have been either a born thief or else some hitherto innocent person pressed to the crime by great necessity. Do you agree with me, Monsieur Valmont?' 'Perfectly. You follow exactly the line of my own reasoning.' 'Very well. It is unlikely that a born thief was one of Mr. Gibbes's guests. Therefore we are reduced to look for a man under the spur of necessity; a man who has no money of his own but who must raise a certain amount, let us say, by a certain date. If we can find such a man in that company, do you not agree with me that he is likely to be the thief?' 'Yes, I do.' 'Then let us start our process of elimination. Out goes Viscount Stern, a lucky individual with twenty thousand acres of land, and God only knows what income. I mark off the name of Lord Templemere, one of His Majesty's judges, entirely above suspicion. Next, Sir John Sanclere; he also is rich, but Vincent Innis is still richer, so the pencil obliterates both names. Now we arrive at Angus McKeller, an author of some note, as you are well aware, deriving a good income from his books and a better one from his plays; a canny Scot, so we may rub his name from our paper and our memory. How do my erasures correspond with yours, Monsieur Valmont?' 'They correspond exactly, Mr. Dacre.' 'I am flattered to hear it. There remains one name untouched, Mr Lionel Dacre, the descendant, as I have said, of robbers.' 'I have not said so, Mr. Dacre.' 'Ah! my dear Valmont, the politeness of your country asserts itself. Let us not be deluded, but follow our inquiry wherever it leads. I suspect Lionel Dacre. What do you know of his circumstances before the dinner of the twenty-third?' As I made no reply he looked up at me with his frank, boyish face illumined by a winning smile. 'You know nothing of his circumstances?' he asked. 'It grieves me to state that I do. Mr. Lionel Dacre was penniless on the night of the dinner.' 'Oh, don't exaggerate, Monsieur Valmont,' cried Dacre with a gesture of pathetic protest; 'his pocket held one sixpence, two pennies, and a halfpenny. How came you to suspect he was penniless?' 'I knew he ordered a case of champagne from the London representative of Camelot Frères, and was refused unless he paid the money down.' 'Quite right, and then when you were talking to Hopper you saw that case of champagne delivered. Excellent! excellent! Monsieur Valmont. But will a man steal, think you, even to supply himself with so delicious a wine as this we have been tasting? And, by the way, forgive my neglect, allow me to fill your glass, Monsieur Valmont.' 'Not another drop, if you will excuse me, Mr. Dacre.' 'Ah, yes, champagne should not be mixed with evidence. When we have finished, perhaps. What further proof have you discovered, monsieur?' 'I hold proof that Mr. Dacre was threatened with bankruptcy, if, on the twenty-fourth, he did not pay a bill of seventy-eight pounds that had been long outstanding. I hold proof that this was paid, not on the twenty-fourth, but on the twenty-sixth. Mr. Dacre had gone to the solicitor and assured him he would pay the money on that date, whereupon he was given two days' grace.' 'Ah, well, he was entitled to three, you know, in law. Yes, there, Monsieur Valmont, you touch the fatal point. The threat of bankruptcy will drive a man in Dacre's position to almost any crime. Bankruptcy to a barrister means ruin. It means a career blighted; it means a life buried, with little chance of resurrection. I see, you grasp the supreme importance of that bit of evidence. The case of champagne is as nothing compared with it, and this reminds me that in the crisis now upon us I shall take another sip, with your permission. Sure you won't join me?' 'Not at this juncture, Mr. Dacre.' 'I envy your moderation. Here's to the success of our search, Monsieur Valmont.' I felt sorry for the gay young fellow as with smiling face he drank the champagne. 'Now, Monsieur,' he went on, 'I am amazed to learn how much you have discovered. Really, I think tradespeople, solicitors, and all such should keep better guard on their tongues than they do. Nevertheless, these documents at my elbow, which I expected would surprise you, are merely the letters and receipts. Here is the communication from the solicitor threatening me with bankruptcy; here is his receipt dated the twenty-sixth; here is the refusal of the wine merchant, and here is his receipt for the money. Here are smaller bills liquidated. With my pencil we will add them up. Seventy-eight pounds--the principal debt--bulks large. We add the smaller items and it reaches a total of ninety-three pounds seven shillings and fourpence. Let us now examine my purse. Here is a five-pound note; there is a golden sovereign. I now count out and place on the table twelve and sixpence in silver and two pence in coppers. The purse thus becomes empty. Let us add the silver and copper to the amount on the paper. Do my eyes deceive me, or is the sum exactly a hundred pounds? There is your money fully accounted for.' 'Pardon me, Mr. Dacre,' I said, 'but I observe a sovereign resting on the mantelpiece.' Dacre threw back his head and laughed with greater heartiness than I had yet known him to indulge in during our short acquaintance. 'By Jove,' he cried, 'you've got me there. I'd forgotten entirely about that pound on the mantelpiece, which belongs to you.' 'To me? Impossible!' 'It does, and cannot interfere in the least with our century calculation. That is the sovereign you gave to my man Hopper, who, knowing me to be hard-pressed, took it and shamefacedly presented it to me, that I might enjoy the spending of it. Hopper belongs to our family, or the family belongs to him. I am never sure which. You must have missed in him the deferential bearing of a man-servant in Paris, yet he is true gold, like the sovereign you bestowed upon him, and he bestowed upon me. Now here, Monsieur, is the evidence of the theft, together with the rubber band and two pieces of cardboard. Ask my friend Gibbes to examine them minutely. They are all at your disposition, Monsieur, and thus you learn how much easier it is to deal with the master than with the servant. All the gold you possess would not have wrung these incriminating documents from old Hopper. I was compelled to send him away to the West End an hour ago, fearing that in his brutal British way he might assault you if he got an inkling of your mission.' 'Mr. Dacre,' said I slowly, 'you have thoroughly convinced me--' 'I thought I would,' he interrupted with a laugh. '--that you did _not_ take the money.' 'Oho, this is a change of wind, surely. Many a man has been hanged on a chain of circumstantial evidence much weaker than this which I have exhibited to you. Don't you see the subtlety of my action? Ninety-nine persons in a hundred would say: "No man could be such a fool as to put Valmont on his own track, and then place in Valmont's hands such striking evidence." But there comes in my craftiness. Of course, the rock you run up against will be Gibbes's incredulity. The first question he will ask you may be this: "Why did not Dacre come and borrow the money from me?" Now there you find a certain weakness in your chain of evidence. I knew perfectly well that Gibbes would lend me the money, and he knew perfectly well that if I were pressed to the wall I should ask him.' 'Mr. Dacre,' said I, 'you have been playing with me. I should resent that with most men, but whether it is your own genial manner or the effect of this excellent champagne, or both together, I forgive you. But I am convinced of another thing. You know who took the money.' 'I don't know, but I suspect.' 'Will you tell me whom you suspect?' 'That would not be fair, but I shall now take the liberty of filling your glass with champagne.' 'I am your guest, Mr. Dacre.' 'Admirably answered, monsieur,' he replied, pouring out the wine, 'and now I offer you a clue. Find out all about the story of the silver spoons.' 'The story of the silver spoons! What silver spoons?' 'Ah! That is the point. Step out of the Temple into Fleet Street, seize the first man you meet by the shoulder, and ask him to tell you about the silver spoons. There are but two men and two spoons concerned. When you learn who those two men are, you will know that one of them did not take the money, and I give you my assurance that the other did.' 'You speak in mystery, Mr. Dacre.' 'But certainly, for I am speaking to Monsieur Eugène Valmont.' 'I echo your words, sir. Admirably answered. You put me on my mettle, and I flatter myself that I see your kindly drift. You wish me to solve the mystery of this stolen money. Sir, you-do me honour, and I drink to your health.' 'To yours, monsieur,' said Lionel Dacre, and thus we drank and parted. On leaving Mr. Dacre I took a hansom to a café in Regent Street, which is a passable imitation of similar places of refreshment in Paris. There, calling for a cup of black coffee, I sat down to think. The clue of the silver spoons! He had laughingly suggested that I should take by the shoulders the first man I met, and ask him what the story of the silver spoons was. This course naturally struck me as absurd, and he doubtless intended it to seem absurd. Nevertheless, it contained a hint. I must ask somebody, and that the right person, to tell me the tale of the silver spoons. Under the influence of the black coffee I reasoned it out in this way. On the night of the twenty-third one of the six guests there present stole a hundred pounds, but Dacre had said that an actor in the silver spoon episode was the actual thief. That person, then, must have been one of Mr. Gibbes's guests at the dinner of the twenty-third. Probably two of the guests were the participators in the silver spoon comedy, but, be that as it may, it followed that one at least of the men around Mr. Gibbes's table knew the episode of the silver spoons. Perhaps Bentham Gibbes himself was cognisant of it. It followed, therefore, that the easiest plan was to question each of the men who partook of that dinner. Yet if only one knew about the spoons, that one must also have some idea that these spoons formed the clue which attached him to the crime of the twenty-third, in which case he was little likely to divulge what he knew to an entire stranger. Of course, I might go to Dacre himself and demand the story of the silver spoons, but this would be a confession of failure on my part, and I rather dreaded Lionel Dacre's hearty laughter when I admitted that the mystery was too much for me. Besides this I was very well aware of the young man's kindly intentions towards me. He wished me to unravel the coil myself, and so I determined not to go to him except as a last resource. I resolved to begin with Mr. Gibbes, and, finishing my coffee, I got again into a hansom, and drove back to the Temple. I found Bentham Gibbes in his room, and after greeting me, his first inquiry was about the case. 'How are you getting on?' he asked. 'I think I'm getting on fairly well,' I replied, 'and expect to finish in a day or two, if you will kindly tell me the story of the silver spoons.' 'The silver spoons?' he echoed, quite evidently not understanding me. 'There happened an incident in which two men were engaged, and this incident related to a pair of silver spoons. I want to get the particulars of that.' 'I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about,' replied Gibbes, thoroughly bewildered. 'You will need to be more definite, I fear, if you are to get any help from me.' 'I cannot be more definite, because I have already told you all I know.' 'What bearing has all this on our own case?' 'I was informed that if I got hold of the clue of the silver spoons I should be in a fair way of settling our case.' 'Who told you that?' 'Mr. Lionel Dacre.' 'Oh, does Dacre refer to his own conjuring?' 'I don't know, I'm sure. What was his conjuring?' 'A very clever trick he did one night at dinner here about two months ago.' 'Had it anything to do with silver spoons?' 'Well, it was silver spoons or silver forks, or something of that kind. I had entirely forgotten the incident. So far as I recollect at the moment there was a sleight-of-hand man of great expertness in one of the music halls, and the talk turned upon him. Then Dacre said the tricks he did were easy, and holding up a spoon or a fork, I don't remember which, he professed his ability to make it disappear before our eyes, to be found afterwards in the clothing of some one there present. Several offered to bet that he could do nothing of the kind, but he said he would bet with no one but Innis, who sat opposite him. Innis, with some reluctance, accepted the bet, and then Dacre, with a great show of the usual conjurer's gesticulations, spread forth his empty hands, and said we should find the spoon in Innis's pocket, and there, sure enough, it was. It seemed a proper sleight-of-hand trick, but we were never able to get him to repeat it.' 'Thank you very much, Mr. Gibbes; I think I see daylight now.' 'If you do you are cleverer than I by a long chalk,' cried Bentham Gibbes as I took my departure. I went directly downstairs, and knocked at Mr. Dacre's door once more. He opened the door himself, his man not yet having returned. 'Ah, monsieur,' he cried, 'back already? You don't mean to tell me you have so soon got to the bottom of the silver spoon entanglement?' 'I think I have, Mr. Dacre. You were sitting at dinner opposite Mr Vincent Innis. You saw him conceal a silver spoon in his pocket. You probably waited for some time to understand what he meant by this, and as he did not return the spoon to its place, you proposed a conjuring trick, made the bet with him, and thus the spoon was returned to the table.' 'Excellent! excellent, monsieur! that is very nearly what occurred, except that I acted at once. I had had experiences with Mr. Vincent Innis before. Never did he enter these rooms of mine without my missing some little trinket after he was gone. Although Mr. Innis is a very rich person, I am not a man of many possessions, so if anything is taken, I meet little difficulty in coming to a knowledge of my loss. Of course, I never mentioned these abstractions to him. They were all trivial, as I have said, and so far as the silver spoon was concerned, it was of no great value either. But I thought the bet and the recovery of the spoon would teach him a lesson; it apparently has not done so. On the night of the twenty-third he sat at my right hand, as you will see by consulting your diagram of the table and the guests. I asked him a question twice, to which he did not reply, and looking at him I was startled by the expression in his eyes. They were fixed on a distant corner of the room, and following his gaze I saw what he was staring at with such hypnotising concentration. So absorbed was he in contemplation of the packet there so plainly exposed, now my attention was turned to it, that he seemed to be entirely oblivious of what was going on around him. I roused him from his trance by jocularly calling Gibbes's attention to the display of money. I expected in this way to save Innis from committing the act which he seemingly did commit. Imagine then the dilemma in which I was placed when Gibbes confided to me the morning after what had occurred the night before. I was positive Innis had taken the money, yet I possessed no proof of it. I could not tell Gibbes, and I dare not speak to Innis. Of course, monsieur, you do not need to be told that Innis is not a thief in the ordinary sense of the word. He has no need to steal, and yet apparently cannot help doing so. I am sure that no attempt has been made to pass those notes. They are doubtless resting securely in his house at Kensington. He is, in fact, a kleptomaniac, or a maniac of some sort. And now, monsieur, was my hint regarding the silver spoons of any value to you?' 'Of the most infinite value, Mr. Dacre.' 'Then let me make another suggestion. I leave it entirely to your bravery; a bravery which, I confess, I do not myself possess. Will you take a hansom, drive to Mr. Innis's house on the Cromwell Road, confront him quietly, and ask for the return of the packet? I am anxious to know what will happen. If he hands it to you, as I expect he will, then you must tell Mr. Gibbes the whole story.' 'Mr. Dacre, your suggestion shall be immediately acted upon, and I thank you for your compliment to my courage.' I found that Mr. Innis inhabited a very grand house. After a time he entered the study on the ground floor, to which I had been conducted. He held my card in his hand, and was looking at it with some surprise. 'I think I have not the pleasure of knowing you, Monsieur Valmont,' he said, courteously enough. 'No. I ventured to call on a matter of business. I was once investigator for the French Government, and now am doing private detective work here in London.' 'Ah! And how is that supposed to interest me? There is nothing that I wish investigated. I did not send for you, did I?' 'No, Mr. Innis, I merely took the liberty of calling to ask you to let me have the package you took from Mr. Bentham Gibbes's frock-coat pocket on the night of the twenty-third.' 'He wishes it returned, does he?' 'Yes.' Mr. Innis calmly walked to a desk, which he unlocked and opened, displaying a veritable museum of trinkets of one sort and another. Pulling out a small drawer he took from it the packet containing the five twenty-pound notes. Apparently it had never been opened. With a smile he handed it to me. 'You will make my apologies to Mr. Gibbes for not returning it before. Tell him I have been unusually busy of late.' 'I shall not fail to do so,' said I, with a bow. 'Thanks so much. Good-morning, Monsieur Valmont.' 'Good-morning, Mr. Innis,' And so I returned the packet to Mr. Bentham Gibbes, who pulled the notes from between their pasteboard protection, and begged me to accept them. 4. _Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune_ The name of the late Lord Chizelrigg never comes to my mind without instantly suggesting that of Mr. T.A. Edison. I never saw the late Lord Chizelrigg, and I have met Mr. Edison only twice in my life, yet the two men are linked in my memory, and it was a remark the latter once made that in great measure enabled me to solve the mystery which the former had wrapped round his actions. There is no memorandum at hand to tell me the year in which those two meetings with Edison took place. I received a note from the Italian Ambassador in Paris requesting me to wait upon him at the Embassy. I learned that on the next day a deputation was to set out from the Embassy to one of the chief hotels, there to make a call in state upon the great American inventor, and formally present to him various insignia accompanying certain honours which the King of Italy had conferred upon him. As many Italian nobles of high rank had been invited, and as these dignitaries would not only be robed in the costumes pertaining to their orders, but in many cases would wear jewels of almost inestimable value, my presence was desired in the belief that I might perhaps be able to ward off any attempt on the part of the deft-handed gentry who might possibly make an effort to gain these treasures, and I may add, with perhaps some little self-gratification, no _contretemps_ occurred. Mr. Edison, of course, had long before received notification of the hour at which the deputation would wait upon him, but when we entered the large parlour assigned to the inventor, it was evident to me at a glance that the celebrated man had forgotten all about the function. He stood by a bare table, from which the cloth had been jerked and flung into a corner, and upon that table were placed several bits of black and greasy machinery--cog wheels, pulleys, bolts, etc. These seemingly belonged to a French workman who stood on the other side of the table, with one of the parts in his grimy hand. Edison's own hands were not too clean, for he had palpably been examining the material, and conversing with the workman, who wore the ordinary long blouse of an iron craftsman in a small way. I judged him to be a man with a little shop of his own in some back street, who did odd jobs of engineering, assisted perhaps by a skilled helper or two, and a few apprentices. Edison looked sternly towards the door as the solemn procession filed in, and there was a trace of annoyance on his face at the interruption, mixed with a shade of perplexity as to what this gorgeous display all meant. The Italian is as ceremonious as the Spaniard where a function is concerned, and the official who held the ornate box which contained the jewellery resting on a velvet cushion, stepped slowly forward, and came to a stand in front of the bewildered American. Then the Ambassador, in sonorous voice, spoke some gracious words regarding the friendship existing between the United States and Italy, expressed a wish that their rivalry should ever take the form of benefits conferred upon the human race, and instanced the honoured recipient as the most notable example the world had yet produced of a man bestowing blessings upon all nations in the arts of peace. The eloquent Ambassador concluded by saying that, at the command of his Royal master, it was both his duty and his pleasure to present, and so forth and so forth. Mr. Edison, visibly ill at ease, nevertheless made a suitable reply in the fewest possible words, and the _étalage_ being thus at an end, the noblemen, headed by their Ambassador, slowly retired, myself forming the tail of the procession. Inwardly I deeply sympathised with the French workman who thus unexpectedly found himself confronted by so much magnificence. He cast one wild look about him, but saw that his retreat was cut off unless he displaced some of these gorgeous grandees. He tried then to shrink into himself, and finally stood helpless like one paralysed. In spite of Republican institutions, there is deep down in every Frenchman's heart a respect and awe for official pageants, sumptuously staged and costumed as this one was. But he likes to view it from afar, and supported by his fellows, not thrust incongruously into the midst of things, as was the case with this panic-stricken engineer. As I passed out, I cast a glance over my shoulder at the humble artisan content with a profit of a few francs a day, and at the millionaire inventor opposite him, Edison's face, which during the address had been cold and impassive, reminding me vividly of a bust of Napoleon, was now all aglow with enthusiasm as he turned to his humble visitor. He cried joyfully to the workman:-- 'A minute's demonstration is worth an hour's explanation. I'll call round tomorrow at your shop, about ten o'clock, and show you how to make the thing work.' I lingered in the hall until the Frenchman came out, then, introducing myself to him, asked the privilege of visiting his shop next day at ten. This was accorded with that courtesy which you will always find among the industrial classes of France, and next day I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Edison. During our conversation I complimented him on his invention of the incandescent electric light, and this was the reply that has ever remained in my memory:-- 'It was not an invention, but a discovery. We knew what we wanted; a carbonised tissue, which would withstand the electric current in a vacuum for, say, a thousand hours. If no such tissue existed, then the incandescent light, as we know it, was not possible. My assistants started out to find this tissue, and we simply carbonised everything we could lay our hands on, and ran the current through it in a vacuum. At last we struck the right thing, as we were bound to do if we kept on long enough, and if the thing existed. Patience and hard work will overcome any obstacle.' This belief has been of great assistance to me in my profession. I know the idea is prevalent that a detective arrives at his solutions in a dramatic way through following clues invisible to the ordinary man. This doubtless frequently happens, but, as a general thing, the patience and hard work which Mr. Edison commends is a much safer guide. Very often the following of excellent clues had led me to disaster, as was the case with my unfortunate attempt to solve the mystery of the five hundred diamonds. As I was saying, I never think of the late Lord Chizelrigg without remembering Mr. Edison at the same time, and yet the two were very dissimilar. I suppose Lord Chizelrigg was the most useless man that ever lived, while Edison is the opposite. One day my servant brought in to me a card on which was engraved 'Lord Chizelrigg.' 'Show his lordship in,' I said, and there appeared a young man of perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, well dressed, and of most charming manners, who, nevertheless, began his interview by asking a question such as had never before been addressed to me, and which, if put to a solicitor, or other professional man, would have been answered with some indignation. Indeed, I believe it is a written or unwritten law of the legal profession that the acceptance of such a proposal as Lord Chizelrigg made to me, would, if proved, result in the disgrace and ruin of the lawyer. 'Monsieur Valmont,' began Lord Chizelrigg, 'do you ever take up cases on speculation?' 'On speculation, sir? I do not think I understand you.' His lordship blushed like a girl, and stammered slightly as he attempted an explanation. 'What I mean is, do you accept a case on a contingent fee? That is to say, monsieur--er--well, not to put too fine a point upon it, no results, no pay.' I replied somewhat severely:-- 'Such an offer has never been made to me, and I may say at once that I should be compelled to decline it were I favoured with the opportunity. In the cases submitted to me, I devote my time and attention to their solution. I try to deserve success, but I cannot command it, and as in the interim I must live, I am reluctantly compelled to make a charge for my time, at least. I believe the doctor sends in his bill, though the patient dies.' The young man laughed uneasily, and seemed almost too embarrassed to proceed, but finally he said:-- 'Your illustration strikes home with greater accuracy than probably you imagined when you uttered it. I have just paid my last penny to the physician who attended my late uncle, Lord Chizelrigg, who died six months ago. I am fully aware that the suggestion I made may seem like a reflection upon your skill, or rather, as implying a doubt regarding it. But I should be grieved, monsieur, if you fell into such an error. I could have come here and commissioned you to undertake some elucidation of the strange situation in which I find myself, and I make no doubt you would have accepted the task if your numerous engagements had permitted. Then, if you failed, I should have been unable to pay you, for I am practically bankrupt. My whole desire, therefore, was to make an honest beginning, and to let you know exactly how I stand. If you succeed, I shall be a rich man; if you do not succeed, I shall be what I am now, penniless. Have I made it plain now why I began with a question which you had every right to resent?' 'Perfectly plain, my lord, and your candour does you credit.' I was very much taken with the unassuming manners of the young man, and his evident desire to accept no service under false pretences. When I had finished my sentence the pauper nobleman rose to his feet, and bowed. 'I am very much your debtor, monsieur, for your courtesy in receiving me, and can only beg pardon for occupying your time on a futile quest. I wish you good-morning, monsieur.' 'One moment, my lord,' I rejoined, waving him to his chair again. 'Although I am unprepared to accept a commission on the terms you suggest, I may, nevertheless, be able to offer a hint or two that will prove of service to you. I think I remember the announcement of Lord Chizelrigg's death. He was somewhat eccentric, was he not?' 'Eccentric?' said the young man, with a slight laugh, seating himself again--'well, _rather_!' 'I vaguely remember that he was accredited with the possession of something like twenty thousand acres of land?' 'Twenty-seven thousand, as a matter of fact,' replied my visitor. 'Have you fallen heir to the lands as well as to the title?' 'Oh, yes; the estate was entailed. The old gentleman could not divert it from me if he would, and I rather suspect that fact must have been the cause of some worry to him.' 'But surely, my lord, a man who owns, as one might say, a principality in this wealthy realm of England, cannot be penniless?' Again the young man laughed. 'Well, no,' he replied, thrusting his hand in his pocket and bringing to light a few brown coppers, and a white silver piece. 'I possess enough money to buy some food tonight, but not enough to dine at the Hotel Cecil. You see, it is like this. I belong to a somewhat ancient family, various members of whom went the pace, and mortgaged their acres up to the hilt. I could not raise a further penny on my estates were I to try my hardest, because at the time the money was lent, land was much more valuable than it is today. Agricultural depression, and all that sort of thing, have, if I may put it so, left me a good many thousands worse off than if I had no land at all. Besides this, during my late uncle's life, Parliament, on his behalf, intervened once or twice, allowing him in the first place to cut valuable timber, and in the second place to sell the pictures of Chizelrigg Chase at Christie's for figures which make one's mouth water.' 'And what became of the money?' I asked, whereupon once more this genial nobleman laughed. 'That is exactly what I came up in the lift to learn if Monsieur Valmont could discover.' 'My lord, you interest me,' I said, quite truly, with an uneasy apprehension that I should take up his case after all, for I liked the young man already. His lack of pretence appealed to me, and that sympathy which is so universal among my countrymen enveloped him, as I may say, quite independent of my own will. 'My uncle,' went on Lord Chizelrigg, 'was somewhat of an anomaly in our family. He must have been a reversal to a very, very ancient type; a type of which we have no record. He was as miserly as his forefathers were prodigal. When he came into the title and estate some twenty years ago, he dismissed the whole retinue of servants, and, indeed, was defendant in several cases at law where retainers of our family brought suit against him for wrongful dismissal, or dismissal without a penny compensation in lieu of notice. I am pleased to say he lost all his cases, and when he pleaded poverty, got permission to sell a certain number of heirlooms, enabling him to make compensation, and giving him something on which to live. These heirlooms at auction sold so unexpectedly well, that my uncle acquired a taste, as it were, of what might be done. He could always prove that the rents went to the mortgagees, and that he had nothing on which to exist, so on several occasions he obtained permission from the courts to cut timber and sell pictures, until he denuded the estate and made an empty barn of the old manor house. He lived like any labourer, occupying himself sometimes as a carpenter, sometimes as a blacksmith; indeed, he made a blacksmith's shop of the library, one of the most noble rooms in Britain, containing thousands of valuable books which again and again he applied for permission to sell, but this privilege was never granted to him. I find on coming into the property that my uncle quite persistently evaded the law, and depleted this superb collection, book by book, surreptitiously through dealers in London. This, of course, would have got him into deep trouble if it had been discovered before his death, but now the valuable volumes are gone, and there is no redress. Many of them are doubtless in America, or in museums and collections of Europe.' 'You wish me to trace them, perhaps?' I interpolated. 'Oh, no; they are past praying for. The old man made tens of thousands by the sale of the timber, and other thousands by disposing of the pictures. The house is denuded of its fine old furniture, which was immensely valuable, and then the books, as I have said, must have brought in the revenue of a prince, if he got anything like their value, and you may be sure he was shrewd enough to know their worth. Since the last refusal of the courts to allow him further relief, as he termed it, which was some seven years ago, he had quite evidently been disposing of books and furniture by a private sale, in defiance of the law. At that time I was under age, but my guardians opposed his application to the courts, and demanded an account of the moneys already in his hands. The judges upheld the opposition of my guardians, and refused to allow a further spoliation of the estate, but they did not grant the accounting my guardians asked, because the proceeds of the former sales were entirely at the disposal of my uncle, and were sanctioned by the law to permit him to live as befitted his station. If he lived meagrely instead of lavishly, as my guardians contended, that, the judges said, was his affair, and there the matter ended. 'My uncle took a violent dislike to me on account of this opposition to his last application, although, of course, I had nothing whatever to do with the matter. He lived like a hermit, mostly in the library, and was waited upon by an old man and his wife, and these three were the only inhabitants of a mansion that could comfortably house a hundred. He visited nobody, and would allow no one to approach Chizelrigg Chase. In order that all who had the misfortune to have dealing with him should continue to endure trouble after his death, he left what might be called a will, but which rather may be termed a letter to me. Here is a copy of it. '"MY DEAR TOM,--You will find your fortune between a couple of sheets of paper in the library. '"Your affectionate uncle, '"REGINALD MORAN, EARL OF CHIZELRIGG."' 'I should doubt if that were a legal will,' said I. 'It doesn't need to be,' replied the young man with a smile. 'I am next-of-kin, and heir to everything he possessed, although, of course, he might have given his money elsewhere if he had chosen to do so. Why he did not bequeath it to some institution, I do not know. He knew no man personally except his own servants, whom he misused and starved, but, as he told them, he misused and starved himself, so they had no cause to grumble. He said he was treating them like one of the family. I suppose he thought it would cause me more worry and anxiety if he concealed the money, and put me on the wrong scent, which I am convinced he has done, than to leave it openly to any person or charity.' 'I need not ask if you have searched the library?' 'Searched it? Why, there never was such a search since the world began!' 'Possibly you put the task into incompetent hands?' 'You are hinting, Monsieur Valmont, that I engaged others until my money was gone, then came to you with a speculative proposal. Let me assure you such is not the case. Incompetent hands, I grant you, but the hands were my own. For the past six months I have lived practically as my uncle lived. I have rummaged that library from floor to ceiling. It was left in a frightful state, littered with old newspapers, accounts, and what-not. Then, of course, there were the books remaining in the library, still a formidable collection.' 'Was your uncle a religious man?' 'I could not say. I surmise not. You see, I was unacquainted with him, and never saw him until after his death. I fancy he was not religious, otherwise he could not have acted as he did. Still, he proved himself a man of such twisted mentality that anything is possible.' 'I knew a case once where an heir who expected a large sum of money was bequeathed a family Bible, which he threw into the fire, learning afterwards, to his dismay, that it contained many thousands of pounds in Bank of England notes, the object of the devisor being to induce the legatee to read the good Book or suffer through the neglect of it.' 'I have searched the Scriptures,' said the youthful Earl with a laugh, 'but the benefit has been moral rather than material.' 'Is there any chance that your uncle has deposited his wealth in a bank, and has written a cheque for the amount, leaving it between two leaves of a book?' 'Anything is possible, monsieur, but I think that highly improbable. I have gone through every tome, page by page, and I suspect very few of the volumes have been opened for the last twenty years.' 'How much money do you estimate he accumulated?' 'He must have cleared more than a hundred thousand pounds, but speaking of banking it, I would like to say that my uncle evinced a deep distrust of banks, and never drew a cheque in his life so far as I am aware. All accounts were paid in gold by this old steward, who first brought the receipted bill in to my uncle, and then received the exact amount, after having left the room, and waited until he was rung for, so that he might not learn the repository from which my uncle drew his store. I believe if the money is ever found it will be in gold, and I am very sure that this will was written, if we may call it a will, to put us on the wrong scent.' 'Have you had the library cleared out?' 'Oh, no, it is practically as my uncle left it. I realised that if I were to call in help, it would be well that the newcomer found it undisturbed.' 'You were quite right, my lord. You say you examined all the papers?' 'Yes; so far as that is concerned, the room has been very fairly gone over, but nothing that was in it the day my uncle died has been removed, not even his anvil.' 'His anvil?' 'Yes; I told you he made a blacksmith's shop, as well as bedroom, of the library. It is a huge room, with a great fireplace at one end which formed an excellent forge. He and the steward built the forge in the eastern fireplace of brick and clay, with their own hands, and erected there a second-hand blacksmith's bellows.' 'What work did he do at his forge?' 'Oh, anything that was required about the place. He seems to have been a very expert ironworker. He would never buy a new implement for the garden or the house so long as he could get one second-hand, and he never bought anything second-hand while at his forge he might repair what was already in use. He kept an old cob, on which he used to ride through the park, and he always put the shoes on this cob himself, the steward informs me, so he must have understood the use of blacksmith's tools. He made a carpenter's shop of the chief drawing-room and erected a bench there. I think a very useful mechanic was spoiled when my uncle became an earl.' 'You have been living at the Chase since your uncle died?' 'If you call it living, yes. The old steward and his wife have been looking after me, as they looked after my uncle, and, seeing me day after day, coatless, and covered with dust, I imagine they think me a second edition of the old man.' 'Does the steward know the money is missing?' 'No; no one knows it but myself. This will was left on the anvil, in an envelope addressed to me.' 'Your statement is exceedingly clear, Lord Chizelrigg, but I confess I don't see much daylight through it. Is there a pleasant country around Chizelrigg Chase?' 'Very; especially at this season of the year. In autumn and winter the house is a little draughty. It needs several thousand pounds to put it in repair.' 'Draughts do not matter in the summer. I have been long enough in England not to share the fear of my countrymen for a _courant d'air._ Is there a spare bed in the manor house, or shall I take down a cot with me, or let us say a hammock?' 'Really,' stammered the earl, blushing again, 'you must not think I detailed all these circumstances in order to influence you to take up what may be a hopeless case. I, of course, am deeply interested, and, therefore, somewhat prone to be carried away when I begin a recital of my uncle's eccentricities. If I receive your permission, I will call on you again in a month or two. To tell you the truth, I borrowed a little money from the old steward, and visited London to see my legal advisers, hoping that in the circumstances I may get permission to sell something that will keep me from starvation. When I spoke of the house being denuded, I meant relatively, of course. There are still a good many antiquities which would doubtless bring me in a comfortable sum of money. I have been borne up by the belief that I should find my uncle's gold. Lately, I have been beset by a suspicion that the old gentleman thought the library the only valuable asset left, and for this reason wrote his note, thinking I would be afraid to sell anything from that room. The old rascal must have made a pot of money out of those shelves. The catalogue shows that there was a copy of the first book printed in England by Caxton, and several priceless Shakespeares, as well as many other volumes that a collector would give a small fortune for. All these are gone. I think when I show this to be the case, the authorities cannot refuse me the right to sell something, and, if I get this permission, I shall at once call upon you.' 'Nonsense, Lord Chizelrigg. Put your application in motion, if you like. Meanwhile I beg of you to look upon me as a more substantial banker than your old steward. Let us enjoy a good dinner together at the Cecil tonight, if you will do me the honour to be my guest. Tomorrow we can leave for Chizelrigg Chase. How far is it?' 'About three hours,' replied the young man, becoming as red as a new Queen Anne villa. 'Really, Monsieur Valmont, you overwhelm me with your kindness, but nevertheless I accept your generous offer.' 'Then that's settled. What's the name of the old steward?' 'Higgins.' 'You are certain he has no knowledge of the hiding-place of this treasure?' 'Oh, quite sure. My uncle was not a man to make a confidant of anyone, least of all an old babbler like Higgins.' 'Well, I should like to be introduced to Higgins as a benighted foreigner. That will make him despise me and treat me like a child.' 'Oh, I say,' protested the earl, 'I should have thought you'd lived long enough in England to have got out of the notion that we do not appreciate the foreigner. Indeed, we are the only nation in the world that extends a cordial welcome to him, rich or poor.' '_Certainement_, my lord, I should be deeply disappointed did you not take me at my proper valuation, but I cherish no delusions regarding the contempt with which Higgins will regard me. He will look upon me as a sort of simpleton to whom the Lord had been unkind by not making England my native land. Now, Higgins must be led to believe that I am in his own class; that is, a servant of yours. Higgins and I will gossip over the fire together, should these spring evenings prove chilly, and before two or three weeks are past I shall have learned a great deal about your uncle that you never dreamed of. Higgins will talk more freely with a fellow-servant than with his master, however much he may respect that master, and then, as I am a foreigner, he will babble down to my comprehension, and I shall get details that he never would think of giving to a fellow-countryman.' * * * * * The young earl's modesty in such description of his home as he had given me, left me totally unprepared for the grandeur of the mansion, one corner of which he inhabited. It is such a place as you read of in romances of the Middle Ages; not a pinnacled or turreted French château of that period, but a beautiful and substantial stone manor house of a ruddy colour, whose warm hue seemed to add a softness to the severity of its architecture. It is built round an outer and an inner courtyard and could house a thousand, rather than the hundred with which its owner had accredited it. There are many stone-mullioned windows, and one at the end of the library might well have graced a cathedral. This superb residence occupies the centre of a heavily timbered park, and from the lodge at the gates we drove at least a mile and a half under the grandest avenue of old oaks I have ever seen. It seemed incredible that the owner of all this should actually lack the ready money to pay his fare to town! Old Higgins met us at the station with a somewhat rickety cart, to which was attached the ancient cob that the late earl used to shoe. We entered a noble hall, which probably looked the larger because of the entire absence of any kind of furniture, unless two complete suits of venerable armour which stood on either hand might be considered as furnishing. I laughed aloud when the door was shut, and the sound echoed like the merriment of ghosts from the dim timbered roof above me. 'What are you laughing at?' asked the earl. 'I am laughing to see you put your modern tall hat on that mediaeval helmet.' 'Oh, that's it! Well, put yours on the other. I mean no disrespect to the ancestor who wore this suit, but we are short of the harmless, necessary hat-rack, so I put my topper on the antique helmet, and thrust the umbrella (if I have one) in behind here, and down one of his legs. Since I came in possession, a very crafty-looking dealer from London visited me, and attempted to sound me regarding the sale of these suits of armour. I gathered he would give enough money to keep me in new suits, London made, for the rest of my life, but when I endeavoured to find out if he had had commercial dealings with my prophetic uncle, he became frightened and bolted. I imagine that if I had possessed presence of mind enough to have lured him into one of our most uncomfortable dungeons, I might have learned where some of the family treasures went to. Come up these stairs, Monsieur Valmont, and I will show you your room.' We had lunched on the train coming down, so after a wash in my own room I proceeded at once to inspect the library. It proved, indeed, a most noble apartment, and it had been scandalously used by the old reprobate, its late tenant. There were two huge fireplaces, one in the middle of the north wall and the other at the eastern end. In the latter had been erected a rude brick forge, and beside the forge hung a great black bellows, smoky with usage. On a wooden block lay the anvil, and around it rested and rusted several hammers, large and small. At the western end was a glorious window filled with ancient stained glass, which, as I have said, might have adorned a cathedral. Extensive as the collection of books was, the great size of this chamber made it necessary that only the outside wall should be covered with book cases, and even these were divided by tall windows. The opposite wall was blank, with the exception of a picture here and there, and these pictures offered a further insult to the room, for they were cheap prints, mostly coloured lithographs that had appeared in Christmas numbers of London weekly journals, encased in poverty-stricken frames, hanging from nails ruthlessly driven in above them. The floor was covered with a litter of papers, in some places knee-deep, and in the corner farthest from the forge still stood the bed on which the ancient miser had died. 'Looks like a stable, doesn't it?' commented the earl, when I had finished my inspection. 'I am sure the old boy simply filled it up with this rubbish to give me the trouble of examining it. Higgins tells me that up to within a month before he died the room was reasonably clear of all this muck. Of course it had to be, or the place would have caught fire from the sparks of the forge. The old man made Higgins gather all the papers he could find anywhere about the place, ancient accounts, newspapers, and what not, even to the brown wrapping paper you see, in which parcels came, and commanded him to strew the floor with this litter, because, as he complained, Higgins's boots on the boards made too much noise, and Higgins, who is not in the least of an inquiring mind, accepted this explanation as entirely meeting the case.' Higgins proved to be a garrulous old fellow, who needed no urging to talk about the late earl; indeed, it was almost impossible to deflect his conversation into any other channel. Twenty years' intimacy with the eccentric nobleman had largely obliterated that sense of deference with which an English servant usually approaches his master. An English underling's idea of nobility is the man who never by any possibility works with his hands. The fact that Lord Chizelrigg had toiled at the carpenter's bench; had mixed cement in the drawing-room; had caused the anvil to ring out till midnight, aroused no admiration in Higgins's mind. In addition to this, the ancient nobleman had been penuriously strict in his examination of accounts, exacting the uttermost farthing, so the humble servitor regarded his memory with supreme contempt. I realised before the drive was finished from the station to Chizelrigg Chase that there was little use of introducing me to Higgins as a foreigner and a fellow-servant. I found myself completely unable to understand what the old fellow said. His dialect, was as unknown to me as the Choctaw language would have been, and the young earl was compelled to act as interpreter on the occasions when we set this garrulous talking-machine going. The new Earl of Chizelrigg, with the enthusiasm of a boy, proclaimed himself my pupil and assistant, and said he would do whatever he was told. His thorough and fruitless search of the library had convinced him that the old man was merely chaffing him, as he put it, by leaving such a letter as he had written. His lordship was certain that the money had been hidden somewhere else; probably buried under one of the trees in the park. Of course this was possible, and represented the usual method by which a stupid person conceals treasure, yet I did not think it probable. All conversations with Higgins showed the earl to have been an extremely suspicious man; suspicious of banks, suspicious even of Bank of England notes, suspicious of every person on earth, not omitting Higgins himself. Therefore, as I told his nephew, the miser would never allow the fortune out of his sight and immediate reach. From the first the oddity of the forge and anvil being placed in his bedroom struck me as peculiar, and I said to the young man,-- 'I'll stake my reputation that forge or anvil, or both, contain the secret. You see, the old gentleman worked sometimes till midnight, for Higgins could hear his hammering. If he used hard coal on the forge the fire would last through the night, and being in continual terror of thieves, as Higgins says, barricading the castle every evening before dark as if it were a fortress, he was bound to place the treasure in the most unlikely spot for a thief to get at it. Now, the coal fire smouldered all night long, and if the gold was in the forge underneath the embers, it would be extremely difficult to get at. A robber rummaging in the dark would burn his fingers in more senses than one. Then, as his lordship kept no less than four loaded revolvers under his pillow, all he had to do, if a thief entered his room was to allow the search to go on until the thief started at the forge, then doubtless, as he had the range with reasonable accuracy night or day, he might sit up in bed and blaze away with revolver after revolver. There were twenty-eight shots that could be fired in about double as many seconds, so you see the robber stood little chance in the face of such a fusillade. I propose that we dismantle the forge.' Lord Chizelrigg was much taken by my reasoning, and one morning early we cut down the big bellows, tore it open, found it empty, then took brick after brick from the forge with a crowbar, for the old man had builded better than he knew with Portland cement. In fact, when we cleared away the rubbish between the bricks and the core of the furnace we came upon one cube of cement which was as hard as granite. With the aid of Higgins, and a set of rollers and levers, we managed to get this block out into the park, and attempted to crush it with the sledge-hammers belonging to the forge, in which we were entirely unsuccessful. The more it resisted our efforts, the more certain we became that the coins would be found within it. As this would not be treasure-trove in the sense that the Government might make a claim upon it, there was no particular necessity for secrecy, so we had up a man from the mines near by with drills and dynamite, who speedily shattered the block into a million pieces, more or less. Alas! there was no trace in its debris of 'pay dirt,' as the western miner puts it. While the dynamite expert was on the spot, we induced him to shatter the anvil as well as the block of cement, and then the workman, doubtless thinking the new earl was as insane as the old one had been, shouldered his tools, and went back to his mine. The earl reverted to his former opinion that the gold was concealed in the park, while I held even more firmly to my own belief that the fortune rested in the library. 'It is obvious,' I said to him, 'that if the treasure is buried outside, someone must have dug the hole. A man so timorous and so reticent as your uncle would allow no one to do this but himself. Higgins maintained the other evening that all picks and spades were safely locked up by himself each night in the tool-house. The mansion itself was barricaded with such exceeding care that it would have been difficult for your uncle to get outside even if he wished to do so. Then such a man as your uncle is described to have been would continually desire ocular demonstration that his savings were intact, which would be practically impossible if the gold had found a grave in the park. I propose now that we abandon violence and dynamite, and proceed to an intellectual search of the library.' 'Very well,' replied the young earl, 'but as I have already searched the library very thoroughly, your use of the word "intellectual", Monsieur Valmont, is not in accord with your customary politeness. However, I am with you. 'Tis for you to command, and me to obey.' 'Pardon me, my lord,' I said, 'I used the word "intellectual" in contradistinction to the word "dynamite". It had no reference to your former search. I merely propose that we now abandon the use of chemical reaction, and employ the much greater force of mental activity. Did you notice any writing on the margins of the newspapers you examined?' 'No, I did not.' 'Is it possible that there may have been some communication on the white border of a newspaper?' 'It is, of course, possible.' 'Then will you set yourself to the task of glancing over the margin of every newspaper, piling them away in another room when your scrutiny of each is complete? Do not destroy anything, but we must clear out the library completely. I am interested in the accounts, and will examine them.' It was exasperatingly tedious work, but after several days my assistant reported every margin scanned without result, while I had collected each bill and memorandum, classifying them according to date. I could not get rid of a suspicion that the contrary old beast had written instructions for the finding of the treasure on the back of some account, or on the fly-leaf of a book, and as I looked at the thousands of volumes still left in the library, the prospect of such a patient and minute search appalled me. But I remembered Edison's words to the effect that if a thing exist, search, exhaustive enough, will find it. From the mass of accounts I selected several; the rest I placed in another room, alongside the heap of the earl's newspapers. 'Now,' said I to my helper, 'if it please you, we will have Higgins in, as I wish some explanation of these accounts.' 'Perhaps I can assist you,' suggested his lordship drawing up a chair opposite the table on which I had spread the statements. 'I have lived here for six months, and know as much about things as Higgins does. He is so difficult to stop when once he begins to talk. What is the first account you wish further light upon?' 'To go back thirteen years I find that your uncle bought a second-hand safe in Sheffield. Here is the bill. I consider it necessary to find that safe.' 'Pray forgive me, Monsieur Valmont,' cried the young man, springing to his feet and laughing; 'so heavy an article as a safe should not slip readily from a man's memory, but it did from mine. The safe is empty, and I gave no more thought to it.' Saying this the earl went to one of the bookcases that stood against the wall, pulled it round as if it were a door, books and all, and displayed the front of an iron safe, the door of which he also drew open, exhibiting the usual empty interior of such a receptacle. 'I came on this,' he said, 'when I took down all these volumes. It appears that there was once a secret door leading from the library into an outside room, which has long since disappeared; the walls are very thick. My uncle doubtless caused this door to be taken off its hinges, and the safe placed in the aperture, the rest of which he then bricked up.' 'Quite so,' said I, endeavouring to conceal my disappointment. 'As this strong box was bought second-hand and not made to order, I suppose there can be no secret crannies in it?' 'It looks like a common or garden safe,' reported my assistant, 'but we'll have it out if you say so.' 'Not just now,' I replied; 'we've had enough of dynamiting to make us feel like housebreakers already.' 'I agree with you. What's the next item on the programme?' 'Your uncle's mania for buying things at second-hand was broken in three instances so far as I have been able to learn from a scrutiny of these accounts. About four years ago he purchased a new book from Denny and Co., the well-known booksellers of the Strand. Denny and Co. deal only in new books. Is there any comparatively new volume in the library?' 'Not one.' 'Are you sure of that?' 'Oh, quite; I searched all the literature in the house. What is the name of the volume he bought?' 'That I cannot decipher. The initial letter looks like "M", but the rest is a mere wavy line. I see, however, that it cost twelve-and-sixpence, while the cost of carriage by parcel post was sixpence, which shows it weighed something under four pounds. This, with the price of the book, induces me to think that it was a scientific work, printed on heavy paper and illustrated.' 'I know nothing of it,' said the earl. 'The third account is for wallpaper; twenty-seven rolls of an expensive wallpaper, and twenty-seven rolls of a cheap paper, the latter being just half the price of the former. This wallpaper seems to have been supplied by a tradesman in the station road in the village of Chizelrigg.' 'There's your wallpaper,' cried the youth, waving his hand; 'he was going to paper the whole house, Higgins told me, but got tired after he had finished the library, which took him nearly a year to accomplish, for he worked at it very intermittently, mixing the paste in the boudoir, a pailful at a time as he needed it. It was a scandalous thing to do, for underneath the paper is the most exquisite oak panelling, very plain, but very rich in colour.' I rose and examined the paper on the wall. It was dark brown, and answered the description of the expensive paper on the bill. 'What became of the cheap paper?' I asked. 'I don't know.' 'I think,' said I, 'we are on the track of the mystery. I believe that paper covers a sliding panel or concealed door.' 'It is very likely,' replied the earl. 'I intended to have the paper off, but I had no money to pay a workman, and I am not so industrious as was my uncle. What is your remaining account?' 'The last also pertains to paper, but comes from a firm in Budge Row, London, E.C. He has had, it seems, a thousand sheets of it, and it appears to have been frightfully expensive. This bill is also illegible, but I take it a thousand sheets were supplied, although of course it may have been a thousand quires, which would be a little more reasonable for the price charged, or a thousand reams, which would be exceedingly cheap.' 'I don't know anything about that. Let's turn on Higgins.' Higgins knew nothing of this last order of paper either. The wallpaper mystery he at once cleared up. Apparently the old earl had discovered by experiment that the heavy, expensive wallpaper would not stick to the glossy panelling, so he had purchased a cheaper paper, and had pasted that on first. Higgins said he had gone all over the panelling with a yellowish-white paper, and after that was dry, he pasted over it the more expensive rolls. 'But,' I objected, 'the two papers were bought and delivered at the same time; therefore, he could not have found by experiment that the heavy paper would not stick.' 'I don't think there is much in that,' commented the earl; 'the heavy paper may have been bought first, and found to be unsuitable, and then the coarse, cheap paper bought afterwards. The bill merely shows that the account was sent in on that date. Indeed, as the village of Chizelrigg is but a few miles away, it would have been quite possible for my uncle to have bought the heavy paper in the morning, tried it, and in the afternoon sent for the commoner lot; but in any case, the bill would not have been presented until months after the order, and the two purchases were thus lumped together.' I was forced to confess that this seemed reasonable. Now, about the book ordered from Denny's. Did Higgins remember anything regarding it? It came four years ago. Ah, yes, Higgins did; he remembered it very well indeed. He had come in one morning with the earl's tea, and the old man was sitting up in bed reading his volume with such interest that he was unaware of Higgins's knock, and Higgins himself, being a little hard of hearing, took for granted the command to enter. The earl hastily thrust the book under the pillow, alongside the revolvers, and rated Higgins in a most cruel way for entering the room before getting permission to do so. He had never seen the earl so angry before, and he laid it all to this book. It was after the book had come that the forge had been erected and the anvil bought. Higgins never saw the book again, but one morning, six months before the earl died, Higgins, in raking out the cinders of the forge, found what he supposed was a portion of the book's cover. He believed his master had burnt the volume. Having dismissed Higgins, I said to the earl,-- 'The first thing to be done is to enclose this bill to Denny and Co., booksellers, Strand. Tell them you have lost the volume, and ask them to send another. There is likely someone in the shop who can decipher the illegible writing. I am certain the book will give us a clue. Now, I shall write to Braun and Sons, Budge Row. This is evidently a French company; in fact, the name as connected with paper-making runs in my mind, although I cannot at this moment place it. I shall ask them the use of this paper that they furnished to the late earl.' This was done accordingly, and now, as we thought, until the answers came, we were two men out of work. Yet the next morning, I am pleased to say, and I have always rather plumed myself on the fact, I solved the mystery before replies were received from London. Of course, both the book and the answer of the paper agents, by putting two and two together, would have given us the key. After breakfast, I strolled somewhat aimlessly into the library, whose floor was now strewn merely with brown wrapping paper, bits of string, and all that. As I shuffled among this with my feet, as if tossing aside dead autumn leaves in a forest path, my attention was suddenly drawn to several squares of paper, unwrinkled, and never used for wrapping. These sheets seemed to me strangely familiar. I picked one of them up, and at once the significance of the name Braun and Sons occurred to me. They are paper makers in France, who produce a smooth, very tough sheet, which, dear as it is, proves infinitely cheap compared with the fine vellum it deposed in a certain branch of industry. In Paris, years before, these sheets had given me the knowledge of how a gang of thieves disposed of their gold without melting it. The paper was used instead of vellum in the rougher processes of manufacturing gold-leaf. It stood the constant beating of the hammer nearly as well as the vellum, and here at once there flashed on me the secret of the old man's midnight anvil work. He was transforming his sovereigns into gold-leaf, which must have been of a rude, thick kind, because to produce the gold-leaf of commerce he still needed the vellum as well as a 'clutch' and other machinery, of which we had found no trace. 'My lord,' I called to my assistant; he was at the other end of the room; 'I wish to test a theory on the anvil of your own fresh common sense.' 'Hammer away,' replied the earl, approaching me with his usual good-natured, jocular expression. 'I eliminate the safe from our investigations because it was purchased thirteen years ago, but the buying of the book, of wall covering, of this tough paper from France, all group themselves into a set of incidents occurring within the same month as the purchase of the anvil and the building of the forge; therefore, I think they are related to one another. Here are some sheets of paper he got from Budge Row. Have you ever seen anything like it? Try to tear this sample.' 'It's reasonably tough,' admitted his lordship, fruitlessly endeavouring to rip it apart. 'Yes. It was made in France, and is used in gold beating. Your uncle beat his sovereigns into gold-leaf. You will find that the book from Denny's is a volume on gold beating, and now as I remember that scribbled word which I could not make out, I think the title of the volume is "Metallurgy". It contains, no doubt, a chapter on the manufacture of gold-leaf.' 'I believe you,' said the earl; 'but I don't see that the discovery sets us any further forward. We're now looking for gold-leaf instead of sovereigns.' 'Let's examine this wallpaper,' said I. I placed my knife under a corner of it at the floor, and quite easily ripped off a large section. As Higgins had said, the brown paper was on top, and the coarse, light-coloured paper underneath. But even that came away from the oak panelling as easily as though it hung there from habit, and not because of paste. 'Feel the weight of that,' I cried, handing him the sheet I had torn from the wall. 'By Jove!' said the earl, in a voice almost of awe. I took it from him, and laid it, face downwards, on the wooden table, threw a little water on the back, and with a knife scraped away the porous white paper. Instantly there gleamed up at us the baleful yellow of the gold. I shrugged my shoulders and spread out my hands. The Earl of Chizelrigg laughed aloud and very heartily. 'You see how it is,' I cried. 'The old man first covered the entire wall with this whitish paper. He heated his sovereigns at the forge and beat them out on the anvil, then completed the process rudely between the sheets of this paper from France. Probably he pasted the gold to the wall as soon as he shut himself in for the night, and covered it over with the more expensive paper before Higgins entered in the morning.' We found afterwards, however, that he had actually fastened the thick sheets of gold to the wall with carpet tacks. His lordship netted a trifle over a hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds through my discovery, and I am pleased to pay tribute to the young man's generosity by saying that his voluntary settlement made my bank account swell stout as a City alderman. 5. _The Absent-Minded Coterie_ Some years ago I enjoyed the unique experience of pursuing a man for one crime, and getting evidence against him of another. He was innocent of the misdemeanour, the proof of which I sought, but was guilty of another most serious offence, yet he and his confederates escaped scot-free in circumstances which I now purpose to relate. You may remember that in Rudyard Kipling's story, _Bedalia Herodsfoot_, the unfortunate woman's husband ran the risk of being arrested as a simple drunkard, at a moment when the blood of murder was upon his boots. The case of Ralph Summertrees was rather the reverse of this. The English authorities were trying to fasten upon him a crime almost as important as murder, while I was collecting evidence which proved him guilty of an action much more momentous than that of drunkenness. The English authorities have always been good enough, when they recognise my existence at all, to look down upon me with amused condescension. If today you ask Spenser Hale, of Scotland Yard, what he thinks of Eugène Valmont, that complacent man will put on the superior smile which so well becomes him, and if you are a very intimate friend of his, he may draw down the lid of his right eye, as he replies,-- 'Oh, yes, a very decent fellow, Valmont, but he's a Frenchman,' as if, that said, there was no need of further inquiry. Myself, I like the English detective very much, and if I were to be in a _mêlée_ tomorrow, there is no man I would rather find beside me than Spenser Hale. In any situation where a fist that can fell an ox is desirable, my friend Hale is a useful companion, but for intellectuality, mental acumen, finesse--ah, well! I am the most modest of men, and will say nothing. It would amuse you to see this giant come into my room during an evening, on the bluff pretence that he wishes to smoke a pipe with me. There is the same difference between this good-natured giant and myself as exists between that strong black pipe of his and my delicate cigarette, which I smoke feverishly when he is present, to protect myself from the fumes of his terrible tobacco. I look with delight upon the huge man, who, with an air of the utmost good humour, and a twinkle in his eye as he thinks he is twisting me about his finger, vainly endeavours to obtain a hint regarding whatever case is perplexing him at that moment. I baffle him with the ease that an active greyhound eludes the pursuit of a heavy mastiff, then at last I say to him with a laugh,-- 'Come _mon ami_ Hale, tell me all about it, and I will help you if I can.' Once or twice at the beginning he shook his massive head, and replied the secret was not his. The last time he did this I assured him that what he said was quite correct, and then I related full particulars of the situation in which he found himself, excepting the names, for these he had not mentioned. I had pieced together his perplexity from scraps of conversation in his half-hour's fishing for my advice, which, of course, he could have had for the plain asking. Since that time he has not come to me except with cases he feels at liberty to reveal, and one or two complications I have happily been enabled to unravel for him. But, staunch as Spenser Hale holds the belief that no detective service on earth can excel that centring in Scotland Yard, there is one department of activity in which even he confesses that Frenchmen are his masters, although he somewhat grudgingly qualifies his admission by adding that we in France are constantly allowed to do what is prohibited in England. I refer to the minute search of a house during the owner's absence. If you read that excellent story, entitled _The Purloined Letter_, by Edgar Allan Poe, you will find a record of the kind of thing I mean, which is better than any description I, who have so often taken part in such a search, can set down. Now, these people among whom I live are proud of their phrase, 'The Englishman's house is his castle,' and into that castle even a policeman cannot penetrate without a legal warrant. This may be all very well in theory, but if you are compelled to march up to a man's house, blowing a trumpet, and rattling a snare drum, you need not be disappointed if you fail to find what you are in search of when all the legal restrictions are complied with. Of course, the English are a very excellent people, a fact to which I am always proud to bear testimony, but it must be admitted that for cold common sense the French are very much their superiors. In Paris, if I wish to obtain an incriminating document, I do not send the possessor a _carte postale_ to inform him of my desire, and in this procedure the French people sanely acquiesce. I have known men who, when they go out to spend an evening on the boulevards, toss their bunch of keys to the concierge, saying,-- 'If you hear the police rummaging about while I'm away, pray assist them, with an expression of my distinguished consideration.' I remember while I was chief detective in the service of the French Government being requested to call at a certain hour at the private hotel of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was during the time that Bismarck meditated a second attack upon my country, and I am happy to say that I was then instrumental in supplying the Secret Bureau with documents which mollified that iron man's purpose, a fact which I think entitled me to my country's gratitude, not that I ever even hinted such a claim when a succeeding ministry forgot my services. The memory of a republic, as has been said by a greater man than I, is short. However, all that has nothing to do with the incident I am about to relate. I merely mention the crisis to excuse a momentary forgetfulness on my part which in any other country might have been followed by serious results to myself. But in France--ah, we understand those things, and nothing happened. I am the last person in the world to give myself away, as they say in the great West. I am usually the calm, collected Eugène Valmont whom nothing can perturb, but this was a time of great tension, and I had become absorbed. I was alone with the minister in his private house, and one of the papers he desired was in his bureau at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs; at least, he thought so, and said,-- 'Ah, it is in my desk at the bureau. How annoying! I must send for it!' 'No, Excellency,' I cried, springing up in a self-oblivion the most complete, 'it is here.' Touching the spring of a secret drawer, I opened it, and taking out the document he wished, handed it to him. It was not until I met his searching look, and saw the faint smile on his lips that I realised what I had done. 'Valmont,' he said quietly, 'on whose behalf did you search my house?' 'Excellency,' I replied in tones no less agreeable than his own, 'tonight at your orders I pay a domiciliary visit to the mansion of Baron Dumoulaine, who stands high in the estimation of the President of the French Republic. If either of those distinguished gentlemen should learn of my informal call and should ask me in whose interests I made the domiciliary visit, what is it you wish that I should reply?' 'You should reply, Valmont, that you did it in the interests of the Secret Service.' 'I shall not fail to do so, Excellency, and in answer to your question just now, I had the honour of searching this mansion in the interests of the Secret Service of France.' The Minister for Foreign Affairs laughed; a hearty laugh that expressed no resentment. 'I merely wished to compliment you, Valmont, on the efficiency of your search, and the excellence of your memory. This is indeed the document which I thought was left in my office.' I wonder what Lord Lansdowne would say if Spenser Hale showed an equal familiarity with his private papers! But now that we have returned to our good friend Hale, we must not keep him waiting any longer. * * * * * I well remember the November day when I first heard of the Summertrees case, because there hung over London a fog so thick that two or three times I lost my way, and no cab was to be had at any price. The few cabmen then in the streets were leading their animals slowly along, making for their stables. It was one of those depressing London days which filled me with ennui and a yearning for my own clear city of Paris, where, if we are ever visited by a slight mist, it is at least clean, white vapour, and not this horrible London mixture saturated with suffocating carbon. The fog was too thick for any passer to read the contents bills of the newspapers plastered on the pavement, and as there were probably no races that day the newsboys were shouting what they considered the next most important event--the election of an American President. I bought a paper and thrust it into my pocket. It was late when I reached my flat, and, after dining there, which was an unusual thing for me to do, I put on my slippers, took an easy-chair before the fire, and began to read my evening journal. I was distressed to learn that the eloquent Mr. Bryan had been defeated. I knew little about the silver question, but the man's oratorical powers had appealed to me, and my sympathy was aroused because he owned many silver mines, and yet the price of the metal was so low that apparently he could not make a living through the operation of them. But, of course, the cry that he was a plutocrat, and a reputed millionaire over and over again, was bound to defeat him in a democracy where the average voter is exceedingly poor and not comfortably well-to-do as is the case with our peasants in France. I always took great interest in the affairs of the huge republic to the west, having been at some pains to inform myself accurately regarding its politics, and although, as my readers know, I seldom quote anything complimentary that is said of me, nevertheless, an American client of mine once admitted that he never knew the true inwardness--I think that was the phrase he used--of American politics until he heard me discourse upon them. But then, he added, he had been a very busy man all his life. I had allowed my paper to slip to the floor, for in very truth the fog was penetrating even into my flat, and it was becoming difficult to read, notwithstanding the electric light. My man came in, and announced that Mr. Spenser Hale wished to see me, and, indeed, any night, but especially when there is rain or fog outside, I am more pleased to talk with a friend than to read a newspaper. '_Mon Dieu_, my dear Monsieur Hale, it is a brave man you are to venture out in such a fog as is abroad tonight.' 'Ah, Monsieur Valmont,' said Hale with pride, 'you cannot raise a fog like this in Paris!' 'No. There you are supreme,' I admitted, rising and saluting my visitor, then offering him a chair. 'I see you are reading the latest news,' he said, indicating my newspaper, 'I am very glad that man Bryan is defeated. Now we shall have better times.' I waved my hand as I took my chair again. I will discuss many things with Spenser Hale, but not American politics; he does not understand them. It is a common defect of the English to suffer complete ignorance regarding the internal affairs of other countries. 'It is surely an important thing that brought you out on such a night as this. The fog must be very thick in Scotland Yard.' This delicate shaft of fancy completely missed him, and he answered stolidly,-- 'It's thick all over London, and, indeed, throughout most of England.' 'Yes, it is,' I agreed, but he did not see that either. Still a moment later he made a remark which, if it had come from some people I know, might have indicated a glimmer of comprehension. 'You are a very, very clever man, Monsieur Valmont, so all I need say is that the question which brought me here is the same as that on which the American election was fought. Now, to a countryman, I should be compelled to give further explanation, but to you, monsieur, that will not be necessary.' There are times when I dislike the crafty smile and partial closing of the eyes which always distinguishes Spenser Hale when he places on the table a problem which he expects will baffle me. If I said he never did baffle me, I would be wrong, of course, for sometimes the utter simplicity of the puzzles which trouble him leads me into an intricate involution entirely unnecessary in the circumstances. I pressed my fingertips together, and gazed for a few moments at the ceiling. Hale had lit his black pipe, and my silent servant placed at his elbow the whisky and soda, then tiptoed out of the room. As the door closed my eyes came from the ceiling to the level of Hale's expansive countenance. 'Have they eluded you?' I asked quietly. 'Who?' 'The coiners.' Hale's pipe dropped from his jaw, but he managed to catch it before it reached the floor. Then he took a gulp from the tumbler. 'That was just a lucky shot,' he said. '_Parfaitement_,' I replied carelessly. 'Now, own up, Valmont, wasn't it?' I shrugged my shoulders. A man cannot contradict a guest in his own house. 'Oh, stow that!' cried Hale impolitely. He is a trifle prone to strong and even slangy expressions when puzzled. 'Tell me how you guessed it.' 'It is very simple, _mon ami_. The question on which the American election was fought is the price of silver, which is so low that it has ruined Mr. Bryan, and threatens to ruin all the farmers of the west who possess silver mines on their farms. Silver troubled America, ergo silver troubles Scotland Yard. 'Very well, the natural inference is that someone has stolen bars of silver. But such a theft happened three months ago, when the metal was being unloaded from a German steamer at Southampton, and my dear friend Spenser Hale ran down the thieves very cleverly as they were trying to dissolve the marks off the bars with acid. Now crimes do not run in series, like the numbers in roulette at Monte Carlo. The thieves are men of brains. They say to themselves, "What chance is there successfully to steal bars of silver while Mr. Hale is at Scotland Yard?" Eh, my good friend?' 'Really, Valmont,' said Hale, taking another sip, 'sometimes you almost persuade me that you have reasoning powers.' 'Thanks, comrade. Then it is not a _theft_ of silver we have now to deal with. But the American election was fought on the _price_ of silver. If silver had been high in cost, there would have been no silver question. So the crime that is bothering you arises through the low price of silver, and this suggests that it must be a case of illicit coinage, for there the low price of the metal comes in. You have, perhaps, found a more subtle illegitimate act going forward than heretofore. Someone is making your shillings and your half-crowns from real silver, instead of from baser metal, and yet there is a large profit which has not hitherto been possible through the high price of silver. With the old conditions you were familiar, but this new element sets at nought all your previous formulae. That is how I reasoned the matter out.' 'Well, Valmont, you have hit it. I'll say that for you; you have hit it. There is a gang of expert coiners who are putting out real silver money, and making a clear shilling on the half-crown. We can find no trace of the coiners, but we know the man who is shoving the stuff.' 'That ought to be sufficient,' I suggested. 'Yes, it should, but it hasn't proved so up to date. Now I came tonight to see if you would do one of your French tricks for us, right on the quiet.' 'What French trick, Monsieur Spenser Hale?' I inquired with some asperity, forgetting for the moment that the man invariably became impolite when he grew excited. 'No offence intended,' said this blundering officer, who really is a good-natured fellow, but always puts his foot in it, and then apologises. 'I want someone to go through a man's house without a search warrant, spot the evidence, let me know, and then we'll rush the place before he has time to hide his tracks.' 'Who is this man, and where does he live?' 'His name is Ralph Summertrees, and he lives in a very natty little bijou residence, as the advertisements call it, situated in no less a fashionable street than Park Lane.' 'I see. What has aroused your suspicions against him?' 'Well, you know, that's an expensive district to live in; it takes a bit of money to do the trick. This Summertrees has no ostensible business, yet every Friday he goes to the United Capital Bank in Piccadilly, and deposits a bag of swag, usually all silver coin.' 'Yes, and this money?' 'This money, so far as we can learn, contains a good many of these new pieces which never saw the British Mint.' 'It's not all the new coinage, then?' 'Oh, no, he's a bit too artful for that. You see, a man can go round London, his pockets filled with new coinage five-shilling pieces, buy this, that, and the other, and come home with his change in legitimate coins of the realm--half-crowns, florins, shillings, sixpences, and all that.' 'I see. Then why don't you nab him one day when his pockets are stuffed with illegitimate five-shilling pieces?' 'That could be done, of course, and I've thought of it, but you see, we want to land the whole gang. Once we arrested him, without knowing where the money came from, the real coiners would take flight.' 'How do you know he is not the real coiner himself?' Now poor Hale is as easy to read as a book. He hesitated before answering this question, and looked confused as a culprit caught in some dishonest act. 'You need not be afraid to tell me,' I said soothingly after a pause. 'You have had one of your men in Mr. Summertrees' house, and so learned that he is not the coiner. But your man has not succeeded in getting you evidence to incriminate other people.' 'You've about hit it again, Monsieur Valmont. One of my men has been Summertrees' butler for two weeks, but, as you say, he has found no evidence.' 'Is he still butler?' 'Yes.' 'Now tell me how far you have got. You know that Summertrees deposits a bag of coin every Friday in the Piccadilly bank, and I suppose the bank has allowed you to examine one or two of the bags.' 'Yes, sir, they have, but, you see, banks are very difficult to treat with. They don't like detectives bothering round, and whilst they do not stand out against the law, still they never answer any more questions than they're asked, and Mr. Summertrees has been a good customer at the United Capital for many years.' 'Haven't you found out where the money comes from?' 'Yes, we have; it is brought there night after night by a man who looks like a respectable city clerk, and he puts it into a large safe, of which he holds the key, this safe being on the ground floor, in the dining-room.' 'Haven't you followed the clerk?' 'Yes. He sleeps in the Park Lane house every night, and goes up in the morning to an old curiosity shop in Tottenham Court Road, where he stays all day, returning with his bag of money in the evening.' 'Why don't you arrest and question him?' 'Well, Monsieur Valmont, there is just the same objection to his arrest as to that of Summertrees himself. We could easily arrest both, but we have not the slightest evidence against either of them, and then, although we put the go-betweens in clink, the worst criminals of the lot would escape.' 'Nothing suspicious about the old curiosity shop?' 'No. It appears to be perfectly regular.' 'This game has been going on under your noses for how long?' 'For about six weeks.' 'Is Summertrees a married man?' 'No.' 'Are there any women servants in the house?' 'No, except that three charwomen come in every morning to do up the rooms.' 'Of what is his household comprised?' 'There is the butler, then the valet, and last, the French cook.' 'Ah,' cried I, 'the French cook! This case interests me. So Summertrees has succeeded in completely disconcerting your man? Has he prevented him going from top to bottom of the house?' 'Oh no, he has rather assisted him than otherwise. On one occasion he went to the safe, took out the money, had Podgers--that's my chap's name--help him to count it, and then actually sent Podgers to the bank with the bag of coin.' 'And Podgers has been all over the place?' 'Yes.' 'Saw no signs of a coining establishment?' 'No. It is absolutely impossible that any coining can be done there. Besides, as I tell you, that respectable clerk brings him the money.' 'I suppose you want me to take Podgers' position?' 'Well, Monsieur Valmont, to tell you the truth, I would rather you didn't. Podgers has done everything a man can do, but I thought if you got into the house, Podgers assisting, you might go through it night after night at your leisure.' 'I see. That's just a little dangerous in England. I think I should prefer to assure myself the legitimate standing of being the amiable Podgers' successor. You say that Summertrees has no business?' 'Well, sir, not what you might call a business. He is by the way of being an author, but I don't count that any business.' 'Oh, an author, is he? When does he do his writing?' 'He locks himself up most of the day in his study.' 'Does he come out for lunch?' 'No; he lights a little spirit lamp inside, Podgers tells me, and makes himself a cup of coffee, which he takes with a sandwich or two.' 'That's rather frugal fare for Park Lane.' 'Yes, Monsieur Valmont, it is, but he makes it up in the evening, when he has a long dinner with all them foreign kickshaws you people like, done by his French cook.' 'Sensible man! Well, Hale, I see I shall look forward with pleasure to making the acquaintance of Mr. Summertrees. Is there any restriction on the going and coming of your man Podgers?' 'None in the least. He can get away either night or day.' 'Very good, friend Hale, bring him here tomorrow, as soon as our author locks himself up in his study, or rather, I should say, as soon as the respectable clerk leaves for Tottenham Court Road, which I should guess, as you put it, is about half an hour after his master turns the key of the room in which he writes.' 'You are quite right in that guess, Valmont. How did you hit it?' 'Merely a surmise, Hale. There is a good deal of oddity about that Park Lane house, so it doesn't surprise me in the least that the master gets to work earlier in the morning than the man. I have also a suspicion that Ralph Summertrees knows perfectly well what the estimable Podgers is there for.' 'What makes you think that?' 'I can give no reason except that my opinion of the acuteness of Summertrees has been gradually rising all the while you were speaking, and at the same time my estimate of Podgers' craft has been as steadily declining. However, bring the man here tomorrow, that I may ask him a few questions.' * * * * * Next day, about eleven o'clock, the ponderous Podgers, hat in hand, followed his chief into my room. His broad, impassive, immobile smooth face gave him rather more the air of a genuine butler than I had expected, and this appearance, of course, was enhanced by his livery. His replies to my questions were those of a well-trained servant who will not say too much unless it is made worth his while. All in all, Podgers exceeded my expectations, and really my friend Hale had some justification for regarding him, as he evidently did, a triumph in his line. 'Sit down, Mr. Hale, and you, Podgers.' The man disregarded my invitation, standing like a statue until his chief made a motion; then he dropped into a chair. The English are great on discipline. 'Now, Mr. Hale, I must first congratulate you on the make-up of Podgers. It is excellent. You depend less on artificial assistance than we do in France, and in that I think you are right.' 'Oh, we know a bit over here, Monsieur Valmont,' said Hale, with pardonable pride. 'Now then, Podgers, I want to ask you about this clerk. What time does he arrive in the evening?' 'At prompt six, sir.' 'Does he ring, or let himself in with a latchkey?' 'With a latchkey, sir.' 'How does he carry the money?' 'In a little locked leather satchel, sir, flung over his shoulder.' 'Does he go direct to the dining-room?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Have you seen him unlock the safe and put in the money?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Does the safe unlock with a word or a key?' 'With a key, sir. It's one of the old-fashioned kind.' 'Then the clerk unlocks his leather money bag?' 'Yes, sir.' 'That's three keys used within as many minutes. Are they separate or in a bunch?' 'In a bunch, sir.' 'Did you ever see your master with this bunch of keys?' 'No, sir.' 'You saw him open the safe once, I am told?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Did he use a separate key, or one of a bunch?' Podgers slowly scratched his head, then said,-- 'I don't just remember, sir.' 'Ah, Podgers, you are neglecting the big things in that house. Sure you can't remember?' 'No, sir.' 'Once the money is in and the safe locked up, what does the clerk do?' 'Goes to his room, sir.' 'Where is this room?' 'On the third floor, sir.' 'Where do you sleep?' 'On the fourth floor with the rest of the servants, sir.' 'Where does the master sleep?' 'On the second floor, adjoining his study.' 'The house consists of four stories and a basement, does it?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I have somehow arrived at the suspicion that it is a very narrow house. Is that true?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Does the clerk ever dine with your master?' 'No, sir. The clerk don't eat in the house at all, sir.' 'Does he go away before breakfast?' 'No, sir.' 'No one takes breakfast to his room?' 'No, sir.' 'What time does he leave the house?' 'At ten o'clock, sir.' 'When is breakfast served?' 'At nine o'clock, sir.' 'At what hour does your master retire to his study?' 'At half-past nine, sir.' 'Locks the door on the inside?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Never rings for anything during the day?' 'Not that I know of, sir.' 'What sort of a man is he?' Here Podgers was on familiar ground, and he rattled off a description minute in every particular. 'What I meant was, Podgers, is he silent, or talkative, or does he get angry? Does he seem furtive, suspicious, anxious, terrorised, calm, excitable, or what?' 'Well, sir, he is by way of being very quiet, never has much to say for himself; never saw him angry, or excited.' 'Now, Podgers, you've been at Park Lane for a fortnight or more. You are a sharp, alert, observant man. What happens there that strikes you as unusual?' 'Well, I can't exactly say, sir,' replied Podgers, looking rather helplessly from his chief to myself, and back again. 'Your professional duties have often compelled you to enact the part of butler before, otherwise you wouldn't do it so well. Isn't that the case.' Podgers did not reply, but glanced at his chief. This was evidently a question pertaining to the service, which a subordinate was not allowed to answer. However, Hale said at once,-- 'Certainly. Podgers has been in dozens of places.' 'Well, Podgers, just call to mind some of the other households where you have been employed, and tell me any particulars in which Mr Summertrees' establishment differs from them.' Podgers pondered a long time. 'Well, sir, he do stick to writing pretty close.' 'Ah, that's his profession, you see, Podgers. Hard at it from half-past nine till towards seven, I imagine?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Anything else, Podgers? No matter how trivial.' 'Well, sir, he's fond of reading too; leastways, he's fond of newspapers.' 'When does he read?' 'I've never seen him read 'em, sir; indeed, so far as I can tell, I never knew the papers to be opened, but he takes them all in, sir.' 'What, all the morning papers?' 'Yes, sir, and all the evening papers too.' 'Where are the morning papers placed?' 'On the table in his study, sir.' 'And the evening papers?' 'Well, sir, when the evening papers come, the study is locked. They are put on a side table in the dining-room, and he takes them upstairs with him to his study.' 'This has happened every day since you've been there?' 'Yes, sir.' 'You reported that very striking fact to your chief, of course?' 'No, sir, I don't think I did,' said Podgers, confused. 'You should have done so. Mr. Hale would have known how to make the most of a point so vital.' 'Oh, come now, Valmont,' interrupted Hale, 'you're chaffing us. Plenty of people take in all the papers!' 'I think not. Even clubs and hotels subscribe to the leading journals only. You said _all_, I think, Podgers?' 'Well, _nearly_ all, sir.' 'But which is it? There's a vast difference.' 'He takes a good many, sir.' 'How many?' 'I don't just know, sir.' 'That's easily found out, Valmont,' cried Hale, with some impatience, 'if you think it really important.' 'I think it so important that I'm going back with Podgers myself. You can take me into the house, I suppose, when you return?' 'Oh, yes, sir.' 'Coming back to these newspapers for a moment, Podgers. What is done with them?' 'They are sold to the ragman, sir, once a week.' 'Who takes them from the study?' 'I do, sir.' 'Do they appear to have been read very carefully?' 'Well, no, sir; leastways, some of them seem never to have been opened, or else folded up very carefully again.' 'Did you notice that extracts have been clipped from any of them?' 'No, sir.' 'Does Mr. Summertrees keep a scrapbook?' 'Not that I know of, sir.' 'Oh, the case is perfectly plain,' said I, leaning back in my chair, and regarding the puzzled Hale with that cherubic expression of self-satisfaction which I know is so annoying to him. '_What's_ perfectly plain?' he demanded, more gruffly perhaps than etiquette would have sanctioned. 'Summertrees is no coiner, nor is he linked with any band of coiners.' 'What is he, then?' 'Ah, that opens another avenue of enquiry. For all I know to the contrary, he may be the most honest of men. On the surface it would appear that he is a reasonably industrious tradesman in Tottenham Court Road, who is anxious that there should be no visible connection between a plebian employment and so aristocratic a residence as that in Park Lane.' At this point Spenser Hale gave expression to one of those rare flashes of reason which are always an astonishment to his friends. 'That is nonsense, Monsieur Valmont,' he said, 'the man who is ashamed of the connection between his business and his house is one who is trying to get into Society, or else the women of his family are trying it, as is usually the case. Now Summertrees has no family. He himself goes nowhere, gives no entertainments, and accepts no invitations. He belongs to no club, therefore to say that he is ashamed of his connection with the Tottenham Court Road shop is absurd. He is concealing the connection for some other reason that will bear looking into.' 'My dear Hale, the goddess of Wisdom herself could not have made a more sensible series of remarks. Now, _mon ami_, do you want my assistance, or have you enough to go on with?' 'Enough to go on with? We have nothing more than we had when I called on you last night.' 'Last night, my dear Hale, you supposed this man was in league with coiners. Today you know he is not.' 'I know you _say_ he is not.' I shrugged my shoulders, and raised my eyebrows, smiling at him. 'It is the same thing, Monsieur Hale.' 'Well, of all the conceited--' and the good Hale could get no further. 'If you wish my assistance, it is yours.' 'Very good. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I do.' 'In that case, my dear Podgers, you will return to the residence of our friend Summertrees, and get together for me in a bundle all of yesterday's morning and evening papers, that were delivered to the house. Can you do that, or are they mixed up in a heap in the coal cellar?' 'I can do it, sir. I have instructions to place each day's papers in a pile by itself in case they should be wanted again. There is always one week's supply in the cellar, and we sell the papers of the week before to the rag men.' 'Excellent. Well, take the risk of abstracting one day's journals, and have them ready for me. I will call upon you at half-past three o'clock exactly, and then I want you to take me upstairs to the clerk's bedroom in the third story, which I suppose is not locked during the daytime?' 'No, sir, it is not.' With this the patient Podgers took his departure. Spenser Hale rose when his assistant left. 'Anything further I can do?' he asked. 'Yes; give me the address of the shop in Tottenham Court Road. Do you happen to have about you one of those new five-shilling pieces which you believe to be illegally coined?' He opened his pocket-book, took out the bit of white metal, and handed it to me. 'I'm going to pass this off before evening,' I said, putting it in my pocket, 'and I hope none of your men will arrest me.' 'That's all right,' laughed Hale as he took his leave. At half-past three Podgers was waiting for me, and opened the front door as I came up the steps, thus saving me the necessity of ringing. The house seemed strangely quiet. The French cook was evidently down in the basement, and we had probably all the upper part to ourselves, unless Summertrees was in his study, which I doubted. Podgers led me directly upstairs to the clerk's room on the third floor, walking on tiptoe, with an elephantine air of silence and secrecy combined, which struck me as unnecessary. 'I will make an examination of this room,' I said. 'Kindly wait for me down by the door of the study.' The bedroom proved to be of respectable size when one considers the smallness of the house. The bed was all nicely made up, and there were two chairs in the room, but the usual washstand and swing-mirror were not visible. However, seeing a curtain at the farther end of the room, I drew it aside, and found, as I expected, a fixed lavatory in an alcove of perhaps four feet deep by five in width. As the room was about fifteen feet wide, this left two-thirds of the space unaccounted for. A moment later, I opened a door which exhibited a closet filled with clothes hanging on hooks. This left a space of five feet between the clothes closet and the lavatory. I thought at first that the entrance to the secret stairway must have issued from the lavatory, but examining the boards closely, although they sounded hollow to the knuckles, they were quite evidently plain matchboarding, and not a concealed door. The entrance to the stairway, therefore, must issue from the clothes closet. The right hand wall proved similar to the matchboarding of the lavatory as far as the casual eye or touch was concerned, but I saw at once it was a door. The latch turned out to be somewhat ingeniously operated by one of the hooks which held a pair of old trousers. I found that the hook, if pressed upward, allowed the door to swing outward, over the stairhead. Descending to the second floor, a similar latch let me in to a similar clothes closet in the room beneath. The two rooms were identical in size, one directly above the other, the only difference being that the lower room door gave into the study, instead of into the hall, as was the case with the upper chamber. The study was extremely neat, either not much used, or the abode of a very methodical man. There was nothing on the table except a pile of that morning's papers. I walked to the farther end, turned the key in the lock, and came out upon the astonished Podgers. 'Well, I'm blowed!' exclaimed he. 'Quite so,' I rejoined, 'you've been tiptoeing past an empty room for the last two weeks. Now, if you'll come with me, Podgers, I'll show you how the trick is done.' When he entered the study, I locked the door once more, and led the assumed butler, still tiptoeing through force of habit, up the stair into the top bedroom, and so out again, leaving everything exactly as we found it. We went down the main stair to the front hall, and there Podgers had my parcel of papers all neatly wrapped up. This bundle I carried to my flat, gave one of my assistants some instructions, and left him at work on the papers. * * * * * I took a cab to the foot of Tottenham Court Road, and walked up that street till I came to J. Simpson's old curiosity shop. After gazing at the well-filled windows for some time, I stepped aside, having selected a little iron crucifix displayed behind the pane; the work of some ancient craftsman. I knew at once from Podgers's description that I was waited upon by the veritable respectable clerk who brought the bag of money each night to Park Lane, and who I was certain was no other than Ralph Summertrees himself. There was nothing in his manner differing from that of any other quiet salesman. The price of the crucifix proved to be seven-and-six, and I threw down a sovereign to pay for it. 'Do you mind the change being all in silver, sir?' he asked, and I answered without any eagerness, although the question aroused a suspicion that had begun to be allayed,-- 'Not in the least.' He gave me half-a-crown, three two-shilling pieces, and four separate shillings, all the coins being well-worn silver of the realm, the undoubted inartistic product of the reputable British Mint. This seemed to dispose of the theory that he was palming off illegitimate money. He asked me if I were interested in any particular branch of antiquity, and I replied that my curiosity was merely general, and exceedingly amateurish, whereupon he invited me to look around. This I proceeded to do, while he resumed the addressing and stamping of some wrapped-up pamphlets which I surmised to be copies of his catalogue. He made no attempt either to watch me or to press his wares upon me. I selected at random a little ink-stand, and asked its price. It was two shillings, he said, whereupon I produced my fraudulent five-shilling piece. He took it, gave me the change without comment, and the last doubt about his connection with coiners flickered from my mind. At this moment a young man came in, who, I saw at once, was not a customer. He walked briskly to the farther end of the shop, and disappeared behind a partition which had one pane of glass in it that gave an outlook towards the front door. 'Excuse me a moment,' said the shopkeeper, and he followed the young man into the private office. As I examined the curious heterogeneous collection of things for sale, I heard the clink of coins being poured out on the lid of a desk or an uncovered table, and the murmur of voices floated out to me. I was now near the entrance of the shop, and by a sleight-of-hand trick, keeping the corner of my eye on the glass pane of the private office, I removed the key of the front door without a sound, and took an impression of it in wax, returning the key to its place unobserved. At this moment another young man came in, and walked straight past me into the private office. I heard him say,-- 'Oh, I beg pardon, Mr. Simpson. How are you, Rogers?' 'Hallo, Macpherson,' saluted Rogers, who then came out, bidding good-night to Mr. Simpson, and departed whistling down the street, but not before he had repeated his phrase to another young man entering, to whom he gave the name of Tyrrel. I noted these three names in my mind. Two others came in together, but I was compelled to content myself with memorising their features, for I did not learn their names. These men were evidently collectors, for I heard the rattle of money in every case; yet here was a small shop, doing apparently very little business, for I had been within it for more than half an hour, and yet remained the only customer. If credit were given, one collector would certainly have been sufficient, yet five had come in, and had poured their contributions into the pile Summertrees was to take home with him that night. I determined to secure one of the pamphlets which the man had been addressing. They were piled on a shelf behind the counter, but I had no difficulty in reaching across and taking the one on top, which I slipped into my pocket. When the fifth young man went down the street Summertrees himself emerged, and this time he carried in his hand the well-filled locked leather satchel, with the straps dangling. It was now approaching half-past five, and I saw he was eager to close up and get away. 'Anything else you fancy, sir?' he asked me. 'No, or rather yes and no. You have a very interesting collection here, but it's getting so dark I can hardly see.' 'I close at half-past five, sir.' 'Ah, in that case,' I said, consulting my watch, 'I shall be pleased to call some other time.' 'Thank you, sir,' replied Summertrees quietly, and with that I took my leave. From the corner of an alley on the other side of the street I saw him put up the shutters with his own hands, then he emerged with overcoat on, and the money satchel slung across his shoulder. He locked the door, tested it with his knuckles, and walked down the street, carrying under one arm the pamphlets he had been addressing. I followed him some distance, saw him drop the pamphlets into the box at the first post office he passed, and walk rapidly towards his house in Park Lane. When I returned to my flat and called in my assistant, he said,-- 'After putting to one side the regular advertisements of pills, soap, and what not, here is the only one common to all the newspapers, morning and evening alike. The advertisements are not identical, sir, but they have two points of similarity, or perhaps I should say three. They all profess to furnish a cure for absent-mindedness; they all ask that the applicant's chief hobby shall be stated, and they all bear the same address: Dr. Willoughby, in Tottenham Court Road.' 'Thank you,' said I, as he placed the scissored advertisements before me. I read several of the announcements. They were all small, and perhaps that is why I had never noticed one of them in the newspapers, for certainly they were odd enough. Some asked for lists of absent-minded men, with the hobbies of each, and for these lists, prizes of from one shilling to six were offered. In other clippings Dr. Willoughby professed to be able to cure absent-mindedness. There were no fees, and no treatment, but a pamphlet would be sent, which, if it did not benefit the receiver, could do no harm. The doctor was unable to meet patients personally, nor could he enter into correspondence with them. The address was the same as that of the old curiosity shop in Tottenham Court Road. At this juncture I pulled the pamphlet from my pocket, and saw it was entitled _Christian Science and Absent-Mindedness_, by Dr. Stamford Willoughby, and at the end of the article was the statement contained in the advertisements, that Dr Willoughby would neither see patients nor hold any correspondence with them. I drew a sheet of paper towards me, wrote to Dr. Willoughby alleging that I was a very absent-minded man, and would be glad of his pamphlet, adding that my special hobby was the collecting of first editions. I then signed myself, 'Alport Webster, Imperial Flats, London, W.' I may here explain that it is often necessary for me to see people under some other name than the well-known appellation of Eugène Valmont. There are two doors to my flat, and on one of these is painted, 'Eugène Valmont'; on the other there is a receptacle, into which can be slipped a sliding panel bearing any _nom de guerre_ I choose. The same device is arranged on the ground floor, where the names of all the occupants of the building appear on the right-hand wall. I sealed, addressed, and stamped my letter, then told my man to put out the name of Alport Webster, and if I did not happen to be in when anyone called upon that mythical person, he was to make an appointment for me. It was nearly six o'clock next afternoon when the card of Angus Macpherson was brought in to Mr. Alport Webster. I recognised the young man at once as the second who had entered the little shop carrying his tribute to Mr. Simpson the day before. He held three volumes under his arm, and spoke in such a pleasant, insinuating sort of way, that I knew at once he was an adept in his profession of canvasser. 'Will you be seated, Mr. Macpherson? In what can I serve you?' He placed the three volumes, backs upward, on my table. 'Are you interested at all in first editions, Mr. Webster?' 'It is the one thing I am interested in,' I replied; 'but unfortunately they often run into a lot of money.' 'That is true,' said Macpherson sympathetically, 'and I have here three books, one of which is an exemplification of what you say. This one costs a hundred pounds. The last copy that was sold by auction in London brought a hundred and twenty-three pounds. This next one is forty pounds, and the third ten pounds. At these prices I am certain you could not duplicate three such treasures in any book shop in Britain.' I examined them critically, and saw at once that what he said was true. He was still standing on the opposite side of the table. 'Please take a chair, Mr. Macpherson. Do you mean to say you go round London with a hundred and fifty pounds worth of goods under your arm in this careless way?' The young man laughed. 'I run very little risk, Mr. Webster. I don't suppose anyone I meet imagines for a moment there is more under my arm than perhaps a trio of volumes I have picked up in the fourpenny box to take home with me.' I lingered over the volume for which he asked a hundred pounds, then said, looking across at him:-- 'How came you to be possessed of this book, for instance?' He turned upon me a fine, open countenance, and answered without hesitation in the frankest possible manner,-- 'I am not in actual possession of it, Mr. Webster. I am by way of being a connoisseur in rare and valuable books myself, although, of course, I have little money with which to indulge in the collection of them. I am acquainted, however, with the lovers of desirable books in different quarters of London. These three volumes, for instance, are from the library of a private gentleman in the West End. I have sold many books to him, and he knows I am trustworthy. He wishes to dispose of them at something under their real value, and has kindly allowed me to conduct the negotiation. I make it my business to find out those who are interested in rare books, and by such trading I add considerably to my income.' 'How, for instance, did you learn that I was a bibliophile?' Mr. Macpherson laughed genially. 'Well, Mr. Webster, I must confess that I chanced it. I do that very often. I take a flat like this, and send in my card to the name on the door. If I am invited in, I ask the occupant the question I asked you just now: "Are you interested in rare editions?" If he says no, I simply beg pardon and retire. If he says yes, then I show my wares.' 'I see,' said I, nodding. What a glib young liar he was, with that innocent face of his, and yet my next question brought forth the truth. 'As this is the first time you have called upon me, Mr. Macpherson, you have no objection to my making some further inquiry, I suppose. Would you mind telling me the name of the owner of these books in the West End?' 'His name is Mr. Ralph Summertrees, of Park Lane.' 'Of Park Lane? Ah, indeed.' 'I shall be glad to leave the books with you, Mr. Webster, and if you care to make an appointment with Mr. Summertrees, I am sure he will not object to say a word in my favour.' 'Oh, I do not in the least doubt it, and should not think of troubling the gentleman.' 'I was going to tell you,' went on the young man, 'that I have a friend, a capitalist, who, in a way, is my supporter; for, as I said, I have little money of my own. I find it is often inconvenient for people to pay down any considerable sum. When, however, I strike a bargain, my capitalist buys the book, and I make an arrangement with my customer to pay a certain amount each week, and so even a large purchase is not felt, as I make the instalments small enough to suit my client.' 'You are employed during the day, I take it?' 'Yes, I am a clerk in the City.' Again we were in the blissful realms of fiction! 'Suppose I take this book at ten pounds, what instalment should I have to pay each week?' 'Oh, what you like, sir. Would five shillings be too much?' 'I think not.' 'Very well, sir, if you pay me five shillings now, I will leave the book with you, and shall have pleasure in calling this day week for the next instalment.' I put my hand into my pocket, and drew out two half-crowns, which I passed over to him. 'Do I need to sign any form or undertaking to pay the rest?' The young man laughed cordially. 'Oh, no, sir, there is no formality necessary. You see, sir, this is largely a labour of love with me, although I don't deny I have my eye on the future. I am getting together what I hope will be a very valuable connection with gentlemen like yourself who are fond of books, and I trust some day that I may be able to resign my place with the insurance company and set up a choice little business of my own, where my knowledge of values in literature will prove useful.' And then, after making a note in a little book he took from his pocket, he bade me a most graceful good-bye and departed, leaving me cogitating over what it all meant. Next morning two articles were handed to me. The first came by post and was a pamphlet on _Christian Science and Absent-Mindedness_, exactly similar to the one I had taken away from the old curiosity shop; the second was a small key made from my wax impression that would fit the front door of the same shop--a key fashioned by an excellent anarchist friend of mine in an obscure street near Holborn. That night at ten o'clock I was inside the old curiosity shop, with a small storage battery in my pocket, and a little electric glow-lamp at my buttonhole, a most useful instrument for either burglar or detective. I had expected to find the books of the establishment in a safe, which, if it was similar to the one in Park Lane, I was prepared to open with the false keys in my possession or to take an impression of the keyhole and trust to my anarchist friend for the rest. But to my amazement I discovered all the papers pertaining to the concern in a desk which was not even locked. The books, three in number, were the ordinary day book, journal, and ledger referring to the shop; book-keeping of the older fashion; but in a portfolio lay half a dozen foolscap sheets, headed 'Mr. Rogers's List', 'Mr. Macpherson's', 'Mr Tyrrel's', the names I had already learned, and three others. These lists contained in the first column, names; in the second column, addresses; in the third, sums of money; and then in the small, square places following were amounts ranging from two-and-sixpence to a pound. At the bottom of Mr. Macpherson's list was the name Alport Webster, Imperial Flats, £10; then in the small, square place, five shillings. These six sheets, each headed by a canvasser's name, were evidently the record of current collections, and the innocence of the whole thing was so apparent that if it were not for my fixed rule never to believe that I am at the bottom of any case until I have come on something suspicious, I would have gone out empty-handed as I came in. The six sheets were loose in a thin portfolio, but standing on a shelf above the desk were a number of fat volumes, one of which I took down, and saw that it contained similar lists running back several years. I noticed on Mr. Macpherson's current list the name of Lord Semptam, an eccentric old nobleman whom I knew slightly. Then turning to the list immediately before the current one the name was still there; I traced it back through list after list until I found the first entry, which was no less than three years previous, and there Lord Semptam was down for a piece of furniture costing fifty pounds, and on that account he had paid a pound a week for more than three years, totalling a hundred and seventy pounds at the least, and instantly the glorious simplicity of the scheme dawned upon me, and I became so interested in the swindle that I lit the gas, fearing my little lamp would be exhausted before my investigation ended, for it promised to be a long one. In several instances the intended victim proved shrewder than old Simpson had counted upon, and the word 'Settled' had been written on the line carrying the name when the exact number of instalments was paid. But as these shrewd persons dropped out, others took their places, and Simpson's dependence on their absent-mindedness seemed to be justified in nine cases out of ten. His collectors were collecting long after the debt had been paid. In Lord Semptam's case, the payment had evidently become chronic, and the old man was giving away his pound a week to the suave Macpherson two years after his debt had been liquidated. From the big volume I detached the loose leaf, dated 1893, which recorded Lord Semptam's purchase of a carved table for fifty pounds, and on which he had been paying a pound a week from that time to the date of which I am writing, which was November, 1896. This single document taken from the file of three years previous, was not likely to be missed, as would have been the case if I had selected a current sheet. I nevertheless made a copy of the names and addresses of Macpherson's present clients; then, carefully placing everything exactly as I had found it, I extinguished the gas, and went out of the shop, locking the door behind me. With the 1893 sheet in my pocket I resolved to prepare a pleasant little surprise for my suave friend Macpherson when he called to get his next instalment of five shillings. Late as was the hour when I reached Trafalgar Square, I could not deprive myself of the felicity of calling on Mr. Spenser Hale, who I knew was then on duty. He never appeared at his best during office hours, because officialism stiffened his stalwart frame. Mentally he was impressed with the importance of his position, and added to this he was not then allowed to smoke his big, black pipe and terrible tobacco. He received me with the curtness I had been taught to expect when I inflicted myself upon him at his office. He greeted me abruptly with,-- 'I say, Valmont, how long do you expect to be on this job?' 'What job?' I asked mildly. 'Oh, you know what I mean: the Summertrees affair.' 'Oh, _that_!' I exclaimed, with surprise. 'The Summertrees case is already completed, of course. If I had known you were in a hurry, I should have finished up everything yesterday, but as you and Podgers, and I don't know how many more, have been at it sixteen or seventeen days, if not longer, I thought I might venture to take as many hours, as I am working entirely alone. You said nothing about haste, you know.' 'Oh, come now, Valmont, that's a bit thick. Do you mean to say you have already got evidence against the man?' 'Evidence absolute and complete.' 'Then who are the coiners?' 'My most estimable friend, how often have I told you not to jump at conclusions? I informed you when you first spoke to me about the matter that Summertrees was neither a coiner nor a confederate of coiners. I secured evidence sufficient to convict him of quite another offence, which is probably unique in the annals of crime. I have penetrated the mystery of the shop, and discovered the reason for all those suspicious actions which quite properly set you on his trail. Now I wish you to come to my flat next Wednesday night at a quarter to six, prepared to make an arrest.' 'I must know who I am to arrest, and on what counts.' 'Quite so, _mon ami_ Hale; I did not say you were to make an arrest, but merely warned you to be prepared. If you have time now to listen to the disclosures, I am quite at your service. I promise you there are some original features in the case. If, however, the present moment is inopportune, drop in on me at your convenience, previously telephoning so that you may know whether I am there or not, and thus your valuable time will not be expended purposelessly.' With this I presented to him my most courteous bow, and although his mystified expression hinted a suspicion that he thought I was chaffing him, as he would call it, official dignity dissolved somewhat, and he intimated his desire to hear all about it then and there. I had succeeded in arousing my friend Hale's curiosity. He listened to the evidence with perplexed brow, and at last ejaculated he would be blessed. 'This young man,' I said, in conclusion, 'will call upon me at six on Wednesday afternoon, to receive his second five shillings. I propose that you, in your uniform, shall be seated there with me to receive him, and I am anxious to study Mr. Macpherson's countenance when he realises he has walked in to confront a policeman. If you will then allow me to cross-examine him for a few moments, not after the manner of Scotland Yard, with a warning lest he incriminate himself, but in the free and easy fashion we adopt in Paris, I shall afterwards turn the case over to you to be dealt with at your discretion.' 'You have a wonderful flow of language, Monsieur Valmont,' was the officer's tribute to me. 'I shall be on hand at a quarter to six on Wednesday.' 'Meanwhile,' said I, 'kindly say nothing of this to anyone. We must arrange a complete surprise for Macpherson. That is essential. Please make no move in the matter at all until Wednesday night.' Spenser Hale, much impressed, nodded acquiescence, and I took a polite leave of him. * * * * * The question of lighting is an important one in a room such as mine, and electricity offers a good deal of scope to the ingenious. Of this fact I have taken full advantage. I can manipulate the lighting of my room so that any particular spot is bathed in brilliancy, while the rest of the space remains in comparative gloom, and I arranged the lamps so that the full force of their rays impinged against the door that Wednesday evening, while I sat on one side of the table in semi-darkness and Hale sat on the other, with a light beating down on him from above which gave him the odd, sculptured look of a living statue of Justice, stern and triumphant. Anyone entering the room would first be dazzled by the light, and next would see the gigantic form of Hale in the full uniform of his order. When Angus Macpherson was shown into this room he was quite visibly taken aback, and paused abruptly on the threshold, his gaze riveted on the huge policeman. I think his first purpose was to turn and run, but the door closed behind him, and he doubtless heard, as we all did, the sound of the bolt being thrust in its place, thus locking him in. 'I--I beg your pardon,' he stammered, 'I expected to meet Mr. Webster.' As he said this, I pressed the button under my table, and was instantly enshrouded with light. A sickly smile overspread the countenance of Macpherson as he caught sight of me, and he made a very creditable attempt to carry off the situation with nonchalance. 'Oh, there you are, Mr. Webster; I did not notice you at first.' It was a tense moment. I spoke slowly and impressively. 'Sir, perhaps you are not unacquainted with the name of Eugène Valmont.' He replied brazenly,-- 'I am sorry to say, sir, I never heard of the gentleman before.' At this came a most inopportune 'Haw-haw' from that blockhead Spenser Hale, completely spoiling the dramatic situation I had elaborated with such thought and care. It is little wonder the English possess no drama, for they show scant appreciation of the sensational moments in life. 'Haw-haw,' brayed Spenser Hale, and at once reduced the emotional atmosphere to a fog of commonplace. However, what is a man to do? He must handle the tools with which it pleases Providence to provide him. I ignored Hale's untimely laughter. 'Sit down, sir,' I said to Macpherson, and he obeyed. 'You have called on Lord Semptam this week,' I continued sternly. 'Yes, sir.' 'And collected a pound from him?' 'Yes, sir.' 'In October, 1893, you sold Lord Semptam a carved antique table for fifty pounds?' 'Quite right, sir.' 'When you were here last week you gave me Ralph Summertrees as the name of a gentleman living in Park Lane. You knew at the time that this man was your employer?' Macpherson was now looking fixedly at me, and on this occasion made no reply. I went on calmly:-- 'You also knew that Summertrees, of Park Lane, was identical with Simpson, of Tottenham Court Road?' 'Well, sir,' said Macpherson, 'I don't exactly see what you're driving at, but it's quite usual for a man to carry on a business under an assumed name. There is nothing illegal about that.' 'We will come to the illegality in a moment, Mr. Macpherson. You, and Rogers, and Tyrrel, and three others, are confederates of this man Simpson.' 'We are in his employ; yes, sir, but no more confederates than clerks usually are.' 'I think, Mr. Macpherson, I have said enough to show you that the game is, what you call, up. You are now in the presence of Mr. Spenser Hale, from Scotland Yard, who is waiting to hear your confession.' Here the stupid Hale broke in with his-- 'And remember, sir, that anything you say will be--' 'Excuse me, Mr. Hale,' I interrupted hastily, 'I shall turn over the case to you in a very few moments, but I ask you to remember our compact, and to leave it for the present entirely in my hands. Now, Mr Macpherson, I want your confession, and I want it at once.' 'Confession? Confederates?' protested Macpherson with admirably simulated surprise. 'I must say you use extraordinary terms, Mr--Mr--What did you say the name was?' 'Haw-haw,' roared Hale. 'His name is Monsieur Valmont.' 'I implore you, Mr. Hale, to leave this man to me for a very few moments. Now, Macpherson, what have you to say in your defence?' 'Where nothing criminal has been alleged, Monsieur Valmont, I see no necessity for defence. If you wish me to admit that somehow you have acquired a number of details regarding our business, I am perfectly willing to do so, and to subscribe to their accuracy. If you will be good enough to let me know of what you complain, I shall endeavour to make the point clear to you if I can. There has evidently been some misapprehension, but for the life of me, without further explanation, I am as much in a fog as I was on my way coming here, for it is getting a little thick outside.' Macpherson certainly was conducting himself with great discretion, and presented, quite unconsciously, a much more diplomatic figure than my friend, Spenser Hale, sitting stiffly opposite me. His tone was one of mild expostulation, mitigated by the intimation that all misunderstanding speedily would be cleared away. To outward view he offered a perfect picture of innocence, neither protesting too much nor too little. I had, however, another surprise in store for him, a trump card, as it were, and I played it down on the table. 'There!' I cried with vim, 'have you ever seen that sheet before?' He glanced at it without offering to take it in his hand. 'Oh, yes,' he said, 'that has been abstracted from our file. It is what I call my visiting list.' 'Come, come, sir,' I cried sternly, 'you refuse to confess, but I warn you we know all about it. You never heard of Dr. Willoughby, I suppose?' 'Yes, he is the author of the silly pamphlet on Christian Science.' 'You are in the right, Mr. Macpherson; on Christian Science and Absent-Mindedness.' 'Possibly. I haven't read it for a long while.' 'Have you ever met this learned doctor, Mr. Macpherson?' 'Oh, yes. Dr. Willoughby is the pen-name of Mr. Summertrees. He believes in Christian Science and that sort of thing, and writes about it.' 'Ah, really. We are getting your confession bit by bit, Mr. Macpherson. I think it would be better to be quite frank with us.' 'I was just going to make the same suggestion to you, Monsieur Valmont. If you will tell me in a few words exactly what is your charge against either Mr. Summertrees or myself, I will know then what to say.' 'We charge you, sir, with obtaining money under false pretences, which is a crime that has landed more than one distinguished financier in prison.' Spenser Hale shook his fat forefinger at me, and said,-- 'Tut, tut, Valmont; we mustn't threaten, we mustn't threaten, you know;' but I went on without heeding him. 'Take for instance, Lord Semptam. You sold him a table for fifty pounds, on the instalment plan. He was to pay a pound a week, and in less than a year the debt was liquidated. But he is an absent-minded man, as all your clients are. That is why you came to me. I had answered the bogus Willoughby's advertisement. And so you kept on collecting and collecting for something more than three years. Now do you understand the charge?' Mr. Macpherson's head during this accusation was held slightly inclined to one side. At first his face was clouded by the most clever imitation of anxious concentration of mind I had ever seen, and this was gradually cleared away by the dawn of awakening perception. When I had finished, an ingratiating smile hovered about his lips. 'Really, you know,' he said, 'that is rather a capital scheme. The absent-minded league, as one might call them. Most ingenious. Summertrees, if he had any sense of humour, which he hasn't, would be rather taken by the idea that his innocent fad for Christian Science had led him to be suspected of obtaining money under false pretences. But, really, there are no pretensions about the matter at all. As I understand it, I simply call and receive the money through the forgetfulness of the persons on my list, but where I think you would have both Summertrees and myself, if there was anything in your audacious theory, would be an indictment for conspiracy. Still, I quite see how the mistake arises. You have jumped to the conclusion that we sold nothing to Lord Semptam except that carved table three years ago. I have pleasure in pointing out to you that his lordship is a frequent customer of ours, and has had many things from us at one time or another. Sometimes he is in our debt; sometimes we are in his. We keep a sort of running contract with him by which he pays us a pound a week. He and several other customers deal on the same plan, and in return for an income that we can count upon, they get the first offer of anything in which they are supposed to be interested. As I have told you, we call these sheets in the office our visiting lists, but to make the visiting lists complete you need what we term our encyclopaedia. We call it that because it is in so many volumes; a volume for each year, running back I don't know how long. You will notice little figures here from time to time above the amount stated on this visiting list. These figures refer to the page of the encyclopaedia for the current year, and on that page is noted the new sale, and the amount of it, as it might be set down, say, in a ledger.' 'That is a very entertaining explanation, Mr. Macpherson. I suppose this encyclopaedia, as you call it, is in the shop at Tottenham Court Road?' 'Oh, no, sir. Each volume of the encyclopaedia is self-locking. These books contain the real secret of our business, and they are kept in the safe at Mr. Summertrees' house in Park Lane. Take Lord Semptam's account, for instance. You will find in faint figures under a certain date, 102. If you turn to page 102 of the encyclopaedia for that year, you will then see a list of what Lord Semptam has bought, and the prices he was charged for them. It is really a very simple matter. If you will allow me to use your telephone for a moment, I will ask Mr Summertrees, who has not yet begun dinner, to bring with him here the volume for 1893, and, within a quarter of an hour, you will be perfectly satisfied that everything is quite legitimate.' I confess that the young man's naturalness and confidence staggered me, the more so as I saw by the sarcastic smile on Hale's lips that he did not believe a single word spoken. A portable telephone stood on the table, and as Macpherson finished his explanation, he reached over and drew it towards him. Then Spenser Hale interfered. 'Excuse _me_,' he said, 'I'll do the telephoning. What is the call number of Mr. Summertrees?' '140 Hyde Park.' Hale at once called up Central, and presently was answered from Park Lane. We heard him say,-- 'Is this the residence of Mr. Summertrees? Oh, is that you, Podgers? Is Mr. Summertrees in? Very well. This is Hale. I am in Valmont's flat--Imperial Flats--you know. Yes, where you went with me the other day. Very well, go to Mr. Summertrees, and say to him that Mr Macpherson wants the encyclopaedia for 1893. Do you get that? Yes, encyclopaedia. Oh, he'll understand what it is. Mr. Macpherson. No, don't mention my name at all. Just say Mr. Macpherson wants the encyclopaedia for the year 1893, and that you are to bring it. Yes, you may tell him that Mr. Macpherson is at Imperial Flats, but don't mention my name at all. Exactly. As soon as he gives you the book, get into a cab, and come here as quickly as possible with it. If Summertrees doesn't want to let the book go, then tell him to come with you. If he won't do that, place him under arrest, and bring both him and the book here. All right. Be as quick as you can; we're waiting.' Macpherson made no protest against Hale's use of the telephone; he merely sat back in his chair with a resigned expression on his face which, if painted on canvas, might have been entitled 'The Falsely Accused.' When Hale rang off, Macpherson said,-- 'Of course you know your own business best, but if your man arrests Summertrees, he will make you the laughing-stock of London. There is such a thing as unjustifiable arrest, as well as getting money under false pretences, and Mr. Summertrees is not the man to forgive an insult. And then, if you will allow me to say so, the more I think over your absent-minded theory, the more absolutely grotesque it seems, and if the case ever gets into the newspapers, I am sure, Mr Hale, you'll experience an uncomfortable half-hour with your chiefs at Scotland Yard.' 'I'll take the risk of that, thank you,' said Hale stubbornly. 'Am I to consider myself under arrest?' inquired the young man. 'No, sir.' 'Then, if you will pardon me, I shall withdraw. Mr. Summertrees will show you everything you wish to see in his books, and can explain his business much more capably than I, because he knows more about it; therefore, gentlemen, I bid you good-night.' 'No you don't. Not just yet awhile,' exclaimed Hale, rising to his feet simultaneously with the young man. 'Then I _am_ under arrest,' protested Macpherson. 'You're not going to leave this room until Podgers brings that book.' 'Oh, very well,' and he sat down again. And now, as talking is dry work, I set out something to drink, a box of cigars, and a box of cigarettes. Hale mixed his favourite brew, but Macpherson, shunning the wine of his country, contented himself with a glass of plain mineral water, and lit a cigarette. Then he awoke my high regard by saying pleasantly as if nothing had happened,-- 'While we are waiting, Monsieur Valmont, may I remind you that you owe me five shillings?' I laughed, took the coin from my pocket, and paid him, whereupon he thanked me. 'Are you connected with Scotland Yard, Monsieur Valmont?' asked Macpherson, with the air of a man trying to make conversation to bridge over a tedious interval; but before I could reply, Hale blurted out,-- 'Not likely!' 'You have no official standing as a detective, then, Monsieur Valmont?' 'None whatever,' I replied quickly, thus getting in my oar ahead of Hale. 'This is a loss to our country,' pursued this admirable young man, with evident sincerity. I began to see I could make a good deal of so clever a fellow if he came under my tuition. 'The blunders of our police', he went on, 'are something deplorable. If they would but take lessons in strategy, say, from France, their unpleasant duties would be so much more acceptably performed, with much less discomfort to their victims.' 'France,' snorted Hale in derision, 'why, they call a man guilty there until he's proven innocent.' 'Yes, Mr. Hale, and the same seems to be the case in Imperial Flats. You have quite made up your mind that Mr. Summertrees is guilty, and will not be content until he proves his innocence. I venture to predict that you will hear from him before long in a manner that may astonish you.' Hale grunted and looked at his watch. The minutes passed very slowly as we sat there smoking, and at last even I began to get uneasy. Macpherson, seeing our anxiety, said that when he came in the fog was almost as thick as it had been the week before, and that there might be some difficulty in getting a cab. Just as he was speaking the door was unlocked from the outside, and Podgers entered, bearing a thick volume in his hand. This he gave to his superior, who turned over its pages in amazement, and then looked at the back, crying,-- '_Encyclopaedia of Sport_, 1893! What sort of a joke is this, Mr. Macpherson?' There was a pained look on Mr. Macpherson's face as he reached forward and took the book. He said with a sigh,-- 'If you had allowed me to telephone, Mr. Hale, I should have made it perfectly plain to Summertrees what was wanted. I might have known this mistake was liable to occur. There is an increasing demand for out-of-date books of sport, and no doubt Mr. Summertrees thought this was what I meant. There is nothing for it but to send your man back to Park Lane and tell Mr. Summertrees that what we want is the locked volume of accounts for 1893, which we call the encyclopaedia. Allow me to write an order that will bring it. Oh, I'll show you what I have written before your man takes it,' he said, as Hale stood ready to look over his shoulder. On my notepaper he dashed off a request such as he had outlined, and handed it to Hale, who read it and gave it to Podgers. 'Take that to Summertrees, and get back as quickly as possible. Have you a cab at the door?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Is it foggy outside?' 'Not so much, sir, as it was an hour ago. No difficulty about the traffic now, sir.' 'Very well, get back as soon as you can.' Podgers saluted, and left with the book under his arm. Again the door was locked, and again we sat smoking in silence until the stillness was broken by the tinkle of the telephone. Hale put the receiver to his ear. 'Yes, this is the Imperial Flats. Yes. Valmont. Oh, yes; Macpherson is here. What? Out of what? Can't hear you. Out of print. What, the encyclopaedia's out of print? Who is that speaking? Dr. Willoughby; thanks.' Macpherson rose as if he would go to the telephone, but instead (and he acted so quietly that I did not notice what he was doing until the thing was done), he picked up the sheet which he called his visiting list, and walking quite without haste, held it in the glowing coals of the fireplace until it disappeared in a flash of flame up the chimney. I sprang to my feet indignant, but too late to make even a motion outwards saving the sheet. Macpherson regarded us both with that self-deprecatory smile which had several times lighted up his face. 'How dared you burn that sheet?' I demanded. 'Because, Monsieur Valmont, it did not belong to you; because you do not belong to Scotland Yard; because you stole it; because you had no right to it; and because you have no official standing in this country. If it had been in Mr. Hale's possession I should not have dared, as you put it, to destroy the sheet, but as this sheet was abstracted from my master's premises by you, an entirely unauthorised person, whom he would have been justified in shooting dead if he had found you housebreaking and you had resisted him on his discovery, I took the liberty of destroying the document. I have always held that these sheets should not have been kept, for, as has been the case, if they fell under the scrutiny of so intelligent a person as Eugène Valmont, improper inferences might have been drawn. Mr. Summertrees, however, persisted in keeping them, but made this concession, that if I ever telegraphed him or telephoned him the word "Encyclopaedia", he would at once burn these records, and he, on his part, was to telegraph or telephone to me "The _Encyclopaedia_ is out of print," whereupon I would know that he had succeeded. 'Now, gentlemen, open this door, which will save me the trouble of forcing it. Either put me formally under arrest, or cease to restrict my liberty. I am very much obliged to Mr. Hale for telephoning, and I have made no protest to so gallant a host as Monsieur Valmont is, because of the locked door. However, the farce is now terminated. The proceedings I have sat through were entirely illegal, and if you will pardon me, Mr. Hale, they have been a little too French to go down here in old England, or to make a report in the newspapers that would be quite satisfactory to your chiefs. I demand either my formal arrest, or the unlocking of that door.' In silence I pressed a button, and my man threw open the door. Macpherson walked to the threshold, paused, and looked back at Spenser Hale, who sat there silent as a sphinx. 'Good-evening, Mr. Hale.' There being no reply, he turned to me with the same ingratiating smile,-- 'Good-evening, Monsieur Eugène Valmont,' he said, 'I shall give myself the pleasure of calling next Wednesday at six for my five shillings.' 6. _The Ghost with the Club-Foot_ Celebrated critics have written with scorn of what they call 'the long arm of coincidence' in fiction. Coincidence is supposed to be the device of a novelist who does not possess ingenuity enough to construct a book without it. In France our incomparable writers pay no attention to this, because they are gifted with a keener insight into real life than is the case with the British. The superb Charles Dickens, possibly as well known in France as he is wherever the English language is read, and who loved French soil and the French people, probably probed deeper into the intricacies of human character than any other novelist of modern times, and if you read his works, you will see that he continually makes use of coincidence. The experience that has come to me throughout my own strange and varied career convinces me that coincidence happens in real life with exceeding frequency, and this fact is especially borne in upon me when I set out to relate my conflict with the Rantremly ghost, which wrought startling changes upon the lives of two people, one an objectionable, domineering man, and the other a humble and crushed woman. Of course, there was a third person, and the consequences that came to him were the most striking of all, as you will learn if you do me the honour to read this account of the episode. So far as coincidence is concerned, there was first the arrival of the newspaper clipping, then the coming of Sophia Brooks, and when that much-injured woman left my flat I wrote down this sentence on a sheet of paper:-- 'Before the week is out, I predict that Lord Rantremly himself will call to see me.' Next day my servant brought in the card of Lord Rantremly. I must begin with the visit of Sophia Brooks, for though that comes second, yet I had paid no attention in particular to the newspaper clipping until the lady told her story. My man brought me a typewritten sheet of paper on which were inscribed the words:-- 'Sophia Brooks, Typewriting and Translating Office, First Floor, No. 51 Beaumont Street, Strand, London, W.C.' I said to my servant,-- 'Tell the lady as kindly as possible that I have no typewriting work to give out, and that, in fact, I keep a stenographer and typewriting machine on the premises.' A few moments later my man returned, and said the lady wished to see me, not about typewriting, but regarding a case in which she hoped to interest me. I was still in some hesitation about admitting her, for my transactions had now risen to a higher plane than when I was new to London. My expenses were naturally very heavy, and it was not possible for me, in justice to myself, to waste time in commissions from the poor, which even if they resulted successfully meant little money added to my banking account, and often nothing at all, because the client was unable to pay. As I remarked before, I possess a heart the most tender, and therefore must greatly to my grief, steel myself against the enlisting of my sympathy, which, alas! has frequently led to my financial loss. Still, sometimes the apparently poor are involved in matters of extreme importance, and England is so eccentric a country that one may find himself at fault if he closes his door too harshly. Indeed, ever since my servant, in the utmost good faith, threw downstairs the persistent and tattered beggar-man, who he learned later to his sorrow was actually his Grace the Duke of Ventnor, I have always cautioned my subordinates not to judge too hastily from appearances. 'Show the lady in,' I said, and there came to me, hesitating, backward, abashed, a middle-aged woman, dressed with distressing plainness, when one thinks of the charming costumes to be seen on a Parisian boulevard. Her subdued manner was that of one to whom the world had been cruel. I rose, bowed profoundly, and placed a chair at her disposal, with the air I should have used if my caller had been a Royal Princess. I claim no credit for this; it is of my nature. There you behold Eugène Valmont. My visitor was a woman. _Voilà!_ 'Madam,' I said politely, 'in what may I have the pleasure of serving you?' The poor woman seemed for the moment confused, and was, I feared, on the verge of tears, but at last she spoke, and said,-- 'Perhaps you have read in the newspapers of the tragedy at Rantremly Castle?' 'The name, madam, remains in my memory, associated elusively with some hint of seriousness. Will you pardon me a moment?' and a vague thought that I had seen the castle mentioned either in a newspaper, or a clipping from one, caused me to pick up the latest bunch which had come from my agent. I am imbued with no vanity at all; still it is amusing to note what the newspapers say of one, and therefore I have subscribed to a clipping agency. In fact, I indulge in two subscriptions--one personal; the other calling for any pronouncement pertaining to the differences between England and France; for it is my determination yet to write a book on the comparative characteristics of the two people. I hold a theory that the English people are utterly incomprehensible to the rest of humanity, and this will be duly set out in my forthcoming volume. I speedily found the clipping I was in search of. It proved to be a letter to the _Times_, and was headed: 'Proposed Destruction of Rantremly Castle'. The letter went on to say that this edifice was one of the most noted examples of Norman architecture in the north of England; that Charles II had hidden there for some days after his disastrous defeat at Worcester. Part of the castle had been battered down by Cromwell, and later it again proved the refuge of a Stuart when the Pretender made it a temporary place of concealment. The new Lord Rantremly, it seemed, had determined to demolish this ancient stronghold, so interesting architecturally and historically, and to build with its stones a modern residence. Against this act of vandalism the writer strongly protested, and suggested that England should acquire the power which France constantly exerts, in making an historical monument of an edifice so interwoven with the fortunes of the country. 'Well, madam,' I said, 'all this extract alludes to is the coming demolition of Rantremly Castle. Is that the tragedy of which you speak?' 'Oh no,' she exclaimed; 'I mean the death of the eleventh Lord Rantremly about six weeks ago. For ten years Lord Rantremly lived practically alone in the castle. Servants would not remain there because the place was haunted, and well it may be, for a terrible family the Rantremlys have been, and a cruel, as I shall be able to tell you. Up to a month and a half ago Lord Rantremly was waited on by a butler older than himself, and if possible, more wicked. One morning this old butler came up the stairs from the kitchen, with Lord Rantremly's breakfast on a silver tray, as was his custom. His lordship always partook of breakfast in his own room. It is not known how the accident happened, as the old servant was going up the stairs instead of coming down, but the steps are very smooth and slippery, and without a carpet; at any rate, he seems to have fallen from the top to the bottom, and lay there with a broken neck. Lord Rantremly, who was very deaf, seemingly did not hear the crash, and it is supposed that after ringing and ringing in vain, and doubtless working himself into a violent fit of temper--alas! too frequent an occurrence--the old nobleman got out of bed, and walked barefooted down the stair, coming at last upon the body of his ancient servant. There the man who arrived every morning to light the fires found them, the servant dead, and Lord Rantremly helpless from an attack of paralysis. The physicians say that only his eyes seemed alive, and they were filled with a great fear, and indeed that is not to be wondered at, after his wicked, wicked life. His right hand was but partially disabled, and with that he tried to scribble something which proved indecipherable. And so he died, and those who attended him at his last moments say that if ever a soul had a taste of future punishment before it left this earth, it was the soul of Lord Rantremly as it shone through those terror-stricken eyes.' Here the woman stopped, with a catch in her breath, as if the fear of that grim death-bed had communicated itself to her. I interjected calmness into an emotional situation by remarking in a commonplace tone,--'And it is the present Lord Rantremly who proposes to destroy the Castle, I suppose?' 'Yes.' 'Is he the son of the late lord?' 'No; he is a distant relative. The branch of the family to which he belongs has been engaged in commerce, and, I believe, its members are very wealthy.' 'Well, madam, no doubt this is all extremely interesting, and rather gruesome. In what way are you concerned in these occurrences?' 'Ten years ago I replied to an advertisement, there being required one who knew shorthand, who possessed a typewriting machine and a knowledge of French, to act as secretary to a nobleman. I was at that time twenty-three years old, and for two years had been trying to earn my living in London through the typing of manuscript. But I was making a hard struggle of it, so I applied for this position and got it. There are in the library of Rantremly Castle many documents relating to the Stuart exile in France. His lordship wished these documents sorted and catalogued, as well as copies taken of each. Many of the letters were in the French language, and these I was required to translate and type. It was a sombre place of residence, but the salary was good, and I saw before me work enough to keep me busy for years. Besides this, the task was extremely congenial, and I became absorbed in it, being young and romantically inclined. Here I seemed to live in the midst of these wonderful intrigues of long ago. Documents passed through my hands whose very possession at one period meant capital danger, bringing up even now visions of block, axe, and masked headsman. It seemed strange to me that so sinister a man as Lord Rantremly, who, I had heard, cared for nothing but drink and gambling, should have desired to promote this historical research, and, indeed, I soon found he felt nothing but contempt for it. However, he had undertaken it at the instance of his only son, then a young man of my own age, at Oxford University. 'Lord Rantremly at that time was sixty-five years old. His countenance was dark, harsh, and imperious, and his language brutal. He indulged in frightful outbursts of temper, but he paid so well for service that there was no lack of it, as there has been since the ghost appeared some years ago. He was very tall, and of commanding appearance, but had a deformity in the shape of a club-foot, and walked with the halting step of those so afflicted. There were at that time servants in plenty at the castle, for although a tradition existed that the ghost of the founder of the house trod certain rooms, this ghost, it was said, never demonstrated its presence when the living representative of the family was a man with a club-foot. Tradition further affirmed that if this club-footed ghost allowed its halting footsteps to be heard while the reigning lord possessed a similar deformity, the conjunction foreshadowed the passing of title and estates to a stranger. The ghost haunted the castle only when it was occupied by a descendant whose two feet were normal. It seems that the founder of the house was a club-footed man, and this disagreeable peculiarity often missed one generation, and sometimes two, while at other times both father and son had club-feet, as was the case with the late Lord Rantremly and the young man at Oxford. I am not a believer in the supernatural, of course, but nevertheless it is strange that within the past few years everyone residing in the castle has heard the club-footed ghost, and now title and estates descend to a family that were utter strangers to the Rantremlys.' 'Well, madam, this also sounds most alluring, and were my time not taken up with affairs more material than those to which you allude, I should be content to listen all day, but as it is--' I spread my hands and shrugged my shoulders. The woman with a deep sigh said,-- 'I am sorry to have taken so long, but I wished you to understand the situation, and now I will come direct to the heart of the case. I worked alone in the library, as I told you, much interested in what I was doing. The chaplain, a great friend of Lord Rantremly's son, and, indeed, a former tutor of his, assisted me with the documents that were in Latin, and a friendship sprang up between us. He was an elderly man, and extremely unworldly. Lord Rantremly never concealed his scorn of this clergyman, but did not interfere with him because of the son. 'My work went on very pleasantly up to the time that Reginald, the heir of his lordship, came down from Oxford. Then began the happiest days of a life that has been otherwise full of hardships and distress. Reginald was as different as possible from his father. In one respect only did he bear any resemblance to that terrible old man, and this resemblance was the deformity of a club-foot, a blemish which one soon forgot when one came to know the gentle and high-minded nature of the young man. As I have said, it was at his instance that Lord Rantremly had engaged me to set in order those historical papers. Reginald became enthusiastic at the progress I had made, and thus the young nobleman, the chaplain, and myself continued our work together with ever-increasing enthusiasm. 'To cut short a recital which must be trying to your patience, but which is necessary if you are to understand the situation, I may say that our companionship resulted in a proposal of marriage to me, which I, foolishly, perhaps, and selfishly, it may be, accepted. Reginald knew that his father would never consent, but we enlisted the sympathy of the chaplain, and he, mild, unworldly man, married us one day in the consecrated chapel of the castle. 'As I have told you, the house at that time contained many servants, and I think, without being sure, that the butler, whom I feared even more than Lord Rantremly himself, got some inkling of what was going forward. But, be that as it may, he and his lordship entered the chapel just as the ceremony was finished, and there followed an agonising scene. His lordship flung the ancient chaplain from his place, and when Reginald attempted to interfere, the maddened nobleman struck his son full in the face with his clenched fist, and my husband lay as one dead on the stone floor of the chapel. By this time the butler had locked the doors, and had rudely torn the vestments from the aged, half-insensible clergyman, and with these tied him hand and foot. All this took place in a very few moments, and I stood there as one paralysed, unable either to speak or scream, not that screaming would have done me any good in that horrible place of thick walls. The butler produced a key, and unlocked a small, private door at the side of the chapel which led from the apartments of his lordship to the family pew. Then taking my husband by feet and shoulders, Lord Rantremly and the butler carried him out, locking the door, and leaving the clergyman and me prisoners in the chapel. The reverend old gentleman took no notice of me. He seemed to be dazed, and when at last I found my voice and addressed him, he merely murmured over and over texts of Scripture pertaining to the marriage service. 'In a short time I heard the key turn again in the lock of the private door, and the butler entered alone. He unloosened the bands around the clergyman's knees, escorted him out, and once more locked the door behind him. A third time that terrible servant came back, grasped me roughly by the wrist, and without a word dragged me with him, along a narrow passage, up a stair, and finally to the main hall, and so to my lord's private study, which adjoined his bedroom, and there on a table I found my typewriting machine brought up from the library. 'I have but the most confused recollection of what took place. I am not a courageous woman, and was in mortal terror both of Lord Rantremly and his attendant. His lordship was pacing up and down the room, and, when I came in, used the most unseemly language to me; then ordered me to write at his dictation, swearing that if I did not do exactly as he told me, he would finish his son, as he put it. I sat down at the machine, and he dictated a letter to himself, demanding two thousand pounds to be paid to me, otherwise I should claim that I was the wife of his son, secretly married. This, placing pen and ink before me, he compelled me to sign, and when I had done so, pleading to be allowed to see my husband, if only for a moment, I thought he was going to strike me, for he shook his fist in my face, and used words which were appalling to hear. That was the last I ever saw of Lord Rantremly, my husband, the clergyman, or the butler. I was at once sent off to London with my belongings, the butler himself buying my ticket, and flinging a handful of sovereigns into my lap as the train moved out.' Here the woman stopped, buried her face in her hands, and began to weep. 'Have you done nothing about this for the past ten years?' She shook her head. 'What could I do?' she gasped. 'I had little money, and no friends. Who would believe my story? Besides this, Lord Rantremly retained possession of a letter, signed by myself, that would convict me of attempted blackmail, while the butler would swear to anything against me.' 'You have no marriage certificate, of course?' 'No.' 'What has become of the clergyman?' 'I do not know.' 'And what of Lord Rantremly's son?' 'It was announced that he had gone on a voyage to Australia for his health in a sailing ship, which was wrecked on the African coast, and everyone on board lost.' 'What is your own theory?' 'Oh, my husband was killed by the blow given him in the chapel.' 'Madam, that does not seem credible. A blow from the fist seldom kills.' 'But he fell backwards, and his head struck the sharp stone steps at the foot of the altar. I know my husband was dead when the butler and his father carried him out.' 'You think the clergyman was also murdered?' 'I am sure of it. Both master and servant were capable of any crime or cruelty.' 'You received no letters from the young man?' 'No. You see, during our short friendship we were constantly together, and there was no need of correspondence.' 'Well, madam, what do you expect of me?' 'I hoped you would investigate, and find perhaps where Reginald and the clergyman are buried. I realise that I have no proof, but in that way my strange story will be corroborated.' I leaned back in my chair and looked at her. Truth to tell, I only partially credited her story myself, and yet I was positive she believed every word of it. Ten years brooding on a fancied injustice by a woman living alone, and doubtless often in dire poverty, had mixed together the actual and the imaginary until now, what had possibly been an aimless flirtation on the part of the young man, unexpectedly discovered by the father, had formed itself into the tragedy which she had told me. 'Would it not be well,' I suggested, 'to lay the facts before the present Lord Rantremly?' 'I have done so,' she answered simply. 'With what result?' 'His lordship said my story was preposterous. In examining the late lord's private papers, he discovered the letter which I typed and signed. He said very coldly that the fact that I had waited until everyone who could corroborate or deny my story was dead, united with the improbability of the narrative itself, would very likely consign me to prison if I made public a statement so incredible.' 'Well, you know, madam, I think his lordship is right.' 'He offered me an annuity of fifty pounds, which I refused.' 'In that refusal, madam, I think you are wrong. If you take my advice, you will accept the annuity.' The woman rose slowly to her feet. 'It is not money I am after,' she said, 'although, God knows, I have often been in sore need of it. But I am the Countess of Rantremly, and I wish my right to that name acknowledged. My character has been under an impalpable shadow for ten years. On several occasions mysterious hints have reached me that in some manner I left the castle under a cloud. If Lord Rantremly will destroy the letter which I was compelled to write under duress, and if he will give me written acknowledgment that there was nothing to be alleged against me during my stay in the castle, he may enjoy his money in peace for all of me. I want none of it.' 'Have you asked him to do this?' 'Yes. He refuses to give up or destroy the letter, although I told him in what circumstances it had been written. But, desiring to be fair, he said he would allow me a pound a week for life, entirely through his own generosity.' 'And this you refused?' 'Yes, I refused.' 'Madam, I regret to say that I cannot see my way to do anything with regard to what I admit is very unjust usage. We have absolutely nothing to go upon except your unsupported word. Lord Rantremly was perfectly right when he said no one would credit your story. I could not go down to Rantremly Castle and make investigations there. I should have no right upon the premises at all, and would get into instant trouble as an interfering trespasser. I beg you to heed my advice, and accept the annuity.' Sophia Brooks, with that mild obstinacy of which I had received indications during her recital, slowly shook her head. 'You have been very kind to listen for so long,' she said, and then, with a curt 'Good-day!' turned and left the room. On the sheet of paper underneath her address, I wrote this prophecy: 'Before the week is out, I predict that Lord Rantremly himself will call to see me.' * * * * * Next morning, at almost the same hour that Miss Brooks had arrived the day before, the Earl of Rantremly's card was brought in to me. His lordship proved to be an abrupt, ill-mannered, dapper business man; purse-proud, I should call him, as there was every reason he should be, for he had earned his own fortune. He was doubtless equally proud of his new title, which he was trying to live up to, assuming now and then a haughty, domineering attitude, and again relapsing into the keen, incisive manner of the man of affairs; shrewd financial sense waging a constant struggle with the glamour of an ancient name. I am sure he would have shone to better advantage either as a financier or as a nobleman, but the combination was too much for him. I formed an instinctive dislike to the man, which probably would not have happened had he been wearing the title for twenty years, or had I met him as a business man, with no thought of the aristocratic honour awaiting him. There seemed nothing in common between him and the former holder of the title. He had keen, ferrety eyes, a sharp financial nose, a thin-lipped line of mouth which indicated little of human kindness. He was short of stature, but he did not possess the club-foot, which was one advantage. He seated himself before I had time to offer him a chair, and kept on his hat in my presence, which he would not have done if he had either been a genuine nobleman or a courteous business man. 'I am Lord Rantremly,' he announced pompously, which announcement was quite unnecessary, because I held his card in my hand. 'Quite so, my lord. And you have come to learn whether or no I can lay the ghost in that old castle to the north which bears your name?' 'Well, I'm blessed!' cried his lordship, agape. 'How could you guess that?' 'Oh, it is not a guess, but rather a choice of two objects, either of which might bring you to my rooms. I chose the first motive because I thought you might prefer to arrange the second problem with your solicitor, and he doubtless told you that Miss Sophia Brooks's claim was absurd; that you were quite right in refusing to give up or destroy the typewritten letter she had signed ten years ago, and that it was weakness on your part, without consulting him, to offer her an annuity of fifty-two pounds a year.' Long before this harangue was finished, which I uttered in an easy and nonchalant tone of voice, as if reciting something that everybody knew, his lordship stood on his feet again, staring at me like a man thunderstruck. This gave me the opportunity of exercising that politeness which his abrupt entrance and demeanour had forestalled. I rose, and bowing, said,-- 'I pray you to be seated, my lord.' He dropped into the chair, rather than sat down in it. 'And now,' I continued, with the utmost suavity, stretching forth my hand, 'may I place your hat on this shelf out of the way, where it will not incommode you during our discourse?' Like a man in a dream, he took his hat from his head, and passively handed it to me, and after placing it in safety I resumed my chair with the comfortable feeling that his lordship and I were much nearer a plane of equality than when he entered the room. 'How about the ghost with a club-foot, my lord?' said I genially. 'May I take it that in the City, that sensible, commercial portion of London, no spirits are believed in except those sold over the bars?' 'If you mean,' began his lordship, struggling to reach his dignity once more, 'if you mean to ask if there is any man fool enough to place credit in the story of a ghost, I answer no. I am a practical man, sir. I now possess in the north property representing, in farming lands, in shooting rights, and what not, a locked-up capital of many a thousand pounds. As you seem to know everything, sir, perhaps you are aware that I propose to build a modern mansion on the estate.' 'Yes; I saw the letter in the _Times_.' 'Very well, sir. It has come to a fine pass if, in this country of law and the rights of property, a man may not do what he pleases with his own.' 'I think, my lord, cases may be cited where the decisions of your courts have shown a man may not do what he likes with his own. Nevertheless, I am quite certain that if you level Rantremly Castle with the ground, and build a modern mansion in its place, the law will not hinder you.' 'I should hope not, sir, I should hope not,' said his lordship gruffly. 'Nevertheless, I am not one who wishes to ride roughshod over public opinion. 'I am chairman of several companies which depend more or less on popular favour for success. I deplore unnecessary antagonism. Technically, I might assert my right to destroy this ancient stronghold tomorrow if I wished to do so, and if that right were seriously disputed, I should, of course, stand firm. But it is not seriously disputed. The British nation, sir, is too sensible a people to object to the removal of an antiquated structure that has long outlived its usefulness, and the erection of a mansion replete with all modern improvements would be a distinct addition to the country, sir. A few impertinent busybodies protest against the demolition of Rantremly Castle, but that is all.' 'Ah, then you _do_ intend to destroy it?' I rejoined, and it is possible that a touch of regret was manifest in my tones. 'Not just at present; not until this vulgar clamour has had time to subside. Nevertheless, as a business man, I am forced to recognise that a large amount of unproductive capital is locked up in that property.' 'And why is it locked up?' 'Because of an absurd belief that the place is haunted. I could let it tomorrow at a good figure, if it were not for that rumour.' 'But surely sensible men do not pay any attention to such a rumour.' 'Sensible men may not, but sensible men are often married to silly women, and the women object. It is only the other day that I was in negotiation with Bates, of Bates, Sturgeon and Bates, a very wealthy man, quite able and willing to pay the price I demanded. He cared nothing about the alleged ghost, but his family absolutely refused to have anything to do with the place, and so the arrangement fell through.' 'What is your theory regarding this ghost, my lord?' He answered me with some impatience. 'How can a sane man hold a theory about a ghost? I can, however, advance a theory regarding the noises heard in the castle. For years that place has been the resort of questionable characters.' 'I understand the Rantremly family is a very old one,' I commented innocently, but his lordship did not notice the innuendo. 'Yes, we are an old family,' he went on with great complacency. 'The castle, as perhaps you are aware, is a huge, ramshackle place, honeycombed underneath with cellars. I dare say in the old days some of these cellars and caves were the resort of smugglers, and the receptacle of their contraband wares, doubtless with the full knowledge of my ancestors, who, I regret to admit, as a business man, were not too particular in their respect for law. I make no doubt that the castle is now the refuge of a number of dangerous characters, who, knowing the legends of the place, frighten away fools by impersonating ghosts.' 'You wish me to uncover their retreat, then?' 'Precisely.' 'Could I get accommodation in the castle itself?' 'Lord bless you, no! Nor within two miles of it. You might secure bed and board at the porter's lodge, perhaps, or in the village, which is three miles distant.' 'I should prefer to live in the castle night and day, until the mystery is solved.' 'Ah, you are a practical man. That is a very sensible resolution. But you can persuade no one in that neighbourhood to bear you company. You would need to take some person down with you from London, and the chances are, that person will not stay long.' 'Perhaps, my lord, if you used your influence, the chief of police in the village might allow a constable to bear me company. I do not mind roughing it in the least, but I should like someone to prepare my meals, and to be on hand in case of a struggle, should your surmise concerning the ghost prove correct.' 'I regret to inform you,' said his lordship, 'that the police in that barbarous district are as superstitious as the peasantry. I, myself, told the chief constable my theory, and for six weeks he has been trying to run down the miscreants, who, I am sure, are making a rendezvous of the castle. Would you believe it, sir, that the constabulary, after a few nights' experience in the castle, threatened to resign in a body if they were placed on duty at Rantremly? They said they heard groans and shrieks, and the measured beat of a club-foot on the oaken floors. Perfectly absurd, of course, but there you are! Why, I cannot even get a charwoman or labourer to clear up the evidences of the tragedy which took place there six weeks ago. The beds are untouched, the broken china and the silver tray lie today at the foot of the stairway, and everything remains just as it was when the inquest took place.' 'Very well, my lord, the case presents many difficulties, and so, speaking as one business man to another, you will understand that my compensation must be correspondingly great.' All the assumed dignity which straightened up this man whenever I addressed him as 'my lord', instantly fell from him when I enunciated the word 'compensation'. His eyes narrowed, and all the native shrewdness of an adept skinflint appeared in his face. I shall do him the justice to say that he drove the very best bargain he could with me, and I, on my part, very deftly concealed from him the fact that I was so much interested in the affair that I should have gone down to Rantremly for nothing rather than forgo the privilege of ransacking Rantremly Castle. When the new earl had taken his departure, walking to the door with the haughty air of a nobleman, then bowing to me with the affability of a business man, I left my flat, took a cab, and speedily found myself climbing the stair to the first floor of 51 Beaumont Street, Strand. As I paused at the door on which were painted the words, 'S. Brooks, Stenography, Typewriting, Translation', I heard the rapid click-click of a machine inside. Knocking at the door the writing ceased, and I was bidden to enter. The room was but meagrely furnished, and showed scant signs of prosperity. On a small side-table, clean, but uncovered, the breakfast dishes, washed, but not yet put away, stood, and the kettle on the hob by the dying fire led me to infer that the typewriting woman was her own cook. I suspected that the awkward-looking sofa which partly occupied one side of the room, concealed a bed. By the lone front window stood the typewriting machine on a small stand, and in front of it sat the woman who had visited me the morning before. She was now gazing at me, probably hoping I was a customer, for there was no recognition in her eyes. 'Good-morning, Lady Rantremly,' was my greeting, which caused her to spring immediately to her feet, with a little exclamation of surprise. 'Oh,' she said at last, 'you are Monsieur Valmont. Excuse me that I am so stupid. Will you take a chair?' 'Thank you, madam. It is I who should ask to be excused for so unceremonious a morning call. I have come to ask you a question. Can you cook?' The lady looked at me with some surprise, mingled perhaps with so much of indignation as such a mild person could assume. She did not reply, but, glancing at the kettle, and then turning towards the breakfast dishes on the table by the wall, a slow flush of colour suffused her wan cheeks. 'My lady,' I said at last, as the silence became embarrassing, 'you must pardon the impulse of a foreigner who finds himself constantly brought into conflict with prejudices which he fails to understand. You are perhaps offended at my question. The last person of whom I made that inquiry was the young and beautiful Madame la Comtesse de Valérie-Moberanne, who enthusiastically clapped her hands with delight at the compliment, and replied impulsively,-- '"Oh, Monsieur Valmont, let me compose for you an omelette which will prove a dream," and she did. One should not forget that Louis XVIII himself cooked the _truffes à la purée d'ortolans_ that caused the Duc d'Escars, who partook of the royal dish, to die of an indigestion. Cooking is a noble, yes, a regal art. I am a Frenchman, my lady, and, like all my countrymen, regard the occupation of a cuisinière as infinitely superior to the manipulation of that machine, which is your profession, or the science of investigation, which is mine.' 'Sir,' she said, quite unmollified by my harangue, speaking with a lofty pride which somehow seemed much more natural than that so intermittently assumed by my recent visitor, 'Sir, have you come to offer me a situation as cook?' 'Yes, madam, at Rantremly Castle.' 'You are going there?' she demanded, almost breathlessly. 'Yes, madam, I leave on the ten o'clock train tomorrow morning. I am commissioned by Lord Rantremly to investigate the supposed presence of the ghost in that mouldering dwelling. I am allowed to bring with me whatever assistants I require, and am assured that no one in the neighbourhood can be retained who dare sleep in the castle. You know the place very well, having lived there, so I shall be glad of your assistance if you will come. If there is any person whom you can trust, and who is not afraid of ghosts, I shall be delighted to escort you both to Rantremly Castle tomorrow.' 'There is an old woman,' she said, 'who comes here to clear up my room, and do whatever I wish done. She is so deaf that she will hear no ghosts, and besides, monsieur, she can cook.' I laughed in acknowledgment of this last sly hit at me, as the English say. 'That will do excellently,' I replied, rising, and placing a ten-pound note before her. 'I suggest, madam, that you purchase with this anything you may need. My man has instructions to send by passenger train a huge case of provisions, which should arrive there before us. If you could make it convenient to meet me at Euston Station about a quarter of an hour before the train leaves, we may be able to discover all you wish to know regarding the mystery of Rantremly Castle.' Sophia Brooks accepted the money without demur, and thanked me. I could see that her thin hands were trembling with excitement as she put the crackling banknote into her purse. * * * * * Darkness was coming on next evening before we were installed in the grim building, which at first sight seemed more like a fortress than a residence. I had telegraphed from London to order a wagonette for us, and in this vehicle we drove to the police station, where I presented the written order from Lord Rantremly for the keys of the castle. The chief constable himself, a stolid, taciturn person, exhibited, nevertheless, some interest in my mission, and he was good enough to take the fourth seat in the wagonette, and accompany us through the park to the castle, returning in that conveyance to the village as nightfall approached, and I could not but notice that this grave official betrayed some uneasiness to get off before dusk had completely set in. Silent as he was, I soon learned that he entirely disbelieved Lord Rantremly's theory that the castle harboured dangerous characters, yet so great was his inherent respect for the nobility that I could not induce him to dispute with any decisiveness his lordship's conjecture. It was plain to be seen, however, that the chief constable believed implicitly in the club-footed ghost. I asked him to return the next morning, as I should spend the night in investigation, and might possibly have some questions to ask him, questions which none but the chief constable could answer. The good man promised, and left us rather hurriedly, the driver of the wagonette galloping his horse down the long, sombre avenue towards the village outside the gates. I found Sophia Brooks but a doleful companion, and of very little assistance that evening. She seemed overcome by her remembrances. She had visited the library where her former work was done, doubtless the scene of her brief love episode, and she returned with red eyes and trembling chin, telling me haltingly that the great tome from which she was working ten years ago, and which had been left open on the solid library table, was still there exactly as she had placed it before being forced to abandon her work. For a decade apparently no one had entered that library. I could not but sympathise with the poor lady, thus revisiting, almost herself like a ghost, the haunted arena of her short happiness. But though she proved so dismal a companion, the old woman who came with her was a treasure. Having lived all her life in some semi-slum near the Strand, and having rarely experienced more than a summer's-day glimpse of the country, the long journey had delighted her, and now this rambling old castle in the midst of the forest seemed to realise all the dreams which a perusal of halfpenny fiction had engendered in her imagination. She lit a fire, and cooked for us a very creditable supper, bustling about the place, singing to herself in a high key. Shortly after supper Sophia Brooks, exhausted as much by her emotions and memories as by her long journey of that day, retired to rest. After being left to myself I smoked some cigarettes, and finished a bottle of superb claret which stood at my elbow. A few hours before I had undoubtedly fallen in the estimation of the stolid constable when, instead of asking him questions regarding the tragedy, I had inquired the position of the wine cellar, and obtained possession of the key that opened its portal. The sight of bin after bin of dust-laden, cobwebbed bottles, did more than anything else to reconcile me to my lonely vigil. There were some notable vintages represented in that dismal cavern. It was perhaps half-past ten or eleven o'clock when I began my investigations. I had taken the precaution to provide myself with half a dozen so-called electric torches before I left London. These give illumination for twenty or thirty hours steadily, and much longer if the flash is used only now and then. The torch is a thick tube, perhaps a foot and a half long, with a bull's-eye of glass at one end. By pressing a spring the electric rays project like the illumination of an engine's headlight. A release of the spring causes instant darkness. I have found this invention useful in that it concentrates the light on any particular spot desired, leaving all the surroundings in gloom, so that the mind is not distracted, even unconsciously, by the eye beholding more than is necessary at the moment. One pours a white light over any particular substance as water is poured from the nozzle of a hose. The great house was almost painfully silent. I took one of these torches, and went to the foot of the grand staircase where the wicked butler had met his death. There, as his lordship had said, lay the silver tray, and nearby a silver jug, a pair of spoons, a knife and fork, and scattered all around the fragments of broken plates, cups, and saucers. With an exclamation of surprise at the stupidity of the researchers who had preceded me, I ran up the stair two steps at a time, turned to the right, and along the corridor until I came to the room occupied by the late earl. The coverings of the bed lay turned down just as they were when his lordship sprang to the floor, doubtless, in spite of his deafness, having heard faintly the fatal crash at the foot of the stairs. A great oaken chest stood at the head of the bed, perhaps six inches from the wall. Leaning against this chest at the edge of the bed inclined a small, round table, and the cover of the table had slipped from its sloping surface until it partly concealed the chest lid. I mounted on this carven box of old black oak and directed the rays of electric light into the chasm between it and the wall. Then I laughed aloud, and was somewhat startled to hear another laugh directly behind me. I jumped down on the floor again, and swung round my torch like a searchlight on a battleship at sea. There was no human presence in that chamber except myself. Of course, after my first moment of surprise, I realised that the laugh was but an echo of my own. The old walls of the old house were like sounding-boards. The place resembled an ancient fiddle, still tremulous with the music that had been played on it. It was easy to understand how a superstitious population came to believe in its being haunted; in fact, I found by experiment that if one trod quickly along the uncovered floor of the corridor, and stopped suddenly, one seemed to hear the sound of steps still going on. I now returned to the stair head, and examined the bare polished boards with most gratifying results. Amazed at having learnt so much in such a short time, I took from my pocket the paper on which the dying nobleman had attempted to write with his half-paralysed hand. The chief constable had given the document to me, and I sat on the stair head, spread it out on the floor and scrutinised it. It was all but meaningless. Apparently two words and the initial letter of a third had been attempted. Now, however grotesque a piece of writing may be, you can sometimes decipher it by holding it at various angles, as those puzzles are solved which remain a mystery when gazed at direct. By partially closing the eyes you frequently catch the intent, as in those pictures where a human figure is concealed among the outlines of trees and leaves. I held the paper at arm's length, and with the electric light gleaming upon it, examined it at all angles, with eyes wide open, and eyes half closed. At last, inclining it away from me, I saw that the words were intended to mean, 'The Secret'. The secret, of course, was what he was trying to impart, but he had apparently got no further than the title of it. Deeply absorbed in my investigation, I was never more startled in my life than to hear in the stillness down the corridor the gasped words, '_Oh, God!_' I swept round my light, and saw leaning against the wall, in an almost fainting condition, Sophia Brooks, her eyes staring like those of a demented person, and her face white as any ghost's could have been. Wrapped round her was a dressing-gown. I sprang to my feet. 'What are you doing there?' I cried. 'Oh, is that you, Monsieur Valmont? Thank God, thank God! I thought I was going insane. I saw a hand, a bodiless hand, holding a white sheet of paper.' 'The hand was far from bodiless, madam, for it belonged to me. But why are you here? It must be near midnight.' 'It _is_ midnight,' answered the woman; 'I came here because I heard my husband call me three times distinctly, "Sophia, Sophia, Sophia!" just like that.' 'Nonsense, madam,' I said, with an asperity I seldom use where the fair sex is concerned; but I began to see that this hysterical creature was going to be in the way during a research that called for coolness and calmness. I was sorry I had invited her to come. 'Nonsense, madam, you have been dreaming.' 'Indeed, Monsieur Valmont, I have not. I have not even been asleep, and I heard the words quite plainly. You must not think I am either mad or superstitious.' I thought she was both, and next moment she gave further evidence of it, running suddenly forward, and clutching me by the arm. 'Listen! listen!' she whispered. 'You hear nothing?' 'Nonsense!' I cried again, almost roughly for my patience was at an end, and I wished to go on with my inquiry undisturbed. 'Hist, hist!' she whispered; 'listen!' holding up her finger. We both stood like statues, and suddenly I felt that curious creeping of the scalp which shows that even the most civilised among us have not yet eliminated superstitious fear. In the tense silence I heard someone slowly coming up the stair; I heard the halting step of a lame man. In the tension of the moment I had allowed the light to go out; now recovering myself, I pressed the spring, and waved its rays backward and forward down the stairway. The space was entirely empty, yet the hesitating footsteps approached us, up and up. I could almost have sworn on which step they last struck. At this interesting moment Sophia Brooks uttered a piercing shriek and collapsed into my arms, sending the electric torch rattling down the steps, and leaving us in impenetrable darkness. Really, I profess myself to be a gallant man, but there are situations which have a tendency to cause annoyance. I carried the limp creature cautiously down the stairs, fearing the fate of the butler, and at last got her into the dining-room, where I lit a candle, which gave a light less brilliant, perhaps, but more steady than my torch. I dashed some water in her face, and brought her to her senses, then uncorking another bottle of wine, I bade her drink a glassful, which she did. 'What was it?' she whispered. 'Madam, I do not know. Very possibly the club-footed ghost of Rantremly.' 'Do you believe in ghosts, Monsieur Valmont?' 'Last night I did not, but at this hour I believe in only one thing, which is that it is time everyone was asleep.' She rose to her feet at this, and with a tremulous little laugh apologised for her terror, but I assured her that for the moment there were two panic-stricken persons at the stair head. Taking the candle, and recovering my electric torch, which luckily was uninjured by its roll down the incline the butler had taken, I escorted the lady to the door of her room, and bade her good-night, or rather, good-morning. The rising sun dissipated a slight veil of mist which hung over the park, and also dissolved, so far as I was concerned, the phantoms which my imagination had conjured up at midnight. It was about half-past ten when the chief constable arrived. I flatter myself I put some life into that unimaginative man before I was done with him. 'What made you think that the butler was mounting the stair when he fell?' 'He was going up with my lord's breakfast,' replied the chief. 'Then did it not occur to you that if such were the case, the silver pitcher would not have been empty, and, besides the broken dishes, there would have been the rolls, butter, toast, or what not, strewn about the floor?' The chief constable opened his eyes. 'There was no one else for him to bring breakfast to,' he objected. 'That is where you are very much mistaken. Bring me the boots the butler wore.' 'He did not wear boots, sir. He wore a pair of cloth slippers.' 'Do you know where they are?' 'Yes; they are in the boot closet.' 'Very well, bring them out, examine their soles, and sticking in one of them you will find a short sliver of pointed oak.' The constable, looking slightly more stupefied than ever, brought the slippers, and I heard him ejaculate: 'Well, I'm blowed!' as he approached me. He handed me the slippers soles upward, and there, as I have stated, was the fragment of oak, which I pulled out. 'Now, if you take this piece of oak to the top of the stair, you will see that it fits exactly a slight interstice at the edge of one of the planks. It is as well to keep one's eyes open, constable, when investigating a case like this.' 'Well, I'm blowed!' he said again, as we walked up the stair together. I showed him that the sliver taken from the slipper fitted exactly the interstice I had indicated. 'Now,' said I to him, 'the butler was not going up the stairs, but was coming down. When he fell headlong he must have made a fearful clatter. Shuffling along with his burden, his slipper was impaled by this sliver, and the butler's hands being full, he could not save himself, but went head foremost down the stair. The startling point, however, is the fact that he was _not_ carrying my lord's breakfast to him, or taking it away from him, but that there is someone else in the castle for whom he was caterer. Who is that person?' 'I'm blessed if I know,' said the constable, 'but I think you are wrong there. He may not have been carrying up the breakfast, but he certainly was taking away the tray, as is shown by the empty dishes, which you have just a moment ago pointed out.' 'No, constable; when his lordship heard the crash, and sprang impulsively from his bed, he upset the little table on which had been placed his own tray; it shot over the oaken chest at the head of the bed, and if you look between it and the wall you will find tray, dishes, and the remnants of a breakfast.' 'Well, I'm blessed!' exclaimed the chief constable once again. 'The main point of all this,' I went on calmly, 'is not the disaster to the butler, nor even the shock to his lordship, but the fact that the tray the serving man carried brought food to a prisoner, who probably for six weeks has been without anything to eat.' 'Then,' said the constable, 'he is a dead man.' 'I find it easier,' said I, 'to believe in a living man than in a dead man's ghost. I think I heard his footsteps at midnight, and they seemed to me the footsteps of a person very nearly exhausted. Therefore, constable, I have awaited your arrival with some impatience. The words his late lordship endeavoured to write on the paper were "The Secret". I am sure that the hieroglyphics with which he ended his effort stood for the letter "R", and if he finished his sentence, it would have stood: "The secret room". Now, constable, it is a matter of legend that a secret room exists in this castle. Do you know where it is?' 'No one knows where the secret room is, or the way to enter it, except the Lords of Rantremly.' 'Well, I can assure you that the Lord of Rantremly who lives in London knows nothing about it. I have been up and about since daylight, taking some rough measurements by stepping off distances. I surmise that the secret room is to the left of this stairway. Probably a whole suite of rooms exists, for there is certainly a stair coinciding with this one, and up that stair at midnight I heard a club-footed man ascend. Either that, or the ghost that has frightened you all, and, as I have said, I believe in the man.' Here the official made the first sensible remark I had yet heard him utter:-- 'If the walls are so thick that a prisoner's cry has not been heard, how could you hear his footsteps, which make much less noise?' 'That is very well put, constable, and when the same thing occurred to me earlier this morning, I began to study the architecture of this castle. In the first place, the entrance hall is double as wide at the big doors as it is near the stairway. If you stand with your back to the front door you will at once wonder why the builders made this curious and unnecessary right angle, narrowing the farther part of the hall to half its width. Then, as you gaze at the stair, and see that marvellous carved oak newel post standing like a monumental column, you guess, if you have any imagination, that the stairway, like the hall, was once double as wide as it is now. We are seeing only half of it, and doubtless we shall find a similar newel post within the hidden room. You must remember, constable, that these secret apartments are no small added chambers. Twice they have sheltered a king.' The constable's head bent low at the mention of royalty. I saw that his insular prejudice against me and my methods was vanishing, and that he had come to look upon me with greater respect than was shown at first. 'The walls need not be thick to be impenetrable to sound. Two courses of brick, and a space between filled with deafening would do it. The secret apartment has been cut off from the rest of the house since the castle was built, and was not designed by the original architect. The partition was probably built in a hurry to fulfil a pressing need, and it was constructed straight up the middle of the stair, leaving the stout planks intact, each step passing thus, as it were, through the wall. Now, when a man walks up the secret stairway, his footsteps reverberate until one would swear that some unseen person was treading the visible boards on the outside.' 'By Jove!' said the constable, in an awed tone of voice. 'Now, officer, I have here a pickaxe and a crowbar. I propose that we settle the question at once.' But to this proposal the constable demurred. 'You surely would not break the wall without permission from his lordship in London?' 'Constable, I suspect there is no Lord Rantremly in London, and that we will find a very emaciated but genuine Lord Rantremly within ten feet of us. I need not tell you that if you are instrumental in his immediate rescue without the exercise of too much red tape, your interests will not suffer because you the more speedily brought food and drink to the lord paramount of your district.' 'Right you are,' cried the constable, with an enthusiasm for which I was not prepared. 'Where shall we begin?' 'Oh, anywhere; this wall is all false from the entrance hall to some point up here. Still, as the butler was carrying the meal upstairs I think we shall save time if we begin on the landing.' I found the constable's brawn much superior to his brain. He worked like a sansculotte on a barricade. When we had torn down part of the old oak panelling, which it seemed such a pity to mutilate with axe and crowbar, we came upon a brick wall, that quickly gave way before the strength of the constable. Then we pulled out some substance like matting, and found a second brick wall, beyond which was a further shell of panelling. The hole we made revealed nothing but darkness inside, and although we shouted, there was no answer. At last, when we had hewn it large enough for a man to enter, I took with me an electric torch, and stepped inside, the constable following, with crowbar still in hand. I learned, as I had surmised, that we were in the upper hall of a staircase nearly as wide as the one on the outside. A flash of the light showed a door corresponding with the fireplace of the upper landing, and this door not being locked, we entered a large room, rather dimly lighted by strongly barred windows that gave into a blind courtyard, of which there had been no indication heretofore, either outside or inside the castle. Broken glass crunched under our feet, and I saw that the floor was strewn with wine bottles whose necks had been snapped off to save the pulling of the cork. On a mattress at the farther end of the room lay a man with gray hair, and shaggy, unkempt iron-gray beard. He seemed either asleep or dead, but when I turned my electric light full on his face he proved to be still alive, for he rubbed his eyes languidly, and groaned, rather than spoke:-- 'Is that you at last, you beast of a butler? Bring me something to eat, in Heaven's name!' I shook him wider awake. He seemed to be drowsed with drink, and was fearfully emaciated. When I got him on his feet, I noticed then the deformity that characterised one of them. We assisted him through the aperture, and down into the dining-room, where he cried out continually for something to eat, but when we placed food before him, he could scarcely touch it. He became more like a human being when he had drunk two glasses of wine, and I saw at once he was not as old as his gray hair seemed to indicate. There was a haunted look in his eyes, and he watched the door as if apprehensive. 'Where is that butler?' he asked at last. 'Dead,' I replied. 'Did I kill him?' 'No; he fell down the stairway and broke his neck.' The man laughed harshly. 'Where is my father?' 'Who is your father?' 'Lord Rantremly.' 'He is dead also.' 'How came he to die?' 'He died from a stroke of paralysis on the morning the butler was killed.' The rescued man made no comment on this, but turned and ate a little more of his food. Then he said to me:-- 'Do you know a girl named Sophia Brooks?' 'Yes. For ten years she thought you dead.' 'Ten years! Good God, do you mean to say I've been in there only ten years? Why, I'm an old man. I must be sixty at least.' 'No; you're not much over thirty.' 'Is Sophia--' He stopped, and the haunted look came into his eyes again. 'No. She is all right, and she is here.' 'Here?' 'Somewhere in the grounds. I sent her and the servant out for a walk, and told them not to return till luncheon time, as the constable and I had something to do, and did not wish to be interrupted.' The man ran his hand through his long tangled beard. 'I should like to be trimmed up a bit before I see Sophia,' he said. 'I can do that for you, my lord,' cried the constable. 'My lord?' echoed the man. 'Oh, yes, I understand. You are a policeman, are you not?' 'Yes, my lord, chief constable.' 'Then I shall give myself up to you. I killed the butler.' 'Oh, impossible, my lord!' 'No, it isn't. The beast, as I called him, was getting old, and one morning he forgot to close the door behind him. I followed him stealthily out, and at the head of the stair planted my foot in the small of his back, which sent him headlong. There was an infernal crash. I did not mean to kill the brute, but merely to escape, and just as I was about to run down the stairway, I was appalled to see my father looking like--looking like--well, I won't attempt to say what he looked like; but all my old fear of him returned. As he strode towards me, along the corridor, I was in such terror that I jumped through the secret door and slammed it shut.' 'Where is the secret door?' I asked. 'The secret door is that fireplace. The whole fireplace moves inward if you push aside the carved ornament at the left-hand corner.' 'Is it a dummy fireplace, then?' 'No, you may build a fire in it, and the smoke will escape up the chimney. But I killed the butler, constable, though not intending it, I swear.' And now the constable shone forth like the real rough diamond he was. 'My lord, we'll say nothing about that. Legally you didn't do it. You see, there's been an inquest on the butler and the jury brought in the verdict, "Death by accident, through stumbling from the top of the stair." You can't go behind a coroner's inquest, my lord.' 'Indeed,' said his lordship, with the first laugh in which he had indulged for many a year. 'I don't want to go behind anything, constable, I've been behind that accursed chimney too long to wish any further imprisonment.' 7. _The Liberation of Wyoming Ed_ A man should present the whole truth to his doctor, his lawyer, or his detective. If a doctor is to cure, he must be given the full confidence of the patient; if a lawyer is to win a case he needs to know what tells against his client as well as the points in his favour; if a secret agent is to solve a mystery all the cards should be put on the table. Those who half trust a professional man need not be disappointed when results prove unsatisfactory. A partial confidence reposed in me led to the liberation of a dangerous criminal, caused me to associate with a robber much against my own inclination, and brought me within danger of the law. Of course, I never pretend to possess that absolute confidence in the law which seems to be the birthright of every Englishman. I have lived too intimately among the machinery of the law, and have seen too many of its ghastly mistakes, to hold it in that blind esteem which appears to be prevalent in the British Isles. There is a doggerel couplet which typifies this spirit better than anything I can write, and it runs:-- No rogue e'er felt the halter draw, With a good opinion of the law. Those lines exemplify the trend of British thought in this direction. If you question a verdict of their courts you are a rogue, and that ends the matter. And yet when an Englishman undertakes to circumvent the law, there is no other man on earth who will go to greater lengths. An amazing people! Never understandable by the sane of other countries. It was entirely my own fault that I became involved in affairs which were almost indefensible and wholly illegal. My client first tried to bribe me into compliance with his wishes, which bribe I sternly refused. Then he partially broke down and, quite unconsciously as I take it, made an appeal to the heart--a strange thing for an Englishman to do. My kind heart has ever been my most vulnerable point. We French are sentimentalists. France has before now staked its very existence for an ideal, while other countries fight for continents, cash, or commerce. You cannot pierce me with a lance of gold, but wave a wand of sympathy, and I am yours. There waited upon me in my flat a man who gave his name as Douglas Sanderson, which may or may not have been his legitimate title. This was a question into which I never probed, and at the moment of writing am as ignorant of his true cognomen, if that was not it, as on the morning he first met me. He was an elderly man of natural dignity and sobriety, slow in speech, almost sombre in dress. His costume was not quite that of a professional man, and not quite that of a gentleman. I at once recognised the order to which he belonged, and a most difficult class it is to deal with. He was the confidential servant or steward of some ancient and probably noble family, embodying in himself all the faults and virtues, each a trifle accentuated, of the line he served, and to which, in order to produce him and his like, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had doubtless been attached. It is frequently the case that the honour of the house he serves is more dear to him than it is to the representative of that house. Such a man is almost always the repository of family secrets; a repository whose inviolability gold cannot affect, threats sway, or cajolery influence. I knew, when I looked at him, that practically I was looking at his master, for I have known many cases where even the personal appearance of the two was almost identical, which may have given rise to the English phrase, 'Like master, like man.' The servant was a little more haughty, a little less kind, a little more exclusive, a little less confidential, a little more condescending, a little less human, a little more Tory, and altogether a little less pleasant and easy person to deal with. 'Sir,' he began, when I had waved him to a seat, 'I am a very rich man, and can afford to pay well for the commission I request you to undertake. To ask you to name your own terms may seem unbusinesslike, so I may say at the outset I am not a business man. The service I shall ask will involve the utmost secrecy, and for that I am willing to pay. It may expose you to risk of limb or liberty, and for that I am willing to pay. It will probably necessitate the expenditure of a large sum of money; that sum is at your disposal.' Here he paused; he had spoken slowly and impressively, with a touch of arrogance in his tone which aroused to his prejudice, the combativeness latent in my nature. However, at this juncture I merely bowed my head, and replied in accents almost as supercilious as his own:-- 'The task must either be unworthy or unwelcome. In mentioning first the compensation, you are inverting the natural order of things. You should state at the outset what you expect me to do, then, if I accept the commission, it is time to discuss the details of expenditure.' Either he had not looked for such a reply, or was loath to open his budget, for he remained a few moments with eyes bent upon the floor, and lips compressed in silence. At last he went on, without change of inflection, without any diminution of that air of condescension, which had so exasperated me in the beginning, and which was preparing a downfall for himself that would rudely shake the cold dignity which encompassed him like a cloak:-- 'It is difficult for a father to confide in a complete stranger the vagaries of a beloved son, and before doing so you must pledge your word that my communication will be regarded as strictly confidential.' '_Cela va sans dire_.' 'I do not understand French,' said Mr. Sanderson severely, as if the use of the phrase were an insult to him. I replied nonchalantly,-- 'It means, as a matter of course; that goes without saying. Whatever you care to tell me about your son will be mentioned to no one. Pray proceed, without further circumlocution, for my time is valuable.' 'My son was always a little wild and impatient of control. Although everything he could wish was at his disposal here at home, he chose to visit America, where he fell into bad company. I assure you there is no real harm in the boy, but he became implicated with others, and has suffered severely for his recklessness. For five years he has been an inmate of a prison in the West. He was known and convicted under the name of Wyoming Ed.' 'What was his crime?' 'His alleged crime was the stopping, and robbing, of a railway train.' 'For how long was he sentenced?' 'He was sentenced for life.' 'What do you wish me to do?' 'Every appeal has been made to the governor of the State in an endeavour to obtain a pardon. These appeals have failed. I am informed that if money enough is expended it may be possible to arrange my son's escape.' 'In other words, you wish me to bribe the officials of the jail?' 'I assure you the lad is innocent.' For the first time a quiver of human emotion came into the old man's voice. 'Then, if you can prove that, why not apply for a new trial?' 'Unfortunately, the circumstances of the case, of his arrest on the train itself, the number of witnesses against him, give me no hope that a new trial would end in a different verdict, even if a new trial could be obtained, which I am informed is not possible. Every legal means tending to his liberation has already been tried.' 'I see. And now you are determined to adopt illegal means? I refuse to have anything to do with the malpractice you propose. You objected to a phrase in French, Mr. Sanderson, perhaps one in Latin will please you better. It is "_Veritas praevalebit_," which means, "Truth will prevail." I shall set your mind entirely at rest regarding your son. Your son at this moment occupies a humble, if honourable, position in the great house from which you came, and he hopes in time worthily to fill his father's shoes, as you have filled the shoes of your father. You are not a rich man, but a servant. Your son never was in America, and never will go there. It is your master's son, the heir to great English estates, who became the Wyoming Ed of the Western prison. Even from what you say, I do not in the least doubt he was justly convicted, and you may go back to your master and tell him so. You came here to conceal the shameful secret of a wealthy and noble house; you may return knowing that secret has been revealed, and that the circumstances in which you so solemnly bound me to secrecy never existed. Sir, that is the penalty of lying.' The old man's contempt for me had been something to be felt, so palpable was it. The armour of icy reserve had been so complete that actually I had expected to see him rise with undiminished hauteur, and leave the room, disdaining further parley with one who had insulted him. Doubtless that is the way in which his master would have acted, but even in the underling I was unprepared for the instantaneous crumbling of this monument of pomp and pride. A few moments after I began to speak in terms as severe as his own, his trembling hands grasped the arms of the chair in which he sat, and his ever-widening eyes, which came to regard me with something like superstitious dread as I went on, showed me I had launched my random arrow straight at the bull's-eye of fact. His face grew mottled and green rather than pale. When at last I accused him of lying, he arose slowly, shaking like a man with a palsy, but, unable to support himself erect, sank helplessly back into his chair again. His head fell forward to the table before him, and he sobbed aloud. 'God help me!' he cried, 'it is not my own secret I am trying to guard.' I sprang to the door, and turned the key in the lock so that by no chance might we be interrupted; then, going to the sideboard, I poured him out a liqueur glass full of the finest Cognac ever imported from south of the Loire, and tapping him on the shoulder, said brusquely:-- 'Here, drink this. The case is no worse than it was half an hour ago. I shall not betray the secret.' He tossed off the brandy, and with some effort regained his self-control. 'I have done my errand badly,' he wailed. 'I don't know what I have said that has led you to so accurate a statement of the real situation, but I have been a blundering fool. God forgive me, when so much depended on my making no mistake.' 'Don't let that trouble you,' I replied; 'nothing you said gave me the slightest clue.' 'You called me a liar,' he continued, 'and that is a hard word from one man to another, but I would not lie for myself, and when I do it for one I revere and respect, my only regret is that I have done it without avail.' 'My dear sir,' I assured him, 'the fault is not with yourself at all. You were simply attempting the impossible. Stripped and bare, your proposal amounts to this. I am to betake myself to the United States, and there commit a crime, or a series of crimes, in bribing sworn officials to turn traitor to their duty and permit a convict to escape.' 'You put it very harshly, sir. You must admit that, especially in new countries, there is lawlessness within the law as well as outside of it. The real criminals in the robbery of the railway train escaped; my young master, poor fellow, was caught. His father, one of the proudest men in England, has grown prematurely old under the burden of this terrible dishonour. He is broken-hearted, and a dying man, yet he presents an impassive front to the world, with all the ancient courage of his race. My young master is an only son, and failing his appearance, should his father die, title and estate will pass to strangers. Our helplessness in this situation adds to its horror. We dare not make any public move. My old master is one with such influence among the governing class of this country, of which he has long been a member, that the average Englishman, if his name were mentioned, would think his power limitless. Yet that power he dare not exert to save his own son from a felon's life and death. However much he or another may suffer, publicity must be avoided, and this is a secret which cannot safely be shared with more than those who know it now.' 'How many know it?' 'In this country, three persons. In an American prison, one.' 'Have you kept up communication with the young man?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Direct?' 'No; through a third person. My young master has implored his father not to write to him direct.' 'This go-between, as we may call him, is the third person in the secret? Who is he?' 'That I dare not tell you!' 'Mr. Sanderson, it would be much better for your master and his son that you should be more open with me. These half-confidences are misleading. Has the son made any suggestion regarding his release?' 'Oh yes, but not the suggestion I have put before you. His latest letter was to the effect that within six months or so there is to be an election for governor. He proposes that a large sum of money shall be used to influence this election so that a man pledged to pardon him may sit in the governor's chair.' 'I see. And this sum of money is to be paid to the third person you referred to?' 'Yes.' 'May I take it that this third person is the one to whom various sums have been paid during the last five years in order to bribe the governor to pardon the young man?' Sanderson hesitated a moment before answering; in fact, he appeared so torn between inclination and duty; anxious to give me whatever information I deemed necessary, yet hemmed in by the instructions with which his master had limited him, that at last I waved my hand and said:-- 'You need not reply, Mr. Sanderson. That third party is the crux of the situation. I strongly suspect him of blackmail. If you would but name him, and allow me to lure him to these rooms, I possess a little private prison of my own into which I could thrust him, and I venture to say that before he had passed a week in darkness, on bread and water, we should have the truth about this business.' Look you now the illogical nature of an Englishman! Poor old Sanderson, who had come to me with a proposal to break the law of America, seemed horror-stricken when I airily suggested the immuring of a man in a dungeon here in England. He gazed at me in amazement, then cast his eyes furtively about him, as if afraid a trap door would drop beneath him, and land him in my private _oubliette_. 'Do not be alarmed, Mr. Sanderson, you are perfectly safe. You are beginning at the wrong end of this business, and it seems to me five years of contributions to this third party without any result might have opened the eyes of even the most influential nobleman in England, not to mention those of his faithful servant.' 'Indeed, sir,' said Sanderson, 'I must confess to you that I have long had a suspicion of this third person, but my master has clung to him as his only hope, and if this third person were interfered with, I may tell you that he has deposited in London at some place unknown to us, a full history of the case, and if it should happen that he disappears for more than a week at a time, this record will be brought to light.' 'My dear Mr. Sanderson, that device is as old as Noah and his ark. I should chance that. Let me lay this fellow by the heels, and I will guarantee that no publicity follows.' Sanderson sadly shook his head. 'Everything might happen as you say, sir, but all that would put us no further forward. The only point is the liberation of my young master. It is possible that the person unmentioned, whom we may call Number Three, has been cheating us throughout, but that is a matter of no consequence.' 'Pardon me, but I think it is. Suppose your young master here, and at liberty. This Number Three would continue to maintain the power over him which he seems to have held over his father for the last five years.' 'I think we can prevent that, sir, if my plan is carried out.' 'The scheme for bribing the American officials is yours, then?' 'Yes, sir, and I may say I am taking a great deal upon myself in coming to you. I am, in fact, disobeying the implied commands of my master, but I have seen him pay money, and very large sums of money, to this Number Three for the last five years and nothing has come of it. My master is an unsuspicious man, who has seen little of the real world, and thinks everyone as honest as himself.' 'Well, that may be, Mr. Sanderson, but permit me to suggest that the one who proposes a scheme of bribery, and, to put it mildly, an evasion of the law, shows some knowledge of the lower levels of this world, and is not quite in a position to plume himself on his own honesty.' 'I am coming to that, Mr. Valmont. My master knows nothing whatever of my plan. He has given me the huge sum of money demanded by Number Three, and he supposes that amount has been already paid over. As a matter of fact, it has not been paid over, and will not be until my suggestion has been carried out, and failed. In fact, I am about to use this money, all of it if necessary, if you will undertake the commission. I have paid Number Three his usual monthly allowance, and will continue to do so. I have told him my master has his proposal under consideration; that there are still six months to come and go upon, and that my master is not one who decides in a hurry.' 'Number Three says there is an election in six months for governor. What is the name of the state?' Sanderson informed me. I walked to my book-case, and took down a current American Year Book, consulted it, and returned to the table. 'There is no election in that State, Mr. Sanderson, for eighteen months. Number Three is simply a blackmailer, as I have suspected.' 'Quite so, sir,' replied Sanderson, taking a newspaper from his pocket. 'I read in this paper an account of a man immured in a Spanish dungeon. His friends arranged it with the officials in this way: The prisoner was certified to have died, and his body was turned over to his relatives. Now, if that could be done in America, it would serve two purposes. It would be the easiest way to get my young master out of the jail. It would remain a matter of record that he had died, therefore there could be no search for him, as would be the case if he simply escaped. If you were so good as to undertake this task you might perhaps see my young master in his cell, and ask him to write to this Number Three with whom he is in constant communication, telling him he was very ill. Then you could arrange with the prison doctor that this person was informed of my young master's death.' 'Very well, we can try that, but a blackmailer is not so easily thrown off the scent. Once he has tasted blood he is a human man-eating tiger. But still, there is always my private dungeon in the background, and if your plan for silencing him fails, I guarantee that my more drastic and equally illegal method will be a success.' * * * * * It will be seen that my scruples concerning the acceptance of this commission, and my first dislike for the old man had both faded away during the conversation which I have set down in the preceding chapter. I saw him under the stress of deep emotion, and latterly began to realise the tremendous chances he was taking in contravening the will of his imperious master. If the large sum of money was long withheld from the blackmailer, Douglas Sanderson ran the risk of Number Three opening up communication direct with his master. Investigation would show that the old servant had come perilously near laying himself open to a charge of breach of trust, and even of defalcation with regard to the money, and all this danger he was heroically incurring for the unselfish purpose of serving the interests of his employer. During our long interview old Sanderson gradually became a hero in my eyes, and entirely in opposition to the resolution I had made at the beginning, I accepted his commission at the end of it. Nevertheless, my American experiences are those of which I am least proud, and all I care to say upon the subject is that my expedition proved completely successful. The late convict was my companion on the _Arontic_, the first steamship sailing for England after we reached New York from the west. Of course I knew that two or three years roughing it in mining camps and on ranches, followed by five years in prison, must have produced a radical effect not only on the character, but also in the personal appearance of a man who had undergone these privations. Nevertheless, making due allowance for all this, I could not but fear that the ancient English family, of which this young man was the hope and pride, would be exceedingly disappointed with him. In spite of the change which grooming and the wearing of a civilised costume made, Wyoming Ed still looked much more the criminal than the gentleman. I considered myself in honour bound not to make any inquiries of the young man regarding his parentage. Of course, if I had wished to possess myself of the secret, I had but to touch a button under the table when Sanderson left my rooms in the Imperial Flats, which would have caused him to be shadowed and run to earth. I may also add that the ex-prisoner volunteered no particulars about himself or his family. Only once on board ship did he attempt to obtain some information from me as we walked up and down the deck together. 'You are acting for someone else, I suppose?' he said. 'Yes.' 'For someone in England?' 'Yes.' 'He put up the money, did he?' 'Yes.' There was a pause, during which we took two or three turns in silence. 'Of course, there's no secret about it,' he said at last. 'I expected help from the other side, but Colonel Jim has been so mighty long about it, I was afraid he'd forgotten me.' 'Who is Colonel Jim?' 'Colonel Jim Baxter. Wasn't it him gave you the money?' 'I never heard of the man before.' 'Then who put up the coin?' 'Douglas Sanderson,' I replied, looking at him sidewise as I mentioned the name. It had apparently no effect upon him. He wrinkled his brow for a moment, then said:-- 'Well, if you never heard of Baxter, I never heard of Sanderson.' This led me to suspect that Douglas Sanderson did not give me his own name, and doubtless the address with which he had furnished me was merely temporary. I did not cable to him from America regarding the success of the expedition, because I could not be certain it was a success until I was safely on English ground, and not even then, to tell the truth. Anyhow, I wished to leave no trail behind me, but the moment the _Arontic_ reached Liverpool, I telegraphed Sanderson to meet us that evening at my flat. He was waiting for me when Wyoming Ed and I entered together. The old man was quite evidently in a state of nervous tension. He had been walking up and down the room with hands clenched behind his back, and now stood at the end farthest from the door as he heard us approach, with his hands still clasped behind his back, and an expression of deep anxiety upon his rugged face. All the electric lamps were turned on, and the room was bright as day. 'Have you not brought him with you?' he cried. 'Brought him with me?' I echoed. 'Here is Wyoming Ed!' The old man glared at him for a moment or two stupefied, then moaned:-- 'Oh, my God, my God, that is not the man!' I turned to my short-haired fellow traveller. 'You told me you were Wyoming Ed!' He laughed uneasily. 'Well, in a manner of speaking, so I have been for the last five years, but I wasn't Wyoming Ed before that. Say, old man, are you acting for Colonel Jim Baxter?' Sanderson, on whom a dozen years seemed to have fallen since we entered the room, appeared unable to speak, and merely shook his head in a hopeless sort of way. 'I say, boys,' ejaculated the ex-convict, with an uneasy laugh, half-comic, half-bewildered, 'this is a sort of mix-up, isn't it? I wish Colonel Jim was here to explain. I say, Boss,' he cried suddenly, turning sharp on me, 'this here misfit's not my fault. I didn't change the children in the cradle. You don't intend to send me back to that hell-hole, do you?' 'No,' I said, 'not if you tell the truth. Sit down.' The late prisoner seated himself in a chair as close to the door as possible, hitching a little nearer as he sat down. His face had taken on a sharp, crafty aspect like that of a trapped rat. 'You are perfectly safe,' I assured him. 'Sit over here by the table. Even if you bolted through that door, you couldn't get out of this flat. Mr. Sanderson, take a chair.' The old man sank despondently into the one nearest at hand. I pressed a button, and when my servant entered, I said to him:-- 'Bring some Cognac and Scotch whisky, glasses, and two syphons of soda.' 'You haven't got any Kentucky or Canadian?' asked the prisoner, moistening his lips. The jail whiteness in his face was now accentuated by the pallor of fear, and the haunted look of the escaped convict glimmered from his eyes. In spite of the comfort I had attempted to bestow upon him, he knew that he had been rescued in mistake for another, and for the first time since he left prison realised he was among strangers, and not among friends. In his trouble he turned to the beverage of his native continent. 'Bring a bottle of Canadian whisky,' I said to the servant, who disappeared, and shortly returned with what I had ordered. I locked the door after him, and put the key in my pocket. 'What am I to call you?' I asked the ex-convict. With a forced laugh he said; 'You can call me Jack for short.' 'Very well, Jack, help yourself,' and he poured out a very liberal glass of the Dominion liquor, refusing to dilute it with soda. Sanderson took Scotch, and I helped myself to a _petit verre_ of brandy. 'Now, Jack,' I began, 'I may tell you plainly that if I wished to send you back to prison, I could not do so without incriminating myself. You are legally dead, and you have now a chance to begin life anew, an opportunity of which I hope you will take advantage. If you were to apply three weeks from today at the prison doors, they would not dare admit you. You are dead. Does that console you?' 'Well, squire, you can bet your bottom dollar I never thought I'd be pleased to hear I was dead, but I'm glad if it's all fixed as you say, and you can bet your last pair of boots I'm going to keep out of the jug in future if I can.' 'That's right. Now, I can promise that if you answer all my questions truthfully, you shall be given money enough to afford you a new beginning in life.' 'Good enough,' said Jack briefly. 'You were known in prison as Wyoming Ed?' 'Yes, sir.' 'If that was not your name, why did you use it?' 'Because Colonel Jim, on the train, asked me to do that. He said it would give him a pull in England to get me free.' 'Did you know Wyoming Ed?' 'Yes, sir, he was one of us three that held up the train.' 'What became of him?' 'He was shot dead.' 'By one of the passengers?' There was silence, during which the old man groaned, and bowed his head. Jack was studying the floor. Then he looked up at me and said:-- 'You don't expect me to give a pal away, do you?' 'As that pal has given you away for the last five years, it seems to me you need not show very much consideration for him.' 'I'm not so sure he did.' 'I am; but never mind that point. Colonel Jim Baxter shot Wyoming Ed and killed him. Why?' 'See here, my friend, you're going a little too fast. I didn't say that.' He reached somewhat defiantly for the bottle from Canada. 'Pardon me,' I said, rising quietly, and taking possession of the bottle myself, 'it grieves me more than I can say to restrict my hospitality. I have never done such a thing in my life before, but this is not a drinking bout; it is a very serious conference. The whisky you have already taken has given you a bogus courage, and a false view of things. Are you going to tell me the truth, or are you not?' Jack pondered on this for a while, then he said:-- 'Well, sir, I'm perfectly willing to tell you the truth as far as it concerns myself, but I don't want to rat on a friend.' 'As I have said, he isn't your friend. He told you to take the name of Wyoming Ed, so that he might blackmail the father of Wyoming Ed. He has done so for the last five years, living in luxury here in London, and not moving a finger to help you. In fact, nothing would appal him more than to learn that you are now in this country. By this time he has probably received the news from the prison doctor that you are dead, and so thinks himself safe for ever.' 'If you can prove that to me--' said Jack. 'I can and will,' I interrupted; then, turning to Sanderson, I demanded:-- 'When are you to meet this man next?' 'Tonight, at nine o'clock,' he answered. 'His monthly payment is due, and he is clamouring for the large sum I told you of.' 'Where do you meet him? In London?' 'Yes.' 'At your master's town house?' 'Yes.' 'Will you take us there, and place us where we can see him and he can't see us?' 'Yes. I trust to your honour, Mr. Valmont. A closed carriage will call for me at eight, and you can accompany me. Still, after all, Mr Valmont, we have no assurance that he is the same person this young man refers to.' 'I am certain he is. He does not go under the name of Colonel Jim Baxter, I suppose?' 'No.' The convict had been looking from one to the other of us during this colloquy. Suddenly he drew his chair up closer to the table. 'Look here,' he said, 'you fellows are square, I can see that, and after all's said and done, you're the man that got me out of clink. Now, I half suspicion you're right about Colonel Jim, but, anyhow, I'll tell you exactly what happened. Colonel Jim was a Britisher, and I suppose that's why he and Wyoming Ed chummed together a good deal. We called Jim Baxter Colonel, but he never said he was a colonel or anything else. I was told he belonged to the British army, and that something happened in India so that he had to light out He never talked about himself, but he was a mighty taking fellow when he laid out to please anybody. We called him Colonel because he was so straight in the back, and walked as if he were on parade. When this young English tenderfoot came out, he and the Colonel got to be as thick as thieves, and the Colonel won a good deal of money from him at cards, but that didn't make any difference in their friendship. The Colonel most always won when he played cards, and perhaps that's what started the talk about why he left the British army. He was the luckiest beggar I ever knew in that line of business. We all met in the rush to the new goldfields, which didn't pan out worth a cent, and one after another of the fellows quit and went somewhere else. But Wyoming Ed, he held on, even after Colonel Jim wanted to quit. As long as there were plenty of fellows there, Colonel Jim never lacked money, although he didn't dig it out of the ground, but when the population thinned down to only a few of us, then we all struck hard times. Now, I knew Colonel Jim was going to hold up a train. He asked me if I would join him, and I said I would if there wasn't too many in the gang. I'd been into that business afore, and I knew there was no greater danger than to have a whole mob of fellows. Three men can hold up a train better than three dozen. Everybody's scared except the express messenger, and it's generally easy to settle him, for he stands where the light is, and we shoot from the dark. Well, I thought at first Wyoming Ed was on to the scheme, because when we were waiting in the cut to signal the train he talked about us going on with her to San Francisco, but I thought he was only joking. I guess that Colonel Jim imagined that when it came to the pinch, Ed wouldn't back out and leave us in the lurch: he knew Ed was as brave as a lion. In the cut, where the train would be on the up grade, the Colonel got his lantern ready, lit it, and wrapped a thin red silk handkerchief round it. The express was timed to pass up there about midnight, but it was near one o'clock when her headlight came in sight. We knew all the passengers would be in bed in the sleepers, and asleep in the smoking car and the day coach. We didn't intend to meddle with them. The Colonel had brought a stick or two of dynamite from the mines, and was going to blow open the safe in the express car, and climb out with whatever was inside. 'The train stopped to the signal all right, and the Colonel fired a couple of shots just to let the engineer know we meant business. The engineer and fireman at once threw up their hands, then the Colonel turns to Ed, who was standing there like a man pole-axed, and says to him mighty sharp, just like if he was speaking to a regiment of soldiers:-- '"You keep these two men covered. Come on, Jack!" he says to me, and then we steps up to the door of the express car, which the fellow inside had got locked and bolted. The Colonel fires his revolver in through the lock, then flung his shoulder agin the door, and it went in with a crash, which was followed instantly by another crash, for the little expressman was game right through. He had put out the lights and was blazing away at the open door. The Colonel sprang for cover inside the car, and wasn't touched, but one of the shots took me just above the knee, and broke my leg, so I went down in a heap. The minute the Colonel counted seven shots he was on to that express messenger like a tiger, and had him tied up in a hard knot before you could shake a stick. Then, quick as a wink he struck a match, and lit the lamp. Plucky as the express messenger was, he looked scared to death, and now, when Colonel Jim held a pistol to his head, he gave up the keys and told him how to open the safe. I had fallen back against the corner of the car, inside, and was groaning with Pain. Colonel Jim was scooping out the money from the shelves of the safe, and stuffing it into a sack. '"Are you hurt, Jack?" he cried. '"Yes, my leg's broke." '"Don't let that trouble you; we'll get you clear all right. Do you think you can ride your horse?" '"I don't believe it," said I. "I guess I'm done for," and I thought I was. 'Colonel Jim never looked round, but he went through that safe in a way that'd make your hair curl, throwing aside the bulky packages after tearing them open, taking only cash, which he thrust into a bag he had with him, till he was loaded like a millionaire. Then suddenly he swore, for the train began to move. '"What is that fool Ed doing?" he shouted, rising to his feet. 'At that minute Ed came in, pistol in each hand, and his face ablaze. '"Here, you cursed thief!" he cried, "I didn't come with you to rob a train!" '"Get outside, you fool!" roared Colonel Jim, "get outside and stop this train. Jack has got his leg broke. Don't come another step towards me, or I'll kill you!" 'But Ed, he walked right on, Colonel Jim backing, then there was a shot that rang like cannon fire in the closed car, and Ed fell forward on his face. Colonel Jim turned him over, and I saw he had been hit square in the middle of the forehead. The train was now going at good speed, and we were already miles away from where our horses were tied. I never heard a man swear like Colonel Jim. He went through the pockets of Ed, and took a bundle of papers that was inside his coat, and this he stuffed away in his own clothes. Then he turned to me, and his voice was like a lamb. '"Jack, old man," he said, "I can't help you. They're going to nab you, but not for murder. The expressman there will be your witness. It isn't murder anyhow on my part, but self-defence. You saw he was coming at me when I warned him to keep away." 'All this he said in a loud voice, for the expressman to hear, then he bent over to me and whispered:-- '"I'll get the best lawyer I can for you, but I'm afraid they're bound to convict you, and if they do, I will spend every penny of this money to get you free. You call yourself Wyoming Ed at the trial. I've taken all this man's papers so that he can't be identified. And don't you worry if you're sentenced, for remember I'll be working night and day for you, and if money can get you out, you'll be got out, because these papers will help me to get the cash required. Ed's folks are rich in England, so they'll fork over to get you out if you pretend to be him." With that he bade me good-bye and jumped off the train. There, gentlemen, that's the whole story just as it happened, and that's why I thought it was Colonel Jim had sent you to get me free.' There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that the convict had told the exact truth, and that night, at nine o'clock, he identified Major Renn as the former Colonel Jim Baxter. Sanderson placed us in a gallery where we could see, but could not hear. The old man seemed determined that we should not know where we were, and took every precaution to keep us in the dark. I suppose he put us out of earshot, so that if the Major mentioned the name of the nobleman we should not be any the wiser. We remained in the gallery for some time after the major had left before Sanderson came to us again, carrying with him a packet. 'The carriage is waiting at the door,' he said, 'and with your permission, Monsieur Valmont, I will accompany you to your flat.' I smiled at the old man's extreme caution, but he continued very gravely:-- 'It is not that, Monsieur Valmont. I wish to consult with you, and if you will accept it, I have another commission to offer.' 'Well,' said I, 'I hope it is not so unsavoury as the last.' But to this the old man made no response. There was silence in the carriage as we drove back to my flat. Sanderson had taken the precaution of pulling down the blinds of the carriage, which he need not have troubled to do, for, as I have said, it would have been the simplest matter in the world for me to have discovered who his employer was, if I had desired to know. As a matter of fact, I do not know to this day whom he represented. Once more in my room with the electric light turned on, I was shocked and astonished to see the expression on Sanderson's face. It was the face of a man who would grimly commit murder and hang for it. If ever the thirst for vengeance was portrayed on a human countenance, it was on his that night. He spoke very quietly, laying down the packet before him on the table. 'I think you will agree with me,' he said, 'that no punishment on earth is too severe for that creature calling himself Major Renn.' 'I'm willing to shoot him dead in the streets of London tomorrow,' said the convict, 'if you give the word.' Sanderson went on implacably: 'He not only murdered the son, but for five years has kept the father in an agony of sorrow and apprehension, bleeding him of money all the time, which was the least of his crimes. Tomorrow I shall tell my master that his son has been dead these five years, and heavy as that blow must prove, it will be mitigated by the fact that his son died an honest and honourable man. I thank you for offering to kill this vile criminal. I intend that he shall die, but not so quickly or so mercifully.' Here he untied the packet, and took from it a photograph, which he handed to the convict. 'Do you recognise that?' 'Oh yes; that's Wyoming Ed as he appeared at the mine; as, indeed, he appeared when he was shot.' The photograph Sanderson then handed to me. 'An article that I read about you in the paper, Monsieur Valmont, said you could impersonate anybody. Can you impersonate this young man?' 'There's no difficulty in that,' I replied. 'Then will you do this? I wish you two to dress in that fashion. I shall give you particulars of the haunts of Major Renn. I want you to meet him together and separately, as often as you can, until you drive him mad or to suicide. He believes you to be dead,' said Sanderson, addressing Jack. 'I am certain he has the news, by his manner tonight. He is extremely anxious to get the lump sum of money which I have been holding back from him. You may address him, for he will recognise your voice as well as your person, but Monsieur Valmont had better not speak, as then he might know it was not the voice of my poor young master. I suggest that you meet him first together, always at night. The rest I leave in your hands, Monsieur Valmont.' With that the old man rose and left us. Perhaps I should stop this narration here, for I have often wondered if practically I am guilty of manslaughter. We did not meet Major Renn together, but arranged that he should encounter Jack under one lamp-post, and me under the next. It was just after midnight, and the streets were practically deserted. The theatre crowds had gone, and the traffic was represented by the last 'buses, and a belated cab now and then. Major Renn came down the steps of his club, and under the first lamp-post, with the light shining full upon him, Jack the convict stepped forth. 'Colonel Jim,' he said, 'Ed and I are waiting for you. There were three in that robbery, and one was a traitor. His dead comrades ask the traitor to join them.' The Major staggered back against the lamp-post, drew his hand across his brow, and muttered, Jack told me afterwards:-- 'I must stop drinking! I must stop drinking!' Then he pulled himself together, and walked rapidly towards the next lamp-post. I stood out square in front of him, but made no sound. He looked at me with distended eyes, while Jack shouted out in his boisterous voice, that had no doubt often echoed over the plain:-- 'Come on, Wyoming Ed, and never mind him. He must follow.' Then he gave a war whoop. The Major did not turn round, but continued to stare at me, breathing stertorously like a person with apoplexy. I slowly pushed back my hat, and on my brow he saw the red mark of a bullet hole. He threw up his hands and fell with a crash to the pavement. 'Heart failure' was the verdict of the coroner's jury. 8. _Lady Alicia's Emeralds_ Many Englishmen, if you speak to them of me, indulge themselves in a detraction that I hope they will not mind my saying is rarely graced by the delicacy of innuendo with which some of my own countrymen attempt to diminish whatever merit I may possess. Mr. Spenser Hale, of Scotland Yard, whose lack of imagination I have so often endeavoured to amend, alas! without perceptible success, was good enough to say, after I had begun these reminiscences, which he read with affected scorn, that I was wise in setting down my successes, because the life of Methuselah himself would not be long enough to chronicle my failures, and the man to whom this was said replied that it was only my artfulness, a word of which these people are very fond; that I intended to use my successes as bait, issue a small pamphlet filled with them, and then record my failures in a thousand volumes, after the plan of a Chinese encyclopaedia, selling these to the public on the instalment plan. Ah, well; it is not for me to pass comment on such observations. Every profession is marred by its little jealousies, and why should the coterie of detection be exempt? I hope I may never follow an example so deleterious, and thus be tempted to express my contempt for the stupidity with which, as all persons know, the official detective system of England is imbued. I have had my failures, of course. Did I ever pretend to be otherwise than human? But what has been the cause of these failures? They have arisen through the conservatism of the English. When there is a mystery to be solved, the average Englishman almost invariably places it in the hands of the regular police. When these good people are utterly baffled; when their big boots have crushed out all evidences that the grounds may have had to offer to a discerning mind; when their clumsy hands have obliterated the clues which are everywhere around them, I am at last called in, and if I fail, they say:-- 'What could you expect; he is a Frenchman.' This was exactly what happened in the case of Lady Alicia's emeralds. For two months the regular police were not only befogged, but they blatantly sounded the alarm to every thief in Europe. All the pawnbrokers' shops of Great Britain were ransacked, as if a robber of so valuable a collection would be foolish enough to take it to a pawnbroker. Of course, the police say that they thought the thief would dismantle the cluster, and sell the gems separately. As to this necklace of emeralds, possessing as it does an historical value which is probably in excess of its intrinsic worth, what more natural than that the holder of it should open negotiations with its rightful owner, and thus make more money by quietly restoring it than by its dismemberment and sale piecemeal? But such a fuss was kicked up, such a furore created, that it is no wonder the receiver of the goods lay low, and said nothing. In vain were all ports giving access to the Continent watched; in vain were the police of France, Belgium, and Holland warned to look out for this treasure. Two valuable months were lost, and then the Marquis of Blair sent for me! I maintain that the case was hopeless from the moment I took it up. It may be asked why the Marquis of Blair allowed the regular police to blunder along for two precious months, but anyone who is acquainted with that nobleman will not wonder that he clung so long to a forlorn hope. Very few members of the House of Peers are richer than Lord Blair, and still fewer more penurious. He maintained that, as he paid his taxes, he was entitled to protection from theft; that it was the duty of the Government to restore the gems, and if this proved impossible, to make compensation for them. This theory is not acceptable in the English Courts, and while Scotland Yard did all it could during those two months, what but failure was to be expected from its limited mental equipment? When I arrived at the Manor of Blair, as his lordship's very ugly and somewhat modern mansion house is termed, I was instantly admitted to his presence. I had been summoned from London by a letter in his lordship's own hand, on which the postage was not paid. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived, and our first conference was what might be termed futile. It was take up entirely with haggling about terms, the marquis endeavouring to beat down the price of my services to a sum so insignificant that it would barely have paid my expenses from London to Blair and back. Such bargaining is intensely distasteful to me. When the marquis found all his offers declined with a politeness which left no opening for anger on his part, he endeavoured to induce me to take up the case on a commission contingent upon my recovery of the gems, and as I had declined this for the twentieth time, darkness had come on, and the gong rang for dinner. I dined alone in the _salle à manger_, which appeared to be set apart for those calling at the mansion on business, and the meagreness of the fare, together with the indifferent nature of the claret, strengthened my determination to return to London as early as possible next morning. When the repast was finished, the dignified servingman said gravely to me,-- 'The Lady Alicia asks if you will be good enough to give her a few moments in the drawing-room, sir.' I followed the man to the drawing-room, and found the young lady seated at the piano, on which she was strumming idly and absentmindedly, but with a touch, nevertheless, that indicated advanced excellence in the art of music. She was not dressed as one who had just risen from the dining table, but was somewhat grimly and commonly attired, looking more like a cottager's daughter than a member of the great country family. Her head was small, and crowned with a mass of jet black hair. My first impression on entering the large, rather dimly lighted room was unfavourable, but that vanished instantly under the charm of a manner so graceful and vivacious, that in a moment I seemed to be standing in a brilliant Parisian _salon_ rather than in the sombre drawing-room of an English country house. Every poise of her dainty head; every gesture of those small, perfect hands; every modulated tone of the voice, whether sparkling with laughter or caressing in confidential speech, reminded me of the _grandes dames_ of my own land. It was strange to find this perfect human flower amidst the gloomy ugliness of a huge square house built in the time of the Georges; but I remembered now that the Blairs are the English equivalent of the de Bellairs of France, from which family sprang the fascinating Marquise de Bellairs, who adorned the Court of Louis XIV. Here, advancing towards me, was the very reincarnation of the lovely marquise, who gave lustre to this dull world nearly three hundred years ago. Ah, after all, what are the English but a conquered race! I often forget this, and I trust I never remind them of it, but it enables one to forgive them much. A vivid twentieth-century marquise was Lady Alicia, in all except attire. What a dream some of our Parisian dress artists could have made of her, and here she was immured in this dull English house in the high-necked costume of a labourer's wife. 'Welcome, Monsieur Valmont,' she cried, in French of almost faultless intonation. 'I am so glad you have arrived,' and she greeted me as if I were an old friend of the family. There was nothing of condescension in her manner; no display of her own affability, while at the same time teaching me my place, and the difference in our stations of life. I can stand the rudeness of the nobility, but I detest their condescension. No; Lady Alicia was a true de Bellairs, and in my confusion, bending over her slender hand, I said:-- 'Madame la Marquise, it is a privilege to extend to you my most respectful salutations.' She laughed at this quietly, with the melting laugh of the nightingale. 'Monsieur, you mistake my title. Although my uncle is a marquis, I am but Lady Alicia.' 'Your pardon, my lady. For the moment I was back in that scintillating Court which surrounded Louis le Grand.' 'How flatteringly you introduce yourself, monsieur. In the gallery upstairs there is a painting of the Marquise de Bellairs, and when I show it to your tomorrow, you will then understand how charmingly you have pleased a vain woman by your reference to that beautiful lady. But I must not talk in this frivolous strain, monsieur. There is serious business to be considered, and I assure you I looked forward to your coming, monsieur, with the eagerness of Sister Anne in the tower of Bluebeard.' I fear my expression as I bowed to her must have betrayed my gratification at hearing these words, so confidentially uttered by lips so sweet, while the glance of her lovely eyes was even more eloquent than her words. Instantly I felt ashamed of my chaffering over terms with her uncle; instantly I forgot my resolution to depart on the morrow; instantly I resolved to be of what assistance I could to this dainty lady. Alas! the heart of Valmont is today as unprotected against the artillery of inspiring eyes as ever it was in his extreme youth. 'This house,' she continued vivaciously, 'has been practically in a state of siege for two months. I could take none of my usual walks in the gardens, on the lawns, or through the park, without some clumsy policeman in uniform crashing his way through the bushes, or some detective in plain clothes accosting me and questioning me under the pretence that he was a stranger who had lost his way. The lack of all subtlety in our police is something deplorable. I am sure the real criminal might have passed through their hands a dozen times unmolested, while our poor innocent servants, and the strangers within our gates, were made to feel that the stern eye of the law was upon them night and day.' The face of the young lady was an entrancing picture of animated indignation as she gave utterance to this truism which her countrymen are so slow to appreciate. I experienced a glow of satisfaction. 'Yes,' she went on, 'they sent down from London an army of stupid men, who have kept our household in a state of abject terror for eight long weeks, and where are the emeralds?' As she suddenly asked this question, in the most Parisian of accents, with a little outward spreading of the hand, a flash of the eye, and a toss of the head, the united effect was something indescribable through the limitations of the language I am compelled to use. 'Well, monsieur, your arrival has put to flight this tiresome brigade, if, indeed, the word flight is not too airy a term to use towards a company so elephantine, and I assure you a sigh of relief has gone up from the whole household with the exception of my uncle. I said to him at dinner tonight: "If Monsieur Valmont had been induced to take an interest in the case at first, the jewels would have been in my possession long before tonight."' 'Ah, my lady,' I protested, 'I fear you overrate my poor ability. It is quite true that if I had been called in on the night of the robbery, my chances of success would have been infinitely greater than they are now.' 'Monsieur,' she cried, clasping her hands over her knees, and leaning towards me, hypnotising me with those starry eyes, 'Monsieur, I am perfectly confident that before a week is past you will restore the necklace, if such restoration be possible. I have said so from the first. Now, am I right in my conjecture, monsieur, that you come here alone; that you bring with you no train of followers and assistants?' 'That is as you have stated it, my lady.' 'I was sure of it. It is to be a contest of trained mentality in opposition to our two months' experience of brute force.' Never before had I felt such ambition to succeed, and a determination not to disappoint took full possession of me. Appreciation is a needed stimulant, and here it was offered to me in its most intoxicating form. Ah, Valmont, Valmont, will you never grow old! I am sure that at this moment, if I had been eighty, the same thrill of enthusiasm would have tingled to my fingers' ends. Leave the Manor of Blair in the morning? Not for the Bank of France! 'Has my uncle acquainted you with particulars of the robbery?' 'No, madame, we were talking of other things.' The lady leaned back in her low chair, partially closed her eyes, and breathed a deep sigh. 'I can well imagine the subject of your conversation,' she said at last. 'The Marquis of Blair was endeavouring to impose usurer's terms upon you, while you, nobly scorning such mercenary considerations, had perhaps resolved to leave us at the earliest opportunity.' 'I assure you, my lady, that if any such conclusion had been arrived at on my part, it vanished the moment I was privileged to set foot in this drawing-room.' 'It is kind of you to say that, monsieur, but you must not allow your conversation with my uncle to prejudice you against him. He is an old man now, and, of course, has his fancies. You would think him mercenary, perhaps, and so he is; but then so, too, am I. Oh, yes, I am, monsieur, frightfully mercenary. To be mercenary, I believe, means to be fond of money. No one is fonder of money than I, except, perhaps, my uncle; but you see, monsieur, we occupy the two extremes. He is fond of money to hoard it; I am fond of money to spend it. I am fond of money for the things it will buy. I should like to scatter largesse as did my fair ancestress in France. I should love a manor house in the country, and a mansion in Mayfair. I could wish to make everyone around me happy if the expenditure of money would do it.' 'That is a form of money-love, Lady Alicia, which will find a multitude of admirers.' The girl shook her head and laughed merrily. 'I should so dislike to forfeit your esteem, Monsieur Valmont, and therefore I shall not reveal the depth of my cupidity. You will learn that probably from my uncle, and then you will understand my extreme anxiety for the recovery of these jewels.' 'Are they very valuable?' 'Oh, yes; the necklace consists of twenty stones, no one of which weighs less than an ounce. Altogether, I believe, they amount to two thousand four hundred or two thousand five hundred carats, and their intrinsic value is twenty pounds a carat at least. So you see that means nearly fifty thousand pounds, yet even this sum is trivial compared with what it involves. There is something like a million at stake, together with my coveted manor house in the country, and my equally coveted mansion in Mayfair. All this is within my grasp if I can but recover the emeralds.' The girl blushed prettily as she noticed how intently I regarded her while she evolved this tantalising mystery. I thought there was a trace of embarrassment in her laugh when she cried:-- 'Oh, what will you think of me when you understand the situation? Pray, pray do not judge me harshly. I assure you the position I aim at will be used for the good of others as well as for my own pleasure. If my uncle does not make a confidant of you, I must take my courage in both hands, and give you all the particulars, but not tonight. Of course, if one is to unravel such a snarl as that in which we find ourselves, he must be made aware of every particular, must he not?' 'Certainly, my lady.' 'Very well, Monsieur Valmont, I shall supply any deficiencies that occur in my uncle's conversation with you. There is one point on which I should like to warn you. Both my uncle and the police have made up their minds that a certain young man is the culprit. The police found several clues which apparently led in his direction, but they were unable to find enough to justify his arrest. At first I could have sworn he had nothing whatever to do with the matter, but lately I am not so sure. All I ask of you until we secure another opportunity of consulting together is to preserve an open mind. Please do not allow my uncle to prejudice you against him.' 'What is the name of this young man?' 'He is the Honourable John Haddon.' 'The Honourable! Is he a person who could do so dishonourable an action?' The young lady shook her head. 'I am almost sure he would not, and yet one never can tell. I think at the present moment there are one or two noble lords in prison, but their crimes have not been mere vulgar housebreaking.' 'Am I to infer, Lady Alicia, that you are in possession of certain facts unknown either to your uncle or the police?' 'Yes.' 'Pardon me, but do these facts tend to incriminate the young man?' Again the young lady leaned back in her chair, and gazed past me, a wrinkle of perplexity on her fair brow. Then she said very slowly:-- 'You will understand, Monsieur Valmont, how loath I am to speak against one who was formerly a friend. If he had been content to remain a friend, I am sure this incident, which has caused us all such worry and trouble, would never have happened. I do not wish to dwell on what my uncle will tell you was a very unpleasant episode, but the Honourable John Haddon is a poor man, and it is quite out of the question for one brought up as I have been to marry into poverty. He was very headstrong and reckless about the matter, and involved my uncle in a bitter quarrel while discussing it, much to my chagrin and disappointment. It is as necessary for him to marry wealth as it is for me to make a good match, but he could not be brought to see that. Oh, he is not at all a sensible young man, and my former friendship for him has ceased. Yet I should dislike very much to take any action that might harm him, therefore I have spoken to no one but you about the evidence that is in my hands, and this you must treat as entirely confidential, giving no hint to my uncle, who is already bitter enough against Mr. Haddon.' 'Does this evidence convince you that he stole the necklace?' 'No; I do not believe that he actually stole it, but I am persuaded he was an accessory after the fact--is that the legal term? Now, Monsieur Valmont, we will say no more tonight. If I talk any longer about this crisis, I shall not sleep, and I wish, assured of your help, to attack the situation with a very clear mind tomorrow.' When I retired to my room, I found that I, too, could not sleep, although I needed a clear mind to face the problem of tomorrow. It is difficult for me to describe accurately the effect this interview had upon my mind, but to use a bodily simile, I may say that it seemed as if I had indulged too freely in a subtle champagne which appeared exceedingly excellent at first, but from which the exhilaration had now departed. No man could have been more completely under a spell than I was when Lady Alicia's eyes first told me more than her lips revealed; but although I had challenged her right to the title 'mercenary' when she applied it to herself, I could not but confess that her nonchalant recital regarding the friend who desired to be a lover jarred upon me. I found my sympathy extending itself to that unknown young man, on whom it appeared the shadow of suspicion already rested. I was confident that if he had actually taken the emeralds it was not at all from motives of cupidity. Indeed that was practically shown by the fact that Scotland Yard found itself unable to trace the jewels, which at least they might have done if the necklace had been sold either as a whole or dismembered. Of course, an emerald weighing an ounce is by no means unusual. The Hope emerald, for example, weighs six ounces, and the gem owned by the Duke of Devonshire measures two and a quarter inches through its greatest diameter. Nevertheless, such a constellation as the Blair emeralds was not to be disposed of very easily, and I surmised no attempt had been made either to sell them or to raise money upon them. Now that I had removed myself from the glamour of her presence, I began to suspect that the young lady, after all, although undoubtedly possessing the brilliancy of her jewels, retained also something of their hardness. There had been no expression of sympathy for the discarded friend; it was too evident, recalling what had latterly passed between us, that the young woman's sole desire, and a perfectly natural desire, was to recover her missing treasure. There was something behind all this which I could not comprehend, and I resolved in the morning to question the Marquis of Blair as shrewdly as he cared to allow. Failing him, I should cross-question the niece in a somewhat dryer light than that which had enshrouded me during this interesting evening. I care not who knows it, but I have been befooled more than once by a woman, but I determined that in clear daylight I should resist the hypnotising influence of those glorious eyes. _Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu_! how easy it is for me to make good resolutions when I am far from temptation! * * * * * It was ten o'clock next morning when I was admitted to the study of the aged bachelor Marquis of Blair. His keen eyes looked through and through me as I seated myself before him. 'Well!' he said shortly. 'My lord,' I began deliberately, 'I know nothing more of the case than was furnished by the accounts I have read in the newspapers. Two months have elapsed since the robbery. Every day that passed made the detection of the criminal more difficult. I do not wish to waste either my time or your money on a forlorn hope. If, therefore, you will be good enough to place me in possession of all the facts known to you, I shall tell you at once whether or not I can take up the case.' 'Do you wish me to give you the name of the criminal?' asked his lordship. 'Is his name known to you?' I asked in return. 'Yes. John Haddon stole the necklace.' 'Did you give that name to the police?' 'Yes.' 'Why didn't they arrest him?' 'Because the evidence against him is so small, and the improbability of his having committed the crime is so great.' 'What is the evidence against him?' His lordship spoke with the dry deliberation of an aged solicitor. 'The robbery was committed on the night of October the fifth. All day there had been a heavy rain, and the grounds were wet. For reasons into which I do not care to enter, John Haddon was familiar with this house, and with our grounds. He was well known to my servants, and, unfortunately, popular with them, for he is an openhanded spendthrift. The estate of his elder brother, Lord Steffenham, adjoins my own to the west, and Lord Steffenham's house is three miles from where we sit. On the night of the fifth a ball was given in the mansion of Lord Steffenham, to which, of course, my niece and myself were invited, and which invitation we accepted. I had no quarrel with the elder brother. It was known to John Haddon that my niece intended to wear her necklace of emeralds. The robbery occurred at a time when most crimes of that nature are committed in country houses, namely, while we were at dinner, an hour during which the servants are almost invariably in the lower part of the house. In October the days are getting short. The night was exceptionally dark, for, although the rain had ceased, not a star was visible. The thief placed a ladder against the sill of one of the upper windows, opened it, and came in. He must have been perfectly familiar with the house, for there are evidences that he went direct to the boudoir where the jewel case had been carelessly left on my niece's dressing table when she came down to dinner. It had been taken from the strong room about an hour before. The box was locked, but, of course, that made no difference. The thief wrenched the lid off, breaking the lock, stole the necklace, and escaped by the way he came.' 'Did he leave the window open, and the ladder in place?' 'Yes.' 'Doesn't that strike you as very extraordinary?' 'No. I do not assert that he is a professional burglar, who would take all the precautions against the discovery that might have been expected from one of the craft. Indeed, the man's carelessness in going straight across the country to his brother's house, and leaving footsteps in the soft earth, easily traceable almost to the very boundary fence, shows he is incapable of any serious thought.' 'Is John Haddon rich?' 'He hasn't a penny.' 'Did you go to the ball that night?' 'Yes, I had promised to go.' 'Was John Haddon there?' 'Yes; but he appeared late. He should have been present at the opening, and his brother was seriously annoyed by his absence. When he did come he acted in a wild and reckless manner, which gave the guests the impression that he had been drinking. Both my niece and myself were disgusted with his actions.' 'Do you think your niece suspects him?' 'She certainly did not at first, and was indignant when I told her, coming home from the ball, that her jewels were undoubtedly in Steffenham House, even though they were not round her neck, but latterly I think her opinion has changed.' 'To go back a moment. Did any of your servants see him prowling about the place?' 'They all say they didn't, but I myself saw him, just before dusk, coming across the fields towards this house, and next morning we found the same footprints both going and coming. It seems to me the circumstantial evidence is rather strong.' 'It's a pity that no one but yourself saw him. What more evidence are the authorities waiting for?' 'They are waiting until he attempts to dispose of the jewels.' 'You think, then, he has not done so up to date?' 'I think he will never do so.' 'Then why did he steal them?' 'To prevent the marriage of my niece with Jonas Carter, of Sheffield, to whom she is betrothed. They were to be married early in the New Year.' 'My lord, you amaze me. If Mr. Carter and Lady Alicia are engaged, why should the theft of the jewels interfere with the ceremony?' 'Mr. Jonas Carter is a most estimable man, who, however, does not move in our sphere of life. He is connected with the steel or cutlery industry, and is a person of great wealth, rising upwards of a million, with a large estate in Derbyshire, and a house fronting Hyde Park, in London. He is a very strict business man, and both my niece and myself agree that he is also an eligible man. I myself am rather strict in matters of business, and I must admit that Mr. Carter showed a very generous spirit in arranging the preliminaries of the engagement with me. When Alicia's father died he had run through all the money he himself possessed or could borrow from his friends. Although a man of noble birth, I never liked him. He was married to my only sister. The Blair emeralds, as perhaps you know, descend down the female line. They, therefore, came to my niece from her mother. My poor sister had long been disillusioned before death released her from the titled scamp she had married, and she very wisely placed the emeralds in my custody to be held in trust for her daughter. They constitute my niece's only fortune, and would produce, if offered in London today, probably seventy-five or a hundred thousand pounds, although actually they are not worth so much. Mr. Jonas Carter very amiably consented to receive my niece with a dowry of only fifty thousand pounds, and that money I offered to advance, if I was allowed to retain the jewels as security. This was arranged between Mr. Carter and myself.' 'But surely Mr. Carter does not refuse to carry out his engagement because the jewels have been stolen?' 'He does. Why should he not?' 'Then surely you will advance the fifty thousand necessary?' 'I will not. Why should I?' 'Well, it seems to me,' said I, with a slight laugh, 'the young man has very definitely checkmated both of you.' 'He has, until I have laid him by the heels, which I am determined to do if he were the brother of twenty Lord Steffenhams.' 'Please answer one more question. Are you determined to put the young man in prison, or would you be content with the return of the emeralds intact?' 'Of course I should prefer to put him in prison and get the emeralds too, but if there's no choice in the matter, I must content myself with the necklace.' 'Very well, my lord, I will undertake the case.' This conference had detained us in the study till after eleven, and then, as it was a clear, crisp December morning, I went out through the gardens into the park, that I might walk along the well-kept private road and meditate upon my course of action, or, rather, think over what had been said, because I could not map my route until I had heard the secret which the Lady Alicia promised to impart. As at present instructed, it seemed to me the best way to go direct to the young man, show him as effectively as I could the danger in which he stood, and, if possible, persuade him to deliver up the necklace to me. As I strolled along under the grand old leafless trees, I suddenly heard my name called impulsively two or three times, and turning round saw the Lady Alicia running toward me. Her cheeks were bright with Nature's rouge, and her eyes sparkled more dazzlingly than any emerald that ever tempted man to wickedness. 'Oh, Monsieur Valmont, I have been waiting for you, and you escaped me. Have you seen my uncle?' 'Yes, I have been with him since ten o'clock.' 'Well?' 'Your ladyship, that is exactly the word with which he accosted me.' 'Ah, you see an additional likeness between my uncle and myself this morning, then? Has he told you about Mr. Carter?' 'Yes.' 'So now you understand how important it is that I should regain possession of my property?' 'Yes,' I said with a sigh; 'the house near Hyde Park and the great estate in Derbyshire.' She clapped her hands with glee, eyes and feet dancing in unison, as she capered along gaily beside me; a sort of skippety-hop, skippety-hop, sideways, keeping pace with my more stately step, as if she were a little girl of six instead of a young woman of twenty. 'Not only that!' she cried, 'but one million pounds to spend! Oh, Monsieur Valmont, you know Paris, and yet you do not seem to comprehend what that plethora of money means!' 'Well, madame, I have seen Paris, and I have seen a good deal of the world, but I am not so certain you will secure the million to spend.' 'What!' she cried, stopping short, that little wrinkle which betokened temper appearing on her brow. 'Do you think we won't get the emeralds then?' 'Oh, I am sure we will get the emeralds. I, Valmont, pledge you my word. But if Mr. Jonas Carter before marriage calls a halt upon the ceremony until your uncle places fifty thousand pounds upon the table, I confess I am very pessimistic about your obtaining control of the million afterwards.' All her vivacity instantaneously returned. 'Pooh!' she cried, dancing round in front of me, and standing there directly in my path, so that I came to a stand. 'Pooh!' she repeated, snapping her fingers, with an inimitable gesture of that lovely hand. 'Monsieur Valmont, I am disappointed in you. You are not nearly so nice as you were last evening. It is very uncomplimentary in you to intimate that when once I am married to Mr. Jonas I shall not wheedle from him all the money I want. Do not rest your eyes on the ground; look at me and answer!' I glanced up at her, and could not forbear laughing. The witchery of the wood was in that girl; yes, and a perceptible trace of the Gallic devil flickered in those enchanting eyes of hers. I could not help myself. 'Ah, Madame la Marquise de Bellairs, how jauntily you would scatter despair in that susceptible Court of Louis!' 'Ah, Monsieur Eugène de Valmont,' she cried, mimicking my tones, and imitating my manner with an exactitude that amazed me, 'you are once more my dear de Valmont of last night. I dreamed of you, I assure you I did, and now to find you in the morning, oh, so changed!' She clasped her little hands and inclined her head, while the sweet voice sank into a cadence of melancholy which seemed so genuine that the mocking ripple of a laugh immediately following was almost a shock to me. Where had this creature of the dull English countryside learnt all such frou-frou of gesture and tone? 'Have you ever seen Sarah Bernhardt?' I asked. Now the average English woman would have inquired the genesis of so inconsequent a question, but Lady Alicia followed the trend of my thought, and answered at once as if my query had been quite expected:-- '_Mais non_, monsieur. Sarah the Divine! Ah, she comes with my million a year and the house of Hyde Park. No, the only inhabitant of my real world whom I have yet seen is Monsieur Valmont, and he, alas! I find so changeable. But now, adieu frivolity, we must be serious,' and she walked sedately by my side. 'Do you know where you are going, monsieur? You are going to church. Oh, do not look frightened, not to a service. I am decorating the church with holly, and you shall help me and get thorns in your poor fingers.' The private road, which up to this time had passed through a forest, now reached a secluded glade in which stood a very small, but exquisite, church, evidently centuries older than the mansion we had left. Beyond it were gray stone ruins, which Lady Alicia pointed out to me as remnants of the original mansion that had been built in the reign of the second Henry. The church, it was thought, formed the private chapel to the hall, and it had been kept in repair by the various lords of the manor. 'Now hearken to the power of the poor, and learn how they may flout the proud marquis,' cried Lady Alicia gleefully; 'the poorest man in England may walk along this private road on Sunday to the church, and the proud marquis is powerless to prevent him. Of course, if the poor man prolongs his walk then is he in danger from the law of trespass. On weekdays, however, this is the most secluded spot on the estate, and I regret to say that my lordly uncle does not trouble it even on Sundays. I fear we are a degenerate race, Monsieur Valmont, for doubtless a fighting and deeply religious ancestor of mine built this church, and to think that when the useful masons cemented those stones together, Madame la Marquise de Bellairs or Lady Alicia were alike unthought of, and though three hundred years divide them this ancient chapel makes them seem, as one might say, contemporaries. Oh, Monsieur Valmont, what is the use of worrying about emeralds or anything else? As I look at this beautiful old church, even the house of Hyde Park appears as naught,' and to my amazement, the eyes that Lady Alicia turned upon me were wet. The front door was unlocked, and we walked into the church in silence. Around the pillars holly and ivy were twined. Great armfuls of the shrubs had been flung here and there along the walls in heaps, and a step-ladder stood in one of the aisles, showing that the decoration of the edifice was not yet complete. A subdued melancholy had settled down on my erstwhile vivacious companion, the inevitable reaction so characteristic of the artistic temperament, augmented doubtless by the solemnity of the place, around whose walls in brass and marble were sculptured memorials of her ancient race. 'You promised,' I said at last, 'to tell me how you came to suspect--' 'Not here, not here,' she whispered; then rising from the pew in which she had seated herself, she said:-- 'Let us go, I am in no mood for working this morning. I shall finish the decoration in the afternoon.' We came out into the cool and brilliant sunlight again, and as we turned homeward, her spirits immediately began to rise. 'I am anxious to know,' I persisted, 'why you came to suspect a man whom at first you believed innocent.' 'I am not sure but I believe him innocent now, although I am forced to the conclusion that he knows where the treasure is.' 'What forces you to that conclusion, my lady?' 'A letter I received from himself, in which he makes a proposal so extraordinary that I am almost disinclined to accede to it, even though it leads to the discovery of my necklace. However, I am determined to leave no means untried if I receive the support of my friend, Monsieur Valmont.' 'My lady,' said I, with a bow, 'it is but yours to command, mine to obey. What were the contents of that letter?' 'Read it,' she replied, taking the folded sheet from her pocket, and handing it to me. She had been quite right in characterising the note as an extraordinary epistle. The Honourable John Haddon had the temerity to propose that she should go through a form of marriage with him in the old church we had just left. If she did that, he said, it would console him for the mad love he felt for her. The ceremony would have no binding force upon her whatever, and she might bring whom she pleased to perform it. If she knew no one that she could trust, he would invite an old college chum, and bring him to the church next morning at half-past seven o'clock. Even if an ordained clergyman performed the ceremony, it would not be legal unless it took place between the hours of eight in the morning, and three in the afternoon. If she consented to this, the emeralds were hers once more. 'This is the proposal of a madman,' said I, as I handed back the letter. 'Well,' she replied, with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, 'he has always said he was madly in love with me, and I quite believe it. Poor young man, if this mummery were to console him for the rest of his life, why should I not indulge him in it?' 'Lady Alicia, surely you would not countenance the profaning of that lovely old edifice with a mock ceremonial? No man in his senses could suggest such a thing!' Once more her eyes were twinkling with merriment. 'But the Honourable John Haddon, as I have told you, is not in his senses.' 'Then why should you indulge him?' 'Why? How can you ask such a question? Because of the emeralds. It is only a mad lark, after all, and no one need know of it. Oh, Monsieur Valmont,' she cried pleadingly, clasping her hands, and yet it seemed to me with an undercurrent of laughter in her beseeching tones, 'will you not enact for us the part of clergyman? I am sure if your face were as serious as it is at this moment, the robes of a priest would become you.' 'Lady Alicia, you are incorrigible. I am somewhat of a man of the world, yet I should not dare to counterfeit the sacred office, and I hope you but jest. In fact, I am sure you do, my lady.' She turned away from me with a very pretty pout. 'Monsieur Valmont, your knighthood is, after all, but surface deep. 'Tis not mine to command, and yours to obey. Certainly I did but jest. John shall bring his own imitation clergyman with him.' 'Are you going to meet him tomorrow?' 'Certainly I am. I have promised. I must secure my necklace.' 'You seem to place great confidence in the belief that he will produce it.' 'If he fails to do so, then I play Monsieur Valmont as my trump card. But, monsieur, although you quite rightly refuse to comply with my first request, you will surely not reject my second. Please meet me tomorrow at the head of the avenue, promptly at a quarter-past seven, and escort me to the church.' For a moment the negative trembled on my tongue's end, but she turned those enchanting eyes upon me, and I was undone. 'Very well,' I answered. She seized both my hands, like a little girl overjoyed at a promised excursion. 'Oh, Monsieur Valmont, you are a darling! I feel as if I'd known you all my life. I am sure you will never regret having humoured me,' then added a moment later, 'if we get the emeralds.' 'Ah,' said I, '_if_ we get the emeralds.' We were now within sight of the house, and she pointed out our rendezvous for the following day, and with that I bade her good-bye. It was shortly after seven o'clock next morning when I reached the meeting-place. The Lady Alicia was somewhat long in coming, but when she arrived her face was aglow with girlish delight at the solemn prank she was about to play. 'You have not changed your mind?' I asked, after the morning's greetings. 'Oh, no, Monsieur Valmont,' she replied, with a bright laugh. 'I am determined to recover those emeralds.' 'We must hurry, Lady Alicia, or we will be too late.' 'There is plenty of time,' she remarked calmly; and she proved to be right, because when we came in sight of the church, the clock pointed to the hour of half-past seven. 'Now,' she said 'I shall wait here until you steal up to the church and look in through one of the windows that do not contain stained glass. I should not for the world arrive before Mr. Haddon and his friend are there.' I did as requested, and saw two young men standing together in the centre aisle, one in the full robes of a clergyman, the other in his ordinary dress, whom I took to be the Honourable John Haddon. His profile was toward me, and I must admit there was very little of the madman in his calm countenance. His was a well-cut face, clean shaven, and strikingly manly. In one of the pews was seated a woman--I learned afterwards she was Lady Alicia's maid, who had been instructed to come and go from the house by a footpath, while we had taken the longer road. I returned and escorted Lady Alicia to the church, and there was introduced to Mr. Haddon and his friend, the made-up divine. The ceremony was at once performed, and, man of the world as I professed myself to be, this enacting of private theatricals in a church grated upon me. When the maid and I were asked to sign the book as witnesses, I said:-- 'Surely this is carrying realism a little too far?' Mr. Haddon smiled, and replied:-- 'I am amazed to hear a Frenchman objecting to realism going to its full length, and speaking for myself, I should be delighted to see the autograph of the renowned Eugène Valmont,' and with that he proffered me the pen, whereupon I scrawled my signature. The maid had already signed, and disappeared. The reputed clergyman bowed us out of the church, standing in the porch to see us walk up the avenue. 'Ed,' cried John Haddon, I'll be back within half an hour, and we'll attend to the clock. You won't mind waiting?' 'Not in the least, dear boy. God bless you both,' and the tremor in his voice seemed to me carrying realism one step further still. The Lady Alicia, with downcast head, hurried us on until we were within the gloom of the forest, and then, ignoring me, she turned suddenly to the young man, and placed her two hands on his shoulders. 'Oh, Jack, Jack!' she cried. He kissed her twice on the lips. 'Jack, Monsieur Valmont insists on the emeralds.' The young man laughed. Her ladyship stood fronting him with her back towards me. Tenderly the young man unfastened something at the throat of that high-necked dress of hers, then there was a snap, and he drew out an amazing, dazzling, shimmering sheen of green, that seemed to turn the whole bleak December landscape verdant as with a touch of spring. The girl hid her rosy face against him, and over her shoulder, with a smile, he handed me the celebrated Blair emeralds. 'There is the treasure, Valmont,' he cried, 'on condition that you do not molest the culprit.' 'Or the accessory after the fact,' gurgled Lady Alicia in smothered tones, with a hand clasping together her high-necked dress at the throat. 'We trust to your invention, Valmont, to deliver that necklace to uncle with a detective story that will thrill him to his very heart.' We heard the clock strike eight; then a second later smaller bells chimed a quarter-past, and another second after they tinkled the half-hour. 'Hallo!' cried Haddon, 'Ed has attended to the clock himself. What a good fellow he is.' 'I looked at my watch; it was twenty-five minutes to nine. 'Was the ceremony genuine then?' I asked. 'Ah, Valmont,' said the young man, patting his wife affectionately on the shoulder, 'nothing on earth can be more genuine than that ceremony was.' And the volatile Lady Alicia snuggled closer to him. APPENDIX: TWO SHERLOCK HOLMES PARODIES 1. The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs (With apologies to Dr. Conan Doyle, and his excellent book, 'A Study in Scarlet'.) I dropped in on my friend, Sherlaw Kombs, to hear what he had to say about the Pegram mystery, as it had come to be called in the newspapers. I found him playing the violin with a look of sweet peace and serenity on his face, which I never noticed on the countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article eulogising the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great was Sherlaw Kombs's contempt for Scotland Yard that he never would visit Scotland during his vacations, nor would he ever admit that a Scotchman was fit for anything but export. He generously put away his violin, for he had a sincere liking for me, and greeted me with his usual kindness. 'I have come,' I began, plunging at once into the matter on my mind, 'to hear what you think of the great Pegram mystery.' 'I haven't heard of it,' he said quietly, just as if all London were not talking of that very thing. Kombs was curiously ignorant on some subjects, and abnormally learned on others. I found, for instance, that political discussion with him was impossible, because he did not know who Salisbury and Gladstone were. This made his friendship a great boon. 'The Pegram mystery has baffled even Gregory, of Scotland Yard.' 'I can well believe it,' said my friend, calmly. 'Perpetual motion, or squaring the circle, would baffle Gregory. He's an infant, is Gregory.' This was one of the things I always liked about Kombs. There was no professional jealousy in him, such as characterises so many other men. He filled his pipe, threw himself into his deep-seated armchair, placed his feet on the mantel, and clasped his hands behind his head. 'Tell me about it,' he said simply. 'Old Barrie Kipson,' I began, 'was a stockbroker in the City. He lived in Pegram, and it was his custom to--' 'COME IN!' shouted Kombs, without changing his position, but with a suddenness that startled me. I had heard no knock. 'Excuse me,' said my friend, laughing, 'my invitation to enter was a trifle premature. I was really so interested in your recital that I spoke before I thought, which a detective should never do. The fact is, a man will be here in a moment who will tell me all about this crime, and so you will be spared further effort in that line.' 'Ah, you have an appointment. In that case I will not intrude,' I said, rising. 'Sit down; I have no appointment. I did not know until I spoke that he was coming.' I gazed at him in amazement. Accustomed as I was to his extraordinary talents, the man was a perpetual surprise to me. He continued to smoke quietly, but evidently enjoyed my consternation. 'I see you are surprised. It is really too simple to talk about, but, from my position opposite the mirror, I can see the reflection of objects in the street. A man stopped, looked at one of my cards, and then glanced across the street. I recognised my card, because, as you know, they are all in scarlet. If, as you say, London is talking of this mystery, it naturally follows that _he_ will talk of it, and the chances are he wished to consult with me upon it. Anyone can see that, besides there is always--_Come in!_ There was a rap at the door this time. A stranger entered. Sherlaw Kombs did not change his lounging attitude. 'I wish to see Mr. Sherlaw Kombs, the detective,' said the stranger, coming within the range of the smoker's vision. 'This is Mr. Kombs,' I remarked at last, as my friend smoked quietly, and seemed half-asleep. 'Allow me to introduce myself,' continued the stranger, fumbling for a card. 'There is no need. You are a journalist,' said Kombs. 'Ah,' said the stranger, somewhat taken aback, 'you know me, then.' 'Never saw or heard of you in my life before.' 'Then how in the world--' 'Nothing simpler. You write for an evening paper. You have written an article slating the book of a friend. He will feel badly about it, and you will condole with him. He will never know who stabbed him unless I tell him.' 'The devil!' cried the journalist, sinking into a chair and mopping his brow, while his face became livid. 'Yes,' drawled Kombs, 'it is a devil of a shame that such things are done. But what would you? as we say in France.' When the journalist had recovered his second wind he pulled himself together somewhat. 'Would you object to telling me how you know these particulars about a man you say you have never seen?' 'I rarely talk about these things,' said Kombs with great composure. 'But as the cultivation of the habit of observation may help you in your profession, and thus in a remote degree benefit me by making your paper less deadly dull, I will tell you. Your first and second fingers are smeared with ink, which shows that you write a great deal. This smeared class embraces two sub-classes, clerks or accountants, and journalists. Clerks have to be neat in their work. The ink smear is slight in their case. Your fingers are badly and carelessly smeared; therefore, you are a journalist. You have an evening paper in your pocket. Anyone might have any evening paper, but yours is a Special Edition, which will not be on the streets for half-an-hour yet. You must have obtained it before you left the office, and to do this you must be on the staff. A book notice is marked with a blue pencil. A journalist always despises every article in his own paper not written by himself; therefore, you wrote the article you have marked, and doubtless are about to send it to the author of the book referred to. Your paper makes a speciality of abusing all books not written by some member of its own staff. That the author is a friend of yours, I merely surmised. It is all a trivial example of ordinary observation.' 'Really, Mr. Kombs, you are the most wonderful man on earth. You are the equal of Gregory, by Jove, you are.' A frown marred the brow of my friend as he placed his pipe on the sideboard and drew his self-cocking six-shooter. 'Do you mean to insult me, sir?' 'I do not--I--I assure you. You are fit to take charge of Scotland Yard tomorrow ----. I am in earnest, indeed I am, sir.' 'Then heaven help you,' cried Kombs, slowly raising his right arm. I sprang between them. 'Don't shoot!' I cried. 'You will spoil the carpet. Besides, Sherlaw, don't you see the man means well. He actually thinks it is a compliment!' 'Perhaps you are right,' remarked the detective, flinging his revolver carelessly beside his pipe, much to the relief of the third party. Then, turning to the journalist, he said, with his customary bland courtesy-- 'You wanted to see me, I think you said. What can I do for you, Mr Wilber Scribbings?' The journalist started. 'How do you know my name?' he gasped. Kombs waved his hand impatiently. 'Look inside your hat if you doubt your own name.' I then noticed for the first time that the name was plainly to be seen inside the top-hat Scribbings held upside down in his hands. 'You have heard, of course, of the Pegram mystery--' 'Tush,' cried the detective; 'do not, I beg of you, call it a mystery. There is no such thing. Life would become more tolerable if there ever _was_ a mystery. Nothing is original. Everything has been done before. What about the Pegram affair?' 'The Pegram--ah--case has baffled everyone. The _Evening Blade_ wishes you to investigate, so that it may publish the result. It will pay you well. Will you accept the commission?' 'Possibly. Tell me about the case.' 'I thought everybody knew the particulars. Mr. Barrie Kipson lived at Pegram. He carried a first-class season ticket between the terminus and that station. It was his custom to leave for Pegram on the 5.30 train each evening. Some weeks ago, Mr. Kipson was brought down by the influenza. On his first visit to the City after his recovery, he drew something like £300 in notes, and left the office at his usual hour to catch the 5.30. He was never seen again alive, as far as the public have been able to learn. He was found at Brewster in a first-class compartment on the Scotch Express, which does not stop between London and Brewster. There was a bullet in his head, and his money was gone, pointing plainly to murder and robbery.' 'And where is the mystery, might I ask?' 'There are several unexplainable things about the case. First, how came he on the Scotch Express, which leaves at six, and does not stop at Pegram? Second, the ticket examiners at the terminus would have turned him out if he showed his season ticket; and all the tickets sold for the Scotch Express on the 21st are accounted for. Third, how could the murderer have escaped? Fourth, the passengers in the two compartments on each side of the one where the body was found heard no scuffle and no shot fired.' 'Are you sure the Scotch Express on the 21st did not stop between London and Brewster?' 'Now that you mention the fact, it did. It was stopped by signal just outside of Pegram. There was a few moments' pause, when the line was reported clear, and it went on again. This frequently happens, as there is a branch line beyond Pegram.' Mr. Sherlaw Kombs pondered for a few moments, smoking his pipe silently. 'I presume you wish the solution in time for tomorrow's paper?' 'Bless my soul, no. The editor thought if you evolved a theory in a month you would do well.' 'My dear sir, I do not deal with theories, but with facts. If you can make it convenient to call here tomorrow at 8 a.m. I will give you the full particulars early enough for the first edition. There is no sense in taking up much time over so simple an affair as the Pegram case. Good afternoon, sir.' Mr. Scribbings was too much astonished to return the greeting. He left in a speechless condition, and I saw him go up the street with his hat still in his hand. Sherlaw Kombs relapsed into his old lounging attitude, with his hands clasped behind his head. The smoke came from his lips in quick puffs at first, then at longer intervals. I saw he was coming to a conclusion, so I said nothing. Finally he spoke in his most dreamy manner. 'I do not wish to seem to be rushing things at all, Whatson, but I am going out tonight on the Scotch Express. Would you care to accompany me?' 'Bless me!' I cried, glancing at the clock, 'you haven't time, it is after five now.' 'Ample time, Whatson--ample,' he murmured, without changing his position. 'I give myself a minute and a half to change slippers and dressing-gown for boots and coat, three seconds for hat, twenty-five seconds to the street, forty-two seconds waiting for a hansom, and then seven minutes at the terminus before the express starts. I shall be glad of your company.' I was only too happy to have the privilege of going with him. It was most interesting to watch the workings of so inscrutable a mind. As we drove under the lofty iron roof of the terminus I noticed a look of annoyance pass over his face. 'We are fifteen seconds ahead of our time,' he remarked, looking at the big clock. 'I dislike having a miscalculation of that sort occur.' The great Scotch Express stood ready for its long journey. The detective tapped one of the guards on the shoulder. 'You have heard of the so-called Pegram mystery, I presume?' 'Certainly, sir. It happened on this very train, sir.' 'Really? Is the same carriage still on the train?' 'Well, yes, sir, it is,' replied the guard, lowering his voice, 'but of course, sir, we have to keep very quiet about it. People wouldn't travel in it, else, sir.' 'Doubtless. Do you happen to know if anybody occupies the compartment in which the body was found?' 'A lady and gentleman, sir; I put 'em in myself, sir.' 'Would you further oblige me,' said the detective, deftly slipping half-a-sovereign into the hand of the guard, 'by going to the window and informing them in an offhand casual sort of way that the tragedy took place in that compartment?' 'Certainly, sir.' We followed the guard, and the moment he had imparted his news there was a suppressed scream in the carriage. Instantly a lady came out, followed by a florid-faced gentleman, who scowled at the guard. We entered the now empty compartment, and Kombs said: 'We would like to be alone here until we reach Brewster.' 'I'll see to that, sir,' answered the guard, locking the door. When the official moved away, I asked my friend what he expected to find in the carriage that would cast any light on the case. 'Nothing,' was his brief reply. 'Then why do you come?' 'Merely to corroborate the conclusions I have already arrived at.' 'And might I ask what those conclusions are?' 'Certainly,' replied the detective, with a touch of lassitude in his voice. 'I beg to call your attention, first, to the fact that this train stands between two platforms, and can be entered from either side. Any man familiar with the station for years would be aware of that fact. This shows how Mr. Kipson entered the train just before it started.' 'But the door on this side is locked,' I objected, trying it. 'Of course. But every season ticket-holder carries a key. This accounts for the guard not seeing him, and for the absence of a ticket. Now let me give you some information about the influenza. The patient's temperature rises several degrees above normal, and he has a fever. When the malady has run its course, the temperature falls to three-quarters of a degree below normal. These facts are unknown to you, I imagine, because you are a doctor.' I admitted such was the case. 'Well, the consequence of this fall in temperature is that the convalescent's mind turns towards thoughts of suicide. Then is the time he should be watched by his friends. Then was the time Mr. Barrie Kipson's friends did _not_ watch him. You remember the 21st, of course. No? It was a most depressing day. Fog all around and mud under foot. Very good. He resolves on suicide. He wishes to be unidentified, if possible, but forgets his season ticket. My experience is that a man about to commit a crime always forgets something.' 'But how do you account for the disappearance of the money?' 'The money has nothing to do with the matter. If he was a deep man, and knew the stupidness of Scotland Yard, he probably sent the notes to an enemy. If not, they may have been given to a friend. Nothing is more calculated to prepare the mind for self-destruction than the prospect of a night ride on the Scotch express, and the view from the windows of the train as it passes through the northern part of London is particularly conducive to thoughts of annihilation.' 'What became of the weapon?' 'That is just the point on which I wish to satisfy myself. Excuse me for a moment.' Mr. Sherlaw Kombs drew down the window on the right hand side, and examined the top of the casing minutely with a magnifying glass. Presently he heaved a sigh of relief, and drew up the sash. 'Just as I expected,' he remarked, speaking more to himself than to me. 'There is a slight dent on the top of the window-frame. It is of such a nature as to be made only by the trigger of a pistol falling from the nerveless hand of a suicide. He intended to throw the weapon far out of the window, but had not the strength. It might have fallen into the carriage. As a matter of fact, it bounced away from the line and lies among the grass about ten feet six inches from the outside rail. The only question that now remains is where the deed was committed, and the exact present position of the pistol reckoned in miles from London, but that, fortunately, is too simple to even need explanation.' 'Great heavens, Sherlaw!' I cried. 'How can you call that simple? It seems to me impossible to compute.' We were now flying over Northern London, and the great detective leaned back with every sign of _ennui_, closing his eyes. At last he spoke wearily: 'It is really too elementary, Whatson, but I am always willing to oblige a friend. I shall be relieved, however, when you are able to work out the ABC of detection for yourself, although I shall never object to helping you with the words of more than three syllables. Having made up his mind to commit suicide, Kipson naturally intended to do it before he reached Brewster, because tickets are again examined at that point. When the train began to stop at the signal near Pegram, he came to the false conclusion that it was stopping at Brewster. The fact that the shot was not heard is accounted for by the screech of the air-brake, added to the noise of the train. Probably the whistle was also sounding at the same moment. The train being a fast express would stop as near the signal as possible. The air-brake will stop a train in twice its own length. Call it three times in this case. Very well. At three times the length of this train from the signal-post towards London, deducting half the length of the train, as this carriage is in the middle, you will find the pistol.' 'Wonderful!' I exclaimed. 'Commonplace,' he murmured. At this moment the whistle sounded shrilly, and we felt the grind of the air-brakes. 'The Pegram signal again,' cried Kombs, with something almost like enthusiasm. 'This is indeed luck. We will get out here, Whatson, and test the matter.' As the train stopped, we got out on the right-hand side of the line. The engine stood panting impatiently under the red light, which changed to green as I looked at it. As the train moved on with increasing speed, the detective counted the carriages, and noted down the number. It was now dark, with the thin crescent of the moon hanging in the western sky throwing a weird half-light on the shining metals. The rear lamps of the train disappeared around a curve, and the signal stood at baleful red again. The black magic of the lonesome night in that strange place impressed me, but the detective was a most practical man. He placed his back against the signal-post, and paced up the line with even strides, counting his steps. I walked along the permanent way beside him silently. At last he stopped, and took a tape-line from his pocket. He ran it out until the ten feet six inches were unrolled, scanning the figures in the wan light of the new moon. Giving me the end, he placed his knuckles on the metals, motioning me to proceed down the embankment. I stretched out the line, and then sank my hand in the damp grass to mark the spot. 'Good God!' I cried, aghast, 'what is this?' 'It is the pistol,' said Kombs quietly. It was!! * * * * * Journalistic London will not soon forget the sensation that was caused by the record of the investigations of Sherlaw Kombs, as printed at length in the next day's _Evening Blade_. Would that my story ended here. Alas! Kombs contemptuously turned over the pistol to Scotland Yard. The meddlesome officials, actuated, as I always hold, by jealousy, found the name of the seller upon it. They investigated. The seller testified that it had never been in the possession of Mr Kipson, as far as he knew. It was sold to a man whose description tallied with that of a criminal long watched by the police. He was arrested, and turned Queen's evidence in the hope of hanging his pal. It seemed that Mr. Kipson, who was a gloomy, taciturn man, and usually came home in a compartment by himself, thus escaping observation, had been murdered in the lane leading to his house. After robbing him, the miscreants turned their thoughts towards the disposal of the body--a subject that always occupies a first-class criminal mind before the deed is done. They agreed to place it on the line, and have it mangled by the Scotch Express, then nearly due. Before they got the body half-way up the embankment the express came along and stopped. The guard got out and walked along the other side to speak with the engineer. The thought of putting the body into an empty first-class carriage instantly occurred to the murderers. They opened the door with the deceased's key. It is supposed that the pistol dropped when they were hoisting the body in the carriage. The Queen's evidence dodge didn't work, and Scotland Yard ignobly insulted my friend Sherlaw Kombs by sending him a pass to see the villains hanged. 2. The Adventure of the Second Swag The time was Christmas Eve, 1904. The place was an ancient, secluded manor house, built so far back in the last century as 1896. It stood at the head of a profound valley; a valley clothed in ferns waist deep, and sombrely guarded by ancient trees, the remnants of a primeval forest. From this mansion no other human habitation could be seen. The descending road which connected the king's highway with the stronghold was so sinuous and precipitate that more than once the grim baronet who owned it had upset his automobile in trying to negotiate the dangerous curves. The isolated situation and gloomy architecture of this venerable mansion must have impressed the most casual observer with the thought that here was the spot for the perpetration of dark deeds, were it not for the fact that the place was brilliantly illumined with electricity, while the silence was emphasised rather than disturbed by the monotonous, regular thud of an accumulator pumping the subtle fluid into a receptive dynamo situated in an outhouse to the east. The night was gloomy and lowering after a day of rain, but the very sombreness of the scene made the brilliant stained glass windows stand out like the radiant covers of a Christmas number. Such was the appearance presented by 'Undershaw', the home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, situated among the wilds of Hindhead, some forty or fifty miles from London. Is it any wonder that at a spot so remote from civilisation law should be set at defiance, and that the one lone policeman who perambulates the district should tremble as he passed the sinister gates of 'Undershaw'? In a large room of this manor house, furnished with a luxuriant elegance one would not have expected in a region so far from humanising influences, sat two men. One was a giant in stature, whose broad brow and smoothly shaven strong chin gave a look of determination to his countenance, which was further enhanced by the heavy black moustache which covered his upper lip. There was something of the dragoon in his upright and independent bearing. He had, in fact, taken part in more than one fiercely fought battle, and was a member of several military clubs; but it was plain to be seen that his ancestors had used war clubs, and had transmitted to him the physique of a Hercules. One did not need to glance at the Christmas number of the _Strand_, which he held in his hand, nor read the name printed there in large letters, to know that he was face to face with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His guest, an older man, yet still in the prime of life, whose beard was tinged with grey, was of less warlike bearing than the celebrated novelist, belonging, as he evidently did, to the civil and not the military section of life. He had about him the air of a prosperous man of affairs, shrewd, good-natured, conciliatory, and these two strongly contrasting personages are types of the men to whom England owes her greatness. The reader of the Christmas number will very probably feel disappointed when he finds, as he supposes, merely two old friends sitting amicably in a country house after dinner. There seems, to his jaded taste, no element of tragedy in such a situation. These two men appear comfortable enough, and respectable enough. It is true that there is whisky and soda at hand, and the box of cigars is open, yet there are latent possibilities of passion under the most placid natures, revealed only to writers of fiction in our halfpenny Press. Let the reader wait, therefore, till he sees these two men tried as by fire under a great temptation, and then let him say whether even the probity of Sir George Newnes comes scathless from the ordeal. 'Have you brought the swag, Sir George?' asked the novelist, with some trace of anxiety in his voice. 'Yes,' replied the great publisher; 'but before proceeding to the count would it not be wise to give orders that will insure our being left undisturbed?' 'You are right,' replied Doyle, pressing an electric button. When the servant appeared he said: 'I am not at home to anyone. No matter who calls, or what excuse is given, you must permit none to approach this room.' When the servant had withdrawn, Doyle took the further precaution of thrusting in place one of the huge bolts which ornamented the massive oaken door studded with iron knobs. Sir George withdrew from the tail pocket of his dress coat two canvas bags, and, untying the strings, poured the rich red gold on the smooth table. 'I think you will find that right,' he said; 'six thousand pounds in all.' The writer dragged his heavy chair nearer the table, and began to count the coins two by two, withdrawing each pair from the pile with his extended forefingers in the manner of one accustomed to deal with great treasure. For a time the silence was unbroken, save by the chink of gold, when suddenly a high-keyed voice outside penetrated even the stout oak of the huge door. The shrill exclamation seemed to touch a chord of remembrance in the mind of Sir George Newnes. Nervously he grasped the arms of his chair, sitting very bolt upright, muttering:-- 'Can it be he, of all persons, at this time, of all times?' Doyle glanced up with an expression of annoyance on his face, murmuring, to keep his memory green:-- 'A hundred and ten, a hundred and ten, a hundred and ten.' 'Not at home?' cried the vibrant voice. 'Nonsense! Everybody is at home on Christmas Eve!' '_You_ don't seem to be,' he heard the servant reply. 'Me? Oh, I have no home, merely rooms in Baker Street. I must see your master, and at once.' 'Master left in his motor car half an hour ago to attend the county ball, given tonight, at the Royal Huts Hotel, seven miles away,' answered the servant, with that glib mastery of fiction which unconsciously comes to those who are members, even in a humble capacity, of a household devoted to the production of imaginative art. 'Nonsense, I say again,' came the strident voice. 'It is true that the tracks of an automobile are on the ground in front of your door, but if you will notice the markings of the puncture-proof belt, you will see that the automobile is returning and not departing. It went to the station before the last shower to bring back a visitor, and since its arrival there has been no rain. That suit of armour in the hall spattered with mud shows it to be the casing the visitor wore. The blazonry upon it of a pair of scissors above an open book resting upon a printing press, indicates that the wearer is first of all an editor; second, a publisher; and third, a printer. The only baronet in England whose occupation corresponds with this heraldic device is Sir George Newnes.' 'You forget Sir Alfred Harmsworth,' said the servant, whose hand held a copy of _Answers_. If the insistent visitor was taken aback by this unlooked-for rejoinder, his manner showed no trace of embarrassment, and he went on unabashed. 'As the last shower began at ten minutes to six, Sir George must have arrived at Haslemere station on the 6.19 from Waterloo. He has had dinner, and at this moment is sitting comfortably with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, doubtless in the front room, which I see is so brilliantly lighted. Now if you will kindly take in my card--' 'But I tell you,' persisted the perplexed servant, 'that the master left in his motor car for the county ball at the Royal--' 'Oh, I know, I know. There stands his suit of armour, too, newly blackleaded, whose coat of arms is a couchant typewriter on an automobile rampant.' 'Great heavens!' cried Sir George, his eyes brightening with the light of unholy desire, 'you have material enough there, Doyle, for a story in our January number. What do you say?' A deep frown marred the smoothness of the novelist's brow. 'I say,' he replied sternly, 'that this man has been sending threatening letters to me. I have had enough of his menaces.' 'Then triply bolt the door,' advised Newnes, with a sigh of disappointment, leaning back in his chair. 'Do you take me for a man who bolts when his enemy appears?' asked Doyle fiercely, rising to his feet. 'No, I will unbolt. He shall meet the Douglas in his hall!' 'Better have him in the drawing-room, where it's warm,' suggested Sir George, with a smile, diplomatically desiring to pour oil on the troubled waters. The novelist, without reply, spread a copy of that evening's _Westminster Gazette_ over the pile of gold, strode to the door, threw it open, and said coldly:-- 'Show the gentleman in, please.' There entered to them a tall, self-possessed, calm man, with clean-shaven face, eagle eye, and inquisitive nose. Although the visit was most embarrassing at that particular juncture, the natural courtesy of the novelist restrained him from giving utterance to his resentment of the intrusion, and he proceeded to introduce the bidden to the unbidden guest as if each were equally welcome. 'Mr. Sherlock Holmes, permit me to present to you Sir George--' 'It is quite superfluous,' said the newcomer, in an even voice of exasperating tenor, 'for I perceive at once that one who wears a green waistcoat must be a Liberal of strong Home Rule opinions, or the editor of several publications wearing covers of emerald hue. The shamrock necktie, in addition to the waistcoat, indicates that the gentleman before me is both, and so I take it for granted that this is Sir George Newnes. How is your circulation, Sir George?' 'Rapidly rising,' replied the editor. 'I am glad of that,' asserted the intruder, suavely, 'and can assure you that the temperature outside is as rapidly falling.' The great detective spread his hands before the glowing electric fire, and rubbed them vigorously together. 'I perceive through that evening paper the sum of six thousand pounds in gold.' Doyle interrupted him with some impatience. 'You didn't see it _through_ the paper; you saw it _in_ the paper. Goodness knows, it's been mentioned in enough of the sheets.' 'As I was about to remark,' went on Sherlock Holmes imperturbably, 'I am amazed that a man whose time is so valuable should waste it in counting the money. You are surely aware that a golden sovereign weighs 123.44 grains, therefore, if I were you, I should have up the kitchen scales, dump in the metal, and figure out the amount with a lead pencil. You brought the gold in two canvas bags, did you not, Sir George?' 'In the name of all that's wonderful, how do you know that?' asked the astonished publisher. Sherlock Holmes, with a superior smile, casually waved his hand toward the two bags which still lay on the polished table. 'Oh, I'm tired of this sort of thing,' said Doyle wearily, sitting down in the first chair that presented itself. 'Can't you be honest, even on Christmas Eve? You know the oracles of old did not try it on with each other.' 'That is true,' said Sherlock Holmes. 'The fact is, I followed Sir George Newnes into the Capital and Counties Bank this afternoon, where he demanded six thousand pounds in gold; but when he learned this would weigh ninety-six pounds seven ounces avoirdupois weight, and that even troy weight would make the sum no lighter, he took two small bags of gold and the rest in Bank of England notes. I came from London on the same train with him, but he was off in the automobile before I could make myself known, and so I had to walk up. I was further delayed by taking the wrong turning on the top and finding myself at that charming spot in the neighbourhood where a sailor was murdered by two ruffians a century or so ago.' There was a note of warning in Doyle's voice when he said:--'Did that incident teach you no lesson? Did you not realise that you are in a dangerous locality?' 'And likely to fall in with two ruffians?' asked Holmes, slightly elevating his eyebrows, while the same sweet smile hovered round his thin lips. 'No; the remembrance of the incident encouraged me. It was the man who had the money that was murdered. I brought no coin with me, although I expect to bear many away.' 'Would you mind telling us, without further circumlocution, what brings you here so late at night?' Sherlock Holmes heaved a sigh, and mournfully shook his head very slowly. 'After all the teaching I have bestowed upon you, Doyle, is it possible that you cannot deduct even so simple a thing as that? Why am I here? Because Sir George made a mistake about those bags. He was quite right in taking one of them to 'Undershaw', but he should have left the other at 221B, Baker Street. I call this little trip 'The Adventure of the Second Swag'. Here is the second swag on the table. The first swag you received long ago, and all I had for my share was some honeyed words of compliment in the stories you wrote. Now, it is truly said that soft words butter no parsnips, and, in this instance, they do not even turn away wrath. So far as the second swag is concerned, I have come to demand half of it.' 'I am not so poor at deduction as you seem to imagine,' said Doyle, apparently nettled at the other's slighting reference to his powers. 'I was well aware, when you came in, what your errand was. I deduced further that if you saw Sir George withdraw gold from the bank, you also followed him to Waterloo station.' 'Quite right.' 'When he purchased his ticket for Haslemere, you did the same.' 'I did.' 'When you arrived at Haslemere, you sent a telegram to your friend, Dr Watson, telling him of your whereabouts.' 'You are wrong there; I ran after the motor car.' 'You certainly sent a telegram from somewhere, to someone, or at least dropped a note in the post-box. There are signs, which I need not mention, that point irrevocably to such a conclusion.' The doomed man, ruined by his own self-complacency, merely smiled in his superior manner, not noticing the eager look with which Doyle awaited his answer. 'Wrong entirely. I neither wrote any telegram, nor spoke any message, since I left London.' 'Ah, no,' cried Doyle. 'I see where I went astray. You merely inquired the way to my house.' 'I needed to make no inquiries. I followed the rear light of the automobile part way up the hill, and, when that disappeared, I turned to the right instead of the left, as there was no one out on such a night from whom I could make inquiry.' 'My deductions, then, are beside the mark,' said Doyle hoarsely, in an accent which sent cold chills up and down the spine of his invited guest, but conveyed no intimation of his fate to the self-satisfied later arrival. 'Of course they were,' said Holmes, with exasperating self-assurance. 'Am I also wrong in deducting that you have had nothing to eat since you left London?' 'No, you are quite right there.' 'Well, oblige me by pressing that electric button.' Holmes did so with much eagerness, but, although the trio waited some minutes in silence, there was no response. 'I deduct from that,' said Doyle, 'that the servants have gone to bed. After I have quite satisfied all your claims in the way of hunger for food and gold, I shall take you back in my motor car, unless you prefer to stay here the night.' 'You are very kind,' said Sherlock Holmes. 'Not at all,' replied Doyle. 'Just take that chair, draw it up to the table and we will divide the second swag.' The chair indicated differed from all others in the room. It was straight-backed, and its oaken arms were covered by two plates, apparently of German silver. When Holmes clutched it by the arms to drag it forward, he gave one half-articulate gasp, and plunged headlong to the floor, quivering. Sir George Newnes sprang up standing with a cry of alarm. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remained seated, a seraphic smile of infinite satisfaction playing about his lips. 'Has he fainted?' cried Sir George. 'No, merely electrocuted. A simple device the Sheriff of New York taught me when I was over there last.' 'Merciful heavens! Cannot he be resuscitated?' 'My dear Newnes,' said Doyle, with the air of one from whose shoulders a great weight is lifted, 'a man may fall into the chasm at the foot of the Reichenbach Fall and escape to record his adventures later, but when two thousand volts pass through the human frame, the person who owns that frame is dead.' 'You don't mean to say you've murdered him?' asked Sir George, in an awed whisper. 'Well, the term you use is harsh, still it rather accurately sums up the situation. To speak candidly, Sir George, I don't think they can indite us for anything more than manslaughter. You see, this is a little invention for the reception of burglars. Every night before the servants go to bed, they switch on the current to this chair. That's why I asked Holmes to press the button. I place a small table beside the chair, and put on it a bottle of wine, whisky and soda, and cigars. Then, if any burglar comes in, he invariably sits down in the chair to enjoy himself, and so you see, that piece of furniture is an effective method of reducing crime. The number of burglars I have turned over to the parish to be buried will prove that this taking off of Holmes was not premeditated by me. This incident, strictly speaking, is not murder, but manslaughter. We shouldn't get more than fourteen years apiece, and probably that would be cut down to seven on the ground that we had performed an act for the public benefit.' 'Apiece!' cried Sir George. 'But what have I had to do with it?' 'Everything, my dear sir, everything. As that babbling fool talked, I saw in your eye the gleam which betokens avarice for copy. Indeed, I think you mentioned the January number. You were therefore accessory before the fact. I simply had to slaughter the poor wretch.' Sir George sank back in his chair wellnigh breathless with horror. Publishers are humane men who rarely commit crimes; authors, however, are a hardened set who usually perpetrate a felony every time they issue a book. Doyle laughed easily. 'I'm used to this sort of thing,' he said. 'Remember how I killed off the people in "The White Company". Now, if you will help me to get rid of the body, all may yet be well. You see, I learned from the misguided simpleton himself that nobody knows where he is today. He often disappears for weeks at a time, so there really is slight danger of detection. Will you lend a hand?' 'I suppose I must,' cried the conscience-stricken man. Doyle at once threw off the lassitude which the coming of Sherlock Holmes had caused, and acted now with an energy which was characteristic of him. Going to an outhouse, he brought the motor car to the front door, then, picking up Holmes and followed by his trembling guest, he went outside and flung the body into the tonneau behind. He then threw a spade and a pick into the car, and covered everything up with a water-proof spread. Lighting the lamps, he bade his silent guest get up beside him, and so they started on their fateful journey, taking the road past the spot where the sailor had been murdered, and dashing down the long hill at fearful speed toward London. 'Why do you take this direction?' asked Sir George. 'Wouldn't it be more advisable to go further into the country?' Doyle laughed harshly. 'Haven't you a place on Wimbledon Common? Why not bury him in your garden?' 'Merciful motors!' cried the horrified man. 'How can you propose such a thing? Talking of gardens, why not have buried him in your own, which was infinitely safer than going forward at this pace.' 'Have no fear,' said Doyle reassuringly, 'we shall find him a suitable sepulchre without disturbing either of our gardens. I'll be in the centre of London within two hours.' Sir George stared in affright at the demon driver. The man had evidently gone mad. To London, of all places in the world. Surely that was the one spot on earth to avoid. 'Stop the motor and let me off,' he cried. 'I'm going to wake up the nearest magistrate and confess.' 'You'll do nothing of the sort,' said Doyle. 'Don't you see that no person on earth would suspect two criminals of making for London when they have the whole country before them? Haven't you read my stories? The moment a man commits a crime he tries to get as far away from London as possible. Every policeman knows that, therefore, two men coming into London are innocent strangers, according to Scotland Yard.' 'But then we may be taken up for fast driving, and think of the terrible burden we carry.' 'We're safe on the country roads, and I'll slow down when we reach the suburbs.' It was approaching three o'clock in the morning when a huge motor car turned out of Trafalgar Square, and went eastward along the Strand. The northern side of the Strand was up, as it usually is, and the motor, skilfully driven, glided past the piles of wood-paving blocks, great sombre kettles holding tar and the general _débris_ of a re-paving convulsion. Opposite Southampton Street, at the very spot so graphically illustrated by George C. Haité on the cover of the _Strand Magazine_, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stopped his motor. The Strand was deserted. He threw pick and shovel into the excavation, and curtly ordered his companion to take his choice of weapons. Sir George selected the pick, and Doyle vigorously plied the spade. In almost less time than it takes to tell it, a very respectable hole had been dug, and in it was placed the body of the popular private detective. Just as the last spadeful was shovelled in place the stern voice of a policeman awoke the silence, and caused Sir George to drop his pick from nerveless hands. 'What are you two doing down there?' 'That's all right, officer,' said Doyle glibly, as one who had foreseen every emergency. 'My friend here is controller of the Strand. When the Strand is up he is responsible, and it has the largest circulation in the--I mean it's up oftener than any other street in the world. We cannot inspect the work satisfactorily while traffic is on, and so we have been examining it in the night-time. I am his secretary; I do the writing, you know.' 'Oh, I see,' replied the constable. 'Well, gentlemen, good morning to you, and merry Christmas.' 'The same to you, constable. Just lend a hand, will you?' The officer of the law helped each of the men up to the level of the road. As Doyle drove away from the ill-omened spot he said:-- 'Thus have we disposed of poor Holmes in the busiest spot on earth, where no one will ever think of looking for him, and we've put him away without even a Christmas box around him. We have buried him for ever in the _Strand_.' * * * * * 
5252	----	This eBook was produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE VOYAGE OF VERRAZZANO; A CHAPTER IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF MARITIME DISCOVERY IN AMERICA. BY HENRY C. MURPHY. TO THE MEMORY OF BUCKINGHAM SMITH, OF ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA. The following pages, intended to show the claim of discovery in America by Verrazzano to be without any real foundation, belong to a work, in hand, upon the earliest explorations of the coast which have led to the settlement of the United States by Europeans. They are now printed separately, with some additions and necessary changes, in consequence of the recent production of the map of Hieronimo de Verrazano, which professes to represent this discovery, and is therefore supposed to afford some proof of its authenticity; in which view it has been the subject of a learned and elaborate memoir by J. Carson Brevoort Esq. Certain important documents in relation to Verrazzano, procured from the archives of Spain and Portugal by the late Buckingham Smith, on a visit to those countries a year or two before his death, are appended. They were intended to accompany a second edition of his Inquiry, a purpose which has been interrupted by his decease. They were entrusted by him to the care of his friend, George H. Moore Esq., of New York, who has placed them at our disposal on the present occasion. The fragmentary and distorted form in which the letter ascribed to Verrazzano, appeared in the collection of Ramusio, and was thence universally admitted into history, rendered it necessary that the letter should be here given complete, according to its original meaning. It is, therefore, annexed in the English translation of Dr. Cogswell, which though not entirely unexceptionable is, for all purposes, sufficiently accurate. The original Italian text can, however, be consulted in the Collections of the New York Historical Society, accompanying his translation, and also in the Archivio Storico Italiano, in which it is represented by the editor to be more correctly copied from the manuscript, and amended in its language where it seemed corrupt; but such corrections are few and unimportant. In all cases in which the letter is now made the subject of critical examination, the passages referred to are given, for obvious reasons, according to the reading of the Florentine editor. We are indebted to the American Geographical Society of New York for the use of its photographs of the Verrazano map, and to Mr. Brevoort for a copy of the cosmography of Alfonse, from which the chart of Norumbega has been taken. And our thanks are due to Dr. J. Gilmary Shea of New York, for valuable assistance; and to Dr. E. B. Straznicky of the Astor Library, Mons. O. Maunoir of the Societe de Geographie of Paris, Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull of Hartford, Hon. John R. Bartlett of Providence, and James Lenox Esq. of New York, for various favors kindly rendered during the progress of our researches. BROOKLYN, SEPT. 1875 CONTENTS. Page I. The Discovery Attributed to Verrazzano II. The Verrazzano Letters not Genuine III. The Letter untrue. I. No Voyage of Discovery made for the King of France, as it states IV. II. Misrepresentations in regard to the Geography of the Coast. The Chesapeake. The Island of Louise. Massachusetts Bay V. III. Cape Breton and the Southerly Coast of Newfoundland, here claimed to have been discovered, were known previously. Perversion of the Text of the Letter by Ramusio VI. IV. The Description of the People and Productions of the Land not made from the Personal Observations of the Writer of the Letter. What distinctly belonged to the Natives is unnoticed, and what is originally mentioned of them is untrue. Further important Alterations of the Text by Ramusio, VII. The Extrinsic Evidence in Support of the Claim. I. Discourse of the French Sea Captain of Dieppe, VIII. II. The Verrazzano Map. It is not an Authoritative Exposition of the Verrazzano Discovery. Its Origin and Date in its present Form. The Letter of Annibal Caro. The Map presented to Henry VIII. Voyages of Verrazzano. The Globe of Euphrosynus Ulpius IX. The Letter to the King founded on the Discoveries of Estevan Gomez. The History of Gomez and his Voyage. The Publication of his Discoveries in Spain and Italy before the Verrazzano claim. The Voyage described in the Letter traced to Ribero's Map of the Discoveries of Gomez X. The Career of Verrazzano. An Adventurous Life and Ignominious Death. Conclusion Appendix Index [Proofreaders note: ILLUSTRATIONS and MAPS omitted] THE VOYAGE OF VERRAZZANO: A CHAPTER IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF MARITIME DISCOVERY IN AMERICA. I. THE DISCOVERY ATTRIBUTED TO VERRAZZANO. The discovery of the greater portion of the Atlantic coast of North America, embracing all of the United States north of Cape Roman in South Carolina, and of the northern British provinces as far at least as Cape Breton, by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine, in the service of the king of France, has received until quite recently the assent of all the geographers and historians who have taken occasion to treat of the subject. This acknowledgment, for more than three hundred years, which would seem to preclude all question in regard to its authenticity at this late day, has, however, been due more to the peculiar circumstances of its publication than to any evidence of its truth. The only account of it which exists, is contained in a letter purporting to have been written by the discoverer himself, and is not corroborated by the testimony of any other person, or sustained by any documentary proof. It was not published to the world until it appeared for the first time in Italy, the birth place of the navigator, more than thirty years after the transactions to which it relates are alleged to have taken place; and it has not, up to the present time, received any confirmation in the history of France, whose sovereign, it is asserted, sent forth the expedition, and to whose crown the right of the discovery accordingly attached. Yet it is not difficult to comprehend how the story, appealing to the patriotic sympathies of Ramusio, was inconsiderately adopted by him, and inserted in his famous collection of voyages, and thus receiving his sanction, was not unwillingly accepted, upon his authority, by the French nation, whose glory it advanced, without possibly its having any real foundation. And as there never was any colonization or attempt at possession of the country in consequence of the alleged discovery, or any assertion of title under it, except in a single instance of a comparatively modern date, and with no important hearing, it is no less easy to understand, how thus adopted and promulgated by the only countries interested in the question, the claim was admitted by other nations without challenge or dispute, and has thus become incorporated into modern history without investigation. Although the claim has never been regarded of any practical importance in the settlement of the country, it has nevertheless possessed an historical and geographical interest in connection with the origin and progress of maritime discovery on this continent. Our own writers assuming its validity, without investigation, have been content to trace, if possible, the route of Verrazzano and point out the places he explored, seeking merely to reconcile the account with the actual condition and situation of the country. Their explanations, though sometimes plausible, are often contradictory, and not unfrequently absurd. Led into an examination of its merits with impressions in its favor, we have nevertheless been compelled to adopt the conclusion of a late American writer, that it is utterly fictitious. [Footnote: An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Documents concerning a Discovery in North America claimed to have been made by Verrazzano. Read before the New York Historical Society, Tuesday, October 10, 1864. By Buckingham Smith. New York, 1864. pp. 31, and a map.] The grounds upon which our conviction rests we propose now to state. Some documents will be introduced, for the first time here brought to light, which will serve further to elucidate the question, and show the career and ultimate fate of Verrazzano. The letter, in which the pretension is advanced, professes to be addressed by Verrazzano to the king of France, at that time Francis I, from Dieppe, in Normandy, the 8th of July (O. S.), 1534, on his return to that port from a voyage, undertaken by order of the king, for the purpose of finding new countries; and to give an account of the discoveries which he had accordingly made. He first reminds his majesty that, after starting with four ships, originally composing the expedition, he was compelled by storms, encountered on the northern coasts, to put into Brittany in distress, with the loss of two of them; and that after repairing there the others, called the Normanda and Delfina (Dauphine), be made a cruize with this FLEET OF WAR, as they are styled, along the coast of Spain. He finally proceeded on the voyage of discovery with the Dauphine alone, setting sail from a desolate rock near the island of Madeira, on the 17th of January, 1524, with fifty men, and provisions for eight months, besides the necessary munitions of war. This voyage, therefore, is to be regarded, according to the representations here made, to have been begun with the sailing of the four ships, from Dieppe, in the preceding year they fell upon a "country never before seen by any one either in ancient or modern times." [Footnote: Some writers have regarded this introductory as referring to two voyages or cruises, one with the four ships before the disaster, and the other with the Dauphine afterwards. But it seems clear from their being described as assailed by tempests in the north, which compelled them to run into Brittany for safety, that they were not far distant from Dieppe when the storms overtook them; and must have been either on their way out or on their return to that port. If they were on their return from a voyage to America, as Charlevoix infers (Fastes Chronologiques 1523-4), or simply from a cruise, as Mr. Brevoort supposes, they would, after making their repairs, have proceeded home, to Dieppe, instead of making a second voyage. They must, therefore, be regarded as on their way from Dieppe. The idea of a voyage having been performed before the storms seems to be due to alteration which Ramusio made in this portion of the letter, by introducing the word "success," as of the four ships, Charlevoix expressly refers to Ramusio as his authority and Mr. Brevoort makes a paraphrase from the Carli and Ramusio versions combined. (Notes on the Verrazzano Map in Journal of the Am. Geog. Society of New York, vol. IV, pp. 172-3)] On leaving Madeira they pursued a westerly course for eight hundred leagues and then, inclining a little to the north, ran four hundred leagues more, when on the 7th of March [Footnote: There is some ambiguity in the account, as to the time when they first saw land. The letter reads as follows: "On the 17th of last January we set sail from a desolate rock near the island of Madeira, and sailing westward, in twenty-five days we ran eight hundred leagues. On the 24th of February, we encountered as violent a hurricane as any ship ever weathered. Pursuing our voyage toward the west, a little northwardly, in twenty-four days more, have run four hundred leagues, we reached a new country," &c. If the twenty- four days be calculated from the 24th of February, the landfall would have taken place on the 20th of March; but if reckoned from the first twenty-five days run, it would have been on the 7th of that month. Ramusio changes the distance first sailed from 800 to 500 leagues; the day when they encountered the storm from the 24th to the 20th of February; and the twenty-four days last run to twenty-five; making the landfall occur on the 17th or 10th of March according to the mode of calculating the days last run. As it is stated, afterwards, that they encountered a gale WHILE AT ANCHOR ON THE COAST, EARLY in March, the 7th of that month must be taken as the time of the landfall.] It seemed very low and stretched to the south, in which direction they sailed along it for the purpose of finding a harbor wherein their ship might ride in safety; but DISCOVERING NONE in a distance of fifty leagues, they retraced their course, and ran to the north with no better success. They therefore drew in with the land and sent a boat ashore, and had their first communication with the inhabitants, who regarded them with wonder. These people are described as going naked, except around their loins, and as being BLACK. The land, rising somewhat from the shore, was covered with thick forests, which sent forth the sweetest fragrance to a great distance. They supposed it adjoined the Orient, and for that reason was not devoid of medicinal and aromatic drugs and gold; and being IN LATITUDE 34 Degrees N., was possessed of a pure, salubrious and healthy climate. They sailed thence westerly for a short distance and then northerly, when at the end of fifty leagues they arrived before a land of great forests, where they landed and found luxuriant vines entwining the trees and producing SWEET AND LUSCIOUS GRAPES OF WHICH THEY ATE, tasting not unlike their own; and from whence they carried off a boy about eight years old, for the purpose of taking him to France. Coasting thence northeasterly for one hundred leagues, SAILING ONLY IN THE DAY TIME AND NOT MAKING ANY HARBOR in the whole of that distance, they came to a pleasant situation among steep hills, from whence a large river ran into the sea. Leaving, in consequence of a rising storm, this river, into which they had entered for a short distance with their boat, and where they saw many of the natives in their CANOES, they sailed directly EAST for eighty leagues, when they discovered an island of triangular shape, about ten leagues from the main land, EQUAL IN SIZE TO THE ISLAND OF RHODES. This island they named after the mother of the king of France. WITHOUT LANDING UPON IT, they proceeded to a harbor fifteen leagues beyond, at the entrance of a large bay, TWELVE LEAGUES BROAD, where they came to anchor and remained for fifteen days. They encountered here a people with whom they formed a great friendship, different in appearance from the natives whom they first saw,--these having a WHITE COMPLEXION. The men were tall and well formed, and the women graceful and possessed of pleasing manners. There were two kings among them, who were attended in state by their gentlemen, and a queen who had her waiting maids. This country was situated in latitude 41 Degrees 40' N, in the parallel of Rome; and was very fertile and abounded with game. They left it on the 6th of May, and sailed one hundred and fifty leagues, CONSTANTLY IN SIGHT OF THE LAND which stretched to the east. In this long distance THEY MADE NO LANDING, but proceeded fifty leagues further along the land, which inclined more to the north, when they went ashore and found a people exceedingly barbarous and hostile. Leaving them and continuing their course northeasterly for fifty leagues FURTHER, they discovered within that distance thirty-two islands. And finally, after having sailed between east and north one hundred and fifty leagues MORE, they reached the fiftieth degree of north latitude, where the Portuguese had commenced their discoveries towards the Arctic circle; when finding their provisions nearly exhausted, they took in wood and water and returned to France, having coasted, it is stated, along an UNKNOWN COUNTRY FOR SEVEN HUNDRED LEAGUES. In conclusion, it is added, they had found it inhabited by a people without religion, but easily to be persuaded, and imitating with fervor the acts of Christian worship performed by the discoverers. The description of the voyage is followed by what the writer calls a cosmography, in which is shown the distance they had sailed from the time they left the desert rocks at Madeira, and the probable size of the new world as compared with the old, with the relative area of land and water on the whole globe. There is nothing striking or important in this supplement, except that it emphasizes and enforces the statements of the former part of the letter in regard to the landfall, fixes the exact point of their departure from the coast for home again at 50 Degrees N. latitude, and gives seven hundred leagues as the extent of the discovery. The length of a longitudinal degree along the parallel of thirty-four, in which it is reiterated they first made land, and between which and the parallel of thirty- two they had sailed from the Desertas, is calculated and found to be fifty-two miles, and the whole number of degrees which they had traversed across the ocean between those parallels, being twelve hundred leagues, or forty-eight hundred miles, is by simple division made ninety-two. The object of this calculation is not apparent, and strikes the reader as if it were a feeble imitation of the manner in which Amerigo Vespucci illustrates his letters. A statement is made, that they took the aim's altitude from day to day, and noted the observations, together with the rise and fall of the tide, in a little boat, which was "communicated to his majesty, in the hope of promoting science." It is also mentioned that they had no lunar eclipses, by means of which they could have ascertained the longitude during the voyage. This fact is shown by the tables of Regiomontanus, which had been published long before the alleged voyage, and were open to the world. The statement of it here, therefore, does not, as has been supposed, furnish any evidence in support of the narrative, by redeem of its originality. Such is the account, in brief; which the letter gives of the origin, nature and extent of the alleged discovery; and as it assumes to be the production of the navigator himself, and is the only source of information on the subject, it suggests all the questions which arise in this inquiry. These relate both to the genuineness of the letter, and the truth of its statements; and accordingly bring under consideration the circumstances under which that instrument was made known and has received credit; the alleged promotion of the voyage by the king of France; and the results claimed to have been accomplished thereby. It will be made to appear upon this examination, that the letter, according to the evidence upon which its existence is predicated, could not have been written by Verrazzano; that the instrumentality of the King of France, in any such expedition of discovery as therein described, is unsupported by the history of that country, and is inconsistent with the acknowledged acts of Francis and his successors, and therefore incredible; and that its description of the coast and some of the physical characteristics of the people and of the country are essentially false, and prove that the writer could not have made them, from his own personal knowledge and experience, as pretended. And, in conclusion, it will be shown that its apparent knowledge of the direction and extent of the coast was derived from the exploration of Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese pilot in the service of the king of Spain, and that Verrazzano, at the time of his pretended discovery, was actually engaged in a corsairial expedition, sailing under the French flag, in a different part of the ocean. II. THE VERRAZZANO LETTER NOT GENUINE No proof that the letter ascribed to Verrazzano, was written by him, has ever been produced. The letter itself has never been exhibited, or referred to in any authentic document, or mentioned by any contemporary or later historian as being in existence, and although it falls within the era, of modern history, not a single fact which it professes to describe relating to the fitting out of the expedition, the voyage, or the discovery, is corroborated by other testimony, whereby its genuineness might even be inferred. The only evidence in regard to it, relates to two copies, as they purport to be, both in the Italian language, one of them coming to us printed and the other in manuscript, but neither of them traceable to the alleged original. They are both of them of uncertain date. The printed copy appears in the work of Ramusio, first published in 1556; when Verrazzano and Francis I, the parties to it, were both dead, and a generation of men had almost passed away since the events which it announced had, according to its authority, taken place, and probably no one connected with the government of France at that time could have survived to gainsay, the story, were it untrue.[Footnote: Verrazzano died in 1527; Louise, the mother of Francis I in September, 1582, and Francis himself in March, 1547.] Ramusio does not state when or how he obtained what he published. In the preface to the volume in which it is printed, dated three years before, he merely speaks of the narrative incidentally, but in a discourse preceding it, he obscurely alludes to the place where he found it, remarking that it was the only letter of Verrazzano that he had "been able to have, because the others had got astray in the troubles of the unfortunate city of Florence." The origin of the manuscript version is equally involved in mystery. It forms part of a codex which contains also a copy of a letter purporting to have been written by Fernando Carli, from Lyons to his father in Florence, on the 4th of August, 1524, giving an account of the arrival of Verrazzano at Dieppe, and inclosing a copy of his letter to the King. The epistles of Carli and Verrazzano are thus connected together in the manuscript in fact, and by reference in that of Carli, making the copy of the Verrazzano letter a part of Carli's, and so to relate to the same date. But as the Carli letter in the manuscript is itself only a copy, there is nothing to show when that was really written; nor is it stated when the manuscript itself was made. All that is positively known in regard to the latter is, that it was mentioned in 1768, as being then in existence in the Strozzi library in Florence. When it came into that collection does not appear, but as that library was not founded until 1627, its history cannot be traced before that year, [Footnote: Der Italicum von D. Friedrich Blume. Band II, 81. Halle, 1827.] Its chirography, however, in the opinion of some competent persons who have examined it, indicates that it was written in the middle of the sixteenth century. There is, therefore, nothing in the history or character of the publication in Ramusio or the manuscript, to show that the letter emanated from Verrazzano. Neither of them is traceable to him; neither of them was printed at a time when its publication, without contradiction, might be regarded as an admission or acknowledgment by the world of a genuine original; and neither of them is found to have existed early enough to authorize an inference in favor of such an original by reason of their giving the earliest account of the coasts and country claimed to have been discovered. On the contrary, these two documents of themselves, when their nature and origin are rightly understood, serve to prove that the Verrazzano letter is not a genuine production. For this purpose it will be necessary to state more fully their history and character. The existence of the copy which, in consequence of its connection in the same manuscript with that of the Carli letter, may be designated as the Carli version, is first mentioned in an eulogy or life of Verrazzano in the series of portraits of illustrious Tuscans, printed in Florence in 1767-8, as existing in the Strozzi library. [Footnote: Serie di Ritratti d'Uomini Illustri Toscani con gli elogi istorici dei medesimi. Vol. secondo Firenze, 1768.] The author calls attention to the fact, that it contains a part of the letter which is omitted by Ramusio. In another eulogy of the navigator, by a different hand, G. P. (Pelli), put forth by the same printer in the following year, the writer, referring to the publication of the letter of Ramusio, states that an addition to it, describing the distances to the places where Verrazzano had been, was inserted in writing in a copy of the work of Ramusio, in the possession at that time of the Verrazzano family in Florence. These references were intended to show the existence of the cosmography, which Tiraboschi afterwards mentions, giving, however, the first named eulogy as his authority. No portion of the Carli copy appeared in print until 1841, when through the instrumentality of Mr. Greene, the American consul at Rome, it was printed in the collections of the New York Historical Society, accompanied by a translation into English by the late Dr. Cogswell. It was subsequently printed in the Archivio Storico Italiano at Florence, in 1853, with some immaterial corrections, and a preliminary discourse on Verrazzano, by M. Arcangeli. From an inspection of the codex in the library, where it then existed in Florence, M. Arcangeli supposes the manuscript was written in the middle of the sixteenth century. This identical copy was, therefore, probably in existence when Ramusio published his work. Upon comparing the letter as given by Ramusio with the manuscript, the former, besides wanting the cosmography, is found to differ from the latter almost entirely in language, and very materially in substance, though agreeing with it in its elementary character and purpose. The two, therefore, cannot be copies of the same original. Either they are different versions from some other language, or one of them must be a recomposition of the other in the language in which they now are found. In regard to their being both translated from the French, the only other language in which the letter can be supposed to have been written besides the native tongue of Verrazzano, although it is indeed most reasonable to suppose that such a letter, addressed to the king of France, on the results of an expedition of the crown, by an officer in his service, would have been written in that language, it is, nevertheless, highly improbable that any letter could, in this instance, have been so addressed to the King, and two different translations made from it into Italian, one by Carli in Lyons in 1524, and the other by Ramusio in Venice twenty-nine years afterwards, and yet no copy of it in French, or any memorial of its existence in that language be known. This explanation must therefore be abandoned. If on the other hand, one of these copies was so rendered from the French, or from an original in either form in which it appears in Italian, whether by Verrazzano or not, the other must have been rewritten from it. It is evident, however, that the Carli version could not have been derived from that contained in Ramusio, because it contains an entire part consisting of several pages, embracing the cosmographical explanations of the voyage, not found in the latter. As we are restricted to these two copies as the sole authority for the letter, and are, therefore, governed in any conclusion on this subject by what they teach, it must be determined that the letter in Ramusio is a version of that contained in the Carli manuscript. This suggestion is not new. It was made by Mr. Greene in his monograph on Verrazzano, without his following it to the conclusion to which it inevitably leads. If the version in Ramusio be a recomposition of the Carli copy, an important step is gained towards determining the origin of the Verrazzano letter, as in that case the inquiry is brought down to the consideration of the authenticity of the Carli letter, of which it forms a part. But before proceeding to that question, the reasons assigned by Mr. Greene, and some incidental facts stated by him in connection with them, should be given. He says: "The Strozzi Library is no longer in existence; but the manuscripts of that collection passed into the hands of the Tuscan government, and were divided between the Magliabechian and Laurentian libraries of Florence. The historical documents were deposited in the former. Among them was the cosmographical narration of Verrazzano mentioned by Tiraboschi, and which Mr. Bancroft expresses a desire to see copied for the Historical Society of New York. It is contained in a volume of Miscellanies, marked "Class XIII. Cod. 89. Verraz;" and forms the concluding portion of the letter to Francis the First, which is copied at length in the same volume. It is written in the common running hand of the sixteenth century (carrattere corsivo), tolerably distinct, but badly pointed. The whole volume, which is composed of miscellaneous pieces, chiefly relating to contemporary history, is evidently the WORK OF THE SAME HAND. "Upon collating this manuscript with that part of the letter which was published by Ramusio, we were struck with the differences in language which run through every paragraph of the two texts. In substance there is no important difference [Footnote: In this statement Mr. Greene was mistaken, as will be manifested in a comparison of the two texts hereafter given, in which the difference of language will also appear.] except in one instance, where by an evident blunder of the transcriber, bianchissimo is put for branzino. There is something so peculiar in the style of this letter, as it reads, in the manuscript of the Magliabechian, that it is impossible to account for its variations from Ramusio, except by supposing that this editor worked the whole piece over anew, correcting the errors of language upon his own authority. [Footnote: Mr. Greene adds in a note to this passage: "He did so also with the translation of Marco Polo. See Apostolo Zeno, Annot. alla Bib. Ital. del Fontanini, tom. II, p. 300; ed. di Parma. 1804." There is another instance mentioned by Amoretti in the preface to his translation of Pigafetta's journal of Magellan's voyage, and that was with Fabre's translation of the copy of the journal given by Pigafetta to the mother of Francis I. Premier voyage autour du monde. xxxii. (Jansen, Paris l'an ix.)] These errors indeed are numerous, and the whole exhibits a strange mixture of Latinisms [Footnote: An instance of these Latinisms is the signature "Janus Verrazzanus," affixed to the letter.] and absolute barbarisms with pure Tuscan words and phrases. The general cast of it, however, is simple and not unpleasing. The obscurity of many of the sentences is, in a great measure, owing to false pointing. "The cosmographical description forms the last three pages of the letter. It was doubtless intentionally omitted by Ramusio, though it would be difficult to say why. Some of the readings are apparently corrupt; nor, ignorant as we are of nautical science, was it in our power to correct them. There are also some slight mistakes, which must be attributed to the transcriber. "A letter which follows that of Verrazzano, gives, as it seems to us, a sufficient explanation of the origin of this manuscript. It was written by a young Florentine, named Fernando Carli, and is addressed from Lyons to his father in Florence. It mentions the arrival of Verrazzano at Dieppe, and contains several circumstances about him, which throw a new though still a feeble light upon parts of his history, hitherto wholly unknown. It is by the discovery of this letter, that we have been enabled to form a sketch of him, somewhat more complete than any which has ever yet been given. "The history of both manuscripts is probably as follows: Carli wrote to his father, thinking, as he himself tells it, that the news of Verrazzano's return would give great satisfaction to many of their friends in Florence. He added at the same time, and this also we learn from his own words, a copy of Verrazzano's letter to the king. Both his letter and his copy of Verrazzano's were intended to be shown to his Florentine acquaintances. Copies, as is usual in such cases, were taken of them; and to us it seems evident that from some one of these the copy in the Magliabechian manuscript was derived. The appearance of this last, which was prepared for some individual fond of collecting miscellaneous documents, if not by him, is a sufficient corroboration of our statement." [Footnote: Historical Studies: by George Washington Greene, New York, 1850; p. 323. Life and Voyages of Verrazzano (by the same), in the North American Review for October, 1837. (Vol. 45, p. 306).] Adopting the Carli copy as the primitive form of the Verrazzano letter, and the Carli letter as the original means by which it has been communicated to the world, the inquiry is resolved into the authenticity of the Carli letter. There are sufficient reasons to denounce this letter as a pure invention; and in order to present those reasons more clearly, we here give a translation of it in full: Letter of Fernando Carli to his Father. [Footnote: The letter of Carli was first published in 1844, with the discourse of Mr. Greene on Verrazzano, in the Saggiatore (I, 257), a Roman journal of history, the fine arts and philology. (M. Arcangeli, Discorso sopra Giovanni da Verrazzano, p. 35, in Archivio Storico Italiano. Appendice tom. IX.) It will be found in our appendix, according to the reprint in the latter work.] In the name of God. 4 August, 1524. Honorable Father: Considering that when I was in the armada in Barbary at Garbich the news were advised you daily from the illustrious Sig. Don Hugo de Moncada, Captain General of the Caesarean Majesty in those barbarous parts, [of what] happened in contending with the Moors of that island; by which it appears you caused pleasure to many of our patrons and friends and congratulated yourselves on the victory achieved: so there being here news recently of the arrival of Captain Giovanni da Verrazzano, our Florentine, at the port of Dieppe, in Normandy, with his ship, the Dauphiny, with which he sailed from the Canary islands the end of last January, to go in search of new lands for this most serene crown of France, in which he displayed very noble and great courage in undertaking such an unknown voyage with only one ship, which was a caravel of hardly-- tons, with only fifty men, with the intention, if possible, of discovering Cathay, taking a course through other climates than those the Portuguese use in reaching it by the way of Calicut, but going towards the northwest and north, entirely believing that, although Ptolemy, Aristotle and other cosmographers affirm that no land is to be found towards such climates, he would find it there nevertheless. And so God has vouchsafed him as he distinctly describes in a letter of his to this S. M.; OF WHICH, IN THIS, THERE IS A COPY. And for want of provisions, after many months spent in navigating, he asserts he was forced to return from that hemisphere into this, and having been seven months on the voyage, to show a very great and rapid passage, and to have achieved a wonderful and most extraordinary feat according to those who understand the seamanship of the world. Of which at the commencement of his said voyage there was an unfavorable opinion formed, and many thought there would be no more news either of him or of his vessel, but that he might be lost on that side of Norway, in consequence of the great ice which is in that northern ocean; but the Great God, as the Moor said, in order to give us every day proofs of his infinite power and show us how admirable is this worldly machine, has disclosed to him a breadth of land, as you will perceive, of such extent that according to good reasons, and the degrees of latitude and longitude, he alleges and shows it greater than Europe, Africa and a part of Asia; ergo mundus novus: and this exclusive of what the Spaniards have discovered in several years in the west; as it is hardly a year since Fernando Magellan returned, who discovered a great country with one ship out of the five sent on the discovery. From whence be brought spices much more excellent than the usual; and of his other ships no news has transpired for five years. They are supposed to be lost. What this our captain has brought he does not state in this letter, except a very young man taken from those countries; but it is supposed he has brought a sample of gold which they do not value in those parts, and of drugs and other aromatic liquors for the purpose of conferring here with several merchants after he shall have been in the presence of the Most Serene Majesty. And at this hour he ought to be there, and from choice to come here shortly, as he is much desired in order to converse with him; the more so that he will find here the Majesty, the King, our Lord, who is expected herein three or four days. And we hope that S. M. will entrust him again with half a dozen good vessels and that he will return to the voyage. And if our Francisco Carli be returned from Cairo, advise him to go, at a venture, on the said voyage with him; and I believe they were acquainted at Cairo where he has been several years; and not only in Egypt and Syria, but almost through all the known world, and thence by reason of his merit is esteemed another Amerigo Vespucci, another Fernando Magellan and even more; and we hope that being provided with other good ships and vessels, well built and properly victualed, he may discover some profitable traffic and matter; and will, our Lord God granting him life, do honor to our country, in acquiring immortal fame and memory. And Alderotto Branelleschi who started with him and by chance turning back was not willing to accompany him further, will, when he hears of this, be discontented. Nothing else now occurs to me, as I have advised you by others of what is necessary. I commend myself constantly to you, praying you to impart this to our friends, not forgetting Pierfrancesco Dagaghiano who in consequence of being an experienced person will take much pleasure in it, and commend me to him. Likewise to Rustichi, who will not be displeased, if he delight, as usual, in learning matters of cosmography. God guard you from all evil. Your son. FERNANDO CARLI, in Lyons. This letter bears date only twenty-seven days after that of the Verrazzano letter, which is declared to be inclosed. To discover its fraudulent nature and the imposition it seeks to practise, it is only necessary to bear this fact in mind, with its pretended origin, in connection with this warlike condition of France and the personal movements of the king, immediately preceding and during the interval between the dates of the two letters. It purports to have been written by Fernando Carli to his father in Florence. Carli is not an uncommon Italian name and probably existed in Florence at that time, but who this Fernando was, has never transpired. He gives in this letter all there is of his biography, which is short. He had formerly been in the service of the emperor, Charles V, under Moncada, in the fleet sent against the Moors in Barbary, and was then in Lyons, where, it might be inferred, from a reference to its merchants, that he was engaged in some mercantile pursuit; but the reason of his presence there is really unaccounted for. It is not pretended that he held any official position under the king of France. The name of his father, by means of which his lineage might be traced, is not mentioned, but Francisco Carli is named as of the same family, but without designating his relationship. Whether a myth or a reality, Fernando seems to have been an obscure person, at the best; not known to the political or literary history of the period, and not professing to occupy any position, by which he might be supposed to have any facility or advantage for obtaining official information or the news of the day, over the other inhabitants of Lyons and of France. He is made to say that he writes this letter for the particular purpose of communicating to his father and their friends in Florence, the news, which had reached Lyons, of the arrival of Verrazzano from his wonderful and successful voyage of discovery, and that he had advised his parent of all other matters touching his own interests, by another conveyance. It might be supposed and indeed reasonably expected in a letter thus expressly devoted to Verrazzano, that some circumstance, personal or otherwise, connected with the navigator or the voyage, or some incident of his discovery, besides what was contained in the enclosed letter, such as must have reached Lyons, with the news of the return of the expedition, would have been mentioned, especially, as it would all have been interesting to Florentines. But nothing of the kind is related. Nothing appears in the letter in regard to the expedition that is not found in the Verrazzano letter. [Footnote: Mr. Greene, in his life of Verrazzano, remarks that it appears from Carli's letter, that the Indian boy whom Verrazzano is stated to have carried away, arrived safely in France; but that is not so. What is said in that letter is, that Verrazzano does not mention IN HIS LETTER what he had brought home, except this boy.] What is stated in reference to the previous life of Verrazzano, must have been as well known to Carli's father as to himself, if it were true, and is therefore unnecessarily introduced, and the same may be said of the facts stated in regard to Brunelleschi's starting on the voyage with Verrazzano and afterwards turning back. The particular description of Dagaghiano and Rustichi, both of Florence, the one as a man of experience and the other as a student of cosmography, was equally superfluous in speaking of them to his father. These portions of the letter look like flimsy artifices to give the main story the appearance of truth. They may or may not have been true, and it is not inconsistent with an intention to deceive in regard to the voyage that they should have been either the one or the other. A single allusion, however, is made to the critical condition of affairs in France and the stirring scenes which were being enacted on either side of the city of Lyons at the moment the letter bears date. It is the mention of the expected arrival of the king at Lyons within three or four days. It is not stated for what purpose he was coming, but the fact was that Francis had taken the field in person to repel the Spanish invasion in the south of France, and was then on his way to that portion of his kingdom, by way of Lyons, where he arrived a few days afterwards. The reference to this march of the king fixes beyond all question the date of the letter, as really intended for the 4th of August, 1524. The movements of Francis at this crisis become important in view of the possibility of the publication in any form of the Verrazzano letter at Lyons, at the last mentioned date, or of the possession of a copy of it there as claimed by Carli in his letter. The army of the emperor, under Pescara and Bourbon, crossed the Alps and entered Provence early in July, and before the date of the Verrazzano letter. [Footnote: Letter of Bourbon. Dyer's Europe, 442.] The intention to do so was known by Francis some time previously. He wrote on the 28th of June from Amboise, near Tours, to the Provencaux that he would march immediately to their relief; [Footnote: Sismondi, xvi. 216, 217.] and on the 2d of July he announced in a letter to his parliament: "I am going to Lyons to prevent the enemy from entering the kingdom, and I can assure you that Charles de Bourbon is not yet in France." [Footnote: Gaillard, Histoire de Francois Premier, tom. III, 172 (Paris, 1769).] He had left his residence at Blois and his capital, and was thus actually engaged in collecting his forces together, on the 8th of July, when the Verrazzano letter is dated. He did not reach Lyons until after the 4th of August, as is correctly stated in the Carli letter. [Footnote: Letter of Moncada in Doc. ined. para la Hist. de Espana. tom. XXIV, 403, and Letters of Pace to Wolsey in State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. IV, Part I, 589, 606.] The author of the Carli letter, whether the person he pretends to have been or not, asserts that news of the arrival of Verrazzano at Dieppe on his return from his voyage of discovery had reached Lyons, and that the navigator himself was expected soon to be in that city for the purpose of conferring with its merchants on the subject of the new countries which he had discovered, and had described in a letter to the king, a copy of which letter was enclosed. He thus explicitly declares not only that news of the discovery had reached Lyons, but that the letter to the king was known to the merchants at that place, and that a copy of it was then actually in his possession and sent with his own. The result of the expedition was, therefore, notorious, and the letter had attained general publicity at Lyons, without the presence there of either Francis or Verrazzano. This statement must be false. Granting that such a letter, as is ascribed to Verrazzano, had been written, it was impossible that this obscure young man at Lyons, hundreds of miles from Dieppe, Paris and Blois, away from the king and court and from Verrazzano, not only at a great distance from them all, but at the point to which the king was hastening, and had not reached, on his way to the scene of war in the southern portion of his kingdom, could have come into the possession of this document in less than a month after it purports to have been written for the king in a port far in the north, on the coast of Normandy. It obviously could not have been delivered to him personally by Verrazzano, who had not been at Lyons, nor could it have been transmitted to him by the navigator, who had not yet presented himself before the king, and could have had no authority to communicate it to any person. It was an official report, addressed to the king, and intended for his eye alone, until the monarch himself chose to make it public. It related to an enterprise of the crown, and eminently concerned its interests and prerogatives, in the magnitude and importance of the new countries; and could not have been sent by Verrazzano, without permission, to a private person, and especially a foreigner, without subjecting himself to the charge of disloyalty, if not of treason, which there is no other evidence to sustain. On the other hand it could not have been delivered by the king to this Carli. It is not probable, even if such a letter could have come into the hands of Francis, absent from his capital in the midst of warlike preparations, engaged in forming his army and en route for the scene of the invasion, that he could have given it any consideration. But if he had received it and considered its import, there was no official or other relation between him and Carli, or any motive for him to send it forward in advance of his coming to Lyons, to this young and obscure alien. There was no possibility, therefore, of Carli obtaining possession of a private copy of the letter through Verrazzano or the king. The only way open to him, under the most favorable circumstances, would have been through some publicity, by proclamation or printing, by order of the king; in which case, it would have been given for the benefit of all his subjects. It is impossible that it could have been seen and copied by this young foreigner alone and in the city of Lyons, and that no other copies would have been preserved in all France. The idea of a publication is thus forbidden. No alternative remains except to pronounce the whole story a fabrication. The Carli letter is untrue. It did not inclose any letter of Verrazzano of the character pretended. And as it is the only authority for the existence of any such letter, that falls with it. III. THE LETTER UNTRUE. I. NO VOYAGE OR DISCOVERY MADE FOR THE KING OF FRANCE, AS IT STATES. All the circumstances relating to the existence of the Verrazzano letter thus prove that it was not the production of Verrazzano at the time and place it purports to have been written by him. We pass now to the question of its authenticity, embracing the consideration of its own statements and the external evidence which exists upon the subject. The letter professes to give the origin and results of the voyage; that is, the agency of the king of France in sending forth the expedition, and the discoveries actually accomplished by it. In both respects it is essentially untrue. It commences by declaring that Verrazzano sailed under the orders and on behalf of the king of France, for the purpose of finding new countries, and that the account then presented was a description of the discoveries made in pursuance of such instructions. That no such voyage of discoveries were made for that monarch is clearly deducible from the history of France. Neither the letter, nor any document, chronicle, memoir, or history of any kind, public or private, printed or in manuscript, belonging to that period, or the reign of Francis I, who then bore the crown, mentioning or in any manner referring to it, or to the voyage and discovery, has ever been found in France; and neither Francis himself, nor any of his successors, ever acknowledged or in any manner recognized such discovery, or asserted under it any right to the possession of the country; but, on the contrary, both he and they ignored it, in undertaking colonization in that region by virtue of other discoveries made under their authority, or with their permission, by their subjects. I. That no evidence of the Verrazzano discovery ever existed in France, is not only necessarily presumed from the circumstance that none has ever been produced, but is inferentially established by the fact that all the French writers and historians, who have had occasion to consider the subject, have derived their information in regard to it from the Italian so-called copies of the letter, and until recently from that in Ramusio alone. No allusion to the discovery, by any of them, occurs until several years after the work of Ramusio was published, when for the first time it is mentioned in the account written by Ribault, in 1563, of his voyage to Florida and attempted colonization at Port Royal in South Carolina, in the previous year. Ribault speaks of it very briefly, in connection with the discoveries of Sebastian Cabot and others, as having no practical results, and states that he had derived his information in regard to it, from what Verrazzano had written, thus clearly referring to the letter. He adds that Verrazzano made another voyage to America afterwards, "where at last he died." As Ramusio is the only authority known for the latter statement, it is evident that Ribault must have had his work before him, and consequently his version of the letter, when he prepared this account. [Footnote: The original narrative of Ribault, in French, has never appeared in print. It was probably suppressed at the time for political reasons, as the colony was intended for the benefit of the protestants of France. It was, however, translated immediately into English and printed in 1563, under the following title: "The whole and true discoverye of Terra Florida &c never found out before the last year, 1562. Written in French by Captain Ribault &c and now newly set forthe in Englishe the XXX of May, 1563. Prynted at London, by Rowland Hall, for Thomas Hacket." This translation was reprinted by Hakluyt in his first work, Divers Voyages, in 1582; but was omitted by him in his larger collections, and the account by Laudoniere, who accompanied Ribault, of that and the two subsequent expeditions, substituted in its stead.] In the relation written by Laudoniere in 1566, but not printed until 1586, of all three of the expeditions sent out from France, for the colonization of the French protestants, mention is again made of the discoveries of Verrazzano. Laudoniere gives no authority, but speaks of them in terms which show that he made his compend from the discourse of the French captain of Dieppe, published by Ramusio in the same volume, in connection with the Verrazzano letter. He says that Verrazzano "was sent by King Francis the First and Madame the Regent, his mother, into these new countries." In thus associating the queen mother with the king in the prosecution of the enterprise Laudoniere commits the same mistake as is made in the discourse in that respect. Louise did not become regent until after the return of Verrazzano is stated to have taken place, and after both his letter and that of Carli are represented to have been written. [Footnote: The edict appointing Louise regent, was dated at Pignerol, the 17th of October, 1524, when Francis was en route for Milan. Isambert, Recueil, &c., tom. XII, part I, p. 230.] In adopting this error it is plain that Laudoniere must have taken it from the work of Ramusio, as the discourse of the French captain is found in no other place, and therefore used that work. He also speaks of the discovered country being called Francesca, as mentioned in the discourse. [Footnote: Basanier, L'Histoire notable de la Floride. (Paris, 1586), fol. 1-3. Hakluyt, III, p. 305. Ramusio, III, fol. 423. (Ed. 1556.)] The Verrazzano discovery is referred to, for the first time, in any work printed in France, in 1570, in a small folio volume called the Universal History of the World, by Francois de Belleforest, a compiler of no great authority. In describing Canada, he characterizes the natives as cannibals, and in proof of the charge repeats the story, which is found in Ramusio only, of Verrazzano having been killed, roasted and eaten by them, and then proceeds with a short account of the country and its inhabitants, derived, as he states, from what Verrazzano had written to King Francis. [Footnote: L'Histoire Universelle du Monde. Par Francois de Belleforest. (Paris 1570, fol. 253-4.)] He does not mention where he obtained this account, but his reference to the manner in which Verrazzano came to his death, shows that he had consulted the volume of Ramusio. Five years later the same writer gave to the world an enlarged edition of his work, with the title of The Universal Cosmography of the World, in three ponderous folios, in which he recites, more at length, the contents of the Verrazzano letter, also without mentioning where he had found it, but disclosing nevertheless that it was in Ramusio, by his following the variations of that version, particularly in regard to the complexion of the natives represented to have been first seen, as they will be hereafter explained. [Footnote: La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde, tom. II, part II, 2175-9. (Paris, 1575.)] This publication of Belleforest is the more important, because it is from the abstract of the Verrazzano letter contained in it, that Lescarbot, thirty-four years afterwards, took his account of the voyage and discovery, word for word, without acknowledgment. [Footnote: Hist. de la Nouvelle France, p. 27, et seq. (ed. 1609). In a subsequent portion of his history (p. 244) Lescarbot again refers incidentally to Verrazzano in connection with Jacques Cartier, to whom he attributes a preposterous statement, acknowledging the Verrazzano discovery. He states that in 1533 Cartier made known to Chabot, then admiral of France, his willingness "to discover countries, as the Spanish had done, in the West Indies, and as, nine years before, Jean Verrazzano (had done) under the authority of King Francis I, which Verrazzano, being prevented by death, had not conducted any colony into the lands he had discovered, and had only remarked the coast from about the THIRTIETH degree of the Terre-neuve, which at the present day they call Florida, as far as the FORTIETH. For the purpose of continuing his design, he offered his services, if it were the pleasure of the king, to furnish him with the necessary means. The lord admiral having approved these words, represented then to his majesty, &c." Lescarbot gives no authority for this statement, made by him seventy-five years after the voyage of Cartier. It is absurd on its face and is contradicted by existing records of that voyage. No authority has ever confined the Verrazzano discovery within the limits here mentioned. Cartier is represented as saying to the admiral that in order to complete Verrazzano's design of carrying colonials to the country discovered by him, that is, within those limits, he would go himself, if the king would accept his services. The documents recently published from the archives of St. Malo, show that the voyage of Cartier proposed by Cartier, was for the purpose of passing through the straits of Belle Isle, in latitude 52 Degrees, far north of the northern limit of the Verrazzano discovery, according to either version of the letter, and not with a design of planting a colony, or going to any part of the Verrazzano explorations, much less to a point south of the fortieth degree. (Rame, Documents inedits sur Jacques Cartier et le Canada, p. 3, Tross, Paris, 1865.) Besides, neither in the commissions to Cartier, nor in any of the accounts of his voyages, is there the slightest allusion to Verrazzano.] The latter writer has accordingly been cited by subsequent authors as an original authority on the subject, among others by Bergeron, [Footnote: Traiete des Navigations, p. 103, par. 15.] and the commissioners of the king of France, in the controversy with his Britannic majesty in relation to the limits of Acadia; [Footnote: Memoires des Commissaires du Roi, &c., I, 29.] but, as this plagiarism proves, without reason. Charlevoix, with a proper discrimination, refers directly to Ramusio as the sole source from whence the account of the discovery is derived, as do the French writers who have mentioned it since his time, except M. Margry, who, in his recent work on the subject of French voyages, quotes from the Carli version. It is thus seen that no other authority is given by the French historians than one or other of the Italian versions. [Footnote: Andre Thevet, who published a work with the title of Cosmographie Universelle, in two volumes, large folio, in rivalry apparently with Belleforest, and in the same year, 1575, is referred to sometimes as an authority on this subject. Speaking of the cruel disposition of the people of Canada, he mentions in illustration of it, the fate at their hands of some colonists whom Verrazzano took to that country. The fact is thus related by him in connection with this voyage, for which he gives no authority or indication of any. "Jean Verazze, a Florentine, left Dieppe, the SEVENTEENTH OF MARCH, one thousand five hundred and twenty-four, by command of King Francis, and coasted the whole of Florida, as far as the thirty- fourth degree of latitude, and the three hundredth of longitude, and explored all this coast, and PLACED HERE A NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO CULTIVATE IT, who in the end were all killed and massacred by this barbarous people" (fol. 1002 B.). This statement seems to justify what the President De Thou, the contemporary of Thevet, says of him, that he composed his books by putting "the uncertain for the certain, and the false for the true, with an astonishing assurance." (Hist. Univ., tom. II, 651, Loud., 1734.) Thevet had published before this, in 1557, another book, called Les Singularites de la France Antarctique, autrement nommee Amerique, in which he describes all the countries of America as far north as Labrador, and says that he ran up the coast to that region on his way home from Brazil, where he went in 1555, with Villegagnon. In this earlier work he makes no mention of Verrazzano; but does say that Jacques Cartier told him that he (Cartier) had made the voyage to America twice (fol. 148-9). It is thus evident that Thevet had not heard of Verrazzano in 1557, or he would necessarily have mentioned him, as he had the subject distinctly before him; and if he is to be believed in regard to his intimacy with Cartier, with whom he says he spent five months at his house in St. Malo (Cos. Univ., fol. 1014, B.), and from whom he received much information, it is quite as clear that Cartier knew nothing of the Verrazzano discovery, or he would have mentioned it to Thevet.] It must, therefore, as regarded as confessed by them, that no original authority for the discovery has never existed in France. If any voyage had taken place, such as this is alleged to have been, it is morally impossible, in the state of learning and art at that time in France, and with the interest which must necessarily have attached to the discovery, that no notice should have been taken of it in any of the chronicles or histories of the country, and that the memory of it should not have been preserved in some of the productions of its press. According to the letter itself, it was one of the grandest achievements in the annals of discovery, and promised the most important results to France. It was an enterprise of her king, which had been successfully accomplished. There had been discovered a heathen land, nearly three thousand miles in extent, before unknown to the civilized world, and, therefore, open to subjugation and settlement; healthy, populous, fertile and apparently rich in gold and aromatics, and, therefore, an acquisition as great and valuable as any discovery made by the Spaniards or Portuguese, except that of Columbus. Silence and indifference in regard to such an event were impossible. Printing introduced long previously into the principal cities in France, had early in this reign reached its highest state of perfection, as the works issued from the presses of Henri Estienne and others attest. In 1521 twenty-four persons practiced the art in Paris alone. [Footnote: Didot in Harrisse Bib. Am. Vet., 189.] The discoveries in the new world by other nations excited as much attention in France as they did in the other countries of Europe. The letters of Columbus and Vespucci, describing their voyages and the countries they had found, were no sooner published abroad than they were translated into French and printed in Paris. From 1515 to 1529 several editions of the Italian collection of voyages, known as the Paesi novamente ritrovati, containing accounts of the discoveries of Columbus, Cortereal, Cabral and Vespucci in America, and in 1532 the Decades of Peter Martyr, were translated and published in Paris, in the French language. Cartier's account of his voyage in 1535-6, undertaken by order of Francis, in which he discovered Canada, was printed in the same city in 1545, during the reign of that monarch. These publications abundantly prove the interest which was taken in France in the discoveries in the new world, and the disposition and efforts of the printers in the country at that time to supply the people with information on the subject; and also, that the policy of the crown allowed publicity to be given to its own maritime enterprises. Of the enlightened interest on the part of the crown in the new discoveries, a memorable instance is recorded, having a direct and important bearing upon this question. A few months only after the alleged return of Verrazzano, and at the darkest hour in the reign of Francis, when he was a captive of the emperor in Spain, Pigafetta, who had accompanied the expedition of Magellan and kept a journal of the voyage, presented himself at the court of France. Louise was then exercising the powers and prerogatives of her son, and guarding his interests and honor with maternal zeal. Pigafetta came to offer her a copy of the manuscript which he had prepared, and which told of the discovery of the newly discovered route to the Moluccas and Cathay. It was written in Italian; and the queen mother caused it to be translated into French by Antoine Fabre, and printed by Simon de Colines, the successor of Estienne. The book bears no date, but bibliographers assign it that of 1525, the year of the regency. Certain it is, it was printed in Paris during the life of Francis, as Colines, whose imprint it bears, died before the king. Thus by the instrumentality of the crown of France was the account of the discovery of Magellan, written by one who belonged to the expedition, first given to the world. It is not probable that the queen mother, exercising the regal power immediately after the alleged return of Verrazzano, would have left entirely unnoticed and unpublished an account of his discovery, so interesting to the subjects of the king and so glorious to France, and yet have caused to be put forth within his realm in its stead, the history of a like enterprise, redounding to the glory of the great rival and enemy of her son. [Footnote: The little book of Pigafetta, a copy of which, by the kindness of Mrs. John Carter Brown, of Providence, is now in our hands, bears the title of Le voyage et navigation faict par les Espaignols es Isles de Molucques, &c. It is fully described by M. Harrisse in his Bib. Vet. Am. The concluding paragraph contains the statement that this manuscript was presented to the queen regent. Ramusio (vol. I, 346), mentions the fact that it was given by her to Fabre to be translated. The particulars are detailed by Amoretti Primo Viaggio, Introd. XXXVII. Premier Voyage, XLIV.] II. Conclusive as the silence of the history of France is against the assertion that the Verrazzano voyage and discovery were made by direction of her king, the life of Francis is a complete denial of it. He was released from his captivity early in 1526, and lived and reigned over France for more than twenty years afterwards, active in promoting the greatness of his kingdom; encouraging science and art among his people, and winning the title of father of letters; awake to whatever concerned his royal rights and prerogatives, and maintaining them with might and vigor abroad as well as at home; and willing and able to obtain and occupy new countries inhabited by the heathen. That he was not insensible to the advantages to his crown and realm of colonies in America, and not without the ability and disposition to prosecute discoveries there for the purpose of settlement, is proven by his actually sending out the expeditions of Jacques Cartier in 1534 and 1535 and Cartier and Roberval in 1541-2, for the purpose of exploring and developing the region beyond the gulf of St. Lawrence, through the icy way of the straits of Belle Isle, in latitude 52 Degrees N. Yet he never recognized by word or deed the voyage or discovery of Verrazzano. If any one in France could have known of them, surely it would have been he who had sent forth the expedition. If Verrazzano were dead, when Francis returned to his kingdom, and the letter had miscarried and never come to his hands, the knowledge of the discovery still would have existed in the bosom of fifty living witnesses, who composed the crew, according to the story; and through them the results of the voyage would have been communicated to the king. But Verrazzano was not dead, at that time, but was alive, as will appear hereafter, in 1527. There is good reason to believe that he was well known then to the royal advisers. One of the first acts of the king after his return from Spain was to create Phillipe Chabot, Sieur de Brion, the admiral of France, whereby that nobleman became invested on the 23d of March, 1526, with the charge of the royal marine. [Footnote: Pere Anselme, IV, 57l.] A document has recently been brought to light from among the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, purporting to be an agreement made by Chabot in his official capacity, with Jean Ango, of Dieppe, and other persons, including Jehan de Varesam, for a voyage to the Indies with two vessels belonging to the king, and one to Ango, to be conducted by Varesam, as master pilot, for the purpose ostensibly of bringing bask a cargo of spices. [Footnote: M. Margry. Navigations Francaises, p. 194. See Appendix.] This instrument has no date, but on its face belongs to Chabot's administration of the admiralty, and must, therefore, have been drawn up in the year 1526 or that of Verrazzano's death, in 1527. If it be genuine, it proves not only that Verrazzano was alive in that period, but was known to the admiral, and, consequently, that any services which he had previously rendered must have been in the possession of the crown. In either case, however, whether Verrazzano were dead or alive when Francis resumed his royal functions, there is no reason why the discovery, if it had ever taken place, should not have been known by him. In sending forth the expeditions of Jacques Cartier and the joint expeditions of Cartier and Roberval, Francis not only showed his interest in the discovery of new countries, but he acted in perfect ignorance of the Verrazzano discovery. If it were known to him, upon what rational theory would he have attempted new voyages of discovery in a cold and inhospitable region, on an uncertain search, instead of developing what had been found for him? What could he have expected to have accomplished by the new expeditions that had not been already fully effected by Verrazzano? And, especially after the way to Canada was found out by Cartier, what was there more inviting in that unproductive quarter than was promised in the temperate climate, fertile soil, and mineral lands, which the Florentine had already discovered in his name, that he should have sent Cartier and Roberval to settle and conquer the newer land? [Footnote: The letters issued to Roberval have been recently published, for the first time, by M. Harrisse, from the archives of France, in his Notes pour servir a l'histoire de la Nouvelle France, p. 244, et seq. (Paris, 1872.) They are dated the 16th of February 1540. Cartier's commission for the same service is dated in October, 1540. Charlevoix, misled probably by the letters granted by Henry IV to the Marquis de la Roche in 1598, in which the letters to Roberval are partially recited, asserts that Roberval is styled in them lord of Norumbega. The letters now published show that he was in error; and that France limited the authority of Roberval to the countries west of the gulf of St. Lawrence (Canada and Ochelaga), so far as any are named or described, and made no reference to Norumbega as a title of Roberval or otherwise. As the year commenced at Easter the date of Roberval's commission was in fact after that of Cartier.] With the failure of the expedition of Roberval, Francis abandoned the attempt to discover new countries, or plant colonies in America; but his successors, though much later, entered upon the colonization of New France. They inherited his rights, and while they acknowledged the discoveries of Cartier they discredited those ascribed to Verrazzano. Of the latter claim all of them must have known. The publication of Ramusio took place during the reign of Henry II, who died in 1559; but he made no endeavor to plant colonies abroad. In 1577 and 1578, the first commissions looking to possessions in America north of Florida, were issued by Henry III, to the Marquis de la Roche, authorizing settlement in the terres neufves and the adjacent countries NEWLY discovered, in the occupancy of barbarians, but nothing was done under them. In 1598, another grant was made to the same person by Henry IV, for the conquest of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, the country of the river St. Lawrence, Norumbega, and other countries adjacent. This is the first document emanating from the crown, containing any mention of any part of the continent north of latitude 33 degrees and south of Cape Breton. Norumbega is the only country of those here enumerated which is included within those limits, and that did not become known through Verrazzano. [Footnote: Norumbega embraced the region of country extending from the land of the Bretons to the Penobscot, of which it was regarded as the Indian name. It was almost identical with what was subsequently called Acadia. It had become known at an early period through the French fishermen and traders in peltries, who obtained the name from the Indians and carried it home to France. It is described by Jean Alfonse, the chief pilot of Roberval, from an exploration which he made along the coast on the occasion of Roberval's expedition to Canada, in 1542. (Hakluyt, III, 239-240. MS. cosmography of Alfonse, in Bib. Nat. of Paris, fol. 185.) Alfonse states that he ran down the coast as far as a bay which he did not penetrate, in latitude 42, between Norumbega and Florida, showing that Norumbega was considered as north of that parallel of latitude. He particularly describes it in the manuscript just cited, which Hakluyt had before him, as the ruttier of Alfonse which he publishes is found in that manuscript. It appears to have been written by Alfonse in 1544-5, which was shortly after his return from Canada with Roberval. the name of Norumbega is found in the discourse of the captain of Dieppe, written in 1539, and printed in third volume of Ramusio. This writer distinctly states that the name was derived from the natives. The description of the country and its inhabitants given by Alfonse, is important, as showing its extent, and alluding to the trade there in peltries thus early. It is found in the cosmography in connection with the ruttier before mentioned (fol. 187-8), and is as follows: "I say that the cape of St. Jehan, called Cape Breton and the cape of the Franciscaine, are northeast and southwest, and take a quarter of east and west and there is in the route one hundred and forty leagues. And here makes a cape called the cape of Noroveregue. This said cape is at forty-five degrees of the height of the arctic pole. The said coast is all sandy land, low without any mountain. And along this coast there are several islands of sand and coast very dangerous, with banks and rocks. The people of this coast and of Cape Breton are bad people, powerful, great archers and live on fish and flesh. They speak, as it were, the same language as those of Canada, and are a great nation. And those of Cape Breton go and make war upon those of Newfoundland (Terre neufve), where they fish. On no account would they save the life of a person when they capture him, if it he not a child or young girl, and are so cruel that if they find a man wearing a beard, they cut his limbs off and carry them to their wives and children, in order to be revenged in that matter. And there is among them much peltry of all animals. Beyond the cape of Noroveregue [Cape Sable] descends the river of the said Noroveregue which is about twenty-five leagues from the cape. The said river is more than forty leagues broad at its mouth, and extends this width inward well thirty or forty leagues, and is all full of islands which enter ten or twelve leagues into the sea, and it is very dangerous with rocks and reefs. The said river is at forty-two degrees of the height of the arctic pole. Fifteen leagues within this river is a city which is called Norombergue, and there are in it good people and THERE IS MUCH PELTRY OF ALL ANIMALS. The people of the city are clothed with peltry, wearing mantles of martin. I suspect the said river enters into the river of Ochelaga, for it is salt more than forty league inward, according to what is said by the people of the city. The people use many words, which resemble Latin, and adore the sun; and are handsome and large men. The land of Norobregue is tolerably high. On the side on the west of the said city there are many rocks which run into the sea well fifteen leagues; and on the side towards the north there is a bay in which there is a little island which is very subject to tempest and cannot be inhabited." Two sketches of the coast by Alfonse accompany this description, which are here reproduced united in one. The map in Ramusio (III, fol. 424-5), prepared by Gastaldi, shows the Terra de Nurumbega, of the same extent as here described, that is, from Cape Breton westerly to a river running north from the Atlantic and connecting with the St. Lawrence or river of Hochelaga. Gastaldi, or Gastaldo, published previously an edition of Ptolemy's Geography (12mo., Venice, 1543), in which (map 56), Norumbega is similarly laid down, without the river running to the St. Lawrence. Norumbega was therefore a well defined district of country at that time. The word was undoubtedly derived from the Indians, and is still in use by those of the Penobscot, to denote certain portions of that river. The missionary Vetromile, in his History of the Abnakis (New York, 1866), observes (pp. 48-9): "Nolumbega means A STILL-WATER BETWEEN FALLS, of which there are several in that river. At different times, travelling in a canoe along the Penobscot, I have heard the Indians calling those localities NOLUMBEGA." That the country did not become known through Verrazzano is evident from the letter, in which it is stated that he ran along the entire coast, from the harbor to which they remained fifteen days, one hundred and fifty leagues easterly, that is from Cape Cod to the Island of Cape Breton, without landing, and consequently without having any correspondence with the natives, so as to have acquired the name. When in particular Alfonse ran along the Atlantic coast is not mentioned, though it is to be inferred that it was on the occasion of Roberval's expedition. There is nothing stated, it is true, to preclude the possibility of its having taken place on some other voyage previously. It could not have been afterwards, as the cosmography describing it was written in 1544-5. Some authors assert that Roberval dispatched him towards Labrador with a view of finding a passage to the East Indies, without mentioning his exploration along Nova Scotia and New England. But Le Clerc, who seems to have been the author of this statement (Premier Etablissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle France, I, 12-13. Paris, 1691), and who is followed by Charlevoix, also alleges that on the occasion of his exploration towards Labrador, he discovered the straits between it and Newfoundland, in latitude 52, now known as the straits of Belle Isle, which is not correct. Jacques Cartier sailed through that passage in his first voyage to Canada, in 1534. Le Clerc either drew false inferences or relied upon false information. He probably derived his impression of the voyage to Labrador and the discovery of the straits by Alfonse, from a cursory reading of the cosmography of Alfonse, who describes these straits, but not as a discovery of his own. In the printed work, called Les voyages avantureux du Capitaine Jean Alphonse, Saintongeois, which was first published in 1559, after the death of Alfonse, it is expressly stated that the river of Norumbega, was discovered by the Portuguese and Spaniards. Describing the great bank, he says that it runs from Labrador, "au nordest et suroest, une partie a oest-suroest, plus de huit cens lieues, et passe bien quatre vingts lieues de la terre neufue, et de la terre des Bretons trente ou quarante lieues. Et d'icy va tout au long de la coste jusques a la riviere du Norembergue, QUI EST NOUVELLEMENT DESCOUVERTE PAR LES PORTUGALOIS ET ESPAGNOLS," p. 53. We quote from an edition of the work not mentioned by the bibliographers (Brunet-Harrisse), printed at Rouen in 1602. This is almost a contemporary denial by a French author, whether Alfonse himself or a compiler, as it would rather appear, from his cosmography, of the Verrazzano discovery of this country.] No allusion is made, in these letters of de la Roche, to any previous exploration, although an enormous recital, already alluded to, is made to a purpose of Francis I, in his commission to Roberval, to conquer the countries here indicated. [Footnote: Lescarbot (ed. 1609), 434. Harrisse, Notes de la Nouvelle France, p. 243.] De la Roche made a miserable attempt to settle the island of Sable, a sand bank in the ocean, two degrees south of Cape Breton, with convicts taken from jails of France, but being repelled by storm and tempest, after leaving that island, from landing on the main coast, returned to France without any further attempt to colonize the country, and abandoning the poor malefactors on the island to a terrible fate. [Footnote: The story is told by Lescarbot (p. 38, ed. 1609), which he subsequently embellished with some fabulous additions in relation to a visit to the island of Sable by Baron de Leri, in 1519 (Ed. 1611, p. 22), even before the date of the Verrazzano letter.] There is therefore no acknowledgment, in the history of this enterprise, of the pretended discovery. The next act of the regal prerogative was a grant to the Sieur de Monts, by the same monarch in 1603, authorizing him to take possession of the country, coasts and confines of La Cadie, extending from latitude 40 Degrees N. to 46 Degrees N., that is, Nova Scotia and New England, the situation of which, it is alleged, De Monts understood from his previous voyages to the country. [Footnote: Lescarbot (ed. 1609), 452-3. La Cadie, or Acadie, as it was for a long time afterwards known, appears for the first time on any chart on the map of Terra Nova, No. 56, in Gastaldi's Ptolemy, and is there called Lacadia.] This document also is utterly silent as to any particular discovery of the country; but it distinctly affirms that the foundation of the claim to this territory was the report of the captains of vessels, pilots, merchants and others, who had for a long time frequented the country and trafficked with its inhabitants. Accompanying these letters patent was a license to De Monts to trade with the natives of the St. Lawrence, and make settlements on that river. It was under these authorisations to De Monts exclusively, that all the permanent settlements of the French in Nova Scotia and Canada were effected, beyond which countries none were ever attempted by them, within the limits of the Verrazzano discovery, or any rights asserted on behalf of the French crown. It is thus evident that the history of France and of her kings is utterly void on the subject of this discovery, without any legitimate cause, if it had ever taken place; and that the policy of the crown in regard to colonization in America has ever been entirely in repugnance to it. It is incredible, therefore, that any such could ever have taken place for Francis, or for France. An important piece of testimony of an affirmative character, however, still exists, showing that the crown of France had no knowledge or appreciation of this claim. It comes from France, and, as it were, from Francis himself. It is to be found in the work of a French cartographer, a large and elaborately executed map of the world, which has been reproduced by M. Jomard, in his Monuments of Geography, under the title of Mappemonde peinte sur parchemin par ordre de Henry II, roi de France. [Footnote: Les Monuments de la Geographie ou Receuil d'anciennes cartes, &c., en facsimile de la grandeur des originaux. Par M. Jomard. No. XIX.] M. D'Avezac assigns it the date of 1542, which is five years before the death of Francis and accession of Henry to the throne. [Footnote: Inventaire et classement raisonne des "Monuments de la Geographie" publies par M. Jomard de 1842 a 1863. (Communication de M. D'Avezac.) Extrait du Bulletin de L'Academie des inscriptions et belles lettres. Seance du 30 Aout 1867, p. 7. L'Annee Geographique. Sixieme annee (1867), pp. 548, 554.] But neither of these dates appears to be exactly correct; as upon that portion of the map representing Saguenay, the person of Roberval is depicted and his name inscribed, evidently denoting his visit to that country, which did not take place until June, 1543. [Footnote: Hakluyt, III, 242.] No information, could possibly have arrived in France, to have enabled the maker of the map, to have indicated this circumstance upon it before the latter part of that year. On the other hand the arms of both the king and dauphin are repeatedly drawn in the decorated border of the map, showing that it was made, if not under the actual direction of Henry, at least while he was in fact discharging the functions of admiral of France, which he assumed after the disgrace of Chabot, in 1540, and continued to exercise until the death of Francis, in 1547. It therefore belongs to the period of 1543-7; and thus comes to us apparently impressed with an official character. It is the work of an accomplished French geographer, DURING THE REIGN OF FRANCIS, and it, no doubt, represents not only the state of geographical knowledge in France at that time, but also all the knowledge possessed by Francis of this coast. Mr. Kohl expresses the opinion that it "is not only one of the most brilliant, but also one of the most exact and trustworthy pictures of the world which we have in the first part of the sixteenth century. It gives accurately all that was known of the world in 1543, especially of the ocean, and the outlines of the coasts of different countries." He adds, "the author of the map must have been a well instructed, intelligent and conscientious man. Where the coasts of a country are not known to him, he so designates them. For his representations of countries recently discovered and already known, he had before him the best models and originals." [Footnote: Discovery of Maine, 351-4.] Yet notwithstanding the thorough knowledge of the subject displayed by this cartographer, his French nationality, and the contemporariness of his labors with the reign of Francis, "no evidence," as Mr. K. further observes," appears that the report or chart of the French commander, Verrazzano, had been used in constructing this chart." On the contrary, the line of coast from Cape St. Roman in South Carolina to Cape Breton is copied from the Spanish map of Ribero, with the Spanish names translated into French. [Footnote: Thus R. del principe, R. del espiritu santo, B. de Santa Maria (the Chesapeake) Playa, C. de S. Juan, R. de St. Iago, C. de Arenas (Cape Henlopen), B. de S. Christoval (the Delaware), B. de S. Antonio (the Hudson), R. de buena Madre, S. Juan Baptista, Arcipelago de Estevan Gomez, Montanas, and R. de la buelta, on the map of Ribero, become on the French map, R. du Prince, R. du St. Esprit, B. de Sa. Marie, Les playnes, C. St. Jean, St. Jacques, C. des Sablons, G. de St. Christofle, R. de St. Anthoine, R. de bonne Mere, Baye de St. Jean Baptiste, Arcipel de Estienne Gomez, Les Montaignes and R. de Volte.] Many other names occur within the same distance, which are found on other Spanish charts since that time, and some which were probably taken from Spanish charts not now known. [Footnote: Of this class are the R. de Canoes, R. Seche, Playne, Coste de Dieu, R. d'Arbres, which, on the map XII, of the Munich Atlas, said to have been taken from the map of the Spanish cosmographer, Alonzo de Santa Cruz, are given, R. de Canoas, R. Seco, Terra Ilana, Costa de Diego, R. d'Arvoredos.] Thus within the limits mentioned, embracing the exploration of Gomez no designation occurs connecting the coast with Verrazzano. [Footnote: The name of Avorobagra, on the west side of the great bay, is found in place of C. de Muchas illas of the Ribero map. This is supposed to have been intended for Norumbega.] From Cape Breton easterly and northerly along the coast of Newfoundland the discoveries of the Normand and Bretons and the Portuguese, and in the river and gulf of St. Lawrence, those of Jacques Cartier, are shown by the names. The whole coast claimed by the letter is thus assigned to other parties than Verrazzano. The logical maxim, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, must here apply. The expression of the Spanish discoveries, at least exclude those of Verrazzano; demonstrating almost to a moral certainty that the latter could never have been performed for the king of France. The author of this map, whether executing it under official responsibility or upon his own account, would not have ascribed, or dared to ascribe, to a foreign nation, much less to a rival, the glory which belonged to his own sovereign, then living, whose protection he enjoyed. IV. II. MISREPRESENTATIONS IN REGARD TO THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE COAST. THE CHESAPEAKE. THE ISLAND OF LOUISE. MASSACHUSETTS BAY. In pursuing its main object of making known the discovery, the letter ventures upon certain statements which are utterly inconsistent with an actual exploration of the country. The general position and direction of the coast are given with sufficient correctness to indicate the presence there of a navigator; but its geographical features are so meagrely and untruthfully represented, as to prove that he could not have been the writer. The same apparent inconsistency exists as to the natural history of the country. Some details are given in regard to the natives, which correspond with their known characteristics, but others are flagrantly false. The account is evidently the work of a person who, with an imperfect outline of the coast, by another hand, before him, undertook to describe its hydrographical character at a venture, so far as he deemed it prudent to say anything on the subject; and to give the natural history of the country, in the same way, founded on other accounts of parts of the new world. The actual falsity of the statements alluded to is, at all events, sufficient to justify the rejection of the whole story. So far as they relate to the littoral, they are now to be considered. In general, the geography of the coast is very indefinitely described. Of its latitudes, with the exception of the landfall and termination of the exploration, which are fixed also by other means, and are necessary to the ground work of the story, only a single one is mentioned. The particular features of the coast are for the most part unnoticed. Long distances, embracing from two hundred to six hundred miles each, are passed over with little or no remark. Islands, rivers, capes, bays, and other land or seamarks, by which navigators usually describe their progress along an unknown coast, are almost entirely unmentioned. For a distance of over two thousand miles, adopting the narrowest limits possible assigned to the discovery, only one island, one river, and one bay are attempted to be described, and not a single cape or headland is referred to. No name is given to any of them, or to any part of the coast, except the one island which is named after the king's mother. It was the uniform practice of the Catholic navigators of that early period, among whom, according to the import of the letter, Verrazzano was one, to designate the places discovered by them, by the names of the saints whose feasts were observed on the days they were discovered, or of the festivals of the church celebrated on those days; so that, says Oviedo, it is possible to trace the course of any such explorer along a new coast by means of the church calendar. This custom was not peculiar to the countrymen of that historian. It was observed by the Portuguese and also by the French, as the accounts of the voyages of Jacques Cartier attest. But nothing of the kind appears here. These omissions of the ordinary and accustomed practices of voyagers are suspicious, and of themselves sufficient to destroy all confidence in the narrative. But to proceed to what is actually stated in regard to the coast. Taking the landfall to have occurred, as is distinctly claimed, at latitude 34 Degrees, which is a few leagues north of Cape Fear in North Carolina, and which is fixed with certainty, for the purposes of the letter, at that point by the estimate of the distance they ran northerly along the coast before it took an easterly direction, the discovery must be regarded as having commenced somewhat south of Cape Roman in South Carolina, being the point where the fifty leagues terminated which they ran along the coast, in the first instance, south of the landfall. It is declared that from thence, for two hundred leagues, to the Hudson river, as it will appear, there was not a single harbor in which the Dauphine could ride in safety. [Footnote: A league, according to the Verrazzano letter, consisted of four miles; and a degree, of 15,625 leagues or 62 1/3 miles.] The size of this craft is not mentioned, but it is said she carried only fifty men, though manned as a corsair. Judging from the size of the vessels used at that time on similar expeditions, she was small. The two which composed the first expedition of Jacques Cartier carried sixty men and were each of about sixty tons burden. The Carli letter, which must be assumed to express the idea of the writer on the subject, describes her as a caravel; which was a vessel of light draught adapted to enter shallow rivers and harbors and to double unknown capes where shoals might have formed, and was therefore much used by the early navigators of the new world. [Footnote: Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance. Tome Second. Marine, par M. A. Jal. fol. V. (Paris 1849.)] Columbus chose two caravels, out of the three vessels with which he made his first voyage; and the third one, which was larger than either of the caravels, was less than one hundred tons. The Dauphine is therefore to be considered, from all the representations in regard to her, of less than the latter capacity, and as specially adapted to the kind of service in which she is alleged to have been engaged. In running north from their extreme southerly limit, they must have passed the harbor of Georgetown in South Carolina, and Beaufort in North Carolina, in either of which the vessel could have entered; and in the latter, carrying seventeen feet at low water and obtaining perfect shelter from all winds. [Footnote: Blunt's American Coast Pilot, p. 359 (19th edition.)] But if they really had been unable to find either of them, it is impossible that they should not have discovered the Chesapeake, and entered it, under the alleged circumstances of their search. That it may be seen what exactly is the statement of the letter in regard to this portion of the coast, it is here given in its own terms. Having represented the explorers as having reached a point fifty leagues north of the landfall, which would have carried them north of Hatteras, but still on the coast of North Carolina, their movements over the next four hundred miles north are disposed of in the following summary manner: "After having remained here," (that is, at or near Albemarle,) "three days riding at anchor on the coast, as we could find no harbor, we determined to depart and coast along the shore to the northeast, keeping sail on the vessel ONLY BY DAY, and coming to anchor by night. After proceeding one hundred leagues we found a VERY PLEASANT SITUATION AMONG SOME STEEP HILLS, THROUGH WHICH A VERY LARGE RIVER, DEEP AT ITS MOUTH, FORCED ITS WAY TO THE SEA." There can be no mistake in regard to the portion of the coast here intended. Upon leaving this river they found that the coast stretched, it is stated, as will presently appear, in an EASTERLY direction. A stream coming from the hills, its situation at the bend of the coast, its latitude as fixed by that of the port which, after leaving it, they found in nearly the same parallel and which is placed in 41 Degrees 40', all point distinctly to the embouchure of the Hudson at the highlands of Navesink as the termination of the hundred leagues. Within this distance the Chesapeake empties into the sea. The explorers were not only in search of a harbor for the purpose of recruiting, but they were seeking, as the great end of the voyage, a passage to Cathay, rendering, therefore, every opening in the coast an object of peculiar interest and importance. They were sailing with extreme caution and observation, in the day-time only, and constantly in sight of land. The bay of the Chesapeake is the most accessible and capacious on the coast of the United States. It presents an opening into the sea of twelve miles from cape to cape, having a broad and deep channel through which the largest ships of modern times, twenty times or more the tonnage of the Dauphiny, may enter and find inside of Cape Henry ample and safe anchorage. [Footnote: Blunt's American Coast Pilot, p. 340.] That an actual explorer could not have failed to have discovered this bay and found a secure harbor at that time, is shown by the account of the expedition, which the Adelantado, Pedro Menendes, of infamous memory, despatched under the command of Pedro Menendez Marquez, for the survey of this coast in 1573; when the means and facilities of navigators for exploration were not different from what existed at the date of the Verrazzano voyage. Menendez Marquez was the first to enter the Chesapeake after Gomez, who gave it the name of the bay of Santa Maria. [Footnote: This name occurs on the map of Ribero on this part of the coast, which establishes its application by Gomez; but its position is evidently misplaced and carried too far south.] Barcia thus summarizes the result of the expedition, so far as it relates to this bay. "Pedro Menendez Marquez, governor of Florida for his uncle the Adelantado reduced many Indians to obedience and took possession of the provinces particularly in the name of the king, in the presence of Rodrigo de Carrion, notary of the government of Santa Elena. Afterwards, he, being a great seaman, inasmuch as he had formerly been admiral of the fleet, as Francisco Cano relates, Lib. 3, de la Histor. de las Ordenes Militares, fol. 184, went, by order of the Adelantado, to explore the coast, which exploration commenced at the cape of the Martyrs, and the peninsula Tequesta [point of Florida], where the coast begins to run north and south, at the outlet of the Bahama channel, and extended along the coast to beyond the harbor and bay of Santa Maria, which is three leagues wide and which is entered towards the northwest; and within it are many rivers and harbors where, on both sides of it, they can anchor. At the entrance, near the shore, on the south, there are from nine to thirteen fathoms of water, and on the north, from five to seven. Two leagues outside, in the sea, the depth is the same, north and south, but more sandy than inside. Going through the channel there are from nine to thirteen fathom; and in the harbor about fifteen, ten and six fathoms were found in places where the lead was thrown." "The bay of Santa Maria is in thirty-seven degrees and a half. [Footnote: Ensayo Chronologico, pp. 146, 8.]" To ignore the existence of this great bay, the most important hydrographical feature of our coast, as Verrazzano, according to the letter, does, and to pretend that no harbor could be found there, in which the diminutive Dauphiny could lie, is, under the circumstances under which this exploration is alleged to have been conducted, to admit that he was never on that part of the coast. Suddenly leaving the river of the hills, in consequence of an approaching storm, they continued their course directly east for a distance of ninety-five leagues, passing in sight of the island and arriving finally at the bay, which are the only ones described, and that very briefly, in the whole voyage along the coast. "Weighing anchor," reads the letter, "we sailed eighty leagues TOWARDS THE EAST, as the coast stretched in that direction, and ALWAYS IN SIGHT OF IT. At length we discovered an island of triangular form, about ten leagues from the main land, in size about equal to the island of Rhodes, having many hills covered with trees and well peopled, judging from the great number of fires which we was all around its shores; we gave it the name of your majesty's illustrious mother. WE DID NOT LAND THERE, as the weather was unfavorable, but proceeded to another place, fifteen leagues distant from the island, where we found a very excellent harbor. * * * This land is situated in the parallel of Rome, being 41 degrees 41' of north latitude. It looks towards the south, on which side the harbor is half a league broad; afterwards, upon entering it between the east and the north it extends twelve leagues, [Footnote: A slight correction of the translation of Dr. Cogswell, which is the one we have adopted, here becomes necessary. It reads: "upon entering it the extent between the east [misprinted coast], and north, is twelve leagues." The text is, "entrando in quello infra oriente e settentrione s'esteude leghe XII."] and then enlarging itself it forms a very large bay, twenty leagues in circumference, in which are five small islands of great fertility and beauty, covered with large and lofty trees. Among these islands any fleet, however large, might ride safely, without fear of tempests or other dangers. Turning towards the south, at the entrance of the harbor on both sides there are very pleasant hills and many streams of clear water which flow down to the sea. In the midst of the entrance, there is a rock of freestone, formed by nature and suitable for the construction of any kind of machine or bulwark for the defence of the harbor." This island is a mere fancy; none such exists any where upon this coast. The distance which they thus ran easterly, of eighty leagues, would have carried them more than an hundred miles into the ocean beyond Cape Cod. That distance, however, may be regarded only as approximate, because they possessed no means of determining longitude with accuracy, and therefore this, like all statements in the letter, of distances running east and west, is to be considered an estimate only, formed from the circumstances attending the sailing of the vessel, and liable to serious error. But the island and bay were objects of actual observation, and are therefore to be regarded as they are described. After leaving Long Island, which forms the coast in an easterly direction for a little over an hundred miles from the Hudson, only three islands occur, except some insignificant ones and the group of the Elizabeth islands all near the shore, in the entire distance to the easterly shore of Cape Cod, when the coast turns directly north. They are all three somewhat of a triangular shape, and in that respect are equally entitled to consideration in connection with the description of the island of Louise, but are all incompatible with it in other particulars. Louise is represented as being a very large island, equal in size to the famous island of Rhodes, which has an area of four hundred square miles, and as being situated ten leagues distant from the main land. The first of the three islands met with, eastward of Long Island, is Block island. It contains less than twenty square miles of territory and lies only three leagues from the land; and thus both by its smallness and position cannot be taken as the island of Louise. It has, however, been so regarded by some writers, because on the main land, about five leagues distant, are found Narraganset bay and the harbor of Newport, which, it is imagined, bear some resemblance to the bay and harbor which the explorers entered fifteen leagues beyond the island of Louise, and which cannot be elsewhere found. But Narraganset bay does not correspond in any particular with the bay described in the letter, except as to its southern exposure and its latitude, and as to them it has no more claim to consideration than Buzzard's bay, three leagues further east, and in other respects not so much. Newport harbor, several miles inside of Narraganset bay, faces the north and west, and not the south. The whole length of that bay, including the harbor of Newport from the ocean to Providence river, is less than five leagues, and its greatest breadth not more than three. But the harbor described in the letter first as extending twelve leagues and then enlarging itself, formed a large bay of twenty leagues in circumference. The two, it is clear, are essentially unlike. The great rock rising out of the sea at the entrance of the harbor, has no existence in this bay or harbor. Narraganset bay, therefore, affords no support to the idea that Block island, or any other, is the island of Louise. Martha's Vineyard, the second of the three islands before mentioned, is the largest of them, but it contains only one hundred and twenty square miles of land, and is within two leagues of the main land. Nantucket, the last of the three, is less than half the size of Martha's Vineyard, and is about thirty miles from Cape Cod, the nearest part of the continent. From neither of them is any harbor to be reached corresponding with that mentioned in the letter. It is incontrovertible, therefore, that there is neither island nor bay on this coast answering the description. It is not difficult to perceive that the island of Louise was a mere invention and artifice on the part of the writer to give consistency to the pretension that the voyage originated with Francis. This island is the only one of which particular mention is made in the whole exploration. Yet it was not visited or seen except, in sailing by it, at a distance. Its pretended hills and trees disclosed nothing of its character; and, under such circumstances, its alleged dimensions were all that could have entitled it to such particular notice and made it worthy of so exalted a designation; and to those no island on this coast has any claim. There is little room to doubt from the description itself, and the fact will be confirmed by other evidence hereafter, that the bay intended to be described was the great bay of Massachusetts and Maine terminating in the bay of Fundy. It is represented as making an offset in the coast of twelve leagues towards the north, and then swelling into an enclosed bay beyond, of twenty leagues in circumference, indicating those bays, in their form. The distances, it is true, do not conform to those belonging to that part of the coast; but it is to be borne in mind that they may have been taken, according to the only view which can reconcile the contradictions of the letter, from an imperfect delineation of the coast by another hand. The identity of the two is, however, proven, without recourse to this explanation, by the description of the coast beyond, which is given as follows: "Having supplied ourselves with every thing necessary, we departed, on the sixth [Footnote: According to the Archivio Storico Italiano, and not the FIFTH, as given in N. Y. Hist. Coll.] of May, from this port [where they had remained fifteen days] and SAILED ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY LEAGUES, KEEPING SO NEAR TO THE COAST AS NEVER TO LOSE IT FROM OUR SIGHT; the nature of the country appeared much the same as before, but the MOUNTAINS were a little higher and all in appearance RICH IN MINERALS. WE DID NOT STOP TO LAND, as the weather was very favorable for pursuing our voyage, and the country presented no variety. THE SHORE STRETCHED TO THE EAST, and fifty leagues beyond more to the north, where we found a more elevated country full of very thick woods of fir trees, cypresses and the like, indicative of a cold climate. The people were entirely different from the others we had seen, whom we had found kind and gentle, but these were so rude and barbarous that we were unable by any signs we could make to hold communication with them." This is all that is mentioned in regard to the entire coast of New England and Nova Scotia, embracing a distance of eight hundred miles according to this computation, but in fact much more. It is here stated, however, distinctly, that from the time of leaving the harbor, near the island of Louise, they kept close to the land, which ran in an EASTERLY direction, and CONSTANTLY IN SIGHT OF IT, for one hundred and fifty leagues. This they could not have done if that harbor were on any part of the coast, west of Massachusetts bay. If they sailed from Narraganset bay, or Buzzard's bay, or from any harbor on that coast, east of Long Island, they would in the course of twenty leagues at the furthest, in an easterly direction, have reached the easterly extremity of the peninsula of Cape Cod, and keeping close to the shore would have been forced for one hundred and fifty miles, in a northerly and west of north direction, and thence along the coast of Maine northeasterly a further distance of one hundred and fifty miles, and been finally locked in the bay of Fundy. It is only by running from Cape Sable along the shores of Nova Scotia that this course and distance, in sight of the land, can be reconciled with the actual direction of the coast; and this makes the opening between Cape Cod and Cape Sable the large bay intended in the letter. But this opening of eighty leagues in width, could never have been seen by the writer of it; and nothing could more conclusively prove his ignorance of the coast, than his statements that from the river among the hills, for the distance of ninety-five leagues easterly to the harbor in 41 Degrees 40' N. and from thence for a further distance of one hundred and fifty leagues, also EASTERLY, the land was always in sight. [Illustration with caption: ] CAPE HENRY AND ENTRANCE INTO THE CHESAPEAKE. Lighthouse, with lantern 129 feet above the sea, bearing W. N. W. 1/2 W., three leagues distant. V. III. CAPE BRETON AHD THE SOUTHERLY COAST OF NEWFOUNDLAND, HERE CLAIMED TO HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED, WERE KNOWN PREVIOUSLY. PERVERSION OF THE TEXT OF THE LETTER BY RAMUSIO. By the two courses and distances just mentioned, the explorers are brought first to the island of Cape Breton, and then to the cape of that name, where the coast first takes a decided turn, from its easterly direction, to the north, and forms the westerly side of the strait leading into the gulf of St. Lawrence. This cape, according to the letter, is distant easterly one hundred and fifty, and fifty, leagues from the harbor in the great bay, distances which, for reasons already mentioned, are to be regarded as estimates only, but which taken exactly would have carried them beyond Cape Race in Newfoundland. They are to be considered, however, as properly limited to the turn of the coast before mentioned, as that is a governing circumstance in the description. Beyond this point, north, and east, the letter presents the claim to the discovery in another aspect. Thus far it relates to portions of the coast confessedly unknown before its date. But from Cape Breton, in latitude 46 Degrees N. to latitude 50 Degrees N. on the east side of Newfoundland, it pretends to the discovery of parts, which were in fact already known; and it makes this claim circumstances which prove it was so known by the writer, if the letter were written as pretended. Having described their attempts at intercourse with the natives at Cape Breton, the narrative concludes the description of the coast with the following paragraph. "Departing from thence, we kept along the coast, steering northeast, and found the country more pleasant and open, free from woods, and distant in the interior, we saw lofty mountains but none which extended to the shore. Within fifty leagues we discovered thirty-two islands, all near the main land, small and of pleasant appearance, but high and so disposed as to afford excellent harbors and channels, as we see in the Adriatic gulf, near Illyria and Dalmatia. We had no intercourse with the people, but we judge that they were similar in nature and usages to those we were last among. After sailing between east and north one hundred and fifty leagues MORE, and finding our provisions and naval stores nearly exhausted, we took in wood and water, and determined to return to France, having discovered (avendo discoperto) VII, [Footnote: "The MS. has erroneously and uselessly the repetition VII, that is, 700 leagues." Note, by M. Arcangeli. It is evident that VII is mistakenly rendered 502 in the transcription used by Dr. Cogswell.] that is, 700 leagues of unknown lands." The exact point at which they left the coast, and to which their discovery is thus stated to have extended, is given in the cosmography which follows the narrative, in these words: "In the voyage which we have made by order of your majesty, in addition to the 92 degrees we ran towards the west from our point of departure (the Desertas) before we reached land in the latitude of 34, we have to count 300 leagues which we ran northeastwardly, and 400 nearly east along the coast before we reached the 50TH PARALLEL OF NORTH LATITUDE, the point where we turned our course from the shore towards home. BEYOND THIS POINT THE PORTUGUESE HAD ALREADY SAILED AS FAR AS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, WITHOUT COMING TO THE TERMINATION OF THE LAND." That this latitude must be taken as correctly determined follows from the representation of the letter, that they took daily observations of the sun and made a record of them, so that no material error could have occurred and remained unrectified for over twenty-four hours; and from the presumption that they were as capable of calculating the latitude as other navigators of that period, sent on such purposes by royal authority, like Jacques Cartier, whose observations, as the accounts of his voyage to this region show, never varied half a degree from the true latitude. The fiftieth parallel strikes the easterly coast of Newfoundland three degrees north of Cape Race, and to that point the exploration of Verrazzano is therefore to be regarded as claimed to have been made. [Footnote: Damiam de Goes, Chronica do felicissimo rei Dom Emanuel parte I. C. 66. (Fol., Lisboa, 1566)] This intention is made positively certain by the remark which follows the statement of the latitude, that "beyond this point the Portuguese had already sailed as far north as the Arctic circle without coming to the termination of the land." The exploration of the Portuguese here referred to, and as far as which that of Verrazzano is carried, was made by Gaspar Cortereal in his second voyage, when according to the letter of Pasqualigo the Venetian embassador, he sailed from Lisbon on a course between west and northwest, and struck a coast along which he ran from six to seven hundred miles, "without finding the end." [Footnote: Paesi novamente ritrovati. Lib. sexto. cap. CXXXL. Venice, 1521. A translation into English of Pasqualigo's letter, which is dated the 19th of October, 1501, is given in the memoir of Sebastian Cabot, p. 235-6.] No other exploration along this coast by the Portuguese, tending to the Arctic circle is known to have taken place before the publication of the Verrazzano letter. The first voyage of Cortereal, was, according to the description of the people given by Damiam de Goes, among the Esquimaux, whether on the one side or the other of Davis straits it is unnecessary here to inquire, as the Esquimaux are not found south of 50 Degrees N. latitude. The land along which he ran in his second voyage, was, according to the same historian, distinctly named after him and his brother, who shared his fate in a subsequent voyage. It is so called on several early printed maps on which it is represented as identical with Newfoundland. It appears first on a map of the world in the Ptolemy of 1511 edited by Bernardus Sylvanus of Eboli, and is there laid down as extending from latitude 50 Degrees N. to 60 Degrees N. with the name of Corte Real or Court Royal, latinized into Regalis Domus. [Footnote: Claudii Ptholemaei Alexandrini liber geographiae, cum tabulis et universali figura et cum additione locorum quae a recentioribus reporta sunt diligenti cura emendatus et impressus. (Fol., Venetiis, 1511.)] The length of the coast, corresponds with the description of Pasqualigo, and its position with the latitude assigned by the Verrazzano letter for their exploration. Its direction is north and south. There can be no question therefore as to the pretension of the Verrazzano letter to the discovery of the coast by him, actually as far north as the fiftieth parallel. That it is utterly unfounded, so far as regards that portion of the coast lying east and north of Cape Breton, that is, from 46 Degrees N. latitude to 50 Degrees N., embracing a distance of five hundred miles according to actual measurement, or eight hundred miles according to the letter, is proven by the fact, that it had all been known and frequented by Portuguese and French fishermen, for a period of twenty years preceding the Verrazano voyage. The Portuguese fisheries in Newfoundland must have commenced shortly after the voyages of the brothers Cortereaes in 1501-2, as they appear to have been carried on in 1506, from a decree of the king of Portugal published at Leiria on the 14th of October in that year, directing his officers to collect tithes of fish which should be brought into his kingdom from Terra Nova; [Footnote: Memorias Economicas da academia Real das Sciencias da Lisboa, tom. III, 393.] and Portuguese charts belonging to that period, still extant, show both the Portuguese and French discoveries of this coast. On a map (No. 1, of the Munich atlas,) of Pedro Reinel, a Portuguese pilot, who entered the service of the king of Spain at the time of fitting out Magellan's famous expedition, Terra Nova, and the land of Cape Breton are correctly laid down, as regards latitude, though not by name. On Terra Nova the name of C. Raso, (preserved in the modern Cape Race) is applied to its southeasterly point, and other Portuguese names, several of which also still remain, designating different points along the easterly coast of Newfoundland, and a Portuguese banner, as an emblem of its discovery by that nation, are found. Another Portuguese chart, belonging to the period when the country between Florida and Terra Nova was unknown (No. 4 of the same atlas) delineates the land of Cape Breton, not then yet known to be an island, in correct relation with the Bacalaos, accompanied by a legend that it was discovered by the Bretons. [Footnote: Atlas zur entdeckingsgeschichte Amerikas. Herausgegeben von Friedrick Kunstmann, Karl von Sprusser, Georg M. Thomas. Zu den Monumenta Saecularia der K.B. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 28 Maers, 1859. Munchen.] The French authorities are more explicit. The particular parts of this coast discovered by the Normands and Bretons with the time of their discovery, and by the Portuguese, are described in the discourse of the French captain of Dieppe, which is found in the collection of Ramusio. This writer states that this land from Cape Breton to Cape Race was discovered by the Bretons and Normandy in 1504, and from Cape Race to Cape Bonavista, seventy leagues north, by the Portuguese, and from thence to the straits of Belle Isle by the Bretons and Normands; and that the country was visited in 1508 by a vessel from Dieppe, commanded by Thomas Aubert, who brought back to France some of the natives. This statement in regard to the Indians is confirmed by an account of them, which is given in a work, printed in Paris at the time, establishing the fact of the actual presence of the Normands in Newfoundland in that year, by contemporaneous testimony of undoubted authority. [Footnote: Eusebii Chronicon, continued by Joannes Multivallis of Louvain, (Paris 1512) fol. 172. We give here, a translation of the interesting passage referred to in the text, from this volume, which came from the celebrated press of Henri Estienne. "An Salutis, 1509. Seven savages were brought to Rouen with their garments and weapons from the island they call Terra Nova. They are of a dark complexion, have thick lips and wear marks on their faces extending along their jaws from the ear to the middle of the chin LIKE SMALL LIVID VEINS. Their hair is black and coarse like a horse's mane. They have no beard, during their lives, or hairs of puberty. Nor have they hair on any part of their persons, except the head and eye-brows. They wear a girdle on which is a small skin to cover their nakedness. They form their speech with their lips. No religion. THEIR BOAT IS OF BARK and a man may carry it with one hand on his shoulders. Their weapons are bows drawn with a string made of the intestines or sinews of animals, and arrows pointed with stone or fish-bone. Their food consists of roasted flesh, their drink is water. Bread, wine and the use of money they have none. They go about naked or dressed in the skins of bears, deer, seals and similar animals. Their country is in the parallel of the seventh climate, more under the west than France is above the west." PLUS SUB OCCIDENTE QUAM GALLICA REGIO SUPRA OCCIDENTEM. By "west" here is meant the meridional line, from which longitude was calculated at that time, through the Island of Ferro, the most westerly of the Canary islands, and the idea here intended to be conveyed is that the country of these Indians was further on this side than France was on the other side, of that line. This description, as well as the name, Terra Nova, indicates the region of Newfoundland as the place from whence these Indians were taken. According to the tables of Pierre d'Ailly, the seventh climate commences at 47 Degrees 15' N. and extends to 50 Degrees 30' N. beginning where the longest day of the year is 15 hours and 45 minutes long. (IMAGO MUNDI, tables prefixed to the first chapter.) This embraces the greater part of the southerly and easterly coasts of Newfoundland. The practice of tattooing their faces in lines across the jaw, as here described, was common to all the tribes of this northern coast, the Nasquapecs of Labrador, the red Indians of Newfoundland and the Micmacs of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. It was from the use of red ochre for this purpose that the natives of Newfoundland obtained their designation of red Indians. The Micmacs used blue and other colors; hence it would appear from the circumstance of the marks upon these Indians being livid (LIVIDAE) or blue, like veins, that they belonged to the tribes of Cape Breton. (Hind's Labrador II, 97-110. Purchas, III. 1880-1. Denys. (HIST. NAT. DE L'AMERIQUE SEPT. II, 887.))] That the French and especially the Normands had soon afterwards resorted to Newfoundland for the purpose of taking fish, and were actually so engaged there at the time of the Verrazzano voyage, is evident from the letter of John Rut, who commanded one of the ships sent out on a voyage of discovery by Henry VIII of England in 1527. That voyager states that, driven from the north by the ice, he arrived at St. Johns in Newfoundland on the third of August in that year, and found there eleven Normand, one Breton and two Portuguese vessels, "all a fishing." [Footnote: Purchas, III, 809. Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, pp. 108, 268, and the authorities there cited.] This was at a single point on the coast, and in latitude 47 Degrees 30' N.; and so large a number of vessels there denotes a growth of many years, at that time, of those fisheries. These facts not only prove that Newfoundland and Cape Breton were well known in France and Portugal before the Verrazzano voyage and therefore that he did not discover them, but that he must have known of them before, and that the letter is intentionally false in that respect. It might perhaps be insisted with some plausibility under other circumstances, that he ran along the coast, believing that it was a new land, and therefore made the representation of having discovered it in good faith. But admitting that it was even possible for him to have sailed along those shores without encountering a single fishing craft which would have assured him that he was not in unknown waters, it is impossible that he could have sailed from Dieppe and returned to that port where, of all the places in France or Europe, the knowledge of these facts most existed, and where they were as familiar as household words, and where they must have entered into the thoughts and hopes of many of its inhabitants, without their being known to him; and that he could have written the letter from that same port, claiming the discovery of the country for himself, without intending a fraud. It was the port to which Aubert belonged and where he landed the Indians he brought from Newfoundland. It was the principal port of Normandy from which the fishing vessels made their annual voyages to that country. It was the port from whence he manned and equipped his own fleet of four ships, with crews which must have been largely composed of Normand sailors who were familiar with the navigation and the coast. And there was not a citizen of Dieppe, probably, who had not an interest of some nature in one or more of the fishing vessels, and could have told him what country it was that he had explored. It bears unequivocal testimony to the fictitious character of this claim, that Ramusio thought it necessary to interpolate in his version a passage representing the discovery of Verrazzano as terminating where the discoveries of the Bretons began, and to omit the cosmography which states it was at the point where those of the Portuguese towards the Arctic circle commenced. By this alteration the letter is made to acknowledge the prior discoveries by the Bretons, which are entirely excluded in the original version, and to adopt the latitude of 50 Degrees N. for the Verrazzano limit thus making the false statement, as to the extent of the discovery, a mistake as it were of nautical observation. The following parallel passages in two versions will best explain the character and effect of the alteration. VERSION OF CARLI, Narrative. Navicando infra 'l subsolano ed aquilone in spatio di leghe CL et de gia avendo consumato tutte le nostre substantie navale et vettovaglie, avendo discopruto leghe DII cive leghe 700, piu do nuova terra fornendoci di acque et legne deliberammo di tornare in Francia. * * * * * * * * * * * * Cosmography. In questa nostra navigatione fatta per ordine du V. S. M., oltre i gradi 92 che dal detto meridiano verso lo occidente della prima terra trovamo gradi 34 navigando leghe 300 infra oriente e settentrione leghe 400, quasi allo oriente continuo el lito della terra siamo pervenuti per infino a gradi 50, lasciando la terra che piu tempe fa trovorno li Lusitani, quali seguirno piu al septentrione, pervenendo sino al circulo artico e'l fine lasciendo incognito. Translation Narrative. After sailing between east and north the distance of one hundred and fifty leagues more and finding our provisions and naval stores nearly exhausted, we took in wood and water, and determined to return to France having discovered VII that is 700 leagues of unknown lands. * * * * * * * * * * * Cosmography. In the voyage which we made by order of your Majesty, in addition to the 92 degrees we ran towards the west from our point of departure, before we reached land in the latitude of 34, we have to count 300 leagues which we ran northeastwardly, and 400 nearly east along the coast before WE REACHED THE 50TH PARALLEL OF NORTH LATITUDE, THE POINT WHERE WE TURNED OUR COURSE FROM THE SHORE TOWARDS HOME. BEYOND THIS POINT THE PORTUGUESE HAD ALREADY SAILED AS FAR NORTH AS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, WITHOUT COMING TO THE TERMINATION OF THE LAND. VERSION OF RAMUSIO, Narrative. Navigando fra levante & tramontana per spatio di leghe 150, PERVENIMO PROPINQUI ALLA TERRA EGE PER IL PASSATO TREVORONO I BRETTONI, QUALE STA IN GRADI 50 & havendo horamai consumati tutti li nostri armeggi & vettovaglie, havendo scoperto leghe 700, & piu di nuova terra, fortnitoci di acque & legue, deliberammo tornare in Francia. * * * * * * * * * * * * Cosmography omitted. Translation Narrative. Sayling northeast for the space of 150 leagues WE APPROACHED TO THE LANDE THAT IN TIMES PAST WAS DISCOVERED BY THE BRITONS, WHICH IS IN FIFTIE DEGREES. Having now spent all our provision and victuals and having discovered about 700 leagues and more of newe countries, and being furnished with water and wood we concluded to returne into Fraunce. (Hakluyt, Divers voyages). (Cogswell, Coll. of N. Y. Hist. Society, Second series, I.) Ramusio in omitting the cosmography and confining his version to the narrative would have left the letter without any designation of the northerly limit reached by Verrazzano, had he not transferred to the narrative, the statement of the latitude attained, namely, the fiftieth degree, from the cosmographical part; which was therefore properly done; though as an editor he should have stated the fact. But he transcended his duty entirely in asserting, in qualification of the latitude, what does not appear in the letter, that it was near where the Bretons had formerly made discoveries, and omitting all reference to the Portuguese. The Bretons are not mentioned or even alluded to in either portion of the original letter. The effect of this substitution therefore is to relieve the original from making a fake claim to the discovery north of Cape Breton, by admitting the discoveries of the Bretons, and making the alleged extent of the Verrazzano discovery, as already remarked, a mistake of nautical observation only. That it was deliberately made, and for that purpose, is shown by his taking the designation of the latitude from the same sentence in the cosmography as that in which the mention of the Portuguese discoveries occurs, in qualification of the latitude. The motive which led Ramusio to make this alteration is found in the discourse of the French captain of Dieppe, in which it is stated that this part of the coast was discovered by the Normands and Bretons and the Portuguese, many years before the Verrazzano voyage. Ramusio, as he informs us himself, translated that paper from the French into the Italian and published it in the same volume, in conjunction with the Verrazzano letter, which he remodelled. He thus had the contents of both documents before him, at the same time, and saw the contradiction between them. They could not both be true. To reconcile them, alterations were necessary; and this change was made in the letter in order to make it conform to the discourse. The fact of his making it, proves that he regarded the letter as advancing an indefensible claim. It is also to be observed that in adopting the fiftieth parallel as the extent of the discovery in the north, Ramusio obtained the statement from the cosmography, showing that he had that portion of the letter before him; and confirming the conclusion, expressed in a previous section, that his version was composed from the Carli copy of the letter, in which alone the cosmography occurs. Whether this limit was so transposed by him for a purpose or not, may be a question; but the origin of it cannot be disputed. VI. IV. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE PEOPLE AND PRODUCTIONS OF THE LAND NOT MADE FROM THE PERSONAL OBSERVATION OF THE WRITER OF THE LETTER. WHAT DISTINCTIVELY BELONGED TO THE NATIVES IS UNNOTICED, AND WHAT IS ORIGINALLY MENTIONED OF THEM IS UNTRUE. FURTHER ALTERATIONS OF THE TEXT BY RAMUSIO. We are brought now to the observations in reference to the people and productions of the country. The communications which the explorers had with the shore are not represented as having been numerous, or their visits of long duration, the longest having been one of three days, while they were riding at anchor off the coast of North Carolina, and another of fifteen, spent in replenishing the supplies for their ship, in the harbor in the great bay of Massachusetts. These opportunities were however, it seems, sufficient to have enabled them to study the characteristics of the natives and to determine the nature of the vegetation at those places; but the description given of both is very general. Not a single person, sagamore or warrior, or even the boy who was carried away to France, is designated by name, nor any object peculiar to the region by its native appellation. Not an Indian word, by which a locality or a tribe might be traced, occurs in the whole narrative. Some familiar details are mentioned of Indian manners and customs, which give the account the appearance of truth, but there is nothing in them which may not have been deduced from known narratives of earlier voyages to adjoining parts of America; while much that was peculiar to the country claimed to have been discovered, and of a character to compel observation, is omitted; and some particulars stated which could not have existed. In its incidents of Indian life it recalls the experiences of Columbus. When the great discoverer first came to the island of Hispaniola it is related, "they saw certaine men of the Islande who perceiving an unknowen native comming toward them, flocked together and ran into the thicke woodes, as it had bin hares coursed with greyhoundes. Our men pursuing them took only one woman, whom they brought, to the ships, where filling her with meate and wine, and apparrelling her, they let her depart to her companie." Also, "their boates are made only of one tree made hollow with a certain sharpe stone, for they have no yron, and are very long and narrow." And again, "when our men went to prayer, and kneeled on their knees, after the manner of the Christians, they did the like also. And after what manner soever they saw them pray to the crosse, they followed them in all poyntes as well as they could." [Footnote: Peter Martyr, Dec. LL in Eden.]. The Verrazzano letter tells us, in like phrase, that when they landed at the end of fifty leagues from the landfall, "we found that the people had fled to the woods for fear. By searching around we discovered in the grass a very old woman and a young girl of about eighteen or twenty, who had concealed themselves for the same reason. We gave them a part of our provisions, which they accepted with delight, but the girl would not touch any." At the same place, it is added, "we saw many of their boats made of one tree, without the aid of stone or iron or other kind of metal." And to make the parallel complete, the letter asserts of the natives, "they are very easy to be persuaded and imitated us with earnestness and fervor in all which they saw us do as Christians in our acts of worship." While they were taking in their supplies and interchanging civilities with the Indians in the harbor of the great bay, the following scene of royalty is described as having occurred. "One of the two kings often came with his queen and many gentlemen (gentili uomini) to see us for his amusement, but he always stopped at the distance of about two hundred paces, and sent a boat to inform us of his intended visit, saying they would come and see our ship. This was done for safety, and as soon as they had an answer from us, they came off and remained awhile to look around; but on hearing the annoying cries of the sailors, the king sent the queen with her maids (demizelle) in a very light boat to wait near an island, a quarter of a league distant from us while he remained a long time on board." This hyperbolical description of the visit of the sachem of Cape Cod accompanied by the gentlemen of his household and of his squaw queen with her maids of honor, has its prototype in the visit paid to Bartholomew Columbus, during the absence of his brother, the admiral, by Bechechio the king or cacique of Xacagua and his sister, the queen dowager, Anacoana, who are represented as going to the ship of the Adelantado in two canoes, "one for himself and certayne of his gentlemen, another for Anacoana and her waiting women." The astonishment which the natives manifested at the appearance of the Dauphiny and her crew; their admiration of the simple toys and little bells which were offered them by the strangers; their practice of painting their bodies, adorning themselves with the gay plumage of birds, and habiting themselves with the skins of animals, seem all analogized, in the same way, from the accounts given by Peter Martyr of the inhabitant of the islands discovered by Columbus, and of the northern regions by Sebastian Cabot. These traits of Indian life and character, therefore, not having been peculiar to the natives of the country described in the letter, and having been already mentioned in earlier accounts of the adjoining parts of America, the description of them here furnishes no proof of originality or of the truth of the letter for that reason. On the other hand objects which historically belong to the inhabitants of the places declared to have been visited, and characterize them distinctly from those previously discovered, and which were of such a marked character as to have commanded attention, are not mentioned at all. Of this class perhaps the most prominent is the wampum, a commodity of such value and use among them that, like gold among the Europeans, it served the double purpose of money and personal adornment. The region of the harbor where the voyagers spent, according to the letter, fifteen days in familiar intercourse with the inhabitants, was its greatest mart, from which it was spread among the tribes, both north and east. Wood, describing the Narragansets in 1634, says they "are the most curious minters of the wampompeage and mowhakes which they forme out of the inmost wreaths of periwinkle shels. The northerne, easterne, and westerne Indians fetch all their coyne from these southern mint- masters. From hence they have most of their curious pendants and bracelets; hence they have their great stone pipes which will hold a quarter of an ounce of tobacco." And in regard to their practice of ornamentation, he remarks again: "although they be poore, yet is there in them the sparkes of naturall pride which appeares in their longing desire after many kinde of ornaments, wearing pendants in their eares, as formes of birds, beasts and fishes, carved out of bone, shels, and stone, with long bracelets of their curious wrought wampompeage and mowhackees which they put about their necks and loynes; which they count a rare kinde of decking." The same writer adds a description of an Indian king of this country in his attire, which is somewhat less fanciful than that in the letter. "A sagamore with a humberd (humming-bird) in his eare for a pendant, a blackhawke in his occiput for his plume, mowhackees for his gold chaine, good store of wampompeage begirting his loynes, his bow in his hand, his quiver at his back, with six naked Indian spatterlashes at his heeles for his guard, thinkes himselfe little inferiour to the great Cham. [Footnote: New England Prospect, pp. 61, 65-6.] Roger Williams confirms this account of the importance of the wampum among these same Indians. "They hang," he states "these strings of money about their necks and wrists, as also about the necks and wrists of their wives and children. Machequoce, a girdle, which they make curiously of one, two, three, four and five inches thickness and more, of this money, which sometimes to the value of tenpounds and more, they weare about their middle, and a scarfe about their shoulders and breasts. The Indians prize not English gold, Nor English, Indians shell: Each in his place will passe for ought, What ere men buy or sell." [Footnote: Key into the Language of America, pp. 149-50.] Another important article in universal use among the Indians of the main land, north and south, was the tobacco pipe. Tobacco was used by the natives of the West India islands, made up in rolls or cigars; but by the Indians of the continent it was broken up, carried in small bags attached to a girdle round the body, and smoked through clay, stone or copper pipes, sometimes of very elaborate workmanship. Smoking the pipe was of universal use among them, both on ordinary and extraordinary occasions. It was a tender of hospitality to strangers; and a sign of peace and friendship between the nations. [Footnote: For a full and interesting account of the importance of the tobacco-pipe among the Indians of North America, upon cited authorities, we refer the reader to Antiquities of the Southern Indians. By Charles C. Jones Jr., p. 382. (New York, 1873.)] When Captain Waymouth ran along the coast of the great bay of Massachusetts, in 1605, he repeatedly encountered this custom. On one occasion the natives came from the shore in three canoes, and Rosier remarks of them: "they came directly aboord us and brought us tobacco, which we tooke with them IN THEIR PIPE which was made of earth very strong, but blacke and short, containing a great quantity. When we came at shoare they all most kindely entertained us, taking us by the hands, as they had observed we did to them aboord in token of welcome, and brought us to sit downe by their fire, where sat together thirteene of them. They filled their tobacco pipe, which was then the short claw of a lobster, which will hold ten of our pipes full and we dranke of their excellent tobacco, as much as we would with them." [Footnote: Purchas, IV. 1662.] No notice is taken of this custom, either of tobacco or the pipe in the Verrazzano letter. The most remarkable omission of all is of the bark canoe. This light and beautiful fabric was peculiar to the Algonkin tribes. It was not found among the southern Indians, much less in the West India islands. Its buoyancy and the beauty of its form were such as to render it an object of particular observation. Though so light as to be capable of being borne on a man's shoulders, it would sometimes carry nine men, and ride with safety over the most stormy sea. It was always from the first a great object of interest with the discoverers of the northerly parts of the coast, which they manifested by taking them back to Europe, as curiosities. Aubert carried one of them to Dieppe in 1508, and Captain Martin Fringe, who was one of the first to visit the shores of Cape Cod, took one, in 1603, thence to Bristol, which he thus describes, as if he saw no other kind. "Their boats whereof we brought one to Bristoll, were in proportion like a wherrie of the river of Thames, seventeene foot long and foure foot broad, made of the barke of a birch tree, farre exceeding in bignesse those of England: it was sowed together with strong and tough oziers or twigs, and the seames covered over with rozen or turpentine little inferiour in sweetnesse to frankincense, as we made triall by burning a little thereof on the coales at sundry times after our comming home: it was also open like a wherrie, and sharpe at both ends, saving that the beake was a little bending roundly upward. And though it carried nine men standing upright, yet it weighed not at the most, above sixtie pounds in weight, a thing almost incredible in regard of the largenesse and capacitie thereof. Their oares were flat at the end like an oven peele, made of ash or maple, very light and strong, about two yards long wherewith they row very swiftly." [Footnote: Purchas, IV. 1655.] The silence of the letter in regard to this species of the canoe is the more remarkable, as it is in connection with the natives of the harbor where they spent fifteen days, that mention is made in it a second time of the manner of making their boats out of single logs, as if it were a subject of importance, and worthy of remark. The inference is most strongly to be drawn therefore, from this circumstance, that the writer knew nothing about the bark canoe, or the people who used them. The absence of all allusion to any of the peculiar attributes, especially of the essential character just described, of the natives of the great bay leads to the conclusion that the whole account is a fabrication. But this end is absolutely reached by the positive statement of a radical difference in complexion between the tribes, which they found in the country. The people whom they saw on their first landing, and who are stated to have been for the most part naked, are described as being black in color, and not very different from Ethiopians, (di colore neri non molto dagli Etiopi disformi) and of medium stature, well formed of body and acute of mind. The latter observation would imply that the voyagers had mixed with these natives very considerably in order to have been able to speak so positively in regard to their mental faculties, and therefore could not have been mistaken as to their complexion for want of opportunity to discover it. The precise place where they first landed and saw these black people is not mentioned further than that the country where they lived was situated in the thirty-fourth degree of latitude. From this place they proceeded further along the coast northwardly, and again coming to anchor attempted to go ashore in a boat without success, when one of them, a young sailor, attempted to swim to the land, but was thrown, by the violence of the waves, insensible on the beach. Upon recovering he found himself surrounded by natives who were black like the others. That there is no mistake in the design of the writer to represent these people as really black, like negroes, is made evident by his account of the complexion of those he found in the harbor of the great bay in latitude 41 Degrees 40", who are described as essentially different and the finest looking tribe they had seen, being "of a very white complexion, some inclining more to white, and others to a yellow color" (di colore bianchissimo; alcuni pendano piu in bianchezza, altri in colore flavo). The difference between the inhabitants of the two sections of country, in respect to color, is thus drawn in actual contrast. This is unfounded in fact. No black aborigines have ever been found within the entire limits of North America, except in California where some are said to exist. The Indians of the Atlantic coast were uniformly of a tawny or yellowish brown color, made more conspicuous by age and exposure and being almost white in infancy. The first voyagers and early European settlers universally concur in assigning them this complexion. Reference need here be to such testimony only as relates to the two parts of the country where the distinction is pretended to have existed. The earliest mention of the inhabitants of the more southerly portion is when the vessels of Ayllon and Matienzo carried off sixty of the Indians from the neighborhood of the Santee, called the Jordan, in 1521, and took them to St. Domingo. One of them went to Spain with Ayllon. They are described by Peter Martyr, from sight, as semifuscos uti nostri sunt agricolae sole adusti aestivo, half brown, like our husbandmen, burnt by the summer sun. [Footnote: Dec. VII, 2.] Barlowe, in his account of the first expedition of Raleigh, which entered Pamlico sound, within the region now under consideration, describes the Indians whom he found there as of a "colour yellowish." [Footnote: Hakluyt, III. 248.] Captain John Smith, speaking of those of the Chesapeake, remarks, that they "are of a color brown when they are of age, but they are born white." [Footnote: Smith, Map of Virginia, 1612, p. 19.] On the other hand the natives of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in latitude 4l Degrees 40' are described by the first explorers of that region in substantially the same terms. Brereton, who accompanied Gosnold in his first voyage to the Elisabeth islands and the main land opposite, in 1602, mentions the natives there, as being of a complexion or color "much like a dark olive." [Footnote: Purchas, IV. 1652.] Martin Fringe who visited Martha's Vineyard the next year and constructed there a barricade where the "people of the country came sometimes, ten, twentie, fortie or three score, and at one time one hundred and twentie at once," says, "these people are inclined to a swart, tawnie or chesnut colour, not by nature but accidentally." [Footnote: Ibid, IV, 1655.] And Roger Williams, partaking of the same idea as Pringe, that the swarthy color was accidental, testifies, almost in the same language as Captain Smith, that the Narragansets and others within a region of two hundred miles of them, were "tawnie by the sunne and their annoyntings, yet they were born white." [Footnote: Roger Williams's Key, 52.] Thus the authorities flatly contradict the statement of black Indians existing in North Carolina, and a difference of color between the people of the two sections claimed to have been visited in this voyage. Of an equally absurd and preposterous character is the statement made in reference to the condition in which the plants and vegetation were found. The grape particularly is mentioned in a manner which proves, beyond question, that the writer could not have been in the country. The dates which are given for the exploration are positive; and are conclusive in this respect. The Dauphiny is represented as having left Madeira on the 17th of January, and arrived on the coast on the 7th of March, that is, the 17th of that month, new style. [Footnote: See ante, page 4, note.] They left the harbor of the great bay, where they had remained for fifteen days on the 6th of May, which makes their arrival there to have been on the 21st of April, or first of May, N. S. They were thus during the months of March and April, engaged in coasting from the landfall to the great bay in latitude 41 Degrees 40', during which period the observations relating to the intermediate country, consequently, must have been made. They left the coast, finally, in latitude 50 Degrees N., for the purpose of returning to France, in time to reach there and have the letter written announcing their arrival at Dieppe on the 8th of July, and therefore it must have been some time in June, at the latest; so that very little if any portion of the summer season was passed upon the coast of America. In describing the country which they reached at the end of the fifty leagues north of the landfall, that is, near the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia, where they discovered the old woman and girl concealed in the GRASS and found the land generally, "abounding in forests filled with various kinds of trees but not of such FRAGRANCE" as those where they first landed, the writer gives a particular description of the condition in which they found the vines and flowers. "We saw," he says, "many vines there growing naturally, which run upon, and entwine about the trees, as they do in Lombardy, and which if the husbandmen were to have under a perfect system of cultivation, would without doubt produce the BEST WINES, because TASTING (beendo, literally, drinking or sucking) THE FRUIT MANY TIMES, we perceived it was sweet and pleasant, not different from ours. They are held in estimation by them because wherever they grow they remove the small trees around them in order that the fruit may be able to germinate. We found wild roses, violets, lilies and many species of plants and ODORIFEROUS FLOWERS, different from ours." [Footnote: "Vedenimo in quella molte vite della natura prodotte, quali alzando si avvoltano agli alberi come nella Cisalpina Gallia custumano; le quali se dagli agricultori avessimo el perfetto ordine di cultura, senza dubbio produrrebbono ottimi vini, perche piu volte il frutto di quello beendo, veggiendo suave e dolce, non dal nostro differente sono da loro tenuti in extimatione; impero che per tutto dove nascono, levano gli arbusculi circustanti ad causa il frutto possa gierminare. Trovamo rose silvestre et vivuole, gigli et molte sorte di erbe e fiori odoriferi da nostri differenti."] The flavor and vinous qualities of the grapes are thus particularly mentioned as having been proven several times by eating the ripe and luscious fruit, and in language peculiarly expressive of the fact. According to the dates before given, this must have occurred early in the month of April, as the scene is laid upon the coast of North Carolina. There is no native vine which ever flowers in this country, north of latitude thirty-four, before the month of May, and none that ripens its fruit before July, which is the month assigned by Lawson for the ripening of the summer fox grape in the swamps and moist lands of North Carolina,--the earliest of all the grapes in that region. [Footnote: New Voyage to Carolina, p. 602.] North of latitude 41 Degrees no grape matures until the latter part of August. As the explorers are made to have left the shores of Newfoundland for home in June, at farthest, they were at no time on any part of the coast, in season to have been able to see or taste the ripe or unripe fruit of the vine. The representation of the letter in this respect depending both upon the sight and the taste, must, like that of the contrasted appearance of the natives, be regarded as deliberately made; and consequently, the two as establishing the falsity of the description in those particulars, and thus involving the integrity and truth of the whole. The liberty which Ramusio took with these passages in his version of the letter, demands notice, and adds his testimony again to the absurdity of the account. He doubtless knew, from the numerous descriptions which had been published, of the uniformity of the physical characteristics of the American Indians; and he certainly knew of it as regarded the natives of this coast; as is proven by his publication of Oviedo's account of the voyage of Gomez, made there in 1525, in which they are described, in the same volume with the Verrazzano letter. [FOOTNOTE: Tom. III. fol. 52, (ed. 1556).] His own experience, as to the climate of Venice, taught him also that grapes could not have ripened in the latitude and at the time of year assigned for that purpose. He had therefore abundant reason to question the correctness of the letter in both particulars. As in the case of the representation of the extent of the discovery, before mentioned, he did not hesitate to make them conform more to the truth. He amended the original in regard to the complexion of the natives represented as those first seen, by inserting in place of the words, applied to them, of "black and not much different from Ethiopians," the phrase, "brownish and not much unlike the Saracens" (berrettini & non molto dalli Saracini differenti) [FOOTNOTE: Berrettini is derived from beretta, the Turkish fez, a red cap, designating also the scarlet cap of the cardinals & the church of Rome.] by which they are likened to those Arabs whose complexion, "yellow, bordering on brown," is of a similar cast; [Footnote: Pritchard, Natural History of Man, p. 127 (2d edition).] and in regard to the grapes, by substituting instead of, "tasting the fruit many times we perceived it was sweet and pleasant," the passage, "having often seen the fruit thereof DRIED, which was sweet and pleasant," (havedo veduto piu volte il frutto di quelle secco, che era suave & dolce,) by which he apparently obviates the objection, but in fact only aggravates it, by asserting what has never yet been heard of among the Indians of this coast, the preservation of the grape by drying or otherwise. It is evident that whatever may have been the motives of Ramusio in making these repeated alterations of the statements in the letter, they not only show his own sense of their necessity, but they have had the effect to keep from the world the real character of this narrative in essential particulars, until its exposure now, by the production of the Carli version. VII. THE EXTRINSIC EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF THE CLAIM. I. DISCOURSE OF THE FRENCH SEA-CAPTAIN OF DIEPPE. The extrinsic evidence which in urged in support of the claim to the discovery by Verrazzano is not of great amount. It is certain, however, that if the letter upon which the claim is founded, be spurious and fictitious, as for the reasons assigned, it is considered to be, any extraneous evidence, must either partake of the same character, or have originated in some misconception or error. What exists upon the subject consists principally of two pieces, which have only recently been regarded of any importance for this purpose, and in connection with which the others may be considered. One of them is an anonymous paper entitled in full, "Discourse of a great sea-captain, a Frenchman of the town of Dieppe, as to the voyages made to the new land of the West Indies, called New France, from the 40 Degrees to the 47 Degrees under the Arctic pole, and concerning the land of Brazil, Guinea, the island of St. Lawrence and that of Sumatra," the other is a map of the world, bearing the name of Hieronimo de Verrazzano. The discourse of the French captain does not, any more than the letter of Verrazzano, exist in the original; nor has any copy of it ever been produced, except in a printed translation by Ramusio in the same volume, as that in which his version of that letter appears, and immediately following it. Ramusio states that it was written in 1539, as may he inferred from the letter itself in its present form, and that he had translated it from the French, grieving much that he did not know the name of the author, because not giving it he seemed to do wrong to the memory of so valiant and noble a gentleman. It is evident, however, upon comparing the description, which it gives, of a voyage made from Dieppe to Sumatra, with the original journal, first brought to light and published a few years ago, of such a voyage made by Jean Parmentier in 1529, that this discourse was written by some one of the persons engaged in that expedition.[Footnote: Voyages et decouvertes des navigateurs Normands. Par L. Estancelin, p. 241. (Paris 1832.) M. Estancelin supposes that Pierre Mauclere the astronomer of one of the ships composing the expedition of Parmentier, was the author of this discourse (p. 45, note). But M. D'Avezac attributes it to Pierre Crignon, who also accompanied Parmentier, and who besides being the editor of a collection of poems by Parmentier, after his death, evinced his knowledge of nautical matters by writing a dissertation on the variation of the needle. Introduction to the Brief Recit of Jacques Cartier, p. VIL (Tross, Paris, 1868.) Brunet, sub Parmentier. Margry, Les navigateurs Francaises, p. 199. ] Its authenticity, in general, may therefore not be questioned. But as the original has never been produced and it is only known through this version of Ramusio, experience in regard to his practice as a compiler, of altering texts according to his judgment of their defects and errors, proves that we have by no means a reliable copy for our guidance. In fact, as given by Ramusio, its recognition of the Verrazzano discovery is only by way of parenthesis, and in such antagonism to the context, as to render it quite certain that this portion of it is by another hand. The writer, after explaining the nature of latitude and longitude, and taking the meridian of no variation running through the eastern extremity of the Cape de Verde islands as the basis of his observations of longitude, proceeds to a description of Terra Nova; so much of which as is pertinent is here abstracted. "The Terra Nova, the nearest cape of which is called the Cape de Ras, is situated west of our diametrical or meridional line whereon is fixed the first point of longitude according to the true meridian of the compass; and the said Cape de Ras is in west longitude 40 Degrees and 47 of North latitude. The Terra Nova extends towards the Arctic pole from 40 Degrees to 60, and from Cape de Ras going towards the pole, the coast almost always runs from south to north, and contains in all 350 leagues, and from said Cape de Ras to the cape of the Brettons, the coast runs east and west, for an hundred leagues, and the cape of the Brettons is in 47 Degrees west longitude and 46 north latitude. To go from Dieppe to the Terra Nova, the course is almost all east and west, and there are from Dieppe to said Cape de Ras 760 leagues. "Between Cape de Ras and cape of the Brettons dwell an austere and cruel people with whom you cannot treat or converse. They are large of person, clad in skins of seals and other wild animals tied together, and are marked with certain lines, made with fire, on the face and as it were striped with color between black and red, (tra il nero & berrettino) and in many respects as to face and neck, are like those of our Barbary, the hair long like women, which they gather up on top of the head as we do with a horse's tail. Their arrows are bows with which they shoot very dexterously, and their arrows are pointed with black stones and fish bones. * * * "This land was discovered 35 years ago, that is, the part that runs east and west, by the Brettons and Normands, for which reason the land is called the Cape of the Brettons. The other part that runs north and south was discovered by the Portuguese from Cape de Ras to Cape Buona-vista, which contains about 70 leagues, and the rest was discovered as far as the gulf of the Castles, and further on by said Brettons and Normands, and it is about 33 years since a ship from Honfleur of which Jean Denys (Giovanni Dionisio) was captain and Camart (Camarto) of Rouen, was pilot, first went there, and in the year 1508, a Dieppe vessel, called the Pensee, which was owned by Jean Ango, father of Monsignor, the captain and Viscount of Dieppe went thither, the master or the captain of said ship being Thomas Aubert, and he was the first who brought hither people of the said country. "Following beyond the cape of the Brettons there is a land contiguous to the said cape, the coast whereof extends west by southwest as far as the land of Florida and it runs full 500 leagues, (WHICH COAST WAS DISCOVERED FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, BY MESSER GIOVANNI DA VERRAZZANO, IN THE NAME OF KING FRANCIS, AND MADAME THE REGENT,) and this land is called by many la Francese, and likewise by the Portuguese themselves and its end towards Florida is at 78 Degrees west longitude and 30 Degrees north latitude. The inhabitants of this land are tractable peoples, friendly and pleasant. The land is most abundant in all fruit. There grow oranges, almonds, wild grapes and many other kinds of odoriferous trees. The land is called by its people Nurumbega, and between this land and that of Brazil is a great gulf which extends westwardly to 92 Degrees west longitude, which is more than a quarter of the circuit of the globe; and in the gulf are the islands and West Indies discovered by the Spaniards." [Footnote: Ramusio, III. fol. 423-4 (ed. 1556).] This account emphatically contradicts the Verrazzano letter which claims the discovery of the coast from Cape Breton in 46 Degrees N, as far east and north, as 50 Degrees N. latitude, embracing a distance of two hundred leagues, both according to the letter and the discourse. It distinctly affirms this long stretch of coast to have been discovered long before the Verrazzano voyage by the Portuguese and the Bretons and Normands, assigning to the Portuguese and French specific portions of it. This is in perfect harmony with the truth as established by the authorities to which occasion has already been had to refer. This account therefore unequivocally repudiates the Verrazzano claim to the discovery of that part of the country, and thus derogates from the pretensions of the letter instead of supporting them. The letter contains a distinct and specific claim for the discovery of the coast as far north as 50 Degrees N. The writer of the discourse, if he had any knowledge on the subject, must have known of the extent of this claim. In attributing to others the discovery of that large portion of the coast, east and north of Cape Breton, he must have considered the claim to that extent as unfounded. It is difficult therefore to account for his admitting its validity as regards the country south of Cape Breton as he apparently does; as it is a manifest inconsistency to reject so important a part as false, and affirm the rest of it to be true, when the whole depends upon the same evidence. Another circumstance to be remarked is, that the description, which follows, of the country said to have been discovered by Verrazzano, has not the slightest reference to the account given in the letter, but is evidently derived from other sources of discovery. Two names are attributed to it, Francese and Nurumbega, both of which owe their designation to other voyagers. Francese, or French land, appears for the first time in any publication, on two maps hereafter mentioned, printed in 1540, under the Latin form of Francisca. It is called in the manuscript cosmography and charts of Jean Alfonse, terre de la Franciscane. An earlier map by Baptista Agnese, described by Mr. Kohl, indicates that the name owes its origin, as will hereafter be pointed out, to the voyages of the French fishermen to the shores of Nova Scotia and New England. [Footnote: Discovery of Maine, p. 202, chart XIV.] Nurumbega, as the writer himself states, is an Indian name, which could not have been taken from the Verrazzano account, as that does not mention a single Indian word of any kind. The statement of the productions of the country includes oranges, which do not belong to any portion of the continent claimed to have been visited by Verrazzano, and plainly indicates an entirely different authority for that portion of the coast. It is therefore equally unaccountable why the author of the discourse should have acknowledged the discovery by Verrazzano and, at the same time, have passed over altogether the description in the letter, and sought his information in regard to the country elsewhere, when he had there such ample details, especially in connection with the great bay. The solution of the whole difficulty is to be found in the fact that the clause relating to Verrazzano was not the work of the author of the discourse, but of another person. It is not difficult to understand how and by whom this interpolation came to be made. Ramusio had both the letter and the discourse in his hands at the same time, for the purpose of preparing them for publication, recomposing the one, as has already been shown, and translating the other from the French into the Italian, as he himself states. In the execution of the former of these tasks, he took the liberty of altering the letter, as has been proven, by substituting the phrase of, THE LAND DISCOVERED BY THE BRETONS, for that of, THE COUNTRY EXPLORED BY THE PORTUGUESE, as the northern limit of the voyage of Verrazzano; thereby removing the objection, to which the letter was obnoxious, of entirely ignoring the discoveries of the Bretons, which were distinctly asserted in the discourse. In order to conform to the Verrazzano letter, as it was thus modified, it was necessary to insert this clause in the discourse, which would else to contradict the letter entirely. The two alterations, however necessary they were to preserve some consistency between the two documents, are, nevertheless, both alike repugnant to the original letter. This discourse fails, therefore, as an authority in favor of the Verrazzano discovery, or even of the existence of a claim in its behalf; the statement which it contains in relation to Verrazzano, originating with Ramusio adding nothing to the case. [Footnote: The writer gives, however, some details in relation to the Indians and the fisheries along the easterly coast of Newfoundland, illustrative of certain points which have arisen in the course of this enquiry. Continuing his remarks, as given in the text, in regard to the Indians inhabiting the southerly coast between Cape Race and Cape Breton, he states: "There are many stags and deer, and birds like geese and margaux. On the coast there is much good fishery of cod, which fish are taken by the FRENCH AND BRETONS, ONLY BECAUSE THOSE OF THE COUNTRY DO NOT TAKE THEM. In the coast running north and south, from Cape de Ras to the entrance of the Castles, [straits of Belle-Isle] there are great gulfs and rivers, and numerous islands, many of them large; and this country is thinly inhabited, except the aforesaid coast, and the people are smaller; and there is great fishery of cod as on the other coast. There has not been seen there either village, or town, or castle, except a great enclosure of wood, which was seen in the gulf of the Castles; and the aforesaid people dwell in little cabins and huts, covered with the bark of trees, which they make to live in during the time of the fisheries, which commences in spring and lasts all the summer. Their fishery is of seal, and porpoises which, with certain seafowl called margaux, they take in the islands and dry; and of the grease of said fish they make oil, and when the time of their fishery is ended, winter coming on, they depart with their fish, and go away, IN LITTLE BOATS MADE OF THE BARK OF TREES, called buil, into other countries, which are perhaps warmer, but we know not where."] VIII. II. THE VERRAZANO MAP. IT IS NOT AN AUTHORITATIVE EXPOSITION OF THE VERRAZZANO DISCOVERY. ITS ORIGIN AND DATE IN ITS PRESENT FORM. THE LETTER OF ANNIBAL CARO. THE MAP PRESENTED TO HENRY VIII. VOYAGES OF VERRAZZANO. THE GLOBE OF EUPHROSYNUS ULPIUS. The map of Hieronimo de Verrazano, recently brought to particular notice, [Footnote: Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York. 1873 Vol. IV. Notes on the Verrazano map. By James Carson Brevoort.] is a planisphere on a roll of parchment eight feet and a half long and of corresponding width, formerly belonging to Cardinal Stefano Borgia, in whose museum, in the college of the Propaganda in the Vatican, it is now preserved. It has no date, though, from a legend upon it referring to the Verrazzano discovery, it may be inferred that the year 1529 is intended to be understood as the time when it was constructed. No paleographical description of it, however, has yet been published, from which the period of its construction might be determined, or the congruity of its parts verified. It may, however, in order to disencumber the question, be admitted to be the map mentioned by Annibal Caro in 1537, in a letter to which occasion will hereafter be had to refer, and that its author was the brother of the navigator, though of both these facts satisfactory proof is wanting. [Footnote: This map was either unknown to Ramusio and Gastaldi or discredited by them. Ramusio in his preface, after mentioning to Fracastor that he placed the relation of Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier in that volume, adds, that inasmuch as Fracastor has exhorted him to make, in imitation of Ptolemy, four or five maps of as much as was known up to that time of the part of the world recently discovered, he could not disobey his commands, and had therefore arranged to have them made by the Piedmontese cosmographer Giacomo de Gastaldi. They are accordingly to be found in the same volume with the letter of Verrazzano. One of them is a map of New France extending somewhat south of Norumbega, but no features of the Verrazzano map are to be traced upon it: and no other map of the country is given. Fol. 424-5.] No entirely legible copy of this map has yet been made public. Two photographs, both much reduced from the original, have been made for the American Geographical Society, from the larger of which, so much as relates to the present purpose, has been carefully reproduced here on the same scale. It is to be regretted that the names along the coast, and the legends relating to the Verrazzano exploration, are not photographed distinctly, though the legends and a few names have been supplied by means of a pen. But although a knowledge of all the names is necessary for a thorough understanding of this map, these photographs, nevertheless, affording a true transcript of it in other respects, enable us to determine that it is of no authority as to the alleged discovery itself. [Footnote: This map was first brought to public notice by M. Thomassey, in a memoir entitled, Les Papes Geographes et la Cosmographie du Vatican, which was published in the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages. Nouvelle serie, tome XXXV. Annee 1853. Tome Troisieme. Paris. We are indebted to this memoir for the explanation of our copy of the map of the scale of distances, which is illegible on the photographs. According to this explanation there should be nine points in the narrower, and nineteen in the wider spaces. These being two and half leagues apart, give twenty-five leagues for the smaller and fifty leagues for the larger spaces, making three hundred and fifty leagues for the whole scale.] It will be found, in the first place, to contravene the Verrazzano letter as to the limits of the discovery, both north and south, and to indicate merely an attempt to reconcile that discovery generally with the discoveries of the Spaniards, Bretons and Portuguese, as shown on the maps of the period to which it relates. The coast of North America is laid down continuously from the gulf of Mexico to Davis straits, in latitude 60 Degrees N. Beginning at the point of Florida, which is placed IN LATITUDE 33 1/2 Degrees N., more than eight degrees north of its true position, it runs northerly along the Atlantic, trending slightly to the west, to a bay or river, in latitude 38 Degrees N. On this part of the country, called Terra Florida, the arms of Spain are represented, denoting its discovery by the Spaniards: and the whole of its coast for a distance of eighty or ninety leagues, is entirely devoid of names. From 38 Degrees N. that is, from the land of Florida as here shown, the coast continues in a northerly direction thirty or forty leagues farther, to a point between 40 Degrees and 41 Degrees N. when, turning northeasterly, it runs with slight variations, on a general course of east north east, for six hundred and fifty leagues to Cape Breton placed in latitude 51 1/2 S., five and a half degrees north of it true position. Along this part of the coast more than sixty names of places occur at intervals sufficiently regular to denote one continuous exploration. They are for the most part undistinguishable on the photographs, but nine of them, at the beginning, are made legible by hand, the first two of which commencing AT LATITUDE 38 Degrees, are Dieppa and Livorno. The others, proceeding north, are Punta de Calami, Palamsina, Polara flor, Comana, Santiago, C. d' Olimpe, and Olimpe, indicating a nomenclature different from that used on any other known map of this region. At a distance of three hundred leagues from Dieppa, and IN LATITUDE 46 Degrees N., is a large triangular island, designated by the name of Luisia. Hence to Cape Breton the names are illegibly photographed. Along this coast, at three points, namely, in latitude 42 Degrees; opposite the island of Luisia, in latitude 46; and in latitude 50 Degrees, standards are displayed, the nationality of which cannot be distinguished, but which no doubt were intended for those of France, inasmuch as over them occurs the name of Nova Gallia sive Iucatanet in large, commanding letters, with the Verrazzano legend, before referred to underneath it, in these words: 'Verrazana seu Gallia nova quale discopri 5 anni fa Giovanni di Verrazano fiorentino per ordine et comandamete del Chrystianissimo Re di Francia; that is, Verrazzana or New Gaul which Giovanni di Verrazzano, a Florentine, discovered five years ago by order and command of the most Christian king of France. [Footnote: The names Verrazzana and Verrazzano in this legend are WRITTEN on the photograph by hand, with a double z, though M. Thomassey uses only the single z, which is adopted on our copy. It would be a singular circumstance, leading to some speculation, if they should really be spelt with the two z's on the original. Hieronimo, if he were the brother of Giovanni, would hardly have written his own name, as it is inscribed on the map, with one z, and that of his brother with two, in the same document.] Over Cape Breton is a representation of the shield of Brittany, denoted by its ermines, in token of the discovery of that country by the Bretons, which is separated by a bay or gulf from Terra Nova sive Le Molue, the latter term being evidently intended for Bacalao (codfish, Fr. morue), the received name of Newfoundland. The southerly coast of Terra Nova for an hundred leagues, and its easterly coast running to the north, are delineated, with the Portuguese name of C. Raso and the island of Baccalaos barely legible. The coast runs north from C. Raso to C. Formoso in latitude 60 Degrees where it meets the straits which separate it from Terra Laboratoris, the country discovered by Gaspar Cortereal on his first voyage, but here attributed to the English, and being in fact Greenland. [Footnote: Mr. Brevoort gives other names as legible on the easterly coast of Terra Nova, which we have not been able to distinguish, namely: c. de spera, illa de san luis, monte de trigo, and illa dos avos. Mr. B. reads IUCATANET, and M. Margry YUCATANET, where our engraver has IUCATANIA, for the general name of the country. The word in either form is apochryphal, as Yucatan is designated in its proper place, though as an island; but which form is correct cannot be determined from the photograph.] It is obvious that the discoveries of Verrazzano are thus intended to embrace the coast from latitude 38 Degrees N. to Cape Breton, that is, between the points designated by the armorial designations of Spain and Brittany, and not beyond either, as that would make the map contradict itself. That they begin at the parallel 38 is shown by the names of Dieppa and Livorno, (Leghorn), which commemorate the port to which the expedition of Verrazzano belonged, and the country in which he himself was born. These names cannot be associated with any other alleged expedition. They are given on the map which contains the legend declaring the country generally to have been discovered by him; and are not found on any other. There can be no doubt, therefore, that they are meant to indicate the beginning of his exploration in the south. That his discoveries are represented as extending in the north to Cape Breton is proven by the continuation of the names to that point, showing an exploration by some voyager along that entire coast, and by the absence of any designation of its discovery by any other nation than the French; while the distance from Dieppa to Cape Breton is laid down as seven hundred leagues, the same as claimed for this exploration. But in restricting his discoveries to latitude 38 Degrees N. on the south, this map essentially departs from the claim set up in the letter ascribed to Verrazzano which carries them to fifty leagues south of 34 Degrees; and on the other hand, in limiting them, in the north, to the land discovered by the Bretons, it conforms to its Portuguese authorities, upon which, as will be seen, it was founded, but, in so doing, contradicts the letter which extends them to the point where the Portuguese commenced their explorations to the Arctic circle, which this map itself shows were on the east side of Terra Nova. Verrazzano the navigator, therefore, could not have been the author of the letter and also the authority for the map. That this map did not proceed from him is also proven by the representation upon it of a great ocean, called Mare Occidentale, which is laid down between the parallels within which these discoveries are confined. It lies on the west side of the continent but approaches so near the Atlantic, in latitude 41 Degrees N., that is, in the vicinity of New York, that according to a legend describing it, the two oceans are there only six miles apart, and can be seen from each other. This isthmus occurs several hundred miles north of Dieppa, and therefore at a point absolutely fixed within the limits of the Verrazzano discoveries, and where the navigator must have sailed, according to both the letter and the map, whether the latitudes on the map be correctly described or not. This western sea is thus made by its position a part of the discoveries of Verrazzano, and is declared by the legend to have been actually seen; and as he was the discoverer, it must be intended to have been seen by him. As, however, there is no such sea in reality, Verrazzano could never have seen it; and therefore, he could not have so represented; or if he did, then the whole story must for that reason alone be discredited. There is no escape from this dilemma. Verrazzano could not have been deceived and have mistaken some other sheet of water for this great sea, and so represented it on any chart, or communicated it in any other way to the maker of this map; for he makes no mention of the circumstance in his letter to the king to whom he would have been prompt to report so important a fact; as it would have proved the accomplishment of the object of his voyage,--the discovery of a passage through this region to Cathay, or if not a passage, at least a way, which could have been made available for reaching the land of spices and aromatics, by reason of its low grade, evident by one sea being seen from the other, and its short distance. The unauthentic character of this map, and the manner in which its representation of the Verrazzano discoveries was produced, distinctly appear in its method of construction. Cape Breton and Terra Nova are represented as they are laid down on the charts of Pedro Reinel and the anonymous cartographer,--reproduced on the first and fourth sheets of the Munich atlas and unquestionably belonging to the period anterior to the discovery of the continuity of the land from Florida to Cape Breton. They bear the names which are found on those maps, importing their discovery thus early by the Bretons and Portuguese. In the south, the designation of Florida as a Spanish discovery, with its southerly coast running along the parallel of thirty-three and a half of north latitude, eight degrees north of its actual position, is precisely the same it as it is shown on the anonymous Portuguese chart just mentioned. These representations of the country, in the north and the south, were thus adopted as the basis of this map. But as there were not seven hundred leagues of coast between latitude 38 Degrees and Cape Breton, which is the distance it indicates as having been explored by Verrazzano, that extent could be obtained only, either by changing the latitude of Florida or Cape Breton, or prolonging the coast longitudinally, or both. The latitude of the northerly limit of Florida having been preserved for the commencement of the discoveries, Cape Breton had therefore to be changed and was accordingly carried five degrees and a half further north and placed in latitude 51-1/2 instead of 46, and by consequence the whole line of coast was thrown several degrees in that direction, as is proven by the position of the island of Louise, which thus falls in 46 Degrees N. instead of 41 Degrees, the latitude assigned to it in the letter. Nothing could more conclusively show the factitious origin of this delineation and its worthlessness as an exposition of the Verrazzano discovery. Some importance, however, attaches to this map in its assisting us to fix approximately the time of the fabrication of the Verrazzano letter. If it were constructed in 1529, as some would infer, with the portions relating to the discovery upon it, then it is the earliest recognition of the CLAIM to this discovery yet produced, irrespective of the letter. But it is by no means certain that it was originally made in that year. Nothing appears on the map itself giving that date in terms; but it is left to be inferred exclusively from the language of the legend, which states that the discovery was made FIVE YEARS AGO, without any indication, either in the legend itself or elsewhere on the map, to what time that period relates; and leaving the discovery, therefore, to be ascertained from extraneous sources. If the discovery be assumed to have been made in 1524, then indeed the map, according to the legend, would have been constructed in 1529. But no person, unacquainted with the letter, can determine from this inscription, or any other part of the map, the date either of the discovery or map; and this precise difficulty Euphrosynus Ulpius apparently encountered in attempting to fix the time of the discovery for his globe, as will hereafter be seen. Why the time of the discovery should have been left in such an ambiguous state, compatibly with fair intentions, it is difficult to understand. The year itself could and should, in the absence of any date on the map, have been stated directly in the legend, without compelling a resort to other authorities. It is not unusual, it is true, for valuable maps and charts of this period to be left without the dates of their construction upon them; but when, as in this case, a date is called for, there seems to be no reason why it should not have been given. This circumstance creates the suspicion that the legend did not belong to the map originally, but was added afterwards, as it now appears on the copy in the Vatican; or if it were upon it then, that it was intended to mislead and conceal the true date of the map. But whatever may be the secret of its origin, this legend furnishes no positive evidence as to the time when the map was made, or pretended to have been made; and we are left to find its date, if possible, by other means. A fact which indicates that this map could not have existed as late as 1536, in the form in which it is now presented, if it existed then at all, is that the western sea is delineated upon a map of the world, made in that year, by Baptista Agnese, an Italian cosmographer, without any reference to the Verrazzano discoveries, under circumstances which would have led him to have recognized them if he knew of them, and which would have required him to have done so if this map were his authority. This sea is laid down by Agnese in the same manner as it is shown on the Verrazzano map, approaching the Atlantic, from the north, along a narrow isthmus terminating at latitude 40 Degrees, with the coast turning abruptly to the west; the ocean being thus represented open thence from the isthmus to Cathay. A track of French navigation, not a single voyage, expressed by the words: el viages de France, is designated upon it, leading from the north of France to this isthmus, referring obviously to the voyages of the fishermen of Brittany and Normandy, to the coasts of Nova Scotia and New England. No allusion is made to the voyage of Verrazzano, or to the discoveries attributed to him by the Verrazano map. The Atlantic coast on the contrary, is plainly delineated after the Spanish map of Ribero, as is shown by the form, peculiar to that map, of the coast, at latitude 40 Degrees, returning to the west. It is apparent, therefore, that the two maps of Agnese and Verrazano, both representing the western sea in the same form, must have been derived from a common source, or else one was taken from the other; and that the map of Agnese could not, in either case, have been derived from a map showing the Verrazzano discovery, and must consequently have been anterior to the Verrazano map in its present form. It militates against the authenticity of the Verrazano map and the early date which it would have inferred for itself, that there is not a single known map or chart, either published or unpublished, before the great map of Mercator in 1569, that refers to the Verrazzano discoveries, or recognizes this map in any respect before that of Michael Lok, published by Hakluyt, in 1582; or any before Lok, that applies the name of the sea of Verrazano to the western sea. The unauthenticated and until recently unnoticed globe of Euphrosynus Ulpius, purporting to have been constructed in 1542, of which we will speak presently, is the only evidence yet presented of the existence of the Verrazano map, as it now appears, beyond the map itself. The whole theory of the early influence of the Verrazzano discovery, or of the Verrazano map, upon the cartography of the period to which they relate, and its consequently proving their authenticity, as advanced by some learned writers, is therefore incorrect and is founded in a misconception of fact. This mistake relates to a map which is found in several editions of the geography of Ptolemy printed at Basle, supposed to represent the western sea shortly after the Verrazzano discovery, and consequently as derived from that source. Mr. Kohl, [Footnote: We are indebted entirely to Mr. Kohl for our knowledge of the map of Agnese, which he produces, on a reduced scale, in the Discovery of Maine, (chart XIV), with an account of the map and its author (p. 292).] in a chapter specially devoted to the consideration of charts from Verrazzano, reproduces one (No. XV, a) which he describes as a sketch of North America, from a map of the new world, in an edition of Ptolemy printed in Basle, 1530. And he adds: "the map was drawn and engraved A FEW YEARS AFTER VERRAZANO'S EXPEDITION. The plate upon which it was engraved, must have been in use for a long time; for the same map appears both, in EARLIER and much later editions of Ptolemy. The same also reappears in the cosmography of Sebastian Munster, published in Basle." Mr. K. finally observes in regard to it: "this map has this particular interest for us, that it is probably the first on which the sea of Verrazano was depicted in the form given to it by Lok, in 1582. I have found no map PRIOR to 1530, on which this delineation appears." [Footnote: Discovery of Maine, pp. 296-7.] There is a little confusion of dates in this statement. Mr. K. states, however, that he had not seen the map of Hieronimo de Verrazano, and evidently derives his information, in regard to the sea of Verrazano, from the map of Lok, who alone gives the western sea the name of Mare de Verrazana, no doubt because he found the sea laid down on the map presented by Verrazzano to Henry VIII, to which reference will presently be made. Had Mr. K. seen the Verrazano map with the absurd legend upon it, in effect declaring the western sea to have been observed by Verrazzano, he must have arrived at different conclusions, notwithstanding the map in Ptolemy of the supposed early date. Mr. Brevoort, in his notes on the Verrazano map, probably relying on the authority of Mr. Kohl, says, "that the first published map containing traces of Verrazano's explorations, is in the Ptolemy of Basle, 1530, which appeared FOUR YEARS BEFORE THE FRENCH RENEWED THEIR ATTEMPTS AT AMERICAN EXPLORATION. It shows the western sea without a name, and the land north of it is called Francisca." [Footnote: Journal of Am. Geog. Soc. of New York, vol. IV, p. 279.] The inference left to be drawn is that, the presence of the French in this region, as denoted by the name, Francisca, four years before the discoveries in that quarter, by Jacques Cartier, and by the delineation of the western sea upon the Verrazano map, establish the authenticity both of the voyage of Verrazzano and the map. All this is erroneous. There was no edition of Ptolemy published in 1530 at Basle, or elsewhere, known to bibliographers. The map to which reference is made, and which is reproduced by Mr. Kohl, was first printed in 1540 at Basle, in an edition of Ptolemy with new maps, both of the new and old world, and with new descriptions of the countries embraced in them, printed on the back of each, accompanied by a geographical description of the modern state of the countries of the old world by Sebastian Munster. [Footnote: Geographia Universalis, vetus et nova, complectens Claudii Ptolemai Alexandrini enarrationis libros VIII. * * * Succedunt tabulos Ptolemaice, opera Sebastiani Munsteri nto paratos. His adjectos sunt plurime novae tabulae, moderna orbis faciem literis & pictura explicantes, inter quas quaedam antehac Ptolemao non fuerunt additae. Sm. fol. Basiteae apud Henricum Petrum Meuse Martio Anno MDXI.] In all the editions of Ptolemy, containing maps of the new world, before the year 1540, North America was represented according to the mistaken ideas of Waltzemuller on that subject in 1513, and without regard to the discoveries which took place after his edition. The maps of Munster constituted a new departure of the Ptolemies in this respect, and were intended to represent the later discoveries in the new world. They were reprinted several times at Basle by the same printer, Henri Pierre (Lelewell II. 176, 208). In the first edition, which is now lying before us, the map in question, number 45, bears the title of Novae Insalae XVII. Nova Tabula. It is an enlarged representation of the portion relating to the new world of another map, No. 1, in the same volume, called Typas Universalis, a map of the whole world, which appears here also as a new map, and represents, for the first time in the Ptolemaic series, the straits of Magellan in the south, New France in the north, and the coast running continuously, north and NORTHEAST, from Florida to Newfoundland. Upon this map a deep gulf is shown, indenting America from a strait in the north, which leads from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in the region of Hudson's straits, in latitude 60 Degrees N. This gulf runs southerly into the continent as far as latitude 40 Degrees N., approaching the Atlantic coast, and in that respect, alone, conforms to the representation of the western sea on the maps of Verrazano and Lok. It differs materially, however, from that sea, and indicates an entirely different meaning and origin. It is simply a gulf, or deep bay, like Hudson's bay, but reaching further south, being land-locked on all sides, except the north, as high as latitude 60 Degrees N.; whereas the western sea, on the other maps, is, as already observed, an open sea, extending westerly from the isthmus in latitude 40 Degrees, without intervening land, uninterruptedly to India. The intention of the delineation of this portion of the map, is not equivocal. For the first time, on any map, there is found upon it the name of Francisca, which is placed above the parallel of 50 Degrees N. latitude and above that of C. Britonum, designated thus by name, in the proper position of Cape Breton. It is placed between the river St. Lawrence, which also is represented but not named, and the gulf before mentioned. This name, Francisca, [Footnote: Called Francese in the discourse of the French captain of Dieppe.] or the FRENCH LAND, and the position, indicate the then recent discoveries in that region, which were due to the French under Jacques Cartier, and which could properly belong to no other exploration of the French. The gulf, no doubt, relates to the great lakes or fresh water sea of which Cartier had heard from the natives, as he himself mentions. (Hakluyt, III. 225.) With the correction, therefore, of the date of the Munster map, the argument in favor of the authenticity either of the Verrazzano discovery or of the Verrazano map, based upon the recognition by the Munster map, of that discovery immediately after it is alleged to have taken place, or after the alleged construction of the Verrazano map, in 1529, and before any other voyages were made by the French to that region, falls entirely to the ground. And with the actual representation upon it of the discoveries of Cartier, without any allusion to the alleged discoveries of Verrazzano or the pretensions of the Verrazano map, while giving the latest discoveries in America, it is fairly to be concluded that both were unheard of, or utterly discredited by the author of the Munster map. The map of Agnese stands, therefore, as the earliest chart of an acknowledged date showing the western sea, and that is independently of the Verrazzano discovery, or the Verrazano map. The hitherto unpublished maps produced by Mr. Kohl, also for the purpose of proving the influence of the Verrazzano discovery, fail entirely of that object. The first of them, in point of date, the sketch (No. XV. c) from the portolano of 1536, preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford, shows a track of navigation from the north of France, across the Atlantic, RUNNING BETWEEN THE BACALAOS AND THE LAND OF THE BRETONS, THROUGH THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, TO THE PACIFIC, AND THENCE TO CATHAY. There is no representation of the western sea, as shown on the Verrazano map, but on the contrary, the whole of the western coast of North America is shown conjecturally in a different form, by dotted lines. So far as this map affords any indication on the subject, it refers to the route of Cartier, and delineates the Atlantic coast according to the Spanish map of Ribero, that is, with a trending of the coast in a more northerly direction than the Verrazano map, and with the peculiar return of that coast westerly, in latitude 40 Degrees N., given on that map. The next chart (No. XV. d) from a map made by Diego Homem in 1540, shows the western sea nearly the same as on the map of Agnese, but conjecturally only; while the representation of the Atlantic coast has the same characteristics as the Bodleian and Agnese maps, showing its derivation from Ribero and not the Verrazano map. The remaining sketch given by Mr. Kohl (No. XV. b) from a map made by G. Ruscelli in 1544, presenting the same features, as do the two others, in regard to the Atlantic coast, puts beyond all question that the map of Ribero is its authority, by adopting from it the name of Montagne Verde which is applied by Ribero to the hills at the mouth of the river San Antonio, in latitude 41 Degrees N., thereby certainly excluding any recognition of the Verrazzano discovery or the Verrazano map. The first published map which refers to the Verrazzano discoveries, that of Mercator in 1569, makes no reference to the Verrazano map, and does not recognize it in any manner. Mercator was the first to give the name of Claudia to the island of Louise, evidently mistaking the name of the wife of Francis for that of his mother, after whom the island was called, according to the letter, without stating her name. Mercator gives a legend in which he mentions that Verrazzano arrived on the coast on the 17th of March 1524, which is the day according to the version of Ramusio, following our mode of computation, as before explained. It is evident, therefore, that Mercator had the Ramusio version before him, and not the Verrazano map, as his authority on the subject. His delineation of the Atlantic coast, moreover, is according to the plan of Ribero, and he gives no indication of the western sea of the Verrazano map, but mentions in a legend the fresh water inland sea spoken of by Cartier, of the extent of which the Indians were ignorant. The existence of the Verrazano map, much less its date, is obviously not proven by any of the maps or charts to which reference has here been made, and which are supposed to reflect some of its features, or indicate the verity of the Verrazzano discovery. There is, however, some evidence of a positive character, both historical and cartographical, which points to the existence of this map in two different forms, one originally not representing the Verrazzano discovery, and the other subsequently, as now presented. The existence of a Verrazano map in some form or other, as early as 1537, seems to be established by a letter of the commendatory, Annibal Caro, written in that year. Caro, who became distinguished among his countrymen for his polite learning, was, in early life, secretary to the cardinal, M. de Gaddi, a Florentine, residing in Rome. While thus engaged, he accompanied his patron on a journey to the mines of Sicily, and there, from Castro, addressed a playful letter to the members generally of the cardinal's household, remaining at Rome. In this letter, which is dated the 13th of October in that year, he writes to them: "I will address sometimes one and sometimes another of you, as matters come into my mind. To you, Verrazzano, a seeker of NEW WORLDS and their marvels, I cannot yet say anything worthy of YOUR MAP, because we have not passed through any country which has not been discovered by you or your brother." [Footnote: "De le lettre familiari des commendatore Annibal Caro," vol. 1. P. 6-7. Venetia, 1581.] This passage was supposed by Tiraboschi to have been addressed to the navigator, and as proving that he was alive at the time the letter was written. But we now know that Verrazzano had then been dead ten years; besides, it is not probable, inasmuch as the person addressed was one of the servants of the prelate, that the navigator would have occupied that position. M. Arcangeli suggests that the name is used by Caro merely as a nom de guerre; [Footnote: "Discorso sopra Giovanni da Verrazzano," p. 27, in "Archivio Storico Italiano," Appendice vol. IX.] but in either case, whether borrowed or not, the remark plainly enough refers to a Verrazzano map, which may POSSIBLY have been the map of Hieronimo. Hakluyt furnishes testimony which, if correct, shows the probable existence of this map before 1529, BUT NOT IN ITS PRESENT FORM. In the dedication to Phillip Sydney of his "Divers voyages touching the discoveries of America, &c.," printed in 1582, he refers to the probabilities of the existence of a northwest passage, and remarks that, "Master John Verarzanus which had been THRISE ON THAT COAST in an olde excellent mappe, which HE GAVE to King Henry the eight, and is yet in custodie of Master Locke, doth so lay it out as is to bee seene in the mappe annexed to the end of this boke, being made according to Verarzanus plat." Hakluyt thus positively affirms that the old map to which he refers was given by Verrazzano himself to the king. What evidence he had of that fact he does not mention, but he speaks of the map as if it had been seen by him, and probably that was his authority. The map he declares of his own knowledge was transferred, so far as regards the western strait, to the map of Lok, which he himself publishes. Lok's map represents the northwest passage as attempted by Frobisher in his several voyages, and as continued from the termination of the English exploration, to a western sea, a portion of which lying between the parallels of 40 Degrees N. and 50 Degrees N. latitude is laid down the same as it appears on the Verrazano map, and bears the inscription of Mare de Verrazana, 1524. The map of Lok is the first one upon which the western sea is so called. The designation was undoubtedly the work of Lok himself, as it is in conformity with his practice in other parts of the map, where he denotes the discoveries of others in the same way, that is, by their names with the dates of their voyages annexed. He no doubt applied the name of Verrazzano to this ocean from finding it represented on the old map given by Verrazzano to the king, and obtained the date from the letter, of which Hakluyt printed in the same volume a translation from the version in Ramusio. It is certain that Verrazzano could not have been accessory to declaring it a DISCOVERY by himself for the reason already mentioned that no such sea, as there laid down, existed to have been discovered. Lok's map represents on the Atlantic coast, in latitude 41 Degrees N., the island alleged in the Verrazzano letter to have been named after the king's mother, and gives it the name of Claudia. That it is the same island is proven by note to the translation of the letter given in the volume in which this map is found. Hakluyt puts in the margin, opposite the passage where mention of the island occurs in the letter, the words "Claudia Ilande." From whatever source this name was derived by them, whether from Mercator or by their own mistake, both Lok and Hakluyt here indirectly bear their testimony to the fact, that the name of Luisia was not upon the old map given to Henry VIII, which Lok consulted, and Hakluyt described. It is thus to be concluded that the map delivered to the king showed the western sea, but not any discoveries of Verrazzano on the Atlantic coast. In another work, as yet unpublished, Hakluyt affords some additional information in regard to the old map, which though brief, is quite significant. He remarks that it is "a mightie large olde mappe in parchment, made AS IT WOULD SEEM by Verrazanus, now in the custodie of Mr. Michael Locke;" and he speaks also of an "olde excellent GLOBE in the Queen's privie gallery, at Westm'r, w'h ALSO SEEMETH to be of Verrazanus making." [Footnote: MS. in possession of the Maine Historical Society, cited in Mr. Kohl's Discovery of Maine, p. 291, note.] Both the map and the globe are thus mentioned as the PROBABLE workmanship of Verrazzano, from which it is probable that there was no name upon them to determine that question positively. The great size of the chart, the material upon which it was made, and the authorship of the map and globe by the same person, are circumstances which go to prove that they were both the work of a professed cosmographer, and embraced the whole world; and consequently that the map was not a chart made by the navigator, showing his discoveries, but possibly the map of Hieronimo in its original form. The construction of this old map, whoever was the author, is fixed certainly BEFORE 1529, by the statement of Hakluyt, that it was presented to Henry VIII by Verrazzano, the navigator, inasmuch as Verrazzano came to his death in 1527. The Verrazzano map, in its present phase, not claiming to have been made before the year 1529, could not, therefore, have furnished the original representation of the western sea, or have been the one used by Lok. Hakluyt adds to his statement that Verrazzano had been three times on the coast of America, which, if true, would disprove the discovery set up in the letter. That document alleges that the coast explored by him was entirely unknown and HAD NEVER BEFORE BEEN SEEN BY ANY ONE before that voyage, and consequently not by him; and that, as regards the residue of the coast north of 50 Degrees N., the Portuguese had sailed along it as far as the Arctic circle, without finding any termination to the land, thus giving the Portuguese as his authority for the continuity of the northern part of the coast, and excluding himself from it. It is thus clearly stated in the letter, that he had not been there before. It was impossible that he could have, consummated two voyages to America, and another to England, and made his court to the king, after 1524, and before his last and fatal cruize along the coast of Spain, as would have been necessary to have been done. In asserting that Verrazzano made other voyages to America, Hakluyt is corroborated by the ancient manuscripts, to which the author of the memoirs of Dieppe refers, as mentioning that one Jean Verassen commanded a ship which accompanied that of Aubert to Newfoundland in 1508. [Footnote: Desmarquets. "Memoires chronologiques pour servir a l'histoire de Dieppe," I. 100. (2 Vols. Paris, 1785.) It is worthy of remark that this annalist seems to regard Verasseu and Verrazzano as different persons, which proves, at least, that his authority was independent of any matter connected with the Verrazzano claim. That these names really relate, however, to the same individual, appears from the agreement with Chabot] It is possible, therefore, that Verrazzano made three voyages to Newfoundland, and was well acquainted with that portion of the coast, before hostilities broke out between Francis I. and the emperor, in 1522; at which time, as will be seen, he entered upon his course of privateering; and that during the time Francis was a prisoner at Madrid, in 1525-6, and the state of war accordingly suspended, and Verrazzano thrown out of employment, he visited England, and laid before the king a scheme of searching for the northwest passage; a project which Henry had been long meditating, as may be gathered from the proposition of Wolsey to Sebastian Cabot in 1519, and the expedition actually sent out for that purpose by that monarch under John Rut, in 1527. [Footnote: Letter of Contarini, the Venetian ambassador in Spain, to the Council of Ten. See "Calendar of State Papers &c. in Venice," 1520- 6. Edited by Rawdon Brown. No. 697, London, 1869. Purchas, III. p. 809.] It is evident that the representation of the western sea, upon the map given to the king, was merely conjectural of its existence in connection with the supposed strait, laid down upon the map, according to Hakluyt. This explanation will serve also to account most readily for the partial knowledge which the letter exhibits, in regard to the customs and characteristics of the Indians of Cape Breton, which might have been collected by the writer, from the journals of those early voyages or other notes of Verrazzano in relation to them; although the same information was obtainable from others who had made similar voyages to that region, from Normandy and Brittany. It is thus established by the same testimony which furnishes the map of Lok, taken in conjunction with its own teachings, that it was not derived from the Verrazano map in its present shape, and does not represent the Verrazzano discovery. The only evidence of the existence of the Verrazano map in any cosmographical production whatever, book, chart or globe, so far as known, independently of its history in the Borgian collection, is a copper globe, found by the late Buckingham Smith in Spain, a few years ago, and now in the possession of the New York Historical Society. This globe purports to have been constructed by Euphrosynus Ulpios in 1542. Inscribed upon it, in a separate scroll, is a dedication, in these words; "Marcello Cervino S. R. E. Presbitero Cardinali D.D. Rome." Cervinus had been archbishop of Florence and was afterwards raised from the cardinalate to the pontificate under the title of Marcellus II. This globe represents the western sea in the same form as it is on the Verrazano map, and contains a legend on the country lying between the isthmus and Cape Breton, in these words: "Verrazana sive Nova Gallia a Verrazano Florentino Comperta anno sal. M.D." In all other respects it differs essentially from the map in its description of the coast. Florida and Cape Breton are laid down in their true positions, and the isthmus occurs at the parallel of 33 degrees N. latitude, instead of 41 degrees. The direction of the coast, between the two points just mentioned, is more northerly, and the length of it consequently much reduced. The names along the coast, so far as the photograph of the map furnishes the means of comparison, are entirely different, except that Piaggia de Calami appears north of the isthmus. Dieppa and Livorno are not found upon it. But the legend affords indubitable evidence that the Maker had consulted the map. The name of Verrazana applied to the land is found no where else no applied, except on the map. But the incompleteness in which the date of the discovery is left, us if written 15--, proves that the maker was unable to ascertain it fully from his authority; the map, therefore, must have been his sole authority. As to the authenticity of this globe there is no other evidence than that it has the appearance of an old instrument, and its representations generally correspond with the state of geographical knowledge of the period of its date. [Footnote: It measures forty- two inches in circumference. Hist. Mag. (New York) 1862, p. 202. A map showing so much of it as relates to North America, was lithographed for the dissertation of Mr. Smith, and is here reproduced.] Adopting its own story of its construction, it proves the existence of the Verrazano map, with the Verrazzano discoveries upon it, and consequently the existence of the claim as early as the year 1542. The other references to a Verrazzano map, prove nothing on the subject of the discoveries, unless the letter of Annibal Caro, which alludes to discoveries by the brothers Verrazzani, in connection with a map, he deemed as referring to them. In that case, 1537 would be the earliest mention of them, in any known publication. Lok and Hakluyt, as has been already seen, clearly do not refer to any map showing the Verrazzano discoveries. The period of the fabrication of the letter may therefore, possibly, be fixed between 1536 and 1542. But whether this period be properly deduced or not, is immaterial; since in no event can an earlier date than 1529 be assigned by any evidence outside of the letter, for the existence of the Verrazzano claim; which year, as is now to be shown, was long after the coast had been discovered and made known to the world by another. IX. THE LETTER TO THE KING FOUNDED ON THE DISCOVERIES OF ESTEVAN GOMEZ. THE HISTORY OF GOMEZ AND HIS VOYAGE. THE PUBLICATION OF HIS DISCOVERIES IN SPAIN AND ITALY BEFORE THE VERRAZZANO CLAIM. THE VOYAGE DESCRIBED IN THE LETTER TRACED TO RIBERO's MAP OF THE DISCOVERIES OF GOMEZ. In the proofs adduced, outside of the letter addressed to the king, no direct evidence appears in regard to the discovery. There is no testimony to be found of any one who took part in the setting forth or equipment of the expedition, or in the prosecution of the voyage, or who was personally cognizant of the return of the Dauphiny. No chart or private letter, no declaration or statement of the navigator, in regard to the extraordinary discovery achieved by him, is produced or mentioned, although he belonged to a family of some note in Tuscany, which still existed in the present century. In this respect, Italy, the birth place and home of Verrazzano, is as blank and barren as France. All that is really shown of any pertinency is the single circumstance, that possibly the claim to the discovery was advanced in Italy, and in that country alone, at the time of the construction of the globe of Ulpius in 1542, but not anterior to the year 1529, or until five years after the event, when, according to the Verrazano map, if that he accepted as genuine in its present form, and the most favorable construction be upon its ambiguous legend, of which that inscription is capable, the claim was for the first time announced. And thus there is nothing showing that the letter or its pretensions were known before the last named year. In view this important fact, and the absence of any evidence whatsoever corroborative of the letter or its contents, it is not unreasonable to believe that the letter was an attempt to appropriate to the Florentine the glory which belonged to Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese pilot, who actually discovered and explored this coast, in 1525, in the service of the emperor, Charles V, and whose voyage and exploration were immediately thereupon made known, both, in Spain and Italy. That such, indeed, was the source from which the Verrazzano letter was derived is susceptible of demonstration; and for that purpose some account of the voyage and discoveries of Gomez and their publication becomes necessary. Gomez, who was born in Oporto and reared there to a sea-faring life, for some reason, unexplained; left Portugal and entered into the Spanish service, in which he was appointed pilot in 1518, at the some time that Sebastian Cabot was created pilot major in the same service. He proposed immediately to the king, to go in search of a new route to the. Moluccas or Spice islands recently discovered by the Portuguese, and which, he affirmed, were within the limits assigned to Spain by the line of demarkation. He exhibited a chart constructed by him showing this fact, [Footnote: Cespedes, "Regimento de Navigacion," 148.] from which it may be inferred that he had already made a voyage to those islands. The way which he proposed then to take is not mentioned. At the same juncture Magellan also arrived in Spain and tendered his services to find a new route to the Moluccas, specifically by the west, as delineated on a globe which he produced. Magellan prevailed in his suit, which was the reason, according to Pigafetta, the historian of the expedition, that the emperor did not give Gomez any caravels to discover new lands. [Footnote: Primo Viaggio, 38] It is to be inferred, therefore, that the first route proposed by Gomez was not by the west. The fleet of Magellan set sail on his expedition in September 1519, with Gomez as chief pilot, an arrangement intended to conciliate and combine both interests; but it was not a happy one. Actuated, it is charged, by a spirit of jealousy and a desire to embarrass Magellan, and render his voyage abortive, Gomez at the very moment that success was assured, and the fleet was entering the strait which led into the Pacific, abandoned his commander; and profiting by the opportunity which was offered him in being detached by Magellan with the San Antonio, one of the ships, to make a reconnaissance in another direction, joined with certain mutineers, seized the captain of that vessel, and returned with her to Spain, arriving there in March 1521. The reasons assigned by him for this desertion of the expedition, were the severity of the treatment of the crew by Magellan, a want of provisions and the unseaworthiness of the San Antonio. He was, however, held by the council of the Indies to answer to any charges which might be preferred against him by Magellan on his return, and in the meantime his pay was sequestered and his property on board the ship attached. In September 1522, the Victoria, the only ship of Magellan's squadron which succeeded in returning to Spain, arrived with the news of Magellan's discovery, and also of his death in a conflict with the natives of the island of Tidore. Upon this information proceedings against Gomez were discontinued and his property released. The success of Magellan served the more to stimulate the purpose of Gomez to undertake a search for the same object. It was supposed at that time, by Sebastian Cabot and others, that the northern parts of America were broken up into islands, but nothing positively was known in relation to them, except in the region of Newfoundland. Between that country and South Carolina, then recently discovered by the joint expedition of the licentiates, all was unknown; and it was considered not improbable that a passage might be found between those points, through to Cathay and the Moluccas, the same as had been discovered in the south, by Magellan. Gomez, released from his disabilities, renewed his application to the emperor for permission to prosecute his search, proposing now to make it through the northern seas; and on the 27th of August 1523 a cedule was made to that effect authorizing him to go with a caravel of fifty toneles burden on the discovery of eastern Cathay. [Footnote: Herrera, III. Iv. 20. The cedule is still extant in the archives at Seville.] In consequence, however, of the remonstrance of the king of Portugal against any interference with his rights to the Moluccas, Charles suspended the prosecution of further voyages in that quarter until the question should be determined to which of the two crowns those islands belonged by virtue of the pope's demarcation. The voyage of Gomez, and also that of Cabot to the La Plata, were delayed until the decision of the junta convened at Badajos by the two monarchs for the purpose of making this determination. To this body Gomez, in conjunction with Sebastian Cabot and Juan Vespucci as pilots, and Diego Ribero as cartographer, was attached,--a circumstance which shows the high estimation in which his nautical knowledge was held. The proceedings closed in May 1524, too late for Gomez to make his arrangements to leave in that year. These were completed, however, in February 1525, in which month he set sail from Coruna, in the north of Spain, in a single caravel, on his voyage of discovery, [Footnote: Navarrete III. 179. Peter Martyr, Dec. VII. 8.] Peter Martyr, after mentioning the proposed expedition of Sebastian Cabot to the south, thus refers in July 1524, to that of Gomez and its destination. "It is also decreed that one Stephanus Gomez, who also himselfe is a skillful navigator, shal goe another way, whereby, betweene the Baccalaos and Florida, long since our countries, he saith he will finde out a waye to Cataia: one onely shippe, called a Carvell, is furnished for him, and he shall have no other thing in charge then to search out whether any passage to the great Chan, from out the diuers windings and vast compassings of this our Ocean, were to be founde." [Footnote: Peter Martyr, Dec. VI. 10. Eden's trans.] Gomez commenced his exploration on the coast of South Carolina, and proceeding thence northwardly, reached the Rio de la buelta, where, as that name denotes, he commenced his return, on the island of Cape Breton. He carefully observed the rivers, capes and bays, which occur within those limits, entering the Chesapeake, Delaware, Hudson and Penobscot, to which he gave appropriate names, derived from the church calendar, or from some characteristic of the locality. He was for a while encouraged to believe, in consequence of the great flood of water which he found issuing from the Penobscot, or Rio de Gamos, (Stag river), that he had there fallen upon the desired strait. Though unsuccessful in the object of his search, he nevertheless accomplished an important service for geographical science, in determining that no such passage existed within the region he had sailed. Taking in a cargo of Indians from the islands of the great bay, he continued his course to the south, and running along the coast of Florida, returned to Spain by way of Cuba. [Footnote: Peter Martyr, Dec. VI. c. 10. Herrera, III, VIII. S. Cespedes, Yslario General, in MS. Cespedes was cosmographer major of the Indies in Seville and wrote many geographical works early in the seventeenth century. His Yslario General, embracing a history of the islands of the world, exists in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid.] The authenticity of this voyage is established by Oviedo and Peter Martyr both of whom were eyewitnesses of the Indians which Gomez brought home and exhibited at Toledo. Both of these writers have given short accounts of the voyage, which, as it was not successful in the purpose for which it was undertaken and promised no returns of gold, excited no public attention. The results were, however, interesting to the hydrographers of Spain, who soon prepared charts of the coast, according to his exploration, among which that made by Diego Ribero, associate of Gomez at the junta of Badajos, and royal cosmographer, will demand especial attention. The voyage of Gomez and what he had accomplished became immediately known to the world at large by printed publications. He arrived home on his return in November 1525; and three months afterwards Oviedo published his first work, addressed to the emperor, in which he makes the following brief mention of the expedition. "Shortly after that yowr Maiestie came to the citie of Toledo, there arryved in the moneth of November, Stephen Gomes the pylot who the yeare before of 1524 by the commandement of yowre maiestie sayled to the Northe partes and founde a greate parte of lande continuate from that which is cauled Baccaleos discoursynge towarde the West to the XL and XLI degree, fro whense he brought certeyne Indians, of the whiche he brought sum with hym from thense who are yet in Toledo at this present, and of greater stature than other of the firme land as they are commonlye. Theyr coloure is much like the other of the firme lande. They are great archers, and go couered with the skinnes of dyuers beastes both wylde and tame. In this lande are many excellent furres, as marterns, sables and such other rych furres, of the which the sayde pilot brought summe with hym into Spayne. They have sylver and copper and certeyne other metalles. They are Idolaters and honoure the soonne and moone, and are seduced with suche superstitions and errours as are they of the firme." [Footnote: Oviedo de la natural hystoria de las Indias. (Toledo, 15 Feby. 1526), fol. 14; and under the title of Relucion Sumaria, p. 16, in Barcia's Historiadores primitivas, tome 1. Translated in Eden's Decades of the new worlde, fol. 213-14.] The details of the exploration appear more distinctly upon the charts which the royal cosmographers at Seville prepared, with the names given to the prominent points of the coast. Two of these maps are still extant, bearing the respective dates of 1527 and 1529, the first by an anonymous cartographer, and the last by Ribero. [Footnote: Both these maps, so far as they relate to America, have been reproduced, with very valuable notes and illustrations, by Mr. Kohl in Die beiden altesten general karten von Amerika. Weimar 1860.] The whole line of coast from the river Jordan, in latitude 33 degrees 10', visited by both the expeditions of Ayllon, to Cape Breton, is laid down upon them with sufficient exactitude. The names indicate the exploration to have been made by Gomez the whole distance between those points; for no other navigator of Spain, in the language of which they are given, had sailed within those limits up to the time these maps bear date. The only question which has been raised in this regard relates to the expeditions of Ayllon; but the first of these, a joint descent upon the coast to carry off Indians in 1520 by two vessels belonging to the licentiates Ayllon and Matienzo of St. Domingo, proceeded no further than the Jordan, as we learn from the testimony of Pedro de Quejo, the pilot of Matienzo. [Footnote: Proceedings before the Auditors at St Domingo, by virtues of a royal decree of Nov. 1525, in relation to the dispute between Ayllon and Matienzo concerning their discovery, preserved in MS. at Seville.] The expedition which Ayllon made afterwards in 1526, in person, to the same coast, proceeded directly to the river Jordan, and after remaining there a few days, ran southwesterly along the coast to Gualdape or St Helena, where Ayllon died, and from whence it thereupon immediately returned home to St Domingo, without any further attempt at exploration. [Footnote: tom. III. p 624. (Madrid 1853.) Mr. Kohl states (Discovery of Mains, 397) that the ships of Ayllon made an extensive survey of the coast, NORTH of the Jordan, soon after their arrival in the country. In this he is in error; into which he appears to have been misled by Navarrete, a part of whose language he quotes in a note, as that of Oviedo. Navarret, referring to the portion of Oviedo's history, not then (1899) published, as his authority, says on this point that after leaving the river Jordan the ships of Ayllon proceeded to Gualdape, "distante cuarenta o cicuenta leguas mas al norte" distant forty or fifty leagues more to the north; whereas the language of Oviedo, as contained in the recently published edition of his work, is, "acordaron de yrse a pohlar la costa delante hacia la costa accidental, e fueron a un grand rio (quarenta o quarenta e cico leguas de alli, pocas mas o menos) que si dice Gualdape," (ut supra, p. 628) they agreed to go and settle the coast further on towards the west coast, and sent to a large river (forty or fifty-five leagues from that place, a little more or less) which is called Gualdape. The course of the coast at these points is northeast and southwest. A westerly course was therefore to the SOUTH and not to the north. Besides, Oviedo states that the Jordan was in latitude 33 degrees 40' and that Gualdape was the country through which the river St. Helena ran, which he also calls the river of Gualdape, and which in another part of his history he places in latitude 33 degrees N., and expressly stating that the Jordan was north of the St. Helena, towards Cape Trafalgar, or Cape Fear (tom. II p. 144.) Ayllon, therefore did not sail north of the Jordan, and the names on the Ribero map, north of that river, are not attributed to his expedition.] This disastrous expedition, therefore, went no further north, than the Jordan or Santee. It demonstrated the falsity of the stories told to Peter Martyr by Francis, the Chicorane, as he was called, one of the Indians seized in the first expedition and taken by Ayllon to Spain, of the vast provinces with uncouth names which were upon his authority transferred to the royal cedule granted to Ayllon on the 12th June, 1523. [Footnote: P. Martyr, Dec. VII. o.2; Navarrete III. 153.] That region remained unknown, therefore, until the voyage of Gomez, and to it and it alone can the names on these maps, within the limits before designated, be attributed. These maps passed at once into Italy; and that of Ribero, bearing the date of 1529 and the arms of the then reigning pontiff, Clement VII, and his successors, the most finished of the three copies known to exist, is still to be found at Rome, and is reasonably supposed to have been the original; and like the last decade of Peter Martyr in 1526, which mentions the discoveries of Gomez, to have been sent to the Holy Father at his desire, in order to keep him informed of the latest discoveries. [Footnote: Nouvelles Annales des Voyages. Nouvelle series, tome xxxv. Annee 1853. Tome troisieme. Paris. Les Papes geographes et la cartographic du Vatican. Par R. M. Thomassey. Appendix p. 275.] Other copies of the Spanish charts showing the exploration of Gomez, found their way in to Italy about the same time, proving that there was then no interdict against their exportation from Spain to that country, at least. [Footnote: In regard to the freedom which the charts of the Spanish navigators so enjoyed there is confirmatory proof in Ramusio. In the preface to his third volume, dedicated to his friend Fracastor of Florence, he writes: "All the literary men daily inform you of any discovery made known to them by captain or pilot coming from those parts, and among others the aforesaid Sig. Gonzalo (Oviedo) from the island of Hispaniola, who every year visits you once or twice with some new made chart."] This appears by a volume which was published in Venice in 1534 under the auspices of Ramusio, [Footnote: M. d'Avezac in Bulletin de la Societe de Geographic for July and August, 1872.] embracing a summary of the general history of the West Indies by Peter Martyr and a translation of Oviedo's natural history of the Indies of 1526, containing the account of Gomez' voyage, with a map of America upon which the discoveries of Gomez are laid down the same as upon the Spanish maps of 1527 and 1529, before mentioned. The following colophon, giving the origin of this map, is to be found at the end of the translation of Oviedo: "Printed at Venice, in the month of December 1534. For the explanation of these books there has been made an universal map of the countries of all the West Indies, together with a special map, taken from two marine charts of the Spaniards, one of which belonged to Don Pietro Martire, Councillor of the Royal Council of the said Indies, and was made by the pilot and master of marine charts, Nino Garzia de Loreno, in Seville. The other was made also by a pilot of the majesty, the emperor, in Seville. With which maps the reader can inform himself of the whole of this new world, place by place, the same as if he had been there himself." [Footnote: This volume has no general title, but contains three books, primo, secondo & ultimo della historia de l'India Occidentali. It is very rarely found with the large map of America. We are indebted to the kindness of James Lonox, Esq. of New York, for the use of a perfect copy in this respect.] The special map here referred to is one of Hispaniola, in the same volume, and was undoubtedly taken from that of Nuno Garcia, in the possession of Peter Martyr. It was therefore made in or before the year 1526, since Martyr died in that year. The map of America, by the pilot of the emperor at Seville, was probably the anonymous map of 1527 before mentioned, as it appears not to have had the name of the author upon it. These facts prove at least that the map of Ribero was in Italy in the year 1529, and that the map of 1527 may have been there before that year. It was from the delineation of the coast on one or other of these two maps, which are in that respect almost identically the same, that the description of it in the Verrazzano letter was derived. This will now be made manifest by the application of that description to the map of Ribero, so much of which as is necessary, is here reproduced for that purpose. In making the proof thus proposed, it is to be borne in mind that the letter is positive and explicit as to the extent and limits of the discovery or exploration which it describes. It fixes them by three different modes which prove each, other: 1. By giving the latitude of the commencement and termination of the voyage along the coast; 2. By a declaration in two different forms of the entire distance run, and 3. By a statement of intermediate courses and distances, from point to point, between the landfall and the place of leaving the coast, separately, making in the aggregate the whole distance named. There can be therefore no mistake as to the meaning of the writer in respect of the extent of the exploration. As to its limits and extent, we have already had occasion to quote his language in impressing upon Francis the great length of the voyage; giving both at the same time: "In the voyage," he says, "which we made by order of your majesty, in addition to the 92 degrees which we ran towards the west from our point of departure, before we reached land in latitude 34, we have to count 300 leagues which we ran northeastwardly and 400 nearly east, along the coast, before we reached the 50th parallel of north latitude, the point where we turned our course from the shore towards home." This distance is also mentioned in the total at the end of the voyage, where he says: "finding our provisions and naval stores nearly exhausted, we took in wood and water, and determined to return to France, having discovered 700 leagues of unknown lands." The several courses and distances run are described in the letter, from point to point, as follows: [Footnote: The translation of Dr. Cogswell, in N.Y. Hist. Collections, is here used, somewhat condensed.] First. "We perceived that it (the land) stretched to the SOUTH and L. coasted along in that direction in search of some port in which we might come to anchor, and examine into the nature of the country, but for FIFTY LEAGUES we could find none in which we could lie 50 securely." SECOND. "Seeing the coast still stretched to the south we resolved to change our course and stand to the northward, and as we still had the same difficulty, we drew in with the land, and sent a boat ashore. Many people, who were seen coming to the sea-side, fled at our approach. We found not far from this people another. This country is plentifully supplied with lakes and ponds of running water and being in the latitude of 34, the air is salubrious, pure and temperate, and free from the extreme both of heat and cold. We set sail from this place continuing to coast along the shore, which we found stretching out to the west (east?) While at anchor on this coast, there being NO HARBOR to enter, we sent the boat on shore with twenty-five men to obtain water. Departing hence, and always following the shore, which stretched to the NORTH, we came in the space of FIFTY LEAGUES to another land which appeared beautiful and 50 full of the largest forests." THIRD. "After having remained here three days riding at anchor on the coast, as we could find no harbor we determined to depart, and coast along the shore to the NORTHEAST. After proceeding ONE HUNDRED LEAGUES, we found a very pleasant situation among some STEEP HILLS THROUGH WHICH A VERY LARGE RIVER, deep at its mouth forced its way 100 to the sea." FOURTH. "We took the boat and entering the river we found the country on its banks well peopled. All of a sudden a violent contrary wind blew in from the sea, and forced us to return to our ship. Weighing anchor, we sailed EIGHTY LEAGUES TOWARDS THE EAST, as the coast stretched in that direction, and always in sight of it. At length we discovered an island, triangular in form, about ten leagues from the mainland. We gave it the name of your majesty's 80 illustrious mother." FIFTH. "We did not land there, as the weather was unfavorable, but proceeded to another place, FIFTEEN LEAGUES distant from the island, where we found a very excellent harbor. It looks towards the south, on which side the harbor is half a league broad. Afterwards, upon entering it, the extent between the east and the north is twelve leagues, and then enlarging itself, forms a VERY LARGE BAY, twenty 15 leagues in circumference." SIXTH. "Having supplied ourselves with every thing necessary, on the sixth of May we departed from the port and sailed one hundred and fifty leagues, keeping so close to the coast as never to lose it from our sight. WE DID NOT STOP TO LAND, as the weather was very favorable for pursuing our voyage, and the country presented no 150 variety. The shore stretched to the EAST" SEVENTH. "And FIFTY LEAGUES beyond, MORE TO the NORTH, where we found a MORE ELEVATED COUNTRY. The people were entirely different from the others we had seen, so rude and barbarous that we were unable by any signs we could make, to hold communication with them. Against their will WE PENETRATED TWO OR THREE LEAGUES INTO THE 50 INTERIOR with twenty-five men." EIGHTH. "Departing from thence we kept along the coast, steering BETWEEN EAST AND NORTH, and found the country more pleasant and open. Within FIFTY LEAGUES we discovered thirty two islands, all 50 near the mainland." NINTH. "We had no intercourse with the people. After sailing between east and north ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY LEAGUES MORE we determined to return France, having discovered 700 leagues of unknown lands." 150 Making a total of 695 L. Now let the reader trace for himself, these courses and distances, as shown on the accompanying sketch of the map of Ribero. according to the following scale, [Proofreaders Note: scale omitted] representing the measurements in the letter; which are calculated on the basis of 15.625 leagues to a degree, while those on the map are 17 1/2 leagues; and he will find, that not only is the whole littoral distance between the parallels of 34 degrees and 50 degrees on the map about seven hundred leagues, but that the several courses and distances, of which this entire distance is composed according to the letter, correspond with similar divisions on the map, proving to a certainty that this map was the source from which the line of coast described in the letter was derived, or the reverse. It will be observed that the FIRST course, beginning according to the letter at the landfall, in latitude 34 N., commences on the map a little north of C. Trafalgar as there laid down, now Cape Fear, and proceeds southerly fifty leagues to C. de S. Roman. The first course being retraced, the SECOND, also of fifty leagues, starting from the landfall near C. Traffalgar, extends to C. de S. Juan of the map, the well known point of Hatteras. The THIRD, runs from C. de S. Juan, one hundred leagues NORTHWARDLY, to the Montana verde, the Navesinks at the mouth of the Hudson, "described as the pleasant situation among steep hills, through which a very large river forced its way into the sea." The perfect identification of this course and distance has already been observed. The fourth extends EASTERLY from the Montana verde eighty leagues and strikes the islands of the C. de Muchas yllas, or Cape Cod, where, among the Elizabeth islands, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, the island of Louise is intended by the letter to be placed. This course, easterly, fixes the position of that island at this point. The FIFTH course and distance embrace fifteen leagues from the islands of C. de Muchas yllas, but the direction is not stated, and is left to be inferred from the fact which is stated that they proceeded on to another place where they entered a harbor, at the mouth of a large bay opening between NORTH and east, of twelve leagues in width. This course must therefore have been NORTHERLY and proceeded along the easterly shore of C. de Muchas yllas or Cape Cod. The sixth runs easterly from the harbor on the C. de Muchas yllas, or Cape Cod, one hundred and fifty leagues EASTERLY which include the opening of the great bay of twelve leagues and proceeds along the Arecifes or C. Sable on the coast of Nova Scotia to the Sarcales, probably Cape Canso at Chedabucto bay, WHERE THE COAST TRENDED MORE NORTHERLY. The SEVENTH, from the Sarcales, fifty leagues MORE TO THE NORTH, extends along the tierra de los Bretones or island of C. Breton to the cape of that name, passing the R. de la buelta, the easterly limit of the voyage of Gomez. From this river easterly the map is compiled, as the names indicate, from Portuguese charts. The EIGHTH, from C. Breton FIFTY LEAGUES between north and east, runs along the easterly coast of the tierra de los Bretones, to the supposed northerly shore of the bay between that land and the tierra de los Bacallaos or Newfoundland, but in reality the southerly entrance into the gulf of St. Lawrence, The NINTH from the termination of the last course, embraces one hundred and fifty leagues between north and east along the coast of the Bacallaos to C. Rasso or Cape Race and thence along the easterly coast of the Bacallaos to the Y. de Bacallaos In latitude 50 degrees N., the point of departure from the coast, and making the complement of 695 leagues, in all. Such exact and unexceptional concurrence in the observation of distances for over two thousand miles, as this comparison exhibits, by two different navigators sailing at different times, under different circumstances of wind and weather, and under different plans of exploration, is impossible. So far as regards the distances running north and south, such an agreement might happen, because the truth in that direction was ascertainable by any one, by means of observations of the latitude; but not as regards those running east and west; for these, no means of determining them existed, as before explained: and accordingly on the Ribero map they are grossly incorrect. From the Montana verde to the C. de Muchas yllas, that is, from the Hudson to the west end of the peninsula of Cape Cod, the distance appears to be eighty leagues, or nearly double its true length; while the width of the great bay between the C. de Muchas yllas and the Arecifes, or from Cape Cod to Cape Sable is shown to be less than twenty leagues, whereas it is more than fifty. And so also from the Arecifes to the Sarcales, from Cape Sable to Cape Canso, it is one hundred and thirty-five leagues on the map, or twice the actual distance. These great errors show how impossible it was at that time to calculate longitudinal distances correctly. But two navigators, sailing independently as mentioned, could not have fallen into these errors exactly to the same extent, exaggerated in the two cases by the same excessive length, and in the other by the same extraordinary diminution. Yet in the particulars just described the map and the letter correspond precisely. Such a coincidence of mistakes, could not have been accidental. One of these documents must, therefore, have been the source of the other. In determining between them, there can be no mistake in adopting as the original, that one which has a certain and indisputable authenticity, and rejecting that which is unsupported by any other testimony. The voyage of Gomez was long the subject of consideration and preparation, and was heralded to the world for months before it was undertaken. The order of the king of Spain under which it was made, still exists in the archives of that kingdom. The results of the expedition were announced by credible historians of the country, immediately after its return; and the nautical information which it brought back, and in regard to which alone it possessed any interest at the time, was transferred at once to the marine charts of the nation, imperfectly it is true, and spread before the world. These charts still remain in their original form, as they were then prepared. With these incontrovertible facts to sustain it, the discovery of Gomez must stand as established in history and, consequently, the claim of Verrazzano must fall. [Footnote: The map of Ribero is not a faithful representation of the exploration of Gomez, in many respects. The tierra de Ayllon is made to embrace a large portion of the country the coast of which was discovered by Gomez. The bay of Santa Maria, or the Chesapeake, is placed two degrees further south than it should he, that is, in latitude 35 degrees, instead of 37 degrees N. The R. de los Gamos, or Penobscot, mentioned by Cespedes, is not named at all. The question, however, of its greater or less correctness is of no importance on the present occasion; it is sufficient that it was followed by the writer of the letter, erroneous as it was.] X. THE CAREER OF VERRAZZANO. AN ADVENTUROUS LIFE AND AN IGNOMINIOUS DEATH. CONCLUSION. The true history of Verrazzano, so far as known, is now to be given, in order to make a final disposition of this story. Nothing is preserved in relation to his early life. Even the year of his birth is matter of conjecture. He is called by Ramusio, Giovanni da Verrazzano, Florentine; and according to Pelli, was born about the year 1485, His father was Piero Andrea, son of Bernardo, the son of Bernardo of Verrazzano, a little town situated in the Val di Greve, near Florence,--the latter Bernardo having belonged to the magistracy of the priors in 1406. All that his eulogist was enabled to gather concerning him, beyond this brief genealogy, is taken from the Verrazzano letter and the discourse of Ramusio, relating how he was killed, roasted and devoured by the savages in a second voyage to America; [Footnote: The account which Ramusio gives of Verrazzano, and the manner of his death, occurs in his Discourse on Labrador, the Baccalaos and New France (vol. III fol. 41), in which, after reffering to the Cortereaes and Sebastian Cabot, he adds: "There also sailed along the said land, in the year 1524, a great captain of the most Christian king in France, called Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine; and he ran along all the coast, as far as Florida, as will be particularly seen by a letter of his, written to the said king, which alone we have been able to have, because the others have got astray in the troubles of the unfortunate city of Florence. And in the last voyage which he made, having wished to descend on the land with some companions, they were all put to death by those people, and in the presence of those who remained on board of the ship, were roasted and devoured. Such a wretched end had this valiant gentleman, who, had not this misfortune intervened, would, by the great knowledge and intelligence which he had of maritime affairs, and of navigation, accompanied and favoured by the immense liberality of King Francis, have discovered and made known to the world, all that part of the earth, up to the north pole, and would not have been contented with the Coast merely, but would have sought to penetrate far inland, and as far as he could go; and many, who have known and conversed with him, have told me, that he declared it was his intention to seek to persuade the most Christian King to send from these parts, a good number of people to settle in some places of said coast which are of temperate climate, and very fertile soil, with very beautiful rivers and harbors capable of holding any fleets. The settlers in these places would be the occasion of producing many good results, and among others of bringing those rude and ignorant tribes to divine worship, and to our most holy faith, and to show them how to cultivate the land, transporting some of the animals of our Europe to those vast plains; and finally, in time, having discovered the inland parts, and seen whether among the many islands existing there, any passage to the south sea exists, or whether the main land of Florida or the West Indies continues up to the pole. This and so much is what has been related of this so brave a gentleman, of whose toil and sweat, in order that his memory may not remain buried, and his name pass into oblivion, we have desired to give to the light the little that has come into our hands." Ramusio here distinctly asserts that the only document in relation to the voyage of Verrazzano which he had been able to procure, was the letter which he published; but he informs his readers that he had been told by certain persons who had known and conversed with Verrazzano, that it was the intention of the navigator, as he himself declared, to seek permission from Francis I, his adopted sovereign, in whose service it is claimed he made the discovery, to make another voyage to the new found land for the purposes of colonization and further exploration; and he also states, upon the same or other authority, that Verrazzano on another voyage was killed and eaten, by the natives of the country. Consequently, Verrazzano must have made a second voyage to America and obtained such permission from the king. But there is not a particle of evidence in existence, apart from the declarations of these persons to Ramusio, that any such permission was ever given, or that a second voyage took place. It proved the credulity of Ramusio that he received these naked statements without any examination.] with the suggestion of Coronelli, the Venetian geographer, that the place where he thus met his death was at the entrance of the gulf of St. Lawrence, The spurious letter of Carli adds that he had been in Egypt, Syria and most other parts of the world. The ancient manuscripts of Dieppe, as we have seen, [Footnote: Ante, p. 112, note] speak of one of his name who accompanied Aubert, in his voyage to Newfoundland, in 1508; and the statement of Hakluyt before referred to, gives some ground to believe that he was employed in early voyages to that region, before he engaged in his operations against the commerce of Spain. What is certainly known of him relates almost exclusively to his career as a French corsair, during the few years which intervened between the breaking out of hostilities between Francis I and Charles V, and his death, in 1527. His cruises, though directed principally against the Spaniards, were not tender of the interests of Portugal; and it is accordingly from Spanish and Portuguese writers and documents of the period, that the little information that exists in relation to him, is derived. He is called by the former, Juan Florin or Florentin, or simply, the Florentine,--the French corsair. He is designated on an occasion to be noted, as Juan Florin of Dieppe. [Footnote: On the capture of the treasure fleet. See Appendix, iv.] They appear to have known him by no other name. They never heard of him as a discoverer, real or pretended, of new countries, until long afterwards. The Verrazzano letter had not been published when Peter Martyr, Oviedo and Gomara wrote; and when Martyr and Gomara make mention of him, they do so only by the title by which he was designated by the Spanish sailors. There was, therefore, no opportunity for his identification by them in the double character of a great discoverer, and a corsair; and it was not until many years after the publication of the Verrazzano letter that this identification was first declared by Barcio [Footnote: Ensayo Chronologico, sub anno, 1524.]. There is no room, however; to doubt its entire correctness. That the occupation of Verrazzano was that of a cruizer on the seas, is not only declared in the letter ascribed to him, [Footnote: Ramusio gives Verrazzano this character more distinctly than it appears in the original version. One of the first alterations of the text, is of the passage previously referred to, relating to the cruise of the Normandy and Dauphiny, after their repairs in Brittany. The Carli version, reads, in connection with the two ships on that occasion: date restaurati ara V. S. M. inteso il discorso facemo con quelle armate in querra per li liti di Spagna, that is, "where being repaired, your serene majesty will have understood we made the cruize with THIS FLEET OF WAR along the coasts of Spain," from which it is to be implied only, that the cruize was for the purpose of depredating on Spanish commerce. But Ramusio, as became his practice, with this document at least, altered this clause into doce poi che furono secondo il bisogno raccociate So ben armeggiate, per i liti di Spagna ce n'andammo in carso, il che V. M. haverd inteso per il profitto che ne facemmo; which Hakluyt fairly renders: "Where, after we had repaired them in all points as was needfull, and armed them very well, we took our course along by the coast of Spain, which your majesty shall understand, BY THE PROFIT WE RECEIVED THEREBY." As this cruize according to the date of the letter must have taken place in 1523, this language, which is Ramusio's own, as to the profit, would seem to refer almost to the capture by Verrazzano of the treasure sent by Cortes, to the emperor which occurred in the summer of that year, as hereafter related: but Verrazzano's fleet consisted of six instead of two ships on that occasion. The words of Ramusio, show, however, that he knew Verazzano was a rover, in search of booty on the seas or at least, that he so regarded him.] but is clearly established by the agreement made by him with Chabot. Besides, there is no other Giovanni, a Florentine, known in the history of the time, sailing in that capacity under the French flag and from the same port of Dieppe; and the references must have therefore been to him alone. The appellation of corsair, does not necessarily imply a pirate. It was applicable to any one engaged in the capture of vessels on the high seas, whether authorized to do so or not. The state of hostilities between France and Spain, protected Verrazzano under the rules of war, as a subject of Francis, in capturing Spanish vessels, as long as it continued; and the anomalous condition of affairs existing at that time, according to the Portuguese historian, Andrade, of private war between the subjects of the kings of France and Portugal, without any public war between the sovereigns, would seem to have justified him in similar acts in regard to the commerce of the Portuguese, as long as the practice was not forbidden by the kings of the two countries. The first adventure of the kind, in which we hear of Verrazzano, was in 1521. At this time a valuable commerce had grown up between Spain and her conquests in the West Indies, and large amounts in gold, pearls, sugar, hides and other articles were sent home. A ship, on her way from Hispaniola, was captured by him, in the year just mentioned, having on board eighty thousand ducats in gold, six hundred pounds weight--eight ounces to the pound, of pearls and two thousand arrobas, of twenty-five pounds each, of sugar. [Footnote: Peter Martyr, Dec. v. c. 8. Epistola 771 (ed. 1671). In this letter which is dated at Valladolid 19th November 1522, Martyr writes: "Anuo quippe superiore Florinus quidam Gallus pirata navim unam ab Hispaniola venientem, auro ad sommam octoginta millium dragmarum, unionum vero libris octuolibus sexcentis & ruborum saecari duobus millibus rapuit."] In the following year, he took possession of seven vessels bound from Cadiz to the Canary islands, with emigrants, but being overhauled off the point of Gando, by vessels sent in pursuit, was compelled to relinquish his prizes. [Footnote: Don Bartholome Garcia del Castillo in Noticias de la historia de las islas de Canaria, by Don Joseph de Viera y Clavijo. (Madrid 1772-84).] He is next found apparently meditating an expedition against the Portuguese possessions in Brazil, upon the pretext of discovering other countries in the east, which that nation had not found. The mention of this project is positive, and becomes curious and interesting in the history of his life, as it affords the only authentic evidence extant of any suggestion of a voyage of discovery, contemplated by him towards Cathay. The design, if really entertained, appears, however, to have fallen through and to have been abandoned; but it may, nevertheless, have been the foundation of the story of the alleged voyage. It is related by Francisco d'Andrade, in his Chronicle of John III, the then reigning king of Portugal. After referring to the death of Magellan, as an event which removed a cause of difference between the crowns of Portugal and Castile, growing out of the famous expedition of that navigator, Andrade thus speaks of the state of affairs between the crowns of France and Portugal. "At that time, the king was told by some Portuguese, doing business in France, that one Joao Varezano, a Florentine, offered himself to Francis, to discover other kingdoms in the East, which the Portuguese had not found, and that in the ports of Normandy a fleet was being made ready under the favor of the admirals of the coast, and the dissimulation of Francis, to colonize the land of Santa Cruz, called Brazil, discovered and laid down by the Portuguese in the second voyage to India. This, and the complaints every where made of the injuries inflicted by French corsairs, rendered the early attention of the king necessary. "Accordingly he sent to France an ambassador, Joao da Silveyra, son of Fernao da Silveyra, who delayed his going no longer than was necessary to get ready. The purpose of his mission was to ask Francis, inasmuch as there never had been war between them, but rather an ancient peace and friendship, that he would give orders throughout his kingdom for the many robberies and injuries, perpetrated at sea on each other by the Portuguese and French, to cease, (which tacitly was a private and not an open war, as in general they were friends); that whatever could be found in his ports taken from the Portuguese, should be restored, as what might be found in the harbors of Portugal, taken from the French, should be forthwith given up, and that to all who should ask justice in this particular it should he rendered immediately and fully. The king then required Francis likewise, to prevent his vessels from making outfits to go to parts of the Portuguese conquest, whither it was not lawful for even Portuguese vessels to sail or the people to traffic. "Joao da Silveyra was well received at the court of France; but as respects the specific matters of negotiation in his charge, he was answered every way indefinitely, with reasons more specious than sound which appeared to be given not so much to conclude the affaire upon which he treated as to procrastinate and consume time. * * * * * * * "Joao da Silveyra continued to solicit with much urgency the matters in his keeping at the court of France, and received answers respecting them according as the matters which were proposed in Portugal, [the marriage of Carlota, daughter of Francis, with the prince Dam Joao], gave hopes of advancement. The king said through one Luys Homem that he greatly desired the fostering and increase of ancient friendship. Following upon that in a few days he ordered the vessels in his ports preparing for India to be stopped, stating that he would arrange this in such a way that the king should be satisfied. Measures were adopted for the restoration of all property that was known to have been taken from the king or his vessels, and expectations were entertained of an order making such provision throughout as should put a stop to all the robberies and the evils arising from them. Since this had been the principal object for which the embassador had been sent to France, it appeared to the king of Portugal, that it would be for his service that he should order the return of Joao da Silveyra, and that the licentiate Pedro Gomez Feixeira with Master Diego de Gevoeya, (to whom he likewise wrote of this matter) should demand justice respecting certain matters of his property and assist such of his vessels as were seeking it. But before the order for the return of Silveyra had left this court, information was received by one Jacome Monteyro (who by authority of the king of France sought the restitution of property) that Francis had issued new orders, commanding the general sequestration of all the property of the king of Portugal and of his people, the embargo of all his vessels to be found in the ports of France, without the declaration of any new cause, or the statement of any reason for this order, the opposite of what had before been promulgated. The king in consequence, directed Joao da Silveyra to take truthful information of the particulars and the reasons for this proceeding and commanded his presence before the council, to make them known. "Following this, hostilities having been declared between the kingdoms and seignories of the emperor and the king of France, they waging cruel strife by land and sea, the French with an armament afloat took a Spanish ship with gold, belonging to the emperor, within the limits of the Portuguese coast, besides much property of individuals, regardless of where she had been found, so little attentive were they in those times, to Portugal and Portuguese; seized her by force as belonging to their enemies, and carried her off, as good prize of war. Pedro Batelho was sailing the while, giving protection to the coast of Portugal, by the royal order, according to the ancient custom of this kingdom, held always to be useful and necessary, the value of which became evident from what occurred afterwards, when it fell into disuse. "The captain coming out one morning with his fleet, near those who were carrying of the Spanish ship, he obliged them by force to take in sail, as they hesitated to obey for some time, until he informed himself of what had passed. Discovering that there were some doubts and that deliberation would be necessary to do justice, he brought all before him to the port of Lisbon, where the prize was sequestrated and they made prisoners, and the case, by order of the king, was sent to the Casa da Supplicacam where sentence was pronounced the following year. This news, which was directly known in France, made great change in the order of affairs with Portugal, and produced the state they were afterwards in, during the following nine consecutive years that Joao da Silveyra was there, in which time, he accomplished nothing he had in hand, except to EMBARGO THE VOYAGE OF THE FLORENTINE, of which mention is made before, and of some few vessels of corsairs which was but sheer justice to us."[Footnote: Cronica de muyto alto, emuyto poderoso rey destes reynos de Portugal Dom Joao o III deste nome. By Francisco d'Andrade. Part I, c. 13 and 14. (Lisbon 1613.)] The time when these preparations were being made by Verrazzano is more definitely fixed by a despatch of Silveira to the king, from Paris on the 25th of April 1523, in which he states that "Verazano" had not yet left for Cathay that this whole story of an intended voyage of discovery was proposed for the purpose of concealing the real object of the preparations which were going on in Normandy, of seizing the treasure which had been sent from Mexico, by Cortes to the emperor, of the successful accomplishment of which we have now to speak. [Footnote: Sautarem gives the date of this dispatch as the 23d of April 1522, Quadro Elementar, tom III, sec. XVI, p. 165. But the letter of Silveira will be found in full in the Appendix (III) from the Portuguese archives. Santarem]. It is highly probable, therefore, is evidently mistaken as to the year, inasmuch as the news of Magellan's death, to which Andrade refers as a prior event, did not reach Spain until September 1522 and Silveira's appointment as embassador was after that news was received.] In November, 1522, a vessel arrived in Spain which had been sent from Mexico, by the conquistador with the emperor's share of the tribute money collected in that country, in the special charge of Alonzo Davila and Antonio Quinones, with other articles of value. Fearing capture by the French corsairs, this vessel had sailed by the way of the Azores, and leaving the treasure, with its custodians, at the island of Santa Maria, proceeded on without it, in order that a proper force might be sent to that island to bring it safely to Spain. Joan Ribera, the secretary of Cortes, came in the ship to Spain. These facts appear to have become notorious immediately. Peter Martyr mentions them in his letter of the 17th of November 1522, and in the fifth of his decades, written while the treasure was still at Santa Maria, speaks of the French having knowledge of its being left there. "I know not," he says, "in reference to the ships sent there for it, what flying report there is that the French pirates have understood of those ships, God grant them good successe." [Footnote: Dec. v. c. 10. (Lok's trans.)] Three caravels were despatched from Seville to Santa Maria, under the command of Captain Domingo Alonzo, arriving there on the 15th of May 1523. Davila and Quinones immediately embarked in them, with the treasure, sailing directly to Spain. Meanwhile, Verrazzano proceeded with six vessels towards Cape St. Vincent, for the purpose of intercepting them, which he succeeded in doing, within ten leagues of that cape. After a sharp encounter, in which Quinones was killed, he captured two of them, in one of which Davila was taken with the gold, and the other most valuable articles. The third caravel escaped, and arrived in Spain, with a tiger and various articles of rich manufacture, which had belonged to Montezuma. Verrazzano took his prizes into Rochelle. The value of the treasure and articles taken was estimated at more than six hundred thousand ducats, or one million and a half of dollars. [Footnote: Peter Martyr, Dec. v. c. 8. Epist. 771, Nov. 19, 1522, and 779, June 11, 1523 (ed. 1670). Herrera, Dec. III. lib. IV. c. 20. Letter of Davila to the emperor from Rochelle, June 17, 1523, in the archives at Seville, now first published in the Appendix (IV). Martyr says there were two ships, the larger of which only containing the treasure fell into the hands of John Florin, the French pirate, and the others escaped; but Davila must be right.] These facts at least establish that Joao Verazano mentioned by the Portuguse, Andrade and Silveira, was the same person who made the capture of the treasure ships; for it is not to be supposed that two different Florentines of the name of Giovanni, were in command of French fleets, at the same time, belonging to the ports of Normandy alone; and consequently that Verrazzano, our navigator, and Juan Florin the corsair were one. But how far the seizure of the treasure ships was, as before suggested, the original purpose of the fleet can only be inferred from the circumstances, and is important only in connection with the DESIGN of a voyage of discovery. Between the time of the arrival of Ribera with the information that the treasure had been left at the Azores, and the sending of the caravels to bring it to Spain, nearly six months elapsed. Taking the dates, which are established by the official documents now produced, of the fitting out of the fleet in Normandy by Verrazzano and the actual capture of the two caravels, it is easy to see that the real purpose of those preparations from the first, might have been to effect the capture of the treasure. The transmission of the news to Portugal of an intended voyage to Brazil and the sending of instructions to the embassador at [Footnote: According to the letter of Silveira, he was at Polssy on Christmas, and Andrade was therefore, probably in error in stating that he had his instructions in regard to Varezano before he left Portugal.] the French court could all have taken place after the detention of the treasure at Santa Maria became known in France and the fitting out of the vessels for its capture had begun to be made. It is stated by Andrade that it was at a port in Normandy where the vessels were being made ready; and it is to be presumed, from the connection of Verrazzano with Jean Ango, as shown subsequently by the agreement with Chabot for a like purpose, that it was from Dieppe, and probably a the expense of that rich merchant, who we are told was enabled to entertain his sovereign with princely magnificence and to embargo the port of Lisbon, with a fleet of his own, [Footnote: Mem. Chron. de Dieppe. I. 106-111.] that they sailed on this occasion. Verrazzano is certainly found at Rochelle on the 16th of June, 1523, two months after the despatch of Silveira was written, with his prizes captured on a different expedition from that mentioned by the ambassador. It is evident, therefore, that the project of a voyage of discovery to Cathay, if ever seriously entertained, had at that time been abandoned; as may also be inferred from the statement of Andrade, that Silveira, in the nine years he was at the court of France, succeeded only in embargoing the voyage of the Florentine, and accomplishing some minor matters.[Footnote: The document accompanying the letter of Davila in the archives, describes Juan Florin as of Dieppe, and thus fixes the seat of his operations in Normandy. See Appendix, (IV. 2.)] But the question of any such voyage of discovery having been made at the time claimed in the Verrazzano letter is effectually set at rest by the fact that Verrazzano was then actually engaged in a corsairial enterprise elsewhere. Peter Martyr, in an epistle written on the 3d of August 1524, less than a month after the alleged return of Verrazzano to Dieppe from his voyage of discovery, wrote from Valladolid that "a courier of the king of Portugal had arrived (with word) that Florin, the French pirate, had captured a ship of his king on her way from the Indies, with a cargo valued at one hundred and eighty thousand ducats." [Footnote: Epist. 800 (ed. 1670).] It is impossible for Verrazzano to have been on the coast of North America, or on his return from Newfoundland to France, and at the same time to have taken a ship on her way from the Indies to Portugal, coming as she must have done, by the Cape of Good Hope. The defeat of Francis I at the battle of Pavia and his capture and detention in Spain during the year 1525, seem to have suspended the depredations upon the seas by the French, and nothing more occurs relating to Verrazzano, until after the release of the king, in the following year, and then in an adventure which seems to have cost him his life, unless his probable appearance in England as mentioned by Hakluyt, to which reference has already been made, be an exception. Allusion has also been made several times to an agreement between Chabot, admiral of France, and others, including Verrazzano, which now assumes particular importance. It is the only document yet produced in France, relating to him, and is of recent discovery. [Footnote: Margry, Les Navigations Francaises, p.194 (Paris, 167.) See Appendix (II)] By this agreement it was stipulated that Chabot, as admiral of France, should furnish two galleons, Jean Ango one ship, and Verrazzano two pilots besides himself, and that the three persons here named should with Guillaume Preudhomme, general of Normandy, Pierre Despinolles and Jacques Boursier, in different specified amounts each, make up the sum of twenty thousand pounds in Tours currency for the expenses, on joint account, of a voyage to the Indies for spices,--the admiral and Ango, however, to have one- fourth of all the merchandise returned, for the use of the vessels, and Verrazzano to have one-sixth of the remaining three-fourths, for his compensation and that of his two pilots. The contract contained another provision, that if any booty should be taken on the sea from the Moors, or other enemies of the faith and the king, the admiral should first take a tenth of it and the remainder should be divided as stipulated in regard to the merchandise, except such part as should, upon advisement, be given to the crew. The admiral was to have letters patent expedited from the king for permission to make the voyage. This paper has no date, but as it was made by Chabot, in his official capacity, as admiral of France, it could not have been earlier than March 1526, when, as we have seen, he was so created. It belongs, therefore, either to that or the following year, judging from the fatal consequences which happened to Verrazzano in the latter. Although a voyage from France to the Indies for spices was not an improbable venture at that time inasmuch as one was actually made from Dieppe, two years afterwards, by Jean Parmentier in the service of Ango, there is every reason to believe that such was not the real object of the parties to this agreement. One of the stipulations between them was for a division, of booty, showing an intention to make captures on the sea. Who were the enemies of the king from whom it was to be taken is not stated. By the treaty of Madrid, in January 1526. peace existed between France and Spain, and any expedition from one of them against the commerce of the other, was clearly piratical. Neither did war exist at this time, between France and Portugal. Yet it appears that both the Spaniards and the Portuguese, were searching for Verrazzano at the time, when the former succeeded in capturing him, in September or October 1527. He had, therefore, not sailed to the Indies and must have made himself obnoxious to those nations, by fresh depredations upon their vessels. Bernal Diaz, who gives an account of his capture and execution, states that he was actually so engaged. [Footnote: Historia verdadera, fol 164.] It appears from the letters of the judge who superintended his execution that he was then encountered by six Biscayan galleons and ships, and after battle, captured and taken by them to Cadiz, with his crew, consisting of one hundred and twenty or thirty persons, besides several gentlemen adventurers, Verrazzano offered his captors thirty thousand ducats to be released, but in vain. He was sent under guard with the adventurers to Madrid, but was overtaken on the way at Colmenar near Puerto del Pico, villages between Salamanca and Toledo, [Footnote: Blaen, Utriusque Castilia nova descripto. Martiniere, Dictionaire Geographique, aub Colmenar et Pico.] by the judge of Cadiz with an order made by the emperor at Lerma on the 13th of October 1527, by virtue of which he was there put to death in November of that year. Such was the termination of the career of this hold man, which was long ago substantially told by Bernal Diaz and Barcia, but so loosely in regard to dates, as to have created doubts as to their correctness, but which is established by the documents existing in the archives at Simancas, now brought to light. [Footnote: See the letter of the judge of Cadiz, in the Appendix (V.L.) Barcia, in his Chronological Essay, mentions the capture and execution of Juan the Florentine as a pirate under the year 1524. He does not state that they took place in that year, but refers to them in connection with the discoveries alleged to have been made in that year by Verrazzano, whom he identifies as the corsair. It has been supposed, consequently, that he meant that year as the time of Verrazzano's death; and hence, inasmuch as Verrazzano was known to have been alive after that year, that the whole story was an error. The letters of Juan de Giles, the resident judge of Cadiz, appended to this memoir, enable us to fix the date of his execution, for although not dated themselves, they contain a reference to the date of the cedule, ordering the execution, by which it can be determined. Giles mentions that this cedule was dated at Lerma, on the 13th of last month, showing that it was made there on the 13th of some month. According to the Itinerary of Charles V, kept by his private secretary, Vandernesse, containing an account of the emperor's journeys from the year 1519 to 1551, Charles went to Lerma, a small town in Old Castile, for the first time on the 9th of May, 1524 and returned thence to Burgos on the 12th of that month, going to Lerma again on the 21st of July of that year and leaving it on the 24th for Vallidesole. He was not there afterwards, until the 12th of October, 1527, where he remained until the 17th of that month when he went to Burgos. He went to Lerma again on the 20th of February 1528, and remained there for two days only. These are all the occasions of his presence at Lerma during the whole period of the Itinerary. These dates prove that the only possible occasion for issuing the order of execution was the 13th of October 1527. The prisoners left under guard, on the 15th of that month for Madrid, and the letter apprising the emperor that the order had been executed upon Verrazzano must have been written in November, the month following. The Itinerary will be found in the Correspondence of the Emperor Charles V, by William Bradford, London, 1850.] And thus finally the testimony, upon which the tale of discovery was credited and proclaimed to the world, is contradicted and disproved. The statement that Verrazzano and a member of his crew were killed and then feasted upon by the inhabitants of the coast which he had visited a second time, has no support or confirmation in the history of that rude and uncivilized people; for, however savage and cruel they were towards their enemies, or, under provocation, towards strangers, no authenticated instance of their canibalism has ever been produced; but on the contrary the testimony of the best authorities, is that they were guiltless of any such horrid practice. Yet that statement was a part of the information which Ramusio received and communicated to his readers at the same time with the Verrazzano letter; and constituted a part of the evidence upon which he relied. How utterly false it was is shown by the agreement with Chabot and the capture and execution of Verrazzano by the Spaniards. It is now seen how the credulity of the historian was imposed upon, and he was led by actual misrepresentations to adopt a narrative which has no foundation in truth, and whose inconsistencies and incongruities he vainly sought to reconcile, but which, for three centuries, sanctioned by his authority alone, has been received as authentic and true; until at length, by the exposure of its original character, and the circumstances of its publication by him, with the production of undoubted evidence from the records of the time, it is proven to be a deliberate fraud. This completes our purpose. The question, however, still presents itself what was the motive for this gross deception? The answer is suggested by the feet that all the evidence produced in favor of the story is traceable to Florence, the birthplace of Verrazzano. Ramusio obtained the Verazzano letter there,--the only one, he says, not astray in consequence of its unfortunate troubles. The letter of Carli, enclosing that of Verrazzano, is professedly written by a Florentine to his father in that city. The map of Hieronimo de Verrazano bears the impress of the family. The discourse of the French captain of Dieppe appears to have been sent originally to Florence, whence it was procured by Ramusio. Even the globe of Euphrosynus Ulpius, a name otherwise unknown, is represented to have been constructed for Marcellus, who had been archbishop of Florence. They are all the testimony of Florence in her own behalf. The cities of Italy which had grown in wealth and importance during the fifteenth century, by means of enterprising and valuable commerce, produced and nurtured a race of skillful seamen, among whom were the most distinguished of the first discoverers of the new world, in the persons of Columbus, Vespucci and the Cabots; but those cities contributed nothing more to the discoveries which thus were achieved, than to give these men birth and education. The glory of promoting and successfully accomplishing those results belonged to other nations, which had the wisdom and fortune to secure the services of these navigators. The cities shone, however, with the lustre reflected from having reared and instructed them to the work they so wonderfully performed. Although enjoying a common nationality, these municipales belonged to independent republics and were in a measure rivals of each other. Florence emulated Genoa. She truly boasted that Vespucci, born and raised on her soil, was the first to reach the main land and thus to have his name applied for the whole continent, "America quasi Americi terra;" while Genoa justly claimed for her son, that the discovery of all America was to be regarded as assured from the moment that Columbus landed on the little sandy island of Guanahana, on the 12th of October 1492. [Footnote: Humboldt, Examen Critique, IV, 37.] But Florence enjoys in addition the unenviable distinction of having sought to advance the pretensions of Vespucci by fictitious letters, purporting to be signed with his name.[Footnote: Varnhagen, Amerigo Vespucci, son caractere, ses scrits (meme les moins authentiques) &c., p. 67, et seq. (Lima, 1865).] That this spirit of civic pride in that same community may have actuated the fabrication of the Verrazzano letter is not improbable; but in justice to the memory of Verrazzano it must be added, there is no reason to believe that he was in any way accessory to the imposture. APPENDIX I. LETTERA DI FERNANDO CARLI A SUO PADRE. From the Archivo Storico Italiano. Appendice Tomo IX. 58-5 Firenze 1858. Al nome di Dio a di 4 Agosta 1524. "Onorando padre,--Considerando che quando fui in la armata di Barbaria alle Gierbe vi furono grate le nuove advisatevi giornalmente per lo illustre sig. Don Ugo di Moncada, capitano generale della Cesarea Maesta in quelle barbare parti, seguite certando [Footnote: Combattendo (Nota dell edisione Romana) con li Mori di detta isola; per la quale mostrasi haver fatto piacere a molti nostri padroni ed amici, e con quelli della conseguita vittoria congratulatovi, pertanto, essendo nuovamente qui nuova della giunta del capitano Giovanui da Verrazzano nostro fiorentino allo porto di Diepa in Normandia con sua nave Delfina, con la quale si parti dalle insule Canarie fino di Gennaio passato, per andare in busca di terre nuove per questa serenissima corona di Francia, in che mostro coraggio troppo nobile e grande a mettersi a tanto incognito viaggio con una sola nave che appena e una caravella di tonelli [Footnote: L'amanuense ha lasciato il numero delle lonnellate di cui era capace la nave (Nota come sopra)], solo con 60 uomini, con intenzione di, giusta sua possa discoprire il Oataio, tenendo cammino per altri climati di quelli usano li Portughesi in lo discoprire di verso la parte di Calicut, ma andando verso coro e settentrione omnino tenendo, che ancora [Footnote: Ancorche] Tolomeo ed Aristotile ed altri cosmografi descrivano verso tali climati non trovarsi terra, di trovarvene a ogni modo; e cosi gli ha Dio concesso, come distintamente descrive per una sua lettera a questa S. M.; della quale in questa ne e una copia. E per mancargli le vettovaglie, dopo molti mesi giunto navigando, assegna essergli stato forza tornare da quello in questo emisperio; e in sette mesi suto in viaggio mostrare grandissimo ed accelerato cammino, aver fatto cosa miranda e massima a chi intende la marinera del mondo. Della quale al cominciamento di detto suo viaggio si fece male iuditio [Footnote: L'ediz. romana ha indizio, una crediamo per errore di stampa.], e molti pensorno che non piu nedilui ne del vascello si avesse nuova, ma che ei dovesso perdere da quella banda della Norvegia per il grands diaccio che e per quello oceano settentrionale; ma come disse quel Moro, lo Dio grande, per darca ogni giorno piu notizie di sua infinita possanza e mostrarci di quanto sia admirabile questa mundiale machina, gli ha discoperto una latitudine di terra, come intenderete, di tauta grandezza che, secondo le buone ragioni e gradi, per latitudine (et) altezza, assegna e mostra piu grande che l'Europa, Africa e parte di Asia: ergo mundus novus; e guesto senza lo che [Footnote: Quello che (Nota come sopra.)] hanno discoperto in piu auni gli Spani per l'occidente, che appena e un anno torno Ferrando Maga-ghiana, quale discoperse grande paese con una nave meno delle cinque [Footnote: Forse venne qui omesso ite o simile; e sembra accennarsi al naufragio di una di quelle cinque navi] a discoprire. Donde addusse garofani molto piu eccellenti delli soliti; e le altro sue navi in 5 anui mai nuova ci e trapelata. Stimansi perae. Quello [Footnote: nelle romana si legge: "stimansi per se quello ec."; ma ci sembra che il senso glustifichi abbastanza la nostra correzione.] che questo nostro capitano abbia condotto non dice per questa sua lettera, salvo uno uomo giovanetta preso di quelli paesi; ma stimansi che abbia portato mostra di oro, poicbe da quelle bande non lo etimano, e di droghe e di altri liquori aromatici, per conferie qua con mold mercatanti di poi che sara stato alla presenza della Serenissima Maesta. E a questa ora doverra. essarvi, a di qua trasferirsi in breve, per che e molto desiato, par ragionare seco; tanto piu che trovers qui la Maesta del Re nostro sire, Che fra tre o quattro giorni vi si attende: e speriamo She S. M. lo rimetta. di mezza dozzina di buoni vascelli, e che tornera al viaggio. E se Francesco Carli nostro ci fosse tornato dal Cairo, advisate che alla ventura vorra andere seco a detto viaggio, e credo si conoschino al Cairo dove e stato piu anni; e non solo in Egitto ed Soria, ma quasi per tutto il cognito mondo; e di qua mediante sua virtu e stimato un altro Amerigo Vespucci, un altro Ferrando Magaghiana, e davantaggio; e speriamo che rimontandosi delle altre buone navi e vascelli ben conditi a vettovagliati come si richiede, abbia ad iscoprire qualche profittoso traffico e fatto; e fara, prestandogli nostro Signore Dio vita, onore alla nostra patria da acquistarne immortale fama e mamoria. E Alderotto Brunelleschi che parti con lui, e per fortuna tornando indietro nou volse piu seguire, come di costa lo intende, sara malcontento. Ne altro per ora mi occorre, perche per altre vi ho avvisato il bisogno. A voi di continuo mi raccomando, pregandovi ne facciate parte agli amici nostri, non dimenticando Pierfrancesco Dagaghiano [Footnote: Forse, da Gagliano], che per essere persona perita, tengo che na prendera grande passatempo; ed u lui mi raccomanderete. Simile al Rustichi, al quale non dispiacera se si diletta, come suole, intendere cose di cosmografia. Che Dio tutti di male vi guardi. Vostro figliuoio FERNANDO CARLI in Lione." II. AGREEMENT OF PHILIPPE CHABOT, ADMIRAL OF FRANCE WITH CERTAIN ADVENTURERS INCLUDING VERRAZZANO. From the Fontette Collection, XXI, 770, fol. 60, in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. First printed by M. Marguy, and her corrected according to the MS. Nous, Philippe Chabot, baron d'Apremont, chevalier de l'ordre du Roi, son gouverneur et lieutenant general de Bourgoingne, admiral de France et de Bretaine. Avons ce jourdhuy delibere que, pour le bien, prouffict et utilite de la chose publieque du royaulme de France, mettre sur deux de nos gallyons estant de present au Havre de Grace avec une nef appartenant a Jehan Ango, de Dieppe, du port soixantedix tonneaulx ou environ, por iceulx troys veseaulx, esquipper, vitailler et convinyr, pour faire le voiaige des espiceryes aux Indies.--Dont pour icelluy voiage faire avons accorde avec les personnes cidessoubz nommes et signez en la maniere qui ensuict pour fournyr lesd. trois navyres de marchandises, victailles et avance de compaignons ainsi qu'il sera requis et necessaire. Et pour ce faire avons conclud et delibere, avec iceulx, mectre et employer jusqnes a la somme de vingt mil livres tour, c'est assavoir, pour nous Admiral quatre mille livres tour, maistre Guillaume Preudhomme, general de Normandye, deux mil livres tour; Pierre Despinolles, mil livres tour; Jehan Ango; deux mil livres tour; Jacques Boursier, pareille somme de deux mil livres tournoys, messire Jehan de Varesam, principalle pilote, semblable somme de deux mil livres tournoys. Lesd. parties revenans ensemble a la somme de vingt mil livres tournoys. Por icelle employer aux vitailles, marchandises et avance, loyer de compagnons. Et nous Amyral et Ango prometons bailler lead. gallyons et nef, bien et deuement radoubees et accoustrees, comme il appartient a faire led voyaige, tant da calfadages, cables, ancres, doubles appareilz, tous cordages, artilleries, pouldres, boullets, et tout ce qui est requiz a telz navires pour faire ung tel et si long voiaige que cestuy et rendre iceulx galyons et nefs prestz, et apareillez a faire led. voiaige dedans deux moys de ce jourduy Par ainsy que nous Admiral et Ango, prenderons au retour dud. voiaige, pour le fret et noleage desd. gallyous et nef, le cart de toutes les marchandises qui reviendront et seront rapportes par iceulx, sans aucune chose payer. Et pour le loyer dudict messire Jehan pillote, lequel s'est submis et oblige de fournyr deux pillotes bons et suffisans pour conduire les deux aultres navires, prendra pr son dict loyer et de ses deux pillotes, le sixiesme de tout se qui reviendra de marchandises, led. cart por nolliage, les frais et mises des marchandises et loyers desa copaignons en prealable prins et leves avant que prendre led. sixiesme. Et se, par cas de fortune, aucuns d'iceulx gallyons on nef feussent pdus aud. voiaige, ou que l'ung p quelque incovenient et les deux aultres feissent leur voiaige, la marchandise qui reviendroit se pteroit comme dessus et y ptiroit led. navire qui n'ayroit este audict voyaige et les marchans, chacun au marc la livre, car tout va a commun profit. Et se aucun butin se faict a la mer sur les Mores, ou aultres ennemys de la Foy et du Roy; monseigneur l'Amyral prendera en prealable sur icelluy butin son xme, et le reste qui revenderoit dud. butin se ptira comme l'autre marchandise, sanf quelque portion d'icelluy butin, que ong baillera aux copagnons ainsi qu'il sera avise. Et fera mond. sr Lamyral expedier letres du Roy en patent pour avoir license et conge faira led. voiaige, et que aucun empeschement ne leur sera fet ou donne par aucune nation des aliez, amys ou cofenderez du Roy nore d sr. Pour le voiage de messire Joan. [Translation.] We, Philippe Chabot, Baron d'Apremont, Knight of the Ordre du Roi, his Governor and Lieutenant-general of Burgundy, Admiral of France and of Brittany, Have this day determined for the good, advantage, and utility of the public affairs of the Kingdom of France, to put two of our galleons, at present at Havre de Grace, with one ship belonging to Jehan Ango of Dieppe, of seventy tons burden or thereabouts, to equip, victual and fit these three vessels, to make the voyage for spices to the Indies. To make the aforesaid voyage we have agreed with the persons hereinafter named and signed, in the manner following, to furnish the said three vessels with goods, victuals, and advance money for the crew, as shall be requisite and necessary. And to do this we have concluded and determined with the aforesaid, to put and employ as large a sum as twenty thousand pounds, Tours currency, that is to say, for ourself, Admiral, four thousand pounds, Tours; Master Guillaume Preudhomme, General of Normandy, two thousand pounds, Tours; Pierre Despinolles, one thousand pounds, Tours; Jehan Ango, two thousand pounds, Tours; Jacques Boursier, an equal sum of two thousand pounds, Tours; Messire Jehan de Varesam, Chief pilot, a like sum of two thousand pounds, Tours. The said parts together amounting to the said sum of 20,000 pounds, Tours, [Footnote: The sums here named do not make twenty thousand pounds.--TRANSLATOR.] to be employed for provisions, merchandise, and advance money to hire the crew. And we, Admiral and Ango, promise to deliver the said galleons and ship well and properly refitted and accoutred, as befits to make the said voyage, as well as caulkings, cables, anchors, duplicate furniture, all cordage, artillery, powder, shot, and all that is required by such vessels, to make such a long voyage as this; and to have these galleons and ship ready and prepared to make the said voyage within two months from this day. Also, that we, Admiral and Ango, will take, on the return from the said voyage, for the freight and freighting of the said galleons and ship, the fourth part of all the merchandise which shall return and shall be brought back by the aforesaid, without any cost. And for the hire of the said pilot, Messire Jehan, who has agreed and bound himself to provide two good and competent pilots to steer the other two vessels, he shall take for his hire and that of his two pilots, the sixth of all the goods which shall be brought back; the said fourth for freightage, expenses and disposing of the goods, and the wages of the crew, being previously taken and levied, before taking the said sixth. And if, in case of accident, any of those galleons or ship should be lost on the said voyage, or if one by any mischance does not, and the other two do make their voyage, the merchandise which should he brought back, would be divided as above, and the said vessel which might not have been on the said voyage shall share, and the merchants each one a mark to the pound, for all goes to the common profit. And if any booty be taken at sea, from the Moors or others enemies of the faith and the King, my Lord; the Admiral, shall take previously, of the aforesaid booty, his tenth; and the balance which would accrue from the said booty, shall be divided like the other goods, except some portion of that booty, which shall be given to the crew as shall be advised. And my aforesaid Admiral shall have letters-patent from the king expedited, in order to have permission and leave to make the said voyage; and no obstruction shall be made or given to these letters, by any allies, friend, or confederate of the king, our said Lord. For the voyage of Sir Joan. III. LETTER OF JOAO DA SILEIRA, THE PORTUGUESE AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE, TO KING DOM JOAO III. Translated from the original at Lisbon, in Archivo de Torre de Tambo, Corp. Chron. Part I. Ma. 29. Doc. 54. Sire: I received a letter from Your Highness on the 19th of this month, through Joao Francisco, wherein I am directed what is to be done respecting the galleon and caravel, taken at the deira Islands, [Footnote: Probably Madeira Islands. TRANSLATOR.] by the galleys of France. As soon as I received the instruction, which was about the beginning of Christmas, I spoke on the subject in a manner befitting the nature of the case. At once they were released,--the caravel with her artillery and the brocades and silks. [Footnote: That is to say, the hangings, tapestry, and awnings of the vessel. TRANSLATOR.] By this time they must have arrived at Lisbon. As respects the merchandise, I had the promise that if it was found to be the property of Your Highness or of your subjects it should not be sold. After a few days, discovering that it belonged to Joao Francisco, an ample order was given to his agents for its entire restitution, which orders set forth that as he lives in the kingdoms of Your Highness, and there is an old friendship existing with the King of France which he was no less desirous of preserving, in this he would favor that king. After this order was promulgated another came from the chief official, in consequence of which nothing was delivered, and the goods moreover were sold. From that time to the present, nothing has been accomplished. I will strive the best I can for despatch, in the manner that Your Highness points out, and will give account of what I do. When the matter of the galleon occurred, the Licentiate Pero Gomez had already embarked at Anaflor. I advised the Doctor, Maestro Diogo, who was about going to Reuao [Footnote: i.e. Rouen. TRANSLATOR.] that he ought not to leave before writing, and to give Your Highness a statement of the facts in that regard; as he at once wrote that he would do so, I have said nothing further in my letters. By what I hear, Maestro Joao Verazano, who is going on the discovery of Cathay, has not left up to this date, for want of opportunity and because of differences, I understand, between himself and men; and on this topic, though knowing nothing positively, I have written my doubts in accompanying letters. I shall continue to doubt unless he take his departure. The Doctor Maestro Diogo de Gouvea is now going to Ruao [Footnote: i.e. Rouen. TRANSLATOR.] where he is going to find out everything with the greatest exactness possible, and, as I have requested, report at great length. May our Lord prolong the life of Your Highness many days and prosper the royal estate. From Poessi the xxv of April 1523. JOAO DA SILVEIRA. IV. I. LETTER OF ALONSO DAVILA TO THE EMPEROR CHARLES V, RELATING TO THE CAPTURE OF THE TREASURE SENT FROM MEXICO BY CORTES. Translated from the original in the Archivo de Indias at Seville. VERY HIGH AND VERY POWERFUL CATHOLIC LORD KING: Captain Domingo Alonso, who was commander of the three caravels that sailed as guard on the coast of Andalusia, gave a cedula to Antonio Quinones and myself at the Island of Azores, in which Your Majesty was pleased to state to us that, from the news of our fear of the French who were said to run the coast, we had remained at the island of Santa Maria until your Highness should direct what might be for the royal service, in so doing we had acted well; that to secure the gold and articles we had brought, the three caravels were sent to us under that captain; and we were enjoined to embark in them at once and come with every thing to the city of Seville, to the House of Contratacion, and the officers who by the royal command reside there, for which favor we kiss your feet and hands. The caravels arrived the xvth of May, and directly in fulfilment of the order we embarked, sailing for the Portuguese coast, which the pilots deemed the safer course, and coming within ten leagues of Cape St. Vincent, six armed French ships ran out upon us. We fought them from two caravels, until we were overpowered, when everything eminently valuable on the way to Your Majesty was lost; the other caravel not being disposed to fight escaped to carry the news; and but for that perhaps the captain might better have staid with his additional force aid our defence than to carry back such tidings. Quinones died, and I am a prisoner at Rochelle in France. I should desire to come, would they but let me, to kiss your royal feet, and give a complete history of all; for I lost everything I possessed in the service of Your Majesty, and have wished that my life had been as well. I entreat that privileges be granted to the residents and inhabitants of New Spain and that you will consider services to have been rendered, since that people have loyally done their duty to this moment, and will ever do as true vassals. I beseech that Your Majesty be pleased to order good protection placed on the coast of Andalusia for the ships coming from the Indies; for now all the French, flushed as they are, desire to take positions whence they may commit mischief. Let it be an armament that can act offensively, and which will not flee, but seek out the enemy. I entreat, prisoner and lost as I am, yet desiring still to die in the royal service, that Your Highness will so favor me, that if any ship should be sent to New Spain, an order be directed to Hernando Cortes, requiring that the Indians I have there deposited in the name of Your Majesty be not taken, but that they be bestowed on me for the period that is your pleasure. Our Lord augment the imperial state of Your Royal Majesty to the extent your royal person may require. From Rochela of France, the XVIth day of June of M. d. XXIIJ years. Of Y.C.Ca. Ma. the loyal vassal who kisses your very royal feet and hands, ALONSO DAVILA. STATEMENT CONCERNING THE FRENCH VESSELS OF WHICH CRUISE THE SEA OF SPAIN, Translated from the original in the Archivio de Indias, Seville, in the same hand, says Dr. D. Francisco Xmarez, the ancient archivero, as the letter of Alonso Davilla addressed from Rochelle to the emperor. The hand writing is most difficult to make out. The amounts marked CII may intend coo, and CI two CO. The French vessels of war which cruise the sea of Spain as far as Andalusia, of which Jn. Florin le Diepa is captain. First, a largo ship CII. tons, in which are CII men--the half soldiers, and the other half sailors; carries XX pieces of artillery of brass, besides others of iron, with munitions and victuals in large quantity. Another vessel, built in Vizcaya, captured by the French of CI tons. Another vessel of CI tons, made in Britany. Five galleons-the largest of LXX tons, another of IX, another of L, another of XL, made in Vizcaya, another of XL, which are also provided with CC men of war, being of the French soldiers who were in Tuenteravia, They have besides full supply of man & of artillery, munition and victuals for one year; and, it is said, that this armada goes direct to Andalusia, to ran that coast and take what may come from the Indias; for this is the same armada that last year took the CXXM ducats that were coming, consequently, it is necessary that His Majesty should have an armada in Andalusia to go to meet this one of France, and not suffer to do mischief. V. 1. LETTER FROM THE JUDGE OF CADIZ TO CHARLES V, GIVING THE NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL PERSONS CAPTURED WITH JUAN FLORIN; AND OF HIS DEATH. Translated from the original, in the Archivo general in Simancos. Estado: Legajo 13, fol. 316. Sacred Caesarean Catholic Majesty. The Licentiate Juan de Giles your Resident Judge in the City of Cadiz reports what has been done in the taking of Juan Florin, a French corsair, and others, made prisoners with him. Before receiving a cedula signed by Your Majesty at Lerma, the thirteenth of last month, knowing that there were some differences of opinion among those making the capture, I labored, and with success, to induce them to bring Juan Florin, Mons. de la Saia, loner Juan de Mensieris, Hichel and a page of Juan Florin before Your Majesty, to avoid certain difficulties that were impending. This was done by Bartolome del Alamo, high-sheriff of said City, with six persons, one from each ship engaged in the capture. These took their departure on the 15th of last month, carrying their prisoners to court; and by virtue of the cedula of Your Majesty, I caused the delivery to me of the remaining French to be kept securely as Your Highness required. One hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty of them were given up, and were in custody when a certain dispatch, came to hand from your Counsel on the twenty seventh of last month. In obedience thereto, I ordered the chief Alcalde of said city to proceed against these in my power, agreeably to what was commanded me by your Counsel; and with the utmost speed I came on in pursuit of Juan Florin to Colmenar de Arenas where were executed on his person the laws of your kingdom, Mon de Mensieris, Michel and Gile I condemned perpetually to the galleys; and because the High Sheriff and the Vizcaynos left Mons de la Sale at the point of death with Juan Lopez de Cumaya, a Vizcaino, who go by another road, I send the High Sheriff for him while I return to Cadiz to make provision for things not done in a manner beat befitting the royal service. In pursuance of your Majesty's order I take especial care that no person ransom or conceal himself. Those of consideration, captured with Juan Florin are Mons de la Sala, doctor indiscretis, a native of Paris, Mons Juan de Mensieris, a native of Turenne, son of Martin Mensieris, who has an income of two hundred ducats, Mons de Londo, a native of Lombardy, son of a gentleman, a Baron, native of Venice, Mons de Lane, second son of Mons de Lane, Mons Vipar, a native of Drumar, son of Mons Vipar, who is rich, and Mons Fasan. S. C. C. M. I kiss the sacred feet of Your Majesty, Licenclado Giles 2. LETTER OF THE JUDGE OF CADIZ IN ANSWER TO A ROYAL MISSIVE, STATING BY WHOM JUAN FLORIN WAS CAPTURED, AND HIS EXECUTION. Translated from the original in the Archivo general in Sijoncas Astado: Legajo 18, fol. 845. Sacred Caesarean Catholic Majesty: The Licentiate Giles, Resident Judge in the City of Cadiz, in compliance with what your Majesty required by your cedula that it should be stated who captured Juan Florin and his accomplices, answers that Martin Yricar, Antonio de Cumaya, Juan Martinez de Aricabalo, Martin Perez de Leabnr, Saba de Ysasa, Juan de Galarza, Captains of their galleons and ships, with their people, were those who captured Juan Florin in the manner that they will relate, and brought him to the Bay of Cadiz. I went directly to their galleons, and to my requirement they answered that they would keep him in safety, that they desired all for your service; and this notwithstanding that the said Juan Florin promised them thirty thousand ducats to be released. The captains of the fleet of Portugal who were cruising at sea in quest of him at the same place in which he was taken also offered ten thousand ducats for him that they might take him to their king, and other offers were made, none of which they would accept, but, unitedly, with the sheriff of that city, took him to Your Majesty, like good and loyal servants. And when they arrived at Puerto del Pico, finding Your Majesty had commanded that he and his said accomplices should be given up to me at once, they delivered and I executed the law upon them. Those captains have sustained much injury and have been at much cost, as I am witness. They arrived with their ships broken, the sails rent, the castles carried away. They had spent much in munition and powder, and for the sustenance of those French before they delivered them to me. When they arrived in the bay they were greatly reduced and hungered, having exhausted their stores by giving to the French. Much would it be for the service of Your Majesty that those Captains should be satisfied for their losses and rewarded which I have promised them, as Your Highness desired by your cedula, that others seeing how they are honored may be encouraged in the royal service. Thus much I entreat that Your Majesty will order done for the loyalty I know those captains tear to your service, and because they are persons by whom you may he much served. S. C. C. M. I kiss the sacred feet of your Highness. LICENCLADO GILES. VI. THE VERRAZZANO LETTER ACCORDING TO THE ORIGINAL VERSION Translated by Dr. J. G. Cogswel, from a copy of the MS. in the Magliahechian Library in Florence, and printed in the Collections of the New York Historical Society. Second Series. Vol. 1, pp. 41-51 CAPTAIN JOHN DE VERRAZZANO to His Most Serene Majesty the KING OF FRANCE, writes: [Footnote: This introduction reads in the original: "Captain John Da Verrazzano Florentine, of Normandy, to the most Serene Crown of France, relates:"] Since the tempests which we encountered on the northern coasts, I have not written to your most Serene and Christian Majesty concerning the four ships sent out by your orders on the ocean to discover new lands, because I thought you must have been before apprized of all that had happened to us--that we had been compelled by the impetuous violence of the winds to put into Brittany in distress with only the two ships Normandy and Dolphin; [Footnote: The signification of Delfina, the name of the Verazzano ship of discovery, is differently given by the translators. Hakluyt renders it into English by the Word Dolphin and Dr. Cogswel here does the same. But this is not correct. The Italian for dolphin is delfino; which also signifies the dauphin, or oldest son of the King of France, so called because upon the cession of Dauphiny to the crown of France, he became entitled to wear the armorial device, which was a dolphin, of the princes of that province. Delfina is the feminine noun of Delfino, in that sense, that is the Dauphiness, M. Margry has so interpreted it in this case, and accordingly gives the vessel the name of Dauphine (Nav. Fran. 209), which as she is represented to have belonged to France, would have been her actual name.] and that after having repaired these ships, we made a cruise in them, well armed, along the coast of Spain, as your Majesty must have heard, and also of our new plan of continuing our begun voyage with the Dolphin alone; from this voyage being now returned, I proceed to give your Majesty an account of our discoveries, On the 17th of last January we set sail from a desolate rock near the island of Madeira, belonging to his most Serene Majesty the King of Portugal, with fifty men, having provisions sufficient for eight months, arms and other warlike munition and naval stores. Sailing westward with a light and pleasant easterly breeze, in twenty-five days we ran eight hundred leagues. On the 24th of February we encountered as violent a hurricane as any ship ever weathered, from which we escaped unhurt by the divine assistance and goodness, to the praise of the glorious and fortunate name of our good ship, that had been able to support the violent tossing of the waves. Pursuing our voyage towards the west, a little northwardly, in twenty-four days more, having run four hundred leagues, we reached a new country, which had never before been seen by any one, either in ancient or modern times. At first it appeared to be very low, but on approaching it to within a quarter of a league from the shore we perceived, by the great fires near the coast, that it was inhabited. We perceived that it stretched to the south, and coasted along in that direction in search of some port, in which we might come to anchor, and examine into the nature of the country, but for fifty leagues we could find none in which we could lie securely. Seeing the coast still stretched to the south, we resolved to change our course and stand to the north-ward, and as we still had the same difficulty, we drew in with the land and sent a boat on shore. Many people who were seen coming to the sea-side fled at our approach, but occasionally stopping, they looked back upon us with astonishment, and some were at length induced, by various friendly signs, to come to us. These showed the greatest delight on beholding us, wondering at our dress, countenances and complexion. They then showed us by signs where we could more conveniently secure our boat, and offered us some of their provisions. That your Majesty may know all that we learned, while on shore, of their manners and customs of life, I will relate what we saw as briefly as possible. They go entirely naked, except that about the loins they wear skins of small animals, like martens fastened by a girdle of plaited grass, to which they tie, all round the body, the tails of other animals hanging down to the knees; all other parts of the body and the head are naked. Some wear garlands similar to birds' feathers. The complexion of these people is black, not much different from that of the Ethiopians; their hair is black and thick, and not very long, it is worn tied back upon the head in the form of a little tail. In person they are of good proportions, of middle stature, a little above our own, broad across the breast, strong in the arms, and well formed in the legs and other parts of the body; the only exception, to their good looks is that have broad faces, but not all, however, as we saw many that had sharp ones, with large black eyes and a fixed expression. They are not very strong in body, but acute in mind, active and swift of foot, as far as we could judge by observation. In these last two particulars they resemble the people of the east, especially those the most remote. We could not learn a great many particulars of their usages on account of our short stay among them and the distance of our ship from the shore. We found not far from this people another whose mode of life we judged to be similar. The whole shore is covered with fine sand, about fifteen feet thick, rising in the form of little hills about fifty paces broad. Ascending farther, we found several arms of the sea which make in through inlets, washing the shores on both aides as the coast runs. An outstretched country appears at a little distance rising somewhat above the sandy shore in beautiful fields and broad plains, covered with immense forests of trees, more or less dense, too various in colours, and too delightful and charming in appearance to be described, I do not believe that they are like the Hercynian forest or the rough wilds of Scythia, and the northern regions full of vines and common trees, but adorned with palms, laurels, cypresses, and other varieties unknown in Europe, that send forth the sweetest fragrance to a great distance, but which, we could not examine more closely for the reasons before given, and not on account of any difficulty in traversing the woods, which, on the contrary, are easily penetrated. As the "East" stretches around this country, I think it cannot be devoid of the same medicinal and aromatic drugs, and various riches of gold and the like, as is denoted by the colour of the ground. It abounds also in animals. as deer, stags, hares, and many other similar, and with a great variety of birds for every kind of pleasant and delightful sports. It is plentifully supplied with lakes and ponds of running water, and being in the latitude of 34. the air is salubrious, pure and temperate, and free from the extremes of both heat and cold. There are no violent winds in these regions, the most prevalent are the north-west and west. In summer, the season in which we were there, the sky is clear, with but little rain: if fogs and mists are at any time driven in by the south wind, they are instantaneously dissipated, and at once it becomes serene and bright again. The sea is calm, not boisterous, and its waves are gentle. Although the whole coast is low and without harbours, it is not dangerous for navigation, being free from rocks And bold, so that within four or five fathoms from the shore there is twenty-four feet of water at all times of tide, and this depth constantly increases in a uniform proportion. The holding ground is so good that no ship can part her cable, however violent the wind, as we proved by experience; for while riding at anchor on the coast, we were overtaken by a gale in the beginning of March, when the winds are high, as is usual in all countries, we found our anchor broken before it started from its hold or moved at all. We set sail from this place, continuing to coast along the shore, which we found stretching out to the west (east?); the inhabitants being numerous, we saw everywhere a multitude of fires. While at anchor on this coast, there being no harbour to enter, we sent the boat on shore with twenty-five men to obtain water, but it was not possible to land without endangering the boat, on account of the immense high surf thrown up by the sea, as it was an open roadstead. Many of the natives came to the beach, indicating by various friendly signs that we might trust ourselves on shore. One of their noble deeds of friendship deserves to be made known to your Majesty. A young sailor was attempting to swim ashore through the surf to carry them some knick-knacks, as little bells, looking-glasses, and other like trifles; when he came near three or four of them he tossed the things to them, and turned about to get back to the boat, but he was thrown over by the waves, and so dashed by them that he lay as it were dead upon the beach When these people saw him in this situation, they ran and took him up by the head, legs and anus, and carried him to a distance from the surf; the young man, finding himself borne off in this way uttered very loud shrieks in fear and dismay, while they answered as they could in their language, showing him that he had no cause for fear. Afterwards they laid him down at the foot of a little hill, when they took off his shirt and trowsers, and examined him, expressing the greatest astonishment at the whiteness of his skin. Our sailors in the boat seeing a great fire made up, and their companion placed very near it, full of fear, as is usual in all cases of novelty, imagined that the native were about to roast him for food. But as soon as be had recovered his strength after a short stay with them; showing by signs that he wished to return aboard, they hugged him with great affection, and accompanied him to the shore, then leaving him, that he might feel more secure, they withdrew to a little hill, from which they watched him until he was safe in the boat. This young man remarked that these people were black like the others, that they had shining skins, middle stature, and sharper faces, and very delicate bodies and limbs, and that they were inferior in strength, but quick in their minds; this is all that he observed of them. Departing hence, and always following the shore, which stretched to the north, we came, in the space of fifty leagues, to another land, which appeared very beautiful and full of the largest forests. We approached it, and going ashore with twenty men, we went back from the coast about two leagues, and found that the people had fled and hid themselves in the woods for fear. By searching around we discovered in the grass a very old woman and a young girl of about eighteen or twenty, who had concealed themselves for the same reason; the old woman carried two infants on her shoulders, and behind her neck a little boy eight Sending Completed Page, Please Wait ... as they carefully remove the shrubbery from around them, wherever they grow, to allow the fruit to ripen better. We found also wild roses, violets, lilies, and many sorts of plants and fragrant flowers different from our own. We cannot describe their habitations, as they are in the interior of the country, but from various indications we conclude they must be formed of trees and shrubs. We saw also many grounds for conjecturing that they often sleep in the open air, without any covering but the sky. Of their other usages we know nothing;--we believe, however, that all the people we were among live in the same way. After having remained here three days, riding at anchor on the coast, as we could find no harbour, we determined to depart, and coast along the shore to the north-east, keeping sail on the vessel, only by day, and coming to anchor by night. After proceeding one hundred leagues, we found a very pleasant situation among some steep hills, through which a very large river, deep at its mouth, forced its way to the sea; from the sea to the estuary of the river, any ship heavily laden might pass, with the help of the tide, which rises eight feet. But as we were riding at anchor in a good berth, we would not venture up in our vessel, without a knowledge of the mouth; therefore we took the boat, and entering the river, we found the country on its banks well peopled, the inhabitants not differing much from the others, being dressed out with feathers of birds of various colours. They came towards us with evident delight, raising loud shouts of admiration, and showing us where we could most securely land with our boat. We passed up this river, about half a league, when we found it formed a most beautiful lake three leagues in circuit, upon which they were rowing thirty or more of their small boats, from one shore to the other, filled with multitudes who came to see us. All of a sudden, as is wont to happen to navigators, a violent contrary wind blew in from the sea, and forced us to return to our ship, greatly regretting to leave this region which seemed so commodious and delightful, and which we supposed must also contain great riches, as the hills showed many indications of minerals. Weighing anchor, we sailed eighty (ottanta) leagues towards the east, as the coast stretched in that direction, and always in sight of it; at length we discovered an island of a triangular form, about ten leagues from the mainland, in size about equal to the island of Rhodes, having many hills covered with trees, and well peopled, judging from the great number of fires which we saw all around its shores; we gave it the name of your Majesty's illustrious mother. We did not land there, as the weather was unfavourable, but proceeded to another place, fifteen leagues distant from the island, where we found a very excellent harbour. Before entering it, we saw about twenty small boats full of people, who came about our ship, uttering many cries of astonishment, but they would not approach nearer than within fifty paces; stopping, they looked at the structure of our ship, our persons and dress, afterwards they all raised a loud shout together, signifying that they were pleased. By imitating their signs, we inspired them in some measure with confidence, so that they came near enough for us to toss to them some little bells and glasses, and many toys, which they took and looked at, laughing, and then came on board without fear. Among them were two kings more beautiful in form and stature than can possibly be described; one was about forty years old, the other about twenty- four, and they were dressed in the following manner: The oldest had a deer's skin around his body, artificially wrought in damask figures, his head was without covering, his hair was tied back in various knots; around his neck he wore a large chain ornamented with many stones of different colours. The young man was similar in his general appearance. This is the finest looking tribe, and the handsomest in their costumes, that we have found in our voyage, They exceed us in size, and they are of a very fair complexion (?); some of them incline more to a white (bronze?), and others to a tawny colour; their faces are sharp, their hair long and black, upon the adorning of which they bestow great pains; their eyes are black and sharp, their expression mild and pleasant, greatly resembling the antique. I say nothing to your Majesty of the other parts of the body, which are all in good proportion, and such as belong to well- formed men. Their women are of the same form and beauty, very graceful, of fine countenances and pleasing appearance in manners and modesty; they wear no clothing except a deer skin, ornamented like those worn by the men; some wear very rich lynx skins upon their arms, and various ornaments upon their heads, composed of braids of hair, which also hang thrown upon their breasts on each side. Others wear different ornaments, such as the women of Egypt and Syria use. The older and the married people, both men and women, wear many ornaments in their ears, hanging down in the oriental manner. We saw upon them several pieces of wrought copper, which is more esteemed by them than gold, as this is not valued on account of its colour, but is considered by them as the most ordinary of the metals--yellow being the colour especially disliked by them; azure and red are those in highest estimation with them. Of those things which we gave them, they prized most highly the bells, azure crystals, and other toys to hang in their ears and about their necks; they do not value or care to have silk or gold stuffs, or other kinds of cloth, nor implements of steel or iron. When we showed them our arms, they expressed no admiration, and only asked how they were made; the same was the case with the looking-glasses, which they returned to us, smiling, as soon as they had looked at them. They are very generous, giving away whatever they have. We formed a great friendship with them, and one day we entered into the port with our ship, having before rode at the distance of a league from the shore, as the weather was adverse. They came off to the ship with a number of their little boats, with their faces painted in divers colours, showing us real signs of joy, bringing us of their provisions, and signifying to us where we could best ride in safety with our ship; and keeping with us until we had cast anchor. We remained among them fifteen days, to provide ourselves with many things of which we were in want, during which time they came every day to see our ship, bringing with them their wives, of whom they were very careful; for, although they came on board themselves, and remained a long while, they made their wives stay in the boats, nor could we ever get them on board by any entreaties or any presents, we could make them. One of the two kings often came with his queen and many attendants, to see us for his amusement; but he always stopped at the distance of about two hundred paces and sent a boat to inform us of his intended visit, saying they would some and see our ship--this was done for safety, and as soon as they had an answer from us they came off, and remained awhile to look around; but on hearing the annoying cries of the sailors, the king sent the queen, with her attendants, in a very light boat, to wait, near an island a quarter of a league distant from us, while he remained a long time on board, talking with us by signs, and expressing his fanciful notions about every thing in the ship, and asking the use of all. After imitating our modes of salutation, and tasting our food, he courteously took leave of us. Sometimes, when our men staid two or three days on a small island, near the ship, for their various necessities, as sailors are wont to do, he came with seven or eight of his attendants, to enquire about our movements, often asking us if we intended to remain there long, and offering us every thing at his command, and then he would shoot with his bow, and run up and down with his people, making great sport for us. We often went five or six leagues into the interior, and found the country as pleasant as is possible to conceive, adapted to cultivation of every kind, whether of corn, wine or oil; there are open plains twenty- five or thirty leagues in extent, entirely free from trees or other hinderances, and of so great fertility, that whatever is sown there will yield an excellent crop. On entering the woods, we observed that they might all be traversed by an army ever so numerous; the trees of which they were composed, were oaks, cypresses, and others, unknown in Europe, We found, also, apples, plumbs, filberts, and many other fruits, but all of a different kind from ours. The animals, which are in great numbers, as stags, deer, lynxes, and many other species, are taken by snares, and by bows, the latter being their chief implement; their arrows are wrought with great beauty, and for the heads of them, they use emery, jasper, hard marble, and other sharp stones, in the place of iron. They also use the same kind of sharp stones in cutting down trees, and with them they construct their boats of single logs, hollowed out with admirable skill, and sufficiently commodious to contain ten or twelve persons; their oars are short, and broad at the end, and are managed in rowing by force of the arms alone, with perfect security, and as nimbly as they choose. We saw their dwellings, which are of a circular form, of about ten or twelve paces in circumference, made of logs split in halves, without any regularity of architecture; and covered with roofs of straw, nicely put on, which protect them from wind and rain. There is no doubt that they would build stately edifices if they had workmen as skilful as ours, for the whole sea- coast abounds in shining stones, crystals, and alabaster, and for the same reason it has ports and retreats for animals. They change their habitations from place to place as circumstances of situation and season may require; this is easily done, as they have only to take with them their mats, and they have other houses prepared at once. The father and the whole family dwell together in one house in great numbers; in some we saw twenty-five or thirty persons. Their food is pulse, as with the other tribes, which is here better than elsewhere, and more carefully cultivated; in the time of sowing they are governed by the moon, the sprouting of grain, and many other ancient usages. They live by hunting and fishing, and they are long- lived. If they fall sick, they cure themselves without medicine, by the heat of the fire, and their death at last comes from extreme old age. We judge them to be very affectionate and charitable towards their relatives--making loud lamentations in their adversity, and in their misery calling to mind all their good fortune. At their departure out of life, their relations mutually join in weeping, mingled with singing, for a long while. This is all that we could learn of them. This region is situated in the parallel of Rome, being 41 degrees 40' of north latitude, but much colder than accidental circumstances, and not by nature, as I shall hereafter explain to your Majesty, and confine myself at present to the description of its local situation. It looks towards the south, on which side the harbour is half a league broad; afterwards upon entering it, the extent between the east (oriente) and north is twelve leagues,[Footnote: See ante, p.51, note] and than enlarging itself it forms a very large bay, twenty leagues in circumference, in which are five small islands, of great fertility and beauty, covered with large and lofty trees. Among these islands any fleet, however large, might ride safely, without fear of tempests or other dangers. Turning towards the south, at the entrance of the harbour, on both sides, there are very pleasant hills, and many streams of clear water, which flow down to the sea. In the midst of the entrance there is a rock of freestone, formed by nature, and suitable for the construction of any kind of machine or bulwark for the defence of the harbour. Having supplied ourselves with every thing necessary, on the sixth (sei) of May we departed from the port, and sailed one hundred and fifty leagues, keeping so close to the coast as never to lose it from our sight; the nature of the country appeared much the same as before, but the mountains were a little higher, and all in appearance rich in minerals. We did not stop to land as the weather was very favourable for pursuing our voyage, and the country presented no variety. The shore stretched to the east, and fifty leagues beyond more to the north, where we found a more elevated country, full of very thick woods of fir trees, cypresses and the like, indicative of a cold climate. The people ware entirely different from the others we had seen, whom we had found kind and gentle, but these were so rude and barbarous that we were unable by any signs we could make, to hold communication with them. They clothe themselves in the skins of bears, lynxes, seals and other animals. Their food, as far as we could judge by several visits to their dwellings, is obtained by hunting and fishing, and fruits, which are a sort of root of spontaneous growth. They have no pulse, and we saw no signs of cultivation; the land appears sterile and unfit for growing of fruit or grain of any kind. If we wished at any time to traffick with them, they came to the sea shore and stood upon the rocks, from which they lowered down by a cord to our boats beneath whatever they had to barter, continually crying out to us, not to come nearer, and instantly demanding from us that which was to be given in exchange; they took from us only knives, fish books and sharpened steel. No regard was paid to out courtesies; when we had nothing left to exchange with them, the men at our departure made the moat brutal signs of disdain and contempt possible. Against their will we penetrated two or three leagues into the interior with, twenty-five men; when we came to the shore, they shot at us with their arrows, raising the most horrible cries and afterwards fleeing to the woods. In this region we found nothing extraordinary except vast forests and some metalliferous hills, as we infer from seeing that many of the people wore copper ear-rings. Departing from thence, we kept along the coast, steering north-east, and found the country more pleasant and open, free from woods, and distant in the interior we saw lofty mountains, but none which extended to the shore. Within fifty leagues we discovered thirty-two islands, all near the main land, small and of pleasant appearance, but high and so disposed as to afford excellent harbours and channels, as we see in the Adriatic gulph, near Illyria and Dalmatia. We had no intercourse with the people, but we judge that they were similar in nature and usages to those we were last among. After sailing between east and north the distance of one hundred and fifty leagues more, and finding our provisions and naval stores nearly exhausted, we took in wood and water and determined to return to France, having discovered 502, [Footnote: see ante. p. 58, note.] that is 700 (sic) leagues of unknown lands. As to the religions faith of all these tribes, not understanding their language, we could not discover either by sign or gestures any thing certain. It seemed to us that they had no religion or laws, or any knowledge of a First Cause or Mover, that they worshipped neither the heavens, stars, sun, moon nor other planets; nor could we learn if they were given to any kind of idolatry, or offered any sacrifices or supplications, or if they have temples or houses of prayer in their villages; our conclusion was, that they have no religious belief whatever, but live in this respect entirely free. All which proceeds from ignorance, as they are very easy to be persuaded, and imitated us with earnestness and fervour in all which they saw us do as Christians in our acts of worship. It remains for me to lay before your Majesty a Cosmographical exposition of our voyage. Taking our departure, an I before observed, from the above mentioned desert rocks, which lie on the extreme verge of the west, as known to the ancients, in the meridian of the Fortunate Islands, and in the latitude of 32 degrees north from the equator, and steering a westward course, we had run, when we first made land, a distance of 1200 leagues or 4800 miles, reckoning, according to nautical usage, four miles to a league. This distance calculated geometrically, upon the usual ratio of the diameter to the circumference of the circle, gives 92 degrees; for if we take 114 degrees as the chord of an arc of a great circle, we have by the same ratio 95 deg., as the chord of an arc on the parallel of 34 degrees, being that on which we first made land, and 300 degrees as the circumference of the whole circle passing through this plane. Allowing then, as actual observations show, that 62 1/2 terrestrial miles correspond to a celestial degree, we find the whole circumference of 300 deg., as just given, to be 18,759 miles, which divided by 360, makes the length of a degree of longitude in the parallel of 34 degrees to be 52 miles, and that is the true measure. Upon this basis, 1200 leagues, or 4800 miles meridional distance, on the parallel of 34, give 92 degrees, and so many therefore have we sailed farther to the west than was known to the ancients. During our voyage we had no lunar eclipses or like celestial phenomenas, we therefore determined our progress from the difference of longitude, which we ascertained by various instruments, by taking the sun's altitude from day to day, and by calculating geometrically the distance run by the ship from one horizon to another; all these observations, as also the ebb and flow of the sea in all places, were noted in a little book, which may prove serviceable to navigators; they are communicated to your Majesty in the hope of promoting science. My intention in this voyage was to reach Cathay, on the extreme coast of Asia, expecting however, to find in the newly discovered land some such an obstacle, as they have proved to be, yet I did not doubt that I should penetrate by some passage to the eastern ocean. It was the opinion of the ancients, that our oriental Indian ocean is one and without interposing land. Aristotle supports it by arguments founded on various probabilities; but it is contrary to that of the moderns and shown to be erroneous by experience; the country which has been discovered, and which was unknown to the ancients, is another world compared with that before known, being manifestly larger than our Europe, together with Africa and perhaps Asia, if we might rightly estimate its extent, as shall now be briefly explained to your Majesty. The Spaniards have sailed south beyond the equator on a meridian 20 degrees west of the Fortunate Islands to the latitude of 54, and there still found land; turning about they steered northward on the same meridian and along the coast to the eighth degree of latitude near the equator, and thence along the coast more to the west and north-west, to the latitude of 21 Degrees, without finding a termination to the continent; they estimated the distance run as 89 degrees, which, added to the 20 first run west of the Canaries, make 109 degrees and so far west; they sailed from the meridian of these islands, but this may vary somewhat from truth; we did not make this voyage and therefore cannot speak from experience; we calculated it geometrically from the observations furnished by many navigators, who have made the voyage and affirm the distance to be 1600 leagues, due allowance being made for the deviations of the ship from a straight course, by reason of contrary winds. I hope that we shall now obtain certain information on these points, by new voyages to be made on the same coasts. But to return to ourselves; in the voyage which we have made by order of your Majesty, in addition to the 92 degrees we run towards the west from our point of departure, before we reached land in the latitude of 34, we have to count 800 leagues which we ran north-east-wardly, and 400 nearly east along the coast before we reached the 50th parallel of north latitude, the point where we turned, our course from the shore towards home. Beyond this point the Portuguese had already sailed as far north as the Arctic circle, without coming to the termination of the land. Thus adding the degrees of south latitude explored, which are 54, to those of the north, which are 66, the sum is 120, and therefore, more than are embraced in the latitude of Africa and Europe, for the north point of Norway, which is the extremity of Europe, is in 71 north, and the Cape of Good Hope, which is the southern extremity of Africa, is in 35 south, and their sum is only 106, and if the breadth of this newly discovered country corresponds to its extent of sea coast, it doubtless exceeds Asia in size. In this way we find that the land forms a much larger portion of our globe than the ancients supposed, who maintained, contrary to mathematical reasoning, that it was less than the water, whereas actual experience proves the reverse, so that we judge in respect to extent of surface the land covers as much space as the water; and I hope more clearly and more satisfactorily to point out and explain to your Majesty the great extent of that new land, or new world, of which I have been speaking. The continent of Asia and Africa, we know for certain is joined to Europe at the north in Norway and Russia, which disproves the idea of the ancients that all this part had been navigated from the Cimbric Chersonesus, eastward as far as the Caspian Sea. They also maintained that the whole continent was surrounded by two seas situate to the east and west of it, which seas in fact do not surround either of the two continents, for as we have seen above, the land of the southern hemisphere at the latitude of 54 extends eastwardly an unknown distance, and that of the northern passing the 66th parallel turns to the east, and has no termination as high as the 70th. In a short time, I hope, we shall have more certain knowledge of these things, by the aid of your Majesty, whom I pray Almighty God to prosper in lasting glory, that, we may see the most important results of this our cosmography in the fulfilment of the holy words of the Gospel. On board the ship Dolphin, in the port of Dieppe in Normandy, the 8th of July, 1524. Your humble servant, JANUS VERRAZZANUS. We have received from Mr. Henry Harrisse of Paris copies, taken from the archives of the Parliament of Rouen, of two powers of attorney made by Verrazzano. They do not relate to his reputed voyage of discovery, but apparently refer to the projected voyage to the Indies for spices, and serve to establish the authenticity of the agreement with Chabot in regard to the latter voyage. They are important in so far as they fix the year 1526 as that in which the contract was made, corroborating the opinion which we expressed in that particular,[Footnote: page 35.] and conforming to the documents from the archives in Simancas in regard to the capture and execution of Verrazzano by the Spaniards. They also prove that Verrazzano had a brother Hieronimo, a relationship conceded [Footnote: Page 91] to the author of the map, in the Borgian collection,[Footnote: The Propaganda College in which this collection is found, is not in the Vatican, as inadvertently stated, but in the Via Due Macelli on the opposite side of the river.] bearing his name, though not ascertained, but regarded as of no practical importance, inasmuch as the mere consanguinity of these parties could not verify the representations on the map, even if they were made by Hieronimo, of which as yet there is no positive proof. Indeed on the contrary we are assured from Rome, on high authority, that this map appears to belong to a period subsequent to 1550, and is regarded by its custodians is only a copy at the best. This note with the two papers from Rouen appended are intended as a supplement to the Memoir on the "Voyage of Verrazzano." H. C. M, Brooklyn, April, 20, 1876. DOCUMENTS FROM THE ARCHIVES OF THE OF ROUEN. "Du vendredi onze mai 1526 Noble homme Jehan de Varasenne, capitain des navires esquippez pour aller au voyage des Indes, lequel fist, nomma, ordonna, counstitua et estably son procureur general et certains messagiers eapeciaulx cest asscavoir Jerosme de Vurasenne son frere et heritier et Zanobis do Rousselay en plaidoirie et par eapeciaL de recevoir tout ce qui au dit constituant est, sera peult et pourra estre den par quelque personne et pour quelque cause ou causes que ce soit on puisse estre tant a raison du dit voyage des Indes qur autrement, du dit deu ensemble de ses descords et procez traicter, composer et appoincter par tels prix moiens et conditions que les dita Jerosme et de Rousselay pourront et de receu et bailler quictance et discharge telle que mestier sera et generalemeat promettre, tenir et obliger biens et heiritages--presents m Gales et Nieolaa Doublet Janus Verrazanus" Sur le meme feuillet-- "Du samedi douzieme jour de mai 1526. Noble homme Messire Jehan de Varasenne, capitaine des navires esquippez pour uller au voiage des Indes, confessa avoir commis, constitue et estably Adam Godeffroy, bourgeois de Rouen auqel il a donne et donne par ces presentes pouvoir et puissauce de faire pour le dit de Verrassane [Footnote: Les mots "en sa charge de capitaine es dits navires," sont ici rayes dans l'original, et l'on ajoute en marge ceux ci: "et pour le dit Godeffroy." ] en ung dea dits navires nomme la Barque de Fescamp, du port de quatre vingt et dix tonneualx ou environ dont est maistre, aprez Dieu, Pierre Cauuay pour ouicelluy navire faire traffiquer et negossier par le dit Varrassenne en toutes choses pour le dit voiage des Indes ainsi que par le dit de Varrassene sera baille par articles et memoires soubz son seing audit Grodeffroy. Et pour ce faire le dit de Varrasene a promis payer au dit Godeffroy pour sa peine et vaccation de farie et accomplir les dits articles et memoirs a son pouvoir en faisant le dit voiage de la dite barque la somme de cinq ceuts livres tournois icelle somme payer au retour du dit voiage a quoi faire le dit de Varassene a oblige et oblige tous ses biens meublea et heritages et iceulx prendre par execution incontinent le dit retour.--Etaussai le dit Godefroy s'est submis faire le dit voyage et deuement et loyaument servir le dit de Varassenne et accomplir a son pouvoir les dits articles et memoires qui ainsi lui seront baillez par le dit de Varraesenne.--Et est ce sans prejudice des biens, deniers et merchandises que le dit Godeffroy aura et pourra mettre es dites navirea pour faire le dit voiage, lesquels lui et les siens auront avec eux emportez pour le profit d'icculx oultre la dite somme de cinq ceuts livres tournois pour le dit voyage et a ce tenir obligent par l'uu et l'autre chacun en son regard leurs biens et heritages.-- Presents Jehan Desvaulx et Robert Bouton." (Translation.) Friday the Eleventh of May, 1526. Jehan de Varasenne, nobleman, captain of the ships equipped to go on the voyage to the Indies, has made, named, ordained, constituted and instituted his attorney, and certain special commissioners that is to say, Jerosme de Varasenne his brother and heir and Zanobis de Rousselay, to sue and especially to receive all which to the said principal is, shall be, may and may become due by any person and for any cause or causes whatsoever as regards what is thus due as well by reason of the said voyage to the Indies as otherwise; and also his disagreements and law suits to treat compound and settle by such prices, means and conditions as the said Jerosme and de Rousselay shall be able to do, and to receive and receipt for and discharge according as the case may be, and generally to pledge, hold and bind chattels and lands. Present mol Gales and Nicolas Doublet. JANUS VERRAZANUS. On the same leaf: Saturday the Twelfth day of May, 1526. Messire Jehan de Varasenne, nobleman, captain of the ships equipped to go on the voyage to the Indies acknowledged that he had appointed, constituted and instituted Adam Godeffroy citizen of Rouen, to whom be has given and gives by these presents power and authority to act for the said de Varrasenne [FOOTNOTE: The words "in his quality of captain of the said ships" are here erased in the original, and they have added in the margin these; "and for the said Godeffroy."] in one of the said ships named the barque of Fescamp of the burthen of ninety tons or thereabouts, of which the master is, after God, Pierre Cauvay, the which ship to employ in trading and traffic for the said Varrasenne in all things for the said voyage of the Indies as by the said de Varrassenne shall be directed by articles and memoranda under his sign manual to the said Godeffroy. And for doing this the said de Varrasenne has promised to pay to the said Godeffroy for his trouble and time and attention in doing and fulfilling the said articles and memoranda according to his ability in making the said voyage of the said barque, the sum of five hundred pounds Tours currency, and this sum to pay on the return from the said voyage, to do which the said de Varrasenne has bound and binds all his chattels and lands, and to take them by execution immediately on the said return. And in like manner the said Godeffroy has undertaken to make the said voyage and duly and loyally to serve the said de Varrasenne, and to carry out according to his power the said articles and memoranda which thus shall be given by the said de Varrasenne. And it is without prejudice of the goods, funds and merchandise which the said Godeffroy shall have and might place on the said ships to make the said voyage, which he and his shall have carried away with them, for their profit, besides the said sum of five hundred pounds Tours currency for the said voyage. And to keep this, each for himself, both parties bind themselves, their chattels and lands. Present Jehan Desvaulx and Robert Bouton. 
6825	----	generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. CHAMPLAIN'S VOYAGES. VOYAGES OF SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY CHARLES POMEROY OTIS, PH.D. WITH HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS, AND A MEMOIR By THE REV. EDMUND F. SLAFTER, A.M. VOL. III. 1611-1618 HELIOTYPE COPIES OF TEN MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Editor: THE REV. EDMUND F. SLAFTER, A.M. PREFACE The present volume completes the work proposed by the Prince Society of a translation into English of the VOYAGES OF CHAMPLAIN. It includes the journals issued in 1604, 1613, and 1619, and covers fifteen years of his residence and explorations in New France. At a later period, in 1632, Champlain published, in a single volume, an abridgment of the issues above mentioned, containing likewise a continuation of his journal down to 1631. This continuation covers thirteen additional years. But it is to be observed that the events recorded in the journal of these later years are immediately connected with the progress and local interests of the French colony at Quebec. This last work of the great explorer is of primary importance and value as constituting original material for the early history of Canada, and a translation of it into English would doubtless be highly appreciated by the local historian. A complete narrative of these events, however, together with a large amount amount of interesting matter relating to the career of Champlain derived from other sources, is given in the Memoir contained in the first volume of this work. This English translation contains not only the complete narratives of all the personal explorations made by Champlain into the then unbroken forests of America, but the whole of his minute, ample, and invaluable descriptions of the character and habits, mental, moral, and physical of the various savage tribes with which he came in contact. It will furnish, therefore, to the student of history and the student of ethnology most valuable information, unsurpassed in richness and extent, and which cannot be obtained from any other source. To aid one or both of these two classes in their investigations, the work was undertaken and has now been completed. E. F. S. BOSTON, 91 BOYLSTON STREET, April 5, 1882. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PREFACE VOYAGE OF CHAMPLAIN IN 1611 DEDICATION TO HENRI DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ VOYAGE MADE IN 1613 DEDICATION TO THE KING CHAMPLAIN'S PREFACE EXTRACT FROM THE LICENSE OF THE KING VOYAGE MADE IN 1615 VOYAGE MADE IN 1618 EXPLANATION OF TWO GEOGRAPHICAL MAPS OF NEW FRANCE ILLUSTRATIONS. LE GRAND SAULT ST. LOUIS DRESS OF THE SAVAGES FORT OF THE IROQUOIS DEER TRAP DRESS OF THE SAVAGES CHAMPLAIN'S LARGE MAP OF NEW FRANCE, 1612 CHAMPLAIN'S SMALL MAP OF NEW FRANCE, 1613 INDEX THE VOYAGES OF SIEUR DE CHAMPLAIN, Of Saintonge, Captain in ordinary to the King in the Marine; OR, _A MOST FAITHFUL JOURNAL OF OBSERVATIONS made in the exploration of New France, describing not only the countries, coasts, rivers, ports, and harbors, with their latitudes, and the various deflections of the Magnetic Needle, but likewise the religious belief of the inhabitants, their superstitions, mode of life and warfare; furnished with numerous illustrations_. Together with two geographical maps: the first for the purposes of navigation, adapted to the compass as used by mariners, which, deflects to the north-east; the other in its true meridian, with longitudes and latitudes, to which is added the Voyage to the Strait north of Labrador, from the 53d to the 63d degree of latitude, discovered in 1612 by the English when they were searching for a northerly course to China. PARIS. JEAN BERJON, Rue St Jean de Beauvais, at the Flying Horse, and at his store in the Palace, at the gallery of the Prisoners. M. DC. XIII. _WITH AUTHORITY OF THE KING_. CHAPTER I. DEPARTURE FROM FRANCE TO RETURN TO NEW FRANCE.--THE DANGERS AND OTHER EVENTS WHICH OCCURRED UP TO THE TIME OF ARRIVAL AT THE SETTLEMENT. We set out from Honfleur on the first day of March. The wind was favorable until the eighth, when we were opposed by a wind south-southwest and west-northwest, driving us as far as latitude 42°, without our being able to make a southing, so as to sail straight forward on our course. Accordingly after encountering several heavy winds, and being kept back by bad weather, we nevertheless, through great difficulty and hardship, and by sailing on different tacks, succeeded in arriving within eighty leagues of the Grand Bank, where the fresh fishery is carried on. Here we encountered ice thirty or forty fathoms high, or more, which led us to consider what course we ought to take, fearing that we might fall in with more during the night, or that the wind changing would drive us on to it. We also concluded that this would not be the last, since we had set out from France too early in the season. We sailed accordingly during that day with short sail, as near the wind as we could. When night came, the fog arose so thick and obscure that we could scarcely see the ship's length. About eleven o'clock at night, more ice was seen, which alarmed us. But through the energy of the sailors we avoided it. Supposing that we had passed all danger, we met with still more ice, which the sailors saw ahead of our vessel, but not until we were almost upon it. When all had committed themselves to God, having given up all hope of avoiding collision with this ice, which was already under our bowsprit, they cried to the helmsman to bear off; and this ice which was very extensive drove in such a manner that it passed by without striking our vessel, which stopped short, and remained as still as if it had never moved, to let it pass. Although the danger was over, our blood was not so quickly cooled, so great had been our fear, and we praised God for delivering us from so imminent a peril. This experience being over, we passed the same night two or three other masses of ice, not less dangerous than the former ones. There was at the same time a dripping fog, and it was so cold that we could scarcely get warm. The next day we met several other large and very high masses of ice, which, in the distance, looked like islands. We, however, avoided them all, and reached the Grand Bank, where we were detained by bad weather for the space of six days. The wind growing a little milder, and very favorable, we left the banks in latitude 44° 30', which was the farthest south we could go. After sailing some sixty leagues west-northwest, we saw a vessel coming down to make us out, but which afterwards wore off to the east-northeast, to avoid a large bank of ice, which covered the entire extent of our line of vision. Concluding that there was a passage through the middle of this great floe, which was divided into two parts, we entered, in pursuance of our course, between the two, and sailed some ten leagues without seeing anything, contrary to our conjecture of a fine passage through, until evening, when we found the floe closed up. This gave us much anxiety as to what was to be done, the night being at hand and there being no moon, which deprived us of all means of returning to the point whence we had come. Yet, after due deliberation, it was resolved to try to find again the entrance by which we had come, which we set about accomplishing. But the night coming on with fog, rain, snow, and a wind so violent that we could scarcely carry our mainsail, every trace of our way was lost. For, as we were expecting to avoid the ice so as to pass out, the wind had already closed up the passage, so that we were obliged to return to the other tack. We were unable to remain longer than a quarter of an hour on one tack before taking another, in order to avoid the numerous masses of ice drifting about on all sides. We thought more than twenty times that we should never escape with our lives. The entire night was spent amid difficulties and hardships. Never was the watch better kept, for nobody wished to rest, but to strive to escape from the ice and danger. The cold was so great, that all the ropes of the vessel were so frozen and covered with large icicles that the men could not work her nor stick to the deck. Thus we ran, on this tack and that, awaiting with hope the daylight. But when it came, attended by a fog, and we saw that our labor and hardship could not avail us anything, we determined to go to a mass of ice, where we should be sheltered from the violent wind which was blowing; to haul everything down, and allow ourselves to be driven along with the ice, so that when at some distance from the rest of the ice we could make sail again, and go back to the above-mentioned bank and manage as before, until the fog should pass away, when we might go out as quickly as possible. Thus we continued the entire day until the morning of the next day, when we set sail, now on this tack now on that, finding ourselves everywhere enclosed amid large floes of ice, as if in lakes on the mainland. At evening we sighted a vessel on the other side of one of these banks of ice, which, I am sure, was in no less anxiety than ourselves. Thus we remained four or five days, exposed to these risks and extreme hardships, until one morning on looking out in all directions, although we could see no opening, yet in one place it seemed as if the ice was not thick, and that we could easily pass through. We got under weigh, and passed by a large number of _bourguignons_; that is, pieces of ice separated from the large banks by the violence of the winds. Having reached this bank of ice, the sailors proceeded to provide themselves with large oars and pieces of wood, in order to keep off the blocks of ice we met. In this way we passed this bank, but not without touching some pieces of ice, which did no good to our vessel, although they inflicted no essential damage. Being outside, we praised God for our deliverance. Continuing our course on the next day, we encountered other pieces, in which we became so involved that we found ourselves surrounded on all sides, except where we had entered. It was accordingly necessary to turn back, and endeavor to double the southern point. This we did not succeed in doing until the second day, passing by several small pieces of ice, which had been separated from the main bank. This latter was in latitude 44° 30'. We sailed until the morning of the next day, towards the northwest, north-northwest, when we met another large ice bank, extending as far as we could see east and west. This, in the distance, seemed like land; for it was so level that it might properly be said to have been made so on purpose. It was more than eighteen feet high, extending twice as far under water. We calculated that we were only some fifteen leagues from Cape Breton, it being the 26th day of the month. These numerous encounters with ice troubled us greatly. We were also fearful that the passage between Capes Breton and Raye would be closed, and that we should be obliged to keep out to sea a long time before being able to enter. Unable to do anything else, we were obliged to run out to sea again some four or five leagues, in order to double another point of the above-mentioned grand ice bank, which continued on our west-southwest. After turning on the other tack to the northwest, in order to double this point, we sailed some seven leagues, and then steered to the north-northwest some three leagues, when we observed another ice bank. The night approached, and the fog came on so that we put to sea to pass the remainder of the night, purposing at daybreak to return and reconnoitre the last mentioned ice. On the twenty-seventh day of the month, we sighted land west-northwest of us, seeing no ice on the north-northeast. We approached nearer for the sake of a better observation, and found that it was Canseau. This led us to bear off to the north for Cape Breton Island; but we had scarcely sailed two leagues when we encountered an ice bank on the northeast. Night coming on, we were obliged to put out to sea until the next day, when we sailed northeast, and encountered more ice, bearing east, east-southeast from us, along which we coasted heading northeast and north for more than fifteen leagues. At last we were obliged to sail towards the west, greatly to our regret, inasmuch as we could find no passage, and should be obliged to withdraw and sail back on our track. Unfortunately for us we were overtaken by a calm, so that it seemed as if the swell of the sea would throw us upon the ice bank just mentioned, and we got ready to launch our little boat, to use in case of necessity. If we had taken refuge on the above-mentioned ice it would only have been to languish and die in misery. While we were deliberating whether to launch our boat, a fresh breeze arose to our great delight, and thus we escaped from the ice. After we had sailed two leagues, night came on, with a very thick fog, causing us to haul down our sail, as we could not see, and as there were several large pieces of ice in our way, which we were afraid of striking. Thus we remained the entire night until the next day, which was the twenty-ninth, when the fog increased to such an extent that we could scarcely see the length of the vessel. There was also very little wind. Yet we did not fail to set sail, in order to avoid the ice. But, although expecting to extricate ourselves, we found ourselves so involved in it that we could not tell on which side to tack. We were accordingly again compelled to lower sail, and drift until the ice should allow us to make sail. We made a hundred tacks on one side and the other, several times fearing that we were lost. The most self-possessed would have lost all judgment in such a juncture; even the greatest navigator in the world. What alarmed us still more was the short distance we could see, and the fact that the night was coming on, and that we could not make a shift of a quarter of a league without finding a bank or some ice, and a great deal of floating ice, the smallest piece of which would have been sufficient to cause the loss of any vessel whatever. Now, while we were still sailing along amid the ice, there arose so strong a wind that in a short time the fog broke away, affording us a view, and suddenly giving us a clear air and fair sun. Looking around about us, we found that we were shut up in a little lake, not so much as a league and a half in circuit. On the north we perceived the island of Cape Breton, nearly four leagues distant, and it seemed to us that the passage-way to Cape Breton was still closed. We also saw a small ice bank astern of our vessel, and the ocean beyond that, which led us to resolve to go beyond the bank, which was divided. This we succeeded in accomplishing without striking our vessel, putting out to sea for the night, and passing to the southeast of the ice. Thinking now that we could double this ice bank, we sailed east-northeast some fifteen leagues, perceiving only a little piece of ice. At night we hauled down the sail until the next day, when we perceived another ice bank to the north of us, extending as far as we could see. We had drifted to within nearly half a league of it, when we hoisted sail, continuing to coast along this ice in order to find the end of it. While sailing along, we sighted on the first day of May a vessel amid the ice, which, as well as ourselves, had found it difficult to escape from it. We backed our sails in order to await the former, which came full upon us, since we were desirous of ascertaining whether it had seen other ice. On its approach we saw that it was the son [1] of Sieur de Poutrincourt, on his way to visit his father at the settlement of Port Royal. He had left France three months before, not without much reluctance, I think, and still they were nearly a hundred and forty leagues from Port Royal, and well out of their true course. We told them we had sighted the islands of Canseau, much to their satisfaction, I think, as they had not as yet sighted any land, and were steering straight between Cape St. Lawrence and Cape Raye, in which direction they would not have found Port Royal, except by going overland. After a brief conference with each other we separated, each following his own course. The next day we sighted the islands of St. Pierre, finding no ice. Continuing our course we sighted on the following day, the third of the month, Cape Raye, also without finding ice. On the fourth we sighted the island of St. Paul, and Cape St. Lawrence, being some eight leagues north of the latter. The next day we sighted Gaspé. On the seventh we were opposed by a northwest wind, which drove us out of our course nearly thirty-five leagues, when the wind lulled, and was in our favor as far as Tadoussac, which we reached on the 13th day of May.[2] Here we discharged a cannon to notify the savages, in order to obtain news from our settlement at Quebec. The country was still almost entirely covered with snow. There came out to us some canoes, informing us that one of our pataches had been in the harbor for a month, and that three vessels had arrived eight days before. We lowered our boat and visited these savages, who were in a very miserable condition, having only a few articles to barter to satisfy their immediate wants. Besides they desired to wait until several vessels should meet, so that there might be a better market for their merchandise. Therefore they are mistaken who expect to gain an advantage by coming first, for these people are very sagacious and cunning. On the 17th of the month I set out from Tadoussac for the great fall,[3] to meet the Algonquin savages and other tribes, who had promised the year before to go there with my man, whom I had sent to them, that I might learn from him what he might see during the winter. Those at this harbor who suspected where I was going, in accordance with the promises which I had made to the savages, as stated above, began to build several small barques, that they might follow me as soon as possible. And several, as I learned before setting out from France, had some ships and pataches fitted out in view of our voyage, hoping to return rich, as from a voyage to the Indies. Pont Gravé remained at Tadoussac expecting, if he did nothing there, to take a patache and meet me at the fall. Between Tadoussac and Quebec our barque made much water, which obliged me to stop at Quebec and repair the leak. This was on the 21st day of May. ENDNOTES: 1. This was Charles de Biencourt, Sieur de Saint Just. He was closely associated with his father, Sieur de Poutrincourt, in his colony at Port Royal. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 122, note 77. 2. They left Honfleur on the first day of March, and were thus seventy-four days in reaching Tadoussac. The voyage was usually made in favorable weather in thirty days. 3. The Falls of St. Louis, near Montreal, now more commonly known as the La Chine Rapids. CHAPTER II. LANDING AT QUEBEC TO REPAIR THE BARQUE.--DEPARTURE FROM QUEBEC FOR THE FALL, TO MEET THE SAVAGES, AND SEARCH OUT A PLACE APPROPRIATE FOR A SETTLEMENT. On going ashore I found Sieur du Parc, who had spent the winter at the settlement. He and all his companions were very well, and had not suffered any sickness. Game, both large and small, had been abundant during the entire winter, as they told me. I found there the Indian captain, named _Batiscan_, and some Algonquins, who said they were waiting for me, being unwilling to return to Tadoussac without seeing me. I proposed to them to take one of our company to the _Trois Rivières_ to explore the place, but being unable to obtain anything from them this year I put it off until the next. Still I did not fail to inform myself particularly regarding the origin of the people living there, of which they told me with exactness. I asked them for one of their canoes, which they were unwilling to part with on any terms, because of their own need of it. For I had planned to send two or three men to explore the neighborhood of the Trois Rivières, and ascertain what there was there. This, to my great regret, I was unable to accomplish, and postponed the project to the first opportunity that might present itself. Meanwhile I urged on the repairs to our barque. When it was ready, a young man from La Rochelle, named Tresart, asked me to permit him to accompany me to the above-mentioned fall. This I refused, replying that I had special plans of my own, and that I did not wish to conduct any one to my prejudice, adding that there were other companies than mine there, and that I did not care to open up a way and serve as guide, and that he could make the voyage well enough alone and without my help. The same day I set out from Quebec, and arrived at the great fall on the twenty-eighth of May. But I found none of the savages who had promised me to be there on this day. I entered at once a poor canoe, together with the savage I had taken to France and one of my own men. After examining the two shores, both in the woods and on the river bank, in order to find a spot favorable for the location of a settlement, and to get a place ready for building, I went some eight leagues by land along the great fall and through the woods, which are very open, as far as a lake, [4] whither our savage conducted me. Here I observed the country very carefully. But in all that I saw, I found no place more favorable than a little spot to which barques and shallops can easily ascend, with the help of a strong wind or by taking a winding course, in consequence of the strong current. But above this place, which we named _La Place Royale_, at the distance of a league from Mont Royal, there are a great many little rocks and shoals, which are very dangerous. Near Place Royale there is a little river, extending some distance into the interior, along the entire length of which there are more than sixty acres of land cleared up and like meadows, where grain can be sown and gardens made. Formerly savages tilled these lands, [5] but they abandoned them on account of their wars, in which they were constantly engaged. There is also a large number of other fine pastures, where any number of cattle can graze. There are also the various kinds of trees found in France, together with many vines, nut and plum trees, cherries, strawberries, and other kinds of good fruit. Among the rest there is a very excellent one, with a sweet taste like that of plantains, a fruit of the Indies, as white as snow, with a leaf resembling that of nettles, and which creeps up the trees and along the ground like ivy. [6] Fish are very abundant, including all the varieties we have in France, and many very good ones which we do not have. Game is also plenty, the birds being of various kinds. There are stags, hinds, does, caribous, [7] rabbits, lynxes, [8] bears, beavers, also other small animals, and all in such large numbers, that while we were at the fall we were abundantly supplied with them. After a careful examination, we found this place one of the finest on this river. I accordingly forthwith gave orders to cut down and clear up the woods in the Place Royale, [9] so as to level it and prepare it for building. The water can easily be made to flow around it, making of it a little island, so that a habitation can be formed as one may wish. There is a little island some twenty fathoms from Place Royale, about a hundred paces long, where a good and strong settlement might be made. There are also many meadows, containing very good and rich potter's clay, as well adapted for brick as for building purposes, and consequently a very useful article. I had a portion of it worked up, from which I made a wall four feet thick, three or four high, and ten fathoms long, to see how it would stand during the winter, when the freshets came down, although I thought the water would not reach up to it, the ground there being twelve feet above the river, which was very high. In the middle of the river there was an island about three-quarters of a league around, where a good and strong town could be built. This we named _Isle de Sainte Hélène_. [10] This river at the fall is like a lake, containing two or three islands, and bordered by fine meadows. On the first day of June, Pont Gravé arrived at the fall, having been unable to accomplish anything at Tadoussac. A numerous company attended and followed after him to share in the booty, without the hope of which they would have been far in the rear. Now, while awaiting the savages, I had two gardens made, one in the meadows, the other in the woods, which I had cleared up. On the 2d of June I sowed some seeds, all of which came up finely, and in a short time, attesting the good quality of the soil. We resolved to send Savignon, our savage, together with another, to meet his countrymen, so as to hasten their arrival. They hesitated about going in our canoe, of which they were distrustful, it being a very poor one. They set out on the 5th. The next day four or five barques arrived as an escort for us, since they could do nothing at Tadoussac. On the 7th I went to explore a little river, along which the savages sometimes go to war, and which flows into the fall of the river of the Iroquois. [11] It is very pleasant, with meadow land more than three leagues in circuit, and much arable land. It is distant a league from the great fall, and a league and a half from Place Royale. On the 9th our savage arrived. He had gone somewhat beyond the lake, which is ten leagues long, and which I had seen before. [12] But he met no one, and they were unable to go any farther, as their canoe gave out, which obliged them to return. They reported that after passing the fall they saw an island, where there was such a quantity of herons that the air was completely filled with them. There was a young man belonging to Sieur de Monts named Louis, who was very fond of the chase. Hearing this, he wished to go and satisfy his curiosity, earnestly entreating our savage to take him to the place. To this the savage consented, taking also a captain of the Montagnais, a very respectable person, whose name was _Outetoucos_. On the following morning Louis caused the two savages to be called, and went with them in a canoe to the island of the herons. This island is in the middle of the fall. [13] Here they captured as many herons and other birds as they wanted, and embarked again in their canoe. Outetoucos, contrary to the wish of the other savage, and against his remonstrances, desired to pass through a very dangerous place, where the water fell more than three feet, saying that he had formerly gone this way, which, however, was false. He had a long discussion in opposition to our savage, who wished to take him on the south side, along the mainland, [14] where they usually go. This, however, Outetoucos did not wish, saying that there was no danger. Our savage finding him obstinate yielded to his desire. But he insisted that at least a part of the birds in the canoe should be taken out, as it was overloaded, otherwise he said it would inevitably fill and be lost. But to this he would not consent, saying that it would be time enough when they found themselves in the presence of danger. They accordingly permitted themselves to be carried along by the current. But when they reached the precipice, they wanted to throw overboard their load in order to escape. It was now, however, too late, for they were completely in the power of the rapid water, and were straightway swallowed up in the whirlpools of the fall, which turned them round a thousand times. For a long time they clung to the boat. Finally the swiftness of the water wearied them so that this poor Louis, who could not swim at all, entirely lost his presence of mind, and, the canoe going down, he was obliged to abandon it. As it returned to the surface, the two others who kept holding on to it, saw Louis no more, and thus he died a sad death. [15] The two others continued to hold on to the canoe. When, however, they were out of danger, this Outetoucos, being naked and having confidence in his swimming powers, abandoned it in the expectation of reaching the shore, although the water still ran there with great rapidity. But he was drowned, for he had been so weakened and overcome by his efforts that it was impossible for him to save himself after abandoning the canoe. Our savage Savignon, understanding himself better, held firmly to the canoe until it reached an eddy, whither the current had carried it. Here he managed so well that, notwithstanding his suffering and weariness, he approached the shore gradually, when, after throwing the water out of the canoe, he returned in great fear that they would take vengeance upon him, as the savages do among themselves, and related to us this sad story, which caused us great sorrow. On the next day I went in another canoe to the fall, together with the savage and another member of our company, to see the place where they had met with their accident, and find, if possible, the remains. But when he showed me the spot, I was horrified at beholding such a terrible place, and astonished that the deceased should have been so lacking in judgment as to pass through such a fearful place, when they could have gone another way. For it is impossible to go along there, as there are seven or eight descents of water one after the other, the lowest three feet high, the seething and boiling of the water being fearful. A part of the fall was all white with foam, indicating the worst spot, the noise of which was like thunder, the air resounding with the echo of the cataracts. After viewing and carefully examining this place, and searching along the river bank for the dead bodies, another very light shallop having proceeded meanwhile on the other bank also, we returned without finding anything. * * * * * CHAMPLAIN'S EXPLANATION OF THE ACCOMPANYING MAP. LE GRAND SAULT ST. LOUIS. A. Small place that I had cleared up. B. Small pond. C. Small islet, where I had a stone wall made. D. Small brook, where the barques are kept. E. Meadows where the savages stay when they come to this region. F. Mountains seen in the interior. G. Small pond. H. Mont Royal. I. Small brook. L. The fall. M. Place on the north side, where the savages transfer their canoes by land. N. Spot where one of our men and a savage were drowned. O. Small rocky islet. P. Another islet where birds make their nests. Q. Heron island. R. Another island in the fall. S. Small islet T. Small round islet. V. Another islet half covered with water. X. Another islet, where there are many river birds. Y. Meadows. Z. Small river. 2. Very large and fine islands. 3. Places which are bare when the water is low, where there are great eddies, as at the main fall. 4. Meadows covered with water 5. Very shallow places. 6. Another little islet. 7. Small rocks. 8. Island St. Hélène. 9. Small island without trees. 00. Marshes connecting with the great fall. ENDNOTES: 4. This journey of eight leagues would take them as far as the Lake of Two Mountains. 5. This little river is mentioned by Champlain in his Voyage of 1603, Vol. I. p. 268. It is represented on early maps as formed by two small streams, flowing, one from the north or northeastern, and the other from the southern side of the mountain, in the rear of the city of Montreal, which unite some distance before they reach the St. Lawrence, flowing into that river at Point Callières. These little brooks are laid down on Champlain's local map, _Le Grand Sault St. Louis_, on Charlevoix's _Carte de l'Isle de Montréal_, 1744, and on Bellin's _L'Isle de Montréal_, 1764; but they have disappeared on modern maps, and probably are either extinct or are lost in the sewerage of the city, of which they have become a part. We have called the stream formed by these two brooks, note 190, Vol. I., _Rivière St. Pierre_. On Potherie's map, the only stream coming from the interior is so named. _Vide Histoire de L'Amerique_ par M. de Bacqueville de la Potherie, 1722, p. 311. On a map in Greig's _Hochelaga Depicta_, 1839, it is called St. Peter's River. The same stream on Bouchette's map, 1830, is denominated Little River. It seems not unlikely that a part of it was called, at one time, Rivière St. Pierre, and another part Petite Rivière. It is plain that on this stream was situated the sixty acres of cleared land alluded to in the text as formerly occupied by the savages. It will be remembered that seventy-six years anterior to this, in 1535, Jacques Cartier discovered this place, which was then the seat of a large and flourishing Indian town. It is to be regretted that Champlain did not inform us more definitely as to the history of the former occupants of the soil. Some important, and we think conclusive, reasons have been assigned for supposing that they were a tribe of the Iroquois. Among others may be mentioned the similarity in the construction of their towns and houses or cabins, the identity of their language as determined by a collation of the words found in Cartier's journal with the language of the Iroquois; and to these may be added the traditions obtained by missionaries and others, as cited by Laverdière, to which we must not, however, attach too much value. _Vide Laverdière in loco_. While it seems probable that the former occupants were of the Iroquois family, it is impossible to determine whether on retiring they joined the Five Nations in the State of New York, or merged themselves with the Hurons, who were likewise of Iroquois origin. 6. I am unable to identify this plant. Its climbing propensity and the color of its fruit suggest _Rhus radicans_, but in other respects the similarity fails. 7. _Cerfs, Daims, Cheureuls, Caribous_. Champlain employs the names of the different species of the Cerf family as used in Europe; but as our species are different, this use of names creates some confusion. There were in Canada, the moose, the caribou, the wapiti, and the common red deer. Any enumeration by the early writers must include these, under whatever names they may be described. One will be found applying a name to a given species, while another will apply the same name to quite a different species. Charlevoix mentions the orignal (moose) caribou, the hart, and the roebuck. Under the name _hart_, he probably refers to the wapiti, _elaphus Canadensis_, and _roe-buck_, to the common red deer, _Cervus Virginianus_. _Vide Charlevoix's Letters to the Dutchess of Lesdiguieres_, 1763, pp. 64-69, also Vol. I. of this work, p. 265. 8. Lynxes, _Loups-serviers_. The compound word _loup-cervier_ was significant, and was applied originally to the animal of which the stag was its natural prey, _qui attaque les cerfs_. In Europe it described the lynx, a large powerful animal of the feline race, that might well venture to attack the stag. But in Canada this species is not found. What is known as the Canadian lynx, _Felis Canadensis_, is only a large species of cat, which preys upon birds and the smaller quadrupeds. Champlain probably gives it the name _loup-servier_ for the want of one more appropriate. It is a little remarkable that he does not in this list mention the American wolf, _Lupus occidentalis_, so common in every part of Canada, and which he subsequently refers to as the animal especially dreaded by the deer. _Vide postea_, pp. 139, 157. 9. The site of Place Royale was on Point Callières, so named in honor of Chevalier Louis Hector de Callières Bonnevue, governor of Montreal in 1684. 10. It seems most likely that the name of this island was suggested by the marriage which Champlain had contracted with Hélène Boullé, the year before. This name had been given to several other places. _Vide_ Vol. I. pp. 104, 105. 11. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 268, note 191. _Walker and Miles's Atlas_, map 186. 12. The Lake of the Two Mountains. _Vide antea_, note 4. 13. On Champlain's local map of the Falls of St. Louis, the letter Q is wanting; but the expression, _ceste isle est au milieu du faut_, in the middle of the fall, as suggested by Laverdière, indicates that the island designated by the letter R is Heron Island. _Vide postea_, R on map at p. 18. 14. _Grand Tibie_, so in the original. This is a typographical error for _grand terre_. _Vide_ Champlain, 1632, Quebec ed., p. 842. 15. The death of this young man may have suggested the name which was afterward given to the fall. He was, however, it is reasonable to suppose, hardly equal in sanctity of character to the Saint Louis of the French. Hitherto it had been called _Le Grand Saut_. But soon after this it began to be called _Grand Saut S. Louys_. _Vide postea_, pp. 38, 51, 59. CHAPTER III. TWO HUNDRED SAVAGES RETURN THE FRENCHMAN WHO HAD BEEN ENTRUSTED TO THEM, AND RECEIVE THE SAVAGE WHO HAD COME BACK FROM FRANCE.--VARIOUS INTERVIEWS ON BOTH SIDES. On the thirteenth day of the month [16] two hundred Charioquois [17] savages, together with the captains Ochateguin, Iroquet, and Tregouaroti, brother of our savage, brought back my servant. [18] We were greatly pleased to see them. I went to meet them in a canoe with our savage. As they were approaching slowly and in order, our men prepared to salute them with a discharge of arquebuses, muskets, and small pieces. When they were near at hand, they all set to shouting together, and one of the chiefs gave orders that they should make their harangue, in which they greatly praised us, commending us as truthful, inasmuch as I had kept the promise to meet them at this fall. After they had made three more shouts, there was a discharge of musketry twice from thirteen barques or pataches that were there. This alarmed them so, that they begged me to assure them that there should be no more firing, saying that the greater part of them had never seen Christians, nor heard thunderings of that sort, and that they were afraid of its harming them, but that they were greatly pleased to see our savage in health, whom they supposed was dead, as had been reported by some Algonquins, who had heard so from the Montagnais. The savage commended the treatment I had shown him in France, and the remarkable objects he had seen, at which all wondered, and went away quietly to their cabins, expecting that on the next day I would show them the place where I wished to have them dwell. I saw also my servant, who was dressed in the costume of the savages, who commended the treatment he had received from them. He informed me of all he had seen and learned during the winter, from the savages. The next day I showed them a spot for their cabins, in regard to which the elders and principal ones consulted very privately. After their long consultation they sent for me alone and my servant, who had learned their language very well. They told him they desired a close alliance with me, and were sorry to see here all these shallops, and that our savage had told them he did not know them at all nor their intentions, and that it was clear that they were attracted only by their desire of gain and their avarice, and that when their assistance was needed they would refuse it, and would not act as I did in offering to go with my companions to their country and assist them, of all of which I had given them proofs in the past. They praised me for the treatment I had shown our savage, which was that of a brother, and had put them under such obligations of good will to me, that they said they would endeavor to comply with anything I might desire from them, but that they feared that the other boats would do them some harm. I assured them that they would not, and that we were all under one king, whom our savage had seen, and belonged to the same nation, though matters of business were confined to individuals, and that they had no occasion to fear, but might feel as much security as if they were in their own country. After considerable conversation, they made me a present of a hundred castors. I gave them in exchange other kinds of merchandise. They told me there were more than four hundred savages of their country who had purposed to come, but had been prevented by the following representations of an Iroquois prisoner, who had belonged to me, but had escaped to his own country. He had reported, they said, that I had given him his liberty and some merchandise, and that I purposed to go to the fall with six hundred Iroquois to meet the Algonquins and kill them all, adding that the fear aroused by this intelligence had alone prevented them from coming. I replied that the prisoner in question had escaped without my leave, that our savage knew very well how he went away, and that there was no thought of abandoning their alliance, as they had heard, since I had engaged in war with them, and sent my servant to their country to foster their friendship, which was still farther confirmed by my keeping my promise to them in so faithful a manner. They replied that, so far as they were concerned, they had never thought of this; that they were well aware that all this talk was far from the truth, and that if they had believed the contrary they would not have come, but that the others were afraid, never having seen a Frenchman except my servant. They told me also that three hundred Algonquins would come in five or six days, if we would wait for them, to unite with themselves in war against the Iroquois; that, however, they would return without doing so unless I went. I talked a great deal with them about the source of the great river and their country, and they gave me detailed information about their rivers, falls, lakes and lands, as also about the tribes living there, and what is to be found in the region. Four of them assured me that they had seen a sea at a great distance from their country, but that it was difficult to go there, not only on account of the wars, but of the intervening wilderness. They told me also that the winter before some savages had come from the direction of Florida, beyond the country of the Iroquois, who lived near our ocean, and were in alliance with these savages. In a word, they made me a very exact statement, indicating by drawings all the places where they had been, and taking pleasure in talking to me about them; and for my part I did not tire of listening to them, as they confirmed points in regard to which I had been before in doubt. After all this conversation was concluded, I told them that we would trade for the few articles they had, which was done the next day. Each one of the barques carried away its portion; we on our side had all the hardship and venture; the others, who had not troubled themselves about any explorations, had the booty, the only thing that urges them to activity, in which they employ no capital and venture nothing. The next day, after bartering what little they had, they made a barricade about their dwelling, partly in the direction of the wood, and partly in that of our pataches; and this they said they did for their security, in order to avoid the surprises of their enemies, which we took for the truth. On the coming night, they called our savage, who was sleeping on my patache, and my servant, who went to them. After a great deal of conversation, about midnight they had me called also. Entering their cabins, I found them all seated in council. They had me sit down near them, saying that when they met for the purpose of considering a matter, it was their custom to do so at night, that they might not be diverted by anything from attention to the subject in hand; that at night one thought only of listening, while during the day the thoughts were distracted by other objects. But in my opinion, confiding in me, they desired to tell me privately their purpose. Besides, they were afraid of the other pataches, as they subsequently gave me to understand. For they told me that they were uneasy at seeing so many Frenchmen, who were not especially united to one another, and that they had desired to see me alone; that some of them had been beaten; that they were as kindly disposed towards me as towards their own children, confiding so much in me that they would do whatever I told them to do, but that they greatly mistrusted the others; that if I returned I might take as many of their people as I wished, if it were under the guidance of a chief; and that they sent for me to assure me anew of their friendship, which would never be broken, and to express the hope that I might never be ill disposed towards them; and being aware that I had determined to visit their country, they said they would show it to me at the risk of their lives, giving me the assistance of a large number of men, who could go everywhere; and that in future we should expect such treatment from them as they had received from us. Straightway they brought fifty castors and four strings of beads, which they value as we do gold chains, saying that I should share these with my brother, referring to Pont Gravé, we being present together; that these presents were sent by other captains, who had never seen me; that they desired to continue friends to me; that if any of the French wished to go with them, they should be greatly pleased to have them do so; and that they desired more than ever to establish a firm friendship. After much conversation with them, I proposed that inasmuch as they were desirous to have me visit their country, I would petition His Majesty to assist us to the extent of forty or fifty men, equipped with what was necessary for the journey, and that I would embark with them on condition that they would furnish us the necessary provisions for the journey, and that I would take presents for the chiefs of the country through which we should pass, when we would return to our settlement to spend the winter; that moreover, if I found their country favorable and fertile, we would make many settlements there, by which means we should have frequent intercourse with each other, living happily in the future in the fear of God, whom we would make known to them. They were well pleased with this proposition, and begged me to shake hands upon it, saying that they on their part would do all that was possible for its fulfilment; that, in regard to provisions, we should be as well supplied as they themselves, assuring me again that they would show me what I desired to see. Thereupon, I took leave of them at daybreak, thanking them for their willingness to carry out my wishes, and entreating them to continue to entertain the same feelings. On the next day, the 17th, they said that they were going castor-hunting, and that they would all return. On the following morning they finished bartering what little they had, when they embarked in their canoes, asking us not to take any steps towards taking down their dwellings, which we promised them. Then they separated from each other, pretending to go a hunting in different directions. They left our savage with me that we might have less distrust in them. But they had appointed themselves a rendezvous above the fall, where they knew well enough that we could not go with our barques. Meanwhile, we awaited them in accordance with what they had told us. The next day there came two savages, one Iroquet, the other the brother of our Savignon. They came to get the latter, and ask me in behalf of all their companions to go alone with my servant to where they were encamped, as they had something of importance to tell me, which they were unwilling to communicate to any Frenchmen. I promised them that I would go. The following day I gave some trifles to Savignon, who set out much pleased, giving me to understand that he was about to live a very irksome life in comparison with that which he had led in France. He expressed much regret at separation, but I was very glad to be relieved of the care of him. The two captains told me that on the morning of the next day they would send for me, which they did. I embarked, accompanied by my servant, with those who came. Having arrived at the fall, we went some eight leagues into the woods, where they were encamped on the shore of a lake, where I had been before.[19] They were much pleased at seeing me, and began to shout after their custom. Our Indian came out to meet me, and ask me to go to the cabin of his brother, where he at once had some meat and fish put on the fire for my entertainment. While I was there, a banquet was held, to which all the leading Indians were invited. I was not forgotten, although I had already eaten sufficiently; but, in order not to violate the custom of the country, I attended. After banqueting, they went into the woods to hold their council, and meanwhile I amused myself in looking at the country round about, which is very pleasant. Some time after they called me, in order to communicate to me what they had resolved upon. I proceeded to them accordingly with my servant. After I had seated myself by their side, they said they were very glad to see me, and to find that I had not failed to keep my word in what I had promised them; saying that they felt it an additional proof of my affection that I continued the alliance with them, and that before setting out they desired to take leave of me, as it would have been a very great disappointment to them to go away without seeing me, thinking that I would in that case have been ill disposed towards them. They said also that what had led them to say they were going a hunting, and build the barricade, was not the fear of their enemies nor the desire of hunting, but their fear of all the other pataches accompanying me, inasmuch as they had heard it said that on the night they sent for me they were all to be killed, and that I should not be able to protect them from the others who were much more numerous; so that in order to get away they made use of this ruse. But they said if there had been only our two pataches they would have stayed some days longer, and they begged that, when I returned with my companions, I would not bring any others. To this I replied that I did not bring these, but that they followed without my invitation; that in the future, however, I would come in another manner; at which explanation they were much pleased. And now they began again to repeat what they had promised me in regard to the exploration of the country, while I promised, with the help of God, to fulfil what I had told them. They besought me again to give them a man, and I replied that if there was any one among us who was willing to go, I should be well pleased. They told me there was a merchant, named Bouyer, commander of a patache, who had asked them to take a young man, which request, however, they had been unwilling to grant before ascertaining whether this was agreeable to me, as they did not know whether we were friends, since he had come in my company to trade with them; also that they were in no wise under any obligations to him, but that he had offered to make them large presents. I replied that we were in no wise enemies, and that they had often seen us conversing with each other; but that in regard to traffic each did what he could, and that the above-named Bouyer was perhaps desirous of sending this young man as I had sent mine, hoping for some return in the future, which I could also lay claim to from them; that, however, they must judge towards whom they had the greatest obligations, and from whom they were to expect the most. They said there was no comparison between the obligations in the two cases, not only in view of the help I had rendered them in their wars against their enemies, but also of the offer of my personal assistance in the future, in all of which they had found me faithful to the truth, adding that all depended on my pleasure. They said moreover that what made them speak of the matter was the presents he had offered them, and that, if this young man should go with them, it would not put them under such obligations to this Bouyer as they were under to me, and that it would have no influence upon the future, since they only took him on account of the presents from Bouyer. I replied that it was indifferent to me whether they took him or not, and in fact that if they took him for a small consideration I should be displeased at it, but if in return for valuable presents, I should be satisfied, provided he stayed with Iroquet; which they promised me. Then there was made on both sides a final statement of our agreements. They had with them one who had three times been made prisoner by the Iroquois, but had been successful in escaping. This one resolved to go, with nine others, to war, for the sake of revenge for the cruelties his enemies had caused him to suffer. All the captains begged me to dissuade him if possible, since he was very valiant, and they were afraid that, advancing boldly towards the enemy, and supported by a small force only, he would never return. To satisfy them I endeavored to do so, and urged all the reasons I could, which, however, availed little; for he, showing me a portion of his fingers cut off, also great cuts and burns on his body, as evidences of the manner they had tortured him, said that it was impossible for him to live without killing some of his enemies and having vengeance, and that his heart told him he must set out as soon as possible, as he did, firmly resolved to behave well. After concluding with them, I asked them to take me back in our patache. To accomplish this, they got ready eight canoes in order to pass the fall, stripping themselves naked, and directing me to go only in my shirt. For it often happens that some are lost in passing the fall. Consequently, they keep close to each other, so as to render assistance at once, if any canoe should happen to turn over. They said to me, if yours should unfortunately overturn, not knowing how to swim, you must not think of abandoning it, and must cling to the little pieces in the middle of it, for we can easily rescue you. I am sure that even the most self-possessed persons in the world, who have not seen this place nor passed it in little boats such as they have, could not do so without the greatest apprehension. But these people are so skilful in passing falls, that it is an easy matter for them. I passed with them, which I had never before done, nor any other Christian, except my above-mentioned servant. Then we reached our barques, where I lodged a large number of them, and had some conversation with the before-mentioned Bouyer in view of the fear he entertained that I should prevent his servant from going with the savages. They returned the next day with the young man, who proved expensive to his master who had expected, in my opinion, to recover the losses of his voyage, which were very considerable, like those of many others. One of our young men also determined to go with these savages, who are Charioquois, living at a distance of some one hundred and fifty leagues from the fall. He went with the brother of Savignon, one of the captains, who promised me to show him all that could be seen. Bouyer's man went with the above-mentioned Iroquet, an Algonquin, who lives some eighty leagues from the fall. Both went off well pleased and contented. After the departure of the savages, we awaited the three hundred others who, as had been told us, were to come, in accordance with the promise I had made them. Finding that they did not come, all the pataches determined to induce some Algonquin savages, who had come from Tadoussac, to go to meet them, in view of a reward that would be given them on their return, which was to be at the latest not over nine days from the time of their departure, so that we might know whether to expect them or not, and be able to return to Tadoussac. This they agreed to, and a canoe left with this purpose. On the fifth of July a canoe arrived from the Algonquins, who were to come to the number of three hundred. From it we learned that the canoe which had set out from us had arrived in their country, and that their companions, wearied by their journey, were resting, and that they would soon arrive, in fulfilment of the promise they had made; that at most they would not be more than eight days behindhand, but that there would be only twenty-four canoes, as one of their captains and many of their comrades had died of a fever that had broken out among them. They also said that they had sent many to the war, which had hindered their progress. We determined to wait for them. But finding that this period had elapsed without their arrival, Pont Gravé set out from the fall on the eleventh of the month, to arrange some matters at Tadoussac, while I stayed to await the savages. The same day a patache arrived, bringing provisions for the numerous barques of which our party consisted. For our bread, wine, meat, and cider had given out some days before, obliging us to have recourse to fishing, the fine river water, and some radishes which grow in great abundance in the country; otherwise we should have been obliged to return. The same day an Algonquin canoe arrived, assuring us that on the next day the twenty-four canoes were to come, twelve of them prepared for war. On the twelfth the Algonquins arrived with some little merchandise. Before trafficking they made a present to a Montagnais Indian, the son of Anadabijou, [20] who had lately died, in order to mitigate his grief at the death of his father. Shortly after they resolved to make some presents to all the captains of the pataches. They gave to each of them ten castors, saying they were very sorry they had no more, but that the war, to which most of them were going, was the reason; they begged, however, that what they offered might be accepted in good part, saying that they were all friends to us, and to me, who was seated near them, more than to all the others, who were well disposed towards them only on account of their castors, and had not always assisted them like myself, whom they had never found double-tongued like the rest. I replied that all those whom they saw gathered together were their friends; that, in case an opportunity should present itself, they would not fail to do their duty; that we were all friends; that they should continue to be well disposed towards us; that we would make them presents in return for those they gave us; and that they should trade in peace. This they did, and carried away what they could. The next day they brought me privately forty castors, assuring me of their friendship, and that they were very glad of the conclusion which I had reached with the savages who had gone away, and that we should make a settlement at the fall, which I assured them we would do, making them a present in return. After everything had been arranged, they determined to go and obtain the body of Outetoucos, who was drowned at the fall, as we have before mentioned. They went to the spot where he had been buried, disinterred him and carried him to the island of St Hélène, where they performed their usual ceremony, which is to sing and dance over the grave with festivities and banquets following. I asked them why they disinterred the body. They replied that if their enemies should find the grave they would do so, and divide the body into several pieces, which they would then hang to trees in order to offend them. For this reason they said that they transferred it to a place off from the road, and in the most secret manner possible. On the 15th there arrived fourteen canoes, the chief over which was named _Tecouehata_. Upon their arrival all the other savages took up arms and performed some circular evolutions. After going around and dancing to their satisfaction, the others who were in their canoes also began to dance, making various movements of the body. After finishing their singing, they went on shore with a small quantity of furs, and made presents similar to those of the others. These were reciprocated by some of equal value. The next day they trafficked in what little they had, and presented me personally with thirty castors, for which I made them an acknowledgment. They begged me to continue my good will to them, which I promised to do. They spoke with me very especially respecting certain explorations towards the north, which might prove advantageous; and said, in reference to them, that if any one of my company would like to go with them, they would show him what would please me, and would treat him as one of their own children. I promised to give them a young man, at which they were much pleased. When he took leave of me to go with them, I gave him a detailed memorandum of what he was to observe while with them. After they had bartered what little they had, they separated into three parties; one for the war, another for the great fall, another for a little river which flows into that of the great fall. Thus they set out on the 18th day of the month, on which day we also departed. The same day we made the thirty leagues from this fall to the Trois Rivières. On the 19th we arrived at Quebec, which is also thirty leagues from the Trois Rivières. I induced the most of those in each boat to stay at the settlement, when I had some repairs made and some rose-bushes set out. I had also some oak wood put on board to make trial of in France, not only for marine wainscoting, but also for windows. The next day, the 20th of July, I set out. On the 23d I arrived at Tadoussac, whence I resolved to return to France, in accordance with the advice of Pont Gravé. After arranging matters relating to our settlement, according to the directions which Sieur de Monts had given me, I embarked in the vessel of Captain Tibaut, of La Rochelle, on the 11th of August. During our passage we had an abundance of fish, such as _orades_, mackerel, and _pilotes_, the latter similar to herrings, and found about certain planks covered with _pousle-pieds_, a kind of shell-fish attaching itself thereto, and growing there gradually. Sometimes the number of these little fish is so great that it is surprising to behold. We caught also some porpoises and other species of fish. The weather was favorable as far as Belle Isle, [21] where we were overtaken by fogs, which continued three or four days. The weather then becoming fair, we sighted Alvert, [22] and arrived at La Rochelle on the 16th of September, 1611. ENDNOTES: 16. June 13th. 17. _Charioquois_. In the issue of 1632, p. 397, Champlain has _Sauuages Hurons_. It is probable that Charioquois was only a chief of the Hurons. 18. This was the young man that had been sent to pass the winter with the Indians, in exchange for the savage which had accompanied Champlain to France. _Vide antea_, Vol. II. p. 246. 19. This was doubtless on the Lake of Two Mountains. 20. Champlain's orthography is here _Aronadabigeau. Vide_ Vol. I pp. 236, 291. 21. Belle Ile. An island on the coast of Brittany in France. 22. Alvert, a village near Marennes, which they sighted as they approached La Rochelle. CHAPTER IV. ARRIVAL AT LA ROCHELLE.--DISSOLUTION OF THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN SIEUR DE MONTS AND HIS ASSOCIATES, THE SIEURS COLIER AND LE GENDRE OF ROUEN.-- JEALOUSY OF THE FRENCH IN REGARD TO THE NEW DISCOVERIES IN NEW FRANCE. Upon my arrival at La Rochelle I proceeded to visit Sieur de Monts, at Pons [23] in Saintonge, to inform him of all that had occurred during the expedition, and of the promise which the Ochateguins[24] and Algonquins had made me, on condition that we would assist them in their wars, as I had agreed. Sieur de Monts, after listening to it all, determined to go to the Court to arrange the matter. I started before him to go there also. But on the way I was unfortunately detained by the falling of a horse upon me, which came near killing me. This fall detained me some time; but as soon as I had sufficiently recovered from its effects I set out again to complete my journey and meet Sieur de Monts at Fontainebleau, who, upon his return to Paris, had a conference with his associates. The latter were unwilling to continue in the association, as there was no commission forbidding any others from going to the new discoveries and trading with the inhabitants of the country. Sieur de Monts, seeing this, bargained with them for what remained at the settlement at Quebec, in consideration of a sum of money which he gave them for their share. He sent also some men to take care of the settlement, in the expectation of obtaining a commission from His Majesty. But while he was engaged in the pursuit of this object some important matters demanded his attention, so that he was obliged to abandon it, and he left me the duty of taking the necessary steps for it. As I was about arranging the matter, the vessels arrived from New France with men from our settlement, those whom I had sent into the interior with the savages. They brought me very important information, saying that more than two hundred savages had come, expecting to find me at the great fall of St. Louis, where I had appointed a rendezvous, with the intention of assisting them according to their request. But, finding that I had not kept my promise, they were greatly displeased. Our men, however, made some apologies, which were accepted, and assured them that they would not fail to come the following year or never. The savages agreed to this on their part. But several others left the old trading-station of Tadoussac, and came to the fall with many small barques to see if they could engage in traffic with these people, whom they assured that I was dead, although our men stoutly declared the contrary. This shows how jealousy against meritorious objects gets possession of bad natures; and all they want is that men should expose themselves to a thousand dangers, to discover peoples and territories, that they themselves may have the profit and others the hardship. It is not reasonable that one should capture the lamb and another go off with the fleece. If they had been willing to participate in our discoveries, use their means, and risk their persons, they would have given evidence of their honor and nobleness, but on the contrary they show clearly that they are impelled by pure malice that they may enjoy the fruit of our labors equally with ourselves. On this subject, and to show how many persons strive to pervert praiseworthy enterprises, I will instance again the people of St. Malo and others, who say that the profit of these discoveries belongs to them, since Jacques Cartier, who first visited Canada and the islands of New Foundland, was from their city, as if that city had contributed to the expenses of these discoveries of Jacques Cartier, who went there by the order and at the expense of King Francis I, in the years 1534 and 1535 to discover these territories now called New France. If then Cartier made any discovery at the expense of His Majesty, all his subjects have the same rights and liberties in them as the people of St. Malo, who cannot prevent others who make farther discoveries at their own expense, as is shown in the case of the discoveries above described, from profiting by them in peace. Hence they ought not to claim any rights if they themselves make no contributions, and their reasons for doing so are weak and foolish. To prove more conclusively that they who maintain this position do so without any foundation, let us suppose that a Spaniard or other foreigner had discovered lands and wealth at the expense of the King of France. Could the Spaniards or other foreigners claim these discoveries and this wealth on the ground that the discoverer was a Spaniard or foreigner? No! There would be no sense in doing so, and they would always belong to France. Hence the people of St. Malo cannot make these claims for the reason which they give, that Cartier was a citizen of their city; and they can only take cognizance of the fact that he was a citizen of theirs, and render him accordingly the praise which is his due. Besides, Cartier in the voyage which he made never passed the great fall of St. Louis, and made no discoveries north or south of the river St. Lawrence. His narratives give no evidence of it, in which he speaks only of the river Saguenay, the Trois Rivières and St. Croix, where he spent the winter in a fort near our settlement. Had he done so, he would not have failed to mention it, any more than what he has mentioned, which shows that he left all the upper part of the St. Lawrence, from Tadoussac to the great fall, being a territory difficult to explore, and that he was unwilling to expose himself or let his barques engage in the venture. So that what he did has borne no fruit until four years ago, when we made our settlement at Quebec, after which I ventured to pass the fall to help the savages in their wars, and fend among them men to make the acquaintance of the people, to learn their mode of living, and the character and extent of their territory. After devoting ourselves to labors which have been so successful, is it not just that we should enjoy their fruits, His Majesty not having contributed anything to aid those who have assumed the responsibilities of these undertakings up to the present time. I hope that God will at some time incline him to do so much for His service, his own glory and the welfare of his subjects, as to bring many new peoples to the knowledge of our faith, that they may at last enjoy the heavenly kingdom. NOTE. Champlain here introduces an explanation of his two geographical maps of New France, and likewise his method of determining a meridian line. For convenience of use the maps are placed at the end of this work, and for the same reason these explanations are carried forward to p. 219, in immediate proximity to the maps which they explain.--EDITOR. ENDNOTES: 23. De Monts was governor of Pons, a town situated about ten miles south of Saintes, in the present department of Lower Charente. 24. _Ochateguins. Vide_ Vol III. Quebec ed. p 169. They were Hurons, and Ochateguin is supposed to have been one of their chiefs. _Vide_ Vol II. note 321. FOURTH VOYAGE OF SIEUR DE CHAMPLAIN, CAPTAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE KING IN THE MARINE, AND LIEUTENANT OF MONSEIGNEUR LE PRINCE DE CONDÉ IN NEW FRANCE, MADE IN THE YEAR 1613. To the very high, powerful, and excellent Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, First Prince of the Blood, First Peer of France, Governor and Lieutenant of His Majesty in Guienne. _Monseigneur, The Honor that I have received from your Highness in being intrusted with the discovery of New France has inspired in me the desire to pursue with still greater pains and zeal than ever the search for the North Sea. With this object in view I have made a voyage during the past year, 1613, relying on a man whom I had sent there and who assured me he had seen it, as you will perceive in this brief narrative, which I venture to present to your Excellence, and in which are particularly described all the toils and sufferings I have had in the undertaking. But although I regret having lost this year so far as the main object is concerned, yet my expectation, as in the first voyage, of obtaining more definite information respecting the subject from the savages, has been fulfilled. They have told me about various lakes and rivers in the north, in view of which, aside from their assurance that they know of this sea, it seems to me easy to conclude from the maps that it cannot be far from the farthest discoveries I have hitherto made. Awaiting a favorable time and opportunity to prosecute my plans, and praying God to preserve you, most happy Prince, in all prosperity, wherein consists my highest wish for your greatness, I remain in the quality of Your most humble and devoted servant, SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN_. FOURTH VOYAGE OF SIEUR DE CHAMPLAIN, CAPTAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE KING IN THE MARINE, AND LIEUTENANT OF MONSEIGNEUR LE PRINCE DE CONDÉ IN NEW FRANCE, MADE IN THE YEAR 1613. CHAPTER I. WHAT LED ME TO SEEK FOR TERMS OF REGULATION.--A COMMISSION OBTAINED-- OPPOSITIONS TO THE SAME.--PUBLICATION AT LAST IN ALL THE PORTS OF FRANCE. The desire which I have always had of making new discoveries in New France, for the good, profit, and glory of the French name, and at the same time to lead the poor natives to the knowledge of God, has led me to seek more and more for the greater facility of this undertaking, which can only be secured by means of good regulations. For, since individuals desire to gather the fruits of my labor without contributing to the expenses and great outlays requisite for the support of the settlements necessary to a successful result, this branch of trade is ruined by the greediness of gain, which is so great that it causes merchants to set out prematurely in order to arrive first in this country. By this means they not only become involved in the ice, but also in their own ruin, for, from trading with the savages in a secret manner and offering through rivalry with each other more merchandise than is necessary, they get the worst of the bargain. Thus, while purposing to deceive their associates, they generally deceive themselves. For this reason, when I returned to France on the 10th of September, 1611, I spoke to Sieur de Monts about the matter, who approved of my suggestions; but his engagements not allowing him to prosecute the matter at court, he left to me its whole management. I then drew up a statement, which I presented to President Jeannin, who, being a man desirous of seeing good undertakings prosper, commended my project, and encouraged me in its prosecution. But feeling assured that those who love to fish in troubled waters would be vexed at such regulations and seek means to thwart them, it seemed advisable to throw myself into the hands of some power whose authority would prevail over their jealousy. Now, knowing Monseigneur le Comte de Soissons[25] to be a prince devout and well disposed to all holy undertakings, I addressed myself to him through Sieur de Beaulieu, councillor, and almoner in ordinary to the King, and urged upon him the importance of the matter, setting forth the means of regulating it, the harm which disorder had heretofore produced, and the total ruin with which it was threatened, to the great dishonor of the French name, unless God should raise up some one who would reanimate it and give promise of securing for it some day the success which had hitherto been little anticipated. After he had been informed in regard to all the details of the scheme and seen the map of the country which I had made, he promised me, under the sanction of the King, to undertake the protectorate of the enterprise. I immediately after presented to His Majesty, and to the gentlemen of his Council, a petition accompanied by articles, to the end that it might please him to issue regulations for the undertaking, without which, as I have said, it would fail. Accordingly his Majesty gave the direction and control to the before-mentioned Count, who then honored me with the lieutenancy. Now as I was preparing to publish the commission [26] of the King in all the ports and harbors of France, there occurred the sickness and greatly lamented death of the Count, which postponed somewhat the undertaking. But his Majesty at once committed the direction to Monseigneur le Prince,[27] who proceeded in the execution of its duties, and, having in like manner honored me with the lieutenancy, [28] directed me to go on with the publication of the commission. But as soon as this was done, some marplots, who had no interest in the matter, importuned him to annul it, representing to him as they claimed the interests of all the merchants of France, who had no cause for complaint, since all were received into the association and could not therefore justly be aggrieved. Accordingly, their evil intention being recognized, they were dismissed, with permission only to enter into the association. During these altercations, it was impossible for me, as the time of my departure was very near at hand, to do anything for the habitation at Quebec, for repairing and enlarging which I desired to take out some workmen. It was accordingly necessary to go out this year without any farther organization. The passports of Monseigneur le Prince were made out for four vessels, which were already in readiness for the voyage, viz. three from Rouen and one from La Rochelle, on condition that each should furnish four men for my assistance, not only in my discoveries but in war, as I desired to keep the promise which I had made to the Ochataiguins [29] in the year 1611, to assist them in their wars at the time of my next voyage. As I was preparing to set out, I was informed that the Parliamentary Court of Rouen would not permit the publication of the commission of the King, because his Majesty had reserved to himself and his Council the sole cognizance of the differences which might arise in this matter; added to which was the fact that the merchants of St. Malo were also opposed to it. This greatly embarrassed me, and obliged me to make three journeys to Rouen, with orders of his Majesty, in consideration of which the Court desisted from their inhibition, and the assumptions of the opponents were overruled. The commission was then published in all the ports of Normandy. ENDNOTES: 25. For a brief notice of the Count de Soissons, _vide_ Vol. I. note 74; also note by Laverdière, Quebec ed., p. 433. 26. This Commission, dated October 15, 1612, will be found in Champlain's issue of 1632. _Vide_ Quebec ed., p 887. 27. Henry de Bourbon. _Vide_ Vol. I. p 113, note 75. 28. Champlain was appointed lieutenant of the Prince de Condé on the 22d day of November, 1612. _Vide_ issue of 1632, Quebec ed., p. 1072. 29. Ochateguins, or Hurons. CHAPTER II. DEPARTURE FROM FRANCE.--WHAT TOOK PLACE UP TO OUR ARRIVAL AT THE FALLS. I set out from Rouen on the 5th of March for Honfleur, accompanied by Sieur L'Ange, to assist me in my explorations, and in war if occasion should require. On the next day, the 6th of the month, we embarked in the vessel of Sieur de Pont Gravé, immediately setting sail, with a favorable wind. On the 10th of April we sighted the Grand Bank, where we several times tried for fish, but without success. On the 15th we had a violent gale, accompanied by rain and hail, which was followed by another, lasting forty-eight hours, and so violent as to cause the loss of several vessels on the island of Cape Breton. On the 21st we sighted the island and Cap de Raye. [30] On the 29th the Montagnais savages, perceiving us from All Devils' Point, [31] threw themselves into their canoes and came to meet us, being so thin and hideous-looking that I did not recognize them. At once they began crying for bread, saying that they were dying of hunger. This led us to conclude that the winter had not been severe, and consequently the hunting poor, which matter we have alluded to in previous voyages. Having arrived on board of our vessel they examined the faces of all, and as I was not to be seen anywhere they asked where Monsieur de Champlain was, and were answered that I had remained in France. But this they would not think of believing, and an old man among them came to me in a corner where I was walking, not desiring to be recognized as yet, and taking me by the ear, for he suspected who it was, saw the scar of the arrow wound, which I received at the defeat of the Iroquois. At this he cried out, and all the others after him, with great demonstrations of joy, saying, Your people are awaiting you at the harbor of Tadoussac. The same day we arrived at Tadoussac, and although we had set out last, nevertheless arrived first, Sieur Boyer of Rouen arriving with the same tide. From this it is evident that to set out before the season is simply rushing into the ice. When we had anchored, our friends came out to us, and, after informing us how everything was at the habitation, began to dress three _outardes_ [32] and two hares, which they had brought, throwing the entrails overboard, after which the poor savages rushed, and, like famished beasts, devoured them without drawing. They also scraped off with their nails the fat with which our vessel had been coated, eating it gluttonously as if they had found some great delicacy. The next day two vessels arrived from St. Malo, which had set out before the oppositions had been settled and the commission been published in Normandy. I proceeded on board, accompanied by L'Ange. The Sieurs de la Moinerie and la Tremblaye were in command, to whom I read the commission of the King, and the prohibition against violating it on penalties attached to the same. They replied that they were subjects and faithful servants of His Majesty, and that they would obey his commands; and I then had attached to a post in the port the arms and commission of His Majesty, that no ground for ignorance might be claimed. On the 2d of May, seeing two shallops equipped to go to the Falls, I embarked with the before-mentioned L'Ange in one of them. We had very bad weather, so that the masts of our shallop were broken, and had it not been for the preserving hand of God we should have been lost, as was before our eyes a shallop from St Malo, which was going to the Isle d'Orleans, those on board of which however being saved. On the 7th we arrived at Quebec, where we found in good condition those who had wintered there, they not having been sick; they told us that the winter had not been severe, and that the river had not frozen. The trees also were beginning to put forth leaves and the fields to be decked with flowers. On the 13th we set out from Quebec for the Falls of St. Louis, where we arrived on the 21st, finding there one of, our barques which had set out after us from Tadoussac, and which had traded some with a small troop of Algonquins, who came from the war with the Iroquois, and had with them two prisoners. Those in the barque gave them to understand that I had come with a number of men to assist them in their wars, according to the promise I had made them in previous years; also that I desired to go to their country and enter into an alliance with all their friends, at which they were greatly pleased. And, inasmuch as they were desirous of returning to their country to assure their friends of their victory, see their wives, and put to death their prisoners in a festive _tabagie_, they left us pledges of their return, which they promised should be before the middle of the first moon, according to their reckoning, their shields made of wood and elk leather, and a part of their bows and arrows. I regretted very much that I was not prepared to go with them to their country. Three days after, three canoes arrived with Algonquins, who had come from the interior, with some articles of merchandise which they bartered. They told me that the bad treatment which the savages had received the year before had discouraged them from coming any more, and that they did not believe that I would ever return to their country on account of the wrong impressions which those jealous of me had given them respecting me; wherefore twelve hundred men had gone to the war, having no more hope from the French, who, they did not believe, would return again to their country. This intelligence greatly disheartened the merchants, as they had made a great purchase of merchandise, with the expectation that the savages would come, as they had been accustomed to. This led me to resolve, as I engaged in my explorations, to pass through their country, in order to encourage those who had stayed back, with an assurance of the good treatment they would receive, and of the large amount of good merchandise at the Fall, and also of the desire I had to assist them in their war. For carrying out this purpose I requested three canoes and three savages to guide us, but after much difficulty obtained only two and one savage, and this by means of some presents made them. ENDNOTES: 30. The _island_ refers to New Foundland. Cap de Raye, still known as Cape Ray, was on the southwestern angle of New Foundland. 31. Now called Point aux Vaches. It was sometimes called All-Devils' Point. _Vide_ note 136, Vol. I. p. 235. 32. _Outardes_. Sometimes written _houtardes_, and _Oltardes_. The name outarde or bustard, the _otis_ of ornithologists, a land bird of Europe, was applied to a species of goose in Canada at a very early period. The outarde is mentioned by Cartier in 1535, and the name may have been originally applied by the fishermen and fur-traders at a much earlier period, doubtless on account of some fancied resemblance which they saw to the lesser bustard or outarde, which was about the size of the English pheasant. _Vide Pennant's British Zoölogy_, Vol. I. p. 379. Cartier, Champlain, Lescarbot, Baron La Hontan, Potherie, and Charlvoix mention the outarde in catalogues of water-fowl in which _oye_, the goose, is likewise mentioned. They very clearly distinguish it from the class which they commonly considered _oyes_, or geese. Cartier, for instance, says, Il y a aussi grand nombre d'oyseaulx, scauoir grues, signes, _oltardes, oyes sauuages, blanches, & grises_. Others speak of _outardes et oyes_. They do not generally describe it with particularity. Champlain, however, in describing the turkey, _cocq d'Inde_, on the coast of New England, says, _aussi gros qu'vne outarde, qui est une espece d'oye_. Father Pierre Biard writes, _et au mesme temps les outardes arriuent du midy, qui sont grosses cannes au double des nostres_. From these statements it is obvious that the outarde was a species of goose, but was so small that it could well be described as a large duck. In New France there were at least four species of the goose, which might have come under the observation of the early navigators and explorers. We give them in the order of their size, as described in Coues' Key to North American Birds. 1. Canada Goose, _Branta Canadensis_, SCOPOLI, 36 inches. 2. Snow Goose, _Anser hyperboreus_, LINNÆUS, 30 inches. 3. Am. White-fronted Goose, _Anser albifrons_, LINNÆUS, 27 inches. 4. Brant Goose, _Branta bernicla_, SCOPOLI, 24 inches. Recurring to the statement of Cartier above cited, it will be observed that he mentions, besides the outarde, wild geese white and gray. The first and largest of the four species above mentioned, the Canada goose, _Branta Canadensis_, is gray, and the two next, the Snow goose and White-fronted, would be classified as white. This disposes of three of the four mentioned. The outarde of Cartier would therefore be the fourth species in the list, viz. the Brant goose. _Branta bernicla_. This is the smallest species found on our northern coast, and might naturally be described, as stated by Father Biard, as a large duck. It is obvious that the good Father could not have described the Canada goose, the largest of the four species, as a large duck, and the white geese have never been supposed to be referred to under the name of outarde. The Brant goose, to which all the evidence which we have been able to find in the Canadian authorities seems to point as the outarde of early times, is common in our markets in its season, but our market-men, unaccustomed to make scientific distinctions, are puzzled to decide whether it should be classed as a goose or a duck. It is not improbable that the early voyagers to our northern latitudes, unable to decide to which of these classes this water-fowl properly belonged, and seeing in it a fancied resemblance to the lesser outarde, with which they were familiar, gave it for sake of the distinction, but nevertheless inappropriately, the name of outarde. The reader is referred to the following authorities. _Vide Brief Récit_ par Jacques Cartier, 1545. D'Avezac ed., p. 33; _Champlain_, Quebec ed., p. 220; _Jésuite Relations_, 1616, p. 10; _Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons_, par Sagard, Paris, 1632, p. 301; _Dictionaire de la Langue Hurone_, par Sagard, Paris, 1632, _oyseaux; Letters to the Dutchess of Lesdiguieres_, By Fr. Xa. de Charlevoix, London. 1763, p. 88; _Le Jeune, Relations des Jésuites_, 1633, P. 4, 1636, p. 47; _Histoire de l'Amérique Septentrionale_, par de la Potherie, Paris, 1722, Vol. I. pp. 20, 172, 212, 308; _Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, pp. 369, 582, 611. CHAPTER III. DEPARTURE TO DISCOVER THE NORTH SEA, ON THE GROUND OF THE REPORT MADE ME IN REGARD TO IT. DESCRIPTION OF SEVERAL RIVERS, LAKES AND ISLANDS, THE FALLS OF THE CHAUDIÈRE AND OTHER FALLS. Now, as I had only two canoes, I could take with me but four men, among whom was one named Nicholas de Vignau, the most impudent liar that has been seen for a long time, as the sequel of this narrative will show. He had formerly spent the winter with the savages, and I had sent him on explorations the preceding years. He reported to me, on his return to Paris in 1612, that he had seen the North Sea; that the river of the Algonquins came from a lake which emptied into it; and that in seventeen days one could go from the Falls of St. Louis to this sea and back again; that he had seen the wreck and _débris_ of an English ship that had been wrecked, on board of which were eighty men, who had escaped to the shore, and whom the savages killed because the English endeavored to take from them by force their Indian corn and other necessaries of life; and that he had seen the scalps which these savages had flayed off, according to their custom, which they would show me, and that they would likewise give me a young English boy whom they had kept for me. This intelligence had greatly pleased me, for I thought that I had almost found that for which I had for a long time been searching. Accordingly I enjoined upon him to tell me the truth, in order that I might inform the King, and warned him that if he gave utterance to a lie he was putting the rope about his neck, assuring him on the other hand that, if his narrative were true, he could be certain of being well rewarded. He again assured me, with stronger oaths than ever; and in order to play his _rôle_ better he gave me a description of the country, which he said he had made as well as he was able. Accordingly the confidence which I saw in him, his entire frankness as it seemed, the description which he had prepared, the wreck and _débris_ of the ship, and the things above mentioned, had an appearance of probability, in connection with the voyage of the English to Labrador in 1612, where they found a strait, in which they sailed as far as the 63d degree of latitude and the 290th of longitude, wintering at the 53d degree and losing some vessels, as their report proves.[33] These circumstances inducing me to believe that what he said was true, I made a report of the same to the Chancellor, [34] which I showed to Marshal de Brissac,[35] President Jeannin, [36] and other Seigneurs of the Court, who told me that I ought to visit the place in person. For this reason I requested Sieur Georges, a merchant of La Rochelle, to give him a passage in his ship, which he willingly did, and during the voyage he questioned him as to his object in making it; and, since it was not of any profit to him, he asked if he expected any pay, to which the young man answered that he did not, that he did not expect anything, from any one but the King, and that he undertook the voyage only to show me the North Sea, which he had seen. He made an affidavit of this at La Rochelle before two notaries. Now as I took leave on Whitsuntide, [37] of all the principal men to whose prayers I commended myself, and also to those of all others, I said to him in their presence that if what he had previously said was not true he must not give me the trouble to undertake the journey, which involved many dangers. Again he affirmed all that he had said, on peril of his life. Accordingly, our canoes being laden with some provisions, our arms, and a few articles of merchandise for making presents to the savages, I set out on Monday the 27th of May from Isle St. Hélène with four Frenchmen and one savage, a parting salute being given me with some rounds from small pieces. This day we went only to the Falls of St. Louis, a league up the river, the bad weather not allowing us to go any farther. On the 29th we passed the Falls, [38] partly by land, partly by water, it being necessary for us to carry our canoes, clothes, victuals, and arms on our shoulders, no small matter for persons not accustomed to it. After going two leagues beyond the Falls, we entered a lake, [39] about twelve leagues in circuit, into which three rivers empty; one coming from the west, from the direction of the Ochateguins, distant from one hundred and fifty to two hundred leagues from the great Falls; [40] another from the south and the country of the Iroquois, a like distance off; [41] and the other from the north and the country of the Algonquins and Nebicerini, also about the same distance. [42] This river on the north, according to the report of the savages, comes from a source more remote, and passes by tribes unknown to them and about three hundred leagues distant. This lake is filled with fine large islands, containing only pasturage land, where there is fine hunting, deer and fowl being plenty. Fish are abundant. The country bordering the lake is covered with extensive forests. We proceeded to pass the night at the entrance to this lake, making barricades against the Iroquois, who roam in these regions in order to surprise their enemies; and I am sure that if they were to find us they would give us as good a welcome as them, for which reason we kept a good watch all night. On the next day I took the altitude of the place, and found it in latitude 45° 18'. About three o'clock in the afternoon we entered the river which comes from the north, and, passing a small fall [43] by land so as to favor our canoes, we proceeded to a little island, where we spent the remainder of the night. On the last day of May we passed another lake, [44] seven or eight leagues long and three broad, containing several islands. The neighboring country is very level, except in some places, where there are pine-covered hills. We passed a fall called by the inhabitants of the country Quenechouan,[45] which is filled with stones and rocks, and where the water runs with great velocity. We had to get into the water and drag our canoes along the shore with a rope. Half a league from there we passed another little fall by rowing, which makes one sweat. Great skill is required in passing these falls, in order to avoid the eddies and surf, in which they abound; but the savages do this with the greatest possible dexterity, winding about and going by the easiest places, which they recognize at a glance. On Saturday, the 1st of June, we passed two other falls; the first half a league long, the second a league, in which we had much difficulty; for the rapidity of the current is so great that it makes a frightful noise, and produces, as it descends from stage to stage, so white a foam everywhere that the water cannot be seen at all. This fall is strewn with rocks, and contains some islands here and there covered with pines and white cedars. This was the place where we had a hard time; for, not being able to carry our canoes by land on account of the density of the wood, we had to drag them in the water with ropes, and in drawing mine I came near losing my life, as it crossed into one of the eddies, and if I had not had the good fortune to fall between two rocks the canoe would have dragged me in, inasmuch as I was unable to undo quickly enough the rope which was wound around my hand, and which hurt me severely and came near cutting it off. In this danger I cried to God and began to pull my canoe, which was returned to me by the refluent water, such as occurs in these falls. Having thus escaped I thanked God, begging Him to preserve us. Later our savage came to help me, but I was out of danger. It is not strange that I was desirous of preserving my canoe, for if it had been lost it would have been necessary to remain, or wait until some savages came that way, a poor hope for those who have nothing to dine on, and who are not accustomed to such hardship. As for our Frenchmen, they did not have any better luck, and several times came near losing their lives; but the Divine Goodness preserved us all. During the remainder of the day we rested, having done enough. The next day we fell in with fifteen canoes of savages called _Quenongebin_, [46] in a river, after we had passed a small lake, four leagues long and two broad. They had been informed of my coming by those who had passed the Falls of St. Louis, on their way from the war with the Iroquois. I was very glad to meet them, as were they also to meet me, but they were astonished to see me in this country with so few companions, and with only one savage. Accordingly, after saluting each other after the manner of the country, I desired them not to go any farther until I had informed them of my plan. To this they assented, and we encamped on an island. The next day I explained to them that I was on my way to their country to visit them, and fulfil the promise I had previously made them, and that if they had determined to go to the war it would be very agreeable to me, inasmuch as I had brought some companions with this view, at which they were greatly pleased; and having told them that I wished to go farther in order to notify the other tribes, they wanted to deter me, saying that the way was bad, and that we had seen nothing up to this point. Wherefore I asked them to give me one of their number to take charge of our second canoe, and also to serve us as guide, since our conductors were not acquainted any farther. This they did willingly, and in return I made them a present and gave them one of our Frenchmen, the least indispensable, whom I sent back to the Falls with a leaf of my note-book, on which for want of paper I made a report of myself. Thus we parted, and continuing our course up the river we found another one, very fair and broad, which comes from a nation called _Ouescharini_, [47] who live north of it, a distance of four days' journey from the mouth. This river is very pleasant in consequence of the fine islands it contains, and the fair and open woods with which its shores are bordered. The land is very good for tillage. On the fourth day we passed near another river coming from the north, where tribes called _Algonquins_ live. This river falls into the great river St. Lawrence, three leagues below the Falls of St. Louis, forming a large island of nearly forty leagues. [48] This river is not broad, but filled with a countless number of falls, very hard to pass. Sometimes these tribes go by way of this river in order to avoid encounters with their enemies, knowing that they will not try to find them in places so difficult of access. Where this river has its debouchure is another coming from the south, [49] at the mouth of which is a marvellous fall. For it descends a height of twenty or twenty-five fathoms [50] with such impetuosity that it makes an arch nearly four hundred paces broad. The savages take pleasure in passing under it, not wetting themselves, except from the spray that is thrown off. There is an island in the middle of the river which, like all the country round about, is covered with pines and white cedars. When the savages desire to enter the river they ascend the mountain, carrying their canoes, and go half a league by land. The neighboring country is filled with all sorts of game, so that the savages often make a stop here. The Iroquois also go there sometimes and surprise them while making the passage. We passed a fall [51] a league from there, which is half a league broad, and has a descent of six or seven fathoms. There are many little islands, which are, however, nothing more than rough and dangerous rocks covered with a poor sort of brushwood. The water falls in one place with such force upon a rock that it has hollowed out in course of time a large and deep basin, in which the water has a circular motion and forms large eddies in the middle, so that the savages call it _Asticou_, which signifies boiler. This cataract produces such a noise in this basin that it is heard for more than two leagues. The savages when passing here observe a ceremony which we shall speak of in its place. We had much trouble in ascending by rowing against a strong current, in order to reach the foot of the fall. Here the savages took their canoes, my Frenchmen and myself, our arms, provisions, and other necessaries, and we passed over the rough rocks for the distance of about a quarter of a league, the extent of the fall. Then we embarked, being obliged afterwards to land a second time and go about three hundred paces through copse-wood, after which we got into the water in order to get our canoes over the sharp rocks, the trouble attending which may be imagined. I took the altitude of this place, which I found to be in latitude 45° 38'. [52] In the afternoon we entered a lake, [53] five leagues long and two wide, in which there are very fine islands covered with vines, nut-trees, and other excellent kinds of trees. Ten or twelve leagues above we passed some islands covered with pines. The land is sandy, and there is found here a root which dyes a crimson color, with which the savages paint their faces, as also little gewgaws after their manner. There is also a mountain range along this river, and the surrounding country seems to be very unpromising. The rest of the day we passed on a very pleasant island. The next day we proceeded on our course to a great fall, nearly three leagues broad, in which the water falls a height of ten or twelve fathoms in a slope, making a marvellous noise. [54] It is filled with a vast number of islands, covered with pines and cedars. In order to pass it we were obliged to give up our maize or Indian corn, and some few other provisions we had, together with our least necessary clothes, retaining only our arms and lines, to afford us means of support from hunting and fishing as place and luck might permit. Thus lightened we passed, sometimes rowing, sometimes carrying our canoes and arms by land, the fall, which is a league and a half long, [55] and in which our savages, who are indefatigable in this work and accustomed to endure such hardships, aided us greatly. Continuing our course, we passed two other falls, one by land, the other with oar and poles standing up. Then we entered a lake, [56] six or seven leagues long, into which flows a river coming from the south, [57] on which at a distance of five days' journey from the other river [58] live a people called _Matou-oüescarini_ [59] The lands about the before-mentioned lake are sandy and covered with pines, which have been almost entirely burned down by the savages. There are some islands, in one of which we rested ourselves. Here we saw a number of fine red cypresses,[60] the first I had seen in this country, out of which I made a cross, which I planted at one end of the island, on an elevated and conspicuous spot, with the arms of France, as I had done in other places where we had stopped. I called this island _Sainte Croix_. On the 6th we set out from this island of St. Croix, where the river is a league and a half broad, and having made eight or ten leagues we passed a small fall by oar, and a number of islands of various sizes. Here our savages left the sacks containing their provisions and their less necessary articles, in order to be lighter for going overland and avoiding several falls which it was necessary to pass. There was a great dispute between our savages and our impostor, who affirmed that there was no danger by way of the falls, and that we ought to go that way. Our savages said to him, You are tired of living, and to me, that I ought not to believe him, and that he did not tell the truth. Accordingly, having several times observed that he had no knowledge of the places, I followed the advice of the savages, which was fortunate for me, for he fought for dangers in order to ruin me or to disgust me with the undertaking, as he has since confessed, a statement of which will be given hereafter. We crossed accordingly towards the west the river, which extended northward. I took the altitude of this place and found it in latitude 46° 40'.[61] We had much difficulty in going this distance overland. I, for my part, was loaded only with three arquebuses, as many oars, my cloak, and some small articles. I cheered on our men, who were somewhat more heavily loaded, but more troubled by the mosquitoes than by their loads. Thus after passing four small ponds and having gone a distance of two and a half leagues, we were so wearied that it was impossible to go farther, not having eaten for twenty-four hours anything but a little broiled fish without seasoning, for we had left our provisions behind, as I mentioned before. Accordingly we rested on the border of a pond, which was very pleasant, and made a fire to drive away the mosquitoes, which annoyed us greatly, whose persistency is so marvellous that one cannot describe it. Here we cast our lines to catch some fish. The next day we passed this pond, which was perhaps a league long. Then we went by land three leagues through a country worse than we had yet seen, since the winds had blown down the pines on top of each other. This was no slight inconvenience, as it was necessary to go now over, now under, these trees. In this way we reached a lake, six leagues long and two wide, [62] very abundant in fish, the neighboring people doing their fishing there. Near this lake is a settlement of savages, who till the soil and gather harvests of maize. Their chief is named _Nibachis_, who came to visit us with his followers, astonished that we could have passed the falls and bad roads in order to reach them. After offering us tobacco, according to their custom, he began to address his companions, saying, that we must have fallen from the clouds, for he knew not how we could have made the journey, and that they who lived in the country had much trouble in traversing these bad ways: and he gave them to understand that I accomplished all that I set my mind upon; in short, that he believed respecting me all that the other savages had told him. Aware that we were hungry, he gave us some fish, which we ate, and after our meal I explained to him, through Thomas, our interpreter, the pleasure I had in meeting them, that I had come to this country to assist them in their wars, and that I desired to go still farther to see some other chiefs for the same object, at which they were glad and promised me assistance. They showed me their gardens and the fields, where they had maize. Their soil is sandy, for which reason they devote themselves more to hunting than to tillage, unlike the Ochateguins. [63] When they wish to make a piece of land arable, they burn down the trees, which is very easily done, as they are all pines, and filled with rosin. The trees having been burned, they dig up the ground a little, and plant their maize kernel by kernel, [64] like those in Florida. At the time I was there it was only four fingers high. ENDNOTES: 33. _Vide_ Vol. II. p. 171, note 297, for an account of Henry Hudson, to whom this statement refers. De Vignau had undoubtedly heard rumors concerning Hudson's expedition to the bay that bears his name in the years 1610-11, out of which he fabricated the fine story of his pretended discovery. Longitude at that time was reckoned from the island of Ferro, one of the Canaries. Proceeding from west to east, the 290° would pass through Hudson's Bay, as may be seen by consulting any early French map. _Vide_ Bellin's _Carte du Globe Terrestre_, 1764. 34. Nicholas Brulart de Sillery, who was born at Sillery, in France, in 1544, and died in the same place in 1624. He rendered signal service to Henry IV. Among other public acts he negotiated the peace of Vervins between France and Spain in 1598. He was appointed grand chancellor of France in 1607. Henry IV. said of him, Avec mon chanclier qui ne fait pas le latin et mon connetable (Henri de Montmorency), qui ne fait ni lire ni écrire, je puis venir à bout des affairs les plus difficiles. 35. For some account of Marshal de Brissac, _vide_ Vol. I. p. 17, note 16. 36. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 112, note 73. President Jeannin was a most suitable person to consult on this subject, as he was deeply interested in the discovery of a northwest passage to India. When minister at the Hague he addressed a letter bearing date January 21st, 1609, to Henry IV. of France, containing an account of his indirect negotiations with Henry Hudson, for a voyage to discover a shorter passage to India. A copy of this interesting letter, both in French and English, may be found in _Henry Hudson the Navigator_, by G. M. Asher, LL.D., Hakluyt Society, London, 1860, p. 244. 37. The festival of Whitsunday occurred on the 26th May. _Laverdière in loco_. 38. The Falls of St Louis. 39. Lake St. Louis. 40. Champlain is here speaking of the river St. Lawrence, which flows into Lake St. Louis slightly south of west. 41. Rivière de Loup, now known as the Chateauguay. 42. The River Ottawa or a branch of it flows into Lake St. Louis from the north, although its course is rather from the west. It was often called the River of the Algonquins. It approaches comparatively near to Lake Nipissing, the home of the Nipissirini. The sources of the Ottawa are northeast of Lake Nipissing, a distance of from one to three hundred miles. The distances here given by Champlain are only general estimates gathered from the Indians, and are necessarily inaccurate. 43. Rapide de Brussi, by which the river flows from the Lake of Two Mountains into Lake St Louis. 44. _Lac de Soissons_, now called Lake of Two Mountains _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 294. 45. This is the first of a series of falls now known as the Long Fall. 46. _Quenongebin_. Laverdière makes, this the same as the Kinounchepiríni of Vimont. It was an Algonquin nation situated south of Allumette Island. _Vide Jesuite Relations_, Quebec ed, 1640, p. 34. 47. _Ouescharini_. These people, called Ouaouechkairini by Vimont, appear to have dwelt on the stream now known as the _Rivière de Petite Nation_, rising in a system of lakes, among which are Lake Simon, Whitefish Lake, Long Lake, and Lake Des Isles. _Vide Jesuite Relations_, 1640, p. 34. The tribe here mentioned was subsequently called the Little Nation of the Algonquins hence the name of the river. _Laverdière_. 48. This passage is exceedingly obscure. Laverdière supposes that part of a sentence was left out by the printer. If so it is remarkable that Champlain did not correct it in his edition of 1632. Laverdière thinks the river here spoken of is the Gatineau, and that the savages following up this stream went by a portage to the St. Maurice, and passing down reached the St. Lawrence _thirty_ leagues, and not _three_, below the Falls of Saint Louis. The three rivers thus named inclose or form an island of about the extent described in the text. This explanation is plausible. The passage amended would read, "This river _extends near another which_ falls into the great river St. Lawrence thirty leagues below the falls of St. Louis." We know of no other way in which the passage can be rationally explained. 49. Rideau, at the mouth of which is Green Island, referred to in the text below. 50. The fall in the Rideau is thirty-four feet, according to the Edinburgh Gazetteer of the World. The estimate of Champlain is so far out of the way that it seems not unlikely that feet were intended instead of fathoms. _Vide_ Vol. I. pp. 301, 302. 51. The Chaudière Falls, just above the present city of Ottawa, the greatest height of which is about forty feet "Arrayed in every imaginable variety of form, in vast dark masses, in graceful cascades, or in tumbling spray, they have been well described as a hundred rivers struggling for a passage. Not the least interesting feature they present is the Lost Chaudière, where a large body of water is quietly sucked down, and disappears underground" _Vide Canada_ by W. H Smith. Vol. I. p. 120. Also Vol I. p, 120 of this work. 52. The latitude of the Chaudière Falls is about 45° 27'. 53. Chaudière Lake, which was only an expansion of the River Ottawa. 54. Rapide des Chats. 55. This probably refers to that part of the fall which was more difficult to pass. 56. Lake des Chats. The name _des chats_ appears to have been given to this Lake, the Rapids, and the _Nation des chats_, on account of the great number of the _loup cervier_, or wild cats, _chats sauvages_, found in this region. Cf. _Le Grande Voyage du Pays des Hurons_, par Sagard, Paris, 1632, p. 307. 57. Madawaskca River, an affluent of the Ottawa, uniting with it at Fitz Roy. 58. Probably an allusion to the River St. Lawrence. 59. This is the same tribe alluded to by Vimont under the name _Mataouchkarmi_, as dwelling south of Allumette Island. _Vide Relations des Jésuites_, 1640, Quebec ed., p. 34. 60. Cyprés, Red Cedar or Savin, _Juniperus Virginiana_. _Vide_ Vol. II. note 168. 61. They were now, perhaps, two miles below Portage du Fort, at the point on the Ottawa nearest to the system of lakes through which they were to pass, and where, as stated in the text, the Ottawa, making an angle, begins to flow directly from the north. The latitude, as here given, is even more than usually incorrect, being too high by more than a degree. The true latitude is about 43° 37'. _Vide Walker_ and _Miles's Atlas of Dominion of Canada_. Note 62 will explain the cause of this inexactness. 62. Muskrat Lake. On Champlain's map of 1632 will be seen laid down a succession of lakes or ponds, together with the larger one, now known as Muskrat Lake, on the borders of which are figured the dwellings of the savages referred to in the text. The pond which they passed is the last in the series before reaching Muskrat Lake. On the direct route between this pond and the lake, known as the Muskrat Portage road, the course undoubtedly traversed by Champlain, there was found in 1867, in the township of Ross, an astrolabe, an instrument used in taking latitudes, on which is the date, 1603. It is supposed to have been lost by Champlain on his present expedition. The reasons for this supposition have been stated in several brochures recently issued, one by Mr. O. H. Marshall of Buffalo, entitled _Discovery of an Astrolabe supposed to have been left by Champlain in 1613_, New York, 1879; reprinted from the _Magazine of American History_ for March of that year. Another, _Champlain's Astrolabe lost on the 7th of June, 1613, and found in August, 1867_, by A. J Russell of Ottawa, Montreal, 1879. And a third entitled _The Astrolabe of Samuel Champlain and Geoffrey Chaucer_, by Henry Scadding, D.D., of Toronto, 1880. All of these writers agree in the opinion that the instrument was probably lost by Champlain on his expedition up the Ottawa in 1613. For the argument _in extenso_ the reader is referred to the brochures above cited. [Illustration of an astrolabe.] Mr. Russell, who examined the astrolabe thus found with great care and had it photographed, describes it as a circular plate having a diameter of five inches and five eighths. "It is of place brass, very dark with age, one eighth of an inch thick above, increasing to six sixteenths of an inch below, to give it steadiness when suspended, which apparently was intended to be increased by hanging a weight on the little projecting ring at the bottom of it, in using it on ship-board. Its suspending ring is attached by a double hinge of the nature of a universal joint. Its circle is divided into single degrees, graduated from its perpendicular of suspension. The double-bladed index, the pivot of which passes through the centre of the astrolabe, has slits and eyelets in the projecting fights that are on it." We give on the preceding page an engraving of this astrolabe from a photograph, which presents a sufficiently accurate outline of the instrument. The plate was originally made to illustrate Mr. Marshall's article in the Magazine of American History, and we are indebted to the courtesy of the proprietors of the Magazine, Messrs. A. S. Barnes and Company of New York, for its use for our present purpose. The astrolabe, as an instrument for taking the altitude of the stars or the sun, had long been in use. Thomas Blundevile, who wrote in 1622, says he had seen three kinds, and that the astrolabe of Stofflerus had then been in use a hundred years. It had been improved by Gemma Frisius. Mr. Blagrave had likewise improved upon the last-mentioned, and his instrument was at that time in general use in England. The astrolabe continued to be employed in Great Britain in taking altitudes for more than a century subsequent to this, certainly till Hadley's Quadrant was invented, which was first announced in 1731. The astrolabes which had the broadest disks were more exact, as they were projected on a larger scale, but as they were easily jostled by the wind or the movement of the ship at sea, they could with difficulty be employed. But Mr. Blundevile informs us that "the Spaniards doe commonly make their astrolabes narrow and weighty, which for the most part are not much above five inches broad, and yet doe weigh at the least foure pound, & to that end the lower part is made a great deale thicker than the upper part towards the ring or handle." _Vide M. Blendeale his Exercises_, London, 1622, pp. 595, 597. This Spanish instrument, it will be observed, is very similar to that found on the Old Portage road, and the latter may have been of Spanish make. In order to take the latitude in Champlain's day, at least three distinct steps or processes were necessary, and the following directions might have been given. I. Let the astrolabe be suspended so that it shall hang plumb. Direct the index or diopter to the sun at noon, so that the same ray of light may shine through both holes in the two tablets or pinules on the diopter, and the diopter will point to the degree of the sun's meridian altitude indicated on the outer rim of the astrolabe. II. Ascertain the exact degree of the sun's declination for that day, by a table calculated for that purpose, which accompanies the astrolabe. III. Subtract the declination, so found, if it be northerly, from the meridian altitude; or if the declination be southerly, add the declination to the meridian altitude, and the result, subtracted from 90°, will give the latitude. In these several processes of taking the latitude there are numerous possibilities of inexactness. It does not appear that any correction was made for refraction of light, or the precession of the equinoxes. But the most important source of inaccuracy was in the use of the astrolabe whose disk was so small that its divisions could not be carried beyond degrees, and consequently minutes were arrived at by sheer estimation, and usually when the work was completed, the error was not less than one fourth or one half of a degree, and it was often much more. This accounts fully for the inaccuracies of Champlain's latitudes from first to last throughout his entire explorations, as tested by the very exact instruments and tables now in use. No better method of determining the latitude existed at that day, and consequently the historian is warned not to rely upon the latitude alone as given by the early navigators and explorers in identifying the exact localities which they visited. 63. Subsequently called Hurons. 64. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 49; Vol. II. note 219. CHAPTER IV. CONTINUATION.--ARRIVAL AT THE ABODE OF TESSOUAT, AND HIS FAVORABLE RECEPTION OF ME.--CHARACTER OF THEIR CEMETERIES--THE SAVAGES PROMISE ME FOUR CANOES FOR CONTINUING MY JOURNEY, WHICH THEY HOWEVER SHORTLY AFTER REFUSE.--ADDRESS OF THE SAVAGES TO DISSUADE ME FROM MY UNDERTAKING, IN WHICH THEY REPRESENT ITS DIFFICULTIES--MY REPLY TO THESE OBJECTIONS.-- TESSOUAT ACCUSES MY GUIDE OF LYING, AND OF NOT HAVING BEEN WHERE HE SAID HE HAD.--THE LATTER MAINTAINS HIS VERACITY--I URGE THEM TO GIVE ME CANOES.-- SEVERAL REFUSALS.--MY GUIDE CONVICTED OF FALSEHOOD, AND HIS CONFESSION. Nibachis had two canoes fitted out, to conduct me to another chief, named Tessoüat, [65] who lived eight leagues from him, on the border of a great lake, through which flows the river which we had left, and which extends northward. Accordingly we crossed the lake in a west-northwesterly direction, a distance of nearly seven leagues. Landing there, we went a league towards the northeast through a very fine country, where are small beaten paths, along which one can go easily. Thus we arrived on the shore of the lake, [66] where the dwelling of Tessoüat was. He was accompanied by a neighboring chieftain, and was greatly amazed to see me, saying that he thought I was a dream, and that he did not believe his eyes. Thence we crossed on to an island, [67] where their cabins are, which are poorly constructed out of the bark of trees. The island is covered with oaks, pines, and elms, and is not subject to inundations, like the other islands in the lake. This island is strongly situated; for at its two ends, and where the river enters the lake, there are troublesome falls, the roughness of which makes the island difficult of access. They have accordingly taken up their abode here in order to avoid the pursuit of their enemies. It is in latitude 47°, [68] as also the lake, which is twenty leagues long, [69] and three or four wide. It abounds in fish; the hunting, however, is not especially good. On visiting the island, I observed their cemeteries, and was struck with wonder as I saw sepulchres of a shape like shrines, made of pieces of wood fixed in the ground at a distance of about three feet from each other, and intersecting at the upper end. On the intersections above they place a large piece of wood, and in front another upright piece, on which is carved roughly, as would be expected, the figure of the male or female interred. If it is a man, they add a shield, a sword attached to a handle after their manner, a mace, and bow and arrows. If it is a chief, there is a plume on his head, and some other _matachia_ or embellishment. If it is a child, they give it a bow and arrow; if a woman or girl, a boiler, an earthen vessel, a wooden spoon, and an oar. The entire sepulchre is six or seven feet long at most, and four wide; others are smaller. They are painted yellow and red, with various ornaments as neatly done as the carving. The deceased is buried with his dress of beaver or other skins which he wore when living, and they lay by his side all his possessions, as hatchets, knives, boilers, and awls, so that these things may serve him in the land whither he goes; for they believe in the immortality of the soul, as I have elsewhere observed. These carved sepulchres are only made for the warriors; for in respect to others they add no more than in the case of women, who are considered a useless class, accordingly but little is added in their case. Observing the poor quality of the soil, I asked them what pleasure they took in cultivating land so unpromising, since there was some much better, which they left barren and waste, as at the Falls of St. Louis. They answered that they were forced to do so in order to dwell in security, and that the roughness of the locality served them as a defence against their enemies. But they said that if I would make a settlement of French at the Falls of St. Louis, as I had promised, they would leave their abode and go and live near us, confident that their enemies would do them no harm while we were with them. I told them that we would this year collect wood and stone in order the coming year to build a fort and cultivate the land; upon hearing which they raised a great cry of applause. This conference having been finished, I asked all the chiefs and prominent men among them to assemble the next day on the main land, at the cabin of Tessoüat, who purposed to celebrate a _tabagie_ in my honor, adding that I would there tell them my plans. This they promised, and sent word to their neighbors to convene at the appointed place. The next day all the guests came, each with his porringer and wooden spoon. They seated themselves without order or ceremony on the ground in the cabin of Tessoüat, who distributed to them a kind of broth made of maize crushed between two stones, together with meat and fish which was cut into little pieces, the whole being boiled together without salt. They also had meat roasted on coals, and fish boiled apart, which he also distributed. In respect to myself, as I did not wish any of their chowder, which they prepare in a very dirty manner, I asked them for some fish and meat, that I might prepare it in my own way, which they gave me. For drink, we had fine clear water. Tessoüat, who gave the _tabagie_, entertained us without eating himself, according to their custom. The _tabagie_ being over, the young men, who are not present at the harangues and councils, and who during the _tabagies_ remain at the door of the cabins, withdrew, when all who remained began to fill their pipes, one and another offering me one. We then spent a full half-hour in this occupation, not a word being spoken, as is their custom. After smoking amply during so long a period of silence, I explained to them, through my interpreter, that the object of my journey was none other than to assure them of my friendship, and of the desire I had to assist them in their wars, as I had before done; that I had been prevented from coming the preceding year, as I had promised them, because the king had employed me in other wars, but that now he had ordered me to visit them and to fulfil my promises, and that for this purpose I had a number of men at the Falls of St. Louis. I told them that I was making an excursion in their territory to observe the fertility of their soil, their lakes and rivers, and the sea which they had told me was in their country; and that I desired to see a tribe distant six days' journey from them, called the _Nebicerini_, in order to invite them also to the war, and accordingly I asked them to give me four canoes with eight savages to guide me to these lands. And since the Algonquins are not great friends of the _Nebicerini_, [70] they seemed to listen to me with greater attention. After I had finished my discourse, they began again to smoke, and to confer among themselves in a very low voice respecting my propositions. Then Tessoüat in behalf of all the rest began and said, that they had always regarded me more friendly towards them than any Frenchman they had seen; that the proofs they had of this in the past made their confidence easier for the future: moreover, that I had shown myself in reality their friend, by encountering so many risks in coming to see them and invite them to the war, and that all these considerations obliged them to feel as kindly disposed towards me as towards their own children. But they said that I had the preceding year broken my promise, that two thousand savages had gone to the Falls with the expectation of finding me ready to go to the war, and making me presents, but that they had not found me and were greatly saddened, supposing that I was dead, as some persons had told them. He said also, that the French who were at the Falls did not want to help them in their wars, that they had been badly treated by certain ones, so that they had resolved among themselves not to go to the Falls again, and that this had caused them, as they did not expect to see me again, to go alone to the war, and that in fact twelve hundred of them had already gone. And since the greater part of their warriors were absent, they begged me to postpone the expedition to the following year, saying that they would communicate the matter to all the people of their country. In regard to the four canoes, which I asked for, they granted them to me, but with great reluctance, telling me that they were greatly displeased at the idea of such an undertaking, in view of the hardships which I would endure; that the people there were sorcerers, that they had caused the death of many of their own tribe by charms and poisoning, on which account they were not their friends: moreover they said that, as it regards war, I was not to think of them, as they were little-hearted. With these and many other considerations they endeavored to deter me from my purpose. But my sole desire on the other hand was to see this people, and enter into friendship with them, so that I might visit the North Sea. Accordingly, with a view to lessening the force of their objections, I said to them, that it was not far to the country in question; that the bad roads could not be worse than those I had already passed; that their witchcraft would have no power to harm me, as my God would preserve me from them; that I was also acquainted with their herbs, and would therefore beware of eating them; that I desired to make the two tribes mutual friends, and that I would to this end make presents to the other tribe, being assured that they would do something for me. In view of these reasons they granted me, as I have said, four canoes, at which I was very happy, forgetting all past hardships in the hope of seeing this sea, as I so much desired. For the remainder of the day, I went out walking in their gardens, which were filled with squashes, beans, and our peas, which they were beginning to cultivate, when Thomas, my interpreter, who understands the language very well, came to inform me that the savages, after I had left them, had come to the conclusion, that if I were to undertake this journey I should die and they also, and that they could not furnish the promised canoes, as there was no one of them who would guide me, but that they wished me to postpone the journey until the next year, when they would conduct me with a good train to protect me from that people, in case they should attempt to harm me, as they are evil-disposed. This intelligence greatly disturbed me, and I at once went to them and told them, that up to this day I had regarded them as men and truthful persons, but that now they had shown themselves children and liars, and that if they would not fulfil their promises, they would fail to show me their friendship; that, however, if they felt it an inconvenience to give me four canoes they should only furnish two and four savages. They represented to me anew the difficulties attending the journey, the number of the falls, the bad character of the people, and that their reason for refusing my request was their fear of losing me. I replied that I was sorry to have them show themselves to so slight an extent my friends, and that I should never have believed it; that I had a young man, showing them my impostor, who had been in their country, and had not found all these difficulties which they represented, nor the people in question so bad as they asserted. Then they began to look at him, in particular Tessoüat the old captain, with whom he had passed the winter, and calling him by name he said to him in his language: Nicholas, is it true that you said you were among the Nebicerini? It was long before he spoke, when he said to them in their language, which he spoke to a certain extent: Yes, I was there. They immediately looked at him awry, and throwing themselves upon him, as if they would eat him up or tear him in pieces, raised loud cries, when Tessoüat said to him: You are a downright liar, you know well that you slept at my side every night with my children, where you arose every morning; if you were among the people mentioned, it was while sleeping. How could you have been so bold as to lead your chief to believe lies, and so wicked as to be willing to expose his life to so many dangers? You are a worthless fellow, and he ought to put you to death more cruelly than we do our enemies. I am not astonished that he should so importune us on the assurance of your words. I at once told him that he must reply to these people; and since he had been in the regions indicated, that he must give me proofs of it, and free me from the suspense in which he had placed me. But he remained silent and greatly terrified. I immediately withdrew him from the savages, and conjured him to declare the truth of the matter, telling him that, if he had seen the sea in question, I would give him the reward which I had promised him, and that, if he had not seen it, he must tell me so without causing me farther trouble. Again he affirmed with oaths all he had before said, and that he would demonstrate to me the truth of it, if the savages would give us canoes. Upon this, Thomas came and informed me, that the savages of the island had secretly sent a canoe to the Nebicerini, to notify them of my arrival. Thereupon, in order to profit by the opportunity, I went to the savages to tell them, that I had dreamed the past night that they purposed to send a canoe to the Nebicerini without notifying me of it, at which I was greatly surprised, since they knew that I was desirous of going there. Upon which they replied that I did them a great wrong in trusting a liar, who wanted to cause my death, more than so many brave chiefs, who were my friends and who held my life dear. I replied that my man, meaning our impostor, had been in the aforesaid country with one of the relatives of Tessoüat and had seen the sea, the wreck and ruins of an English vessel, together with eighty scalps which the savages had in their possession, and a young English boy whom they held as prisoner, and whom they wished to give me as a present. When they heard me speak of the sea, vessels, scalps of the English, and the young prisoner, they cried out more than before that he was a liar, and thus they afterwards called him, as if it were the greatest insult they could have done him, and they all united in saying that he ought to be put to death, or else that he should tell with whom he had gone to the place indicated, and state the lakes, rivers, and roads, by which he had gone. To this he replied with assurance, that he had forgotten the name of the savage, although he had stated to me his name more than twenty times, and even on the previous day. In respect to the peculiarities of the country, he had described them in a paper which he had handed me. Then I brought forward the map and had it explained to the savages, who questioned him in regard to it. To this he made no reply, but rather manifested by his sullen silence his perverse nature. As my mind was wavering in uncertainty, I withdrew by myself, and reflected upon the above-mentioned particulars of the voyage of the English, and how the reports of our liar were quite in conformity with it, also that there was little probability of this young man's having invented all that, in which case he would not have been willing to undertake the journey, but that it was more probable that he had seen these things, and that his ignorance did not permit him to reply to the questions of the savages. To the above is to be added the fact that, if the report of the English be true, the North Sea cannot be farther distant from this region than a hundred leagues in latitude, for I was in latitude 47° and in longitude 296°.[71] But it may be that the difficulties attending the passage of the falls, the roughness of the mountains covered with shows, is the reason why this people have no knowledge of the sea in question; indeed they have always said that from the country of the Ochateguins it is a journey of thirty-five or forty days to the sea, which they see in three places, a thing which they have again assured me of this year. But no one has spoken to me of this sea on the north, except this liar, who had given me thereby great pleasure in view of the shortness of the journey. Now, when this canoe was ready, I had him summoned into the presence of his companions; and after laying before him all that had transpired, I told him that any further dissimulation was out of the question, and that he must say whether he had seen these things or not; that I was desirous of improving the opportunity that presented itself; that I had forgotten the past; but that, if I went farther, I would have him hung and strangled, which should be his sole reward. After meditating by himself, he fell on his knees and asked my pardon, declaring that all he had said, both in France and this country, in respect to the sea in question was false; that he had never seen it, and that he had never gone farther than the village of Tessoüat; that he had said these things in order to return to Canada. Overcome with wrath at this, I had him removed, being unable to endure him any longer in my presence, and giving orders to Thomas to inquire into the whole matter in detail; to whom he stated, that he did not believe that I would undertake the journey on account of the dangers, thinking that some difficulty would present itself to prevent me from going on, as in the case of these savages, who were not disposed to lend me canoes; and accordingly that the journey would be put off until another year, when he being in France would be rewarded for his discovery; but that, if I would leave him in this country, he would go until he found the sea in question, even if he should die in the attempt. These were his words as reported to me by Thomas, but they did not give me much satisfaction, astounded as I was at the effrontery and maliciousness of this liar: and I cannot imagine how he could have devised this imposition, unless that he had heard of the above-mentioned voyage of the English, and in the hope of some reward, as he said, had the temerity to venture on it. Shortly after I proceeded to notify the savages, to my great regret, of the malignity of this liar, stating that he had confessed the truth; at which they were delighted, reproaching me with the little confidence I put in them, who were chiefs and my friends, and who always spoke the truth; and who said that this liar ought to be put to death, being extremely malicious; and they added, Do you not see that he meant to cause your death. Give him to us, and we promise you that he shall not lie any more. And as they all went after him shouting, their children also shouting still more, I forbade them to do him any harm, directing them to keep their children also from doing so, inasmuch as I wished to take him to the Falls to show him to the gentlemen there, to whom he was to bring some salt water; and I said that, when I arrived there, I would consult as to what should be done with him. My journey having been in this manner terminated, and without any hope of seeing the sea in this direction, except in imagination, I felt a regret that I should not have employed my time better, and that I should have had to endure the difficulties and hardships, which however I was obliged patiently to submit to. If I had gone in another direction, according to the report of the savages, I should have made a beginning in a thing which must be postponed to another time. At present my only wish being to return, I desired the savages to go to the Falls of St. Louis, where there were four vessels loaded with all kinds of merchandise, and where they would be well treated. This they communicated to all their neighbors. Before setting out, I made a cross of white cedar, which I planted in a prominent place on the border of the lake, with the arms of France, and I begged the savages to have the kindness to preserve it, as also those which they would find along the ways we had passed; telling them that, if they broke them, misfortune would befall them, but that, if they preserved them, they would not be assaulted by their enemies. They promised to do so, and said that I should find them when I came to visit them again. ENDNOTES: 65. It seems not improbable, as suggested by Laverdière, that this was the same chief that Champlain met at Tadoussac in 1603, then called _Besouat. Vide_ Vol. I. p. 242. 66. They crossed Muskrat Lake, and after a portage of a league, by general estimation, they reached Lake Allumette. This lake is only the expanded current of the river Ottawa on the southern side of Allumette Island; which is formed by the bifurcation of the Ottawa. 67. Allumette Island, often called, in the _Relations des Jésuites_, simply the Island. The savages in occupation were in the habit of exacting tribute from the Hurons and others, who passed along on their war excursions or their journeys for trade with the French at Montreal. They bartered their maize with other tribes for skins with which they clothed themselves. 68. The true latitude here is about 45° 47'. On the map of 1632 the latitude corresponds with the statement in the text. 69. In his issue of 1632 Champlain corrects his statement as to the length of Allumette Island, and says it is ten leagues long, which is nearly correct. _Vide_ Quebec ed. p 868. Of this island Bouchette says that in length it is about fifteen miles, and on an average four miles wide. _British Dominions in North America_, London, 1831, Vol I. p. 187. 70. This tribe was subsequently known as the Nipissings, who dwelt on the borders of Lake Nipissing. They were distinguished for their sorceries, under the cover of which they appear to have practised impositions which naturally enough rendered other neighboring Algonquin tribes hostile to them. 71. The true latitude, as we have stated, _antea_, note 61, is about 45° 37'; but on Champlain's map it corresponds with the statement in the text, and a hundred leagues north of where they then were, as his map is constructed, would carry them to the place in the bay where Hudson wintered, as stated by Champlain, and as laid down on his small map included in this volume; but the longitude is incorrect, Allumette Island being two or three degrees east of longitude 296°, as laid down on Champlain's map of 1632. CHAPTER V. OUR RETURN TO THE FALLS.--FALSE ALARM.--CEREMONY AT THE CHAUDIÈRE FALLS.-- CONFESSION OF OUR LIAR BEFORE ALL THE CHIEF MEN.--OUR RETURN TO FRANCE. On the 10th of June I took leave of Tessoüat, a good old captain, making him presents, and promising him, if God preserved me in health, to come the next year, prepared to go to war. He in turn promised to assemble a large number by that time, declaring that I should see nothing but savages and arms which would please me; he also directed his son to go with me for the sake of company. Thus we set out with forty canoes, and passed by way [72] of the river we had left, which extends northward, and where we went on shore in order to cross the lakes. On the way we met nine large canoes of the Ouescharini, with forty strong and powerful men, who had come upon the news they had received; we also met others, making all together sixty canoes; and we overtook twenty others, who had set out before us, each heavily laden with merchandise. We passed six or seven falls between the island of the Algonquins [73] and the little fall; [74] where the country was very unpleasant I readily realized that, if we had gone in that direction, we should have had much more trouble, and would with difficulty have succeeded in getting through: and it was not without reason that the savages opposed our liar, as his only object was to cause my ruin. Continuing our course ten or twelve leagues below the island of the Algonquins, we rested on a very pleasant island, which was covered with vines and nut-trees, and where we caught some fine fish. About midnight, there arrived two canoes, which had been fishing farther off, and which reported that they had seen four canoes of their enemies. At once three canoes were despatched to reconnoitre, but they returned without having seen anything. With this assurance all gave themselves up to sleep, excepting the women, who resolved to spend the night in their canoes, not feeling at ease on land. An hour before daylight a savage, having dreamed that the enemy were attacking them, jumped up and started on a run towards the water, in order to escape, shouting, They are killing me. Those belonging to his band all awoke dumfounded and, supposing that they were being pursued by their enemies, threw themselves into the water, as did also one of our Frenchmen, who supposed that they were being overpowered. At this great noise, the rest of us, who were at a distance, were at once awakened, and without making farther investigation ran towards them: but as we saw them here and there in the water, we were greatly surprised, not seeing them pursued by their enemies, nor in a state of defence, in case of necessity, but only ready to sacrifice themselves. After I had inquired of our Frenchman about the cause of this excitement, he told me that a savage had had a dream, and that he with the rest had thrown themselves into the water in order to escape, supposing that they were being attacked. Accordingly, the state of the case being ascertained, it all passed off in a laugh. Continuing our way, we came to the Chaudière Falls, where the savages went through with the customary ceremony; which is as follows. After carrying their canoes to the foot of the Fall, they assemble in one spot, where one of them takes up a collection with a wooden plate, into which each one puts a bit of tobacco. The collection having been made, the plate is placed in the midst of the troupe, and all dance about it, singing after their style. Then one of the captains makes an harangue, setting forth that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering, by which means they are insured protection against their enemies, that otherwise misfortune would befall them, as they are convinced by the evil spirit; and they live on in this superstition, as in many others, as we have said in other places. This done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate, and throws the tobacco into the midst of the caldron, whereupon they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this place, since their enemies await them at this portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty of the journey, whence they say they surprise them there, as they have sometimes done. The next day we arrived at an island at the entrance to a lake, and seven or eight leagues distant from the great Falls of St. Louis. Here while reposing at night we had another alarm, the savages supposing that they had seen the canoes of their enemies. This led them to make several large fires, which I had them put out, representing to them the harm which might result, namely, that instead of concealing they would disclose themselves. On the 17th of June, we arrived at the Falls of St. Louis, where I found L'Ange, who had come to meet me in a canoe to inform me, that Sieur de Maisonneuve of St. Malo had brought a passport from the Prince for three vessels. In order to arrange matters until I should see him, I assembled all the savages and informed them that I did not wish them to traffic in any merchandise until I had given them permission, and that I would furnish them provisions as soon as we should arrive; which they promised, saying that they were my friends. Thus, continuing our course, we arrived at the barques, where we were saluted by some discharges of cannon, at which some of our savages were delighted, and others greatly astonished, never having heard such music. After I had landed, Maisonneuve came to me with the passport of the Prince. As soon as I had seen it, I allowed him and his men to enjoy the benefits of it like the rest of us; and I sent word to the savages that they might trade on the next day. After seeing all the chief men and relating the particulars of my journey and the malice of my liar, at which they were greatly amazed, I begged them to assemble, in order that in their presence, and that of the savages and his companions, he might make declaration of his maliciousness; which they gladly did. Being thus assembled, they summoned him, and asked him, why he had not shown me the sea in the north, as he had promised me at his departure. He replied that he had promised something impossible for him, since he had never seen this sea, and that the desire of making the journey had led him to say what he did, also that he did not suppose that I would undertake it; and he begged them to be pleased to pardon him, as he also did me again, confessing that he had greatly offended, and if I would leave him in the country, he would by his efforts repair the offence, and see this sea, and bring back trustworthy intelligence concerning it the following year; and in view of certain considerations I pardoned him on this condition. After relating to them in detail the good treatment I had received at the abodes of the savages, and how I had been occupied each day, I inquired what they had done during my absence, and what had been the result of their hunting excursions, and they said they had had such success that they generally brought home six stags. Once on St. Barnabas's day, Sieur du Parc, having gone hunting with two others, killed nine. These stags are not at all like ours, and there are different kinds of them, some larger, others smaller, which resemble closely our deer.[75] They had also a very large number of pigeons, [76] and also fish, such as pike, carp, sturgeon, shad, barbel, turtles, bass, and other kinds unknown to us, on which they dined and supped every day. They were also all in better condition than myself, who was reduced from work and the anxiety which I had experienced, not having eaten more than once a day, and that of fish badly cooked and half broiled. On the 22d of June, about 8 o'clock in the evening, the savages sounded an alarm because one of them had dreamed he had seen the Iroquois. In order to content them, all the men took their arms, and some were sent to their cabins to reassure them, and into the approaches to reconnoitre, so that, finding it was a false alarm, they were satisfied with the firing of some two hundred musket and arquebus shots, after which arms were laid down, the ordinary guard only being left. This reassured them greatly, and they were very glad to see the French ready to help them. After the savages had bartered their articles of merchandise and had resolved to return, I asked them to take with them two young men, to treat them in a friendly manner, show them the country, and bind themselves to bring them back. But they strongly objected to this, representing to me the trouble our liar had given me, and fearing that they would bring me false reports, as he had done. I replied that they were men of probity and truth, and that if they would not take them they were not my friends, whereupon they resolved to do so. As for out liar, none of the savages wanted him, notwithstanding my request to them to take him, and we left him to the mercy of God. Finding that I had no further business in this country, I resolved to cross in the first vessel that should return to France. Sieur de Maisonneuve, having his ready, offered me a passage, which I accepted; and on the 27th of June I set out with Sieur L'Ange from the Falls, where we left the other vessels, which were awaiting the return of the savages who had gone to the war, and we arrived at Tadoussac on the 6th of July. On the 8th of August [77] we were enabled by favorable weather to set sail. On the 18th we left Gaspé and Isle Percée. On the 28th we were on the Grand Bank, where the green fishery is carried on, and where we took as many fish as we wanted. On the 26th of August we arrived at St Malo, where I saw the merchants, to whom I represented the ease of forming a good association in the future, which they resolved to do, as those of Rouen and La Rochelle had done, after recognizing the necessity of the regulations, without which it is impossible to hope for any profit from these lands. May God by His grace cause this undertaking to prosper to His honor and glory, the conversion of these poor benighted ones, and to the welfare and honor of France. ENDNOTES: 72. By the Ottawa, which they had left a little below Portage du Fort, and not by the same way they had come, through the system of small lakes, of which Muskrat lake is one. _Vide Carte de la Nouvelle France_, 1632, Vol. I. p. 304. 73. Allumette Island. 74. Near Gould's Landing, below or south of Portage da Fort.--_Vide Champlain's Astrolabe_, by A. J. Russell, Montreal, 1879, p. 6. 75. At that time there were to be found in Canada at least four species of the Cervus Family. 1. The Moose, _Cervus alces_, or _alces Americanus_, usually called by the earliest writers _orignal_ or _orignac_. _Vide_ Vol. I. pp. 264, 265. This is the largest of all the deer family in this or in any other part of the world The average weight has been placed at seven hundred pounds, while extraordinary specimens probably attain twice that weight. 2. The Wapiti, or American Elk, _Cervus elaphus_, or _Canadensis_. This is the largest of the known deer except the preceding. The average weight is probably less than six hundred pounds. 3. The Woodland Caribou, _Cervus tarandus_. It is smaller than the Wapiti. Its range is now mostly in the northern regions of the continent but specimens are still found in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The female is armed with antlers as well as the male, though they are smaller. 4. The Common Deer, _Cervus Virginianus_. It has the widest range of any of the deer family. It is still found in every degree of latitude from Mexico to British Columbia. _Vide Antelope and Deer of America_ by John Dean Caton, LL.D., Boston, 1877. 76. _Palombes_. The passenger, or wild pigeon, _Ectopistes migratorius_. 77. _Le_ 8 _Aoust_. Laverdière suggests with much plausibility that this should read "The 8th of July." Champlain could hardly have found it necessary to remain at Tadoussac from the 6th of July to the 8th of August for favorable weather to sail. If he had been detained by any other cause, it would probably have been deemed of sufficient gravity to be specially mentioned. VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES IN NEW FRANCE, From the year 1615 to the end of the year 1618. BY SIEUR DE CHAMPLAIN, Captain in ordinary to the King in the Western Sea. WHERE ARE DESCRIBED _The manners, customs, dress, mode of warfare, hunting, dances, festivals, and method of burial of various savage peoples, with many remarkable experiences of the author in this country, and an account of the beauty, fertility, and temperature of the same_. PARIS. CLAUDE COLLET, in the Palace, at the gallery of the Prisoners. M. DC. XIX. _WITH AUTHORITY OF THE KING_. TO THE KING. _Sire, This is a third volume containing a narrative of what has transpired most worthy of note during the voyages I have made to New France, and its perusal will, I think, afford your Majesty greater pleasure than that of those preceding, which only designate the ports, harbors, situations, declinations, and other particulars, having more interest for navigators and sailors than for other persons. In this narrative you will be able to observe more especially the manners and mode of life of these peoples both in particular and in general, their wars, ammunition, method of attack and of defence, their expeditions and retreats in various circumstances, matters about which those interested desire information. You will perceive also that they are not savage to such an extent that they could not in course of time and through association with others become civilised and cultivated. You will likewise perceive how great hopes we cherish from the long and arduous labors we have for the past fifteen years sustained, in order to plant in this country the standard of the cross, and to teach the people the knowledge of God and the glory of His holy name, it being our desire to cultivate a feeling of charity towards His unfortunate creatures, which it is our duty to practise more patiently than any other thing, especially as there are many who have not entertained such purposes, but have been influenced only by the desire of gain. Nevertheless we may, I suppose, believe that these are the means which God makes use of for the greater promotion of the holy desire of others. As the fruits which the trees bear are from God, the Lord of the soil, who has planted, watered, and nourished them with an especial care, so your Majesty can be called the legitimate lord of our labors, and the good resulting from them, not only because the land belongs to you, but also because you have protected us against so many persons, whose only object has been by troubling us to prevent the success of so holy a determination, taking from us the power to trade freely in a part of your country, and striving to bring everything into confusion, which would be, in a word, preparing the way for the ruin of everything to the injury of your state. To this end your subjects have employed every conceivable artifice and all possible means which they thought could injure us. But all these efforts have been thwarted by your Majesty, assisted by your prudent council, who have given us the authority of your name, and supported us by your decrees rendered in our favor. This is an occasion for increasing in us our long-cherished desire to send communities and colonies there, to teach the people the knowledge of God, and inform them of the glory and triumphs of your Majesty, so that together with the French language they may also acquire a French heart and spirit, which, next to the fear of God, will be inspired with nothing so ardently as the desire to serve you. Should our design succeed, the glory of it will be due, after God, to your Majesty, who will receive a thousand benedictions from Heaven for so many souls saved by your instrumentality, and your name will be immortalized for carrying the glory and sceptre of the French as far to the Occident as your precursors have extended it to the Orient, and over the entire habitable earth. This will augment the quality of_ MOST CHRISTIAN _belonging to you above all the kings of the earth, and show that it is as much your due by merit as it is your own of right, it having been transmitted to you by your predecessors, who acquired it by their virtues; for you have been pleased, in addition to so many other important affairs, to give your attention to this one, so seriously neglected hitherto, God's special grace reserving to your reign the publication of His gospel, and the knowledge of His holy name to so many tribes who had never heard of it. And some day may God's grace lead them, as it does us, to pray to Him without ceasing to extend your empire, and to vouchsafe a thousand blessings to your Majesty_. _SIRE_, _Your most humble, most faithful_, _and most obedient servant and subject_, _CHAMPLAIN_. PREFACE. As in the various affairs of the world each thing strives for its perfection and the preservation of its being, so on the other hand does man interest himself in the different concerns of others on some account, either for the public good, or to acquire, apart from the common interest, praise and reputation with some profit. Wherefore many have pursued this course, but as for myself I have made choice of the most unpleasant and difficult one of the perilous navigation of the seas; with the purpose, however, not so much of gaining wealth, as the honor and glory of God in behalf of my King and country, and contributing by my labors something useful to the public good. And I make declaration that I have not been tempted by any other ambition, as can be clearly perceived, not only by my conduct in the past, but also by the narratives of my voyages, made by the command of His Majesty, in New France, contained in my first and second books, as may be seen in the same. Should God bless our purpose, which aims only for His glory, and should any fruit result from our discoveries and arduous labors, I will return thanks to Him, and for Your Majesty's protection and assistance will continue my prayers for the aggrandizement and prolongation of your reign. EXTRACT FROM THE LICENSE OF THE KING. By favor and license of the KING, permission is given to CLAUDE COLLET, merchant bookseller in our city of Paris, to print, or have printed by such printer as shall seem good to him, a book entitled, _Voyages and Discoveries in New France, from the Year_ 1615 _to the End of the Year 1618. By Sieur de Champlain, Captain in Ordinary to the King in the Western Sea_. All booksellers and printers of our kingdom are forbidden to print or have printed, to sell wholesale or retail, said book, except with the consent of said Collet, for the time and term of six years, beginning with the day when said book is printed, on penalty of confiscation of the copies, and a fine of four hundred _livres_, a half to go to us and a half to said petitioner. It is our will, moreover, that this License should be placed at the commencement or end of said book. This is our pleasure. Given at Paris, the 18th day of May, 1619, and of our reign the tenth. By the Council, DE CESCAUD VOYAGE OF SIEUR DE CHAMPLAIN TO NEW FRANCE, MADE IN THE YEAR 1615. The strong love, which I have always cherished for the exploration of New France, has made me desirous of extending more and more my travels over the country, in order, by means of its numerous rivers, lakes, and streams, to obtain at last a complete knowledge of it, and also to become acquainted with the inhabitants, with the view of bringing them to the knowledge of God. To this end I have toiled constantly for the past fourteen or fifteen years, [78] yet have been able to advance my designs but little, because I have not received the assistance which was necessary for the success of such an undertaking. Nevertheless, without losing courage, I have not ceased to push on, and visit various nations of the savages; and, by associating familiarly with them, I have concluded, as well from their conversation as from the knowledge already attained, that there is no better way than, disregarding all storms and difficulties, to have patience until His Majesty shall give the requisite attention to the matter, and meanwhile, not only to continue the exploration of the country, but also to learn the language, and form relations and friendships with the leading men of the villages and tribes, in order to lay the foundations of a permanent edifice, as well for the glory of God as for the renown of the French. And His Majesty having transferred and intrusted the superintendence of this work to Monseigneur the Prince de Condé, the latter has, by his management, under the authority of His Majesty, sustained us against all forts of jealousies and obstacles concerted by evil wishers. This has, as it were, animated me and redoubled my courage for the continuation of my labors in the exploration of New France, and with increased effort I have pushed forward in my undertaking into the mainland, and farther on than I had previously been, as will be hereafter indicated in the course of this narrative. But it is appropriate to state first that, as I had observed in my previous journeys, there were in some places people permanently settled, who were fond of the cultivation of the soil, but who had neither faith nor law, and lived without God and religion, like brute beasts. In view of this, I felt convinced that I should be committing a grave offence if I did not take it upon myself to devise some means of bringing them to the knowledge of God. To this end I exerted myself to find some good friars, with zeal and affection for the glory of God, that I might persuade them to send some one, or go themselves, with me to these countries, and try to plant there the faith, or at least do what was possible according to their calling, and thus to observe and ascertain whether any good fruit could be gathered there. But since to attain this object an expenditure would be required exceeding my means, and for other reasons, I deferred the matter for a while, in view of the difficulties there would be in obtaining what was necessary and requisite in such an enterprise; and since, furthermore, no persons offered to contribute to it. Nevertheless, while continuing my search, and communicating my plan to various persons, a man of distinction chanced to present himself, whose intimate acquaintance I enjoyed. This was Sieur Hoüel, Secretary of the King and Controller-general of the salt works at Brouage, a man of devoted piety, and of great zeal and love for the honor of God and the extension of His religion. [79] He gave me the following information, which afforded me great pleasure. He said that he was acquainted with some good religious Fathers, of the order of the Recollects, in whom he had confidence; and that he enjoyed such intimacy and confidence with them that he could easily induce them to consent to undertake the voyage; and that, as to the necessary means for sending out three or four friars, there would be no lack of people of property who would give them what they needed, offering for his part to assist them to the extent of his ability; and, in fact, he wrote in relation to the subject to Father du Verger, [80] who welcomed with joy the undertaking, and, in accordance with the recommendation of Sieur Hoüel, communicated it to some of his brethren, who, burning with charity, offered themselves freely for this holy undertaking. Now he was at that time in Saintonge, whence he sent two men to Paris with a commission, though not with absolute power, reserving the rest to the Nuncio of our Holy Father the Pope, who was at that time, in 1614, in France. [81] He called upon these friars at their house in Paris, and was greatly pleased with their resolution. We then went all together to see the Sieur Nuncio, in order to communicate to him the commission, and entreat him to interpose his authority in the matter. But he, on the contrary, told us that he had no power whatever in such matters, and that it was to their General that they were to address themselves. Notwithstanding this reply, the Recollects, in consideration of the difficulty of the mission, were unwilling to undertake the journey on the authority of Father du Verger, fearing that it might not be sufficient, and that the commission might not be valid, on which account the matter was postponed to the following year. Meanwhile they took counsel, and came to a determination, according to which all arrangements were made for the undertaking, which was to be carried out in the following spring; awaiting which the two friars returned to their convent at Brouage. I for my part improved the time in arranging my affairs in preparation for the voyage. Some months after the departure of the two friars, the Reverend Father Chapoüin, Provincial of the Recollect Fathers, a man of great piety, returned to Paris. Sieur Hoüel called on him, and narrated what had taken place respecting the authority of Father du Verger, and the mission he had given to the Recollect Fathers. After which narrative the Provincial Father proceeded to extol the plan, and to interest himself with zeal in it, promising to promote it with all his power, and adding that, he had not before well comprehended the subject of this mission; and it is to be believed that God inspired him more and more to prosecute the matter. Subsequently he spoke of it to Monseigneur the Prince de Condé, and to all the cardinals and bishops who were then assembled at Paris for the Session of the Estates. All of them approved and commended the plan; and to show that they were favorably disposed towards it, they assured the Sieur Provincial that they would devise among themselves and the members of the Court means for raising a small fund, and that they would collect some money for assisting four friars to be chosen, and who were then chosen for the execution of so holy a work. And in order to facilitate the undertaking, I visited at the Estates the cardinals and bishops, and urgently represented to them the advantage, and usefulness which might one day result, in order by my entreaties to move them to give, and cause others who might be stimulated by their example to give, contributions and presents, leaving all to their good will and judgment. The contributions which were made for the expenses of this expedition amounted to nearly fifteen hundred _livres_, which were put into my hands, and then employed, according to the advice and in the presence of the Fathers, for the purchase of what was necessary, not only for the maintenance of the Fathers who should undertake the journey into New France, but also for their clothing, and the attire and ornaments necessary for performing divine service. The friars were sent on in advance to Honfleur, where their embarkation was to take place. Now the Fathers who were appointed for this holy enterprise were Father Denis [82] as commissary, Jean d'Olbeau, [83] Joseph le Caron, and Pacifique du Plessis, [84] each of whom was moved by a holy zeal and ardor to make the journey, through God's grace, in order to see if they might produce some good fruit, and plant in these regions the standard of Jesus Christ, determined to live and to die for His holy name, should it be necessary to do so and the occasion require it. Everything having been prepared, they provided themselves with church ornaments, and we with what was necessary for our voyage. I left Paris the last day of February to meet at Rouen our associates, and represent to them the will of Monseigneur the Prince, and also his desire that these good Fathers should make the journey, since he recognized the fact that the affairs of the country could hardly reach any perfection or advancement, if God should not first of all be served; with which our associates were highly pleased, promising to assist the Fathers to the extent of their ability, and provide them with the support they might need. The Fathers arrived at Rouen the twentieth of March following, where we stayed some time. Thence we went to Honfleur to embark, where we also stayed some days, waiting for our vessel to be got ready, and loaded with the necessaries for so long a voyage. Meanwhile preparations were made in matters of conscience, so that each one of us might examine himself, and cleanse himself from his sins by penitence and confession, in order to celebrate the sacrament and attain a state of grace, so that, being thereby freer in conscience, we might under the guidance of God, expose ourselves to the mercy of the waves of the great and perilous sea. This done, we embarked on the vessel of the association, which was of three hundred and fifty tons burden, and was called the Saint Étienne, commanded by Sieur de Pont Gravé. We departed from Honfleur on the twenty-fourth day of August, [85] in the above-mentioned year, and set sail with a very favorable wind. We continued on our voyage without encountering ice or other dangers, through the mercy of God, and in a short time arrived off the place called _Tadoussac_, on the twenty-fifth day of May, when we rendered thanks to God for having conducted us so favorably to the harbor of our destination. Then we began to set men at work to fit up our barques in order to go to Quebec, the place of our abode, and to the great Falls of Saint Louis, the rendezvous of the savages, who come there to traffic. The barques having been fitted up, we went on board with the Fathers, one of whom, named Father Joseph, [86] desired, without stopping or making any stay at Quebec, to go directly to the great Falls, where he saw all the savages and their mode of life. This induced him to go and spend the winter in their country and that of other tribes who have a fixed abode, not only in order to learn their language, but also to see what the prospect was of their conversion to Christianity. This resolution having been formed, he returned to Quebec the twentieth day of June [87] for some church ornaments and other necessaries. Meanwhile I had stayed at Quebec in order to arrange matters relating to our habitation, as the lodgings of the Fathers, church ornaments, the construction of a chapel for the celebration of the mass, as also the employment of persons for clearing up lands. I embarked for the Falls together with Father Denis, [88] who had arrived the same day from Tadoussac with Sieur de Pont Gravé. As to the other friars, viz., Fathers Jean and Pacifique, [89] they stayed at Quebec in order to fit up their chapel and arrange their lodgings. They were greatly pleased at seeing the place so different from what they had imagined, which increased their zeal. We arrived at the Rivière des Prairies, five leagues below the Falls of Saint Louis, whither the savages had come down. I will not attempt to speak of the pleasure which our Fathers experienced at seeing, not only so long and large a river, filled with many fine islands and bordered by a region apparently so fertile, but also a great number of strong and robust men, with natures not so savage as their manners, nor as they acknowledged they had conceived them to be, and very different from what they had been given to understand, owing to their lack of cultivation. I will not enter into a description of them, but refer the reader to what I have said about them in my preceding books, printed in the year 1614. [90] To continue my narrative: We met Father Joseph, who was returning to Quebec in order to make preparations, and take what he needed for wintering in their country. This I did not think advisable at this season, but counselled him rather to spend the winter at our settlement as being more for his comfort, and undertake the journey when spring came or at least in summer, offering to accompany him, and adding that by doing so he would not fail to see what he might have seen by going, and that by returning and spending the winter at Quebec he would have the society of his brothers and others who remained at the settlement, by which he would be more profited than by staying alone among these people, with whom he could not, in my opinion, have much satisfaction. Nevertheless, in spite of all that could be said to him and all representations, he would not change his purpose, being urged by a godly zeal and love for this people, and hoping to make known to them their salvation. His motive in undertaking this enterprise, as he stated to us, was that he thought it was necessary for him to go there not only in order to become better acquainted with the characteristics of the people, but also to learn more easily their language. In regard to the difficulties which it was represented to him that he would have to encounter in his intercourse with them, he felt assured that he could bear and overcome them, and that he could adapt himself very well and cheerfully to the manner of living and the inconveniences he would find, through the grace of God, of whose goodness and help he felt clearly assured, being convinced that, since he went on His service, and since it was for the glory of His name and the preaching of His holy gospel that he undertook freely this journey, He would never abandon him in his undertaking. And in regard to temporal provisions very little was needed to satisfy a man who demands nothing but perpetual poverty, and who seeks for nothing but heaven, not only for himself but also for his brethren, it not being consistent with his rule of life to have any other ambition than the glory of God, and it being his purpose to endure to this end all the hardships, sufferings, and labors which might offer. Seeing him impelled by so holy a zeal and so ardent a charity, I was unwilling to try any more to restrain him. Thus he set out with the purpose of being the first to announce through His holy favor to this people the name of God, having the great satisfaction that an opportunity presented itself for suffering something for the name and glory of our Saviour Jesus Christ. As soon as I had arrived at the Falls, I visited the people, who were very desirous of seeing us and delighted at our return. They hoped that we would furnish them some of our number to assist them in their wars against our enemies, representing to us that they could with difficulty come to us if we should not assist them; for the Iroquois, they said, their old enemies, were always on the road obstructing their passage. Moreover I had constantly promised to assist them in their wars, as they gave us to understand by their interpreter. Whereupon Sieur Pont Gravé and myself concluded that it was very necessary to assist them, not only in order to put them the more under obligations to love us, but also to facilitate my undertakings and explorations which, as it seemed, could only be accomplished by their help, and also as this would be a preparatory step to their conversion to Christianity. [91] Therefore I resolved to, go and explore their country and assist them in their wars, in order to oblige them to show me what they had so many times promised to do. We accordingly caused them all to assemble together, that we might communicate to them our intention. When they had heard it, they promised to furnish us two thousand five hundred and fifty men of war, who would do wonders, with the understanding that I with the same end in view should very glad to see them decide so well. Then I proceeded to make known to them the methods to be adopted for fighting, in which they took especial pleasure, manifesting a strong hope of victory. Everything having been decided upon, we separated with the intention of returning for the execution of our undertaking. But before entering upon this journey, which would require not less than three or four months, it seemed desirable that I should go to our settlement to make the necessary arrangements there for my absence. On the ---- day of ---- following I set out on my return to the Rivière des Prairies. [92] While there with two canoes of savages I met Father Joseph, who was returning from our settlement with some church ornaments for celebrating the holy sacrifice of the mass, which was chanted on the border of the river with all devotion by the Reverend Fathers Denis and Joseph, in presence of all the people, who were amazed at seeing the ceremonies observed and the ornaments which seemed to them so handsome. It was something which they had never before seen, for these Fathers were the first who celebrated here the holy mass. To return and continue the narrative of my journey: I arrived at Quebec on the 26th, where I found the Fathers Jean and Pacifique in good health. They on their part did their duty at that place in getting all things ready. They celebrated the holy mass, which had never been said there before, nor had there ever been any priest in this region. Having arranged all matters at Quebec, I took with me two men and returned to the Rivière des Prairies, in order to go with the savages. I left Quebec on the fourth day of July, and on the eighth of the month while _en route_ I met Sieur du Pont Gravé and Father Denis, who were returning to Quebec, and who told me that the savages had departed greatly disappointed at my not going with them; and that many of them declared that we were dead or had been taken by the Iroquois, since I was to be gone only four or five days, but had been gone ten. This made them and even our own Frenchmen give up hope, so much did they long to see us again. They told me that Father Joseph had departed with twelve Frenchmen, who had been furnished to assist the savages. This intelligence troubled me somewhat; since, if I had been there, I should have arranged many things for the journey, which I could not now do. I was troubled not only on account of the small number of men, but also because there were only four or five who were acquainted with the handling of arms, while in such an expedition the best are not too good in this particular. All this however did not cause me to lose courage at all for going on with the expedition, on account of the desire I had of continuing my explorations. I separated accordingly from Sieurs du Pont Gravé and Father Denis, determined to go on in the two canoes which I had, and follow after the savages, having provided myself with what I needed. On the 9th of the month I embarked with two others, namely, one of our interpreters [93] and my man, accompanied by ten savages in the two canoes, these being all they could carry, as they were heavily loaded and encumbered with clothes, which prevented me from taking more men. We continued our voyage up the River St. Lawrence some six leagues, and then went by the Rivière des Prairies, which discharges into that river. Leaving on the left the Falls of St. Louis, which are five or six leagues higher up, and passing several small falls on this river, we entered a lake, [94] after passing which we entered the river where I had been before, which leads to the Algonquins, [95] a distance of eighty-nine leagues [96] from the Falls of St. Louis. Of this river I have made an ample description, with an account of my explorations, in my preceding book, printed in 1614.[97] For this reason I shall not speak of it in this narrative, but pass on directly to the Lake of the Algonquins.[98] Here we entered a river [99] which flows into this lake, up which we went some thirty-five leagues, passing a large number of falls both by land and water, the country being far from attractive, and covered with pines, birches, and some oaks, being also very rocky, and in many places somewhat hilly. Moreover it was very barren and sterile, being but thinly inhabited by certain Algonquin savages, called _Otaguottouemin_, [100] who dwell in the country, and live by hunting and the fish they catch in the rivers, ponds, and lakes, with which the region is well provided. It seems indeed that God has been pleased to give to these forbidding and desert lands some things in their season for the refreshment of man and the inhabitants of these places. For I assure you that there are along the rivers many strawberries, also a marvellous quantity of blueberries, [101] a little fruit very good to eat, and other small fruits. The people here dry these fruits for the winter, as we do plums in France for Lent. We left this river, which comes from the north, [102] and by which the savages go to the Saguenay to barter their furs for tobacco. This place is situated in latitude 46°, and is very pleasant, but otherwise of little account. [103] Continuing our journey by land, after leaving the river of the Algonquins, we passed several lakes [104] where the savages carry their canoes, and entered the lake of the Nipissings,[105] in latitude 46° 15', on the twenty-sixth day of the month, having gone by land and the lakes twenty- five leagues, or thereabouts.[106] We then arrived at the cabins of the savages, with whom we stayed two days. There was a large number of them, who gave us a very welcome reception. They are a people who cultivate the land but little. A shows the dress of these people as they go to war; B that of the women, which differs in no wise from that of the Montagnais and the great people of the Algonquins, extending far into the interior.[107] During the time that I was with them the chief of this tribe and their most prominent men entertained us with many banquets according to their custom, and took the trouble to go fishing and hunting with me, in order to treat me with the greatest courtesy possible. These people are very numerous, there being from seven to eight hundred souls, who live in general near the lake. This contains a large number of very pleasant islands, among others one more than six leagues long, with three or four fine ponds and a number of fine meadows; it is bordered by very fine woods, that contain an abundance of game, which frequent the little ponds, where the savages also catch fish. The northern side of the lake is very pleasant, with fine meadows for the grazing of cattle, and many little streams, discharging into the lake. They were fishing at that time in a lake very abundant in various kinds of fish, among others one a foot long that was very good. There are also other kinds which the savages catch for the purpose of drying and storing away. The lake is some eight leagues broad and twenty-five long,[108] into which a river [109] flows from the northwest, along which they go to barter the merchandise, which we give them in exchange for their peltry, with those who live on it, and who support themselves by hunting and fishing, their country containing great quantities of animals, birds, and fish.[110] After resting two days with the chief of the Nipissings we re-embarked in our canoes, and entered a river, by which this lake discharges itself.[111] We proceeded down it some thirty-five leagues, and descended several little falls by land and by water, until we reached Lake Attigouautan. All this region is still more unattractive than the preceding, for I saw along this river only ten acres of arable land, the rest being rocky and very hilly. It is true that near Lake Attigouautan we found some Indian corn, but only in small quantity. Here our savages proceeded to gather some squashes, which were acceptable to us, for our provisions began to give out in consequence of the bad management of the savages, who ate so heartily at the beginning that towards the end very little was left, although we had only one meal a day. But, as I have mentioned before, we did not lack for blueberries [112] and strawberries; otherwise we should have been in danger of being reduced to straits. We met three hundred men of a tribe we named _Cheveux Relevés_, [113] since their hair is very high and carefully arranged, and better dressed beyond all comparison than that of our courtiers, in spite of their irons and refinements. This gives them a handsome appearance. They have no breeches, and their bodies are very much pinked in divisions of various shapes. They paint their faces in various colors, have their nostrils pierced, and their ears adorned with beads. When they go out of their houses they carry a club. I visited them, became somewhat acquainted, and formed a friendship with them. I gave a hatchet to their chief, who was as much pleased and delighted with it as if I had given him some rich present. Entering into conversation with him, I inquired in regard to the extent of his country, which he pictured to me with coal on the bark of a tree. He gave me to understand that he had come into this place for drying the fruit called _bluës_ [114] to serve for manna in winter, and when they can find nothing else. A and C show the manner in which they arm themselves when they go to war. They have as arms only the bow and arrow, made in the manner you see depicted, and which they regularly carry; also a round shield of dressed leather [115] made from an animal like the buffalo. [116] The next day we separated, and continued our course, along the shore of the lake of the Attigouautan, [117] which contains a large number of islands. We went some forty-five leagues, all the time along the shore of the lake. It is very large, nearly four hundred leagues long from east to west, and fifty leagues broad, and in view of its great extent I have named it the _Mer Douce_. [118] It is very abundant in various sorts of very good fish, both those which we have and those we do not, but especially in trout, which are enormously large, some of which I saw as long as four feet and a half, the least being two feet and a half. There are also pike of like size, and a certain kind of sturgeon, a very large fish and of remarkable excellence. The country bordering this lake is partly hilly, as on the north side, and partly flat, inhabited by savages, and thinly covered with wood, including oaks. After crossing a bay, which forms one of the extremities of the lake, [119] we went some seven leagues until we arrived in the country of the Attigouautan at a village called _Otoüacha_, on the first day of August. Here we found a great change in the country. It was here very fine, the largest part being cleared up, and many hills and several rivers rendering the region agreeable. I went to see their Indian corn, which was at that time far advanced for the season. These localities seemed to me very pleasant, in comparison with so disagreeable a region as that from which we had come. The next day I went to another village, called _Carmaron_, a league distant from this, where they received us in a very friendly manner, making for us a banquet with their bread, squashes, and fish. As to meat, that is very scarce there. The chief of this village earnestly begged me to stay, to which I could not consent, but returned to our village, where on the next night but one, as I went out of the cabin to escape the fleas, of which there were large numbers and by which we were tormented, a girl of little modesty came boldly to me and offered to keep me company, for which I thanked her, sending her away with gentle remonstrances, and spent the night with some savages. The next day I departed from this village to go to another, called _Touaguainchain_, and to another, called _Tequenonquiaye_, in which we were received in a very friendly manner by the inhabitants, who showed us the best cheer they could with their Indian corn served in various styles. This country is very fine and fertile, and travelling through it is very pleasant. Thence I had them guide me to Carhagouha, which was fortified by a triple palisade of wood thirty-five feet high for its defence and protection. In this village Father Joseph was staying, whom we saw and were very glad to find well. He on his part was no less glad, and was expecting nothing so little as to see me in this country. On the twelfth day of August the Recollect Father celebrated the holy mass, and a cross was planted near a small house apart from the village, which the savages built while I was staying there, awaiting the arrival of our men and their preparation to go to the war, in which they had been for a long time engaged. Finding that they were so slow in assembling their army, and that I should have time to visit their country, I resolved to go by short days' journeys from village to village as far as Cahiagué, where the rendezvous of the entire army was to be, and which was fourteen leagues distant from Carhagouha, from which village I set out on the fourteenth of August with ten of my companions. I visited five of the more important villages, which were enclosed with palisades of wood, and reached Cahiagué, the principal village of the country, where there were two hundred large cabins and where all the men of war were to assemble. Now in all these villages they received us very courteously with their simple welcome. All the country where I went contains some twenty to thirty leagues, is very fine, and situated in latitude 44° 30'. It is very extensively cleared up. They plant in it a great quantity of Indian corn, which grows there finely. They plant likewise squashes,[120] and sun-flowers,[121] from the seed of which they make oil, with which they anoint the head. The region is extensively traversed with brooks, discharging into the lake. There are many very good vines [122] and plums, which are excellent,[123] raspberries,[124] strawberries,[125] little wild apples,[126] nuts,[127] and a kind of fruit of the form and color of small lemons, with a similar taste, but having an interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The plant which bears this fruit is two and a half feet high, with but three or four leaves at most, which are of the shape of those of the fig-tree, and each plant bears but two pieces of fruit. There are many of these plants in various places, the fruit being very good and savory.[128] Oaks, elms, and beeches [129] are numerous here, as also forests of fir, the regular retreat of partridges [130] and hares.[131] There are also quantities of small cherries [132] and black cherries,[133] and the same varieties of wood that we have in our forests in France. The soil seems to me indeed a little sandy, yet it is for all that good for their kind of cereal. The small tract of country which I visited is thickly settled with a countless number of human beings, not to speak of the other districts where I did not go, and which, according to general report, are as thickly settled or more so than those mentioned above. I reflected what a great misfortune it is that so many poor creatures live and die without the knowledge of God, and even without any religion or law established among them, whether divine, political, or civil; for they neither worship, nor pray to any object, at least so far as I could perceive from their conversation. But they have, however, some sort of ceremony, which I shall describe in its proper place, in regard to the sick, or in order to ascertain what is to happen to them, and even in regard to the dead. These, however, are the works of certain persons among them, who want to be confidentially consulted in such matters, as was the case among the ancient pagans, who allowed themselves to be carried away by the persuasions of magicians and diviners. Yet the greater part of the people do not believe at all in what these charlatans do and say. They are very generous to one another in regard to provisions, but otherwise very avaricious. They do not give in return. They are clothed with deer and beaver skins, which they obtain from the Algonquins and Nipissings in exchange for Indian corn and meal. On the 17th of August I arrived at Cahiagué, where I was received with great joy and gladness by all the savages of the country, who had abandoned their undertaking, in the belief that they would see me no more, and that the Iroquois had captured me, as I have before stated. This was the cause of the great delay experienced in this expedition, they even having postponed it to the following year. Meanwhile they received intelligence that a certain nation of their allies, [134] dwelling three good days' journeys beyond the Entouhonorons, [135] on whom the Iroquois also make war, desired to assist them in this expedition with five hundred good men; also to form an alliance and establish a friendship with us, that we might all engage in the war together; moreover that they greatly desired to see us and give expression to the pleasure they would have in making our acquaintance. I was glad to find this opportunity for gratifying my desire of obtaining a knowledge of their country. It is situated only seven days from where the Dutch [136] go to traffic on the fortieth degree. The savages there, assisted by the Dutch, make war upon them, take them prisoners, and cruelly put them to death; and indeed they told us that the preceding year, while making war, they captured three of the Dutch, who were assisting their enemies, [137] as we do the Attigouautans, and while in action one of their own men was killed. Nevertheless they did not fail to send back the three Dutch prisoners, without doing them any harm, supposing that they belonged to our party, since they had no knowledge of us except by hearsay, never having seen a Christian; otherwise, they said, these three prisoners would not have got off so easily, and would not escape again should they surprise and take them. This nation is very warlike, as those of the nation of the Attigouautans maintain. They have only three villages, which are in the midst of more than twenty others, on which they make war without assistance from their friends; for they are obliged to pass through the thickly settled country of the Chouontouaroüon,[138] or else they would have to make a very long circuit. After arriving at the village, it was necessary for me to remain until the men of war should come from the surrounding villages, so that we might be off as soon as possible. During this time there was a constant succession of banquets and dances on account of the joy they experienced at seeing me so determined to assist them in their war, just as if they were already assured of victory. The greater portion of our men having assembled, we set out from the village on the first day of September, and passed along the shore of a small lake, [139] distant three leagues from the village, where they catch large quantities of fish, which they preserve for the winter. There is another lake, [140] closely adjoining, which is twenty-five leagues in circuit, and slows into the small one by a strait, where the above mentioned extensive fishing is carried on. This is done by means of a large number of stakes which almost close the strait, only some little openings being left where they place their nets, in which the fish are caught. These two lakes discharge into the _Mer Douce_. We remained some time in this place to await the rest of our savages. When they were all assembled, with their arms, meal, and necessaries, it was decided to choose some of the most resolute men to compose a party to go and give notice of our departure to those who were to assist us with five hundred men, that they might join us, and that we might appear together before the fort of the enemy. This decision having been made, they dispatched two canoes, with twelve of the most stalwart savages, and also with one of our interpreters, [141] who asked me to permit him to make the journey, which I readily accorded, inasmuch as he was led to do so of his own will, and as he might in this way see their country and get a knowledge of the people living there. The danger, however, was not small, since it was necessary to pass through the midst of enemies. They set out on the 8th of the month, and on the 10th following there was a heavy white frost. We continued our journey towards the enemy, and went some five or six leagues through these lakes, [142] when the savages carried their canoes about ten leagues by land. We then came to another lake, [143] six to seven leagues in length and three broad. From this flows a river which discharges into the great lake of the Entouhonorons. After traversing this lake we passed a fall, and continuing our course down this river for about sixty-four leagues [144] entered the lake of the Entouhonorons, having passed, on our way by land, five falls, some being from four to five leagues long. We also passed several lakes of considerable size, through which the river passes. The latter is large and very abundant in good fish. It is certain that all this region is very fine and pleasant. Along the banks it seems as if the trees had been set out for ornament in most places, and that all these tracts were in former times inhabited by savages, who were subsequently compelled to abandon them from fear of their enemies. Vines and nut-trees are here very numerous. Grapes mature, yet there is always a very pungent tartness which is felt remaining in the throat when one eats them in large quantities, arising from defect of cultivation. These localities are very pleasant when cleared up. Stags and bears are here very abundant. We tried the hunt and captured a large number as we journeyed down. It was done in this way. They place four or five hundred savages in line in the woods, so that they extend to certain points on the river; then marching in order with bow and arrow in hand, shouting and making a great noise in order to frighten the beasts, they continue to advance until they come to the end of the point. Then all the animals between the point and the hunters are forced to throw themselves into the water, as many at least as do not fall by the arrows shot at them by the hunters. Meanwhile the savages, who are expressly arranged and posted in their canoes along the shore, easily approach the stags and other animals, tired out and greatly frightened in the chase, when they readily kill them with the spear heads attached to the extremity of a piece of wood of the shape of a half pike. This is the way they engage in the chase; and they do likewise on the islands where there are large quantities of game. I took especial pleasure in seeing them hunt thus and in observing their dexterity. Many animals were killed by the shot of the arquebus, at which the savages were greatly surprised. But it unfortunately happened that, while a stag was being killed, a savage, who chanced to come in range, was wounded by a shot of an arquebus. Thence a great commotion arose among them, which however subsided when some presents were given to the wounded. This is the usual manner of allaying and settling quarrels, and, in case of the death of the wounded, presents are given to the relatives of the one killed. As to smaller game there is a large quantity of it in its season. There are also many cranes,[145] white as swans, and other varieties of birds like those in France. We proceeded by short days' journeys as far as the shore of the lake of the Entouhonorons, constantly hunting as before mentioned. Here at its eastern extremity, which is the entrance to the great River St. Lawrence, we made the traverse, in latitude 43°, [146] where in the passage there are very large beautiful islands. We went about fourteen leagues in passing to the southern side of the lake towards the territory of the enemy. [147] The savages concealed all their canoes in the woods near the shore. We went some four leagues over a sandy strand, where I observed a very pleasant and beautiful country, intersected by many little streams and two small rivers, which discharge into the before-mentioned lake, also many ponds and meadows, where there was an endless amount of game, many vines, fine woods, and a large number of chestnut trees, whose fruit was still in the burr. The chestnuts are small, but of a good flavor. The country is covered with forests, which over its greater portion have not been cleared up. All the canoes being thus hidden, we left the border of the lake, [148] which is some eighty leagues long and twenty-five wide. [149] The greater portion of its shores is inhabited by savages. We continued our course by land for about twenty-five or thirty leagues. In the space of four days we crossed many brooks, and a river which proceeds from a lake that discharges into that of the Entouhonorons. [150] This lake is twenty-five or thirty leagues in circuit, contains some fine islands, and is the place where our enemies, the Iroquois, catch their fish, in which it abounds. On the 9th of the month of October our savages going out to reconnoitre met eleven savages, whom they took prisoners. They consisted of four women, three boys, one girl, and three men, who were going fishing and were distant some four leagues from the fort of the enemy. Now it is to be noted that one of the chiefs, on seeing the prisoners, cut off the finger of one of these poor women as a beginning of their usual punishment; upon which I interposed and reprimanded the chief, Iroquet, representing to him that it was not the act of a warrior, as he declared himself to be, to conduct himself with cruelty towards women, who have no defence but their tears and that one should treat them with humanity on account of their helplessness and weakness; and I told him that on the contrary this act would be deemed to proceed from a base and brutal courage, and that if he committed any more of these cruelties he would not give me heart to assist them or favor them in the war. To which the only answer he gave me was that their enemies treated them in the same manner, but that, since this was displeasing to me, he would not do anything more to the women, although he would to the men. The next day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived before the fort [151] of their enemies, where the savages made some skirmishes with each other, although our design was not to disclose ourselves until the next day, which however the impatience of our savages would not permit, both on account of their desire to see fire opened upon their enemies, and also that they might rescue some of their own men who had become too closely engaged, and were hotly pressed. Then I approached the enemy, and although I had only a few men, yet we showed them what they had never seen nor heard before; for, as soon as they saw us and heard the arquebus shots and the balls whizzing in their ears, they withdrew speedily to their fort, carrying the dead and wounded in this charge. We also withdrew to our main body, with five or six wounded, one of whom died. This done, we withdrew to the distance of cannon range, out of sight of the enemy, but contrary to my advice and to what they had promised me. This moved me to address them very rough and angry words in order to incite them to do their duty, foreseeing that if everything should go according to their whim and the guidance of their council, their utter ruin would be the result. Nevertheless I did not fail to send to them and propose means which they should use in order to get possession of their enemies. These were, to make with certain kinds of wood a _cavalier_, which should be higher than the palisades. Upon this were to be placed four or five of our arquebusiers, who should keep up a constant fire over their palisades and galleries, which were well provided with stones, and by this means dislodge the enemy who might attack us from their galleries. Meanwhile orders were to be given to procure boards for making a sort of mantelet to protect our men from the arrows and stones of which the savages generally make use. These instruments, namely the cavalier and mantelets, were capable of being carried by a large number of men. One mantelet was so constructed that the water could not extinguish the fire, which might be set to the fort, under cover of the arquebusiers who were doing their duty on the cavalier. In this manner, I told them, we might be able to defend ourselves so that the enemy could not approach to extinguish the fire which we should set to their ramparts. This proposition they thought good and very seasonable, and immediately proceeded to carry it out as I directed. In fact the next day they set to work, some to cut wood, others to gather it, for building and equipping the cavalier and mantelets. The work was promptly executed and in less than four hours, although the amount of wood they had collected for burning against the ramparts, in order to set fire to them, was very small. Their expectation was that the five hundred men who had promised to come would do so on this day, but doubt was felt about them, since they had not appeared at the rendezvous, as they had been charged to do, and as they had promised. This greatly troubled our savages; but seeing that they were sufficiently numerous to take the fort without other assistance, and thinking for my part that delay, if not in all things at least in many, is prejudicial, I urged them to attack it, representing to them that the enemy, having become aware of their force and our arms, which pierced whatever was proof against arrows, had begun to barricade themselves and cover themselves with strong pieces of wood, with which they were well provided and their village filled. I told them that the least delay was the best, since the enemy had already strengthened themselves very much; for their village was enclosed by four good palisades, which were made of great pieces of wood, interlaced with each other, with an opening of not more than half a foot between two, and which were thirty feet high, with galleries after the manner of a parapet, which they had furnished with double pieces of wood that were proof against our arquebus shots. Moreover it was near a pond where the water was abundant, and was well supplied with gutters, placed between each pair of palisades, to throw out water, which they had also under cover inside, in order to extinguish fire. Now this is the character of their fortifications and defences, which are much stronger than the villages of the Attigouautan and others. We approached to attack the village, our cavalier being carried by two hundred of the strongest men, who put it down before the village at a pike's length off. I ordered three arquebusiers to mount upon it, who were well protected from the arrows and stones that could be shot or hurled at them. Meanwhile the enemy did not fail to send a large number of arrows which did not miss, and a great many stones, which they hurled from their palisades. Nevertheless a hot fire of arquebuses forced them to dislodge and abandon their galleries, in consequence of the cavalier which uncovered them, they not venturing to show themselves, but fighting under shelter. Now when the cavalier was carried forward, instead of bringing up the mantelets according to order, including that one under cover of which we were to set the fire, they abandoned them and began to scream at their enemies, shooting arrows into the fort, which in my opinion did little harm to the enemy. But we must excuse them, for they are not warriors, and besides will have no discipline nor correction, and will do only what they please. Accordingly one of them set fire inconsiderately to the wood placed against the fort of the enemy, quite the wrong way and in the face of the wind, so that it produced no effect. This fire being out, the greater part of the savages began to carry wood against the palisades, but in so small quantity that the fire could have no great effect. There also arose such disorder among them that one could not understand another, which greatly troubled me. In vain did I shout in their ears and remonstrate to my utmost with them as to the danger to which they exposed themselves by their bad behavior, but on account of the great noise they made they heard nothing. Seeing that shouting would only burst my head, and that my remonstrances were useless for putting a stop to the disorder, I did nothing more, but determined together with my men to do what we could, and fire upon such as we could see. Meanwhile the enemy profited by our disorder to get water and pour it so abundantly that you would have said brooks were flowing through their spouts, the result of which was that the fire was instantly extinguished, while they did not cease shooting their arrows, which fell upon us like hail. But the men on the cavalier killed and maimed many. We were engaged in this combat about three hours, in which two of our chiefs and leading warriors were wounded, namely, one called _Ochateguain_ and another _Orani_, together with some fifteen common warriors. The others, seeing their men and some of the chiefs wounded, now began to talk of a retreat without farther fighting, in expectation of the five hundred men, [152] whose arrival could not be much delayed. Thus they retreated, a disorderly rabble. Moreover the chiefs have in fact no absolute control over their men, who are governed by their own will and follow their own fancy, which is the cause of their disorder and the ruin of all their undertakings; for, having determined upon anything with their leaders, it needs only the whim of a villain, or nothing at all, to lead them to break it off and form a new plan. Thus there is no concert of action among them, as can be seen by this expedition. Now we withdrew into our fort, I having received two arrow wounds, one in the leg, the other in the knee, which caused me great inconvenience, aside from the severe pain. When they were all assembled, I addressed them some words of remonstrance on the disorder that had occurred. But all I said availed nothing, and had no effect upon them. They replied that many of their men had been wounded like myself, so that it would cause the others much trouble and inconvenience to carry them as they retreated, and that it was not possible to return again against their enemies, as I told them it was their duty to do. They agreed, however, to wait four days longer for the five hundred men who were to come; and, if they came, to make a second effort against their enemies, and execute better what I might tell them than they had done in the past. With this I had to content myself, to my great regret. Herewith is indicated the manner in which they fortify their towns, from which representation it may be inferred that those of their friends and enemies are fortified in like manner. The next day there was a violent wind, which lasted two days, and was very favorable for setting fire anew to the fort of the enemy which, although I urged them strongly, they were unwilling to do, as if they were afraid of getting the worst of it, and besides they pleaded their wounded as an excuse. We remained in camp until the 16th of the month, [153] during which time there were some skirmishes between the enemy and our men, who were very often surrounded by the former, rather through their imprudence than from lack of courage; for I assure you that every time we went to the charge it was necessary for us to go and disengage them from the crowd, since they could only retreat under cover of our arquebusiers, whom the enemy greatly dreaded and feared; for as soon as they perceived any one of the arquebusiers they withdrew speedily, saying in a persuasive manner that we should not interfere in their combats, and that their enemies had very little courage to require us to assist them, with many other words of like tenor, in order to prevail upon us. I have represented by figure E the manner in which they arm themselves in going to war. After some days, seeing that the five hundred men did not come, they determined to depart, and enter upon their retreat as soon as possible. They proceeded to make a kind of basket for carrying the wounded, who are put into it crowded up in a heap, being bound and pinioned in such a manner that it is as impossible for them to move as for an infant in its swaddling clothes; but this is, not without causing the wounded much extreme pain. This I can say with truth from my own experience, having been carried some days, since I could not stand up, particularly on account of an arrow-wound which I had received in the knee. I never found myself in such a _gehenna_ as during this time, for the pain which I suffered in consequence of the wound in my knee was nothing in comparison with that which I endured while I was carried bound and pinioned on the back of one of our savages; so that I lost my patience, and as soon as I could sustain myself, got out of this prison, or rather _gehenna_. The enemy followed us about half a league, though at a distance, with the view of trying to take some of those composing the rear guard; but their efforts were vain, and they retired. Now the only good point that I have seen in their mode of warfare is that they make their retreat very securely, placing all the wounded and aged in their centre, being well armed on the wings and in the rear, and continuing this order without interruption until they reach a place of security. Their retreat was very long, being from twenty-five to thirty leagues, which caused the wounded much fatigue, as also those who carried them, although the latter relieved each other from time to time. On the 18th day of the month there fell much snow and hail, accompanied by a strong wind, which greatly incommoded us. Nevertheless we succeeded in arriving at the shore of the lake of the Entouhonorons, at the place where our canoes were concealed, which we found all intact, for we had been afraid lest the enemy might have broken them up. When they were all assembled, and I saw that they were ready to depart to their village, I begged them to take me to our settlement, which, though unwilling at first, they finally concluded to do, and sought four men to conduct me. Four men were found, who offered themselves of their own accord; for, as I have before said, the chiefs have no control over their men, in consequence of which they are often unable to do as they would like. Now the men having been found, it was necessary also to find a canoe, which was not to be had, each one needing his own, and there being no more than they required. This was far from being pleasant to me, but, on the contrary greatly annoyed me, since it led me to suspect some evil purpose, inasmuch as they had promised to conduct me to our settlement after their war. Moreover I was poorly prepared for spending the winter with them, or else should not have been concerned about the matter. But not being able to do anything, I was obliged to resign myself in patience. Now after some days I perceived that their plan was to keep me and my companions, not only as a security for themselves, for they feared their enemies, but also that I might listen to what took place in their councils and assemblies, and determine what they should do in the future against their enemies for their security and preservation. The next day, the 28th of the month, they began to make preparations; some to go deer-hunting, others to hunt bears and beavers, others to go fishing, others to return to their villages. An abode and lodging were furnished me by one of the principal chiefs, called _D'Arontal_, with whom I already had some acquaintance. Having offered me his cabin, provisions, and accommodations, he set out also for the deer-hunt, which is esteemed by them the greatest and most noble one. After crossing, from the island, [154] the end of the lake, we entered a river [155] some twelve leagues in extent. They then carried their canoes by land some half a league, when we entered a lake [156] which was some ten or twelve leagues in circuit, where there was a large amount of game, as swans, [157] white cranes, [158] outardes, [159] ducks, teal, song-thrush, [160] larks, [161] snipe, [162] geese, [163] and several other kinds of fowl too numerous to mention. Of these I killed a great number, which stood us in good stead while waiting for the capture of a deer. From there we proceeded to a certain place some ten leagues distant, where our savages thought there were deer in abundance. Assembled there were some twenty-five savages, who set to building two or three cabins out of pieces of wood fitted to each other, the chinks of which they stopped up by means of moss to prevent the entrance of the air, covering them with the bark of trees. When they had done this they went into the woods to a small forest of firs, where they made an enclosure in the form of a triangle, closed up on two sides and open on one. This enclosure was made of great stakes of wood closely pressed together, from eight to nine feet high, each of the sides being fifteen hundred paces long. At the extremity of this triangle there was a little enclosure, constantly diminishing in size, covered in part with boughs and with only an opening of five feet, about the width of a medium-sized door, into which the deer were to enter. They were so expeditious in their work, that in less than ten days they had their enclosure in readiness. Meanwhile other savages had gone fishing, catching trout and pike of prodigious size, and enough to meet all our wants. All preparations being made, they set out half an hour before day to go into the wood, some half a league from the before-mentioned enclosure, separated from each other some eighty paces. Each had two sticks, which they struck together, and they marched in this order at a slow pace until they arrived at their enclosure. The deer hearing this noise flee before them until they reach the enclosure, into which the savages force them to go. Then they gradually unite on approaching the bay and opening of their triangle, the deer skirting the sides until they reach the end, to which the savages hotly pursue them, with bow and arrow in hand ready to let fly. On reaching the end of the triangle they begin to shout and imitate wolves, [164] which are numerous, and which devour the deer. The deer, hearing this frightful noise, are constrained to enter the retreat by the little opening, whither they are very hotly pursued by arrow shots. Having entered this retreat, which is so well closed and fastened that they can by no possibility get out, they are easily captured. I assure you that there is a singular pleasure in this chase, which took place every two days, and was so successful that, in the thirty-eight days [165] during which we were there, they captured one hundred and twenty deer, which they make good use of, reserving the fat for winter, which they use as we do butter, and taking away to their homes some of the flesh for their festivities. They have other contrivances for capturing the deer; as snares, with which they kill many. You see depicted opposite the manner of their chase, enclosure, and snare. Out of the skins they make garments. Thus you see how we spent the time while waiting for the frost, that we might return the more easily, since the country is very marshy. When they first went out hunting, I lost my way in the woods, having followed a certain bird that seemed to me peculiar. It had a beak like that of a parrot, and was of the size of a hen. It was entirely yellow, except the head which was red, and the wings which were blue, and it flew by intervals like a partridge. The desire to kill it led me to pursue it from tree to tree for a very long time, until it flew away in good earnest. Thus losing all hope, I desired to retrace my steps, but found none of our hunters, who had been constantly getting ahead, and had reached the enclosure. While trying to overtake them, and going, as it seemed to me, straight to where the enclosure was, I found myself lost in the woods, going now on this side now on that, without being able to recognize my position. The night coming on, I was obliged to spend it at the foot of a great tree, and in the morning set out and walked until three o'clock in the afternoon, when I came to a little pond of still water. Here I noticed some game, which I pursued, killing three or four birds, which were very acceptable, since I had had nothing to eat. Unfortunately for me there had been no sunshine for three days, nothing but rain and cloudy weather, which increased my trouble. Tired and exhausted I prepared to rest myself and cook the birds in order to alleviate the hunger which I began painfully to feel, and which by God's favor was appeased. When I had made my repast I began to consider what I should do, and to pray God to give me the will and courage to sustain patiently my misfortune if I should be obliged to remain abandoned in this forest without counsel or consolation except the Divine goodness and mercy, and at the same time to exert myself to return to our hunters. Thus committing all to His mercy I gathered up renewed courage going here and there all day, without perceiving any foot-print or path, except those of wild beasts, of which I generally saw a good number. I was obliged to pass here this night also. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring with me a small compass which would have put me on the right road, or nearly so. At the dawn of day, after a brief repast, I set out in order to find, if possible, some brook and follow it, thinking that it must of necessity flow into the river on the border of which our hunters were encamped. Having resolved upon this plan, I carried it out so well that at noon I found myself on the border of a little lake, about a league and a half in extent, where I killed some game, which was very timely for my wants; I had likewise remaining some eight or ten charges of powder, which was a great satisfaction. I proceeded along the border of this lake to see where it discharged, and found a large brook, which I followed until five o'clock in the evening, when I heard a great noise, but on carefully listening failed to perceive clearly what it was. On hearing the noise, however, more distinctly, I concluded that it was a fall of water in the river which I was searching for. I proceeded nearer, and saw an opening, approaching which I found myself in a great and far-reaching meadow, where there was a large number of wild beasts, and looking to my right I perceived the river, broad and long. I looked to see if I could not recognize the place, and walking along on the meadow I noticed a little path where the savages carried their canoes. Finally, after careful observation, I recognized it as the same river, and that I had gone that way before. I passed the night in better spirits than the previous ones, supping on the little I had. In the morning I re-examined the place where I was, and concluded from certain mountains on the border of the river that I had not been deceived, and that our hunters must be lower down by four or five good leagues. This distance I walked at my leisure along the border of the river, until I perceived the smoke of our hunters, where I arrived to the great pleasure not only of myself but of them, who were still searching for me, but had about given up all hopes of seeing me again. They begged me not to stray off from them any more, or never to forget to carry with me my compass, and they added: If you had not come, and we had not succeeded in finding you, we should never have gone again to the French, for fear of their accusing us of having killed you. After this he [166] was very careful of me when I went hunting, always giving me a savage as companion, who knew how to find again the place from which he started so well that it was something very remarkable. To return to my subject: they have a kind of superstition in regard to this hunt; namely, they believe that if they should roast any of the meat taken in this way, or if any of the fat should fall into the fire, or if any of the bones should be thrown into it, they would not be able to capture any more deer. Accordingly they begged me to roast none of this meat, but I laughed at this and their way of doing. Yet, in order not to offend them, I cheerfully desisted, at least in their presence; though when they were out of sight I took some of the best and roasted it, attaching no credit to their superstitions. When I afterwards told them what I had done, they would not believe me, saying that they could not have taken any deer after the doing of such a thing. On the fourth day of December we set out from this place, walking on the river, lakes, and ponds, which were frozen, and sometimes through the woods. Thus we went for nineteen days, undergoing much hardship and toil, both the savages, who were loaded with a hundred pounds, and myself, who carried a burden of twenty pounds, which in the long journey tired me very much. It is true that I was sometimes relieved by our savages, but nevertheless I suffered great discomfort. The savages, in order to go over the ice more easily, are accustomed to make a kind of wooden sledge, [167] on which they put their loads, which they easily and swiftly drag along. Some days after there was a thaw, which caused us much trouble and annoyance; for we had to go through pine forests full of brooks, ponds, marshes, and swamps, where many trees had been blown down upon each other. This caused us a thousand troubles and embarrassments, and great discomfort, as we were all the time wet to above our knees. We were four days in this plight, since in most places the ice would not bear. At last, on the 20th of the month, we succeeded in arriving at our village. [168] Here the Captain Yroquet had come to winter with his companions, who are Algonquins, also his son, whom he brought for the sake of treatment, since while hunting he had been seriously injured by a bear which he was trying to kill. After resting some days I determined to go and visit Father Joseph, and to see in winter the people where he was, whom the war had not permitted me to see in the summer. I set out from this village on the 14th [169] of January following, thanking my host for the kindness he had shown me, and, taking formal leave of him, as I did not expect to see him again for three months. The next day I saw Father Joseph, [170] in his small house where he had taken up his abode, as I have before stated. I stayed with him some days, finding him deliberating about making a journey to the Petun people, as I had also thought of doing, although it was very disagreeable travelling in winter. We set out together on the fifteenth of February to go to that nation, where we arrived on the seventeenth of the month. [171] These Petun people plant the maize, called by us _blé de Turquie_, and have fixed abodes like the rest. We went to seven other villages of their neighbors and allies, with whom we contracted friendship, and who promised to come in good numbers to our settlement. They welcomed us with good cheer, making a banquet with meat and fish, as is their custom. To this the people from all quarters flocked in order to see us, showing many manifestations of friendship, and accompanying us on the greater part of our way back. The country is diversified with pleasant slopes and plains. They were beginning to build two villages, through which we passed, and which were situated in the midst of the woods, because of the convenience [172] of building and fortifying their towns there. These people live like the Attignouaatitans, [173] and have the same customs. They are situated near the Nation Neutre, [174] which are powerful and occupy a great extent of country. After visiting these people, we set out from that place, and went to a nation of savages, whom we named _Cheveux Relevés_. [175] They were very happy to see us again, and we entered into friendship with them, while they in return promised to come and see us, namely at the habitation in this place. It has seemed to me desirable to describe them and their country, their customs and mode of life. In the first place they are at war with another nation of savages, called Asistagueroüon, [176] which means _Gens de Feu_, who are distant from them ten days' journey. I informed myself accordingly very particularly in regard to their country and the tribes living there, as also to their character and numbers. The people of this nation are very numerous, and are for the most part great warriors, hunters, and fishermen. They have several chiefs, each ruling in his own district. In general they plant Indian corn, and other cereals. They are hunters who go in troops to various regions and countries, where they traffic with other nations, distant four or five hundred leagues. They are the cleanest savages in their household affairs that I have ever seen, and are very industrious in making a kind of mat, which constitutes their Turkish carpets. The women have the body covered, but the men go uncovered, with the exception of a fur robe in the form of a cloak, which they usually leave off in summer. The women and girls are not more moved at seeing them thus, than if they saw nothing unusual. The women live very happily with their husbands. They have the following custom when they have their catamenia: the wives withdraw from their husbands, or the daughter from her father and mother and other relatives, and go to certain small houses. There they remain in retirement, awaiting their time, without any company of men, who bring them food and necessaries until their return. Thus it is known who have their catamenia and who have not. This tribe is accustomed more than others to celebrate great banquets. They gave us good cheer and welcomed us very cordially, earnestly begging me to assist them against their enemies, who dwell on the banks of the _Mer Douce_, two hundred leagues distant; to which I replied that they must wait until another time, as I was not provided with the necessary means. They were at a loss how to welcome us. I have represented them in figure C as they go to war. There is, also, at a distance of a two days' journey from them, in a southerly direction, another savage nation, that produces a large amount of tobacco. This is called _Nation Neutre_. They number four thousand warriors, and dwell westward of the lake of the Entouhonorons, which is from eighty to a hundred leagues in extent. They, however, assist the _Cheveux Relevés_ against the _Gens de Feu_. But with the Iroquois and our allies they are at peace, and preserve a neutrality. There is a cordial understanding towards both of these nations, and they do not venture to engage in any dispute or quarrel, but on the contrary often eat and drink with them like good friends. I was very desirous of visiting this nation, but the people where we were dissuaded me from it, saying that the year before one of our men had killed one of them, when we were at war with the Entouhonorons, which offended them; and they informed us that they are much inclined to revenge, not concerning themselves as to who struck the blow, but inflicting the penalty upon the first one they meet of the nation, even though one of their friends, when they succeed in catching him, unless harmony has been previously restored between them, and gifts and presents bestowed upon the relatives of the deceased. Thus I was prevented for the time being from going, although some of this nation assured us that they would do us no harm for the reason assigned above. Thus we were led to return the same way we had come, and continuing my journey, I reached the nation of the _Pisierinii_, [177] who had promised to conduct me farther on in the prosecution of my plans and explorations. But I was prevented by the intelligence which came from our great village and the Algonquins, where Captain Yroquet was, namely, that the people of the nation of the Atignouaatitans [178] had placed in his hands a prisoner of a hostile nation, in the expectation that this Captain Yroquet would exercise on the prisoner the revenge usual among them. But they said that, instead of doing so, he had not only set him at liberty, but, having found him apt, and an excellent hunter, had treated him as his son, on account of which the Atignouaatitans had become jealous and resolved upon vengeance, and had in fact appointed a man to go and kill this prisoner, allied as he was. As he was put to death in the presence of the chiefs of the Algonquin nation, they, indignant at such an act and moved to anger, killed on the spot this rash murderer; whereupon the Atignouaatitans feeling themselves insulted, seeing one of their comrades dead, seized their arms and went to the tents of the Algonquins, who were passing the winter near the above mentioned village, and belabored them severely, Captain Yroquet receiving two arrow wounds. At another time they pillaged some of the cabins of the Algonquins before the latter could place themselves in a state of defence, so that they had not an equal chance. Notwithstanding this they were not reconciled to the Algonquins, who for securing peace had given the Atignouaatitans fifty necklaces of porcelain and a hundred branches of the same [179] which they value highly, and likewise a number of kettles and axes, together with two female prisoners in place of the dead man. They were, in a word, still in a state of violent animosity. The Algonquins were obliged to suffer patiently this great rage, and feared that they might all be killed, not feeling any security, notwithstanding their gifts, until they should be differently situated. This intelligence greatly disturbed me, when I considered the harm that might arise not only to them, but to us as well, who were in their country. I then met two or three savages of our large village, who earnestly entreated me to go to them in order to effect a reconciliation, declaring that if I did not go none of them would come to us any more, since they were at war with the Algonquins and regarded us as their friends. In view of this I set out as soon as possible, and visited on my way the Nipissings to ascertain when they would be ready for the journey to the north, which I found broken off on account of these quarrels and hostilities, as my interpreter gave me to understand, who said that Captain Yroquet had come among all these tribes to find and await me. He had requested them to be at the habitation of the French at the same time with himself to see what agreement could be made between them and the Atignouaatitans, and to postpone the journey to the north to another time. Moreover, Yroquet had given porcelain to break off this journey. They promised us to be at our habitation at the same time as the others. If ever there was one greatly disheartened it was myself, since I had been waiting to see this year what during many preceding ones I had been seeking for with great toil and effort, through so many fatigues and risks of my life. But realizing that I could not help the matter, and that everything depended on the will of God, I comforted myself, resolving to see it in a short time. I had such sure information that I could not doubt the report of these people, who go to traffic with others dwelling in those northern regions, a great part of whom live in a place very abundant in the chase, and where there are great numbers of large animals, the skins of several of which I saw, and which I concluded were buffaloes [180] from their representation of their form. Fishing is also very abundant there. This journey requires forty days, as well in returning as in going. I set out towards our above-mentioned village on the 15th of February, taking with me six of our men. Having arrived at that place the inhabitants were greatly pleased, as also the Algonquins, whom I sent our interpreter to visit in order to ascertain how everything had taken place on both sides, for I did not wish to go myself that I might give no ground for suspicion to either party. Two days were spent in hearing from both sides how everything had taken place. After this the principal men and seniors of the place came away with us, and we all together went to the Algonquins. Here in one of their cabins, where several of the leading men were assembled, they all, after some talk, agreed to come and accept all that might be said by me as arbiter in the matter, and to carry out what I might propose. Then I gathered the views of each one, obtaining and investigating the wishes and inclinations of both parties, and ascertained that all they wanted was peace. I set forth to them that the best course was to become reconciled and remain friends, since being united and bound together they could the more easily withstand their enemies; and as I went away I begged them not to ask me to effect their reconciliation if they did not intend to follow in all respects the advice I should give them in regard to this dispute, since they had done me the honor to request my opinion. Whereupon they told me anew that they had not desired my return for any other reason. I for my part thought that if I should not reconcile and pacify them they would separate ill disposed towards each other, each party thinking itself in the right. I reflected, also, that they would not have gone to their cabins if I had not been with them, nor to the French if I had not interested myself and taken, so to speak, the charge and conduct of their affairs. Upon this I said to them that as for myself I proposed to go with my host, who had always treated me well, and that I could with difficulty find one so good; for it was on him that the Algonquins laid the blame, saying that he was the only captain who had caused the taking up of arms. Much was said by both sides, and finally it was concluded that I should tell them what seemed to me best, and give them my advice. Since I saw now from what was said that they referred the whole matter to my own decision as to that of a father, and promised that in the future I might dispose of them as I thought best, referring the whole matter to my judgment for settlement, I replied that I was very glad to see them so inclined to follow my advice, and assured them that it should be only for the best interests of the tribes. Moreover I told them, I had been greatly disturbed at hearing the further sad intelligence, namely the death of one of their relatives and friends, whom we regarded as one of our own, which might have caused a great calamity resulting in nothing but perpetual wars between both parties, with various and serious disasters and a rupture of their friendship, in consequence of which the French would be deprived of seeing them and of intercourse with them, and be obliged to enter into alliance with other nations; since we loved each other as brothers, leaving to God the punishment of those meriting it. I proceeded to say to them, that this mode of action between two nations, who were, as they acknowledged, friendly to each other, was unworthy of reasoning men, but rather characteristic of brute beasts. I represented to them, moreover, that they were enough occupied in repelling their enemies who pursued them, in routing them as often as possible, in pursuing them to their villages and taking them prisoners; and that these enemies, seeing divisions and wars among them, would be delighted and derive great advantage therefrom; and be led to lay new and pernicious plans, in the hope of soon being able to see their ruin, or at least their enfeebling through one another, which would be the truest and easiest way for them to conquer and become masters of their territories, since they did not assist each other. I told them likewise that they did not realize the harm that might befall them from thus acting; that on account of the death of one man they hazarded the lives of ten thousand, and ran the risk of being reduced to perpetual slavery; that, although in fact one man was of great value, yet they ought to consider how he had been killed, and that it was not with deliberate purpose, nor for the sake of inciting a civil war, it being only too evident that the dead man had first offended, since with deliberate purpose he had killed the prisoner in their cabins, a most audacious thing, even if the latter were an enemy. This aroused the Algonquins, who, seeing a man that had been so bold as to kill in their own cabins another to whom they had given liberty and treated as one of themselves, were carried away with passion; and some, more excited than the rest, advanced, and, unable to restrain or control their wrath, killed the man in question. Nevertheless they had no ill feeling at all towards the nation as a whole, and did not extend their purposes beyond the audacious one, who, they thought, fully deserved what he had wantonly earned. And besides I told them they must consider that the Entouhonoron, finding himself wounded by two blows in the stomach, tore from his wound the knife which his enemy had left there and gave the latter two blows, as I had been informed; so that in fact one could not tell whether it was really the Algonquins who had committed the murder. And in order to show to the Attigouantans that the Algonquins did not love the prisoner, and that Yroquet did not bear towards him the affection which they were disposed to think, I reminded them that they had eaten him, as he had inflicted blows with a knife upon his enemy; a thing, however, unworthy of a human being, but rather characteristic of brute beasts. I told them also that the Algonquins very much regretted all that had taken place, and that, if they had supposed such a thing would have happened, they would have sacrificed this Iroquois for their satisfaction. I reminded them likewise that they had made recompense for this death and offence, if so it should be called, by large presents and two prisoners, on which account they had no reason at present to complain, and ought to restrain themselves and act more mildly towards the Algonquins, their friends. I told them that, since they had promised to submit every thing to arbitration, I entreated them to forget all that had passed between them and never to think of it again, nor bear any hatred or ill will on account of it to each other, but to live good friends as before, by doing which they would constrain us to love them and assist them as I had done in the past. But in case they should not be pleased with my advice, I requested them to come, in as large numbers as possible, to our settlement, so that there, in the presence of all the captains of vessels, our friendship might be ratified anew, and measures taken to secure them from their enemies, a thing which they ought to consider. Then they began to say that I had spoken well, and that they would adhere to what I had said, and all went away to their cabins, apparently satisfied, excepting the Algonquins, who broke up and proceeded to their village, but who, as it seemed to me, appeared to be not entirely satisfied, since they said among themselves that they would not come to winter again in these places, the death of these two men having cost them too dearly. As for myself, I returned to my host, in whom I endeavored to inspire all the courage I could, in order to induce him to come to our settlement, and bring with him all those of his country. During the winter, which lasted four months, I had sufficient leisure to observe their country, customs, dress, manner of living, the character of their assemblies, and other things which I should like to describe. But it is necessary first to speak of the situation of the country in general and its divisions, also of the location of the tribes and the distances between them. The country extends in length, in the direction from east to west, nearly four hundred and fifty leagues, and some eighty or a hundred leagues in breadth from north to south, from latitude 41° to 48° or 49° [181] This region is almost an island, surrounded by the great river Saint Lawrence, which passes through several lakes of great extent, on the shores of which dwell various tribes speaking different languages, having fixed abodes, and all fond of the cultivation of the soil, but with various modes of life, and customs, some better than others. On the shore north of this great river, extending westerly some hundred leagues towards the Attigouantans, [182] there are very high mountains, and the air is more temperate than in any other part of these regions, the latitude being 41°. All these places abound in game, such as stags, caribous, elks, does, [183] buffaloes, bears, wolves, beavers, foxes, minxes, [184] weasels, [185] and many other kinds of animals which we do not have in France. Fishing is abundant, there being many varieties, both those which we have in France, as also others which we have not. There are likewise many birds in their time and season. The country is traversed by numerous rivers, brooks, and ponds, connecting with each other and finally emptying into the river St. Lawrence and the lakes through which it passes. The country is very pleasant in spring, is covered with extensive and lofty forests, and filled with wood similar to that which we have in France, although in many places there is much cleared land, where they plant Indian corn. This region also abounds in meadows, lowlands, and marshes, which furnish food for the animals before mentioned. The country north of the great river is very rough and mountainous, and extends in latitude from 47° to 49°, and in places abounds in rocks. [186] So far as I could make out, these regions are inhabited by savages, who wander through the country, not engaging in the cultivation of the soil, nor doing anything, or at least as good as nothing. But they are hunters, now in one place, now in another, the region being very cold and disagreeable. This land on the north is in latitude 49° and extends over six hundred leagues in breadth from east to west, of parts of which we have full knowledge. There are also many fine large rivers rising in this region and discharging into the before-mentioned river, together with an infinite number of fine meadows, lakes, and ponds, through which they pass, where there is an abundance of fish. There are likewise numerous islands which are for the most part cleared up and very pleasant, the most of them containing great quantities of vines and wild fruits. With regard to the regions further west, we cannot well determine their extent, since the people here have no knowledge of them except for two or three hundred leagues or more westerly, from whence comes the great river, which passes, among other places, through a lake having an extent of nearly thirty days' journey by canoe, namely that which we have called the _Mer Douce_. This is of great extent, being nearly four hundred leagues long. Inasmuch as the savages, with whom we are on friendly terms, are at war with other nations on the west of this great lake, we cannot obtain a more complete knowledge of them, except as they have told us several times that some prisoners from the distance of a hundred leagues had reported that there were tribes there like ourselves in color and in other respects. Through them they have seen the hair of these people which is very light, and which they esteem highly, saying that it is like our own. I can only conjecture in regard to this, that the people they say resemble us were those more civilized than themselves. It would require actual presence to ascertain the truth in regard to this matter. But assistance is needed, and it is only men of means, leisure, and energy, who could or would undertake to promote this enterprise so that a full exploration of these places might be made, affording us a complete knowledge of them. In regard to the region south of the great river it is very thickly settled, much more so than that on the north, and by tribes who are at war with each other. The country is very pleasant, much more so than that on the northern border, and the air is more temperate. There are many kinds of trees and fruits not found north of the river, while there are many things on the north side, in compensation, not found on the south. The regions towards the east are sufficiently well known, inasmuch as the ocean borders these places. These are the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, Cape Breton, La Cadie, and the Almouchiquois, [187] places well known, as I have treated of them sufficiently in the narrative of my previous Voyages, as likewise of the people living there, on which account I shall not speak of them in this treatise, my object being only to make a succinct and true report of what I have seen in addition. The country of the nation of the Attigouantans is in latitude 44° 30', and extends two hundred and thirty leagues [188] in length westerly, and ten in breadth. It contains eighteen villages, six of which are enclosed and fortified by palisades of wood in triple rows, bound together, on the top of which are galleries, which they provide with stones and water; the former to hurl upon their enemies and the latter to extinguish the fire which their enemies may set to the palisades. The country is pleasant, most of it cleared up. It has the shape of Brittany, and is similarly situated, being almost surrounded by the _Mer Douce_ [189] They assume that these eighteen villages are inhabited by two thousand warriors, not including the common mass which amounts to perhaps thirty thousand souls. Their cabins are in the shape of tunnels or arbors, and are covered with the bark of trees. They are from twenty-five to thirty fathoms long, more or less, and six wide, having a passage-way through the middle from ten to twelve feet wide, which extends from one end to the other. On the two sides there is a kind of bench, four feet high, where they sleep in summer, in order to avoid the annoyance of the fleas, of which there are great numbers. In winter they sleep on the ground on mats near the fire, so as to be warmer than they would be on the platform. They lay up a stock of dry wood, with which they fill their cabins, to burn in winter. At the extremity of the cabins there is a space, where they preserve their Indian corn, which they put into great casks made of the bark of trees and placed in the middle of their encampment. They have pieces of wood suspended, on which they put their clothes, provisions, and other things, for fear of the mice, of which there are great numbers. In one of these cabins there may be twelve fires, and twenty-four families. It smokes excessively, from which it follows that many receive serious injury to the eyes, so that they lose their sight towards the close of life. There is no window nor any opening, except that in the upper part of their cabins for the smoke to escape. This is all that I have been able to learn about their mode of life; and I have described to you fully the kind of dwelling of these people, as far as I have been able to learn it, which is the same as that of all the tribes living in these regions. They sometimes change their villages at intervals of ten, twenty, or thirty years, and transfer them to a distance of one, two, or three leagues from the preceding situation, [190] except when compelled by their enemies to dislodge, in which case they retire to a greater distance, as the Antouhonorons, who went some forty to fifty leagues. This is the form of their dwellings, which are separated from each other some three or four paces, for fear of fire, of which they are in great dread. Their life is a miserable one in comparison with our own; but they are happy among themselves, not having experienced anything better, and not imagining that anything more excellent is to be found. Their principal articles of food are Indian corn and Brazilian beans, [191] which they prepare in various ways. By braying in a wooden mortar they reduce the corn to meal. They remove the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this meal they make bread, using also beans which they first boil, as they do the Indian corn for soup, so that they may be more easily crushed. Then they mix all together, sometimes adding blueberries [192] or dry raspberries, and sometimes pieces of deer's fat, though not often, as this is scarce with them. After steeping the whole in lukewarm water, they make bread in the form of bannocks or pies, which they bake in the ashes. After they are baked they wash them, and from these they often make others by wrapping them in corn leaves, which they fasten to them, and then putting them in boiling water. But this is not their most common kind. They make another, which they call _migan_, which is as follows: They take the pounded Indian corn, without removing the bran, and put two or three handfuls of it in an earthen pot full of water. This they boil, stirring it from time to time, that it may not burn nor adhere to the pot. Then they put into the pot a small quantity of fish, fresh or dry, according to the season, to give a flavor to the _migan_, as they call it. They make it very often, although it smells badly, especially in winter, either because they do not know how to prepare it rightly, or do not wish to take the trouble to do so. They make two kinds of it, and prepare it very well when they choose. When they use fish the _migan_ does not smell badly, but only when it is made with venison. After it is all cooked, they take out the fish, pound it very fine, and then put it all together into the pot, not taking the trouble to remove the appendages, scales, or inwards, as we do, which generally causes a bad taste. It being thus prepared, they deal out to each one his portion. This _migan_ is very thin, and without much substance, as may be well supposed. As for drink, there is no need of it, the _migan_ being sufficiently thin of itself. They have another kind of _migan_, namely, they roast new corn before it is ripe, which they preserve and cook whole with fish, or flesh when they have it. Another way is this: they take Indian corn, which is very dry, roast it in the ashes, then bray it and reduce it to meal as in the former case. This they lay up for the journeys which they undertake here and there. The _migan_ made in the latter manner is the best according to my taste. Figure H shows the women braying their Indian corn. In preparing it, they cook a large quantity of fish and meat, which they cut into pieces and put into great kettles, which they fill with water and let it all boil well. When this is done, they gather with a spoon from the surface the fat which comes from the meat and fish. Then they put in the meal of the roasted corn, constantly stirring it until the _migan_ is cooked and thick as soup. They give to each one a portion, together with a spoonful of the fat. This dish they are accustomed to prepare for banquets, but they do not generally make it. Now the corn freshly roasted, as above described, is highly esteemed among them. They eat also beans, which they boil with the mass of the roasted flour, mixing in a little fat and fish. Dogs are in request at their banquets, which they often celebrate among themselves, especially in winter, when they are at leisure. In case they go hunting for deer or go fishing, they lay aside what they get for celebrating these banquets, nothing remaining in their cabins but the usual thin _migan_, resembling bran and water, such as is given to hogs to eat. They have another way of eating the Indian corn. In preparing it, they take it in the ear and put it in water under the mud, leaving it two or three months in this state until they think it is putrefied. Then they remove it, and eat it boiled with meat or fish. They also roast it, and it is better so than boiled. But I assure you that there is nothing that smells so badly as this corn as it comes from the water all muddy. Yet the women and children take it and suck it like sugar-cane, nothing seeming to them to taste better, as they show by their manner. In general they have two meals a day. As for ourselves, we fasted all of Lent and longer, in order to influence them by our example. But it was time lost. They also fatten bears, which they keep two or three years, for the purpose of their banquets. I observed that if this people had domestic animals they would be interested in them and care for them very well, and I showed them the way to keep them, which would be an easy thing for them, since they have good grazing grounds in their country, and in large quantities, for all kinds of animals, horses, oxen, cows, sheep, swine, and other kinds, for lack of which one would consider them badly off, as they seem to be. Yet with all their drawbacks, they seem to me to live happily among themselves, since their only ambition is to live and support themselves, and they lead a more settled life than those who wander through the forests like brute beasts. They eat many squashes, [193] which they boil, and roast in the ashes. In regard to their dress, they have various kinds and styles made of the skins of wild beasts, both those which they capture themselves, and others which they get in exchange for their Indian corn, meal, porcelain, and fishing-nets from the Algonquins, Nipissings, and other tribes, which are hunters having no fixed abodes. All their clothes are of one uniform shape, not varied by any new styles. They prepare and fit very well the skins, making their breeches of deer-skin rather large, and their stockings of another piece, which extend up to the middle and have many folds. Their shoes are made of the skins of deer, bears, and beaver, of which they use great numbers. Besides, they have a robe of the same fur, in the form of a cloak, which they wear in the Irish or Egyptian style, with sleeves which are attached with a string behind. This is the way they are dressed in winter, as is seen in figure D. When they go into the fields, they gird up their robe about the body; but when in the village, they leave off their sleeves and do not gird themselves. The Milan trimmings for decorating their garments are made of glue and the scrapings of the before-mentioned skins, of which they make bands in various styles according to their fancy, putting in places bands of red and brown color amid those of the glue, which always keep a whitish appearance, not losing at all their shape, however dirty they may get. There are those among these nations who are much more skilful than others in fitting the skins, and ingenious in inventing ornaments to put on their garments. It is our Montagnais and Algonquins, above all others, who take more pains in this matter. They put on their robes bands of porcupine quills, which they dye a very fine scarlet color. [194] They value these bands very highly, and detach them so that they may serve for other robes when they wish to make a change. They also make use of them to adorn the face, in order to give it a more graceful appearance whenever they wish particularly to decorate themselves. Most of them paint the face black and red. These colors they mix with oil made from the seed of the sun-flower, or with bear's fat or that of other animals. They also dye their hair, which some wear long, others short, others on one side only. The women and girls always wear their hair in one uniform style. They are dressed like men, except that they always have their robes girt about them, which extend down to the knee. They are not at all ashamed to expose the body from the middle up and from the knees down, unlike the men, the rest being always covered. They are loaded with quantities of porcelain, in the shape of necklaces and chains, which they arrange in the front of their robes and attach to their waists. They also wear bracelets and ear-rings. They have their hair carefully combed, dyed, and oiled. Thus they go to the dance, with a knot of their hair behind bound up with eel-skin, which they use as a cord. Sometimes they put on plates a foot square, covered with porcelain, which hang on the back. Thus gaily dressed and habited, they delight to appear in the dance, to which their fathers and mothers send them, forgetting nothing that they can devise to embellish and set off their daughters. I can testify that I have seen at dances a girl who had more than twelve pounds of porcelain on her person, not including the other bagatelles with which they are loaded and bedecked. In the illustration already cited, F shows the dress of the women, G that of the girls attired for the dance. All these people have a very jovial disposition, although there are many of them who have a sad and gloomy look. Their bodies are well proportioned. Some of the men and women are well formed, strong, and robust. There is a moderate number of pleasing and pretty girls, in respect to figure, color, and expression, all being in harmony. Their blood is but little deteriorated, except when they are old. There are among these tribes powerful women of extraordinary height. These have almost the entire care of the house and work; namely, they till the land, plant the Indian corn, lay up a store of wood for the winter, beat the hemp and spin it, making from the thread fishing-nets and other useful things. The women harvest the corn, house it, prepare it for eating, and attend to household matters. Moreover they are expected to attend their husbands from place to place in the fields, filling the office of pack-mule in carrying the baggage, and to do a thousand other things. All the men do is to hunt for deer and other animals, fish, make their cabins, and go to war. Having done these things, they then go to other tribes with which they are acquainted to traffic and make exchanges. On their return, they give themselves up to festivities and dances, which they give to each other, and when these are over they go to sleep, which they like to do best of all things. They have some sort of marriage, which is as follows: when a girl has reached the age of eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen years she has suitors, more or less according to her attractions, who woo her for some time. After this, the consent of their fathers and mothers is asked, to whose will the girls often do not submit, although the most discreet and considerate do so. The lover or suitor presents to the girl some necklaces, chains, and bracelets of porcelain. If the girl finds the suitor agreeable, she receives the present. Then the lover comes and remains with her three or four nights, without saying anything to her during the time. They receive thus the fruit of their affections. Whence it happens very often that, after from eight to fifteen days, if they cannot agree, she quits her suitor, who forfeits his necklaces and other presents that he has made, having received in return only a meagre satisfaction. Being thus disappointed in his hopes, the man seeks another woman, and the girl another suitor, if it seems to them desirable. Thus they continue to do until a favorable union is formed. It sometimes happens that a girl thus passes her entire youth, having more than twenty mates, which twenty are not alone in the enjoyment of the creature, mated though they are; for when night comes the young women run from one cabin to another, as do also the young men on their part, going where it seems good to them, but always without any violence, referring the whole matter to the pleasure of the woman. Their mates will do likewise to their women-neighbors, no jealousy arising among them on that account, nor do they incur any reproach or insult, such being the custom of the country. Now the time when they do not leave their mates is when they have children. The preceding mate returns to her, renews the affection and friendship which he had borne her in the past, asserting that it is greater than that of any other one, and that the child she has is his and of his begetting. The next says the same to her. In time, the victory is with the stronger, who takes the woman for his wife. Thus it depends upon the choice of the woman to take and accept him who shall please her best, having meantime in her searching and loves gained much porcelain and, besides, the choice of a husband. The woman remains with him without leaving him; or if she do leave him, for he is on trial, it must be for some good reason other than impotence. But while with this husband, she does not cease to give herself free rein, yet remains always at home, keeping up a good appearance. Thus the children which they have together, born from such a woman, cannot be sure of their legitimacy. Accordingly, in view of this uncertainty, it is their custom that the children never succeed to the property and honors of their fathers, there being doubt, as above indicated, as to their paternity. They make, however, the children of their sisters, from whom they are known to have issued, their successors and heirs. The following is the way they nourish and bring up their children: they place them during the day on a little wooden board, wrapping them up in furs or skins. To this board they bind them, placing them in an erect position, and leaving a little opening for the child to do its necessities. If it is a girl, they put a leaf of Indian corn between the thighs, which presses against its privates. The extremity of the leaf is carried outside in a turned position, so that the water of the child runs off on it without inconvenience. They put also under the children the down of certain reeds that we call hare's-foot, on which they rest very softly. They also clean them with the same down. As an ornament for the child, they adorn the board with beads, which they also put on its neck, however small it may be. At night they put it to bed, entirely naked, between the father and mother. It may be regarded as a great miracle that God should thus preserve it so that no harm befalls it, as might be expected, from suffocation, while the father and mother are in deep sleep, but that rarely happens. The children have great freedom among these tribes. The fathers and mothers indulge them too much, and never punish them. Accordingly they are so bad and of so vicious a nature, that they often strike their mothers and others. The most vicious, when they have acquired the strength and power, strike their fathers. They do this whenever the father or mother does anything that does not please them. This is a sort of curse that God inflicts upon them. In respect to laws, I have not been able to find out that they have any, or anything that approaches them, inasmuch as there is not among them any correction, punishment, or censure of evil-doers except in the way of vengeance, when they return evil for evil, not by rule but by passion, which produces among them conflicts and differences, which occur very frequently. Moreover, they do not recognize any divinity, or worship any God and believe in anything whatever, but live like brute beasts. They have, however, some respect for the devil, or something so called, which is a matter of uncertainty, since the word which they use thus has various significations and comprises in itself various things. It is accordingly difficult to determine whether they mean the devil or something else, but what especially leads to the belief that what they mean is the devil is this: whenever they see a man doing something extraordinary, or who is more capable than usual, or is a valiant warrior, or furthermore who is in a rage as if out of his reason and senses, they call him _oqui_, or, as we should say, a great knowing spirit, or a great devil. However this may be, they have certain persons, who are the _oqui_, or, as the Algonquins and Montagnais call them, _manitous_; and persons of this kind are the medicine-men, who heal the sick, bind up the wounded, and predict future events, who in fine practise all abuses and illusions of the devil to deceive and delude them. These _oquis_ or conjurers persuade their patients and the sick to make, or have made banquets and ceremonies that they may be the sooner healed, their object being to participate in them finally themselves and get the principal benefit therefrom. Under the pretence of a more speedy cure, they likewise cause them to observe various other ceremonies, which I shall hereafter speak of in the proper place. These are the people in whom they put especial confidence, but it is rare that they are possessed of the devil and tormented like other savages living more remote than themselves. This gives additional reason and ground to believe that their conversion to the knowledge of God would be more easy, if their country were inhabited by persons who would take the trouble and pains to instruct them. But it is not enough to send to them friars, unless there are those to support and assist them. For although these people have the desire to-day to know what God is, to-morrow this disposition will change when they are obliged to lay aside and bring under their foul ways, their dissolute manners, and their savage indulgences. So that there is need of people and families to keep them in the way of duty, to constrain them through mildness to do better, and to move them by good example to mend their lives. Father Joseph [195] and myself have many times conferred with them in regard to our belief, laws, and customs. They listened attentively in their assemblies, sometimes saying to us: You say things that pass our knowledge, and which we cannot understand by words, being beyond our comprehension; but if you would do us a service come and dwell in this country, bringing your wives and children, and when they are here we shall see how you serve the God you worship, and how you live with your wives and children, how you cultivate and plant the soil, how you obey your laws, how you take care of animals, and how you manufacture all that we see proceeding from your inventive skill. When we see all this, we shall learn more in a year than in twenty by simply hearing you discourse and if we cannot then understand, you shall take our children, who shall be as your own. And thus being convinced that our life is a miserable one in comparison with yours, it is easy to believe that we shall adopt yours, abandoning our own. Their words seemed to me good common sense, showing the desire they have to get a knowledge of God. It is a great wrong to let so many men be lost, and see them perish at our door, without rendering them the succor which can only be given through the help of kings, princes, and ecclesiastics, who alone have the power to do this. For to them alone belongs the honor of so great a work; namely, planting the Christian faith in an unknown region and among savage nations, since we are well informed about these people, that they long for and desire nothing so much as to be clearly instructed as to what they should do and avoid. It is accordingly the duty of those who have the power, to labor there and contribute of their abundance, for one day they must answer before God for the loss of the souls which they allowed to perish through their negligence and avarice; and these are not few but very numerous. Now this will be done when it shall please God to give them grace to this end. As for myself, I desire this result rather to-day than to-morrow, from the zeal which I have for the advancement of God's glory, for the honor of my King, and for the welfare and renown of my country. When they are sick, the man or woman who is attacked with any disease sends for the _oqui_, who visits the patient and informs himself about the malady and the suffering. After this, the _oqui_ sends for a large number of men, women, and girls, including three or four old women. These enter the cabin of the sick, dancing, each one having on his head the skin of a bear or some other wild beast, that of the bear being the most common as it is the most frightful. There are three or four other old women about the sick or suffering, who for the most part feign sickness, or are sick merely in imagination. But they are soon cured of this sickness, and generally make banquets at the expense of their friends or relatives, who give them something to put into their kettle, in addition to the presents which they receive from the dancers, such as porcelain and other bagatelles, so that they are soon cured; for when they find that they have nothing more to look for, they get up with what they have secured. But those who are really sick are not readily cured by plays, dances, and such proceedings. To return to my narrative: the old women near the sick person receive the presents, each singing and pausing in turn. When all the presents have been made, they proceed to lift up their voices with one accord, all singing together and keeping time with sticks on pieces of dry bark. Then all the women and girls proceed to the end of the cabin, as if they were about to begin a ballet or masquerade. The old women walk in front with their bearskins on their heads, all the others following them, one after the other. They have only two kinds of dances with regular time, one of four steps and the other of twelve, as in the _trioli_ de Bretagne. They exhibit much grace in dancing. Young men often take part with them. After dancing an hour or two, the old women lead out the sick person to dance, who gets up dolefully and prepares to dance, and after a short time she dances and enjoys as much as the others. I leave it to you to consider how sick she was. Below is represented the mode of their dances. The medicine-man thus gains honor and credit, his patient being so soon healed and on her feet. This treatment, however, does nothing for those who are dangerously ill and reduced by weakness, but causes their death rather than their cure; for I can testify that they sometimes make such a noise and hubbub from morning until two o'clock at night that it is impossible for the patient to endure it without great pain. Sometimes the patient is seized with the desire to have the women and girls dance all together, which is done in accordance with the direction of the _oqui_. But this is not all, for he and the _manitou_, accompanied by some others, make grimaces, perform magic arts, and twist themselves about so that they generally end in being out of their senses, seemingly crazy, throwing the fire from one side of the cabin to the other, eating burning coals, holding them in their hands for a while, and throwing red-hot ashes into the eyes of the spectators. Seeing them in this condition, one would say that the devil, the _oqui_, or _manitou_, if he is thus to be called, possesses and torments them. This noise and hubbub being over, they retire each to his own cabin. But those who suffer especially during this time are the wives of those possessed, and all the inmates of their cabins, from the fear they have lest the raging ones burn up all that is in their houses. This leads them to remove everything that is in sight; for as soon as he arrives he is all in a fury, his eyes flashing and frightful, sometimes standing up, sometimes seated, as his fancy takes him. Suddenly a fit seizes him, and laying hold of everything he finds in his way he throws them to one side and the other. Then he lies down and sleeps for some time. Waking up with a jump, he seizes fire and stones which he throws about recklessly on all sides. This rage passes off with the sleep which seizes him again. Then he rages and calls several of his friends to sweat with him. The latter is the best means they have for preserving themselves in health. While they are sweating, the kettle boils to prepare them something to eat. They remain, two or three hours or so, covered up with great pieces of bark and wrapped in their robes, with a great many stones about them which have been heated red hot in the fire. They sing all the time while they are in the rage, occasionally stopping to take breath. Then they give them many draughts of water to drink, since they are very thirsty, when the demoniac, who was crazy or possessed of an evil spirit, becomes sober. Thus it happens that three or four of these sick persons get well, rather by a happy coincidence and chance than in consequence of any intelligent treatment, and this confirms their false belief that they are healed by means of these ceremonies, not considering that, for two who are thus cured, ten others die on account of the noise, great hubbub and hissing, which are rather calculated to kill than cure a sick person. But that they expect to recover their health by this noise, and we on the contrary by silence and rest, shows how the devil does everything in hostility to the good. There are also women who go into these rages, but they do not do so much harm. They walk on all fours like beasts. Seeing this, the magician, called _oqui_, begins to sing; then, with some contortions of the face, he blows upon her, directing her to drink certain waters, and make at once a banquet of fish or flesh, which must be procured although very scarce at the time. When the shouting is over and the banquet ended, they return each to her own cabin. At another time he comes back and visits her, blowing upon her and singing in company with several others, who have been summoned for this purpose, and who hold in the hand a dry tortoise-shell filled with little pebbles, which they cause to resound in the ears of the sick woman. They direct her to make at once three or four banquets with singing and dancing, when all the girls appear adorned and painted as I have represented in figure G. The _oqui_ orders masquerades, and directs them to disguise themselves, as those do who run along the streets in France on _Mardi-gras_. [196] Thus they go and sing near the bed of the sick woman and promenade through the village while the banquet is preparing to receive the maskers, who return very tired, having taken exercise enough to be able to empty the kettle of its _migan_. According to their custom each household lives on what it gets by fishing and planting, improving as much land as it needs. They clear it up with great difficulty, since they do not have the implements adapted to this purpose. A party strip the trees of all their branches, which they burn at their base in order to kill them. They clear carefully the land between the trees, and then plant their corn at distances of a pace, putting in each place some ten kernels, and so on until they have made provision for three or four years, fearing that a bad year may befall them. The women attend to the planting and harvesting, as I have said before, and to procuring a supply of wood for winter. All the women aid each other in procuring this provision of wood, which they do in the month of March or April, in the order of two days for each. Every household is provided with as much as it needs; and if a girl marries, each woman and girl is expected to carry to the newly married one a parcel of wood for her provision, since she could not procure it alone, and at a season when she has to give her attention to other things. The following is their mode of government: the older and leading men assemble in a council, in which they settle upon and propose all that is necessary for the affairs of the village. This is done by a plurality of voices, or in accordance with the advice of some one among them whose judgment they consider superior: such a one is requested by the company to give his opinion on the propositions that have been made, and this opinion is minutely obeyed. They have no particular chiefs with absolute command, but they show honor to the older and more courageous men, whom they name captains, as mark of honor and respect, of which there are several in a village. But, although they confer more honor upon one than upon others, yet he is not on that account to bear sway, nor esteem himself higher than his companions, unless he does so from vanity. They make no use of punishments nor arbitrary command, but accomplish everything by the entreaties of the seniors, and by means of addresses and remonstrances. Thus and not otherwise do they bring everything to pass. They all deliberate in common, and whenever any member of the assembly offers to do anything for the welfare of the village, or to go anywhere for the service of the community, he is requested to present himself, and if he is judged capable of carrying out what he proposes, they exhort him, by fair and favorable words, to do his duty. They declare him to be an energetic man, fit for undertakings, and assure him that he will win honor in accomplishing them. In a word, they encourage him by flatteries, in order that this favorable disposition of his for the welfare of his fellow- citizens may continue and increase. Then, according to his pleasure, he refuses the responsibility, which few do, or accepts, since thereby he is held in high esteem. When they engage in wars or go to the country of their enemies, two or three of the older or valiant captains make a beginning in the matter, and proceed to the adjoining villages to communicate their purpose, and make presents to the people of these villages, in order to induce them to accompany them to the wars in question. In so far they act as generals of armies. They designate the place where they desire to go, dispose of the prisoners who are captured, and have the direction of other matters of especial importance, of which they get the honor, if they are successful; but, if not, the disgrace of failure in the war falls upon them. These captains alone are looked upon and considered as chiefs of the tribes. They have, moreover, general assemblies, with representatives from remote regions. These representatives come every year, one from each province, and meet in a town designated as the rendezvous of the assembly. Here are celebrated great banquets and dances, for three weeks or a month, according as they may determine. Here they renew their friendship, resolve upon and decree what they think best for the preservation of their country against their enemies, and make each other handsome presents, after which they retire each to his own district. In burying the dead, they take the body of the deceased, wrap it in furs, and cover it very carefully with the bark of trees. Then they place it in a cabin, of the length of the body, made of bark and erected upon four posts. Others they place in the ground, propping up the earth on all sides, that it may not fall on the body, which they cover with the bark of trees, putting earth on top. Over this trench they also make a little cabin. Now it is to be understood that the bodies remain in these places, thus inhumed, but for a period of eight or ten years, when the men of the village recommend the place where their ceremonies are to take place; or, to speak more precisely, they hold a general council, in which all the people of the country are present, for the purpose of designating the place where a festival is to be held. After this they return each to his own village, where they take all the bones of the deceased, strip them and make them quite clean. These they keep very carefully, although they smell like bodies recently interred. Then all the relatives and friends of the deceased take these bones, together with their necklaces, furs, axes, kettles, and other things highly valued, and carry them, with a quantity of edibles, to the place assigned. Here, when all have assembled, they put the edibles in a place designated by the men of the village, and engage in banquets and continual dancing. The festival continues for the space of ten days, during which time other tribes, from all quarters, come to witness it and the ceremonies. The latter are attended with great outlays. Now, by means of these ceremonies, including dances, banquets, and assemblies, as above stated, they renew their friendship to one another, saying that the bones of their relatives and friends are to be all put together, thus indicating by a figure that, as their bones are gathered together and united in one and the same place, so ought they also, during their life, to be united in one friendship and harmony, like relatives and friends, without separation. Having thus mingled together the bones of their mutual relatives and friends, they pronounce many discourses on the occasion. Then, after various grimaces or exhibitions, they make a great trench, ten fathoms square, in which they put the bones, together with the necklaces, chains of porcelain, axes, kettles, sword-blades, knives, and various other trifles, which, however, are of no slight account in their estimation. They cover the whole with earth, putting on top several great pieces of wood, and placing around many posts, on which they put a covering. This is their manner of proceeding with regard to the dead, and it is the most prominent ceremony they have. Some of them believe in the immortality of the soul, while others have only a presentiment of it, which, however, is not so very different; for they say that after their decease they will go to a place where they will sing, like crows, a song, it must be confessed, quite different from that of angels. On the following page are represented their sepulchres and manner of interment. It remains to describe how they spend their time in winter; namely, from the month of December to the end of March, or the beginning of our spring, when the snow melts. All that they might do during autumn, as I have before stated, they postpone to be done during winter; namely, their banquetings, and usual dances for the sake of the sick, which I have already described, and the assemblages of the inhabitants of various villages, where there are banquetings, singing, and dances, which they call _tabagies_ [197] and where sometimes five hundred persons are collected, both men, women, and girls. The latter are finely decked and adorned with the best and most costly things they have. On certain days they make masquerades, and visit each other's cabins, asking for the things they like, and if they meet those who have what they want, these give it to them freely. Thus they go on asking for many things without end; so that a single one of those soliciting will have robes of beaver, bear, deer, lynxes, and other furs, also fish, Indian corn, tobacco, or boilers, kettles, pots, axes, pruning-knives, knives, and other like things. They go to the houses and cabins of the village, singing these words, That one gave me this, another gave that, or like words, by way of commendation. But if one gives them nothing they get angry, and show such spite towards him that when they leave they take a stone and put it near this man or that woman who has not given them anything. Then, without saying a word, they return singing, which is a mark of insult, censure, and ill-will. The women do so as well as the men, and this mode of proceeding takes place at night, and the masquerade continues seven or eight days. There are some of their villages which have maskers or merry-makers, as we do on the evening of _Mardi-gras_, and they invite the other villages to come and see them and win their utensils, if they can. Meanwhile banquets are not wanting. This is the way they spend their time in winter. Moreover the women spin, and pound meal for the journeys of their husbands in summer, who go to other tribes to trade, as they decide to do at the above-mentioned councils, in which it is determined what number of men may go from each village, that it may not be deprived of men of war for its protection; and nobody goes from the country without the general consent of the chiefs, or if they should go they would be regarded as behaving improperly. The men make nets for fishing, which they carry on in summer, but generally in winter, when they capture the fish under the ice with the line or with the seine. The following is their manner of fishing. They make several holes in a circular form in the ice, the one where they are to draw the seine being some five feet long and three wide. Then they proceed to place their net at this opening, attaching it to a rod of wood from six to seven feet long, which they put under the ice. This rod they cause to pass from hole to hole, when one or more men, putting their hands in the holes, take hold of the rod to which is attached an end of the net, until they unite at the opening of five to six feet. Then they let the net drop to the bottom of the water, it being sunk by little stones attached to the end. After it is down they draw it up again with their arms at its two ends, thus capturing the fish that are in it. This is, in brief, their manner of fishing in winter. The winter begins in the month of November and continues until the month of April, when the trees begin to send forth the sap and show their buds. On the 22d of the month of April we received news from our interpreter, who had gone to Carantoüan, through those who had come from there. They told us that they had left him on the road, he having returned to the village for certain reasons. Now, resuming the thread of my narrative, our savages assembled to come with us, and conduct us back to our habitation, and for this purpose we set out from their country on the 20th of the month, [198] and were forty days on the way. We caught a large number of fish and animals of various kinds, together with small game, which afforded us especial pleasure, in addition to the provisions thus furnished us for our journey. Upon our arrival among the French, towards the end of the month of June, I found Sieur du Pont Gravé, who had come from France with two vessels, and who had almost despaired of seeing me again, having heard from the savages the bad news, that I was dead. We also saw all the holy fathers who had remained at our settlement. They too were very happy to see us again, and we none the less so to see them. Welcomes, and felicitations on all sides being over, I made arrangements to set out from the Falls of St. Louis for our settlement, taking with me my host D'Arontal. I took leave also of all the other savages, assuring them of my affection, and that, if I could, I would see them in the future, to assist them as I had already done in the past, bringing them valuable presents to secure their friendship with one another, and begging them to forget all the disputes which they had had when I reconciled them, which they promised to do. Then we set out, on the 8th of July, and arrived at our settlement on the 11th of that month. Here I found everybody in good health, and we all, in company with our holy fathers, who chanted the Divine service, returned thanks to God for His care in preserving us, and protecting us amid the many perils and dangers to which we had been exposed. After this, and when everything had become settled, I proceeded to show hospitalities to my host, D'Arontal, who admired our building, our conduct, and mode of living. After carefully observing us, he said to me, in private, that he should never die contented until he had seen all of his friends, or at least a good part of them, come and take up their abode with us, in order to learn how to serve God, and our way of living, which he esteemed supremely happy in comparison with their own. Moreover he said that, if he could not learn it by word of mouth, he would do so much better and more easily by sight and by frequent intercourse, and that, if their minds could not comprehend our arts, sciences, and trades, their children who were young could do so, as they had often represented to us in their country in conversation with Father Joseph. He urged us, for the promotion of this object, to make another settlement at the Falls of St. Louis, so as to secure them the passage of the river against their enemies, assuring us that, as soon as we should build a house, they would come in numbers to live as brothers with us. Accordingly I promised to make a settlement for them as soon as possible. After we had remained four or five days together, I gave him some valuable presents, with which he was greatly pleased, and I begged him to continue his affection for us, and come again to see our settlement with his friends. Then he returned happy to the Falls of St Louis, where his companions awaited him. When this Captain D'Arontal had departed, we enlarged our habitation by a third at least in buildings and fortifications, since it was not sufficiently spacious, nor convenient for receiving the members of our own company and likewise the strangers that might come to see us. We used, in building, lime and sand entirely, which we found very good there in a spot near the habitation. This is a very useful material for building for those disposed to adapt and accustom themselves to it. The Fathers Denis and Joseph determined to return to France, in order to testify there to all they had seen, and to the hope they could promise themselves of the conversion of these people, who awaited only the assistance of the holy fathers in order to be converted and brought to our faith and the Catholic religion. During my stay at the settlement I had some common grain cut; namely, French grain, which had been planted there and which had come up very finely, that I might take it to France, as evidence that the land is good and fertile. In another part, moreover, there was some fine Indian corn, also scions and trees which had been given us by Sieur du Monts in Normandy. In a word all the gardens of the place were in an admirably fine condition, being planted with peas, beans, and other vegetables, also squashes, and very superior radishes of various sorts, cabbages, beets, and other kitchen vegetables. When on the point of departure, we left two of our fathers at the settlement; namely, Fathers Jean d'Olbeau and Pacifique, [199] who were greatly pleased with all the time spent at that place, and resolved to await there the return of Father Joseph, [200] who was expected to come back in the following year, which he did. We sailed in our barques the 20th day of July, and arrived at Tadoussac the 23d day of the month, where Sieur du Pont Gravé awaited us with his vessel ready and equipped. In this we embarked and set out the 3d day of the month of August. The wind was so favorable that we arrived in health by the grace of God, at Honfleur, on the 10th day of September, one thousand six hundred and sixteen, and upon our arrival rendered praise and thanks to God for his great care in preserving our lives, and delivering and even snatching us, as it were, from the many dangers to which we had been exposed, and for bringing and conducting us in health to our country; we besought Him also to move the heart of our King, and the gentlemen of his council, to contribute their assistance so far as necessary to bring these poor savages to the knowledge of God, whence honor will redound to his Majesty, grandeur and growth to his realm, profit to his subjects, and the glory of all these undertakings and toils to God, the sole author of all excellence, to whom be honor and glory. Amen. ENDNOTES: 78. Champlain's first voyage was made in 1603, and this journal was published in 1619. It was therefore fully fifteen years since his explorations began. 79. _Vide Histoire du Canada_, par Sagard, Trois ed., pp 27, 28. The reader is likewise referred to the Memoir of Champlain, Vol. I. pp 122-124. 80. Bernard du Verger, a man of exalted virtue--_Laverdière_. 81. Robert Ubaldim was nuncio at this time. _Vide Laverdière in loco_. 82. Denis Jamay. Sagard writes this name _Jamet_. 83. Jean d'Olbeau. _Vide Histoire du Canada_, par Gabriel Sagard, Paris, 1636, Tross ed., Vol. I. p. 28. 84. Pacifique du Plessis was a lay-brother, although the title of Father is given to him by several early writers. _Vide citations by Laverdière in loco_, Quebec ed., Vol. IV. p. 7. 85. Read April 24. It is obvious from the context that it could not be August. Sagard says _le_ 24 _d'Auril_. _Vide Histoire du Canada_, Trois ed., Vol. I. p 36. 86. The Recollect Father Joseph le Caron. 87. _Vide Laverdière in loco_. 88. Father Denis Jamay. 89. Jean d'Olbeau and Pacifique du Plessis. 90. This refers to the volume bearing date 1613, but which may not have been actually issued from the press till 1614. 91. Our views of the war policy of Champlain are stated at some length in Vol I. pp 189-193. 92. Laverdière thinks it probable that Champlain left the Falls of St Louis on the 23d of June, and that the Holy Mass was celebrated on the Rivière des Prairies on the 24th, the festival of St John the Baptist. 93. This interpreter was undoubtedly Etienne Brûlé. It was a clearly defined policy of Champlain to send suitable young men among the savages, particularly to learn their language, and subsequently to act as interpreters. Brûlé is supposed to have been of this class. 94. The Lake of Two Mountains. 95. The River Ottawa, which Champlain had explored in 1613, as far as Allumet Island, where a tribe of the Algonquins resided, called later _Kichesipinni_. _Vide Relation des Jésuites_, 1640, p 34. 96. This is an over-estimate. 97. Champlain here again, _Vide_ note 90, refers to the issue bearing date 1613. It is not unlikely that while it bears the imprint of 1613, it did not actually issue from the press till 1614. 98. The lake or expansion of the Ottawa on the southern side of Allumet Island was called the Lake of the Algonquins, as Allumet Island was oftentimes called the Island of the Algonquins. 99. The River Ottawa. 100. Père Vimont calls this tribe _Kotakoutouemi_. _Relation des Jésuites_, 1640, p. 34. Père Rogueneau gives _Outaoukotouemiouek_, and remarks that their language is a mixture of Algonquin and Montagnais. _Vide Relation des Jésuites_, 1650. p. 34; also _Laverdière in loco_. 101. _Blues_, blueberries. The Canada blueberry. _Vaccinium Canadense_. Under the term _blues_ several varieties may have been included. Charlevoix describes and figures this fruit under the name _Bluet du Canada_. _Vide Description des Plantes Principales de l'Amérique Septentrionale_, in _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, Paris. 1744, Tom. IV. pp. 371, 372; also Vol. I: p 303, note 75, of this work. 102. At its junction with the Mattawan, the Ottawa's course is from the north. What is known as its east branch rises 150 miles north of the city of Ottawa. Extending towards the west in a winding course for the distance of about 300 miles, it turns towards the southeast, and a few miles before it joins the Mattawan its course is directly south. From its northeastern source by a short portage is reached the river Chomouchouan, an affluent of Lake St. John and the Saguenay. 103. Mattawa is 197 miles from Ottawa. We have no means of giving the latitude with entire accuracy, but it is about 46° 20'. 104. Lac du Talon and Lac la Tortue. 105. Nipissings, or Nipissirini. Champlain writes _Nipisierinii_. 106. On the 26th of July, The distance from the junction of the Ottawa and the Mattawan to Lake Nipissing is about thirty-two miles. If _lieues_ were translated miles, it would be a not very incorrect estimate. 107. _Vide_ the representations here referred to. 108. Lake Nipissing, whose dimensions are over-stated. 109. Sturgeon River. 110. Père Vimont gives the names of these tribes as follows,--_Timiscimi, Outimagami, Ouachegami, Mitchitamou, Outurbi, Kiristinon_. _Vide Relation des Jésuites_. 1640. p. 34. 111. French River. 112. _Blues_. _Vide antea_, note 101. 113. This significant name is given with reference to their mode of dressing their hair. 114. Blueberries, _Vaccinium Canadense_. 115. _De cuir beullu_, for _cuir bouilli_, literally "boiled leather." 116. The shields of the savages of this region may have been made of the hide of the buffalo, although the range of this animal was far to the northwest of them. Champlain saw undoubtedly among the Hurons skins of the buffalo. _Vide postea_, note 180. 117. Lake Huron is here referred to. 118. The greatest length of Lake Huron on a curvilinear line, between the discharge of St Mary's Strait and the outlet, is about 240 miles; its length due north and south is 186 miles, and its extreme breadth about 220 miles. _Bouchette_. 119. Coasting along the eastern shore of the Georgian Bay, when they arrived at Matchedash Bay they crossed it in a southwesterly course and entered the country of the Attigouautans, or, as they are sometimes called, the Attignaouentans. _Relation des Jésuites,_ 1640, p. 78. They were a principal tribe of the Hurons, living within the limits of the present county of Simcoe. It is to be regretted that the Jesuit Fathers did not accompany their relations with local maps by which we could fix, at least approximately, the Indian towns which they visited, and with which they were so familiar. For a description of the Hurons and of their country, the origin of the name and other interesting particulars, _vide Pere Hierosine Lalemant, Relation des Jésuites_, 1639, Quebec ed. p. 50. 120. _Sitrouilles_ for _citrouilles_. _Vide_ Vol II. p. 64, note 128. 121. _Herbe au soleil_. The sunflower of Northeast America, _Helianthus multiflorus_. This species is found from Quebec to the Saskatchewan, a tributary of Lake Winnipeg. _Vide Chronological History of Plants_, by Charles Pickering, M.D., Boston, 1879. p. 914. Charlevoix, in the description of his journey through Canada in 1720, says: "The Soleil is a plant very common in the fields of the savages, and which grows seven or eight feet high. Its flower, which is very large, is in the shape of the marigold, and the seed grows in the same manner. The savages, by boiling it, draw out an oil, with which they grease their hair." _Letters to the Dutchess of Lesdiguieres_, London, 1763, p. 95. 122. _Vignes_ Probably the frost grape, _Vitis cordifolia_. 123. _Prunes_. The Canada plum, _Prunus Americana_. 124. _Framboises_. The wild red raspberry, _Rubus strigosus_. 125. _Fraises_. The wild strawberry, _Fragaria Virginiana_. _Vide Pickering Chro. Hist. Plants_, p. 771. 126. _Petites pommes sauuages_. Probably the American crab-apple, _Pyrus coronaria_. 127. _Noix_ This may include the butternut and some varieties of the walnut. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 264. 128. Doubtless the May-apple, _Podophyllum peltatum_. In the wilds of Simcoe this fruit may have seemed tolerable from the absence of others more desirable. Gray says, "It is slightly acid, mawkish, eaten by pigs and boys." _Cf. Florula Bostioniensis_, by Jacob Bigelow, M.D. Boston, 1824, pp. 215, 216. 129. _Les Chesnes, ormeaux, & heslres_. For oaks see Vol I. p. 264. Elms, plainly the white elm, _Ulmus Americana_, so called in contradistinction to the red or slippery elm, _Ulmus fulva_. The savages sometimes used the bark of the slippery elm in the construction of their canoes when the white birch could not be obtained. _Vide Charlevoix's Letters_, 1763, p. 94. For the beech, see Vol. I. p. 264. 130. _Perdrix_. Canada Grouse, _Tetrao Canadensis_, sometimes called the Spruce Partridge, differing from the partridge of New England, which is the Ruffed Grouse, _Bonasa umbellus_. This latter species is, however, found likewise in Canada. 131. _Lapins_. The American hare, _Lepus Americanus_. 132. _Cerises petites_. Reference is evidently here made to the wild red cherry, _Prunus Pennsylvanica_, which is the smallest of all the native species. _Cf_. Vol. I. p. 264. 133. _Merises_. The wild black cherry, _Prunus serotina_. 134. The Carantouanais. _Vide Carte de la Nouvelle France_, 1632, _also_ Vol. I. p. 304. This tribe was probably situated on the upper waters of the Susquehanna, and consequently south of the Five Nations, although we said inadvertently in Vol. I. p. 128 that they were on the west of them. General John S. Clark thinks their village was at Waverly, near the border of Pennsylvania In Vol. I. p. 143. in the 13th line from the top, we should have said the Carantouanais instead of _Entouhonorons_. 135. The Entouhonorons were a part, it appears, of the Five Nations. Champlain says they unite with the Iroquois in making war against all the other tribes except the Neutral Nation. Lake Ontario is called _Lac des Entouhonorons_, and Champlain adds that their country is near the River St. Lawrence, the passage of which they forbid to all other tribes. _Vide_ Vol. I. pp. 303, 304. He thus appears to apply the name _Iroquois_ to the eastern portion of the Five Nations, particularly those whom he had attacked on Lake Champlain; and the Huron name, _Entouhonorons_, to the western portion. The subdivisions, by which they were distinguished at a later period, were probably not then known, at least not to Champlain. 136. _Flamens_. The Dutch were at this time on the Hudson, qengaged in the fur trade with the savages. _Vide History of the State of New York_ by John Romeyn Brodhead, New York, 1853. pp. 38-65. _History of New Netherland_ or _New York under the Dutch_, by E. B. O'Callaghan, New York, 1846, pp. 67-77. 137. Their enemies were the Iroquois. 138. _Chouontouaroüon_, another name for _Entouhoronon_. 139. Lake Couchiching, a small sheet of water into which pass by a small outlet the waters of Lake Simcoe. 140. Lake Simcoe. Laverdière says the Indian name of this lake was _Ouentaronk_, and that it was likewise called _Lac aux Claies_. 141. Étienne Brûlé. _Vide postea_, p. 208. 142. _Dans ces lacs_. From Lake Chouchiching, coasting along the northeastern shore of Lake Simcoe, they would make five or six leagues in reaching a point nearest to Sturgeon Lake. 143. Undoubtedly Sturgeon Lake. 144. From their entrance of Sturgeon Lake to the point where they reached Lake Ontario, at the eastern limit of Amherst Island, the distance is, in its winding and circuitous course, not far from Champlain's estimate, viz. sixty-four leagues. That part of the river above Rice Lake is the Otonabee; that below is known as the Trent. 145. _Gruës_ The white crane, _Grus Americanus_ Adult plumage pure white _Coues's Key to North American Birds_, Boston, 1872, p 271 Charlevoix says, "We have cranes of two colors, some white and others _gris de lin_," that is a purple or lilac color. This latter species is the brown crane, _Grus Canadensis_. "Plumage plumbeous gray." _Coues_. _Vide Charlevoix's Letters_, London. 1763, p 83. 146. The latitude of the eastern end of Amherst Island is about 44° 11'. 147. This traverse, it may be presumed, was made by coasting along the shore, as was the custom of the savages with their light canoes. 148. It appears that, after making by estimate about fourteen leagues in their bark canoes, and four by land along the shore, they struck inland. Guided merely by the distances given in the text, it is not possible to determine with exactness at what point they left the lake. This arises from the fact that we are not sure at what point the measurement began, and the estimated distances are given, moreover, with very liberal margins. But the eighteen leagues in all would take them not very far from Little Salmon River, whether the estimate were made from the eastern end of Amherst Island or Simcoe Island, or any place in that immediate neighborhood. The natural features of the country, for four leagues along the coast north of Little Salmon River, answer well to the description given in the text. The chestnut and wild grape are still found there. _Vide MS. Letters of the Rev. James Cross, D.D., LL.D., and of S.Z. Smith, Esq._, of Mexico, New York. 149. Lake Ontario, or Lake of the Entouhonorons, is about a hundred and eighty miles long, and about fifty-five miles in its extreme width. 150. The river here crossed was plainly Oneida River, flowing from Oneida Lake into Lake Ontario. The lake is identified by the islands in it. Oneida Lake is the only one in this region which contains any islands whatever, and consequently the river flowing from it must be that now known as Oneida River. 151. For the probable site of this fort, see Vol. I. p. 130, note 83. 152. They were of the tribe called Carantouanais. _Vide antea_, note 134. 153. This was in the month of October. 154. _Et après auoir trauersé le bout du lac de laditte isle_. From this form of expression this island would seem to have been visited before. But no particular island is mentioned on their former traverse of the lake. It is impossible to fix with certainty upon the island referred to. It may have been Simcoe or Wolf Island, or some other. 155. Probably Cataraqui Creek. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 136. 156. Perhaps Loughborough Lake, or the system of lakes of which this is a part. 157. _Cygnes_, swans. Probably the Trumpeter Swan, _Cygnus buccinator_. They were especially found in Sagard's time about Lake Nipissing. "Mais pour des Cignes, qu'ils appellent _Horhev_, il y en a principalement vers les Epicerinys." _Vide Le Grand Voyage av Pays des Hurons_ par Fr. Gabriel Sagard, Paris, 1632, p. 303. 158. _Gruës blanches_. _Vide antea_, n. 145. 159. _Houstardes_. _Vide antea_, note 32. 160. _Mauuis_, Song-Thrush. Doubtless the Robin, _Turdus migratorius_. 161. _Allouettes_, larks. Probably the Brown Lark, _Anthus ludovicianus_. Found everywhere in North America. 162. _Beccassines_. Probably the American Snipe, _Gallinago Wilsonii_. 163. _Oyes_, geese. The common Wild Goose, _Branta Canadensis_, or it may include all the species taken collectively. For the several species found in Canada, _vide antea_, note 32. 164. _Les loups_. The American Wolf, _Lupus occidentalis_. 165. The thirty-eight days during which they were there would include the whole period from the time they began to make their preparations on the 28th of October on the shores of Lake Ontario till they began their homeward journey on the 4th of December. _Vide antea_, p. 137; _postea_, p. 143. 166. The author here refers to the chief D'Arontal, whose guest he was. _Vide antea_, 137. Cf. also Quebec ed. 1632, p. 928. 167. _Trainees de bois_, a kind of sledge. The Indian's sledge was made of two pieces of board, which, with his stone axe and perhaps with the aid of fire, he patiently manufactured from the trunks of trees. The boards were each about six inches wide and six or seven feet long, curved upward at the forward end and bound together by cross pieces. The sides were bordered with strips of wood, which served as brackets, to which was fastened the strap that bound the baggage upon the sledge. The load was dragged by a rope or strap of leather passing round the breast of the savage and attached to the end of the sledge. The sledge was so narrow that it could be drawn easily and without impediment wherever the savage could thread his way through the pathless forests. The journey from their encampment northeast of Kingston on Lake Ontario to the capital of the Hurons was not less in a straight line than a hundred and sixty miles. Without a pathway, in the heart of winter, through water and melting snow, with their heavy burdens, the hardship and exhaustion can hardly be exaggerated. 168. Namely at Cahiagué. In the issue of 1632, Champlain says they arrived on the 23d day of the month. _Vide_ Quebec ed, p. 929. Leaving on the 4th and travelling nineteen days, as stated above, they would arrive on the 23d December. 169. Probably the 4th of January. 170. Father Joseph Le Caron had remained at Carhagouha, during the absence of the war party in their attack upon the Iroquois, where Champlain probably arrived on the 5th of January. 171. In the issue of 1632, the arrival of Champlain and Le Caron is stated to have occurred on the 17th of January. This harmonizes with the correction of dates in notes 169, 170. The Huron name of the Petuns was _Tionnontateronons_, or _Khionontateronons_, or _Quieunontateronons_. Of them Vimont says, "Les Khionontateronons, qu'on appelle la nation du Petun, pour l'abondance qu'il y a de cette herbe, sont eloignez du pays des Hurons, dont ils parlent la langue, enuiron douze ou quinze lieues tirant à l'Occident." _Vide Relation des Jésuites_, 1640, p. 95; _His. Du Canada_, Vol. I. p. 209. Sagard. For some account of the subsequent history of the Nation de Petun, _vide Indian Migration in Ohio_, by C. C. Baldwin, 1879, p. 2. 172. It was of great importance to the Indians to select a site for their villages where suitable wood was accessible, both for fortifying them with palisades and for fuel in the winter. It could not be brought a great distance for either of these purposes. Hence when the wood in the vicinity became exhausted they were compelled to remove and build anew. 173. That is to say like the Hurons. 174. The Nation Neutre was called by the Hurons _Attisandaronk_ or _Attihouandaron_. _Vide Relation des Jésuites_, 1641, p. 72; _Dictonaire de la Langue Huronne_, par Sagard, a Paris, 1632. Champlain places them, on his map of 1632, south of Lake Erie. His knowledge of that lake, obtained from the savages, was very meagre as the map itself shows. The Neutres are placed by early writers on the west of Lake Ontario and north of Lake Erie _Vide Laverdière in loco_, Quebec ed., p. 546; also, _Indian Migration in Ohio_, by C. C. Baldwin, p. 4. They are placed far to the south of Lake Erie by Nicholas Sanson. _Vide Cartes de l'Amerique_, 1657. 175. The Cheveux Relevés are represented by Champlain as dwelling west of the Petuns, and were probably not far from the most southern limit of the Georgian Bay. Strangely enough Nicholas Sanson places them on a large island that separates the Georgian Bay from Lake Huron. _Vide Cartes de l'Amerique_ par N. Sanson, 1657. 176. _Atsistaehronons, ou Nation du Feu_. Their Algonquin name was Mascoutins or Maskoutens, with several other orthographies. The significance of their name is given by Sagard as follows: Ils sont errans, sinon que quelques villages d'entr'eux fement des bleds d'Inde, et font la guerre à vne autre Nation, nommée _Assitagueronon_, qui veut dire gens de feu: car en langue Huronne _Assista_ signifie du feu, et _Eronon_, signifie Nation. _Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons_, par Gabriel Sagard, a Paris, 1632, p. 78. _Vide Relation des Jésuites_, 1641, p 72; _Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley_, by John Gilmary Shea, p. 13; _Indian Migration in Ohio_, by C. C. Baldwin, pp 9, 10; Discovery of the _Northwest by John Nicolet_, by C. W. Butterfield, p. 63; _L'Amerique en Plusieurs Cartes_, par N. Sanson, 1657. 177. _Pisierinii_, the Nipissings. This relates to those Nipissings who had accompanied Champlain on the expedition against the Iroquois, and who were passing the winter among the Hurons. He had expected that they would accompany him on explorations on the north of them. But arriving at their encampment, on his return from the Petuns and Cheveux Relevés, he learned from them of the quarrel that had arisen between the Algonquins and the Hurons. 178. Attigouantans, the principal tribe of the Hurons. 179. _Colliers de pourceline_. These necklaces were composed of shells, pierced and strung like beads. They were of a violet color, and were esteemed of great value. The _branches_ were strings of white shells, and were more common and less valuable. An engraved representation may be seen in _Histoire de L'Amérique Septentrionale_, par De la Potherie, Paris, 1722, Tom. I. p. 334. For a full description of these necklaces and their significance and use in their councils, _vide Charlevoix's Letters_, London, 1763, p 132. 180. _Buffles_, buffaloes. The American Bison, _Bos Americanus_. The skins seen by Champlain in the possession of the savages seem to indicate that the range of the buffalo was probably further east at that period than at the present time, its eastern limit being now about the Red River, which flows into Lake Winnipeg. The limit of its northern range is generally stated to be at latitude 60 degrees, but it is sometimes found as far north as 63 degrees or 64 degrees. _Vide_ Dr. Shea's interesting account of the buffalo in _Discovery and Exploration of Mississippi Valley_, p. 18. The range of the Musk Ox is still farther north, rarely south of latitude 67 degrees. His home is in the Barren Grounds, west of Hudson Bay, and on the islands on the north of the American Continent, where he subsists largely on lichens and the meagre herbage of that frosty region. 181. Champlain is here speaking of the whole country of New France. 182. This sentence in the original is unfinished and defective. _Au costé vers le Nort, icelle grande riuiere terant à l'Occident, etc_. In the ed. 1632, the reading is _Au costé vers le nort d'icelle grande riuiere tirant au suroust, etc_. The tranlation is according to the ed. of 1632. _Vide_ Quebec ed., p. 941. 183. Champlain here gives the four species of the _cervus_ family under names then known to him, viz, the moose, wapiti or elk, caribou, and the common deer. 184. _Fouines_, a quadruped known as the minx or mink, _Mustela vison_. 185. _Martes_, weasels, _Mustela vulgaris_. 186. _The country on the north_, &c. Having described the country along the coast of the St Lawrence and the lakes he now refers to the country still further north even to the southern borders of Hudson's Bay. _Vide_ small map. 187. _Almouchiquois_, so in the French for Almouchiquois. All the tribes at and south of _Chouacoet_, or the mouth of the Saco River, were denominated Almouchiquois by the French. _Vide_ Vol II p 63, _et passim_. 188. The country of the Attigouantans, sometimes written Attigouautans, the principal tribe of the Hurons, used by Champlain as including the whole, with whom the French were in close alliance, was from east to west not more than about twelve leagues. There must have been some error by which the author is made to say that it was _two hundred and thirty leagues_. Laverdière suggests that in the manuscript it might have been 23, or 20 to 30, and that the printer made it 230. 189. The author plainly means that the country of the Hurons was nearly surrounded by the Mer Douce; that is to say, by Lake Huron and the waters connected with it, viz., the River Severn, Lake Couchiching, and Lake Simcoe. As to the population, compare _The Jesuits in North America_, by Francis Parkman, LL.D., note p. xxv. 190. _Vide antea_, note 172, for the reason of these removals. 191. _Febues du Brésil_. This was undoubtedly the common trailing bean, _Pliaseolus vulgaris_, probably called the Brazilian bean, because it resembled a bean known under that name. It was found in cultivation in New England as mentioned by Champlain and the early English settlers. Bradford discoursing of the Indians, _His. Plymouth Plantation_, p. 83, speaks of "their beans of various collours." It is possible that the name, _febues du Brésil_, was given to it on account of its red color, as was that of the Brazil-wood, from the Portuguese word _braza_, a burning coal. 192. _Vide antea_, note 101. 193. _Sitrouelles_, or _citrouilles_, the common summer squash, _Cucurbita polymorpha. Vide_ Vol. II. note 128. For figure D, _vide_ p. 116. 194. The coloring matter appears to have been derived from the root of the bedstraw, _Galium tinctorum_. Peter Kalm, a pupil of Linnæus, who travelled in Canada in 1749, says, "The roots of this plant are employed by the Indians in dyeing the quills of the American porcupines red, which they put into several pieces of their work, and air, sun, or water seldom change this color." _Travels into North America_, London, 1771, Vol. III. pp. 14-15. 195. Père Joseph Le Caron, who had passed the winter among the Hurons. 196. _Mardi-gras_, Shrove-Tuesday, or _flesh Tuesday_, the last day of the Carnival, the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day in Lent. 197. _Vide_ Vol. I. pp. 236-238. 198. This must have been on the 20th of May. 199. Jean d'Olbeau and the lay brother Pacifique du Plessis. 200. Joseph le Caron, who accompanied Champlain to France. CONTINUATION OF THE VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES MADE IN NEW FRANCE, BY SIEUR DE CHAMPLAIN, CAPTAIN FOR THE KING IN THE WESTERN MARINE, IN THE YEAR 1618. At the beginning of the year one thousand six hundred and eighteen, on the twenty-second of March, I set out from Paris, [201] together with my brother-in-law, [202] for Honfleur, our usual port of embarkation. There we were obliged to make a long stay on account of contrary winds. But when they had become favorable, we embarked on the large vessel of the association, which Sieur du Pont Gravé commanded. There was also on board a nobleman, named De la Mothe, [203] who had previously made a voyage with the Jesuits to the regions of La Cadie, where he was taken prisoner by the English, and by them carried to the Virginias, the place of their settlement. Some time after they transferred him to England and from there to France, where there arose in him an increased desire to make another voyage to New France, which led him to seek the opportunity presented by me. I had assured him, accordingly, that I would use my influence and assistance with our associates, as it seemed to me that they would find such a person desirable, since he would be very useful in those regions. Our embarkation being made, we took our departure from Honfleur on the 24th day of May following, in the year 1618. The wind was favorable for our voyage, but continued so only a very few days, when it suddenly changed, and we had all the time head winds up to our arrival, on the 3d day of June following, on the Grand Bank, where the fresh fishery is carried on. Here we perceived to the windward of us some banks of ice, which came down from the north. While waiting for a favorable wind we engaged in fishing, which afforded us great pleasure, not only on account of the fish but also of a kind of bird called _fauquets_, [204] and other kinds that are caught on the line like fish. For, on throwing the line, with its hook baited with cod liver, these birds made for it with a rush, and in such numbers that you could not draw it out in order to throw it again, without capturing them by the beak, feet, and wings as they slew and fell upon the bait, so great were the eagerness and voracity of these birds. This fishing afforded us great pleasure, not only on account of the sport, but on account of the infinite number of birds and fish that we captured, which were very good eating, and made a very desirable change on shipboard. Continuing on our route, we arrived on the 15th of the month off Isle Percée, and on St. John's day [205] following entered the harbor of Tadoussac, where we found our small vessel, which had arrived three weeks before us. The men on her told us that Sieur des Chesnes, the commander, had gone to our settlement at Quebec. Thence he was to go to the Trois Rivières to meet the savages, who were to come there from various regions for the purpose of trade, and likewise to determine what was to be done on account of the death of two of our men, who had been treacherously and perfidiously killed by two vicious young men of the Montagnais. These two unfortunate victims, as the men on the vessel informed us, had been killed while out hunting nearly two years [206] before. Those in the settlement had always supposed that they had been drowned from the upsetting of their canoe, until a short time before, one of the men, conceiving an animosity against the murderers, made a disclosure and communicated the fact and cause of the murder to the men of our settlement. For certain reasons it has seemed to me well to give an account of the matter and of what was done in regard to it. But it is almost impossible to obtain the exact truth in the case, on account, not only of the small amount of testimony at hand, but of the diversity of the statements made, the most of which were presumptive. I will, however, give an account of the matter here, following the statement of the greater number as being nearer the truth, and relating what I have found to be the most probable. The following is the occasion of the murder of the two unfortunate deceased. One of the two murderers paid frequent visits to our settlement, receiving there a thousand kindnesses and favors, among other persons from Sieur du Parc, a nobleman from Normandy, in command at the time at Quebec, in the service of the King and in behalf of the merchants of the Association in the year 1616. This savage, while on one of his customary visits, received one day, on account of some jealousy, ill treatment from one of the two murdered men, who was by profession a locksmith, and who after some words beat the savage so soundly as to impress it well upon his memory. And not satisfied with beating and misusing the savage he incited his companions to do the same, which aroused still more the hatred and animosity of the savage towards this locksmith and his companions, and led him to seek an opportunity to revenge himself. He accordingly watched for a time and opportunity for doing so, acting however cautiously and appearing as usual, without showing any sign of resentment. Some time after, the locksmith and a sailor named Charles Pillet, from the island of Ré, arranged to go hunting and stay away three or four nights. For this purpose they got ready a canoe, and embarking departed from Quebec for Cape Tourmente. Here there were some little islands where a great quantity of game and birds resorted, near Isle d'Orleans, and distant seven leagues from Quebec. The departure of our men became at once known to the two savages, who were not slow in starting to pursue them and carry out their evil design. They sought for the place where the locksmith and his companion went to sleep, in order to surprise them. Having ascertained it at evening, at break of day on the following morning, the two savages slipped quietly along certain very pleasant meadows. Arriving at a point near the place in question, they moored their canoe, landed and went straight to the cabin, where our men had slept. But they found only the locksmith, who was preparing to go hunting with his companion, and who thought of nothing less than of what was to befall him. One of these savages approached him, and with some pleasant words removed from him all suspicion of anything wrong in order that he might the better deceive him. But as he saw him stoop to adjust his arquebus, he quickly drew a club that he had concealed on his person, and gave the locksmith so heavy a blow on his head, that it sent him staggering and completely stunned. The savage, seeing that the locksmith was preparing to defend himself, repeated his blow, struck him to the ground, threw himself upon him, and with a knife gave him three or four cuts in the stomach, killing him in this horrible manner. In order that they might also get possession of the sailor, the companion of the locksmith who had started early in the morning to go hunting, not because they bore any special hatred towards him, but that they might not be discovered nor accused by him, they went in all directions searching for him. At last, from the report of an arquebus which they heard, they discovered where he was, in which direction they rapidly hastened, so as to give no time to the sailor to reload his arquebus and put himself in a state of defence. Approaching, they fired their arrows at him, by which having prostrated him, they ran upon him and finished him with the knife. Then the assassins carried off the body, together with the other, and, binding them so firmly together that they would not come apart, attached to them a quantity of stones and pebbles, together with their weapons and clothes, so as not to be discovered by any sign, after which they carried them to the middle of the river, threw them in, and they sank to the bottom. Here they remained a long time until, through the will of God, the cords broke, and the bodies were washed ashore and thrown far up on the bank, to serve as accusers and incontestable witnesses of the attack of these two cruel and treacherous assassins. For the two bodies were found at a distance of more than twenty feet from the water in the woods, but had not become separated in so long a time, being still firmly bound, the bones, stripped of the flesh like a skeleton, alone remaining. For the two victims, contrary to the expectation of the two murderers, who thought they had done their work so secretly that it would never be known, were found a long time after their disappearance by the men of our settlement, who, pained at their absence, searched for them along the banks of the river. But God in his justice would not permit so enormous a crime, and had caused it to be exposed by another savage, their companion, in retaliation for an injury he had received from them. Thus their wicked acts were disclosed. The holy Fathers and the men of the settlement were greatly surprised at seeing the bodies of these two unfortunates, with their bones all bare, and their skulls broken by the blows received from the club of the savages. The Fathers and others at the settlement advised to preserve them in some portion of the settlement until the return of our vessels, in order to consult with all the French as to the best course to pursue in the matter. Meanwhile our people at the settlement resolved to be on their guard, and no longer allow so much freedom to these savages as they had been accustomed to, but on the contrary require reparation for so cruel a murder by a process of justice, or some other way, or let things in the mean time remain as they were, in order the better to await our vessels and our return, that we might all together consult what was to be done in the matter. But the savages seeing that this iniquity was discovered, and that they and the murderer were obnoxious to the French, were seized with despair, and, fearing that our men would exercise vengeance upon them for this murder, withdrew for a while from our settlement.[207] Not only those guilty of the act but the others also being seized with fear came no longer to the settlement, as they had been accustomed to do, but waited for greater security for themselves. Finding themselves deprived of intercourse with us, and of their usual welcome, the savages sent one of their companions named by the French, _La Ferrière_, to make their excuses for this murder; namely, they asserted they had never been accomplices in it, and had never consented to it, and that, if it was desired to have the two murderers for the sake of inflicting justice, the other savages would willingly consent to it, unless the French should be pleased to take as reparation and restitution for the dead some valuable presents of skins, as they are accustomed to do in return for a thing that cannot be restored. They earnestly entreated the French to accept this rather than require the death of the accused which they anticipated would be hard for them to execute, and so doing to forget everything as if it had not occurred. To this, in accordance with the advice of the holy Fathers, it was decided to reply that the savages should bring and deliver up the two malefactors, in order to ascertain from them their accomplices, and who had incited them to do the deed. This they communicated to La Ferrière for him to report to his companions. This decision having been made, La Ferrière withdrew to his companions, who upon hearing the decision of the French found this procedure and mode of justice very strange and difficult; since they have no established law among themselves, but only vengeance and restitution by presents. After considering the whole matter and deliberating with one another upon it, they summoned the two murderers and set forth to them the unhappy position into which they had been thrown by the event of this murder, which might cause a perpetual war with the French, from which their women and children would suffer. However much trouble they might give us, and although they might keep us shut up in our settlement and prevent us from hunting, cultivating and tilling the soil, and although we were in too small numbers to keep the river blockaded, as they persuaded themselves to believe in their consultations; still, after all their deliberations, they concluded that it was better to live in peace with the French than in war and perpetual distrust. Accordingly the savages thus assembled, after finishing their consultation and representing the situation to the accused, asked them if they would not have the courage to go with them to the settlement of the French and appear before them; promising them that they should receive no harm, and assuring them that the French were lenient and disposed to pardon, and would in short go so far in dealing with them as to overlook their offence on condition of their not returning to such evil ways. The two criminals, finding themselves convicted in conscience, yielded to this proposition and agreed to follow this advice. Accordingly one of them made preparations, arraying himself in such garments and decorations as he could procure, as if he had been invited to go to a marriage or some great festivity. Thus attired, he went to the settlement, accompanied by his father, some of the principal chiefs, and the captain of their company. As to the other murderer, he excused himself from this journey, [208] realizing his guilt of the heinous act and fearing punishment. When now they had entered the habitation, which was forthwith surrounded by a multitude of the savages of their company, the bridge [209] was drawn up, and all of the French put themselves on guard, arms in hand. They kept a strict watch, sentinels being posted at the necessary points, for fear of what the savages outside might do, since they suspected that it was intended actually to inflict punishment upon the guilty one, who had so freely offered himself to our mercy, and not upon him alone, but upon those also who had accompanied him inside, who likewise were not too sure of their persons, and who, seeing matters in this state, did not expect to get out with their lives. The whole matter was very well managed and carried out, so as to make them realize the magnitude of the crime and have fear for the future. Otherwise there would have been no security with them, and we should have been obliged to live with arms in hand and in perpetual distrust. After this, the savages suspecting lest something might happen contrary to what they hoped from us, the holy Fathers proceeded to make them an address on the subject of this crime. They set forth to them the friendship which the French had shown them for ten or twelve years back, when we began to know them, during which time we had continually lived in peace and intimacy with them, nay even with such freedom as could hardly be expressed. They added moreover that I had in person assisted them several times in war against their enemies, thereby exposing my life for their welfare; while we were not under any obligations to do so, being impelled only by friendship and good will towards them, and feeling pity at the miseries and persecutions which their enemies caused them to endure and suffer. This is why we were unable to believe, they said, that this murder had been committed without their consent, and especially since they had taken it upon themselves to favor those who committed it. Speaking to the father of the criminal, they represented to him the enormity of the deed committed by his son, saying that as reparation for it he deserved death, since by our law so wicked a deed did not go unpunished, and that whoever was found guilty and convicted of it deserved to be condemned to death as reparation for so heinous an act; but, as to the other inhabitants of the country, who were not guilty of the crime, they said no one wished them any harm or desired to visit upon them the consequences of it. All the savages, having clearly heard this, said, as their only excuse, but with all respect, that they had not consented to this act; that they knew very well that these two criminals ought to be put to death, unless we should be disposed to pardon them; that they were well aware of their wickedness, not before but after the commission of the deed; that they had been informed of the death of the two ill-fated men too late to prevent it. Moreover, they said that they had kept it secret, in order to preserve constantly an intimate relationship and confidence with us, and declared that they had administered to the evil-doers severe reprimands, and set forth the calamity which they had not only brought upon themselves, but upon all their tribe, relatives and friends; and they promised that such a calamity should never occur again and begged us to forget this offence, and not visit it with the consequences it deserved, but rather go back to the primary motive which induced the two savages to go there, and have regard for that. Furthermore they said that the culprit had come freely and delivered himself into our hands, not to be punished but to receive mercy from the French. But the father, turning to the friar, [210] said with tears, there is my son, who committed the supposed crime; he is worthless, but consider that he is a young, foolish, and inconsiderate person, who has committed this act through passion, impelled by vengeance rather than by premeditation: it is in your power to give him life or death; you can do with him what you please, since we are both in your hands. After this address, the culprit son, presenting himself with assurance, spoke these words. "Fear has not so seized my heart as to prevent my coming to receive death according to my desserts and your law, of which I acknowledge myself guilty." Then he stated to the company the cause of the murder, and the planning and execution of it, just as I have related and here set forth. After his recital he addressed himself to one of the agents and clerks of the merchants of our Association, named _Beauchaine_, begging him to put him to death without further formality. Then the holy Fathers spoke, and said to them, that the French were not accustomed to put their fellow-men to death so suddenly, and that it was necessary to have a consultation with all the men of the settlement, and bring forward this affair as the subject of consideration. This being a matter of great consequence, it was decided that it should be carefully conducted and that it was best to postpone it to a more favorable occasion, which would be better adapted to obtain the truth, the present time not being favorable for many reasons. In the first place, we were weak in numbers in comparison with the savages without and within our settlement, who, resentful and full of vengeance as they are, would have been capable of setting fire on all sides and creating disorder among us. In the second place, there would have been perpetual distrust and no security in our intercourse with them. In the third place, trade would have been injured, and the service of the King impeded. In view of these and other urgent considerations, it was decided that we ought to be contented with their putting themselves in our power and their willingness to give satisfaction submissively, the father of the criminal on the one hand presenting and offering him to the company, and he, for his part, offering to give up his own life as restitution for his offence, just as his father offered to produce him whenever he might be required. This it was thought necessary to regard as a sort of honorable amend, and a satisfaction to justice. And it was considered that if we thus pardoned the offence, not only would the criminal receive his life from us, but, also, his father and companions would feel under great obligations. It was thought proper, however, to say to them as an explanation of our action, that, in view of the fact of the criminal's public assurance that all the other savages were in no respect accomplices, or to blame for the act, and had had no knowledge of it before its accomplishment, and in view of the fact that he had freely offered himself to death, it had been decided to restore him to his father, who should remain under obligations to produce him at any time. On these terms and on condition that he should in future render service to the French, his life was spared, that he and all the savages might continue friends and helpers of the French. Thus it was decided to arrange the matter until the vessels should return from France, when, in accordance with the opinion of the captains and others, a definite and more authoritative settlement was to be concluded. In the mean time we promised them every favor and the preservation of their lives, saying to them, however, for our security, that they should leave some of their children as a kind of hostage, to which they very willingly acceded, and left at the settlement two in the hands of the holy Fathers, who proceeded to teach their letters, and in less than three months taught them the alphabet and how to make the letters. From this it may be seen that they are capable of instruction and are easily taught, as Father Joseph [211] can testify. The vessels having safely arrived, Sieur du Pont Gravé, some others, and myself were informed how the affair had taken place, as has been narrated above, when we all decided that it was desirable to make the savages feel the enormity of this murder, but not to execute punishment upon them, for various good reasons hereafter to be mentioned. As soon as our vessels had entered the harbor of Tadoussac, even on the morning of the next day, [212] Sieur du Pont Gravé and myself set sail again, on a small barque of ten or twelve tons' burden. So also Sieur de la Mothe, together with Father Jean d'Albeau, [213] a friar, and one of the clerks and agent of the merchants, named _Loquin_, embarked on a little shallop, and we set out together from Tadoussac. There remained on the vessel another friar, called Father _Modeste_ [214] together with the pilot and master, to take care of her. We arrived at Quebec, the place of our settlement, on the 27th of June following. Here we found Fathers Joseph, Paul, and Pacifique, the friars, [215] and Sieur Hébert [216] with his family, together with the other members of the settlement. They were all well, and delighted at our return in good health like themselves, through the mercy of God. The same day Sieur du Pont Gravé determined to go to Trois Rivières, where the merchants carried on their trading, and to take with him some merchandise, with the purpose of meeting Sieur des Chesnes, who was already there. He also took with him Loquin, as before mentioned. I stayed at our settlement some days, occupying myself with business relating to it; among other things in building a furnace for making an experiment with certain ashes, directions for which had been given me, and which are in truth of great value; but it requires labor, diligence, watchfulness and skill; and for the working of these ashes a sufficient number of men are needed who are acquainted with this art. This first experiment did not prove successful, and we postponed further trial to a more favorable opportunity. I visited the cultivated lands, [217] which I found planted with fine grain. The gardens contained all kinds of plants, cabbages, radishes, lettuce, purslain, sorrel, parsley, and other plants, squashes, cucumbers, melons, peas, beans and other vegetables, which were as fine and forward as in France. There were also the vines, which had been transplanted, already well advanced. In a word, you could see everything growing and flourishing. Aside from God, we are not to give the praise for this to the laborers or their skill, for it is probable that not much is due to them, but to the richness and excellence of the soil, which is naturally good and adapted for everything, as experience shows, and might be turned to good account, not only for purposes of tillage and the cultivation of fruit-trees and vines, but also for the nourishment and rearing of cattle and fowl, such as are common in France. But the thing lacking is zeal and affection for the welfare and service of the King. I tarried some time at Quebec, in expectation of further intelligence, when there arrived a barque from Tadoussac, which had been sent by Sieur du Pont Gravé to get the men and merchandise remaining at that place on the before-mentioned large vessel. Leaving Quebec, I embarked with them for Trois Rivières, where the trading was going on, in order to see the savages and communicate with them, and ascertain what was taking place respecting the assassination above set forth, and what could be done to settle and smooth over the whole matter. On the 5th of July following I set out from Quebec, together with Sieur de la Mothe, for Trois Rivières, both for engaging in traffic and to see the savages. We arrived at evening off Sainte Croix, [218] a place on the way so called. Here we saw a shallop coming straight to us, in which were some men from Sieurs du Pont Gravé and des Chesnes, and also some clerks and agents of the merchants. They asked me to despatch at once this shallop to Quebec for some merchandise remaining there, saying that a large number of savages had come for the purpose of making war. This intelligence was very agreeable to us, and in order to satisfy them, on the morning of the next day I left my barque and went on board a shallop in order to go more speedily to the savages, while the other, which had come from Trois Rivières, continued its course to Quebec. We made such progress by rowing that we arrived at the before-mentioned place on the 7th of July at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Upon landing, all the savages with whom I had been intimate in their country recognized me. They were awaiting me with impatience, and came up to me very happy and delighted to see me again, one after the other embracing me with demonstrations of great joy, I also receiving them in the same manner. In this agreeable way was spent the evening and remainder of this day, and on the next day the savages held a council among themselves, to ascertain from me whether I would again assist them, as I had done in the past and as I had promised them, in their wars against their enemies, by whom they are cruelly harassed and tortured. Meanwhile on our part we took counsel together to determine what we should do in the matter of the murder of the two deceased, in order that justice might be done, and that they might be restrained from committing such an offence in future. In regard to the assistance urgently requested by the savages for making war against their enemies, I replied that my disposition had not changed nor my courage abated, but that what prevented me from assisting them was that on the previous year, when the occasion and opportunity presented, they failed me when the time came; because when they had promised to return with a good number of warriors they did not do so, which caused me to withdraw without accomplishing much. Yet I told them the matter should be taken into consideration, but that for the present it was proper to determine what should be done in regard to the assassination of the two unfortunate men, and that satisfaction must be had. Upon this they left their council in seeming anger and vexation about the matter, offering to kill the criminals, and proceed at once to their execution, if assent were given, and acknowledging freely among themselves the enormity of the affair. But we would not consent to this, postponing our assistance to another time, requiring them to return to us the next year with a good number of men. I assured them, moreover, that I would entreat the King to favor us with men, means, and supplies to assist them and enable them to enjoy the rest they longed for, and victory over their enemies. At this they were greatly pleased, and thus we separated, after they had held two or three meetings on the subject, costing us several hours of time. Two or three days after my arrival at this place they proceeded to make merry, dance, and celebrate many great banquets in view of the future war in which I was to assist them. Then I stated to Sieur du Pont Gravé what I thought about this murder; that it was desirable to make a greater demand upon them; that at present the savages would dare not only to do the same thing again but what would be more injurious to us; that I considered them people who were governed by example; that they might accuse the French of being wanting in courage; that if we said no more about the matter they would infer that we were afraid of them: and that if we should let them go so easily they would grow more insolent, bold, and intolerable, and we should even thereby tempt them to undertake greater and more pernicious designs. Moreover I said that the other tribes of savages, who had or should get knowledge of this act, and that it had been unrevenged, or compromised by gifts and presents, as is their custom, would boast that killing a man is no great matter; since the French make so little account of seeing their companions killed by their neighbors, who drink, eat, and associate intimately with them, as may be seen. But, on the other hand, in consideration of the various circumstances; namely, that the savages do not exercise reason, that they are hard to approach, are easily estranged, and are very ready to take vengeance, that, if we should force them to inflict punishment, there would be no security for those desirous of making explorations among them, we determined to settle this affair in a friendly manner, and pass over quietly what had occurred, leaving them to engage peaceably in their traffic with the clerks and agents of the merchants and others in charge. Now there was with them a man named _Estienne Brûlé_, one of our interpreters, who had been living with them for eight years, as well to pass his time as to see the country and learn their language and mode of life. He is the one whom I had despatched with orders to go in the direction of the Entouhonorons, [219] to Carantoüan, in order to bring with him five hundred warriors they had promised to send to assist us in the war in which we were engaged against their enemies, a reference to which is made in the narrative of my previous book. [220] I called this man, namely Estienne Brûlé, and asked him why he had not brought the assistance of the five hundred men, and what was the cause of the delay, and why he had not rendered me a report. Thereupon he gave me an account of the matter, a narrative of which it will not be out of place to give, as he is more to be pitied than blamed on account of the misfortunes which he experienced on this commission. He proceeded to say that, after taking leave of me to go on his journey and execute his commission, he set out with the twelve savages whom I had given him for the purpose of showing the way, and to serve as an escort on account of the dangers which he might have to encounter. They were successful in reaching the place, Carantoüan, but not without exposing themselves to risk, since they had to pass through the territories of their enemies, and, in order to avoid any evil design, pursued a more secure route through thick and impenetrable forests, wood and brush, marshy bogs, frightful and unfrequented places and wastes, all to avoid danger and a meeting with their enemies. But, in spite of this great care, Brûlé and his savage companions, while crossing a plain, encountered some hostile savages, who were returning to their village and who were surprised and worsted by our savages, four of the enemy being killed on the spot and two taken prisoners, whom Brûlé and his companions took to Carantoüan, by the inhabitants of which place they were received with great affection, a cordial welcome, and good cheer, with the dances and banquets with which they are accustomed to entertain and honor strangers. Some days were spent in this friendly reception; and, after Brûlé had told them his mission and explained to them the occasion of his journey, the savages of the place assembled in council to deliberate and resolve in regard to sending the five hundred warriors asked for by Brûlé. When the council was ended and it was decided to send the men, orders were given to collect, prepare, and arm them, so as to go and join us where we were encamped before the fort and village of our enemies. This was only three short days' journey from Carantoüan, which was provided with more than eight hundred warriors, and strongly fortified, after the manner of those before described, which have high and strong palisades well bound and joined together, the quarters being constructed in a similar fashion. After it had been resolved by the inhabitants of Carantoüan to send the five hundred men, these were very long in getting ready, although urged by Brûlé, to make haste, who explained to them that if they delayed any longer they would not find us there. And in fact they did not succeed in arriving until two days after our departure from that place, which we were forced to abandon, since we were too weak and worn by the inclemency of the weather. This caused Brûlé, and the five hundred men whom he brought, to withdraw and return to their village of Carantoüan. After their return Brûlé was obliged to stay, and spend the rest of the autumn and all the winter, for lack of company and escort home. While awaiting, he busied himself in exploring the country and visiting the tribes and territories adjacent to that place, and in making a tour along a river [221] that debouches in the direction of Florida, where are many powerful and warlike nations, carrying on wars against each other. The climate there is very temperate, and there are great numbers of animals and abundance of small game. But to traverse and reach these regions requires patience, on account of the difficulties involved in passing the extensive wastes. He continued his course along the river as far as the sea, [222] and to islands and lands near them, which are inhabited by various tribes and large numbers of savages, who are well disposed and love the French above all other nations. But those who know the Dutch [223] complain severely of them, since they treat them very roughly. Among other things he observed that the winter was very temperate, that it snowed very rarely, and that when it did the snow was not a foot deep and melted immediately. After traversing the country and observing what was noteworthy, he returned to the village of Carantoüan, in order to find an escort for returning to our settlement. After some stay at Carantoüan, five or six of the savages decided to make the journey with Brûlé. On the way they encountered a large number of their enemies, who charged upon Brûlé and his companions so violently that they caused them to break up and separate from each other, so that they were unable to rally: and Brûlé, who had kept apart in the hope of escaping, became so detached from the others that he could not return, nor find a road or sign in order to effect his retreat in any direction whatever. Thus he continued to wander through forest and wood for several days without eating, and almost despairing of his life from the pressure of hunger. At last he came upon a little footpath, which he determined to follow wherever it might lead, whether toward the enemy or not, preferring to expose himself to their hands trusting in God rather than to die alone and in this wretched manner. Besides he knew how to speak their language, which he thought might afford him some assistance. But he had not gone a long distance when he discovered three savages loaded with fish repairing to their village. He ran after them, and, as he approached, shouted at them, as is their custom. At this they turned about, and filled with fear were about to leave their burden and flee. But Brûlé speaking to them reassured them, when they laid down their bows and arrows in sign of peace, Brûlé on his part laying down his arms. Moreover he was weak and feeble, not having eaten for three or four days. On coming up to them, after he had told them of his misfortune and the miserable condition to which he had been reduced, they smoked together, as they are accustomed to do with one another and their acquaintances when they visit each other. They had pity and compassion for him, offering him every assistance, and conducting him to their village, where they entertained him and gave him something to eat. But as soon as the people of the place were informed that an _Adoresetoüy_ had arrived, for thus they call the French, the name signifying _men of iron_, they came in a rush and in great numbers to see Brûlé. They took him to the cabin of one of the principal chiefs, where he was interrogated, and asked who he was, whence he came, what circumstance had driven and led him to this place, how he had lost his way, and whether he did not belong to the French nation that made war upon them. To this he replied that he belonged to a better nation, that was desirous solely of their acquaintance and friendship. Yet they would not believe this, but threw themselves upon him, tore out his nails with their teeth, burnt him with glowing firebrands, and tore out his beard, hair by hair, though contrary to the will of the chief. During this fit of passion one of the savages observed an _Agnus Dei_, which he had attached to his neck, and asked what it was that he had thus attached to his neck, and was on the point of seizing it and pulling it off. But Brûlé said to him, with resolute words, If you take it and put me to death, you will find that immediately after you will suddenly die, and all those of your house. He paid no attention however to this, but continuing in his malicious purpose tried to seize the _Agnus Dei_ and tear it from him, all of them together being desirous of putting him to death, but previously of making him suffer great pain and torture, such as they generally practise upon their enemies. But God, showing him mercy, was pleased not to allow it, but in his providence caused the heavens to change suddenly from the serene and fair state they were in to darkness, and to become filled with great and thick clouds, upon which followed thunders and lightnings so violent and long continued that it was something strange and awful. This storm caused the savages such terror, it being not only unusual but unlike anything they had ever heard, that their attention was diverted and they forgot the evil purpose they had towards Brûlé, their prisoner. They accordingly left him without even unbinding him, as they did not dare to approach him. This gave the sufferer an opportunity to use gentle words, and he appealed to them and remonstrated with them on the harm they were doing him without cause, and set forth to them how our God was enraged at them for having so abused him. The captain then approached Brûlé, unbound him, and took him to his house, where he took care of him and treated his wounds. After this there were no dances, banquets, or merry-makings to which Brûlé was not invited. So after remaining some time with these savages, he determined to proceed towards our settlement. Taking leave of them, he promised to restore them to harmony with the French and their enemies, and cause them to swear friendship with each other, to which end he said he would return to them as soon as he could. Thence he went to the country and village of the Atinouaentans, [224] where I had already been; the savages at his departure having conducted him for a distance of four days' journey from their village. Here Brûlé remained some time, when, resuming his journey towards us he came by way of the _Mer Douce_, [225] boating along its northern shores for some ten days, where I had also gone when on my way to the war. And if Brûlé had gone further on to explore these regions, as I had directed him to do, it would not have been a mere rumor that they were preparing war with one another. But this undertaking was reserved to another time, which he promised me to continue and accomplish in a short period with God's grace, and to conduct me there that I might obtain fuller and more particular knowledge. After he had made this recital, I gave him assurance that his services would be recognized, and encouraged him to continue his good purpose until our return, when we should have more abundant means to do that with which he would be satisfied. This is now the entire narrative and recital of his journey from the time he left me [226] to engage in the above-mentioned explorations; and it afforded me pleasure in the prospect thereby presented me of being better able to continue and promote them. With this purpose he took leave of me to return to the savages, an intimate acquaintance with whom had been acquired by him in his journeys and explorations. I begged him to continue with them until the next year, when I would return with a good number of men, both to reward him for his labors, and to assist as in the past the savages, his friends, in their wars. Resuming the thread of my former discourse, I must note that in my last and preceding voyages and explorations I had passed through numerous and diverse tribes of savages not known to the French nor to those of our settlement, with whom I had made alliances and sworn friendship, on condition that they should come and trade with us, and that I should assist them in their wars; for it must be understood that there is not a single tribe living in peace, excepting the Nation Neutre. According to their promise, there came from the various tribes of savages recently discovered some trade in peltry, others to see the French and ascertain what kind of treatment and welcome would be shown them. This encouraged everybody, the French on the one hand to show them cordiality and welcome, for they honored them with some attentions and presents, which the agents of the merchants gave to gratify them; on the other hand, it encouraged the savages, who promised all the French to come and live in future in friendship with them, all of them declaring that they would deport themselves with such affection towards us that we should have occasion to commend them, while we in like manner were to assist them to the extent of our power in their wars. The trading having been concluded, and the savages having taken their leave and departed, we left Trois Rivières on the 14th of July of this year. The next day we arrived at our quarters at Quebec, where the barques were unloaded of the merchandise which had remained over from the traffic and which was put in the warehouse of the merchants at that place. Now Sieur de Pont Gravé went to Tadoussac with the barques in order to load them and carry to the habitation the provisions necessary to support those who were to remain and winter there, and I determined while the barques were thus engaged to continue there for some days in order to have the necessary fortifications and repairs made. At my departure from the settlement I took leave of the holy Fathers, Sieur de la Mothe, and all the others who were to stay there, giving them to expect that I would return, God assisting, with a good number of families to people the country. I embarked on the 26th of July, together with the Fathers Paul and Pacifique, [227] the latter having wintered here once and the other having been here a year and a half, who were to make a report of what they had seen in the country and of what could be done there. We set out on the day above mentioned from the settlement for Tadoussac, where we were to embark for France. We arrived the next day and found our vessels ready to set sail. We embarked, and left Tadoussac for France on the 13th of the month of July, 1618, and arrived at Honfleur on the 28th day of August, the wind having been favorable, and all being in good spirits. ENDNOTES: 201. Champlain made a voyage to New France in 1617, but appears to have kept no journal of its events. He simply observes that nothing occurred worthy of remark. _Vide_ issue of 1632, Quebec ed., p. 969. Sagard gives a brief narrative of the events that occurred that year. Vol. I. pp. 34-44. 202. Eustache Boullé. His father was Nicolas Boullé, Secretary of the King's Chamber, and his mother was Marguerite Alix. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 205 _et passim_. 203. Nicolas de La Mothe, or de la Motte le Vilin. He had been Lieutenant of Saussaye in 1613, when Capt. Argall captured the French colony at Mount Desert. _Vide Les Voyages de Champlain_, 1632, Quebec ed., p. 773; _Relation de la Nouvelle France_, Père Biard, p. 64. 204. _Fauquets_. Probably the common Tern, or Sea Swallow. _Sterna hirundo_. Peter Kalm, on his voyage in 1749, says "Terns, _sterna hirundo, Linn_, though of a somewhat darker colour than the common ones, we found after the forty-first degree of north latitude and forty-seventh degree of west longitude from _London_, very plentifully, and sometimes in flocks of some hundreds; sometimes they settled, as if tired, on our ship." _Kalm's Travels_, 1770, Vol. I. p. 23. 205. St. John's day was June 24th. 206. According to Sagard they were assassinated about the middle of April, 1617. _Hist. Canada_, Vol. I. p. 42. 207. Sagard says the French, on account of this affair, were menaced by eight hundred savages of different nations who were assembled at Trois Rivières. _Vide Histoire du Canada_, 1636, Vol. I. p.42. The statement, "on estoit menacé de huict cens Sauvages de diuerse nations, qui festoient assemblez és Trois Rivieres à dessein de venir surprendre les François & leur coupper à tous la gorge, pour preuenir la vengeance qu'ils eussent pû prendre de deux de leurs hommes tuez par les Montagnais environ la my Auril de l'an 1617," is, we think, too strong. The savages were excited and frightened by the demands of the French, who desired to produce upon their minds a strong moral impression, in order to prevent a recurrence of the murder, which was a private thing, in which the great body of the savages had no part. They could not be said to be hostile, though they prudently put themselves in a state of defence, as, under the circumstances, it was very natural they should do. 208. They were then at Trois Rivières. 209. The moat around the habitation at Quebec was fifteen feet wide and six feet deep, constructed with a drawbridge to be taken up in case of need. _Vide_ Vol II p. 182. 210. Probably Père le Caron, who was in charge of the mission at Quebec at that time. 211. _Vide Histoire du Canada_, par Sagard, 1636, Vol. I. p 45. 212. They arrived on St. John's day, _antea, note 205_, and consequently this was the 25th of June, 1618. 213. Jean d'Olbeau. 214. Frère Modeste Guines. _Vide Histoire du Canada_, par Sagard, à Paris, 1636, Vol. I.p. 40. 215. Joseph le Caron, Paul Huet, and Pacifique du Plessis. 216. Louis Hébert, an apothecary, settled at Port Royal in La Cadie or Nova Scotia, under Poutrincourt, was there when, in 1613, possession was taken in the name of Madame de Guercheville. He afterward took up his abode at Quebec with his family, probably in the year 1617. His eldest daughter Anne was married at Quebec to Estienne Jonquest, a Norman, which was the first marriage that took place with the ceremonies of the Church in Canada. His daughter Guillemette married William Couillard, and to her Champlain committed the two Indian girls, whom he was not permitted by Kirke to take with him to France, when Quebec was captured by the English in 1629. Louis Hébert died at Quebec on the 25th of January, 1627. _Histoire du Canada_, Vol. I. pp. 41, 591. 217. These fields were doubtless those of Louis Hébert, who was the first that came into the country with his family to live by the cultivation of the soil. 218. Platon. _Vide_ Vol. 1., note 155. 219. Champlain says, _donné charge d'aller vers les Entouhonorons à Carantouan_. By reference to the map of 1632. it will be seen that the Entouhonorons were situated on the southern borders of Lake Ontario. They are understood by Champlain to be a part at least of the Iroquois; but the Carantouanais, allies of the Hurons, were south of them, occupying apparently the upper waters of the Susquehanna. A dotted line will be seen on the same map, evidently intended to mark the course of Brûlé's journey. From the meagre knowledge which Champlain possessed of the region, the line can hardly be supposed to be very accurate, which may account for Champlain's indefinite expression as cited at the beginning of this note. The Entouhonorons, Quentouoronons, Tsonnontouans, or Senecas constituted the most western and most numerous canton of the Five Nations. _Vide Continuation of the New Discovery_, by Louis Hennepin, 1699, p. 95; also Origin of the name Seneca in Mr. O. H. Marshall's brochure on _De la Salle among the Senecas_, pp. 43-45. 220. _Vide antea_, p. 124. 221. The River Susquehanna. 222. He appears to have gone as far south at least as the upper waters of Chesapeake Bay. 223. The Dutch fur-traders. _Vide History of the State of New York_ by John Romeyn Brodhead, Vol. I. p. 44 _et passim_. 224. Attigonantans or Attignaouantans the principal tribe of the Hurons, sometimes called _Les bons Iroquis_, as they and the Iroquois were of the same original stock. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 276, note 212. 225. Lake Huron. For the different names which have been attached to this lake, _vide Local Names of Niagara Frontier_, by Orsamus H. Marshall, 1881, P. 37. 226. Brûlé was despatched on his mission Sept 8, 1615. _Vide antea_, p. 124. As we have already stated in a previous note, it was the policy of Champlain to place competent young men with the different tribes of savages to obtain that kind of information which could only come from an actual and prolonged residence with them. This enabled him to secure not only the most accurate knowledge of their domestic habits and customs, the character and spirit of their life, but these young men by their long residence with the savages acquired a good knowledge of their language, and were able to act as interpreters. This was a matter of very great importance, as it was often necessary for Champlain to communicate with the different tribes in making treaties of friendship, in discussing questions of war with their enemies, in settling disagreements among themselves, and in making arrangements with them for the yearly purchase of their peltry. It was not easy to obtain suitable persons for this important office. Those who had the intellectual qualifications, and who had any high aspirations, would not naturally incline to pass years in the stupid and degrading associations, to say nothing of the hardships and deprivations, of savage life. They were generally therefore adventurers, whose honesty and fidelity had no better foundation than their selfish interests. Of this sort was this Étienne Brûlé, as well as Nicholas Marsolet and Pierre Raye, all of whom turned traitors, selling themselves to the English when Quebec was taken in 1629. Of Brûlé, Champlain uses the following emphatic language: "Lé truchement Bruslé à qui l'on donnoit cent pistolles par an, pour inciter les sauuages à venir à la traitte, ce qui estoit de tres-mauuais exemple, d'enuoyer ainsi des personnes si maluiuans, que l'on eust deub chastier seuerement, car l'on recognoissoit cet homme pour estre fort vicieux, & adonné aux femmes; mais que ne fait faire l'esperance du gain, qui passe par dessus toutes considerations." _Vide issue of_ 1632, Quebec ed., pp. 1065, 1229. But among Champlain's interpreters there were doubtless some who bore a very different character. Jean Nicolet was certainly a marked exception. Although Champlain does not mention him by name, he appears to have been in New France as early as 1618, where he spent many years among the Algonquins, and was the first Frenchman who penetrated the distant Northwest. He married into one of the most respectable families of Quebec, and is often mentioned in the Relations des Jésuites. _Vide_ a brief notice of him in _Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley_, by John Gilmary Shea, 1852, p. xx. A full account of his career has recently been published, entitled _History of the Discovery of the Northwest by John Nicolet in_ 1634, _with a Sketch of his Life_. By C. W. Butterfield. Cincinnati, 1881. _Vide_ also _Détails fur la Vie de Jean Nicollet_, an extract from _Relation des Jésuites_, 1643, in _Découveries_, etc, par Pierre Margry, p. 49. 227. Paul Huet and Pacifique du Plessis. The latter had been in New France more than a year and a half, having arrived in 1615. _Vide antea_, pp. 104-5. EXPLANATION OF TWO GEOGRAPHICAL MAPS OF NEW FRANCE. It has seemed to me well to make some statements in explanation of the two geographical maps. Although one corresponds to the other so far as the harbors, bays, capes, promontories, and rivers extending into the interior are concerned, nevertheless they are different in respect to the bearings. The smallest is in its true meridian, in accordance with the directions of Sieur de Castelfranc in his book on the mecometry of the magnetic needle [228] where I have noted, as will be seen on the map, several declinations, which have been of much service to me, so also all the altitudes, latitudes, and longitudes, from the forty-first degree of latitude to the fifty-first, in the direction of the North Pole, which are the confines of Canada, or the Great Bay, where more especially the Basques and Spaniards engage in the whale fishery. In certain places in the great river St. Lawrence, in latitude 45°, I have observed the declination of the magnetic needle, and found it as high as twenty-one degrees, which is the greatest I have seen. The small map will serve very well for purposes of navigation, provided the needle be applied properly to the rose [229] indicating the points of the compass. For instance, in using it, when one is on the Grand Bank where fresh fishing is carried on, it is necessary, for the sake of greater convenience, to take a rose where the thirty-two points are marked equally, and put the point of the magnetic needle 12, 15, or 16 degrees from the _fleur de lis_ on the northwest side, which is nearly a point and a half, that is north a point northwest or a little more, from the _fleur de lis_ of said rose, and then adjust the rose to the compass. By this means the latitudes of all the capes, harbors, and rivers can be accurately ascertained. I am aware that there are many who will not make use of it, but will prefer to run according to the large one, since it is made according to the compass of France, where the magnetic needle varies to the northeast, for the reason that they are so accustomed to this method that it is difficult for them to change. For this reason I have prepared the large map in this manner, for the assistance of the majority of the pilots and mariners in the waters of New France, fearing that if I had not done so, they would have ascribed to me a mistake, not knowing whence it proceeded. For the small plans or charts of Newfoundland are, for the most part, different in all their statements with respect to the positions of the lands and their latitudes. And those who may have some small copies, reasonably good, esteem them so valuable that they do not communicate a knowledge of them to their country, which might derive profit therefrom. Now the construction of these maps is such that they have their meridian in a direction north-northeast, making west west-northwest, which is contrary to the true meridian of this place, namely, to call north-northeast north, for the needle instead of varying to the northwest, as it should, varies to the northeast as if it were in France. The consequence of this is that error has resulted, and will continue to do so, since this antiquated custom is practised, which they still retain, although they fall into grave mistakes. They also make use of a compass marked north and south; that is, so that the point of the magnetic needle is directly on the _fleur de lis_. In accordance with such a compass many construct their small maps, which seems to me the better way, and so approach nearer to the true meridian of New France, than the compasses of France proper, which point to the northeast. It has come about, consequently, in this way that the first navigators who sailed to New France thought there was no greater deviation in going to these parts than to the Azores, or other places near France, where the deviation is almost imperceptible in navigation, the navigators having the compasses of France, which point northeast and represent the true meridian. In sailing constantly westward with the purpose of reaching a certain latitude, they laid their course directly west by their compass, supposing that they were sailing on the one parallel where they wished to go. By thus going constantly in a straight line and not in a circle, as all the parallels on the surface of the globe run, they found after having traversed a long distance, and as they were approaching the land, that they were some three, four, or five degrees farther south than they ought to be, thus being deceived in their true latitude and reckoning. It is true, indeed, that, when the weather was fair and the sun clearly visible, they corrected their latitude, but not without wondering how it happened that their course was wrong, which arose in consequence of their sailing in a straight instead of a circular line according to the parallel, so that in changing their meridian they changed with regard to the points of the compass, and consequently their course. It is, therefore, very necessary to know the meridian, and the declination of the magnetic needle, for this knowledge can serve all navigators. This is especially so in the north and south, where there are greater variations in the magnetic needle, and where the meridians of longitude are smaller, so that the error, if the declination were not known, would be greater. This above-mentioned error has accordingly arisen, because navigators have either not cared to correct it, or did not know how to do so, and have left it in the state in which it now is. It is consequently difficult to abandon this manner of sailing in the regions of New France. This has led me to make this large map, not only that it might be more minute than the small one, but also in order to satisfy navigators, who will thus be able to sail as they do according to their small maps; and they will excuse me for not making it better and more in detail, for the life of a man is not long enough to observe things so exactly that at least something would not be found to have been omitted. Hence inquiring and pains-taking persons will, in sailing, observe things not to be found on this map, but which they add to it, so that in the course of time there will be no doubt as to any of the localities indicated. At least it seems to me that I have done my duty, so far as I could, not having sailed to put on my map anything that I have seen, and thus giving to the public special knowledge of what had never been described, nor so carefully explored as I have done it. Although in the past others have written of these things, yet very little in comparison with what we have explored within the past ten years. MODE OF DETERMINING A MERIDIAN LINE. Take a small piece of board, perfectly level, and place in the middle a needle C, three inches high, so that it shall be exactly perpendicular. Expose it to the sun before noon, at 8 or 9 o'clock, and mark the point B at the end of the shadow cast by the needle. Then opening the compasses, with one point on C and the other on the shadow B, describe an arc AB. Leave the whole in this position until afternoon when you see the shadow just reaching the arc at A. Then divide equally the arc AB, and taking a rule, and placing it on the points C and D, draw a line running the whole length of the board, which is not to be moved until the observation is completed. This line will be the meridian of the place you are in. And in order to ascertain the declination of the place where you are with reference to the meridian, place a compass, which must be rectangular, along the meridian line, as shown in the figure above, there being upon the card a circle divided into 360 degrees. Divide the circle by two diametrical lines; one representing the north and south, as indicated by EF, the other the east and west, as indicated by GH. Then observe the magnetic needle turning on its pivot upon the card, and you will see how much it deviates from the fixed meridian line upon the card, and how many degrees it varies to the northeast of northwest. CHAMPLAIN'S LARGE MAP. GEOGRAPHICAL CHART OF NEW FRANCE, MADE BY SIEUR DE CHAMPLAIN OF SAINTONGE, CAPTAIN IN ORDINARY FOR THE KING IN THE MARINE. MADE IN THE YEAR 1612. I have made this map for the greater convenience of the majority of those who navigate on these coasts, since they sail to that country according to compasses arranged for the hemisphere of Asia. And if I had made it like the small one, the majority would not have been able to use it, owing to their not knowing the declinations of the needle. [230] Observe that on the present map north-northeast stands for north, and west-northwest for west; according to which one is to be guided in ascertaining the elevation of the degrees of latitude, as if these points were actually east and west, north and south, since the map is constructed according to the compasses of France, which vary to the northeast. [231] SOME DECLINATIONS OF THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE, WHICH I HAVE CAREFULLY OBSERVED. Cap Breton . . . . . . 14° 50' Cap de la Have . . . . 16° 15' Baye Ste Mane . . . . 17° 16' Port Royal . . . . . . 17° 8' En la grande R. St Laurent 21° St Croix . . . . . . . 17° 32' Rivière de Norumbegue. 18° 40' Quinibequi . . . . . . 19° 12' Mallebarre . . . . . . 18° 40' All observed by Sieur de Champlain, 1612. REFERENCES ON CHAMPLAIN'S LARGE MAP. A. Port Fortuné. B. Baye Blanche. C. Baye aux Isles. D. Cap des Isles. E. Port aux Isles. F. Isle Haute. G. Isle des Monts Déserts. H. Cap Corneille. I. Isles aux Oiseaux. K. Cap des Deux Bayes. L. Port aux Mines M. Cap Fourchu. N. Cap Nègre. O. Port du Rossignol. P. St. Laurent. Q. Rivière de l'Isle Verte. R. Baye Saine. S. Rivière Sainte Marguerite T. Port Sainte Hélène. V. Isle des Martires. X. Isles Rangées. Y. Port de Savalette. Z. Passage du Glas. 1. Port aux Anglois. 2. Baye Courante. 3. Cap de Poutrincourt. 4. Isle Gravée. 5. Passage Courant. 6. Baye de Gennes. 7. Isle Perdue. 8. Cap des Mines. 9. Port aux Coquilles. 10. Isles Jumelles. 11. Cap Saint Jean. 12. Isle la Nef. 13. La Heronniére Isle. 14. Isles Rangées. 15. Baye Saint Luc. 16. Passage du Gas. 17. Côte de Montmorency. 18. Rivière de Champlain. 19. Rivière Sainte Marie. 20. Isle d'Orléans. 21. Isle de Bacchus. NOTE--The reader will observe that in a few instances the references are wanting on the map. CHAMPLAIN'S NOTE TO THE SMALL MAP. On the small map [232] is added the strait above Labrador between the fifty-third and sixty-third degrees of latitude, which the English have discovered during the present year 1612, in their voyage to find, if possible, a passage to China by way of the north. [233] They wintered at a place indicated by this mark, 6. But it was not without enduring severe cold, and they were obliged to return to England, leaving their leader in the northern regions. Within six months three other vessels have set out, to penetrate, if possible, still farther, and, at the same time, to search for the men who were left in that region. GEOGRAPHICAL MAP OF NEW FRANCE, IN ITS TRUE MERIDIAN. _Made by Sieur Champlain, Captain for the King in the Marine. 1613_. +o Matou-ouescariny. [Note: This figure is inverted on the map. _Vide antea_, note 59, p. 62.] o+ Gaspay. oo Ouescariny. [Note: _Vide antea_, note 47, pp. 59, 81. The figure oo is misplaced and should be where o-o is on the map, on the extreme western border near the forty-seventh degree of north latitude.] o-o Quenongebin. [Note: This figure o-o on the map occupies the place which should be occupied by oo. _Vide antea_, p. 58, note 46.] A. Tadoussac. B. Lesquemain. C. Isle Percée. D. Baye de Chaleur. E. Isles aux Gros Yeux. [Note: A cluster of islands of which the Island of Birds is one.] H. Baye Françoise. I. Isles aux Oyseaux. L. Rivière des Etechemins. [Note: This letter, placed between the River St. John and the St. Croix, refers to the latter.] M. Menane. N. Port Royal. P. Isle Longue. Q. Cap Fourchu. R. Port au Mouton. S. Port du Rossignol. [Note: The letter S appears twice on the coast of La Cadie. The one here referred to is the more westerly.] SS. Lac de Medicis. [Note: This reference is probably to the Lake of Two Mountains, which will be seen on the map west of Montreal.] T. Sesambre. V. Cap des Deux Bayes. 3. L'Isle aux Coudres. 4. Saincte Croix. [Note: St. Croix on the map is where a cross surmounted by the figure 4 may be seen.] 4. Rivière des Etechemins. [Note: This appears to refer to the Chaudière. _Vide_ vol. I. p. 296.] 5. Sault. [Note: This refers to the Falls of Montmorency.] 6. Lac Sainct Pierre. 7. Rivière des Yroquois. 9. Isle aux Lieures. 10. Rivière Platte. [Note: A small river flowing into Mal Bay. _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 295; also _Les Voyages de Champlain_, Quebec ed., p. 1099.] 11. Mantane. [Note: _Vide_ Vol. I. p 234.] 40. Cap Saincte Marie. [Note: The figures are wanting. Cape St. Mary is on the southern coast of Newfoundland. _Vide_ Vol I. p. 232.] ENDNOTES: 228. The determination of longitudes has from the beginning been environed with almost insuperable difficulties. At one period the declination of the magnetic needle was supposed to furnish the means of a practical solution. Sebastian Cabot devoted considerable attention to the subject, as did likewise Peter Plancius at a later date. Champlain appears to have fixed the longitudes on his smaller map by calculations based on the variation of the needle, guided by the principles laid down by Guillaume de Nautonier, Sieur de Castelfranc, to whose work he refers in the text. It was entitled, _Mécométrie de l'eymant c'est à dire la manière de mesurer les longitudes par le moyen de l'eymant_. This rare volume is not to be found as far as my inquiries extend, in any of the incorporated libraries on this continent. There is however a copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, to which in the catalogue is given the bibliographical note: _Six livres. Folio. Tolose, 1603_. It is hardly necessary to add that the forces governing the variation of the needle, both local and general, are so inconstant that the hope of fixing longitudes by it was long since abandoned. The reason for the introduction of the explanation of the maps at this place will be seen _antea_, p. 39. 229. The rose is the face or card of the mariner's compass. It was anciently called the fly. Card may perhaps be derived from the Italian cardo, a thistle, which the face of the compass may be supposed to resemble. On the complete circle of the compass there are thirty-two lines drawn from the centre to the circumference to indicate the direction of the wind. Each quarter of the circle, or 90°, contains eight lines representing the points of the compass in that quarter. They are named with reference to the cardinal points from which they begin, as: 1, north, 2, north by east, 3, north-northeast; 4, northeast by north; 5, northeast; 6, northeast by east; 7, east- northeast; 8, east by north. The points in each quarter are named in a similar manner. 230. The above title is on the large map of 1612. This note is on the upper left-hand corner of the same map. 231. For this note see the upper right-hand corner of the map. 232. In Champlain's issue in 1613, the note here given was placed in the preliminary matter to that volume. It was placed there probably after the rest of the work had gone to press. We have placed it here in connection with other matter relating to the maps, where it seems more properly to belong. 233. This refers to the fourth voyage of Henry Hudson, made in 1610, for the purpose here indicated. He penetrated Lomley's Inlet, hoping to find a passage through to the Pacific Ocean, or, as it was then called, the South Sea, and thus find a direct and shorter course to China. He passed the winter at about 52° north latitude, in that expanse of water which has ever since been appropriately known as Hudson's Bay. A mutiny having broken out among his crew, he and eight others having been forced into a small boat, on the 21st of June, 1611, were set adrift on the sea, and were never heard of afterward. A part of the mutinous crew arrived with the ship in England, and were immediately thrown into prison. The following year, 1612, an expedition under Sir Thomas Button was sent out to seek for Hudson, and to prosecute the search still further for a northwest passage. It is needless to add that the search was unsuccessful. A chart by Hudson fortunately escaped destruction by the mutineers. Singularly enough, an engraving of it, entitled, TABVLA NAVTICA, was published by Heffel Gerritz at Amsterdam the same year. Champlain incorporated the part of it illustrating Hudson's discovery in his smaller map, which is dated the same year, 1612. He does not introduce it into his large map, although that is dated likewise 1612. A facsimile of the Tabula Nautica is given in Henry Hudson the Navigator, by G. M. Asher, LL.D. published by the Hakluyt Society in 1860. 
7147	----	THE FRENCH IN THE HEART OF AMERICA BY JOHN FINLEY PREFACE Most of what is here written was spoken many months ago in the Amphithéâtre Richelieu of the Sorbonne, in Paris, and some of it in Lille, Nancy, Dijon, Lyons, Grenoble, Montpellier, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Poitiers, Rennes, and Caen; and all of it was in the American publisher's hands before the great war came, effacing, with its nearer adventures, perils, sufferings, and anxieties, the dim memories of the days when the French pioneers were out in the Mississippi Valley, "The Heart of America." As it was spoken, the purpose was to freshen and brighten for the French the memory of what some of them had seemingly wished to forget and to visualize to them the vigorous, hopeful, achieving life that is passing before that background of Gallic venturing and praying. It was planned also to publish the book simultaneously in France; and, less than a week before the then undreamed-of war, the manuscript was carried for that purpose to Paris and left for translation in the hands of Madame Boutroux, the wife of the beloved and eminent Émile Boutroux, head of the Fondation Thiers, and sister of the illustrious Henri Poincaré. But wounded soldiers soon came to fill the chambers of the scholars there, and the wife and mother has had to give all her thought to those who have hazarded their all for the France that is. But it was my hope that what was spoken in Paris might some day be read in America, and particularly in that valley which the French evoked from the unknown, that those who now live there might know before what a valorous background they are passing, though I can tell them less of it than they will learn from the Homeric Parkman, if they will but read his immortal story. My first debt is to him; but I must include with him many who made their contributions to these pages as I wrote them in Paris. The quotation- marks, diligent and faithful as they have tried to be, have, I fear, not reached all who have assisted, but my gratitude extends to every source of fact and to every guide of opinion along the way, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, even if I have not in every instance known or remembered his name. As without Parkman's long labors I could not have prepared these chapters, so without the occasion furnished by the Hyde Foundation and the nomination made by the President of Harvard University to the exchange lectureship, I should not have undertaken this delightful filial task. The readers' enjoyment and profit of the result will not be the full measure of my gratitude to Mr. James H. Hyde, the author of the Foundation, to President Lowell, and to him whose confidence in me persuaded me to it. But I hope these enjoyments and profits will add something to what I cannot adequately express. That what was written could, in the midst of official duties, be prepared for the press is due largely to the patient, verifying, proof-reading labors of Mr. Frank L. Tolman, my young associate in the State Library. The title of this book (appearing first as the general title for some of these chapters in _Scribner's Magazine_ in 1912) has a purely geographical connotation. But I advise the reader, in these days of bitterness, to go no further if he carry any hatred in his heart. JOHN FINLEY. STATE EDUCATION BUILDING, ALBANY, N. Y. Washington's Birthday, 1915. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. FROM LABRADOR TO THE LAKES III. THE PATHS OF THE GRAY FRIARS AND BLACK GOWNS IV. FROM THE GREAT LAKES TO THE GULF V. THE RIVER COLBERT: A COURSE AND SCENE OF EMPIRE VI. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE AND THE DREAM OF ITS REVIVAL VII. THE PEOPLING OF THE WILDERNESS VIII. THE PARCELLING OF THE DOMAIN IX. IN THE TRAILS OF THE COUREURS DE BOIS X. IN THE WAKE OF THE "GRIFFIN" XI WESTERN CITIES THAT HAVE SPRUNG FROM FRENCH FORTS XII. WESTERN TOWNS AND CITIES THAT HAVE SPRUNG FROM FRENCH PORTAGE PATHS XIII. FROM LA SALLE TO LINCOLN XIV. THE VALLEY OF THE NEW DEMOCRACY XV. WASHINGTON: THE UNION OF THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN WATERS XVI. THE PRODUCERS XVII. THE THOUGHT OF TO-MORROW XVIII. "THE MEN OF ALWAYS" XIX. THE HEART OF AMERICA EPILOGUE THE FRENCH IN THE HEART OF AMERICA From "a series of letters to a friend in England," in 1793, "tending to shew the probable rise and grandeur of the American Empire": "_It struck me as a natural object of enquiry to what a future increase and elevation of magnitude and grandeur the spreading empire of America might attain, when a country had thus suddenly risen from an uninhabited wild, to the quantum of population necessary to govern and regulate its own administration._" G. IMLAY ("A captain in the American Army during the late war, and a commissioner for laying out land in the back settlements"). CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I address the reader as living in the land from which the pioneers of France went out to America; first, because I wrote these chapters in that land, a few steps from the Seine; second, because I should otherwise have to assume the familiarity of the reader with much that I have gathered into these chapters, though the reader may have forgotten or never known it; and, third, because I wish the reader to look at these new-world regions from without, and, standing apart and aloof, to see the present restless life of these valleys, especially of the Mississippi Valley, against the background of Gallic adventure and pious endeavor which is seen in richest color, highest charm, and truest value at a distance. But, while I must ask my readers in America to expatriate themselves in their imaginations and to look over into this valley as aliens, I wish them to know that I write, though myself in temporary exile, as a son of the Mississippi Valley, as a geographical descendant of France; that my commission is given me of my love for the boundless stretch of prairie and plain whose virgin sod I have broken with my plough; of the lure of the waterways and roads where I have followed the boats and the trails of French voyageurs and coureurs de bois; and of the possessing interest of the epic story of the development of that most virile democracy known to the world. The "Divine River," discovered by the French, ran near the place of my birth. My county was that of "La Salle," a division of the land of the Illinois, "the land of men." The Fort, or the Rock, St. Louis, built by La Salle and Tonty, was only a few miles distant. A little farther, a town, Marquette, stands near the place where the French priest and explorer, Père Marquette, ministered to the Indians. Up-stream, a busy city keeps the name of Joliet on the lips of thousands, though the brave explorer would doubtless not recognize it as his own; and below, the new- made Hennepin Canal makes a shorter course to the Mississippi River than that which leads by the ruins of La Salle's Fort Crèvecoeur. It is of such environment that these chapters were suggested, and it has been by my love for it, rather than by any profound scholarship, that they have been dictated. I write not as a scholar--since most of my life has been spent in action, not in study--but as an academic coureur de bois and of what I have known and seen in the Valley of Democracy, the fairest and most fruitful of the regions where France was pioneer in America. There should be written in further preface to all the chapters which follow a paragraph from the beloved historian to whom I am most indebted and of whom I shall speak later at length. I first read its entrancing sentences when a youth in college, a quarter of a century ago, and I have never been free of its spell. I would have it written not only in France but somewhere at the northern portals of the American continent, on the cliffs of the Saguenay, or on that Rock of Quebec which saw the first vessel of the French come up the river and supported the last struggle for formal dominion of a land which the French can never lose, _except by forgetting_: "Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for Civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil." [Footnote: Parkman: "Pioneers of France in the New World." New library edition. Introduction, xii-xiii.] These are the regions we are to explore, and these are the men with whom we are to begin the journey. CHAPTER II FROM LABRADOR TO THE LAKES We shall not be able to enter the valley of the Mississippi in this chapter. There is a long stretch of the nearer valley of the St. Lawrence that must first be traversed. Just before I left America in 1910 two men flew in a balloon from St. Louis, the very centre of the Mississippi Valley, to the Labrador gate of the St. Lawrence, the vestibule valley, in a few hours, but it took the French pioneers a whole century and more to make their way out to where those aviators began their flight. We have but a few pages for a journey over a thousand miles of stream and portage and a hundred years of time. I must therefore leave most of the details of suffering from the rigors of the north, starvation, and the Iroquois along the way to your memories, or to your fresh reading of Parkman, Winsor, Fiske, and Thwaites in English, or to Le Clercq, Lescarbot, Champlain, Charlevoix, Sagard, and others in French. The story of the exploration and settlement of those valleys beyond the cod-banks of Newfoundland begins not in the ports of Spain or Portugal, nor in England, but in a little town on the coast of France, standing on a rocky promontory thrust out into the sea, only a few hours' ride from Paris, in the ancient town of St. Malo, the "nursery of hardy mariners," the cradle of the spirit of the West. [Footnote: After reaching Paris on my first journey, the first place to which I made a pilgrimage, even before the tombs of kings and emperors and the galleries of art, was this gray-bastioned town of St. Malo.] For a son of France was the first of Europeans, so far as we certainly know, to penetrate beyond the tidewater of those confronting coasts, the first to step over the threshold of the unguessed continent, north, at any rate, of Mexico. Columbus claimed at most but an Asiatic peninsula, though he knew that he had found only islands. The Cabots, in the service of England, sailing along its mysterious shores, had touched but the fringe of the wondrous garment. Ponce de Leon, a Spaniard, had floundered a few leagues from the sea in Florida searching for the fountain of youth. Narvaez had found the wretched village of Appalache but had been refused admission by the turbid Mississippi and was carried out to an ocean grave by its fierce current; Verrazano, an Italian in the employ of France, living at Rouen, had entered the harbor of New York, had enjoyed the primitive hospitality of what is now a most fashionable seaside resort (Newport), had seen the peaks of the White Mountains from his deck, and, as he supposed, had looked upon the Indian Ocean, or the Sea of Verrazano, which has shrunk to the Chesapeake Bay on our modern maps and now reaches not a fiftieth part of the way to the other shore. It was a true son of France who first had the persistence of courage and the endurance of imagination to enter the continent and see the gates close behind him--Jacques Cartier, a master pilot of St. Malo, commissioned of his own intrepid desire and of the jealous ambition of King Francis I to bring fresh tidings of the mysterious "square gulf," which other Frenchmen, Denys and Aubert, may have entered a quarter of a century earlier, and which it was hoped might disclose a passage to the Indies. It was from St. Malo that Carrier set sail on the highroad to Cathay, as he imagined, one April day in 1534 in two ships of sixty tons each. [Footnote: I crossed back over the same ocean, nearly four hundred years later, to a French port in a steamship of a tonnage equal to that of a fleet of four hundred of Carrier's boats; so has the sea bred giant children of such hardy parentage.] There is preserved in St. Malo what is thought to be a list of those who signed the ship's papers subscribed under Carrier's own hand. It is no such instrument as the "Compact" which the men of the _Mayflower_ signed as they approached the continent nearly a century later, but it is none the less fateful. The autumn leaves had not yet fallen from the trees of Brittany when the two ships that started out in April appeared again in the harbor of St. Malo, carrying two dusky passengers from the New World as proofs of Carrier's ventures. He had made reconnoissance of the gulf behind Newfoundland and returned for fresh means of farther quest toward Cathay. The leaves were but come again on the trees of Brittany when, with a larger crew in three small vessels (one of only forty tons), he again went out with the ebb-tide from St. Malo; his men, some of whom had been gathered from the jails, having all made their confession and attended mass, and received the benediction of the bishop. In August he entered the great river St. Lawrence, whose volume of water was so great as to brighten Carrier's hopes of having found the northern way to India. On he sailed, with his two dusky captives for pilots, seeing with regret the banks of the river gradually draw together and hearing unwelcome word of the freshening of its waters--on past the "gorge of the gloomy Saguenay with its towering cliffs and sullen depths, depths which no sounding-line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a speck"; on past frowning promontory and wild vineyards, to the foot of the scarped cliff of Quebec, now "rich with heroic memories, then but the site of a nameless barbarism"; thence, after parley with the Indian chief Donnacona and his people, on through walls of autumn foliage and frost- touched meadows to where the Lachine Rapids mocked with unceasing laughter those who dreamed of an easy way to China. There, entertained at the Indian capital, he was led to the top of a hill, such as Montmartre, from whose height he saw his Cathay fade into a stretch of leafy desert bounded only by the horizon and threaded by two narrow but hopeful ribbons of water. There, hundreds of miles from the sea, he stood, probably the only European, save for his companions, inside the continent, between Mexico and the Pole; for De Soto had not yet started for his burial in the Mississippi; the fathers of the Pilgrim Fathers were still in their cradles; Narvaez's men had come a little way in shore and vanished; Cabeça de Vaca was making his almost incredible journey from the Texas coast to the Pacific; Captain John Smith was not yet born; and Henry Hudson's name was to remain obscure for three quarters of a century. Francis I had sneeringly inquired of Charles V if he and the King of Portugal had parcelled out the world between them, and asked to see the last will and testament of the patriarch Adam. If King Francis had been permitted to see it, he would have found a codicil for France written that day against the bull of Pope Alexander VI and against the hazy English claim of the Cabots. For the river, "the greatest without comparison," as Cartier reported later to his king, "that is known to have ever been seen," carried drainage title to a realm larger many times than all the lands of the Seine and the Rhone and the Loire, and richer many times than the land of spices to which the falls of Lachine, "the greatest and swiftest fall of water that any where hath beene scene," seemed now to guard the way. "Hochelaga" the Indians called their city--the capital of the river into which the sea had narrowed, a thousand miles inland from the coasts of Labrador which but a few years before were the dim verge of the world and were believed even then to be infested with griffins and fiends--a city which vanished within the next three quarters of a century. For when Champlain came in 1611 to this site to build his outpost, not a trace was left of the palisades which Cartier describes and one of his men pictures, not an Indian was left of the population that gave such cordial welcome to Cartier. And for all Champlain's planning it was still a meadow and a forest--the spring flowers "blooming in the young grass" and birds of varied plumage flitting "among the boughs"--when the mystic and soldier Maisonneuve and his associates of Montreal, forty men and four women, in an enterprise conceived in the ancient Church of St. Germain-des-Prés and consecrated to the Holy Family by a solemn ceremonial at Notre-Dame, knelt upon this same ground in 1642 before the hastily reared and decorated altar while Father Vimont, standing in rich vestments, addressed them. "You are," he said, "a grain of mustard-seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is on you and your children shall fill the land." [Footnote: François Dollier de Casson, "Histoire du Montreal," quoted in Parkman's "Jesuits in North America," p. 209, a free rendering of the original. "Voyez-vous, messieurs, dit-il, ce que vous voyez n'est qu'un grain de moutarde, mais il est jeté par des mains si pieuses et animées de l'esprit de la foi et de la religion que sans doute il faut que le ciele est de grands desseins puisqu'il se sert de tels ouvriers, et je ne fais aucun doute que ce petit grain ne produise un grand arbre, ne fasse un jour des merveilles, ne soit multiplié et ne s'étende de toutes parts."] Parkman (from the same French authority) finishes the picture of the memorable day: "The afternoon waned; the sun sank behind the western forest, and twilight came on. Fireflies were twinkling over the darkened meadow. They caught them, tied them with threads into shining festoons and hung them before the altar, where the Host remained exposed. Then they pitched their tents, lighted their bivouac fires, stationed their guards and lay down to rest. Such was the birth-night of Montreal." [Footnote: François Dollier de Casson, "Histoire du Montreal," quoted in Parkman's "Jesuits in North America," p. 209, a free rendering of the original. "On avait point de lampes ardentes devant le St. Sacrement, mais on avait certaines mouches brillantes qui y luisaient fort agréablement jour et nuit étant suspendues par des filets d'une façon admirable et belle, et toute propre à honorer selon la rusticité de ce pays barbare, le plus adorable de nos mystères."] On the both of September in 1910 two hundred thousand people knelt in that same place before an out-of-door altar, and the incandescent lights were the fireflies of a less romantic and a more practical age. Maisonneuve and Mademoiselle Mance would have been enraptured by such a scene, but it would have given even greater satisfaction to the pilot of St. Malo if he could have seen that commercial capital of the north lying beneath the mountain which still bears the name he gave it, and stretching far beyond the bounds of the palisaded Hochelaga. It should please France to know that nearly two hundred thousand French keep the place of the footprint of the first pioneer, Jacques Cartier. When a few weeks before my coming to France I was making my way by a trail down the side of Mount Royal through the trees--some of which may have been there in Cartier's day--two lads, one of as beautiful face as I have ever seen, though tear-stained, emerged from the bushes and begged me, in a language which Jacques Cartier would have understood better than I, to show them the way back to "rue St. Maurice," which I did, finding that street to be only a few paces from the place where Champlain had made a clearing for his "Place Royale" in the midst of the forest three hundred years ago. That beautiful boy, Jacques Jardin, brown-eyed, bare-kneed, in French soldier's cap, is to me the living incarnation of the adventure which has made even that chill wilderness blossom as a garden in Brittany. But to come back to Cartier. It was too late in the season to make further explorations where the two rivers invited to the west and northwest, so Cartier joined the companions who had been left near Quebec to build a fort and make ready for the winter. As if to recall that bitter weather, the hail beat upon the windows of the museum at St. Malo on the day when I was examining there the relics of the vessel which Cartier was obliged to leave in the Canadian river, because so many of his men had died of scurvy and exposure that he had not sufficient crew to man the three ships home. And probably not a man would have been left and not even the _Grande Hermine_ would have come back if a specific for scurvy had not been found before the end of the winter--a decoction learned of the Indians and made from the bark or leaves of a tree so efficacious that if all the "doctors of Lorraine and Montpellier had been there, with all the drugs of Alexandria, they could not have done so much in a year as the said tree did in six days; for it profited us so much that all those who would use it recovered health and soundness, thanks to God." Cartier appears again in July, 1536, before the ramparts of St. Malo with two of his vessels. The savages on the St. Charles were given the _Petite Hermine_, [Footnote: James Phinney Baxter, "A Memoir of Jacques Cartier," p. 200, writes: "The remains of this ship, the _Petite Hermine_, were discovered in 1843, in the river St. Charles, at the mouth of the rivulet known as the Lairet. These precious relics were found buried under five feet of mud, and were divided into two portions, one of which was placed in the museum of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, and destroyed by fire in 1854. The other portion was sent to the museum at St. Malo, where it now remains. For a particular account _vide Le Canadien_ of August 25, and the _Quebec Gazette_ of August 30, 1843; 'Transactions of the Quebec Literary and Historical Society for 1862'; and 'Picturesque Quebec,' Le Moine, Montreal, 1862, pp. 484-7."] its nails being accepted in part requital for the temporary loss of their chief. Donnacona, whom Cartier kidnapped. A cross was left standing on the shores of the St. Lawrence with the fleur-de-lis planted near it. Donnacona was presented to King Francis and baptized, and with all his exiled companions save one was buried, where I have not yet learned, but probably somewhere out on that headland of France nearest Stadacone, the seat of his lost kingdom. Cartier busied himself in St. Malo (or Limoilou) till called upon, in 1541, when peace was restored in France to take the post of captain- general of a new expedition under Sieur de Roberval, "Lord of Norembega, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General of Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay and Baccalaos," [Footnote: Baxter, "Memoir of Jacques Cartier," note, p. 40, writes: "These titles are given on the authority of Charlevoix, 'Histoire de la Nouvelle France,' Paris, 1744, tome I, p. 32. Reference, however, to the letters patent of January 15, 1540, from which he professes to quote and which are still preserved and can be identified as the same which he says were to be found in the Etat Ordinaire des Guerres in the Chambre des Comptes at Paris, does not bear out his statement."] with a commission of discovery, settlement, and conversion of the Indians, and with power to ransack the prisons for material with which to carry out these ambitious and pious designs, thereby, as the king said, employing "clemency in doing a merciful and meritorious work toward some criminals and malefactors, that by this they may recognize the Creator by rendering Him thanks, and amending their lives." Again Cartier (Roberval having failed to arrive in time) sets out; again he passes the gloomy Saguenay and the cliff of Quebec; again he leaves his companions to prepare for the winter; again he ascends the river to explore the rapids, still dreaming of the way to Asia; again after a miserable winter he sails back to France, eluding Roberval a year late, and carrying but a few worthless quartz diamonds and a little sham gold. Then Roberval, the Lord of Norembega, reigns alone in his vast and many-titled domain, for another season of snows and famine, freely using the lash and gibbet to keep his penal colonists in subjection; and then, according to some authorities, supported by the absence of Carder's name from the local records of St. Malo for a few months, Cartier was sent out to bring the Lord of Norembega home. So Cartier's name passes from the pages of history, even if it still appears again in the records of St. Malo, and he spends the rest of his days on the rugged little peninsula thrust out from France toward the west, as it were a hand. A few miles out of St. Malo the Breton tenants of the Cartier manor, Port Cartier, to-day carry their cauliflower and carrots to market and seemingly wonder at my curiosity in seeking Cartier's birthplace rather than Châteaubriand's tomb. It were far fitter that Cartier instead of Châteaubriand should have been buried out on the "Plage" beyond the ramparts, exiled for a part of every day by the sea, for the amphibious life of this master pilot, going in and out of the harbor with the tide, had added to France a thousand miles of coast and river, had opened the door of the new world, beyond the banks of the Baccalaos, to the imaginations of Europe, and unwittingly showed the way not to Asia, but to a valley with which Asia had nothing to compare. For a half century after Cartier's home bringing of Roberval--the very year that De Soto's men quitted in misery the lower valley of the Mississippi--there is no record of a sail upon the river St. Lawrence. Hochelaga became a waste, its tenants annihilated or scattered, and Cartier's fort was all but obliterated. The ambitious symbols of empire were alternately buried in snows and blistered by heat. France had too much to think of at home. But still, as Parkman says, "the wandering Esquimaux saw the Norman and Breton sails hovering around some lonely headland or anchored in fleets in the harbor of St. John, and still through salt spray and driving mist, the fishermen dragged up the riches of the sea." For "codfish must still be had for Lent and fast-days." Another authority pictures the Breton babies of this period playing with trinkets made of walrus tusks, and the Norman maidens decked in furs brought by their brothers from the shores of Anticosti and Labrador. Meanwhile in Brouage on the Bay of Biscay a boy is born whose spirit, nourished of the tales of the new world, is to make a permanent colony where Cartier had found and left a wilderness, and is to write his name foremost on the "bright roll of forest chivalry"--Samuel Champlain. Once the sea, I am told, touched the massive walls of Brouage. There are still to be seen, several feet below the surface, rings to which mariners and fishermen moored their boats--they who used to come to Brouage for salt with which to cure their fish, they whose stories of the Newfoundland cod-banks stirred in the boy Champlain the desire for discovery beyond their fogs. The boys in the school of Hiers-Brouage a mile away--in the Mairie where I went to consult the parish records--seemed to know hardly more of that land which the Brouage boy of three centuries before had lifted out of the fogs by his lifelong heroic adventures than did the boy Champlain, which makes me feel that till all French children know of, and all American children remember Brouage, the story of France in America needs to be retold. The St. Lawrence Valley has not forgotten, but I could not learn that a citizen of the Mississippi Valley had made recent pilgrimage to this spot. [Footnote: For an interesting account of Brouage to-day, see "Acadiensis," 4:226.] In the year of Champlain's birth the frightful colonial tragedy in Florida was nearing its end. By the year 1603 he had, in Spanish employ, made a voyage of two years in the West Indies, the unique illustrated journal [Footnote: "Brief Discours des Choses plus remarquables que Sammuel Champlain de Brouage, reconnues aux Indies Occidentalles au voiage qu'il en a faict en icelles en l'annee V'C IIIJ'XX XIX (1599) et en l'annee VJ'C J (1601) comme ensuite." Now in English translation by Hakluyt Society, 1859.] of which in his own hand was for two centuries and more in Dieppe, but has recently been acquired by a library in the United States [Footnote: The John Carter Brown Library at Providence, R. I.]--a journal most precious especially in its prophecy of the Panama Canal: [Footnote: Several earlier Spanish suggestions for a canal had been made. See M. F. Johnson, "Four Centuries of the Panama Canal."] "One might judge, if the territory four leagues in extent, lying between Panama and the river were cut thru, he could pass from the south sea to that on the other side, and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues. From Panama to Magellan would constitute an island, and from Panama to Newfoundland would constitute another, so that the whole of America would be in two islands." He had also made one expedition to the St. Lawrence, reaching the deserted Hochelaga, seeing the Lachine Rapids, and getting vague reports of the unknown West. He must have been back in Paris in time to see the eleven survivors of La Roche's unsuccessful expedition of 1590, who, having lived twelve years and more on Sable Island, were rescued and brought before King Henry IV, "standing like river gods" in their long beards and clad in shaggy skins. During the next three years this indefatigable, resourceful pioneer assisted in founding Acadia and exploring the Atlantic coast southward. Boys and girls in America are familiar with the story of the dispersion of the Acadians, a century and more later, as preserved in our literature by the poet Longfellow. But doubtless not one in a hundred thousand has ever read the earlier chapters of that Aeneid. The best and the meanest of France were of the company that set out from Dieppe to be its colonists: men of highest condition and character, and vagabonds, Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers, soldiers and artisans. There were theological discussions which led to blows before the colonists were far at sea. Fiske, the historian, says the "ship's atmosphere grew as musty with texts and as acrid with quibbles as that of a room at the Sorbonne." There was the incident of the wandering of Nicolas Aubry, "more skilled in the devious windings of the [Latin Quarter] than in the intricacies of the Acadian Forest," where he was lost for sixteen days and subsisted on berries and wild fruits; there was the ravage of the relentless maladie de terre, scurvy, for which Cartier's specific could not be found though the woods were scoured; there were the explorations of beaches and harbors and islands and rivers, including the future Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, and the accurate mapping of all that coast now so familiar; there were the arrivals of the ship _Jonas_ once with temporal supplies and again, as the _Mayflower of the Jesuits_, with spiritual teachers; there was the "Order of Good Times," which flourished with as good cheer and as good food at Port Royal in the solitude of the continent as the gourmands at the Rue aux Ours had in Paris and that, too, at a cheaper rate; [Footnote: "Though the epicures of Paris often tell us we have no Rue aux Ours over there, as a rule we made as good cheer as we could have in this same Rue aux Ours and at less cost." Lescarbot, "Champlain Society Publication," 7:342.] there was later the news of the death of Henry IV heard from a fisherman of Newfoundland; and there was, above all else except the "indomitable tenacity" of Champlain, the unquenchable enthusiasm, lively fancy, and good sense of Lescarbot, the verse-making advocate from Paris. There is so much of tragic suffering and gloom in all this epic of the forests that one is tempted to spend more time than one ought, perhaps, on that bit of European clearing (the only spot, save one, as yet in all the continent north of Florida and Mexico), in the jolly companionship of that young poet-lawyer who had doubtless sat under lecturers in Paris and who would certainly have been quite as capable and entertaining as any lecturers on the new world brought in these later days from America to Paris, a man "who won the good-will of all and spared himself naught," "who daily invented something for the public good," and who gave the strongest proof of what advantage "a new settlement might derive from a mind cultivated by study and induced by patriotism to use its knowledge and reflections." It cannot seem unworthy of the serious purpose of this book to let the continent lie a few minutes longer in its savage slumber, or, as the Jesuits thought it, "blasted beneath the sceptre of hell," while we accompany Poutrincourt and Champlain, returning wounded and weather-beaten from inspecting the coast of New England, to find the buildings of Port Royal, under Lescarbot's care, bright with lights, and an improvised arch bearing the arms of Poutrincourt and De Monts, to be received by Neptune, who, accompanied by a retinue of Tritons, declaimed Alexandrine couplets of praise and welcome, and to sit at the sumptuous table of the Order of Good Times, of which I have just spoken, furnished by this same lawyer- poet's agricultural industry. We may even stop a moment longer to hear his stately appeal to France, which, heeded by her, would have made Lescarbot's a name familiar in the homes of America instead of one known only to those who delve in libraries: "France, fair eye of the universe, nurse from old of letters and of arms, resource to the afflicted, strong stay to the Christian religion, Dear Mother ... your children, our fathers and predecessors, have of old been masters of the sea.... They have with great power occupied Asia.... They have carried the arms and the name of France to the east and south.... All these are marks of your greatness, ... but you must now enter again upon old paths, in so far as they have been abandoned, and expand the bounds of your piety, justice and humanity, by teaching these things to the nations of New France.... Our ancient practice of the sea must be revived, we must ally the east with the west and convert those people to God before the end of the world come.... You must make an alliance in imitation of the course of the sun, for as he daily carries his light hence to New France, so let your civilization, your light, be carried thither by your children, who henceforth, by the frequent voyages they shall make to these western lands, shall be called children of the sea, which is, being interpreted, children of the west." [Footnote: Lescarbot, "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," 1618, pp. 15-22.] "Children of the west." His fervid appeal found as little response then as doubtless it would find if made to-day, and the children of the sea were interpreted as the children of the south of Africa. The sons of France have ever loved their homes. They have, except the adventurous few, preferred to remain children of the rivers and the sea of their fathers, and so it is that few of Gallic blood were "spawned," to use Lescarbot's metaphor, in that chill continent, though the venturing or missionary spirit of such as Cartier and Champlain, Poutrincourt and De Monts gave spawn of such heroism and unselfish sacrifice as have made millions in America whom we now call "children of the west," geographical offspring of Brittany and Normandy and Picardy. The lilies of France and the escutcheons of De Monts and Poutrincourt, painted by Lescarbot for the castle in the wilderness, faded; the sea which Lescarbot, as Neptune, impersonated in the pageant of welcome, and the English ships received back those who had not been gathered into the cemetery on land; and the first agricultural colony in the northern wilds lapsed for a time at least into a fur traders' station or a place of call for fishermen. It was only by locating these points on Champlain's map of Port Royal that I was able to find in 1911 the site of the ancient fort, garden, fish- pond, and cemetery. The men unloading a schooner a few rods away seemed not to know of Lescarbot or Poutrincourt or even Champlain, but that was perhaps because they were not accustomed to my tongue. The unquiet Champlain left Acadia in the summer of 1607, the charter having been withdrawn by the king. In the winter of 1607-8 he walked the streets of Paris as in a dream, we are told, longing for the northern wilderness, where he had left his heart four years before. In the spring of 1608 the white whales are floundering around his lonely ship in the river of his dreams. At the foot of the gray rock of Quebec he makes the beginning of a fort, whence he plans to go forth to trace the rivers to their sources, discover, perchance, a northern route to the Indies, and make a path for the priests to the countless savages "in bondage of Satan." Parkman speaks of him as the "Aeneas of a destined people," and he is generally called the "father of Canada." But I think of him rather as a Prometheus who, after his years of bravest defiance of elements and Indians, is to have his heart plucked out day by day, chained to that same gray rock--only that death instead of Herculean succor came. There is space for only the briefest recital of the exploits and endurances of the stout heart and hardy frame of the man of whom any people of any time might well be proud. The founding of Quebec, the rearing of the pile of wooden buildings where the lower town now stretches along the river; the unsuccessful plot to kill Champlain before the fort is finished; the death of all of the twenty-eight men save eight before the coming of the first spring--these are the incidents of the first chapter. The visit to the Iroquois country; the discovery of the lake that bears his name; the first portentous collision with the Indians of the Five Nations, undertaken to keep the friendship of the Indian tribes along the St. Lawrence; a winter in France; the breaking of ground for a post at Montreal; another visit to France to find means for the rescue and sustenance of his fading colony, make a depressing second chapter. Then follows the journey up the Ottawa with the young De Vignau, who had stirred Paris by claiming that he had at last found the northwest passage to the Pacific, when he had in fact spent the winter in an Indian lodge not two hundred miles from Montreal; the noble forgiveness of De Vignau by Champlain; his crestfallen return and his going forth from France again in 1615 with four Récollet friars (Franciscans of the strict observance) of the convent of his birthplace (Brouage) inflamed by him with holy zeal for the continent of savages. For a little these "apostolic mendicants" in their gray robes girt with the white cord, their feet naked or shod in wooden sandals, tarried beneath the gray rock and then set forth east, north, and west, soon (1626) to be followed and reinforced by their brothers of stronger resources, the Jesuits, the "black gowns," upon a mission whose story is as marvellous as a "tale of chivalry or legends of lives of the saints." Meanwhile Champlain, exploring the regions to the northwest, is the first of white men to look upon the first of the Great Lakes--the "Mer Douce" (Lake Huron) being discovered before the lakes to the south--the first after the boy Étienne Brûlé and Friar Le Caron: the latter having gone before him, celebrated the first mass on Champlain's arrival the 12th of August, 1615, a day "marked with white in the friar's calendar," and deserving to be marked with red in the calendar of the west. There follow twenty restless years in which Champlain's efforts are divided between discovery and strengthening the little colony, and his occupations between holding his Indian allies who lived along the northern pathway to the west, fighting their enemies to the south, the Iroquois, restraining the jealousies of merchants and priests, trade and missions, reconciling Catholics and Huguenots, going nearly every year to France in the interests of the colony, building and repairing, yielding for a time to the overpowering ships of the English. The grizzled soldier and explorer, restored and commissioned anew under the fostering and firm support of Richelieu, struggled to the very end of his life to make the feeble colony, which eighteen years after its founding "could scarcely be said to exist but in the founder's brain," not chiefly an agricultural settlement but a spiritual centre from which the interior was to be explored and the savage hordes won--at the same time to heaven and to France--subdued not by being crushed but by being civilized, not by the sword but by the cross. It was a far different colony that was beginning to grow fronting the harbor of Plymouth, where men quite as intolerant of priests as Richelieu was intolerant of Huguenots were building homes and making firesides in enjoyment of religious and political freedom. Champlain lay dying as the year 1635 went out, asking more help from his patron Richelieu, but his great task had been accomplished. The St. Lawrence had been opened, the first two of the Great Lakes had been reached, and explorer and priest were already on the edge of that farther valley of the "Missipi," which we are to enter in the next chapter. CHAPTER III THE PATHS OF THE GRAY FRIARS AND BLACK GOWNS It was exactly a hundred years, according to some authorities, after Jacques Cartier opened and passed through the door of the St. Lawrence Valley that another son of France, Jean Nicolet, again the first of Europeans so far as is now certainly known, looked over into the great valley of the Mississippi from the north. Champlain, dying beneath the Rock of Quebec, had touched two of the Great Lakes twenty years before. He never knew probably that another of those immense inland seas lay between, though, as his last map indicates, he had some word several years before his death of a greater sea beyond, where now two mighty lakes, the largest bodies of fresh water on the globe, carry their sailless fleets and nourish the life of millions on their shores. From the coureurs de bois, "runners of the woods," whom he, tied by the interests of his feeble colony to the Rock, had sent out, enviously no doubt, upon journeys of exploration and arbitration among the Indians, and from the Gray Friars and Black Gowns who, inflamed of his spirit, had gone forth through the solitudes from Indian village to village, from suffering to suffering, reports had come which he must have been frequently translating with his practised hand into river and shore line of this precious map, the original of which is still kept among the proud archives of France. He was disappointed the while, I have no doubt, that still the fresh water kept flowing from the west, and that still there was no word of the salt sea. The straight line which makes the western border of his map is merciful of his ignorance, but merciless of his hopes. It admits no stream that does not flow into one of the lakes or into the St. Lawrence. But it was made probably four years before his death and it is possible, indeed probable, that just before paralysis came upon him, he had heard through the famous coureur de bois, Jean Nicolet, whom he had despatched the year previous, of a river which this man of the woods had descended so far that "in three days more" he would have reached what the Indians called the "Great Water." [Footnote: The Mississippi. Nicolet probably did not go beyond the Fox portage. See C. W. Butterfield, "The Discovery of the Northwest by Jean Nicolet."] There is good reason, in the appointment of this same coureur de bois as a commissioner and interpreter at Three Rivers, for thinking (as one wishes to think) that like Moses, Champlain had, through him a vision of the valley which he himself might not enter, but which his compatriots were to possess. The historian Bancroft said of that land: "Not a cape was turned, not a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." But the men of sandalled feet had not yet penetrated so far in 1635. It is an interesting tribute to these spiritual pioneers, however, that the particular rough coureur de bois who first looked into that far valley of solitude, inhabited only by Indians and buffaloes and other untamed beasts, would doubtless never have left his Indian habits and returned to civilization if he could have lived without the sacraments of the church. This coureur de bois Nicolet presents a grotesque appearance as he mounts the rims of the two valleys where the two bowls touch each other, bowls so full that in freshet the water sometimes overflows the brim and makes one continuous valley. Nicolet would not be recognized for the Frenchman that he was, as he appears yonder; for, having been told that the men whom he was to meet were without hair upon their faces and heads, and thinking himself to be near the confines of China, he had attired himself as one about to be received at an Oriental court. Accordingly, he stands upon the edge of the prairies in a robe of Chinese damask embroidered with flowers and birds-- but with a pistol in each hand. Having succeeded in his mission to these barbarians (for such he found them to be, wearing breech-clouts instead of robes of silk), he was impelled or lured over into the great valley, it is believed. He passed from the lake on the border of Champlain's map [Footnote: Lake Michigan.] up a river (the Fox) that by and by became but a stream over which one might jump. He portaged from this stream or creek across a narrow strip of prairie, only a mile wide, to the Wisconsin River, a tributary of the Mississippi. The statement over which I have pondered, walking along that river, that he might have reached the "great water" in three more days, is intelligible only in this interpretation of his course. The next Europeans to look out over the edge of the basin of the lakes were two other sons of France, one a man of St. Malo, Radisson, a voyageur and coureur de bois, the other his brother-in-law, Groseilliers (1654). It is thought that these companions went all the way to the Mississippi and so became the discoverers of her northern waters. The journal of the voyage is unfortunately somewhat obscure. The great "rivers that divide themselves in two" are many in that valley, and no one can be certain of the identity of that river "called the forked" mentioned in the "relation" of Radisson, which had "two branches, one towards the west, the other towards the south," and, as the travellers believed, ran toward Mexico. [Footnote: See Warren Upham. Groseilliers and Radisson, the first white men in Minnesota, 1655-6 and 1659-60, and their discovery of the Upper Mississippi River, in Minn. Historical Society Collections, 10:449-594.] Then came the Hooded Faces, the friars and the priests. To the four Récollet friars whom Champlain brought out with him in 1615 from the convent of his native town (Brouage), Jamay, D'Olbeau, Le Caron, and a lay brother, Du Plessis, others were added, but there were not more than six in all for the missions extending from Acadia to where Champlain found Le Caron in 1615 in the vicinity of Lake Huron. Their experiences and ardor (not unlike those of other missionaries in other continents and in our own times) have illustration in this extract from a letter written by Le Caron: "It would be difficult to tell you the fatigue I have suffered, having been obliged to have my paddle in hand all day long and row with all my strength with the Indians. I have more than a hundred times walked in the rivers over the sharp rocks, which cut my feet, in the mud, in the woods, where I carried the canoe and my little baggage, in order to avoid the rapids and frightful waterfalls. I say nothing of the painful fast which beset us, having only a little sagamity, which is a kind of pulmentum composed of water and the meal of Indian corn, a small quantity of which is dealt out to us morning and evening. Yet I must avow that amid my pains I felt much consolation. For alas! when we see such a great number of infidels, and nothing but a drop of water is needed to make them children of God, one feels an ardor which I cannot express to labor for their conversion and to sacrifice for it one's repose and life." [Footnote: Le Clercq, "First Establishment of the Faith in New France (Shea)," 1:95.] "Six months before the Pilgrims began their meeting-house on the burial hill at Plymouth," he and his brother priests laid the corner-stone of "the earliest church erected in French-America." It was a bitter disappointment when, in 1629, he was carried away by the English from his infant mission to spend his latter days far from his savage converts, perhaps in his whitewashed cell in the convent of Brouage, and to administer before an altar where it was not necessary to have neophytes wave green boughs to drive off the mosquitoes--those pestiferous insects from whose persecutions a brother Récollet said he suffered his "worst martyrdom" in America. But more bitter chagrin was in store for Le Caron, for when the French returned to Quebec, in 1632, after the restoration under the treaty, the Gray Apostles of the White Cord (who had invited the Black Gowns to join them in their missions years before and had so hospitably entertained them when denied shelter elsewhere in Quebec) were not permitted to be of the company. [Footnote: Le Caron, says Le Clercq, when he "saw all his efforts were useless, experienced the same fate as Saint Francis Xavier, who when on the point of entering China, found so many secret obstacles to his pious design that he fell sick and died of chagrin. So was Father Joseph a martyr to the zeal which consumed him, and of that ardent charity which burned in his heart to visit his church again."--Le Clercq, 1.c. 1:324.] The Jesuits went alone. Repairing their dilapidated buildings of Notre Dame des Anges, a little way out of Quebec on the St. Charles River, where Cartier had spent his first miserable winter in America, they began their enterprises _ad majorem Dei gloriam_ in a field of labor whose vastness "might," as Parkman says, "tire the wings of thought itself." Le Jeune left the convent at Dieppe, De Noue that at Rouen, and they went out from Havre together to begin their labors among a people whose first representatives came aboard the vessel at Tadoussac with faces variously painted, black and red and yellow, as a party of "carnival maskers." One cannot well conjecture a more hopeless undertaking than that of making those half-naked, painted barbarians understand the mystery of the Trinity, for example, or the significance of the cross. Think of this gentle, holy father, Le Jeune, seated in a hovel beside one of these savages, whose language he is trying to learn, bribing his Indian tutor with a piece of tobacco at every difficulty to make him more attentive, or with half-frozen fingers writing his Algonquin exercises, or making translations of prayers for the tongues of his prospective converts--and you will be able to appreciate the beginnings of the task to which these men without the slightest question set themselves. It was a life, once these men left the mission house of Notre Dame des Anges, that was without the slightest social intercourse, that was beyond the prizes of any earthly ambition, that was frequently in imminence of torture and death, and that was usually in physical discomfort if not in pain. Obscure and constant toil for tender hands, solitude, suffering, privation, death--these made up the portion of the messengers of the faith who turned their faces toward the wilderness, their steps into the gloom of the forests, pathless except for the traces of the feet of savages and wild beasts. For it is twenty-five years after that memorable day when Le Caron first said mass on the shores of one of the Great Lakes (Champlain being present) before the farthermost shore of the farthest lake is reached by these patient and valorous pilgrims of the west. The story of that heroic journey, of the consecration of those forests and waters and clearings by suffering and unselfish ministry, fills many volumes (forty in the French edition and seventy-two in the edition recently published in the United States, the English translation being presented on the pages opposite the Latin or French originals). There is material in them for many chapters of a new-world "Odyssey." To these "Relations," as they were called, we owe the great body of information we have concerning New France, from 1603 in Acadia to the early part of the eighteenth century in the Mississippi and St. Lawrence Valleys; for they who wrote them were not priests alone, they were at the same time explorers, scientists, historical students, ethnologists (the first and best-fitted students of the North American Indian), physicians to the bodies as well as ministers to the souls of those wild creatures. There was a time when these "Relations," as they came from the famous press of Cramoisy, were eagerly awaited and devoured, and were everywhere the themes of enthusiastic discussion in circles of high devotion in Paris and throughout France, where it is doubtless believed by many to-day that the borders of the lakes which the authors of these "Relations" traversed are still possessed by Indians, or at best by half-civilized, half- barbaric peoples who would stand agape in the Louvre as the Goths stood before the temples and the statues of Rome. The "Relations" of Jesuits are among our most precious chronicles in America. With these the history of the north--the valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi--begins. The coureurs de bois may have anticipated the priests in some solitary places, but they seldom made records. Doubtless, like Nicolet, they told their stories to the priests when they went back to the altars for sacrament, so that even their experiences have been for the most part preserved. But when we know under what distracting and discouraging conditions even the priest wrote, we wonder, as Thwaites says, that anything whatever has been preserved in writing. The "Relations" were written by the fathers, he reminds us, [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations," 1:39, 40.] in Indian camps, the aboriginal insects buzzing or crawling about them, in the midst of a chaos of distractions, immersed in scenes of squalor and degradation, overcome by fatigue and improper sustenance, suffering from wounds and disease, and maltreated by their hosts who were often their jailers. What they wrote under these circumstances is simple and direct. There is no florid rhetoric; there is little self-glorification; no unnecessary dwelling on the details of martyrdom; and there is not a line to give suspicion "that one of this loyal band flinched or hesitated." "I know not," says one of these apostles [Footnote: Fr. Francesco Giuseppe Bressani, "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 39:55.] in an epistle to the Romans (for this particular letter went to Rome), "I know not whether your Paternity will recognize the letter of a poor cripple, who formerly, when in perfect health was well known to you. The letter is badly written, and quite soiled because in addition to other inconveniences, he who writes it has only one whole finger on his right hand; and it is difficult to avoid staining the paper with the blood which flows from his wounds, not yet healed: he uses arquebus powder for ink, and the earth for a table." This particular early American writer, besides having his hand split and now one finger-nail or joint burned off and now another, his hair and beard pulled out, his flesh burned with live coals and red-hot stones, was hung up by the feet, had food for dogs placed upon his body that they might lacerate him as they ate, but finally escaped death itself through sale to the Dutch. Two other chroniclers of that life of which they were a part, were two men of noble birth: the giant Brébeuf, "the Ajax of the mission," a man of vigorous passions tamed by religion (as Parkman says, "a dammed-up torrent sluiced and guided to grind and saw and weave for the good of man"); and in marked and strange contrast with him, Charles Garnier, a young man of thirty-three, of beardless face--laughed at by his friends in Paris, we are told, because he was beardless but admired by the Indians for the same reason--of a delicate nature but of the most valiant spirit. It was Brébeuf who kept the westernmost outpost for many years. A man of iron frame and resoluteness, the only complaint of his that I have found, is one which would furnish a study for a great artist: it was that he had "no moment to read his breviary, except by moonlight or the fire, when stretched out to sleep on a bare rock by some savage cataract,--or in a damp nook of the adjacent forest." There is another picture of him in action, crouched in a canoe, barefoot, toiling at the paddle, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, behind the lank hair and brown shoulders and long, naked arms of his aboriginal companion. Still another simple "Relation" shows him teaching the Huron children to chant and repeat the commandments under reward of beads, raisins, or prunes. In 1637, accused of having bewitched the Huron nation and having brought famine and pest, he was doomed to death; he wrote his farewell letter to his superior, gave his farewell dinner to his enemies, taking that opportunity to preach a farewell sermon concerning the Trinity, heaven and hell, angels and fiends--the only real things to him--and so wrought upon his guests that he was spared to labor on, though often in peril, until the Iroquois (1649), still following the Hurons, found him with a brother priest giving baptism and absolution to the savages dying in that last struggle this side of the Lakes against their ancient enemies. They tied him to a stake, hung a collar of "hatchets heated red-hot" about his neck, baptized him with boiling water, cut strips of flesh from his limbs, drank his blood as if to inherit of his valiance, and finally tore out and ate his heart for supreme courage. Such cannibalism seems poetically justifiable in tribute to such unflinching constancy of devotion. His brother priest, Lalemant, who was tortured to death at the same time, had thought it no good omen ten years before (1639) that no martyr's blood had yet furnished seed for the church in that new soil, though consoling himself with the thought that the daily life amid abuse and threats, smoke, fleas, filth, and dogs might be "accepted as a living martyrdom." There was ample seed by now, and still more was soon to be added, for very soon, the same year, the gentle Garnier is to die the same death ministering to these same Hurons, whose refugees, flying beyond two lakes to escape from their murderous foes, are to lure the priests on still farther westward till, even in their unmundane thoughts, the great, mysterious river begins to flow toward a longed-for sea. It was by such a path of danger and suffering, a path which threads gloomy forests, that the first figures clad in black gowns came and peered over the edge of the valley of this mysterious stream, even before Radisson and Groseilliers wandered in that wooded and wet and fertile peninsula which, beginning at the junction of three lakes, widens to include the whole northwest of what is now the United States. You may travel in a day and a night now up the Ottawa River, above Lake Nipissing, around Huron to the point of that peninsula, from Montreal, and if you go in the season of the year in which I once made the journey you will find this path (the path on which Champlain came near losing his life, where Récollet and Jesuit, coureur de bois and soldier toiled up hundreds of portages) bordered as a garden path much of the way by wild purple flowers (that doubtless grew red in the blood-sodden ground of the old Huron country), with here and there patches of gold. The first of these was Father Raymbault and with him Father Isaac Jogues, who was later to knock with mutilated hands for shelter at the Jesuit college in Rennes. Jogues was born at Orleans; he was of as delicate mould as Garnier, modest and refined, but "so active that none of the Indians could surpass him in running." In the autumn of 1641 he stood with his companion at the end of the peninsula between the Lakes, their congregation to the number of two thousand having been gathered for them from all along the southern shore of Lake Superior, the land of the Chippewas. Father Raymbault died at Quebec from exposure and hardship encountered here, the first of the Christian martyrs on that field, and Jogues was soon after sent upon an errand of greater peril. While on his way from Quebec to the new field (the old Huron station) with wine for the eucharist, writing materials, and other spiritual and temporal supplies, he was captured by the Iroquois and with his companions subjected to such torture as even Brébeuf was not to know. Journeying from the place of his capture on the St. Lawrence to that of his protracted torture he, first of white men, saw the Lake Como of America which bears the name of "George," a king of England, instead of "Jogues," whom the holy church may honor with canonization, but who should rather be canonized by the hills and waters where he suffered. His fingers were lacerated by the savages before the journey was begun; up the Richelieu River he went, suffering from his wounds and "the clouds of mosquitoes." At the south end of Lake Champlain this gentle son of France was again subjected to special tortures for the gratification of another band of Iroquois; his hands were mangled, his body burned and beaten till he fell "drenched in blood." Where thousands now land every summer at the head of Lake George for pleasure he staggered forth under his portage burden to the shores of the Mohawk, where again the chief called the crowd to "caress" the Frenchmen with knives and other instruments of torture, the children imitating the barbarity of their elders. I should not repeat such details of this horrible story here except to give background to one moment's act in the midst of it all, illustrative of the motive which was back of this unexampled endurance. While he and his companions were on the scaffold of torture, four Huron prisoners were brought in and put beside the Frenchmen: whereupon Father Jogues began his ministry anew, for when an ear of green corn was thrown him for food, discovering a few rain-drops clinging to the husks, he secretly baptized two of his eleventh-hour converts. This was not the end, but after months of pain and privation, which make one wonder at what a frail body, fitted with a delicate organism, can endure, he escaped by the aid of the Dutch at Fort Orange (now the capital of the State of New York), whither the Iroquois had gone to trade, and after six weeks in hiding there, was sent to New Amsterdam--then a "delapidated fort garrisoned by sixty soldiers" and a village of only four or five hundred inhabitants, but even at that time so cosmopolitan that, as one of my friends who has recently revived a census of that day shows, nearly twenty different languages were spoken. It is thus that a little French father of the wilderness comes from a thousand miles behind the mountains, from the shores of the farthest lake, in the middle of the continent, at a time when New York and Boston had together scarcely more inhabitants than would fill a hall in the Sorbonne. If only Richelieu (who died in the very year that Jogues was exemplifying so faithfully the teaching of Him whose brother he called himself) had permitted the Huguenot who wanted to go, to follow this little priest into those wilds, instead of trying in vain to persuade those to go who would not, who shall say that American visitors from that far interior might not be speaking to-day in a tongue which Richelieu, were he alive, could best understand. The little father, who has always seemed to me an old man, though he was then only thirty-six, was carried back to England, suffering from nature and pirates almost as much as from the Iroquois, and at last reached Rennes, where, after his identity was disclosed, the night was given to jubilation and thanksgiving, we are told. He was summoned to Paris, where the queen "kissed his mutilated hands" and exclaimed: "People write romances for us--but was there ever a romance like this, and it is all true?" Others gladly did him honor. But all this gave no satisfaction to his soul bent upon one task, and as soon as the Pope, at the request of his friends, granted a special dispensation [Footnote: The answer of Pope Urban VIII was: "Indignum esset martyrem Christi, Christi non bibere sanguinem."] which permitted him, though deformed by the "teeth and knives of the Iroquois," to say mass once more, he returned to the wilderness where within a few months the martyrdom was complete and his head was displayed from the palisades of a Mohawk town. So vanished the face of the first priest of France from the edge of the great valley, he, too, as Raymbault, perhaps, hoping "to reach China across the wilderness" but finding his path "diverted to heaven." It was not until 1660 that another came into that peninsula at whose point Jogues had preached, the aged Ménard, who after days among the tangled swamps of northern Wisconsin was lost, and only his cassock, breviary, and kettle were ever recovered. A little later came Allouez and Dablon, and Druilletes who had been entertained at Boston by Winslow and Bradford and Dudley and John Eliot, and last of those to be selected from the increasing number of that brotherhood for mention, the young Père Marquette, "son of an old and honorable family at Laon," of extraordinary talents as a linguist (having learned, as Parkman tells us, to speak with ease six Indian languages) and in devotion the "counterpart of Garnier and Jogues." When he first appears in the west it is at the mission of Pointe de St. Esprit, near the very western end of Lake Superior. There he heard, from the Illinois who yearly visited his mission, of the great river they had crossed on their way, and from the Sioux, who lived upon its banks, "of its marvels." His desire to follow its course would seem to have been greater than his interest in the more spiritual ends of his mission, for he disappointedly, it is intimated, followed his little Huron flock suddenly driven back toward the east by the Iroquois of the West--the Sioux. At Point St. Ignace, a place midway between the two perils, the Sioux of the West and the Iroquois of the East, they huddled under his ministry. It was there in the midst of his labors among his refugees, that Louis Joliet, the son of a wagon-maker of Quebec, a grandson of France, found him on the day, as he writes in his journal, of "the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin, whom I had continually invoked since I came to this country of the Ottawas to obtain from God the favor of being enabled to visit the Nations on the river Missisipi." Joliet carried orders from Frontenac the governor and Talon the intendant, that Marquette should join him--or he Marquette--upon this voyage of discovery, so consonant with Marquette's desire for divine ordering. Marquette quieted his morbid conscience, which must have reproved his exploring ambitions, by reflecting upon the "happy necessity of exposing his life" for the salvation of all the tribes upon that particular river, and especially, he adds, as if to silence any possible lingering remonstrance, "the Illinois, who when I was at St. Esprit, had begged me very earnestly to bring the Word of God among them." So the learned son of Laon and the practical son of the wagon-maker of Quebec set out westward upon their journey under the protection of Marquette's particular divinity, but provided by Joliet with supplies of smoked meat and Indian corn, and furnished with a map of their proposed route made up from rather hazy Indian data. Through the strait that leads into Lake Michigan, and along the shores of this wonderful western sea they crept, stopping at night for bivouac on shore; then up Green Bay to the old mission; and then up the Fox River, where Nicolet had gone, in his love not of souls but of mere adventure. What interests one who has lived in that region, is to hear the first word of praise of the prairies extending farther than the eye can see, interspersed with groves or with lofty trees. [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 59:103.] I have spoken of the little river, dwindling into a creek of perplexed channel before the trail is found that ties the two great valleys together. One cannot miss it now, for when I last passed over it it was being paved, or macadamized, and a steam-roller was doing in a few days what the moccasined or sandalled feet of the first travellers there would not have accomplished in a thousand thousand years. I shall speak later of what has grown upon this narrow isthmus (now crossed not merely by trail and highway, but by canal as well), but I now must hasten on where the impatient priest and his sturdy, practical companion are leading, toward the Wisconsin. Nicolet may have put his boat in this same Wisconsin River, but if he did he did not go far below the portage. La Salle may even have walked over this very path only a year or two before. But, after all, it is only a question as to which son of France it was, for we know of a certainty that on a day in June of 1673 Joliet and Marquette did let their canoes yield to the current of this broad, tranquil stream after their days of paddling up the "stream of the wild rice." I have walked in the wide valley of the Wisconsin River and have seen through the haze of an Indian summer day the same dim bluffs that Marquette looked upon, and by night the light of the same stars that Marquette saw reflected from its surface. But having never ridden upon its waters, I take the description of one who has followed its course more intimately if not more worshipfully. "They glided down the stream," he writes, "by islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape- vines, by forests, groves and prairies, the parks and pleasure-grounds of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under the shadowing trees between whose tops looked down from afar the bold brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac, the canoes inverted on the bank, the nickering fire, the meal of bison-flesh or venison, the evening pipes, and slumber beneath the stars; and when in the morning they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil, then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the languid woods basked breathless in the sultry glare." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," pp. 63 and 64.] But to those first voyagers it had a charm, a lure which was not of stars or shadows or wooded bluffs or companionable bivouac. It led to the great and the unknown river, which in turn led to a sea remote from that by which the French had come out of Europe into America. They were travelling over the edge of Champlain's map, away from Europe, away from Canada, away from the Great Lakes. As far as that trail which led through the grass and reeds up from the Fox, one might have come every league of the way from Havre or even from a quay of the Seine, by water, except for a few paces of portage at La Chine and at Niagara. But that narrow strip of prairie which they crossed that June day in 1673 was in a sense the coast of a new sea, they knew not what sea--or, better, it was the rim of a new world. On the 17th of June they entered the Mississippi with a joy which they could not express, Marquette naming it, according to his vow, in honor of the Virgin Mary, Rivière de la Conception, and Joliet, with an earthly diplomacy or gratitude, in honor of Frontenac, "La Buade." For days they follow its mighty current southward through the land of the buffalo, but without sight for sixty leagues of a human being, where now its banks are lined with farms, villages, and towns. At last they come upon footprints of men, and following them up from the river they enter a beautiful prairie where a little way back from the river lay three Indian villages. There, after peaceful ceremonies and salutations, they, the first Frenchmen on the farther bank, their fame having been carried westward from the missions on the shores of the lakes, were received. "I thank thee," said the sachem of the Illinois, addressing them; "I thank thee, Black Gown, and thee, O frenchman," addressing himself to Monsieur Jollyet, "for having taken so much trouble to come to visit us. Never has the earth been so beautiful, or the sun so Bright, as to-day; Never has our river been so Calm, or so clear of rocks, which your canoes have Removed in passing; never has our tobacco tasted so good, or our corn appeared so fine, as We now see Them. Here is my son, whom I give thee to Show thee my Heart. I beg thee to have pity on me, and on all my Nation. It is thou who Knowest the great Spirit who has made us all. It is thou who speakest to Him, and who hearest his word. Beg Him to give me life and health, and to come and dwell with us, in order to make us Know him." [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 59:121.] Knowing the linguistic attainments of Marquette and his sincerity, one must credit this first example of eloquence and poetry of the western Indians, cultivated of life amid the elemental forces of the water, earth, and sky. [Footnote: It was of these same prairies, rivers, and skies, these same elemental ever-present forces, that Abraham Lincoln learned the simple, rugged eloquence that made him the most powerful soul that valley has known.] A beautiful earth, sprinkled with flowers, a bright sun, a calm river free of rocks, sweet-flavored tobacco, thriving corn, an acquaintance with the Great Spirit--well might the old man who received the French man say: "thou shalt enter all our cabins in peace." Indian eloquence is not of the lips only. It is a poor Indian speech indeed that is not punctuated by gifts. And so it was that the French travellers resumed their journey laden with presents from their prairie hosts, and a slave to guide them, and a calumet to procure peace wherever they went. It is enough now, perhaps, to know that the voyagers passed the mouth of the Illinois, the Missouri, the Ohio, and reached the mouth of the Arkansas, when thinking themselves near the gulf and fearing that they might fall into the hands of the Spaniards if they ventured too near the sea, and so be robbed of the fruits of their expedition, they turned their canoes up-stream. Instead, however, of following their old course they entered the Illinois River, known sometimes as the "Divine River." I borrow the observing father's description of that particular valley as it was just two centuries before I first remember seeing it. "We have seen nothing like this river for the fertility of the land, its prairies, woods, wild cattle, stag, deer, wildcats, bustards, swans, ducks, parrots, and even beaver; its many little lakes and rivers." [Footnote: B. F. French, "Historical Collections of Louisiana," 4:51. "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 59:161.] Through this paradise of plenty they passed, up one of the branches of the Illinois, till within a few miles of Lake Michigan, where they portaged a thousand paces to a creek that emptied into the lake of the Illinois. If they were following that portage path and creek today they would be led through that city which stands next to Paris in population--the city of Chicago, in the commonwealth that bears the name of the land through which the French voyagers passed, "Illinois." At the end of September, having been absent four months, and having paddled their canoes over twenty-five hundred miles, they reached Green Bay again. There these two pioneers, companions forever in the history of the new world, separated--Joliet to bear the report of the discovery of the Rivière de Buade to Count Frontenac, Marquette to continue his devotions to his divinity and recruit his wasted strength, that he might keep his promise to return to minister to the Illinois, whom he speaks of as the most promising of tribes, for "to say 'Illinois' is in their language to say 'the men.'" By most unhappy fate Joliet's canoe was upset in the Lachine Rapids, when almost within sight of Montreal, and all his papers, including his precious map, were lost in the foam. But several maps were made under his direction or upon his data. Marquette's map, showing nothing but their course and supplying nothing from conjecture, was found nearly two hundred years later in St. Mary's College in Montreal, furnishing, I have thought, a theme and design for a mural painting in the interesting halls of the Sorbonne, where so many periods, personages, and incidents of the world's history are worthily remembered. The art of that valley has sought to reproduce or idealize the faces of these pioneers. The more eloquent, visible memorial would be the crude map from the hand of the priest Jacques Marquette, son of Rose de la Salle of the royal city of Rheims. Of his setting out again for the Illinois, where he purposed establishing a mission, of his spending the winter, ill, in a hut on the Chicago portage path, of his brief visit to the Illinois, of his journey northward, of his death by the way, and of the Indian procession that bore his bones up the lake to Point St. Ignace--of all this I may not speak in this chapter. Here let me say only the word of tribute that comes to him out of his own time, as the first stories of history came, being handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, till a poet or a historian should make them immortal. The story of Marquette I had known for many years from the blind Parkman, but not long ago I met one day an Indian boy, with some French blood of the far past in his veins, the son of a Chippewa chief, a youth who had never read Parkman or Winsor but who knew the story of Marquette better than I, for his grandmother had told him what she had heard from her grandmother, and she in turn from her mother or grandmother, of listening to Marquette speak upon the shores of Superior, of going with other French and Indians on that missionary journey to the Illinois to prepare food for him, and of hearing the mourning among the Indians when long after his death the report of his end reached their lodges. The grim story of the labors of the followers of Loyola among the Indians has its beatific culmination in the life of this zealot and explorer. Pestilence and the Iroquois had ruined all the hopes of the Jesuits in the east. Their savage flocks were scattered, annihilated, driven farther in the fastnesses, or exiled upon islands. The shepherds who vainly followed their vanishing numbers found themselves out upon the edge of a new field. If the Iroquois east and west could have been curbed, the Jesuits would have become masters of that field and all the north. We shall, thinking of that contingency, take varying views, beyond reconciliation, as to the place of the Iroquois in American history; but we shall all agree, whatever our religious and political predilection, men of Old France and men of New France alike, in applauding the sublime disinterestedness, fearless zeal, and unquestioned devotion to something beyond the self, which have consecrated all that valley of the Lakes and have, in the person of Marquette, the son of Laon, made first claim upon the life of the valley, whose great water he helped to discover. CHAPTER IV FROM THE GREAT LAKES TO THE GULF Père Marquette was still in a convent in Rheims when a French wood-ranger and fur trader was out in those western forests making friends for the French, one Sieur Nicolas Perrot, who would doubtless have been forgotten with many another of his craft if he had not been able-as few of them were-to read and write. And Marquette was but on his way from France to Canada when Sieur Perrot was ministering with beads and knives and hatchets and weapons of iron to these stone-age men on the southern shore of Superior, where the priest was later to minister with baptismal water and mysterious emblems. It was Perrot, whom they would often have worshipped as a god, who prepared the way for the altars of the priests and the forts of the captains; for back of the priests there were coming the brilliantly clad figures of the king's representatives. Once when Perrot was receiving such adoration, he told the simple-minded worshippers that he was "only a Frenchman, that the real Spirit who had made all, had given the French the knowledge of iron and the ability to handle it as if it were paste"; that out of "pity for His creatures He had permitted the French nation to settle in their country." [Footnote: Emma H. Blair, "Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley," 1:310.] At another time he said: "I am the dawn of that light, which is beginning to appear in your lands," and having learned by experience the true Indian eloquence, he proceeded in his oration with most impressive pauses: "It is for these young men I leave my gun, which they must regard as the pledge of my esteem for their valor. They must use it if they are attacked. It will also be more satisfactory in hunting cattle and other animals than are all the arrows that you use. To you who are old men I leave my kettle (pause); I carry it everywhere without fear of breaking it" (being of copper or iron instead of clay). "You will cook in it meat that your young men bring from the chase, and the food which you offer to the Frenchmen who come to visit you." [Footnote: Blair, "Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley," 1:330, 331.] And so he went on, throwing iron awls to the women to be used instead of their bone bodkins, iron knives to take the place of pieces of stone in killing beavers and cutting their meat, till he reached his peroration, which was punctuated with handfuls of round beads for the adornment of their children and girls. Do not think this a petty relation. It is a detail in the story of an age of iron succeeding, in a single generation, an age of stone. The splendor of the court and age of Louis XIV was beginning to brighten the sombreness of the northern primeval forests. It is this ambassador Perrot, learned in the craft of the woods rather than in that of the courts, more effective in his forest diplomacy than an army with banners, who soon after (1671) appears again on those shores, summoning the nations to a convocation by the side of that northern tumultuous strait, known everywhere now as the "Soo," then as the Sault Ste. Marie, there to meet the representatives of the king who lived across the water and of the Onontio who governed on the St. Lawrence. This convocation, of which Perrot was the successful herald, was held in the beginning of summer in the year 1671 (the good fishing doubtless assisting the persuasiveness of Perrot's eloquence in procuring the great savage audience). When the fleets of canoes arrived from the west and the south and east, Daumont de St. Lusson and his French companions, sent out the previous autumn from Quebec, having wintered in the Mantoulin Island, were there to meet them. It is a picture for the Iliad. Coureur de bois and priest had penetrated these regions, as we have seen; but now was to take place the formal possession by the crown of a territory that was coming to be recognized as valuable in itself, even if no stream ran though it to the coasts that looked on Asia. The scene is kept for us with much detail and color. On a beautiful June morning the procession was formed, the rapids probably furnishing the only music for the stately march of soldier and priest. After St. Lusson, four Jesuits led the processional: Dablon, Allouez, whom we have already seen on the shores of Superior, André from the Mantoulin Island, and Druilletes; the last, familiar from his long visit at Plymouth and Boston with the character of the Puritan colonies and doubtless understanding as no one else in that company, the menace to the French of English sturdiness and industry and self-reliant freedom. He must have wondered in the midst of all that formal vaunt of possession, how long the mountains would hold back those who were building permanent bridges over streams, instead of traversing them in ephemeral interest, or as paths to waters beyond; who were working the iron of the bogs near by, instead of hunting for the more precious ores or metals on remote shores; who were sawing the trees into lumber for permanent homes and shops, instead of adapting themselves to the more primitive life and barter in the woods; who were getting riches from the cleared fields, instead of from the backs of beavers in the sunless forests; who were raising sheep and multiplying cattle, instead of hunting deer and buffaloes; who were beginning to trade with European ports not as mere voyageurs but as thrifty merchants; who were vitally concerned about their own salvation first, and then interested in the fate of the savage; and who, above all, were learning in town meetings to govern themselves, instead of having all their daily living regulated from Versailles or the Louvre. Druilletes, remembering New England that day, must have wondered as to the future of this unpeopled, uncultivated empire of New France, without ploughs, without tame animals, without people, even, which St. Lusson was proclaiming. [Footnote: See Justin Winsor "Pageant of St. Lusson," 1892.] Was its name indeed to be written only in the water which their canoes traversed? There were fifteen Frenchmen with St. Lusson, among them the quiet, practical, unboastful Joliet, trained for the priesthood, but turned trader and explorer, who had already been two years previous out on the shores of Superior looking for copper. Marquette was not with the priests but was urging on the reluctant Hurons and Ottawas who did not arrive until after the ceremony. The French were grouped about a cross on the top of a knoll near the rapids, and the great throng of savages, "many-tinted" and adorned in the mode of the forest, sat or stood in wider circle. Father Dablon sanctified a great wooden cross. It was raised to its place while the inner circle sang _Vexilla Regis_. Close to the cross a post bearing a plate inscribed with the royal arms, sent out by Colbert, was erected, and the woods heard the _Exaudiat_ chanted while a priest said a prayer for the king. Then St. Lusson (a sword in one hand and "crumbling turf in the other") cried to his French followers who applauded his sentences, to the savages who could not understand, to the rapids which would not heed, and to the forests which have long forgotten the vibrations of his voice, the words in French to which these words in English correspond: "'In the name of the most high, most mighty and most redoubtable monarch Louis, the XIVth of the name, most Christian King of France and Navarre, we take possession of the said place of Ste Mary of the Falls as well as of Lakes Huron and Supérieur, the Island of Caientoton and of all other Countries, rivers, lakes and tributaries, contiguous and adjacent thereunto, as well discovered as to be discovered, which are bounded on the one side by the Northern and Western Seas and on the other side by the South Sea, including all its length or breadth;' Raising at each of the said three times a sod of earth whilst crying Vive le Roy, and making the whole of the assembly as well French as Indians repeat the same; declaring to the aforesaid Nations that henceforward as from this moment they were dependent on his Majesty, subject to be controlled by his laws and to follow his customs, promising them all protection and succor on his part against the incursion or invasion of their enemies, declaring unto all other Potentates, Princes and Sovereigns, States and Republics, to them and their subjects, that they cannot or ought not seize on, or settle in, any places in said Country, except with the good pleasure of his said most Christian Majesty and of him who will govern the Country in his behalf, on pain of incurring his hatred and the effects of his arms; and in order that no one plead cause of ignorance, we have attached to the back the Arms of France thus much of the present our Minute of the taking possession." [Footnote: "Wisconsin Historical Collections," 11:28.] Then the priest Allouez (as reported by his brother priest Dablon), after speaking of the significance of the cross they had just raised, told them of the great temporal king of France, of him whom men came from every quarter of the earth to admire, and by whom all that was done to the world was decided. "But look likewise at that other post, to which are affixed the armorial bearings of the great Captain of France whom we call King. He lives beyond the sea; he is the Captain of the greatest Captains, and has not his equal in the world. All the Captains you have ever seen, or of whom you have ever heard, are mere children compared with him. He is like a great tree, and they, only like little plants that we tread under foot in walking. You know about Onnontio, that famous Captain of Quebec. You know and feel that he is the terror of the Iroquois, and that his very name makes them tremble, now that he has laid waste their country and set fire to their Villages. Beyond the sea there are ten thousand Onnontios like him, who are only the Soldiers of that great Captain, our Great King, of whom I am speaking. When he says, 'I am going to war,' all obey him; and those ten thousand Captains raise Companies of a hundred soldiers each, both on sea and on land. Some embark in ships, one or two hundred in number, like those that you have seen at Quebec. Your Canoes hold only four or five men--or, at the very most, ten or twelve. Our ships in France hold four or five hundred, and even as many as a thousand. Other men make war by land, but in such vast numbers that, if drawn up in a double file, they would extend farther than from here to Mississaquenk, although the distance exceeds twenty leagues. When he attacks, he is more terrible than the thunder: the earth trembles, the air and the sea are set on fire by the discharge of his Cannon; while he has been seen amid his squadrons, all covered with the blood of his foes, of whom he has slain so many with his sword that he does not count their scalps, but the rivers of blood which he sets flowing. So many prisoners of war does he lead away that he makes no account of them, letting them go about whither they will, to show that he does not fear them. No one now dares make war upon him, all nations beyond the sea having most submissively sued for peace. From all parts of the world people go to listen to his words and to admire him, and he alone decides all the affairs of the world. What shall I say of his wealth? You count yourselves rich when you have ten or twelve sacks of corn, some hatchets, glass beads, kettles, or other things of that sort. He has towns of his own, more in number than you have people in all these countries five hundred leagues around; while in each town there are warehouses containing enough hatchets to cut down all your forests, kettles to cook all your moose, and glass beads to fill all your cabins. His house is longer than from here to the head of the Sault"--that is, more than half a league--"and higher than the tallest of your trees; and it contains more families than the largest of your Villages can hold." [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 55:111-113.] This remarkable proclamation and this extraordinary speech are to be found in the records. And the historian would end the incident here. But one may at least wonder what impressions of Louis the Great and Paris and France these savages carried back to their lodges to ponder over and talk about in the winter nights; and one must wonder, too, what impression the proclamation and pantomime of possession made upon their primitive minds. Perrot translated the proclamation for them, and asked them to repeat "Long live the king!" but it must have been a free translation that he made into their idioms; he must have softened "vassals" to "children," and "king" to "father," and made them understand that the laws and customs of Versailles would not curb their freedom of coiffure or attire, of chase or of leisure, on the shores of Superior. The speech of Allouez may seem full of hyperbole to those who know, in history, the king, and, by sight, the palace employed in the priest's similes; but if we think of Louis XIV not in his person but as a representative of the civilization of Europe that was asserting its first claim there in the wilderness, and give to the word of the priest something of the import of prophecy, the address becomes mild, indeed. Through those very rapids a single fleet of boats carries every year enough iron ore to supply every man, woman, and child in the United States (97,000,000) with a new iron kettle every year; another fleet bears enough to meet the continent's, if not the world's, need of hatchets. Trains laden with golden grain, more precious than beads, trains that would encircle the palace at Versailles or the Louvre now cross that narrow strait every day. A track of iron, bearing the abbreviated name of the rapids and the mission, penetrates the forests and swamps from which that savage congregation was gathered in the first great non-religious convocation on the shores of the western lakes where men with the scholarship of the Sorbonne now march every year with emblems of learning on their shoulders. As to the proclamation, Parkman asks, what now remains of the sovereignty it so pompously announced? "Now and then," he answers, "the accents of France on the lips of some straggling boatman, or vagabond half-breed-- this and nothing more." But again I would ask you to think of St. Lusson not as proclaiming merely the sovereignty of Louis XIV or of France, but as heralding the new civilization, for if we are to appreciate the real significance of that pageant and of France's mission, we must associate with that day's ceremony, not merely the subsequent wanderings of a few men of French birth or ancestry in all those "countries, rivers, lakes and streams," "bounded on the one side by the seas of the north and west and on the other by the South Sea," but all that life to which they led the adventurous, perilous way. The Iroquois and disease had thinned the Indian populations of the northeast, but here was a new and a friendly menace to that stone-age barbarism whose dusky subjects found their way back to their haunts by the stars, lighted their fires by their flint, and gluttonously feasted in plenty, or stoically fasted in famine. For the French it was a challenge to "those countries, lakes and islands bounded by the seas." They must now "make good the grandeur of their hopes." And a brave beginning is soon to be made. This highly colored scene becomes frontispiece of another glorious chapter, in the midst of whose hardship one will turn many a time to look with a sneer or smile, or with pity, at the figures in court garments, burnished armor, and "cleansed vestments," standing where the east and the west and the far north and the south meet. From the shores of a seigniory on the St. Lawrence, eight or nine miles from Montreal, just above those hoarse-voiced, mocking rapids which had lured and disappointed Cartier and Champlain and Maisonneuve, and which were to get their lasting name of derision from the disappointment of the man who now (1668) stands there, Robert René Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, looks across the waters of Lake St. Louis (into which the St. Lawrence for a little way widens) to the "dim forests of Chateauguay and Beauharnois." His thoughts look still farther, for they are out in that valley of his imagination through which a river "must needs flow," as he thinks, "into the 'Vermilion Sea'"--the Gulf of California. The old possessing dream! This young man (but twenty-five years of age) was a scion of an old and rich family of Rouen. As a youth he showed unusual traits of intellect and character and (it is generally agreed) doubtless because of his promise, he was led to the benches of the Jesuits. Whether this be true or not, he was an earnest Catholic. But his temperament would not let him yield unquestioned submission to any will save his own. For it was will and not mere passion that mastered his course. "In his faults," says a sympathetic historian, "the love of pleasure had no part." At twenty-three he had left Rouen, and securing a seigniory, where we have just seen him, in the "most dangerous place in Canada," he made clearing for the settlement which he named the Seigniory of St. Sulpice (having received it from the seminary of St. Sulpice), but which his enemies named, as they named the rapids, "La Chine." There tutored in the Indian languages and inflamed of imagination as he looked day after day off to the west, his thoughts "made alliance with the sun," as Lescarbot would have said, and dwelt on' exploration and empire. It was ten years later that those who were keeping the mission and the trading-post on Point St. Ignace, where to-day candles burn before the portrait of Père Marquette, saw a vessel equipped with sails, as large as the ships with which Jacques Cartier first crossed the Atlantic, come ploughing its way through waters that had never before borne such burdens without the beating of oars or paddles. Its commander is Sieur de la Salle, now a noble and possessed of a seigniory two hundred miles west of that on which we left him--two hundred miles nearer his goal. This galleon, called the _Griffin_ because it carried on its prow the carving of a griffin, "in honor of the armorial bearings of Count Frontenac," was the precursor of those mighty fleets that now stir those waters with their commerce. These ten years of disaster and disappointment, but also of inflexible purpose and indomitable persistence, must not be left to lie unremembered, though the recital must be the briefest. In 1669, in company with some Sulpitian priests and others, twenty-four in all, he sets forth from his seigniory. Along the south shore of Ontario they coast, stopping on the way to visit the Senecas, La Salle, at least, hoping to find there a guide to the headwaters of what is now known as the Ohio River. Disappointed, he with them journeyed on westward past the mouth of the Niagara River, hearing but the sound of the mighty cataract. At the head of Lake Ontario they have the astounding fortune to meet Louis Joliet, who with a companion was returning from Superior (two years before the pageant of St. Lusson) and who had just discovered that great inland lake between the two lakes, Ontario and Huron (which had been shown on French maps as connected by a river only). This lake, Erie, now the busiest perhaps of all that great chain, had been avoided because of the hostility of the Iroquois, and so it was that it was last to rise out of the geographic darkness of that region. Even Joliet's Iroquois guide, although well acquainted with the easier route, had not dared to go to the Niagara outlet but had followed the Grand River from its northern shores and then portaged to Lake Ontario. The Sulpitian priests and their companions followed to the west the newly found course, but La Salle, the goal of whose thought was still the Ohio, feigning illness (as it is believed), received the sacrament from the priests (an altar being improvised of some paddles), parted from them, and, as they at the time supposed, went back to Montreal. But it was not of such fibre that his purposes were knit. Just where he went it is not with certainty known, but it is generally conceded that he reached and followed the Ohio as far at least as the site of Louisville, Ky. It is claimed by some that he coasted the unknown western shores of Lake Huron; that he reached the site of Chicago; and that he even saw the Mississippi two years at least before Marquette and Joliet. What Parkman says in his later edition, after full and critical acquaintance with the Margry papers in Paris, is this: "La Salle discovered the Ohio, and in all probability the Illinois also; but that he discovered the Mississippi has not been proved, nor, in the light of the evidence we have, is it likely." Winsor argues that in the minds of those who knew him in Montreal, La Salle's projects had failed, since it was then that the mocking name was given to his estate--a name which, by the way, has been made good, as some one remarks, "by the passage across La Salle's old possessions of the Canadian Pacific Railway," a new way to China. I think we must admit, with his enemies of that day and hostile authorities of this, despite Margry's documents, that except for his increased knowledge of the approaches and his acquaintance with Indians and the conditions of nature in that valley, La Salle's expedition was a failure. It was his first defiance of the wilderness before him and the first victory of his enemies behind him. While Marquette is spending the winter, sick of a mortal illness, in the hut on the Chicago portage, La Salle is in Paris, bearing a letter from Frontenac, in which he is recommended to Minister Colbert as "the most capable man I know to carry on every kind of enterprise and discovery" and as having "the most perfect knowledge of the state of the country," [Footnote: Margry, "Découvertes et établissements des Français," 1:227.] that is, of the west. A letter I find was sent to Colbert under the same or proximate date [Footnote: Winsor dates letter November 14, 1674. Margry, November 11.] acquainting Colbert with the discovery made by Joliet. La Salle must therefore have known of the Mississippi and its course, even if he himself had not beheld it with his own eyes or felt the impulse of its current. He goes back to Canada possessed of a new and valuable seigniory (having spent the proceeds of the first in his unsuccessful venture) under charge to garrison Fort Frontenac (on the north shore of Ontario) and to gather about it a French colony. For two years he labors there, bringing a hundred acres of sunlight into the forests, building ships for the navigation of the lake, and establishing a school under the direction of the friars. He might have stayed there and become rich "if he had preferred gain to glory"--there where he had both solitude and power. "Feudal lord of the forest around him, commander of a garrison raised and paid by himself, founder of the mission and patron of the church, he reigned the autocrat of his lonely little empire." But this does not satisfy him. It is but a step toward the greater empire still farther to the west. In 1677 he comes back again to Paris with a desire not for land, but for authority to explore and open up the western country, which he describes in a letter to Colbert. It is nearly all "so beautiful and fertile; so free from forests and so full of meadows, brooks and rivers; so abounding in fish, game, and venison that one can find there in plenty, and with little trouble, all that is needful for the support of powerful colonies. The soil will produce anything that is raised in France." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 122. Margry, 1:331.] He says that cattle may be left out all winter, calls attention to some hides he has brought with him of cattle whose wool is also valuable, and again expresses confidence that colonies would become prosperous, especially as they would be increased by the tractable Indians, who will readily adapt themselves to the French way of life, as soon as they taste the advantages of French friendship. He does not fail to mention the hostility of the Iroquois and the threatened rivalry of the English, who are beginning to covet that country--all of which only animates him the more to action. Lodged in Paris in an obscure street, Rue de la Truanderie, and attacked as a visionary or worse, he is yet petitioning Louis XIV for the government of a realm larger than the king's own, and holding conference with Colbert. In the early summer, after his winter of waiting somewhere in the vicinity in which I have written this chapter, a patent comes to him from the summer palace at St.-Germain-en-Laye, which must have been to him far more than his patent of nobility or title to any estate in France: "Louis, by the grace of God King of France and Navarre, to our dear and well-beloved Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, greeting. We have received with favor the very humble petition made us in your name to permit you to undertake the discovery of the western parts of New France; and we have the more willingly consented to this proposal, since we have nothing more at heart than the exploration of this country, through which, to all appearances, a way may be found to Mexico." [Footnote: Various translations. Original in Margry, 1:337.] La Salle, accordingly, was permitted to build forts at his own expense, to carry on certain trade in buffalo-hides, and explore to his heart's content. This lodger in Rue de la Truanderie now sets about raising funds for his enterprise and, having succeeded chiefly among his brothers and relations, he gathers materials for two vessels, hires shipwrights, and starts from Rochelle for his empire, his commission doubtless bound to his body, taking with him as his lieutenant Henri de Tonty--son of the inventor of the Tontine form of life insurance who had come to France from Naples--a most valuable and faithful associate and possessed of an intrepid soul to match his own. From Fort Frontenac, an outpost, La Salle's company pushes out to build a fort below Niagara Falls near the mouth of the Niagara River, the key to the four great lakes above, and to construct a vessel of fifty tons above the Falls for the navigation of these upper lakes. It is on this journey that the world makes first acquaintance of that mendacious historian Friar Hennepin, who, equipped with a portable altar, ministered to his companions and the savages along the way and wrote the chronicles of the expedition. It is he who has left us the first picture of Niagara Falls unprofaned by tourists; of the buffalo, now extinct except for a few scrawny specimens in parks, and of St. Anthony Falls. After loss by wreck of a part of the material intended for the vessel and repeated delays, due to La Salle's creditors at Frontenac and the Indians on his way, the vessel was at last completed, launched with proper ceremonies, and started on her maiden trip up those lakes where sail was never seen before. It is this ship that found temporary haven in the cove back of Point St. Ignace in 1679 while La Salle, "very finely dressed in his scarlet cloak trimmed with gold lace," knelt, his companions about him, and again heard mass where the bones of Marquette were doubtless even then gathered before the Jesuit altar. Thence they pushed on to Green Bay, where some of his advance agents had gathered peltries for his coming. The _Griffin_, loaded with these, her first and precious cargo, was sent back to satisfy his creditors, and La Salle with fourteen men put forth in their canoes for the land of his commission, of "buffalo-hides," and of "the way toward Mexico." I will "make the _Griffin_ fly above the crows," La Salle is recorded to have said more than once in his threat toward those of the Black Gowns who were opposing his imperious plans, because they aimed at the occupation, fortification, and settlement of what the order still hoped to keep for itself. But the flight of this aquatic griffin gave to La Salle no good omen of triumph. The vessel never reached safe port, so far as is known. Tonty searched all the east coast of Lake Michigan for sight of her sail, but in vain. And those whom in America we call "researchers"--those who hunt through manuscripts in libraries--have not as yet had word of her. Many have doubtless walked, as I, the shores of that lake with thoughts of her, but no one has found so much as a feather of her pinions. Whether she foundered in a storm or was treacherously sunk and her cargo stolen, no one will probably ever know. La Salle and his men in their heavily laden canoes had a tempestuous voyage up the west shore of Lake Michigan. [Footnote: It will illustrate what a change has come over a bit of that shore along which he passed if I tell you that when I landed there one day from a later lake _Griffin_, at a place called Milwaukee--in La Salle's day but another "nameless barbarism"--the first person whom I encountered chanced to be reading a copy of _the London Spectator_--the ultimate symbol of civilization some would think it.] They passed the site of Chicago, deciding upon another course (which persuades me that La Salle must have been in that region before) and on till they reached the mouth of the St. Joseph River, where precious time was lost in waiting for Tonty and his party coming up the other shore. I take space to speak in such detail of this voyage because it traces another important route into the valley. About seventy miles up the stream there stands an old cedar-tree bearing, as it is believed by antiquarians, the blaze marks of the old French broadaxes and marking the beginning of another of those historic portage paths over the valley's low rim. I have visited this portage more than once, and when last there I dug away the sand and soil about the trunk of the tree till I could trace the scar left by the axe of the French. It is only about two miles from this tree at the bend of the St. Joseph to where a mere ditch in the midst of the prairie, a tributary of the Illinois, soon gathers enough eager water to carry a canoe toward the Gulf of Mexico. I have read in the chronicles, with a regret as great as that of the hungry Hennepin, that the Illinois, from whom La Salle expected hospitality at their village farther down the Illinois River, which had been visited by Marquette twice, were off on their hunting expeditions. But I have satisfaction in knowing that he took needful food from their caches in my own county, now named La Salle. Early in January they passed on to a village four days beyond--the site of the second largest city in the State of Illinois. There La Salle, detained by Indian suspicions of his alliance with the Iroquois, discouraged by the desertion of some of his own men and by the certainty that the _Griffin_ was lost beyond all question not only with its skins but with the materials for a vessel, which he purposed building for the Mississippi waters, stayed for the rest of the winter, building for shelter and protection a fort which he named Fort Crèvecoeur, not to memorialize his own disheartenments as some hint, but, as we are assured by other historians, to celebrate the demolition of Fort Crèvecoeur in the Netherlands by Louis XIV, in which Tonty had participated. The vessel for the Mississippi he bravely decides to build despite the desertion of his sawyers, who had fled to the embrace of barbarism and who, fortunately, did not return to prevent the employment of the unskilled hands of La Salle himself and some others of his men. And so the first settlement in Illinois begins. On the last day of February Father Hennepin and two associates were sent down the Illinois River on a voyage of exploration, carrying abundant gifts with which to make addresses to the Indians along the way. We may not follow their tribulations and experiences, but we have reason to believe that they reached the upper waters of the Mississippi. There, taken by the Sioux, they were in humiliating and even perilous captivity till rescued by the aid of Du Lhut. We almost wish that the rumor that Hennepin had been hung by his own waist-cord had been true, if only we could have had his first book without the second. On the next day La Salle, leaving Tonty in command, set out amid the drifting ice of the river with four or perhaps six [Footnote: Margry, 1:488.] men and a guide for Fort Frontenac, to replace at once the articles lost in the _Griffin_, else another year would be spent in vain. Having walked many, many miles along that particular river on those prairies, I can appreciate, as perhaps some readers cannot, what it means to enter upon a journey of a thousand miles when the "ground is oozy" and patches of snow lie about, and the ice is not strong enough to bear one's weight but thick enough to hinder one's progress. La Salle, moreover, was in constant danger of Indians of various tribes. In a letter to a friend he said that though he knew that they must suffer all the time from hunger, sleep on the open ground, and often without food, watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes wading whole days through marshes where the water was waist- deep; still he was resolved to go. Two of the men fell ill. A canoe was made for them and the journey continued. Two men were sent to Point St. Ignace to learn if any news had come of the _Griffin_. At Niagara, where he learned of further misfortune, he left the other two Frenchmen and the faithful Mohigan Indian as unfit for further travel and pushed on with three fresh men to Fort Frontenac, which he reached in sixty-five days from the day of his starting from Fort Crèvecoeur. This gives intimation and illustration of the will which possessed the body of this "man of thought, trained amid arts and letters." "In him," said the Puritan Parkman, "an unconquerable mind held at its service a frame of iron." And Fiske adds: "We may see here how the sustaining power of wide-ranging thoughts and a lofty purpose enabled the scholar, reared in luxury, to surpass in endurance the Indian guide and the hunter inured to the hardships of the forest." I have wondered how his petition to the king, if written after this journey, would have described this valley. But its attraction seems not to be less despite this experience, for he was setting forth again, when word came to him that his Fort Crèvecoeur had been destroyed, most of his men deserting and throwing into the river the stores and goods they could not carry away! All has to be begun again. Less than nothing is left to him of all his capital. Nothing is left except his own inflexible spirit and the loyalty of his Tonty in the heart of the wilderness. Still undismayed, he turns his hand to the giant task again, only to find when he reaches the Illinois a dread foreboding of the crowning disaster. The Iroquois, the scourge of the east, had swept down the valley of the Illinois like hyenas of the prairies, leaving total desolation in their path. After a vain, anxious search for Tonty among the ruins and the dead, he makes his way back, finding at last at the junction of the two rivers that make the Illinois a bit of wood cut by a saw. I fear to tire the reader with the monotony of the mere rehearsal of difficulty and discouragement and despairful circumstance which I feel it needful to present in order to give faithful background to the story of the valley. I have by no means told all: of continued malevolence where there should have been help; of the conspiracy of every possible untoward circumstance to block his way. But the telling of so much will be tolerated in the knowledge that, after all, his master spirit did triumph over every ill and obstacle. With Tonty, who, as he writes, is full of zeal, he confounded his enemies at home, gathered the tribes of the west into a confederacy against the Iroquois, as Champlain had done in the east, gave up for the present the building of the vessel, and in 1681, the river being frozen, set out on sledges at Chicago portage and made a prosperous journey down the Illinois to Fort Crèvecoeur. Re-embarking in his canoes, they paddled noiselessly past tenantless villages into the Mississippi. He went beyond the mouth of the Arkansas, reached by Joliet and Marquette; he was entertained by the Indians of whom Châteaubriand has written with such charm in his "Atala"; and at last, in April, 1682, fifteen years from the days that he looked longingly from his seigniory above the Lachine Rapids, he found the "brackish water changed to brine," the salt breath of the sea touched his face, and the "broad bosom of the great gulf opened on his sight--limitless, voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life." His French companions and his great company of Indians about him, he repeated there, in the subtropical spring, the ceremony which ten years before had been performed two thousand miles and more by the water to the north, but in phrases which his inflexible purpose, valorously pursued, had given him a greater right to pronounce. "In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible and victorious prince, Louis the Great--I,--in virtue of the commission of his majesty which I hold in my hand, and which may be seen by all whom it may concern, have taken and do now take, in the name of his Majesty--possession of this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers,--from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio,--as also along the river Colbert, or Mississippi, and the rivers which discharge themselves thereinto, from its source beyond the Nadouessioux--as far as its mouth at the sea, or Gulf of Mexico, and also to the mouth of the River of Palms, upon the assurance we have had from the natives of these countries, that we are the first Europeans who have descended or ascended the river Colbert." [Footnote: Margry, 2:191.] None could have remembered the emaciated followers of De Soto, who cared not for the land since they had found no gold there and asked only to be carried back to the sea, whence they had so foolishly wandered. There were probably not even traditions of the white god who had a century and a half before been buried in the river that his mortality might be concealed. It was, indeed, a French river, from where Hennepin had been captured by the Sioux through the stretches covered by Marquette and Joliet to the very sea which La Salle had at last touched. The water path from Belle Isle, Labrador, to the Gulf of Mexico was open, with only short portages at Lachine and Niagara and of a few paces where the Fox all but touches the Wisconsin, the Chicago the Des Plaines, or the St. Joseph the Kankakee. It took almost a century and a half to open that way, but every league of it was pioneered by the French, and if not for the French forever, is the credit the less theirs? When the "weathered voyagers" that day on the edge of the gulf planted the cross, inscribed the arms of France upon a tree, buried a leaden plate of possession in the earth and sang to the skies "The banners of heaven's king advance," La Salle in a loud voice read the proclamation which I have in part repeated. Thus "a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile," [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 308.] in fact gave to France a river and a stupendous territory, of which Parkman has made this description for the title-deed: "The fertile plains of Texas, the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen springs to the sultry borders of the gulf; from the wooded ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 308.] They gave it to France. That, perhaps, the people of France almost wish to forget. But it is better and more accurately written: "On that day France, pioneer among nations, gave this rich, wide region to the world." CHAPTER V THE RIVER COLBERT: A COURSE AND SCENE OF EMPIRE A CHARACTERIZATION OF THE RIVER WHOSE EXPLORATION AND CONTROL GAVE TO FRANCE LOUISIANA AND THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS To the red barbarian tribes, of which Parkman says there were a thousand, the river which passed through their valley was the "Mississippi," that is, the Great Water. They must have named it so under the compulsion of the awe in which they stood of some parts of it, and not from any knowledge of its length. They must have been impressed, especially they of the lower valley, as is the white man of to-day, by the "overwhelming, unbending grandeur of the wonderful spirit ruling the flow of the sands, the lumping of the banks, the unceasing shifting of the channel and the send of the mighty flood." No one tribe knew both its fountains and its delta, its sources and its mouth. To those midway of the valley it came out of the mystery of the Land of Frosts and passed silently on, or, in places, complainingly on, to the mystery of the Land of the Sun, into neither of which dared they penetrate because of hostile tribes. While the red men of the Mississippi lowlands were not able as the "swamp angel" of to-day to discern the rising of its Red River tributary by the reddish tinge of the water in his particular bayou, or to measure by changing hues, now the impulses of the Wisconsin or of the Ohio, and now of the richer-silted blood of the Rockies (as Mr. Raymond S. Spears, writing of the river, has graphically described), [Footnote: "The Moods of the Mississippi," in _Atlantic Monthly_, 102:378-382. See also his "Camping on a Great River," New York, Harper, 1912, and numerous magazine articles.] yet as they gazed with wonderment at these changes of color, they must have had inward visions of hills of red, green, and blue earth somewhere above their own lodges or hunting-grounds, and must even have had at times some tangible message of their brothers of the upper waters, some fragments of their handiwork, such as a broken canoe, an arrow-shaft. But the men of the sources, up toward the "swamps of the nests of the eagles," on the low watersheds, heard only vague reports of the sea or gulf; even the Indians of Arkansas, as we read in the account of the De Soto expedition, could or would "give no account of the sea, and had no word in their language, or idea or emblem, that could make them comprehend a great expanse of salt water like the ocean." So the river was not the source or father of running waters, but the great, awe-inspiring water. The French were misled, as we have seen, when they first heard Indian references to it, thinking it was what they were longing for--the western ocean, a great stretch of salt water instead of another and a larger Seine. And when they did discover that it was a river, their first concern was not as to what lay along its course, but as to where it led. A prominent American historian, to whom we are much indebted, with Parkman, for the memorials of this period, praises by contrast those who kept within smell of tide-water along the Atlantic shore. But when we reach the underlying motives of the exploration and settlement of that continent, do they who sought the sources and the paths to the smell of other tide-waters deserve dispraise or less praise than those who sat thriftily by the Atlantic seashore? The English colonists were struggling for themselves and theirs, not for the good or glory of a country across seas. They had no reason to look beyond their short rivers, so long as their valleys were fruitful and ample. Shall they be praised the more that they did not for a century venture beyond the sources of those streams? The first French followers of the river courses were, as we have seen, devotees of a religion for the salvation of others, bearers of advancing banners for the glory of France, and lovers of nature and adventure. And if there were, as there were, avaricious men among them, we must be careful not to blame them more than those whose avarice or excessive thrift was economically more beneficial to the world and to the community and the colony and to themselves. Economic values and moral virtues, as expressed in productivity of fields, mines, factories, church attendance, and obedience to the selectmen, are so easy of assessment that it is difficult to get just appraisement for those who endured everything, not for their own freedom or gain but for others' glory, and accomplished so little that could be measured in the terms of substantial, visible, tangible, economic, or ecclesiastical progress. Who first of Europeans looked upon this river at the gulf we do not know, but on a Ptolemy map, published in Venice in 1513, it is thought by some that the delta is traced with distinctness, as less distinctly in Waldseemüller's map of 1507. Five years later (1518) on Garay's map of Alvarez de Pineda's explorations, there descends into the gulf a sourceless river, the Rio del Espiritu Santo, which is thought by some to be the same river that Marquette's map showed under the name de la Conception, ending its course in the midst of the continent; but it is more generally thought now to be the Mobile River, and the Gulf del Espiritu Santo to be the Bay of Mobile. Narvaez, as I have said, tried a score of years after to enter the Mississippi, but he was carried out to sea in his flimsy improvised craft, by its resisting current. Cabeça de Vaca may have seen it again after he left Narvaez, but we have no record in his narrative that distinguishes it from any other river. Then came the accredited discoverer De Soto, who found it but another obstacle in his gold-seeking path toward the Ozarks and who found it his grave on his harassed, disappointed journey back toward Florida. It was more than a hundred years after "it pleased God that the flood should rise," as the chronicle has it, and carry the brigantines built by De Soto's lieutenant, Moscoso, with his emaciated followers "down the Great River to the opening gulf," before another white face looked upon this great water. It was in 1543 that Moscoso and his men disappeared, sped on their voyage by the arrows of the aborigines. It was a June day in 1673 that Marquette and Joliet, coming down the Wisconsin from Green Bay, saw before them, "avec une joye que je ne peux pas expliquer," the slow, gentle-currented Mississippi; or, as Mark Twain has measured the time in a chronology of his own: "After De Soto glimpsed the river, a fraction short of a quarter of a century elapsed, and then Shakespeare was born, lived a trifle more than a half a century,--then died; and when he had been in his grave considerably more than half a century, the second white man saw the Mississippi." [Footnote: "Life on the Mississippi," Hillcrest edition, pp. 19, 20] In 1682 La Salle followed it to where it meets the great gulf, possessing with emblems of empire and his indomitable spirit the lower reaches of the stream whose upper waters had first been touched by the gentle Marquette and the practical Joliet and the vainglorious Hennepin. Between that day and the time when it became a course of regular and active commerce (again in Mark Twain's chronology), "seven sovereigns had occupied the throne of England, America had become an independent nation, Louis XIV and Louis XV had rotted--the French monarchy had gone down in the red tempest of the Revolution--and Napoleon was a name that was beginning to be talked about." [Footnote: "Life on the Mississippi," p. 20.] Of what befell in that period, marked by such figures and events, a later chapter will tell. Here our thought is of the river itself, the river of "a hundred thousand affluents," as one has characterized it; the river which for a little time bore through the valley of Louisiana and of the Illinois the name of the great French minister "Colbert." To the Spanish the river was a hazard, a difficulty to be gotten over. To the Indian it was the place of fish and defense. To the Anglo-American empire of wheels, that later came over the mountains, it was a barrier athwart the course, to be ferried or forded or bridged, but not to be followed. To be sure, it was (later) utilized by that empire, for a little while, as a path of dominant, noisy commerce in haste to get its products to market. And the keels of commerce may come again to stir its waters. But the river will never be to its later east-and-west migrants what it was to the French, whose evangelists, both of empire and of the soul, saw its significance, caught its spirit into their veins, and (from the day when Marquette and Joliet found their courage roused, and their labor of rowing from morning till night sweetened by the joy of their expedition) have possessed the river for their own and will possess it, even though all the land belongs to others, and the rivers are put to the uses of millions to whom the beautiful speech of the French is alien. Many a time in poling or paddling a boat in its tributaries in years gone by, have I thought and said to my companion: "How less inviting this stream would be if the French with valiant, adventurous spirit had not first passed over it!" And my companion was generally one who was always "Tonty" to me. It is still the river of Marquette and Joliet, Nicolet, Groseilliers and Radisson, La Salle and Tonty, Hennepin and Accau, Gray Gowns and Black Gowns, Iberville and Bienville, St. Ange and Laclede; for across every portage into the valley of that river, it was the men of France, so far as we know, who passed, first of Europeans, from Lake Erie up to Lake Chautauqua; or across to Fort Le Boeuf and down French Creek into the Alleghany and the Ohio (La Belle Rivière); or up the Maumee and across to the Wabash (the Appian Way); or from Lake Michigan up the St. Joseph and across to the Kankakee, at South Bend; or, most trodden path of all, from Green Bay up the Fox River and across to the Wisconsin; or at Chicago from the Chicago River across to the Des Plaines (to which with the Illinois River the French seem to have given the name "Divine"), and so on to the Mississippi. It is this last approach that I learned first and, though a smoke now hangs habitually over the entrance as a curtain, I have for myself but to push that aside to find the Divine River way still the best route into the greatest valley of the earth. Man has diverted this Divine River to very practical uses, and even changed its name, but it is hallowed still beyond all other approaches to the Great River. In a hut on the portage Père Jacques Marquette spent his last winter on earth in sickness; down the river the brave De la Salle built his Fort St. Louis on the great rock in the midst of his prairies, and still farther down his Fort Crèvecoeur. On no other affluent stream are there braver and more stirring memories of French adventure and sacrifice than move along those waters or bivouac on those banks. And so I would have one's imagination take that trail toward the Mississippi and first see it glisten beneath the tall white cliffs which stand at the portal of the Divine River entry. Its branches are reputed to have all borne at one time the names of saints, and it had like canonization itself. But these streams of the Mississippi, like the Seine, have none or few of the qualities that make this saintly terminology appropriate. It is anthropomorphism, not canonization, that befits its temper and its lure. Mystery no longer hangs over its waters. Now that all the prairie and plain have been occupied, the mystery has fled entirely from the valley or has hidden itself in the wilderness and "bad lands." All is translated into the values of a matter- of-fact, pragmatic, industrial occupation. These are some of the pragmatic and other facts concerning it which I have gathered from the explorers and surveyors and lovers of this region, Ogg [Footnote: Ogg, F. A., "Opening of the Mississippi," New York, 1904.] and Austin [Footnote: Austin, O. P., "Steps in the Expansion of our Territory," New York, 1903.] and Mark Twain [Footnote: Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi," various editions.] among them. Its length lies wholly within the temperate zone. In this respect it is more fortunately situated than the more fertile-valleyed Amazon, since the climate here, varied and sometimes inhospitable as it is, offers conditions of human development there denied. The main stream is two thousand five hundred and three miles in length, or more truly four thousand one hundred and ninety miles, if the Mississippi and Missouri be taken; that is, many times the length of the Seine. As Mark Twain, who is to be forever associated with its history, has said, it is "the crookedest river" in the world, travelling "one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that a crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five." For a distance of several hundred miles the Upper Mississippi is a mile in width. Back in 1882 it was seventy miles or more [Footnote: Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi," p. 456.] wide when the flood was highest, and in 1912 sixty miles wide. The volume of water discharged by it into the sea is second only to the Amazon, and is greater than that of all European rivers combined--Seine, Rhine, Rhone, Po, Danube, and all the rest, omitting the Volga. The amount is estimated at one hundred and fifty-nine cubic miles annually--that is, it would fill annually a tank one hundred and fifty-nine miles long, a mile wide, and a mile high. With its tributaries it provides somewhat more than sixteen thousand miles of navigable water, more than any other system on the globe except the Amazon, and more than enough to reach from Paris to Lake Superior by way of Kamchatka and Alaska--about three-fourths of the way around the globe. The sediment carried to the sea is estimated at four hundred million tons [Footnote: Humphrey's and Abbot's estimate.] annually. As one has put it, it would require daily for its removal five hundred trains of fifty cars, each carrying fifty tons, and would make two square miles each year over a hundred and thirty feet deep. Mark Twain in "Life on the Mississippi" is authority for the statement that the muddy water of the Missouri is more wholesome than other waters, until it has settled, when it is no better than that of the Ohio, for example. If you let a pint of it settle you will have three-fourths of an inch of mud in the bottom. His advice is to keep it stirred up. [Footnote: "Life on the Mississippi," p. 182.] The area which it drains is roughly a million and a quarter square miles, or two-fifths of the United States. That is, as one graphic historian has visualized it in European terms, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, and Italy could be set down within its limits and there would still be some room to spare. The river has the strength (for the most part put to no use) of sixty million horses. The difference between high water and low water in flood conditions is in some places fifty feet, which shows that it has a wider range of moodiness than even the Seine. The rim dividing the Mississippi basin from that of the Great Lakes is, as we have seen, low and narrow; in some places, especially in wet seasons, the watershed is indistinguishable. The waters know not which way to go. This fact furnishes the explanation of the ease with which the French explorers penetrated the valley from the north. A high mountain range kept the English colonists out of it from the east. The Spanish found no physical barriers at the south (except the water, which gave the Frenchmen help), but, as we have seen, on the other hand, they found no adequate inducement. The isotherm which touches the southern limits of France passes midway between the source and mouth of the river. In the northern half, it has the mean annual temperature of France, England, and Germany; in the southern half, of the Mediterranean coasts. From the gulf into which it empties, a river (that is, an ocean river, or current) runs through the ocean to the western coasts of Europe; another runs out along the northeastern coast of South America, and, still another is in waiting at the western terminus of the Panama Canal to assist the ships across the Pacific. A fair regularity and reliability of rainfall have made the rich soil of the valley tillable and productive without irrigation, except in the far western stretches; and these blessings are likely to continue, as one authority puts it, "so long as the earth continues to revolve toward the east and the present relationship of ocean and continent continues." Including Texas and Alabama (which lie between the same ranges of mountains with this valley, though their rivers run into the gulf and not into the Mississippi), this valley has perhaps one hundred and forty thousand miles of railway, or about sixty per cent of the total mileage of the country, or twenty-five per cent of the mileage of the entire globe. "In richness of soil, variety of climate, number and value of products, facilities for communication and general conditions of wealth and prosperity, the Mississippi Valley surpasses anything known to the Old World as well as the New." It produces the bulk of the world's cotton and oil; of corn it raises much more than all the rest of the world combined, and of each of the following (produced mainly in this same valley) the United States leads in quantity all the nations of the earth: wheat, cattle, hogs, oats, hay, lumber, coal, iron and steel, and other mineral products. Its valley supports an estimated population of over fifty millions, or over half that of the whole United States; and has an estimated maintenance capacity of from 200,000,000 [Footnote: Justin Winsor, "Mississippi Basin," p. 4.] to 350,000,000 [Footnote: A. B. Hart, "Future of the Mississippi Valley," _Harper's Magazine_, 100:419, February, 1900.] or from four to seven times its present population. It has been tilled with "luxurious carelessness." A peasant in Brittany or a forester in Normandy would be scandalized by the extravagant, profligate use of its patrimony. That it is likely to have at least the 250,000,000 by the year 2100, and with intensive cultivation will be able to support them, is allowed by estimates of reliable statisticians. Europe had 175,000,000 at the beginning of the nineteenth century and North America 5,308,000. The former has somewhat more than doubled its population in the century since; America has increased hers about twenty times, and the Mississippi Valley several thousand times. It is not unreasonable to expect the doubling of the population of that valley in another century and its quadrupling in two. Let De Tocqueville make summary of those prideful items in his description of the valley, embraced by the equator-sloping half of the continent: "It is upon the whole," he says, "the most magnificent dwelling-place prepared by God for man's abode"--a "space of 1,341,649 square miles--about six times that of France"--watered by a river "which, like a god of antiquity, dispenses both good and evil." [Footnote: "Democracy in America," 1:22, 21, 20. New York, 1898.] And it was still another Frenchman who first gave to the world an accurate description of the sources of the river. On his own account, Nicollet, sometime professor in the College Louis le Grand, set out in 1831 to explore the river from its mouth to the source. He spent five years in these regions which he described as "a grand empire possessing the grandest natural limits on the earth." He then returned to a little Catholic college in Baltimore as a teacher, but the United States Government, hearing of his valuable service, commissioned him to make another expedition that would enable him to complete his map of the region of the sources. What he then accomplished has given him "distinct and conspicuous place among the explorers of the Mississippi." His map shows myriad lakes in the region of the sources (where the slightest jar of earth might turn in other directions the water of these brimming bowls), so many indeed, that there would seem to be only lake and marsh and savannas. But we see him looking off toward plateaus "looming as if [they were] a distant shore." Another picture I shall always keep from his report is of his stolid half-breed guide (who usually waited for him and his companion with face toward them) sitting one day somewhat ahead of the party on a slight elevation, which makes the watershed between the rivers of the north and the rivers of the south, his face turned from them, gazing in silent rapture upon the boundless stretch of plains. How their magical influence possessed him, as well as that child of forest and plain, Nicollet, a peasant boy of Savoy, a professor in Paris, interrupts his topographical report to tell: "It is difficult to express by words the varied impressions which the spectacle of these prairies produces. Their sight never wearies. To look a prairie up or down, to ascend one of its undulations, to reach a small plateau (or, as the voyageurs call it, a prairie planche), moving from wave to wave over alternate swells and depressions and finally to reach the vast, interminable low prairie that extends itself in front--(be it for hours, days or weeks)--one never tires; pleasurable and exhilarating sensations are all the time felt; ennui is never experienced. Doubtless there are moments when excessive heat, a want of fresh water, and other privations remind one that life is a toil; but these drawbacks are of short duration. There are no concealed dangers--no difficulties of road; a far-spreading verdure, relieved by a profusion of variously colored flowers, the azure of the sky above, or the tempest that can be seen from its beginning to its end, the beautiful modifications of the changing clouds, the curious looming of objects between earth and sky, taxing the ingenuity every moment to rectify--all, everything, is calculated to excite the perceptions and keep alive the imagination. In the summer season, especially, everything upon the prairies is cheerful, graceful, and animated. The Indians, with herds of deer, antelope and buffalo, give life and motion to them. It is then they should be visited; and I pity the man whose soul could remain unmoved under such a scene of excitement." [Footnote: Report intended to illustrate a map of the hydrographical basin of the upper Mississippi River, Washington, 1843, 26th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 237, p. 52.] It is a singular fortune that has made a son of France, a century and a half after the discovery of this mighty stream, the explorer and cartographer of its sources, a fortune that has its partial explanation at least in the lure of this stream for the Gallic heart. Mrs. Trollope, a famous English traveller, found its lower valley depressing, as has many another: "Unwonted to European eyes and mystically heavy is the eternal gloom that seems to have settled upon that region. Whatever wind may blow, however bright and burning the southern sun may blaze in the unclouded sky, the stream is forever turbid and forever dark." Of the scene at its mouth, where La Salle and his men had sung with such joy, she says: "Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors." [Footnote: "Domestic Manners of the Americans," p. r] But no French visitor, so far as I know, has ever found it gloomy, even in flood or tempest on its subtropical stretches; nor has he found those level vastnesses desolate. A traveller, Paul Fountain by name, and so of French origin, I suspect, wandering over those valley plains in the early days, tells of the sense of freedom, health, and strength that they give: "There is no air like the prairie air--not even the grand freshness of the boundless ocean itself.--The loveliness and variety of the prairie odors are quite indescribable, as are its superb wild flowers. It is a paradise. No man who has lived on it long enough to know it and love it (no great time, I can assure you) ever experiences real happiness after he has left it. There is a longing and eager craving to return to the life. The vulgar cowboys and hunters, uneducated and unpoetical past all degree, never leave it except to get drunk. Their money gone, back they go to get fresh strength and more pelf for another orgie; but if by chance they abandon the wild, free life, they soon drink themselves to lunacy or death, and their last babblings are of the glorious wilderness they all love." [Footnote: "The Great Deserts and Forests of North America," p. 22.] This is the too exuberant expression of one who had probably never had a hearth of his own in France, but it gives some intimation of the charm of that great and seemingly infinite sweep of level ground, which many, and especially unimaginative minds, find so monotonous. We cannot be quite sure, when we listen to some recent critics, that Châteaubriand ever saw this great valley. Certainly we who have grown up in it have never found his reindeer and moose about our homes (save in our Christmas-time imaginations). Paroquets that in the woods repeated the words learned of settlers are not of the fauna known to reputable Ohio naturalists, nor have two-headed snakes been found except in the vision of those who see double in their intoxication. The tamarind and the terebinth are not of its forest-trees. But whether or not Châteaubriand visited it in person, his imagination had frequent residence upon the Mississippi and its tributaries. His "Atala" put into French literature a country where many have loved to dwell, though its fauna and flora were not more accurate in some respects than the mineralogy and meteorology of the John Law scheme, known later as the "Mississippi Bubble," that made France wild with excitement once. However, I have recalled the fervid pen of Châteaubriand, not as that of a faunal or floral naturalist, but to have it rewrite these sentences: "Nothing is more surprising and magnificent than this movement and this distribution of the central waters of North America" (whence flows the Mississippi), "a river which the French first descended; a river which flowed under their power, and the rich valley of which," as the translator has rendered it, "still regrets their genius," but, as Châteaubriand doubtless meant it, and as it is better translated, "still grieves for their spirit," their "familiar" ("et dont la riche vallée regrette encore leur génie"). [Footnote: "Travels in America and Italy," 1:72, 73, London, 1828.] I think that Châteaubriand had accurate instinct in divining the river's grieving for the spirit that (with all the practical genius which now inhabits the valley) is still needed to give an appreciation of that in the valley which lies beyond the counting of statistics or even the glowing rhetoric of the orators of liberty. Hamlin Garland, reared in that valley, and first known in American letters as the author of remarkable stories of life on a Western farm, "Main Travelled Roads," has recently given expression to this grieving (though he says no word of the French) in an essay on "The Silent Mississippi," published a few years ago. He speaks of the river's bold, blue-green bluffs "looking away into haze," of its golden bars of sand "jutting out into the burnished stream," of its thickets of yellow-green willows, of the splendid old trees and of its glades opening away to the hills (all making a magical way of beauty), only to use it as a background for the statement that "not one beautiful building" is to be seen on its banks "for a thousand miles." There are many towns, but "without a single distinctive building; everything is a flimsy jumble, out of key, meaningless, impertinent, evanescent, too, thanks to climate." "We took a wild land beautiful as a dream," he proceeds, "and we have made a refuse heap. The birds of the trees have disappeared, the water-fowl have gone, every edible creature has vanished. An era of hopeless, distinctive vulgarity is upon us." I have travelled down the smaller waterways of the valley with like feeling, which, though it has led to no such comprehensive generalization, yet gave me a distinct consciousness of their "grieving," if not for the French, at any rate for the silences that preceded the French, and for their own riparian architecture. The busy towns along the streams I have known have turned their faces from these streams toward the railroads. They have left the riverside to the thriftless men and the truant boys. Stables and outhouses look upon their waters, and the sewers pollute them. And if on some especially eligible bluff better buildings do stand, their owners or builders show no appreciation of what the bluff or river cares for, but reproduce the lines of some pretentious edifice that has no relation, historic or otherwise, to it or to the site. The old mills, with their feet in the water, are almost the only sympathetic structures-- especially so when they are in ruins. I once followed the upper waters of the stream (the Ohio) along which Celoron, of whom I shall speak later, planted his emblems of French possession. He would doubtless care to claim that valley even to-day, though unsightly houses and sheds line it, and pipes and shafts of iron, hastily rigged up and left to rust when done with, run everywhere, and the scum of oil is on the water. The profit of the hour was all that was visible of motive or achievement in that smoky valley, though I know it is not safe to generalize, for miracles have been wrought in that very valley. A change is coming in many of the towns and cities of both the lesser and the larger rivers. In the town that I knew best, thirty years ago only a few ventured upon the water, and they were the fishermen or rivermen who had not much to do with the community life; now the steam or gasolene launch is making these streams highways of pleasure, and so is bringing them within the daily life of thousands. Waiting for a boat in St. Louis one beautiful summer morning on the quay, where in Paris I should have found the book-stalls, I saw a Pullman train just starting for New York, and at the water's edge under the stately bridge one tramp "barbering" another. But, reading the morning paper, I found by chance that back in the city there was one man at least, a teacher and artist, who had the old-time French feeling for the grieving river. It was dark before I found him, after my day on a steamboat whose most important passenger, pointed out to me with some apparent pride by the old-time captain, was a brewer, author of a brew more famous in those parts than the artist's river pictures which I saw by candle-light that night in his schoolroom. The artist had his river studio upon one of the beautiful cliffs which La Salle must have seen when he came out of the Illinois into the Mississippi. And it was within a few miles of that studio, it may be added, that I found, too, one noteworthy exception to Mr. Hamlin Garland's statement concerning riparian architecture. These are hopeful intimations succeeding the fading of the last traces in that region of the old French days, traces which I found a few hours' journey below St. Louis, in the village of Prairie du Rocher (locally pronounced Prary de Roosh); for Cahokia, where I stopped first, had no mark of the French regime except the "congregation," which was, as the priest told me, two hundred years old. The village had no distinctiveness. But Prairie du Rocher had its own atmosphere and charm. French skies never produced a more glorious August sunset than I saw through the Corot trees of that village, which stands or reclines beneath the cliffs and looks off toward the river that has receded far to the westward. I tried to find the old French records of which I had heard, but there was a new priest who knew not the French; yet I did not need them to assure me that the French had been there. At dawn, after such a peaceful night as one might have in upper Carcasonne, I found my way to the river near which are the ruins of Fort Chartres--all that is left of the greatest French fortress in the Mississippi Valley, the last to yield to man and the last to surrender to nature. The town, Nouvelle Chartres, with all its color and gayety, has become a corn field, and only the magazine of the fort remains, hidden, a gunshot from the river, among the weeds, bushes, vines, and trees. Fourteen miles below is the site of the oldest French village in the upper valley. But the river was jealous and took it all, foundation and roof, to itself. The charms of old Kaskaskia, the sometime capital of all that region, are "one with Nineveh and Tyre." Not a vestige is left of its first days and only a broken structure or two of its later glory. Nor is there any other trace, so far as I could learn, anywhere down the winding stream till one reaches New Orleans. The red sun-worshippers in their white garments--familiar of old to the French--even they have followed their divinity toward its setting, and only among those with African shadows in their faces do they still sing, as I have heard, of the "brave days of D'Artaguette." The monuments do not remember beyond the bravery and carnage of the Civil War, or at farthest beyond the War of 1812. I was myself apprehended for a foreign spy one day while I was searching too near to the guns of a present fort for more ancient monuments. The great river and some of its tributaries have a commerce, but it is of an inanimate and unappealing kind. They no longer draw the throngs daily to the wharfs as in the days of the glory of the steamboat. Everybody is in too much of a hurry to travel by water. An old Mississippi River steamboat captain [Footnote: George B. Merrick, "Old Times on the Upper Mississippi," Cleveland, A. H. Clark Co., 1909.] has written a reminiscent book, in which he tells with sorrow of the departed majesty and glory of the river, the glamour remaining only in the memories of those who knew the river sixty years or more ago. He laments the passing of that mighty fleet, destroyed by the very civilization that built it--a civilization which cut down the impounding forests and so removed the great natural dams which must in time be replaced by artificial ones if the rivers are ever to run full again in the dry seasons and not overflow in the wet. It is that day of the Mississippi that is best known in our literature. Mark Twain has put forever on the map of letters (where the Euphrates, the Nile, the Ilyssus, the Tiber, the Seine, the Thames long have been) the Mississippi, the river which the French first traced upon the maps of geography. So we are especially indebted to the French for Mark Twain, who began his career as a "cub" pilot on the river which in turn gave him the name by which the world is ever to know him. It was he who once wrote of this river: "The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly renewed with every reperusal." [Footnote: "Life on the Mississippi," pp. 82-83.] When I was entering the English Channel on my way to Havre, the captain showed me what varied courses must be taken at different hours and different days to gain full advantage of tide and current and yet avoid all danger. But, as this Mississippi River pilot has observed, it is now a comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run these buoyed and lighted ship channels; it was then quite another matter to pilot a steamboat in the Mississippi or Missouri, "whose alluvial banks cave and change constantly, whose snags are always hunting up new quarters, whose sand- bars are never at rest, whose channels are forever dodging and shirking, and whose obstructions" had fifty years ago to be "confronted in all nights and all weathers without the aid of a single lighthouse or a single buoy." [Footnote: "Life on the Mississippi," p. 86.] And yet that man, who came to know, in age, the courses of human emotions the world over, could, as a young man, shut his eyes and trace the river from St. Louis to New Orleans, and read its face as one "would cull the news from a morning paper." It was for years a wish of mine that when Mark Twain should come to die, he should lie not in an ordinary sepulchre of earth but in the river which he knew so well and loved, and of whose golden days he sang. I wished that the river might be turned aside from its wonted channel, as the River Busentinus for the interment of Alaric, and then, after his burial there, be let back into it again, that he might ever hear the sonorous voice of its waters above him, and, perhaps, now and then the call of the leadsman overhead, crying the depth beneath, as he himself in the pilot-house used once to hear the call "Mark Twain" from the darkness below. So it was a disappointment to me that when the world followed him to his grave it was to a little patch of earth outside the valley, beyond the reach of even the farthest tributary of the Mississippi. The great river has been the course of one empire and the scene of many. Spain, France, England, and the United States have each claimed its mastery, as we have seen or shall see. The Germans once dreamed of a state on its banks, but could not agree as to the locality (Minnesota or Texas), so variedly tempting was the fertility of its upper and its lower waters. The sons of the Norsemen are now tilling the land around its sources. Indeed, it has now upon its banks and within the reach of its myriad streams a babel of earth's races, although the river has not, as the River of the Lotus Flower, conformed them to one uniform type. We are beginning now to realize more keenly that the river has yet to be conquered. It has yielded complete sovereignty to no people. It has made light of the emblems of empire. It has even ignored the white, channel- marking signals of the government that now exercises lordship over all the land it drains. Its untamed spirit flaunts continual challenge in the face of all men. It has had in derision the building of cities and towns. One town, for example, has been left to choose between being left high and dry five miles from water, or of meeting the fate of old Kaskaskia. And though the town has already thrown a million dollars to the river, as if to some unappeased god, the river is merciless. One town and another have been ostracized or destroyed, their wharfs left far inland or carried away to some commerceless bayou. The sentiment I have regarding the river makes it difficult to excuse its infidelity toward one little French town in particular, St. Genevieve. I can do so only by assuming that the river has cared less for its later inhabitants than it did for those who gave it name. It has laughed at the embankments on which hundreds of millions have been spent by nation, state, and private enterprise to keep its flood in restraint. Shorn of its trees, as Samson of his long hair, it has pulled down the pillars of man's raising into its own destroying waters. In 1912 a space nearly two and a half times the size of the State of New Jersey was devastated. [Footnote: Seventeen thousand six hundred and five square miles.] In 1913 the loss in a single year was one hundred and sixty million dollars. [Footnote: One hundred and sixty-three million, U. S. Weather Bureau estimate.] In the last thirty years it is estimated the loss has been a half of a billion, and it would have been immensely greater, of course, if the river had not been given unchallenged freedom of great, unclaimed swamps. And yet the river has never at any one time massed its great army of waters. At one time it has been the Ohio, at another the Missouri, and then the Red that it has sent against the fortifications. If all these streams were to be brought in flood at once the lower valley would be swept clean. So it is no martial simile that I am using. It is a real battle that is continuously on. The gaunt sharp-shooter, pacing the embankment with Winchester in hand to shoot any burrowing confederate of the river, a rat, or mole, is a real and not an imaginary figure. And the battles that have been fought along its course are as play by the side of those yet to be waged before it is subdued by man. It is fitly the War Department of the government that has been watching its every movement, that has set the signals on its fitful tide, and that has recorded its every shift for years as if it were an animate enemy. Its changing area, velocity, discharge--items of infinite permutations--are all noted and analyzed. But the war department of the government is still almost as powerless to control the river as the Yazoo farmer who watches its changing moods, not by instruments but by the movement of an eddy in his own hidden bayou. The battle is with floods, shallows, and erosion, but it is essentially a battle with floods, for not until their strongholds are taken, controlled, is the complete conquest assured. It was control of the mouth of the river that seemed so important in early days. The effort to obtain that led ultimately to the purchase of Louisiana (that is, the west bank of the river) from the French by the United States. It was the confirmation of that security of navigation which gave the battle of New Orleans its high significance. Then the mouth (thus obtained) was found too shallow for the demands of commerce, and there followed what some one with poetic instincts has called the battle of the shoals, a battle in which General Eads, who had bridged the river at St. Louis, compelled the river by means of jetties to run deeper and carry heavier burdens. But the future battle-fields are perceived to lie toward the sources, at the eaves, as it were, of the watersheds, the headwaters of its tributaries as well as its own. No deepening, embanking, straightening, canalization of the river is to be permanently effective until all danger of flood can be removed. Wandering among those tributaries, seeing the trickling fountains of several of them, watching the timid stream in the naked, deforested fields (not knowing quite which way to go, east or west, north or south), I have been strongly appealed to by the plan of impounding in reservoirs these first waters, whose freedom (no longer restrained in youth by the sage forests) makes them libertines and wantons in the distant valleys below. Such impounding has successful inauguration in five small reservoirs now in operation on the headwaters of the Mississippi out of forty-two planned. An ambitious plan for controlling the turbulent Ohio by a system of from seventeen to forty-three reservoirs at an estimated cost of from twenty to thirty-four millions of dollars has been suggested by Mr. M. O. Leighton of the United States Geological Survey, and received indorsement from the Pittsburgh Flood Commission, the Dayton Flood Commission, and the National Waterways Commission. These would suffice to keep the lawless waters within temperate bounds in the spring and to give more generous navigable currents in the summer and autumn. Against the great expense of such a project is set the tremendous possibilities in the development of water-power. Of the theoretical sixty millions of horse-power in the current of the Mississippi, it is estimated that about six and a half millions can be economically developed throughout the year, while twelve millions could be developed during six months or more without storage reservoirs. An adequate system of reservoirs might double or treble these totals, while a million or two would be immediately available to begin the payment of the debt, and more of the strength would be harnessed to that purpose in time. So, it is urged, the river would be made to meet the expense of its own conquest. [Footnote: See reports of the National Conservation Commission in 1909; National Waterways Commission, 1912; Report Commissioner of Corporations on Water-Power Development in the United States, 1912; J. L. Mathews "Remaking the Mississippi," Boston, 1909.] And once that is done the river may be straightened, shortened, deepened, leveed, and made a docile, reliable carrier of commerce. It may then be compelled to a respect for cities and government signals and wharfs and mills. And the astute suggestion of the practical Joliet for the canalization of its waters, may be realized in the safe passage not merely of boats but of stately, giant, ocean-sized vessels from the Great Lakes to the gulf. A hundred years ago (1809) one Nicholas Roosevelt, commissioned of Robert Fulton (the inventor of the steamboat) and others, was sent to Pittsburgh to build the first steamboat to be launched in western waters. So confident was this young man of the success of steamboat navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi that, on his journey of inspection, he purchased coal-mines along the way and arranged to have the coal piled up on the river bank against the time of its need by boats whose keels had not been laid and whose existence even depended upon the approval of eastern capitalists. It suggests the prevision of the nephew, Theodore Roosevelt, in making provision for the coaling of ships in the east long before the Spanish War was in sight. I was on the Marquette-Joliet portage the very day that this same nephew was predicting with like confidence to the people of St. Louis that the Mississippi would be deepened till from the lakes to the gulf it should be a course for seagoing vessels. Champlain suggested the Panama Canal three hundred years before its building. Joliet, in 1673, suggested the lakes-to-the-gulf ship waterway, [Footnote: Margry, 1:268.] and by the three-hundredth anniversary, perhaps, it will be completed. I made a journey in 1911 that began at the first settlements of the French in Nova Scotia, touched the Bay of Chaleur and the lower St. Lawrence, and then followed the French water paths all the way to the mouth of the Mississippi, where the master of pilots, a descendant of France, carried me out into the Gulf of Mexico. Starting back before dawn in a little boat, I saw, just as the sun was coming up over the swamps where the river begins to divide, the hulk of a great seagoing vessel against the morning sky. It seemed then a gloomy apparition; but as I think of it now it was rather the presage of the new commerce than the ghost of that which has departed. That the Valley of a Hundred Thousand Streams--streams that together touch every community of any size from the Alleghanies to the Rockies--streams whose waters all find their way sooner or later into the Mississippi--will ever give up battle till the great water itself is conquered, no one who knows the determined people in that valley will ever question. The sixty million people will not be resisted permanently by the sixty million horses of the river, though the strength of the horses be driven by all the clouds that the gulf sends up the valley to its aid. Some day the great, free River Colbert will run vexed of impenetrable, unyielding walls to the sea. Its "titanic ambition for quiet flowing" down this beautiful, gently sloping valley to the gulf (which, as one has said, "has been its longing through ages") will have been turned to human ministry. The spirit of the great water will have become as patient, as thoughtless of its own wild comfort or ambitions as that of the priest who dedicated it to the honor of the mother of the most patient of men. CHAPTER VI THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE AND THE DREAM OF ITS REVIVAL The readers who have through these chapters been companions of Champlain, La Salle, Joliet, Marquette, and others in the discovery of the mighty rivers and the conquest of the mighty vastnesses of the new world will have, if they continue, yet before them even harder and more disheartening ventures, as La Salle himself had that April day in 1682, when he turned from the column which he had planted in sight of the Gulf of Mexico, four thousand miles from the Cape of Labrador, and began to drive his canoes up the river which he had traced forever, if too tortuously, on the maps of the earth. During the chapter since we reached the shores of that lonely sea without a sail, we have, covering in prospect two centuries, contemplated the majesty of that river of a hundred thousand affluents. Now, as we turn our faces toward the lakes and Canada again, a century of hardship confronts us. If the readers endure it with me, as I have endured it again and again, they will have added again to their France and their United States memories more precious than the titles to boundless prairies and trackless forests. La Salle was not content with the discovery of the great waterway to the gulf, the tracing of whose course had ended all dreams of a shorter route to China by aid of its current. In place of his La Chine dream grew another dream: to open this valley to France from the south instead of from the north, where the way was long and perilous, closed half the year by ice and storm, and beset all the year by hostile intrigue, envy, and dishonesty of colonial officials. A Franco-Indian colony was to be established along the Illinois under the protection of Fort St. Louis on the Rock. Ultimately a chain of forts and colonies would hold the watercourse all the way from gulf to gulf-from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico-maintained by revenues from the hides and wool of the buffalo then roaming the woods and prairies and plains from one side of the valley to the other; the Indians would gather about these centres for gain and protection; and in the midst of this wilderness he would hold for France the empire that the inscription on the column at the mouth of the river claimed. The crows might fly about his fields, but they could not then touch his rich crops. Griffins--flocks, fleets of griffins--would fly above them. That was the vision with which he started northward from the mouth of the great river, the vision out of which he might at once have been starved except for the meat of alligators shot along the way. Seized of a dangerous illness, he sent Tonty on to Mackinaw to forward news of the discovery to Canada, and unable, even after months of Father Membré's care, to go to Paris to prepare for the carrying out of his great scheme, he, joined by Tonty, climbs the Rock St. Louis and lays out ramparts on its crest, of which I thought I discovered traces many years ago. It was another Rock of Quebec, rising sheer a hundred and twenty-five feet above the river in the midst of the prairie. About it gathered under his protection many tribes of Indians, in common dread of the Iroquois, in common hope, doubtless, of gain from commerce with the French. La Salle, in a report to be found in the archives of the Marine in Paris, states that his extemporized colony numbered four thousand warriors, or twenty thousand souls. [Footnote: Margry, 2:363. Parkman, "La Salle," pp. 317, 318.] It had come up as Jonah's gourd and might as quickly wither, as the village of the Illinois but a few years previous had withered into desolation in a few hours before the hot breath of the terrorizing fame of the Iroquois. From his seigniorial aerie he sent messages to the governor of Canada, no longer the friendly Frontenac but a Pharaoh who knew not this Joseph, praying for cooperation, saying that he could not leave his red allies lest, if the Iroquois should strike in his absence, they would think him in league with their dread enemies; asking that his men who go down with hides in exchange for munitions be not retained as outlaws; urging that it is for the advantage of his creditors (for his losses had amounted to forty thousand crowns) that they do not seize his goods-since the means of meeting all his debts would then be destroyed-and begging for more men with whom to make this colony permanent and gather the more remote Indian tribes around the sheltering Rock St. Louis. [Footnote: Margry, 2:314. Parkman, "La Salle," pp. 320-324.] But it was not such prayers that reached Louis XIV, who, on May 10, 1682, before La Salle's report of the discovery of the Mississippi arrived at Versailles, had directed that no further permission should be given to make journeys of discovery toward the Mississippi, as the colonists might better be employed in cultivating the lands. This is an example of the advice the king is receiving from his governor in Quebec: "You will see that ... [La Salle] has been bold enough to give you intelligence of a false discovery and that, instead of returning to the colony to learn what the King wishes him to do, he does not come near me, but keeps in the backwoods, five hundred leagues off, with the idea of attracting the inhabitants to him, and building up an imaginary kingdom for himself, by debauching all the bankrupts and idlers of this country, ... All the men who brought me news from him have abandoned him, and say not a word about returning, but sell the furs they have brought as if they were their own; so that he cannot hold his ground much longer." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 323.] Meanwhile the king, the same king who five years before had said in La Salle's commission that he had "nothing more at heart" than the exploration of that country, writes to the governor of Canada from Fontainebleau: "I am convinced, as you, that the discovery of the Sieur de la Salle is very useless, and that such enterprises ought to be prevented in the future." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 324.] In his extremity, his supplies cut off, his men sent to Quebec deserting with the profits of his hides, La Salle leaves Tonty on the Rock, starts for Quebec, intending to go to France, meets on the way an officer appointed to succeed him in all his wilderness authority, and in the spring of 1684 is again a lodger in Rue de la Truanderie, a miserable little street in Paris where, as I have said before, I have tried to locate the lodging of the valiant soul who once dwelt upon the mysterious rock near my boyhood home. Thence this man of "solitary disposition," whose life had been joined to savages, and who had for years had "neither servants, clothes nor fare which did not savor more of meanness than of ostentation," and who was of such natural timidity that it took him a week "to make up his mind to go to an audience" with Monseigneur de Conti, is summoned to an interview with the king himself. La Salle's memorials, which recall by way of introduction his five journeys of upward of five thousand leagues, in great part on foot, through more than six hundred leagues of unknown country among savages and cannibals, and at the cost of one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and which propose projects that seem in some of their features quixotic and visionary, received favorable consideration of the king and his minister Colbert's son. La Salle's wilderness empire is restored to him and he is granted four ships in which to carry soldiers, mechanics, and laborers to establish a fort and colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, to open up all the interior of America from the south, and incidentally to make war on the Spaniards (who were claiming the gulf for their own), and to seize their valuable mines. The quarrellings of this expedition (due in part to the divided command); the failure to find the mouth of the Mississippi since, we are told, La Salle had been unable in 1682 to determine its longitude; the landing on the shores of Texas, far beyond the mouth of the Mississippi; the loss of one of the vessels to the Spanish, the wreck of two others, and the return of the fourth to France; the miserable fate of the colony left on those desolate shores; the long search of La Salle and his companions for the "fatal river"--these make a dismal story whose details cannot be rehearsed here, a story whose tragic end was the murder of La Salle by one of his own disaffected followers in March, 1687, on the banks of the Trinity River. There is time, as we hasten on, for only a few words over the body of this "iron man," left "a prey to the buzzards and wolves" of the wilderness in which he sacrificed all, as Champlain, for France. "One of the greatest men of his age," said Tonty, who was nearest to him in all his labors save his last. "Without question one of the most remarkable explorers whose names live in history," writes Parkman. [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 430.] His "personality is impressed in some respects more strongly than that of any other upon the history of New France," says another historian, Fiske. [Footnote: "New France and New England," p. 132.] "For force of will and vast conceptions; for various knowledge and quick adaptation of his genius to untried circumstances; for a sublime magnanimity, that resigned itself to the will of Heaven, and yet triumphed over affliction by energy of purpose and unfaltering hope--this daring adventurer had no superior among his countrymen," says Bancroft. [Footnote: "History of the United States," 3: 173.] And further, in the estimate of a recent historian of the valley, "for all the qualities of rugged manhood, courage, persistency that could not be broken, contempt of pain and hardship, he has never been surpassed." [Footnote: James K. Hosmer, "Short History of the Mississippi Valley," p. 140.] Let him who next to Tonty knew him better than all the other chroniclers say a last word--one which will justify the time that we have given to following the fortunes and adversities of this spirit, unbroken to the last: "He was a tower of adamant, against whose impregnable front hardship and danger, the rage of man and of the elements, the southern sun, the northern blast, fatigue, famine, disease, delay, disappointment and deferred hope, emptied their quivers in vain.... Never under the impenetrable mail of paladin or crusader beat a heart of more intrepid mettle than within the stoic panoply that armed the breast of La Salle. To estimate aright the marvels of his patient fortitude, one must follow on his track through the vast scene of his interminable journeyings.... America owes him an enduring memory; for in this masculine figure she sees the pioneer who guided her to her richest heritage." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 432.] France had deserved well of that valley had she done nothing more than to set that rugged, fearless figure in the heart of America, a perpetual foil to effeminacy and submission to softening luxury, to the arts that seek merely popularity, to drunkenness and other vices which he combated even in that wilderness, to sycophancy and demagogy--a perpetual example of the "vir" and virtue in the noblest sense in which mankind has defined them. In the grand amphitheatre in the Sorbonne, I witnessed one day in Paris a celebration of the conquests of the French language in lands outside of France: conquests in the islands of the West Indies, where La Salle suffered all but death; in Canada, where he had his first visions; and in Louisiana, where he perished. Though his name was not spoken, it were a reason for greater celebration in France that the spirit of such a Frenchman as La Salle had enduring memory in the severe ideals of manhood that are for all time to possess the men of that valley to which he guided the world. There is a grave for which I wished to make search in Rouen, the grave of the mother of La Salle, to whom he wrote in 1684: "I hope ... to embrace you a year hence with all the pleasure that the most grateful of children can feel with so good a mother as you have always been." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 364.] I wish I could have made her know--but since I could not, I tried to let France know instead--that there are millions who could speak to-day as the most "grateful of children" what her son and France's son was never permitted to utter. La Salle's dream of New France did not fade with his last sight of his empire of Louisiana. But the century in which he was born and died had all but gone out before the stirring of his life's vision and sacrifice, strengthened by appeal of the gallant and faithful Tonty, resulted in the offer by one who has been called the "Cid of Canada," Le Moyne d'Iberville, to carry out the schemes of La Salle, and it was becoming clear that France must act at once or England would build the glorious structure which La Salle had designed. In the offer of this young Canadian and his brother Bienville were the purposes that gave substantial foundation to Louisiana. Sailing with their two ships in 1699, they were caught in the "strong, muddy current of fresh water," which La Salle had unluckily passed without seeing. They entered this stream and, after several days of exploration, had verification of the identity of the river in a letter (or "speaking bark," as the Indians called it), dated the 2Oth of April, 1685, which Tonty, years before, when making the journey down the river in search of La Salle, had left in the hands of an Indian chief to be delivered to La Salle, or, as the chief called him, "the man who should come up the river." The fortunes which befell those of this colony, trying to find a suitable site in that land of bushes and cane-brakes, are not agreeable to follow. For thirteen years the "paternal providence of Versailles" watched over them, sending them marriageable women, soldiers, priests, and nuns, but so little food that famine and pestilence often came to their miserable stockades. They were under injunction "to seek out pearl fisheries," "to catch bison-calves, tame them and take their wool," and "to look for mines." What employment for the founders of an empire! [Footnote: In one of the branches of that river at whose mouth they settled I saw a summer or two ago, one of the men of that valley wading in its water, still in search of pearls. A pearl worth a thousand dollars had once been found near by, and so (in the same hope that animated the mind of King Louis XIV) man after man in that neighborhood had abandoned his fertile farm to search for pearls, only to be reduced, as the poor settlers of early, Louisiana, to live upon the shell-fish in which the pearls refused to grow.] One cannot resist the temptation to say again: If only Louis XIV had had the good sense, unblinded of pearls and gold and bigotry and some other things, to let the industrious, skilled Huguenots, flying from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settle in Louisiana, instead of forcing them to swell the numbers of the English colonies on the Atlantic coast, and eventually assist them in taking the New France from which they had been debarred! The French engineer of an English ship, appearing on the river one day, had furtively handed Bienville a petition of four hundred Huguenots in the Carolinas to be allowed to settle in Louisiana and to have the privilege of worship, such as is enjoyed to-day. The answer came from Versailles to the cane-brakes--from Versailles, where, amid scenes "which no European court could rival," the "greatest of France, princes, warriors, statesmen," were gathered week after week in the "Halls of Abundance, Venus, Mars and Apollo," from Versailles to the half-starved little group sitting in exile by the gulf, far from abundance, without love, in dread of Mars, and with no arts of Apollo save the sound of the wind in the trees and the moan of the sea: "Have I expelled heretics from France in order that they should set up a republic in America?" One has reminded us that while Iberville was making almost futile attempts with the half-hearted support of his government to establish this colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, Peter the Great was beginning to lay the foundations of St. Petersburg in as unpromising a place--a barren, uncultivated island which was a frozen swamp in winter and a heap of mud in summer, in the midst of pathless forests and deep morasses haunted by wolves and bears. Peter the Great spent great treasure in clearing the forests, draining the swamps, and raising embankments for this future capital of an empire. Louis XIV had only to let certain Frenchmen settle on these less forbidding coasts, that might soon have become the capital of as fruitful a province as Peter the Great's; and the transformation would have been made, as in New England, without any assistance from the king except perhaps for defense. It is due the memory of Iberville, often slandered as was La Salle before him, not that the story of his all but hopeless struggles should be repeated here but that the object toward which he so valiantly struggled should be clearly seen. He had read Father Membré's account of the La Salle voyage of discovery and Joutel's story of the last expedition. He had even had a conversation with La Salle, and had heard his own lips describe the river; and he had known Tonty of the Iron Hand, faithful to the last. Iberville had a mind capable of entertaining the vision, and he had a spirit capable of following it. He seems to have been for a time after La Salle's death his only great-minded follower. He wrote on reaching Rochelle after his first voyage that "if France does not immediately seize this part of America, which is the most beautiful, and establish a colony strong enough to resist any which England may have here, the English colonies (already considerable in Carolina) will so thrive that in less than a hundred years they will be strong enough to seize all America." [Footnote: Margry, _l. c._, IV:322.] But the answer from Versailles only hastened the fulfilment of Iberville's prophecy. It is as a page torn from a contemporaneous suburban villa prospectus that speaks of one of those migratory settlements of Iberville on the shores of the gulf as a "terrestrial paradise," a "Pomona," or "The Fortunate Island." And the reality which confronts the home seeker is usually more nearly true to the idealistic details than that which Governor Cadillac, wishing no doubt to discredit his predecessor, reported when he went to succeed Bienville for a time as governor: "I have seen the garden on Dauphin Island, which had been described to me as a terrestrial paradise. I saw there three seedling pear-trees, three seedling apple- trees, a little plum-tree about three feet high, with seven bad plums on it, a vine some thirty feet long, with nine bunches of grapes, some of them withered, or rotten, and some partly ripe, about forty plants of French melons and a few pumpkins." [Footnote: Parkman, "A Half Century of Conflict," 1:309.] Bienville, the brother, also deserves remembrance both in France and America--dismissed once but exonerated, returning later to succeed the pessimistic Cadillac and to lay the foundations of New Orleans on the only dry spot he had found on his first journey up the river, there to plant the seed of the fruits and melons and pumpkins of the garden on Dauphin Island, that were to bring forth millionfold, though they have not yet entirely crowded out the cypress and the palmetto, and the fleur-de-lis that still grows wild and flowers brilliantly at certain seasons. It was some time before this, however, that the king, nearing the end of his days, vexed with his wars, tired of his expensive and unproductive venture, gave over the colony into the hands and enterprise of a speculator, one Antoine Crozat, a French merchant whose purse had been open to Louis for his wars. There was a total population at this juncture (1712) of three hundred and eighty souls, about one half of whom were "in the king's pay." Crozat, the king's deputy despot, finds no better fortune than the king, and soon (1717) resigns his charter, to be succeeded in his anxieties and privileges by that famous Scotch adventurer John Law, who organized the Mississippi Company in order to enjoy the varied monopolies assembled in its charter--monopolies which would make any inhabitant of that trust-hating valley to-day fume in denouncing. It was a tobacco trust, a coinage trust, a revenue trust, a slave-holding trust, a mining trust, a trade trust wrapped in one, with an unlimited license. It was, moreover, a conscience trust, a speech trust, a religion trust, a race trust. It was, in short, the ultimate, sublimated expression of a monopolistic theory made effective in a charter. Immigration, within these restrictions, was not likely to be voluntary and eager, as was the case in New England, and, since the company was under the one compulsion of providing a certain number of colonists and slaves, immigration was forced. Every conceivable sound economic and philosophical principle was violated, and yet investors came from all parts of Europe. "Crowds of crazed speculators jostled and fought each other" before the offices of the company in the Rue Quincampoix [Footnote: A now disreputable street, or so it seemed as I walked through it one day in the dusk.] from morning till night to get their names inscribed among the stockholders, and, though five hundred thousand foreigners were attracted to Paris by opportunities for speculation, scarcely a colonist went willingly to the Eldorado of the company, whose stock was capitalized in billions and "whose ingots of gold were displayed in Paris shop-windows." There were maps of that valley to be found in abundance in Paris in those days with mines indicated on them indiscriminately. When the bubble burst, Louisiana "became a name of disgust and terror" in Europe, and doubtless thousands hoped never to hear the word "Mississippi" again, and yet it was only time that was needed to make even such wild prophecies true. The monopolistic venture failed. Many of the colonists whom the company entered died or ran away; millions of pounds had been spent, there was no return, and there was little tangible to show for it all--a few thousand white settlers, many of whom, in a phrase current to-day in the States, were "undesirable citizens," living in palisaded cabins. So the little settlement became a crown colony again and came back to the king, but not to him in whose name it had been originally taken, for that king was dead. Louis XIV's name, kept in "Louisiana," claims now but a fragment of that vast territory which might have been his forever. The little outcast colony was laid on the steps of Versailles again, and was again subject to "paternalistic nursing," because of or in despite of which it began at last to show signs of growth. It was at the cost of a half-century of time, of eight or more millions of livres to the king, Crozat and the company, of millions upon millions more to those who bought the worthless stock of the Mississippi Company, and of ignominy and shame, that La Salle's dream began to have realization, while on the Atlantic seaboard the English colonies were growing luxuriantly in comparative neglect. Meanwhile French explorers were traversing this mighty interior valley with all the spirit of Cartier, Joliet, Champlain, and La Salle. Pierre Charles le Sueur had ascended the Mississippi far toward its source in search of copper and lead. Bernard de la Harpe and Louis Juchereau, the Sieur de St. Denis, explored the Red River and penetrated as far as the Spanish settlement of St. Jean Baptiste on the Rio Grande. Each might have a volume. The turbid Missouri even (which Marquette and Joliet first saw heading great trees down into the Mississippi) was not passed by as impervious to the hardihood of undaunted, amphibious geographers such as La Harpe and Du Tisne. Two brothers, Pierre and Paul Mallet, penetrated to the old Spanish settlement at Santa Fé and may have been the first of Frenchmen to see the farther boundary of the valley, the Rocky Mountains. Whether they did or not, it is certain that far to the northwest two other brothers did reach that mighty range and "discovered that part of it to which the name Rocky Mountains properly belongs." The brothers La Vérendrye in 1735, two centuries after Cartier, were still looking for a way to the western sea (Mer de l'Ouest). With their father these sons ventured their lives and gave their fortunes to the exploration of the northwest out beyond Lake Superior, out past the ranch where a century and a half later President Roosevelt wrote the "Winning of the West," out to or beyond the edge of what is now the great Yellowstone National Park, anticipating by more than sixty years the first stages of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. The snow covered the peaks of the Big Horn Mountains, but the party probably forced a way to the Wind River Range before they reluctantly turned back from the foot of the mountains, disappointedly fancying that they might have seen the Pacific if they could have reached the summits. It is not far from the place where they began their homeward journey that I have seen two trickling streams, within a few yards of each other, start, one toward the gulf and one toward the Pacific--but the latter had seven or eight hundred miles of mountain and forest to pass before it could touch what the Vérendrye brothers hoped to see. Yet, though they, as Cartier, Champlain, Nicolet, La Salle, and scores of others did not find the way to the western sea, their unappreciated, heroic efforts made at their own expense stretched the line of French forts all the way across the valley from sea to mountain range, completing, as one historian has represented it, a T, but as it seems to me rather a cross, with a perpendicular column reaching from the gulf to Hudson's Bay, and its transverse strip from the Big Horn Mountains to Cape Breton. Or so it stood for a day in the world's history, raised by unspeakable suffering, a vision once seen never to be forgotten. Chevalier de la Vérendrye, who had seen, first of white men, the snow- capped mountains, "sank into poverty and neglect," and finally perished in the shipwreck off the island of Cape Breton. So was the whole east and west line of French pioneering retraced and extended in the life of one hardy French family. [Footnote: Parkman, "The Discovery of the Rocky Mountains," in _Atlantic Monthly_, 61:783-793. "A Half Century of Conflict," 2:4-43. Thwaites, "A Brief History of Rocky Mountain Exploration," pp. 26-36.] And as to the north and south line, every year saw its foundations and strength increase as if it were a a growing tree. Along the Mississippi, forts were planted and Jesuit and Sulpician missions grew. The Illinois country enjoyed a "boom," as we say in America, even in those days, and became known for a time as the Garden of New France; but only for a time, for it was so easy to earn a livelihood there that it was not long before the habitants reverted, under temptation, to the preagricultural, hunting state after giving a moment's prophecy of the stirring life that was some day to make it the garden of the new world, the busiest spot in the busy world. There are glimpses here and there of gayety and halcyon days that give brightness to the story so full of tragedy. There was in the very heart of the valley (near the site of St. Louis, where a great world's fair was held a few years ago), Fort Chartres, mentioned above, "the centre of life and fashion in the West" as well as "a bulwark against Spain and a barrier to England." [Footnote: See Edward G. Mason, "Old Fort Chartres," in his "Chapters from Illinois History," 1901.] But in time the Indians, stirred by the English rivalry, swarmed as well as mosquitoes about the place, and there were battles, the echoes of which are still heard, we are told, in the regions south of St. Louis even in Our days. A young French officer, the Chevalier d'Artaguette, captured by the Chickasaws, was burned at the stake. He and his kin were loved by all the French and the song they used to sing of him is kept in a negro melody whose "oft-repeated chorus" ran: "In the days of D'Artaguette, Hé! Ho! Hé! It was the good old time. The world was led straight with a switch, Hé! Ho! Hé! Then there were no negroes, no ribbons, No diamonds For the vulgar. Hé! Ho! Hé!" And here even in this remote place premonitions of the great and imminent struggle with the English are ominously heard. We hear the governor- general of Canada, the Marquis de la Galissonnière, asking the home government in France not to leave the little colony of Illinois to perish --not for its own sake, but "else Canada and Louisiana would fall apart"; still urging, moreover, the value for fabrics of the wool of buffaloes, which roam the prairies in innumerable multitudes, the readiness of the earth for the plough, and the availability of the buffalo as a domestic animal. "If caught and attached to a plough," says the governor, who spoke truthfully but with little knowledge of this wild animal, "it would move it at a speed superior to that of the domestic ox." I do not know how appealing this harnessing of the original motive power of the prairie to the uses of agriculture was, and it is not of importance now. The buffalo has long since gone. Even the ox and the Norman horse, so long in use there, have been largely supplanted by that mysterious force, electricity, which Franklin was discovering on the other side of the Alleghany Mountains at the very time that this suggestion was being made to the minister of Louis XV. It is known, however, that the king took thought of the little Illinois colony, for the fort of wood was transformed under the direction of Chevalier de Macarty into a fortress of stone and garrisoned by nearly a regiment of French troops. A million crowns it cost the king, but this could not have distressed his Majesty, engaged in "throwing dice with piles of Louis d'or before him" and princes about him. This was in the early fifties, and the fort was hardly transformed before the rifles of George Washington's men were heard from the eastern barriers disputing the claim of the French to the Ohio country. Jumonville, who was slain among the rocks of the Laurel Mountains, in the Alleghanies (killed in the opening skirmish of the final struggle), had a young brother, Neyon de Villiers, a captain in Chevalier de Macarty's garrison at Fort Chartres; and eastward he hastened, up the Ohio, to avenge his brother's death. "M. de Wachenston" (as the name appears in French despatches) was driven back, and so the "Old French War" in America began. It was from this mid-continent fortress and its fertile environs that help in arms and rations went to the support of that final struggle along the mountains and lakes, even as far as La Salle's old Fort Niagara, where the valiant Aubry, at the head of his Illinois expedition, fell covered with wounds and many of his men were killed or taken prisoners. That was about all that one in the interior of the valley heard of the battles of the Seven Years' War out upon its edges. What gives peculiar interest in this fortress to us to-day is that it was for a little time the only place in North America where the flag of the French was flying. All New France had been ceded by the treaty of Paris in 1763, but the little garrison of forty men still held Fort Chartres. Pontiac and other friendly Indians intercepted all approaching English forces till, in 1765 (two years after the treaty of Paris and the cession of Canada and all the valley east of the Mississippi), St. Ange, the commander, announced to Pontiac, friendly to the end, that all was over, that "Onontio, their great French father," could no longer help his red children, that he was beyond the sea and could not hear, and that he, Pontiac, must make peace with the English. Then it was that the forty- second Highlanders, the "Black Watch," were permitted to enter the fort and to put the red cross of St. George in place of the fleur-de-lis. And so it was at Fort Chartres that the mighty struggle ended and that the titular life of the great empire of France in the new world actually went out. The river, seemingly sentient, and still French, as I have said, soon swept away the site of the village outside the fort; and when the English had begun to look upon this as their permanent headquarters in the northwest--this fort, which Captain Pittman had reported to be the best- built fort in America--the still hostile river rose one night, and with its "resistless flood" tore away a bastion and a part of the river wall, then moved its channel away, and left the fort a mile inland. The magazine still stands, or did a little time ago when I visited the site and found it nearly hidden by the trees, bushes, and weeds--all that is visibly left of the old French domain--and not far away, hidden at the foot of a hill, lies, as I have said, the village of Prairie du Rocher, "a little piece of old France transplanted to the Mississippi" a century and a half ago and forgotten. It was on Champlain's cliff and beneath Cartier's Mount Royal that the unequal contest for the possession of America ended, where it began--a contest whose story, as Parkman says, in a sense demeaning his own great contribution, "would have been a history, if faults of constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed it to an episode." But if it was an episode to the New Englander, or even to Frenchmen at the distance in time at which I write, it rises to the importance of history out in that region of America, where a century of unexampled fortitude needs rather an epic poet than a historian to give it its place in the world's consciousness. Indeed, historians of the United States to-day, as well as statesmen of that time, are in substantial agreement in this: That the presence of the French on all the colonial borders compelled a confederation of the varying interests of the several English colonies, kept them penned in between the mountains and the sea until there had been developed some degree of solidarity, some ability to act together; and then by the sudden, if compulsory, withdrawal of the pressure not only allowed their expansion but relieved them of all need of help from England and so of dependence upon her. "We have caught them at last," said Louis XV's minister, Choiseul, speaking of the treaty of Paris in 1763. [Footnote: Bancroft, "History of the United States," 4:460.] Burke [Footnote: William Burke, "Remarks on the Letter Addressed to Two Great Men."] prophesied that the removal of France from North America would precipitate, as it did, the division of the British Empire. And Richard Henry Greene, the great English historian, dates the foundation of the great independent republic of the west (the United States) from the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham. It is interesting testimony in support of this fear of the eventual loss of all the colonies in such a cession, or such an acceptance, that the English commissioners debated long whether it might be more profitable to retain the little island of Guadeloupe instead of all New France. And it would appear that except for the advice of Benjamin Franklin this substitution would probably have been made. France, then, having borne the brunt of conflict with nature and the natives in that valley, having revealed the riches of that valley to the world, having consecrated its entire length and breadth by high valor and sacrifice, having possessed that valley practically to the very eve of the birth of the nation that now occupies it, and having helped by substantial aid the struggling colonies to their independence, deserves (not through her monarchs or ministers chiefly, but through the new-world pioneers, who gave illustration of the spirit and stuff of Frenchmen) a lasting and a large share of credit for the establishment of the republic which has its most vigorous life in that valley. New France has passed and New England, too, but in their stead the new republic, recruited from all nations under heaven, ties their lost dominions into a power which is immensely greater than the sum of the two could have been, greater than it could have been in the hands of either alone. There was for a little time a dream of the revival of New France out beyond the Mississippi, for there was a vast part of that valley that did not pass to England in 1763. The great territory between the Mississippi and the mountains, whose "snow-encumbered" peaks the Vérendrye brothers had so longingly looked upon, was abandoned to Spain, or rather thrust upon Spain, already claiming it. France wanted to give it to England in order that Florida might be saved to Spain, her ally, but England did not hesitate as she did in making choice between the eastern half of the valley and Guadeloupe. She declined. So with an apparent magnanimity, which is greatly to be discounted when we come to know how worthless even the people of the United States, years later, considered this trans- Mississippi country, France, "secretly tired of her colony," finally induced Spain to accept it. The Spanish monarch, as if making the best of a bad bargain, took it with many excuses for his seemingly poor judgment. But though Louis's minister, Choiseul, chuckled outwardly over the embarrassment to England of his compulsory cession of Canada, New France, Illinois, and Louisiana (instead of Guadeloupe) and made a show of magnanimity in thrusting the other half of the Mississippi upon Spain, and though Turgot's simile between colonies and ripe fruit was often repeated for justification and consolation, the loss of these possessions was undoubtedly keenly felt and the dream of their recovery cherished; at any rate, the recovery of that part which lay beyond the Mississippi. But that possession had become more precious to the sovereign of Spain, who refused the proffers that France was able to make in the next thirty years. The dream of repossession became fonder to the French republic. Talleyrand, who had spent a year in travel in the United States, urged the acquisition not merely for France's own sake but to curb the ambitions of the Americans, "whose conduct ever since the moment of their independence is enough to prove this truth: the Americans are devoured by pride, ambition, and cupidity." "There are," he said, "no other means of putting an end to the ambition of the Americans than that of shutting them up within the limits which nature seems to have traced for them; but Spain is not in a condition to do this great work alone. She cannot, therefore, hasten too quickly to engage the aid of a preponderating power, yielding to it a small part of her immense domains in order to preserve the rest." "Let the court of Madrid cede these districts to France and from that moment the power of America is bounded by the limit which it may suit the interests and the tranquillity of France and Spain to assign her. The French Republic ... will be a wall of brass forever impenetrable to the combined efforts of England and America." [Footnote: Quoted in Henry Adams's "History of the United States," 1:357.] If in Napoleon's mind the dream was as sinister, as regards the United States, it was not so for long. It contemplated at first the occupation of Santo Domingo, the quelling of the insurrection there, then the seizure of Louisiana, already promised to France by Spain, then the acquisition of Florida, the conversion of the Gulf of Mexico into a French lake, and ultimately the extension of the province of Louisiana to the Alleghanies and, perhaps, even to the old borders of New France along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. But plague and slaughter met his armies in Santo Domingo in the first step toward the realization of his vast design, and the vision, in the shifting light of events in Europe and on the shores of America as well, soon assumed other shape and color and at last disappeared entirely, supplanted by the vision of a strengthened American republic that would come to be a rival of England. This was what came (in his own language) instead of his dream of a New France beyond the Mississippi, beyond the American republic: "I know the full value of Louisiana, and I have been desirous of repairing the fault of the French negotiator who abandoned it in 1763. A few lines of a treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. But if it escapes from me, it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it than to those to whom I wish to deliver it. The English have successfully taken from France, Canada, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the richest portions of Asia. They are engaged in exciting troubles in St. Domingo. They shall not have the Mississippi which they covet. Louisiana is nothing in comparison with their conquests in all parts of the globe, and yet the jealousy they feel at the restoration of this colony to the sovereignty of France acquaints me with their wish to take possession of it, and it is thus that they will begin the war.... I think of ceding it to the United States. I can scarcely say that I cede it to them, for it is not yet in our possession. If, however, I leave the least time to our enemies, I shall only transmit an empty title to those republicans whose friendship I seek. They only ask of me one town in Louisiana, but I already consider the colony as entirely lost, and it appears to me that in the hands of this growing power, it will be more useful to the policy and even to the commerce of France than if I should attempt to keep it." [Footnote: Marbois, "History of Louisiana," pp. 263-264.] The United States Commissioner came one day to Paris to purchase New Orleans, and he went back to America with a deed to more than 800,000 square miles of the region which La Salle had claimed for Louis XIV by virtue of the commission which he carried in his bosom from the Rue de la Truanderie more than a century before: "The First Consul of the French Republic, desiring to give to the United States a strong proof of friendship, doth hereby cede to the said United States, in the name of the French Republic, forever and in full sovereignty, the said territory, with all its rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner as they might have been acquired by the French Republic." [Footnote: Treaty of Purchase between the United States and the French Republic, Art. I.] The dream faded into something undefined but greater, relieving Napoleon and France of immediate dangers and promising more to humanity, we must agree, than a colony administered at that distance and separated from a young, growing nation merely by a shifting river that must inevitably have made trouble instead of preventing it. Whatever may be said of Napoleon's motives or compulsions in this matter or of his service to mankind in others, he has been "useful to the universe," not in preventing England from ruling in that valley and so dominating America, but in making it possible for the United States to undertake the greatest task ever given into the hands of a republic, and at the same time enabling it to keep the good-will of that people who might (if the other dream had been realized) have become the worst of her enemies. It was Napoleon, whatever his motive, Napoleon in the name of the French people, who gave the United States the possibility of becoming a world-power. CHAPTER VII THE PEOPLING OF THE WILDERNESS Let us remind ourselves again, before the hordes of frontiersmen and settlers come over the mountains and up the lakes and down the rivers, erasing most of the tangible memories of the inter-montane, primeval western wilderness, that France evoked it from the unknown. A circle drawn round the Louvre with the radius of two kilometres, enclosed the little patch of earth from which were evoked these millions of acres of untouched forests and millions of acres of virgin plain and prairie, seamed and watered by a hundred thousand streams, washed by a chain of the mightiest inland fresh-water oceans, and guarded by two ranges of mountains. Within that narrow circle, four kilometres in diameter, stood Cartier dreaming of Asia, asking for permission to explore the mysterious square gulf, the St. Lawrence, and again presenting to the king the dusky captive Donnacona; within that circle was the street, Rue aux Ours, whose meat shops Lescarbot in Acadia remembered as the place of good food and doubtless of excited talk concerning the unexplored New France, whose hardships and pleasures he afterward tasted; within that circle Champlain walked, as in a dream, we are told, impatient as a lion in a cage, longing to be again upon the wilderness path, westward of Quebec, toward the unknown; within that circle the priest Olier, of St. Germain-des-Prés, had his vision that led to the founding of Montreal, whose consecration was celebrated also within that same circumference at the Cathedral of Notre Dame; within that circle La Salle lodged in Rue de la Truanderie, awaiting his fateful commission that should give him leave to make real his dream of a wilderness empire; not a stone's throw away from the Rue de la Truanderie ran the street having its beginning or end in Rue aux Ours, Rue Quincampoix, in which the thousands jostled and fought from morning till night for the purchase of stock in that same wilderness empire; and it was finally within that same circle that the wilderness dream, seen for a moment again by Napoleon, grew into the vision of a republic--a republic that might be found, as Napoleon said, "too powerful for Europe in two or three centuries," but in whose bosom dissensions, as he prophesied, could be looked for in the future. A wilderness, with a radius of nearly a thousand kilometres, was evoked from the envisioning, praying, adventuring, and enduring of a few Frenchmen, led by fewer Frenchmen, who stood sooner or later all within the narrow circle that sweeps around the Sorbonne, but four kilometres in diameter. I walked, in the afternoon of the last day of the old year 1910, entirely around the old city of Paris by way of its fortifications, in a circle three kilometres longer of radius, within a few hours encompassing a ground, rich in what it yields to-day in fruits of art, literature, and science--of indefatigable, intellectual industry and imagination--but richer than its inhabitants know in what has grown upon the billion acres which it has lifted out of the ocean, [Footnote: For it will be remembered that to geographers before Cartier this Mississippi Valley was but a sea, even as ages before it actually was.] and given as a soil where civilization could gather its forces from all peoples and begin afresh on the problems of the individual and society. It is a new view of Paris, I know. No historian of the United States has, so far as I am aware, presented it. Yet I think it is not a distorted vision which enabled me, looking in from the old fortifications, to see Paris not merely as the capital of art and of a great modern language and literature, as those who live there see her, nor as the centre of gayety and frivolity, as so many of my own countrymen see her, but as the parent of fruitful wildernesses, as a patron of pioneers, as the divinity of the verges, as the godmother of a frontier democracy. It is to be remembered, too, let me say again, that, while England held control of one half of the Mississippi Valley for twenty years after 1763, and Spain of the other half for twenty more, the occupation was hardly more than nominal. Indeed, the English king, George III, in 1763 forbade colonization--as Louis XIV at one time had wished to prevent it--beyond the Alleghany Mountains without his special permission, and, moreover, it was hardly more than ten years after the titular transfer to England that the colonists declared themselves independent. As for the Spanish sovereign, delaying five years in sending a representative to take over the government of his unprofitable half of the wilderness, he had no need to make a decree forbidding settlement. There were no eager settlers. What virtually happened, therefore, was that the pioneers of France gave the valley not to England, not to Spain, not even to the American-English colonists, but to the pioneers of the young republic, who, whatever their origin, were without European nationality. It may be said with approximate accuracy that, while the British flag supplanted the French for a little on a few scattered forts on the east side of the Mississippi and the Spanish flag floated for a little while on the other side of the river, the heart of America really knew in turn, first, only the old Americans, the Indians; second, the French pioneers; and third, the new Americans. The valley heard, as I have said, hardly a sound of the Seven Years' War, the "Old French War" as Parkman called it. Only on its border was there the slightest bloodshed. All it knew was that the fleur-de-lis flags no longer waved along its rivers and that after a few years men came with axes and ploughs through the passes in the mountains carrying an emblem that had never grown in European fields--a new flag among national banners. They were bearing, to be sure, a constitution and institutions strange to France, but only less strange to England, and perhaps no less strange to other nations of Europe. I emphasize this because our great debt to English antecedents has obscured the fact that the great physical heritage between the mountains, consecrated of Gallic spirit, came, in effect, directly from the hands that won its first title, the French, into the hands of American settlers, at the moment when a "separate and individual people" were "springing into national life." This territory was distinct from that of the British colonies up to the very time of the American Revolution. And when the Revolution was over and independence was won, by the aid of France let it be remembered, the only settlements within the valley were three little clusters of French gathered about the forts once French, then for a few years nominally English, and then American: two thousand inhabitants at Detroit and four thousand at Vincennes, on the Wabash, and in the hamlets along the Mississippi above the Ohio. How little the life of those settlements was disturbed is intimated by what occurred in one of the Illinois villages--that about Fort Chartres. The venerable and beloved commander, Louis St. Ange de Belle Rive, had upon the first formal surrender ascended the Mississippi River and crossed to the Spanish territory, where the foundations of the city of St. Louis were being laid, but the British officer in command at Fort Chartres dying suddenly, and there being no one competent to succeed him, St. Ange returned to his old post, restored order, and remained there until another British officer could reach the fort. The habitants were accustomed "to obey, without question, the orders of their superiors.... (They) yielded a passive obedience to the new rulers.... They remained the owners, the tillers of the soil." [Footnote: Roosevelt, "Winning of the West," 1:38, Alleghany edition.] And one of the last acts of the Continental Congress and the first of the new Congress, under the Constitution, was to provide for an enumeration of these French settlers and for the allotment to them of lands in this valley where they had been the sole owners. Many of the French habitants were not of pure blood. The French seldom took women with them into the wilderness. They were traders, trappers, and soldiers. They married Indian wives, untrammelled, as President Roosevelt says, "by the queer pride which makes a man of English stock unwilling to make a red-skinned woman his wife, though anxious enough to make her his concubine." [Footnote: Roosevelt, "Winning of the West," 1:41.] They were under ordinary circumstances good-humored, kindly men, "always polite" [Footnote: "Winning of the West," 1:45.]--in "agreeable contrast" to most frontiersmen--religious, yet fond of merrymaking, of music and dancing; and while, as time went on, they came to borrow traits of their red neighbors and even to forget the years and months (reckoning time, as the Indians did, from the flood of the river or the ripening of strawberries), still they kept many valuable and amiable qualities, to be merged eventually in the new life that soon swept over their beautiful little villages. Of the coming of a strange, new, strenuous life, a stray English or American fur trader gave them occasional presentment, as it were, the spray of the swelling, restless sea of human spirits, beating against the mountain barriers and flung far inland. In the early part of the eighteenth century an English governor of the colony of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, had led a band of horsemen known afterward as his "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," with great hilarity, "stimulated by abundance of wine, champagne, rum," and other liquors, over the Blue Ridge Mountains, a part of the Alleghany Range, to the Shenandoah. He had talked menacingly of the French who held the valley beyond, had encouraged the extension of English settlements to break the line of French possessions, and had formed a short-lived Virginia-Indian company to protect the frontier against French and Indian incursions. This expedition was a visible challenge. With his merry company he buried a record of his "farthest west" journey in one of the bottles emptied en route and then went back to tidewater. That was the end of his adventure; little or nothing came of his "flourish" except the extension of the Virginia frontier to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Only traders and trappers ventured farther or even so far during the next three or four decades, and they were a "set of abandoned wretches," or so a later governor characterized them, though Parkman mentions some exceptions, and I wish to believe there were more, since one of them, I find, carried my own name far into that country on his trading and hunting expeditions among and with the Indians. Searching, a few years ago, the files of a paper published early in the nineteenth century on the edge of this wilderness, which was already calling itself the _Western World_--a paper, one of the first of the myriad white leaves into which the falling forests have been converted and scattered thick enough to cover every square foot of the valley--I happened upon this record, surprised as if a bit of the transmontane sea spray had touched my own face on the Mississippi: "That delightful country" (Kentucky), it ran, "from time immemorial had been the resort of wild beasts and of men only less savage, when in the year 1767 it was visited by John Finley and a few wandering white men from the British colony of North Carolina, allured by the love of hunting and the desire of barter with the Indians. The distance of this country from populous parts of the colonies, almost continuous wars, and the claims of the French had prevented all attempts at exploration." I seize upon this partly because, having succeeded to the name of this hunter and trader, who entered the valley just as St. Ange was yielding Fort Chartres to the English and crossing the Mississippi, I am able to show that my own ancestral sympathies while dwelling on the frontiers were not with the French. But I quote it chiefly because he was a typical forerunner, a first frontiersman. Like the coureur de bois Nicolas Perrot, of exactly a century before, he was only the dawn of the light--the light of another day, which was beginning to appear in the valley. For it was he who led Daniel Boone to the first exploring and settling of that wilderness south of the Ohio, which, to quote further from the paper called the _Western World_, [Footnote _Western World_, published at Frankfort, Ky., 1806-8, by John Wood and Joseph M. Street.] had a soil "more fat and fertile than Egypt"-- and was the place where "Pan, if he ever existed, held dominion unmolested of Ceres or Lucinia." Such was the almost soundless beginning of what soon developed into a mighty "processional," its rumblings of wagons and shoutings of drivers on land and blowing of conches on the rivers increasing, accompanied by the sound of rushing waters, the cry of frightened birds, and the thunders of crashing trees. First came this silent hunter and fur trader, almost as stealthy as the Indian in his movements; then the pale, gaunt, slow- moving, half hunter, half farmer, too indolent to disturb the wilderness from which he got a meagre living, planting his meagre crops among the girdled trees of withered foliage, which he did not take the trouble to cut down; then the backwoodsman, sallow as his immediate predecessor from the shade of the forest, who with his axe made a little clearing, built a "shack," turned his cattle into the grass that had grown for centuries untouched, and let his pigs feed on the acorns; then the more robust agriculturist who aggressively pushed back the shadows of the forest, planted the wilderness with seeds of a magic learned in the valleys of Europe and Asia, put up the fences of individualistic struggle, and built his log cabin, the wilderness castle, the birthplace of the new American; then the speculator and promoter (the hunter and explorer of the urban occupation); and finally in their wake the builders of mills and factories and cities--drab, smoky, vainglorious, ill-smelling, bad-architectured centres of economic activity, fringed with unoccupied, unimproved, naked areas, plotted and held for increment, earned only by risk and privation. This processional, "this gradual and continuous progress of the European race toward the Rocky Mountains," says the vivid pen of De Tocqueville, "has the solemnity of a providential event. It is like a deluge of men, rising unabatedly and driven daily onward by the hand of God." [Footnote: "Democracy in America," ed. Gilman, 1:512.] The story of this anabasis has been told in hundreds and thousands of fragments--the anabasis that has had no katabasis--the literal going up of a people, as we shall see, from primitive husbandry and handicraft and a neighborly individualism, to another level, of machine labor, of more comfortable living, and of socialized aspiration. De Quincey has gathered into an immortal story the dramatic details of an exodus that had its beginning and end just at the time when these half huntsmen, half traders were creeping down from the farther ridges of the Alleghanies into the wilderness, where the little French settlements were clinging like clusters of ripened grapes to a great vine--the story of the flight of the Kalmuck Tartars from the banks of the Volga, across the steppes of Europe and the deserts of Asia to the frontiers of China--the story of the journey of over a half million semi-barbarians, half of whom perished by the way from cold or heat, from starvation or thirst, or from the sabres and cannon of the savage hosts pursuing them by day and night through the endless stretches--the story of the translation of these nomad herdsmen on the steppes of Russia through "infinite misery" into stable agriculturists beneath the great wall of China. If the myriad details of this new-world migration could be summarized with like genius, we should have a drama to put beside the exodus of Israel from Egypt and their conquest of Canaan--a drama, less picturesque and highly colored than that of the flight of the Tartars--their Oriental costumes, their fierce horses, their camels and tents, showing, unhidden of tree against the snowy or sandy desert--but infinitely more consequential in the history of the human race. The Indians, hostile to this horde that built cabins upon their hunting- grounds and devoured their forests, were to the wilderness migrants, driven, not of the hand of man but, as De Tocqueville says, "of the hand of God" made manifest in some human instinct, some desire of freedom, some hatred of convention, some hope of power or possession, what the Kirghese and Bashkirs and Russians were to those Asiatic migrants, pursuing them day and night like fiends for thousands of miles. And the myriad sufferings of the American migrants from hunger and thirst, from the freezing cold and the blasting, blistering, wilting heat, from the fevers of the new-broken lands, from the ravages of locust and grasshopper, and chinch-bug and drought, from isolation from human friendships, from want of gentle nursing--even De Quincey's improvident travellers did not endure more, nor the children of Israel, to whose thirst the smitten rock yielded water, to whose hunger the heavens ministered with manna and the earth with quail, whose pursuing enemies were drowned in the sea that closed over their pathway, and whose confronting enemies in the land they entered to possess were overcome by the aid of unseen armies that were heard marching in the tops of the mulberry-trees, or were seen by friendly vision assembling their chariots in the skies above. Here across the Mississippi Valley is an exodus accomplished not of a single night, as these two of which I have just spoken, but extended through a hundred years of home leavings and love privations. Here is an anabasis of a century of privations, titanic labors, frontier battles, endured countless times, till these migrants of Europe and of the new- world seaboard, became, as children of the wilderness, a new people, with qualities so distinctive as to lead the highest authority [Footnote: Frederick J. Turner, "The Significance of the Mississippi Valley in American History," in Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (1909-10), 3:159-184.] on the history of that valley to characterize the west not as a geographic division of the United States, but as a "form of society" with its own peculiar flowering, developed, not as Parkman's magnificent fleur-de-lis, [Footnote: See Epilogue.] by cross- fertilization, nor by grafting, but simply by the planting or sowing of Old World seeds on new and free land, where the mountains kept off the pollen of alien spirit, where the puritanical winds of the New England coast were somewhat tempered by the warmer winds from the south, where the waters had some iron in them, but, most of all, where the soil was practically as free as when it came from the hands of the glaciers and the streams. It is this distinctiveness of development, due to the mountains' challenge to every man's spirit as he passed, to the isolation which compelled him to work out his own salvation, and to the constant struggle, largely single-handed, with frontier forces--as well as the uniqueness of background--that gave the west a character which identifies it to discerning minds quite as much as its geographic boundaries. It is this fact which makes the French pioneering preface to a civilization different from anything that has developed elsewhere in the United States, and not only different in the past but now the dominant force in American education, politics, and industry. What that civilization would have been without the adventurous French preface we can but vainly surmise. What it is with that background, that preface, is indeed the "foremost chapter in the files of time." As Ambassador James Bryce has said: "What Europe is to Asia, what England is to the rest of Europe, what America is to England, that the western States are to the Atlantic States." [Footnote: "American Commonwealth," 1913 ed., 2:892.] The French may dispute the implied claim of the second of these comparisons, but even they will have a satisfaction in admitting that their particular part of the United States is to the rest, which was not touched by their priests and explorers, what "Europe is to Asia." And here is my particular justification for asking the imaginations of the people of France to occupy and hold that to which the preface has given them the best of titles. Meanwhile, that migration, heralded, as we have seen, just before the Revolution, by huntsmen and traders, meagre by reason of Indian hostility and the need of soldiers on the Atlantic side of the mountains till independence had been won, became appreciable at the end of the century and grew to an inundating stream after the War of 1812 had made the Mississippi secure to the new republic beyond all question. "Old America," said an observing English traveller in 1817, "seems to be breaking up and moving westward. We are seldom out of sight, as we travel on this grand track (the national turnpike through Pennsylvania) towards the Ohio, of family groups behind and before us.... A small waggon so light that you might almost carry it, yet strong enough to bear a good load of bedding and utensils and provisions and a swarm of young citizens, and to sustain marvellous shocks in its passage over these rocky heights with two small horses and sometimes a cow or two, comprises their all; excepting a little store of hard earned cash for the land-office of the district; where they may obtain a title for as many acres as they possess half dollars, being one-fourth of the purchase money. The waggon has a tilt, or cover, made of a sheet, or perhaps a blanket. The family are seen before, behind, or within the vehicle, according to the road or the weather, or perhaps the spirits of the party.... A cart and single horse, frequently affords the means of transfer, sometimes a horse and pack saddle. Often the back of the poor pilgrim bears all his effects, and his wife follows, bare footed, bending under the hopes of the family." [Footnote: Morris Birkbeck, "Notes on a Tour in America, 1817," pp. 34, 35.] This is a detail of the exodus through the most northern mountain pass. Farther south the procession moved in heavy wagons drawn by four or six horses. "Family groups, crowding the roads and fords, marching toward the sunset," at right angles to the courses of the migratory birds, not mindful as they of seasons, "were typical of the overland migration" across Tennessee and Kentucky. The poorer classes travelled on foot, as at the north, but drew after them carts with all their household effects. [Footnote: F. J. Turner, "Rise of the New West," p. 80.] Still farther south "the same type of occupation was to be seen; the poorer classes of southern emigrants cut out their clearings along the rivers that flowed to the gulf and to the lower Mississippi," [Footnote: F. J. Turner, "Rise of the New West," p. 90.] and later still farther west into what is now Texas. The squatters whom I saw in my walk around the city of Paris, inhabiting what was the military zone with their portable houses, or in their dilapidated shacks, had better shelter than they who first invaded the zone beyond the mountain walls that were the natural western fortifications of the Atlantic colonies. But though many of those western wilderness immigrants were "poor pilgrims" and for a time squatters (as the immediately extramural population of Paris), they were recruited from the sturdiest stock on the Atlantic side of the fortifications. Some went, to be sure, who had failed in the old place, but were ready to make new hazard; some wanted greater freedom than the more highly socialized and conventionalized life within the fortifications would permit; some longed for adventure; some sought a fortune or competency perhaps impossible in the old settlements; some had only the inherited promptings of the nomad savage in them, and kept ever moving on, making their nameless graves out in the gloom of the forest or upon the silent plains. It was indeed a motley procession, the by-product of the more or less conservative, sometimes politically or religiously intolerant, aristocratic tide-water settlements. Yet do not make the mistake of thinking that it was slag or refuse humanity, such as camps in the narrow zone around the gates of Paris. It is rather like an industrial by-product that has needed some slight change or adaptation to make it more valuable to society than the original product upon which the manufacturers had kept their attention fixed--or, at any rate, to make the margin of profit in the whole industry greater. Out of once discarded, seemingly valueless matter have come our coal-tar products: saccharine many times sweeter than sugar, colors unknown to the old dyers, perfumes as fragrant as those distilled from flowers, medicines potent to allay fevers. Up in the woods of Canada last summer I found a chemist trying to do with the wood waste what Remsen and Perkin and others have done with coal waste, and I cannot resist the suggestion of my metaphor that there in the forest valleys beyond the Alleghanies the elements and conditions were found to convert this Atlantic by-product, unpromising outwardly, into the substance of a new and precious civilization. This overmountain procession came chiefly up the watercourses of the south and middle States. Prior to 1830 the mass of pioneer colonists in most of the Mississippi Valley had been contributed by the up-country of the south. The dominant strain in those earlier comers, as President Roosevelt reminds us, was Scotch-Irish, a "race doubly-twisted in the making, flung from island to island and toughened by exile"--a race of frontiersmen than whom a "better never appeared"--a race which was as "steel welded into the iron of an axe." They form the kernel of the "distinctively and intensely American stock who were the pioneers of the axe and the rifle, succeeding the French pioneers of the sword and the bateaux." What I have just said of them, these Scotch-Irish, is in quotation, for as I have already intimated, my own ancestry is of that double-twisting; and since the time when my first American ancestor settled as the first permanent minister beyond the mountains, following the paths of the French priests in their missions and became a member of a presbytery extending from the mountains to the setting sun, until my last collateral ancestor living among the Indians helped survey the range lines of new States and finally marked the boundaries of the last farms in the passes of the Rockies, that ancestry has followed the frontier westward from where Céloron planted the emblems of French possession along the Ohio to where Chevalier la Vérendrye looked upon the snowy and impassable peaks of the Rockies. The immigrants to America of that stock had, many of them, at once on reaching the new land found the foot-hills of mountains, chiefly in Pennsylvania. Here they settled, gradually pushing their way southward in the troughs of the mountain streams and making finally a "broad belt from north to south, a shield of sinewy men thrust in between the people of the seaboard and the red warriors of the wilderness," the same men who declared for American independence in North Carolina before any others, even before the men of Massachusetts. With this stock there went over the mountain men of other origins, of course, English, French Huguenots, Germans, Hollanders, Swedes; but the Scotch-Irish were the core of the new life, which in "iron surroundings" became strongly homogeneous--"yet different from the rest of the world--even the world of America, and infinitely more the world of Europe." In the north the great rivers lay across the tedious paths that ran with the lines of latitude. And so it was partly for physiographic reasons that the first far-stretching expansions of the New England settlements were not toward this great western wilderness but northward along the narrower valleys. It was not until the migration had filled the meagre limits and capacities of these smaller valleys and had carried school-houses and churches and town halls well up granite hillsides, that the western exodus came, to leave those hillside homes and institutional shelters as shells found far from a receding sea, empty or habited by a new species of immigrant. [Footnote: In one of those far northern valleys which I know best there was a school, before the exodus, of some seventy pupils, gathered from the farmers' families of the neighborhood. Now there are not a half-dozen pupils, and they are carried to a neighboring district.] Farms were abandoned for the fertile fields of the far west, from which wheat can be imported for less than the cost of raising it on the sterile hills and in the short-summered valleys. New England had once claimed a fraction of the great west, as, indeed, had most of the other seaboard colonies. But these claims were surrendered to the general government, as we shall see later, "for the common good," and so her migrants had none other than that instinct which follows lines of latitude to keep them practically within the zone of her relinquished claims. Over into New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania her children overflowed till a map of these States in 1820, colored to show the origin and character of their various communities, made practically all of western New York, a part of New Jersey and the northern third of Pennsylvania, an expanded New England. Meanwhile the hardiest joined the transmontane migration, and in the decade after the opening of the Erie Canal (1830-40) the whole northern edge of the valley takes color of New England conquest. So the first peopling was a mingling of the children of the first strugglers with a raw savage continent; men already schooled in adversity, already acquainted with some of the frontier problems--civilization's most highly individualized, least socialized material, the wheat of the new world's first winnowing. What is particularly to be observed is that men of the north and the south, as far apart as Carolina and Massachusetts, came together beyond the mountains in the united building of commonwealths; for over those mountains the rivers all ran toward the Mississippi, which tied the interests of all together. There was no north-and-south line then. The men of the valley were all westerners, "men of the western world"; not yet very strong as nationalists, that is, as men of the United States. "Men of the western waters" they also called themselves, for they shunned the uplands and kept near the streams by which or along which they had come into the wilderness and from which they drank. Men of the axe they were, too, in that first occupancy, never venturing far from the trees that gave them both roof and fuel. It was later, as we have seen, that the men of the plough came where the men of the axe had cleared the way. It is interesting to notice that when these builders of new States came to devise symbols for their official seals, many of them took the plough, that implement which we know was carried in the first Aryan migration into the plains of Europe, but some of them put a rising sun on the horizon of their shields--the sign of the consciousness of a new day. The foundation, then, of the new societies was laid in what might be called a concrete of character and lineage--heterogeneous, but all of the neo-American period and not of the paleo-European. Here came the ancestors of Abraham Lincoln, among the axemen from the South, and here the ancestors of General Grant, among the builders of towns, from New England, both born in cabins. And these instances are but suggestive of the conglomerate that was to be as practicable for building purposes (the co- efficient of spirit being once determined) as any homogeneous, age-old rock used in the structure of nations. It became "homogeneous" not as bricks or stones built into a wall by mortar or cement but as concrete, eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a new rock has been formed. How distinctly western this first migration was you may know from the fact that there was frequent talk of secession from the Union by the seaboard commonwealths in the early post-revolutionary days. There were even, as we have seen, hopes and fears that a Franco-American republic might grow out of that solidarity and independent spirit that were ready to forsake the government on the eastern side of the mountains, which seemed to be heedless of western needs. This tells us, who are conscious of the national spirit which is now stronger, perhaps, in that valley than in any other part of the Union, how strong the western, the anti-nationalistic, spirit must have been then. But that was before the coming of the east-and-west canal and the east- and-west railroads, which virtually upheaved a new watershed and changed the whole physiographic, social, and economic relationships of the west. The old French river Colbert, the Eternal River, was virtually cut into two great rivers, one of which was to empty into the gulf (just as it did in La Salle's day and in Iberville's day), while the other was to run through the valley of the Great Lakes, down through the valley of the hostile Iroquois, into the harbor of New York. This is not observable on the topographical maps simply because of our unimaginative definition of a watershed. A watershed is changed, according to that definition, only by an actual elevation or depression of the surface of the earth, whereas a railroad or canal that bridges ravines and tunnels or climbs elevations, or a freight rate that diverts traffic into a new course, as suddenly raises or lowers and as certainly removes watersheds as if mountains were miraculously lifted and carried into the midst of the sea. So there came to be not only two rivers but two valleys, the one of the lake and prairie plainsmen and the other of the gulf plainsmen. The steam shuttles flying east and west by land and water wove a pattern in the former different from the latter but on the same warp. Two widely unlike industrial and social systems gradually developed, and they, in turn, struggling for the mastery of lands beyond the Mississippi, divided the nearer west--once a homogeneous state of mind--into two wests and all but disrupted the Union. Then the direct European immigration began, millions coming from single states of Europe, sifting into the neo-American settlements, but for the most part passing on, in mighty armies, to possess whole tracts farther west, along and beyond the Mississippi. In some parts of the northwest to- day the parents of three men out of four were born in Europe--in Scandinavia, in Germany, in Russia, in Italy. So France, keeping near her those whom she loves best, her own children, has yet seen her Nouvelle France draw to it the children of all other nations. As from Hagar exiled in the wilderness has a new race sprung--has the wilderness been peopled. In my boyhood the last division of that great exodus, largely made up of migrants from the eastern half of the valley, was still passing westward. One of the banners which some of the wagons covered with canvas ("prairie- schooners," as they were called) used to fly was "Pike's Peak or Bust," an Americanism indicating the intention of the pilgrims to reach the mountain at the western terminus of the great valley or die in the attempt. Occasionally one came back with the inglorious substitute legend upon his wagon, "Busted"--a laconic intimation of failure. But this was the exception. The west kept, till it had made them her own, most of those who ventured their all for a home in the wilderness. There were "two great commemorative monuments that arose to mark the depth and permanence of the awe" which possessed all who shared the calamities or witnessed the results of the Tartar migration. One was a "Romanang"--a "national commemoration, with music rich and solemn," of all the souls who departed to the rest of Paradise from the "afflictions of the desert"--and the "other, more durable and more commensurate to the scale of the calamity and to the grandeur of the national exodus," "mighty columns of granite and brass," where the exodus had ended in the shadow of the Chinese wall. The inscription on these columns reads: By the Will of God, Here, upon the Brink of these Deserts, Which from this Point begin and stretch away Pathless, treeless, waterless, For thousands of miles, and along the margins of many mighty Nations, Rested from their labors and from great afflictions, Under the shadow of the Chinese Wall, And by the favor of Kien Long, God's Lieutenant upon Earth, The ancient Children of the Wilderness--the Turgote Tartars-- Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar, Wandering Sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial Empire in the year 1616, But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow, Into the fold of their forgiving Shepherd. Hallowed be the spot forever, and Hallowed be the day--September 8, 1771! Amen. There have been many expositions of the fruits of the Mississippi Valley's agriculture and manufacture and mining and thinking and teaching and preaching and ministering, but there has been no general commemoration with "music rich and solemn" of those who endured the "afflictions of the wilderness," though the last of the pioneers will soon have departed to his rest, for fourteen years ago it was officially declared that there was no longer a frontier. But mighty columns not of man's rearing stand upon the farther edge of that western valley, columns of rock rich with gold and silver and every other precious metal, surmounted, some of them the year through, with capitals of snow and lacking only the legend: Here upon the Brink of the Plains Which stretched away pathless, treeless, boundless, Ended their century-long exodus The New Children of the Wilderness, Driven by the Hand of God Westward and ever Westward Till they have at last entered Into the full Heritage of those Who, first of Pioneers, Traced the rivers and lakes of this Valley Between the eternal mountains. CHAPTER VIII THE PARCELLING OF THE DOMAIN The domain of Louis XIV in the midst of America (between the Great Lakes and the gulf, the Alleghanies and the Rockies) embraced over seven hundred and fifty million acres. One-half of it, roughly, was covered with giant forests inhabited by fur-bearing animals with opulence upon their backs. One-half was covered with vegetation, varying from the luxuriant prairie grass to the sage-brush of the shadeless plains, plains roamed by beasts clothed with valuable robes. Two-thirds of this domain was arable, with only the irrigation of the clouds, and all of it was destined some day to be cultivated, the clouds having the assistance of man-made irrigation or dry farming. The portion east of the Mississippi (about three hundred million acres) was at one time estimated to be worth not more, politically and physically, than the island of Guadeloupe-an island represented by a pin- head on an ordinary map-producing forty thousand tons of sugar and about two million pounds each of coffee and cocoa. Even the people of the Atlantic States were accused by westerners as late as 1786 of threatening secession and of being as ignorant of the trans- Alleghany country as Great Britain had been of America, and as inconsiderate. The western half, urged by the minister of Louis XV upon Spain after sixty or seventy millions of francs had been spent fruitlessly upon it by France, recovered by Napoleon and sold to the United States for one-fourth of the amount that was expended a century later for the celebration of the purchase, was regarded at the time of the purchase, even by many seacoast Americans, as useless, except as it secured control of the mouth of the Mississippi. An important New York paper said editorially: "... As to the unbounded region west of the Mississippi, it is, with the exception of a very few settlements of Spaniards and Frenchmen bordering on the banks of the river, a wilderness through which wander numerous tribes of Indians. And when we consider the present extent of the United States, and that not one-sixteenth part of its territory is yet under occupation, the advantage of the acquisition, as it relates to actual settlement, appears too distant and remote to strike the mind of a sober politician with much force. This, therefore, can only rest in speculation for many years, if not centuries to come, and consequently will not perhaps be allowed very great weight in the account by the majority of readers. But it may be added, that should our own citizens, more enterprizing than wise, become desirous of settling this country, and emigrate thither, it must not only be attended with all the injuries of a too widely dispersed population, but, by adding to the great weight of the western part of our territory, must hasten the dismemberment of a large portion of our country, or a dissolution of the government. On the whole, we think it may with candor be said, that whether the possession at this time of any territory west of the river Mississippi will be advantageous, is at best extremely problematical. For ourselves, we are very much inclined to the opinion that, after all, it is the Island of N. Orleans by which the command of a free navigation of the Mississippi is secured, that gives to this interesting cession its greatest value, and will render it in every view of immense benefit to our country. By this cession we hereafter shall hold within our own grasp, what we have heretofore enjoyed only by the uncertain tenure of a treaty, which might be broken at the pleasure of another, and (governed as we now are) with perfect impunity. Provided therefore we have not purchased it too dear, there is all the reason for exultation which the friends of the administration display, and which all Americans may be allowed to feel." [Footnote: York Herald, July 6, 1803.] I quote this to show how far from appreciating France's generosity the easterners, and especially the anti-Jeffersonian Federalists in America, were at that time. Other and less conscientious newspapers put the prodigality of Jefferson's commissioners more graphically: "Fifteen millions of dollars! they would exclaim. The sale of a wilderness has not usually commanded a price so high. Ferdinand Gorges received but twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling for the Province of Maine. William Penn gave for the wilderness that now bears his name but a trifle over five thousand pounds. Fifteen millions of dollars! A breath will suffice to pronounce the words. A few strokes of the pen will express the sum on paper. But not one man in a thousand has any conception of the magnitude of the amount. Weigh it and there will be four hundred and thirty-three tons of solid silver. Load it into wagons, and there will be eight hundred and sixty-six of them. Place the wagons in a line, giving two rods to each, and they will cover a distance of five and one-third miles. Hire a laborer to shovel it into the carts, and, though he load sixteen each day, he will not finish the work in two months. Stack it up dollar on dollar, and supposing nine to make an inch, the pile will be more than three miles high. It would load twenty-five sloops; it would pay an army of twenty-five thousand men forty shillings a week each for twenty-five years; it would, divided among the population of the country, give three dollars for each man, woman, and child.... Invest the principal as school fund, and the interest will support, forever, eighteen hundred free schools, all owning fifty scholars, and five hundred dollars to each school." [Footnote: McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," 2:630.] Napoleon had, indeed, made a good bargain for France, selling a wilderness, which at best he could not well have kept long, for a price which all the specie currency in the poor young republic would not be adequate to meet. It was of this domain (a part of the claim of La Salle for Louis XIV in 1682, divided between England and Spain in 1763, made one again in 1803 by the will of Napoleon, under the control of the United States, added to by the purchase of Florida from Spain and the acquisition of Texas, filling all the Great Valley)--it was of this valley that, as late as the early fifties, a member of Congress (afterward to become vice-president of the United States, then President), Andrew Johnson, although an earnest advocate of a liberal land policy, predicted that it would take "seven hundred years to dispose of the public lands at the rate we have been disposing of them." [Footnote: Speech on the Homestead bill, April 29, 1852.] Seven hundred years--as long as from the founding of Charlemagne's new empire of the west to the discovery of the coasts of a still newer empire of the west. But in two hundred years from the day that La Salle so miserably perished on the plains of Texas, in exactly one hundred years from the time when, under the epoch-making "Ordinance of the Northwest" (as it has been called), the parcelling of the land began, and in less than half a century from the year when Andrew Johnson's seven-hundred-year prophecy began to run, practically the entire domain had been surveyed and sold or given by the nation to private or municipal or corporate possession. It was the 24th of July, 1687, that La Salle died; it was July 27, 1787, that the first great sale of a fragment of the domain was made; and it was in 1887, approximately, that all the humanly available domain was occupied by at least two persons to a square mile; for in 1890 it was officially declared by the government of the United States that it had no frontier. Not that the land was all sold, but all that was immediately valuable. As soon as the War of Independence was over, and even during the struggle, the territories of several of the Atlantic States (or colonies) expanded to the Mississippi. There was a quadrilateral, trans-Alleghany Massachusetts, as indifferent to natural boundaries as a "state of mind" (which Massachusetts has often been defined to be), respectful only of imaginary lines of latitude and the Mississippi River, the Spanish border. Little Connecticut multiplied its latitude by degrees of longitude till it reached in a thin but rich slice from Pennsylvania also to the Mississippi. Virginia disputed these mountain-to-river claims of her New England sisters, but held unquestioned still larger territories to the north and south--and so on from the sources of the river to Florida, South Carolina even claiming a strip a few miles wide and four hundred long. There was almost a duplication of the Atlantic front on the Mississippi River. These statements will not interest those who can have no particular acquaintance with the personalities of those several commonwealths, quite as marked as are those of Normandy and Brittany; but even without this knowledge it is possible to appreciate the magnanimity and the wisdom which prompted those States, many with large and rich claims, to surrender all to the central government, the Continental Congress, for the benefit of all the States, landful and landless alike. [Footnote: LANDS CEDED BY THE STATES TO THE UNITED STATES NORTHWEST OF THE OHIO RIVER SQUARE MILES Ohio......................................................... 39,964 Indiana.......................................................33,809 Illinois..................................................... 55,414 Michigan......................................................56,451 Wisconsin.................................................... 53,924 Minnesota, east of the Mississippi River......................26,000 ------- 265,562 or 169,959,680 acres. Virginia claimed this entire region. New York claimed an indefinite amount. Connecticut claimed about 25,600,000 acres and ceded all but 3,300,000. Massachusetts claimed about 34,560,000 acres. SOUTH OF KENTUCKY South Carolina ceded about 3,136,000 acres. North Carolina ceded (nominally) 29,184,000 acres. Georgia ceded 56,689,920 acres.--Payson J. Treat, "The National Land System, 1785-1820."] So it was that even before the National Government was organized under a federal constitution in 1789, the land beyond the western boundaries of the several colonies, out as far as the Mississippi, was held for the good of all. And later the same policy followed the expansion to the Rockies and beyond. Can one imagine a greater or more fateful task than confronted this young, inexperienced republic--to have the disposal of a billion acres of timber lands, grazing lands, farm lands, ore lands, oil lands, coal lands, arid lands, and swamp lands for the good not only of the first comers and of those then living in the Atlantic States but also of the millions that should inhabit all that country in future generations as well--for the good of all of all time? This one-time bed of the Paleozoic sea between Archaean shores, raised in time above the ocean and enriched of the mountains that through millions of years were gradually to be worn down by the natural forces of the valley, and finally, as we have seen, opened by the French as a new- created world to be peopled by the old world, then overflowing its brim, became all of it in the space of a single lifetime the property of a few million human beings, their heirs, and assigns forever. The "men of always" [Footnote: The Iroquois, according to Châteaubriand, called themselves Ongoueonoue, the "men of always," signifying that they were a race eternal, immortal, not to fade away.--"Travels in America," 2:93.] had actually come and were to divide and distribute among themselves the stores of millions of years as if reserved for them from the foundation of the world. When Deucalion and Pyrrha went forth to repeople the world after a flood, they were told by the oracle to cast over their shoulders the bones of their mother. These they rightly interpreted, according to the myth, to be the stones of the earth, and so the valleys of the ancient world became populous. Peopling _per se_ was not, however, the object or the first object of the act under which the government, after the manner of Deucalion, went across this new-world valley, casting in stoneless areas clods of earth and tufts of virgin sod before it and behind it. It was not people that the government wanted. Indeed, it was afraid of people. What it desired, the "common good," was the immediate payment of the debt incurred in the War of Independence, and the only resource was land. The land that the French had discovered, whose nominal transfer to England Choiseul had said he had made to destroy England's power in America, was now to meet a portion at least of the expense of the brave struggle for the winning of independence. France's practically untouched wilderness was now to supplement the succor of French ships and arms and sympathy in the firm founding of the new nation. The acres that France under other fortunes might have divided among her own descendants, children of the west, she gave to a happier destiny than La Salle could have desired in his wildest dreams as he traversed the streams that watered those first- parcelled fields. So, incidentally, the French pioneers before the fact and the first settlers of the west after the fact had their part, witting or unwitting, willing or unwilling, written or unwritten, along with George Rogers Clark and his men, who seized the British forts in that territory during the Revolution (and thus gave standing to the claim for its transfer), and along with the men of the Atlantic colonies who sacrificed their fortunes and their lives--these all had their part in the inauguration of this experiment in self-government. There was no higher, more far-reaching "common good" than this to which acres prepared from Paleozoic days and consecrated of unselfish adventure could be devoted. I cannot find anywhere in our history an appreciation of this particular contribution to the foundation of free institutions in America. But it is one that should be recorded and remembered along with the more tangible contributions. Every perilous journey of the French across that territory for which France got not a franc, every purchase which Scotch-Irish or New England or other settlers went out to conquer, was a march or a skirmish in the War of Independence, for all was turned to the confirming of the fruits of victory of the American Revolution. Those who have written of the land policy which prescribed the conditions of sale have divided its history roughly into two periods: the first, from 1783 to 1840, in which the fiscal considerations of the general government were dominant; and the second, from 1840 to the present time, when the social conditions, either within the territory itself or in the nation at large, were given first consideration. The statistical story of the first period, under that accurate classification, would be about as interesting as a bulletin of real-estate transactions in Chicago would be to a professor of paleontology in the Sorbonne. It is only when those sales are considered teleologically (as the philosophers would say) that they can seem absorbingly vital to others than economists or to the fortunate heirs of some of the purchasers. I am aware (let me say parenthetically) that customs duties might have a somewhat like interpretation under a higher imaginative power; but this possibility does not lessen to me the singularly spiritual character of this series of transactions-of land sales, or transmutations of lands, on the one hand, into the maintenance of the fabric of a government by the people, and, on the other, into the ruggedest, hardiest species of men and women the world has known in its new hemisphere. Land-offices, as I have seen them described in the newspapers of the early part of the nineteenth century, gave no outward suggestion of being places of miracles--sacred places. They were noisy, dirty, ephemeral tabernacles of canvas or of boards in the wilderness, carried westward till the day of permanent temples should come. But like the Ark of the Covenant in the history of Israel, they blessed those in whose fields they rested on the way, even as the field and household of Obed-edom the Gittite were blessed by the presence of the ark on its way up to Jerusalem in the days of David. The initial policy of the government was to sell in as great tracts as possible (the very reverse of the present conserving, anti-monopolistic policy, as we shall see). The first sale (1787) was of nearly a million acres, for which an average of two-thirds of a dollar per acre in securities worth nine or ten cents was received. This sale, whatever may be said for it as a part of a fiscal policy, was significant not only in opening up a great tract (one thousand three hundred square miles) but in the fact that the purchase and holding were conditioned by certain provisions of a precious ordinance--the last of importance of the old Continental Congress-only less important than the Constitution, which it preceded by two years--the "basis of law and politics" in the northwest. It, moreover, gave precedent for a policy of territorial control by the central government that has been effective even to the present time. Daniel Webster said of it: "I doubt whether any single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character." [Footnote: First Speech on Foot's Resolution in "Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster," national edition, 5:263.] It forbade slavery and had in this provision an important influence on the history of the valley. But there was another far-reaching and a positive provision which must be of special interest to the people of France even to-day. Its preamble lies in this memorable passage: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." As to the specific means of encouraging religion, morality, and knowledge, and so, ultimately, of promoting good government and the happiness of mankind, it was proposed by the representative of the Ohio Company, which stood ready to purchase a million acres, that the government should give support both to education and religion, as was done in New England, and as follows: one lot in each township (that is, a section one mile square in every tract six miles square) to be reserved for the common schools, another for the support of the ministry, and four whole townships, in the whole tract, for the maintenance of a university. Congress thought this too liberal, but finally, under the stress of need of revenue which the high-minded, reverend lobbyist, Reverend Menasseh Cutler, was prepared through his company to furnish, acceded, with a reduction only of the proposed appropriation to the university. The provision specifically was: "Lot number sixteen to be given perpetually by Congress to the maintenance of schools, and lot number twenty-nine to the purpose of religion in the said townships; two townships near the center and of good land to be also given by Congress for the support of a literary institution, to be applied to the intended object by the legislature of the State." A second great tract was sold the same year under similar conditions. This was the last occasion on which provision for the support of religion was made by the national Congress, and what came of this particular grant I have not followed beyond the statement below. [Footnote: In 1828 Ohio petitioned for permission to sell the lands reserved for religious purposes, and in 1833 this was granted. The proceeds of the sales were to be invested and used for the support of religion, under the direction of the legislature within the townships in which the reserves were located.-- Payson J. Treat, "The National Land System, 1785-1820."] But the "section-sixteen" allotment for the aid of public schools continued as a feature of all future grants within the Northwest Territory, and also in all the new States of the southwestern and trans- Mississippi territory erected prior to 1850, from which time forward two sections in each township (sixteen and thirty-six) were granted for school purposes, besides specific grants for higher education amounting to over a million acres. A recent student [Footnote: Joseph Shafer, "The Origin of the System of Land Grants for Education." Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 63. History Series, Vol. i, No. i, August, 1902.] of this subject has traced this policy of public aid to education back through New England, where colonies, in grants to companies or townships, made specific stipulations and reservations for the support of schools and the ministry and where townships voluntarily often made like disposition of surplus wild lands; and through New England to England of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where, the monasteries and other religious foundations being destroyed and the schools depending upon them perishing, schools were endowed by the kings, sometimes out of sequestered church lands, or were established by towns and counties, in addition to those chartered under private patronage, so strong was the new educational movement of the time. In the Mississippi Valley, then, or the greater part of it--whatever the historical origin of the provisions may be-from one-thirty-sixth to one- eighteenth of the public land has been set apart to the education of generation after generation till the end of the republic--or as Americans would be disposed to put it in synonymous phrase, "till the end of time." Acres vary in size, one of our eminent horticulturists has reminded us, measured in terms of productivity. And the gifts to the various townships have been by no means of the same size, measured in terms of revenue for school purposes. "Number sixteen" may sometimes have fallen in shallow soil or on stony ground and "thirty-six" in swamp or alkali land. The lottery of nature is as hard-hearted as the lotteries of human devising; but the general provision has put an obligation upon the other thirty-five or thirty-four sections in every township that I suppose is seldom evaded. The child's acres are practically never, I suspect, less valuable than the richest and largest of those in the township about it, for the reason that the difference is made good by the local taxpayer. The child's acre is, as a rule, then, as large as the largest, the most productive acre. And roughly there are fifty thousand of those little plots in that domain-- fifty thousand sections a mile square, thirty-two million acres reserved from the beginning of time, theoretically at least, to the end of time. As a matter of fact, they are not to be distinguished objectively from other acres now; they are to be distinguished only subjectively, that is, as one thinks of what is grown year by year in the schools, to which their proceeds, if not their products, are given. I quoted above an estimate made in 1803 of what might have been done with the fifteen million dollars, paid to the French for Louisiana. One alternative suggested was the permanent endowment of eighteen hundred free schools, allowing five hundred dollars a year per school and accommodating ninety thousand pupils. The public-school allotment for that part of the valley alone is fifteen million acres. Even at two dollars an acre (a very low estimate), the endowment is twice the total amount paid for Louisiana --and I am estimating this school acreage at but one thirty-sixth instead of one-eighteenth of the total acreage. Therefore, France may, in a sense, be said to have given these acres to the support of the "children of always"--since these plots alone have probably yielded many times the purchase price of the entire territory. To be sure, these white plots, as I would have them marked on a map of the valley, have in many States been sold and occupied as the other plots, with only this distinction, that the proceeds are inviolably set apart to this sacred use, as certain parts of animals were, under Mosaic law, reserved for public sacrifice. In one trans-Mississippi State, Iowa, for example, of a total grant of 1,013,614.21 acres [Footnote: Iowa, 1,013,614.21 acres from section 16 and 535,473.76 acres by congressional grant in 1841.] (less what the boundary rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri, had carried away in their voracious encroachments, and plus what other natural agents had added), only 200 acres remained unsold in 1911. As we view the policy from the year 1903 and from the midst of a populous valley, in which land values have risen from one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre to a hundred or two hundred dollars in most fertile farm tracts, and to thousands in urban centres, we can but regret that these lands themselves had not been held inviolate, and can but wish that only their rentals had been devoted to the high uses to which the nation and State had consecrated these lands. This policy would have put in the heart of every township a common field whose rental would have grown with the development of the country. It would have furnished fruitful data for comparison between two systems of land tenure. And it would have kept ever visibly, tangibly before the people their heritage and their obligation. As it is, one has to use the greatest imagination in translating the figures in a State treasurer's or county supervisor's report, back into the little plots that gathered into the soil of their acres the noblest purposes that ever animated a nation--these spots where one generation made its unselfish prayer and sacrifice for the next. That the purpose still exists, despite the passing of the tangible symbol, and that the prayer is still made in every township of that territory, where even a few children live, is evidenced by the fact that every two miles north and south, east and west of settled region there stands a schoolhouse. I shall speak later of this wide-spread provision, not only for universal elementary education but also for secondary and higher education, ordained of the people and for the people, to be paid for by the people out of their common treasury. But attention must here be called, in passing, to the fact that the parcelling of the domain of Louis XIV in the new world fixed irrevocably the public school in the national consciousness and purpose and made it the foundation of a purely democratic social system and the nourisher of a more highly efficient democratic political system. On the Atlantic side of the mountains there was bitter controversy between those who held that education was necessary for the preservation of free institutions and those who held that free education increased taxation unduly; between those who desired and those who regretted the breaking down of social barriers which both claimed would ensue as a result of such education; between those who regarded education as a natural right and those who considered taxation for such a purpose a violation of the rights of the individual; between those who saw in it a panacea for poverty and distress and those who urged that it would not benefit the masses; and, finally, between those of one sect and race and those of another. But in the trans-Alleghany country north of the Ohio, and in all the territory west of the Mississippi (practically coterminous, let me again remind you, with that region where the French were pioneers within the present bounds of the United States) there was practically no dissension, though the provision was meagre at the start. The public school had no more of the atmosphere or character of a charity, a "pauper" school than the highway provided for out of the same grant, where rich and poor met in absolute equality of right and opportunity. It became the pride of a people, the expression of the people's ideal, the corner-stone of the people's hope. I suppose that three-fourths of the children of the territory whose ranges have been surveyed by the magic chains forged of this first great parcelling ordinance have had the tuition of the public schools--future Presidents of the United States, justices, railroad and university presidents, farmers, artisans, artists, and poets alike. So while it was desire for revenue that prompted the early sales of the public domain in the Mississippi Valley, the nation got in return not only means to help pay its Revolution debt, but, incidentally, settlements of highly individualistic, self-dependent, and interdependent pioneers, gathered about one highly paternalistic or maternalistic institution--the public school. The credit for this has gone to New England and New York, but the "white acres" came of the territory and the riches of Nouvelle France. You will not wish to follow in detail the ministrations of the priests of the land-offices and the surveys of the men of the magic chains, for it is a long and tedious story that would fill thousands of pages, and in the end only obscure the real significance of the movement. Here is a summary of allotments made up to 1904 of all the public domain, that of the Mississippi Valley being somewhat more than half. [Footnote: See Report of the Public Lands Commission, Washington, 1905.] _Private land claims_, donations etc. (the first of the latter being made to the early French settlers).............................................(ACRES) 33,400,000 _Wagon-road, canal, and river_ improvement grants (provision for the narrow strips of common that intersect each other at every mile of the settled parts of the valley).................................. 9,700,000 _Railroad grants_ for the subsidizing of the private building of railways chiefly up and down and across the valley.............................. 117,600,000 _Swamp-land grants_ (being tracts of wet or overflowed lands given to the various States for reclamation)............................................. 65,700,000 _School grants to States_ (those which we have been considering)....................................... 69,000,000 _Other grants to States_ (largely for educational purposes)........................................ 20,600,000 _Military and naval land warrants_........................... 61,000,000 _Scrip_ issued for various purposes (chiefly in view of service to the government)......................... 9,300,000 _Allotment to individual Indians_............................ 15,100,000 _Mineral lands_ (under special entries)....................... 1,700,000 _Homestead entries_ (that is, by settlers taking claims under homestead acts of which I shall speak later)........................................... 96,500,000 _Timber-culture entries_ (final).............................. 9,700,000 _Timber and stone entries_.................................... 7,600,000 _Cash entries_, including entries under the preemption and other acts................................... 276,600,000 _Reservoir rights of way_....................................... 300,000 _Forest reserves_ (tracts of forest land permanently reserved from sale).............................. 57,900,000 For national reclaiming purposes............................. 39,911,000 Reserved for public purposes (public buildings, forts, etc.).................................................. 6,700,000 _Indian reservations_........................................ 73,000,000 _Entries pending_............................................ 39,500,000 _Unappropriated public land_................................ 841,872,377 _Total (including Alaska)_................................ 1,852,683,377 By June 30, 1912, homestead entries had increased to 127,800,000 acres; timber and stone entries to 13,060,000 acres; forest reserves to 187,400,000 acres, and there was left 682,984,762 acres, more than half of which was in Alaska; that is, of the billion and a half of acres, exclusive of Alaska, over a billion have been sold to private uses, granted in aid of private enterprises, used for public improvements, appropriated forever to public uses, or given to the support of education. The controlling motive at the start, I repeat, was revenue. But gradually the people, seeing great tracts of land held unimproved for speculation, seeing the domain of free land narrowing while the pressure of want was beginning to make itself felt east of the mountains, as in Europe, and feeling concerned, as some men of vision did, at the passing of the world's great opportunity for the practical realization of man's natural right to the land without disturbing the system in force in older settled communities, the people strove to effect the subordination of revenue to the social good of the frontier and the country at large. By the middle of the century this many-motived feeling had expression in a party platform; that "the public lands-belong to the people and should not be sold to individuals nor granted to corporations, but should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people and should be granted in limited quantities, free of cost, to landless settlers." [Footnote: Free-Soil Democratic Platform, 1892, p. 12.] It was ten years before this doctrine became embodied in law over the signature of Abraham Lincoln, but the agitation for its enactment had been active for thirty years, beginning with the cry of a poor printer in New York City, [Footnote: George Henry Evans.] taught of French doctrine, who in season and out kept asserting the equal right of man to land. It was as a voice in the wilderness proclaiming a plan of salvation to the already congested areas on the seashore and, incidentally, a means of making the wilderness blossom. He was not then a disciple of Fourier (as many of his associates were and he himself had been originally), threatening vested privileges of rights; he did not preach a communistic division of property; he was an individualistic idealist and saw in the opening of this wild, unoccupied land, not to speculators or to alien purchasers, but to actual settlers permitted to pre-empt in quarter-sections (one hundred and sixty acres) and forbidden to alienate it, a means of social regeneration that would not disturb the titles to property already granted to individuals by the State, and yet would bless all the property-less, for there was enough free land for every landless man who wanted it, and would be for decades if not for centuries beyond their lives, or so he thought. [Footnote: See J. R. Commons, "Documentary History of American Industrial Society," VII:287-349.] A German economist has expressed the view that it was only this movement, so inaugurated, that prevented America from going into socialism. One of our foremost economists in America, in discussing this very subject, begins with these observations: "The French are a nation of philosophers. Starting with the theory of the rights of man, they build up a logical system, then a revolution, and the theory goes into practice. Next a coup d'état and an emperor. "The English are a nation without too much philosophy or logic. They piece out their constitution at the spot where it becomes tight.... They are practical ... unlogical. "The Americans are French in their logic and English in their use of logic. They announce the universal rights of man and then enact into law enough to augment the rights of property." The homestead law owed its origin to the doctrine of natural rights, whose transcendental glory faded often into the light of common day during the discussions but still enhaloes a very practical and matter-of-fact statute. Economic reasons, both of eastern and western motive, were gathered under the banner of its idealism, till finally it came to be an ensign not only of free soil for the landless but of free soil for the slaves. The "homestead" movement put an end to slavery, even if within a half century it has exhausted in its generosity the nation's domain of arable land. The voice in the wilderness cried for a legalized natural right that would not disturb vested rights, for an individualism based on private property given without cost, for equality by a limitation of that property to one hundred and sixty acres, and finally for the inalienability from sale or mortgage of that little plot of earth. Thirty years later the natural right to unoccupied land was recognized, individualistic society was strengthened by the great increase in the number of property holders, and inalienability was recognized by the States; but the failure to reserve the free lands to such actual settlers alone and to limit the amount of the holding left the way open for railroad grants, which alone have in two generations exceeded the homestead entries, and for the amassing of great stretches by a few. The logic of France, speaking through the voice of that leader and other men such as Horace Greeley, led the later exodus as certainly as her pioneers opened the way for the first American settlers. And though the logic was applied in English fashion, yet it had a notable part in making, as I have just said, the free soil of the Mississippi Valley contribute to the freeing of a whole people in slavery, inside and outside of the valley. That logic learned in France would doubtless have accomplished a conclusion needing less patching and opportunistic repair if the immediate interests of those of the frontiers, those who wanted immediate settlement and development, had not disturbed one of the premises. At any rate, a great and perhaps the last opportunity to carry such doctrines to their conclusions without overturning all social and industrial institutions has gone by. A half-billion acres of inalienable farms, all of the same size, trespassing upon no ancient rights, interspersed with the white blocks held for the education of the children of that free soil, might have furnished an example for all time to be followed or shunned-if, indeed, all acres had been born of the primeval sea and glaciers not only free but equal in size. As it was, some acres were born large and some small, some fruitful and some barren, some with gold in their mouths and some with only the taste of alkali; and only an infinite wisdom could have adjusted them to the unequal capacities of that army of land lackers who declared themselves free and equal, and who, with free-soil banners, advanced to the territory where the squatters became sovereigns and homesteads became castles. President Andrew Johnson (who as a congressman, in 1852, made the seven- hundred-year prophecy) estimated that a homestead (of one hundred and sixty acres) would increase every homesteader's purchasing ability by one hundred dollars a year; and if (he argued) the government enacted a 30- per-cent duty it would be reimbursed in seven years in the amount of two hundred and ten dollars, or ten dollars more than the cost of the homestead. By such reckoning he reached the conclusion that the homesteaders would defray the expenses of the government for a period of four thousand three hundred and ninety-two years-each homesteader of the nine millions contributing indirectly twenty-four thousand four hundred dollars in seven hundred years and all of them two hundred and nineteen billion six hundred million dollars--a scheme as ingenious, says one, as Fourier's "scheme to pay off the national debt of France with a setting hen." [Footnote: Speech on the bill to encourage agriculture, July 25, 1850. Speeches on the homestead bill, April 29, 1852, and May 20, 1858.] There are approximately nine million homes (or homes, tenements, and flats) in that domain to-day, and it is quite easily demonstrable that they not only contribute to the support of government, directly and indirectly, far more than the seemingly fantastic estimates of Andrew Johnson suggested but also give to the world a surplus of product undreamed of even in 1850. It is hardly likely that any system of parcelling would have more rapidly developed this vast domain. There is a question as to whether some more logical, conserving, long-viewed policy might not have been devised for the "common good" of the generations that are yet to occupy that valley with the generation that is there and the three or four generations that have already gone. It is that "common good" that is now engaging the thought of our foremost economists, natural scientists, and public men. Of that I shall speak later. Here we celebrate merely the fact that there are fifty or sixty million geographical descendants of France living in the midst of the valley at the mouth of whose river La Salle took immediate possession for Louis XIV, but prophetic possession for all the peoples that might in any time find dwelling there. CHAPTER IX IN THE TRAILS OF THE COUREURS DE BOIS "It is a mistake," said one of the statesmen of the Mississippi Valley, Senator Thomas H. Benton, "to suppose that none but men of science lay off a road. There is a class of topographical engineers older than the schools and more unerring than the mathematicians. They are the wild animals-- buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, bears-which traverse the forest not by compass but by an instinct which leads them always the right way-to the lowest passes in the mountains, the shallowest fords in the rivers, the richest pastures in the forests, the best salt springs, and the shortest practicable lines between remote points. They travel thousands of miles, have their annual migrations backwards and forwards, and never miss the best and shortest route. These are the first engineers to lay out a road in a new country; the Indians follow them, and hence a buffalo road becomes a warpath. The first white hunters follow the same trails in pursuing their game; and after that the buffalo road becomes the wagon road of the white man, and finally the macadamized road or railroad of the scientific man." [Footnote: Speech on a bill for the construction of a highway to the Pacific, December 16, 1850.] A hunter of wild sheep in the Rocky Mountains following their trails wonders if they were made a year, five, or ten years ago, and is told by the scientist at his side that they may have been sixteen thousand years old, so long have these first engineers been at work. In some places of Europe, I am told, their fellow engineers, longer in the practice of their profession, have actually worn paths in the rocks by their cushioned feet. It is a mistake, therefore, we are reminded, to suppose that the forests and plains of the Mississippi Valley were trackless. They were coursed by many paths. If you have by chance read Châteaubriand's "Atala," you will have a rather different notion of the American forests, especially of the Mississippi Valley. "On the western side of the Mississippi," he wrote, "the waves of verdure on the limitless plains (savannas) appear as they recede to rise gradually into the azure sky"; but on the eastern half of the valley, "trees of every form, of every color, and of every perfume throng and grow together, stretching up into the air to heights that weary the eye to follow. Wild vines ... intertwine each other at the feet of these trees, escalade their trunks and creep along to the extremity of their branches, stretching from the maple to the tulip-tree, from the tulip-tree to the hollyhock, and thus forming thousands of grottos, arches and porticos. Often, in their wanderings from tree to tree, these creepers cross the arm of a river, over which they throw a bridge of flowers.... A multitude of animals spread about life and enchantment. From the extremities of the avenues may be seen bears, intoxicated with the grape, staggering upon the branches of the elm-trees; caribous bathe in the lake; black squirrels play among the thick foliage; mocking-birds, and Virginian pigeons not bigger than sparrows, fly down upon the turf, reddened with strawberries; green parrots with yellow heads, purple woodpeckers, cardinals red as fire, clamber up to the very tops of the cypress-trees; humming-birds sparkle upon the jessamine of the Floridas; and bird- catching serpents hiss while suspended to the domes of the woods, where they swing about like creepers themselves.... All here ... is sound and motion.... When a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing these floating bodies, to confound these masses of white, blue, green, and pink, to mix all the colors and to combine all the murmurs, there issue such sounds from the depths of the forests, and such things pass before the eyes, that I should in vain endeavor to describe them to those who have never visited these primitive fields of nature." And when René and Atala were escaping through those forests they "advanced with difficulty under a vault of smilax, amidst vines, indigo-plants, bean-trees, and creeping-ivy that entangled our feet like nets.... Bell serpents were hissing in every direction, and wolves, bears, carcajous and young tigers, come to hide themselves in these retreats, made them resound with their roarings." [Footnote: Châteaubriand, "Atala," trans. Harry, pp. 2, 3, 19.] A trackless, howling wilderness, indeed, if we are to accept this as an accurate description of scenes which, as I have intimated, it is now suspected that Châteaubriand's imagination visited, unaccompanied of his body. But a recent indigenous writer on the valley and its roads--having in mind, to be sure, the forests a little farther north than those in which Atala and René wandered--assures us that they were neither "pathless" nor "howling." He writes that in 1775 (eighteen years before the first white settlement in the State of Ohio) there were probably as many paths within the bounds of that State on which a man could travel on horseback at the rate of five miles an hour as there are railways in that State to-day. And the buffalo paths were-some of them, at any rate--roads so wide that several wagons might have been driven abreast on them--as wide as the double-track railroads. So the Indian farther west had his highways prepared for him by the instincts of these primitive engineers that knew nothing of trigonometry or the sextant or the places of the stars. [Footnote: Hulbert, "Historic Highways," vol. I, pt. II.] Nor did these first makers of roads howl or bellow their way over them. On this same authority (Hulbert) I am able to assure you that the forest paths were noiseless "traces," as they were originally called, in the midst of silences disturbed only by the wind and the falling waters. Wolves did sometimes howl in the forests or out upon the plains, but it was only in hunger and in accentuation of the usual silence. Neither they nor the bears growled or howled, except when they came into collision with each other, or starvation. And there were not even birds to give cheer to the gloom of these black forests, whose tree tops were knitted together by vines, but had no undergrowth, since the sun could not reach the ground. "The birds of the forest came only with the white man." There were parrots in Kentucky, and there were in Ohio pigeons and birds of prey, eagles and buzzards, but the birds we know to-day and the bees were later immigrants from lands that remembered Aristophanes or the hills of Hymettus, or that knew Shelley's skylark or Keats's nightingale or Rostand's tamer fowls or Maeterlinck's bees. Even if we allow to the forests Chateaubriand's color in summer and the clamor in times of terror--color and clamor which only a keen eye and ear would have seen and heard--we cannot longer think of them as pathless, if inhabited by those ancient pathmakers, the buffalo, deer, sheep. And, naturally, when the Indian came, dependent as he was upon wild game, he followed these paths or traces made and frequented by the beasts--the ways to food, to water, to salt, to other habitats with the changing seasons. The buffalo roads and the deer trails became his vocational trails--the streets of his livelihood. And as his enemy was likely to find him by following these traces, they became not only the paths of peace but the paths of war. When the red man trespassed upon the peaceful trails of his enemy, he was, in an American idiom, "on the war-path." Then in time the European trader went in friendly search of the Indian by these same paths, and they became the avenues of petty commerce. As street venders in Paris, so these forest traders or runners went up and down these sheltered paths, as dark in summer as the narrowest streets, only they went silently, though they were often heard as distinctly in the breaking of twigs or in their muffled tread by the alert ears of the Indians as the musical voices of these venders are heard in the city. And the places where these traders put down their cheap trinkets before their dusky patrons grew into trading-posts, prophetic of future cities and towns. Such were the paths by which the runners of the woods, the French coureurs de bois, first emerged--after following the watercourses--upon the western forest glades and the edges of the prairies and astonished the aboriginal human owners of those wild highways that had known only the soft feet of the wolf and fox and bear, the hoofs of the buffalo and deer, and the bare feet or the moccasins of the Indians (the "silent shoes," as I have seen such footgear advertised in Boulevard St. Germain). It has been said by a chemist of some repute that man came, in his evolution, out of the sea; that he has in his veins certain elements-- potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium--in the same ratio in which they appeared in the water of the Pre-Cambrian ocean. Whether this be true or not, one stage of human development carries marks of the forest, and from that period "having nothing but forest knowledge, forest dreams, forest fancies, forest faith," as an American writer has said, man emerges upon the plains of history. So, though the French civilization still smells and sounds of the sea, and followed the streams that kept its first men in touch with it, it had finally, in its pioneering, to take to the trails and the forests. And these runners of the woods were the amphibious ambassadors from this kingdom of the sea to the kingdom of the land. They were, as Étienne Brûlé of Champlain's time, the pioneers of pioneers who, often in unrecorded advance of priest and explorer, pushed their adventurous traffic in French guns and hatchets, French beads and cloth, French tobacco and brandy, till they knew and were known to the aboriginal habitants, "from where the stunted Esquimaux burrowed in their snow caves to where the Comanches scoured the plains of the south with their banditti cavalry." They were a lawless lot whom this mission, not only between water and land but also between civilization and barbarism, "spoiled for civilization." But they must not be judged too harshly in their vibrations between the two standards of life which they bridged, making periodical confession to charitable priests in one, of the sins committed in the other, which, unforgiven, might have driven them entirely away from the church and into perdition. The names of most of these coureurs de bois are forgotten by history (which is rather particular about the character of those whom it remembers--other than those in kingly or other high places). But they who have followed immediately in the trails of these men of the verges have written these names, or some of them, in places where they are more widely read than if cherished by history even. Étienne Brûlé--who, as interpreter, led Le Caron out upon the first western mission--after following trails and waters for hundreds of miles back of the English settlements, where the timid colonists had not dared to venture, suffered the martyrdom of fire, and is remembered in a tempestuous stream in the west and perhaps in an Indian tribe. The name of Jean Nicolet of Cherbourg (the ambassador to the Winnebagoes, from the record of whose picturesque advent in the "Jesuit Relations" the annals of the west really began) has been given to a path now grown into one of the most populous streets along the whole course of the Mississippi River--in Minneapolis. And Du Lhut, the cousin of Tonty, a native of Lyons--a man of "persistent hardihood, not surpassed perhaps even by La Salle," says Parkman, "continually in the forest, in the Indian towns, or in the remote wilderness outposts planted by himself, exploring, trading, fighting, ruling lawless savages, and whites scarcely less ungovernable," [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 274] and crossing the ocean for interviews with the colonial minister, "amid the splendid vanities of Versailles"--he is remembered for all time in that city, built up against the far shores of Lake Superior, bearing his name, Duluth, the city that has taken the place of London in the list of the world's great harbors. Macaulay's vision of the New Zealander standing amid the ruins of London and overlooking the mastless Thames seems to have some realization in the succeeding of a city, founded in the path of a wood runner, out on the borders of civilization, to one of London's distinctions among the cities of the world. "This class of men is not extinct," said Parkman twenty or thirty years ago; "in the cheerless wilds beyond the northern lakes, or among the solitudes of the distant west they may still be found, unchanged in life and character since the day when Louis the Great claimed sovereignty over the desert empire." But their mission, if any survive till now, is past. The paths, surveyed of the beasts and opened by these pioneers to the feet of priests, explorers, and traders, have let in the influences that in time destroyed all these forest lovers braved the solitude for. The trace has become the railroad, and the smell of the gasolene motor is even on the once wild Oregon trail; for, in general, it has been said of the forest part of the valley, "where there is a railway to-day there was a path a century and a quarter ago" (and that means longer ago); and it may be added that where there was a French trading-post, or fort, or portage, there is a city to- day, not because of the attraction of the populations of those places for the prospecting railroad, but because of their natural highway advantage, learned even by the buffaloes. Not all paths have evolved into railroads, but the railroads have followed practically all of these natural paths-- paths of the coureurs de bois, instinctively searching for mountain passes, the low portages from valley to valley, the shortest ways and the easiest grades. One of America's greatest railroad presidents has noted this significant difference between the railroads of Europe and those of America, or at any rate of the Mississippi Valley. In Europe they "took the place of the pack-animal, the stage-coach, the goods-van that crowded all the highways between populous centers," whereas in the Mississippi Valley and beyond they succeeded the pioneer and pathfinder. The railroad outran the settler and "beckoned him on," just as the coureur de bois outran the slower-going migrant and beckoned him on to ever new frontiers. The buffalo, the coureur de bois, the engineer in turn. The railroad, the more modern coureur de bois and coureur de planche, has not served the new-world society merely as a connecting-link between communities already developed. It has been the "creator of cities." [Footnote: James J. Hill, "Highways of Progress," pp. 235-236.] Out on those prairies beyond the forests I have seen this general statement of Mr. Hill's illustrated. Down from Lake Michigan the first railroad crept toward the Mississippi along the Des Plaines and then the Illinois, where La Salle had seen from his canoe great herds of buffalo "trampling by in ponderous columns or filing in long lines morning, noon, and night." That railroad was a path, not to any particular city but to the water, a path from water to water, a long portage from the lake to the Mississippi and back again. One day, within my memory, a new path was marked by stakes that led away from that river, off across the prairie, to an uninhabited place which the first engineers had not known--a place of fire, the fields of coal, of which the practical Joliet had found signs on his memorable journey. And so one and another road crossed that prairie (on which I can even now clearly see the first engine standing in the prairie-grass), making toward the places of fire, of wood, of grain, of meat, of gold, of iron, of lead, till the whole prairie was a network of these paths--and now the "transportation machine" (as Mr. Hill calls it) has grown to two hundred and fifty-four thousand seven hundred and thirty-two miles (in 1911), or about 40 per cent of the world mileage, of which one hundred and forty thousand miles are within the Mississippi Valley, carrying with them wherever they go the telegraph and telephone wires, building villages, towns, and cities-still bringing the fashions of Paris, as did Perrot, in the paths of the buffalo. When the surveyors crossed that prairie, treeless except for the woods along the Aramoni River (just back of the Rock St. Louis) and along the Illinois River at the other edge, the wild animals and the Indians had disappeared westward, the prairie ground was broken and planted in patches; fences had begun to appear on the silent stretches; houses stood four to a section, with a one-room schoolhouse every two miles and churches at long intervals. After the construction train ploughed its slow way across that same prairie, in the trail staked by the surveyors, a place was marked for a village; the farmers upon whose land it promised to trespass wanted each to give it the name of his wife, his queen, as La Salle of his king; but one day a workman, representing the unsentimental corporation, without ceremony nailed a strip of board to a post, with the name "Aramoni," let us say, painted upon it. Wooden buildings, stores, elevators, blacksmith, harness, and shoemaker shops, and the dwellings of those who did the work of the little town, gathered about; in time some of the pioneer settlers leaving their farms to the care of children or tenants moved into the town; the primitive stores were rebuilt in brick; houses of pretentious architecture crowded out of the best sites the first dwellings; and in twenty or thirty years it had become a village of several hundred people: retired farmers or their widows, men of the younger generation living on the income of their farms without more than nominal occupation, and those who buy the produce and minister to the wants of this little community. Most of the villagers and most of the farmers in all the country about have the telephone in their houses and can talk as much as they please with their neighbors at a very small yearly charge. They also keep track of the grain and stock markets by telephone, have their daily metropolitan paper, a county paper, monthly magazines (of which they are the best readers), perhaps a piano or an organ, more likely, now, a phonograph, which reproduces, if they choose, what is heard in Paris or in concerts or the grand opera; reproductions of pieces of statuary or paintings in the Louvre; and either a fast driving horse or an automobile. They are often within easy reach of a city by train, and the wives or daughters know the fashions of Paris and begin to follow the modes as quickly as local talent can make the adaptations and transformations. Aramoni is not an imaginary much less a Utopian village. There are thousands of "Aramonis" where the railroads have gone, drawing all the physical conveniences and social conventions after them, where once coureurs de bois followed the buffaloes. Mr. Hill, whom I have just quoted above, has said: "Next after the Christian religion and the public school the railroad has been the largest single contributing factor to the welfare and happiness of the people of that valley." [Footnote: James J. Hill, "Highways of Progress," pp. 236, 237.] The first great service of the railroads to the republic, as such, was to make it possible that the people of a territory three thousand miles wide, crossed by two mountain ranges, should be bound into one republic. The waters to the east of the Alleghanies ran toward the Atlantic, the waters west of the Rockies ran toward the Pacific, and the waters between the mountains ran to the Gulf of Mexico. If the great east-and-west railroads had not been built and some of the waters of the Lakes had not been made to run down the Mohawk Valley into the Hudson it is more than probable that there would have been a secession of the men who called themselves the "men of the western waters," a secession of the west from the east, rather than of the south from the north. If the men of this valley had continued men of the "western waters" there would probably have been at least three republics in North America and perhaps as many as in South America. When Josiah Quincy, a famous son of Massachusetts, said for the men of the east in the halls of Congress, "You have no authority to throw the rights and liberties and property of this people into hotchpot with the wild men on the Missouri, nor with the mixed though more respectable race of Anglo- Hispano-Gallo-Americans, who bask on the sands in the mouth of the Mississippi," he was visualizing the men whose interests followed the rivers to another tide-water than that of Boston and New York harbors. The railroads made a real prophecy of his fear that these men of the western rivers would some day be "managing the concerns of a seaboard fifteen hundred miles from their residences, and having a preponderance in the councils," into which, as he contended, "they should never have been admitted." [Footnote: Speech on the bill to admit Orleans Territory into the Union. Annals of Congress, 11th Cong., 3d Sess., 1810-11, pp. 524- 542.] He was thinking and speaking rather of the southwest than of the northwest, but it was the east-and-west lines of railroad that prevented the vital interest of that northern valley from flowing with the water along parallels of longitude to where the gulf currents would catch its commerce, instead of over the mountains along the sterner parallels of latitude and in straighter course to Europe. The force of gravity, the temptation of the tropics, the indifference of the east, the freedom from eastern and puritanical restraints, were all on the side of a "republic of the western waters" and against that larger, continent-wide nationalism which now has its most ardent support in that valley through which the iron shuttles fly from sea to sea, weaving the waters as strands of color into a unified pattern of sublimer import. It looks now as if the north-and-south lines were to be strengthened the world over, as the occupied and exploited north temperate zone reaches north toward the frigid zone, now grown warmer by the very opening of the lands to the sun and the long burning of coal, and south toward the tropics, now made more habitable by the new knowledge of tropical medicine, and even across the tropics to the sister temperate zone of the southern hemisphere. [Footnote: I have been told by one who has been studying conditions in the great northwest fields of Canada that it is now possible to grow crops there that could not have been grown before the country was opened and cultivated to the south of them, so much longer have the frosts been delayed in the autumn.] In the Mississippi Valley, the gulf ports, fed of river and railroad, are increasingly busy, partly, to be sure, because they look toward the east-and-west path through Panama, but partly, too, because they lie between the two temperate zones, which must inevitably be brought nearer to each other. We cannot imagine two permanently dissociated or distantly associated temperate civilizations on this globe, which is becoming smaller every day. It was inevitable, perhaps, and happily inevitable, that the east-and-west lines should be well established before the temperate zone should venture into tropic lotus-lands again, and perhaps it was inevitable that the west should eventually, even without the help of steam and steel, attach itself to the east--even by streams of water. Washington had hardly put off his uniform, after the peace of 1783, when he was planning for a western trip, and his diary on the third day of that trip of six hundred and eighty miles shows that his one object was to obtain information of the nearest and best communication between the eastern and the western waters. One of the kings of France said, when his grandson was made king of Spain, "There are no longer any Pyrenees," and Washington, when he saw the new republic forming, said, in effect, "There must be no Alleghanies." He expected a canal to erase the mountains, but the railroad accomplished this gigantic task with but slight aid of water. And as the railroad tied the Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic coast, so in time, aided of a government that had every reason to be grateful, it reached across the uninhabited plains, over the Rocky Mountains, which even the western statesmen said were the divinely appointed barriers, and across the desert beyond to the Pacific slope and tied it to a capital which is now nearer to San Francisco than once it was to Boston. A man from Missouri is speaker of the house in which Josiah Quincy spoke his provincial fears. A man from the mouth of the Mississippi, the highest authority in America on the French code, was but a little time ago appointed as the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by a President who was born on the banks of the Ohio; that is, the highest office in each of the three independent branches of government (the executive, the legislative, and the judicial) have at one time been filled by men of the western waters. I am anticipating a fact that belongs to a later theme, but there is no single fact that can better illustrate the political service of the paths over which we are to-day travelling. On the economic consequences we need not now dwell. They have had too frequent and sufficiently conspicuous illustration in every foreign mind that knows anything whatever of that valley to make it necessary to insist in this cursory view upon their great contribution to physical comfort. It is, however, begun to be felt that in the rapid development and exploitation of the resources of that valley (made possible only by the railroads) the future has not been enough in our minds. It was said a few years ago that there was not money enough in the world to lay track to take the traffic that the Mississippi Basin offered. The valley wanted to get everything to market in one generation, indifferent to the fate of those who should come after-the passes through the mountains being choked by cars carrying to the coasts crops from increasing acreage of declining productivity or the products of swiftly disappearing forests or the output of mines that must soon be exhausted. Perhaps the railroads are not to be blamed for this decrease in productivity--a passing phase of our agricultural life, as recent crop reports show. They are very loudly blamed that they do not carry these products fast enough or cheaply enough, though, according to a recent authority, their rates are less on the average than the cost of the French water traffic. Nevertheless, their wheels alone have made possible that phenomenal draining of the riches of the land to the coasts and other shores, assisting the waters that carry a half-billion tons of soil into the gulf every year. Perhaps this hurried, panting development has been for the good of all time, but until recently there has been little or no thought of that "all time" (as we observed in the policies of land parcelling). Practically the whole western country has tied itself to a wheel, and so whatever its happiness and welfare may be, come of or with the wheel. This territory is capable of self-support; it has still its independent spirit, bred of the pioneer who lived before the day of wheels; it is responsive to appeals that stop its restless movement--as the wheel of Ixion when Orpheus played; but none the less is it an eager, restless, unquiet life, driven as a wheel, driven by the same hand that urged it into the valley. No one asks--or few ask--if the wheel brings good or ill. The only concern is that it shall run as quickly and safely as is humanly and mechanically possible and shall not discriminate between one shipper and another, one community and another, one consumer and another. That is the railroad problem. The wheel has removed watersheds at pleasure, created cities and fortunes by its presence or its taking thought. But under the new policy of the government it is not likely that there will ever again be such ruthless disturbance of nature, or such wild, profuse creation. Democracy, beginning in that valley, is seeking now a perfect impersonal transportation machine. But such a machine will drain quite as effectively the country districts. The census returns for 1910 show, for example, that in one prosperous agricultural State, Missouri, just west of the Mississippi, while the State as a whole showed an increase of 187,000 in ten years, there was a net decrease of 84,000 in the rural districts. A partial explanation of the latter statistic is the moving on of farmers to still newer lands; another, the decline in the size of families; but it is attributable chiefly to the first statistic, the drift to the city--and to this the wheels contribute more than any other influence, carrying, as they do, the glamour or the opportunity of the city life daily before the eyes of the country boy. To be sure, these same wheels are lessening, to some extent, the congestion of the great centres of population, and lightening their shadows by extending them--spreading them--but none the less are the shadows spreading faster from the coming of the country to the city than of the suburbanizing of the city. This movement is not peculiar to the Mississippi Valley, but it is more rapid there, perhaps, than in any other great area. Let me give you an illustration of that demigrating influence. Two years ago I invited several leaders of great transportation and educational interests in New York to meet one of their number who, beginning life as a telegraph operator out beyond the Mississippi, was at the head of one of the two greatest railroads in the east. Of the guests, one, the president of another important railroad, was once a farm boy, then a freight brakeman in that same western State; another, the president of one of the longest railroads, was the son of a stone-mason out in that valley; another, the head of the Interborough system of New York, also a prairie- born boy; another, president of the greatest southern railroad, was born at the mouth of the Mississippi; and still another, one of the wealthiest men in the world, was at one time a messenger boy and telegraph operator just over the mountains on the site of Fort Duquesne. Only one man of the company of nearly twenty men, assembled without thought of origin, had been born in New York. All had come from the country or from across the water, and most of them from the great Mississippi Valley. I speak of this while discussing the railroad, because it is their paths through the valley of the French that have made this phenomenon possible. I have spoken of what the wheel has done in making the permanence of one republic of such an area a possibility. Nothing save a loose, heterogeneous confederation could have been practicable without its unifying service. It is only fair to those who made such gloomy prophecies in the early days to say that they had no intimation of what steam was destined to do. When Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, early in the nineteenth century, on a journey back from the west in a stage- coach, said that some day steam would drive wagons faster than they were going in the coach, his fellow passengers thought him a dreamer--a visionary. But it was only a man of such dreams or visions who in those days could have seen the possibility which has to-day been realized through the railroad. I have spoken of the part which the steam wheel has had in the rapid development and the exploitation of that great valley which, except for its pioneering in wild places, might have been seven hundred years, as Andrew Johnson predicted, in filling up, or at least two or three centuries. I have intimated its influence in promoting migration cityward--a movement as wide as European civilization--but intensified there, where the inhabitants have not been tied through generations of inheritance or historic associations to particular fields, where primogeniture has no observance, and where the traditions are of the wilderness and the visions are ever of a promised land beyond. The city is on every boy's horizon. Its glow is in every prairie sky at twilight. When a boy on those silent plains I had my Horace and my Euripides in the field. The unattainable eternal cities lent their charm and glory to the valley whose childhood horizon I had not crossed. But now no country boy thinks of the ancient or the mediaeval. It is the nearer city and civilization that impress the imagination. The valedictorian of a class, graduating as I entered college, told me a few months ago that he was building a trolley-line in Rome, and that, after all, Falernian wine, of which we who had never tasted wine out in that vineless region thought as some drink of the gods, was very bitter. I have hinted at what the wheel has done, in what it carries, to make all look alike and think alike and act alike, but there is one supreme service that must have mention. In that country when travel was slow we had a representative government. But while we still have the same form, the wheel has made possible, and so necessary, a more democratic government. When a representative was weeks in reaching the capital he acted on his own responsibility in larger measure than now, when his constituency can reach him every morning. The valley is reached every day, just as the people in a pure democracy were reached by the ancient stentor. The people are reserving to themselves more and more of the function of their one- time representatives, in such measures as the referendum and initiative intimate, and are trying to secure more accurate representation in such systems as the direct primary and proportional representation suggest; but these all are possible only through the aid of the wheel and of what it has brought. If the improvement of democracy is to come through more democracy, as some think, then the railroad is an essential agent of political progress as well as of economic exploitation and social homogeneity. I am not discussing this thesis but simply showing how dependent upon this physical agent is the machinery of democracy. Moreover, mobility is almost an essential quality of the spirit of democracy, the free way to the farthest horizons, the open road to the highest position and service. When the atom becomes practically fixed by its environment, reposeful and stable, stratification sets in. We may or we may not have then something better. It may seem to you a far cry from those rough, lawless coureurs de bois to the mobile but orderly people of that valley to-day. But after an experience of a few summers ago the distance does not seem so great. Here is a journal of three days: In the morning of an August day I was gathering some last data from the library of one of the greatest, though one of the newest, universities in the world--a two-hours' journey from where the coureur de bois Jean Nicolet, in robe of damask, first looked over the edge of the basin, (Not many years ago I sat there in an assembly of learned men gathered from the ends of the earth and arrayed in academic robes.) In the afternoon I walked over that first and most famous of the French portages, but not content with that, I walked on into the night along the Wisconsin, that I might see the river as the explorers saw it. However, at midnight I took a palace car, with such conveniences as even Louis the Great did not have at Versailles, and woke well up the Mississippi. I spent the day at another great State university and at dusk set off by the actual trails of the French coureurs de bois (only by wheels instead of on foot), first through the woods and along rivers, above Green Bay to the "Soo," then above Lake Huron and the Nipissing and down the Ottawa River, where I saw the second day break, and then on past La Salle's seigniory of St. Sulpice, around Carder's mountain into Montreal, and thence to the Rock of Quebec. It is a common, unimaginative metaphor in the United States to call the engine which leads the mighty trains across the country the iron horse; but it is deserving of a nobler figure. It is the iron coureur de bois, still leading Europe into America, and America into a newer America. CHAPTER X IN THE WAKE OF THE "GRIFFIN" In the lower St. Lawrence Valley, among the French Canadians, where France is best remembered and where the shut-in life is not disturbed by current events or changing conventions or evanescent fashions, I am told there are traces in their language of the sea life of their ancestors on the coasts of Brittany and Normandy. When, for example, a neighbor approaches a farmhouse on horseback he is asked not to "alight" or to "dismount" but to "disembark," and he is invited not to "tie" his horse but to "moor" it. It is as if they were still crying ever in their unconscious memories, "Thalassa, Thalassa"; as if the very shells of speech still carried the roar of the ocean which they who hold them to their ears have never seen. If the language of the upper valley of the St. Lawrence and of the valley of the Mississippi remembered as distinctly its origin we should everywhere hear the plash of the oar in all the hospitality of their settlements. But all such traces have disappeared, or all but disappeared, in the Mississippi Valley. The only one that comes to me now, as possibly of the old French days, is one which is preserved in an adage not at all French but quite characteristic of the independent life that has occupied the banks of all the rivers: "Paddle your own canoe." Yet even in the space of one or two generations of agricultural life that, too, is disappearing, supplanted by a synonymous phrase, borrowed of fields that have entirely forgotten the primitive days, when men travelled only by water and lived near the streams: "Hoe your own row." The first sound of the overmountain migration of which I spoke above was of the stealthy step of the hunter, yet back of that for a century was the scarcely audible plash of the paddle and the answering swirl of the water. But as in overmountain migration the noisy wheel soon followed the foot, so in the other the noiseless sail followed the swishing paddle. The city of Paris bears a sailing ship upon her shield, though she sits a hundred miles or more from the sea. Whatever the significance of that symbol has been to the people of France, it has a peculiar appropriateness (probably never realized before) in the fact that the iron, cordage, and anchors for the first vessel which sailed upon the inland waters of the new world were carried out from France to the first shipyard, beyond the mountains, in the midst of the forest, above the mighty Falls of Niagara. Jason of Thessaly, sailing for the Golden Fleece in Colchis, and braving the fiery breath of the dragon, did not undertake a more perilous or more difficult labor than he who bore from the banks of the Seine the equipment of a vessel in which to bring back to France, as he hoped, the fleece of the forest and the plain. We are accustomed to call those who crossed the plains and the Rocky Mountains for the gold-fields of California nearly two centuries later (in 1849) the Argonautae; but the first American Argonauts went from France, and they built their _Argo_ on what is now Lake Erie, on the edge of the Field of the Bulls, near a place, grown into a beautiful city, which now bears the very name of the wild bull, the "buffalo," and within sound of the roaring of the dragon that had frightened all earlier explorers. So accurately do the details of the story of Jason's adventure become realities to-day! Champlain and others had heard only at a distance the thunder of the great cataract that was some day to become not only as docile as the dragon under Jason's taming but as useful as a million harnessed bulls. La Salle gathered his ship-carpenters and his ship furniture between his journeys to Rouen (the place of his birth) and elsewhere for the means of purchase. But before the winter had come in Normandy his messengers were out amid the snows and naked forests of Canadian winters in continuance of that voyage toward the western Colchis. In the autumn of 1678 a Franciscan friar, Hennepin, set out with two canoemen, the first solitary figures of the expedition--a gray priest from the gray Rock of Quebec, in a birch canoe, carrying with him the "furniture of a portable altar"--a priest who professed a zeal for souls, but who admitted a passion for travel and a burning desire to visit strange lands. He relates of himself that, being sent from a convent in Artois to Calais at the season of herring fishing, he made friends of the sailors and never tired of their stories. "Often," he says, "I hid myself behind tavern doors while the sailors were telling of their voyages. The tobacco smoke made me very sick at the stomach, but nevertheless I listened attentively.... I could have passed whole days and nights in this way without eating." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 133. Hennepin, "A New Discovery of a Large Country in America," ed. Thwaites, 1:30.] Along the way up the St. Lawrence he stopped to minister to the habitants --too few and too poor to support a priest--saying mass, exhorting, and baptizing. Early in November he arrived at the mission of Fort Frontenac, which he had two or three years before helped to establish in the wilds. Soon La Salle's lieutenants, La Motte and Tonty, appeared with most of the men, and while some were despatched in canoes to Lake Michigan to gather the buffalo-hides and beaver-skins against the coming of the ship, whose keel had not yet been laid, the rest (La Motte, Hennepin, and sixteen men) embarked for the Niagara River, by which the upper lakes empty into Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. After a tempestuous voyage up and across the lake they reached this river, whose torrent fury, gathered of "four inland oceans," stopped even the canoes. Then, led of the priest, they toiled up the cliffs called the "Three Mountains," because, I suppose, of the three terraces. (Having climbed up the face of the cliffs in winter, with a heavy camera for my portable altar, and having broken the great icicles formed by the trickling stream over one of the terraces, in order to make my way across a narrow ledge to the top of the precipice, I am able to know what the journey must have meant to those first European travellers.) Once upon the upper plateau, they marched through the wintry forest and at length, in "solitude unprofaned as yet by the pettiness of man," they beheld the "imperial cataract"--the "thunder of water," as the Indians called it--or, as Hennepin described it, that "vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and most astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel, those of Italy and Switzerland being but sorry patterns." To this priest, Hennepin, we owe the first description and picture of Niagara, [Footnote: "Four leagues from Lake Frontenac there is an incredible Cataract or Waterfall, which has no equal. The Niagara river near this place is only the eighth of a league wide, but it is very deep in places, and so rapid above the great fall that it hurries down all the animals which try to cross it, without a single one being able to withstand its current. They plunge down a height of more than five hundred feet, and its fall is composed of two sheets of water and a cascade, with an island sloping down. In the middle these waters foam and boil in a fearful manner. They thunder continually, and when the wind blows in a southerly direction the noise which they make is heard for more than fifteen leagues. Four leagues from this cataract, or fall, the Niagara river rushes with extraordinary rapidity especially for two leagues into Lake Frontenac."--Hennepin, "Description of Louisiana," pp. 71-73.] probably now more familiar to the world than any other natural feature of this continent. He has somewhat magnified the height of these falls, making it five hundred feet in the edition of 1683, and raising it to six hundred in 1697; but they are impressive enough to acquit him of intentional falsification and powerful enough to run virtually all the manufacturing plants in the United States, if they could be gathered within its easy reach. As it is, less than 9 per cent of the water that overflows from the four upper Great Lakes into the lower lake, once known as Lake Frontenac and now as Ontario, is diverted for utilitarian purposes; it supplies the Americans and the Canadians almost equally between the two shores five hundred thousand horse-power. [Footnote: "Under a treaty between the United States and the British Government only about 25 per cent of the theoretical horsepower of Niagara Falls can be developed. The estimate of the minimum amount of power that can be developed on the Niagara River above and including the Falls is 5,800,000 h.p., and the assumed maximum is 6,500,000 h.p. The treaty, therefore, limits present possible minimum development on both sides of the Falls to 1,450,000 h.p. Under the treaty only five-fourteenths of the power made available thereby belongs to the United States, its share being reduced by the diversion of water from Lake Michigan into the Drainage Canal at Chicago. There is thus left at Niagara Falls only about 518,000 h.p. that can at present be developed on the American side." About one-half of this total is now developed.--United States Commissioner of Corporations. Report on water-power development in the United States. 1912.] What the conversion of the strength of this Titan (for ages entirely wasted and for a century after Hennepin only a scenic wonder) means, or may mean, to industry in the future is intimated in some statistics, furnished by a recent writer on the Great Lakes, showing the relative cost per month of a certain unit of power in a number of representative American cities. [Footnote: "Assuming the maximum power used to be one hundred horse-power, the number of working hours a day to be ten, and the 'load factor,' or average power actually used, to be seventy-five per cent of the total one hundred, the cost per month in the cities named is as [above]."--Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 135.] Boston $937.50 Philadelphia 839.25 New York 699.37 Chicago 629.43 Cleveland 559.50 Pittsburgh 419.62 Buffalo 184.91 Niagara Falls 144.17 These figures are more significant as one contemplates the diminishing supply of coal in coming centuries, if not decades. According to the estimate of a reliable authority the available and accessible coal supply of the United States will be exhausted at the present rate of exploitation by the year 2027, and the entire supply by the year 2050. Such statistics intimate the advantage possessed, perhaps beyond any other site in America, by the strip of shore on which La Salle's men, from the banks of the Seine, and Hennepin, the priest from Calais, that December night in 1678 encamped, building their bivouac fires amid the snows, three miles above the falls--and so opening to the view of the world a natural source of power and wealth more valuable than extensive coal-fields or rich mines of gold or silver. It was but a great waterfall to La Salle and Tonty and Hennepin--an impeding, noisy, hostile object. And to the half-mutinous, quarrelsome workmen (French, Flemings, Italians) it was a demon, no doubt, whose very breath froze their beards into icicles. It was, in reality, potentially the most beneficent single, incarnate force bounded by any one horizon of sky, in that new world, developed by the tipping of the continent a little to the eastward after the upper lakes had been formed and the consequent emptying of their waters into the St. Lawrence instead of the Gulf of Mexico. In January, 1679, a file of burdened men, some thirty in number, toiling slowly on their way over the snowy plains and "through the gloomy forests of spruce and naked oak trees," the priest accompanying with his altar lashed to his back, reached a favorable spot beside calm water several miles above the cataract: the site is identified as situate a little way above the mouth of Cayuga Creek, just outside the village of La Salle, in the State of New York. There is a stone erected by the local historical society to mark the spot. When I saw the bronze tablet the inscription was almost illegible, covered, as it was, with ice and the snow that was at that very hour falling upon it. There, began the felling and hewing of trees that were to touch the farther shores of Michigan. The supplies brought out from Paris had been lost by the wreck of La Salle's smaller vessel on the way up Ontario, but enough was saved, or brought by La Salle on his return from Fort Frontenac, to give this sixty-ton vessel full equipment, for in the spring she was launched. The "friar pronounced his blessing on her; the assembled company sang _Te Deum_; cannon were fired; and French and Indians ... shouted and yelped in chorus as she glided into Niagara." She carried five cannon and on her prow was carved such a "portentous monster" as doubtless is to be found among the grotesques of Notre Dame--a griffin (that is, a beast with the body of a lion and the head, beak, and pinions of a bird), in honor of the armorial bearings of Count Frontenac. Through spring and half the summer the vessel lay moored beyond reach of the Indians but near enough so that Hennepin "could preach on Sundays from the deck to the men encamped along the bank." When La Salle, who had been obliged by disasters to go back to Fort Frontenac during the building of the ship, again appeared above the falls in midsummer, the _Griffin_ was warped up into the placid lake, and on the 7th of August anchor was lifted and the fateful voyage was begun. There was (as when the _Argo_, the "first bold vessel, dared the seas") no Orpheus standing "high on the stern" and "raising his entrancing strain." Nor did a throng of proud Thessalians or of "transported demi-gods" stand round to cheer them off. The naked Indians, their hands over their mouths in wonderment or shouting, "Gannorom! Gannorom!" alone saw the great boat move out over the waters without oar or paddle or towing rope. For music there was only the _Te Deum_ again, sung by raw, unpractised voices, such as one might hear among the boatmen of the Seine. It was not such music, at any rate, as that of Orpheus, to make plain men grow "heroes at the sound." Doubtless no one felt himself a hero. The only intimation of any consciousness of a high mission comes from Hennepin, who, when the _Griffin_, some days later, was ploughing peacefully through the straits that led to the Mer Douce--"verdant prairies, dotted with groves and bordered with lofty forests" on either side, "herds of deer and flocks of swans and wild turkeys" within sight, and the "bulwarks plentifully hung with game"--wrote: "Those who will one day have the happiness to possess this fertile and pleasant strait, will be very much obliged to those who have shown them the way." "Very much obliged"? No, Hennepin! Of the hundreds of thousands who now pass through or across those straits every year, or of those thousands who possess its shores, not a hundred, I venture to say, remember "those who showed the way"! They have even forgotten "that the first European voice that Niagara ever heard was French"! Ste. Claire!--the name you gave to the beautiful strait beyond the "Symplegades" of your voyage, in gratitude and in honor of the day on which your company reached it--has become masculine in tribute to an American general. If your later praying to that patron of seamen, St. Anthony of Padua, had not availed to save you from the peril of the storm and you had gone to death in unsalted water, you could hardly have been more completely forgotten. One has spoken now and then lightly of the vow made by your commander, La Salle, to build a grateful chapel to St. Anthony if your lives were saved during that storm, forgetting that so long as the Mississippi runs to the sea there will be a chapel to St. Anthony (St. Anthony's Falls) in which gratitude will be continually chanted through ages for the preservation of the ship and its crew to find haven in quiet waters behind Point St. Ignace. It was there, at St. Ignace that we have seen La Salle, in scarlet, kneeling before the altar, where Marquette's bones were doubtless by that time gathered by his devoted savage followers, and it was thence that they passed on to an island in Green Bay, the goal of their journey. From that far port the first cargo carried of sails was sent out, bound for the shore on which the _Griffin's_ timbers had been hewn. That it never reached harbor of that calm shelter, or any other, we know; but that loss, once the path was traced in the waters, is hardly of consequence save as it helped further to illustrate the indomitable spirit of La Salle and his companions. What good came to Thessaly or Greece of the yellow peltry that Jason brought back is not even kept in myth or fable. The mere adventure was the all. They did not even think of its worth. The goatskin was valueless except as a proof or token, and the boat _Argo_, though the greatest ship known to the early myths of Greece, and though dedicated, we are told, to Neptune at the end of the voyage, became the pioneer of no such mighty fleet as did the _Griffin_. The list of the Greek ships and commanders in the Iliad offers but a pygmy analogy. And if you were to go to Buffalo to- day, near the site of that first shipyard (a little farther away from the falls), you would know that the successors of La Salle in new _Griffins_ had actually brought back the golden fleece--the priceless fleece, the fleece of the plains if not of the forests. Day after day its gold is hung against the sky as the grain is lifted from the ships into elevators which can store at one time twenty-three million bushels of wheat. The coasts of the lakes up which the _Griffin_ led the oarless way are three thousand three hundred and eighty-five miles in length, or, including those of the lower lake, Frontenac, which was also first touched of French keels, over four thousand miles. The statistics of the traffic which has grown in the furrow of that wind-drawn plough would be fatiguing if they did not carry you to heights of a wider and more exhilarating view. We have occupied and apportioned the billion acres of French domain among sixty million people. Here is an added domain in which no landmarks can be set--which belongs to all men. These are a few graphic facts gathered from recent reports and books about the Great Lakes: [Footnote: Edward Charming and M. F. Lansing, "The Story of the Great Lakes." Macmillan, New York, 1909. James O. Curwood, "The Great Lakes." Putnam, New York, 1909. James C. Mills, "Our Inland Seas." McClurg, Chicago, 1910.] Nearly as many people live in States that have ports upon those shores as in France to-day--between thirty-five and forty millions. The lakes have a tonnage equal to one-third of the total tonnage of North America. [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 4. "In 1913 the total tonnage of the Great Lakes was 2,940,000 tons, of the United States 7,887,000 tons."--Report United States Commission of Navigation.] They have made possible a saving in cost of transportation (and so of production) of several hundred million dollars in a single year. [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 4.] Only ninety million dollars have been spent by the government for their improvement in the whole history of their occupation, above Niagara Falls, [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 9.] while France in that time has spent for harbors and waterways alone seven hundred and fifty million dollars.[Footnote: "Four hundred and fifty million dollars of this total has been for the improvement and maintenance of the waterways."--Report of National Waterways Commission, p. 507.] They have been privately developed. Six times as much freight passes over these lakes as through the Suez Canal in a year. [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 6.] Three thousand five hundred vessels, and more than twenty-five thousand men are required to move the hundred million tons of freight which every year would fill a train encircling the globe. [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," pp. 25, 26, and Report of United States Commission of Navigation, 1913.] If one were to stand on the shore of that "charming strait," between Erie and Huron, the Detroit River (which Hennepin so covetously describes, wishing to make settlement there, until La Salle reminded him of his "professed passion for exploring a new country"), one would now see a vessel passing one way or the other every twelve minutes, on the average, day and night during the eight months of open navigation. Nor are they small sailing vessels of a few tons' burden, but great sailless, steam-propelled hulks, carrying from five to ten thousand tons. So it is no fleet of graceful galleons--half bird, half lion, as the _Griffin_ was--that have followed in her wake up what Hennepin called "the vast and unknown seas of which even the savages knew not the end." They have, in the evolution of nautical zoology, lost beak, wings, and feathers, and now like a shoal of wet lions, tawny and black, their powerful heads and long steel backs just visible above the blue water, they course the western Mediterranean from spring to winter. [Footnote: It is an intruding and probably whimsical, but fascinating, thought that the wings of the griffin have become evolved into the air-ships which first began successfully to fly, in America, near the shores of the lake on which the Griffin itself was hatched. The Wright brothers were born near one of those lakes. It is not a far-fetched or labored thought which pictures that simple, rough-made galleon--very like the model of the ship on the shield of Paris--as leading two broods across the valley above the Falls, one of lions that cannot fly and one of sea-birds, hydroplanes, whose paths are the air, but whose resting-places are the calm water; the brood of the sea and the brood of the sky, hatched from one nest at the water's edge.] The ships of the lion brood are, some of them, five or six hundred feet in length, and carry eleven thousand tons of cargo. I have seen the skeleton of one of these iron-boned beasts, and I have been told that eight hundred thousand rivets go into its creation. And upon hearing this I could not but hear the deafening clamor caused by La Salle's driving the first nail or bolt, Father Hennepin declining the honor because of the "modesty of [his] religious profession." As to the cargoes that these ships bring back, the story is even more marvellous. First in quantity is iron ore, forty-seven million four hundred and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and seventy-one tons in 1912 [Footnote: "Mineral Industry," 21:455.] from the shores of Superior, where Joliet had made search for copper mines, where Father Allouez--in the midst of reports of baptisms and masses--tells of nuggets and rocks of the precious metal, and where has grown up in a few years the "second greatest freight-shipping port on earth"--a port that bears the name of that famous French coureur de bois, Du Lhut. Forty-seven millions of tons, and there are still a billion and a half in sight on those shores, which have already given to the ships hundreds of millions of their dark treasure. After the ore, lumber, one billion one hundred and sixty-five million feet [Footnote: Monthly Summary of Internal Commerce of the United States, December, 1911.] in one year (1911); a waning amount from the vanishing forests that once completely encircled these lakes. Alexander Pope, whose "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day" I have quoted (and would there were a Homer, Pope, or Kipling to sing this true legend), speaks of _Argo_ seeing "her kindred trees descend from Pelion to the Main"--from the mountain to the sea, where Jason's boat was launched. So, with the departure of the _Griffin_ from her Green Bay Island, might a prophetic poet have seen her masts beckoning all the kindred trees to the water, in which one hundred and sixty billion feet of pine have descended from the forests of Michigan alone, [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 57.] and that is but one of the circling States. And there is this singular fact to be added, that nearly a third of the annual cargo goes to the "Tonawandas," [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 54.] the "greatest lumber towns" in the world that have grown up practically on the very site of the shipyard at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, a little way above the falls. And after the ore and lumber, grain--the fleece of the fields, immensely more valuable than that of the forests; one hundred and fifty million bushels in one year and eleven million barrels of flour--a fortnight's bread supply for the entire world. [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 49.] And after ore and lumber and grain, fuel and other bulky necessities of life. The casual relation between the pioneer building and journey of the _Griffin_ and these statistics cannot, of course, be established, but what no inspired human prophecy could have divined, or even the wildest dreaming of La Salle have imagined, is as sequential as the history that has been made to trace all new-world development in the wake of the caravels of Columbus. The storms of nature and the jealousies in human breasts thwarted La Salle's immediate ambitions, but what has come into that northern valley has followed closely in the path of his purposes, the path traced by his ship built of the trees of Niagara and furnished by the chandleries of Paris. The mystery of the vanishing of this pioneer vessel only enhances the glory of its venture and service--as its loss but gave new foil to the hardihood of La Salle and Tonty. We can imagine the golden-brown skins scattered over the blue waters as the bits of the body of the son of the king of Colchis strewn by Medea to detain the pursuers of the Argonauts. It was the first sacrifice to the valley for the fleece. In the depths of these Lakes or on their shores were buried the bones of these French mariners who, first of Europeans, trusted themselves to sails and west winds on those uncharted seas. But this is not the all of the tragic story. The _Griffin_ carried in her the prophecies of other than lake vessels. She had in her hold on that fateful trip the cordage and iron for the pioneer of the river ships. So when she went down she spoke to the waters that engulfed her the two dreams of her builder and commander: one dream the navigation of the lakes and the other the coursing of the western rivers. The Spanish council which decreed long ago that "if it had pleased God that ... rivers should have been navigable, He would not have wanted human assistance to make them such" would be horrified by the sacrilege that has been committed and is being contemplated by the followers of the men of the _Griffin_. They have made a canal around the Falls (which Hennepin first saw breathing a cloud of mist over the great abyss)--a canal that, supplemented by other canals along the St. Lawrence River, allows vessels of fourteen-foot draught to go from Lake Erie to Montreal and so on to the sea. If this achievement were put into the poetry of legend it would show the outwitting of the dragon. They have deepened the straits where the _Griffin_ had to wait for favorable breezes and soundings to pass from Erie to Huron--the Symplegades (clashing rocks) of the new-world voyage. They have made canals on either side of the Sault Ste. Marie--the rapids of the St. Mary's River, by the side of which St. Lusson took formal possession of all that northern empire and Father Allouez made his extraordinary address--canals through which sixty-two million tons passed in 1910 toward the east and south. They have made and deepened harbors all the way around the shores till ships two hundred times the size of the _Griffin_ can ride in them. Yet this is not all. The symbols of La Salle's vision revived in the lakes memories of the days when their waters ran through the Mississippi Valley to the gulf--the very course which La Salle's unborn _Griffin_ was to take. When the continent tilted a little to the east and in the tilting poured the water of the upper lakes over the Niagara edge into the St. Lawrence, that same tilting stopped the overflow down into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico at the other end of the lakes. But so slight was the tilting that the water still sweeps over, in places, when the lakes are high, and sometimes even carries light boats across. Of late engineers have, in effect, been undoing with levels and scoops and dredges what nature did in a mighty upheaval. They are practically tipping the bowls back the other way and so making currents to run down the old channel toward the gulf through the valleys of the Des Plaines and the Illinois to the Mississippi. And so that dream which the dying _Griffin_ spoke to the lake, and the lake to the rivers in the time of flood--when intercommunication was possible--is to be realized, except that steam or electricity will take the place of winds, and screws of sails. [Footnote: Herbert Quick, "American Inland Waterways," New York, 1909.] Meanwhile a great battle of the lakes is waging--a battle of levels, it might better be called, between those, on the one side, who wish to maintain the grandeur of Niagara much as it was when Hennepin first pictured it, and with them those who for utilitarian reasons do not wish its thunderous volume diminished, except, perhaps, for their local uses, and those also who fear disaster to their harbors and canals all around the lakes, deepened at great expense, if water is led away toward the Mississippi; and, on the other side, the public health of millions at the western end of the lakes and the commercial hopes of other millions in the Mississippi Valley waiting for the _Griffins_ of the lakes to come with more generous prices for their produce and bring to their doors what the rest of the world has now to send to them by the more expensive railroad. Some day, perhaps, the great upper lake, Superior, will be made a reservoir where enough water will be impounded in wet seasons for a steady and more generous supply during the dry seasons; in which event there will be water enough to keep Niagara in perennial beauty and power, to fill all the present and prospective harbors and canals to their desired depths and float even larger fleets of _Griffins_, and, at the same time, have enough left to make the Mississippi, as the Frenchman who first saw it visualized it, and as President Roosevelt, two centuries later, expressed it, "a loop of the sea." [Footnote: Herbert Quick, "American Inland Waterways," New York, 1909.] But another amicable battle is on--a battle of the eastern levels--between the men of the old French valley to the north (_i.e._, the St. Lawrence) and the men of the old Iroquois valleys to the south, of the Mohawk and the Hudson. In 1830 a canal was built by the latter from above the Falls to the navigable Hudson, and with high ceremony a cask of the water of Lake Erie was emptied into New York harbor as symbol of the wedding of lake and ocean. Then Canada built her Welland Canal around Niagara and made canals along the St. Lawrence and channels in the St. Lawrence past the Lachine Rapids to Montreal, and even made the way from there to the sea deeper that the growing ocean vessels might come to old Hochelaga. Now New York has begun deepening the old and almost useless Erie Canal from seven and nine feet to twelve feet, and to take barges one hundred and fifty feet long and twenty-five feet beam, with a draught of ten feet, and Canada is contemplating still deeper channels that will let the ocean steamers into every port of the Great Lakes. She is even thinking of a canal that will follow the path of Champlain, up the Ottawa and across the old portage to Lake Nipissing and thence by the French River into Lake Huron; and of an alternative course by another of Champlain's paths, from Ontario across to Huron by way of Lake Simcoe and the Trent River, in either route avoiding Niagara altogether, paths that would shorten the water distance by hundreds of miles and bring Europe almost as near to the shores where Le Caron ministered to the Hurons as to New York City. It is a rivalry between the old Champlain paths and the La Salle paths, with just an intimation from those who look far into the future that a new water path still farther north--of which Radisson gave some premonition-- may carry the wheat of the far northwest from Winnipeg beyond Superior and beyond the courses of the Mississippi up to Hudson Bay and across the ocean to European ports, brought a thousand miles nearer. This is but the merest intimation of the prophetic service of the water pioneers. And when the prophecy of these pioneers, as interpreted in terms of steam and locks and dams unknown to them, is fulfilled, it is not beyond thinking that a captain of a seagoing vessel of ten or twenty thousand tons from Havre or Cherbourg may some day be calling in deep voice (as last summer in a room on the twenty-ninth floor of a Chicago "sky-scraper" I heard a local descendant of the _Griffin_ screeching) for the lifting of the bridges that will open the way to the Mississippi, the heart of America. CHAPTER XI WESTERN CITIES THAT HAVE SPRUNG FROM FRENCH FORTS It is a strange and varied crop that has grown from the leaden plates with French inscriptions, planted by St. Lusson, La Salle, and Céloron by lakes and rivers in that western country. The mythical story of the sowing of Cadmus in the Boeotian field is again rather tame by comparison with a true relation of what has actually occurred within the memory of a few generations in a valley as wild when Céloron traversed the course of La Belle Rivière (the name given by the French to the Ohio, which was known to the Indians as the "River of the Whitecaps") with his little fleet only a century and a half ago as was Boeotia when Cadmus set out from Phoenicia in search of his sister, Europa (that is, Europe), back beyond the memory of history. It was a bourgeoning, most miraculous, in those spots of the west, a new Europa, where soldiers sprang up immediately upon the sowing, like the sproutings of Cadmus' dragon's teeth, to fight one another and to build strongholds that should some day be cities, even as Cadmea, the fortress of the "Spartoi," became the city of Thebes. So, in this sowing, did France become the mother of western cities, of Pittsburgh and Buffalo, of Erie, of St. Louis, of Detroit and New Orleans, of Peoria and St. Joseph, and still other cities whose names have never been heard by the people--of France--even as Phoenicia, in the wanderings of her adventurous son, Cadmus, became the mother of Thebes and the godmother of Greek culture and of European literature. Palamedes and Simonides added some letters to the alphabet brought, according to tradition, by Cadmus to Greece, and Cadmus suffered the doom of those who sow dragon's teeth, as France has suffered, but still is his name kept in the memory of every school child; and so should be remembered those who planted the lead plates and sowed the teeth that sprang into the "Spartoi" of a new civilization. Of the sowing of St. Lusson at the "Soo" and La Salle at New Orleans we have spoken. Long later (1749), the first of whom we have record after La Salle, another French sower went forth to sow along the rivers close to the foot of the Alleghany Mountains--Céloron de Bienville, Chevalier de St. Louis. It is of his sowing that the main cities have sprung, for he planted a plate of "repossession" at the entrance of every important branch of the Ohio and fastened upon trees sheets of "white iron" bearing the arms of France. Chief among them is Pittsburgh, which stands on the carboniferous site of Fort Duquesne like the prow of a vessel headed westward, a place which Céloron is believed to have had in mind when he wrote in his journal, "the finest place on La Belle Rivière"--what was then a wedge of wild black land lodged between two converging streams that drained all the slope of the northern Alleghanies being now the foundation of the world's capital of a sterner metal than lead--scarred with fires and smothered with smoke from many furnaces, two of which alone, it has been estimated by some one, have poured forth enough molten iron in the last thirty years to cover with steel plates an inch thick a road fifty feet wide stretching from the Alleghany edge of the valley not merely to the mouth of the Ohio but on to the other mountain border, where all dreams of a way to the western sea were ended. And this highway of plates across the empire of New France gives but suggestion of the meagerest fraction of the fruitage of the planting of the leaden plates or the grafting of the arms of France upon the trees along the Ohio--forty pounds of iron, it has been estimated by one graphic statistician, for every man, woman, and child on the globe to-day, [Footnote: H. N. Casson. United States produces thirty million tons annually, Pennsylvania eleven and a quarter million. "Mineral Resources," 1912.] and I do not know how much tin. And, in a sense, all from a small box or crate of plates made of lead--six, eight, or more in number, eleven inches long, seven inches wide, and one eighth of an inch thick, and engraved with an inscription--one of which was found not long ago, by some lads, protruding from the bank of one of the tributary rivers! The inscription ran (in translation): "Year 1749, in the reign of Louis XV., King of France, We, Céloron, commanding the detachment sent by the Marquis De la Galissonière, Commander General of New France, to restore tranquillity in certain villages of these cantons, have buried this plate at [here is inserted the name of the tributary at its confluence with the Ohio] this [date] as a token of renewal of possession heretofore taken of the aforesaid river, Ohio, of all streams that fall into it, and all lands on both sides to the sources of the aforesaid streams, as the preceding Kings of France enjoyed it, or ought to have enjoyed it, and which they have upheld by force of arms and by treaties, notably by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix la Chapelle." And with these plates (to be buried at the confluences of the important rivers along the way) were carried sheets of tin--of white iron--on which the arms of France had been stamped, to be nailed to trees above the places of the plates. "As the Kings of France enjoyed it, or ought to have enjoyed it"--what a blight of regret was in the very seed that in its flower of to-day makes one wish for some delicate beauty or subtle fragrance that is not there, because the Kings of France did not let France enjoy it. One can but pause here again, as I have paused many, many times in the preparation of these chapters, to ask what would have been the result if France had but chosen as Portia's successful suitor in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" when he was confronted with the caskets of gold, silver, and lead--had but chosen "to owe and hazard all for lead," instead of deciding as did the Prince of Morocco, the other suitor, that "a golden mind stoops not to shows of dross"--if France had hazarded all for the holding and settling of those regions whose worth was symbolized in those unpromising pieces of lead planted in the fertile soil of Louisiana, Michigan, and Ohio along the watercourses, rather than in the caskets of gold and silver sought among the mountains--if Louis XV, throwing dice at Versailles in the valley of the Seine, as Parkman describes him, with his piles of louis d'or before him, and the princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses and courtiers about him, had but followed the advice of Marquis de la Galissonnière, the humpbacked governor-general of Canada, who furnished Céloron with his leaden seeds and appointed the place of the sowing--if Louis XV had but answered his Canadian governor's prayer and sent French peasants where the plates were buried, or had even let those who wanted to flee to that valley, as they would have fled by tens of thousands, preferring the hardships and privations of the pioneer to the galleys, the dungeons, or the gallows--then "Versailles" in that valley of the Ohio would not be merely what it is, a ward or township in a city that bears the name of a British statesman. "Or, if soldiers had been sent!" Parkman, approaching the great valley in imagination with Céloron, from the north, exclaims, "the most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: 'Shall France remain here or shall she not?' If by diplomacy or war she had preserved but the half or less than half of her American possessions, then a barrier would have been set to the spread of the English-speaking races, there would have been no Revolutionary War and, for a long time at least, no independence." [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," p. 5.] (Which but emphasizes what I have said as to the part, the negative part as well as the positive, France conspicuously and unconsciously played in the making of a new nation.) If "the French soldiers left dead on inglorious continental battle-fields could," as Parkman says, "have saved Canada, and perhaps made good her claim to the vast territories of the West," [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," p. 41.] could they after all have done more for the world than those who, in effect, sacrificed their lives on glorious western battle- fields for the United States? A little way back I spoke of the first expedition looking toward that valley from the Atlantic side of the Alleghanies--the expedition of the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe"--and of its vain threats. In 1748 a company of still wider horizon was formed in Virginia, George Washington's father being a member of it. It was known as the Ohio Land Company and derived its transmontane rights through George II from John Cabot, an Italian under English commission, who may have set foot nearly two centuries before somewhere on the coast of North America below Labrador, and from a very expansive interpretation of a treaty with the Indians at Lancaster, Pa., in 1744, the trans-Alleghany Indians protesting, however, not less firmly than the French, that the lands purchased by the English under that treaty extended no farther toward the sunset than the laurel hills on the western edge of the Alleghanies. News of this Virginia corporate enterprise was willingly carried, it is surmised, by jealous Pennsylvanians and hostile French, till it reached Montreal, and so it was that Céloron was despatched with his little company to bury "Monuments of the Renewal of Possession" by France. It was a significant and rather solemn, but most picturesque, processional that this chevalier of St. Louis led from Montreal through one thousand two hundred leagues of journey by water and land to the mouth of the Miami River and back. There are no hilarious songs in this prelude such as were heard from the crests of the Blue Ridge when Spotswood's horsemen came up from the other side. It has to me the atmosphere and movement of some Greek tragedy, though one writer likens it to mediæval mummery. Perhaps it is only a knowledge of its import and the end that makes it sombre and grave despite the beautiful setting to this prelude which one may read to- day in the French archives. So full of portent and color it is that I wonder no one has woven its incidents, slight as they are, into French literature or into that of America. "I left Lachine on the 15th of June," begins Céloron's journal, [Footnote: Margry, 6:666.] now in the Département de la Marine, in Paris, "with a detachment formed of a captain, eight subaltern officers, six cadets, an armorer, twenty men of the troops, one hundred and eighty Canadians, and nearly thirty savages--equal number of Iroquois and Abenakes." They filled twenty-three canoes in a procession that was halted by shipwreck, by heat, by lack of rain and by too much rain, by difficult portages, and damage to the canoes. Over a part of their first portage from Lake Erie I walked one night years ago through a drenching rain, such as they endured in the seven days in which they were carrying their canoes and baggage up those steep hills through the then dense forest of beech, oak, and elm, to the waters of Lake Chautauqua, where now many thousands gather every summer, from children to white-haired men and women, to study history, language, sciences, cooking, sewing, etc., and to attend conferences daily. But the expedition then was often stopped by savages who ran away to avoid the excessive speechmaking and lecturing of these old-world orators, conferenciers; and the ears and eyes of the auditors who did not run away were opened by strings of wampum, though they were often too little moved by the love of their father Onontio and his concern lest the English should make themselves masters and the Indians their victims. There is in a Paris library a map of this expedition made by the hand of Père Bonnecamps, who signs himself "Jesuitte Mathematiciant." He kept a diary, [Footnote: Translation in "Jesuit Relations," ed. Thwaites, vol. 69. "Account of the voyage on the Beautiful River made in 1749 under the direction of Monsieur de Céloron."] also preserved in Paris, in which there has crept some of the sombreness of that narrow, dark valley (now filled with oil-derricks) surrounded by mountains sometimes so high as to let them see the sun only from nine or ten o'clock in the morning till two or three in the afternoon. And across the mountains one may hear even to- day the despairful, yet appealing, voice of Céloron, speaking for the great Onontio: "My children," he says, "since I have been at war with the English I have learned that that nation has seduced you; and, not content with corrupting your hearts, they have profited by my absence from the country to invade the land which does not belong to them and which is mine.... I will give you the aid you should expect from a good father.... I will furnish you traders in abundance if you wish them. I will send here officers if that please you--to give you good spirit, so that you will only work in good affairs.... Follow my advice. Then the sky will always be beautiful and clear over your villages." [Footnote: Margry, 6: 677.] "My father," said the spokesman for the savages at another council, "we pray you have pity on us; we are young men who cannot reply as the old men could; what you have said to us has opened our eyes [received gifts], given us spirit, we see that you only work with good affairs.... [The great Onontio in Paris is playing all the while in Paris with the louis d'or.] Examine, my father, the situation in which we are. If thou makest the English to retire, who give us necessaries, and especially the smith who mends our guns and hatchets, we would be without help and exposed to die of hunger and of misery in the Belle Rivière. Have pity on us, my father, thou canst not at present give us our necessaries. Leave us at least for this winter, or at least till we go hunting, the smith and some one who can help us. We promise thee that in the spring the English will retire." [Footnote: Margry, 6:683.] And so the expedition passed on from river to river, from tribe to tribe, planting plates and making appeals to the savages, down the Ohio to the Miami, up the Miami, stopping at the village of a chief known as La Demoiselle, thence by portage to the French settlement on the Maumee, and so back to Lake Erie. Then came the fort builders in their wake, and so the "Spartoi," the soldiers, almost literally sprang from the earth of the sowing of the plates. At one place (the place where the Loups prayed for a smith) they found a young Englishman with a few dozen workmen building a stockade, but they sent him back beyond the mountains over which he had come and built upon its site Fort Duquesne--the defense of the mountain gate to the great valley--here with a few hundred men on the edge of a hostile wilderness to make beginning of that mighty struggle which was to end, as we know, on the river by which Cartier and Champlain had made their way into the continent. It is a fact, remarkable to us now, that the first to bring a challenge from behind the mountains to that brave and isolate garrison sitting in Fort Duquesne at the junction of the water paths, was Washington ("Sir Washington," as one chronicler has written it), not Washington the American but Washington the English subject, major in the colonial militia, envoy of an English governor of Virginia, Dinwiddie, who, having acquired a controlling interest in the Ohio Company, became especially active in planning to seat a hundred families on that transmontane estate of a half-million acres and so to win title to it. "So complicated [were] the political interests of [that] time that a shot fired in America [was] the signal for setting all Europe together by the ears," wrote Voltaire, [Footnote: Voltaire, "The French in America" in his "Short Studies in English and American Subjects," p. 249.] and "it was not a cannon-shot" that gave the signal but, as Parkman said, "a volley from the hunting pieces of a few backwoodsmen, commanded by a Virginia youth, George Washington." [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," 1:3.] We must stop for a moment to look at this lithe young English colonist, twenty-one years of age, standing on the nearest edge of the French explorations and claims and the farthest verge of English adventure, on the watershed twenty miles from Lake Erie, and requesting, in the name of Governor Dinwiddie and of the shade of John Cabot, the peaceable departure of those French pioneers and soldiers, who, as the letter which the young colonel bore stated, were "erecting fortresses and making settlements upon the the river [Ohio] so notoriously known to be the property of the Crown of Great Britain." The edge of the Great Lakes' basin is only a little way, at the place where he stood, from the watershed of the Mississippi River. A little farther up the shore, where Celoron made portage, it is only six or eight miles across, and here it is but a little more, and the "height of land" is hardly noticeable. The French built a fort on a promontory in the lake --a promontory almost an island--Presque Isle; and there, where the waters begin to run the other way, that is, toward the gulf, they built still another which they called Le Boeuf, an easier portage than the Chautauqua. From the former fort the city of Erie, a grimy, busy manufacturing city, has grown. The latter has produced only a village, on whose weed-grown outskirts the ruins of a fort still look out upon the meadow where the little stream called "French Creek" starts, first toward France, in its two-thousand-mile journey to the gulf that lies in the other direction. For twenty miles I followed the stream one day to where it became a part of Céloron's river-in imagination calling the French back to its banks again, but finding them slow to come, for that part of the valley seemed not particularly attractive. It is a little farther down the lake that the vineyards fill all the shore from the lake to the watershed. And in that very country I have often wondered at the miracle which raised from one bit of ground the corn and the pumpkin, and from another the vine and filled its fruit with wine. The one-eyed veteran, Legardeur de St. Pierre, the commander of Fort Le Boeuf, asked Washington, in rich diplomatic sarcasm, to descend to the particularization of facts, and the lithe figure disappeared behind the snows of the mountains only to come again across the mountains in the springtime with sterner questioning. There was then no talk of Cabot or La Salle, of Indian purchase or crown property. Jumonville may have come out from Duquesne for peaceable speech, but Washington misunderstood or would not listen. A flash of flint fire, a fresh bit of lead planted in the hill of laurel, a splash of blood on the rock, and the war for the west was begun. What actually happened out on the slope of that hill will never be accurately known; but, though Washington was only twenty-two years old then, "full of military ardor" and "vehement," he could not have been guilty of wilful firing on men of peaceful intent. It doubtless seemed but an insignificant skirmish when Washington attacked Jumonville near Pittsburgh, and it is now remembered by only a line or two in our histories and the little cairn of stones "far up among the mountain fogs near the headwaters of the Youghiogheny River," which marks the grave of Jumonville. Washington, the major of colonial militia in the Alleghany Mountains, the scout of a land company, has been entirely forgotten in Washington, the father of a nation; but Jumonville, the French ensign with no land-scrip, fighting certainly as unselfishly and with as high purpose, is not forgotten in any later achievement. That skirmish ended all for him. But let it be remembered even now that he was a representative of France standing almost alone, at the confluence of all the waters for hundreds of miles on the other slope of the Alleghanies, in defense of what other men of France had won by their hardihood. I heard a great audience at the Academy applaud the brave endurance of French priests and soldiers in Asia. Some day I hope these unrenowned men who sacrificed as much for France in America will be as notably remembered. There is a short street in Pittsburgh that bears Jumonville's name--a short street that runs from the river into a larger street with the name of one of his seven brothers, De Villiers, Coulon de Villiers, who hastened from Montreal, while another brother hastened from the Illinois to avenge his death. But the cairn on the hillside has grown to no high monument. Mr. Hulbert, who has written with filial pen of the valley, says that occasionally a traveller repairs a rough wooden cross made of boards or tree branches and planted among the rocks of the cairn. [Footnote: A. B. Hulbert, "The Ohio River," pp. 44, 45.] But on a recent visit to the grave out in that lonesome ravine, I found that a permanent tablet had been placed there instead of this fragile cross. I must leave to your unrefreshed memories the exploits of Beaujeu and Braddock, of Contrecoeur and Forbes, blow up Fort Duquesne of the past, and come into the city of to-day, for I wish to put against this background this mighty city where it is often difficult to see because of the smoke. The French, as we are well aware, came to their forts by water. Quebec, Frontenac, Niagara, Presque Isle, the Rock St. Louis, St. Joseph, Chartres, and many others stood by river or lake. But the going was often slow. Céloron (whose name is often spelled Céleron but would seem not to deserve that spelling) was fifty-three days in making his water journey from Montreal to the site of Pittsburgh. But a Céloron of to-day may see the light of the Bartholdi statue in New York harbor at ten o'clock by night and yet pass Braddock's field in the morning (before the time that Bonnecamp said the sun came up in the narrow valley of the Belle Rivière), and have breakfast at the Duquesne Club in time for a city day's work. It was about as far from Paris to Marseilles in 1750 as it is to-day from Paris to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is the front door of the valley of La Salle, as we now know the valley, and the most important door; for the tonnage that enters and leaves it by rail and water (177,071,238 tons in 1912 for the Pittsburgh district) exceeds the tonnage of the five other greatest cities of the world [Footnote: R. B. Naylor, address before the Ohio Valley Historical Association (quoted in Hulbert, "Ohio River," pp. 365-6).] and is twice the combined tonnage of both coasts of the United States to and from foreign ports--which is probably due to the fact that so much of its traffic is not in silks and furs but in iron and coal. And the multitudes of human beings that pass through it are comparable in number with the migrant tonnage and inanimate cargoes; for Pittsburgh is "the antithesis of a mediaeval town"; "it is all motion;" "it is a flow, not a tank." The mountains, once impenetrable barriers that had to be gone about, have been levelled, and in the levelling the watersheds, as we have seen, have been shifted. One who sees that throng pass to-day back and forth, to and from the valley and the ocean, must know that there are no Alleghanies in our continental topography, as Washington saw and as Webster stated there could not be in our politics. If one makes the journey from the ocean in the night, one may hear, if one wakes, the puffing of two engines, as in the Jura Mountains, but there will be nothing else to tell him that the shaggy Alleghany Mountains have not been cast into the midst of the sea-- nothing except the groaning of the wheels. The Indians near Pittsburgh, I have said, prayed the messenger of Onontio that they might keep their English smith--and the prayer seems to have been abundantly answered, for Pittsburgh appears at first to be one vast smithy, so enveloped is it in the smoke of its own toil, so reddened are its great sky walls by its flaming forges, so filled is the air with the dust from the bellows, and so clangorous is the sound of its hammers. It is a city of Vulcans--a city whose industry makes academic discussions seem as the play of girls in a field of flowers. It is not primarily a market-place, this point of land, one of the places where the French and English traders used to barter guns, whiskey, and trinkets for furs. It is a making place--a pit between the hills, where the fires of creation are still burning. Céloron and his sombre voyage had been in my mind all day, as I sat in a beautiful library of that city among books of the past; but in the evening, as Dante accompanied by Virgil, I descended circle by circle to the floor of the valley--with this difference, that it was not to a place of torment but to the halls of the swarth gods of creation, those great, dim, shadowy sheds that stretch along the river's edge. Into these, men of France, has your Fort Duquesne grown--mile on mile of flame-belching buildings, with a garrison as great as the population of all New France in the day of Duquesne. The new-world epic will find some of its color and incident there--an epic in which we have already heard the men of France nailing the sheets of "white iron" against the trees of the valley of La Belle Rivière. And as I saw the white-hot sheets of iron issuing from those crunching rollers, driven by the power of seven thousand horses, I felt that the youth with the stamping iron should have put a fleur-de-lis upon each with all his other cabalistic markings, for who of us can know that any metal would ever have flowed white from the furnaces in that valley if the white-metal signs of Louis XV had not first been carried into it? In each of these halls there pass in orderly succession cars with varied cargoes; red ore from the faraway hills beyond Superior, limestone fragments from some near-by hill, and scrap of earlier burning. These, one by one, are seized by a great arm of iron, thrust out from a huge moving structure that looks like a battering-ram and is operated by a young man about whom the lightnings play as he moves; and, one by one, they are cast into the furnaces that are heated to a temperature of a thousand degrees or more. There the red earth is freed of its "devils," as the great ironmaster has named the sulphur and phosphorus--freed of its devils as the red child was freed of his sins by the touch of holy water from the fingers of Allouez out in those very forests from which the red ore was dug--and comes forth purified, to be cast into flaming ingots, to be again heated and then crushed and moulded and sawed and pierced for the better service of man. In the course of a few minutes one sees a few iron carloads of ore that was a month before lying in the earth beyond Superior transformed into a girder for a bridge, a steel rail, a bit of armor-plate, a beam for a sky- scraper--and all in utter human silence, with the calm pushing and pulling of a few levers, the accurate shovelling by a few hands, the deliberate testing by a few pairs of experienced eyes. Here is the new Fort Duquesne that is holding the place of the confluence of the rivers and trails just beyond the Alleghanies, and this is the ammunition with which that begrimed but strong-faced garrison defends the valley to-day, supports the city on the environing hills and the convoluted plateau back of the point, spans streams the world around, builds the skeletons of new cities and protects the coasts of their country. There are many others in that garrison, but these makers of steel are the core of that city, in which "the modern world," to use the words of one of our first economists, "achieves its grandest triumph and faces its gravest problem" [Footnote: John R. Commons, in _Survey_, March 6, 1909, 1:1051.] --the "mighty storm mountain of capital and labor." I quote from this same economist a comprehensive paragraph descriptive of its riches: "Through hills which line these [confluent] rivers run enormous veins of bituminous coal. Located near the surface, the coal is easily mined, and elevated above the rivers, much of it comes down to Pittsburgh by gravity. There are twenty-nine billion tons of it, good for steam, gas or coke. Then there are vast stores of oil [seven million five hundred thousand gallons annually] natural gas [of which two hundred and fifty million feet are consumed daily], sand, shale, clay and stone, with which to give Pittsburgh and the tributary country the lead of the world in iron and steel, glass, electrical machinery, street-cars, tin plate, air-brakes and firebrick." [Footnote: J. R. Commons, "Wage Earners of Pittsburg," in _Survey_, March 6, 1909, 21:1051-64.] And to all this natural bounty the national government has added that of the tariff and of millions spent in river improvements, while Europe has contributed raw labor already fed to the strength of oxen and often already developed to highest skill. It was a young chemist trained in Europe who conducted me through the mills, explaining all the processes in a perfect idiomatic speech, though of broken accent. The white-hot steel ingot swinging beneath a smoky sky is a sign of the contribution of France through Pittsburgh to civilization, not merely the material but the human contribution. The ingot, a great block of white-hot steel, is the sign of her labor, which has assembled the scattered elements of the valley and, in the fierce heat of natural and unfed fires, has compounded them into a new metal that is something more than iron, more valuable than gold. But it is only another sign, too, of forces that have assembled from all parts of the earth, men represented in the varied cargoes that are poured by a seemingly omnipotent hand into those furnaces--red-blooded men, and with them slag that has gone through the fires of older civilizations. Here, let me say again, is being made a new metal; this no one can doubt. It is not merely a melting and a restamping of old coin with a new superscription, a new sovereignty--a composite face instead of a personal likeness--it is the making, as I have said in other illustrations and metaphors, of a new race. If I had an instinct of human character, such as the intuitive sense of the fibre and tension of steel possessed by the man who watches the boiling in the furnaces and who, from time to time, puts aside his smoked glasses and looks at the texture of a typical bit of his metal, or who stands at the emptying of the furnace into the ladle and directs the addition of carbon or magnesium to bring his output to the right constituency, I could tell you what strains and stresses this new people would stand. As it is, I can only make a surmise, perhaps not more valuable than yours. The makers of steel were concerned only to get the primacy in steel. Human character was of concern only as it made better steel and more of it. They took the red ore where they could get it richest in iron and cheapest, and they took red-blooded labor where they could get it strongest--sinewed, clearest-eyed, and cheapest. "There are no able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and fifty years left in my native town," said a Servian workman in the mills. "They have all come to America. The agricultural districts and villages of the mid-eastern valleys of Europe are sending their strongest men and youths, nourished of good diet and in pure air, stolid and care-free, into that dim canyon-Servians, Croatians, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, with Italians, Poles, and Russian Jews." [Footnote: P. Roberts, "The New Pittsburg," in _Charities and the Commons_, January 2, 1909, 21:533. See also J. A. Fitch, "The Steel Workers," New York, 1910.] It is from Slavs and mixed people of the old European midland, says one, "where the successive waves of broad-headed and fair-haired peoples gathered force and swept westward to become Celt and Saxon, and Swiss and Scandinavian and Teuton," the old European midland with its "racial and religious loves and hates seared deep, that the new immigration is coming to Pittsburgh to work out civilization under tense conditions"--not with that purpose, to be sure, but with that certain result. The conscious purposes have been expressed in the tangible ingots, the wages they have offered them in their hot hands, and the profits. The civilization has been incidental. There is developing, however, an effort in the midst of this "dynamic individualism" to make both the new and the old immigration work out "civilization." This individualism was prodigal, profligate, at first. But it has learned thrift; it by and by came to burn its gas over and over; it made the purifying substances go on in a continued round of service; it became more mindful of human muscles and bones and eyes and ears; it took the latest advice of experts, but for steel's sake, not civilization's. Mr. Carnegie, when a manufacturer there, found 90 per cent of pure iron in the refuse of his competitor, it is said. This he bought under long contract and worked over in his own mills. His neighbor's waste became a part of his fortune. And the result of that discernment and thrift is now furnishing an analogue for the conscious utilization of other waste--waste of native capacity of the steel-worker for happiness and usefulness. Mr. Carnegie has indeed led the way in the establishment of libraries, art galleries, museums, institutes of training and research out of what were but waste if spent as some millionaires spend their profits. All these things upon the hills are by-products of the steel-mills down in the ravine. In every luminous ingot swung in the mills that were his, there is something toward the pension of a university professor out in Oregon, something for an artist in New York or Paris, something for an astronomer on the top of Mount Wilson, something for the teacher in the school upon the hill, something for every library established by his gift. What is now making itself felt, however, is a desire to get the wage element in the ingot as thriftily, as efficiently, as nobly converted and used to the last ounce as is the profit element. There has been in the past a masterful individualism at work. Now there is a masterful aggressive humanism beginning to make itself felt, comparable in its spirit with the masterful venturing of the French explorers or the masterful faith of the French missionaries, that promises to constrain the city "to the saving and enhancing of individual and collective human power," even as the French missionaries tried to constrain the great fur- trading prospects of France to the saving of human souls. The attempt to realize an urban paradise is becoming a conscious purpose as this extract made from a report made to a city-plan committee of a Pittsburgh commission will indicate: "A third undeveloped asset in the Pittsburgh waterfront is its value for recreation and as an element of civic comeliness and self-respect. One of the deplorable consequences of the short-sighted and wasteful commercialism of the later nineteenth century lay in its disregard of what might have been the æsthetic byproducts of economic improvement; in the false impression spread abroad that economical and useful things were normally ugly; and in the vicious idea which followed, that beauty and the higher pleasures of civilized life were to be sought only in things otherwise useless. Thus the pursuit of beauty was confounded with extravagance. "Among the most significant illustrations of the fallacy of such ideas are the comeliness and the incidental recreation value which attach to many of the commercial water fronts of European river ports, and it is along such lines that Pittsburgh still has opportunity for redeeming the sordid aspect of its business centre. "Wherever in the world, as an incident of the highways and wharves along its river banks, a city has provided opportunity for the people to walk and sit under pleasant conditions, where they can watch the water and the life upon it, where they can enjoy the breadth of outlook and the sight of the open sky and the opposite bank and the reflections in the stream, the result has added to the comeliness of the city itself, the health and happiness of the people, and their loyalty and local pride. This has been true in the case of a bare paved promenade, running along like an elevated railroad over the sheds and tracks and derricks of a busy ocean port, as at Antwerp, in the case of a tree-shaded sidewalk along a commercial street with the river quays below it, as at Paris and Lyons and hundreds of lesser cities; and in the case of a broad embankment garden won from the mud banks by dredging and filling, as at London." I had great difficulty in finding a bookstore in Pittsburgh. Some day that idealistic condition which makes the Seine so dear to thousands who know its every mood, and so dear both to the wise and the ignorant, may obtain on La Belle Rivière. This is but one item of a planning for the future of this city which thinks not merely of its beautifying and of the pleasure of its people in their leisure, but of all conditions which affect the health, convenience, education, and general welfare of the whole district--that region once called the "black country," of which Pittsburgh was the "dingy capital"-- one of the regions where the French were pioneers. I have spoken of this as the "taking thought" of a democratic community. More accurately, a body of one hundred volunteer citizens, disposing themselves in fourteen different committees (including those on rapid transit, industrial accidents, city housing, and public hygiene), have undertaken all this labor of constructive planning at their own expense (based upon a series of investigations made by endowed researchers), but with the hope of creating a public opinion favorable to their plans, which look to the establishment by the democratic community of "such living and working conditions as may set a standard for other American industrial centres." [Footnote: Olmsted, F. L., "Pittsburgh, Main Thoroughfares and the Down-Town District." Pittsburgh Civic Commission, 1910. _Survey_, February 4, 1911, 25:740-4.] No such thorough and systematic study of existing city conditions has been made anywhere else in America. It is quite as scientific as the scholarly studies of buried cities, only immensely more complex and difficult. Knowing itself and possessed of an unconquerable spirit, it seems likely now that Pittsburgh will win back the beautiful site which Céloron remarked when he passed down La Belle Rivière--a site which even "Florence might covet"--and will make it a city that will deserve to keep always the other part of the name of the sower of the leaden plates--Bienville. A pillar of cloud stands over the city by day and a pillar of fire by night. They have together shown the way out of the wilderness. It now remains to be seen whether the highest things of men's longing will have realization, in giving that "dynamic individualism" a social ideal with distinct, practicable working plans. Pittsburgh stands on the edge of the valley of the new democracy. It has put its plates along every path. There is hardly a village of any size from the Alleghanies to the Rockies that it has not laid some claim to by its strips of steel. There is hardly a stream of any size that it has not claimed by a bridge. It has, indeed, the spirit of Céloron, in other body, still planting monuments of France's renewal of possession, wherever the steel rails and girders and plates from the Pittsburgh mills have been carried. And Pittsburgh is but one of the renewed cities which encompass the eastern half of the valley where once stretched the chain of French forts futile in defense but powerful in prophecy. When we see the American city, even through the eyes of Walt Whitman, that poet of democracy, it seems a desperate hope that is left her: "Are there, indeed, men here in the city," he asks, "worthy the name? Are there athletes? Are there perfect women to match the generous material luxuriance? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Are there crops of fine youths and majestic old persons? Are there arts worthy freedom and a rich people? Is there a great moral and religious civilization--the only justification of a great material one? Confess that to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort of dry and flat Sahara appears, these cities crowded with petty grotesques, malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics. Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, barroom, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity--everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe--everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood decreasing or deceas'd, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners (considering the advantages enjoy'd) probably the meanest to be seen in the world." [Footnote: "Democratic Vistas," in his "Complete Works," pp. 205, 206.] But it is no such desperate hope that the cities we have seen spring from French fort and portage keep in their hearts. It is not even a confession that one would have to make to-day in the American cities which Whitman had in mind in his gloomy, foreboding vision. I have seen on the streets of one of the Whitman cities [Footnote: New York City.] those same grotesques, malformations, and meaningless antics, that flippancy and vulgarity and cunning, that foppishness and premature ripeness, that painted, bad-complexioned, bad-mannered, shallow-beautied humanity; but touching, as I have had opportunity to touch, three of the great agencies of its aspirations--its philanthropies, its literature, and its schools--I know that no body of five million people, whether huddled in tenements or scattered over plain and mountain and along rivers and seas, has with more serious or sacrificing purpose aspired, though constantly disturbed in its prayers, its operations, by people of every tongue, nearly a million strong, who are emptied at her port every year from Europe and Asia, besides the hundreds of thousands who come up from the country. There are public schools, for example, in certain parts of that city where there is not a child of American parentage. There is one, in particular, which I visit frequently and which I call the "oasis" in the desert of humanity (Walt Whitman's Sahara), where two or three thousand children are gathered, literally from the plains of Russia, the valleys of Italy, and other parts of Europe--for these were their ancestral homes, though they come immediately from the swarming streets and dimly lighted, ill-smelling tenements of New York--and there, aspiring under the hopeful teaching of the city, I have heard them, boys and girls together, sing, with all the joy and cleanliness of shepherd children, of a leading in green pastures and by still waters. But to come back to the cities in the valley of Nouvelle France, there is no note of else than hope there. Mistakes, disappointments, crudities, infidelities? Yes, but the mistakes, disappointments, crudities, failures of youth--youth of strong passions and love of play but of a masterful will that a generous nature has so much encouraged and aided as to obscure its limitations. A few rods from the Carnegie Library and Museum of Art and Concert Hall in Pittsburgh is a baseball field, where a million people or more come in the course of the season to see trained men play an out-of-door game (and if it chanced that the President of the United States were visiting the city, he might be seen there accompanied by his secretary of state or the president of a great university). In Chicago I found the whole city, young and old, united in its interest in the results of the "game" of the day before or the prospects of the next. When games are played for the great championship pennant the city virtually takes a holiday. But that is the spirit of youth in those overgrown, awkward cities that are only now beginning to be self-conscious and seriously purposeful in doing more than the things conventionally and for the most part selfishly done by cities generally. In the conjugation of their busy, noisy life they do not often use the past tense, never the past-perfect, and they have had for the most part little concern as to the future, except the rise in real-estate values and the retaining of markets. When in Pittsburgh I asked a prominent man, of French ancestry, why the people did not keep from the destroying hand of private enterprise the site of old Fort Duquesne (the fecund plot from which the great city had grown), and he said it was all they could do to keep the little blockhouse that remained of Fort Pitt, filling a space a few yards square. What claim has the past as against the needs of industry in the present? That was the attitude of that grimy individualism born in "barefoot square" or in "slab alley," in the land of smoke and flame and "rusty rivers." And the future? Well, the voice of the French priest and of those ministers of his own and other faiths that have followed in his footsteps is still heard there crying of the world to come. Several years ago on my way into that valley, on one of those fast trains that tie the east and west together, we came shrieking, thundering down the mountain slopes in the dusk of the day, past Jumonville's grave, past Braddock's field, past miles on miles of glowing coke-ovens, past acres upon acres of factories with their thousands of lighted windows, past flaming towers and chimneys into the midst of the modern babel, the tops of whose buildings were hidden in smoke, when suddenly, above the noise and clangor of whistles and wheels, I heard the rich, deep voice of a cathedral bell telling that the priest was still at the side of the explorer and trader and the iron coureur de bois. It is not, however, of the celestial but of the terrestrial future that I am permitted to speak. For, as I intimated, these young cities of the west, only a half-century old as cities--children by the side of Paris, London, Rome--are beginning seriously to take thought of the morrow, not simply of multiplying their numbers nor of sending their multitudes back to the country but of giving them prospect and promise of a better, more comfortable, more wholesome life, capable of a higher individual and collective development within the city. For while cities have been preached against since the time when Jonah cried against Nineveh, and while cities have perished and have been buried, even as Nineveh, the generic city, the assembling of gregarious men, continues and increases. The census returns for 1910 for the American cities show, so far as I noticed, scarcely a single loss of population in the last ten years [Footnote: Cities with losses of population in the decade are Galveston, Texas: 37,389 in 1900, 36,981 in 1910; Chelsea, Mass.: 34,072 in 1900, 32,452 in 1910; St. Joseph, Mo.: 102,979 in 1900, 77,403 in 1910.] and a large gain for nearly every city of the middle west. It is prophesied that before long one-half of the people of the United States will be living in cities, and there is the more distant prospect that the urban population will be two-thirds of the whole. [Footnote: In 1910 46.3 per cent resided in communities classed by the census as urban, and 55.1 per cent in cities and incorporated or unincorporated villages.] It is hopeless to try to turn that tide away from the cities except to suburban fields. So the great problem of that valley is to improve the cities, since from them are to be the issues of the new life, since they are, indeed, the hope of democracy. I have thought it of significance that the envisioned place of ultimate celestial felicity-seen though it was by a man in the solitude of a cave in an island of the Mediterranean (the place which the civilized world has dimly hanging over it, whenever it looks away from its tasks and into the beyond)--is not a lotus-land, not an oasis of spring and palm, not a stretch of forest and mountain, not even a quiet place by a sea of jasper, but a place of many tenements--a city, a perfect city to be sure, let down ultimately from the skies, with walls of precious stones--and no zone for Kipling's "Tomlinsons" about it--with gates whose octroi officials keep out whatever makes an abomination or a lie, but which are open to the east and west, the north and south, that the kings of earth may bring their glory and honor into it--a city whose streets are clean and smooth--a city that has flowing through it a river of pure water, on whose banks grow trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. The obvious thing to do, since, good or bad, the country is emptying its population into the cities, since we cannot go back through the gates of Eden into the garden paradise of Genesis, is to go toward the city of the Apocalypses, not, to be sure, as the Oriental mind of John saw it, paved and walled with precious stones and gold, but made as beautiful as the Occidental taste and architectural skill will permit, as comfortable as Occidental standards demand, and as sanitary as the mortal desire for immortality can with finite wisdom make it. I was speaking some time ago of a painting I once saw, in illustration of the death of Eve, which represented her as on a journey in her haggard old age, accompanied by Cain (whose son built the first city in a wilderness), and as pausing in the journey on a height of ground, pointing toward a little cluster of trees in the distance, and saying to her son: "There was Paradise." But paradise is not to be realized by the masses of men in the return of man to the forests. The healing trees and the river are to be carried to the city. CHAPTER XII WESTERN TOWNS AND CITIES THAT HAVE SPRUNG FROM FRENCH PORTAGE PATHS The old French portage paths were also fruitful of cities on the edge of the Mississippi Valley, though the growth of these short paths was not-- with one notable exception--as luxuriant as that from the earth enriched of human blood and bones about the old French forts. These portages, or carrying paths, which differ from the trails of the wood runners in that they are but short interruptions of the water paths and were not designed or laid out, as a rule, by the wild engineers of the forests and prairies but by human feet, lie across the great highway along which, before the days of canals, one might have walked dry-shod from the Atlantic to the Pacific--between the basins of the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, the Pacific and the Arctic --a highway which has, however, been trodden by no one probably through its entire length, for in places it runs over inaccessible peaks of mountains and winds around the narrowest of ledges. But the paths across it--those connecting the streams that flow in opposite directions from the continental watersheds--are like isthmian paths between great oceans-- great dry oceans with watercourses through them. There were, to be sure, still other portage paths than those across watersheds, and the most common were those that led around waterfalls or impassable rapids, such as Champlain and the Jesuits followed on their journeys up the Ottawa to the Nipissing. It was of such portages that Father Brébeuf wrote--portage paths passing almost continually by torrents, by precipices, and by places that were horrible in every way. In less than five days they made more than thirty-five portages, some of which were three leagues long. This means that on these occasions the traveller had to carry on his shoulders his canoe and all his baggage, with so little food that he was continually hungry and almost without strength and vigor. [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 8:75-77.] Another priest tells of a portage occupying an entire day, during which he climbed mountains and pierced forests and carried, the while, his chapel and his little store of provisions. Of whatever variety, however, these portage paths were frequently burying- grounds. Sometimes altars were erected beside them. They were often places of encampments, of assemblies, and more often of ambuscades. So it came about, too, that they were made the places of minor forts or gave occasion for forts farther on the way. In those precivilized Panama days, the neutrality of the isthmian paths could not be assured, and so they were fortified. Céloron tells of the mending of boats at the end of his Chautauqua portages, and that statement, with other like incidents, has led one authority to picture the birches--those beautiful white and golden trees of the sombre northern woods that gave their cloaks to the travellers who asked and shivered till they grew others--stripped of their bark where those paths came down to the streams. He has even imagined primitive carpenter shops and ovens and huts on these paths where the voyageurs must stop for repairs, food, and rest--the precursors of garage, road-house, and hotel. But on maps in the Bibliothèque Nationale names of portage paths have been found which assure us that these difficult ways were not without charm to those early travellers, as they have been to many a wanderer since; for there was Portage des Roses, where the wild rose brightened the way; and Portage de la Musique, where the water sang constantly its song in the solitude. Then there were Portage de la Roche Fendue, Portage des Chênes, Portage des Perches, Portage Talon, and Portage des Récollets, named in memory of experiences of men whom the voyageurs wished to recall or to honor, just as the French give to their streets such names as "Rue des Fleurs," "Boulevard des Capucines." [Footnote: A. B. Hulbert, "Historic Highways of America," 7:49.] The portage paths that became in time most fruitful were generally short, well-cleared, and deep-furrowed by feet. On three of the most important and historic of these paths from the basin of the Great Lakes to that of the Mississippi I have walked with the memories of these precursors; in one place it was suggested that I should ride in a carriage, but I refused, feeling that these men must be worshipped on foot. The first of these portages is that path of which I have already spoken several times (and which I never tire of letting my imagination travel again), the one over which Nicolet must have passed from the Fox River into the Wisconsin River, if he got so far on his way to Muscovy--the path to which Father Dablon said the way was as through a paradise, but was as hard as the way to heaven [Footnote: "If the country ... somewhat resembles an earthly paradise in beauty, the way leading to it may be said to bear some likeness to the one depicted by our Lord as leading to Heaven."--"Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 55:191.]--the path which the coureurs de bois Radisson and Groseilliers doubtless followed; the path which La Salle may have found in those two years of mysterious absence in the valley; the path Marquette and Joliet and hundreds after them certainly took on their way from Montreal to the Mississippi or from the Mississippi back to Montreal. You would not know this narrow strip--not a mile wide--to be a watershed dividing the continent, the north from the south; you would not know it for the threshold to the Mississippi Valley. The plain which the path crosses seems to the eye as level as a table. Undoubtedly before the tipping of the bed of the lakes the water flowed over this path. Indeed, La Salle in one of his letters refers to the portaging here of canoes past an "oak grove and across a flooded meadow." The tree of which he speaks, with two canoes clumsily drawn upon it by the savages, to mark the beginning of the portage at the Wisconsin, has gone, but a monument of red granite now stands there with the names of Marquette and Joliet upon it. At the other end of the now macadamized "path" there is a little red bridge that leads across the Fox to where a portage fort grew later into an important trading-post; but now there is no trace of those monuments of war and trade. There is a farmhouse on their site whose tenants are in fear only of drought and early frosts. A canal crosses this little isthmus and once it interlocked the east and west, the arctic plains with the subtropic cane fields; but it has given over its work to the railroads, having served, however, I have no doubt, to water the roots of the beautiful town that bears the generic name of all those places where burdens were borne between waters. "Wauona," the Indians called it, more euphoniously, but with the same significance as "Portage"--in the State that has taken the name of the river that carried the burdens on to the Mississippi--Wisconsin. This town has lately crept modestly into our western literature as "Friendship Village." [Footnote: Zona Gale, "Friendship Village." Macmillan, New York, 1908.] Except that it has a more comely setting than most towns of the plains--even of those northern plains with their restful undulations--and has a brighter, cleaner aspect --since a light-colored brick is used instead of the red so much in favor where wood is forbidden by the fire laws--it is a typical western town-- the next size larger than "Aramoni"; and so I must stop here for a moment where Marquette, son of Rose de la Salle of Rheims, and Joliet, the wagon maker of Quebec, came up out of the twisting little stream that is still one of the fountains of the Atlantic. For none the less is this village, standing beside this fountain (again more euphoniously called the Kaka-ling or Kaukauna), itself touching the Atlantic shores and even mingling with currents that reach the European coasts. There was born in this village the historian [Footnote: Frederick Jackson Turner.] who has written so well of the rise of that western country that he has been called to the professorship of American history at Harvard University, a literal son of the portage, who has rediscovered the west to the world. And recently all the valley, and other valleys, too, have been reading the stories of this place of portage (called, as I have said, "Friendship Village"), written by a young woman whose windows look out from her home upon the Wisconsin River not many paces from Marquette's place of embarkation--a true daughter of the portage. The French, who have given the new continent this portage path out of Europe into the very heart of America, should read with some gratification of the more intimate life that dwells there back of and in the midst of the bustling, tireless, noisy industry of the valley. "The long Caledonian hills" [the same which La Salle describes], "the four rhythmic spans of the bridge" [a bridge of iron, not of vines and flowers such as Chateaubriand describes], "the nearer river, the island where the first birds build--these teach our windows the quiet and the opportunity of the home town, its kindly brooding companionship, its doors to an efficiency as intimate as that of fairy fingers." [Footnote: "Friendship Village," p. vii, author's note.] And this is but one of thousands of "home towns" in that great basin, towns with Daphne streets and Queen Anne houses, and gloomy court-houses and austere churches and miniature libraries, towns that taper off into suburban shanties, towns that have in these new bottles, of varied and pretentious shapes, the best wine of that western world. The author of "Friendship Village" has vision of the more beautiful towns into which these towns will some day grow, as yours have grown more beautiful with age. "All the way," she writes, seeing the sunset from that same river of the portage as Marquette saw it, "I had been watching against the gold the jogging homeward of empty carts.... Such a procession I want to see painted upon a sovereign sky. I want to have painted a giant carpenter of the village as I once saw him, his great bare arms upholding a huge white pillar, while blue figures hung above and set the acanthus capital.... Some day we shall see these things in their own surprising values and fresco our village libraries with them." [Footnote: Zona Gale, "Friendship Village Love Stories," p. 47.] That appreciation and expression of the beautiful is something that the French explorers in that other world--the valley reached of the pioneers of the seeing eyes and the understanding hearts--have carried and will continue to carry over those same portages, to give that virile life of the west some of those higher satisfactions of which this daughter of the portage is the prophetess. Another portage path of importance is that which Marquette may also have trodden, or may even have been carried over by his faithful attendants, Pierre Porteret and Jacques, on his death journey from the land of the Illinois to the mission of Michilimackinac, which he did not reach alive-- a journey, the latter part of which was like that of King Arthur borne in a barge by his faithful knight, Sir Bedivere, to his last resting-place, the Vale of Avalon. This portage, varying in length with the season from three to five miles, was the St. Joseph-Kankakee Portage. La Salle, Tonty, and Hennepin passed over it in 1679 on a less spiritual errand to the same land whose inhabitants Marquette had tried to instruct in the mystery of the faith. And it was well worn by adventurous and pious feet in the century that followed. What traffic in temporal and spiritual things was here carried over, is intimated by relics of that century found in the fields not far away, where for many years a French mission house stood with enough of a military garrison to invite for it the name "Fort St. Joseph." In the room of the Northern Indiana Historical Society at this portage there are to be seen some of these relics, sifted from the dirt and sand: crucifixes, knives, awls, beads--which I am told are clearly the loot of ancient Roman cities, traded to the Indians for hides--iron rings, nails, and hinges- these with flint arrow-heads and axes, relics of the first munitions of the stone and iron ages out on the edges of civilization. This portage path between the rivers is now obliterated by railroads, paved streets, furrows, graves, factories, and dwellings; but down by the St. Joseph River there stands a withered cedar, perhaps several hundred years old, which bears scars that are believed to be the blaze marks of the broad-bladed axes of the French explorers--made to indicate the place where the portage out of the river began, the place which La Salle missed when lost in the forest but afterward found, where Father Gabriel made several crosses, as Hennepin records, on the trees--perhaps these very marks-and where La Salle left letters for the guidance over the prairie of those "who were to come in the vessel"--thinking of the captain of the Griffin who was ordered to follow him to the Illinois on his return. It is only a little more than a league from this landing at the bend of the river (which has given the name "South Bend" to the town) across the "large prairie" to the wet meadows in whose ooze the tortuous Kankakee River became navigable, in La Salle's day, a hundred paces from its source, and increased so rapidly in volume that, as he says in a letter, "in a short time it becomes as broad and deep as the Marne"--the Marne which he knew in his boyhood and for which any but his iron heart must have longed. Charlevoix walked across those unchanged fields of St. Joseph a half century (1674-1720) after La Salle, and Parkman made the same journey nearly a century after Charlevoix, finding there what he called "a dirty little town." To-day a clean, industrious, eager city of over fifty-three thousand, with a world horizon, as well as a provincial pride, throws its shadow in the early morning across the path. Through its outskirts I tried years ago to trace this portage path and there with my companion (who was always the "Tonty" of my voyages on those western streams), put my boat in the river and paddled and poled the seventy-five miles down the St. Joseph River to the lake, where, as I wanted to believe, Marquette had made his last journey. Hearing, some time after, of the blaze marks on the cedar- tree, I went again to the portage, and from this old red cedar-tree again traced the probable course of the French to the fields of corn, or maize, yellow in the autumn sun that hid the fountains of the Kankakee. This time, having but little leisure, I rode in an automobile from one end to the other through and along the path, looking occasionally toward the sky for air-ships that were due to alight there on their way from Chicago to New York. In La Salle's packs, carried over that portage, were blacksmith's tools-- forge, bellows, anvil, iron for nails--and carpenter's and joiner's tools. One might easily believe that they were left there--such have been the products of that portage strip, two or three miles wide. First, there has grown there the largest wagon factory in the world. The path of the pack and the burden has here produced as its peculiar contribution to civilization that which is to carry burdens, instead of the backs of men, the world round. Second, here stands the world's largest plough factory--a place from which ploughs are sent to every arable valley that civilization has conquered and made to feel its hunger. Third, here spreading its acres, or arpents, of buildings across the high ground between the two rivers, is the largest factory in the world for the making of certain parts of the sewing-machine; in every community of any size in the world it has an agency. And here, last of all, besides more than a hundred minor industries, is what is, to my great surprise, said to be the largest toy factory in the world. The gift of wagons for the bearing and easing of men's burdens; the gift of the steel plough that has lifted man from the primitive subsistence of the hoe; the gift of the shuttle which has released woman from the tyranny of the needle; the gift of toys to the children of all races; has not this portage prairie, this meadow of St. Joseph, had some element mixed with its loam and clay from the spirit of those Gallic precursors of American energy, something that has given this industry a wider venture, if not peculiar expression? At any rate, its gifts to its time have been far beyond common, of the tangible at least; and as to the intangible, the day that I last spent on this portage an art league was being formed to foster an interest in art and bring the best examples available to what were, but a little time ago, dreary meadows half covered with snow and strewn with skulls and bones of the buffalo. The most modern schools are being developed and maintained by the public, and the University of Notre Dame and the College of St. Mary look across the river to this portage field and city. One might have passed this portage so difficult to discern, as La Salle did, and yet have found another way to the lower Mississippi, with a short portage from this same stream to the Wabash River. A still shorter way than any of these, and doubtless known to La Salle from his first years of wanderings in the eastern end of the Mississippi Valley, led from the west end of Lake Erie up the Maumee and then by portage to the Wabash and the Ohio. This was the path that Celoron followed homeward on his memorable plate-planting journey. But the portage was so long that he burned his shattered canoes near the source of the Miami and was furnished with boats at the French fort near the headwaters of the Maumee. The hostility of the Iroquois, as we have seen, made perilous to the French in the earlier days this path, so important among Indian highways as often to be called the "Indian Appian Way." Excepting the portage paths farther up the valley, notably that of St. Esprit, and important chiefly as fur-trading paths, there remains but one other historic portage path across the ridge of stone and swamp and prairie from which are pendent, on the one side, all the silver streams of the Mississippi Valley and, on the other side, all the Great Lakes and all the rivers that flow into them. This remaining path is the tenuous trail through the fields of wild onions that led from the river or creek called Chicago (the Garlic River--Rivière de l'Ail) into a stream that still bears a French name but of a pronunciation which a Parisian would not accept--the Des Plaines. This path, too, traversed a marsh and flat prairie so level that in freshet the water ran both ways and was once in the bed of a river that ran from the lake to the gulf. But it has been hallowed beyond all others of these trails, for it was beside this portage that Marquette suffered through a winter, detained there by a serious sickness when on his way to minister to the Illinois Indians a hundred miles below. His hut was the first European habitation upon its site--the site of the future city of Chicago. In a book-shop not a league from where that hut stood I found a volume valued at its weight in gold [Footnote: Thevenot, "Recueil de Voyages," with 2 folding maps and 14 plates, complete. Crown 8vo, white pigskin. Paris 1682. Contains Marquette's and Joliet's Discoveries in North America, etc. For an account of the various editions, see "Jesuit Relations," 59:294-9.] giving the account of the journey in which Marquette had passed up this portage on the way to Green Bay after the discovery of the upper Mississippi with Joliet. It tells in its closing paragraphs of the rich prairies just beyond this portage, but it recites with greater satisfaction the baptizing of a dying child brought to the side of his canoe as he was setting out for the mission house. "Had all this voyage," he said, "caused but the salvation of a single soul I should deem all my fatigue well repaid, and this I have reason to think. For, when I was returning, I passed by the Indians of Peoria, where I was three days announcing the faith, in all their cabins, after which, as we were embarking, they brought me on the water's edge a dying child which I baptized a little before it expired, by an admirable providence, for the salvation of an innocent soul." [Footnote: Shea, "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley," 2d ed., p. 55.] That was in 1673. It was more than a year before he again entered the Chicago River, wishing to keep his promise to minister to the Illinois savages and eager "to do and suffer everything for so glorious an undertaking." In the "Jesuit Relations" [Footnote: 59:165-183.] the story of those winter days at the Chicago portage has been kept for all time. All through January his illness obliged him to stay in the portage cabin, but early in February he "commenced Novena (Neufuaine) with a mass, at which Pierre and Jacques [his companions], who do everything they can to relieve me, received communion--to ask God to restore my health." His ailment left him, but weakness and the cold and the ice in the rivers kept him still at the portage until April. On the eve of his leaving for the Illinois the journal ends with this thoughtful word of the French: "If the French procure robes in this country, they do not disrobe the savages, so great are the hardships that must be endured to obtain them." [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 59:183.] In the dusk of an autumn day I went out to find the place where the Novena had worked the miracle of his healing. As I have already intimated, few of all the hundreds of thousands there in that great city have had any consciousness of the background of French heroism and suffering and prevision in front of which they were passing daily, but I found that the policemen and the watchmen on the railroad near the river knew at least of the great black cross which stands by that drab and sluggish water, placed there in memory of Marquette and Joliet. The bit of high ground where the hut stood is now surrounded by great looming sheds and factories, which were entirely tenantless when I found my way through a long unlighted and unpaved street in the direction of the river. The cross stood, in a little patch of white, black as the father's cowl, against the night with its crescent moon. I could not make out the inscription on the river side of the monument and, seeing a signal-lantern tied to a scow moored to the bank near by, I untied it and by its light was able to read the tribute of the city to the memory of the priest and the explorer "who first of known white men had passed that way," having travelled, as it recites, "two thousand five hundred miles in canoes in one hundred and twenty days." The bronze plate bears a special tribute to the foresight of Joliet, but it commemorates first of all the dwelling of the frail body and valorous soul of Father Marquette, the first European within the bounds of the city of Chicago. I wish there might be written on Mississippi maps, in that space that is shown between the Chicago and the Des Plaines, or the "Divine River," as it was sometimes called, the words: "Portage St. Jacques." That were a fitter canonization than to put his name among the names of cities, steamboats on the lake, or tobaccos, as is our custom in America. The crescent moon dropped behind the shadows that now line the portage "like a sombre forest," but it is only a few steps through the darkness back into the light and noise of the city of more than two million people. Out of the black loam of this dark portage path fringed by marshes, in the field of wild onions, the newest of the world's great cities has sprung and spread with a promise that exceeds any other on the face of the planet, though within the life of men still living it was but a stretch of lake shore, a marshy plain with a path from its miniature river or creek toward the crescent moon. A metropolis was doubtless predestined on or near the very site of Chicago by natural conditions and the peopling of the lands to the northwest; but Louis Joliet was its first prophet. The inscription on the tablet at the foot of the black cross recites that in crossing this site Joliet recommended it for its natural advantages and as a place of first settlement. And he first suggested the lakes-to-the-gulf waterway--a prospect of which La Salle speaks with disfavor but which over two hundred years later was in some measure realized. The "Jesuit Relation" of August 1, 1674, reporting the conversation of Joliet, who had lost all his precious papers in the Lachine Rapids, makes this interesting prophecy: [Footnote: Thwaite's edition, 58:105.] "It would only be necessary to make a canal by cutting through half a league of prairie, to pass from the foot of the Lake of the Illinois [Michigan] to the River St. Louis [Mississippi].... A bark [built on Lake Erie] would easily sail to the Gulf of Mexico. "The monument to him stands by the canal that has been cut through not merely a league but many leagues (thirty-eight miles) and lets the waters of Michigan flow southward to the Illinois. Of this site Joliet is quoted as saying, "The place at which we entered the lake is a harbor, very convenient for receiving vessels and sheltering them from the wind;" [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 58:107.] and of the prairies back of the harbor: "At first when we were told of these treeless lands I imagined that it was a country ravaged by fire, where the soil was so poor that it could produce nothing. But we certainly observed the contrary, and no better soil can be found, either for corn, for vines, or for any fruit whatever.... A settler would not there spend ten years in cutting down and burning the trees; on the very day of his arrival he could put his plough into the ground, and if he had no oxen from France, he could use those of this country, or even the animals possessed by the western savages, on which they ride, as we do on horses. After sowing grain of all kinds, he might devote himself especially to planting the vine, and grafting fruit-trees, to dressing ox- hides, wherewith to make shoes; and with the wool of these oxen he could make cloth, much finer than most of that which we bring from France. Thus he could easily find in the country his food and clothing, and nothing would be wanting except salt; but, as he could make provision for it, it would not be difficult to remedy that inconvenience." [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 58:107-9.] If Marquette was the first martyr of the Illinois, Joliet was the first prophet of that great city of the Illinois. What he could not foresee was that Lake Michigan would make the Chicago of to-day not so much by giving it a waterway to the markets of the east and Europe as by standing as an obstacle in the way of a straight path to the sea from the northwest fields and so compelling those fertile lands to send all their riches around the southern end of Lake Michigan. He overestimated the economic importance, to be sure, of the buffalo. But if domesticated cattle be substituted for the wild species, he again showed remarkable prevision of the future of a city which has enjoyed a world fame by reason of its cattle-market--its stock-yards. [Footnote: Of the importance of the lakes-to-the-gulf waterway we have already spoken.] Chicago is a city without a past, save for that glow of adventure which is almost as hazy as the myths or legends that lie back of Europe. It is just eighty-one years since it came into existence as a town, [Footnote: August 12, 1833.] and but twenty-eight voters voted for the first board of trustees of the town; its population was variously estimated at from above two hundred to three hundred and fifty. As a city, it is seventy-seven years old, [Footnote: Chartered March 4, 1837.] beginning its legal life as such with fewer than five thousand people. It was of its first mayor, William B. Ogden--though some years later than his administration--that Guizot, looking upon the portrait of his benevolent face, said: "That is the representative American, who is the benefactor of his country, especially the mighty West; he built Chicago." But the Chicago which he administered was but a small town in size. Its officials from treasurer to scavenger were appointed by the common council and obliged to serve or pay certain fines. Every male resident over twenty-one was obliged to work three days each year on the streets and alleys or pay one dollar for each day. Fire wardens had no compensation except release from jury or military service. There was at first meagre school provision, [Footnote: The money derived from the sale of school lands in 1833 was distributed among the existing private schools which thus became free common schools. Less than $40,000 was received for lands now worth much more than $100, 000,000.] no public sanitary provision, no considerable public service of any sort. It was a neighborly but unsocialized place, where the individual had little restraint save of his own limitations and his personal love of his neighbors. What social functions the city performed were self-protective and not self-improving in motive. For example, fire might not be carried in the street except in a fire-proof vessel. [Footnote: S. E. Sparling, "Municipal History and Present Organization of the City of Chicago," University of Wisconsin Bulletin, No. 23, 1898.] The aboriginal frog croaked on the very site of the place where grand opera is now sung. The city's development was largely left to the haphazard, unrestrained, but whole-souled, big-hearted, self-confident individualism, such as has been potent in Pittsburgh. The restrictions were mainly those of the prohibitory Mosaic commandments. And so this city, increasing its population by a half-million in each of the last three decades, has come to stand next to Paris in population and first of all great American cities in the constructive activity of its civic consciousness and urban imagination. The city is still smoke-enwrapped (when the wind does not blow from the lake); its streets run out into prairie dust and mud; its harbor, of which Joliet spoke in praise, merits rather the disparagement of La Salle; there are offending smells and sights everywhere. But in the midst of it all and over it all is moving now, as a healing efficacy in troubled waters, a spirit of democratic aspiration. What Louis XIV or Napoleon I or Napoleon III, king and emperors, planned and did, compelling the co-operation of a people in making the city of Paris more beautiful, more habitable, that a people of millions out upon the prairies of Illinois are beginning to do out of their own desire and common treasury. It is of interest that the sovereign of France who gave her empire of those great stretches of plain, gave to Paris "those vast reaches of avenue and boulevard which to-day are the crowning features of the most beautiful of cities." But it must quicken France's interest further to know that this first systematic planning for a city, as an organic whole, by Louis XIV and Colbert, Le Notre and Blondel is now being followed out on that plain by a self-governing people, who have been making cities for barely half a century, to bring order and form and beauty, and better condition of living out of that grimy collection of homes and shops and beginnings of civic enterprise and great private philanthropies. A great deal has been already accomplished, such as the widening of the leading avenue, the addition of acres upon acres to the park space on the lake shore, the establishment of an efficient small park system; but it is only the beginning of a scheme that thinks of Chicago as a city that will some day hold ten millions of people. The prophecy of one statistician (now of New York) predicts for Chicago a population of thirteen million two hundred and fifty thousand souls in 1952; [Footnote: Bion J. Arnold, "Report of the Engineering and Operating Features of the Chicago Transportation Problem," pp. 95, 96.] and the great railroad builder, James J. Hill, has estimated that "when the Pacific coast shall have a population of twenty millions, Chicago will be the largest city in the world." The specific plans for its improvement have been developed by a small body of public-spirited citizens, but they are simply that great urban democracy thinking and speaking, trying to express itself. It has developed with less interference or compulsion on the part of the State than any other great city of America, and now it is moving voluntarily to the noblest as well as the most practical of improvements. Under like leading it built the "White City," the ephemeral city of the World's Fair, in the celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, and that splendid achievement of the black, unkempt city back of it gave first hint, in the co-operation that made this possible, of what a community could do and at the same time gathered to it the teaching of the older cities of the earth from their long striving for the city beautiful. The city provides its own water-supply, it lights its streets, it has recently acquired control of its street-car lines, and every passenger is notified as a shareholder that 55 per cent of the profits comes into the city treasury. And now under this inspiration and yet of its own will it has begun a transformation of itself into the likeness of what it dreamed in those evanescent buildings and courts and columns and statues and frescoes out by the opalescent waters of its sea. It saw the reflection of that "White City" in the lake and then the image of its own workaday face --and it has not forgotten what manner of city it was. Remember again that what is and what is promised have come in a lifetime. Walking in the streets of that city early one morning a few years ago, as the trains were emptying the throngs who sleep outside along the lake and out on the prairie, into the canyons made by its tall buildings, I found myself immediately behind a robust old man, a civil engineer, who was born before Chicago had a hundred inhabitants. He was much older than the city whose buildings now reach out miles from the lake (one of its streets thirty-two miles long) and thirty and forty stories into the air. One hundred years ago it was the French wilderness untouched. Eighty years ago most of its citizens bore French names. The portage path has literally yielded a harvest of streets. Chicago, the city of the French portage, Chicago, which despite all that casual visitors see and say of it, was, I contend, best defined by Harriet Martineau as a "great, embryo poet," moody, wild, but bringing about results, exulting that he--for he is a masculine poet--has caught the true spirit of things of the past and has had sight of the depths of futurity. But it is only now that the brooding poet is coming to express himself in verses that are recognized for their beauty. Chicago, the field of the wild onions, threaded by La Rivière de l'Ail, the place of the shambles, the capital of the golden calf. That is her fame. Only recently I read in a book which I found in Paris, written by an English traveller, that Chicago stands apart from all other cities in that "her people are really on earth to make money"; that, magnificent as she is in many ways, chiefly in distances, she is "too busy money-making to attend to civic improvements" or to have a "keen affection for worthier things." I have gone a hundred times in and out of that dirty, unkempt city, swept only by the winds, one would think, and I know its worst, its physical, moral, political worst. But if the people there have worshipped the golden calf in their wilderness, they have now drunk of the dust of their first image, and I should be disposed to say that nowhere among American cities is there a keener affection for worthier things showing itself. Again I shall have to admit that this "affection" is not the spontaneous expression of the entire democratic community. As in Pittsburgh, a comparatively few men have voluntarily, and at their own expense, undertaken to study not only the conditions that make for better and cheaper travel, more profitable commercial intercourse and greater productiveness, but for a more wholesome and a higher spiritual existence. And again it is so with the hope that the great self-governing community will out of its desire and treasury bring about these conditions. These few men and women, possessed both by a love of that still uncouth city and an ideal objectively learned in the days when the "White City" stood between it and the lakes, have already spent a half-million francs in study and in making plans--in addition to all the months and years of volunteer, unpaid service. The principal items of this great scheme are: 1. The improvement of the lake front. 2. The creation of a system of highways outside the city. 3. The improvement of railway terminals and the development of a complete traction system for both freight and passengers. 4. The acquisition of an outer park system and of parkway circuits. 5. The systematic arrangement of the streets and avenues within the city, in order to facilitate the movement to and from the business districts. 6. The development of centres of intellectual life and of civic administration, so related as to give coherence and unity to the city. Is there not hope for democracy if in the places of its greatest strain and stress, in the midst of its fiercest passions, there is a deliberate, affectionate, intelligent striving toward cities that have been revealed not in apocalyptic vision but in the long-studied plans of terrestrial architects and engineers and altruistic souls, such as that of Jane Addams, cities that to such amphionic music shall out of the shards of the past build themselves silently, impregnably--if not in a diviner clime, at any rate in a diviner spirit--on shores and slopes and plains of that broad valley of the new democracy, conterminous in its mountain boundaries with New France in America? A little while ago some workmen who were digging trenches for the foundations of a new factory or warehouse along that portage path thrust their spades into a piece of wood buried sixteen feet below the surface. It was found to be a fragment of a French bateau, lying on one of whose thwarts was a sword--probably of one who had met his death on the edge of the portage--a sword with an inscription showing that it probably belonged to an early French voyageur. And so again in these relics but newly brought to light I find new words to remind ourselves that the roots of that mighty, virile, healthiest, most aspiring of America's great cities are entwined about the symbols of French adventure and empire in the west--the sword and the boat, and doubtless there was a crucifix not far away. CHAPTER XIII FROM LA SALLE TO LINCOLN I once heard a public lecturer in America telling a New York audience of an experience in the Mississippi Valley, where he asked an audience of children what body of water lay in the middle of the earth--wishing them to name to him, of course, the Mediterranean Ocean--and unexpectedly got the serious answer from a lad of deep conviction but narrow horizon, "the Sangamon River." I told the amused lecturer, who had never heard of this river, at any rate as locally pronounced, that the lad spoke more truly than the lecturer knew. For to those of even wider horizons, whose greatest and most beloved hero in history lived and was buried near the banks of the Sangamon, it is the middle water of the earth. It is but a little river, and it is but one of the rivers of the valley of a hundred thousand streams, truly the Medimarenean Land, since all the oceans are now being gathered about it. The Sangamon flows into the Illinois, the Illinois into the Mississippi, and the Mississippi is now to flow into all the seas, even as the life of Lincoln is to flow into all history. How little competent I am to speak dispassionately of this great incarnation of the spirit of those western waters the distorted geography of the untravelled lad whom the alien lecturer found on the prairies will suggest, for the river of the home and the fame of Lincoln empties into the river of my birth. It was along this latter river--the Illinois--as we know, that La Salle and his men, in midwinter of 1682, dragged on the ice their canoes, baggage, and disabled companions from the Chicago River, all the way to the site of Fort Crèvecoeur, where they found open water, and thence in their canoes made their way past the mouth of the Sangamon (which first appears on the maps of the new world in 1683, just after La Salle's journey, as the River Emicouen) and on into the Mississippi. We recall their "adventurous progress" and the unveiling to their eyes more and more of the vast new world, where the warm and drowsy air and hazy sunlight succeeded the frosty breath of the north. We see them floating down the winding water path. We see the red children of the sun--the Indian sun- worshippers--clothed in white cloaks, receiving the white heralds of Europe; we hear the weather-beaten voyageurs chant on the shores of the gulf solemn, exulting songs learned in church and cloister of France; we hear the faint voice of their leader crying his claim to all the great valley from the mouth of the river to its source beyond the country of the Nadouesioux--the voice not of a human throat alone but of a vision in the wilderness. We discern after long years the sounds of its realization. We see the iridescence of the John Law bubble shining over the turbid waters of that river for a moment. We see the raising and lowering of flags of various colors. We hear Napoleon's representative saying: "May the inhabitants of this valley and a Frenchman never meet upon any spot of the globe without feeling brothers!" We see the general who is later to embody the west's crude democratic ideals, Andrew Jackson, victorious in the last struggle of independence from Europe. We see the red worshippers of the sun in their white cloaks crossing the river, vanishing toward its setting; and we see the black shadows of men, the negro slaves, creeping out of Africa after the white heralds of Europe in America. Seeing and hearing all this, we have seen and heard the intimations of the glory of France in the new world, the birth of a world-power, the United States, the infancy of a new democracy, the disappearance of the aboriginal Indian, the menace of the black shadow that had made a nation half slave and half free, and the prophecy of the triumphant coming of the new-age producers and poets, the men of the Land of the Western Waters. It is out of this light and shade gathered by the Father of Waters--the Mississippi--along its banks, that there comes silently one day in 1831, the lank, bony, awkward figure of Abraham Lincoln, then a young man of twenty-two, guiding a flatboat laden with prairie products down this same tortuous waterway, from the Sangamon to the sea. He was six feet four inches tall, homely, sad-faced, handy, and as little promising outwardly as any other pilot or boatman of those days. It is still remembered in prairie legends, however, that at the beginning of the voyage, his boat being stuck midway across a dam, he had ingeniously managed to release it and save all from shipwreck. It seems now an incident fraught with prophecy. And it is said that many years later he made designs of a contrivance that would lift flatboats over shoals and even let them navigate on ice--an intimation of the resourcefulness of men left to fight alone with the forces of nature. He was not a "Yankee," as one writing me in Paris characterized the men of that valley. This awkward landsman on water was born in a cabin in the Kentucky wilderness, a house replaced by one of unhewn timber, without door or floor or window, probably not better than the meanest of the gypsy houses just outside the fortifications of Paris. He accompanied his restless, migratory father from one squatter home to another until he settled in Illinois, where the timber-land and prairie meet, near the Sangamon, and there built another cabin, made rails to fence ten acres of land--which gave him the sobriquet the "rail-splitter"--"broke" the ground, and raised a crop of corn on it the first year. You may remember that Joliet made report of such a possibility there. Lincoln's origin you will recognize as typical of that frontier, except that the character which asserted itself in the son, if there is transmission of acquired character, seems to have come from the mother and the nurturing of his stepmother rather than from the shiftless, paternal pioneer who gave the wilderness environment and soil to the nurturing of this stock and was as little paternalistic as the government. Perhaps this ne'er-do-well father is to be classed as one of those rough coureurs de bois who, in his ambassadorship from his ancestors to their frontier posterity, forgot the conventions and manners of the ancestral life in the temptations of the open country to a man without a slave. When he started down the Ohio into Indiana with his family, his carpenter's tools, his household goods, and a considerable quantity of whiskey, he was going to treat, not as the coureurs de bois, with the Indians, the savage men of the forests; he was going to treat with the savage forces of nature themselves. And one must, as I have said of Nicolet and Perrot and Du Lhut, judge charitably these men who made the reconciliations of the edges of things. They made the paths to western cities; he, to a western character; that only need be remembered. Certain trees depend for the spread of their kind on seeds equipped with spiral wings that when they fall they may reach the ground outside the shadow of the parent tree and so have a chance to grow into wide-spreading trees. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was as the spirals that carried the precious seed where it could have free air and an unshadowed soil to grow in. And there the tuition of the experiences that made all men kin and so made a natural democracy possible began. He had little teaching of the formal sort. Six months or a year in a log schoolhouse probably measured its duration. He had the sterner discipline of the fields, the waters, and the trees, for their very temptations became disciplines to those who resisted, as his father did not. He learned his parables of the fields and of the natural instincts of his neighbors. He knew both physical and human nature about him, and this he illustrated, expressed, in such manner as to make him a faithful and favorite exponent of its coarseness, its kindliness, its gallantry, its sympathies, and its heroisms. These neighborly fellowships, not affected but genuine, equipped him not only with a vital and never-failing sense of brotherhood but with a faith in those whom he called the "plain people," the common man. His creed was, if not innate, innurtured. That fellowship and that faith were at the bottom of his democracy--not merely patient love of his neighbors but faith in their ultimate judgments--democracy that made him a nationalist and a world humanist. But in the making of Lincoln there were more than the usual disciplines. He had also the tuition of the "solemn solitude," as Bancroft says. He sought the fellowships of the past--of that "invisible multitude of the spirits of yesterday." He read every book that he could get within fifty miles, it is said. But what is more certain is that he read thoroughly and "inwardly digested" a few books. He knew the Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns, Aesop's "Fables," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and "Robinson Crusoe." He read a history of the United States and a life of Washington, and he learned by heart the statutes of the State of Indiana. Moreover, he studied without guidance algebra and geometry. It is said that later in life, when his political career was beginning, he continued his studies even more seriously and attempted to master a foreign language. So he had companionship of the patriarchs and prophets and poets of Israel. And it was the experience of many another prairie boy that he knew intimately these Asiatic heroes of history before he consciously heard of modern or contemporary heroes. I knew of Joshua before I was aware of Napoleon, and I remember carving upon a primitive arch of triumph--which was only the stoop at the roadside, but the most, conspicuous public place accessible to my knife--the name of one of the cities taken in the conquest of Canaan, an instinct of hero-worship--so splendidly illustrated in French art and monuments. Lincoln the youth had not only those ancient companionships but the intimate counsel of the greatest of teachers of democracy. He knew, too, the homely wisdom of Greece as well as he knew the treasured sayings of his own people handed on from generation to generation. He was as familiar with the larger-horizoned gossip and philosophies of Shakespeare's plays as with those which gathered around the post-office of Clary's Grove, where later this youth as postmaster carried the letters in his hat and read the newspapers before they were delivered. He loved Burns for his philosophy that "a man's a man for a' that." So with these and others he found his high fellowships, even while he "swapped" stories (enriched of his reading) with his neighbors at the store or his fellow lawyers at the primitive taverns. But there were less personal associations. He made the fundamental laws of a wilderness State an acquisition of his instincts. There is preserved in a law library in New York the much-worn copy of the statutes of Indiana enacted in the first years of the existence of that State. It is stated that he learned these statutes by copying extracts from them--and from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Ordinance of the Northwest, included in the same volume--on a shingle when paper was scarce, using ink made of the juice of brier-root and a pen made from the quill of a turkey-buzzard, and shaving the shingle clean for another extract when one was learned, till his primitive palimpsest was worn out. But whatever the medium of their transmigration from matter to mind, they became the law of his democracy, sacred as if they had been brought to him on tables of stone by a prophet with shining face. It was in that school, I believe, that he learned his nationalism, his devotion to the Constitution--to which in maturer years he gave this famed expression: "I would save the Union, I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitution.... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." [Footnote: Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862.] And when he had freed the negro by a proclamation that violated the letter of the Constitution, it was still that boy of the woods speaking in the man--the boy who had learned his lesson beyond all possibility of forgetting or misunderstanding--"I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation." It was from those shingles that he learned, too, the place of the State in this nationalism. Its paternalism has grown tremendously since 1824, when democracy was a negative, a repressive and not a positive, aggressive political and social spirit, but, as it was, it gave him the foundation of the political structure within whose lines he had to build later. And with all this was a self-discipline in the two great knowledges by which men have climbed from savages to gods--language and mathematics. He was told one day that there was an English grammar in a house six miles from his home, and he at once walked off to borrow it. And he studied geometry and algebra alone. This may seem to you an inconsequential thing, but having myself on those same prairies not far away from the Sangamon acquired my algebra with little teaching and my solid geometry with only the tuition of a book and of the sun or a lamp, I am able to appreciate what the hardship of that self-schooling was. It was more agreeable to watch the clouds while the horses rested at the end of the furrow, to address, as did Burns, lines to a field-mouse, or to listen to the song of the meadow-lark, than to learn the habits of the three dimensions then known, of points in motion, of lines in intersection, of surfaces in revolution, or to represent the unknown by algebraic instead of poetic symbols. But his private personal culture, as one [Footnote: Herbert Croly, Lincoln as more than an American in his "Promise of American Life," pp. 89-99.] has observed, had no "embarrassing effects," because he shared so completely and genuinely the amusements and occupations of his neighborhood. No "taint of bookishness" disturbed the local fellowships which gave him opportunity to express in "familiar and dramatic form" of story and illustration his more substantial philosophy and so find for it the perfect speech. His neighbors called him by homely, affectionate names, thinking he was entirely one of them--a little more clever, a little less ambitious in the usual channels of business and enterprise. He had no "moral strenuousness of the reformer" and no "exclusiveness" of learning. He "accepted the fabric of traditional American political thought." He seemed "but the average product," and yet, as this same writer has said, "at bottom Abraham Lincoln differed as essentially from the ordinary western American of the middle period as St. Francis of Assisi differed from the ordinary Benedictine monk of the thirteenth century." [Footnote: Croly, "Promise of American Life," p. 90.] He was not, like Jackson, simply a large, forceful version of the plain American trans-Alleghany citizen; he made no clamorous, boastful show of strength, powerful as he was physically and intellectually. He shared genuinely, with no consciousness of his own distinction, the "good-fellowship of his neighbors, their strength of will, their excellent faith, and above all their innocence." But he made himself, by discipline of his own, "intellectually candid, concentrated, and disinterested and morally humane, magnanimous and humble." This is not the picture of a conventional, generic democrat; and this is not, we are assured by the earlier writers, the picture of the westerner of that period. Indeed, Mr. Croly insists that while these Lincolnian qualities are precisely the qualities which Americans, in order to become better democrats, should add to their strength, homogeneity, and innocence, they are just the qualities (high intelligence, humanity, magnanimity, and humility) which Americans are "prevented by their individualistic practice and tradition from attaining or properly valuing." "Their deepest convictions," he contends, "make the average unintelligent man the representative democrat, and the aggressive, successful individual the admired national type." To them Lincoln is simply "a man of the people" and an example of strong will. But the man who said this did not know that land of Lincoln--which was the valley of La Salle, and even before that the valley of the tribe of men-- for I believe its inhabitants knew that he was the embodiment of what they coveted for themselves; that he was not their ordinary average but their best selves. Their individualism has been, I must say again, under practical compulsions and has had fruits that deceive the eye. It is so insistent upon national productivity, but none the less is it joined to a high idealism that worships just the qualities that were so miraculously united in Abraham Lincoln. To be sure, some remember for their own excuse his coarse stories; some recall for their own justification his acceptance of the political standards that he found; but the great body of the people keep him in reverence and affection as the incarnation of patience, honesty, fairness, magnanimity, humility; not for his strength of will primarily, but for his strength of charity and honesty, and in so doing they reveal the ideal that is in and under their own individual struggle. Montalembert said that "a social constitution which produced a Lincoln and others like him is a good tree whose sure fruit leaves nothing to envy in the product of any monarchy or aristocracy." Lincoln was not, we want to believe, a freak, a sport of nature, but the "sure fruit" that should not only leave nothing to envy in others, but leave nothing to question in the soundness of a democracy that gives evidence of its spirit in remembering Abraham Lincoln more tenderly, more affectionately, more reverentially than any one else in its history. It is less to his praise but more accurate, I think, that, as his biographer put it: "His day and generation uttered itself through him." He expressed their ugliest forms and their most beautiful developments. None the less is it remarkable that not only should the virility and nobility of the frontier have been exhibited in him, but that the consummate skill and character known to the world's centres of culture should have had, in his speech and intellectual attitude and grasp, a new example. When he wrote his letter in acceptance of the nomination to the presidency, he showed it to the superintendent of public instruction in Illinois, whom he called "Mr. Schoolmaster" (and who was years after my own beloved schoolmaster) saying: "I am not very strong on grammar and I wish you would see if it is all right." The schoolmaster had only to repair what we call a "split infinitive." But the great utterances of his life had no tuition or revision of schoolmasters. They were his own in conception and expression. He sent his Cooper Union speech in advance to several for advice, and they, I am told, changed not a word. Of his debates with Douglas (1858), his speech in Cooper Union, New York, 1860, his oration at the dedication of the Soldiers' Cemetery at Gettysburg, and of his second inaugural address, it has been said that no one of them has been surpassed in its separate field. Goldwin Smith said of the Gettysburg speech: "Saving one very flat expression, the address has no superior in literature." [Footnote: Goldwin Smith, "Early Years of A. Lincoln." In R. D. Sheppard, "Abraham Lincoln," p. 132.] These appraisements I would hesitate to repeat in France, where all letters come finally to be adjudged, if I did not know that this last document (the Gettysburg speech), at least, had been admitted to the seat of the immortal classics. It is said to have been written on scraps of paper, as the great care-worn man rode in the car from Washington to Gettysburg, and I have been told by one who was present at the ceremonies that the quiet had hardly come over the vast audience, stirred by the eloquence of Edward Everett's oration which had lasted two hours, before this briefest and noblest of American orations, spoken in a high and unmusical voice by the great lank figure, consulting his manuscript, was over. It is heard now in the memory of millions of school-children from the Atlantic to the Pacific: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. "But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far beyond our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work, which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Bronze tablets bearing this oration for their inscription have been put on the walls of schoolhouses and public buildings all the way across the continent--plates in renewal of possession, that are another fruitage of the valley where the French planted their plates of possession and repossession a century before. But I would also have read--especially in France, where letters are still being written that have the quality of literature--a letter of this frontiersman. The professor of history in the College of the City of New York, showing me his museum, would have me read again this letter in the hand of Abraham Lincoln; and I would have those beyond America, as well as in that valley, hear what a man of the western waters could write before the coming of the typewriter: "DEAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. "Yours very sincerely and respectfully, "ABRAHAM LINCOLN." [Footnote: "Lincoln, Complete Works" (Nicolay and Hay edition), 2:600. To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass., November 1, 1864.] These two examples illustrate not only the form of his speech and writing, but the sympathy and the temper of the soul of the man. They need only the supplement of a comment on the strength of his thought in expression. It is said of his Cooper Union speech (his first speech before a large eastern urban audience, I think): "From the first line to the last, from his premises to his conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring directness which no logician ever excelled, an argument complete and full, without the affectation of learning.... A single, easy, simple sentence ... contains a chapter of history that, in some instances, has taken days of labor to verify and which must have cost the author months of investigation to acquire.... Commencing with this address as a political pamphlet, the reader will leave it as an historical work, brief, complete, profound, truthful--which will survive the time and occasion that called it forth and be esteemed hereafter, no less for its intrinsic worth than its unpretending modesty." [Footnote: Pamphlet edition with notes and prefaces by C. C. Nott and Cephas Brainerd, September, 1860. Quoted in Nicolay and Hay, "Abraham Lincoln," 2:225.] His first wide fame grew from a speech which he delivered on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, the city that had grown on the Illinois River by the side of La Salle's Fort Crèvecoeur. "When the white man governs himself," he said there, "that is self-government; but when the white man governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-- that is despotism." [Footnote: "Lincoln, Complete Works," ed. by Nicolay and Hay, 2:227.] Two years later he made near there an address so irresistible in its eloquence that the reporters forgot why they were there and failed to take notes. So there are but fragments preserved of what is known as "the lost speech." The minor anecdotes of his life that are treasured and the stories which he is said to have told would fill a volume--perhaps volumes. They all tell of a genius who through adversity became resourceful, who through the neighborly exchanges of a village learned a sympathy as wide as humanity, and who with an infinite patience and kindliness and good sense dealt with a divided people. The world outside the valley at first thought him a buffoon because it heard only the echo of the hoarse laughter after his stories. They found when he spoke in Cooper Union that he had a mind that would have sat unembarrassed and luminous in the company of the men of the age of Pericles. But he had a sense of humor that, had he been there, would have saved Socrates from the hyssop. Mr. Bryce says, that all the world knows the Americans to be a humorous people. [Footnote: Bryce, "American Commonwealth," 2:286.] "They are," he has said, "as conspicuously the purveyors of humor to the nineteenth century as the French were the purveyors of wit to the eighteenth.... [This sense] is diffused among the whole people; it colors their ordinary life and gives to their talk that distinctively new flavor which a European palate enjoys." And he adds: "Much of President Lincoln's popularity, and much also of the gift he showed for restoring confidence to the North at the darkest moments of the war, was due to the humorous way he used to turn things, conveying the impression of not being himself uneasy, even when he was most so." Yet it was no mask, it was instinctive. On one of those days when the anxiety was keenest and the sky darkest a delegation of prohibitionists came to him and insisted that the reason the north did not win was because the soldiers drank so much whiskey and thus brought the curse of the Lord down upon them. There was, we are told, a mischievous twinkle in his eye when he replied that he considered it very unfair on the part of the Lord, because the southerners drank a good deal worse whiskey and more of it than the soldiers of the north. Most of these stories and parables had a flavor of the west and of the fields where they were collected in the days when, as a lawyer, he followed the court from one town to another, and spent the nights in talk around the tavern stove. When asked one day how he disposed of a caller who had come to him in a towering rage, he told of the farmer in Illinois who announced one Sunday to his neighbors that he had gotten rid of a great log in the middle of his field. They were anxious to know how, since it was too big to haul out, too knotty to split, too wet and soggy to burn. And the farmer announced: "I ploughed around it." "And so," he said, "I got rid of General----. I ploughed around him, but it took me three hours to do it." This, then, was the lank boatman who came down the river (that was once the River Colbert) and who, seeing the horrors of the slave markets in New Orleans, went back to the Sangamon with a memory of them that was a "continual torment," as he said, and with a vow to hit that institution hard if ever he had a chance. It was this boatman who was twenty years later to have, of all men, the chance. One cannot tell here, even in outline, the story of that irrepressible conflict in which this western ploughman and lawyer became commander-in- chief of an army of a million men and carried on a war involving the expenditure of three billion dollars. One need not tell it. It need only to be recalled that it was this man of the western waters who first saw clearly, or first made it clearly seen, that the nation could not endure permanently half slave and half free. "I do not expect the Union to be dissolved," he said, "but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or the other." And it was he who more than any one single force brought the fulfilment of his prophecy--of a nation reunited and all free. He hated slavery. "If slavery is not wrong," he said, "nothing is wrong." But he wanted to get rid of it without injustice to those to whom it was an inherited, if cherished, institution. If he saw a venomous snake in the road he would take the nearest stick and kill it, but if he found it in bed with his children, "I might hurt the children," he said, "more than the snake and it might bite them." He was as tender and considerate of the south as ever he was of an erring neighbor in Illinois, where it is remembered that he carried home with his giant strength one whom his comrades would have left to freeze, and nursed him through the night. So he sat almost sleepless, sad-hearted, through the four dark years, but resolute, cheering his own heart and those about him with a broad humor that came as "Aesop's Fables" out of the fields and their elemental wisdoms. One summer's day, when ploughing in the fields of that land of Lincoln, I heard a sound of buzzing in the air and, looking up, I saw a faint cloud against the clear sky. I recognized it as a swarm of bees making their way from a hive, they knew not where, and with an instinct born of the plains at once I began to follow them and to throw up clods of earth to stop their flight, bringing them down finally on the edge of the field upon a branch of a tree, where they were at evening gathered into a new hive and persuaded back to profitable industry instead of wasting their substance in the forest. So this great ploughman used the clods of earth, the things at his hand, illustrations from the fields, to bring the thoughts of his countrymen down to contentful co-operation again. "You may," said Alcibiades, speaking of Socrates, "imagine Brasidas and others to have been like Achilles, or you may imagine Nestor and Antenor to have been like Pericles; and the same may be said of other famous men. But of this strange being you will never be able to find any likeness, however remote, either among men that now are or who ever have been--other than ... Silenus and the Satyrs, and they represent in a figure not only himself but his words. For his words are like the images of Silenus which open. They are ridiculous when you first hear them.... His talk is of pack-beasts and smiths and cobblers and curriers.... But he who opens the bust and sees what is within will find they are the only words which have a meaning in them and also the most divine, abounding in fair images of virtue, and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to the whole duty of a good and honorable man." [Footnote: Plato, "Symposium," Jowett's trans., 1:592.] The twenty-three centuries since Socrates do not furnish me with a fitter characterization of Lincoln. His image was as homely as that of Silenus was bestial. His talk was of ploughs and boats, polecats and whiskey. But those who opened this homely image found in him a likeness as of no other man, and in his words a meaning that was of widest and most ennobling comprehension. And, as Crito said for all ages, after the sun that was on the hilltops when Socrates took the poison had set and darkness had come: "Of all the men of his time, he was the wisest and justest and best." So has the poet of that western democracy given to all time this phrase, sung in the evening of the day of Lincoln's martyrdom, at the time when the lilac bloomed and the great star early dropped in the western sky and the thrush sang solitary: "The sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands." [Footnote: Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last."] We ask ourselves if he was the gift of democracy. And we find ourselves answering: his peculiar excellence could have come of no other order of society. We ask ourselves anxiously if democracy has the unerring instinct to find such men to embody its wishes, or did it take him only for a talented rail-splitter--an average man? But we have no certain answer to this anxious questioning. What gives most hope in new confusions and problems, unknown to his day, however, is that the more clearly his disinterestedness and forbearance and magnanimity and humility are revealed, the wider and deeper is the feeling of admiration and love for his character, which perhaps assures us, after all, better than anything else, of the soundness and nobility of the ideals of democracy. They carried this man at death over into the valley of his birth, into the land of the men of the western waters that was Nouvelle France, and there buried him among his neighbors, of whom he learned his spirit of democracy, in the midst of scenes where he had mastered its language, in the very ground that had taught him his parables, by the side of the stream that gave him sight of his supreme mission. It is the greatest visible monument to his achievement that the "Father of Waters ... goes unvexed to the sea" [Footnote: Letter to John C. Conkling, August 25, 1863.] through one country instead of the territory of two or more nations and that the slavery he witnessed is no more. But it is a greater monument to him, as it is a nobler monument to those who have erected it in their own hearts, that he is revered the length of the course of the river first traced by La Salle, and through all the reach of the rivers of his claim from its source, even as far as its mouth at the limitless sea. CHAPTER XIV THE VALLEY OF THE NEW DEMOCRACY France evoked from the unknown the valley that may, in more than one sense, be called the heart of America. Her coureurs de bois opened its paths made by the buffalo and the red men to the shod feet of Europe. Her explorers planted the watershed with slender, silent portage traces that have multiplied into thousands of noisy streets and tied indissolubly the lakes of the north to the rivers of the south from which they were long ago severed by nature. Her one white sail above Niagara marked the way of a mighty commerce. Her soldiers sowed the molten seeds of tumultuous cities on the sites of their forts, and her priests and friars consecrated with their faith and prayers forest trail, portage path, ship's sail, and leaden plate. But that is not all--a valley of new cities like the old, of new paths for greater commerce, of more altars to the same God! The chief significance and import of the addition of this valley to the maps of the world, all indeed that makes it significant, is that here was given (though not of deliberate intent) a rich, wide, untouched field, distant, accessible only to the hardiest, without a shadowing tradition or a restraining fence, in which men of all races were to make attempt to live together under rules of their own devising and enforcing. And as here the government of the people by the people was to have even more literal interpretation than in that Atlantic strip which had traditions of property suffrage and church privilege and class distinctions, I have called it the "Valley of the New Democracy." When the French explorers entered it, it was a valley of aboriginal, anarchic individualism, with little movable spots of barbaric communistic timocracy, as Plato would doubtless have classified those migratory, predatory kingdoms of the hundreds of red kings, contemporary with King Donnacona, whom Cartier found on the St. Lawrence--communities governed by the warlike, restless spirit. The French communities that grew in the midst of those naked timocrats, whose savagery they soothed by beads and crucifixes and weapons, were the plantings of absolutism paternalistic to the last degree. One cannot easily imagine a socialism that would go further in its prescriptions than did this affectionate, capricious, generous, if unwise, as it now seems, government of a village along the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi, from a palace by the Seine where a hard-working monarch issued edicts "in the fulness of our power and of our certain knowledge." The ordinances preserved in the colonial records furnish abundant proof of that parental concern and restraint. They relate to the regulation of inns and markets, poaching, preservation of game, sale of brandy, rent of pews, stray hogs, mad dogs, matrimonial quarrels, fast driving, wards and guardians, weights and measures, nuisances, observance of Sunday, preservation of timber, and many other matters. Parkman cites these interesting ordinances, which illustrate to what absurd lengths this jealous, paternalistic care extended: "Chimney-sweeping having been neglected at Quebec, the intendant commands all householders promptly to do their duty in this respect, and at the same time fixes the pay of the sweep at six sous a chimney. Another order forbids quarrelling in church. Another assigns pews in due order of precedence." [Footnote: Parkman, "Old Regime in Canada," p. 341.] One intendant issued a "mandate to the effect that, whereas the people of Montreal raise too many horses, which prevents them from raising cattle and sheep, 'being therein ignorant of their true interest, ... now, therefore, we command that each inhabitant of the cotes of this government shall hereafter own no more than two horses or mares and one foal--the same to take effect after the sowing season of the ensuing year (1710), giving them time to rid themselves of their horses in excess of said number, after which they will be required to kill any of such excess that may remain in their possession." [Footnote: Parkman, "Old Regime in Canada," p. 341.] And, apropos of the trend toward cities, there is the ordinance of Bigot, issued with a view, we are told, of "promoting agriculture and protecting the morals of farmers" by saving them from the temptations of the cities: "We prohibit and forbid you to remove to this town (Quebec) under any pretext whatever, without our permission in writing, on pain of being expelled and sent back to your farms, your furniture and goods confiscated, and a fine of fifty livres laid on you for the benefit of the hospitals." [Footnote: Parkman, "Old Regime in Canada," p. 342.] There is even a royal edict designed to prevent the undue subdivision of farms which "forbade the country people, except such as were authorized to live in villages, to build a house or barn on any piece of land less than one and a half arpents wide and thirty arpents long." [Footnote: Parkman, "Old Regime in Canada," p. 342.] And this word should be added in intimation of the generosity of the paternalism: "One of the faults of his [Louis XIV's] rule is the excess of his benevolence, for not only did he give money to support parish priests, build churches, and aid the seminary, the Ursulines, the missions, and the hospitals, but he established a fund destined, among other objects, to relieve indigent persons, subsidized nearly every branch of trade and industry, and in other instances did for the colonists what they would far better have learned to do for themselves." [Footnote: Parkman, "Old Regime in Canada," p. 347.] Like Aeneas, therefore, these filial emigrants, seeking new homes, not only carried their _lares et penates_ in their arms but bore upon their shoulders their father Anchises. Succeeding savage individualism, this benevolent despotism gave the valley into the keeping of an individualism even purer and less restrained than that which it succeeded, for the sparse pioneer transmontane settlements were practically governed at first by only the consciences or whims of the inhabitants, instructed of parental commandments learned the other side of the mountains, and by their love of forest and of their prairie neighbors. And when formal government came a pure democracy, social and political--it came of individual interest and neighborly love and of no abstract philosophical theory or of protest against oligarchy; it came from the application, voluntary for the most part, of "older institutions and ideas to the transforming influence of land," free land; and such has been the result, says Professor Turner, [Footnote: See his "Significance of the Frontier in American History," in "Fifth Yearbook of the National Herbart Society, 1899," also his "Significance of the Mississippi Valley in American History," in "Mississippi Valley Historical Association Proceedings, 1909-10."] that fundamentally "American democracy is the outcome of the American people in dealing with the West," that is, the people of this valley of the French pioneers. The democratical man, as Socrates is made to define him in Plato's "Republic," was one in whom the licentious and extravagant desires have expelled the moderate appetites and love of decorum, which he inherited from his oligarchical father. "Such a man," he adds, "lives a life of enjoyment from day to day, guided by no regulating principle, but turning from one pleasure to another, just as fancy takes him. All pleasures are in his eyes equally good and equally deserving of cultivation. In short, his motto is 'Liberty and Equality.'" But the early "democratical man" of that valley, even if he came remotely from such oligarchical sires as Socrates gives immediately to all democratical men, reached his motto of "Liberty and Equality" through no such sensual definition of life. It is true that many of those first settlers migrated from places where the opportunities seemed restricted or conventions irksome or privileges unequal, but it was no "licentious or extravagant desire" or flitting from pleasure to pleasure that filled that valley with sober, pale-faced, lean- featured men and tired, gentle women who enjoyed the "liberty" not of a choice of pleasurable indulgences but of interminable struggles, the "equality" of being each on the same social, economic, and political footing as his neighbor. The sequent democracy was derived of neighborliness and good fellowship, the "natural issue of their interests, their occupations, and their manner of life," and was not constructed of any theory of an ideal state. Nor were they frightened by the arguments of Socrates, who found in the "extravagant love of liberty" the preface to tyranny. And they would not have been frightened even if they had been familiar with his doctrine of democracy. They little dreamed that they were exemplifying the doctrines of a French philosopher or refuting those of a Greek thinker. Those primitive democratic and individualistic conditions had not yet been seriously changed when, in that bit of the valley which lies in the dim background of my own memory, there had developed a form of government more stern and uncaressing. But there was not a pauper in all the township for its stigmatizing care. There was not an orphan who did not have a home; there was not a person in prison; there was only one insane person, so far as the public knew, and she was cared for in her own home. The National Government was represented by the postmaster miles away; the State government by the tax assessor, a neighbor who came only once a year, if he came at all, to inquire about one's earthly belongings, which could not then be concealed in any way; and the local government by the school- teacher, who was usually a man incapacitated for able-bodied labor or an unmarried woman. The citizens made and mended the public roads, looked after the sick in a neighborly way, bought their children's schoolbooks, and buried their own dead. I can remember distinctly wondering what a "poor officer" was, for there were no poor in that society where none was rich. It was a community of high social consistency, promoted not by a conscious, disinterested devotion to the common welfare but by the common, eagerly interested pursuit of the same individual welfares, where there was room enough for all. It is well contended in a recent and most profound discussion of this subject by Professor Turner (of whom I spoke as born on a portage) that this homogeneity of feeling was the most promising and valuable characteristic of that American democracy. [Footnote: See his "Significance of the Mississippi Valley in American History."] And it was, indeed, prolific of mighty consequences: First of all, it made it possible for the United States to accept Napoleon's proffer of Louisiana. Second, it compelled the War of 1812 and so confirmed to the United States the fruits of the purchase, demonstrating at the same time that the "abiding-place" of the national spirit was in the west. And, third, that spirit of nationalism took into its hands the reins of action in the time when nationality was in peril. Before the end of the Civil War the west was represented in the National Government by the President, the Vice-President, the Chief Justice, the Speaker of the House, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Postmaster-General, the Attorney-General, the General of the Army, and the Admiral of the Navy. And it furnished, as Turner adds in summary, the "national hero, the flower of frontier training and ideals." While the mere fact of office-holding does not indicate the place or source of power, it is noteworthy that the Presidents since the war--to the election of Wilson--Grant, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley, Harrison, and Taft all came from this valley. Cleveland went over the edge of it, when a young man, to Buffalo and left it only to become governor and President; Arthur, who succeeded to the presidency through the death of President Garfield, and President Roosevelt, who also came first to the presidency through the death of a President and was afterward elected, were both residents of New York, though the latter had a ranch in the far west and seems rather to belong to that region than the place of his birth. Thus of the elected Presidents there was not one who had not a middle-western origin, experience, or association. The Chief Justices since the war have been without exception western men, and so with few exceptions have been the Speakers of the House. And practically all these Presidents, Chief Justices, Speakers, were pioneers or sons of pioneers in that "Valley of the New Democracy" or, at any rate, were nurtured of its natural fellowships, its one-man-as-good-as-another institutions, and its unhampered ambitions. It is not mere geographical and numerical majorities that are connoted. It is the dominancy of the social, democratic, national spirit of the valley --the supremacy of the average, the useful man, his power and self- sufficiency when standing squarely, firmly upon the earth. It was the secret of the great wrestler Antaeus, the son of Terra, that he could not be thrown even by Hercules so long as his feet touched the earth. How intimately filial to the earth and neighborly the middle-west pioneers were has been suggested. And it was the secret of their success that they stood, every man in his own field, on his own feet, and wrestled with his own arms in primitive strength and virtue and self-reliant ingenuity. Democracy did not theorize much, and when it did it stumbled. If it had indulged freely in the abstractions of its practices, it would doubtless have suffered the fate of Antaeus, who was finally strangled in mid-air by a giant who came over the mountains. As it was, this valley civilization apotheosized the average man. Mr. Herbert Croly, in his "Promise of American Life," makes this picture of him: "In that country [the very valley of which I am writing] it was sheer waste to spend much energy upon tasks which demanded skill, prolonged experience, high technical standards, or exclusive devotion. The cheaply and easily made instrument was the efficient instrument, because it was adapted to a year or two of use, and then for supersession by a better instrument; and for the service of such tools one man was as likely to be good as another. No special equipment was required. The farmer was required to be all kinds of a rough mechanic. The business man was merchant, manufacturer, and storekeeper. Almost everybody was something of a politician. The number of parts which a man of energy played in his time was astonishingly large. Andrew Jackson was successively a lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, and statesman; and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a society a man who persisted in one job and who applied the most rigorous and exacting standards to his work was out of place and was really inefficient. His finished product did not serve its temporary purpose much better than did the current careless and hasty product, and his higher standards and peculiar ways constituted an implied criticism upon the easy methods of his neighbors. He interfered with the rough good-fellowship which naturally arises among a group of men who submit good-naturedly and uncritically to current standards." [Footnote: Herbert Croly, "Promise of American Life," pp. 63, 64.] Is this what democracy, undefiled of aristocratic conditions and traditions, has produced? it will be asked. Has pure individualism in a virgin field wrought of its opportunity only this mediocre, all-round, good-natured, profane, rough, energetic, ingenious efficiency? Is this colorless, insipid "social consistency" the best wine that the valley can offer of its early vintages? I know those frontier Antaei, who, with their feet on the prairie ground, faced every emergency with a piece of fence wire. They differed from their European brothers in being more resourceful, more energetic, and more hopeful. If it be true that "out of a million well-established Americans taken indiscriminately from all occupations and conditions," when compared to a corresponding assortment of Europeans, "a larger proportion of the former will be leading alert, active, and useful lives," though they may not be wiser or better men; that there will be a "smaller amount of social wreckage" and a "larger amount of wholesome and profitable achievement," it may be safely said that, if the middle-west frontier Americans had been under consideration, the proportion of alert achievement would have been higher and the social wreckage smaller--partly because of the encouragement of the economic opportunity, and partly because of the encouragement of a casteless society. I cannot lead away from those familiar days without speaking of other companionships which that valley furnished beyond those intimated-- companionships which did not interfere with the rough frontier fellowships that made democracy possible. For it was in these same fields that Horace literally sat by the plough and sang of farm and city. It was there that Livy told his old-world stories by lamplight or at the noon-hour. It was there that Pythagoras explained his ancient theorem. I cannot insist that these companionships and intimacies were typical, but they were sufficiently numerous to disturb any generalizations as to the sacrifices which that democracy demanded for the sake of "social conditions" and economic regularity. The advancing frontier soon spent itself in the arid desert. The pioneer came to ride in an automobile. The people began to jostle one another in following their common aspirations, where once there was freedom for the energy, even the unscrupulous energy, of all. Time accentuated differences till those who started together were millions of dollars apart. Failures had no kinder fields for new trials. Democracy had now to govern not a puritanical, industrious, sparsely settled Arcady but communities of conflicting dynamic successes, static envies, and complaining despairs. It met the new emergencies at first, one by one, with no other programme than the most necessary restraints, encouragement of tariffs for the dynamic, improved transportation for the static, and charity for the despairful; but all with an optimism born of a belief in destined success. To this has succeeded gradually a more or less clearly defined policy of constructive individualism, under an increasingly democratic and less representative control. The paternal absolutism of Louis XIV has evolved into the paternal individualism of a people who are constantly struggling in imperfect speech to make their will understood and by imperfect machinery to get it done--and, as I believe, with increasingly disinterested purpose. It is, however, I emphasize, the paternalism of a highly individualized society. I described in an earlier chapter a frontier community in that valley. See what has come in its stead, in the city into which it has grown. The child coming from the unknown, trailing clouds of glory, creeps into the community as a vital statistic and becomes of immediate concern. From obliging the nurse to take certain precautions at its birth, the State follows the newcomer through life, sees that he is vaccinated, removes his tonsils and adenoids, furnishes him with glasses if he has bad vision, compels him to school, prepares him not only for citizenship but for a trade or profession, prevents the adulteration of his food, inspects his milk, filters his water, stands by grocer and butcher and weighs his bread and meat for him, cleans the street for him, stations a policeman at his door, transports his letters of business or affection, furnishes him with seeds, gives augur of the weather, wind, and temperature, cares for him if he is helpless, feeds him if he is starving, shelters him if he is homeless, nurses him in sickness, says a word over him if he dies friendless, buries him in its potter's field, and closes his account as a vital statistic in the mortality column. And there are many agencies of restraint or anxious care that stand in a remoter circle, ready to come in when emergencies require. I have before me a report of legislation in the States alone (that is, exclusive of national and municipal legislation) for two years. I note here a few characteristic and illustrative measures out of the thousands that have been adopted. They relate to the following subjects: Health of women and children at work; employer's liability; care of epileptics, idiots, and insane; regulation of dentistry and chiropody; control of crickets, grasshoppers, and rodents; exclusion of the boll- weevil; the introduction of parasites; the quenching of fires; the burning of debris in gardens; the destruction of predatory fish; the prohibition of automatic guns for hunting game; against hazing in schools; instruction as to tuberculosis and its prevention; the demonstration of the best methods of producing plants, cut flowers, and vegetables under glass; the establishment of trade-schools; the practice of embalming. I introduce this brief but suggestive list as intimating how far a democratic people have gone in doing for themselves what Louis XIV at Versailles in the "fulness of power" and out of "certain knowledge" did for the trustful habitants of Montreal, who were "ignorant of their true interest." And, of course, with that increased paternalism has come of necessity an army of public servants--governors and policemen, street cleaners and judges, teachers and factory inspectors, till, as I have estimated, in some communities one adult in every thirty is a paid servant of the public. Such paternalism is not peculiar to that valley. I remember, years ago, when I was following the legislation of an eastern State, that a bill was introduced fixing the depth of a strawberry box, and another obliging the vender of huckleberries to put on the boxes a label in letters of certain height indicating that they were picked in a certain way. And this paternalism is even more marked in the old-age pension provision in England, where the "mother of parliaments," as one has expressed it, has been put on the level of the newest western State in its parental solicitude. But nowhere else than in this valley, doubtless, is that paternalism so thoroughly informed of the individualistic spirit. Chesterton said of democracy that it "is not founded on pity for the common man.... It does not champion man because man is miserable, but because man is so sublime." It "does not object so much to the ordinary man being a slave as to his not being a king." Indeed, democracy is ever dreaming of "a nation of kings." [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, "Heretics," p. 268.] And that characteristic is truer of the democracy that came stark out of the forests and out of the furrows than of the democracy which sprang from protest against and fear of single kings. The constitution east of the mountains was made in fear of a system which permitted an immediate and complete expression of the will of the people. The movement in American democracy which is most conspicuous is the effort to get that will accurately and immediately expressed--that is, a movement toward what might be called more democracy--toward a direct control of "politics" by the people--and that movement has had its rise and strength in the Mississippi Valley and beyond. But who are the people who are to control? Only those who are living and of electoral age and other qualification? I recall again Bismarck's definition: "They are the invisible multitude of spirits--the nation of yesterday and to-morrow." And that invisible multitude of yesterday and to-morrow, whose mouths are stopped with dust or who have not yet found human embodiment, must find voice in the multitude of to-day--the multitude that inherits the yesterdays and has in it the only promise of to-morrow. There may be some question there as to its being always the voice of God, but no one thinks of any other (except to add to it that of the woman). The "certain knowledge" and the "fulness of power" of Louis XIV have become the endowments of the average man--and the average man is one-half or two-thirds of all the voting men of the community or nation, plus one. But that average man, forgetful of the multitude of yesterday and ungrateful, has none the less wrought into his very fibre and spirit the uncompromising individualism, the unconventional neighborliness, and the frontier fellowships of yesterday. It is of that that he is consciously or unconsciously instructed at every turn. And he is now beginning to think more and more of the invisible multitude, the nation of tomorrow. It is deplored that the so-called individuality developed in that valley is "simply an unusual amount of individual energy, successfully spent in popular and remunerative occupations," that there is "not the remotest conception of the individuality which may reside in the gallant and exclusive devotion to some disinterested and perhaps unpopular moral, intellectual, or technical purpose," as has such illustrious exhibition in France, for example. This is, we are told, one of the sacrifices to social consistency which menaces the fulness and intensity of American national life. And the most serious problem is to make a nation of independent kings who shall not exercise their independencies "perversely or irresponsibly." Men have been always prone to make vocational pursuits the basis of social classification. In the Scripture record of man he had not been seven generations in the first inhabited valley of earth before his descendants were divided into cattlemen, musicians, and mechanics. For the record runs that Lamech had three sons, Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal--Jabal who became the father of those who live in tents and have cattle, Jubal the father of those that handle the harp and the organ, and Tubal the father of those who work in brass and iron. And we do not have to turn many pages to discover the social distinctions that grew out of the vocational. The first question of that western valley is, "Who is he?" and the answer is one which will tell you his occupation. No one who has not an occupation of some regularity and recognized practical usefulness is, as Mr. Croly intimates, likely to have much recognition. On the other hand, within the limits of approved occupations, there is, except in great centres, no marked social stratification based on vocation, as in old-world life and that of the new world more intimately touched by the old. The man is recognized for his worth. In the midst of that valley is a college town, [Footnote: Galesburg, Ill.] planted by a company of migrants from an older State seventy-five years ago who bought a township of land, founded a college, [Footnote: Knox College.] and built their homes about on the wild prairie. It has now twenty thousand inhabitants and is an important railroad as well as educational centre. It was nearly fifty years old when I entered it as a student. That I studied Greek did not keep me from knowing well a carpenter; that in spare hours I learned a manual trade and put into type my translation of "Prometheus Bound" did not bar me from the homes of the richest or the most cultured. Once, when a student, because of some little victory, I was received by the mayor and a committee of citizens, but the men at the engines in the shops and on the engines in the yards blew their whistles. When I went back to that college as its president it was not remembered against me that I had sawed wood or driven a plough. I knew all the conductors and most of the engineers on the railroads. I knew every merchant and nearly every mechanic, as well as every lawyer, judge, and doctor. Men had, to be sure, their preferential associations, but these were personal and not determined of vocation or class. A recent mayor of this city of two colleges was a cigar maker and, I was assured by a professor of theology in a local university, the best mayor it has had in years, and he died driving a smallpox patient to a pest-house. I received when in Paris, by the same mail as I recall, a resolution of felicitation from a Protestant body of which I was a member in that town, and a letter of like felicitation from the Catholic parish priest of that same city. I do not know how better to illustrate, to those who are working at the problem of democracy in other valleys, how democracy has wrought for itself in that valley of neighborliness and resourcefulness and plenty, in the wake of the monarchical, paternalistic affection of France. CHAPTER XV WASHINGTON: THE UNION OF THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN WATERS We have followed the French explorers and priests as pioneers through the valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi to the gulf and the Rocky Mountains. But there remains one further conquest, a conquest of their adventurous imaginations only, for none of their adventurous or pious feet ever travelled over the valley lying south of the St. Lawrence watershed and east of the Alleghanies, though they were probably the first of white men to see those peaks rising in the north of what is now New England, known as the White Mountains. Standing on the summit of one of the White Mountains a few summers ago, I was shown a dim little indentation of the sky at the northwest which I was told was Mont Real. And since seeing that I have imagined Jacques Cartier in 1535 looking off to the southeast, when his disappointed vision of the west had tired his eyes, and catching first sight of these dim indentations of his sky, the White Mountains, which the colonists from England did not see until a century later and then only from their ocean side. But whether the master pilot from the white-bastioned St. Malo saw them or not, we have record that Champlain in his exploration of the Atlantic coast did discern their peaks upon his horizon; and so we may think of the French as the discoverers not merely of the northern and western valleys, of the Adirondacks, in whose shadows Champlain and Brule and Father Jogues fought with the Iroquois and suffered torture, and of the snow-capped Rockies at whose feet Chevalier de la Vérendrye was obliged to turn back, but also of the tops of the white hills near the Atlantic coast, which I have often seen lighted at sunrise while the lower slopes and valleys were in darkness or shadow--hills touched by the French, as by that rising sun, only at their tops and by the trails of their eyes. For the moment those mountains stand upon the horizon as the symbol of the only part of North America east of the Rockies which the French pioneers did not possess before others by the trails of their feet or the paths of their boats. Verrazano of Dieppe had sailed along the Atlantic shore front, but so, perhaps, had Cabot. Ribaut had been "put to the knife" in Florida, but it was the knife of a Spaniard whose compatriots had been there before Ribaut. Étienne Brûlé had wandered all the way from Canada into Pennsylvania along the sources and upper waters of the Atlantic streams, but the colonists of other nations were sitting huddled at the mouths of the streams. And Father Jogues had endured the torturing portage from the shores of Lake George to the Mohawk, but the Dutch were by that time there to succor him from the Iroquois. Only with their eyes had the French beheld first of Europe the America of the eastern waters, whose inhabitants, when they came to put on uniform and fight for its independence, called themselves "Continentals," as if their little hem of the garment were the continent. One wonders--if to little purpose--what would have been the consequence if De Monts, whom Champlain accompanied to America in 1604, had planted his little colony at some place farther south in his continental grant made by Henry IV, stretching, as it did, all the way from what is now Philadelphia to the St. Lawrence--if, for example, he had anchored off the Island of Manhattan, as well he might have done, five years before Hudson came up the harbor in the _Half Moon_, had settled there instead of on the sterile island of Ste. Croix in the Bay of Fundy, where, amid the "sand, the sedge, and the matted whortleberry bushes," the commissioners to fix the boundaries between the United States and Canada discovered in 1793--nearly two centuries later--the foundations of the "Habitation de l'isle Ste. Croix" that the French had built in the gloom of the cedars. Or if, when the scurvy-stricken colony left that barren site, they had followed Champlain to the mouth of the Charles, la rivière du Guast--the site of Cambridge or Boston--or even to the Bay St. Louis--which is remembered in Champlain's journal as the place where the friendly Indians showed him their fish-hooks made of barbed bone lashed to wood, but which has become better known as Plymouth Bay where the Pilgrims landed fifteen years later--there instead of Port Royal, where even Lescarbot's "Ordre de Bon- Temps" could not overcome the evil reports in France concerning a "churlish wilderness"! Or if Champlain, instead of seeking later the Rock of Quebec--whose rugged charms he could not forget even in the presence of the site of Boston or in the streets of Paris--had laid the foundations of his faith and his courage on the Susquehanna, for example! In any one of these contingencies there might have been a more prosperous Acadia. New England might conceivably have become Nouvelle France, and New York City might be bearing to-day the name of a seventeenth-century French prince. An idle conjecture, but it does, I think, help us to appreciate the happy destiny (or by whatever name the sequence of events may be called) not that kept France out of that narrow Atlantic-coast strip but that put her in a position to become the power that should in a very true sense force the jealous, many-minded colonies of that strip into a union, make possible the erection of that feeble union into a nascent nation, give it, though under certain compulsion, territory to become a world-power, and finally furnish it, if grudgingly, with a great western, overmountain domain in which to develop a democratic and a nationalistic spirit strong enough to hold a continent-wide people in one republic. These services, intended and unintended, negative and positive, grudging and voluntary, performed, however, all in unsurpassed sacrifice and valiance not only of the explorers and priests but of the exiled soldiers, intimate how, out of all the misery of finding the northern water gate and keeping it and following the northern waterway and fortifying it, came the harvests--even if France did not gather them into her own granaries--of those who "sow by all waters." We might not have had some of the institutions we do have if Champlain or Poutrincourt had anticipated the English Pilgrims at Plymouth, but we might still be a colony or a cluster of republics, even with all that we have got by way of those and other English migrants, except for these hardy men who kept battling with the ice and snow and water and famine at the north. But what I wish to emphasize here--and I am much indebted to the young western historian Mr. Hulbert, for this view--is that France, struggling to keep the empire of her adventure and faith in the northern and western valleys of America, gave to the world George Washington. She made him, all unconsciously to be sure, first in war. She saved him, consciously, from the fate of an unsuccessful rebel. And she made it possible for him to be first in peace. These are all defensible theses, however much or little credit France may deserve in her purposes toward him. Up in those same White Mountains there rises one that bears his name, taller than the rest. It stands in a presidential range that has no rivalling peak. A singular felicity in the naming of the neighboring mountains has given the name Lafayette to the most picturesque of all. There are well-known and much-travelled trails to the austere peak of Mount Washington. There is even a railroad now. Doubtless no mountain in America is known in its contour to more people, though there are many of loftier height and of more inviting slopes. So the outlines of the life of Washington are known more widely than those of any other American. The trails to the height of his achievement and genius have doubtless been learned in the histories of France. And asking my readers to travel over one of those well-worn trails again, I can offer no better reason than that I may on the way call attention to objects and outlooks that should be of special interest to the eyes of a company of men and women whose geographical or racial ancestors gave us him in giving us the west. Washington was born a British colonist. His great-grandfather settled in Virginia at about the time that La Salle was making his way up the St. Lawrence to the seigniory of St. Sulpice above the Lachine Rapids. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were frontiersmen, farmers, or planters. He had himself the discipline of the plantation, but he learned surveying and had also the sterner experiences of its frontier practice. Then came his appointment at nineteen as an adjutant-general of colonial militia in Virginia and with that office the still sterner disciplines beyond the frontier, where France was tutor, without which tuition he would doubtless have become and remained a successful colonial Virginia planter and general of militia. I have estimated that all the young men in America of approximately Washington's age at that time could probably have been gathered into the Roman colosseum back of the Pantheon; at any rate, into an American university stadium. They could have been reached by the voice of one man. (Which will intimate how small America was--one-fourth the size of Paris when he was born, one-half the size of Paris when he became a major of militia.) They were practically all country-born. There were, indeed, no great cities in which to be born. New York was little more than a town with only eight or nine thousand inhabitants; and Boston, the largest city at that time, had but thirteen thousand in the year 1732. They were men, as Kipling says of the colonials in the Boer War, who could "shoot and ride." And Washington was a strong athletic youth of fiery passions, which, given free rein, would have made him a successful Indian chief. (Indeed, the Indians admired him and called him Ha-no-da-ga-ne-ars--"the destroyer of cities"--and at last admitted him, as a supreme tribute, to their Indian paradise, the only white man found worthy of such canonization.) But, rugged, country-born men though they were, it was in no such neighborly democracy as Lincoln knew that they were bred. Washington had his slaves, his coat of arms, and the occupations and leisures and pleasures, so far as the frontier would permit, of an English gentleman. And it is no such slouchy, shabbily dressed figure as Lincoln's that Washington presents. I saw a few years ago a letter in Washington's own hand, in which he gave directions to the tailor as to the number of buttons that his coat should have, the shape of its lapel, and the fit of its collar. He was most insistent upon the conventions, though if such an assembly had been held, as I have suggested, of the young men from the eastern waters, there would have been no such uniformity of costume as now makes an audience of men in America, or in Europe, so monotonously black and white. These young men did not dress alike; they did not spell alike. Washington's letters show that he did not even spell consistently with himself. And that first man of the eastern waters to follow the French in establishing a settlement on the western waters, Daniel Boone, left this memorial of his orthography on a tree in Kentucky: "C-I-L-L-E-D A B-A-R." They did not dress alike, they did not spell alike, they did not think alike. It was a great, and it must have seemed a hopeless, motley of men who were all unconsciously to lay the foundations of a new national structure. They were all of immigrant ancestors, and most of them of most recent immigrant ancestry, or of foreign birth. Though much more homogeneous in their lineage than the present immigration, they had not the unifying agencies that now keep Maine and Florida within a few minutes of each other by telephone or a few hours by rail. But there were in all, immigrants and sons of immigrants, hardly more in number than now enter that same land as aliens in one or two years. I spoke a few years ago at a dinner of the descendants of the _Mayflower_ and was told that they numbered in all the country, as I recall, about three thousand--three thousand descendants in three hundred years of a hundred colonists, half of whom perished in the first winter; which leads one to wonder what the land of the _Mayflower_ and the nation of George Washington will be in three hundred years, when the descendants of each shipload of immigrants of to-day will have increased in like ratio. From a single steerage passenger cargo, of the _Lusitania_ or _Mauretania_, let us say, we shall have twenty, thirty, or forty thousand Lusitanians or Mauretanians as descendants; and from a single year's immigration thirty millions. The descendants of the colonial ships will be lost in this mighty new progeny of the ships of Europe and will numerically be as negligible as the North American Indian is in our census today. But to come back to Washington: the appointment of the stripling as adjutant-general with rank of major was two years after the humpbacked Governor Galissonnière had sent Celoron down the Ohio on that historic voyage of plate-planting, the news of which had finally reached the ears of the governor of Virginia, who with many planters of Virginia (Washington's family included) had a prospective interest in lands along that same river. Then came the word through Indian and trader (the only long-distance telephones of that time) that forts were beginning to grow where the plates had been planted. It was then that the young farmer, surveyor, soldier, just come of age, was chosen to carry a message to the commander of the nearest French fort in the valley--Fort Le Boeuf, which I have already described--about fifteen miles from Lake Erie on the slight elevation from which the waters begin to flow toward the Mississippi. The commander was Legardeur de St. Pierre, a one-eyed veteran of wars, but recently come from an expedition out across the valley toward the Rockies. Parkman has made this picture of the momentous meeting of France and America in the western wilderness, which in its peopling has kept only a single tree of those forests, a tree pointed out to me as the Washington tree, though it, too, may have come with the migrants: "The surrounding forests had dropped their leaves, and in gray and patient desolation bided the coming winter. Chill rains drizzled over the gloomy 'clearing,' and drenched the palisades and log-built barracks, raw from the axe. Buried in the wilderness, the military exiles [Legardeur and his garrison] resigned themselves as they might to months of monotonous solitude; when, just after sunset on the eleventh of December, a tall youth [and he was only an inch shorter than Lincoln, six feet three inches] came out of the forest on horseback, attended by a companion much older and rougher than himself, and followed by several Indians and four or five white men with packhorses. Officers from the fort went out to meet the strangers; and, wading through mud and sodden snow, they entered at the gate. On the next day the young leader of the party, with the help of an interpreter, for he spoke no French [a deficiency which he laments with greatest regret later in life], had an interview with the commandant and gave him a letter from Governor Dinwiddie. St. Pierre and the officer next in rank, who knew a little English, took it to another room to study it at their ease; and in it, all unconsciously, they read a name destined to stand one of the noblest in the annals of mankind, for it introduced Major George Washington, Adjutant-General of the Virginia Militia." [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," 1:136-7.] At the end of three days the young British colonial officer of militia started on his perilous journey homeward, having been most hospitably entertained by the one-eyed veteran, bearing on his person a letter which St. Pierre and his officer had been the three days in preparing. The brave, courteous, soldierly lines of the frontier deserve to be heard to- day both in France and America: "I am here by Virtue of the Orders of my General; and I entreat you, Sir, not to doubt, one Moment, but that I am determined to conform myself to them with all the Exactness and Resolution which can be expected from the best Officer.... I don't know that in the Progress of this Campaign [of repossession] anything passed which can be reputed an Act of Hostility or is contrary to the Treaties which subsist between the two Crowns.... Had you been pleased, Sir, to have descended to particularize the Facts which occasioned your Complaints I should have had the Honor of answering you in the fullest, and, I am persuaded, most satisfactory Manner." In the spring the two hundred canoes which Washington saw moored by the Rivière aux Boeufs carried the builders of Fort Duquesne and a garrison for it down La Belle Rivière, and a little later is heard the volley of the Virginia backwoodsmen up on the Laurel ridges a little way back from Duquesne, the volley which began the strife that armed the civilized world--the backwoodsmen commanded by the Virginia youth, George Washington. It is in that lonely ravine up among the ridges which I have described in an earlier chapter that the union of the eastern and western waters began. And there should be a monument beside Jumonville's to keep succeeding generations mindful of the mighty consequence of what happened then. This fray of the mountains was one of the most portentous of events in American history. It was not only the grappling of two European peoples and two systems of government out upon the edges of the civilized world-- the stone-age men assisting on both sides--a fray in which Legardeur de St. Pierre, Coulon de Jumonville, and de Villiers, his avenging brother, were France, and Washington was England. It was the beginning of the making of a new nation, of which that tall youth, who found the whizzing of bullets a "charming sound," was to be the very cornerstone. He was here having his first tuition of war. De Villiers let him march back from Fort Necessity unharmed, when he might, perhaps, have ended the career of this young major in the great meadows where they fought "through the gray veil of mists and rain." Washington was taught by France, in these years of border warfare--for he went four times over the mountains-- he was spared by France in the end to help take from France the title of the west, or so it seemed when, in 1763, the war which his command had begun was ended in the surrender of that vast domain to England. But we know now that the struggle had other issue. The steep path of the years when the colonies were taught their first lessons of federation by their common fear of the French and their allies, led by the tall young man who emerged from the woods back of Fort Le Boeuf and later assisted by the moral and pecuniary sympathy of France, by the presence of her ships along their menaced coasts, by the counsels of her admirals and generals, and by the marching and fighting of her soldiers side by side with theirs, you know. It is a path so marked by memorials as to need no spoken word. Only one vista in this trail of gloom with overhanging clouded sky need detain us a moment. It lets us see Benjamin Franklin rejoicing in Paris after the news of the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777. We see Beaumarchais rushing away from Franklin's lodgings in Passy to spread the good news, and in such mad haste that he upset his carriage and dislocated his arm. And when we next look out from the path we see the British soldiers passing in surrender between two lines drawn up at Yorktown, the American soldiers on one side with Washington at their head, and on the other the French soldiers under Count Rochambeau. Washington and Legardeur de St. Pierre at Fort Le Boeuf, Washington and Rochambeau at Yorktown! You have been told again and again that except for the France of Rochambeau the War of Independence would probably have failed and that the colonies would have remained English colonies. But let us remember that except for the France of Legardeur de St. Pierre there would probably not have been, as Parkman says, a "revolution"; and by the France of Legardeur I mean the spirit of France that had illustration in his lonely, exiled watching of the regions won by her pioneers. The French man-of-war _Triumph_ brought to Philadelphia in May of 1783 the treaty of Paris. In the December following General Washington said farewell to his officers and returned to Mount Vernon, his estate on the Potomac. There he was busied through the next few months in putting his private affairs in order, in superintending the reparation of his plantation, and in receiving those who came to him for counsel or to express their gratitude. It was as a level bit of the mountain trail from which the traveller catches glimpses of a peaceful valley. And that is all that the traveller usually sees. But there is a farther view. From that level path one can see over the Alleghanies the great valley so familiar to our eyes from other points of view, stretching toward the Mississippi. In the autumn of 1784 (eight months after his farewell to the army) Washington leaves his home, as it appears, to visit some lands which he had acquired as one result of his earlier and martial trips out beyond the Laurel Hills. He had title to forty thousand acres beyond the mountains. He had even purchased the site of this first battle in the meadows, where he had built Fort Necessity and where he was himself captured by the French, but from which he was permitted to go back over the mountains with his flags flying and his drums beating. A "charming field of encounter" he called the place in his youthful exuberance before the battle in 1753. "Much Hay may be cut here When the ground is laid down in Grass; and the upland, East of the Meadow is good for grain," he wrote in his unsentimental diary, September 12, 1784. For over the mountains he went again on what was thought but a trip of personal business. But on the third day of the journey, September 3d, he writes, incidentally, as explaining his desire to talk with certain men: "one object of my journey being to obtain information of the nearest and best communication between the Eastern and Western Waters." And as he advances this becomes the possessing object. Here are a few extracts from that diary still preserved in his own hand which give the intimation of a prescience that should in itself hold for him a grateful place in the memory of the west and of a concern about little things that should bring him a bit nearer to our human selves: _September 6_. "Remained at Bath all day and was showed the Model of a Boat constructed by the ingenious Mr. (James) Rumsey for ascending rapid currents by mechanism.... Having hired three Pack horses to give my own greater relief...." _September 11._ "This is a pretty considerable water and, as it is said to have no fall in it, may, I conceive, be improved into a valuable navigation...." _September 12._ "Crossing the Mountains, I found tedious and fatieguing [_sic_].... In passing over the Mountains I met numbers of Persons and Pack horses ... from most of whom I made enquiries of the nature of the Country...." _September 13._ "I visited my Mill" [a mill which he had had built before the Revolution].... _September 15._ "This being the day appointed for the Sale of my moiety of the Co-partnership Stock many People were gathered (more out of curiosity I believe than from other motives). My Mill I could obtain no bid for...." _September 19._ "Being Sunday, and the People living on my Land, apparently very religious" [these were Scotch-Irish who had squatted on a rich piece of land patented by Washington], "it was thought best to postpone going among them till to-morrow...." _September 20._ "I told them I had no inclination to sell; however, after hearing a good deal of their hardships, their Religious principles (which had brought them together as a society of Ceceders [_sic_]) and unwillingness to seperate [_sic_] or remove; I told them I would make them a last offer...." _September 22._ "Note--In my equipage Trunk and the Canteens--were Madeira and Port Wine--Cherry bounce--Oyl, Mustard--Vinegar--and Spices of all sorts--Tea, and Sugar in the Camp Kettles (a whole loaf of white sugar broke up about 7 lbs. weight).... My fishing lines are in the Canteens...." _September 23._ "An Apology made to me from the Court of Fayette (thro' Mr. Smith) for not addressing me." The Cheat at the Mouth is about 125 y'ds wide--the Monongahela near d'ble that--the colour of the two Waters is very differ't, that of Cheat is dark (occasioned as is conjectured by the Laurel, among which it rises, and through which it runs) the other is clear, & there appears a repugnancy in both to mix, as there is a plain line of division betw'n the two for some distance below the fork; which holds, I am told near a Mile.--the Cheat keeps to the right shore as it descends, & the other the left. _September 25._ "At the crossing of this Creek McCulloch's path, which owes its origen [_sic_] to Buffaloes.... At the entrance of the above glades I lodged this night, with no other shelter or cover than my cloak & was unlucky enough to have a heavy shower of Rain." _September 26._ "We had an uncomfortable travel to one Charles Friends, about 10 miles; where we could get nothing for our horses, and only boiled Corn for ourselves." _October 1._ "I had a good deal of conversation with this Gentleman on the Waters, and trade of the Western Country." _October 4._ "I breakfasted by Candlelight, and Mounted my horse soon after daybreak. I arrived at Colchester, 30 Miles, to Dinner; and reached home before Sun down." [Footnote: A. B. Hulbert, "Washington and the West," pp. 32-85.] In this revelation of Washington out of the laconic misspelled entries of his diary we have not only a most human portrait but an intimation of his practical far-seeing statesmanship. He looms even a larger figure as he rides through the fog of the Youghiogheny, for there he appears as the prophet of the eastern and western waters. In his vision the New France and the New England are to be indissolubly bound into a New America. He had written Chevalier de Chastellux from Princeton, October 12, 1783, after a return from the Mohawk Valley, that he could not but be struck by the immense extent and importance "of the vast inland navigation of these United States," that should bring that great western valley into communication with the east, and that he would not rest contented until he had explored that western country and traversed those lines which have given bounds to a new empire. And as he comes back over the Alleghanies from this journey of six hundred and eighty miles on the same horses he writes: "No well-informed mind need be told how necessary it is to apply the cement of interest to bind all parts together by one indissoluble band." And the indissoluble band is the smooth road and the navigable stream or canal. [Footnote: A. B. Hulbert, "Washington and the West," p. 100.] England and France had both restrained western migration, and the young provincial republic was doubtless of no mind to encourage it, so far as it then knew its mind. But Washington had a larger, wiser view than any other except Franklin, and even Franklin was not ardent for the canals. Washington was thinking, some will say, of the trade that would come over those paths; and so he was, but it was not primarily for his own advantage, not for the trade's sake, but for the sake of the weak little confederation of States for which he had ventured all he was and had. He was (as my old professor of history in Johns Hopkins was the first to point out [Footnote: Herbert B. Adams, "Washington's Interests in Western Lands," in _Johns Hopkins University Studies._ Third series, No. I, 1885.]) the first to suggest the parcelling of the western country into "free, convenient, and independent governments," and here he appears the first not to speculate about but to seek out by fording streams and climbing mountains a practical way to a "more perfect union," and not merely for those jealous States lying along the Atlantic and within reach of its commerce, but for all the territory and people of their new heritage. And singularly enough this very journey led not only to the establishment of those paths between the east and west, the national road, the canals reaching toward the sources of the rivers, and ultimately the trans- Alleghany railroad, but to the making of that unmatched document, the Constitution of the United States. And in this wise: Washington called the attention of Virginia and Maryland to the importance of opening a communication between the Potomac and James and the western waters. He writes to Lafayette of being at the meeting of the Maryland Assembly in that interest. [Footnote: John Pickell, "New Chapter in the Early Life of Washington in Connection with the Narrative History of the Potomac Company, 1856," pp. 133-4.] These two States appointed commissioners to confer concerning this and other matters. Their recommendations resulted in the calling of a more widely representative convention, and this in turn in the convening of a body to revise the entire federal system. So this peaceful journey of the warrior over the mountains to the great meadows and down into the tangled ravines of West Virginia became not only the prophecy of the indissoluble bond between the east and west; it became the first step in that movement which led the original States themselves into that more perfect union. The sequence, which did not occur to me until I read recently the diary of that trans-Alleghany journey, gives Washington a new, if a homelier, majesty. Napoleon the Great has spoken his praise of Washington as a general. Many of our own historians agree that it is very doubtful if without Washington the struggle for independence would have succeeded. Other men were important. He was indispensable. This intimates the occasion we have for gratitude that the commander of the French let him march out of Fort Necessity in 1754. The world has for a century been repeating the eulogies that have outlived the invective of his day--and that are only now becoming humanized by the new school of historians who will not sacrifice facts to glowing periods. Washington is now more of a human being and less of a god than the Washington whom Lincoln found in Weems's "Life." Yet with all the humanizing is he the austere, rugged, inaccessible mountain, its fiery passions hidden, its head above the forests. And so will he stand in history the justest of men, a man of highest purity of purpose and of greatest practical wisdom; but, if as a mountain, then as one that hides somewhere in its slopes such a path as we have learned to know in our journeys over this course, a portage path between two great valleys which its summit has blessed, for he was as a portage path between the eastern and western waters, between the institutions of New England and the fleur-de-lis fields of Nouvelle France. I have visited the unmarked field where Fort Le Boeuf once stood, by French Creek, the field where "the most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this [American] continent" [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," 1:4.] was put by the stripling Washington to the veteran Legardeur de St. Pierre. I have, in my worship of the great general, followed through the rain and sleet of a winter's night and in the mud of a country road his famous march from the crossing of the Delaware to Trenton, made in that December night of 1776 when the struggle seemed most hopeless. And I have been in the place in which--as to at least one historian--he seems to me the most of a man and the most of a prophet, even the most of a god, out in the glades and passes, the rains and fogs, of the Alleghanies, fording the streams and following the paths of buffalo and deer in an attempt to find a way between the east and west. CHAPTER XVI THE PRODUCERS On the wonderful background which the passing life of that valley has filled with dim epic figures that are now but the incarnations of European longings, as rich in color as that which lies more consciously back of Greece and Rome or in the fields of Gaul (the splendors of the court of Versailles shining through the sombre forests and into the huts of the simple habitants)--on this I have depicted the rather shadowy suggestions of a matter-of-fact, drab democracy which is usually made to obscure all that background with its smoke. But if I have made your eyes see what I have tried to show, the colors and figures of the background still show themselves. I have now to put against that wonderful background, dim as it is, the new habitants. I suggested earlier the emergence of their gaunt figures from the forests and the processional of their ships of the prairies through the tall grass that seemed as the sea itself. I had in my thought to speak of these new inhabitants as workers, but that word has in it too much of the suggestion of endless, hopeless, playless labor. Yet they are workers all-or nearly all. There are some tramps, vagrants, idlers, to be sure, the spray of that restless sea. But when a man of great wealth wishes to give up systematic work he generally goes out of the valley or begins a migratory life, as do the wild birds of the valley. But these busy, ever-working people of the valley are better characterized by other names, and they may be divided into three overlapping classes: I. The precursors, those that run before, the explorers, the discoverers, the inventors, the prophets. II. The producers, those, literally, who lead forth: the dukes, marshals, generals of democracy, bringers forth of things from the ground, the waters, by brain and muscle; and the transporters of the things brought forth to the places of need. III. The poets, that is, in the old pristine Greek sense, the makers, the creators, in the generic sense, and not merely in the specific sense of makers of verses. If you object to my terminology as exalting too much the common man, as putting sacred things to profane use, as demeaning prophecy and nobility and poesy, I shall answer that it is because of the narrowing definitions of convention that only the makers of verses, and not all of those, are poets, that only men of certain birth or ancestry or favor are dukes, and that prophets have entirely disappeared. And I bring to my support the more liberal lexicography of science, whose spectroscopy now admits the humblest elements into the society of the stars; whose microscopy, as Maeterlinck has helped us to become aware, has permitted the flowers to share the aspirations of animal intelligence; whose chemistry has gathered the elements into a social democracy in which no permanent aristocracy seems now to be possible, except that of service to man; whose physics has divided the atom and yet exalted it to a place which would lead Lucretius, were he writing now, to include it in Natura Deorum instead of Natura Rerum. The son of Sirach, in his Book of Wisdom, has described the man who did the work of the world in ancient times; for "how shall he become wise," begins this essay, "that holdeth the plough, that glorieth in the shaft of the goad, that driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labors, and whose discourse is of the stock of bulls? He will set his heart upon turning his furrows, his wakefulness is to give his heifers their fodder. So is every artificer and work-master that passeth his time by night as by day, they that cut gravings of signets; and his diligence is to make great variety; he will set his heart to preserve likeness in his portraiture, and will be wakeful to finish his work. So is the smith, sitting by the anvil, and considering the un-wrought iron; the vapor of the fire will waste his flesh, and in the heat of the furnace will he wrestle with his work; the noise of the hammer will be ever in his ears, and his eyes are upon the pattern of the vessel; he will set his heart upon perfecting his works, and he will be wakeful to adorn them perfectly. So is the potter sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always anxiously set at his work, and all his handiwork is by number; he will fashion the clay with his arm, and will bend its strength in front of his feet; he will apply his heart to finish the glazing, and he will be wakeful to make clean the furnace. All these put their trust in their hands; and each becometh wise in his own work. Without these shall not a city be inhabited, and men shall not sojourn or walk up or down therein. They shall not be sought for in the council of the people, and in the assembly they shall not mount on high; they shall not sit on the seat of the judge, and they shall not understand the covenant of judgment; neither shall they declare instruction and judgment, and where parables are they shall not be found. But they will maintain the fabric of the world; and in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer." The wisdom of the scribe, however, he said, "cometh by opportunity of leisure." That wisdom the west, as I have already intimated, has not yet learned. Such a scene as I witnessed a little time ago in the amphitheatre of the Sorbonne, a scene typical of what occurs many times a day there, is not yet to be seen in the valley. I saw that hall filled in the early afternoon with an audience markedly masculine, listening to a lecture on early Greek life, interspersed with readings from the Homeric epics. I cannot visualize, much as I could wish to, a like scene in the Mississippi Valley, except in the atmosphere of a woman's club, or at an assembly on the shore of the lake Chautauqua, which I have described in the narrative of the "sowing of the leaden plates," where men and women are for a little time shut away from their normal occupations in a fenced or walled town; or in a university where attendance upon the lecture is required for a degree. I cannot visualize it even with such a charming and amphionic lecturer as the great scholar who gave the lecture on Greece [Footnote: Dean Croiset.] to which I have referred. It is that want, in the valley, of appreciation of the value of leisure and of its wisdoms, it is that worship of what the son of Sirach called the "wisdom of business," or busyness, it is that disposition not to listen to the voices of the invisible multitude of spirits of the past (who after all help to constitute a nation no less than the multitude of spirits of the present, and of the future), it is that inability to credit disinterested, materially unproductive, purposes and pursuits, and fit them into the philosophy of a perfectibility based on material prosperity --it is all of these that intimate the shortcomings of that life of the Valley of Hurry. I saw another great and, as it seemed, non-university audience in the same amphitheatre in Paris listening just after midday to a lecture on Montesquieu, and I had not sufficient imagination to picture such an audience as near the Stock Exchange of Chicago as the Sorbonne is to the Bourse--in that western city where men take hardly time at that hour of day to eat, much less to philosophize. They will not pause to hear Montesquieu remind them that "democracy is virtue" or to hear Homer speak of virtue as the ancients conceived it.' But, on the other hand, and there is another side, they will give up private business, eating, and all to stop a patent dishonesty, to improve the mail service, to discuss the smoke nuisance that happens to be choking their throats, or get rid of the beggar at the door, or to go to a ball game. They do not there in any great number appreciate the wonderful, indefatigable, disinterested efforts of scholars, artists, poets, in the narrower sense--the wisdoms of seeming idleness or leisure. On the other hand, I am sure that the poetry and prophecy of those who (again in the language of the son of Sirach) are "building the fabric of the world" are not appreciated either in Paris or Chicago, partly because of convention and inadequate representation in the old world, and because of the smoke and noise and the thought of the "unwrought iron" in the new world. Of the geographical precursors of that valley I have spoken. But there are others who have enlarged the boundaries and increased the size of acres discovered by the first precursors. Let me without fatiguing statistics give intimation of what I mean in one or two illustrations of the successors of the coureurs de bois, the runners before, the later prophets of the valley. Out of a trough up in the Alleghany Mountains--one of those troughs occupied by the sinewy Scotch-Irish pioneers who first, after the French, as you will recall, crept down into the great valley--there journeyed one day, a century after Céloron, a young man on horseback. He rode as many miles as La Salle went on foot in that memorable heart-breaking journey from Fort Crèvecoeur to Fort Frontenac. He rode through the territory which La Salle had so appealingly described to Louis XIV, now yellow with ripe wheat. Men and women, children and grandmothers, were toiling day and night with scythes and sickles to harvest it by hand, but could not gather it all, and tons were left to rot under the "hoofs of cattle." [Footnote: "He saw hogs and cattle turned into fields of ripe wheat, for lack of laborers to gather it in. The fertile soil had given Illinois five million bushels of wheat, and it was too much. It was more than the sickle and the scythe could cut. Men toiled and sweltered to save the yellow affluence from destruction. They worked by day and by night; and their wives and children worked. But the tragic aspect of the grain crop is this--it must be gathered quickly or it breaks down and decays. It will not wait. The harvest season lasts from four to ten days only. And whoever cannot snatch his grain from the field during this short period must lose it."--H. N. Casson, "Cyrus Hall McCormick," pp. 65, 66.] This precursor came with a sword, beaten not into a ploughshare but into a something quite as indispensable, a sickle--a vibrating sickle driven by horses, that would in a day do the work of a dozen, twenty, thirty, forty men, women, children, and grandmothers. In his eastern home he had, like La Salle, suffered from creditors, from jeering neighbors who thought him visionary, if not crazed, and from fearful laborers who broke his machines; but there in that golden western valley he found sympathy, and, on the Chicago portage, a site for the making of his sickles, fitted into machines called harvesters--there where the French precursor's boat and sword were found not long ago. Seventeen years later, on his imperial farm, Napoleon III (whose royal ancestors had given the very site for the factory) fastened the cross of the Legion of Honor upon the breast of this prophet. There were others who went with him or followed him into that richer valley, adding the self-rake to the sickle, then putting a platform on the harvester so that the men who bound the sheaves had no longer to walk and bend over the grain on the ground, as they had done since before the days of Ruth and Naomi, then devising an iron arm to take the place of one of flesh, and finally putting a piece of twine in the hand of that iron arm and making it do the work of the binder. I cannot help wondering what Tonty of the iron hand would have said could he have seen that half-human machine cutting the wheat, and with its iron hand tying it in bundles, there in the fields of Aramoni, just back of the Rock St. Louis. But I do not need to idealize or emphasize to men of France the service of this particular precursor, who was for years considering the unwrought iron, making experiment after experiment before he came down into that golden valley, literally to multiply its acres a hundredfold; for the French Academy of Science declared that he had "done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man," and a late President of the French Republic is quoted as saying that without this harvester "France would starve." The King of Spain, the Emperor of Germany, the Czar of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, and the Shah of Persia have added their tributes to those of the President of the French Republic, and all the nations of the earth are literally bringing their glory and their honor into that city of the portage strip, which, in a sense, has leading across and out of it paths to all the other golden valleys of the earth, for we are told that the sickles are reaping the fields of "Argentina in January, Upper Egypt in February, East India in March, Mexico in April, China in May, Spain in June, Iowa in July, Canada in August, Sweden in September, Norway in October, South Africa in November, and Burma in December." When in France, walking one afternoon from Orange to Avignon, the first object I saw as I entered that charming city of the palace of the Pope was a sign advertising the McCormick harvester. I do not mean to intimate that all the sickles, that is, harvesters, are made on that portage strip, for if all the factories and coal lands (twenty thousand acres) and timber lands (one hundred thousand acres) and ore lands (with their forty million tons of ore) and railway tracks that unite to make these harvesters were brought together around that portage strip there would be no place for the city itself; but through one building on that strip the myriad paths do run, connecting all the tillable, grain-growing valleys of this planet; and yet a recent, most observing English critic, Mr. Wells, saw as he left that city only a "great industrial desolation" netted by railroads. He smelled an unwholesome reek from the stock-yards, and saw a bituminous reek that outdoes London, with vast chimneys right and left, "huge blackened grain- elevators, flame-crowned furnaces, and gauntly ugly and filthy factory buildings, monstrous mounds of refuse, desolate, empty lots, littered with rusty cans, old iron, and indescribable rubbish. Interspersed with these are groups of dirty, disreputable, insanitary-looking wooden houses." [Footnote: H. G. Wells, "Future in America," p. 59.] Nothing but these in a place whose very smoke was a sign of what had made it possible for the nations of the earth even to subsist at all in any such numbers, or if at all, on anything better than black bread. And, after all, this precursor, this runner before, was but one of hundreds of later Champlains, Nicolets, and La Salles, in the wake of whose visions came the producers, those who led forth the corn and wheat from the furrows, the trees from the forests, the coal from the ground, the iron from the hills, the steel from the retorts, the fire from the wells, the water from the mountains, electricity from the clouds and the cataract--dukes, field-marshals, generals, demigods whom no myth has enhaloed or poetry immortalized. Prometheus, bringing fire to mortals, did in a more primitive way what they have done who have led forth the oil of the rocks (petroleum) to light the lamps of the earth. Orpheus, who sang so entrancingly that mortals forgot their punishments and followed him, and Amphion, who drew the stones into their places in the walls by his music, performed no more of a miracle than a lad who tips a Bessemer converter. Hercules is remembered as a hero of the garden of the Hesperides for all time, whereas he probably but imported oranges from Spain to the eastern Mediterranean, and is hardly to be mentioned by the side of such a Mississippi Valley transporter and importer as Mr. Hill. But let us follow more particularly the producers of the fields, whom we call the farmers there, the men whom the son of Sirach had in mind when he said in the ancient days: "How shall he become wise that holdeth the plough, that glorieth in the shaft of the goad, ... and whose discourse is of the stock of bulls?" It was a farmer's son who invented the harvester, and four-fifths of the men (whom the writer, to whom I am indebted for many of these facts about the farmer, calls "harvester kings")--along with the plough kings and wagon kings of whom democracy has been dreaming-were farmers' sons. The plough, the self-binder, the thresher were all invented on the farm. The son of Sirach said: "They shall not be sought for in the council of the people, and in the assembly they shall not mount on high"; but fourteen of the first twenty-six Presidents were farmers' sons, and that statistic gives but merest suggestion of the farmer's part in all the councils of the people. Here are a few significant, graphic facts which would furnish interesting material for a new edition of Virgil's "Georgics" and "Bucolics" or lead Horace to revise his verses on rural life. There are practically five times as many farmers (under the early man- power definition of the farmer) as the census shows, for the farmer now works with the old-time power of five men. Six per cent of the human race (and the larger part of that six per cent is in the Mississippi Valley) produces, one-fifth of the wheat of the world, two-thirds of the cotton, and three fourths of the corn (and this takes no account of its reapers and mowers that gather the crops in other valleys). It would cost three hundred million dollars more to harvest the world's wheat by hand, if it were possible, than it costs now by the aid of the harvester and reaper. [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Romance of the Reaper," p. 178.] Some years ago in a trial made in Germany in the presence of the Emperor and his ministers, it was shown that a Mississippi Valley harvester driven by one man could do more in one day than forty Polish women with old- fashioned sickles. [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Romance of the Reaper," pp. 134, 135.] The precursor of the harvester saw grandmothers and mothers in the fields working day and night to cut and gather the harvest, but he could not now (except among the new immigrant farmers) see that spectacle. I cannot recall that, until I met that old-world population coming over the mountains as I made my first journey east out of that valley, over twenty years ago, I ever saw a woman at work in the fields. The gallantry of that primitive pioneer life kept her in the cabin, which was the castle, and, while her labor was doubtless not less than her husband's, it had the sanctity of its seclusion and its maternal ministries to life. In the new industrialism that has invited the daughters of the Polish women harvesters into the factories yonder there is this constant and increasing concern which is insisting upon a living wage, wholesome sanitary environment, and on shorter hours of labor for women and children--this purpose that will ultimately bring skies and sunsets without exposure or back-breaking labor. On my way to a provincial university in the north of France not long ago, I saw a peasant mother standing in the misty morning at the mouth of a small thresher, feeding into it the sheaves handed her by her husband, the horse in a treadmill furnishing the power. When I passed in the misty morning of the next day she was still feeding the yellow sheaves into the thresher; and I thought how much better that was than the flail. On a farm in the northwest, a hundred miles square, as long ago as 1893, three hundred self-binders were reaping the wheat at the cost of less than a cent a bushel--with practically no human labor beyond driving, [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Romance of the Reaper," p. 178.] and there are seven thousand harvesting machines made each week [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Cyrus Hall McCormick," p. 196.] by the one great harvester company alone. The time needed to handle an acre of wheat has been reduced by the use of machinery from sixty-one hours to three; of an acre of hay from twenty-one to four; of oats from sixty-six to seven; of potatoes from one hundred and nine to thirty-eight--which is significant in its promise of the wisdoms of leisure. [Footnote: H. N. Casson, "Romance of the Reaper," p. 179.] But machinery has also increased the size of the farm. In France and Germany, I am told, the average farm is but five acres in size, and in England nine; while in the United States it is one hundred and thirty- eight acres, and in the States west of the Mississippi two hundred and eleven acres. And the product? One harvest, in the picturesque words of Mr. Casson, would buy Belgium, two would buy Italy, three would buy Austria-Hungary, and five, at a spot-cash price, would take Russia from the Czar. Seven bushels of wheat for every man, woman, and child of the ninety or more millions in America and a thousand million dollars' worth of food to other nations! That is the sum of the product--of what has been led forth in a single year. But the leader forth, the producer, the man who set his heart upon "turning his furrows," whose "wakefulness was to give heifers their fodder," he has himself risen. He has, as I said of the farmers of Aramoni (the sons of the first settlers who are still turning up occasionally a flint arrow-head in the fields)--he has his daily paper, his daily mail, his telephone. He "pays his taxes with a week's earnings." He ploughs, plants, sows, cultivates, reaps by machinery. The poet Gray could find only with difficulty in that valley a footsore ploughman homeward wending his weary way, and Millet would in vain look for a sower, a man with a hoe, a woman reaper with a sickle, a man with a scythe or cradle. The new- world peasant is not only maintaining more than his per-capita share of the "fabric of the world" but he is taking his place in the councils of men. What is most promising now is that these followers of the old pioneers of France in that valley are beginning to add to their acres new dominions, discovered by the new pioneers of France, such as the chemists Lavoisier and Berthelot, forerunners of the modern schools of agricultural chemistry and physical chemistry. One hundred years after La Salle completed the waterway journey to the gulf through that valley, Lavoisier made a discovery of the composition of water itself that has been of immense benefit, I am told, to the farmer of that valley and of other valleys. And then came Berthelot with his teaching of how to put together again, to synthetize, what man has waste-fully dissipated. France's men of the lens and the retort have become precursors where France's men of the boat and the sword went first, and have opened paths to even richer fields than those in which the harvesters have reaped. There are as many agricultural colleges in the United States as there are States; there are at least fifty agricultural experiment stations, and there is ever new provision for scientific agricultural research. Here is a partial catalogue of the enactments and appropriations of the legislature in the valley States for two years only: LAWS AND APPROPRIATIONS SHOWING WORK DONE IN AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT AND EXTENSION WORK BY CERTAIN OF THE STATES, 1911-14. ALABAMA 1912.--$27,000, experiments with fertilizers, combating boll-weevil, plant breeding, horticultural investigations, agricultural extension, etc. 1913.--Same as for 1912. COLORADO 1911-12.--$5,500, experiments with potatoes. 5,000, experiments with alfalfa, grain, etc. 3,500, dry farming. 1913.--$47,500, experimental work in dry farming, dairying, etc. 1913-l4.--County commissioners, on petition of one hundred taxpayers, to appoint county agriculturist; salary paid by county and expenses by county, State, and United States. ILLINOIS 1913.--Authorized counties to appropriate $5,000 annually for soil and crop improvement. See "American Year Book, 1913," p. 466. IOWA 1913.--$500, cross-breeding of fruits and edible nuts. Authorizing establishment of county corporations for improvement of agriculture. 40,000, experiment station. 10,000, veterinary investigation. 17,000, experimental farm. 40,000, agricultural extension. See "American Year Book, 1913," p. 465. KANSAS 1913-14.--$55,000, experiment station. 15,000, production and dissemination of improved seeds. 102,500, for six branch stations, two of which are new. 125,000, pumping-plants at experiment station. LOUISIANA 1912.--Police juries of several parishes authorized to appropriate not to exceed $1,000 annually in aid of farmers' co-operative demonstration work; also to acquire and establish experimental farms. MICHIGAN 1912.--Authorizing and regulating county agricultural departments for advice and assistance to farmers. MINNESOTA 1913.--$60,000, maintenance of county agricultural agents; counties each to pay $1,000. MISSOURI 1913-14.--$25,000, county farm advisers. 20,000, soil experiments. 30,000, agricultural investigations. 5,000, promotion of corn growing. 12,000, soil survey. 50,000, hog-cholera serum work. 2,500, orchard demonstration. 10,000, agricultural laboratories. 12,000, animal husbandry. 5,000, dairying. MONTANA 1912.--$20,000, demonstration of dry-land farming. 1913.--County commissioners may, upon vote of 51 per cent of electors, appropriate $100 per month for agricultural instructor, remainder of salary to be paid by State and United States. NEBRASKA 1911-12.--$100,000, establishment of school of agriculture. 3,000, agricultural botanical work. 1913-14.--$3,000, agricultural botanical work. County to employ farm demonstrator on petition of 10 per cent of farm-land owners. 1,250 (maximum), annually to each accredited high school teaching agriculture, manual training, and home economics. 85,000, for fireproof building for agronomy, horticulture, botany, and entomology. OHIO 1913.--$229,200, aggregate of station appropriation. OKLAHOMA 1913.--Counties authorized to appropriate $500 annually for farmers' demonstration work. See "American Year Book, 1913," pp. 465-6. TEXAS 1911.--Authorizing county commissioners' courts to establish experimental farms. 1913.--Railroads may own and operate experimental farms. WISCONSIN 1913.--Beginning January 1, 1914, $10,000, county agricultural representatives, agricultural development, etc. WYOMING 1912.--$4,000, agriculture and soil-culture experiments. 1913.--$4,000, experiments along lines of agriculture and soil culture. 5,000, purchase and maintenance of experimental farm. 1914-15.--$5,000, dry-farm experiments. See "American Year Book, 1913," p. 466. And nearly every State availed itself by specific act of certain appropriations under a federal grant. In addition to all this, appropriations are generally made for the holding of farmers' institutes at which instruction is given by experts and farmers exchange experiences. The agricultural colleges have a total of over one hundred thousand graduates, men and women, and it is they, and those who follow in increasing numbers, who are to cultivate the valley of Lavoisier and Berthelot even as the pioneers and producers of the past have cultivated for the world the valley of Marquette and La Salle. It is not all as bright and promising as this rather generalized picture may seem to indicate. There are still isolations, there are bad crops in unfavorable places and untoward seasons. There are human failures. It is an intimation of the darker side that President Roosevelt appointed a commission [Footnote: Commission on Country Life.] a few years ago to see what could be done for the ignorances, the lonesomenesses, the monotonies of country life in America, and to prevent the migration to cities, even as Louis XIV. But all that I have described is there--aggressively, blusteringly, optimistically there--and is going most confidently on. It is for the most part a temperate life. All through that valley there has swept a movement, moral, economic, or both, which has closed saloons and prevented the sale of intoxicating drink of any sort in States or communities all the way from the lakes to the gulf. But, singularly enough, there is promise of a new age of alcohol, I am told. Farmers can distil a variety of alcohol from potatoes at a cost of ten cents a gallon and use it in gasolene engines most profitably, which leads one who has written most informingly and hopefully of the American farmer to foreshadow the day when the farmer "will grow his own power and know how to harness for his own use the omnipotence of the soil" and get its fruits most beneficially distributed. That there is a strong utilitarian spirit possessing all the valley I do not deny. But I often wonder whether we are not conventionally astigmatic to much of the beauty and moral value of such utilitarian life and its disciplines. There is intimation of this in a recent statement of a western economist to the effect that there was as great cultural value in developing the lines of a perfect milk cow as in studying a Venus de Milo, and in growing a perfect ear of corn as in representing it by means of color or expressing the rhythm of its growth in metered words. But, I believe that there is as much beauty and poetry there as among the isles of Greece, if only it were interpreted by the disinterested spirit and skill of the artist, the scholar, and the poet. If we turn for a moment to the precursors who have led the way to the valley that lies beneath, the valley of the strata of coal and iron, with its subterranean streams of precious metal, its currents of gold and silver, and its lakes of oil and gas, and from these precursors to the producers and transporters who have led these elements forth to the uses of man, we shall find a like story--another chapter of democracy's dreaming of kings. The same author whom I have quoted liberally above has written what he calls "The Romance of Steel" in that valley. It begins with an Englishman of French ancestry, Bessemer, and one Kelly, an Irish-American, born on the old Fort Duquesne point. They had discovered and developed, each without the knowledge of the other, the pneumatic process of treating iron--that is, of refining it with air and making steel. Bessemer's name became associated with the process. But the industry has made Kelly's birthplace, the site of the old French fort, its capital (with another of those poetic fitnesses that multiply as we put the present against the past). France not only gave to Pittsburgh her site but the crucibles in which her fortunes lay. Bessemer was the son of a French artist living in London in poverty. Young Bessemer had invented many devices, when Napoleon III, one day in a conversation, complained to him that the metal used in making cannon was of poor quality and expensive. He began experiments in London at the Emperor's suggestion and later sent the Emperor a toy cannon of his own making. It was in this experimenting, as I infer, that the idea struck him of making malleable iron by introducing air into the fluid metal. But his first experiments were not particularly encouraging, and when he read a paper on the process of manufacturing steel without fuel before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, it is said that every British steelmaker roared with laughter at the "crazy Frenchman" and that it was voted not to mention his silly paper in the minutes of the association. [Footnote: "On the 13th of August, 1856, the author had the honor of reading a paper before the mechanical section of the British Association at Cheltenham. This paper, entitled 'The Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without Fuel,' was the first account that appeared shadowing forth the important manufacture now generally known as the Bessemer process. "It was only through the earnest solicitation of Mr. George Rennie, the then president of the mechanical section of this association, that the invention was, at that early stage of its development, thus prominently brought forward; and when the author reflects on the amount of labor and expenditure of time and money that were found to be still necessary before any commercial results from the working of the process were obtained, he has no doubt whatever but that, if the paper at Cheltenham had not then been read, the important system of manufacture to which it gave rise would to this hour have been wholly unknown." Henry Bessemer, "On the Manufacture of Cast Steel: Its Progress and Employment as a Substitute for Wrought Iron." British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report, 1865. Mechanical Science Section, pp. 165- 6.] To-day, on the same authority, "there are more than a hundred Bessemer converters in the United States," and they "breathe iron into steel at the rate of eighteen billion pounds a year"--"two and a quarter millions of pounds every hour of the day and night." With their companion open-hearth converters and attendant furnaces and mills, they not only hold the site of the old fort but make a circle of glowing fortresses around the valley--in Buffalo, in Birmingham, Alabama, and in the "red crags" of the Rockies at Pueblo, beneath Pike's Peak. And within ten years a whole new city, [Footnote: Gary, Indiana.] not far from Chicago, on Lake Michigan, has been made to order. A river was turned from its course, a town was moved, and an entirely new city was constructed with homes for nearly twenty thousand workmen near a square mile of furnaces and mills. The attention of the world has been centred upon the millionaires whom this mighty trade has made. The very book which I have quoted so literally carries as its luring subtitle, "The Story of a Thousand Millionaires." "A huge, exclusive preoccupation with dollar-getting," says H. G. Wells. But an occupation that finds the red earth and the white earth, carries it hundreds of miles to where the coal is stored or the gas is ready to be lighted, assembles the labor from Europe, and converts that red earth, with almost human possibilities, into rails and locomotives (that have together made a republic such as the United States possible), into forty- story buildings and watch-springs, into bridges and mariners' needles, into battle-ships and lancets, into almost every conceivable instrument of human use, can hardly be rightfully called a preoccupation with dollar- getting, though it has brought the perplexing problem that has so much disturbed the hopes of democracy, dreaming of such masterful children, producers, and poets, yet dreading the very inequalities that their energies create. There comes constantly the question as to how all this initiative which has been so titanic is to be reconciled with the general good--a world- wide and insistent problem, which will be more serious there when the neighborliness is not so intimate. But the new neighborly element will be found, we must believe, as an element has been found for the strengthening of steel. I was told by a chemist, when visiting the mills in Pittsburgh, that every steelmaker knows that a little titanium mixed with the molten iron after its boiling in air multiplies its tensile strength immeasurably, though no one knows just why it is so. Perhaps, in the plans for the new cities of Pittsburgh and Chicago, we have sign of the social titanium that will increase the tensile strength of democracy in the places where the stress and strain are greatest. But my concern just now is that the reader shall see how the valley first explored by the French has given and is giving bread to the world, and has postponed the dread augury of the Malthusian doctrine; how the larger valley of the explorers of the lens and crucible, Lavoisier and Berthelot, is opening into infinite distances; and how the under valley, when breathed upon by the air, has given its wealth to the over valley--and through this all to realize that France's geographical descendants are out of those three valleys evoking, making, a new world. For they are a people of makers--of new-age poets, not mere workers glorying in the shafts of their goads, wakeful to adorn their work and keep clean the furnace, and making their "craft their prayer" (an impossibility in these days of the high division of labor) but rough, noisy, grimy, braggart creators, caring not for the straightness of the furrow unless it produces more, the beauty of the goad unless it promotes speed, the cleanliness of the furnace unless it increases the output, or the craft itself; but only of the product, the thing led forth, and its value to the world. If so much is said of the dollar, it is because the dollar is the kilowatt, the measure of the product. And while we have not yet found the ideal way of distributing what has been led forth, do not let that fact obscure the world service of these new-world Prometheans, who have carried the fire to a mortal use which even the gods of Greece could not have imagined and have turned the air itself into fuel to feed it. A young man, born son of a stone-mason in that valley, who has been successively a student, clerk, lawyer, solicitor-general of a great railroad, its president, and later the head of an industry that is carrying electricity over the world, said to me not long ago that he was building a trolley-line in Rome. It seemed a profanation. But if the titular function of the official who holds the highest spiritual office there was once the care of bridges (Pontifex Maximus), will the higher utilization of those bridges not be some day made as poetic, as spiritual, as high a function of state and society? I see that son of the stone-mason, with blanched face and set jaw, facing and quelling a body of strikers threatening to tear up the tracks along the Chicago River, as brave as Horatius at the bridge across the Tiber. There is a vivid picture of democracy's greatest problem in that valley. Then I see him flinging almost in a day a new bridge across the Tiber. There is a companion picture, a gleam of democracy's poesy. One writing of the habitants of one of those smoky valley cities said: "They are not below poetry but above it." Rather are they making it-- rough, virile, formless, rhymeless. It reminds me of some of Walt Whitman's verses that at first seem but catalogues of homely objects on his horizon but that by and by are singing, in some rough rhythm, a song that stirs one's blood. Oil of rocks, led from cisterns in the valley, that Bonnecamp found so dark and gloomy on the Céloron journey, to the lamp of the academician and the peasant; wheat from millions of age-long fallow acres to keep the world from fear of hunger; flour from the grinding of the mills of the saint to whom La Salle prayed; wagons, sewing-machines, ploughs, harvesters from the places of the portages; bridges, steel rails, cars, ready-made structures of twenty stories from the places of the forts; unheard-of fruits from the trees of the new garden of the Hesperides (under the magic of such as Burbank); flowers from wildernesses! Would Whitman were come back to put all together into a song of the valley that should acquaint our ears with that rugged music-that rugged music wakened by the plash of the paddle and the swirl of the water in the wake of the Frenchman's canoe! As he is not, I can only wish that you who have read these chapters may have intimation of it, as not long ago in New York, standing before a rough, unsightly, entirely isolate frame in a university corridor--where there were heard normally only the noises of closing doors and shuffling feet--I put a receiver to my ears and heard, in the midst of these nearer, every-day noises, some distant cello whose vibrations were but waiting in the air to be heard. Some said there was but the slamming of doors, but I had evidence of my own ears that the music was there. I have not imagined this song of the valley, nor have I improvised it. Its vibrations which I myself feel are but transmitted as best an imperfect, detached frame in the midst of other sounds and interests can. CHAPTER XVII THE THOUGHT OF TO-MORROW The clearing in the forest for the log schoolhouse where Lincoln got his only formal schooling illustrates the beginning of the field of public provision for culture, a territory then made up in that valley largely of the white acres set apart from the domain of Louis XIV for the maintenance of public schools. I can tell you out of my own experience how meagre that provision was. Out on the open prairie a frame building--the successor of the log cabin--was built. I think the ground on which it stood had never been ploughed. I remember hearing, as if yesterday, a farmer's boy reciting in it one day what we thought a piece of lasting eloquence: "Not many generations ago where you now sit encircled by all the embellishments of life, the wild fox dug his hole unscared and the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; here lived and learned another race of beings"--little realizing that, except in the encircling embellishments, we were sitting on such a site, and that we were the "new race of beings" and much nearer to the stone-age man than were they who built the ancient wall just back of the Pantheon in Paris. The thought of the nation for to-morrow was tangibly represented only by that hut twenty feet square, with its few nourishing acres, most primitively furnished, a teacher of no training in the art of teaching, a few tons of coal in a shed, a box of crayons, and perhaps a map. The master made his own fires and swept unaided, or with the aid of his pupils, the floor. When, years later, in a larger building on the same site I came to be master of the same school, and gathered for work at night the farmers' sons who could not leave the fields by day, except in winter, I even paid the expense of the light. Now, if not on that site, certainly on thousands of others, in schools springing from such beginnings, the community provides not only chalk and electric light, but pencils, paper, books, lenses, compasses, lathes, libraries, gymnastic apparatus, pianos, and even food, if not free, at any rate at cost, in addition to trained teachers, trained in public normal schools, and janitors, and automatic ventilators to insure pure air, and thermostats to preserve an even temperature. The public has become father, mother, physician, and guild master as well as teacher of the new generation. The public has even become the nurse, for in most of the large cities the kindergarten has become transformed into a public institution which takes the child from the home, sometimes almost from the cradle, but more often from the street, at the age of four, five, or six years, and keeps it until it is ready for the tuitions of the elementary grades. In St. Louis, just across and up the river from Fort Chartres, where the initial municipal experiment was made, there are now more than two hundred and eighty-three such schools. It has, moreover, gone beyond these serious maternal employments. The strenuous civilization of the west has insisted that every man shall work. But now that it has succeeded in this, it is not only beginning to insist that he shall not work too much--the maximum hours of labor in many employments being fixed by law--but he is being taught how to play wisely. One of the most stirring books that I have read recently, "The Spirit of Play and the City Streets," is an appeal written by Miss Addams, of Chicago, whose noble work has been for years among the people who live close by Marquette's portage hut--an appeal for the recognition of the play instincts and their conversion into a greater permanent human happiness. There are statistics which intimate that the per-hour efficiency of men in some parts of America, whose number of hours of labor has been lessened, has also been diminished--diminished because of their imprudent use of their leisure, of their play time. So the thought of social experts is turning to teaching children to play wisely, they whose ancestors were compelled to leave off playing. I speak of this here to intimate how far in its thought of the man of the future, the nation of to-morrow, that valley has travelled-first of all in its elementary training, and within much less than a half century, from chalk to grand pianos, and from inexpensive tuitions in reading, writing, and arithmetic to the dearer tuitions in singing, basket-weaving, cooking, sewing, carpentering, drawing, and the trained teaching of the old elementary subjects, with the addition of history, algebra, physiology, Latin, and modern languages. When the State of Iowa was admitted into the Union, in 1846, there were 100 log schoolhouses in use, valued each at $125. The latest statistics I have at hand show that in 1912 the average value of the 13,870 school properties in the State was $2,170, that the average expenditure for each pupil was $28.86, and for each inhabitant $6.58, and that of the 507,109 pupils enrolled in the State only six per cent were in private schools-- the average for the States of the west varying from less than one per cent to sixteen per cent. The elementary school followed the frontier at even pace. It was usually the first public building of every community, large or small. That everybody saw it for what it was, I cannot maintain; but that it was the symbol of the nation of to-morrow, borne daily before the people of the present is certain. The westerners carried rails in the Lincoln campaign, in their pride of his humble birth and vocation; they carried miniature log cabins in another campaign in exaltation of another frontier hero. They pictured ploughs and axes on the shields of their commonwealths. But if one were to seek a symbol for the democracy of that valley, one could find none more appropriate than the image of a frontier schoolhouse. It is the most poetical thing of all that western landscape, when it is seen for what it is, though it is not always architecturally imposing. A signal- box, says an English essayist, such as one sees along the railroads, is only called a signal-box, but it is the house of life and death, a place "where men in an agony of vigilance light blood-red and sea-green fires to keep other men from death." A post-box is only called a post-box; it is a sanctuary of human words, a place to which "friends and lovers commit their messages, conscious that when they have done so they are sacred, and not to be touched not only by others but even by themselves." [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, on Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his "Heretics," p. 41.] And so a schoolhouse is only called a schoolhouse, but it is a place where the invisible spirits of the past meet in the present the nascent spirits of the future--the meetinghouse of the nation of yesterday and to-morrow. And I would show that image of the schoolhouse upon a field of white, as suggesting those white acres consecrated of the domain of Louis XIV to the children of the west. Some years ago, when walking across the island of Porto Rico in the West Indies, just after its occupation and annexation by the United States, I met in the interior mountains one morning a man carrying upon his shoulders a basket filled with flowers, as it seemed to me at a distance. As he approached, however, I saw that he was bearing the dead body of his child, with flowers about it, to burial in consecrated ground miles away. The first task of the new government there, as in the western States, was to make fields consecrated for the living child, to set apart sites for schoolhouses--the place for the common school. That the common school has not in itself brought millennial conditions to the valley we are aware, even as universal man suffrage has not brought the full fruits of democracy. French philosophers and American patriots alike have expected too much perhaps of an imperfect human nature. But they have made their high demand of the only institution that can give in full measure what is sought in a democracy. First, it teaches the child the way and the means by which the race has come out of barbarism and something of the rigor of the disciplines by which civilization has been learned. Second, it gives this teaching to the whole nation of to-morrow. There are over ten million children in the public schools of that valley alone in America, and, as I stated above, less than eight per cent in the private schools; in the State of Indiana, where Lincoln had his slight schooling, less than three per cent are in private schools-that is, practically the entire people of the coming generation will have had some tuition of the common school, some equality of fitting. Third, as is to be inferred from the second fact, children of rich and poor, of banker and mechanic, doctor and tradesman, come together, and in a perfectly natural companionship, though in the great cities, where there is less homogeneity, this mingling is somewhat disturbed by social stratification and the great masses of immigrants. So is the motto of the French Republic written the length and breadth of that valley, though it may never actually be seen upon a lintel or door- post: the "liberty" of access to the knowledges which are to assist in making men as free as they can be; an elevating "equality" such as a State can give to men of unequal endowments, capacities, and ambitions; and a "fraternity" which is unconscious of else than real differences. I gave intimation in an earlier chapter of the cosmopolitan quality of the human material gathered into those houses of prophecy. There is separation of Caucasian from African in the south, and there is more or less unwilling association of Caucasian and Oriental in places of the far west on the Pacific slope, but except for these and for individual instances where, for example, the social extremes are brought together, these minglings are but microcosms of the State itself. The schools are not in that valley, in any sense, places provided by wealth for poverty, by one class for another--charity schools; they are the natural meeting-houses of democracy, with as little atmosphere of pauper or class schools as the highways, on which even the President must obey the custom which controls the humblest. And let me say in passing: there is no body of men and women in America more useful to the State, more high-minded, more patriotic, than the army of public school-teachers--our great soldiery of peace. They are a body six times the size of our standing army--more than a half- million in number (547,289)--recruited from the best stock we have and animated by higher purposes, more unselfish motives than any other half- million public or private vocationalists of America. The total expenditure for the common schools is but four and a half times the appropriation for the standing army, though the number of teachers is six times (which intimates how little we pay our public school-teachers relatively-- seventy-eight dollars per month to men, fifty-eight dollars to women teachers). These men and women, who take the place of father, mother, adviser, and nurse in the new industrial and social order--receive about one and a quarter cents a day per inhabitant, man, woman, and child--a little more than two sous per day. It is this two-sous-per-day army that is our hope of to-morrow. It is primarily upon its efficient valor that the future of democracy depends. For it is they, rather than the parents, especially in the great cities and in communities of large foreign elements, who have its making in their hands. Without them the nation of to-morrow would be defenseless. She would have to increase her standing army of soldiers, and even then, with the multitudes of individual ignorances, malices, selfishnesses growing in her own valleys and being disembarked by millions at her ports, she would be powerless to defend her ideals. One whom I have already quoted as speaking so disparagingly of Chicago said that the most touching sight he saw in America was the marching of the phalanxes of the nation of to-morrow past one of the generals or colonels of that standing army of teachers. It was not in Chicago, but it might have been. This particular phalanx had not been in America long. They were singing "Sweet Land of Liberty" as they marched, swishing their flags, and then they paused and repeated in broken speech: "Flag of our great republic, inspirer in battle, guardian of our homes, whose stars and stripes stand for bravery, purity, truth, and union, we salute thee! We, the natives of distant lands who find rest under thy folds, do pledge our hearts, our lives, and our sacred honor to love and protect thee, our country, and the liberty of the American people forever." [Footnote: H. G. Wells, "Future in America," p. 205.] A little florid, you may say. "But think," said the English visitor, even as he passed out into the filthy street, "think of the promise of it! Think of the flower of belief that may spring from this warm sowing!" And what gives most promise now is that this tuition has assumed a more positive interest in the nation of to-morrow. The pioneer school was a place of discipline, a place of fraternity, and it had the cooperation of the home discipline and of the discipline of the primitive industrial life in which the boy joined even during his school years. But that tuition was in a sense as unsocialized as was the democracy of that day. It was assumed that this meagre training would equip the boy with all the tools of citizenship. Being able to read, write, and cipher, his own instincts and interests would somehow procure good government and happiness. Whatever patriotic stimulus his school gave him, as I recall out of my experience, was through a history which engendered a feeling of hostility toward England. That is being succeeded by a positive programme that thinks very definitely of the boy's fullest development and of his social spiritualization. The schoolhouse has become, or is in the way of becoming, the civic centre of the nation. But on top of the eight years' training of the elementary school, which was considered at first the full measure of the obligation of the community, the State in that region came to build additional years of discipline--the high schools, first to equip young men for colleges or universities and then to fit them for the meeting of the more highly complex and specialized problems of life. These schools multiplied in the upper Mississippi Valley at an extraordinary rate after the elementary schools had prepared the way. In the northern part of that valley alone sixteen hundred were established between 1860 and 1902. And there is hardly a community of five thousand inhabitants that has not its fully organized and well-equipped high or secondary school; while even towns of a thousand inhabitants or less have made such provision. Near the site of the village of the Illinois Indians, the village where Père Marquette went from hut to hut in his ministries just before his death journey; where La Salle gathered about his rock-built castle his red allies to the number of thousands and attempted to build up what La Barre, in his letter to Louis XIV, characterized as an imaginary kingdom for himself--there is a beautiful river city, bearing the Indian name of "Ottawa," and in the midst of it a large building that was for me the capital of an imaginary kingdom, my one-time world, though it is called a township high school. I speak of it because it is typical of the instruction and influence that have come out of the long past, and that are looking into the long future, in thousands of the towns and cities that have each about them as many aspiring men, women, and youth as La Salle had savage souls about his solitary castle in the wilderness. These are the new Rocks St. Louis, these the eagles' nests of the new Nouvelle France--I have visited scores of them--at Peoria, that was Fort Crèvecoeur; at Joliet, where is now one of the best-equipped schools in the valley; at Marquette, upon Lake Superior; at Chicago, where I spoke one day to four thousand high-school boys and girls, for in most of these schools the boys and girls are taught together. The valley has one of these schools every few miles, where are gathered for the higher, sterner disciplines of democracy those who wish to prepare themselves for its larger service. Their courses are four years in length, and, though varying widely, have each a core of mathematics, English, foreign languages, and either science or manual training or commerce. In some large cities the schools are differentiated as general, manual training, and commercial. But the States of that valley have not stopped here. With the encouragement of national grants--again from the great domain of Louis XIV--they have established universities with colleges of liberal arts and sciences, and schools of agriculture, forestry, mining, engineering, pharmacy, veterinary surgery, commerce, law, medicine, and philosophy. There is not a State in all that valley that has not its university in name and in most instances in fact. They admit both men and women and there is no fee, or only a nominal fee, to residents of the State. These are the great strategic centres and strongholds of the new democracy. A little way back from Cadillac's fort on the Detroit River is one, the oldest, the University of Michigan-- founded in 1837--with 5,805 students. A few years ago I addressed there, at commencement, over eight hundred candidates for degrees and diplomas in law, medicine, pharmacy, liberal arts and science. A little way from the Fox-Wisconsin portage is another, the University of Wisconsin, with 5,970 students. A few years ago I sat in that beautiful seat of learning among men from all parts of the world offering their congratulations at its jubilee. And they sat in silk gowns only less ornate than Nicolet's when he came over the rim of the basin to treat with the Winnebagoes--whom he had supposed to be Chinese mandarins. I heard, too, the graduates receive their degrees on theses ranging from the poetry of a lesser Greek poet to the "pancreas of a cat." I spent a month in its library at a later time and found it superior for my purposes to any other in America. No higher institution of learning in America is more strongly possessed by the spirit of the ministry of scholarship directly to the people. It needs sorely advice of the arts that centre in Paris, as most of those universities do. It needs advice not of industry but of the indefatigable disinterestedness of the French. Behind the Falls of St. Anthony in the Mississippi River, first described and named by Father Hennepin, is the University of Minnesota, with 6,642 students. The principal deity of the Sioux was supposed to live under these falls, and Hennepin, the priest of Artois, speaks in his journal of hearing one of the Indians at the portage around the falls, in loud and lamenting voice haranguing the spirit to whom he had just hung a robe of beaver-skin among the branches of a tree. The buildings that are and are planned to be on this site would tell better than a chapter of description what a single State has done and is purposing at this portage of St. Anthony of Padua, where hardly more than a lifetime ago the savage was sacrificing beaver-skins to the god of the Mississippi. There are many great laboratories and academic buildings upon that high shore at present, but a score more are in prospect for this mighty democratic university of letters and science, law and medicine, that will house in other centuries perhaps not merely the appeased spirit of the Mississippi but such learning as is in Paris or was in Padua, whose saint is still remembered by the falls; for the university has the necessary means. When the Église of the Sorbonne, which Richelieu had consecrated, was being built, the French priests out along the shores of Superior were preparing the way for this new-world university. Certain lands in that iron region which they first explored were given by the nation as dowry to the university. These were not thought to be valuable, as at the time of the grant the most valuable timber and farming land had been sold. Fifteen years ago, more or less, a train-load of iron ore was brought down from that region to Allouez, a town on the lake named in memory of the priest of St. Esprit-- and now the lands of the university are valued at from thirty to fifty millions of dollars. [Footnote: "Forty Years at the University of Minnesota," p. 243.] One might follow the River Colbert all the way down the valley and trace its branches to the mountains on either side, and find in every State some such fortress: in Iowa a university with 2,255 students; in Illinois one with 4,330; and so on to the banks of the river in Texas where La Salle died--and there learn that the most extensive of all in its equipment may some day rise. These, besides the scores of institutions of private foundation, but compelled to the same public spirit as the State universities, tell with what thought of to-morrow the geographical descendants of France are doing their tasks of to-day, where Allouez and Marquette, Hennepin and Du Lhut, Radisson and Groseilliers, and the Sieur de la Salle wandered and suffered and died but yesterday, Their paths have opened and multiplied not only into streets of cities and highways and railroads but into curricula of the world's wisdoms, gathered from Paris and Oxford and Edinburgh and Berlin and Bologna and Prague and Salamanca, even as their students are being gathered from all peoples. Perrot spoke truer than he knew when he said to the savages of Wisconsin, "I am but the dawn of the day"; and the Indian chief who first of human beings welcomed Europeans the other side of the Mississippi River spoke in prophecy when he said that the earth had grown more beautiful with their coming. The common school, the high school, the college and university--the common school compulsory for every child; the high school open to every boy and girl, without regard to race, creed, or riches; the university accessible to every young man and woman who has the ambition, the endurance, to make his way or her way to the frontiers of the spirit and endure their hardships! For I think of these universities as the free lands that were out upon the borders of that valley, except that this frontier of the mind will never, never find its limit. There will always be a frontier beyond, for new settlers, new squatters, of the telescope which makes the universe smaller, of the microscope which enlarges it, of the written word, the spoken word, the unknown quantities, the philosophies of life. Do we not see the illimitable fields opening even beyond the vision of those men of the crucible and retort, who are but leading the new farmers on to visible fields of increasing richness? Hardly less cosmopolitan are the men of science and letters who are actually in those regions, and only less so those tens of thousands, who, like migrants of the earlier days, are going forward, many to the farthest, lonesomest frontiers of knowledge, but all to something beyond their immediate ancestral lot or field. I am not thinking of the additions to the world's learning in all this, great as it is but impossible of appraisement. Nor am I thinking chiefly of the industrial and material advantages. I think it was some bacteriological discovery, known as the Babcock test, resulting in a great improvement in the making of butter, that gave the University of Wisconsin its first wide sympathetic support. It was the discovery by a professor in one of the western universities of the means of inoculating with some fatal disease, and so exterminating, an insect that destroyed wheat and oats, which gave that professor a chancellorship, I am told, and his university more liberal appropriations. But those achievements and fames, while not to be belittled, I have no wish to catalogue and recite here. I am thinking of the social value of this great public educational system that is thinking constantly of tomorrow--of the world markets of to- morrow, to some extent, to which these curricula, as railroads' and ships' courses, lead; of the world's letters of to-morrow, perhaps; but more specifically and more especially of the higher happiness of those particular regions and the success of its democracy. I am thinking of what these institutions of the people's own devising are doing toward the making of a homogeneous spirit, in which individual, disinterested, and varied achievement will have a liberty to grow--as perhaps in no other soil of earth. Democritus said two thousand years and more ago: "Education and nature are similar. For education transforms the man, and in transforming him creates in him a new nature." The State in its three institutions--the common school, the high school, the college and university--has many in its care and under its tuitions for fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years, and in these tuitions has she created in her children a new nature, whatever their ancestry or place of birth. Memories of Europe's forges and trees, or fields of roses and golden mountains, and even of Asia's wildernesses, are in the names of many who enter those doors; the memories of other languages are in the muscles of their tongues or the formation of their organs of speech. Like the ancient Ephraimites at the fords of Jordan, they cannot "frame to pronounce" certain words. And memories of persecution or of vassalage are in the physical and mental attitudes of some. But they are all reborn of a genealogy impersonal but loftier in its gifts than any mere personal heritage--a genealogy which, like that of the children of Deucalion, begins in the earth itself, the free soil. I have often thought and spoken of how artificial differences disappear when, let us say, Smith (English) and Schmidt (German) and Cohen (Hebrew), Coletti (Italian) and D'Artagnan (French) and McGregor (Scotch) and Olsen (Scandinavian) and McCarthy (Irish) and Winslow (of old America) travel together through the parasangs of the "Anabasis," or together follow Caesar into Gaul, or together compute a solar parallax, or build an arch, or do any one of a thousand things that have no national boundaries or racial characteristics. This is an extreme but not an unheard-of assembling of elements which the State has the task of assimilating to its own ideals. I have not spoken, I cannot speak, of methods of that teaching, of its shortcomings, of it crudities in many places, of its general want of appreciation of form and color (of its particular need of France there), of its utilitarian inclinations, and of its eager haste. The essential thing that I have wanted to say is that this valley is not only more democratic socially and politically than any other part of America, unless it be that narrow strip farther west, but is also more consciously and vitally and constantly concerned about the nation of to-morrow. I spoke of the flaming ingot of steel swinging in the smoky ravine by the site of Fort Duquesne as the symbol of the new human metal that is made of the mingling of men of varied race, tradition, and ideals in the labor of that continent. But above that in a clearer sky shines a more hopeful symbol--the house of the school, the meeting-place of the invisible spirits, the place of prophecy, pictured against a white field. The historians have traced the origins of these institutions to New England, to England, to Germany, to Greece. It is not remembered that France went first and hallowed the fields. But it is my hope that out in that valley, once a year, school and university may be led to look back to the men who there ventured all for the "greater glory of God" and majesty of France and found a field for the greater freedom and fraternity of mankind. My own thought goes back to the place by the St. Charles River where Cartier's boat, which he could not take back to St. Malo because so many of his men had died, was left to be buried by the river, the place where Montcalm gathered his shattered army after the defeat on the Plains of Abraham. It was there that a structure once stood, made of planks hewn out of the forest, plastered with mud and thatched with long grass from the meadows. It was the residence of Notre Dame des Anges, the house from which the first martyrs were to go forth toward the west. This was, says Parkman, the cradle of the great mission of New France. And to this my thought goes as the precursor of the university in the Valley of the New Democracy. CHAPTER XVIII "THE MEN OF ALWAYS" If one travels along the lower St. Lawrence in summer, one sees the narrow strips of the one-time great seigniories, clinging like ribbons of varied colors, green, gold, and brown, to the ancient river, of Cartier and Champlain. There is on each strip, a little way back from the river, a picturesque cottage, usually thatched, not roofed by shingles, with its outbuildings close about, such as Longfellow writes of in Acadia-memories of homes "which the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries." There is usually on each a section of meadow for the cattle, a section of tilled field for the wheat and corn and vegetables and a section of woodland for the fire-wood--each strip, so divided, being a complete miniature seigniory. Everything is neat. One feels that not a wisp of hay is lost (for it was in haying time that I passed), that every tree is as carefully watched as a child, that whatever is taken from the fields they are not impoverished. The living owners, when they go to their graves, leave their little patches of earth as rich as they found them. There is no hurrying. The habitants go at the pace of their oxen. They are thrifty, apparently contented, conservers of what they have; they spend prudently for to-day; they save for to-morrow--not for the to-morrow of the nation, but for the to-morrow of the family. They are avowedly individualistic, nepotic conservationists and only in effect national. This is one picture. I put beside it another. Out on the farther edge of the Mississippi Valley one finds the other extreme. Within the past twenty-two years certain tracts of vacant land have been purchased by the government from the Indians (and let me here say that the government has been trying to deal fairly with these people; mistakes have been made, but I should say that the nation had in its recent treatment of them, despite reports I have heard in Paris, pauperized rather than robbed them). These tracts have been opened to settlement--all the rest of the great public domain that was immediately desirable having been occupied, as we have seen. When, in 1889, the first of these tracts, nearly two million acres, was to be opened, twenty thousand people were waiting just outside its borders--some on swift horses, some in wagons or buggies, and some in railroad trains. When the signal was given there was a race across the border and a scramble for farm sites; and on the part of the passengers on the trains, for town lots, when the trains had reached the predetermined sites of cities. At the close of the first day the future capital of what has for many years been a State had a population of several thousand inhabitants living in tents, and within a hundred days a population of fifteen thousand people, mostly men, an electric system in operation, a street-railway under contract, streets, alleys, parks, boulevards, stores, and bridges, four thousand houses under construction, five banks, fifteen hotels, fifty grocery stores, six printing-offices, and three daily papers--about as striking and unpleasant a contrast to that peaceful life on the St. Lawrence as one can well imagine. Practically all of the available land (nearly two million acres) was taken during the course of a few days. At the later opening of another tract one hundred thousand persons took part in the race for the "last of the people's land." And these scenes but illustrate the rough races to the gold-fields and the iron mountains and the oil-wells, in eagerness to seize whatever earth had to offer and turn it to immediate wealth--rough, restless precursors, producers, poets eager for to-day, yet coming by and by, as we have seen, to be ready to spend for to-morrow, building schools and universities, enlarging the field of public provision and service, and filling the land, once neighborly, individualistic, with institutions of philanthropy. But the habitant of that farther valley is considerate neither of himself nor of generous nature. He is ready to spend his all, or her all, of to- day for to-day and for to-morrow, and to some extent unselfishly, but not to save it. He lives "angerously" and takes all the risks. His thought of the future is not nepotic or thrifty; it is likely to be altruistic, publicistic. I suppose that the constitution and laws of Oklahoma, whose land was the last to be added to the public domain and its commonwealth among the last to the roll of States, has been more generous-minded toward its children than any other. It set apart not only sections sixteen and thirty-six in every township for the public schools; it reserved two more sections in every township for kindred uses. But in all this, as I pointed out, it is spending for the future, not saving, hoarding. The nepotic conservationist of the St. Lawrence, fixed in his place, saves because if he leaves but an exhausted field behind him he is robbing his children and grandchildren of their rightful, personal heritage. The "boomer" of Oklahoma exploits and spends lavishly because of a sublime confidence in the illimitability of the resources of nature and in the resourcefulness of the coming generations. But the natural scientists--the foresters, the physiographers, the geologists--have within a very few years been making themselves heard in warning. They have said that "the mountains of France, of Spain, and China have been denuded of their forests in large measure so that the supply of wood is inadequate to meet the needs of the people," [Footnote: C. R. Van Hise, "Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States," p. 3.] that "in Spain and Italy, though warm countries, the people suffer more from the cold than in America because of insufficient fuel," [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 2.] that "one-half of the people of the world go to bed hungry," [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 3.] or at any rate insufficiently nourished for the next day's work. But few listened to them except in the hills and in the valleys of abandoned farms. France, Italy, Spain, China were remote. The optimism fostered of new teeming acres and newly discovered mines was heedless of the warning. It tore down barns and built bigger, and it gave even more generously to the need of the hour and the day. But the scientists came even nearer home in their studies and statistics. These are some of the ominous and disturbing facts that are getting to the ears of the people out of their laboratories and experiment stations: The coal-fields of the United States (which lie almost exclusively in and upon the eastern and western edges of the Mississippi Valley) were, at the rate at which coal was used a few decades ago, practically inexhaustible. But the per-capita consumption has increased from about a ton in 1870 to 5.6 tons in 1907. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 23.] Up to 1908, 7,240,000,000 [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 25.] tons had been mined, but over ten million tons were wasted in the mining of seven billions. You may recall the prophecy which I quoted earlier, that if the mining and wasting go on at the same rate of increase as in the past few decades the supposed illimitable fields will be exhausted in one hundred and fifty years--that is by the year 2050. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 25.] This is one of the statistics of those watchmen on the walls who, instead of standing in high places with telescopes, sit at microscopes or over tables of figures. That seems a long period of time, one hundred and fifty years, but it was only a little longer ago that a French explorer saw the first signs of coal in that valley along the Illinois, and, as the scientist has intimated, there is no reason why we should not expect a future of thousands of years for the coal that has been thousands or millions of years in the making. The petroleum and natural-gas fields are also nearly all in that valley or on its edges. (I think it was in the narrow valley of La Belle Rivière, which Père Bonnecamp found so dark on that Celoron expedition, that this oil of the rocks was first found.) [Footnote: Natural gas and burning springs were early known to the French pioneers and Jesuits who penetrated the Iroquois country, as the following extracts show: "It was during this interval that, in order to pass away the time, I went with M. de LaSalle, under the escort of two Indians, about four leagues south of the village where we were staying, to see a very extraordinary spring. Issuing from a moderately high rock, it forms a small brook. The water is very clear but has a bad odor, like that of the mineral marshes of Paris, when the mud on the bottom is stirred with the foot. I applied a torch and the water immediately took fire and burned like brandy, and was not extinguished until it rained. This flame is among the Indians a sign of abundance or sterility according as it exhibits the contrary qualities. There is no appearance of sulphur, saltpetre or any other combustible material. The water has not even any taste, and I can neither offer nor imagine any better explanation, than that it acquires this combustible property by passing over some aluminous land."--Galinee's journal, 1669, in "Marshall Historical Writings," p. 209. "... The spring in the direction of Sonnontouan is no less wonderful; for its water--being of the same nature as the surrounding soil, which has only to be washed in order to obtain perfectly pure sulphur--ignites when shaken violently, and yields sulphur when boiled. As one approaches nearer to the country of the Cats, one finds heavy and thick water, which ignites like brandy, and boils up in bubbles of flame when fire is applied to it. It is, moreover, so oily, that all our Savages use it to anoint and grease their heads and their bodies."--"Jesuit Relations, 1657," 43:261. Pierre Boucher (governor of Three Rivers in 1653-8 and 1662-7) thus mentions the mineral products of Canada, in his "Histoire veritable et naturelle de la Nouvelle France" (Paris, 1664), chap. 1: "Springs of salt water have been discovered, from which excellent salt can be obtained; and there are others, which yield minerals. There is one in the Iroquois Country, which produces a thick liquid, resembling oil, and which is used in place of oil for many purposes."--"Jesuit Relations," 8:289.] If we assume that the fields have all been discovered and that the present rate of exploitation is to continue, the supply of petroleum will be exhausted by 1935 (twenty-one years), or, if the present production goes on without increase, in ninety years (_i.e.,_ eighty-six years), [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 48] and that of natural gas in twenty-five years (i. e., twenty-one years from 1914). [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 56.] Iron, the metal which the Indians worshipped as a spirit when they first saw it in the hands of the French, a substance so precious that their name for it meant "all kinds of good," has, too, been taken with feverish haste from its ancient places. Joliet and Marquette saw deposits of this ore near the mouth of the Ohio in 1673, but it was a century and a half before the harvesting of this crop, down among the rocks for millions of years before, began. And now, if no new fields are found and the increased use goes on at the rate of the last three decades, all the available high- grade ore will have become pig iron and steel billets, bridges, battle- ships, sky-scrapers, and locomotives, and all kinds of goods, within the next three decades. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 68.] The forests of the United States--the forests primeval, with the voice of whose murmuring pines and hemlocks Longfellow begins his sad story of the Acadians--contained approximately one billion acres, [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 210.] a region not conterminous with, but almost as large as, the Mississippi Valley. Of that great, tempering, benign shadow over the continent, tempering its heat, giving shelter from its cold, restraining the waters, there is left about 65 per cent in acreage and not more than one-half the merchantable timber--five hundred million acres gone in a century and a half. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 210.] And as to the land itself--the land first symbolized in the tuft of earth that St. Lusson lifted toward the sky that day in 1671 at Sault Ste. Marie, when he took possession of all the land between the seas of the north and west and south--in the first place, the loss each year from erosion is six hundred and ten million cubic yards. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 307, quoted from W. J. Spillman, "Report National Conservation Commission," 3:257-262.] This is, of course, inconsiderable in a short period but in a long period of years means a mighty loss of nourishing soil. With this loss is that of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, things of which the farmer had not even heard the names a few years ago. The yield of farms in the United States during the last forty years does not show a decreased average, but it must be remembered that in this period there have been brought under cultivation new and virgin acres, which have in their bountiful yield kept up the general average. One authority says that, taking the country by regions and by districts and considering what has actually happened, he is led to the conclusion that the fertility of the soil for 50 per cent of our country has been lessened. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 299.] The significance of these facts lies in the desire of the people to know the truth and seek a remedy. In a sense the public domain has been exhausted. The pick of the land has been pre-empted, occupied. But if it is to grow with all its crops, and to put forth with all its products such a public spirit as this, France will have given to America a treasure infinitely more valuable than the land itself which her explorers gave to Europe and the world. The beaver, which the French regarded as the first opulence of the valley, remains only as a synonym for industry, one of the States being called the "Beaver State," perhaps in memory of the beaver days but now in characterization of the beaverlike activity of its people. The hide of the buffalo which La Salle showed in Paris is now almost as great a curiosity in the valley as it was in Paris in 1680. Wild beasts now slink only in the mountains' margins. Domestic animals, natives of distant lands, live about the dwellings of men. Even the streams of water that bore the French into the valley have dwindled, many of them, or are in despair and tears, between shallows and torrents, longing for the forests, it is said by the scientists--longing for the days of the French, the poet would put it. So are the rivers crying, "In the days of Père Marquette"--the days of the "River of the Immaculate Conception." And so are the prophets of science crying as the prophets of inspiration cried of old: O valley of a hundred thousand streams, O valley of a million centuries of rock and iron and earth, O valley of a century of man! The riches of the gathering of a million years are spent in a day. Baldness has come upon the mountains, as upon Gaza of old. The trees have gone down to the waters. The iron has flowed like blood from the hills. The fire of the ground is being given to the air. The sky is filled with smoke. The soil is being carried into the sea; it's precious dust of nitrogen and phosphor blown to the ends of the earth. The fresh lands are no more. There are no mines to be had for the asking. The frontier has become as the centre, the new as the old. But it is not a hopeless prophecy--an unconstructive, pessimisstic, lamentation. The way of reparation is made clear. If I were to speak only of what has been done under the inspiration of that prophecy, I should have little that is definitely measurable to present, but in making a catalogue of the averting advice of that prophecy, I am giving intimation of what will in all probability be done. For the people of that valley are not wittingly going to give their once fertile lands as stones, even to the sons of others who ask for bread, nor their streams as serpents of pestilence to those who ask for fish. These are some of the items of their constructive conservation programme: _Coal._--The waste in the mining of coal must be reduced from 50 and 150 per cent of the amount taken out to 25, 15, or 10 per cent by the working of upper beds first, the utilization of slack, etc. [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 26, 27.] The reckless waste of coal in the making of coke can be prevented by the use of the right sort of oven. It is estimated that there would be a saving of $50,000,000 per annum if such a substitution were made. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 28. ] The tremendous loss of the power value, [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 29, 30.] from 20 to 33 per cent, and of illuminating value [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 32.] (99 per cent) in coal because of its imperfect consumption can be greatly reduced by the employment of mechanical stokers and other devices. The use of the gas- engine in the place of the steam-engine, [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 31.] the use of power developed from water, and the diffused carbon dioxide in the air tempering the climate are also intimations of forces that may lengthen the life of the coal, 99 per cent of which still remains in the keeping of the valley. It is not too late. [Footnote: See "The Coal Resources of the World," International Geological Congress, 1913.] _Petroleum._--Its probable life may be lengthened beyond ninety years by its restriction to lubricating and illuminating uses only and by the prevention of its exportation. [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 50-55.] _Natural Gas._--Its flame is ephemeral at best, but its light may be kept burning a little longer if the prodigious waste is prevented. During 1907 four hundred billion feet were consumed and almost as great an amount wasted through uncontrolled wells, leaky pipes, etc. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 58.] _Iron (and, in less measure, gold, silver, and other metals)_, whose life does not, as coal and oil and gas, perish with the using, but some of whose value is lost in the transformation from one state of use to another, needs only to be more economically mined and used. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 68.] Non-metallic, inexhaustible materials, as stone, clay, cement, should be employed in their stead when possible. [Footnote: I watched day by day for weeks the erection of a great building in Paris, and I noticed how little iron or steel was used as compared with that in such structures in New York. We shall undoubtedly come to that.] Every scrap of iron should be conserved, cry our constructive prophets, even as the Indians treasured it. We may not need it, but succeeding generations will. It may be recast to their use. We are but its trustees. [Footnote: See, "Iron Ore Resources of the World," International Geological Congress, 1910.] _Forests_[Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 223-262.]--A reduction of the waste in cutting (this is 25 per cent of the total value of the timber cut); of the waste in milling and manufacture, and in turpentining. This last waste is appalling but preventable in full or large measure. The lessening the demand for lumber by a preservative treatment of all merchantable timber. A utilization of by-products. (Undoubtedly science will be most helpful here.) Precautions against fires and their control. Reforestation. Maintenance of forests on what are called essential areas, such as high altitudes and slopes, as tending to prevent floods and erosion. (France here gives most impressive example in planning to bring under conrol about three thousand torrential streams in the Alps, Pyrenees, Ardennes, and Cévennes by means, partly at least, of afforestation, $14,000,000 out of $40,000,000 being provided for this purpose. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 247.] Italy, because of the greatly increased destruction by the Po, has begun the reforestation of the Apennines to the extent of a million acres.) Battle with insect pests and finally the substitution of other materials for wood, thus not only saving the trees but diminishing the losses by fire. _Land._ [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 307-352.]--The control of water to prevent erosion, deep tillage, and contour ploughing. The restoration of nitrogen and phosphorus by rotation of crops, phosphates, fertilizers, and electricity. The destruction of noxious insects, mammals, and weeds. The reclamation of wet lands. The introduction of new varieties of crops. _Water._--A fuller use in the place of other sources of power that are exhausted in use. It is believed that of the twenty-six million horse- power now developed by coal fifteen million could be more economically developed by water, thus saving not only $180,000,000 by the substitution, but 150,000,000 tons of coal for posterity. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 124.] The leading of this power through longer distances, as from Niagara Falls; its impounding for a more steady supply; [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 125- 133.] the digging of channels of irrigation into arid places; [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 185-207.] the drainage of wet regions; the fuller utilization of the carrying power of water to relieve the costlier use of wheels. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 164.] Making the escaping, unsatisfying stream of Sisyphus turn the mills of the gods. This is, indeed, as the writing of that ancient prophet of Israel who, in his vision of the restoration of his city and his land and the healing of its waters, saw a man with a radiant face, a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed. And wherever this man of radiant face measured he caused the waters to run in dry places and deep rivers to course where the waters were but ankle-deep; fish to swarm again in the rivers and the seas to be free of pollution; salt to come in the miry places and trees to grow upon the land with unwithering leaves and abundant meat. So have these modern prophets with optimistic faces written of their vision, only the fulfilment comes not simply of the constructive measuring of statistics. It takes some trees a hundred years to grow; and dams and reservoirs for the deepening of shallow streams are not made over night as once they were by nature, or as they grew in the vision of Ezekiel. None the less is the prophecy a long way toward fulfilment when the vision is seen. And that it has been seen is intimated by this sentence, too optimistic no doubt, from a book on the subject by one of the major prophets of conservation, recently published in America. "Conservation," he says, "has captured the nation." It is not the thrifty, nepotic, static conservation of the St. Lawrence habitant, which depends upon the self and family interest of each landholder to keep the fields enriched and to prevent the washing away of the soil. It is a dynamic and paternalistic conservation--a conservation that thinks of great dams for the restraint of waters and reservoirs for their impounding to the extent of millions or billions of cubic feet, forestation of great stretches of mountain slope, of restrictions and compulsions of other than personal and family interests--a paternalism that looks beyond the next generation or even two generations and to the feeding of other children than one's own lineal descendants--a paternalism that is not exploiting but fiduciary. It is interesting to observe again how the beginnings of this conservation have been made in the fields where stood the first hospitals for the sick among the living, the first memorials to the dead, the first schools for the children of to-day that are to be the nation of to-morrow. Here also begin to rise the structures of the thought for the day after to-morrow. The first notable assembling of men in the interest of conservation, chiefly of men already in public service--the President of the United States, the Vice-President, members of the cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, the governors of thirty-four States, representatives of the other States, the governors of the Territories, and other public officials, with a number of representatives of societies and a few guests--met in 1908, to discuss questions relative to conservation. Probably not in the history of the nation has there sat in its borders an assembly of men so widely representative. This gathering resulted in the appointment of a National Conservation Commission by the President, but Congress made no appropriation for meeting the expense of its labors; and so private enterprise and providence have undertaken the carrying out of the movement. A great body of men and women scientists, public-spirited citizens from all parts of the nation, under the presidency of Doctor Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard University, began a campaign of education to the end that ultimately and soon--before the riches have gone--this concern for the far future may become fixed in the law and conscious provision of the people. I spoke in the last chapter of Hennepin's seeing a savage making sacrifice to the spirit of the Mississippi, supposed to live under the Falls of St. Anthony. You will recall the description of the great public university beside it that represents the sacrifice of the democracy of to-day for the nation of to-morrow. Instead of the beaver-skin which the poor Indian hung in the branches of a tree near the falls as his offering, the State has hung its gift of forty million dollars for the highest training of its sons and daughters. But there is still, if possible, a nobler aspiration to put against that primitive background and beside the Indian's beaver- skin, for the gift is as yet little more than an aspiration. A few miles back from these same falls there was held in 1910 a convention of many thousands from all parts of the Union, the President of the United States and his predecessor among them, assembled under the auspices of the National Conservation Congress to consider, as they avowed, not alone their own affairs, not even the good of their children with theirs, but primarily the welfare of unborn millions as well. It cannot be assumed that all were looking so far ahead, but the declaration of principles which had called this great assemblage had in it this import--something loftier than any declaration of personal rights. It was a declaration of duty--of duty not to the past, not even to the present, but to the long, long distant future. "Recognizing the natural resources of the country as the prime basis of property and opportunity, we hold the rights of the people in these resources to be natural and inherent and justly inalienable and indefeasible; and we insist that the resources should and shall be developed, used, and conserved in ways consistent with current welfare and with the perpetuity of our people." When this or a like sentiment is framed out of the consciousness of a free people into a controlling declaration of public policy, we shall have not merely a nobler offering to put beside the beaver-skin and the university, but a document worthy to be put above our Declaration of Independence even, and an interpretation of the words "the people of the United States" in our Constitution that will give them an import beyond the highest conception of its authors. The movement which embodies this sentiment is as yet chiefly a private effort, as I have said, but its influence is beginning to run through the sentiment of the individualism which has so rapidly exploited the riches of the valley and spent with such generous hand for the immediate future. And the boundaries of public service are already enlarged in making room for the previsions of the "Children of Always," as the mankind now in the thought of conservationists may well be called. Already millions of acres of coal lands have been withdrawn from private entry, and plans are being made for the leasing of such lands; that is, the people are to keep them for their own. Like provision has also been made with respect to oil, natural gas, and phosphate fields. Forest lands to the extent of nearly two hundred million acres have been reserved as a perpetual national domain, and, in addition to this, several States have forest reservations amounting to nearly ten million acres. [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 216, 217.] The volume of forest legislation in the States is unprecedented, providing for forest service, forest study, and the prevention of forest-fires, with a prospect of laws providing for a more rigid public control of private forests. An increasing public control of waters is another noticeable trend in legislation, and their increased utilization has already been noticed. Joliet's canal has been built. Champlain's is at last completed. A President of the United States has recommended the deepening of La Salle's river. The valley is coming back to the French paths. These and many others are conservation projects only indirectly, but they intimate a thought of the future as do the heavy appropriations for the reclamation of arid and subarid regions, the government having spent seventy million dollars [Footnote: To June 1, 1912.] in such undertakings, making "one hand wash the other," as our saying is; that is, making the well-watered regions meet the expense of watering the arid. And, finally, the States are beginning to take most serious and even radical measures to encourage farmers so to till their fields as to be able to bequeath them un-impoverished to those who come after. I think it not unlikely that eventually the demos, thinking of the future, will be as paternalistic as was Louis XIV, who told the habitant of the St. Lawrence how many horses he should keep. This review of the resources of the valley of France in the midst of America, and of the forces that are now assembling to preserve for posterity its vast capital of earth, air, and water, is but an intimation of what might easily be expanded into a volume of itself. Indeed, much of my statistical material I have from a book by Doctor Charles R. Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin; but, meagre as this review is, it must give you, as it has given me, a stirring sense of the mighty reach of the paths of those few pioneers of France in those regions where the spirit of conservation is strongest. While it is true that every human life, as Carlyle has said, stands at the conflux of two eternities--the one behind him, the other before--in a sense have the material preparations, extending during a length of time that to our measurement seems an eternity, converged upon and in those pioneers of Europe in that valley; and from them has diverged a civilization that now begins to look forward in the eyes of her prophets through years that seem as another eternity. Probably, says this eminent scientist of that valley, speaking of the past, "some of the deposits at present being mined are the result of agents ... a hundred million years ago"; [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 18.] and of the future: "We hope for a future ... not to be reckoned by thousands of years but by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. And, therefore, so far as our responsibility is concerned, it is immaterial whether the coal will be exhausted in one hundred and fifty years or fifteen hundred years, or fifteen thousand years. Our responsibility to succeeding generations demands that we reduce its use to our absolute necessities, and therefore prolong its life to the utmost." [Footnote: Van Rise, p. 25.] Conservation has in such depth of years given a new perspective to the picture we have been painting of the life in that valley. The French were pioneers not merely of an exploiting individualism of a day, or of a hundred or two hundred years, not merely of a democracy thinking of an equality of the men of one generation, but also of the conserving dynamic civilization of hundreds of centuries of a people--to come back again to that best of definitions--who are the invisible multitude of spirits, the nation of yesterday and to-morrow. The French priest, kneeling over the dying Indian child in the forest hut and stealthily touching its brow with water, had vision of another immortality than that, as we know; the empire which the French explorers and adventurers hoped to build with its capital on the Rock of Quebec, or on the Rock St. Louis of the Illinois, or at the mouth of the Mississippi did not grow in the fashion of their dream, as we of course realize. But we see, on the other hand, what promise of ages has been given to the faith and adventure which found incarnation in a frontier democracy whose energy and spirit made possible the great, lusty republic of to-day, that now begins to talk of a thousand centuries. Out in that far west, in a recent autumn, the men of the standing army were set to fighting forest-fires. This has seemed to me a happy omen of what the new conservatism of the world may ask of its soldiery--the conserving not of borders but of the resources of human life and of human life itself. And so have I added another class to the inhabitants of the valley, to the precursors, the producers, the poets, and the teachers of to-morrow-the conservers of the day after to-morrow. Our great philosopher William James gave expression in one of his last utterances to a hope that every man, rich or poor, may come to serve the State (as now every man in France does his military service) in some direct duty that asks the same obedience, the same sacrifice, the same forgetting of self that is asked of the soldier--that every man by the payment of the blood tax may be able to get and keep the spirit of neighborliness, to know how to sympathize more deeply with his fellow men, and to learn the joy of disinterested doing for the nation. [Footnote: "Memories and Studies: The Moral Equivalent of War," pp. 267-296.] But in this demand and appeal of the new theory of our common responsibility, of a dynamic conservationism, is the germ of a larger patriotism than any that history has as yet defined--a patriotism that asks the lifetime service of an individualism with an all-time horizon. CHAPTER XIX THE HEART OF AMERICA In the little town of St. Die in the east of France there was printed in the year 1507 a "Cosmographias Introductio"--an introduction to a forthcoming edition of Ptolemy--in which was included an account of the journeys of one Amerigo Vespucci, who is credited with the discovery of a new part of the world--a fourth continent. For this reason, the author recites, "quarta orbis pars, quam quis Americus invenit, Amerigen quasi Americi terram, sivi Americam nuncupare licit." And so the name America (for it was thought proper to give it the feminine form, "cum et Europa et Asia a mulieribus sua sortitae sint nomina") was probably first pronounced in the mountain-circled town of St. Die, where the scholars of the Vosges, shut away from the sea and its greedy rumors of India, conceived more accurately in their isolation the significance of the western discoveries and made the new-found shores the edge not of Asia but of another continent. Perhaps this new land should have been given some other name; but that it is futile now to discuss. America it has been these four hundred years and America it is doubtless always to be. And it is particularly gratifying to one who has come to care so much for France to find that the name of his own land--a name most euphonious and delectable to his ears--came of the christening at the font of the River Meurthe, the beautiful French dame of St. Die standing by as godmother, and that that name was first whispered to the world by the trees of the forests of the Vosges, whose wood may even have furnished the blocks to fashion first its letters. So may we go back and write this interesting if not important fact of French pioneering in America. But let us rehearse to ourselves once more before we separate the epic sequence of adventure and suffering which tells how much more than a name France gave to that continent just rising from the seas when the savants of St. Die touched her face with the baptismal water of their recluse learning. Again the "boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky"--the America not of the imaging of the mountain men of St. Die but of the seeing and enduring of the seamen of Dieppe and St. Malo and Rochelle and Rouen. Again Jacques Cartier stands alone within this "shaggy continent," a thousand miles beyond the banks of the Baccalaos and the Isles of the Demons. Again for a moment Acadia echoes of the Sorbonne and of Arcadian poesy. Again the unblenching "preux chevalier" Champlain stands with his back against the gray cliff of Quebec fighting red and white foe alike, famine and disease, to keep a foothold in the wilderness, with the sublime faith of a crusader and the patient endurance of a Prometheus. Again the zealous but narrow rigor of Richelieu, flowering in his native land in the learning of the Sorbonne and preparing for him in the new world, as Le Jeune wrote, a "dazzling crown in heaven," builds by the St. Charles and the wreckage of Cartier's _Petite Hermine_, the house of Notre Dame des Anges, the "cradle of the great mission of New France." Again the fireflies light the meadow altar of Maisonneuve at Montreal on its birth- night. Again the gray gowns and the black, Le Caron, Brébeuf, Jogues, and Gamier, enter upon their glorious toils, their bare and sandalled feet, accustomed to the smooth walks of the convents of Brouage and Rheims and Paris, begin to climb the rough paths to the west, _ad majorem Dei gloriam._ Again the swift coureurs de bois, half-savage in their ambassadorship of the woods, follow the traces of the most ancient road- makers, the buffalo and deer, and the voyageurs carry their boats across the portage places. Again the _Griffin_--the winged lion of the lakes-- flies from Niagara to the island in Green Bay, France's precursor of the million-tonned commerce of the northern seas, but sinks with her cargo of golden fleece in their blue waters. Again Marquette, the son of Laon, beholds with joy unspeakable the mysterious "great water," and yet again, La Salle stands by the lonely sea and cries his proclamation toward the limitless land. And, seeing and hearing all this again, we have seen a land as large as all Europe emerge from the unknown at the evocation of pioneers of France who stood all or nearly all sooner or later in Paris within three or four kilometres of the very place in which I sit writing these words. Carder gave to the world the St. Lawrence River as far as the Falls of Lachine; Champlain, his Récollet friars and Jesuit priests and heralds of the woods added the upper lakes; and Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, Tonty, Hennepin, Radisson, Groseilliers, Iberville, Bienville, Le Sueur, La Harpe, the Vérendrye--father and sons--and scores of other Frenchmen, many of forgotten names, added the valley of the river of a hundred thousand streams, from where at the east the French creek begins, a few miles from Lake Erie, to flow toward the Ohio even to the sources of the Missouri in the snows of the Rockies--"the most magnificent dwelling-place"--again to recall De Tocqueville, "prepared by God for man's abode; the valley destined to give the world a field for a new experiment in democracy and to become the heart of America." I have not been able to write at any length of that part of all this vast region of France's pioneering and evoking where France is best remembered --remembered in speech that imitates that which is dearest to France's ears; remembered in voices that even in the harsh winds of the north keep something of the mellowness and softness of the south; remembered in the surnames that recall beautiful trees and fields of perfume and hills of vines and things of the sea which surrounded their ancestors; remembered in the appellations of the saints that protect their firesides and their fortunes; remembered in the names that still cling tenaciously to rivers and towns of that land which calls Champlain its father--Canada. A traveller in the lower St. Lawrence Valley might well think himself east of the Atlantic as he hears the guard on the railway train from Montreal to Quebec call: St. Rochs, Les Éboulements, Portneuf, Pont Rouge, Capucins, Mont Louis, Pointe au Chêne; or hears the speech as he walks at the foot of the gray Rock of Quebec, or even reads the street signs in Montreal. There are memories there on every side, in their very houses and habits--yet memories which I fear are beginning to fade with the allurements of the land of hope to the far west and the northwest of Canada--the "land of hope," the new frontier of America, now of such interest to the people of that other valley, the Mississippi, which was once separated from Canada by no boundaries save watersheds, and these so low that there was reciprocity of their waters. But even if I could keep you longer I am thinking that I should have asked you to spend it where there are fewer memories than in Canada, in the valley where the old French names, if kept at all, are often obscured in a new orthography or a different pronunciation. Up in the boundary of waters between the two lands there is a lighthouse on an island called "Skilligallee." I was a long time in discovering that this meaningless euphonic name was but the memory of the Isle aux Galets--the island of the pebbles. So have the memories been lost in tongues that could not easily frame to pronounce the words they found when they entered that farther valley where France's pioneering is almost forgotten, but where France should be best remembered. A catalogue (and this book has been little else) of the reasons for such remembrance has doubtless brought little comfort; indeed, it may have brought some pain, because the recital of the reasons has but emphasized the forgetting and accentuated the loss. But is France not to find, in a fuller consciousness of what has developed in that valley into which she led Europe, a higher satisfaction than could have come through the formal relationship of mother and colony, or any other that could be reasonably conjectured? For Turgot's prophecy would have some day been realized, and there would perhaps have been a bitterness where now there is gratitude. I can think of no series of relations that could have been of more profound and momentous import in the history of that continent, or that should give higher satisfaction to France in her thought of America than that which this summation permits us to recall once more. France not only christened America; she not only stood first far inside that continent at the north and furnished Europe proof of its mighty dimensions; she also gave to this continent, child of her christening, the richest great valley of the world. This valley she held in the title of her own claim for more than a century from the time that her explorers first looked over its brim, held it by valors and sufferings which would have been gloriously recorded if their issue had been to keep by those waters the tongue in which they could be written and sung. When France did yield it, because of forces outside the valley, not inside (there was hardly a sound of battle there), she gave it in effect to a new nation. She shared it with the aboriginal American, she gave it to the ultimate American. She got her title from the first Americans who, as Chateaubriand said, called themselves the "Children of Always." She gave it to those who are beginning to think of it as belonging not to them but to the new "Children of Always." By her very valorous holding she taught the fringe of colonies along the Atlantic the first lessons in union, and she gave them a leader out of the disciplines of her borders, George Washington, whom in the course of time she directly assisted with her sympathy and means to make certain the independence of those same colonies. He, in turn, in the paths of the Old French War across the Alleghanies, found by a most singular fate not only the indissoluble bond between the eastern and the western waters but in those very paths the practical way to the more "perfect union" of the young nation that was to succeed to this joint heritage of England and of France. To its estate of hundreds of millions of acres east of the Mississippi Napoleon added a half-billion more out of the one-time domain of Louis XIV and made it possible that the United States should some day develop into a world-power. The half-valley, enlarged to its mountain bounds through the influence of its free soil on those whose feet touched it as pioneers, nourished a natural democracy founded in the equalities, the freedoms, and the fraternities of the frontier so vital, so powerful that it became the dominant nationalistic force in a continent-wide republic. Aided by the means of communication which a rampant individualism had prepared for it, it held that republic together, expressing itself most conspicuously in the democratic soul of Lincoln--who, following La Salle down the Mississippi, found his high mission to the world--and in the masterful, resourceful generalship of Grant. The old French forts have grown into new-world cities, the portage paths have been multiplied into streets, the trails of the coureurs de bois have become railroads, and all are the noisy, flaming, smoky places and means of such an industry and exploitation as doubtless are not to be found so extensive and so intensive in any other valley of the earth. A quantitative analysis has led me to present statistics of its production and manufacture which would seem inexcusably braggart if it were not to remind the French and my own countrymen that it was the geographical descendants of France who, out of the wealth of their heritage of France's bequeathing, untouched from the glaciers and the Indians, were confuting with their wheat the prophecies of Malthus and making the whole world a more comfortable and a somewhat brighter place with their iron, their oil, their reapers, their wagons, and their sewing-machines. It were nothing to be ashamed of unless that were all. But a careful qualitative analysis discovers in the life of that valley, which has been so widely advertised by its purely quantitative output, a certain idealism that is usually obscured by the smoke of its individualism. We have seen it in the grimy ravine by old Fort Duquesne, where, like the titanium which, in what way no chemist knows, increases the tensile strength of its steel, this practical idealism gives promise of a democracy that will stand a greater stress and strain. We have seen it in the plans for the future of the city that has risen from the onion field along the Chicago River, where Marquette's spirit lived in a sick body through a bitter winter. We have seen it in the setting apart of the white acres in every township for the training of the child of to-morrow, in the higher school that stands in thousands of towns and cities throughout the valley, and in the university supported of every State in that valley, such as that which we saw beside the falls where Hennepin tells of the Indian sacrificing his beaver-skin to the river spirit. And, finally, we have seen the men of to-day, rising to that highest definition of a people--the invisible multitude of spirits, the nation of yesterday and of to-morrow--forgetting their interests of the moment, listening to the men of the universities speaking out of the past, and planning for the conservation of what they have left to them of the resources of the land for the "interests of mankind"--the true "Children of Always." This, then, is what France has prepared the way for, in one of the vast regions where she was pioneer in America. Through the venture and the faith of her sons she won the valley with a past of a million of ages; through unrecorded valors she held it as her very own for a century, and, though she lost nominal title to it as a territory, she has a ground-rent interest in it, real title to a share in its human fruitage, which time can neither take away nor cloud but only augment. The social and industrial life which has developed there by mere coincidence, or of direct cause, is distinctive and peculiar to that part of the United States which has a French background, though it now has made itself felt throughout the nation. And, however little in its feature and language the foreground may seem to take color of it, I shall always believe that the consecration of the rivers and paths, by explorations and ministries that were for the most part as unselfish as France's scholarship is to-day, must in some subtle way have had such a potency as the catalytic substances which work miracles in matter and yet are beyond the discerning of the scientist. An English essayist [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, "The Fallacy of the Young Nation," in his "Heretics," pp. 247-266.] has estimated that we of the United States are no longer young and finds in the fact that we have produced great artists the intimations of age. The art of Whistler and the letters of Henry James are to him the "sweet and startling" but "unmistakable cry of a dying man." But this essayist could not have known the men of the valley which is the heart of the nation as it is the heart of the country, the place of its dominant spirits. That valley, so rapidly exploited of its resources that it has grown ages poorer, is yet virile, youthful in its faults and its achievements. It has no "fine futility" as yet, and the cry is not "sweet" though it may be "startling." It is the shout of a young god, of a Jason driving the bulls in the fields of Colchis. The attenuations of distance may easily deceive one's ears who listens from across the ocean and the mountains. I think it was this same essayist who said that to understand a people one must study them with the "loyalty of a child" and the patience not of a scientist but of a poet. I thank him for that, while I excuse his confounding of sounds that he hears in England from America, and agree that what we need in that valley to tell its story, to interpret it, is not a specialist in statistics nor an annalist, not a critic who looks at the smoke of the chimneys and visits the slaughter-houses only, but a poet who will have the patience to consult both the statistician and the annalist, a patient poet with the "loyalty of a child" toward his theme. EPILOGUE FRANCIS PARKMAN THE HISTORIAN OF FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD I make the epilogue of this story my tribute to Francis Parkman, who has in a sense made this all possible for me: first, by reason of the love he gave me long ago for his New France with its primeval forests, its virgin prairies, its glistening rivers, its untamed Indians, its explorers, its gray and black cowls, its coureurs de bois, its stars whose light had never before looked on a white face; and second, by reason of the mass of incident and color which he has supplied for the background of the life I have known in that valley. On entering a college out in the midst of that region--the middle of the Mississippi Valley--nearly thirty years ago I was assigned, as my first important task in English, the reading and criticism of one of Parkman's books. I think that "The Oregon Trail" was suggested. I read several volumes, however, but found my interest greatest in "The Pioneers of France in the New World" and "The Jesuits in North America." What I wrote I do not now remember (nor do I wish to refresh my memory), but so persistent was the grip of those graphic relations upon my imagination that years later, when leaving the presidency of that same college, I asked to be permitted to take from the library three books (replacing them with fresher copies): the chapel Bible--from which I had been read to by my president and professors and from which I in turn had read to succeeding students--a copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene"--which my college's only poet, Eugene Field, had read through--and a volume of Parkman's on the pioneers of France. So I take the opportunity to pay my tribute to him who long ago put these figures on the frontier of my imagination, and who has prevented my ever speaking in dispassion or without favorable prejudice of them. When Parkman was leaving America for Paris in 1868, "for medical advice and research," uncertain as to whether he would ever return to take up his unfinished story of the American forest, he left in the hands of a friend a parcel, "not to be opened during his life." It is that parcel, not opened until twenty-five years later--for Parkman lived to return to America and to return again to Paris more than once, and then to go back and finish, after a full half-century of struggle with physical maladies and infirmities, the last book of the plan virtually sketched fifty years before, and with a singular felicity of coincidence named "The Half- Century of Conflict"--it is that parcel which has kept for later generations his remarkable autobiography. While on his visits in Paris he was known in a wide circle. As he himself said in writing to his sisters, "if able to accept invitations," he "would have had the run of Faubourg St. Germain." I doubt, however, if his personality is remembered by many, much less that strangely tortured life which probably gave little mark of its suffering even to those who knew him best in France. I therefore recall some of the detail of the years preceding those days when he appeared in the streets of Paris seeking health, but seeing often Margry, the "intractable yet kindly keeper" of an important department of French archives, who had in his secretive keeping documents most precious to the uses of Parkman. It is not altogether an agreeable chronicle, this autobiography. [Footnote: Printed in "Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1892- 4," series 2, 8:349-360.] It is rather like a "pathological record," and as totally unlike the pages of his books as can be well imagined. But it is an essential document. The first pages of this biography were withheld by him and so removed from the parcel; the record begins with a general characterization of his childhood. There is no detail. But there are to be found elsewhere the memories of others which tell of his boyish enjoyment of the little wilderness of joyous colors near the school to which he was sent-microcosm of the greater wilderness in which his body and then his imagination were to wander through all his mature days till his death. His own chronicle has forgotten or ignored those elysian days and has not in all its length a joyful note or a bright color. This is the summary: His childhood was neither healthful nor buoyant.... Chemical experiment was his favorite hobby, involving a lonely, confined, unwholesome sort of life, baneful to body and mind.... The age of fifteen or sixteen produced a revolution; retorts and crucibles were forever discarded.... He became enamoured of the woods, a fancy which soon gained full control over the course of his literary pursuits.... He resolved to confine his homage to the muse of history.... At the age of eighteen (born in 1823) the plan (to whose execution he gave his long life) was, in its most essential features, formed. His idea was clear before him, yet attended with unpleasant doubts as to his ability to realize it to his own satisfaction.... The task, as he then reckoned it, would require about twenty years. The time allowed was ample; but here he fell into a fatal error, entering upon this long pilgrimage with all the vehemence of one starting on a mile heat. His reliance, however, was less on books than on such personal experience as should intimately identify him with his theme. Let me here say that I have found traces of his steps at nearly every site that I have visited. He had been at Fort St. Louis, at the most important portages, and at the places where the French forts once stood. His natural inclinations urged him in the same direction, his thoughts were constantly in the forest, whose features, not unmixed with softer images, possessed his waking and sleeping dreams; he was as fond of hardships as he was vain of enduring them, cherishing a sovereign scorn for every physical weakness or defect. Moreover, deceived by a rapid development of frame and sinews which flattered him with the belief that discipline sufficiently unsparing would harden him into an athlete, he slighted precautions of a more reasonable woodcraft, tired old foresters with long marches, stopped neither for heat nor rain, and slept on the earth without a blanket.... He spent his summer vacations in the woods or in Canada, at the same time reading such books as he thought suited to help him toward his object.... While in the law school he entered in earnest on two other courses, one of general history, the other of Indian history and ethnology, studying diligently at the same time the models of English style.... There developed in him a state of mental tension, habitual for several years, and abundantly mischievous in its effects. With a mind overstrained and a body overtaxed, he was burning his candle at both ends.... A highly irritable organism spurred the writer to excess.... Labor became a passion, and rest intolerable yet with a keen appetite for social enjoyments.... His condition became that of a rider whose horse runs headlong with the bit between his teeth, or of a locomotive, built of indifferent material, under a head of steam too great for its strength, hissing at a score of crevices, yet rushing on with accelerating speed to the inevitable smash.... Soon appeared, as a sign of mischief, weakness of sight. Accordingly he went to the Rocky Mountains to rest his failing vision and to get an inside view of Indian life.... Reeling in the saddle, he set forth, attended by a Canadian hunter.... Joining the Ogallala Indians, he followed their wanderings for several weeks. To have worn the air of an invalid would have been an indiscretion, as he says, since "a horse, a rifle, a pair of pistols, and a red shirt might have offered temptations too strong for aboriginal virtue." So he hunted when he could scarcely sit upright.... To the maladies of the prairies other disorders succeeded on his return.... Flat stagnation followed, reaching its depth in eighteen months.... The desire to return to the prairie was intense, but exposure to the sunlight would have destroyed his sight.... When his condition was at its worst, he resolved to attempt the composition of the "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," for which he had been collecting material since his days in college. Suffering from extreme weakness of sight, a condition of the brain prohibiting fixed attention, and a nervous derangement, he yet set out upon this labor, using a wooden frame strung with parallel wires to guide his crayon. Books and documents were read to him, but never, without injury, for more than a half-hour at a time, and frequently not at all for days. For the first half-year he averaged six lines of composition a day. And he wrote, I suppose, at least ten hundred thousand lines. His health improving, he dictated, pacing a dark garret. He then entered upon "France in the New World." The difficulties were incalculable.... Wholly unable to use his eyes, he had before him the task of tracing out, collecting, indexing, arranging, and digesting a great mass of incongruous material, scattered on both sides of the Atlantic. He was unable to employ trained assistants and had to rely mainly on his own research, though, in some cases, receiving valuable aid of scholars and others. He used to employ as reader of French a public-school girl wholly ignorant of French (who, I suppose, gave English pronunciation to all the words), but with such help and that of members of his own family the work went on. Then came another disaster--an effusion of water on the knee which involved a close confinement for two years; and this in turn resulted in serious nervous disturbance centring in the head. These extreme conditions of disorder continued for many years.... His work was wholly interrupted for one year, four years, and numerous short intervals.... Later the condition of sight so far improved as to permit reading, not exceeding, on an average, five minutes at one time. By judicious use this modicum of power was extended. By reading for one minute and then resting for an equal time the alternate process could be continued for about half an hour, then, after a sufficient interval, repeated three or four times a day. Working under such conditions he makes this report, 1868, of progress: "Most of the material is collected or within reach; another volume, on the Jesuits of North America, is one- third written; another, on the French explorers of the Great West, is half written; while a third, devoted to the checkered career of Comte de Frontenac, is partially arranged for composition." During this period he had made many journeys in the United States and Canada for material, and had been four times in Europe.... He wonders as to the advantage of this tortoise pace, but says in conclusion that, "irksome as may be the requirements of conditions so anomalous, they are far less oppressive than the necessity they involve of being busied with the Past when the Present has claims so urgent, and of holding the pen with the hand that should have grasped the sword" (for he was greatly disappointed that he could not enter the army at the time of the Civil War). I have made this rather extensive summary of the singular autobiography-- and largely in the author's own words--not to prepare your minds for lenient judgments of his work, but to inform them of the tenacious purpose of the man whose infirmities of the knees kept him most of his life from the wild forest trails and streams and compelled him to a wheel-chair in gardens of tame roses; whose weakness of the eyes allowed him but inadequate vision of the splendor of the woods and even robbed him of the intimacy of books; whose malady of mind kept him ever in terror of devils more fierce than the inhuman tortures of Jogues and Brébeuf--a tenacious purpose that wrought its youth-selected, self-appointed work, and so well, so splendidly, so thoroughly that it needs never to be done again. One of his friends, in a memoir of Parkman, recalls an observation of Sainte-Beuve, in his paper on Taine's "English Literature," that has found its best illustration in what Parkman accomplished in spite of lameness, blindness, and mental distress: "All things considered, every allowance being made for general or particular elements and for circumstances, there still remain place and space enough around men of talent, wherein they can move and turn themselves with entire freedom. And, moreover, were the circle drawn round each a very contracted one, every man of talent, every genius, in so far as he is in some degree a magician and an enchanter, possesses a secret entirely his own, whereby to perform prodigies within this circle and work wonders there." [Footnote: "Nouveaux Lundis," vol. VIII, English translation in "English Portraits," p. 243.] This autobiography has shown how short was the radius of the circle. The twelve volumes of his work attest, under Sainte-Beuve's definition, the degree of his powers of magic and enchantment. Men of strong knees, of good eyes, and of brains that do not keep them from sleep by night or from work by day, have travelled over this same field, but of most that they gathered it may be said: "To no such aureate earth 'tis turned as, buried once, men want dug up again." I have sat for days in the Harvard University Library among the books bequeathed to it by Parkman (being the greater part of the library which surrounded him in his work--books of history, of travel, and of biography; books about Indians, flints, and folk-lore; maps and guides-among them several guides to Paris--only twenty-five hundred volumes in all); but they are not the material of his magic. His work was not legerdemain, skilful manipulation, but recreation, and he found the aureate earth in the forests, on the prairies, and in documents contemporary to his theme. In a cabinet (bearing in its carving suggestions of the fleur-de-lis) in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society, I found some of this precious material, also bequeathed by the historian. Its nature is suggested in the preface to his "Montcalm and Wolfe." "A very large amount," he says, "of unpublished material has been used in its preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the archives and libraries of France and England. The papers copied for the present work ["Montcalm and Wolfe"] in France alone, exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional and supplementary to the 'Paris Documents' procured for the State of New York.... The copies made in England form ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this [_i.e._, American] side of the Atlantic." But even these were as the dry bones in the valley which Ezekiel saw, till he touched these scattered fragments with his genius. The process employed by the blind workman is described by Frothingham, one of his friends: "The manuscripts were read over to him, slowly, one by one. First the chief points were considered, then the details of the story were gone over carefully and minutely. As the reading went on, he made notes, first of essential and then of non-essential. After this he welded everything together, made the narrative completely his own, infused into it his own fire, quickened it by his own imagination, and made it as it were a living experience, so that his books read like personal reminiscences." [Footnote: "Memoirs of Francis Parkman," in "Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1892-4," series 2, 8:555.] In a book of Parkman memorabilia of various kinds which I found in the Harvard Library, I happened one day upon a few scraps of paper which furnish illustration of the first steps of the process--paper on which were notes made in Parkman's own hand: "Deserts covered with bones of buffalo and elk"; "No sign of man from Fort Union to Fort Mackenzie"; "White clay, cactus dried up, grasshoppers"; "Poplars,--wild roses,--gooseberries"; "prairie dogs,--heat,--aridity"; "extraordinary castellated mountains, stone walls,--etc. above Fort Union"; "in 1832 Blackfeet are said to have killed 58 whites, three years before, 80"; "Blackfeet do not eat dogs--Blackfeet Societies--beaver traps lent to Blackfeet"; "wood near Fort Clark chiefly poplar"; "fossils-- terres mauvaises"; "maize cultivated by Mandans"; "catching the war eagle"; "Mandans etc. agricultural tribes"; "wolf-pits described"; "Exceptional cold Ft. Clark"; "Wolf attacked three women;--wooden carts no iron"; "Barren Mts. little dells with water,--gooseberries, strawberries, currants, very few trees, mad river." But these and many other notes on scraps of blue paper in his hand have significance only in their translation, transfusion into the color or detail of some of his wonderful pictures. Somewhere in his books I felt certain, when reading these notes, I should find those poplars growing on the plains with wild roses and gooseberry bushes not far away; some day I should come to the barren mountains and the dells with water, or should hear the roaring of the mad river and witness the catching of the war- eagle. Indeed, some of these very notes had entered, as I found, into the description of that lonely journey of the brothers Vérendrye as they passed through the bad lands (terres mauvaises of the notes), where the clay is sometimes white as chalk and the barren, castellated bluffs, "carved into fantastic shapes by the storms," stand about. "For twenty days the travellers saw no human being [see note above], so scanty was the population of these plains. Game, however, was abundant. Deer sprang from the tall reed grass of the river bottoms; buffalo tramped by in ponderous columns, or dotted the swells of the distant prairie with their grazing thousands; antelope approached, with the curiosity of their species, to gaze at the passing horsemen, then fled like the wind; and as they neared the broken uplands towards the Yellowstone, they saw troops of elk (later their bones) and flocks of mountain-sheep. Sometimes, for miles together, the dry plain was studded thick with the earthen mounds that marked the burrows of the curious marmots, called prairie dogs from their squeaking bark. Wolves, white and gray, howled about the camp at night, and their cousin, the coyote, seated in the dusk of evening upright on the grass, with nose turned to the sky, saluted them with a complication of yelpings, as if a score of petulant voices were pouring together from the throat of one small beast." [Footnote: Parkman, "Half-Century of Conflict," 2 23, 24.] It is impossible to know how much of this came from his own actual seeing (for in his journey over the Oregon trail he had passed near the trail of the Vérendrye brothers) and how much came from those scraps of color and incident picked up in his blindness from varied sources; nor is it of consequence, except as it connotes something of the quality and character of his genius, for it is all accurate and the brave brothers Vérendrye move as living men across it. He was able to revivify a dusty document as well as a personal experience. "To him," as Mr. Barrett Wendell said out of an intimate acquaintance with him and his work, "a document of whatever kind,--a state paper, a Jesuit 'relation,' the diary of a provincial soldier, the record of a Yankee church,--was merely the symbol of a fact which had once been as real as his own hardships among the western Indians, or as the lifetime of physical suffering, which never bent his will." [Footnote: "Proceedings American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1893-4," 29:439.] I have never read "The Oregon Trail" with the same keen enthusiasm as his other books, largely, I think, because it is a mere report of personal adventure and not a composition fused of his imagination. It is an excellent photograph by the side of a master's painting. But all this accuracy of detail, this revivifying of dead Indians, knights, voyageurs and soldiers, this painting of prairie, forest, and mountain, was not in itself to put him among the world's great historians. And, indeed, there are those who, appreciating the artist's skill, have expressed regret that he gave this skill to no great theme. It is as if he were (they would doubtless say) writing of the labors of sacrificing missionaries in Africa, or of colonial administration in Indo-China, or of forest adventure along the Amazon. In the Boston Public Library I found that every work of his had duplicate copies in the boys' department. (And how great the reading is to this day is intimated by my inability one evening to get a copy of "Pontiac's War," though there were several copies in the possession of the library. A reserve had finally to be called in.) But I should say that this double classification intimated rather the genuine human interest of his story, appealing alike to men and to boys (as the greatest of human writings do)--a work "for all mankind and for all time." But I should go beyond this. His books are not merely of elemental entertainment. He has seized the most fundamental, far-reaching, and consequential of themes. He found going on in his forest, of which he set out to write, not merely flame-lighted scalpings and official rapacities and picturesque maraudings and quixotic pageants and the like. His theme was even greater than the mere gathering of all these raids and rapacities and maraudings and pageants into an informed racial, national struggle for the possession of a continent. It was nothing less than the grappling, out on the frontier of the world, between two principles of organized human life. The forests are so demanding, the incidents so stirring in themselves, that many have doubtless missed the high theme that expressed itself there. But that theme possessed its author, and it possesses every sensitive reader as some fateful, recurring, tragic melody in an opera full of diverting incident and picturesque figures. Parkman is more likely to keep his generalizations within the overture, but frequently one gives summary to an act or scene, so that even he who comes for entertainment can hardly miss the significance of it all; though, as Mr. Wendell has said, to borrow again from his, the best, brief tribute: "Parkman was very sparing of generalization, of philosophic comment," whether from overconsciousness or from the intrusion of his malady which forbade long-continued thought. He made the course of events carry its own philosophy. Several noble and notable generalizations have, however, already thrust themselves into these chapters to illustrate his appreciation of the loftiness of his theme, his candor, and his genuine sympathy with those to whose ill-fated heroism he gave such "precious testimony." One has only to associate with the persistent, clearly outlined purpose of a half-century a realization of the completeness of its achievement to be stirred, as by the victory not of a fortuitously reckless assault but of a long, carefully planned campaign. Among his papers (in the fleur-de-lis cabinet of which I have spoken) there are the first prophecies: two maps of the Lake George (Champlain) region drawn by him on the inside of a red portfolio cover, marked 1842, when he was nineteen years old; and next an odd-covered blank book in which he began his note-making on the "Old French War," with such notes as these: "Rights of the two nations"; "When did Marquette make his discoveries?" "When did La Salle settle?" "Had not the French a right both of prior discovery and prior settlement?" "The English never settled"; "The letters patent to Louisiana are preposterous, perhaps, but not more so than the English claim from coasts back of the Mississippi"; "The first blood was spilt by Washington. Jumonville would seem to have been sent with peaceful intentions. His orders charged him to attack the French." The title is written in a strong hand, but before he has half filled the little book he makes entry that the "French War" is laid aside, for the time, for the history of "Pontiac's War," and thus the latter part of this thin note-book grew into "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," and that in turn became sequel to the whole series of which it also was the promise, a series of books so closely related that John Fiske speaks of them as "one book." The scope, to be sure, is a restricted one. He has two great wildernesses to cover, but it is a century and a half after the epic narrative begins before enough people enter to prevent one from keeping track of all of them. It is as if he were writing the history of man, from the last day of creation forward, starting with a few transmigrant souls still under the control of their oversea existence. He begins at the beginning, with not even a twilight zone of tradition and with a stage "far more primitive than that which is depicted in the Odyssey or even Genesis." Cartier's route is as well known as that of the steamship that sailed yesterday through the "Square Gulf," if the ice permitted, and the incidents of his first days beyond the gates of the first wilderness have been as accurately recorded, to say the least, as are yesterday's events yonder in the morning's papers here. And when his story ends, there are not as many people in the two great valleys along the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi as in a good-sized city to-day. But none the less, as I have said, are the forces (fighting in and through these few representatives of civilization) age-old and world-important. Never has historian had such fascinating theme--such "epic theme," says Fiske--"save when Herodotus told the story of Greece and Persia, or when Gibbon's pages resounded with the marshalled hosts through a thousand years of change." And Parkman met one of what Lowell calls "the convincing tests of genius" in the choice of this subject. When John Fiske said at the Harvard exercises in memory of Parkman that he was one of the world's greatest historians, I subtracted something because of the occasion and the nearness of view. But a year later he is saying of Parkman's work, in a critical review: "Strong in its individuality and like to nothing besides, it clearly belongs, I think, among the world's few masterpieces of the highest rank, along with the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Gibbon." [Footnote: _Atlantic Monthly_, 73:674; "A Century of Science and Other Essays," p. 264.] There will never be such a story to write again, for the frontier of forest and prairie has disappeared. It is now in the midst of cities where civilizations grapple in their smoke and turmoil. So shall we hold even more precious his gift and thank Heaven for "sending us such a scholar, such an artist, such a genius before it was too late to catch the fleeting light and fix it upon immortal canvas." Among the writings of Francis Parkman there are a few pages--known not even to a score of his readers, I suppose--which might very well be printed in summary of his great work--though they find no place in any volume--for the symbol they carry of his achievement. These few pages make a leaflet--a reprint of a paper contributed to the _Botanical Bulletin_ in 1878 by "Francis Parkman, late Professor of Horticulture at the Bussey Institution," and entitled "The Hybridization of Lilies." In this brief paper is related the story of Parkman's own attempts, extending through seven years, to combine certain well-established varieties of lilies, and especially two superb lilies--the "Speciosum" (_Lancifolium_) and the "Auratum,"--the pollen of the latter being carried to the deanthered flowers of the former. The patient, anxious, exquisite care with which he carried on these experiments suggests the infinite pains with which he gathered and classified and sifted and weighed his historical material (his material of "France Speciosum" and of "France Auratum"). The result of his floral experiment, the wonderfully beautiful flower which he produced, described in a London horticultural magazine as the "grandest flowering plant yet introduced into our gardens," and known as the "Lilium Parkmanni," is suggestive of his achievement in so depicting and defining that civilization which is symbolized by the lily, the fleur-de-lis, in its strange, wild, highly colored flowering on the prairies and by the rivers of Nouvelle France, as to make it for all time identified with his memory and name. He lived among roses of his own growing, through his later invalid years, in the outskirts of Boston. He even wrote a book about roses. But his peculiar triumph (the one flower that lingers in gardens carrying a memory of him) is a "magnificent" lily. And though he lived amid the heritages of the English, in the new continent, with fair mind and most acute and industrious, he has preserved the hybrid heritages of the French spirit in the American regions--heritages that, save for his research lighted by imagination, might never have blossomed in the pages of history. 
30849	----	THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON SWANSTON EDITION VOLUME XX _Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies have been printed, of which only Two Thousand Copies are for sale._ _This is No. ........._ [Illustration: R. L. S. IN THE BOW OF THE SCHOONER "EQUATOR"] THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON VOLUME TWENTY LONDON : PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND WINDUS : IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED : WILLIAM HEINEMANN : AND LONGMANS GREEN AND COMPANY MDCCCCXII ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS ST. IVES CHAPTER PAGE I. A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT 3 II. A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS 16 III. MAJOR CHEVENIX COMES INTO THE STORY AND GOGUELAT GOES OUT 23 IV. ST. IVES GETS A BUNDLE OF BANK-NOTES 34 V. ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE 42 VI. THE ESCAPE 50 VII. SWANSTON COTTAGE 60 VIII. THE HEN-HOUSE 68 IX. THREE IS COMPANY, AND FOUR NONE 75 X. THE DROVERS 88 XI. THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 99 XII. I FOLLOW A COVERED CART NEARLY TO MY DESTINATION 110 XIII. I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN 122 XIV. TRAVELS OF THE COVERED CART 131 XV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK 138 XVI. THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY'S VISCOUNT 154 XVII. THE DESPATCH-BOX 163 XVIII. MR. ROMAINE CALLS ME NAMES 172 XIX. THE DEVIL AND ALL AT AMERSHAM PLACE 182 XX. AFTER THE STORM 193 XXI. I BECOME THE OWNER OF A CLARET-COLOURED CHAISE 204 XXII. CHARACTER AND ACQUIREMENTS OF MR. ROWLEY 214 XXIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE RUNAWAY COUPLE 224 XXIV. THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE 236 XXV. I MEET A CHEERFUL EXTRAVAGANT 244 XXVI. THE COTTAGE AT NIGHT 251 XXVII. THE SABBATH-DAY 261 XXVIII. EVENTS OF MONDAY: THE LAWYER'S PARTY 272 XXIX. EVENTS OF TUESDAY: THE TOILS CLOSING 286 XXX. EVENTS OF WEDNESDAY: THE UNIVERSITY OF CRAMOND 298 _The remaining Chapters are by_ A. T. QUILLER-COUCH XXXI. EVENTS OF THURSDAY: THE ASSEMBLY BALL 310 XXXII. EVENTS OF FRIDAY MORNING: THE CUTTING OF THE GORDIAN KNOT 327 XXXIII. THE INCOMPLETE AËRONAUTS 340 XXXIV. CAPTAIN COLENSO 359 XXXV. IN PARIS.--ALAIN PLAYS HIS LAST CARD 378 XXXVI. I GO TO CLAIM FLORA 394 ST. IVES BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A FRENCH PRISONER IN ENGLAND ST. IVES CHAPTER I A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT It was in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at last into the hands of the enemy. My knowledge of the English language had marked me out for a certain employment. Though I cannot conceive a soldier refusing to incur the risk, yet to be hanged for a spy is a disgusting business; and I was relieved to be held a prisoner of war. Into the Castle of Edinburgh, standing in the midst of that city on the summit of an extraordinary rock, I was cast with several hundred fellow-sufferers, all privates like myself, and the more part of them, by an accident, very ignorant, plain fellows. My English, which had brought me into that scrape, now helped me very materially to bear it. I had a thousand advantages. I was often called to play the part of an interpreter, whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in relations, sometimes of mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the officers in charge. A young lieutenant singled me out to be his adversary at chess, a game in which I was extremely proficient, and would reward me for my gambits with excellent cigars. The major of the battalion took lessons of French from me while at breakfast, and was sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal. Chevenix was his name. He was stiff as a drum-major and selfish as an Englishman, but a fairly conscientious pupil and a fairly upright man. Little did I suppose that his ramrod body and frozen face would, in the end, step in between me and all my dearest wishes; that upon this precise, regular, icy soldier-man my fortunes should so nearly shipwreck! I never liked, but yet I trusted him; and though it may seem but a trifle, I found his snuff-box with the bean in it come very welcome. For it is strange how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back in life; so that after but a little while in prison, which is after all the next thing to being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in the most pitiful, childish interests, and a sugar-biscuit or a pinch of snuff become things to follow after and scheme for! We made but a poor show of prisoners. The officers had been all offered their parole, and had taken it. They lived mostly in suburbs of the city, lodging with modest families, and enjoyed their freedom and supported the almost continual evil tidings of the Emperor as best they might. It chanced I was the only gentleman among the privates who remained. A great part were ignorant Italians, of a regiment that had suffered heavily in Catalonia. The rest were mere diggers of the soil, treaders of grapes, or hewers of wood, who had been suddenly and violently preferred to the glorious state of soldiers. We had but the one interest in common: each of us who had any skill with his fingers passed the hours of his captivity in the making of little toys and _articles of Paris_; and the prison was daily visited at certain hours by a concourse of people of the country, come to exult over our distress, or--it is more tolerant to suppose--their own vicarious triumph. Some moved among us with a decency of shame or sympathy. Others were the most offensive personages in the world, gaped at us as if we had been baboons, sought to evangelise us to their rustic, northern religion, as though we had been savages, or tortured us with intelligence of disasters to the arms of France. Good, bad, and indifferent, there was one alleviation to the annoyance of these visitors; for it was the practice of almost all to purchase some specimen of our rude handiwork. This led, amongst the prisoners, to a strong spirit of competition. Some were neat of hand, and (the genius of the French being always distinguished) could place upon sale little miracles of dexterity and taste. Some had a more engaging appearance; fine features were found to do as well as fine merchandise, and an air of youth in particular (as it appealed to the sentiment of pity in our visitors) to be a source of profit. Others, again, enjoyed some acquaintance with the language, and were able to recommend the more agreeably to purchasers such trifles as they had to sell. To the first of these advantages I could lay no claim, for my fingers were all thumbs. Some at least of the others I possessed; and finding much entertainment in our commerce, I did not suffer my advantages to rust. I have never despised the social arts, in which it is a national boast that every Frenchman should excel. For the approach of particular sorts of visitors I had a particular manner of address, and even of appearance, which I could readily assume and change on the occasion rising. I never lost an opportunity to flatter either the person of my visitor, if it should be a lady, or, if it should be a man, the greatness of his country in war. And in case my compliments should miss their aim, I was always ready to cover my retreat with some agreeable pleasantry, which would often earn me the name of an "oddity" or a "droll fellow." In this way, although I was so left-handed a toy-maker, I made out to be rather a successful merchant; and found means to procure many little delicacies and alleviations, such as children or prisoners desire. I am scarcely drawing the portrait of a very melancholy man. It is not indeed my character; and I had, in a comparison with my comrades, many reasons for content. In the first place, I had no family: I was an orphan and a bachelor; neither wife nor child awaited me in France. In the second, I had never wholly forgot the emotions with which I first found myself a prisoner; and although a military prison be not altogether a garden of delights, it is still preferable to a gallows. In the third, I am almost ashamed to say it, but I found a certain pleasure in our place of residence: being an obsolete and really mediæval fortress, high placed and commanding extraordinary prospects, not only over sea, mountain, and champaign, but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly, although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite as ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen leagues into the bargain. The first of my troubles, indeed, was the costume we were obliged to wear. There is a horrible practice in England to trick out in ridiculous uniforms, and as it were to brand in mass, not only convicts but military prisoners, and even the children in charity schools. I think some malignant genius had found his masterpiece of irony in the dress which we were condemned to wear: jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or mustard yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white striped cotton. It was conspicuous, it was cheap, it pointed us out to laughter--we, who were old soldiers, used to arms, and some of us showing noble scars,--like a set of lugubrious zanies at a fair. The old name of that rock on which our prison stood was (I have heard since then) the "Painted Hill." Well, now it was all painted a bright yellow with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers who guarded us being of course the essential British red rag, we made up together the elements of a lively picture of hell. I have again and again looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger rise, and choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The more part, as I have said, were peasants; somewhat bettered perhaps by the drill-sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed, you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy, and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would but point the insult of the travesty. And I remembered the days when I wore the coarse but honourable coat of a soldier; and remembered further back how many of the noble, the fair, and the gracious had taken a delight to tend my childhood.... But I must not recall these tender and sorrowful memories twice; their place is further on, and I am now upon another business. The perfidy of the Britannic Government stood nowhere more openly confessed than in one particular of our discipline: that we were shaved twice in the week. To a man who has loved all his life to be fresh shaven, can a more irritating indignity be devised? Monday and Thursday were the days. Take the Thursday, and conceive the picture I must present by Sunday evening! And Saturday, which was almost as bad, was the great day for visitors. Those who came to our market were of all qualities, men and women, the lean and the stout, the plain and the fairly pretty. Sure, if people at all understood the power of beauty, there would be no prayers addressed except to Venus; and the mere privilege of beholding a comely woman is worth paying for. Our visitors, upon the whole, were not much to boast of; and yet, sitting in a corner and very much ashamed of myself and my absurd appearance, I have again and again tasted the finest, the rarest, and the most ethereal pleasures in a glance of an eye that I should never see again--and never wanted to. The flower of the hedgerow and the star in heaven satisfy and delight us: how much more the look of that exquisite being who was created to bear and rear, to madden and rejoice, mankind! There was one young lady in particular, about eighteen or nineteen, tall, of a gallant carriage, and with a profusion of hair in which the sun found threads of gold. As soon as she came in the courtyard (and she was a rather frequent visitor) it seemed I was aware of it. She had an air of angelic candour, yet of a high spirit; she stepped like a Diana, every movement was noble and free. One day there was a strong east wind; the banner was straining at the flagstaff; below us the smoke of the city chimneys blew hither and thither in a thousand crazy variations; and away out on the Forth we could see the ships lying down to it and scudding. I was thinking what a vile day it was, when she appeared. Her hair blew in the wind with changes of colour; her garments moulded her with the accuracy of sculpture; the ends of her shawl fluttered about her ear and were caught in again with an inimitable deftness. You have seen a pool on a gusty day, how it suddenly sparkles and flashes like a thing alive? So this lady's face had become animated and coloured; and as I saw her standing, somewhat inclined, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes, I could have clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim her a genuine daughter of the winds. What put it in my head, I know not: perhaps because it was a Thursday and I was new from the razor; but I determined to engage her attention no later than that day. She was approaching that part of the court in which I sat with my merchandise, when I observed her handkerchief to escape from her hands and fall to the ground; the next moment the wind had taken it up and carried it within my reach. I was on foot at once: I had forgot my mustard-coloured clothes, I had forgot the private soldier and his salute. Bowing deeply, I offered her the slip of cambric. "Madam," said I, "your handkerchief. The wind brought it me." I met her eyes fully. "I thank you, sir," said she. "The wind brought it me," I repeated. "May I not take it for an omen? You have an English proverb, 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.'" "Well," she said, with a smile, "'One good turn deserves another.' I will see what you have." She followed me to where my wares were spread out under lee of a piece of cannon. "Alas, mademoiselle!" said I, "I am no very perfect craftsman. This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry. You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. _Failures for Sale_ should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum." I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. "Strange, is it not," I added, "that a grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and a sad heart produce anything so funny to look at?" An unpleasant voice summoned her at this moment by the name of Flora, and she made a hasty purchase and rejoined her party. A few days after she came again. But I must first tell you how she came to be so frequent. Her aunt was one of those terrible British old maids of which the world has heard much; and having nothing whatever to do, and a word or two of French, she had taken what she called an _interest in the French prisoners_. A big, bustling, bold old lady, she flounced about our market-place with insufferable airs of patronage and condescension. She bought, indeed, with liberality, but her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass, and playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any gratitude. She had a tail behind her of heavy, obsequious old gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to whom she appeared to be an oracle. "This one can really carve prettily: is he not a quiz with his big whiskers?" she would say. "And this one," indicating myself with her gold eye-glass, "is, I assure you, quite an oddity." The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth. She had a way of standing in our midst, nodding around, and addressing us in what she imagined to be French: "_Bienne, hommes! ça va bienne_?" I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo: "_Bienne, femme! ça va couci-couci tout d'même, la bourgeoise_!" And at that, when we had all laughed, with a little more heartiness than was entirely civil, "I told you he was quite an oddity!" says she in triumph. Needless to say, these passages were before I had remarked the niece. The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more than usually large, which she manoeuvred to and fro about the market and lectured to at rather more than usual length, and with rather less than her accustomed tact. I kept my eyes down, but they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite in vain. The aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the crowd, and on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at last as she had come, without a sign. Closely as I had watched her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for an instant; and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and blackness. I tore out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for ever; I laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the night. How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would wholly blind them to his merits. I was a prisoner, a slave, a contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering countrymen. I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future should have the chance to think I had looked at her with admiration. You cannot imagine any one of a more resolute and independent spirit, or whose bosom was more wholly mailed with patriotic arrogance, than I. Before I dropped asleep, I had remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an overwhelming column to Flora. The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was some one standing near; and behold, it was herself! I kept my seat, at first in the confusion of my mind, later on from policy; and she stood, and leaned a little over me, as in pity. She was very still and timid; her voice was low. Did I suffer in my captivity? she asked me. Had I to complain of any hardship? "Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain," said I. "I am a soldier of Napoleon." She sighed. "At least you must regret _La France_," said she, and coloured a little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a pretty strangeness of accent. "What am I to say?" I replied. "If you were carried from this country, for which you seem so wholly suited, where the very rains and winds seem to become you like ornaments, would you regret, do you think? We must surely all regret! the son to his mother, the man to his country; these are native feelings." "You have a mother?" she asked. "In heaven, mademoiselle," I answered. "She, and my father also, went by the same road to heaven as so many others of the fair and brave: they followed their queen upon the scaffold. So, you see, I am not so much to be pitied in my prison," I continued: "there are none to wait for me; I am alone in the world. 'Tis a different case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap. His bed is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself. He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments; and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart. Do you know what made him take me for a confidant?" She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak. The look burned all through me with a sudden vital heat. "Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his village!" I continued. "The circumstance is quaint enough. It seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts that make life beautiful, and people and places dear--and from which it would seem I am cut off!" I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground. I had been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry she should go: an impression is a thing so delicate to produce and so easy to overthrow! Presently she seemed to make an effort. "I will take this toy," she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in my hand, and was gone ere I could thank her. I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun. The beauty, the expression of her eyes, the tear that had trembled there, the compassion in her voice, and a kind of wild elegance that consecrated the freedom of her movements, all combined to enslave my imagination and inflame my heart. What had she said? Nothing to signify; but her eyes had met mine, and the fire they had kindled burned inextinguishably in my veins. I loved her; and I did not fear to hope. Twice I had spoken with her; and in both interviews I had been well inspired, I had engaged her sympathies, I had found words that she must remember, that would ring in her ears at night upon her bed. What mattered if I were half-shaved and my clothes a caricature? I was still a man, and I had drawn my image on her memory. I was still a man, and, as I trembled to realise, she was still a woman. Many waters cannot quench love; and love, which is the law of the world, was on my side. I closed my eyes, and she sprang up on the background of the darkness, more beautiful than in life. "Ah!" thought I, "and you too, my dear, you too must carry away with you a picture, that you are still to behold again and still to embellish. In the darkness of night, in the streets by day, still you are to have my voice and face, whispering, making love for me, encroaching on your shy heart. Shy as your heart is, _it_ is lodged there--_I_ am lodged there; let the hours do their office--let time continue to draw me ever in more lively, ever in more insidious colours." And then I had a vision of myself, and burst out laughing. A likely thing, indeed, that a beggar-man, a private soldier, a prisoner in a yellow travesty, was to awake the interest of this fair girl! I would not despair; but I saw the game must be played fine and close. It must be my policy to hold myself before her, always in a pathetic or pleasing attitude; never to alarm or startle her; to keep my own secret locked in my bosom like a story of disgrace, and let hers (if she could be induced to have one) grow at its own rate; to move just so fast, and not by a hair's-breadth any faster, than the inclination of her heart. I was the man, and yet I was passive, tied by the foot in prison. I could not go to her; I must cast a spell upon her at each visit, so that she should return to me; and this was a matter of nice management. I had done it the last time--it seemed impossible she should not come again after our interview; and for the next I had speedily ripened a fresh plan. A prisoner, if he has one great disability for a lover, has yet one considerable advantage: there is nothing to distract him, and he can spend all his hours ripening his love and preparing its manifestations. I had been then some days upon a piece of carving--no less than the emblem of Scotland, the Lion Rampant. This I proceeded to finish with what skill I was possessed of; and when at last I could do no more to it (and, you may be sure, was already regretting I had done so much), added on the base the following dedication: À LA BELLE FLORA LE PRISONNIER RECONNAISSANT A. D. ST. Y. D. K. I put my heart into the carving of these letters. What was done with so much ardour, it seemed scarce possible that any should behold with indifference; and the initials would at least suggest to her my noble birth. I thought it better to suggest: I felt that mystery was my stock-in-trade; the contrast between my rank and manners, between my speech and my clothing, and the fact that she could only think of me by a combination of letters, must all tend to increase her interest and engage her heart. This done, there was nothing left for me but to wait and to hope. And there is nothing further from my character: in love and in war, I am all for the forward movement; and these days of waiting made my purgatory. It is a fact that I loved her a great deal better at the end of them, for love comes, like bread, from a perpetual rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny addition to the prison fare? Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and to-day I have not the courage to remember; but at last she was there. At last I saw her approach me in the company of a boy about her own age, and whom I divined at once to be her brother. I rose and bowed in silence. "This is my brother, Mr. Ronald Gilchrist," said she. "I have told him of your sufferings. He is so sorry for you!" "It is more than I have the right to ask," I replied; "but among gentlefolk these generous sentiments are natural. If your brother and I were to meet in the field, we should meet like tigers; but when he sees me here disarmed and helpless, he forgets his animosity." (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this beardless champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.) "Ah, my dear young lady," I continued, "there are many of your countrymen languishing in my country, even as I do here. I can but hope there is found some French lady to convey to each of them the priceless consolation of her sympathy. You have given me alms; and more than alms--hope; and while you were absent I was not forgetful. Suffer me to be able to tell myself that I have at least tried to make a return; and for the prisoner's sake deign to accept this trifle." So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke out with a cry-- "Why, how did you know my name?" she exclaimed. "When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed," said I, bowing. "But indeed, there was no magic in the matter. A lady called you by name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I was quick to remark and cherish it." "It is very, very beautiful," said she, "and I shall be always proud of the inscription.--Come, Ronald, we must be going." She bowed to me as a lady bows to her equal, and passed on (I could have sworn) with a heightened colour. I was overjoyed: my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my gift without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace till she had made it up to me. No greenhorn in matters of the heart, I was besides aware that I had now a resident ambassador at the court of my lady. The lion might be ill chiselled; it was mine. My hands had made and held it; my knife--or, to speak more by the mark, my rusty nail--had traced those letters; and simple as the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was grateful and that I found her fair. The boy had looked like a gawky, and blushed at a compliment; I could see besides that he regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he made so manly a figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my sympathy. And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I could not sufficiently admire it. It seemed to me finer than wit, and more tender than a caress. It said (plain as language), "I do not and I cannot know you. Here is my brother--you can know him; this is the way to me--follow it." CHAPTER II A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that discharged our visitors into the street. Our little market was no sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according to fancy in any part of our quarters. I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed--as the sightseers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were susceptible beyond reason. Some of these old whiskerandos, originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies, and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations, could ill brook their change of circumstance. There was one man of the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was otherwise unfitted--that of _maréchal des logis_ in the 22nd of the line. In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good soldier; the Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in all things outside his line of duty the man was no other than a brawling, bruising, ignorant pillar of low pothouses. As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest victim, and too often on myself. It was so now. Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing near. He wore an air of hateful mirth, a set of young fools, among whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation; and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable pleasantries. He took a place beside me, spread out his rations, drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began. What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among the gravel. For my part, I thought at first I should have died. I had not dreamed the wretch was so observant; but hate sharpens the ears, and he had counted our interviews and actually knew Flora by her name. Gradually my coolness returned to me, accompanied by a volume of living anger that surprised myself. "Are you nearly done?" I asked. "Because if you are, I am about to say a word or two myself." "O, fair play!" said he. "Turnabout! The Marquis of Carabas to the tribune." "Very well," said I. "I have to inform you that I am a gentleman. You do not know what that means, hey? Well, I will tell you. It is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The lion is a gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and, do not say a word, or I shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us. Here is your health!" said I, and pledged him in the prison beer. "You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child," I continued, "who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to me and some others of us mendicants. If the Emperor"--saluting--"if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from your gross body. I cannot do that; I cannot take away what his Majesty has given; but one thing I promise you--I promise you, Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night." I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought there was no end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed. But I have the pleasure to think that some of my expressions had pierced through his thick hide; and besides, the brute was truly a hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself. Whatever the cause, at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the thing (to do him justice) handsomely. "And I promise you, by the devil's horns, that you shall have the chance!" said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him scrupulous honour. The news of this defiance spread from prisoner to prisoner with the speed of wings; every face was seen to be illuminated like those of the spectators at a horse-race; and indeed you must first have tasted the active life of a soldier, and then mouldered for a while in the tedium of a gaol, in order to understand, perhaps even to excuse, the delight of our companions. Goguelat and I slept in the same squad, which greatly simplified the business; and a committee of honour was accordingly formed of our shed-mates. They chose for president a sergeant-major in the 4th Dragoons, a greybeard of the army, an excellent military subject, and a good man. He took the most serious view of his functions, visited us both, and reported our replies to the committee. Mine was of a decent firmness. I told him the young lady of whom Goguelat had spoken had on several occasions given me alms. I reminded him that, if we were now reduced to hold out our hands and sell pill boxes for charity, it was something very new for soldiers of the Empire. We had all seen bandits standing at a corner of a wood truckling for copper halfpence, and after their benefactors were gone spitting out injuries and curses. "But," said I, "I trust that none of us will fall so low. As a Frenchman and a soldier, I owe that young child gratitude, and am bound to protect her character, and to support that of the army. You are my elder and my superior: tell me if I am not right." He was a quiet-mannered old fellow, and patted me with three fingers on the back. "_C'est bien, mon enfant_," says he, and returned to his committee. Goguelat was no more accommodating than myself. "I do not like apologies nor those that make them," was his only answer. And there remained nothing but to arrange the details of the meeting. So far as regards place and time we had no choice; we must settle the dispute at night, in the dark, after a round had passed by, and in the open middle of the shed under which we slept. The question of arms was more obscure. We had a good many tools, indeed, which we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of the combatants. At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined twine--the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from the green pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe. It was a strange thing to feel in one's hand this weapon, which was no heavier than a riding-rod, and which it was difficult to suppose would prove more dangerous. A general oath was administered and taken, that no one should interfere in the duel nor (suppose it to result seriously) betray the name of the survivor. And with that, all being then ready, we composed ourselves to await the moment. The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first round of the night passed through our shed and wound off along the ramparts; and as we took our places, we could still hear, over the murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its further passage. Laclas, the sergeant-major, set us in our stations, engaged our wands, and left us. To avoid blood-stained clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet. The man was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I, being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong. In the inky blackness of the shed it was impossible to see his eyes; and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself down and lunge at the same moment. It was to play my life upon one card: should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left me; what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my own face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults, and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most readily expose. "_Allez!_" said the sergeant-major. Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my manoeuvre both had certainly been spitted. As it was, he did no more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless. When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads crowded around me. I sat up. "What is it?" I exclaimed. "Hush!" said the sergeant-major. "Blessed be God, all is well." I felt him clasp my hand, and there were tears in his voice. "'Tis but a scratch, my child; here is papa, who is taking good care of you. Your shoulder is bound up; we have dressed you in your clothes again, and it will all be well." At this I began to remember. "And Goguelat?" I gasped. "He cannot bear to be moved; he has his bellyful; 'tis a bad business," said the sergeant-major. The idea of having killed a man with such an instrument as half a pair of scissors seemed to turn my stomach. I am sure I might have killed a dozen with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted weapon, and been visited by no such sickness of remorse. And to this feeling every unusual circumstance of our rencounter, the darkness in which we had fought, our nakedness, even the resin on the twine, appeared to contribute. I ran to my fallen adversary, kneeled by him, and could only sob his name. He bade me compose myself. "You have given me the key of the fields, comrade," said he. "_Sans rancune!_" At this my horror redoubled. Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts. Here was he, who had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in a foreign land of this ignoble injury, and meeting death with something of the spirit of a Bayard. I insisted that the guards should be summoned and a doctor brought. "It may still be possible to save him," I cried. The sergeant-major reminded me of our engagement. "If you had been wounded," said he, "you must have lain there till the patrol came by and found you. It happens to be Goguelat--and so must he! Come, child, time to go to by-by." And as I still resisted, "Champdivers!" he said, "this is weakness. You pain me." "Ay, off to your beds with you!" said Goguelat, and named us in a company with one of his jovial gross epithets. Accordingly the squad lay down in the dark and simulated, what they certainly were far from experiencing, sleep. It was not yet late. The city, from far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of wheels and feet and lively voices. Yet awhile, and the curtain of the cloud was rent across, and in the space of sky between the eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the ramparts a multitude of stars appeared. Meantime, in the midst of us lay Goguelat, and could not always withhold himself from groaning. We heard the round far off; heard it draw slowly nearer. Last of all, it turned the corner and moved into our field of vision: two file of men and a corporal with a lantern, which he swung to and fro, so as to cast its light in the recesses of the yards and sheds. "Hullo!" cried the corporal, pausing as he came by Goguelat. He stooped with his lantern. All our hearts were flying. "What devil's work is this?" he cried, and with a startling voice summoned the guard. We were all afoot upon the instant; more lanterns and soldiers crowded in front of the shed; an officer elbowed his way in. In the midst was the big naked body, soiled with blood. Some one had covered him with his blanket; but as he lay there in agony, he had partly thrown it off. "This is murder!" cried the officer. "You wild beasts, you will hear of this to-morrow." As Goguelat was raised and laid upon a stretcher, he cried to us a cheerful and blasphemous farewell. CHAPTER III MAJOR CHEVENIX COMES INTO THE STORY AND GOGUELAT GOES OUT There was never any talk of a recovery, and no time was lost in getting the man's deposition. He gave but the one account of it: that he had committed suicide because he was sick of seeing so many Englishmen. The doctor vowed it was impossible, the nature and direction of the wound forbidding it. Goguelat replied that he was more ingenious than the other thought for, and had propped up the weapon in the ground and fallen on the point--"just like Nebuchadnezzar," he added, winking to the assistants. The doctor, who was a little, spruce, ruddy man of an impatient temper, pished and pshawed and swore over his patient. "Nothing could be made of him!" he cried. "A perfect heathen. If we could only find the weapon!" But the weapon had ceased to exist. A little resined twine was perhaps blowing about in the Castle gutters; some bits of broken stick may have trailed in corners; and behold, in the pleasant air of the morning, a dandy prisoner trimming his nails with a pair of scissors! Finding the wounded man so firm, you may be sure the authorities did not leave the rest of us in peace. No stone was left unturned. We were had in again and again to be examined, now singly, now in twos and threes. We were threatened with all sorts of impossible severities and tempted with all manner of improbable rewards. I suppose I was five times interrogated, and came off from each with flying colours. I am like old Souvaroff: I cannot understand a soldier being taken aback by any question: he should answer, as he marches on the fire, with an instant briskness and gaiety. I may have been short of bread, gold, or grace; I was never found wanting in an answer. My comrades, if they were not all so ready, were none of them less staunch; and I may say here at once that the inquiry came to nothing at the time, and the death of Goguelat remained a mystery of the prison. Such were the veterans of France! And yet I should be disingenuous if I did not own this was a case apart; in ordinary circumstances, some one might have stumbled or been intimidated into an admission; and what bound us together with a closeness beyond that of mere comrades was a secret to which we were all committed and a design in which all were equally engaged. No need to inquire as to its nature: there is only one desire, and only one kind of design, that blooms in prisons. And the fact that our tunnel was near done supported and inspired us. I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the sittings of the court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one listens to; and yet I was unmasked--I, whom my very adversary defended, as good as confessed, as good as told the nature of the quarrel, and by so doing prepared for myself in the future a most anxious, disagreeable adventure. It was the third morning after the duel, and Goguelat was still in life, when the time came round for me to give Major Chevenix a lesson. I was fond of this occupation; not that he paid me much--no more, indeed, than eighteenpence a month, the customary figure, being a miser in the grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to some extent) himself. At least, he was a man of education; and of the others with whom I had any opportunity of speech, those that would not have held a book upside down would have torn the pages out for pipe-lights. For I must repeat again that our body of prisoners was exceptional: there was in Edinburgh Castle none of that educational busyness that distinguished some of the other prisons, so that men entered them unable to read, and left them fit for high employments. Chevenix was handsome, and surprisingly young to be a major: six feet in his stockings, well set up, with regular features and very clear grey eyes. It was impossible to pick a fault in him, and yet the sum-total was displeasing. Perhaps he was too clean; he seemed to bear about with him the smell of soap. Cleanliness is good, but I cannot bear a man's nails to seem japanned. And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold. There was none of the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the soldier, in this young officer. His kindness was cold, and cruel cold; his deliberation exasperating. And perhaps it was from this character, which is very much the opposite of my own, that even in these days, when he was of service to me, I approached him with suspicion and reserve. I looked over his exercise in the usual form, and marked six faults. "H'm. Six," says he, looking at the paper. "Very annoying! I can never get it right." "O, but you make excellent progress!" I said. I would not discourage him, you understand, but he was congenitally unable to learn French. Some fire, I think, is needful, and he had quenched his fire in soapsuds. He put the exercise down, leaned his chin upon his hand, and looked at me with clear, severe eyes. "I think we must have a little talk," said he. "I am entirely at your disposition," I replied; but I quaked, for I knew what subject to expect. "You have been some time giving me these lessons," he went on, "and I am tempted to think rather well of you. I believe you are a gentleman." "I have that honour, sir," said I. "You have seen me for the same period. I do not know how I strike you; but perhaps you will be prepared to believe that I also am a man of honour," said he. "I require no assurances; the thing is manifest," and I bowed. "Very well, then," said he. "What about this Goguelat?" "You heard me yesterday before the court," I began. "I was awakened only----" "O yes; I 'heard you yesterday before the court,' no doubt," he interrupted, "and I remember perfectly that you were 'awakened only.' I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed. But do you suppose that I believed you for a moment?" "Neither would you believe me if I were to repeat it here," said I. "I may be wrong--we shall soon see," says he; "but my impression is that you will not 'repeat it here.' My impression is that you have come into this room, and that you will tell me something before you go out." I shrugged my shoulders. "Let me explain," he continued. "Your evidence, of course, is nonsense. I put it by, and the court put it by." "My compliments and thanks!" said I. "You _must_ know--that's the short and the long," he proceeded. "All of you in Shed B are bound to know. And I want to ask you where is the common sense of keeping up this farce, and maintaining this cock-and-bull story between friends. Come, come, my good fellow, own yourself beaten, and laugh at it yourself." "Well, I hear you--go ahead," said I. "You put your heart in it." He crossed his legs slowly. "I can very well understand," he began, "that precautions have had to be taken. I dare say an oath was administered. I can comprehend that perfectly." (He was watching me all the time with his cold, bright eyes.) "And I can comprehend that, about an affair of honour, you would be very particular to keep it." "About an affair of honour?" I repeated, like a man quite puzzled. "It was not an affair of honour, then?" he asked. "What was not? I do not follow," said I. He gave no sign of impatience; simply sat a while silent, and began again in the same placid and good-natured voice: "The court and I were at one in setting aside your evidence. It could not deceive a child. But there was a difference between myself and the other officers, because _I knew my man_ and they did not. They saw in you a common soldier, and I knew you for a gentleman. To them your evidence was a leash of lies, which they yawned to hear you telling. Now, I was asking myself, how far will a gentleman go? Not surely so far as to help hush a murder up? So that--when I heard you tell how you knew nothing of the matter, and were only awakened by the corporal, and all the rest of it--I translated your statements into something else. Now, Champdivers," he cried, springing up lively and coming towards me with animation, "I am going to tell you what that was, and you are going to help me to see justice done: how, I don't know, for of course you are under oath--but somehow. Mark what I'm going to say." At that moment he laid a heavy, hard grip upon my shoulder; and whether he said anything more or came to a full stop at once, I am sure I could not tell you to this day. For, as the devil would have it, the shoulder he laid hold of was the one Goguelat had pinked. The wound was but a scratch; it was healing with the first intention; but in the clutch of Major Chevenix it gave me agony. My head swam; the sweat poured off my face; I must have grown deadly pale. He removed his hand as suddenly as he had laid it there. "What is wrong with you?" said he. "It is nothing," said I. "A qualm. It has gone by." "Are you sure?" said he. "You are as white as a sheet." "O no, I assure you! Nothing whatever. I am my own man again," I said, though I could scarce command my tongue. "Well, shall I go on again?" says he. "Can you follow me?" "O, by all means!" said I, and mopped my streaming face upon my sleeve, for you may be sure in those days I had no handkerchief. "If you are sure you can follow me. That was a very sudden and sharp seizure," he said doubtfully. "But if you are sure, all right, and here goes. An affair of honour among you fellows would, naturally, be a little difficult to carry out; perhaps it would be impossible to have it wholly regular. And yet a duel might be very irregular in form, and, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, loyal enough in effect. Do you take me? Now, as a gentleman and a soldier." His hand rose again at the words and hovered over me. I could bear no more, and winced away from him. "No," I cried, "not that. Do not put your hand upon my shoulder. I cannot bear it. It is rheumatism," I made haste to add. "My shoulder is inflamed and very painful." He returned to his chair and deliberately lighted a cigar. "I am sorry about your shoulder," he said at last. "Let me send for the doctor." "Not in the least," said I. "It is a trifle. I am quite used to it. It does not trouble me in the smallest. At any rate, I don't believe in doctors." "All right," said he, and sat and smoked a good while in a silence which I would have given anything to break. "Well," he began presently, "I believe there is nothing left for me to learn. I presume I may say that I know all." "About what?" said I boldly. "About Goguelat," said he. "I beg your pardon. I cannot conceive," said I. "O," says the major, "the man fell in a duel, and by your hand! I am not an infant." "By no means," said I. "But you seem to me to be a good deal of a theorist." "Shall we test it?" he asked. "The doctor is close by. If there is not an open wound on your shoulder, I am wrong. If there is----" He waved his hand. "But I advise you to think twice. There is a deuce of a nasty drawback to the experiment--that what might have remained private between us two becomes public property." "O, well!" said I, with a laugh, "anything rather than a doctor! I cannot bear the breed." His last words had a good deal relieved me, but I was still far from comfortable. Major Chevenix smoked a while, looking now at his cigar ash, now at me. "I'm a soldier myself," he says presently, "and I've been out in my time and hit my man. I don't want to run any one into a corner for an affair that was at all necessary or correct. At the same time, I want to know that much, and I'll take your word of honour for it. Otherwise, I shall be very sorry, but the doctor must be called in." "I neither admit anything nor deny anything," I returned. "But if this form of words will suffice you, here is what I say: I give you my parole, as a gentleman and a soldier, there has nothing taken place amongst us prisoners that was not honourable as the day." "All right," says he. "That was all I wanted. You can go now, Champdivers." And as I was going out he added, with a laugh: "By the bye, I ought to apologise: I had no idea I was applying the torture!" The same afternoon the doctor came into the courtyard with a piece of paper in his hand. He seemed hot and angry, and had certainly no mind to be polite. "Here!" he cried. "Which of you fellows knows any English? O!"--spying me--"there you are, what's your name! _You_'ll do. Tell these fellows that the other fellow's dying. He's booked; no use talking; I expect he'll go by evening. And tell them I don't envy the feelings of the fellow who spiked him. Tell them that first." I did so. "Then you can tell 'em," he resumed, "that the fellow, Goggle--what's his name?--wants to see some of them before he gets his marching orders. If I got it right, he wants to kiss or embrace you, or some sickening stuff. Got that? Then here's a list he's had written, and you'd better read it out to them--I can't make head or tail of your beastly names--and they can answer _present_, and fall in against that wall." It was with a singular movement of incongruous feelings that I read the first name on the list. I had no wish to look again on my own handiwork; my flesh recoiled from the idea; and how could I be sure what reception he designed to give me? The cure was in my own hand; I could pass that first name over--the doctor would not know--and I might stay away. But to the subsequent great gladness of my heart, I did not dwell for an instant on the thought, walked over to the designated wall, faced about, read out the name "Champdivers," and answered myself with the word "Present." There were some half-dozen on the list, all told; and as soon as we were mustered, the doctor led the way to the hospital, and we followed after, like a fatigue-party, in single file. At the door he paused, told us "the fellow" would see each of us alone, and, as soon as I had explained that, sent me by myself into the ward. It was a small room, whitewashed; a south window stood open on a vast depth of air and a spacious and distant prospect; and from deep below, in the Grassmarket, the voices of hawkers came up clear and far away. Hard by, on a little bed, lay Goguelat. The sunburn had not yet faded from his face, and the stamp of death was already there. There was something wild and unmannish in his smile, that took me by the throat; only death and love know or have ever seen it. And when he spoke, it seemed to shame his coarse talk. He held out his arms as if to embrace me. I drew near with incredible shrinkings, and surrendered myself to his arms with overwhelming disgust. But he only drew my ear down to his lips. "Trust me," he whispered. "_Je suis bon bougre, moi._ I'll take it to hell with me and tell the devil." Why should I go on to reproduce his grossness and trivialities? All that he thought, at that hour, was even noble, though he could not clothe it otherwise than in the language of a brutal farce. Presently he bade me call the doctor; and when that officer had come in, raised himself a little up in his bed, pointed first to himself and then to me, who stood weeping by his side, and several times repeated the expression, "Frinds--frinds--dam frinds." To my great surprise the doctor appeared very much affected. He nodded his little bob-wigged head at us, and said repeatedly, "All right, Johnny--me comprong." Then Goguelat shook hands with me, embraced me again, and I went out of the room sobbing like an infant. How often have I not seen it, that the most unpardonable fellows make the happiest exits! It is a fate we may well envy them. Goguelat was detested in life; in the last three days, by his admirable staunchness and consideration, he won every heart; and when word went about the prison the same evening that he was no more, the voice of conversation became hushed as in a house of mourning. For myself, I was like a man distracted; I cannot think what ailed me: when I awoke the following day, nothing remained of it; but that night I was filled with a gloomy fury of the nerves. I had killed him; he had done his utmost to protect me; I had seen him with that awful smile. And so illogical and useless is this sentiment of remorse that I was ready, at a word or a look, to quarrel with somebody else. I presume the disposition of my mind was imprinted on my face; and when, a little after, I overtook, saluted, and addressed the doctor, he looked on me with commiseration and surprise. I had asked him if it was true. "Yes," he said, "the fellow's gone." "Did he suffer much?" I asked. "Devil a bit; passed away like a lamb," said he. He looked on me a little, and I saw his hand go to his fob. "Here, take that! no sense in fretting," he said, and, putting a silver twopenny-bit in my hand, he left me. I should have had that twopenny framed to hang upon the wall, for it was the man's one act of charity in all my knowledge of him. Instead of that I stood looking at it in my hand and laughed out bitterly, as I realised his mistake; then went to the ramparts, and flung it far into the air like blood-money. The night was falling; through an embrasure and across the gardened valley I saw the lamp-lighters hasting along Princes Street with ladder and lamp, and looked on moodily. As I was so standing a hand was laid upon my shoulder, and I turned about. It was Major Chevenix, dressed for the evening, and his neckcloth really admirably folded. I never denied the man could dress. "Ah!" said he, "I thought it was you, Champdivers. So he's gone?" I nodded. "Come, come," said he, "you must cheer up. Of course it's very distressing, very painful and all that. But do you know, it ain't such a bad thing either for you or me? What with his death and your visit to him I am entirely reassured." So I was to owe my life to Goguelat at every point. "I had rather not discuss it," said I. "Well," said he, "one word more and I'll agree to bury the subject. What did you fight about?" "O, what do men ever fight about?" I cried. "A lady?" said he. I shrugged my shoulders. "Deuce you did!" said he. "I should scarce have thought it of him." And at this my ill-humour broke fairly out in words. "He!" I cried. "He never dared to address her--only to look at her and vomit his vile insults! She may have given him sixpence: if she did, it may take him to heaven yet!" At this I became aware of his eyes set upon me with a considering look, and brought up sharply. "Well, well," said he. "Good-night to you, Champdivers. Come to me at breakfast-time to-morrow, and we'll talk of other subjects." I fully admit the man's conduct was not bad: in writing it down so long after the events I can even see that it was good. CHAPTER IV ST. IVES GETS A BUNDLE OF BANK-NOTES I was surprised one morning, shortly after, to find myself the object of marked consideration by a civilian and a stranger. This was a man of the middle age; he had a face of a mulberry colour, round black eyes, comical tufted eyebrows, and a protuberant forehead, and was dressed in clothes of a Quakerish cut. In spite of his plainness, he had that inscrutable air of a man well-to-do in his affairs. I conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but an abominable accent. "I have the pleasure of addressing Monsieur le Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves?" said he. "Well," said I, "I do not call myself all that; but I have a right to, if I choose. In the meanwhile I call myself plain Champdivers, at your disposal. It was my mother's name, and good to go soldiering with." "I think not quite," said he; "for if I remember rightly your mother also had the particle. Her name was Florimonde de Champdivers." "Right again," said I, "and I am extremely pleased to meet a gentleman so well informed in my quarterings. Is monsieur Born himself?" This I said with a great air of assumption, partly to conceal the degree of curiosity with which my visitor had inspired me, and in part because it struck me as highly incongruous and comical in my prison garb and on the lips of a private soldier. He seemed to think so too, for he laughed. "No, sir," he returned, speaking this time in English; "I am not '_born_,' as you call it, and must content myself with _dying_, of which I am equally susceptible with the best of you. My name is Mr. Romaine--Daniel Romaine--a solicitor of London city, at your service; and, what will perhaps interest you more, I am here at the request of your great-uncle, the Count." "What!" I cried, "does M. de Kéroual de Saint-Yves remember the existence of such a person as myself, and will he deign to count kinship with a soldier of Napoleon?" "You speak English well," observed my visitor. "It has been a second language to me from a child," said I. "I had an English nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was finished by a countryman of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr. Vicary." A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer's face. "What!" he cried, "you knew poor Vicary?" "For more than a year," said I; "and shared his hiding-place for many months." "And I was his clerk, and have succeeded him in business," said he. "Excellent man! It was on the affairs of M. de Kéroual that he went to that accursed country, from which he was never destined to return. Do you chance to know his end, sir?" "I am sorry," said I, "I do. He perished miserably at the hands of a gang of banditti, such as we call _chauffeurs_. In a word, he was tortured, and died of it. See," I added, kicking off one shoe, for I had no stockings; "I was no more than a child, and see how they had begun to treat myself." He looked at the mark of my old burn with a certain shrinking. "Beastly people!" I heard him mutter to himself. "The English may say so with a good grace," I observed politely. Such speeches were the coin in which I paid my way among this credulous race. Ninety per cent. of our visitors would have accepted the remark as natural in itself and creditable to my powers of judgment, but it appeared my lawyer was more acute. "You are not entirely a fool, I perceive," said he. "No," said I; "not wholly." "And yet it is well to beware of the ironical mood," he continued. "It is a dangerous instrument. Your great uncle has, I believe, practised it very much, until it is now become a problem what he means." "And that brings me back to what you will admit is a most natural inquiry," said I. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? how did you recognise me? and how did you know I was here?" Carefully separating his coat skirts, the lawyer took a seat beside me on the edge of the flags. "It is rather an odd story," says he, "and, with your leave, I'll answer the second question first. It was from a certain resemblance you bear to your cousin, M. le Vicomte." "I trust, sir, that I resemble him advantageously," said I. "I hasten to reassure you," was the reply: "you do. To my eyes, M. Alain de Saint-Yves has scarce a pleasing exterior. And yet, when I knew you were here, and was actually looking for you--why, the likeness helped. As for how I came to know your whereabouts, by an odd enough chance, it is again M. Alain we have to thank. I should tell you, he has for some time made it his business to keep M. de Kéroual informed of your career; with what purpose I leave you to judge. When he first brought the news of your--that you were serving Buonaparte, it seemed it might be the death of the old gentleman, so hot was his resentment. But from one thing to another, matters have a little changed. Or I should rather say, not a little. We learned you were under orders for the Peninsula, to fight the English; then that you had been commissioned for a piece of bravery, and were again reduced to the ranks. And from one thing to another (as I say), M. de Kéroual became used to the idea that you were his kinsman and yet served with Buonaparte, and filled instead with wonder that he should have another kinsman who was so remarkably well informed of events in France. And now it became a very disagreeable question, whether the young gentleman was not a spy? In short, sir, in seeking to disserve you, he had accumulated against himself a load of suspicions." My visitor now paused, took snuff, and looked at me with an air of benevolence. "Good God, sir!" says I, "this is a curious story." "You will say so before I have done," said he. "For there have two events followed. The first of these was an encounter of M. de Kéroual and M. de Mauséant." "I know the man to my cost," said I; "it was through him I lost my commission." "Do you tell me so?" he cried. "Why, here is news!" "O, I cannot complain!" said I. "I was in the wrong. I did it with my eyes open. If a man gets a prisoner to guard and lets him go, the least he can expect is to be degraded." "You will be paid for it," said he. "You did well for yourself and better for your king." "If I had thought I was injuring my emperor," said I, "I would have let M. de Mauséant burn in hell ere I had helped him, and be sure of that! I saw in him only a private person in a difficulty: I let him go in private charity; not even to profit myself will I suffer it to be misunderstood." "Well, well," said the lawyer, "no matter now. This is a foolish warmth--a very misplaced enthusiasm, believe me! The point of the story is that M. de Mauséant spoke of you with gratitude, and drew your character in such a manner as greatly to affect your uncle's views. Hard upon the back of which, in came your humble servant, and laid before him the direct proof of what we had been so long suspecting. There was no dubiety permitted. M. Alain's expensive way of life, his clothes and mistresses, his dicing and racehorses, were all explained: he was in the pay of Buonaparte, a hired spy, and a man that held the strings of what I can only call a convolution of extremely fishy enterprises. To do M. de Kéroual justice, he took it in the best way imaginable, destroyed the evidences of the one great-nephew's disgrace--and transferred his interest wholly to the other." "What am I to understand by that?" said I. "I will tell you," says he. "There is a remarkable inconsistency in human nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of occasion to observe. Selfish persons can live without chick or child, they can live without all mankind except perhaps the barber and the apothecary; but when it comes to dying, they seem physically unable to die without an heir. You can apply this principle for yourself. Viscount Alain, though he scarce guesses it, is no longer in the field. Remains, Viscount Anne." "I see," said I, "you give a very unfavourable impression of my uncle, the Count." "I had not meant it," said he. "He has led a loose life--sadly loose--but he is a man it is impossible to know and not to admire; his courtesy is exquisite." "And so you think there is actually a chance for me?" I asked. "Understand," said he: "in saying as much as I have done, I travel quite beyond my brief. I have been clothed with no capacity to talk of wills, or heritages, or your cousin. I was sent here to make but the one communication: that M. de Kéroual desires to meet his great-nephew." "Well," said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat surrounded, "this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to the mountain." "Pardon me," said Mr. Romaine; "you know already your uncle is an aged man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up, and his death shortly looked for. No, no, there is no doubt about it--it is the mountain that must come to Mahomet." "From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant," said I; "but you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men's secrets, and I see you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a truculent patriotism, to say the least." "I am first of all the lawyer of your family!" says he. "That being so," said I, "I can perhaps stretch a point myself. This rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a devil of a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I have a pair of wings that might carry me just so far as to the bottom. Once at the bottom I am helpless." "And perhaps it is just then that I could step in," returned the lawyer. "Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess, and on which I offer no opinion----" But here I interrupted him. "One word ere you go further. I am under no parole," said I. "I understood so much," he replied, "although some of you French gentry find their word sit lightly on them." "Sir, I am not one of those," said I. "To do you plain justice, I do not think you one," said he. "Suppose yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock," he continued, "although I may not be able to do much, I believe I can do something to help you on your road. In the first place I would carry this, whether in an inside pocket or in my shoe." And he passed me a bundle of bank-notes. "No harm in that," said I, at once concealing them. "In the second place," he resumed, "it is a great way from here to where your uncle lives--Amersham Place, not far from Dunstable; you have a great part of Britain to get through; and for the first stages, I must leave you to your own luck and ingenuity. I have no acquaintance here in Scotland, or at least" (with a grimace) "no dishonest ones. But further to the south, about Wakefield, I am told there is a gentleman called Burchell Fenn, who is not so particular as some others, and might be willing to give you a cast forward. In fact, sir, I believe it's the man's trade: a piece of knowledge that burns my mouth. But that is what you get by meddling with rogues; and perhaps the biggest rogue now extant, M. de Saint-Yves, is your cousin, M. Alain." "If this be a man of my cousin's," I observed, "I am perhaps better to keep clear of him?" "It was through some paper of your cousin's that we came across his trail," replied the lawyer. "But I am inclined to think, so far as anything is safe in such a nasty business, you might apply to the man Fenn. You might even, I think, use the Viscount's name; and the little trick of family resemblance might come in. How, for instance, if you were to call yourself his brother?" "It might be done," said I. "But look here a moment. You propose to me a very difficult game: I have apparently a devil of an opponent in my cousin; and, being a prisoner of war, I can scarcely be said to hold good cards. For what stakes, then, am I playing?" "They are very large," said he. "Your great-uncle is immensely rich--immensely rich. He was wise in time; he smelt the Revolution long before; sold all that he could, and had all that was movable transported to England through my firm. There are considerable estates in England; Amersham Place itself is very fine; and he has much money, wisely invested. He lives, indeed, like a prince. And of what use is it to him? He has lost all that was worth living for--his family, his country; he has seen his king and queen murdered; he has seen all these miseries and infamies," pursued the lawyer, with a rising inflection and a heightening colour; and then broke suddenly off,--"In short, sir, he has seen all the advantages of that government for which his nephew carries arms, and he has the misfortune not to like them." "You speak with a bitterness that I suppose I must excuse," said I; "yet which of us has the more reason to be bitter? This man, my uncle, M. de Kéroual, fled. My parents, who were less wise perhaps, remained. In the beginning they were even republicans; to the end they could not be persuaded to despair of the people. It was a glorious folly, for which, as a son, I reverence them. First one and then the other perished. If I have any mark of a gentleman, all who taught me died upon the scaffold, and my last school of manners was the prison of the Abbaye. Do you think you can teach bitterness to a man with a history like mine?" "I have no wish to try," said he. "And yet there is one point I cannot understand: I cannot understand that one of your blood and experience should serve the Corsican. I cannot understand it: it seems as though everything generous in you must rise against that--domination." "And perhaps," I retorted, "had your childhood passed among wolves, you would have been overjoyed yourself to see the Corsican Shepherd." "Well, well," replied Mr. Romaine, "it may be. There are things that do not bear discussion." And with a wave of his hand he disappeared abruptly down a flight of steps and under the shadow of a ponderous arch. CHAPTER V ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE The lawyer was scarce gone before I remembered many omissions; and chief among these, that I had neglected to get Mr. Burchell Fenn's address. Here was an essential point neglected; and I ran to the head of the stairs to find myself already too late. The lawyer was beyond my view; in the archway that led downward to the Castle gate, only the red coat and the bright arms of a sentry glittered in the shadow; and I could but return to my place upon the ramparts. I am not very sure that I was properly entitled to this corner. But I was a high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private, in the Castle would have turned me back, except upon a thing of moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The cliff went down before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison, that it should command a view on the chief thoroughfare! It is not necessary that I should trouble you with the train of my reflections, which turned upon the interview I had just concluded and the hopes that were now opening before me. What is more essential, my eye (even while I thought) kept following the movement of the passengers on Princes Street, as they passed briskly to and fro--met, greeted, and bowed to each other--or entered and left the shops, which are in that quarter, and, for a town of the Britannic provinces, particularly fine. My mind being busy upon other things, the course of my eye was the more random; and it chanced that I followed, for some time, the advance of a young gentleman with a red head and a white greatcoat, for whom I cared nothing at the moment, and of whom it is probable I shall be gathered to my fathers without learning more. He seemed to have a large acquaintance: his hat was for ever in his hand; and I dare say I had already observed him exchanging compliments with half-a-dozen, when he drew up at last before a young man and a young lady whose tall persons and gallant carriage I thought I recognised. It was impossible at such a distance that I could be sure, but the thought was sufficient, and I craned out of the embrasure to follow them as long as possible. To think that such emotions, that such a concussion of the blood, may have been inspired by a chance resemblance, and that I may have stood and thrilled there for a total stranger! This distant view, at least, whether of Flora or of some one else, changed in a moment the course of my reflections. It was all very well, and it was highly needful, I should see my uncle; but an uncle, a great-uncle at that, and one whom I had never seen, leaves the imagination cold; and if I were to leave the Castle, I might never again have the opportunity of finding Flora. The little impression I had made, even supposing I had made any, how soon it would die out! how soon I should sink to be a phantom memory, with which (in after days) she might amuse a husband and children! No, the impression must be clenched, the wax impressed with the seal, ere I left Edinburgh. And at this the two interests that were now contending in my bosom came together and became one. I wished to see Flora again; and I wanted some one to further me in my flight and to get me new clothes. The conclusion was apparent. Except for persons in the garrison itself, with whom it was a point of honour and military duty to retain me captive, I knew, in the whole country of Scotland, these two alone. If it were to be done at all, they must be my helpers. To tell them of my designed escape while I was still in bonds, would be to lay before them a most difficult choice. What they might do in such a case, I could not in the least be sure of, for (the same case arising) I was far from sure what I should do myself. It was plain I must escape first. When the harm was done, when I was no more than a poor wayside fugitive, I might apply to them with less offence and more security. To this end it became necessary that I should find out where they lived and how to reach it; and feeling a strong confidence that they would soon return to visit me, I prepared a series of baits with which to angle for my information. It will be seen the first was good enough. Perhaps two days after, Master Ronald put in an appearance by himself. I had no hold upon the boy, and pretermitted my design till I should have laid court to him and engaged his interest. He was prodigiously embarrassed, not having previously addressed me otherwise than by a bow and blushes; and he advanced to me with an air of one stubbornly performing a duty, like a raw soldier under fire. I laid down my carving; greeted him with a good deal of formality, such as I thought he would enjoy; and finding him to remain silent, branched off into narratives of my campaigns such as Goguelat himself might have scrupled to endorse. He visibly thawed and brightened; drew more near to where I sat; forgot his timidity so far as to put many questions; and at last, with another blush, informed me he was himself expecting a commission. "Well," said I, "they are fine troops, your British troops in the Peninsula. A young gentleman of spirit may well be proud to be engaged at the head of such soldiers." "I know that," he said; "I think of nothing else. I think shame to be dangling here at home, and going through with this foolery of education, while others, no older than myself, are in the field." "I cannot blame you," said I. "I have felt the same myself." "There are--there are no troops, are there, quite so good as ours?" he asked. "Well," said I, "there is a point about them: they have a defect--they are not to be trusted in a retreat. I have seen them behave very ill in a retreat." "I believe that is our national character," he said--God forgive him!--with an air of pride. "I have seen your national character running away at least, and had the honour to run after it!" rose to my lips, but I was not so ill-advised as to give it utterance. Every one should be flattered, but boys and women without stint; and I put in the rest of the afternoon narrating to him tales of British heroism, for which I should not like to engage that they were all true. "I am quite surprised," he said at last. "People tell you the French are insincere. Now, I think your sincerity is beautiful. I think you have a noble character. I admire you very much. I am very grateful for your kindness to--to one so young," and he offered me his hand. "I shall see you again soon?" said I. "O, now! Yes, very soon," said he. "I--I wish to tell you. I would not let Flora--Miss Gilchrist, I mean--come to-day. I wished to see more of you myself. I trust you are not offended: you know, one should be careful about strangers." I approved his caution, and he took himself away: leaving me in a mixture of contrarious feelings, part ashamed to have played on one so gullible, part raging that I should have burned so much incense before the vanity of England; yet, in the bottom of my soul, delighted to think I had made a friend--or, at least, begun to make a friend--of Flora's brother. As I had half expected, both made their appearance the next day. I struck so fine a shade betwixt the pride that is allowed to soldiers and the sorrowful humility that befits a captive, that I declare, as I went to meet them, I might have afforded a subject for a painter. So much was high comedy, I must confess; but so soon as my eyes lighted full on her dark face and eloquent eyes, the blood leaped into my cheeks--and that was nature! I thanked them, but not the least with exultation; it was my cue to be mournful, and to take the pair of them as one. "I have been thinking," I said, "you have been so good to me, both of you, stranger and prisoner as I am, that I have been thinking how I could testify to my gratitude. It may seem a strange subject for a confidence, but there is actually no one here, even of my comrades, that knows me by my name and title. By these I am called plain Champdivers, a name to which I have a right, but not the name which I should bear, and which (but a little while ago) I must hide like a crime. Miss Flora, suffer me to present to you the Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, a private soldier." "I knew it!" cried the boy; "I knew he was a noble!" And I thought the eyes of Miss Flora said the same, but more persuasively. All through this interview she kept them on the ground, or only gave them to me for a moment at a time, and with a serious sweetness. "You may conceive, my friends, that this is rather a painful confession," I continued. "To stand here before you vanquished, a prisoner in a fortress, and take my own name upon my lips, is painful to the proud. And yet I wished that you should know me. Long after this we may yet hear of one another--perhaps Mr. Gilchrist and myself in the field and from opposing camps--and it would be a pity if we heard and did not recognise." They were both moved; and began at once to press upon me offers of service, such as to lend me books, get me tobacco if I used it, and the like. This would have been all mighty welcome, before the tunnel was ready. Now it signified no more to me than to offer the transition I required. "My dear friends," I said--"for you must allow me to call you that, who have no others within so many hundred leagues--perhaps you will think me fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I am; but there is one service that I would beg of you before all others. You see me set here on the top of this rock in the midst of your city. Even with what liberty I have, I have the opportunity to see a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty leagues of sea and land. All this hostile! Under all these roofs my enemies dwell; wherever I see the smoke of a house rising, I must tell myself that some one sits before the chimney and reads with joy of our reverses. Pardon me, dear friends, I know that you must do the same, and I do not grudge at it! With you it is all different. Show me your house, then, were it only the chimney, or, if that be not visible, the quarter of the town in which it lies! So, when I look all about me, I shall be able to say: '_There is one house in which I am not quite unkindly thought of._'" Flora stood a moment. "It is a pretty thought," said she, "and, as far as regards Ronald and myself, a true one. Come, I believe I can show you the very smoke out of our chimney." So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of some fore-shortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits (say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars. And to this she directed my attention. "You see these marks?" she said. "We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I are living with my aunt. If it gives you pleasure to see it, I am glad. We, too, can see the Castle from a corner in the garden, and we go there in the morning often--do we not, Ronald?--and we think of you, M. de Saint-Yves; but I am afraid it does not altogether make us glad!" "Mademoiselle!" said I, and indeed my voice was scarce under command, "if you knew how your generous words--how even the sight of you--relieved the horrors of this place, I believe, I hope, I know, you would be glad. I will come here daily and look at that dear chimney and these green hills, and bless you from the heart, and dedicate to you the prayers of this poor sinner. Ah! I do not say they can avail!" "Who can say that, M. de Saint-Yves?" she said softly.--"But I think it is time we should be going." "High time," said Ronald, whom (to say the truth) I had a little forgotten. On the way back, as I was laying myself out to recover lost ground with the youth, and to obliterate, if possible, the memory of my last and somewhat too fervent speech, who should come past us but the major! I had to stand aside and salute as he went by, but his eyes appeared entirely occupied with Flora. "Who is that man?" she asked. "He is a friend of mine," said I. "I give him lessons in French, and he has been very kind to me." "He stared," she said,--"I do not say rudely; but why should he stare?" "If you do not wish to be stared at, mademoiselle, suffer me to recommend a veil," said I. She looked at me with what seemed anger. "I tell you the man stared," she said. And Ronald added: "O, I don't think he meant any harm. I suppose he was just surprised to see us walking about with a pr--with M. Saint-Yves." But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix's rooms, and after I had dutifully corrected his exercise--"I compliment you on your taste," said he to me. "I beg your pardon?" said I. "O no, I beg yours," said he. "You understand me perfectly, just as I do you." I murmured something about enigmas. "Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?" said he, leaning back. "That was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you avenged. I do not blame you. She is a heavenly creature." "With all my heart, to the last of it!" said I. "And to the first also, if it amuses you! You are become so very acute of late that I suppose you must have your own way." "What is her name?" he asked. "Now, really," said I. "Do you think it likely she has told me?" "I think it certain," said he. I could not restrain my laughter. "Well, then, do you think it likely I would tell you?" I cried. "Not a bit," said he.--"But come, to our lesson!" CHAPTER VI THE ESCAPE The time for our escape drew near, and the nearer it came the less we seemed to enjoy the prospect. There is but one side on which this Castle can be left either with dignity or safety; but as there is the main gate and guard, and the chief street of the upper city, it is not to be thought of by escaping prisoners. In all other directions an abominable precipice surrounds it, down the face of which (if anywhere at all) we must regain our liberty. By our concurrent labours in many a dark night, working with the most anxious precautions against noise, we had made out to pierce below the curtain about the south-west corner, in a place they call the Devil's Elbow. I have never met that celebrity; nor (if the rest of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry, the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building. I had never the heart to look for any length of time--the thought that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a steeple-jack the mere sight of the Devil's Elbow wrought like an emetic. I don't know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it, it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with the way we had to go? Day after day, there would be always some of us stolen out to the Devil's Elbow and making estimates of the descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones. A private of pioneers remembered the formula for that--or else remembered part of it and obligingly invented the remainder. I had never any real confidence in that formula; and even had we got it from a book, there were difficulties in the way of the application that might have daunted Archimedes. We durst not drop any considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that we dropped we could not hear ourselves. We had never a watch--or none that had a second-hand; and though every one of us could guess a second to a nicety, all somehow guessed it differently. In short, if any two set forth upon this enterprise, they invariably returned with two opinions and often with a black eye in the bargain. I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without laughter, yet with impatience and disgust. I am one that cannot bear to see things botched or gone upon with ignorance; and the thought that some poor devil was to hazard his bones upon such premises revolted me. Had I guessed the name of that unhappy first adventurer, my sentiments might have been livelier still. The designation of this personage was indeed all that remained for us to do; and even in that we had advanced so far that the lot had fallen on Shed B. It had been determined to mingle the bitter and the sweet; and whoever went down first, the whole of his shed-mates were to follow next in order. This caused a good deal of joy in Shed B, and would have caused more if it had not still remained to choose our pioneer. In view of the ambiguity in which we lay as to the length of the rope and the height of the precipice--and that this gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a pitchy night, on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an infant child to steady it at the bottom, a little backwardness was perhaps excusable. But it was, in our case, more than a little. The truth is, we were all womanish fellows about a height; and I have myself been put, more than once, _hors de combat_ by a less affair than the rock of Edinburgh Castle. We discussed it in the dark and between the passage of the rounds; and it was impossible for any body of men to show a less adventurous spirit. I am sure some of us, and myself first among the number, regretted Goguelat. Some were persuaded it was safe, and could prove the same by argument; but if they had good reasons why some one else should make the trial, they had better still why it should not be themselves. Others, again, condemned the whole idea as insane; among these, as ill-luck would have it, a seaman of the fleet; who was the most dispiriting of all. The height, he reminded us, was greater than the tallest ship's mast, the rope entirely free; and he as good as defied the boldest and strongest to succeed. We were relieved from this deadlock by our sergeant-major of dragoons. "Comrades," said he, "I believe I rank before you all; and for that reason, if you really wish it, I will be the first myself. At the same time, you are to consider what the chances are that I may prove to be the last as well. I am no longer young--I was sixty near a month ago. Since I have been a prisoner, I have made for myself a little _bedaine_. My arms are all gone to fat. And you must promise not to blame me, if I fall and play the devil with the whole thing." "We cannot hear of such a thing!" said I. "M. Laclas is the oldest man here; and, as such, he should be the very last to offer. It is plain we must draw lots." "No," said M. Laclas; "you put something else in my head! There is one here who owes a pretty candle to the others, for they have kept his secret. Besides, the rest of us are only rabble; and he is another affair altogether. Let Champdivers--let the noble go the first." I confess there was a notable pause before the noble in question got his voice. But there was no room for choice. I had been so ill-advised, when I first joined the regiment, as to take ground on my nobility. I had been often rallied on the matter in the ranks, and had passed under the by-names of _Monseigneur_ and _the Marquis_. It was now needful I should justify myself and take a fair revenge. Any little hesitation I may have felt passed entirely unnoticed, from the lucky incident of a round happening at that moment to go by. And during the interval of silence there occurred something to set my blood to the boil. There was a private in our shed called Clausel, a man of a very ugly disposition. He had made one of the followers of Goguelat; but whereas Goguelat had always a kind of monstrous gaiety about him, Clausel was no less morose than he was evil-minded. He was sometimes called _the General_, and sometimes by a name too ill-mannered for repetition. As we all sat listening, this man's hand was laid on my shoulder, and his voice whispered in my ear: "If you don't go, I'll have you hanged, Marquis!" As soon as the round was past--"Certainly, gentlemen!" said I. "I will give you a lead, with all the pleasure in the world. But, first of all, there is a hound here to be punished. M. Clausel has just insulted me, and dishonoured the French army; and I demand that he run the gauntlet of this shed." There was but one voice asking what he had done, and, as soon as I had told them, but one voice agreeing to the punishment. The General was, in consequence, extremely roughly handled, and the next day was congratulated by all who saw him on his _new decorations_. It was lucky for us that he was one of the prime movers and believers in our project of escape, or he had certainly revenged himself by a denunciation. As for his feelings towards myself, they appeared, by his looks, to surpass humanity; and I made up my mind to give him a wide berth in the future. Had I been to go down that instant, I believe I could have carried it well. But it was already too late--the day was at hand. The rest had still to be summoned. Nor was this the extent of my misfortune; for the next night, and the night after, were adorned with a perfect galaxy of stars, and showed every cat that stirred in a quarter of a mile. During this interval I have to direct your sympathies on the Vicomte de Saint-Yves! All addressed me softly, like folk round a sick-bed. Our Italian corporal, who had got a dozen of oysters from a fishwife, laid them at my feet, as though I were a Pagan idol; and I have never since been wholly at my ease in the society of shellfish. He who was the best of our carvers brought me a snuff-box, which he had just completed, and which, while it was yet in hand, he had often declared he would not part with under fifteen dollars. I believe the piece was worth the money too! And yet the voice stuck in my throat with which I must thank him. I found myself, in a word, to be fed up like a prisoner in a camp of anthropophagi, and honoured like the sacrificial bull. And what with these annoyances, and the risky venture immediately ahead, I found my part a trying one to play. It was a good deal of a relief when the third evening closed about the Castle with volumes of sea-fog. The lights of Princes Street sometimes disappeared, sometimes blinked across at us no brighter than the eyes of cats; and five steps from one of the lanterns on the ramparts it was already groping dark. We made haste to lie down. Had our gaolers been upon the watch they must have observed our conversation to die out unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of us slept. Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of liberty and the fear of a hateful death. The guard call sounded; the hum of the town declined by little and little. On all sides of us, in their different quarters, we could hear the watchmen cry the hours along the street. Often enough, during my stay in England, have I listened to these gruff or broken voices; or perhaps gone to my window when I lay sleepless, and watched the old gentleman hobble by upon the causeway with his cape and his cap, his hanger and his rattle. It was ever a thought with me how differently that cry would re-echo in the chamber of lovers, beside the bed of death, or in the condemned cell. I might be said to hear it that night myself in the condemned cell! At length a fellow with a voice like a bull's began to roar out in the opposite thoroughfare: "Past yin o'cloak, and a dark, haary moarnin'." At which we were all silently afoot. As I stole about the battlements towards the--gallows, I was about to write--the sergeant-major, perhaps doubtful of my resolution, kept close by me, and occasionally proffered the most indigestible reassurances in my ear. At last I could bear them no longer. "Be so obliging as to let me be!" said I. "I am neither a coward nor a fool. What do _you_ know of whether the rope be long enough? But I shall know it in ten minutes!" The good old fellow laughed in his moustache, and patted me. It was all very well to show the disposition of my temper before a friend alone; before my assembled comrades the thing had to go handsomely. It was then my time to come on the stage; and I hope I took it handsomely. "Now, gentlemen," said I, "if the rope is ready, here is the criminal!" The tunnel was cleared, the stake driven, the rope extended. As I moved forward to the place, many of my comrades caught me by the hand and wrung it, an attention I could well have done without. "Keep an eye on Clausel!" I whispered to Laclas; and with that, got down on my elbows and knees, took the rope in both hands, and worked myself, feet foremost, through the tunnel. When the earth failed under my feet, I thought my heart would have stopped; and a moment after I was demeaning myself in mid-air like a drunken jumping-jack. I have never been a model of piety, but at this juncture prayers and a cold sweat burst from me simultaneously. The line was knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend. The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the face of the rock. I had no eyes to see with; and I doubt if there was anything to see but darkness. I must occasionally have caught a gasp of breath, but it was quite unconscious. And the whole forces of my mind were so consumed with losing hold and getting it again, that I could scarce have told whether I was going up or coming down. Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost bereft me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed to find that I was in a state of rest, that the face of the precipice here inclined outwards at an angle which relieved me almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and that one of my feet was safely planted on a ledge. I drew one of the sweetest breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy of relief. It occurred to me next to see how far I was advanced on my unlucky journey, a point on which I had not a shadow of a guess. I looked up: there was nothing above me but the blackness of the night and the fog. I craned timidly forward and looked down. There, upon a floor of darkness, I beheld a certain pattern of hazy lights, some of them aligned as in thoroughfares, others standing apart as in solitary houses; and before I could well realise it, or had in the least estimated my distance, a wave of nausea and vertigo warned me to lie back and close my eyes. In this situation I had really but the one wish, and that was: something else to think of! Strange to say, I got it; a veil was torn from my mind, and I saw what a fool I was--what fools we had all been--and that I had no business to be thus dangling between earth and heaven by my arms. The only thing to have done was to have attached me to a rope and lowered me, and I had never the wit to see it till that moment! I filled my lungs, got a good hold on my rope, and once more launched myself on the descent. As it chanced, the worst of the danger was at an end, and I was so fortunate as to be never again exposed to any violent concussion. Soon after I must have passed within a little distance of a bush of wallflower, for the scent of it came over me with that impression of reality which characterises scents in darkness. This made me a second landmark, the ledge being my first. I began accordingly to compute intervals of time: so much to the ledge, so much again to the wallflower, so much more below. If I were not at the bottom of the rock, I calculated I must be near indeed to the end of the rope, and there was no doubt that I was not far from the end of my own resources. I began to be light-headed and to be tempted to let go--now arguing that I was certainly arrived within a few feet of the level and could safely risk a fall, anon persuaded I was still close at the top and it was idle to continue longer on the rock. In the midst of which I came to a bearing on plain ground, and had nearly wept aloud. My hands were as good as flayed, my courage entirely exhausted, and, what with the long strain and the sudden relief, my limbs shook under me with more than the violence of ague, and I was glad to cling to the rope. But this was no time to give way. I had (by God's single mercy) got myself alive out of that fortress; and now I had to try to get the others, my comrades. There was about a fathom of rope to spare; I got it by the end, and searched the whole ground thoroughly for anything to make it fast to. In vain: the ground was broken and stony, but there grew not there so much as a bush of furze. "Now then," thought I to myself, "here begins a new lesson, and I believe it will prove richer than the first. I am not strong enough to keep this rope extended. If I do not keep it extended the next man will be dashed against the precipice. There is no reason why he should have my extravagant good luck. I see no reason why he should not fall--nor any place for him to fall on but my head." From where I was now standing there was occasionally visible, as the fog lightened, a lamp in one of the barrack windows, which gave me a measure of the height he had to fall, and the horrid force that he must strike me with. What was yet worse, we had agreed to do without signals: every so many minutes by Laclas' watch another man was to be started from the battlements. Now, I had seemed to myself to be about half-an-hour in my descent, and it seemed near as long again that I waited, straining on the rope for my next comrade to begin. I began to be afraid that our conspiracy was out, that my friends were all secured, and that I should pass the remainder of the night, and be discovered in the morning, vainly clinging to the rope's end like a hooked fish upon an angle. I could not refrain, at this ridiculous image, from a chuckle of laughter. And the next moment I knew, by the jerking of the rope, that my friend had crawled out of the tunnel, and was fairly launched on his descent. It appears it was the sailor who had insisted on succeeding me: as soon as my continued silence had assured him the rope was long enough, Gautier, for that was his name, had forgot his former arguments, and shown himself so extremely forward, that Laclas had given way. It was like the fellow, who had no harm in him beyond an instinctive selfishness. But he was like to have paid pretty dearly for the privilege. Do as I would, I could not keep the rope as I could have wished it; and he ended at last by falling on me from a height of several yards, so that we both rolled together on the ground. As soon as he could breathe he cursed me beyond belief, wept over his finger, which he had broken, and cursed me again. I bade him be still and think shame of himself to be so great a cry-baby. Did he not hear the round going by above? I asked; and who could tell but what the noise of his fall was already remarked, and the sentinels at the very moment leaning upon the battlements to listen? The round, however, went by, and nothing was discovered; the third man came to the ground quite easily; the fourth was, of course, child's play; and before there were ten of us collected, it seemed to me that, without the least injustice to my comrades, I might proceed to take care of myself. I knew their plan: they had a map and an almanac, and designed for Grangemouth, where they were to steal a ship. Suppose them to do so, I had no idea they were qualified to manage it after it was stolen. Their whole escape, indeed, was the most haphazard thing imaginable; only the impatience of captives and the ignorance of private soldiers would have entertained so misbegotten a device; and though I played the good comrade and worked with them upon the tunnel, but for the lawyer's message I should have let them go without me. Well, now they were beyond my help, as they had always been beyond my counselling; and, without word said or leave taken, I stole out of the little crowd. It is true I would rather have waited to shake hands with Laclas, but in the last man who had descended I thought I recognised Clausel, and since the scene in the shed my distrust of Clausel was perfect. I believed the man to be capable of any infamy, and events have since shown that I was right. CHAPTER VII SWANSTON COTTAGE I had two views. The first was, naturally, to get clear of Edinburgh Castle and the town, to say nothing of my fellow-prisoners; the second to work to the southward so long as it was night, and be near Swanston Cottage by morning. What I should do there and then, I had no guess, and did not greatly care, being a devotee of a couple of divinities called Chance and Circumstance. Prepare, if possible; where it is impossible, work straight forward, and keep your eyes open and your tongue oiled. Wit and a good exterior--there is all life in a nutshell. I had at first a rather chequered journey: got involved in gardens, butted into houses, and had even once the misfortune to awake a sleeping family, the father of which, as I suppose, menaced me from the window with a blunderbuss. Altogether, though I had been some time gone from my companions, I was still at no great distance, when a miserable accident put a period to the escape. Of a sudden the night was divided by a scream. This was followed by the sound of something falling, and that again by the report of a musket from the Castle battlements. It was strange to hear the alarm spread through the city. In the fortress drums were beat and a bell rung backward. On all hands the watchmen sprang their rattles. Even in that limbo or no-man's-land where I was wandering, lights were made in the houses; sashes were flung up; I could hear neighbouring families converse from window to window, and at length I was challenged myself. "Wha's that?" cried a big voice. I could see it proceeded from a big man in a big nightcap, leaning from a one-pair window; and as I was not yet abreast of his house, I judged it was more wise to answer. This was not the first time I had had to stake my fortunes on the goodness of my accent in a foreign tongue; and I have always found the moment inspiriting, as a gambler should. Pulling around me a sort of greatcoat I had made of my blanket, to cover my sulphur-coloured livery,--"A friend!" said I. "What like's all this collieshangie?" said he. I had never heard of a collieshangie in my days, but with the racket all about us in the city, I could have no doubt as to the man's meaning. "I do not know, sir, really," said I; "but I suppose some of the prisoners will have escaped." "Be damned!" says he. "O, sir, they will be soon taken," I replied: "it has been found in time. Good-morning, sir!" "Ye walk late, sir?" he added. "O, surely not," said I, with a laugh. "Earlyish, if you like!" which brought me finally beyond him, highly pleased with my success. I was now come forth on a good thoroughfare, which led (as well as I could judge) in my direction. It brought me almost immediately through a piece of street, whence I could hear close by the springing of a watchman's rattle, and where I suppose a sixth part of the windows would be open, and the people, in all sorts of night-gear, talking with a kind of tragic gusto from one to another. Here, again, I must run the gauntlet of a half-dozen questions, the rattle all the while sounding nearer; but as I was not walking inordinately quick, as I spoke like a gentleman, and the lamps were too dim to show my dress, I carried it off once more. One person, indeed, inquired where I was off to at that hour. I replied vaguely and cheerfully, and as I escaped at one end of this dangerous pass I could see the watchman's lantern entering by the other. I was now safe on a dark country highway, out of sight of lights and out of the fear of watchmen. And yet I had not gone above a hundred yards before a fellow made an ugly rush at me from the roadside. I avoided him with a leap, and stood on guard, cursing my empty hands, wondering whether I had to do with an officer or a mere footpad, and scarce knowing which to wish. My assailant stood a little; in the thick darkness I could see him bob and sidle as though he were feinting at me for an advantageous onfall. Then he spoke. "My goo' frien'," says he, and at the first word I pricked my ears, "my goo' frien', will you oblishe me with lil neshary information? Whish roa' t' Cramond?" I laughed out clear and loud, stepped up to the convivialist, took him by the shoulders, and faced him about. "My good friend," said I, "I believe I know what is best for you much better than yourself, and may God forgive you the fright you have given me! There, get you gone to Edinburgh!" And I gave a shove, which he obeyed with the passive agility of a ball, and disappeared incontinently in the darkness down the road by which I had myself come. Once clear of this foolish fellow, I went on again up a gradual hill, descended on the other side through the houses of a country village, and came at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading to the Pentlands and my destination. I was some way up when the fog began to lighten; a little farther, and I stepped by degrees into a clear starry night, and saw in front of me, and quite distinct, the summits of the Pentlands, and behind, the valley of the Forth and the city of my late captivity buried under a lake of vapour. I had but one encounter--that of a farm-cart, which I heard, from a great way ahead of me, creaking nearer in the night, and which passed me about the point of dawn like a thing seen in a dream, with two silent figures in the inside nodding to the horse's steps. I presume they were asleep; by the shawl about her head and shoulders, one of them should be a woman. Soon, by concurrent steps, the day began to break and the fog to subside and roll away. The east grew luminous and was barred with chilly colours, and the Castle on its rock, and the spires and chimneys of the upper town, took gradual shape, and arose, like islands, out of the receding cloud. All about me was still and sylvan; the road mounting and winding, with nowhere a sign of any passenger, the birds chirping, I suppose for warmth, the boughs of the trees knocking together, and the red leaves falling in the wind. It was broad day, but still bitter cold and the sun not up, when I came in view of my destination. A single gable and chimney of the cottage peeped over the shoulder of the hill; not far off, and a trifle higher on the mountain, a tall old whitewashed farmhouse stood among the trees, beside a falling brook; beyond were rough hills of pasture. I bethought me that shepherd folk were early risers, and if I were once seen skulking in that neighbourhood it might prove the ruin of my prospects; took advantage of a line of hedge, and worked myself up in its shadow till I was come under the garden wall of my friend's house. The cottage was a little quaint place of many rough-cast gables and grey roofs. It had something the air of a rambling infinitesimal cathedral, the body of it rising in the midst, two stories high, with a steep-pitched roof, and sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels, and transepts) one-storied and dwarfish projections. To add to this appearance, it was grotesquely decorated with crockets and gargoyles, ravished from some mediæval church. The place seemed hidden away, being not only concealed in the trees of the garden, but, on the side on which I approached it, buried as high as the eaves by the rising of the ground. About the walls of the garden there went a line of well-grown elms and beeches, the first entirely bare, the last still pretty well covered with red leaves, and the centre was occupied with a thicket of laurel and holly, in which I could see arches cut and paths winding. I was now within hail of my friends, and not much the better. The house appeared asleep; yet if I attempted to wake any one, I had no guarantee it might not prove either the aunt with the gold eye-glasses (whom I could only remember with trembling), or some ass of a servant-maid who should burst out screaming at sight of me. Higher up I could hear and see a shepherd shouting to his dogs and striding on the rough sides of the mountain, and it was clear I must get to cover without loss of time. No doubt the holly thickets would have proved a very suitable retreat, but there was mounted on the wall a sort of signboard not uncommon in the country of Great Britain, and very damping to the adventurous: SPRING GUNS AND MAN TRAPS was the legend that it bore. I have learned since that these advertisements, three times out of four, were in the nature of Quaker guns on a disarmed battery, but I had not learned it then, and even so, the odds would not have been good enough. For a choice, I would a hundred times sooner be returned to Edinburgh Castle and my corner in the bastion, than to leave my foot in a steel trap or have to digest the contents of an automatic blunderbuss. There was but one chance left--that Ronald or Flora might be the first to come abroad; and in order to profit by this chance, if it occurred, I got me on the cope of the wall in the place where it was screened by the thick branches of a beech, and sat there waiting. As the day wore on, the sun came very pleasantly out. I had been awake all night, I had undergone the most violent agitations of mind and body, and it is not so much to be wondered at, as it was exceedingly unwise and foolhardy, that I should have dropped into a doze. From this I awakened to the characteristic sound of digging, looked down, and saw immediately below me the back view of a gardener in a stable waistcoat. Now he would appear steadily immersed in his business; anon, to my more immediate terror, he would straighten his back, stretch his arms, gaze about the otherwise deserted garden, and relish a deep pinch of snuff. It was my first thought to drop from the wall upon the other side. A glance sufficed to show me that even the way by which I had come was now cut off, and the field behind me already occupied by a couple of shepherds' assistants and a score or two of sheep. I have named the talismans on which I habitually depend, but here was a conjuncture in which both were wholly useless. The copestone of a wall arrayed with broken bottles is no favourable rostrum; and I might be as eloquent as Pitt, and as fascinating as Richelieu, and neither the gardener nor the shepherd lads would care a halfpenny. In short, there was no escape possible from my absurd position: there I must continue to sit until one or other of my neighbours should raise his eyes and give the signal for my capture. The part of the wall on which (for my sins) I was posted could be scarce less than twelve feet high on the inside; the leaves of the beech which made a fashion of sheltering me were already partly fallen; and I was thus not only perilously exposed myself, but enabled to command some part of the garden walks and (under an evergreen arch) the front lawn and windows of the cottage. For long nothing stirred except my friend with the spade; then I heard the opening of a sash; and presently after saw Miss Flora appear in a morning wrapper and come strolling hitherward between the borders, pausing and visiting her flowers--herself as fair. _There_ was a friend; _here_, immediately beneath me, an unknown quantity--the gardener: how to communicate with the one and not attract the notice of the other? To make a noise was out of the question; I dared scarce to breathe. I held myself ready to make a gesture as soon as she should look, and she looked in every possible direction but the one. She was interested in the vilest tuft of chickweed, she gazed at the summit of the mountain, she came even immediately below me and conversed on the most fastidious topics with the gardener; but to the top of that wall she would not dedicate a glance! At last she began to retrace her steps in the direction of the cottage; whereupon, becoming quite desperate, I broke off a piece of plaster, took a happy aim, and hit her with it in the nape of the neck. She clapped her hand to the place, turned about, looked on all sides for an explanation, and spying me (as indeed I was parting the branches to make it the more easy), half uttered and half swallowed down again a cry of surprise. The infernal gardener was erect upon the instant. "What's your wull, miss?" said he. Her readiness amazed me. She had already turned and was gazing in the opposite direction. "There's a child among the artichokes," she said. "The Plagues of Egyp'! _I'll_ see to them!" cried the gardener truculently, and with a hurried waddle disappeared among the evergreens. That moment she turned, she came running towards me, her arms stretched out, her face incarnadined for the one moment with heavenly blushes, the next pale as death. "Monsieur de Saint-Yves!" she said. "My dear young lady," I said, "this is the damnedest liberty--I know it! But what else was I to do?" "You have escaped?" said she. "If you call this escape," I replied. "But you cannot possibly stop there!" she cried. "I know it," said I. "And where am I to go?" She struck her hands together. "I have it!" she exclaimed. "Come down by the beech trunk--you must leave no footprint in the border--quickly, before Robie can get back! I am the hen-wife here: I keep the key; you must go into the hen-house--for the moment." I was by her side at once. Both cast a hasty glance at the blank windows of the cottage and so much as was visible of the garden alleys; it seemed there was none to observe us. She caught me by the sleeve and ran. It was no time for compliments; hurry breathed upon our necks; and I ran along with her to the next corner of the garden, where a wired court and a board hovel standing in a grove of trees advertised my place of refuge. She thrust me in without a word; the bulk of the fowls were at the same time emitted; and I found myself the next moment locked in alone with half-a-dozen sitting hens. In the twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed to upbraid me with some crying impropriety. Doubtless the hen has always a puritanic appearance, although (in its own behaviour) I could never observe it to be more particular than its neighbours. But conceive a British hen! CHAPTER VIII THE HEN-HOUSE I was half-an-hour at least in the society of these distressing bipeds, and alone with my own reflections and necessities. I was in great pain of my flayed hands, and had nothing to treat them with; I was hungry and thirsty, and had nothing to eat or to drink; I was thoroughly tired, and there was no place for me to sit. To be sure there was the floor, but nothing could be imagined less inviting. At the sound of approaching footsteps my good-humour was restored. The key rattled in the lock, and Master Ronald entered, closed the door behind him, and leaned his back to it. "I say, you know!" he said, and shook a sullen young head. "I know it's a liberty," said I. "It's infernally awkward: my position is infernally embarrassing," said he. "Well," said I, "and what do you think of mine?" This seemed to pose him entirely, and he remained gazing upon me with a convincing air of youth and innocence. I could have laughed, but I was not so inhumane. "I am in your hands," said I, with a little gesture. "You must do with me what you think right." "Ah, yes!" he cried: "if I knew!" "You see," said I, "it would be different if you had received your commission. Properly speaking, you are not yet a combatant; I have ceased to be one; and I think it arguable that we are just in the position of one ordinary gentleman to another, where friendship usually comes before the law. Observe, I only say _arguable_. For God's sake, don't think I wish to dictate an opinion. These are the sort of nasty little businesses, inseparable from war, which every gentleman must decide for himself. If I were in your place----" "Ay, what would you do, then?" says he. "Upon my word, I do not know," said I. "Hesitate, as you are doing, I believe." "I will tell you," he said. "I have a kinsman, and it is what _he_ would think that I am thinking. It is General Graham of Lynedoch--Sir Thomas Graham. I scarcely know him, but I believe I admire him more than I do God." "I admire him a good deal myself," said I, "and have good reason to. I have fought with him, been beaten, and run away. _Veni, victus sum, evasi._" "What!" he cried. "You were at Barossa?" "There and back, which many could not say," said I. "It was a pretty affair and a hot one, and the Spaniards behaved abominably, as they usually did in a pitched field; the Marshal Duke of Belluno made a fool of himself, and not for the first time; and your friend Sir Thomas had the best of it, so far as there was any best. He is a brave and ready officer." "Now, then, you will understand!" said the boy. "I wish to please Sir Thomas: what would he do?" "Well, I can tell you a story," said I, "a true one too, and about this very combat of Chiclana, or Barossa as you call it. I was in the Eighth of the Line; we lost the eagle of the First Battalion, more betoken, but it cost you dear. Well, we had repulsed more charges than I care to count, when your 87th Regiment came on at a foot's pace, very slow but very steady; in front of them a mounted officer, his hat in his hand, white-haired, and talking very quietly to the battalions. Our Major, Vigo-Roussillon, set spurs to his horse and galloped out to sabre him, but seeing him an old man, very handsome, and as composed as if he were in a coffee-house, lost heart and galloped back again. Only, you see, they had been very close together for the moment, and looked each other in the eyes. Soon after the Major was wounded, taken prisoner, and carried into Cadiz. One fine day they announced to him the visit of the General, Sir Thomas Graham. 'Well, sir,' said the General, taking him by the hand, 'I think we were face to face upon the field.' It was the white-haired officer!" "Ah!" cried the boy; his eyes were burning. "Well, and here is the point," I continued. "Sir Thomas fed the Major from his own table from that day, and served him with six covers." "Yes, it is a beautiful--a beautiful story," said Ronald. "And yet somehow it is not the same--is it?" "I admit it freely," said I. The boy stood a while brooding. "Well, I take my risk of it," he cried. "I believe it's treason to my sovereign--I believe there is an infamous punishment for such a crime--and yet I'm hanged if I can give you up." I was as much moved as he. "I could almost beg you to do otherwise," I said. "I was a brute to come to you, a brute and a coward. You are a noble enemy; you will make a noble soldier." And with rather a happy idea of a compliment for this warlike youth, I stood up straight and gave him the salute. He was for a moment confused; his face flushed. "Well, well, I must be getting you something to eat, but it will not be for six," he added, with a smile; "only what we can get smuggled out. There is my aunt in the road, you see," and he locked me in again with the indignant hens. I always smile when I recall that young fellow; and yet, if the reader were to smile also, I should feel ashamed. If my son shall be only like him when he comes to that age, it will be a brave day for me and not a bad one for his country. At the same time I cannot pretend that I was sorry when his sister succeeded in his place. She brought me a few crusts of bread and a jug of milk, which she had handsomely laced with whisky after the Scottish manner. "I am so sorry," she said: "I dared not bring you anything more. We are so small a family, and my aunt keeps such an eye upon the servants. I have put some whisky in the milk--it is more wholesome so--and with eggs you will be able to make something of a meal. How many eggs will you be wanting to that milk? for I must be taking the others to my aunt--that is my excuse for being here. I should think three or four. Do you know how to beat them in? or shall I do it?" Willing to detain her a while longer in the hen-house, I displayed my bleeding palms; at which she cried out aloud. "My dear Miss Flora, you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs," said I; "and it is no bagatelle to escape from Edinburgh Castle. One of us, I think, was even killed." "And you are as white as a rag, too," she exclaimed, "and can hardly stand! Here is my shawl, sit down upon it here in the corner, and I will beat your eggs. See, I have brought a fork, too; I should have been a good person to take care of Jacobites or Covenanters in old days! You shall have more to eat this evening; Ronald is to bring it you from town. We have money enough, although no food that we can call our own. Ah, if Ronald and I kept house you should not be lying in this shed! He admires you so much." "My dear friend," said I, "for God's sake do not embarrass me with more alms. I loved to receive them from that hand, so long as they were needed; but they are so no more, and whatever else I may lack--and I lack everything--it is not money." I pulled out my sheaf of notes and detached the top one: it was written for ten pounds, and signed by that very famous individual, Abraham Newlands. "Oblige me, as you would like me to oblige your brother if the parts were reversed, and take this note for the expenses. I shall need not only food, but clothes." "Lay it on the ground," said she. "I must not stop my beating." "You are not offended?" I exclaimed. She answered me by a look that was a reward in itself, and seemed to imply the most heavenly offers for the future. There was in it a shadow of reproach, and such warmth of communicative cordiality as left me speechless. I watched her instead till her hens' milk was ready. "Now," said she, "taste that." I did so, and swore it was nectar. She collected her eggs and crouched in front of me to watch me eat. There was about this tall young lady at the moment an air of motherliness delicious to behold. I am like the English general, and to this day I still wonder at my moderation. "What sort of clothes will you be wanting?" said she. "The clothes of a gentleman," said I. "Right or wrong, I think it is the part I am best qualified to play. Mr. St. Ives (for that's to be my name upon the journey) I conceive as rather a theatrical figure, and his make-up should be to match." "And yet there is a difficulty," said she. "If you got coarse clothes the fit would hardly matter. But the clothes of a fine gentleman--O, it is absolutely necessary that these should fit! And above all, with your"--she paused a moment--"to our ideas somewhat noticeable manners." "Alas for my poor manners!" said I. "But, my dear friend Flora, these little noticeabilities are just what mankind has to suffer under. Yourself, you see, you're very noticeable even when you come in a crowd to visit poor prisoners in the Castle." I was afraid I should frighten my good angel visitant away, and without the smallest breath of pause went on to add a few directions as to stuffs and colours. She opened big eyes upon me. "O, Mr. St. Ives!" she cried--"if that is to be your name--I do not say they would not be becoming; but for a journey, do you think they would be wise? I am afraid"--she gave a pretty break of laughter--"I am afraid they would be daft-like!" "Well, and am I not daft?" I asked her. "I do begin to think you are," said she. "There it is, then!" said I. "I have been long enough a figure of fun. Can you not feel with me that perhaps the bitterest thing in this captivity has been the clothes? Make me a captive--bind me with chains if you like--but let me be still myself. You do not know what it is to be a walking travesty--among foes," I added bitterly. "O, but you are too unjust!" she cried. "You speak as though any one ever dreamed of laughing at you. But no one did. We were all pained to the heart. Even my aunt--though sometimes I do think she was not quite in good taste--you should have seen her and heard her at home! She took so much interest. Every patch in your clothes made us sorry; it should have been a sister's work." "That is what I never had--a sister," said I. "But since you say that I did not make you laugh----" "O, Mr. St. Ives! never!" she exclaimed. "Not for one moment. It was all too sad. To see a gentleman----" "In the clothes of a harlequin, and begging?" I suggested. "To see a gentleman in distress, and nobly supporting it," she said. "And do you not understand, my fair foe," said I, "that even if all were as you say--even if you had thought my travesty were becoming--I should be only the more anxious for my sake, for my country's sake, and for the sake of your kindness, that you should see him whom you have helped as God meant him to be seen? that you should have something to remember him by at least more characteristic than a misfitting sulphur-yellow suit, and half a week's beard?" "You think a great deal too much of clothes," she said. "I am not that kind of girl." "And I am afraid I am that kind of a man," said I. "But do not think of me too harshly for that. I talked just now of something to remember by. I have many of them myself, of these beautiful reminders, of these keepsakes, that I cannot be parted from until I lose memory and life. Many of them are great things, many of them are high virtues--charity, mercy, faith. But some of them are trivial enough. Miss Flora, do you remember the day that I first saw you, the day of the strong east wind? Miss Flora, shall I tell you what you wore?" We had both risen to our feet, and she had her hand already on the door to go. Perhaps this attitude emboldened me to profit by the last seconds of our interview; and it certainly rendered her escape the more easy. "O, you are too romantic!" she said, laughing; and with that my sun was blown out, my enchantress had fled away, and I was again left alone in the twilight with the lady hens. CHAPTER IX THREE IS COMPANY, AND FOUR NONE The rest of the day I slept in the corner of the hen-house upon Flora's shawl. Nor did I awake until a light shone suddenly in my eyes, and starting up with a gasp (for, indeed, at the moment I dreamed I was still swinging from the Castle battlements) I found Ronald bending over me with a lantern. It appeared it was past midnight, that I had slept about sixteen hours, and that Flora had returned her poultry to the shed and I had heard her not. I could not but wonder if she had stooped to look at me as I slept. The puritan hens now slept irremediably; and being cheered with the promise of supper I wished them an ironical good-night, and was lighted across the garden and noiselessly admitted to a bedroom on the ground-floor of the cottage. There I found soap, water, razors--offered me diffidently by my beardless host--and an outfit of new clothes. To be shaved again without depending on the barber of the gaol was a source of a delicious, if a childish joy. My hair was sadly too long, but I was none so unwise as to make an attempt on it myself. And, indeed, I thought it did not wholly misbecome me as it was, being by nature curly. The clothes were about as good as I expected. The waistcoat was of toilenet, a pretty piece, the trousers of fine kerseymere, and the coat sat extraordinarily well. Altogether, when I beheld this changeling in the glass, I kissed my hand to him. "My dear fellow," said I, "have you no scent?" "Good God, no!" cried Ronald. "What do you want with scent?" "Capital thing on a campaign," said I. "But I can do without." I was now led, with the same precautions against noise, into the little bow-windowed dining-room of the cottage. The shutters were up, the lamp guiltily turned low; the beautiful Flora greeted me in a whisper; and when I was set down to table, the pair proceeded to help me with precautions that might have seemed excessive in the Ear of Dionysius. "She sleeps up there," observed the boy, pointing to the ceiling; and the knowledge that I was so imminently near to the resting-place of that gold eye-glass touched even myself with some uneasiness. Our excellent youth had imported from the city a meat-pie, and I was glad to find it flanked with a decanter of really admirable wine of Oporto. While I ate, Ronald entertained me with the news of the city, which had naturally rung all day with our escape: troops and mounted messengers had followed each other forth at all hours and in all directions; but according to the last intelligence no recapture had been made. Opinion in town was very favourable to us; our courage was applauded, and many professed regret that our ultimate chance of escape should be so small. The man who had fallen was one Sombref, a peasant; he was one who slept in a different part of the Castle; and I was thus assured that the whole of my former companions had attained their liberty, and Shed B was untenanted. From this we wandered insensibly into other topics. It is impossible to exaggerate the pleasure I took to be thus sitting at the same table with Flora, in the clothes of a gentleman, at liberty and in the full possession of my spirits and resources; of all of which I had need, because it was necessary that I should support at the same time two opposite characters, and at once play the cavalier and lively soldier for the eyes of Ronald, and to the ears of Flora maintain the same profound and sentimental note that I had already sounded. Certainly there are days when all goes well with a man; when his wit, his digestion, his mistress are in a conspiracy to spoil him, and even the weather smiles upon his wishes. I will only say of myself upon that evening that I surpassed my expectations, and was privileged to delight my hosts. Little by little they forgot their terrors and I my caution; until at last we were brought back to earth by a catastrophe that might very easily have been foreseen, but was not the less astonishing to us when it occurred. I had filled all the glasses. "I have a toast to propose," I whispered, "or rather three, but all so inextricably interwoven that they will not bear dividing. I wish first to drink to the health of a brave and therefore a generous enemy. He found me disarmed, a fugitive and helpless. Like the lion, he disdained so poor a triumph; and when he might have vindicated an easy valour, he preferred to make a friend. I wish that we should next drink to a fairer and a more tender foe. She found me in prison; she cheered me with a priceless sympathy; and what she has done since, I know she has done in mercy, and I only pray--I dare scarce hope--her mercy may prove to have been merciful. And I wish to conjoin with these, for the first, and perhaps the last time, the health--and I fear I may already say the memory--of one who has fought, not always without success, against the soldiers of your nation; but who came here, vanquished already, only to be vanquished again by the loyal hand of the one, by the unforgettable eyes of the other." It is to be feared I may have lent at times a certain resonancy to my voice; it is to be feared that Ronald, who was none the better for his own hospitality, may have set down his glass with something of a clang. Whatever may have been the cause, at least, I had scarce finished my compliment before we were aware of a thump upon the ceiling overhead. It was to be thought some very solid body had descended to the floor from the level (possibly) of a bed. I have never seen consternation painted in more lively colours than on the faces of my hosts. It was proposed to smuggle me forth into the garden, or to conceal my form under a horsehair sofa which stood against the wall. For the first expedient, as was now plain by the approaching footsteps, there was no longer time; from the second I recoiled with indignation. "My dear creatures," said I, "let us die, but do not let us be ridiculous." The words were still upon my lips when the door opened and my friend of the gold eye-glass appeared, a memorable figure, on the threshold. In one hand she bore a bedroom-candlestick; in the other, with the steadiness of a dragoon, a horse-pistol. She was wound about in shawls which did not wholly conceal the candid fabric of her nightdress, and surmounted by a nightcap of portentous architecture. Thus accoutred, she made her entrance; laid down the candle and pistol, as no longer called for; looked about the room with a silence more eloquent than oaths; and then, in a thrilling voice--"To whom have I the pleasure?" she said, addressing me with a ghost of a bow. "Madam, I am charmed, I am sure," said I. "The story is a little long; and our meeting, however welcome, was for the moment entirely unexpected by myself. I am sure----" but here I found I was quite sure of nothing, and tried again. "I have the honour," I began, and found I had the honour to be only exceedingly confused. With that, I threw myself outright upon her mercy. "Madam, I must be more frank with you," I resumed. "You have already proved your charity and compassion for the French prisoners: I am one of these; and if my appearance be not too much changed, you may even yet recognise in me that _Oddity_ who had the good fortune more than once to make you smile." Still gazing upon me through her glass, she uttered an uncompromising grunt; and then, turning to her niece--"Flora," said she, "how comes he here?" The culprits poured out for a while an antiphony of explanations, which died out at last in a miserable silence. "I think at least you might have told your aunt," she snorted. "Madam," I interposed, "they were about to do so. It is my fault if it be not done already. But I made it my prayer that your slumbers might be respected, and this necessary formula of my presentation should be delayed until to-morrow in the morning." The old lady regarded me with undissembled incredulity, to which I was able to find no better repartee than a profound and I trust graceful reverence. "French prisoners are very well in their place," she said, "but I cannot see that their place is in my private dining-room." "Madam," said I, "I hope it may be said without offence, but (except the Castle of Edinburgh) I cannot think upon the spot from which I would so readily be absent." At this, to my relief, I thought I could perceive a vestige of a smile to steal upon that iron countenance and to be bitten immediately in. "And if it is a fair question, what do they call ye?" she asked. "At your service, the Vicomte Anne de Saint-Yves," said I. "Mosha the Viscount," said she, "I am afraid you do us plain people a great deal too much honour." "My dear lady," said I, "let us be serious for a moment. What was I to do? Where was I to go? And how can you be angry with these benevolent children who took pity on one so unfortunate as myself? Your humble servant is no such terrific adventurer that you should come out against him with horse-pistol and"--smiling--"bedroom-candlesticks. It is but a young gentleman in extreme distress, hunted upon every side, and asking no more than to escape from his pursuers. I know your character, I read it in your face"--the heart trembled in my body as I said these daring words. "There are unhappy English prisoners in France at this day, perhaps at this hour. Perhaps at this hour they kneel as I do; they take the hand of her that might conceal and assist them; they press it to their lips as I do----" "Here, here!" cried the old lady, breaking from my solicitations. "Behave yourself before folk! Saw ever any one the match of that? And on earth, my dears, what are we to do with him?" "Pack him off, my dear lady," said I: "pack off the impudent fellow double-quick! And if it may be, and if your good heart allows it, help him a little on the way he has to go." "What's this pie?" she cried stridently. "Where is this pie from, Flora?" No answer was vouchsafed by my unfortunate and (I may say) extinct accomplices. "Is that my port?" she pursued. "Hough! Will somebody give me a glass of my port wine?" I made haste to serve her. She looked at me over the rim with an extraordinary expression. "I hope ye liked it?" said she. "It is even a magnificent wine," said I. "Awell, it was my father laid it down," said she. "There were few knew more about port wine than my father, God rest him!" She settled herself in a chair with an alarming air of resolution. "And so there is some particular direction that you wish to go in?" said she. "O," said I, following her example, "I am by no means such a vagrant as you suppose. I have good friends, if I could get to them, for which all I want is to be once clear of Scotland; and I have money for the road." And I produced my bundle. "English bank-notes?" she said. "That's not very handy for Scotland. It's been some fool of an Englishman that's given you these, I'm thinking. How much is it?" "I declare to Heaven I never thought to count!" I exclaimed. "But that is soon remedied." And I counted out ten notes of ten pound each, all in the name of Abraham Newlands, and five bills of country bankers for as many guineas. "One hundred and twenty-six pound five," cried the old lady. "And you carry such a sum about you, and have not so much as counted it! If you are not a thief, you must allow you are very thief-like." "And yet, madam, the money is legitimately mine," said I. She took one of the bills and held it up. "Is there any probability, now, that this could be traced?" she asked. "None, I should suppose; and if it were, it would be no matter," said I. "With your usual penetration, you guessed right. An Englishman brought it me. It reached me through the hands of his English solicitor, from my great-uncle, the Comte de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, I believe the richest _émigré_ in London." "I can do no more than take your word for it," said she. "And I trust, madam, not less," said I. "Well," said she, "at this rate the matter may be feasible. I will cash one of these five-guinea bills, less the exchange, and give you silver and Scots notes to bear you as far as the border. Beyond that, Mosha the Viscount, you will have to depend upon yourself." I could not but express a civil hesitation as to whether the amount would suffice, in my case, for so long a journey. "Ay," said she, "but you havena heard me out. For if you are not too fine a gentleman to travel with a pair of drovers, I believe I have found the very thing, and the Lord forgive me for a treasonable old wife! There are a couple stopping up-by with the shepherd-man at the farm; to-morrow they will take the road for England, probably by skreigh of day--and in my opinion you had best be travelling with the stots," said she. "For Heaven's sake do not suppose me to be so effeminate a character!" I cried. "An old soldier of Napoleon is certainly beyond suspicion. But, dear lady, to what end? and how is the society of these excellent gentlemen supposed to help me?" "My dear sir," said she, "you do not at all understand your own predicament, and must just leave your matters in the hands of those who do. I dare say you have never even heard tell of the drove-roads or the drovers; and I am certainly not going to sit up all night to explain it to you. Suffice it, that it is me who is arranging this affair--the more shame to me!--and that is the way ye have to go. Ronald," she continued, "away up-by to the shepherds; rowst them out of their beds, and make it perfectly distinct that Sim is not to leave till he has seen _me_." Ronald was nothing loth to escape from his aunt's neighbourhood, and left the room and the cottage with a silent expedition that was more like flight than mere obedience. Meanwhile the old lady turned to her niece. "And I would like to know what we are to do with him the night!" she cried. "Ronald and I meant to put him in the hen-house," said the encrimsoned Flora. "And I can tell you he is to go to no such a place," replied the aunt. "Hen-house indeed! If a guest he is to be, he shall sleep in no mortal hen-house. Your room is the most fit, I think, if he will consent to occupy it on so great a suddenty. And as for you, Flora, you shall sleep with me." I could not help admiring the prudence and tact of this old dowager, and of course it was not for me to make objections. Ere I well knew how, I was alone with a flat candlestick, which is not the most sympathetic of companions, and stood studying the snuff in a frame of mind between triumph and chagrin. All had gone well with my flight; the masterful lady who had arrogated to herself the arrangement of the details gave me every confidence; and I saw myself already arriving at my uncle's door. But, alas! it was another story with my love-affair. I had seen and spoken with her alone; I had ventured boldly; I had been not ill received; I had seen her change colour, had enjoyed the undissembled kindness of her eyes; and now, in a moment, down comes upon the scene that apocalyptic figure with the nightcap and the horse-pistol, and with the very wind of her coming behold me separated from my love! Gratitude and admiration contended in my breast with the extreme of natural rancour. My appearance in her house at past midnight had an air (I could not disguise it from myself) that was insolent and underhand, and could not but minister to the worst suspicions. And the old lady had taken it well. Her generosity was no more to be called in question than her courage, and I was afraid that her intelligence would be found to match. Certainly, Miss Flora had to support some shrewd looks, and certainly she had been troubled. I could see but the one way before me; to profit by an excellent bed, to try to sleep soon, to be stirring early, and to hope for some renewed occasion in the morning. To have said so much and yet to say no more, to go out into the world upon so half-hearted a parting, was more than I could accept. It is my belief that the benevolent fiend sat up all night to balk me. She was at my bedside with a candle long ere day, roused me, laid out for me a damnable misfit of clothes, and bade me pack my own (which were wholly unsuited to the journey) in a bundle. Sore grudging, I arrayed myself in a suit of some country fabric, as delicate as sackcloth and about as becoming as a shroud; and, on coming forth, found the dragon had prepared for me a hearty breakfast. She took the head of the table, poured out the tea, and entertained me as I ate with a great deal of good sense and a conspicuous lack of charm. How often did I not regret the change!--how often compare her, and condemn her in the comparison, with her charming niece! But if my entertainer was not beautiful, she had certainly been busy in my interest. Already she was in communication with my destined fellow-travellers; and the device on which she had struck appeared entirely suitable. I was a young Englishman who had outrun the constable; warrants were out against me in Scotland, and it had become needful I should pass the border without loss of time, and privately. "I have given a very good account of you," said she, "which I hope you may justify. I told them there was nothing against you beyond the fact that you were put to the horn (if that is the right word) for debt." "I pray God you have the expression incorrectly, ma'am," said I. "I do not give myself out for a person easily alarmed; but you must admit there is something barbarous and mediæval in the sound well qualified to startle a poor foreigner." "It is the name of a process in Scots Law, and need alarm no honest man," said she. "But you are a very idle-minded young gentleman; you must still have your joke, I see: I only hope you will have no cause to regret it." "I pray you not to suppose, because I speak lightly, that I do not feel deeply," said I. "Your kindness has quite conquered me; I lay myself at your disposition, I beg you to believe, with real tenderness; I pray you to consider me from henceforth as the most devoted of your friends." "Well, well," she said, "here comes your devoted friend the drover. I'm thinking he will be eager for the road; and I will not be easy myself till I see you well off the premises, and the dishes washed, before my servant-woman wakes. Praise God, we have gotten one that is a treasure at the sleeping!" The morning was already beginning to be blue in the trees of the garden, and to put to shame the candle by which I had breakfasted. The lady rose from table, and I had no choice but to follow her example. All the time I was beating my brains for any means by which I should be able to get a word apart with Flora, or find the time to write her a billet. The windows had been opened while I breakfasted, I suppose to ventilate the room from any traces of my passage there; and, Master Ronald appearing on the front lawn, my ogre leaned forth to address him. "Ronald," she said, "wasn't that Sim that went by the wall?" I snatched my advantage. Right at her back there was pen, ink, and paper laid out. I wrote: "I love you"; and before I had time to write more, or so much as to blot what I had written, I was again under the guns of the gold eye-glasses. "It's time," she began; and then, as she observed my occupation, "Umph!" she broke off. "Ye have something to write?" she demanded. "Some notes, madam," said I, bowing with alacrity. "Notes," she said; "or a note?" "There is doubtless some _finesse_ of the English language that I do not comprehend," said I. "I'll contrive, however, to make my meaning very plain to ye, Mosha le Viscount," she continued. "I suppose you desire to be considered a gentleman?" "Can you doubt it, madam?" said I. "I doubt very much, at least, whether you go the right way about it," she said. "You have come here to me, I cannot very well say how; I think you will admit you owe me some thanks, if it was only for the breakfast I made ye. But what are you to me? A waif young man, not so far to seek for looks and manners, with some English notes in your pocket and a price upon your head. I am a lady; I have been your hostess, with however little will; and I desire that this random acquaintance of yours with my family will cease and determine." I believe I must have coloured. "Madam," said I, "the notes are of no importance; and your least pleasure ought certainly to be my law. You have felt, and you have been pleased to express, a doubt of me. I tear them up." Which you may be sure I did thoroughly. "There's a good lad!" said the dragon, and immediately led the way to the front lawn. The brother and sister were both waiting us here, and, as well as I could make out in the imperfect light, bore every appearance of having passed through a rather cruel experience. Ronald seemed ashamed to so much as catch my eye in the presence of his aunt, and was the picture of embarrassment. As for Flora, she had scarce the time to cast me one look before the dragon took her by the arm, and began to march across the garden in the extreme first glimmer of the dawn without exchanging speech. Ronald and I followed in equal silence. There was a door in that same high wall on the top of which I had sat perched no longer gone than yesterday morning. This the old lady set open with a key; and on the other side we were aware of a rough-looking, thick-set man, leaning with his arms (through which was passed a formidable staff) on a dry-stone dyke. Him the old lady immediately addressed. "Sim," said she, "this is the young gentleman." Sim replied with an inarticulate grumble of sound, and a movement of one arm and his head, which did duty for a salutation. "Now, Mr. St. Ives," said the old lady, "it's high time for you to be taking the road. But first of all let me give the change of your five-guinea bill. Here are four pounds of it in British Linen notes, and the balance in small silver, less sixpence. Some charge a shilling, I believe, but I have given you the benefit of the doubt. See and guide it with all the sense that you possess." "And here, Mr. St. Ives," said Flora, speaking for the first time, "is a plaid which you will find quite necessary on so rough a journey. I hope you will take it from the hands of a Scots friend," she added, and her voice trembled. "Genuine holly: I cut it myself," said Ronald, and gave me as good a cudgel as a man could wish for in a row. The formality of these gifts, and the waiting figure of the drover, told me loudly that I must be gone. I dropped on one knee and bade farewell to the aunt, kissing her hand. I did the like--but with how different a passion!--to her niece; as for the boy, I took him to my arms and embraced him with a cordiality that seemed to strike him speechless. "Farewell!" and "Farewell!" I said. "I shall never forget my friends. Keep me sometimes in memory. Farewell!" With that I turned my back and began to walk away; and had scarce done so, when I heard the door in the high wall close behind me. Of course this was the aunt's doing; and of course, if I know anything of human character, she would not let me go without some tart expressions. I declare, even if I had heard them, I should not have minded in the least, for I was quite persuaded that, whatever admirers I might be leaving behind me in Swanston Cottage, the aunt was not the least sincere. CHAPTER X THE DROVERS It took me a little effort to come abreast of my new companion; for though he walked with an ugly roll and no great appearance of speed, he could cover the ground at a good rate when he wanted to. Each looked at the other: I with natural curiosity, he with a great appearance of distaste. I have heard since that his heart was entirely set against me; he had seen me kneel to the ladies, and diagnosed me for a "gesterin' eediot." "So, ye're for England, are ye?" said he. I told him yes. "Weel, there's waur places, I believe," was his reply; and he relapsed into a silence which was not broken during a quarter of an hour of steady walking. This interval brought us to the foot of a bare green valley, which wound upwards and backwards among the hills. A little stream came down the midst and made a succession of clear pools, near by the lowest of which I was aware of a drove of shaggy cattle, and a man who seemed the very counterpart of Mr. Sim making a breakfast upon bread and cheese. This second drover (whose name proved to be Candlish) rose on our approach. "Here's a mannie that's to gang through with us," said Sim. "It was the auld wife Gilchrist wanted it." "Aweel, aweel," said the other; and presently, remembering his manners, and looking on me with a solemn grin, "A fine day!" says he. I agreed with him, and asked him how he did. "Brawly," was the reply; and without further civilities, the pair proceeded to get the cattle under way. This, as well as almost all the herding, was the work of a pair of comely and intelligent dogs, directed by Sim or Candlish in little more than monosyllables. Presently we were ascending the side of the mountain by a rude green track, whose presence I had not hitherto observed. A continual sound of munching and the crying of a great quantity of moor birds accompanied our progress, which the deliberate pace and perennial appetite of the cattle rendered wearisomely slow. In the midst my two conductors marched in a contented silence that I could not but admire. The more I looked at them, the more I was impressed by their absurd resemblance to each other. They were dressed in the same coarse home-spun, carried similar sticks, were equally begrimed about the nose with snuff, and each wound in an identical plaid of what is called the shepherd's tartan. In a back view they might be described as indistinguishable; and even from the front they were much alike. An incredible coincidence of humours augmented the impression. Thrice and four times I attempted to pave the way for some exchange of thought, sentiment, or--at the least of it--human words. An _Ay_ or a _Nhm_ was the sole return, and the topic died on the hillside without echo. I can never deny that I was chagrined; and when, after a little more walking, Sim turned towards me and offered me a ram's horn of snuff, with the question, "Do ye use it?" I answered, with some animation, "'Faith, sir, I would use pepper to introduce a little cordiality." But even this sally failed to reach, or at least failed to soften, my companions. At this rate we came to the summit of a ridge, and saw the track descend in front of us abruptly into a desert vale, about a league in length, and closed at the farther end by no less barren hill-tops. Upon this point of vantage Sim came to a halt, took off his hat, and mopped his brow. "Weel," he said, "here we're at the top o' Howden." "The top o' Howden, sure eneuch," said Candlish. "Mr. St. Ivy, are ye dry?" said the first. "Now, really," said I, "is not this Satan reproving sin?" "What ails ye, man?" said he. "I'm offerin' ye a dram." "O, if it be anything to drink," said I, "I am as dry as my neighbours." Whereupon Sim produced from the corner of his plaid a black bottle, and we all drank and pledged each other. I found these gentlemen followed upon such occasions an invariable etiquette, which you may be certain I made haste to imitate. Each wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand, held up the bottle in his right, remarked with emphasis, "Here's to ye!" and swallowed as much of the spirit as his fancy prompted. This little ceremony, which was the nearest thing to manners I could perceive in either of my companions, was repeated at becoming intervals, generally after an ascent. Occasionally we shared a mouthful of ewe-milk cheese and an inglorious form of bread, which I understood (but am far from engaging my honour on the point) to be called "shearer's bannock." And that may be said to have concluded our whole active intercourse for the first day. I had the more occasion to remark the extraordinarily desolate nature of that country, through which the drove-road continued, hour after hour, and even day after day, to wind. A continual succession of insignificant shaggy hills, divided by the course of ten thousand brooks, through which we had to wade, or by the side of which we encamped at night; infinite perspectives of heather; infinite quantities of moorfowl; here and there, by a stream-side, small and pretty clumps of willows or the silver birch; here and there, the ruins of ancient and inconsiderable fortresses--made the unchanging characters of the scene. Occasionally, but only in the distance, we could perceive the smoke of a small town or of an isolated farmhouse or cottage on the moors; more often, a flock of sheep and its attendant shepherd, or a rude field of agriculture perhaps not yet harvested. With these alleviations, we might almost be said to pass through an unbroken desert--sure, one of the most impoverished in Europe; and when I recalled to mind that we were yet but a few leagues from the chief city (where the law-courts sat every day with a press of business, soldiers garrisoned the Castle, and men of admitted parts were carrying on the practice of letters and the investigations of science), it gave me a singular view of that poor, barren, and yet illustrious country through which I travelled. Still more, perhaps, did it commend the wisdom of Miss Gilchrist in sending me with these uncouth companions and by this unfrequented path. My itinerary is by no means clear to me; the names and distances I never clearly knew, and have now wholly forgotten; and this is the more to be regretted as there is no doubt that, in the course of those days, I must have passed and camped among sites which have been rendered illustrious by the pen of Walter Scott. Nay, more, I am of opinion that I was still more favoured by fortune, and have actually met and spoken with that inimitable author. Our encounter was of a tall, stoutish, elderly gentleman, a little grizzled, and of a rugged but cheerful and engaging countenance. He sat on a hill pony, wrapped in a plaid over his green coat, and was accompanied by a horsewoman, his daughter, a young lady of the most charming appearance. They overtook us on a stretch of heath, reined up as they came alongside, and accompanied us for perhaps a quarter of an hour before they galloped off again across the hillsides to our left. Great was my amazement to find the unconquerable Mr. Sim thaw immediately on the accost of this strange gentleman, who hailed him with a ready familiarity, proceeded at once to discuss with him the trade of droving and the prices of cattle, and did not disdain to take a pinch from the inevitable ram's horn. Presently I was aware that the stranger's eye was directed on myself; and there ensued a conversation, some of which I could not help overhearing at the time, and the rest have pieced together more or less plausibly from the report of Sim. "Surely that must be an _amateur drover_ ye have gotten there?" the gentleman seems to have asked. Sim replied I was a young gentleman that had a reason of his own to travel privately. "Well, well, ye must tell me nothing of that. I am in the law, you know, and _tace_ is the Latin for a candle," answered the gentleman. "But I hope it's nothing bad." Sim told him it was no more than debt. "O Lord, if that be all!" cried the gentleman; and turning to myself, "Well, sir," he added, "I understand you are taking a tramp through our forest here for the pleasure of the thing?" "Why, yes, sir," said I; "and I must say I am very well entertained." "I envy you," said he. "I have jogged many miles of it myself when I was younger. My youth lies buried about here under every heather-bush, like the soul of the licentiate Lucius. But you should have a guide. The pleasure of this country is much in the legends, which grow as plentiful as blackberries." And directing my attention to a little fragment of a broken wall no greater than a tombstone, he told me, for an example, a story of its earlier inhabitants. Years after it chanced that I was one day diverting myself with a Waverley Novel, when what should I come upon but the identical narrative of my green-coated gentleman upon the moors! In a moment the scene, the tones of his voice, his northern accent, and the very aspect of the earth and sky and temperature of the weather, flashed back into my mind with the reality of dreams. The unknown in the green coat had been the Great Unknown! I had met Scott; I had heard a story from his lips; I should have been able to write, to claim acquaintance, to tell him that his legend still tingled in my ears. But the discovery came too late, and the great man had already succumbed under the load of his honours and misfortunes. Presently, after giving us a cigar apiece, Scott bade us farewell and disappeared with his daughter over the hills. And when I applied to Sim for information, his answer of "The Shirra, man! A'body kens the Shirra!" told me, unfortunately, nothing. A more considerable adventure falls to be related. We were now near the border. We had travelled for long upon the track beaten and browsed by a million herds, our predecessors, and had seen no vestige of that traffic which had created it. It was early in the morning when we at last perceived, drawing near to the drove-road, but still at a distance of about half a league, a second caravan, similar to but larger than our own. The liveliest excitement was at once exhibited by both my comrades. They climbed hillocks, they studied the approaching drove from under their hand, they consulted each other with an appearance of alarm that seemed to me extraordinary. I had learned by this time that their stand-off manners implied, at least, no active enmity; and I made bold to ask them what was wrong. "Bad yins," was Sim's emphatic answer. All day the dogs were kept unsparingly on the alert, and the drove pushed forward at a very unusual and seemingly unwelcome speed. All day Sim and Candlish, with a more than ordinary expenditure both of snuff and of words, continued to debate the position. It seems that they had recognised two of our neighbours on the road--one Faa, and another by the name of Gillies. Whether there was an old feud between them still unsettled I could never learn; but Sim and Candlish were prepared for every degree of fraud or violence at their hands. Candlish repeatedly congratulated himself on having left "the watch at home with the mistress"; and Sim perpetually brandished his cudgel, and cursed his ill-fortune that it should be sprung. "I wilna care a damn to gie the daashed scoon'rel a fair clout wi' it," he said. "The daashed thing micht come sindry in ma hand." "Well, gentlemen," said I, "suppose they do come on, I think we can give a very good account of them." And I made my piece of holly, Ronald's gift, the value of which I now appreciated, sing about my head. "Ay, man? Are ye stench?" inquired Sim, with a gleam of approval in his wooden countenance. The same evening, somewhat wearied with our day-long expedition, we encamped on a little verdant mound, from the midst of which there welled a spring of clear water scarce great enough to wash the hands in. We had made our meal and lain down, but were not yet asleep, when a growl from one of the collies set us on the alert. All three sat up, and on a second impulse all lay down again, but now with our cudgels ready. A man must be an alien and an outlaw, an old soldier and a young man in the bargain, to take adventure easily. With no idea as to the rights of the quarrel or the probable consequences of the encounter, I was as ready to take part with my two drovers as ever to fall in line on the morning of a battle. Presently there leaped three men out of the heather; we had scarce time to get to our feet before we were assailed; and in a moment each one of us was engaged with an adversary whom the deepening twilight scarce permitted him to see. How the battle sped in other quarters I am in no position to describe. The rogue that fell to my share was exceedingly agile and expert with his weapon; had and held me at a disadvantage from the first assault; forced me to give ground continually, and at last, in mere self-defence, to let him have the point. It struck him in the throat, and he went down like a nine-pin and moved no more. It seemed this was the signal for the engagement to be discontinued. The other combatants separated at once; our foes were suffered, without molestation, to lift up and bear away their fallen comrade; so that I perceived this sort of war to be not wholly without laws of chivalry, and perhaps rather to partake of the character of a tournament than of a battle _à outrance_. There was no doubt, at least, that I was supposed to have pushed the affair too seriously. Our friends the enemy removed their wounded companion with undisguised consternation; and they were no sooner over the top of the brae than Sim and Candlish roused up their wearied drove and set forth on a night march. "I'm thinking Faa's unco bad," said the one. "Ay," said the other, "he lookit dooms gash." "He did that," said the first. And their weary silence fell upon them again. Presently Sim turned to me. "Ye're unco ready with the stick," said he. "Too ready, I'm afraid," said I. "I am afraid Mr. Faa (if that be his name) has got his gruel." "Weel, I wouldna wonder," replied Sim. "And what is likely to happen?" I inquired. "Aweel," said Sim, snuffing profoundly, "if I were to offer an opeenion, it would not be conscientious. For the plain fac' is, Mr. St. Ivy, that I div not ken. We have had crackit heids--and rowth of them--ere now; and we have had a broken leg, or maybe twa; and the like of that we drover bodies make a kind of a practice like to keep among oursel's. But a corp we have none of us ever had to deal with, and I could set na leemit to what Gillies micht consider proper in the affair. Forbye that, he would be in raither a hobble himsel' if he was to gang hame wantin' Faa. Folk are awfu' throng with their questions, and parteecularly when they're no' wantit." "That's a fac'," said Candlish. I considered this prospect ruefully; and then making the best of it, "Upon all which accounts," said I, "the best will be to get across the Border and there separate. If you are troubled, you can very truly put the blame upon your late companion; and if I am pursued, I must just try to keep out of the way." "Mr. St. Ivy," said Sim, with something resembling enthusiasm, "no' a word mair! I have met in wi' mony kinds o' gentry ere now; I hae seen o' them that was the tae thing, and I hae seen o' them that was the tither; but the wale of a gentleman like you I have no' sae very frequently seen the bate of." Our night march was accordingly pursued with unremitting diligence. The stars paled, the east whitened, and we were still, both dogs and men, toiling after the wearied cattle. Again and again Sim and Candlish lamented the necessity: it was "fair ruin on the bestial," they declared; but the thought of a judge and a scaffold hunted them ever forward. I myself was not so much to be pitied. All that night, and during the whole of the little that remained before us of our conjunct journey, I enjoyed a new pleasure, the reward of my prowess, in the now loosened tongue of Mr. Sim. Candlish was still obdurately taciturn: it was the man's nature; but Sim, having finally appraised and approved me, displayed without reticence a rather garrulous habit of mind and a pretty talent for narration. The pair were old and close companions, co-existing in these endless moors in a brotherhood of silence such as I have heard attributed to the trappers of the West. It seems absurd to mention love in connection with so ugly and snuffy a couple; at least, their trust was absolute; and they entertained a surprising admiration for each other's qualities; Candlish exclaiming that Sim was "grand company!" and Sim frequently assuring me in an aside that for "a rale auld stench bitch there was na the bate of Candlish in braid Scotland." The two dogs appeared to be entirely included in this family compact, and I remarked that their exploits and traits of character were constantly and minutely observed by the two masters. Dog-stories particularly abounded with them; and not only the dogs of the present but those of the past contributed their quota. "But that was naething," Sim would begin: "there was a herd in Manar, they ca'd him Tweedie--ye'll mind Tweedie, Can'lish?" "Fine, that!" said Candlish. "Aweel, Tweedie had a dog--" The story I have forgotten; I dare say it was dull, and I suspect it was not true; but indeed my travels with the drovers had rendered me indulgent, and perhaps even credulous, in the matter of dog-stories. Beautiful, indefatigable beings! as I saw them at the end of a long day's journey frisking, barking, bounding, striking attitudes, slanting a bushy tail, manifestly playing to the spectator's eye, manifestly rejoicing in their grace and beauty--and turned to observe Sim and Candlish unornamentally plodding in the rear with the plaids about their bowed shoulders and the drop at their snuffy nose--I thought I would rather claim kinship with the dogs than with the men! My sympathy was unreturned; in their eyes I was a creature light as air; and they would scarce spare me the time for a perfunctory caress or perhaps a hasty lap of the wet tongue, ere they were back again in sedulous attendance on those dingy deities, their masters--and their masters, as like as not, damning their stupidity. Altogether the last hours of our tramp were infinitely the most agreeable to me, and I believe to all of us; and by the time we came to separate there had grown up a certain familiarity and mutual esteem that made the parting harder. It took place about four of the afternoon on a bare hillside from which I could see the ribbon of the great north road, henceforth to be my conductor. I asked what was to pay. "Naething," replied Sim. "What in the name of folly is this?" I exclaimed. "You have led me, you have fed me, you have filled me full of whisky, and now you will take nothing!" "Ye see we indentit for that," replied Sim. "Indented?" I repeated; "what does the man mean?" "Mr. St. Ivy," said Sim, "this is a maitter entirely between Candlish and me and the auld wife Gilchrist. You had naething to say to it; weel, ye can have naething to do with it, then." "My good man," said I, "I can allow myself to be placed in no such ridiculous position. Mrs. Gilchrist is nothing to me, and I refuse to be her debtor." "I dinna exac'ly see what way ye're gaun to help it," observed my drover. "By paying you here and now," said I. "There's aye twa to a bargain, Mr. St. Ivy," said he. "You mean that you will not take it?" said I. "There or thereabout," said he. "Forbye that it would set ye a heap better to keep your siller for them you awe it to. Ye're young, Mr. St. Ivy, and thoughtless; but it's my belief that, wi' care and circumspection, ye may yet do credit to yoursel'. But just you bear this in mind: that him that _awes_ siller should never _gie_ siller." Well, what was there to say? I accepted his rebuke, and, bidding the pair farewell, set off alone upon my southward way. "Mr. St. Ivy," was the last word of Sim, "I was never muckle ta'en up in Englishry; but I think that I really ought to say that ye seem to me to have the makings of quite a decent lad." CHAPTER XI THE GREAT NORTH ROAD It chanced that as I went down the hill these last words of my friend the drover echoed not unfruitfully in my head. I had never told these men the least particulars as to my race or fortune, as it was a part, and the best part, of their civility to ask no questions: yet they had dubbed me without hesitation English. Some strangeness in the accent they had doubtless thus explained. And it occurred to me, that if I could pass in Scotland for an Englishman, I might be able to reverse the process and pass in England for a Scot. I thought, if I was pushed to it, I could make a struggle to imitate the brogue; after my experience with Candlish and Sim, I had a rich provision of outlandish words at my command; and I felt I could tell the tale of Tweedie's dog so as to deceive a native. At the same time, I was afraid my name of St. Ives was scarcely suitable; till I remembered there was a town so called in the province of Cornwall, thought I might yet be glad to claim it for my place of origin, and decided for a Cornish family and a Scots education. For a trade, as I was equally ignorant of all, and as the most innocent might at any moment be the means of my exposure, it was best to pretend to none. And I dubbed myself a young gentleman of a sufficient fortune and an idle, curious habit of mind, rambling the country at my own charges, in quest of health, information, and merry adventures. At Newcastle, which was the first town I reached, I completed my preparations for the part, before going to the inn, by the purchase of a knapsack and a pair of leathern gaiters. My plaid I continued to wear from sentiment. It was warm, useful to sleep in if I were again benighted, and I had discovered it to be not unbecoming for a man of gallant carriage. Thus equipped, I supported my character of the light-hearted pedestrian not amiss. Surprise was indeed expressed that I should have selected such a season of the year; but I pleaded some delays of business, and smilingly claimed to be an eccentric. The devil was in it, I would say, if any season of the year was not good enough for me; I was not made of sugar, I was no mollycoddle to be afraid of an ill-aired bed or a sprinkle of snow; and I would knock upon the table with my fist and call for t'other bottle, like the noisy and free-hearted young gentleman I was. It was my policy (if I may so express myself) to talk much and say little. At the inn-tables, the country, the state of the roads, the business interest of those who sat down with me, and the course of public events, afforded me a considerable field in which I might discourse at large and still communicate no information about myself. There was no one with less air of reticence; I plunged into my company up to the neck; and I had a long cock-and-bull story of an aunt of mine which must have convinced the most suspicious of my innocence. "What!" they would have said, "that young ass to be concealing anything! Why, he has deafened me with an aunt of his until my head aches. He only wants you should give him a line, and he would tell you his whole descent from Adam downward, and his whole private fortune to the last shilling." A responsible solid fellow was even so much moved by pity for my inexperience as to give me a word or two of good advice: that I was but a young man after all--I had at this time a deceptive air of youth that made me easily pass for one-and-twenty, and was, in the circumstances, worth a fortune--that the company at inns was very mingled, that I should do well to be more careful, and the like; to all which I made answer that I meant no harm myself and expected none from others, or the devil was in it. "You are one of those d----d prudent fellows that I could never abide with," said I. "You are the kind of man that has a long head. That's all the world, my dear sir: the long heads and the short horns! Now, I am a short horn." "I doubt," says he, "that you will not go very far without getting sheared." I offered to bet with him on that, and he made off, shaking his head. But my particular delight was to enlarge on politics and the war. None damned the French like me; none was more bitter against the Americans. And when the north-bound mail arrived, crowned with holly, and the coachman and guard hoarse with shouting victory, I went even so far as to entertain the company to a bowl of punch, which I compounded myself with no illiberal hand, and doled out to such sentiments as the following:-- "Our glorious victory on the Nivelle!" "Lord Wellington, God bless him! and may victory ever attend upon his arms!" and, "Soult, poor devil! and may he catch it again to the same tune!" Never was oratory more applauded to the echo--never any one was more of the popular man than I. I promise you, we made a night of it. Some of the company supported each other, with the assistance of boots, to their respective bed-chambers, while the rest slept on the field of glory where we had left them; and at the breakfast-table the next morning there was an extraordinary assemblage of red eyes and shaking fists. I observed patriotism to burn much lower by daylight. Let no one blame me for insensibility to the reverses of France! God knows how my heart raged. How I longed to fall on that herd of swine and knock their heads together in the moment of their revelry! But you are to consider my own situation and its necessities; also a certain lightheartedness, eminently Gallic, which forms a leading trait in my character, and leads me to throw myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a schoolboy. It is possible that I sometimes allow this impish humour to carry me further than good taste approves: and I was certainly punished for it once. This was in the episcopal city of Durham. We sat down, a considerable company, to dinner, most of us fine old vatted English tories of that class which is often so enthusiastic as to be inarticulate. I took and held the lead from the beginning; and, the talk having turned on the French in the Peninsula, I gave them authentic details (on the authority of a cousin of mine, an ensign) of certain cannibal orgies in Galicia, in which no less a person than General Caffarelli had taken a part. I always disliked that commander, who once ordered me under arrest for insubordination; and it is possible that a spice of vengeance added to the rigour of my picture. I have forgotten the details; no doubt they were high-coloured. No doubt I rejoiced to fool these jolter-heads; and no doubt the sense of security that I drank from their dull, gasping faces encouraged me to proceed extremely far. And for my sins, there was one silent little man at table who took my story at the true value. It was from no sense of humour, to which he was quite dead. It was from no particular intelligence, for he had not any. The bond of sympathy, of all things in the world, had rendered him clairvoyant. Dinner was no sooner done than I strolled forth into the streets with some design of viewing the cathedral; and the little man was silently at my heels. A few doors from the inn, in a dark place of the street, I was aware of a touch on my arm, turned suddenly, and found him looking up at me with eyes pathetically bright. "I beg your pardon, sir; but that story of yours was particularly rich. He--he! Particularly racy," said he. "I tell you, sir, I took you wholly! I _smoked_ you! I believe you and I, sir, if we had a chance to talk, would find we had a good many opinions in common. Here is the 'Blue Bell,' a very comfortable place. They draw good ale, sir. Would you be so condescending as to share a pot with me?" There was something so ambiguous and secret in the little man's perpetual signalling, that I confess my curiosity was much aroused. Blaming myself, even as I did so, for the indiscretion, I embraced his proposal, and we were soon face to face over a tankard of mulled ale. He lowered his voice to the least attenuation of a whisper. "Here, sir," said he, "is to the Great Man. I think you take me? No?" He leaned forward till our noses touched. "Here is to the Emperor!" said he. I was extremely embarrassed, and, in spite of the creature's innocent appearance, more than half alarmed. I thought him too ingenuous, and, indeed, too daring for a spy. Yet if he were honest he must be a man of extraordinary indiscretion, and therefore very unfit to be encouraged by an escaped prisoner. I took a half course, accordingly--accepted his toast in silence, and drank it without enthusiasm. He proceeded to abound in the praises of Napoleon, such as I had never heard in France, or at least only on the lips of officials paid to offer them. "And this Caffarelli, now," he pursued; "he is a splendid fellow, too, is he not? I have not heard vastly much of him myself. No details, sir--no details! We labour under huge difficulties here as to unbiassed information." "I believe I have heard the same complaint in other countries," I could not help remarking. "But as to Caffarelli, he is neither lame nor blind, he has two legs, and a nose in the middle of his face. And I care as much about him as you care for the dead body of Mr. Perceval!" He studied me with glowing eyes. "You cannot deceive me!" he cried. "You have served under him. You are a Frenchman! I hold by the hand, at last, one of that noble race, the pioneers of the glorious principles of liberty and brotherhood. Hush! No, it is all right. I thought there had been somebody at the door. In this wretched, enslaved country we dare not even call our souls our own. The spy and the hangman, sir--the spy and the hangman! And yet there is a candle burning, too. The good leaven is working, sir--working underneath. Even in this town there are a few brave spirits who meet every Wednesday. You must stay over a day or so and join us. We do not use this house. Another, and a quieter. They draw fine ale, however--fair, mild ale. You will find yourself among friends, among brothers. You will hear some very daring sentiments expressed!" he cried, expanding his small chest. "Monarchy, Christianity--all the trappings of a bloated past--the Free Confraternity of Durham and Tyneside deride." Here was a devil of a prospect for a gentleman whose whole design was to avoid observation! The Free Confraternity had no charms for me; daring sentiments were no part of my baggage; and I tried, instead, a little cold water. "You seem to forget, sir, that my Emperor has reestablished Christianity," I observed. "Ah, sir, but that was policy!" he exclaimed. "You do not understand Napoleon. I have followed his whole career. I can explain his policy from first to last. Now, for instance, in the Peninsula, on which you were so very amusing, if you will come to a friend's house who has a map of Spain, I can make the whole course of the war quite clear to you, I venture to say, in half an hour." This was intolerable. Of the two extremes, I found I preferred the British tory; and, making an appointment for the morrow, I pleaded sudden headache, escaped to the inn, packed my knapsack, and fled, about nine at night, from this accursed neighbourhood. It was cold, starry, and clear, and the road dry, with a touch of frost. For all that, I had not the smallest intention to make a long stage of it; and about ten o'clock, spying on the right-hand side of the way the lighted windows of an ale-house, I determined to bait there for the night. It was against my principle, which was to frequent only the dearest inns; and the misadventure that befell me was sufficient to make me more particular in the future. A large company was assembled in the parlour, which was heavy with clouds of tobacco-smoke, and brightly lighted up by a roaring fire of coal. Hard by the chimney stood a vacant chair in what I thought an enviable situation, whether for warmth or the pleasure of society; and I was about to take it when the nearest of the company stopped me with his hand. "Beg thy pardon, sir," said he; "but that there chair belongs to a British soldier." A chorus of voices enforced and explained. It was one of Lord Wellington's heroes. He had been wounded under Rowland Hill. He was Colbourne's right-hand man. In short, this favoured individual appeared to have served with every separate corps, and under every individual general in the Peninsula. Of course I apologised. I had not known. The devil was in it if a soldier had not a right to the best in England. And with that sentiment, which was loudly applauded, I found a corner of a bench, and awaited, with some hopes of entertainment, the return of the hero. He proved, of course, to be a private soldier. I say of course, because no officer could possibly enjoy such heights of popularity. He had been wounded before San Sebastian, and still wore his arm in a sling. What was a great deal worse for him, every member of the company had been plying him with drink. His honest yokel's countenance blazed as if with fever, his eyes were glazed and looked the two ways, and his feet stumbled as, amidst a murmur of applause, he returned to the midst of his admirers. Two minutes afterwards I was again posting in the dark along the highway; to explain which sudden movement of retreat I must trouble the reader with a reminiscence of my services. I lay one night with the out-pickets in Castile. We were in close touch with the enemy; the usual orders had been issued against smoking, fires, and talk, and both armies lay as quiet as mice, when I saw the English sentinel opposite making a signal by holding up his musket. I repeated it, and we both crept together in the dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies. It was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the English had quite run out. He gave me the money, and I, as was the custom, left him my firelock in pledge, and set off for the canteen. When I returned with a skin of wine, behold, it had pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to withdraw the outposts! Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future. Doubtless our officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of courtesies, but doubtless it would be impossible to wink at so gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a misadventure as mine; and you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of Castile, benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and with no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond that it was somewhere in my Lord Wellington's army. But my Englishman was either a very honest fellow, or else extremely thirsty, and at last contrived to advertise me of his new position. Now, the English sentry in Castile and the wounded hero in the Durham public-house were one and the same person; and if he had been a little less drunk, or myself less lively in getting away, the travels of M. St. Ives might have come to an untimely end. I suppose this woke me up; it stirred in me besides a spirit of opposition, and in spite of cold, darkness, the highwaymen and the footpads, I determined to walk right on till breakfast-time: a happy resolution, which enabled me to observe one of those traits of manners which at once depict a country and condemn it. It was near midnight when I saw, a great way ahead of me, the light of many torches; presently after, the sound of wheels reached me, and the slow tread of feet, and soon I had joined myself to the rear of a sordid, silent, and lugubrious procession, such as we see in dreams. Close on a hundred persons marched by torchlight in unbroken silence; and in their midst a cart, and in the cart, on an inclined platform, the dead body of a man--the centre-piece of this solemnity, the hero whose obsequies we were come forth at this unusual hour to celebrate. It was but a plain, dingy old fellow of fifty or sixty, his throat cut, his shirt turned over as though to show the wound. Blue trousers and brown socks completed his attire, if we can talk so of the dead. He had a horrid look of a waxwork. In the tossing of the lights he seemed to make faces and mouths at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of speech. The cart, with this shabby and tragic freight, and surrounded by its silent escort and bright torches, continued for some distance to creak along the high-road, and I to follow it in amazement, which was soon exchanged for horror. At the corner of a lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night) drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. The hole was filled with quicklime, and the bystanders, as if relieved of some oppression, broke at once into a sound of whispered speech. My shirt stuck to me, my heart had almost ceased beating, and I found my tongue with difficulty. "I beg your pardon," I gasped to a neighbour, "what is this? what has he done? is it allowed?" "Why, where do you come from?" replied the man. "I am a traveller, sir," said I, "and a total stranger in this part of the country. I had lost my way when I saw your torches, and came by chance on this--this incredible scene. Who was the man?" "A suicide," said he. "Ay, he was a bad one was Johnny Green." It appeared this was a wretch who had committed many barbarous murders, and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his own hand. And the nightmare at the cross-roads was the regular punishment, according to the laws of England, for an act which the Romans honoured as a virtue! Whenever an Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it's a defect they are rather prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to myself in conscious superiority--and take a thimbleful of brandy for the stomach's sake. I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going to bed extremely early, that I came to the model of a good old-fashioned English inn, and was attended on by the picture of a pretty chambermaid. We had a good many pleasant passages as she waited table or warmed my bed for me with a devil of a brass warming-pan, fully larger than herself; and as she was no less pert than she was pretty, she may be said to have given rather better than she took. I cannot tell why (unless it were for the sake of her saucy eyes), but I made her my confidante, told her I was attached to a young lady in Scotland, and received the encouragement of her sympathy, mingled and connected with a fair amount of rustic wit. While I slept the down-mail stopped for supper; it chanced that one of the passengers left behind a copy of the _Edinburgh Courant_, and the next morning my pretty chambermaid set the paper before me at breakfast, with the remark that there was some news from my lady-love. I took it eagerly, hoping to find some further word of our escape, in which I was disappointed; and I was about to lay it down, when my eye fell on a paragraph immediately concerning me. Faa was in hospital, grievously sick, and warrants were out for the arrest of Sim and Candlish. These two men had shown themselves very loyal to me. This trouble emerging, the least I could do was to be guided by a similar loyalty to them. Suppose my visit to my uncle crowned with some success, and my finances re-established, I determined I should immediately return to Edinburgh, put their case in the hands of a good lawyer, and await events. So my mind was very lightly made up to what proved a mighty serious matter. Candlish and Sim were all very well in their way, and I do sincerely trust I should have been at some pains to help them, had there been nothing else. But in truth my heart and my eyes were set on quite another matter, and I received the news of their tribulation almost with joy. There is never a bad wind that blows where we want to go, and you may be sure there was nothing unwelcome in a circumstance that carried me back to Edinburgh and Flora. From that hour I began to indulge myself with the making of imaginary scenes and interviews, in which I confounded the aunt, flattered Ronald, and now in the witty, now in the sentimental manner, declared my love and received the assurance of its return. By means of this exercise my resolution daily grew stronger, until at last I had piled together such a mass of obstinacy as it would have taken a cataclysm of nature to subvert. "Yes," said I to the chambermaid, "here is news of my lady-love indeed, and very good news too." All that day, in the teeth of a keen winter wind, I hugged myself in my plaid, and it was as though her arms were flung around me. CHAPTER XII I FOLLOW A COVERED CART NEARLY TO MY DESTINATION At last I began to draw near, by reasonable stages, to the neighbourhood of Wakefield; and the name of Mr. Burchell Fenn came to the top in my memory. This was the gentleman (the reader may remember) who made a trade of forwarding the escape of French prisoners. How he did so: whether he had a signboard, _Escapes forwarded, apply within_; what he charged for his services, or whether they were gratuitous and charitable, were all matters of which I was at once ignorant and extremely curious. Thanks to my proficiency in English, and Mr. Romaine's bank-notes, I was getting on swimmingly without him; but the trouble was that I could not be easy till I had come to the bottom of these mysteries, and it was my difficulty that I knew nothing of him beyond the name. I knew not his trade beyond that of Forwarder of Escapes--whether he lived in town or country, whether he were rich or poor, nor by what kind of address I was to gain his confidence. It would have a very bad appearance to go along the highwayside asking after a man of whom I could give so scanty an account; and I should look like a fool, indeed, if I were to present myself at his door and find the police in occupation! The interest of the conundrum, however, tempted me, and I turned aside from my direct road to pass by Wakefield; kept my ears pricked, as I went, for any mention of his name, and relied for the rest on my good fortune. If Luck (who must certainly be feminine) favoured me as far as to throw me in the man's way, I should owe the lady a candle; if not, I could very readily console myself. In this experimental humour, and with so little to help me, it was a miracle that I should have brought my enterprise to a good end; and there are several saints in the calendar who might be happy to exchange with St. Ives! I had slept that night in a good inn at Wakefield, made my breakfast by candle-light with the passengers of an up-coach, and set off in a very ill temper with myself and my surroundings. It was still early; the air raw and cold; the sun low, and soon to disappear under a vast canopy of rain-clouds that had begun to assemble in the north-west, and from that quarter invaded the whole width of the heaven. Already the rain fell in crystal rods; already the whole face of the country sounded with the discharge of drains and ditches; and I looked forward to a day of downpour and the hell of wet clothes, in which particular I am as dainty as a cat. At the corner of the road, and by the last glint of the drowning sun, I spied a covered cart, of a kind that I thought I had never seen before, preceding me at the foot's pace of jaded horses. Anything is interesting to a pedestrian that can help him to forget the miseries of a day of rain; and I bettered my pace and gradually overtook the vehicle. The nearer I came the more it puzzled me. It was much such a cart as I am told the calico-printers use, mounted on two wheels, and furnished with a seat in front for the driver. The interior closed with a door, and was of a bigness to contain a good load of calico, or (at a pinch and if it were necessary) four or five persons. But, indeed, if human beings were meant to travel there, they had my pity! They must travel in the dark, for there was no sign of a window; and they would be shaken all the way like a phial of doctor's stuff, for the cart was not only ungainly to look at--it was besides very imperfectly balanced on the one pair of wheels, and pitched unconscionably. Altogether, if I had any glancing idea that the cart was really a carriage, I had soon dismissed it; but I was still inquisitive as to what it should contain, and where it had come from. Wheels and horses were splashed with many different colours of mud, as though they had come far and across a considerable diversity of country. The driver continually and vainly plied his whip. It seemed to follow they had made a long, perhaps an all-night, stage; and that the driver, at that early hour of a little after eight in the morning, already felt himself belated. I looked for the name of the proprietor on the shaft, and started outright. Fortune had favoured the careless: it was Burchell Fenn! "A wet morning, my man," said I. The driver, a loutish fellow, shock-headed and turnip-faced, returned not a word to my salutation, but savagely flogged his horses. The tired animals, who could scarce put the one foot before the other, paid no attention to his cruelty; and I continued without effort to maintain my position alongside, smiling to myself at the futility of his attempts, and at the same time pricked with curiosity as to why he made them. I made no such formidable a figure as that a man should flee when I accosted him; and, my conscience not being entirely clear, I was more accustomed to be uneasy myself than to see others timid. Presently he desisted and put back his whip in the holster with the air of a man vanquished. "So you would run away from me?" said I. "Come, come, that's not English." "Beg pardon, master; no offence meant," he said, touching his hat. "And none taken!" cried I. "All I desire is a little gaiety by the way." I understood him to say he didn't "take with gaiety." "Then I will try you with something else," said I. "O, I can be all things to all men, like the apostle! I dare to say I have travelled with heavier fellows than you in my time, and done famously well with them. Are you going home?" "Yes, I'm a-goin' home, I am," he said. "A very fortunate circumstance for me!" said I. "At this rate we shall see a good deal of each other, going the same way; and, now I come to think of it, why should you not give me a cast? There is room beside you on the bench." With a sudden snatch he carried the cart two yards into the roadway. The horses plunged and came to a stop. "No, you don't!" he said, menacing me with the whip. "None o' that with me." "None of what?" said I. "I asked you for a lift, but I have no idea of taking one by force." "Well, I've got to take care of the cart and 'orses, I have," says he. "I don't take up with no runagate vagabones, you see, else." "I ought to thank you for your touching confidence," said I, approaching carelessly nearer as I spoke. "But I admit the road is solitary hereabouts, and no doubt an accident soon happens. Little fear of anything of the kind with you! I like you for it, like your prudence, like that pastoral shyness of disposition. But why not put it out of my power to hurt? Why not open the door and bestow me here in the box, or whatever you please to call it?" And I laid my hand demonstratively on the body of the cart. He had been timorous before; but at this he seemed to lose the power of speech a moment, and stared at me in a perfect enthusiasm of fear. "Why not?" I continued. "The idea is good. I should be safe in there if I were the monster Williams himself. The great thing is to have me under lock and key. For it does lock; it is locked now," said I, trying the door. "_À propos_, what have you for a cargo? It must be precious." He found not a word to answer. Rat-tat-tat, I went upon the door like a well-drilled footman. "Any one at home?" I said, and stooped to listen. There came out of the interior a stifled sneeze, the first of an uncontrollable paroxysm; another followed immediately on the heels of it; and then the driver turned with an oath, laid the lash upon the horses with so much energy that they found their heels again, and the whole equipage fled down the road at a gallop. At the first sound of the sneeze I had started back like a man shot. The next moment a great light broke on my mind, and I understood. Here was the secret of Fenn's trade: this was how he forwarded the escape of prisoners, hawking them by night about the country in his covered cart. There had been Frenchmen close to me; he who had just sneezed was my countryman, my comrade, perhaps already my friend! I took to my heels in pursuit. "Hold hard!" I shouted. "Stop! It's all right! Stop!" But the driver only turned a white face on me for a moment, and redoubled his efforts, bending forward, plying his whip and crying to his horses; these lay themselves down to the gallop and beat the highway with flying hoofs; and the cart bounded after them among the ruts and fled in a halo of rain and spattering mud. But a minute since, and it had been trundling along like a lame cow; and now it was off as though drawn by Apollo's coursers. There is no telling what a man can do until you frighten him! It was as much as I could do myself, though I ran valiantly, to maintain my distance; and that (since I knew my countrymen so near) was become a chief point with me. A hundred yards farther on the cart whipped out of the high-road into a lane embowered with leafless trees, and became lost to view. When I saw it next the driver had increased his advantage considerably, but all danger was at an end, and the horses had again declined into a hobbling walk. Persuaded they could not escape me, I took my time, and recovered my breath as I followed them. Presently the lane twisted at right angles and showed me a gate and the beginning of a gravel sweep; and a little after, as I continued to advance, a red-brick house about seventy years old, in a fine style of architecture, and presenting a front of many windows to a lawn and garden. Behind, I could see outhouses and the peaked roofs of stacks; and I judged that a manor-house had in some way declined to be the residence of a tenant-farmer, careless alike of appearances and substantial comfort. The marks of neglect were visible on every side, in flower-bushes straggling beyond the borders, in the ill-kept turf, and in the broken windows that were incongruously patched with paper or stuffed with rags. A thicket of trees, mostly evergreen, fenced the place round and secluded it from the eyes of prying neighbours. As I came in view of it, on that melancholy winter's morning, in the deluge of the falling rain, and with the wind that now rose in occasional gusts and hooted over the old chimneys, the cart had already drawn up at the front-door steps, and the driver was already in earnest discourse with Mr. Burchell Fenn. He was standing with his hands behind his back--a man of a gross, misbegotten face and body, dewlapped like a bull and red as a harvest moon; and in his jockey-cap, blue coat and top-boots, he had much the air of a good, solid tenant-farmer. The pair continued to speak as I came up the approach, but received me at last in a sort of goggling silence. I had my hat in my hand. "I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Burchell Fenn?" said I. "The same, sir," replied Mr. Fenn, taking off his jockey-cap in answer to my civility, but with the distant look and the tardy movements of one who continues to think of something else. "And who may you be?" he asked. "I shall tell you afterwards," said I. "Suffice it, in the meantime, that I come on business." He seemed to digest my answer laboriously, his mouth gaping, his little eyes never straying from my face. "Suffer me to point out to you, sir," I resumed, "that this is a devil of a wet morning; and that the chimney corner, and possibly a glass of something hot, are clearly indicated." Indeed, the rain was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident crash. The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was far from reassuring me. On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of the driver, craning from his perch to observe us with the expression of a fascinated bird. So we stood silent, when the prisoner again began to sneeze from the body of the cart; and at the sound, prompt as a transformation, the driver had whipped up his horses and was shambling off round the corner of the house, and Mr. Fenn, recovering his wits with a gulp, had turned to the door behind him. "Come in, come in, sir," he said. "I beg your pardon, sir; the lock goes a trifle hard." Indeed, it took him a surprising time to open the door, which was not only locked on the outside, but the lock seemed rebellious from disuse; and when at last he stood back and motioned me to enter before him, I was greeted on the threshold by that peculiar and convincing sound of the rain echoing over empty chambers. The entrance-hall, in which I now found myself, was of a good size and good proportions; potted plants occupied the corners; the paved floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered with straw; on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a candle had been stuck and suffered to burn down--plainly a long while ago, for the gutterings were green with mould. My mind, under these new impressions, worked with unusual vivacity. I was here shut off with Fenn and his hireling in a deserted house, a neglected garden, and a wood of evergreens; the most eligible theatre for a deed of darkness. There came to me a vision of two flagstones raised in the hall-floor, and the driver putting in the rainy afternoon over my grave; and the prospect displeased me extremely. I felt I had carried my pleasantry as far as was safe; I must lose no time in declaring my true character, and I was even choosing the words in which I was to begin, when the hall-door was slammed-to behind me with a bang, and I turned, dropping my stick as I did so, in time--and not any more than time--to save my life. The surprise of the onslaught and the huge weight of my assailant gave him the advantage. He had a pistol in his right hand of a portentous size, which it took me all my strength to keep deflected. With his left arm he strained me to his bosom, so that I thought I must be crushed or stifled. His mouth was open, his face crimson, and he panted aloud with hard animal sounds. The affair was as brief as it was hot and sudden. The potations which had swelled and bloated his carcase had already weakened the springs of energy. One more huge effort, that came near to overpower me, and in which the pistol happily exploded, and I felt his grasp slacken and weakness come on his joints; his legs succumbed under his weight, and he grovelled on his knees on the stone floor. "Spare me!" he gasped. I had not only been abominably frightened; I was shocked besides: my delicacy was in arms, like a lady to whom violence should have been offered by a similar monster. I plucked myself from his horrid contact, I snatched the pistol--even discharged, it was a formidable weapon--and menaced him with the butt. "Spare you!" I cried, "you beast!" His voice died in his fat inwards, but his lips still vehemently framed the same words of supplication. My anger began to pass off, but not all my repugnance; the picture he made revolted me, and I was impatient to be spared the further view of it. "Here," said I, "stop this performance: it sickens me. I am not going to kill you, do you hear? I have need of you." A look of relief, that I could almost have called beautiful, dawned on his countenance. "Anything--anything you wish," said he. Anything is a big word, and his use of it brought me for a moment to a stand. "Why, what do you mean?" I asked. "Do you mean that you will blow the gaff on the whole business?" He answered me "Yes" with eager asseverations. "I know Monsieur de Saint-Yves is in it; it was through his papers we traced you," I said. "Do you consent to make a clean breast of the others?" "I do--I will!" he cried. "The 'ole crew of 'em; there's good names among 'em. I'll be King's evidence." "So that all shall hang except yourself? You damned villain!" I broke out. "Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I am a kinsman of Monsieur de Saint-Yves--here in his interest. Upon my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn! Come, stand up; don't grovel there! Stand up, you lump of iniquity!" He scrambled to his feet. He was utterly unmanned, or it might have gone hard with me yet; and I considered him hesitating, as, indeed, there was cause. The man was a double-dyed traitor: he had tried to murder me, and I had first baffled his endeavours and then exposed and insulted him. Was it wise to place myself any longer at his mercy? With his help I should doubtless travel more quickly; doubtless also far less agreeably; and there was everything to show that it would be at a greater risk. In short, I should have washed my hands of him on the spot, but for the temptation of the French officers, whom I knew to be so near, and for whose society I felt so great and natural an impatience. If I was to see anything of my countrymen, it was clear I had first of all to make my peace with Mr. Fenn; and that was no easy matter. To make friends with any one implies concessions on both sides; and what could I concede? What could I say of him, but that he had proved himself a villain and a fool, and the worse man? "Well," said I, "here has been rather a poor piece of business, which I dare say you can have no pleasure in calling to mind; and, to say truth, I would as readily forget it myself. Suppose we try. Take back your pistol, which smells very ill; put it in your pocket or wherever you had it concealed. There! Now let us meet for the first time.--Give you good morning, Mr. Fenn! I hope you do very well. I come on the recommendation of my kinsman, the Vicomte de Saint-Yves." "Do you mean it?" he cried. "Do you mean you will pass over our little scrimmage?" "Why, certainly!" said I. "It shows you are a bold fellow, who may be trusted to forget the business when it comes to the point. There is nothing against you in the little scrimmage, unless that your courage is greater than your strength. You are not so young as you once were, that is all." "And I beg of you, sir, don't betray me to the Viscount," he pleaded. "I'll not deny but what my 'eart failed me a trifle; but it was only a word, sir, what anybody might have said in the 'eat of the moment, and over with it." "Certainly," said I. "That is quite my own opinion." "The way I came to be anxious about the Viscount," he continued, "is that I believe he might be induced to form an 'asty judgment. And the business, in a pecuniary point of view, is all that I could ask; only trying, sir--very trying. It's making an old man of me before my time. You might have observed yourself, sir, that I 'aven't got the knees I once 'ad. The knees and the breathing, there's where it takes me. But I'm very sure, sir, I address a gentleman as would be the last to make trouble between friends." "I am sure you do me no more than justice," said I; "and I shall think it quite unnecessary to dwell on any of these passing circumstances in my report to the Vicomte." "Which you do favour him (if you'll excuse me being so bold as to mention it) exac'ly!" said he. "I should have known you anywheres. May I offer you a pot of 'ome-brewed ale, sir? By your leave? This way, if you please. I am 'eartily grateful--'eartily pleased to be of any service to a gentleman like you, sir, which is related to the Vis-count, and really a fambly of which you might well be proud! Take care of the step, sir. You have good news of 'is 'ealth, I trust? as well as that of Monseer the Count?" God forgive me! the horrible fellow was still puffing and panting with the fury of his assault, and already he had fallen into an obsequious, wheedling familiarity like that of an old servant--already he was flattering me on my family connections! I followed him through the house into the stable-yard, where I observed the driver washing the cart in a shed. He must have heard the explosion of the pistol. He could not choose but hear it; the thing was shaped like a little blunderbuss, charged to the mouth, and made a report like a piece of field artillery. He had heard, he had paid no attention; and now, as we came forth by the back door, he raised for a moment a pale and tell-tale face that was as direct as a confession. The rascal had expected to see Fenn come forth alone; he was waiting to be called on for that part of sexton, which I had already allotted to him in fancy. I need not detain the reader very long with any description of my visit to the back-kitchen; of how we mulled our ale there, and mulled it very well; nor of how we sat talking, Fenn like an old, faithful, affectionate dependant, and I--well! I myself fallen into a mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a fancy to the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty in him, his _aplomb_ was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to drop into the autobiographical; telling me how the farm, in spite of the war and the high prices, had proved a disappointment; how there was "a sight of cold, wet land as you come along the 'igh-road"; how the winds and rains and the seasons had been misdirected, it seemed "o' purpose"; how Mrs. Fenn had died--"I lost her coming two year agone; a remarkable fine woman, my old girl, sir; if you'll excuse me," he added, with a burst of humility. In short, he gave me an opportunity of studying John Bull, as I may say, stripped naked--his greed, his usuriousness, his hypocrisy, his perfidy of the back-stairs, all swelled to the superlative--such as was well worth the little disarray and fluster of our passage in the hall. CHAPTER XIII I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN As soon as I judged it safe, and that was not before Burchell Fenn had talked himself back into his breath and a complete good-humour, I proposed he should introduce me to the French officers, henceforth to become my fellow-passengers. There were two of them, it appeared, and my heart beat as I approached the door. The specimen of Perfidious Albion whom I had just been studying gave me the stronger zest for my fellow-countrymen. I could have embraced them; I could have wept on their necks. And all the time I was going to a disappointment. It was in a spacious and low room, with an outlook on the court, that I found them bestowed. In the good days of that house the apartment had probably served as a library, for there were traces of shelves along the wainscot. Four or five mattresses lay on the floor in the corner, with a frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a basin and a cube of soap; a rude kitchen-table and some deal chairs stood together at the far end; and the room was illuminated by no less than four windows, and warmed by a little crazy sidelong grate, propped up with bricks in the vent of a hospitable chimney, in which a pile of coals smoked prodigiously and gave out a few starveling flames. An old frail white-haired officer sat in one of the chairs, which he had drawn close to this apology for a fire. He was wrapped in a camlet cloak, of which the collar was turned up, his knees touched the bars, his hands were spread in the very smoke, and yet he shivered for cold. The second--a big, florid, fine animal of a man, whose every gesture labelled him the cock of the walk and the admiration of the ladies--had apparently despaired of the fire, and now strode up and down, sneezing hard, bitterly blowing his nose, and proffering a continual stream of bluster, complaint, and barrack-room oaths. Fenn showed me in with the brief form of introduction: "Gentlemen all, this here's another fare!" and was gone again at once. The old man gave me but the one glance out of lack-lustre eyes; and even as he looked a shiver took him as sharp as a hiccough. But the other, who represented to admiration the picture of a Beau in a Catarrh, stared at me arrogantly. "And who are you, sir?" he asked. I made the military salute to my superiors. "Champdivers, private, Eighth of the Line," said I. "Pretty business!" said he. "And you are going on with us? Three in a cart, and a great trolloping private at that! And who is to pay for you, my fine fellow?" he inquired. "If monsieur comes to that," I answered civilly, "who paid for _him_?" "Oh, if you choose to play the wit!" said he,--and began to rail at large upon his destiny, the weather, the cold, the danger and the expense of the escape, and, above all, the cooking of the accursed English. It seemed to annoy him particularly that I should have joined their party. "If you knew what you were doing, thirty thousand millions of pigs! you would keep yourself to yourself! The horses can't drag the cart; the roads are all ruts and swamps. No longer ago than last night the Colonel and I had to march half the way--thunder of God!--half the way to the knees in mud--and I with this infernal cold--and the danger of detection! Happily we met no one: a desert--a real desert--like the whole abominable country! Nothing to eat--no, sir, there is nothing to eat but raw cow and greens boiled in water--nor to drink but Worcestershire sauce! Now I, with my catarrh, I have no appetite; is it not so? Well, if I were in France, I should have a good soup with a crust in it, an omelette, a fowl in rice, a partridge in cabbages--things to tempt me, thunder of God! But here--day of God!--what a country! And cold, too! They talk about Russia--this is all the cold I want! And the people--look at them! What a race! Never any handsome men; never any fine officers!"--and he looked down complacently for a moment at his waist--"And the women--what faggots! No, that is one point clear, I cannot stomach the English!" There was something in this man so antipathetic to me, as sent the mustard into my nose. I can never bear your bucks and dandies, even when they are decent-looking and well dressed; and the Major--for that was his rank--was the image of a flunkey in good luck. Even to be in agreement with him, or to seem to be so, was more than I could make out to endure. "You could scarce be expected to stomach them," said I civilly, "after having just digested your parole." He whipped round on his heel and turned on me a countenance which I dare say he imagined to be awful; but another fit of sneezing cut him off ere he could come the length of speech. "I have not tried the dish myself," I took the opportunity to add. "It is said to be unpalatable. Did monsieur find it so?" With surprising vivacity the Colonel woke from his lethargy. He was between us ere another word could pass. "Shame, gentlemen!" he said. "Is this a time for Frenchmen and fellow-soldiers to fall out? We are in the midst of our enemies; a quarrel, a loud word, may suffice to plunge us back into irretrievable distress. _Monsieur le Commandant_, you have been gravely offended. I make it my request, I make it my prayer--if need be, I give you my orders--that the matter shall stand by until we come safe to France. Then, if you please, I will serve you in any capacity.--And for you, young man, you have shown all the cruelty and carelessness of youth. This gentleman is your superior; he is no longer young"--at which word you are to conceive the Major's face. "It is admitted he has broken his parole. I know not his reason, and no more do you. It might be patriotism in this hour of our country's adversity, it might be humanity, necessity; you know not what in the least, and you permit yourself to reflect on his honour. To break parole may be a subject for pity and not derision. I have broken mine--I, a colonel of the Empire. And why? I have been years negotiating my exchange, and it cannot be managed; those who have influence at the Ministry of War continually rush in before me, and I have to wait, and my daughter at home is in a decline. I am going to see my daughter at last, and it is my only concern lest I should have delayed too long. She is ill, and very ill,--at death's door. Nothing is left me but my daughter, my Emperor, and my honour; and I give my honour, blame me for it who dare!" At this my heart smote me. "For God's sake," I cried, "think no more of what I have said! A parole? what is a parole against life and death and love? I ask your pardon; this gentleman's also. As long as I shall be with you, you shall not have cause to complain of me again. I pray God you will find your daughter alive and restored." "That is past praying for," said the Colonel; and immediately the brief fire died out of him, and, returning to the hearth, he relapsed into his former abstraction. But I was not so easy to compose. The knowledge of the poor gentleman's trouble, and the sight of his face, had filled me with the bitterness of remorse; and I insisted upon shaking hands with the Major (which he did with a very ill grace), and abounded in palinodes and apologies. "After all," said I, "who am I to talk? I am in the luck to be a private soldier; I have no parole to give or to keep; once I am over the rampart, I am as free as air. I beg you to believe that I regret from my soul the use of these ungenerous expressions. Allow me.... Is there no way in this damned house to attract attention? Where is this fellow Fenn?" I ran to one of the windows and threw it open. Fenn, who was at the moment passing below in the court, cast up his arms like one in despair, called to me to keep back, plunged into the house, and appeared next moment in the doorway of the chamber. "O, sir!" says he, "keep away from those there windows. A body might see you from the back lane." "It is registered," said I. "Henceforward I will be a mouse for precaution and a ghost for invisibility. But in the meantime, for God's sake, fetch us a bottle of brandy! Your room is as damp as the bottom of a well, and these gentlemen are perishing of cold." So soon as I had paid him (for everything, I found, must be paid in advance), I turned my attention to the fire, and whether because I threw greater energy into the business, or because the coals were now warmed and the time ripe, I soon started a blaze that made the chimney roar again. The shine of it, in that dark, rainy day, seemed to reanimate the Colonel like a blink of sun. With the outburst of the flames, besides, a draught was established, which immediately delivered us from the plague of smoke; and by the time Fenn returned, carrying a bottle under his arm and a single tumbler in his hand, there was already an air of gaiety in the room that did the heart good. I poured out some of the brandy. "Colonel," said I, "I am a young man and a private soldier. I have not been long in this room, and already I have shown the petulance that belongs to the one character and the ill manners that you may look for in the other. Have the humanity to pass these slips over, and honour me so far as to accept this glass." "My lad," says he, waking up and blinking at me with an air of suspicion, "are you sure you can afford it?" I assured him I could. "I thank you, then: I am very cold." He took the glass out, and a little colour came in his face. "I thank you again," said he. "It goes to the heart." The Major, when I motioned him to help himself, did so with a good deal of liberality; continued to do so for the rest of the morning, now with some sort of apology, now with none at all; and the bottle began to look foolish before dinner was served. It was such a meal as he had himself predicted: beef, greens, potatoes, mustard in a teacup, and beer in a brown jug that was all over hounds, horses, and hunters, with a fox at the far end and a gigantic John Bull--for all the world like Fenn--sitting in the midst in a bob-wig and smoking tobacco. The beer was a good brew, but not good enough for the Major; he laced it with brandy--for his cold, he said; and in this curative design the remainder of the bottle ebbed away. He called my attention repeatedly to the circumstance; helped me pointedly to the dregs, threw the bottle in the air and played tricks with it; and at last, having exhausted his ingenuity, and seeing me remain quite blind to every hint, he ordered and paid for another himself. As for the Colonel, he ate nothing, sat sunk in a muse, and only awoke occasionally to a sense of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. On each of these occasions he showed a gratitude and kind courtesy that endeared him to me beyond expression. "Champdivers, my lad, your health!" he would say. "The Major and I had a very arduous march last night, and I positively thought I should have eaten nothing, but your fortunate idea of the brandy has made quite a new man of me--quite a new man." And he would fall to with a great air of heartiness, cut himself a mouthful, and, before he had swallowed it, would have forgotten his dinner, his company, the place where he then was, and the escape he was engaged on, and become absorbed in the vision of a sick-room and a dying girl in France. The pathos of this continual pre-occupation, in a man so old, sick, and over-weary, and whom I looked upon as a mere bundle of dying bones and death-pains, put me wholly from my victuals: it seemed there was an element of sin, a kind of rude bravado of youth, in the mere relishing of food at the same table with this tragic father; and though I was well enough used to the coarse, plain diet of the English, I ate scarce more than himself. Dinner was hardly over before he succumbed to a lethargic sleep; lying on one of the mattresses with his limbs relaxed, and his breath seemingly suspended--the very image of dissolution. This left the Major and myself alone at the table. You must not suppose our _tête-à-tête_ was long, but it was a lively period while it lasted. He drank like a fish or an Englishman; shouted, beat the table, roared out songs, quarrelled, made it up again, and at last tried to throw the dinner-plates through the window, a feat of which he was at that time quite incapable. For a party of fugitives, condemned to the most rigorous discretion, there was never seen so noisy a carnival; and through it all the Colonel continued to sleep like a child. Seeing the Major so well advanced, and no retreat possible, I made a fair wind of a foul one, keeping his glass full, pushing him with toasts; and sooner than I could have dared to hope, he became drowsy and incoherent. With the wrong-headedness of all such sots, he would not be persuaded to lie down upon one of the mattresses until I had stretched myself upon another. But the comedy was soon over; soon he slept the sleep of the just, and snored like a military music; and I might get up again and face (as best I could) the excessive tedium of the afternoon. I had passed the night before in a good bed; I was denied the resource of slumber; and there was nothing open for me but to pace the apartment, maintain the fire, and brood on my position. I compared yesterday and to-day--the safety, comfort, jollity, open-air exercise and pleasant roadside inns of the one, with the tedium, anxiety, and discomfort of the other. I remembered that I was in the hands of Fenn, who could not be more false--though he might be more vindictive--than I fancied him. I looked forward to nights of pitching in the covered cart, and days of monotony in I knew not what hiding-places; and my heart failed me, and I was in two minds whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to my solitary way of travel. But the Colonel stood in the path. I had not seen much of him; but already I judged him to be a man of childlike nature--with that sort of innocence and courtesy that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or old priests--and broken with years and sorrow. I could not turn my back on his distress; could not leave him alone with the selfish trooper who snored on the next mattress. "Champdivers, my lad, your health!" said a voice in my ear, and stopped me--and there are few things I am more glad of in the retrospect than that it did. It must have been about four in the afternoon--at least the rain had taken off, and the sun was setting with some wintry pomp--when the current of my reflections was effectually changed by the arrival of two visitors in a gig. They were farmers of the neighbourhood, I suppose--big, burly fellows in greatcoats and top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and, before they left, inimitably drunk. They stayed long in the kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of company. The night fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and blinked on the panelled wall. Our illuminated windows must have been visible not only from the back lane of which Fenn had spoken, but from the court where the farmer's gig awaited them. In the far end of the firelit room lay my companions, the one silent, the other clamorously noisy, the images of death and drunkenness. Little wonder if I were tempted to join in the choruses below, and sometimes could hardly refrain from laughter, and sometimes, I believe, from tears--so unmitigated was the tedium, so cruel the suspense, of this period. At last, about six at night, I should fancy, the noisy minstrels appeared in the court, headed by Fenn with a lantern, and knocking together as they came. The visitors clambered noisily into the gig, one of them shook the reins, and they were snatched out of sight and hearing with a suddenness that partook of the nature of prodigy. I am well aware there is a Providence for drunken men, that holds the reins for them and presides over their troubles; doubtless he had his work cut out for him with this particular gigful! Fenn rescued his toes with an ejaculation from under the departing wheels, and turned at once with uncertain steps and devious lantern to the far end of the court. There, through the open doors of a coach-house, the shock-headed lad was already to be seen drawing forth the covered cart. If I wished any private talk with our host, it must be now or never. Accordingly I groped my way downstairs, and came to him as he looked on at and lighted the harnessing of the horses. "The hour approaches when we have to part," said I; "and I shall be obliged if you will tell your servant to drop me at the nearest point for Dunstable. I am determined to go so far with our friends, Colonel X and Major Y, but my business is peremptory, and it takes me to the neighbourhood of Dunstable." Orders were given, to my satisfaction, with an obsequiousness that seemed only inflamed by his potations. CHAPTER XIV TRAVELS OF THE COVERED CART My companions were aroused with difficulty: the Colonel, poor old gentleman, to a sort of permanent dream, in which you could say of him only that he was very deaf and anxiously polite; the Major still maudlin drunk. We had a dish of tea by the fireside, and then issued like criminals into the scathing cold of the night. For the weather had in the meantime changed. Upon the cessation of the rain, a strict frost had succeeded. The moon, being young, was already near the zenith when we started, glittered everywhere on sheets of ice, and sparkled in ten thousand icicles. A more unpromising night for a journey it was hard to conceive. But in the course of the afternoon the horses had been well roughed; and King (for such was the name of the shock-headed lad) was very positive that he could drive us without misadventure. He was as good as his word; indeed, despite a gawky air, he was simply invaluable in his present employment, showing marked sagacity in all that concerned the care of horses, and guiding us by one short cut after another for days, and without a fault. The interior of that engine of torture, the covered cart, was fitted with a bench, on which we took our places; the door was shut: in a moment, the night closed upon us solid and stifling; and we felt that we were being driven carefully out of the courtyard. Careful was the word all night, and it was an alleviation of our miseries that we did not often enjoy. In general, as we were driven the better part of the night and day, often at a pretty quick pace and always through a labyrinth of the most infamous country lanes and by-roads, we were so bruised upon the bench, so dashed against the top and sides of the cart, that we reached the end of a stage in truly pitiable case, sometimes flung ourselves down without the formality of eating, made but one sleep of it until the hour of departure returned, and were only properly awakened by the first jolt of the renewed journey. There were interruptions, at times, that we hailed as alleviations. At times the cart was bogged, once it was upset, and we must alight and lend the driver the assistance of our arms; at times, too (as on the occasion when I first encountered it), the horses gave out, and we had to trail alongside in mud or frost until the first peep of daylight, or the approach to a hamlet or a high-road, bade us disappear like ghosts into our prison. The main roads of England are incomparable for excellence, of a beautiful smoothness, very ingeniously laid down, and so well kept that in most weathers you could take your dinner off any part of them without distaste. On them, to the note of the bugle, the mail did its sixty miles a day; innumerable chaises whisked after the bobbing post-boys; or some young blood would flit by in a curricle and tandem, to the vast delight and danger of the lieges. On them the slow-pacing waggons made a music of bells, and all day long the travellers on horseback and the travellers on foot (like happy Mr. St. Ives so little a while before!) kept coming and going, and baiting and gaping at each other, as though a fair were due, and they were gathering to it from all England. No, nowhere in the world is travel so great a pleasure as in that country. But unhappily our one need was to be secret; and all this rapid and animated picture of the road swept quite apart from us, as we rumbled up hill and down dale, under hedge and over stone, among circuitous byways. Only twice did I receive, as it were, a whiff of the highway. The first reached my ears alone. I might have been anywhere. I only knew I was walking in the dark night and among ruts, when I heard very far off, over the silent country that surrounded us, the guard's horn wailing its signal to the next post-house for a change of horses. It was like the voice of the day heard in darkness, a voice of the world heard in prison, the note of a cock crowing in the mid-seas--in short, I cannot tell you what it was like, you will have to fancy for yourself--but I could have wept to hear it. Once we were belated: the cattle could hardly crawl, the day was at hand, it was a nipping, rigorous morning, King was lashing his horses, I was giving an arm to the old Colonel, and the Major was coughing in our rear. I must suppose that King was a thought careless, being nearly in desperation about his team, and, in spite of the cold morning, breathing hot with his exertions. We came, at last, a little before sunrise to the summit of a hill, and saw the high-road passing at right angles through an open country of meadows and hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail, speeding smoothly at the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise besides, with the post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself putting his head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know. So that we enjoyed for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in its most luxurious forms of despatch and comfort. And thereafter, with a poignant feeling of contrast in our hearts, we must mount again into our wheeled dungeon. We came to our stages at all sorts of odd hours, and they were in all kinds of odd places. I may say at once that my first experience was my best. Nowhere again were we so well entertained as at Burchell Fenn's. And this, I suppose, was natural, and indeed inevitable, in so long and secret a journey. The first stop, we lay six hours in a barn standing by itself in a poor, marshy orchard, and packed with hay; to make it more attractive, we were told it had been the scene of an abominable murder, and was now haunted. But the day was beginning to break, and our fatigue was too extreme for visionary terrors. The second or third, we alighted on a barren heath about midnight, built a fire to warm us under the shelter of some thorns, supped like beggars on bread and a piece of cold bacon, and slept like gipsies with our feet to the fire. In the meanwhile, King was gone with the cart, I know not where, to get a change of horses, and it was late in the dark morning when he returned and we were able to resume our journey. In the middle of another night we came to a stop by an ancient, whitewashed cottage of two stories; a privet hedge surrounded it; the frosty moon shone blankly on the upper windows; but through those of the kitchen the firelight was seen glinting on the roof and reflected from the dishes on the wall. Here, after much hammering on the door, King managed to arouse an old crone from the chimney-corner chair, where she had been dozing in the watch; and we were had in, and entertained with a dish of hot tea. This old lady was an aunt of Burchell Fenn's--and an unwilling partner in his dangerous trade. Though the house stood solitary, and the hour was an unlikely one for any passenger upon the road, King and she conversed in whispers only. There was something dismal, something of the sick-room, in this perpetual, guarded sibilation. The apprehensions of our hostess insensibly communicated themselves to every one present. We ate like mice in a cat's ear; if one of us jingled a teaspoon, all would start; and when the hour came to take the road again, we drew a long breath of relief, and climbed to our places in the covered cart with a positive sense of escape. The most of our meals, however, were taken boldly at hedge-row alehouses, usually at untimely hours of the day, when the clients were in the field or the farmyard at labour. I shall have to tell presently of our last experience of the sort, and how unfortunately it miscarried; but as that was the signal for my separation from my fellow-travellers I must first finish with them. I had never any occasion to waver in my first judgment of the Colonel. The old gentleman seemed to me, and still seems in the retrospect, the salt of the earth. I had occasion to see him in the extremes of hardship, hunger, and cold; he was dying, and he looked it; and yet I cannot remember any hasty, harsh, or impatient word to have fallen from his lips. On the contrary, he ever showed himself careful to please; and even if he rambled in his talk, rambled always gently--like a humane, half-witted old hero, true to his colours to the last. I would not dare to say how often he awoke suddenly from a lethargy, and told us again, as though we had never heard it, the story of how he had earned the Cross, how it had been given him by the hand of the Emperor, and of the innocent--and, indeed, foolish--sayings of his daughter when he returned with it on his bosom. He had another anecdote which he was very apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond endurance with dispraises of the English. This was an account of the _braves gens_ with whom he had been boarding. True enough, he was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most common civilities were able to touch him to the heart, and would remain written in his memory; but from a thousand inconsiderable but conclusive indications, I gathered that this family had really loved him, and loaded him with kindness. They made a fire in his bedroom, which the sons and daughters tended with their own hands; letters from France were looked for with scarce more eagerness by himself than by these alien sympathisers; when they came, he would read them aloud in the parlour to the assembled family, translating as he went. The Colonel's English was elementary; his daughter not in the least likely to be an amusing correspondent; and, as I conceived these scenes in the parlour, I felt sure the interest centred in the Colonel himself, and I thought I could feel in my own heart that mixture of the ridiculous and the pathetic, the contest of tears and laughter, which must have shaken the bosoms of the family. Their kindness had continued till the end. It appears they were privy to his flight; the camlet cloak had been lined expressly for him, and he was the bearer of a letter from the daughter of the house to his own daughter in Paris. The last evening, when the time came to say good-night, it was tacitly known to all that they were to look upon his face no more. He rose, pleading fatigue, and turned to the daughter, who had been his chief ally: "You will permit me, my dear--to an old and very unhappy soldier--and may God bless you for your goodness!" The girl threw her arms about his neck and sobbed upon his bosom; the lady of the house burst into tears; "_et je vous le jure, le père se mouchait_!" quoth the Colonel, twisting his moustaches with a cavalry air, and at the same time blinking the water from his eyes at the mere recollection. It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in captivity: that he had started on this fatal journey from so cordial a farewell. He had broken his parole for his daughter: that he should ever live to reach her sick-bed, that he could continue to endure to an end the hardships, the crushing fatigue, the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to hope. I did for him what I was able,--nursed him, kept him covered, watched over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough places of the road. "Champdivers," he once said, "you are like a son to me--like a son." It is good to remember, though at the time it put me on the rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we were travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to another destination. Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent. An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech, from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old words of the _patois_, too: _Ouistreham_, _matrassé_, and others, the sense of which we were sometimes unable to guess. On the very last day he began again his eternal story of the Cross and the Emperor. The Major, who was particularly ill, or at least particularly cross, uttered some angry words of protest. "_Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le commandant, mais c'est pour monsieur_," said the Colonel; "monsieur has not yet heard the circumstance, and is good enough to feel an interest." Presently after, however, he began to lose the thread of his narrative; and at last: "_Qué que j'ai? Je m'embrouille!_" says he. "_Suffit: s'm'a la donné, et Berthe en était bien contente._" It struck me as the falling of the curtain or the closing of the sepulchre doors. Sure enough, in but a little while after, he fell into a sleep as gentle as an infant's, which insensibly changed into the sleep of death. I had my arm about his body at the time and remarked nothing, unless it were that he once stretched himself a little, so kindly the end came to that disastrous life. It was only at our evening halt that the Major and I discovered we were travelling alone with the poor clay. That night we stole a spade from a field--I think near Market Bosworth--and a little farther on, in a wood of young oak trees, and by the light of King's lantern, we buried the old soldier of the Empire with both prayers and tears. We had needs invent Heaven if it had not been revealed to us; there are some things that fall so bitterly ill on this side Time! As for the Major, I have long since forgiven him. He broke the news to the poor Colonel's daughter: I am told he did it kindly; and sure, nobody could have done it without tears! His share of purgatory will be brief; and in this world, as I could not very well praise him, I have suppressed his name. The Colonel's also, for the sake of his parole. _Requiescat._ CHAPTER XV THE ADVENTURE OF THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK I have mentioned our usual course, which was to eat in inconsiderable wayside hostelries, known to King. It was a dangerous business: we went daily under fire to satisfy our appetite, and put our head in the lion's mouth for a piece of bread. Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would all dismount before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally, and give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers. In like manner we departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some half a mile beyond. The Colonel and the Major had each a word or two of English--God help their pronunciation! But they did well enough to order a rasher and a pot or call a reckoning; and, to say truth, these country-folks did not give themselves the pains, and had scarce the knowledge, to be critical. About nine or ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to an alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire not far from Bedford itself. In the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic-looking fellow of perhaps forty, dressed in black. He sat on a settle by the fireside, smoking a long pipe, such as they call a yard of clay. His hat and wig were hanged upon the knob behind him, his head as bald as a bladder of lard, and his expression very shrewd, cantankerous and inquisitive. He seemed to value himself above his company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his due; being, as I afterwards discovered, an attorney's clerk. I took upon myself the more ungrateful part of arriving last; and by the time I entered on the scene the Major was already served at a side-table. Some general conversation must have passed, and I smelled danger in the air. The Major looked flustered, the attorney's clerk triumphant, and three or four peasants in smock-frocks (who sat about the fire to play chorus) had let their pipes go out. "Give you good-evening, sir!" said the attorney's clerk to me. "The same to you, sir," said I. "I think this one will do," quoth the clerk to the yokels with a wink; and then, as soon as I had given my order, "Pray, sir, whither are you bound?" he added. "Sir," said I, "I am not one of those who speak either of their business or their destination in houses of public entertainment." "A good answer," said he, "and an excellent principle.--Sir, do you speak French?" "Why, no, sir," said I. "A little Spanish, at your service." "But you know the French accent, perhaps?" said the clerk. "Well do I do that!" said I. "The French accent? Why, I believe I can tell a Frenchman in ten words." "Here is a puzzle for you, then!" he said. "I have no material doubt myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward. The lack of education, you know. I make bold to say that a man cannot walk, cannot hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of education." He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat. "Now, sir," pursued the clerk, "let me have the pleasure to hear your voice again. Where are you going, did you say?" "Sare, I am go--ing to Lon--don," said the Major. I could have flung my plate at him to be such an ass, and to have so little a gift of languages where that was the essential. "What think ye of that?" said the clerk. "Is that French enough?" "Good God!" cried I, leaping up like one who should suddenly perceive an acquaintance, "is this you, Mr. Dubois? Why, who would have dreamed of encountering you so far from home?" As I spoke, I shook hands with the Major heartily; and turning to our tormentor, "O, sir, you may be perfectly reassured! This is a very honest fellow, a late neighbour of mine in the City of Carlisle." I thought the attorney looked put out; I little knew the man! "But he is French," said he, "for all that?" "Ay, to be sure!" said I. "A Frenchman of the emigration! None of your Buonaparte lot. I will warrant his views of politics to be as sound as your own." "What is a little strange," said the clerk quietly, "is that Mr. Dubois should deny it." I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was rude, and in the course of the next words I contrived to do what I have rarely done, and make a slip in my English. I kept my liberty and life by my proficiency all these months, and for once that I failed, it is not to be supposed that I would make a public exhibition of the details. Enough that it was a very little error, and one that might have passed ninety-nine times in a hundred. But my limb of the law was as swift to pick it up as though he had been by trade a master of languages. "Aha!" cries he; "and you are French too! Your tongue bewrays you. Two Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and accidentally, not knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night, in the middle of Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You are all prisoners escaping, if you are nothing worse. Consider yourselves under arrest. I have to trouble you for your papers." "Where is your warrant, if you come to that?" said I. "My papers! A likely thing that I would show my papers on the _ipse dixit_ of an unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!" "Would you resist the law?" says he. "Not the law, sir!" said I. "I hope I am too good a subject for that. But for a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of gingham small-clothes, why certainly! 'Tis my birthright as an Englishman. Where's _Magna Charta_ else?" "We will see about that," says he; and then, addressing the assistants, "Where does the constable live?" "Lord love you, sir!" cried the landlord, "what are you thinking of? The constable at past ten at night! Why, he's abed and asleep, and good and drunk two hours agone!" "Ah that a' be!" came in chorus from the yokels. The attorney's clerk was put to a stand. He could not think of force; there was little sign of martial ardour about the landlord, and the peasants were indifferent--they only listened, and gaped, and now scratched a head, and now would get a light to their pipes from the embers on the hearth. On the other hand, the Major and I put a bold front on the business and defied him, not without some ground of law. In this state of matters he proposed I should go along with him to one Squire Merton, a great man of the neighbourhood, who was in the commission of the peace, the end of his avenue but three lanes away. I told him I would not stir a foot for him if it were to save his soul. Next he proposed I should stay all night where I was, and the constable could see to my affair in the morning, when he was sober. I replied I should go when and where I pleased; that we were lawful travellers in the fear of God and the King, and I for one would suffer myself to be stayed by nobody. At the same time, I was thinking the matter had lasted altogether too long, and I determined to bring it to an end at once. "See here," said I, getting up, for till now I had remained carelessly seated, "there's only one way to decide a thing like this--only one way that's right _English_--and that's man to man. Take off your coat, sir, and these gentlemen shall see fair play." At this there came a look in his eye that I could not mistake. His education had been neglected in one essential and eminently British particular: he could not box. No more could I, you may say; but then I had the more impudence--and I had made the proposal. "He says I'm no Englishman, but the proof of the pudding is the eating of it," I continued. And here I stripped my coat and fell into the proper attitude, which was just about all I knew of this barbarian art. "Why, sir, you seem to me to hang back a little," said I. "Come, I'll meet you; I'll give you an appetiser--though hang me if I can understand the man that wants any enticement to hold up his hands." I drew a bank-note out of my fob and tossed it to the landlord. "There are the stakes," said I. "I'll fight you for first blood, since you seem to make so much work about it. If you tap my claret first, there are five guineas for you, and I'll go with you to any squire you choose to mention. If I tap yours, you'll perhaps let on that I'm the better man, and allow me to go about my lawful business at my own time and convenience, by God!--Is that fair, my lads?" says I, appealing to the company. "Ay, ay," said the chorus of chawbacons; "he can't say no fairer nor that, he can't. Take off thy coat, master!" The limb of the law was now on the wrong side of public opinion, and, what heartened me to go on, the position was rapidly changing in our favour. Already the Major was paying his shot to the very indifferent landlord, and I could see the white face of King at the backdoor, making signals of haste. "Oho!" quoth my enemy, "you are as full of doubles as a fox, are you not? But I see through you; I see through and through you. You would change the venue, would you?" "I may be transparent, sir," says I, "but if you'll do me the favour to stand up, you'll find I can hit damn hard." "Which is a point, if you will observe, that I had never called in question," said he. "Why, you ignorant clowns," he proceeded, addressing the company, "can't you see the fellow's gulling you before your eyes? Can't you see that he has changed the point upon me? I say he's a French prisoner, and he answers that he can box! What has that to do with it? I would not wonder but what he can dance too--they're all dancing-masters over there. I say, and I stick to it, that he's a Frenchy. He says he isn't. Well then, let him out with his papers, if he has them! If he had, would he not show them? If he had, would he not jump at the idea of going to Squire Merton, a man you all know? Now, you are all plain, straightforward Bedfordshire men, and I wouldn't ask a better lot to appeal to. You're not the kind to be talked over with any French gammon, and he's plenty of that. But let me tell him, he can take his pigs to another market; they'll never do here; they'll never go down in Bedfordshire. Why! look at the man! Look at his feet! Has anybody got a foot in the room like that? See how he stands! do any of you fellows stand like that? Does the landlord, there? Why, he has Frenchman wrote all over him as big as a sign-post!" This was all very well; and in a different scene I might even have been gratified by his remarks; but I saw clearly, if I were to allow him to talk, he might turn the tables on me altogether. He might not be much of a hand at boxing; but I was much mistaken, or he had studied forensic eloquence in a good school. In this predicament I could think of nothing more ingenious than to burst out of the house, under the pretext of an ungovernable rage. It was certainly not very ingenious--it was elementary, but I had no choice. "You white-livered dog!" I broke out. "Do you dare to tell me you're an Englishman, and won't fight? But I'll stand no more of this! I leave this place, where I've been insulted! Here! what's to pay? Pay yourself!" I went on, offering the landlord a handful of silver, "and give me back my bank-note!" The landlord, following his usual policy of obliging everybody, offered no opposition to my design. The position of my adversary was now thoroughly bad. He had lost my two companions. He was on the point of losing me also. There was plainly no hope of arousing the company to help; and, watching him with a corner of my eye, I saw him hesitate for a moment. The next, he had taken down his hat and his wig, which was of black horsehair; and I saw him draw from behind the settle a vast hooded greatcoat and a small valise. "The devil!" thought I: "is the rascal going to follow me?" I was scarce clear of the inn before the limb of the law was at my heels. I saw his face plain in the moonlight; and the most resolute purpose showed in it, along with an unmoved composure. A chill went over me. "This is no common adventure," thinks I to myself. "You have got hold of a man of character, St. Ives! A bite-hard, a bull-dog, a weasel is on your trail; and how are you to throw him off?" Who was he? By some of his expressions I judged he was a hanger-on of courts. But in what character had he followed the assizes? As a simple spectator, as a lawyer's clerk, as a criminal himself, or--last and worst supposition--as a Bow Street "runner"? The cart would wait for me, perhaps half a mile down our onward road, which I was already following. And I told myself that in a few minutes' walking, Bow Street runner or not, I should have him at my mercy. And then reflection came to me in time. Of all things, one was out of the question. Upon no account must this obtrusive fellow see the cart. Until I had killed or shook him off, I was quite divorced from my companions--alone, in the midst of England, on a frosty by-way leading whither I knew not, with a sleuth-hound at my heels, and never a friend but the holly-stick! We came at the same time to a crossing of lanes. The branch to the left was overhung with trees, deeply sunken and dark. Not a ray of moonlight penetrated its recesses; and I took it at a venture. The wretch followed my example in silence; and for some time we crunched together over frozen pools without a word. Then he found his voice, with a chuckle. "This is not the way to Mr. Merton's," said he. "No?" said I. "It is mine, however." "And therefore mine," said he. Again we fell silent; and we may thus have covered half a mile before the lane, taking a sudden turn, brought us forth again into the moonshine. With his hooded greatcoat on his back, his valise in his hand, his black wig adjusted, and footing it on the ice with a sort of sober doggedness of manner, my enemy was changed almost beyond recognition: changed in everything but a certain dry, polemical, pedantic air, that spoke of a sedentary occupation and high stools. I observed, too, that his valise was heavy; and, putting this and that together, hit upon a plan. "A seasonable night, sir," said I. "What do you say to a bit of running? The frost has me by the toes." "With all the pleasure in life," says he. His voice seemed well assured, which pleased me little. However, there was nothing else to try, except violence, for which it would always be too soon. I took to my heels accordingly, he after me; and for some time the slapping of our feet on the hard road might have been heard a mile away. He had started a pace behind me, and he finished in the same position. For all his extra years and the weight of his valise, he had not lost a hair's breadth. The devil might race him for me--I had enough of it! And, besides, to run so fast was contrary to my interests. We could not run long without arriving somewhere. At any moment we might turn a corner and find ourselves at the lodge-gate of some Squire Merton, in the midst of a village whose constable was sober, or in the hands of a patrol. There was no help for it--I must finish with him on the spot, as long as it was possible. I looked about me, and the place seemed suitable; never a light, never a house--nothing but stubble-fields, fallows, and a few stunted trees. I stopped and eyed him in the moonlight with an angry stare. "Enough of this foolery!" said I. He had turned, and now faced me full, very pale, but with no sign of shrinking. "I am quite of your opinion," said he. "You have tried me at the running; you can try me next at the high jump. It will be all the same. It must end the one way." I made my holly whistle about my head. "I believe you know what way!" said I. "We are alone, it is night, and I am wholly resolved. Are you not frightened?" "No," he said, "not in the smallest. I do not box, sir; but I am not a coward, as you may have supposed. Perhaps it will simplify our relations if I tell you at the outset that I walk armed." Quick as lightning I made a feint at his head; as quickly he gave ground, and at the same time I saw a pistol glitter in his hand. "No more of that, Mr. French-Prisoner!" he said. "It will do me no good to have your death at my door." "Faith, nor me either!" said I; and I lowered my stick and considered the man, not without a twinkle of admiration. "You see," I said, "there is one consideration that you appear to overlook: there are a great many chances that your pistol may miss fire." "I have a pair," he returned. "Never travel without a brace of barkers." "I make you my compliment," said I. "You are able to take care of yourself, and that is a good trait. But, my good man! let us look at this matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more am I; we are both men of excellent sense; I have good reason, whatever it may be, to keep my concerns to myself and to walk alone. Now, I put it to you pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am I likely to put up with your continued and--excuse me--highly impudent _ingérence_ into my private affairs?" "Another French word," says he composedly. "O! damn your French words!" cried I. "You seem to be a Frenchman yourself!" "I have had many opportunities by which I have profited," he explained. "Few men are better acquainted with the similarities and differences, whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages." "You are a pompous fellow, too!" said I. "O, I can make distinctions, sir," says he. "I can talk with Bedfordshire peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope, in the company of a gentleman of education like yourself." "If you set up to be a gentleman----" I began. "Pardon me," he interrupted: "I make no such claim. I only see the nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain person." "For the Lord's sake," I exclaimed, "set my mind at rest upon one point. In the name of mystery, who and what are you?" "I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir," said he, "nor yet my trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr. Daniel Romaine, solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address, sir." It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I had been frightened. I flung my stick on the road. "Romaine?" I cried. "Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face and a big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my arms!" "Keep back, I say!" said Dudgeon weakly. I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as if I must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if the pistol that he held in one hand were no more to be feared than the valise that he carried with the other, and now put up like a barrier against my advance. "Keep back, or I declare I will fire," he was crying. "Have a care, for God's sake! My pistol----" He might scream as he pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my breast, I pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never been kissed before and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it. But all's well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept singing and whistling on the streets:-- "There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft And looks out for the life of poor Jack." "There!" said I, releasing him a little, but still keeping my hands on his shoulders, "_je vous ai bel et bien embrassé_--and, as you would say, there is another French word." With his wig over one eye, he looked incredibly rueful and put out. "Cheer up, Dudgeon; the ordeal is over, you shall be embraced no more. But do, first of all, for God's sake, put away your pistol; you handle it as if you were a cockatrice; some time or other, depend upon it, it will certainly go off. Here is your hat. No, let me put it on square, and the wig before it. Never suffer any stress of circumstances to come between you and the duty you owe to yourself. If you have nobody else to dress for, dress for God! "Put your wig straight On your bald pate, Keep your chin scraped, And your figure draped. Can you match me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And remark, I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are the outpourings of a _dilettante_." "But, my dear sir!" he exclaimed. "But, my dear sir!" I echoed, "I will allow no man to interrupt the flow of my ideas. Give me your opinion on my quatrain, or I vow we shall have a quarrel of it." "Certainly you are quite an original," he said. "Quite," said I; "and I believe I have my counterpart before me." "Well, for a choice," says he, smiling, "and whether for sense or poetry, give me "'Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow: The rest is all but leather and prunello.'" "Oh, but that's not fair--that's Pope! It's not original, Dudgeon. Understand me," said I, wringing his breast-button, "the first duty of all poetry is to be mine, sir--mine. Inspiration now swells in my bosom, because--to tell you the plain truth, and descend a little in style--I am devilish relieved at the turn things have taken. So, I dare say, are you yourself, Dudgeon, if you would only allow it. And _à propos_, let me ask you a home question. Between friends, have you ever fired that pistol?" "Why, yes, sir," he replied. "Twice--at hedge-sparrows." "And you would have fired at me, you bloody-minded man?" I cried. "If you go to that, you seemed mighty reckless with your stick," said Dudgeon. "Did I indeed? Well, well, 'tis all past history; ancient as King Pharamond--which is another French word, if you cared to accumulate more evidence," says I. "But happily we are now the best of friends, and have all our interests in common." "You go a little too fast, if you'll excuse me, Mr.----: I do not know your name, that I am aware," said Dudgeon. "No, to be sure!" said I. "Never heard of it!" "A word of explanation----" he began. "No, Dudgeon!" I interrupted. "Be practical; I know what you want, and the name of it is supper. _Rien ne creuse comme l'émotion._ I am hungry myself, and yet I am more accustomed to warlike palpitations than you, who are but a hunter of hedge-sparrows. Let me look at your face critically: your bill of fare is three slices of cold rare roast beef, a Welsh rabbit, a pot of stout, and a glass or two of sound tawny port, old in bottle--the right milk of Englishmen." Methought there seemed a brightening in his eye and a melting about his mouth at this enumeration. "The night is young," I continued; "not much past eleven, for a wager. Where can we find a good inn? And remark that I say _good_, for the port must be up to the occasion--not a headache in a pipe of it." "Really, sir," he said, smiling a little, "you have a way of carrying things----" "Will nothing make you stick to the subject?" I cried; "you have the most irrelevant mind! How do you expect to rise in your profession? The inn?" "Well, I will say you are a facetious gentleman!" said he. "You must have your way, I see. We are not three miles from Bedford by this very road." "Done!" cried I. "Bedford be it!" I tucked his arm under mine, possessed myself of the valise, and walked him off unresisting. Presently we came to an open piece of country lying a thought downhill. The road was smooth and free of ice, the moonshine thin and bright over the meadows and the leafless trees. I was now honestly done with the purgatory of the covered cart; I was close to my great-uncle's; I had no more fear of Mr. Dudgeon: which were all grounds enough for jollity. And I was aware, besides, of us two as of a pair of tiny and solitary dolls under the vast frosty cupola of the midnight; the rooms decked, the moon burnished, the least of the stars lighted, the floor swept and waxed, and nothing wanting but for the band to strike up and the dancing to begin. In the exhilaration of my heart I took the music on myself-- "Merrily danced the Quaker's wife, And merrily danced the Quaker." I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm about Dudgeon's waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step! He hung back a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden--really like balm--what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had given me in the immediate past. Presently we began to see the lights of Bedford. My puritanic companion stopped and disengaged himself. "This is a trifle _infra dig._, sir, is it not?" said he. "A party might suppose we had been drinking." "And so you shall be, Dudgeon," said I. "You shall not only be drinking, you old hypocrite, but you shall be drunk--dead drunk, sir--and the boots shall put you to bed! We'll warn him when we go in. Never neglect a precaution; never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day!" But he had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage and came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still alight and in a bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders with a prompt severity which ensured obedience, and to be served soon after at a side-table, close to the fire and in a blaze of candle-light, with such a meal as I had been dreaming of for days past. For days, you are to remember, I had been skulking in the covered cart, a prey to cold, hunger, and an accumulation of discomforts that might have daunted the most brave; and the white table napery, the bright crystal, the reverberation of the fire, the red curtains, the Turkey carpet, the portraits on the coffee-room wall, the placid faces of the two or three late guests who were silently prolonging the pleasures of digestion, and (last, but not by any means least) a glass of an excellent light dry port, put me in a humour only to be described as heavenly. The thought of the Colonel, of how he would have enjoyed this snug room and roaring fire, and of his cold grave in the wood by Market Bosworth, lingered on my palate, _amari aliquid_, like an after-taste, but was not able--I say it with shame--entirely to dispel my self-complacency. After all, in this world every dog hangs by its own tail. I was a free adventurer, who had just brought to a successful end--or, at least, within view of it--an adventure very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr. Dudgeon, as the port rose to his cheeks, and a smile, that was semi-confidential and a trifle foolish, began to play upon his leathery features, not only with composure, but with a suspicion of kindness. The rascal had been brave, a quality for which I would value the devil; and if he had been pertinacious in the beginning, he had more than made up for it before the end. "And now, Dudgeon, to explain," I began. "I know your master, he knows me, and he knows and approves of my errand. So much I may tell you, that I am on my way to Amersham Place." "Oho!" quoth Dudgeon, "I begin to see." "I am heartily glad of it," said I, passing the bottle, "because that is about all I can tell you. You must take my word for the remainder. Either believe me or don't. If you don't, let's take a chaise; you can carry me to-morrow to High Holborn, and confront me with Mr. Romaine; the result of which will be to set your mind at rest--and to make the holiest disorder in your master's plans. If I judge you aright (for I find you a shrewd fellow), this will not be at all to your mind. You know what a subordinate gets by officiousness; if I can trust my memory, old Romaine has not at all the face that I should care to see in anger; and I venture to predict surprising results upon your weekly salary--if you are paid by the week, that is. In short, let me go free, and 'tis an end of the matter; take me to London, and 'tis only a beginning--and, by my opinion, a beginning of troubles. You can take your choice." "And that is soon taken," said he. "Go to Amersham to-morrow, or go to the devil if you prefer--I wash my hands of you and the whole transaction. No, you don't find me putting my head in between Romaine and a client! A good man of business, sir, but hard as millstone grit. I might get the sack, and I shouldn't wonder! But, it's a pity, too," he added, and sighed, shook his head, and took his glass off sadly. "That reminds me," said I. "I have a great curiosity, and you can satisfy it. Why were you so forward to meddle with poor Mr. Dubois? Why did you transfer your attentions to me? And generally, what induced you to make yourself such a nuisance?" He blushed deeply. "Why, sir," says he, "there _is_ such a thing as patriotism, I hope." CHAPTER XVI THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY'S VISCOUNT By eight the next morning Dudgeon and I had made our parting. By that time we had grown to be extremely familiar; and I would very willingly have kept him by me, and even carried him to Amersham Place. But it appeared he was due at the public-house where we had met, on some affairs of my great-uncle the Count, who had an outlying estate in that part of the shire. If Dudgeon had had his way the night before, I should have been arrested on my uncle's land and by my uncle's agent, a culmination of ill-luck. A little after noon I started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable. The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. "You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble gentleman; and I'm sure nobody more polite! They do say, sir, his wealth is enormous, and before the Revolution, quite a prince in his own country! But I beg your pardon, sir; 'ow I do run on, to be sure; and doubtless all beknown to you already! For you do resemble the family, sir. I should have known you anywheres by the likeness to the dear viscount. Ha, poor gentleman, he must 'ave a 'eavy 'eart these days!" In the same place I saw out of the inn-windows a man-servant passing in the livery of my house, which you are to think I had never before seen worn, or not that I could remember. I had often enough, indeed, pictured myself advanced to be a Marshal, a Duke of the Empire, a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and some other kickshaws of the kind, with a perfect rout of flunkeys correctly dressed in my own colours. But it is one thing to imagine, and another to see; it would be one thing to have these liveries in a house of my own in Paris--it was quite another to find them flaunting in the heart of hostile England; and I fear I should have made a fool of myself, if the man had not been on the other side of the street, and I at a one-pane window. There was something illusory in this transplantation of the wealth and honours of a family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil; something ghostly in this sense of home-coming so far from home. From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar impressions. There are certainly few things to be compared with these castles, or rather country seats, of the English nobility and gentry; nor anything at all to equal the servility of the population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I was but driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have gone abroad, and the women curtsied and the men louted to me by the wayside. As I came near I began to appreciate the roots of this widespread respect. The look of my uncle's park wall, even from the outside, had something of a princely character; and when I came in view of the house itself, a sort of madness of vicarious vainglory struck me dumb and kept me staring. It was about the size of the Tuileries. It faced due north; and the last rays of the sun, that was setting like a red-hot shot amidst a tumultuous gathering of snow-clouds, were reflected on the endless rows of windows. A portico of Doric columns adorned the front, and would have done honour to a temple. The servant who received me at the door was civil to a fault--I had almost said, to offence; and the hall to which he admitted me through a pair of glass doors was warmed and already partly lighted by a liberal chimney heaped with the roots of beeches. "Vicomte Anne de Saint-Yves," said I, in answer to the man's question; whereupon he bowed before me lower still, and stepping upon one side introduced me to the truly awful presence of the major-domo. I have seen many dignitaries in my time, but none who quite equalled this eminent being; who was good enough to answer to the unassuming name of Dawson. From him I learned that my uncle was extremely low, a doctor in close attendance, Mr. Romaine expected at any moment, and that my cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Yves, had been sent for the same morning. "It was a sudden seizure, then?" I asked. Well, he would scarcely go as far as that. It was a decline, a fading away, sir; but he was certainly took bad the day before, had sent for Mr. Romaine, and the major-domo had taken it on himself a little later to send word to the Viscount. "It seemed to me, my lord," said he, "as if this was a time when all the fambly should be called together." I approved him with my lips, but not in my heart. Dawson was plainly in the interests of my cousin. "And when can I expect to see my great-uncle, the Count?" said I. In the evening, I was told; in the meantime he would show me to my room, which had been long prepared for me, and I should be expected to dine in about an hour with the doctor, if my lordship had no objections. My lordship had not the faintest. "At the same time," I said, "I have had an accident: I have unhappily lost my baggage, and am here in what I stand in. I don't know if the doctor be a formalist, but it is quite impossible I should appear at table as I ought." He begged me to be under no anxiety. "We have been long expecting you," said he. "All is ready." Such I found to be the truth. A great room had been prepared for me; through the mullioned windows the last flicker of the winter sunset interchanged with the reverberation of a royal fire; the bed was open, a suit of evening clothes was airing before the blaze, and from the far corner a boy came forward with deprecatory smiles. The dream in which I had been moving seemed to have reached its pitch. I might have quitted this house and room only the night before; it was my own place that I had come to; and for the first time in my life I understood the force of the words home and welcome. "This will be all as you would want, sir?" said Mr. Dawson. "This 'ere boy, Rowley, we place entirely at your disposition. E's not exactly a trained vallet, but Mosha Powl, the Viscount's gentleman, 'ave give him the benefick of a few lessons, and it is 'oped that he may give sitisfection. Hanythink that you may require, if you will be so good as to mention the same to Rowley, I will make it my business myself, sir, to see you sitisfied." So saying, the eminent and already detested Mr. Dawson took his departure, and I was left alone with Rowley. A man who may be said to have wakened to consciousness in the prison of the Abbaye, among those ever graceful and ever tragic figures of the brave and fair, awaiting the hour of the guillotine and denuded of every comfort, I had never known the luxuries or the amenities of my rank in life. To be attended on by servants I had only been accustomed to in inns. My toilet had long been military, to a moment, at the note of a bugle, too often at a ditch-side. And it need not be wondered at if I looked on my new valet with a certain diffidence. But I remembered that if he was my first experience of a valet, I was his first trial as a master. Cheered by which consideration, I demanded my bath in a style of good assurance. There was a bath-room contiguous; in an incredibly short space of time the hot water was ready; and soon after, arrayed in a shawl dressing-gown and in a luxury of contentment and comfort, I was reclined in an easy-chair before the mirror, while Rowley, with a mixture of pride and anxiety which I could well understand, laid out his razors. "Hey, Rowley?" I asked, not quite resigned to go under fire with such an inexperienced commander. "It's all right, is it? You feel pretty sure of your weapons?" "Yes, my lord," he replied. "It's all right, I assure your lordship." "I beg your pardon, Mr. Rowley, but for the sake of shortness, would you mind not belording me in private?" said I. "It will do very well if you call me Mr. Anne. It is the way of my country, as I dare say you know." Mr. Rowley looked blank. "But you're just as much a Viscount as Mr. Powl's, are you not?" he said. "As Mr. Powl's Viscount?" said I, laughing. "O, keep your mind easy, Mr. Rowley's is every bit as good. Only, you see, as I am of the younger line, I bear my Christian name along with the title. Alain is the _Viscount_; I am the _Viscount Anne_. And in giving me the name of Mr. Anne, I assure you you will be quite regular." "Yes, Mr. Anne," said the docile youth. "But about the shaving, sir, you need be under no alarm. Mr. Powl says I 'ave excellent dispositions." "Mr. Powl?" said I. "That doesn't seem to me very like a French name." "No, sir, indeed, my lord," said he, with a burst of confidence. "No, indeed, Mr. Anne, and it do not surely. I should say now, it was more like Mr. Pole." "And Mr. Powl is the Viscount's man?" "Yes, Mr. Anne," said he. "He 'ave a hard billet, he do. The Viscount is a very particular gentleman. I don't think as you'll be, Mr. Anne?" he added, with a confidential smile in the mirror. He was about sixteen, well set up, with a pleasant, merry, freckled face, and a pair of dancing eyes. There was an air at once deprecatory and insinuating about the rascal that I thought I recognised. There came to me from my own boyhood memories of certain passionate admirations long passed away, and the objects of them long ago discredited or dead. I remembered how anxious I had been to serve those fleeting heroes, how readily I told myself I would have died for _them_, how much greater and handsomer than life they had appeared. And, looking in the mirror, it seemed to me that I read the face of Rowley, like an echo or a ghost, by the light of my own youth. I have always contended (somewhat against the opinion of my friends) that I am first of all an economist; and the last thing that I would care to throw away is that very valuable piece of property--a boy's hero-worship. "Why," said I, "you shave like an angel, Mr. Rowley!" "Thank you, my lord," says he. "Mr. Powl had no fear of me. You may be sure, sir, I should never 'ave had this berth if I 'adn't 'ave been up to Dick. We been expecting of you this month back. My eye! I never see such preparations. Every day the fires has been kep' up, the bed made, and all! As soon as it was known you were coming, sir, I got the appointment; and I've been up and down since then like a Jack-in-the-box. A wheel couldn't sound in the avenue but what I was at the window! I've had a many disappointments; but to-night, as soon as you stepped out of the shay, I knew it was my--it was you. O, you had been expected! Why, when I go down to supper, I'll be the 'ero of the servants' 'all: the 'ole of the staff is that curious!" "Well," said I, "I hope you may be able to give a fair account of me--sober, steady, industrious, good-tempered, and with a first-rate character from my last place?" He laughed an embarrassed laugh. "Your hair curls beautiful," he said, by way of changing the subject. "The Viscount's the boy for curls, though; and the richness of it is, Mr. Powl tells me his don't curl no more than that much twine--by nature. Gettin' old, the Viscount is. He _'ave_ gone the pace, 'aven't 'e, sir?" "The fact is," said I, "that I know very little about him. Our family has been much divided, and I have been a soldier from a child." "A soldier, Mr. Anne, sir?" cried Rowley, with a sudden feverish animation. "Was you ever wounded?" It is contrary to my principles to discourage admiration for myself; and, slipping back the shoulder of the dressing-gown, I silently exhibited the scar which I had received in Edinburgh Castle. He looked at it with awe. "Ah, well!" he continued, "there's where the difference comes in! It's in the training. The other Viscount have been horse-racing, and dicing, and carrying on all his life. All right enough, no doubt; but what I do say is that it don't lead to nothink. Whereas----" "Whereas Mr. Rowley's?" I put in. "My Viscount?" said he. "Well, sir, I _did_ say it; and now that I've seen you, I say it again!" I could not refrain from smiling at this outburst, and the rascal caught me in the mirror and smiled to me again. "I'd say it again, Mr. Hanne," he said. "I know which side my bread's buttered. I know when a gen'leman's a gen'leman. Mr. Powl can go to Putney with his one! Beg your pardon, Mr. Anne, for being so familiar," said he, blushing suddenly scarlet. "I was especially warned against it by Mr. Powl." "Discipline before all," said I. "Follow your front-rank man." With that we began to turn our attention to the clothes. I was amazed to find them fit so well: not _à la diable_, in the haphazard manner of a soldier's uniform or a ready-made suit; but with nicety, as a trained artist might rejoice to make them for a favourite subject. "'Tis extraordinary," cried I: "these things fit me perfectly." "Indeed, Mr. Anne, you two be very much of a shape," said Rowley. "Who? What two?" said I. "The Viscount," he said. "Damnation! Have I the man's clothes on me, too?" cried I. But Rowley hastened to reassure me. On the first word of my coming the Count had put the matter of my wardrobe in the hands of his own and my cousin's tailors; and on the rumour of our resemblance, my clothes had been made to Alain's measure. "But they were all made for you express, Mr. Anne. You may be certain the Count would never do nothing by 'alf: fires kep' burning; the finest of clothes ordered, I'm sure, and a body-servant being trained a-purpose." "Well," said I, "it's a good fire, and a good set-out of clothes; and what a valet, Mr. Rowley! And there's one thing to be said for my cousin--I mean for Mr. Powl's Viscount--he has a very fair figure." "O, don't you be took in, Mr. Anne," quoth the faithless Rowley: "he has to be hyked into a pair of stays to get them things on!" "Come, come, Mr. Rowley," said I, "this is telling tales out of school! Do not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity, including Cæsar and Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or Alain's, to follow his example. 'Tis a misfortune common to all; and really," said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, "when the result is so successful as this, who would do anything but applaud?" My toilet concluded, I marched on to fresh surprises. My chamber, my new valet, and my new clothes had been beyond hope: the dinner, the soup, the whole bill of fare was a revelation of the powers there are in man. I had not supposed it lay in the genius of any cook to create, out of common beef and mutton, things so different and dainty. The wine was of a piece, the doctor a most agreeable companion; nor could I help reflecting on the prospect that all this wealth, comfort, and handsome profusion might still very possibly become mine. Here were a change, indeed, from the common soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations, the fugitive and the horrors of the covered cart! CHAPTER XVII THE DESPATCH-BOX The doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I was myself summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count. You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of the _émigrés_ could never expect a good word in the society in which my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a doubtful nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable portrait; and as I was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye that I cast on my great-uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a little cot no greater than a camp-bed, not visibly breathing. He was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have faded from his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed, as though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree of slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed to lie there with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey. His speech was very deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder than a sigh. "I bid you welcome, Monsieur le Vicomte Anne," said he, looking at me hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. "I have sent for you, and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have shown. It is my misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I trust you have been reasonably well entertained?" "_Monsieur mon oncle_," I said, bowing very low, "I am come at the summons of the head of my family." "It is well," he said. "Be seated. I should be glad to hear some news--if that can be called news that is already twenty years old--of how I have the pleasure to see you here." By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth. "That is soon told, _monseigneur_," said I. "I understand that I need tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story of the lost dog." "You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable affair; it is painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who would not be advised," said he. "Tell me, if you please, simply of yourself." "I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in the beginning," said I, with a bitter smile, "because my story begins at the foot of the guillotine. When the list came out that night, and her name was there, I was already old enough, not in years but in sad experience, to understand the extent of my misfortune. She----" I paused. "Enough that she arranged with a friend, Madame de Chasseradès, that she should take charge of me, and by the favour of our gaolers I was suffered to remain in the shelter of the _Abbaye_. That was my only refuge; there was no corner of France that I could rest the sole of my foot upon except the prison. Monsieur le Comte, you are as well aware as I can be what kind of a life that was, and how swiftly death smote in that society. I did not wait long before the name of Madame de Chasseradès succeeded to that of my mother on the list. She passed me on to Madame de Noytot; she, in her turn, to Mademoiselle de Braye; and there were others. I was the one thing permanent; they were all transient as clouds; a day or two of their care, and then came the last farewell and--somewhere far off in that roaring Paris that surrounded us--the bloody scene. I was the cherished one, the last comfort, of these dying women. I have been in pitched fights, my lord, and I never knew such courage. It was all done smiling, in the tone of good society; _belle maman_ was the name I was taught to give to each; and for a day or two the new 'pretty mamma' would make much of me, show me off, teach me the minuet, and to say my prayers; and then, with a tender embrace, would go the way of her predecessors, smiling. There were some that wept too. There was a childhood! All the time Monsieur de Culemberg kept his eye on me, and would have had me out of the _Abbaye_ and in his own protection, but my 'pretty mammas' one after another resisted the idea. Where could I be safer? they argued; and what was to become of them without the darling of the prison? Well, it was soon shown how safe I was! The dreadful day of the massacre came; the prison was overrun; none paid attention to me, not even the last of my 'pretty mammas,' for she had met another fate. I was wandering distracted, when I was found by some one in the interests of Monsieur de Culemberg. I understand he was sent on purpose; I believe, in order to reach the interior of the prison, he had set his hand to nameless barbarities; such was the price paid for my worthless, whimpering little life! He gave me his hand; it was wet, and mine was reddened; he led me unresisting. I remember but the one circumstance of my flight--it was my last view of my last 'pretty mamma.' Shall I describe it to you?" I asked the Count, with a sudden fierceness. "Avoid unpleasant details," observed my great-uncle gently. At these words a sudden peace fell upon me. I had been angry with the man before; I had not sought to spare him; and now, in a moment, I saw that there was nothing to spare. Whether from natural heartlessness or extreme old age, the soul was not at home; and my benefactor, who had kept the fire lit in my room for a month past--my only relative except Alain, whom I knew already to be a hired spy--had trodden out the last sparks of hope and interest. "Certainly," said I; "and, indeed, the day for them is nearly over. I was taken to Monsieur de Culemberg's,--I presume, sir, that you know the Abbé de Culemberg?" He indicated assent without opening his eyes. "He was a very brave and a very learned man----" "And a very holy one," said my uncle civilly. "And a very holy one, as you observe," I continued. "He did an infinity of good, and through all the Terror kept himself from the guillotine. He brought me up and gave me such education as I have. It was in his house in the country at Dammarie, near Melun, that I made the acquaintance of your agent, Mr. Vicary, who lay there in hiding, only to fall a victim at the last to a gang of _chauffeurs_." "That poor Mr. Vicary!" observed my uncle. "He had been many times in my interests to France, and this was his first failure. _Quel charmant homme, n'est-ce pas?_" "Infinitely so," said I. "But I would not willingly detain you any further with a story, the details of which it must naturally be more or less unpleasant for you to hear. Suffice it that, by M. de Culemberg's own advice, I said farewell at eighteen to that kind preceptor and his books, and entered the service of France; and have since then carried arms in such a manner as not to disgrace my family." "You narrate well; _vous avez la voix chaude_," said my uncle, turning on his pillows as if to study me. "I have a very good account of you by Monsieur de Mauséant, whom you helped in Spain. And you had some education, from the Abbé de Culemberg, a man of good house? Yes, you will do very well. You have a good manner and a handsome person, which hurts nothing. We are all handsome in the family; even I myself, I have had my successes, the memories of which still charm me. It is my intention, my nephew, to make of you my heir. I am not very well content with my other nephew, Monsieur le Vicomte: he has not been respectful, which is the flattery due to age. And there are other matters." I was half tempted to throw back in his face that inheritance so coldly offered. At the same time I had to consider that he was an old man, and, after all, my relation; and that I was a poor one, in considerable straits, with a hope at heart which that inheritance might yet enable me to realise. Nor could I forget that, however icy his manners, he had behaved to me from the first with the extreme of liberality and--I was about to write, kindness, but the word, in that connection, would not come. I really owed the man some measure of gratitude, which it would be an ill manner to repay if I were to insult him on his deathbed. "Your will, monsieur, must ever be my rule," said I, bowing. "You have wit, _monsieur mon neveu_," said he, "the best wit--the wit of silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude. Gratitude!" he repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and smiled to himself. "But to approach what is more important. As a prisoner of war, will it be possible for you to be served heir to English estates? I have no idea: long as I have dwelt in England, I have never studied what they call their laws. On the other hand, how if Romaine should come too late? I have two pieces of business to be transacted--to die, and to make my will; and, however desirous I may be to serve you, I cannot postpone the first in favour of the second beyond a very few hours." "Well, sir, I must then contrive to be doing as I did before," said I. "Not so," said the Count. "I have an alternative. I have just drawn my balance at my banker's, a considerable sum, and I am now to place it in your hands. It will be so much for you and so much less----" he paused, and smiled with an air of malignity that surprised me. "But it is necessary it should be done before witnesses. Monsieur le Vicomte is of a particular disposition, and an unwitnessed donation may very easily be twisted into a theft." He touched a bell, which was answered by a man having the appearance of a confidential valet. To him he gave a key. "Bring me the despatch-box that came yesterday, La Ferrière," said he. "You will at the same time present my compliments to Dr. Hunter and M. l'Abbé, and request them to step for a few moments to my room." The despatch-box proved to be rather a bulky piece of baggage, covered with Russia leather. Before the doctor and an excellent old smiling priest it was passed over into my hands with a very clear statement of the disposer's wishes; immediately after which, though the witnesses remained behind to draw up and sign a joint note of the transaction, Monsieur de Kéroual dismissed me to my own room, La Ferrière following with the invaluable box. At my chamber door I took it from him with thanks, and entered alone. Everything had been already disposed for the night, the curtains drawn and the fire trimmed; and Rowley was still busy with my bed-clothes. He turned round as I entered with a look of welcome that did my heart good. Indeed, I had never a much greater need of human sympathy, however trivial, than at that moment when I held a fortune in my arms. In my uncle's room I had breathed the very atmosphere of disenchantment. He had gorged my pockets; he had starved every dignified or affectionate sentiment of a man. I had received so chilling an impression of age and experience that the mere look of youth drew me to confide in Rowley: he was only a boy, his heart must beat yet, he must still retain some innocence and natural feelings, he could blurt out follies with his mouth, he was not a machine to utter perfect speech! At the same time I was beginning to outgrow the painful impressions of my interview; my spirits were beginning to revive; and at the jolly, empty looks of Mr. Rowley, as he ran forward to relieve me of the box, St. Ives became himself again. "Now, Rowley, don't be in a hurry," said I. "This is a momentous juncture. Man and boy, you have been in my service about three hours. You must already have observed that I am a gentleman of a somewhat morose disposition, and there is nothing that I more dislike than the smallest appearance of familiarity. Mr. Pole or Mr. Powl, probably in the spirit of prophecy, warned you against this danger." "Yes, Mr. Anne," said Rowley blankly. "Now there has just arisen one of those rare cases in which I am willing to depart from my principles. My uncle has given me a box--what you would call a Christmas box. I don't know what's in it, and no more do you: perhaps I'm an April fool, or perhaps I am already enormously wealthy; there might be five hundred pounds in this apparently harmless receptacle!" "Lord, Mr. Anne!" cried Rowley. "Now, Rowley, hold up your right hand and repeat the words of the oath after me," said I, laying the despatch-box on the table. "Strike me blue if I ever disclose to Mr. Powl, or Mr. Powl's Viscount, or anything that is Mr. Powl's, not to mention Mr. Dawson and the doctor, the treasures of the following despatch-box; and strike me sky-blue scarlet if I do not continually maintain, uphold, love, honour, and obey, serve, and follow to the four corners of the earth and the waters that are under the earth, the hereinafter before-mentioned (only that I find I have neglected to mention him) Viscount Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, commonly known as Mr. Rowley's Viscount. So be it. Amen." He took the oath with the same exaggerated seriousness as I gave it to him. "Now," said I. "Here is the key for you; I will hold the lid with both hands in the meanwhile." He turned the key. "Bring up all the candles in the room, and range them alongside. What is it to be? A live gorgon, a Jack-in-the-box, or a spring that fires a pistol? On your knees, sir, before the prodigy!" So saying, I turned the despatch-box upside down upon the table. At sight of the heap of bank paper and gold that lay in front of us between the candles, or rolled upon the floor alongside, I stood astonished. "O Lord!" cried Mr. Rowley; "O Lordy, Lordy, Lord!" and he scrambled after the fallen guineas. "O my, Mr. Anne! what a sight o' money! Why, it's like a blessed story-book. It's like the Forty Thieves." "Now, Rowley, let's be cool, let's be business-like," said I. "Riches are deceitful, particularly when you haven't counted them; and the first thing we have to do is to arrive at the amount of my--let me say modest competency. If I'm not mistaken, I have enough here to keep you in gold buttons all the rest of your life. You collect the gold, and I'll take the paper." Accordingly, down we sat together on the hearthrug, and for some time there was no sound but the creasing of bills and the jingling of guineas, broken occasionally by the exulting exclamations of Rowley. The arithmetical operation on which we were embarked took long, and it might have been tedious to others; not to me nor to my helper. "Ten thousand pounds!" I announced at last. "Ten thousand!" echoed Mr. Rowley. And we gazed upon each other. The greatness of this fortune took my breath away. With that sum in my hands I need fear no enemies. People are arrested in nine cases out of ten, not because the police are astute, but because they themselves run short of money; and I had here before me in the despatch-box a succession of devices and disguises that ensured my liberty. Not only so; but, as I felt with a sudden and overpowering thrill, with ten thousand pounds in my hand, I was become an eligible suitor. What advances I had made in the past, as a private soldier in a military prison, or a fugitive by the wayside, could only be qualified or, indeed, excused as acts of desperation. And now, I might come in by the front door; I might approach the dragon with a lawyer at my elbow, and rich settlements to offer. The poor French prisoner, Champdivers, might be in a perpetual danger of arrest; but the rich travelling Englishman, St. Ives, in his post-chaise, with his despatch-box by his side, could smile at fate and laugh at locksmiths. I repeated the proverb, exulting, _Love laughs at locksmiths!_ In a moment, by the mere coming of this money, my love had become possible--it had come near, it was under my hand--and it may be by one of the curiosities of human nature, but it burned that instant brighter. "Rowley," said I, "your Viscount is a made man." "Why, we both are, sir," said Rowley. "Yes, both," said I; "and you shall dance at the wedding"; and I flung at his head a bundle of bank notes, and had just followed it up with a handful of guineas, when the door opened, and Mr. Romaine appeared upon the threshold. CHAPTER XVIII MR. ROMAINE CALLS ME NAMES Feeling very much of a fool to be thus taken by surprise, I scrambled to my feet and hastened to make my visitor welcome. He did not refuse me his hand; but he gave it with a coldness and distance for which I was quite unprepared, and his countenance, as he looked on me, was marked in a strong degree with concern and severity. "So, sir, I find you here?" said he, in tones of little encouragement. "Is that you, George? You can run away; I have business with your master." He showed Rowley out, and locked the door behind him. Then he sat down in an armchair on one side of the fire, and looked at me with uncompromising sternness. "I am hesitating how to begin," said he. "In this singular labyrinth of blunders and difficulties that you have prepared for us, I am positively hesitating where to begin. It will perhaps be best that you should read, first of all, this paragraph." And he handed over to me a newspaper. The paragraph in question was brief. It announced the recapture of one of the prisoners recently escaped from Edinburgh Castle; gave his name Clausel, and added that he had entered into the particulars of the recent revolting murder in the Castle, and denounced the murderer: "It is a common soldier called Champdivers, who had himself escaped, and is in all probability involved in the common fate of his comrades. In spite of the activity along all the Forth and the East Coast, nothing has yet been seen of the sloop which these desperadoes seized at Grangemouth, and it is now almost certain that they have found a watery grave." At the reading of this paragraph my heart turned over. In a moment I saw my castle in the air ruined; myself changed from a mere military fugitive into a hunted murderer, fleeing from the gallows; my love, which had a moment since appeared so near to me, blotted from the field of possibility. Despair, which was my first sentiment, did not, however, endure for more than a moment. I saw that my companions had indeed succeeded in their unlikely design; and that I was supposed to have accompanied and perished along with them by shipwreck--a most probable ending to their enterprise. If they thought me at the bottom of the North Sea, I need not fear much vigilance on the streets of Edinburgh. Champdivers was wanted: what was to connect him with St. Ives? Major Chevenix would recognise me if he met me; that was beyond bargaining: he had seen me so often, his interest had been kindled to so high a point, that I could hope to deceive him by no stratagem of disguise. Well, even so; he would have a competition of testimony before him: he knew Clausel, he knew me, and I was sure he would decide for honour. At the same time, the image of Flora shot up in my mind's-eye with such a radiancy as fairly overwhelmed all other considerations; the blood sprang to every corner of my body, and I vowed I would see and win her, if it cost my neck. "Very annoying, no doubt," said I, as I returned the paper to Mr. Romaine. "Is annoying your word for it?" said he. "Exasperating, if you like," I admitted. "And true?" he inquired. "Well, true in a sense," said I. "But perhaps I had better answer that question by putting you in possession of the facts?" "I think so, indeed," said he. I narrated to him as much as seemed necessary of the quarrel, the duel, the death of Goguelat, and the character of Clausel. He heard me through in a forbidding silence, nor did he at all betray the nature of his sentiments, except that, at the episode of the scissors, I could observe his mulberry face to turn three shades paler. "I suppose I may believe you?" said he, when I had done. "Or else conclude this interview," said I. "Can you not understand that we are here discussing matters of the gravest import? Can you not understand that I feel myself weighted with a load of responsibility on your account--that you should take this occasion to air your fire-eating manners against your own attorney? There are serious hours in life, Mr. Anne," he said severely. "A capital charge, and that of a very brutal character and with singularly unpleasant details; the presence of the man Clausel, who (according to your account of it) is actuated by sentiments of real malignity, and prepared to swear black white; all the other witnesses scattered and perhaps drowned at sea; the natural prejudice against a Frenchman and a runaway prisoner: this makes a serious total for your lawyer to consider, and is by no means lessened by the incurable folly and levity of your own disposition." "I beg your pardon!" said I. "O, my expressions have been selected with scrupulous accuracy," he replied. "How did I find you, sir, when I came to announce this catastrophe? You were sitting on the hearthrug playing, like a silly baby, with a servant, were you not, and the floor all scattered with gold and bank paper? There was a tableau for you! It was I who came, and you were lucky in that. It might have been any one--your cousin as well as another." "You have me there, sir," I admitted. "I had neglected all precautions, and you do right to be angry. _À propos_, Mr. Romaine, how did you come yourself, and how long have you been in the house?" I added, surprised, on the retrospect, not to have heard him arrive. "I drove up in a chaise and pair," he returned. "Any one might have heard me. But you were not listening, I suppose? being so extremely at your ease in the very house of your enemy, and under a capital charge! And I have been long enough here to do your business for you. Ah, yes, I did it, God forgive me!--did it before I so much as asked you the explanation of the paragraph. For some time back the will has been prepared; now it is signed; and your uncle has heard nothing of your recent piece of activity. Why? Well, I had no fancy to bother him on his deathbed: you might be innocent; and at bottom I preferred the murderer to the spy." No doubt of it but the man played a friendly part: no doubt also that, in his ill-temper and anxiety, he expressed himself unpalatably. "You will perhaps find me over-delicate," said I. "There is a word you employed----" "I employ the words of my brief, sir," he cried, striking with his hand on the newspaper. "It is there in six letters. And do not be so certain--you have not stood your trial yet. It is an ugly affair, a fishy business. It is highly disagreeable. I would give my hand off--I mean I would give a hundred pound down--to have nothing to do with it. And, situated as we are, we must at once take action. There is here no choice. You must at once quit this country, and get to France, or Holland, or, indeed, to Madagascar." "There may be two words to that," said I. "Not so much as one syllable!" he retorted. "Here is no room for argument. The case is nakedly plain. In the disgusting position in which you have found means to place yourself, all that is to be hoped for is delay. A time may come when we shall be able to do better. It cannot be now: now it would be the gibbet." "You labour under a false impression, Mr. Romaine," said I. "I have no impatience to figure in the dock. I am even as anxious as yourself to postpone my first appearance there. On the other hand, I have not the slightest intention of leaving this country, where I please myself extremely. I have a good address, a ready tongue, an English accent that passes, and, thanks to the generosity of my uncle, as much money as I want. It would be hard indeed if, with all these advantages, Mr. St. Ives should not be able to live quietly in a private lodging, while the authorities amuse themselves by looking for Champdivers. You forget, there is no connection between these two personages." "And you forget your cousin," retorted Romaine. "There is the link. There is the tongue of the buckle. He knows you are Champdivers." He put up his hand as if to listen. "And, for a wager, here he is himself!" he exclaimed. As when a tailor takes a piece of goods upon his counter and rends it across, there came to our ears from the avenue the long tearing sound of a chaise and four approaching at the top speed of the horses. And, looking out between the curtains, we beheld the lamps skimming on the smooth ascent. "Ay," said Romaine, wiping the window-pane that he might see more clearly. "Ay, that he is by the driving! So he squanders money along the king's highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving--where? Ah, yes, where but a debtor's gaol, if not a criminal prison!" "Is he that kind of a man?" I said, staring on these lamps as though I could decipher in them the secret of my cousin's character. "You will find him a dangerous kind," answered the lawyer. "For you, these are the lights on a lee shore! I find I fall in a muse when I consider of him; what a formidable being he once was, and what a personable! and how near he draws to the moment that must break him utterly! We none of us like him here; we hate him, rather; and yet I have a sense--I don't think at my time of life it can be pity--but a reluctance rather, to break anything so big and figurative, as though he were a big porcelain pot or a big picture of high price. Ay, there is what I was waiting for!" he cried, as the lights of a second chaise swam in sight. "It is he beyond a doubt. The first was the signature and the next the flourish. The two chaises, the second following with the baggage, which is always copious and ponderous, and one of his valets: he cannot go a step without a valet." "I hear you repeat the word big," said I. "But it cannot be that he is anything out of the way in stature." "No," said the attorney. "About your height, as I guessed for the tailors, and I see nothing wrong with the result. But, somehow, he commands an atmosphere; he has a spacious manner; and he has kept up, all through life, such a volume of racket about his personality, with his chaises and his racers and his dicings, and I know not what--that somehow he imposes! It seems, when the farce is done, and he locked in Fleet prison--and nobody left but Buonaparte and Lord Wellington and the Hetman Platoff to make a work about--the world will be in a comparison quite tranquil. But this is beside the mark," he added, with an effort, turning again from the window. "We are now under fire, Mr. Anne, as you soldiers would say, and it is high time we should prepare to go into action. He must not see you; that would be fatal. All that he knows at present is that you resemble him, and that is much more than enough. If it were possible, it would be well he should not know you were in the house." "Quite impossible, depend upon it," said I. "Some of the servants are directly in his interests, perhaps in his pay: Dawson, for an example." "My own idea!" cried Romaine. "And at least," he added, as the first of the chaises drew up with a dash in front of the portico, "it is now too late. Here he is." We stood listening, with a strange anxiety, to the various noises that awoke in the silent house: the sound of doors opening and closing, the sound of feet near at hand and farther off. It was plain the arrival of my cousin was a matter of moment, almost of parade, to the household. And suddenly, out of this confused and distant bustle, a rapid and light tread became distinguishable. We heard it come upstairs, draw near along the corridor, pause at the door, and a stealthy and hasty rapping succeeded. "Mr. Anne--Mr. Anne, sir! Let me in!" said the voice of Rowley. We admitted the lad, and locked the door again behind him. "It's _him_, sir," he panted. "He've come." "You mean the Viscount?" said I. "So we supposed. But come, Rowley--out with the rest of it! You have more to tell us, or your face belies you!" "Mr. Anne, I do," he said. "Mr. Romaine, sir, you're a friend of his, ain't you?" "Yes, George, I am a friend of his," said Romaine, and, to my great surprise, laid his hand upon my shoulder. "Well, it's this way," said Rowley; "Mr. Powl have been at me! It's to play the spy! I thought he was at it from the first! From the first I see what he was after--coming round and round, and hinting things! But to-night he outs with it plump! I'm to let him hear all what you're to do beforehand, he says; and he gave me this for an arnest"--holding up half a guinea; "and I took it, so I did! Strike me sky-blue scarlet!" says he, adducing the words of the mock oath; and he looked askance at me as he did so. I saw that he had forgotten himself, and that he knew it. The expression of his eye changed almost in the passing of the glance from the significant to the appealing--from the look of an accomplice to that of a culprit; and from that moment he became the model of a well-drilled valet. "Sky-blue scarlet?" repeated the lawyer. "Is the fool delirious?" "No," said I; "he is only reminding me of something." "Well--and I believe the fellow will be faithful," said Romaine. "So you are a friend of Mr. Anne's too?" he added to Rowley. "If you please, sir," said Rowley. "'Tis something sudden," observed Romaine, "but it may be genuine enough. I believe him to be honest. He comes of honest people. Well, George Rowley, you might embrace some early opportunity to earn that half-guinea by telling Mr. Powl that your master will not leave here till noon to-morrow, if he go even then. Tell him there are a hundred things to be done here, and a hundred more that can only be done properly at my office in Holborn. Come to think of it--we had better see to that first of all," he went on, unlocking the door. "Get hold of Powl, and see. And be quick back, and clear me up this mess." Mr. Rowley was no sooner gone than the lawyer took a pinch of snuff, and regarded me with somewhat of a more genial expression. "Sir," said he, "it is very fortunate for you that your face is so strong a letter of recommendation. Here am I, a tough old practitioner, mixing myself up with your very distressing business; and here is this farmer's lad, who has the wit to take a bribe and the loyalty to come and tell you of it--all, I take it, on the strength of your appearance. I wish I could imagine how it would impress a jury!" says he. "And how it would affect the hangman, sir?" I asked. "_Absit omen!_" said Mr. Romaine devoutly. We were just so far in our talk, when I heard a sound that brought my heart into my mouth: the sound of some one slily trying the handle of the door. It had been preceded by no audible footstep. Since the departure of Rowley our wing of the house had been entirely silent. And we had every right to suppose ourselves alone, and to conclude that the new-comer, whoever he might be, was come on a clandestine, if not a hostile, errand. "Who is there?" asked Romaine. "It's only me, sir," said the soft voice of Dawson. "It's the Viscount, sir. He is very desirous to speak with you on business." "Tell him I shall come shortly, Dawson," said the lawyer. "I am at present engaged." "Thank you, sir!" said Dawson. And we heard his feet draw off slowly along the corridor. "Yes," said Mr. Romaine, speaking low, and maintaining the attitude of one intently listening, "there is another foot. I cannot be deceived!" "I think there was indeed!" said I. "And what troubles me--I am not sure that the other has gone entirely away. By the time it got the length of the head of the stair the tread was plainly single." "Ahem--blockaded?" asked the lawyer. "A siege _en règle_!" I exclaimed. "Let us come farther from the door," said Romaine, "and reconsider this damnable position. Without doubt, Alain was this moment at the door. He hoped to enter and get a view of you, as if by accident. Baffled in this, has he stayed himself, or has he planted Dawson here by way of sentinel?" "Himself, beyond a doubt," said I. "And yet to what end? He cannot think to pass the night there!" "If it were only possible to pay no heed!" said Mr. Romaine. "But this is the accursed drawback of your position. We can do nothing openly. I must smuggle you out of this room and out of this house like seizable goods; and how am I to set about it with a sentinel planted at your very door?" "There is no good in being agitated," said I. "None at all," he acquiesced. "And, come to think of it, it is droll enough that I should have been that very moment commenting on your personal appearance, when your cousin came upon this mission. I was saying, if you remember, that your face was as good or better than a letter of recommendation. I wonder if M. Alain would be like the rest of us--I wonder what he would think of it?" Mr. Romaine was sitting in a chair by the fire with his back to the windows, and I was myself kneeling on the hearthrug and beginning mechanically to pick up the scattered bills, when a honeyed voice joined suddenly in our conversation. "He thinks well of it, Mr. Romaine. He begs to join himself to that circle of admirers which you indicate to exist already." CHAPTER XIX THE DEVIL AND ALL AT AMERSHAM PLACE Never did two human creatures get to their feet with more alacrity than the lawyer and myself. We had locked and barred the main gates of the citadel; but unhappily we had left open the bath-room sally-port; and here we found the voice of the hostile trumpets sounding from within, and all our defences taken in reverse. I took but the time to whisper Mr. Romaine in the ear: "Here is another tableau for you!" at which he looked at me a moment with a kind of pathos, as who should say, "Don't hit a man when he's down." Then I transferred my eyes to my enemy. He had his hat on, a little on one side: it was a very tall hat, raked extremely, and had a narrow curling brim. His hair was all curled out in masses like an Italian mountebank--a most unpardonable fashion. He sported a huge tippeted overcoat of frieze, such as watchmen wear, only the inside was lined with costly furs, and he kept it half open to display the exquisite linen, the many-coloured waistcoat, and the profuse jewellery of watch-chains and brooches underneath. The leg and the ankle were turned to a miracle. It is out of the question that I should deny the resemblance altogether, since it has been remarked by so many different persons whom I cannot reasonably accuse of a conspiracy. As a matter of fact, I saw little of it and confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race-meeting, or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared at himself with admiration by the coal porters. Of his frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught up in a smile that could almost be called a snarl, of a sheer, arid malignity that appalled me and yet put me on my mettle for the encounter. He looked me up and down, then bowed and took off his hat to me. "My cousin, I presume?" he said. "I understand I have that honour," I replied. "The honour is mine," said he, and his voice shook as he said it. "I should make you welcome, I believe," said I. "Why?" he inquired. "This poor house has been my home for longer than I care to claim. That you should already take upon yourself the duties of host here is to be at unnecessary pains. Believe me, that part would be more becomingly mine. And, by the way, I must not fail to offer you my little compliment. It is a gratifying surprise to meet you in the dress of a gentleman, and to see"--with a circular look upon the scattered bills--"that your necessities have already been so liberally relieved." I bowed with a smile that was perhaps no less hateful than his own. "There are so many necessities in this world," said I. "Charity has to choose. One gets relieved, and some other, no less indigent, perhaps indebted, must go wanting." "Malice is an engaging trait," said he. "And envy, I think?" was my reply. He must have felt that he was not getting wholly the better of this passage at arms; perhaps even feared that he should lose command of his temper, which he reined in throughout the interview as with a red-hot curb, for he flung away from me at the word, and addressed the lawyer with insulting arrogance. "Mr. Romaine," he said, "since when have you presumed to give orders in this house?" "I am not prepared to admit that I have given any," replied Romaine; "certainly none that did not fall in the sphere of my responsibilities." "By whose orders, then, am I denied entrance to my uncle's room?" said my cousin. "By the doctor's, sir," replied Romaine; "and I think even you will admit his faculty to give them." "Have a care, sir," cried Alain. "Do not be puffed up with your position. It is none so secure, Master Attorney. I should not wonder in the least if you were struck off the rolls for this night's work, and the next I should see of you were when I flung you alms at a pothouse door to mend your ragged elbows. The doctor's orders? But I believe I am not mistaken! You have to-night transacted business with the Count; and this needy young gentleman has enjoyed the privilege of still another interview, in which (as I am pleased to see) his dignity has not prevented his doing very well for himself. I wonder that you should care to prevaricate with me so idly." "I will confess so much," said Mr. Romaine, "if you call it prevarication. The order in question emanated from the Count himself. He does not wish to see you." "For which I must take the word of Mr. Daniel Romaine?" asked Alain. "In default of any better," said Romaine. There was an instantaneous convulsion in my cousin's face, and I distinctly heard him gnash his teeth at this reply; but, to my surprise, he resumed in tones of almost good-humour: "Come, Mr. Romaine, do not let us be petty!" He drew in a chair and sat down. "Understand you have stolen a march upon me. You have introduced your soldier of Napoleon, and (how, I cannot conceive) he has been apparently accepted with favour. I ask no better proof than the funds with which I find him literally surrounded--I presume in consequence of some extravagance of joy at the first sight of so much money. The odds are so far in your favour, but the match is not yet won. Questions will arise of undue influence, of sequestration, and the like: I have my witnesses ready. I tell it you cynically, for you cannot profit by the knowledge; and, if the worst come to the worst, I have good hopes of recovering my own and of ruining you." "You do what you please," answered Romaine; "but I give it you for a piece of good advice, you had best do nothing in the matter. You will only make yourself ridiculous; you will only squander money, of which you have none too much, and reap public mortification." "Ah, but there you make the common mistake, Mr. Romaine!" returned Alain. "You despise your adversary. Consider, if you please, how very disagreeable I could make myself if I chose. Consider the position of your _protégé_--an escaped prisoner! But I play a great game. I condemn such petty opportunities." At this Romaine and I exchanged a glance of triumph. It seemed manifest that Alain had as yet received no word of Clausel's recapture and denunciation. At the same moment the lawyer, thus relieved of the instancy of his fear, changed his tactics. With a great air of unconcern, he secured the newspaper, which still lay open before him on the table. "I think, Monsieur Alain, that you labour under some illusion," said he. "Believe me, this is all beside the mark. You seem to be pointing to some compromise. Nothing is further from my views. You suspect me of an inclination to trifle with you, to conceal how things are going. I cannot, on the other hand, be too early or too explicit in giving you information which concerns you (I must say) capitally. Your great-uncle has to-night cancelled his will, and made a new one in favour of your cousin Anne. Nay, and you shall hear it from his own lips, if you choose! I will take so much upon me," said the lawyer, rising. "Follow me, if you please, gentlemen." Mr. Romaine led the way out of the room so briskly, and was so briskly followed by Alain, that I had hard ado to get the remainder of the money replaced and the despatch-box locked, and to overtake them, even by running, ere they should be lost in that maze of corridors, my uncle's house. As it was, I went with a heart divided; and the thought of my treasure thus left unprotected, save by a paltry lid and lock that any one might break or pick open, put me in a perspiration whenever I had the time to remember it. The lawyer brought us to a room, begged us to be seated while he should hold a consultation with the doctor, and, slipping out of another door, left Alain and myself closeted together. Truly he had done nothing to ingratiate himself; his every word had been steeped in unfriendliness, envy, and that contempt which (as it is born of anger) it is possible to support without humiliation. On my part, I had been little more conciliating; and yet I began to be sorry for this man, hired spy as I knew him to be. It seemed to me less than decent that he should have been brought up in the expectation of this great inheritance, and now, at the eleventh hour, be tumbled forth out of the house door and left to himself, his poverty, and his debts--those debts of which I had so ungallantly reminded him so short a time before. And we were scarce left alone ere I made haste to hang out a flag of truce. "My cousin," said I, "trust me, you will not find me inclined to be your enemy." He paused in front of me--for he had not accepted the lawyer's invitation to be seated, but walked to and fro in the apartment--took a pinch of snuff, and looked at me while he was taking it with an air of much curiosity. "Is it even so?" said he. "Am I so far favoured by fortune as to have your pity? Infinitely obliged, my cousin Anne! But these sentiments are not always reciprocal, and I warn you that the day when I set my foot on your neck, the spine shall break. Are you acquainted with the properties of the spine?" he asked, with an insolence beyond qualification. It was too much. "I am acquainted also with the properties of a pair of pistols," said I, toising him. "No, no, no!" says he, holding up his finger. "I will take my revenge how and when I please. We are enough of the same family to understand each other, perhaps; and the reason why I have not had you arrested on your arrival, why I had not a picket of soldiers in the first clump of evergreens, to await and prevent your coming--I, who knew all, before whom that pettifogger, Romaine, has been conspiring in broad daylight to supplant me--is simply this: that I had not made up my mind how I was to take my revenge." At that moment he was interrupted by the tolling of a bell. As we stood surprised and listening, it was succeeded by the sound of many feet trooping up the stairs and shuffling by the door of our room. Both, I believe, had a great curiosity to set it open, which each, owing to the presence of the other, resisted; and we waited instead in silence, and without moving, until Romaine returned and bade us to my uncle's presence. He led the way by a little crooked passage, which brought us out in the sick-room, and behind the bed. I believe I have forgotten to remark that the Count's chamber was of considerable dimensions. We beheld it now crowded with the servants and dependants of the house, from the doctor and the priest to Mr. Dawson and the housekeeper, from Dawson down to Rowley and the last footman in white calves, the last plump chambermaid in her clean gown and cap, and the last ostler in a stable waistcoat. This large congregation of persons (and I was surprised to see how large it was) had the appearance, for the most part, of being ill at ease and heartily bewildered, standing on one foot, gaping like zanies, and those who were in the corners nudging each other and grinning aside. My uncle, on the other hand, who was raised higher than I had yet seen him on his pillows, wore an air of really imposing gravity. No sooner had we appeared behind him than he lifted his voice to a good loudness, and addressed the assemblage. "I take you all to witness--can you hear me?--I take you all to witness that I recognise as my heir and representative this gentleman, whom most of you see for the first time, the Viscount Anne de Saint-Yves, my nephew of the younger line. And I take you to witness at the same time that, for very good reasons known to myself, I have discarded and disinherited this other gentleman whom you all know, the Viscount de Saint-Yves. I have also to explain the unusual trouble to which I have put you all--and, since your supper was not over, I fear I may even say annoyance. It has pleased M. Alain to make some threats of disputing my will, and to pretend that there are among your number certain estimable persons who may be trusted to swear as he shall direct them. It pleases me thus to put it out of his power and to stop the mouths of his false witnesses. I am infinitely obliged by your politeness, and I have the honour to wish you all a very good evening." As the servants, still greatly mystified, crowded out of the sick-room door, curtsying, pulling the forelock, scraping with the foot, and so on, according to their degree, I turned and stole a look at my cousin. He had borne this crushing public rebuke without change of countenance. He stood now, very upright, with folded arms, and looking inscrutably at the roof of the apartment. I could not refuse him at that moment the tribute of my admiration. Still more so when, the last of the domestics having filed through the doorway and left us alone with my great-uncle and the lawyer, he took one step forward towards the bed, made a dignified reverence, and addressed the man who had just condemned him to ruin. "My lord," said he, "you are pleased to treat me in a manner which my gratitude, and your state, equally forbid me to call in question. It will be only necessary for me to call your attention to the length of time in which I have been taught to regard myself as your heir. In that position I judged it only loyal to permit myself a certain scale of expenditure. If I am now to be cut off with a shilling as the reward of twenty years of service, I shall be left not only a beggar, but a bankrupt." Whether from the fatigue of his recent exertion, or by a well-inspired ingenuity of hate, my uncle had once more closed his eyes; nor did he open them now. "Not with a shilling," he contented himself with replying; and there stole, as he said it, a sort of smile over his face, that flickered there conspicuously for the least moment of time, and then faded and left behind the old impenetrable mask of years, cunning, and fatigue. There could be no mistake: my uncle enjoyed the situation as he had enjoyed few things in the last quarter of a century. The fires of life scarce survived in that frail body; but hatred, like some immortal quality, was still erect and unabated. Nevertheless my cousin persevered. "I speak at a disadvantage," he resumed. "My supplanter, with perhaps more wisdom than delicacy, remains in the room," and he cast a glance at me that might have withered an oak tree. I was only too willing to withdraw, and Romaine showed as much alacrity to make way for my departure. But my uncle was not to be moved. In the same breath of a voice, and still without opening his eyes, he bade me remain. "It is well," said Alain. "I cannot then go on to remind you of the twenty years that have passed over our heads in England, and the services I may have rendered you in that time. It would be a position too odious. Your lordship knows me too well to suppose I could stoop to such ignominy. I must leave out all my defence--your lordship wills it so! I do not know what are my faults; I know only my punishment, and it is greater than I have the courage to face. My uncle, I implore your pity: pardon me so far; do not send me for life into a debtors' gaol--a pauper debtor." "_Chat et vieux, pardonnez?_" said my uncle, quoting from La Fontaine; and then, opening a pale-blue eye full on Alain, he delivered with some emphasis: "La jeunesse se flatte et croit tout obtenir; La vieillesse est impitoyable." The blood leaped darkly into Alain's face. He turned to Romaine and me, and his eyes flashed. "It is your turn now," he said. "At least it shall be prison for prison with the two viscounts." "Not so, Mr. Alain, by your leave," said Romaine. "There are a few formalities to be considered first." But Alain was already striding towards the door. "Stop a moment, stop a moment!" cried Romaine. "Remember your own counsel not to despise an adversary." Alain turned. "If I do not despise I hate you!" he cried, giving a loose to his passion. "Be warned of that, both of you." "I understand you to threaten Monsieur le Vicomte Anne," said the lawyer. "Do you know, I would not do that. I am afraid, I am very much afraid, if you were to do as you propose, you might drive me into extremes." "You have made me a beggar and a bankrupt," said Alain. "What extreme is left?" "I scarce like to put a name upon it in this company," replied Romaine. "But there are worse things than even bankruptcy, and worse places than a debtors' gaol." The words were so significantly said that there went a visible thrill through Alain; sudden as a sword-stroke, he fell pale again. "I do not understand you," said he. "O yes, you do," returned Romaine. "I believe you understand me very well. You must not suppose that all this time, while you were so very busy, others were entirely idle. You must not fancy, because I am an Englishman, that I have not the intelligence to pursue an inquiry. Great as is my regard for the honour of your house, M. Alain de Saint-Yves, if I hear of you moving directly or indirectly in this matter, I shall do my duty, let it cost what it will: that is, I shall communicate the real name of the Buonapartist spy who signs his letters _Rue Grégoire de Tours_." I confess my heart was already almost altogether on the side of my insulted and unhappy cousin; and if it had not been before, it must have been so now, so horrid was the shock with which he heard his infamy exposed. Speech was denied him; he carried his hand to his neckcloth; he staggered; I thought he must have fallen. I ran to help him, and at that he revived, recoiled before me, and stood there with arms stretched forth as if to preserve himself from the outrage of my touch. "Hands off!" he somehow managed to articulate. "You will now, I hope," pursued the lawyer, without any change of voice, "understand the position in which you are placed, and how delicately it behoves you to conduct yourself. Your arrest hangs, if I may so express myself, by a hair; and as you will be under the perpetual vigilance of myself and my agents, you must look to it narrowly that you walk straight. Upon the least dubiety, I will take action." He snuffed, looking critically at the tortured man. "And now let me remind you that your chaise is at the door. This interview is agitating to his lordship--it cannot be agreeable for you--and I suggest that it need not be further drawn out. It does not enter into the views of your uncle, the Count, that you should again sleep under this roof." As Alain turned and passed without a word or a sign from the apartment, I instantly followed. I suppose I must be at bottom possessed of some humanity; at least, this accumulated torture, this slow butchery of a man as by quarters of rock, had wholly changed my sympathies. At that moment I loathed both my uncle and the lawyer for their cold-blooded cruelty. Leaning over the banisters, I was but in time to hear his hasty footsteps in that hall that had been crowded with servants to honour his coming, and was now left empty against his friendless departure. A moment later, and the echoes rang, and the air whistled in my ears, as he slammed the door on his departing footsteps. The fury of the concussion gave me (had one been still wanted) a measure of the turmoil of his passions. In a sense I felt with him; I felt how he would have gloried to slam that door on my uncle, the lawyer, myself, and the whole crowd of those who had been witnesses to his humiliation. CHAPTER XX AFTER THE STORM No sooner was the house clear of my cousin than I began to reckon up, ruefully enough, the probable results of what had passed. Here were a number of pots broken, and it looked to me as if I should have to pay for all! Here had been this proud, mad beast goaded and baited both publicly and privately, till he could neither hear nor see nor reason; whereupon the gate had been set open, and he had been left free to go and contrive whatever vengeance he might find possible. I could not help thinking it was a pity that, whenever I myself was inclined to be upon my good behaviour, some friends of mine should always determine to play a piece of heroics and cast me for the hero--or the victim--which is very much the same. The first duty of heroics is to be of your own choosing. When they are not that, they are nothing. And I assure you, as I walked back to my own room, I was in no very complaisant humour: thought my uncle and Mr. Romaine to have played knuckle-bones with my life and prospects; cursed them for it roundly; had no wish more urgent than to avoid the pair of them; and was quite knocked out of time, as they say in the ring, to find myself confronted with the lawyer. He stood on my hearthrug, leaning on the chimney-piece, with a gloomy, thoughtful brow, as I was pleased to see, and not in the least as though he were vain of the late proceedings. "Well?" said I. "You have done it now!" "Is he gone?" he asked. "He is gone," said I. "We shall have the devil to pay with him when he comes back." "You are right," said the lawyer, "and very little to pay him with but flams and fabrications, like to-night's." "To-night's?" I repeated. "Ay, to-night's!" said he. "To-night's _what_?" I cried. "To-night's flams and fabrications." "God be good to me, sir," said I, "have I something more to admire in your conduct than ever _I_ had suspected? You cannot think how you interest me! That it was severe, I knew; I had already chuckled over that. But that it should be false also! In what sense, dear sir?" I believe I was extremely offensive as I put the question, but the lawyer paid no heed. "False in all senses of the word," he replied seriously. "False in the sense that they were not true, and false in the sense that they were not real; false in the sense that I boasted, and in the sense that I lied. How can I arrest him? Your uncle burned the papers! I told you so--but doubtless you have forgotten--the day I first saw you in Edinburgh Castle. It was an act of generosity; I have seen many of these acts, and always regretted--always regretted! 'That shall be his inheritance,' he said, as the papers burned; he did not mean that it should have proved so rich a one. How rich, time will tell." "I beg your pardon a hundred thousand times, my dear sir, but it strikes me you have the impudence--in the circumstances I may call it the indecency--to appear cast down?" "It is true," said he: "I am. I am cast down. I am literally cast down. I feel myself quite helpless against your cousin." "Now, really!" I asked. "Is this serious? And is it perhaps the reason why you have gorged the poor devil with every species of insult? and why you took such surprising pains to supply me with what I had so little need of--another enemy? That you were helpless against him? 'Here is my last missile,' say you; 'my ammunition is quite exhausted: just wait till I get the last in--it will irritate, it cannot hurt him. There--you see!--he is furious now, and I am quite helpless. One more prod, another kick: now he is a mere lunatic! Stand behind me; I am quite helpless!' Mr. Romaine, I am asking myself as to the background or motive of this singular jest, and whether the name of it should not be called treachery?" "I can scarce wonder," said he. "In truth it has been a singular business, and we are very fortunate to be out of it so well. Yet it was not treachery: no, no, Mr. Anne, it was not treachery; and if you will do me the favour to listen to me for the inside of a minute, I shall demonstrate the same to you beyond cavil." He seemed to wake up to his ordinary briskness. "You see the point?" he began. "He had not yet read the newspaper, but who could tell when he might? He might have had that damned journal in his pocket, and how should we know? We were--I may say, we are--at the mercy of the merest twopenny accident." "Why, true," said I: "I had not thought of that." "I warrant you," cried Romaine, "you had supposed it was nothing to be the hero of an interesting notice in the journals! You had supposed, as like as not, it was a form of secrecy! But not so in the least. A part of England is already buzzing with the name of Champdivers; a day or two more and the mail will have carried it everywhere: so wonderful a machine is this of ours for disseminating intelligence! Think of it! When my father was born----but that is another story. To return: we had here the elements of such a combustion as I dread to think of--your cousin and the journal. Let him but glance an eye upon that column of print, and where were we? It is easy to ask; not so easy to answer, my young friend. And let me tell you, this sheet is the Viscount's usual reading. It is my conviction he had it in his pocket." "I beg your pardon, sir," said I. "I have been unjust. I did not appreciate my danger." "I think you never do," said he. "But yet surely that public scene----" I began. "It was madness. I quite agree with you," Mr. Romaine interrupted. "But it was your uncle's orders, Mr. Anne, and what could I do? Tell him you were the murderer of Goguelat? I think not." "No, sure!" said I. "That would but have been to make the trouble thicker. We were certainly in a very ill posture." "You do not yet appreciate how grave it was," he replied. "It was necessary for you that your cousin should go, and go at once. You yourself had to leave to-night under cover of darkness, and how could you have done that with the Viscount in the next room? He must go, then; he must leave without delay. And that was the difficulty." "Pardon me, Mr. Romaine, but could not my uncle have bidden him to go?" I asked. "Why, I see I must tell you that this is not so simple as it sounds," he replied. "You say this is your uncle's house, and so it is. But to all effects and purposes it is your cousin's also. He has rooms here; has had them coming on for thirty years now, and they are filled with a prodigious accumulation of trash--stays, I dare say, and powder-puffs, and such effeminate idiocy--to which none could dispute his title, even suppose any one wanted to. We had a perfect right to bid him go, and he had a perfect right to reply, 'Yes, I will go, but not without my stays and cravats. I must first get together the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine chestsful of insufferable rubbish, that I have spent the last thirty years collecting--and may very well spend the next thirty hours a-packing of.' And what should we have said to that?" "By way of repartee?" I asked. "Two tall footmen and a pair of crabtree cudgels, I suggest." "The Lord deliver me from the wisdom of laymen!" cried Romaine. "Put myself in the wrong at the beginning of a lawsuit? No, indeed! There was but one thing to do, and I did it, and burned my last cartridge in the doing of it. I stunned him. And it gave us three hours, by which we should make haste to profit; for if there is one thing sure, it is that he will be up to time again to-morrow in the morning." "Well," said I, "I own myself an idiot. Well do they say, _An old soldier, an old innocent!_ For I guessed nothing of all this." "And, guessing it, have you the same objections to leave England?" he inquired. "The same," said I. "It is indispensable," he objected. "And it cannot be," I replied. "Reason has nothing to say in the matter; and I must not let you squander any of yours. It will be enough to tell you this is an affair of the heart." "Is it even so?" quoth Romaine, nodding his head. "And I might have been sure of it. Place them in a hospital, put them in a gaol in yellow overalls, do what you will, young Jessamy finds young Jenny. O, have it your own way; I am too old a hand to argue with young gentlemen who choose to fancy themselves in love; I have too much experience, thank you. Only, be sure that you appreciate what you risk: the prison, the dock, the gallows, and the halter--terribly vulgar circumstances, my young friend; grim, sordid, earnest; no poetry in that!" "And there I am warned," I returned gaily. "No man could be warned more finely or with a greater eloquence. And I am of the same opinion still. Until I have again seen that lady, nothing shall induce me to quit Great Britain. I have besides----" And here I came to a full stop. It was upon my tongue to have told him the story of the drovers, but at the first word of it my voice died in my throat. There might be a limit to the lawyer's toleration, I reflected. I had not been so long in Britain altogether; for the most part of that time I had been by the heels in limbo in Edinburgh Castle; and already I had confessed to killing one man with a pair of scissors; and now I was to go on and plead guilty to having settled another with a holly stick! A wave of discretion went over me as cold and as deep as the sea. "In short, sir, this is a matter of feeling," I concluded, "and nothing will prevent my going to Edinburgh." If I had fired a pistol in his ear he could not have been more startled. "To Edinburgh?" he repeated. "Edinburgh? where the very paving-stones know you!" "Then is the murder out!" said I. "But, Mr. Romaine, is there not sometimes safety in boldness? Is it not a common-place of strategy to get where the enemy least expects you? And where would he expect me less?" "Faith, there is something in that, too!" cried the lawyer. "Ay, certainly, a great deal in that. All the witnesses drowned but one, and he safe in prison; you yourself changed beyond recognition--let us hope--and walking the streets of the very town you have illustrated by your--well, your eccentricity! It is not badly combined, indeed!" "You approve it, then?" said I. "O, approve!" said he; "there is no question of approval. There is only one course which I could approve, and that were to escape to France instanter." "You do not wholly disapprove, at least?" I substituted. "Not wholly; and it would not matter if I did," he replied. "Go your own way; you are beyond argument. And I am not sure that you will run more danger by that course than by any other. Give the servants time to get to bed and fall asleep, then take a country cross-road and walk, as the rhyme has it, like blazes all night. In the morning take a chaise or take the mail at pleasure, and continue your journey with all the decorum and reserve of which you shall be found capable." "I am taking the picture in," I said. "Give me time. 'Tis the _tout ensemble_ I must see: the whole as opposed to the details." "Mountebank!" he murmured. "Yes, I have it now; and I see myself with a servant, and that servant is Rowley," said I. "So as to have one more link with your uncle?" suggested the lawyer. "Very judicious!" "And, pardon me, but that is what it is," I exclaimed. "Judicious is the word. I am not making a deception fit to last for thirty years; I do not found a palace in the living granite for the night. This is a shelter tent--a flying picture--seen, admired, and gone again in the wink of an eye. What is wanted, in short, is a _trompe-l'oeil_ that shall be good enough for twelve hours at an inn: is it not so?" "It is, and the objection holds. Rowley is but another danger," said Romaine. "Rowley," said I, "will pass as a servant from a distance--as a creature seen poised on the dicky of a bowling chaise. He will pass at hand as a smart, civil fellow one meets in the inn corridor, and looks back at, and asks, and is told, 'Gentleman's servant in Number 4.' He will pass, in fact, all round, except with his personal friends! My dear sir, pray what do you expect? Of course, if we meet my cousin, or if we meet anybody who took part in the judicious exhibition of this evening, we are lost; and who's denying it? To every disguise, however good and safe, there is always the weak point; you must always take (let us say--and to take a simile from your own waistcoat pocket) a snuffboxful of risk. You'll get it just as small with Rowley as with anybody else. And the long and short of it is, the lad's honest, he likes me, I trust him; he is my servant, or nobody." "He might not accept," said Romaine. "I bet you a thousand pounds he does!" cried I. "But no matter; all you have to do is to send him out to-night on this cross-country business, and leave the thing to me. I tell you, he will be my servant, and I tell you, he will do well." I had crossed the room, and was already overhauling my wardrobe as I spoke. "Well," concluded the lawyer, with a shrug, "one risk with another: _à la guerre comme à la guerre_, as you would say. Let the brat come and be useful, at least." And he was about to ring the bell when his eye was caught by my researches in the wardrobe. "Do not fall in love with these coats, waistcoats, cravats, and other panoply and accoutrements by which you are now surrounded. You must not run the post as a dandy. It is not the fashion, even." "You are pleased to be facetious, sir," said I, "and not according to knowledge. These clothes are my life, they are my disguise; and since I can take but few of them, I were a fool indeed if I selected hastily! Will you understand, once and for all, what I am seeking? To be invisible is the first point; the second, to be invisible in a post-chaise and with a servant. Can you not perceive the delicacy of the quest? Nothing must be too coarse, nothing too fine; _rien de voyant, rien qui détonne_; so that I may leave everywhere the inconspicuous image of a handsome young man of a good fortune travelling in proper style, whom the landlord will forget in twelve hours--and the chambermaid perhaps remember, God bless her! with a sigh. This is the very fine art of dress." "I have practised it with success for fifty years," said Romaine, with a chuckle. "A black suit and a clean shirt is my infallible recipe." "You surprise me; I did not think you would be shallow!" said I, lingering between two coats. "Pray, Mr. Romaine, have I your head? or did you travel post and with a smartish servant?" "Neither, I admit," said he. "Which change the whole problem," I continued. "I have to dress for a smartish servant and a Russia leather despatch-box." That brought me to a stand. I came over and looked at the box with a moment's hesitation. "Yes," I resumed. "Yes, and for the despatch-box! It looks moneyed and landed; it means I have a lawyer. It is an invaluable property. But I could have wished it to hold less money. The responsibility is crushing. Should I not do more wisely to take five hundred pounds, and intrust the remainder with you, Mr. Romaine?" "If you are sure you will not want it," answered Romaine. "I am far from sure of that," cried I. "In the first place, as a philosopher. This is the first time that I have been at the head of a large sum, and it is conceivable--who knows himself?--that I may make it fly. In the second place, as a fugitive. Who knows what I may need? The whole of it may be inadequate. But I can always write for more." "You do not understand," he replied. "I break off all communication with you here and now. You must give me a power of attorney ere you start to-night, and then be done with me trenchantly until better days." I believe I offered some objection. "Think a little for once of me!" said Romaine. "I must not have seen you before to-night. To-night we are to have had our only interview, and you are to have given me the power; and to-night I am to have lost sight of you again--I know not whither, you were upon business, it was none of my affairs to question you! And this, you are to remark, in the interests of your own safety much more than mine." "I am not even to write to you?" I said, a little bewildered. "I believe I am cutting the last strand that connects you with common-sense," he replied. "But that is the plain English of it. You are not even to write; and if you did, I would not answer." "A letter, however----" I began. "Listen to me," interrupted Romaine. "So soon as your cousin reads the paragraph, what will he do? Put the police upon looking into my correspondence! So soon as you write to me, in short, you write to Bow Street; and if you will take my advice, you will date that letter from France." "The devil!" said I, for I began suddenly to see that this might put me out of the way of my business. "What is it now?" says he. "There will be more to be done, then, before we can part," I answered. "I give you the whole night," said he. "So long as you are off ere daybreak, I am content." "In short, Mr. Romaine," said I, "I have had so much benefit of your advice and services that I am loth to sever the connection, and would even ask a substitute. I would be obliged for a letter of introduction to one of your own cloth in Edinburgh--an old man for choice, very experienced, very respectable, and very secret. Could you favour me with such a letter?" "Why, no," said he. "Certainly not. I will do no such thing, indeed." "It would be a great favour, sir," I pleaded. "It would be an unpardonable blunder," he replied. "What? Give you a letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it no more." "You seem to be always in the right," said I. "The letter would be out of the question, I quite see that. But the lawyer's name might very well have dropped from you in the way of conversation; having heard him mentioned, I might profit by the circumstance to introduce myself; and in this way my business would be the better done, and you not in the least compromised." "What is this business?" said Romaine. "I have not said that I had any," I replied. "It might arise. This is only a possibility that I must keep in view." "Well," said he, with a gesture of the hands, "I mention Mr. Robbie; and let that be an end of it!--Or wait!" he added, "I have it. Here is something that will serve you for an introduction, and cannot compromise me." And he wrote his name and the Edinburgh lawyer's address on a piece of card and tossed it to me. CHAPTER XXI I BECOME THE OWNER OF A CLARET-COLOURED CHAISE What with packing, signing papers, and partaking of an excellent cold supper in the lawyer's room, it was past two in the morning before we were ready for the road. Romaine himself let us out of a window in a part of the house known to Rowley: it appears it served as a kind of postern to the servants' hall, by which (when they were in the mind for a clandestine evening) they would come regularly in and out; and I remember very well the vinegar aspect of the lawyer on the receipt of this piece of information--how he pursed his lips, jutted his eyebrows, and kept repeating, "This must be seen to, indeed! this shall be barred to-morrow in the morning!" In this preoccupation I believe he took leave of me without observing it; our things were handed out; we heard the window shut behind us; and became instantly lost in a horrid intricacy of blackness and the shadow of woods. A little wet snow kept sleepily falling, pausing, and falling again; it seemed perpetually beginning to snow and perpetually leaving off; and the darkness was intense. Time and again we walked into trees; time and again found ourselves adrift among garden borders or stuck like a ram in the thicket. Rowley had possessed himself of the matches, and he was neither to be terrified nor softened. "No, I will not, Mr. Anne, sir," he would reply. "You know he tell me to wait till we were over the 'ill. It's only a little way now. Why, and I thought you was a soldier, too!" I was at least a very glad soldier when my valet consented at last to kindle a thieves' match. From this we easily lit the lantern: and thenceforward, through a labyrinth of woodland paths, were conducted by its uneasy glimmer. Both booted and great-coated, with tall hats much of a shape, and laden with booty in the form of a despatch-box, a case of pistols, and two plump valises, I thought we had very much the look of a pair of brothers returning from the sack of Amersham Place. We issued at last upon a country by-road where we might walk abreast and without precaution. It was nine miles to Aylesbury, our immediate destination; by a watch, which formed part of my new outfit, it should be about half-past three in the morning; and as we did not choose to arrive before daylight, time could not be said to press. I gave the order to march at ease. "Now, Rowley," said I, "so far so good. You have come, in the most obliging manner in the world, to carry these valises. The question is, what next? What are we to do at Aylesbury? or, more particularly, what are you? Thence, I go on a journey. Are you to accompany me?" He gave a little chuckle. "That's all settled already, Mr. Anne, sir," he replied. "Why, I've got my things here in the valise--a half a dozen shirts and what not; I'm all ready, sir: just you lead on: _you'll_ see." "The devil you have!" said I. "You made pretty sure of your welcome." "If you please, sir," said Rowley. He looked up at me, in the light of the lantern, with a boyish shyness and triumph that awoke my conscience. I could never let this innocent involve himself in the perils and difficulties that beset my course, without some hint of warning, which it was a matter of extreme delicacy to make plain enough and not too plain. "No, no," said I; "you may think you have made a choice, but it was blindfold, and you must make it over again. The Count's service is a good one; what are you leaving it for? Are you not throwing away the substance for the shadow? No, do not answer me yet. You imagine that I am a prosperous nobleman, just declared my uncle's heir, on the threshold of the best of good fortune, and, from the point of view of a judicious servant, a jewel of a master to serve and stick to? Well, my boy, I am nothing of the kind, nothing of the kind." As I said the words, I came to a full stop and held up the lantern to his face. He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the background of impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to stone between his double burden like an ass between two panniers, and gaping at me like a blunderbuss. I had never seen a face so predestined to be astonished, or so susceptible of rendering the emotion of surprise; and it tempted me as an open piano tempts the musician. "Nothing of the sort, Rowley," I continued, in a churchyard voice. "These are appearances, petty appearances. I am in peril, homeless, hunted. I count scarce any one in England who is not my enemy. From this hour I drop my name, my title; I become nameless; my name is proscribed. My liberty, my life, hang by a hair. The destiny which you will accept, if you go forth with me, is to be tracked by spies, to hide yourself under a false name, to follow the desperate pretences and perhaps share the fate of a murderer with a price upon his head." His face had been hitherto beyond expectation, passing from one depth to another of tragic astonishment, and really worth paying to see; but at this it suddenly cleared. "O, I ain't afraid!" he said; and then, choking into laughter, "why, I see it from the first!" I could have beaten him. But I had so grossly overshot the mark that I suppose it took me two good miles of road and half an hour of elocution to persuade him I had been in earnest. In the course of which I became so interested in demonstrating my present danger that I forgot all about my future safety, and not only told him the story of Goguelat, but threw in the business of the drovers as well, and ended by blurting out that I was a soldier of Napoleon's and a prisoner of war. This was far from my views when I began; and it is a common complaint of me that I have a long tongue. I believe it is a fault beloved by fortune. Which of you considerate fellows would have done a thing at once so foolhardy and so wise as to make a confidant of a boy in his 'teens, and positively smelling of the nursery? And when had I cause to repent it? There is none so apt as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties such as mine. To the beginnings of virile common-sense he adds the last lights of the child's imagination; and he can fling himself into business with that superior earnestness that properly belongs to play. And Rowley was a boy made to my hand. He had a high sense of romance, and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals. His travelling library consisted of a chap-book life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the "Old Bailey Sessions Papers" by Gurney the shorthand writer; and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a murderer, rolled in one--to live by stratagems, disguises, and false names, in an atmosphere of midnight and mystery so thick that you could cut it with a knife--was really, I believe, more dear to him than his meals, though he was a great trencherman, and something of a glutton besides. For myself, as the peg by which all this romantic business hung, I was simply idolised from that moment; and he would rather have sacrificed his hand than surrendered the privilege of serving me. We arranged the terms of our campaign, trudging amicably in the snow, which now, with the approach of morning, began to fall to purpose. I chose the name of Ramornie, I imagine from its likeness to Romaine; Rowley, from an irresistible conversion of ideas, I dubbed Gammon. His distress was laughable to witness; his own choice of an unassuming nickname had been Claude Duval! We settled our procedure at the various inns where we should alight, rehearsed our little manners like a piece of drill until it seemed impossible we should ever be taken unprepared; and in all these dispositions, you may be sure the despatch-box was not forgotten. Who was to pick it up, who was to set it down, who was to remain beside it, who was to sleep with it--there was no contingency omitted, all was gone into with the thoroughness of a drill-sergeant on the one hand and a child with a new plaything on the other. "I say, wouldn't it look queer if you and me was to come to the post-house with all this luggage?" said Rowley. "I dare say," I replied. "But what else is to be done?" "Well, now, sir--you hear me," says Rowley. "I think it would look more natural-like if you was to come to the post-house alone, and with nothing in your 'ands--more like a gentleman, you know. And you might say that your servant and baggage was a-waiting for you up the road. I think I could manage, somehow, to make a shift with all them dratted things--leastways if you was to give me a 'and up with them at the start." "And I would see you far enough before I allowed you to try, Mr. Rowley!" I cried. "Why, you would be quite defenceless! A footpad that was an infant child could rob you. And I should probably come driving by to find you in a ditch with your throat cut. But there is something in your idea, for all that; and I propose we put it in execution no farther forward than the next corner of a lane." Accordingly, instead of continuing to aim for Aylesbury, we headed by cross-roads for some point to the northward of it, whither I might assist Rowley with the baggage, and where I might leave him to await my return in the post-chaise. It was snowing to purpose, the country all white, and ourselves walking snowdrifts, when the first glimmer of the morning showed us an inn upon the highwayside. Some distance off, under the shelter of the corner of the road and a clump of trees, I loaded Rowley with the whole of our possessions, and watched him till he staggered into safety to the doors of the "Green Dragon," which was the sign of the house. Thence I walked briskly into Aylesbury, rejoicing in my freedom and the causeless good spirits that belong to a snowy morning; though, to be sure, long before I had arrived the snow had again ceased to fall, and the eaves of Aylesbury were smoking in the level sun. There was an accumulation of gigs and chaises in the yard, and a great bustle going forward in the coffee-room and about the doors of the inn. At these evidences of so much travel on the road I was seized with a misgiving lest it should be impossible to get horses, and I should be detained in the precarious neighbourhood of my cousin. Hungry as I was, I made my way first of all to the postmaster, where he stood--a big, athletic, horsey-looking man, blowing into a key in the corner of the yard. On my making my modest request, he awoke from his indifference into what seemed passion. "A po'-shay and 'osses!" he cried. "Do I look as if I 'ad a po'-shay and 'osses? Damn me, if I 'ave such a thing on the premises. I don't _make_ 'osses and chaises--I _'ire_ 'em. You might be God Almighty!" said he; and instantly, as if he had observed me for the first time, he broke off, and lowered his voice into the confidential. "Why, now that I see you are a gentleman," said he, "I'll tell you what! If you like to _buy_, I have the article to fit you. Second-'and shay by Lycett, of London. Latest style; good as new. Superior fittin's, net on the roof, baggage platform, pistol 'olsters--the most com-plete and the most gen-teel turn-out I ever see! The 'ole for seventy-five pound! It's as good as givin' her away!" "Do you propose I should trundle it myself, like a hawker's barrow?" said I. "Why, my good man, if I had to stop here, anyway, I should prefer to buy a house and garden!" "Come and look at her!" he cried; and, with the word, links his arm in mine and carries me to the outhouse where the chaise was on view. It was just the sort of chaise that I had dreamed of for my purpose: eminently rich, inconspicuous, and genteel; for, though I thought the postmaster no great authority, I was bound to agree with him so far. The body was painted a dark claret, and the wheels an invisible green. The lamp and glasses were bright as silver; and the whole equipage had an air of privacy and reserve that seemed to repel inquiry and disarm suspicion. With a servant like Rowley, and a chaise like this, I felt that I could go from the Land's End to John o' Groat's House amid a population of bowing ostlers. And I suppose I betrayed in my manner the degree in which the bargain tempted me. "Come," cried the postmaster--"I'll make it seventy, to oblige a friend!" "The point is: the horses," said I. "Well," said he, consulting his watch, "it's now gone the 'alf after eight. What time do you want her at the door?" "Horses and all?" said I. "'Osses and all!" says he. "One good turn deserves another. You give me seventy pound for the shay, and I'll 'oss it for you. I told you I didn't _make_ 'osses; but I _can_ make 'em, to oblige a friend." What would you have? It was not the wisest thing in the world to buy a chaise within a dozen miles of my uncle's house; but in this way I got my horses for the next stage. And by any other it appeared that I should have to wait. Accordingly I paid the money down--perhaps twenty pounds too much, though it was certainly a well-made and well-appointed vehicle--ordered it round in half an hour, and proceeded to refresh myself with breakfast. The table to which I sat down occupied the recess of a bay-window, and commanded a view of the front of the inn, where I continued to be amused by the successive departures of travellers--the fussy and the offhand, the niggardly and the lavish--all exhibiting their different characters in that diagnostic moment of the farewell: some escorted to the stirrup or the chaise door by the chamberlain, the chambermaids, and the waiters almost in a body, others moving off under a cloud, without human countenance. In the course of this I became interested in one for whom this ovation began to assume the proportions of a triumph; not only the under-servants, but the barmaid, the landlady, and my friend the postmaster himself, crowding about the steps to speed his departure. I was aware, at the same time, of a good deal of merriment, as though the traveller were a man of a ready wit, and not too dignified to air it in that society. I leaned forward with a lively curiosity; and the next moment I had blotted myself behind the teapot. The popular traveller had turned to wave a farewell; and behold! he was no other than my cousin Alain. It was a change of the sharpest from the angry, pallid man I had seen at Amersham Place. Ruddy to a fault, illuminated with vintages, crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious popularity and insufferable condescension. He reminded me at once of a royal duke, of an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman who should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman. A moment after he was gliding noiselessly on the road to London. I breathed again. I recognised, with heartfelt gratitude, how lucky I had been to go in by the stable-yard instead of the hostelry door, and what a fine occasion of meeting my cousin I had lost by the purchase of the claret-coloured chaise! The next moment I remembered that there was a waiter present. No doubt but he must have observed when I crouched behind the breakfast equipage; no doubt but he must have commented on this unusual and undignified behaviour; and it was essential that I should do something to remove the impression. "Waiter!" said I, "that was the nephew of Count Carwell that just drove off, wasn't it?" "Yes, sir: Viscount Carwell we calls him," he replied. "Ah, I thought as much," said I. "Well, well, damn all these Frenchmen, say I!" "You may say so indeed, sir," said the waiter. "They ain't not to say in the same field with our 'ome-raised gentry." "Nasty tempers?" I suggested. "Beas'ly temper, sir, the Viscount 'ave," said the waiter with feeling. "Why, no longer agone than this morning, he was sitting breakfasting and reading in his paper. I suppose, sir, he come on some pilitical information, or it might be about 'orses, but he raps his 'and upon the table sudden and calls for curaçoa. It gave me quite a turn, it did; he did it that sudden and 'ard. Now, sir, that may be manners in France, but hall I can say is, that I'm not used to it." "Reading the paper, was he?" said I. "What paper, eh?" "Here it is, sir," exclaimed the waiter. "Seems like as if he'd dropped it." And picking it off the floor he presented it to me. I may say that I was quite prepared, that I already knew what to expect; but at sight of the cold print my heart stopped beating. There it was: the fulfilment of Romaine's apprehension was before me; the paper was laid open at the capture of Clausel. I felt as if I could take a little curaçoa myself, but on second thoughts called for brandy. It was badly wanted; and suddenly I observed the waiter's eye to sparkle, as it were, with some recognition; made certain he had remarked the resemblance between me and Alain; and became aware--as by a revelation--of the fool's part I had been playing. For I had now managed to put my identification beyond a doubt, if Alain should choose to make his inquiries at Aylesbury: and, as if that were not enough, I had added, at an expense of seventy pounds, a clue by which he might follow me through the length and breadth of England, in the shape of the claret-coloured chaise! That elegant equipage (which I began to regard as little better than a claret-coloured ante-room to the hangman's cart) coming presently to the door, I left my breakfast in the middle and departed; posting to the north as diligently as my cousin Alain was posting to the south, and putting my trust (such as it was) in an opposite direction and equal speed. CHAPTER XXII CHARACTER AND ACQUIREMENTS OF MR. ROWLEY I am not certain that I had ever really appreciated before that hour the extreme peril of the adventure on which I was embarked. The sight of my cousin, the look of his face--so handsome, so jovial at the first sight, and branded with so much malignity as you saw it on the second--with his hyperbolical curls in order, with his neckcloth tied as if for the conquests of love, setting forth (as I had no doubt in the world he was doing) to clap the Bow Street runners on my trail, and cover England with handbills, each dangerous as a loaded musket, convinced me for the first time that the affair was no less serious than death. I believe it came to a near touch whether I should not turn the horses' heads at the next stage and make directly for the coast. But I was now in the position of a man who should have thrown his gage into the den of lions; or, better still, like one who should have quarrelled overnight under the influence of wine, and now, at daylight, in a cold winter's morning, and humbly sober, must make good his words. It is not that I thought any the less, or any the less warmly, of Flora. But, as I smoked a grim segar that morning in a corner of the chaise, no doubt I considered, in the first place, that the letter-post had been invented, and admitted privately to myself, in the second, that it would have been highly possible to write her on a piece of paper, seal it, and send it skimming by the mail, instead of going personally into these egregious dangers, and through a country that I beheld crowded with gibbets and Bow Street officers. As for Sim and Candlish, I doubt if they crossed my mind. At the "Green Dragon" Rowley was waiting on the doorsteps with the luggage, and really was bursting with unpalatable conversation. "Who do you think we've 'ad 'ere, sir?" he began breathlessly, as the chaise drove off. "Red Breasts"; and he nodded his head portentously. "Red Breasts?" I repeated, for I stupidly did not understand at the moment an expression I had often heard. "Ah!" said he. "Red weskits. Runners. Bow Street runners. Two on 'em, and one was Lavender himself! I hear the other say quite plain, 'Now, Mr. Lavender, _if_ you're ready.' They was breakfasting as nigh me as I am to that post-boy. They're all right; they ain't after us. It's a forger; and I didn't send them off on a false scent--O no! I thought there was no use in having them over our way; so I give them 'very valuable information,' Mr. Lavender said, and tipped me a tizzy for myself; and they're off to Luton. They showed me the 'andcuffs, too--the other one did--and he clicked the dratted things on my wrist; and I tell you I believe I nearly went off in a swound! There's something so beastly in the feel of them! Begging your pardon, Mr. Anne," he added, with one of his delicious changes from the character of the confidential schoolboy into that of the trained, respectful servant. Well, I must not be proud! I cannot say I found the subject of handcuffs to my fancy; and it was with more asperity than was needful that I reproved him for the slip about the name. "Yes, Mr. Ramornie," says he, touching his hat. "Begging your pardon, Mr. Ramornie. But I've been very piticular, sir, up to now; and you may trust me to be very piticular in the future. It were only a slip, sir." "My good boy," said I, with the most imposing severity, "there must be no slips. Be so good as to remember that my life is at stake." I did not embrace the occasion of telling him how many I had made myself. It is my principle that an officer must never be wrong. I have seen two divisions beating their brains out for a fortnight against a worthless and quite impregnable castle in a pass: I knew we were only doing it for discipline, because the General had said so at first, and had not yet found any way out of his own words; and I highly admired his force of character, and throughout these operations thought my life exposed in a very good cause. With fools and children, which included Rowley, the necessity was even greater. I proposed to myself to be infallible; and even when he expressed some wonder at the purchase of the claret-coloured chaise, I put him promptly in his place. In our situation, I told him, everything had to be sacrificed to appearances; doubtless, in a hired chaise, we should have had more freedom, but look at the dignity! I was so positive, that I had sometimes almost convinced myself. Not for long, you may be certain! This detestable conveyance always appeared to me to be laden with Bow Street officers, and to have a placard upon the back of it publishing my name and crimes. If I had paid seventy pounds to get the thing, I should not have stuck at seven hundred to be safely rid of it. And if the chaise was a danger, what an anxiety was the despatch-box and its golden cargo! I had never had a care but to draw my pay and spend it; I had lived happily in the regiment, as in my father's house, fed by the great Emperor's commissariat as by ubiquitous doves of Elijah--or, my faith! if anything went wrong with the commissariat, helping myself with the best grace in the world from the next peasant! And now I began to feel at the same time the burthen of riches and the fear of destitution. There were ten thousand pounds in the despatch-box, but I reckoned in French money, and had two hundred and fifty thousand agonies; I kept it under my hand all day, I dreamed of it at night. In the inns, I was afraid to go to dinner and afraid to go to sleep. When I walked up a hill I durst not leave the doors of the claret-coloured chaise. Sometimes I would change the disposition of the funds: there were days when I carried as much as five or six thousand pounds on my own person, and only the residue continued to voyage in the treasure-chest--days when I bulked all over like my cousin, crackled to a touch with bank paper, and had my pockets weighed to bursting-point with sovereigns. And there were other days when I wearied of the thing--or grew ashamed of it--and put all the money back where it had come from: there let it take its chance, like better people! In short, I set Rowley a poor example of consistency, and, in philosophy, none at all. Little he cared! All was one to him so long as he was amused, and I never knew any one amused more easily. He was thrillingly interested in life, travel, and his own melodramatic position. All day he would be looking from the chaise windows with ebullitions of gratified curiosity, that were sometimes justified and sometimes not, and that (taken altogether) it occasionally wearied me to be obliged to share. I can look at horses, and I can look at trees too, although not fond of it. But why should I look at a lame horse, or a tree that was like the letter Y? What exhilaration could I feel in viewing a cottage that was the same colour as "the second from the miller's" in some place where I had never been, and of which I had not previously heard? I am ashamed to complain, but there were moments when my juvenile and confidential friend weighed heavy on my hands. His cackle was indeed almost continuous, but it was never unamiable. He showed an amiable curiosity when he was asking questions; an amiable guilelessness when he was conferring information. And both he did largely. I am in a position to write the biographies of Mr. Rowley, Mr. Rowley's father and mother, his Aunt Eliza, and the miller's dog; and nothing but pity for the reader and some misgivings as to the law of copyright prevail on me to withhold them. A general design to mould himself upon my example became early apparent, and I had not the heart to check it. He began to mimic my carriage; he acquired, with servile accuracy, a little manner I had of shrugging the shoulders; and I may say it was by observing it in him that I first discovered it in myself. One day it came out by chance that I was of the Catholic religion. He became plunged in thought, at which I was gently glad. Then suddenly-- "Odd-rabbit it! I'll be Catholic too!" he broke out. "You must teach me it, Mr. Anne--I mean, Ramornie." I dissuaded him: alleging that he would find me very imperfectly informed as to the grounds and doctrines of the Church, and that, after all, in the matter of religions, it was a very poor idea to change. "Of course, my Church is the best," said I; "but that is not the reason why I belong to it; I belong to it because it was the faith of my house. I wish to take my chances with my own people, and so should you. If it is a question of going to hell, go to hell like a gentleman with your ancestors." "Well, it wasn't that," he admitted. "I don't know that I was exactly thinking of hell. Then there's the inquisition, too. That's rather a cawker, you know." "And I don't believe you were thinking of anything in the world," said I--which put a period to his respectable conversion. He consoled himself by playing for a while on a cheap flageolet, which was one of his diversions, and to which I owed many intervals of peace. When he first produced it, in the joints, from his pocket, he had the duplicity to ask me if I played upon it. I answered, no; and he put the instrument away with a sigh and the remark that he had thought I might. For some while he resisted the unspeakable temptation, his fingers visibly itching and twittering about his pocket, even his interest in the landscape and in sporadic anecdote entirely lost. Presently the pipe was in his hands again; he fitted, unfitted, refitted, and played upon it in dumb show for some time. "I play it myself a little," says he. "Do you?" said I, and yawned. And then he broke down. "Mr. Ramornie, if you please, would it disturb you, sir, if I was to play a chune?" he pleaded. And from that hour, the tootling of the flageolet cheered our way. He was particularly keen on the details of battles, single combats, incidents of scouting parties, and the like. These he would make haste to cap with some of the exploits of Wallace, the only hero with whom he had the least acquaintance. His enthusiasm was genuine and pretty. When he learned we were going to Scotland, "Well, then," he broke out, "I'll see where Wallace lived!" And presently after, he fell to moralising. "It's a strange thing, sir," he began, "that I seem somehow to have always the wrong sow by the ear. I'm English after all, and I glory in it. My eye! don't I, though! Let some of your Frenchies come over here to invade, and you'll see whether or not. O yes, I'm English to the backbone, I am. And yet look at me! I got hold of this 'ere William Wallace and took to him right off; I never heard of such a man before! And then you came along, and I took to you. And both the two of you were my born enemies! I--I beg your pardon, Mr. Ramornie, but would you mind it very much if you didn't go for to do anything against England"--he brought the word out suddenly, like something hot--"when I was along of you?" I was more affected than I can tell. "Rowley," I said, "you need have no fear. By how much I love my own honour, by so much I will take care to protect yours. We are but fraternising at the outposts, as soldiers do. When the bugle calls, my boy, we must face each other, one for England, one for France, and may God defend the right!" So I spoke at the moment; but for all my brave airs, the boy had wounded me in a vital quarter. His words continued to ring in my hearing. There was no remission all day of my remorseful thoughts; and that night (when we lay at Lichfield, I believe) there was no sleep for me in my bed. I put out the candle and lay down with a good resolution; and in a moment all was light about me like a theatre, and I saw myself upon the stage of it playing ignoble parts. I remembered France and my Emperor, now depending on the arbitrament of war, bent down, fighting on their knees and with their teeth against so many and such various assailants. And I burned with shame to be here in England, cherishing an English fortune, pursuing an English mistress, and not there, to handle a musket in my native fields, and to manure them with my body if I fell. I remembered that I belonged to France. All my fathers had fought for her, and some had died; the voice in my throat, the sight of my eyes, the tears that now sprang there, the whole man of me, was fashioned of French earth and born of a French mother; I had been tended and caressed by a succession of the daughters of France, the fairest, the most ill-starred; I had fought and conquered shoulder to shoulder with her sons. A soldier, a noble, of the proudest and bravest race in Europe, it had been left to the prattle of a hobbledehoy lackey in an English chaise to recall me to the consciousness of duty. When I saw how it was I did not lose time in indecision. The old classical conflict of love and honour being once fairly before me, it did not cost me a thought. I was a Saint-Yves de Kéroual; and I decided to strike off on the morrow for Wakefield and Burchell Fenn, and embark, as soon as it should be morally possible, for the succour of my downtrodden fatherland and my beleaguered Emperor. Pursuant on this resolve, I leaped from bed, made a light, and as the watchman was crying half-past two in the dark streets of Lichfield, sat down to pen a letter of farewell to Flora. And then--whether it was the sudden chill of the night, whether it came by association of ideas from the remembrance of Swanston Cottage, I know not, but there appeared before me--to the barking of sheep-dogs--a couple of snuffy and shambling figures, each wrapped in a plaid, each armed with a rude staff; and I was immediately bowed down to have forgotten them so long, and of late to have thought of them so cavalierly. Sure enough, there was my errand! As a private person I was neither French nor English; I was something else first; a loyal gentleman, an honest man. Sim and Candlish must not be left to pay the penalty of my unfortunate blow. They held my honour tacitly pledged to succour them; and it is a sort of stoical refinement entirely foreign to my nature to set the political obligation above the personal and private. If France fell in the interval for the lack of Anne de Saint-Yves, fall she must! But I was both surprised and humiliated to have had so plain a duty bound upon me for so long--and for so long to have neglected and forgotten it. I think any brave man will understand me when I say that I went to bed and to sleep with a conscience very much relieved, and woke again in the morning with a light heart. The very danger of the enterprise reassured me; to save Sim and Candlish (suppose the worst to come to the worst) it would be necessary for me to declare myself in a court of justice, with consequences which I did not dare to dwell upon; it could never be said that I had chosen the cheap and the easy--only that in a very perplexing competition of duties I had risked my life for the most immediate. We resumed the journey with more diligence: thenceforward posted day and night; did not halt beyond what was necessary for meals; and the postillions were excited by gratuities, after the habit of my cousin Alain. For two-pence I could have gone farther and taken four horses; so extreme was my haste, running as I was before the terrors of an awakened conscience. But I feared to be conspicuous. Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the seventy-pounds-worth of claret-coloured chaise. Meanwhile I was ashamed to look Rowley in the face. The young shaver had contrived to put me wholly in the wrong; he had cost me a night's rest and a severe and healthful humiliation; and I was grateful and embarrassed in his society. This would never do; it was contrary to all my ideas of discipline; if the officer has to blush before the private, or the master before the servant, nothing is left to hope for but discharge or death. I hit upon the idea of teaching him French; and accordingly, from Lichfield, I became the distracted master, and he the scholar--how shall I say? indefatigable, but uninspired. His interest never flagged. He would hear the same word twenty times with profound refreshment, mispronounce it in several different ways, and forget it again with magical celerity. Say it happened to be _stirrup_. "No, I don't seem to remember that word, Mr. Anne," he would say: "it don't seem to stick to me, that word don't." And then, when I had told it him again, "_Étrier!_" he would cry. "To be sure! I had it on the tip of my tongue. _Éterier!_" (going wrong already, as if by a fatal instinct). "What will I remember it by, now? Why, _interior_, to be sure! I'll remember it by its being something that ain't in the interior of a horse." And when next I had occasion to ask him the French for stirrup, it was a toss-up whether he had forgotten all about it, or gave me _exterior_ for an answer. He was never a hair discouraged. He seemed to consider that he was covering the ground at a normal rate. He came up smiling day after day. "Now, sir, shall we do our French?" he would say; and I would put questions, and elicit copious commentary and explanation, but never the shadow of an answer. My hands fell to my sides; I could have wept to hear him. When I reflected that he had as yet learned nothing, and what a vast deal more there was for him to learn, the period of these lessons seemed to unroll before me vast as eternity, and I saw myself a teacher of a hundred, and Rowley a pupil of ninety, still hammering on the rudiments! The wretched boy, I should say, was quite unspoiled by the inevitable familiarities of the journey. He turned out at each stage the pink of serving-lads, deft, civil, prompt, attentive, touching his hat like an automaton, raising the status of Mr. Ramornie in the eyes of all the inn by his smiling service, and seeming capable of anything in the world but the one thing I had chosen--learning French! CHAPTER XXIII THE ADVENTURE OF THE RUNAWAY COUPLE The country had for some time back been changing in character. By a thousand indications I could judge that I was again drawing near to Scotland. I saw it written in the face of the hills, in the growth of the trees, and in the glint of the waterbrooks that kept the high-road company. It might have occurred to me, also, that I was, at the same time, approaching a place of some fame in Britain--Gretna Green. Over these same leagues of road--which Rowley and I now traversed in the claret-coloured chaise, to the note of the flageolet and the French lesson--how many pairs of lovers had gone bowling northwards to the music of sixteen scampering horseshoes; and how many irate persons, parents, uncles, guardians, evicted rivals, had come tearing after, clapping the frequent red face to the chaise-window, lavishly shedding their gold about the post-houses, sedulously loading and reloading, as they went, their avenging pistols! But I doubt if I had thought of it at all, before a wayside hazard swept me into the thick of an adventure of this nature; and I found myself playing providence with other people's lives, to my own admiration at the moment--and subsequently to my own brief but passionate regret. At rather an ugly corner of an uphill reach I came on the wreck of a chaise lying on one side in the ditch, a man and a woman in animated discourse in the middle of the road, and the two postillions, each with his pair of horses, looking on and laughing from the saddle. "Morning breezes! here's a smash!" cried Rowley, pocketing his flageolet in the middle of the "Tight Little Island." I was perhaps more conscious of the moral smash than the physical--more alive to broken hearts than to broken chaises; for, as plain as the sun at morning, there was a screw loose in this runaway match. It is always a bad sign when the lower classes laugh: their taste in humour is both poor and sinister; and for a man, running the posts with four horses, presumably with open pockets, and in the company of the most entrancing little creature conceivable, to have come down so far as to be laughed at by his own postillions, was only to be explained on the double hypothesis that he was a fool and no gentleman. I have said they were man and woman. I should have said man and child. She was certainly not more than seventeen, pretty as an angel, just plump enough to damn a saint, and dressed in various shades of blue, from her stockings to her saucy cap, in a kind of taking gamut, the top note of which she flung me in a beam from her too appreciative eye. There was no doubt about the case: I saw it all. From a boarding-school, a black-board, a piano, and Clementi's "Sonatinas," the child had made a rash adventure upon life in the company of a half-bred hawbuck; and she was already not only regretting it, but expressing her regret with point and pungency. As I alighted they both paused with that unmistakable air of being interrupted in a scene. I uncovered to the lady and placed my services at their disposal. It was the man who answered. "There's no use in shamming, sir," said he. "This lady and I have run away, and her father's after us: road to Gretna, sir. And here have these nincompoops spilt us in the ditch and smashed the chaise!" "Very provoking," said I. "I don't know when I've been so provoked!" cried he, with a glance down the road, of mortal terror. "The father is no doubt very much incensed?" I pursued civilly. "O God!" cried the hawbuck. "In short, you see, we must get out of this. And I'll tell you what--it may seem cool, but necessity has no law--if you would lend us your chaise to the next post-house, it would be the very thing, sir." "I confess it seems cool," I replied. "What's that you say, sir?" he snapped. "I was agreeing with you," said I. "Yes, it does seem cool: and what is more to the point, it seems unnecessary. This thing can be arranged in a more satisfactory manner otherwise, I think. You can doubtless ride?" This opened a door on the matter of their previous dispute, and the fellow appeared life-sized in his true colours. "That's what I've been telling her: that, damn her! she must ride!" he broke out. "And if the gentleman's of the same mind, why, damme, you shall!" As he said so, he made a snatch at her wrist, which she evaded with horror. I stepped between them. "No, sir," said I; "the lady shall not." He turned on me raging. "And who are you to interfere?" he roared. "There is here no question of who I am," I replied. "I may be the devil or the Archbishop of Canterbury for what you know, or need know. The point is that I can help you--it appears that nobody else can: and I will tell you how I propose to do it. I will give the lady a seat in my chaise, if you will return the compliment by allowing my servant to ride one of your horses." I thought he would have sprung at my throat. "You have always the alternative before you: to wait here for the arrival of papa," I added. And that settled him. He cast another haggard look down the road, and capitulated. "I am sure, sir, the lady is very much obliged to you," he said, with an ill grace. I gave her my hand; she mounted like a bird into the chaise; Rowley, grinning from ear to ear, closed the door behind us; the two impudent rascals of post-boys cheered and laughed aloud as we drove off; and my own postillion urged his horses at once into a rattling trot. It was plain I was supposed by all to have done a very dashing act, and ravished the bride from the ravisher. In the meantime I stole a look at the little lady. She was in a state of pitiable discomposure, and her arms shook on her lap in her black lace mittens. "Madam----" I began. And she, in the same moment, finding her voice: "O, what must you think of me!" "Madam," said I, "what must any gentleman think when he sees youth, beauty, and innocence in distress? I wish I could tell you that I was old enough to be your father; I think we must give that up," I continued, with a smile. "But I will tell you something about myself which ought to do as well, and to set that little heart at rest in my society. I am a lover. May I say it of myself--for I am not quite used to all the niceties of English--that I am a true lover? There is one whom I admire, adore, obey; she is no less good than she is beautiful; if she were here, she would take you to her arms: conceive that she has sent me--that she has said to me, 'Go, be her knight!'" "O, I know she must be sweet, I know she must be worthy of you!" cried the little lady. "She would never forget female decorum--nor make the terrible _erratum_ I've done!" And at this she lifted up her voice and wept. This did not forward matters: it was in vain that I begged her to be more composed and to tell me a plain, consecutive tale of her misadventures; but she continued instead to pour forth the most extraordinary mixture of the correct school miss and the poor untutored little piece of womanhood in a false position--of engrafted pedantry and incoherent nature. "I am certain it must have been judicial blindness," she sobbed. "I can't think how I didn't see it, but I didn't; and he isn't, is he? And then a curtain rose.... O, what a moment was that! But I knew at once that _you were_; you had but to appear from your carriage, and I knew it. O, she must be a fortunate young lady! And I have no fear with you, none--a perfect confidence." "Madam," said I, "a gentleman." "That's what I mean--a gentleman," she exclaimed. "And he--and that--_he_ isn't. O, how shall I dare meet father!" And disclosing to me her tear-stained face, and opening her arms with a tragic gesture: "And I am quite disgraced before all the young ladies, my school-companions!" she added. "O, not so bad as that!" I cried. "Come, come, you exaggerate, my dear Miss ----? Excuse me if I am too familiar: I have not yet heard your name." "My name is Dorothy Greensleeves, sir: why should I conceal it? I fear it will only serve to point an adage to future generations, and I had meant so differently! There was no young female in the county more emulous to be thought well of than I. And what a fall was there! O, dear me, what a wicked, piggish donkey of a girl I have made of myself, to be sure! And there is no hope! O, Mr.----" And at that she paused and asked my name. I am not writing my eulogium for the Academy; I will admit it was unpardonably imbecile, but I told it her. If you had been there--and seen her, ravishingly pretty and little, a baby in years and mind--and heard her talking like a book, with so much of schoolroom propriety in her manner, with such an innocent despair in the matter--you would probably have told her yours. She repeated it after me. "I shall pray for you all my life," she said. "Every night, when I retire to rest, the last thing I shall do is to remember you by name." Presently I succeeded in winning from her her tale, which was much what I had anticipated: a tale of a schoolhouse, a walled garden, a fruit-tree that concealed a bench, an impudent raff posturing in church, an exchange of flowers and vows over the garden wall, a silly schoolmate for a confidante, a chaise and four, and the most immediate and perfect disenchantment on the part of the little lady. "And there is nothing to be done!" she wailed in conclusion. "My error is irretrievable, I am quite forced to that conclusion. O, Monsieur de Saint-Yves! who would have thought that I could have been such a blind, wicked donkey!" I should have said before--only that I really do not know when it came in--that we had been overtaken by the two post-boys, Rowley and Mr. Bellamy, which was the hawbuck's name, bestriding the four post-horses; and that these seemed a sort of cavalry escort, riding now before, now behind the chaise, and Bellamy occasionally posturing at the window and obliging us with some of his conversation. He was so ill-received that I declare I was tempted to pity him, remembering from what a height he had fallen, and how few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his arms, all blushes and ardour. Well, these great strokes of fortune usually befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate object of my commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys! "Miss Dorothy," said I, "you wish to be delivered from this man?" "O, if it were possible!" she cried. "But not by violence." "Not in the least, ma'am," I replied. "The simplest thing in life. We are in a civilised country; the man's a malefactor----" "O, never!" she cried. "Do not even dream it! With all his faults, I know he is not _that_." "Anyway, he's in the wrong in this affair--on the wrong side of the law, call it what you please," said I; and with that, our four horsemen having for the moment headed us by a considerable interval, I hailed my post-boy and inquired who was the nearest magistrate and where he lived. Archdeacon Clitheroe, he told me, a prodigious dignitary, and one who lived but a lane or two back, and at the distance of only a mile or two out of the direct road. I showed him the king's medallion. "Take the lady there, and at full gallop," I cried. "Right, sir! Mind yourself," says the postillion. And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the carriage to the rightabout and we were galloping south. Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manoeuvre, and came flying after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting; so that the fine, sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we had presented but a moment back, was transformed, in the twinkling of an eye into the image of a noisy fox-chase. The two postillions and my own saucy rogue were, of course, disinterested actors in the comedy; they rode for the mere sport, keeping in a body, their mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and crying (as the fancy struck them) "Tally-ho!" "Stop, thief!" "A highwayman! A highwayman!" It was other guesswork with Bellamy. That gentleman no sooner observed our change of direction than he turned his horse with so much violence that the poor animal was almost cast upon its side, and launched her in immediate and desperate pursuit. As he approached I saw that his face was deadly white and that he carried a drawn pistol in his hand. I turned at once to the poor little bride that was to have been, and now was not to be; she, upon her side, deserting the other window, turned as if to meet me. "O, O, don't let him kill me!" she screamed. "Never fear," I replied. Her face was distorted with terror. Her hands took hold upon me with the instinctive clutch of an infant. The chaise gave a flying lurch, which took the feet from under me and tumbled us anyhow upon the seat. And almost in the same moment the head of Bellamy appeared in the window which Missy had left free for him. Conceive the situation! The little lady and I were falling--or had just fallen--backward on the seat, and offered to the eye a somewhat ambiguous picture. The chaise was speeding at a furious pace, and with the most violent leaps and lurches, along the highway. Into this bounding receptacle Bellamy interjected his head, his pistol arm, and his pistol; and since his own horse was travelling still faster than the chaise, he must withdraw all of them again in the inside of a fraction of a minute. He did so, but he left the charge of the pistol behind him--whether by design or accident I shall never know, and I dare say he has forgotten! Probably he had only meant to threaten, in hopes of causing us to arrest our flight. In the same moment came the explosion and a pitiful cry from Missy; and my gentleman, making certain he had struck her, went down the road pursued by the furies, turned at the first corner, took a flying leap over the thorn hedge, and disappeared across country in the least possible time. Rowley was ready and eager to pursue; but I withheld him, thinking we were excellently quit of Mr. Bellamy, at no more cost than a scratch on the forearm and a bullet-hole in the left-hand claret-coloured panel. And accordingly, but now at a more decent pace, we proceeded on our way to Archdeacon Clitheroe's. Missy's gratitude and admiration were aroused to a high pitch by this dramatic scene, and what she was pleased to call my wound. She must dress it for me with her handkerchief, a service which she rendered me even with tears. I could well have spared them, not loving on the whole to be made ridiculous, and the injury being in the nature of a cat's scratch. Indeed, I would have suggested for her kind care rather the cure of my coat-sleeve, which had suffered worse in the encounter; but I was too wise to risk the anti-climax. That she had been rescued by a hero, that the hero should have been wounded in the affray, and his wound bandaged with her handkerchief (which it could not even bloody), ministered incredibly to the recovery of her self-respect; and I could hear her relate the incident to "the young ladies, my school-companions," in the most approved manner of Mrs. Radcliffe! To have insisted on the torn coat-sleeve would have been unmannerly, if not inhuman. Presently the residence of the Archdeacon began to heave in sight. A chaise and four smoking horses stood by the steps, and made way for us on our approach; and even as we alighted there appeared from the interior of the house a tall ecclesiastic, and beside him a little, headstrong, ruddy man, in a towering passion, and brandishing over his head a roll of paper. At sight of him Miss Dorothy flung herself on her knees with the most moving adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond, loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears. To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the road when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with Bellamy's two postillions. They had not the least claim on me, but one of which they were quite ignorant--that I was a fugitive. It is the worst feature of that false position that every gratuity becomes a case of conscience. You must not leave behind you any one discontented nor any one grateful. But the whole business had been such a "hurrah-boys" from the beginning, and had gone off in the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions, reconciliations, and the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly impossible to keep it covered. It was plain it would have to be talked over in all the inn-kitchens for thirty miles about, and likely for six months to come. It only remained for me, therefore, to settle on that gratuity which should be least conspicuous--so large that nobody could grumble, so small that nobody would be tempted to boast. My decision was hastily and not wisely taken. The one fellow spat on his tip (so he called it) for luck; the other, developing a sudden streak of piety, prayed God bless me with fervour. It seemed a demonstration was brewing, and I determined to be off at once. Bidding my own post-boy and Rowley be in readiness for an immediate start, I reascended the terrace and presented myself, hat in hand, before Mr. Greensleeves and the Archdeacon. "You will excuse me, I trust," said I. "I think shame to interrupt this agreeable scene of family effusion, which I have been privileged in some small degree to bring about." And at these words the storm broke. "Small degree! small degree, sir!" cries the father; "that shall not pass, Mr. St. Eaves! If I've got my darling back, and none the worse for that vagabone rascal, I know whom I have to thank. Shake hands with me--up to the elbows, sir! A Frenchman you may be, but you're one of the right breed, by God! And, by God, sir, you may have anything you care to ask of me, down to Dolly's hand, by God!" All this he roared out in a voice surprisingly powerful from so small a person. Every word was thus audible to the servants, who had followed them out of the house and now congregated about us on the terrace, as well as to Rowley and the five postillions on the gravel sweep below. The sentiments expressed were popular; some ass, whom the devil moved to be my enemy, proposed three cheers, and they were given with a will. To hear my own name resounding amid acclamations in the hills of Westmorland was flattering, perhaps; but it was inconvenient at a moment when (as I was morally persuaded) police handbills were already speeding after me at the rate of a hundred miles a day. Nor was that the end of it. The Archdeacon must present his compliments, and pressed upon me some of his West India sherry, and I was carried into a vastly fine library, where I was presented to his lady wife. While we were at sherry in the library, ale was handed round upon the terrace. Speeches were made, hands were shaken, Missy (at her father's request) kissed me farewell, and the whole party reaccompanied me to the terrace, where they stood waving hats and handkerchiefs, and crying farewells to all the echoes of the mountains until the chaise had disappeared. The echoes of the mountains were engaged in saying to me privately: "You fool, you have done it now!" "They do seem to have got 'old of your name, Mr. Anne," said Rowley. "It weren't my fault this time." "It was one of those accidents that can never be foreseen," said I, affecting a dignity that I was far from feeling. "Some one recognised me." "Which on 'em, Mr. Anne?" said the rascal. "That is a senseless question; it can make no difference who it was," I returned. "No, nor that it can't!" cried Rowley. "I say, Mr. Anne, sir, it's what you would call a jolly mess, ain't it? looks like 'clean bowled-out in the middle stump,' don't it?" "I fail to understand you, Rowley." "Well, what I mean is, what are we to do about this one?" pointing to the postillion in front of us, as he alternately hid and revealed his patched breeches to the trot of his horse. "He see you get in this morning under Mr. Ramornie--I was very piticular to _Mr. Ramornie_ you, if you remember, sir--and he see you get in again under Mr. St. Eaves, and whatever's he going to see you get out under? that's what worries me, sir. It don't seem to me like as if the position was what you call _stratetegic_!" "_Parrrbleu!_ will you let me be?" I cried. "I have to think; you cannot imagine how your constant idiotic prattle annoys me." "Beg pardon, Mr. Anne," said he; and the next moment, "You wouldn't like for us to do our French now, would you, Mr. Anne?" "Certainly not," said I. "Play upon your flageolet." The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony. Conscience doth make cowards of us all! I was so downcast by my pitiful mismanagement of the morning's business that I shrank from the eye of my own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into his idle tootling. I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a needle and thread. There is nothing more conducive to thought, above all in arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually gained a clearness upon my affairs. I must be done with the claret-coloured chaise at once. It should be sold at the next stage for what it would bring. Rowley and I must take back to the road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names! So much trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time, and all for a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue! CHAPTER XXIV THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE I had hitherto conceived and partly carried out an ideal that was dear to my heart. Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured chaise, a couple of correctly-dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young fellows, like a pair of aristocratic mice; attending singly to our own affairs, communicating solely with each other, and that with the niceties and civilities of drill. We would pass through the little crowd before the door with high-bred preoccupation, inoffensively haughty, after the best English pattern; and disappear within, followed by the envy and admiration of the bystanders, a model master and servant, point-device in every part. It was a heavy thought to me, as we drew up before the inn at Kirkby-Lonsdale, that this scene was now to be enacted for the last time. Alas! and had I known it, it was to go off with so inferior a grace! I had been injudiciously liberal to the post-boys of the chaise and four. My own post-boy, he of the patched breeches, now stood before me, his eyes glittering with greed, his hand advanced. It was plain he anticipated something extraordinary by way of a _pourboire_; and considering the marches and counter-marches by which I had extended the stage, the military character of our affairs with Mr. Bellamy, and the bad example I had set before him at the Archdeacon's, something exceptional was certainly to be done. But these are always nice questions, to a foreigner above all: a shade too little will suggest niggardliness, a shilling too much smells of hush-money. Fresh from the scene at the Archdeacon's, and flushed by the idea that I was now nearly done with the responsibilities of the claret-coloured chaise, I put into his hands five guineas; and the amount served only to waken his cupidity. "O, come, sir, you ain't going to fob me off with this? Why, I seen fire at your side!" he cried. It would never do to give him more; I felt I should become the fable of Kirkby-Lonsdale if I did; and I looked him in the face, sternly but still smiling, and addressed him with a voice of uncompromising firmness. "If you do not like it, give it back," said I. He pocketed the guineas with the quickness of a conjurer, and, like a base-born cockney as he was, fell instantly to casting dirt. "'Ave your own way of it, Mr. Ramornie--leastways Mr. St. Eaves, or whatever your blessed name may be. Look 'ere"--turning for sympathy to the stable-boys--"this is a blessed business. Blessed 'ard, I calls it. 'Ere I takes up a blessed son of a pop-gun what calls hisself anything you care to mention, and turns out to be a blessed _mounseer_ at the end of it! 'Ere 'ave I been drivin' of him up and down all day, a-carrying off of gals, a-shootin' of pistyils, and a-drinkin' of sherry and hale: and wot does he up and give me but a blank, blank, blanketing blank!" The fellow's language had become too powerful for reproduction, and I passed it by. Meanwhile I observed Rowley fretting visibly at the bit; another moment, and he would have added a last touch of the ridiculous to our arrival by coming to his hands with the postillion. "Rowley!" cried I reprovingly. Strictly it should have been Gammon; but in the hurry of the moment, my fault (I can only hope) passed unperceived. At the same time I caught the eye of the postmaster. He was long and lean, and brown and bilious; he had the drooping nose of the humorist, and the quick attention of a man of parts. He read my embarrassment in a glance, stepped instantly forward, sent the post-boy to the rightabout with half a word, and was back next moment at my side. "Dinner in a private room, sir? Very well. John, No. 4! What wine would you care to mention? Very well, sir. Will you please to order fresh horses? Not, sir? Very well." Each of these expressions was accompanied by something in the nature of a bow, and all were prefaced by something in the nature of a smile, which I could very well have done without. The man's politeness was from the teeth outwards; behind and within, I was conscious of a perpetual scrutiny: the scene at his doorstep, the random confidences of the post-boy, had not been thrown away on this observer; and it was under a strong fear of coming trouble that I was shown at last into my private room. I was in half a mind to have put off the whole business. But the truth is, now my name had got abroad, my fear of the mail that was coming, and the handbills it should contain, had waxed inordinately, and I felt I could never eat a meal in peace till I had severed my connection with the claret-coloured chaise. Accordingly, as soon as I had done with dinner, I sent my compliments to the landlord and requested he should take a glass of wine with me. He came; we exchanged the necessary civilities, and presently I approached my business. "By the bye," said I, "we had a brush down the road to-day. I dare say you may have heard of it?" He nodded. "And I was so unlucky as to get a pistol ball in the panel of my chaise," I continued, "which makes it simply useless to me. Do you know any one likely to buy?" "I can well understand that," said the landlord. "I was looking at it just now; it's as good as ruined, is that chaise. General rule, people don't like chaises with bullet-holes." "Too much 'Romance of the Forest'?" I suggested, recalling my little friend of the morning, and what I was sure had been her favourite reading--Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. "Just so," said he. "They may be right, they may be wrong; I'm not the judge. But I suppose it's natural, after all, for respectable people to like things respectable about them; not bullet-holes, nor puddles of blood, nor men with aliases." I took a glass of wine and held it up to the light to show that my hand was steady. "Yes," said I, "I suppose so." "You have papers, of course, showing you are the proper owner?" he inquired. "There is the bill, stamped and receipted," said I, tossing it across to him. He looked at it. "This all you have?" he asked. "It is enough, at least," said I. "It shows you where I bought and what I paid for it." "Well, I don't know," he said. "You want some paper of identification." "To identify the chaise?" I inquired. "Not at all: to identify _you_," said he. "My good sir, remember yourself!" said I. "The title-deeds of my estate are in that despatch-box; but you do not seriously suppose that I should allow you to examine them?" "Well, you see, this paper proves that some Mr. Ramornie paid seventy guineas for a chaise," said the fellow. "That's all well and good; but who's to prove to me that you are Mr. Ramornie?" "Fellow!" cried I. "O, fellow as much as you please!" said he. "Fellow, with all my heart! That changes nothing. I am fellow, of course--obtrusive fellow, impudent fellow, if you like--but who are you? I hear of you with two names; I hear of you running away with young ladies, and getting cheered for a Frenchman, which seems odd; and one thing I will go bail for, that you were in a blue fright when the post-boy began to tell tales at my door. In short, sir, you may be a very good gentleman; but I don't know enough about you, and I'll trouble you for your papers, or to go before a magistrate. Take your choice; if I'm not fine enough, I hope the magistrates are." "My good man," I stammered, for though I had found my voice, I could scarce be said to have recovered my wits, "this is most unusual, most rude. Is it the custom in Westmorland that gentlemen should be insulted?" "That depends," said he. "When it's suspected that gentlemen are spies it _is_ the custom; and a good custom, too. No, no," he broke out, perceiving me to make a movement. "Both hands upon the table, my gentleman! I want no pistol balls in my chaise panels." "Surely, sir, you do me strange injustice!" said I, now the master of myself. "You see me sitting here, a monument of tranquillity: pray may I help myself to wine without umbraging you?" I took this attitude in sheer despair. I had no plan, no hope. The best I could imagine was to spin the business out some minutes longer, then capitulate. At least, I would not capitulate one moment too soon. "Am I to take that for _no_?" he asked. "Referring to your former obliging proposal?" said I. "My good sir, you are to take it, as you say, for 'No.' Certainly I will not show you my deeds; certainly I will not rise from table and trundle out to see your magistrates. I have too much respect for my digestion, and too little curiosity in justices of the peace." He leaned forward, looked me nearly in the face, and reached out one hand to the bell-rope. "See here, my fine fellow!" said he. "Do you see that bell-rope? Let me tell you, there's a boy waiting below: one jingle, and he goes to fetch the constable." "Do you tell me so?" said I. "Well, there's no accounting for tastes! I have a prejudice against the society of constables, but if it is your fancy to have one in for the dessert----" I shrugged my shoulders lightly. "Really, you know," I added, "this is vastly entertaining. I assure you, I am looking on, with all the interest of a man of the world, at the development of your highly original character." He continued to study my face without speech, his hand still on the button of the bell-rope, his eyes in mine; this was the decisive heat. My face seemed to myself to dislimn under his gaze, my expression to change, the smile (with which I had begun) to degenerate into the grin of the man upon the rack. I was besides harassed with doubts. An innocent man, I argued, would have resented the fellow's impudence an hour ago; and by my continued endurance of the ordeal, I was simply signing and sealing my confession; in short, I had reached the end of my powers. "Have you any objection to my putting my hands in my breeches pockets?" I inquired. "Excuse me mentioning it, but you showed yourself so extremely nervous a moment back." My voice was not all I could have wished, but it sufficed. I could hear it tremble, but the landlord apparently could not. He turned away, and drew a long breath, and you may be sure I was quick to follow his example. "You're a cool hand at least, and that's the sort I like," said he. "Be what you please, I'll deal square. I'll take the chaise for a hundred pound down, and throw the dinner in." "I beg your pardon," I cried, wholly mystified by this form of words. "You pay me a hundred down," he repeated, "and I'll take the chaise. It's very little more than it cost," he added, with a grin, "and you know you must get it off your hands somehow." I do not know when I have been better entertained than by this impudent proposal. It was broadly funny, and I suppose the least tempting offer in the world. For all that, it came very welcome, for it gave me the occasion to laugh. This I did with the most complete abandonment, till the tears ran down my cheeks; and ever and again, as the fit abated, I would get another view of the landlord's face, and go off into another paroxysm. "You droll creature, you will be the death of me yet!" I cried, drying my eyes. My friend was now wholly disconcerted; he knew not where to look, nor yet what to say; and began for the first time to conceive it possible he was mistaken. "You seem rather to enjoy a laugh, sir," said he. "O yes! I am quite an original," I replied, and laughed again. Presently, in a changed voice, he offered me twenty pounds for the chaise; I ran him up to twenty-five, and closed with the offer; indeed, I was glad to get anything; and if I haggled, it was not in the desire of gain, but with the view at any price of securing a safe retreat. For, although hostilities were suspended, he was yet far from satisfied; and I could read his continued suspicions in the cloudy eye that still hovered about my face. At last they took shape in words. "This is all very well," says he: "you carry it off well; but for all that, I must do my duty." I had my strong effect in reserve: it was to burn my ships with a vengeance! I rose. "Leave the room," said I. "This is insufferable. Is the man mad?" And then, as if already half-ashamed of my passion: "I can take a joke as well as any one," I added; "but this passes measure. Send my servant and the bill." When he had left me alone, I considered my own valour with amazement. I had insulted him; I had sent him away alone; now, if ever, he would take what was the only sensible resource, and fetch the constable. But there was something instinctively treacherous about the man which shrank from plain courses. And, with all his cleverness, he missed the occasion of fame. Rowley and I were suffered to walk out of his door, with all our baggage, on foot, with no destination named, except in the vague statement that we were come "to view the lakes"; and my friend only watched our departure with his chin in his hand, still moodily irresolute. I think this one of my great successes. I was exposed, unmasked, summoned to do a perfectly natural act which must prove my doom, and which I had not the slightest pretext for refusing. I kept my head, stuck to my guns, and, against all likelihood, here I was once more at liberty and in the king's highway. This was a strong lesson never to despair; and, at the same time, how many hints to be cautious! and what a perplexed and dubious business the whole question of my escape now appeared! That I should have risked perishing upon a trumpery question of a _pourboire_, depicted in lively colours the perils that perpetually surrounded us. Though, to be sure, the initial mistake had been committed before that; and if I had not suffered myself to be drawn a little deep in confidences to the innocent Dolly, there need have been no tumble at the inn of Kirkby-Lonsdale. I took the lesson to heart, and promised myself in the future to be more reserved. It was none of my business to attend to broken chaises or shipwrecked travellers. I had my hands full of my own affairs; and my best defence would be a little more natural selfishness and a trifle less imbecile good-nature. CHAPTER XXV I MEET A CHEERFUL EXTRAVAGANT I pass over the next fifty or sixty leagues of our journey without comment. The reader must be growing weary of scenes of travel; and for my own part I have no cause to recall these particular miles with any pleasure. We were mainly occupied with attempts to obliterate our trail, which (as the result showed) were far from successful; for, on my cousin following, he was able to run me home with the least possible loss of time, following the claret-coloured chaise to Kirkby-Lonsdale, where I think the landlord must have wept to learn what he had missed, and tracing us thereafter to the doors of the coach-office in Edinburgh without a single check. Fortune did not favour me, and why should I recapitulate the details of futile precautions which deceived nobody and wearisome arts which proved to be artless? The day was drawing to an end when Mr. Rowley and I bowled into Edinburgh to the stirring sound of the guard's bugle and the clattering team. I was here upon my field of battle; on the scene of my former captivity, escape, and exploits; and in the same city with my love. My heart expanded; I have rarely felt more of a hero. All down the Bridges I sat by the driver with my arms folded and my face set, unflinchingly meeting every eye, and prepared every moment for a cry of recognition. Hundreds of the population were in the habit of visiting the Castle, where it was my practice (before the days of Flora) to make myself conspicuous among the prisoners; and I think it an extraordinary thing that I should have encountered so few to recognise me. But doubtless a clean chin is a disguise in itself; and the change is great from a suit of sulphur-yellow to fine linen, a well-fitting mouse-coloured greatcoat furred in black, a pair of tight trousers of fashionable cut, and a hat of inimitable curl. After all, it was more likely that I should have recognised our visitors, than that they should have identified the modish gentleman with the miserable prisoner in the Castle. I was glad to set foot on the flagstones, and to escape from the crowd that had assembled to receive the mail. Here we were, with but little daylight before us, and that on Saturday afternoon, the eve of the famous Scottish Sabbath, adrift in the New Town of Edinburgh, and overladen with baggage. We carried it ourselves. I would not take a cab, nor so much as hire a porter, who might afterwards serve as a link between my lodgings and the mail, and connect me again with the claret-coloured chaise and Aylesbury. For I was resolved to break the chain of evidence for good, and to begin life afresh (so far as regards caution) with a new character. The first step was to find lodgings, and to find them quickly. This was the more needful as Mr. Rowley and I, in our smart clothes and with our cumbrous burthen, made a noticeable appearance in the streets at that time of the day and in that quarter of the town, which was largely given up to fine folk, bucks and dandies and young ladies, or respectable professional men on their way home to dinner. On the north side of St. James' Square I was so happy as to spy a bill in a third-floor window. I was equally indifferent to cost and convenience in my choice of a lodging--"any port in a storm" was the principle on which I was prepared to act; and Rowley and I made at once for the common entrance and scaled the stair. We were admitted by a very sour-looking female in bombazine. I gathered she had all her life been depressed by a series of bereavements, the last of which might very well have befallen her the day before; and I instinctively lowered my voice when I addressed her. She admitted she had rooms to let--even showed them to us--a sitting-room and bedroom in a _suite_, commanding a fine prospect to the Firth and Fifeshire, and in themselves well proportioned and comfortably furnished, with pictures on the wall, shells on the mantelpiece, and several books upon the table, which I found afterwards to be all of a devotional character, and all presentation copies, "to my Christian friend," or "to my devout acquaintance in the Lord, Bethiah McRankine." Beyond this my "Christian friend" could not be made to advance: no, not even to do that which seemed the most natural and pleasing thing in the world--I mean to name her price--but stood before us shaking her head, and at times mourning like the dove, the picture of depression and defence. She had a voice the most querulous I have ever heard, and with this she produced a whole regiment of difficulties and criticisms. She could not promise an attendance. "Well, madam," said I, "and what is my servant for?" "Him?" she asked. "Be gude to us! is _he_ your servant?" "I am sorry, ma'am, he meets with your disapproval." "Na, I never said that. But he's young. He'll be a great breaker, I'm thinkin'. Ay! he'll be a great responsibeelity to ye, like. Does he attend to his releegion?" "Yes, m'm," returned Rowley, with admirable promptitude, and, immediately closing his eyes, as if from habit, repeated the following distich with more celerity than fervour: "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on!" "Nhm!" said the lady, and maintained an awful silence. "Well, ma'am," said I, "it seems we are never to hear the beginning of your terms, let alone the end of them. Come--a good movement! and let us be either off or on." She opened her lips slowly. "Ony raferences?" she inquired, in a voice like a bell. I opened my pocket-book and showed her a handful of bank-bills. "I think, madam, that these are unexceptionable," said I. "Ye'll be wantin' breakfast late?" was her reply. "Madam, we want breakfast at whatever hour it suits you to give it, from four in the morning till four in the afternoon!" I cried. "Only tell us your figure, if your mouth be large enough to let it out!" "I couldna give ye supper the nicht," came the echo. "We shall go out to supper, you incorrigible female!" I vowed, between laughter and tears. "Here--this is going to end! I want you for a landlady--let me tell you that!--and I am going to have my way. You won't tell me what you charge? Very well; I will do without! I can trust you! You don't seem to know when you have a good lodger; but I know perfectly when I have an honest landlady! Rowley, unstrap the valises!" Will it be credited? The monomaniac fell to rating me for my indiscretion! But the battle was over; these were her last guns, and more in the nature of a salute than of renewed hostilities. And presently she condescended on very moderate terms, and Rowley and I were able to escape in quest of supper. Much time had, however, been lost; the sun was long down, the lamps glimmered along the streets, and the voice of a watchman already resounded in the neighbouring Leith Road. On our first arrival I had observed a place of entertainment not far off, in a street behind the Register House. Thither we found our way, and sat down to a late dinner alone. But we had scarce given our orders before the door opened, and a tall young fellow entered with something of a lurch, looked about him, and approached the same table. "Give you good evening, most grave and reverend seniors!" said he. "Will you permit a wanderer, a pilgrim--the pilgrim of love, in short--to come to temporary anchor under your lee? I care not who knows it, but I have a passionate aversion from the bestial practice of solitary feeding!" "You are welcome, sir," said I, "if I may take upon me so far to play the host in a public place." He looked startled, and fixed a hazy eye on me, as he sat down. "Sir," said he, "you are a man not without some tincture of letters, I perceive! What shall we drink, sir?" I mentioned I had already called for a pot of porter. "A modest pot--the seasonable quencher?" said he. "Well, I do not know but what I could look at a modest pot myself! I am, for the moment, in precarious health. Much study hath heated my brain, much walking wearied my--well, it seems to be more my eyes!" "You have walked far, I dare say?" I suggested. "Not so much far as often," he replied. "There is in this city--to which, I think, you are a stranger? Sir, to your very good health and our better acquaintance!--there is, in this city of Dunedin, a certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on the designer and the publicans--at every hundred yards is seated the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment. I have been doing a trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and nature. A few chosen comrades--enemies of publicity and friends to wit and wine--obliged me with their society. 'Along the cool, sequestered vale of Register Street we kept the uneven tenor of our way,' sir." "It struck me, as you came in----" I began. "O, don't make any bones about it!" he interrupted. "Of course it struck you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike myself. When I entered this apartment I shone 'with all the pomp and prodigality of brandy and water,' as the poet Gray has in another place expressed it. Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy-piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle--not a man, sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the devil have I done with my fork? Thank you, I am sure. _Temulentia, quoad me ipsum, brevis calligo est._ I sit and eat, sir, in a London fog. I should bring a link-boy to table with me; and I would too, if the little brutes were only washed! I intend to found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and Shaving Soldiers. I am pleased to observe that, although not of an unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved. In my calendar of the virtues shaving comes next to drinking. A gentleman may be a low-minded ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close shaved. See me, with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the morning--say about a quarter to twelve, noon--see me awake! First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda-water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity. Stimulating thought! I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds. The stubble reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant. To employ a hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington my uncle! I, too, have dared, perhaps bled, before the imminent deadly shaving-table." In this manner the bombastic fellow continued to entertain me all through dinner, and by a common error of drunkards, because he had been extremely talkative himself, leaped to the conclusion that he had chanced on very genial company. He told me his name, his address; he begged we should meet again; finally he proposed that I should dine with him in the country at an early date. "The dinner is official," he explained. "The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond--an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense--meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established _howff_, Cramond Bridge. One place is vacant, fascinating stranger--I offer it to you!" "And who is your friend Icarus?" I asked. "The aspiring son of Dædalus!" said he. "Is it possible that you have never heard the name of Byfield?" "Possible and true," said I. "And is fame so small a thing?" cried he. "Byfield, sir, is an aëronaut. He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of offering to the inhabitants--I beg your pardon, to the nobility and gentry of our neighbourhood--the spectacle of an ascension. As one of the gentry concerned, I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved. I care not a Tinker's Damn for his ascension. No more--I breathe in your ear--does anybody else. The business is stale, sir, stale. Lunardi did it, and overdid it. A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts--for I was at that time rocking in my cradle. But once was enough. If Lunardi went up and came down, there was the matter settled. We prefer to grant the point. We do not want to see the experiment repeated _ad nauseam_ by Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley. Ah! if they would go up and _not_ come down again! But this is by the question. The University of Cramond delights to honour merit in the man, sir, rather than utility in the profession; and Byfield, though an ignorant dog, is a sound, reliable drinker, and really not amiss over his cups. Under the radiance of the kindly jar partiality might even credit him with wit." It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I thought it at the time. Indeed, I was impatient to be gone. Even as my friend maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain were opened against the coffee-house windows, and at that inclement signal I remembered I was due elsewhere. CHAPTER XXVI THE COTTAGE AT NIGHT At the door I was nearly blown back by the unbridled violence of the squall, and Rowley and I must shout our parting words. All the way along Princes Street (whither my way led) the wind hunted me behind and screamed in my ears. The city was flushed with bucketfuls of rain that tasted salt from the neighbouring ocean. It seemed to darken and lighten again in the vicissitudes of the gusts. Now you would say the lamps had been blown out from end to end of the long thoroughfare; now, in a lull, they would revive, re-multiply, shine again on the wet pavements, and make darkness sparingly visible. By the time I had got to the corner of the Lothian Road there was a distinct improvement. For one thing, I had now my shoulder to the wind; for a second, I came in the lee of my old prison-house, the Castle; and, at any rate, the excessive fury of the blast was itself moderating. The thought of what errand I was on re-awoke within me, and I seemed to breast the rough weather with increasing ease. With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of wind or a sprinkle of cold water? I recalled Flora's image, I took her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed. And the next moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool's paradise. If I could spy her taper as she went to bed, I might count myself lucky. I had about two leagues before me of a road mostly uphill, and now deep in mire. So soon as I was clear of the last street lamp, darkness received me--a darkness only pointed by the lights of occasional rustic farms, where the dogs howled with uplifted heads as I went by. The wind continued to decline: it had been but a squall, not a tempest. The rain, on the other hand, settled into a steady deluge, which had soon drenched me thoroughly. I continued to tramp forward in the night, contending with gloomy thoughts and accompanied by the dismal ululation of the dogs. What ailed them that they should have been thus wakeful, and perceived the small sound of my steps amid the general reverberation of the rain, was more than I could fancy. I remembered tales with which I had been entertained in childhood. I told myself some murderer was going by, and the brutes perceived upon him the faint smell of blood; and the next moment, with a physical shock, I had applied the words to my own case! Here was a dismal disposition for a lover. "Was ever lady in this humour wooed?" I asked myself, and came near turning back. It is never wise to risk a critical interview when your spirits are depressed, your clothes muddy, and your hands wet! But the boisterous night was in itself favourable to my enterprise: now, or perhaps never, I might find some way to have an interview with Flora; and if I had one interview (wet clothes, low spirits and all), I told myself there would certainly be another. Arrived in the cottage-garden I found the circumstances mighty inclement. From the round holes in the shutters of the parlour, shafts of candle-light streamed forth; elsewhere the darkness was complete. The trees, the thickets, were saturated; the lower parts of the garden turned into a morass. At intervals, when the wind broke forth again, there passed overhead a wild coil of clashing branches; and between-whiles the whole enclosure continuously and stridently resounded with the rain. I advanced close to the window and contrived to read the face of my watch. It was half-past seven; they would not retire before ten, they might not before midnight, and the prospect was unpleasant. In a lull of the wind I could hear from the inside the voice of Flora reading aloud; the words of course inaudible--only a flow of undecipherable speech, quiet, cordial, colourless, more intimate and winning, more eloquent of her personality, but not less beautiful than song. And the next moment the clamour of a fresh squall broke out about the cottage; the voice was drowned in its bellowing, and I was glad to retreat from my dangerous post. For three egregious hours I must now suffer the elements to do their worst upon me, and continue to hold my ground in patience. I recalled the least fortunate of my services in the field: being out-sentry of the pickets in weather no less vile, sometimes unsuppered, and with nothing to look forward to by way of breakfast but musket-balls; and they seemed light in comparison. So strangely are we built: so much more strong is the love of woman than the mere love of life. At last my patience was rewarded. The light disappeared from the parlour and reappeared a moment after in the room above. I was pretty well informed for the enterprise that lay before me. I knew the lair of the dragon--that which was just illuminated. I knew the bower of my Rosamond, and how excellently it was placed on the ground-level, round the flank of the cottage, and out of earshot of her formidable aunt. Nothing was left but to apply my knowledge. I was then at the bottom of the garden, whither I had gone (Heaven save the mark!) for warmth, that I might walk to and fro unheard, and keep myself from perishing. The night had fallen still, the wind ceased; the noise of the rain had much lightened, if it had not stopped, and was succeeded by the dripping of the garden trees. In the midst of this lull, and as I was already drawing near to the cottage, I was startled by the sound of a window-sash screaming in its channels; and a step or two beyond I became aware of a gush of light upon the darkness. It fell from Flora's window, which she had flung open on the night, and where she now sat, roseate and pensive, in the shine of two candles falling from behind, her tresses deeply embowering and shading her; the suspended comb still in one hand, the other idly clinging to the iron stanchions with which the window was barred. Keeping to the turf, and favoured by the darkness of the night and the patter of the rain which was now returning, though without wind, I approached until I could almost have touched her. It seemed a grossness of which I was incapable to break up her reverie by speech. I stood and drank her in with my eyes; how the light made a glory in her hair, and (what I have always thought the most ravishing thing in nature) how the planes ran into each other, and were distinguished, and how the hues blended and varied, and were shaded off, between the cheek and neck. At first I was abashed: she wore her beauty like an immediate halo of refinement: she discouraged me like an angel. But as I continued to gaze, hope and life returned to me; I forgot my timidity, I forgot the sickening pack of wet clothes with which I stood burdened, I tingled with new blood. Still unconscious of my presence, still gazing before her upon the illuminated image of the window, the straight shadows of the bars, the glinting of pebbles on the path, and the impenetrable night on the garden and the hills beyond it, she heaved a deep breath that struck upon my heart like an appeal. "Why does Miss Gilchrist sigh?" I whispered. "Does she recall absent friends?" She turned her head swiftly in my direction; it was the only sign of surprise she deigned to make. At the same time I stepped into the light and bowed profoundly. "You!" she said. "Here?" "Yes, I am here," I replied. "I have come very far, it may be a hundred and fifty leagues, to see you. I have waited all this night in your garden. Will Miss Gilchrist not offer her hand--to a friend in trouble?" She extended it between the bars, and I dropped upon one knee on the wet path and kissed it twice. At the second it was withdrawn suddenly, methought with more of a start than she had hitherto displayed. I regained my former attitude, and we were both silent a while. My timidity returned on me tenfold. I looked in her face for any signals of anger, and seeing her eyes to waver and fall aside from mine, augured that all was well. "You must have been mad to come here!" she broke out. "Of all places under heaven this is no place for you to come. And I was just thinking you were safe in France!" "You were thinking of me!" I cried. "Mr. St. Ives, you cannot understand your danger," she replied. "I am sure of it, and yet I cannot find it in my heart to tell you. O, be persuaded, and go!" "I believe I know the worst. But I was never one to set an undue value on life, the life that we share with beasts. My university has been in the wars, not a famous place of education, but one where a man learns to carry his life in his hand as lightly as a glove, and for his lady or his honour to lay it as lightly down. You appeal to my fears, and you do wrong. I have come to Scotland with my eyes quite open to see you and to speak with you--it may be for the last time. With my eyes quite open, I say; and if I did not hesitate at the beginning, do you think that I would draw back now?" "You do not know!" she cried, with rising agitation. "This country, even this garden, is death to you. They all believe it; I am the only one that does not. If they hear you now, if they heard a whisper--I dread to think of it. O, go, go this instant. It is my prayer." "Dear lady, do not refuse me what I have come so far to seek; and remember that out of all the millions in England there is no other but yourself in whom I can dare confide. I have all the world against me; you are my only ally; and as I have to speak, you have to listen. All is true that they say of me, and all of it false at the same time. I did kill this man Goguelat--it was that you meant?" She mutely signed to me that it was; she had become deadly pale. "But I killed him in fair fight. Till then, I had never taken a life unless in battle, which is my trade. But I was grateful, I was on fire with gratitude, to one who had been good to me, who had been better to me than I could have dreamed of an angel, who had come into the darkness of my prison like sunrise. The man Goguelat insulted her. O, he had insulted _me_ often, it was his favourite pastime, and he might insult me as he pleased--for who was I? But with that lady it was different. I could never forgive myself if I had let it pass. And we fought, and he fell, and I have no remorse." I waited anxiously for some reply. The worst was now out, and I knew that she had heard of it before; but it was impossible for me to go on with my narrative without some shadow of encouragement. "You blame me?" "No, not at all. It is a point I cannot speak on--I am only a girl. I am sure you were in the right: I have always said so--to Ronald. Not, of course, to my aunt. I am afraid I let her speak as she will. You must not think me a disloyal friend; and even with the Major--I did not tell you he had become quite a friend of ours--Major Chevenix, I mean--he has taken such a fancy to Ronald! It was he that brought the news to us of that hateful Clausel being captured, and all that he was saying. I was indignant with him. I said--I dare say I said too much--and I must say he was very good-natured. He said, 'You and I, who are his friends, _know_ that Champdivers is innocent. But what is the use of saying it?' All this was in the corner of the room, in what they call an aside. And then he said, 'Give me a chance to speak to you in private; I have much to tell you.' And he did. And told me just what you did--that it was an affair of honour, and no blame attached to you. O, I must say I like that Major Chevenix!" At this I was seized with a great pang of jealousy. I remembered the first time that he had seen her; the interest that he seemed immediately to conceive; and I could not but admire the dog for the use he had been ingenious enough to make of our acquaintance in order to supplant me. All is fair in love and war. For all that, I was now no less anxious to do the speaking myself than I had been before to hear Flora. At least, I could keep clear of the hateful image of Major Chevenix. Accordingly I burst at once on the narrative of my adventures. It was the same as you have read, but briefer, and told with a very different purpose. Now every incident had a particular bearing, every by-way branched off to Rome--and that was Flora. When I had begun to speak I had kneeled upon the gravel withoutside the low window, rested my arms upon the sill, and lowered my voice to the most confidential whisper. Flora herself must kneel upon the other side, and this brought our heads upon a level, with only the bars between us. So placed, so separated, it seemed that our proximity, and the continuous and low sounds of my pleading voice, worked progressively and powerfully on her heart, and perhaps not less so on my own. For these spells are double-edged. The silly birds may be charmed with the pipe of the fowler, which is but a tube of reeds. Not so with a bird of our own feather! As I went on, and my resolve strengthened, and my voice found new modulations, and our faces were drawn closer to the bars and to each other, not only she, but I, succumbed to the fascination, and were kindled by the charm. We make love, and thereby ourselves fall the deeper in it. It is with the heart only that one captures a heart. "And now," I continued, "I will tell you what you can still do for me. I run a little risk just now, and you see for yourself how unavoidable it is for any man of honour. But if--but in case of the worst, I do not choose to enrich either my enemies or the Prince Regent. I have here the bulk of what my uncle gave me. Eight thousand odd pounds. Will you take care of it for me? Do not think of it merely as money; take and keep it as a relic of your friend or some precious piece of him. I may have bitter need of it ere long. Do you know the old country story of the giant who gave his heart to his wife to keep for him, thinking it safer to repose on her loyalty than his own strength? Flora, I am the giant--a very little one: will you be the keeper of my life? It is my heart I offer you in this symbol. In the sight of God, if you will have it, I give you my name, I endow you with my money. If the worst come, if I may never hope to call you wife, let me at least think you will use my uncle's legacy as my widow." "No, not that," she said. "Never that." "What then?" I said. "What else, my angel? What are words to me? There is but one name I care to know you by. Flora, my love!" "Anne!" she said. What sound is so full of music as one's own name uttered for the first time in the voice of her we love! "My darling!" said I. The jealous bars, set at the top and bottom in stone and lime, obstructed the rapture of the moment; but I took her to myself as wholly as they allowed. She did not shun my lips. My arms were wound round her body, which yielded itself generously to my embrace. As we so remained, entwined and yet severed, bruising our faces unconsciously on the cold bars, the irony of the universe--or, as I prefer to say, envy of some of the gods--again stirred up the elements of that stormy night. The wind blew again in the tree-tops; a volley of cold sea-rain deluged the garden, and, as the deuce would have it, a gutter which had been hitherto choked up began suddenly to play upon my head and shoulders with the vivacity of a fountain. We parted with a shock; I sprang to my feet, and she to hers, as though we had been discovered. A moment after, but now both standing, we had again approached the window on either side. "Flora," I said, "this is but a poor offer I can make you." She took my hand in hers and clasped it to her bosom. "Rich enough for a queen!" she said, with a lift in her breathing that was more eloquent than words. "Anne, my brave Anne! I would be glad to be your maidservant; I could envy that boy Rowley. But, no!" she broke off, "I envy no one--I need not--I am yours." "Mine," said I, "for ever! By this and this, mine!" "All of me," she repeated. "Altogether, and for ever!" And if the god were envious, he must have seen with mortification how little he could do to mar the happiness of mortals. I stood in a mere waterspout; she herself was wet, not from my embrace only, but from the splashing of the storm. The candles had guttered out; we were in darkness. I could scarce see anything but the shining of her eyes in the dark room. To her I must have appeared as a silhouette, haloed by rain and the spouting of the ancient Gothic gutter above my head. Presently we became more calm and confidential; and when that squall, which proved to be the last of the storm, had blown by, fell into a talk of ways and means. It seems she knew Mr. Robbie, to whom I had been so slenderly accredited by Romaine--was even invited to his house for the evening of Monday, and gave me a sketch of the old gentleman's character, which implied a great deal of penetration in herself, and proved of great use to me in the immediate sequel. It seemed he was an enthusiastic antiquary, and in particular a fanatic of heraldry. I heard it with delight, for I was myself, thanks to M. de Culemberg, fairly grounded in that science, and acquainted with the blazons of most families of note in Europe. And I had made up my mind--even as she spoke, it was my fixed determination, though I was a hundred miles from saying it--to meet Flora on Monday night as a fellow-guest in Mr. Robbie's house. I gave her my money--it was, of course, only paper I had brought. I gave it her, to be her marriage-portion, I declared. "Not so bad a marriage-portion for a private soldier," I told her, laughing, as I passed it through the bars. "O Anne, and where am I to keep it?" she cried. "If my aunt should find it! What would I say?" "Next your heart," I suggested. "Then you will always be near your treasure," she cried, "for you are always there!" We were interrupted by a sudden clearness that fell upon the night. The clouds dispersed: the stars shone in every part of the heavens; and, consulting my watch, I was startled to find it already hard on five in the morning. CHAPTER XXVII THE SABBATH-DAY It was indeed high time I should be gone from Swanston; but what I was to do in the meanwhile was another question. Rowley had received his orders last night: he was to say that I had met a friend, and Mrs. McRankine was not to expect me before morning. A good enough tale in itself; but the dreadful pickle I was in made it out of the question. I could not go home till I had found harbourage, a fire to dry my clothes at, and a bed where I might lie till they were ready. Fortune favoured me again. I had scarce got to the top of the first hill when I spied a light on my left, about a furlong away. It might be a case of sickness; what else it was likely to be--in so rustic a neighbourhood, and at such an ungodly time of the morning--was beyond my fancy. A faint sound of singing became audible, and gradually swelled as I drew near, until at last I could make out the words, which were singularly appropriate both to the hour and to the condition of the singers. "The cock may craw, the day may daw," they sang; and sang it with such laxity both in time and tune, and such sentimental complaisance in the expression, as assured me they had got far into the third bottle at least. I found a plain rustic cottage by the wayside, of the sort called double, with a signboard over the door; and, the lights within streaming forth and somewhat mitigating the darkness of the morning, I was enabled to decipher the inscription: "The Hunters' Tryst, by Alexander Hendry. Porter, Ales, and British Spirits. Beds." My first knock put a period to the music, and a voice challenged tipsily from within. "Who goes there?" it said; and I replied, "A lawful traveller." Immediately after, the door was unbarred by a company of the tallest lads my eyes had ever rested on, all astonishingly drunk and very decently dressed, and one (who was perhaps the drunkest of the lot) carrying a tallow candle, from which he impartially bedewed the clothes of the whole company. As soon as I saw them I could not help smiling to myself to remember the anxiety with which I had approached. They received me and my hastily-concocted story, that I had been walking from Peebles and had lost my way, with incoherent benignity; jostled me among them into the room where they had been sitting, a plain hedgerow alehouse parlour with a roaring fire in the chimney and a prodigious number of empty bottles on the floor; and informed me that I was made, by this reception, a temporary member of the _Six-Feet-High Club_, an athletic society of young men in a good station, who made of the "Hunters' Tryst" a frequent resort. They told me I had intruded on an "all-night sitting," following upon an "all-day Saturday tramp" of forty miles; and that the members would all be up and "as right as ninepence" for the noon-day service at some neighbouring church--Collingwood, if memory serves me right. At this I could have laughed, but the moment seemed ill-chosen. For, though six feet was their standard, they all exceeded that measurement considerably; and I tasted again some of the sensations of childhood, as I looked up to all these lads from a lower plane, and wondered what they would do next. But the Six-Footers, if they were very drunk, proved no less kind. The landlord and servants of the "Hunters' Tryst" were in bed and asleep long ago. Whether by natural gift or acquired habit they could suffer pandemonium to reign all over the house, and yet lie ranked in the kitchen like Egyptian mummies, only that the sound of their snoring rose and fell ceaselessly like the drone of a bagpipe. Here the Six-Footers invaded them--in their citadel, so to speak; counted the bunks and the sleepers; proposed to put me in bed to one of the lasses, proposed to have one of the lasses out to make room for me, fell over chairs, and made noise enough to waken the dead; the whole illuminated by the same young torch-bearer, but now with two candles, and rapidly beginning to look like a man in a snowstorm. At last a bed was found for me, my clothes were hung out to dry before the parlour fire, and I was mercifully left to my repose. I awoke about nine with the sun shining in my eyes. The landlord came at my summons, brought me my clothes dried and decently brushed, and gave me the good news that the Six-Feet-High Club were all abed and sleeping off their excesses. Where they were bestowed was a puzzle to me until (as I was strolling about the garden patch waiting for breakfast) I came on a barn door, and, looking in, saw all the red faces mixed in the straw like plums in a cake. Quoth the stalwart maid who brought me my porridge and bade me "eat them while they were hot," "Ay, they were a' on the ran-dan last nicht! Hout! they're fine lads, and they'll be nane the waur of it. Forby Farbes's coat: I dinna see wha's to get the creish off that!" she added, with a sigh; in which, identifying Forbes as the torch-bearer, I mentally joined. It was a brave morning when I took the road; the sun shone, spring seemed in the air, it smelt like April or May, and some over-venturous birds sang in the coppices as I went by. I had plenty to think of, plenty to be grateful for, that gallant morning; and yet I had a twitter at my heart. To enter the city by daylight might be compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my head suddenly with how much better a countenance I should be able to do it if I could but improvise a companion. Hard by Merchiston I was so fortunate as to observe a bulky gentleman in broadcloth and gaiters, stooping, with his head almost between his knees, before a stone wall. Seizing occasion by the forelock, I drew up as I came alongside and inquired what he had found to interest him. He turned upon me a countenance not much less broad than his back. "Why, sir," he replied, "I was even marvelling at my own indefeasible stupeedity; that I should walk this way every week of my life, weather permitting, and should never before have _notticed_ that stone," touching it at the same time with a goodly oak staff. I followed the indication. The stone, which had been built sideways into the wall, offered traces of heraldic sculpture. At once there came a wild idea into my mind: his appearance tallied with Flora's description of Mr. Robbie; a knowledge of heraldry would go far to clinch the proof; and what could be more desirable than to scrape an informal acquaintance with the man whom I must approach next day with my tale of the drovers, and whom I yet wished to please? I stooped in turn. "A chevron," I said; "on a chief three mullets? Looks like Douglas, does it not?" "Yes, sir, it does; you are right," said he: "it _does_ look like Douglas; though, without the tinctures, and the whole thing being so battered and broken up, who shall venture an opinion? But allow me to be more personal, sir. In these degenerate days I am astonished you should display so much proficiency." "O, I was well grounded in my youth by an old gentleman, a friend of my family, and I may say my guardian," said I; "but I have forgotten it since. God forbid I should delude you into thinking me a herald, sir! I am only an ungrammatical amateur." "And a little modesty does no harm even in a herald," says my new acquaintance graciously. In short, we fell together on our onward way, and maintained very amicable discourse along what remained of the country road, past the suburbs, and on into the streets of the New Town, which was as deserted and silent as a city of the dead. The shops were closed, no vehicle ran, cats sported in the midst of the sunny causeway; and our steps and voices re-echoed from the quiet houses. It was the high-water, full and strange, of that weekly trance to which the city of Edinburgh is subjected: the apotheosis of the _Sawbath_; and I confess the spectacle wanted not grandeur, however much it may have lacked cheerfulness. There are few religious ceremonies more imposing. As we thus walked and talked in a public seclusion the bells broke out ringing through all the bounds of the city, and the streets began immediately to be thronged with decent church-goers. "Ah!" said my companion, "there are the bells! Now, sir, as you are a stranger I must offer you the hospitality of my pew. I do not know whether you are at all used with our Scottish form; but in case you are not I will find your places for you; and Dr. Henry Gray, of St. Mary's (under whom I sit), is as good a preacher as we have to show you." This put me in a quandary. It was a degree of risk I was scarce prepared for. Dozens of people, who might pass me by in the street with no more than a second look, would go on from the second to the third, and from that to a final recognition, if I were set before them, immobilised in a pew, during the whole time of service. An unlucky turn of the head would suffice to arrest their attention. "Who is that?" they would think: "surely I should know him!" and, a church being the place in all the world where one has least to think of, it was ten to one they would end by remembering me before the benediction. However, my mind was made up: I thanked my obliging friend, and placed myself at his disposal. Our way now led us into the north-east quarter of the town, among pleasant new faubourgs, to a decent new church of a good size, where I was soon seated by the side of my good Samaritan, and looked upon by a whole congregation of menacing faces. At first the possibility of danger kept me awake; but by the time I had assured myself there was none to be apprehended, and the service was not in the least likely to be enlivened by the arrest of a French spy, I had to resign myself to the task of listening to Dr. Henry Gray. As we moved out, after this ordeal was over, my friend was at once surrounded and claimed by his acquaintances of the congregation; and I was rejoiced to hear him addressed by the expected name of Robbie. So soon as we were clear of the crowd--"Mr. Robbie?" said I, bowing. "The very same, sir," said he. "If I mistake not, a lawyer?" "A writer to His Majesty's Signet, at your service." "It seems we were predestined to be acquaintances!" I exclaimed. "I have here a card in my pocket intended for you. It is from my family lawyer. It was his last word, as I was leaving, to ask to be remembered kindly and to trust you would pass over so informal an introduction." And I offered him the card. "Ay, ay, my old friend Daniel!" says he, looking on the card. "And how does my old friend Daniel?" I gave a favourable view of Mr. Romaine's health. "Well, this is certainly a whimsical incident," he continued. "And since we are thus met already--and so much to my advantage!--the simplest thing will be to prosecute the acquaintance instantly. Let me propose a snack between sermons, a bottle of my particular green seal--and when nobody is looking we can talk blazons, Mr. Ducie!"--which was the name I then used and had already incidentally mentioned, in the vain hope of provoking a return in kind. "I beg your pardon, sir; do I understand you to invite me to your house?" said I. "That was the idea I was trying to convey," said he. "We have the name of hospitable people up here, and I would like you to try mine." "Mr. Robbie, I shall hope to try it some day, but not yet," I replied. "I hope you will not misunderstand me. My business, which brings me to your city, is of a peculiar kind. Till you shall have heard it, and, indeed, till its issue is known, I should feel as if I had stolen your invitation." "Well, well," said he, a little sobered, "it must be as you wish, though you would hardly speak otherwise if you had committed homicide! Mine is the loss. I must eat alone; a very pernicious thing for a person of my habit of body, content myself with a pint of skinking claret, and meditate the discourse. But about this business of yours: if it is so particular as all that, it will doubtless admit of no delay?" "I must confess, sir, it presses," I acknowledged. "Then, let us say to-morrow at half-past eight in the morning," said he; "and I hope, when your mind is at rest (and it does you much honour to take it as you do), that you will sit down with me to the postponed meal, not forgetting the bottle. You have my address?" he added, and gave it me--which was the only thing I wanted. At last, at the level of York Place, we parted with mutual civilities, and I was free to pursue my way, through the mobs of people returning from church, to my lodgings in St. James' Square. Almost at the house door whom should I overtake but my landlady in a dress of gorgeous severity, and dragging a prize in her wake: no less than Rowley, with the cockade in his hat, and a smart pair of tops to his boots! When I said he was in the lady's wake I spoke but in metaphor. As a matter of fact he was squiring her, with the utmost dignity, on his arm; and I followed them up the stairs, smiling to myself. Both were quick to salute me as soon as I was perceived, and Mrs. McRankine inquired where I had been. I told her boastfully, giving her the name of the church and the divine, and ignorantly supposing I should have gained caste. But she soon opened my eyes. In the roots of the Scottish character there are knots and contortions that not only no stranger can understand, but no stranger can follow; he walks among explosives; and his best course is to throw himself upon their mercy--"Just as I am, without one plea," a citation from one of the lady's favourite hymns. The sound she made was unmistakable in meaning, though it was impossible to be written down; and I at once executed the manoeuvre I have recommended. "You must remember I am a perfect stranger in your city," said I. "If I have done wrong, it was in mere ignorance, my dear lady; and this afternoon, if you will be so good as to take me, I shall accompany _you_." But she was not to be pacified at the moment, and departed to her own quarters murmuring. "Well, Rowley," said I; "and have you been to church?" "If you please, sir," he said. "Well, you have not been any less unlucky than I have," I returned. "And how did you get on with the Scottish form?" "Well, sir, it was pretty 'ard, the form was, and reether narrow," he replied. "I don't know w'y it is, but it seems to me like as if things were a good bit changed since William Wallace! That was a main queer church she took me to, Mr. Anne! I don't know as I could have sat it out, if she 'adn't 'a' give me peppermints. She ain't a bad one at bottom, the old girl; she do pounce a bit, and she do worry, but, law bless you, Mr. Anne, it ain't nothink really--she don't _mean_ it. W'y, she was down on me like a 'undredweight of bricks this morning. You see, last night she 'ad me in to supper, and, I beg your pardon, sir, but I took the freedom of playing her a chune or two. She didn't mind a bit; so this morning I began to play to myself, and she flounced in, and flew up, and carried on no end about Sunday!" "You see, Rowley," said I, "they're all mad up here, and you have to humour them. See and don't quarrel with Mrs. McRankine; and, above all, don't argue with her, or you'll get the worst of it. Whatever she says, touch your forelock and say, 'If you please!' or 'I beg pardon, ma'am.' And let me tell you one thing: I am sorry, but you have to go to church with her again this afternoon. That's duty, my boy!" As I had foreseen, the bells had scarce begun before Mrs. McRankine presented herself to be our escort, upon which I sprang up with readiness and offered her my arm. Rowley followed behind. I was beginning to grow accustomed to the risks of my stay in Edinburgh, and it even amused me to confront a new churchful. I confess the amusement did not last until the end; for if Dr. Gray were long, Mr. McCraw was not only longer but more incoherent, and the matter of his sermon (which was a direct attack, apparently, on all the Churches of the world, my own among the number), where it had not the tonic quality of personal insult, rather inclined me to slumber. But I braced myself for my life, kept up Rowley with the end of a pin, and came through it awake, but no more. Bethiah was quite conquered by this "mark of grace," though, I am afraid, she was also moved by more worldly considerations. The first is, the lady had not the least objection to go to church on the arm of an elegantly dressed young gentleman, and be followed by a spruce servant with a cockade in his hat. I could see it by the way she took possession of us, found us the places in the Bible, whispered to me the name of the minister, passed us lozenges, which I (for my part) handed on to Rowley, and at each fresh attention stole a little glance about the church to make sure she was observed. Rowley was a pretty boy; you will pardon me if I also remembered that I was a favourable-looking young man. When we grow elderly, how the room brightens, and begins to look as it ought to look, on the entrance of youth, grace, health, and comeliness! You do not want them for yourself, perhaps not even for your son, but you look on smiling; and when you recall their images--again, it is with a smile. I defy you to see or think of them and not smile with an infinite and intimate, but quite impersonal, pleasure. Well, either I know nothing of women, or that was the case with Bethiah McRankine. She had been to church with a cockade behind her, on the one hand; on the other, her house was brightened by the presence of a pair of good-looking young fellows of the other sex, who were always pleased and deferential in her society, and accepted her views as final. These were sentiments to be encouraged; and, on the way home from church--if church it could be called--I adopted a most insidious device to magnify her interest. I took her into the confidence, that is, of my love affair, and I had no sooner mentioned a young lady with whom my affections were engaged than she turned upon me with a face of awful gravity. "Is she bonny?" she inquired. I gave her full assurances upon that. "To what denoamination does she beloang?" came next, and was so unexpected as almost to deprive me of breath. "Upon my word, ma'am, I have never inquired," cried I; "I only know that she is a heartfelt Christian, and that is enough." "Ay!" she sighed, "if she has the root of the maitter! There's a remnant practically in most of the denoaminations. There's some in the McGlashanites, and some in the Glassites, and mony in the McMillanites, and there's a leeven even in the Estayblishment." "I have known some very good Papists even, if you go to that," said I. "Mr. Ducie, think shame to yoursel'!" she cried. "Why, my dear madam! I only----" I began. "You shouldna jest in sairious maitters," she interrupted. On the whole, she entered into what I chose to tell her of our idyll with avidity, like a cat licking her whiskers over a dish of cream; and, strange to say--and so expansive a passion is that of love!--that I derived a perhaps equal satisfaction from confiding in that breast of iron. It made an immediate bond: from that hour we seemed to be welded into a family party; and I had little difficulty in persuading her to join us and to preside over our tea-table. Surely there was never so ill-matched a trio as Rowley, Mrs. McRankine, and the Viscount Anne! But I am of the Apostle's way, with a difference: all things to all women! When I cannot please a woman, hang me in my cravat! CHAPTER XXVIII EVENTS OF MONDAY: THE LAWYER'S PARTY By half-past eight o'clock on the next morning, I was ringing the bell of the lawyer's office in Castle Street, where I found him ensconced at a business table, in a room surrounded by several tiers of green tin cases. He greeted me like an old friend. "Come away, sir, come away!" said he. "Here is the dentist ready for you, and I think I can promise you that the operation will be practically painless." "I am not so sure of that, Mr. Robbie," I replied, as I shook hands with him. "But at least there shall be no time lost with me." I had to confess to having gone a-roving with a pair of drovers and their cattle, to having used a false name, to having murdered or half-murdered a fellow-creature in a scuffle on the moors, and to having suffered a couple of quite innocent men to lie some time in prison on a charge from which I could have immediately freed them. All this I gave him first of all, to be done with the worst of it; and all this he took with gravity, but without the least appearance of surprise. "Now, sir," I continued, "I expect to have to pay for my unhappy frolic, but I would like very well if it could be managed without my personal appearance or even the mention of my real name. I had so much wisdom as to sail under false colours in this foolish jaunt of mine; my family would be extremely concerned if they had wind of it; but at the same time, if the case of this Faa has terminated fatally, and there are proceedings against Sim and Candlish, I am not going to stand by and see them vexed, far less punished; and I authorise you to give me up for trial if you think that best--or, if you think it unnecessary, in the meanwhile to make preparations for their defence. I hope, sir, that I am as little anxious to be Quixotic as I am determined to be just." "Very fairly spoken," said Mr. Robbie. "It is not much in my line, as doubtless your friend, Mr. Romaine, will have told you. I rarely mix myself up with anything on the criminal side, or approaching it. However, for a young gentleman like you, I may stretch a point, and I dare say I may be able to accomplish more than perhaps another. I will go at once to the Procurator Fiscal's office and inquire." "Wait a moment, Mr. Robbie," said I. "You forget the chapter of expenses. I had thought, for a beginning, of placing a thousand pounds in your hands." "My dear sir, you will kindly wait until I render you my bill," said Mr. Robbie severely. "It seemed to me," I protested, "that coming to you almost as a stranger, and placing in your hands a piece of business so contrary to your habits, some substantial guarantee of my good faith----" "Not the way that we do business in Scotland, sir," he interrupted, with an air of closing the dispute. "And yet, Mr. Robbie," I continued, "I must ask you to allow me to proceed. I do not merely refer to the expenses of the case. I have my eye besides on Sim and Candlish. They are thoroughly deserving fellows; they have been subjected through me to a considerable term of imprisonment; and I suggest, sir, that you should not spare money for their indemnification. This will explain," I added, smiling, "my offer of the thousand pounds. It was in the nature of a measure by which you should judge the scale on which I can afford to have this business carried through." "I take you perfectly, Mr. Ducie," said he. "But the sooner I am off, the better this affair is likely to be guided. My clerk will show you into the waiting-room and give you the day's _Caledonian Mercury_ and the last _Register_ to amuse yourself with in the interval." I believe Mr. Robbie was at least three hours gone. I saw him descend from a cab at the door, and almost immediately after I was shown again into his study, where the solemnity of his manner led me to augur the worst. For some time he had the inhumanity to read me a lecture as to the incredible silliness, "not to say immorality," of my behaviour. "I have the satisfaction in telling you my opinion, because it appears that you are going to get off scot-free," he continued, where, indeed, I thought he might have begun. "The man Faa has been dischairged cured; and the two men, Sim and Candlish, would have been leeberated long ago, if it had not been for their extraordinary loyalty to yourself, Mr. Ducie--or Mr. St. Ivey, as I believe I should now call you. Never a word would either of the two old fools volunteer that in any manner pointed at the existence of such a person; and when they were confronted with Faa's version of the affair, they gave accounts so entirely discrepant with their own former declarations, as well as with each other, that the Fiscal was quite nonplussed, and imaigined there was something behind it. You may believe I soon laughed him out of that! And I had the satisfaction of seeing your two friends set free, and very glad to be on the causeway again." "O sir," I cried, "you should have brought them here!" "No instructions, Mr. Ducie!" said he. "How did I know you wished to renew an acquaintance which you had just terminated so fortunately? And, indeed, to be frank with you, I should have set my face against it, if you had! Let them go! They are paid and contented, and have the highest possible opinion of Mr. St. Ivey! When I gave them fifty pounds apiece--which was rather more than enough, Mr. Ducie, whatever you may think--the man Sim, who has the only tongue of the party, struck his staff on the ground. 'Weel,' says he, 'I aye said he was a gentleman!' 'Man Sim,' said I, 'that was just what Mr. St. Ivey said of yourself!'" "So it was a case of 'Compliments fly when gentlefolk meet.'" "No, no, Mr. Ducie, man Sim and man Candlish are gone out of your life, and a good riddance! They are fine fellows in their way, but no proper associates for the like of yourself; and do you finally agree to be done with all eccentricity--take up with no more drovers, or rovers, or tinkers, but enjoy the naitural pleesures for which your age, your wealth, your intelligence, and (if I may be allowed to say it) your appearance so completely fit you. And the first of these," quoth he, looking at his watch, "will be to step through to my dining-room and share a bachelor's luncheon." Over the meal, which was good, Mr. Robbie continued to develop the same theme. "You're, no doubt, what they call a dancing-man?" said he. "Well, on Thursday night there is the Assembly Ball. You must certainly go there, and you must permit me besides to do the honours of the ceety and send you a ticket. I am a thorough believer in a young man being a young man--but no more drovers or rovers, if you love me! Talking of which puts me in mind that you may be short of partners at the Assembly--O, I have been young myself!--and if ye care to come to anything so portentously tedious as a tea-party at the house of a bachelor lawyer, consisting mainly of his nieces and nephews, and his grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and his wards, and generally the whole clan of the descendants of his clients, you might drop in to-night towards seven o'clock. I think I can show you one or two that are worth looking at, and you can dance with them later on at the Assembly." He proceeded to give me a sketch of one or two eligible young ladies whom I might expect to meet. "And then there's my parteecular friend, Miss Flora," said he. "But I'll make no attempt of a description. You shall see her for yourself." It will be readily supposed that I accepted his invitation; and returned home to make a toilette worthy of her I was to meet and the good news of which I was the bearer. The toilette, I have reason to believe, was a success. Mr. Rowley dismissed me with a farewell: "Crikey! Mr. Anne, but you do look prime!" Even the stony Bethiah was--how shall I say?--dazzled, but scandalised, by my appearance; and while, of course, she deplored the vanity that led to it, she could not wholly prevent herself from admiring the result. "Ay, Mr. Ducie, this is a poor employment for a way-faring Christian man!" she said. "Wi' Christ despised and rejectit in all pairts of the world, and the flag of the Covenant flung doon, you will be muckle better on your knees! However, I'll have to confess that it sets you weel. And if it's the lassie ye're gaun to see the nicht, I suppose I'll just have to excuse ye! Bairns maun be bairns!" she said, with a sigh. "I mind when Mr. McRankine came courtin', and that's lang by-gane--I mind I had a green gown, passementit, that was thocht to become me to admiration. I was nae just exactly what ye would ca' bonny; but I was pale, penetratin', and interestin'." And she leaned over the stair-rail with a candle to watch my descent as long as it should be possible. It was but a little party of Mr. Robbie's--by which I do not so much mean that there were few people, for the rooms were crowded, as that there was very little attempted to entertain them. In one apartment there were tables set out, where the elders were solemnly engaged upon whist; in the other and larger one, a great number of youths of both sexes entertained themselves languidly, the ladies sitting upon chairs to be courted, the gentlemen standing about in various attitudes of insinuation or indifference. Conversation appeared the sole resource, except in so far as it was modified by a number of keepsakes and annuals which lay dispersed upon the tables, and of which the young beaux displayed the illustrations to the ladies. Mr. Robbie himself was customarily in the card-room; only now and again, when he cut out, he made an incursion among the young folks, and rolled about jovially from one to another, the very picture of the general uncle. It chanced that Flora had met Mr. Robbie in the course of the afternoon. "Now, Miss Flora," he had said, "come early, for I have a Phoenix to show you--one Mr. Ducie, a new client of mine that, I vow, I have fallen in love with"; and he was so good as to add a word or two on my appearance, from which Flora conceived a suspicion of the truth. She had come to the party, in consequence, on the knife-edge of anticipation and alarm; had chosen a place by the door, where I found her, on my arrival, surrounded by a posse of vapid youths; and, when I drew near, sprang up to meet me in the most natural manner in the world, and, obviously, with a prepared form of words. "How do you do, Mr. Ducie?" she said. "It is quite an age since I have seen you!" "I have much to tell you, Miss Gilchrist," I replied. "May I sit down?" For the artful girl, by sitting near the door, and the judicious use of her shawl, had contrived to keep a chair empty by her side. She made room for me as a matter of course, and the youths had the discretion to melt before us. As soon as I was once seated her fan flew out, and she whispered behind it-- "Are you mad?" "Madly in love," I replied; "but in no other sense." "I have no patience! You cannot understand what I am suffering!" she said. "What are you to say to Ronald, to Major Chevenix, to my aunt?" "Your aunt?" I cried, with a start. "_Peccavi_! is she here?" "She is in the card-room at whist," said Flora. "Where she will probably stay all the evening?" I suggested. "She may," she admitted; "she generally does!" "Well, then, I must avoid the card-room," said I, "which is very much what I had counted upon doing. I did not come here to play cards, but to contemplate a certain young lady to my heart's content--if it can ever be contented!--and to tell her some good news." "But there are still Ronald and the Major!" she persisted. "They are not card-room fixtures! Ronald will be coming and going. And as for Mr. Chevenix, he----" "Always sits with Miss Flora?" I interrupted. "And they talk of poor St. Ives? I had gathered as much, my dear; and Mr. Ducie has come to prevent it! But pray dismiss these fears! I mind no one but your aunt." "Why my aunt?" "Because your aunt is a lady, my dear, and a very clever lady, and, like all clever ladies, a very rash lady," said I. "You can never count upon them, unless you are sure of getting them in a corner, as I have got you, and talking them over rationally, as I am just engaged on with yourself! It would be quite the same to your aunt to make the worst kind of a scandal, with an equal indifference to my danger and to the feelings of our good host!" "Well," she said, "and what of Ronald, then? Do you think _he_ is above making a scandal? You must know him very little!" "On the other hand, it is my pretension that I know him very well!" I replied. "I must speak to Ronald first--not Ronald to me--that is all!" "Then, please, go and speak to him at once!" she pleaded. "He is there--do you see?--at the upper end of the room, talking to that girl in pink." "And so lose this seat before I have told you my good news?" I exclaimed. "Catch me! And, besides, my dear one, think a little of me and my good news! I thought the bearer of good news was always welcome! I hoped he might be a little welcome for himself! Consider! I have but one friend; and let me stay by her! And there is only one thing I care to hear; and let me hear it!" "O Anne," she sighed, "if I did not love you, why should I be so uneasy? I am turned into a coward, dear! Think, if it were the other way round--if you were quite safe and I was in, O, such danger!" She had no sooner said it than I was convicted of being a dullard. "God forgive me, dear!" I made haste to reply, "I never saw before that there were two sides to this!" And I told her my tale as briefly as I could, and rose to seek Ronald. "You see, my dear, you are obeyed," I said. She gave me a look that was a reward in itself; and as I turned away from her, with a strong sense of turning away from the sun, I carried that look in my bosom like a caress. The girl in pink was an arch, ogling person, with a good deal of eyes and teeth, and a great play of shoulders and rattle of conversation. There could be no doubt, from Mr. Ronald's attitude, that he worshipped the very chair she sat on. But I was quite ruthless. I laid my hand on his shoulder, as he was stooping over her like a hen over a chicken. "Excuse me for one moment, Mr. Gilchrist!" said I. He started and span about in answer to my touch, and exhibited a face of inarticulate wonder. "Yes!" I continued, "it is even myself! Pardon me for interrupting so agreeable a _tête-à-tête_, but you know, my good fellow, we owe a first duty to Mr. Robbie. It would never do to risk making a scene in the man's drawing-room; so the first thing I had to attend to was to have you warned. The name I go by is Ducie, too, in case of accidents." "I--I say, you know!" cried Ronald. "Deuce take it, what are you doing here?" "Hush, hush!" said I. "Not the place, my dear fellow--not the place. Come to my rooms, if you like, to-night after the party, or to-morrow in the morning, and we can talk it out over a segar. But here, you know, it really won't do at all." Before he could collect his mind for an answer, I had given him my address in St. James' Square, and had again mingled with the crowd. Alas! I was not fated to get back to Flora so easily! Mr. Robbie was in the path: he was insatiably loquacious; and as he continued to palaver I watched the insipid youths gather again about my idol, and cursed my fate and my host. He remembered suddenly that I was to attend the Assembly Ball on Thursday, and had only attended to-night by way of a preparative. This put it into his head to present me to another young lady; but I managed this interview with so much art that, while I was scrupulously polite and even cordial to the fair one, I contrived to keep Robbie beside me all the time, and to leave along with him when the ordeal was over. We were just walking away arm in arm, when I spied my friend the Major approaching, stiff as a ramrod and, as usual, obtrusively clean. "O! there's a man I want to know," said I, taking the bull by the horns. "Won't you introduce me to Major Chevenix?" "At a word, my dear fellow," said Robbie; and "Major!" he cried, "come here and let me present to you my friend Mr. Ducie, who desires the honour of your acquaintance." The Major flushed visibly, but otherwise preserved his composure. He bowed very low. "I'm not very sure," he said: "I have an idea we have met before?" "Informally," I said, returning his bow; "and I have long looked forward to the pleasure of regularising our acquaintance." "You are very good, Mr. Ducie," he returned. "Perhaps you could aid my memory a little? Where was it that I had the pleasure?" "O, that would be telling tales out of school," said I, with a laugh, "and before my lawyer, too!" "I'll wager," broke in Mr. Robbie, "that, when you knew my client, Chevenix--the past of our friend Mr. Ducie is an obscure chapter full of horrid secrets--I'll wager, now, you knew him as St. Ivey," says he, nudging me violently. "I think not, sir," said the Major, with pinched lips. "Well, I wish he may prove all right!" continued the lawyer, with certainly the worst-inspired jocularity in the world. "I know nothing by him! He may be a swell mobsman for me with his aliases. You must put your memory on the rack, Major, and when ye've remembered when and where ye've met him, be sure ye tell me." "I will not fail, sir," said Chevenix. "Seek to him!" cried Robbie, waving his hand as he departed. The Major, as soon as we were alone, turned upon me his impassive countenance. "Well," he said, "you have courage." "It is undoubted as your honour, sir," I returned, bowing. "Did you expect to meet me, may I ask?" said he. "You saw, at least, that I courted the presentation," said I. "And you were not afraid?" said Chevenix. "I was perfectly at ease. I knew I was dealing with a gentleman. Be that your epitaph." "Well, there are some other people looking for you," he said, "who will make no bones about the point of honour. The police, my dear sir, are simply agog about you." "And I think that that was coarse," said I. "You have seen Miss Gilchrist?" he inquired, changing the subject. "With whom, I am led to understand, we are on a footing of rivalry?" I asked. "Yes, I have seen her." "And I was just seeking her," he replied. I was conscious of a certain thrill of temper; so, I suppose, was he. We looked each other up and down. "The situation is original," he resumed. "Quite," said I. "But let me tell you frankly you are blowing a cold coal. I owe you so much for your kindness to the prisoner Champdivers." "Meaning that the lady's affections are more advantageously disposed of?" he asked, with a sneer. "Thank you, I am sure. And, since you have given me a lead, just hear a word of good advice in your turn. Is it fair, is it delicate, is it like a gentleman, to compromise the young lady by attentions which (as you know very well) can come to nothing?" I was utterly unable to find words in answer. "Excuse me if I cut this interview short," he went on. "It seems to me doomed to come to nothing, and there is more attractive metal." "Yes," I replied, "as you say, it cannot amount to much. You are impotent, bound hand and foot in honour. You know me to be a man falsely accused, and even if you did not know it, from your position as my rival you have only the chance to stand quite still or to be infamous." "I would not say that," he returned, with another change of colour. "I may hear it once too often." With which he moved off straight for where Flora was sitting amidst her court of vapid youths, and I had no choice but to follow him, a bad second, and reading myself, as I went, a sharp lesson on the command of temper. It is a strange thing how young men in their 'teens go down at the mere wind of the coming of men of twenty-five and upwards! The vapid ones fled without thought of resistance before the Major and me; a few dallied awhile in the neighbourhood--so to speak, with their fingers in their mouths--but presently these also followed the rout, and we remained face to face before Flora. There was a draught in that corner by the door; she had thrown her pelisse over her bare arms and neck, and the dark fur of the trimming set them off. She shone by contrast; the light played on her smooth skin to admiration, and the colour changed in her excited face. For the least fraction of a second she looked from one to the other of her pair of rival swains, and seemed to hesitate. Then she addressed Chevenix: "You are coming to the Assembly, of course, Major Chevenix?" said she. "I fear not; I fear I shall be otherwise engaged," he replied. "Even the pleasure of dancing with you, Miss Flora, must give way to duty." For a while the talk ran harmlessly on the weather, and then branched off towards the war. It seemed to be by no one's fault; it was in the air, and had to come. "Good news from the scene of operations," said the Major. "Good news while it lasts," I said. "But will Miss Gilchrist tell us her private thought upon the war? In her admiration for the victors, does not there mingle some pity for the vanquished?" "Indeed, sir," she said, with animation, "only too much of it! War is a subject that I do not think should be talked of to a girl. I am, I have to be--what do you call it?--a non-combatant? And to remind me of what others have to do and suffer: no, it is not fair!" "Miss Gilchrist has the tender female heart," said Chevenix. "Do not be too sure of that!" she cried. "I would love to be allowed to fight myself!" "On which side?" I asked. "Can you ask?" she exclaimed. "I am a Scottish girl!" "She is a Scottish girl!" repeated the Major, looking at me. "And no one grudges you her pity!" "And I glory in every grain of it she has to spare," said I. "Pity is akin to love." "Well, and let us put that question to Miss Gilchrist. It is for her to decide, and for us to bow to the decision. Is pity, Miss Flora, or is admiration, nearest love?" "O, come," said I, "let us be more concrete. Lay before the lady a complete case: describe your man, then I'll describe _mine_, and Miss Flora shall decide." "I think I see your meaning," said he, "and I'll try. You think that pity--and the kindred sentiments--have the greatest power upon the heart. I think more nobly of women. To my view, the man they love will first of all command their respect; he will be steadfast--proud, if you please; dry, possibly--but of all things steadfast. They will look at him in doubt; at last they will see that stern face which he presents to all the rest of the world soften to them alone. First, trust, I say. It is so that a woman loves who is worthy of heroes." "Your man is very ambitious, sir," said I, "and very much of a hero! Mine is a humbler, and, I would fain think, a more human dog. He is one with no particular trust in himself, with no superior steadfastness to be admired for, who sees a lady's face, who hears her voice, and, without any phrase about the matter, falls in love. What does he ask for, then, but pity?--pity for his weakness, pity for his love, which is his life. You would make women always the inferiors, gaping up at your imaginary lover; he, like a marble statue, with his nose in the air! But God has been wiser than you; and the most steadfast of your heroes may prove human, after all. We appeal to the queen for judgment," I added, turning and bowing before Flora. "And how shall the queen judge?" she asked. "I must give you an answer that is no answer at all. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth': she goes where her heart goes." Her face flushed as she said it; mine also, for I read in it a declaration, and my heart swelled for joy. But Chevenix grew pale. "You make of life a very dreadful kind of lottery, ma'am," said he. "But I will not despair. Honest and unornamental is still my choice." And I must say he looked extremely handsome and very amusingly like the marble statue with its nose in the air to which I had compared him. "I cannot imagine how we got upon this subject," said Flora. "Madam, it was through the war," replied Chevenix. "All roads lead to Rome," I commented. "What else would you expect Mr. Chevenix and myself to talk of?" About this time I was conscious of a certain bustle and movement in the room behind me, but did not pay to it that degree of attention which perhaps would have been wise. There came a certain change in Flora's face; she signalled repeatedly with her fan; her eyes appealed to me obsequiously; there could be no doubt that she wanted something--as well as I could make out, that I should go away and leave the field clear for my rival, which I had not the least idea of doing. At last she rose from her chair with impatience. "I think it time you were saying good-night, Mr. Ducie!" she said. I could not in the least see why, and said so. Whereupon she gave me this appalling answer, "My aunt is coming out of the card-room." In less time than it takes to tell, I had made my bow and my escape. Looking back from the doorway I was privileged to see, for a moment, the august profile and gold eye-glasses of Miss Gilchrist issuing from the card-room; and the sight lent me wings. I stood not on the order of my going; and a moment after, I was on the pavement of Castle Street, and the lighted windows shone down on me, and were crossed by ironical shadows of those who had remained behind. CHAPTER XXIX EVENTS OF TUESDAY: THE TOILS CLOSING This day began with a surprise. I found a letter on my breakfast-table addressed to Edward Ducie, Esquire; and at first I was startled beyond measure. "Conscience doth make cowards of us all!" When I had opened it, it proved to be only a note from the lawyer, enclosing a card for the Assembly Ball on Thursday evening. Shortly after, as I was composing my mind with a segar at one of the windows of the sitting-room, and Rowley, having finished the light share of work that fell to him, sat not far off tootling with great spirit, and a marked preference for the upper octave, Ronald was suddenly shown in. I got him a segar, drew in a chair to the side of the fire, and installed him there--I was going to say, at his ease, but no expression could be farther from the truth. He was plainly on pins and needles, did not know whether to take or to refuse the segar, and, after he had taken it, did not know whether to light or to return it. I saw he had something to say; I did not think it was his own something; and I was ready to offer a large bet it was really something of Major Chevenix's. "Well, and so here you are!" I observed, with pointless cordiality, for I was bound I should do nothing to help him out. If he were, indeed, here running errands for my rival, he might have a fair field, but certainly no favour. "The fact is," he began, "I would rather see you alone." "Why, certainly," I replied. "Rowley, you can step into the bedroom. My dear fellow," I continued, "this sounds serious. Nothing wrong, I trust." "Well, I'll be quite honest," said he. "I _am_ a good deal bothered." "And I bet I know why!" I exclaimed. "And I bet I can put you to rights, too!" "What do you mean?" he asked. "You must be hard up," said I, "and all I can say is, you've come to the right place. If you have the least use for a hundred pounds, or any such trifling sum as that, please mention it. It's here, quite at your service." "I am sure it is most kind of you," said Ronald, "and the truth is, though I can't think how you guessed it, that I really _am_ a little behind board. But I haven't come to talk about that." "No, I dare say!" cried I. "Not worth talking about! But remember, Ronald, you and I are on different sides of the business. Remember that you did me one of those services that make men friends for ever. And since I have had the fortune to come into a fair share of money, just oblige me, and consider so much of it as your own." "No," he said, "I couldn't take it; I couldn't, really. Besides, the fact is, I've come on a very different matter. It's about my sister, St. Ives," and he shook his head menacingly at me. "You're quite sure?" I persisted. "It's here, at your service--up to five hundred pounds, if you like. Well, all right; only remember where it is when you do want it." "O, please let me alone!" cried Ronald: "I've come to say something unpleasant; and how on earth can I do it, if you don't give a fellow a chance? It's about my sister, as I said. You can see for yourself that it can't be allowed to go on. It's compromising; it don't lead to anything; and you're not the kind of man (you must feel it yourself) that I can allow my female relatives to have anything to do with. I hate saying this, St. Ives; it looks like hitting a man when he's down, you know; and I told the Major I very much disliked it from the first. However, it had to be said; and now it has been, and, between gentlemen, it shouldn't be necessary to refer to it again." "It's compromising; it doesn't lead to anything; not the kind of man," I repeated thoughtfully. "Yes, I believe I understand, and shall make haste to put myself _en règle_." I stood up and laid my segar down. "Mr. Gilchrist," said I, with a bow, "in answer to your very natural observations, I beg to offer myself as a suitor for your sister's hand. I am a man of title, of which we think lightly in France, but of ancient lineage, which is everywhere prized. I can display thirty-two quarterings without a blot. My expectations are certainly above the average: I believe my uncle's income averages about thirty thousand pounds, though I admit I was not careful to inform myself. Put it anywhere between fifteen and fifty thousand; it is certainly not less." "All this is very easy to say," said Ronald, with a pitying smile. "Unfortunately, these things are in the air." "Pardon me--in Buckinghamshire," said I, smiling. "Well, what I mean is, my dear St. Ives, that you _can't prove_ them," he continued. "They might just as well not be: do you follow me? You can't bring us any third party to back you up." "O, come!" cried I, springing up and hurrying to the table. "You must excuse me!" I wrote Romaine's address. "There is my reference, Mr. Gilchrist. Until you have written to him, and received his negative answer, I have a right to be treated, and I shall see that you treat me, as a gentleman." He was brought up with a round turn at that. "I beg your pardon, St. Ives," said he. "Believe me, I had no wish to be offensive. But there's the difficulty of this affair; I can't make any of my points without offence! You must excuse me, it's not my fault. But, at any rate, you must see for yourself this proposal of marriage is--is merely impossible, my dear fellow. It's nonsense! Our countries are at war; you are a prisoner." "My ancestor of the time of the Ligue," I replied, "married a Huguenot lady out of the Saintonge, riding two hundred miles through an enemy's country to bring off his bride; and it was a happy marriage." "Well," he began; and then looked down into the fire and became silent. "Well?" I asked. "Well, there's this business of--Goguelat," said he, still looking at the coals in the grate. "What!" I exclaimed, starting in my chair. "What's that you say?" "This business about Goguelat," he repeated. "Ronald," said I, "this is not your doing. These are not your own words. I know where they came from: a coward put them in your mouth." "St. Ives!" he cried, "why do you make it so hard for me? and where's the use of insulting other people? The plain English is, that I can't hear of any proposal of marriage from a man under a charge like that. You must see it for yourself, man! It's the most absurd thing I ever heard of! And you go on forcing me to argue with you, too!" "Because I have had an affair of honour which terminated unhappily, you--a young soldier, or next-door to it--refuse my offer? Do I understand you aright?" said I. "My dear fellow!" he wailed, "of course you can twist my words, if you like. You _say_ it was an affair of honour. Well, I can't, of course, tell you that--I can't--I mean, you must see that that's just the point! Was it? I don't know." "I have the honour to inform you," said I. "Well, other people say the reverse, you see!" "They lie, Ronald, and I will prove it in time." "The short and the long of it is, that any man who is so unfortunate as to have such things said about him is not the man to be my brother-in-law!" he cried. "Do you know who will be my first witness at the court? Arthur Chevenix!" said I. "I don't care!" he cried, rising from his chair and beginning to pace outrageously about the room. "What do you mean, St. Ives? What is this about? It's like a dream, I declare! You made an offer, and I have refused it. I don't like it, I don't want it; and whatever I did, or didn't, wouldn't matter--my aunt wouldn't hear of it anyway! Can't you take your answer, man?" "You must remember, Ronald, that we are playing with edged tools," said I. "An offer of marriage is a delicate subject to handle. You have refused, and you have justified your refusal by several statements: first, that I was an impostor; second, that our countries were at war; and third--No, I will speak," said I; "you can answer when I have done,--and third, that I had dishonourably killed--or was said to have done so--the man Goguelat. Now, my dear fellow, these are very awkward grounds to be taking. From any one else's lips I need scarce tell you how I should resent them; but my hands are tied. I have so much gratitude to you, without talking of the love I bear your sister, that you insult me, when you do so, under the cover of a complete impunity. I must feel the pain--and I do feel it acutely--I can do nothing to protect myself." He had been anxious enough to interrupt me in the beginning; but now, and after I had ceased, he stood a long while silent. "St. Ives," he said at last, "I think I had better go away. This has been very irritating. I never at all meant to say anything of the kind, and I apologise to you. I have all the esteem for you that one gentleman should have for another. I only meant to tell you--to show you what had influenced my mind; and that, in short, the thing was impossible. One thing you may be sure of: _I_ shall do nothing against you. Will you shake hands before I go away?" he blurted out. "Yes," said I, "I agree with you--the interview has been irritating. Let bygones be bygones. Good-bye, Ronald." "Good-bye, St. Ives!" he returned. "I'm heartily sorry." And with that he was gone. The windows of my own sitting-room looked towards the north; but the entrance passage drew its light from the direction of the square. Hence I was able to observe Ronald's departure, his very disheartened gait, and the fact that he was joined, about half-way, by no less a man than Major Chevenix. At this, I could scarce keep from smiling; so unpalatable an interview must be before the pair of them, and I could hear their voices, clashing like crossed swords, in that eternal antiphony of "I told you," and "I told you not." Without doubt, they had gained very little by their visit; but then I had gained less than nothing, and had been bitterly dispirited into the bargain. Ronald had stuck to his guns and refused me to the last. It was no news; but, on the other hand, it could not be contorted into good news. I was now certain that during my temporary absence in France, all irons would be put into the fire, and the world turned upside down, to make Flora disown the obtrusive Frenchman and accept Chevenix. Without doubt she would resist these instances: but the thought of them did not please me, and I felt she should be warned and prepared for the battle. It was no use to try and see her now, but I promised myself early that evening to return to Swanston. In the meantime I had to make all my preparations, and look the coming journey in the face. Here in Edinburgh I was within four miles of the sea, yet the business of approaching random fishermen with my hat in the one hand and a knife in the other, appeared so desperate, that I saw nothing for it but to retrace my steps over the northern counties, and knock a second time at the doors of Burchell Fenn. To do this, money would be necessary; and after leaving my paper in the hands of Flora I had still a balance of about fifteen hundred pounds. Or rather I may say I had them and I had them not; for after my luncheon with Mr. Robbie I had placed the amount, all but thirty pounds of change, in a bank in George Street, on a deposit receipt in the name of Mr. Rowley. This I had designed to be my gift to him, in case I must suddenly depart. But now, thinking better of the arrangement, I despatched my little man, cockade and all, to lift the fifteen hundred. He was not long gone, and returned with a flushed face, and the deposit receipt still in his hand. "No go, Mr. Anne," says he. "How's that?" I inquired. "Well, sir, I found the place all right, and no mistake," said he. "But I tell you what gave me a blue fright! There was a customer standing by the door, and I reckonised him! Who do you think it was, Mr. Anne? W'y, that same Red-Breast--him I had breakfast with near Aylesbury." "You are sure you are not mistaken?" I asked. "Certain sure," he replied. "Not Mr. Lavender, I don't mean, sir; I mean the other party. 'Wot's he doing here?' says I. 'It don't look right.'" "Not by any means," I agreed. I walked to and fro in the apartment reflecting. This particular Bow Street runner might be here by accident; but it was to imagine a singular play of coincidence that he, who had met Rowley and spoken with him in the "Green Dragon," hard by Aylesbury, should be now in Scotland, where he could have no legitimate business, and by the doors of the bank where Rowley kept his account. "Rowley," said I, "he didn't see you, did he?" "Never a fear," quoth Rowley. "W'y, Mr. Anne, sir, if he 'ad, you wouldn't have seen _me_ any more! I ain't a hass, sir!" "Well, my boy, you can put that receipt in your pocket. You'll have no more use for it till you're quite clear of me. Don't lose it, though; it's your share of the Christmas-box: fifteen hundred pounds all for yourself." "Begging your pardon, Mr. Anne, sir, but wot for?" said Rowley. "To set up a public-house upon," said I. "If you'll excuse me, sir, I ain't got any call to set up a public-house, sir," he replied stoutly. "And I tell you wot, sir, it seems to me I'm reether young for the billet. I'm your body-servant, Mr. Anne, or else I'm nothink." "Well, Rowley," I said, "I'll tell you what it's for. It's for the good service you have done me, of which I don't care--and don't dare--to speak. It's for your loyalty and cheerfulness, my dear boy. I had meant it for you; but to tell you the truth, it's past mending now--it has to be yours. Since that man is waiting by the bank, the money can't be touched until I'm gone." "Until you're gone, sir?" re-echoed Rowley. "You don't go anywheres without me, I can tell you that, Mr. Anne, sir!" "Yes, my boy," said I, "we are going to part very soon now; probably to-morrow. And it's for my sake, Rowley! Depend upon it, if there was any reason at all for that Bow Street man being at the bank, he was not there to look out for _you_. How they could have found out about the account so early is more than I can fathom; some strange coincidence must have played me false! But there the fact is; and, Rowley, I'll not only have to say farewell to you presently, I'll have to ask you to stay indoors until I can say it. Remember, my boy, it's only so that you can serve me now." "W'y, sir, you say the word, and of course I'll do it!" he cried. "'Nothink by 'alves,' is my motto! I'm your man, through thick and thin, live or die, I am!" In the meantime there was nothing to be done till towards sunset. My only chance now was to come again as quickly as possible to speech of Flora, who was my only practicable banker; and not before evening was it worth while to think of that. I might compose myself as well as I was able over the _Caledonian Mercury_, with its ill news of the campaign of France and belated documents about the retreat from Russia; and, as I sat there by the fire, I was sometimes all awake with anger and mortification at what I was reading, and sometimes again I would be three parts asleep as I dozed over the barren items of home intelligence. "Lately arrived"--this is what I suddenly stumbled on--"at Dumbreck's Hotel, the Viscount of Saint-Yves." "Rowley," said I. "If you please, Mr. Anne, sir," answered the obsequious, lowering his pipe. "Come and look at this, my boy," said I, holding out the paper. "My crikey!" said he. "That's 'im, sir, sure enough!" "Sure enough, Rowley," said I. "He's on the trail. He has fairly caught up with us. He and this Bow Street man have come together, I would swear. And now here is the whole field, quarry, hounds and hunters, all together in this city of Edinburgh." "And wot are you goin' to do now, sir? Tell you wot, let me take it in 'and, please! Gimme a minute, and I'll disguise myself, and go out to this Dum--to this hotel, leastways, sir--and see wot he's up to. You put your trust in me, Mr. Anne: I'm fly, don't you make no mistake about it. I'm all a-growing and a-blowing, I am." "Not one foot of you," said I. "You are a prisoner, Rowley, and make up your mind to that. So am I, or next door to it. I showed it you for a caution; if you go on the streets, it spells death to me, Rowley." "If you please, sir," says Rowley. "Come to think of it," I continued, "you must take a cold, or something. No good of awakening Mrs. McRankine's suspicions." "A cold?" he cried, recovering immediately from his depression. "I can do it, Mr. Anne." And he proceeded to sneeze and cough and blow his nose, till I could not restrain myself from smiling. "O, I tell you, I know a lot of them dodges," he observed proudly. "Well, they come in very handy," said I. "I'd better go at once and show it to the old gal, 'adn't I?" he asked. I told him, by all means; and he was gone upon the instant, gleeful as though to a game of football. I took up the paper and read carelessly on, my thoughts engaged with my immediate danger, till I struck on the next paragraph:-- "In connection with the recent horrid murder in the Castle, we are desired to make public the following intelligence. The soldier, Champdivers, is supposed to be in the neighbourhood of this city. He is about the middle height, or rather under, of a pleasing appearance and highly genteel address. When last heard of he wore a fashionable suit of pearl-grey, and boots with fawn-coloured tops. He is accompanied by a servant about sixteen years of age, speaks English without any accent, and passed under the _alias_ of Ramornie. A reward is offered for his apprehension." In a moment I was in the next room, stripping from me the pearl-coloured suit! I confess I was now a good deal agitated. It is difficult to watch the toils closing slowly and surely about you, and to retain your composure; and I was glad that Rowley was not present to spy on my confusion. I was flushed, my breath came thick; I cannot remember a time when I was more put out. And yet I must wait and do nothing, and partake of my meals, and entertain the ever-garrulous Rowley, as though I were entirely my own man. And if I did not require to entertain Mrs. McRankine also, that was but another drop of bitterness in my cup! For what ailed my landlady, that she should hold herself so severely aloof, that she should refuse conversation, that her eyes should be reddened, that I should so continually hear the voice of her private supplications sounding through the house? I was much deceived, or she had read the insidious paragraph and recognised the comminated pearl-grey suit. I remember now a certain air with which she had laid the paper on my table, and a certain sniff, between sympathy and defiance, with which she had announced it: "There's your _Mercury_ for ye!" In this direction, at least, I saw no pressing danger; her tragic countenance betokened agitation; it was plain she was wrestling with her conscience, and the battle still hung dubious. The question of what to do troubled me extremely. I could not venture to touch such an intricate and mysterious piece of machinery as my landlady's spiritual nature; it might go off at a word, and in any direction, like a badly-made firework. And while I praised myself extremely for my wisdom in the past, that I had made so much a friend of her, I was all abroad as to my conduct in the present. There seemed an equal danger in pressing and in neglecting the accustomed marks of familiarity. The one extreme looked like impudence, and might annoy; the other was a practical confession of guilt. Altogether, it was a good hour for me when the dusk began to fall in earnest on the streets of Edinburgh, and the voice of an early watchman bade me set forth. I reached the neighbourhood of the cottage before seven; and as I breasted the steep ascent which leads to the garden wall, I was struck with surprise to hear a dog. Dogs I had heard before, but only from the hamlet on the hillside above. Now, this dog was in the garden itself, where it roared aloud in the paroxysms of fury, and I could hear it leaping and straining on the chain. I waited some while, until the brute's fit of passion had roared itself out. Then, with the utmost precaution, I drew near again, and finally approached the garden wall. So soon as I had clapped my head above the level, however, the barking broke forth again with redoubled energy. Almost at the same time, the door of the cottage opened, and Ronald and the Major appeared upon the threshold with a lantern. As they so stood, they were almost immediately below me, strongly illuminated, and within easy earshot. The Major pacified the dog, who took instead to low, uneasy growling intermingled with occasional yelps. "Good thing I brought Towzer!" said Chevenix. "Damn him, I wonder where he is!" said Ronald; and he moved the lantern up and down, and turned the night into a shifting puzzle-work of gleam and shadow. "I think I'll make a sally." "I don't think you will," replied Chevenix. "When I agreed to come out here and do sentry-go, it was on one condition, Master Ronald: don't you forget that! Military discipline, my boy! Our beat is this path close about the house. Down, Towzer! good boy, good boy--gently, then!" he went on, caressing his confounded monster. "To think! The beggar may be hearing us this minute!" cried Ronald. "Nothing more probable," said the Major. "You there, St. Ives?" he added, in a distinct but guarded voice. "I only want to tell you, you had better go home. Mr. Gilchrist and I take watch and watch." The game was up. "_Beaucoup de plaisir!_" I replied, in the same tones. "_Il fait un peu froid pour veiller; gardez-vous des engelures!_" I suppose it was done in a moment of ungovernable rage; but in spite of the excellent advice he had given to Ronald the moment before, Chevenix slipped the chain, and the dog sprang, straight as an arrow, up the bank. I stepped back, picked up a stone of about twelve pounds weight, and stood ready. With a bound the beast landed on the cope-stone of the wall; and, almost in the same instant, my missile caught him fair in the face. He gave a stifled cry, went tumbling back where he had come from, and I could hear the twelve-pounder accompany him in his fall. Chevenix, at the same moment, broke out in a roaring voice: "The hell-hound! If he's killed my dog!" and I judged, upon all grounds, it was as well to be off. CHAPTER XXX EVENTS OF WEDNESDAY: THE UNIVERSITY OF CRAMOND I awoke to much diffidence, even to a feeling that might be called the beginnings of panic, and lay for hours in my bed considering the situation. Seek where I pleased, there was nothing to encourage me and plenty to appal. They kept a close watch about the cottage; they had a beast of a watch-dog--at least, unless I had settled it; and if I had, I knew its bereaved master would only watch the more indefatigably for the loss. In the pardonable ostentation of love I had given all the money I could spare to Flora; I had thought it glorious that the hunted exile should come down, like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and pour thousands in the lap of the beloved. Then I had in an hour of arrant folly buried what remained to me in a bank in George Street. And now I must get back the one or the other; and which? and how? As I tossed in my bed, I could see three possible courses, all extremely perilous. First, Rowley might have been mistaken; the bank might not be watched; it might still be possible for him to draw the money on the deposit receipt. Second, I might apply again to Robbie. Or, third, I might dare everything, go to the Assembly Ball, and speak with Flora under the eyes of all Edinburgh. This last alternative, involving as it did the most horrid risks, and the delay of forty-eight hours, I did but glance at with an averted head, and turned again to the consideration of the others. It was the likeliest thing in the world that Robbie had been warned to have no more to do with me. The whole policy of the Gilchrists was in the hands of Chevenix; and I thought this was a precaution so elementary that he was certain to have taken it. If he had not, of course I was all right: Robbie would manage to communicate with Flora; and by four o'clock I might be on the south road and, I was going to say, a free man. Lastly, I must assure myself with my own eyes whether the bank in George Street were beleaguered. I called to Rowley and questioned him tightly as to the appearance of the Bow Street officer. "What sort of looking man is he, Rowley?" I asked, as I began to dress. "Wot sort of a looking man he is?" repeated Rowley. "Well, I don't very well know wot you would say, Mr. Anne. He ain't a beauty, any'ow." "Is he tall?" "Tall? Well, no, I shouldn't say _tall_, Mr. Anne." "Well, then, is he short?" "Short? No, I don't think I would say he was what you would call _short_. No, not piticular short, sir." "Then, I suppose, he must be about the middle height?" "Well, you might say it, sir; but not remarkable so." I smothered an oath. "Is he clean-shaved?" I tried him again. "Clean-shaved?" he repeated, with the same air of anxious candour. "Good heaven, man, don't repeat my words like a parrot!" I cried. "Tell me what the man was like: it is of the first importance that I should be able to recognise him." "I'm trying to, Mr. Anne. But _clean-shaved_? I don't seem to rightly get hold of that p'int. Sometimes it might appear to me like as if he was; and sometimes like as if he wasn't. No, it wouldn't surprise me now if you was to tell me he 'ad a bit o' whisker." "Was the man red-faced?" I roared, dwelling on each syllable. "I don't think you need go for to get cross about it, Mr. Anne!" said he. "I'm tellin' you every blessed thing I see! Red-faced? Well, no, not as you would remark upon." A dreadful calm fell upon me. "Was he anywise pale?" I asked. "Well, it don't seem to me as though he were. But I tell you truly, I didn't take much heed to that." "Did he look like a drinking man?" "Well, no. If you please, sir, he looked more like an eating one." "O, he was stout, was he?" "No, sir. I couldn't go so far as that. No, he wasn't not to say _stout_. If anything, lean rather." I need not go on with the infuriating interview. It ended as it began, except that Rowley was in tears, and that I had acquired one fact. The man was drawn for me as being of any height you like to mention, and of any degree of corpulence or leanness; clean-shaved or not, as the case might be; the colour of his hair Rowley "could not take it upon himself to put a name on"; that of his eyes he thought to have been blue--nay, it was the one point on which he attained to a kind of tearful certainty. "I'll take my davy on it," he asseverated. They proved to have been as black as sloes, very little and very near together. So much for the evidence of the artless! And the fact, or rather the facts, acquired? Well, they had to do not with the person but with his clothing. The man wore knee breeches and white stockings; his coat was "some kind of a lightish colour--or betwixt that and dark"; and he wore a "moleskin weskit." As if this were not enough, he presently hailed me from my breakfast in a prodigious flutter, and showed me an honest and rather venerable citizen passing in the Square. "That's _him_, sir," he cried, "the very moral of him! Well, this one is better dressed, and p'raps a trifler taller; and in the face he don't favour him noways at all, sir. No, not when I come to look again, 'e don't seem to favour him noways." "Jackass!" said I, and I think the greatest stickler for manners will admit the epithet to have been justified. Meanwhile the appearance of my landlady added a great load of anxiety to what I already suffered. It was plain that she had not slept; equally plain that she had wept copiously. She sighed, she groaned, she drew in her breath, she shook her head, as she waited on table. In short, she seemed in so precarious a state, like a petard three times charged with hysteria, that I did not dare to address her; and stole out of the house on tiptoe, and actually ran downstairs, in the fear that she might call me back. It was plain that this degree of tension could not last long. It was my first care to go to George Street, which I reached (by good luck) as a boy was taking down the bank shutters. A man was conversing with him; he had white stockings and a moleskin waistcoat, and was as ill-looking a rogue as you would want to see in a day's journey. This seemed to agree fairly well with Rowley's _signalement_: he had declared emphatically (if you remember), and had stuck to it besides, that the companion of the great Lavender was no beauty. Thence I made my way to Mr. Robbie's, where I rang the bell. A servant answered the summons, and told me the lawyer was engaged, as I had half expected. "Wha shall I say was callin'?" she pursued: and when I had told her "Mr. Ducie," "I think this'll be for you, then?" she added, and handed me a letter from the hall table. It ran:-- "DEAR MR. DUCIE, "My single advice to you is to leave _quam primum_ for the South.--Yours, T. ROBBIE." That was short and sweet. It emphatically extinguished hope in one direction. No more was to be gotten of Robbie; and I wondered, from my heart, how much had been told him. Not too much, I hoped, for I liked the lawyer who had thus deserted me, and I placed a certain reliance in the discretion of Chevenix. He would not be merciful; on the other hand, I did not think he would be cruel without cause. It was my next affair to go back along George Street, and assure myself whether the man in the moleskin vest was still on guard. There was no sign of him on the pavement. Spying the door of a common stair nearly opposite the bank, I took it in my head that this would be a good point of observation, crossed the street, entered with a businesslike air, and fell immediately against the man in the moleskin vest. I stopped and apologised to him; he replied in an unmistakable English accent, thus putting the matter almost beyond doubt. After this encounter I must, of course, ascend to the top story, ring the bell of a suite of apartments, inquire for Mr. Vavasour, learn (with no great surprise) that he did not live there, come down again and, again politely saluting the man from Bow Street, make my escape at last into the street. I was now driven back upon the Assembly Ball. Robbie had failed me. The bank was watched; it would never do to risk Rowley in that neighbourhood. All I could do was to wait until the morrow evening, and present myself at the Assembly, let it end as it might. But I must say I came to this decision with a good deal of genuine fright; and here I came for the first time to one of those places where my courage stuck. I do not mean that my courage boggled and made a bit of a bother over it, as it did over the escape from the Castle; I mean, stuck, like a stopped watch, or a dead man. Certainly I would go to the ball; certainly I must see this morning about my clothes. That was all decided. But the most of the shops were on the other side of the valley, in the Old Town; and it was now my strange discovery that I was physically unable to cross the North Bridge! It was as though a precipice had stood between us, or the deep sea had intervened. Nearer to the Castle my legs refused to bear me. I told myself this was mere superstition; I made wagers with myself--and gained them; I went down on the esplanade of Princes Street, walked and stood there, alone and conspicuous, looking across the garden at the old grey bastions of the fortress, where all these troubles had begun. I cocked my hat, set my hand on my hip, and swaggered on the pavement, confronting detection. And I found I could do all this with a sense of exhilaration that was not unpleasing, and with a certain _crânerie_ of manner that raised me in my own esteem. And yet there was one thing I could not bring my mind to face up to, or my limbs to execute; and that was to cross the valley into the Old Town. It seemed to me I must be arrested immediately if I had done so; I must go straight into the twilight of a prison cell, and pass straight thence to the gross and final embraces of the nightcap and the halter. And yet it was from no reasoned fear of the consequences that I could not go. I was unable. My horse balked, and there was an end! My nerve was gone: here was a discovery for a man in such imminent peril, set down to so desperate a game, which I could only hope to win by continual luck and unflagging effrontery! The strain had been too long continued, and my nerve was gone. I fell into what they call panic fear, as I have seen soldiers do on the alarm of a night attack, and turned out of Princes Street at random as though the devil were at my heels. In St. Andrew Square, I remember vaguely hearing some one call out. I paid no heed, but pressed on blindly. A moment after, a hand fell heavily on my shoulder, and I thought I had fainted. Certainly the world went black about me for some seconds; and when that spasm passed I found myself standing face to face with the "cheerful extravagant," in what sort of disarray I really dare not imagine, dead white at least, shaking like an aspen, and mowing at the man with speechless lips. And this was the soldier of Napoleon, and the gentleman who intended going next night to an Assembly Ball! I am the more particular in telling of my breakdown, because it was my only experience of the sort; and it is a good tale for officers. I will allow no man to call me coward; I have made my proofs; few men more. And yet I (come of the best blood in France and inured to danger from a child) did, for some ten or twenty minutes, make this hideous exhibition of myself on the streets of the New Town of Edinburgh. With my first available breath I begged his pardon. I was of an extremely nervous disposition, recently increased by late hours; I could not bear the slightest start. He seemed much concerned. "You must be in a devil of a state!" said he; "though of course it was my fault--damnably silly, vulgar sort of thing to do! A thousand apologies! But you really must be run down; you should consult a medico. My dear sir, a hair of the dog that bit you is clearly indicated. A touch of Blue Ruin, now? Or, come: it's early, but is man the slave of hours? what do you say to a chop and a bottle in Dumbreck's Hotel?" I refused all false comfort; but when he went on to remind me that this was the day when the University of Cramond met; and to propose a five-mile walk into the country and a dinner in the company of young asses like himself, I began to think otherwise. I had to wait until to-morrow evening, at any rate; this might serve as well as anything else to bridge the dreary hours. The country was the very place for me: and walking is an excellent sedative for the nerves. Remembering poor Rowley, feigning a cold in our lodgings and immediately under the guns of the formidable and now doubtful Bethiah, I asked if I might bring my servant. "Poor devil! it is dull for him," I explained. "The merciful man is merciful to his ass," observed my sententious friend. "Bring him, by all means! "'The harp, his sole remaining joy, Was carried by an orphan boy'; and I have no doubt the orphan boy can get some cold victuals in the kitchen, while the Senatus dines." Accordingly, being now quite recovered from my unmanly condition, except that nothing could yet induce me to cross the North Bridge, I arranged for my ball dress at a shop in Leith Street, where I was not served ill, cut out Rowley from his seclusion, and was ready along with him at the trysting-place, the corner of Duke Street and York Place, by a little after two. The University was represented in force: eleven persons, including ourselves, Byfield the aëronaut, and the tall lad, Forbes, whom I had met on the Sunday morning, bedewed with tallow, at the "Hunters' Tryst." I was introduced; and we set off by way of Newhaven and the sea-beach; at first through pleasant country roads, and afterwards along a succession of bays of a fairylike prettiness, to our destination--Cramond on the Almond--a little hamlet on a little river, embowered in woods, and looking forth over a great flat of quicksand to where a little islet stood planted in the sea. It was miniature scenery, but charming of its kind. The air of this good winter afternoon was bracing, but not cold. All the way my companions were skylarking, jesting, and making puns, and I felt as if a load had been taken off my lungs and spirits, and skylarked with the best of them. Byfield I observed, because I had heard of him before, and seen his advertisements, not at all because I was disposed to feel interest in the man. He was dark and bilious and very silent; frigid in his manners, but burning internally with a great fire of excitement; and he was so good as to bestow a good deal of his company and conversation (such as it was) upon myself, who was not in the least grateful. If I had known how I was to be connected with him in the immediate future, I might have taken more pains. In the hamlet of Cramond there is a hostelry of no very promising appearance, and here a room had been prepared for us, and we sat down to table. "Here you will find no guttling or gormandising, no turtle or nightingales' tongues," said the extravagant, whose name, by the way, was Dalmahoy. "The device, sir, of the University of Cramond is Plain Living and High Drinking." Grace was said by the Professor of Divinity, in a macaronic Latin, which I could by no means follow, only I could hear it rhymed, and I guessed it to be more witty than reverent. After which the _Senatus Academicus_ sat down to rough plenty in the shape of rizzar'd haddocks and mustard, a sheep's head, a haggis, and other delicacies of Scotland. The dinner was washed down with brown stout in bottle, and as soon as the cloth was removed, glasses, boiling water, sugar, and whisky were set out for the manufacture of toddy. I played a good knife and fork, did not shun the bowl, and took part, so far as I was able, in the continual fire of pleasantry with which the meal was seasoned. Greatly daring, I ventured, before all these Scotsmen, to tell Sim's Tale of Tweedie's dog; and I was held to have done such extraordinary justice to the dialect, "for a Southron," that I was immediately voted into the Chair of Scots, and became, from that moment, a full member of the University of Cramond. A little after, I found myself entertaining them with a song; and a little after--perhaps a little in consequence--it occurred to me that I had had enough, and would be very well inspired to take French leave. It was not difficult to manage, for it was nobody's business to observe my movements, and conviviality had banished suspicion. I got easily forth of the chamber, which reverberated with the voices of these merry and learned gentlemen, and breathed a long breath. I had passed an agreeable afternoon and evening, and I had apparently escaped scot-free. Alas! when I looked into the kitchen, there was my monkey, drunk as a lord, toppling on the edge of the dresser, and performing on the flageolet to an audience of the house lasses and some neighbouring ploughmen. I routed him promptly from his perch, stuck his hat on, put his instrument in his pocket, and set off with him for Edinburgh. His limbs were of paper, his mind quite in abeyance; I must uphold and guide him, prevent his frantic dives, and set him continually on his legs again. At first he sang wildly, with occasional outbursts of causeless laughter. Gradually an inarticulate melancholy succeeded; he wept gently at times; would stop in the middle of the road, say firmly, "No, no, no," and then fall on his back; or else address me solemnly as "M'lord" and fall on his face by way of variety. I am afraid I was not always so gentle with the little pig as I might have been, but really the position was unbearable. We made no headway at all, and I suppose we were scarce gotten a mile away from Cramond, when the whole _Senatus Academicus_ was heard hailing, and doubling the pace to overtake us. Some of them were fairly presentable; and they were all Christian martyrs compared to Rowley; but they were in a frolicsome and rollicking humour that promised danger as we approached the town. They sang songs, they ran races, they fenced with their walking-sticks and umbrellas; and, in spite of this violent exercise, the fun grew only the more extravagant with the miles they traversed. Their drunkenness was deep-seated and permanent, like fire in a peat; or rather--to be quite just to them--it was not so much to be called drunkenness at all, as the effect of youth and high spirits--a fine night, and the night young, a good road under foot, and the world before you! I had left them once somewhat unceremoniously; I could not attempt it a second time; and, burthened as I was with Mr. Rowley, I was really glad of assistance. But I saw the lamps of Edinburgh draw near on their hill-top with a good deal of uneasiness, which increased, after we had entered the lighted streets, to positive alarm. All the passers-by were addressed, some of them by name. A worthy man was stopped by Forbes. "Sir," said he, "in the name of the Senatus of the University of Cramond, I confer upon you the degree of LL.D.," and with the words he bonneted him. Conceive the predicament of St. Ives, committed to the society of these outrageous youths, in a town where the police and his cousin were both looking for him! So far we had pursued our way unmolested, although raising a clamour fit to wake the dead; but at last, in Abercromby Place, I believe--at least it was a crescent of highly respectable houses fronting on a garden--Byfield and I, having fallen somewhat in the rear with Rowley, came to a simultaneous halt. Our ruffians were beginning to wrench off bells and door-plates! "O, I say!" says Byfield, "this is too much of a good thing! Confound it, I'm a respectable man--a public character, by George! I can't afford to get taken up by the police." "My own case exactly," said I. "Here, let's bilk them," said he. And we turned back and took our way down hill again. It was none too soon: voices and alarm bells sounded; watchmen here and there began to spring their rattles; it was plain the University of Cramond would soon be at blows with the police of Edinburgh! Byfield and I, running the semi-inanimate Rowley before us, made good despatch, and did not stop till we were several streets away, and the hubbub was already softened by distance. "Well, sir," said he, "we are well out of that! Did ever any one see such a pack of young barbarians?" "We are properly punished, Mr. Byfield; we had no business there," I replied. "No, indeed, sir, you may well say that! Outrageous! And my ascension announced for Friday, you know!" cried the aëronaut. "A pretty scandal! Byfield the aëronaut at the police-court! Tut-tut! Will you be able to get your rascal home, sir? Allow me to offer you my card. I am staying at Walker and Poole's Hotel, sir, where I should be pleased to see you." "The pleasure would be mutual, sir," said I, but I must say my heart was not in my words, and as I watched Mr. Byfield departing I desired nothing less than to pursue the acquaintance. One more ordeal remained for me to pass. I carried my senseless load upstairs to our lodging, and was admitted by the landlady in a tall white nightcap and with an expression singularly grim. She lighted us into the sitting-room; where, when I had seated Rowley in a chair, she dropped me a cast-iron curtsy. I smelt gunpowder on the woman. Her voice tottered with emotion. "I give ye nottice, Mr. Ducie," said she. "Dacent folks' houses...." And at that apparently temper cut off her utterance, and she took herself off without more words. I looked about me at the room, the goggling Rowley, the extinguished fire; my mind reviewed the laughable incidents of the day and night; and I laughed out loud to myself--lonely and cheerless laughter!... [_At this point the Author's_ MS. _breaks off: what follows is the work of_ MR. A.T. QUILLER-COUCH.] CHAPTER XXXI EVENTS OF THURSDAY: THE ASSEMBLY BALL But I awoke to the chill reminder of dawn, and found myself no master even of cheerless mirth. I had supped with the _Senatus Academicus_ of Cramond: so much my head informed me. It was Thursday, the day of the Assembly Ball. But the ball was fixed by the card for 8 P.M., and I had, therefore, twelve mortal hours to wear through as best I could. Doubtless it was this reflection which prompted me to leap out of bed instanter and ring for Mr. Rowley and my shaving water. Mr. Rowley, it appeared, was in no such hurry. I tugged a second time at the bell-rope. A groan answered me: and there in the doorway stood, or rather titubated, my paragon of body-servants. He was collarless, unkempt; his face a tinted map of shame and bodily disorder. His hand shook on the hot-water can, and spilled its contents into his shoes. I opened on him with a tirade, but had no heart to continue. The fault, after all, was mine: and it argued something like heroism in the lad that he had fought his nausea down and come up to time. "But not smiling," I assured him. "O, please, Mr. Anne. Go on, sir; I deserve it. But I'll never do it again, strike me sky-blue scarlet!" "In so far as that differed from your present colouring, I believe," said I, "it would be an improvement." "Never again, Mr. Anne." "Certainly not, Rowley. Even to good men this may happen once: beyond that, carelessness shades off into depravity." "Yessir." "You gave a good deal of trouble last night. I have yet to meet Mrs. McRankine." "As for that, Mr. Anne," said he, with an incongruous twinkle in his bloodshot eye, "she've been up with a tray: dry toast and a pot of tea. The old gal's bark is worse than her bite, sir, begging your pardon, and meaning as she's a decent one, she is." "I was fearing that might be just the trouble," I answered. One thing was certain. Rowley, that morning, should not be entrusted with a razor and the handling of my chin. I sent him back to his bed, with orders not to rise from it without permission; and went about my toilette deliberately. In spite of the lad, I did not enjoy the prospect of Mrs. McRankine. I enjoyed it so little, indeed, that I fell to poking the sitting-room fire when she entered with the _Mercury_; and read the _Mercury_ assiduously while she brought in breakfast. She set down the tray with a slam and stood beside it, her hands on her hips, her whole attitude breathing challenge. "Well, Mrs. McRankine?" I began, upturning a hypocritical eye from the newspaper. "'Well,' is it? Nhm!" I lifted the breakfast cover, and saw before me a damnatory red herring. "Rowley was very foolish last night," I remarked, with a discriminating stress on the name. "'The ass knoweth his master's crib.'" She pointed to the herring. "It's all ye'll get, Mr.--Ducie, if that's your name." "Madam"--I held out the fish at the end of my fork--"you drag it across the track of an apology." I set it back on the dish and replaced the cover. "It is clear that you wish us gone. Well and good: grant Rowley a day for recovery, and to-morrow you shall be quit of us." I reached for my hat. "Whaur are ye gaun?" "To seek other lodgings." "I'll no say--Man, man! have a care! And me beat to close an eye the nicht!" She dropped into a chair. "Nay, Mr. Ducie, ye daurna! Think o' that innocent lamb!" "That little pig." "He's ower young to die," sobbed my landlady. "In the abstract I agree with you: but I am not aware that Rowley's death is required. Say rather that he is ower young to turn King's evidence." I stepped back from the door. "Mrs. McRankine," I said, "I believe you to be soft-hearted. I know you to be curious. You will be pleased to sit perfectly still and listen to me." And, resuming my seat, I leaned across the corner of the table and put my case before her without suppression or extenuation. Her breathing tightened over my sketch of the duel with Goguelat; and again more sharply as I told of my descent of the rock. Of Alain she said, "I ken his sort," and of Flora twice, "I'm wonderin' will I have seen her?" For the rest she heard me out in silence, and rose and walked to the door without a word. There she turned. "It's a verra queer tale. If McRankine had told me the like, I'd have gien him the lie to his face." Two minutes later I heard the vials of her speech unsealed abovestairs, with detonations that shook the house. I had touched off my rocket, and the stick descended--on the prostrate Rowley. And now I must face the inert hours. I sat down, and read my way through the _Mercury_. "The escaped French soldier, Champdivers, who is wanted in connection with the recent horrid murder at the Castle, remains at large--" the rest but repeated the advertisement of Tuesday. "At large!" I set down the paper and turned to my landlady's library. It consisted of Derham's "Physico- and Astro-Theology," "The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin," by one Taylor, D.D., "The Ready Reckoner or Tradesman's Sure Guide," and "The Path to the Pit delineated, with Twelve Engravings on Copper-plate." For distraction I fell to pacing the room, and rehearsing those remembered tags of Latin verse concerning which M. de Culemberg had long ago assured me, "My son, we know not when, but some day they will come back to you with solace if not with charm." Good man! My feet trod the carpet to Horace's Alcaics. _Virtus recludensim meritis mori Coelum_--h'm, h'm--_raro_-- _raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit pede Poena claudo._ I paused by the window. In this there was no indiscretion; for a cold drizzle washed the panes, and the warmth of the apartment dimmed their inner surface. "_Pede Poena claudo_," my finger traced the words on the damp glass. A sudden clamour of the street-door bell sent me skipping back to the fire-place with my heart in my mouth. Interminable minutes followed, and at length Mrs. McRankine entered with my ball suit from the tailor's. I carried it into the next room, and disposed it on the bed--olive-green coat with gilt buttons and facings of watered silk, olive-green pantaloons, white waistcoat sprigged with blue and green forget-me-nots. The survey carried me on to midday and the midday meal. The ministry of meal-time is twice blest: for prisoners and men without appetite it punctuates and makes time of eternity. I dawdled over my chop and pint of brown stout until Mrs. McRankine, after twice entering to clear away, with the face of a Cumæan sibyl, so far relaxed the tension of unnatural calm as to inquire if I meant to be all night about it. The afternoon wore into dusk; and with dusk she re-appeared with a tea-tray. At six I retired to dress. Behold me now issuing from my chamber, conscious of a well-fitting coat and a shapely pair of legs: the dignified simplicity of my _tournure_ (simplicity so proper to the scion of an exiled house) relieved by a dandiacal hint of shirt-frill, and corrected into tenderness by the virgin waistcoat sprigged with forget-me-nots (for constancy), and buttoned with pink coral (for hope). Satisfied of the effect, I sought the apartment of Mr. Rowley of the Rueful Countenance, and found him less yellow, but still contrite, and listening to Mrs. McRankine, who sat with open book by his bedside, and plied him with pertinent dehortations from the Book of Proverbs. He brightened. "My heye, Mr. Hann, if that ain't up to the knocker!" Mrs. McRankine closed the book, and conned me with austerer approval. "Ye carry it well, I will say." "It fits, I think." I turned myself complacently about. "The drink, I am meaning. I kenned McRankine." "Shall we talk of business, madam? In the first place, the quittance for our board and lodging." "I mak' it out on Saturdays." "Do so; and deduct it out of this." I handed twenty-five of my guineas into her keeping; this left me with five and a crown piece in my pocket. "The balance, while it lasts, will serve for Rowley's keep and current expenses. Before long I hope he may lift the money which lies in the bank at his service, as he knows." "But you'll come back, Mr. Anne?" cried the lad. "I'm afraid it's a toss-up, my boy. Discipline, remember!"--for he was preparing to leap out of bed there and then--"You can serve me better in Edinburgh. All you have to do is to wait for a clear coast, and seek and present yourself in private before Mr. T. Robbie of Castle Street, or Miss Flora Gilchrist of Swanston Cottage. From either or both of these you will take your instructions. Here are the addresses." "If that's a' your need for the lad," said Mrs. McRankine, "he'll be eating his head off: no' to say drinking." Rowley winced. "I'll tak' him on mysel'." "My dear woman----" "He'll be a brand frae the burnin': and he'll do to clean the knives." She would hear no denial. I committed the lad to her in this double capacity; and equipped with a pair of goloshes from the wardrobe of the late McRankine, sallied forth upon the rain-swept street. The card of admission directed me to Buccleuch Place, a little off George Square; and here I found a wet rag of a crowd gathered about a couple of lanterns and a striped awning. Beneath the awning a panel of light fell on the plashy pavement. Already the guests were arriving. I whipped in briskly, presented my card, and passed up a staircase decorated with flags, evergreens, and national emblems. A venerable flunkey waited for me at the summit. "Cloak lobby to the left, sir." I obeyed, and exchanged my overcoat and goloshes for a circular metal ticket. "What name, sir?" he purred over my card, as I lingered in the vestibule for a moment to scan the ball-room and my field of action: then, having cleared his throat, bawled suddenly, "Mr. Ducie!" It might have been a stage direction. "_A tucket sounds. Enter the Vicomte, disguised._" To tell the truth, this entry was a daunting business. A dance had just come to an end; and the musicians in the gallery had fallen to tuning their violins. The chairs arrayed along the walls were thinly occupied, and as yet the social temperature scarce rose to thawing-point. In fact, the second-rate people had arrived, and from the far end of the room were nervously watching the door for notables. Consequently my entrance drew a disquieting fire of observation. The mirrors, reflectors, and girandoles had eyes for me; and as I advanced up the perspective of waxed floor, the very boards winked detection. A little Master of Ceremonies, as round as the rosette on his lapel, detached himself from the nearest group, and approached with something of a skater's motion and an insinuating smile. "Mr.-a-Ducie, if I heard aright? A stranger, I believe, to our northern capital, and I hope a dancer?" I bowed. "Grant me the pleasure, Mr. Ducie, of finding you a partner." "If," said I, "you would present me to the young lady yonder, beneath the musicians' gallery----" For I recognised Master Ronald's flame, the girl in pink of Mr. Robbie's party, to-night gowned in apple-green. "Miss McBean--Miss Camilla McBean? With pleasure. Great discrimination you show, sir. Be so good as to follow me." I was led forward and presented. Miss McBean responded to my bow with great play of shoulders; and in turn presented me to her mother, a moustachioed lady in stiff black silk, surmounted with a black cap and coquelicot trimmings. "_Any_ friend of Mr. Robbie's, I'm sure," murmured Mrs. McBean, affably inclining. "Look, Camilla dear--Sir William and Lady Frazer--in laylock sarsnet--how well that diamond bandeau becomes her! They are early to-night. As I was saying, Mr.----" "Ducie." "_To_ be sure. As I was saying, _any_ friend of Mr. Robbie--one of my oldest acquaintance. If you can manage now to break him of his bachelor habits? You are making a long stay in Edinburgh?" "I fear, madam, that I must leave it to-morrow." "You have seen all our lions, I suppose? The Castle, now? Ah, the attractions of London!--now don't shake your head, Mr. Ducie. I hope I know a Londoner when I see one. And yet 'twould surprise you how fast we are advancing in Edinburgh. Camilla dear, that Miss Scrymgeour has edged her China crape with the very ribbon trimmings--black satin with pearl edge--we saw in that new shop in Princes Street yesterday: sixpenny width at the bottom, and three-three-farthings round the bodice. Perhaps you can tell me, Mr. Ducie, if it's really true that ribbon trimmings are _the height_ in London and Bath this year?" But the band struck up, and I swept the unresisting Camilla towards the set. After the dance, the ladies (who were kind enough to compliment me on my performance) suffered themselves to be led to the tea-room. By this time the arrivals were following each other thick and fast; and, standing by the tea-table, I heard name after name vociferated at the ball-room door, but never the name my nerves were on the strain to echo. Surely Flora would come: surely none of her guardians, natural or officious, would expect to find me at the ball. But the minutes passed, and I must convey Mrs. and Miss McBean back to their seats beneath the gallery. "Miss Gilchrist--Miss Flora Gilchrist--Mr. Ronald Gilchrist! Mr. Robbie! Major Arthur Chevenix!" The first name plumped like a shot across my bows, and brought me up standing--for a second only. Before the catalogue was out I had dropped the McBeans at their moorings, and was heading down on my enemies' line of battle. Their faces were a picture. Flora's cheek flushed, and her lips parted in the prettiest cry of wonder. Mr. Robbie took snuff. Ronald went red in the face, and Major Chevenix white. The intrepid Miss Gilchrist turned not a hair. "What will be the meaning of this?" she demanded, drawing to a stand, and surveying me through her gold-rimmed eye-glass. "Madam," said I, with a glance at Chevenix, "you may call it a cutting-out expedition." "Miss Gilchrist," he began, "you will surely not--" But I was too quick for him. "Madam, since when has the gallant Major superseded Mr. Robbie as your family adviser?" "H'mph!" said Miss Gilchrist; which in itself was not reassuring. But she turned to the lawyer. "My dear lady," he answered her look, "this very imprudent young man seems to have burnt his boats, and no doubt recks very little if, in that heroical conflagration, he burns our fingers. Speaking, however, as your family adviser"--and he laid enough stress on it to convince me that there was no love lost between him and the interloping Chevenix--"I suggest that we gain nothing by protracting this scene in the face of a crowded assembly. Are you for the card-room, madam?" She took his proffered arm, and they swept from us, leaving Master Ronald red and glum, and the Major pale but nonplussed. "Four from six leaves two," said I; and promptly engaged Flora's arm, and towed her away from the silenced batteries. "And now, my dear," I added, as we found two isolated chairs, "you will kindly demean yourself as if we were met for the first or second time in our lives. Open your fan--so. Now listen: my cousin, Alain, is in Edinburgh, at Dumbreck's Hotel. No, don't lower it." She held up her fan, though her small wrist trembled. "There is worse to come. He has brought Bow Street with him, and likely enough at this moment the runners are ransacking the city hot-foot for my lodgings." "And you linger and show yourself here!--here of all places! O, it is mad! Anne, why will you be so rash?" "For the simple reason that I have been a fool, my dear. I banked the balance of my money in George Street, and the bank is watched. I must have money to win my way south. Therefore I must find you and reclaim the notes you were kind enough to keep for me. I go to Swanston and find you under surveillance of Chevenix, supported by an animal called Towzer. I may have killed Towzer, by the way. If so, transported to an equal sky, he may shortly have the faithful Chevenix to bear him company. I grow tired of Chevenix." But the fan dropped: her arms lay limp in her lap; and she was staring up at me piteously, with a world of self-reproach in her beautiful eyes. "And I locked up the notes at home to-night--when I dressed for the ball--the first time they have left my heart! O, false!--false of trust that I am!" "Why, dearest, that is not fatal, I hope. You reach home to-night--you slip them into some hiding--say in the corner of the wall below the garden----" "Stop: let me think." She picked up her fan again, and behind it her eyes darkened while I watched and she considered. "You know the hill we pass before we reach Swanston?--it has no name, I believe, but Ronald and I have called it the Fish-back since we were children: it has a clump of firs above it like a fin. There is a quarry on the east slope. If you will be there at eight--I can manage it, I think, and bring the money." "But why should you run the risk?" "Please, Anne--O, please, let me _do_ something! If you knew what it is to sit at home while your--your dearest----" "THE VISCOUNT OF SAINT-YVES!" The name, shouted from the doorway, rang down her faltering sentence as with the clash of an alarm bell. I saw Ronald--in talk with Miss McBean but a few yards away--spin round on his heel and turn slowly back on me with a face of sheer bewilderment. There was no time to conceal myself. To reach either the tea-room or the card-room, I must traverse twelve feet of open floor. We sat in clear view of the main entrance; and there already, with eye-glass lifted, raffish, flamboyant, exuding pomades and bad style, stood my detestable cousin. He saw us at once; wheeled right-about-face and spoke to some one in the vestibule; wheeled round again, and bore straight down, a full swagger varnishing his malign triumph. Flora caught her breath as I stood up to accost him. "Good evening, my cousin! The newspaper told me you were favouring this city with a stay." "At Dumbreck's Hotel: where, my dear Anne, you have not yet done me the pleasure to seek me out." "I gathered," said I, "that you were forestalling the compliment. Our meeting, then, is unexpected?" "Why, no; for, to tell you the truth, the secretary of the Ball Committee, this afternoon, allowed me a glance over his list of _invités_. I am apt to be nice about my company, cousin." Ass that I was! I had never given this obvious danger so much as a thought. "I fancy I have seen one of your latest intimates about the street." He eyed me, and answered, with a bluff laugh, "Ah! You gave us the very devil of a chase. You appear, my dear Anne, to have a hare's propensity for running in your tracks. And begad, I don't wonder at it!" he wound up, ogling Flora with an insolent stare. Him one might have hunted by scent alone. He reeked of essences. "Present me, _mon brave_." "I'll be shot if I do." "I believe they reserve that privilege for soldiers," he mused. "At any rate they don't extend it to----" I pulled up on the word. He had the upper hand, but I could at least play the game out with decency. "Come," said I, "_contre-danse_ will begin presently. Find yourself a partner, and I promise you shall be our _vis-à-vis_." "You have blood in you, my cousin." He bowed, and went in search of the Master of Ceremonies. I gave an arm to Flora. "Well, and how does Alain strike you?" I asked. "He is a handsome man," she allowed. "If your uncle had treated him differently, I believe----" "And I believe that no woman alive can distinguish between a gentleman and a dancing-master! A posture or two, and you interpret worth. My dear girl--that fellow!" She was silent. I have since learned why. It seems, if you please, that the very same remark had been made to her by that idiot Chevenix, upon me! We were close to the door: we passed it, and I flung a glance into the vestibule. There, sure enough, at the head of the stairs, was posted my friend of the moleskin waistcoat, in talk with a confederate by some shades uglier than himself, a red-headed, loose-legged scoundrel in cinder-grey. I was fairly in the trap. I turned, and between the moving crowd caught Alain's eye and his evil smile. He had found a partner: no less a personage than Lady Frazer of the lilac sarsnet and diamond bandeau. For some unaccountable reason, in this infernal _impasse_ my spirits began to rise, to soar. I declare it: I led Flora forward to the set with a gaiety which may have been unnatural, but was certainly not factitious. A Scotsman would have called me fey. As the song goes--and it matters not if I had it then, or read it later in my wife's library-- "Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, Sae dauntingly gaed he; He played a spring and danced it round Beneath----" never mind what. The band played the spring and I danced it round, while my cousin eyed me with extorted approval. The quadrille includes an absurd figure--called, I think, _La Pastourelle_. You take a lady with either hand, and jig them to and fro, for all the world like an Englishman of legend parading a couple of wives for sale at Smithfield; while the other male, like a timid purchaser, backs and advances with his arms dangling. "I've lived a life of sturt and strife, I die by treacherie----" I challenged Alain with an open smile as he backed before us; and no sooner was the dance over, than I saw him desert Lady Frazer on a hurried excuse, and seek the door to satisfy himself that his men were on guard. I dropped laughing into a chair beside Flora. "Anne," she whispered; "who is on the stairs?" "Two Bow Street runners." If you have seen a dove--a dove caught in a gin! "The back stairs!" she urged. "They will be watched too. But let us make sure." I crossed to the tea-room, and, encountering a waiter, drew him aside. Was there a man watching the back entrance? He could not tell me. For a guinea would he find out? He went, and returned in less than a minute. Yes, there was a constable below. "It's just a young gentleman to be put to the horn for debt," I explained, recalling the barbarous and, to me, still unmeaning phrase. "I'm no speiring," replied the waiter. I made my way back, and was not a little disgusted to find my chair occupied by the unconscionable Chevenix. "My dear Miss Flora, you are unwell!" Indeed, she was pale enough, poor child, and trembling. "Major, she will be swooning in another minute. Get her to the tea-room, quick! while I fetch Miss Gilchrist. She must be taken home." "It is nothing," she faltered: "it will pass. Pray do not--" As she glanced up, she caught my meaning. "Yes, yes: I will go home." She took the Major's arm, while I hurried to the card-room. As luck would have it, the old lady was in the act of rising from the green table, having just cut out from a rubber. Mr. Robbie was her partner; and I saw (and blessed my star for the first time that night) the little heap of silver, which told that she had been winning. "Miss Gilchrist," I whispered, "Miss Flora is faint: the heat of the room--" "I've not observed it. The ventilation is considered pairfect." "She wishes to be taken home." With fine composure she counted back her money, piece by piece, into a velvet reticule. "Twelve and sixpence," she proclaimed. "Ye held good cards, Mr. Robbie. Well, Mosha the Viscount, we'll go and see about it." I led her to the tea-room: Mr. Robbie followed. Flora rested on a sofa in a truly dismal state of collapse, while the Major fussed about her with a cup of tea. "I have sent Ronald for the carriage," he announced. "H'm," said Miss Gilchrist, eyeing him oddly. "Well, it's your risk. Ye'd best hand me the teacup, and get our shawls from the lobby. You have the tickets. Be ready for us at the top of the stairs." No sooner was the Major gone than, keeping an eye on her niece, this imperturbable lady stirred the tea and drank it down herself. As she drained the cup--her back for the moment being turned on Mr. Robbie--I was aware of a facial contortion. Was the tea (as children say) going the wrong way? No: I believe--aid me Apollo, and the Nine! I believe--though I have never dared, and shall never dare to ask--that Miss Gilchrist was doing her best to wink! On the instant entered Master Ronald with word that the carriage was ready. I slipped to the door and reconnoitred. The crowd was thick in the ball-room; a dance in full swing; my cousin gambolling vivaciously, and, for the moment, with his back to us. Flora leaned on Ronald, and, skirting the wall, our party gained the great door and the vestibule, where Chevenix stood with an armful of cloaks. "You and Ronald can return and enjoy yourselves," said the old lady, "as soon as ye've packed us off. Ye'll find a hackney coach, no doubt, to bring ye home." Her eye rested on the two runners, who were putting their heads together behind the Major. She turned on me with a stiff curtsy. "Good-night, sir, and I am obliged for your services. Or stay--you may see us to the carriage, if ye'll be so kind. Major, hand Mr. What-d'ye-call some of your wraps." My eyes did not dare to bless her. We moved down the stairs--Miss Gilchrist leading, Flora supported by her brother and Mr. Robbie, the Major and I behind. As I descended the first step, the red-headed runner made a move forward. Though my gaze was glued upon the pattern of Miss Gilchrist's Paisley shawl, I saw his finger touch my arm! Yes, and I felt it, like a touch of hot iron. The other man--Moleskin--plucked him by the arm: they whispered. They saw me bareheaded, without my overcoat. They argued, no doubt, that I was unaware; was seeing the ladies to their carriage; would of course return. They let me pass. Once in the boisterous street, I darted round to the dark side of the carriage. Ronald ran forward to the coachman (whom I recognised for the gardener, Robie). "Miss Flora is faint. Home, as fast as you can!" He skipped back under the awning. "A guinea to make it faster!" I called up from the other side of the box-seat; and out of the darkness and rain I held up the coin and pressed it into Robie's damp palm. "What in the name----!" He peered round, but I was back and close against the step. The door was slammed. "Right away!" It may have been fancy; but with the shout I seemed to hear the voice of Alain lifted in imprecation on the Assembly Room stairs. As Robie touched up the grey, I whipped open the door on my side and tumbled in--upon Miss Gilchrist's lap. Flora choked down a cry. I recovered myself, dropped into a heap of rugs on the seat facing the ladies, and pulled-to the door by its strap. Dead silence from Miss Gilchrist! I had to apologise, of course. The wheels rumbled and jolted over the cobbles of Edinburgh; the windows rattled and shook under the uncertain gusts of the city. When we passed a street lamp it shed no light into the vehicle, but the awful profile of my protectress loomed out for a second against the yellow haze of the pane, and sank back into impenetrable shade. "Madam, some explanation--enough at least to mitigate your resentment--natural, I allow."--Jolt, jolt! And still a mortuary silence within the coach! It was disconcerting. Robie for a certainty was driving his best, and already we were beyond the last rare outposts of light on the Lothian Road. "I believe, madam, the inside of five minutes--if you will allow----" I stretched out a protesting hand. In the darkness it encountered Flora's. Our fingers closed upon the thrill. For five, ten beatific seconds our pulses sang together, "I love you! I love you!" in the stuffy silence. "Mosha Saint-Yvey!" spoke up a deliberate voice (Flora caught her hand away), "as far as I can make head and tail of your business--supposing it to have a modicum of head, which I doubt--it appears to me that I have just done you a service; and that makes twice." "A service, madam, I shall ever remember." "I'll chance that, sir; if ye'll kindly not forget _yoursel'_." In resumed silence we must have travelled a mile and a half, or two miles, when Miss Gilchrist let down the sash with a clatter, and thrust her head and mamelone cap forth into the night. "Robie!" Robie pulled up. "The gentleman will alight." It was only wisdom, for we were nearing Swanston. I rose. "Miss Gilchrist, you are a good woman; and I think the cleverest I have met." "Umph," replied she. In the act of stepping forth I turned for a final handshake with Flora, and my foot caught in something and dragged it out upon the road. I stooped to pick it up, and heard the door bang by my ear. "Madam--your shawl!" But the coach lurched forward; the wheels splashed me; and I was left standing alone on the inclement highway. While yet I watched the little red eyes of the vehicle, and almost as they vanished, I heard more rumbling of wheels, and descried two pairs of yellow eyes upon the road, towards Edinburgh. There was just time enough to plunge aside, to leap a fence into a rain-soaked pasture; and there I crouched, the water squishing over my dancing-shoes, while with a flare, a slant of rain, and a glimpse of flogging drivers, two hackney carriages pelted by at a gallop. CHAPTER XXXII EVENTS OF FRIDAY MORNING: THE CUTTING OF THE GORDIAN KNOT I pulled out my watch. A fickle ray--the merest filtration of moonlight--glimmered on the dial. Fourteen minutes past one! "Past yin o'clock, and a dark, haary moarnin'." I recalled the bull voice of the watchman as he had called it on the night of our escape from the Castle--its very tones: and this echo of memory seemed to strike and reverberate the hour closing a long day of fate. Truly, since that night the hands had run full circle, and were back at the old starting-point. I had seen dawn, day: I had basked in the sunshine of men's respect; I was back in Stygian night--back in the shadow of that infernal Castle--still hunted by the law--with possibly a smaller chance than ever of escape--the cockshy of the elements--with no shelter for my head but a Paisley shawl of violent pattern. It occurred to me that I had travelled much in the interval, and run many risks, to exchange a suit of mustard-yellow for a Paisley shawl and a ball dress that matched neither it nor the climate of the Pentlands. The exhilaration of the ball, the fighting spirit, the last communicated thrill of Flora's hand, died out of me. In the thickening envelope of sea-fog I felt like a squirrel in a rotatory cage. That was a lugubrious hour. To speak precisely, those were seven lugubrious hours; since Flora would not be due before eight o'clock, if, indeed, I might count on her eluding her double cordon of spies. The question was, whither to turn in the meantime? Certainly not back to the town. In the near neighbourhood I knew of no roof but "The Hunters' Tryst," by Alexander Hendry. Suppose that I found it (and the chances in that fog were perhaps against me), would Alexander Hendry; aroused from his bed, be likely to extend his hospitality to a traveller with no more luggage than a Paisley shawl? He might think I had stolen it. I had borne it down the staircase under the eyes of the runners, and the pattern was bitten upon my brain. It was doubtless unique in the district and familiar: an oriflamme of battle over the barter of dairy produce and malt liquors. Alexander Hendry _must_ recognise it, and with an instinct of antagonism. Patently it formed no part of my proper wardrobe: hardly could it be explained as a _gage d'amour_. Eccentric hunters trysted under Hendry's roof; the Six-Foot Club, for instance. But a hunter in a frilled shirt and waistcoat sprigged with forget-me-nots! And the house would be watched, perhaps. Every house around would be watched. The end was that I wore through the remaining hours of darkness upon the sodden hillside. Superlative Miss Gilchrist! Folded in the mantle of that Spartan dame; huddled upon a boulder, while the rain descended upon my bare head, and coursed down my nose, and filled my shoes, and insinuated a playful trickle down the ridge of my spine; I hugged the lacerating fox of self-reproach, and hugged it again, and set my teeth as it bit upon my vitals. Once, indeed, I lifted an accusing arm to heaven. It was as if I had pulled the string of a douche-bath. Heaven flooded the fool with gratuitous tears; and the fool sat in the puddle of them and knew his folly. But heaven at the same time mercifully veiled that figure of abasement: and I will lift but a corner of the sheet. Wind in hidden gullies, and the talk of lapsing waters on the hillside, filled all the spaces of the night. The high-road lay at my feet, fifty yards or so below my boulder. Soon after two o'clock (as I made it) lamps appeared in the direction of Swanston, and drew nearer; and two hackney coaches passed me at a jog-trot, towards the opaline haze into which the weather had subdued the lights of Edinburgh. I heard one of the drivers curse as he went by, and inferred that my open-handed cousin had shirked the weather and gone comfortably from the Assembly Rooms to Dumbreck's Hotel and bed, leaving the chase to his mercenaries. After this you are to believe that I dozed and woke by snatches. I watched the moon descend in her foggy circle; but I saw also the mulberry face and minatory forefinger of Mr. Romaine, and caught myself explaining to him and Mr. Robbie that their joint proposal to mortgage my inheritance for a flying broomstick took no account of the working-model of the whole Rock and Castle of Edinburgh, which I dragged about by an ankle chain. Anon I was pelting with Rowley in a claret-coloured chaise through a cloud of robin-redbreasts; and with that I awoke to the veritable chatter of birds and the white light of dawn upon the hills. The truth is, I had come very near to the end of my endurance. Cold and rain together, supervening in that hour of the spirit's default, may well have made me light-headed; nor was it easy to distinguish the tooth of self-reproach from that of genuine hunger. Stiff, qualmish, vacant of body, heart, and brain, I left my penitential boulder and crawled down to the road. Glancing along it for sight or warning of the runners, I spied, at two gunshots' distance or less, a milestone with a splash of white upon it--a draggled placard. Abhorrent thought! Did it announce the price upon the head of Champdivers? "At least I will see how they describe him"--this I told myself; but that which tugged at my feet was the baser fascination of fright. I had thought my spine inured by the night's experiences to anything in the way of cold shivers. I discovered my mistake while approaching that scrap of paper. "AERIAL ASCENSION EXTRAORDINARY!!! IN THE MONSTRE BALLOON _LUNARDI_ PROFESSOR BYFIELD (BY DIPLOMA), THE WORLD-RENOWNED EXPONENT OF AEROSTATICS AND AERONAUTICS, Has the honour to inform the Nobility and Gentry of Edinburgh and the neighbourhood----" The shock of it--the sudden descent upon sublimity, according to Byfleld--took me in the face. I put up my hands. I broke into elfish laughter, and ended with a sob. Sobs and laughter together shook my fasting body like a leaf; and I zigzagged across the fields, buffeted this side and that by a mirth as uncontrollable as it was idiotic. Once I pulled up in the middle of a spasm to marvel irresponsibly at the sound of my own voice. You may wonder that I had will and wit to be drifted towards Flora's trysting-place. But in truth there was no missing it--the low chine looming through the weather, the line of firs topping it, and, towards the west, diminishing like a fish's dorsal fin. I had conned it often enough from the other side; had looked right across it on the day when she stood beside me on the bastion and pointed out the smoke of Swanston Cottage. Only on this side the fish-tail (so to speak) had a nick in it; and through that nick ran the path to the old quarry. I reached it a little before eight. The quarry lay to the left of the path, which passed on and out upon the hill's northern slope. Upon that slope there was no need to show myself. I measured out some fifty yards of the path, and paced it to and fro, idly counting my steps; for the chill crept back into my bones if I halted for a minute. Once or twice I turned aside into the quarry, and stood there tracing the veins in the hewn rock: then back to my quarter-deck tramp and the study of my watch. Ten minutes past eight! Fool--to expect her to cheat so many spies. This hunger of mine was becoming serious.... A stone dislodged--a light footfall on the path--and my heart leapt. It was she! She came, and earth flowered again, as beneath the feet of the goddess, her namesake. I declare it for a fact that from the moment of her coming the weather began to mend. "Flora!" "My poor Anne!" "The shawl has been useful," said I. "You are starving." "That is unpleasantly near the truth." "I knew it. See, dear." A shawl of hodden grey covered her head and shoulders, and from beneath it she produced a small basket and held it up. "The scones will be hot yet, for they went straight from the hearth into the napkin." She led the way to the quarry. I praised her forethought; having in those days still to learn that woman's first instinct, when a man is dear to her and in trouble, is to feed him. We spread the napkin on a big stone of the quarry, and set out the feast: scones, oatcake, hard-boiled eggs, a bottle of milk, and a small flask of usquebaugh. Our hands met as we prepared the table. This was our first housekeeping; the first breakfast of our honeymoon I called it, rallying her. "Starving I may be; but starve I will in sight of food, unless you share it," and, "It escapes me for the moment, madam, if you take sugar." We leaned to each other across the rock, and our faces touched. Her cold cheek with the rain upon it, and one small damp curl--for many days I had to feed upon the memory of that kiss, and I feed upon it yet. "But it beats me how you escaped them," said I. She laid down the bannock she had been making pretence to nibble. "Janet--that is our dairy girl--lent me her frock and shawl: her shoes too. She goes out to the milking at six, and I took her place. The fog helped me. They are hateful." "They are, my dear. Chevenix--" "I mean these clothes. And I am thinking, too, of the poor cows." "The instinct of animals--" I lifted my glass. "Let us trust it to find means to attract the notice of two paid detectives and two volunteers." "I had rather count on Aunt," said Flora, with one of her rare and adorable smiles, which fleeted as it came. "But, Anne, we must not waste time. They are so many against you, and so near. O, be serious!" "Now you are talking like Mr. Romaine." "For my sake, dear!" She clasped her hands. I took them in mine across the table, and, unclasping them, kissed the palms. "Sweetheart," I said, "before this weather clears----" "It is clearing." "We will give it time. Before this weather clears, I must be across the valley and fetching a circuit for the drovers' road, if you can teach me when to hit it." She withdrew one of her hands. It went up to the throat of her bodice, and came forth with my packet of notes. "Good Lord!" said I: "if I hadn't forgotten the money!" "I think nothing teaches you," sighed she. She had sewed them tightly in a little bag of yellow oiled silk; and as I held it, warm from her young bosom, and turned it over in my hand, I saw that it was embroidered in scarlet thread with the one word "Anne" beneath the Lion Rampant of Scotland, in imitation of the poor toy I had carved for her--it seemed, so long ago! "I wear the original," she murmured. I crushed the parcel into my breast-pocket, and, taking both hands again, fell on my knees before her on the stones. "Flora--my angel! my heart's bride!" "Hush!" She sprang away. Heavy footsteps were coming up the path. I had just time enough to fling Miss Gilchrist's shawl over my head and resume my seat, when a couple of buxom country wives bustled past the mouth of the quarry. They saw us, beyond a doubt: indeed, they stared hard at us, and muttered some comment as they went by, and left us gazing at each other. "They took us for a picnic," I whispered. "The queer thing," said Flora, "is that they were not surprised. The sight of you----" "Seen sideways in this shawl, and with my legs hidden by the stone here, I might pass for an elderly female junketer." "This is scarcely the hour for a picnic," answered my wise girl, "and decidedly not the weather." The sound of another footstep prevented my reply. This time the wayfarer was an old farmer-looking fellow in a shepherd's plaid and bonnet powdered with mist. He halted before us and nodded, leaning rheumatically on his staff. "A coarse moarnin'. Ye'll be from Leadburn, I'm thinkin'?" "Put it at Peebles," said I, making shift to pull the shawl close about my damning finery. "Peebles!" he said reflectively. "I've ne'er ventured so far as Peebles. I've contemplated it! But I was none sure whether I would like it when I got there. See here: I recommend ye no' to be lazin' ower the meat, gin ye'd drap in for the fun. A'm full late, mysel'!" He passed on. What could it mean? We hearkened after his tread. Before it died away, I sprang and caught Flora by the hand. "Listen! Heavens above us, what is _that_?" "It sounds to me like Gow's version of 'The Caledonian Hunt's Delight,' on a brass band." Jealous powers! Had Olympus conspired to ridicule our love, that we must exchange our parting vows to the public strains of "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight," in Gow's version and a semitone flat? For three seconds Flora and I (in the words of a later British bard) looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent. Then she darted to the path, and gazed along it down the hill. "We must run, Anne. There are more coming!" We left the scattered relics of breakfast, and, taking hands, scurried along the path northwards. A few yards, and with a sharp turn it led us out of the cutting and upon the hillside. And here we pulled up together with a gasp. Right beneath us lay a green meadow, dotted with a crowd of two or three hundred people; and over the nucleus of this gathering, where it condensed into a black swarm, as of bees, there floated, not only the dispiriting music of "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight," but an object of size and shape suggesting the Genie escaped from the Fisherman's Bottle, as described in M. Galland's ingenious "Thousand and One Nights." It was Byfield's balloon--the monster _Lunardi_--in process of inflation. "Confound Byfield!" I ejaculated in my haste. "Who is Byfield?" "An aëronaut, my dear, of bilious humour; which no doubt accounts for his owning a balloon striped alternately with liver-colour and pale blue, and for his arranging it and a brass band in the very line of my escape. That man dogs me like fate." I broke off sharply. "And after all, why not?" I mused. The next instant I swung round, as Flora uttered a piteous little cry; and there, behind us, in the outlet of the cutting, stood Major Chevenix and Ronald. The boy stepped forward, and, ignoring my bow, laid a hand on Flora's arm. "You will come home at once." I touched his shoulder. "Surely not," I said, "seeing that the spectacle apparently wants but ten minutes of its climax." He swung on me in a passion. "For God's sake, St. Ives, don't force a quarrel now, of all moments! Man, haven't you compromised my sister enough?" "It seems to me that, having set a watch on your sister at the suggestion, and with the help of a casual Major of Foot, you might in decency reserve the word 'compromise' for home consumption; and further, that against adversaries so poorly sensitive to her feelings, your sister may be pardoned for putting her resentment into action." "Major Chevenix is a friend of the family." But the lad blushed as he said it. "The family?" I echoed. "So? Pray did your aunt invite his help? No, no, my dear Ronald; you cannot answer that. And while you play the game of insult to your sister, sir, I will see that you eat the discredit of it." "Excuse me," interposed the Major, stepping forward. "As Ronald said, this is not the moment for quarrelling; and, as you observed, sir, the climax is not so far off. The runner and his men are even now coming round the hill. We saw them mounting the slope, and (I may add) your cousin's carriage drawn up on the road below. The fact is, Miss Gilchrist has been traced to the hill: and as it secretly occurred to us that the quarry might be her objective, we arranged to take the ascent on this side. See there!" he cried, and flung out a hand. I looked up. Sure enough, at that instant, a grey-coated figure appeared on the summit of the hill, not five hundred yards away to the left. He was followed closely by my friend of the moleskin waistcoat; and the pair came sidling down the slope towards us. "Gentlemen," said I, "it appears that I owe you my thanks. Your stratagem in any case was kindly meant." "There was Miss Gilchrist to consider," said the Major stiffly. But Ronald cried, "Quick, St. Ives! Make a dash back by the quarry path. I warrant we don't hinder." "Thank you, my friend: I have another notion. Flora," I said, and took her hand, "here is our parting. The next five minutes will decide much. Be brave, dearest; and your thoughts go with me till I come again." "Wherever you go, I'll think of you. Whatever happens, I'll love you. Go, and God defend you, Anne!" Her breast heaved, as she faced the Major, red and shame-fast, indeed, but gloriously defiant. "Quick!" cried she and her brother together. I kissed her hand and sprang down the hill. I heard a shout behind me; and, glancing back, saw my pursuers, three now, with my full-bodied cousin for whipper-in--change their course as I leapt a brook and headed for the crowded enclosure. A somnolent fat man, bulging, like a feather-bed, on a three-legged stool, dozed at the receipt of custom, with a deal table and a bowl of sixpences before him. I dashed on him with a crown-piece. "No change given," he objected, waking up and fumbling with a bundle of pink tickets. "None required." I snatched the ticket and ran through the gateway. I gave myself time for another look before mingling with the crowd. The moleskin waistcoat was leading now, and had reached the brook; with red-head a yard or two behind, and my cousin, a very bad third, panting--it pleased me to imagine how sorely--across the lower slopes to the eastward. The janitor leaned against his toll-bar and still followed me with a stare. Doubtless by my uncovered head and gala dress he judged me an all-night reveller--a strayed Bacchanal fooling in the morrow's eye. Prompt upon the inference came inspiration. I must win to the centre of the crowd, and a crowd is invariably indulgent to a drunkard. I hung out the glaring sign-board of crapulous glee. Lurching, hiccoughing, jostling, apologising to all and sundry with spacious incoherence, I plunged my way through the sightseers, and they gave me passage with all the good-humour in life. I believe that I descended upon that crowd as a godsend, a dancing rivulet of laughter. They needed entertainment. A damper, less enthusiastic company never gathered to a public show. Though the rain had ceased, and the sun shone, those who possessed umbrellas were not to be coaxed, but held them aloft with a settled air of gloom which defied the lenitives of nature and the spasmodic cajolery of the worst band in Edinburgh. "It'll be near full, Jock?" "It wull." "He'll be startin' in a meenit?" "Aiblins he wull." "Wull this be the sixt time ye've seen him?" "I shudna wonder." It occurred to me that, had we come to bury Byfield, not to praise him, we might have displayed a blither interest. Byfield himself, bending from the car beneath his gently swaying canopy of liver-colour and pale blue, directed the proceedings with a mien of saturnine preoccupation. He may have been calculating the receipts. As I squeezed to the front, his underlings were shifting the pipe which conveyed the hydrogen gas, and the _Lunardi_ strained gently at its ropes. Somebody with a playful thrust sent me staggering into the clear space beneath. And here a voice hailed and fetched me up with a round turn. "Ducie, by all that's friendly! Playmate of my youth and prop of my declining years, how goes it?" It was the egregious Dalmahoy. He clung and steadied himself by one of the dozen ropes binding the car to earth; and with an air of doing it all by his unaided cleverness--an air so indescribably, so majestically drunken, that I could have blushed for the poor expedients which had carried me through the throng. "You'll excuse me if I don't let go. Fact is, we've been keeping it up a bit all night. Byfield leaves us--to expatiate in realms untrodden by the foot of man-- "'The feathered tribes on pinions cleave the air; Not so the mackerel, and, still less, the bear.' But Byfield does it--Byfield in his Monster Foolardi. One stroke of this knife (always supposing I miss my own hand), and the rope is severed: our common friend scales the empyrean. But he'll come back--oh, never doubt he'll come back!--and begin the dam business over again. Tha's the law 'gravity 'cording to Byfield." Mr. Dalmahoy concluded inconsequently with a vocal imitation of a post-horn; and, looking up, I saw the head and shoulders of Byfield projected over the rim of the car. He drew the natural inference from my dress and demeanour, and groaned aloud. "O, go away--get out of it, Ducie! Isn't one natural born ass enough for me to deal with? You fellows are guying the whole show!" "Byfield!" I called up eagerly, "I'm not drunk. Reach me down the ladder, quick! A hundred guineas if you'll take me with you!" I saw over the crowd, not ten deep behind me, the red head of the man in grey. "That proves it," said Byfield. "Go away; or at least keep quiet. I'm going to make a speech." He cleared his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen----" I held up my packet of notes, "Here's the money--for pity's sake, man! There are bailiffs after me, in the crowd!" "--the spectacle which you have honoured with your enlightened patronage--I tell you I can't." He cast a glance behind him into the car--"with your enlightened patronage, needs but few words of introduction or commendation." "Hear, hear!" from Dalmahoy. "Your attendance proves the sincerity of your interest----" I spread out the notes under his eyes. He blinked, but resolutely lifted his voice. "The spectacle of a solitary voyager----" "Two hundred!" I called up. "The spectacle of two hundred solitary voyagers--cradled in the brain of a Montgolfier and a Charles--O, stop it! I'm no public speaker! How the deuce----?" There was a lurch and a heave in the crowd. "Pitch oot the drunken loon!" cried a voice. The next moment I heard my cousin bawling for a clear passage. With the tail of my eye I caught a glimpse of his plethoric perspiring face as he came charging past the barrels of the hydrogen-apparatus; and, with that, Byfield had shaken down a rope-ladder and fixed it, and I was scrambling up like a cat. "Cut the ropes!" "Stop him!" my cousin bawled. "Stop the balloon! It's Champdivers, the murderer!" "Cut the ropes!" vociferated Byfield; and to my infinite relief I saw that Dalmahoy was doing his best. A hand clutched at my heel. I let out viciously, amid a roar of the crowd; felt the kick reach and rattle home on somebody's teeth; and, as the crowd made a rush and the balloon swayed and shot upwards, heaved myself over the rim into the car. Recovering myself on the instant, I bent over. I had on my tongue a neat farewell for Alain, but the sight of a hundred upturned and contorted faces silenced me as a blow might. There had lain my real peril, in the sudden wild-beast rage now suddenly baffled. I read it, as clear as print, and sickened. Nor was Alain in a posture to listen. My kick had sent Moleskin flying on top of him; and borne to earth, prone beneath the superincumbent bulk of his retainer, he lay with hands outspread like a swimmer's and nose buried in the plashy soil. CHAPTER XXXIII THE INCOMPLETE AËRONAUTS All this I took in at a glance: I dare say in three seconds or less. The hubbub beneath us dropped to a low, rumbling bass. Suddenly a woman's scream divided it--one high-pitched, penetrating scream, followed by silence. And then, as a pack of hounds will start into cry, voice after voice caught up the scream and reduplicated it until the whole enclosure rang with alarm. "Hullo!" Byfield called to me: "what the deuce is happening now?" and ran to his side of the car. "Good Lord, it's Dalmahoy!" It was. Beneath us, at the tail of a depending rope, that unhappy lunatic dangled between earth and sky. He had been the first to cut the tether; and, having severed it below his grasp, had held on while the others cut loose, taking even the asinine precaution to loop the end twice round his wrist. Of course the upward surge of the balloon had heaved him off his feet, and his muddled instinct did the rest. Clutching now with both hands, he was borne aloft like a lamb from the flock. So we reasoned afterwards. "The grapnel!" gasped Byfield: for Dalmahoy's rope was fastened beneath the floor of the car, and not to be reached by us. We fumbled to cast the grapnel loose, and shouted down together-- "For God's sake hold on! Catch the anchor when it comes! You'll break your neck if you drop!" He swung into sight again beyond the edge of the floor, and uplifted a strained, white face. We cast loose the grapnel, lowered it and jerked it towards him. He swung past it like a pendulum, caught at it with one hand, and missed: came flying back on the receding curve, and missed again. At the third attempt he blundered right against it, and flung an arm over one of the flukes, next a leg, and in a trice we were hauling up, hand over hand. We dragged him inboard. He was pale, but undefeatedly voluble. "Must apologise to you fellows, really. Dam silly, clumsy kind of thing to do; might have been awkward too. Thank you, Byfield, my boy, I will: two fingers only--a harmless steadier." He took the flask and was lifting it. But his jaw dropped and his hand hung arrested. "He's going to faint," I cried. "The strain----" "Strain on your grandmother, Ducie! What's _that_?" He was staring past my shoulder, and on the instant I was aware of a voice--not the aëronaut's--speaking behind me, and, as it were, out of the clouds-- "I tak' ye to witness, Mister Byfield----" Consider, if you please. For six days I had been oscillating within a pretty complete circumference of alarms. It is small blame to me, I hope, that with my nerve on so nice a pivot, I quivered and swung to this new apprehension like a needle in a compass-box. On the floor of the car, at my feet, lay a heap of plaid rugs and overcoats, from which, successively and painfully disinvolved, there emerged first a hand clutching a rusty beaver hat, next a mildly indignant face, in spectacles, and finally the rearward of a very small man in a seedy suit of black. He rose on his knees, his finger-tips resting on the floor, and contemplated the aëronaut over his glasses with a world of reproach. "I tak' ye to witness, Mr. Byfield!" Byfield mopped a perspiring brow. "My dear sir," he stammered, "all a mistake--no fault of mine--explain presently"; then, as one catching at an inspiration, "Allow me to introduce you. Mr. Dalmahoy, Mr.----" "My name is Sheepshanks," said the little man stiffly. "But you'll excuse me----" Mr. Dalmahoy interrupted with a playful cat-call. "Hear, hear! _Silence!_ 'His name is Sheepshanks. On the Grampian Hills his father kept his flocks--a thousand sheep,' and, I make no doubt, shanks in proportion. Excuse you, Sheepshanks? My _dear_ sir! At this altitude one shank was more than we had a right to expect: the plural multiplies the obligation." Keeping a tight hold on his hysteria, Dalmahoy steadied himself by a rope and bowed. "And I, sir,"--as Mr. Sheepshanks' thoroughly bewildered gaze travelled around and met mine--"I, sir, am the Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, at your service. I haven't a notion how or why you come to be here: but you seem likely to be an acquisition. On my part," I continued, as there leapt into my mind the stanza I had vainly tried to recover in Mrs. McRankine's sitting-room, "I have the honour to refer you to the inimitable Roman, Flaccus-- "'Virtus, recludens immeritis mori Coelum negata temptat iter via, Coetusque vulgares et udam Spernit humum fugiente penna' --you have the Latin, sir?" "Not a word." He subsided upon the pile of rugs and spread out his hands in protest. "I tak' ye to witness, Mr. Byfield!" "Then in a minute or so I will do myself the pleasure of construing," said I, and turned to scan the earth we were leaving--I had not guessed how rapidly. We contemplated it from the height of six hundred feet--or so Byfield asserted after consulting his barometer. He added that this was a mere nothing: the wonder was the balloon had risen at all with one-half of the total folly of Edinburgh clinging to the car. I passed the possible inaccuracy and certain ill-temper of this calculation. He had (he explained) made jettison of at least a hundred-weight of sand ballast. I could only hope it had fallen on my cousin. To me, six hundred feet appeared a very respectable eminence. And the view was ravishing. The _Lunardi_, mounting through a stagnant calm in a line almost vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated in a heaven of exquisite blue. Below us, by some trick of eyesight, the country had grown concave, its horizons curving up like the rim of a shallow bowl--a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with sea-fog, but to our eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow. Upon it the travelling shadow of the balloon became no shadow but a stain: an amethyst (you might call it) purged of all grosser properties than colour and lucency. At times thrilled by no perceptible wind, rather by the pulse of the sun's rays, the froth shook and parted: and then behold, deep in the _crevasses_, vignetted and shining, an acre or two of the earth of man's business and fret--tilled slopes of the Lothians, ships dotted on the Forth, the capital like a hive that some child had smoked--the ear of fancy could almost hear it buzzing. I snatched the glass from Byfield, and brought it to focus upon one of these peepshow rifts: and lo! at the foot of the shaft, imaged, as it were, far down in a luminous well, a green hillside and three figures standing. A white speck fluttered; and fluttered until the rift closed again. Flora's handkerchief! Blessings on the brave hand that waved it!--at a moment when (as I have since heard and knew without need of hearing) her heart was down in her shoes, or, to speak accurately, in the milkmaid Janet's. Singular in many things, she was at one with the rest of her sex in its native and incurable distrust of man's inventions. I am bound to say that my own faith in aërostatics was a plant--a sensitive plant--of extremely tender growth. Either I failed, a while back, in painting the emotions of my descent of the Devil's Elbow, or the reader knows that I am a chicken-hearted fellow about a height. I make him a present of the admission. Set me on a plane superficies, and I will jog with all the _insouciance_ of a rolling stone: toss me in air, and, with the stone in the child's adage, I am in the hands of the devil. Even to the qualified instability of a sea-going ship I have ever committed myself with resignation rather than confidence. But to my unspeakable relief the _Lunardi_ floated upwards, and continued to float, almost without a tremor. Only by reading the barometer, or by casting scraps of paper overboard, could we tell that the machine moved at all. Now and again we revolved slowly: so Byfield's compass informed us, but for ourselves we had never guessed it. Of dizziness I felt no longer a symptom, for the sufficient reason that the provocatives were nowhere at hand. We were the only point in space, without possibility of comparison with another. We were made one with the clean silences receiving us; and speaking only for the Vicomte Anne de Saint-Yves, I dare assert that for five minutes a newly bathed infant had not been less conscious of original sin. "But look here, you know"--it was Byfield at my elbow--"I'm a public character, by George; and this puts me in a devilish awkward position." "So it does," I agreed. "You proclaimed yourself a solitary voyager: and here, to the naked eye, are four of us." "And pray how can I help that? If, at the last moment, a couple of lunatics come rushing in----" "They still leave Sheepshanks to be accounted for." Byfield began to irritate me. I turned to the stowaway. "Perhaps," said I, "Mr. Sheepshanks will explain." "I paid in advance," Mr. Sheepshanks began, eager to seize the opening presented. "The fact is, I'm a married man." "Already at two points you have the advantage of us. Proceed, sir." "You were good enough, just now, to give me your name, Mr.----" "The Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves." "It is a somewhat difficult name to remember." "If that be all, sir, within two minutes you shall have a _memoria technica_ prepared for use during the voyage." Mr. Sheepshanks harked back. "I am a married man, and--d'ye see?--Mrs. Sheepshanks, as you might say, has no sympathy with ballooning. She was a Guthrie of Dumfries." "Which accounts for it, to be sure," said I. "To me, sir, on the contrary, aërostatics have long been an alluring study. I might even, Mr. ----, I might even, I say, term it the passion of my life." His mild eyes shone behind their glasses. "I remember Vincent Lunardi, sir. I was present in Heriot's Gardens when he made an ascension there in October '85. He came down at Cupar. The Society of Gentlemen Golfers at Cupar presented him with an address; and at Edinburgh he was admitted Knight Companion of the Beggar's Benison, a social company, or (as I may say) crew, since defunct. A thin-faced man, sir. He wore a peculiar bonnet, if I may use the expression, very much cocked up behind. The shape became fashionable. He once pawned his watch with me, sir; that being my profession. I regret to say he redeemed it subsequently: otherwise I might have the pleasure of showing it to you. O yes, the theory of ballooning has long been a passion with me. But in deference to Mrs. Sheepshanks I have abstained from the actual practice--until to-day. To tell you the truth, my wife believes me to be brushing off the cobwebs in the Kyles of Bute." "_Are_ there any cobwebs in the Kyles of Bute?" asked Dalmahoy, in a tone unnaturally calm. "A figure of speech, sir--as one might say, holiday-keeping there. I paid Mr. Byfield five pounds in advance. I have his receipt. And the stipulation was that I should be concealed in the car and make the ascension with him alone." "Are we then to take it, sir, that our company offends you?" I demanded. He made haste to disclaim. "Not at all: decidedly not in the least. But the chances were for less agreeable associates." I bowed. "And a bargain's a bargain," he wound up. "So it is," said I. "Byfield, hand Mr. Sheepshanks back his five pounds." "O, come now!" the aëronaut objected. "And who may you be, to be ordering a man about?" "I believe I have already answered that question twice in your hearing." "Mosha the Viscount Thingamy de Something-or-other? I dare say!" "Have you any objection?" "Not the smallest. For all I care, you are Robert Burns, or Napoleon Buonaparte, or anything, from the Mother of the Gracchi to Balaam's Ass. But I knew you first as Mr. Ducie; and you may take it that I'm Mr. Don't-see." He reached up a hand towards the valve-string. "What are you proposing to do?" "To descend." "What?--back to the enclosure?" "Scarcely that, seeing that we have struck a northerly current, and are travelling at the rate of thirty miles an hour, perhaps. That's Broad Law to the south of us, as I make it out." "But why descend at all?" "Because it sticks in my head that some one in the crowd called you by a name that wasn't Ducie; and by a title, for that matter, which didn't sound like 'Viscount.' I took it at the time for a constable's trick; but I begin to have my strong doubts." The fellow was dangerous. I stooped nonchalantly on pretence of picking up a plaid; for the air had turned bitterly cold of a sudden. "Mr. Byfield, a word in your private ear, if you will." "As you please," said he, dropping the valve-string. We leaned together over the breastwork of the car. "If I mistake not," I said, speaking low, "the name was Champdivers." He nodded. "The gentleman who raised that foolish but infernally risky cry was my own cousin, the Viscount de Saint-Yves. I give you my word of honour to that." Observing that this staggered him, I added, mighty slily, "I suppose it doesn't occur to you now that the whole affair was a game, for a friendly wager?" "No," he answered brutally, "it doesn't. And what's more, it won't go down." "In that respect," said I, with a sudden change of key, "it resembles your balloon. But I admire the obstinacy of your suspicions; since, as a matter of fact, I am Champdivers." "The mur----" "Certainly not. I killed the man in fair duel." "Ha!" he eyed me with sour distrust. "That is what you have to prove." "Man alive, you don't expect me to demonstrate it up here, by the simple apparatus of ballooning?" "There is no talk of 'up here,'" said he, and reached for the valve-string. "Say 'down there,' then. Down there it is no business of the accused to prove his innocence. By what I have heard of the law, English or Scotch, the boot is on the other leg. But I'll tell you what I _can_ prove. I can prove, sir, that I have been a deal in your company of late; that I supped with you and Mr. Dalmahoy no longer ago than Wednesday. You may put it that we three are here together again by accident; that you never suspected me; that my invasion of your machine was a complete surprise to you, and, so far as you were concerned, wholly fortuitous. But ask yourself what any intelligent jury is likely to make of that cock-and-bull story." Mr. Byfield was visibly shaken. "Add to this," I proceeded, "that you have to explain Sheepshanks; to confess that you gulled the public by advertising a lonely ascension, and haranguing a befooled multitude to the same intent, when, all the time, you had a companion concealed in the car. 'A public character!' you call yourself! My word, sir! there'll be no mistake about it, this time." I paused, took breath, and shook a finger at him:-- "Now just you listen to me, Mr. Byfield. Pull that string, and a sadly discredited aëronaut descends upon the least charitable of worlds. Why, sir, in any case your game in Edinburgh is up. The public is dog-tired of you and your ascensions, as any observant child in to-day's crowd could have told you. The truth was there staring you in the face; and next time even your purblind vanity must recognise it. Consider; I offered you two hundred guineas for the convenience of your balloon. I now double that offer on condition that I become its owner during this trip, and that you manipulate it as I wish. Here are the notes; and out of the total you will refund five pounds to Mr. Sheepshanks." Byfield's complexion had grown streaky as his balloon; and with colours not so very dissimilar. I had stabbed upon his vital self-conceit, and the man was really hurt. "You must give me time," he stammered. "By all means." I knew he was beaten. But only the poorness of my case excused me, and I had no affection for the weapons used. I turned with relief to the others. Dalmahoy was seated on the floor of the car, and helping Mr. Sheepshanks to unpack a carpet bag. "This will be whisky," the little pawnbroker announced: "three bottles. My wife said, 'Surely, Elshander, ye'll find whisky where ye're gaun.' 'No doubt I will,' said I, 'but I'm not very confident of its quality; and it's a far step.' My itinerary, Mr. Dalmahoy, was planned from Greenock to the Kyles of Bute and back, and thence coastwise to Saltcoats and the land of Burns. I told her, if she had anything to communicate, to address her letter to the care of the postmaster, Ayr--ha, ha!" He broke off and gazed reproachfully into Dalmahoy's impassive face. "Ayr--air," he explained: "a little play upon words." "Skye would have been better," suggested Dalmahoy, without moving an eyelid. "Skye? Dear me--capital, capital! Only, you see," he urged, "she wouldn't expect me to be in Skye." A minute later he drew me aside. "Excellent company your friend is, sir: most gentlemanly manners; but at times, if I may so say, not very gleg." My hands by this time were numb with cold. We had been ascending steadily, and Byfield's English thermometer stood at thirteen degrees. I borrowed from the heap a thicker overcoat, in the pocket of which I was lucky enough to find a pair of furred gloves; and leaned over for another look below, still with a corner of my eye for the aëronaut, who stood biting his nails, as far from me as the car allowed. The sea-fog had vanished, and the south of Scotland lay spread beneath us from sea to sea, like a map in monotint. Nay, yonder was England, with the Solway cleaving the coast--a broad, bright spearhead, slightly bent at the tip--and the fells of Cumberland beyond, mere hummocks on the horizon; all else flat as a board or as the bottom of a saucer. White threads of high-road connected town to town: the intervening hills had fallen down, and the towns, as if in fright, had shrunk into themselves, contracting their suburbs as a snail his horns. The old poet was right who said that the Olympians had a delicate view. The lace-makers of Valenciennes might have had the tracing of those towns and high-roads; those knots of _guipure_ and ligatures of finest _réseau_-work. And when I considered that what I looked down on--this, with its arteries and nodules of public traffic--was a nation; that each silent nodule held some thousands of men, each man moderately ready to die in defence of his shopboard and hen-roost; it came into my mind that my Emperor's emblem was the bee, and this Britain the spider's web, sure enough. Byfield came across and stood at my elbow. "Mr. Ducie, I have considered your offer, and accept it. It's a curst position----" "For a public character," I put in affably. "Don't, sir! I beg that you don't. Your words just now made me suffer a good deal: the more, that I perceive a part of them to be true. An aëronaut, sir, has ambition--how can he help it? The public, the newspapers, feed it for a while; they _fête_, and flatter, and applaud him. But in its heart the public ranks him with the mountebank, and reserves the right to drop him when tired of his tricks. Is it wonderful that he forgets this sometimes? For in his own thoughts he is not a mountebank--no, by God, he is not!" The man spoke with genuine passion. I held out my hand. "Mr. Byfield, my words were brutal. I beg you will allow me to take them back." He shook his head. "They were true, sir; partly true, that is." "I am not so sure. A balloon, as you hint and I begin to discover, may alter the perspective of man's ambitions. Here are the notes; and on the top of them I give you my word that you are not abetting a criminal. How long should the _Lunardi_ be able to maintain itself in the air?" "I have never tried it; but I calculate on twenty hours--say twenty-four at a pinch." "We will test it. The current, I see, is still north-east, or from that to north-by-east. And our height?" He consulted the barometer. "Something under three miles." Dalmahoy heard, and whooped. "Hi! you fellows, come to lunch! Sandwiches, shortbread, and cleanest Glenlivet--Elshander's Feast: "'Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown; He raised a mortal to the skies----' Sheepshanks provided the whisky. Rise, Elshander: observe that you have no worlds left to conquer, and, having shed the perfunctory tear, pass the corkscrew. Come along, Ducie: come, my Dædalian boy; if you are not hungry, I am, and so is--Sheepshanks--what the dickens do you mean by consorting with a singular verb? _Verbum cum nominativo_--I should say, so _are_ sheepshanks." Byfield produced from one of the lockers a pork pie and a bottle of sherry (the _viaticum_ in choice and assortment almost explained the man) and we sat down to the repast. Dalmahoy's tongue ran like a brook. He addressed Mr. Sheepshanks with light-hearted impartiality as Philip's royal son, as the Man of Ross, as the divine Clarinda. He elected him Professor of Marital Diplomacy to the University of Cramond. He passed the bottle and called on him for a toast, a song--"Oblige me, Sheepshanks, by making the welkin ring." Mr. Sheepshanks beamed, and gave us a sentiment instead. The little man was enjoying himself amazingly. "Fund of spirits your friend has, to be sure, sir--quite a fund." Either my own spirits were running low or the bitter cold had congealed them. I was conscious of my thin ball-suit, and moreover of a masterful desire of sleep. I felt no inclination for food, but drained half a tumblerful of the Sheepshanks whisky, and crawled beneath the pile of plaids. Byfield considerately helped to arrange them. He may or may not have caught some accent of uncertainty in my thanks: at any rate he thought fit to add the assurance, "You may trust me, Mr. Ducie." I saw that I could, and began almost to like the fellow. In this posture I dozed through the afternoon. In dreams I heard Dalmahoy and Sheepshanks lifting their voices in amoebæan song, and became languidly aware that they were growing uproarious. I heard Byfield expostulating, apparently in vain: for I awoke next to find that Sheepshanks had stumbled over me while illustrating, with an empty bottle, the motions of tossing the caber. "Old Hieland sports," explained Dalmahoy, wiping tears of vain laughter: "his mother's uncle was out in the 'Forty-Five. Sorry to wake you, Ducie: balow, my babe!" It did not occur to me to smoke danger in this tomfoolery. I turned over and dozed again. It seemed but a minute later that a buzzing in my ears awoke me, with a stab of pain as though my temples were being split with a wedge. On the instant I heard my name cried aloud, and sat up, to find myself blinking in a broad flood of moonlight over against the agitated face of Dalmahoy. "Byfield----" I began. Dalmahoy pointed. The aëronaut lay at my feet, collapsed like some monstrous marionette, with legs and arms a-splay. Across his legs, with head propped against a locker, reclined Sheepshanks, and gazed upwards with an approving smile. "Awkward business," explained Dalmahoy, between gasps. "Sheepshanks 'nmanageable; can't carry his liquor like a gentleman: thought it funny 'pitch out ballast. Byfield lost his temper: worst thing in the world. One thing I pride myself, 'menable to reason. No holding Sheepshanks: Byfield got him down; too late; faint both of us. Sheepshanks wants ring for 'shistance: pulls string: breaks. When string breaks _Lunardi_ won't fall--tha's the devil of it." "_With_ my tol-de-rol," Mr. Sheepshanks murmured. "Pretty--very pretty." I cast a look aloft. The _Lunardi_ was transformed: every inch of it frosted as with silver. All the ropes and cords ran with silver too, or liquid mercury. And in the midst of this sparkling cage, a little below the hoop, and five feet at least above reach, dangled the broken valve-string. "Well," I said, "you have made a handsome mess of it! Pass me the broken end, and be good enough not to lose your head." "I wish I could," he groaned, pressing it between his palms. "My dear sir, I'm not frightened, if that is your meaning." I was, and horribly. But the thing had to be done. The reader will perhaps forgive me for touching shyly on the next two or three minutes, which still recur on the smallest provocation and play bogey with my dreams. To balance on the edge of night, quaking, gripping a frozen rope; to climb, and feel the pit of one's stomach slipping like a bucket in a fathomless well--I suppose the intolerable pains in my head spurred me to the attempt--these and the urgent shortness of my breathing--much as toothache will drive a man up to the dentist's chair. I knotted the broken ends of the valve-string and slid back into the car: then tugged the valve open, while with my disengaged arm I wiped the sweat from my forehead. It froze upon the coat-cuff. In a minute or so the drumming in my ears grew less violent. Dalmahoy bent over the aëronaut, who was bleeding at the nose and now began to breathe stertorously. Sheepshanks had fallen into placid slumber. I kept the valve open until we descended into a stratum of fog--from which, no doubt, the _Lunardi_ had lately risen: the moisture collected here would account for its congelated coat of silver. By and by, still without rising, we were quit of the fog, and the moon swept the hollow beneath us, rescuing solitary scraps and sheets of water and letting them slip again like imprehensible ghosts. Small fiery eyes opened and shut on us; cressets of flame on factory chimneys, more and more frequent. I studied the compass. Our course lay south-by-west. But our whereabouts? Dalmahoy, being appealed to, suggested Glasgow: and thenceforward I let him alone. Byfield snored on. I pulled out my watch, which I had forgotten to wind; and found it run down. The hands stood at twenty minutes past four. Daylight, then, could not be far off. Eighteen hours--say twenty: and Byfield had guessed our rate at one time to be thirty miles an hour. Five hundred miles---- A line of silver ahead: a ribbon drawn taut across the night, clean-edged, broadening--the sea! In a minute or two I caught the murmur of the coast. "Five hundred miles," I began to reckon again, and a holy calm dawned on me as the _Lunardi_ swept high over the fringing surf, and its voice faded back with the glimmer of a whitewashed fishing-haven. I roused Dalmahoy and pointed. "The sea!" "Looks like it. Which, I wonder?" "The English Channel, man." "I say--are you sure?" "Eh?" exclaimed Byfield, waking up and coming forward with a stagger. "The English Channel." "The French fiddlestick," said he with equal promptness. "O, have it as you please!" I retorted. It was not worth arguing with the man. "What is the hour?" I told him that my watch had run down. His had done the same. Dalmahoy did not carry one. We searched the still prostrate Sheepshanks: his had stopped at ten minutes to four. Byfield replaced it and underlined his disgust with a kick. "A nice lot!" he ejaculated. "I owe you my thanks, Mr. Ducie, all the same. It was touch and go with us, and my head's none the better for it." "But I say," expostulated Dalmahoy. "France! This is getting past a joke." "So you are really beginning to discover that, are you?" Byfield stood, holding by a rope, and studied the darkness ahead. Beside him I hugged my convictions--hour after hour, it seemed; and still the dawn did not come. He turned at length. "I see a coast line to the south of us. This will be the Bristol Channel: and the balloon is sinking. Pitch out some ballast if these idiots have left any." I found a couple of sand bags and emptied them overboard. The coast, as a matter of fact, was close at hand. But the _Lunardi_ rose in time to clear the cliff barrier by some hundreds of feet. A wild sea ran on it: of its surf, as of a grey and agonising face, we caught one glimpse as we hurled high and clear over the roar: and, a minute later, to our infinite dismay, were actually skimming the surface of a black hillside. "Hold on!" screamed Byfield, and I had barely time to tighten my grip when crash! the car struck the turf and pitched us together in a heap on the floor. Bump! the next blow shook us like peas in a bladder. I drew my legs up and waited for the third. None came. The car gyrated madly and swung slowly back to equilibrium. We picked ourselves up, tossed rugs, coats, instruments, promiscuously overboard, and mounted again. The chine of the tall hill, our stumbling-block, fell back and was lost, and we swept forward into formless shadow. "Confound it!" said Byfield, "the land can't be uninhabited!" It was, for aught we could see. Not a light showed anywhere; and to make things worse the moon had abandoned us. For one good hour we swept through chaos to the tuneless lamentations of Sheepshanks, who declared that his collar-bone was broken. Then Dalmahoy flung a hand upwards. Night lay like a sack around and below us: but right aloft, at the zenith, day was trembling. Slowly established, it spread and descended upon us until it touched a distant verge of hills, and there, cut by the rim of the rising sun, flowed suddenly with streams of crimson. "Over with the grapnel!" Byfield sprang to the valve-string and pulled; and the featureless earth rushed up towards us. The sunlight through which we were falling had not touched it yet. It leaped on us, drenched in shadow, like some incalculable beast from its covert: a land shaggy with woods and coppices. Between the woods a desolate river glimmered. A colony of herons rose from the tree-tops beneath us and flew squawking for the farther shore. "This won't do," said Byfield, and shut the escape. "We must win clear of these woods. Hullo!" Ahead of us the river widened abruptly into a shining estuary, populous with anchored shipping. Tall hills flanked it, and in the curve of the westernmost hill a grey town rose from the waterside: its terraces climbing, tier upon tier, like seats in an amphitheatre; its chimneys lifting their smoke over against the dawn. The tiers curved away southward to a round castle and a spit of rock, off which a brig under white canvas stood out for the line of the open sea. We swept across the roadstead towards the town, trailing our grapnel as it were a hooked fish, a bare hundred feet above the water. Faces stared up at us from the ships' decks. The crew of one lowered a boat to pursue; we were half a mile away before it touched the water. Should we clear the town? At Byfield's orders we stripped off our overcoats and stood ready to lighten ship; but seeing that the deflected wind in the estuary was carrying us towards the suburbs and the harbour's mouth, he changed his mind. "It is devil or deep sea," he announced. "We will try the grapnel. Look to it, Ducie, while I take the valve!" He pressed a clasp-knife into my hand. "Cut, if I give the word." We descended a few feet. We were skimming the ridge. The grapnel touched, and, in the time it takes you to wink, had ploughed through a kitchen garden, uprooting a regiment of currant bushes; had leaped clear and was caught in the eaves of a wooden outhouse, fetching us up with a dislocating shock. I heard a rending noise, and picked myself up in time to see the building collapse like a house of cards, and a pair of demented pigs emerge from the ruins and plunge across the garden-beds. And with that I was pitched off my feet again as the hook caught in an iron _chevaux-de-frise_, and held fast. "Hold tight!" shouted Byfield, as the car lurched and struggled, careering desperately. "Don't cut, man! What the devil!" Our rope had tautened over the coping of a high stone wall; and the straining _Lunardi_--a very large and handsome blossom, bending on a very thin stalk--overhung a gravelled yard; and lo! from the centre of it stared up at us, rigid with amazement, the faces of a squad of British red-coats! I believe that the first glimpse of that abhorred uniform brought my knife down upon the rope. In two seconds I had slashed through the strands, and the flaccid machine lifted and bore us from their ken. But I see their faces yet, as in _basso relievo_: round-eyed, open-mouthed; honest country faces, and boyish, every one: an awkward squad of recruits at drill, fronting a red-headed sergeant; the sergeant, with cane held horizontally across and behind his thighs, his face upturned with the rest, and "Irishman" on every feature of it. And so the vision fleeted, and Byfield's language claimed attention. The man took the whole vocabulary of British profanity at a rush, and swore himself to a standstill. As he paused for second wind I struck in: "Mr. Byfield, you open the wrong valve. We drift, as you say, towards--nay, over the open sea. As master of this balloon, I suggest that we descend within reasonable distance of the brig yonder; which, as I make out, is backing her sails; which, again, can only mean that she observes us and is preparing to lower a boat." He saw the sense of this, and turned to business, though with a snarl. As a gull from the cliff, the _Lunardi_ slanted downwards, and passing the brig by less than a cable's length to leeward, soused into the sea. I say "soused": for I confess that the shock belied the promise of our easy descent. The _Lunardi_ floated: but it also drove before the wind. And as it dragged the car after it like a tilted pail, the four drenched and blinded aëronauts struggled through the spray and gripped the hoop, the netting--nay, dug their nails into the oiled silk. In its new element the machine became inspired with a sudden infernal malice. It sank like a pillow if we tried to climb it: it rolled us over in the brine; it allowed us no moment for a backward glance. I spied a small cutter-rigged craft tacking towards us, a mile and more to leeward, and wondered if the captain of the brig had left our rescue to it. He had not. I heard a shout behind us; a rattle of oars as the bowmen shipped them; and a hand gripped my collar. So one by one we were plucked--uncommon specimens!--from the deep; rescued from what Mr. Sheepshanks a minute later, as he sat on a thwart and wiped his spectacles, justly termed "a predicament, sir, as disconcerting as any my experience supplies." CHAPTER XXXIV CAPTAIN COLENSO "But what be us to do with the balloon, sir?" the coxswain demanded. Had it been my affair, I believe I should have obeyed a ridiculous impulse and begged them to keep it for their trouble; so weary was I of the machine. Byfield, however, directed them to slit a seam of the oiled silk and cut away the car, which was by this time wholly submerged and not to be lifted. At once the _Lunardi_ collapsed and became manageable; and having roped it to a ring-bolt astern, the crew fell to their oars. My teeth were chattering. These operations of salvage had taken time, and it took us a further unconscionable time to cover the distance between us and the brig as she lay hove-to, her maintopsail aback and her headsails drawing. "Feels like towing a whale, sir," the oarsman behind me panted. I whipped round. The voice--yes, and the face--were the voice and face of the seaman who sat and steered us: the voice English, of a sort; the face of no pattern that I recognised for English. The fellows were as like as two peas: as like as the two drovers Sim and Candlish had been: you might put them both at forty; grizzled men, pursed about the eyes with seafaring. And now that I came to look, the three rowers forward, though mere lads, repeated their elders' features and build; the gaunt frame, the long, serious face, the swarthy complexion and meditative eye--in short, Don Quixote of la Mancha at various stages of growth. Men and lads, I remarked, wore silver earrings. I was speculating on this likeness when we shipped oars and fell alongside the brig's ladder. At the head of it my hand was taken, and I was helped on deck with ceremony by a tall man in loose blue jacket and duck trousers: an old man, bent and frail; by his air of dignity, the master of the vessel, and by his features as clearly the patriarch of the family. He lifted his cap and addressed us with a fine but (as I now recall it) somewhat tired courtesy. "An awkward adventure, gentlemen." We thanked him in proper form. "I am pleased to have been of service. The pilot-cutter yonder could hardly have fetched you in less than twenty minutes. I have signalled her alongside, and she will convey you back to Falmouth; none the worse, I hope, for your wetting." "A convenience," said I, "of which my friends will gladly avail themselves. For my part, I do not propose to return." He paused, weighing my words; obviously puzzled, but politely anxious to understand. His eyes were grey and honest, even childishly honest, but dulled about the rim of the iris and a trifle vacant, as though the world with its train of affairs had passed beyond his active concern. I keep my own eyes about me when I travel, and have surprised just such a look, before now, behind the spectacles of very old men who sit by the roadside and break stones for a living. "I fear, sir, that I do not take you precisely." "Why," said I, "if I may guess, this is one of the famous Falmouth packets?" "As to that, sir, you are right, and yet wrong. She _was_ a packet, and (if I may say it) a famous one." His gaze travelled aloft, and descending rested on mine with a sort of gentle resignation. "But the old pennon is down, as you see. At present she sails on a private adventure, and under private commission." "A privateer?" "You may call it that." "The adventure hits my humour even more nicely. Accept me, Captain----" "Colenso." "Accept me, Captain Colenso, for your passenger: I will not say comrade-in-arms--naval warfare being so far beyond my knowledge, which it would perhaps be more descriptive to call ignorance. But I can pay--" I thrust a hand nervously into my breast-pocket, and blessed Flora for her waterproof bag. "Excuse me, Captain, if I speak with my friend here in private for a moment." I drew Byfield aside. "Your notes? The salt water----" "You see," said he, "I am a martyr to acidity of the stomach." "Man! do I invite the confidence of your stomach?" "Consequently I never make an ascension unaccompanied by a small bottle of Epsom salts, tightly corked." "And you threw away the salts and substituted the notes?--that was clever of you, Byfield." I lifted my voice. "And Mr. Dalmahoy, I presume, returns to his sorrowing folk?" The extravagant cheerfully corrected me. "They will not sorrow: but I shall return to them. Of their grudged pension I have eighteenpence in my pocket. But I propose to travel with Sheepshanks, and raise the wind by showing his tricks. He shall toss the caber from Land's End to Forthside, cheered by the plaudits of the intervening taverns and furthered by their bounty." "A progress which we must try to expedite, if only out of regard for Mrs. Sheepshanks." I turned to Captain Colenso again. "Well, sir, will you accept me for your passenger?" "I doubt that you are joking, sir." "And I swear to you that I am not." He hesitated; tottered to the companion, and called down, "Susannah! Susannah! A moment on deck, if you please. One of these gentlemen wishes to ship as passenger." A dark-browed woman of middle age thrust her head above the ladder and eyed me. Even so might a ruminating cow gaze over her hedge upon some posting wayfarer. "What's he dressed in?" she demanded abruptly. "Madam, it was intended for a ball-suit." "You will do no dancing here, young man." "My dear lady, I accept that and every condition you may impose. Whatever the discipline of the ship----" She cut me short. "Have you told him, father?" "Why, no. You see, sir, I ought to tell you that this is not an ordinary voyage." "Nor, for that matter, is mine." "You will be exposed to risks." "In a privateer that goes without saying." "The risk of capture." "Naturally: though a brave captain will not dwell on it." And I bowed. "But I do dwell on it," he answered earnestly, a red spot showing on either cheek. "I must tell you, sir, that we are very likely indeed to fall into an enemy's hands." "Say certain," chimed in Susannah. "Yes, I will say we are certain. I cannot in conscience do less." He sought his daughter's eyes. She nodded. "O, damn your conscience!" thought I, my stomach rising in contempt for this noble-looking but extremely faint-hearted privateersman. "Come," I said, rallying him, "we fall in with a Frenchman, or--let us suppose--an American: that is our object, eh?" "Yes, with an American. That is our object, to be sure." "Then I warrant we give a good account of ourselves. Tut, tut, man--an ex-packet captain!" I pulled up in sheer wonder at the lunacy of our dispute and the side he was forcing me to take. Here was I haranguing a grey-headed veteran on his own quarter-deck and exhorting him to valour! In a flash I saw myself befooled, tricked into playing the patronising amateur, complacently posturing for the derision of gods and men. And Captain Colenso, who aimed but to be rid of me, was laughing in his sleeve, no doubt. In a minute even Sheepshanks would catch the jest. Now, I do mortally hate to be laughed at: it may be disciplinary for most men, but it turns me obstinate. Captain Colenso, at any rate, dissembled his mirth to perfection. The look which he shifted from me to Susannah and back was eloquent of senile indecision. "I cannot explain to you, sir. The consequences--I might mitigate them for you--still you must risk them." He broke off and appealed to me. "I would rather you did not insist: I would indeed! I must beg of you, sir, not to press it." "But I do press it," I answered, stubborn as a mule. "I tell you that I am ready to accept all risks. But if you want me to return with my friends in the cutter, you must summon your crew to pitch me down the ladder. And there's the end on't." "Dear, dear! Tell me at least, sir, that you are an unmarried man." "Up to now I have that misfortune." I aimed a bow at Mistress Susannah; but that lady had turned her broad shoulders, and it missed fire. "Which reminds me," I continued, "to ask for the favour of pen, ink, and paper. I wish to send a letter ashore, to the mail." She invited me to follow her; and I descended to the main cabin, a spick-and-span apartment, where we surprised two passably good-looking damsels at their housework, the one polishing a mahogany swing-table, the other a brass door-handle. They picked up their cloths, dropped me a curtsy apiece, and disappeared at a word from Susannah, who bade me be seated at the swing-table and set writing materials before me. The room was lit by a broad stern-window, and lined along two of its sides with mahogany doors leading, as I supposed, to sleeping cabins: the panels--not to speak of the brass handles and finger-plates--shining so that a man might have seen his face in them, to shave by. "But why all these women on board a privateer?" thought I, as I tried a quill on my thumb-nail, and embarked upon my first love-letter. "DEAREST,--This line with my devotion to tell you that the balloon has descended safely, and your Anne finds himself on board...." "By the way, Miss Susannah, what is the name of this ship?" "She is called the _Lady Nepean_; and I am a married woman and the mother of six." "I felicitate you, madam." I bowed, and resumed my writing: "... the _Lady Nepean_ packet, outward bound from Falmouth to...." --"Excuse me, but where the dickens are we bound for?" "For the coast of Massachusetts, I believe." "You believe?" She nodded. "Young man, if you'll take my advice, you'll go back." "Madam," I answered, on the sudden impulse, "I am an escaped French prisoner." And with that, having tossed my cap over the mills (as they say), I leaned back in the settee, and we regarded each other. "----escaped," I continued, still my eyes on hers, "with a trifle of money, but minus my heart. I write this to the fair daughter of Britain who has it in her keeping. And now what have you to say?" "Ah, well," she mused, "the Lord's ways be past finding out. It may be the easier for you." Apparently it was the habit of this ship's company to speak in enigmas. I caught up my pen again: "... the coast of Massachusetts, in the United States of America, whence I hope to make my way in good time to France. Though you have news, dearest, I fear none can reach me for a while. Yet, and though you have no more to write than 'I love you, Anne,' write it, and commit it to Mr. Robbie, who will forward it to Mr. Romaine, who in turn may find a means to get it smuggled through to Paris, Rue du Fouarre, 16. It should be consigned to the widow Jupille, 'to be called for by the corporal who praised her _vin blanc_.' She will remember; and in truth a man who had the courage to praise it deserves remembrance as singular among the levies of France. Should a youth of the name of Rowley present himself before you, you may trust his fidelity absolutely, his sagacity not at all. And so (since the boat waits to take this) I kiss the name of Flora, and subscribe myself--until I come to claim her, and afterwards to eternity--her _prisoner_. "ANNE." I had, in fact, a second reason for abbreviating this letter and sealing it in a hurry. The movements of the brig, though slight, were perceptible, and in the close air of the main cabin my head already began to swim. I hastened on deck in time to shake hands with my companions and confide the letter to Byfield with instructions for posting it. "And if your share in our adventure should come into public question," said I, "you must apply to a Major Chevenix, now quartered in Edinburgh Castle, who has a fair inkling of the facts, and as a man of honour will not decline to assist you. You have Dalmahoy, too, to back your assertion that you knew me only as Mr. Ducie." Upon Dalmahoy I pressed a note for his and Mr. Sheepshanks's travelling expenses. "My dear fellow," he protested, "I couldn't _dream_ ... if you are sure it won't inconvenience ... merely as a loan ... and deuced handsome of you, I will say." He kept the cutter waiting while he drew an I.O.U., in which I figured as Bursar and Almoner (_honoris causà_) to the Senatus Academicus of Cramond-on-Almond. Mr. Sheepshanks meanwhile shook hands with me impressively. "It has been a memorable experience, sir. I shall have much to tell my wife on my return." It occurred to me as probable that the lady would have even more to say to him. He stepped into the cutter, and, as they pushed off, was hilariously bonneted by Mr. Dalmahoy, by way of parting salute. "Starboard after-braces!" Captain Colenso called to his crew. The yards were trimmed and the _Lady Nepean_ slowly gathered way, while I stood by the bulwarks gazing after my friends and attempting to persuade myself that the fresh air was doing me good. Captain Colenso perceived my queasiness, and advised me to seek my berth and lie down; and on my replying with haggard defiance, took my arm gently, as if I had been a wilful child, and led me below. I passed beyond one of the mahogany doors leading from the main cabin; and in that seclusion I ask you to leave me face to face with the next forty-eight hours. It was a dreadful time. Nor at the end of it did gaiety wait on a partially recovered appetite. The ladies of the ship nursed me, and tickled my palate with the lightest of sea diet. The men strowed seats for me on deck, and touched their caps with respectful sympathy. One and all were indefatigably kind, but taciturn to a degree beyond belief. A fog of mystery hung and deepened about them and the _Lady Nepean_, and I crept about the deck in a continuous evil dream, entangling myself in impossible theories. To begin with, there were eight women on board: a number not to be reconciled with serious privateering; all daughters or sons' wives or granddaughters of Captain Colenso. Of the men--twenty-three in all--those who were not called Colenso were called Pengelly; and most of them convicted landsmen by their bilious countenances and unhandy movements; men fresh from the plough-tail by their gait, yet with no ruddy impress of field-work and the open air. Twice every day, and thrice on Sundays, this extraordinary company gathered bare-headed to the poop for a religious service which it would be colourless to call frantic. It began decorously enough with a quavering exposition of some portion of Holy Writ by Captain Colenso. But by and by (and especially at the evening office) his listeners kindled and opened on him with a skirmishing fire of "Amens." Then, worked by degrees to an ecstasy, they broke into cries of thanksgiving and mutual encouragement; they jostled for the rostrum (a long nine-pounder swivel); and then speaker after speaker declaimed his soul's experiences until his voice cracked, while the others sobbed, exhorted, even leapt in the air. "Stronger, brother!" "'Tis working, 'tis working!" "O deliverance!" "O streams of redemption!" For ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour maybe, the ship was a Babel, a Bedlam. And then the tumult would die down as suddenly as it had arisen, and dismissed by the old man, the crew, with faces once more inscrutable, but twitching with spent emotion, scattered to their usual tasks. Five minutes after these singular outbreaks it was difficult to believe in them. Captain Colenso paced the quarter-deck once more with his customary shuffle, his hands beneath his coat-tails, his eyes conning the ship with their usual air of mild abstraction. Now and again he paused to instruct one of his incapables in the trimming of a brace, or to correct the tie of a knot. He never scolded; seldom lifted his voice. By his manner of speech, and the ease of his authority, he and his family might have belonged to separate ranks of life. Yet I seemed to detect method in their obedience. The veriest fumbler went about his work with a concentrated gravity of bearing, as if he fulfilled a remoter purpose, and understood it while he tied his knots into "grannies," and generally mismanaged the job in hand. Towards the middle of our second week out, we fell in with a storm--a rotatory affair, and soon over by reason that we struck the outer fringe of it; but to a landsman sufficiently daunting while it lasted. Late in the afternoon I thrust my head up for a look around. We were weltering along in horrible forty-foot seas, over which our bulwarks tilted at times until from the companion hatchway I stared plumb into the grey sliding chasms, and felt like a fly on the wall. The _Lady Nepean_ hurled her old timbers along under close-reefed maintopsail, and a rag of a foresail only. The captain had housed topgallant masts and lashed his guns inboard; yet she rolled so that you would not have trusted a cat on her storm-washed decks. They were desolate but for the captain and helmsman on the poop; the helmsman, a mere lad--the one, in fact, who had pulled the bow-oar to our rescue--lashed and gripping the spokes pluckily, but with a white face which told that, though his eyes were strained on the binnacle, his mind ran on the infernal seas astern. Over him, in sea-boots and oilskins, towered Captain Colenso--rejuvenated, transfigured; his body swaying easily to every lurch and plunge of the brig, his face entirely composed and cheerful, his salt-rimmed eyes contracted a little, but alert and even boyishly bright. An heroical figure of a man! My heart warmed to Captain Colenso; and next morning, as we bowled forward with a temperate breeze on our quarter, I took occasion to compliment him on the _Lady Nepean's_ behaviour. "Ay," said he abstractedly; "the old girl made pretty good weather of it." "I suppose we were never in what you would call real danger?" He faced me with sudden earnestness. "Mr. Ducie, I have served the Lord all my days, and He will not sink the ship that carries my honour." Giving me no time to puzzle over this, he changed his tone. "You'll scarce believe it, but in her young days she had a very fair turn of speed." "Her business surely demands it still," said I. Only an arrant landsman could have reconciled the lumbering old craft with any idea of privateering; but this was only my theory, and I clung to it. "We shall not need to test her." "You rely on your guns, then?" I had observed the care lavished on these. They were of brass, and shone like the door-plates in the main cabin. "Why, as to that," he answered evasively, "I've had to before now. The last voyage I commanded her--it was just after the war broke out with America--we fell in with a schooner off the Banks; we were outward bound for Halifax. She carried twelve nine-pounder carronades and two long nines, beside a big fellow on a traverse; and we had the guns you see--eight nine-pounders and one chaser of the same calibre--post-office guns, we call them. But we beat her off after two hours of it." "And saved the mails?" He rose abruptly (we had seated ourselves on a couple of hen-coops under the break of the poop). "You will excuse me. I have an order to give"; and he hurried up the steps to the quarter-deck. It must have been ten days after this that he stopped me in one of my eternal listless promenades and invited me to sit beside him again. "I wish to take your opinion, Mr. Ducie. You have not, I believe, found salvation? You are not one of us, as I may say?" "Meaning by 'us'?" "I and mine, sir, are unworthy followers of the Word, as preached by John Wesley." "Why, no; that is not my religion." "But you are a gentleman." I bowed. "And on a point of honour--do you think, sir, that as a servant of the King one should obey his earthly master even to doing what conscience forbids?" "That might depend--" "But on a point of honour, sir? Suppose that you had pledged your private word, in a just, nay, a generous bargain, and were commanded to break it. Is there anything could override that?" I thought of my poor old French colonel and his broken _parole_; and was silent. "Can you not tell me the circumstances?" I suggested at length. He had been watching me eagerly. But he shook his head now, sighed, and drew a small Bible from his pocket. "I am not a gentleman, sir. I laid it before the Lord: but," he continued naïvely, "I wanted to learn how a gentleman would look at it." He searched for a text, turning the pages with long, nervous fingers; but desisted with another sigh, and, a moment later, was summoned away to solve some difficulty with the ship's reckoning. My respect for the captain had been steadily growing. He was so amiable, too, so untiringly courteous; he bore his sorrow--whatever the cause might be--with so gentle a resignation; that I caught myself pitying even while I cursed him and his crew for their inhuman reticence. But my respect vanished pretty quickly next day. We were seated at dinner in the main cabin--the captain at the head of the table, and, as usual, crumbling his biscuit in a sort of waking trance--when Mr. Reuben Colenso, his eldest son and acting mate, put his solemn face in at the door with news of a sail about four miles distant on the lee bow. I followed the captain on deck. The stranger, a schooner, had been lying-to when first descried in the hazy weather; but was standing now to intercept us. At two miles' distance--it being then about two o'clock--I saw that she hoisted British colours. "But that flag was never sewn in England," Captain Colenso observed, studying her through his glass. His cheeks, usually of that pallid ivory colour proper to old age, were flushed with a faint carmine, and I observed a suppressed excitement in all his crew. For my part, I expected no better than to play target in the coming engagement: but it surprised me that he served out no cutlasses, ordered up no powder from the hold, and, in short, took no single step to clear the _Lady Nepean_ for action or put his men in fighting trim. The most of them were gathered about the fore-hatch, to the total neglect of their guns, which they had been cleaning assiduously all the morning. On we stood without shifting our course by a point, and were almost within range when the schooner ran up the stars-and-stripes and plumped a round shot ahead of us by way of hint. I stared at Captain Colenso. Could he mean to surrender without one blow? He had exchanged his glass for a speaking trumpet, and waited, fumbling with it, his face twitching painfully. A cold, dishonouring suspicion gripped me. The man was here to betray his flag. I glanced aloft: the British ensign flew at the peak. And as I turned my head, I felt rather than saw the flash, heard the shattering din as the puzzled American luffed up and let fly across our bows with a raking broadside. Doubtless she, too, took note of our defiant ensign, and leaped at the nearest guess that we meant to run her aboard. Now, whether my glance awoke Captain Colenso, or this was left to the all but simultaneous voice of the guns, I know not. But as their smoke rolled between us I saw him drop his trumpet and run with a crazed face to the taffrail, where the halliards led. The traitor had forgotten to haul down his flag! It was too late. While he fumbled with the halliards, a storm of musketry burst and swept the quarter-deck. He flung up both hands, spun round upon his heel, and pitched backwards at the helmsman's feet, and the loosened ensign dropped slowly and fell across him, as if to cover his shame. Instantly the firing ceased. I stood there between compassion and disgust, willing yet loathing to touch the pitiful corpse, when a woman--Susannah--ran screaming by me and fell on her knees beside it. I saw a trickle of blood ooze beneath the scarlet folds of the flag. It crawled along the plank, hesitated at a seam, and grew there to an oddly shaped pool. I watched it. In shape I thought it remarkably like the map of Ireland. And I became aware that some one was speaking to me, and looked up to find a lean and lantern-jawed American come aboard and standing at my shoulder. "Are you anywise hard of hearing, stranger? Or must I repeat to you that this licks cockfighting?" "I, at any rate, am not disputing it, sir." "The _Lady Nepean_, too! Is that the Cap'n yonder? I thought as much. Dead, hey? Well, he'd better _stay_ dead; though I'd have enjoyed the inside o' five minutes' talk, just to find out what he did it for." "Did what?" "Why, brought the _Lady Nepean_ into these waters, and Commodore Rodgers no further away than Rhode Island, by all accounts. He must have had a nerve. And what post might _you_ be holding on this all-fired packet? Darn _me_, but you have females enough on board!" For indeed there were three poor creatures kneeling now and crooning over the dead captain. The men had surrendered--they had no arms to fling down--and were collected in the waist, under guard of a cordon of Yankees. One lay senseless on deck, and two or three were bleeding from splinter wounds; for the enemy, her freeboard being lower by a foot or two than the wall sides of the _Lady Nepean_, had done little execution on deck, whatever the wounds in our hull might be. "I beg your pardon, Captain--" "Seccombe, sir, is my name. Alpheus Q. Seccombe, of the _Manhattan_ schooner." "Well, then, Captain Seccombe, I am a passenger on board this ship, and know neither her business here nor why she has behaved in a fashion that makes me blush for her flag--which, by the way, I have every reason to abominate." "O, come now! You're trying it on. It's a yard-arm matter, and I don't blame you, to be sure. Cap'n sank the mails?" "There were none to sink, I believe." He conned me curiously. "You don't look like a Britisher, either." "I trust not. I am the Viscount Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, escaped from a British war-prison." "Lucky for you if you prove it. We'll get to the bottom of this." He faced about and called, "Who's the first officer of this brig?" Reuben Colenso was allowed to step forward. Blood from a scalp-wound had run and caked on his right cheek, but he stepped squarely enough. "Bring him below," Captain Seccombe commanded. "And you, Mr. What's-your-name, lead the way. It's one or the other of us will get the hang of this affair." He seated himself at the head of the table in the main cabin, and spat ceremoniously on the floor. "Now, sir: you are, or were, first officer of this brig?" The prisoner, standing between his two guards, gripped his stocking cap nervously. "Will you please to tell me, sir, if my father is killed?" "Seth, my lad, I want room." One of the guards, a strapping youngster, stepped and flung open a pane of the stern window. Captain Seccombe spat out of it with nonchalant dexterity before answering-- "I guess he is. Brig's name?" "The _Lady Nepean_." "Mail packet?" "Yes, sir; leastways--" "Now, see here, Mister First Officer Colenso junior; it's a shortish trip between this and the yard-arm, and it may save you some su-perfluous lying if I tell you that in August, last year, the _Lady Nepean_ packet, Captain Colenso, outward bound for Halifax, met the _Hitchcock_ privateer off the Great Bank of Newfoundland, and beat her off after two hours' fighting. You were on board of her?" "I tended the stern gun." "_Very_ good. The next day, being still off the Banks, she fell in with Commodore Rodgers, of the United States frigate _President_, and surrendered to him right away." "We sank the mails." "You did, my man. Notwithstanding which, that lion-hearted hero treated you with the forbearance of a true-born son of freedom." Captain Seccombe's voice took an oratorical roll. "He saw that you were bleeding from your fray. He fed you at his hospitable board; he would not suffer you to be de-nuded of the least trifle. Nay, what did he promise?--but to send your father and his crew and passengers back to England in their own ship, on their swearing, upon their sacred honour, that she should return to Boston harbour with an equal number of American prisoners from England. Your father swore to that upon the Old and New Testaments, severally and conjointly; and the _Lady Nepean_ sailed home for all the world like a lamb from the wolf's jaws, with a single American officer inside of her. And how did your dog-damned Government respect this noble confidence? In a way, sir, that would have brought a blush to the cheek of a low-down attorney's clerk. They re-pudiated. Under shelter of a notification that no exchange of prisoners on the high seas would count as valid, this perjured tyrant and his myrmidons went back on their captain's oath, and kept the brig; and the American officer came home empty-handed. Your father was told to resume his duties, immortal souls being cheap in a country where they press seamen's bodies. And now, Mister First Officer Colenso, perhaps you'll explain how he had the impudence to come within two hundred miles of a coast where his name smelt worse than vermin." "He was coming back, sir." "Hey?" "Back to Boston, sir. You see, Cap'n, father wasn't a rich man, but he had saved a trifle. He didn't go back to the service, though told that he might. It preyed on his mind. We was all very fond of father; being all one family, as you might say, though some of us had wives and families, and some were over to Redruth, to the mines." "Stick to the point." "But this _is_ the point, Cap'n. He was coming back, you see. The _Lady Nepean_ wasn't fit for much after the handling she'd had. She was going for twelve hundred pounds: the Post Office didn't look for more. We got her for eleven hundred, with the guns, and the repairs may have cost a hundred and fifty; but you'll find the account-books in the cupboard there. Father had a matter of five hundred laid by, and a little over." Captain Seccombe removed his legs from the cabin-table, tilted his chair forward and half rose in his seat. "You _bought_ her?" "That's what I'm telling you, sir; though father'd have put it much clearer. You see, he laid it before the Lord; and then he laid it before all of us. It preyed on his mind. My sister Susannah stood up and she said, 'I reckon I'm the most respectably married of all of you, having a farm of my own; but we can sell up, and all the world's a home to them that fears the Lord. We can't stock up with American prisoners, but we can go ourselves instead; and judging by the prisoners I've a-seen brought in, Commodore Rodgers'll be glad to take us. What he does to us is the Lord's affair.' That's what she said, sir. Of course, we kept it quiet: we put it about that the _Lady Nepean_ was for Canada, and the whole family going out for emigrants. This here gentleman we picked up outside Falmouth; perhaps he've told you." Captain Seccombe stared at me, and I at Captain Seccombe. Reuben Colenso stood wringing his cap. At length the American found breath enough to whistle. "I'll have to put back to Boston about this, though it's money out of pocket. This here's a matter for Commodore Bainbridge. Take a seat, Mr. Colenso." "I was going to ask," said the prisoner simply, "if, before you put me in irons, I might go on deck and look at father. It'll be only a moment, sir." "Yes, sir, you may. And if you can get the ladies to excuse me, I will follow in a few minutes. I wish to pay him my respects. It's my opinion," he added pensively, as the prisoner left the cabin--"it's my opinion that the man's story is genu-wine." He repeated the word, five minutes later, as we stood on the quarter-deck beside the body. "A genu-wine man, sir, unless I am mistaken." Well, the question is one for casuists. In my travels I have learnt this, that men are greater than governments; wiser sometimes, honester always. Heaven deliver me from any such problem as killed this old packet-captain! Between loyalty to his king and loyalty to his conscience he had to choose, and it is likely enough that he erred. But I believe that he fought it out, and found on his country's side a limit of shame to which he could not stoop. A man so placed, perhaps, may even betray his country to her honour. In this hope at least the flag which he had hauled down covered his body still as we committed it to the sea, its service or disservice done. Two days later we anchored in the great harbour at Boston, where Captain Seccombe went with his story and his prisoners to Commodore Bainbridge, who kept them pending news of Commodore Rodgers. They were sent, a few weeks later, to Newport, Rhode Island, to be interrogated by that commander; and, to the honour of the Republic, were released on a liberal _parole_; but whether, when the war ended, they returned to England or took oath as American citizens, I have not learned. I was luckier. The Commodore allowed Captain Seccombe to detain me while the French consul made inquiry into my story; and during the two months which the consul thought fit to take over it, I was a guest in the captain's house. And here I made my bow to Miss Amelia Seccombe, an accomplished young lady, "who," said her doating father, "has acquired a considerable proficiency in French, and will be glad to swap ideas with you in that language." Miss Seccombe and I did not hold our communications in French; and, observing her disposition to substitute the warmer language of the glances, I took the bull by the horns, told her my secret, and rhapsodised on Flora. Consequently no Nausicaa figures in this Odyssey of mine. Nay, the excellent girl flung herself into my cause, and bombarded her father and the consular office with such effect that on 2nd February 1814, I waved farewell to her from the deck of the barque _Shawmut_, bound from Boston to Bordeaux. CHAPTER XXXV IN PARIS.--ALAIN PLAYS HIS LAST CARD On the 10th of March at sunset the _Shawmut_ passed the Pointe de Grave fort and entered the mouth of the Gironde, and at eleven o'clock next morning dropped anchor a little below Blaye, under the guns of the _Regulus_, 74. We were just in time, a British fleet being daily expected there to co-operate with the Duc d'Angoulème and Count Lynch, who was then preparing to pull the tricolour from his shoulder and betray Bordeaux to Beresford, or, if you prefer it, to the Bourbon. News of his purpose had already travelled down to Blaye, and therefore no sooner were my feet once more on the soil of my beloved France, than I turned them towards Libourne, or rather Fronsac, and the morning after my arrival there, started for the capital. But so desperately were the joints of travel dislocated (the war having deplenished the country alike of cattle and able-bodied drivers), and so frequent were the breakdowns by the way, that I might as expeditiously have trudged it. It cost me fifteen good days to reach Orleans, and at Étampes (which I reached on the morning of the 30th) the driver of the tottering diligence flatly declined to proceed. The Cossacks and Prussians were at the gates of Paris. "Last night we could see the fires of their bivouacs. If Monsieur listens he can hear the firing." The Empress had fled from the Tuileries. "Whither?" The driver, the aubergiste, the disinterested crowd, shrugged their shoulders. "To Rambouillet, probably. God knew what was happening or what would happen." The Emperor was at Troyes, or at Sens, or else as near as Fontainebleau; nobody knew for certain which. But the fugitives from Paris had been pouring in for days, and not a cart or four-footed beast was to be hired for love or money, though I hunted Étampes for hours. At length, and at nightfall, I ran against a bow-kneed grey mare, and a _cabriolet de place_, which, by its label, belonged to Paris; the pair wandering the street under what it would be flattery to call the guidance of an eminently drunken driver. I boarded him; he dissolved at once into maudlin tears and prolixity. It appeared that on the 29th he had brought over a bourgeois family from the capital, and had spent the last three days in perambulating Étampes, and the past three nights in crapulous slumber within his vehicle. Here was my chance, and I demanded to know if for a price he would drive me back with him to Paris. He declared, still weeping, that he was fit for anything. "For my part, I am ready to die, and Monsieur knows that we shall never reach." "Still, anything is better than Étampes." For some inscrutable reason this struck him as excessively comic. He assured me that I was a brave fellow, and bade me jump up at once. Within five minutes we were jolting towards Paris. Our progress was all but inappreciable, for the grey mare had come to the end of her powers, and her master's monologue kept pace with her. His anecdotes were all of the past three days. The iron of Étampes apparently had entered his soul and effaced all memory of his antecedent career. Of the war, of any recent public events, he could tell me nothing. I had half expected--supposing the Emperor to be near Fontainebleau--to happen on his vedettes, but we had the road to ourselves, and reached Longjumeau a little before daybreak without having encountered a living creature. Here we knocked up the proprietor of a cabaret, who assured us between yawns that we were going to our doom, and after baiting the grey and dosing ourselves with execrable brandy, pushed forward again. As the sky grew pale about us, I had my ears alert for the sound of artillery. But Paris kept silence. We passed Sceaux, and arrived at length at Montrouge and the barrier. It was open--abandoned--not a sentry, not a douanier visible. "Where will Monsieur be pleased to descend?" my driver inquired, and added, with an effort of memory, that he had a wife and two adorable children on a top floor in the Rue du Mont Parnasse, and stabled his mare handy by. I paid and watched him from the deserted pavement as he drove away. A small child came running from a doorway behind me, and blundered against my legs. I caught him by the collar and demanded what had happened to Paris. "That I do not know," said the child, "but mamma is dressing herself to take me to the review. Tenez!" he pointed, and at the head of the long street I saw advancing the front rank of a blue-coated regiment of Prussians, marching across Paris to take up position on the Orleans road. That was my answer. Paris had surrendered! And I had entered it from the south just in time, if I wished, to witness the entry of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander from the north. Soon I found myself one of a crowd converging towards the bridges, to scatter northward along the line of His Majesty's progress, from the Barrière de Pantin to the Champs Élysées, where the grand review was to be held. I chose this for my objective, and, making my way along the Quays, found myself shortly before ten o'clock in the Place de la Concorde, where a singular little scene brought me to a halt. About a score of young men--aristocrats by their dress and carriage--were gathered about the centre of the square. Each wore a white scarf and the Bourbon cockade in his hat; and their leader, a weedy youth with hay-coloured hair, had drawn a paper from his pocket and was declaiming its contents at the top of a voice by several sizes too big for him:-- "For Paris is reserved the privilege, under circumstances now existing, to accelerate the dawn of Universal Peace. Her suffrage is awaited with the interest which so immense a result naturally inspires," _et cetera_. Later on, I possessed myself of a copy of the Prince of Schwartzenberg's proclamation, and identified the wooden rhetoric at once. "Parisians! you have the example of Bordeaux before you".... Ay, by the Lord, they had--right under their eyes! The hay-coloured youth wound up his reading with a "Vive le Roi!" and his band of walking gentlemen took up the shout. The crowd looked on impassive; one or two edged away; and a grey-haired, soldierly horseman (whom I recognised for the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin) passing in full tenue of Colonel of the National Guard, reined up, and addressed the young men in a few words of grave rebuke. Two or three answered by snapping their fingers, and repeating their "Vive le Roi" with a kind of embarrassed defiance. But their performance, before so chilling an audience, was falling sadly flat when a dozen or more of young royalist bloods came riding up to reanimate it--among them, M. Louis de Chateaubriand, M. Talleyrand's brother, Archambaut de Périgord, the scoundrelly Marquis de Maubreuil--yes, and my cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Yves! The indecency, the cynical and naked impudence of it, took me like a buffet. There, in a group of strangers, my cheek reddened under it, and for the moment I had a mind to run. I had done better to run. By a chance his eye missed mine as he swaggered past at a canter, for all the world like a tenore robusto on horseback, with the rouge on his face, and his air of expansive Olympian black-guardism. He carried a lace white handkerchief at the end of his riding switch, and this was bad enough. But as he wheeled his bay thoroughbred, I saw that he had followed the _déclassé_ Maubreuil's example and decorated the brute's tail with a Cross of the Legion of Honour. That brought my teeth together, and I stood my ground. "Vive le Roi!" "Vivent les Bourbons!" "À bas le sabot corse!" Maubreuil had brought a basketful of white brassards and cockades, and the gallant horsemen began to ride about and press them upon the unresponsive crowd. Alain held one of the badges at arm's length as he pushed into the little group about me, and our eyes met. "_Merci_," said I, "_retenez-le jusqu'à ce que nous nous rencontrions_--_Rue Grégoire de Tours!_" His arm with the riding switch and laced handkerchief went up as though he had been stung. Before it could descend, I darted aside deep into the crowd which hustled around him, understanding nothing, but none the less sullenly hostile. "A bas les cocardes blanches!" cried one or two. "Who was the cur?" I heard Maubreuil's question as he pressed in to the rescue, and Alain's reply, "Peste! A young relative of mine who is in a hurry to lose his head; whereas I prefer to choose the time for that." I took this for a splutter of hatred, and even found it laughable as I made my escape good. At the same time, our encounter had put me out of humour for gaping at the review, and I turned back and recrossed the river, to seek the Rue du Fouarre and the Widow Jupille. Now the Rue du Fouarre, though once a very famous thoroughfare, is to-day perhaps as squalid as any that drains its refuse by a single gutter into the Seine, and the widow had been no beauty even in the days when she followed the 106th of the Line as vivandière and before she wedded Sergeant Jupille of that regiment. But she and I had struck up a friendship over a flesh-wound which I received in an affair of outposts on the Algueda, and thenceforward I taught myself to soften the edge of her white wine by the remembered virtues of her ointment, so that when Sergeant Jupille was cut off by a grapeshot in front of Salamanca, and his Philomène retired to take charge of his mother's wine shop in the Rue du Fouarre, she had enrolled my name high on the list of her prospective patrons. I felt myself, so to speak, a part of the goodwill of her house, and "Heaven knows," thought I, as I threaded the insalubrious street, "it is something for a soldier of the Empire to count even on this much in Paris to-day. _Est aliquid, quocunque loco, quocunque sacello...._" Madame Jupille knew me at once, and we fell (figuratively speaking) upon each other's neck. Her shop was empty, the whole quarter had trooped off to the review. After mingling our tears (again figuratively) over the fickleness of the capital, I inquired if she had any letters for me. "Why, no, comrade." "None?" I exclaimed with a very blank face. "Not one"; Madame Jupille eyed me archly, and relented. "The reason being that Mademoiselle is too discreet." "Ah!" I heaved a big sigh of relief. "You provoking woman, tell me what you mean by that?" "Well, now, it may have been ten days ago that a stranger called in and asked if I had any news of the corporal who praised my white wine. 'Have I any news,' said I, 'of a needle in a bundle of hay? They all praise it.'" (O, Madame Jupille!) "'The corporal I'm speaking of,' said he, 'is or was called Champdivers.' '_Was!_' I cried, 'you are not going to tell me he is dead?' and I declare to you, comrade, the tears came into my eyes. 'No, he is not,' said the stranger, 'and the best proof is that he will be here inquiring for letters before long. You are to tell him that if he expects one from'--see, I took the name down on a scrap of paper, and stuck it in a wine-glass here--'from Miss Flora Gilchrist, he will do well to wait in Paris until a friend finds means to deliver it by hand. And if he asks more about me, say that I am from'--tenez, I wrote the second name underneath--yes, that is it--'Mr. Romaine.'" "Confound his caution!" said I. "What sort of man was this messenger?" "O, a staid-looking man, dark and civil-spoken. You might call him an upper servant, or perhaps a notary's clerk; very plainly dressed, in black." "He spoke French?" "_Parfaitement._ What else?" "And he has not called again?" "To be sure, yes, and the day before yesterday, and seemed quite disappointed. 'Is there anything Monsieur would like to add to his message?' I asked. 'No,' said he, 'or stay, tell him that all goes well in the north, but he must not leave Paris until I see him.'" You may guess how I cursed Mr. Romaine for this beating about the bush. If all went well in the north, what possible excuse of caution could the man have for holding back Flora's letter? And how, in any case, could it compromise me here in Paris? I had half a mind to take the bit in my teeth and post off at once for Calais. Still, there was the plain injunction, and the lawyer doubtless had a reason for it hidden somewhere behind his tiresome circumambulatory approaches. And his messenger might be back at any hour. Therefore, though it went against the grain, I thought it prudent to take lodgings with Madame Jupille and possess my soul in patience. You will say that it should not have been difficult to kill time in Paris between the 31st of March and the 5th of April 1814. The entry of the Allies, Marmont's supreme betrayal, the Emperor's abdication, the Cossacks in the streets, the newspaper offices at work like hives under their new editors, and buzzing contradictory news from morning to night; a new rumour at every cafe, a scuffle, or the makings of one, at every street corner, and hour by hour a steady stream of manifestoes, placards, handbills, caricatures, and broadsheets of opprobrious verse--the din of it all went by me like the vain noises of a dream as I trod the pavements, intent upon my own hopes and perplexities. I cannot think that this was mere selfishness; rather, a deep disgust was weaning me from my country. If this Paris indeed were the reality, then was I the phantasm, the _revenant_; then was France--the France for which I had fought and my parents gone to the scaffold--a land that had never been, and our patriotism the shadow of a shade. Judge me not too hardly if in the restless, aimless perambulations of those five days I crossed the bridge between the country that held neither kin nor friends for me, but only my ineffectual past, and the country wherein one human creature, if only one, had use for my devotion. On the sixth day--that is, April 5th--my patience broke down. I took my resolution over lunch and a bottle of Beaujolais, and walked straight back from the restaurant to my lodgings, where I asked Madame Jupille for pen, ink, and paper, and sat down to advertise Mr. Romaine that, for good or ill, he might expect me in London within twenty-four hours of the receipt of this letter. I had scarce composed the first sentence, when there came a knock at the door and Madame Jupille announced that two gentlemen desired to see me. "Show them up," said I, laying down my pen with a leaping heart; and in the doorway a moment later stood--my cousin Alain! He was alone. He glanced with a grin of comprehension from me to the letter, advanced, set his hat on the table beside it, and his gloves (after blowing into them) beside his hat. "My cousin," said he, "you show astonishing agility from time to time; but on the whole you are damned easy to hunt." I had risen. "I take it you have pressing business to speak of, since amid your latest political occupations you have been at pains to seek me out. If so, I will ask you to be brief." "No pains at all," he corrected affably. "I have known all the time that you were here. In fact, I expected you some while before you arrived, and sent my man, Paul, with a message." "A message?" "Certainly--touching a letter from _la belle Flora_. You received it? The message, I mean." "Then it was not----" "No, decidedly it was not Mr. Romaine, to whom"--with another glance at the letter--"I perceive that you are writing for explanations. And since you are preparing to ask how on earth I traced you to this rather unsavoury den, permit me to inform you that a--b spells 'ab,' and that Bow Street, when on the track of a criminal, does not neglect to open his correspondence." I felt my hand tremble as it gripped the top rail of my chair, but I managed to command the voice to answer, coldly enough: "One moment, Monsieur le Vicomte, before I do myself the pleasure of pitching you out of window. You have detained me these five days in Paris, and have done so, you give me to understand, by the simple expedient of a lie. So far, so good; will you do me the favour to complete the interesting self-exposure, and inform me of your reasons?" "With all the pleasure in life. My plans were not ready, a little detail wanting, that is all. It is now supplied." He took a chair, seated himself at the table, and drew a folded paper from his breast-pocket. "It will be news to you perhaps, that our uncle--our lamented uncle, if you choose--is dead these three weeks." "Rest his soul!" "Forgive me if I stop short of that pious hope." Alain hesitated, let his venom get the better of him, and spat out on his uncle's memory an obscene curse which only betrayed the essential weakness of the man. Recovering himself, he went on: "I need not recall to you a certain scene (I confess too theatrical for my taste), arranged by the lawyer at his bedside; nor need I help you to an inkling of the contents of his last will. But possibly it may have slipped your memory that I gave Romaine fair warning. I promised him that I would raise the question of undue influence, and that I had my witnesses ready. I have added to them since; but I own to you that my case will be the stronger when you have obligingly signed the paper which I have the honour to submit to you." And he tossed it, unopened, across the table. I picked it up and unfolded it:--"_I, the Viscount Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, formerly serving under the name of Champdivers in the Buonapartist army, and later under that name a prisoner of war in the Castle of Edinburgh, hereby state that I had neither knowledge of my uncle the Count de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, nor expectations from him, nor was owned by him, until sought out by Mr. Daniel Romaine, in the Castle of Edinburgh, by him supplied with money to expedite my escape, and by him clandestinely smuggled at nightfall into Amersham Place; Further, that until that evening I had never set eyes on my uncle, nor have set eyes on him since; that he was bedridden when I saw him, and apparently in the last stage of senile decay. And I have reason to believe that Mr. Romaine did not fully inform him of the circumstances of my escape, and particularly of my concern in the death of a fellow-prisoner named Goguelat, formerly a maréchal des logis in the 22nd Regiment of the Line_...." Of the contents of this precious document let a sample suffice. From end to end it was a tissue of distorted statements implicated with dishonouring suggestions. I read it through, and let it drop on the table. "I beg your pardon," said I, "but what do you wish me to do with it?" "Sign it," said he. I laughed. "Once more I beg your pardon, but though you have apparently dressed for it, this is not comic opera." "Nevertheless you will sign." "O, you weary me." I seated myself, and flung a leg over the arm of my chair. "Shall we come to the alternative For I assume you have one." "The alternative, to be sure," he answered cheerfully. "I have a companion below, one Clausel, and at the 'Tête d'Or,' a little way up the street, an escort of police." Here was a pleasing predicament. But if Alain had started with a chance of daunting me (which I do not admit), he had spoilt it long since by working on the raw of my temper. I kept a steady eye on him, and considered: and the longer I considered the better assured was I that his game must have a disastrously weak point somewhere, which it was my business to find. "You have reminded me of your warning to Mr. Romaine. The subject is an ugly one for two of our family to touch upon; but do you happen to recall Mr. Romaine's counter-threat?" "Bluff! my young sir. It served his purpose for the moment, I grant you. I was unhinged. The indignity, the very monstrosity of it, the baselessness, staggered reason." "It was baseless, then?" "The best proof is that in spite of his threat, and my open contempt and disregard of it, Mr. Romaine has not stirred a hand." "You mean that my uncle destroyed the evidence?" "I mean nothing of the kind," he retorted hotly, "for I deny that any such evidence at any time existed." I kept my eye on him. "Alain," I said quietly, "you are a liar." A flush darkened his face beneath its cosmetics, and with an oath he dipped finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a dog whistle. "No more of that," said he, "or I whistle up the police this minute." "Well, well, let us resume the discussion. You say this man Clausel has denounced me?" He nodded. "Soldiers of the Empire are cheap in Paris just now." "So cheap that public opinion would be content if all the messieurs Champdivers were to kill all the messieurs Goguelat and be shot or guillotined for it. I forget which your case demands, and doubt if public opinion would inquire." "And yet," I mused, "there must be preliminaries; some form of trial, for instance, with witnesses. It is even possible that I might be found innocent." "I have allowed for that unlikely chance, and I look beyond it. To be frank, it does not strike me as probable that a British jury will hand over the estates of the Comte de Kéroual de Saint-Yves to an escaped Buonapartist prisoner who has stood his trial for the murder of a comrade, and received the benefit of the doubt." "Allow me," said I, "to open the window an inch or two. No; put back your whistle. I do not propose to fling you out, at least not just yet; nor will I try to escape. To tell you the truth, you suggest the need of a little fresh air. And now, Monsieur, you assure me you hold the knave in your hand. Well then, play him. Before I tear your foolish paper up, let me have a look at your confederate." I stepped to the door and called down the stairs, "Madame Jupille, be so good as to ask my other visitor to ascend." With that I turned to the window again and stood there looking out upon the foul gutter along which the refuse of some dye-works at the head of the street found its way down to the Seine. And standing so, I heard the expected footsteps mounting the stairs. "I must ask your pardon, Monsieur, for this intrusion----" "Hey!" If the words had been a charge of shot fired into my back, I could not have spun round on them more suddenly. "Mr. Romaine!" For indeed it was he, and not Clausel, who stood in the doorway. And to this day I do not know if Alain or I stared at him with the blanker bewilderment; though I believe there was a significant difference in our complexions. "M. le Vicomte," said Romaine advancing, "recently effected an exchange. I have taken the liberty to effect another, and have left Mr. Clausel below listening to some arguments which are being addressed to him by Mr. Dudgeon, my confidential clerk. I think I may promise"--with a chuckle--"they will prove effectual. By your faces, gentlemen, I see that you regard my appearance as something in the nature of a miracle. Yet, M. le Vicomte at least should be guessing by this time that it is the simplest, most natural affair in the world. I engaged my word, sir, to have you watched. Will it be set down to more than ordinary astuteness that, finding you in negotiations for the exchange of the prisoner Clausel, we kept an eye upon him also?--that we followed him to Dover, and though unfortunate in missing the boat, reached Paris in time to watch the pair of you leave your lodgings this morning--nay, that knowing whither you were bound, we reached the Rue du Fouarre in time to watch you making your dispositions? But I run on too fast. Mr. Anne, I am entrusted with a letter for you. When, with Mr. Alain's permission, you have read it, we will resume our little conversation." He handed me the letter and walked to the fireplace, where he took snuff copiously, while Alain eyed him like a mastiff about to spring. I broke open my letter and stooped to pick up a small enclosure which fell from it. "MY DEAREST ANNE,--When your letter came and put life into me again, I sat down in my happiness and wrote you one that I shall never allow you to see; for it makes me wonder at myself. But when I took it to Mr. Robbie, he asked to see your letter, and when I showed him the _wrapper_, declared that it had been tampered with, and if I wrote and told you what we were doing for you, it might only make your enemies the wiser. For we have done something, and this (which is purely a business letter) is to tell you that the credit does not all belong to Mr. Robbie, or to your Mr. Romaine (who by Mr. Robbie's account must be quite a tiresome old gentleman, though well-meaning, no doubt). But on the Tuesday after you left us I had a talk with Major Chevenix, and when I really felt quite sorry for him (though it was no use and I told him so), he turned round in a way I could not but admire and said he wished me well and would prove it. He said the charge against you was really one for the military authorities alone; that he had reasons for feeling sure that you had been drawn into this affair on _a point of honour_, which was quite a different thing from _what they said_; and that he could not only make an affidavit or something of the kind on his own account, but knew enough of that man Clausel to make him confess the truth. Which he did the very next day, and made Clausel sign it, and Mr. Robbie has a copy of the man's statement which he is sending with this to Mr. Romaine in London; and that is the reason why Rowley (who is a _dear_) has come over and is waiting in the kitchen while I write these hurried lines. He says, too, that Major Chevenix was only just in time, since Clausel's friends are managing an exchange for him, and he is going back to France. And so in haste I write myself,--Your sincere friend, FLORA. "_P.S._--My aunt is well; Ronald is expecting his commission. "_P.P.S._--You told me to write it, and so I must: 'I love you, Anne.'" The enclosure was a note in a large and unformed hand, and ran-- "DEAR MR. ANNE, RESPECTED SIR,--This comes hopeing to find you well as it leaves me at present, all is well as Miss Flora will tell you that double-died Clausel has contest. This is to tell you Mrs. Mac R. is going on nicely, bar the religion which is only put on to anoy people and being a widow who blames her, not me. Miss Flora says she will put this in with hers, and there is something else but it is a dead secret, so no more at present from, sir,--Yours Respectfully, "JAS. ROWLEY." Having read these letters through, I placed them in my breast-pocket, stepped to the table and handed Alain's document gravely back to him; then turned to Mr. Romaine, who shut his snuff-box with a snap. "It only remains, I think," said the lawyer, "to discuss the terms which (merely as a matter of generosity, or say, for the credit of your house) can be granted to your--to Mr. Alain." "You forget Clausel, I think," snarled my cousin. "True, I had forgotten Clausel." Mr. Romaine stepped to the head of the stairs and called down, "Dudgeon!" Mr. Dudgeon appeared, and endeavoured to throw into the stiffness of his salutation a denial that he had ever waltzed with me in the moonlight. "Where is the man Clausel?" "I hardly know, sir, if you would place the wine-shop of the 'Tête d'Or' at the top or at the bottom of this street; I presume the top, since the sewer runs in the opposite direction. At all events Mr. Clausel disappeared about two minutes ago in the same direction as the sewer." Alain sprang up, whistle in hand. "Put it down," said Mr. Romaine. "The man was cheating you. I can only hope," he added with a sour smile, "that you paid him on account with an I.O.U." But Alain turned at bay. "One trivial point seems to have escaped you, Master Attorney, or your courage is more than I gave you credit for. The English are none too popular in Paris as yet, and this is not the most scrupulous quarter. One blast of this whistle, a cry of '_Espion Anglais!_' and two Englishmen----" "Say three," Mr. Romaine interrupted, and strode to the door. "Will Mr. Burchell Fenn be good enough to step upstairs?" And here let me cry "Halt." There are things in this world--or that is my belief--too pitiful to be set down in writing, and of these, Alain's collapse was one. It may be, too, that Mr. Romaine's British righteousness accorded rather ill with the weapon he used so unsparingly. Of Fenn I need only say, that the luscious rogue shouldered through the doorway as though he had a public duty to discharge, and only the contrariness of circumstances had prevented his discharging it before. He cringed to Mr. Romaine, who held him and the whole nexus of his villainies in the hollow of his hand. He was even obsequiously eager to denounce his fellow-traitor. Under a like compulsion, he would (I feel sure) have denounced his own mother. I saw the sturdy Dudgeon's mouth working like a bull-terrier's over a shrewmouse. And between them, Alain had never a chance. Not for the first time in this history, I found myself all but taking sides with him in sheer repulsion from the barbarity of the attack. It seemed that it was through Fenn that Mr. Romaine had first happened on the scent; and the greater rogue had held back a part of the evidence, and would trade it now--"having been led astray--to any gentleman that would let bygones be bygones." And it was I, at length, who interposed when my cousin was beaten to his knees, and, having dismissed Mr. Burchell Fenn, restored the discussion to a businesslike footing. The end of it was, that Alain renounced all his claims, and accepted a yearly pension of six thousand francs. Mr. Romaine made it a condition that he should never set foot again in England; but seeing that he would certainly be arrested for debt within twenty-four hours of his landing at Dover, I thought this unnecessary. "A good day's work," said the lawyer, as we stood together in the street outside. But I was silent. "And now, Mr. Anne, if I may have the honour of your company at dinner--shall we say Tortoni's?--we will on our way step round to my hotel, the Quatre Saisons, behind the Hôtel de Ville, and order a _calèche_ and four to be in readiness." CHAPTER XXXVI I GO TO CLAIM FLORA Behold me now speeding northwards on the wings of love, ballasted by Mr. Romaine. But, indeed, that worthy man climbed into the _calèche_ with something less than his habitual gravity. He was obviously and pardonably flushed with triumph. I observed that now and again he smiled to himself in the twilight, or drew in his breath and emitted it with a martial _pouf_! And when he began to talk--which he did as soon as we were clear of the Saint-Denis barrier--the points of the family lawyer were untrussed. He leaned back in the _calèche_ with the air of a man who had subscribed to the Peace of Europe, and dined well on top of it. He criticised the fortifications with a wave of his toothpick, and discoursed derisively and at large on the Emperor's abdication, on the treachery of the Duke of Ragusa, on the prospects of the Bourbons, and on the character of M. Talleyrand, with anecdotes which made up in raciness for what they lacked in authenticity. We were bowling through La Chapelle, when he pulled out his snuff-box and proffered it. "You are silent, Mr. Anne." "I was waiting for the chorus," said I. "'Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves: and Britons never, never, never----' Come, out with it!" "Well," he retorted: "and I hope the tune will come natural to you before long." "O, give me time, my dear sir! I have seen the Cossacks enter Paris, and the Parisians decorate their poodles with the Cross of the Legion of Honour. I have seen them hoist a wretch on the Vendôme column, to smite the bronze face of the man of Austerlitz. I have seen the _salle_ of the Opera rise to applaud a blatant fat fellow singing the praises of the Prussian--and to that tune of _Vive Henri Quatre_! I have seen, in my cousin Alain, of what the best blood in France is capable. Also, I have seen peasant boys--unripe crops of the later levies--mown down by grapeshot--raise themselves on their elbows to cheer for France and the little man in grey. In time, Mr. Romaine, no doubt my memory will confuse these lads with their betters, and their mothers with the ladies of the _salle de l'Opéra_: just as in time, no doubt, I shall find myself Justice of the Peace, and Deputy-Lieutenant of the shire of Buckingham. I am changing my country, as you remind me: and, on my faith, she has no place for me. But, for the sake of her, I have explored and found the best of her--in my new country's prisons. And I repeat, you must give me time." "Tut, tut!" was his comment, as I searched for tinder box and sulphur match to relight my segar. "We must get you into Parliament, Mr. Anne. You have the gift." As we approached Saint-Denis, the flow of his discourse sensibly slackened: and, a little beyond, he pulled his travelling cap over his ears, and settled down to slumber. I sat wide awake beside him. The spring night had a touch of chill in it, and the breath of our horses, streaming back upon the lamps of the _calèche_, kept a constant nimbus between me and the postillions. Above it, and over the black spires of the poplar avenues, the regiments of stars moved in parade. My gaze went up to the ensign of their noiseless evolutions, to the pole-star, and to Cassiopeia swinging beneath it, low in the north, over my Flora's pillow--_my_ pole-star and journey's end. Under this soothing reflection I composed myself to slumber; and awoke, to my surprise and annoyance, in a miserable flutter of the nerves. And this fretfulness increased with the hours, so that from Amiens to the coast Mr. Romaine must have had the devil of a time with me. I bolted my meals at the way-houses, chafing all the while at the business of the relays. I popped up and down in the _calèche_ like a shot on a hot shovel. I cursed our pace. I girded at the lawyer's snuff-box, and could have called him out upon Calais sands, when we reached them, to justify his vile methodical use of it. By good fortune we arrived to find the packet ready with her warps, and bundled ourselves on board in a hurry. We sought separate cabins for the night, and in mine, as in a sort of moral bath, the drastic cross seas of the Channel cleansed me of my irritable humour, and left me like a rag, beaten and hung on a clothes-line to the winds of heaven. In the grey of the morning we disembarked at Dover; and here Mr. Romaine had prepared a surprise for me. For, as we drew to the shore, and the throng of porters and waterside loafers, on what should my gaze alight but the beaming countenance of Mr. Rowley! I declare it communicated a roseate flush to the pallid cliffs of Albion. I could have fallen on his neck. On his side the honest lad kept touching his hat and grinning in a speechless ecstasy. As he confessed to me later, "It was either hold my tongue, sir, or call for three cheers." He snatched my valise and ushered us through the crowd, to our hotel-breakfast. And, it seemed, he must have filled up his time at Dover with trumpetings of our importance: for the landlord welcomed us on the _perron_, obsequiously cringing; we entered in a respectful hush that might have flattered his Grace of Wellington himself; and the waiters, I believe, would have gone on all-fours, but for the difficulty of reconciling that posture with efficient service. I knew myself at last for a Personage: a great English land-owner: and did my best to command the mien proper to that tremendous class when, the meal despatched, we passed out between the bowing ranks to the door where our chaise stood ready. "But hullo!" said I at sight of it; and my eye sought Rowley's. "Begging your pardon, sir, but I took it on myself to order the colour, and hoping it wasn't a liberty." "Claret and invisible green--a duplicate, but for a bullet-hole wanting." "Which I didn't like to go so far on my own hook, Mr. Anne." "We fight under the old colours, my lad." "And walk in and win this time, sir, strike me lucky!" While we bowled along the first stage towards London--Mr. Romaine and I within the chaise and Rowley perched upon the dickey--I told the lawyer of our progress from Aylesbury to Kirkby-Lonsdale. He took snuff. "_Forsitan et hæc olim_--that Rowley of yours seems a good-hearted lad, and less of a fool than he looks. The next time I have to travel post with an impatient lover, I'll take a leaf out of his book and buy me a flageolet." "Sir, it was ungrateful of me----" "Tut, tut, Mr. Anne. I was fresh from my little triumph, that is all; and perhaps would have felt the better for a word of approbation--a little pat on the back, as I may say. It is not often that I have felt the need of it--twice or thrice in my life, perhaps: not often enough to justify my anticipating your example and seeking a wife betimes; for that is a man's one chance if he wants another to taste his success." "And yet I dare swear you rejoice in mine unselfishly enough." "Why, no, sir: your cousin would have sent me to the right-about within a week of his succession. Still, I own to you that he offended something at least as deep as self-interest: the sight and scent of him habitually turned my gorge: whereas"--and he inclined to me with a dry smile--"your unwisdom at least was amiable, and--in short, sir, though you can be infernally provoking, it has been a pleasure to serve you." You may be sure that this did not lessen my contrition. We reached London late that night; and here Mr. Romaine took leave of us. Business waited for him at Amersham Place. After a few hours' sleep, Rowley woke me to choose between two post-boys in blue jackets and white hats, and two in buff jackets and black hats, who were competing for the honour of conveying us as far as Barnet: and having decided in favour of the blue and white, and solaced the buff and black with a _pourboire_, we pushed forward once more. We were now upon the Great North Road, along which the York mail rolled its steady ten miles an hour to the wafted music of the guard's bugle; a rate of speed which to the more Dorian mood of Mr. Rowley's flageolet, I proposed to better by one-fifth. But first, having restored the lad to his old seat beside me, I must cross-question him upon his adventures in Edinburgh, and the latest news of Flora and her aunt, Mr. Robbie, Mrs. McRankine, and the rest of my friends. It came out that Mr. Rowley's surrender to my dear girl had been both instantaneous and complete. "She _is_ a floorer, Mr. Anne. I suppose now, sir, you'll be standing up for that knock-me-down kind of thing?" "Explain yourself, my lad." "Beg your pardon, sir, what they call love at first sight." He wore an ingenuous blush and an expression at once shy and insinuating. "The poets, Rowley, are on my side." "Mrs. McRankine, sir----" "The Queen of Navarre, Mr. Rowley----" But he so far forgot himself as to interrupt. "It took Mrs. McRankine years, sir, to get used to her first husband. She told me so." "It took us some days, if I remember, to get used to Mrs. McRankine. To be sure, her cooking----" "That's what I say, Mr. Anne: it's more than skin-deep: and you'll hardly believe me, sir--that is, if you didn't take note of it--but she hev got an ankle." He had produced the pieces of his flageolet, and was adjusting them nervously, with a face red as a turkey-cock's wattles. I regarded him with a new and incredulous amusement. That I served Mr. Rowley for a glass of fashion and a mould of form was of course no new discovery: and the traditions of body-service allow--nay, enjoin--that when the gentleman goes a-wooing, the valet shall take a sympathetic wound. What could be more natural than that a gentleman of sixteen should select a lady of fifty for his first essay in the tender passion? Still--Bethiah McRankine! I kept my countenance with an effort. "Mr. Rowley," said I, "if music be the food of love, play on." And Mr. Rowley gave "The Girl I left behind me," shyly at first, but anon with terrific expression. He broke off with a sigh. "Heigho!" in fact, said Rowley: and started off again while I tapped out the time, and hummed-- "But now I'm bound for Brighton camp, Kind Heaven then pray guide me, And send me safely back again To the girl I left behind me!" Thenceforward that not uninspiriting air became the _motif_ of our progress. We never tired of it. Whenever our conversation flagged, by tacit consent Mr. Rowley pieced his flageolet together and started it. The horses lilted it out in their gallop: the harness jingled, the postillions tittuped to it. And the _presto_ with which it wound up as we came to a post-house and a fresh relay of horses had to be heard to be believed. So with the chaise windows open to the vigorous airs of spring, and my own breast like a window flung wide to youth and health and happy expectations, I rattled homewards; impatient as a lover should be, yet not too impatient to taste the humour of spinning like a lord, with a pocketful of money, along the road which the _ci-devant_ M. Champdivers had so fearfully dodged and skirted in Burchell Fenn's covered cart. And yet so impatient that when we galloped over the Calton Hill and down into Edinburgh by the new London road, with the wind in our faces, and a sense of April in it, brisk and jolly, I must pack off Rowley to our lodgings with the valises, and stay only for a wash and breakfast at Dumbreck's before posting on to Swanston alone. "Whene'er my steps return that way, Still faithful shall she find me, And never more again I'll stray From the girl I left behind me." When the gables of the cottage rose into view over the hill's shoulder I dismissed my driver and walked forward, whistling the tune; but fell silent as I came under the lee of the garden wall, and sought for the exact spot of my old escalade. I found it by the wide beechen branches over the road, and hoisted myself noiselessly up to the coping where, as before, they screened me--or would have screened me had I cared to wait. But I did not care to wait; and why? Because, not fifteen yards from me, she stood!--she, my Flora, my goddess, bareheaded, swept by chequers of morning sunshine and green shadows, with the dew on her sandal shoes and the lap of her morning gown appropriately heaped with flowers--with tulips, scarlet, yellow, and striped. And confronting her, with his back towards me and a remembered patch between the armholes of his stable-waistcoat, Robie the gardener rested both hands on his spade and expostulated. "But I like to pick my tulips, leaves and all, Robie!" "Aweel, miss; it's clean ruinin' the bulbs, that's all I say to you." And that was all I waited to hear. As he bent over and resumed his digging I shook a branch of the beech with both hands and set it swaying. She heard the rustle and glanced up, and, spying me, uttered a gasping little cry. "What ails ye, miss?" Robie straightened himself instanter; but she had whipped right-about face and was gazing towards the kitchen garden-- "Isn't that a child among the arti--the strawberry beds, I mean?" He cast down his spade and ran. She turned, let the tulips fall at her feet, and, ah! her second cry of gladness, and her heavenly blush as she stretched out both arms to me! It was all happening over again--with the difference that now my arms too were stretched out. "Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know...." Robie had run a dozen yards perhaps, when either the noise I made in scrambling off the wall, or some recollection of having been served in this way before, brought him to a halt. At any rate, he turned round, and just in time to witness our embrace. "The good Lord behear!" he exclaimed, stood stock-still for a moment, and waddled off at top speed towards the back door. "We must tell Aunt at once! She will--why, Anne, where are you going?" She caught my sleeve. "To the hen-house, to be sure," said I. A moment later, with peals of happy laughter, we had taken hands and were running along the garden alleys towards the house. And I remember, as we ran, finding it somewhat singular that this should be the first time I had ever invaded Swanston Cottage by way of the front door. We came upon Miss Gilchrist in the breakfast room. A pile of linen lay on the horse-hair sofa; and the good lady, with a measuring tape in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, was walking around Ronald, who stood on the hearthrug in a very manly attitude. She regarded me over her gold-rimmed spectacles, and, shifting the scissors into her left hand, held out her right. "H'm," said she; "I give ye good morning, Mosha. And what might you be wanting of us this time?" "Madam," I answered, "that, I hope, is fairly evident." Ronald came forward. "I congratulate you, St. Ives, with all my heart. And you may congratulate me: I have my commission." "Nay, then," said I, "let me rather congratulate France that the war is over. Seriously, my dear fellow, I wish you joy. What's the regiment?" "The 4-th." "Chevenix's!" "Chevenix is a decent fellow. He has behaved very well, indeed he has." "Very well indeed," said Flora, nodding her head. "He has the knack. But if you expect me to like him any the better for it----" "Major Chevenix," put in Miss Gilchrist in her most Rhadamanthine voice, "always sets me in mind of a pair of scissors." She opened and shut the pair in her hand, and I had to confess that the stiff and sawing action was admirably illustrative. "But I wish to heaven, madam," thought I, "you could have chosen another simile!" In the evening of that beatific day I walked back to Edinburgh by some aërial and rose-clouded path not indicated on the maps. It led somehow to my lodgings, and my feet touched earth when the door was opened to me by Bethiah McRankine. "But where is Rowley?" I asked a moment later, looking round my sitting-room. Mrs. McRankine smiled sardonically. "Him? He came back rolling his eyes so that I guessed him to be troubled in the wind. And he's in bed this hour past with a spoonful of peppermint in his little wame." * * * * * And here I may ring down the curtain upon the adventures of Anne de Saint-Yves. Flora and I were married early in June, and had been settled for little over six months, amid the splendours of Amersham Place, when news came of the Emperor's escape from Elba. Throughout the consequent alarums and excursions of the Hundred Days (as M. de Chambord named them for us), I have to confess that the Vicomte Anne sat still and warmed his hands at the domestic hearth. To be sure, Napoleon had been my master, and I had no love for the _cocarde blanche_. But here was I, an Englishman, already, in legal but inaccurate phrase, a "naturalised" one, having, as Mr. Romaine put it, a stake in the country, not to speak of a nascent interest in its game-laws and the local administration of justice. In short, here was a situation to tickle a casuist. It did not, I may say, tickle me in the least, but played the mischief with my peace. If you, my friends, having weighed the _pro_ and _contra_, would have counselled inaction, possibly, allowing for the _hébétude de foyer_ and the fact that Flora was soon to become a mother, you might have predicted it. At any rate I sat still and read the newspapers: and on the top of them came a letter from Ronald, announcing that the 4-th had their marching, or rather their sailing, orders, and that within a week his boat would rock by the pier of Leith to convey him and his comrades to join the Duke of Wellington's forces in the Low Countries. Forthwith nothing would suit my dear girl but we must post to Edinburgh to bid him farewell--in a chariot, this time, with a box seat for her maid and Mr. Rowley. We reached Swanston in time for Ronald to spend the eve of his departure with us at the Cottage; and very gallant the boy looked in his scarlet uniform, which he wore for the ladies' benefit, and which (God forgive us men!) they properly bedewed with their tears. Early next morning we drove over to the city and drew up in the thick of the crowd gathered at the foot of the Castle Hill to see the 4-th march out. We had waited half an hour, perhaps, when we heard two thumps of a drum and the first notes of the regimental quick-step sounded within the walls; the sentry at the outer gate stepped back and presented arms, and the ponderous archway grew bright with the red coats and brazen instruments of the band. The farewells on their side had been said; and the inexorable _tramp_--_tramp_ upon the drawbridge was the burthen of their answer to the waving handkerchiefs, the huzzas of the citizens, the cries of the women. On they came, and in the first rank, behind the band, rose Major Chevenix. He saw us, flushed a little, and gravely saluted. I never liked the man; but will admit he made a fine figure there. And I pitied him a little; for while his eyes rested on Flora, hers wandered to the rear of the third company, where Ensign Ronald Gilchrist marched beside the tattered colours with chin held up and a high colour on his young cheeks and a lip that quivered as he passed us. "God bless you, Ronald!" "Left wheel!" The band and the Major riding behind it swung round the corner into North Bridge Street; the rear-rank and the adjutant behind it passed down the Lawnmarket. Our driver was touching up his horses to follow, when Flora's hand stole into mine. And I turned from my own conflicting thoughts to comfort her. END OF VOL. XX PRINTED BY CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C. 
21556	----	Monsieur Violet, by Captain Marryat. ________________________________________________________________________ Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848. He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still in print. Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary genius. "Monsieur Violet" was published in 1843, the twentieth book to flow from Marryat's pen. It was written after Marryat's visit to America, the Diary of which had been published in 1839. Much of the material for this book must have been gathered during that visit. The setting is North America. This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted several times during recent years. ________________________________________________________________________ MONSIEUR VIOLET, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT. CHAPTER ONE. The Revolution of 1830, which deprived Charles the Tenth of the throne of France, like all other great and sudden changes, proved the ruin of many individuals, more especially of many ancient families who were attached to the Court, and who would not desert the exiled monarch in his adversity. Among the few who were permitted to share his fortunes was my father, a noble gentleman of Burgundy, who at a former period and during a former exile, had proved his unchangeable faith and attachment to the legitimate owners of the crown of France. The ancient royal residence of Holyrood having been offered, as a retreat, to his unhappy master, my father bade an eternal adieu to his country and with me, his only son, then but nine years of age, followed in the suite of the monarch, and established himself in Edinburgh. Our residence in Scotland was not long. Charles the Tenth decided upon taking up his abode at Prague. My father went before him to make the necessary arrangements; and as soon as his master was established there, he sought by travel to forget his griefs. Young as I was, I was his companion. Italy, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land were all visited in the course of three years, after which time we returned to Italy; and being then twelve years old, I was placed for my education in the Propaganda at Rome. For an exile who is ardently attached to his country there is no repose. Forbidden to return to his beloved France, there was no retreat which could make my father forget his griefs, and he continued as restless and as unhappy as ever. Shortly after that I had been placed in the Propaganda, my father fell in with an old friend, a friend of his youth, whom he had not met with for years, once as gay and as happy as he had been, now equally suffering and equally restless. This friend was the Italian Prince Seravalle, who also had drank deep of the cup of bitterness. In his youth, feeling deeply the decadence, both moral and physical, of his country, he had attempted to strike a blow to restore it to its former splendour; he headed a conspiracy, expended a large portion of his wealth in pursuit of his object, was betrayed by his associates, and for many years was imprisoned by the authorities in the Castle of San Angelo. How long his confinement lasted I know not, but it must have been a long while, as in after-times, when he would occasionally revert to his former life, all the incidents he related were for years "when he was in his dungeon, or in the court-yard prison of the Capitol," where many of his ancestors had dictated laws to nations. At last the Prince was restored to freedom, but captivity had made no alteration in his feelings or sentiments. His love for his country, and his desire for its regeneration, were as strong as ever, and he very soon placed himself at the head of the Carbonari, a sect which, years afterwards, was rendered illustrious by the constancy and sufferings of a Maroncelli, a Silvio Pellico, and many others. The Prince was again detected and arrested, but he was not thrown into prison. The government had been much weakened and the well-known opinions and liberality of the Prince had rendered him so popular with the Trasteverini, or northern inhabitants of the Tiber, that policy forbade either his captivity or destruction. He was sentenced to be banished for (I think) ten years. During his long banishment, the Prince Seravalle wandered over various portions of the globe, and at last found himself in Mexico. After a residence at Vera Cruz, he travelled into the interior, to examine the remains of the ancient cities of the Western World; and impelled by his thirst for knowledge and love of adventure, he at last arrived on the western coast of America, and passing through California, fell in with the Shoshones, or Snake Indians, occupying a large territory extending from the Pacific to nearly the feet of the Rocky Mountains. Pleased with the manners and customs and native nobility of this tribe of Indians, the Prince remained with them for a considerable time, and eventually decided that he would return once more to his country, now that his term of banishment had expired; not to resettle in an ungrateful land, but to collect his property and return to the Shoshones, to employ it for their benefit and advancement. There was, perhaps, another feeling, even more powerful, which induced the Prince Seravalle to return to the Indians with whom he had lived so long. I refer to the charms and attraction which a wild life offers to the man of civilisation, more particularly when he has discovered how hollow and heartless we become under refinement. Not one Indian who has been brought up at school, and among the pleasures and luxuries of a great city, has ever wished to make his dwelling among the pale faces; while, on the contrary, many thousands of white men, from the highest to the lowest stations in civilisation, have embraced the life of the savage, remaining with and dying among them, although they might have accumulated wealth, and returned to their own country. This appears strange, but it is nevertheless true. Any intelligent traveller, who has remained a few weeks in the wigwams of well-disposed Indians, will acknowledge that the feeling was strong upon him even during so short a residence. What must it then be on those who have resided with the Indians for years? It was shortly after the Prince's return to Italy to fulfil his benevolent intentions, that my father renewed his old friendship--a friendship of early years, so strong that their adverse politics could not weaken it. The Prince was then at Leghorn; he had purchased a vessel, loaded it with implements of agriculture and various branches of the domestic arts; he had procured some old pieces of artillery, a large quantity of carabines from Liege, gunpowder, etcetera; materials for building a good house, and a few articles of ornament and luxury. His large estates were all sold to meet these extraordinary expenses. He had also engaged masons, smiths, and carpenters, and he was to be accompanied by some of his former tenants, who well understood the cultivation of the olive-tree and vine. It was in the autumn of 1833 when he was nearly ready to start, that he fell in with my father, told him his adventures and his future plans, and asked him to accompany him. My father, who was tired and disgusted with every thing, blase au fond, met the Prince more than half way. Our property in France had all been disposed of at a great sacrifice at the time of the Revolution. All my father possessed was in money and jewels. He resolved to risk all, and to settle with the Prince in this far distant land. Several additions were consequently made to the cargo and to the members composing the expedition. Two priests had already engaged to act as missionaries. Anxious for my education, my father provided an extensive library, and paid a large sum to the Prior of a Dominican convent to permit the departure with us of another worthy man, who was well able to superintend my education. Two of the three religious men who had thus formed our expedition had been great travellers, and had already carried the standard of the cross east of the Ganges in the Thibetian and Burman empires. In order to avoid any difficulties from the government, the Prince Seravalle had taken the precaution to clear the vessel out for Guatemala, and the people at Leghorn fully believed that such was his object. But Guatemala and Acapulco were left a long way south of us before we arrived at our destination. At last every thing was prepared. I was sent for from the Propaganda-- the stock of wines, etcetera, were the last articles which were shipped, and the Esmeralda started on her tedious, and by no means certain voyage. CHAPTER TWO. I was very young then--not thirteen years old; but if I was young, I had travelled much, and had gained that knowledge which is to be obtained by the eye--perhaps the best education we can have in our earlier years. I shall pass over the monotony of the voyage of eternal sky and water. I have no recollection that we were in any imminent danger at anytime, and the voyage might have been styled a prosperous one. After five months, we arrived off the coast, and with some difficulty we gained the entrance of a river falling into Trinity Bay, in latitude 41 degrees north and longitude 124 degrees 28 minutes west. We anchored about four miles above the entrance, which was on the coast abreast of the Shoshones' territory, and resorted to by them on their annual fishing excursions. In memory of the event, the river was named by the Indians--"Nu eleje sha wako;" or, the Guide of the Strangers. For many weeks it was a strange and busy scene. The Prince Seravalle had, during his former residence with the Shoshones, been admitted into their tribe as a warrior and a chief, and now the Indians flocked from the interior to welcome their pale-faced chief, who had not forgotten his red children. They helped our party to unload the vessel, provided us with game of all kinds, and, under the directions of the carpenter, they soon built a large warehouse to protect our goods and implements from the effect of the weather. As soon as our cargo was housed, the Prince and my father, accompanied by the chiefs and elders of the tribe, set off on an exploring party, to select a spot fit for the settlement. During their absence, I was entrusted to the care of one of the chief's squaws, and had three beautiful children for my playmates. In three weeks the party returned; they had selected a spot upon the western banks of the Buona Ventura River, at the foot of a high circular mountain, where rocks, covered with indurated lava and calcined sulphur, proved the existence of former volcanic eruptions. The river was lined with lofty timber; immense quarries of limestone were close at hand, and the minor streams gave us clay, which produced bricks of an excellent quality. The Spaniards had before visited this spot, and had given the mountain the name of St. Salvador; but our settlement took the Indian appellation of the Prince, which was--"Nanawa ashta jueri e," or the Dwelling of the Great Warrior. As the place of our landing was a great resort of the Indians during the fishing season, it was also resolved that a square fort and store, with a boat-house, should be erected there; and for six or seven months all was bustle and activity, when an accident occurred which threw a damp upon our exertions. Although the whole country abounds in cattle, and some other tribes, of which I shall hereafter make mention, do possess them in large herds, the Shoshones did not possess any. Indeed, so abundant was the game in this extensive territory, that they could well dispense with them; but as the Prince's ambition was to introduce agriculture and more domestic habits among the tribe he considered it right that they should be introduced. He therefore despatched the Esmeralda to obtain them either at Monterey or Santa Barbara. But the vessel was never more heard of: the Mexicans stated that they had perceived the wreck of a vessel off Cape Mendocino, and it was but natural to suppose that these were the remains of our unfortunate brig. All hands on board perished, and the loss was very heavy to us. The crew consisted of the captain, his son, and twelve men, and there were also on board five of our household, who had been despatched upon various commissions, Giuseppe Polidori, the youngest of our missionaries, one of our gunsmiths, one of our masons, and two Italian farmers. Melancholy as was this loss, it did not abate the exertions of those who were left. Fields were immediately cleared--gardens prepared; and by degrees the memory of this sad beginning faded away before the prospect of future happiness and comfort. As soon as we were completely established, my education commenced. It was novel, yet still had much affinity to the plan pursued with the students of the Military Colleges in France, inasmuch as all my play hours were employed in the hardier exercises. To the two excellent missionaries I owe much, and with them I passed many happy hours. We had brought a very extensive and very well selected library with us, and under their care I soon became acquainted with the arts and sciences of civilisation: I studied history generally, and they also taught me Latin and Greek, and I was soon master of many of the modern languages. And as my studies were particularly devoted to the history of the ancient people of Asia, to enable me to understand their theories and follow up their favourite researches upon the origin of the great ruins in Western and Central America, the slight knowledge which I had gained at the Propaganda of Arabic and Sanscrit was now daily increased. Such were my studies with the good fathers: the other portion of my education was wholly Indian. I was put under the charge of a celebrated old warrior of the tribe, and from him I learned the use of the bow, the tomahawk, and the rifle, to throw the lasso, to manage the wildest horse, to break in the untamed colt; and occasionally I was permitted to accompany them in their hunting and fishing excursions. Thus for more than three years did I continue to acquire knowledge of various kinds, while the colony gradually extended its fields, and there appeared to be every chance of gradually reclaiming the wild Shoshones to a more civilised state of existence. But "l'homme propose et Dieu dispose." Another heavy blow fell upon the Prince, which eventually proved the ruin of all his hopes. After the loss of the vessel, we had but eight white men in the colony, besides the missionaries and ourselves; and the Prince, retaining only my father's old servant, determined upon sending the remainder to purchase the cattle which we had been so anxious to obtain. They departed on this mission, but never returned. In all probability, they were murdered by the Apaches Indians, although it is not impossible that, tired of our simple and monotonous life, they deserted us to establish themselves in the distant cities of Mexico. This second catastrophe weighed heavy upon the mind of the good old Prince. All his hopes were dashed to the ground--the illusions of the latter part of his life were destroyed for ever. His proudest expectations had been to redeem his savage friends from their wild life, and this could only be effected by commerce and agriculture. The farms round the settlement had for now nearly four years been tilled by the squaws and young Indians, under the direction of the white men, and although the occupation was by no means congenial to their nature, the Prince had every anticipation that, with time and example, the Shoshones would perceive the advantages, and be induced to till the land for themselves. Before our arrival, the winter was always a season of great privation to that portion of the Indians who could not repair to the hunting grounds, while now, Indian corn, potatoes, and other vegetables were in plenty, at least for those who dwelt near to the settlement. But now that we had lost all our white cultivators and mechanics, we soon found that the Indians avoided the labour. All our endeavours proved useless: the advantages had not yet been sufficiently manifest: the transition attempted had been too short; and the good, although proud and lazy, Shoshones abandoned the tillage, and relapsed into their former apathy and indifference. Mortified at this change, the Prince and my father resolved to make an appeal to the whole nation, and try to convince them how much happier they would be if they would cultivate the ground for their support. A great feast was given, the calumet was smoked; after which the Prince rose and addressed them after their own fashion. As I had, a short time previous, been admitted as a chief and warrior, I, of course, was present at the meeting. The Prince spoke:-- "Do you not want to become the most powerful nation of the West? You do. If then such is the case, you must ask assistance from the earth, which is your mother. True, you have prairies abounding in game, but the squaws and the children cannot follow your path when hunting. "Are not the Crows, the Bannaxas, the Flat Heads, and the Umbiquas, starving during the winter? They have no buffalo in their land, and but few deer. What have they to eat? A few lean horses, perchance a bear; and the stinking flesh of the otter or beaver they may trap during the season. "Would they not be too happy to exchange their furs against the corn, the tobacco, and good dried fish of the Shoshones? Now they sell their furs to the Yankees, but the Yankees bring them no food. The Flat Heads take the fire-water and blankets from the traders, but they do so because they cannot get any thing else, and their packs of furs would spoil if they kept them. "Would they not like better to barter them with you, who are so near to them, for good food to sustain them and their children during the winter--to keep alive their squaws and their old men during the long snow and the dreary moons of darkness and gloom? "Now if the Shoshones had corn and tobacco to give for furs, they would become rich. They would have the best saddles from Mexico, and the best rifles from the Yankees, the best tomahawks and blankets from the Canadians. Who then could resist the Shoshones? When they would go hunting, hundreds of the other natives would clear for them the forest path, or tear with their hands the grass out of their track in the prairie. I have spoken." All the Indians acknowledged that the talk was good and full of wisdom; but they were too proud to work. An old chief answered for the whole tribe. "Nanawa Ashta is a great chief; he is a brave! The Manitou speaks softly to his ears, and tells him the secret which makes the heart of a warrior big or small; but Nanawa has a pale face--his blood is a strange blood, although his heart is ever with his red friends. It is only the white Manitou that speaks to him, and how could the white Manitou know the nature of the Indians? He has not made them; he don't call them to him; he gives them nothing; he leaves them poor and wretched; he keeps all for the pale faces. "It is right he should do so. The panther will not feed the young of the deer, nor will the hawk sit upon the eggs of the dove. It is life, it is order, it is nature. Each has his own to provide for and no more. Indian corn is good; tobacco is good, it gladdens the heart of the old men when they are in sorrow; tobacco is the present of chiefs to chiefs. The calumet speaks of war and death; it discourses also of peace and friendship. The Manitou made the tobacco expressly for man--it is good. "But corn and tobacco must be taken from the earth; they must be watched for many moons, and nursed like children. This is work fit only for squaws and slaves. The Shoshones are warriors and free; if they were to dig in the ground, their sight would become weak, and their enemies would say they were moles and badgers. "Does the just Nanawa wish the Shoshones to be despised by the Crows or the horsemen of the south! No! he had fought for them before he went to see if the bones of his fathers were safe: and since his return, has he not given to them rifles and powder, and long nets to catch the salmon and plenty of iron to render their arrows feared alike by the buffaloes and the Umbiquas? "Nanawa speaks well, for he loves his children: but the spirit that whispers to him is a pale-face spirit, that cannot see under the skin of a red-warrior; it is too tough: nor in his blood: it is too dark. "Yet tobacco is good, and corn too. The hunters of the Flat Heads and Pierced Noses would come in winter to beg for it; their furs would make warm the lodges of the Shoshones. And my people would become rich and powerful; they would be masters of all the country, from the salt waters to the big mountains; the deer would come and lick their hands, and the wild horses would graze around their wigwams. 'Tis so that the pale faces grow rich and strong; they plant corn, tobacco, and sweet melons; they have trees that bear figs and peaches; they feed swine and goats, and tame buffaloes. They are a great people. "A red-skin warrior is nothing but a warrior; he is strong, but he is poor; he is not a wood-chunk, nor a badger, nor a prairie dog; he cannot dig the ground; he is a warrior, and nothing more. I have spoken." Of course the tenor of this speech was too much in harmony with Indian ideas not to be received with admiration. The old man took his seat, while another rose to speak in his turn. "The great chief hath spoken: his hair is white like the down of the swan; his winters have been many; he is wise; why should I speak after him, his words were true? The Manitou touched my ears and my eyes when he spoke (and he spoke like a warrior); I heard his war cry. I saw the Umbiquas running in the swamps, and crawling like black snakes under the bushes. I spied thirty scalps on his belt, his leggings and mocassins were sewn with the hair of the Wallah Wallahs. [See note 1.] "I should not speak; I am young yet and have no wisdom; my words are few, I should not speak. But in my vision I heard a spirit, it came upon the breeze, it entered within me. "Nanawa is my father, the father to all, he loves us, we are his children; he has brought with him a great warrior of the pale faces, who was a mighty chief in his tribe; he has given us a young chief who is a great hunter; in a few years he will be a great warrior, and lead our young men in the war path on the plains of the Wachinangoes [see note 2], for Owato Wachina [see note 3] is a Shoshone, though his skin is paler than the flower of the magnolia. "Nanawa has also given to us two Makota Konayas [see note 4], to teach wisdom to our young men; their words are sweet, they speak to the heart; they know every thing and make men better. Nanawa is a great chief, very wise; what he says is right, what he wishes must be done, for he is our father, and he gave us strength to fight our enemies. "He is right, the Shoshones must have their lodges full of corn and tobacco. The Shoshones must ever be what they are, what they were, a great nation. But the chief of many winters hath said it; the hedge-hogs and the foxes may dig the earth, but the eyes of the Shoshones are always turned towards their enemies in the woods, or the buffaloes in the plains. "Yet the will of Nanawa must be done, but not by a Shoshone. We will give him plenty of squaws and dogs; we will bring him slaves from the Umbiquas, the Cayuses, and the Wallah Wallahs. They shall grow the corn and the tobacco while we hunt; while we go to fetch more slaves, even in the big mountains, or among the dogs of the south, the Wachinangoes. I will send the vermilion [see note 5] to my young warriors, they will paint their faces and follow me on the war-path. I have spoken!" Thus ended the hopes of making agriculturists of the wild people among whom we lived; nor did I wonder such as they were, they felt happy. What could they want besides their neat conical skin lodges, their dresses, which were good, comfortable, and elegant, and their women, who were virtuous, faithful, and pretty? Had they not the unlimited range of the prairies? were they not lords over millions of elks and buffaloes?--they wanted nothing, except tobacco. And yet it was a pity we could not succeed in giving them a taste for civilisation. They were gentlemen by nature; as indeed almost all the Indians are, when not given to drinking. They are extremely well bred, and stamped with the indubitable seal of nobility on their brow. The council was broken up, as both Christianity, and his own peculiar sentiments, would not permit the Prince Seravalle to entertain the thought of extending slavery. He bowed meekly to the will of Providence, and endeavoured by other means to effect his object of enlightening the minds of this pure and noble, yet savage race of men. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. Indians living on the Columbian River, two hundred miles above Fort Vancouver, allied to the Nez Perces, and great supporters of the Americans. Note 2. Name given to the half breeds by the Spaniards, but by Indians comprehending the whole Mexican race. Note 3. The "spirit of the young beaver;" a name given to me when I was made a warrior. Note 4. Two priests, literally two black gowns. Note 5. When a chief wishes to go to war, he sends to his warriors some leaves of tobacco covered with vermilion. It is a sign that they must soon be prepared. CHAPTER THREE. This breaking up, for the time, of our agricultural settlement took place in the year 1838. Till then, or a few months before, I had passed my time between my civilised and uncivilised instructors. But although educated, I was an Indian, not only in my dress but in my heart. I mentioned that in the council called by the Prince I was present, having been admitted as a chief, being then about seventeen years old. My admission was procured in the following manner: when we received intelligence of the murder, or disappearance, of our seven white men, whom the Prince had sent to Monterey to procure cattle, a party was sent out on their track to ascertain what had really taken place, and at my request the command of that party was confided to me. We passed the Buona Ventura, and followed the track of our white men for upwards of 200 miles, when we not only could trace it no further, but found our small party of fifteen surrounded by about eighty of our implacable enemies, the Crows. By stratagem, we not only broke through them, but succeeded in surprising seven of their party. My companions would have put them to death, but I would not permit it. We secured them on their own horses, and made all the haste we could, but the Crows had discovered us and gave chase. It was fifteen days' travelling to our own country, and we were pursued by an enemy seven or eight times superior to us in numbers. By various stratagems, which I shall not dwell upon, aided by the good condition of our horses, we contrived to escape them, and to bring our prisoners safe into the settlement. Now, although we had no fighting, yet address is considered a great qualification. On my return I was therefore admitted as a chief, with the Indian name Owato Wanisha, or "spirit of the beaver," as appropriate to my cunning and address. To obtain the rank of a warrior chief, it was absolutely requisite that I had distinguished myself on the field of battle. Before I continue my narration, I must say a little more relative to the missionaries, who were my instructors. One of them, the youngest, Polidori, was lost in the Esmeralda, when she sailed for Monterey to procure cattle. The two others were Padre Marini and Padre Antonio. They were both highly accomplished and learned. Their knowledge in Asiatic lore was unbounded, and it was my delight to follow them in their researches and various theories concerning the early Indian emigration across the waters of the Pacific. They were both Italians by birth. They had passed many years of their lives among the nations west of the Ganges, and in their advanced years had returned to sunny Italy, to die near the spot where they had played as little children. But they had met with Prince Seravalle, and when they heard from him of the wild tribes with whom he had dwelt, and who knew not God, they considered that it was their duty to go and instruct them. Thus did these sincere men, old and broken, with one foot resting on their tombs, again encounter difficulties and danger, to propagate among the Indians that religion of love and mercy, which they were appointed to make known. Their efforts, however, to convert the Shoshones were fruitless. Indian nature would seem to be a nature apart and distinct. The red men, unless in suffering or oppression, will not listen to what they call "the smooth honey words of the pale-faced sages;" and even when they do so, they argue upon every dogma and point of faith, and remain unconvinced. The missionaries, therefore, after a time, contented themselves with practising deeds of charity, with alleviating their sufferings when able, from their knowledge of medicine and surgery, and by moral precepts, softening down as much as they could the fierce and occasionally cruel tempers of this wild untutored race. Among other advantages which the Shoshones derived from our missionaries, was the introduction of vaccination. At first it was received with great distrust, and indeed violently opposed, but the good sense of the Indians ultimately prevailed; and I do not believe that there is one of the Shoshones born since the settlement was formed who has not been vaccinated; the process was explained by the Padres Marini and Polidori to the native medical men, and is now invariably practised by them. I may as well here finish the histories of the good missionaries. When I was sent upon an expedition to Monterey, which I shall soon have to detail, Padre Marini accompanied me. Having failed with the Shoshones, he considered that he might prove useful by locating himself in the Spanish settlements of California. We parted soon after we arrived at Monterey, and I have never seen or heard of him since. I shall, however, have to speak of him again during our journey and sojourn at that town. The other, Padre Antonio, died at the settlement previous to my journey to Monterey, and the Indians still preserve his robes, missal, and crucifix, as the relics of a good man. Poor Padre Antonio! I would have wished to have known the history of his former life. A deep melancholy was stamped upon his features, from some cause of heart-breaking grief, which even religion could but occasionally assuage, but not remove. After his death, I looked at his missal. The blank pages at the beginning and the end were filled up with pious reflections, besides some few words, which spoke volumes as to one period of his existence. The first words inscribed were: "Julia, obiit A.D. 1799. Virgo purissima, Maris Stella. Ora pro me." On the following leaf was written: "Antonio de Campestrina, Convient. Dominicum. In Roma, A.D. 1800." Then he had embraced a monastic life upon the death of one dear to him-- perhaps his first and only love. Poor man! many a time have I seen the big burning tears rolling fast down his withered cheeks. But he is gone, and his sorrows are at rest. On the last page of the missal were also two lines, written in a tremulous hand, probably a short time previous to his death: "I, nunc anima anceps; sitque tibi Deus misericors." The Prince Seravalle did not, however, abandon his plans; having failed in persuading the Shoshones, at the suggestion of my father, it was resolved that an attempt should be made to procure a few Mexicans and Canadians to carry on the agricultural labours; for I may here as well observe, that both the Prince and my father had long made up their minds to live and die among the Indians. This expedition was to be undertaken by me. My trip was to be a long one. In case I should not succeed in Monterey in enlisting the parties required, I was to proceed on to Santa Fe, either with a party of Apaches Indians, who were always at peace with the Shoshones, or else with one of the Mexican caravans. In Santa Fe there was always a great number of French and Canadians, who came every year from St. Louis, hired by the Fur Companies; so that we had some chance of procuring them. If, however, my endeavours should prove fruitless, as I should already have proceeded too far to return alone, I was to continue on from Santa Fe with the fur traders, returning to St. Louis, on the Mississippi, where I was to dispose of some valuable jewels, hire men to form a strong caravan, and return to the settlement by the Astoria trail. As my adventures may be said but to commence at my departure upon this commission, I will, before I enter upon my narrative, give the reader some insight into the history and records of the Shoshones, or Snake Indians, with whom I was domiciled, and over whom, although so young, I held authority and command. CHAPTER FOUR. The Shoshones, or Snake Indians, are a brave and numerous people, occupying a large and beautiful tract of country, 540 miles from east to west, and nearly 300 miles from north to south. It lies betwixt 38 degrees and 43 degrees north latitude, and from longitude 116 degrees west of Greenwich to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, which there extend themselves to nearly the parallel of 125 degrees west longitude. The land is rich and fertile, especially by the sides of numerous streams, where the soil is sometimes of a deep red colour, and at others entirely black. The aspect of this region is well diversified, and though the greatest part of it must be classified under the denomination of rolling prairies, yet woods are very abundant, principally near the rivers and in the low flat bottoms; while the general landscape is agreeably relieved from the monotony of too great uniformity by numerous mountains of fantastical shapes and appearance, entirely unconnected with each other, and all varying in the primitive matter of their conformation. Masses of native copper are found at almost every step, and betwixt two mountains which spread from east to west in the parallel of the rivers Buona Ventura and Calumet, there are rich beds of galena, even at two or three feet under ground; sulphur and magnesia appear plentiful in the northern districts; while in the sand of the creeks to the south, gold dust is occasionally collected by the Indians. The land is admirably watered by three noble streams--the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and the Nu eleje sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers of inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of mosquito-grass, blue grass, and clover, in which innumerable herds of buffaloes, and mustangs, or wild horses, graze, except during the hunting season, in undisturbed security. The Shoshones [see note 1] are indubitably a very ancient people. It would be impossible to say how long they may have been on this portion of the continent. Their cast of features proves them to be of Asiatic origin, and their phraseology, elegant and full of metaphors, assumes all the graceful variety of the brightest pages of Saadi. A proof of their antiquity and foreign extraction is, that few of their records and traditions are local; they refer to countries on the other side of the sea, countries where the summer is perpetual, the population numberless, and the cities composed of great palaces, like the Hindoo traditions, "built by the good genii, long before the creation of man." There is no doubt, indeed it is admitted by the other tribes that the Shoshone is the parent tribe of the Comanches, Arrapahoes, and Apaches-- the Bedouins of the Mexican deserts. They all speak the same beautiful and harmonious language, have the same traditions; and indeed so recent have been their subdivisions, that they point out the exact periods by connecting them with the various events of Spanish inland conquest in the northern portion of Sonora. It is not my intention to dwell long upon speculative theory but I must observe, that if any tradition is to be received with confidence it must proceed from nations, or tribes, who have long been stationary. That the northern continent of America was first peopled from Asia, there can be little doubt, and if so it is but natural to suppose that those who first came over would settle upon the nearest and most suitable territory. The emigrants who, upon their landing, found themselves in such a climate and such a country as California, were not very likely to quit it in search of a better. That such was the case with the Shoshones, and that they are descendants from the earliest emigrants, and that they have never quitted the settlement made by their ancestors, I have no doubt, for all their traditions confirm it. We must be cautious how we put faith in the remarks of missionaries and travellers, upon a race of people little known. They seldom come into contact with the better and higher classes, who have all the information and knowledge; and it is only by becoming one of them, not one of their tribes, but one of their chiefs, and received into their aristocracy, that any correct intelligence can be gained. Allow that a stranger was to arrive at Wapping, or elsewhere, in Great Britain, and question those he met in such a locality as to the religion, laws, and history of the English, how unsatisfactory would be their replies; yet missionaries and travellers among these nations seldom obtain farther access. It is therefore among the better classes of the Indians that we must search for records, traditions, and laws. As for their religion, no stranger will ever obtain possession of its tenets, unless he is cast among them in early life and becomes one of them. Let missionaries say what they please in their reports to their societies, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretended ones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are outcasts from their tribes. The traditions of the Shoshones fully bear out my opinion, that they were among the earliest of the Asiatic emigrants; they contain histories of subsequent emigrations, in which they had to fight hard to retain their lands; of the dispersion of the new emigrants to the north and south; of the increase of numbers, and breaking up of portions of the tribes, who travelled away to seek subsistence in the East. We find, as might be expected, that the traditions of the Eastern tribes, collected as they have occasionally been previous to their extinction, are trifling and absurd; and why so? because, driven away to the east, and finding other tribes of Indians, who had been driven there before them, already settled there, they have immediately commenced a life of continual hostility and change of domicile. When people have thus been occupied for generations in continual warfare and change, it is but natural to suppose that in such a life of constant action, they have had no time to transmit their traditions, and that ultimately they have been lost to the tribe. We must then look for records in those quarters where the population has remained stationary for ages. It must be in south-west of Oregon, and in the northern parts of Upper California and Sonora, that the philosopher must obtain the eventful history of vast warlike nations, of their rise and of their fall. The western Apaches or the Shoshones, with their antiquities and ruins of departed glory, will unfold to the student's mind long pages of a thrilling interest, while in their metaphors and rich phraseology, the linguist, learned in Asiatic lore, will detect their ancient origin. It is remarkable to observe, how generally traditions and records will spread and be transmitted among nations destitute of the benefits of the art of printing. In Europe, the mass were certainly better acquainted with their ancient history before this great discovery than they are in our days, as traditions were then handed down from family to family--it was a duty, a sacred one, for a father to transmit them to his son, unadulterated, such in fact, as he had received them from his ancestors. It is same case with the Indians, who have remained stationary for a long period. It is in the long evenings of February, during the hunting season, that the elders of the tribe will reveal to young warriors all the records of their history; and were a learned European to assist at one of these "lectures upon antiquity," he would admit that, in harmony, eloquence, strength of argument, and deduction, the red-coloured orator could not be surpassed. The Shoshones have a clear and lucid recollection of the far countries whence they have emigrated. They do not allude to any particular period, but they must have been among the first comers, for they relate with great topographical accuracy all the bloody struggles they had to sustain against newer emigrants. Often beaten, they were never conquered, and have always occupied the ground which they had selected from the beginning. Unlike the great families of the Dahcotahs and Algonquins who yet retain the predominant characteristics of the wandering nations of South-west Asia, the Shoshones seem to have been in all ages a nation warlike, though stationary. It is evident that they never were a wealthy people, nor possessed any great knowledge of the arts and sciences. Their records of a former country speak of rich mountainous districts, with balmy breezes, and trees covered with sweet and beautiful fruits; but when they mention large cities, palaces, temples, and gardens, it is always in reference to other nations, with whom they were constantly at war; and these traditions would induce us to believe that they are descendants of the Mancheoux Tartars. They have in their territory on both sides of the Buona Ventura river many magnificent remains of devastated cities; but although connected with a former period of their history, they were not erected by the Shoshones. The fountains, aqueducts, the heavy domes, and the long graceful obelisks, rising at the feet of massive pyramids, show indubitably the long presence of a highly civilised people; and the Shoshones' accounts of these mysterious relics may serve to philosophers as a key to the remarkable facts of thousands of similar ruins found everywhere upon the continent of America. The following is a description of events at a very remote period, which was related by an old Shoshone sage, in their evening encampment in the prairies, during the hunting season:-- "It is a long, long while! when the wild horses were unknown in the country, [Horses were unknown until the arrival of the Spaniards], and when the buffalo alone ranged the vast prairies; then, huge and horrid monsters existed. The approaches of the mountains and forests were guarded by the evil spirits [see note 2], while the seashore, tenanted by immense lizards [see note 3], was often the scene of awful conflicts between man, the eldest son of light, and the mighty children of gloom and darkness. Then, too, the land we now live in had another form; brilliant stones were found in the streams; the mountains had not yet vomited their burning bowels, and the great Master of Life was not angry with his red children. "One summer, and it was a dreadful one, the moon (i.e. the sun) remained stationary for a long time; it was of a red blood colour, and gave neither night nor days. Takwantona, the spirit of evil, had conquered Nature, and the sages of the Shoshones foresaw many dire calamities. The great _Medecines_ declared that the country would soon be drowned in the blood of their nation. They prayed in vain, and offered, without any success, two hundred of their fairest virgins in sacrifice on the altars of Takwantona. The evil spirit laughed, and answered to them with his destructive thunders. The earth was shaken and rent asunder; the waters ceased to flow in the rivers, and large streams of fire and burning sulphur rolled down from the mountains, bringing with them terror and death. How long it lasted none is living to say; and who could? There stood the bleeding moon; 'twas neither light nor obscurity; how could man divide the time and the seasons? It may have been only the life of a worm; it may have been the long age of a snake. "The struggle was fearful, but at last the good Master of Life broke his bonds. The sun shone again. It was too late! the Shoshones had been crushed and their heart had become small; they were poor, and had no dwellings; they were like the deer of the prairies, hunted by the hungry panther. "And a strange and numerous people landed on the shores of the sea; they were rich and strong; they made the Shoshones their slaves, and built large cities, where they passed all their time. Ages passed: the Shoshones were squaws; they hunted for the mighty strangers; they were beasts, for they dragged wood and water to their great wigwams; they fished for them, and they themselves starved in the midst of plenty. Ages again passed: the Shoshones could bear no more; they ran away to the woods, to the mountains, and to the borders of the sea; and, lo! the great Father of Life smiled again upon them; the evil genii were all destroyed, and the monsters buried in the sands. "They soon became strong, and great warriors; they attacked the strangers, destroyed their cities, and drove them like buffaloes, far in the south, where the sun is always burning, and from whence they did never return. "Since that time, the Shoshones have been a great people. Many, many times strangers arrived again; but being poor and few, they were easily compelled to go to the east and to the north, in the countries of the Crows, Flatheads, Wallah Wallahs, and Jal Alla Pujees (the Calapooses)." I have selected this tradition out of many, as, allowing for metaphor, it appears to be a very correct epitome of the history of the Shoshones in former times. The very circumstance of their acknowledging that they were, for a certain period, slaves to that race of people who built the cities, the ruins of which still attest their magnificence, is a strong proof of the outline being correct. To the modern Shoshones, and their manners and customs, I shall refer in a future portion of my narrative. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. The American travellers (even Mr Catlin, who is generally correct) have entirely mistaken the country inhabited by the Shoshones. One of them represents this tribe as "the Indians who inhabit that part of the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and Green River branches of the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great Bear River, and the hospitable shores of Great Salt Lakes." It is a great error. That the Shoshones may have been seen in the above-mentioned places is likely enough, as they are a great nation, and often send expeditions very far from their homes; but their own country lies, as I have said, betwixt the Pacific Ocean and the 116th degree of west longitude. As to the "hospitable" shores of the Great Salt Lake, I don't know what it means, unless it be a modern Yankee expression for a tract of horrid swamps with deadly effluvia, tenanted by millions of snakes and other "such hospitable reptiles." The lake is situated on the western country of the Crows, and I doubt if it has ever been visited by any Shoshone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 2. Skeletons of the mammoth are often found whole at the foot of the Grand Serpent, a long rugged mountain which runs for 360 miles under the parallel of 40 degrees north latitude. It extends from the centre of the Shoshone territory to the very country of the Crows, that is to say, from the 119th to the 113th degree west longitude. It is possible that this race may not have been yet quite extinct in the middle of the 17th century; for, indeed, in their family records, aged warriors will often speak of awful encounters, in which their great-great-grandfathers had fought against the monster. Some of them have still in their possession, among other trophies of days gone by, teeth and bones highly polished, which belong indubitably to this animal, of which so little is known. Mr Ross Cox, in the relation of his travels across the Rocky Mountains, says, "that the Upper Crees, a tribe who inhabit the country in the vicinity of the Athabasca river, have a curious tradition with respect to these animals. They allege, `that these animals were of frightful magnitude, that they formerly lived in the plains, a great distance in the south, where they had destroyed all the game, after which they retired to the mountains. They killed every thing, and if their agility had been equal to size and ferocity, they would have destroyed all the Indians. One man asserted, that his great-grandfather told him he saw one of those animals in a mountain-pass, where he was hunting, and that on hearing its roar, which he compared to loud thunder, the sight almost left his eyes, and his heart became as small as that of a child's.'" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 3. A few miles from the Pacific Ocean, and at the foot of a mountain called by the Shoshones the Dwelling of the Monster, were found the remains of an immense lizard belonging to an extinct family of the saurian species. Within a few inches of the surface, and buried in a bed of shells and petrified fish, our old missionary, Padre Antonio, digged up fifty-one vertebrae quite whole and well preserved. They were mostly from twelve to eighteen inches in length and from eight to fourteen inches in diameter, measuring in all more than fifteen feet in length. Of the tail and neck but few vertebrae were found but there were many fragments of the ribs and of the leg bones. All the vertebrae discovered were in a continuous line, nearly joined together. The head, to correspond to other parts of the animal, must have been twelve or fourteen feet long, which would have given to the monster the almost incredible length of eighty feet. The prince Seravalle, while digging in the fall of the year 1834, for an ammunition store on the western banks of the Buona Ventura, picked up a beautiful curved ivory tusk, three feet long, which, had it not been for its jet black colour, would have been amazingly alike to that of a large elephant. Some pieces of it (for unhappily it was sawn into several parts) are now in the possession of the governor of Monterey and Mr Lagrange, a Canadian trader, who visited the territory in 1840. CHAPTER FIVE. Every point having been arranged, I received my final instructions, and letters for the Governor of Monterey, to which was added a heavy bag of doubloons for my expenses. I bade farewell to the Prince and my father, and with six well-armed Indians and the Padre Marini, I embarked in a long canoe on the Buona Ventura river, and carried away by the current, soon lost sight of our lonesome settlement. We were to follow the stream to the southern lakes of the Buona Ventura, where we were to leave our Indians, and join some half-bred Wachinangoes, returning to Monterey, with the mustangs, or wild horses, which they had captured in the prairies. It was a beautiful trip, just at the commencement of the spring; both shores of the river were lined with evergreens; the grass was luxuriant, and immense herds of buffaloes and wild horses were to be seen grazing in every direction. Sometimes a noble stallion, his long sweeping mane and tail waving to the wind, would gallop down to the water's edge, and watch us as if he would know our intentions. When satisfied, he would walk slowly back, ever and anon turning round to look at us again, as if not quite so convinced of our peaceful intentions. On the third night, we encamped at the foot of an obelisk in the centre of some noble ruins. It was a sacred spot with the Shoshones. Their traditions told them of another race, who had formerly lived there, and which had been driven by them to the south. It must have been ages back, for the hand of time, so lenient in this climate, and the hand of man, so little given to spoil, had severely visited this fated city. We remained there the following day, as Padre Marini was anxious to discover any carvings or hieroglyphics from which he might draw some conclusions; but our endeavours were not successful, and we could not tarry longer, as we were afraid that the horse-hunters would break up their encampments before we arrived. We, therefore, resumed our journey, and many were the disquisitions and conjectures which passed between me and the holy father, as to the high degree of civilisation which must have existed among the lost race who had been the architects of such graceful buildings. Four days more brought us to the southern shore of the St. Jago lake. We arrived in good time, dismissed our Indians, and having purchased two excellent mules, we proceeded on our journey, in company with the horse-hunters, surrounded by hundreds of their captives, who were loudly lamenting their destiny, and shewed their sense of the injustice of the whole proceeding by kicking and striking with their fore-feet at whatever might come within the reach of their hoofs. Notwithstanding the very unruly conduct of the prisoners, we arrived at Monterey on the sixth evening. The reader will discover, as he proceeds, that my adventures are about to commence from this journey to Monterey; I therefore wish to remind him that I was at this time not eighteen years old. I had a remembrance of civilisation previous to my arrival among the Indians, and as we enjoyed every comfort and some luxuries at the settlement, I still had a remembrance, although vague, of what had passed in Italy and elsewhere. But I had become an Indian, and until I heard that I was to undertake this journey, I had recollected the former scenes of my youth only to despise them. That this feeling had been much fostered by the idea that I should never again rejoin them, is more than probable; for from the moment that I heard that I was to proceed to Monterey, my heart beat tumultuously and my pulse was doubled in its circulation. I hardly know what it was that I anticipated, but certainly I had formed the idea of a terrestrial paradise. If not exactly a paradise, Monterey is certainly a sweet place; 'tis even now a fairy spot in my recollection, although sobered down, and, I trust, a little wiser than I was at that time. There certainly is an air of happiness spread over this small town. Every one is at their ease, every body sings and smiles, and every hour is dedicated to amusement or repose. None of your dirty streets and sharp pavements; no manufactories with their eternal smoke; no policemen looking like so many knaves of clubs; no cabs or omnibuses splashing the mud to the right and to the left; and, above all, none of your punctual men of business hurrying to their appointments, blowing like steam-engines, elbowing every body, and capsizing the apple-stalls. No; there is none of these at Monterey. There is a bay, blue and bottomless, with shores studded with tall beautiful timber. There is a prairie lawn, spread like a carpet in patterns composed of pretty wild flowers. Upon it stand hundreds of cottage-built tenements, covered with the creeping vine. In the centre, the presidio, or government-house; on one side the graceful spire of a church, on the other the massive walls of a convent. Above, all is a sky of the deepest cobalt blue, richly contrasting with the dark green of the tall pines, and the uncertain and indescribable tints on the horizon of these western prairies. Even the dogs are polite at Monterey, and the horses, which are always grazing about, run up to you, and appear as if they would welcome you on your arrival; but the fact is, that every traveller carries a bag of salt at his saddle-bow, and by their rubbing their noses against it, it is clear that they come to beg a little salt, of which they are very fond. Every body and every animal is familiar with you, and, strange to say, the English who reside there are contented, and still more strange, the Americans are almost honest. What a beautiful climate it must be at Monterey! Their hospitality is unbounded. "The holy Virgin bless thee," said an old man, who watched our coming; "tarry here and honour my roof." Another came up, shook us by the hand, his eye sparkling with kind feelings. A third took our mules by the bridles and led us to his own door, when half-a-dozen pretty girls, with flashing dark eyes and long taper fingers, insisted on undoing our leggings and taking off our spurs. Queen city of California! to me there is poetry in thy very name, and so would it be to all who delight in honesty, bonhommie, simplicity, and the dolce far niente. Notwithstanding the many solicitations we received; Padre Marini went to the convent, and I took up my quarters with the old governor. All was new to me, and pleasant too, for I was not eighteen; and at such a time one has strange dreams and fancies of small waists, and pretty faces, smiling cunningly. My mind had sometimes reverted to former scenes, when I had a mother and a sister. I had sighed for a partner to dance or waltz with on the green, while our old servant was playing on his violin some antiquated en avant deux. Now I had found all that, and a merry time I had of it. True, the sack of doubloons helped me wonderfully. Within a week after my arrival, I had a magnificent saddle embossed with silver, velvet breeches instead of cloth leggings, a hat and feathers, glossy pumps, red sash, velvet round-about, and the large cape or cloak, the eternal, and sometimes the only, garment of a western Mexican grandee, in winter or in summer, by night or by day. I say it was a merry time, and it agreed well with me. Dance I did! and sing and court too. My old travelling companion, the missionary, remonstrated a little, but the girls laughed at him, and I clearly pointed out to him that he was wrong. If my English readers only knew what a sweet, pretty little thing is a Monterey girl, they would all pack up their wardrobes to go there and get married. It would be a great pity, for with your mistaken ideas of comforts, with your love of coal-fire and raw beef-steak, together with your severe notions of what is proper or improper, you would soon spoil the place, and render it as stiff and gloomy as any sectarian village of the United States, with its nine banks, eighteen chapels, its one "a-b-c" school, and its immense stone jail, very considerately made large enough to contain its whole population. The governor was General Morreno, an old soldier, of the genuine Castilian stock; proud of his blood, proud of his daughters, of himself, of his dignities, proud of every thing--but, withal, he was benevolence and hospitality personified. His house was open to all (that is to say, all who could boast of having white blood), and the time passed there in continual fiestas, in which pleasure succeeded to pleasure, music to dancing; courting with the eyes to courting with the lips, just as lemonade succeeded to wine, and creams to grapes and peaches. But unhappily, nature made a mistake in our conformation, and, alas! man must repose from pleasure as he does from labour. It is a great pity, for life is short, and repose is so much time lost; at so thought I at eighteen. Monterey is a very ancient city; it was founded in the seventeenth century by some Portuguese Jesuits, who established a mission there. To the Jesuits succeeded the Franciscans, who were a good, lenient, lazy, and kind-hearted set of fellows, funny yet moral, thundering against vice and love, and yet giving light penalties and entire absolution. These Franciscans were shown out of doors by the government of Mexico, who wished to possess their wealth. It was unfortunate, as for the kind, hospitable, and generous monks, the government substituted agents and officers from the interior, who, not possessing any ties at Monterey, cared little for the happiness of the inhabitants. The consequence is, that the Californians are heartily tired of these agents of extortion; they have a natural antipathy against custom-house officers; and, above all, they do not like the idea of giving their dollars to carry on the expense of the Mexican wars, in which they feel no interest. Some morning (and they have already very nearly succeeded in so doing) they will haul down the Mexican flag from the presidio, drive away the commissarios and custom-house receivers, declare their independence of Mexico, and open their ports to all nations. Monterey contains about three thousand souls, including the half-breeds and Indians acting as servants in the different dwellings. The population is wealthy, and not having any opportunity to throw away their money, as in the eastern cities (for all their pleasures and enjoyments are at no expense), they are fond of ornamenting their persons, and their horses and saddles, with as much wealth as they can afford. A saddle of 100 pounds in value is a common thing among the richer young men, who put all their pride in their steeds and accoutrements. The women dress richly and with an admirable taste; the unmarried girls in white satin, with their long black hair falling upon their shoulders; their brow ornamented with rich jewels when at home, and when out, their faces covered with a long white veil, through which their dark eyes will shine like diamonds. The married women prefer gaudy colours, and keep their hair confined close to their head by a large comb. They have also another delightful characteristic, which indeed the men share with them; I mean a beautiful voice, soft and tremulous among the women, rich, sonorous, and majestic among their lords. An American traveller has said, "A common bullock-driver on horseback, delivering a message, seemed to speak like an ambassador to an audience. In fact, the Californians appear to be a people on whom a curse had fallen, and stripped them of every thing but their pride, their manners, and their voices." There is always much amusement in Monterey; and, what betwixt cock-fighting, racing, fandangoing, hunting, fishing, sailing, and so forth, time passes quickly away. Its salubrity is remarkable; there has never been any disease--indeed sickness of any kind is unknown. No toothache nor other malady, and no spleen; people die by accident or from old age; indeed, the Montereyans have an odd proverb, "El que quiere morir que se vaya del pueblo"--that is to say, "He who wishes to die must leave the city." While remaining there I had rather a perilous adventure. I had gone with some of my friends to great fishing party at the entrance of the bay, which, by the bye, is one of the finest in the world, being twenty-four miles in length and eighteen in breadth. The missionary, Padre Marini, not being very well, had an idea that the sea-air would do him good, and joined our company. We had many boats; the one in which the Padre and I embarked was a well-shaped little thing, which had belonged to some American vessel. It was pulled with two oars, and had a small mast and sail. Our fishing being successful, we were all in high glee, and we went on shore to fry some of our victims for our afternoon's meal. During the conversation, somebody spoke of some ancient ruins, fifteen miles north, at the entrance of a small creek. The missionary was anxious to see them, and we agreed that our companions should return to Monterey while he and I would pass the night where we were, and proceed the next morning on an exploring expedition to the ruins. We obtained from another boat a large stone jug of water, two blankets, and a double-barrelled gun. As soon as our companions quitted us, we pulled the boat round to the northern point of the bay, and having selected proper quarters for the night, we made a kind of shelter on the beach with the oars, mast, and sail, and lighted a fire to make ourselves more comfortable. It was one of those beautiful mild evenings which can be found only in the Bay of Monterey; the gentle and perfumed breeze softly agitated the foliage around and above us, and as night came on, with its myriads of stars and its silvery moon, the missionary having, for some time, raised his eyes above in silent contemplation, reverted to scenes of the past, and of other climes. He spoke of Hurdwar, a far distant mission in the north of India, close to the Himalayas. The Hindoos call it the "City of a Thousand Palaces;" they say it was built by the genii on the very spot where Vishnu had reposed himself for a few weeks, after one of his mystic transmutations, in which he had conquered Siva, or Sahavedra, the spirit of evil. Though not so well known, Hurdwar is a place still more sacred than Benares; people assemble there once a year from all parts, and consecrate several days to their ablutions in the purifying waters of the Ganges. In this noble city is also held one of the greatest fairs of India, indeed of all the world; and as its time is fixed upon the same month as that in which the Hindoo devotees arrive at the city, numerous caravans from Persia, Arabia, Cashmere, and Lahore repair to the spot, and erect their bazaars along the banks of the river, forming a street of many miles. The concourse collected at these times has been ascertained to number more than one million of souls. There the Padre Marini had remained as a missionary for some years, all alone. His flock of converts was but a small one; he had little to do, and yet his mind could not be arrested by the study of all the wonders around him; his heart was sad; for years he had had a sorrow which weighed heavily upon him, and he was wretched. Before he had embraced the solitude of a monastic life, he had with him a younger brother, of whom he was very fond. The young man was a student in medicine, with fair capacity and an energy which promised to advance him in his profession. When Marini entered the convent, his brother went to Turkey, where men of his profession were always certain of a good reception, and for a long time was never heard of. At last, when the missionary was ready to start for a distant mission, he learned that which proved so destructive to his peace of mind. From Constantinople, his brother had gone to Persia, where he was residing in easy circumstances; but, ambitious of advancement, he had abjured the faith of his fathers and become a follower of Mahommed. It was a melancholy intelligence, and many were the tears of the good monk. The first year of his arrival at Hurdwar, he met with a Jewish merchant who had accompanied a Persian caravan. That man knew his brother, the renegade, and informed the Padre that his brother had fallen into disgrace, and as a punishment of his apostacy, was now leading a life of privation and misery. Deep and fervent were now the monk's prayers to heaven; he implored forgiveness for his brother, and offered penance for him. Poor man! he thought if he could but see him and talk to him, he would redeem him from his apostacy; but, alas! his duty was in Hurdwar, he was bound there and could not move. One day (it was during the fair) he had wandered at a distance from the river, that he might not witness the delusions of Paganism, and his mind was intensely absorbed in prayer. Anon, unusual sounds broke on his ears; sounds well known, sounds reminding him of his country, of his beautiful Italy. They came from a little bower ten steps before him; and as past scenes rushed to his memory, his heart beat tremulously in his bosom; the monk recognised a barcarole which he had often sung in his younger days; but although the air was lively, the voice which sung it was mournful and sad. Stepping noiselessly, he stood at the entrance of the bower. The stranger started and arose! Their separation had been a long one, but neither the furrowed cheeks and sallow complexion of the one, nor the turbaned head of the other, could deceive them; and the two brothers fell in each other's arms. On its return, the Persian caravan had one driver the less, for the apostate was on his death-bed in the humble dwelling of his brother. Once more a Christian, again reconciled to his God, he calmly awaited his summons to a better world. For two weeks he lingered on, repenting his error and praying for mercy. He died, and in the little jessamine bower where he had met with the Mussulman, the monk buried the Christian; he placed a cross upon his grave and mourned him long; but a heavy load had been removed from his breast, and since that time he had felt happy, having no weight on his mind to disturb him in the execution of his sacred ministry. Having narrated this passage in his history, the Padre Marini bid me good night, and we prepared to sleep. I went to the boat, where, stretching myself at the bottom, with my face turned towards the glittering canopy above, I remained pensive and reflecting upon the narrative of the monk, until at last I slept. CHAPTER SIX. I felt chilly, and I awoke. It was daylight. I stood on my feet and looked around me. I found myself floating on the deep sea, far from the shore, the outline of which was tinged with the golden hues of morn. The rope and stick to which the boat had been made fast towed through the water, as the land-breeze, driving me gently, increased my distance from the land. For some moments I was rather scared; the oars were left on shore, and I had no means of propelling my little skiff. In vain did I paddle with my hands and the stick which I had taken on board. I turned and turned again round to all the points of the compass, but to no purpose. At last I began to reflect. The sea was smooth and quiet; so I was in no immediate danger. The Padre, when he awoke in the morning, would discover my accident, and perhaps see the boat; he would hasten to town, but he would not arrive till the evening; for he was an old man, and had to walk twenty-five miles. Boats would be dispatched after me; even the Mexican schooner which lay in the bay. The next morning I was certainly to be rescued, and the utmost of my misfortune would amount to a day of fast and solitude. It was no great matter; so I submitted to my fate, and made a virtue of necessity. Happily for me, the boat belonged to an American exceedingly fond of fishing; and consequently it contained many necessaries which I had before overlooked. Between the foremost thwart and the bow there was half a barrel filled with fishes, some pieces of charcoal, and some dried wood; under the stern-sheets was a small locker, in which I discovered a frying-pan, a box with salt in it, a tin cup, some herbs used instead of tea by the Californians, a pot of honey, and another full of bear's grease. Fortunately, the jar of water was also on board as well as my lines, with baits of red flannel and white cotton. I threw them into the water, and prepared to smoke my cigarito. In these countries no one is without his flint, steel, tinder, and tobacco. Hours passed so. My fishing being successful, I lighted a fire, and soon fried a few fine mackerel; but by-and-bye the sun reached its highest position, and the scorching became so intolerable that I was obliged to strip and spread my clothes, and even my shirt, upon the benches, to obtain a shelter. By that time, I had lost sight of land, and could only perceive now and then some small black points, which were the summits of fine tall pines. As soon as my meal was finished, I don't know why, but instead of sleeping a decent siesta of two hours, the Spanish tonic to digest a dinner, I never awoke before sunset; and only then, because I began to feel a motion that was far from being pleasant. In fact, the waves were beginning to rise in sharp ridges, covered with foam; the mild land-breeze had changed into a cool sharp westerly wind. A fair wind, however, was a comfort, and as I put on my clothes, I began to think that by making a proper use of the helm and standing upright in the boat, my body would serve as a small sail, when "He, he, hoe!" shouted twenty voices, on the larboard side of me. I started with astonishment, as may be imagined, and turning round, perceived, fifty yards from me, a large boat driving before the waves, impelled on by ten oars. It was filled with men, casks, and kegs, and one at the helm was making signals, apparently inviting me to stop. A few minutes after, we were close to each other; and I dare say our astonishment was mutual,-- theirs to see me alone and without oars; mine, to behold such a wretched spectacle. They were evidently the crew of a wrecked vessel, and must have undergone frightful privations and fatigues, so emaciated was their appearance. No time, however, was to be lost. All of them asked for water, and pointed to the horizon, to know in which direction they should go. My stone jug was full; I handed it to the man at the helm, who seemed to be the captain; but the honest and kind-hearted fellow, pouring out a small quantity in the cup, gave some to all his companions before he would taste any himself. The jug was a large one, containing two gallons or more, but of course was soon emptied. I gave them a fried mackerel, which I had kept for my supper; they passed it to the captain, and, in spite of his generous denial, they insisted upon his eating it immediately. Seeing which, I shewed them nine or ten other raw fishes, two or three of which were heavy, and proposed to cook them. They sang and laughed: cook the fish! No; little cooking is wanted when men are starving. They divided them brotherly; and this supply, added to the honey for the captain and the bear's grease for the sailors, seemed to have endowed them with new life. The captain and four of the men, with oars, stepped into my skiff. At that moment the stars were beginning to appear; and pointing out to him one in the east as a guide, we ploughed our way towards the shore, greatly favoured both by the wind and the waves. In a singular mixture of English, French, Italian, and Latin, the captain made me comprehend that his vessel had been a Russian brig, bound from Asitka, in Russian America, to Acapulco, in Mexico, for a supply of grain, tallow, and spirits; that it had been destroyed by fire during the night, scarcely allowing time for the men to launch the long-boat. No provisions could be procured; the boxes and kegs that had been taken in the hurry were of no use; that they had been rowing forty-eight hours without food or water, and were ignorant of their distance from the shore; and, finally, that they had perceived my skiff a good half-hour before I awoke; thought it at first empty, but saw me rising, and called to me, in the hope that I would guide them to a landing-place. In return I explained to him my adventure as well, as I could, and made him promises of plenty for the next day; but I might have talked for ever to no purpose; the poor fellow, overpowered with fatigue, and now feeling secure, had sunk into a deep sleep. At the break of day we made the land, at the entrance of a small river and close to some fine old ruins. It was the very spot where I had intended to go with the Padre. There were a few wild horses rambling in the neighbourhood; I cleaned my gun, loaded it again, and killed one; but not before the tired and hungry crew, stretched on the strand, proved by their nasal concerts that for the present their greatest necessity was repose after their fatigues. There were twenty of them including the captain. I had led too much of an Indian life, not to know bow to bear fatigue, and to be rapid in execution. The sun was not more than three hours high, when I had already cooked the best part of the horse. All the unfortunates were still asleep, and I found it was no easy matter to awake them. At last, I hit upon an expedient which did not fail; I stuck the ramrod of my gun into a smoking piece of meat, and held it so that the fumes should rise under their very noses. No fairy wand was ever more effective; in less than two minutes they were all chewing and swallowing their breakfast, with an energy that had anything but sleep in it. It is no easy matter to satisfy twenty hungry Russians; but still there is an end to every thing. One of them knelt before me, and kissed my feet. Poor fellow! he thought that I had done a great deal for him and his companions, forgetting that perhaps I owed my own life to them. The men were tired: but when they heard that they could reach a city in the afternoon, they made preparation for departure with great alacrity. We pulled slowly along the coast, for the heat was intense, and the rowers fast losing their strength. At one o'clock I landed at my former encampment. The Padre had, of course, left the oars, sail, and blankets. My skiff was rigged in a moment; and out of the blankets, those in the long-boat managed to make a sail, an oar and a long pole tied together answering for a mast. In doubling the northern point of the bay, I perceived the Mexican schooner and many boats, pretty far at sea. No doubt they were searching for me. At six o'clock in the evening we landed at Monterey, amidst the acclamations of a wondering crowd. I was a general favourite, and my loss had occasioned much alarm; so that when I landed, I was assailed with questions from every quarter. The women petted me, some kissed me (by the bye, those were d'un certain age), and all agreed that I should burn half a dozen of candles on the altar of the Virgin Mary. There was one, however, who had wept for me; it was Isabella, a lovely girl of fifteen, and daughter to the old Governor. The General, too, was glad to see me; he liked me very much, because we played chess while smoking our cigars, and because I allowed him to beat me, though I could have given him the queen and the move. I will confess, sotto voce, that this piece of policy had been hinted to me by his daughters, who wished me to find favour in his sight. "Dios te ayuda nino," said the Governor to me; I feared we should never play chess any more. "Que tonteria, andar a dormir in una barca, quando se lo podia sobre tierra firma!" (What folly to go sleep in a boat, when it can be done upon solid ground!) I told him the story of the poor Russians, and in spite of his pride, the tears started in his eye, for he was kind-hearted. He took the captain into his own house, and gave orders concerning the accommodation of the crew; but the universal hospitality had not waited for commands to show itself, and the poor fellows, loaded with attention and comforts, soon forgot the dangers which they had escaped. Fifteen days after they were sent on board the Mexican schooner, to the bay of St. Francisco, where a Russian brig of war, bound to Asitka, had just arrived. However, they did not part from us with empty hands. The Montereyans having discovered their passionate love for tallow and whiskey, had given them enough of these genteel rafraichissements, to drown care and sorrow for a long while. As to the captain he received the attention which his gallant conduct entitled him to, and on the eve of his departure he was presented with a trunk, of tolerable dimensions, well filled with linen and clothes. A merry night was passed to celebrate my escape. Guns had been fired, flags hoisted to recall the boats, and at ten o'clock in the night, the whole population was gambolling on the lawn, singing, dancing, and feasting, as if it was to have been our last day of pleasure during life. Thus passed away four weeks, and I must admit to my shame, I had willingly missed two chances of going to Santa Fe. One morning, however, all my dreams of further pleasure were dispelled. I was just meditating upon my first declaration of love, when our old servant arrived with four Indian guides. He had left the settlement seven days, and had come almost all the way by water. He had been despatched by my father to bring me home if I had not yet left Monterey. His intelligence was disastrous; the Prince had been murdered by the Crows; the Shoshones had gone on a war expedition to revenge the death of the Prince; and my father himself who had been daily declining, expected in a short time to rejoin his friend in a better world. Poor Isabella! I would have added, poor me! but the fatal news brought had so excited me, that I had but few thoughts to give to pleasure and to love. My immediate return was a sacred duty, and, besides, the Shoshones expected me to join with them on my first war-path. The old Governor judged it advisable that I should return home by sea, as the Arrapahoes Indians were at that moment enemies of the Shoshones, and would endeavour to cut me off if I were to ascend the Buona Ventura. Before my departure, I received a visit from an Irishman, a wild young fellow of the name of Roche, a native of Cork, and full of fun and activity. He had deserted on the coast from one of the American vessels, and in spite of the promised reward of forty dollars, he was never discovered, and his vessel sailed without him. General Morreno was at first angry, and would have sent the poor devil to jail, but Roche was so odd, and made so many artful representations of the evils he had suffered on board on account of his being a Catholic, that the clergy, and, in fact, all Monterey, interfered. Roche soon became a valuable acquisition to the community; he was an indefatigable dancer, and a good fiddler. Besides, he had already accustomed himself to the Mexican manners and language, and in a horse or buffalo hunt none were more successful. He would tell long stories to the old women about the wonders of Erin, the miracles of St. Patrick, and about the stone at Blarney. In fact, he was a favourite with every one, and would have become rich and happy could he have settled. Unfortunately for him, his wild spirit of adventure did not allow him to enjoy the quiet of a Montereyan life, and hearing that there was a perspective of getting his head broken in the "Settlement of the Grandees," he asked permission to join my party. I consented that Roche should accompany me: with my servant and the Indians, we embarked on board of the schooner. Many were the presents I received from the good people; what with pistols, powder, horses, fusils, knives, and swords, I could have armed a whole legion. The Governor, his daughters, and all those that could get room in the boats, accompanied me as far as the northern part of the bay, and it was with a swelling heart that I bade my farewell to them all. CHAPTER SEVEN. Nothing could have been more fortunate than our proceeding by sea. On the fourth day we were lying to, at a quarter of a mile from the shore, exactly under the parallel of 39 degrees north latitude, and at the southern point of a mountain called the Crooked Back-bone. The Indians first landed in a small canoe we had provided ourselves with, to see if the coast was clear; and in the evening the schooner was far on her way back, while we were digging a cachette to conceal the baggage which we could not carry. Even my saddle was wrapped up in a piece of canvas, and deposited in a deep bed of shale. Among other things presented to me in Monterey, were two large boxes covered with tin, and containing English fire-works, which, in the course of events, performed prodigies, and saved many scalps when all hope of succour had been entirely given up. The Montereyans are amazingly fond of these fire-works, and every vessel employed in the California trade for hides has always a large supply of them. When all our effects were concealed, we proceeded, first in an easterly, and next in a north-westerly direction, in the hope of coming across some of the horses belonging to the tribe. We had reckoned right. At the break of day we entered a natural pasture of clover, in which hundreds of them were sleeping and grazing; but as we had walked more than thirty miles, we determined to take repose before we should renew our journey. I had scarcely slept an hour when I was roused by a touch on my shoulder. At first, I fancied it was a dream, but as I opened my eyes, I saw one of my Indians with his fingers upon his lips to enjoin me to silence, while his eyes were turned towards the open prairie. I immediately looked in that direction, and there was a sight that acted as a prompt anti-soporific. About half a mile from us stood a band of twenty Indians, with their war-paint and accoutrements, silently and quietly occupied in tying the horses. Of course they were not of our tribe, but belonged to the Umbiquas, a nation of thieves on our northern boundary, much given to horse-stealing, especially when it was not accompanied by any danger. In the present instance they thought themselves safe, as the Shoshones had gone out against the Crows, and they were selecting at their leisure our best animals. Happily for us, we had encamped amidst thick bushes upon a spot broken and difficult of access to quadrupeds, otherwise we should have been discovered, and there would have been an end to my adventures. We awoke our companions, losing no time in forming a council of war. Fight them we could not; let them depart with the horses was out of the question. The only thing to be done was to follow them, and wait an opportunity to strike a decisive blow. At mid-day, the thieves having secured as many of the animals as they could well manage, turned their backs to us, and went on westward, in the direction of the fishing station where we had erected our boat-house; the place where we had first landed on coming from Europe. We followed them the whole day, eating nothing but the wild plums of the prairies. At evening one of my Indians, an experienced warrior, started alone to spy into their camp, which he was successful enough to penetrate, and learn the plan of their expedition, by certain tokens which could not deceive his cunning and penetration. The boat-house contained a large sailing boat, besides seven or eight skiffs. There also we had in store our stock of dried fish and fishing apparatus, such as nets, etcetera. As we had been at peace for several years, the house, or post, had no garrison, except that ten or twelve families of Indians were settled around it. Now, the original intention of the Umbiquas had been only to steal horses; but having discovered that the half a dozen warriors, belonging to these families, had gone to the settlement for fire-arms and ammunition, they had arranged to make an attack upon the post, and take a few scalps before returning home by sea and by land, with our nets, boats, fish, etcetera. This was a serious affair. Our carpenter and smith had disappeared, as I have said before; and as our little fleet had in consequence become more precious, we determined to preserve it at any sacrifice. To send an Indian to the settlement would have been useless, inasmuch as it would have materially weakened our little force, and, besides, help could not arrive in time. It was better to try and reach the post before the Umbiquas; where under the shelter of thick logs, and with the advantage of our rifles. We should be an equal match for our enemies, who had but two fusils among their party, the remainder being armed with lances, and bows and arrows. Our scout had also gathered, by overhearing their conversation, that they had come by sea, and that their canoes were hid somewhere on the coast, in the neighbourhood of the post. By looking over the map, the reader will perceive the topography of the country. Fifty miles north from us were the forks of the Nu-eleje-sha-wako river, towards which the Umbiquas were going, to be near to water, and also to fall upon the path from the settlement to the post. Thus they would intercept any messenger, in case their expedition should have been already discovered. Their direct road to the post was considerably shorter, but after the first day's journey, no sweet grass nor water was to be found. The ground was broken, and covered with thick bushes, which would not allow them to pass with the horses. Besides this reason, an Indian always selects his road where he thinks he has nothing to fear. We determined to take the direct road to the post, and chance assisted us in a singular manner. The Indians and my old servant were asleep, while I was watching with the Irishman Roche. I soon became aware that something was moving in the prairie behind us, but what, I could not make out. The buffaloes never came so far west, and it was not the season for the wolves. I crawled out of our bush, and after a few minutes found myself in the middle of a band of horses who had not allowed themselves to be taken, but had followed the tracks of their companions, to know what had become of them. I returned, awoke the Indians, and told them; they started with their lassoes, while I and Roche remained to sleep. Long before morn the Indian scout guided us to three miles westward, behind a swell of the prairie. It was an excellent precaution, which prevented any Umbiqua straggler from perceiving us, a rather disagreeable event, which would have undoubtedly happened, as we were camped only two miles from them, and the prairie was flat until you came to the swell just mentioned. There we beheld seven strong horses, bridled with our lassoes. We had no saddles; but necessity rides without one. The Indians had also killed a one-year-old colt, and taken enough of the meat to last us two days; so that when we started (and we did so long before the Umbiquas began to stir) we had the prospect of reaching the fishing-post thirty hours before them. We knew that they would rest two hours in the day, as they were naturally anxious to keep their stolen horses in good condition, having a long journey before them ere they would enter into their own territory. With us, the case was different; there were but forty miles, which we could travel on horseback, and we did not care what became of the animals afterwards. Consequently, we did not spare their legs; the spirited things, plump as they were, having grazed two months without any labour, carried us fast enough. When we halted, on the bank of a small river, to water them and let them breathe, they did not appear much tired, although we had had a run of twenty-eight miles. At about eleven o'clock we reached the confines of the rocky ground; here we rested for three hours, and took a meal, of which we were very much in want, having tasted nothing but berries and plums since our departure from the schooner, for we had been so much engrossed by the digging of the cachette that we had forgotten to take with us any kind of provision. Our flight, or, to say better, our journey, passed without anything remarkable. We arrived, as we had expected, a day and a half before the Umbiquas: and, of course, were prepared for them. The squaws, children, and valuables were already in the boat-house with plenty of water, in case the enemy should attempt to fire it. The presence of a hostile war-party had been singularly discovered two days before; three children having gone to a little bay at a short distance from the post, to catch some young seals, discovered four canoes secured at the foot of a rock, while, a little farther, two young men were seated near a fire, cooking comfortably one of the seals they had taken. Of course the children returned borne, and the only three men who had been left at the post (three old men) went after their scalps. They had not returned when we arrived; but in the evening they entered the river with the scalps of the two Umbiquas, whom they had surprised, and the canoes, which were safely deposited in the store. Our position was indeed a strong one. Fronting us to the north, we had a large and rapid river; on the south we were flanked by a ditch forty feet broad and ten feet deep, which isolated the building from a fine open ground, without any bush, tree, or cover; the two wings were formed by small brick towers twenty feet high, with loop-holes, and a door ten feet from the ground; the ladder to which, of course, we took inside. The only other entrance, the main one in fact, was by water; but it could be approached only by swimming. The fort was built of stone and brick, while the door, made of thick posts, and lined with sheets of copper, would have defied for a long time, the power of their axes or fire. Our only anxiety was about the inflammable quality of the roof, which was covered with pine shingles. Against such an accident, however, we prepared ourselves by carrying water to the upper rooms, and we could at any time, if it became necessary, open holes in the roof, for the greater facility of extinguishing the fire. In the meantime we covered it with a coat of clay in the parts which were most exposed. We were now ten men, seven of us armed with fire-arms and pretty certain of our aim: we had also sixteen women and nine children, boys and girls, to whom various posts were assigned; in case of a night attack. The six warriors who had gone to the settlement for fire-arms would return in a short time, and till then we had nothing to do but to be cautious, to wait for the enemy, and even beat their first attack without using our firearms, that they might not suspect our strength inside. One of the old men, a cunning fellow, who had served his time as a brave warrior, hit upon a plan which we followed. He proposed that another man should accompany him to the neighbourhood of the place where the canoes had been concealed, and keep up the fires, so that the smoke should lull all suspicion. The Umbiquas, on their arrival before the post would indubitably send one of their men to call the canoe-keepers; this one they would endeavour to take alive, and bring him to the post. One of the canoes was consequently launched in the river, and late in the evening the two Indians well armed with fusils started on this expedition. CHAPTER EIGHT. The Umbiquas came at last; their want of precaution shewed their certainty of success. At all events, they did not suspect there were any fire-arms in the block-house, for they halted within fifty yards from the eastern tower, and it required more than persuasion to prevent Roche from firing. The horses were not with them, but before long we saw the animals on the other side of the river, in a little open prairie, under the care of two of their party, who had swum them over, two or three miles above, for the double purpose of having them at hand in case of emergency and of giving them the advantage of better grazing than they could possibly find on our side. This was an event which we had not reckoned upon, yet, after all, it proved to be a great advantage to us. The savages making a very close inspection of the outer buildings, soon became convinced of the utter impossibility of attacking the place by any ordinary means. They shot some arrows and once fired with a fusil at the loop-holes, to ascertain if there were any men within capable of fighting; but as we kept perfectly quiet, their confidence augmented; and some followed the banks of the river, to see what could be effected at the principal entrance. Having ascertained the nature of its material, they seemed rather disappointed, and retired to about one hundred yards, to concert their plans. It was clear that some of them were for firing the building; but, as we could distinguish by their gestures, these were comparatively few. Others seemed to represent that, by doing so they would indubitably consume the property inside, which they were not willing to destroy, especially as there was so little danger to be feared from within. At last one who seemed to be a chief, pointed first with his fingers in the direction where the canoes had been left; he pointed also to the river, and then behind him to the point of the horizon where the sun rises. After he had ceased talking, two of his men rose, and went away to the south-west. Their plan was very evident. These two men, joined with the two others that had been left in charge were to bring the canoes round the point and enter the river. It would take them the whole night to effect this, and at sunrise they would attack and destroy the front door with their tomahawks. With the darkness of night, a certain degree of anxiety came over us, for we knew not what devilish plan the Indians might hit upon; I placed sentries in every corner of the block-house, and we waited in silence; while our enemies, having lighted a large fire, cooked their victuals, and though we could not hear the import of their words, it was evident that they considered the post as in their power. Half of them, however, laid down to sleep, and towards midnight the stillness was uninterrupted by any sound, whilst their half-burnt logs ceased to throw up their bright flames. Knowing how busy we should be in the morning, I thought that till then I could not do better than refresh myself by a few hours' repose; I was mistaken. I had scarcely closed my eyes, when I heard the dull regular noise of the axe upon trees. I looked cautiously; the sounds proceeded from the distance, and upon the shores of the river, and behind the camp of the savages, dark forms were moving in every direction, and we at last discovered that the Umbiquas were making ladders to scale the upper doors of our little towers. This, of course, was to us a matter of little or no consideration, as we were well prepared to receive them; yet we determined not to let them know our strength within, until the last moment, when we should be certain, with our fire-arms, to bring down five of them at the first discharge. Our Indians took their bows and selected only such arrows as were used by their children when fishing, so that the hostile party might attribute their wounds and the defence of their buildings to a few bold and resolute boys. At morn, the Umbiquas made their appearance with two ladders, each carried by three men, while others were lingering about and giving directions more by sign than word. They often looked toward the loop-holes, but the light of day was yet too faint for their glances to detect us; and besides they were lulled into perfect security by the dead silence we had kept during the whole night. Indeed they thought the boat-house had been deserted, and the certain degree of caution with which they proceeded was more the effect of savage cunning and nature than the fear of being seen or of meeting with any kind of resistance. The two ladders were fixed against one of the towers, and an Indian ascended upon each; at first they cast an inquisitive glance through the holes upon both sides of the door, but we concealed ourselves. Then all the Umbiquas formed in a circle round the ladders, with their bows and spears, watching the loop-holes. At the chief's command, the first blows were struck, and the Indians on the ladders began to batter both doors with their tomahawks. While in the act of striking for the third time, the Umbiqua on the eastern door staggered and fell down the ladder; his breast had been pierced by an arrow. At the same moment a loud scream from the other tower showed that here also we had had the same success. The Umbiquas retired precipitately with their dead, uttering a yell of disappointment and rage, to which three of our boys, being ordered so to do, responded with a shrill war-whoop of defiance. This made the Umbiquas quite frantic, but they were now more prudent. The arrows that had killed their comrades were children-arrows; still there could be no doubt but that they had been shot by warriors. They retired behind a projecting rock on the bank of the river, only thirty yards in our front, but quite protected from our missiles. There they formed a council of war, and waited for their men and canoes, which they expected to have arrived long before. At that moment, the light fog which had been hovering over the river was dispersed, and the other shore became visible, and showed us a sight which arrested our attention. There, too, the drama of destruction was acting, though on a smaller scale. Just opposite to us was a canoe; the same in which our two Indians had gone upon their expedition the day before. The two Umbiquas keeping the stolen horses were a few yards from they had apparently discovered it a few minutes before, and were uncertain what course to pursue; they heard both the war-whoop and the yell of their own people, and were not a little puzzled; but as soon as the fog was entirely gone, they perceived their party, where they had sheltered themselves, and, probably in obedience to some signals from it, they prepared to cross the river. At the very moment they were untying the canoe, there was a flash and two sharp reports; the Indians fell down--they were dead. Our two scouts, who were concealed behind some bushes, then appeared, and began coolly to take the scalps, regardless of a shower of arrows from the yelling and disappointed Umbiquas. Nor was this all: in their rage and anxiety, our enemies had exposed themselves beyond the protection of the rock; they presented a fair mark, and just as the chief was looking behind him to see if there was any movement to fear from the boat-house, four more of his men fell under our fire. The horrible yells which followed, I can never describe, although the events of this, my first fight, are yet fresh in my mind. The Umbiquas took their dead, and turned to the east, in the direction of the mountains, which they believed would be their only means of escaping destruction. They were now reduced to only ten men, and their appearance was melancholy and dejected. They felt that they were doomed never more to return to their own home. We gathered from our scouts opposite, that the six warriors of the post had returned from the settlement, and lay somewhere in ambush; this decided us. Descending by the ladders which the Indians had left behind them, we entered the prairie path, so as to bar their retreat in every direction. Let me wind up this tale of slaughter. The Umbiquas fell headlong on the ambush, by which four more of them were killed; the remainder dispersed in the prairie, where they tried in vain to obtain a momentary refuge in the chasms. Before mid-day they were all destroyed, except one, who escaped by crossing the river. However, he never saw his home again; for, a long time afterwards, the Umbiquas declared that not one ever returned from that fatal horse-stealing expedition. Thus ended my first fight; and yet I had not myself drawn a single trigger. Many a time I took a certain aim; but my heart beat quick, and I felt queer at the idea of taking the life of a man. This did not prevent me from being highly complimented; henceforward Owato Wanisha was a warrior. The next day I left the boat-house with my own party, I mean the seven of us who had come from Monterey. Being all well mounted, we shortly reached the settlement, from which I had been absent more than three months. Events had turned out better than I had anticipated. My father seemed to recover rapidly from the shock he had received. Our tribe, in a fierce inroad upon the southern country of the Crows, had inflicted upon them a severe punishment. Our men returned with a hundred and fifty scalps, four hundred horses, and all the stock of blankets and tobacco which the Crows had a short time before obtained from the Yankees in exchange for their furs. For a long time, the Crows were dispirited and nearly broken down, and this year they scarcely dared to resort to their own hunting-grounds. The following is a narrative of the death of the Prince Seravalle, as I heard it from individuals who were present. The year after we had arrived from Europe, the Prince had an opportunity of sending letters to St. Louis, Missouri, by a company of traders homeward bound. More than three years had elapsed without any answer; but a few days after my departure for Monterey, the Prince having heard from a party of Shoshones, on their return from Fort Hall, that a large caravan was expected there, he resolved to proceed to the fort himself, for the double purpose of purchasing several articles of hardware, which we were in need of, and also of forwarding other instructions to St. Louis. Upon his arrival at the fort, he was agreeably surprised at finding, not only letters for him, together with various bales of goods, but also a French savant, bound to California, whither he had been sent by some scientific society. He was recommended to us by the Bishop, and the President of the college at St. Louis, and had brought with him as guides five French trappers, who had passed many years of their lives rambling from the Rocky Mountains to the southern shores of Lower California. The Prince left his Shoshones at the fort, to bring on the goods at a fitting occasion, and, in company with his new guests retraced his steps towards our settlement. On the second day of their journey they met with a strong war-party of the Crows, but as the Shoshones were then at peace with all their neighbours, no fear had been entertained. The faithless Crows, however, unaware, as well as the Prince, of the close vicinity of a Shoshone hunting-party, resolved not to let escape an opportunity of obtaining a rich booty without much danger. They allowed the white men to pursue their way, but followed them at a distance, and in the evening surprised them in their encampment so suddenly that they had pot even time to seize their arms. The prisoners, with their horses and luggage, were conducted to the spot where their captors had halted, and a council was formed immediately. The Prince, addressing the chief, reproached him bitterly with his treachery; little did he know of the Crows, who are certainly the greatest rascals among the mountains. The traders and all the Indian tribes represent them as "thieves never known to keep a promise or to do a honourable act." None but a stranger will ever trust them. They are as cowardly as cruel. Murder and robbery are the whole occupation of their existence, and woe to the traders or trappers whom they may meet with during their excursions, if they are not at least one-tenth of their own number. A proof of their cowardice is that once Roche, myself, and a young Parisian named Gabriel, having by chance fallen upon a camp of thirteen Crows and three Arrapahoes, they left us their tents, furs, and dried meats; the Arrapahoes alone showing some fight, in which one of them was killed: but to return to our subject. The chief heard the Prince Seravalle with a contemptuous air, clearly showing that he knew who the Prince was, and that he entertained no goodwill towards him. His duplicity, however, and greediness, getting the better of his hatred, he asked the prisoners what they would give to obtain their freedom. Upon their answer that they would give two rifles, two horses, with one hundred dollars, he said that all which the prisoners possessed when taken, being already his own, he expected much more than that. He demanded that one of the Canadians should go to Fort Hall, with five Crows, with an order from the Prince to the amount of sixty blankets, twenty rifles, and ten kegs of powder. In the meantime the prisoners were to be carried into the country of the Crows, where the goods were to follow them as soon as obtained; upon the reception of which, the white men should be set at liberty. Understanding now the intention of their enemies, and being certain that, once in the strong-holds of the Crows, they would never be allowed to return, the Prince rejected the offer; wishing, however, to gain time, he made several others, which, of course, were not agreed upon. When the chief saw that he was not likely to obtain anything more than that which he had already become master of, he threw away his mask of hypocrisy, and, resuming at once his real character, began to abuse his victims. "The Pale-faces," he said, "were base dogs, and too great cowards to fight against the Crows. They were less than women, concealing themselves in the lodges of the Shoshones, and lending them their rifles, so that having now plenty of arms and ammunition, that tribe had become strong, and feared by all. But now they would kill the Pale-faces, and they would see what colour was the blood of cowards. When dead, they could not give any more rifles, or powder, to the Shoshones, who would then bury themselves like prairie-dogs in their burrows, and never again dare to cross the path of a Crow." The Prince replied to the chief with scorn. "The Crows," he said, "ought not to speak so loud, lest they should be heard by the Shoshone braves, and lies should never be uttered in open air. What were the Crows before the coming of the white men, on the shores of the Buona Ventura? They had no country of their own, for one part of it had been taken by the Black-feet, and the other by the Arrapahoes and the Shoshones. Then the Crows were like doves hunted by the hawks of the mountains. They would lie concealed in deep fissures of the earth, and never stir but during night, so afraid were they of encountering a Shoshone. But the white men assembled the Shoshones around their settlements, and taught them to remain at peace with their neighbours. They had been so for four years; the Crows had had time to build other wigwams. Why did they act like wolves, biting their benefactors instead of showing to them their gratitude?" The Prince, though an old man, had much mettle in him, especially when his blood was up. He had become a Shoshone, in all except ferocity; he heartily despised the rascally Crows. As to the chief, he firmly grasped the handle of his tomahawk, so much did he feel the bitter taunts of his captive. Suddenly, a rustling was heard, then the sharp report of a rifle, and one of the Crows, leaping high in the air, fell down a corpse. "The chief hath spoken too loud," said the Prince, "I hear the step of a Shoshone; the Crows had better run away to the mountains, or their flesh will fatten the dogs of our village." An expression of rage and deep hatred shot across the features of the chief, but he stood motionless, as did all his men, trying to catch the sounds, to ascertain in which direction they should fly from the danger. "Fear has turned the Crows into stones," resumed the Prince, "what has become of their light feet? I see the Shoshones." "The dog of a Pale-face will see them no more," replied the savage, as he buried his tomahawk in the skull of the unfortunate nobleman, who was thus doomed to meet with an inglorious death in a distant land. The other prisoners, who were bound, could of course offer no resistance. The French savant and two of his guides were butchered in an instant, but before the remainder of the party could be sacrificed, a well-directed volley was poured upon the compact body of the Crows, who rushed immediately to the woods for cover, leaving behind them twenty dead and wounded, besides their cruel chief. Then from the thickets behind appeared thirty Shoshones, who immediately gave chase, leaving only one of their men to free the three remaining trappers, and watch over the body of their murdered friend and legislator. A sharp tiralleur fire from their respective covers were carried on between the Shoshones and Crows for half an hour, in which the Crows lost ten more scalps, and having at length reached a rugged hill full of briars and bushes, they took fairly to their heels, without even attempting to answer the volleys poured after them. The victims were carried to the settlement, and the very day they were consigned to their grave, the Shoshones started for the land of the Crows. The results of the expedition I have mentioned already. With my father I found the three trappers; two of whom were preparing to start for California, but the third, a young Parisian, who went by the name of Gabriel, preferred remaining with us, and never left me until a long time afterwards, when we parted upon the borders of the Mississippi, when I was forcing my way towards the Atlantic Ocean. He and Roche, when I parted with them, had directed their steps back to the Shoshones; they delighted too much in a life of wild and perilous adventure to leave it so soon, and the Irishman vowed that if he ever returned within the pale of civilisation, it would be to Monterey, the only place where, in his long wanderings, he had found a people congenial to his own ideas. When, in the meeting of a great council, I apprised the tribe of the attack made upon the boat-house by the Umbiquas, and of its results, there was a loud burst of satisfaction. I was made a War-Chief on the spot; and it was determined that a party should immediately proceed to chastise the Umbiquas. My father did not allow me to join it, as there was much to be done in settling the affairs of the Prince, and paying the debts he had contracted at Fort Hall; consequently, I led a clerk's life for two months, writing accounts, etcetera--rather a dull occupation, for which I had not the smallest relish. During this time, the expedition against the Umbiquas had been still more successful than that against the Crows; and, in fact, that year was a glorious one for the Shoshones, who will remember it a long while, as a period in which leggings and mocassins were literally sewn with human hair, and in which the blanched and unburied bones of their enemies, scattered on the prairie, scared even the wolves from crossing the Buona Ventura. Indeed, that year was so full of events, that my narration would be too much swelled if I were to enumerate them all. I had not forgotten the cachette at our landing-place. Every thing was transferred to the boat-house, and the hot days of summer having already begun to render the settlement unpleasant, we removed to the sea-shore, while the major part of the tribe went to hunt in the rolling prairies of the south. The presents of the good people of Monterey proved to be a treat acquisition to my father. There were many books, which he appropriated to himself; being now too aged and infirm to bear the fatigues of Indian life, he had become fond of retirement and reading. As to Gabriel and Roche, we became inseparable, and though in some points we were not on an equality, yet the habit of being constantly together and sharing the same tent united us like brothers. As my readers will eventually discover, many daring deeds did we perform together, and many pleasant days did we pass, both in the northern cities of Mexico and western prairies of Texas, hunting with the Comanches, and occasionally unmasking some rascally Texians, who, under the paint of an Indian, would commit their murders and depredations upon the remote settlements of their own countrymen. CHAPTER NINE. In the remarks which I am about to make relative to the Shoshones, I may as well observe that the same observations will equally apply to the Comanches, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, as they are but subdivisions and offsets from the original stock--the Shoshones. The Wakoes, who have not yet been mentioned, or even seen, by any other travellers, I shall hereafter describe. I may as well here observe, that although the Shoshones are always at peace with the Comanches and Apaches, they had for a long while been at war with their descendants, the Arrapahoes, as well as the whole of the Dacotah and Algonquin tribes, as the Crows and Rickarees, Black-feet, Nez-perces, and others. First, as to their religion--a question highly interesting, and perhaps throwing more light upon their origin than can be collected from tradition, manners, and customs. From my knowledge of the Indians, I believe them, if not more religious, most certainly to be more conscientious, than most Christians. They all believe in one God-- Manitou, the author of good, and worship him as such; but believing that human nature is too gross to communicate with the Arbitrator of all things, they pray generally through the intervention of the elements or even of certain animals, in the same manner that the Catholics address themselves to their saints. The great Manitou is universal among this family and indeed among all the savage tribes of North America. The interceding spirit alone varies, not with the tribe and nation, but according to individual selection. Children are taught to know "Kishe Manito" (the Almighty), but no more. When the boy is verging upon manhood, he selects his own personal deity, or household god, which is made known to him in his dreams. When he states his intention of seeking the spirit, the parents of the young man order him to fast for three days; then they take away his bow and arrows, and send him far into the woods, the mountains, or the prairies, to wait for the visitation. An empty stomach and inaction in the lone wilderness are certain to produce reveries and waking dreams. If the young man is thirsty, he thinks of water; of fire or sunshine, if he feels cold; of buffalo or fish, if he is hungry. Sometimes he meets with some reptile, and upon any one of these or other natural causes or productions, his imagination will work, until it becomes wholly engrossed by it. Thus fire and water, the sun or the moon, a star, a buffalo, or a snake--any one of them, will become the subject of his thoughts, and when he sleeps, he naturally dreams of that object which he has been brooding over. He then returns home, engraves upon a stone, a piece of wood, or a skin, the form of this "spirit" which his dream has selected for him, wears it constantly on his person, and addresses it, not as a god, but as an intercessor, through which his vows, must pass before they can reach the fearful Lord of all things. Some men among the Indians acquire, by their virtues and the regularity of their lives, the privilege of addressing the Creator without any intervention, and are admitted into the band, headed by the masters of ceremonies and the presidents of the sacred lodges, who receive neophytes and confer dignities. Their rites are secret; none but a member can be admitted. These divines, as of old the priest of Isis and Osiris, are deeply learned; and truly their knowledge of natural history is astonishing. They are well acquainted with astronomy and botany, and keep the records and great transactions of the tribes, employing certain hieroglyphics, which they paint in the sacred lodges, and which none but their caste or order can decipher. Those few who, in their journey in the wilderness, have "dreamt" of a snake and made it their "spirit," become invariably "Medecines." This reptile, though always harmless in the western countries (except in some parts of the mountains on the Columbia, where the rattle-snake abounds), has ever been looked upon with dread by the Indians, who associate it with the evil spirit. When "Kishe Manito" (the good God) came upon earth, under the form of a buffalo, to alleviate the sufferings of the red man, "kinebec" (the serpent), the spirit of evil, gave him battle. This part of their creed alone would almost establish their Brahminic origin. The "Medecine" inspires the Indian with awe and dread; he is respected, but he has no friends, no squaws, no children. He is the man of dark deeds, he that communes with the spirit of evil: he takes his knowledge from the earth, from the fissures of the rocks, and knows how to combine poisons; he alone fears not "Anim Teki" (thunder). He can cure disease with his spells, and with them he can kill also; his glance is that of the snake, it withers the grass, fascinates birds and beasts, troubles the brain of man, and throws in his heart, fear and darkness. The Shoshone women, as well as the Apache and Arrapahoe, all of whom are of the Shoshone race, are very superior to the squaws of the Eastern Indians. They are more graceful in their forms, and have more personal beauty. I cannot better describe them than by saying that they have more similitude to the Arabian women than any other race. They are very clean in their persons and in their lodges; and all their tribes having both male and female slaves, the Shoshone wife is not broken down by hard labour, as are the squaws of the eastern tribes; to their husbands they are most faithful, and I really believe that any attempt upon their chastity would prove unavailing. They ride as bravely as the men, and are very expert with the bow and arrow. I once saw a very beautiful little Shoshone girl, about ten years old, the daughter of a chief, when her horse was at full speed, kill, with her bow and arrow, in the course of a minute or two, nine out of a flock of wild turkeys which she was in chase of. Their dress is both tasteful and chaste. It is composed of a loose shirt, with tight sleeves, made of soft and well-prepared doe-skin, almost always dyed blue or red; this shirt is covered from the waist by the toga, which falls four or six inches below the knee, and is made either of swan-down, silk, or woollen stuff; they wear leggings of the same material as the shirt, and cover their pretty little feet with beautifully-worked mocassins; they have also a scarf, of a fine rich texture, and allow their soft and long raven hair to fall luxuriantly over their shoulder, usually ornamented with flowers, but sometimes with jewels of great value; their andes and wrists are also encircled by bracelets; and indeed to see one of these young and graceful creatures, with her eyes sparkling and her face animated with the exercise of the chase, often recalled to the mind a nymph of Diana, as described by Ovid. [The Comanches women very much resemble the common squaws, being short and broad in figure. This arises from the Comanches secluding the women, and not permitting them air and exercise.] Though women participate not in the deeper mysteries of religion, some of them are permitted to consecrate themselves to this divinity, and to make vows of chastity, as the vestals of Paganism or the nuns of the Catholic convents. But there is no seclusion. They dress as men, covered with leather from head to foot, a painting of the sun on their breasts. These women are warriors, but never go out with the parties, remaining always behind to protect the villages. They also live alone, are dreaded, but not loved. The Indian hates anything or any body that usurps power, or oversteps those bounds which appear to him as natural and proper, or who does not fulfil what he considers as their intended destiny. The fine evenings of summer are devoted, by the young Indian, to courtship. When he has made his choice, he communicates it to his parents, who take the business into their bands. Presents are carried to the door of the fair one's lodge; if they are not accepted, there is an end to the matter, and the swain must look somewhere else; if they are taken in, other presents are returned, as a token of agreement. These generally consist of objects of women's workmanship, such as garters, belts, mocassins, etcetera; then follows a meeting of the parents, which terminates by a speech from the girl's father, who mentions his daughter as the "dove," or "lily," or "whisper of the breeze," or any other pretty Indian name which may appertain to her. She has been a good daughter, she will be a dutiful wife; her blood is that of a warrior's; she will bear noble children to her husband, and sing to them his great deeds, etcetera, etcetera. The marriage-day arrives at last; a meal of roots and fruits is prepared; all are present except the bridegroom, whose arms, saddles, and property are placed behind the fair one. The door of the lodge is open, its threshold lined with flowers; at sunset the young man presents himself; with great gravity of deportment. As soon as he has taken a seat near the girl, the guests beg in eating but in silence; but soon a signal is given by the mothers, each guest rises, preparatory to retiring. At that moment, the two lovers cross their hands, and the husband speaks for the first time, interrogatively:--"Faithful to the lodge, faithful to the father, faithful to his children?" She answers softly "Faithful, ever faithful, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death"--"Penir, penir-asha, sartir nu cohta, lebeck nu tanim." It is the last formula,--the ceremony is accomplished. This may seem very simple and ridiculous; to me it appeared almost sublime. Opinions depend upon habits and education. The husband remains a whole year with his father-in-law, to whom belongs by right the produce of his hunting, both skins and flesh. The year expired, his bondage is over, and he may, if he wishes it, retire with his wife to his own father's, or construct a lodge for his own use. The hunter brings his game to his door, except when a heavy animal; there ends his task; the wife skins and cuts it, she dries the skin and cures the meat. Yet if the husband is a prime hunter, whose time is precious, the woman herself, or her female relations, go out and seek the game where it has been killed. When a man dies, his widow wears mourning during two or four years; the same case happens with the male widower, only his duties are not so strict as that of a woman; and it often happens that, after two years, he marries his sister-in-law, if there is any. The Indians think it a natural thing; they say that a woman will have more care of her sister's children than of those of a stranger. Among the better classes of Indians, children are often affianced to each other, even at the age of a few months. These engagements are sacred, and never broken. The Indians in general have very severe laws against murder, and they are pretty much alike among the tribes; they are divided into two distinct sections--murder committed in the nation and out of the nation. When a man commits a murder upon his own people, he runs away from his tribe, or delivers himself to justice. In this latter case, the nearest relation of the victim kills him openly, in presence of all the warriors. In the first case, he is not pursued, but his nearest relation is answerable for the deed, and suffers the penalty, if by a given time he has not produced the assassin. The death is instantaneous, from the blow of a tomahawk. Often the chief will endeavour to make the parties smoke the pipe of peace; if he succeeds, all ends here; if not, a victim must be sacrificed. It is a stern law, which sometimes brings with its execution many great calamities. Vengeance has often become hereditary, from generation to generation; murders have succeeded murders, till me of the two families has deserted the tribe. It is, no doubt, owing to such circumstances that great families, or communities of savages bearing the same type and speaking the same tongue, have been subdivided into so many distinct tribes. Thus it has been with the Shoshones, whose emigrant families have formed the Comanches, the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes. The Tonquewas have since sprung from the Comanches, the Lepans and the Texas from the Apaches, and the Navahoes from the Arrapahoes. The Texas are now extinct. Formerly there was a considerable tribe of Indians, by the name of Texas, who have all disappeared, from continual warfare. Among the Nadowessies or Dahcotahs, the subdivision has been still greater, the same original tribe having given birth to the Konsas, the Mandans, the Tetons, the Yangtongs, Sassitongs, Ollah-Gallahs, the Siones, the Wallah Wallahs, the Cayuses, the Black-feet, and lastly the Winnebagoes. The Algonquin species, or family, produced twenty-one different tribes; the Micmacs, Etchemins, Abenakis, Sokokis, Pawtucket, Pokanokets, Narragansets, Pequods, Mohegans, Lenilenapes, Nanticokes, Powatans, Shawnees, Miamis, Illinois, Chippewas, Ottawas, Menomonies, Sacs, Foxes, and the Kickapoos, which afterwards subdivided again into more than a hundred nations. But, to return to the laws of murder:--It often happens that the nephew, or brother of the murderer, will offer his life in expiation. Very often these self-sacrifices are accepted, principally among the poorer families, but the devoted is not put to death, he only loses his relationship and connection with his former family; he becomes a kind of slave or bondsman for life in the lodges of the relations of the murdered. Sometimes, too, the guilty man's life is saved by a singular and very ancient law; it, however, happens but rarely. If the murdered leaves a widow with children, this widow may claim the criminal as her own, and he becomes her husband nominally, that is to say, he must hunt and provide for the subsistence of the family. When the murderer belongs to a hostile tribe, war is immediately declared; if, on the contrary, he belongs to a friendly nation, the tribe will wait three or four months till the chiefs of that nation come to offer excuses and compensation. When they do this, they bring presents, which they leave at time door of the council lodge, one side of which is occupied by the relations of the victims, the other by the chiefs and warriors of the tribe, and the centre by the ambassadors. One of these opens the ceremony by pronouncing a speech of peace, while another offers the pipe to the relations. If they refuse it, and the great chief of the tribe entertains a particular regard for the other nation, he rises and offers himself to the relations the calumet of conciliation. If refused still, all the children and babes of the murdered one's family are called into the lodge, and the pipe passed a third time in that part of the lodge. Then if a child even two or three months old touches it, the Indians consider the act as a decision of the great Master of Life, the pipe goes round, the presents are carried in, and put at the feet of the plaintiffs. When, on the contrary, the calumet passes untouched, the murderer's life alone can satisfy the tribe. When the chiefs of the tribe of the murderer leave their village to come and offer excuses, they bring with them the claimed victim, who is well armed. If he is held in high estimation, and has been a good warrior and a good man, the chiefs of his tribe are accompanied by a great number of their own warriors, who paint their faces before entering the council lodge; some in black with green spots, some all green (the pipe of peace is always painted green). The relations of the murdered man stand on one side of the lodge, the warriors of the other tribe opposite to them. In the centre is the chief, who is attended by the bearer of the pipe of peace on one side of him, and the murderer on the other. The chief then makes a speech, and advances with the pipe-bearer and the murderer towards the relatives of the deceased; he entreats them, each man separately, to smoke the pipe which is offered by the pipe-bearer, and when refused, offered to the next of the relatives. During this time the murderer, who is well armed, stands by the chief's side, advancing slowly, with his arrow or his carbine pointed, ready to fire at any one of the relations who may attempt to take his life before the pipe has been refused by the whole of them. When such is the case, if the chiefs want peace, and do not care much for the murderer, they allow him to be killed without interference; if, on the contrary, they value him and will not permit his death, they raise the war-whoop, their warriors defend the murderer's life, and the war between the two tribes may be said to have commenced. Most usually, however, the pipe of peace is accepted, in preference to proceeding to such extremities. I will now mention the arms and accoutrement of the Shoshone warriors, observing, at the same time, that my remarks refer equally to the Apaches, the Arrapahoes, and the Comanches, except that the great skill of the Shoshones turns the balance in their favour. A Shoshone is always on horseback, firmly sitting upon a small and light saddle of his own manufacture, without any stirrups, which indeed they prefer not to have, the only Indians using them being chiefs and celebrated warriors, who have them as a mark of distinction, the more so that a saddle and stirrups are generally trophies obtained in battle from a conquered enemy. They have too good a taste to ornament their horses as the Mexicans the Crows, or the Eastern Indians do; they think that the natural grace and beauty of the animal are such that any thing gaudy would break its harmony; the only mark of distinction they put upon their steeds (and the chiefs only can do so) is a rich feather or two, or three quills of the eagle, fixed to the rosette of the bridle, below the left ear; and as a Shoshone treats his horse as a friend, always petting him, cleaning him, never forcing or abusing him, the animal is always in excellent condition, and his proud eyes and majestic bearing present to the beholder the beau ideal of the graceful and the beautiful. The elegant dress and graceful form of the Shoshone cavalier, harmonises admirably with the wild and haughty appearance of the animal. The Shoshone allows his well-combed locks to undulate with the wind, only pressed to his head by a small metal coronet, to which he fixes feathers or quills, similar to those put to his horse's rosette. This coronet is made either of gold or silver, and those who cannot afford to use these metals make it with swan-down or deer-skin, well prepared and elegantly embroidered with porcupine-quills; his arms are bare and his wrists encircled with bracelets of the same material as the coronet; his body, from the neck to the waist, is covered with a small, soft, deerskin shirt, fitting him closely without a single wrinkle; from the waist to the knee he wears a many-folded toga of black, brown, red, or white woollen or silk stuff, which he procures at Monterey or St. Francisco, from the Valparaiso and China traders, his leg from the ankle to the hip is covered by a pair of leggings of deer-skin, dyed red or black with some vegetable acids, and sewed with human hair, which hangs flowing, or in tresses, on the outward side; these leggings are fastened a little above the foot by other metal bracelets, while the foot is encased in an elegantly finished mocassin, often edged with small beautiful round crimson shells, no bigger than a pea, and found among the fossil remains of the country. Round his waist, and to sustain the toga, he wears a sash, generally made by the squaws out of the slender filaments of the silk-tree, a species of the cotton-wood, which is always covered with long threads, impalpable, though very strong. These are woven together, and richly dyed. I am sure that in Paris or in London, these scarfs, which are from twelve to fifteen feet long, would fetch a large sum among the ladies of the haut ton. I have often had one of them shut up in my hand so that it was scarcely to be perceived that I had any thing enclosed in my fist. Suspended to this scarf, they have the knife on the left side and the tomahawk on the right. The bow and quiver are suspended across their shoulders by bands of swan-down three inches broad, while their long lance, richly carved, and with a bright copper or iron point, is carried horizontally at the side of the horse. Those who possess a carbine have it fixed on the left side by a ring and a hook, the butt nearly close to the sash, and the muzzle protruding a little before the knee. The younger warriors, who do not possess the carbine, carry in its stead a small bundle of javelins (the jerrid of the Persians), with which they are very expert, for I have often seen them, at a distance of ten feet, bury one more than two feet deep in the flanks of a buffalo. To complete their offensive weapons, they have the lasso, a leather rope fifty feet long, and as thick as a woman's little finger, hanging from the pommel of their saddles; this is a terrible arm, against which there is but little possibility of contending, even if the adversary possess a rifle, for the casting of the lasso is done with the rapidity of thought, and an attempt to turn round and fire would indubitably seal his fate: the only means to escape the fatal noose is, to raise the reins of your horse to the top of your head, and hold any thing diagonally from your body, such as the lance, the carbine, or any thing except the knife, which you must hold in your sight hand, ready for use. The chances then are: if the lasso falls above your head, it must slip, and then it is a lost throw, but if you are quick enough to pass your knife through the noose, and cut it as it is dragged back, then the advantage becomes yours, or, at least is equally divided, for then you may turn upon your enemy, whose bow, lance, and rifle, for the better management of his lasso, have been left behind, or too firmly tied about him to be disengaged and used in so short a time. He can only oppose you with the knife and tomahawk, and if you choose, you may employ your own lasso; in that case the position is reversed; still the conquest belongs to the most active of the two. It often happens, that after having cut the lasso and turned upon his foe, an Indian, without diminishing the speed of his horse, will pick up from the ground, where he has dropped it, his rifle or his lance; then, of course, victory is in his hands. I escaped once from being lassoed in that way. I was pursued by a Crow Indian; his first throw failed, so did his second and his third; on the fourth, I cut the rope, and wheeling round upon him, I gave chase, and shot him through the body with one of my pistols. The noose at every cast formed such an exact circle, and fell with such precision, the centre above my head, and the circumference reaching from the neck to the tail of my horse, that if I had not thrown away my rifle, lance, bow, and quiver, I should immediately have been dragged to the ground. All the western Indians and Mexicans are admirably expert in handling this deadly weapon. Before the arrival of the Prince Seravalle, the Shoshones had bucklers, but they soon cast them aside as an incumbrance; the skill which was wasted upon the proper management of this defensive armour being now applied to the improved use of the lance. I doubt much, whether, in the tournaments of the days of chivalry, the gallant knights could show to their lady-love greater skill than a Shoshone can exhibit when fighting against an Arrapahoe or a Crow. [The Crows, our neighbours, who are of the Dacotah race, are also excellent horsemen, most admirably dressed and fond of show, but they cannot be compared to the Shoshones; they have not the same skill, and, moreover, they abuse and change their horses so often that the poor brutes are never accustomed to their masters.] But the most wonderful feat of the Shoshone, and also of the Comanche and Apache, is the facility with which he will hang himself alongside his horse in a charge upon an enemy, being perfectly invisible to him, and quite invulnerable, except through the body of his horse. Yet in that difficult and dangerous position he will use any of his arms with precision and skill. The way in which they keep their balance is very simple; they pass their right arm, to the very shoulder, through the folds of the lasso, which, as I have said, is suspended to the pommel or round the neck of the horse; for their feet they find a support in the numerous loops of deer-skin hanging from the saddle; and thus suspended, the left arm entirely free to handle the bow, and the right one very nearly so, to draw the arrow, they watch their opportunity, and unless previously wounded, seldom miss their aim. I have said that the Shoshones threw away their bucklers at the instigation of the Prince Seravalle, who also taught them the European cavalry tactics. They had sense enough to perceive the advantage they would gain from them, and they were immediately incorporated, as far as possible, with their own. The Shoshones now charge in squadrons with the lance, form squares, wheel with wonderful precision, and execute many difficult manoeuvres; but as they combine our European tactics with their own Indian mode of warfare, one of the most singular sights is to witness the disappearance behind their horses, after the Indian fashion, of a whole body of perhaps five hundred horse when in full charge. The effect is most strange; at one moment, you see the horses mounted by gallant fellows, rushing to the conflict; at a given signal, every man has disappeared, and the horses, in perfect line appear as if charging, without riders, and of their own accord, upon the ranks of the enemy. I have dwelt perhaps too long upon the manners and habits of these people; I cannot help, however, giving my readers a proof of the knowledge which the higher classes among them really possess. I have said that they are good astronomers, and I may add that their intuitive knowledge of geometry is remarkable. I once asked a young chief what he considered the height of a lofty pine. It was in the afternoon, about three o'clock. He walked to the end of the shadow thrown by the pine-tree, and fixed his arrow in the ground, measured the length of the arrow, and then the length of the shadow thrown by it; then measuring the shadow of the pine, he deducted from it in the same proportion as the difference between the length of the arrow, and the length of its shadow, and gave me the result. He worked the Rule of Three without knowing it. But the most remarkable instance occurred when we were about to cross a wide and rapid river, and required a rope to be thrown across, as a stay to the men and horses. The question was, what was the length of the rope required; i.e., what was the width of the river? An old chief stepped his horse forward, to solve the problem, and he did it as follows:--He went down to the side of the river, and fixed upon a spot as the centre; then he selected two trees, on the right and left, on the other side, as near as his eye could measure equidistant from where he stood. Having so done, he backed his horse from the river, until he came to where his eye told him that he had obtained the point of an equilateral triangle. Thus, in the diagram, he selected the two trees, A and B, walked back to E, and there fixed his lance. He then fell back in the direction E D, until he had, as nearly as he could tell, made the distance from A E equal to that from E D, and fixed another lance. The same was repeated to E C, when the last lance was fixed. He then had a parallelogram; and as the distance from F to E was exactly equal to the distance from E to G, he had but to measure the space between the bank of the river and F, and deduct it from E G, and he obtained the width of the river required. I do not think that this calculation, which proved to be perfectly correct, occupied the old chief more than three minutes, and it must be remembered that it was done in the face of the enemy: but I resume my own history. CHAPTER TEN. In narrating the unhappy death of the Prince, I have stated that the Crows bore no good-will to the white men established among the Shoshones. That feeling, however, was not confined to that tribe; it was shared by all the others within two or three hundred miles from the Buona Ventura river, and it was not surprising! Since our arrival, the tribe had acquired a certain degree of tactics and unity of action, which was sufficient in itself to bear down all their enemies, independent of the immense power they had obtained from their quantity of fire-arms and almost inexhaustible ammunition. All the other nations were jealous of their strength and resources, and this jealousy being now worked up to its climax, they determined to unite and strike a great blow, not only to destroy the ascendancy which the Shoshones had attained, but also to possess themselves of the immense wealth which they foolishly supposed the Europeans had brought with them to the settlement. For a long time previous to the Crow and Umbiqua expedition, which I have detailed, messengers had been passing between tribe and tribe, and, strange to say, they had buried all their private animosities, to form a league against the common enemy, as were considered the Shoshones. It was, no doubt, owing to this arrangement that the Crows and Umbiquas shewed themselves so hardy; but the prompt and successful retaliation of the Shoshones cooled a little the war spirit which was fomenting around us. However, the Arrapahoes having consented to join the league, the united confederates at once opened the campaign, and broke upon our country in every direction. We were taken by surprise; for the first three weeks they carried every thing before them, for the majority of our warriors were still hunting. But having been apprised of the danger, they returned in haste, and the aspect of affairs soon changed. The lost ground was regained inch by inch. The Arrapahoes having suffered a great deal, retired from the league, and having now nothing to fear from the South, we turned against our assailants on our northern boundaries. Notwithstanding the desertion of the Arrapahoes, the united tribes were still three times our number, but they wanted union, and did not act in concert. They mustered about fifteen thousand warriors, from the Umbiquas, Callapoos, Cayuses, Nez-perces, Bonnaxes, Flat-heads, and some of the Crows, who had not yet gained prudence from their last "brushing." The superiority of our arms, our tactics, discipline, and art of intrenchment, together with the good service of two clumsy old Spanish four-pounders, enabled us not only in a short time to destroy the league, but also to crush and annihilate for ever some of our treacherous neighbours. As it would be tedious to a stranger to follow the movements of the whole campaign, I will merely mention that part of it in which I assisted. The system of prairie warfare is so different from ours, that the campaign I have just related will not be easily understood by those acquainted only with European military tactics. When a European army starts upon an expedition, it is always accompanied by waggons, carrying stores of provisions and ammunition of all kinds. There is a commissariat appointed for the purpose of feeding the troops. Among the Indians there is no such thing, and except a few pieces of dried venison, a pound weight of powder, and a corresponding quantity of lead, if he has a rifle, but if not, with his lance, bow, arrows, and tomahawk, the warrior enters the war-path. In the closer country, for water and fuel, he trusts to the streams and to the trees of the forests or mountains; when in the prairie, to the mud-holes and chasms for water, and to the buffalo-dung for his fire. His rifle and arrows will always give him enough of food. But these supplies would not, of course, be sufficient for a great number of men; ten thousand, for example. A water-hole would be drained by the first two or three hundred men that might arrive, and the remainder would be obliged to go without any. Then, unless perchance they should fall upon a large herd of buffaloes, they would never be able to find the means of sustaining life. A buffalo, or three or four deer, can be killed every day, by hunters out of the tract of an expedition; this supply would suffice for a small war-party, but it would never do for an army. Except in the buffalo ranges, where the Comanches, the Apaches, and the Southern Shoshones will often go by bands of thousands, the generality of the Indians enter the path in a kind of _echelonage_ that is to say, supposing the Shoshones to send two thousand men against the Crows, they would be divided into fifteen or twenty bands, each commanded by an inferior chief. The first party will start for reconnoitring. The next day the second band, accompanied by the great chiefs, will follow, but in another track; and so on with a third, till three hundred or three hundred and fifty are united together. Then they will begin their operations, new parties coming to take the place of those who have suffered, till they themselves retire to make room for others. Every new comer brings a supply of provisions, the produce of their chase in coming, so that those who are fighting need be in no fear of wanting the necessaries of life. By this the reader will see that a band of two thousand warriors, only four or five hundred are effectually fighting, unless the number of warriors agreed upon by the chiefs prove too small, when new reinforcements are sent forward. We were divided into four war-parties: one which acted against the Bonnaxes and the Flat-heads, in the north-east; the second, against the Cayuses and Nez-perces, at the forks of the Buona Ventura and Calumet rivers; the third remained near the settlement, to protect it from surprise; while the fourth, a very small one, under my father's command, and to which I was attached, remained in or about the boat-house, at the fishing station. Independent of these four parties, well-armed bands were despatched into the Umbiqua country both by land and sea. In the beginning, our warfare on the shores of the Pacific amounted merely to skirmishes, but by-and-by, the Callapoos having joined the Umbiquas with a numerous party, the game assumed more interest. We not only lost our advantages in the Umbiqua country, but were obliged little by little to retire to the Post; this, however, proved to be our salvation. We were but one hundred and six men, whilst our adversaries mustered four hundred and eighty, and yet full one-fifth of their number were destroyed in one afternoon, during a desperate attack which they made upon the Post, which had been put into an admirable state of defence. The roof had been covered with sheets of copper, and holes had been opened in various parts of the wall for the use of the cannon, of our possession of which the enemy was ignorant. The first assault was gallantly conducted, and every one of the loopholes was choked with their balls and arrows. On they advanced, in a close and thick body, with ladders and torches, yelling like a million of demons. When at the distance of sixty yards, we poured upon them the contents of our two guns; they were heavily loaded with grape-shot, and produced a most terrible effect. The enemy did not retreat; raising their war-whoop, as they rushed, with a determination truly heroical. The guns were again fired, and also the whole of our musketry, after which a party of forty of our men made a sortie. This last charge was sudden and irresistible; the enemy fled in every direction, leaving behind their dead and wounded. That evening we received a reinforcement of thirty-eight men from the settlement, with a large supply of buffalo meat and twenty fine young fat colts. This was a great comfort to us, as, for several days, we had been obliged to live upon our dried fish. During seven days we saw nothing of the enemy; but our scouts scoured in every direction, and our long-boat surprised, in a bay opposite George Point thirty-six large boats, in which the Callapoos had come from their territory. The boats were destroyed, and their keepers scalped. As the heat was very intense, we resolved not to confine ourselves any more within the walls of the Post; we formed a spacious camp, to the east of the block-house, with breastworks of uncommon strength. This plan probably saved us from some contagious disease; indeed, the bad smell of the dried fish, and the rarefied air in the building, had already begun to affect many of our men, especially the wounded. At the end of a week, our enemy re-appeared, silent and determined. They had returned for revenge or for death; the struggle was to be a fearful one. They encamped in the little open prairie on the other side of the river, and mustered about six hundred men. The first war-party had overthrown and dispersed the Bonnaxes, as they were on their way to join the Flat-heads; and the former tribe not being able to effect the intended junction, threw itself among the Cayuses and Nez-perces. These three combined nations, after a desultory warfare, gave way before the second war-party; and the Bonnaxes, being now rendered desperate by their losses and the certainty that they would be exterminated if the Shoshones should conquer, joined the Callapoos and Umbiquas, to make one more attack upon our little garrison. Nothing could have saved us, had the Flat-heads held out any longer; but the Black-feet, their irreconcilable enemies, seizing the opportunity, had entered their territory. They sued to us for peace, and then detachments from both war-parties hastened to our help. Of this we were apprised by our runners; and having previously concerted measures with my father, I started alone to meet these detachments, in the passes of the Mineral Mountains. The returning warriors were seven hundred strong, and had not lost more than thirteen men in their two expeditions; they divided into three bands, and succeeded, without discovery, in surrounding the prairie in which the enemy were encamped; an Indian was then sent to cross the river, a few miles to the east, and carry a message to my father. The moon rose at one in the morning. It was arranged that, two hours before its rising, the garrison of the block-house, which had already suffered a great deal, during four days of a close siege, were to let off the fire-works that I had received from the Mexicans at Monterey, and to watch well the shore on their side of the river; for we were to fall upon the enemy during their surprise, occasioned by such an unusual display. All happened as was intended. At the first rocket, the Bonnaxes, Callapoos, and Umbiquas were on the alert; but astonishment and admiration very soon succeeded their fear of surprise, which they knew could not be attempted from their opponents in front. The bombs burst, the wheels threw their large circles of coloured sparks, and the savages gazed in silent admiration. But their astonishment was followed by fear of supernatural agency; confusion spread among them, and their silence was at last broken by hundreds of loud voices!! The moment had now come, the two Shoshone war-parties rushed upon their terrified victims, and an hour afterwards, when the moon rose and shone above the prairie, its mild beams were cast upon four hundred corpses. The whole of the Bonnax and Umbiqua party were entirely destroyed. The Callapoos suffered but little, having dispersed, and run toward the sea-shore at the beginning of the affray. Thus ended the great league against the Shoshones, which tradition will speak of in ages yet to come. But these stirring events were followed by a severe loss to me. My father, aged as he was, had shown a great deal of activity during the last assault, and he had undergone much privation and fatigue: his high spirit sustained him to the very last of the struggle; but when all was over, and the reports of the rifles no longer whizzed to his ears, his strength gave way, and, ten days after the last conflict, he died of old age, fatigue, and grief. On the borders of the Pacific Ocean, a few miles inland, I have raised his grave. The wild flowers that grow upon it are fed by the clear waters of the Nu eleje sha wako, and the whole tribe of the Shoshones will long watch over the tomb of the Pale-face from a distant land, who was once their instructor and their friend. As for my two friends, Gabriel and Roche, they had been both seriously wounded, and it was a long time before they were recovered. We passed the remainder of the summer in building castles in the air for the future, and at last agreed to go to Monterey to pass the winter. Fate, however, ordered otherwise, and a succession of adventures, the current of which I could not oppose, forced me through many wild scenes and countries, which I have yet to describe. CHAPTER ELEVEN. At the beginning of the fall, a few months after my father's death, I and my two comrades, Gabriel and Roche, were hunting in the rolling prairies of the South, on the eastern shores of the Buona Ventura. One evening we were in high spirits, having had good sport. My two friends had entered upon a theme which they could never exhaust; one pleasantly narrating the wonders and sights of Paris, the other describing with his true native eloquence the beauties of his country, and repeating the old local Irish legends, which appeared to me quaint and highly poetical. Of a sudden we were surrounded by a party of sixty Arrapahoes; of course, resistance or flight was useless. Our captors, however, treated us with honour, contenting themselves with watching us closely and preventing our escape. They knew who we were, and, though my horse, saddle, and rifle were in themselves a booty for any chief, nothing was taken from us. I addressed the chief, whom I knew: "What have I done to the Morning Star of the Arrapahoes, that I should be taken and watched like a sheep of the Watchinangoes?" The chief smiled and put his hand upon my shoulders. "The Arrapahoes," said he, "love the young Owato Wanisha and his pale-faced brothers, for they are great warriors, and can beat their enemies with beautiful blue fires from the heavens. The Arrapahoes know all; they area wise people. They will take Owato Wanisha to their own tribe, that he may show his skill to them, and make them warriors. He shall be fed with the fittest and sweetest dogs. He will become a great warrior among the Arrapahoes. So wish our prophets. I obey the will of the prophets and of the nation." "But," answered I, "my Manitou will not hear me if I am a slave. The Pale-face Manitou has ears only for free warriors. He will not lend me his fires unless space and time be my own." The chief interrupted me:--"Owato Wanisha is not a slave, nor can he be one. He is with his good friends, who will watch over him, light his fire, spread their finest blankets in his tent, and fill it with the best game of the prairie. His friends love the young chief, but he must not escape from them, else the evil spirit would make the young Arrapahoes drunk as a beastly Crow, and excite them in their folly to kill the Pale-faces." As nothing could be attempted for the present, we submitted to our fate, and were conducted by a long and dreary journey to the eastern shores of the Rio Colorado of the West, until at last we arrived at one of the numerous and beautiful villages of the Arrapahoes. There we passed the winter in a kind of honourable captivity. An attempt to escape would have been the signal of our death, or, at least, of a harsh captivity. We were surrounded by vast sandy deserts, inhabited by the Clubs (Piuses), a cruel race of people, some of them cannibals. Indeed, I may as well here observe that most of the tribes inhabiting the Colorado are men-eaters, even including the Arrapahoes, on certain occasions. Once we fell in with a deserted camp of Club-men, and there we found the remains of about twenty bodies, the bones of which had been picked with apparently as much relish as the wings of a pheasant would have been by a European epicure. This winter passed gloomily enough, and no wonder. Except a few beautiful groves, found here and there, like the oases in the sands of the Sahara, the whole country is horribly broken and barren. Forty miles above the Gulf of California, the Colorado ceases to be navigable, and presents from its sources, for seven hundred miles, nothing but an uninterrupted series of noisy and tremendous cataracts, bordered on each side by a chain of perpendicular rocks, five or six hundred feet high, while the country all around seems to have been shaken to its very centre by violent volcanic eruptions. Winter at length passed away, and with the first weeks of spring were renovated our hopes of escape. The Arrapahoes, relenting in their vigilance, went so far as to offer us to accompany them in an expedition eastward. To this, of course, we agreed, and entered very willingly upon the beautiful prairies of North Sonora. Fortune favoured us; one day, the Arrapahoes having followed a trail of Apaches and Mexicans, with an intent to surprise and destroy them, fell themselves into a snare, in which they were routed, and many perished. We made no scruples of deserting our late masters, and, spurring our gallant steeds, we soon found that our unconscious liberators were a party of officers bound from Monterey or Santa Fe, escorted by two-and-twenty Apaches and some twelve or fifteen families of Ciboleros. I knew the officers, and was very glad to have intelligence from California. Isabella was as bright as ever, but not quite so light-hearted. Padre Marini, the missionary, had embarked for Peru, and the whole city of Monterey was still laughing, dancing, singing, and love-making, just as I had left them. The officers easily persuaded me to accompany them to Santa Fe, from whence I could readily return to Monterey with the next caravan. A word concerning the Ciboleros may not be uninteresting. Every year, large parties of Mexicans, some with mules, others with ox-carts, drive out into these prairies to procure for their families a season's supply of buffalo beef. They hunt chiefly on horseback, with bow and arrow, or lance, and sometimes the fusil, whereby they soon load their carts and mules. They find no difficulty in curing their meat even in mid-summer, by slicing it thin, and spreading or suspending it in the sun; or, if in haste, it is slightly barbecued. During the curing operation, they often follow the Indian practice of beating the slices of meat with their feet, which they say contributes to its preservation. Here the extraordinary purity of the atmosphere of these regions is remarkably exemplified. A line is stretched from corner to corner along the side of the waggon body, and strung with slices of beef, which remain from day to day till they are sufficiently cured to be packed up. This is done without salt, and yet the meat rarely putrefies. The optic deception of the rarefied and transparent atmosphere of these elevated plains is truly remarkable. One might almost fancy oneself looking through a spy-glass; for objects often appear at scarce one-fourth of their real distance--frequently much magnified, and more especially much elevated. I have often seen flocks of antelopes mistaken for droves of elks or wild horses, and when at a great distance, even for horsemen; whereby frequent alarms are occasioned. A herd of buffaloes upon a distant plain often appear so elevated in height, that they would be mistaken by the inexperienced for a large grove of trees. But the most curious, and at the same time the most tormenting phenomenon occasioned by optical deception, is the "mirage," or, as commonly called by the Mexican travellers, "the lying waters." Even the experienced prairie hunter is often deceived by these, upon the arid plains, where the pool of water is in such request. The thirsty wayfarer, after jogging for hours under a burning sky, at length espies a pond--yes, it must be water--it looks too natural for him to be mistaken. He quickens his pace, enjoying in anticipation the pleasures of a refreshing draught; but, as he approaches, it recedes or entirely disappears; and standing upon its apparent site, he is ready to doubt his own vision, when he finds but a parched sand under his feet. It is not until he has been thus a dozen times deceived, that he is willing to relinquish the pursuit, and then, perhaps, when he really does see a pond, he will pass it unexamined, from fear of another disappointment. The philosophy of these false ponds I have never seen satisfactorily explained. They have usually been attributed to a refraction, by which a section of the bordering sky is thrown below the horizon; but I am convinced that they are the effect of reflection. It seems that a gas (emanating probably from the heated earth and its vegetable matter) floats upon the elevated flats, and is of sufficient density, when viewed obliquely, to reflect the objects beyond it; thus the opposing sky being reflected in the pond of gas, gives the appearance of water. As a proof that it is the effect of reflection, I have often observed the distant knolls and trees which were situated near the horizon beyond the mirage, distinctly inverted in the "pond." Now, were the mirage the result of refraction, these would appear on it erect, only cast below the surface. Many are the singular atmospheric phenomena observable upon the plains and they would afford a field of interesting researches for the curious natural philosopher. We had a pleasant journey, although sometimes pressed pretty hard by hunger. However, Gabriel, Roche, and I were too happy to complain. We had just escaped from a bitter and long slavery, beside which, we were heartily tired of the lean and tough dogs of the Arrapahoes, which are the only food of that tribe during the winter. The Apaches, who had heard of our exploits, shewed us great respect; but what still more captivated their good graces, was the Irishman's skill in playing the fiddle. It so happened that a Mexican officer having, during the last fall, been recalled from Monterey to Santa Fe, had left his violin. It was a very fine instrument, an old Italian piece of workmanship, and worth, I am convinced, a great deal of money. At the request of the owner, one of the present officers had taken charge of the violin and packed it up, together with his trunks, in one of the Cibolero's waggons. We soon became aware of the circumstance, and when we could not get anything to eat, music became our consolation. Tired as we were, we would all of us, "at least the Pale-faces," dance merrily for hours together, after we had halted, till poor Roche, exhausted, could no longer move his fingers. We were at last relieved of our obligatory fast, and enabled to look with contempt upon the humble prickly pears, which for many a long day had been our only food. Daily now we came across herds of fat buffaloes, and great was our sport in pursuing the huge lord of the prairies. One of them, by the bye, gored my horse to death, and I would likely have put an end to my adventures, had it not been for the certain aim of Gabriel. I had foolishly substituted my bow and arrows for the rifle, that I might show my skill to my companions. My vanity cost me dear; for though the bull was a fine one, and had seven arrows driven through his neck, I lost one of the best horses of the West, and my right leg was considerably hurt. Having been informed that there was a large city or commonwealth of prairie dogs directly in our route, I started on ahead with my two companions, to visit these republicans. We had a double object in view: first, a desire to examine one of the republics about which prairie travellers have said so much; and, secondly, to obtain something to eat, as the flesh of these animals was said to be excellent. Our road for six or seven miles wound up the sides of a gently ascending mountain. On arriving at the summit, we found a beautiful table-land spread out, reaching for miles in every direction before us. The soil appeared to be uncommonly rich, and was covered with a luxurious growth of musqueet trees. The grass was of the curly musquito species, the sweetest and most nutritious of all the different kinds of that grass, and the dogs never locate their towns or cities except where it grows in abundance, as it is their only food. We had proceeded but a short distance after reaching this beautiful prairie, before we came upon the outskirts of the commonwealth. A few scattered dogs were seen scampering in, and, by their short and sharp yelps, giving a general alarm to the whole community. The first cry of danger from the outskirts was soon taken up in the centre of the city, and now nothing was to be seen in any direction but a dashing and scampering of the mercurial and excitable citizens of the place, each to his lodge or burrow. Far as the eye could reach was spread the city, and in every direction the scene was the same. We rode leisurely along until we had reached the more thickly settled portion of the city, when we halted, and after taking the bridles from our horses to allow them to graze, we prepared for a regular attack upon its inhabitants. The burrows were not more than fifteen yards apart, with well-trodden paths leading in different directions, and I even thought I could discover something like regularity in the laying out of the streets. We sat down upon a bank under the shade of a musqueet tree, and leisurely surveyed the scene before us. Our approach had driven every one in our immediate vicinity to his home, but some hundred yards off, the small mound of earth in front of a burrow was each occupied by a dog sitting I straight up on his hinder legs, and coolly looking about him to ascertain the cause of the recent commotion. Every now and then some citizen, more venturous than his neighbour, would leave his lodge on a flying visit to a companion, apparently to exchange a few words, and then scamper back as fast as his legs would carry him. By-and-by, as we kept perfectly still, some of our nearer neighbours were seen cautiously poking their heads from out their holes and looking cunningly, and at the same time inquisitively, about them. After some time, a dog would emerge from the entrance of his domicile, squat upon his looking-out place, shake his head, and commence yelping. For three hours we remained watching the movements of these animals, and occasionally picking one of them off with our rifles. No less than nine were obtained by the party. One circumstance I will mention as singular in the extreme, and which shows the social relationship which exists among these animals, as well as the regard they have one for another. One of them had perched himself directly upon the pile of earth in front of his hole, sitting up, and offering a fair mark, while a companion's head, too timid, perhaps, to expose himself farther; was seen poking out of the entrance. A well-directed shot carried away the entire top of the head of the first dog, and knocked him some two or three feet from his post, perfectly dead. While reloading, the other daringly came out, seized his companion by one of his legs, and before we could arrive at the hole, had drawn him completely out of reach, although we tried to twist him out with a ramrod. There was a feeling in this act--a something human, which raised the animals in my estimation; and never after did I attempt to kill one of them, except when driven by extreme hunger. The prairie dog is about the size of a rabbit, heavier perhaps, more compact, and with much shorter legs. In appearance, it resembles the ground-hog of the north, although a trifle smaller than that animal. In their habits, the prairie dogs are social, never live alone like other animals, but are always found in villages or large settlements. They are a wild, frolicksome set of fellows when undisturbed, restless, and ever on the move. They seem to take especial delight in chattering away the time, and visiting about, from hole to hole, to gossip and talk over one another's affairs; at least, so their actions would indicate. Old hunters say that when they find a good location for a village, and no water is handy, they dig a well to supply the wants of the community. On several occasions, I have crept up close to one of their villages, without being observed, that I might watch their movements. Directly in the centre of one of them, I particularly noticed a very large dog, sitting in front of his door, or entrance to his burrow, and by his own actions and those of his neighbours, it really looked as though he was the president, mayor, or chief; at all events, he was the "big dog" of the place. For at least an hour, I watched the movements of this little community; during that time, the large dog I have mentioned received at least a dozen visits from his fellow-dogs, who would stop and chat with him a few moments, and then run off to their domiciles. All this while he never left his post for a single minute, and I thought I could discover a gravity in his deportment, not discernible in those by whom he was addressed. Far be it from me to say that the visits he received were upon business, or having anything to do with the local government of the village; but it certainly appeared as if such was the case. If any animal is endowed with reasoning powers, or has any system of laws regulating the body politic, it is the prairie dog. In different parts of the village the members of it were seen gambolling, frisking, and visiting about, occasionally turning heels over head into their holes, and appearing to have all sorts of fun among themselves. Owls of a singular species were also seen among them; they did not appear to join in their sports in any way, but still seemed to be on good terms, and as they were constantly entering and coming out of the same holes, they might be considered as members of the same family, or, at least, guests. Rattlesnakes, too, dwell among them; but the idea generally received among the Mexicans, that they live upon terms of companionship with the dogs, is quite ridiculous, and without any foundation. The snakes I look upon as _loafers_, not easily shaken off by the regular inhabitants, and they make use of the dwellings of the dogs as more comfortable quarters than they could find elsewhere. We killed one a short distance from a burrow, which had made a meal of a little pup; although I do not think they can master full-grown dogs. This town, which we visited, was several miles in length and at least a mile in width. Around and in the vicinity, were smaller villages, suburbs to the town. We kindled a fire, and cooked three of the animals we had shot; the meat was exceedingly sweet, tender, and juicy, resembling that of the squirrel, only that there was more fat upon it. CHAPTER TWELVE. Among these Apaches, our companions, were two Comanches, who, fifteen years before, had witnessed the death of the celebrated Overton. As this wretch, for a short time, was employed as an English agent by the Fur Company, his wild and romantic end will probably interest the many readers who have known him; at all events, the narrative will serve as a specimen of the lawless career of many who resort to the western wilderness. Some forty-four years ago, a Spanish trader had settled among a tribe of the Tonquewas [The Tonquewas tribe sprung from the Comanches many years ago.], at the foot of the Green Mountains. He had taken an Indian squaw, and was living there very comfortably, paying no taxes, but occasionally levying some, under the shape of black mail, upon the settlements of the province of Santa Fe. In one excursion, however, he was taken and hung, an event soon forgotten both by Spaniards and Tonquewas. He had left behind him, besides a child and a squaw, property to a respectable amount; the tribe took his wealth for their own use, but cast away the widow and her offspring. She fell by chance into the hands of a jolly though solitary Canadian trapper, who, not having the means of selecting his spouse, took the squaw for better and for worse. In the meantime the young half-breed grew to manhood, and early displayed a wonderful capacity for languages. The squaw died, and the trapper, now thinking of the happy days he had passed among the civilised people of the East, resolved to return thither, and took with him the young half-breed, to whom by long habit he had become attached. They both came to St. Louis, where the half-breed soon learned enough of English to make himself understood, and one day, having gone with his "father-in-law" to pay a visit to the Osages, he murdered him on the way, took his horse, fusil, and sundries, and set up for himself. For a long time he was unsuspected, and indeed, if he had been, he cared very little about it. He went from tribe to tribe, living an indolent life, which suited his taste perfectly; and as he was very necessary to the Indians as an interpreter during their bartering transactions with the Whites, he was allowed to do just as he pleased. He was, however, fond of shifting from tribe to tribe, and the traders seeing him now with the Pawnies or the Comanches, now with the Crows or the Tonquewas, gave him the surname of "Turn-over," which name, making a summerset, became Over-turn, and by corruption, Overton. By this time every body had discovered that Overton was a great scoundrel, but as he was useful, the English company from Canada employed him, paying him very high wages. But his employers having discovered that he was almost always tipsy, and not at all backward in appropriating to himself that to which he had no right, dismissed him from their service, and Overton returned to his former life. By-and-by, some Yankees made him proposals, which he accepted; what was the nature of them no one can exactly say, but every body may well fancy, knowing that nothing is considered more praiseworthy than cheating the Indians in their transactions with them, through the agency of some rascally interpreter, who, of course, receives his _tantum quantum_ of the profits of his treachery. For some time the employers and employed agreed amazingly well, and as nothing is cheaper than military titles in the United States, the half-breed became Colonel Overton, with boots and spurs, a laced coat, and a long sword. Cunning as were the Yankees, Overton was still more so; cheating them as he had cheated the Indians. The holy alliance was broken up; he then retired to the mountains, protected by the Mexican government, and commenced a system of general depredation, which for some time proved successful. His most ordinary method was to preside over a barter betwixt the savages and the traders. When both parties had agreed, they were of course in good humour, and drank freely. Now was the time for the Colonel. To the Indians he would affirm that the traders only waited till they were asleep, to butcher them and take back their goods. The same story was told to the traders, and a fight ensued, the more terrible as the whole party was more or less tipsy. Then, with some rogues in his own employ, the Colonel, under the pretext of making all safe, would load the mules with the furs and goods, proceed to Santa Fe, and dispose of his booty for one-third of its value. None cared how it had been obtained; it was cheap, consequently it was welcome. His open robberies and tricks of this description were so numerous, that Overton became the terror of the mountains. The savages swore they would scalp him; the Canadians vowed that they would make him dance to death; the English declared that they would hang him; and the Yankees, they would put him to Indian torture. The Mexicans, not being able any more to protect their favourite, put a price upon his head. Under these circumstances, Overton took an aversion to society, concealed himself, and during two years nothing was heard of him; when, one day, as a party of Comanches and Tonquewas were returning from some expedition, they perceived a man on horseback. They knew him to be Overton, and gave chase immediately. The chase was a long one. Overton was mounted upon a powerful and noble steed, but the ground was broken and uneven; he could not get out of the sight of his pursuers. However, he reached a platform covered with fine pine trees, and thought himself safe, as on the other side of the wood there was a long level valley, extending for many miles; and there he would be able to distance his pursuers, and escape. Away he darted like lightning, their horrible yell still ringing in his ears; he spurred his horse, already covered with foam, entered the plain, and, to his horror and amazement, found that between him and the valley there was a horrible chasm, twenty-five feet in breadth and two hundred feet in depth, with acute angles of rocks, as numerous as the thorns upon a prickly pear. What could he do? His tired horse refused to take the leap, and he could plainly hear the voices of the Indians encouraging each other in the pursuit. Along the edge of the precipice there lay a long hollow log, which had been probably dragged there with the intention of making a bridge across the chasm. Overton dismounted, led his horse to the very brink, and pricked him with his knife: the noble animal leaped, but his strength was too far gone for him to clear it; his breast struck the other edge, and he fell from crag to crag into the abyss below. This over, the fugitive crawled to the log, and concealed himself under it, hoping that he would yet escape. He was mistaken, for he had been seen; at that moment, the savages emerged from the wood, and a few minutes more brought them around the log. Now certain of their prey, they wished to make him suffer a long moral agony, and they feigned not to know where he was. "He has leaped over," said one; "it was the full jump of a panther. Shall we return, or encamp here?" The Indians agreed to repose for a short time; and then began a conversation. One protested, if he could ever get Overton, he would make him eat his own bowels. Another spoke of red-hot irons and of creeping flesh. No torture was left unsaid, and horrible must have been the position of the wretched Overton. "His scalp is worth a hundred dollars," said one. "We will get it some day," answered another. "But since we are here, we had better camp and make a fire; there is a log." Overton now perceived that he was lost. From under the log he cast a glance around him: there stood the grim warriors, bow in hand, and ready to kill him at his first movement. He understood that the savages had been cruelly playing with him and enjoying his state of horrible suspense. Though a scoundrel, Overton was brave, and had too much of the red blood within him not to wish to disappoint his foes--he resolved to allow himself to be burnt, and thus frustrate the anticipated pleasure of his cruel persecutors. To die game to the last is an Indian's glory, and under the most excruciating tortures, few savages will ever give way to their bodily sufferings. Leaves and dried sticks soon surrounded and covered the log--fire was applied, and the barbarians watched in silence. But Overton had reckoned too much upon his fortitude. His blood, after all, was but half Indian, and when the flames caught his clothes he could bear no more. He burst out from under the fire, and ran twice round within the circle of his tormentors. They were still as the grave, not a weapon was aimed at him, when, of a sudden, with all the energy of despair, Overton sprang through the circle and took the fearful leap across the chasm. Incredible as it may appear, he cleared it by more than two feet: a cry of admiration burst from the savages; but Overton was exhausted, and he fell slowly backwards. They crouched upon their breasts to look down--for the depth was so awful as to giddy the brain-- and saw their victim, his clothes still in flames, rolling down from rock to rock till all was darkness. Had he kept his footing on the other side of the chasm, he would have been safe, for a bold deed always commands admiration from the savage, and at that time they would have scorned to use their arrows. Such was the fate of Colonel Overton! CHAPTER THIRTEEN. At last, we passed the Rio Grande, and a few days more brought us to Santa Fe. Much hath been written about this rich and romantic city, where formerly, if we were to believe travellers, dollars and doubloons were to be had merely for picking them up; but I suspect the writers had never seen the place, for it is a miserable, dirty little hole, containing about three thousand souls, almost all of them half-bred, naked, and starved. Such is Santa Fe. You will there witness spectacles of wretchedness and vice hardly to be found elsewhere--harsh despotism; immorality carried to its highest degree, with drunkenness and filth. The value of the Santa Fe trade has been very much exaggerated. This town was formerly the readiest point to which goods could be brought overland from the States to Mexico; but since the colonisation of Texas, it is otherwise. The profits also obtained in this trade are far from being what they used to be. The journey from St. Louis (Missouri) is very tedious, the distance being about twelve hundred miles; nor is the journey ended when you reach Santa Fe, as they have to continue to Chihuahua. Goods come into the country at a slight duty, compared to that payable on the coast, five hundred dollars only (whatever may be the contents) being charged upon each waggon; and it is this privilege which supports the trade. But the real market commences at Chihuahua; north of which nothing is met with by the traveller, except the most abject moral and physical misery. Of course, our time passed most tediously; the half-breed were too stupid to converse with, and the Yankee traders constantly tipsy. Had it not been that Gabriel was well acquainted with the neighbourhood, we should positively have died of _ennui_. As it was, however, we made some excursions among the _rancheros_, or cattle-breeders, and visited several Indian tribes, with whom we hunted, waiting impatiently for a westward-bound caravan. One day, I had a rather serious adventure. Roche and Gabriel were bear-hunting, while I, feeling tired, had remained in a Rancho, where, for a few days, we had had some amusement; in the afternoon, I felt an inclination to eat some fish, and being told that at three or four miles below, there was a creek of fine basses, I went away with my rifle, hooks, and line. I soon found the spot, and was seeking for some birds or squirrels, whose flesh I could use as bait. As, rifle in hand, I walked, watching the branches of the trees along the stream, I felt something scratching my leggings and mocassins; I looked down, and perceived a small panther-cub frisking and frolicking around my feet, inviting me to play with it. It was a beautiful little creature, scarcely bigger than a common cat. I sat down, put my rifle across my knees, and for some minutes caressed it as I would have done an ordinary kitten; it became very familiar, and I was just thinking of taking it with me, when I heard behind me a loud and well-known roar, and, as the little thing left me, over my head bounded a dark heavy body. It was a full-grown panther, the mother of the cub. I had never thought of her. I rose immediately. The beast having missed the leap, had fallen twelve feet before me. It crouched, sweeping the earth with its long tail, and looking fiercely at me. Our eyes met; I confess it, my heart was very small within me. I had my rifle, to be sure, but the least movement to poise it would have been the signal for a spring from the animal. At last, still crouching, it crept back, augmenting the distance to about thirty feet. Then it made a circle round me, never for a moment taking its eyes off my face, for the cub was still playing at my feet. I have no doubt that if the little animal had been betwixt me and the mother, she would have snatched it and run away with it. As it was, I felt very, very queer; take to my heels I could not, and the panther would not leave her cub behind; on the contrary, she continued making a circle round me, I turning within her, and with my rifle pointed towards her. As we both turned, with eyes straining at each other, inch by inch I slowly raised my rifle, till the butt reached my shoulder; I caught the sight and held my breath. The cub, in jumping, hurt itself, and mewed; the mother answered by an angry growl, and just as she was about to spring, I fired; she stumbled backwards, and died without a struggle. My ball, having entered under the left eye, had passed through the skull, carrying with it a part of the brain. It was a terrific animal; had I missed it, a single blow from her paw would have crushed me to atoms. Dead as it was, with its claws extended, as if to seize its prey, and its bleeding tongue hanging out, it struck me with awe. I took off the skin, hung it to a tree, and securing the cub, I hastened home, having lost my appetite for fishing or a fish-supper for that evening. A week after this circumstance, a company of traders arrived from St. Louis. They had been attacked by Indians, and made a doleful appearance. During their trip they had once remained six days without any kind of food, except withered grass. Here it may not be amiss to say a few words about the origin of this inland mercantile expedition, and the dangers with which the traders are menaced. In 1807, Captain Pike, returning from his exploring trip in the interior of the American continent, made it known to the United States' merchants that they could establish a very profitable commerce with the central provinces of the north of Mexico; and in 1812, a small party of adventurers, Millar, Knight, Chambers, Beard, and others, their whole number not exceeding twelve, forced their way from St. Louis to Santa Fe, with a small quantity of goods. It has always been the policy of the Spaniards to prevent strangers from penetrating into the interior of their colonies. At that period, Mexico being in revolution, strangers, and particularly Americans, were looked upon with jealousy and distrust. These merchants were, consequently, seized upon, their goods confiscated, and themselves shut up in the prisons of Chihuahua, where, during several years, they underwent a rigorous treatment. It was, I believe, in the spring of 1821, that Chambers, with the other prisoners, returned to the United States, and shortly afterwards a treaty with the States rendered the trade lawful. Their accounts induced one Captain Glenn, of Cincinnatti, to join them in a commercial expedition, and another caravan, twenty men strong, started again for Santa Fe. They sought a shorter road to fall in with the Arkansas river, but their enterprise failed for, instead of ascending the stream of the Canadian fork, it appears that they only coasted the great river to its intersection by the Missouri road. There is not a drop of water in this horrible region, which extends even to the Cimaron river, and in this desert they had to suffer all the pangs of thirst. They were reduced to the necessity of killing their dogs and bleeding their mules to moisten their parched lips. None of them perished; but, suite dispirited, they changed their direction and turned back to the nearest point of the river Arkansas, where they were at least certain to find abundance of water. By this time their beasts of burden were so tired and broken down that they had become of no use. They were therefore obliged to conceal their goods, and arrived without any more trouble at Santa Fe, when procuring other mules, they returned to their cachette. Many readers are probably unaware of the process employed by the traders to conceal their cargo, their arms, and even their provisions. It is nothing more than a large excavation in the earth, in the shape of a jar, in which the objects are stored; the bottom of the cachette having been first covered with wood and canvas, so as to prevent any thing being spoiled by the damp. The important science of cachaye (Canadian expression) consists in leaving no trace which might betray it to the Indians; to prevent this, the earth taken from the excavation is put into blankets and carried to a great distance. The place generally selected for a cachette is a swell in the prairie, sufficiently elevated to be protected from any kind of inundation, and the arrangement is so excellent, that it is very seldom that the traders lose any thing in their cachette, either by the Indians, the changes of the climate, or the natural dampness of the earth. In the spring of 1820, a company from Franklin, in the west of Missouri, had already proceeded to Santa Fe, with twelve mules loaded with goods. They crossed prairies where no white man had ever penetrated, having no guides but the stars of Heaven, the morning breeze from the mountains, and perhaps a pocket compass. Daily they had to pass through hostile nations; but spite of many other difficulties, such as ignorance of the passes and want of water, they arrived at Santa Fe. The adventurers returned to Missouri during the fall; their profit had been immense, although the capital they had employed had been very small. Their favourable reports produced a deep sensation, and in the spring of the next year, Colonel Cooper and some associates, to the number of twenty-two, started with fourteen mules well loaded. This time the trip was a prompt and a fortunate one; and the merchants of St. Louis getting bolder and bolder, formed, in 1822, a caravan of seventy men, who carried with them goods to the amount of forty thousand dollars. Thus began the Santa Fe trade, which assumed a more regular character. Companies started in the spring to return in the fall, with incredible benefits, and the trade increasing, the merchants reduced the number of their guards, till, eventually, repeated attacks from the savages obliged them to unite together, in order to travel with safety. At first the Indians appeared disposed to let them pass without any kind of interruption; but during the summer of 1826 they began to steal the mules and the horses of the travellers; but they killed nobody till 1828. Then a little caravan, returning from Santa Fe, followed the stream of the north fork of the Canadian river. Two of the traders, having preceded the company in search of game, fell asleep on the edge of a brook. These were espied by a band of Indians, who surprised them, seized their rifles, took their scalps, and retired before the caravan had reached the brook, which had been agreed upon as the place of rendezvous. When the traders arrived, one of the victims still breathed. They carried him to the Cimaron, where he expired and was buried according to the prairie fashion. Scarcely had the ceremony been terminated, when upon a neighbouring hill appeared four Indians, apparently ignorant of what had happened. The exasperated merchants invited them into their camp, and murdered all except one, who, although wounded, succeeded in making his escape. This cruel retaliation brought down heavy punishment. Indeed from that period the Indians vowed an eternal war--a war to the knife, "in the forests and the prairies, in the middle of rivers and lakes, and even among the mountains covered with eternal snows." Shortly after this event another caravan was fallen in with and attacked by the savages, who carried off with them thirty-five scalps, two hundred and fifty mules, and goods to the amount of thirty thousand dollars. These terrible dramas were constantly re-acted in these vast western solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being covered with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone had escaped. In 1831, Mr Sublette and his company crossed the prairies with twenty-five waggons. He and his company were old pioneers among the Rocky Mountains, whom the thirst of gold had transformed into merchants. They went without guides, and no one among them had ever performed the trip. All that they knew was that they were going from such to such a degree of longitude. They reached the Arkansas river, but from thence to the Cimaron there is no road, except the numerous paths of the buffaloes, which, intersecting the prairie, very often deceive the travellers. When the caravan entered this desert the earth was entirely dry, and, the pioneers mistaking their road, wandered during several days exposed to all the horrors of a febrile thirst, under a burning sun. Often they were seduced by the deceitful appearance of a buffalo path, and in this perilous situation Captain Smith, one of the owners of the caravan, resolved to follow one of these paths, which he considered would indubitably lead him to some spring of water or to a marsh. He was alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and, if but half of what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to blench upon the desert sands. He was about twelve miles front his comrades, when, turning round a small hill, he perceived the long-sought object of his wishes. A small stream glided smoothly in the middle of the prairie before him. It was the river Cimaron. He hurried forward to moisten his parched lips, but just as he was stooping over the water he fell, pierced by ten arrows. A band of Comanches had espied him, and waited there for him. Yet he struggled bravely. The Indians have since acknowledged that, wounded as he was, before dying, Captain Smith had killed three of their people. Such was the origin of the Santa Fe trade, and such are the liabilities which are incurred even now, in the great solitudes of the West. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Time passed away, till I and my companions were heartily tired of our inactivity: besides, I was home-sick, and I had left articles of great value at the settlement, about which I was rather fidgety. So one day we determined that we would start alone, and return to the settlement by a different road. We left Santa Fe and rode towards the north, and it was not until we had passed Taos, the last Mexican settlement, that we became ourselves again and recovered our good spirits. Gabriel knew the road; our number was too small not to find plenty to eat, and as to the hostile Indians, it was a chance we were willing enough to encounter. A few days after we had quitted Santa Fe, and when in the neighbourhood of the Spanish Peaks, and about thirty degrees north latitude, we fell in with a numerous party of the Comanches. It was the first time we had seen them in a body, and it was a grand sight. Gallant horsemen they were, and well mounted. They were out upon an expedition against the Pawnee (see Note one) Loups, and they behaved to us with the greatest kindness and hospitality. The chief knew Gabriel, and invited us to go in company with them to their place of encampment. The chief was a tall, fine fellow, and with beautiful symmetry of figure. He spoke Spanish well, and the conversation was carried on in that tongue until the evening, when I addressed him in Shoshone, which beautiful dialect is common to the Comanches, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, and related to him the circumstances of our captivity on the shores of the Colorado of the West. As I told my story the chief was mute with astonishment, until at last, throwing aside the usual Indian decorum, he grasped me firmly by the hand. He knew I was neither a Yankee nor a Mexican, and swore that for my sake every Canadian or Frenchman falling in their power should be treated as a friend. After our meal, we sat comfortably round the fires, and listened to several speeches and traditions of the warriors. One point struck me forcibly during my conversation with that noble warrior. According to his version, the Comanches were in the beginning very partial to the Texians, as they were brave, and some of them generous. But he said, that afterwards, as they increased their numbers and established their power, they became a rascally people, cowards and murderers. One circumstance above all fired the blood of the Comanches, and since that time it has been and will be with them a war of extinction against the Texians. An old Comanche, with a daughter, had separated himself from their tribe. He was a chief, but he had been unfortunate; and being sick, he retired to San Antonio to try the skill of the treat Pale-face medecin. His daughter was a noble and handsome girl of eighteen, and she had not been long in the place before she attracted the attention of a certain doctor, a young man from Kentucky, who had been tried for murder in the States. He was the greatest scoundrel in the world, but being a desperate character, he was feared, and, of course, courted by his fellow Texians. Perceiving that he could not succeed in his views so long as the girl was with her father, he contrived to throw the old man into jail, and, inducing her to come to his house to see what could be done to release him, he abused her most shamefully, using blows and violence, to accomplish his purpose, to such a degree, that he left her for dead. Towards the evening, she regained some strength, and found a shelter in the dwelling of some humane Mexican. The old Indian was soon liberated: he found his daughter, but it was on her death-bed, and then he learned the circumstances of the shameful transaction, and deeply vowed revenge. A Mexican gentleman, indignant at such a cowardly deed, in the name of outraged nature and humanity, laid the cause before a jury of Texians. The doctor was acquitted by the Texian jury, upon the ground that the laws were not made for the benefit of the Comanches. The consequences may be told in a few words. One day Dr Cobbet was found in an adjoining field stabbed to the heart and scalped. The Indian had run away, and meeting with a party of Comanches, he related his wrongs and his revenge. They received him again into the tribe, but the injury was a national one, not sufficiently punished: that week twenty-three Texians lost their scalps, and fourteen women were carried into the wilderness, there to die in captivity. The Comanche chief advised us to keep close to the shores of the Rio Grande, that we might not meet with the parties of the Pawnee Loups; and so much was he pleased with us, that he resolved to turn out of his way and accompany us with his men some thirty miles farther, when we should be comparatively out of danger. The next morning we started, the chief and I riding close together and speaking of the Shoshones. We exchanged our knives as a token of friendship, and when we parted, he assembled all his men and made the following speech:-- "The young chief of the Shoshones is returning to his brave people across the rugged mountains. Learn his name, so that you may tell your children that they have a friend in Owato Wanisha. He is neither a Shakanath (an Englishman) nor a Kishemoc Comoanak (a long knife, a Yankee). He is a chief among the tribe of our great-grandfathers, he is a chief, though he is very, very young." At this moment all the warriors came, one after the other, to shake hands with me, and when this ceremony was terminated, the chief resumed his discourse. "Owato Wanisha, we met as strangers, we part as friends. Tell your young warriors you have been among the Comanches, and that we would like to know them. Tell them to come, a few or many, to our _waikiams_ (lodges) they will find the moshkataj (buffalo) in plenty. "Farewell, young chief, with a pale face and an Indian heart; the earth be light to thee and thine. May the white Manitou clear for thee the mountain path, and may you never fail to remember _Opishka Toaki_ (the White Raven), who is thy Comanche friend, and who would fain share with thee his home, his wealth, and his wide prairies. I have said: young brother, farewell." The tears stood in our eyes as gallantly the band wheeled round. We watched them till they had all disappeared in the horizon. And these noble fellows were Indians; had they been Texians they would have murdered us to obtain our horses and rifles. Two days after we crossed the Rio Grande, and entered the dreary path of the mountains in the hostile and inhospitable country of the Navahoes and the Crows. [See note 2.] [Note two. The Crows are gallant horsemen; but, although they have assumed the manners and customs of the Shoshones, they are of the Dahcotah breed. There is a great difference between the Shoshone tribes and the Crows. The latter want that spirit of chivalry so remarkable among the Comanches, the Arrapahoes, and the Shoshones--that nobility of feeling which scorns to take an enemy at a disadvantage. I should say that the Shoshone tribes are the lions and the Crows the tigers of these deserts.] We had been travelling eight days on a most awful stony road, when at last we reached the head waters of the Colorado of the West, but we were very weak, not having touched any food during the last five days, except two small rattlesnakes, and a few berries we had picked up on the way. On the morning we had chased a large grizzly bear, but to no purpose; our poor horses and ourselves were too exhausted to follow the animal for any time, and with its disappearance vanished away all hopes of a dinner. It was evening before we reached the river, and, by that time, we were so much maddened with hunger, that we seriously thought of killing one of our horses. Luckily, at that instant we espied a smoke rising from a camp of Indians in a small valley. That they were foes we had no doubt; but hunger can make heroes, and we determined to take a meal at their expense. The fellows had been lucky, for around their tents they had hung upon poles large pieces of meat to dry. They had no horses, and only a few dogs scattered about the camp. We skirted the plain in silence, and at dark we had arrived at three hundred yards from them, concealed by the projecting rocks which formed a kind of belt around the camp. Now was our time. Giving the Shoshone war-whoop and making as much noise as we could, we spurred on our horses, and in a few moments each of us had secured a piece of meat from the poles. The Crows (for the camp contained fifteen Crows and three Arrapahoes), on hearing the war-whoop, were so terrified that they had all run away without ever looking behind them; but the Arrapahoes stood their ground, and having recovered from their first surprise, they assaulted us bravely with their lances and arrows. Roche was severely bruised by his horse falling, and my pistol, by disabling his opponent, who was advancing with his tomahawk, saved his life. Gabriel had coolly thrown his lasso round his opponent, and had already strangled him, while the third had been in the very beginning of the attack run over by my horse. Gabriel lighted on the ground, entered the lodges, cut the strings of all the bows he could find, and, collecting a few more pieces of the meat, we started at a full gallop, not being inclined to wait till the Crows should have recovered from their panic. Though our horses were very tired, we rode thirteen miles more that night, and, about ten o'clock, arrived at a beautiful spot with plenty of fine grass and cool water, upon which both we and our horses stretched ourselves most luxuriously even before eating. Capital jokes were passed round that night while we were discussing the qualities of the mountain-goat flesh, but yet I felt annoyed at our feat; the thing, to be sure, had been gallantly done, still it was nothing better than highway robbery. Hunger, however, is a good palliative for conscience, and, having well rubbed our horses, who seemed to enjoy their grazing amazingly, we turned to repose, watching alternately for every three hours. The next day at noon we met with unexpected sport and company. As we were going along, we perceived two men at a distance, sitting close together upon the ground, and apparently in a vehement conversation. As they were white men, we dismounted and secured our horses, and then crept silently along until we were near the strangers. They were two very queer looking beings; one long and lean, the other short and stout. "Bless me," the fat one said, "bless me, Pat Swiney, but I think the Frenchers will never return, and so we must die here like starved dogs." "Och," answered the thin one, "they have gone to kill game. By St. Patrick, I wish it would come, raw or cooked, for my bowels are twisting like worms on a hook." "Oh, Pat, be a good man; can't you go and pick some berries? my stomach is like an empty bag." "Faith, my legs an't better than yours," answered the Irishman, patting his knee with a kind of angry gesture. And for the first time we perceived that the legs of both of them were shockingly swollen. "If we could only meet with the Welsh Indians or a gold mine," resumed the short man. "Botheration," exclaimed his irascible companion. "Bother them all--the Welsh Indians and the Welsh English." We saw that hunger had made the poor fellows rather quarrelsome, so we kindly interfered with a tremendous war-whoop. The fat one closed his eyes and allowed himself to fall down, while his fellow in misfortune rose up in spite of the state of his legs. "Come," roared he, "come, ye rascally red devils, do your worst without marcy, for I am lame and hungry." There was something noble in his words and pathetic in the I action. Roche, putting his hand on his shoulder, whispered some Irish words in his ear, and the poor fellow almost cut a caper. "Faith," he said, "if you are not a Cork boy you are the devil; but devil or no, for the sake of the old country, give us something to eat--to me and that poor Welsh dreamer. I fear your hellish yell has taken the life out of him." Such was not the case. At the words "something to eat," the fellow opened his eyes with a stare, and exclaimed-- "The Welsh Indians, by St. David!" We answered him with a roar of merriment that rather confused him, and his companion answered-- "Ay! Welsh Indians or Irish Indians, for what I know. Get up, will ye, ye lump of flesh, and politely tell the gentlemen that we have tasted nothing for the last three days." Of course we lost no time in lighting a fire and bringing our horses. The meat was soon cooked, and it was wonderful to see how quickly it disappeared in the jaws of our two new friends. We had yet about twelve pounds of it, and we were entering a country where game would be found daily, so we did not repine at their most inordinate appetites, but, on the contrary, encouraged them to continue. When the first pangs of hunger were a little soothed, they both looked at us with moist and grateful eyes. "Och," said the Irishman, "but ye are kind gentlemen, whatever you may be, to give us so good a meal when perhaps you have no more." Roche shook him by the hand, "Eat on, fellow," he said, "eat on and never fear. We will afterwards see what can be done for the legs." As to the Welshman, he never said a word for a full half hour. He would look, but could neither speak nor hear, so intensely busy was he with an enormous piece of half-raw flesh, which he was tearing and swallowing like a hungry wolf. There is, however, an end to every thing and when satiety had succeeded to want, they related to us the circumstance that had led them where they were. They had come as journeymen with a small caravan going from St. Louis to Astoria. On the Green River they had been attacked by a war-party of the Black-feet, who had killed all except them, thanks to the Irishman's presence of mind, who pushed his fat companion into a deep fissure of the earth, and jumped after him. Thus they saved their bacon, and had soon the consolation of hearing the savages carrying away the goods, leading the mules towards the north. For three days they had wandered south, in the hope of meeting with some trappers, and this very morning they had fallen in with two French trappers, who told them to remain there and repose till their return, as they were going after game. While they were narrating their history, the two trappers arrived with a fat buck. They were old friends, having both of them travelled and hunted with Gabriel. We resolved not to proceed any further that day, and they laughed a great deal when we related to them our prowess against the Crows. An application of bruised leaves of the Gibson weed upon the legs of the two sufferers immediately soothed their pain, and the next morning they were able to use Roche's and Gabriel's horses, and to follow us to Brownhall, an American fur-trading port, which place we reached in two days. There we parted from our company, and rapidly continued our march towards the settlement. Ten days did we travel thus in the heart of a fine country, where game at every moment crossed our path. We arrived in the deserted country of the Bonnaxes, and were scarcely two days' journey from the Eastern Shoshone boundary, when, as ill luck would have it, we met once more with our old enemies, the Arrapahoes. This time, however, we were determined not to be put any more on dog's meat allowance, and to fight, if necessary, in defence of our liberty. We were surrounded, but not yet taken and space being ours and our rifles true, we hoped to escape, not one of our enemies having, as we well knew, any fire-arms. They reduced their circle smaller and smaller, till they stood at about a hundred and fifty yards from us; their horses, fat and plump, but of the small wild breed, and incapable of running a race with tall and beautiful Mexican chargers. At that moment Gabriel raised his hand, as if for a signal; we all three darted like lightning through the line of warriors, who were too much taken by surprise even to use their bows. They soon recovered from their astonishment, and giving the war-whoop, with many ferocious yells of disappointment, dashed after us at their utmost speed. Their horses, as I have said, could not run a race with ours, but in a long chase their hardy little animals would have had the advantage, especially as our own steeds had already performed so long a journey. During the two first hours we kept them out of sight, but towards dark, as our beasts gave in, we saw their forms in the horizon becoming more and more distinct, while, to render our escape less probable, we found ourselves opposed in front by a chain of mountains, not high, but very steep and rugged. "On, ahead, we are safe!" cried Gabriel. Of course, there was no time for explanation, and ten minutes more saw us at the foot of the mountain. "Not a word, but do as I do," again said my companion. We followed his example by unsaddling our animals and taking off the bridles, with which we whipped them. The poor things, though tired, galloped to the south, as if they were aware of the impending danger. "I understand, Gabriel," said I, "the savages cannot see us in the shades of these hills; they will follow our horses by the sounds." Gabriel chuckled with delight. "Right," said he, "right enough, but it is not all. I know of a boat on the other side of the mountain, and the Ogden river will carry us not far from the Buona Ventura." I started. "A mistake," I exclaimed, "dear friend, a sad mistake, we are more than thirty miles from the river." "From the main river, yes," answered he, shaking my hand, "but many an otter have I killed in a pretty lake two miles from here, at the southern side of this bill. There I have a boat well concealed, as I hope; and it is a place where we may defy all the Arrapahoes, and the Crows to back them. From that lake to the river it is but thirty miles' paddling in a smooth canal, made either by nature or by a former race of men." I need not say how cheerfully we walked these two miles, in spite of the weight of our saddles, rifles, and accoutrements, our ascent was soon over, and striking into a small tortuous deer-path, we perceived below us the transparent sheet of water, in which a few stars already reflected their pale and tremulous light. When we reached the shore of the lake, we found ourselves surrounded by vast and noble ruins, like those on the Buona Ventura, but certainly much more romantic. Gabriel welcomed us to his trapping-ground, as a lord in his domain, and soon brought out a neat little canoe, from under a kind of ancient vault. "This canoe," said he, "once belonged to one of the poor fellows that was murdered with the Prince Seravalle. We brought it here six years ago with great secrecy; it cost him twenty dollars, a rifle, and six blankets. Now, in the middle of this lake there is an island, where he and I lived together, and where we can remain for months without any fear of Indians or starvation." We all three entered the canoe, leaving our saddles behind us to recover them on the following day. One hour's paddling brought us to the island, and it was truly a magnificent spot. It was covered with ruins; graceful obelisks were shaded by the thick foliage of immense trees, and the soft light of the moon beaming on the angles of the ruined monuments, gave to the whole scenery the hue of an Italian landscape. "Here we are safe," said Gabriel, "and to-morrow you will discover that my old resting-place is not deficient in comfort." As we were very tired, we laid down and soon slept, forgetting [in] this little paradise the dangers and the fatigues of the day. Our host's repose, however, was shorter than mine, for long before morn he had gone to fetch our saddles. Roche and I would probably have slept till his return, had we not been awakened by the report of a rifle, which came down to us, repeated by a thousand echoes. An hour of intense anxiety was passed, till at last we saw Gabriel paddling towards us. The sound of the rifle had, however, betrayed our place of concealment, and as Gabriel neared the island, the shore opposite to us began to swarm with our disappointed enemies, who, in all probability had camped in the neighbourhood. As my friend landed, I was beginning to scold him for his imprudence in using his rifle under our present circumstances, when a glance shewed me at once he had met with an adventure similar to mine near Santa Fe. In the canoe lay the skin of a large finely-spotted jaguar, and by it a young cub, playing unconsciously with the scalping-knife, yet reeking in its mother's blood. "Could not help it,--self-defence!" exclaimed he, jumping on shore. "Now the red devils know where we are, but it is a knowledge that brings them little good. The lake is ten fathoms in depth, and they will not swim three miles under the muzzles of our rifles. When they are tired of seeing us fishing, and hearing us laughing, they will go away like disappointed foxes." So it proved. That day we took our rifles and went in the canoe to within eighty yards of the Indians, on the main land, we fishing for trouts, and inviting them to share in our sport. They yelled awfully, and abused us not a little, calling us by all the names their rage could find: squaws, dogs of Pale-faces, cowards, thieves, etcetera. At last, however, they retired in the direction of the river, hoping, yet to have us in their power; but so little had we to fear, that we determined to pass a few days on the island, that we might repose from our fatigues. When we decided upon continuing our route, Gabriel and Roche were obliged to leave their saddles and bridles behind, as the canoe was too small for ourselves and luggage. This was a misfortune which could be easily repaired at the settlement, and till then saddles, of course, were useless. We went on merrily from forty-five to fifty miles every day, on the surface of the most transparent and coolest water in the world. During the night we would land and sleep on the shore. Game was very plentiful, for at almost every minute we would pass a stag or a bull drinking; sometimes at only twenty yards' distance. During this trip on the Ogden river, we passed four other magnificent lakes, but not one of them bearing any marks of former civilisation, as on the shores of the first one which had sheltered us. We left the river two hundred and forty miles from where we had commenced our navigation, and, carrying our canoe over a portage of three miles, we launched it again upon one of the tributaries of the Buona Ventura, two hundred miles north-east from the settlement. The current was now in our favour, and in four days more we landed among my good friends, the Shoshones, who, after our absence of nine months, received us with almost a childish joy. They had given us up for dead, and suspecting the Crows of having had a hand in our disappearance, they had made an invasion into their territory. Six days after our arrival, our three horses were perceived swimming across the river; the faithful animals had also escaped from our enemies, and found their way back to their masters and their native prairies. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note one. The word Pawnee signifies "_exiled_," therefore it does not follow that the three tribes bearing the same name belong to the same nation. The Grand Pawnees, the tribe among whom Mr Murray resided, are of Dahcotah origin, and live along the shores of the river Platte; the Pawnee Loups are of the Algonquin race, speaking quite another language, and occupying the country situated between the northern forks of the same river. Both tribes are known among the trappers to be the "Crows of the East;" that is to say, thieves and treacherous. They cut their hair short, except on the scalp, as is usual among the nations which they have sprung from. The third tribe of that name is called Pawnee Pict; these are of Comanche origin and Shoshone race, wearing their hair long, and speaking the same language as all the western great prairie tribes. They live upon the Red River, which forms the boundary betwixt North Texas and the Western American boundary, and have been visited by Mr Cattlin, who mentions them in his work. The Picts are constantly at war with the two other tribes of Pawnees; and though their villages are nearly one thousand miles distant from those of their enemy, their war-parties are continually scouring the country of the "Exiles of the East"--"_Pa-wah-nejs_." CHAPTER FIFTEEN. During my long absence and captivity among the Arrapahoes, I had often reflected upon the great advantages which would accrue if, by any possibility, the various tribes which were of Shoshone origin could be induced to unite with them in one confederacy; and the more I reflected upon the subject, the more resolved I became, that if ever I returned to the settlement, I would make the proposition to our chiefs in council. The numbers composing these tribes were as follows:--The Shoshones, amounting to about 60,000, independent of the mountain tribes, which we might compute at 10,000 more; the Apaches, about 40,000; the Arrapahoes, about 20,000; the Comanches and the tribes springing from them, at the lowest computation, amounting to 60,000 more. Speaking the same language, having the same religious formula, the same manners and customs; nothing appeared to me to be more feasible. The Arrapahoes were the only one tribe which was generally at variance with us, but they were separated from the Shoshones much later than the other tribes, and were therefore even more Shoshone than the Apaches and Comanches. Shortly after my return, I acted upon my resolution. I summoned all the chiefs of our nation to a great council, and in the month of August, 1839, we were all assembled outside of the walls of the settlement. After the preliminary ceremonies, I addressed them:-- "Shoshones! brave children of the Grand Serpent! my wish is to render you happy, rich, and powerful. During the day I think of it; I dream of it in my sleep. At last, I have had great thoughts--thoughts proceeding from the Manitou. Hear now the words of Owato Wanisha; he is young, very young; his skin is that of a Pale-face, but his heart is a Shoshone's. "When you refused to till the ground, you did well, for it was not in your nature--the nature of man cannot be changed like that of a moth. Yet, at that time, you understood well the means which give power to a great people. Wealth alone can maintain the superiority that bravery has asserted. Wealth and bravery make strength--strength which nothing can break down, except the great Master of Life. "The Shoshones knew this a long time ago; they are brave, but they have no wealth; and if they still keep their superiority, it is because their enemies are at this time awed by the strength and the cunning of their warriors. But the Shoshones, to keep their ground, will some day be obliged to sleep always on their borders, to repel their enemies. They will be too busy to fish and to hunt. Their squaws and children will starve! Even now the evil has begun. What hunting and what fishing have you had this last year? None! As soon as the braves had arrived at their hunting-ground, they were obliged to return back to defend their squaws and to punish their enemies. "Now, why should not the Shoshones put themselves at once above the reach of such chances? why should they not get rich? They object to planting grain and tobacco. They do well, as other people can do that for them; but there are many other means of getting strength and wealth. These I will teach to my tribe! "The Shoshones fight the Crows, because the Crows are thieves; the Flat-heads, because they are greedy of our buffaloes; the Umbiquas, because they steal horses. Were it not for them, the children of the Grand Serpent would never fight; their lodges would fill with wealth, and that wealth would purchase all the good things of the white men from distant lands. These white men come to the Watchinangoes (Mexicans), to take the hides of their oxen, the wool of their sheep. They would come to us, if we had anything to offer them. Let us then call them, for we have the hides of thousands of buffaloes; we have the furs of the beaver and the otter; we have plenty of copper in our mountains, and of gold in our streams. "Now, hear me. When a Shoshone chief thinks that the Crows will attack his lodge, he calls his children and his nephews around him. A nation can do the same. The Shoshones have many brave children in the prairies of the South; they have many more on the borders of the Yankees. All of them think and speak like their ancestors; they are the same people. Now would it not be good and wise to have all these brave grandchildren and grand-nephews as your neighbours and allies, instead of the Crows, the Cayuses, and the Umbiquas? Yes, it would. Who would dare to come from the north across a country inhabited by the warlike Comanches, or from the south and the rising sun, through the wigwams of the Apaches? The Shoshones would then have more than 30,000 warriors; they would sweep the country, from the sea to the mountains; from the river of the north (Columbia) to the towns of the Watchinangoes. When the white men would come in their big canoes as traders and friends, we would receive them well--if the come as foes, we will laugh at them, and whip them like dogs. These are the thoughts which I wanted to make known to the Shoshones. "During my absence, I have seen the Apaches and the Comanches. They are both great nations. Let us send some wise men to invite them to return to their fathers; let our chiefs offer them wood, land, and water. I have said." As long as I spoke, the deepest silence reigned over the whole assembly; but as soon as I sat down, and began smoking, there was a general movement, which showed me that I had made an impression. The old great chief rose, however, and the murmurs were hushed. He spoke:-- "Owato Wanisha has spoken. I have heard. It was a strange vision, a beautiful dream. My heart came young again, my body lighter, and my eyes more keen. Yet I cannot see the future; I must fast and pray, I must ask the great Master of Life to lend me his wisdom. "I know the Comanches, I know the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes. They are our children; I know it. The Comanches have left us a long, long time, but the Apaches and Arrapahoes have not yet forgotten the hunting-grounds where their fathers were born. When I was but a young hunter, they would come every snow to the lodge of our Manitou, to offer their presents. It was long before any Pale-face had passed the mountains. Since that the leaves of the oaks have grown and died eighty times. It is a long while for a man, but for a nation it is but as yesterday. "They are our children,--it would be good to have them with us; they would share our hunts; we would divide our wealth with them. Then we would be strong. Owato Wanisha has spoken well; he hath learned many mysteries with the _Macota Conaya_ (black robes, priests); he is wise. Yet, as I have said, the red-skin chiefs must ask wisdom from the Great Master. He will let us know what is good and what is bad. At the next moon we will return to the council. I have said." All the chiefs departed, to prepare for their fasting and ceremonies, while Gabriel, Roche, my old servant, and myself; concerted our measures so as to insure the success of my enterprise. My servant I despatched to Monterey, Gabriel to the nearest village of the Apaches, and as it was proper, according to Indian ideas, that I should be out of the way during the ceremonies, so as not to influence any chief; I retired with Roche to the boat-house, to pass the time until the new moon. Upon the day agreed upon, we were all once more assembled at the council-ground on the shores of the Buona Ventura. The chiefs and elders of the tribe had assumed a solemn demeanour and even the men of dark deeds (the Medecins) and the keepers of the sacred lodges had made their appearance, in their professional dresses, so as to impress upon the beholders the importance of the present transaction. One of the sacred lodge first rose, and making a signal with his hand, prepared to speak:-- "Shoshones," said he, "now has come the time in which our nation must either rise above all others, as the eagle of the mountains rises above the small birds, or sink down and disappear from the surface of the earth. Had we been left such as we were before the Pale-faces crossed the mountains, we would have needed no other help but a Shoshone heart and our keen arrows to crush our enemies; but the Pale-faces have double hearts, as well as a double tongue; they are friends or enemies as their thirst for wealth guides them. They trade with the Shoshones, but they also trade with the Crows and the Umbiquas. The young chief, Owato Wanisha, hath proposed a new path to our tribe; he is young, but he has received his wisdom from the Black-gowns, who,--of all men, are the most wise. I have heard, as our elders and ancient chiefs have also heard, the means by which he thinks we can succeed; we have fasted, we have prayed to the Master of Life to show unto us the path which we must follow. Shoshones, we live in a strange time! Our great Manitou bids us Red-skins obey the Pale-face, and follow him to conquer or die. I have said! The chief of many winters will now address his warriors and friends!" A murmur ran through the whole assembly, who seemed evidently much moved by this political speech from one whom they were accustomed to look upon with dread, as the interpreter of the will of Heaven. The old chief, who had already spoken in the former council, now rose and spoke with a tremulous, yet distinct voice. "I have fasted, I have prayed, I have dreamed. Old men, who have lived almost all their life, have a keener perception to read the wishes of the Master of Life concerning the future. I am a chief, and have been a chief during sixty changes of the season. I am proud of my station, and as I have struck deepest in the heart of our enemies, I am jealous of that power which is mine, and would yield it to no one, if the great Manitou did not order it. When this sun will have disappeared behind the salt-water, I shall no longer be a chief! Owato Wanisha will guide our warriors, he will preside in council, for two gods are with him--the Manitou of the Pale-faces and the Manitou of the Red-skins. "Hear my words, Shoshones! I shall soon join my father and grandfather in the happy lands, for I am old. Yet, before my bones are buried at the foot of the hills, it would brighten my heart to see the glory of the Shoshones, which I know must be in a short time. Hear my words! Long ages ago some of our children, not finding our hunting-grounds wide enough for the range of their arrows, left us. They first wandered in the south, and in the beautiful prairies of the east, under a climate blessed by the good spirits. They grew and grew in number till their families were as numerous as ours, and as they were warriors and their hearts big, they spread themselves, and, soon crossing the big mountains, their eagle glance saw on each side of their territory the salt-water of the sunrise and the salt-water of the sunset. These are the Comanches, a powerful nation. The Comanches even now have a Shoshone heart, a Shoshone tongue. Owato Wanisha has been with them; he says they are friends, and have not forgotten that they are the children of the Great Serpent. "Long, long while afterwards, yet not long enough that it should escape the memory and the records of our holy men, some other of our children, hearing of the power of the Comanches, of their wealth, of their beautiful country, determined also to leave us and spread to the south. These are the Apaches. From the top of the big mountains, always covered with snow, they look towards the bed of the sun. They see the green grass of the prairie below them, and afar the blue salt-water. Their houses are as numerous as the stars in heaven, their warriors as thick as the shells in the bottom of our lakes. They are brave; they are feared by the Pale-faces,--by all; and they, too, know that we are their fathers; their tongue is our tongue; their Manitou our Manitou, their heart a portion of our heart; and never has the knife of a Shoshone drunk the blood of an Apache, nor the belt of an Apache suspended the scalp of a Shoshone. "And afterwards, again, more of our children left us. But that time they left us because we were angry. They were a few families of chiefs who had grown strong and proud. They wished to lord over our wigwams, and we drove them away, as the panther drives away her cubs, when their claws and teeth have been once turned against her. These are the Arrapahoes. They are strong and our enemies, yet they are a noble nation. I have in my lodge twenty of their scalps; they have many of ours. They fight by the broad light of the day, with the lance, bow, and arrows; they scorn treachery. Are they not, although rebels and unnatural children, still the children the Shoshones? Who ever heard of the Arrapahoes entering the war-path in night? No one! They are no Crows, no Umbiquas, no Flat-heads! They can give death, they know how to receive it,--straight and upright, knee to knee, breast to breast, and their eye drinking the glance of their foe. "Well, these Arrapahoes are our neighbours; often, very often, too much so (as many of our widows can say), when they unbury their tomahawk and enter the war-path against the Shoshones. Why; can two suns light the same prairie, or two male eagles cover the same nest? No. Yet numerous stars appear during night all joined together and obedient to the moon. Blackbirds and parrots will unite their numerous tribes, and take the same flight to seek all together a common rest and shelter for a night; it is a law of nature. The Red-skin knows none but the laws of nature. The Shoshone is an eagle on the hills, a bright sun in the prairie, so is an Arrapahoe; they must both struggle and fight till one sun is thrown into darkness, or one eagle, blind and winged, falls down the rocks and leaves the whole nest to its conqueror. The Arrapahoes would not fight a cowardly Crow except for self-defence, for he smells of carrion; nor would a Shoshone. "Crows, Umbiquas, and Flat-heads, Cayuses, Bonnaxes, and Callapoos can hunt all together, and rest together; they are the blackbirds and the parrots; they must do so, else the eagle should destroy them during the day, or the hedgehog during the night. "Now, Owato Wanisha, or his Manitou, has offered a bold thing. I have thought of it, I have spoken of it to the spirits of the Red-skin; they said it was good; I say it is good! I am a chief of many winters; I know what is good, I know what is bad! Shoshones, hear me! my voice is weak, come nearer; hearken to my words, hist! I hear a whisper under the ripples of the water, I hear it in the waving of the grass, I feel it on the breeze!--hist, it is the whisper of the Master of Life,-- hist!" At this moment the venerable chief appeared abstracted, his face flushed; then followed a trance, as if he were communing with some invisible spirit. Intensely and silently did the warriors watch the struggles of his noble features; the time had come in which the minds of the Shoshones were freed of their prejudices, and dared to contemplate the prospective of a future general domination over the western continent of America. The old chief raised his hand, and he spoke again:-- "Children, for you are my children! Warriors, for you are all brave! Chiefs, for you are all chiefs! I have seen a vision. It was a cloud, and the Manitou was upon it. The cloud gave way; and behind I saw a vast nation, large cities, rich wigwams, strange boats, and great parties of warriors, whose trail was so long that I could not see the beginning nor the end. It was in a country which I felt within me was extending from the north, where all is ice, down to the south, where all is fire! Then a big voice was heard! It was not a war-whoop, it was not the yell of the fiends, it was not the groan of the captive tied to the stake; it was a voice of glory, that shouted the name of the Shoshones--for all were Shoshones. There were no Pale-faces among them,--none! Owato Wanisha was there, but he had a red skin, and his hair was black; so were his two fathers, but they were looking young; so was his aged and humble friend, but his limbs seemed to have recovered all the activity and vigour of youth; so were his two young friends, who have fought so bravely at the Post, when the cowardly Umbiquas entered our grounds. This is all what I have heard, all what I have seen; and the whisper said to me, as the vision faded away, `Lose no time, old chief, the day has come! Say to thy warriors Listen to the young Pale-face. The Great Spirit of the Red-skin will pass into his breast, and lend him some words that the Shoshone will understand.' "I am old and feeble; I am tired, arise, my grandson Owato Wanisha; speak to my warriors; tell them the wishes of the Great Spirit. I have spoken." Thus called upon, I advanced to the place which the chief had left vacant, and spoke in my turn:-- "Shoshones, fathers, brothers, warriors,--I am a Pale-face, but you know all my heart is a Shoshone's. I am young, but no more a child. It is but a short time since that I was a hunter; since that time the Manitou has made me a warrior, and led me among strange and distant tribes, where he taught me what I should do to render the Shoshones a great people. Hear my words, for I have but one tongue; it is the tongue of my heart, and in my heart now dwells the Good Spirit. Wonder not, if I assume the tone of command to give orders; the orders I will give are the Manitou's. "The twelve wisest heads of the Shoshones will go to the Arrapahoes. With them they will take presents; they will take ten sons of chiefs, who have themselves led men on the war-path; they will take ten young girls, fair to look at, daughters of chiefs, whose voices are soft as the warbling of the birds in the fall. At the great council of the Arrapahoes, the ten girls will be offered to ten great chiefs, and ten great chiefs will offer their own daughters to our ten young warriors; they will offer peace for ever; they will exchange all the scalps, and they will may that their fathers, the Shoshones, will once more open their arms to their brave children. Our best hunting-ground shall be theirs; they will fish the salmon of our rivers; they will be Arrapahoes Shoshones; we will become Shoshones Arrapahoes. I have already sent to the settlement of the Watchinangoes my ancient Pale-face friend of the stout heart and keen eye; shortly we will see at the Post a vessel with arms, ammunition, and presents for the nation. I will go myself with a party of warriors to the prairies of the Apaches, and among the Comanches. "Yet I hear within me a stout voice, which I must obey. My grandfather, the old chief, has said he should be no more a chief. I was wrong, very wrong; the Manitou is angry. Is the buffalo less a buffalo when he grows old, or the eagle less an eagle when a hundred winters have whitened his wings? No! their nature cannot change, not more than that of a chief, and that chief, a chief of the Shoshones! "Owato Wanisha will remain what he is; he is too young to be the great chief of the whole of a great nation. His wish is good, but his wisdom is of yesterday; he cannot rule. To rule belongs to those who have deserved, doing so, by long experience. No! Owato Wanisha will lead his warriors to the war-path, or upon the trail of the buffalo; he will go and talk to the grandchildren of the Shoshones; more he cannot do! "Let now the squaws prepare the farewell meal, and make ready the green paint; to-morrow I shall depart, with fifty of my young men. I have spoken." The council being broken up, I had to pass through the ceremony of smoking the pipe and shaking hands with those who could call themselves warriors. On the following morning, fifty magnificent horses, richly caparisoned, were led to the lawn before the council lodge. Fifty warriors soon appeared, in their gaudiest dresses, all armed with the lance, bow, and lasso, and rifle suspended across the shoulder. Then there was a procession of all the tribe, divided into two bands, the first headed by the chiefs and holy men; the other, by the young virgins. Then the dances commenced; the elders sang their exploits of former days, as an example to their children; the young men exercised themselves at the war-post; and the matrons, wives, mothers, or sisters of the travellers, painted their faces with green and red, as a token of the nature of their mission. When this task was performed, the whole of the procession again formed their ranks, and joined in a chorus, asking the Manitou for success, and bidding us farewell. I gave the signal; all my men sprang up in their saddles, and the gallant little band, after having rode twice round the council lodge, galloped away into the prairie. Two days after us, another party was to start for the country of the Arrapahoes, with the view of effecting a reconciliation between our two tribes. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. At this time, the generally bright prospects of California were clouding over. Great changes had taken place in the Mexican government, new individuals had sprung into power, and their followers were recompensed with dignities and offices. But, as these offices had been already filled by others, it was necessary to remove the latter, and, consequently, the government had made itself more enemies. Such was the case in California; but that the reader may understand the events which are to follow, it is necessary to draw a brief sketch of the country. I have already said that California embraces four hundred miles of sea-coast upon the Pacific Ocean. On the east, it is bounded by the Californian gulf, forming, in fact, a long peninsula. The only way of arriving at it by land, from the interior of Mexico, is to travel many hundred miles north, across the wild deserts of Sonora, and through tribes of Indians which, from the earliest records down to our days, have always been hostile to the Spaniards, and, of course, to the Mexicans. Yet far as California is--too far indeed for the government of Mexico to sufficiently protect it, either from Indian inroads or from the depredations of pirates, by which, indeed, the coast has much suffered--it does not prevent the Mexican Government from exacting taxes from the various settlements--taxes enormous in themselves, and so onerous, that they will ever prevent these countries from becoming what they ought to be, under a better government. The most northerly establishment of Mexico on the Pacific Ocean is San Francisco; the next, Monterey; then comes San Barbara, St. Luis Obispo, Buona Ventura, and, finally, St. Diego; besides these sea-ports, are many cities in the interior, such as St. Juan Campestrano, Los Angelos, the largest town in California, and San Gabriel. Disturbances, arising from the ignorance and venality of the Mexican dominion, very often happen in these regions; new individuals are continually appointed to rule them; and these individuals are generally men of broken fortunes and desperate characters, whose extortions become so intolerable that, at last, the Californians, in spite of their lazy dispositions, rise upon their petty tyrants. Such was now the case at Monterey. A new governor had arrived; the old General Morano had, under false pretexts, been dismissed, and recalled to the central department, to answer to many charges preferred against him. The new governor, a libertine of the lowest class of the people, half monk and half soldier, who had carved his way through the world by murder, rapine, and abject submission to his superiors, soon began to stretch an iron hand over the town's-people. The Montereyans will bear much, yet under their apparent docility and moral apathy there lurks a fire which, once excited, pours forth flames of destruction. Moreover, the foreigners established in Monterey had, for a long time, enjoyed privileges which they were not willing to relinquish; and as they were, generally speaking, wealthy, they enjoyed a certain degree of influence over the lower classes of the Mexicans. Immediately after the first extortion of the new governor, the population rose _en masse_, and disarmed the garrison. The presidio was occupied by the insurgents, and the tyrant was happy to escape on board an English vessel, bound to Acapulco. However, on this occasion the Montereyans did not break their fealty to the Mexican government; they wanted justice, and they took it into their own hands. One of the most affluent citizens was unanimously selected governor _pro tempore_, till another should arrive, and they returned to their usual pleasures and apathy, just as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The name of the governor thus driven away was Fonseca. Knowing well that success alone could have justified his conduct, he did not attempt to return to Mexico, but meeting with some pirates, at that time ravaging the coasts in the neighbourhood of Guatimala, he joined them, and, excited by revenge and cupidity, he conceived the idea of conquering California for himself. He succeeded in enlisting into his service some 150 vagabonds from all parts of the earth--runaway sailors, escaped criminals, and, among the number, some forty Sandwich Islanders, brave and desperate fellows, who were allured with the hopes of plunder. I may as well here mention, that there is a great number of these Sandwich Islanders swarming all along the coast of California, between which and the Sandwich Islands a very smart trade is carried on by the natives and the Americans. The vessels employed to perform the voyage are always double manned, and once on the shores of California, usually half if the crew deserts. Accustomed to a warm climate and to a life of indolence, they find themselves perfectly comfortable and happy in the new country. They engage themselves now and then as journeymen, to fold the hides, and, with their earnings, they pass a life of inebriety singularly contrasting with the well-known abstemiousness of the Spaniards. Such men had Fonseca taken into his service, and having seized upon a small store of arms and ammunition, he prepared for his expedition. In the meanwhile the governor of Senora having been apprised of the movements at Monterey, took upon himself to punish the outbreak, imagining that his zeal would be highly applauded by the Mexican government. Just at this period troops having come from Chihuahua, to quell an insurrection of the conquered Indians, he took the field in person, and advanced towards California. Leaving the ex-governor Fonseca and the governor of Senora for a while, I shall return to my operations among the Indians. I have stated, that upon the resolution of the Shoshones to unite the tribes, I had despatched my old servant to Monterey, and Gabriel to the nearest Apache village. This last had found a numerous party of that tribe on the waters of the Colorado of the West, and was coming in the direction which I had myself taken, accompanied by the whole party. We soon met; the Apaches heard with undeniable pleasure the propositions I made unto them, and they determined that one hundred of their chiefs and warriors should accompany me on my return to the Shoshones, in order to arrange with the elders of the tribe the compact of the treaty. On our return we passed through the Arrapahoes, who had already received my messengers, and had accepted as well as given the "brides," which were to consolidate an indissoluble union. As to the Comanches, seeing the distance, and the time which must necessarily be lost in going and returning, I postponed my embassy to them, until the bonds of union between the three nations, Shoshones, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, should be so firmly cemented as not to be broken. The Arrapahoes followed the example of the Apaches; and a hundred warriors, all mounted and equipped, joined us to go and see their fathers, the Shoshones, and smoke with them the calumet of eternal peace. We were now a gallant band, two hundred and fifty strong; and in order to find game sufficient for the subsistence of so many individuals, we were obliged to take a long range to the south, so as to fall upon the prairies bordering the Buona Ventura. Chance, however, led us into a struggle, in which I became afterwards deeply involved. Scarcely had we reached the river, when we met with a company of fifteen individuals, composed of some of my old Monterey friends. They were on their way to the settlement, to ask my help against the governor of Senora; and the Indians being all unanimous in their desire to chastise him, and to acquire the good-will of the wealthy people of Monterey, I yielded to circumstances, and altered our course to the south. My old servant had come with the deputation, and from him I learnt the whole of the transaction. It appears that the governor of Senora declared, that he would whip like dogs, and hang the best part of the population of Monterey, principally the Anglo-Saxon settlers, the property of whom he intended to confiscate for his own private use. If he could but have kept his own counsel, he would of a certainty have succeeded, but the Montereyans were aware of his intentions, even before he had reached the borders of California. Deputations were sent to the neighbouring towns, and immediately a small body of determined men started to occupy the passes through which the governor had to proceed. There they learnt with dismay, that the force they would have to contend with was at least ten times more numerous than their own; they were too brave, however, to retire without a blow in defence of their independence, and remembering the intimacy contracted with me, together with the natural antipathy of the Indians against the Watchinangoes, or Mexicans, they determined to ask our help, offering in return a portion of the wealth they could command in cattle, arms, ammunition, and other articles of great value among savages. The governor's army amounted to five hundred men two hundred of them soldiers in uniform, and the remainder half-bred stragglers, fond of pillage, but too cowardly to fight for it. It was agreed that I and my men, being all on horseback, should occupy the prairie, where we would conceal ourselves in an ambush. The Montereyans and their friends were to give way at the approach of the governor, as if afraid of disputing the ground; and then, when the whole of the hostile should be in full pursuit, we were to charge them in flank, and put them to rout. All happened as was anticipated; we mustered about three hundred and fifteen men, acting under one single impulse, and sanguine as to success. On came the governor with his heroes. A queer sight it was, and a noisy set of fellows they were; nevertheless, we could see that they were rather afraid of meeting with opposition, for they stopped at the foot of the hill, and perceiving some eight or ten Montereyans at the top of the pass, they despatched a white flag, to see if it were not possible to make some kind of compromise. Our friends pretended to be much terrified, and retreated down towards the prairie. Seeing this, our opponents became very brave. They marched, galloped, and rushed on without order, till they were fairly in our power; then we gave the war-whoop, which a thousand echoes rendered still more terrible. We fired not a bullet, we shot not an arrow, yet we obtained a signal victory. Soldiers and stragglers threw themselves on the ground to escape from death; while the governor, trusting in his horse's speed, darted away to save himself. Yet his cowardice cost him his life, for his horse tumbling down, he broke his neck. Thus perished the only victim of this campaign. We took the guns and ammunition of our vanquished opponents, leaving them only one fusil for every ten men, with a number of cartridges sufficient to prevent their starving on their return home. Their leader was buried where he had fallen, and thus ended this mock engagement. Yet another battle was to be fought, which, though successful, did not terminate in quite so ludicrous a manner. By this time Fonseca was coasting along the shore, but the south-easterly winds preventing him from making Monterey, he entered the Bay of St. Francisco. This settlement is very rich, its population being composed of the descendants of English and American merchants, who had acquired a fortune in the Pacific trade; it is called _Yerba buena_ (the good grass), from the beautiful meadows of wild clover which extend around it for hundreds of miles. There Fonseca had landed with about two hundred rascals of his own stamp, and his first act of aggression had been to plunder and destroy the little city. The inhabitants of course fled in every direction; and on meeting us, they promised the Indians half of the articles which had been plundered from them, if we could overpower the invaders and recapture them. I determined to surprise the rascals in the midst of their revellings. I divided my little army into three bands, giving to Gabriel the command of the Apaches, with orders to occupy the shores of the bay and destroy the boats, so that the pirates should not escape to their vessels. The Arrapahoes were left in the prairie around the city to intercept those who might endeavour to escape by land. The third party I commanded myself. It consisted of fifty well-armed Shoshones and fifty-four Mexicans from the coast, almost all of them sons of English or American settlers. Early in the morning we entered into what had been, a few days before, a pretty little town. It was now nothing but a heap of ruins, among which a few tents had been spread for night shelter. The sailors and pirates were all tipsy, scattered here and there on the ground, in profound sleep. The Sandwichers, collected in a mass, lay near the tents. Near them stood a large pile of boxes, kegs, bags, etcetera; it was the plunder. We should have undoubtedly seized upon the brigands without any bloodshed had not the barking of the dogs awakened the Sandwichers, who were up in a moment. They gave the alarm, seized their arms, and closed fiercely and desperately with my left wing which was composed of the white men. These suffered a great deal, and broke their ranks; but I wheeled round and surrounded the fellows with my Shoshones, who did not even use their rifles, the lance and tomahawk performing their deadly work in silence, and with such a despatch, that in ten minutes but few of the miserable islanders lived to complain of their wounds. My Mexicans, having rallied, seized upon Fonseca and destroyed many of the pirates in their beastly state of intoxication. Only a few attempted to fight, the greater number staggering towards the beach to seek shelter in their boats. But the Apaches had already performed their duty; the smallest boats they had dragged on shore, the largest they had scuttled and sunk. Charging upon the miserable fugitives, they transfixed them with their spears, and our victory was complete. The pirates remaining on board the two vessels, perceiving how matters stood, saluted us with a few discharges of grape and canister, which did no execution; the sailors, being almost all of them runaway Yankees, were in all probability as drunk as their companions on shore. At last they succeeded in heaving up their anchors, and, favoured by the land-breeze, they soon cleared the bay. Since that time nothing has been heard of them. Fonseca, now certain of his fate, proved to be as mean and cowardly as he had been tyrannical before his defeat. He made me many splendid offers if I would but let him go and try his fortune elsewhere: seeing how much I despised him, he turned to the Mexicans, and tried them one and all; till, finally, perceiving that he had no hope of mercy, he began to blaspheme so horribly that I was obliged to order him to be gagged. The next morning two companies arrived from Monterey, a council was convened, twenty of the citizens forming themselves into a jury. Fonseca was tried and condemned, both as a traitor and a pirate; and, as shooting would have been too great an honour for such a wretch, he was hanged in company with the few surviving Sandwichers. Our party had suffered a little in the beginning of the action; three Mexicans had been killed and eighteen wounded, as well as two Apaches. Of my Shoshones, not one received the smallest scratch; and the Arrapahoes, who had been left to scour the prairie, joined us a short time after the battle with a few scalps. The people of San Francisco were true to their promise; the rescued booty was divided into two equal parts, one of which was offered to the Indians, as had been agreed upon. On the eve of our departure, presents were made to us as a token of gratitude, and of course the Indians, having at the first moment of their confederation, made such a successful and profitable expedition, accepted it as a good presage for the future. Their services being no longer required, they turned towards the north, and started for the settlement under the command of Roche, to follow up their original intentions of visiting the Shoshones. As for us, I remained behind at San Francisco. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Up to the present portion of my narrative, I have lived and kept company with Indians and a few white men who had conformed to their manners and customs. I had seen nothing of civilised life, except during my short sojourn at Monterey, one of the last places in the world to give you a true knowledge of mankind. I was as all Indians are, until they have been deceived and outraged, frank, confiding, and honest. I knew that I could trust my Shoshones, and I thought that I could put confidence in those who were Christians and more civilised. But the reader must recollect that I was but nineteen years of age, and had been brought up as a Shoshone. My youthful ardour had been much inflamed by our late successful conflicts. Had I contented myself with cementing the Indian confederation, I should have done well, but my ideas now went much farther. The circumstances which had just occurred raised in my mind the project of rendering the whole of California independent, and it was my ambition to become the liberator of the country. Aware of the great resources of the territory, of the impassable barriers presented to any large body of men who would invade it from the central parts of Mexico; the more I reflected, the more I was convinced of the feasibility of the undertaking. I represented to the Californians at San Francisco that, under existing circumstances, they would not be able successfully to oppose any force which the government might send by sea from Acapulco; I pointed out to them that their rulers, too happy in having a pretext for plundering them, would show them no mercy, after what had taken place; and I then represented, that if they were at once to declare their independence, and open their ports to strangers, they would, in a short time, become sufficiently wealthy and powerful to overthrow any expedition that might be fitted out against them. I also proposed, as they had no standing troops, to help them with a thousand warriors; but if so, I expected to have a share in the new government that should be established. My San Francisco friends heard me with attention, and I could see they approved the idea; yet there were only a few from among the many who spoke out, and they would not give any final answer until they had conferred with their countrymen at Monterey. They pledged their honour that immediately on their arrival in that city, they would canvas the business, dispatch messengers to the southern settlements, and let me know the result. As it was useless for me to return to the settlement before I knew their decision, I resolved upon taking up my residence at one of the missions on the bay, under the charge of some jolly Franciscan monks. In the convent, or mission, I passed my time pleasantly; the good fathers were all men of sound education, as indeed they all are in Mexico. The holy fathers were more than willing to separate California from the Mexican government; indeed they had many reasons for their disaffection; government had robbed them of their property, and had levied nearly two hundred per cent upon all articles of Californian produce and manufacture. Moreover, when they sold their furs and hides to the foreign traders, they were bound to give one-half of the receipts to the government, while the other half was already reduced to an eighth, by the Mexican process of charging 200 per cent duty upon all goods landed on the shore. They gave me to understand that the missions would, if necessary for my success, assist me with 15, 20, nay, 30,000 dollars. I had a pleasant time with these Padres, for they were all _bon vivants_. Their cellars were well filled with Constantia wine, their gardens highly cultivated, their poultry fat and tender, and their game always had a particular flavour. Had I remained a few months more, I might have taken the vows myself, so well did that lazy, comfortable life agree with my taste; but the Californians had been as active as they had promised to be, and their emissaries came to San Francisco to settle the conditions under which I was to lend my aid. Events were thickening there was no retreat for me, and I prepared for action. After a hasty, though hearty, farewell to my pious and liberal entertainers, I returned to the settlement, to prepare for the opening of the drama, which would lead some of us either to absolute power or to the scaffold. Six weeks after my quitting San Francisco, I was once more on the field and ready for an encounter against the troops dispatched from St. Miguel of Senora, and other central garrisons. On hearing of the defeat of the two governors, about 120 Californians, from Monterey and San Francisco, had joined my forces, either excited by their natural martial spirit, or probably with views of ambition similar to my own. I had with me 1,200 Indians, well equipped and well mounted; but, on this occasion, my own Shoshones were in greater numbers than our new allies. They numbered 800, forming two squadrons, and their discipline was such as would have been admired at the military parades of Europe. Besides them, I had 300 Arrapahoes and 100 Apaches. As the impending contest assumed a character more serious than our two preceding skirmishes, I made some alteration in the command, taking under my own immediate orders a body of 250 Shoshones and the Mexican company, who had brought four small field-pieces. The remainder of my Indians were subdivided into squadrons of 100, commanded by their own respective chiefs. Gabriel, Roche, and my old servant, with two or three clever young Californians, I kept about me, as aides-de-camp. We advanced to the pass, and found the enemy encamped on the plain below. We made our dispositions; our artillery was well posted behind breast-works, in almost an impregnable position, a few miles below the pass, where we had already defeated the governor of Senora. We found ourselves in presence of an enemy inferior in number, but well disciplined, and the owners of four field-pieces heavier than ours. They amounted to about 950, 300 of which were cavalry, and the remainder light infantry, with a small company of artillery. Of course, in our hilly position our cavalry could be of no use, and as to attacking them in the plain, it was too dangerous to attempt it, as we had but 600 rifles to oppose to their superior armament and military discipline. Had it been in a wood, where the Indians could have been under cover of trees, we would have given the war-whoop, and destroyed them without allowing them time to look about them; but as it was, having dismounted the Apaches, and feeling pretty certain of the natural strength of our position, we determined to remain quiet, till a false movement or a hasty attack from the enemy should give us the opportunity of crushing them at a blow. I was playing now for high stakes, and the exuberancy of spirit which had formerly accompanied my actions had deserted me, and I was left a prey to care, and, I must confess, to suspicion; but it was too late to retrace my steps, and moreover, I was too proud not to finish what I had begun, even if it should be at the expense of my life. Happily, the kindness and friendship of Gabriel and Roche threw a brighter hue upon my thoughts; in them I knew I possessed two friends who would never desert me in misfortune whatever they might do in prosperity; we had so long lived and hunted together, shared the same pleasures and the same privations, that our hearts were linked by the strongest ties. The commander who opposed us was an old and experienced officer, and certainly we should have had no chance with him had he not been one of those individuals who, having been appreciated by the former government, was not in great favour with or even trusted by the present one. Being the only able officer in the far west, he had of a necessity been intrusted with this expedition, but only _de nomine_; in fact, he had with him agents of the government to watch him, and who took a decided pleasure in counteracting all his views; they were young men, without any kind of experience, whose only merit consisted in their being more or less related to the members of the existing government. Every one of them wished to act as a general, looking upon the old commander as a mere convenience upon whom they would throw all the responsibility in case of defeat, and from whom they intended to steal the laurels, if any were to be obtained. This commander's name was Martinez; he had fought well and stoutly against the Spaniards during the war of Independence; but that was long ago, and his services had been forgotten. As he had acted purely from patriotism, and was too stern, too proud, and too honest to turn courtier and bow to upstarts in power, he had left the halls of Montezuma with disgust; consequently he had remained unnoticed, advancing not a step; used now and then in time of danger, but neglected when no longer required. I could plainly perceive how little unity there was prevailing among the leaders of our opponents. At some times the position of the army showed superior military genius, at others the infantry were exposed, and the cavalry performing useless evolutions. It was evident that two powers were struggling with each other; one endeavouring to maintain regular discipline, the other following only the impulse of an unsteady and overbearing temper. This discovery, of course, rendered me somewhat more confident, and it was with no small pride I reflected that in my army I alone commanded. It was a pretty sight to look at my Shoshones, who already understood the strength gained by simultaneous action. The Apaches, too, in their frequent encounters with the regular troops, had acquired a certain knowledge of cavalry tactics. All the travellers in Mexico who have met with these intrepid warriors have wondered at their gallant and uniform bearing. The Californians also, having now so much at stake, had assumed a demeanour quite contrary to their usual indolent natures, and their confidence in me was much increased since our success against Fonseca, and the comparison they could now make between the disposition and arrangement of the opposed forces. So elated indeed were they and so positive of success, that they frequently urged me to an immediate attack. But I had determined upon a line of conduct to which I adhered. The Arrapahoes showed themselves a little unruly; brave, and such excellent horsemen, as almost to realise the fable of the Centaurs, charging an enemy with the impetuosity of lightning and disappearing with the quickness of thought, they requested me every moment to engage; but I know too well the value of regular infantry, and how ineffectual would be the efforts of light cavalry against their bayonets. I was obliged to restrain their ardour by every argument I could muster, principally by giving them to understand that by a hasty attack we should certainly lose the booty. The moment came at last. The prudence of the old commander having been evidently overruled by his ignorant coadjutors, the infantry were put in motion, flanked on one side by the cavalry and on the other by the artillery. It was indeed a pitiful movement, for which they paid dearly. I despatched the Arrapahoes to out-flank and charge the cavalry of the enemy when a signal should be made; the Apaches slowly descended the hill in face of the infantry, upon which we opened a destructive fire with our four field-pieces. The infantry behaved well; they never flinched, but stood their ground as brave soldiers should do. The signal to charge was given to the Arrapahoes, and at that moment the Shoshones, who till then had remained inactive with me on the hill, started at full gallop to their appointed duty. The charge of the Arrapahoes was rapid and terrific, and, when the smoke and dust had cleared away, I perceived them in the plain a mile off, driving before them the Mexican cavalry, reduced to half its number. The Shoshones, by a rapid movement, had broken through between the infantry and artillery, forcing the artillerymen to abandon their pieces; then, closing their ranks and wheeling, they attacked fiercely the right flank of the infantry. When I gave the signal to the Arrapahoes to charge, the Apaches quickened their speed and charged the enemy in front; but they were checked by the running fire of the well-disciplined troops, and, in spite of their determination and gallantry, they found in the Mexican bayonets a barrier of steel which their lances could not penetrate. The chances, however, were still ours: the Mexican artillery was in our power, their cavalry dispersed and almost out of sight, and the infantry, though admirably disciplined, was very hardly pressed both in flank and in front. At this juncture I sent Gabriel to bring back the Arrapahoes to the scene of the conflict, for I knew that the Mexican cavalry would never form again until they had reached the borders of Senora. Of course, the coadjutors of Martinez had disappeared with the fugitive cavalry, leaving the old general to regain the lost advantage and to bear the consequences of their own cowardice and folly. Now left master of his actions, this talented officer did not yet despair of success. By an admirable manoeuvre he threw his infantry into two divisions, so as to check both bodies of cavalry until he could form them into a solid square, which, charging with impetuosity through the Shoshones, regained possession of their pieces of artillery, after which, retreating slowly, they succeeded in reaching, without further loss, the ground which they had occupied previous to their advance, which, from its more broken and uneven nature, enabled the infantry to resist a charge of cavalry with considerable advantage. This manoeuvre of the old general, which extricated his troops from their dangerous position and recovered his field-pieces, had also the advantage of rendering our artillery of no further service, as we could not move them down the hill. As the battle was still to be fought, I resolved to attack them before they had time to breathe, and while they were yet panting and exhausted with their recent exertions. Till then the Californians had been merely spectators of the conflict. I now put myself at their head and charged the Mexicans' square in front, while the Shoshones did the same on the left, and the Apaches on the right. Five or six times were we repulsed, and we repeated the charge, the old commander everywhere giving directions and encouraging his men. Roche and I were both wounded, fifteen of the Californians dead, the ranks of Shoshones much thinned by the unceasing fire of the artillery, and the Apaches were giving way in confusion. I was beginning to doubt of success, when Gabriel, having succeeded in recalling the Arrapahoes from their pursuit of the fugitive cavalry, re-formed them, made a furious charge upon the Mexicans on the only side of the square not already assailed, and precisely at the moment when a last desperate effort of the Shoshones and my own body of Californians had thrown the ranks opposed to us into confusion. The brave old commander, perceiving he could no longer keep his ground, retreated slowly, with the intention of gaining the rugged and broken ground at the base of the mountains behind him, where our cavalry could no longer assail him. Perceiving his intention, and determining, if possible, to prevent his retreat, the Arrapahoes having now rejoined us, we formed into one compact body and made a final and decisive charge, which proved irresistible. We broke through their ranks and dispersed them. For a time my command and power ceased; the Indians were following their own custom of killing without mercy, and scalping the dead. One-half of the enemy were destroyed; but Martinez succeeded with the remainder in reaching his intended position. But the Mexican troops considered it useless to contend any more, and shortly afterwards the old general himself rode towards us with a flag, to ascertain the conditions under which we would accept his surrender. Poor man! He was truly an estimable officer. The Indians opened their ranks to let him pass, while all the Californians, who felt for his mortification, uncovered themselves as a mark of respect. The old general demanded a free passage back to Senora, and the big tears were in his eyes as he made the proposal. Speaking of his younger associates, he never used a word to their disparagement, though the slight curl of his lip showed plainly how bitter were his feelings; he knew too that his fate was sealed, and that he alone would bear the disgrace of the defeat. So much was he respected by the Californians, that his request was immediately granted, upon his assurance that, under no circumstance, he would return to California as a foe. As Martinez departed, a Shoshone chief, perceiving that his horse was seriously wounded, dismounted from his own, and addressed him:-- "Chief of the Watchinangoes (Mexicans) and brother brave warrior! a Shoshone can honour as well as fight an enemy: take this horse; it has been the horse of a Red-skin warrior, it will be faithful to the Pale-face." The general bowed upon his saddle, and descended, saying, in few words, that he now learned to esteem the Indian warriors who had overpowered him on that fated day, both by their gallantry and generosity. When the Indian proceeded to change the saddles, Martinez stopped him: "Nay, brother," said he; "keep it with the holsters and their contents, which are more suitable to a conqueror and a young warrior than to a vanquished and broken-hearted old man." Having said this, he spurred his new horse, and soon rejoined his men. We returned to the encampment, and two hours afterwards we saw the Mexicans in full retreat towards the rising sun. That night was one of mourning; our success had been complete, but dearly purchased. The Arrapahoes alone had not suffered. The Apaches had lost thirty men, the Shoshones one hundred and twelve, killed and wounded, and the Montereyans several of their most respected young citizens. On the following day we buried our dead, and when our task was over, certain that we should remain unmolested for a considerable time, we returned to San Francisco--the Indians to receive the promised bounty, and I to make arrangements for our future movements. By the narrative I have given, the reader may have formed an accurate idea of what did take place in California. I subsequently received the Mexican newspapers, containing the account of what occurred; and as these are the organs through which the people of Europe are enlightened, as to the events of these distant regions, I shall quote the pages, to show how truth may be perverted. "_Chihuahua--News of the West--Californian Rebellion_.--This day arrived in our city a particular courier from the Bishop of Senora, bearer of dispatches rather important for the welfare of our government. The spirit of rebellion is abroad; Texas already has separated from our dominions; Yucatan is endeavouring to follow the pernicious example, and California has just now lighted the flambeau of civil war. "It appears that, excited by the bad advices of foreigners, the inhabitants of Monterey obliged the gallant governor to leave his fireside. This warlike officer found the means of forwarding dispatches to Senora, while he himself, uniting a handful of brave and faithful citizens, landed in the bay of San Francisco, in order to punish the rebels. By this time the governor of Senora, with the elite of the corps of the army under his orders, having advanced to his help, was decoyed into the rebels' camp under some peaceful pretext, and shamefully murdered. "It is yet a glory to think that even a Mexican rebel could not have been guilty of so heinous a crime. The performer of that cowardly deed was a Frenchman, living among the Indians of the west, who, for the sake of a paltry sum of gold, came to the aid of the rebels with many thousands of the savages. His next step was to enter San Francisco, and there, the horrors he committed recall to our mind the bloody deeds performed in his country during the great revolution. But what could be expected from a Frenchman? Fonseca was executed as a malefactor, the city plundered, the booty divided among the red warriors; besides an immense sum of money which was levied upon the other establishments, or, to say better, extorted, upon the same footing as the buccaneers of old. "The news having reached the central government of the west, General Martinez assumed upon himself the responsibility of an expedition, which, under the present appearances, shewed his want of knowledge, and his complete ignorance of military tactics. He was met by ten thousand Indians, and a powerful artillery served by the crews of many vessels upon the coast--vessels bearing rather a doubtful character. Too late he perceived his error, but had not the gallantry of repairing it and dying as a Mexican should. He fled from the field almost in the beginning of the action, and had it not been for the desperate efforts of the cavalry, and truly wonderful military talents displayed by three or four young officers who had accompanied him, the small army would have been cut to pieces. We numbered but five hundred men in all, and had but a few killed and wounded, while the enemy left behind them on the field more than twelve hundred slain. "The gallant young officers would have proceeded to San Francisco, and followed up their conquest, had the little army been in possession of the necessary provisions and ammunition; but General Martinez, either from incapacity or treachery, had omitted these two essential necessaries for an army. We are proud and happy to say, that Emanuel Bustamente, the young distinguished officer, of a highly distinguished family, who conducted himself so well in Yucatan during the last struggle, commanded the cavalry, and it is to his skill that we Mexicans owe the glory of having saved our flag from a deep stain. "Postcriptum.--We perceive that the cowardly and mercenary Martinez has received the punishment his treachery so well deserved; during his flight he was met by some Indians and murdered. May divine Providence thus punish all traitors to the Mexican government!" I regret to say that the last paragraph was true. The brave Martinez, who had stood to the last, who had faced death in many battles, had been foully murdered, but not, as was reported, by an Indian: he had fallen under the knife of an assassin--but it was a Mexican who had been bribed to the base deed. Up to the present all had prospered. I was called "The Liberator, the Protector of California." Splendid offers were made to me, and the independence of California would have been secured, had I only had two small vessels to reduce the southern sea-ports which had not yet declared themselves, either fearing the consequences of a rebellion, or disliking the idea of owing their liberation to a foreign condottiere, and a large force of savages. The Apaches returned home with eighty mules loaded with their booty; so did the Arrapahoes with pretty nearly an equal quantity. My Shoshones I satisfied with promises, and returned with them to the settlement, to prepare myself for forthcoming events. A few chapters backwards I mentioned that I had despatched my old servant to Monterey. He had taken with him a considerable portion of my jewels and gold to make purchases, which were firmly to establish my power over the Indian confederacy. A small schooner, loaded with the goods purchased, started from Monterey; but never being seen afterwards, it is probable that she fell into the hands of the pirate vessels which escaped from San Francisco. I had relied upon this cargo to satisfy the just demands of my Indians upon my arrival at the settlement. The loss was a sad blow to me. The old chief had just died, the power had devolved entirely upon me, and it was necessary, according to Indian custom, that I should give largess, and shew a great display of liberality on my accession to the command of the tribe; so necessary, indeed, was it, that I determined upon returning to Monterey, _via_ San Francisco, to provide what was requisite. This step was a fatal one, as will be shewn when I narrate the circumstances which had occurred during my absence. Upon hearing the news of our movements in the west, the Mexican government, for a few days, spoke of nothing but extermination. The state of affairs, however, caused them to think differently; they had already much work upon their hands, and California was very far off. They hit upon a plan, which, if it shewed their weakness, proved their knowledge of human nature. While I was building castles in the air, agents from Mexico privately came to Monterey and decided the matter. They called together the Americans domiciled at Monterey, who were the wealthiest and the most influential of the inhabitants, and asked them what it was that they required from the government? Diminution of taxes, answered they. It was agreed. What next? Reduction of duty on foreign goods? Agreed again. And next? Some other privileges and dignities. All these were granted. In return for this liberality, the Mexican agents then demanded that two or three of the lower Mexicans should be hung up for an example, and that the Frenchman and his two white companions should be decoyed and delivered up to the government. This was consented to by these honest domiciliated Americans, and thus did they arrange to sacrifice me who had done so much for them. Just as everything had been arranged upon between them and the agents, I most unfortunately made my appearance, with Gabriel and Roche, at the mission at San Francisco. As soon as they heard of our arrival, we were requested to honour them with our company at a public feast, in honour of our success!! It was the meal of Judas. We were all three seized and handed over to the Mexican agents. Bound hand and foot, under an escort of thirty men, the next morning we set off to cross the deserts and prairies of Senora, to gain the Mexican capital, where we well knew that a gibbet was to be our fate. Such was the grateful return we received from those who had called us to their assistance. Such was my first lesson in civilised life! Note: Americans, or Europeans, who wish to reside in Mexico, are obliged to conform to the Catholic religion, or they cannot hold property and become resident merchants. These were the apostates for wealth who betrayed me. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. As circumstances, which I have yet to relate, have prevented my return to the Shoshones, and I shall have no more to say of their movements in these pages, I would fain pay them a just tribute before I continue my narrative. I wish the reader to perceive how much higher the Western Indians are in the scale of humanity than the tribes of the East, so well described by Cooper and other American writers. There is a chivalrous spirit in these rangers of the western prairies not to be exceeded in history or modern times. The four tribes of Shoshones, Arrapahoes, Comanches, and Apaches never attempt, like the Dahcotah and Algonquin, and other tribes of the East, to surprise an enemy; they take his scalp, it is true, but they take it in the broad day; neither will they ever murder the squaws, children, and old men, who may be left unprotected when the war-parties are out. In fact, they are honourable and noble foes, sincere and trustworthy friends. In many points they have the uses of ancient chivalry among them, so much so as to induce me to surmise that they may have brought them over with them when they first took possession of the territory. Every warrior has his nephew, who is selected as his page; he performs the duty of a squire, in ancient knight errantry, takes charge of his horse, arms, and accoutrements; and he remains in this office until he is old enough to gain his own spurs. Hawking is also a favourite amusement, and the chiefs ride out with the falcon, or small eagle, on their wrist or shoulder. Even in their warfare, you often may imagine that you were among the knights of ancient days. An Arrapahoe and a Shoshone warrior armed with a buckler and their long lances, will single out and challenge each other; they run a tilt, and as each has warded off the blow, and passed unhurt, they will courteously turn back and salute each other, as an acknowledgment of their enemy's bravery and skill. When these challenges take place, or indeed in any single combat without challenge, none of these Indians will take advantage of possessing a superior weapon. If one has a rifle and knows that his opponent has not, he will throw his rifle down, and only use the same weapon as his adversary. I will now relate some few traits of character, which will prove the nobility of these Indians. [See note 1.] Every year during the season dedicated to the performing of the religious ceremonies, premiums are given by the holy men and elders of the tribe to those among the young men who have the most distinguished themselves. The best warrior receives feather of the black eagle; the most successful hunter obtains robe of buffalo-skin, painted inside, and representing some of his most daring exploits; the most virtuous has for his share coronet made either of gold or silver; and these premiums an suspended in their wigwams, as marks of honour, and handed down to their posterity. In fact, they become a kind of ecusson which ennobles a family. Once during the distribution of these much-coveted prizes, a young man of twenty-two was called by the chiefs to receive the premium of virtue. The Indian advanced towards his chiefs when an elder of the tribe rising, addressed the whole audience. He pointed the young man out, as one whose example should be followed, and recorded, among many other praiseworthy actions that three squaws, with many children, having been reduced to misery by the death of their husbands in the last war agains the Crows; this young man, although the deceased were the greatest foes of his family, undertook to provide for their widow and children till the boys, grown up, would be able to provide for themselves and their mothers. Since that time, he had given them the produce of his chase, reserving to himself nothing but what was strictly necessary to sustain the wants of nature. This was a noble and virtuous act, one that pleased the Manitou. It was an example which all the Shoshones should follow. The young man bowed, and as the venerable chief was stooping to put the coronet upon his head, he started back and, to the astonishment of all, refused the premium. "Chiefs, warriors, elders of the Shoshones, pardon me! You know the good which I have done, but you know not in what I have erred. My first feeling was to receive the coronet, and conceal what wrong I had done; but a voice in my heart forbids my taking what others have perchance better deserved. "Hear me, Shoshones! the truth must be told; hear my shame! One day, I was hungry; it was in the great prairies. I had killed no game, and I was afraid to return among our young men with empty hands. I remained four days hunting, and still I saw neither buffaloes nor bears. At last, I perceived the tent of an Arrapahoe. I went in; there was no one there, and it was full of well-cured meat. I had not eaten for five days; I was hungry, and I became a thief. I took away a large piece, and ran away like a cowardly wolf. I have said: the prize cannot be mine." A murmur ran through the assembly, and the chiefs, holy men, and elders consulted together. At last, the ancient chief advanced once more towards the young man, and took his two hands between his own. "My son," he said, "good, noble, and brave; thy acknowledgment of thy fault and self-denial in such a moment make thee as pure as a good spirit in the eyes of the great Manitou. Evil, when confessed and repented of, is forgotten; bend thy head, my son, and let me crown thee. The premium is twice deserved and twice due." A Shoshone warrior possessed a beautiful mare; no horse in the prairie could outspeed her, and in the buffalo or bear hunt she would enjoy the sport as much as her master, and run alongside the huge beast with great courage and spirit. Many propositions were made to the warrior to sell or exchange the animal; but he would not hear of it. The dumb brute was his friend, his sole companion; they had both shared the dangers of battle and the privations of prairie travelling; why should he part with her? The fame of that mare extended so far, that in a trip he made to San Francisco, several Mexicans offered him large sums of money; nothing, however, could shake him in his resolution. In those countries, though horses will often be purchased at the low price of one dollar, it often happens that a steed, well-known as a good hunter or a rapid pacer, will bring sums equal to those paid in England for a fine race-horse. One of the Mexicans, a wild young man, resolved to obtain the mare, whether or no. One evening, when the Indian was returning from some neighbouring plantation, the Mexican laid down in some bushes at a short distance from the road, and moaned as if in the greatest pain. The good and kind-hearted Indian having reached the spot, heard his cries of distress, dismounted from his mare, and offered any assistance: it was nearly dark, and although he knew the sufferer to be a Pale-face, yet he could not distinguish his features. The Mexican begged for a drop of water, and the Indian dashed into a neighbouring thicket to procure it for him. As soon as the Indian was sufficiently distant, the Mexican vaulted upon the mare, and apostrophised the Indian:-- "You fool of a Red-skin, not cunning enough for a Mexican: you refused my gold; now I have the mare for nothing, and I will make the trappers laugh when I tell them how easily I have outwitted a Shoshone." The Indian looked at the Mexican for a few moments in silence, for his heart was big, and the shameful treachery wounded him to the very core. At last, he spoke:-- "Pale-face," said he, "for the sake of others, I may not kill thee. Keep the mare, since thou art dishonest enough to steal the only property of a poor man; keep her, but never say a word how thou camest by her, lest hereafter a Shoshone, having learned distrust, should not hearken to the voice of grief and woe. Away, away with her! let me never see her again, or in an evil hour the desire of vengeance may make a bad man of me." The Mexican was wild, inconsiderate, and not over-scrupulous, but not without feeling: he dismounted from his horse, and putting the bridle in the hand of the Shoshone, "Brother," said he, "I have done wrong, pardon me! from an Indian I learn virtue, and for the future, when I would commit any deed of injustice, I will think of thee." Two Apaches loved the same girl; one was a great chief, the other a young warrior, who had entered the war-path but a short time. Of course, the parents of the young girl rejected the warrior's suit, as soon as the chief proposed himself. Time passed, and the young man, broken-hearted, left all the martial exercises, in which he had excelled. He sought solitude, starting early in the morning from the wigwam, and returning but late in the night, when the fires were out. The very day on which he was to lead the young girl to his lodge, the chief went bear-hunting among the hills of the neighbourhood. Meeting with a grizzly bear, he fired at him; but at the moment he pulled the trigger his foot slipped, and he fell down, only wounding the fierce animal, which now, smarting and infuriated with pain, rushed upon him. The chief had been hurt in his fall, he was incapable of defence, and knew that he was lost; he shut his eyes, and waited for his death-blow, when the report of a rifle, and the springing of the bear in the agonies of death, made him once more open his eyes; he started upon his feet, there lay the huge monster, and near him stood the young warrior who had thus timely rescued him. The chief recognised his rival, and his gratitude overpowering all other feelings, he took the warrior by the hand and grasped it firmly. "Brother," he said, "thou hast saved my life at a time when it was sweet, more so than usual; let us be brothers." The young man's breast heaved with contending passions, but he, too, was a noble fellow. "Chief," answered line, "when I saw the bear rushing upon thee, I thought it was the Manitou who had taken compassion on my sufferings, my heart for an instant felt light and happy; but as death was near thee, very near, the Good Spirit whispered his wishes, and I have saved thee for happiness. It is I who must die! I am nothing, have no friends, no one to care for me, to love me, to make pleasant in the lodge the dull hours of night. Chief; farewell!" He was going, but the chief grasped him firmly by the arm:-- "Where dost thou wish to go? Dost thou know the love of a brother? Didst thou ever dream of one? I have said we must be brothers to each other; come to the wigwam." They returned to the village in silence, and when they arrived before the door of the council lodge, the chief summoned everybody to hear what he had to communicate, and ordered the parents to bring the young girl. "Flower of the magnolia," said he, taking her by the hand, "wilt thou love me less as a brother than as a husband? speak! Whisper thy thought to me! Didst thou ever dream of another voice than mine, a younger one, breathing of love and despair?" Then leading the girl to where the young warrior stood-- "Brother," said he, "take thy wife and my sister." Turning towards the elders, the chief extended his right arm so as to invite general attention. "I have called you," said he, "that an act of justice may be performed; hear my words:-- "A young antelope loved a lily, standing under the shade of a sycamore, by the side of a cool stream. Daily he came to watch it as it grew whiter and more beautiful; he loved it very much, till one day a large bull came and picked up the lily. Was it good? No! The poor antelope fled towards the mountains, never wishing to return any more under the cool shade of the sycamore. One day he met the bull down, and about to be killed by a big bear. He saved him; he heard only the whisper of his heart; he saved the bull, although the bull had taken away the pretty lily from where it: stood, by the cool stream. It was good, it was well! The bull said to the antelope, `We shall be brothers, in joy and in sorrow!' and the antelope said, there could be no joy for him since the lily was gone. The bull considered; he thought that a brother ought to make great sacrifices for a brother, and he said to the antelope: `Behold, there is the lily, take it before it droops away, wear it in thy bosom and be happy.' Chiefs, sages, and warriors! I am the bull; behold! my brother the antelope. I have given unto him the flower of the magnolia; she is the lily, that grew by the side of the stream, and under the sycamore. I have done well, I have done much, yet not enough for a great chief, not enough for a brother, not enough for justice! Sages, warriors, hear me all; the flower of the magnolia can lie but upon the bosom of a chief. My brother must become a chief, he is a chief, for I divide with him the power I possess: my wealth, my lodge, are his own; my horses, my mules, my furs, and all! A chief has but one life, and it is a great gift than cannot be paid too highly. You have heard my words: I have said!" This sounds very much like a romance, but it is an Apache story, related of one of their great chiefs, during one of their evening encampments. An Apache having, in a moment of passion accidentally killed one of the tribe, hastened to the chiefs to deliver himself up to justice. On his way he was met by the brother of his victim, upon whom, according to Indian laws, fell the duty of revenge and retaliation; they were friends and shook hands together. "Yet I must kill thee, friend," said the brother. "Thou wilt!" answered the murderer; "it is thy duty, but wilt thou not remember the dangers we have passed together, and provide and console those I leave behind in my lodge?" "I will," answered the brother; "thy wife shall be my sister during her widowhood, thy children will never want game, until they can themselves strike the bounding deer." The two Indians continued their way in silence, till at once the brother of the murdered one stopped. "We shall soon reach the chiefs," said he, "I to revenge a brother's death, thou to quit for ever thy tribe and thy children. Hast thou a wish? think, whisper!" The murderer stood irresolute, his glance furtively took the direction of his lodge. The brother continued:-- "Go to thy lodge. I shall wait for thee till the setting of the sun, before the council door. Go! thy tongue is silent; but I know the wish of thy heart. Go!" Such traits are common in Indian life. Distrust exists not among the children of the wilderness, until generated by the conduct of white men. These stories and thousand others, all exemplifying the triumph of virtue and honour over baseness and vice, are every day narrated by the elders, in presence of the young men and children. The evening encampment is a great school of morals, where the Red-skin philosopher embodies in his tales the sacred precepts of virtue. A traveller, could he understand what was said, as he viewed the scene, might fancy some of the sages of ancient Greece inculcating to their disciples those precepts of wisdom which have transmitted their name down to us bright and glorious, through more than twenty centuries. I have stated that the holy men among the Indians, that is to say, the keepers of the sacred lodges, keep the records of the great deeds performed in the tribe; but a tribe will generally boast more of the great virtues of one of its men than of the daring of its bravest warriors. "A virtuous man," they say, "has the ear of the Manitou, he can tell him the sufferings of Indian nature, and ask him to soothe them." Even the Mexicans, who, of all men, have had most to suffer and suffer daily from the Apaches, [What I here say of the Apaches applies to the whole Shoshone race.] cannot but do them the justice they so well deserve. The road betwixt Chihuahua and Santa Fe is almost entirely deserted, so much are the Apaches dreaded; yet they are not hated by the Mexicans half as much as the Texians or the Americans. The Apaches are constantly at war with the Mexicans, it is true, but never have they committed any of those cowardly atrocities which have disgraced every page of Texian history. With the Apaches there are no murders in cold blood, no abuse of the prisoners; a captive knows that he will either suffer death or be adopted in the tribe; but he has never to fear the slow fire and the excruciating torture so generally employed by the Indians in the United States' territories. Their generosity is unbounded, and by the treatment I received at their hands the reader may form an idea of that brave people. They will never hurt a stranger coming to them: a green bough in his hand is a token of peace; for him they will spread the best blankets the wigwam can afford, they will studiously attend to his wants, smoke with him the calumet of peace, and when he goes away, whatever he may desire from among the disposable wealth of the tribe, if he asks for it, it is given. Gabriel was once attacked near Santa Fe, and robbed of his baggage by some honest Yankee traders. He fell in with a party of Apaches, to whom he related the circumstance. They gave him some blankets and left him with their young men at the hunting-lodges they had erected. The next day they returned with several Yankee captives, all well tied, to prevent any possibility of escape. These were the thieves, and what they had taken of Gabriel was of course restored to him. One of the Indians saying, that the Yankees, having blackened and soiled the country by theft, should receive the punishment of dogs, and as it was beneath an Apache to strike them, cords were given to them, with orders that they should chastise each other for their rascality. The blackguards were obliged to submit, and the dread of being scalped was too strong upon them to allow them to refuse. At first, they did not seem to hurt each other much; but one or two of them, smarting under the lash, returned the blows in good earnest, and then they all got angry and beat each other so unmercifully that, in a few minutes, they were scarcely able to move. Nothing could exceed the ludicrous picture which Gabriel would draw out of this little event. There is one circumstance which will form a particular datum in the history of the western wild tribes: I mean the terrible visitation of the small-pox. The Apaches, Comanches, the Shoshones, and Arrapahoes are so clean and so very nice in the arrangement of their domestic comforts, that they suffered very little, or not at all; at least, I do not remember a single case which brought death in these tribes; indeed, as I have before mentioned, the Shoshones vaccinate. But such was not the case with the Club Indians of the Colorado of the West, with the Crows, the Flat-heads, the Umbiquas, and the Black-feet. These last suffered a great deal more than any people in the world ever suffered from any plague or pestilence. To be sure, the Mandans had been entirely swept from the surface of the earth; but they were few, while the Black-feet were undoubtedly the most numerous and powerful tribe in the neighbourhood of the mountains. Their war-parties ranged the country from the northern English posts on the Slave Lake down south to the very borders of the Shoshones, and many among them had taken scalps of the Osages, near the Mississippi, and even of the great Pawnees. Between the Red River and the Platte they had once one hundred villages, thousands and thousands of horses. They numbered more than six thousand warriors. Their name had become a by-word of terror on the northern continent, from shore to shore, and little children in the eastern states, who knew not the name of the tribes two miles from their dwellings, had learned to dread even the name a Black-foot. Now the tribe has been reduced to comparative insignificancy by this dreadful scourge. They died by thousands; whole towns and villages were destroyed; and even now the trapper, coming from the mountains, will often come across numberless lodges in ruins, and the blanched skeletons of uncounted and unburied Indians. They lost ten thousand individuals in less than three weeks. Many tribes but little known suffered pretty much in the same ratio. The Club Indians, I have mentioned, numbering four thousand before the pestilence, are now reduced to thirty or forty individuals; and some Apaches related to me that, happening at that time to travel along the shores of the Colorado, they met the poor fellows dying by hundreds on the very edge of the water, where they had dragged themselves to quench their burning thirst, there not being among them one healthy or strong enough to help and succour the others. The Navahoes, living in the neighbourhood of the Club Indians, have entirely disappeared; and, though late travellers have mentioned them in their works, there is not one of them living now. Mr Farnham mentions them in his "Tour on the Mountains;" but he must have been mistaken, confounding one tribe with another, or perhaps deceived by the ignorance of the trappers; for that tribe occupied a range of country entirely out of his track, and never travelled by American traders or trappers. Mr Farnham could not have been in their neighbourhood by at least six hundred miles. The villages formerly occupied by the Navahoes are deserted, though many of their lodges still stand; but they serve only to shelter numerous tribes of dogs, which, having increased wonderfully since there has been no one to kill and eat them, have become the lords of vast districts, where they hunt in packs. So numerous and so fierce have they grown; that the neighbouring tribes feel great unwillingness to extend their range to where they may fall in with these canine hunters. This disease, which has spread north as far as the Ohakallagans, on the borders of the Pacific Ocean, north of Fort Vancouver, has also extended its ravages to the western declivity of the Arrahuac, down to 30 degrees north latitude, where fifty nations that had a name are now forgotten, the traveller, perchance, only reminded that they existed when he falls in with heaps of unburied bones. How the Black-feet caught the infection it is difficult to say as their immediate neighbours in the east escaped; but the sites of their villages were well calculated to render the disease more general and terrible: their settlements being generally built in some recess, deep in the heart of the mountains, or in valleys surrounded by lofty hills, which prevent all circulation of the air; and it is easy to understand that the atmosphere, once becoming impregnated with the effluvia, and having, no issue, must have been deadly. On the contrary, the Shoshones, the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes, have the generality of their villages built along the shores of deep and broad rivers. Inhabiting a warm clime, cleanness, first a necessity, has become a second nature. The hides and skins are never dried in the immediate vicinity of their lodges, but at a great distance where the effluvia can hurt no one. The interior of their lodges is dry, and always covered with a coat of hard white clay, a good precaution against insects and reptiles, the contrast of colour immediately betraying their presence. Besides which, having always a plentiful supply of food, they are temperate in their habits, and are never guilty of excess; while the Crows, Black-feet, and Clubs, having often to suffer hunger for days, nay, weeks together, will, when they have an opportunity, eat to repletion, and their stomachs being always in a disordered state (the principal and physical cause of their fierceness and ferocity), it is no wonder that they fell victims, with such predispositions to disease. It will require many generations to recover the number of Indians which perished in that year; and, as I have said, as long as they live, it will form an epoch or era to which they will for centuries refer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. There is every prospect of these north-western tribes remaining in their present primitive state, indeed of their gradual improvement, for nothing can induce them to touch spirits. They know that the eastern Indians had been debased and conquered by the use of them, and consider an offer of a dram from an American trader as an indirect attempt upon their life and honour. CHAPTER NINETEEN. In the last chapter but one, I stated that I and my companions, Gabriel and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be hanged as an example to all liberators. This escort was commanded by two most atrocious villains, Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz. They evidently anticipated that they would become great men in the republic, upon the safe delivery of our persons to the Mexican government, and every day took good care to remind us that the gibbet was to be our fate on our arrival. Our route lay across the central deserts of Senora, until we arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande; and so afraid were they of falling in with a hostile party of Apaches, that they took long turns out of the general track, and through mountainous passes, by which we not only suffered greatly from fatigue, but were very often threatened with starvation. It was sixty-three days before we crossed the Rio Grande at Christobal, and we had still a long journey before us. This delay, occasioned by the timidity of our guards, proved our salvation. We had been but one day on our march in the swamp after leaving Christobal, when the war-whoop pierced our ears, and a moment afterwards our party was surrounded by me hundred Apaches, who saluted us with a shower or arrows. Our Mexican guards threw themselves down on the ground, and cried for mercy, offering ransom. I answered the war-whoop of the Apaches, representing my companions and myself as their friends, and requesting their help and protection, which were immediately given. We were once more unbound and free. I hardly need say that this was a most agreeable change in the state of affairs; for I have no doubt that, had we arrived at our destination, we should either have been gibbeted or died (somehow or another) in prison. But if the change was satisfactory to us, it was not so to Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz, who changed their notes with their change of condition. The scoundrels, who had amused themselves with reminding us that all we had to expect was an ignominious death, were now our devoted humble servants, cleaning and brushing their own mules for our use, holding the stirrup, and begging for our interference in their behalf with the Apaches. Such wretches did not deserve our good offices; we therefore said nothing for or against them, leaving the Apaches to act as they pleased. About a week after our liberation, the Apaches halted, as they were about to divide their force into two bands, one of which was to return home with the booty they had captured, while the other proceeded to the borders of Texas. I have stated that the Shoshones, the Arrapahoes, and Apaches had entered into the confederation, but the Comanches were too far distant for us to have had an opportunity of making the proposal to them. As this union was always uppermost in my mind, I resolved that I would now visit the Comanches, with a view to the furtherance of my object. The country on the east side of the Rio Grande is one dreary desert, in which no water is to be procured. I believe no Indian has ever done more than skirt its border; indeed, as they assert that it is inhabited by spirits and demons, it is clear that they cannot have visited it. To proceed to the Comanches country, it was therefore necessary that we should follow the Rio Grande till we came to the presidio of Rio Grande, belonging to the Mexicans, and from there cross over and take the road to San Antonio de Bejar, the last western city of Texas, and proceed through the Texian country to where the Comanches were located. I therefore decided that we would join the band of Apaches who were proceeding towards Texas. During this excursion, the Apaches had captured many horses and arms from a trading party which they had surprised near Chihuahua, and, with their accustomed liberality, they furnished us with steeds, saddles, arms, blankets, and clothes; indeed, they were so generous, that we could easily pass ourselves off as merchants returning from a trading expedition, in case we were to fall in with any Mexicans, and have to undergo an examination. We took our leave of the generous Apache chiefs, who were returning homewards. Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz were, with the rest of the escort, led away as captives, and what became of them I cannot say. We travelled with the other band of Indians, until we had passed the Presidio del Rio Grande, a strong Mexican fort, and the day afterwards took our farewell of them, having joined a band of smugglers who were on their way to Texas. Ten days afterwards, we entered San Antonio de Bejar, and had nothing more to fear, as we were now clear of the Mexican territory. San Antonio de Bejar is by far the most agreeable residence in Texas. When in the possession of the Mexicans, it must have been a charming place. The river San Antonio, which rises at a short distance above the city, glides gracefully through the suburbs; and its clear waters, by numerous winding canals, are brought up to every house. The temperature of the water is the same throughout the year, neither too warm nor too cold for bathing; and not a single day passes without the inhabitants indulging in the favourite and healthy exercise of swimming, which is practised by every body, from morning till evening; and the traveller along the shores of this beautiful river will constantly see hundreds of children, of all ages and colour, swimming and diving like so many ducks. The climate is pure, dry, and healthy. During summer the breeze is fresh and perfumed; and as it never rains, the neighbouring plantations are watered by canals, which receive and carry in every direction the waters of the San Antonio. Formerly the city contained fifteen thousand inhabitants, but the frequent revolutions and the bloody battles which have been fought within its walls have most materially contributed to diminish its number; so much indeed, that, in point of population, the city of San Antonio de Bejar, with its bishopric and wealthy missions, has fallen to the rank of a small English village. It still carries on a considerable trade, but its appearance of prosperity is deceptive; and I would caution emigrants not to be deceived by the Texian accounts of the place. Immense profits have been made, to be sure; but now even the Mexican smugglers and banditti are beginning to be disgusted with the universal want of faith and probity. The Mexicans were very fond of gardens and of surrounding their houses with beautiful trees, under the shade of which they would pass most of the time which could be spared from bathing. This gives a fresh and lively appearance to the city, and you are reminded of Calabrian scenery, the lightness and simplicity of the dwellings contrasting with the grandeur and majesty of the monastic buildings in the distance. Texas had no convents, but the Spanish missions were numerous, and their noble structures remain as monuments of former Spanish greatness. Before describing these immense establishments, it is necessary to state that, soon after the conquest of Mexico, one of the chief objects of Spanish policy was the extension of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. The conversion of the Indians and the promulgation of Christianity were steadily interwoven with the desire of wealth; and at the time that they took away the Indian's gold, they gave him Christianity. At first, force was required to obtain proselytes, but cunning was found to succeed better; and, by allowing the superstitions of the Indians to be mixed up with the rites of the Church, a sort of half-breed religion became general, upon the principle, I presume, that half a loaf is better than no bread. The anomalous consequences of this policy are to be seen in the Indian ceremonies even to this day. To afford adequate protection to the Roman Catholic missionaries, settlements were established, which still bear the name of missions. They are very numerous throughout California, and there are several in Texas. The Alamo, at San Antonio, was one of great importance; there were others of less consideration in the neighbourhood; as the missions of Conception, of San Juan, San Jose, and La Espada. All these edifices are most substantially built; the walls are of great thickness, and from their form and arrangement they could be converted into frontier fortresses. They had generally, though not always, a church at the side of the square, formed by the high walls, through which there was but one entrance. In the interior they had a large granary, and the outside wall formed the back to a range of buildings, in which the missionaries and their converts resided. A portion of the surrounding district was appropriated to agriculture, the land being, as I before observed, irrigated by small canals, which conducted the water from the river. The Alamo is now in ruins, only two or three of the houses of the inner square being inhabited. The gateway of the church was highly ornamented, and still remains, although the figures which once occupied the niches have disappeared. But there is still sufficient in the ruins to interest the inquirer into its former history, even if he could for a moment forget the scenes which have rendered it celebrated in the history of Texian independence. About two miles lower down the San Antonio river is the mission of Conception. It is a very large stone building, with a fine cupola, and though a plain building, is magnificent in its proportions and the durability of its construction. It was here that Bowie fought one of the first battles with the Mexican forces, and it has not since been inhabited. Though not so well known to fame as other conflicts, this battle was that which really committed the Texians, and compelled those who thought of terms and the maintenance of a Mexican connection to perceive that the time for both had passed. The mission of San Jose is about a mile and a half further down the river. It consists, like the others, of a large square, and numerous Mexican families still reside there. To the left of the gateway is the granary. The church stands apart from the building; it is within the square, but unconnected. The west door is decorated with the most elaborated carvings of flowers, images of angels, and figures of the apostles: the interior is plain. To the right is a handsome tower and belfry, and above the altar a large stone cupola. Behind the church is a long range of rooms for the missionaries, with a corridor of nine arches in front. The Texian troops were long quartered here, and, although always intoxicated, strange to say, the stone carvings have not been injured. The church has since been repaired, and divine service is performed in it. About half a mile further down is the mission of San Juan. The church forms part of the sides of the square, and on the north-west corner of the square are the remains of a small stone tower. This mission, as well as that of La Espada, is inhabited. The church of La Espada, however, is in ruins, and but two sides of the square, consisting of mere walls, remain entire; the others have been wantonly destroyed. The church at San Antonio de Bejar was built in the year 1717; and although it has suffered much from the many sieges which the city has undergone, it is still used as a place of public worship. At the time that San Antonio was attacked and taken, by Colonel Cooke, in 1835, several cannon-shots struck the dome, and a great deal of damage was done; in fact, all the houses in the principal square of the town are marked more or less by shot. One among them has suffered very much; it is the "Government-house," celebrated for one of the most cowardly massacres ever committed by a nation of barbarians, and which I shall here relate. After some skirmishes betwixt the Comanches and the Texians, in which the former had always had the advantage, the latter thought it advisable to propose a treaty of alliance. Messengers, with flags of truce, were despatched among the Indians, inviting all their chiefs to a council at San Antonio, where the representatives of Texas would meet them and make their proposals for an eternal peace. Incapable of treachery themselves, the brave Comanches never suspected it in others; at the time agreed upon, forty of their principal chiefs arrived in the town, and, leaving their horses in the square, proceeded to the "Government-house." They were all unarmed, their long flowing hair covered with a profusion of gold and silver ornaments; their dresses very rich, and their blankets of that fine Mexican texture which commands in the market from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars apiece. Their horses were noble animals and of great value, their saddles richly embossed with gold and silver. The display of so much wealth excited all the worst propensities of the Texian populace, who resolved at any price to obtain possession of so splendid a booty. While the chiefs were making their speeches of peace and amity, a few hundred Texian blackguards rushed into the room with their pistols and knives, and began their work of murder. All the Indians fell, except one, who succeeded in making his escape; but though the Comanches were quite unarmed, they sold their lives dearly, for eighteen Texians were found among the slain. I will close this chapter with a few remarks upon the now acknowledged republic of Texas. The dismenmberment of Texas from Mexico was effected by the reports of extensive gold mines, diamonds, etcetera, which were to be found there, and which raised the cupidity of the eastern speculators and land-jobbers of the United States. But, in all probability, this appropriation would never have taken place, if it had not been that the southern states of America had, with very different views, given every encouragement to the attempt. The people of Louisiana and the southern states knew the exact value of the country, and laughed at the idea of its immense treasures. They acted from a deep although it eventually has turned out to have been a false, policy. They considered that Texas, once wrested from Mexico, would be admitted into the Union, subdivided into two or three states, every one of which would, of course, be slave-holding states, and send their members to Congress. This would have given the slave-holding states the preponderance in the Union. Events have turned out differently, and the planters of the south now deplore their untoward policy and want of foresight, as they have assisted in raising up a formidable rival in the production of their staple commodity, injurious to them even in time of peace, and in case of a war with England, still more inimical to their interests. It is much to be lamented that Texas had not been populated by a more deserving class of individuals; it might have been, even by this time, a country of importance and wealth; but it has from the commencement been the resort of every vagabond and scoundrel who could not venture to remain in the United States; and, unfortunately, the Texian character was fixed and established, as a community wholly destitute of principle or probity, before the emigration of more respectable settlers had commenced. The consequences have been most disastrous, and it is to be questioned whether some of them will ever be removed. At the period of its independence, the population of Texas was estimated at about forty thousand. Now, if you are to credit the Texian Government, it has increased to about seventy-five thousand. Such, however, is not the fact, although it, of course, suits the members of the republic to make the assertion. Instead of the increase stated by them, the population of Texas has decreased considerably, and is not now equal to what it was at the Independence. This may appear strange, after so many thousands from the United States, England, and Germany have been induced to emigrate there; but the fact is, that, after having arrived in the country, and having discovered that they were at the mercy of bands of miscreants, who are capable of any dark deed, they have quitted the country to save the remainder of their substance, and have passed over into Mexico, the Southern United States, or anywhere else where they had some chance of security for life and property. Among the population of Texas were counted many thousand Mexicans, who remained in the country, trusting that order and law would soon be established; but, disappointed in their expectations, they have emigrated to Mexico. Eight thousand have quitted St. Antonio de Bejar, and the void has been filled up by six or seven hundred drunkards, thieves, and murderers. The same desertion has taken place in Goliad, Velasco, Nacogdoches, and other towns, which were formerly occupied by Mexican families. It may give the reader some idea of the insecurity of life and property in Texas, when I state, that there are numerous bands of robbers continually on the look-out, to rifle and murder the travellers, and that it is of frequent occurrence for a house to be attacked and plundered, the women violated, and every individual afterwards murdered by these miscreants, who, to escape detection, dress and paint themselves as Indians. Of course, what I have now stated, although well known to be a fact, is not likely to be mentioned in the Texian newspapers. Another serious evil arising from this lawless state of the country is, that the Indians, who were well inclined towards the Texians, as being, with them, mutual enemies of the Mexicans, are now hostile, to extermination. I have mentioned the murder of the Comanche chiefs, in the government-house of San Antonio, which, in itself, was sufficient. But such has been the disgraceful conduct of the Texians towards the Indians, that the white man is now considered by them as a term of reproach; they are spoken of by the Indians as "dogs," and are generally hung or shot whenever they are fallen in with. Centuries cannot repair this serious evil, and the Texians have made bitter and implacable foes of those who would have been their friends. No distinction is made between an American and a Texian, and the Texians have raised up a foe to the United states, which may hereafter prove not a little troublesome. In another point, Texas has been seriously injured by this total want of probity and principle. Had Western Texas been settled by people of common honesty, it would, from its topographical situation, have soon become a very important country, as all the mercantile transactions with the north central provinces of Mexico would have been secured to it. From the Presidio del Rio Grande there is an excellent road to San Antonio do Bejar; to the south of San Antonio lies Chihuahua; so that the nearest and most accessible route overland, from the United. States to the centre of Mexico, is through San Antonio. And this overland route can be shortened by discharging vessels at Linville, or La Bacca, and from thence taking the goods to San Antonio, a distance of about one hundred and forty miles. The western boundary line of Texas, at the time of the declaration of its independence, was understood to be the river Nueces; and if so, nothing could have prevented San Antonio from becoming an inland depot of much commercial importance. Numerous parties of Mexican traders have long been accustomed to come to San Antonio from the Rio Grande. They were generally very honest in their payments, and showed a very friendly spirit. Had this trade been protected, as it should have been, by putting down the bands of robbers, who rendered the roads unsafe by their depredations and atrocities, it would have become of more value than any trade to Santa Fe. Recognised or unrecognised, Texas could have carried on the trade; merchants would have settled in the West, to participate in it; emigrants would have collected in the district, where the soil is rich and the climate healthy. It is true, the trade would have been illicit; but such is ever the inevitable consequence of a high and ill-regulated tariff. It would, nevertheless, have been very profitable, and would have conciliated the population of Rio Grande towards the Texians, and in all probability have forced upon the Mexican government the establishment of friendly relations between the two countries. But this trade has been totally destroyed; the Indians now seize and plunder every caravan, either to or from San Antonio; the Texian robbers lie in wait for them, if they escape the Indians; and should the Mexican trader escape with his goods from both, he has still to undergo the chance of being swindled by the _soi-disant_ Texian merchant. If ever there was a proof, from the results of pursuing an opposite course, that honesty is the best policy, it is to be found in the present state of Texas. CHAPTER TWENTY. Happily for me and my two companions, there still remained two or three gentlemen in San Antonio. These were Colonel Seguin and Messrs. Novarro, senior and junior, Mexican gentlemen, who, liberal in their ideas and frank in their natures, had been induced by the false representations of the Texians not to quit the country after its independence of Mexico; and, as they were men of high rank, by so doing they not only forfeited their rights as citizens of Mexico, but also incurred the hatred and animosity of that government. Now that they had discovered their error, it was too late to repair it; moreover, pride and, perhaps, a mistaken sense of honour, would not permit them to remove to Mexico, although severed from all those ties which render life sweet and agreeable. Their own sorrows did not, however, interfere with their unbounded hospitality: in their house we found a home. We formed no intimacy with the Texians; indeed, we had no contact whatever with them, except that one day Roche thrashed two of them with his shillalah for ill-treating an old Indian. Inquiries were made by Colonel Seguin as to where the Comanches might be found, and we soon ascertained that they were in their great village, at the foot of the Green Mountain, upon the southern fork of the head-waters of the Rio Roxo. We made immediate preparations for departure, and as we proposed to pass through Austin, the capital of Texas, our kind entertainers pressed five hundred dollars upon us, under the plea that no Texian would ever give us a tumbler of water except it was paid for, and that, moreover, it was possible that after passing a few days among the gallant members of Congress, we might miss our holsters or stirrups, our blankets, or even one of our horses. We found their prediction, in the first instance, but too true. Six miles from Austin we stopped at the farm of the Honourable Judge Webb, and asked leave to water our horses, as they had travelled forty miles under a hot sun without drawing bit. The honourable judge flatly refused, although he had a good well, besides a pond, under fence, covering several acres; his wife, however, reflecting, perhaps, that her stores were rather short of coffee or silt, entered into a rapid discussion with her worse half, and by-and-by that respectable couple of honourables agreed to sell water to us at twenty-five cents a bucket. When we dismounted to take the bridles off our horses, the daughters arrived, and perceiving we had new silk sashes and neckerchiefs and some fine jewels, they devoured us with their eyes, and one of them, speaking to her papa, that most hospitable gentleman invited us to enter his house. By that time we were once more upon our saddles and ready to start. Roche felt indignant at the meanness of the fellow, who had received our seventy-five cents for the water before he invited us into the house. We refused, and Roche told him that he was an old scoundrel to sell for money that which even a savage will never refuse to his most bitter enemy. The rage of the honourable cannot be depicted: "My rifle!" he vociferated, "my rifle for God's sake, Betsey--Juliet, run for my rifle!" The judge then went into the house; but, as three pistols were drawn from our holsters, neither he nor his rifle made their appearance, so we turned our horses' heads and rode on leisurely to Austin. In Austin we had a grand opportunity of seeing the Texians under their true colours. There were three hotels in the town, and every evening, after five o'clock, almost all of them, not excluding the president of the republic, the secretaries, judges, ministers, and members of Congress, were, more or less, tipsy, and in the quarrels which ensued hardly a night passed without four or five men being stabbed or shot, and the riot was continued during the major portion of the night, so that at nine o'clock in the morning everybody was still in bed. So buried in silence was the town, that one morning, at eight o'clock, I killed a fine buck grazing quietly before the door of the Capitol. It is strange that this capital of Texas should have been erected upon the very northern boundary of the state. Indians have often entered it and taken scalps not ten steps from the Capitol. While we were in Austin we made the acquaintance of old Castro, the chief of the Lepan Indians, an offset of the Comanche tribe. He is one of the best-bred gentlemen in the world, having received a liberal and military education, first in Mexico, and subsequently in Spain. He has travelled in France, Germany, England, and, in fact, all over Europe. He speaks and writes five or six languages, and so conscious is he of his superiority over the Texians, that he never addresses them but with contempt. He once said to them in the legislature room of Matagorda--"Never deceive yourselves, Texians. I fight with you against the Mexicans, because betwixt them and me there is an irreconcilable hatred. Do not then flatter yourselves that it is through friendship towards you. I can give my friendship only to those who are honourable both in peace and in war; you are all of you liars, and many of you thieves, scoundrels, and base murderers. Yes, dogs, I say true; yelp not, bark not, for you know you dare not bite, now that my two hundred warriors are surrounding this building: be silent, I say." Castro was going in the same direction as ourselves to join his band, which was at that moment buffalo-hunting, a few journeys northward. He had promised his company and protection to two foreign gentlemen, who were desirous of beholding the huge tenant of the prairies. We all started together, and we enjoyed very much this addition to our company. The first day we travelled over an old Spanish military road, crossing rich rolling prairies, here and there watered by clear streams, the banks of which are sheltered by magnificent oaks. Fifteen miles from Austin there is a remarkable spot, upon which a visionary speculator had a short time before attempted to found a city. He purchased an immense tract of ground, had beautiful plans drawn and painted, and very soon there appeared, upon paper, one of the largest and handsomest cities in the world. There were colleges and public squares, penitentiaries, banks, taverns, whisky-shops, and fine walks. I hardly need say, that this town-manufacturer was a Yankee, who intended to realise a million by selling town-lots. The city (in prospective) was called Athens, and the silly fellow had so much confidence in his own speculation, that he actually built upon the ground a very large and expensive house. One day, as he, with three or four negroes, were occupied in digging a well, he was attacked by a party of Yankee thieves, who thought he had a great deal of money. The poor devil ran away from his beloved city and returned no more. The house stands as it was left. I even saw near the well the spades and pickaxes with which they had been working at the time of the attack. Thus modern Athens was cut off in the bud, which was a great pity, as a few Athenian sages and legislators are sadly wanted in Texas. Early one morning we were awakened by loud roars in the prairie. Castro started on his feet, and soon gave the welcome news, "The Buffaloes." On the plain were hundreds of dark moving spots, which increased in size as we came nearer; and before long we could clearly see the shaggy brutes galloping across the prairie, and extending their dark, compact phalanxes even to the line of the horizon. Then followed a scene of excitement. The buffaloes, scared by the continual reports of our rifles, broke their ranks and scattered themselves in every direction. The two foreigners were both British, the youngest being a young Irishman of a good family, and of the name of Fitzgerald. We had been quite captivated by his constant good humour and vivacity of spirits; he was the life of our little evening encampments, and, as he had travelled on the other side of the Pacific, we would remain till late at night listening to his interesting and beautiful narratives of his adventures in Asiatic countries. He had at first joined the English legion in Spain, in which he had advanced to the rank of captain; he soon got tired of that service and went to Persia, where he entered into the Shah's employ as an officer of artillery. This after some time not suiting his fancy, he returned to England, and decided upon visiting Texas, and establishing himself as a merchant at San Antonio. But his taste for a wandering life would not allow him to remain quiet for any length of time, and having one day fallen in with an English naturalist, who had come out on purpose to visit the north-west prairies of Texas, he resolved to accompany him. Always ready for any adventure, Fitzgerald rushed madly among the buffaloes. He was mounted upon a wild horse of the small breed, loaded with saddlebags, water calabashes, tin and coffee cups, blankets, etcetera, but these encumbrances did not stop him in the least. With his bridle fastened to the pommel of his saddle and a pistol in each hand, he shot to the right and left, stopping now and then to reload and then starting anew. During the hunt he lost his hat, his saddlebags, with linen and money, and his blankets: as he never took the trouble to pick them up, they are probably yet in the prairie where they were dropped. The other stranger was an English savant, one of the queerest fellows in the world. He wished also to take his share in the buffalo-hunt, but his steed was a lazy and peaceable animal, a true nag for a fat abbot, having a horror of any thing like trotting or galloping; and as he was not to be persuaded out of his slow walk, he and his master remained at a respectable distance from the scene of action. What an excellent caricature might have been made of that good-humoured savant, as he sat on his Rosinante, armed with an enormous double-barrelled gun, loaded but not primed, some time, to no purpose, spurring the self-willed animal, and then spying through an opera-glass at the majestic animals which he could not approach. We killed nine bulls and seven fat calves, and in the evening we encamped near a little river, where we made an exquisite supper of marrow and tongue, two good things, which can only be enjoyed in the wild prairies. The next day, at sunset, we received a visit from an immense herd of mustangs (wild horses). We saw them at first ascending one of the swells of the prairie, and took them for hostile Indians; but having satisfied their curiosity, the whole herd wheeled round with as much regularity as a well-drilled squadron, and with their tails erect and long manes floating to the wind, were soon out of sight. Many strange stories have been related by trappers and hunters, of a solitary white horse which has often been met with near the Cross Timbers and the Red River. No one ever saw him trotting or galloping; he only canters, but with such rapidity that no steed can follow him. Immense sums of money have been offered to any who could catch him, and many have attempted the task, but without success. The noble animal still runs free in his native prairies, always alone and unapproachable. We often met with the mountain goat, an animal which participates both of the deer and the common goat, but whose flesh is far superior to either. It is gracefully shaped--long-legged and very fleet. One of them, whose fore-leg I had broken with a rifle ball, escaped from our fleetest horse (Castro's), after a chase of nearly thirty minutes. The mountain goat is found on the great platforms of the Rocky Mountains, and also at the broad waters of the rivers Brasos and Colorado. Though of a very timid nature, they are superlatively inquisitive, and can be easily attracted within rifle range, by agitating, from behind a tree, a white or red handkerchief. We were also often visited, during the night, by rattlesnakes, who liked amazingly the heat and softness of our blankets. They were unwelcome customers, to be sure; but yet there were some others of which we were still more in dread: among them I may class, as the ugliest and most deadly, the prairie tarantula, a large spider, bigger than a good-sized chicken egg, hairy, like a bear, with small blood-shot eyes and little sharp teeth. One evening, we encamped near a little spring, two miles from the Brasos. Finding no wood to burn near to us, Fitzgerald started to fetch some. As I have said, his was a small wild horse; he was imprudent enough to tie to its tail a young tree, which he had cut down. The pony, of course, got angry, and galloped furiously towards the camp, surrounded by a cloud of dust. At this sight, the other horses began to show signs of terror; but we were fortunate enough to secure them all before it was too late, or we should have lost them for ever. It is astonishing to witness in the prairies how powerfully fear will act, not only upon the buffaloes and mustangs, but also upon tame horses and cattle. Oxen will run farther than horses, and some of them have been known, when under the influence of the estampede, or sudden fright, to run forty miles without ever stopping, and when at last they halted, it was merely because exhausted nature would not allow them to go further. The Texian expedition, on its way to Santa Fe, once lost ninety-four horses by an estampede. I must say that nothing can exceed the grandeur of the sight, when a numerous body of cattle are under its influence. Old nags, broken by age and fatigue, who have been deserted on account of their weakness, appear as wild and fresh as young colts. As soon as they are seized with that inexplicable dread which forces them to fly, they appear to regain in a moment all the powers of their youth; with head and tail erect, and eyes glaring with fear, they rush madly on in a straight line; the earth trembles under their feet; nothing can stop them--trees, abysses, lakes, rivers, or mountains--they go over all, until nature can support it no more, and the earth is strewed with their bodies. Even the otherwise imperturbable horse of our savant would sometimes have an estampede after his own fashion; lazy and self-willed, preferring a slow walk to any other kind of motion, this animal showed in all his actions that he knew how to take care of number one, always selecting his quarters where the water was cooler and the grass tender. But he had a very bad quality for a prairie travelling nag, which was continually placing his master in some awkward dilemma. One day that we had stopped to refresh ourselves near a spring, we removed the bridles from our horses, to allow them to graze a few minutes, but the savant's cursed beast took precisely that opportunity of giving us a sample of his estampede. Our English friend had a way, quite peculiar to himself, of crowding upon his horse all his scientific and culinary instruments. He had suspended at the pommel of the saddle a thermometer, a rum calabash, and a coffee boiler, while behind the saddle hung a store of pots and cups, frying-pan, a barometer, a sextant, and a long spy-glass. The nag was grazing, when one of the instruments fell down, at which the beast commenced kicking, to show his displeasure. The more he kicked, the greater was the rattling of the cups and pans; the brute was now quite terrified; we first secured our own steeds, and then watched the singular and ridiculous movements of this estampedero. He would make ten leaps, and then stop to give as many kicks, then shake himself violently and start off full gallop. At every moment, some article, mathematical or culinary, would get loose, fall down, and be trampled upon. The sextant was kicked to pieces, the frying-pan and spy-glass were put out of shape, the thermometer lost its mercury, and at last, by dint of shaking, rolling, and kicking, the brute got rid of his entire load and saddle, and then came quietly to us, apparently very well satisfied with himself and with the damage he had done. It was a most ludicrous scene, and defies all power of description; so much did it amuse us, that we could not stop laughing for three or four hours. The next day, we found many mineral springs, the waters of which were strongly impregnated with sulphur and iron. We also passed by the bodies of five white men, probably trappers, horribly mangled, and evidently murdered by some Texian robbers. Towards evening, we crossed a large fresh Indian trail, going in the direction of the river Brasos, and, following it, we soon came up with the tribe of Lepans, of which old Castro was the chief. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. The Lepans were themselves going northwards, and for a few days we skirted, in company with them, the western borders of the Cross Timbers. The immense prairies of Texas are for hundreds and hundreds of miles bordered on the east by a belt of thick and almost impenetrable forests, called the Cross Timbers. Their breadth varies from seventy to one hundred miles. There the oak and hiccory grow tall and beautiful, but the general appearance of the country is poor, broken, and rugged. These forests abound with deer and bears, and sometimes the buffalo, when hotly pursued by the Indians in the prairies, will take refuge in its closest thickets. Most of the trees contain hives of bees full of a very delicate honey, the great luxury of the pioneers along these borders. We now took our leave of the Lepans and our two white friends, who would fain have accompanied us to the Comanches had there been a chance of returning to civilisation through a safe road; as it was, Gabriel, Roche, and I resumed our journey alone. During two or three days we followed the edge of the wood, every attempt to penetrate into the interior proving quite useless, so thick were the bushes and thorny briars. Twice or thrice we perceived on some hills, at a great distance, smoke and fires, but we could not tell what Indians might be there encamped. We had left the Timbers and had scarcely advanced ten miles in a westerly direction, when a dog of a most miserable appearance joined our company. He was soon followed by two others as lean and as weak as himself. They were evidently Indian dogs of the wolf breed, and miserable, starved animals they looked, with the ribs almost bare, while their tongues, parched and hanging downwards, showed clearly the want of water in these horrible regions. We had ourselves been twenty-four hours without having tasted any, and our horses were quite exhausted. We were slowly descending the side of a swell in the prairie, when a buffalo passed at full speed, ten yards before us, closely pursued by a Tonquewa Indian (a ferocious tribe), mounted upon a small horse, whose graceful form excited our admiration. This savage was armed with a long lance, and covered with a cloak of deer-skin, richly ornamented, his long black hair undulating with the breeze. A second Indian soon followed the first, and they were evidently so much excited with the chase as not to perceive us, although I addressed the last one who passed not ten yards from me. The next day we met with a band of Wakoes Indians, another subdivision of the Comanches or of the Apaches, and not yet seen or even mentioned by any traveller. They were all mounted upon fine tall horses, evidently a short time before purchased at the Mexican settlements, for some of them had their shoes still on their feet. They immediately offered us food and water, and gave us fresh steeds, for our own were quite broken down, and could scarcely drag themselves along. We encamped with them that day on a beautiful spot, where our poor animals recovered a little. We bled them freely, an operation which probably saved them to share with us many more toils and dangers. The next day we arrived at the Wakoe village, pleasantly situated upon the banks of a cold and clear stream, which glided through a romantic valley, studded here and there with trees just sufficient to vary the landscape, without concealing its beauties. All around the village were vast fields of Indian corn and melons; further off numerous herds of cattle, sheep, and horses were grazing; while the women were busy drying buffalo meat. In this hospitable village we remained ten days, by which time we and our beasts had entirely recovered from our fatigues. This tribe is certainly far superior in civilisation and comforts to all other tribes of Indians, the Shoshones not excepted. The Wakoe wigwams are well built, forming long streets, admirable for their cleanness and regularity. They are made of long posts, neatly squared, firmly fixed into the ground, and covered over with tanned buffalo hides, the roof being formed of white straw, plaited much finer than the common summer hats of Boston manufacture. These dwellings are of a conical form, thirty feet in height and fifteen in diameter. Above the partition walls of the principal room are two rows of beds, neatly arranged, as on board of packet-ships. The whole of their establishment, in fact, proves that they not only live at ease, but also enjoy a high degree of comfort and luxury. Attached to every wigwam is another dwelling of less dimensions, the lower part of which is used as a provision store. Here is always to be found a great quantity of pumpkins, melons, dried peaches, grapes, and plums, cured venison, and buffalo tongues. Round the store is a kind of balcony, leading to a small room above it. What it contained I know not, though I suspect it is consecrated to the rites of the Wakoe religion. Kind and hospitable as they were, they refused three or four times to let us penetrate in this sanctum sanctorum, and of course we would not press them further. The Wakoes, or, to say better, their villages, are unknown, except to a few trappers and hunters, who will never betray the kind hospitality they have received by showing the road to them. There quiet and happiness have reigned undisturbed for many centuries. The hunters and warriors themselves will often wander in the distant settlements of the Yankees and Mexicans to procure seeds, for they are very partial to gardening; they cultivate tobacco; in fact, they are, I believe, the only indians who seriously occupy themselves with agriculture, which occupation does not prevent them from being a powerful and warlike people. As well as the Apaches and the Comanches, the Wakoes are always on horseback; they are much taller and possess more bodily strength than either of these two nations, whom they also surpass in ingenuity. A few years ago, three hundred Texians, under the command of General Smith, met an equal party of the Wakoes hunting to the east of the Cross Timbers. As these last had many fine horses and an immense provision of hides and cured meat, the Texians thought that nothing could be more easy than routing the Indians and stealing their booty. They were, however, sadly mistaken; when they made their attack they were almost all cut to pieces, and the unburied bones of two hundred and forty Texians remain blanching in the prairie, as a monument of their own rascality and the prowess of the Wakoes. Comfortable and well treated as we were by that kind people, we could not remain longer with them; so we continued our toilsome and solitary journey. The first day was extremely damp and foggy; a pack of sneaking wolves were howling about, within a few yards of us, but the sun came out about eight o'clock, dispersing the fog and also the wolves. We still continued our former course, and found an excellent road for fifteen miles, when we entered a singular tract of land unlike anything we had ever before seen. North and south, as far as the eye could reach, nothing could be seen but a sandy plain, covered with dwarf oaks two and three feet high, and bearing innumerable acorns of a large size. This desert, although our horses sank to the very knee in the sand, we were obliged to cross; night came on before the passage was effected, and we were quite tired with the fatigues of the day. We were, however, fortunate enough to find a cool and pure stream of running water, on the opposite side of which the prairie had been recently burnt, and the fresh grass was just springing up; here we encamped. We started the next morning, and ascended a high ridge; we were in great spirits, little anticipating the horrible tragedy in which we should soon have to play our parts. The country before us was extremely rough and broken; we pushed on, however, buffeting, turning, and twisting about until nearly dark, crossing and recrossing deep gullies, our progress in one direction impeded by steep hills, and in another by yawning ravines, until, finally, we encamped at night not fifteen miles from where we had started in the morning. During the day, we had found large plum patches, and had picked a great quantity of this fruit, which we found sweet and refreshing after our toil. On the following morning, after winding about until noon among the hills, we at length reached a beautiful table land, covered with musqueet trees. So suddenly did we leave behind us the rough and uneven tract of country and enter a level valley, and so instantaneous was the transition, that the change of scenery in a theatre was brought forcibly to our minds; it was turning from the bold and wild scenery of Salvator Rosa to dwell upon the smiling landscape of a Poussin or Claude Lorrain. On starting in the morning, nothing was to be seen but a rough and rugged succession of hills before us, piled one upon another, each succeeding hill rising above its neighbour. At the summit of the highest of these hills, the beautiful and fertile plain came suddenly to view, and we were immediately upon it, without one of us anticipating anything of the kind. The country between the Cross Timbers and the Rocky Mountains rises by steps, if I may so call them. The traveller journeying west meets, every fifty or sixty miles, with a ridge of high bills; as he ascends these, he anticipates a corresponding descent upon the opposite side, but in most instances, on reaching this summit, he finds before him a level and fertile prairie. This is certainly the case south of the Red River, whatever it may be to the northward of it. We halted an hour or two on reaching this beautiful table land, to rest ourselves and give our horses an opportunity to graze. Little villages of prairie dogs were scattered here and there, and we killed half-a-dozen of them for our evening meal. The fat of these animals, I have forgotten to say, is asserted to be an infallible remedy for the rheumatism. In the evening, we again started, and encamped, an hour after sun-down, upon the banks of a clear running stream. We had, during the last part of our journey, discovered the tops of three or four high mountains in the distance; we knew them to be "The Crows," by the description of them given to us by the Wakoes. Early the next morning we were awakened by the warbling of innumerable singing birds, perched among the bushes along the borders of the stream. Pleasing as was the concert, we were obliged to leave it behind and pursue our weary march. Throughout the day we had an excellent road, and when night same, we had travelled about thirty-five miles. The mountains, the summits of which we had perceived the evening before, were now plainly visible, and answered to the descriptions of the Wakoes, as those in the neighbourhood of the narrows of the Red River. We now considered that we were near the end of our journey. That night we swallowed a very scanty supper, laid down to sleep, and dreamed of beaver tail and buffalo hump and tongues. The next day, at noon, we crossed the bed of a stream, which was evidently a large river during the rainy season. At that time but little water was found in it, and that so salt, it was impossible even for our horses to drink it. Towards night, we came to the banks of a clear stream, the waters of which were bubbling along, over a bed of golden sand, running nearly north and south, while, at a distance of some six miles, and to our left, was the chain of hills I have previously mentioned; rising above the rest, were three peaks, which really deserved the name of mountains. We crossed the stream and encamped on the other side. Scarcely had we unsaddled our horses, when we perceived coming towards us a large party of savages, whose war paint, with the bleeding scalps hanging to their belts, plainly showed the errand from which they were returning; they encamped on the other side of the stream, within quarter of a mile from us. That night we passed watching, shivering, and fasting, for we dared not light a fire in the immediate vicinity of our neighbours, whom we could hear singing and rejoicing. The next morning, long before dawn, we stole away quietly and trotted briskly till noon, when we encountered a deep and almost impassable ravine. There we were obliged to halt, and pass the remainder of the day endeavouring to discover a passage. This occupied us till night-fall, and we had nothing to eat but plums and berries. Melancholy were our thoughts when we reflected upon the difficulties we might shortly have to encounter; and gloomy were our forebodings as we wrapt ourselves in our blankets, half starved and oppressed with feelings of uncertainty as to our present position and our future destinies. The night passed without alarm, but the next morning we were sickened by a horrible scene which was passing about half a mile from us. A party of the same Indians, whom we had seen the evening before, were butchering some of their captives, while several others were busy cooking the flesh, and many were eating it. We were rooted to the spot by a thrill of horror we could not overcome; even our horses seemed to know by instinct that something horrible was acting below, for they snuffed the air, and with their ears pointed straight forward, trembled so as to satisfy us that for the present we could not avail ourselves of their services. Gabriel crept as near as he could to the party, leaving us to await his return in a terrible state of suspense and anxiety. When he rejoined us, it appeared our sight had not deceived us. There were nine more prisoners, who would probably undergo the same fate on the following day; four, he said, were Comanches, the other five, Mexican females,--two young girls and three women. The savages had undoubtedly made an inroad upon San Miguel or Taos, the two most northern settlements of the Mexicans, not far from the Green Mountains where we were ourselves going. What could we do? We could not fight the cannibals, who were at least one hundred in number, and yet we could not go away and leave men and women of our own colour to a horrible death, and a tomb in the stomach of these savages. The idea could not be borne, so we determined to remain and trust to chance or Providence. After their abominable meal, the savages scattered about the prairie in every direction, but not breaking up their camp, where they left their prisoners, under the charge of twelve of their young warriors. Many plans did we propose for the rescue of the poor prisoners, but they were all too wild for execution; at last chance favoured us, although we did not entirely succeed in our enterprise. Three or four deer galloped across the prairie, and passed not fifty yards from the camp. A fine buck came in our direction, and two of the Indians who were left in charge started after him. They rushed in among us, and stood motionless with astonishment at finding neighbours they had not reckoned upon. We, however, gave them no time to recover from their surprise, our knives and tomahawks performed quickly and silently the work of death, and little remorse did we feel, after the scene we had witnessed in the morning. We would have killed, if possible, the whole band, as they slept, without any more compunction than we would have destroyed a nest of rattlesnakes. The deer were followed by a small herd of buffaloes. We had quickly saddled and secured our horses to some shrubs, in case it should be necessary to run for our lives, when we perceived the ten remaining Indians, having first examined and ascertained that their captives were well bound, start on foot in chase of the herd of buffaloes; indeed there was but about twenty horses in the whole band, and they had been ridden away by the others. Three of these Indians we killed without attracting the attention of the rest, and Gabriel, without being discerned, gained the deserted encampment, and severed the thongs which bound the prisoners. The Mexican women refused to fly; they were afraid of being captured and tortured; they thought they would be spared, and taken to the wigwams of the savages, who, we then learned, belonged to the tribe of the Cayugas. They told us that thirteen Indian prisoners had already been eaten, but no white people. The Comanche prisoners armed themselves with the lances, bows, and arrows left in the camp, and in an hour after the passage of the buffaloes, but two of the twelve Indians were alive; these, giving the war-whoop to recall their party, at last discovered that their comrades had been killed. At that moment the prairie became animated with buffaloes and hunters; the Cayugas on horseback were coming back, driving another herd before them. No time was to be lost if we wished to save our scalps; we gave one of our knives (so necessary an article in the wilderness) to the Comanches, who expressed what they felt in glowing terms, and we left them to their own cunning and knowledge of the localities, to make their escape. We had not overrated their abilities, for some few days afterwards we met them safe and sound in their own wigwams. We galloped as fast as our horses could go for fifteen miles, along the ravine which had impeded our journey during the preceding day, when we fell in with a small creek. There we and our horses drank incredible quantities of water, and as our position was not yet very safe, we again resumed our march at a brisk trot. We travelled three or four more miles along the foot of a high ridge, and discovered what seemed to be an Indian trail, leading in a zigzag course up the side of it. This we followed, and soon found ourselves on the summit of the ridge. There we were again gratified at finding spread out before us a perfectly level prairie, extending as far as the eye could reach, without a tree to break the monotony of the scene. We halted a few minutes to rest our horses, and for some time watched what was passing in the valley we had left, now lying a thousand feet below us. All we could perceive at the distance which we were, was that all was in motion, and we thought that our best plan was to leave as much space between us and the Cayugas as possible. We had but little time to converse with the liberated Comanches, yet we had gained from them that we were in the right direction, and were not many days from our destination. At the moment we were mounting our horses, all was quiet again in the valley below. It was a lovely panorama, and, viewing it from the point where we stood, we could hardly believe that, some hours previous, such a horrible tragedy had been there performed. Softened down by the distance, there was a tranquillity about it which appeared as if it never had been broken. The deep brown skirting of bushes, on the sides of the different water-courses, broke and varied the otherwise vast extent of vivid green. The waters of the river, now reduced to a silver thread, were occasionally brought to view by some turn in the stream, and again lost to sight under the rich foliage on the banks. We continued our journey, and towards evening we descried a large bear within a mile of us, and Roche started in chase. Having gained the other side of the animal, he drove it directly towards me. Cocking a pistol, I rode a short distance in front, to meet him, and while in the act of taking deliberate aim at the bear, then not more than eight yards from me, I was surprised to see him turn a summerset and commence kicking with his hind legs. Unseen by me, Gabriel had crept up close on the opposite side of my horse, and had noosed the animal with his lasso, as I was pulling the trigger of my pistol; Bruin soon disengaged himself from the lasso, and made towards Roche, who brought him down with a single shot below the ear. Gabriel and I then went on ahead, to select a place for passing the night, leaving our friend behind to cut up the meat; but we had not gone half a mile, when our progress was suddenly checked by a yawning abyss, or chasm, some two hundred yards across, and probably six hundred feet in depth. The banks, at this place, were nearly perpendicular, and from the sides projected sharp rocks, and, now and then, tall majestic cedars. We travelled a mile or more along the banks, but perceiving it was too late to find a passage across, we encamped in a little hollow wider a cluster of cedars. There we were soon joined by Roche, and we were indebted to Bruin for an excellent repast. The immense chasm before us ran nearly north and south, and we perceived that the current of the stream, or rather torrent, below us, ran towards the former point. The next morning, we determined to direct our steps to the northward, and we had gone but a few miles before large buffalo or Indian trails were seen running in a south-west direction, and as we travelled on, others were noticed bearing more to the west. Obliged to keep out some distance from the ravine, to avoid the small gullies emptying into it and the various elbows which it made, about noon we struck upon a large trail, running directly west; this we followed, and on reaching the main chasm, found that it led to the only place where there was any chance of crossing. Here, too, we found that innumerable trails joined, coming from every direction--proof conclusive that we must cross here or travel many weary miles out of our way. Dismounting from our animals, we looked at the yawning abyss before us, and our first impression was, that the passage was impracticable. That buffaloes, mustangs, and, very probably, Indian horses, had crossed here, was evident enough, for a zigzag path had been worn down the rocky and precipitous sides; but our three horses were unused to sliding down or climbing precipices, and they drew back on being led to the brink of the chasm. After many unsuccessful attempts, I at last persuaded my steed to take the path; the others followed. In some places they went along the very verge of rocky edges, where a false step would have precipitated them hundreds of feet down, to instant death; in others, they were compelled to slide down passes nearly perpendicular. Gabriel's horse was much bruised, but after an hour's severe toil, we gained the bottom, without sustaining any serious injury. Here we remained a couple of hours, to rest our weary animals and find the trail leading up the opposite side. This we discovered, and, after great exertions, succeeded in clambering up to the top, where we again found ourselves upon a smooth and level prairie. On looking back, I shuddered to behold the frightful chasm we had so successfully passed, and thought it a miracle that we had got safely across; but a very short time afterwards, I was convinced that the feat we had just accomplished was a mere nothing. After giving our animals another rest, we resumed our journey across the dreary prairie. Not a tree or bush could be seen in any direction. A green carpeting of short grass was spread over the vast scene, with naught else to relieve the sight. People may talk of the solitude of forests as much as they please, but there is a company in trees which one misses upon the prairie. It is in the prairie, with its ocean-like waving of grass, like a vast sea without landmarks, that the traveller feels a sickly sensation of loneliness. There he feels as if not in the world, although not out of it; there he finds no sign or trace to tell him that there are, beyond or behind him, countries where millions of his own kindred are living and moving. It is in the prairie that man really feels that he is-- alone. We rode briskly along till sun-down, and encamped by the side of a small water-hole, formed by a hollow in the prairie. The mustangs, as well as the deer and antelopes, had left this part of the prairie, driven out, doubtless, by the scarcity of water. Had it not been for occasional showers, while travelling through this dreary waste, we should most inevitably have perished, for even the immense chasms had no water in them except that temporarily supplied by the rains. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. The morning broke bright and cloudless, the sun rising from the horizon in all his majesty. Having saddled our horses, we pursued our journey in a north-east direction; but we had scarcely proceeded six miles before we suddenly came upon an immense rent or chasm in the earth, far exceeding in depth the one we had so much difficulty in crossing the day before. We were not aware of its existence until we were immediately upon its brink, when a spectacle exceeding in grandeur any thing we had previously witnessed burst upon our sight. Not a tree or bush, no outline whatever, marked its position or course, and we were lost in amazement and wonder as we rode up and peered into the yawning abyss. In depth it could not have been less than one thousand feet, in width from three to five hundred yards, and at the point where we first struck it, its sides were nearly perpendicular. A sickly sensation of dizziness was felt by all three of us, as we looked down, as it were, into the very bowels of the earth. Below, an occasional spot of green relieved the eye, and a stream of water, now visible, now concealed behind some huge rock, was bubbling and foaming along. Immense walls, columns, and, in some places, what appeared to be arches, filled the ravine, worn by the water undoubtedly, but so perfect in form, that we could with difficulty be brought to believe that the hand of men or genii had not been employed in raising them. The rains of centuries, a falling upon the extended prairie, had here found a reservoir and vent, and their sapping and undermining of the different veins of earth and stone had formed these strange and fanciful shapes. Before reaching the chasm, we had crossed numerous large trails leading a little more to the westward than we had been travelling, and we were at once convinced that they all centred in a common crossing close at hand. In this conjecture we were not disappointed, half-an-hour's trotting brought us into a large road, the thoroughfare for years of millions of Indians, buffaloes and mustangs. Perilous as the descent appeared, we well knew there was no other near. My horse was again started ahead while the two others followed. Once in the narrow path, which led circuitously down the deep descent, there was no possibility of turning back, and our maddened animals finally reached the bottom in safety. Several large stones were loosened from under our feet during this frightful descent. They would leap, dash, and thunder down the precipitous sides, and strike against the bottom far below us with a terrific crash. We found a running stream at the bottom, and on the opposite side of it a romantic dell covered with short grass and a few scattered cotton-wood trees. A large body of Indians had encamped on this very spot but a few days previous; the _blazed_ limbs of the trees and other "signs" shewing that they had made it a resting-place. We, too, halted a couple of hours to give our horses an opportunity to graze and rest themselves. The trail which led up to the prairie on the opposite side was discovered a short distance above us to the south. As we journeyed along this chasm, we were struck with admiration at the strange and fanciful figures made by the washing of the waters during the rainy season. In some places, perfect walls, formed of a reddish clay, were to be seen standing; in any other locality it would have been impossible to believe but that they had been raised by the hand of man. The strata of which these walls were composed was regular in width, hard, and running perpendicularly; and where the softer sand which had surrounded them had been washed away, the strata still remained, standing in some places one hundred feet high, and three or four hundred in length. Here and there were columns, and such was their architectural regularity, and so much of chaste grandeur was there about them, that we were lost in admiration and wonder. In other places the breastworks of forts would be plainly visible, then again the frowning turrets of some castle of the olden time. Cumbrous pillars, apparently ruins of some mighty pile, formerly raised to religion or royalty, were scattered about; regularity and perfect design were strangely mixed up with ruin and disorder, and nature had done it all. Niagara has been considered one of her wildest freaks; but Niagara falls into insignificance when compared with the wild grandeur of this awful chasm. Imagination carried me back to Thebes, to Palmyra, and the Edomite Paetra, and I could not help imagining that I was wandering among their ruins. Our passage out of this chasm was effected with the greatest difficulty. We were obliged to carry our rifles and saddle-bags in our hands, and, in clambering up a steep precipice, Roche's horse, striking his shoulder against a projecting rock, was precipitated some fifteen or twenty feet, falling upon his back. We thought he must be killed by the fall; but, singular enough, he rose immediately, shook himself, and a second effort in climbing proved more successful. The animal had not received the slightest apparent injury. Before evening we were safely over, having spent five or six hours in passing this chasm. Once more we found ourselves upon the level of the prairie, and after proceeding some hundred yards, on looking back, not a sign of the immense fissure was visible. The waste we were then travelling over was at least two hundred and fifty miles in width, and the two chasms I have mentioned were the reservoirs, and at the same time the channels of escape for the heavy rains which fall upon it during the wet season. This prairie is undoubtedly one of the largest in the world, and the chasm is in perfect keeping with the size of the prairie. At sun-down we came upon a water-hole, and encamped for the night. By this time we were entirely out of provisions, and our sufferings commenced. The next day we resumed our journey, now severely feeling the cravings of hunger. During our journey we saw small herds of deer and antelopes, doubtless enticed to the water-courses by the recent rains, and towards night we descried a drove of mustangs upon a swell of the prairie half a mile ahead of us. They were all extremely shy, and although we discharged our rifles at them, not a shot was successful. In the evening we encamped near a water-hole, overspreading an area of some twenty acres, but very shallow. Large flocks of Spanish curlews, one of the best-flavoured birds that fly, were hovering about, and lighting on it on all sides. Had I been in possession of a double-barrelled gun, with small shot, we could have had at least one good meal; but as I had but a heavy rifle and my bow and arrows, we were obliged to go to sleep supperless. About two o'clock the next morning we saddled and resumed our travel, journeying by the stars, still in a north-east direction. On leaving the Wakoes, we thought that we could be not more than one hundred miles from the Comanche encampment. We had now ridden much more than that distance, and were still on the immense prairie. To relieve ourselves from the horrible suspense we were in--to push forward, with the hope of procuring some provisions--to get somewhere, in short, was now our object, and we pressed onward, with the hope of finding relief. Our horses had, as yet, suffered less than ourselves, for the grazing in the prairie had been good but our now hurried march, and the difficult crossing of the immense chasms, began to tell upon them. At sunrise we halted near a small pond of water, to rest the animals and allow them an hour to feed. While stretched upon the ground, we perceived a large antelope slowly approaching--now stopping, now walking a few steps nearer, evidently inquisitive as to who, or rather what, we might be. His curiosity cost him his life: with a well-directed shot, Gabriel brought him down, and none but a starved man could appreciate our delight. We cooked the best part of the animal, made a plentiful dinner, and resumed our journey. For three days more, the same dreary spectacle of a boundless prairie was still before us. Not a sign was visible that we were nearing its edge. We journeyed rapidly on till near the middle of the afternoon of the third day, when we noticed a dark spot a mile and a half ahead of us. At first we thought it to be a low bush, but as we gradually neared it, it had more the appearance of a rock, although nothing of the kind had been seen from the time we first came on the prairie, with the exception of those at the chasms. "A buffalo!" cried Roche, whose keen eye at last penetrated the mystery: "a buffalo, lying down and asleep." Here, then, was another chance for making a good meal, and we felt our courage invigorated. Gabriel went ahead on foot, with his rifle, in the hope that he should at least get near enough to wound the animal, while Roche and I made every preparation for the chase. Disencumbering our horses of every pound of superfluous weight, we started for the sport, rendered doubly exciting by the memory of our recent suffering from starvation. For a mile beyond where the buffalo lay, the prairie rose gradually, and we knew nothing of the nature of the ground beyond. Gabriel crept till within a hundred and fifty yards of the animal, which now began to move and show signs of uneasiness. Gabriel gave him a shot: evidently hit, he rose from the ground, whisked his long tail, and looked for a moment inquiringly about him. I still kept my position a few hundred yards from Gabriel, who reloaded his piece. Another shot followed: the buffalo again lashed his sides, and then started off at a rapid gallop, directly towards the sun, evidently wounded, but not seriously hurt. Roche and I started in pursuit, keeping close together, until we had nearly reached the top of the distant rise in the prairie. Here my horse, being of a superior mettle, passed that of Roche, and, on reaching the summit, I found the buffalo still galloping rapidly, at a quarter of a mile's distance. The descent of the prairie was very gradual, and I could plainly see every object within five miles. I now applied the spurs to my horse, who dashed madly down the declivity. Giving one look behind, I saw that Roche, or at least his horse, had entirely given up the chase. The prairie was comparatively smooth, and although I dared not to spur my horse to his full speed, I was soon alongside of the huge animal. It was a bull of the largest size, and his bright, glaring eyeballs, peering out from his shaggy frontlet of hair, shewed plainly that he was maddened by his wounds and the hot pursuit. It was with the greatest difficulty, so fierce did the buffalo look, that I could get my horse within twenty yards of him, and when I fired one of my pistols at that distance, my ball did not take effect. As the chase progressed, my horse came to his work more kindly, and soon appeared to take a great interest in the exciting race I let him fall back a little, and then, by dashing the spurs deep into his sides, brought him up directly alongside, and within three or four yards of the infuriated beast. I fired my other pistol, and the buffalo shrank as the ball struck just behind the long hair on his shoulders. I was under such headway when I fired, that I was obliged to pass the animal, cutting across close to his head, and then again dropping behind. At that moment I lost my rifle, and I had nothing left but my bow and arrows; but by this time I had become so much excited by the chase, that I could not think of giving it up. Still at full speed, I strung my bow, once more put my spurs to my horse, he flew by the buffalo's right ride, and I buried my arrow deep into his ribs. The animal was now frothing and foaming with rage and pain. His eyes were like two deep red balls of fire, his tongue was out and curling upwards, his long tufted tail curled on high, or lashing madly against his sides. A more wild, and at the same time a more magnificent picture of desperation I had never witnessed. By this time my horse was completely subjected to my guidance. He no longer pricked his ears with fear, or sheered off as I approached the monster, but, on the contrary, ran directly up, that I could almost touch the animal while bending my bow. I had five or six more arrows left, but I resolved not to shoot again unless I were certain of touching a vital part, and succeeded at last in hitting him deep betwixt the shoulder and the ribs. This wound caused the maddened beast to spring backwards, and I dashed past him as he vainly endeavoured to gore and overthrow my horse. The chase was now over, the buffalo stopped and soon rolled on the ground perfectly helpless. I had just finished him with two other arrows, when, for the first time, I perceived that I was no longer alone. Thirty or forty well-mounted Indians were quietly looking at me in an approving manner, as if congratulating me on my success. They were the Comanches we had been so long seeking for. I made myself known to them, and claimed the hospitality which a year before had been offered to me by their chief, "the white raven." They all surrounded me and welcomed me in the most kind manner. Three of them started to fetch my rifle and to join my companions, who were some eight or nine miles eastward, while I followed my new friends to their encampment, which was but a few miles distant. They had been buffalo hunting, and had just reached the top of the swell when they perceived me and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the subject of my recent chase. The Comanches are a noble and most powerful nation. They have hundreds of villages, between which they are wandering all the year round. They are well armed, and always move in bodies of some hundreds, and even thousands all active and skilful horsemen, living principally by the chase, and feeding occasionally during their distant excursions, upon the flesh of the mustang, which, after all, is a delightful food, especially when fat and young. A great council of the whole tribe is held once a year, besides which there are quarterly assemblies, where all important matters are discussed. They have long been hostile to the Mexicans, but are less so now; their hatred having been concentrated upon the Yankees and Texians, whom they consider as brigands. They do not apply themselves to the culture of the ground as the Wakoes, yet they own innumerable herds of horses, cattle, and sheep, which graze in the northern prairies, and they are indubitably one of the wealthiest people in the world. They have a great profusion of gold, which they obtain from the neighbourhood of the San Seba hills, and work it themselves into bracelets, armlets, diadems, as well as bits for their horses, and ornaments to their saddles. Like all the Shoshones' tribe, they are most elegant horsemen, and by dint of caresses and good treatment, render the animals so familiar and attached to them, that I have often seen some of them following their masters like dogs, licking their hands and shoulders. The Comanche young women are exquisitely clean, good-looking, and but slightly bronzed; indeed the Spaniards of Andalusia and the Calabrians are darker than they are. Their voice is soft, their motions dignified and graceful; their eyes dark and flashing, when excited, but otherwise mild, with a soft tinge of melancholy. The only fault to be found in them is that they are inclined to be too stout, arising from their not taking exercise. The Comanches, like all the tribes of the Shoshone breed, are generous and liberal to excess. You can take what you please from the wigwam-- horses, skins, rich furs, gold, anything, in fact, except their arms and their females, whom they love fondly. Yet they are not jealous; they are too conscious of their own superiority to fear anything, and besides, they respect too much the weaker sex to harbour any injurious suspicion. It is a very remarkable fact, that all the tribes who claim any affinity with the Shoshones, the Apaches, the Comanches, and the Pawnies Loups, have always rejected with scorn any kind of spirits when offered to them by the traders. They say that "Shoba-wapo" (the fire-water) is the greatest enemy of the Indian race, and that the Yankees, too cowardly to fight the Indians as men, have invented this terrible poison to destroy them without danger. "We hated once the Spaniards and the Watchinangoes (Mexicans)," they say, "but they were honourable men compared with the thieves of Texas. The few among the Spanish race who would fight, did so as warriors; and they had laws among them which punished with death those who would give or sell this poison to the Indians." The consequence of this abstinence from spirits is, that these Western nations improve and increase rapidly; while, on the contrary, the Eastern tribes, in close contact with the Yankees, gradually disappear. The Sioux, the Osage, the Winnebego, and other Eastern tribes, are very cruel in disposition; they show no mercy, and consider every means fair, however treacherous, to conquer an enemy. Not so with the Indians to the west of the Rocky Mountains. They have a spirit of chivalry, which prevents them taking any injurious advantage. As I have before observed, an Indian will never fire his rifle upon an enemy who is armed only with his lance, bow, and arrows or if he does, and kills him, he will not take his scalp, as it would constantly recall to his mind that he had killed a defenceless foe. Private encounters with their enemies, the Navahoes and Arrapahoes, are conducted as tournaments in the days of yore. Two Indians will run full speed against each other with their well-poised lance; on their shield, with equal skill, they will receive the blow; then, turning round, they will salute each other as a mark of esteem from one brave foe to another. Such incidents happen daily, but they will not be believed by the Europeans, who have the vanity of considering themselves alone as possessing "le sentiment du chevalresque et du beau:" besides, they are accustomed to read so many horrible accounts of massacres committed by the savages, that the idea of a red skin is always associated in their mind with the picture of burning stakes and slow torture. It is a mistake, and a sad one; would to God that our highly civilised nations of Europe had to answer for no more cruelties than those perpetuated by the numerous gallant tribes of western America. I was present one day when a military party came from Fort Bent, on the head of the Arkansa, to offer presents and make proposals of peace to the Comanche council. The commander made a long speech, after which he offered I don't know how many hundred gallons of whisky. One of the ancient chiefs had not patience to hear any more, and he rose full of indignation. His name was Auku-wonze-zee, that is to say, "he who is superlatively old." "Silence," he said; "speak no more, double-tongued. Oposh-ton-ehoe (Yankee). Why comest thou, false-hearted, to pour thy deceitful words into the ears of my young men? You tell us you come for peace, and you offered to us poison. Silence. Oposh-ton-ehoe, let me hear thee no more, for I am an old man; and now that I have one foot in the happy grounds of immortality, it pains me to think that I leave my people so near a nation of liars. An errand of peace! Does the snake offer peace to the squirrel when he kills him with the poison of his dreaded glance? does an Indian say to the beaver, he comes to offer peace when he sets his traps for him? No! a pale-faced `Oposh-ton-ehoe', or a `_Kish emok comho-anac_' (the beast that gets drunk and lies, the Texian), can alone thus lie to nature--but not a red-skin, nor even a girlish Wachinangoe, nor a proud `_Skakanah_' (Englishman), nor a `_Mahamate kosh ehoj_' (open-heart, open-handed Frenchman). "Be silent then, man with the tongue of a snake, the heart of a deer, and the ill-will of a scorpion; be silent, for I and mine despise thee and thine. Yet fear not, thou mayest depart in peace, for a Comanche is too noble not to respect a white flag, even when carried by a wolf or a fox. Till sun-set eat, but alone; smoke, but not in our calumets; repose in two or three lodges, for we can burn them after pollution, and then depart, and say to thy people, that the Comanche, having but one tongue and one nature, can neither speak with nor understand an Oposh-ton-ehoe. "Take back thy presents; my young men will have none of them, for they can accept nothing except from a friend--and if thou look'st at their feet, thou shalt see their mocassins, their leggings, even their bridles are braided with the hair of thy people, perhaps of thy brothers. Take thy `Shoba-wapo' (fire-water), and give it to drink to thy warriors, that we may see them raving and tumbling like swine. Silence, and away with thee; our squaws will follow ye on your trail for a mile, to burn even the grass ye have trampled upon near our village. Away with you all, now and for ever! I have said!!!" The American force was numerous and well armed, and a moment, a single moment, deeply wounded by these bitter taunts, they looked as if they would fight and die to resent the insult; but it was only a transient feeling, for they had their orders and they went away, scorned and humiliated. Perhaps, too, an inward voice whispered to them that they deserved their shame and humiliation; perhaps the contrast of their conduct with that of the savages awakened in them some better feeling, which had a long time remained dormant, and they were now disgusted with themselves and their odious policy. As it was, they departed in silence, and the last of their line had vanished under the horizon before the Indians could smother the indignation and resentment which the strangers had excited within their hearts. Days, however, passed away, and with them the recollection of the event. Afterwards, I chanced to meet, in the Arkansas, with the Colonel who commanded; he was giving a very strange version of his expedition, and as I heard facts so distorted, I could not help repeating to myself the words of Auku-wonze-zee, "The Oposh-ton-ehoe is a double-tongued liar!" CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. One morning, Roche, Gabriel, and myself were summoned to the Great Council Lodge; there we met with the four Comanches whom we had rescued some days before, and it would be difficult to translate from their glowing language their warm expressions of friendship and gratitude. We learned from them that before the return of the Cayugas from the prairie they had concealed themselves in some crevices of the earth until night, when they contrived to seize upon three of the horses and effect their escape. At the passage of the great chasm they had found the old red sash of Roche, which they produced, asking at the same time permission to keep it as a token from their Pale-face brothers. We shook bands and exchanged pipes. How noble and warm is an Indian in his feelings! In the lodge we also perceived our friend of former days, "Opishka Koaki" (the White Raven), but as he was about to address the assembly, we restrained from renewing our acquaintance and directed all our attention to what was transacting. After the ordinary ceremonies, Opishka Koaki commenced:-- "Warriors, I am glad you have so quickly understood my messages, but when does a Comanche turn his back on receiving the vermilion from his chief? Never! you know I called you for war, and you have come; 'tis well. Yet, though I am a chief, I am a man. I may mistake; I may now and then strike a wrong path. I will do nothing, attempt nothing, without knowing the thoughts of my brave warriors. Then hear me! "There live under the sun a nation of Redskins, whose men are cowards. Never striking an enemy but when his back is turned, or when they number a hundred to one. This nation crawls in the prairies about the great chasms, they live upon carrion, and have no other horses but those they can steal from the deer-hearted Watchinangoes. Do my warriors know such a people? Let them speak! I hear!" At that moment a hundred voices shouted the name of Cayugas. "I knew it!" exclaimed the chief, "there is but one such a people with a red skin; my warriors are keen-sighted; they cannot be mistaken. Now, we Comanches never take the scalp of a Cayuga any more than that of a hedge-hog; we kick them out of our way when they cross our path; that's all. Hear me my braves, and believe me, though I will speak strange words: these reptiles have thought that because we have not killed them as toads and scorpions, it was because we were afraid of their poison. One thousand Cayugas, among other prisoners, have taken eight Comanches; they have eaten four of them, they would have eaten them all, but the braves escaped; they are here. Now, is an impure Cayuga a fit tomb for the body of a Comanche warrior? No! I read the answer in your burning eyes. What then shall we do? Shall we chastise them and give their carcasses to the crows and wolves? What say my warriors: let them speak? I hear!" All were silent, though it was evident that their feelings had been violently agitated. At last, an old chief rose and addressed Opishka: "Great chief," said he, "why askest thou? Can a Comanche and warrior think in any way but one? Look at them! See you not into their hearts? Perceive you not how fast the blood runs into their veins? Why ask? I say; thou knowest well their hearts' voice is but the echo of thine own. Say but a word, say, `Let us go to the Cayugas!' Thy warriors will answer: `We are ready, shew us the path!' Chief of a mighty nation, thou hast heard my voice, and in my voice are heard the thousand voices of thy thousand warriors." Opishka Koaki rose again. "I knew it, but I wanted to hear it, for it does my heart good; it makes me proud to command so many brave warriors. Then to-morrow we start, and we will hunt the Cayugas even to the deepest of their burrows. I have said!" Then the four rescued prisoners recounted how they had been taken, and what sufferings they had undergone. They spoke of their unfortunate companions and of their horrible fate, which they should have also shared had it not been for the courage of the three Pale-face brothers, who killed five Cayugas, and cut their bonds; they themselves killed five more of their cowardly foes and escaped, but till to-day they had had no occasion of telling to their tribe the bravery and generosity of the three Pale faces. At this narrative all the warriors, young and old, looked as though they were personally indebted to us, and would have come, one and all, to shake our hands, had it not been for the inviolable rules of the council lodge, which forbids any kind of disorder. It is probable that the scene had been prepared beforehand by the excellent chief who wished to introduce us to his warriors under advantageous circumstances. He waved his hand to claim attention, and spoke again. "It is now twelve moons, it is more I met Owato Wanisha and his two brothers. He is a chief of the great Shoshones, who are our grandfathers, far--far under the setting of the sun beyond the big mountains. His two brothers are two great warriors from powerful nations far in the east and beyond the Sioux, the Chippewas beyond the `Oposh-ton-ehoe' (Americans), even beyond the deep salt-water. One is a `Shakanah' (Englishman), the other a `Naimewa' from the `Maha-mate-kosh-ehoj' (an exile from the French). They are good and they are brave: they have learned wisdom from the `Macota Konayas' (priests), and Owato Wanisha knows how to build strong forts, which he can better defend than the Watchinangoes have defended theirs. I have invited him and his brother to come and taste the buffalo of our prairies, to ride our horses, and smoke the calumet of friendship. They have come, and will remain with us till we ourselves go to the big stony river (the Colorado of the West). They have come; they are our guests; the best we can command is their own already; but they are chiefs and warriors. A chief is a chief everywhere. We must treat them as chiefs, and let them select a band of warriors for themselves to follow them till they go away from us. "You have heard what our scouts have said; they would have been eaten by the Cayugas, had it not been for our guests, who have preserved not only the lives of four men--that is nothing--but the honour of the tribe. I need say no more; I know my young amen; I know my warriors; I know they will love the strangers as chiefs and brothers. I have said." Having thus spoken, he walked slowly out of the lodge, which was immediately deserted for the green lawn before the village. There we were sumptuously entertained by all the principal chiefs and warriors of the tribe, after which they conducted us to a new tent, which they had erected for us in the middle of their principal square. There we found also six magnificent horses, well caparisoned, tied to the posts of the tent; they were the presents of the chiefs. At a few steps from the door was an immense shield, suspended upon four posts, and on which a beaver, the head of an eagle, and the claws of a bear were admirably painted--the first totem for me, the second for Gabriel, and the third for Roche. We gratefully thanked our hospitable hosts, and retired to rest in our rich and elegant dwelling. The next morning, we awoke just in time to witness the ceremony of departure; a war party, already on horseback, was waiting for their chief. At the foot of our shield were one hundred lances, whose owners belonged to the family and kindred of the Indians whom we had rescued from the Cayugas. A few minutes afterwards, the owners of the weapons appeared in the square, well mounted and armed, to place themselves at our entire disposal. We could not put our authority to a better use than by joining our friends in their expedition, so when the chief arrived, surrounded by the elders of the tribe, Gabriel advanced towards him. "Chief," he said, "and wise men of a brave nation, you have conferred upon us a trust of which we are proud. To Owato Wanisha, perhaps, it was due, for he is mighty in his tribe; but I and the Shakanah are no chiefs. We will not decline your favour, but we must deserve it. The young beaver will remain in the village, to learn the wisdom of your old men, but the eagle and the bear must and will accompany you in your expedition. You have given them brave warriors, who would scorn to remain at home; we will follow you." This proposition was received with flattering acclamations, and the gallant army soon afterwards left the village on its mission of revenge. The Cayugas were, before that expedition, a powerful tribe, about whom little or nothing had ever been written or known. In their customs and manners of living, they resemble in every way the Club Indians of the Colorado, who were destroyed by the small-pox. They led a wandering prairie life, but generally were too cowardly to fight well, and too inexpert in hunting to surround themselves with comforts, even in the midst of plenty like the Clubs, they are cannibals, though, I suspect, they would not eat a white man. They have but few horses, and these only when they could be procured by stealth, for, almost always starving, they could not afford to breed them, always eating the colts before they could be useful. Their grounds lie in the vicinity of the great fork of the Rio Puerco, by latitude 35 degrees and longitude 105 degrees from Greenwich. The whole nation do not possess half a dozen of rifles, most all of them being armed with clubs, bows, and arrows. Some old Comanches have assured me that the Cayuga country abounds with fine gold. While I was with the Comanches, waiting the return of the expedition, I had an accident which nearly cost me my life. Having learned that there were many fine basses to be fished in a stream some twenty miles on, I started on horseback, with a view of passing the night there. I took with me a buffalo-hide, a blanket, and a tin cup, and two hours before sunset I arrived at the spot. As the weather had been dry for some time, I could not pick any worms, so I thought of killing some bird or other small animal, whose flesh would answer for bait. Not falling in with any birds, I determined to seek for a rabbit or a frog. To save time, I lighted a fire, put my water to boil, spread my hide and blanket, arranged my saddle for a pillow, and then went in search of bait, and sassafras to make tea with. While looking for sassafras, I perceived a nest upon a small oak near to the stream. I climbed to take the young ones, obtained two, which I put in my round jacket, and looked about me to see where I should jump upon the ground. After much turning about, I suspended myself by the hands from a hanging branch, and allowed myself to drop down. My left foot fell flat, but under the soft sole of my right mocassin I felt something alive, heaving or rolling. At a glance, I perceived that my foot was on the body of a large rattle-snake, with his head just forcing itself from under my heel. Thus taken by surprise, I stood motionless and with my heart throbbing. The reptile worked itself free, and twisting round my leg, almost in a second bit me two or three times. The sharp rain which I felt from the fangs recalled me to consciousness, and though I felt convinced that I was lost, I resolved that my destroyer should die also. With my bowie-knife I cut its body into a hundred pieces; walked away very sad and gloomy, and sat upon my blanket near the fire. How rapid and tumultuous were my thoughts! To die so young, and such a dog's death! My mind reverted to the happy scenes of my early youth, when I had a mother, and played so merrily among the golden grapes of sunny France, and when later I wandered with my father in the Holy land, in Italy and Egypt. I also thought of the Shoshones, of Roche and Gabriel, and I sighed. It was a moral agony; for the physical pain had subsided, and my leg was almost benumbed by paralysis. The sun went down, and the last carmine tinges of his departed glory reminded me how soon my sun would set; then the big burning tears smothered me, for I was young, very young, and I could not command the courage and resignation to die such a horrible death. Had I been wounded in the field, leading my brave Shoshones, and hallooing the war-whoop, I would have cared very little about it, but thus, like a dog! It was horrible! and I dropped my head upon my knees, thinking how few hours I had now to live. I was awakened from that absorbing torpor by my poor horse, who was busy licking my ears. The faithful animal suspected something was wrong, for usually at such a time I would sing Spanish ditties or some Indian war-songs. Sunset was also the time when I brushed and patted him. The intelligent brute knew that I suffered, and, in its own way, showed me that it participated in my affliction. My water, too, was boiling on the fire, and the bubbling of the water seemed to be a voice raised on purpose to divert my gloomy thoughts. "Aye, boil, bubble, evaporate," exclaimed I; "what do I care for water or tea now?" Scarcely had I finished these words, when, turning suddenly my head round, my attention was attracted by an object before me, and a gleam of hope irradiated my gloomy mind: close to my feet I beheld five or six stems of the rattlesnake master weed. I well knew the plant, but I had been incredulous as to its properties. Often had I heard the Indians speaking of its virtues, but I had never believed them. "A drowning man will seize at a floating straw." By a violent effort I got up on my legs, went to fetch my knife, which I had left near the dead snake, and I commenced digging for two or three of the roots with all the energy of despair. These roots I cut into small slices, and threw them in the boiling water. It soon produced a dark green decoction, which I swallowed; it was evidently a powerful alkali, strongly impregnated with a flavour of turpentine. I then cut my mocassin, for my foot was already swollen to twice its ordinary size, bathed the wounds with a few drops of the liquid, and, chewing some of the slices, I applied them as a poultice, and tied them on with my scarf and handkerchief. I then put some more water to boil, and, half an hour afterwards, having drank another pint of the bitter decoction, I drew my blanket over me. In a minute or less after the second draught, my brain whirled, and a strange dizziness overtook me, which was followed by a powerful perspiration, and soon afterwards all was blank. The next morning, I was awakened by my horse again licking me; he wondered why I slept so late. I felt my head ache dreadfully, and I perceived that the burning rays of the sun for the last two hours had been darting upon my uncovered face. It was some time before I could collect my thoughts, and make out where I was. At last, the memory of the dreadful incident of the previous evening broke upon my mind, and I regretted I had not died during my unconsciousness; for I thought that the weakness I felt was an effect of the poison, and that I should have to undergo an awful lingering death. Yet all around me, nature was smiling; thousands of birds were singing their morning concert, and, at a short distance, the low and soft murmuring of the stream reminded me of my excessive thirst. Alas! well hath the Italian bard sung:-- "Nesson maggior dolore Che riccordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria!"--DANTE. As I lay and reflected upon my utter helplessness, again my heart swelled, and my tears flowed freely. Thirst, however, gave me the courage which the freshness and beauty of nature had not been able to inspire me with. I thought of attempting to rise to fetch some water; but first I slowly passed my hand down my thigh, to feel my knee. I thought the inflammation would have rendered it as thick as my waist. My hand was upon my knee, and so sudden was the shock that my heart ceased to heat. Joy can be most painful; for I felt an acute pang through my breast, as from a blow of a dagger. When I moved my finger across the cap of my knee, it was quite free from inflammation, and perfectly sound. Again there was a re-action. Aye, thought I, 'tis all on the ankle; how can I escape! Is not the poison a deadly one? I dared not throw away the blanket and investigate further; I felt weaker and weaker, and again covered my head to sleep. I did sleep, and when I awoke this time I felt myself a little invigorated, though my lips and tongue were quite parched. I remembered everything; down my hand slided; I could not reach my ankle, so I put up my knee. I removed the scarf and the poultice of master weed. My handkerchief was full of a dried, green, glutinous matter, and the wounds looked clean. Joy gave me strength. I went to the stream, drank plentifully, and washed. I still felt very feverish; and, although I was safe from the immediate effects of the poison, I knew that I had yet to suffer. Grateful to Heaven for my preservation, I saddled my faithful companion, and, wrapping myself closely in my buffalo hide, I set off to the Comanche camp. My senses had left me before I arrived there. They found me on the ground, and my horse standing by me. Fifteen days afterwards I awoke to consciousness, a weak and emaciated being. During this whole time I had been raving under a cerebral fever, death hovering over me. It appears that I had received a coup-de-soleil, in addition to my other mischances. When I returned to consciousness, I was astonished to see Gabriel and Roche by my side; the expedition had returned triumphant. The Cayugas' villages had been burnt, almost all their warriors destroyed, and those who remained had sought a shelter in the fissures of the earth, or in the passes of the mountains unknown to any but themselves. Two of the Mexican girls had also been rescued, but what had become of the others they could not tell. The kindness and cares of my friends, with the invigorating influence of a beautiful chine, soon restored me to comparative health, but it was a long time before I was strong enough to ride and resume my former exercise. During that time Gabriel made frequent excursions to the southern and even to the Mexican settlements, and on the return from his last trip he brought up news which caused the Indians, for that year, to forsake their hunting, and remain at home. General Lamar and his associates had hit upon a plan not only treacherous, but in open defiance of all the laws of nations. But what, indeed, could be expected from a people who murdered their guests, invited by them, and under the sanction of a white flag? I refer to the massacre of the Comanche chiefs at San Antonio. The President of Mexico, Bustamente, had a view to a cessation of hostilities with Texas. The Texians had sent ambassadors to negotiate a recognition and treaty of alliance and friendship with other nations; they had despatched Hamilton in England to supplicate the cabinet of St. James to lend its mighty influence towards the recognition of Texas by Mexico, and while these negotiations were pending, and the peace with Mexico still in force, Lamar, in defiance of all good faith and honour, was secretly preparing an expedition, which, under the disguise of a mercantile caravan, was intended to conquer Santa Fe and all the northern Mexican provinces. This expedition of the Texians, as it would pass through the territory of the Comanches, whose villages, etcetera, if unprotected, would, in all probability, have been plundered, and their women and children murdered, induced the Comanches to break up their camp, and return home as speedily as possible. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. During my convalescence, my tent, or I should say, the lawn before it, became a kind of general divan, where the warrior and elders of the tribe would assemble, to smoke and relate the strange stories of days gone by. Some of them appeared to me particularly beautiful; I shall, therefore, narrate them to the reader. One old chief began as follows:-- "I will tell ye of the Shkote-nah Pishkuan, or the boat of fire, when I saw it for the first time. Since that, the grass has withered fifteen times in the prairies, and I have grown weak and old. Then I was a warrior, and many scalps have I taken on the eastern shores of the Sabine. Then, also, the Pale-faces, living in the prairies were good; we fought them because we were enemies, but they never stole anything from us, nor we from them. "Well, at that time, we were once in the spring hunting the buffalo. The Caddoes, who are now a small tribe of starved dogs, were then a large powerful nation, extending from the Cross Timbers to the waters of the great stream, in the East, but they were gamblers and drunkards; they would sell all their furs for the `Shoba-wapo' (fire-water), and return to their villages to poison their squaws, and make brutes of their children. Soon they got nothing more to sell; and as they could not now do without the `Shoba-wapo,' they began to steal. They would steal the horses and oxen of the Pale-faces, and say `The Comanches did it.' When they killed trappers or travellers, they would go to the fort of the Yankees and say to them, `Go to the wigwams of the Comanches, and you will see the scalps of your friends hanging upon long poles.' But we did not care, for we knew it was not true. "A long time passed away, when the evil spirit of the Caddoes whispered to them to come to the villages of the Comanches while they were hunting and to take away with them all that they could. They did so, entering the war-path as foxes and owls, during night. When they arrived, they found nothing but squaws, old women, and little children. Yet these fought well, and many of the Caddoes were killed before they abandoned their lodges. They soon found us out in the hunting-ground; and our great chief ordered me to start with five hundred warriors, and never return until the Caddoes should have no home, and wander like deer and starved wolves in the open prairie. "I followed the track. First, I burnt their great villages in the Cross Timbers, and then pursued them in the swamps and cane-breaks of the East, where they concealed themselves among the long lizards of the water (the alligators). We, however, came up with them again, and they crossed the Sabine, to take shelter among the Yankees, where they had another village, which was their largest and their richest. We followed; and on the very shores of their river, although a thousand miles from our own country, and where the waters are dyed with the red clay of the soil, we encamped round their wigwams and prepared to conquer. "It was at the gloomy season, when it rains night and day; the river was high, the earth damp, and our young braves shivering, even under their blankets. It was evening, when, far to the south, above one of the windings of the stream, I saw a thick black smoke rising as a tall pine among the clouds, and I watched it closely. It came towards us; and as the sky darkened and night came on, sparks of fire showed the progress of the strange sight. Soon noises were heard, like those of the mountains when the evil spirits are shaking them; the sounds were awful, solemn, and regular, like the throbs of a warrior's heart; and now and then a sharp, shrill scream would rend the air and awake other terrible voices in the forest. "It came, and deer, bears, panthers were passing among us madly flying before the dreaded unknown. It came, it flew, nearer and nearer, till we saw it plainly with its two big mouths, spitting fire like the burning mountains of the West. It rained very hard, and yet we saw all. It was like a long fish, shaped like a canoe, and its sides had many eyes, full of bright light as the stars above. "I saw no one with the monster; he was alone, breaking the waters and splashing them with his arms, his legs, or his fins. On the top, and it was very high, there was a square lodge: Once I thought I could see a man in it, but it was a fancy; or perhaps the soul of the thing, watching from its hiding place for a prey which it might seize upon; happily it was dark, very dark, and being in a hollow along the banks, we could not be perceived; and the dreadful thing passed. "The Caddoes uttered a loud scream of fear and agony; their hearts were melted. We said nothing, for we were Comanches and warriors; and yet I felt strange, and was fixed to where I stood. A man is but a man, and even a Red-skin cannot struggle with a spirit. The scream of the Caddoes, however, frightened the monster; its flanks opened and discharged some tremendous Anim Tekis (thunders) on the village. I heard the crashing of the logs, the splitting of the hides covering the lodges, and when the smoke was all gone, it left a smell of powder; the monster was far, far off, and there was no trace of it left, except the moans of the wounded and the lamentation of the squaws among the Caddoes. "I and my young men soon recovered our senses; we entered the village, burnt every thing, and killed the warriors. They would not fight; but as they were thieves, we destroyed them. We returned to our own villages, every one of us with many scalps, and since that time the Caddoes have never been a nation; they wander from north to south, and from east to west: they have huts made with the bark of trees, or they take shelter in the burrows of the prairie dogs, with the owls and the snakes; but they have no lodges, no wigwams, no villages. Thus may it be with all the foes of our great nation." This is an historical fact. The steamboat "Beaver" made its first exploration upon the Red River, some eighty miles above the French settlement of Nachitochy, just at the very time that the Comanches were attacking the last Caddoe village upon the banks of the Red. River. These poor savages yelled with terror when the strange mass passed thus before them, and, either from wanton cruelty or from fear of an attack, the boat fired four guns, loaded with grape-shot, upon the village, from which they were not a hundred yards distant. The following is a narrative of events which happened in the time of Mosh Kohta (buffalo), a great chief, hundreds of years ago, when the unfortunate "La Salle" was shipwrecked upon the coast of Texas, while endeavouring to discover the mouth of the Mississippi. Such records are very numerous among the great prairie tribes; they bear sometimes the Ossianic type, and are related every evening during the month of February, when the "Divines" and the elders of the nation teach to the young men the traditions of former days. "It was in the time of a chief, a great chief, strong, cunning, and wise, a chief of many bold deeds. His name was Mosh Kohta. "It is a long while! No Pale-faces dwelt in the land of plenty (the translation of the Indian word `Texas'); our grandfathers had just received it from the Great Spirit, and they had come from the setting of the sun across the big mountains to take possession. We were a great nation, we are so now, we have always been so, and we will ever be. At that time, also, our tribe spread all along the western shores of the great stream Mississippi, for no Pale-face had yet settled upon it. We were a great people, ruled by a mighty chief; the earth, the trees, the rivers, and the air know his name. Is there a place in the mountains or the prairies where the name of Mosh Kohta has not been pronounced and praised? "At that time a strange warlike people of the Pale-faces broke their big canoes along our coasts of the South, and they landed on the shore, well armed with big guns and long rifles, but they had nothing to eat. These were the `Maha-mate-kosh-ehoj' (the French); their chief was a good man, a warrior, and a great traveller; he had started from the northern territories of the Algonquins, to go across the salt water in far distant lands, and bring back with him many good things which the Red-skins wanted:--warm blankets to sleep upon, flints to strike a fire, axes to cut the trees, and knives to skin the bear and the buffalo. He was a good man and loved the Indians, for they also were good, and good people will always love each other. "He met with Mosh Kohta; our warriors would not fight the strangers, for they were hungry and their voices were soft; they were also too few to be feared, though their courage seemed great under misfortune, and they would sing and laugh while they suffered. We gave them food, we helped them to take from the waters the planks of their big canoe, and to build the first wigwam in which the Pale-faces ever dwelt in Texas. Two moons they remained hunting the buffalo with our young men, till at last their chief and his bravest warriors started in some small canoes of ours, to see if they could not enter the great stream, by following the coast towards the sunrise. He was gone four moons, and when he returned, he had lost half of his men, by sickness, hunger, and fatigue; yet Mosh Kohta bade him not despair; the great chief promised the Pale-faces to conduct them in the spring to the great stream, and for several more moons we lived all together, as braves and brothers should. Then, for the first time also, the Comanches got some of their rifles, and others knives. Was it good--was it bad? Who knows? Yet the lance and arrows killed as many buffaloes as lead and black dust (powder), and the squaws could take off the skin of a deer or a beaver without knives. How they did it, no one knows now; but they did it, though they had not yet seen the keen and sharp knives of the Pale-faces. "However, it was not long time before many of the strangers tired of remaining so far from their wigwams their chief every morning would look for hours towards the rising of the sun, as if the eyes of his soul could see through the immensity of the prairies; he became gloomy as a man of dark deeds (a Medecin), and one day, with half of his men, he began a long inland trail across prairies, swamps, and rivers, so much did he dread to die far from his lodge. Yet he did die: not of sickness, not of hunger, but under the knife of another Pale-face; and he was the first one from strange countries whose bones blanched without burial in the waste. Often the evening breeze whispers his name along the swells of the southern plains, for he was a brave man, and no doubt he is now smoking with his great Manitou. "Well, he started. At that time the buffalo and the deer were plentiful, and the men went on their trail gaily till they reached the river of many forks (Trinity River), for they knew that every day brought them nearer and nearer to the forts of their people, though it was yet a long way--very long. The Pale-face chief had a son with him; a noble youth, fair to look upon, active and strong: the Comanches loved him. Mosh Kohta had advised him to distrust two of his own warriors; but he was young and generous, incapable of wrong or cowardice; he would not suspect it in others, especially among men of his own colour and nation, who had shared his toils, his dangers, his sorrows, and his joys. "Now these two warriors our great chief had spoken of were men and very greedy; they were ambitious too, and believed that, by killing their chief and his son, they would themselves command the hand. One evening, while they were all eating the meal of friendship, groans were heard--a murder had been committed. The other warriors sprang up; they saw their chief dead, and the two warriors coming towards them; their revenge was quick--quick as that of the panther: the two base warriors were killed. "Then there was a great fight among the Pale-face band, in which many were slain; but the young man and some other braves escaped from their enemies, and, after two moons, reached the Arkansas, where they found their friends and some Makota Conayas (priests--black-gowns). The remainder of the band who left us, and who murdered their chief, our ancestors destroyed like reptiles, for they were venomous and bad. The other half of the Pale-faces, who had remained behind in their wood wigwams, followed our tribe to our great villages, became Comanches, and took squaws. Their children and grandchildren have formed a good and brave nation; they are paler than the Comanches, but their heart is all the same; and often in the hunting-grounds they join our hunters, partake of the same meals, and agree like brothers. These are the nation of the Wakoes, not far in the south, upon the trail of the Cross Timbers. But who knows not the Wakoes?--even children can go to their hospitable lodges." This episode is historical. In the early months of 1684, four vessels left La Rochelle, in France, for the colonisation of the Mississippi, bearing two hundred and eighty persons. The expedition was commanded by La Salle, who brought with him his nephew, Moranget. After a delay at Santo Domingo, which lasted two years, the expedition, missing the mouth of the Mississippi, entered the Bay of Matagorda, where they were shipwrecked. "There," says Bancroft in his History of America, "under the suns of June, with timber felled in an inland grove, and dragged for a league over the prairie grass, the colonists prepared to build a shelter, La Salle being the architect, and himself making the beams, and tenons, and mortises." This is the settlement which made Texas a part of Louisiana, La Salle proposed to seek the Mississippi in the canoes of the Indians, who had shewed themselves friendly, and, after an absence of about four months, and the loss of thirty men, he returned in rags, having failed to find "the fatal river." The eloquent American historian gives him a noble character:--"On the return of La Salle," says he, "he learned that a mutiny had broken out among his men, and they had destroyed a part of the colony's provisions. Heaven and man seemed his enemies, and, with the giant energy of an indomitable will, having lost his hopes of fortune, his hopes of fame, with his colony diminished to about one hundred, among whom discontent had given birth to plans of crime--with no European nearer than the river Pamuco, and no French nearer than the northern shores of the Mississippi, he resolved to travel on foot to his countrymen in the North, and renew his attempts at colonisation." It appears that La Salle left sixty men behind him, and on the 20th of March, 1686, after a buffalo-hunt, he was murdered by Duhaut and L'Archeveque, two adventurers, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. They had long shewn a spirit of mutiny, and the malignity of disappointed avarice so maddened them that that they murdered their unfortunate commander. I will borrow a page of Bancroft, who is more explicit than the Comanche chroniclers. "Leaving sixty men at Fort St. Louis, in January, 1687, La Salle, with the other portion of his men, departed for Canada. Lading their baggage on the wild horses from the Cenis, which found their pasture everywhere in the prairies, in shoes made of green buffalo hides; for want of other paths, following the track of the buffalo, and using skins as the only shelter against rain, winning favour with the savages by the confiding courage of their leader--they ascended the streams towards the first ridges of highlands, walking through beautiful plains and groves, among deer and buffaloes,--now fording the clear rivulets, now building a bridge by felling a giant tree across a stream, till they had passed the basin of the Colorado, and in the upland country had reached a branch of the Trinity River. "In the little company of wanderers there were two men, Duhaut and L'Archeveque, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. Of these, Duhaut had long shewn a spirit of mutiny; the base malignity of disappointed avarice, maddened by sufferings and impatient of control, awakened the fiercest passions of ungovernable hatred. Inviting Moranget to take charge of the fruits of a buffalo hunt, they quarrelled with him and murdered him. "Wondering at the delay of his nephew's return, La Salle, on the 20th of March, went to seek him. At the brink of the river, he observed eagles hovering, as if over carrion, and he fired an alarm-gun. Warned by the sound, Duhaut and L'Archeveque crossed the river: the former skulked in the prairie grass; of the latter, La Salle asked, `Where is my nephew?' At the moment of the answer, Duhaut fired; and, without uttering a word, La Salle fell dead. `You are down now, grand bashaw! You are down now:' shouted one of the conspirators, as they despoiled his remains, which were left on the prairie, naked and without burial, to be devoured by wild beasts. "Such was the end of this daring adventurer. For force of will and vast conceptions; for various knowledge, and quick adaptation of his genius to untried circumstances; for a sublime magnanimity, that resigned itself to the will of Heaven, and yet triumphed over affliction by energy of purpose and unfaltering hope,--he had no superior among his countrymen. He had won the affection of the Governor of Canada, the esteem of Colbert, the confidence of Seignelay, the favour of Louis XIV. After beginning the colonisation of Upper Canada, he perfected the discovery of the Mississippi from the Falls of St. Anthony to its mouth; and he will be remembered through all times as the father of colonisation in the great central valley of the West." Jontel, with the brother and son of La Salle, and others, but seven in all, obtained a guide from the Indians for the Arkansas, and, fording torrents, crossing ravines, making a ferry over rivers with rafts or boats of buffalo hides, without meeting the cheering custom of the calumet, till they reached the country above the Red River, and leaving an esteemed companion in a wilderness grave, on the 24th of July, came upon a branch of the Mississippi. There they beheld on an island a large cross: never did Christians gaze on that emblem with more deep-felt emotion. Near it stood a log hut, tenanted by two Frenchmen. A missionary, of the name of Tonti, had descended that river, and, full of grief at not finding La Salle, had established a post near the Arkansas. As the reader may perceive, there is not much difference between our printed records, and the traditions of the Comanches. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE. It was during my convalescence that the fate of the Texian expedition to Santa Fe was decided; and as the real facts have been studiously concealed, and my intelligence, gained from the Indians, who were disinterested parties, was afterwards fully corroborated by an Irish gentleman who had been persuaded to join it, I may as well relate them here. Assuming the character of friendly traders, with some hundred dollars' worth of goods, as a blind to their real intentions, which were to surprise the Mexicans during the neutrality which had been agreed upon, about five hundred men were collected at Austin, for the expedition. Although the report was everywhere circulated that this was to be a trading experiment, the expedition, when it quitted Austin, certainly wore a very different appearance. The men had been supplied with uniforms; generals, and colonels, and majors were dashing about in every direction, and they quitted the capital of Texas with drums beating and colours flying. Deceived by the Texians, a few respectable Europeans were induced to join this expedition, either for scientific research or the desire to visit a new and unexplored country, under such protection, little imagining that they had associated themselves with a large band of robbers, for no other name can be given to these lawless plunderers. But if the force made a tolerable appearance on its quitting the capital, a few hours' march put an end to all discipline and restraint. Although the country abounded with game, and it was killed from mere wantonness, such was their improvidence, that they were obliged to resort to their salt pork and other provisions; and as, in thirty days, forty large casks of whisky were consumed, it is easy to suppose, which was indeed the fact, that every night that they halted, the camp was a scene of drunkenness and riot. During the last few days of the march through the game country, they killed more than a hundred buffaloes, yet, three days after they had quitted the prairies and had entered the dreary northern deserts, they had no provisions left, and were compelled to eat their worn-out and miserable horses. A true account of their horrible sufferings would beggar all description; they became so weak and so utterly helpless, that half-a-dozen Mexicans, well mounted, could have destroyed them all. Yet, miserable as they were, and under the necessity of conciliating the Indians, they could not forego their piratical and thieving propensities. They fell upon a small village of the Wakoes, whose warriors and hunters were absent, and, not satisfied with taking away all the eatables they could carry, they amused themselves with firing the Indian stores and shooting the children, and did not leave until the village was reduced to a heap of burning ashes. This act of cowardice sealed the fate of the expedition, which was so constantly harassed by the Wakoe warriors, and had lost already so many scalps, that afterwards meeting with a small party of Mexicans, they surrendered to them, that they might escape the well-deserved, and unrelenting vengeance of the warlike Wakoes. Such was the fate of the Texian expedition; but there is another portion of the history which has been much talked of in the United States; I mean the history of their captivity and sufferings, while on their road from Santa Fe to Mexico. Mr Daniel Webster hath made it a government question, and Mr Pakenham, the British ambassador in Mexico, has employed all the influence of his own position to restore to freedom the half-dozen of Englishmen who had joined the expedition. Of course they knew nothing of the circumstances, except from the report of the Texians themselves. Now it is but just that the Mexicans' version should be heard also. The latter is the true one, at least so far as I can judge by what I saw, what I heard upon the spot, and from some Mexican documents yet in my possession. The day before their capture, the Texians, who for the last thirteen days had suffered all the pangs of hunger, came suddenly upon a flock of several thousand sheep, belonging to the Mexican government. As usual, the flock was under the charge of a Mexican family, living in a small covered waggon, in which they could remove from spot to spot, shifting the pasture-ground as required. In that country, but very few individuals are employed to keep the largest herds of animals; but they are always accompanied by a number of noble dogs, which appear to be particularly adapted to protect and guide the animals. These dogs do not run about, they never bark or bite, but, on the contrary, they will walk gently up to any one of the flock that happens to stray, take it carefully by the ear, and lead it back to its companions. The sheep do not show the least fear of these dogs, nor is there any occasion for it. These useful guardians are a cross of the Newfoundland and St. Bernard breed, of a very large size, and very sagacious. Now, if the Texians had asked for a hundred sheep, either for money or in barter (a sheep is worth about sixpence), they would have been supplied directly; but as soon as the flock was perceived, one of the Texian leaders exclaimed, with an oath, "Mexicans' property, and a welcome booty; upon it my boys, upon it, and no mercy." One of the poor Mexicans who had charge was shot through the head, the others succeeded in escaping by throwing themselves down among the thick ranks of the affrighted animals, till out of rifle distance; then began a carnage without discrimination, and the Texians never ceased firing until the prairie was for miles covered with the bodies of their victims. Yet this grand victory was not purchased without a severe loss, for the dogs defended the property intrusted to their care; they scorned to run away, and before they could all be killed, they had torn to pieces half-a-dozen of the Texians, and dreadfully lacerated as many more. The evening was, of course, spent in revelry: the dangers and fatigues, the delays and vexatious of the march were now considered over, and high were their anticipations of the rich plunder in perspective. But this was the only feat accomplished by this Texian expedition: the Mexicans had not been deceived; they had had intelligence of the real nature of the expedition, and advanced parties had been sent out to announce its approach. Twenty-four hours after they had regaled themselves with mutton, one of these parties, amounting to about one hundred men, made its appearance. All the excitement of the previous evening had evaporated, the Texians sent out a flag of truce, and three hundred of them surrendered themselves unconditionally to this small Mexican force. On one point the European nations have been much deceived, which is as to the character of the Mexican soldier, who appears to be looked upon with a degree of contempt. This is a great mistake, but it has arisen from the false reports and unfounded aspersions of the Texians, as to the result of many of their engagements. I can boldly assert (although opposed to them) that there is not a braver individual in the world than the Mexican; in my opinion, far superior to the Texian, although probably not equal to him in the knowledge and use of fire-arms. One great cause of the Mexican army having occasionally met with defeat, is that the Mexicans, who are of the oldest and best Castile blood, retain the pride of the Spanish race to an absurd degree. The sons of the old nobility are appointed as officers; they learn nothing, know nothing of military tactics--they know how to die bravely, and that is all. The battle of St. Jacinta, which decided the separation of Texas, has been greatly cried up by the Texians; the fact is, it was no battle at all. They were commanded by Santa Anna, who has great military talent, and the Mexicans reposed full confidence in him. Santa Anna feeling very unwell, went to a farm-house, at a small distance, to recover himself, and was captured by half-a-dozen Texian robbers, who took him on to the Texian army. The loss of the general with the knowledge that there was no one fit to supply his place, dispirited the Mexicans, and they retreated; but since that time they have proved to the Texians how insecure they are, even at this moment. England and other European governments have thought proper, very hastily, to recognise Texas, but Mexico has not, and will not. The expedition to Santa Fe, by which the Texians broke the peace, occurred in the autumn of 1841; the Mexican army entered Texas in the spring of 1842, sweeping every thing before them, from St. Antonio di Bejar to the Colorado; but the Texians had sent emissaries to Yucatan, to induce that province to declare its independence. The war in Yucatan obliged the Mexican army to march back in that direction to quell the insurrection, which it did, and then returned to Texas, and again took possession of St. Antonio di Bejar in September of the same year, taking many prisoners of consequence away with them. It was the intention of the Mexicans to have returned to Texas in the spring of the year, but fresh disturbances in Yucatan prevented Santa Anna from executing his projects. Texas is, therefore, by no means secure, its population is decreasing, and those who had respectability attached to their character have left it. I hardly need observe that the Texian national debt, now amounting to thirteen millions of dollars, may, for many reasons, turn out to be not a very profitable investment. [See Note 1.] But to return to the Santa Fe expedition. Texians were deprived of their arms and conducted to a small village, called Anton Chico, till orders should have been received as to their future disposition, from General Armigo, governor of the province. It is not to be supposed that in a small village of about one hundred government shepherds, several hundred famished men could be supplied with all the necessaries and superfluities of life. The Texians accuse the Mexicans of having starved them in Anton Chico, forgetting that every Texian had the same ration of provisions as the Mexican soldier. Of course the Texians now attempted to fall back upon the original falsehood, that they were a trading expedition, and had been destroyed and plundered by the Indians; but, unfortunately, the assault upon the sheep and the cowardly massacre of the shepherds were not to be got over. As Governor Armigo very justly observed to them, if they were traders, they had committed murder; if they were not traders, they were prisoners of war. After a painful journey of four months, the prisoners arrived in the old capital of Mexico, where the few strangers who had been induced to join the expedition, in ignorance of its destination, were immediately restored to liberty; the rest were sent, some to the mines, to dig for the metal they were so anxious to obtain, and some were passed over to the police of the city, be employed in the cleaning of the streets. Many American newspapers have filled their columns with all manner of histories relative to this expedition; catalogues of the cruelties practised by the Mexicans have been given, and the sympathising American public have been called upon to give the unfortunate men who had escaped. I will only give one instance of misrepresentation in the New Orleans _Picayune_, and put in juxta-position the real truth. It will be quite sufficient. Mr Kendal says:-- "As the sun was about setting those of us who were in front were startled by the report of two guns, following each other in quick succession. We turned to ascertain the cause, and soon found that a poor, unfortunate man, named Golpin, a merchant, and who had started upon the expedition with a small amount of goods, had been shot by the rear-guard, for no other reason than that he was too sick and weak to keep up; he had made a bargain with one of the guard to ride his mule a short distance, for which he was to pay him his only shirt! While in the act of taking it off, Salazar (the commanding officer) ordered a soldier to shoot him. The first ball only wounded the wretched man, but the second killed him instantly, and he fell with his shirt still about his face. Golpin was a citizen of the United States, and reached Texas a short time before the expedition. He was a harmless, inoffensive man, of most delicate constitution, and, during a greater part of the time we were upon the road, was obliged to ride in one of the waggons." This story is, of course, very pathetic; but here we have a few lines taken from the _Bee_, a New Orleans newspaper:-- "_January_, 1840. HORRIBLE MURDER!--Yesterday, at the plantation of William Reynolds, was committed one of those acts, which revolt human nature. Henry Golpin, the overseer, a Creole, and strongly suspected of being a quadroon, had for some time acted improperly towards Mrs Reynolds and daughters. A few days ago, a letter from WR was received from St. Louis, stating that he would return home at the latter end of the week; and Golpin, fearing that the ladies would complain of his conduct and have him turned out, poisoned them with the juice of some berries poured into their coffee. Death was almost instantaneous. A pretty mulatto girl of sixteen, an attendant and _protegee_ of the young ladies, entering the room where the corpses were already stiff, found the miscreant busy in taking off their jewels and breaking up some recesses, where he knew that there were a few thousand dollars, in specie and paper, the produce of a recent sale of negroes. At first, he tried to coax the girl, offering to run away and marry her, but she repulsed him with indignation, and, forcing herself off his hold, she ran away to call for help. Snatching suddenly a rifle, he opened a window, and as the honest girl ran across the square towards the negroes' huts, she fell quite dead, with a ball passing across her temples. The governor and police of the first and second municipalities offer one thousand dollars reward for the apprehension of the miserable assassin, who, of course, has absconded." This is the "_harmless and inoffensive man of delicate constitution, a citizen of the United States_," which Mr Kendal would give us as a martyr of Mexican barbarism. During the trip across the prairie, every man, except two or three, had shunned him, so well did every one know his character; and now I will describe the events which caused him to be shot in the way above related. Two journeys after they had left Santa Fe they passed the night in a little village, four men being billeted in every house under the charge of one soldier. Golpin and another of his stamp were, however, left without any guard in the house of a small retailer of aguardiente, who, being now absent, had left his old wife alone in the house. She was a good hospitable soul, and thought it a Christian duty to administer to the poor prisoners all the relief she could afford. She gave them some of her husband's linen, bathed their feet with warm water mixed with whisky, and served up to them a plentiful supper. Before they retired to rest, she made them punch, and gave them a small bottle of liquor, which they could conceal about them and use on the road. The next morning the sounds of the drums called the prisoners in the square to get ready for their departure. Golpin went to the old woman's room, insisting that she should give them more of the liquor. Now the poor thing had already done much. Liquor in these far inland countries, where there are no distilleries, reaches the enormous price of from sixteen to twenty dollars a gallon. So she mildly but firmly refused, upon which Golpin seized from the nail, where it was hung, a very heavy key, which he knew to be that of the little cellar underground, where the woman kept the liquor. She tried to regain possession of it, but during the struggle Golpin beat her brains out with a bar of iron that was in the room. This deed perpetrated, he opened the trap-door of the cellar, and among the folds of his blanket and that of his companion concealed as many flasks as they could carry. They then shut the street-door and joined their companions. Two hours afterwards, the husband returned, and knocked in vain; at last, he broke open the door, and beheld his helpmate barbarously mangled. A neighbour soon told him about the two Texian guests, and the wretched man having made his depositions to an alcade, or constable, they both started upon fresh horses, and at noon overtook the prisoners. The commanding officers soon ascertained who were the two men that had been billeted at the old woman's, and found them surrounded by a group of Texians, making themselves merry with the stolen liquor. Seeing that they were discovered, to save his life, Golpin's companion immediately peached, and related the whole of the transaction. Of course the assassin was executed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. Perhaps the English reader will find it extraordinary that Santa Anna, once freed from his captivity, should not have re-entered Texas with an overwhelming force. The reason is very simple: Bustamente was a rival of Santa Anna for the presidency; the general's absence allowed him to intrigue, and when the news reached the capital that Santa Anna had fallen a prisoner, it became necessary to elect a new president. Bustamente had never been very popular, but having promised to the American population of the sea-ports, that nothing should be attempted against Texas if he were elected, these, through mercantile interest, supported him, not only with their influence, but also with their money. When, at last, Santa Anna returned to Mexico, his power was lost, and his designs upon Texas were discarded by his successor. Bustamente was a man entirely devoid of energy, and he looked with apathy upon the numerous aggressions made by the Texians upon the borders of Mexico. As soon however, as the Mexicans heard that the Texians, in spite of the law of nations, had sent an expedition to Santa Fe, at the very time that they were making overtures for peace and recognition of their independence, they called upon Bustamente to account for his culpable want of energy. Believing himself secure against any revolution, the president answered with harsh measures, and the soldiery, now exasperated, put Santa Anna at their head forcing him to re-assume the presidency. Bustamente ran away to Paris, the Santa Fe expedition was soon defeated, and, as we have seen, the president, Santa Anna, began his dictatorship with the invasion of Texas (March, 1842). CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. At that time, the Pawnee Picts, themselves an offset of the Shoshones and Comanches, and speaking the same language--a tribe residing upon the northern shores of the Red River, and who had always been at peace with their ancestors, had committed some depredations upon the northern territory of the Comanches. The chiefs, as usual, waited several moons for reparation to be offered by the offenders, but as none came, it was feared that the Picts had been influenced by the American agents to forget their long friendship, and commence hostilities with them. It was, therefore, resolved that we should enter the war path, and obtain by force that justice which friendship could no longer command. The road which we had to travel, to arrive at the town of the Pawnee Picts, was rough and uneven, running over hills and intersected by deep gullies. Bad as it was, and faint and tired as were our horses, in ten days we reached a small prairie, within six miles of the river, on the other side of which lay the principal village of the Pawnee Picts. The heavens now became suddenly overcast, and a thunderstorm soon rendered it impossible for even our best warriors to see their way. A halt was consequently ordered, and, notwithstanding a tremendous rain, we slept soundly till morn, when a drove of horses, numbering some hundreds, was discovered some distance to our left. In all appearance they were tame animals, and many thought they could see the Pawnee warriors riding them. Four of us immediately started to reconnoitre, and we made our preparations for attack; as we gradually approached there appeared to be no little commotion among the herd, which we now plainly perceived to be horses without any riders. When we first noticed them, we discerned two or three white spots, which Gabriel and I mistook for flags; a nearer view convinced us that they were young colts. We continued our route. The sun had scarcely risen when we arrived on the shore of the river, which was lined with hundreds of canoes, each carrying green branches at their bows and white flags at their sterns. Shortly afterwards, several chiefs passed over to our side, and invited all our principal chiefs to come over to the village and talk to the Pawnee Picts, who wished to remain brothers with their friends--the Comanches. This was consented to, and Gabriel, Roche, and I accompanied them. This village was admirably protected from attack on every side; and in front, the Red River, there clear and transparent, rolls its deep waters. At the back of the village, stony and perpendicular mountains rise to the height of two thousand feet, and their ascent is impossible, except by ladders and ropes, or where steps have, been cut into the rock. The wigwams, one thousand in number, extend, for the space of four miles, upon a beautiful piece of rich alluvial soil, in a very high state of cultivation; the fields were well fenced and luxuriant with maize, pumpkins, melons, beans and squashes. The space between the mountains and the river, on each side of the village, was thickly planted with close ranks of prickly pear, impassable to man or beast, so that the only way in which the Pawnees could be attacked was in front, by forcing a passage across the river, which could not be effected without a great loss of life, as the Pawnees are a brave people and well supplied with rifles, although in their prairie hunts they prefer to use their lances and their arrows. When we entered the great council lodge, the great chief, Wetara Sharoj, received us with great urbanity, assigned to us places next to him, and gave the signal for the Pawnee elders to enter the lodge. I was very much astonished to see among them some white men, dressed in splendid military uniforms; but the ceremonies having begun, and it being the Indian custom to assume indifference, whatever your feelings may be, I remained where I was. Just at the moment that the pipe-bearer was lighting the calumet of peace, the venerable Pawnee chief advanced to the middle of the lodge, and addressed the Comanches:-- "My sight is old, for I have seen a hundred winters, and yet I can recognise those who once were friends. I see among you Opishka Koaki (the White Raven), and the leader of a great people; Pemeh-Katey (the Long Carbine), and the wise Hah-nee (the Old Beaver). You are friends, and we should offer you at once the calumet of peace, but you have come as foes; as long as you think you have cause to remain so, it would be mean and unworthy of the Pawnees to sue and beg for what perchance they may obtain by their courage. Yet the Comanches and the Pawnees have been friends too long a time to fall upon each other as a starved wolf does upon a wounded buffalo. A strong cause must excite them to fight against each other, and then, when it comes, it must be a war of extermination, for when a man breaks with an old friend, he becomes more bitter in his vengeance than against an utter stranger. Let me hear what the brave Comanches have to complain of, and any reparation, consistent with the dignity of a Pawnee chief, shall be made, sooner than risk a war between brothers who have so long hunted together and fought together against a common enemy. I have said." Opishka Koaki ordered me to light the Comanche calumet of peace, and advancing to the place left vacant by the ancient chief, he answered:-- "I have heard words of great wisdom; a Comanche always loves and respects wisdom; I love and respect my father, Wetara Sharoj; I will tell him what are the complaints of our warriors, but before, as we have come as foes, it is but just that we should be the first to offer the pipe of peace; take it, chief, for we must be friends; I will tell our wrongs, and leave it to the justice of the great Pawnee to efface them, and repair the loss his young men have caused to a nation of friends." The pipe was accepted, and the "talk" went on. It appeared that a party of one hundred Pawnee hunters had had their horses estampeded one night, by some hostile Indians. For five days they forced their way on foot, till entering the northern territory of the Comanches, they met with a drove of horses and cattle. They would never have touched them, had it not been that, a short time afterwards, they met with another very numerous party of their inveterate enemies--the Kiowas, by whom they were pressed so very hard, that they were obliged to return to the place where the Comanche herds of horse were grazing, and to take them, to escape their foes. So far, all was right; it was nothing more than what the Comanches would have done themselves in the land of the Pawnees; but what had angered the Comanche warriors was, that the hundred horses thus borrowed in necessity, had never been returned, although the party had arrived at the village two moons ago. When the Pawnees heard that we had no other causes for complaint, they shewed, by their expressions of friendship, that the ties of long brotherhood were not to be so easily broken; and indeed the Pawnees had, some time before, sent ten of their men with one hundred of their finest horses, to compensate for those which they had taken and rather ill-treated, in their hurried escape from the Kiowas. But they had taken a different road from that by which we had come, and consequently we had missed them. Of course, the council broke up, and the Indians, who had remained on the other side of the river, were invited in the village to partake of the Pawnee hospitality. Gabriel and I soon accosted the strangely-dressed foreigners. In fact, we were seeking each other, and I learned that they had been a long time among the Pawnees, and would have passed over to the Comanches, in order to confer with me on certain political matters, had it not been that they were aware of the great antipathy the chiefs of that tribe entertained against the inhabitants of the United States. The facts were as follows:--These people were emissaries of the Mormons, a new sect which had sprung up in the States, and which was rapidly increasing in numbers. This sect had been created by a certain Joseph Smith. Round the standard of this bold and ambitious leader, swarms of people crowded from every part, and had settled upon a vast extent of ground on the eastern shores of the Mississippi, and there established a civil, religious, and military power, as anomalous as it was dangerous to the United States. In order to accomplish his ulterior views, this modern apostle wished to establish relations of peace and friendship with all the Indians in the great western territories, I had for that purpose sent messengers among the various tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. Having also learned, by the St. Louis trappers, that strangers, long established among the Shoshones of the Pacific Ocean, were now residing among the Comanches, Smith had ordered his emissaries among the Pawnees to endeavour to meet us, and concert together as to what measures could be taken so as to secure a general league, defensive and offensive, against the Americans and the Texians, and which was to extend from the Mississippi to the western seas. Such a proposition of course could not be immediately answered. I therefore obtained leave from the Comanches to stake the two strangers with us, and we all returned together. It would be useless to relate to the reader that which passed between me and the emissaries of the Mormons; let it suffice to say, that after a residence of three weeks in the village, they were conducted back to the Pawnees. With the advice of Gabriel, I determined to go myself and confer with the principal Mormon leaders; resolving in my own mind that if our interview was not satisfactory, I would continue on to Europe, and endeavour either to engage a company of merchants to enter into direct communication with the Shoshones, or to obtain the support of the English government, in furtherance of the objects I had in view for the advantage of the tribe. As a large portion of the Comanches were making preparations for their annual migration to the east of Texas, Roche, Gabriel, and I joined this party, and having exchanged an affectionate farewell with the remainder of the tribe, and received many valuable presents, we started, taking the direction of the Saline Lake, which forms the head-waters of the southern branch or fork of the river Brasos. There we met again with our old friends, the Wakoes, and learned that there was a party of sixty or seventy Yankees or Texians roaming about the upper forks of the Trinity, committing all sorts of depredations, and painting their bodies like the Indians, that their enormities might be laid to the account of the savages. This may appear strange to the reader, but it has been a common practice for some time. There have always been in the United States a numerous body of individuals, who, having by their crimes been compelled to quit the settlements of the east, have sought shelter out of the reach of civilisation. These individuals are all desperate characters, and, uniting themselves in small bands, come fearlessly among the savages, taking squaws, and living among them till a sufficient period has elapsed to enable them to venture, under an assumed name and in a distant state, to return with impunity and enjoy the wealth acquired by plunder and assassination. This is the history of the major portion of the western pioneers, whose courage and virtues have been so much celebrated by American writers. As they increased in numbers, these pioneers conceived a plan by which they acquired great wealth. They united together, forming a society of land privateers or buccaneers, and made incursions into the very heart of the French and Spanish settlements of the west, where, not being expected, they surprised the people and carried off great booty. When, however, these Spanish and French possessions were incorporated into the United States, they altered their system of plunder; and, under the name of Border's Buggles, they infested the states of the Mississippi and Tennessee, where they obtained such a dreaded reputation that the government sent out many expeditions against them, which, however, were useless, as all the principal magistrates of these states had contrived even themselves to be elected members of the fraternity. The increase of population broke up this system, and the "Buggles" were compelled to resort to other measures. Well acquainted with Indian manners, they would dress and paint themselves as savages, and attack the caravans to Mexico. The traders, in their reports, would attribute the deed to some tribe of Indians, probably, at the moment of the attack, some five or six hundred miles distant from the spot. This land pirating is now, carried to a greater extent than ever. Bands of fifty or sixty pioneers steal horses, cattle, and slaves from the west of Arkansas and Louisiana; and sell them in Texas, where they have their agents; and then, under the disguise of Indian warriors, they attack plantations in Texas, carrying away with them large herds of horses and cattle, which they drive to Missouri, through the lonely mountain passes of the Arkansas, or to the Attalapas and Opelousas districts of Western Louisiana, forcing their way through the Lakes and swamps on both shores of the river Sabine. The party mentioned by the Wakoes was one of this last description. We left our friends, and, after a journey of three days, we crossed the Brasos, close to a rich copper mine, which has ages been worked by the Indians, who used, as they do now, thin metal for the points of their arrows and lances. Another three days' journey brought us to one of the forks of Trinity, and there we met with two companies of Texian rangers and spies, under the command of a certain Captain Hunt, who had been sent from the lower part of the river to protect the northern plantations. With him I found five gentlemen, who, tired of residing in Texas, had taken the opportunity of this military escort to return to the Arkansas. As soon as they heard that I was going there myself, they offered to join me, which I agreed to, as it was now arranged that Gabriel and Roche should not accompany me farther than to the Red River. [See note 1.] The next morning I received a visit from Hunt and two or three inferior officers, to advise upon the following subject. An agricultural company from Kentucky had obtained from the Texian government a grant of lands on the upper forks of the Trinity. There twenty-five or thirty families had settled, and they had with them numerous cattle, horses, mules, and donkeys a very superior breed. On the very evening I met with the Texian rangers, the settlement had been visited by a party of ruffians, who stole every thing, murdering sixty or seventy men, women, and children, and firing all the cottages and log-houses of this rising and prosperous village. All the corpses were shockingly mangled and scalped, and as the assailants were painted in the Indian fashion, the few inhabitants who had escaped and gained the Texian camp declared that the marauders were Comanches. This I denied stoutly, as did the Comanche party, and we all proceeded with the Texian force to Lewisburg, the site of the massacre. As soon as I viewed the bodies, lying here and there, I at once was positive that the deed had been committed by white men. The Comanche chief could scarcely restrain his indignation; he rode close to Captain Hunt and sternly said to him:-- "Stoop, Pale-face of a Texian, and look with thy eyes open; be honest if thou canst, and confess that thou knowest by thine own experience that this deed is that of white men. What Comanche ever scalped women and children. Stoop, I say, and behold a shame on thy colour and race--a race of wolves, preying upon each other; a race of jaguars, killing the female after having forced her--stoop and see. "The bodies of the young women have been atrociously and cowardly abused--seest thou? Thou well knowest the Indian is too noble and too proud to level himself to the rank of a Texian or of a brute." Twenty of our Comanches started on the tracks, and in the evening brought three prisoners to the camp. They were desperate blackguards, well known to every one of the soldiers under Captain Hunt, who in spite of their Indian disguise, identified them immediately. Hunt refused to punish them, or make any further pursuit, under the plea that he had received orders to act against Indian depredators, but not against white men. "If such is the case," interrupted the Comanche chief; "retire immediately with thy men, even to-night, or the breeze of evening will repeat thy words to my young men, who would give a lesson of justice to the Texians. Away with thee, if thou valuest thy scalp; justice shall be done by Indians; it is time they should take it into their own hands, when Pale-faces are afraid of each other." Captain Hunt was wise enough to retire without replying, and the next morning the Indians, armed with cords and switches, gave a severe whipping to the brigands, for having assumed the Comanche paint and war-whoop. This first part of their punishment being over, their paint was washed off, and the chief passed them over to us, who were, with the addition I have mentioned, now eight white inca. "They are too mean," said the chief, "to receive a warrior's death; judge them according to your laws; justice must be done." It was an awful responsibility; but we judged them according to the laws of the United States and of Texas: they were condemned to be hung, and at sunset they were executed. For all I know, their bodies may still hang from the lower branches of the three large cotton-wood trees upon the head waters of the Trinity River. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. It may appear singular to the reader that the Comanche, being always at war with the Texians, should not have immediately attacked the party under the orders of Hunt. But we were merely a hunting-party; that is to say, our band was composed chiefly of young hunters, not yet warriors. On such occasions, there is frequently, though not always, an ancient warrior for every eight hunters just to shew to them the crafts of Indian mode of hunting. These parties often bring with them their squaws and children, and never fight but when obliged to do so. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. We remained a few days where we were encamped to repose our horses and enable them to support the fatigues of our journey through the rugged and swampy wilderness of North-east Texas. Three days after the execution of the three prisoners, some of our Indians, on their return from a buffalo chase, informed us that several Texian companies, numbering two hundred men, were advancing in our direction, and that probably they were out upon an expedition against the Indians of the Cross Timbers, as they had with them many waggons evidently containing nothing but provisions and ammunition. We were encamped in a strong position, and of course did not think of retiring. We waited for the Texian army, determined to give them a good drubbing if they dared to attempt to molest us. Notwithstanding the security of our position, we kept a good watch during the night, but nothing happened to give us alarm. The next morning, two hours after sunrise, we saw the little army halting two miles from us, on the opposite shore of a deep stream, which they must necessarily pass to come to us. A company of the Comanches immediately darted forward to dispute the passage; but some flags of truce being displayed by the Texians, five or six of them were allowed to swim over unmolested. These worthies who came over were Captain Hunt, of whom I have before made mention, and General Smith, commanding the Texian army, who was a certain butcher from Indiana, who had been convicted of having murdered his wife and condemned to be hanged. He had, however, succeeded in escaping from the gaol, and making his way to Texas. The third eminent personage was a Colonel Hookley, and the other two were interpreters. As an Indian will never hurt a foe who comes with a flag of truce, the Comanches brought these gentlemen up to the camp. As soon as General Smith presented himself before the Comanche chief, he commenced a bullying harangue, not stating for what purpose he had come, telling us gratuitously that he was the greatest general in the land, and that all the other officers were fools; that he had with him an innumerable number of stout and powerful warriors, who had no equal in the world; and thus he went on for half an hour, till, breath failing him, he was obliged to stop. After a silence of a few minutes, he asked the Comanche chief what he could answer to that? The chief looked at him and replied, with the most ineffable contempt: "What should I answer?" said he; "I have heard nothing but the words of a fool abusing other fools. I have heard the howl of the wolf long before the buffalo was wounded; there can be no answer to no question; speak, if thou canst; say what thou wishest, or return from whence thou comest, lest the greatest warrior of Texas should be whipped by squaws and boys." The ex-butcher was greatly incensed at the want of breeding and manners of the "poor devil of a savage," but at last he condescended to come to the point. First of all, having learned from Captain Hunt the whole transaction at Lewisburg, and that the Comanches had detained the prisoners, he wished to have them restored to him. Next he wanted to get the three young Pale-faces, who were with the Comanches (meaning me, Gabriel, and Roche). They were three thieves, who had escaped from the gaols, and he, the general, wanted to punish them. After all, they were three vagabonds, damned strangers, and strangers had nothing to do in Texas, so he must have them. Thirdly and lastly, he wanted to have delivered unto him the five Americans who had left Captain Hunt to join us. He suspected them to be rascals or traitors, or they would not have joined the Indians. He, the great general, wished to investigate closely into the matter, and so the Comanches had better think quick about it, for he was in a hurry. I should here add, that the five Americans, though half-ruined by the thefts of the Texians, had yet with them four or five hundred dollars in good bank-notes, besides which each had a gold watch, well-furnished saddle-bags, a good saddle, and an excellent travelling horse. The chief answered him: "Now I can answer, for I have heard words having a meaning, although I know them to be great lies. I say first, thou shalt not have the prisoners who murdered those of thine own colour, for they are hung yonder upon the tall trees, and there they shall remain till the vultures and the crows have picked their flesh. "I say, secondly, that the three young Pale-faces are here and will answer for themselves, if they will or will not follow thee; but I see thy tongue can utter big lies; for I know they have never mixed with the Pale-faces of the south. As to the five Yankees, we cannot give them back to thee, because we can give back only what we have taken. They are now our guests, and, in our hospitality, they are secure till they leave us of their own accord. I have said!" Scarcely were these words finished, when the general and his four followers found themselves surrounded by twenty Comanches, who conducted them back to the stream in rather an abrupt manner. The greatest officer of the land swore revenge; but as his guides did not understand him, he was lucky enough to reserve his tongue for more lies and more swearing at a more fitting time. He soon rejoined his men, and fell back with them about a mile, apparently to prepare for an attack upon our encampment. In the evening, Roche and some five or six Indians passed the stream a few miles below, that they might observe what the Texians were about; but unfortunately they met with a party of ten of the enemy hunting, and Roche fell heavily under his horse, which was killed by a rifle-shot. One of the Comanches immediately jumped from his horse, rescued Roche from his dangerous position, and, notwithstanding that the Texians were at that instant charging, he helped Roche to his own saddle and bade him fly. Roche was too much stupified by his fall that he could not reflect, or otherwise his generous nature would never have permitted him to save his life--at the expense of that of the noble fellow who was thus sacrificing himself. As it was, he darted away, and his liberator, receiving the shock of the assailants, killed two of them, and fell pierced with their rifle-balls. [See note 1.] The report of the rifles recalled Roche to his senses, and joining once more the three remaining Indians, he rushed madly upon the hunters, and, closing with one of them, he ripped him up with his knife, while the Comanches had each of them successfully thrown their lassoes, and now galloped across the plain, dragging after them three mangled bodies. Roche recovered his saddle and holsters, and taking with him the corpse of the noble-minded Indian, he gave to his companions the signal for retreat, as the remaining hunters were flying at full speed towards their camp, and, succeeded in giving the alarm. An hour after, they returned to us, and, upon their report, it was resolved that we should attack the Texians that very night. About ten o'clock we started, divided into three bands of seventy men each, which made our number about equal to that of the Texians; Roche, who was disabled, with fifteen Indians and the five Americans remaining in the camp. Two of the bands went down the river to cross it without noise, while the third, commanded by Gabriel and me, travelled up the stream for two miles, where we safely effected our passage. We had left the horses ready, in case of accident, under the keeping of five men for every band. The plan was to surprise the Texians, and attack them at once in front and in rear; we succeeded beyond all expectations, the Texians, as usual, being all more or less intoxicated. We reached their fires before any alarm was given. We gave the war-whoop and rushed among the sleepers. Many, many were killed in their deep sleep of intoxication, but those who awoke and had time to seize upon their arms fought certainly better than they would have done had they been sober. The gallant General Smith, the bravest of the brave and ex-butcher, escaped at the very beginning of the affray, but I saw the Comanche chief cleaving the skull of Captain Hunt with his tomahawk. Before their onset, the Indians had secured almost all the enemy's waggons and horses, so that flight to many became impossible. At that particular spot the prairie was undulatory and bare, except on the left of the encampment, where a few bushes skirted the edge of a small stream; but these were too few and too small to afford a refuge to the Texians, one hundred of whom were killed and scalped. The remainder of the night was passed in giving chase to the fugitives, who, at last, halted at a bend of the river, in a position that could not be forced without great loss of life; so the Indians left them, and, after having collected all the horses and the booty they thought worth taking away, they burnt the waggons and returned to their own camp. As we quitted the spot, I could not help occasionally casting a glance behind me, and the spectacle was truly magnificent. Hundreds of barrels, full of grease, salt pork, gin, and whisky, were burning, and the conflagration had now extended to the grass and the dry bushes. We had scarcely crossed the river when the morning breeze sprung up, and now the flames extended in every direction, pining rapidly upon the spot where the remaining Texians had stood at bay. So fiercely and abruptly did the flames rush upon them, that all simultaneously, men and horses, darted into the water for shelter against the devouring element. Many were drowned in the whirlpools, and those who succeeded in reaching the opposite shore were too miserable and weak to think of anything, except of regaining, if possible, the southern settlements. Though protected from the immediate reach of the flames by the branch of the river upon the shore of which we were encamped, the heat had become so intense, that we were obliged to shift farther to the west. Except in the supply of arms and ammunition, we perceived that our booty was worth nothing. This Texian expedition must have been composed of a very beggarly set, for there was not a single yard of linen, nor a miserable worn-out pair of trousers, to be found in all their bundles and boxes. Among the horses taken, some thirty or forty were immediately identified by the Comanches as their own property, many of them, during the preceding year, having been stolen by a party of Texians, who had invited the Indians to a grand council. Gabriel, Roche, and I, of course, would accept none of the booty; and as time was now becoming to me a question of great importance, we bade farewell to our Comanche friends, and pursued our journey east, in company with the five Americans. During the action, the Comanches had had forty men wounded and only nine killed. Yet, two months afterwards, I read in one of the American newspapers a very singular account of the action. It was a report of General Smith, commandant of the central force of Texas, relative to the glorious expedition against the savages, in which the gallant soldiers of the infant republic had achieved the most wonderful exploits. It said, "That General Smith having been apprised, by the unfortunate Captain Hunt, that five thousand savages had destroyed the rising city of Lewisburg, and murdered all the inhabitants, had immediately hastened with his intrepid fellows to the neighbourhood of the scene; that there, during the night, and when every man was broken down with fatigue, they were attacked by the whole force of the Indians, who had with them some twenty half-breeds, with French and English traders. In spite of their disadvantages, the Texians repulsed the Comanches with considerable loss, till the morning, when the men were literally tired with killing and the prairie was covered with the corpses of two thousand savages; the Texians themselves having lost but thirty or forty men, and these people of little consequence, being emigrants recently arrived from the States. During the day, the stench became so intolerable, that General Smith caused the prairie to be set on fire, and crossing the river, returned home by slow marches, knowing it would be quite useless to pursue the Comanches in the wild and broken prairies of the north. Only one Texian of note had perished during the conflict--the brave and unfortunate Captain Hunt; so that, upon the whole, considering the number of the enemy, the republic may consider this expedition as the most glorious enterprise since the declaration of Texian independence." The paragraph went on in this manner till it filled three close columns, and as a finale, the ex-butcher made an appeal to all the generous and "liberty-loving" sons of the United States and Texas, complaining bitterly against the cabinets of St. James and the Tuileries, who, jealous of the prosperity and glory of Texas, had evidently sent agents (trappers and half-breeds) to excite the savages, through malice, envy, and hatred of the untarnished name and honour of the great North American Republic. The five Americans who accompanied us were of a superior class, three of them from Virginia and two from Maryland. Their history was that of many others of their countrymen. Three of them had studied the law, one divinity, and the other medicine. Having no opening for the exercise of their profession at home, they had gone westward, to carve a fortune in the new States; but there every thing was in such a state of anarchy that they could not earn their subsistence; they removed farther west, until they entered Texas, "a country sprung up but yesterday, and where an immense wealth can be made." They found, on their arrival at this anticipated paradise, their chances of success in their profession still worse than in their own country. The lawyers discovered that, on a moderate computation, there were not less than ten thousand attorneys in Texas, who had emigrated from the Eastern States; the president, the secretaries, constables, tavern-keepers, generals, privates, sailors, porters, and horse-thieves were all of them originally lawyers, or had been brought up to that profession. As to the doctor, he soon found that the apologue of the "wolf and the stork" had been written purposely for medical practice in Texas, for as soon as he had cured a patient (picked the bone out of his throat), he had to consider himself very lucky if he could escape from half-a-dozen inches of the bowie-knife, by way of recompense; moreover, every visit cost him his pocket-handkerchief or his 'bacco-box, if he had any. I have to remark here, that kerchief-taking is a most common joke in Texas, and I wonder very much at it, as no individual of the male species, in that promised land, will ever apply that commodity to its right use, employing for that purpose the pair of snuffers which natural instinct has supplied him with. At the same time, it must be admitted that no professional man can expect employment, without he can flourish a pocket-handkerchief. As for the divine, he soon found that religion was not a commodity required in so young a country, and that he might just as well have speculated in sending a cargo of skates to the West Indies, or supplying Mussulmans with swine. The merits of the voluntary system had not been yet appreciated in Texas; and if he did preach, he had to preach by himself, not being able to obtain a clerk to make the responses. As we travelled along the dreary prairies, these five Eldorado seekers proved to be jovial fellows, and there was about them an elasticity of temper which did not allow them to despond. The divine had made up his mind to go to Rome, and convert the Pope, who, after all, was a clever old _bon vivant_; the doctor would go to Edinburgh, and get selected, from his superior skill, as president of the Surgical College; one of the lawyers determined he would "run for legislature," or keep a bar (a whisky one); the second wished to join the Mormons, who were a set of clever blackguards; and the third thought of going to China, to teach the celestial brother of the sun to use the Kentucky rifle and "brush the English." Some individuals in England have reproached me with indulging too much in building castles in the air; but certainly, compared to those of a Yankee in search after wealth, mine have been most sober speculations. Each of our new companions had some little Texian history to relate, which they declared to be the most rascally, but _smartish_ trick in the world. One of the lawyers was once summoned before a magistrate, and a false New Orleans fifty-dollar bank-note was presented to him, as the identical one he had given to the clerk of Tremont Hotel (the great hotel at Galveston), in payment of his weekly bill. Now, the lawyer had often dreamed of fifties, hundreds, and even of thousands; but fortune had been so fickle with him, that he had never been in possession of bank-notes higher than five or ten dollars, except one of the glorious Cairo Bank twenty-dollar notes, which his father presented to him in Baltimore, when he advised him most paternally to try his luck in the West. By the bye, that twenty-dollar Cairo note's adventures should be written in gold letters, for it enabled the traveller to eat, sleep, and drink, free of cost, from Louisville to St. Louis, through Indiana and Illinois; any tavern-keeper preferring losing the price of a bed, or of a meal, sooner than run the risk of returning good change for bad money. The note was finally changed in St. Louis for a three-dollar, bank of Springfield, which being yet current, at a discount of four cents to the dollar, enabled the fortunate owner to take his last tumbler of port-wine sangaree before his departure for Texas. Of course, the lawyer had no remorse of conscience, in swearing that the note had never been his, but the tavern-keeper and two witnesses swore to his having given it, and the poor fellow was condemned to recash and pay expenses. Having not a cent, he was allowed to go, for it so happened that the gaol was not built for such vagabonds, but for the government officers, who had their sleeping apartments in it. This circumstance occasioned it to be remarked by a few commonly honest people of Galveston, that if the gates of the gaol were closed at night, the community would be much improved. Three days afterwards, a poor captain, from a Boston vessel, was summoned for the very identical bank-note, which he was obliged to pay, though he had never set his foot into the Tremont Hotel. There is, in Galveston a new-invented trade, called "the rag-trade," which is very profitable. I refer to the purchasing and selling of false bank-notes, which are, as in the lawyer's case, palmed upon any stranger suspected of having money. On such occasions, the magistrate and the plaintiff share the booty. I may as well here add a fact which is well known in France and the United States. Eight days after the Marquis de Saligny's (French charge d'affaires) arrival in Houston, he was summoned before a magistrate, and, upon the oaths of the parties, found guilty of having passed seven hundred dollars in false notes to a land speculator. He paid the money, but as he never had had in his possession any money, except French gold and notes of the Banque de France, he complained to his government; and this specimen of Texian honesty was the principal cause why the banker (Lafitte) suddenly broke the arrangement he had entered into with General Hamilton (charge d'affaires from Texas to England and France) for a loan of seven millions of dollars. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. So sacred are the laws of hospitality among these indians, that a dozen lives would be sacrificed, if required, to save that of a guest. In sacrificing himself for Roche, the Comanche considered that he was doing a mere act of duty. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. We had now entered a track of land similar to that which we had travelled over when on our route from the Wakoes to the Comanches. The prairie was often intersected by chasms, the bottoms of which were perfectly dry, so that we could procure water but once every twenty-four hours, and that, too, often so hot and so muddy, that even our poor horses would not drink it freely. They had, however, the advantage over us in point of feeding, for the grass was sweet and tender, and moistened during night by the heavy dews; as for ourselves, we were beginning to starve in earnest. We had anticipated regaling ourselves with the juicy humps of the buffaloes which we should kill, but although we had entered the very heart of their great pasture-land, we had not met with one, nor even with a ground-hog, a snake, or a frog. One evening, the pangs of hunger became so sharp, that we were obliged to chew tobacco and pieces of leather to allay our cravings; and we determined that if, the next day at sunset, we had no better fortune, we would draw lots to kill one of our horses. That evening we could not sleep, and as murmuring was of no avail, the divine entertained us with a Texian story, just, as he said, to pump the superfluous air out of his body. I shall give it in his own terms:-- "Well, I was coming down the Wabash River (Indiana), when, as it, happens nine times out of ten, the steam-boat got aground, and that so firmly, that there was no hope of her floating again till the next flood; so I took my wallet, waded for two hundred yards, with the water to my knees, till I got safe on shore, upon a thick-timbered bank, full of rattle-snakes, thorns of the locust-tree, and spiders' webs, so strong, that I was obliged to cut them with my nose, to clear the way before me. I soon got so entangled by the vines and the briars, that I thought I had better turn my back to the stream till I should get to the upland, which I could now and then perceive through the clearings opened between the trees by recent thunder-storms. Unhappily, between the upland and the little ridge on which I stood there was a wide river bottom [see note 1.], into which I had scarcely advanced fifty yards, when I got bogged. Well, it took me a long while to get out of my miry hole, where I was as fast as a swine in its Arkansas sty; and then I looked about for my wallet, which I had dropped. I could see which way it had gone, for, close to the yawning circle from which I had just extricated myself; there was another smaller one two yards off; into which my wallet had sunk deep, though it was comfortably light, which goes to illustrate the Indiana saying, that there is no conscience so light but will sink in the bottom of the Wabash. Well, I did not care much, as in my wallet I had only an old coloured shirt and a dozen of my own sermons, which I knew by heart, having repeated them a hundred times over. "Being now in a regular fix, I cut a stick, and began whittling and whistling, to lighten my sorrows, till at last I perceived at the bank of the river, and five hundred yards ahead, one of those large rafts, constructed pretty much like Noah's ark, in which a Wabash farmer embarks his cargo of women and fleas, pigs and chickens, corn, whisky, rats, sheep, and stolen niggers; indeed, in most cases, the whole of the cargo is stolen, except the wife and children, the only portion whom the owner would very much like to be rid of; but these will stick to him as naturally as a prairie fly to a horse, as long as he has spirits to drink, pigs to attend to, and breeches to mend. "Well, as she was close to the bank, I got in. The owner was General John Meyer, from Vincennes, and his three sons, the colonel, the captain, and the judge. They lent me a sort of thing which, many years before, had probably been a horse-blanket. With it I covered myself; while one of the `boys' spread my clothes to dry, and, as I had nothing left in the world, except thirty dollars in my pocket-book, I kept that constantly in my hand till the evening, when, my clothes being dried, I recovered the use of my pocket. The general was free with his `Wabash water' (western appellation for whisky), and, finding me to his taste, as he said, he offered me a passage gratis to New Orleans, if I could but submit myself to his homely fare; that is to say, salt pork, with plenty of gravy, four times a day, and a decoction of burnt bran and grains of maize, going under the name of coffee all over the States--the whisky was to be _ad libitum_. "As I considered the terms moderate, I agreed, and the hospitable general soon entrusted me with his plans. He had gone many times to Texas; he loved Texas--it was a free country, according to his heart; and now he had collected all his own (he might have said, `and other people's too'), to go to New Orleans, where his pigs and corn, exchanged against goods, would enable him to settle with his family in Texas in a gallant style. Upon my inquiring what could be the cause of a certain abominable smell which pervaded the cabin, he apprised me that, in a small closet adjoining, he had secured a dozen of runaway negroes, for the apprehension of whom he would be well rewarded. "Well, the next morning we went on pretty snugly, and I had nothing to complain of, except the fleas and the `gals' who bothered me not a little. Three days afterwards we entered the Ohio, and the current being very strong, I began to think myself fortunate, as I should reach New Orleans in less than forty days, passage free. We went on till night, when we stopped, three or four miles from the junction with the Mississippi. The cabin being very warm, and the deck in possession of the pigs, I thought I would sleep ashore, under a tree. The general said it was a capital plan, and, after having drained half-a-dozen cups of `stiff, true, downright Yankee Number 1,' we all of us took our blankets (I mean the white-skinned party), and having lighted a great fire, the general, the colonel, the major, and the judge laid down,--an example which I followed as soon as I had neatly folded up my coat and fixed it upon a bush, with my hat and boots, for I was now getting particular, and wished to cut a figure in New Orleans; my thoughts running upon plump and rich widows, which you know are the only provision for us preachers. "Well, my dreams were nothing but the continuation of my thoughts during the day. I fancied I was married, and the owner of a large sugar plantation. I had a good soft bed and my pious wife was feeling about me with her soft hands, probably to see if my heart beat quick, and if I had good dreams;--a pity I did not awake then, for I should have saved my dollars, as the hand which I was dreaming of was that of the hospitable general searching for my pocket-book. It was late when I opened my eyes--and, lo! the sleepers were gone, with the boat, my boots, my coat, my hat, and, I soon found, with my money I had been left alone, with a greasy Mackinaw blanket, and as in my stupefaction I gazed all round, and up and down, I saw my pocket-book empty, which the generous general had humanely left to me to put other notes in, `when I could get any.' I kicked it with my foot, and should indubitably have been food for cat-fish, had I not heard most _a propos_ the puffing of a steam-boat coming down the river." At that moment the parson interrupted his narrative, by observing: "Well, I'd no idea that I had talked so long; why, man, look to the east, 'tis almost daylight." And sure enough the horizon of the prairie was skirted with that red tinge which always announces the break of day in these immense level solitudes. Our companions had all fallen asleep, and our horses, looking to the east, snuffed the air and stamped upon the ground, as if to express their impatience to leave so inhospitable a region. I replied to the parson: "It is now too late for us to think of sleeping; let us stir the fire, and go on with your story." We added fuel to the nearly consumed pile, and shaking our blankets, which were heavy with the dew, my companion resumed his narrative:-- "Well, I reckon it was more than half an hour before the steam-boat came in sight, and as the channel of the river ran close in with the shore, I was soon picked up. The boat was going to St. Louis, and as I had not a cent left to pay my passage, I was obliged, in way of payment, to relate my adventure. Everybody laughed. All the men declared the joke was excellent, and that General Meyer was a clever rascal; they told me I should undoubtedly meet him at New Orleans, but it would be of no use. Every body knew Meyer and his pious family, but he was so smart, that nothing could be done against him. Well, the clerk was a good-humoured fellow; he lent me an old coat and five dollars; the steward brought me a pair of slippers, and somebody gave me a worn-out loose cap. This was very good, but my luck was better still. The cause of my own ruin had been the grounding of a steam-boat; the same accident happening again set me on my legs. Just as we turned the southern point of Illinois, we buried ourselves in a safe bed of mud. It was so common an occurrence, that nobody cared much about it, except a Philadelphian going to Texas; he was in a great hurry to go on westward, and no wonder. I learned afterwards that he had absconded from the bank, of which he was a cashier, with sixty thousand dollars. "Well, as I said, we were bogged; patience was necessary, laments were of no use, so we dined with as much appetite as if nothing had happened, and some of the regular `boys' took to `Yooka,' to kill the time. They were regular hands, to be sure, but I was myself trump Number 1. Pity we have no cards with us; it would be amusing to be the first man introducing that game into the western prairies. Well, I looked on, and by-and-by, I got tired of being merely a spectator. My nose itched, my fingers too. I twisted my five-dollar bill in all senses, till a sharp took me for a flat, and he proposed kindly to pluck me out-and-out. I plucked him in less than no time, winning eighty dollars at a sitting; and when we left off for tea, I felt that I had acquired consequence, and even merit, for money gives both. During the night I was so successful, that when I retired to my berth I found myself the owner of four hundred and fifty dollars, a gold watch, a gold pin, and a silver 'bacco-box. Everything is useful in this world, even getting aground. Now, I never repine at anything. "The next day another steam-boat passed, and picked us up. It was one of those light crafts which speculate upon misfortune; they hunt after stranded boats, as a wolf after wounded deer--they take off the passengers, and charge what they please. From Cincinnati to St. Louis the fare was ten dollars, and the unconscious wreck-seeker of a captain charged us twenty-five dollars each for the remainder of the trip--one day's journey. However, I did not care. "An Arkansas man, who had no more money, sold me, for fifteen dollars, his wallet, a fine great-coat, two clean shirts, and a hat; from another I purchased a pair of bran-new, Boston-made, elegant black breeches, so that when I landed at St. Louis I cut a regular figure, went to Planter's Hotel, and in the course of a week made a good round sum by three lectures upon the vanities of the world and the sin of desponding. Well, to cut matters short--by the bye, there must be something wrong stirring in the prairie; look at our horses, how uneasy they seem to be. Don't you hear anything?" Our horses, indeed, were beginning to grow wild with excitement, and thinking that their instinct had told them that wolves were near, I tied them closer to where we bivouacked, and then applied my ears to the ground, to try and catch any sound. "I hear no noise," said I, "except the morning breeze passing through the withered grass. Our horses have been smelling wolves, but the brutes will not approach our fire." The parson, who had a great faith in my "white Indian nature," resumed the thread of his narrative:-- "To cut the matter short, I pass over my trip to New Orleans and Galveston. Suffice it to say, that I was a gentleman preacher, with plenty of money, and that the Texians, president, generals, and all, condescended to eat my dinners, though they would not hear my sermons; even the women looked softly upon me, for I had two trunks, linen in plenty, and I had taken the precaution in Louisiana of getting rid of my shin-plasters for hard specie. I could have married any body, if I had wished, from the president's old mother to the barmaid at the tavern. I had money, and to me all was smiles and sunshine. One day I met General Meyer; the impudent fellow came immediately to me, shook my hand in quite a cordial manner, and inquired how my health had been since he had seen me last. That was more than my professional meekness could endure, so I reproached him with his rascality and abuse of hospitality towards me, adding that I expected he would now repay me what he had so unceremoniously taken from me while I was asleep. General Meyer looked perfectly aghast, and calling me a liar, a scoundrel, and a villain, he rushed upon me with his drawn bowie-knife, and would have indubitably murdered me, had he not been prevented by a tall powerful chap, to whom, but an hour before, I had lent, or given, five dollars, partly from fear of him and partly from compassion for his destitution. "The next day I started for Houston, where I settled, and preached to old women, children, and negroes, while the white male population were getting drunk, swearing, and fighting, just before the door of the church. I had scarcely been there a month when a constable arrested me on the power of a warrant obtained against me by that rascally Meyer. Brought up before the magistrate, I was confronted with the blackguard and five other rascals of his stamp, who positively took their oaths that they had seen me taking the pocket-book of the general, which he had left accidentally upon the table in the bar of Tremont's. The magistrate said, that out of respect for the character of my profession he would not push the affair to extremities, but that I must immediately give back the two hundred dollars Meyer said I had stolen from him, and pay fifty dollars besides for the expenses. In vain I remonstrated my innocence; no choice was left to me but to pay or go to gaol. "By that time I knew pretty well the character of the people among whom I was living; I knew there was no justice to whom I could apply; I reckoned also that, if once put in gaol, they would not only take the two hundred and fifty dollars; but also the whole I possessed. So I submitted, as it was the best I could do; I removed immediately to another part of Texas, but it would not do. Faith, the Texians are a very ugly set of gents." "And Meyer," I interrupted, "what of him?" "Oh!" replied the parson, "that is another story. Why, he returned to New Orleans, where, with his three sons, he committed an awful murder upon the cashier of the legislature; he was getting away with twenty thousand dollars, but being caught in the act, he was tried, sentenced, and hanged, with all his hopeful progeny, and the old negro hangman of New Orleans had the honour of making in one day, a close acquaintance with a general, a colonel, a major, and a judge." "What, talking still!" exclaimed the doctor, yawning: he had just awoke. "What the devil can you have babbled about during the whole blessed night? Why, 'tis morn." Saying this, he took up his watch, looked at it, applied it to his ear, to see if it had not stopped, and exclaimed:-- "By jingo, but I am only half-past one." The parson drew out his also, and repeated the same, "half-past one." At that moment the breeze freshened, and I heard the distant and muffled noise which in the West announces either an earthquake or an "estampede," of herds of wild cattle and other animals. Our horses, too, were aware of some danger, for now they were positively mad, struggling to break the lassoes and escape. "Up!" I cried, "up! Gabriel, Roche, up!--up, strangers, quick! saddle your beasts! run for your lives! the prairie is on fire, and the buffaloes are upon us." They all started upon their feet, but not a word was exchanged; each felt the danger of his position; speed was our only resource, if it was not already too late. In a minute our horses were saddled, in another we were madly galloping across the prairie, the bridles upon the necks of our steeds, allowing them to follow their instinct. Such had been our hurry, that all our blankets were left behind, except that of Gabriel; the lawyers had never thought of their saddle-bags, and the parson had forgotten his holsters and his rifle. For an hour we dashed on with undiminished speed, when we felt the earth trembling behind us, and soon afterwards the distant bellowing mixed up with the roaring and sharper cries of other animals, were borne down unto our ears. The atmosphere grew oppressive and heavy, while the flames, swifter than the wind, appeared raging upon the horizon. The fleeter game of all kinds now shot past us like arrows; deer were bounding over the ground, in company with wolves and panthers; droves of elks and antelopes passed swifter than a dream; then a solitary horse or a huge buffalo-bull. From our intense anxiety, although our horses strained every nerve, we almost appeared to stand still. The atmosphere rapidly became more dense, the heat more oppressive, the roars sounded louder and louder in our ears; now and then they were mingled with terrific howls and shrill sounds, so unearthly that even our horses would stop their mad career and tremble, as if they considered them supernatural; but it was only for a second, and they dashed on. A noble stag passed close to us, his strength was exhausted; three minutes afterwards, we passed him--dead. But soon, with the rushing noise of a whirlwind, the mass of heavier and less speedy animals closed upon us: buffaloes and wild horses, all mixed together, an immense dark body, miles in front, miles in depth; on they came, trampling and dashing through every obstacle. This phalanx was but two miles from us. Our horses were nearly exhausted; we gave ourselves up for lost; a few minutes more, and we should be crushed to atoms. At that moment, the sonorous voice of Gabriel was heard, firm and imperative. He had long been accustomed to danger, and now he faced it with his indomitable energy, as if such scenes were his proper element:--"Down from your horses," cried he; "let two of you keep them steady. Strip off your shirts, linen, anything that will catch fire; quick, not a minute is to be lost." Saying this, he ignited some tinder with the pan of his pistol, and was soon busy in making a fire with all the clothes we now threw to him. Then we tore up withered grass and buffalo-dung, and dashed them on the heap. Before three minutes had passed, our fire burned fiercely. On came the terrified mass of animals, and perceiving the flame of our fire before them, they roared with rage and terror, yet they turned not, as we had hoped. On they came, and already we could distinguish their horns, their feet, and the white foam; our fuel was burning out, the flames were lowering; the parson gave a scream, and fainted. On came the maddened myriads, nearer and nearer; I could see their wild eyes glaring; they wheeled not, opened not a passage, but came on like messengers of death--nearer--nearer--nearer still. My brain reeled, my eyes grew dim; it was horrible, most horrible! I dashed down, with my face covered, to meet my fate. At that moment I heard an explosion, then a roar, as if proceeding from ten millions of buffalo-bulls--so stunning, so stupefying was the sound from the mass of animals, not twenty yards from us. Each moment I expected the hoofs which were to trample us to atoms; and yet, death came not. I only heard the rushing as of a mighty wind and the trembling of the earth. I raised my head, and looked. Gabriel at the critical moment had poured some whisky upon the flames, the leathern bottle had exploded, with a blaze like lightning, and, at the expense of thousands crushed to death, the animals had swerved from contact with the fierce, blue column of fire which had been created. Before and behind, all around us, we could see nothing but the shaggy wool of the huge monsters; not a crevice was to be seen in the flying masses, but the narrow line which had been opened to avoid our fire. In this dangerous position we remained for one hour, our lives depending upon the animals not closing the line; but Providence watched over us, and after what appeared an eternity of intense suspense, the columns became thinner and thinner, till we found ourselves only encircled with the weaker and more exhausted animals, which brought up the rear. Our first danger was over, but we had still to escape from one as imminent-- the pursuing flame, now so much closer to us. The whole prairie behind us was on fire, and the roaring element was gaining on us with a frightful speed. Once more we sprang upon our saddles, and the horses, with recovered wind and with strength tenfold increased by their fear, soon brought us to the rear of the buffaloes. It was an awful sight! a sea of fire roaring in its fury, with heaving waves and unearthly hisses, approaching nearer and nearer, rushing on swifter than the sharp morning breeze. Had we not just escaped so unexpectedly a danger almost as terrible, we should have despaired and left off an apparently useless struggle for our lives. Away we dashed, over hills and down declivities; for now the ground had become more broken. The fire was gaining fast upon us, when we perceived that, a mile ahead, the immense herds before us had entered a deep, broad chasm, into which they dashed, thousands upon thousands, tumbling headlong into the abyss. But now, the fire rushing quicker, blazing fiercer than before, as if determined not to lose its prey, curled its waves above our heads, smothering us with its heat and lurid smoke. A few seconds more we spurred in agony; speed was life; the chasm was to be our preservation or our tomb. Down we darted, actually borne upon the backs of the descending mass, and landed, without sense or motion, more than a hundred feet below. As soon as we recovered from the shock, we found that we had been most mercifully preserved; strange to say, neither horse nor rider had received any serious injury. We heard, above our heads, the hissing and cracking of the fire; we contemplated with awe the flames, which were roaring along the edge of the precipice--now rising, now lowering, just as if they would leap over the space and annihilate all life in these western solitudes. We were preserved; our fall had been broken by the animals, who had taken the leap a second before us, and by the thousands of bodies which were heaped up as a hecatomb, and received us as a cushion below. With difficulty we extricated ourselves and horses, and descending the mass of carcasses, we at last succeeded in reaching a few acres of clear ground. It was elevated a few feet above the water of the torrent, which ran through the ravine, and offered to our broken-down horses a magnificent pasture of sweet blue grass. But the poor things were too terrified and exhausted, and they stretched themselves down upon the ground, a painful spectacle of utter helplessness. We perceived that the crowds of flying animals had succeeded in finding, some way further down, an ascent to the opposite prairie; and as the earth and rocks still trembled, we knew that the "estampede" had not ceased, and that the millions of fugitives had resumed their mad career. Indeed there was still danger, for the wind was high, and carried before it large sheets of flames to the opposite side, where the dried grass and bushes soon became ignited, and the destructive element thus passed the chasm and continued its pursuit. We congratulated ourselves upon having thus found security, and returned thanks to Heaven for our wonderful escape; and as we were now safe from immediate danger, we lighted a fire, feasted upon a young buffalo-calf, every bone of which we found had been broken into splinters. [See note 2.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. River bottom is a space, sometimes of many many miles in width, on the side of the river, running parallel with it. It is always very valuable and productive land, but unhealthy, and dangerous to cross, from its boggy nature. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 2. I have said, at a venture, that we descended more than a hundred feet into the chasm before we fairly landed on the bodies of the animals. The chasm itself could not have been less than two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet deep at the part that we plunged down. This will give the reader some idea of the vast quantity of bodies of animals, chiefly buffaloes, which were there piled up. I consider that this pile must have been formed wholly from the foremost of the mass, and that when formed, it broke the fall of the others, who followed them, as it did our own; indeed, the summit of the heap was pounded into a sort of jelly. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE. Two days did we remain in our shelter, to regain our strength and to rest our horses. Thus deeply buried in the bosom of the earth, we were safe from the devastating elements. On the second day we heard tremendous claps of thunder; we knew that a storm was raging which would quench the fire, but we cared little about what was going on above. We had plenty to eat and to drink, our steeds were recovering fast, and, in spite of the horrors we had just undergone, we were not a little amused by the lamentations of the parson, who, recollecting the destruction of his shirts, forgot his professional duty, and swore against Texas and the Texians, against the prairies, the buffaloes, and the fire: the last event had produced so deep an impression upon his mind, that he preferred shivering all night by the banks of the torrent to sleeping near our comfortable fire; and as to eating of the delicate food before him, it was out of the question; he would suck it, but not masticate nor swallow it; his stomach and his teeth refused to accomplish their functions upon the abhorred meat; and he solemnly declared that never again would he taste beef--cow or calf--tame or wild--even if he were starving. One of the lawyers, too, was loud in his complaints, for although born in the States, he had in his veins no few drops of Irish blood, and could not forget the sacrifice Gabriel had made of the whisky. "Such stuff!" he would exclaim, "the best that ever came into this land of abomination, to be thrown in the face of dirty buffaloes! the devil take them! Eh! Monsheer Owato Wanisha,--queer outlandish name, by the bye,--please to pass me another slice of the varmint (meaning the buffalo-calf). Bless my soul, if I did not think, at one time, it was after the liquor the brutes were running!" Upon the morning of the third day, we resumed our journey, following the stream down for a few miles, over thousands of dead animals, which the now foaming torrent could not wash away. We struck the winding path which the "estampedados" had taken; and as it had been worked by the millions of fugitives into a gentle ascent, we found ourselves, long before noon, once more upon the level of the prairie. What a spectacle of gloom and death! As far as the eye could reach, the earth was naked and blackened. Not a stem of grass, not a bush, had escaped the awful conflagration; and thousands of half-burnt bodies of deer, buffaloes, and mustangs covered the prairie in every direction. The horizon before us was concealed by a high and rugged ridge of the rolling prairie, towards which we proceeded but slowly, so completely was the track made by the buffaloes choked by burnt bodies of all descriptions of animals. At last we reached the summit of the swell, and perceived that we were upon one of the head branches of the Trinity River, forming a kind of oblong lake, a mile broad, but exceedingly shallow; the bottom was of a hard white sandy formation, and as we crossed this beautiful sheet of clear water, the bottom appeared to be studded with grains of gold and crystals. This brought round the characteristic elasticity of temper belonging to the Americans, and caused the doctor to give way to his mental speculations:--He would not go to Edinburgh; it was nonsense; here was a fortune made. He would form a company in New York, capital one million of dollars--the Gold, Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire, and Amethyst Association, in ten thousand shares, one hundred dollars a-piece. In five years he would be the richest man in the world; he would build ten cities on the Mississippi, and would give powder and lead to the Comanches for nothing, so that they could at once clear the world of Texians and buffaloes. He had scarcely finished, when we reached the other side of the lake; there we had to pass over a narrow ridge, covered with green bushes, but now torn and trampled down; the herds had passed over there, and the fire had been extinguished by the waters of this "fairy lake," for so we had baptised it. Half an hour more brought us clear out from the cover, and a most strange and unusual sight was presented to our eyes. On a rich and beautiful prairie, green and red, the wild clover and the roses, and occasionally a plum-tree, varying the hues, were lying prostrate, as far as the eye could reach, hundreds of thousands of animals of all species, some quietly licking their tired limbs, and others extending their necks, without rising, to graze upon the soft grass around them. The sight was beautiful above all description, and recalled to mind the engravings of the creation affixed to the old Bibles. Wolves and panthers were lying but a few paces from a small flock of antelopes; buffaloes, bears, and horses were mixed together, every one of them incapable of moving from the spot on which they had dropped from exhaustion and fatigue. We passed a large jaguar, glaring fiercely at a calf ten feet from him; on seeing us, he attempted to rise, but, utterly helpless, he bent his body so as to form a circle, concealing his head upon his breast under his huge paws, and uttered a low growl, half menacing, half plaintive. Had we had powder to waste, we would certainly have rid the gramnivorous from many of their carnivorous neighbours, but we were now entering a tract of country celebrated for the depredations of the Texians and Buggles free bands, and every charge of powder thrown away was a chance the less, in case of a fight. As by this time our horses were in want of rest, we took off their saddles, and the poor things feasted better than they had done for a long while. As for us, we had fortunately still a good supply of the cold calf, for we felt a repugnance to cut the throats of any of the poor broken-down creatures before us. Close to us there was a fine noble stag, for which I immediately took a fancy. He was so worn out that he could not even move a few inches to get at the grass, and his dried, parched tongue shewed plainly how much he suffered from the want of water. I pulled up two or three handfuls of clover, which I presented to him, but though he tried to swallow it, he could not. As there was a water-hole some twenty yards off, I took the doctor's fur cap, and filling it with water, returned to the stag. What an expressive glance! What beautiful eyes! I sprinkled at first some drops upon his tongue, and then, putting the water under his nose, he soon drained it up. My companions became so much interested with the sufferings of the poor animals, that they took as many of the young fawns as they could, carrying them to the edge of the water-hole, that they might regain their strength and fly away before the wolves could attack them. Upon my presenting a second capful of water to the stag, the grateful animal licked my hands, and, after having drunk, tried to rise to follow me, but its strength failing, its glances followed me as I was walking to and fro; they spoke volumes; I could understand their meaning. I hate to hear of the superiority of man! Man is ungrateful as a viper, while a horse, a dog, and many others of the "soulless brutes," will never forget a kindness. I wondered what had become of our three lawyers, who had wandered away without their rifles, and had been more than two hours absent. I was about to propose a search after them when they arrived, with their knives and tomahawks, and their clothes all smeared with blood. They had gone upon a cruise against the wolves, and had killed the brutes until they were tired and had no more strength to use their arms. The reader, comfortably seated in his elbow-chair, cannot comprehend the hatred which a prairie traveller nourishes against the wolves. As soon as we found out what these three champions of the wilderness had been about, we resolved to encamp there for the night, that we might destroy as many as we could of these prairie sharks. Broken-down as they were, there was no danger attending the expedition, and, tightening on our belts, and securing our pistols, in case of an attack from a recovering panther, we started upon our butchering expedition. On our way we met with some fierce-looking jaguars, which we did not think prudent to attack, so we let them alone, and soon found occupation enough for our knives and tomahawks among a close-packed herd of wolves. How many of these detested brutes we killed I cannot say, but we did not leave off until our hands had become powerless from exhaustion, and our tomahawks were so blunted as to be rendered of no use. When we left the scene of massacre, we had to pass over a pool of blood ankle-deep, and such was the bowling of those who were not quite dead, that the deer and elk were in every direction struggling to rise and fly [see note 1]. We had been employed more than four hours in our work of destruction, when we returned to the camp, tired and hungry. Roche had kicked up a bear-cub, which the doctor skinned and cooked for us while we were taking our round to see how our proteges were going on. All those that had been brought up to the water-hole were so far recovered that they were grazing about, and bounded away as soon as we attempted to near them. My stag was grazing also, but he allowed me to caress him, just as if we had been old friends, and he never left the place until the next morning, when we ourselves started. The doctor called us for our evening meal, to which we did honour, for, in addition to his wonderful culinary talents, he knew some plants, common in the prairies, which can impart even to a bear's chop a most savoury and aromatic flavour. He was in high glee, as we praised his skill, and so excited did he become, that he gave up his proposal of the "Gold, Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire, and Amethyst Association, in ten thousand shares," and vowed he would cast away his lancet and turn cook in the service of some bon vivant, or go to feed the padres of a Mexican convent, he boasted that he could cook the toughest old woman, so as to make the flesh appear as white, soft, and sweet as that of a spring chicken; but upon my proposing to send him, as a cordon bleu, to the Cayugas, in West Texas, or among the Club Indians of the Colorado of the West, he changed his mind again, and formed new plans for the regeneration of the natives of America. After our supper, we rode our horses to the lake, to water and bathe them, which duty being performed, we sought that repose which we were doomed not to enjoy; for we had scarcely shut our eyes when a tremendous shower fell upon us, and in a few minutes we were drenched to the skin. The reader may recollect that, excepting Gabriel we had all of us left our blankets on the spot where we had at first descried the prairie was in flames, so that we were now shivering with cold, and, what was worse, the violence of the rain was such, that we could not keep our fire alive. It was an ugly night, to be sure; but the cool shower saved the panting and thirsty animals, for whose sufferings we had felt so much. All night we heard the deer and antelopes trotting and scampering towards the lake; twice or thrice the distant roars of the panthers shewed that these terrible animals were quitting our neighbourhood, and the fierce growling of the contending wolves told us plainly that, if they were not strong enough to run, they could at least crawl and prey upon their own dead. It has been asserted that wolves do not prey upon their own species, but it is a mistake, for I have often seen them attacking, tearing, and eating each other. The warm rays of the morning sun at last dispersed the gloom and clouds of night; deer, elks, and antelopes were all gone except my own stag, to which I gave a handful of salt, as I had some in my saddle-bags. Some few mustangs and buffaloes were grazing, but the larger portion, extending as far as the eye could reach, were still prostrate on the grass. As to the wolves, either from their greater fatigue they had undergone, or from their being glutted with the blood and flesh of their companions, they seemed stiffer than ever. We watered our horses, replenished our flasks, and, after a hearty meal upon the cold flesh of the bear, we resumed our journey to warm ourselves by exercise and dry our clothes, for we were wet to the skin, and benumbed with cold. The reader may be surprised at these wild animals being in the state of utter exhaustion which I have described; but he must be reminded that, in all probability, this prairie fire had driven them before it for hundreds of miles, and that at a speed unusual to them, and which nothing but a panic could have produced. I think it very probable that the fire ran over an extent of five hundred miles; and my reason for so estimating it is, the exhausted state of the carnivorous animals. A panther can pass over two hundred miles or more at full speed without great exhaustion; so would a jaguar, or, indeed an elk. I do not mean to say that all the animals, as the buffaloes, mustangs, deer, etcetera, had run this distance; of course, as the fire rolled on, the animals were gradually collected, till they had formed the astounding mass which I have described, and thousands had probably already perished, long before the fire had reached the prairie where we were encamped; still I have at other times witnessed the extraordinary exertions which animals are capable of when under the influence of fear. At one estampede, I knew some oxen, with their yokes on their necks, to accomplish sixty miles in four hours. On another occasion, on the eastern shores of the Vermilion Sea, I witnessed an estampede, and, returning twelve days afterwards, I found the animals still lying in every direction on the prairie, although much recovered from their fatigue. On this last occasion, the prairie had been burnt for three hundred miles, from east to west, and there is no doubt but that the animals had estampedoed the whole distance at the utmost of their speed. Our horses having quite recovered from their past fatigue, we started at a brisk canter, under the beams of a genial sun, and soon felt the warm blood stirring in our veins. We had proceeded about six or seven miles, skirting the edge of the mass of buffaloes reclining on the prairie, when we witnessed a scene which filled us with pity. Fourteen hungry wolves, reeling and staggering with weakness, were attacking a splendid black stallion, which was so exhausted, that he could not get up upon his legs. His neck and sides were already covered with wounds, and his agony was terrible. Now, the horse is too noble an animal not to find a protector in man against such bloodthirsty foes; so we dismounted and despatched the whole of his assailants; but as the poor stallion was wounded beyond all cure, and would indubitably have fallen a prey to another pack of his prairie foes, we also despatched him with a shot of a rifle. It was an act of humanity, but still the destruction of this noble animal in the wilderness threw a gloom over our spirits. The doctor perceiving this, thought it advisable to enliven us with the following story:-- "All the New York amateurs of oysters know well the most jovial tavern-keeper in the world, old Slick Bradley, the owner of the `Franklin,' in Pearl-street. When you go to New York, mind to call upon him, and if you have any relish for a cool sangaree, a mint jullep, or a savoury oyster-soup, none can make it better than Slick Bradley. Besides, his bar is snug, his little busy wife neat and polite, and if you are inclined to a spree, his private rooms up-stairs are comfortable as can be. "Old Slick is good-humoured and always laughing; proud of his cellar, of his house, of his wife, and, above all, proud of the sign-post hanging before his door; that is to say, a yellow head of Franklin, painted by some bilious chap, who looked in the glass for a model. "Now Slick has kept house for more than forty years, and though he has made up a pretty round sum, he don't wish to leave off the business. No! till the day of his death he will remain in his bar, smoking his Havannahs, and mechanically playing with the two pocket-books in his deep waistcoat pockets--one for the ten-dollar notes and above, the other for the fives, and under. Slick Bradley is the most independent man in the world; he jokes familiarly with his customers, and besides their bill of fare, he knows how to get more of their money by betting, for betting is the great passion of Slick; he will bet any thing, upon every thing: contradict him in what he says, and down come the two pocket-books under your nose. `I know better,' he will say, `don't I? What will you bet--five, ten, fifty, hundred? Tush! you dare not bet, you know you are wrong:' and with an air of superiority and self-satisfaction, he will take long strides over his well-washed floor, repeating, `I know better.' "Slick used once to boast that he had never lost a bet; but since a little incident which made all New York laugh at him, he confesses that he did once meet with his match, for though he certainly won the bet, he had paid the stakes fifty times over. Now, as I heard the circumstance from the jolly landlord himself; here it goes, just as I had it, neither more nor less. "One day, two smart young fellows entered the `Franklin;' they alighted from a cab, and were dressed in the tip-top of fashion. As they were new customers, the landlord was all smiles and courtesy, conducted them into saloon Number 1, and making it up in his mind that his guests could be nothing less than Wall-street superfines, he resolved that they should not complain of his fare. "A splendid dinner was served to them, with sundry bottles of old wines and choice Havannahs, and the worthy host was reckoning in his mind all the items he could decently introduce in the bill, when ding, ding went the bell, and away he goes up-stairs, capering, jumping, smiling, and holding his two hands before his bow-window in front. "`Eh, old Slick,' said one of the sparks, `capital dinner, by Jove; good wine, fine cigars; plenty of customers, eh!' "Slick winked; he was in all his glory, proud and happy. "`Nothing better in life than a good dinner,' resumed the spark Number 1; `some eat only to live--they are fools; I live only to eat, that is the true philosophy. Come, old chap, let us have your bill, and mind, make it out as for old customers, for we intend to return often; don't we?' "This last part of the sentence was addressed to spark Number 2, who, with his legs comfortably over the corner of the table, was picking his teeth with his fork. "`I shall, by jingo!' slowly drawled out Number 2, `dine well here! damned comfortable; nothing wanted but the Champagne.' "`Lord, Lord! gentlemen,' exclaimed Slick, `why did you not say so? Why, I have the best in town.' "`Faith, have you?' said Number 1, smacking his lips; `now have you the real genuine stuff? Why then bring a bottle, landlord, and you must join us; bring three glasses; by Jove, we will drink your health.' "When Slick returned, he found his customers in high glee, and so convulsive was their merriment, that they were obliged to hold their sides. Slick laughed too, yet losing no time; in a moment, he presented the gentlemen with the sparkling liquor. They took their glasses, drank his health, and then recommenced their mirth. "`And so you lost the wager?' asked Number 2. "`Yes, by Heaven, I paid the hundred dollars, and, what was worse, was laughed at by every body.' "Slick was sadly puzzled, the young men had been laughing, they were now talking of a bet, and he knew nothing of it. He was mightily inquisitive; and knowing, by experience, that wine opens the heart and unlooses the tongue, he made an attempt to ascertain the cause of the merriment. "`I beg your pardon, gentlemen, if I make too bold; but please, what was the subject of the wager the recollection of which puts you in so good a humour?' "`I'll tell you,' exclaimed Number 1, `and you will see what a fool I have made of myself. You must know that it is impossible to follow the pendulum of the clock with the hand, and to repeat "Here she goes--there she goes," just as it swings to and fro, that is, when people are talking all round you, as it puts you out. One day I was with a set of jolly fellows in a dining-room, with a clock just like this in your room; the conversation fell upon the difficulty of going on "Here she goes," and "there she goes," for half an hour, without making a mistake. Well, I thought it was the easiest thing in the world, to do it: and, upon my saying so, I was defied to do it: the consequence was a bet of a hundred dollars, and, having agreed that they could talk to me as much as they pleased, but not touch me, I posted myself before the clock and went on--"Here she goes, there she goes," while some of my companions began singing, some shouting, and some laughing. Well, after three minutes, I felt that the task was much more difficult than I had expected; but yet I went on, till I heard somebody saying, "As I am alive, there is Miss Reynolds walking arm in arm with that lucky dog, Jenkins." Now you must know, landlord, that Miss Reynolds was my sweetheart, and Jenkins my greatest enemy, so I rushed to the window to see if it was true, and at that moment a roar of laughter announced to me that I had lost the bet.' "Now Slick Bradley, as I have said, was very fond of betting. Moreover, he prided himself not a little upon his self-command, and as he had not any mistress to be jealous of, as soon as the gentleman had finished his story, he came at once to the point. "`Well,' said he, `you lost the wager, but it don't signify. I think myself, as you did, that it is the easiest thing in the world. I am sure I could do it half an hour, aye, and an hour too.' "The gentlemen laughed, and said they knew better, and the now-excited host proposed, if the liberty did not offend them, to make any bet that he could do it for half an hour. At first they objected, under the plea that they would not like to win his money, as they were certain he had no chance, but upon his insisting, they consented to bet twenty dollars; and Slick, putting himself face to face with his great grandfather's clock, began following the pendulum with his hand, repeating `Here she goes, there she goes.' "The two gentlemen discovered many wonderful things through the window: first a sailor had murdered a woman, next the stage had just capsized, and afterwards they were sure that the shop next door was on fire. Slick winked and smiled complacently, without leaving his position. He was too old a fox to be taken by such childish tricks. All at once, Number 2 observed to Number 1, that the bet would not keep good, as the stakes had not been laid down, and both addressed the host at the same time. `Not cunning enough for me,' thought Slick, and poking his left hand into the right pocket of his waistcoat, he took out his pocket-book containing the larger notes, and handed it to his customers. "`Now,' exclaimed Number 2 to his companion, `I am sure you will lose the wager; the fellow is imperturbable; nothing can move him.' "`Wait a bit; I'll soon make him leave off,' whispered the other, loud enough for Slick to hear him. "`Landlord,' continued he, `we trust to your honour to go on for half an hour; we will now have a talk with bonny Mrs Slick.' Saying this, they quitted the room without closing the door. "Slick was not jealous. Not he; besides, the bar was full of people; it was all a trick of the gents, who were behind the door watching him. After all they were but novices, and he would win their money, he only regretted that the bet had not been heavier. "Twenty minutes had fairly passed, when Slick's own little boy entered the room. `Pa,' said he, `there is a gemman what wants you below in the bar.' "`Another trick,' thought the landlord; `they shan't have me, though.-- Here she goes, there she goes.' And as the boy approached near to him to repeat his errand, Slick gave him a kick. `Get away--Here she goes, there she goes.' "The boy went away crying, and soon returned with Mrs Slick, who cried, in an angry tone, `Now don't make a fool of yourself; the gentleman you sold the town-lot to is below with the money.' "`They shan't have me though,' said Slick to himself. And to all the invectives and reproaches of Mrs Slick he answered only with, `Here she goes, there she goes.' At last the long needle marked the half hour; and the landlord, having won the wager, turned round. "`Where are they?' said he to his wife. `They; who do you mean?' answered she. "`The two gentlemen, to be sure.' "`Why, they have been gone these last twenty minutes.' "Slick was thunderstruck, `and the pocket-book?' he uttered, convulsively. "His wife looked at him with ineffable contempt. "`Why, you fool, you did not give them your money, did you?' "Slick soon discovered that he was minus five hundred dollars, besides the price of the two dinners. Since that time he never bets but cash down, and in the presence of witnesses." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. The prairie wolf is a very different animal from the common wolf, as will be understood by the reader when I give a description of the animals found in California and Texas. CHAPTER THIRTY. We continued our route for a few days, after we had left the buffaloes, and now turned our horses' heads due east. Having left behind the localities frequented by the wild herds, we soon become exposed to the cravings of hunger. Now and then we would fall in with a prairie hen, a turkey, or a few rattlesnakes, but the deer and antelopes were so shy, that though we could see them sporting at a distance, we could never come within a mile of them. The ground was level, and the grass, although short, was excellent pasture, and richly enamelled with a variety of flowers. It was a beautiful country. We had fine weather during the day, but the nights were exceedingly cold, and the dew heavy. Having lost our blankets, we passed miserable nights. There was no fuel with which we could light our fire; even the dung of animals was so scarce, that we could not, during seven days, afford to cook our scanty meals more than thrice, and the four last grouse that we killed were eaten raw. About the middle of the eighth day, a dark line was seen rising above the horizon, far in the south-east, and extending as far as the eye could reach. We knew it was a forest, and that when we gained it, we were certain of having, plenty to eat; but it was very far off, at least twenty miles, and were much exhausted. In the evening we were almost driven to desperation by hunger, and we found that the approach to the forest would prove long and difficult, as it, was skirted by a bed of thick briars and prickly pears, which in breadth, could not be less than three leagues, and that a passage must be forced through this almost impassable barrier. The forest was undoubtedly the commencement of that extended line of noble timber which encircles as a kind of natural barrier, the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. By reaching it, we should soon leave privation and fatigue behind us, whereas, on the contrary, travelling to the north, would have added to our sufferings, as the same level and untenanted prairie extended to the very shores of the Red River. We consequently determined to force our way through the thorns and briars, even if we were obliged to cut a road with our knives and tomahawks. We journeyed on till sunset, when we came to a deep dry gully, on the very edge of the prickly pear barrier, and there we encamped for the night. To go farther without something to eat was impossible. The wild and haggard looks of my companions, their sunken eyes, and sallow, fleshless faces, too plainly showed that some subsistence must be speedily provided more nutritious than the unripe and strongly acidulated fruit presented to us. We drew lots, and the parson's horse was doomed; in a few minutes, his hide was off; and a part of the flesh distributed. The meat of a young mustang is excellent, but that of an old broken-down horse is quite another affair. It was as tough as India-rubber, and the more a piece of it was masticated, the larger it became in the mouth. A man never knows what he can eat, until driven to desperation by a week's starving, and the jolly parson, who had pledged himself never to eat even calf's meat, fiercely attacked the leathery remains of his faithful ambler. The next morning we directed our steps in a south course, and crossing the gully, we entered in what appeared to be a passage, or a bear's path through the prickly pears; but after travelling some six or eight miles, we found our further progress cut off by a deep and precipitous chasm, lined with impassable briars. To return was our only alternative, and at noon we again found ourselves near to the point from whence we had started in the morning. A consultation was now held as to our future course. The lawyers and Roche proposed to go farther south, and make another attempt, but recollecting, that on the morning of the preceding day we had passed a large, though shallow, sandy stream, Gabriel and I thought it more advisable to return to it. This stream was evidently one of the tributaries of the Red River, and was running in an easterly direction, and we were persuaded that it must flow through the chasm, and enter into the forest. Our proposal was agreed to, and without any more loss of time, each of us taking with him a piece of horse-flesh, we re-traced our steps. The parson was on foot; and though I proposed many times that we should ride alternately, he always refused, preferring now to travel on foot, as he was heartily tired of riding. Indeed, I never saw a better walker in my life; the man had evidently mistaken his profession, for he would have gained more money with his legs as an Indian runner; or a scout, than he had any chance of obtaining in the one to which he belonged, and for which he was most unqualified. The next day, at noon, we encamped on the stream, and though with little hope of success, I threw in my fishing line, baiting my hook with horse-flies and grasshoppers. My hooks had scarcely sunk in the water, when the bait was taken, and to my astonishment and delight, I soon dragged out of the water two very large trout. I shouted to my companions, who were soon round me, and we resolved to pass the night there, as we considered that a good meal or two would enable us so much better to continue our fatiguing journey. A little above us was also discovered a large quantity of drift, timber left dry upon the sand, and in a short time every one of us were actively employed in preparing for a jovial meal. Gabriel, being the best marksman, started for game, and I continued fishing, to the great delight of the doctor and the parson, the first one taking under his care the cooking department, and the last scouring the prairie to catch grasshoppers and horse-flies. In less than three hours I had twenty large trout, and a dozen cat-fish, and Gabriel returned with two Canadian geese. Invigorated by an abundant meal and a warm fire, we soon regained our spirits, and that night we slept sound, and made up for our former watching and shivering. The next morning, after breakfast, we filled our saddle-bags with the remainder of our provisions, and following the stream for ten miles, with water to our horses' shoulders, as both sides of the river were covered with briars. The parson had been obliged to ride behind one of the lawyers, who had a strong built, powerful horse; and great was our merriment when one of our steeds stumbled into a hole, and brought down his master with him. For nine miles more we continued wading down the river, till at last the prickly pears and briars receding from the banks, allowed us once more to regain the dry ground: but we had not travelled an hour upon the bank, when our road was interrupted by a broken range of hills. After incredible fatigue to both horses and men, for we were obliged to dismount and carry our arms and saddle-bags, the ascent was finally achieved. When we arrived at the summit, we found below us a peaceful and romantic valley, through the centre of which the river winded its way, and was fed by innumerable brooks, which joined it in every direction. Their immediate borders were fringed with small trees, bushes of the deepest green, while the banks of the river were skirted with a narrow belt of timber, of larger and more luxuriant growth. This valley was encircled by the range of hills we had ascended, so far as to the belt of the forest. We led our horses down the declivity, and in less than an hour found ourselves safe at the bottom. A brisk ride of three or four miles through the valley brought us to the edge of the forest, where we encamped near a small creek, and after another good night's rest, we pushed on through a mass of the noblest maple and pine trees I had ever seen. Now game abounded; turkeys, bears, and deer, were seen almost every minute, and, as we advanced, the traces of mules and jackasses were plainly visible. A little further on, the footprints of men were also discovered, and from their appearance they were but a few hours old. This sight made us forget our fatigues, and we hurried on, with fond anticipations of finding a speedy termination to all our sufferings. Late in the afternoon, I killed a very fat buck, and although we were anxious to follow the tracks, to ascertain what description of travellers were before us, our horses were so tired, and our appetites so sharpened, that upon reflection, we thought it desirable to remain where we were. I took this opportunity of making myself a pair of mocassins, with the now useless saddlebags of the parson. That evening we were in high glee, thinking that we had arrived at one of the recent settlements of western emigration, for, as I have observed, we had seen tracks of jackasses, and these animals are never employed upon any distant journey. We fully expected the next morning to find some log houses, within ten or fifteen miles, where we should be able to procure another horse for the parson, and some more ammunition, as we had scarcely half a pound of balls left between us. The lawyer enjoyed, by anticipation, the happiness of once more filling his half-gallon flask, and the doctor promised to give us dishes of his own invention, as soon as he could meet with a frying-pan. In fine, so exuberant were our spirits, that it was late before we laid down to sleep. At about two o'clock in the morning, feeling a pressure upon my breast, I opened my eyes, and saw Gabriel with a finger upon his lips, enjoining me to silence. He then informed me, in a whisper, that a numerous party of thieves were in our neighbourhood, and that they had already discovered our horses. Taking with us only our knives and tomahawks, we crawled silently till we came to a small opening in the forest, when we saw some twenty fellows encamped, without any light or fire, but all armed to the teeth. Three or four of them appeared animated in their conversation, and, being favoured by the darkness, we approached nearer, till we were able to hear every word. "All sleeping sound," said one of them, "but looking mighty wretched; not a cent among them, I am sure; if I can judge by their clothing, three of them are half-breeds." "And the horses?" said another voice. "Why, as to them, they have only seven," replied the first voice, "and they are broken down and tired, although fine animals. They would sell well after a three weeks' grazing." "Take them away, then; are they tied?" "Only two." "Break the halters then, and start them full speed, as if they were frightened; it will not awaken their suspicion." "Why not settle the matter with them all at once? we would get their saddles." "Fool! suppose they are a vanguard of General Rusk's army, and one of them should escape? No; to-morrow at sunrise they will run upon the tracks of their horses, and leave their saddles and saddle-bags behind; three men shall remain here, to secure the plunder, and when the ducks (travellers) are fairly entangled in the forest, being on foot, we can do what we please." Others then joined the conversation, and Gabriel and I returned to our friends as silently as we left them. Half an hour afterwards, we heard the galloping of our horses, in a southerly direction, and Gabriel going once more to reconnoitre, perceived the band taking another course, towards the east, leaving as they had proposed, three of their men behind them. For a few minutes he heard these men canvassing as to the best means of carrying the saddles, and having drank pretty freely from a large stone jug, they wrapped themselves in their blankets, and crawled into a sort of burrow, which had probably been dug out by the brigands, as a cachette for their provisions and the booty which they could not conveniently carry. By the conversation of the three fellows, Gabriel conjectured that the band had gone to a place of rendezvous, on the bank of some river, and that the party who had carried away our horses was to proceed only six miles south, to a stream where the track of the horses would be effaced and lost in case of our pursuit. As soon as they considered that we were far enough from our encampment, they were to return by another road, and rejoin the three men left behind. Gabriel conjectured that only four men had gone away with the horses. After a little consultation, we awoke our comrades, and explaining to them how matters stood, we determined upon a counterplot. It was at first proposed to shoot the three scoundrels left for our saddle-bags, but reflecting that they were better acquainted than we were with the locality, and that the report of one of their fire-arms would excite the suspicion of those who had charge of our horses, we determined upon another line of conduct. Before daylight, I took my bow and arrows, and succeeded in reaching a secure position, a few yards from the burrow where the thieves were concealed, Gabriel did the same, in a bush, half way between the burrow and our encampment. In the meantime, Roche, with the five Americans, played their part admirably-- walking near to the burrow, swearing that our horses had been frightened by some varmint and escaped, and started upon the tracks, with as much noise as they could make; to deceive the robbers the more, they left their rifles behind. As soon as they were gone, the thieves issued from their places of concealment, and one arming himself with his rifle, "went," as he said, "to see if the coast was clear." He soon returned with two of our rifles and a blazing piece of wood, and the worthies began laughing together at the success of their ruse. They lighted a fire, took another dram, and while one busied himself with preparing coffee, the other two started, with no other weapon but their knives, to fetch the saddle-bags and saddles. They had not been gone five minutes, when I perceived an enormous rattlesnake, ready to spring, at not half a yard from me. Since my snake adventure among the Comanches, I had imbibed the greatest dread of that animal, and my alarm was so great, that I rushed out of my concealment, and, at a single bound, found myself ten yards from the fellow, who was quietly blowing his fire and stirring his coffee. He arose immediately made two steps backwards, and, quite unnerved by so sudden an apparition, he extended his hand towards a tree, against which the rifles had been placed. That movement decided his fate, for not choosing to be shot at, nor to close with a fellow so powerful that he could have easily crushed my head between his thumb and finger, I drew at him; though rapid, my aim was certain, and he fell dead, without uttering a single word, the arrow having penetrated his heart. I then crawled to Gabriel, to whom I explained the matter, and left him, to take my station near the two remaining brigands. I found them busy searching the saddle-bags and putting aside what they wished to secrete for their own use. After they had been thus employed for half an hour, one of them put three saddles upon his head, and, thus loaded, returned to the burrow, desiring his companion to come along, and drink his coffee while it was hot. Some five minutes afterwards, the noise of a heavy fall was heard (it was that of the thief who had just left, who was killed by the tomahawk of Gabriel), and the remaining robber, loading himself with the saddle-bags, prepared to follow, swearing aloud against his companion, "who could not see before his eyes, and would break the pommels of the saddles." I had just drawn my bow, and was taking my aim, when Gabriel, passing me, made a signal to forbear, and rushing upon the thief, he kicked him in the back, just as he was balancing the saddles upon his head. The thief fell down, and attempted to struggle, but the prodigious muscular strength of Gabriel was too much for him; in a moment he laid half strangled and motionless. We bound him firmly hand and foot, and carried him to his burrow; we laid the two bodies by his side, stowed our luggage in the burrow, and having destroyed all traces of the struggle, we prepared for the reception of the horse-thieves. Chance befriended us. While we were drinking the coffee thus left as a prize to the conquerors, we heard at a distance the trampling of horses. I seized one of the rifles, and Gabriel, after a moment of intense listening, prepared his lasso, and glided behind the bushes. It was not long before I perceived my own horse who having undoubtedly thrown his rider, was galloping back to the camp. He was closely pursued by one of the rascals, mounted upon Gabriel's horse, and calling out to the three robbers, "Stop him; Russy, Carlton--stop him!" At that moment, Gabriel's lasso fell upon his shoulders, and he fell off the horse as dead as if struck by lightning: his neck was broken. Having gained our horses, we saddled them, and took our rifles, not doubting but that we would easily capture the remaining rascals, as the speed of our two steeds was very superior to that of the others. After half an hour's hard riding, we fell in with Roche and our companions, who had been equally fortunate. It appeared that the fellow who had been riding my horse had received a severe fall against a tree; and while one of his companions started in chase of the animal, who had galloped off. The two others tied their horses to the trees, and went to his assistance. When thus occupied, they were surprised, and bound hand and foot by Roche and his party. We brought back our prisoners, and when we arrived at the burrow, we found that, far from having lost any thing by the robbers, we had, on the contrary, obtained articles which we wanted. One of the lawyers found in the stone jug enough of whisky to fill his flask; the parson got another rifle, to replace that which he had lost in the prairie, and the pouches and powder-horns of the three first robbers were found well supplied with powder and balls. We also took possession of four green Mackinaw blankets and a bag of ground coffee. We heartily thanked Providence, who had thrown the rascals in our way, and after a good meal, we resumed our journey in a southern direction, each of the three lawyers leading, by a stout rope, one of the brigands, who were gagged and their hands firmly bound behind their backs. During the whole day, the parson amused himself with preaching honesty and morality to our prisoners, who seeing now that they had not the least chance to escape, walked briskly alongside of the horses. Towards evening we encamped in one of those plains, a mile in circumference, which are so frequently met with in the forests of the west. We had performed a journey of twenty miles, and that with the forced ride which our beasts had performed in the morning, had quite tired them out. Besides, having now four men on foot, we could not proceed so fast as before. We lighted a fire and fed our prisoners, putting two of them in the centre of our circles, while the two others, who were much bruised by their falls of the morning, took their station near the fire, and we covered them with a blanket. Though we believed we had nothing to fear from our prisoners, the two first being bound hand and foot, and the two last being too weak to move, we nevertheless resolved that a watch should be kept, and as Gabriel and I had not slept during the night before, we appointed Roche to keep the first watch. When I awoke, I felt chilly, and to my astonishment I perceived that our fire was down. I rose and looked immediately for the prisoners. The two that we had put within our circle were still snoring heavily, but the others, whose feet we had not bound on account of their painful bruises, were gone. I looked for the watch, and found that it was one of the lawyers, who having drank too freely of the whisky, had fallen asleep. The thieves had left the blanket; I touched it, I perceived that it was yet warm, so that I knew they could not have been gone a long while. The day was just breaking, and I awoke my companions; the lawyer was much ashamed of himself, and offered the humblest apologies, and as a proof of his repentance, he poured on the ground the remainder of the liquor in his flask. As soon as Gabriel and Roche were up, we searched in the grass for the footprints, which we were not long in finding, and which conducted us straight to the place where we had left our horses loose and grazing. Then, for the first time, we perceived that the horses which were shod, and which belonged to the three lawyers, had had their shoes taken off, when in possession of the thieves the day before. By the foot-prints, multiplied in every direction, it was evident that the fugitives had attempted, though in vain, to seize upon some of our horses. Following the foot-marks a little farther, brought us to a small sandy creek, where the track was lost; and on the other side, to our great astonishment, we saw plainly (at least the appearance seemed to imply as much), that help had been at hand, and that the thieves had escaped upon a tall American horse, ambling so lightly, that the four shoes of the animal were comparatively but feebly marked on the ground. It seemed, also, that the left foreleg of the animal had been at some time hurt, for the stopping was not regular, being sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, and now and then deviating two or three inches from the line. I thought immediately that we had been discovered by another roving party of the brigands, and that they had gone to get a reinforcement to overpower us, but upon a closer examination of the track, I came at once to the solution of the mystery. I remarked that on the print left by the shoes, the places upon which the head of the nails should have pressed deeper, were, on the contrary, convex, the shoes were, therefore, not fixed by nails; and my suspicions being awakened, I soon spied upon a soft sandy spot, through which the track passed, that there was something trailing from the left hind foot, and I satisfied myself that this last slight mark was made by a piece of twine. A little afterwards I remarked that on the softer parts of the ground, and two or three inches behind and before the horse-shoe prints, were two circular impressions, which I ascertained to be the heel and the toe-marks left by a man's mocassins. The mystery was revealed. We had never searched our prisoners, one of whom must have had some of the shoes taken off the horses, which shoes, in these districts, are very valuable, as they cannot be replaced. Having tried in vain to catch some of our horses, they had washed out the tracks in the creek, and had fixed the horse-shoes to their own feet with pieces of twine; after which, putting themselves in a line at the required distance one from the other, they had started off, both with the same foot, imitating thus the pacing of a swift horse. The plan was cunning enough, and proved that the blackguards were no novices in their profession, but they had not yet sufficiently acquired that peculiar tact natural to savage life. Had they been Indians, they would have fixed small pieces of wood into the holes of the shoe to imitate the nails, and they would then have escaped. We returned to the camp to arm ourselves, and the lawyers, wishing to recover our confidence, entreated that they might be permitted to chase and recapture the fellows. At noon they returned quite exhausted, but they had been successful; the prisoners were now bound hand and foot, and also tied by the waist to a young pine, which we felled for the purpose. It was useless to travel further on that day, as the lawyers' horses were quite blown, and having now plenty of ammunition, some of us went in pursuit of turkeys and pheasants, for a day or two's provisions. All my efforts to obtain information from the prisoners were vain. To my inquiries as to what direction lay the settlements, I received no answer. Towards evening, as we were taking our meal, we were visited by a band of dogs, who, stopping ten yards from us, began to bark most furiously. Thinking at first they belonged to the band of robbers, who employed them to follow travellers, we hastily seized our arms, and prepared for a fight; but Gabriel asserting the dogs were a particular breed belonging to the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and other tribes of half-civilised Indians, established upon the Red River, we began shouting and firing our rifles, so as to guide towards us the Indians, whom we presumed could not be far behind their dogs. We did not wait long, for a few minutes afterwards a gallant band of eighty Cherokees dashed through the cover, and reined up their horses before us. All was explained in a moment. A system of general depredation had been carried on, for a long while with impunity, upon the plantations above the great bend of the Red River. The people of Arkansas accused the Texians, who, in their turn, asserted that the parties were Indians. Governor Yell, of the Arkansas, complained to Ross, the highly talented chief of the Cherokees, who answered that the robbers were Arkansas men and Texians, and, as a proof of his assertion, he ordered a band to scour the country, until they had fallen in with and captured the depredators. For the last two days, they had been following some tracks, till their dogs, having crossed the trail left by the lawyers and their prisoners, guided the warriors to our encampments. We gave them all our prisoners, whom we were very glad to get rid of; and the Indian leader generously ordered one of his men to give up his horse and saddle to the parson. To this, however, we would not consent, unless we paid for the animal; and each of us subscribing ten dollars, we presented the money to the man, who certainly did not lose by the bargain. The next morning, the leader of the Cherokee party advised me to take a southern direction, till we should arrive at the head waters of the river Sabine, from whence, proceeding either northward or eastward, we should, in a few days, reach the Red River, through the cane-brakes and the clearings of the new settlers. Before parting, the Indians made us presents of pipes and tobacco, of which we were much in want; and after a hearty breakfast, we resumed our journey. CHAPTER THIRTY ONE. The Cherokee Indians, a portion of whom we had just met on such friendly terms, are probably destined to act no inconsiderable part in the future history of Texas. Within the last few years, they have given a severe lesson to the governments of both Texas and the United States. The reader is already aware that, through a mistaken policy, the government of Washington have removed from several southern states those tribes of half-civilised Indians which indubitably were the most honourable and industrious portion of the population of these very states. The Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Choctaws, among others, were established on the northern banks of the Red River, in the territory west of the Arkansas. The Cherokees, with a population of twenty-four thousand individuals; the Creeks, with twenty thousand, and the Choctaws, with fifteen, as soon as they reached their new country, applied themselves to agriculture, and as they possessed wealth, slaves, and cattle, their cotton plantations soon became the finest west from the Mississippi, and latterly all the cotton grown by the Americans and the Texians, within one hundred miles from the Indian settlements, has been brought up to their mills and presses, to be cleaned and put into bales, before it was shipped to New Orleans. Some years before the Independence of Texas, a small number of these Cherokees had settled as planters upon the Texian territory, where, by their good conduct and superior management of their farms, they had acquired great wealth, and had conciliated the good will of the warlike tribes of Indians around them, such as the Cushates, the Caddoes, and even the Comanches. As soon as the Texians declared their independence, their rulers, thinking that no better population could exist in the northern districts than that of the Cherokees, invited a few hundred more to come from the Red River, and settle among them; and to engage them so to do, the first session of congress offered them a grant of two or three hundred thousand acres of land, to be selected by them in the district they would most prefer. Thus enticed, hundreds of wealthy Cherokee planters migrated to Texas, with their wealth and cattle. Such was the state of affairs until the presidency of Lamar, a man utterly unequal to the task of ruling over a new country. Under his government, the Texians, no longer restrained by the energy and honourable feelings of an Austin or a Houston, followed the bent of their dispositions, and were guilty of acts of barbarism and cruelty which, had they, at the time, been properly represented to the civilised people of Europe, would have caused them to blot the name of Texas out of the list of nations. I have already related the massacre of the Comanches in San Antonio, and the miserable pilfering expedition to Santa Fe, but these two acts had been preceded by one still more disgraceful. The Cherokees, who had migrated to Texas, were flourishing in their new settlement, when the bankruptcy of the merchants in the United States was followed by that of the planters. The consequence was, that from Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, hundreds of planters smuggled their negroes and other property into Texas, and as they dared not locate themselves too far west, from their dread of the Mexicans and Indians, they remained in the east country, upon the rivers of which only, at that time, navigation had been attempted. These new comers, however, had to struggle with many difficulties; they had to clear the ground, to build bridges, to dry up mud-holes and swamps; and, moreover, they found that they could not enter into competition with the Cherokees, who having been established there for a longer time, and raising abundant crops of maize, cotton, and tobacco, were enabled to sell their provisions at one-half the price which the white planter wished to realise. The Europeans, of course, preferred to settle near the Cherokees, from whom they could obtain their Indian corn at fifty cents a bushel, while the American planters demanded two dollars and sometimes three. In a short time, the Cherokee district became thickly settled, possessing good roads, and bridges and ferries upon every muddy creek; in short, it was, in civilisation, full a century ahead of all the other eastern establishments of Texas. The Texian planters from the United States represented to the government that they would have no chance of cultivating the country and building eastern cities, as long as the Cherokees were allowed to remain; and, moreover, they backed their petition with a clause showing that the minimum price the Cherokee land would be sold at to new comers from the United States was ten dollars an acre. This last argument prevailed, and in spite of the opposition of two or three honest men, the greedy legislators attacked the validity of the acts made during the former presidency; the Cherokees' grant was recalled, and notice given to them that they should forth with give up their plantations and retire from Texas. To this order, the Cherokees did not deign to give an answer, and, aware of the character of the Texians, they never attempted to appeal for justice; but, on the contrary, prepared themselves to defend their property from any invasion. Seeing them so determined, the Texians' ardour cooled a little, and they offered the Indians twelve cents an acre for their land, which proposition was not attended to; and probably the Cherokees, from the fear which they inspired, would never have been molested had it not been for an act of the greatest cowardice on the part of the Texian government, and a most guilty indifference on that of the United States. In Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas, labour had fallen so low, that thousands of individuals had abandoned their farms to become horse-thieves and negro smugglers. Many among them had gone to sell the produce of their depredations to the Cherokees, who not only did not condescend to deal with them, but punished them with rigour, subjecting them to their own code of laws. These ruffians nurtured plans of vengeance which they dared not themselves execute, but, knowing the greedy spirit of their countrymen, they spread the most incredible stories of Cherokee wealth and comforts. The plan succeeded well, for as soon as the altercation between the Texians and Cherokee Indians was made known to the Western States, several bands were immediately formed, who, in the expectation of a rich booty, entered Texas, and offered the Congress to drive away the Cherokees. As soon as this was known, representations were made by honourable men to the government of the United States, but no notice was taken, and the Western States, probably to get rid at once of the scum of their population, gave every encouragement to the expedition. For a few months the Cherokees invariably discomfited their invaders, destroying their bands as soon as they were newly formed, and treating them as common robbers; but, being farmers, they could not fight and cultivate their ground at the same time, and they now thought of abandoning so unhospitable a land; the more so as, discovering that the Cherokees were more than a match for them in the field, a system of incendiarism and plunder was resorted to, which proved more disastrous to the Cherokees than the previous open warfare. The Cherokees wisely reflected, that as long as the inhabitants of the Western States would entertain the hope of plunder and booty, they would constantly pour upon them their worthless population. They, therefore, destroyed their farms and their bridges; and collecting their horses and cattle, they retreated upon the Red River among their own people. The Cherokee campaign is a topic of much boasting among the Texians, as they say they expelled the Indians from their country; but a fact, which they are not anxious to publish, is, that for every Cherokee killed, twenty Texians bit the dust. Since that period the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks have had several war councils, and I doubt not that they are only waiting for an opportunity to retaliate, and will eventually sweep off the entire eastern population of Texas. The fact is, that a democratic form of government is powerless when the nation is so utterly depraved. Austin, the father of Texian colonisation, quitted the country in disgust. Houston, whose military talents and well-known courage obtained for him the presidency, has declared his intention to do the same, and to retire to the United States, to follow up his original profession of a lawyer. Such is the demoralised state of Texas at the present moment; what it may hereafter be is in the womb of Time. CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. We had now entered the white settlements of the Sabine river, and found, to our astonishment, that, far from arriving at civilisation, we were receding from it; the farms of the Wakoes and well-cultivated fields of the Pawnee-Picts, their numerous cattle and comfortable dwellings, were a strong contrast to the miserable twelve-feet-square mud-and-log cabins we passed by. Every farmer we met was a perfect picture of wretchedness and misery; their women dirty and covered with rags, which could scarcely conceal their nudity; the cattle lean and starving; and the horses so weak, that they could scarcely stand upon their legs. Where was the boasted superiority of the Texians over the Indian race? or were these individuals around us of that class of beings who, not daring to reside within the jurisdiction of the law, were obliged to lead a borderer's life, exposed to all the horrors of Indian warfare and famine? Upon inquiry, we discovered that these frontier men were all, more or less, eminent members of the Texian Republic, one being a general, another a colonel; some speakers of the House of Representatives; and many of them members of Congress, judges, and magistrates. Notwithstanding their high official appointments, we did not think it prudent to stop among them, but pushed on briskly, with our rifles across the pommels of our saddles; indeed, from the covetous eyes which these magistrates and big men occasionally cast upon our horses and saddle-bags, we expected at every moment that we should be attacked. A smart ride of two hours brought us to a second settlement which contrasted most singularly with the first. Here, all the houses were neat and spacious, with fine barns and stables; the fields were well enclosed, and covered with a green carpet of clover, upon which were grazing cattle and horses of a superior breed. This sight of comfort and plenty restored our confidence in civilisation, which confidence we had totally lost at the first settlement we had fallen in with; and perceiving, among others, a dwelling surrounded with gardens arranged with some taste, we stopped our horses and asked for accommodation for ourselves and beasts. Three or four smart young boys rushed out, to take care of our horses, and a venerable old man invited us to honour his hearth. He was a Mormon, and informed us that hundreds of farmers belonging to that sect had established themselves in East Texas, at a short distance from each other, and that, if we were going to travel through the Arkansas, and chose to do so, we could stop every other day at a Mormon farm, until we arrived at the southern borders of the state of Missouri. We resolved to avail ourselves of this information, anticipating that every Mormon dwelling would be as clean and comfortable as the one we were in; but we afterwards found out our mistake, for, during the fifteen days' journey which we travelled between the Sabine and a place called Boston, we stopped at six different Mormon farms, either for night or fore-noon meals, but, unlike the first, they were anything but comfortable or prosperous. One circumstance, however, attracted particularly our attention; it was, that, rich or poor, the Mormon planters had superior cattle and horses, and that they had invariably stored up in their granaries or barns the last year's crop of every thing that would keep. Afterwards I learned that these farmers were only stipendiary agents of the elders of the Mormons, who, in the case of a westward invasion being decided upon by Joe Smith and his people, would immediately furnish their army with fresh horses and all the provisions necessary for a campaign. One morning we met with a Texian constable going to arrest a murderer. He asked us what o'clock it was, as he had not a watch, and told us that a few minutes' ride would bring us to Boston, a new Texian city. We searched in vain for any vestiges which could announce our being in the vicinity of even a village; at last, however, emerging from a swamp, through which we had been forcing our way for more than an hour, we descried between the trees a long building, made of the rough logs of the black pine, and as we advanced, we perceived that the space between the logs (about six inches) had not been filled up, probably to obtain a more free circulation of air. This building, a naked negro informed us, was Ambassadors' Hall, the great and only hotel of Texian Boston. Two hundred yards farther we perceived a multitude of individuals swarming around another erection of the same description, but without a roof, and I spurred on my horse, believing we should be in time to witness some cockfighting or a boxing-match; but my American fellow-travellers, better acquainted with the manners and customs of the natives, declared it was the "Court House." As we had nothing to do there, we turned our horses' heads towards the tavern, and the barking of a pack of hungry dogs soon called around us a host of the Bostonians. It is strange that the name of city should be given to an unfinished log-house, but such is the case in Texas; every individual possessing three hundred acres of land calls his lot a city, and his house becomes at once the tavern, the post office the court-house, the gaol, the bank, the land-office, and in fact everything. I knew a man near the Red River, who had obtained from government an appointment of postmaster, and, during the five years of his holding the office, he had not had a single letter in his hand. This city mania is a very extraordinary disease in the United States, and is the cause of much disappointment to the traveller. In the Iowa territory, I once asked a farmer my way to Dubugue. "A stranger, I reckon," he answered; "but no matter, the way is plain enough. Now, mind what I say: after you have forded the river, you will strike the military road till you arrive in the prairie; then you ride twenty miles east, till you arrive at Caledonia city; there they will tell you all about it." I crossed the river, and, after half an hour's fruitless endeavours, I could not find the military road, so I forded back, and returned to my host. "Law!" he answered; "why, the trees are blazed on each side of the road." Now, if he had told me that at first, I could not have mistaken, for I had seen the blazing of a bridle-path; but as he had announced a military road, I expected, what it imported, a military road. I resumed my journey and entered the prairie. The rays of the sun were very powerful, and, wishing to water my horse, I hailed with delight a miserable hut, sixteen feet square, which I saw at about half a mile from the trail. In a few minutes I was before the door, and tied my horse to a post, upon which was a square board bearing some kind of hieroglyphics on both sides. Upon a closer inspection, I saw upon one side, "Ice," and upon the other, "POSTOFF." "A Russian, a Swede, or a Norwegian," thought I, knowing that Iowa contained eight or ten thousand emigrants of these countries. "Ice-- well, that is a luxury rarely to be found by a traveller in the prairie, but it must be pretty dear; no matter, have some I must." I entered the hut, and saw a dirty woman half-naked, and slumbering upon a stool, by the corner of the chimney. "Any milk?" I inquired, rousing her up. She looked at me and shook her head; evidently she did not understand me; however, she brought me a stone jug full of whisky, a horn tumbler, and a pitcher of water. "Can you give my horse a pail of water?" I asked again. The woman bent down her body, and dragging from under the bed a girl of fourteen, quite naked, and with a skin as tough as that of an alligator, ordered her to the well with a large bucket. Having thus provided for my beast, I sat upon a stump that served for a chair, and once more addressed my hostess. "Now, my good woman, let us have the ice." "The what?" she answered. As I could not make her understand what I wanted, I was obliged to drink the whisky with water almost tepid, and my horse being refreshed, I paid my fare and started. I rode for three hours more, and was confident of having performed twice the distance named by mine host of the morning, and yet the prairie still extended as far as the eye could reach, and I could not perceive the city of Caledonia. Happily, I discovered a man at a distance riding towards me: we soon met. "How far," said I, "to Caledonia city?" "Eighteen miles," answered the traveller. "Is there no farm on the way?" I rejoined, "for my horse is tired." The horseman stared at me in amazement. "Why, Sir," he answered, "you turn your back to it; you have passed it eighteen miles behind." "Impossible!" I exclaimed: "I never left the trail, except to water my horse at a little hut." "Well," he answered, "that was at General Hiram Washington Tippet's; he keeps the post-office--why, Sir, that was Caledonia city." I thanked him, unsaddled my horse, and bivouacked where I was, laughing heartily at my mistake in having asked for _ice_, when the two sides of the board made _post-office_. But I must return to Boston and its court-house. As it was the time of the assizes, some fifty or sixty individuals had come from different quarters, either to witness the proceedings, or to swap their horses, their saddles, their bowie knife, or anything; for it is while law is exercising its functions that a Texian is most anxious to swap, to cheat, to gamble, and to pick pockets and quarrel under its nose, just to shew his independence of all law. The dinner-bell rang a short time after our arrival, and for the first time in my life I found myself at an American _table-d'hote_. I was astonished, as an Indian well might be. Before my companions and self had had time to set down and make choice of any particular dish, all was disappearing like a dream. A general opposite to me took hold of a fowl, and, in the twinkling of an eye, severed the wings and legs. I thought it was polite of him to carve for others as well as himself, and was waiting for him to pass over the dish after he had helped himself, when to my surprise, he retained all he had cut off, and pushed the carcase of the bird away from him. Before I had recovered from my astonishment, his plate was empty. Another seized a plate cranberries, a fruit I was partial to, and I waited for him to help himself first and then pass the dish over to me; but he proved be more greedy than the general, for, with an enormous horn spoon, he swallowed the whole. The table was now deserted by all except by me and my companions, who, with doleful faces, endeavoured to appease our hunger with some stray potatoes. We called the landlord, and asked him for something to eat; it was with much difficulty that we could get half-a-dozen of eggs and as many slices of salt pork. This lesson was not thrown away upon me; and afterwards, when travelling in the States, I always helped myself before I was seated, caring nothing for my neighbours. Politeness at meals may be and is practised in Europe, or among the Indians, but among the Americans it would be attended with starvation. After dinner, to kill time, we went to the court-house and were fortunate enough to find room in a position where we could see and hear all that was going on. The judge was seated upon a chair, the frame of which he was whittling with such earnestness that he appeared to have quite forgotten where he was. On each side of him were half-a-dozen of jurymen, squatted upon square blocks, which they were also whittling, judge and jurymen having each a cigar in the mouth, and a flask of liquor, with which now and then they regaled themselves. The attorney, on his legs, addressing the jury, was also smoking, as well as the plaintiff, the defendant, and all the audience. The last were seated, horseback-fashion, upon parallel low benches, for their accommodation, twenty feet long, all turned towards the judge, and looking over the shoulders of the one in front of him, and busily employed in carving at the bench between his thigh and that of his neighbour. It was a very singular _coup-d'oeil_, and a new-comer from Europe would have supposed the assembly to have been a "whittling club." Having surveyed the company, I then paid attention to the case on trial, and, as I was just behind the defendant, I soon learned how justice was executed in Texas, or, or least, in Texian Boston. It appeared that the defendant was the postmaster and general merchant of the country. Two or three weeks back, the son of the plaintiff had entered his shop to purchase his provision of coffee, sugar, and flour, and had given him to change a good one-hundred-dollar bill of one of the New Orleans banks. The merchant had returned to him a fifty-dollar note and another of ten. Two hours afterwards, the young man, having swapped his horse, carriole, and twenty dollars, for a waggon and two couple of oxen, presented the fifty-dollar note, which was refused as being counterfeited. The son of the plaintiff returned to the merchant, and requested him to give him a good note. The merchant, however, would not: "Why did you take it?" said he; "I be damned if I give you any other money for it." Upon which the young man declared it was shameful swindling, and the merchant, throwing at him an iron weight of nine pounds, killed him on the spot. The attorney, who was now pleading for the defendant, was trying to impress upon the jury that the murder had been merely accidental, inasmuch as the merchant had thrown the missile only in sport, just to scare away the fellow who was assaulting him in his own house; but, strange to say, no mention was made at all of the note, though everybody knew perfectly well that the merchant had given it, and that it was a part of his trade to pass forged notes among his inexperienced customers. As soon as the lawyer had ended the defence, the merchant was called upon by the judge to give his own version of what occurred. He rose: "Why," said he, "it was just so as has been said. I wished not to hurt the fellow; but he called me a swindler. Well, I knew the man was in a passion, and I did not care. I only said, `How dare you, Sir?' and I threw the piece of iron just to frighten him. Well, to be sure, the blackguard fell down like a bull and I thought it was a humbug. I laughed and said, `None of your gammon;' but he was dead. I think the thing must have struck something on the way, and so swerved against his head. I wished not to kill the fellow--I be damned if I did." The jurymen looked at each other with a significant and approving air, which could be translated as accidental death. Gabriel touched the merchant upon the shoulder, "You should have said to him, that you merely wished to kill a mosquito upon the wall." "Capital idea," cried the defendant. "I be damned if it was not a mosquito eating my molasses that I wished to kill, after all." At that moment one of the jurymen approached the merchant, and addressed him in a low voice; I could not hear what passed, but I heard the parting words of the juryman, which were, "All's right!" To this dispenser of justice succeeded another; indeed, all the jurymen followed in succession, to have a little private conversation with the prisoner. At last the judge condescended to cease his whittling, and come to make his own bargain, which he did openly: "Any good saddles, Fielding? mine looks rather shabby." "Yes, by Jingo, a fine one, bound with blue cloth, and silver nails-- Philadelphia-made--prime cost sixty dollars." "That will do," answered the judge, walking back to his seat. Ten minutes afterwards the verdict of manslaughter was returned against the defendant, who was considered, in a speech from the judge, sufficiently punished by the affliction which suck an accident must produce to a generous mind. The court broke up, and Fielding, probably to show how deep was his remorse, gave three cheers, to which the whole court answered with a hurrah, and the merchant was called upon to treat the whole company: of course he complied, and they all left the court house. Gabriel and I remained behind. He had often tried to persuade me to abandon my ideas of going to the States and Europe, pointing out to me that I should be made a dupe and become a prey to pretended well-wishers. He had narrated to me many incidents of his own life, of his folly and credulity, which had thrown him from an eminent station in civilised society, and had been the cause of our meeting in the Western World. He forewarned me that I should be disappointed in my expectations, and reap nothing but vexation and disappointment. He knew the world too well, I knew nothing of it, and I thought that he was moved by bitterness of spirit to rail so loud against it. He would fain persuade me to return with him to my own tribe of Shoshones, and not go in search of what I never should obtain. He was right, but I was obstinate. He did not let pass this opportunity of giving me a lesson. "You have now witnessed," said he, "a sample of justice in this _soi-disant_ civilised country. Two hundred dollars, perhaps, have cleared a murderer; ten millions would not have done it among the Shoshones." "But Texas is not Europe," replied I. "No," said Gabriel, "it is not; but in Europe, as in Texas, with money you can do anything, without money nothing." At that moment we perceived a man wrapt in his blanket, and leaning against a tree. He surveyed the group receding to the tavern, and the deepest feelings of hatred and revenge were working evidently within him. He saw us not, so intense were his thoughts. It was the plaintiff whose son had been murdered. Gabriel resumed: "Now, mark that man; he was the plaintiff, the father of the young fellow so shamefully plundered and murdered; he is evidently a poor farmer, or the assassin would have been hung. He is now brooding over revenge; the law gave not justice, he will take it into his own hands, and he will probably have it to-night, or to-morrow. Injustice causes crime, and ninety-nine out of a hundred are forced into it by the impotency of the law; they suffer once, and afterwards act towards others as they have been acted by. That man may have been till this day a good, industrious, and hospitable farmer; to-night he will be a murderer, in a week he will have joined the free bands, and will then revenge himself upon society at large, for the injustice he has received from a small portion of the community." Till then I had never given credit to my friend for any great share of penetration, but he prophesied truly. Late in the night the father announced his intention of returning to his farm, and entered the general sleeping-room of the hotel to light a cigar. A glance informed him of all that he wished to know. Forty individuals were ranged sleeping in their blankets, alongside of the walls, which, as I have observed, were formed of pine logs, with a space of four or six inches between each: parallel with the wall, next to the yard, lay the murderer Fielding. The father left the room, to saddle his horse. An hour afterwards the report of a rifle was heard, succeeded by screams and cries of "Murder! help! murder!" Every one in the sleeping-room was up in a moment, lights were procured, and the judge was seen upon his knees with his hands upon his hinder quarters; his neighbour Fielding was dead, and the same ball which had passed through his back and chest had blazed the bark off the nether parts of this pillar of Texian justice. When the first surprise was over, pursuit of the assassin was resolved upon, and then it was discovered that, in his revenge, the father had not lost sight of prudence. All the horses were loose; the stable and the court-house, as well as the bar and spirit store of the tavern, were in flames. While the Bostonians endeavoured to steal what they could, and the landlord was beating his negroes, the only parties upon whom he could vent his fury, our companions succeeded in recovering their horses, and at break of day, without any loss but the gold watch of the doctor, which had probably been stolen from him during his sleep, we started for the last day's journey which we had to make in Texas. As we rode away, nothing remained of Texian Boston except three patches of white ashes, and a few half-burnt logs, nor do know if that important city has ever been rebuilt. CHAPTER THIRTY THREE. We were now but twenty miles from the Red River, and yet this short distance proved to be the most difficult travelling we had experienced for a long while. We had to cross swamps, lagoons, and cane-brakes, in which our horses were bogged continually; so that at noon, and after a ride of six hours, we had only gained twelve miles. We halted upon a dry knoll, and there, for the first time since the morning, we entered into conversation; for, till then, we had been too busy scrutinising the ground before our horses' feet. I had a great deal to say both to Gabriel and to Roche; we were to part the next morning,--they to return to the Comanches and the Shoshones, I to go on to the Mormons, and perhaps to Europe. I could not laugh at the doctor's _bon mots_, for my heart was full; till then, I had never felt how long intercourse, and sharing the same privations and dangers, will attach men to each other; and the perspective of a long separation rendered me gloomier and gloomier, as the time we still had to pass together became shorter. Our five American companions had altered their first intention of travelling with me through the Arkansas. They had heard on the way, that some new thriving cities had lately sprung up on the American side of the Red River; the doctor was already speculating upon the fevers and agues of the ensuing summer; the parson was continually dreaming of a neat little church and a buxom wife, and the three lawyers, of rich fees from the wealthy cotton planters. The next day, therefore, I was to be alone, among a people less hospitable than the Indians, and among whom I had to perform a journey of a thousand miles on horseback, constantly on the outskirts of civilisation, and consequently exposed to all the dangers of border travelling. When we resumed our march through the swampy cane-brake, Gabriel, Roche, and I kept a little behind our companions. "Think twice, whilst it is yet time," said Gabriel to me, "and believe me, it is better to rule over your devoted and attached tribe of Shoshones than to indulge in dreams of establishing a western empire; and, even if you will absolutely make the attempt, why should we seek the help of white men? what can we expect from them and their assistance but exorbitant claims and undue interference? With a few months' regular organisation, the Comanches, Apaches, and Shoshones can be made equal to any soldiers of the civilised world, and among them you will have no traitors." I felt the truth of what he said, and for a quarter of an hour I remained silent: "Gabriel," replied I at last, "I have now gone too far to recede, and the plans which I have devised are not for my own advantage, but for the general welfare of the Shoshones and of all the friendly tribes. I hope to live to see them a great nation, and, at all events, it is worth a trial." My friend shook his head mournfully; he was not convinced, but he knew the bent of my temper, and was well aware that all he could say would now be useless. The natural buoyancy of our spirits would not, however, allow us to be grave long; and when the loud shouts of the doctor announced that he had caught a sight of the river, we spurred our horses, and soon rejoined our company. We had by this time issued from the swampy cane-brakes, and were entering a lane between two rich cotton-fields, and at the end of which flowed the Red River; not the beautiful, clear, and transparent stream running upon a rocky and sandy bed, as in the country inhabited by the Comanches and Pawnee Picts, and there termed the Colorado of the West; but a red and muddy, yet rapid stream. We agreed that we should not ferry the river that evening, but seek a farm, and have a feast before parting company. We learned from a negro, that we were in a place called Lost Prairie, and that ten minutes' ride down the bank of the stream would carry us to Captain Finn's plantation. We received this news with wild glee, for Finn was a celebrated character, one whose life was so full of strange adventures in the wilderness, that it would fill volumes with hairbreadth encounter and events of thrilling interest. Captain Finn received us with a cordial welcome, for unbounded hospitality is the invariable characteristic of the older cotton planters. A great traveller himself, he knew the necessities of a travelling life, and, before conducting us to the mansion, he guided us to the stables, where eight intelligent slaves, taking our horses, rubbed them down before our eyes, and gave them a plentiful supply of fodder and a bed of _fresh_ straw. "That will do till they are cool," said our kind host; "tonight they will have their grain and water; let us now go to the old woman and see what she can give us for supper." A circumstance worthy of remark is, that, in the western states, a husband always calls his wife the old woman, and she calls him the old man, no matter how young the couple may be. I have often heard men of twenty-five sending their slaves upon some errand "to the old woman," who was not probably more than eighteen years old. A boy of ten years calls his parents in the same way. "How far to Little Rock?" I once asked of a little urchin; "I don't know," answered he, "but the old ones will tell you." A few yards farther I met the "old ones;" they were both young people, not much more than twenty. In Mrs Finn we found a stout and plump farmer's wife, but she was a lady in her manners. Born in the wilderness, the daughter of one bold pioneer and married to another, she had never seen anything but woods, cane-brakes, cotton, and negroes, and yet, in her kindness and hospitality, she displayed a refinement of feeling and good breeding. She was daughter of the celebrated Daniel Boone, a name which has acquired a reputation even in Europe. She immediately ransacked her pantry, her hen-roost, and garden, and when we returned from the cotton-mill, to which our host, in his farmer's pride, had conducted us. [We found upon] an immense table, a meal which would have satisfied fifty of those voracious Bostonians whom we had met with the day before at the _table-d'hote_. Well do I recollect her, as she stood before us on that glorious evening, her features beaming with pleasure, as she witnessed the rapidity with which we emptied our plates. How happy she would look when we praised her chickens, her honey, and her coffee; and then she would carve and cut, fill again our cups, and press upon us all the delicacies of the Far West borders, delicacies unknown in the old countries; such as fried beaver-tail, smoked tongue of the buffalo-calf, and (the _gourmand's_ dish _par excellence)_ the Louisiana gombo. Her coffee, too, was superb, as she was one of the few upon the continent of America who knew how to prepare it. After our supper, the captain conducted us under the piazza attached to the building, where we found eight hammocks suspended, as white as snow. There our host disinterred from a large bucket of ice several bottles of Madeira, which we sipped with great delight; the more so as, for our cane pipes and cheap Cavendish, Finn substituted a box of genuine Havannah cazadores. After our fatigues and starvation, it was more than comfortable--it was delightful. The doctor vowed he would become a planter, the parson asked if there were any widows in the neighbourhood, and the lawyers inquired if the planters of the vicinity were any way litigious. By the bye, I have observed that Captain Finn was a celebrated character. As we warmed with the _Madere frappe a glace_, we pressed him to relate some of his wild adventures, with which request he readily complied; for he loved to rehearse his former exploits, and it was not always that he could narrate them to so numerous an assembly. As the style he employed could only be understood by individuals who have rambled upon the borders of the Far West, I will relate the little I remember in my own way, though I am conscious that the narrative must lose much when told by any one but Finn himself. When quite an infant, he had been taken by the Indians and carried into the fastnesses of the West Virginian forests; there he had been brought up till he was sixteen years old, when, during an Indian war, he was recaptured by a party of white men. Who were his parents, he could never discover, and a kind Quaker took him into his house, gave him his name, and treated him as his own child, sending him first to school, and then to the Philadelphia college. The young man, however, was little fit for the restrictions of a university; he would often escape and wander for days in the forests, until hunger would bring him home again. At last, he returned to his adopted father, who was now satisfied that his thoughts were in the wilderness, and that, in the bustle of a large city and restraint of civilised life, he would not live, but linger on till he drooped and died. This discovery was a sad blow to the kind old man, who had fondly anticipated that the youngster would be a kind and grateful companion to him, when age should make him feel the want of friendship; but he was a just man, and reflecting that perhaps a short year of rambling would cure him, he was the first to propose it. Young Finn was grateful; beholding the tears of his venerable protector, he would have remained and attended him till the hour of his death; but the Quaker would not permit him, he gave him his best horse, and furnished him with arms and money. At that time, the fame of Daniel Boone had filled the Eastern States, and young Finn had read with avidity the adventures of that bold pioneer. Hearing that he was now on the western borders of Kentucky, making preparations for emigration farther west, into the very heart of the Indian country, he resolved to join him and share the dangers of his expedition. The life of Boone is too well known for me to describe this expedition. Suffice it to say, that, once in Missouri, Finn conceived and executed the idea of making alone a trip across the Rocky Mountains, to the very borders of the Pacific Ocean. Strange to say, he scarcely remembers anything of that first trip, which lasted eleven months. The animals had not yet been scared out of the wilderness; water was found twice every day; the vine grew luxuriantly in the forests, and the caravans of the white men had not yet destroyed the patches of plums and nuts which grew wild in the prairies. Finn says he listened to the songs of the birds, and watched the sport of the deer, the buffaloes, and wild horses, in a sort of dreaming existence, fancying that he heard voices in the streams, in the foliage of the trees, in the caverns of the mountains; his wild imagination sometimes conjuring up strange and beautiful spirits of another world, who were his guardians, and who lulled him asleep every evening with music and perfumes. I have related this pretty nearly in the very terms of our host, and many of his listeners have remarked, at different times, that when he was dwelling upon that particular portion of his life, he became gloomy and abstracted, as if still under the influence of former indelible impressions. Undoubtedly Captain Finn is of a strong poetical temperament, and any one on hearing him narrate would say the same; but it is supposed that when the captain performed this first solitary excursion, his brain was affected by an excited and highly poetical imagination. After eleven months of solitude, he reached the Pacific Ocean, and awoke from his long illusion in the middle of a people whose language he could not understand; yet they were men of his colour, kind and hospitable; they gave him jewels and gold, and sent him back east of the mountains, under the protection of some simple and mild-hearted savages. The spot where Finn had arrived was at one of the missions, and those who released him and sent him back were the good monks of one of the settlements in Upper California. When Finn returned to the Mississippi, his narrative was so much blended with strange and marvellous stories, that it was not credited; but when he showed and produced his stock of gold dust in bladders, and some precious stones, fifty different proposals were made to him to guide a band of greedy adventurers to the new western Eldorado. Finn, like Boone, could not bear the society of his own countrymen; he dreaded to hear the noise of their axes felling the beautiful trees; he feared still more to introduce them, like so many hungry wolves, among the good people who knew so well the sacred rites of hospitality. After a short residence with the old back-woodsman, Finn returned to Virginia, just in time to close the eyes of the kind old Quaker. He found that his old friend had expected his return for he had sold all his property, and deposited the amount in the hands of a safe banker, to be kept for Finn's benefit. The young wanderer was amazed; he had now ten thousand dollars, but what could he do with so much money? He thought of a home, of love and happiness, of the daughter of old Boone, and he started off to present her with his newly-acquired wealth. Finn entered Boone's cottage, with his bags and pocket-books in each hand, and casting his burden into a corner, he entered at once upon the matter. "Why, I say, old man, I am sure I love the gal." "She is a comely and kind girl," said the father. "I wish she could love me." "She does." "Does she? well, I tell you what, Boone, give her to me, I'll try to make her happy." "I will but not yet," said the venerable patriarch. "Why, you are both of you mere children; she can't get a house, and how could you support her?" Finn jumped up with pride and glee. "Look," said he, while he scattered on the floor his bank-notes, his gold, and silver, "that will support her bravely; tell me, old father, that will keep her snug, won't it?" The pioneer nodded his head. "Finn," answered he, "you are a good young man, and I like you; you think like me; you love Polly, and Polly loves you mind, you shall have her, when you are both old enough; but remember, my son, neither your pieces of money nor your rags of paper will ever keep a daughter of mine. No, no! you shall have Polly, but you must first know how to use the rifle and the axe." A short time after this interview, Finn started upon another trip to unknown lands, leaving old Boone to make the most he could of his money. Now, the old pioneer, although a bold hunter and an intrepid warrior, was a mere child in matters of interest, and in less than two months he had lost the whole deposit, the only "gentleman" he ever trusted having suddenly disappeared with the funds. In the meanwhile Finn had gone down the Mississippi, to the thirty-second degree of north latitude, when, entering the western swamps, where no white man had ever penetrated, he forced his way to the Red River, which he reached a little above the old French establishment of Nachitoches. Beyond this point, inland navigation had never been attempted, and Finn, procuring a light dug-out, started alone, with his arms and his blanket, upon his voyage of discovery. During four months he struggled daily against the rapid stream, till he at last reached, in spite of rafts and dangerous eddies, its source at the Rocky Mountains. On his return, a singular and terrible adventure befell him; he was dragging his canoe over a raft, exactly opposite to where now stands his plantation, when, happening to hurt his foot, he lost hold of his canoe. It was on the very edge of the raft, near a ruffled eddy; the frail bark was swamped in a moment, and with it Finn lost his rifle, all his arms, and his blanket. [See Note 1.] Now that cotton grown on the Red River has been acknowledged to be the best in the States, speculators have settled upon both sides of it as far as two hundred miles above Lost Prairie; but at the time that Finn made his excursion, the country was a wilderness of horrible morasses, where the alligators basked unmolested. For months Finn found himself a prisoner at Lost Prairie, the spot being surrounded with impenetrable swamps, where the lightest foot would have sunk many fathoms below the surface. As to crossing the river, it was out of the question, as it was more than half a mile broad, and Finn was no swimmer; even now, no human being or animal can cross it at this particular spot, for so powerful are the eddies, that, unless a pilot is well acquainted with the passage, a boat will be capsized in the whirlpools. Human life can be sustained upon very little, for Finn managed to live for months upon a marshy ground six miles in extent, partially covered with prickly pears, sour grapes, and mushrooms. Birds he would occasionally kill with sticks; several times he surprised tortoises coming on shore to deposit their eggs, and once, when much pressed by hunger, he gave battle to a huge alligator. Fire he had none; his clothes had long been in rags; his beard had grown to a great length, and his nails were sharp as the claws of a wild beast. At last there was a flood in the river, and above the raft Finn perceived two immense pine trees afloat in the middle of the stream. Impelled by the force of the current, they cut through the raft, where the timber was rotten, and then grounded. This was a chance which Finn lost no time in profiting by; out of the fibrous substance of the prickly pear, he soon manufactured sufficient rope to lash the two trees together, with great labour got them afloat, and was carried down the stream with the speed of an arrow. He succeeded in landing many miles below, on the eastern bank, but he was so bruised, that for many days he was unable to move. One day a report was spread in the neighbourhood of Port Gibson, that a strange monster, of the ourang-outang species, had penetrated the cane-brakes upon the western banks of the Mississippi. Some negroes declared to have seen him tearing down a brown bear; an Arkansas hunter had sent to Philadelphia an exaggerated account of this recently discovered animal, and the members of the academies had written to him to catch the animal, if possible, alive, no matter at what expense. A hunting expedition was consequently formed, hundreds of dogs were let loose in the cane-brakes, and the chase began. The hunters were assembled, waiting till the strange animal should break cover, when suddenly he burst upon them, covered with blood, and followed closely by ten or fifteen hounds. He was armed with a heavy club, with which he now and then turned upon the dogs, crushing them at a blow. The hunters were dumb with astonishment; mounting their horses, they sprang forward to witness the conflict; the brute, on seeing them, gave a loud shout; one of the hunters being terrified, fired at him with his rifle; the strange animal put one of his hairy paws upon its breast, staggered, and fell; a voice was heard: "The Lord forgive you this murder!" On coming near, the hunters found that their victim was a man, covered with hair from head to foot; he was senseless, but not dead. They deplored their fatal error, and resolved that no expense or attention should be spared upon the unfortunate sufferer. This hunted beast, this hairy man, was Finn. The wound, not being mortal, was soon cured; but he became crazy and did not recover his reason for eight months. He related his adventures up to his quitting the Lost Prairie; after which all was a blank. His narrative soon spread all over the States, and land speculators crowded from every part to hear Finn's description of the unknown countries. The government became anxious to establish new settlements in these countries, and Finn was induced to commence the work of colonisation by the gift of the "Lost Prairie." Money was also supplied to him, that he might purchase slaves; but, before taking possession of his grant, he went to Missouri to visit his old friend, and claim his bride. Her father had been dead for some time, but the daughter was constant. With his wife, his brother-in-law, his negroes, and several waggons loaded with the most necessary articles, Finn forced his way to Little Rock, on the Arkansas River, whence, after a short repose, he again started in a South South West direction, through a hilly and woody country never before travelled. At last he reached the "Lost Prairie;" nothing was heard of him for two years, when he appeared at Nachitoches in a long cow [see note 2], laden with produce. From Nachitoches Finn proceeded to New Orleans, where the money received for his cotton, furs, and honey enabled him to purchase two more negroes and a fresh supply of husbandry tools. A company was immediately formed, for the purpose of exploring the Red River, as far as it might prove navigable, and surveying the lands susceptible of cultivation. A small steamboat was procured, and its command offered to Finn, who thus became a captain. Although the boat could not proceed higher than Lost Prairie, the result of the survey induced hundreds of planters to settle upon the banks of the river, and Captain Finn lived to become rich and honoured by his countrymen; his great spirit of enterprise never deserted him, and it was he who first proposed to the government to cut through the great rafts which impeded the navigation. His plans were followed, and exploring steam-boats have since gone nearly a thousand miles above Captain Finn's plantation at Lost Prairie. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. Rafts are an assemblage of forest trees, which have been washed down to the river, from the undermining of its banks. At certain points they become interlaced and stationary, stretching right across the river, preventing the passage of even a canoe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 2. A cow is a kind of floating raft peculiar to the western rivers of America, being composed of immense pine-trees tied together, and upon which a log cabin is erected. CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. The next morning our American companions bade us farewell, and resumed their journey; but Captain Finn insisted that Gabriel, Roche, and I should not leave him so soon. He pointed out that my steed would not be able to travel much farther, if I did not give him at least two or three days' repose; as for the horses of my two companions, they had become quite useless, and our host charged himself with procuring them others, which would carry them back to the Comanches. Captain Finn's hospitality was not, however, so heavily taxed, for during the day a flotilla of fifteen canoes stopped before the plantation, and a dozen of French traders came up to the house. They were intimate friends of the captain, who had known them for a long time, and it fortunately happened that they were proceeding with goods to purchase the furs of the Pawnee Picts. They offered a passage to Gabriel and Roche, who, of course, accepted the welcome proposition. They embarked their saddles with sundry provisions, which the good Mrs Finn forced upon them, while her hospitable husband, unknown to them, put into the canoes a bale of such articles as he thought would be useful to them during their long journey. The gift, as I afterwards learned, was composed of pistols and holsters, a small keg of powder, bars of lead, new bits and stirrups, and of four Mackinaw blankets. At last the moment arrived when I was to part with my friends. I felt a bitter pang, and I wept when I found myself alone. However, I consoled myself with the reflection that our separation was not to be a long one, and, cheered up by the captain, I soon overcame the bitterness of the separation. Yet, for months afterwards, I felt lonely and tired of myself; I had never had an idea how painful it is to part from the only few individuals who are attached to you. My worthy host showed much interest in my welfare. As he had some business to transact at the Land Office in the Arkansas, he resolved that he would accompany me two or three days on my journey. Five days after the departure of Gabriel and Roche, we crossed the Red River, and soon arrived at Washington, the only place of any importance in the west of Arkansas. From Washington to Little Rock, the capital of the state, there is a mail-road, with farms at every fifteen or twenty miles; but the captain informed me they were inhabited by the refuse from other states, and that west of the Mississippi (except in Louisiana and Missouri,) it was always safer to travel through the wilderness, and camp out. We accordingly took the back-wood trail, across a hilly and romantic country, entirely mineral, and full of extinct, volcanoes. The quantity of game found in these parts is incredible; every ten minutes we would start a band of some twenty turkeys. At all times, deer were seen grazing within rifle-shot, and I don't think that, on our first day's journey over the hills, we met less than twenty bears. Independent of his love for the wilderness, and his hatred of bowie-knife men, Captain Finn had another reason for not following the mail-road. He had business to transact at the celebrated hot springs, and he had to call on his way upon one of his brothers-in-law, a son of Boone, and a mighty hunter, who had settled in the very heart of the mountains, and who made it a rule to take a trip every spring to the Rocky Mountains. The second day, at noon, after a toilsome ascent of a few thousand feet; we arrived at a small clearing on the top of the mountains, where the barking of the dogs and the crowing of the fowls announced the vicinity of a habitation, and, ere many minutes had elapsed, we heard the sharp report of a rifle. "Young Boone's own, I declare," exclaimed Finn; "'twas I that gave him the tool. I should know its crack amidst a thousand. Now mark me, chief, Boone never misses; he has killed a deer or a bear; if the first, search for a hole between the fifth and sixth rib; if a bear, look in the eye. At all events, the young chap is a capital cook, and we arrive in good time. Did I not say so? By all the alligators in the swamps! Eh, Boone, my boy, how fares it with ye?" We had by this time arrived at the spot where the buck lay dead, and near the body was standing the gaunt form of a man, about forty years old, dressed in tanned leather, and standing six feet nine in his mocassins. Though we were within a yard of him, he reloaded his rifle with imperturbable gravity, and it was only when he had finished that job that I could perceive his grim features beaming with a smile. "Welcome, old boy; welcome, stranger; twice welcome to the hunter's home. I knew somebody was coming, because I saw the pigeons were flying up from the valley below; and as dried venison won't do after a morning trip, why, I took the rifle to kill a beast out of my _flock_." The hunter grinned at his conceit. "You see," he continued, "this place of mine is a genuine spot for a hunter. Every morning, from my threshold, can shoot a deer, a bear, or a turkey. I can't abide living in a country where an honest man must toil a whole day for a mouthful of meat; it would never do for me. Down Blackey, down Judith, down dogs. Old boy, take the scalping-knife and skin the beast under the red oak." This second part of the sentence was addressed to a young lad of sixteen, an inmate of the hunter's cabin; and the dogs, having come to the conclusion that we were not robbers, allowed us to dismount our horses. The cabin was certainly the _ne plus ultra_ of simplicity, and yet it was comfortable. Four square logs supported a board--it was the table; many more were used as _fauteuils_; and buffalo and bear hides, rolled in a corner of the room, were the bedding. A stone jug, two tin cups, and a large boiler completed the furniture of the cabin. There was no chimney; all the cooking was done outside. In due time we feasted upon the hunter's spoil, and, by way of passing the time, Boone related to us his first grizzly bear expedition. While a very young man, he had gone to the great mountain; of the West with a party of trappers. His great strength and dexterity in handling the axe, and the deadly precision of his aim with the rifle, had given him a reputation among his companions, and yet they were always talking to him as if he were a boy, because he had not yet followed the Red-skins on the war-path, nor fought a grizzly bear, which deed is considered quite as honourable and more perilous. Young Boone waited patiently for an opportunity, when one day he witnessed a terrible conflict, in which one of these huge monsters, although wounded by twenty balls, was so closely pursuing the trappers, his companions, that they were compelled to seek their safety by plunging into the very middle of abroad river. There, fortunately, the strength of the animal failed, and the stream rolled him away. It had been a terrible fight, and for many days the young man would shudder at the recollection; but he could no longer bear the taunts which were bestowed upon him, and, without announcing his intention to his companions, he resolved to leave them and bring back with him the claws of a grizzly bear, or die in the attempt. For two days he watched in the passes of the mountains, till he discovered, behind some bushes, the mouth of a dark cave, under a mass of rocks. The stench which proceeded from it and the marks at the entrance were sufficient to point out to the hunter that it contained the object of his search; but, as the sun had set, he reflected that the beast was to a certainty awake, and most probably out in search of prey. Boone climbed up a tree, from which he could watch the entrance of the cave; having secured himself and his rifle against a fall, by thongs of leather, with which a hunter is always provided, fatigue overpowered him, and he slept. At morn he was awakened by a growl and a rustling noise below; it was the bear dragging to his abode the carcase of a buck. When he thought that the animal was glutted with flesh, and sleeping, Boone descended the tree, and, leaning his rifle against the rock, he crawled into the cave to reconnoitre. It must have been a terrible moment; but he had made up his mind, and he possessed all the courage of his father: the cave was spacious and dark. The heavy grunt of the animal showed that he was asleep. By degrees, the vision of Boone became more clear, and he perceived the shaggy mass at about ten feet from him and about twenty yards from the entrance of the cave. The ground under him yielded to his weight, for it was deeply covered with the bones of animals, and more than once he thought himself lost, when rats, snakes, and other reptiles, disturbed by him from their meal, would start away, in every direction, with loud hissing, and other noises. The brute, however, never awoke, and Boone, having finished his survey, crawled out from this horrid den to prepare for the attack. He first cut a piece of pitch-pine, six or seven feet long, then taking from his pouch a small cake of bees'-wax, he wrapped it round one end of the stick, it at the extremity the shape of a small cup, to hold some whisky. This done, he re-entered the cavern, turned to his left, fixed his new kind of flambeau upright against the wall, poured the liquor in the wax cup, and then went out again to procure fire. With the remainder of his wax and a piece of cotton twine, he made a small taper which he lighted, and crawled in again over the bones, shading his light with one hand, till he had applied the flame to the whisky. The liquor was above proof, and as Boone returned and took up his position nearer the entrance, with his rifle, it threw up a vivid flame, which soon ignited the wax and the pitch-pine itself. The bear required something more than light to awake him from his almost lethargic sleep, and Boone threw bone after bone at him, till the brute woke up, growled with astonishment at the unusual sight before him, and advanced lazily to examine it. The young man had caught up his rifle by the barrel; he took a long and steady aim, as he knew that he must die if the bear was only wounded; and as the angry animal raised his paw to strike down the obnoxious torch, he fired. There was a heavy fall, a groan, and a struggle,--the light was extinguished, and all was dark as before. The next morning Boone rejoined his companions as they were taking their morning meal, and, throwing at their feet his bleeding trophies, he said to them, "Now, who will dare to say that I am not a man?" The history of this bold deed spread in a short time to even the remotest tribes of the North, and when, years afterwards, Boone fell a prisoner to the Black-feet Indians, they restored him to liberty and loaded him with presents, saying, that they could not hurt the great brave who had vanquished in his own den the evil spirit of the mountains. At another time, Boone, when hardly pressed by a party of the Flat-head Indians, fell into a crevice and broke the butt of his rifle. He was safe, however, from immediate danger; at least, he thought so, and resolved he would remain where he was till his pursuers should abandon their search. On examining the place which had afforded him so opportune a refuge, he perceived it was a spacious natural cave, having no other entrance than the hole or aperture through which he had fallen. He thanked Providence for this fortunate discovery, as, for the future, he would have a safe place to conceal his skins and provisions while trapping; but as he was prosecuting his search, he perceived with dismay that the cave was already inhabited. In a corner he perceived two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain: the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous situation, he heard a roar, which summoned all his energy; he rolled a loose mass of rock to the entrance; made it as firm as he could, by backing it with other stones; tied his knife to the end of his rifle barrel, and calmly waited for the issue. A minute passed, when a tremendous jaguar dashed against the rock, and Boone needed all his giant's strength to prevent it from giving way. Perceiving that main force could not dear the passage, the animal began scratching and digging at the entrance, and its hideous roars were soon responded to by the cubs, which threw themselves upon Boone. He kicked them away, but not without receiving several ugly scratches, and, thrusting the blade of his knife through the opening between the large stone and the solid rock, he broke it in the shoulder of the female jaguar, which, with a yell, started away. This respite was fortunate, as by this time Boone's strength was exhausted; he profited by the suspension of hostility, so as to increase the impediments, in case of a new attack; and reflecting that the mewings of the cubs attracted and enraged the mother, he knocked their brains out with the barrel of his rifle. During two hours, he was left to repose himself after his exertions, and he was beginning to think the animal had been scared away, when another terrible bound against the massive stone forced it a few inches into the cave. For an hour he struggled, till the jaguar, itself tired, and not hearing the mewings of her cubs, retired with a piteous howl. Night came, and Boone began to despond. Leaving the cave was out of question, for the brute was undoubtedly watching for him; and yet remaining was almost as dangerous, as long watching and continual exertion weighed down his eyelids and rendered sleep imperative. He decided to remain where he was and after another hour of labour in fortifying the entrance, he lay down to sleep, with the barrel of his rifle close to him, in case of attack. He had slept about three or four hours, when he was awakened by a noise close to his head. The moon was shining, and shot her beams through the crevices at the mouth of the cave. A foreboding of danger would not allow Boone to sleep any more; he was watching with intense anxiety, when he observed several of the smaller stones he had placed round the piece of rock rolling towards him, and that the rays of light streaming into the cave were occasionally darkened by some interposed body. It was the jaguar, which had been undermining the rock: one after the other, the stones gave way; Boone rose, grasped his heavy rifle barrel, and determined to await the attack of the animal. In a second or two, the heavy stone rolled a few feet into the cave; the jaguar advanced her head then her shoulders, and at last, a noiseless bound brought her within four feet of Boone who at that critical moment collecting all his strength for a decisive blow, dashed her skull to atoms. Boone, quite exhausted, drank some of her blood to allay his thirst, pillowed his head upon her body, and fell into a deep sleep. The next morning Boone, after having made a good meal off one of the cubs, started to rejoin his companions, and communicated to them his adventure and discovery. A short time afterwards, the cave was stored with all the articles necessary to a trapper's life, and soon became the rendezvous of all the adventurous men from the banks of the river Platte to the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Since Boone had settled in his present abode, he had had a hand-to-hand fight with a black bear, in the very room where we were sitting. When he had built his log cabin, it was with the intention of taking to himself a wife. At that time he courted the daughter of one of the old Arkansas settlers, and he wished to have "a place and a crop on foot" before he married. The girl was killed by the fall of a tree, and Boone, in his sorrow, sent away, the men whom he had hired to help him in "turning his field," for he wished to be alone. Months elapsed, and his crop of corn promised an abundant harvest; but he cared not. He would take his rifle and remain sometimes for a month in the woods, brooding over his loss. The season was far advanced, when, one day returning home, he perceived that the bears, the squirrels, and the deer had made rather free with the golden ears of his corn. The remainder he resolved to save for the use of his horse, and as he wished to begin harvest next morning, he slept that night in the cabin, on his solitary pallet. The heat was intense, and, as usual in these countries during summer, he had left his door wide open. It was about midnight, when he heard something tumbling in the room; he rose in a moment, and, hearing a short and heavy breathing, he asked who it was, for the darkness was such, that he could not see two yards before him. No answer being given, except a kind of half-smothered grunt, he advanced, and, putting out his hand, he seized the shaggy coat of a bear. Surprise rendered him motionless, and the animal giving him a blow in the chest with his terrible paw, threw him down outside the door. Boone could have escaped, but, maddened with the pain of his fall, he only thought of vengeance, and, seizing his knife and tomahawk, which were fortunately within his reach, he darted furiously at the beast, dealing blows at random. Great as was his strength, his tomahawk could not penetrate through the thick coat of the animal, which, having encircled the body of his assailant with his paws, was pressing him in one of those deadly embraces which could only have been resisted by a giant like Boone. Fortunately, the black bear, unlike the grizzly, very seldom uses his claws and teeth in fighting, contenting himself with smothering his victim. Boone disentangled his left arm, and with his knife dealt a furious blow upon the snout of the animal, which, smarting with pain, released his hold. The snout is the only vulnerable part in an old black bear. Even at forty yards, the ball of a rifle will flatten against his skull, and if in any other part of the body, it will scarcely produce any serious effect. Boone, aware of this, and not daring to risk another hug, darted away from the cabin. The bear, now quite angry, followed and overtook him near the fence. Fortunately the clouds were clearing away, and the moon threw light sufficient to enable the hunter to strike with a more certain aim: chance also favoured him; he found on the ground one of the rails made of the blue ash, very heavy, and ten feet in length; he dropped his knife and tomahawk, and seizing the rail, he renewed the fight with caution, for it had now become a struggle for life or death. Had it been a bull or a panther, they would have had their bones shivered to pieces by the tremendous blows which Boone dealt upon his adversary with all the strength of despair; but Bruin is by nature an admirable fencer, and, in spite of his unwieldy shape, there is not in the world an animal whose motions are more rapid in a close encounter. Once or twice he was knocked down by the force of the blows, but generally he would parry them with a wonderful agility. At last, he succeeded in seizing the other end of the rail, and dragged it towards him with irresistible force. Both man and beast fell, Boone rolling to the place where he had dropped his arms, while the bear advanced upon him; the moment was a critical one, but Boone was accustomed to look at and brave death under every shape, and with a steady hand he buried his tomahawk in the snout of his enemy, and, turning round, he rushed to his cabin, believing he would have time to secure the door. He closed the latch, and applied his shoulders to it; but it was of no avail, the terrible brute dashed in head foremost, and tumbled in the room with Boone and the fragments of the door. The two foes rose and stared at each other; Boone had nothing left but his knife, but Bruin was tottering and unsteady, and Boone felt that the match was more equal: once more they closed. A few hours after sunrise, Captain Finn, returning home from the Legislature at Little Rock, called upon his friend, and, to his horror, found him apparently lifeless on the floor, and alongside of him, the body of the bear. Boone soon recovered, and found that the lucky blow which had saved him from being crushed to death had buried the whole blade of his knife, through the left eye, in the very brain of the animal. [See note 1.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. The black bear does not grow to any great size in the eastern and northern parts of America, but in Arkansas and the adjacent states it becomes, from its size and strength, almost as formidable an antagonist as a grizzly bear. It is very common to find them eight hundred weight, but sometimes they weigh above a thousand pounds. CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE. The next morning, we all three started, and by noon we had crossed the Washita River. It is the most beautiful stream I know of, being cool and transparent, averaging a depth of eight or ten feet, and running upon a hard sandy bottom. While we were crossing, Boone told us that as soon as we arrived at the summit of the woody hills before us, if we looked sharp, we should see some bears, for he had never passed that way without shooting one or two. We forded the stream, and entered into a noble forest of maple trees, the ground now rising in gentle swells for several miles, when the fir-pines, succeeding to the maple, told us that we had reached the highest point of the hills. Hearing some trampling and rustling at a distance, I spurred my horse to take the lead and have the first chance of a shot, when I perceived to my left, not twenty yards from me and in a small patch of briars, a large she-bear playing with her cub. I was just raising my rifle to fire, when Boone's voice called me back, and I perceived that he and Finn had just dismounted and entered a thicket. Knowing that they must have an object in view, I joined them, and asked them what was the matter. "Rare sport," answered Finn, extending his hand towards a precipitous and rocky part of the mountain. It was sport, and of a very singular description. A large deer was running at full speed, closely pursued by a puma. The chase had already been a long one, for as they came nearer and nearer, I could perceive both their long parched tongues hanging out of their mouths, and their bounding, though powerful, was no longer so elastic as usual. The deer, having now arrived within two hundred yards of the bear, stopped a moment to sniff the air; then coming still nearer, he made a bound, with his head extended, to ascertain if Bruin was still near him. As the puma was closing with him, the deer wheeled sharp round, and turning back almost upon his own trail, passed within thirty yards of his pursuer, who, not being able at once to stop his career, gave an angry growl and followed the deer again, but at a distance of some hundred yards; hearing the growl, Bruin drew his body half out of the briars, remaining quietly on the lookout. "Gone," I exclaimed. "Wait a bit," answered Boone; "here he comes again." He was right; the deer again appeared, coming towards us, but his speed was much reduced, and as he approached us, it was evident that the animal was calculating his distance with admirable precision. The puma, now expecting to seize his prey, followed about thirty yards behind; the bear, aware of the close vicinity of her enemy, cleared the briars and squared herself for action, when the deer, with a beautiful and powerful spring, passed the bear's head and disappeared. At the moment he took the leap, the puma was close upon him, and was just balancing himself for a spring, when he perceived, to his astonishment, that now he was faced by a formidable adversary, not the least disposed to fly. He crouched, lashing his flanks with his long tail, while the bear, about five yards from him, remained like a statue looking at the puma with his little glaring eyes. One minute they remained thus; the puma, its sides heaving with exertion, agitated, and apparently undecided; the bear, perfectly calm and motionless. Gradually the puma crawled backwards, till at a right distance for a spring, when, throwing all its weight upon its hind parts, to increase its power, it darted upon the bear like lightning, and fixed its claws into her back. The bear, with irresistible force, seized the puma with her two fore-paws, pressing it with all the weight of her body and rolling over it. We heard a heavy grunt, a plaintive howl, a crashing of bones, and the puma was dead. The cub of the bear came to ascertain what was going on, and after a few minutes' examination of the victim, it strutted down the slope of the bill, followed by its mother, which was apparently unhurt. We did not attempt to prevent their retreat, for among real hunters in the wilds, there is a feeling which restrains them from attacking an animal which has just undergone a deadly strife. This is a very common practice of the deer, when chased by a puma--that of leading him to the haunt of a bear; I have often witnessed it, although I never before knew the deer to turn, as it did in this instance. This incident reminds me of another, which was witnessed by Gabriel, a short time before the murder of the Prince Seravalle. Gabriel had left his companions, to look after game, and he soon came upon the track of a wild boar, which led to a grove of tall persimmon trees; then, for the first time, he perceived that he had left his pouch and powder-horn in the camp; but he cared little about it, as he knew that his aim was certain. When within sixty yards of the grove, he spied the boar at the foot of one of the outside trees: the animal was eating the fruit which had fallen. Gabriel raised his eyes to the thick-leaved branches of the tree, and perceived that there was a large black bear in the tree, also regaling himself with the fruit. Gabriel approached to within thirty yards, and was quite absorbed with the novelty of the sight. At every motion of Bruin, hundreds of persimmons would fall down, and these, of course, were the ripest. This the bear knew very well, and it was with no small jealousy that he witnessed the boar below making so luxurious a meal at his expense, while he could only pick the green fruit, and that with difficulty, as he dared not trust his body too far upon the smaller limbs of the tree. Now and then he would growl fiercely, and put his head down, and the boar would look at him with a pleased and grateful motion of the head, answering the growl by a grunt, just as to say, "Thank you; very polite to eat the green ones and send me the others." This Bruin understood, and he could bear it no longer; he began to shake the tree violently, till the red persimmons fell like a shower around the boar; then there was a duet of growls and grunts-- angry and terrific from the bear above, denoting satisfaction and pleasure on the part of the boar below. Gabriel had come in pursuit of the boar, but now he changed his mind, for, considering the present angry mood of Bruin, he was certain to be attacked by him if discovered. As to going away, it was a thing he would not think of, as long as his rifle was loaded; so he waited and watched, until the bear should give him an opportunity of aiming at a vital part. This he waited for in vain, and, on reflection, he determined to wound the bear; for, knowing the humour of the animal, he felt almost positive it would produce a conflict between him and the boar, which the bear would attack in his wrath. He fired: the bear was evidently wounded, although but slightly, and he began roaring and scratching his neck in a most furious manner, and looking vindictively at the boar, which, at the report of the rifle, had merely raised his head for a moment, and then resumed his meal. Bruin was certainly persuaded that the wound he had received had been inflicted by the beast below. He made up his mind to punish him, and, to spare the trouble and time of descending, dropped from the tree, and rushed upon the boar, which met him at once, and, notwithstanding Bruin's great strength, he proved to him that a ten years old wild boar, with seven-inch tusks, was a very formidable antagonist. Bruin soon felt the tusks of the boar ripping him up; ten or twelve streams of blood were rushing from his sides, yet he did not give way; on the contrary, he grew fiercer and fiercer, and at last the boar was almost smothered under the huge paws of his adversary. The struggle lasted a few minutes more, the grunting and growling becoming fainter and fainter, till both combatants lay motionless. They were dead when Gabriel came up to them; the bear horribly mangled, and the boar with every bone of his body broken. Gabriel filled his hat with the persimmons which were the cause of this tragedy, and returned to the camp for help and ammunition. Finn, Boone, and I resumed our journey, and after a smart ride of two hours we entered upon a beautiful spot, called "Magnet Cove." This is one of the great curiosities of the Arkansas, and there are few planters who do not visit it at least once in their lives, even if they have to travel a distance of one hundred miles. It is a small valley surrounded by rocky hills, one or two hundred feet high, and forming a belt, in the shape of a horseshoe. From these rocks flow hundreds of sulphuric springs, some boiling and some cold, all pouring into large basins, which their waters have dug out during their constant flow of so many centuries. These mineral springs are so very numerous in this part of the country, that they would scarcely be worth mentioning, were it not that in this valley, for more than a mile in circumference, the stones and rocks, which are of a dull black colour and very heavy, are all magnetic. It is a custom for every visitor to bring with him some pieces of iron, to throw against the rocks: the appearance is very strange, old horse-shoes, forks, knives, bars of iron, nails, and barrels of pistols, are hanging from the projecting stones, the nails standing upright, as if they were growing. These pieces of iron have themselves become very powerfully magnetic. I picked up a horse-shoe, which I afterwards found lifted a bar of steel of two pounds weight. Half a mile from this singular spot dwelt another old pioneer, a friend of my companions, and at his cabin we stopped to pass the night. Our host was only remarkable for his great hospitality and greater taciturnity; he had always lived in the wilds, quite alone, and the only few words he would utter were incoherent. It appeared as if his mind was fixed upon scenes of the past. In his early life he had been one of the companions of the celebrated pirate La Fitte, and after the defence of New Orleans, in which the pirates played no inconsiderable part (they had the management of the artillery), he accepted the free pardon of the President, and forcing his way through the forests and swamps of Louisiana, was never heard of for five or six years. Subsequently, circumstances brought about an intimacy between him and my two companions, but, contrary to the habits of pioneers and trappers, he never reverted to his former adventures, but always evaded the subject. There were mysterious rumours afloat about treasure which had been buried by the pirates in Texas, known only to him; a thing not improbable, as the creeks, lagoons, and bays of that country had always been a favourite resort of these freebooters; but nothing had ever been extracted from him relative to the question. He was now living with an Indian woman of the Flat-head tribe, by whom he had several children, and this was also a subject upon which the western farmers had much to say. Had the squaw been a Creek, a Cherokee, or an Osage woman, it would have created no surprise; but how came he in possession of a woman belonging to so distant a tribe? Moreover, the squaw looked so proud, so imperious, so queenly; there was a mystery, which every one was anxious, but unable to solve. We left our host early in the morning, and arrived at noon at the hot springs, where I was to part company with my entertaining companions. I was, however, persuaded to remain till the next morning, as Finn wished to give me a letter for a friend of his in South Missouri. Of the hot springs of the Arkansas, I can give no better description, than by quoting the following lines from a Little Rock newspaper:-- "The warm springs are among the most interesting curiosities of our country: they are in great numbers. One of them, the central one, emits a vast quantity of water; the ordinary temperature is that of boiling water. When the season is dry, and the volume of water somewhat diminished, the temperature of the water increases. "The waters are remarkably limpid and pure, and are used by the people who resort there for health, for culinary purposes. They have been analysed, and exhibit no mineral properties beyond common spring water. Their efficacy, then, for they are undoubtedly efficacious to many invalids that resort there, results from the shades of the adjacent mountains, and from the cool and oxygenated mountain breeze; the convenience of warm and tepid bathing; the novelty of fresh and mountain scenery, and the necessity of temperance, imposed by the poverty of the country and the difficulty of procuring supplies. The cases in which the waters are supposed to be efficacious, are those of rheumatic affection, general debility, dyspepsia, and cutaneous complaints. At a few yards from the hot springs is one strongly sulphuric and remarkable for its coldness. In the wild and mountain scenery of this lonely region, there is much of grandeur and novelty to fix the curiosity of the lover of nature." The next morning I bade farewell to Finn and Boone, and set off on my journey. I could not help feeling a strange sensation of loneliness, as I passed hill after hill, and wood after wood. It seemed to me as if something was wrong; I talked to myself, and often looked behind to see if any one was coming my way. This feeling, however, did not last long, and I soon learned that, west of the Mississippi, a man with a purse and a good horse must never travel in the company of strangers, without he is desirous to lose them and his life to boot. I rode without stopping the forty-five miles of dreary road which leads from the hot springs to Little Rock, and I arrived in that capital early at noon. Foreigners are constantly visiting every part of the United States, and yet very few, if any, have ever visited the Arkansas. They seem all to be frightened away by the numerous stories of Arkansas murders, with which a tourist is always certain to be entertained on board one of the Mississippi steam-boats. Undoubtedly these reports of murders and atrocities have been, as all things else are in the United States, much exaggerated, but none can deny that the assizes of Arkansas contain more cases of stabbing and shooting than ten of the other states put together. The very day I arrived at Little Rock I had an opportunity of witnessing two or three of these Arkansas incidents, and also to hear the comments made upon them. Legislature was then sitting. Two of the legislators happened to be of a contrary opinion, and soon abused each other. From words they came to blows, and one shot the other with one of Colt's revolving six-barrel pistols. This event stopped legislative business for that day; the corpse was carried to the tavern where I had just arrived, and the murderer, having procured bail for two thousand dollars, ran away during the night, and nobody ever thought of searching for him. The corpse proved to be a bonus for my landlord, who had it deposited in a room next to the bar, and as the news spread, all the male population of Little Rock came in crowds to see with their own eyes, and to give their own opinion of the case over a bottle of wine or a glass of whisky. Being tired, I went to bed early, and was just dozing, in spite of the loud talking and swearing below, when I heard five or six shots fired in rapid succession, and followed by yells and screams. I got up and stopped a negro girl, as she was running up-stairs, a picture of terror and despair. "What is the matter, Blackey?" said I, "are they shooting in the bar?" "Oh, yes, Massa," she answered, "they shoot terrible. Dr Francis says, Dr Grey is a blackguard; Dr Grey says, Dr Francis is a ruffian; Dr Francis shoots with big pistols and kills Dr Grey; Dr Grey shoots with other pistols and kills Dr Francis." "What," I exclaimed, "after he was dead?" "Oh no, Massa, before he was dead; they shoot together--pan, pan, pan." I went down-stairs to ascertain the circumstances attending this double murder. A coroner's inquest had been held upon the body of the legislator killed in the morning, and the two surgeons, who had both drunk freely at the bar, had quarrelled about the direction which the ball had taken. As they did not agree, they came to words; from words to blows; ending in the grand finale of shooting each other. I was so sickened and disgusted with the events of one day, that I paid my bill, saddled my horse myself, and got a man to ferry me over the Arkansas river, a noble, broad, and rapid stream, on the southern bank of which the capital is situated. I rode briskly for a short hour, and camped in the woods alone, preferring their silence and dreariness to remaining to witness, under a roof, further scenes of bloodshed and murder. North of the Arkansas river, the population, though rough and "not better than it should be," is less sanguinary and much more hospitable; that is to say, a landlord will shew you civility for your money, and in Batesville, a city (fifty houses, I think) upon the northern bank of the White River, I found thirty generals, judges, and majors, who condescended to shew me every bar in the place, purchasing sundry dozens of Havannahs and drinking sundry long toasts in iced wine, which wine and tobacco, although ordered and consumed by themselves, they left me to pay for; which I was willing to do, as I was informed that these gentlemen always refrain from paying any thing when a stranger is present, from fear of wounding his delicacy. It was in Batesville that I became enlightened as to the western paper currency, which was fortunate, as I purchased one hundred and forty dollars in "shin plasters," as they call them, for an English sovereign; and for my travelling expenses they answered just as well. In the White River ferry-boat, I met with one of those itinerant Italian pedlars, who are found, I think, everywhere under heaven, selling pins, needles, and badly-coloured engravings, representing all the various passages of William Tell's history, and the combats during the "three days," in 1830. Although not a refined companion, the Genevese spoke Italian, and I was delighted to converse in that soft tongue, not a word of which I had spoken since the death of Prince Seravalle. I invited my companion to the principal tavern, and called at the bar for two tumblers of iced-mint tulip. "How much?" I asked from the bar-keeper. "Five dollars," he answered. I was quite thunderstruck, and, putting my money back in my pocket, I told him I would not pay him at all. The man then began to swear I was a queer sort of a chap, and wondered how a _gentleman_ could drink at a bar and not pay for his liquor. "I always pay," I answered, "what others pay; but I will not submit to such a swindling, and give five dollars for what is only worth twenty-five cents." The host then came to me, with a smile. "Why, Sir, we don't charge more to you than to others. Five dollars in `shin-plasters,' or twenty-five cents in specie." All was thus explained, and the next morning I satisfied my bill of twenty-two dollars, with one dollar and twelve cents in silver. This may appear strange to the English reader, who prefers bank-notes to gold; but he must reflect that England is not Arkansas, and that the Bank of England is not the "Real Estate Bank of Arkansas," capital two millions of dollars. Notwithstanding the grandeur of the last five words, I have been positively informed that the bank never possessed five dollars, and had not been able to pay the poor Cincinnati engraver who made the notes. The merchants of Little Rock, who had set up the bank, were the usual purchasers of the produce from the farmer; but the credit of the bank was so bad, that they were obliged to offer three dollars in their notes for a bushel of wheat, which, in New York, commanded only eighty-four cents in specie. The farmers, however, were as sharp as the merchants, and, compelled to deal with them, they hit upon a good plan. The principal landholders of every county assembled, and agreed that they would also have a farmer's bank, and a few months afterwards the country was inundated with notes of six-and-a-quarter, twelve-and-a-half, twenty-five, and fifty cents, with the following inscription: "We, the freeholders and farmers of such county, promise to pay (so much) in Real Estate Bank of Arkansas notes, but not under the sum of five dollars." The bankers were caught in their own snares. They were obliged to accept the "shin plasters" for the goods in their stores, with the pleasing perspective of being paid back with their own notes, which made their faces as doleful as the apothecary who was obliged to swallow his own pills. CHAPTER THIRTY SIX. From Batesville to the southern Missouri border, the road continues for a hundred miles, through a dreary solitude of rocky mountains and pine forests, full of snakes and a variety of game, but without the smallest vestige of civilisation. There is not a single blade of grass to be found, except in the hollows, and these are too swampy for a horse to venture upon. Happily, small clear and limpid brooks are passed every half-hour, and I had had the precaution to provide myself, at a farm, with a large bag of maize for my horse. After all, we fared better than we should have done at the log huts, and my faithful steed, at all events, escaped the "ring." What the "ring" is, I will explain to the reader. In these countries, it always requires a whole day's smart riding to go from one farm to another; and when the traveller is a "raw trotter" or a "green one" (Arkansas denomination for a stranger), the host employs all his cunning to ascertain if his guest has any money, as, if so, his object is to detain him as long as he can. To gain this information, although there are always at home half-a-dozen strong boys to take the horses, he sends a pretty girl (a daughter, or a niece) to shew you the stable and the maize-store. This nymph becomes the traveller's attendant; she shews him the garden and the pigs, and the stranger's bedroom, etcetera. The consequence is, that the traveller becomes gallant, the girl insists upon washing his handkerchief and mending his jacket before he starts the next morning, and by keeping constantly with him, and continual conversation, she is, generally speaking, able to find out whether the traveller has money or not, and reports accordingly. Having supped, slept, and breakfasted, he pays his bill and asks for his horse. "Why, Sir," answers the host, "something is wrong with the animal--he is lame." The traveller thinks it is only a trifle; he starts, and discovers, before he has made a mile, that his beast cannot possibly go on; so he returns to the farm, and is there detained, for a week, perhaps, until his horse is fit to travel. I was once cheated in this very manner, and had no idea that I had been tricked; but, on leaving another farm, on the following day, I found my horse was again lame. Annoyed at having been delayed so long, I determined to go on, in spite of my horse's lameness. I travelled on for three miles, till at last I met with an elderly man also on horseback. He stopped and surveyed me attentively, and then addressed me:-- "I see, youngster, you are a green one." Now I was in uncommon bad temper that morning, and I answered his question with a "What do you mean, you old fool?" "Nay, pardon me," he resumed; "I would not insult a stranger. I am Governor Yell, of this state, and I see that some of my `clever citizens' have been playing a trick upon you. If you will allow me, I will cure the lameness of your horse in two minutes." At the mention of his name, I knew I was speaking to a gentleman. I apologised for my rough rejoinder, and the governor, dismounting, then explained to me the mystery of the ring. Just above my horse's hoof, and well concealed under the hair, was a stout silken thread, tied very tight; this being cut, the horse, in a moment, got rid of his lameness. As the governor and I parted, he gave me this parental advice:-- "My dear young man," said he, "I will give you a hint, which will enable you to travel safely through the Arkansas. Beware of pretty girls, and honest, clever people; never say you are travelling further than from the last city to the nearest, as a long journey generally implies that you have cash; and, if possible, never put your horse in a stable. Farewell." The soil in the Arkansas is rocky and mountainous as far as to the western border of the state, when you enter upon the great American desert, which continues to the other side of the Cimarron, nearly to the foot of the Cordilleras. The eastern portion of Arkansas, which is watered by the Mississippi, is an unknown swamp, for there the ground is too soft even for the light-footed Indian; and, I may say, that the whole territory, contained between the Mississippi and the St. Francis river is nothing but a continued river-bottom. It is asserted, on the authority of intelligent residents, that the river-bottoms of the St. Francis were not subject to be overflowed previous to the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, when an extensive tract in the valley of that river sank to a considerable depth. According to Stoddart, who knew nothing of the shocks of 1811, earthquakes have been common here from the first settlement of the country; he himself experienced several shocks at Kaskaskia, in 1804, by which the soldiers stationed there were aroused from sleep, and the buildings were much shaken and disjointed. Oscillations still occur with such frequency as to be regarded with indifference by the inhabitants, who familiarly call them _shakes_. But the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, which were felt from New England to New Orleans, are the only ones known to have left permanent traces, although there is every probability that this part of the valley of the Mississippi has been much convulsed at former periods. In 1812, the earth opened in wide chasms, from which columns of water and sand burst forth; hills disappeared, and their sites were occupied by lakes; the beds of the lakes were raised, and their waters flowed off, leaving them dry; the courses of the streams were changed by the elevation of their beds and the falling of their banks; for one whole hour the current of the Mississippi was turned backwards towards its source, until its accumulated waters were able to break through the barrier which had dammed them up; boats were dashed on the banks, or suddenly left dry in the deserted channel, or hurried backwards and forwards with the surging eddies; while in the midst of these awful changes, electric fires, accompanied by loud rumblings, flashed through the air, which was darkened with clouds and vapour. In some places, submerged forests and cane-brakes are still visible at a great depth, on the bottom of lakes, which were then formed. That the causes of these convulsions were not local, as some have imagined, is evident enough from the fact, that the Azores, the West India Islands, and the northern coast of South America were unusually agitated at the same time, and the cities of Carracas, Laguayra, and some others were totally destroyed. I had been advised not to stop at any house on the borders, and would have proceeded on to Missouri, bivouacking during the night, had it not been that the rainy season had just commenced, and it was far from pleasant to pass the night exposed to the most terrific showers of rain that could be imagined. When I arrived upon the St. Francis river, I found myself compelled by the state of the weather to stop at a parson's--I don't know what particular sect he professed to belong to; but he was reputed to be the greatest hypocrite in the world, and the "smartest scoundrel" in the Arkansas. My horse was put into the stable, my saddle into the hall, and I brought my saddle-bags into the sitting-room. Then, as usual, I went to the well for a purification after my day's ride. To my astonishment, I found, on my return, that my saddle-bags had already disappeared. I had in them jewels and money to rather a considerable amount for a person in my position, and I inquired of a woman cooking in the next room what had become of them. She answered she did not know, but that probably her father had put them out of the way. I waited a long while, standing at the door, with no small anxiety, till at last I perceived the parson crossing an Indian corn-field, and coming towards the house. I went to meet him, and asked what he had done with my saddle-bags; to which question he answered angrily, he did not know what I meant; that I had no saddle-bags when I came to his house; that he suspected I was a knowing one, but could not come round so old a fox as he was. As by that time I was perfectly au fait to all the tricks of Arkansas' smartness, I returned to the hall, took my pistols from the holsters, placed them in my belt, and, seizing my rifle, followed his trail upon the soft ground of the fields. It led me to a corn-house, and there, after an hour's search, I found my lost saddle-bags. I threw them upon my shoulders, and returned to the house just as a terrible shower had commenced. When within fifteen yards from the threshold, the parson, with his wife and daughter, a pretty girl of sixteen, in tears, came up to me to apologise. The mother declared the girl would be the death of her, and the parson informed me, with great humility, that his daughter, baying entered the room, and seeing the saddle-bags, had taken and hidden them, believing that they belonged to her sweetheart, who was expected on a visit. Upon this, the girl cried most violently, saying she only wished to play a trick to Charley. She was an honest girl, and no thief. I thought proper to pretend to be satisfied with this explanation and ordered my supper, and, shortly afterwards, to my great relief, new guests arrived; they were four Missourian planters, returning home from a bear-hunt, in the swamps of the St. Francis. One of them was a Mr Courtenay, to whom I had a letter from Captain Finn, and, before the day had closed, I received a cordial invitation to go and stay with him for at least a week. As he spoke French, I told him, in that language, my saddle-bag adventure; he was not surprised, as he was aware of the character of our host. It was arranged that Mr Courtenay and I should sleep in a double-bedded room on the first floor; the other hunters were accommodated in another part of the house. Before retiring for the night, they all went to visit their horses, and the young girl took that opportunity to light me to the room. "Oh, Sir," she said to me, after she had closed the door, "pray do not tell the other travellers what I did, or they would all say that I am courting Charley, and my character would be lost." "Mark me," replied I, "I have already told the story, and I know the Charley story is nothing but a--what your father ordered you to say. When I went to the corn-house, the tracks I followed were those made by your father's heavy boots, and not by your light pumps and small feet. The parson is a villain; tell him that; and if it were not too much trouble, I would summon him before some magistrate." The girl appeared much shocked, and I repented my harshness, and was about to address her more kindly, when she interrupted me. "Spare me, Sir," she said, "I know all; I am so unhappy; if I had but a place to go to, where I could work for bread, I would do it in a minute, for here I am very, very miserable." At that moment the poor girl heard the footsteps of the hunters returning from the stable, and she quitted me in haste. When Mr Courtenay entered the room, he told me he expected that the parson was planning some new iniquity, for he had seen him just then crossing the river in a dug-out. As everything was to be feared from the rascal, after the circumstance of the saddle-bags, we resolved that we would keep a watch; we dragged our beds near the window, and laid down without undressing. To pass away the time, we talked of Captain Finn and of the Texians. Mr Courtenay related to me a case of negro stealing by the same General John Meyer, of whom my fellow companion, the parson, had already talked so much while we were travelling in Texas. One winter, Mr Courtenay, returning from the East, was stopped in Vincennes (Indiana) by the depth of the snow, which for a few days rendered the roads impassable. There he saw a very fine breed of sheep, which he determined to introduce upon his plantation; and hearing that the general would be coming down the river in a large flat boat as soon as the ice would permit, he made an agreement with him that he should bring a dozen of the animals to the plantation, which stood a few miles below the mouth of the Ohio, on the other side of the Mississippi. Meyer made his bargain, and two months afterwards delivered the live stock, for which he received the price agreed upon. Then he asked permission to encamp upon Mr Courtenay's land, as his boat had received some very serious injury, which could not be repaired under five or six days. Mr Courtenay allowed Meyer and his people to take shelter in a brick barn, and ordered his negroes to furnish the boatmen with potatoes and vegetables of all descriptions. Three or four days afterwards he was astonished by several of his slaves informing him the general had been tampering with them, saying they were fools to remain slaves, when they could be as free as white men, and that if they would come down the river with him, he would take them to Texas, where he would pay them twenty dollars a month for their labour. Courtenay advised them, by all means, to seem to accede to the proposition, and gave them instructions as to how they were to act. He then despatched notes to some twenty neighbours, requesting them to come to the plantation, and bring their whips with them, as they would be required. Meyer having repaired his boats, came to return thanks, and to announce his departure early on the following morning. At eleven o'clock, when he thought everybody in the house was asleep, he hastened, with two of his sons, to a lane, where he had made an appointment with the negroes to meet him and accompany him to his boat, which was ready to start. He found half-a-dozen of the negroes, and, advising them not to speak before they were fairly off the plantation, desired them to follow him to the boat; but, to his astonishment, he soon discovered that the lane was occupied with other negroes and white men, armed with the much-dreaded cow-hides. He called out to his two sons to fly, but it was too late. The general and his two sons were undoubtedly accustomed to such disasters, for they showed amazing dexterity in taking advantage of the angles of the fences, to evade the lashes: but, in spite of all their devices, they were cruelly punished, as they had nearly a quarter of a mile of gauntlet to run through before they were clear of the lane. In vain they groaned, and swore, and prayed; the blows fell thicker and thicker, principally from the hands of the negroes, who, having now and then tasted of the cow-hide, were in high glee at the idea of flogging white men. The worshipful general and his dutiful sons at last arrived at their boat, quite exhausted, and almost fainting under the agony! of the well-applied lashes. Once on board, they cut their cable, and pushed into the middle of the stream; and although Meyer had come down the river at least ten times since, he always managed to pass the plantation during night, and close to the bank of the opposite shore. I told Mr Courtenay what I knew myself about General John Meyer; while I was talking, his attention was attracted by a noise near the stables, which were situated at the bottom of a lane, before our windows. We immediately suspected that there would be an attempt to steal our horses; so I handed my rifle to my companion, who posted himself in a position commanding the lane, through which the thief or thieves must necessarily pass. We waited thus in suspense for a few minutes, till Mr Courtenay desired me to take his place, saying,--"If any one passes the lane with any of our horses, shoot him; I will go down myself and thrash the blackguard, for I suspect the parson will turn them into the swamps, where he is pretty certain of recovering them afterwards." Saying this, he advanced to the door, and was just putting his hand upon the latch, when we heard a most terrific yell, which was followed by a neighing, which I recognised as that of my horse. Taking our pistols and bowie-knives, we hurried down the lane. We found that our two horses, with a third, belonging to one of the hunters, were out of the stable, and tied neck and tail, so as to require only one person to lead them. The first one had the bridle on, and the last, which was mine, was in a state of excitement, as if something unusual had happened to him. On continuing our search, we found the body of a young man, most horribly mangled, the breast being entirely open, and the heart and intestines hanging outside. It appeared that my faithful steed, which had already shown, in Texas, a great dislike to being taken away from me, had given the thief the terrible kick, which had thrown him ten or fifteen yards, as I have said, a mangled corpse. By this time, the other hunters came out to us; lights were procured, and then we learned that the victim was the parson's eldest son, newly married, and settled on the east side of the St. Francis. The parson was not long himself in making his appearance; but he came from an opposite direction to that of the house, and he was dressed as on the evening before: he had evidently not been to bed during that night. As soon as he became aware of the melancholy circumstance, he raved and swore that he would have the lives of the damned Frenchman and his damnation horse; but Mr Courtenay went to him, and said--"Hold your tongue, miserable man! See your own work, for you have caused this death. It was to fetch your son, to help you to steal the horses, that you crossed the river in the dug-out. Be silent, I say; you know me; look at your eldest-born, villain that you are! May the chain of your future misery be long, and the last link of it the gibbet, which you deserve!" The parson was silent, even when his sobbing wife reproached him. "I warned thee, husband," she said; "even now has this come, and I fear that worse is still to come. Unlucky was the hour we met; still more so when the child was born;" and, leaning against the fence, she wept bitterly. I will pass over the remainder of this melancholy scene. We all felt for the mother and the poor girl, who stood by with a look of despair. Saddling our horses, Mr Courtenay and I resumed our journey, the hunters remaining behind till the arrival of the magistrate, whom we promised to send. To procure one, we were obliged to quit the high road, and, after a ride of several miles, having succeeded in finding his house, we awoke him, gave him the necessary directions, and, at sunrise, forded the river. CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN. At last we arrived at the plantation of Mr Courtenay: the house was one of the very few buildings in the United States in which taste was displayed. A graceful portico, supported by columns; large verandahs, sheltered by jessamine; and the garden so green and so smiling, with its avenues of acacias and live fences of holly and locust, all recalled to my mind the scenes of my childhood in Europe. Every thing was so neat and comfortable; the stables so airy, the dogs so well housed, and the slaves so good-humoured-looking, so clean and well dressed. When we descended from our horses, a handsome lady appeared at the portico, with joy and love beaming in her face, as five or six beautiful children, having at last perceived our arrival, left their play to welcome and kiss their father. A lovely vision of youth and beauty also made its appearance--one of those slender girls of the South, a woman of fifteen years old, with her dark eyelashes and her streaming ebony hair; slaves of all ages--mulattoes and quadroon girls, old negroes and boy negroes, all calling together--"Eh! Massa Courtenay, kill plenty bear, dare say; now plenty grease for black family, good Massa Courtenay." Add to all this, the dogs barking and the horses neighing, and truly the whole tableau was one of unbounded affection and happiness. I doubt if, in all North America, there is another plantation equal to that of Mr Courtenay. I soon became an inmate of the family, and for the first time enjoyed the pleasures, of highly-polished society. Mrs Courtenay was an admirable performer upon the harp; Miss Emma Courtenay, her niece, was a delightful pianist; and my host himself was no mean amateur upon the flute. Our evenings would pass quickly away, in reading Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Metastasio, or the modern writers of English literature after which we would remain till the night had far advanced, enjoying the beautiful compositions of Beethoven, Gluck, and Mozart, or the brilliant overtures of Donizetti, Bellini, and Meyerbeer. Thus my time passed like a happy dream, and as, from the rainy season having just set in, all travelling was impossible, I remained many weeks with my kind entertainers, the more willingly, that the various trials I had undergone had, at so early an age, convinced me that, upon earth, happiness was too scarce not to be enjoyed when presented to you. Yet in the midst of pleasure I did not forget the duty I owed to my tribe, and I sent letters to Joe Smith, the Mormon leader at Nauvoo, that we might at once enter into an arrangement. Notwithstanding the bad season, we had some few days of sunshine, in which pretty Miss Emma and I would take long rambles in the woods; and sometimes, too, my host would invite the hunters of his neighbourhood, for a general _battue_ against bears, deer, and wild cats. Then we would encamp out under good tents, and during the evening, while smoking near our blazing fires, I would hear stories which taught me more of life in the United States than if I had been residing there for years. "Dis-moi qui tu frequentes, je te dirai qui tu es," is the old French proverb. Mr Courtenay never chose his companions but among the more intellectual classes of the society around him, and, of course, these stories were not only well told, but interesting in their subject. Often the conversation would fall upon the Mormons, and perceiving how anxious I was to learn anything about this new sect, my host introduced me to a very talented gentleman, who had every information connected with their history. From him I learned the particulars which gave rise to Mormonism, undoubtedly the most extraordinary imposition of the nineteenth century. There existed years ago a Connecticut man, named Solomon Spalding, a relation of the one who invented the wooden nutmegs. By following him through his career, the reader will find him a Yankee of the true stock. He appears at first as a law student then as a preacher, a merchant, and a bankrupt; afterwards he becomes a blacksmith in a small western village: then a land speculator and a county schoolmaster; later still, he becomes the owner of an iron-foundry; once more a bankrupt; at last, a writer and a dreamer. As might be expected, he died a beggar somewhere in Pennsylvania, little thinking that, by a singular coincidence, one of his productions (the "Manuscript found"), redeemed from oblivion by a few rogues, would prove in their hands a powerful weapon, and be the basis of one of the most anomalous, yet powerful secessions which has ever been experienced by the Established Church. We find, under the title of the "Manuscript found," an historical romance of the first settlers of America, endeavouring to shew that the American Indians are the descendants of the Jews, or the lost tribes. It gives a detailed account of their journey from Jerusalem, by land and by sea, till they arrived in America, under the command of Nephi and Lehi. They afterwards had quarrels and contentions, and separated into two distinct nations, one of which is denominated Nephites, and the other Lamanites. Cruel and bloody wars ensued, in which great multitudes were slain. They buried their dead in large heaps, which caused the mounds now so commonly found on the continent of America. Their knowledge in the arts and sciences, and their civilisation, are dwelt upon, in order to account for all the remarkable ruins of cities and other curious antiquities, found in various parts of North and South America. Solomon Spalding writes in the biblic style, and commences almost every sentence with, "And it came to pass,"--"Now, it came to pass." Although some powers of imagination, and a degree of scientific information are displayed throughout the whole romance, it remained for several years unnoticed, on the shelves of Messrs. Patterson and Lambdin, printers, in Pittsbourg. Many years passed, when Lambdin the printer, having failed, wished _to raise the wind by some book speculation_. Looking over the various manuscripts then in his possession, the "Manuscript found," venerable in its dust, was, upon examination, looked upon as a gold mine, which would restore to affluence the unfortunate publisher. But death summoned Lambdin away, and put an end to the speculation, as far as his interests were concerned. Lambdin had intrusted the precious manuscript to his bosom friend, Sidney Rigdon, that he might embellish and alter it, as he might think expedient. The publisher now dead, Rigdon allowed this _chef-d'oeuvre_ to remain in his desk, till, reflecting upon his precarious means, and upon his chances of obtaining a future livelihood, a sudden idea struck him. Rigdon well knew his countrymen, and their avidity for the marvellous; he resolved to give to the world the "_Manuscript found_," not as a mere work of imagination or disquisition, as its writer had intended it to be, but as a new code of religion, sent down to man, as of yore, on awful Sinai, the tables were given unto Moses. For some time, Rigdon worked very hard, studying the Bible, altering his book, and preaching every Sunday. As the reader may easily imagine, our Bible student had been, as well as Spalding, a Jack-of-all-trades, having successively filled the offices of attorney, bar-keeper, clerk, merchant, waiter, newspaper editor, preacher, and, finally, a hanger-on about printing-offices, where he could always pick up some little job in the way of proof correcting and so forth. To us this variety of occupations may appear very strange, but among the unsettled and ambitious population of the United States, men at the age of fifty have been, or at least have tried to be, everything, not in gradation, from the lowest up to the highest, but just as it may happen--doctor yesterday and waiter to-day--the Yankee philosopher will to-morrow run for a seat in legislature; if he fails, he may turn a Methodist preacher, a Mormon, a land-speculator, a member of the "Native American Society," or a mason--that is to say, a journeyman mason. Two words more upon Rigdon, before we leave him in his comparative insignificance! He is undoubtedly the father of Mormonism, and the author of the "Golden Book," with the exception of a few subsequent alterations made by Joe Smith. It was easy for him, from the first planning of his intended imposture to publicly discuss, in the pulpit, many strange points of controversy, which were eventually to become the corner-stones of the structure which he wished to raise. The novelty of the discussions was greedily received by many, and, of course, prepared them for that which was coming. Yet, it seems that Rigdon soon perceived the evils which his wild imposture would generate, and he recoiled from his task, not because there remained lurking in his breast some few sparks of honesty, but because he wanted courage; he was a scoundrel, but a timorous one, and always in dread of the penitentiary. With him, Mormonism was a mere money speculation, and he resolved to shelter himself behind some fool who might bear the whole odium, while he would reap a golden harvest, and quietly retire before the coming of a storm. But, as is often the case, he reckoned without his host; for it so happened that, in searching for a tool of this description, he found in Joe Smith one not precisely what he had calculated upon. He wanted a compound of roguery and folly as his tool and slave; Smith was a rogue and an unlettered man, but he was what Rigdon was not aware of--a man of bold conception, full of courage and mental energy, one of those unprincipled, yet lofty, aspiring beings, who, centuries past, would have succeeded as well as Mahomet, and who has, even in this more enlightened age, accomplished that which is wonderful to contemplate. When it was too late to retract, Rigdon perceived with dismay that, instead of acquiring a silly bondsman, he had subjected himself to a superior will; he was now himself a slave, bound by fear and interest, his two great guides through life. Smith consequently became, instead of Rigdon, "the elect of God," and is now at the head of thousands, a great religious and political leader. From the same gentleman, I also learned the history of Joseph Smith; and I will lay before the reader what, from various documents, I have succeeded in collecting concerning this remarkable impostor, together with a succinct account of the rise and progress of this new sect, as it is a remarkable feature in the history of nations. CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. My readers have already been made acquainted with the history of the "Book," upon which the imposture of Mormonism has been founded, and of the acquaintance which took place between Rigdon and Joe Smith, whose career I shall now introduce. The father of Joe was one of a numerous class of people who are termed, in the west, "money diggers," living a sort, of vagrant life, imposing upon the credulous farmers by pretending that they knew of treasure concealed, and occasionally stealing horses and cattle. Joseph Smith was the second son, and a great favourite of his father, who stated everywhere that Joe had that species of second sight, which enabled him to discover where treasure was hidden. Joe did certainly turn out very smart, and it was prophesied by the "old ones" that, provided he was not hung, Joe would certainly become a general, if he did not gain the office of President of the United States. But Joe's smartness was so great, that Palmyra, where his father usually resided, became too small for the exercise of his talents, and our hero set off on his travels. Some time afterwards Joe was again heard of. In one of his rambles, he had gone to Harmony (Pennsylvania), and there formed an acquaintance with a young woman. In the fall of 1826, being then at Philadelphia, he resolved to go and get married to her, but, being destitute of means, he now set his wits to work to raise some money and get a recommendation, so as to obtain the fair one of his choice. He went to a man named Lawrence, and stated that he had discovered in Pennsylvania, on the bank of the Susquehanna river, a very rich mine of silver, and if he, Lawrence, would go there with him, he might have a share in the profits; that it was near high water mark, and that they could put the silver into boats, and take it down the river to Philadelphia, and dispose of it. Lawrence asked Joseph if he was not deceiving him. "No," replied Joe, "for I have been there and seen it with my own eyes, and if you do not find it so when we get there, I will bind myself to be your servant for three years." By oaths, asseverations, and fair promises, Lawrence was induced to believe in Joe's assertion, and agreed to go with him; and as Joseph was out of money, Lawrence had to defray the whole expenses of the journey. When they arrived at Harmony, Joseph was strongly recommended by Lawrence, who was well known to the parents of the young woman; after which, they proceeded on their journey to the silver mine, made a diligent search, and of course found nothing. Thus Lawrence had his trouble for his pains, and returned home with his pockets lighter than when he started, whilst honest Joe had not only his expenses paid, but a good recommendation to the father of his fair one. Joe now proposed to marry the girl, but the parents were opposed to the match. One day, when they happened to be from home, he took advantage of the opportunity, went off with her, and the knot was tied. Being still destitute of money, he now again set his wits to work, to contrive to get back to Manchester, at that time his place of residence, and he hit upon the following plan, which succeeded. He went to an honest old Dutchman, by the name of Stowel, and told him that he had discovered on the banks of the Black River, in the village of Watertown (Jefferson County, New York), a cave, in which he found a bar of gold as big as his leg, and about three or four feet long; that he could not get it out alone on account of its great weight; and if Stowel would frank him and his wife to Manchester (New York), they would then go together to the cave, and Stowel should share the prize with him. The good Dutchman consented. A short time after their arrival at Manchester, Stowel reminded Joseph of his promise, but he coolly replied that he could not go just then, as his wife was among strangers, and would be very lonesome if he quitted her. Mr Stowel was, like Mr Lawrence, obliged to return without any remuneration, and with less money than he came. I mention these two freaks of Joe Smith, as they explain the money-digger's system of fraud. It would hardly be believed that, especially among the cunning Yankees, such "mines and treasures" stories should be credited; but it is a peculiar feature in the US that the inhabitants, so difficult to overreach in other matters, will greedily take the bait when "mines" or "hidden treasure" are spoken of. In Missouri and Wisconsin, immense beds of copper ore and lead have been discovered in every direction. Thousands of poor, ignorant farmers, emigrants from the East, have turned diggers, miners, and smelters. Many have accumulated large fortunes in the space of a few years, and have returned "wealthy gentlemen" to their own native state, much to the astonishment of their neighbours. Thus has the "mining spirit" been kept alive, and impostors of every variety have reaped their harvest, by speculating upon the well-known avidity of the "_people of America_!" It was in the beginning of 1827, that Joe, in a trip to Pittsburg, became acquainted with Rigdon. A great intimacy took place betwixt them, and they paid each other alternate visits--Joe coming to Pittsburg and Rigdon going to the Susquehanna, _for pleasure excursions, at a friend's_. It was also during the same year that the Smith family assumed a new character. In the month of June, Joseph Smith, senior, went to a wealthy, but credulous farmer, and related the following story:-- "That some years ago, a spirit had appeared to Joe, his son, and, in a vision, informed him that in a certain place there was a record on plates of gold, and that he was the person who must obtain them, and this he must do in the following manner:--On the 22nd of September, he must repair to the place where these plates of gold were deposited, dressed in black clothes, and riding a black horse, with a switch tail, and demand the plates in a certain name; and, after obtaining them, he must immediately go away, and neither lay them down nor look behind him." The farmer gave credit to old Smith's communication. He accordingly fitted out Joseph with a suit of black clothes, and borrowed a black horse. Joe (by his own account) repaired to the place of deposit, and demanded the plates, which were in a stone box, unsealed, and so near the surface of the ground that he could see one end of it; raising the lid up, he took out the plates of gold; but fearing some one might discover where he got them, he laid them down, to replace the top stone as he had found it; when, turning round, to his surprise, there were no plates to be seen. He again opened the box, and saw the plates in it; he attempted to take them out, but was not able. He perceived in the box something like a toad, which gradually assumed the appearance of a man, and struck him on the side of his head. Not being discouraged at trifles, Joe again stooped down and attempted to take the plates, when the spirit struck him again, knocked him backwards three or four rods, and hurt him very much: recovering from his fright, he inquired of the spirit, why he could not take the plates; to which the spirit made reply, "Because you have not obeyed your orders." He then inquired when he could have them, and was answered thus: "Come one year from this day, and bring with you your eldest brother; then you shall have them." "This spirit," said the elder Joseph Smith, "was the spirit of the prophet who wrote this book, and who was sent to Joe Smith, junior, to make known these things to him. Before the expiration of the year, the eldest brother died; which," the old man said "was a decree of Providence." He also added-- "Joe went one year from that day to demand the plates, and the spirit inquired for his brother, and Joe replied that he was dead. The spirit then commanded him to come again in one year from that day, and bring a man with him. On asking who might be the man, he was answered that he would know him when he saw him." Thus, while Rigdon was concocting his Bible and preaching new doctrines, the Smith family were preparing the minds of the people for the appearance of something wonderful; and although Joe Smith was well known to be a drunken vagabond, he succeeded in inspiring, in hundreds of uneducated farmers, a feeling of awe which they could not account for. I must here stop in my narrative, to make a few observations. In the great cities of Europe and America, civilisation, education, and the active bustle of every-day life, have, to a great degree, destroyed the superstitious feelings so common among the lower classes, and have completely removed the fear of evil geniuses, goblins, and spirits. But such is not the case in the Western country of the United States, on the borders of the immense forests and amidst the wild and broken scenery of glens and mountains, where torrents roll with impetuosity through caves and cataracts; where, deprived of the amusements and novelties which would recreate his imagination, the farmer allows his mind to be oppressed with strange fancies, and though he may never avow the feeling, from the fear of not meeting with sympathy, he broods over it and is a slave to the wild phantasmagoria of his brain. The principal cause of this is, the monotony and solitude of his existence. At these confines of civilisation, the American is always a hunter, and those who dwell on the smaller farms, at the edges of forests, often depend, for their animal food, upon the skill of the male portion of their community. In the fall of the year, the American shoulders his rifle, and goes alone into the wilds, to "see after his pigs, horses, and cows." Constantly on the look-out for deer and wild bees, he resorts to the most secluded spots, to swamps, mountain ridges, or along the bushy windings of some cool stream. Constant views of nature in her grandeur, the unbroken silence of his wanderings, causes a depression of the mind, and, as his faculties of sight and hearing are ever on the stretch, it affects his nervous system. He starts at the falling of a dried leaf, and, with a keen and painful sensation, he scrutinises the withered grass before him, aware that at every step he may trample upon some venomous and deadly reptile. Moreover, in his wanderings, he is often pressed with hunger, and is exposed to a great deal of fatigue. "Fast in the wilds, and you will dream of spirits," is an Indian axiom, and a very true one. If to the above we add, that his mind is already prepared to receive the impressions of the mysterious and marvellous, we cannot wonder at their becoming superstitious. As children, they imbibe a disposition for the marvellous; during the long evenings of winter, when the snow is deep and the wild wind roars through the trees, the old people will smoke their pipes near huge blazing logs, and relate to them some terrible adventure. They speak of unearthly noises heard near some caves, of hair-breadth escapes in encounters with evil spirits, under the form of wild animals; and many will whisper, that at such a time of night, returning from some neighbouring market, they have met with the evil one in the forest, in such and such a spot, where the two roads cross each other, or where the old oak has been blasted by lightning. The boy grows to manhood, but these family traditions are deeply engraved in his memory, and when alone, in the solitude, near the "haunted places," his morbid imagination embodies the phantoms of his diseased brain. No wonder, then, that such men should tamely yield to the superior will of one like Joe Smith, who, to their knowledge, wanders alone by moonlight in the solitude of forests, and who, in their firm belief, holds communication with spirits of another world. For, be it observed, Smith possesses all the qualities and exercises all the tricks of the necromancers during the middle ages. His speech is ambiguous, solemn, and often incomprehensible--a great proof to the vulgar of his mystical vocation. Cattle and horses, lost for many months, have been recovered through the means of Joe, who, after an inward prayer, looked through a sacred stone, "the gift of God," as he has asserted, and discovered what he wished to know. We need not say that, while the farmer was busy at home with his crop, Smith and his gang, ever rambling in woods and glens, were well acquainted with every retired, shady spot, the usual abode of wild as well as of tame animals, who seek there, during the summer, a shelter against the hot rays of the sun. Thus, notwithstanding his bad conduct, Smith had spread his renown for hundreds of miles as that of a "strange man;" and when he started his new religion, and declared himself "a prophet of God," the people did not wonder. Had Rigdon, or any other, presented himself, instead of Joe, Mormonism would never have been established; but in the performer of _mysterious deeds_, it seemed a natural consequence. As the stone we have mentioned did much in raising Joe to his present high position, I will here insert an affidavit made relative to Joe Smith's obtaining possession of this miraculous treasure. Manchester, Ontario County, New York, 1833. "I became acquainted with the Smith family, known as the authors of the Mormon Bible, in the year 1820. At that time they were engaged in the money-digging business, which they followed until the latter part of the season of 1827. In the year 1822, I was engaged in digging a well; I employed Joe Smith to assist me. After digging about twenty feet below the surface of the earth, we discovered a singular-looking stone, which excited my curiosity. I brought it to the top of the well, and as we were examining it, Joseph laid it in the crown of his hat, and then put his face into the top of his hat. It has been said by Smith, that he got the stone from God, but this is false. "The next morning Joe came to me, and wished to obtain the stone, alleging that he could see in it; but I told him I did not wish to part with it, on account of its being a curiosity, but would lend it. After obtaining the stone, he began to publish abroad what wonders he could discover by looking in it, and made so much disturbance among the credulous part of the community, that I ordered the stone to be returned to me again. He had it in his possession about two years. I believe, some time in 1825, Hiram Smith (Joe's brother) came to me, and wished to borrow the same stone, alleging that they wanted to accomplish some business of importance, which `could not very well be done without the aid of the stone.' I told him it was of no particular worth to me, but I merely wished to keep it as a curiosity, and if he would pledge me his word and honour that I should have it when called for, he might have it; which he did, and took the stone. I thought I could rely on his word at this time, as he had made a profession of religion; but in this I was disappointed, for he disregarded both his word and honour. "In the fall of 1826, a friend called upon me, and wished to see that stone about which so much had been said: and I told him, if he would go with me to Smith's (a distance of about half a mile), he might see it. To my surprise, however, on asking Smith for the stone, he said, `You cannot have it.' I told him it belonged to me; repeated to him the promise he had made me at the time of obtaining the stone; upon which he faced me with a malignant look, and said, `_I don't care who the devil it belongs to; you shall not have it_.' "COLONEL NAHUM HOWARD. CHAPTER THIRTY NINE. I must pass over many details interesting in themselves; but too long to insert in this work. It must suffice to say, that after a time Joe Smith stated that he had possession of the golden plates, and had received from heaven a pair of spectacles by means of which the unknown characters could be decyphered by him. It may appear strange that such absurd assertions should be credited, but the reader must call to mind the credence given in this country to Joanna Southcote, and the infatuation displayed by her proselytes to the very last. The origin of Mormonism deserves peculiar examination from the success which has attended the imposture, and the prospects which it has of becoming firmly established as a new creed. At its first organisation, which took place at the time that the golden plates were translating, which the reader may suppose was nothing more than the contents of the book that Rigdon had obtained possession of, and which had been originally written by S. Spalding, there were but six members of the new creed. These first members, consisting mostly of persons who were engaged with Smith in the translation of the plates, forthwith applied themselves with great zeal to building up the church. Their first efforts were confined to Western New York and Pennsylvania, where they met with considerable success. After a number of converts had been made, Smith received a revelation that he and all his followers should go to Kirkland, in Ohio and there take up their abode. Many obeyed this command, selling their possessions, and helping each other to settle on the spot designated. This place was the head-quarters of the Church and the residence of the prophets until 1838; but it does not appear that they ever regarded it as a permanent settlement; for, in the Book of Covenants, it is said, in speaking of Kirkland, "I consecrate this land unto them for a little season, until I the Lord provide for them to go home." In the spring of 1831, Smith, Rigdon, and others declared themselves directed by revelation to go on a journey to Missouri, and there the Lord was to shew them the place of the New Jerusalem. This journey was accordingly taken, and when they arrived, a revelation was received, pointing out the town of Independence, in Jackson county, as the central spot of the land of promise, where they were directed to build a temple, etcetera, etcetera. Shortly after their return to Kirkland, a number of revelations were received, commanding the saints throughout the country to purchase and settle in this land of promise. Accordingly, many went and began to build up "Zion," as they called it. In 1831, a consecration law was established in the church by revelation. It was first published in the Book of Covenants, in the following words:--"If thou lovest me, thou shalt keep my commandments, and thou shalt consecrate all thy properties unto me with a covenant and deed which cannot be broken." This law, however, has been altered since that time. As modified, it reads thus:--"If thou lovest me, thou shalt serve and keep all of my commandments, and, behold, thou shalt remember the poor, and consecrate of thy properties for their support that which thou hast to impart unto them, with a covenant and a deed which cannot be broken." In April, 1832, a firm was established by revelation, ostensibly for the benefit of the church, consisting of the principal members in Kirkland and Independence. The members of this firm were bound together by an oath and covenant to manage the affairs of the poor, and all things pertaining to the church, both in Zion (Missouri) and in Shinakar (Kirkland). In June, 1833, another revelation was received to lay off Kirkland in lots, and the proceeds of the sale were to go to this firm. In 1834 or 1835, the firm was divided by revelation, so that those in Kirkland continued as one firm, and those in Missouri as another. In the same revelation they are commanded to divide the consecrated property between the individuals of the firm, which each separately were to manage as stewards. Previous to this (1833), a revelation was received to build a temple, which was to be done by the consecrated funds, which were under the control of the firm. In erecting this building the firm involved itself in debt to a large amount; to meet which, in the revelation last mentioned, the following appears: "Inasmuch as ye are humble and faithful, and call on my name, behold, I will give you the victory. I give unto you a promise that you shall be delivered this once out of your bondage, inasmuch as you obtain a chance to loan money by hundreds and thousands, even till you have obtained enough to deliver yourselves out of bondage." This was a command to borrow money, in order to free themselves from the debt that oppressed them. They made the attempt, but failed to get sufficient to meet their exigencies. This led to another expedient. In 1835, Smith, Rigdon, and others formed a mercantile house, and purchased goods in Cleveland and in Buffalo to a very large amount, on a credit of six months. In the fall, other houses were formed, and goods purchased in the eastern cities to a still greater amount. A great part of the goods of these houses went to pay the workmen on the temple, and many were sold on credit, so that when the notes came due the house was not able to meet them. Smith, Rigdon, and Co then attempted to borrow money, by issuing their notes, payable at different periods after date. This expedient not being effectual, the idea of a bank suggested itself. Accordingly, in 1837, the far-famed Kirkland bank was put into operation, without any charter. This institution, by which so many have been swindled, was formed after the following manner. Subscribers for stock were allowed to pay the amount of their subscriptions in town lots, at five or six times their real value; others paid in personal property at a high valuation; and some paid the cash. When the notes were first issued, they were current in the vicinity, and Smith took advantage of their credit to pay off with them the debts he and the brethren had contracted in the neighbourhood for land and other purchases. The eastern creditors, however, refused to take their notes. This led to the expedient of exchanging them for the notes of other banks. Accordingly the elders were sent off the country to barter Kirkland money, which they did with great zeal, and continued the operation until the notes were not worth sixpence to the dollar. As might have been expected, this institution exploded after a few months, involving Smith and his brethren in inextricable difficulties. The consequence was, that he and most of the members of the church set off, in the spring of 1838, for Missouri, pursued by their creditors, but to no effect. We must now go back for a short period to state another circumstance. In 1836, an endowment meeting, or solemn assembly, was called, to be held in the temple at Kirkland. It was given out that those who were in attendance at the meeting should receive an endowment or blessing similar to that experienced by the disciples of Christ on the day of Pentecost. When the day arrived, great numbers convened from the different churches in the country. They spent the day in fasting and prayer, and in washing and perfuming their bodies; they also washed their feet and anointed their heads with what they called holy oil, and pronounced blessings. In the evening, they met for the endowment; the fast was then broken, by eating light wheat bread, and drinking as much wine as they thought proper. Smith knew well how to infuse the spirit which they expected to receive; so he encouraged the brethren to drink freely, telling them that the wine was consecrated, and would not make them drunk. As may be supposed, they drank to some purpose; after this, they began to prophesy, pronouncing blessings upon their friends and curses upon their enemies; after which the meeting adjourned. We now return to Missouri. The Mormons who had settled in and about Independence, in the year 1831, having become very arrogant, claiming the land as their own, saying, the Lord had given it to them, and making the most haughty assumptions, so exasperated the old citizens, that a mob was raised in 1833, and expelled the whole Mormon body from the county. They fled to Clay county, where the citizens permitted them to live in quiet till 1836, when a mob spirit began to manifest itself, and the Mormons retired to a very thinly settled district of the country, where they began to make improvements. This district was at the session of 1836-7 of the Missouri legislature, erected into a county, by the name of Caldwell with Far-West for its capital. Here the Mormons remained in quiet until after the bank explosion in Kirkland, in 1838, when Smith, Rigdon, and others of the heads of the sect arrived. Shortly after this, the Danite Society was organised, the object of which, at first, was to drive the dissenters out of the county. The members of this society were bound by an oath and covenant, with the penalty of death attached to a breach of it, to defend the presidency, and each other, unto death, right or wrong. They had their secret signs, by which they knew each other, either by day or night; and were divided into bands of tens and fifties, with a captain over each band, and a general over the whole. After this body was formed, notice was given to several of the dissenters to leave the county, and they were threatened severely in case of disobedience. The effect of this was, that many of the dissenters left: among these were David Whitmer, John Whitmer, Hiram Page, and Oliver Cowdery, all witnesses to the Book of Mormon; also Lyman Johnson, one of the twelve apostles. The day after John Whitmer left his house in Far-West, it was taken possession of by Sidney Rigdon. About this time, Rigdon preached his famous "Salt Sermon." The text was:--"Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." He informed the Mormons that the Church was the salt; that dissenters were the salt that had lost its flavour; and that they were literally to be trodden under the foot of the Church, until their bowels should gush out. In one of the meetings of the Danite band, one of the leaders informed them that the time was not far distant, when the elders of the Church should go forth to the world with swords at their sides, and that they would soon have to go through the state of Missouri, and slay every man, woman, and child! They had it in contemplation at one time to prophesy a dreadful pestilence in Missouri, and then to poison the waters of the state, to bring it about, and thus to destroy the inhabitants. In the early part of the fall of the year 1838, the last disturbance between the Mormons and the Missourians commenced. It had its origin at an election in Davies county, where some of the Mormons had located. A citizen of Davies, in a conversation with a Mormon, remarked that the Mormons all voted one way: this was denied with warmth; a violent contest ensued, when, at last, the Mormon called the Missourian a liar. They came to blows, and the quarrel was followed by a row between the Mormons and the Missourians. A day or two after this, Smith, with a company of men from Far-West, went into Davies county, for the purpose, as they said, of quelling the mob; but when they arrived, the mob had dispersed. The citizens of Davies gathered in their turn; however, the Mormons soon collected a force to the amount of five hundred men, and compelled the citizens to retire; they fled, leaving the country deserted for many miles around. At this time, the Mormons killed between two and three hundred hogs, and a number of cattle; took at least forty or fifty stands of honey, and at the same time destroyed several fields of corn. The word was given out, that the Lord had consecrated, through the Church, the spoils unto his host. All this was done when they had plenty of their own, and previous to the citizens in that section of the country taking any thing from them. They continued, these depredations for near a week, when the Clay County Militia was ordered out. The contest was a bloody one: suffice it to say, that, finally, Smith, Rigdon, and many others were taken, and, at a court of inquiry, were remanded over for trial. Rigdon was afterwards discharged on _habeas corpus_, and Smith and his comrades, after being in prison several months, escaped from their guards, and reached Quincy, Illinois. The Mormons had been before ordered to leave the state, by direction of the governor, and many had retired to Illinois previous to Smith's arrival. The Mormons, as a body, arrived in Illinois in the early part of the year 1839, in a state of great destitution and wretchedness. Their condition, with their tales of persecutions and privations, wrought powerfully upon the sympathies of the citizens, and caused them to be received with the greatest hospitality and kindness. After the arrival of Smith, the greater part of them settled at Commerce, situated upon the Mississippi river, at the lower rapids, just opposite the entrance of the river Des Moines, a site equal in beauty to any on the river. Here they began to build, and in the short time of four years they have raised a city. At first, as was before said, on account of their former sufferings, and also from the great political power which they possessed, from their unity, they were treated by the citizens of Illinois with great respect; but subsequent events have turned the tide of feeling against them. In the winter of 1840, they applied to the legislature of the state for several charters; one for the city of Nauvoo, the name Smith had given to the town of Commerce; one for the Nauvoo legion, a military body; one for manufacturing purposes, and one for the Nauvoo University. The privileges which they asked for were very extensive, and such was the desire to secure their political support, that all were granted for the mere asking; indeed, the leaders of the American legislature seemed to vie with each other in sycophancy towards this body of fanatical strangers, so anxious was each party to do them some favour that would secure their gratitude. This tended to produce jealousy in the minds of the neighbouring citizens, and fears were expressed lest a body so united religiously and politically, might become dangerous to liberal institutions. The Mormons had at every election voted in a body with their leaders; this alone made them formidable. The legion of Mormons had been amply supplied with arms by the state, and the whole body was under the strictest military discipline. These facts, together with complaints similar to those which were made in Missouri, tended to arouse a strong feeling against them, and at last, in the early part of the summer of 1841, the citizens of Illinois organised a strong force in opposition; the Mormons were beaten in the contest. The disposition now manifested by the citizens, appears to be to act upon the defensive, but at all hazards to maintain their rights. As regards the pecuniary transactions of the Mormons since they have been in Illinois, Smith still uses his power for his own benefit. His present arrangements are to purchase land at a low rate, lay it off into town lots, which he sells to his followers at a high price; thus lots that scarcely cost him a dollar, are frequently sold for a thousand. He has raised several towns in this manner, both in Illinois and in Ioway. During the last year, he has made two proclamations to his followers abroad, to come and settle in the county of Hancock. These proclamations have been obeyed to a great extent, and, strange to say, hundreds have been flocking in from the great manufacturing cities of England. What is to be the result of all this, it is impossible to tell; but one thing is certain, that, in a political point of view, the Mormons are already powerful, and that the object of Smith is evidently to collect all his followers into one focus, and thus concentrate all his power and wealth. The designs of Smith and his coadjutors, at the time of the first publication of the Book of Mormon, was, doubtlessly, nothing more than pecuniary aggrandisement. We do not believe they expected at that time that so many could ever be duped to be converted; when, however, the delusion began to spread, the publishers saw the door opened not only for wealth, but also for extensive power, and their history throughout shews that they have not been remiss in their efforts to acquire both. The extent of their desires is now by no means limited, for their writings and actions shew a design to pursue the same path, and attain the same end by the same means, as did Mahomet. The idea of a second Mahomet arising in the nineteenth century may excite a smile, but when we consider the steps now taken by the Mormons to concentrate their numbers, and their ultimate design to unite themselves with the Indians, it will not be at all surprising, if scenes unheard of since the days of feudalism should soon be re-enacted. I will here submit to my readers a letter directed to Mr Courtenay in 1842 by a superior officer of the United States artillery. "Yesterday (July the 10th) was a great day among the Mormons; their legion, to the number of three thousand men, was reviewed by Generals Smith, Bennet, and others, and certainly made a very noble and imposing appearance; the evolutions of the troops commanded by Joe would do honour to any body of regular soldiers in England, France, or Prussia. What does this mean? Why this exact discipline of the Mormon corps? Do they intend to conquer Missouri, Illinois, Mexico? It is true they are part of the militia of the state of Illinois, by the charter of their legion, but then there are no troops in the States like them in point of discipline and enthusiasm; and led on by ambitious and talented officers, what may not be effected by them? perhaps the subversion of the constitution of the United States; and if this should be considered too great a task, foreign conquest will most certainly be attempted. The northern provinces of Mexico will fall into their hands, even if Texas should first take possession of them. "These Mormons are accumulating, like a snow-ball rolling down an inclined plane. They are also enrolling among their officers some of the first talent in the country, by titles which they give and by money which they can command. They have appointed Captain Henry Bennet, late of the United States' army, Inspector-General of their legion, and he is commissioned as such by Governor Carlin. This gentleman is known to be well skilled in fortification, gunnery, and military engineering generally; and I am assured that he is receiving regular pay, derived from the tithing of this warlike people. I have seen his plans for fortifying Nauvoo, which are equal to any of Vauban's. "General John C. Bennet (a New England man) is the prophet's great gun. They call him, though a man of diminutive stature, the `forty-two pounder.' He might have applied his talents in a more honourable cause; but I am assured that he is well paid for the important services he is rendering this people, or, I should rather say, rendering the prophet. This, gentleman exhibits the highest degree of field military talent (field tactics), united with extensive learning. He may yet become dangerous to the states. He was quarter-master-general of the state of Illinois, and, at another time, a professor in the Erie university. It will, therefore, be seen that nothing but a high price could have secured him to these fanatics. Only a part of their officers and professors are Mormons; but then they are united by a common interest, and will act together on main points to a man. Those who are not Mormons when they come here, very soon become so, either from interest or conviction. "The Smiths are not without talent; Joe, the chief, is a noble-looking fellow, a Mahomet every inch of him; the postmaster, Sidney Rigdon, is a lawyer, a philosopher, and a saint. The other generals are also men of talent, and some of them men of learning. I have no doubt they are all brave, as they are most unquestionably ambitious, and the tendency of their religious creed is to annihilate all other sects. We may, therefore, see the time when this gathering host of religious fanatics will make this country shake to its centre. A western empire is certain. Ecclesiastical history presents no parallel to this people, inasmuch as they are establishing their religion on a learned basis. In their college, they teach all the sciences, with Latin, Greek, Hebrew. French, Italian, and Spanish; the mathematical department is under an extremely able professor, of the name of Pratt; and a professor of Trinity College, Dublin, is president of their university. "I arrived there, incog, on the 1st inst, and, from the great preparations for the military parade, was induced to stay to see the turn-out, which, I confess, has astonished and filled me with fears for the future consequences. The Mormons, it is true, are now peaceable, but the lion is asleep. Take care, and don't rouse him. "The city of Nauvoo contains about fifteen thousand souls, and is rapidly increasing. It is well laid out, and the municipal affairs appear to be well conducted. The adjoining country is a beautiful prairie. Who will say that the Mormon prophet is not among the great spirits of the age? "The Mormons number, in Europe and America, about one hundred and fifty thousand, and are constantly pouring into Nauvoo and the neighbouring country. There are probably in and about this city, at a short distance from the river, not far from thirty thousand of these warlike fanatics, and it is but a year since they have settled in the Illinois." CHAPTER FORTY. While I was at Mr Courtenay's plantation I had a panther adventure, a circumstance which, in itself, would be scarcely worth mentioning, were it not that this fierce animal was thought to have entirely left the country for more than twenty years. For several days there had been a rapid diminution among the turkeys, lambs, and young pigs in the neighbourhood, and we had unsuccessfully beaten the briars and cane-brakes, expecting at every moment to fall in with some large tiger-cat, which had strayed from the southern brakes. After much fruitless labour, Mr Courtenay came to the conclusion that a gang of negro marroons were hanging about, and he ordered that a watch should for the future be kept every night. It happened that the whole family was one day invited to a wedding on the other side of the river. Not having any clothes fit for a party, I remained at home, and at mid-day started on horseback alone, with all the dogs, for a battue. The day was sultry, although windy; as the roar of the wind in the canes prevented me from hearing the barking of the dogs, having arrived at one of our former hunting camping places, fifteen miles from the house, I threw myself upon the ground, and allowed my horse to graze. I had scarcely been half-an-hour occupied in smoking my pipe, when all the dogs, in full cry, broke from the briars, and rushed into the cane-brakes, passing me at a distance of thirty yards. I knew it was neither bear nor deer that they were running after, and as I had observed a path through the canes, I leaped upon my saddle, and followed the chase, wondering what it could be, as, had the animal been any of the smaller feline species, it would have kept to the briars, where dogs have never the least chance against them. I rode briskly till I arrived at a large cypress swamp, on the other side of which I could perceive through the openings another cane-brake, higher and considerably thicker. I fastened my horse, giving him the whole length of the lasso, to allow him to browse upon the young leaves of the canes, and with my bowie knife and rifle entered the swamp, following the trail of the dogs. When I came to the other cane-brake, I heard the pack before me barking most furiously, and evidently at bay. I could only be directed by the noise, as it was impossible for me to see any thing; so high and thick were the canes, that I was obliged to open a way with my knife, and it was with much trouble and fatigue that I arrived within twenty yards of the dogs. I knew that I was once more approaching a swamp, for the canes were becoming thinner; raising my eyes, I perceived that I was in the vicinity of a large cotton tree, at the foot of which probably the dogs were standing. Yet I could not see them, and I began to examine with care the upper limbs of the tree, to ascertain if any tiger-cat had lodged itself upon some of the forks. But there was nothing that I could discover; cutting the canes on the left and the right, I advanced ten yards more, when, to my surprise, I perceived, thirty feet above me, a large panther embracing the trunk of a tree with its huge paws, and looking angrily below at the dogs. I would have retired, but I dared not, as I feared that the least noise would attract the attention of the animal, who would spring upon me from its elevated position. The dogs barked louder and louder; twice I raised my rifle, but did not fire, my nerves were too much agitated, and my arms shook. At last I regained my self-command, and reflecting that among the pack there were some dogs almost a match for the terrible animal, I rested my rifle upon the limb of one of the heavy canes, and fired: my aim was true, the brute fell mortally wounded, though not dead; half of the dogs were upon it in a moment, but, shaking them off, the animal attempted to re-ascend the tree. The effort, however, was above its strength, and, after two useless springs, it attempted to slip away. At that moment the larger dogs sprang upon the animal, which could struggle no longer, as life was ebbing fast with the stream of blood. Ere I had time to reload my rifle, it was dead. When I approached, all the dogs were upon the animal, except fierce little black bitch, generally the leader of the pack; I saw her dart through the canes with her nose on the ground, and her tail hanging low. The panther was a female, very lean, and of the largest size; by her dugs I knew she had a cub which could not be far off, and I tried to induce the pack to follow the bitch, but they were all too busy in tearing and drinking the blood of the victim, and it was not safe to use force with them. For at least ten minutes I stood contemplating them, waiting till they would be tired. All at once I heard a bark, a growl, and a plaintive moan. I thought at first that the cub had been discovered, but as the dogs started at full speed, following the chase for more than twenty minutes, I soon became convinced that it must be some new game, either a boar or a bear. I followed, but had not gone fifty steps, when a powerful rushing through the canes made me aware that the animal pursued had turned back on its trail, and twenty yards before me, I perceived the black bitch dead and horribly mangled. I was going up to; her, when the rushing came nearer and nearer; I had just time to throw myself behind a small patch of briars, before another panther burst out from the cane-brakes. I had never seen before so tremendous, and, at the same time, so majestic and so beautiful an animal, as with a long and light spring it broke out of the canes. It was a male; his jaws were covered with foam and blood; his tail was lashing through the air, and at times he looked steadily behind, as if uncertain if he would run or fight his pursuers. At last his eyes were directed to the spot where the bitch lay dead, and with a single bound he was again upon the body, and rolled it under his paws till it had lost all shape. As the furious animal stood thus twenty yards before me, I could have fired, but dared not to do so, while the dogs were so far off. However, they soon emerged from the brake, and rushed forward. A spirited young pup, a little ahead of the others, was immediately crushed by his paw, and making a few bounds towards a large tree, he climbed to the height of twenty feet, where he remained, answering to the cries of the dogs with a growl as loud as thunder. I fired, and this time there was no struggle. My ball had penetrated through the eye to the brain, yet the brute in its death struggle still clung on. At last the claws relaxed from their hold, and it fell down a ponderous mass, terrible still in death. The sun had already set, and not wishing to lose any time in skinning the animal, I merely cut off its long tail, which I secured as a trophy round my waist. My adventures, however, were not yet terminated, for while I was crossing the short width of cane-brake which was between me and where the she-panther laid dead, the dogs again gave tongue, and, in less than three minutes, had tracked another animal. Night was coming on pretty fast, and I was beginning to be alarmed. Till now I had been successful, each time having destroyed, with a single ball, a terrible enemy, whom even the boldest hunters fear to attack alone; but should I have the same good luck in a third encounter? It was more than I could expect, especially as the darkness would render it more difficult to take a certain aim. I therefore allowed the dogs to bark as much as they pleased, and forced my way to my first victim, the tail of which I also severed, as a proof of my prowess. It, however, occurred to me that if there were many more panthers in the cover, it would be very unsafe to return alone to where I had left may horse. I therefore made sure that my rifle was in good order, and proceeded towards the place where the dogs were still baying. There I beheld another panther, but this time it was a sport unattended by any danger, for the animal was a very young cub, who had taken refuge fifteen feet from the ground upon a tree which had been struck by lightning, and broken off about three yards from its roots. The animal was on the broken part which had its summit entangled in the lower branches of another tree. It was truly a pretty sight, as the little animal's tail, hanging down, served as a _point de mire_ to all the dogs, who were jumping up to catch it. The cub was delighted, mewing with high glee, sometimes running up, sometimes down, just to invite his playfellows to come to him. I felt great reluctance to kill so graceful and playful an animal, but it became a necessity, as no endeavours of mine could have forced the dogs to leave it. I shot him, and, tying him round my neck, I now began to seek, with some anxiety, for the place where I had left my horse. There is but little twilight in America, in the spring of the year especially; great was my hurry, and consequently less was my speed. I lost my trail, bogged myself in a swamp, tore my hands and face with the briars, and, after an hour of severe fatigue, at last heard my horse, who was impatient at being left alone, neighing loudly. Though my distance to the house was only eighteen miles and the road quite safe, I contrived to lose myself three or four times, till, _en desespoir_, I threw the bridle on my horse's neck, trusting to his instinct to extricate me from my difficulties. It was nearly midnight when I approached the back fences of Mr Courtenay's plantation, and I wondered very much at seeing torches glaring in every direction. I galloped rapidly through the lane, and learned from a negro that the family had long returned home, and that supper had been, as usual, served at eight o'clock: that they had been anxiously waiting for me, and that Mr Courtenay, fearing some accident had happened, had resolved to go himself in search of me with the major portion of his negroes. Leaving my horse to the care of the slave, I ran towards the house, where the dogs had already announced my arrival. The family came under the portico to welcome me, and simultaneously asked me what could have detained me so long. "I have caught the robbers," replied I, approaching the group, "I have killed them, and lost two dogs; here are my _spolia opima_." My host was thunderstruck; he was too much of a hunter not to be able to estimate the size of the animals by the tokens I had brought with me, and he had believed that for the last twenty or thirty years, not one of these terrible animals was actually living in the country. The fact was so very remarkable, that he insisted on going himself that very night with his negroes to skin the animals; and, after a hasty meal, he left us to fulfil his intentions. Relating my adventures to my kind hostess and her niece, I had the satisfaction of feeling that my narrative excited emotions which could only arise from a strong interest in my welfare. This panther story got wind, and nothing could convince the neighbouring farmers but the very sight of the skins. All the western newspapers related the matter, and for two months at least I was quite a "lion." A few days after that adventure, the Caroline, the largest and finest steam-boat upon the Mississippi, struck a snag in coming down the stream, and sank immediately. The river, however, being very low, the upper decks remained above water, and help coming down from the neighbouring plantations, all the passengers were soon brought on shore without any loss of life. Three hundred sheep, one hundred hogs, eighty cows, and twelve horses were left to their fate, and it was a painful sight to witness the efforts of the poor brutes struggling against the powerful current and looking towards the people on shore, as if to implore for help. Only one pig, two cows, and five horses ever reached the bank of the river, many disappearing under the repeated attacks of the gar-fish, and other monsters, and the remainder carried by the stream to feed the alligators and the cawanas of the south. But very few objects on board were insured, and hundreds of hogsheads of Missouri tobacco and barrels of Kentucky our were several days afterwards picked up by the Arkansas and Tennessee wreckers. Articles thus lost by shipwreck upon the Mississippi are seldom reclaimed, as the principal owners of the goods, on hearing the news, generally collect all the property which they can, run away, change their names, and enter upon new speculations in another state. Among the passengers on board, Mr Courtenay recognised several of his friends, whom he directly invited into the mansion, while temporary sheds were erected for the others, till some steamboat should pass and take them off. So sudden had been the catastrophe, that no luggage of any kind had been saved, and several Englishmen, travelling to purchase cotton and minerals, suffered very serious loss. As to the Americans themselves, though they complained very loudly, vowing they would bring an action against the river, the steam-boats, against every boat, and every thing, for I don't know how many millions of dollars, their losses were very trifling, as it is the custom for a man in the Western States to carry all his money in his pocketbook, and his pocket-book in his pocket; as to luggage, he never has any except a small valise, two feet long, in which are contained a shirt, two bosoms, three frills, a razor, and a brush, which may serve for his head, clothing, boots, and perhaps teeth. It was amusing to hear all the complaints that were made, and to enumerate the sums which were stated to have been lost; there was not one among the travellers, even among those who had taken a deck-passage, who had not lost from ten to fifty thousand dollars, with which he was going to purchase a cotton plantations a steam-boat, or a whole cargo of Havannah cigars. What made it more ridiculous was the facility with which everybody found a witness to certify his loss. "I had five thousand dollars," one would say; "ask the general: he will tell you if it is true." "True, as I am an honest man," would answer the general, "to wit, that I swapped with the judge my eastern notes for his southern ones." It would be impossible to explain to a sober Englishman the life that is led on, and the numerous tricks that are played in Mississippi steam-boat. One I will mention, which will serve as a sample. An itinerant preacher, well known as a knave upon both banks, and the whole length of the river, used (before he was sent to the Penitentiary for picking pockets) to live comfortably in the steam-boats without ever paying a farthing. From St. Louis he would book for New Orleans, and the passage-money never being asked in the West but at the termination of the trip, the preacher would go on shore at Vicksburg, Natches, Bayon, Sarah, or any other such station in the way. Then he would get on board any boat bound to the Ohio, book himself for Louisville, and step on shore at Memphis. He had no luggage of any kind except a green cotton umbrella; but, in order to lull all suspicion, he contrived always to see the captain or the clerk in his office, and to ask them confidentially if they knew the man sleeping in the upper bed, if he was respectable, as he, the preacher, had in his trunks considerable sums intrusted to him by some societies. The consequence was, that, believing him rich, the captain and officers would pay him a great deal of attention, inviting him to wine and liquor. When he disappeared, they would express how sorry they were to have been obliged to leave the gentleman behind, but they hoped they would see him at St. Louis, New Orleans, or Louisville, or hear from him, so as to know where to direct his trunks. But they would soon ascertain that there were no trunks left behind, that there had never been any brought on board, and that they had been duped by a clever sharper. In less than twenty-four hours almost all the passengers had got on board some other boats, but those who had been invited by Mr Courtenay tarried a few days with us, for we were on the eve of a great fishing party on the lake, which in the Far-West is certainly a very curious scene. Among the new guests were several cotton planters from the South, and English cotton-brokers. One of them had passed a short time among the Mormons, at Nauvoo, and had many amusing stories to tell of them. One I select among many, which is the failure of an intended miracle by Joe Smith. Towards the close of a fine summer's day, a farmer of Ioway found a respectable-looking man at his gate, who requested permission to pass the night under his roof. The hospitable farmer readily complied; the stranger was invited into the house, and a warm and substantial supper set before him. After he had eaten, the farmer, who appeared to be a jovial, warm-hearted, humorous, and withal a shrewd old man, passed several hours in conversation with his guest, who seemed to be very ill at ease, both in body and mind; yet, as if desirous of pleasing his entertainer, he replied courteously and agreeably to whatever was said to him. Finally, he pleaded fatigue and illness as an excuse for retiring to rest, and was conducted by the farmer to an upper chamber where he went to bed. About the middle of the night, the farmer and his family were awakened by dreadful groans, which they soon ascertained proceeded from the chamber of the traveller. On going to ascertain the cause, they found that the stranger was dreadfully ill, suffering the most acute pains and uttering the most doleful cries, apparently quite unconscious of what was passing around him. Every-thing that kindness and experience could suggest was done to relieve the sick man; but all efforts were in vain, and, to the consternation of the farmer and his family, their guest, in the course of a few hours, expired. At an early hour in the morning, in the midst of their trouble and anxiety, two travellers came to the gate, and requested entertainment. The farmer told them that he would willingly offer them hospitality, but that just now his household was in the greatest confusion, on account of the death of a stranger, the particulars of which he proceeded to relate to them. They appeared to be much surprised and grieved at the poor man's calamity, and politely requested permission to see the corpse. This, of course, the farmer readily granted, and conducted them to the chamber in which laid the dead body. They looked at it for a few minutes in silence, and then the oldest of the pair gravely told the farmer that they were elders of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and were empowered by God to perform miracles, even to the extent of raising the dead; and that they felt quite assured they could bring to life the man who laid dead before them! The farmer was, of course, "pretty considerably," astonished at the quality and powers of the persons who addressed him, and, rather incredulously asked if they were quite sure that they could perform all which they professed. "O certainly! not a doubt of it. The Lord has commissioned us expressly to work miracles, in order to prove the truth of the prophet Joseph Smith, and the inspiration of the books and doctrines revealed to him. Send for all your neighbours, that, in the presence of a multitude, we may bring the dead man to life, and that the Lord and his church may be glorified to all men." The farmer, after a little consideration, agreed to let the miracle-workers proceed, and, as they desired, sent his children to his neighbours, who, attracted by the expectation of a miracle, flocked to the house in considerable numbers. The Mormon elders commenced their task by kneeling and praying before the body with uplifted hands and eyes, and with most stentorian lungs. Before they had proceeded far with their prayer, a sudden idea struck the farmer, who quietly quitted the house for a few minutes, and then returned, and waited patiently by the bedside, until the prayer was finished, and the elders ready to perform their miracle. Before they began, he respectfully said to them, that, with their permission, he wished to ask them a few questions upon the subject of this miracle. They replied that they had no objection. The farmer then asked-- "You are quite certain that you can bring this man to life again?" "We are." "How do you know that you can?" "We have just received a revelation from the Lord, informing us that we can." "Are you quite sure that the revelation was from the Lord?" "Yes; we cannot be mistaken about it." "Does your power to raise this man to life again depend upon the particular nature of his disease? or could you now bring any dead man to life?" "It makes no difference to us; we could bring any corpse to life." "Well, if this man had been killed, and one of his arms cut off, could you bring him to life, and also restore to him his arm?" "Certainly! there is no limit to the power given us by the Lord. It would make no difference, even if both his arms and legs were cut off." "Could you restore him, if his head had been cut off?" "Certainly we could!" "Well," said the farmer, with a quiet smile upon his features, "I do not doubt the truth of what such holy men assert; but I am desirous that my neighbours here should be fully converted, by having the miracle performed in the completest manner possible. So, by your leave, if it makes no difference whatever, I will proceed to cut off the head of this corpse." Accordingly, he produced a huge and well-sharpened broad axe from beneath his coat, which he swung above his head, and was, apparently, about to bring it down upon the neck of the corpse, when, lo and behold! to the amazement of all present, the dead man started up in great agitation, and swore that, "by hell and jingo," he would not have his head cut off, for any consideration whatever. The company immediately seized the Mormons, and soon made them confess that the pretended dead man was also a Mormon elder, and that they had sent him to the farmer's house, with directions to die there at a particular hour, when they would drop in, as if by accident, and perform a miracle that would astonish everybody. The farmer, after giving the impostors a severe chastisement, let them depart to practise their _humbug_ in some other quarter. These two "_Elders of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints_," were honest Joe and his worthy _compeer_ and coadjutor, Sidney Rigdon. CHAPTER FORTY ONE. The day of the fishing at length arrived; our party of ladies and gentlemen, with the black cooks and twenty slaves, started two hours before sunrise, and, after a smart ride of some twelve miles, we halted before a long row of tents, which had been erected for the occasion, on the shores of one of these numerous and beautiful western lakes. Fifty negroes were already on the spot, some cutting wood for fuel, some preparing breakfast, while others made ready the baits and lines, or cleaned empty barrels, in which our intended victims were to be salted. We scarcely had had time to look around us, when, from twenty different quarters, we beheld the approach of as many parties, who had been invited to share the sport. We greeted them planter fashion;--"Are you hungry, eh, eh?--Sam, Napoleon, Washington, Caesar--quick--the breakfast." For several days previous, all the creeks of the neighbourhood had been drained of their cray-fish, minnows, and shell-fish. All the dug-outs and canoes from every stream thirty miles round had also been dragged to the lake, and it was very amusing to see a fleet of eighty boats and canoes of every variety, in which we were about to embark to prosecute our intentions against the unsuspecting inhabitants of the water. After a hearty, though somewhat hasty meal, we proceeded to business, every white man taking with him a negro, to bait his line and unhook the fish; the paddles were soon put in motion, and the canoes, keeping a distance of fifty yards from each other, having now reached the deepest part of the lake, bets were made as to who would pull up the first fish, the ladies on shore watching the sport, and the caldrons upon the fire ready to receive the first victims. I must not omit to mention, that two of the larger canoes, manned only by negroes, were ordered to pull up and down the line of fishing-boats and canoes, to take out the fish as they were captured. At a signal given by the ladies, the lines were thrown into the lake, and, almost at the same moment, a deafening hurrah of a hundred voices announced that all the baits had been taken before reaching the bottom, every fisherman imagining that he had won his bet. The winner, however, could never be ascertained, and nobody gave it a second thought, all being now too much excited with the sport. The variety of the fish was equal to the rapidity with which they were taken: basses, perch, sun-fish, buffaloes, trouts, and twenty other sorts. In less than half an hour my canoe was full to sinking; and I should certainly have sunk with my cargo, had it not been most opportunely taken out by one of the spare boats. All was high glee on shore and on the lake, and the scene was now and then still diversified by comic accidents, causing the more mirth, as there was no possibility of danger. The canoe next to me was full to the gunwale, which was not two inches above water: it contained the English traveller and a negro, who was quite an original in his way. As fish succeeded to fish, their position became exceedingly ludicrous: the canoe was positively sinking, and they were lustily calling for assistance. The spare boat approached rapidly, and had neared them to within five yards, when the Englishman's line was suddenly jerked by a very heavy fish, and so unexpectedly, that the sportsman lost his equilibrium and fell upon the larboard side of the canoe. The negro, wishing to restore the equilibrium, threw his weight on the opposite side; unluckily, this had been the simultaneous idea of his white companion, who also rolled over the fish to starboard. The canoe turned the turtle with them, and away went minnows, crawfish, lines, men, and all. Everybody laughed most outrageously, as the occupants of the canoe re-appeared upon the surface of the water, and made straight for the shore not daring to trust to another canoe after their ducking. The others continued fishing till about half-past nine, when the rays of the sun were becoming so powerful as to compel us to seek shelter in the tents. If the scene on the lake had been exciting, it became not less so on shore, when all the negroes, male and female, crowding together, began to scale, strip, and salt the fish. Each of them had an account to give of some grand fishery, where a monstrous fish, a mile in length, had been taken by some fortunate "Sambo" of the South. The girls gaped with terror and astonishment, the men winking and trying to look grave, while spinning these yarns, which certainly beat all the wonders of the veracious Baron Munchausen. The call to renew the sport broke off their ludicrous inventions. Our fortune was as great as in the forenoon, and at sunset we returned home, leaving the negroes to salt and pack the fish in barrels, for the supply of the plantation. A few days afterwards, I bade adieu to Mr Courtenay and his delightful family, and embarked myself and horse on board of one of the steamers bound to St. Louis, which place I reached on the following morning. St. Louis has been described by so many travellers, that it is quite useless to mention anything about this "queen city of the Mississippi." I will only observe, that my arrival produced a great sensation among the inhabitants, to whom the traders in the Far West had often told stories about the wealth of the Shoshones. In two or three days, I received a hundred or more applications from various speculators, "to go and kill the Indians in the West, and take away their treasures;" and I should have undoubtedly received ten thousand more, had I not hit upon a good plan to rid myself of all their importunities. I merely sent all the notes to the newspapers as fast as I received them; and it excited a hearty laugh amongst the traders, when thirty letters appeared in the columns, all of them written in the same tenor and style. One evening I found at the post-office a letter from Joseph Smith himself, in which he invited me to go to him without any loss of time, as the state of affairs having now assumed a certain degree of importance, it was highly necessary that we should at once come to a common understanding. Nothing could have pleased me more than this communication, and the next morning I started from St. Louis, arriving before noon at St. Charles, a small town upon the Missouri, inhabited almost entirely by French creoles, fur-traders, and trappers. There, for the first time, I saw a steam-ferry, and, to say the truth, I do not understand well how horses and waggons could have been transported over before the existence of steam-boats, as, in that particular spot, the mighty stream rolls its muddy waters with an incredible velocity, forming whirlpools, which seem strong enough to engulf anything that may come into them. From St. Charles I crossed a hilly land, till I arrived once more upon the Mississippi; but there "the father of the waters" (as the Indians call it) presented an aspect entirely new: its waters, not having yet mixed with those of the Missouri, were quite transparent; the banks, too, were several hundred feet high, and recalled to my mind the countries watered by the Buona Ventura River. For two days I continued my road almost always in sight of the stream, till at last, the ground becoming too broken and hilly, I embarked upon another steam-ferry at Louisiana, a rising and promising village, and landed upon the shores of Illinois, where the level prairies would allow of more rapid travelling. The state of Missouri, in point of dimensions, is the second state of the Union, being inferior in extent only to Virginia. It extends from 36 degrees to 40 degrees 35 minutes North latitude, and from 89 degrees 20 minutes to 95 degrees West longitude, having an area of about 68,500 square miles. Its boundaries, as fixed by the Constitution, are a line drawn from a point in the middle of the Mississippi, in 36 degrees North latitude, and along that parallel, west to its intersection, a meridian line, passing through the mouth of the Kansas. Thence, the western boundary was originally at that meridian; but, by act of Congress in 1836, the triangular tract between it and the Missouri, above the mouth of the Kansas, was annexed to the state. On the north, the parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the river Desmoines, forms the boundary between that river and the Missouri. The surface of that portion of the state which lies north of the Missouri is, in general, moderately undulating, consisting of an agreeable interchange of gentle swells and broad valleys, and rarely, though occasionally, rugged, or rising into hills of much elevation. With the exception of a narrow strips of woodland along the water-courses, almost the whole of this region is prairie, at least nine-tenths being wholly destitute of trees. The alluvial patches or river-bottoms are extensive, particularly on the Missouri, and generally of great fertility; and the soil of the upland is equal, if not superior, to that of any other upland tract in the United States. The region south of the Missouri River and west of the Osage, is of the same description; the northern and western Missouri country is most delightful, a soil of inexhaustible fertility and a salubrious climate, rendering it a most desirable and pleasant residence; but south-east of the latter river, the state is traversed by numerous ridges of the Ozark mountains, and the surface is here highly broken and rugged. This mountainous tract has a breadth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles; but although it often shoots up into precipitous peaks, it is believed that they rarely exceed two thousand feet in height; no accurate measurements of their elevation have, however, been made, and little is known of the course and mutual relations of the chains. The timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, etcetera, indicative of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state, hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, etcetera, are the prevailing growth; and in river-bottoms, the cotton tree, sycamore or button-wood, maple, ash, walnut, etcetera, predominate. The south-eastern corner of the state, below Cape Girardeau, and east of the Black River, is a portion of the immense inundated region which borders the Arkansas. A considerable part of this tract is indeed above the reach of the floods, but these patches are isolated and inaccessible, except by boats, during the rise of the waters. My friend Mr Courtenay penetrated these swamps with three Indians and two negroes. His companions were bogged and lost; he returned, having killed seven fine elks and two buffaloes. Some of these mighty animals have been breeding there for a long while, undisturbed by man. The state of Missouri is abundantly supplied with navigable channels, affording easy access to all parts. The Mississippi washes the eastern border, by the windings of the stream, for a distance of about four hundred and seventy miles. Above St. Genevieve, it flows for the most part between high and abrupt cliffs of limestone, rising to an elevation of from one hundred to four hundred feet above the surface of the river; sometimes separated from it by bottoms of greater or less width, and at others springing up abruptly from the water's edge. A few miles below Cape Girardeau, and about thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Ohio, are the rocky ledges, called the Little and Grand Chain; and about half-way between that point and St. Genevieve, is the Grand Tower, one of the wonders of the Mississippi. It is a stupendous pile of rocks, of a conical form, about one hundred and fifty feet high, and one hundred feet circumference at its base, rising up out of the bed of the river. It seems, in connection with the rocky shores on both sides, to have been opposed, at some former period, as a barrier to the flow of the Mississippi, which must here have had a perpendicular fell of more than one hundred feet. The principal tributaries of the Mississippi, with the exception of the Missouri, are the Desmoines, Wyacond, Fabius, Salt, and Copper Rivers, above that great stream, and the Merrimac, St. Francis, and White River below; the two last passing into Arkansas. Desmoines, which is only a boundary stream, is navigable one hundred and seventy miles, and Salt River, whose northern sources are in Iowa, and southern in Boone county, and which takes its name from the salt licks or salines on its borders, may be navigated by steam-boats up to Florida (a small village); that is to say, ninety-five or a hundred miles. The Riviere au Cuivre, or Copper River, is also a navigable stream; but the navigation of all these rivers is interrupted by ice in winter, and by shoals and bars in the dry season. The Missouri river flows through the state for a distance of about six hundred miles; but although steam-boats have ascended it two thousand five hundred miles from its mouth, its navigation is rendered difficult and dangerous by sand-bars, falling banks, snags, and shifting channels. The bank of the Mississippi river, on the Illinois side, is not by far so picturesque as the country I have just described, but its fertility is astonishing. Consequently, the farms and villages are less scattered, and cities, built with taste and a great display of wealth, are found at a short distance one from the other. Quincy I may mention, among others, as being a truly beautiful town, and quite European in its style of structure and neatness. Elegant fountains are pouring their cool waters at the end of every row of houses; some of the squares are magnificent, and, as the town is situated upon a hill several hundred feet above the river, the prospect is truly grand. At every place where I stopped between St. Louis and Quincy, I always heard the Mormons abused and spoken of as a set of scoundrels, but from Quincy to Nauvoo the reports were totally different. The higher or more enlightened classes of the people have overlooked the petty tricks of the Mormon leaders, to watch with more accuracy the advance and designs of Mormonism. In Joe Smith they recognise a great man, a man of will and energy, one who has the power of carrying every thing before him, and they fear him accordingly. On leaving Quincy. I travelled about seventy miles through a country entirely flat, but admirably cultivated. I passed through several little villages, and at noon of the second day I reached my destination. CHAPTER FORTY TWO. Nauvoo, the holy city of the Mormons, and present capital of their empire, is situated in the north-western part of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi, in latitude 40 degrees 33 minutes North; it is bounded on the north, south, and west by the river, which there forms a large curve, and is nearly two miles wide. Eastward of the city is a beautiful undulating prairie; it is distant ten miles from Fort Madison, in Iowa, and more than two hundred from St. Louis. Before the Mormons gathered there, the place was named _Commerce_, as I have already said, and was but a small and obscure village of some twenty houses; so rapidly, however, have they accumulated, that there are now, within four years of their first settlement, upwards of fifteen thousand inhabitants in the city, and as many more in its immediate vicinity. The surface of the ground upon which Nauvoo is built is very uneven, though there are no great elevations. A few feet below the soil is a vast bed of limestone, from which excellent building material can be quarried, to almost any extent. A number of _tumuli_, or ancient mounds, are found within the limits of the city, proving it to have been a place of some importance with the former inhabitants of the country. The space comprised within the city limits is about four miles in its extreme length, and three in its breadth; but is very irregular in its outline, and does not cover so much ground as the above measurement would seem to indicate. The city is regularly laid out, the streets crossing each other at right angles, and generally of considerable length, and of convenient width. The majority of the houses are still nothing more than log cabins, but lately a great number of plank and brick houses have been erected. The chief edifices of Nauvoo are the Temple, and an hotel, called the Nauvoo House, but neither of them is yet finished; the latter is of brick, upon a stone foundation, and presents a front of one hundred and twenty feet, by sixty feet deep, and is to be three stories high, exclusive of the basement. Although intended chiefly for the reception and entertainment of strangers and travellers, it contains, or rather will contain, a splendid suite of apartments for the particular accommodation of the prophet Joe Smith, and his heirs and descendants for ever. The privilege of this accommodation he pretends was granted to him by the Lord, in a special revelation, on account of his services to the Church. It is most extraordinary that the Americans, imbued with democratic sentiments and with such an utter aversion to hereditary privileges of any kind, could for a moment be blinded to the selfishness of the prophet, who thus easily provided for himself and his posterity a palace and a maintenance. The Mormon temple is a splendid structure of stone, quarried within the bounds of the city; its breadth is eighty feet, and its length one hundred and forty, independent of an outer court of thirty feet, making the length of the whole structure one hundred and seventy feet. In the basement of the temple is the baptisma font, constructed in imitation of the famous brazen sea of Solomon; it is supported by twelve oxen, well modelled and overlaid with gold. Upon the sides of the font, in panels, are represented various scriptural subjects, well painted. The upper story of the temple will, when finished, be used as a lodge-room for the Order Lodge and other secret societies. In the body of the temple, where it is intended that the congregation shall assemble, are two sets of pulpits, one for the priesthood, and the other for the grandees of the church. The cost of this noble edifice has been defrayed by tithing the whole Mormon church. Those who reside at Nauvoo and are able to labour, have been obliged to work every tenth day in quarrying stone, or upon the building of the temple itself. Besides the temple, there are in Nauvoo two steam saw-mills, a steam flour-mill, a tool-factory on a large scale, a foundry, and a company of considerable wealth, from Staffordshire, have also established there a manufacture of English china. The population of the holy city itself is rather a mixed kind. The general gathering of the saints has, of course, brought together men of all classes and characters. The great majority of them are uneducated and unpolished people, who are undoubtedly sincere believers in the prophet and his doctrines. A great proportion of them consist of converts from the English manufacturing districts, who were easily persuaded by Smith's missionaries to exchange their wretchedness at home for ease and plenty in the promised land. These men are devotedly attached to the prophet's will, and obey his orders as they would those of God himself. These aliens can, by the law of Illinois, vote after six months' residence in the state, and they consequently vote blindly, giving their votes according to the will of Joe Smith. To such an extent does his will influence them, that at the election in Nauvoo (1842) there were but six votes against the candidates he supported. Of the Mormons, I believe the majority to be ignorant, deluded men, really and earnestly devoted to their new religion. But their leaders are men of intellect, who profess Mormonism because of the wealth, titles [see note 1], rank, and power which it procures them. As a military position, Nauvoo, garrisoned by twenty or thirty thousand fanatics, well armed and well supplied with provisions, would be most formidable. It is unapproachable upon any side but the east, and there the nature of the ground (boggy) offers great obstacles to any besieging operations. It is Smith's intention, to congregate his followers there, until he accumulates a force that can defy anything that can be brought against him. Nauvoo is a Hebrew word, and signifies a beautiful habitation for a man, carrying with it the idea of rest. It is not, however, considered by the Mormons as their final home, but as a resting-place; they only intend to remain there till they have gathered a force sufficient to enable them to conquer Independence (Missouri), which, according to them, _is one of the most fertile, pleasant, and desirable countries on the face of the earth, possessing a soil unsurpassed by any region_. Independence they consider their Zion, and they there intend to rear their great temple, the corner stone of which is already laid. There is to be the great gathering-place for all the saints, and, in that delightful and healthy country, they expect to find their Eden and build their New Jerusalem. What passed between Joe Smith and myself I feel not at liberty to disclose; in fact, publicity would interfere with any future plans. I will only say, that the prophet received me with the greatest cordiality, and confirmed the offers which his agents had made to me when I was among the Comanches. When, however, I came to the point, and wished to ascertain whether the Mormons would act up to the promises of their leaders, I perceived, to my great disappointment, that the means at least, for the present--the operative means--were not yet ready to be put in motion. According to him, the Foxes, Osages, Winnebegoes, Sioux, and Mennomonie Indians would act for him at a moment's notice; and, on my visiting the Foxes to ascertain the truth of these assertions, I discovered that they had indeed promised to do so, provided that, previously, the Mormons should have fulfilled certain promises to them, the performance of which I knew was not yet in the power of the Mormons. In the meanwhile, I heard from Joe Smith himself how God had selected him to obtain and be the keeper of the divine bible; and the reader will form his own idea of Joe Smith by the narrative. The day appointed was the 22nd of September, and Joe told me that on that day-- "He arose early in the morning, took a one-horse waggon of some one that had staid overnight at his house, and, accompanied by his wife, repaired to the hill which contained the book. He left his wife in the waggon by the road, and went alone to the hill, a distance of thirty or forty rods. He then took the book out of the ground, hid it in a tree top, and returned home. The next day he went to work for some time in the town of Macedon, but about ten days afterwards, it having been suggested that some one had got his book, his wife gave him notice of it; upon which, hiring a horse, he returned home in the afternoon, staid just time enough to drink a cup of tea went in search of his book, found it safe, took off his frock, wrapt it round his treasure, put it under his arm, and ran all the way home, a distance of about two miles. He said he should think that, being written on plates of gold, it weighed sixty pounds, but, at all events, was sure it was not less than forty. On his return he was attacked by two men in the woods, knocked them both down, made his escape, and arrived safe at home with his burden." The above were the exact words of Smith, to which he adds, somewhere in his translation of the book, that had it not been for the supernatural virtues of the stone he carried with him, virtues which endowed him with divine strength and courage, he would never have been able to undergo the fatigues and conquer the obstacles he encountered during that frightful night. Thus Smith gets possession of his precious manuscript. But, alas 'tis written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Joe calls to his assistance the wonderful stone, "the gift of God," and peeping hastily through it, he sees an angel pointing somewhere towards _a miraculous pair of spectacles_!!! Yes, two polished pieces of crystal were the humble means by which the golden plates were to be rendered comprehensible. By the bye, the said spectacles are a heavy, ugly piece of workmanship of the last century; they are silver-mounted, and bear the maker's name, plainly engraved, "Schneider, Zurich." The Book of Mormon was published in the year 1830. Since that period its believers and advocates have propagated its doctrines and absurdities with a zeal worthy of a better cause. Through every State of the Union, and in Canada, the apostles of this wild delusion have disseminated its principles and duped thousands to believe it true. They have crossed the ocean, and in England have made many converts; recently some of their missionaries have been sent to Palestine. Such strenuous exertions having been, and still being made, to propagate the doctrines of this book, and such fruits having already appeared from the labours of its friends, it becomes a matter of some interest to investigate the history of this strange delusion, and, although it does not deserve it, treat the subject seriously. The Book of Mormon purports to be the record or history of a certain people who inhabited America previous to its discovery by Columbus. According to the book, this people were the descendants of one Lehi, who crossed the ocean from the eastern continent to that of America. Their history and records, containing prophecies and revelations, were engraven, by the command of God, on small plates, and deposited in the hill Comora, which appears to be situated in Western New York. Thus was preserved an account of this race (together with their religious creed) up to the period when the descendants of Laman, Lemuel, and Sam, who were the three eldest sons of Lehi, arose and destroyed the descendants of Nephi, who was the youngest son. From this period the descendants of the eldest sons "dwindled in unbelief," and "became a dark, loathsome, and filthy people." These last-mentioned are the present American Indians. The plates above mentioned remained in their depository until 1827, when they were found by Joseph Smith, junior, who was directed in the discovery by the angel of the Lord. On these plates were certain hieroglyphics, said to be of the Egyptian character, which Smith, by the direction of God, being instructed by inspiration as to their meaning, proceeded to translate. It will be here proper to remark, that a narrative so extraordinary as that contained in the book of Mormon, translated from hieroglyphics, of which even the most learned have but a limited knowledge, and that too, by an ignorant man, who pretended to no other knowledge of the characters than what he derived from inspiration, requires more than ordinary evidence to substantiate it. It will, therefore, be our purpose to inquire into the nature and degree of testimony which has been given to the world to substantiate the claims of this extraordinary book. In the first place, the existence of the plates themselves has ever since their alleged discovery been in dispute. On this point it would be extremely easy to give some proofs, by making an exhibition of them to the world. If they are so ancient as they are claimed to be, and designed for the purpose of transmitting the history of a people, and if they have lain for ages deposited in the earth, their appearance would certainly indicate the fact. What evidence, then, have we of the _existence_ of these plates? Why, none other than the mere _dictum_ of Smith himself and the certificates of eleven other individuals, who say that they have seen them; and upon this testimony we are required to believe this most extraordinary narrative. Now, even admitting, for the sake of argument, that these witnesses are all honest and credible men, yet what would be easier than for Smith to deceive them? Could he not easily procure plates and inscribe thereon a set of characters, no matter what, and exhibit them to the intended witnesses as genuine? What would be easier than thus to impose on their credulity and weakness? And if it were necessary to give them the appearances of antiquity, a chemical process could effect the matter. But we do not admit that these witnesses were honest; for six of them, after having made the attestation to the world that they had seen the plates, left the Church, thus contradicting that to which they had certified. And one of these witnesses, Martin Harris, who is frequently mentioned in the Book of Covenants--who was a high-priest of the Church--who was one of the most infatuated of Smith's followers--who even gave his property in order to procure the publication of the Book of Mormon, afterwards seceded from the Church. Smith, in speaking of him in connection with others, said that they were so far beneath contempt, that a notice of them would be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make. Some of the Mormons have said that a copy of the plates was presented to Professor Anthon, a gentleman standing in the first rank as a classical scholar, and that he attested to the faithfulness of the translation of the Book of Mormon. Now, let us read what the professor himself has to say on this matter. In a letter recently published he expresses himself thus:-- "Many years ago, the precise date I do not now recollect, a plain-looking countryman called upon me, with a letter from Dr Samuel L. Mitchell, requesting me to examine and give my opinion upon a certain paper, marked with various characters, which the doctor confessed he could not decipher, and which the bearer of the note was very anxious to have explained. A very brief examination of the paper convinced me that it was not only a mere hoax, but a very clumsy one. The characters were arranged in columns, like the Chinese mode of writing, and presented the most singular medley I ever beheld. Greek, Hebrew, and all sorts of letters, more or less distorted, either through unskilfulness or from actual design, were intermingled with sundry delineations of half-moons, stars, and other natural objects, and the whole ended in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac. The conclusion was irresistible, that some cunning fellow had prepared the paper in question, for the purpose of imposing upon the countryman who brought it, and I told the man so, without any hesitation. He then proceeded to give me the history of the whole affair, which convinced me that he had fallen into the hands of some sharper, while it left me in great astonishment at his simplicity." The professor also states that he gave his opinion in writing to the man, that "the marks on the paper appeared to be merely an imitation of various alphabetic characters, and had no meaning at all connected with them." The following letter, which I received, relative to the occupation of Joe Smith, as a treasure-finder, will probably remind the reader of the character of Dousterswivel, in Walter Scott's tale of the Antiquary. One could almost imagine that either Walter Scott had borrowed from Joe, or that Joe had borrowed from the great novelist. "I first became acquainted with Joseph Smith, senior, and his family, in 1820. They lived at that time in Palmyra, about one mile and a half from my residence. A great part of their time was devoted to digging for money: especially in the night-time, when, they said, the money could be most easily obtained. I have heard them tell marvellous tales respecting the discoveries they have made in their peculiar occupation of money-digging. They would say, for instance, that in such and such a place, in such a hill, or a certain man's farm, there were deposited kegs, barrels, and hogsheads of coined silver and gold, bars of gold, golden images, brass kettles filled, with gold and silver, gold candlesticks, swords, etcetera, etcetera. They would also say, that nearly all the hills in this part of New York were thrown by human hands, and in them were large caves, which Joseph, junior, could see, by placing a stone of singular appearance in his hat, in such a manner as to exclude all light; at which time they pretended he could see all things within and under the earth; that he could spy within the above-mentioned caves large gold bars and silver plates; that he could also discover the spirits in whose charge these treasures were, clothed in ancient dresses. At certain times, these treasures could be obtained very easily; at others, the obtaining of them was difficult. The facility of approaching them depended in a great measure on the state of the moon. New moon and Good Friday, I believe, were regarded as the most favourable times for obtaining these treasures. These tales, of course, I regarded as visionary. However, being prompted by curiosity, I at length accepted their invitation to join them in their nocturnal excursions. I will now relate a few incidents attending these nocturnal excursions. "Joseph Smith, senior, came to me one night, and told me that Joseph, junior, had been looking in his stone, and had seen, not many rods from his house, two or three kegs of gold and silver, some feet under the surface of the earth, and that none others but the elder Joseph and myself could get them. I accordingly consented to go, and early in the evening repaired to the place of deposit. Joseph, senior, first made a circle, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter: `This circle,' said he, `contains the treasure.' He then stuck in the ground a row of witch-hazel sticks around the said circle, for the purpose of keeping off the evil spirits. Within this circle he made another, of about eight or ten feet in diameter. He walked around three times on the periphery of this last circle, muttering to himself something I could not understand. He next stuck a steel rod in the centre of the circles, and then enjoined profound silence, lest we should arouse the evil spirit who had the charge of these treasures. After we had dug a trench of about five feet in depth around the rod, the old man, by signs and motions asked leave of absence, and went to the house to inquire of the son the cause of our disappointment. He soon returned, and said, that Joe had remained all the time in the house, looking in his stone and watching the motions of the evil spirit; that he saw the spirit come up to the ring, and as soon as it beheld the cone which we had formed around the rod, it caused the money to sink. We then went into the house, and the old man observed that we had made a mistake in the commencement of the operation; `If it had not been for that,' said he, `we should have got the money.' "At another time, they devised a scheme by which they might satiate their hunger with the flesh of one of my sheep. They had seen in my flock of sheep a large, fat, black wether. Old Joseph and one of the boys came to me one day, and said, that Joseph, junior, had discovered some very remarkable and valuable treasures, which could be procured only in one way. That way was as follows:--that a black sheep should be taken on the ground where the treasures were concealed; that, after cutting its throat, it should be led around a circle while bleeding; this being done, the wrath of the evil spirit would be appeased, the treasures could then be obtained, and my share of them would be four-fold. To gratify my curiosity, I let them have the sheep. They afterwards informed me that the sheep was killed pursuant to commandment; but, as there was some mistake in the process, it did not have the desired effect. This, I believe, is the only time they ever made money-digging a profitable business. They, however, had constantly around them a worthless gang, whose employment it was to dig for money at night, and who, during day, had more to do with mutton than money. "When they found that the better classes of people of this vicinity would no longer put any faith in their schemes for digging money, they then pretended to find a gold bible, of which they said the Book of Mormon was only an introduction. This latter book was at length fitted for the press. No means were taken by any individual to suppress its publication; no one apprehended danger from a book originating with individuals who had neither influence, honesty, nor honour. The two Josephs and Hiram promised to shew me the plates after the Book of Mormon was translated; but afterwards, they pretended to have received an express commandment, forbidding them to shew the plates. Respecting the manner of obtaining and translating the Book of Mormon, their statements were always discordant. The elder Joseph would say, that he had seen the plates, and that he knew them to be gold; at other times he would say they looked like gold; and at other times he asserted he had not seen the plates at all. "I have thus briefly stated a few of the facts, in relation to the conduct and character of this family of Smiths; probably sufficient has been stated without my going into detail. "WILLIAM STAFFORD." The following is a curious document from one of the very individuals who printed the Mormon Bible:-- "Having noticed in a late number of the _Signs of the Times_, a notice of a work entitled `Mormon Delusions and Monstrosities,' it occurred to me that it might, perhaps, be of service to the cause of truth to state one circumstance, relative to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, which occurred during its publication, at which time I was a practical printer and engaged in the office where it was printed, and became familiar with the men and their principles, through whose agency it was `got up.' "The circumstance alluded to was as follows:--We had heard much said by Martin Harris, the man who paid for the printing, and the only one in the concern worth any property, about the wonderful wisdom of the translators of the mysterious plates, and we resolved to test their wisdom. Accordingly, after putting one sheet in type, we laid it aside, and told Harris it was lost, and there would be a serious defection in the book in consequence, unless another sheet, like the original, could be produced. The announcement threw the old gentleman into great excitement; but, after few a moments' reflection, he said he would try to obtain another. After two or three weeks, another sheet was produced, but no more like the original than any other sheet of paper would have been, written over by a common schoolboy, after having read, as they had, the manuscript preceding and succeeding the lost sheet. As might be expected, the disclosure of this trick greatly annoyed the authors, and caused no little merriment among those who were acquainted with the circumstance. As we were none of us _Christians_, and only laboured for the `gold that perisheth,' we did not care for the delusion, only so far as to be careful to avoid it ourselves and enjoy the hoax. _Not one_ of the hands in the office where the wonderful book was printed ever became a convert to the system, although the writer of this was often assured by Harris, that if he did not, he would be destroyed in 1832. "T.N.S. TUCKER." GROTON, MAY 23, 1842. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. As I have mentioned the word _titles_: I must make myself understood. There are certain classes of individuals in the United States who, by their own fortune, education, and social position, could not be easily brought over to Mormonism. Joe Smith, as a founder of a sect, has not only proved himself a great man, but that he perfectly understands his countrymen, and, above all, their greediness for any kind of distinction which can nominally raise them above the common herd, for it is a fact that no people hate the word equality more than the American. Joe Smith has instituted titles, dignities, and offices corresponding to those of the governments in the Old World. He has not yet dared to make himself a king, but he has created a nobility that will support him when he thinks proper to assume the sovereign title. Thus he has selected individuals expressly to take care of the Church, these form the order of the Templars, with their grand masters, etcetera. He has organised a band of soldiers, called _Danites_, a sacred battalion--the _celeres_ of Romulus--these are all _comites_ or counts; their chiefs are _conductors_, or dukes. Then follow the pontiffs, the bishops, etcetera, etcetera. This plan has proved to answer well, as it has given to Mormonism many wealthy individuals from the eastern states, who accepted the titles and came over to Europe to act as emissaries from Joe, under the magnificent titles of Great Commander, prince of Zion, Comte de Jerusalem, Director of the Holy College, etcetera, etcetera. CHAPTER FORTY THREE. Let us now examine into the political views of the Mormons, and follow Smith in his lofty and aspiring visions of sovereignty for the future. He is a rogue and a swindler,--no one can doubt that; yet there is something grand in his composition. Joe, the mean, miserable, half-starved money-digger of western New York, was, as I have before observed, cast in the mould of conquerors, and out of that same clay which Nature had employed for the creation of a Mahomet. His first struggle was successful; the greater portion of his followers surrounded him in Kirkland, and acknowledged his power, as that of God's right hand; while many individuals from among the better classes repaired to him, attracted by the ascendency of a bold genius, or by the expectation of obtaining a share in his fame, power, and glory. Kirkland, however, was an inland place; there, on every side, Smith had to contend with opposition; his power was confined and his plans had not sufficient room for development. He turned his mind towards the western borders of Missouri: it was but a thought; but with him, rapid action was as much a natural consequence of thought as thunder is of lightning. Examine into the topography of that country, the holy Zion and promised land of the Mormons, and it will be easy to recognise the fixed and unchangeable views of Smith, as connected with the formation of a vast empire. For the last twelve or fifteen years the government of the United States has, through a mistaken policy, been constantly engaged in sending to the western borders all the eastern Indian tribes that were disposed to sell their land, and also the various tribes who, having rebelled against their cowardly despotism, had been overpowered and conquered during the struggle. This gross want of policy is obvious. Surrounded and demoralised by white men, the Indian falls into a complete state of _decadence_ and _abrutissement_. Witness the Choctaw tribes that hover constantly about Mobile and New Orleans; the Winnebegoes, who have of late come into immediate contact with the settlers of Wisconsin; the Pottawatomies, on both shores of Lake Michigan; the Miamis of North Indiana, and many more. On the contrary, the tribes on the borders, or in the wilderness, are on the increase. Of course, there are a few exceptions, such as the Kansas, or the poor Mandans, who have lately been almost entirely swept away from the earth by the small-pox. Some of the smaller tribes may be destroyed by warfare, or they may incorporate themselves with others, and thus lose their name and nationality; but the increase of the Indian population is considerable among the great uncontrolled nations; such as the Chippewas and Dahcotahs (Siouxes), of the north United States; the Comanches and the Pawnees, on the boundaries, or even in the very heart, of Texas; the Shoshones (Snakes), on the southern limits of Oregon; and the brave Apaches of Sonora, those bold Bedouins of the Mexican deserts, who, constantly on horseback, wander, in immense phalanxes, from the eastern shores of the Gulf of California to the very waters of the Rio Grande. Admitting, therefore, as a fact, that the tribes on the borders do increase, in the same ratio with their material strength, grows also their invincible, stern, and unchangeable hatred towards the American. In fact, more or less, they have all been ill-treated and abused, and every additional outrage to one tribe is locked up in the memory of all, who wait for the moment of retaliation and revenge. In the Wisconsin war (Black Hawk, 1832), even after the poor starved warriors had surrendered themselves by treaty, after a noble struggle, more than two hundred old men, women, and children were forced by the Americans to cross the river without boats or canoes. The poor things endeavoured to pass it with the help of their horses; the river there was more than half a mile broad, and while these unfortunates were struggling for life against a current of nine miles an hour, they were treacherously shot in the water. This fact is known to all the tribes--even to the Comanches, who are so distant. It has satisfied them as to what they may expect from those who thus violate all treaties and all faith. The remainder of that brave tribe is now dwelling on the west borders of Ioway, but their wrongs are too deeply dyed with their own blood to be forgotten even by generations, and their cause is ready to be espoused by every tribe, even those who have been their hereditary enemies; for what is, after all, their history but the history of almost every Indian nation transplanted on the other side of the Mississippi? This belt of Indian tribes, therefore, is rather an unsafe neighbour, especially in the event of a civil war or of a contest with England. Having themselves, by a mistaken policy, collected together a cordon of offended warriors, the United States will some day deplore, when too late, their former greediness, cowardice, and cruelty towards the natural owners of their vast territories. It is among these tribes that Joe Smith wishes to lay the foundation of his future empire; and settling at Independence, he was interposing as a neutral force between two opponents, who would, each of them, have purchased his massive strength and effective energy with the gift of supremacy over an immense and wealthy territory. As we have seen, chance and the fortune of war have thrown Smith and the Mormons back on the eastern shores of the Mississippi, opposite the entrance of Desmoines river; but when forced back, the Mormons were an unruly and turbulent crowd, without means or military tactics; now, such is not the case. Already, the prophet has sent able agents over the river; the Sacs and Foxes, the same tribe we have just spoken of as the much-abused nation of Wisconsin, and actually residing at about eighty miles North North West from Nauvoo, besides many others, are on a good understanding with the Latter-day Saints. A few bold apostles of Mormonism have also gone to the far, far west, among the unconquered tribes of the prairies, to organise an offensive power, ever ready for action. Thus, link after link, Smith extends his influence, which is already felt in Illinois, in Iowa, in Missouri, at Washington, and at the very foot of the Rocky Mountains. Moreover, hundreds of Mormons, without avowing their creed, have gone to Texas, and established themselves there. They save all their crops, and have numerous cattle and droves of horses, undoubtedly to feed and sustain a Mormon army on any future invasion. Let us now examine further into this cunning and long-sighted policy, and we shall admire the great genius that presides over it. We are not one of those, so common in these days, who have adopted the _nil admirari_ for their motto. Genius, well or ill guided, is still genius; and if we load with shame the former life of Smith and his present abominable religious impositions, still we are bound to do justice to that conquering spirit which can form such vast ideas, and work such a multitude to his will. The population of Texas does not amount to seventy thousand souls, among whom there are twenty-five different forms of religion. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are scoundrels, who have there sought a refuge against the offended laws of their country. They are not only a curse and a check to civilisation, but they reflect dishonour upon the remaining third portion of the Texians, who have come from distant climes for the honest purposes of trade and agriculture. This mongrel and mixed congregation of beings, though firmly united in one point (war with Mexico, and that in the expectation of a rich plunder), are continually at variance on other points. Three thousand Texians would fight against Mexico, but not two hundred against the Mormons; and that for many reasons: government alone, and not an individual, would be a gainer by a victory in Texas, not a soul cares for any thing but himself. Besides, the Mormons are Yankees, and can handle a rifle, setting aside their good drilling and excellent discipline. In number, they would also have the advantage; while I am now writing, they can muster five thousand well-drilled soldiers, and, in the event of an invasion of Texas, they could easily march ten thousand men from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, from the Red River to the Gulf of Mexico. Opposition they will not meet. A year after the capture, the whole of Texas becomes Mormon, while Joe--king, emperor, Pharaoh, judge or regenerator--rules over a host of two hundred and fifty thousand devoted subjects. Let our reader observe that these are not the wild utopias of a heated imagination. No; we speak as we do believe, and our intercourse with the Mormons, during our travels, has been sufficiently close to give us a clear insight into their designs for the future. Joe's policy is, above all, to conciliate the Indians, and that once done, there will not be in America a power capable of successfully opposing him. In order to assist this he joins them in his new faith. In admitting the Indians to be the "right, though guilty," descendants of the sacred tribes, he flatters them with an acknowledgment of their antiquity, the only point on which a white can captivate and even blind the shrewd though untutored man of the wilds. In explanation of the plans and proceedings of Joe Smith and the Mormons, it may not be amiss to make some remarks upon the locality which he has designed as the seat of his empire and dominion, and where he has already established his followers, as the destined instruments of his ambition. According to the Mormon prophets, the whole region of country between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies was, at a period of about thirteen hundred years ago, densely peopled by nations descended from a Jewish family, who emigrated from Jerusalem in the time of the prophet Jeremiah, some six or seven hundred years before Christ; immense cities were founded, and sumptuous edifices reared, and the whole land overspread with the results of a high and extensive civilisation. The Book of Mormon speaks of cities with stupendous stone walls, and of battles, in which hundreds of thousands were slain. The land afterwards became a waste and howling wilderness, traversed by a few straggling bands or tribes of savages, descended from a branch of the aforesaid Jewish family, who, in consequence of their wickedness, had their complexion changed from white to red; but the emigrants from Europe and their descendants, having filled the land, and God having been pleased to grant a revelation by which is made known the true history of the past in America, and the events which are about to take place, he has also commanded the Saints of the Latter Day to assemble themselves together there, and occupy the land which was once held by the members of the true church. The states of Missouri and Illinois, and the territory of Iowa, are the regions to which the prophet has hitherto chiefly directed his schemes of aggrandisement, and which are to form the nucleus of the Mormon empire. The remaining states are to be _licked up_ like salt, and fall before the sweeping falchion of glorious prophetic dominion, like the defenceless lamb before the mighty king of the forest. I have given the results of my notes taken relative to the Mormons, not, perhaps, in very chronological order, but as I gathered them from time to time. The reader will agree with me, that the subject is well worth attention. Absurd and ridiculous as the creed may be, no creed ever, in so short a period, obtained so many or such devoted proselytes. From information I have since received, they may now amount to three hundred thousand; and they have wealth, energy, and unity--they have every thing in their favour; and the federal government has been so long passive, that I doubt if it has the power to disperse them. Indeed, to obtain their political support, they have received so many advantages, and, I may say, such assistance, that they are now so strong, that any attempt to wrest from them the privileges which have been conceded would be the signal for a general rising. They have fortified Nauvoo; they can turn out a disciplined force as large as the States are likely to oppose to them, and, if successful, can always expect the co-operation of seventy thousand Indians, or, if defeated, a retreat among them, which will enable them to coalesce for a more fortunate opportunity of action. Neither do I imagine that the loss of their leader, Joe Smith, would now much affect their strength; there are plenty to replace him, equally capable, not perhaps to have formed the confederacy, religious and political, which he has done, but to uphold it, now that it is so strong. The United States appear to me to be just now in a most peculiar state of progression, and very soon the eyes of the whole world will be directed towards them and the result of their institutions. A change is about to take place; what that change will be, it is difficult to say; but a few years will decide the question. CHAPTER FORTY FOUR. Having now related the principal events which I witnessed, or in which I was an actor, both in California and in Texas, as these countries are still new and but little known (for, indeed, the Texians themselves know nothing of their inland country), I will attempt a topographical sketch of these regions, and also make some remarks upon the animals which inhabit the immense prairies and mountains of the wilderness. Along the shores of the Pacific Ocean, from the 42 degrees down to the 34 degrees North, the climate is much the same; the only difference between the winter and summer being that the nights of the former season are a little chilly. The causes of this mildness in the temperature are obvious. The cold winds of the north, rendered sharper still by passing over the snows and ices of the great northern lakes, cannot force their passage across the rocky chain south of the latitude 44 degrees North, being prevented by a belt of high mountains or by impenetrable forests. To the eastward, on the contrary, they are felt very severely; not encountering any kind of obstacles, they sweep their course to the very shores of the Gulf of Mexico, so that in 26 degrees North latitude, on the southern boundaries of Texas, winter is still winter; that is to say, fire is necessary in the apartments during the month of January, and flannel and cloth dresses are worn; while, on the contrary, the same month on the shores of the Pacific, up to 40 degrees, is mild enough to allow strangers from the south, and even the Sandwich islanders, to wear their light nankeen trowsers and gingham round-abouts. There is also a wide difference between the two coasts of the continent during summer. In Upper California and the Shoshone territory, although the heat, from the rays of the sun, is intense, the temperature is so cooled both by the mountain and sea-breeze, as never to raise the mercury to more than 95 degrees Fahrenheit, even in San Diego, which lies under the parallel of 32 degrees 39 minutes; while in the east, from 27 degrees in South Texas, and 30 degrees at New Orleans, up to 49 degrees upon Lake Superior, the mercury rises to 100 degrees every year, and frequently 105 degrees, 107 degrees in Saint Louis, in Prairie du Chien, Green Bay. Saint Anthony's Falls, and the Lake Superior. The _resume_ of this is simply that the climate of the western coast of America is the finest in the world, with an air so pure that during the intense heat of summer a bullock, killed, cleansed, and cut into slices, will keep for months without any salting nor smoking. Another cause which contributes to render these countries healthy and pleasant to live in is, that there are, properly speaking, no swamps, marshes, nor bayous, as in the United States, and in the neighbourhood of Acapulco and West Mexico. These lakes and bayous drying during summer, and exposing to the rays of the sun millions of dead fish, impregnate the atmosphere with miasma, generating typhus, yellow fever, dysenteries, and pulmonary diseases. If the reader will look over the map I have sketched of the Shoshone country, he will perceive how well the land is watered; the lakes are all transparent and deep, the rivers run upon a rocky bottom as well as all the brooks and creeks, the waters of which are always cool and plentiful. One more observation to convince the reader of the superiority of the clime is, that, except a few ants in the forests, there are no insects whatever to be found. No mosquitoes, no prairie horse-flies, no beetles, except the coconilla or large phosphoric fly of California, and but very few worms and caterpillars; the consequence is, that there are but two or three classes of the smaller species of carnivorous birds; the large ones such as the common and red-headed vulture and crow, are very convenient, fulfilling the office of general scavengers in the prairies, where every year thousands of wild cattle die, either from fighting, or, when in the central deserts, from the want of water. On the western coast, the aspect of the country, in general, is gently diversified; the monotony of the prairies in the interior being broken by islands of fine timber, and now and then by mountains projecting boldly from their bases. Near the seashore the plains are intersected by various ridges of mountains, giving birth to thousands of small rapid streams, which carry their cool and limpid waters to the many tributaries of the sea, which are very numerous between the mouth of the Calumet and Buonaventura. Near to the coast lies a belt of lofty pines and shady odoriferous magnolias, which extends in some places to the very beach and upon the high cliffs, under which the shore is so bold that the largest man-of-war could sail without danger. I remember to have once seen, above the bay of San Francisco, the sailors of a Mexican brig sitting on the ends of their topsail yards, and picking the flowers from the branches of the trees as they glided by. In that part of the country, which is intersected by mountains, the soil is almost every where mineral, while the mountains themselves contain rich mines of copper. I know of beds of galena extending for more than a hundred miles; and, in some tracts, magnesian earths cover an immense portion of the higher ridges. Most of the sandy streams of the Shoshone territory contain a great deal of gold-dust, which the Indians collect twice a year and exchange away with the Mexicans, and also with the Arrapahoes. The principal streams containing gold are tributaries to the Buonaventura, but there are many others emptying into small lakes of volcanic formation. The mountains in the neighbourhood of the Colorado of the West, and in the very country of the Arrapahoes, are full of silver, and perhaps no people in the world can shew a greater profusion of this bright metal than these Indians. The Shoshone territory is of modern formation, at least in comparison with the more southern countries where the Cordillieres and the Andes project to the very shores of the ocean. It is evident that the best portion of the land, west of the Buonaventura, was first redeemed from the sea by some terrible volcanic eruption. Until about two centuries ago, or perhaps less, these subterranean fires have continued to exercise their ravages, raising prairies into mountains, and sinking mountains and forests many fathoms below the surface of the earth; their sites now marked by lakes of clear and transparent water, frequently impregnated with a slight, though not unpleasant, taste of sulphur; while precious stones, such as topazes, sapphires, large blocks of amethysts, are found every day in the sand and among the pebbles on their borders. In calm days I have often seen, at a few fathoms deep, the tops of pine trees still standing in their natural perpendicular position. In the southern streams are found emeralds of very fine water; opals also are very frequently met with. The formation of the rocks is in general basaltic, but white, black, and green marble, red porphyry, jasper, red and grey granite, abound east of the Buonaventura. Quartz, upon some of the mountains near the sea-shore, is found in immense blocks and principally in that mountain range which is designated in the map as the "Montagne du Monstre," at the foot of which were dug up the remains of the huge Saurian Lizard. The greater portion of the country is, of course, prairie; these prairies are covered with blue grass, muskeet grass, clovers, sweet prairie hay, and the other grasses common to the east of the continent of America. Here and there are scattered patches of plums of the green-gage kind, berries, and a peculiar kind of shrub oaks, never more than five feet high, yet bearing a very large and sweet acorn; ranges of hazel nuts will often extend thirty or forty miles, and are the abode of millions of birds of the richest and deepest dyes. Along the streams which glide through the prairies, there is a luxuriant growth of noble timber, such as maple, magnolia, blue and green ash, red oak, and cedar, around which climb vines loaded with grapes. Near the sea-shores, the pine, both black and white, becomes exceedingly common, while the smaller plains and hills are covered with that peculiar species of the prickly pear upon which the cochineal insect feeds. All round the extinguished volcano, and principally in the neighbourhood of the hill Nanawa Ashtajueri e, the locality of our settlement upon the banks of the Buonaventura, the bushes are covered with a very superior quality of the vanilla bean. The rivers and streams, as well as the lakes of the interior, abound with fish; in the latter, the perch, trout, and carp are very common; in the former, the salmon and white-cat fish, the soft-shelled tortoise, the pearl oyster, the sea-perch (Lupus Maritimes), the ecrevisse, and hundred families of the "crevette species," offer to the Indian a great variety of delicate food for the winter. In the bays along the shore, the mackerel and bonita, the turtle, and, unfortunately, the sharks, are very numerous; while on the shelly beach, or the fissures of the rocks, are to be found lobsters, and crabs of various sorts. The whole country offers a vast field to the naturalist; the most common birds of prey are the bald, the white-headed eagle, the black and the grey, the falcon, the common hawk, the epervier, the black and red-headed vulture, the raven and the crow. Among the granivorous, the turkey, the wapo (a small kind of prairie ostrich), the golden and common pheasant, the wild peacock, of a dull whitish colour, and the guinea-fowl; these two last, which are very numerous, are not indigenous to this part of the country, but about a century ago escaped from the various missions of Upper California, at which they had been bred, and since have propagated in incredible numbers; also the grouse, the prairie hen, the partridge, the quail, the green parrot, the blackbird, and many others which I cannot name, not knowing their generic denomination. The water-fowls are plentiful, such as swans, geese, ducks of many different species, and the Canadian geese with their long black necks, which, from November to March, graze on the prairies in thousands. The quadrupeds are also much diversified. First in rank, among the grazing animals, I may name the mustangs, or wild horses, which wander in the natural pastures in herds of hundreds of thousands. They vary in species and size, according to the country where they are found, but these found in California, Senora, and the western district of Texas, are the finest breed in the world. They were imported from Andalusia by the Spaniards, almost immediately after the conquest of Grenada, the Bishop of Leon having previously, by his prayers, exorcised the devil out of their bodies. Mr Catlin says, that in seeing the Comanche horse, he was much disappointed; it is likely, Mr Catlin having only visited the northern borders of Texas, and the poorest village of the whole Comanche tribe. If, however, he had proceeded as far as the Rio Puerco, he would have seen the true Mecca breed, with which the Moslems conquered Spain. He would have also perceived how much the advantages of a beautiful clime and perpetual pasture has improved these noble animals, making them superior to the primitive stock, both in size, speed, and bottom. With one of them I made a journey of five thousand miles, and on arriving in Missouri, I sold him for eight hundred dollars. He was an entire horse, as white as snow, and standing seventeen and a half hands high. One thousand pounds would not have purchased him in England. Next, the lordly buffaloes, the swift wild-goat the deer, the antelope, the elk, the prairie dogs, the hare, and the rabbits. The carnivorous are the red panther, or puma [see note 1], the spotted leopard, the ounce, the jaguar, the grizzly black and brown bear, the wolf, black, white and grey: the blue, red, and black fox, the badger, the porcupine, the hedgehog, and the coati (an animal peculiar to the Shoshone territory, and Upper California), a kind of mixture of the fox and wolf breed, fierce little animals with bushy tails and large heads, and a quick, sharp bark. The amphibious are the beaver, the fresh-water and sea otter; the musk-rat, and a species of long lizard, with sharp teeth, very like the cayman as regards the head and tail, but with a very short body. It is a very fierce animal, killing whatever it attacks, dwelling in damp, shady places, in the juncks, upon the borders of some lakes, and is much dreaded by the Indians; fortunately, it is very scarce. The Shoshones have no particular name for it, but would sooner attack a grizzly bear than this animal, which they have a great dread of, sometimes calling it the evil spirit, sometimes the scourge, and many other such appellations. It has never yet been described by any naturalist, and I never yet saw one dead, although I have heard of their having been killed. In Texas, the country presents two different aspects, much at variance with each other, the eastern borders and sea-coast being only a continuation of the cypress swamps, mud creeks, and cane-brakes of south Arkansas, and west Louisiana; while, on the contrary, the north and west offer much the same topography as that of the countries I have just delineated. The climate in Texas is very healthy two hundred miles from the sea, and one hundred west of the Sabine, which forms the eastern boundary of Texas; but to the east and south the same diseases and epidemics prevail as in Louisiana, Alabama, and the Floridas. The whole of Texas is evidently of recent formation, all the saline prairies east of the Rio Grande being even now covered with shells of all the species common to the Gulf of Mexico, mixed up with skeletons of sharks, and now and then with petrified turtle, dolphin, rock fish, and bonitas. A few feet below the surface, and hundreds of miles distant from the sea, the sea-sand is found; and although the ground seems to rise gradually as it recedes from the shores, the southern plains are but a very little elevated above the surface of the sea until you arrive at thirty degrees north, when the prairies begin to assume an undulating form, and continually ascend till, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, they acquire a height of four and five thousand feet above the level of the sea. Texas does not possess any range of mountains with the exception that, one hundred miles north from San Antonio de Bejar, the San Seba hills rise and extend themselves in a line parallel with the Rocky Mountains, as high as the green peaks in the neighbourhood of Santa Fe. The San Seba hills contain several mines of silver, and I doubt not that this metal is very common along the whole range east of the Rio Grande. Gold is also found in great quantities in all the streams tributary to the Rio Puerco, but I have never heard of precious stones of any kind. Excepting the woody districts which border Louisiana and Arkansas, the greater proportion of Texas is prairie; a belt of land commences upon one of the bends of the river Brasos, spreads northward to the very shores of the Red River, and is called by the Americans "The Cross timbers;" its natural productions, together with those of the prairies, are similar to those of the Shoshone country. Before the year 1836, and I dare say even now, the great western prairies of Texas contained more animals and a greater variety of species than any other part of the world within the same number of square miles; and I believe that the Sunderbunds in Bengal do not contain monsters more hideous and terrible than are to be found in the eastern portion of Texas, over which nature appears to have spread a malediction. The myriads of snakes of all kinds, the unaccountable diversity of venomous reptiles, and even the deadly tarantula spider or "vampire" of the prairies, are trifles compared with the awful inhabitants of the eastern bogs, swamps, and muddy rivers. The former are really dangerous only during two or three months of the year, and, moreover, a considerable portion of the trails are free from their presence, owing to the fires which break out in the dry grass almost every fall. There the traveller knows what he has to fear, and, independent of the instinct and knowledge of his horse, he himself keeps an anxious look-out, watching the undulating motion of the grass, and ever ready with his rifle or pistols in the event of his being confronted with bears, pumas, or any other ferocious quadruped. If he is attacked, he can fight, and only few accidents have ever happened in these encounters, as these animals always wander alone, with the exception of the wolf, from whom, however, there is but little to fear, as, in the prairies, this animal is always glutted with food and timid at the approach of man. As the prairie wolf is entirely different from the European, I will borrow a page of Ross Cox, who, having had an opportunity of meeting it, gives a very good description of its manners and ways of living. Yet as this traveller does not describe the animal itself, I will add, that the general colour of the prairie wolf is grey mixed with black, the ears are round and straight, it is about forty inches long, and possesses the sagacity and cunning of the fox. "The prairie wolves," says Cox, "are much smaller than those which inhabit the woods. They generally travel together in numbers, and a solitary one is seldom met with. Two or three of us have often pursued from fifty to one hundred, driving them before us as quickly as our horses could charge. "Their skirts are of no value, and we do not therefore waste much powder and ball in shooting them. The Indians, who are obliged to pay dear for their ammunition, are equally careful not to throw it away on objects that bring no remunerating value. The natural consequence is, that the wolves are allowed to multiply; and some parts of the country are completely overrun by them. The Indians catch numbers of them in traps, which they set in the vicinity of those places where their tame horses are sent to graze. The traps are merely excavations covered over with slight switches and hay, and baited with meat, etcetera, into which the wolves fall, and being unable to extricate themselves, they perish by famine or the knife of the Indian. These destructive animals annually destroy numbers of horses, particularly during the winter season, when the latter get entangled in the snow, in which situation they become an easy prey to their light-footed pursuers, ten or fifteen of which will often fasten on one animal, and with their long fangs in a few minutes separate the head from the body. If, however, the horses are not prevented from using their legs, they sometimes punish the enemy severely; as an instance of this, I saw one morning the bodies of two of our horses which had been killed the night before, and around were lying eight dead and maimed wolves; some with their brains scattered about, and others with their limbs and ribs broken by the hoofs of the furious animals in their vain attempts to escape from their sanguinary assailants." Although the wolves of America are the most daring of all the beasts of prey on that continent, they are by no means so courageous or ferocious as those of Europe, particularly in Spain or the south of France, in which countries they commit dreadful ravages both on man and beast; whereas a prairie wolf, except forced by desperation, will seldom or never attack a human being. I have said that the danger that attends the traveller in the great prairies is trifling; but it is very different in the eastern swamps and mud-holes, where the enemy, ever on the watch, is also always invisible, and where the speed of the horse and the arms of the rider are of no avail, for they are then swimming in the deep water, or splashing, breast-deep, in the foul mud. Among these monsters of the swamps and lagoons of stagnant waters, the alligator ranks the first in size and voracity; yet man has nothing to fear from him; and though there are many stories among the cotton planters about negroes being carried away by this immense reptile, I do firmly believe that few human beings have ever been seized alive by the American alligator. But although harmless to man, the monster is a scourge to all kinds of animals, and principally to dogs and horses. It often happens that a rider loses his track through a swamp or a muddy cane-brake, and then, if a new comer in East Texas, he is indubitably lost. While his poor steed is vainly struggling in a yielding mass of mud, he will fall into a hole, and before he can regain his footing, an irresistible force will drag him deeper and deeper, till smothered. This force is the tail of the alligator, with which this animal masters its prey, no matter how strong or heavy, when once within its reach. M. Audubon has perfectly described its power: I will repeat his words:-- "The power of the alligator is in its great strength, and the chief means of its attack or defence is its large tail, so well contrived by nature to supply his wants, or guard him from danger, that it reaches, when curled into a half-circle, to his enormous mouth. Woe be to him who goes within the reach of this tremendous thrashing instrument; for, no matter how strong or muscular, if human, he must suffer greatly, if he escape with life. The monster, as he strikes with this, forces all objects within the circle towards his jaws, which, as the tail makes a motion, are opened to their full stretch, thrown a little sideways to receive the object, and, like battering-rams, to bruise it shockingly in a moment." Yet, as I have said, the alligator is but little formidable to man. In Western Louisiana and Eastern Texas, where the animal is much hunted for the sake of his grease, with which the planters generally oil the machinery of their mills, little negroes are generally sent into the woods, during the fall, "grease-making" as at that season the men are better employed in cotton-picking or storing the maize. No danger ever happens to the urchins during these expeditions, as, keeping within the sweep of the tail, they contrive to chop it off with an axe. M. Audubon says:-- When autumn has heightened the colouring of the foliage of our woods, and the air feels more rarefied during the nights and the early part of the day, the alligators leave the lakes to seek for winter-quarters, by burrowing under the roots of trees, or covering themselves simply with earth along their edges. They become then very languid and inactive, and, at this period, to sit or ride on one would not be more difficult than for a child to mount his wooden rocking-horse. The negroes, who now kill them, put all danger aside by separating at one blow with an axe, the tail from the body. They are afterwards cut up in large pieces, and boiled whole in a good quantity of water, from the surface of which the fat is collected with large ladles. One single man kills oftentimes a dozen or more of large alligators in the evening, prepares his fire in the woods, where he has erected a camp for the purpose, and by morning has the oil extracted. As soon as the rider feels his horse sinking, the first movement, if an inexperienced traveller, is to throw himself from the saddle, and endeavour to wade or to swim to the cane-brakes, the roots of which give to the ground a certain degree of stability. In that case, his fate is probably sealed, as he is in immediate danger of the "cawana." This is a terrible and hideous monster, with which, strange to say, the naturalists of Europe are not yet acquainted, though it is too well known to all the inhabitants of the streams and lagoons tributary to the Red River. It is an enormous turtle or tortoise, with the head and tail of the alligator, not retractile, as is usual among the different species of this reptile; the shell is one inch and a half thick, and as impenetrable as steel. It lies in holes in the bottom of muddy rivers or in the swampy cane-brakes, and measures often ten feet in length and six in breadth over the shell, independent of the head and tail, which must give often to this dreadful monster the length of twenty feet. Such an unwieldy mass is not, of course, capable of any rapid motion; but in the swamps I mention they are very numerous, and the unfortunate man or beast going astray, and leaving for a moment the small patches of solid ground, formed by the thicker clusters of the canes, must of a necessity come within the reach of one of these powerful creature's jaws, always extended and ready for prey. Cawanas of a large size have never been taken alive, though often, in draining the lagoons, shells have been found measuring twelve feet in length. The planters of Upper Western Louisiana have often fished to procure them for scientific acquaintances, but, although they take hundreds of the smaller ones, they could never succeed to drag on shore any of the large ones after they have been hooked, as these monsters bury their claws, head, and tail so deep in the mud, that no power short of steam can make them relinquish their hold. Some officers of the United States army and land surveyors, sent on the Red River by the government at Washington for a month, took up their residence at Captain Finn's. One day, when the conversation had fallen upon the cawana, it was resolved that a trial should be made to ascertain the strength of the animal. A heavy iron hand-pike was transformed by a blacksmith into a large hook, which was fixed to an iron chain belonging to the anchor of a small-boat, and as that extraordinary fishing-tackle was not of a sufficient length, they added to it a hawser, forty fathoms in length and of the size of a woman's wrist. The hook was baited with a lamb a few days old, and thrown into a deep hole ten yards from the shore, where Captain Finn knew that one of the monsters was located; the extremity of the hawser was made fast to an old cotton-tree. Late in the evening of the second day, and as the rain poured down in torrents, a negro slave ran to the house to announce that the bait had been taken, and every one rushed to the river side. They saw that, in fact, the hawser was in a state of tension, but the weather being too bad to do any thing that evening, they put it off till the next morning. A stout horse was procured, who soon dragged the hawser from the water till the chain became visible, but all further attempts of the animal were in vain; after the most strenuous exertion, the horse could not conquer the resistance or gain a single inch. The visitors were puzzled, and Finn then ordered one of the negroes to bring a couple of powerful oxen, yoked to a gill, employed to drag out the stumps of old trees. For many minutes the oxen were lashed and goaded in vain; every yarn of the hawser was strained to the utmost, till, at last, the two brutes, uniting all their strength in one vigorous and final pull, it was dragged from the water, but the monster had escaped. The hook had straightened and to its barb were attached pieces of thick bones and cartilages, which must have belonged to the palate of the monster. The unfortunate traveller has but little chance of escaping with life, if, from want of experience, he is foundered in the swampy cane-brakes. When the horse sinks and the rider leaves the saddle, the only thing he can do is to return back upon his track; but let him beware of these solitary small patches of briars, generally three or four yards in circumference, which are spread here and there on the edges of the cane-brakes, for there he will meet with deadly reptiles and snakes unknown in the prairies; such as the grey-ringed water mocassin, the brown viper, the black congo with red head and the copper head, all of whom congregate and it may be said make their nests in these little dry oases, and their bite is followed by instantaneous death. These are the dangers attending travellers in the swamps, but there are many others to be undergone in crossing lagoons, rivers, or small lakes. All the streams, tributaries of the Sabine and of the Red River below the great bend (which is twenty miles north of the Lost Prairie), have swampy banks and muddy bottoms, and are impassable when the water is too low to permit the horses to swim. Some of these streams have ferries, and some lagoons have floating bridges in the neighbourhood of the plantations; but as it is a new country, where government has as yet done nothing, these conveniences are private property, and the owner of a ferry, not being bound by a contract, ferries only when he chooses and at the price he wishes to command. I will relate a circumstance which will enable the reader to understand the nature of the country, and the difficulties of overland travelling in Texas. The great Sulphur Fork is a tributary of the Red River, and it is one of the most dangerous. Its approach can only be made on both sides through belts of swampy cane-brakes, ten miles in breadth, and so difficult to travel over, that the length of the two swamps, short as it is, cannot be passed by a fresh and strong horse in less than fourteen hours. At just half-way of this painful journey the river is to be passed, and this cannot be done without a ferry, for the moment you leave the canes, the shallow water begins, and the bottom is so soft, that any object touching it must sink to a depth of several fathoms. Till 1834, no white man lived in that district, and the Indians resorted to it only during the shooting season, always on foot and invariably provided with half-a-dozen of canoes on each side of the stream for their own use or for the benefit of travellers. The Texians are not so provident nor so hospitable. As the white population increased in that part of the country, a man of the name of Gibson erected a hut on the southern bank of the stream, constructed a flat-boat, and began ferrying over at the rate of three dollars a head. As the immigration was very extensive, Gibson soon grew independent, and he entered into a kind of partnership with the free bands which were already organised. One day, about noon, a land speculator presented himself on the other side of the river, and called for the ferry. At that moment the sky was covered with dark and heavy clouds, and flashes of lightning succeeded each other in every direction; in fact, every thing proved that the evening would not pass without one of those dreadful storms so common in that country during the months of April and May. Gibson soon appeared in his boat, but instead of casting it loose, he entered into a conversation. "Where do you come from, eh?" "From the settlements," answered the stranger. "You've a ticklish, muddish kind of a river to pass." "Aye," replied the other, who was fully aware of it. "And a blackish, thunderish, damned storm behind you, I say." The traveller knew that too, and as he believed that the conversation could as well be carried on while crossing over, he added: "Make haste, I pray, my good man; I am in a hurry, and I should not like to pass the night here in these canes for a hundred dollars." "Nor I, for a thousand," answered Gibson. "Well, stranger, what will you give me to ferry you over?" "The usual fare, I suppose--two or three dollars." "Why, that may do for a poor man in fine weather, and having plenty of time to spare, but I be blessed if I take you for ten times that money now that you are in so great a hurry and have such a storm behind." The traveller knew at once he had to deal with a blackguard, but as he was himself an Arkansas man of the genuine breed, he resolved to give him a "Roland for an Oliver." "It is a shameful imposition," he cried; "how much do you want after all?" "Why, not a cent less than fifty dollars." The stranger turned his horse round, as if he would go back but, after a few moments, he returned again. "Oh," he cried, "you are a rogue, and take the opportunity of my being in so great a hurry. I'll give you what you want, but mind I never will pass this road again, and shall undoubtedly publish your conduct in the Arkansas newspapers." Gibson chuckled with delight; he had humbugged a stranger and did not care a fig for all the newspapers in the world; so he answered, "Welcome to do what you please;" and, untying the boat, he soon crossed the stream. Before allowing the stranger to enter the ferry, Gibson demanded the money, which was given to him under the shape of five ten-dollar notes, which he secured in his pocket, and then rowed with all his might. On arriving on the other side, the stranger led his horse out of the boat, and while Gibson was stooping down to fix the chain, he gave him a kick on the temple, which sent him reeling and senseless in his boat; then taking back his own money, he sprung upon his saddle, and passing before the cabin, he gently advised Gibson's wife to go and see, for her husband had hurt himself a little in rowing. These extortions are so very frequent, and now so well known, that the poorer classes of emigrants never apply for the ferries, but attempt the passage just as they can, and when we call to mind that the hundreds of cases which are known and spoken of must be but a fraction of those who have disappeared without leaving behind the smallest clue of their former existence and unhappy fate, the loss of human life within the last four or five years must have been awful. Besides the alligator and the cawana, there are in these flyers many other destructive animals of a terrible appearance, such as the devil jack diamond fish, the saw fish, the horn fish, and, above all, the much dreaded gar. The first of these is often taken in summer in the lakes and bayous, which, deprived of water for a season, are transformed into pastures; these lakes, however, have always a channel or deeper part, and there the devil jack diamond has been caught, weighing four hundred pounds and upwards. The saw fish is peculiar to the Mississippi and its tributaries, and varies in length from four to eight feet. The horn fish is four feet long, with a bony substance on his upper jaw, strong, curved, and one foot long, which he employs to attack horses, oxen, and even alligators, when pressed by hunger. But the gar fish is the most terrible among the American ichthyology, and a Louisiana writer describes it in the following manner:-- "Of the gar fish there are numerous varieties. The alligator gar is sometimes ten feet long, and is voracious, fierce, and formidable, even to the human species. Its dart in rapidity equals the flight of a bird; its mouth is long, round, and pointed, thick set with sharp teeth; its body is covered with scale so hard as to be impenetrable by a rifle-bullet, and which, when dry, answers the purposes of a flint in striking fire from steel; its weight is from fifty to four hundred pounds, and its appearance is hideous; it is, in fact, the shark of rivers, but more terrible than the shark of the sea, and is considered far more formidable than the alligator himself." It is, in fact, a most terrible animal. I have seen it more than once seizing its prey, and dragging it down with the rapidity of an arrow. One day while I was residing at Captain Finn's upon the Red River, I saw one of these monsters enter a creek of transparent water. Following him for curiosity, I soon perceived that he had not left the deep water without an inducement, for just above me there was an alligator devouring an otter. As soon as the alligator perceived his formidable enemy, he thought of nothing but escape to the shore; he dropped his prey and began to climb, but he was too slow for the gar fish, who, with a single dart, closed upon it with extended jaws, and seized it by the middle of the body. I could see plainly through the transparent water, and yet I did not perceive that the alligator made the least struggle to escape from the deadly fangs; there was a hissing noise as that of shells and bones crushed, and the gar fish left the creek with his victim in his jaws, so nearly severed in two, that the head and tail were towing on each side of him. Besides these, the traveller through rivers and bayous has to fear many other enemies of less note, and but little, if at all, known to naturalists. Among these is the mud vampire, a kind of spider leech, with sixteen short paws round a body of the form and size of the common plate; the centre of the animal (which is black in any other part of the body) has a dark vermilion round spot, from which dart a quantity of black suckers, one inch and a half long, through which they extract the blood of animals; and so rapid is the phlebotomy of this ugly reptile, that though not weighing more than two ounces in its natural state, a few minutes after it is stuck on, it will increase to the size of a beaver hat, and weigh several pounds. Thus leeched in a large stream, a horse will often faint before he can reach the opposite shore, and he then becomes a prey to the gar fish; if the stream is but small, and the animal is not exhausted, he will run madly to the shore and roll to get rid of his terrible blood-sucker, which, however, will adhere to him, till one or the other of them dies from exhaustion, or from repletion. In crossing the Eastern Texas bayous, I used always to descend from my horse to look if the leeches had stuck; the belly and the breast are the parts generally attacked, and so tenacious are these mud vampires, that the only means of removing them is to pass the blade of a knife under them and cut them off. But let us leave these disgusting animals, and return to the upland woods and prairies, where nature seems ever smiling, and where the flowers, the birds, and harmless quadrupeds present to the eye a lively and diversified spectacle. One of the prettiest _coups d'oeil_ in the world is to witness the gambols and amusements of a herd of horses, or a flock of antelopes. No kitten is more playful than these beautiful animals, when grazing undisturbed in the prairies; and yet those who, like the Indian, have time and opportunity to investigate, will discover vices in gregarious animals, hitherto attributed solely to man. It would appear that, even among animals, where there is a society, there is a tyrant and pariah. On board vessels, in a school, or any where, if man is confined in space, there will always be some one lording over the others, either by his mere brutal strength or by his character; and, as a consequence, there is also another, who is spurned, kicked, and beaten by his companions, a poor outcast, whom every body delights in insulting and trampling upon; it is the same among gregarious brutes. Take a flock of buffaloes or horses, or of antelopes; the first glance is always sufficient to detect the two contrasts. Two of the animals will stand apart from the herd, one proudly looking about, the other timid and cast down; and every minute some will leave their grazing, go and shew submission, and give a caress to the one, and a kick or a bite to the other. Such scenes I have often observed, and I have also witnessed the consequence, which is, that the outcast eventually commits suicide, another crime supposed to be practised only by reasoning creatures like ourselves. I have seen horses, when tired of their pariah life, walk round and round large trees, as if to ascertain the degree of hardness required; they have then measured their distance, and darting with furious speed against it, fractured their skull, and thus got rid of life and oppression. I remember a particular instance; it was at the settlement. I was yet a boy, and during the hotter hours of the day, I used to take my books and go with one of the missionaries to study near a torrent, under the cool shade of a magnolia. All the trees around us were filled with numerous republics of squirrels, scampering and jumping from branch to branch, and, forgetful of every thing else, we would sometimes watch their sport for hours together. Among them we had remarked one, who kept solitary between the stems of an absynth shrub, not ten yards from our usual station. There he would lie motionless for hours basking in the sun, till some other squirrels would perceive him. Then they would jump upon him, biting and scratching till they were tired, and the poor animal would offer no resistance, and only give way to his grief by plaintive cries. At this sight, the good Padre did not lose the opportunity to inculcate a lesson, and after he had finished speaking, he would strike his hands together to terrify the assailants. "Yes," observed I, using his own words, "it is nature." "Alas! no," he would reply; "'tis too horrible to be nature; it is only one of the numerous evils generated from society." The Padre was a great philosopher, and he was right. One day, while we were watching this pariah of a squirrel, we detected a young one slowly creeping through the adjoining shrubs; he had in his mouth a ripe fruit, a parcimon, if I remember right. At every moment he would stop and look as if he were watched, just as if he feared detection. At last he arrived near the pariah, and deposited before him his offering to misery and old age. We watched this spectacle with feelings which I could not describe; there was such a show of meek gratitude in the one and happiness in the other, just as if he enjoyed his good action. They were, however, perceived by the other squirrels, who sprang by dozens upon them; the young one with two bounds escaped, the other submitted to his fate. I rose, all the squirrels vanished except the victim; but that time, contrary to his habits, he left the shrub and slowly advanced to the bank of the river, and ascended a tree. A minute afterwards we observed him at the very extremity of a branch projecting over the rapid waters, and we heard his plaintive shriek. It was his farewell to life and misery; he leaped into the middle of the current, which in a moment carried him to the shallow water a little below. In spite of his old age, the Padre waded into the stream and rescued the suicide. I took it home with me, fed it well, and in a short time its hair had grown again thick and glossy. Although left quite free, the poor animal never attempted to escape to the woods, and he had become so tame, that every time I mounted my horse, he would jump upon me and accompany me on my distant excursions. Eight or ten months afterwards he was killed by a rattle-snake, who surprised him sleeping upon my blanket, during one of our encampments. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. The puma, or red panther, is also called "American lion," "cougar," and in the Western states, "catamount." It was once spread all over the continent of America, and is even now found, although very rarely, as far north as Hudson's Bay. No matter under what latitude, the puma is a sanguinary animal; but his strength, size, and thirst of blood, vary with the clime. I have killed this animal in California, in the Rocky Mountains, in Texas, and in Missouri; in each of these places it presented quite a different character. In Chili, it has the breadth and limbs approaching to those of the African lion; to the far north, it falls away in bulk, until it is as thin and agile as the hunting leopard. In Missouri and Arkansas, the puma will prey chiefly upon fowls and young pigs; it will run away from dogs, cows, horses, and even from goats. In Louisiana and Texas, it will run from man, but it fights the dogs, tears the horse, and kills the cattle, even the wild buffalo, merely for sport. In the Anahuar, Cordillieres, and Rocky Mountains, it disdains to fly, becomes more majestic in its movements, and faces its opponents, from the grizzly bear to a whole company of traders; yet it will seldom attack unless when cubbing. In Senora and California it is even more ferocious. When hungry, it will hunt by the scent, like the dog, with its nose on the ground. Meeting a frail, it follows it at the rate of twenty miles an hour, till it can pounce upon a prey; a single horseman, or an army, a deer, or ten thousand buffaloes, it cares not, it attacks every thing. I did not like to interrupt my narrative merely to relate a puma adventure but during the time that I was with the Comanches, a Mexican priest, who had for a long time sojourned as instructor among the Indians, arrived in the great village on his way to Saint Louis, Missouri, where he was proceeding on clerical affairs. The Comanches received him with affection, gave him a fresh mule, with new blankets, and mustered a small party to accompany him to the Wakoes Indians. The Padre was a highly talented man, above the prejudices of his cast; he had lived the best part of his life in the wilderness among the wild tribes on both sides of the Anahuar, and had observed and leaned enough to make him love "these children of nature." So much was I pleased with him, that I offered to command the party which was to accompany him. My request was granted, and having provided ourselves with a long tent and the necessary provisions, we started on our journey. Nothing remarkable happened till we arrived at the great chasm I have already mentioned, when, our provisions being much reduced, we pitched the tent on the very edge of the chasm, and dedicated half a day to hunting and grazing our horses. A few deer were killed, and to avoid a nocturnal attack from the wolves, which were very numerous, we hung the meat upon the cross pole inside of the tent. The tent itself was about forty feet long, and about seven in breadth; large fires were lighted at the two ends, piles of wood were gathered to feed them during the night, and an old Indian and I took upon us the responsibility of keeping the fires alive fill the moon should be up. These arrangements being made, we spread our buffalo-hides, with our saddles for pillows, and, as we were all exhausted, we stretched ourselves, if not to sleep, at least to repose. The _Padre_ amused me, during the major portion of my watch, in relating to me his past adventures, when he followed the example of all the Indians, who were all sound asleep, except the one watching at the other extremity of the tent. This Indian observed to me, that the moon would rise in a couple of hours, and that, if we were to throw a sufficient quantity of fuel on the fire, we could also sleep without any fear. I replenished the fuel, and, wrapping myself in my blanket, I soon fell asleep. I awoke suddenly, thinking I had heard a rubbing of some body against the canvass outside of the tent. My fire was totally extinguished, but, the moon having risen, gave considerable light. The hour of danger had passed. As I raised my head, I perceived that the fire at the other opening of the tent was also nearly extinguished; I wrapt myself still closer, as the night had become cool, and soon slept as soundly as before. Once more I was awakened, but this time there was no delusion of the senses, for I felt a heavy pressure on my chest. I opened my eyes, and could scarcely refrain from crying out, when I perceived that the weight which had thus disturbed my sleep was nothing less than the hind paw of a large puma. There he stood, his back turned to me, and seeming to watch with great avidity a deer-shoulder suspended above his head. My feelings at that moment were anything but pleasant; I felt my heart beating high; the smallest nervous movement, which perhaps I could not control, would divert the attention of the animal, whose claws would then immediately enter my flesh. I advanced my right hand towards the holster, under my head, to take one of my pistols, but the holsters were buttoned up, and I could not undo them, as this would require a slight motion of my body. At last I felt the weight sliding down my ribs fill it left me; and I perceived, that in order to take a better leap at the meat, the puma had moved on a little to the left, but in so doing one of his fore paws rested upon the chest of the _Padre_. I then obtained one of the pistols, and was just in the act of cocking it under my blanket, when I heard a mingled shriek and roar. Then succeeded a terrible scuffling. A blanket was for a second rolled over me; the canvass of the tent was burst open a foot above me; I heard a heavy fall down the chasm; the _Padre_ screamed again; by accident I pulled the trigger and discharged my pistol, and the Indians, not knowing what was the matter, gave a tremendous war-whoop. The scenes I have described in so many lines was performed in a few seconds. It was some time before we could recover our senses and inquire into the matter. It appeared, that at the very moment the puma was crouching to take his leap, the _Padre_ awaking, gave the scream: this terrified the animal, who dashed through the canvass of the tent above me with the _Padre's_ blanket entangled in his claws. Poor _Padre_! he had fainted, and continued senseless till daylight, when I bled him with my penknife. Fear had produced a terrible effect upon him, and his hair, which the evening before was as black as jet, had now changed to the whiteness of snow. He never recovered, notwithstanding the attention shewn to him by the Indians who accompanied him to Saint Louis. Reason had forsaken its seat, and, as I leaned some time afterwards, when, being in Saint Louis, I went to the mission to inquire after him, he died two days after his arrival at the Jesuits' college. As to the puma, the Indians found it dead at the bottom of the chasm, completely wrapped in the blanket, and with most of its bones broken. THE END. 
37116	----	* * * * * Transcriber's Note: This is a faithful reproduction of the original work with the exception of changes listed at the end. Also: Notation: Words in italics are indicated _like this_. But the publisher also wanted to emphasize names in sentences already italicized, so he printed them in the regular font which is indicated here with: _The pirates then went to =Hispaniola=._ Superscripts are indicated like this: S^{ta} Maria. Footnotes are located near the end of the work. * * * * * HISTORY OF THE BUCCANEERS OF AMERICA. By JAMES BURNEY, F.R.S. CAPTAIN IN THE ROYAL NAVY. London: _Printed by Luke Hansard & Sons, near Lincoln's-Inn Fields;_ FOR PAYNE AND FOSS, PALL-MALL. 1816. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. _Considerations on the Rights acquired by the Discovery of Unknown Lands, and on the Claims advanced by the Spaniards._ CHAP. II. _Review of the Dominion of the =Spaniards= in =Hayti= or =Hispaniola=._ Page Hayti, or Hispaniola, the Land on which the Spaniards first settled in America 7 Government of Columbus 9 Dogs made use of against the Indians 10 Massacre of the Natives, and Subjugation of the Island 11 Heavy Tribute imposed 12 City of Nueva Ysabel, or Santo Domingo 14 Beginning of the Repartimientos 16 Government of Bovadilla _ib._ The Natives compelled to work the Mines 17 Nicolas Ovando, Governor _ib._ Working the Mines discontinued 18 The Natives again forced to the Mines 19 Insurrection in Higuey 20 Encomiendas established _ib._ Africans carried to the West Indies 21 Massacre of the People of Xaragua 22 Death of Queen Ysabel 23 Desperate condition of the Natives 24 The Grand Antilles 26 Small Antilles, or Caribbee Islands _ib._ Lucayas, or Bahama Islands _ib._ The Natives of the Lucayas betrayed to the Mines 27 Fate of the Natives of Porto Rico 28 D. Diego Columbus, Governor _ib._ Increase of Cattle in Hayti. Cuba 29 De las Casas and Cardinal Ximenes endeavour to serve the Indians 30 Cacique Henriquez _ib._ Footnotes CHAP. III. _Ships of different European Nations frequent the =West Indies=. Opposition experienced by them from the Spaniards. Hunting of Cattle in =Hispaniola=._ Adventure of an English Ship 32 The French and other Europeans resort to the West Indies 33 Regulation proposed in Hispaniola, for protection against Pirates _ib._ Hunting of Cattle in Hispaniola 34 Matadores _ib._ Guarda Costas 35 Brethren of the Coast 36 CHAP. IV. _Iniquitous Settlement of the Island =Saint Christopher= by the =English= and =French=. =Tortuga= seized by the Hunters. Origin of the name =Buccaneer=. The name =Flibustier=. Customs attributed to the =Buccaneers=._ The English and French settle on Saint Christopher 38 Are driven away by the Spaniards 40 They return 41 Tortuga seized by the Hunters 41 Whence the Name Buccaneer 42 the Name Flibustier 43 Customs attributed to the Buccaneers 45 CHAP. V. _Treaty made by the Spaniards with Don =Henriquez=. Increase of English and French in the =West Indies=. =Tortuga= surprised by the Spaniards. Policy of the English and French Governments with respect to the Buccaneers. =Mansvelt=, his attempt to form an independent Buccaneer Establishment. French West-India Company. =Morgan= succeeds =Mansvelt= as Chief of the Buccaneers._ Cultivation in Tortuga 48 Increase of the English and French Settlements in the West Indies _ib._ Tortuga surprised by the Spaniards 49 Is taken possession of for the Crown of France 51 Policy of the English and French Governments with respect to the Buccaneers 52 The Buccaneers plunder New Segovia 53 The Spaniards retake Tortuga _ib._ With the assistance of the Buccaneers the English take Jamaica 54 The French retake Tortuga _ib._ Pierre le Grand, a French Buccaneer _ib._ Alexandre 55 Montbars, surnamed the Exterminator _ib._ Bartolomeo Portuguez _ib._ L'Olonnois, and Michel le Basque, take Maracaibo and Gibraltar 55 Outrages committed by L'Olonnois _ib._ Mansvelt, a Buccaneer Chief, attempts to form a Buccaneer Establishment 56 Island S^{ta} Katalina, or Providence; since named Old Providence _ib._ Death of Mansvelt 57 French West-India Company _ib._ The French Settlers dispute their authority 58 Morgan succeeds Mansvelt; plunders Puerto del Principe _ib._ Maracaibo again pillaged 59 Morgan takes Porto Bello: his Cruelty _ib._ He plunders Maracaibo and Gibraltar 60 His Contrivances to effect his Retreat 61 CHAP. VI. _Treaty of =America=. Expedition of the Buccaneers against =Panama=. Exquemelin's History of the American Sea Rovers. Misconduct of the European Governors in the =West Indies=._ Treaty between Great Britain and Spain 63 Expedition of the Buccaneers against Panama 64 They take the Island S^{ta}. Katalina 65 Attack of the Castle at the River Chagre _ib._ Their March across the Isthmus 66 The City of Panama taken 67 And burnt 68 The Buccaneers depart from Panama 69 Exquemelin's History of the Buccaneers of America 71 Flibustiers shipwrecked at Porto Rico; and put to death by the Spaniards 73 CHAP. VII. _=Thomas Peche.= Attempt of =La Sound= to cross the =Isthmus of America=. Voyage of =Antonio de Vea= to the =Strait of Magalhanes=. Various Adventures of the Buccaneers, in the =West Indies=, to the year 1679._ Thomas Peche 75 La Sound attempts to cross the Isthmus _ib._ Voyage of Ant. de Vea 76 Massacre of the French in Samana 77 French Fleet wrecked on Aves 77 Granmont _ib._ Darien Indians 79 Porto Bello surprised by the Buccaneers _ib._ CHAP. VIII. _Meeting of Buccaneers at the =Samballas=, and =Golden Island=. Party formed by the English Buccaneers to cross the =Isthmus=. Some Account of the Native Inhabitants of the =Mosquito Shore=._ Golden Island 81 Account of the Mosquito Indians 82 CHAP. IX. _Journey of the Buccaneers across the =Isthmus of America=._ Buccaneers commence their March 91 Fort of S^{ta} Maria taken 95 John Coxon chosen Commander 96 They arrive at the South Sea 97 CHAP. X. _First Buccaneer Expedition in the =South Sea=._ In the Bay of Panama 98 Island Chepillo _ib._ Battle with a small Spanish Armament _ib._ Richard Sawkins 99 Panama, the new City 100 Coxon returns to the West Indies 101 Richard Sawkins chosen Commander _ib._ Taboga; Otoque 102 Attack of Pueblo Nuevo 103 Captain Sawkins is killed _ib._ Imposition practised by Sharp 104 Sharp chosen Commander 105 Some return to the West Indies _ib._ The Anchorage at Quibo _ib._ Island Gorgona 106 Island Plata 107 Adventure of Seven Buccaneers _ib._ Ilo 109 Shoals of Anchovies _ib._ La Serena plundered and burnt _ib._ Attempt of the Spaniards to burn the Ship of the Buccaneers _ib._ Island Juan Fernandez 110 Sharp deposed from the Command 111 Watling elected Commander _ib._ William, a Mosquito Indian, left on the Island Juan Fernandez 112 Island Yqueque; Rio de Camarones 113 They attack Arica _ib._ Are repulsed; Watling killed 114 Sharp again chosen Commander 115 Huasco; Ylo _ib._ The Buccaneers separate 116 Proceedings of Sharp and his Followers _ib._ They enter a Gulf 118 Shergall's Harbour 119 Another Harbour _ib._ The Gulf is named the English Gulf _ib._ Duke of York's Islands 120 A Native killed by the Buccaneers 121 Native of Patagonia carried away _ib._ Passage round Cape Horn 122 Appearance like Land, in 57° 50' S. _ib._ Ice Islands _ib._ Arrive in the West Indies 123 Sharp, and others, tried for Piracy _ib._ CHAP. XI. _Disputes between the French Government and their West-India Colonies. =Morgan= becomes Deputy Governor of =Jamaica=. =La Vera Cruz= surprised by the Flibustiers. Other of their Enterprises._ Prohibitions against Piracy disregarded by the French Buccaneers 125-6 Sir Henry Morgan, Deputy Governor of Jamaica 126 His Severity to the Buccaneers _ib._ Van Horn, Granmont, and De Graaf, go against La Vera Cruz 127 They surprise the Town by Stratagem 127 Story of Granmont and an English Ship 128 Disputes of the French Governors with the Flibustiers of Saint Domingo 130 CHAP. XII. _Circumstances which preceded the Second Irruption of the Buccaneers into the =South Sea=. Buccaneers under =John Cook= sail from =Virginia=; stop at the =Cape de Verde Islands=; at =Sierra Leone=. Origin and History of the Report concerning the supposed Discovery of =Pepys Island=._ Circumstances preceding the Second Irruption of the Buccaneers into the South Sea 132 Buccaneers under John Cook 134 Cape de Verde Islands 135 Ambergris; The Flamingo _ib._ Coast of Guinea 136 Sherborough River 137 John Davis's Islands _ib._ History of the Report of a Discovery named Pepys Island _ib._ Shoals of small red Lobsters 140 Passage round Cape Horne _ib._ CHAP. XIII. _Buccaneers under =John Cook= arrive at =Juan Fernandez=. Account of =William=, a Mosquito Indian, who had lived there three years. They sail to the =Galapagos Islands=; thence to the Coast of =New Spain=. =John Cook= dies. =Edward Davis= chosen Commander._ The Buccaneers under Cook joined by the Nicholas of London, John Eaton 141 At Juan Fernandez 142 William the Mosquito Indian _ib._ Juan Fernandez first stocked with Goats by its Discoverer 143 Appearance of the Andes _ib._ Islands Lobos de la Mar _ib._ At the Galapagos Islands 145 Duke of Norfolk's Island _ib._ Cowley's Chart of the Galapagos 146 King James's Island _ib._ Mistake by the Editor of Dampier _ib._ Concerning Fresh Water and Herbage at the Galapagos _ib._ & 147 Land and Sea Turtle 148 Mammee Tree _ib._ Coast of New Spain; Cape Blanco 149 John Cook, Buccaneer Commander, dies _ib._ Edward Davis chosen Commander _ib._ CHAP. XIV. _=Edward Davis= Commander. On the Coast of =New Spain= and =Peru=. Algatrane, a bituminous earth. =Davis= is joined by other Buccaneers. =Eaton= sails to the =East Indies=. =Guayaquil= attempted. =Rivers of St. Jago=, and =Tomaco=. In the Bay of =Panama=. Arrivals of numerous parties of Buccaneers across the =Isthmus= from the =West Indies=._ Caldera Bay 150 Volcan Viejo 151 Ria-lexa Harbour _ib._ Bay of Amapalla 152 Davis and Eaton part company 154 Tornadoes near the Coast of New Spain 155 Cape San Francisco _ib._ Eaton's Description of Cocos Island _ib._ Point S^{ta} Elena 156 Algatrane, a bituminous Earth _ib._ Rich Ship wrecked on Point S^{ta} Elena 157 Manta; Rocks near it, and Shoal _ib._ Davis is joined by other Buccaneers _ib._ The Cygnet, Captain Swan _ib._ At Isle de la Plata 159 Cape Blanco, near Guayaquil; difficult to weather _ib._ Payta burnt 160 Part of the Peruvian Coast where it never rains _ib._ Lobos de Tierra, and Lobos de la Mar _ib._ Eaton at the Ladrones 161 Nutmeg Island, North of Luconia 163 Davis on the Coast of Peru _ib._ Slave Ships captured _ib._ The Harbour of Guayaquil 164 Island S^{ta} Clara: Shoals near it 164 Cat Fish 165 The Cotton Tree and Cabbage Tree 166 River of St. Jago _ib._ Island Gallo; River Tomaco 167 Island Gorgona _ib._ Pearl Oysters 168 Galera Isle _ib._ The Pearl Islands 169 Arrival of fresh bodies of Buccaneers from the West Indies 170 Grogniet and L'Escuyer _ib._ Townley and his Crew 171 Pisco Wine 172 Port de Pinas; Taboga 173 Chepo 174 CHAP. XV. _=Edward Davis= Commander. Meeting of the Spanish and Buccaneer Fleets in the =Bay of Panama=. They separate without fighting. The Buccaneers sail to the Island =Quibo=. The English and French separate. Expedition against the City of =Leon=. That City and =Ria Lexa= burnt. Farther dispersion of the Buccaneers._ The Lima Fleet arrives at Panama 176 Meeting of the two Fleets 177 They separate 180 Keys of Quibo: The Island Quibo 181 Rock near the Anchorage _ib._ Serpents; The Serpent Berry 182 Disagreements among the Buccaneers _ib._ The French separate from the English 183 Knight, a Buccaneer, joins Davis _ib._ Expedition against the City of Leon 184 Leon burnt by the Buccaneers 186 Town of Ria Lexa burnt 187 Farther Separation of the Buccaneers _ib._ CHAP. XVI. _Buccaneers under =Edward Davis=. At =Amapalla= Bay; =Cocos Island=; The =Galapagos= Islands; Coast of =Peru=. Peruvian Wine. =Knight= quits the =South Sea=. Bezoar Stones. Marine Productions on Mountains. =Vermejo=. =Davis= joins the French Buccaneers at =Guayaquil=. Long Sea Engagement._ Amapalla Bay 188 A hot River _ib._ Cocos Island 189 Effect of Excess in drinking the Milk of the Cocoa-nut 190 At the Galapagos Islands _ib._ On the Coast of Peru 191 Peruvian Wine like Madeira _ib._ At Juan Fernandez 192 Knight quits the South Sea _ib._ Davis returns to the Coast of Peru _ib._ Bezoar Stones 193 Marine Productions found on Mountains; Vermejo _ib._ Davis joins the French Buccaneers at Guayaquil 195 They meet Spanish Ships of War 196 A Sea Engagement of seven days _ib._ At the Island de la Plata 198 Division of Plunder 199 They separate, to return home by different Routes 200 CHAP. XVII. _=Edward Davis=; his Third visit to the =Galapagos=. One of those Islands, named =Santa Maria de l'Aguada= by the Spaniards, a Careening Place of the Buccaneers. Sailing thence Southward they discover Land. Question, whether Edward Davis's Discovery is the Land which was afterwards named =Easter Island=? =Davis= and his Crew arrive in the =West Indies=._ Davis sails to the Galapagos Islands 201 King James's Island 202 The Island S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada 203 Davis sails from the Galapagos to the Southward 205 Island discovered by Edward Davis 206 Question whether Edward Davis's Land and Easter Island are the same Land 207 At the Island Juan Fernandez 210 Davis sails to the West Indies 211 CHAP. XVIII. _Adventures of =Swan= and =Townley= on the Coast of =New Spain=, until their Separation._ Bad Water, and unhealthiness of Ria Lexa 213 Island Tangola 214 Guatulco; El Buffadore 215 Vinello, or Vanilla, a Plant 216 Island Sacrificio _ib._ Port de Angeles _ib._ Adventure in a Lagune 217 Alcatraz Rock; White Cliffs 218 River to the West of the Cliffs _ib._ Snook, a Fish _ib._ High Land of Acapulco 219 Sandy Beach, West of Acapulco _ib._ Hill of Petaplan 220 Chequetan _ib._ Estapa _ib._ Hill of Thelupan 221 Volcano and Valley of Colima _ib._ Salagua 222 Report of a great City named Oarrah _ib._ Coronada Hills 223 Cape Corrientes _ib._ Keys or Islands of Chametly form a convenient Port _ib._ Bay and Valley de Vanderas 225 Swan and Townley part company 226 CHAP. XIX. _The =Cygnet= and her Crew on the Coast of =Nueva Galicia=, and at the =Tres Marias Islands=._ Coast of Nueva Galicia 227 Point Ponteque _ib._ White Rock, 21° 51' N 228 Chametlan Isles, 23° 11' N _ib._ The Penguin Fruit _ib._ Rio de Sal, and Salt-water Lagune _ib._ The Mexican, a copious Language 229 Mazatlan _ib._ Rosario, an Indian Town; River Rosario; Sugar-loaf Hill; Caput Cavalli; Maxentelbo Rock; Hill of Xalisco 230 River of Santiago 230 Town of S^{ta} Pecaque 231 Buccaneers defeated and slain by the Spaniards 233 At the Tres Marias 234 A Root used as Food 235 A Dropsy cured by a Sand Bath _ib._ Bay of Vanderas 236 CHAP. XX. _The =Cygnet=. Her Passage across the =Pacific Ocean=. At the =Ladrones=. At =Mindanao=._ The Cygnet quits the American Coast 237 Large flight of Birds _ib._ Shoals and Breakers near Guahan _ib._ Bank de Santa Rosa 238 At Guahan _ib._ Flying Proe, or Sailing Canoe 239 Bread Fruit 241 Eastern side of Mindanao, and the Island St. John 241 Sarangan and Candigar 243 Harbour or Sound on the South Coast of Mindanao _ib._ River of Mindanao 244 City of Mindanao _ib._ CHAP. XXI. _The =Cygnet= departs from =Mindanao=. At the =Ponghou Isles=. At the =Five Islands=. =Dampier's= Account of the =Five Islands=. They are named the =Bashee Islands=._ South Coast of Mindanao 249 Among the Philippine Islands _ib._ Pulo Condore _ib._ In the China Seas 250 Ponghou Isles 250 The Five Islands _ib._ Dampier's Description of them 250-256 CHAP. XXII. _The =Cygnet=. At the =Philippines=, =Celebes=, and =Timor=. On the Coast of =New Holland=. End of the =Cygnet=._ Island near the SE end of Mindanao 257 Candigar, a convenient Cove there _ib._ Low Island and Shoal, SbW from the West end of Timor 258 NW Coast of New Holland _ib._ Bay on the Coast of New Holland 258 Natives 259 An Island in Latitude 10° 20' S 261 End of the Cygnet _ib._ CHAP. XXIII. _French Buccaneers =under François Grogniet= and =Le Picard=, to the Death of =Grogniet=._ Point de Burica; Chiriquita 263 Unsuccessful attempt at Pueblo Nuevo 265 Grogniet is joined by Townley _ib._ Expedition against the City of Granada 266 At Ria Lexa 269 Grogniet and Townley part company _ib._ Buccaneers under Townley _ib._ Lavelia taken, and set on fire 270 Battle with Spanish armed Ships 274 Death of Townley 277 Grogniet rejoins company 278 They divide, meet again, and reunite 279 Attack on Guayaquil 280 At the Island Puna 282 Grogniet dies _ib._ Edward Davis joins Le Picard 283 CHAP. XXIV. _Retreat of the =French Buccaneers= across =New Spain= to the =West Indies=. All the =Buccaneers= quit the =South Sea=._ In Amapalla Bay 286 Chiloteca; Massacre of Prisoners _ib._ The Buccaneers burn their Vessels 287 They begin their march over land 288 Town of New Segovia 289 Rio de Yare, or Cape River 291 La Pava; Straiton; Le Sage 294 Small Crew of Buccaneers at the Tres Marias. Their Adventures 295 Story related by Le Sieur Froger _ib._ Buccaneers who lived three years on the Island Juan Fernandez 296 CHAP. XXV. _Steps taken towards reducing the =Buccaneers= and =Flibustiers= under subordination to the regular Governments. War of the Grand Alliance against =France=. Neutrality of the =Island St. Christopher= broken._ Reform attempted in the West Indies 298 Campeachy burnt _ib._ Danish Factory robbed 300 The English driven from St. Christopher 301 The English retake St. Christopher 302 CHAP. XXVI. _Siege and Plunder of the City of =Carthagena= on the =Terra Firma=, by an Armament from =France= in conjunction with the =Flibustiers= of =Saint Domingo=._ Armament under M. de Pointis 303 His Character of the Buccaneers 304 Siege of Carthagena by the French 307 The City capitulates 309 Value of the Plunder 313 CHAP. XXVII. _Second Plunder of =Carthagena=. Peace of =Ryswick=, in 1697. Entire Suppression of the =Buccaneers= and =Flibustiers=._ The Buccaneers return to Carthagena 316 Meet an English and Dutch Squadron 319 Peace of Ryswick 320 Causes which led to the Suppression of the Buccaneers _ib._ Providence Island 322 CONCLUSION 323 HISTORY OF THE BUCCANEERS OF AMERICA. CHAPTER I. _Considerations on the Rights acquired by the Discovery of Unknown Lands, and on the Claims advanced by the =Spaniards=._ The accounts given by the Buccaneers who extended their enterprises to the _Pacific Ocean_, are the best authenticated of any which have been published by that class of Adventurers. They are interspersed with nautical and geographical descriptions, corroborative of the events related, and more worth being preserved than the memory of what was performed. The materials for this portion of Buccaneer history, which it was necessary should be included in a History of South Sea Navigations, could not be collected without bringing other parts into view; whence it appeared, that with a moderate increase of labour, and without much enlarging the bulk of narrative, a regular history might be formed of their career, from their first rise, to their suppression; and that such a work would not be without its use. No practice is more common in literature, than for an author to endeavour to clear the ground before him, by mowing down the labours of his predecessors on the same subject. To do this, where the labour they have bestowed is of good tendency, or even to treat with harshness the commission of error where no bad intention is manifest, is in no small degree illiberal. But all the Buccaneer histories that hitherto have appeared, and the number is not small, are boastful compositions, which have delighted in exaggeration: and, what is most mischievous, they have lavished commendation on acts which demanded reprobation, and have endeavoured to raise miscreants, notorious for their want of humanity, to the rank of heroes, lessening thereby the stain upon robbery, and the abhorrence naturally conceived against cruelty. There is some excuse for the Buccaneer, who tells his own story. Vanity, and his prejudices, without any intention to deceive, lead him to magnify his own exploits; and the reader naturally makes allowances. The men whose enterprises are to be related, were natives of different European nations, but chiefly of _Great Britain_ and _France_, and most of them seafaring people, who being disappointed, by accidents or the enmity of the Spaniards, in their more sober pursuits in the _West Indies_, and also instigated by thirst for plunder as much as by desire for vengeance, embodied themselves, under different leaders of their own choosing, to make predatory war upon the Spaniards. These men the Spaniards naturally treated as pirates; but some peculiar circumstances which provoked their first enterprises, and a general feeling of enmity against that nation on account of their American conquests, procured them the connivance of the rest of the maritime states of _Europe_, and to be distinguished first by the softened appellations of Freebooters and Adventurers, and afterwards by that of Buccaneers. _Spain_, or, more strictly speaking, _Castile_, on the merit of a first discovery, claimed an exclusive right to the possession of the whole of _America_, with the exception of the _Brasils_, which were conceded to the Portuguese. These claims, and this division, the Pope sanctioned by an instrument, entitled a Bull of Donation, which was granted at a time when all the maritime powers of _Europe_ were under the spiritual dominion of the See of _Rome_. The Spaniards, however, did not flatter themselves that they should be left in the sole and undisputed enjoyment of so large a portion of the newly-discovered countries; but they were principally anxious to preserve wholly to themselves the _West Indies_: and, such was the monopolising spirit of the Castilians, that during the life of the Queen Ysabel of _Castile_, who was regarded as the patroness of Columbus's discovery, it was difficult even for Spaniards, not subjects born of the crown of _Castile_, to gain access to this _New World_, prohibitions being repeatedly published against the admission of all other persons into the ships bound thither. Ferdinand, King of _Arragon_, the husband of Ysabel, had refused to contribute towards the outfit of Columbus's first voyage, having no opinion of the probability that it would produce him an adequate return; and the undertaking being at the expence of _Castile_, the countries discovered were considered as appendages to the crown of _Castile_. If such jealousy was entertained by the Spaniards of each other, what must not have been their feelings respecting other European nations? 'Whoever,' says Hakluyt, 'is conversant with the Portugal and Spanish writers, shall find that they account all other nations for pirates, rovers, and thieves, which visit any heathen coast that they have sailed by or looked on.' _Spain_ considered the _New World_ as what in our law books is called Treasure-trove, of which she became lawfully and exclusively entitled to take possession, as fully as if it had been found without any owner or proprietor. _Spain_ has not been singular in her maxims respecting the rights of discoverers. Our books of Voyages abound in instances of the same disregard shewn to the rights of the native inhabitants, the only rightful proprietors, by the navigators of other European nations, who, with a solemnity due only to offices of a religious nature, have continually put in practice the form of taking possession of Countries which to them were new discoveries, their being inhabited or desert making no difference. Not unfrequently has the ceremony been performed in the presence, but not within the understanding, of the wondering natives; and on this formality is grounded a claim to usurp the actual possession, in preference to other Europeans. Nothing can be more opposed to common sense, than that strangers should pretend to acquire by discovery, a title to countries they find with inhabitants; as if in those very inhabitants the right of prior discovery was not inherent. On some occasions, however, Europeans have thought it expedient to acknowledge the rights of the natives, as when, in disputing each other's claims, a title by gift from the natives has been pretended. In uninhabited lands, a right of occupancy results from the discovery; but actual and _bonâ fide_ possession is requisite to perfect appropriation. If real possession be not taken, or if taken shall not be retained, the right acquired by the mere discovery is not indefinite and a perpetual bar of exclusion to all others; for that would amount to discovery giving a right equivalent to annihilation. Moveable effects may be hoarded and kept out of use, or be destroyed, and it will not always be easy to prove whether with injury or benefit to mankind: but the necessities of human life will not admit, unless under the strong hand of power, that a right should be pretended to keep extensive and fertile countries waste and secluded from their use, without other reason than the will of a proprietor or claimant. Particular local circumstances have created objections to the occupancy of territory: for instance, between the confines of the Russian and Chinese Empires, large tracts of country are left waste, it being held, that their being occupied by the subjects of either Empire would affect the security of the other. Several similar instances might be mentioned. There is in many cases difficulty to settle what constitutes occupancy. On a small Island, any first settlement is acknowledged an occupancy of the whole; and sometimes, the occupancy of a single Island of a group is supposed to comprehend an exclusive title to the possession of the remainder of the group. In the _West Indies_, the Spaniards regarded their making settlements on a few Islands, to be an actual taking possession of the whole, as far as European pretensions were concerned. The first discovery of Columbus set in activity the curiosity and speculative dispositions of all the European maritime Powers. King Henry the VIIth, of _England_, as soon as he was certified of the existence of countries in the Western hemisphere, sent ships thither, whereby _Newfoundland_, and parts of the continent of _North America_, were first discovered. _South America_ was also visited very early, both by the English and the French; 'which nations,' the Historian of _Brasil_ remarks, 'had neglected to ask a share of the undiscovered World, when Pope Alexander the VIth partitioned it, who would as willingly have drawn two lines as one; and, because they derived no advantage from that partition, refused to admit its validity.' The _West Indies_, however, which doubtless was the part most coveted by all, seem to have been considered as more particularly the discovery and right of the Spaniards; and, either from respect to their pretensions, or from the opinion entertained of their force in those parts, they remained many years undisturbed by intruders in the _West Indian Seas_. But their homeward-bound ships, and also those of the Portuguese from the _East Indies_, did not escape being molested by pirates; sometimes by those of their own, as well as of other nations. CHAP. II. _Review of the Dominion of the =Spaniards= in =Hayti= or =Hispaniola=._ [Sidenote: 1492-3. Hayti, or Hispaniola, the first Settlement of the Spaniards in America.] The first settlement formed by the Castilians in their newly discovered world, was on the Island by the native inhabitants named _Hayti_; but to which the Spaniards gave the name of _Española_ or _Hispaniola_. And in process of time it came to pass, that this same Island became the great place of resort, and nursery, of the European adventurers, who have been so conspicuous under the denomination of the Buccaneers of _America_. The native inhabitants found in _Hayti_, have been described a people of gentle, compassionate dispositions, of too frail a constitution, both of body and mind, either to resist oppression, or to support themselves under its weight; and to the indolence, luxury, and avarice of the discoverers, their freedom and happiness in the first instance, and finally their existence, fell a sacrifice. Queen Ysabel, the patroness of the discovery, believed it her duty, and was earnestly disposed, to be their protectress; but she wanted resolution to second her inclination. The Island abounded in gold mines. The natives were tasked to work them, heavier and heavier by degrees; and it was the great misfortune of Columbus, after achieving an enterprise, the glory of which was not exceeded by any action of his contemporaries, to make an ungrateful use of the success Heaven had favoured him with, and to be the foremost in the destruction of the nations his discovery first made known to _Europe_. [Sidenote: Review of the Dominion of the Spaniards in Hispaniola.] The population of _Hayti_, according to the lowest estimation made, amounted to a million of souls. The first visit of Columbus was passed in a continual reciprocation of kind offices between them and the Spaniards. One of the Spanish ships was wrecked upon the coast, and the natives gave every assistance in their power towards saving the crew, and their effects to them. When Columbus departed to return to _Europe_, he left behind him thirty-eight Spaniards, with the consent of the Chief or Sovereign of the part of the Island where he had been so hospitably received. He had erected a fort for their security, and the declared purpose of their remaining was to protect the Chief against all his enemies. Several of the native Islanders voluntarily embarked in the ships to go to _Spain_, among whom was a relation of the _Hayti_ Chief; and with them were taken gold, and various samples of the productions of the _New World_. Columbus, on his return, was received by the Court of _Spain_ with the honours due to his heroic achievement, indeed with honours little short of adoration: he was declared Admiral, Governor, and Viceroy of the Countries that he had discovered, and also of those which he should afterwards discover; he was ordered to assume the style and title of nobility; and was furnished with a larger fleet to prosecute farther the discovery, and to make conquest of the new lands. The Instructions for his second expedition contained the following direction: 'Forasmuch as you, Christopher Columbus, are going by our command, with our vessels and our men, to discover and subdue certain Islands and Continent, our will is, that you shall be our Admiral, Viceroy, and Governor in them.' This was the first step in the iniquitous usurpations which the more cultivated nations of the world have practised upon their weaker brethren, the natives of _America_. [Sidenote: 1493. Government of Columbus.] Thus provided and instructed, Columbus sailed on his second voyage. On arriving at _Hayti_, the first news he learnt was, that the natives had demolished the fort which he had built, and destroyed the garrison, who, it appeared, had given great provocation, by their rapacity and licentious conduct. War did not immediately follow. Columbus accepted presents of gold from the Chief; he landed a number of colonists, and built a town on the North side of _Hayti_, which he named after the patroness, _Ysabel_, and fortified. [Sidenote: 1494.] A second fort was soon built; new Spaniards arrived; and the natives began to understand that it was the intention of their visitors to stay, and be lords of the country. The Chiefs held meetings, to confer on the means to rid themselves of such unwelcome guests, and there was appearance of preparation making to that end. The Spaniards had as yet no farther asserted dominion, than in taking land for their town and forts, and helping themselves to provisions when the natives neglected to bring supplies voluntarily. The histories of these transactions affect a tone of apprehension on account of the extreme danger in which the Spaniards were, from the multitude of the heathen inhabitants; but all the facts shew that they perfectly understood the helpless character of the natives. A Spanish officer, named Pedro Margarit, was blamed, not altogether reasonably, for disorderly conduct to the natives, which happened in the following manner. He was ordered, with a large body of troops, to make a progress through the Island in different parts, and was strictly enjoined to restrain his men from committing any violence against the natives, or from giving them any cause for complaint. But the troops were sent on their journey without provisions, and the natives were not disposed to furnish them. The troops recurred to violence, which they did not limit to the obtaining food. If Columbus could spare a detachment strong enough to make such a visitation through the land, he could have entertained no doubt of his ability to subdue it. But before he risked engaging in open war with the natives, he thought it prudent to weaken their means of resisting by what he called stratagem. _Hayti_ was divided into five provinces, or small kingdoms, under the separate dominion of as many Princes or Caciques. One of these, Coanabo, the Cacique of _Maguana_, Columbus believed to be more resolute, and more dangerous to his purpose, than any other of the chiefs. To Coanabo, therefore, he sent an Officer, to propose an accommodation on terms which appeared so reasonable, that the Indian Chief assented to them. Afterwards, relying on the good faith of the Spaniards, not, as some authors have meanly represented, through credulous and childish simplicity, but with the natural confidence which generally prevails, and which ought to prevail, among mankind in their mutual engagements, he gave opportunity for Columbus to get possession of his person, who caused him to be seized, and embarked in a ship then ready to sail for _Spain_. The ship foundered in the passage. [Sidenote: 1495.] The story of Coanabo, and the contempt with which he treated Columbus for his treachery, form one of the most striking circumstances in the history of the perfidious dealings of the Spaniards in _America_. [Sidenote: Dogs used in Battle against the Indians.] On the seizure of this Chief, the Islanders rose in arms. Columbus took the field with two hundred foot armed with musketry and cross-bows, with twenty troopers mounted on horses, and with twenty large dogs[1]! It is not to be urged in exculpation of the Spaniards, that the natives were the aggressors, by their killing the garrison left at _Hayti_. Columbus had terminated his first visit in friendship; and, without the knowledge that any breach had happened between the Spaniards left behind, and the natives, sentence of subjugation had been pronounced against them. This was not to avenge injury, for the Spaniards knew not of any committed. Columbus was commissioned to execute this sentence, and for that end, besides a force of armed men, he took with him from _Spain_ a number of blood-hounds, to prosecute a most unrighteous purpose by the most inhuman means. Many things are justifiable in defence, which in offensive war are regarded by the generality of mankind with detestation. All are agreed in the use of dogs, as faithful guards to our persons as well as to our dwellings; but to hunt men with dogs seems to have been till then unheard of, and is nothing less offensive to humanity than cannibalism or feasting on our enemies. Neither jagged shot, poisoned darts, springing of mines, nor any species of destruction, can be objected to, if this is allowed in honourable war, or admitted not to be a disgraceful practice in any war. It was scarcely possible for the Indians, or indeed for any people naked and undisciplined, however numerous, to stand their ground against a force so calculated to excite dread. The Islanders were naturally a timid people, and they regarded fire-arms as engines of more than mortal contrivance. Don Ferdinand, the son of Columbus, who wrote a History of his father's actions, relates an instance, which happened before the war, of above 400 Indians running away from a single Spanish horseman. [Sidenote: Massacre of the Natives, and Subjugation of the Island.] So little was attack, or valiant opposition, apprehended from the natives, that Columbus divided his force into several squadrons, to charge them at different points. 'These faint-hearted creatures,' says Don Ferdinand, 'fled at the first onset; and our men, pursuing and killing them, made such havock, that in a short time they obtained a complete victory.' The policy adopted by Columbus was, to confirm the natives in their dread of European arms, by a terrible execution. The victors, both dogs and men, used their ascendancy like furies. The dogs flew at the throats of the Indians, and strangled or tore them in pieces; whilst the Spaniards, with the eagerness of hunters, pursued and mowed down the unresisting fugitives. Some thousands of the Islanders were slaughtered, and those taken prisoners were consigned to servitude. If the fact were not extant, it would not be conceivable that any one could be so blind to the infamy of such a proceeding, as to extol the courage of the Spaniards on this occasion, instead of execrating their cruelty. Three hundred of the natives were shipped for _Spain_ as slaves, and the whole Island, with the exception of a small part towards the Western coast, which has since been named the _Cul de Sac_, was subdued. [Sidenote: Tribute imposed.] Columbus made a leisurely progress through the Island, which occupied him nine or ten months, and imposed a tribute generally upon all the natives above the age of fourteen, requiring each of them to pay quarterly a certain quantity of gold, or 25 lbs. of cotton. Those natives who were discovered to have been active against the Spaniards, were taxed higher. To prevent evasion, rings or tokens, to be produced in the nature of receipts, were given to the Islanders on their paying the tribute, and any Islander found without such a mark in his possession, was deemed not to have paid, and proceeded against. Queen Ysabel shewed her disapprobation of Columbus's proceedings, by liberating and sending back the captive Islanders to their own country; and she moreover added her positive commands, that none of the natives should be made slaves. This order was accompanied with others intended for their protection; but the Spanish Colonists, following the example of their Governor, contrived means to evade them. In the mean time, the Islanders could not furnish the tribute, and Columbus was rigorous in the collection. It is said in palliation, that he was embarrassed in consequence of the magnificent descriptions he had given to Ferdinand and Ysabel, of the riches of _Hispaniola_, by which he had taught them to expect much; and that the fear of disappointing them and losing their favour, prompted him to act more oppressively to the Indians than his disposition otherwise inclined him to do. Distresses of this kind press upon all men; but only in very ordinary minds do they outweigh solemn considerations. Setting aside the dictates of religion and moral duty, as doubtless was done, and looking only to worldly advantages, if Columbus had properly estimated his situation, he would have been resolute not to descend from the eminence he had attained. The dilemma in which he was placed, was simply, whether he would risk some diminution of the favour he was in at Court, by being the protector of these Islanders, who, by circumstances peculiarly calculated to engage his interest, were entitled in an especial manner to have been regarded as his clients; or, to preserve that favour, would oppress them to their destruction, and to the ruin of his own fame. [Sidenote: Despair of the Natives.] The Islanders, finding their inability to oppose the invaders, took the desperate resolution to desist from the cultivation of their lands, to abandon their houses, and to withdraw themselves to the mountains; hoping thereby that want of subsistence would force their oppressors to quit the Island. The Spaniards had many resources; the sea-coast supplied them with fish, and their vessels brought provisions from other islands. As to the natives of _Hayti_, one third part of them, it is said, perished in the course of a few months, by famine and by suicide. The rest returned to their dwellings, and submitted. All these events took place within three years after the discovery; so active is rapacity. Some among the Spaniards (authors of that time say, the enemies of Columbus, as if sentiments of humanity were not capable of such an effort) wrote Memorials to their Catholic Majesties, representing the disastrous condition to which the natives were reduced. [Sidenote: 1496.] Commissioners were sent to examine into the fact, and Columbus found it necessary to go to _Spain_ to defend his administration. So great was the veneration and respect entertained for him, that on his arrival at Court, accusation was not allowed to be produced against him: and, without instituting enquiry, it was arranged, that he should return to his government with a large reinforcement of Spaniards, and with authority to grant lands to whomsoever he chose to think capable of cultivating them. Various accidents delayed his departure from _Spain_ on his third voyage, till 1498. [Sidenote: City of Nueva Ysabel founded, 1496.] He had left two of his brothers to govern in _Hispaniola_ during his absence; the eldest, Bartolomé, with the title of Adelantado; in whose time (A. D. 1496) was traced, on the South side of the Island, the plan of a new town intended for the capital, the land in the neighbourhood of the town of _Ysabel_, before built, being poor and little productive. [Sidenote: Its name changed to Santo Domingo.] The name first given to the new town was _Nueva Ysabel_; this in a short time gave place to that of _Santo Domingo_, a name which was not imposed by authority, but adopted and became in time established by common usage, of which the original cause is not now known[2]. Under the Adelantado's government, the parts of the Island which till then had held out in their refusal to receive the Spanish yoke, were reduced to subjection; and the conqueror gratified his vanity with the public execution of one of the Hayti Kings. Columbus whilst he was in _Spain_ received mortification in two instances, of neither of which he had any right to complain. In October 1496, three hundred natives of _Hayti_ (made prisoners by the Adelantado) were landed at _Cadiz_, being sent to _Spain_ as slaves. At this act of disobedience, the King and Queen strongly expressed their displeasure, and said, if the Islanders made war against the Castilians, they must have been constrained to do it by hard treatment. Columbus thought proper to blame, and to disavow what his brother had done. The other instance of his receiving mortification, was an act of kindness done him, and so intended; and it was the only shadow of any thing like reproof offered to him. In the instructions which he now received, it was earnestly recommended to him to prefer conciliation to severity on all occasions which would admit it without prejudice to justice or to his honour. [Sidenote: 1498.] It was in the third voyage of Columbus that he first saw the Continent of _South America_, in August 1498, which he then took to be an Island, and named _Isla Santa_. He arrived on the 22d of the same month at the City of _San Domingo_. The short remainder of Columbus's government in _Hayti_ was occupied with disputes among the Spaniards themselves. A strong party was in a state of revolt against the government of the Columbuses, and accommodation was kept at a distance, by neither party daring to place trust in the other. [Sidenote: 1498-9.] Columbus would have had recourse to arms to recover his authority, but some of his troops deserted to the disaffected, and others refused to be employed against their countrymen. In this state, the parties engaged in a treaty on some points, and each sent Memorials to the Court. The Admiral in his dispatches represented, that necessity had made him consent to certain conditions, to avoid endangering the Colony; but that it would be highly prejudicial to the interests of their Majesties to ratify the treaty he had been forced to subscribe. [Sidenote: Beginning of the Repartimientos.] The Admiral now made grants of lands to Spanish colonists, and accompanied them with requisitions to the neighbouring Caciques, to furnish the new proprietors with labourers to cultivate the soil. This was the beginning of the _Repartimientos_, or distributions of the Indians, which confirmed them slaves, and contributed, more than all former oppressions, to their extermination. Notwithstanding the earnest and express order of the King and Queen to the contrary, the practice of transporting the natives of _Hayti_ to _Spain_ as slaves, was connived at and continued; and this being discovered, lost Columbus the confidence, but not wholly the support, of Queen Ysabel. [Sidenote: 1500. Government of Bovadilla.] The dissensions in the Colony increased, as did the unpopularity of the Admiral; and in the year 1500, a new Governor General of the _Indies_, Francisco de Bovadilla, was sent from _Spain_, with a commission empowering him to examine into the accusations against the Admiral; and he was particularly enjoined by the Queen, to declare all the native inhabitants free, and to take measures to secure to them that they should be treated as a free people. How a man so grossly ignorant and intemperate as Bovadilla, should have been chosen to an office of such high trust, is not a little extraordinary. His first display of authority was to send the Columbuses home prisoners, with the indignity to their persons of confining them in chains. He courted popularity in his government by shewing favour to all who had been disaffected to the government or measures of the Admiral and his brothers, the natives excepted, for whose relief he had been especially appointed Governor. To encourage the Spaniards to work the mines, he reduced the duties payable to the Crown on the produce, and trusted to an increase in the quantity of gold extracted, for preserving the revenue from diminution. [Sidenote: All the Natives compelled to work the Mines.] This was to be effected by increasing the labour of the natives; and that these miserable people might not evade their servitude, he caused muster-rolls to be made of all the inhabitants, divided them into classes, and made distribution of them according to the value of the mines, or to his desire to gratify particular persons. The Spanish Colonists believed that the same facilities to enrich themselves would not last long, and made all the haste in their power to profit by the present opportunity. By these means, Bovadilla drew from the mines in a few months so great a quantity of gold, that one fleet which he sent home, carried a freight more than sufficient to reimburse _Spain_ all the expences which had been incurred in the discovery and conquest. The procuring these riches was attended with so great a mortality among the natives as to threaten their utter extinction. Nothing could exceed the surprise and indignation of the Queen, on receiving information of these proceedings. The bad government of Bovadilla was a kind of palliation which had the effect of lessening the reproach upon the preceding government, and, joined to the disgraceful manner in which Columbus had been sent home, produced a revolution of sentiment in his favour. The good Queen Ysabel wished to compensate him for the hard treatment he had received, at the same time that she had the sincerity to make him understand she would not again commit the Indian natives to his care. All his other offices and dignities were restored to him. [Sidenote: 1501-2. Nicolas Ovando, Governor.] For a successor to Bovadilla in the office of Governor General, Don Nicolas Ovando, a Cavalero of the Order of _Alcantara_, was chosen; a man esteemed capable and just, and who entered on his government with apparent mildness and consideration. But in a short time he proved the most execrable of all the tyrants, 'as if,' says an historian, 'tyranny was inherent and contagious in the office, so as to change good men to bad, for the destruction of these unfortunate Indians.' [Sidenote: Working the Mines discontinued by Orders from Spain.] In obedience to his instructions, Ovando, on arriving at his government, called a General Assembly of all the Caciques or principal persons among the natives, to whom he declared, that their Catholic Majesties took the Islanders under their royal protection; that no exaction should be made on them, other than the tribute which had been heretofore imposed; and that no person should be employed to work in the mines, except on the footing of voluntary labourers for wages. [Sidenote: 1502.] On the promulgation of the royal pleasure, all working in the mines immediately ceased. The impression made by their past sufferings was too strong for any offer of pay or reward to prevail on them to continue in that work. [The same thing happened, many years afterwards, between the Chilese and the Spaniards.] A few mines had been allowed to remain in possession of some of the Caciques of _Hayti_, on the condition of rendering up half the produce; but now, instead of working them, they sold their implements. In consequence of this defection, it was judged expedient to lower the royal duties on the produce of the mines, which produced some effect. Ovando, however, was intent on procuring the mines to be worked as heretofore, but proceeded with caution. In his dispatches to the Council of the _Indies_, he represented in strong colours the natural levity and inconstancy of the Indians, and their idle and disorderly manner of living; on which account, he said, it would be for their improvement and benefit to find them occupation in moderate labour; that there would be no injustice in so doing, as they would receive wages for their work, and they would thereby be enabled to pay the tribute, which otherwise, from their habitual idleness, many would not be able to satisfy. He added moreover, that the Indians, being left entirely their own masters, kept at a distance from the Spanish habitations, which rendered it impossible to instruct them in the principles of Christianity. This reasoning, and the proposal to furnish the natives with employment, were approved by the Council of the _Indies_; and the Court, from the opinion entertained of the justice and moderation of Ovando, acquiesced so far as to trust making the experiment to his discretion. In reply to his representations, he received instructions recommending, 'That if it was necessary to oblige the Indians to work, it should be done in the most gentle and moderate manner; that the Caciques should be invited to send their people in regular turns; and that the employers should treat them well, and pay them wages, according to the quality of the person and nature of the labour; that care should be taken for their regular attendance at religious service and instruction; and that it should be remembered they were a free people, to be governed with mildness, and on no account to be treated as slaves.' [Sidenote: 1502-3. The Natives again forced to the Mines.] These directions, notwithstanding the expressions of care for the natives contained in them, released the Governor General from all restriction. This man had recently been appointed Grand Master of the order of _Calatrava_, and thenceforward he was most generally distinguished by the appellation or title of the Grand Commander. A transaction of a shocking nature, which took place during Bovadilla's government, caused an insurrection of the natives; but which did not break out till after the removal of Bovadilla. A Spanish vessel had put into a port of the province of _Higuey_ (the most Eastern part of _Hayti_) to procure a lading of _cassava_, a root which is used as bread. The Spaniards landed, having with them a large dog held by a cord. Whilst the natives were helping them to what they wanted, one of the Spaniards in wanton insolence pointed to a Cacique, and called to the dog in manner of setting him on. The Spaniard who held the cord, it is doubtful whether purposely or by accident, suffered it to slip out of his hand, and the dog instantly tore out the unfortunate Cacique's entrails. The people of _Higuey_ sent a deputation, to complain to Bovadilla; but those who went could not obtain attention. [Sidenote: Severities shewn to the people of Higuey.] In the beginning of Ovando's government, some other Spaniards landed at the same port of _Higuey_, and the natives, in revenge for what had happened, fell upon them, and killed them; after which they took to arms. This insurrection was quelled with so great a slaughter, that the province, from having been well peopled, was rendered almost a desert. [Sidenote: 1503. Encomiendas established.] Ovando, on obtaining his new instructions, followed the model set by his predecessors. He enrolled and classed the natives in divisions, called _Repartimientos_: from these he assigned to the Spanish proprietors a specified number of labourers, by grants, which, with most detestable hypocrisy, were denominated _Encomiendas_. The word _Encomienda_ signifies recommendation, and the employer to whom the Indian was consigned, was to have the reputation of being his patron. The _Encomienda_ was conceived in the following terms:--'_I recommend to =A. B.= such and such Indians =(listed by name)= the subjects of such Cacique; and he is to take care to have them instructed in the principles of our holy faith._' Under the enforcement of the _encomiendas_, the natives were again dragged to the mines; and many of these unfortunate wretches were kept by their hard employers under ground for six months together. With the labour, and grief at being again doomed to slavery, they sunk so rapidly, that it suggested to the murderous proprietors of the mines the having recourse to _Africa_ for slaves. [Sidenote: African Slaves carried to the West Indies.] Ovando, after small experience of this practice, endeavoured to oppose it as dangerous, the Africans frequently escaping from their masters, and finding concealment among the natives, in whom they excited some spirit of resistance. The ill use made by the Grand Commander of the powers with which he had been trusted, appears to have reached the Court early, for, in 1503, he received fresh orders, enjoining him not to allow, on any pretext, the natives to be employed in labour against their own will, either in the mines or elsewhere. Ovando, however, trusted to being supported by the Spanish proprietors of the mines within his government, who grew rich by the _encomiendas_, and with their assistance he found pretences for not restraining himself to the orders of the Court. In parts of the Island, the Caciques still enjoyed a degree of authority over the natives, which rested almost wholly on habitual custom and voluntary attachment. To loosen this band, Ovando, assuming the character of a protector, published ordonnances to release the lower classes from the oppressions of the Caciques; but from those of their European taskmasters he gave them no relief. Some of the principal among the native inhabitants of _Xaragua_, the South-western province of _Hayti_, had the hardiness openly to express their discontent at the tyranny exercised by the Spaniards established in that province. The person at this time regarded as Cacique or Chief of _Xaragua_ was a female, sister to the last Cacique, who had died without issue. The Spanish histories call her Queen of _Xaragua_. This Princess had shewn symptoms of something like abhorrence of the Spaniards near her, and they did not fail to send representations to the Grand Commander, with the addition, that there appeared indications of an intention in the Xaraguans to revolt. On receiving this notice, Ovando determined that _Xaragua_, as _Higuey_ had before, should feel the weight of his displeasure. Putting himself at the head of 370 Spanish troops, part of them cavalry, he departed from the city of _San Domingo_ for the devoted province, giving out publicly, that his intention was to make a progress into the West, to collect the tribute, and to visit the Queen of _Xaragua_. He was received by the Princess and her people with honours, feastings, and all the demonstrations of joy usually acted by terrified people with the hopes of soothing tyranny; and the troops were regaled with profusion of victuals, with dancing, and shows. [Sidenote: 1503-4.] After some days thus spent, Ovando invited the Princess, her friends and attendants, to an entertainment which he promised them, after the manner of _Spain_. A large open public building was the chosen place for holding this festival, and all the Spanish settlers in the province were required to attend. A great concourse of Indians, besides the bidden guests, crowded round, to enjoy the spectacle. [Sidenote: Massacre of the people of Xaragua.] As the appointed time approached, the Spanish infantry gradually appeared, and took possession of all the avenues; which being secured, this Grand Commander himself appeared, mounted at the head of his cavalry; and on his making a signal, which had been previously concerted, which was laying his hand on the Cross of his Order, the whole of these diabolical conquerors fell upon the defenceless multitude, who were so hemmed in, that thousands were slaughtered, and it was scarcely possible for any to escape unwounded. Some of the principal Indians or Caciques, it is said, were by the Commander's order fastened to the pillars of the building, where they were questioned, and made to confess themselves in a conspiracy against the Spanish government; after which confession the building was set on fire, and they perished in the flames. The massacre did not stop here. Detachments of troops, with dogs, were sent to hunt and destroy the natives in different parts of the province, and some were pursued over to the Island _Gonave_. The Princess was carried bound to the city of _San Domingo_, and with the forms of law was tried, condemned, and put to death. The purposes, besides that of gratifying his revenge for the hatred shewn to his government, which were sufficient to move Ovando to this bloody act, were, the plunder of the province, and the reduction of the Islanders to a more manageable number, and to the most unlimited submission. [Sidenote: 1504.] Some of the Indians fled to the mountains. 'But,' say the Spanish Chronicles of these events, 'in a short time their Chiefs were taken and punished, and at the end of six months there was not a native living on the Island who had not submitted to the dominion of the Spaniards.' [Sidenote: Death of Queen Ysabel.] Queen Ysabel died in November 1504, much and universally lamented. This Princess bore a large share in the usurpations practised in the New World; but it is evident she was carried away, contrary to her real principles and disposition, which were just and benevolent, and to her own happiness, by the powerful stream of general opinion. In _Europe_, political principles, or maxims of policy, have been in continual change, fashioned by the nature of the passing events, no less than dress has been by caprice; causes which have led one to deviate from plain rectitude, as the other from convenience. One principle, covetousness of the attainment of power, has nevertheless constantly predominated, and has derided and endeavoured to stigmatize as weakness and imbecility, the stopping short of great acquisitions, territorial especially, for moral considerations. Queen Ysabel lived surrounded by a world of such politicians, who were moreover stimulated to avarice by the prospect of American gold; a passion which yet more than ambition is apt to steel the heart of man against the calls of justice and the distresses of his fellow creatures. If Ysabel had been endued with more than mortal fortitude, she might have refused her sanction to the usurpations, but could not have prevented them. On her death bed she earnestly recommended to King Ferdinand to recall Ovando. Ovando, however, sent home much gold, and Ferdinand referred to a distant time the fulfilment of her dying request. Upon news of the death of Queen Ysabel, the small wages which had been paid the Indians for their labour, amounting to about half a piastre _per_ month, were withheld, as being too grievous a burthen on the Spanish Colonists; and the hours of labour were no longer limited. [Sidenote: 1506.] In the province of _Higuey_, the tyranny and licentiousness of the military again threw the poor natives into a frenzy of rage and despair, and they once more revolted, burnt the fort, and killed the soldiers. Ovando resolved to put it out of the power of the people of _Higuey_ ever again to be troublesome. A strong body of troops was marched into the province, the Cacique of _Higuey_ (the last of the _Hayti_ Kings) was taken prisoner and executed, and the province pacified. The pecuniary value of grants of land in _Hayti_ with _encomiendas_, became so considerable as to cause them to be coveted and solicited for by many of the grandees and favourites of the Court in _Spain_, who, on obtaining them, sent out agents to turn them to account. [Sidenote: Desperate condition of the Natives.] The agent was to make his own fortune by his employment, and to satisfy his principal. In no instance were the natives spared through any interference of the Grand Commander. It was a maxim with this bad man, always to keep well with the powerful; and every thing respecting the natives was yielded to their accommodation. Care, however, was taken that the Indians should be baptised, and that a head tax should be paid to the Crown; and these particulars being complied with, the rest was left to the patron of the _encomienda_. Punishments and tortures of every kind were practised, to wring labour out of men who were dying through despair. Some of the accounts, which are corroborated by circumstances, relate, that the natives were frequently coupled and harnessed like cattle, and driven with whips. If they fell under their load, they were flogged up. To prevent their taking refuge in the woods or mountains, an officer, under the title of _Alguazil del Campo_, was constantly on the watch with a pack of hounds; and many Indians, in endeavouring to escape, were torn in pieces. The settlers on the Island, the great men at home, their agents, and the royal revenue, were all to be enriched at the expence of the destruction of the natives. It was as if the discovery of _America_ had changed the religion of the Spaniards from Christianity to the worship of gold with human sacrifices. If power were entitled to dominion between man and man, as between man and other animals, the Spaniards would remain chargeable with the most outrageous abuse of their advantages. In enslaving the inhabitants of _Hayti_, if they had been satisfied with reducing them to the state of cattle, it would have been merciful, comparatively with what was done. The labour imposed by mankind upon their cattle, is in general so regulated as not to exceed what is compatible with their full enjoyment of health; but the main consideration with the Spanish proprietors was, by what means they should obtain the greatest quantity of gold from the labour of the natives in the shortest time. By an enumeration made in the year 1507, the number of the natives in the whole Island _Hayti_ was reckoned at 60,000, the remains of a population which fifteen years before exceeded a million. The insatiate colonists did not stop: many of the mines lay unproductive for want of labourers, and they bent their efforts to the supplying this defect. [Sidenote: The Grand Antilles.] The Islands of the _West Indies_ have been classed into three divisions, which chiefly regard their situations; but they are distinguished also by other peculiar circumstances. The four largest Islands, _Cuba_, _Hayti_, _Jamaica_, and _Porto Rico_, have been called the _Grand Antilles_. When first discovered by Europeans, they were inhabited by people whose similarity of language, of customs, and character, bespoke them the offspring of one common stock. [Sidenote: Small Antilles, or Caribbee Islands.] The second division is a chain of small Islands Eastward of these, and extending South to the coast of _Paria_ on the Continent of _South America_. They have been called sometimes the _Small Antilles_; sometimes after the native inhabitants, the _Caribbee Islands_; and not less frequently by a subdivision, the Windward and Leeward Islands. The inhabitants on these Islands were a different race from the inhabitants of the _Grand Antilles_. They spoke a different language, were robust in person; and in disposition fierce, active, and warlike. Some have conjectured them to be of Tartar extraction, which corresponds with the belief that they emigrated from _North America_ to the _West Indies_. It is supposed they drove out the original inhabitants from the _Small Antilles_, to establish themselves there; but they had not gained footing in the large Islands. [Sidenote: Lucayas, or Bahama Islands.] The third division of the Islands is the cluster which are situated to the North of _Cuba_, and near _East Florida_, and are called the _Lucayas_, of whose inhabitants mention will shortly be made. The Spanish Government participated largely in the wickedness practised to procure labourers for the mines of _Hispaniola_. Pretending great concern for the cause of humanity, they declared it legal, and gave general license, for any individual to make war against, and enslave, people who were cannibals; under which pretext every nation, both of the American Continent and of the Islands, was exposed to their enterprises. Spanish adventurers made attempts to take people from the small _Antilles_, sometimes with success; but they were not obtained without danger, and in several expeditions of the kind, the Spaniards were repulsed with loss. This made them turn their attention to the _Lucayas Islands_. [Sidenote: 1508.] The inhabitants of the _Lucayas_, an unsuspicious and credulous people, did not escape the snares laid for them. Ovando, in his dispatches to _Spain_, represented the benefit it would be to the holy faith, to have the inhabitants of the _Lucayas_ instructed in the Christian religion; for which purpose, he said, 'it would be necessary they should be transported to _Hispaniola_, as Missionaries could not be spared to every place, and there was no other way in which this abandoned people could be converted.' [Sidenote: The Natives of the Lucayas betrayed to the Mines;] King Ferdinand and the Council of the Indies were themselves so abandoned and destitute of all goodness, as to pretend to give credit to Ovando's representation, and lent him their authority to sacrifice the Lucayans, under the pretext of advancing religion. Spanish ships were sent to the Islands on this business, and the natives were at first inveigled on board by the foulest hypocrisy and treachery. Among the artifices used by the Spaniards, they pretended that they came from a delicious country, where rested the souls of the deceased fathers, kinsmen, and friends, of the Lucayans, who had sent to invite them. [Sidenote: and the Islands wholly unpeopled.] The innocent Islanders so seduced to follow the Spaniards, when, on arriving at _Hispaniola_, they found how much they had been abused, died in great numbers of chagrin and grief. Afterwards, when these impious pretences of the Spaniards were no longer believed, they dragged away the natives by force, as long as any could be found, till they wholly unpeopled the _Lucayas Islands_. The Buccaneers of _America_, whose adventures and misdeeds are about to be related, may be esteemed saints in comparison with the men whose names have been celebrated as the Conquerors of the NEW WORLD. In the same manner as at the _Lucayas_, other Islands of the _West Indies_, and different parts of the Continent, were resorted to for recruits. A pearl fishery was established, in which the Indians were not more spared as divers, than on the land as miners. _Porto Rico_ was conquered at this time. [Sidenote: Fate of the native Inhabitants of Porto Rico.] Ore had been brought thence, which was not so pure as that of _Hayti_; but it was of sufficient value to determine Ovando to the conquest of the Island. The Islanders were terrified by the carnage which the Spaniards with their dogs made in the commencement of the war, and, from the fear of irritating them by further resistance, they yielded wholly at discretion, and were immediately sent to the mines, where in a short time they all perished. In the same year with _Porto Rico_, the Island of _Jamaica_ was taken possession of by the Spaniards. [Sidenote: 1509. D. Diego Columbus, Governor of Hispaniola.] Ovando was at length recalled, and was succeeded in the government of _Hispaniola_ by Don Diego Columbus, the eldest son and inheritor of the rights and titles of the Admiral Christopher. To conclude with Ovando, it is related that he was regretted by his countrymen in the _Indies_, and was well received at Court. Don Diego did not make any alteration in the _repartimientos_, except that some of them changed hands in favour of his own adherents. During his government, some fathers of the Dominican Order had the courage to inveigh from the pulpit against the enormity of the _repartimientos_, and were so persevering in their representations, that the Court of _Spain_ found it necessary, to avoid scandal, to order an enquiry into the condition of the Indians. In this enquiry it was seriously disputed, whether it was just or unjust to make them slaves. [Sidenote: 1511. Increase of Cattle in Hayti.] The Histories of _Hispaniola_ first notice about this time a great increase in the number of cattle in the Island. As the human race disappeared, less and less land was occupied in husbandry, till almost the whole country became pasturage for cattle, by far the greater part of which were wild. An ordonnance, issued in the year 1511, specified, that as beasts of burthen were so much multiplied, the Indians should not be made to carry or drag heavy loads. [Sidenote: Cuba.] In 1511, the conquest of _Cuba_ was undertaken and completed. The terror conceived of the Spaniards is not to be expressed. The story of the conquest is related in a Spanish history in the following terms: 'A leader was chosen, who had acquitted himself in high employments with fortune and good conduct. He had in other respects amiable qualities, and was esteemed a man of honour and rectitude. He went from _S. Domingo_ with regular troops and above 300 volunteers. He landed in _Cuba_, not without opposition from the natives. In a few days, he surprised and took the principal Cacique, named Hatuey, prisoner, and _made him expiate in the flames the fault he had been guilty of in not submitting with a good grace to the conqueror_.' This Cacique, when at the stake, being importuned by a Spanish priest to become a Christian, that he might go to Heaven, replied, that if any Spaniard was to be met in Heaven, he hoped not to go there. [Sidenote: 1514.] The Reader will be detained a very little longer with these irksome scenes. In 1514, the number of the inhabitants of _Hayti_ was reckoned 14,000. A distributor of Indians was appointed, with powers independent of the Governor, with intention to save the few remaining natives of _Hayti_. The new distributor began the exercise of his office by a general revocation of all the _encomiendas_, except those which had been granted by the King; and almost immediately afterwards, in the most open and shameless manner, he made new grants, and sold them to the highest bidder. [Sidenote: 1515.] He was speedily recalled; and another (the Licentiate Ybarra) was sent to supply his place, who had a high character for probity and resolution; but he died immediately on his arrival at _Santo Domingo_, and not without suspicion that he was poisoned. [Sidenote: Bart. de las Casas, and Cardinal Ximenes; their endeavours to serve the Indians. The Cardinal dies.] The endeavours of the Dominican Friars in behalf of the natives were seconded by the Licentiate Bartolomeo de las Casas, and by Cardinal Ximenes when he became Prime Minister of _Spain_; and, to their great honour, they were both resolute to exert all their power to preserve the natives of _America_. The Cardinal sent Commissioners, and with them las Casas, with the title of Protector of the Indians. But the Cardinal died in 1517; after which all the exertions of las Casas and the Dominicans could not shake the _repartimientos_. [Sidenote: 1519.] At length, among the native Islanders there sprung up one who had the courage to put himself at the head of a number of his countrymen, and the address to withdraw with them from the gripe of the Spaniards, and to find refuge among the mountains. [Sidenote: Cacique Henriquez.] This man was the son, and, according to the laws of inheritance, should have been the successor, of one of the principal Caciques. He had been christened by the name of Henriquez, and, in consequence of a regulation made by the late Queen Ysabel of _Castile_, he had been educated, on account of his former rank, in a Convent of the Franciscans. He defended his retreat in the mountains by skilful management and resolute conduct, and had the good fortune in the commencement to defeat some parties of Spanish troops sent against him, which encouraged more of his countrymen, and as many of the Africans as could escape, to flock to him; and under his government, as of a sovereign prince, they withstood the attempts of the Spaniards to subdue them. Fortunately for Henriquez and his followers, the conquest and settlement of _Cuba_, and the invasion of _Mexico_, which was begun at this time, lessened the strength of the Spaniards in _Hispaniola_, and enabled the insurgents for many years to keep all the Spanish settlements in the Island in continual alarm, and to maintain their own independence. During this time, the question of the propriety of keeping the Islanders in slavery, underwent grave examinations. It is related that the experiment was tried, of allowing a number of the natives to build themselves two villages, to live in them according to their own customs and liking; and that the result was, they were found to be so improvident, and so utterly unable to take care of themselves, that the _encomiendas_ were pronounced to be necessary for their preservation. Such an experiment is a mockery. Before the conquest, and now under Don Henriquez, the people of _Hayti_ shewed they wanted not the Spaniards to take care of them. CHAP. III. _Ships of different European Nations frequent the =West Indies=. Opposition experienced by them from the =Spaniards=. Hunting of Cattle in =Hispaniola=._ [Sidenote: 1518. Adventure of an English Ship.] In the year 1517 or 1518, some Spaniards in a caravela going from _St. Domingo_ to the Island _Porto Rico_, to take in a lading of cassava, were surprised at seeing a ship there of about 250 tons, armed with cannon, which did not appear to belong to the Spanish nation; and on sending a boat to make enquiry, she was found to be English. The account given by the English Commander was, that two ships had sailed from _England_ in company, with the intention to discover the country of the Great Cham; that they were soon separated from each other by a tempest, and that this ship was afterwards in a sea almost covered with ice; that thence she had sailed southward to _Brasil_, and, after various adventures, had found the way to _Porto Rico_. This same English ship, being provided with merchandise, went afterwards to _Hispaniola_, and anchored near the entrance of the port of _San Domingo_, where the Captain sent on shore to demand leave to sell their goods. The demand was forwarded to the _Audiencia_, or superior court in _San Domingo_; but the Castellana, or Governor of the Castle, Francisco de Tapia, could not endure with patience to see a ship of another nation in that part of the world, and, without waiting for the determination of the _Audiencia_, ordered the cannon of the fort to be fired against her; on which she took up her anchor and returned to _Porto Rico_, where she purchased provisions, paying for what she got with wrought iron, and afterwards departed for _Europe_[3]. When this visit of an English ship to the _West Indies_ was known in _Spain_, it caused there great inquietude; and the Governor of the Castle of _San Domingo_, it is said, was much blamed, because he had not, instead of forcing the ship to depart by firing his cannon, contrived to seize her, so that no one might have returned to teach others of their nation the route to the Spanish Indies. [Sidenote: The French and other Europeans resort to the West Indies;] The English were not the only people of whom the Spaniards had cause to be jealous, nor those from whom the most mischief was to be apprehended. The French, as already noticed, had very early made expeditions to _Brasil_, and they now began to look at the _West Indies_; so that in a short time the sight of other European ships than those of _Spain_ became no novelty there. Hakluyt mentions a Thomas Tyson, an Englishman, who went to the _West Indies_ in 1526, as factor to some English merchants. [Sidenote: Are regarded as Interlopers by the Spaniards. 1529. Regulation proposed by the Government in Hispaniola, for protection against Pirates.] When the Spaniards met any of these intruders, if able to master them, they made prisoners of them, and many they treated as pirates. The new comers soon began to retaliate. In 1529, the Governor and Council at _San Domingo_ drew up the plan of a regulation for the security of their ships against the increasing dangers from pirates in the _West Indies_. In this, they recommended, that a central port of commerce should be established in the _West Indies_, to which every ship from _Spain_ should be obliged to go first, as to a general rendezvous, and thence be dispatched, as might suit circumstances, to her farther destination; also, that all their ships homeward bound, from whatsoever part of the _West Indies_, should first rendezvous at the same port; by which regulation their ships, both outward and homeward bound, would form escorts to each other, and have the benefit of mutual support; and they proposed that some port in _Hispaniola_ should be appointed for the purpose, as most conveniently situated. This plan appears to have been approved by the Council of the _Indies_; but, from indolence, or some other cause, no farther measures were taken for its adoption. The attention of the Spaniards was at this time almost wholly engrossed by the conquest and plunder of the American Continent, which it might have been supposed would have sufficed them, according to the opinion of Francisco Preciado, a Spanish discoverer, who observed, that _there was country enough to conquer for a thousand years_. The continental pursuits caused much diminution in the importance of the _West India Islands_ to the Spaniards. The mines of the Islands were not comparable in richness with those of the Continent, and, for want of labourers, many were left unworked. [Sidenote: Hunting of Cattle in Hispaniola.] The colonists in _Hispaniola_, however, had applied themselves to the cultivation of the sugar-cane, and to manufacture sugar; also to hunting cattle, which was found a profitable employment, the skins and the suet turning to good account. [Sidenote: Matadores.] The Spaniards denominated their hunters Matadores, which in the Spanish language signifies killers or slaughterers. That the English, French, and Hollanders, in their early voyages to the _West Indies_, went in expectation of meeting hostility from the Spaniards, and with a determination therefore to commit hostility if they could with advantage, appears by an ingenious phrase of the French adventurers, who, if the first opportunity was in their favour, termed their profiting by it '_se dedomager par avance_.' Much of _Hispaniola_ had become desert. There were long ranges of coast, with good ports, that were unfrequented by any inhabitant whatever, and the land in every part abounded with cattle. These were such great conveniencies to the ships of the interlopers, that the Western coast, which was the most distant part from the Spanish capital, became a place of common resort to them when in want of provisions. Another great attraction to them was the encouragement they received from Spanish settlers along the coast; who, from the contracted and monopolizing spirit of their government in the management of their colonies, have at all times been eager to have communication with foreigners, that they might obtain supplies of European goods on terms less exorbitant than those which the royal regulations of _Spain_ imposed. [Sidenote: Guarda-Costas.] The government at _San Domingo_ employed armed ships to prevent clandestine trade, and to clear the coasts of _Hispaniola_ of interlopers, which ships were called _guarda costas_; and it is said their commanders were instructed not to take prisoners. On the other hand, the intruders formed combinations, came in collected numbers, and made descents on different parts of the coast, ravaging the Spanish towns and settlements. In the customary course, such transactions would have come under the cognizance of the governments in _Europe_; but matters here took a different turn. The Spaniards, when they had the upper hand, did not fail to deal out their own pleasure for law; and in like manner, the English, French, and Dutch, when masters, determined their own measure of retaliation. The different European governments were glad to avoid being involved in the settlement of disorders they had no inclination to repress. In answer to representations made by _Spain_, they said, 'that the people complained against had acted entirely on their own authority, not as the subjects of any prince, and that the King of _Spain_ was at liberty to proceed against them according to his own pleasure.' Queen Elizabeth of _England_, with more open asperity answered a complaint made by the Spanish ambassador, of Spanish ships being plundered by the English in the _West Indies_, 'That the Spaniards had drawn these inconveniencies upon themselves, by their severe and unjust dealings in their American commerce; for she did not understand why either her subjects, or those of any other European prince, should be debarred from traffic in the _Indies_. That as she did not acknowledge the Spaniards to have any title by the donation of the Bishop of _Rome_, so she knew no right they had to any places other than those they were in actual possession of; for that their having touched only here and there upon a coast, and given names to a few rivers or capes, were such insignificant things as could no ways entitle them to a propriety further than in the parts where they actually settled, and continued to inhabit[4].' A warfare was thus established between Europeans in the _West Indies_, local and confined, which had no dependence upon transactions in _Europe_. [Sidenote: Brethren of the Coast.] All Europeans not Spaniards, whether it was war or peace between their nations in _Europe_, on their meeting in the _West Indies_, regarded each other as friends and allies, knowing then no other enemy than the Spaniards; and, as a kind of public avowal of this confederation, they called themselves _Brethren of the Coast_. The first European intruders upon the Spaniards in the _West Indies_ were accordingly mariners, the greater number of whom, it is supposed, were French, and next to them the English. Their first hunting of cattle in _Hayti_, was for provisioning their ships. The time they began to form factories or establishments, to hunt cattle for the skins, and to cure the flesh as an article of traffic, is not certain; but it may be concluded that these occupations were began by the crews of wrecked vessels, or by seamen who had disagreed with their commander; and that the ease, plenty, and freedom from all command and subordination, enjoyed in such a life, soon drew others to quit their ships, and join in the same occupations. The ships that touched on the coast supplied the hunters with European commodities, for which they received in return hides, tallow, and cured meat. The appellation of _Boucanier_ or _Buccaneer_ was not invented, or at least not applied to these adventurers, till long after their first footing in _Hayti_. At the time of Oxnam's expedition across the _Isthmus of America_ to the _South Sea_, A. D. 1575, it does not appear to have been known. There is no particular account of the events which took place on the coasts of _Hispaniola_ in the early part of the contest between the Spaniards and the new settlers. It is however certain, that it was a war of the severest retaliation; and in this disorderly state was continued the intercourse of the English, French, and Dutch with the _West Indies_, carried on by individuals neither authorized nor controlled by their governments, for more than a century. In 1586, the English Captain, Francis Drake, plundered the city of _San Domingo_; and the numbers of the English and French in the _West Indies_ increased so much, that shortly afterwards the Spaniards found themselves necessitated to abandon all the Western and North-western parts of _Hispaniola_. CHAP. IV. _Iniquitous Settlement of the Island =Saint Christopher= by the =English= and =French=. =Tortuga= seized by the Hunters. Origin of the name =Buccaneer=. The name =Flibustier=. Customs attributed to the =Buccaneers=._ The increase of trade of the English and French to the _West Indies_, and the growing importance of the freebooters or adventurers concerned in it, who, unassisted but by each other, had begun to acquire territory and to form establishments in spite of all opposition from the Spaniards, attracted the attention of the British and French governments, and suggested to them a scheme of confederacy, in which some of the principal adventurers were consulted. The project adopted by them was, to plant a royal colony of each nation, on some one island, and at the same time; by which a constant mutual support would be secured. In as far as regarded the concerns of Europeans with each other, this plan was unimpeachable. The Island chosen by the projectors, as the best suited to their purpose, was one of the _Small Antilles_ or _Caribbee Islands_, known by the name of _St. Christopher_, which is in length about seven leagues, and in breadth two and a half. [Sidenote: 1625. The Island Saint Christopher settled by the English and French.] Thus the governments of _Great Britain_ and _France_, like friendly fellow-travellers, and not like rivals who were to contend in a race, began their West-Indian career by joint consent at the same point both in time and place. In the year 1625, and on the same day, a colony of British and a colony of French, in the names and on the behalf of their respective nations, landed on this small island, the division of which had been settled by previous agreement. The Island _St. Christopher_ was at that time inhabited by Caribbe Indians. The Spaniards had never possessed a settlement on it, but their ships had been accustomed to stop there, to traffic for provisions and refreshments. The French and English who came to take possession, landed without obtaining the consent of the native Caribbe inhabitants; and, because danger was apprehended from their discontent, under pretence that the Caribbs were friends to the Spaniards, these new colonists fell upon them by surprise in the night, killed their principal leaders, and forced the rest to quit the Island and seek another home. De Rochefort, in his _Histoire Morale des Isles Antilles_ (p. 284.) mentions the English and French killing the Caribb Chiefs, in the following terms: '_Ils se defirent en une nuit de tous les plus factieux de cette nation!_' Thus in usurpation and barbarity was founded the first colony established under the authority of the British and French governments in the _West Indies_; which colony was the parent of our African slave trade. When accounts of the conquest and of the proceedings at _Saint Christopher_ were transmitted to _Europe_, they were approved; West-India companies were established, and licences granted to take out colonists. De Rochefort has oddly enough remarked, that the French, English, and Dutch, in their first establishments in the _West Indies_, did not follow the cruel maxims of the Spaniards. True it is, however, that they only copied in part. In their usurpations their aim went no farther than to dispossess, and they did not seek to make slaves of the people whom they deprived of their land. The English and French in a short time had disagreements, and began to make complaints of each other. The English took possession of the small Island _Nevis_, which is separated only by a narrow channel from the South end of _St. Christopher_. P. Charlevoix says, 'the ambition of the English disturbed the good understanding between the colonists of the two nations; but M. de Cusac arriving with a squadron of the French King's ships, by taking and sinking some British ships lying there, brought the English Governor to reason, and to confine himself to the treaty of Partition.' [Sidenote: 1629. The English and French driven from Saint Christopher by the Spaniards.] After effecting this amicable adjustment, De Cusac sailed from _St. Christopher_; and was scarcely clear of the Island when a powerful fleet, consisting of thirty-nine large ships, arrived from _Spain_, and anchored in the Road. Almost without opposition the Spaniards became masters of the Island, although the English and French, if they had cordially joined, could have mustered a force of twelve hundred men. Intelligence that the Spaniards intended this attack, had been timely received in _France_; and M. de Cusac's squadron had in consequence been dispatched to assist in the defence of _St. Christopher_; but the Spaniards being slow in their preparations, their fleet did not arrive at the time expected, and De Cusac, hearing no news of them, presumed that they had given up their design against _St. Christopher_. Without strengthening the joint colony, he gave the English a lesson on moderation, little calculated to incline them to co-operate heartily with the French in defence of the Island, and sailed on a cruise to the _Gulf of Mexico_. Shortly after his departure, towards the end of the year 1629, the Spanish fleet arrived. The colonists almost immediately despaired of being able to oppose so great a force. Many of the French embarked in their ships in time to effect their escape, and to take refuge among the islands northward. The remainder, with the English, lay at the disposal of the Spanish commander, Don Frederic de _Toledo_. At this time _Spain_ was at war with _England_, _France_, and _Holland_; and this armament was designed ultimately to act against the Hollanders in _Brasil_, but was ordered by the way to drive the English and the French from the Island of _Saint Christopher_. Don Frederic would not weaken his force by leaving a garrison there, and was in haste to prosecute his voyage to _Brasil_. As the settlement of _Saint Christopher_ had been established on regular government authorities, the settlers were treated as prisoners of war. To clear the Island in the most speedy manner, Don Frederic took many of the English on board his own fleet, and made as many of the other colonists embark as could be crowded in any vessels which could be found for them. He saw them get under sail, and leave the Island; and from those who remained, he required their parole, that they would depart by the earliest opportunity which should present itself, warning them, at the same time, that if, on his return from _Brasil_, he found any Englishmen or Frenchmen at _Saint Christopher_, they should be put to the sword. [Sidenote: 1630. They return.] After this, he sailed for _Brasil_. As soon, however, as it was known that the Spanish fleet had left the West-Indian sea, the colonists, both English and French, returned to _Saint Christopher_, and repossessed themselves of their old quarters. The settlement of the Island _Saint Christopher_ gave great encouragement to the hunters on the West coast of _Hispaniola_. Their manufactories for the curing of meat, and for drying the skins, multiplied; and as the value of them increased, they began to think it of consequence to provide for their security. [Sidenote: The Island Tortuga seized by the English and French Hunters.] To this end they took possession of the small Island _Tortuga_, near the North-west end of _Hispaniola_, where the Spaniards had placed a garrison, but which was too small to make opposition. There was a road for shipping, with good anchorage, at _Tortuga_; and its separation from the main land of _Hispaniola_ seemed to be a good guarantee from sudden and unexpected attack. They built magazines there, for the lodgement of their goods, and regarded this Island as their head quarters, or place of general rendezvous to which to repair in times of danger. They elected no chief, erected no fortification, set up no authorities, nor fettered themselves by any engagement. All was voluntary; and they were negligently contented at having done so much towards their security. [Sidenote: Whence the Name Buccaneer.] About the time of their taking possession of _Tortuga_, they began to be known by the name of Buccaneers, of which appellation it will be proper to speak at some length. The flesh of the cattle killed by the hunters, was cured to keep good for use, after a manner learnt from the Caribbe Indians, which was as follows: The meat was laid to be dried upon a wooden grate or hurdle (_grille de bois_) which the Indians called _barbecu_, placed at a good distance over a slow fire. The meat when cured was called _boucan_, and the same name was given to the place of their cookery. Père Labat describes _Viande boucannée_ to be, _Viande seché a petit feu et a la fumée_. The Caribbes are said to have sometimes served their prisoners after this fashion, '_Ils les mangent après les avoir bien boucannée, c'est a dire, rotis bien sec_[5].' The boucan was a very favourite method of cooking among these Indians. A Caribbe has been known, on returning home from fishing, fatigued and pressed with hunger, to have had the patience to wait the roasting of a fish on a wooden grate fixed two feet above the ground, over a fire so small as sometimes to require the whole day to dress it[6]. The flesh of the cattle was in general dried in the smoke, without being salted. The _Dictionnaire de Trevoux_ explains _Boucaner_ to be '_faire sorer sans sel_,' to dry red without salt. But the flesh of wild hogs, and also of the beeves when intended for keeping a length of time, was first salted. The same thing was practised among the Brasilians. It was remarked in one of the earliest visits of the Portuguese to _Brasil_, that the natives (who were cannibals) kept human flesh salted and smoked, hanging up in their houses[7]. The meat cured by the Buccaneers to sell to shipping for sea-store, it is probable was all salted. The process is thus described: 'The bones being taken out, the flesh was cut into convenient pieces and salted, and the next day was taken to the _boucan_.' Sometimes, to give a peculiar relish to the meat, the skin of the animal was cast into the fire under it. The meat thus cured was of a fine red colour, and of excellent flavour; but in six months after it was boucanned, it had little taste left, except of salt. The boucanned hog's flesh continued good a much longer time than the flesh of the beeves, if kept in dry places. From adopting the boucan of the Caribbes, the hunters in _Hispaniola_, the Spaniards excepted, came to be called Boucaniers, but afterwards, according to a pronunciation more in favour with the English, Buccaneers[8]. Many of the French hunters were natives of _Normandy_; whence it became proverbial in some of the sea-ports of _Normandy_ to say of a smoky house, _c'est un vrai Boucan_. [Sidenote: The name Flibustier.] The French Buccaneers and Adventurers were also called Flibustiers, and more frequently by that than by any other name. The word Flibustier is merely the French mariner's mode of pronouncing the English word Freebooter, a name which long preceded that of Boucanier or Buccaneer, as the occupation of cruising against the Spaniards preceded that of hunting and curing meat. Some authors have given a derivation to the name _Flibustier_ from the word Flyboat, because, say they, the French hunters in _Hispaniola_ bought vessels of the Dutch, called Flyboats, to cruise upon the Spaniards. There are two objections to this derivation. First, the word _flyboat_, is only an English translation of the Dutch word _fluyt_, which is the proper denomination of the vessel intended by it. Secondly, it would not very readily occur to any one to purchase Dutch fluyts, or flyboats, for chasing vessels. Some have understood the Boucanier and Flibustier to be distinct both in person and character[9]. This was probably the case with a few, after the settlement of _Tortuga_; but before, and very generally afterwards, the occupations were joined, making one of amphibious character. Ships from all parts of the _West Indies_ frequented _Tortuga_, and it continually happened that some among the crews quitted their ships to turn Buccaneers; whilst among the Buccaneers some would be desirous to quit their hunting employment, to go on a cruise, to make a voyage, or to return to _Europe_. The two occupations of hunting and cruising being so common to the same person, caused the names Flibustier and Buccaneer to be esteemed synonimous, signifying always and principally the being at war with the Spaniards. The Buccaneer and Flibustier therefore, as long as they continued in a state of independence, are to be considered as the same character, exercising sometimes one, sometimes the other employment; and either name was taken by them indifferently, whether they were employed on the sea or on the land. But a fanciful kind of inversion took place, through the different caprices of the French and English adventurers. The greater part of the first cattle hunters were French, and the greater number of the first cruisers against the Spaniards were English. The French adventurers, nevertheless, had a partiality for the name of Flibustier; whilst the English shewed a like preference for the name of Buccaneer, which, as will be seen, was assumed by many hundred seamen of their nation, who were never employed either in hunting or in the boucan. [Sidenote: Customs attributed to the Buccaneers.] A propensity to make things which are extraordinary appear more so, has caused many peculiar customs to be attributed to the Buccaneers, which, it is pretended, were observed as strictly as if they had been established laws. It is said that every Buccaneer had his chosen and declared comrade, between whom property was in common, and if one died, the survivor was inheritor of the whole. This was called by the French _Matelotage_. It is however acknowledged that the _Matelotage_ was not a compulsatory regulation; and that the Buccaneers sometimes bequeathed by will. A general right of participation in some things, among which was meat for present consumption, was acknowledged among them; and it is said, that bolts, locks, and every species of fastening, were prohibited, it being held that the use of such securities would have impeached the honour of their vocation. Yet on commencing Buccaneer, it was customary with those who were of respectable lineage, to relinquish their family name, and assume some other, as a _nom de guerre_. Their dress, which was uniformly slovenly when engaged in the business of hunting or of the boucan, is mentioned as a prescribed _costume_, but which doubtless was prescribed only by their own negligence and indolence; in particular, that they wore an unwashed shirt and pantaloons dyed in the blood of the animals they had killed. Other distinctions, equally capricious, and to little purpose, are related, which have no connexion with their history. Some curious anecdotes are produced, to shew the great respect some among them entertained for religion and for morality. A certain Flibustier captain, named Daniel, shot one of his crew in the church, for behaving irreverently during the performance of mass. Raveneau de Lussan (whose adventures will be frequently mentioned) took the occupation of a Buccaneer, because he was in debt, and wished, as every honest man should do, to have wherewithal to satisfy his creditors. In their sea enterprises, they followed most of the customs which are generally observed in private ships of war; and sometimes were held together by a subscribed written agreement, by the English called Charter-party; by the French _Chasse-partie_, which might in this case be construed a Chasing agreement. Whenever it happened that _Spain_ was at open and declared war with any of the maritime nations of _Europe_, the Buccaneers who were natives of the country at war with her, obtained commissions, which rendered the vessels in which they cruised, regular privateers. The English adventurers sometimes, as is seen in Dampier, called themselves Privateers, applying the term to persons in the same manner we now apply it to private ships of war. The Dutch, whose terms are generally faithful to the meaning intended, called the adventurers _Zee Roovers_; the word _roover_ in the Dutch language comprising the joint sense of the two English words rover and robber. CHAP. V. _Treaty made by the Spaniards with Don =Henriquez=. Increase of English and French in the =West Indies=. =Tortuga= surprised by the Spaniards. Policy of the English and French Governments with respect to the Buccaneers. =Mansvelt=, his attempt to form an independent Buccaneer Establishment. French West-India Company. =Morgan= succeeds =Mansvelt= as Chief of the Buccaneers._ [Sidenote: 1630.] The Spanish Government at length began to think it necessary to relax from their large pretensions, and in the year 1630 entered into treaties with other European nations, for mutual security of their West-India possessions. In a Treaty concluded that year with _Great Britain_, it was declared, that peace, amity, and friendship, should be observed between their respective subjects, in all parts of the world. But this general specification was not sufficient to produce effect in the _West Indies_. [Sidenote: 1633.] In _Hispaniola_, in the year 1633, the Government at _San Domingo_ concluded a treaty with Don Henriquez; which was the more readily accorded to him, because it was apprehended the revolted natives would league with the Brethren of the Coast. By this treaty all the followers of Don Henriquez who could claim descent from the original natives, in number four thousand persons, were declared free and under his protection, and lands were marked out for them. But, what is revolting to all generous hopes of human nature, the negroes were abandoned to the Spaniards. Magnanimity was not to be expected of the natives of _Hayti_; yet they had shewn themselves capable of exertion for their own relief; and a small degree more of firmness would have included these, their most able champions, in the treaty. This weak and wicked defection from friends, confederated with them in one common and righteous cause, seems to have wrought its own punishment. The vigilance and vigour of mind of the negro might have guarded against encroachments upon the independence obtained; instead of which, the wretched Haytians in a short time fell again wholly into the grinding hands of the Spaniards: and in the early part of the eighteenth century, it was reckoned that the whole number living, of the descendants of the party of Don Henriquez, did not quite amount to one hundred persons. [Sidenote: Cultivation in Tortuga.] The settlement of the Buccaneers at _Tortuga_ drew many Europeans there, as well settlers as others, to join in their adventures and occupations. They began to clear and cultivate the grounds, which were before overgrown with woods, and made plantations of tobacco, which proved to be of extraordinary good quality. [Sidenote: Increase of the English and French Settlements in the West Indies.] More Europeans, not Spaniards, consequently allies of the Buccaneers, continued to pour into the _West Indies_, and formed settlements on their own accounts, on some of the islands of the small _Antilles_. These settlements were not composed of mixtures of different people, but were most of them all English or all French; and as they grew into prosperity, they were taken possession of for the crowns of _England_ or of _France_ by the respective governments. Under the government authorities new colonists were sent out, royal governors were appointed, and codes of law established, which combined, with the security of the colony, the interests of the mother-country. But at the same time these benefits were conferred, grants of lands were made under royal authority, which dispossessed many persons, who, by labour and perilous adventure, and some who at considerable expence, had achieved establishments for themselves, in favour of men till then no way concerned in any of the undertakings. In some cases, grants of whole islands were obtained, by purchase or favour; and the first settlers, who had long before gained possession, and who had cleared and brought the ground into a state for cultivation, were rendered dependent upon the new proprietary governors, to whose terms they were obliged to submit, or to relinquish their tenure. Such were the hard accompaniments to the protection afforded by the governments of _France_ and _Great Britain_ to colonies, which, before they were acknowledged legitimate offsprings of the mother-country, had grown into consideration through their own exertions; and only because they were found worth adopting, were now received into the parent family. The discontents created by this rapacious conduct of the governments, and the disregard shewn to the claims of the first settlers, instigated some to resistance and rebellion, and caused many to join the Buccaneers. The Caribbe inhabitants were driven from their lands also with as little ceremony. The Buccaneer colony at _Tortuga_ had not been beheld with indifference by the Spaniards. [Sidenote: 1638.] The Buccaneers, with the carelessness natural to men in their loose condition of life, under neither command nor guidance, continued to trust to the supineness of the enemy for their safety, and neglected all precaution. [Sidenote: Tortuga surprised by the Spaniards.] In the year 1638, the Spaniards with a large force fell unexpectedly upon _Tortuga_, at a time when the greater number of the settlers were absent in _Hispaniola_ on the chace; and those who were on the Island, having neither fortress nor government, became an easy prey to the Spaniards, who made a general massacre of all who fell into their hands, not only of those they surprised in the beginning, but many who afterwards came in from the woods to implore their lives on condition of returning to _Europe_, they hanged. A few kept themselves concealed, till they found an opportunity to cross over to their brethren in _Hispaniola_. It happened not to suit the convenience of the Spaniards to keep a garrison at _Tortuga_, and they were persuaded the Buccaneers would not speedily again expose themselves to a repetition of such treatment as they had just experienced; therefore they contented themselves with destroying the buildings, and as much as they could of the plantations; after which they returned to _San Domingo_. In a short time after their departure, the remnant of the Hunters collected to the number of three hundred, again fixed themselves at _Tortuga_, and, for the first time, elected a commander. As the hostility of the Buccaneers had constantly and solely been directed against the Spaniards, all other Europeans in the _West Indies_ regarded them as champions in the common cause, and the severities which had been exercised against them created less of dread than of a spirit of vengeance. The numbers of the Buccaneers were quickly recruited by volunteers of English, French, and Dutch, from all parts; and both the occupations of hunting and cruising were pursued with more than usual eagerness. The French and English Governors in the _West Indies_, influenced by the like feelings, either openly, or by connivance, gave constant encouragement to the Buccaneers. The French Governor at _St. Christopher_, who was also Governor General for the French West-India Islands, was most ready to send assistance to the Buccaneers. This Governor, Monsieur de Poincy, an enterprising and capable man, had formed a design to take possession of the Island _Tortuga_ for the crown of _France_; which he managed to put in execution three years after, having by that time predisposed some of the principal French Buccaneers to receive a garrison of the French king's troops. [Sidenote: Tortuga taken possession of for the Crown of France.] This appropriation was made in 1641; and De Poincy, thinking his acquisition would be more secure to _France_ by the absence of the English, forced all the English Buccaneers to quit the Island. The French writers say, that before the interposition of the French Governor, the English Buccaneers took advantage of their numbers, and domineered in _Tortuga_. The English Governors in the _West Indies_ could not at this time shew the same tender regard for the English Buccaneers, as the support they received from home was very precarious, owing to the disputes which then subsisted in _England_ between King Charles and the English Parliament, which engrossed so much of the public attention as to leave little to colonial concerns. The French Commander de Poincy pushed his success. In his appointment of a Governor to _Tortuga_, he added the title of Governor of the West coast of _Hispaniola_, and by degrees he introduced French garrisons. This was the first footing obtained by the Government of _France_ in _Hispaniola_. The same policy was observed there respecting the English as at _Tortuga_, by which means was effected a separation of the English Buccaneers from the French. After this time, it was only occasionally, and from accidental circumstances, or by special agreement, that they acted in concert. The English adventurers, thus elbowed out of _Hispaniola_ and _Tortuga_, lost the occupation of hunting cattle and of the boucan, but they continued to be distinguished by the appellation of Buccaneers, and, when not cruising, most generally harboured at the Islands possessed by the British. Hitherto, it had rested in the power of the Buccaneers to have formed themselves into an independent state. Being composed of people of different nations, the admission of a Governor from any one, might easily have been resisted. Now, they were considered in a kind of middle state, between that of Buccaneers and of men returned to their native allegiance. It seemed now in the power of the English and French Governments to put a stop to their cruisings, and to furnish them with more honest employment; but politics of a different cast prevailed. The Buccaneers were regarded as profitable to the Colonies, on account of the prizes they brought in; and even vanity had a share in their being countenanced. [Sidenote: Policy of the English and French Governments with respect to the Buccaneers.] The French authors call them _nos braves_, and the English speak of their 'unparalleled exploits.' The policy both of _England_ and of _France_ with respect to the Buccaneers, seems to have been well described in the following sentence: _On laissoit faire des Avanturiers, qu'on pouvoit toujours desavouer, mais dont les succes pouvoient etre utiles_: _i. e._ 'they connived at the actions of these Adventurers, which could always be disavowed, and whose successes might be serviceable.' This was not esteemed _friponnerie_, but a maxim of sound state policy. In the character given of a good French West-India governor, he is praised, for that, 'besides encouraging the cultivation of lands, he never neglected to encourage the _Flibustiers_. It was a certain means of improving the Colony, by attracting thither the young and enterprising. He would scarcely receive a slight portion of what he was entitled to from his right of bestowing commissions in time of war[10]. And when we were at peace, and our Flibustiers, for want of other employment, would go cruising, and would carry their prizes to the English Islands, he was at the pains of procuring them commissions from _Portugal_, which country was then at war with _Spain_; in virtue of which our _Flibustiers_ continued to make themselves redoubtable to the Spaniards, and to spread riches and abundance in our Colonies.' This panegyric was bestowed by Père Labat; who seems to have had more of national than of moral or religious feeling on this head. It was a powerful consideration with the French and English Governments, to have at their occasional disposal, without trouble or expence, a well trained military force, always at hand, and willing to be employed upon emergency; who required no pay nor other recompense for their services and constant readiness, than their share of plunder, and that their piracies upon the Spaniards should pass unnoticed. [Sidenote: 1644.] Towards the end of 1644, a new Governor General for the French West-India possessions was appointed by the French Regency (during the minority of Louis XIV.); but the Commander de Poincy did not choose to resign, and the colonists were inclined to support him. Great discontents prevailed in the French Colonies, which rendered them liable to being shaken by civil wars; and the apprehensions of the Regency on this head enabled De Poincy to stand his ground. He remained Governor General over the French Colonies not only for the time, but was continued in that office, by succeeding administrations, many years. [Sidenote: 1654. The Buccaneers plunder New Segovia.] About the year 1654, a large party of Buccaneers, French and English, joined in an expedition on the Continent. They ascended a river of the _Mosquito shore_, a small distance on the South side of _Cape Gracias a Dios_, in canoes; and after labouring nearly a month against a strong stream and waterfalls, they left their canoes, and marched to the town of _Nueva Segovia_, which they plundered, and then returned down the river. [Sidenote: The Spaniards retake Tortuga. 1655. With the assistance of the Buccaneers, the English take Jamaica: 1660; And the French retake Tortuga.] In the same year, the Spaniards took _Tortuga_ from the French. In the year following, 1655, _England_ being at war with _Spain_, a large force was sent from _England_ to attempt the conquest of the Island _Hispaniola_. In this attempt they failed; but afterwards fell upon _Jamaica_, of which Island they made themselves masters, and kept possession. In the conquest of _Jamaica_, the English were greatly assisted by the Buccaneers; and a few years after, with their assistance also, the French regained possession of _Tortuga_. On the recovery of _Tortuga_, the French Buccaneers greatly increased in the Northern and Western parts of _Hispaniola_. _Spain_ also sent large reinforcements from _Europe_; and for some years war was carried on with great spirit and animosity on both sides. During the heat of this contest, the French Buccaneers followed more the occupation of hunting, and less that of cruising, than at any other period of their history. The Spaniards finding they could not expel the French from _Hispaniola_, determined to join their efforts to those of the French hunters, for the destruction of the cattle and wild hogs on the Island, so as to render the business of hunting unproductive. But the French had begun to plant; and the depriving them of the employment of hunting, drove them to other occupations not less contrary to the interest and wishes of the Spaniards. The less profit they found in the chase, the more they became cultivators and cruisers. [Sidenote: Pierre le Grand, a French Buccaneer.] The Buccaneer Histories of this period abound with relations: of daring actions performed by them; but many of which are chiefly remarkable for the ferocious cruelty of the leaders by whom they were conducted. Pierre, a native of _Dieppe_, for his success received to his name the addition of _le grand_, and is mentioned as one of the first Flibustiers who obtained much notoriety. In a boat, with a crew of twenty-eight men, he surprised and took the Ship of the Vice-Admiral of the Spanish galeons, as she was sailing homeward-bound with a rich freight. He set the Spanish crew on shore at _Cape Tiburon_, the West end of _Hispaniola_, and sailed in his prize to _France_. [Sidenote: Alexandre.] A Frenchman, named Alexandre, also in a small vessel, took a Spanish ship of war. [Sidenote: Montbars, surnamed the Exterminator.] It is related of another Frenchman, a native of _Languedoc_, named Montbars, that on reading a history of the cruelty of the Spaniards to the Americans, he conceived such an implacable hatred against the Spaniards, that he determined on going to the _West Indies_ to join the Buccaneers; and that he there pursued his vengeance with so much ardour as to acquire the surname of the Exterminator. [Sidenote: Bartolomeo Portuguez.] One Buccaneer of some note was a native of _Portugal_, known by the name of Bartolomeo Portuguez; who, however, was more renowned for his wonderful escapes, both in battle, and from the gallows, than for his other actions. [Sidenote: L'Olonnois, a French Buccaneer, and Michel le Basque, take Maracaibo and Gibraltar.] But no one of the Buccaneers hitherto named, arrived at so great a degree of notoriety, as a Frenchman, called François L'Olonnois, a native of part of the French coast which is near the sands of _Olonne_, but whose real name is not known. This man, and Michel le Basque, both Buccaneer commanders, at the head of 650 men, took the towns of _Maracaibo_ and _Gibraltar_ in the _Gulf of Venezuela_, on the _Tierra Firma_. The booty they obtained by the plunder and ransom of these places, was estimated at 400,000 crowns. The barbarities practised on the prisoners could not be exceeded. [Sidenote: Outrages committed by L'Olonnois.] Olonnois was possessed with an ambition to make himself renowned for being terrible. At one time, it is said, he put the whole crew of a Spanish ship, ninety men, to death, performing himself the office of executioner, by beheading them. He caused the crews of four other vessels to be thrown into the sea; and more than once, in his frenzies, he tore out the hearts of his victims, and devoured them. Yet this man had his encomiasts; so much will loose notions concerning glory, aided by a little partiality, mislead even sensible men. Père Charlevoix says, _Celui de tous, dont les grandes actions illustrerent davantage les premieres années du gouvernement de M. d'Ogeron, fut l'Olonnois. Ses premiers succès furent suivis de quelques malheurs, qui ne servirent qu'à donner un nouveau lustre à sa gloire._ The career of this savage was terminated by the Indians of the coast of _Darien_, on which he had landed. [Sidenote: Mansvelt, a Buccaneer Chief; his Plan for forming a Buccaneer Establishment. 1664.] The Buccaneers now went in such formidable numbers, that several Spanish towns, both on the Continent and among the Islands of the _West Indies_, submitted to pay them contribution. And at this time, a Buccaneer commander, named Mansvelt, more provident and more ambitious in his views than any who preceded him, formed a project for founding an independent Buccaneer establishment. Of what country Mansvelt was native, does not appear; but he was so popular among the Buccaneers, that both French and English were glad to have him for their leader. The greater number of his followers in his attempt to form a settlement were probably English, as he fitted out in _Jamaica_. A Welshman, named Henry Morgan, who had made some successful cruises as a Buccaneer, went with him as second in command. [Sidenote: Island S^{ta} Katalina, or Providence; since named Old Providence.] The place designed by them for their establishment, was an Island named _S^{ta} Katalina_, or _Providence_, situated in latitude 13° 24' N, about 40 leagues to the Eastward of the _Mosquito shore_. This Island is scarcely more than two leagues in its greatest extent, but has a harbour capable of being easily fortified against an enemy; and very near to its North end is a much smaller Island. The late Charts assign the name of _S^{ta} Katalina_ to the small Island, and give to the larger Island that of _Old Providence_, the epithet _Old_ having been added to distinguish this from the _Providence_ of the _Bahama Islands_. At the time Mansvelt undertook his scheme of settlement, this _S^{ta} Katalina_, or _Providence Island_, was occupied by the Spaniards, who had a fort and good garrison there. Some time in or near the year 1664, Mansvelt sailed thither from _Jamaica_, with fifteen vessels and 500 men. He assaulted and took the fort, which he garrisoned with one hundred Buccaneers and all the slaves he had taken, and left the command to a Frenchman, named Le Sieur Simon. At the end of his cruise, he returned to _Jamaica_, intending to procure there recruits for his Settlement of _S^{ta} Katalina_; but the Governor of _Jamaica_, however friendly to the Buccaneers whilst they made _Jamaica_ their home, saw many reasons for disliking Mansvelt's plan, and would not consent to his raising men. [Sidenote: Death of Mansvelt.] Not being able to overcome the Governor's unwillingness, Mansvelt sailed for _Tortuga_, to try what assistance he could procure there; but in the passage he was suddenly taken ill, and died. For a length of time after, Simon remained at _S^{ta} Katalina_ with his garrison, in continual expectation of seeing or hearing from Mansvelt; instead of which, a large Spanish force arrived and besieged his fort, when, learning of Mansvelt's death, and seeing no prospect of receiving reinforcement or relief, he found himself obliged to surrender. [Sidenote: French West-India Company.] The government in _France_ had appointed commissioners on behalf of the French West-India Company, to take all the Islands called the _French Antilles_, out of the hands of individuals, subjects of _France_, who had before obtained possession, and to put them into the possession of the said Company, to be governed according to such provisions as they should think proper. [Sidenote: 1665.] In February 1665, M. d'Ogeron was appointed Governor of _Tortuga_, and of the French settlements in _Hispaniola_, or _St. Domingo_, as the Island was now more commonly called. [Sidenote: The French settlers dispute their authority.] On his arrival at _Tortuga_, the French adventurers, both there and in _Hispaniola_, declared that if he came to govern in the name of the King of _France_, he should find faithful and obedient subjects; but they would not submit themselves to any Company; and in no case would they consent to the prohibiting their trade with the Hollanders, 'with whom,' said the Buccaneers, 'we have been in the constant habit of trading, and were so before it was known in _France_ that there was a single Frenchman in _Tortuga_, or on the coast of _St. Domingo_.' [Sidenote: 1665-7.] M. d'Ogeron had recourse to dissimulation to allay these discontents. He yielded consent to the condition respecting the commerce with the Dutch, fully resolved not to observe it longer than till his authority should be sufficiently established for him to break it with safety; and to secure the commerce within his government exclusively to the French West-India Company, who, when rid of all competitors, would be able to fix their own prices. It was not long before M. d'Ogeron judged the opportunity was arrived for effecting this revocation without danger; but it caused a revolt of the French settlers in _St. Domingo_, which did not terminate without bloodshed and an execution; and so partial as well as defective in principle were the historians who have related the fact, that they have at the same time commended M. d'Ogeron for his probity and simple manners. In the end, he prevailed in establishing a monopoly for the Company, to the injury of his old companions the French Buccaneers, with whom he had at a former period associated, and who had been his benefactors in a time of his distress. [Sidenote: Morgan succeeds Mansvelt; plunders Puerto del Principe.] On the death of Mansvelt, Morgan was regarded as the most capable and most fortunate leader of any of the _Jamaica_ Buccaneers. With a body of several hundred men, who placed themselves under his command, he took and plundered the town of _Puerto del Principe_ in _Cuba_. A quarrel happened at this place among the Buccaneers, in which a Frenchman was treacherously slain by an Englishman. The French took to arms, to revenge the death of their countryman; but Morgan pacified them by putting the murderer in irons, and promising he should be delivered up to justice on their return to _Jamaica_; which was done, and the criminal was hanged. But in some other respects, the French were not so well satisfied with Morgan for their commander, as they had been with Mansvelt. Morgan was a great rogue, and little respected the old proverb of, Honour among Thieves: this had been made manifest to the French, and almost all of them separated from him. [Sidenote: 1667. Maracaibo again pillaged. 1668. Morgan takes Porto Bello: Exercises great Cruelty.] _Maracaibo_ was now a second time pillaged by the French Buccaneers, under Michel le Basque. Morgan's next undertaking was against _Porto Bello_, one of the principal and best fortified ports belonging to the Spaniards in the _West Indies_. He had under his command only 460 men; but not having revealed his design to any person, he came on the town by surprise, and found it unprepared. Shocking cruelties are related to have been committed in this expedition. Among many others, that a castle having made more resistance than had been expected, Morgan, after its surrendering, shut up the garrison in it, and caused fire to be set to the magazine, destroying thereby the castle and the garrison together. In the attack of another fort, he compelled a number of religious persons, both male and female, whom he had taken prisoners, to carry and plant scaling ladders against the walls; and many of them were killed by those who defended the fort. The Buccaneers in the end became masters of the place, and the use they made of their victory corresponded with their actions in obtaining it. Many prisoners died under tortures inflicted on them to make them discover concealed treasures, whether they knew of any or not. A large ransom was also extorted for the town and prisoners. This success attracted other Buccaneers, among them the French again, to join Morgan; and by a kind of circular notice they rendezvoused in large force under his command at the _Isla de la Vaca_ (by the French called _Isle Avache_) near the SW part of _Hispaniola_. A large French Buccaneer ship was lying at _la Vaca_, which was not of this combination, the commander and crew of which refused to join with Morgan, though much solicited. Morgan was angry, but dissembled, and with a show of cordiality invited the French captain and his officers to an entertainment on board his own ship. When they were his guests, they found themselves his prisoners; and their ship, being left without officers, was taken without resistance. The men put by Morgan in charge of the ship, fell to drinking; and, whether from their drunkenness and negligence, or from the revenge of any of the prisoners, cannot be known, she suddenly blew up, by which 350 English Buccaneers, and all the Frenchmen on board her, perished. _The History of the Buccaneers of America_, in which the event is related, adds by way of remark, 'Thus was this unjust action of Captain Morgan's soon followed by divine justice; for this ship, the largest in his fleet, was blown up in the air, with 350 Englishmen and all the French prisoners.' This comment seems to have suggested to Voltaire the ridicule he has thrown on the indiscriminate manner in which men sometimes pronounce misfortune to be a peculiar judgment of God, in the dialogue he put into the mouths of Candide and Martin, on the wicked Dutch skipper being drowned. [Sidenote: 1669. Maracaibo and Gibraltar plundered by Morgan.] From _Isla de la Vaca_ Morgan sailed with his fleet to _Maracaibo_ and _Gibraltar_; which unfortunate towns were again sacked. It was a frequent practice with these desperadoes to secure their prisoners by shutting them up in churches, where it was easy to keep guard over them. This was done by Morgan at _Maracaibo_ and _Gibraltar_, and with so little care for their subsistence, that many of the prisoners were actually starved to death, whilst their merciless victors were rioting in the plunder of their houses. Morgan remained so long at _Gibraltar_, that the Spaniards had time to repair and put in order a castle at the entrance of the _Lagune of Maracaibo_; and three large Spanish ships of war arrived and took stations near the castle, by which they hoped to cut off the retreat of the pirates. [Sidenote: His Contrivances in effecting his Retreat.] The Buccaneer Histories give Morgan much credit here, for his management in extricating his fleet and prizes from their difficult situation, which is related to have been in the following manner. He converted one of his vessels into a fire-ship, but so fitted up as to preserve the appearance of a ship intended for fighting, and clumps of wood were stuck up in her, dressed with hats on, to resemble men. By means of this ship, the rest of his fleet following close at hand, he took one of the Spanish ships, and destroyed the two others. Still there remained the castle to be passed; which he effected without loss, by a stratagem which deceived the Spaniards from their guard. During the day, and in sight of the castle, he filled his boats with armed men, and they rowed from the ships to a part of the shore which was well concealed by thickets. After waiting as long as might be supposed to be occupied in the landing, all the men lay down close in the bottom of the boats, except two in each, who rowed them back, going to the sides of the ships which were farthest from the castle. This being repeated several times, caused the Spaniards to believe that the Buccaneers intended an assault by land with their whole force; and they made disposition with their cannon accordingly, leaving the side of the castle towards the sea unprovided. When it was night, and the ebb tide began to make, Morgan's fleet took up their anchors, and, without setting sail, it being moonlight, they fell down the river, unperceived, till they were nigh the castle. They then set their sails, and fired upon the castle, and before the Spaniards could bring their guns back to return the fire, the ships were past. The value of the booty made in this expedition was 250,000 pieces of eight. Some minor actions of the Buccaneers are omitted here, not being of sufficient consequence to excuse detaining the Reader, to whom will next be related one of their most remarkable exploits. CHAP. VI. _Treaty of =America=. Expedition of the Buccaneers against =Panama=. Exquemelin's History of the American Sea Rovers. Misconduct of the European Governors in the =West Indies=._ [Sidenote: 1670.] In July 1670, was concluded a Treaty between _Great Britain_ and _Spain_, made expressly with the intention of terminating the Buccaneer war, and of settling all disputes between the subjects of the two countries in _America_. It has been with this especial signification entitled the Treaty of _America_, and is the first which appears to have been dictated by a mutual disposition to establish peace in the _West Indies_. The articles particularly directed to this end are the following:-- [Sidenote: Treaty between Great Britain and Spain, called the Treaty of America.] Art. II. There shall be an universal peace and sincere friendship, as well in _America_, as in other parts, between the Kings of _Great Britain_ and _Spain_, their heirs and successors, their kingdoms, plantations, &c. III. That all hostilities, depredations, &c. shall cease between the subjects of the said Kings. IV. The two Kings shall take care that their subjects forbear all acts of hostility, and shall call in all commissions, letters of marque and reprisals, and punish all offenders, obliging them to make reparation. VII. All past injuries, on both sides, shall be buried in oblivion. VIII. The King of _Great Britain_ shall hold and enjoy all the lands, countries, &c. he is now possessed of in _America_. IX. The subjects on each side shall forbear trading or sailing to any places whatsoever under the dominion of the other, without particular licence. XIV. Particular offences shall be repaired in the common course of justice, and no reprisals made unless justice be denied, or unreasonably retarded. When notice of this Treaty was received in the _West Indies_, the Buccaneers, immediately as of one accord, resolved to undertake some grand expedition. Many occurrences had given rise to jealousies between the English and the French in the _West Indies_; but Morgan's reputation as a commander was so high, that adventurers from all parts signified their readiness to join him, and he appointed _Cape Tiburon_ on the West of _Hispaniola_ for the place of general rendezvous. In consequence of this summons, in the beginning of December 1670, a fleet was there collected under his command, consisting of no less than thirty-seven vessels of different sizes, and above 2000 men. Having so large a force, he held council with the principal commanders, and proposed for their determination, which they should attempt of the three places, _Carthagena_, _Vera Cruz_, and _Panama_. _Panama_ was believed to be the richest, and on that City the lot fell. A century before, when the name of Buccaneer was not known, roving adventurers had crossed the _Isthmus of America_ from the _West Indies_ to the _South Sea_; but the fate of Oxnam and his companions deterred others from the like attempt, until the time of the Buccaneers, who, as they increased in numbers, extended their enterprises, urged by a kind of necessity, the _West Indies_ not furnishing plunder sufficient to satisfy so many men, whose modes of expenditure were not less profligate than their means of obtaining were violent and iniquitous. [Sidenote: Expedition of the Buccaneers against Panama.] The rendezvous appointed by Morgan for meeting his confederates was distant from any authority which could prevent or impede their operations; and whilst they remained on the coast of _Hispaniola_, he employed men to hunt cattle, and cure meat. He also sent vessels to collect maize, at the settlements on the _Tierra Firma_. Specific articles of agreement were drawn up and subscribed to, for the distribution of plunder. Morgan, as commander in chief, was to receive one hundredth part; each captain was to have eight shares; provision was stipulated for the maimed and wounded, and rewards for those who should particularly distinguish themselves. [Sidenote: December. They take the Island S^{ta} Katalina.] These matters being settled, on December the 16th, the whole fleet sailed, from _Cape Tiburon_; on the 20th, they arrived at the Island _S^{ta} Katalina_, then occupied by the Spaniards, who had garrisoned it chiefly with criminals sentenced to serve there by way of punishment. Morgan had fully entered into the project of Mansvelt for forming an establishment at _S^{ta} Katalina_, and he was not the less inclined to it now that he considered himself as the head of the Buccaneers. The Island surrendered upon summons. It is related, that at the request of the Governor, in which Morgan indulged him, a military farce was performed; Morgan causing cannon charged only with powder to be fired at the fort, which returned the like fire for a decent time, and then lowered their flag. Morgan judged it would contribute to the success of the proposed expedition against _Panama_, to make himself master of the fort or castle of _San Lorenzo_ at the entrance of the _River Chagre_. For this purpose he sent a detachment of 400 men under the command of an old Buccaneer named Brodely, and in the mean time remained himself with the main body of his forces at _S^{ta} Katalina_, to avoid giving the Spaniards cause to suspect his further designs. [Sidenote: Attack of the Castle at the River Chagre.] The Castle of _Chagre_ was strong, both in its works and in situation, being built on the summit of a steep hill. It was valiantly assaulted, and no less valiantly defended. The Buccaneers were once forced to retreat. They returned to the attack, and were nearly a second time driven back, when a powder magazine in the fort blew up, and the mischief and confusion thereby occasioned gave the Buccaneers opportunity to force entrance through the breaches they had made. The Governor of the castle refused to take quarter which was offered him by the Buccaneers, as did also some of the Spanish soldiers. More than 200 men of 314 which composed the garrison were killed. The loss on the side of the Buccaneers was above 100 men killed outright, and 70 wounded. [Sidenote: 1671. January. March of the Buccaneers across the Isthmus.] On receiving intelligence of the castle being taken, Morgan repaired with the rest of his men from _S^{ta} Katalina_. He set the prisoners to work to repair the Castle of _San Lorenzo_, in which he stationed a garrison of 500 men; he also appointed 150 men to take care of the ships; and on the 18th of January 1671[11], he set forward at the head of 1200 men for _Panama_. One party with artillery and stores embarked in canoes, to mount the _River Chagre_, the course of which is extremely serpentine. At the end of the second day, however, they quitted the canoes, on account of the many obstructions from trees which had fallen in the river, and because the river was at this time in many places almost dry; but the way by land was also found so difficult for the carriage of stores, that the canoes were again resorted to. On the sixth day, when they had expended great part of their travelling store of provisions, they had the good fortune to discover a barn full of maize. They saw many native Indians, who all kept at a distance, and it was in vain endeavoured to overtake some. On the seventh day they came to a village called _Cruz_, the inhabitants of which had set fire to their houses, and fled. They found there, however, fifteen jars of Peruvian wine, and a sack of bread. The village of _Cruz_ is at the highest part of the _River Chagre_ to which boats or canoes, can arrive. It was reckoned to be eight leagues distant from _Panama_. On the ninth day of their journey, they came in sight of the _South Sea_; and here they were among fields in which cattle grazed. Towards evening, they had sight of the steeples of _Panama_. In the course of their march thus far from the Castle of _Chagre_, they lost, by being fired at from concealed places, ten men killed; and as many more were wounded. _Panama_ had not the defence of regular fortifications. Some works had been raised, but in parts the city lay open, and was to be won or defended by plain fighting. According to the Buccaneer account, the Spaniards had about 2000 infantry and 400 horse; which force, it is to be supposed, was in part composed of inhabitants and slaves. [Sidenote: 27th. The City of Panama taken.] January the 27th, early in the morning, the Buccaneers resumed their march towards the city. The Spaniards came out to meet them. In this battle, the Spaniards made use of wild bulls, which they drove upon the Buccaneers to disorder their ranks; but it does not appear to have had much effect. In the end, the Spaniards gave way, and before night, the Buccaneers were masters of the city. All that day, the Buccaneers gave no quarter, either during the battle, or afterwards. Six hundred Spaniards fell. The Buccaneers lost many men, but the number is not specified. [Sidenote: The City burnt.] One of the first precautions taken by Morgan after his victory, was to prevent drunkenness among his men: to which end, he procured to have it reported to him that all the wine in the city had been poisoned by the inhabitants; and on the ground of this intelligence, he strictly prohibited every one, under severe penalties, from tasting wine. Before they had well fixed their quarters in _Panama_, several parts of the city burst out in flames, which spread so rapidly, that in a short time many magnificent edifices built with cedar, and a great part of the city, were burnt to the ground. Whether this was done designedly, or happened accidentally, owing to the consternation of the inhabitants during the assault, has been disputed. Morgan is accused of having directed some of his people to commit this mischief, but no motive is assigned that could induce him to an act which cut off his future prospect of ransom. Morgan charged it upon the Spaniards; and it is acknowledged the Buccaneers gave all the assistance they were able to those of the inhabitants who endeavoured to stop the progress of the fire, which nevertheless continued to burn near four weeks before it was quite extinguished. Among the buildings destroyed, was a factory-house belonging to the Genoese, who then carried on the trade of supplying the Spaniards with slaves from _Africa_. The rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty, of the Buccaneers, in their pillage of _Panama_, had no bounds. 'They spared,' says the narrative of a Buccaneer named Exquemelin, 'in these their cruelties no sex nor condition whatsoever. As to religious persons and priests, they granted them less quarter than others, unless they procured a considerable sum of money for their ransom.' Morgan sent detachments to scour the country for plunder, and to bring in prisoners from whom ransom might be extorted. Many of the inhabitants escaped with their effects by sea, and went for shelter to the Islands in the _Bay of Panama_. Morgan found a large boat lying aground in the Port, which he caused to be lanched, and manned with a numerous crew, and sent her to cruise among the Islands. A galeon, on board which the women of a convent had taken refuge, and in which money, plate, and other valuable effects, had been lodged, very narrowly escaped falling into their hands. They made prize of several vessels, one of which was well adapted for cruising. This opened a new prospect; and some of the Buccaneers began to consult how they might quit Morgan, and seek their fortunes on the _South Sea_, whence they proposed to sail, with the plunder they should obtain, by the _East Indies_ to _Europe_. But Morgan received notice of their design before it could be put in execution, and to prevent such a diminution of his force, he ordered the masts of the ship to be cut away, and all the boats or vessels lying at _Panama_ which could suit their purpose, to be burnt. [Sidenote: Feb. 24th. The Buccaneers depart from Panama.] The old city of _Panama_ is said to have contained 7000 houses, many of which were magnificent edifices built with cedar. On the 24th of February, Morgan and his men departed from its ruins, taking with them 175 mules laden with spoil, and 600 prisoners, some of them carrying burthens, and others for whose release ransom was expected. Among the latter were many women and children. These poor creatures were designedly caused to suffer extreme hunger and thirst, and kept under apprehensions of being carried to _Jamaica_ to be sold as slaves, that they might the more earnestly endeavour to procure money to be brought for their ransom. When some of the women, upon their knees and in tears, begged of Morgan to let them return to their families, his answer to them was, that 'he came not there to listen to cries and lamentations, but to seek money,' Morgan's thirst for money was not restrained to seeking it among his foes. He had a hand equally ready for that of his friends. Neither did he think his friends people to be trusted; for in the middle of the march back to _Chagre_, he drew up his men and caused them to be sworn, that they had not reserved or concealed any plunder, but had delivered all fairly into the common stock. This ceremony, it seems, was not uncustomary. 'But Captain Morgan having had experience that those loose fellows would not much stickle to swear falsely in such a case, he commanded every one to be searched; and that it might not be esteemed an affront, he permitted himself to be first searched, even to the very soles of his shoes. The French Buccaneers who had engaged on this expedition with Morgan, were not well satisfied with this new custom of searching; but their number being less than that of the English, they were forced to submit.' On arriving at _Chagre_, a division was made. The narrative says, 'every person received his portion, or rather what part thereof Captain Morgan was pleased to give him. For so it was, that his companions, even those of his own nation, complained of his proceedings; for they judged it impossible that, of so many valuable robberies, no greater share should belong to them than 200 pieces of eight _per_ head. But Captain Morgan was deaf to these, and to many other complaints of the same kind.' As Morgan was not disposed to allay the discontents of his men by coming to a more open reckoning with them, to avoid having the matter pressed upon him, he determined to withdraw from his command, 'which he did without calling any council, or bidding any one adieu; but went secretly on board his own ship, and put out to sea without giving notice, being followed only by three or four vessels of the whole fleet, who it is believed went shares with him in the greatest part of the spoil.' The rest of the Buccaneer vessels soon separated. Morgan went to _Jamaica_, and had begun to levy men to go with him to the Island _S^{ta} Katalina_, which he purposed to hold as his own, and to make it a common place of refuge for pirates; when the arrival of a new Governor at _Jamaica_, Lord John Vaughan, with orders to enforce the late treaty with _Spain_, obliged him to relinquish his plan. [Sidenote: Exquemelin's History of the Buccaneers of America.] The foregoing account of the destruction of _Panama_ by Morgan, is taken from a History of the Buccaneers of America, written originally in the Dutch language by a Buccaneer named Exquemelin, and published at Amsterdam in 1678, with the title of _De Americaensche Zee Roovers_. Exquemelin's book contains only partial accounts of the actions of some of the principal among the Buccaneers. He has set forth the valour displayed by them in the most advantageous light; but generally, what he has related is credible. His history has been translated into all the European languages, but with various additions and alterations by the translators, each of whom has inclined to maintain the military reputation of his own nation. The Spanish translation is entitled _Piratas_, and has the following short complimentary Poem prefixed, addressed to the Spanish editor and emendator:-- De Agamenôn cantó la vida Homero Y Virgilio de Eneas lo piadoso Camoes de Gama el curso presurosso Gongora el brio de Colon Velero. Tu, O Alonso! mas docto y verdadoro, Descrives del America ingenioso Lo que assalta el Pirata codicioso: Lo que defiende el Español Guerrero. The French translation is entitled _Les Avanturiers qui se sont signalez dans les Indes_, and contains actions of the French Flibustiers which are not in Exquemelin. The like has been done in the English translation, which has for title _The Bucaniers of America_. The English translator, speaking of the sacking of _Panama_, has expressed himself with a strange mixture of boasting and compunctious feeling. This account, he says, contains the unparalleled and bold exploits of Sir Henry Morgan, written by one of the Buccaneers who was present at those tragedies. It has been remarked, that the treaty of _America_ furnishes an apology for the enterprises of the Buccaneers previous to its notification; it being so worded as to admit an inference that the English and Spaniards were antecedently engaged in a continual war in _America_. [Sidenote: 1671.] The new Governor of _Jamaica_ was authorized and instructed to proclaim a general pardon, and indemnity from prosecution, for all piratical offences committed to that time; and to grant 35 acres of land to every Buccaneer who should claim the benefit of the proclamation, and would promise to apply himself to planting; a measure from which the most beneficial effects might have been expected, not to the British colonists only, but to all around, in turning a number of able men from destructive occupations to useful and productive pursuits, if it had not been made subservient to sordid views. The author of the _History of Jamaica_ says, 'This offer was intended as a lure to engage the Buccaneers to come into port with their effects, that the Governor might, and which he was directed to do, take from them the tenths and fifteenths of their booty as the dues of the Crown [and of the Colonial Government] for granting them commissions.' Those who had neglected to obtain commissions would of course have to make their peace by an increased composition. In consequence of this scandalous procedure, the Jamaica Buccaneers, to avoid being so taxed, kept aloof from _Jamaica_, and were provoked to continue their old occupations. Most of them joined the French Flibustiers at _Tortuga_. Some were afterwards apprehended at _Jamaica_, where they were brought to trial, condemned as pirates, and executed. [Sidenote: 1672.] A war which was entered into by _Great Britain_ and _France_ against _Holland_, furnished for a time employment for the Buccaneers and Flibustiers, and procured the Spaniards a short respite. [Sidenote: 1673. Flibustiers shipwrecked at Porto Rico;] In 1673, the French made an attempt to take the Island of _Curaçao_ from the Dutch, and failed. M. d'Ogeron, the Governor of _Tortuga_, intended to have joined in this expedition, for which purpose he sailed in a ship named l'Ecueil, manned with 300 Flibustiers; but in the night of the 25th of February, she ran aground among some small islands and rocks, near the North side of the Island _Porto Rico_. The people got safe to land, but were made close prisoners by the Spaniards. After some months imprisonment, M. d'Ogeron, with three others, made their escape in a canoe, and got back to _Tortuga_. The Governor General over the French West-India Islands at that time, was a M. de Baas, who sent to _Porto Rico_ to demand the deliverance of the French detained there prisoners. The Spanish Governor of _Porto Rico_ required 3000 pieces of eight to be paid for expences incurred. De Baas was unwilling to comply with the demand, and sent an agent to negociate for an abatement in the sum; but they came to no agreement. M. d'Ogeron in the mean time collected five hundred men in _Tortuga_ and _Hispaniola_, with whom he embarked in a number of small vessels to pass over to _Porto Rico_, to endeavour the release of his shipwrecked companions; but by repeated tempests, several of his flotilla were forced back, and he reached _Porto Rico_ with only three hundred men. [Sidenote: And put to death by the Spaniards.] On their landing, the Spanish Governor put to death all his French prisoners, except seventeen of the officers. Afterwards in an engagement with the Spaniards, D'Ogeron lost seventeen men, and found his strength not sufficient to force the Spaniards to terms; upon which he withdrew from _Porto Rico_, and returned to _Tortuga_. The seventeen French officers that were spared in the massacre of the prisoners, the Governor of _Porto Rico_ put on board a vessel bound for the _Tierra Firma_, with the intention of transporting them to _Peru_; but from that fate they were delivered by meeting at sea with an English Buccaneer cruiser. Thus, by the French Governor General disputing about a trifling balance, three hundred of the French Buccaneers, whilst employed for the French king's service under one of his officers, were sacrificed. CHAP. VII. _=Thomas Peche=. Attempt of =La Sound= to cross the =Isthmus of America=. Voyage of =Antonio de Vea= to the =Strait of Magalhanes=. Various Adventures of the Buccaneers, in the =West Indies=, to the year 1679._ [Sidenote: 1673. Thomas Peche.] In 1673, Thomas Peche, an Englishman, fitted out a ship in _England_ for a piratical voyage to the _South Sea_ against the Spaniards. Previous to this, Peche had been many years a Buccaneer in the _West Indies_, and therefore his voyage to the _South Sea_ is mentioned as a Buccaneer expedition; but it was in no manner connected with any enterprise in or from the _West Indies_. The only information we have of Peche's voyage is from a Spanish author, _Seixas y Lovera_; and by that it may be conjectured that Peche sailed to the _Aleutian Isles_.[12] [Sidenote: 1675.] About this time the French West-India Company was suppressed; but another Company was at the same time erected in its stead, and under the unpromising title of _Compagnie des Fermiers du domaine d'Occident_. [Sidenote: La Sound attempts to cross the Isthmus.] Since the plundering of _Panama_, the imaginations of the Buccaneers had been continually running on expeditions to the _South Sea_. This was well known to the Spaniards, and produced many forebodings and prophecies, in _Spain_ as well as in _Peru_, of great invasions both by sea and land. The alarm was increased by an attempt of a French Buccaneer, named La Sound, with a small body of men, to cross over land to the _South Sea_. La Sound got no farther than the town of _Cheapo_, and was driven back. Dampier relates, 'Before my going to the _South Seas_, I being then on board a privateer off _Portobel_, we took a packet from _Carthagena_. We opened a great many of the merchants' letters, several of which informed their correspondents of a certain prophecy that went about _Spain_ that year, the tenor of which was, _That the English privateers in the West Indies would that year open a door into the South Seas_.' [Sidenote: Voyage of Ant. de Vea to the Strait of Magalhanes.] In 1675, it was reported and believed in _Peru_, that strange ships, supposed to be Pirates, had been seen on the coast of _Chili_, and it was apprehended that they designed to form an establishment there. In consequence of this information or rumour, the Viceroy sent a ship from _Peru_, under the command of Don Antonio de Vea, accompanied with small barks as tenders, to reconnoitre the _Gulf de la Santissima Trinidada_, and to proceed thence to the West entrance of the _Strait of Magalhanes_. De Vea made examination at those places, and was convinced, from the poverty of the land, that no settlement of Europeans could be maintained there. One of the Spanish barks, with a crew of sixteen men, was wrecked on the small Islands called _Evangelists_, at the West entrance of the _Strait_. De Vea returned to _Callao_ in April 1676[13]. [Sidenote: 1676.] The cattle in _Hispaniola_ had again multiplied so much as to revive the business of hunting and the _boucan_. In 1676, some French who had habitations in the _Peninsula of Samana_ (the NE part of _Hispaniola_) made incursions on the Spaniards, and plundered one of their villages. Not long afterwards, the Spaniards learnt that in _Samana_ there were only women and children, the men being all absent on the chace; and that it would be easy to surprise not only the habitations, but the hunters also, who had a boucan at a place called the _Round Mountain_. [Sidenote: Massacre of the French in Samana.] This the Spaniards executed, and with such full indulgence to their wish to extirpate the French in _Hispaniola_, that they put to the sword every one they found at both the places. The French, in consequence of this misfortune, strengthened their fortifications at _Cape François_, and made it their principal establishment in the Island. [Sidenote: 1678. French Fleet wrecked on the Isles de Aves.] In 1678, the French again undertook an expedition against the Dutch Island _Curaçao_, with a large fleet of the French king's ships, under the command of Admiral the Count d'Etrées. The French Court were so earnest for the conquest of _Curaçao_, to wipe off the disgrace of the former failure, that the Governor of _Tortuga_ was ordered to raise 1200 men to join the Admiral d'Etrées. The king's troops within his government did not exceed 300 men; nevertheless, the Governor collected the number required, the Flibustiers willingly engaging in the expedition. Part of them embarked on board the king's ships, and part in their own cruising vessels. By mistake in the navigation, d'Etrées ran ashore in the middle of the night on some small Isles to the East of _Curaçao_, called _de Aves_, which are surrounded with breakers, and eighteen of his ships, besides some of the Flibustier vessels, were wrecked. The crews were saved, excepting about 300 men. The _Curaçao_ expedition being thus terminated, the Flibustiers who had engaged in it, after saving as much as they could of the wrecks, went on expeditions of their own planning, to seek compensation for their disappointment and loss. [Sidenote: Granmont.] Some landed on _Cuba_, and pillaged _Puerto del Principe_. One party, under Granmont, a leader noted for the success of his enterprises, went to the Gulf of _Venezuela_, and the ill-fated towns _Maracaibo_ and _Gibraltar_ were again plundered; but what the Buccaneers obtained was not of much value. In August this year, _France_ concluded a treaty of peace with _Spain_ and _Holland_. The Government in _Jamaica_ had by this time relapsed to its former propensities, and again encouraged the Buccaneers, and shared in their gains. One crew of Buccaneers carried there a vessel taken from the Spaniards, the cargo of which produced for each man's share to the value of 400_l._ After disposing of the cargo, they burnt the vessel; and 'having paid the Governor his duties, they embarked for _England_, where,' added the author, 'some of them live in good reputation to this day[14].' As long as the war had lasted between _France_ and _Spain_, the French Buccaneers had the advantage of being lawful privateers. An English Buccaneer relates, 'We met a French private ship of war, mounting eight guns, who kept in our company some days. Her commission was only for three months. We shewed him our commission, which was for three years to come. This we had purchased at a cheap rate, having given for it only ten pieces of eight; but the truth of the thing was, that our commission was made out at first only for three months, the same date as the Frenchman's, whereas among ourselves we contrived to make it that it should serve for three years, for with this we were resolved to seek our fortunes.' Whenever _Spain_ was at war with another European Power, adventurers of any country found no difficulty in the _West Indies_ in procuring commissions to war against the Spaniards; with which commission, and carrying aloft the flag of the nation hostile to _Spain_, they assumed that they were lawful enemies. Such pretensions did them small service if they fell into the hands of the Spaniards; but they were allowed in the ports of neutral nations, which benefited by being made the mart of the Buccaneer prize goods; and the Buccaneers thought themselves well recompensed in having a ready market, and the security of the port. [Sidenote: 1678. Darien Indians.] The enterprises of the Buccaneers on the _Tierra Firma_ and other parts of the American Continent, brought them into frequent intercourse with the natives of those parts, and produced friendships, and sometimes alliances against the Spaniards, with whom each were alike at constant enmity. But there sometimes happened disagreements between them and the natives. The Buccaneers, if they wanted provisions or assistance from the Indians, had no objection to pay for it when they had the means; nor had the natives objection to supply them on that condition, and occasionally out of pure good will. The Buccaneers nevertheless, did not always refrain from helping themselves, with no other leave than their own. Sometime before Morgan's expedition to _Panama_, they had given the Indians of _Darien_ much offence; but shortly after that expedition, they were reconciled, in consequence of which, the Darien Indians had assisted La Sound. In 1678, they gave assistance to another party of Flibustiers which went against _Cheapo_, under a French Captain named Bournano, and offered to conduct them to a place called _Tocamoro_, where they said the Spaniards had much gold. Bournano did not think his force sufficient to take advantage of their offer, but promised he would come again and be better provided. [Sidenote: 1679. Porto Bello surprised by the Buccaneers.] In 1679, three Buccaneer vessels (two of them English, and one French) joined in an attempt to plunder _Porto Bello_. They landed 200 men at such a distance from the town, that it occupied them three nights in travelling, for during the day they lay concealed in the woods, before they reached it. Just as they came to the town, they were discovered by a negro, who ran before to give intelligence of their coming; but the Buccaneers were so quickly after him, that they got possession of the town before the inhabitants could take any step for their defence, and, being unacquainted with the strength of the enemy, they all fled. The Buccaneers remained in the town collecting plunder two days and two nights, all the time in apprehension that the Spaniards would; 'pour in the country' upon their small force, or intercept their retreat. They got back however to their ships unmolested, and, on a division of the booty, shared 160 pieces of eight to each man. CHAP. VIII. _Meeting of Buccaneers at the =Samballas=, and =Golden Island=. Party formed by the English Buccaneers to cross the =Isthmus=. Some account of the Native Inhabitants of the =Mosquito Shore=._ Immediately after the plundering of _Porto Bello_, a number of Buccaneer vessels, both English and French, on the report which had been made by Captain Bournano, assembled at the _Samballas_, or _Isles of San Blas_, near the coast of _Darien_. One of these vessels was commanded by Bournano. The Indians of _Darien_ received them as friends and allies, but they now disapproved the project of going to _Tocamoro_. The way thither, they said, was mountainous, and through a long tract of uninhabited country, in which it would be difficult to find subsistence; and instead of _Tocamoro_, they advised going against the city of _Panama_. [Sidenote: 1680. Golden Island.] Their representation caused the design upon _Tocamoro_ to be given up. The English Buccaneers were for attacking _Panama_; but the French objected to the length of the march; and on this difference, the English and French separated, the English Buccaneers going to an Island called by them _Golden Island_, which is the most eastern of the _Samballas_, if not more properly to be said to the eastward of all the _Samballas_. Without the assistance of the French, _Panama_ was too great an undertaking. They were bent, however, on crossing the _Isthmus_; and at the recommendation of their Darien friends, they determined to visit a Spanish town named _Santa Maria_, situated on the banks of a river that ran into the _South Sea_. The Spaniards kept a good garrison at _Santa Maria_, on account of gold which was collected from mountains in its neighbourhood. The Buccaneers who engaged in this expedition were the crews of seven vessels, of force as in the following list: Guns Men A vessel of 8 and 97 commanded by John Coxon. -- 25 - 107 ---- Peter Harris. -- 1 - 35 ---- Richard Sawkins. -- 2 - 40 ---- Bart. Sharp. -- 0 - 43 ---- Edmond Cook. -- 0 - 24 ---- Robert Alleston. -- 0 - 20 ---- ---- Macket. It was settled that Alleston and Macket, with 35 men, themselves included, should be left to guard the vessels during the absence of those who went on the expedition, which was not expected to be of long continuance. These matters were arranged at _Golden Island_, and agreement made with the Darien Indians to furnish them with subsistence during the march. William Dampier, a seaman at that time of no celebrity, but of good observation and experience, was among these Buccaneers, and of the party to cross the _Isthmus_; as was Lionel Wafer, since well known for his _Description of the Isthmus of Darien_, who had engaged with them as surgeon. [Sidenote: Account of the Mosquito Indians.] In this party of Buccaneers were also some native Americans, of a small tribe called Mosquito Indians, who inhabited the sea coast on each side of _Cape Gracias a Dios_, one way towards the river _San Juan de Nicaragua_, the other towards the _Gulf of Honduras_, which is called the _Mosquito Shore_. If Europeans had any plea in justification of their hostility against the Spaniards in the _West Indies_, much more had the native Americans. The Mosquito Indians, moreover, had long been, and were at the time of these occurrences, in an extraordinary degree attached to the English, insomuch that voluntarily of their own choice they acknowledged the King of _Great Britain_ for their sovereign. They were an extremely ingenious people, and were greatly esteemed by the European seamen in the _West Indies_, on account of their great expertness in the use of the harpoon, and in taking turtle. The following character of them is given by Dampier: 'These Mosquito Indians,' he says; 'are tall, well made, strong, and nimble of foot; long visaged, lank black hair, look stern, and are of a dark copper complexion. They are but a small nation or family. They are very ingenious in throwing the lance, or harpoon. They have extraordinary good eyes, and will descry a sail at sea, farther than we. For these things, they are esteemed and coveted by all privateers; for one or two of them in a ship, will sometimes maintain a hundred men. When they come among privateers, they learn the use of guns, and prove very good marksmen. They behave themselves bold in fight, and are never seen to flinch, or hang back; for they think that the white men with whom they are, always know better than they do, when it is best to fight; and be the disadvantage never so great, they do not give back while any of their party stand. These Mosquito men are in general very kind to the English, of whom they receive a great deal of respect, both on board their ships, and on shore, either in _Jamaica_, or elsewhere. We always humour them, letting them go any where as they will, and return to their country in any vessel bound that way, if they please. They will have the management of themselves in their striking fish, and will go in their own little canoe, nor will they then let any white man come in their canoe; all which we allow them. For should we cross them, though they should see shoals of fish, or turtle, or the like, they will purposely strike their harpoons and turtle-irons aside, or so glance them as to kill nothing. They acknowledge the King of England for their sovereign, learn our language, and take the Governor of _Jamaica_ to be one of the greatest princes in the world. While they are among the English, they wear good cloaths, and take delight to go neat and tight; but when they return to their own country, they put by all their cloaths, and go after their own country fashion.' In Dampier's time, it was the custom among the Mosquito Indians, when their Chief died, for his successor to obtain a commission, appointing him Chief, from the Governor of _Jamaica_; and till he received his commission he was not acknowledged in form by his countrymen[15]. How would Dampier have been grieved, if he could have foreseen that this simple and honest people, whilst their attachment to the English had suffered no diminution, would be delivered by the British Government into the hands of the Spaniards; which, from all experience of what had happened, was delivering them to certain destruction. Before this unhappy transaction took place, and after the time Dampier wrote, the British Government took actual possession of the Mosquito Country, by erecting a fort, and stationing there a garrison of British troops. British merchants settled among the Mosquito natives, and magistrates were appointed with authority to administer justice. Mosquito men were taken into British pay to serve as soldiers, of which the following story is related in Long's History of _Jamaica_; 'In the year 1738, the Government of _Jamaica_ took into their pay two hundred Mosquito Indians, to assist in the suppression of the Maroons or Wild Negroes. During a march on this service, one of their white conductors shot a wild hog. The Mosquito men told him, that was not the way to surprise the negroes, but to put them on their guard; and if he wanted provisions, they would kill the game equally well with their arrows. They effected considerable service on this occasion, and were well rewarded for their good conduct; and when a pacification took place with the Maroons, they were sent well satisfied to their own country.' In the year 1770, there resided in the _Mosquito Country_ of British settlers, between two and three hundred whites, as many of mixed blood, and 900 slaves. On the breaking out of the war between _Great Britain_ and _Spain_, in 1779, when the Spaniards drove the British logwood cutters from their settlements in the _Bay of Honduras_, the Mosquito men armed and assisted the British troops of the line in the recovery of the logwood settlements. They behaved on that occasion, and on others in which they served against the Spaniards, with their accustomed fidelity. An English officer, who was in the _West Indies_ during that war, has given a description of the Mosquito men, which exactly agrees with what Dampier has said; and all that is related of them whilst with the Buccaneers, gives the most favourable impression of their dispositions and character. It was natural to the Spaniards to be eagerly desirous to get the Mosquito Country and people into their power; but it was not natural that such a proposition should be listened to by the British. Nevertheless, the matter did so happen. When notice was received in the _West Indies_, that a negociation was on foot for the delivery of the _Mosquito Shore_ to _Spain_, the Council at _Jamaica_ drew up a Report and Remonstrance against it; in which was stated, that 'the number of the Mosquito Indians, so justly remarkable for their fixed hereditary hatred to the Spaniards, and attachment to us, were from seven to ten thousand.' Afterwards, in continuation, the Memorial says, 'We beg leave to state the nature of His Majesty's territorial right, perceiving with alarm, from papers submitted to our inspection, that endeavours have been made to create doubts as to His Majesty's just claims to the sovereignty of this valuable and delightful country. The native Indians of this country have never submitted to the Spanish Government. The Spaniards never had any settlement amongst them. During the course of 150 years they have maintained a strict and uninterrupted alliance with the subjects of _Great Britain_. They made a free and formal cession of the dominion of their country to His Majesty's predecessors, acknowledging the King of _Great Britain_ for their sovereign, long before the American Treaty concluded at _Madrid_ in 1670; and consequently, by the eighth Article of that Treaty, our right was declared[16].' In one Memorial and Remonstrance which was presented to the British Ministry on the final ratification (in 1786) of the Treaty, it is complained, that thereby his Majesty had given up to the King of _Spain_ 'the Indian people, and country of the _Mosquito Shore_, which formed the most secure West-Indian Province possessed by _Great Britain_, and which we held by the most pure and perfect title of sovereignty.' Much of this is digression; but the subject unavoidably came into notice, and could not be hastily quitted. Some mercantile arrangement, said to be advantageous to _Great Britain_, but which has been disputed, was the publicly assigned motive to this act. It has been conjectured that a desire to shew civility to the Prime Minister of _Spain_ was the real motive. Only blindness or want of information could give either of these considerations such fatal influence. The making over, or transferring, inhabited territory from the dominion and jurisdiction of one state to that of another, has been practised not always with regard for propriety. It has been done sometimes unavoidably, sometimes justly, and sometimes inexecusably. Unavoidably, when a weaker state is necessitated to submit to the exactions of a stronger. Justly, when the inhabitants of the territory it is proposed to transfer, are consulted, and give their consent. Also it may be reckoned just to exercise the power of transferring a conquered territory, the inhabitants of which have not been received and adopted as fellow subjects with the subjects of the state under whose power it had fallen. The inhabitants of a territory who with their lands are transferred to the dominion of a new state without their inclinations being consulted, are placed in the condition of a conquered people. The connexion of the Mosquito people with _Great Britain_ was formed in friendship, and was on each side a voluntary engagement. That it was an engagement, should be no question. In equity and honour, whoever permits it to be believed that he has entered into an engagement, thereby becomes engaged. The Mosquito people were known to believe, and had been allowed to continue in the belief, that they were permanently united to the British. The Governors of _Jamaica_ giving commissions for the instalment of their chief, the building a fort, and placing a garrison in the country, shew both acceptance of their submission and exercise of sovereignty. Vattel has described this case. He says, 'When a nation has not sufficient strength of itself, and is not in a condition to resist its enemies, it may lawfully submit to a more powerful nation on certain conditions upon which they shall come to an agreement; and the pact or treaty of submission will be afterwards the measure and rule of the rights of each. For that which submits, resigning a right it possessed, and conveying it to another, has an absolute power to make this conveyance upon what conditions it pleases; and the other, by accepting the submission on this footing, engages to observe religiously all the clauses in the treaty. When a nation has placed itself under the protection of another that is more powerful, or has submitted to it with a view of protection; if this last does not effectually grant its protection when wanted, it is manifest that by failing in its engagements it loses the rights it had acquired.' The rights lost or relinquished by _Great Britain_ might possibly be of small import to her; but the loss of our protection was of infinite consequence to the Mosquito people. Advantages supposed or real gained to _Great Britain_, is not to be pleaded in excuse or palliation for withdrawing her protection; for that would seem to imply that an engagement is more or less binding according to the greater or less interest there may be in observing it. But if there had been no engagement, the length and steadiness of their attachment to _Great Britain_ would have entitled them to her protection, and the nature of the case rendered the obligation sacred; for be it repeated, that experience had shewn the delivering them up to the dominion of the Spaniards, was delivering them to certain slavery and death. These considerations possibly might not occur, for there seems to have been a want of information on the subject in the British Ministry, and also a want of attention to the remonstrances made. The Mosquito Country, and the native inhabitants, the best affected and most constant of all the friends the British ever had, were abandoned in the summer of 1787, to the Spaniards, the known exterminators of millions of the native Americans, and who were moreover incensed against the Mosquito men, for the part they had always taken with the British, by whom they were thus forsaken. The British settlers in that country found it necessary, to withdraw as speedily as they had opportunity, with their effects. If the business had been fully understood, and the safety of _Great Britain_ had depended upon abandoning the Mosquito people to their merciless enemies, it would have been thought disgraceful by the nation to have done it; but the national interest being trivial, and the public in general being uninformed in the matter, the transaction took place without attracting much notice. A motion, however, was made in the British House of Lords, 'that the terms of the Convention with _Spain_, signed in July 1786, did not meet the favourable opinion of this House;' and the noble Mover objected to that part of the Convention which related to the surrender of the British possessions on the _Mosquito Shore_, that it was a humiliation, and derogating from the rights of _Great Britain_. The first Article of the Treaty of 1786 says, 'His Britannic Majesty's subjects, and the other Colonists, who have hitherto enjoyed the protection of _England_, shall evacuate the Country of the Mosquitos, as well as the Continent in general, and the Islands adjacent, without exception, situated beyond the line hereafter described, as what ought to be the extent of territory granted by his Catholic Majesty to the English.' In the debate, rights were asserted for _Spain_, not only to what she then possessed on the Continent of _America_, but to parts she had never possessed. Was this want of information, or want of consideration? The word 'granted' was improperly introduced. In truth and justice, the claims of _Spain_ to _America_ are not to be acknowledged rights. They were founded in usurpation, and prosecuted by the extermination of the lawful and natural proprietors. It is an offence to morality and to humanity to pretend that _Spain_ had so clear and just a title to any part of her possessions on the Continent of _America_, as _Great Britain_ had to the _Mosquito_ Country. The rights of the Mosquito people, and their claims to the friendship of _Great Britain_, were not sufficiently made known; and the motion was negatived. It might have been of service in this debate to have quoted Dampier. In conclusion, the case of the Mosquito people deserves, and demands the reconsideration of _Great Britain_. If, on examination, it shall be proved that they have been ungenerously and unjustly treated, it may not be too late to seek to make reparation, which ought to be done as far as circumstances will yet admit. The first step towards this would be, to institute enquiry if there are living any of our forsaken friends, or of their posterity, and what is their present condition. If the Mosquito people have been humanely and justly governed since their separation from _Great Britain_, the enquiry will give the Spaniards cause for triumph, and the British cause to rejoice that evil has not resulted from their act. On the other hand, should it be found that they have shared in the common calamities heaped upon the natives of _America_ by the Spaniards, then, if there yet exist enough of their tribe to form a nation, it would be right to restore them, if practicable, to the country and situation of which their fathers were deprived, or to find them an equivalent; and at any price or pains, to deliver them from oppression. If only few remain, those few should be freed from their bondage, and be liberally provided with lands and maintenance in our own _West-India Islands_. CHAP. IX. _Journey of the Buccaneers across the =Isthmus of America=._ [Sidenote: 1680. April 5th, Buccaneers land on the Isthmus.] On the 5th of April, 1680, three hundred and thirty-one Buccaneers, most of them English, passed over from _Golden Island_, and landed in _Darien_, 'each man provided with four cakes of bread called dough-boys, with a fusil, a pistol, and a hanger.' They began their journey marshalled in divisions, with distinguishing flags, under their several commanders, Bartholomew Sharp and his men taking the lead. Many Darien Indians kept them company as their confederates, and supplied them with plantains, fruit, and venison, for which payment was made in axes, hatchets, knives, needles, beads, and trinkets; all which the Buccaneers had taken care to come well provided with. Among the Darien Indians in company were two Chiefs, who went by the names of Captain Andreas and Captain Antonio. [Sidenote: The First Day's March.] The commencement of their march was through the skirt of a wood, which having passed, they proceeded about a league by the side of a bay, and afterwards about two leagues directly up a woody valley, where was an Indian house and plantation by the side of a river. Here they took up their lodging for the night, those who could not be received in the house, building huts. The Indians were earnest in cautioning them against sleeping in the grass, on account of adders. This first day's journey discouraged four of the Buccaneers, and they returned to the ships. Stones were found in the river, which on being broken, shone with sparks of gold. These stones, they were told, were driven down from the neighbouring mountains by torrents during the rainy season[17]. [Sidenote: Second Day's Journey.] The next morning, at sunrise, they proceeded in their journey, labouring up a steep hill, which they surmounted about three in the afternoon; and at the foot on the other side, they rested on the bank of a river, which Captain Andreas told them ran into the _South Sea_, and was the same by which the town of _Santa Maria_ was situated. They marched afterwards about six miles farther, over another steep hill, where the path was so narrow that seldom more than one man could pass at a time. At night, they took up their lodging by the side of the river, having marched this day, according to their computation, eighteen miles. [Sidenote: 7th. Third Day's Journey.] The next day, April the 7th, the march was continued by the river, the course of which was so serpentine, that they had to cross it almost at every half mile, sometimes up to their knees, sometimes to their middle, and running with a very swift current. About noon they arrived at some large Indian houses, neatly built, the sides of wood of the cabbage-tree, and the roofs of cane thatched over with palmito leaves. The interior had divisions into rooms, but no upper story; and before each house was a large plantain walk. Continuing their journey, at five in the afternoon, they came to a house belonging to a son of Captain Andreas, who wore a wreath of gold about his head, for which he was honoured by the Buccaneers with the title of King Golden Cap. [Sidenote: 8th.] They found their entertainment at King Golden Cap's house so good, that they rested there the whole of the following day. Bartholomew Sharp, who published a Journal of his expedition, says here, 'The inhabitants of _Darien_ are for the most part very handsome, especially the female sex, who are also exceeding loving and free to the embraces of strangers.' This was calumny. Basil Ringrose, another Buccaneer, whose Journal has been published, and who is more entitled to credit than Sharp, as will be seen, says of the Darien women, 'they are generally well featured, very free, airy, and brisk; yet withal very modest.' Lionel Wafer also, who lived many months among the Indians of the _Isthmus_, speaks highly of the modesty, kindness of disposition, and innocency, of the Darien women. [Sidenote: 9th. Fourth Day's Journey.] On the 9th, after breakfast, they pursued their journey, accompanied by the Darien Chiefs, and about 200 Indians, who were armed with bows and lances. They descended along the river, which they had to wade through between fifty and sixty times, and they came to a house 'only here and there.' At most of these houses, the owner, who had been apprised of the march of the Buccaneers, stood at the door, and as they passed, gave to each man a ripe plantain, or some sweet cassava root. If the Buccaneer desired more, he was expected to purchase. Some of the Indians, to count the number of the Buccaneers, for every man that went by dropped a grain of corn. That night they lodged at three large houses, where they found entertainment provided, and also canoes for them to descend the river, which began here to be navigable. [Sidenote: 10th. Fifth Day's Journey.] The next morning, as they were preparing to depart, two of the Buccaneer Commanders, John Coxon and Peter Harris, had some disagreement, and Coxon fired his musket at Harris, who was about to fire in return, but other Buccaneers interposed, and effected a reconciliation. Seventy of the Buccaneers embarked in fourteen canoes, in each of which two Indians also went, who best knew how to manage and guide them down the stream: the rest prosecuted their march by land. The men in the canoes found that mode of travelling quite as wearisome as marching, for at almost every furlong they were constrained to quit their boats to lanch them over rocks, or over trees that had fallen athwart the river, and sometimes over necks of land. At night, they stopped and made themselves huts on a green bank by the river's side. Here they shot wild-fowl. [Sidenote: 11th. Sixth Day's Journey.] The next day, the canoes continued to descend the river, having the same kind of impediments to overcome as on the preceding day; and at night, they lodged again on the green bank of the river. The land party had not kept up with them. Bartholomew Sharp says, 'Our supper entertainment was a very good sort of a wild beast called a _Warre_, which is much like to our English hog, and altogether as good. There are store of them in this part of the world: I observed that the navels of these animals grew upon their backs.' Wafer calls this species of the wild hog, _Pecary_[18]. In the night a small tiger came, and after looking at them some time, went away. The Buccaneers did not fire at him, lest the noise of their muskets should give alarm to the Spaniards at _S^{ta} Maria_. [Sidenote: 12th. Seventh Day's Journey.] The next day, the water party again embarked, but under some anxiety at being so long without having any communication with the party marching by land. Captain Andreas perceiving their uneasiness, sent a canoe back up the river, which returned before sunset with some of the land party, and intelligence that the rest were near at hand. [Sidenote: 13th.] Tuesday the 13th, early in the day, the Buccaneers arrived at a beachy point of land, where another stream from the uplands joined the river. This place had sometimes been the rendezvous of the Darien Indians, when they collected for attack or defence against the Spaniards; and here the whole party now made a halt, to rest themselves, and to clean and prepare their arms. They also made paddles and oars to row with; for thus far down the river, the canoes had been carried by the stream, and guided with poles: but here the river was broad and deep. [Sidenote: 14th.] On the 14th, the whole party, Buccaneers and Indians, making nearly 600 men, embarked in 68 canoes, which the Indians had provided. At midnight, they put to land, within half a mile of the town of _S^{ta} Maria_. [Sidenote: 15th.] In the morning at the break of day, they heard muskets fired by the guard in the town, and a 'drum beating _à travailler_[19].' [Sidenote: Fort of S^{ta} Maria taken.] The Buccaneers put themselves in motion, and by seven in the morning came to the open ground before the Fort, when the Spaniards began firing upon them. The Fort was formed simply with palisadoes, without brickwork, so that after pulling down two or three of the palisadoes, the Buccaneers entered without farther opposition, and without the loss of a man; nevertheless, they acted with so little moderation or mercy, that twenty-six Spaniards were killed, and sixteen wounded. After the surrender, the Indians took many of the Spaniards into the adjoining woods, where they killed them with lances; and if they had not been discovered in their amusement, and prevented, not a Spaniard would have been left alive. It is said in a Buccaneer account, that they found here the eldest daughter of the King of _Darien_, Captain Andreas, who had been forced from her father's house by one of the garrison, and was with child by him; which greatly incensed the father against the Spaniards. The Buccaneers were much disappointed in their expectations of plunder, for the Spaniards had by some means received notice of their intended visit in time to send away almost all that was of value. A Buccaneer says, 'though we examined our prisoners severely, the whole that we could pillage, either in the town or fort, amounted only to twenty pounds weight of gold, and a small quantity of silver; whereas three days sooner, we should have found three hundred pounds weight in gold in the Fort.' [Sidenote: John Coxon chosen Commander.] The majority of the Buccaneers were desirous to proceed in their canoes to the _South Sea_, to seek compensation for their disappointment at _S^{ta} Maria_. John Coxon and his followers were for returning; on which account, and not from an opinion of his capability, those who were for the _South Sea_, offered Coxon the post of General, provided he and his men would join in their scheme, which offer was accepted. It was then determined to descend with the stream of the river to the _Gulf de San Miguel_, which is on the East side of the _Bay of Panama_. The greater part of the Darien Indians, however, separated from them at _S^{ta} Maria_, and returned to their homes. The Darien Chief Andreas, and his son Golden Cap, with some followers, continued with the Buccaneers. Among the people of _Darien_ were remarked some white, 'fairer than any people in Europe, who had hair like unto the finest flax; and it was reported of them that they could see farther in the dark than in the light[20].' The River of _S^{ta} Maria_ is the largest of several rivers which fall into the _Gulf de San Miguel_. Abreast where the town stood, it was reckoned to be twice as broad as the _River Thames_ is at _London_. The rise and fall of the tide there was two fathoms and a half[21]. [Sidenote: April 17th.] April the 17th, the Buccaneers and their remaining allies embarked from _S^{ta} Maria_, in canoes and a small bark which was found at anchor before the town. About thirty Spaniards who had been made prisoners, earnestly entreated that they should not be left behind to fall into the hands of the Indians. 'We had much ado,' say the Buccaneers, 'to find boats enough for ourselves: the Spaniards, however, found or made bark logs, and it being for their lives, made shift to come along with us.' [Sidenote: 18th, They arrive at the South Sea.] At ten that night it was low water, and they stopped on account of the flood tide. The next morning they pursued their course to the sea. CHAP. X. _First Buccaneer Expedition in the =South Sea=._ [Sidenote: 1680. April 19th. In the Bay of Panama. 22d. Island Chepillo.] On the 19th of April, the Buccaneers, under the command of John Coxon, entered the _Bay of Panama_; and the same day, at one of the Islands in the _Bay_, they captured a Spanish vessel of 30 tons, on board of which 130 of the Buccaneers immediately placed themselves, glad to be relieved from the cramped and crowded state they had endured in the canoes. The next day another small bark was taken. The pursuit of these vessels, and seeking among the Islands for provisions, had separated the Buccaneers; but they had agreed to rendezvous at the Island _Chepillo_, near the entrance of the River _Cheapo_. Sharp, however, and some others, wanting fresh water, went to the _Pearl Islands_. The rest got to _Chepillo_ on the 22d, where they found good provision of plantains, fresh water, and hogs; and at four o'clock that same afternoon, they rowed from the Island towards _Panama_. By this time, intelligence of their being in the _Bay_ had reached the city. Eight vessels were lying in the road, three of which the Spaniards hastily equipped, manning them with the crews of all the vessels, and the addition of men from the shore; the whole, according to the Buccaneer accounts, not exceeding 230 men, and not more than one-third of them being Europeans; the rest were mulattoes and negroes. [Sidenote: 23d. Battle with a small Spanish Armament. The Buccaneers victorious.] On the 23d, before sunrise, the Buccaneers came in sight of the city; and as soon as they were descried, the three armed Spanish ships got under sail, and stood towards them. The conflict was severe, and lasted the greater part of the day, when it terminated in the defeat of the Spaniards, two of their vessels being carried by boarding, and the third obliged to save herself by flight. The Spanish Commander fell, with many of his people. Of the Buccaneers, 18 were killed, and above 30 wounded. Peter Harris, one of their Captains, was among the wounded, and died two days after. One Buccaneer account says, 'we were in all 68 men that were engaged in the fight of that day.' Another Buccaneer relates, 'we had sent away the Spanish bark to seek fresh water, and had put on board her above one hundred of our best men; so that we had only canoes for this fight, and in them not above 200 fighting men.' The Spanish ships fought with great bravery, but were overmatched, being manned with motley and untaught crews; whereas the Buccaneers had been in constant training to the use of their arms; and their being in canoes was no great disadvantage, as they had a smooth sea to fight in. [Sidenote: Richard Sawkins.] The valour of Richard Sawkins, who, after being three times repulsed, succeeded in boarding and capturing one of the Spanish ships, was principally instrumental in gaining the victory to the Buccaneers. It gained him also their confidence, and the more fully as some among them were thought to have shewn backwardness, of which number John Coxon, their elected Commander, appears to have been. The Darien Chiefs were in the heat of the battle. [Sidenote: The New City of Panama, four miles Westward of the Old City. The Buccaneers take several Prizes.] Immediately after the victory, the Buccaneers stood towards _Panama_, then a new city, and on a different site from the old, being four miles Westward of the ruins of the city burnt by Morgan. The old city had yet some inhabitants. The present adventurers did not judge their strength sufficient for landing, and they contented themselves with capturing the vessels that were at anchor near the small Islands of _Perico_, in the road before the city. One of these vessels was a ship named the Trinidad, of 400 tons burthen, in good condition, a fast sailer, and had on board a cargo principally consisting of wine, sugar, and sweetmeats; and moreover a considerable sum of money. The Spanish crew, before they left her, had both scuttled and set her on fire, but the Buccaneers took possession in time to extinguish the flames, and to stop the leaks. In the other prizes they found flour and ammunition; and two of them, besides the Trinidad, they fitted up for cruising. Two prize vessels, and a quantity of goods which were of no use to them, as iron, skins, and soap, which the Spaniards at _Panama_ refused to ransom, they destroyed. Besides these, they captured among the Islands some small vessels laden with poultry. Thus in less than a week after their arrival across the _Isthmus_ to the coast of the _South Sea_, they were provided with a small fleet, not ill equipped; and with which they now formed an actual and close blockade by sea, of _Panama_, stationing themselves at anchor in front of the city. [Sidenote: Panama, the new City.] This new city was already considerably larger than old _Panama_ had ever been, its extent being in length full a mile and a half, and in breadth above a mile. The churches (eight in number) were not yet finished. The cathedral church at the Old Town was still in use, 'the beautiful building whereof,' says Ringrose, 'maketh a fair show at a distance, like unto the church of St. Paul's at _London_. Round the city for the space of seven leagues, more or less, all the adjacent country is what they call in the Spanish language, _Savana_, that is to say, plain and level ground, as smooth as a sheet; only here and there is to be seen a small spot of woody land. And every where, this level ground is full of _vacadas_, where whole droves of cows and oxen are kept. But the ground whereon the city standeth, is damp and moist, and of bad repute for health. The sea is also very full of worms, much prejudicial to shipping, for which reason the king's ships are always kept near _Lima_. We found here in one night after our arrival, worms of three quarters of an inch in length, both in our bed-cloaths and other apparel.' [Sidenote: Coxon and his Men return to the West Indies.] Within two or three days after the battle with the Spanish Armadilla, discord broke out among the Buccaneers. The reflections made upon the behaviour of Coxon and some of his followers, determined him and seventy men to return by the River of _S^{ta} Maria_ over the _Isthmus_ to the _North Sea_. Two of the small prize vessels were given them for this purpose, and at the same time, the Darien Chiefs, Captain Andreas and Captain Antonio, with most of their people, departed to return to their homes. Andreas shewed his goodwill towards the Buccaneers who remained in the _South Sea_, by leaving with them a son and one of his nephews. [Sidenote: Richard Sawkins chosen Commander.] On the departure of Coxon, Richard Sawkins was chosen General or Chief Commander. They continued ten days in the road before _Panama_, at the end of which they retired to an Island named _Taboga_, more distant, but whence they could see vessels going to, or coming from, _Panama_. At _Taboga_ they stopped nearly a fortnight, having had notice that a rich ship from _Lima_ was shortly expected; but she came not within that time. Some other vessels however fell into their hands, by which they obtained in specie between fifty and sixty thousand dollars, 1200 packs of flour, 2000 jars of wine, a quantity of brandy, sugar, sweetmeats, poultry, and other provisions, some gunpowder and shot, besides various other articles of merchandise. Among their prisoners, were a number of negro slaves, which was a temptation to the merchants of _Panama_, to go to the ships whilst they lay at _Taboga_, who purchased part of the prize goods, and as many of the negroes as the Buccaneers would part with, giving for a negro two hundred pieces of eight; and they also sold to the Buccaneers such stores and commodities as they were in need of. [Sidenote: May.] Ringrose relates, that in the course of this communication, a message was delivered to their Chief from the Governor of _Panama_, demanding, "why, during a time of peace between _England_ and _Spain_, Englishmen should come into those seas, to commit injury? and from whom they had their commission so to do?" To which message, Sawkins returned answer, 'that he and his companions came to assist their friend the King of _Darien_, who was the rightful Lord of _Panama_, and all the country thereabouts. That as they had come so far, it was reasonable they should receive some satisfaction for their trouble; and if the Governor would send to them 500 pieces of eight for each man, and 1000 for each commander, and would promise not any farther to annoy the Darien Indians, their allies, that then the Buccaneers would desist from hostilities, and go quietly about their business.' By the Spaniards who traded with them, Sawkins learnt that the Bishop of _Panama_ was a person whom he had formerly taken prisoner in the _West Indies_, and sent him a small present as a token of regard; the Bishop sent a gold ring in return. [Sidenote: Island Taboga.] Sawkins would have waited longer for the rich ship expected from _Peru_; but all the live stock within reach had been consumed, and his men became impatient for fresh provisions. 'This _Taboga_,' says Sharp, 'is an exceeding pleasant island, abounding in fruits, such as pine-apples, oranges, lemons, pears, mammees, cocoa-nuts, and others; with a small, but brave commodious fresh river running in it. The anchorage is also clear and good.' [Sidenote: 15th. Island Otoque.] On the 15th of May, they sailed to the Island _Otoque_, at which place they found hogs and poultry; and, the same day, or the day following, they departed with three ships and two small barks, from the Bay of _Panama_, steering Westward for a Spanish town named _Pueblo Nuevo_. In this short distance they had much blowing weather and contrary winds, by which both the small barks, one with fifteen men, the other with seven men, were separated from the ships, and did not join them again. The crew of one of these barks returned over the _Isthmus_ with Coxon's party. The other bark was taken by the Spaniards. [Sidenote: At Quibo.] About the 21st, the ships anchored near the _Island Quibo_; from the North part of which, to the town of _Pueblo Nuevo_ on the main land, was reckoned eight leagues. [Sidenote: Attack of Pueblo Nuevo.] Sawkins, with sixty men, embarked on board the smallest ship, and sailed to the entrance of a river which leads to the town. He there left the ship with a few men to follow him, and proceeded with the rest in canoes up the river by night, having a negro prisoner for pilot. Those left with the care of the ship, 'entered the river, keeping close by the East shore, on which there is a round hill. Within two stones cast of the shore there was four fathoms depth; and within the point a very fine and large river opens. But being strangers to the place, the ship was run aground nigh a rock which lieth by the Westward shore; for the true channel of this river is nearer to the East than to the West shore. The Island _Quibo_ is SSE from the mouth of this river[22].' [Sidenote: Captain Sawkins is killed, and the Buccaneers retreat.] The canoes met with much obstruction from trees which the Spaniards had felled across the river; but they arrived before the town during the night. The Spaniards had erected some works, on which account the Buccaneers waited in their canoes till daylight, and then landed; when Richard Sawkins, advancing with the foremost of his men towards a breastwork, was killed, as were two of his followers. Sharp was the next in command, but he was disheartened by so unfortunate a beginning, and ordered a retreat. Three Buccaneers were wounded in the re-embarkation. In the narrative which Sharp himself published, he says, 'we landed at a _stockado_ built by the Spaniards, where we had a small rencounter with the enemy, who killed us three men, whereof the brave Captain Sawkins was one, and wounded four or five more; besides which we got nothing, so that we found it our best way to retreat down the river again.' The death of Sawkins was a great misfortune to the Buccaneers, and was felt by them as such. One Buccaneer relates, 'Captain Sawkins landing at _Pueblo Nuevo_ before the rest, as being a man of undaunted courage, and running up with a small party to a breastwork, was unfortunately killed. And this disaster occasioned a mutiny amongst our men; for our Commanders were not thought to be leaders fit for such hard enterprises. Now Captain Sharp was left in chief, and he was censured by many, and the contest grew to that degree that they divided into parties, and about 70 of our men fell off from us.' [Sidenote: Imposition practised by Sharp.] Ringrose was not in _England_ when his Narrative was published; and advantage was taken of his absence, to interpolate in it some impudent passages in commendation of Sharp's, valour. In the printed Narrative attributed to Ringrose, he is made to say, 'Captain Sawkins in running up to the breastwork at the head of a few men was killed; a man as valiant and courageous as any could be, and, next unto Captain Sharp, the best beloved of all our company, or the most part thereof.' Ringrose's manuscript Journal has been preserved in the Sloane Collection, at the _British Museum_ (No. 3820[23] of Ayscough's Catalogue) wherein, with natural expression of affection and regard, he says, 'Captain Sawkins was a valiant and generous spirited man, and beloved above any other we ever had among us, which he well deserved.' [Sidenote: May. Sharp chosen Commander.] In their retreat down the river of _Pueblo Nuevo_, the Buccaneers took a ship laden with indigo, butter, and pitch; and burnt two other vessels. When returned to _Quibo_, they could not agree in the choice of a commander. Bartholomew Sharp had a greater number of voices than any other pretender, which he obtained by boasting that he would take them a cruise whereby he did not at all doubt they would return home with not less than a thousand pounds to each man. Sharp was elected by but a small majority. [Sidenote: Some separate, and return to the West Indies.] Between 60 and 70 men who had remained after Coxon quitted the command, from attachment to Captain Sawkins, would not stay to be commanded by Sharp, and departed from _Quibo_ in one of the prize vessels to return over the _Isthmus_ to the _West Indies_; where they safely arrived. All the Darien Indians also returned to the _Isthmus_. One hundred and forty-six Buccaneers remained with Bartholomew Sharp. [Sidenote: The Anchorage at Quibo.] 'On the SE side of the Island _Quibo_ is a shoal, or spit of sand, which stretches out a quarter of a league into the sea[24].' Just within this shoal, in 14 fathoms depth, the Buccaneer ships lay at anchor. The Island abounded in fresh rivers, this being the rainy season. They caught red deer, turtle, and oysters. Ringrose says, 'here were oysters so large that we were forced to cut them into four pieces, each quarter being a good mouthful.' Here were also oysters of a smaller kind, from which the Spaniards collected pearls. They killed alligators at _Quibo_, some above 20 feet in length; 'they were very fearful, and tried to escape from those who hunted them.' Ringrose relates, that he stood under a manchineal tree to shelter himself from the rain, but some drops fell on his skin from the tree, which caused him to break out all over in red spots, and he was not well for a week afterwards. [Sidenote: June.] June the 6th, Sharp and his followers, in two ships, sailed from _Quibo_ Southward for the coast of _Peru_, intending to stop by the way at the _Galapagos Islands_; but the winds prevented them. [Sidenote: Island Gorgona.] On the 17th, they anchored on the South side of the _Island Gorgona_, near the mouth of a river. '_Gorgona_ is a high mountainous Island, about four leagues in circuit, and is distant about four leagues from the Continent. The anchorage is within a pistol-shot of the shore, in depth from 15 to 20 fathoms. At the SW of _Gorgona_ is a smaller Island, and without the same stands a small rock[25].' There were at this time streams of fresh water on every side of the Island. _Gorgona_ being uninhabited, was thought to be a good place of concealment. The Island supplied rabbits, monkeys, turtle, oysters, and birds; which provision was inducement to the Buccaneers, notwithstanding the rains, to remain there, indulging in idleness, till near the end of July, when the weather began to be dry. They killed a snake at _Gorgona_, eleven feet long, and fourteen inches in circumference. [Sidenote: July.] July the 25th, they put to sea. Sharp had expressed an intention to attack _Guayaquil_; but he was now of opinion that their long stay at _Gorgona_ must have occasioned their being discovered by the Spaniards, 'notwithstanding that he himself had persuaded them to stay;' their plan was therefore changed for the attack of places more Southward, where they would be less expected. [Sidenote: Island Plata.] The winds were from the Southward, and it was not till August the 13th, that they got as far as the _Island Plata_. [Sidenote: August.] The only landing at _Plata_ at this time, was on the NE side, near a deep valley, where the ships anchored in 12 fathoms. Goats were on this Island in such numbers, that they killed above a hundred in a day with little labour, and salted what they did not want for present use. Turtle and fish were in plenty. They found only one small spring of fresh water, which was near the landing place, and did not yield them more than 20 gallons in the 24 hours. There were no trees on any part of the Island. [Sidenote: On the Coast of Peru.] From _Plata_ they proceeded Southward. The 25th, near _Cape St. Elena_, they met a Spanish ship from _Guayaquil_ bound to _Panama_, which they took after a short action in which one Buccaneer was killed, and two others were wounded. In this prize they found 3000 dollars. They learnt from their prisoners, that one of the small buccaneer tenders, which had been separated from Sawkins in sailing from the _Bay of Panama_, had been taken by the Spaniards, after losing six men out of seven which composed her crew. [Sidenote: Adventure of a small Crew of Buccaneers.] Their adventure was as follows. Not being able to join their Commander Sawkins at _Quibo_, they sailed to the Island _Gallo_ near the Continent (in about 2° N.) where they found a party of Spaniards, from whom they took three white women. A few days afterwards, they put in at another small Island, four leagues distant from _Gallo_, where they proposed to remain on the lookout, in hopes of seeing some of their friends come that way, as Sawkins had declared it his intention to go to the coast of _Peru_. Whilst they were waiting in this expectation, a Spaniard whom they had kept prisoner, made his escape from them, and got over to the main land. This small buccaneer crew had the imprudence nevertheless to remain in the same quarters long enough to give time for a party of Spaniards to pass over from the main land, which they did without being perceived, and placed themselves in ambuscade with so much advantage, that at one volley they killed six Buccaneers out of the seven: the one remaining became their prisoner. Sharp and his men divided the small sum of money taken in their last prize, and sunk her. Ringrose relates, 'we also punished a Friar and shot him upon the deck, casting him overboard while he was yet alive. I abhorred such cruelties, yet was forced to hold my tongue.' It is not said in what manner the Friar had offended, and Sharp does not mention the circumstance in his Journal. One of the two vessels in which the Buccaneers cruised, sailed badly, on which account she was abandoned, and they all embarked in the ship named the Trinidad. [Sidenote: September.] On the 4th of September they took a vessel from _Guayaquil_ bound for _Lima_, with a lading of timber, chocolate, raw silk, Indian cloth, and thread stockings. It appears here to have been a custom among the Buccaneers, for the first who boarded an enemy, or captured vessel, to be allowed some extra privilege of plunder. Ringrose says, 'we cast dice for the first entrance, and the lot fell to the larboard watch, so twenty men belonging to that watch, entered her.' They took out of this vessel as much of the cargo as they chose, and put some of their prisoners in her; after which they dismissed her with only one mast standing and one sail, that she should not be able to prosecute her voyage Southward. [Sidenote: October.] Sharp passed _Callao_ at a distance from land, being apprehensive there might be ships of war in the road. October the 26th, he was near the town of _Arica_, when the boats manned with a large party of Buccaneers departed from the ship with intention to attack the town; but, on coming near the shore, they found the surf high, and the whole country appeared to be in arms. [Sidenote: 28th. Ilo.] They returned to the ship, and it was agreed to bear away for _Ilo_, a small town on the coast, in latitude about 17° 40' S. Their stock of fresh water was by this time so reduced, that they had come to an allowance of only half a pint for a man for the day; and it is related that a pint of water was sold in the ship for 30 dollars. They succeeded however in landing at _Ilo_, and obtained there fresh water, wine, fruits, flour, oil, chocolate, sugar, and other provisions. The Spaniards would give neither money nor cattle to have their buildings and plantations spared, and the Buccaneers committed all the mischief they could. [Sidenote: December. Shoals of Anchovies.] From _Ilo_ they proceeded Southward. December the 1st, in the night, being in latitude about 31°, they found themselves in white water, like banks or breakers, which extended a mile or more in length; but they were relieved from their alarm by discovering that what they had apprehended to be rocks and breakers was a large shoal of anchovies. [Sidenote: On the Coast of Peru. La Serena plundered and burnt.] December the 3d, they landed at the town of _La Serena_, which they entered without opposition. Some Spaniards came to negociate with them to ransom the town from being burnt, for which they agreed to pay 95,000 pieces of eight; but the money came not at the time appointed, and the Buccaneers had reason to suspect the Spaniards intended to deceive them. [Sidenote: Attempt of the Spaniards to burn the Ship.] Ringrose relates, that a man ventured to come in the night from the shore, on a float made of a horse's hide blown up like a bladder. 'He being arrived at the ship, went under the stern and crammed oakum and brimstone and other combustible matter between the rudder and the stern-post. Having done this, he fired it with a match, so that in a small time our rudder was on fire, and all the ship in a smoke. Our men, both alarmed and amazed with this smoke, ran up and down the ship, suspecting the prisoners to have fired the vessel, thereby to get their liberty and seek our destruction. At last they found out where the fire was, and had the good fortune to quench it before its going too far. After which we sent the boat ashore, and found both the hide afore-mentioned, and the match burning at both ends, whereby we became acquainted with the whole matter.' By the _La Serena_ expedition they obtained five hundred pounds weight of silver. One of the crew died in consequence of hard drinking whilst on shore. They released all their prisoners here, except a pilot; after which, they stood from the Continent for _Juan Fernandez_. In their approach to that Island, it is remarked by Ringrose, that they saw neither bird, nor fish; and this being noticed to the pilot, he made answer, that he had many times sailed by _Juan Fernandez_, and had never seen either fish or fowl whilst at sea in sight of the Island. [Sidenote: Island Juan Fernandez.] On Christmas day, they anchored in a Bay at the South part of _Juan Fernandez_; but finding the winds SE and Southerly, they quitted that anchorage, and went to a Bay on the North side of the Island, where they cast anchor in 14 fathoms, so near to the shore that they fastened the end of another cable from the ship to the trees; being sheltered by the land from ESE round by the South and West, and as far as NbW[26]. Their fastenings, however, did not hold the ship against the strong flurries that blew from the land, and she was twice forced to sea; but each time recovered the anchorage without much difficulty. [Sidenote: 1681. January.] The shore of this bay was covered with seals and sea lions, whose noise and company were very troublesome to the men employed in filling fresh water. The seals coveted to lie where streams of fresh water ran into the sea, which made it necessary to keep people constantly employed to beat them off. Fish were in the greatest plenty; and innumerable sea birds had their nests near the shore, which makes the remark of Ringrose on approaching the Island the more extraordinary. Craw-fish and lobsters were in abundance; and on the Island itself goats were in such plenty, that, besides what they eat during their stay, they killed about a hundred for salting, and took away as many alive. [Sidenote: Sharp deposed from the Command. Watling elected Commander.] Here new disagreements broke out among the Buccaneers. Some wished to sail immediately homeward by the _Strait of Magalhanes_; others desired to try their fortune longer in the _South Sea_. Sharp was of the party for returning home; but in the end the majority deposed him from the command, and elected for his successor John Watling, 'an old privateer, and esteemed a stout seaman.' Articles were drawn up in writing between Watling and the crew, and subscribed. One Narrative says, 'the true occasion of the grudge against Sharp was, that he had got by these adventures almost a thousand pounds, whereas many of our men were scarce worth a groat; and good reason there was for their poverty, for at the _Isle of Plate_ and other places, they had lost all their money to their fellow Buccaneers at dice; so that some had a great deal, and others, just nothing. Those who were thrifty sided with Captain Sharp, but the others, being the greatest number, turned Sharp out of his command; and Sharp's party were persuaded to have patience, seeing they were the fewest, and had money to lose, which the other party had not.' Dampier says Sharp was displaced by general consent, the company not being satisfied either with his courage or his conduct. Watling began his command by ordering the observance of the Sabbath. 'This day, January the 9th,' says Ringrose, 'was the first Sunday that ever we kept by command since the loss and death of our valiant Commander Captain Sawkins, who once threw the dice overboard, finding them in use on the said day.' [Sidenote: 11th. 12th. They sail from Juan Fernandez.] The 11th, two boats were sent from the ship to a distant part of the Island to catch goats. On the following morning, the boats were seen returning in great haste, and firing muskets to give alarm. When arrived on board, they gave information that three sail, which they believed to be Spanish ships of war, were in sight of the Island, and were making for the anchorage. In half an hour after this notice, the strange ships were seen from the Bay; upon which, all the men employed on shore in watering, hunting, and other occupations, were called on board with the utmost speed; and not to lose time, the cable was slipped, and the ship put to sea. [Sidenote: William, a Mosquito Indian, left on the island.] It happened in this hurry of quitting the Island, that one of the Mosquito Indians who had come with the Buccaneers, and was by them called William, was absent in the woods hunting goats, and heard nothing of the alarm. No time could be spared for search, and the ship sailed without him. This it seems was not the first instance of a solitary individual being left to inhabit _Juan Fernandez_. Their Spanish pilot affirmed to them, that 'many years before, a ship had been cast away there, and only one man saved, who lived alone upon the Island five years, when another ship coming that way, took him off.' The three vessels whose appearance caused them in such haste to quit their anchorage, were armed Spanish ships. They remained in sight of the Buccaneer ship two days, but no inclination appeared on either side to try the event of a battle. The Buccaneers had not a single great gun in their ship, and must have trusted to their musketry and to boarding. [Sidenote: 13th.] On the evening of the 13th after dark, they resigned the honour of the field to the Spaniards, and made sail Eastward for the American coast, with design to attack _Arica_, which place they had been informed contained great riches. [Sidenote: January 26th. Island Yqueque. River de Camarones.] The 26th, they were close to the small Island named _Yqueque_, about 25 leagues to the South of _Arica_, where they plundered a small Indian village of provisions, and took two old Spaniards and two Indians prisoners. This Island was destitute of fresh water, and the inhabitants were obliged to supply themselves from the Continent, at a river named _De Camarones_, 11 Spanish leagues to the North of _Yqueque_. The people on _Yqueque_ were the servants and slaves of the Governor of _Arica_, and were employed by him to catch and dry fish, which were disposed of to great profit among the inland towns of the Continent. The Indians here eat much and often of certain leaves 'which were in taste much like to the bay leaves in England, by the continual use of which their teeth were dyed of a green colour.' [Sidenote: 27th.] The 27th, Watling examined one of the old Spaniards concerning the force at _Arica_; and being offended at his answers, ordered him to be shot, which was done. The same morning they took a small bark from the River _Camarones_, laden with fresh water. [Sidenote: On the Coast of Peru.] In the night of the 28th, Watling with one hundred men departed from the ship in the small prize bark and boats for _Arica_. They put ashore on the mainland about five leagues to the South of _Arica_, before it was light, and remained concealed among rocks all day. [Sidenote: 30th. They attack Arica.] At night, they again proceeded, and at daylight (on the 30th) Watling landed with 92 men, four miles from the town, to which they marched, and gained entrance, with the loss of three men killed, and two wounded. There was a castle or fort, which for their own security they ought immediately to have attacked; but Watling was only intent on making prisoners, until he was incommoded, with more than could be well guarded. This gave the inhabitants who had fled, time to recover from their alarm, and they collected in the Fort. To complete the mistake, Watling at length advanced to attack the fort, where he found resistance more than he expected. [Sidenote: Are Repulsed.] Watling put in practice the expedient of placing his prisoners in front of his own men; but the defenders of the fort were not a whit deterred thereby from firing on the Buccaneers, who were twice repulsed. The Spaniards without, in the mean time, began to make head from all parts; and in a little time the Buccaneers, from being the assailants, found themselves obliged to look to their defence. [Sidenote: Watling killed.] Watling their chief was killed, as were two quarter-masters, the boatswain, and some others of their best men; and the rest thought it necessary to retreat to their boats, which, though harassed the whole way by a distant firing from the Spaniards, they effected in tolerable order, and embarked. In this attack, the Buccaneers lost in killed, and taken prisoners by the Spaniards, 28 men; and of those who got back to the ship, eighteen were wounded. Among the men taken by the Spaniards were two surgeons, to whose care the wounded had been committed. 'We could have brought off our doctors,' says Ringrose, 'but they got to drinking whilst we were assaulting the fort, and when we called to them, they would not come with us.' The Spaniards gave quarter to the surgeons, 'they being able to do them good service in that country: but as to the wounded men taken prisoners, they were all knocked on the head.' The whole party that landed at _Arica_ narrowly escaped destruction; for the Spaniards learnt from the prisoners they took, the signals which had been agreed upon with the men left in charge of the boats; of which information they made such use, that the boats had quitted their station, and set sail to run down to the town; but some Buccaneers who had been most speedy in the retreat, arrived at the sea side just in time to call them back. [Sidenote: Sharp again chosen Commander.] This miscarriage so much disheartened the whole Buccaneer crew, that they made no attempt to take three ships which were at anchor in the road before _Arica_. Sharp was reinstated in the command, because he was esteemed a leader of safer conduct than any other; and every one was willing to quit the _South Sea_, but which it was now proposed they should do by re-crossing the _Isthmus_. [Sidenote: March. Huasco.] They did not, however, immediately steer Northward; but continued to beat up against the wind to the Southward, till the 10th of March, when they landed at _Guasco_ or _Huasco_ (in lat. about 28-1/2°) from which place they carried off 120 sheep, 80 goats, 200 bushels of corn, and filled their jars with fresh water. From _Huasco_ they stood to the North. On the 27th, they passed _Arica_. The Narrative remarks, 'our former entertainment had been so very bad, that we were no ways encouraged to stop there again.' [Sidenote: Ylo.] They landed at _Ylo_, of which Wafer says, 'the _River Ylo_ is situated in a valley which is the finest I have seen in all the coast of _Peru_, and furnished with a multitude of vegetables. A great dew falls here every night.' [Sidenote: April.] April the 16th, they were near the Island _Plata_. By this time new opinions and new projects had been formed. Many of the crew were again willing to try their fortune longer in the _South Sea_; but one party would not continue under the command of Sharp, and others would not consent to choosing a new commander. As neither party would yield, it was determined to separate, and agreed upon by all hands, 'that which party soever upon polling should be found to have the majority, should keep the ship.' The other party was to have the long-boat and the canoes. On coming to a division, Sharp's party proved the most numerous. The minority consisted of forty-four Europeans, two Mosquito Indians, and a Spanish Indian. [Sidenote: Another Party of the Buccaneers return across the Isthmus.] On the forenoon of the 17th, the party in the boats separated from the ship, and proceeded for the _Gulf de San Miguel_, where they landed, and returned over the _Isthmus_ back to the _West Indies_. In this party were William Dampier, and Lionel Wafer the surgeon. Dampier afterwards published a brief sketch of the expedition, and an account of his return across the _Isthmus_, both of which are in the 1st volume of his Voyages. Wafer met with an accidental hurt whilst on the _Isthmus_, which disabled him from travelling with his countrymen, and he remained some months living with the Darien Indians, of whom he afterwards published an entertaining description, with a Narrative of his own adventures among them. [Sidenote: Further Proceedings of Sharp and his Followers.] Sharp and his diminished crew sailed in their ship from the Island _Plata_ Northward to the _Gulf of Nicoya_, where they met with no booty, nor with any adventure worth mentioning. [Sidenote: July.] They returned Southward to the Island _Plata_, and in the way took three prizes: the first, a ship named the San Pedro, from _Guayaquil_ bound for _Panama_, with a lading of cocoa-nuts, and 21,000 pieces of eight in chests, and 16,000 in bags, besides plate. The money in bags and all the loose plunder was divided, each man receiving for his share 234 pieces of eight; whence it may be inferred that their number was reduced to about 70 men. The rest of the money was reserved for a future division. Their second prize was a packet from _Panama_ bound for _Callao_, by which they learnt that in _Panama_ it was believed all the Buccaneers had returned overland to the _West Indies_. The third was a ship named the _San Rosario_, which did not submit to them without resistance, nor till her Captain was killed. She was from _Callao_, laden with wine, brandy, oil, and fruit, and had in her as much money as yielded to each Buccaneer 94 dollars. One Narrative says a much greater booty was missed through ignorance. 'Besides the lading already mentioned, we found in the San Rosario 700 pigs of plate, which we supposed to be tin, and under this mistake, they were slighted by us all, especially by the Captain, who would not by persuasions used by some few be induced to take them into our ship, as we did most of the other things. Thus we left them in the _Rosario_, which we turned away loose into the sea. This, it should seem, was plate, not thoroughly refined and fitted for coin, which occasioned our being deceived. We took only one pig of the seven hundred into our ship, thinking to make bullets of it; and to this effect, or what else our seamen pleased, the greatest part of it was melted and squandered away. Afterwards, when we arrived at _Antigua_, we gave the remaining part (which was about one-third thereof) to a _Bristol_ man, who knew presently what it was; who brought it to _England_, and sold it there for 75_l._ sterling. Thus we parted with the richest booty we got in the whole voyage, through our own ignorance and laziness[27].' The same Narrative relates, that they took out of the Rosario 'a great book full of sea charts and maps, containing an accurate and exact description of all the ports, soundings, rivers, capes, and coasts, of the _South Sea_, and all the navigation usually performed by the Spaniards in that ocean. This book was for its novelty and curiosity presented unto His Majesty on the return of some of the Buccaneers to _England_, and was translated into English by His Majesty's order[28].' [Sidenote: August.] August the 12th, they anchored at the Island _Plata_, whence they departed on the 16th, bound Southward, intending to return by the _Strait of Magalhanes_ or _Strait le Maire_, to the _West Indies_. The 28th, they looked in at _Paita_; but finding the place prepared for defence, they stood off from the coast, and pursued their course Southward, without again coming in sight of land, and without the occurrence of any thing remarkable, till they passed the 50th degree of latitude. [Sidenote: October 12th. By the Western Coast of America, in 50° 50' S.] October the 11th, they were in latitude 49° 54' S, and estimated their distance from the American coast to be 120 leagues. The wind blew strong from the SW, and they stood to the South East. On the morning of the 12th, two hours before day, being in latitude by account 50° 50' S, they suddenly found themselves close to land. The ship was ill prepared for such an event, the fore yard having been lowered to ease her, on account of the strength of the wind. 'The land was high and towering; and here appeared many Islands scattered up and down.' They were so near, and so entangled, that there was no possibility of standing off to sea, and, with such light as they had, they steered, as cautiously as they could, in between some Islands, and along an extensive coast, which, whether it was a larger Island, or part of the Continent, they could not know. [Sidenote: They enter a Gulf.] As the day advanced, the land was seen to be mountainous and craggy, and the tops covered with snow. Sharp says, 'we bore up for a harbour, and steered in Northward about five leagues. On the North side there are plenty of harbours[29].' [Sidenote: Shergall's Harbour.] At 11 in the forenoon they came to an anchor 'in a harbour, in 45 fathoms, within a stone's cast of the shore, where the ship was landlocked, and in smooth water. As the ship went in, one of the crew, named Henry Shergall, fell overboard as he was going into the spritsail top, and was drowned; on which account this was named _Shergall's Harbour_.' The bottom was rocky where the ship had anchored; a boat was therefore sent to look for better anchorage. They did not however shift their birth that day; and during the night, strong flurries of wind from the hills, joined with the sharpness of the rocks at the bottom, cut their cable in two, and they were obliged to set sail. [Sidenote: Another Harbour.] They ran about a mile to another bay, where they let go another anchor, and moored the ship with a fastening to a tree on shore. They shot geese, and other wild-fowl. On the shores they found large muscles, cockles like those in _England_, and limpets: here were also penguins, which were shy and not taken without pursuit; 'they padded on the water with their wings very fast, but their bodies were too heavy to be carried by the said wings.' [Sidenote: 15th.] The first part of the time they lay in this harbour, they had almost continual rain. On the night of the 15th, in a high North wind, the tree to which their cable was fastened gave way, and came up by the root, in consequence of which, the stern of the ship took the ground and damaged the rudder. They secured the ship afresh by fastening the cable to other trees; but were obliged to unhang the rudder to repair. [Sidenote: 18th.] The 18th was a day of clear weather. The latitude was observed 50° 40' S. The difference of the rise and fall of the tide was seven feet perpendicular: the time of high water is not noted. [Sidenote: The Gulf is named the English Gulf. Duke of York's Islands.] The arm of the sea, or gulf, in which they were, they named the _English Gulf_; and the land forming the harbour, the _Duke of York's Island_; 'more by guess than any thing else; for whether it were an Island or Continent was not discovered,' Ringrose says, 'I am persuaded that the place where we now are, is not so great an Island as some Hydrographers do lay it down, but rather an archipelago of smaller Islands. Our Captain gave to them the name of the _Duke of York's Islands_. Our boat which went Eastward, found several good bays and harbours, with deep water close to the shore; but there lay in them several sunken rocks, as there did also in the harbour where the ship lay. These rocks are less dangerous to shipping, by reason they have weeds lying about them.' [Sidenote: Sharp's English Gulf, the Brazo de la Conçepçion of Sarmiento.] From all the preceding description, it appears, that they were at the South part of the Island named _Madre de Dios_ in the Spanish Atlas, which Island is South of the Channel, or Arm of the Sea, named the _Gulf de la S^{ma} Trinidada_; and that Sharp's _English Gulf_ is the _Brazo de la Conçepçion_ of Sarmiento. Ringrose has drawn a sketch of the _Duke of York's Islands_, and one of the _English Gulf_; but which are not worth copying, as they have neither compass, meridian line, scale, nor soundings. He has given other plan's in the same defective manner, on which account they can be of little use. It is necessary however to remark a difference in the plan which has been printed of the _English Gulf_, from the plan in the manuscript. In the printed copy, the shore of the _Gulf_ is drawn as one continued line, admitting no thoroughfare; whereas, in the manuscript plan, there are clear openings leaving a prospect of channels through. [Sidenote: Natives.] Towards the end of October, the weather settled fair. Hitherto they had seen no inhabitants; but on the 27th, a party went from the ship in a boat, on an excursion in search of provisions, and unhappily caught sight of a small boat belonging to the natives of the land. [Sidenote: One of them killed by the Buccaneers.] The ship's boat rowed in pursuit, and the natives, a man, a woman, and a boy, finding their boat would be overtaken, all leapt overboard and swam towards shore. This villainous crew of Buccaneers had the barbarity to shoot at them in the water, and they shot the man dead; the woman made her escape to land; the boy, a stout lad about eighteen years of age, was taken, and with the Indian boat, was carried to the ship. The poor lad thus made prisoner had only a small covering of seal skin. 'He was squint-eyed, and his hair was cut short. The _doree_, or boat, in which he and the other Indians were, was built sharp at each end and flat bottomed: in the middle they had a fire burning for dressing victuals, or other use. They had a net to catch penguins, a club like to our bandies, and wooden darts. This young Indian appeared by his actions to be very innocent and foolish. He could open large muscles with his fingers, which our Buccaneers could scarcely manage with their knives. He was very wild, and would eat raw flesh.' [Sidenote: November.] By the beginning of November the rudder was repaired and hung. Ringrose says, 'we could perceive, now the stormy weather was blown over, much small fry of fish about the ship, whereof before we saw none. The weather began to be warm, or rather hot, and the birds, as thrushes and blackbirds, to sing as sweetly as those in England.' [Sidenote: Native of Patagonia carried away.] On the 5th of November, they sailed out of the _English Gulf_, taking with them their young Indian prisoner, to whom they gave the name of Orson. As they departed, the natives on some of the lands to the Eastward made great fires. At six in the evening the ship was without the mouth of the _Gulf_: the wind blew fresh from NW, and they stood out SWbW, to keep clear of breakers which lie four leagues without the entrance of the _Gulf_ to the South and SSE. Many reefs and rocks were seen hereabouts, on account of which, they kept close to the wind till they were a good distance clear of the land. Their navigation from here to the _Atlantic_ was, more than could have been imagined, like the journey of travellers by night in a strange country without a guide. The weather was stormy, and they would not venture to steer in for the _Strait of Magalhanes_, which they had purposed to do for the benefit of the provision which the shores of the _Strait_ afford of fresh water, fish, vegetables, and wood. They ran to the South to go round the _Tierra del Fuego_, having the wind from the NW, which was the most favourable for this navigation; but they frequently lay to, because the weather was thick. [Sidenote: Passage round Cape Horn.] On the 12th, they had not passed the _Tierra del Fuego_. The latitude according to observation that day was 55° 25', and the course they steered was SSE. [Sidenote: 14th. Appearance like Land. Latitude observed, 57° 50' S.] On the 14th, Ringrose says, 'the latitude was observed 57° 50' S, and on this day we could perceive land, from which at noon we were due West.' They steered EbS, and expected that at daylight the next morning they should be close in with the land; but the weather became cloudy with much fall of snow, and nothing more of it was seen. No longitude or meridian distance is noticed, and it must remain doubtful whether what they took for land was floating ice; or their observation for the latitude erroneous, and that they saw the _Isles of Diego Ramirez_. [Sidenote: Ice Islands.] Three days afterwards, in latitude 58° 30' S, they fell in with Ice Islands, one of which they reckoned to be two leagues in circumference. A strong current set here Southward. They held on their course Eastward so far that when at length they did sail Northward, they saw neither the _Tierra del Fuego_ nor _Staten Island_. [Sidenote: December.] December the 5th, they divided the plunder which had been reserved, each man's share of which amounted to 328 pieces of eight. Their course was now bent for the _West Indies_. [Sidenote: 1682. January.] January the 15th, died William Stephens, a seaman, whose death was attributed to his having eaten three manchineal apples six months before, when on the coast of _New Spain_, 'from which time he wasted away till he became a perfect skeleton.' [Sidenote: Arrive in the West Indies.] January the 28th, 1682, they made the Island of _Barbadoes_, but learnt that the Richmond, a British frigate, was lying in the road. Ringrose and his fellow journalists say, 'we having acted in all our voyage without a commission, dared not be so bold as to put in, lest the said frigate should seize us for pyrateering, and strip us of all we had got in the whole voyage.' They next sailed to _Antigua_; but the Governor at that Island, Colonel Codrington, would not give them leave to enter the harbour, though they endeavoured to soften him by sending a present of jewels to his lady, which, however, were not accepted. Sharp and his crew grew impatient at their uneasy situation, and came to a determination to separate. Some of them landed at _Antigua_; Sharp and others landed at _Nevis_, whence they got passage to _England_. Their ship, which was the Trinidad captured in the _Bay of Panama_, was left to seven men of the company who had lost their money by gaming. The Buccaneer journals say nothing of their Patagonian captive Orson after the ship sailed from his country; and what became of the ship after Sharp quitted her does not appear. [Sidenote: Bart. Sharp and some of his men tried for Piracy.] Bartholomew Sharp, and a few others, on their arrival in _England_, were apprehended, and a Court of Admiralty was held at the _Marshalsea_ in _Southwark_, where, at the instance of the Spanish Ambassador, they were tried for committing acts of piracy in the _South Sea_; but from the defectiveness of the evidence produced, they escaped conviction. One of the principal charges against them was for taking the Spanish ship Rosario, and killing the Captain and another man belonging to her; 'but it was proved,' says the author of the anonymous Narrative, who was one of the men brought to trial, 'that the Spaniards fired at us first and it was judged that we ought to defend ourselves.' Three Buccaneers of Sharp's crew were also tried at _Jamaica_, one of whom was condemned and hanged, 'who,' the narrator says, 'was wheedled into an open confession: the other two stood it out, and escaped for want of witnesses to prove the fact against them.' Thus terminated what may be called the First Expedition of the Buccaneers in the _South Sea_; the boat excursion by Morgan's men in the _Bay of Panama_ being of too little consequence to be so reckoned. They had now made successful experiment of the route both by sea and land; and the Spaniards in the _South Sea_ had reason to apprehend a speedy renewal of their visits. Carlos Enriquez Clerck, who went from _England_ with Captain Narbrough, was at this time executed at _Lima_, on a charge of holding correspondence with the English of _Jamaica_; which act of severity probably is attributable more to the alarm which prevailed in the Government of _Peru_, than to any guilty practices of Clerck. CHAP. XI. _Disputes between the French Government and their West-India Colonies. =Morgan= becomes Deputy Governor of =Jamaica=. =La Vera Cruz= surprised by the Flibustiers. Other of their Enterprises._ [Sidenote: 1680. Proceedings of the Buccaneers in the West Indies. Prohibitions against Piracy by the French Government;] Whilst so many of the English Buccaneers were seeking plunder in the _South Sea_, the French Flibustiers had not been inactive in the _West Indies_, notwithstanding that the French government, after the conclusion of the war with _Spain_, issued orders prohibiting the subjects of _France_ in the _West Indies_ from cruising against the Spaniards. A short time before this order arrived, a cruising commission had been given to Granmont, who had thereupon collected men, and made preparation for an expedition to the _Tierra Firma_; and they did not choose that so much pains should be taken to no purpose. The French settlers generally, were at this time much dissatisfied on account of some regulations imposed upon them by the Company of Farmers, whose privileges and authority extended to fixing the price upon growth, the produce of the soil; and which they exercised upon tobacco, the article then most cultivated by the French in _Hispaniola_, rigorously requiring the planters to deliver it to the Company at the price so prescribed. Many of the inhabitants, ill brooking to live under such a system of robbery, made preparations to withdraw to the English and Dutch settlements; but their discontent on this account was much allayed by the Governor writing a remonstrance to the French Minister, and promising them his influence towards obtaining a suppression of the farming tobacco. Fresh cause of discontent soon occurred, by a monopoly of the French African Slave Trade being put into the hands of a new company, which was named the _Senegal_ Company. [Sidenote: Disregarded by the French Buccaneers.] Granmont and the Flibustiers engaged with him, went to the coast of _Cumana_, where they did considerable mischief to the Spaniards, with some loss, and little profit, to themselves. [Sidenote: 1680-1. Sir Henry Morgan, Deputy Governor of Jamaica. His Severity to the Buccaneers.] In the autumn of this same year, the Earl of Carlisle, who was Governor of _Jamaica_, finding the climate did not agree with his constitution, returned to _England_, and left as his Deputy to govern in _Jamaica_, Morgan, the plunderer of _Panama_, but who was now Sir Henry Morgan. This man had found favour with King Charles II. or with his Ministers, had been knighted, and appointed a Commissioner of the Admiralty Court in _Jamaica_. On becoming Deputy Governor, his administration was far from being favourable to his old associates, some of whom suffered the extreme hardship of being tried and hanged under his authority; and one crew of Buccaneers, most of them Englishmen, who fell into his hands, he sent to be delivered up (it may be presumed that he sold them) to the Spaniards at _Carthagena_. Morgan's authority as Governor was terminated the following year, by the arrival of a Governor from _England_[30]. The impositions on planting and commerce in the French settlements, in the same degree that they discouraged cultivation, encouraged cruising, and the Flibustier party so much increased, as to have little danger to apprehend from any Governor's authority. [Sidenote: 1683.] The matter however did not come to issue, for in 1683, war again broke out between _France_ and _Spain_. But before the intelligence arrived in the _West Indies_, 1200 French Flibustiers had assembled under Van Horn (a native of _Ostend_), Granmont, and another noted Flibustier named Laurent de Graaf, to make an expedition against the Spaniards. [Sidenote: Van Horn, Granmont, and de Graaf, go against La Vera Cruz.] Van Horn had been a notorious pirate, and for a number of years had plundered generally, without shewing partiality or favour to ships of one nation more than to those of another. After amassing great riches, he began to think plain piracy too dangerous an occupation, and determined to reform, which he did by making his peace with the French Governor in _Hispaniola_, and turning Buccaneer or Flibustier, into which fraternity he was admitted on paying entrance. The expedition which he undertook in conjunction with Granmont and de Graaf, was against _La Vera Cruz_ in the _Gulf of Mexico_, a town which might be considered as the magazine for all the merchandise which passed between _New Spain_ and _Old Spain_, and was defended by a fort, said to be impregnable. The Flibustiers sailed for this place with a fleet of ten ships. They had information that two large Spanish ships, with cargoes of cacao, were expected at _La Vera Cruz_ from the _Caraccas_; and upon this intelligence, they put in practice the following expedient. [Sidenote: They surprise the Town by Stratagem.] They embarked the greater number of their men on board two of their largest ships, which, on arriving near _La Vera Cruz_, put aloft Spanish colours, and ran, with all sail set, directly for the port like ships chased, the rest of the Buccaneer ships appearing at a distance behind, crowding sail after them. The inhabitants of _La Vera Cruz_ believed the two headmost ships to be those which were expected from the _Caraccas_; and, as the Flibustiers had contrived that they should not reach the port till after dark, suffered them to enter without offering them molestation, and to anchor close to the town, which they did without being suspected to be enemies. In the middle of the night, the Flibustiers landed, and surprised the fort, which made them masters of the town. The Spaniards of the garrison, and all the inhabitants who fell into their hands, they shut up in the churches, where they were kept three days, and with so little care for their subsistence that several died from thirst, and some by drinking immoderately when water was at length given to them. With the plunder, and what was obtained for ransom of the town, it is said the Flibustiers carried away a million of piastres, besides a number of slaves and prisoners. Van Horn shorty after died of a wound received in a quarrel with De Graaf. The ship he had commanded, which mounted fifty guns, was bequeathed by him to Granmont, who a short time before had lost a ship of nearly the same force in a gale of wind. Some quarrels happened at this time between the French Flibustiers and the English Buccaneers, which are differently related by the English and the French writers. The French account says, that in a Spanish ship captured by the Flibustiers, was found a letter from the Governor of _Jamaica_ addressed to the Governor of the _Havannah_, proposing a union of their force to drive the French from _Hispaniola_. [Sidenote: Story of Granmont and an English Ship.] Also, that an English ship of 30 guns came cruising near _Tortuga_, and when the Governor of _Tortuga_ sent a sloop to demand of the English Captain his business there, the Englishman insolently replied, that the sea was alike free to all, and he had no account to render to any one. For this answer, the Governor sent out a ship to take the English ship, but the Governor's ship was roughly treated, and obliged to retire into port. Granmont had just returned from the _La Vera Cruz_ expedition, and the Governor applied to him, to go with his fifty gun ship to revenge the affront put upon their nation. 'Granmont,' says the Narrator, 'accepted the commission joyfully. Three hundred Flibustiers embarked with him in his ship; he found the Englishman proud of his late victory; he immediately grappled with him and put all the English crew to the sword, saving only the Captain, who he carried prisoner to _Cape François_.' On the merit of this service, his disobedience to the royal prohibitory order in attacking _La Vera Cruz_ was to pass with impunity. The English were not yet sufficiently punished; the account proceeds, 'Our Flibustiers would no longer receive them as partakers in their enterprises, and even confiscated the share they were entitled to receive for the _La Vera Cruz_ expedition.' Thus the French account. If the story of demolishing the English crew is true, the fact is not more absurd than the being vain of such an exploit. If a fifty gun ship will determine to sink a thirty gun ship, the thirty gun ship must in all probability be sunk. The affront given, if it deserves to be called an affront, was not worthy being revenged with a massacre. The story is found only in the French histories, the writers of which it may be suspected were moved to make Granmont deal so unmercifully with the English crew, by the kind of feeling which so generally prevails between nations who are near neighbours. To this it may be attributed that Père Charlevoix, both a good historian and good critic, has adopted the story; but had it been believed by him, he would have related it in a more rational manner, and not with exultation. English writers mention a disagreement which happened about this time between Granmont and the English Buccaneers, on account of his taking a sloop belonging to _Jamaica_, and forcing the crew to serve under him; but which crew found opportunity to take advantage of some disorder in his ship, and to escape in the night[31]. This seems to have been the whole fact; for an outrage such as is affirmed by the French writers, could not have been committed and have been boasted of by one side, without incurring reproach from the other. The French Government was highly offended at the insubordination and unmanageableness of the Flibustiers in _Hispaniola_, and no one was more so than the French King, Louis XIV. Towards reducing them to a more orderly state, instructions were sent to the Governors in the _West Indies_ to be strict in making them observe Port regulations; the principal of which were, that all vessels should register their crew and lading before their departure, and also at their return into port; that they should abstain from cruising in times of peace, and should take out regular commissions in times of war; and that they should pay the dues of the crown, one _item_ of which was a tenth of all prizes and plunder. [Sidenote: Disputes of the French Governors with the Flibustiers of Saint Domingo.] The number of the French Flibustiers in 1684, was estimated to be 3000. The French Government desired to convert them into settlers. A letter written in that year from the French Minister to the Governor General of the French West-India Islands, has this remarkable expression: 'His Majesty esteems nothing more important than to render these vagabonds good inhabitants of _Saint Domingo_.' Such being the disposition of the French Government, it was an oversight that they did not contribute towards so desirable a purpose by making some abatement in the impositions which oppressed and retarded cultivation, which would have conciliated the Colonists, and have been encouragement to the Flibustiers to become planters. But the Colonists still had to struggle against farming the tobacco, which they had in vain attempted to get commuted for some other burthen, and many cultivators of that plant were reduced to indigence. The greediness of the French chartered companies appears in the _Senegal_ Company making it a subject of complaint, that the Flibustiers sold the negroes they took from the Spaniards to whomsoever they pleased, to the prejudice of the interest of the Company. It was unreasonable to expect the Flibustiers would give up their long accustomed modes of gain, sanctioned as they had hitherto been by the acquiescence and countenance of the French Government, and turn planters, under circumstances discouraging to industry. Their number likewise rendered it necessary to observe mildness and forbearance in the endeavour to reform them; but both the encouragement and the forbearance were neglected; and in consequence of their being made to apprehend rigorous treatment in their own settlements, many removed to the British and Dutch Islands. The French Flibustiers were unsuccessful at this time in some enterprises they undertook in the _Bay of Campeachy_, where they lost many men: on the other hand, three of their ships, commanded by De Graaf, Michel le Basque, and another Flibustier named Jonqué, engaged and took three Spanish ships which were sent purposely against them out of _Carthagena_. CHAP. XII. _Circumstances which preceded the Second Irruption of the Buccaneers into the =South Sea=. Buccaneers under =John Cook= sail from =Virginia=; stop at the =Cape de Verde Islands=; at =Sierra Leone=. Origin and History of the Report concerning the supposed Discovery of =Pepys Island=._ The Prohibitions being enforced, determined many, both of the English Buccaneers and of the French Flibustiers, to seek their fortunes in the _South Sea_, where they would be at a distance from the control of any established authority. This determination was not a matter generally concerted. The first example was speedily followed, and a trip to the _South Sea_ in a short time became a prevailing fashion among them. Expeditions were undertaken by different bodies of men unconnected with each other, except when accident, or the similarity of their pursuits, brought them together. [Sidenote: Circumstances preceding the Second Irruption of the Buccaneers into the South Sea.] Among the Buccaneers in the expedition of 1680 to the _South Sea_, who from dislike to Sharp's command returned across the _Isthmus of Darien_ at the same time with Dampier, was one John Cook, who on arriving again in the _West Indies_, entered on board a vessel commanded by a Dutchman of the name of Yanky, which was fitted up as a privateer, and provided with a French commission to cruise against the Spaniards. Cook, being esteemed a capable seaman, was made Quarter-Master, by which title, in privateers as well as in buccaneer vessels, the officer next in command to the Captain was called. Cook continued Quarter-Master with Yanky till they took a Spanish ship which was thought well adapted for a cruiser. Cook claimed to have the command of this ship, and, according to the usage among privateers in such cases, she was allotted to him, with a crew composed of men who volunteered to sail with him. Dampier was of the number, as were several others who had returned from the _South Sea_; division was made of the prize goods, and Cook entered on his new command. [Sidenote: 1683.] This arrangement took place at _Isla Vaca_, or _Isle a Vache_, a small Island near the South coast of _Hispaniola_, which was then much resorted to by both privateers and Buccaneers. It happened at this time, that besides Yanky's ship, some French privateers having legal commissions, were lying at _Avache_, and their Commanders did not contentedly behold men without a commission, and who were but Buccaneers, in the possession of a finer ship than any belonging to themselves who cruised under lawful authority. The occasion being so fair, and remembering what Morgan had done in a case something similar, after short counsel, they joined together, and seized the buccaneer ship, goods, and arms, and turned the crew ashore. A fellow-feeling that still existed between the privateers and Buccaneers, and probably a want of hands, induced a Captain Tristian, who commanded one of the privateers, to receive into his ship ten of the Buccaneers to be part of his crew. Among these were Cook, and a Buccaneer afterwards of greater note, named Edward Davis. Tristian sailed to _Petit Guaves_, where the ship had not been long at anchor, before himself and the greatest part of his men went on shore. Cook and his companions thought this also a fair occasion, and accordingly they made themselves masters of the ship. Those of Tristian's men who were on board, they turned ashore, and immediately taking up the anchors, sailed back close in to the _Isle a Vache_, where, before notice of their exploit reached the Governor, they collected and took on board the remainder of their old company, and sailed away. They had scarcely left the _Isle a Vache_, when they met and captured two vessels, one of which was a ship from _France_ laden with wines. Thinking it unsafe to continue longer in the _West Indies_, they directed their course for _Virginia_, where they arrived with their prizes in April 1683. [Sidenote: August, 1683. Buccaneers under John Cook sail for the South Sea.] In _Virginia_ they disposed of their prize goods, and two vessels, keeping one with which they proposed to make a voyage to the _South Sea_, and which they named the Revenge. She mounted 18 guns, and the number of adventurers who embarked in her, were about seventy, the major part of them old Buccaneers, some of whose names have since been much noted, as William Dampier, Edward Davis, Lionel Wafer, Ambrose Cowley, and John Cook their Captain. August the 23d, 1683, they sailed from the _Chesapeak_. Dampier and Cowley have both related their piratical adventures, but with some degree of caution, to prevent bringing upon themselves a charge of piracy. Cowley pretended that he was engaged to sail in the Revenge to navigate her, but was kept in ignorance of the design of the voyage, and made to believe they were bound for the _Island Hispaniola_; and that it was not revealed to him till after they got out to sea, that instead of to the _West Indies_, they were bound to the coast of _Guinea_, there to seek for a better ship, in which they might sail to the _Great South Sea_. William Dampier, who always shews respect for truth, would not stoop to dissimulation; but he forbears being circumstantial concerning the outset of this voyage, and the particulars of their proceedings whilst in the _Atlantic_; supplying the chasm in the following general terms; "August the 23d, 1683, we sailed from _Virginia_ under the command of Captain Cook, bound for the _South Seas_. I shall not trouble the reader with an account of every day's run, but hasten to the less known parts of the world." [Sidenote: Cape de Verde Islands.] Whilst near the coast of _Virginia_ they met a Dutch ship, out of which they took six casks of wine; and other provisions; also two Dutch seamen, who voluntarily entered with them. [Sidenote: September.] Some time in September they anchored at the _Isle of Sal_, where they procured fish and a few goats, but neither fruits nor good fresh water. Only five men lived on the Island, who were all black; but they called themselves Portuguese, and one was styled the Governor. [Sidenote: Ambergris.] These Portuguese exchanged a lump of ambergris, or what was supposed to be ambergris, for old clothes. Dampier says, 'not a man in the ship knew ambergris, but I have since seen it in other places, and am certain this was not the right; it was of a dark colour, like sheep's dung, very soft, but of no smell; and possibly was goat's dung. Some I afterwards saw sold at the _Nicobars_ in the _East Indies_, was of lighter colour, and very hard, neither had that any smell, and I suppose was also a cheat. Mr. Hill, a surgeon, once shewed me a piece of ambergris, and related to me, that one Mr. Benjamin Barker, a man I have been long well acquainted with, and know to be a very sober and credible person, told this Mr. Hill, that being in the _Bay of Honduras_, he found in a sandy bay upon the shore of an Island, a lump of ambergris so large, that when carried to _Jamaica_, it was found to weigh upwards of 100 _lbs._ When he found it, it lay dry above the mark of the sea at high water, and in it were a great multitude of beetles. It was of a dusky colour, towards black, about the hardness of mellow cheese, and of a very fragrant smell. What Mr. Hill shewed me was some of it, which Mr. Barker had given him[32].' [Sidenote: The Flamingo.] There were wild-fowl at _Sal_; and Flamingos, of which, and their manner of building their nests, Dampier has given a description. The flesh of the Flamingo is lean and black, yet good meat, 'tasting neither fishy nor any way unsavory. A dish of Flamingos' tongues is fit for a Prince's table: they are large, and have a knob of fat at the root which is an excellent bit. When many of them stand together, at a distance they appear like a brick wall; for their feathers are of the colour of new red brick, and, except when feeding, they commonly stand upright, exactly in a row close by each other.' [Sidenote: Cape de Verde Islands.] From the Isle of _Sal_ they went to other of the _Cape de Verde Islands_. At _St. Nicholas_ they watered the ship by digging wells, and at _Mayo_ they procured some provisions. They afterwards sailed to the Island _St. Jago_, but a Dutch ship was lying at anchor in _Port Praya_, which fired her guns at them as soon as they came within reach of shot, and the Buccaneers thought it prudent to stand out again to sea. [Sidenote: November. Coast of Guinea.] They next sailed to the coast of _Guinea_, which they made in the beginning of November, near _Sierra Leone_. A large ship was at anchor in the road, which proved to be a Dane. On sight of her, and all the time they were standing into the road, all the Buccaneer crew, except a few men to manage the sails, kept under deck; which gave their ship the appearance of being a weakly manned merchant-vessel. When they drew near the Danish ship, which they did with intention to board her, the Buccaneer Commander, to prevent suspicion, gave direction in a loud voice to the steersman to put the helm one way; and, according to the plan preconcerted, the steersman put it the contrary, so that their vessel seemed to fall on board the Dane through mistake. By this stratagem, they surprised, and, with the loss of five men, became masters of a ship mounting 36 guns, which was victualled and stored for a long voyage. This achievement is related circumstantially in Cowley's manuscript Journal[33]; but in his published account he only says, 'near Cape _Sierra Leone_, we alighted on a new ship of 40 guns, which we boarded and carried her away.' [Sidenote: Sherborough River.] They went with their prize to a river South of the _Sierra Leone_, called the _Sherborough_, to which they were safely piloted through channels among shoals, by one of the crew who had been there before. At the River _Sherborough_ there was then an English factory, but distant from where they anchored. Near them was a large town inhabited by negroes, who traded freely, selling them rice, fowls, plantains, sugar-canes, palm-wine, and honey. The town was skreened from shipping by a grove of trees. The Buccaneers embarked here all in their new ship, and named her the Batchelor's Delight. Their old ship they burnt, 'that she might tell no tales,' and set their prisoners on shore, to shift as well as they could for themselves. They sailed from the coast of Guinea in the middle of November, directing their course across the _Atlantic_ towards the _Strait of Magalhanes_. [Sidenote: January, 1684.] On January the 28th, 1684, they had sight of the Northernmost of the Islands discovered by Captain John Davis in 1592, (since, among other appellations, called the _Sebald de Weert Islands_.) From the circumstance of their falling in with this land, originated the extraordinary report of an Island being discovered in the _Southern Atlantic Ocean_ in lat. 47° S, and by Cowley named _Pepys Island_; which was long believed to exist, and has been sought after by navigators of different European nations, even within our own time. The following are the particulars which caused so great a deception. [Sidenote: History of the Report of a Discovery named Pepys Island.] Cowley says, in his manuscript Journal, 'January 1683: This month we were in latitude 47° 40', where we espied an Island bearing West of us, and bore away for it, but being too late we lay by all night. The Island seemed very pleasant to the eye, with many woods. I may say the whole Island was woods, there being a rock above water to the Eastward of it with innumerable fowls. I sailed along that Island to the Southward, and about the SW side of the Island there seemed to me to be a good place for ships to ride. The wind blew fresh, and they would not put the boat out. Sailing a little further, having 26 and 27 fathoms water, we came to a place where we saw the weeds ride, and found only seven fathoms water and all rocky ground, therefore we put the ship about: but the harbour seemed a good place for ships to ride in. There seemed to me harbour for 500 sail of shipping, the going in but narrow, and the North side of the entrance shallow that I could see: but I think there is water enough on the South side. I would have had them stand upon a wind all night; but they told me they did not come out to go upon discovery. We saw likewise another Island by this, which made me to think them the _Sibble D'wards_[34].' The latitude given by Cowley is to be attributed to his ignorance, and to this part of his narrative being composed from memory, which he acknowledges, though it is not so stated in the printed Narrative. His describing the land to be covered with wood, is sufficiently accounted for by the appearance it makes at a distance, which in the same manner has deceived other voyagers. Pernety, in his Introduction to M. de Bougainville's Voyage to the _Malouines_ (by which name the French Voyagers have chosen to call _John Davis's Islands_) says, 'As to wood, we were deceived by appearances in running along the coast of the _Malouines_: we thought we saw some, but on landing, these appearances were discovered to be only tall bulrushes with large flat leaves, such as are called corn flags[35].' The Editor of Cowley's Journal, William Hack, might possibly believe from the latitude mentioned by Cowley, that the land seen by him was a new discovery. To give it a less doubtful appearance, he dropped the 40 minutes of latitude, and also Cowley's conjecture that the land was the _Sebald de Weerts_; and with this falsification of the Journal, he took occasion to compliment the Honourable Mr. Pepys, who was then Secretary of the Admiralty, by putting his name to the land, giving as Cowley's words, 'In the latitude of 47°, we saw land, the same being an Island not before known. I gave it the name of _Pepys Island_.' Hack embellished this account with a drawing of _Pepys Island_, in which is introduced an _Admiralty Bay_, and _Secretary's Point_. The account which Dampier has given of their falling in with this land, would have cleared up the whole matter, but for a circumstance which is far more extraordinary than any yet mentioned, which is, that it long escaped notice, and seems never to have been generally understood, that Dampier and Cowley were at this time in the same ship, and their voyage thus far the same. Dampier says, 'January the 28th (1683-4) we made the _Sebald de Weerts_. They are three rocky barren Islands without any tree, only some bushes growing on them. The two Northernmost lie in 51° S, the other in 51° 20' S. We could not come near the two Northern Islands, but we came close by the Southern; but we could not obtain soundings till within two cables' length of the shore, and there found the bottom to be foul rocky ground[36].' In consequence of the inattention, or oversight, in not perceiving that Dampier and Cowley were speaking of the same land, Hack's ingenious adulation of the Secretary of the Admiralty flourished a full century undetected; a _Pepys Island_ being all the time admitted in the charts. [Sidenote: Shoals of small red Lobsters.] Near these Islands the variation was observed 23° 10' Easterly. They passed through great shoals of small red lobsters, 'no bigger than the top of a man's little finger, yet all their claws, both great and small, were like a lobster. I never saw,' says Dampier, 'any of this sort of fish naturally red, except here.' The winds blew hard from the Westward, and they could not fetch the _Strait of Magalhanes_. [Sidenote: February.] On February the 6th, they were at the entrance of _Strait le Maire_, when it fell calm, and a strong tide set out of the _Strait_ Northward, which made a short irregular sea, as in a race, or place where two tides meet, and broke over the waist of the ship, 'which was tossed about like an egg-shell.' [Sidenote: They sail by the East end of Staten Island; and enter the South Sea.] A breeze springing up from the WNW, they bore away Eastward, and passed round the East end of _Staten Island_; after which they saw no other land till they came into the _South Sea_. They had much rain, and took advantage of it to fill 23 casks with fresh water. [Sidenote: March.] March the 17th, they were in latitude 36° S, standing for the _Island Juan Fernandez_. Variation 8° East. CHAP. XIII. _Buccaneers under =John Cook= arrive at =Juan Fernandez=. Account of =William=, a Mosquito Indian, who had lived there three years. They sail to the =Galapagos Islands=; thence to the Coast of =New Spain=. =John Cook= dies. =Edward Davis= chosen Commander._ [Sidenote: 1684. March 19th.] Continuing their course for _Juan Fernandez_, on the 19th in the morning, a strange ship was seen to the Southward, standing after them under all her sail. The Buccaneers were in hopes she would prove to be a Spaniard, and brought to, to wait her coming up. The people on board the strange vessel entertained similar expectations, for they also were English, and were come to the _South Sea_ to pick up what they could. This ship was named the Nicholas; her Commander John Eaton; she fitted out in the River _Thames_ under pretence of a trading, but in reality with the intention of making a piratical voyage. [Sidenote: Joined by the Nicholas of London, John Eaton Commander.] The two ships soon joined, and on its being found that they had come on the same errand to the _South Sea_, Cook and Eaton and their men agreed to keep company together. It was learnt from Eaton that another English ship, named the Cygnet, commanded by a Captain Swan, had sailed from _London_ for the _South Sea_; but fitted out by reputable merchants, and provided with a cargo for a trading voyage, having a licence from the Duke of York, then Lord High Admiral of _England_. The Cygnet and the Nicholas had met at the entrance of the _Strait of Magalhanes_, and they entered the _South Sea_ in company, but had since been separated by bad weather. [Sidenote: March 22d.] March the 22d, the Batchelor's Delight and the Nicholas came in sight of the Island _Juan Fernandez_. [Sidenote: At Juan Fernandez. William the Mosquito Indian.] The reader may remember that when the Buccaneers under Watling were at _Juan Fernandez_ in January 1681, the appearance of three Spanish ships made them quit the Island in great haste, and they left behind a Mosquito Indian named William, who was in the woods hunting for goats. Several of the Buccaneers who were then with Watling were now with Cook, and, eager to discover if any traces could be found which would enable them to conjecture what was become of their former companion, but with small hope of finding him still here, as soon as they were near enough for a boat to be sent from the ship, they hastened to the shore. Dampier was in this first boat, as was also a Mosquito Indian named Robin; and as they drew near the land, they had the satisfaction to see William at the sea-side waiting to receive them. Dampier has given the following affecting account of their meeting: 'Robin, his countryman, was the first who leaped ashore from the boats, and running to his brother _Moskito_ man, threw himself flat on his face at his feet, who helping him up and embracing him, fell flat with his face on the ground at Robin's feet, and was by him taken up also. We stood with pleasure to behold the surprise, tenderness, and solemnity of this interview, which was exceedingly affectionate on both sides: and when their ceremonies were over, we also that stood gazing at them, drew near, each of us embracing him we had found here, who was overjoyed to see so many of his old friends, come hither as he thought purposely to fetch him. He was named Will, as the other was Robin; which names were given them by the English, for they have no names among themselves, and they take it as a favour to be named by us, and will complain if we do not appoint them some name when they are with us.' William had lived in solitude on _Juan Fernandez_ above three years. The Spaniards knew of his being on the Island, and Spanish ships had stopped there, the people belonging to which had made keen search after him; but he kept himself concealed, and they could never discover his retreat. At the time Watling sailed from the Island, he had a musket, a knife, a small horn of powder, and a few shot. 'When his ammunition was expended, he contrived by notching his knife, to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made harpoons, lances, hooks, and a long knife, heating the pieces of iron first in the fire, and then hammering them out as he pleased with stones. This may seem strange to those not acquainted with the sagacity of the Indians; but it is no more than what the Moskito men were accustomed to in their own country.' He had worn out the clothes with which he landed, and was not otherwise clad than with a skin about his waist. He made fishing lines of the skins of seals cut into thongs. 'He had built himself a hut, half a mile from the sea-shore, which he lined with goats' skins, and slept on his couch or _barbecu_ of sticks raised about two feet from the ground, and spread with goats' skins.' He saw the two ships commanded by Cook and Eaton the day before they anchored, and from their manoeuvring believing them to be English, he killed three goats, which he drest with vegetables; thus preparing a treat for his friends on their landing; and there has seldom been a more fair and joyful occasion for festivity. [Sidenote: Stocked with Goats by its Discoverer.] Dampier reckoned two bays in _Juan Fernandez_ proper for ships to anchor in; 'both at the East end, and in each there is a rivulet of good fresh water.' He mentions (it may be supposed on the authority of Spanish information) that this Island was stocked with goats by Juan Fernandez, its discoverer, who, in a second voyage to it, landed three or four of these animals, and they quickly multiplied. Also, that Juan Fernandez had formed a plan of settling here, if he could have obtained a patent or royal grant of the Island; which was refused him[37]. The Buccaneers found here a good supply of provisions in goats, wild vegetables, seals, sea-lions, and fish. Dampier says, 'the seals at _Juan Fernandez_ are as big as calves, and have a fine thick short fur, the like I have not taken notice of any where but in these seas. The teeth of the sea-lion are the bigness of a man's thumb: in Captain Sharp's time, some of the Buccaneers made dice of them. Both the sea-lion and the seal eat fish, which I believe is their common food.' [Sidenote: Coast of Peru.] April the 8th, the Batchelor's Delight and Nicholas sailed from _Juan Fernandez_ for the American coast, which they made in latitude 24° S, and sailed Northward, keeping sight of the land, but at a good distance. [Sidenote: May.] On May the 3d, in latitude 9° 40' S, they took a Spanish ship laden with timber. [Sidenote: Appearance of the Andes.] Dampier remarks that 'from the latitude of 24° S to 17°, and from 14° to 10° S, the land within the coast is of a prodigious height. It lies generally in ridges parallel to the shore, one within another, each surpassing the other in height, those inland being the highest. They always appear blue when seen from sea, and are seldom obscured by clouds or fogs. These mountains far surpass the _Peak of Teneriffe_, or the land of _Santa Martha_.' [Sidenote: Islands Lobos de la Mar.] On the 9th, they anchored at the Islands _Lobos de la Mar_. 'This _Lobos_ consists of two little Islands each about a mile round, of indifferent height, with a channel between fit only for boats. Several rocks lie on the North side of the Islands. There is a small cove, or sandy bay, sheltered from the winds, at the West end of the Easternmost Island, where ships may careen. There is good riding between the Easternmost Island and the rocks, in 10, 12, or 14 fathoms; for the wind is commonly at S, or SSE, and the Easternmost Island lying East and West, shelters that road. Both the Islands are barren, without fresh water, tree, shrub, grass, or herb; but sea-fowls, seals, and sea-lions were here in multitudes[38].' On a review of their strength, they mustered in the two ships 108 men fit for service, besides their sick. They remained at the _Lobos de la Mar_ Isles till the 17th, when three vessels coming in sight, they took up their anchors and gave chace. They captured all the three, which were laden with provisions, principally flour, and bound for _Panama_. They learnt from the prisoners that the English ship Cygnet had been at _Baldivia_, and that the Viceroy on information of strange ships having entered the _South Sea_, had ordered treasure which had been shipped for _Panama_ to be re-landed. [Sidenote: They sail to the Galapagos Islands.] The Buccaneers, finding they were expected on the coast, determined to go with their prizes first to the _Galapagos Islands_, and afterwards to the coast of _New Spain_. They arrived in sight of the _Galapagos_ on the 31st; but were not enough to the Southward to fetch the Southern Islands, the wind being from SbE, which Dampier remarks is the common trade-wind in this part of the _Pacific_. Many instances occur in _South Sea_ navigations which shew the disadvantage of not keeping well to the South in going to the _Galapagos_. [Sidenote: Duke of Norfolk's Island.] The two ships anchored near the North East part of one of the Easternmost Islands, in 16 fathoms, the bottom white hard sand, a mile distant from the shore. It was during this visit of the Buccaneers to the _Galapagos_, that the chart of these Islands which was published with Cowley's voyage was made. Considering the small opportunity for surveying which was afforded by their track, it may be reckoned a good chart, and has the merit both of being the earliest survey known of these Islands, and of having continued in use to this day; the latest charts we have of the _Galapagos_ being founded upon this original, and (setting aside the additions) varying little from it in the general outlines. Where Cook and Eaton first anchored, appears to be the _Duke of Norfolk's Island_ of Cowley's chart. They found there sea turtle and land turtle, but could stop only one night, on account of two of their prizes, which being deeply laden had fallen too far to leeward to fetch the same anchorage. [Sidenote: June. King James's Island.] The day following, they sailed on to the next Island Westward (marked _King James's Island_ in the chart) and anchored at its North end, a quarter of a mile distant from the shore, in 15 fathoms. Dampier observed the latitude of the North part of this second Island, 0° 28' N, which is considerably more North than it is placed in Cowley's chart. The riding here was very uncertain, 'the bottom being so steep that if an anchor starts, it never holds again.' [Sidenote: Mistake made by the Editor of Dampier's Voyages.] An error has been committed in the printed Narrative of Dampier, which it may be useful to notice. It is there said, 'The Island at which we first anchored hath water on the North end, falling down in a stream from high steep rocks upon the sandy bay, where it may be taken up.' Concerning so essential an article to mariners as fresh water, no information can be too minute to deserve attention. [Sidenote: Concerning Fresh Water at King James's Island.] In the manuscript Journal, Dampier says of the first Island at which they anchored, 'we found there the largest land turtle I ever saw; but the Island is rocky and barren, without wood or water.' At the next Island at which they anchored, both Dampier and Cowley mention fresh water being found. Cowley says, 'this Bay I called _Albany Bay_, and another place _York Road_. Here is excellent sweet water.' Dampier also in the margin of his written Journal where the second anchorage is mentioned, has inserted the note following: 'At the North end of the Island we saw water running down from the rocks.' The editor or corrector of the press has mistakenly applied this to the first anchorage. [Sidenote: Herbage on the North end of Albemarle Island.] Cowley, after assigning names to the different Islands, adds, 'We could find no good water on any of these places, save on the _Duke of York's_ [_i. e. King James's_] _Island_. But at the North end of _Albemarle Island_ there were green leaves of a thick substance which we chewed to quench our thirst: and there were abundance of fowls in this Island which could not live without water, though we could not find it[39].' Animal food was furnished by the _Galapagos Islands_ in profusion, and of the most delicate kind; of vegetables nothing of use was found except the mammee, the leaves just noticed and berries. The name _Galapagos_ which has been assigned to these Islands, signifies Turtle in the Spanish language, and was given to them on account of the great numbers of those animals, both of the sea and land kind, found there. Guanoes, an amphibious animal well known in the _West Indies_, fish, flamingoes, and turtle-doves so tame that they would alight upon the men's heads, were all in great abundance; and convenient for preserving meat, salt was plentiful at the _Galapagos_. Some green snakes were the only other animals seen there. [Sidenote: Land Turtle.] The full-grown land turtle were from 150 to 200 _lbs._ in weight. Dampier says, 'so sweet that no pullet can eat more pleasantly. They are very fat; the oil saved from them was kept in jars, and used instead of butter to eat with dough-boys or dumplings.'--'We lay here feeding sometimes on land turtle, sometimes on sea turtle, there being plenty of either sort; but the land turtle, as they exceed in sweetness, so do they in numbers: it is incredible to report how numerous they are.' [Sidenote: Sea Turtle.] The sea turtle at the _Galapagos_ are of the larger kind of those called the Green Turtle. Dampier thought their flesh not so good as the green turtle of the _West Indies_. Dampier describes the _Galapagos Isles_ to be generally of good height: 'four or five of the Easternmost Islands are rocky, hilly, and barren, producing neither tree, herb, nor grass; but only a green prickly shrub that grows 10 or 12 feet high, as big as a man's leg, and is full of sharp prickles in thick rows from top to bottom, without leaf or fruit. In some places by the sea side grow bushes of Burton wood (a sort of wood which grows in the _West Indies_) which is good firing. [Sidenote: Mammee Tree.] Some of the Westernmost of these Islands are nine or ten leagues long, have fertile land with mold deep and black; and these produce trees of various kinds, some of great and tall bodies, especially the Mammee. The heat is not so violent here as in many other places under the Equator. The time of year for the rains, is in November, December, and January.' At _Albany Bay_, and at other of the Islands, the Buccaneers built storehouses, in which they lodged 5000 packs of their prize flour, and a quantity of sweetmeats, to remain as a reserved store to which they might have recourse on any future occasion. Part of this provision was landed at the Islands Northward of _King James's Island_, to which they went in search of fresh water, but did not find any. They endeavoured to sail back to the _Duke of York's Island_, Cowley says, 'there to have watered,' but a current setting Northward prevented them. [Sidenote: 12th. They sail from the Galapagos.] On June the 12th, they sailed from the _Galapagos Islands_ for the Island _Cocos_, where they proposed to water. The wind at this time was South; but they expected they should find, as they went Northward, the general trade-wind blowing from the East; and in that persuasion they steered more Easterly than the line of direction in which _Cocos_ lay from them, imagining that when they came to the latitude of the Island, they would have to bear down upon it before the wind. Contrary however to this expectation, as they advanced Northward they found the wind more Westerly, till it settled at SWbS, and they got so far Eastward, that they crossed the parallel of _Cocos_ without being able to come in sight of it. [Sidenote: July. Coast of New Spain. Cape Blanco.] Missing _Cocos_, they sailed on Northward for the coast of _New Spain_. In the beginning of July, they made the West Cape of the _Gulf of Nicoya_. 'This Cape is about the height of _Beachy Head_, and was named _Blanco_, on account of two white rocks lying about half a mile from it, which to those who are far off at sea, appear as part of the mainland; but on coming nearer, they appear like two ships under sail[40].' [Sidenote: John Cook, Buccaneer Commander, dies. Edward Davis chosen Commander.] The day on which they made this land, the Buccaneer Commander, John Cook, who had been some time ill, died. Edward Davis, the Quarter-Master, was unanimously elected by the company to succeed in the command. CHAP. XIV. _=Edward Davis= Commander. On the coast of =New Spain= and =Peru=. Algatrane, a bituminous earth. =Davis= is joined by other Buccaneers. =Eaton= sails to the East Indies. =Guayaquil= attempted. Rivers of =St. Jago=, and =Tomaco=. In the Bay of =Panama=. Arrivals of numerous parties of Buccaneers across the =Isthmus= from the =West Indies=._ [Sidenote: 1684. July. Coast of New Spain. Caldera Bay.] Dampier describes the coast of _New Spain_ immediately westward of the _Cape Blanco_ last mentioned, to fall in to the NE about four leagues, making a small bay, which is by the Spaniards called _Caldera_[41]. Within the entrance of this bay, a league from _Cape Blanco_, was a small brook of very good water running into the sea. The land here is low, making a saddle between two small hills. The ships anchored near the brook, in good depth, on a bottom of clean hard sand; and at this place, their deceased Commander was taken on shore and buried. The country appeared thin of inhabitants, and the few seen were shy of coming near strangers. Two Indians however were caught. Some cattle were seen grazing near the shore, at a Beef _Estançian_ or Farm, three miles distant from where the ships lay. Two boats were sent thither to bring cattle, having with them one of the Indians for a guide. They arrived at the farm towards evening, and some of the Buccaneers proposed that they should remain quiet till daylight next morning, when they might surround the cattle and drive a number of them into a pen or inclosure; others of the party disliked this plan, and one of the boats returned to the ships. Twelve men, with the other boat, remained, who hauled their boat dry up on the beach, and went and took their lodgings for the night by the farm. When the morning arrived, they found the people of the country had collected, and saw about 40 armed men preparing to attack them. The Buccaneers hastened as speedily as they could to the sea-side where they had left their boat, and found her in flames. 'The Spaniards now thought they had them secure, and some called to them to ask if they would be pleased to walk to their plantations; to which never a word was answered.' Fortunately for the Buccaneers, a rock appeared just above water at some distance from the shore, and the way to it being fordable, they waded thither. This served as a place of protection against the enemy, 'who only now and then whistled a shot among them.' It was at about half ebb tide when they took to the rock for refuge; on the return of the flood, the rock became gradually covered. They had been in this situation seven hours, when a boat arrived, sent from the ships in search of them. The rise and fall of the tide here was eight feet perpendicular, and the tide was still rising at the time the boat came to their relief; so that their peril from the sea when on the rock was not less than it had been from the Spaniards when they were on shore. From _Caldera Bay_, they sailed for _Ria-lexa_. [Sidenote: Volcan Viejo. Ria-lexa Harbour.] The coast near _Ria-lexa_ is rendered remarkable by a high peaked mountain called _Volcan Viejo_ (the Old Volcano.) 'When the mountain bears NE, ships may steer directly in for it, which course will bring them to the harbour. Those that go thither must take the sea wind, which is from the SSW, for there is no going in with the land wind. The harbour is made by a low flat Island about a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad, which lies about a mile and a half from the main-land. There is a channel at each end of the Island: the West channel is the widest and safest, yet at the NW point of the Island there is a shoal of which ships must take heed, and when past the shoal must keep close to the Island on account of a sandy point which strikes over from the main-land. This harbour is capable of receiving 200 sail of ships. The best riding is near the main-land, where the depth is seven or eight fathoms, clean hard sand. Two creeks lead up to the town of _Ria-lexa_, which is two leagues distant from the harbour[42].' The Spaniards had erected breastworks and made other preparation in expectation of such a visit as the present. The Buccaneers therefore changed their intention, which had been to attack the town; and sailed on for the _Gulf of Amapalla_. [Sidenote: Bay of Amapalla.] 'The Bay or Gulf of _Amapalla_ runs eight or ten leagues into the country. On the South side of its entrance is _Point Casivina_, in latitude 12° 40' N; and on the NW side is _Mount San Miguel_. There are many Islands in this Gulf, all low except two, named _Amapalla_ and _Mangera_, which are both high land. These are two miles asunder, and between them is the best channel into the Gulf[43].' The ships sailed into the _Gulf_ through the channel between _Point Casivina_ and the Island _Mangera_. Davis went with two canoes before the ships, and landed at a village on the Island _Mangera_. The inhabitants kept at a distance, but a Spanish Friar and some Indians were taken, from whom the Buccaneers learnt that there were two Indian towns or villages on the _Island Amapalla_; upon which information they hastened to their canoes, and made for that Island. On coming near, some among the inhabitants called out to demand who they were, and what they came for. Davis answered by an interpreter, that he and his men were Biscayners sent by the King of _Spain_ to clear the sea of Pirates; and that their business in _Amapalla Bay_, was to careen. No other Spaniard than the Padre dwelt among these Indians, and only one among the Indians could speak the Spanish language, who served as a kind of Secretary to the Padre. The account the Buccaneers gave of themselves satisfied the natives, and the Secretary said they were welcome. The principal town or village of the Island _Amapalla_ stood on the top of a hill, and Davis and his men, with the Friar at their head, marched thither. At each of the towns on _Amapalla_, and also on _Mangera_, was a handsome built church. The Spanish Padre officiated at all three, and gave religious instruction to the natives in their own language. The Islands were within the jurisdiction of the Governor of the Town of _San Miguel_, which was at the foot of the _Mount_. 'I observed,' says Dampier, 'in all the Indian towns under the Spanish Government, that the Images of the Virgin Mary, and of other Saints with which all their churches are filled, are painted of an Indian complexion, and partly in an Indian dress: but in the towns which are inhabited chiefly by Spaniards, the Saints conform to the Spanish garb and complexion.' The ships anchored near the East side of the _Island Amapalla_, which is the largest of the Islands, in 10 fathoms depth, clean hard sand. On other Islands in the Bay were plantations of maize, with cattle, fowls, plantains, and abundance of a plum-tree common in _Jamaica_, the fruit of which Dampier calls the large hog plum. This fruit is oval, with a large stone and little substance about it; pleasant enough in taste, but he says he never saw one of these plums ripe that had not a maggot or two in it. The Buccaneers helped themselves to cattle from an Island in the Bay which was largely stocked, and which they were informed belonged to a Nunnery. The natives willingly assisted them to take the cattle, and were content on receiving small presents for their labour. The Buccaneers had no other service to desire of these natives, and therefore it must have been from levity and an ambition to give a specimen of their vocation, more than for any advantage expected, that they planned to take the opportunity when the inhabitants should be assembled in their church, to shut the church doors upon them, the Buccaneers themselves say, 'to let the Indians know who we were, and to make a bargain with them.' In executing this project, one of the buccaneers being impatient at the leisurely movements of the inhabitants, pushed one of them rather rudely, to hasten him into the church; but the contrary effect was produced, for the native being frightened, ran away, and all the rest taking alarm 'sprang out of the church like deer.' As they fled, some of Davis's men fired at them as at an enemy, and among other injury committed, the Indian Secretary was killed. Cowley relates their exploits here very briefly, but in the style of an accomplished Gazette writer. He says, 'We set sail from _Realejo_ to the _Gulf of St. Miguel_, where we took two Islands; one was inhabited by Indians, and the other was well stored with cattle.' [Sidenote: September. Davis and Eaton part Company.] Davis and Eaton here broke off consortship. The cause of their separating was an unreasonable claim of Davis's crew, who having the stouter and better ship, would not agree that Eaton's men should share equally with themselves in the prizes taken. Cowley at this time quitted Davis's ship, and entered with Eaton, who sailed from the _Bay of Amapalla_ for the Peruvian coast. Davis also sailed the same way on the day following (September the 3d), first releasing the Priest of _Amapalla_; and with a feeling of remorse something foreign to his profession, by way of atonement to the inhabitants for the annoyance and mischief they had sustained from the Buccaneers, he left them one of the prize vessels, with half a cargo of flour. [Sidenote: Tornadoes near the Coast of New Spain.] Davis sailed out of the Gulf by the passage between the Islands _Amapalla_ and _Mangera_. In the navigation towards the coast of _Peru_, they had the wind from the NNW and West, except during tornadoes, of which they had one or more every day, and whilst they lasted the wind generally blew from the South East; but as soon as they were over, the wind settled again, in the NW. Tornadoes are common near the _Bay of Panama_ from June to November, and at this time were accompanied with much thunder, lightning, and rain. [Sidenote: Cape San Francisco.] When they came to _Cape San Francisco_, they found settled fair weather, and the wind at South. On the 20th, they anchored by the East side of the _Island Plata_. The 21st, Eaton's ship anchored near them. Eaton had been at the _Island Cocos_, and had lodged on shore there 200 packages of flour. [Sidenote: Eaton's Description of Cocos Island.] According to Eaton's description, _Cocos Island_ is encompassed with rocks, 'which make it almost inaccessible except at the NE end, where there is a small but secure harbour; and a fine brook of fresh water runs there into the sea. The middle of the Island is pretty high, and destitute of trees, but looks green and pleasant with an herb by the Spaniards called _Gramadiel_. All round the Island by the sea, the land is low, and there cocoa-nut trees grow in great groves.' [Sidenote: Coast of Peru.] At _La Plata_ they found only one small run of fresh water, which was on the East side of the Island, and trickled slowly down from the rocks. The Spaniards had recently destroyed the goats here, that they might not serve as provision for the pirates. Small sea turtle however were plentiful, as were men-of-war birds and boobies. The tide was remarked to run strong at this part of the coast, the flood to the South. Eaton and his crew would willingly have joined company again with Davis, but Davis's men persisted in their unsociable claim to larger shares: the two ships therefore, though designing alike to cruise on the coast of _Peru_, sailed singly and separately, Eaton on the 22d, and Davis on the day following. [Sidenote: Point S^{ta} Elena.] Davis went to _Point S^{ta} Elena_. On its West side is deep water and no anchorage. In the bay on the North side of the Point is good anchorage, and about a mile within the Point was a small Indian village, the inhabitants of which carried on a trade with pitch, and salt made there. The _Point S^{ta} Elena_ is tolerably high, and overgrown with thistles; but the land near it is sandy, low, and in parts overflowed, without tree or grass, and without fresh water; but water-melons grew there, large and very sweet. When the inhabitants of the village wanted fresh water, they were obliged to fetch it from a river called the _Colanche_, which is at the innermost part of the bay, four leagues distant from their habitations. The buccaneers landed, and took some natives prisoners. A small bark was lying in the bay at anchor, the crew of which set fire to and abandoned her; but the buccaneers boarded her in time to extinguish the fire. A general order had been given by the Viceroy of _Peru_ to all ship-masters, that if they should be in danger of being taken by pirates, they should set fire to their vessels and betake themselves to their boats. [Sidenote: Algatrane, a bituminous Earth.] The pitch, which was the principal commodity produced at _S^{ta} Elena_, was supplied from a hot spring, of which Dampier gives the following account. 'Not far from the Indian village, and about five paces within high-water mark, a bituminous matter boils out of a little hole in the earth. It is like thin tar; the Spaniards call it _Algatrane_. By much boiling, it becomes hard like pitch, and is used by the Spaniards instead of pitch. It boils up most at high water, and the inhabitants save it in jars[44].' [Sidenote: A rich Ship formerly wrecked on Point S^{ta} Elena.] A report was current here among the Spaniards, 'that many years before, a rich Spanish ship was driven ashore at _Point S^{ta} Elena_, for want of wind to work her; that immediately after she struck, she heeled off to seaward, and sunk in seven or eight fathoms water; and that no one ever attempted to fish for her, because there falls in here a great high sea[45].' [Sidenote: Manta.] Davis landed at a village named _Manta_, on the main-land about three leagues Eastward of _Cape San Lorenzo_, and due North of a high conical mountain called _Monte Christo_. The village was on a small ascent, and between it and the sea was a spring of good water. [Sidenote: Sunken Rocks near it.] 'About a mile and a half from the shore, right opposite the village, is a rock which is very dangerous, because it never appears above water, neither does the sea break upon it. A mile within the rock is good anchorage in six, eight or ten fathoms, hard sand and clear ground. [Sidenote: And Shoal.] A mile from the road on the West side is a shoal which runs out a mile into the sea[46].' The only booty made by landing at _Manta_, was the taking two old women prisoners. From them however, the Buccaneers obtained intelligence that many of their fraternity had lately crossed the _Isthmus_ from the _West Indies_, and were at this time on the _South Sea_, without ships, cruising about in canoes; and that it was on this account the Viceroy had given orders for the destruction of the goats at the Island _Plata_. [Sidenote: October. Davis is joined by other Buccaneers.] Whilst Davis and his men, in the Batchelor's Delight, were lying at the Island _Plata_, unsettled in their plans by the news they had received, they were, on October the 2d, joined by the Cygnet, Captain Swan, and by a small bark manned with a crew of buccaneers, both of which anchored in the road. [Sidenote: The Cygnet, Captain Swan.] The Cygnet, as before noticed, was fitted out from _London_ for the purpose of trade. She had put in at _Baldivia_, where Swan, seeing the Spaniards suspicious of the visits of strangers, gave out that he was bound to the _East Indies_, and that he had endeavoured to go by the _Cape of Good Hope_; but that meeting there with storms and unfavourable winds, and not being able to beat round that _Cape_, he had changed his course and ran for the _Strait of Magalhanes_, to sail by the _Pacific Ocean_ to _India_. This story was too improbable to gain credit. Instead of finding a market at _Baldivia_, the Spaniards there treated him and his people as enemies, by which he lost two men and had several wounded. He afterwards tried the disposition of the Spaniards to trade with him at other places, both in _Chili_ and _Peru_, but no where met encouragement. He proceeded Northward for _New Spain_ still with the same view; but near the _Gulf of Nicoya_ he fell in with some buccaneers who had come over the _Isthmus_ and were in canoes; and his men (Dampier says) forced him to receive them into his ship, and he was afterwards prevailed on to join in their pursuits. Swan had to plead in his excuse, the hostility of the Spaniards towards him at _Baldivia_. These buccaneers with whom Swan associated, had for their commander Peter Harris, a nephew of the Peter Harris who was killed in battle with the Spaniards in the _Bay of Panama_, in 1680, when the Buccaneers were commanded by Sawkins and Coxon. Swan stipulated with them that ten shares of every prize should be set apart for the benefit of his owners, and articles to that purport were drawn up and signed. Swan retained the command of the Cygnet, with a crew increased by a number of the new comers, for whose accommodation a large quantity of bulky goods belonging to the merchants was thrown into the sea. Harris with others of the buccaneers established themselves in a small bark they had taken. On their meeting with Davis, there was much joy and congratulation on all sides. They immediately agreed to keep together, and the separation of Eaton's ship was now much regretted. They were still incommoded in Swan's ship for want of room, therefore (the supercargoes giving consent) whatever part of the cargo any of the crews desired to purchase, it was sold to them upon trust; and more bulky goods were thrown overboard. Iron, of which there was a large quantity, was kept for ballast; and the finer goods, as silks, muslins, stockings, &c. were saved. [Sidenote: At Isle de la Plata.] Whilst they continued at _La Plata_, Davis kept a small bark out cruising, which brought in a ship from _Guayaquil_, laden with timber, the master of which reported that great preparations were making at _Callao_ to attack the pirates. This information made a re-union with Eaton more earnestly desired, and a small bark manned with 20 men was dispatched to search along the coast Southward as far as to the _Lobos Isles_, with an invitation to him to join them again. The ships in the mean time followed leisurely in the same direction. [Sidenote: Cape Blanco, near Guayaquil; difficult to weather.] On the 30th, they were off the _Cape Blanco_ which is between _Payta_ and the _Bay of Guayaquil_. Southerly winds prevail along the coast of _Peru_ and _Chili_ much the greater part of the year; and Dampier remarks of this _Cape Blanco_, that it was reckoned the most difficult to weather of any headland along the coast, the wind generally blowing strong from SSW or SbW, without being altered, as at other parts of the coast, by the land winds. Yet it was held necessary here to beat up close in with the shore, because (according to the accounts of Spanish seamen) 'on standing out to sea, a current is found setting NW, which will carry a ship farther off shore in two hours, than she can run in again in five.' [Sidenote: November. Payta burnt.] November the 3d, the Buccaneers landed at _Payta_ without opposition, the town being abandoned to them. They found nothing of value, 'not so much as a meal of victuals being left them.' The Governor would not pay ransom for the town, though he fed the Buccaneers with hopes till the sixth day, when they set it on fire. At most of the towns on the coast of _Peru_, the houses are built with bricks made of earth and straw kneaded together and dried in the sun; many houses have no roof other than mats laid upon rafters, for it never rains, and they endeavour to fence only from the sun. From the want of moisture, great part of the country near the coast will not produce timber, and most of the stone they have, 'is so brittle that any one may rub it into sand with their finger.' _Payta_ had neither wood nor water, except what was carried thither. The water was procured from a river about two leagues NNE of the town, where was a small Indian village called _Colan_. [Sidenote: Part of the Peruvian Coast where it never rains.] Dampier says, 'this dry country commences Northward about _Cape Blanco_ (in about 4° S latitude) whence it reaches to latitude 30° S, in which extent they have no rain that I could ever observe or hear of.' In the Southern part of this tract however (according to Wafer) they have great dews in the night, by which the vallies are rendered fertile, and are well furnished with vegetables. Eaton had been at _Payta_, where he burnt a large ship in the road, but did not land. He put on shore there all his prisoners; from which circumstance it was conjectured that he purposed to sail immediately for the _East Indies_; and such proved to be the fact. The vessel commanded by Harris, sailed badly, and was therefore quitted and burnt. [Sidenote: Lobos de Tierra. Lobos de la Mar.] On the 14th, the other Buccaneer vessels, under Davis, anchored near the NE end of _Lobos de Tierra_, in four fathoms depth. They took here penguins, boobies, and seals. On the 19th, they were at _Lobos de la Mar_, where they found a letter left by the bark sent in search of Eaton, which gave information that he had entirely departed from the American coast. The bark had sailed for the Island _Plata_ expecting to rejoin the ships there. [Sidenote: Eaton sails for the East Indies; Stops at the Ladrones.] Eaton in his route to the _East Indies_ stopped at _Guahan_, one of the _Ladrone Islands_, where himself and his crew acted towards the native Islanders with the utmost barbarity, which Cowley relates as a subject of merriment. On their first arrival at _Guahan_, Eaton sent a boat on shore to procure refreshments; but the natives kept at a distance, believing his ship to be one of the Manila galeons, and his people Spaniards. Eaton's men served themselves with cocoa-nuts, but finding difficulty in climbing, they cut the trees down to get at the fruit. The next time their boat went to the shore, the Islanders attacked her, but were easily repulsed; and a number of them killed. By this time the Spanish Governor was arrived at the part of the Island near which the ship had anchored, and sent a letter addressed to her Commander, written in four different languages, to wit, in Spanish, French, Dutch, and Latin, to demand of what country she was, and whence she came. Cowley says, 'Our Captain, thinking the French would be welcomer than the English, returned answer we were French, fitted out by private merchants to make fuller discovery of the world. The Governor on this, invited the Captain to the shore, and at their first conference, the Captain told him that the Indians had fallen upon his men, and that we had killed some of them. He wished we had killed them all, and told us of their rebellion, that they had killed eight Fathers, of sixteen which were in a convent. He gave us leave to kill and take whatever we could find on one half of the Island where the rebels lived. We then made wars with these infidels, and went on shore every day, fetching provisions, and firing upon them wherever we saw them, so that the greatest part of them left the Island. The Indians sent two of their captains to us to treat of peace, but we would not treat with them[47].'--'The whole land is a garden. The Governor was the same man who detained Sir John Narbrough's Lieutenant at _Baldivia_. Our Captain supplied him with four barrels of gunpowder, and arms.' Josef de Quiroga was at this time Governor at _Guahan_, who afterwards conquered and unpeopled all the Northern Islands of the _Ladrones_. Eaton's crew took some of the Islanders prisoners: three of them jumped overboard to endeavour to escape. It was easy to retake them, as they had been bound with their hands behind them; but Eaton's men pursued them with the determined purpose to kill them, which they did in mere wantonness of sport[48]. At another time, when they had so far come to an accommodation with the Islanders as to admit of their approach, the ship's boat being on shore fishing with the seine, some natives in canoes near her were suspected of intending mischief. Cowley relates, 'our people that were in the boat let go in amongst the thickest of them, and killed a great many of their number.' It is possible that thus much might have been necessary for safety; but Cowley proceeds, 'the others, seeing their mates fall, ran away. Our other men which were on shore, meeting them, saluted them also by making holes in their hides.' From the _Ladrones_ Eaton sailed to the North of _Luconia_, and passed through among the Islands which were afterwards named by Dampier the _Bashee Islands_. The account given by Cowley is as follows: 'There being half a point East variation, till we came to latitude 20° 30' N, where we fell in with a parcel of Islands lying to the Northward of _Luconia_. On the 23d day of April, we sailed through between the second and third of the Northernmost of them. We met with a very strong current, like the _Race of Portland_. [Sidenote: Nutmeg Island, North of Luconia.] At the third of the Northernmost Islands, we sent our boat on shore, where they found abundance of nutmegs growing, but no people. They observed abundance of rocks and foul ground near the shore, and saw many goats upon the Island.' Cowley concludes the narrative of his voyage with saying that he arrived home safe to _England_ through the infinite mercy of God. [Sidenote: Coast of Peru. Davis attempts Guayaquil. Slave Ships captured.] To return to Edward Davis: At _Lobos de la Mar_, the Mosquito Indians struck as much turtle as served all the crews. Shortly after, Davis made an attempt to surprise _Guayaquil_, which miscarried through the cowardice of one of his men, and the coldness of Swan to the enterprise. In the _Bay of Guayaquil_ they captured four vessels; one of them laden with woollen cloth of _Quito_ manufacture; the other three were ships coming out of the _River of Guayaquil_ with cargoes of Negroes. The number of Negroes in these vessels was a thousand, from among which Davis and Swan chose each about fifteen, and let the vessels go. Dampier entertained on this occasion different views from his companions. 'Never,' says he, 'was put into the hands of men a greater opportunity to enrich themselves. We had 1000 Negroes, all lusty young men and women, and we had 200 tons of flour stored up at the _Galapagos Islands_. With these Negroes we might have gone and settled at _Santa Maria_ on the _Isthmus of Darien_, and have employed them in getting gold out of the mines there. All the Indians living in that neighbourhood were mortal enemies to the Spaniards, were flushed by successes against them, and for several years had been the fast friends of the privateers. Add to which, we should have had the _North Sea_ open to us, and in a short time should have received assistance from all parts of the _West Indies_. Many thousands of Buccaneers from _Jamaica_ and the French Islands would have flocked to us; and we should have been an overmatch for all the force the Spaniards could have brought out of _Peru_ against us.' The proposal to employ slaves in the mines leaves no cause to regret that Dampier's plan was not adopted; but that was probably not an objection with his companions. They naturally shrunk from an attempt which in the execution would have required a regularity and order to which they were unaccustomed, and not at all affected. [Sidenote: Description of the Harbour of Guayaquil.] The Harbour of _Guayaquil_ is the best formed port in _Peru_. In the river, three or four miles short of the town, stands a low Island about a mile long, on either side of which is a fair channel to pass up or down. The Western Channel is the wildest: the other is as deep. 'From the upper part of the Island to the town is about a league, and it is near as much from one side of the river to the other. In that spacious place ships of the greatest burthen may ride afloat; but the best place for ships is near that part of the land on which the town stands. The country here is subject to great rains and thick fogs, which render it very unwholesome and sickly, in the vallies especially; _Guayaquil_ however is not so unhealthy as _Quito_ and other towns inland; but the Northern part of Peru pays for the dry weather which they have about _Lima_ and to the Southward.' [Sidenote: Island S^{ta} Clara. Shoals near its North Side.] 'Ships bound into the river of _Guayaquil_ pass on the South side of the Island _Santa Clara_ to avoid shoals which are on the North side, whereon formerly ships have been wrecked. A rich wreck lay on the North side of _Santa Clara_ not far from the Island, and some plate which was in her was taken up: more might have been saved but for the cat-fish which swarm hereabouts. [Sidenote: Cat Fish.] 'The Cat-fish is much like a whiting; but the head is flatter and bigger. It has a wide mouth, and certain small strings pointing out on each side of it like cats' whiskers. It hath three fins; one on the back, and one on either side. Each of these fins hath a sharp bone which is very venemous if it strikes into a man's flesh. Some of the Indians that adventured to search this wreck lost their lives, and others the use of their limbs, by these fins. Some of the cat-fish weigh seven or eight pounds; and in some places there are cat-fish which are none of them bigger than a man's thumb; but their fins are all alike venemous. They are most generally at the mouths of rivers (in the hot latitudes) or where there is much mud and ooze. The bones in their bodies are not venemous, and we never perceived any bad effect in eating the fish, which is very sweet and wholesome meat[49].' The 13th, Davis and Swan with their prizes sailed from the _Bay of Guayaquil_ to the Island _Plata_, and found there the bark which had been in quest of Eaton's ship. From _Plata_, they sailed Northward towards the _Bay of Panama_, landing at the villages along the coast to seek provisions. They were ill provided with boats, which exposed them to danger in making descents, by their not being able to land or bring off many men at one time; and they judged that the best places for getting their wants in this respect supplied would be in rivers of the Continent, in which the Spaniards had no settlement, where from the native inhabitants they might obtain canoes by traffic or purchase, if not otherwise. Dampier remarks that there were many such unfrequented rivers in the Continent to the Northward of the _Isle de la Plata_; and that from the Equinoctial to the _Gulf de San Miguel_ in the _Bay of Panama_, which is above eight degrees of latitude, the coast was not inhabited by the Spaniards, nor were the Indians who lived there in any manner under their subjection, except at one part near the Island _Gallo_, 'where on the banks of a Gold River or two, some Spaniards had settled to find gold.' [Sidenote: The Land Northward of Cape San Francisco. The Cotton Tree and Cabbage Tree.] The land by the sea-coast to the North of _Cape San Francisco_ is low and extremely woody; the trees are of extraordinary height and bigness; and in this part of the coast are large and navigable rivers. The white cotton-tree, which bears a very fine sort of cotton, called silk cotton, is the largest tree in these woods; and the cabbage-tree is the tallest. Dampier has given full descriptions of both. He measured a cabbage-tree 120 feet in length, and some were longer. 'It has no limbs nor boughs except at the head, where there are branches something bigger than a man's arm. The cabbage-fruit shoots out in the midst of these branches, invested or folded in leaves; and is as big as the small of a man's leg, and a foot long. It is white as milk, and sweet as a nut if eaten raw, and is very sweet and wholesome if boiled.' [Sidenote: River of St. Jago.] The Buccaneers entered a river with their boats, in or near latitude 2° N, which Dampier, from some Spanish pilot-book, calls the _River of St. Jago_. It was navigable some leagues within the entrance, and seems to be the river marked with the name _Patia_ in the late Spanish charts, a name which has allusion to spreading branches. Davis's men went six leagues up the river without seeing habitation or people. They then came in sight of two small huts, the inhabitants of which hurried into canoes with their household-stuff, and paddled upwards against the stream faster than they could be pursued. More houses were seen higher up; but the stream ran here so swift, that the Buccaneers would not be at the labour of proceeding. [Sidenote: Island Gallo.] They found in the two deserted huts, a hog, some fowls and plantains, which they dressed on the spot, and after their meal returned to the ships, which were at the _Island Gallo_. 'The Island _Gallo_ is clothed with timber, and here was a spring of good water at the NE end, with good landing in a small sandy bay, and secure riding in six or seven fathoms depth[50].' [Sidenote: River Tomaco.] They entered with their boats another large river, called the _Tomaco_, the entrance of which is but three leagues from the _Island Gallo_. This river was shoal at the mouth, and navigable for small vessels only. A little within, was a village called _Tomaco_, some of the inhabitants of which they took prisoners, and carried off a dozen jars of good wine. [Sidenote: 1685. January.] On the 1st of January, they took a packet-boat bound for _Lima_, which the President of _Panama_ had dispatched to hasten the sailing of the Plate Fleet from _Callao_; the treasure sent from _Peru_ and _Chili_ to _Old Spain_ being usually first collected at _Panama_, and thence transported on mules to _Portobello_. The Buccaneers judged that the _Pearl Islands_ in the _Bay of Panama_ would be the best station they could occupy for intercepting ships from _Lima_. On the 7th, they left _Gallo_, and pursued their course Northward. An example occurs here of Buccaneer order and discipline. 'We weighed,' says Dampier, 'before day, and all got out of the road except Captain Swan's tender, which never budged; for the men were all asleep when we went out, and the tide of flood coming on before they awoke, we were forced to stay for them till the following tide.' [Sidenote: Island Gorgona.] On the 8th, they took a vessel laden with flour. The next day they anchored on the West side of the _Island Gorgona_, in 38 fathoms depth clear ground, a quarter of a mile from the shore. _Gorgona_ was uninhabited; and like _Gallo_ covered with trees. It is pretty high, and remarkable by two saddles, or risings and fallings on the top. It is about two leagues long, one broad, and is four leagues distant from the mainland. It was well watered at this time with small brooks issuing from the high land. At its West end is another small Island. The tide rises and falls seven or eight feet; and at low water shell-fish, as periwinkles, muscles, and oysters, may be taken. At _Gorgona_ were small black monkeys. 'When the tide was out, the monkeys would come down to the sea-shore for shell-fish. Their way was to take up an oyster and lay it upon a stone, and with another stone to keep beating of it till they broke the shell[51].' [Sidenote: Pearl Oysters.] The pearl oyster was here in great plenty: they are flatter than other oysters, are slimy, and taste copperish if eaten raw, but were thought good when boiled. The Indians and Spaniards hang the meat of them on strings to dry. 'The pearl is found at the head of the oyster, between the meat and the shell. Some have 20 or 30 small seed-pearl, some none at all, and some one or two pretty large pearls. The inside of the shell is more glorious than the pearl itself[52].' [Sidenote: Bay of Panama. Galera Isle.] They put some of their prisoners on shore at _Gorgona_, and sailed thence on the 13th, being six sail in company; that is to say, Davis's ship, Swan's ship, three tenders, and their last prize. The 21st, they arrived in the _Bay of Panama_, and anchored at a small low and barren Island named _Galera_. On the 25th, they went from _Galera_ to one of the Southern _Pearl Islands_, where they lay the ships aground to clean, the rise and fall of the sea at the spring tides being ten feet perpendicular. The small barks were kept out cruising, and on the 31st, they brought in a vessel bound for _Panama_ from _Lavelia_, a town on the West side of the _Bay_, laden with Indian corn, salt beef, and fowls. Notwithstanding it had been long reported that a fleet was fitting out in _Peru_ to clear the _South Sea_ of pirates, the small force under Davis, Swan, and Harris, amounting to little more than 250 men, remained several weeks in uninterrupted possession of the _Bay of Panama_, blocking up access to the city by sea, supplying themselves with provisions from the Islands, and plundering whatsoever came in their way. [Sidenote: The Pearl Islands.] The _Pearl Islands_ are woody, and the soil rich. They are cultivated with plantations of rice, plantains, and bananas, for the support of the City of _Panama_. Dampier says, 'Why they are called the _Pearl Islands_ I cannot imagine, for I did never see one pearl oyster about them, but of other oysters many. It is very pleasant sailing here, having the mainland on one side, which appears in divers forms, beautified with small hills clothed with woods always green and flourishing; and on the other side, the _Pearl Islands_, which also make a lovely prospect as you sail by them.' The Buccaneers went daily in their canoes among the different Islands, to fish, fowl, or hunt for guanoes. One man so employed and straggling from his party, was surprised by the Spaniards, and carried to _Panama_. [Sidenote: February.] In the middle of February, Davis, who appears to have always directed their movements as the chief in command, went with his ships and anchored near the City of _Panama_. He negociated with the Governor an exchange of prisoners, and was glad by the release of forty Spaniards to obtain the deliverance of two Buccaneers; one of them the straggler just mentioned; the other, one of Harris's men. A short time after this exchange, as the Buccaneer ships were at anchor near the Island _Taboga_, which is about four leagues to the South of _Panama_, they were visited by a Spaniard in a canoe, who pretended he was a merchant and wanted to traffic with them privately. He proposed to come off to the ships in the night with a small vessel laden with such goods as the Buccaneers desired to purchase. This was agreed to, and he came with his vessel when it was dark; but instead of a cargo of goods, she was fitted up as a fire-ship with combustibles. The Buccaneers had suspected his intention and were on their guard; but to ward off the mischief, were obliged to cut from their anchors and set sail. In the morning they returned to their anchorage, which they had scarcely regained when a fresh cause of alarm occurred. Dampier relates, [Sidenote: Arrival of fresh bodies of Buccaneers from the West Indies.] 'We were striving to recover the anchors we had parted from, but the buoy-ropes, being rotten, broke, and whilst we were puzzling about our anchors, we saw a great many canoes full of men pass between the Island _Taboga_ and another Island, which at first put us into a new consternation. We lay still some time, till we saw they made directly towards us; upon which we weighed and stood towards them. When we came within hail, we found that they were English and French privateers just come from the _North Sea_ over the _Isthmus of Darien_. We presently came to an anchor again, and all the canoes came on board.' [Sidenote: Grogniet and L'Escuyer.] This new arrival of Buccaneers to the _South Sea_ consisted of 200 Frenchmen and 80 Englishmen, commanded by two Frenchmen named Grogniet and L'Escuyer. Grogniet had a commission to war on the Spaniards from a French West-India Governor. The Englishmen of this party upon joining Davis, were received into the ships of their countrymen, and the largest of the prize vessels, which was a ship named the San Rosario, was given to the Frenchmen. From these new confederates it was learnt, that another party, consisting of 180 Buccaneers, commanded by an Englishman named Townley, had crossed the _Isthmus_, and were building canoes in the _Gulf de San Miguel_; on which intelligence, it was determined to sail to that Gulf, that the whole buccaneer force in this sea might be joined. Grogniet in return for the ship given to the French Buccaneers, offered to Davis and Swan new commissions from the Governor of _Petit Goave_, by whom he had been furnished with spare commissions with blanks, to be filled up and disposed of at his own discretion. Davis accepted Grogniet's present, 'having before only an old commission which had belonged to Captain Tristian, and which, being found in Tristian's ship when she was carried off by Cook, had devolved as an inheritance to Davis.' The commissions which, by whatever means, the Buccaneers procured, were not much protection in the event of their falling into the hands of the Spaniards, unless the nation of which the Buccaneer was a native happened to be then at war with _Spain_. Instances were not uncommon in the _West Indies_ of the Spaniards hanging up their buccaneer prisoners with their commissions about their necks. But the commissions were allowed to be valid in the ports of other powers. Swan however refused the one offered him, and rested his justification on the orders he had received from the Duke of York; in which he was directed, neither to give offence to the Spaniards, nor to submit to receive affront from them: they had done him injury in killing his men at _Baldivia_, and he held his orders to be a lawful commission to do himself right. [Sidenote: March. Townley and his Crew.] On the 3d of March, as they approached the _Gulf de San Miguel_ to meet the Buccaneers under Townley, they were again surprised by seeing two ships standing towards them. These proved to be Townley and his men, in two prizes they had already taken, one laden with flour, the other with wine, brandy, and sugar; both designed for _Panama_. [Sidenote: Pisco Wine.] The wine came from _Pisco_, 'which place is famous for wine, and was contained in jars of seven or eight gallons each. Ships which lade at _Pisco_ stow the jars one tier on the top of another, so artificially that we could hardly do the like without breaking them: yet they often carry in this manner 1500 or 2000, or more, in a ship, and seldom break one.' On this junction of the Buccaneers, they went altogether to the _Pearl Islands_ to make arrangements, and to fit their prize vessels as well as circumstances would admit, for their new occupation. Among the preparations necessary to their equipment, it was not the last which occurred, that the jars from _Pisco_ were wanted to contain their sea stock of fresh water; for which service they were in a short time rendered competent. The 10th, they took a small bark in ballast, from _Guayaquil_. On the 12th, some Indians in a canoe came out of the River _Santa Maria_, purposely to inform them that a large body of English and French Buccaneers were then on their march over the _Isthmus_ from the _North Sea_. This was not all; for on the 15th, one of the small barks which were kept out cruising, fell in with a vessel in which were six Englishmen, who were part of a crew of Buccaneers that had been six months in the _South Sea_, under the command of a William Knight. These six men had been sent in a canoe in chase of a vessel, which they came up with and took; but they had chased out of sight of their own ship, and could not afterwards find her. Davis gave the command of this vessel to Harris, who took possession of her with a crew of his own followers, and he was sent to the River _Santa Maria_ to look for the buccaneers, of whose coming the Indians had given information. This was the latter part of the dry season in the _Bay of Panama_. Hitherto fresh water had been found in plenty at the _Pearl Islands_; but the springs and rivulets were now dried up. The Buccaneers examined within _Point Garachina_, but found no fresh water. [Sidenote: Port de Pinas. 25th. Taboga Isle.] They searched along the coast Southward, and on the 25th, at a narrow opening in the mainland with two small rocky Islands before it, about seven leagues distant from _Point Garachina_, which Dampier supposed to be _Port de Pinas_, they found a stream of good water which ran into the sea; but the harbour was open to the SW, and a swell set in, which rendered watering there difficult and hazardous: the fleet (for they were nine sail in company) therefore stood for the Island _Taboga_, 'where,' says Dampier, 'we were sure to find a supply.' [Sidenote: April.] Their boats being sent before the ships, came unexpectedly upon some of the inhabitants of _Panama_ who were loading a canoe with plantains, and took them prisoners. One among these, a Mulatto, had the imprudence to say he was in the fire-ship which had been sent in the night to burn the Buccaneer ships; upon which, the Buccaneers immediately hanged him. They had chocolate, but no sugar; and all the kettles they possessed, constantly kept boiling, were not sufficient to dress victuals for so many men. Whilst the ships lay at _Taboga_, a detachment was sent to a sugar-work on the mainland, from which they returned with sugar and three coppers. [Sidenote: More Buccaneers arrive.] On the 11th of April, they went from _Tabogo_ to the _Pearl Islands_, and were there joined by the Flibustiers and Buccaneers of whose coming they had been last apprised, consisting of 264 men, commanded by Frenchmen named Rose, Le Picard, and Des-marais. Le Picard was a veteran who had served under Lolonois and Morgan. In this party came Raveneau de Lussan, whose Journal is said to be the only one kept by any of the French who were in this expedition. Lussan's Narrative is written with much misplaced gaiety, which comes early into notice, and shews him to have been, even whilst young and unpractised in the occupation of a Buccaneer, of a disposition delighting in cruelty. In the account of his journey overland from the _West Indies_, he relates instances which he witnessed of the great dexterity of the monkeys which inhabited the forests, and among others the following: '_Je ne puis me souvenir sans rire de l'action que je vis faire a un de ces animaux, auquel apres avoir tiré plusieurs coups de fusil qui lui emportoient une partie du ventre, en sorte que toutes ses tripes sortoient; je le vis se tenir d'une de ses pates, ou mains si l'on veut, a une branche d'arbre, tandis que de l'autre il ramassoit ses intestins qu'il se refouroit dans ce qui lui restoit de ventre[53]._' Ambrose Cowley and Raveneau de Lussan are well matched for comparison, alike not only in their dispositions, but in their conceptions, which made them imagine the recital of such actions would be read with delight. The Buccaneers in the _Bay of Panama_ were now nearly a thousand strong, and they held a consultation whether or not they should attack the city. They had just before learnt from an intercepted packet that the Lima Fleet was at sea, richly charged with treasure; and that it was composed of all the naval force the Spaniards in _Peru_ had been able to collect: it was therefore agreed not to attempt the city at the present, but to wait patiently the arrival of the Spanish fleet, and give it battle. [Sidenote: Chepo.] The only enterprise they undertook on the main-land in the mean time, was against the town of _Chepo_, where they found neither opposition nor plunder. The small Island _Chepillo_ near the mouth of the river which leads to _Chepo_, Dampier reckoned the most pleasant of all the Islands in the _Bay of Panama_. 'It is low on the North side, and rises by a small ascent towards the South side. The soil is yellow, a kind of clay. The low land is planted with all sorts of delicate fruits.' The Islands in the Bay being occupied by the Buccaneers, caused great scarcity of provision and distress at _Panama_, much of the consumption in that city having usually been supplied from the Islands, which on that account and for their pleasantness were called the Gardens of _Panama_. In this situation things remained till near the end of May, the Buccaneers in daily expectation of seeing the fleet from _Lima_, of which it is now time to speak. CHAP. XV. _=Edward Davis= Commander. Meeting of the Spanish and Buccaneer Fleets in the =Bay of Panama=. They separate without fighting. The Buccaneers sail to the Island =Quibo=. The English and French separate. Expedition against the City of =Leon=. That City and =Ria Lexa= burnt. Farther dispersion of the Buccaneers._ [Sidenote: 1685. May. Bay of Panama.] The Viceroy of _Peru_ judged the Fleet he had collected, to be strong enough to encounter the Buccaneers, and did not fear to trust the treasure to its protection; but he gave directions to the Commander of the Fleet to endeavour to avoid a meeting with them until after the treasure should be safely landed. In pursuance of this plan, the Spanish Admiral, as he drew near the _Bay of Panama_, kept more Westward than the usual course, and fell in with the coast of _Veragua_ to the West of the _Punta Mala_. Afterwards, he entered the _Bay_ with his fleet keeping close to the West shore; and to place the treasure out of danger as soon as possible, he landed it at _Lavelia_, thinking it most probable his fleet would be descried by the enemy before he could reach _Panama_, which must have happened if the weather had not been thick, or if the Buccaneers had kept a sharper look-out by stationing tenders across the entrance of the _Bay_. [Sidenote: The Lima Fleet arrives at Panama.] In consequence of this being neglected, the Spanish fleet arrived and anchored before the city of _Panama_ without having been perceived by them, and immediately on their arrival, the crews of the ships were reinforced with a number of European seamen who had purposely been sent over land from _Porto Bello_. Thus strengthened, and the treasure being placed out of danger, the Spanish Admiral took up his anchors, and stood from the road before _Panama_ towards the middle of the Bay, in quest of the Buccaneers. [Sidenote: 28th.] May the 28th, the morning was rainy: the Buccaneer fleet was lying at anchor near the Island _Pacheca_, the Northernmost of the _Pearl Islands_. At eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the weather cleared up, when the Spanish fleet appeared in sight about three leagues distant from them to the WNW. The wind was light from the Southward, and they were standing sharp trimmed towards the Buccaneers. [Sidenote: Meeting of the two Fleets.] Lussan dates this their meeting with the Spanish Fleet, to be on June the 7th. Ten days alteration of the style had taken place in _France_ three years before, and no alteration of style had yet been adopted in _England_. [Sidenote: Force of the Buccaneer.] The Buccaneer fleet was composed of ten sail of vessels, of different sizes, manned with 960 men, almost all Europeans; but, excepting the Batchelor's Delight and the Cygnet, none of their vessels had cannon. Edward Davis was regarded as the Admiral. His ship mounted 36 guns, and had a crew of 156 men, most of them English; but as he was furnished with a French commission, and _France_ was still at war with _Spain_, he carried aloft a white flag, in which was painted a hand and sword. Swan's ship had 16 guns, with a crew of 140 men, all English, and carried a Saint George's flag at her main-topmast head. The rest of their fleet was well provided with small-arms, and the crews were dexterous in the use of them. Grogniet's ship was the most powerful, except in cannon, her crew consisting of 308 men. [Sidenote: Force of the Spanish Fleet.] The Spanish fleet numbered fourteen sail, six of which were provided with cannon; six others with musketry only, and two were fitted up as fire-ships. The buccaneer accounts say the Spanish Admiral had 48 guns mounted, and 450 men; the Vice-Admiral 40 guns, and men in proportion; the Rear-Admiral 36 guns, one of the other ships 24, one 18, and one 8 guns; and that the number of men in their fleet was above 2500; but more than one half of them Indians or slaves. When the two fleets first had sight of each other, Grogniet's ship lay at anchor a mile to leeward of his confederates, on which account he weighed anchor, and stood close upon a wind to the Eastward, intending to turn up to the other ships; but in endeavouring to tack, he missed stays twice, which kept him at a distance all the fore part of the day. From the superiority of the Spaniards in cannon, and of the buccaneer crews in musketry, it was evident that distant fighting was most to the advantage of the Spaniards; and that the Buccaneers had to rest their hopes of success on close fighting and boarding. Davis was fully of this opinion, and at three o'clock in the afternoon, the enemy's fleet being directly to leeward and not far distant, he got his vessels under sail and bore right down upon them, making a signal at the same time to Grogniet to board the Spanish Vice-Admiral, who was some distance separate from the other ships of his fleet. Here may be contemplated the Buccaneers at the highest pitch of elevation to which they at any time attained. If they obtained the victory, it would give them the sole dominion of the _South Sea_; and Davis, the buccaneer Commander, aimed at no less; but he was ill seconded, and was not possessed of authority to enforce obedience to his commands. The order given to Grogniet was not put in execution, and when Davis had arrived with his ship within cannon-shot of the Spaniards, Swan shortened sail and lowered his ensign, to signify he was of opinion that it would be best to postpone fighting till the next day. Davis wanting the support of two of the most able ships of his fleet, was obliged to forego his intention, and no act of hostility passed during the afternoon and evening except the exchange of some shot between his own ship and that of the Spanish Vice-Admiral. When it was dark, the Spanish fleet anchored, and at the same time, the Spanish Admiral took in his light, and ordered a light to be shewn from one of his small vessels, which he sent to leeward. The Buccaneers were deceived by this artifice, believing the light they saw to be that of the Spanish Admiral, and they continued under sail, thinking themselves secure of the weather-gage. [Sidenote: 29th.] At daylight the next morning the Spaniards were seen well collected, whilst the buccaneer vessels were much dispersed. Grogniet and Townley were to windward of the Spaniards; but all the rest, contrary to what they had expected, were to leeward. At sunrise, the Spanish fleet got under sail and bore down towards the leeward buccaneer ships. The Buccaneers thought it not prudent to fight under such disadvantages, and did not wait to receive them. They were near the small Island _Pacheca_, on the South side of which are some Islands yet smaller. Among these Islands, Dampier says, is a narrow channel in one part not forty feet wide. Townley, being pressed by the Spaniards and in danger of being intercepted, pushed for this passage without any previous examination of the depth of water, and got safe through. Davis and Swan, whose ships were the fastest sailing in either fleet, had the credit of affording protection to their flying companions, by waiting to repulse the most advanced of the Spaniards. Dampier, who was in Davis's ship, says, she was pressed upon by the whole Spanish force. 'The Spanish Admiral and the rest of his squadron began to play at us and we at them as fast as we could: yet they kept at distant cannonading. They might have laid us aboard if they would, but they came not within small-arms shot, intending to maul us in pieces with their great guns.' After a circuitous chace and running fight, which lasted till the evening, the Buccaneers, Harris's ship excepted, which had been forced to make off in a different direction, anchored by the Island _Pacheca_, nearly in the same spot whence they had set out in the morning. [Sidenote: 30th.] On the 30th, at daylight, the Spanish fleet was seen at anchor three leagues to leeward. The breeze was faint, and both fleets lay quiet till ten o'clock in the forenoon. The wind then freshened a little from the South, and the Spaniards took up their anchors; but instead of making towards the Buccaneers, they sailed away in a disgraceful manner for _Panama_. Whether they sustained any loss in this skirmishing does not appear. The Buccaneer's had only one man killed outright. In Davis's ship, six men were wounded, and half of her rudder was shot away. [Sidenote: The two Fleets separate.] It might seem to those little acquainted with the management of ships that it could make no material difference whether the Spaniards bore down to engage the Buccaneers, or the Buccaneers bore down to engage the Spaniards; for that in either case when the fleets were closed, the Buccaneers might have tried the event of boarding. But the difference here was, that if the Buccaneers had the weather-gage, it enabled them to close with the enemy in the most speedy manner, which was of much consequence where the disparity in the number of cannon was so great. When the Spaniards had the weather-gage, they would press the approach only near enough to give effect to their cannon, and not near enough for musketry to do them mischief. With this view, they could choose their distance when to stop and bring their broadsides to bear, and leave to the Buccaneers the trouble of making nearer approach, against the wind and a heavy cannonade. Dampier, who has related the transactions of the 28th and 29th very briefly, speaks of the weather-gage here as a decisive advantage. He says, "In the morning (of the 29th) therefore, when we found the enemy had got the weather-gage of us, and were coming upon us with full sail, we ran for it." On this occasion there is no room for commendation on the valour of either party. The Buccaneers, however, knew, by the Spanish fleet coming to them from _Panama_, that the treasure must have been landed, and therefore they could have had little motive for enterprise. The meeting was faintly sought by both sides, and no battle was fought, except a little cannonading during the retreat of the Buccaneers, which on their side was almost wholly confined to the ship of their Commander. Both Dampier and Lussan acknowledge that Edward Davis brought the whole of the buccaneer fleet off safe from the Spaniards by his courage and good management. [Sidenote: June.] On June the 1st, the Buccaneers sailed out of the _Bay of Panama_ for the Island _Quibo_. They had to beat up against SW winds, and had much wet weather. In the middle of June, they anchored on the East side of _Quibo_, where they were joined by Harris. [Sidenote: Keys of Quibo. The Island Quibo.] _Quibo_ and the smaller Islands near it, Dampier calls collectively, the Keys of _Quibo_. They are all woody. Good fresh water was found on the great Island, which would naturally be the case with the wet weather; and here were deer, guanoes, and large black monkeys, whose flesh was esteemed by the Buccaneers to be sweet and wholesome food. [Sidenote: Rock near the Anchorage.] A shoal which runs out from the SE point of _Quibo_ half a mile into the sea, has been already noticed: a league to the North of this shoal, and a mile distant from the shore, is a rock which appears above water only at the last quarter ebb. Except the shoal, and this rock, there is no other danger; and ships may anchor within a quarter of a mile of the shore, in from six to twelve fathoms clear sand and ooze[54]. They stopped at _Quibo_ to make themselves canoes, the trees there being well suited for the purpose, and some so large that a single trunk hollowed and wrought into shape, would carry forty or fifty men. Whilst this work was performing, a strong party was sent to the main-land against _Pueblo Nuevo_, which town was now entered without opposition; but no plunder was obtained. [Sidenote: Serpents. The Serpent Berry.] Lussan relates that two of the Buccaneers were killed by serpents at _Quibo_. He says, 'here are serpents whose bite is so venemous that speedy death inevitably ensues, unless the patient can have immediate recourse to a certain fruit, which must be chewed and applied to the part bitten. The tree which bears this fruit grows here, and in other parts of _America_. It resembles the almond-tree in _France_ in height and in its leaves. The fruit is like the sea chestnut (_Chataines de Mer_) but is of a grey colour, rather bitter in taste, and contains in its middle a whitish almond. The whole is to be chewed together before it is applied. It is called (_Graine à Serpent_) the Serpent Berry.' [Sidenote: July. Disagreements among the Buccaneers.] The dissatisfaction caused by their being foiled in the _Bay of Panama_, broke out in reproaches, and produced great disagreements among the Buccaneers. Many blamed Grogniet for not coming into battle the first day. On the other hand, Lussan blames the behaviour of the English, who, he says, being the greater number, lorded it over the French; that Townley, liking Grogniet's ship better than his own, would have insisted on a change, if the French had not shewn a determination to resist such an imposition. Another cause of complaint against the English was, the indecent and irreverent manner in which they shewed their hatred to the Roman Catholic religion. Lussan says, 'When they entered the Spanish churches, it was their diversion to hack and mutilate every thing with their cutlasses, and to fire their muskets and pistols at the images of the Saints.' [Sidenote: The French separate from the English.] In consequence of these disagreements, 330 of the French joined together under Grogniet, and separated from the English. [Sidenote: Knight, a Buccaneer Commander, joins Davis.] Before either of the parties had left _Quibo_, William Knight, a Buccaneer already mentioned, arrived there in a ship manned with 40 Englishmen and 11 Frenchmen. This small crew of Buccaneers had crossed the _Isthmus_ about nine months before; they had been cruising both on the coast of _New Spain_ and on the coast of _Peru_; and the sum of their successes amounted to their being provided with a good vessel and a good stock of provisions. They had latterly been to the Southward, where they learnt that the _Lima_ fleet had sailed against the Buccaneers before _Panama_, which was the first notice they received of other Buccaneers than themselves being in the _South Sea_. On the intelligence, they immediately sailed for the _Bay of Panama_, that they might be present and share in the capture of the Spaniards, which they believed would inevitably be the result of a meeting. On arriving in the _Bay of Panama_, they learnt what really had happened: nevertheless, they proceeded to _Quibo_ in search of their friends. The Frenchmen in Knight's ship left her to join their countrymen: Knight and the rest of the crew, put themselves under the command of Davis. The ship commanded by Harris, was found to be in a decayed state and untenantable. Another vessel was given to him and his crew; but the whole company were so much crowded for want of ship room, that a number remained constantly in canoes. One of the canoes which they built at _Quibo_ measured 36 feet in length, and between 5 and 6 feet in width. Davis and the English party, having determined to attack the city of _Leon_ in the province of _Nicaragua_, sent an invitation to the French Buccaneers to rejoin them. The French had only one ship, which was far from sufficient to contain their whole number, and they demanded, as a condition of their uniting again with the English, that another vessel should be given to themselves. The English could ill spare a ship, and would not agree to the proposition; the separation therefore was final. Jean Rose, a Frenchman, with fourteen of his countrymen, in a new canoe they had built for themselves, left Grogniet to try their fortunes under Davis. In this, and in other separations which subsequently took place among the Buccaneers, it has been thought the most clear and convenient arrangement of narrative, to follow the fortunes of the buccaneer Commander Edward Davis and his adherents, without interruption, to the conclusion of their adventures in the _South Sea_; and afterwards, to resume the proceedings of the other adventurers. [Sidenote: Proceedings of Edward Davis. August. Expedition against the City of Leon.] On the 20th of July, Davis with eight vessels and 640 men, departed from the Island _Quibo_ for _Ria Lexa_, sailing through the channel between _Quibo_ and the main-land, and along the coast of the latter, which was low and overgrown with thick woods, and appeared thin of inhabitants. August the 9th, at eight in the morning, the ships being then so far out in the offing that they could not be descried from the shore, Davis with 520 men went away in 31 canoes for the harbour of _Ria Lexa_. They set out with fair weather; but at two in the afternoon, a tornado came from the land, with thunder, lightning, and rain, and with such violent gusts of wind that the canoes were all obliged to put right before it, to avoid being overwhelmed by the billows. Dampier remarks generally of the hot latitudes, as Lussan does of the _Pacific Ocean_, that the sea there is soon raised by the wind, and when the wind abates is soon down again. _Up Wind Up Sea, Down Wind Down Sea_, is proverbial between the tropics among seamen. The fierceness of the tornado continued about half an hour, after which the wind gradually abated, and the canoes again made towards the land. At seven in the evening it was calm, and the sea quite smooth. During the night, the Buccaneers, having the direction of a Spanish pilot, entered a narrow creek which led towards _Leon_; but the pilot could not undertake to proceed up till daylight, lest he should mistake, there being several creeks communicating with each other. [Sidenote: Leon.] The city of _Leon_ bordered on the Lake of _Nicaragua_, and was reckoned twenty miles within the sea coast. They went only a part of this distance by the river, when Davis, leaving sixty men to guard the canoes, landed with the rest and marched towards the city, two miles short of which they passed through an Indian town. _Leon_ had a cathedral and three other churches. It was not fortified, and the Spaniards, though they drew up their force in the Great Square or Parade, did not think themselves strong enough to defend the place. About three in the afternoon, the Buccaneers entered, and the Spaniards retired. All the Buccaneers who landed did not arrive at _Leon_ that same day. According to their ability for the march, Davis had disposed his men into divisions. The foremost was composed of all the most active, who marched without delay for the town, the other divisions following as speedily as they were able. The rear division being of course composed of the worst travellers, some of them could not keep pace even with their own division. They all came in afterwards except two, one of whom was killed, and the other taken prisoner. The man killed was a stout grey-headed old man of the name of Swan, aged about 84 years, who had served under Cromwell, and had ever since made privateering or buccaneering his occupation. This veteran would not be dissuaded from going on the enterprise against _Leon_; but his strength failed in the march; and after being left in the road, he was found by the Spaniards, who endeavoured to make him their prisoner; but he refused to surrender, and fired his musket amongst them, having in reserve a pistol still charged; on which he was shot dead. The houses in _Leon_ were large, built of stone, but not high, with gardens about them. 'Some have recommended _Leon_ as the most pleasant place in all _America_; and for health and pleasure it does surpass most places. The country round is of a sandy soil, which soon drinks up the rains to which these parts are much subject[55].' [Sidenote: Leon burnt by the Buccaneers.] The Buccaneers being masters of the city, the Governor sent a flag of truce to treat for its ransom. They demanded 300,000 dollars, and as much provision as would subsist 1000 men four months: also that the Buccaneer taken prisoner should be exchanged. These demands it is probable the Spaniards never intended to comply with; however they prolonged the negociation, till the Buccaneers suspected it was for the purpose of collecting force. Therefore, on the 14th, they set fire to the city, and returned to the coast. The town of _Ria Lexa_ underwent a similar fate, contrary to the intention of the Buccaneer Commander. [Sidenote: Ria Lexa. Town of Ria Lexa burnt.] _Ria Lexa_ is unwholesomely situated in a plain among creeks and swamps, 'and is never free from a noisome smell.' The soil is a strong yellow clay; in the neighbourhood of the town were many sugar-works and beef-farms; pitch, tar, and cordage were made here; with all which commodities the inhabitants carried on a good trade. The Buccaneers supplied themselves with as much as they wanted of these articles, besides which, they received at _Ria Lexa_ 150 head of cattle from a Spanish gentleman, who had been released upon his parole, and promise of making such payment for his ransom; their own man who had been made prisoner was redeemed in exchange for a Spanish lady, and they found in the town 500 packs of flour; which circumstances might have put the Buccaneers in good temper and have induced them to spare the town; 'but,' says Dampier, 'some of our destructive crew, I know not by whose order, set fire to the houses, and we marched away and left them burning.' [Sidenote: Farther Separation of the Buccaneers.] After the _Leon_ expedition, no object of enterprise occurred to them of sufficient magnitude to induce or to enable them to keep together in such large force. Dispersed in small bodies, they expected a better chance of procuring both subsistence and plunder. By general consent therefore, the confederacy which had been preserved of the English Buccaneers was relinquished, and they formed into new parties according to their several inclinations. Swan proposed to cruise along the coast of _New Spain_, and NW-ward, as far as to the entrance of the _Gulf of California_, and thence to take his departure for the _East Indies_. Townley and his followers agreed to try their fortunes with Swan as long as he remained on the coast of New _Spain_; after which they proposed to return to the _Isthmus_. In the course of settling these arrangements, William Dampier, being desirous of going to the _East Indies_, took leave of his commander, Edward Davis, and embarked with Swan. Of these, an account will be given hereafter. CHAP. XVI. _Buccaneers under =Edward Davis=. At =Amapalla= Bay; =Cocos= Island; The =Galapagos= Islands; Coast of =Peru=. Peruvian Wine. =Knight= quits the =South Sea=. Bezoar Stones. Marine productions on Mountains. =Vermejo.= =Davis= joins the French Buccaneers at =Guayaquil=. Long Sea Engagement._ [Sidenote: 1685. August.] With Davis there remained the vessels of Knight and Harris, with a tender, making in all four sail. August the 27th, they sailed from the harbour of _Ria Lexa_, and as they departed Swan saluted them with fifteen guns, to which Davis returned eleven. [Sidenote: Proceedings of the Buccaneers under Edw. Davis. Amapalla Bay.] A sickness had broken out among Davis's people, which was attributed to the unwholesomeness of the air, or the bad water, at _Ria Lexa_. After leaving the place, the disorder increased, on which account Davis sailed to the _Bay of Amapalla_, where on his arrival he built huts on one of the Islands in the Bay for the accommodation of his sick men, and landed them. Above 130 of the Buccaneers were ill with a spotted fever, and several died. Lionel Wafer was surgeon with Davis, and has given a brief account of his proceedings. Wafer, with some others, went on shore to the main land on the South side of _Amapalla Bay_, to seek for provisions. They walked to a beef farm which was about three miles from their landing. [Sidenote: A hot River.] In the way they crossed a hot river in an open savannah, or plain, which they forded with some difficulty on account of its heat. This river issued from under a hill which was not a volcano, though along the coast there were several. 'I had the curiosity,' says Wafer, 'to wade up the stream as far as I had daylight to guide me. The water was clear and shallow, but the steams were like those of a boiling pot, and my hair was wet with them. The river reeked without the hill a great way. Some of our men who had the itch, bathed themselves here, and growing well soon after, their cure was imputed to the sulphureousness or other virtue of this water.' Here were many wolves, who approached so near and so boldly to some who had straggled from the rest of their party, as to give them great alarm, and they did not dare to fire, lest the noise of their guns should bring more wolves about them. [Sidenote: Cocos Island.] Davis remained some weeks at _Amapalla Bay_, and departed thence for the Peruvian coast, with the crews of his ships recovered. In their way Southward they made _Cocos Island_, and anchored in the harbour at the NE part, where they supplied themselves with excellent fresh water and cocoa-nuts. Wafer has given the description following: 'The middle of _Cocos Island_ is a steep hill, surrounded with a plain declining to the sea. This plain is thick set with cocoa-nut trees: but what contributes greatly to the pleasure of the place is, that a great many springs of clear and sweet water rising to the top of the hill, are there gathered as in a deep large bason or pond, and the water having no channel, it overflows the verge of its bason in several places, and runs trickling down in pleasant streams. In some places of its overflowing, the rocky side of the hill being more than perpendicular, and hanging over the plain beneath, the water pours down in a cataract, so as to leave a dry space under the spout, and form a kind of arch of water. The freshness which the falling water gives the air in this hot climate makes this a delightful place. [Sidenote: Effect of Excess in drinking the Milk of the Cocoa-nut.] We did not spare the cocoa-nuts. One day, some of our men being minded to make themselves merry, went ashore and cut down a great many cocoa-nut trees; from which they gathered the fruit, and drew about twenty gallons of the milk. They then sat down and drank healths to the King and Queen, and drank an excessive quantity; yet it did not end in drunkenness: but this liquor so chilled and benumbed their nerves that they could neither go nor stand. Nor could they return on board without the help of those who had not been partakers of the frolick, nor did they recover under four or five days' time[56].' Here Peter Harris broke off consortship, and departed for the _East Indies_. The tender sailed at the same time, probably following the same route. [Sidenote: At the Galapagos Islands.] Davis and Knight continued to associate, and sailed together from _Cocos Island_ to the _Galapagos_. At one of these Islands they found fresh water; the buccaneer Journals do not specify which Island, nor any thing that can be depended upon as certain of its situation. Wafer only says, 'From _Cocos_ we came to one of the _Galapagos Islands_. At this Island there was but one watering-place, and there we careened our ship.' Dampier was not with them at this time; but in describing the _Galapagos_ Isles, he makes the following mention of Davis's careening place. 'Part of what I say of these Islands I had from Captain Davis, who was there afterwards, and careened his ship at neither of the Islands that we were at in 1684, but went to other Islands more to the Westward, which he found to be good habitable Islands, having a deep fat soil capable of producing any thing that grows in those climates: they are well watered, and have plenty of good timber. Captain Harris came hither likewise, and found some Islands that had plenty of mammee-trees, and pretty large rivers. They have good anchoring in many places, so that take the _Galapagos Islands by and large_, they are extraordinary good places for ships in distress to seek relief at[57].' Wafer has not given the date of this visit, which was the second made by Davis to the _Galapagos_; but as he stopped several weeks in the _Gulf of Amapalla_ for the recovery of his sick, and afterwards made some stay at _Cocos Island_, it must have been late in the year, if not after the end, when he arrived at the _Galapagos_, and it is probable, during, or immediately after, a rainy season. The account published by Wafer, excepting what relates to the _Isthmus_ of _Darien_, consists of short notices set down from recollection, and occupying in the whole not above fifty duodecimo pages. He mentions a tree at the Island of the _Galapagos_ where they careened, like a pear-tree, 'low and not shrubby, very sweet in smell, and full of very sweet gum.' Davis and Knight took on board their ships 500 packs or sacks of flour from the stores which had formerly been deposited at the _Galapagos_. The birds had devoured some, in consequence of the bags having been left exposed. [Sidenote: 1686. On the Coast of Peru.] From the _Galapagos_, they sailed to the coast of _Peru_, and cruised in company till near the end of 1686. They captured many vessels, which they released after plundering; and attacked several towns along the coast. They had sharp engagements with the Spaniards at _Guasco_, and at _Pisco_, the particulars of which are not related; but they plundered both the towns. [Sidenote: Peruvian Wine like Madeira.] They landed also at _La Nasca_, a small port on the coast of _Peru_ in latitude about 15° S, at which place they furnished themselves with a stock of wine. Wafer says, 'This is a rich strong wine, in taste much like Madeira. It is brought down out of the country to be shipped for _Lima_ and _Panama_. Sometimes it is kept here many years stopped up in jars, of about eight gallons each: the jars were under no shelter, but exposed to the scorching sun, being placed along the bay and between the rocks, every merchant having his own wine marked.' It could not well have been placed more conveniently for the Buccaneers. They landed at _Coquimbo_, which Wafer describes 'a large town with nine churches.' What they did there is not said. Wafer mentions a small river that emptied itself in a bay, three miles from the town, in which, up the country, the Spaniards get gold. 'The sands of the river by the sea, and round the whole Bay, are all bespangled with particles of gold; insomuch that in travelling along the sandy bays, our people were covered with a fine gold-dust, but too fine for any profit, for it would be an endless work to pick it up.' Statistical accounts of the Viceroyalty of _Peru_, which during a succession of years were printed annually at the end of the _Lima_ Almanack, notice the towns of _Santa Maria de la Perilla_, _Guasca_, _Santiago de Miraflores_, _Cañete_, _Pisco_, _Huara_, and _Guayaquil_, being sacked and in part destroyed by pirates, in the years 1685, 1686, and 1687. [Sidenote: At Juan Fernandez.] Davis and Knight having made much booty (Lussan says so much that the share of each man amounted to 5000 pieces of eight), they went to the Island _Juan Fernandez_ to refit, intending to sail thence for the _West Indies_: but before they had recruited and prepared the ships for the voyage round the South of _America_, Fortune made a new distribution of their plunder. Many lost all their money at play, and they could not endure, after so much peril, to quit the _South Sea_ empty handed, but resolved to revisit the coast of _Peru_. [Sidenote: Knight quits the South Sea.] The more fortunate party embarked with Knight for the _West Indies_. [Sidenote: Davis returns to the Coast of Peru.] The luckless residue, consisting of sixty Englishmen, and twenty Frenchmen, with Edward Davis at their head, remained with the Batchelor's Delight to begin their work afresh. They sailed from _Juan Fernandez_ for the American coast, which they made as far South as the Island _Mocha_. By traffic with the inhabitants, they procured among other provisions, a number of the Llama or Peruvian sheep. [Sidenote: Bezoar Stones.] Wafer relates, that out of the stomach of one of these sheep he took thirteen Bezoar stones of several forms, 'some resembling coral, some round, and all green when first taken out; but by long keeping they turned of an ash colour.' [Sidenote: Marine Productions found on Mountains.] In latitude 26° S, wanting fresh water, they made search for the River _Copiapo_. They landed and ascended the hills in hopes of discovering it. According to Wafer's computation they went eight miles within the coast, ascending mountain beyond mountain till they were a full mile in perpendicular height above the level of the sea. They found the ground there covered with sand and sea-shells, 'which,' says Wafer, 'I the more wondered at, because there were no shell-fish, nor could I ever find any shells, on any part of the sea-coast hereabouts, though I have looked for them in many places.' They did not discover the river they were in search of; but shortly afterwards, they landed at _Arica_, which they plundered; and at the River _Ylo_, where they took in fresh water. At _Arica_ was a house full of Jesuits' bark. [Sidenote: Vermejo.] Wafer relates, 'We also put ashore at _Vermejo_, in 10° S latitude. I was one of those who landed to see for water. We marched about four miles up a sandy bay, which we found covered with the bodies of men, women, and children. These bodies to appearance, seemed as if they had not been above a week dead; but if touched, they proved dry and light as a sponge or piece of cork. We were told by an old Spanish Indian whom we met, that in his father's time, the soil there, which now yielded nothing, was well cultivated and fruitful: that the city of _Wormia_ had been so numerously inhabited with Indians, that they could have handed a fish from hand to hand until it had come to the Inca's hand. But that when the Spaniards came and laid siege to their city, the Indians, rather than yield to their mercy, dug holes in the sand and buried themselves alive. The men as they now lie, have by them their broken bows; and the women their spinning-wheels and distaffs with cotton yarn upon them. Of these dead bodies I brought on board a boy of about ten years of age with an intent to bring him to _England_; but was frustrated of my purpose by the sailors, who had a foolish conceit that the compass would not traverse right whilst there was a dead body on board, so they threw him overboard to my great vexation[58].' [Sidenote: April.] Near this part of the coast of _Peru_, in April 1687, Davis had a severe action with a Spanish frigate, named the Katalina, in which the drunkenness of his crew gave opportunity to the Spanish Commander, who had made a stout defence, to run his ship ashore upon the coast. They fell in with many other Spanish vessels, which, after plundering, they dismissed. Shortly after the engagement with the Spanish frigate Katalina, Davis made a descent at _Payta_, to seek refreshments for his wounded men, and surprised there a courier with dispatches from the Spanish Commander at _Guayaquil_ to the Viceroy at _Lima_, by which he learnt that a large body of English and French Buccaneers had attacked, and were then in possession of, the town of _Guayaquil_. [Sidenote: May.] The Governor had been taken prisoner by the Buccaneers, and the Deputy or next in authority, made pressing instances for speedy succour, in his letter to the Viceroy, which, according to Lussan, contained the following passage: '_The time has expired some days which was appointed for the ransom of our prisoners. I amuse the enemy with the hopes of some thousands of pieces of eight, and they have sent me the heads of four of our prisoners: but if they send me fifty, I should esteem it less prejudicial than our suffering these ruffians to live. If your Excellency will hasten the armament to our assistance, here will be a fair opportunity to rid ourselves of them._' [Sidenote: Davis joins other Buccaneers at Guayaquil.] Upon this news, and the farther intelligence that Spanish ships of war had been dispatched from _Callao_ to the relief of _Guayaquil_, Davis sailed for that place, and, on May the 14th, arrived in the _Bay of Guayaquil_, where he found many of his old confederates; for these were the French Buccaneers who had separated from him under Grogniet, and the English who had gone with Townley. Those two leaders had been overtaken by the perils of their vocation, and were no more. But whilst in their mortal career, and after their separation from Davis, though they had at one time been adverse almost to hostility against each other, they had met, been reconciled, and had associated together. Townley died first, of a wound he received in battle, and was succeeded in the command of the English by a Buccaneer named George Hout or Hutt. At the attack of _Guayaquil_, Grogniet was mortally wounded; and Le Picard was chosen by the French to succeed him in the command. _Guayaquil_ was taken on the 20th of April; the plunder and a number of prisoners had been conveyed by the Buccaneers to their ships, which were at anchor by the Island _Puna_, when their unwearied good fortune brought Davis to join them. The taking of _Guayaquil_ by the Buccaneers under Grogniet and Hutt will be more circumstantially noticed in the sequel, with other proceedings of the same crews. When Davis joined them, they were waiting with hopes, nearly worn out, of obtaining a large ransom which had been promised them for the town of _Guayaquil_, and for their prisoners. [Sidenote: Near the Island Puna.] The information Davis had received made him deem it prudent, instead of going to anchor at _Puna_, to remain with his ship on the look-out in the offing; he therefore sent a prize-vessel into the road to acquaint the Buccaneers there of his being near at hand, and that the Spaniards were to be expected shortly. The captors of _Guayaquil_ continued many days after this to wait for ransom. They had some hundreds of prisoners, for whose sakes the Spaniards sent daily to the Buccaneers large supplies of provisions, of which the prisoners could expect to receive only the surplus after the Buccaneers should be satisfied. At length, the Spaniards sent 42,000 pieces of eight, the most part in gold, and eighty packages of flour. The sum was far short of the first agreement, and the Buccaneers at _Puna_, to make suitable return, released only a part of the prisoners, reserving for a subsequent settlement those of the most consideration. [Sidenote: 26th. Meeting between Spanish Ships of War and the Buccaneers.] On the 26th, they quitted the road of _Puna_, and joined Davis. In the evening of the same day, two large Spanish ships came in sight. Davis's ship mounted 36 guns; and her crew, which had been much diminished by different engagements, was immediately reinforced with 80 men from Le Picard's party. Besides Davis's ship, the Buccaneers had only a small ship and a _barca-longa_ fit to come into action. Their prize vessels which could do no service, were sent for security into shallow water. [Sidenote: A Sea Engagement of seven days.] On the morning of the 27th, the Buccaneers and Spaniards were both without the Island _S^{ta} Clara_. The Spaniards were the farthest out at sea, and had the sea-breeze first, with which they bore down till about noon, when being just within the reach of cannon-shot, they hauled upon a wind, and began a distant cannonade, which was continued till evening: the two parties then drew off to about a league asunder, and anchored for the night. On the morning of the 28th, they took up their anchors, and the day was spent in distant firing, and in endeavours to gain or to keep the wind of each other. The same kind of manoeuvring and distant firing was put in practice on each succeeding day, till the evening of the 2d of June, which completed the seventh day of this obstinate engagement. The Spanish Commander, being then satisfied that he had fought long enough, and hopeless of prevailing on the enemy to yield, withdrew in the night. [Sidenote: June. The Spaniards retire.] On the morning of the 3d, the Buccaneers were surprised, and not displeased, at finding no enemy in sight. During all this fighting, the Buccaneers indulged their vanity by keeping the Governor of _Guayaquil_, and other prisoners of distinction, upon deck, to witness the superiority of their management over that of the Spaniards. It was not indeed a post of much danger, for in the whole seven days battle, not one Buccaneer was killed, and only two or three were wounded. It may be some apology for the Spanish Commander, that in consequence of Davis's junction with the captors of _Guayaquil_, he found a much greater force to contend with than he had been taught to expect. Fortune had been peculiarly unfavourable to the Spaniards on this occasion. Three ships of force had been equipped and sent in company against the Buccaneers at _Guayaquil_. One of them, the Katalina, by accident was separated from the others, and fell in with Davis, by whom she was driven on the coast, where she stranded. The Spanish armament thus weakened one-third, on arriving in the _Bay of Guayaquil_, found the buccaneer force there increased, by this same Davis, in a proportion greater than their own had been diminished. [Sidenote: At the Island De la Plata.] Davis and Le Picard left the choice of distance to the Spaniards in this meeting, not considering it their business to come to serious battle unless forced. They had reason to be satisfied with having defended themselves and their plunder; and after the enemy disappeared, finding the coast clear, they sailed to the Island _De la Plata_, where they stopped to repair damages, and to hold council. They all now inclined homewards. The booty they had made, if it fell short of the expectations of some, was sufficient to make them eager to be where they could use or expend it; but they were not alike provided with the means of returning to the _North Sea_. Davis had a stout ship, and he proposed to go the Southern passage by the _Strait of Magalhanes_, or round _Cape Horne_. No other of the vessels in the possession of the Buccaneers was strong enough for such a voyage. All the French therefore, and many of the English Buccaneers, bent their thoughts on returning overland, an undertaking that would inevitably be attended with much difficulty, encumbered as they were with their plunder, and the Darien Indians having become hostile to them. Almost all the Frenchmen in Davis's ship, left her to join their countrymen, and many of the English from their party embarked with Davis. All thoughts of farther negociation with the Spaniards for the ransom of prisoners, were relinquished. Le Picard had given notice on quitting the _Bay of Guayaquil_, that payment would be expected for the release of the remaining prisoners, and that the Buccaneers would wait for it at _Cape Santa Elena_; but they had passed that _Cape_, and it was apprehended that if they returned thither, instead of receiving ransom, they might find the Spanish ships of war, come to renew the attack on them under other Commanders. On the 10th, they landed their prisoners on the Continent. [Sidenote: Division of Plunder.] The next day they shared the plunder taken at _Guayaquil_. The jewels and ornaments could not well be divided, nor could their value be estimated to general satisfaction: neither could they agree upon a standard proportion between the value of gold and silver. Every man was desirous to receive for his share such parts of the spoil as were most portable, and this was more especially of importance to those who intended to march overland. The value of gold was so much enhanced that an ounce of gold was received in lieu of eighty dollars, and a Spanish pistole went for fifteen dollars; but these instances probably took place in settling their gaming accounts. In the division of the plunder these difficulties were obviated by a very ingenious and unobjectionable mode of distribution. The silver was first divided: the other articles were then put up to auction, and bid for in pieces of eight; and when all were so disposed of, a second division was made of the silver produced by the sale. Davis and his company were not present at the taking of _Guayaquil_, but the services they had rendered, had saved both the plunder and the plunderers, and gave them a fair claim to share. Neither Wafer nor Lussan speak to this point, from which it may be inferred that every thing relating to the division was settled among them amicably, and that Davis and his men had no reason to be dissatisfied. Lussan gives a loose statement of the sum total and of the single shares. 'Notwithstanding that these things were sold so dearly, we shared for the taking of _Guayaquil_ only 400 pieces of eight to each man, which would make in the whole about fifteen hundred thousand _livres_.' The number of Buccaneers with Grogniet and Hutt immediately previous to the attack of _Guayaquil_, was 304. Davis's crew at the time he separated from Knight, consisted of eighty men. He had afterwards lost men in several encounters, and it is probable the whole number present at the sharing of the plunder of _Guayaquil_ was short of three hundred and fifty. Allowing the extra shares to officers to have been 150, making the whole number of shares 500, the amount of the plunder will fall short of Lussan's estimate. [Sidenote: They separate to return home by different Routes.] On the 12th, the two parties finally took leave of each other and separated, bound by different routes for the _Atlantic_. CHAP. XVII. _=Edward Davis=; his Third visit to the =Galapagos=. One of those Islands, named =Santa Maria de l'Aguada= by the Spaniards, a Careening Place of the Buccaneers. Sailing thence Southward they discover Land. Question, whether Edward Davis's Discovery is the Land which was afterwards named =Easter Island=? =Davis= and his Crew arrive in the =West Indies=._ [Sidenote: 1687. Davis sails to the Galapagos Islands.] Davis again sailed to the _Galapagos Islands_, to victual and refit his ship. Lionel Wafer was still with him, and appears to have been one of those to whom fortune had been most unpropitious. Wafer does not mention either the joining company with the French Buccaneers, or the plunder of _Guayaquil_; and particularises few of his adventures. He says, 'I shall not pursue all my coasting along the shore of _Peru_ with Captain Davis. We continued rambling about to little purpose, sometimes at sea, sometimes ashore, till having spent much time and visited many places, we were got again to the _Galapagos_; from whence we were determined to make the best of our way out of these seas.' At the _Galapagos_ they again careened; and there they victualled the ship, taking on board a large supply of flour, curing fish, salting flesh of the land turtle for sea store; and they saved as much of the oil of the land turtle as filled sixty jars (of eight gallons each) which proved excellent, and was thought not inferior to fresh butter. [Sidenote: King James's Island.] Captain Colnet was at the _Galapagos Isles_ in the years 1793 and 1794, and found traces, still fresh, which marked the haunts of the Buccaneers. He says, 'At every place where we landed on the Western side of _King James's Isle_, we might have walked for miles through long grass and beneath groves of trees. It only wanted a stream to compose a very charming landscape. This Isle appears to have been a favourite resort of the Buccaneers, as we found seats made by them of earth and stone, and a considerable number of broken jars scattered about, and some whole, in which the Peruvian wine and liquors of the country are preserved. We also found daggers, nails, and other implements. The watering-place of the Buccaneers was at this time (the latter part of April or beginning of May) entirely dried up, and there was only found a small rivulet between two hills running into the sea; the Northernmost of which hills forms the South point of _Fresh Water Bay_. There is plenty of wood, but that near the shore is not large enough for other use than fire-wood. In the mountains the trees may be larger, as they grow to the summits. I do not think the watering-place we saw is the only one on the Island, and I have no doubt, if wells were dug any where beneath the hills, and not near the lagoon behind the sandy beach, that fresh water would be found in great plenty[59].' Since Captain Colnet's Voyage, Captain David Porter of the American United States' frigate Essex, has seen and given descriptions of the _Galapagos_ Islands. He relates an anecdote which accords with Captain Colnet's opinion of there being fresh water at _King James's Island_. He landed, on its West side, four goats (one male and three female) and some sheep, to graze. As they were tame and of their own accord kept near the landing-place, they were left every night without a keeper, and water was carried to them in the morning. 'But one morning, after they had been on the Island several days and nights, the person who attended them went on shore as usual to give them water, but no goats were to be found: they had all as with one accord disappeared. Several persons were sent to search after them for two or three days, but without success.' Captain Porter concluded that they had found fresh water in the interior of the Island, and chose to remain near it. 'One fact,' he says, 'was noticed by myself and many others, the day preceding their departure, which must lead us to believe that something more than chance directed their movements, which is, that they all drank an unusual quantity of water on that day, as though they had determined to provide themselves with a supply to enable them to reach the mountains[60].' Davis and his men had leisure for search and to make every kind of experiment; but no one of his party has given any description or account of what was transacted at the _Galapagos_ in this his third visit. Light, however, has been derived from late voyages. [Sidenote: The Island S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada, a Careening Place of the Buccaneers.] It has been generally believed, but not till lately ascertained, that Davis passed most of the time he was amongst the _Galapagos_, at an Island which the Spaniards have designated by the name of _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_, concerning the situation of which the Spaniards as well as geographers of other countries have disagreed. A Spanish pilot reported to Captain Woodes Rogers that _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_ lay by itself, (i. e. was not one of a groupe of Islands) in latitude 1° 20' or 1° 30' S, was a pleasant Island, well stocked with wood, and with plenty of fresh water[61]. Moll, DeVaugondy, and others, combining the accounts given by Dampier and Woodes Rogers, have placed a _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_ several degrees to the Westward of the whole of Cowley's groupe. Don Antonio de Ulloa, on the contrary, has laid it down as one of the _Galapagos Isles_, but among the most South-eastern of the whole groupe. More consonant with recent information, Pascoe Thomas, who sailed round the world with Commodore Anson, has given from a Spanish manuscript the situations of different Islands of the _Galapagos_, and among them that of _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_. The most Western in the Spanish list published by Thomas is named _S^{ta} Margarita_, and is the same with the _Albemarle Island_ in Cowley's chart. The _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_ is set down in the same Spanish list in latitude 1° 10' S, and 19 minutes in longitude more East than the longitude given of _S^{ta} Margarita_, which situation is due South of Cowley's _King James's Island_. Captain Colnet saw land due South of _King James's Island_, which he did not anchor at or examine, and appears to have mistaken for the _King Charles's Island_ of Cowley's chart. On comparing Captain Colnet's chart with Cowley's, it is evident that Captain Colnet has given the name of _Lord Chatham's Isle_ to Cowley's _King Charles's Island_, the bearings and distance from the South end of _Albemarle Island_ being the same in both, i. e. due East about 20 leagues. It follows that the _Charles Island_ of Colnet's chart was not seen by Cowley, and that it is the _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_ of the Spaniards. It has lately been frequented by English and by American vessels employed in the South Sea Whale Fishery, who have found a good harbour on its North side, with wood and fresh water; and marks are yet discoverable that it was formerly a careening place of the buccaneers. Mr. Arrowsmith has added this harbour to Captain Colnet's chart, on the authority of information communicated by the master of a South Sea whaler. From Captain David Porter's Journal, it appears that the watering-place at _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_ is three miles distant from any part of the sea-shore; and that the supply it yields is not constant. On arriving a second time at the _Galapagos_, in the latter part of August, Captain Porter sent a boat on shore to this Island. Captain Porter relates, 'I gave directions that our former watering-places there should be examined, but was informed that they were entirely dried up.' [Illustration: GALLAPAGOS ISLANDS, _Described by_ Ambrose Cowley _in 1684_.] Cowley's chart, being original, a buccaneer performance, and not wholly out of use, is annexed to this account; with the insertion, in unshaded outline, of the _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_, according to its situation with respect to _Albemarle Island_, as laid down in the last edition of Captain Colnet's chart, published by Mr. Arrowsmith. This unavoidably makes a difference in the latitude equal to the difference between Cowley's and Captain Colnet's latitude of the South end of _Albemarle Island_. In Captain Colnet's chart, the North end of _S^{ta} Maria de l'Aguada_ is laid down in 1° 15' S. The voyage of the Essex gives reasonable expectation of an improved chart of the _Galapagos Isles_, the Rev. Mr. Adams, who sailed as Chaplain in that expedition, having employed himself actively in surveying them. [Sidenote: 1687. Davis sails from the Galapagos to the Southward.] When the season approached for making the passage round _Cape Horne_, Davis and his company quitted their retreat. The date of their sailing is not given. Wafer relates, 'From the _Galapagos Islands_ we went again for the Southward, intending to touch no where till we came to the Island _Juan Fernandez_. In our way thither, being in the latitude of 12° 30' S, and about 150 leagues from the main of _America_, about four o'clock in the morning, our ship felt a terrible shock, so sudden and violent that we took it for granted she had struck upon a rock. When the amazement was a little over, we cast the lead and sounded, but found no ground, so we concluded it must certainly be some earthquake. The sea, which ordinarily looks green, seemed then of a whitish colour; and the water which we took up in the buckets for the ship's use, we found to be a little mixed with sand. Some time after, we heard that at that very time, there was an earthquake at _Callao_, which did mischief both there and at _Lima_.' [Sidenote: Island discovered by Edw. Davis.] 'Having recovered our fright, we kept on to the Southward. We steered SbE 1/2 Easterly, until we came to the latitude of 27° 20' S, when about two hours before day, we fell in with a small low sandy Island, and heard a great roaring noise, like that of the sea beating upon the shore, right ahead of the ship. Whereupon, fearing to fall foul upon the shore before day, the ship was put about. So we plied off till day, and then stood in again with the land, which proved to be a small flat Island, without the guard of any rocks. We stood in within a quarter of a mile of the shore, and could see it plainly, for it was a clear morning. To the Westward, about twelve leagues by judgement, we saw a range of high land, which we took to be Islands, for there were several partitions in the prospect. This land seemed to reach about 14 or 16 leagues in a range, and there came thence great flocks of fowls. I, and many of our men would have made this land, and have gone ashore at it, but the Captain would not permit us. The small Island bears from _Copiapo_ almost due East [West was intended] 500 leagues, and from the _Galapagos_ under the line is distant 600 leagues[62].' Dampier was not present at this discovery; but he met his old Commander afterwards, and relates information he received concerning it in the following words. 'Captain Davis told me lately, that after his departing from us at _Ria Lexa_, he went, after several traverses, to the _Galapagos_, and that standing thence Southward for wind to bring him about the _Tierra del Fuego_, in the latitude of 27° S, about 500 leagues from _Copayapo_ on the coast of _Chili_, he saw a small sandy Island just by him; and that they saw to the Westward of it a long tract of pretty high land, tending away toward the NW out of sight[63].' [Sidenote: Question whether Edward Davis's Land and Easter Island are the same Land, or different.] The two preceding paragraphs contain the whole which either in Wafer or Dampier is said concerning this land. The apprehension of being late in the season for the passage round _Cape Horne_ seems to have deterred Davis from making examination of his discovery. The latitude and specified distance from _Copiapo_ were particulars sufficient to direct future search; and twenty-five years afterwards, Jacob Roggewein, a Dutch navigator, guided by those marks, found land; but it being more distant from the American Continent than stated by Davis or Wafer, Roggewein claimed it as a new discovery. A more convenient place for discussing this point, which has been a lasting subject of dispute among geographers, would be in an account of Roggewein's voyage; but a few remarks here may be satisfactory. Wafer kept neither journal nor reckoning, his profession not being that of a mariner; and from circumstances which occur in Davis's navigation to the _Atlantic_, it may reasonably be doubted whether a regular reckoning or journal was kept by any person on board; and whether the 500 leagues distance of the small Island from the American coast mentioned by Davis and Wafer, was other than a conjectured distance. They had no superior by whom a journal of their proceedings would be required or expected. If a regular journal had really been kept, it would most probably have found its way to the press. Jacob Roggewein, the Dutch Admiral, was more than any other navigator, willing to give himself the credit of making new discoveries, as the following extracts from the Journal of his expedition will evince. 'We looked for _Hawkins's Maiden Land_, but could not find it; but we discovered an Island 200 leagues in circuit, in latitude 52° S, about 200 leagues distant to the East of the coast of _South America_, which we named _Belgia Austral_.' That is as much as to say, Admiral Roggewein could not find _Hawkins's Maiden Land_; but he discovered land on the same spot, which he named _Belgia Austral_. Afterwards, proceeding in the same disposition, the Journal relates, 'We directed our course from _Juan Fernandez_ towards _Davis's Land_, but to the great astonishment of the Admiral (Roggewein) it was not seen. I think we either missed it, or that there is no such land. We went on towards the West, and on the anniversary of the Resurrection of our Saviour, we came in sight of an Island. We named it _Paaschen_ or _Oster Eylandt_ (i. e. Easter Island).' _Paaschen_ or _Easter Island_ according to modern charts and observations, is nearly 690 leagues distant from _Copiapo_, which is in the same parallel on the Continent of _America_. The statement of Davis and Wafer makes the distance only 512 leagues, which is a difference of 178 leagues. It is not probable that Davis could have had good information of the longitudes of the _Galapagos Islands_ and _Copiapo_; but with every allowance, so large an error as 178 leagues in a run of 600 leagues might be thought incredible, if its possibility had not been demonstrated by a much greater being made by the same persons in this same homeward passage; as will be related. In the latitude and appearance of the land, the descriptions of Davis and Wafer are correct, _Easter Island_ being a mountainous land, which will make partitions in the distant prospect and appear like a number of Islands. Roggewein's claim to _Paaschen_ or _Easter Island_ as a new discovery has had countenance and support from geographers, some of the first eminence, but has been made a subject of jealous contest, and not of impartial investigation. If Roggewein discovered an Island farther to the West of the American coast than _Davis's Land_, it must follow that Davis's land lies between his discovery and the Continent; but that part of the _South Sea_ has been so much explored, that if any high land had existed between _Easter Island_ and the American coast, it could not have escaped being known. There is not the least improbability that ships, in making a passage from the _Galapagos Isles_ through the South East trade-wind, shall come into the neighbourhood of _Easter Island_. Edward Davis has generally been thought a native of _England_, but according to Lussan, and nothing appears to the contrary, he was a native of _Holland_. The majority of the Buccaneers in the ship, however, were British. How far to that source may be traced the disposition to refuse the Buccaneers the credit of the discovery, and how much national partialities have contributed to the dispute, may be judged from this circumstance, that _Easter Island_ being _Davis's Land_ has never been doubted by British geographers, and has been questioned only by those of other nations. The merit of the discovery is nothing, for the Buccaneers were not in search of land, but came without design in sight of it, and would not look at what they had accidentally found. And whether the discovery is to be attributed to Edward Davis or to his crew, ought to be esteemed of little concern to the nations of which they were natives, seeing the discoverers were men outlawed, and whose acts were disowned by the governments of their countries. Passing from considerations of claims to consideration of the fact;--there is not the smallest plea for questioning, nor has any one questioned the truth of the Buccaneers having discovered a high Island West of the American coast, in or near the latitude of 27° S. If different from _Easter Island_, it must be supposed to be situated between that and the Continent. But however much it has been insisted or argued that _Easter Island_ is not _Davis's Land_, no chart has yet pretended to shew two separate Islands, one for Edward Davis's discovery, and one for Roggewein's. The one Island known has been in constant requisition for double duty; and must continue so until another Island of the same description shall be found. [Sidenote: 1687. At the Island Juan Fernandez.] Davis arrived at _Juan Fernandez_ 'at the latter end of the year,' and careened there. Since the Buccaneers were last at the Island, the Spaniards had put dogs on shore, for the purpose of killing the goats. Many, however, found places among precipices, where the dogs could not get at them, and the Buccaneers shot as many as served for their daily consumption. Here again, five men of Davis's crew, who had gamed away their money, 'and were unwilling to return out of these seas as poor as they came in,' determined on staying at _Juan Fernandez_, to take the chance of some other buccaneer ship, or privateer, touching at the Island. A canoe, arms, ammunition, and various implements were given to them, with a stock of maize for planting, and some for their immediate subsistence; and each of these gentlemen had a negro attendant landed with him. From _Juan Fernandez_, Davis sailed to the Islands _Mocha_ and _Santa Maria_, near the Continent, where he expected to have procured provisions, but he found both those Islands deserted and laid waste, the Spaniards having obliged the inhabitants to remove, that the Buccaneers might not obtain supply there. The season was advanced, therefore without expending more time in searching for provisions, they bent their course Southward. They passed round _Cape Horne_ without seeing land, but fell in with many Islands of ice, and ran so far Eastward before they ventured to steer a Northerly course, that afterwards, when, in the parallel of the _River de la Plata_, they steered Westward to make the American coast, which they believed to be only one hundred leagues distant, they sailed 'four hundred and fifty leagues to the West in the same latitude,' before they came in sight of land; whence many began to apprehend they were still in the _South Sea_[64], and this belief would have gained ground, if a flight of locusts had not alighted on the ship, which a strong flurry of wind had blown off from the American coast. [Sidenote: 1688. Davis sails to the West Indies.] They arrived in the _West Indies_ in the spring of the year 1688, at a time when a proclamation had recently been issued, offering the King's pardon to all Buccaneers who would quit that way of life, and claim the benefit of the proclamation. It was not the least of fortune's favours to this crew of Buccaneers, that they should find it in their power, without any care or forethought of their own, to terminate a long course of piratical adventures in quietness and security. Edward Davis was afterwards in _England_, as appears by the notice given of his discovery by William Dampier, who mentions him always with peculiar respect. Though a Buccaneer, he was a man of much sterling worth; being an excellent Commander, courageous, never rash, and endued in a superior degree with prudence, moderation, and steadiness; qualities in which the Buccaneers generally have been most deficient. His character is not stained with acts of cruelty; on the contrary, wherever he commanded, he restrained the ferocity of his companions. It is no small testimony of his abilities that the whole of the Buccaneers in the _South Sea_ during his time, in every enterprise wherein he bore part, voluntarily placed themselves under his guidance, and paid him obedience as their leader; and no symptom occurs of their having at any time wavered in this respect, or shewn inclination to set up a rival authority. It may almost be said, that the only matter in which they were not capricious was their confidence in his management; and in it they found their advantage, if not their preservation. CHAP. XVIII. _Adventures of =Swan= and =Townley= on the Coast of =New Spain=, until their Separation._ [Sidenote: Swan and Townley.] The South Sea adventures of the buccaneer Chief Davis being brought to a conclusion, the next related will be those of Swan and his crew in the Cygnet, they being the first of the Buccaneers who after the battle in the _Bay of Panama_ left the _South Sea_. William Dampier who was in Swan's ship, kept a Journal of their proceedings, which is published, and the manuscript also has been preserved. [Sidenote: 1685. August.] Swan and Townley, the reader may recollect, were left by Edward Davis in the harbour of _Ria Lexa_, in the latter part of August 1685, and had agreed to keep company together Westward towards the entrance of the _Gulf of California_. [Sidenote: Bad Water, and Unhealthiness of Ria Lexa.] They remained at _Ria Lexa_ some days longer to take in fresh water, 'such as it was,' and they experienced from it the same bad effects which it had on Davis's men; for, joined to the unwholesomeness of the place, it produced a malignant fever, by which several were carried off. [Sidenote: September. On the Coast of New Spain.] On September the 3d, they put to sea, four sail in company, i. e. the Cygnet, Townley's ship, and two tenders; the total of the crews being 340 men. [Sidenote: Tornadoes.] The season was not favourable for getting Westward along this coast. Westerly winds were prevalent, and scarcely a day passed without one or two violent tornadoes, which were accompanied with frightful flashes of lightning, and claps of thunder, 'the like,' says Dampier, 'I did never meet with before nor since.' These tornadoes generally came out of the NE, very fierce, and did not last long. When the tornado was passed, the wind again settled Westward. On account of these storms, Swan and Townley kept a large offing; but towards the end of the month, the weather became settled. On the 24th, Townley, and 106 men in nine canoes, went on Westward, whilst the ships lay by two days with furled sails, to give them time to get well forward, by which they would come the more unexpectedly upon any place along the coast. [Sidenote: October.] Townley proceeded, without finding harbour or inlet, to the Bay of _Tecuantepeque_, where putting ashore at a sandy beach, the canoes were all overset by the surf, one man drowned, and some muskets lost. Townley however drew the canoes up dry, and marched into the country; but notwithstanding that they had not discovered any inlet on the coast, they found the country intersected with great creeks not fordable, and were forced to return to their canoes. A body of Spaniards and Indians came to reconnoitre them, from the town of _Tecuantepeque_, to seek which place was the chief purpose of the Buccaneers when they landed. 'The Spanish books,' says Dampier, 'mention a large river there, but whether it was run away at this time, or rather that Captain Townley and his men were shortsighted, I know not; but they did not find it.' October the 2d, the canoes returned to the ships. The wind was fresh and fair from the ENE, and they sailed Westward, keeping within short distance of the shore, but found neither harbour nor opening. They had soundings all the way, the depth being 21 fathoms, a coarse sandy bottom, at eight miles distance from the land. [Sidenote: Island Tangola.] Having run about 20 leagues along the coast, they came to a small high Island called _Tangola_, on which they found wood and water; and near it, good anchorage. 'This Island is about a league distant from the main, which is pretty high, and savannah land by the sea; but within land it is higher and woody.'---- [Sidenote: Guatulco. El Buffadore, a spouting Rock.] 'We coasted a league farther, and came to _Guatulco_, in latitude 15° 30', which is one of the best ports in this Kingdom of _Mexico_. Near a mile from the mouth of the harbour, on the East side, is a little Island close by the main-land. On the West side of the mouth of the harbour, is a great hollow rock, which by the continual working of the sea in and out, makes a great noise, and may be heard a great way; every surge that comes in, forces the water out at a little hole at the top, as out of a pipe, from whence it flies out just like the blowing of a whale, to which the Spaniards liken it, and call it _El Buffadore_. Even at the calmest seasons, the beating of the sea makes the waterspout out at the hole, so that this is always a good mark to find the harbour of _Guatulco_ by. [Sidenote: The Harbour of Guatulco.] The harbour runs in NW, is about three miles deep, and one mile broad. The West side of the harbour is the best for small ships to ride in: any where else you are open to SW winds, which often blow here. There is clean ground any where, and good gradual soundings from 16 to 6 fathoms: it is bounded by a smooth sandy shore, good for landing; and at the bottom of the harbour is a fine brook of fresh water running into the sea. The country is extraordinary pleasant and delightful to behold at a distance[65].' There appeared to be so few inhabitants at this part of the coast, that the Buccaneers were not afraid to land their sick. A party of men went Eastward to seek for houses and inhabitants, and at a league distance from _Guatulco_ they found a river, named by the Spaniards _El Capalita_, which had a swift current, and was deep at the entrance. They took a few Indians prisoners, but learnt nothing of the country from them. [Sidenote: Vinello, or Vanilla, a Plant.] On the 6th, Townley with 140 men marched fourteen miles inland, and in all that way found only one small Indian village, the inhabitants of which cultivated and cured a plant called _Vinello_, which grows on a vine, and is used to perfume chocolate, and sometimes tobacco. The 10th, the canoes were sent Westward; and on the 12th, the ships followed, the crews being well recovered of the _Ria Lexa_ fever. 'The coast (from _Guatulco_) lies along West and a little Southerly for 20 or 30 leagues[66].' [Sidenote: Island Sacrificio.] On account of a current which set Eastward, they anchored near a small green Island named _Sacrificio_, about a league to the West of _Guatulco_, and half a mile from the main. In the channel between, was five or six fathoms depth, and the tide ran there very swift. [Sidenote: Port de Angeles.] They advanced Westward; but slowly. The canoes were again overset in attempting to land near _Port de Angeles_, at a place where cattle were seen feeding, and another man was drowned. Dampier says, 'We were at this time abreast of _Port de Angeles_, but those who had gone in the canoes did not know it, because the Spaniards describe it to be as good a harbour as _Guatulco_. It is a broad open bay with two or three rocks at the West side. There is good anchorage all over the bay in depth from 30 to 12 fathoms, but you are open to all winds till you come into 12 fathoms, and then you are sheltered from the WSW, which is here the common trade-wind. Here always is a great swell, and landing is bad. The place of landing is close by the West side, behind a few rocks. Latitude 15° N. The tide rises about five feet. The land round _Port de Angeles_ is pretty high, the earth sandy and yellow, in some places red.' The Buccaneers landed at _Port de Angeles_, and supplied themselves with cattle, hogs, poultry, maize, and salt; and a large party of them remained feasting three days at a farm-house. The 27th, they sailed on Westward. Some of their canoes in seeking _Port de Angeles_ had been as far Westward as _Acapulco_. In their way back, they found a river, into which they went, and filled fresh water. Afterwards, they entered a _lagune_ or lake of salt water, where fishermen had cured, and stored up fish, of which the Buccaneers took away a quantity. [Sidenote: Adventure in a Lagune.] On the evening of the 27th, Swan and Townley anchored in 16 fathoms depth, near a small rocky Island, six leagues Westward of _Port de Angeles_, and about half a mile distant from the main land. The next day they sailed on, and in the night of the 28th, being abreast the lagune above mentioned, a canoe manned with twelve men was sent to bring off more of the fish. The entrance into the lagune was not more than pistol-shot wide, and on each side were rocks, high enough and convenient to skreen or conceal men. The Spaniards having more expectation of this second visit than they had of the first, a party of them, provided with muskets, took station behind these rocks. They waited patiently till the canoe of the Buccaneers was fairly within the lagune, and then fired their volley, and wounded five men. The buccaneer crew were not a little surprised, yet returned the fire; but not daring to repass the narrow entrance, they rowed to the middle of the lagune, where they lay out of the reach of shot. There was no other passage out but the one by which they had entered, which besides being so narrow was a quarter of a mile in length, and it was too desperate an undertaking to attempt to repass it. Not knowing what else to do, they lay still two whole days and three nights in hopes of relief from the ships. It was not an uncommon circumstance among the Buccaneers, for parties sent away on any particular design, to undertake some new adventure; the long absence of the canoe therefore created little surprise in the ships, which lay off at sea waiting without solicitude for her return; till Townley's ship happening to stand nearer to the shore than the rest, heard muskets fired in the lagune. He then sent a strong party in his canoes, which obliged the Spaniards to retreat from the rocks, and leave the passage free for the hitherto penned-up Buccaneers. Dampier gives the latitude of this lagune, 'about 16° 40' N.' [Sidenote: November. Alcatraz Rock. White Cliffs. River to the West of the Cliffs.] They coasted on Westward, with fair weather, and a current setting to the West. On November the 2d, they passed a rock called by the Spaniards the _Alcatraz_ (Pelican.) 'Five or six miles to the West of the rock are seven or eight white cliffs, which are remarkable, because there are none other so white and so thick together on all the coast. A dangerous shoal lies SbW from these cliffs, four or five miles off at sea. Two leagues to the West of these cliffs is a pretty large river, which forms a small Island at its mouth. The channel on the East side is shoal and sandy; the West channel is deep enough for canoes to enter.' The Spaniards had raised a breastwork on the banks of this channel, and they made a show of resisting the Buccaneers; but seeing they were determined on landing, they quitted the place; on which Dampier honestly remarks, 'One chief reason why the Spaniards are so frequently routed by us, though much our superiors in number, is, their want of fire-arms; for they have but few unless near their large garrisons.' [Sidenote: Snook, a Fish.] A large quantity of salt intended for salting the fish caught in the lagune, was taken here. Dampier says, 'The fish in these lagunes were of a kind called Snooks, which are neither sea-fish nor fresh-water fish; it is about a foot long, round, and as thick as the small of a man's leg, has a pretty long head, whitish scales, and is good meat.' [Sidenote: November 7th. High Land of Acapulco.] A Mulatto whom they took prisoner told them that a ship of twenty guns had lately arrived at _Acapulco_ from _Lima_. Townley and his crew had long been dissatisfied with their ship; and in hopes of getting a better, they stood towards the harbour of _Acapulco_. On the 7th, they made the high land over _Acapulco_, 'which is remarkable by a round hill standing between two other hills, both higher, the Westernmost of which is the biggest and the highest, and has two hillocks like two paps at the top.' Dampier gives the latitude of _Acapulco_ 17° N[67]. This was not near the usual time either of the departure or of the arrival of the Manila ships, and except at those times, _Acapulco_ is almost deserted on account of the situation being unhealthy. _Acapulco_ is described hot, unwholesome, pestered with gnats, and having nothing good but the harbour. Merchants depart from it as soon as they have transacted their business. Townley accordingly expected to bring off the _Lima_ ship quietly, and with little trouble. In the evening of the 7th, the ships being then so far from land that they could not be descried, Townley with 140 men departed in twelve canoes for the harbour of _Acapulco_. They did not reach _Port Marques_ till the second night; and on the third night they rowed softly and unperceived by the Spaniards into _Acapulco Harbour_. They found the _Lima_ ship moored close to the castle, and, after reconnoitring, thought it would not be in their power to bring her off; so they paddled back quietly out of the harbour, and returned to their ships, tired and disappointed. [Sidenote: Sandy Beach, West of Acapulco. Hill of Petaplan.] Westward from the Port of _Acapulco_, they passed a sandy bay or beach above twenty leagues in length, the sea all the way beating with such force on the shore that a boat could not approach with safety. 'There was clean anchoring ground at a mile or two from the shore. At the West end of this Bay, in 17° 30' N, is the Hill of _Petaplan_, which is a round point stretching out into the sea, and at a distance seems an Island[68].' This was reckoned twenty-five leagues from _Acapulco_. A little to the West of the hill are several round white rocks. They sailed within the rocks, having 11 fathoms depth, and anchored on the NW side of the hill. Their Mosquito men took here some small turtle and small jew-fish. They landed, and at an Indian village took a Mulatto woman and her children, whom they carried on board. They learnt from her that a caravan drawn by mules was going with flour and other goods to _Acapulco_, but that the carrier had stopped on the road from apprehension of the Buccaneers. [Sidenote: Chequetan.] The ships weighed their anchors, and ran about two leagues farther Westward, to a place called _Chequetan_, which Dampier thus describes: 'A mile and a half from the shore is a small Key (or Island) and within it is a very good harbour, where ships may careen: here is also a small river of fresh water, and wood enough.' [Sidenote: 14th. Estapa.] On the 14th, in the morning, about a hundred Buccaneers set off in search of the carrier, taking the woman prisoner for a guide. They landed a league to the West of _Chequetan_, at a place called _Estapa_, and their conductress led them through a wood, by the side of a river, about a league, which brought them to a savannah full of cattle; and here at a farm-house the carrier and his mules were lodged. He had 40 packs of flour, some chocolate, small cheeses, and earthenware. The eatables, with the addition of eighteen beeves which they killed, the Buccaneers laid on the backs of above fifty mules which were at hand, and drove them to their boats. A present of clothes was made to the woman, and she, with two of her children, were set at liberty; but the other child, a boy seven or eight years old, Swan kept, against the earnest intreaties of the mother. Dampier says, 'Captain Swan promised her to make much of him, and was as good as his word. He proved afterwards a fine boy for wit, courage, and dexterity.' [Sidenote: 21st. Hill of Thelupan.] They proceeded Westward along the coast, which was high land full of ragged hills, but with pleasant and fruitful vallies between. The 25th, they were abreast a hill, 'which towered above his fellows, and was divided in the top, making two small parts. It is in latitude 18° 8' N. The Spaniards mention a town called _Thelupan_ near this hill.' The 26th, the Captains Swan and Townley went in the canoes with 200 men, to seek the city of _Colima_, which was reported to be a rich place: but their search was fruitless. They rowed 20 leagues along shore, and found no good place for landing; neither did they see house or inhabitant, although they passed by a fine valley, called the _Valley of Maguella_, except that towards the end of their expedition, they saw a horseman, who they supposed had been stationed as a sentinel, for he rode off immediately on their appearance. They landed with difficulty, and followed the track of the horse on the sand, but lost it in the woods. [Sidenote: 28th. Volcano of Colima. Valley of Colima.] On the 28th, they saw the Volcano of _Colima_, which is in about 18° 36' N latitude, five or six leagues from the sea, and appears with two sharp points, from each of which issued flames or smoke. The _Valley of Colima_ is ten or twelve leagues wide by the sea: it abounds in cacao-gardens, fields of corn, and plantain walks. The coast is a sandy shore, on which the waves beat with violence. Eastward of the Valley the land is woody. A river ran here into the sea, with a shoal or bar at its entrance, which boats could not pass. On the West side of the river was savannah land. [Sidenote: December. Salagua.] December the 1st, they were near the Port of _Salagua_, which Dampier reckoned in latitude 18° 52' N. He says, 'it is only a pretty deep bay, divided in the middle with a rocky point, which makes, as it were, two harbours[69]. Ships may ride secure in either, but the West harbour is the best: the depth of water is 10 or 12 fathom, and a brook of fresh water runs into the sea there.' [Sidenote: Report of a great City named Oarrah.] Two hundred Buccaneers landed at _Salagua_, and finding a broad road which led inland, they followed it about four leagues, over a dry stony country, much overgrown with short wood, without seeing habitation or inhabitant; but in their return, they met and took prisoners two Mulattoes, who informed them that the road they had been travelling led to a great city called _Oarrah_, which was distant as far as a horse will travel in four days; and that there was no place of consequence nearer. The same prisoner said the _Manila_ ship was daily expected to stop at this part of the coast to land passengers; for that the arrival of the ships at _Acapulco_ from the _Philippines_ commonly happened about Christmas, and scarcely ever more than eight or ten days before or after. Swan and Townley sailed on for Cape _Corrientes_. Many among the crews were at this time taken ill with a fever and ague, which left the patients dropsical. Dampier says, the dropsy is a disease very common on this coast. He was one of the sufferers, and continued ill a long time; and several died of it. [Sidenote: The Land near Cape Corrientes. Coronada Hills. Cape Corrientes.] The coast Southward of _Cape Corrientes_, is of moderate height, and full of white cliffs. The inland country is high and barren, with sharp peaked hills. Northward of this rugged land, is a chain of mountains which terminates Eastward with a high steep mountain, which has three sharp peaks and resembles a crown; and is therefore called by the Spaniards _Coronada_. On the 11th they came in sight of _Cape Corrientes_. When the _Cape_ bore NbW, the _Coronada_ mountain bore ENE[70]. On arriving off _Cape Corrientes_, the buccaneer vessels spread, for the advantage of enlarging their lookout, the Cygnet taking the outer station at about ten leagues distance from the _Cape_. Provisions however soon became scarce, on which account Townley's tender and some of the canoes were sent to the land to seek a supply. The canoes rowed up along shore against a Northerly wind to the _Bay de Vanderas_; but the bark could not get round _Cape Corrientes_. [Sidenote: 18th.] On the 18th, Townley complained he wanted fresh water, whereupon the ships quitted their station near the Cape, and sailed to some small Islands called the _Keys of Chametly_, which are situated to the SE of _Cape Corrientes_, to take in fresh water. The descriptions of the coast of _New Spain_ given by Dampier, in his account of his voyage with the Buccaneers, contain many particulars of importance which are not to be found in any other publication. Dampier's manuscript and the printed Narrative frequently differ, and it is sometimes apparent that the difference is not the effect of inadvertence, or mistake in the press, but that it was intended as a correction from a reconsideration of the subject. [Sidenote: Keys or Islands of Chametly.] The printed Narrative says at this part, 'These _Keys_ or _Islands_ of _Chametly_ are about 16 or 18 leagues to the Eastward of _Cape Corrientes_. They are small, low, woody, and environed with rocks. There are five of them lying in the form of a half moon, not a mile from the shore of the main, and between them and the main land is very good riding secure from any wind[71].' In the manuscript it is said, 'the Islands _Chametly_ make a secure port. They lie eight or nine leagues from _Port Navidad_.' It is necessary to explain that Dampier, in describing his navigation along the coast of _New Spain_, uses the terms Eastward and Westward, not according to the precise meaning of the words, but to signify being more or less advanced along the coast from the _Bay of Panama_. By Westward, he invariably means more advanced towards the _Gulf of California_; by Eastward, the contrary. [Sidenote: Form a convenient Port.] The ships entered within the _Chametly Islands_ by the channel at the SE end, and anchored in five fathoms depth, on a bottom of clean sand. They found there good fresh water and wood, and caught plenty of rock-fish with hook and line. No inhabitants were seen, but there were huts, made for the temporary convenience of fishermen who occasionally went there to fish for the inhabitants of the city of _La Purificacion_. These Islands, forming a commodious port affording fresh water and other conveniencies, from the smallness of their size are not made visible in the Spanish charts of the coast of _New Spain_ in present use[72]. Whilst the ships watered at the _Keys_ or _Isles of Chametly_, a party was sent to forage on the main land, whence they carried off about 40 bushels of maize. On the 22d, they left the _Keys of Chametly_, and returned to their cruising station off _Cape Corrientes_, where they were rejoined by the canoes which had been to the _Bay de Vanderas_. Thirty-seven men had landed there from the canoes, who went three miles into the country, where they encountered a body of Spaniards, consisting both of horse and foot. The Buccaneers took benefit of a small wood for shelter against the attack of the horse, yet the Spaniards rode in among them; but the Spanish Captain and some of their foremost men being killed, the rest retreated. Four of the Buccaneers were killed, and two desperately wounded. The Spanish infantry were more numerous than the horse, but they did not join in the attack, because they were armed only with lances and swords; 'nevertheless,' says Dampier, 'if they had come in, they would certainly have destroyed all our men.' The Buccaneers conveyed their two wounded men to the water side on horses, one of which, when they arrived at their canoes, they killed and drest; not daring to venture into the savannah for a bullock, though they saw many grazing. [Sidenote: 1686. January. Bay de Vanderas.] Swan and Townley preserved their station off _Cape Corrientes_ only till the 1st of January, 1686, when their crews became impatient for fresh meat, and they stood into the _Bay de Vanderas_, to hunt for beef. The depth of water in this Bay is very great, and the ships were obliged to anchor in 60 fathoms. [Sidenote: Valley of Vanderas.] 'The _Valley of Vanderas_ is about three leagues wide, with a sandy bay against the sea, and smooth landing. In the midst of this bay (or beach) is a fine river, into which boats may enter; but it is brackish at the latter part of the dry season, which is in March, and part of April. The Valley is enriched with fruitful savannahs, mixed with groves of trees fit for any use; and fruit-trees grow wild in such plenty as if nature designed this place only for a garden. The savannahs are full of fat bulls and cows, and horses; but no house was in sight.' Here they remained hunting beeves, till the 7th of the month. Two hundred and forty men landed every day, sixty of whom were stationed as a guard, whilst the rest pursued the cattle; the Spaniards all the time appearing in large companies on the nearest hills. The Buccaneers killed and salted meat sufficient to serve them two months, which expended all their salt. Whilst they were thus occupied in the pleasant valley of _Vanderas_, the galeon from _Manila_ sailed past _Cape Corrientes_, and pursued her course in safety to _Acapulco_. This they learnt afterwards from prisoners; but it was by no means unexpected: on the contrary, they were in general so fully persuaded it would be the consequence of their going into the _Bay de Vanderas_, that they gave up all intention of cruising for her afterwards. [Sidenote: Swan and Townley part company.] The main object for which Townley had gone thus far Northward being disposed of, he and his crew resolved to return Southward. Some Darien Indians had remained to this time with Swan: they were now committed to the care of Townley, and the two ships broke off consortship, and parted company. CHAP. XIX. _The =Cygnet= and her Crew on the Coast of =Nueva Galicia=, and at the =Tres Marias Islands=._ [Sidenote: 1686. January. Coast of Nuevo Galicia.] Swan and his crew determined before they quitted the American coast, to visit some Spanish towns farther North, in the neighbourhood of rich mines, where they hoped to find good plunder, and to increase their stock of provisions for the passage across the _Pacific_ to _India_. [Sidenote: Point Ponteque.] January the 7th, the Cygnet and her tender sailed from the _Valley of Vanderas_, and before night, passed _Point Ponteque_, the Northern point of the _Vanderas Bay_. _Point Ponteque_ is high, round, rocky, and barren: at a distance it makes like an Island. Dampier reckoned it 10 leagues distant, in a direction N 20° W, from _Cape Corrientes_; the variation of the compass observed near the _Cape_ being 4° 28' Easterly[73]. A league West from _Point Ponteque_ are two small barren Islands, round which lie scattered several high, sharp, white rocks. The Cygnet passed on the East side of the two Islands, the channel between them and _Point Ponteque_ appearing clear of danger. 'The sea-coast beyond _Point Ponteque_ runs in NE, all ragged land, and afterwards out again NNW, making many ragged points, with small sandy bays between. The land by the sea is low and woody; but the inland country is full of high, sharp, rugged, and barren hills.' Along this coast they had light sea and land breezes, and fair weather. They anchored every evening, and got under sail in the morning with the land-wind. [Sidenote: January 14th. White Rock, 21° 51' N.] On the 14th, they had sight of a small white rock, which had resemblance to a ship under sail. Dampier gives its latitude 21° 51' N, and its distance from _Cape Corrientes_ 34 leagues. It is three leagues from the main, with depth in the channel, near the Island, twelve or fourteen fathoms. [Sidenote: 15th. 16th.] The 15th, at noon, the latitude was 22° 11' N. The coast here lay in a NNW direction. The 16th, they steered 'NNW as the land runs.' At noon the latitude was 22° 41' N. The coast was sandy and shelving, with soundings at six fathoms depth a league distant. The sea set heavy on the shore. They caught here many cat-fish. [Sidenote: 20th. Chametlan Isles, 23° 11' N.] On the 20th, they anchored a league to the East of a small groupe of Isles, named the _Chametlan Isles_, after the name of the District or Captainship (_Alcaldia mayor_) in the province of _Culiacan_, opposite to which they are situated. Dampier calls them the _Isles of Chametly_, 'different from the _Isles_ or _Keys of Chametly_ at which we had before anchored. These are six small Islands in latitude 23° 11' N, about three leagues distant from the main-land[74], where a salt lake has its outlet into the sea. Their meridian distance from _Cape Corrientes_ is 23 leagues [West.] The coast here, and for about ten leagues before coming abreast these Islands, lies NW and SE.' [Sidenote: The Penguin Fruit.] On the _Chametlan Isles_ they found guanoes, and seals; and a fruit of a sharp pleasant taste, by Dampier called the Penguin fruit, 'of a kind which grows so abundantly in the _Bay of Campeachy_ that there is no passing for their high prickly leaves.' [Sidenote: Rio de Sal, and Salt-water Lagune, 23° 30' N.] In the main-land, six or seven leagues NNW from the _Isles of Chametlan_, is a narrow opening into a _lagune_, with depth of water sufficient for boats to enter. This _lagune_ extends along the back of the sea-beach about 12 leagues, and makes many low Mangrove Islands. The latitude given of the entrance above-mentioned is 23° 30' N, and it is called by the Spaniards _Rio de Sal_. Half a degree Northward of _Rio de Sal_ was said to be the River _Culiacan_, with a rich Spanish town of the same name. Swan went with the canoes in search of it, and followed the coast 30 leagues from abreast the _Chametlan Isles_, without finding any river to the North of the _Rio de Sal_. All the coast was low and sandy, and the sea beat high on the shore. [Sidenote: 30th.] The ships did not go farther within the _Gulf_ than to 23° 45' N, in which latitude, on the 30th, they anchored in eight fathoms depth, three miles distant from the main-land; the meridian distance from _Cape Corrientes_ being 34 leagues West, by Dampier's reckoning. [Sidenote: The Mexican, a copious Language.] In their return Southward, Swan with the canoes, entered the _Rio de Sal Lagune_, and at an _estancian_ on the Western side, they took the owner prisoner. They found in his house a few bushels of maize; but the cattle had been driven out of their reach. Dampier relates, 'The old Spanish gentleman who was taken at the _Estancian_ near the _Rio de Sal_ was a very intelligent person. He had been a great traveller in the kingdom of _Mexico_, and spoke the Mexican language very well. He said it is a copious language, and much esteemed by the Spanish gentry in those parts, and of great use all over the kingdom; and that many Indian languages had some dependency on it.' [Sidenote: Mazatlan.] The town of _Mazatlan_ was within 5 leagues of the NE part of the _lagune_, and Swan with 150 men went thither. The inhabitants wounded some of the Buccaneers with arrows, but could make no effectual resistance. There were rich mines near _Mazatlan_, and the Spaniards of _Compostella_, which is the chief town in this district, kept slaves at work in them. The Buccaneers however found no gold here, but carried off some Indian corn. [Sidenote: February 2d. Rosario, an Indian Town.] February the 2d, the canoes went to an Indian town called _Rosario_, situated on the banks of a river and nine miles within its entrance. '_Rosario_ was a fine little town of 60 or 70 houses, with a good church.' The river produced gold, and mines were in the neighbourhood; but here, as at _Mazatlan_, they got no other booty than Indian corn, of which they conveyed to their ships between 80 and 90 bushels. [Sidenote: 3d. River Rosario, 22° 51' N. Sugar-loaf Hill. Caput Cavalli.] On the 3d, the ships anchored near the _River Rosario_ in seven fathoms oozy ground, a league from the shore; the latitude of the entrance of the river 22° 51' N. A small distance within the coast and bearing NEbN from the ship, was a round hill like a sugar-loaf; and North Westward of that hill, was another 'pretty long hill,' called _Caput Cavalli_, or the _Horse's Head_. [Sidenote: 8th.] On the 8th, the canoes were sent to search for a river named the _Oleta_, which was understood to lie in latitude 22° 27' N; but the weather proving foggy they could not find it. [Sidenote: 11th. Maxentelbo Rock. Hill of Xalisco.] On the 11th, they anchored abreast the South point of the entrance of a river called the _River de Santiago_, in seven fathoms soft oozy bottom, about two miles from the shore; a high white rock, called _Maxentelbo_, bore from their anchorage WNW, distant about three leagues, and a high hill in the country, with a saddle or bending, called the _Hill Xalisco_, bore SE. [Sidenote: River of Santiago, 22° 15' N.] 'The _River St. Iago_ is in latitude 22° 15' N, the entrance lies East and West with the _Rock Maxentelbo_. It is one of the principal rivers on this coast: there is ten feet water on the bar at low-water; but how much the tide rises and falls, was not observed. The mouth of the river is nearly half a mile broad, with very smooth entering. Within the entrance it widens, for three or four rivers meet there, and issue all out together. The water is brackish a great way up; but fresh water is to be had by digging two or three feet deep in a sandy bay just at the mouth of the river. Northward of the entrance, and NEbE from _Maxentelbo_, is a round white rock.' 'Between the latitudes 22° 41' and 22° 10' N, which includes the _River de Santiago_, the coast lies NNW and SSE[75].' No inhabitants were seen near the entrance of the _River St. Iago_, but the country had a fruitful appearance, and Swan sent seventy men in four canoes up the river, to seek for some town or village. After two days spent in examining different creeks and rivers, they came to a field of maize which was nearly ripe, and immediately began to gather; but whilst they were loading the canoes, they saw an Indian, whom they caught, and from him they learnt that at four leagues distance from them was a town named _S^{ta} Pecaque_. With this information they returned to the ship; and the same evening, Swan with eight canoes and 140 men, set off for _S^{ta} Pecaque_, taking the Indian for a guide. This was on the 15th of the month. [Sidenote: 16th.] They rowed during the night about five leagues up the river, and at six o'clock in the morning, landed at a place where it was about a pistol-shot wide, with pretty high banks on each side, the country plain and even. Twenty men were left with the canoes, and Swan with the rest marched towards the town, by a road which led partly through woodland, and partly through savannas well stocked with cattle. They arrived at the town by ten in the forenoon, and entered without opposition, the inhabitants having quitted it on their approach. [Sidenote: Town of S^{ta} Pecaque.] The town of _Santa Pecaque_ was small, regularly built after the Spanish mode, with a Parade in the middle, and balconies to the houses which fronted the parade. It had two churches. The inhabitants were mostly Spaniards, and their principal occupation was husbandry. It is distant from _Compostella_ about 21 leagues. _Compostella_ itself was at that time reckoned not to contain more than seventy white families, which made about one-eighth part of its inhabitants. There were large storehouses, with maize, salt-fish, salt, and sugar, at _Santa Pecaque_, provisions being kept there for the subsistence of some hundreds of slaves who worked in silver mines not far distant. The chief purpose for which the Cygnet had come so far North on this coast was to get provisions, and here was more than sufficient to supply her wants. For transporting it to their canoes, Swan divided the men into two parties, which it was agreed should go alternately, one party constantly to remain to guard the stores in the town. The afternoon of the first day was passed in taking rest and refreshment, and in collecting horses. [Sidenote: 17th.] The next morning, fifty-seven men, with a number of horses laden with maize, each man also carrying a small quantity, set out for the canoes, to which they arrived, and safely deposited their burthens. The Spaniards had given some disturbance to the men who guarded the canoes, and had wounded one, on which account they were reinforced with seven men from the carrying party; and in the afternoon, the fifty returned to _Santa Pecaque_. Only one trip was made in the course of the day. [Sidenote: 18th.] On the morning of the 18th, the party which had guarded the town the day before, took their turn for carrying. They loaded 24 horses, and every man had his burthen. This day they took a prisoner, who told them, that nearly a thousand men, of all colours, Spaniards, Indians, Negroes, and Mulattoes, were assembled at the town of _Santiago_, which was only three leagues distant from _Santa Pecaque_. This information made Captain Swan of opinion, that separating his men was attended with much danger; and he determined that the next morning he would quit the town with the whole party. In the mean time he employed his men to catch as many horses as they could, that when they departed they might carry off a good load. [Sidenote: February 19th.] On the 19th, Swan called his men out early, and gave order to prepare for marching; but the greater number refused to alter the mode they had first adopted, and said they would not abandon the town until all the provision in it was conveyed to the canoes. Swan was forced to acquiesce, and to allow one-half of the company to go as before. They had fifty-four horses laden; Swan advised them to tie the horses one to another, and the men to keep in two bodies, twenty-five before, and the same number behind. His directions however were not followed: 'the men would go their own way, every man leading his horse.' The Spaniards had before observed their careless manner of marching, and had prepared their plan of attack for this morning, making choice of the ground they thought most for their advantage, and placing men there in ambush. The Buccaneer convoy had not been gone above a quarter of an hour when those who kept guard in the town, heard the report of guns. Captain Swan called on them to march out to the assistance of their companions; but some even then opposed him, and spoke with contempt of the danger and their enemies, till two horses, saddled, with holsters, and without riders, came galloping into the town frightened, and one had at its side a carabine newly discharged. [Sidenote: Buccaneers defeated and slain by the Spaniards.] On this additional sign that some event had taken place which it imported them to know, Swan immediately marched out of the town, and all his men followed him. When they came to the place where the engagement had happened, they beheld their companions that had gone forth from the town that morning, every man lying dead in the road, stripped, and so mangled that scarcely any one could be known. This was the most severe defeat the Buccaneers suffered in all their _South Sea_ enterprises. The party living very little exceeded the number of those who lay dead before them, yet the Spaniards made no endeavour to interrupt their retreat, either in their march to the canoes, or in their falling down the river, but kept at a distance. 'It is probable,' says Dampier, 'the Spaniards did not cut off so many of our men without loss of many of their own. We lost this day fifty-four Englishmen and nine blacks; and among the slain was my ingenious friend Mr. Ringrose, who wrote that part of the _History of the Buccaneers_ which relates to Captain Sharp. He had engaged in this voyage as supercargo of Captain Swan's ship.'--'Captain Swan had been forewarned by his astrologer of the great danger they were in; and several of the men who went in the first party had opposed the division of their force: some of them foreboded their misfortune, and heard as they lay down in the church in the night, grievous groanings which kept them from sleeping[76].' Swan and his surviving crew were discouraged from attempting any thing more on the coast of _New Galicia_, although they had laid up but a small stock of provisions. On the 21st, they sailed from the _River of St. Jago_ for the South Cape of _California_, where it was their intention to careen the ship; but the wind had settled in the NW quarter, and after struggling against it a fortnight, on the 7th of March, they anchored in a bay at the East end of the middle of the _Tres Marias Islands_, in eight fathoms clean sand. [Sidenote: March. At the Middle Island of the Tres Marias.] The next day, they took a birth within a quarter of a mile of the shore; the outer points of the bay bearing ENE and SSW. None of the _Tres Marias Islands_ were inhabited. Swan named the one at which he had anchored, _Prince George's Island_. Dampier describes them of moderate height, and the Westernmost Island to be the largest of the three. 'The soil is stony and dry, producing much of a shrubby kind of wood, troublesome to pass; but in some parts grow plenty of straight large cedars. [Sidenote: A Root used as Food.] The sea-shore is sandy, and there, a green prickly plant grows, whose leaves are much like the penguin leaf; the root is like the root of the _Sempervive_, but larger, and when baked in an oven is reckoned good to eat. The Indians of _California_ are said to have great part of their subsistence from these roots. We baked some, but none of us greatly cared for them. They taste exactly like the roots of our English Burdock boiled.' At this Island were guanoes, raccoons, rabbits, pigeons, doves, fish, turtle, and seal. They careened here, and made a division of the store of provisions, two-thirds to the Cygnet and one-third to the Tender, 'there being one hundred eaters in the ship, and fifty on board the tender.' The maize they had saved measured 120 bushels. [Sidenote: A Dropsy cured by a Sand Bath.] Dampier relates the following anecdote of himself at this place. 'I had been a long time sick of a dropsy, a distemper whereof many of our men died; so here I was laid and covered all but my head in the hot sand. I endured it near half an hour, and then was taken out. I sweated exceedingly while I was in the sand, and I believe it did me much good, for I grew well soon after.' This was the dry season, and they could not find here a sufficient supply of fresh water, which made it necessary for them to return to the Continent. Before sailing, Swan landed a number of prisoners, Spaniards and Indians, which would have been necessary on many accounts besides that of the scantiness of provisions, if it had been his design to have proceeded forthwith Westward for the _East Indies_; but as he was going again to the American coast, which was close at hand, the turning his prisoners ashore on a desolate Island, appears to have been in revenge for the disastrous defeat sustained at _S^{ta} Pecaque_, and for the Spaniards having given no quarter on that occasion. [Sidenote: Bay of Vanderas.] They sailed on the 26th, and two days after, anchored in the _Bay of Vanderas_ near the river at the bottom of the bay; but the water of this river was now brackish. Search was made along the South shore of the bay, and two or three leagues towards _Cape Corrientes_, a small brook of good fresh water was found; and good anchorage near to a small round Island which lies half a mile from the main, and about four leagues NEastward of the Cape. Just within this Island they brought the ships to anchor, in 25 fathoms depth, the brook bearing from them E-1/2N half a mile distant, and _Point Ponteque_ NWbN six leagues. The Mosquito men struck here nine or ten jew-fish, the heads and finny pieces of which served for present consumption, and the rest was salted for sea-store. The maize and salted fish composed the whole of their stock of eatables for their passage across the _Pacific_, and at a very straitened allowance would scarcely be sufficient to hold out sixty days. CHAP. XX. _The =Cygnet=. Her Passage across the =Pacific Ocean=. At the =Ladrones=. At =Mindanao=._ [Sidenote: 1686. March. The Cygnet quits the American Coast.] March the 31st, they sailed from the American coast, steering at first SW, and afterwards more Westerly till they were in latitude 13° N, in which parallel they kept. 'The kettle was boiled but once a day,' says Dampier, 'and there was no occasion to call the men to victuals. All hands came up to see the Quarter-master share it, and he had need to be exact. We had two dogs and two cats on board, and they likewise had a small allowance given them, and they waited with as much eagerness to see it shared as we did.' [Sidenote: Large flight of Birds. Lat. 13° N. Long. 180°.] In this passage they saw neither fish nor fowl of any kind, except at one time, when by Dampier's reckoning they were 4975 miles West from _Cape Corrientes_, and then, numbers of the sea-birds called boobies were flying near the ships, which were supposed to come from some rocks not far distant. Their longitude at this time may be estimated at about 180 degrees from the meridian of Greenwich[77]. [Sidenote: May 21st.] Fortunately, they had a fresh trade-wind, and made great runs every day. 'On May the 20th, which,' says Dampier, 'we begin to call the 21st, we were in latitude 12° 50' N, and steering West. [Sidenote: Shoals and Breakers SbW-1/2W 10 or 11 leagues from the S end of Guahan. Bank de Santa Rosa.] At two p. m. the bark tender being two leagues ahead of the Cygnet, came into shoal water, and those on board plainly saw rocks under her, but no land was in sight. They hauled on a wind to the Southward, and hove the lead, and found but four fathoms water. They saw breakers to the Westward. They then wore round, and got their starboard tacks on board and stood Northward. The Cygnet in getting up to the bark, ran over a shoal bank, where the bottom was seen, and fish among the rocks; but the ship ran past it before we could heave the lead. Both vessels stood to the Northward, keeping upon a wind, and sailed directly North, having the wind at ENE, till five in the afternoon, having at that time run eight miles and increased our latitude so many minutes. We then saw the Island _Guam_ [_Guahan_] bearing NNE, distant from us about eight leagues, which gives the latitude of the Island (its South end) 13° 20' N. We did not observe the variation of the compass at _Guam_. At _Cape Corrientes_ we found it 4° 28' Easterly, and an observation we made when we had gone about a third of the passage, shewed it to be the same. I am inclined to think it was less at _Guam_[78].' The shoal above mentioned is called by the Spaniards the _Banco de Santa Rosa_, and the part over which the Cygnet passed, according to the extract from Dampier, is about SbW-1/2W from the South end of _Guahan_, distant ten or eleven leagues. [Sidenote: At Guahan.] An hour before midnight, they anchored on the West side of _Guahan_, a mile from the shore. The Spaniards had here a small Fort, and a garrison of thirty soldiers; but the Spanish Governor resided at another part of the Island. As the ships anchored, a Spanish priest in a canoe went on board, believing them to be Spaniards from _Acapulco_. He was treated with civility, but detained as a kind of hostage, to facilitate any negociation necessary for obtaining provisions; and Swan sent a present to the Spanish Governor by the Indians of the canoe. No difficulty was experienced on this head. Both Spaniards, and the few natives seen here, were glad to dispose of their provisions to so good a market as the buccaneer ships. Dampier conjectured the number of the natives at this time on _Guahan_ not to exceed a hundred. In the last insurrection, which was a short time before Eaton stopped at the _Ladrones_, the natives, finding they could not prevail against the Spaniards, destroyed their plantations, and went to other Islands. 'Those of the natives who remained in _Guahan_,' says Dampier, 'if they were not actually concerned in that broil, their hearts were bent against the Spaniards; for they offered to carry us to the Fort and assist us to conquer the Island.' Whilst Swan lay at _Guahan_, the Spanish Acapulco ship came in sight of the Island. The Governor immediately sent off notice to her of the Buccaneer ships being in the road, on which she altered her course towards the South, and by so doing got among the shoals, where she struck off her rudder, and did not get clear for three days. The natives at _Guahan_ told the Buccaneers that the Acapulco ship was in sight of the Island, 'which,' says Dampier, 'put our men in a great heat to go out after her, but Captain Swan persuaded them out of that humour.' [Sidenote: Flying Proe, or Sailing Canoe.] Dampier praises the ingenuity of the natives of the _Ladrone Islands_, and particularly in the construction of their sailing canoes, or, as they are sometimes called, their flying proes, of which he has given the following description. 'Their Proe or Sailing Canoe is sharp at both ends; the bottom is of one piece of good substance neatly hollowed, and is about 28 feet long; the under, or keel part is made round, but inclining to a wedge; the upper part is almost flat, having a very gentle hollow, and is about a foot broad: from hence, both sides of the boat are carried up to about five feet high with narrow plank, and each end of the boat turns up round very prettily. But what is very singular, one side of the boat is made perpendicular like a wall, while the other side is rounding as other vessels are, with a pretty full belly. The dried husks of the cocoa-nuts serve for oakum. At the middle of the vessel the breadth aloft is four or five feet, or more, according to the length of the boat. The mast stands exactly in the middle, with a long yard that peeps up and down like a ship's mizen yard; one end of it reaches down to the head of the boat, where it is placed in a notch made purposely to keep it fast: the other end hangs over the stern. To this yard the sail is fastened, and at the foot of the sail is another small yard to keep the sail out square, or to roll the sail upon when it blows hard; for it serves instead of a reef to take up the sail to what degree they please. Along the belly side of the boat, parallel with it, at about seven feet distance, lies another boat or canoe very small, being a log of very light wood, almost as long as the great boat, but not above a foot and a half wide at the upper part, and sharp like a wedge at each end. The little boat is fixed firm to the other by two bamboos placed across the great boat, one near each end, and its use is to keep the great boat upright from oversetting. They keep the flat side of the great boat against the wind, and the belly side, consequently, with its little boat, is upon the lee[79]. The vessel has a head at each end so as to be able to sail with either foremost: they need not tack as our vessels do, but when they ply to windward and are minded to make a board the other way, they only alter the setting of the sail by shifting the end of the yard, and they take the broad paddle with which they steer instead of a rudder, to the other end of the vessel. I have been particular in describing these their sailing canoes, because I believe they sail the best of any boats in the world. I tried the swiftness of one of them with our log: we had twelve knots on our reel, and she ran it all out before the half-minute glass was half out. I believe she would run 24 miles in an hour. It was very pleasant to see the little boat running so swift by the other's side. I was told that one of these proes being sent express from _Guahan_ to _Manila_, [a distance above 480 leagues] performed the voyage in four days.' [Sidenote: Bread Fruit.] Dampier has described the Bread-fruit, which is among the productions of the _Ladrone Islands_. He had never seen nor heard of it any where but at these Islands. Provisions were obtained in such plenty at _Guahan_, that in the two vessels they salted above fifty hogs for sea use. The friar was released, with presents in return for his good offices, and to compensate for his confinement. [Sidenote: June.] June the 2d, they sailed from _Guahan_ for the Island _Mindanao_. The weather was uncertain: 'the Westerly winds were not as yet in strength, and the Easterly winds commonly over-mastered them and brought the ships on their way to _Mindanao_.' [Sidenote: Eastern side of Mindanao, and the Island St. John.] There is much difference between the manuscript Journal of Dampier and the published Narrative, concerning the geography of the East side of _Mindanao_. The Manuscript says, 'We arrived off _Mindanao_ the 21st day of June; but being come in with the land, knew not what part of the Island the city was in, therefore we run down to the Northward, between _Mindanao_ and _St. John_, and came to an anchor in a bay which lieth in six degrees North latitude.' In the printed Narrative it is said, 'The 21st day of June, we arrived at the _Island St. John_, which is on the East side of _Mindanao_, and distant from it 3 or 4 leagues. It is in latitude about 7° or 8° North. This Island is in length about 38 leagues, stretching NNW and SSE, and is in breadth about 24 leagues in the middle of the Island. The Northernmost end is broader, and the Southern narrower. This Island is of good height, and is full of small hills. The land at the SE end (where I was ashore) is of a black fat mould; and the whole Island seems to partake of the same, by the vast number of large trees that it produceth, for it looks all over like one great grove. As we were passing by the SE end, we saw a canoe of the natives under the shore, and one of our boats went after to have spoken with her, but she ran to the shore, and the people leaving her, fled to the woods. We saw no more people here, nor sign of inhabitant at this end. When we came aboard our ship again, we steered away for the Island _Mindanao_, which was fair in sight of us, it being about 10 leagues distant from this part of _St. John's_. The 22d day, we came within a league of the East side of _Mindanao_, and having the wind at SE, we steered towards the North end, keeping on the East side till we came into the latitude of 7° 40' N, and there we anchored in a small bay, a mile from the shore, in 10 fathoms, rocky foul ground; _Mindanao_ being guarded on the East side by _St. John's Island_, we might as reasonably have expected to find the harbour and city on this side as any where else; but coming into the latitude in which we judged the city might be, we found no canoes or people that indicated a city or place of trade being near at hand, though we coasted within a league of the shore[80].' This difference between the manuscript and printed Journal cannot well be accounted for. The most remarkable particular of disagreement is in the latitude of the bay wherein they anchored. At this bay they had communication with the inhabitants, and learnt that the _Mindanao City_ was to the Westward. They could not prevail on any Mindanao man to pilot them; the next day, however, they weighed anchor, and sailed back Southward, till they came to a part they supposed to be the SE end of _Mindanao_, and saw two small Islands about three leagues distant from it. [Sidenote: Sarangan and Candigar.] There is reason to believe that the two small Islands here noticed were _Sarangan_ and _Candigar_; according to which, Dampier's _Island St. John_ will be the land named _Cape San Augustin_ in the present charts. And hence arises a doubt whether the land of _Cape San Augustin_ is not an Island separate from _Mindanao_. Dampier's navigation between them does not appear to have been far enough to the Northward to ascertain whether he was in a Strait or a Gulf. [Sidenote: July. Harbour or Sound on the South Coast of Mindanao.] The wind blew constant and fresh from the Westward, and it took them till the 4th of July to get into a harbour or sound a few leagues to the NW from the two small Islands. This harbour or sound ran deep into the land; at the entrance it is only two miles across, but within it is three leagues wide, with seven fathoms depth, and there is good depth for shipping four or five leagues up, but with some rocky foul ground. On the East side of this Bay are small rivers and brooks of fresh water. The country on the West side was uncultivated land, woody, and well stocked with wild deer, which had been used to live there unmolested, no people inhabiting on that side of the bay. Near the shore was a border of savanna or meadow land which abounded in long grass. Dampier says, 'the adjacent woods are a covert for the deer in the heat of the day; but mornings and evenings they feed in the open plains, as thick as in our parks in England. I never saw any where such plenty of wild deer. We found no hindrance to our killing as many as we pleased, and the crews of both the ships were fed with venison all the time we remained here.' They quitted this commodious Port on the 12th; the weather had become moderate, and they proceeded Westward for the River and City of _Mindanao_. The Southern part of the Island appeared better peopled than the Eastern part; they passed many fishing boats, 'and now and then a small village.' [Sidenote: River of Mindanao.] On the 18th, they anchored before the _River of Mindanao_, in 15 fathoms depth, the bottom hard sand, about two miles distant from the shore, and three or four miles from a small Island which was without them to the Southward. The river is small, and had not more than ten or eleven feet depth over the bar at spring tides. Dampier gives the latitude of the entrance 6° 22' N. [Sidenote: City of Mindanao.] The buccaneer ships on anchoring saluted with seven guns, under English colours, and the salute was returned with three guns from the shore. 'The City of _Mindanao_ is about two miles from the sea. It is a mile long, of no great breadth, winding with the banks of the river, on the right hand going up, yet it has many houses on the opposite side of the river.' The houses were built upon posts, and at this time, as also during a great part of the succeeding month, the weather was rainy, and 'the city seemed to stand as in a pond, so that there was no passing from one house to another but in canoes.' The Island _Mindanao_ was divided into a number of small states. The port at which the Cygnet and her tender now anchored, with a large district of country adjacent, was under the dominion of a Sultan or Prince, who appears to have been one of the most powerful in the Island. The Spaniards had not established their dominion over all the _Philippine Islands_, and the inhabitants of this place were more apprehensive of the Hollanders than of any other Europeans; and on that account expressed some discontent when they understood the Cygnet was not come for the purpose of making a settlement. On the afternoon of their arrival, Swan sent an officer with a present to the Sultan, consisting of scarlet cloth, gold lace, a scymitar, and a pair of pistols; and likewise a present to another great man who was called the General, of scarlet cloth and three yards of silver lace. The next day, Captain Swan went on shore and was admitted to an audience in form. The Sultan shewed him two letters from English merchants, expressing their wishes to establish a factory at _Mindanao_, to do which he said the English should be welcome. A few days after this audience, the Cygnet and tender went into the river, the former being lightened first to get her over the bar. Here, similar to the custom in the ports of _China_, an officer belonging to the Sultan went on board and measured the ships. Voyagers or travellers who visit strange countries, generally find, or think, it necessary to be wary and circumspect: mercantile voyagers are on the watch for occasions of profit, and the inquisitiveness of men of observation will be regarded with suspicion; all which, however familiarity of manners may be assumed, keeps cordiality at a distance, and causes them to continue strangers. The present visitors were differently circumstanced and of different character: their pursuits at _Mindanao_ were neither to profit by trade nor to make observation. Long confined with pockets full of money which they were impatient to exchange for enjoyment, with minds little troubled by considerations of economy, they at once entered into familiar intercourse with the natives, who were gained almost as much by the freedom of their manners as by their presents, and with whom they immediately became intimates and inmates. The same happened to Drake and his companions, when, returning enriched with spoil from the _South Sea_, they stopped at the Island _Java_; and we read no instance of Europeans arriving at such sociable and friendly intercourse with any of the natives of _India_, as they became with the people of _Java_ during the short time they remained there, except in the similarly circumstanced, instance of the crew of the Cygnet among the Mindanayans. By the length of their stay at _Mindanao_, Dampier was enabled to enter largely into descriptions of the natives, and of the country, and he has related many entertaining particulars concerning them. Those only in which the Buccaneers were interested will be noticed here. The Buccaneers were at first prodigal in their gifts. When any of them went on shore, they were welcomed and invited to the houses, and were courted to form particular attachments. Among many nations of the East a custom has been found to prevail, according to which, a stranger is expected to choose some individual native to be his friend or comrade; and a connexion so formed, and confirmed with presents, is regarded, if not as sacred, with such high respect, that it is held most dishonourable to break it. The visitor is at all times afterwards welcome to his comrade's house. The _tayoship_, with the ceremony of exchanging names, among the South Sea islanders, is a bond of fellowship of the same nature. The people of _Mindanao_ enlarged and refined upon this custom, and allowed to the stranger a _pagally_, or platonic friend of the other sex. The wives of the richest men may be chosen, and she is permitted to converse with her pagally in public. 'In a short time,' says Dampier, 'several of our men, such as had good clothes and store of gold, had a comrade or two, and as many pagallies.' Some of the crew hired, and some purchased, houses, in which they lived with their comrades and pagallies, and with a train of servants, as long as their means held out. 'Many of our Squires,' continues Dampier, 'were in no long time eased of the trouble of counting their money. This created a division of the crew into two parties, that is to say, of those who had money, and those who had none. As the latter party increased, they became dissatisfied and unruly for want of action, and continually urged the Captain to go to sea; which not being speedily complied with, they sold the ship's stores and the merchants' goods to procure arrack.' Those whose money held out, were not without their troubles. The Mindanayans were a people deadly in their resentments. Whilst the Cygnet lay at _Mindanao_, sixteen Buccaneers were buried, most of whom, Dampier says, died by poison. 'The people of _Mindanao_ are expert at poisoning, and will do it upon small occasions. Nor did our men want for giving offence either by rogueries, or by familiarities with their women, even before their husbands' faces. They have poisons which are slow and lingering; for some who were poisoned at _Mindanao_, did not die till many months after.' Towards the end of the year they began to make preparation for sailing. It was then discovered that the bottom of the tender was eaten through by worms in such a manner that she would scarcely swim longer in port, and could not possibly be made fit for sea. The Cygnet was protected by a sheathing which covered her bottom, the worms not being able to penetrate farther than to the hair which was between the sheathing and the main plank. [Sidenote: January, 1687.] In the beginning of January (1687), the Cygnet was removed to without the bar of the river. Whilst she lay there, and when Captain Swan was on shore, his Journal was accidentally left out, and thereby liable to the inspection of the crew, some of whom had the curiosity to look in it, and found there the misconduct of several individuals on board, noted down in a manner that seemed to threaten an after-reckoning. This discovery increased the discontents against Swan to such a degree, that when he heard of it he did not dare to trust himself on board, and the discontented party took advantage of his absence and got the ship under sail. Captain Swan sent on board Mr. Harthope, one of the Supercargoes, to see if he could effect a reconciliation. The principal mutineers shewed to Mr. Harthope the Captain's Journal, 'and repeated to him all his ill actions, and they desired that he would take the command of the ship; but he refused, and desired them to tarry a little longer whilst he went on shore and communed with the Captain, and he did not question but all differences would be reconciled. They said they would wait till two o'clock; but at four o'clock, Mr. Harthope not having returned, and no boat being seen coming from the shore, they made sail and put to sea with the ship, leaving their Commander and 36 of the crew at _Mindanao_.' Dampier was among those who went in the ship; but he disclaims having had any share in the mutiny. CHAP. XXI. _The =Cygnet= departs from =Mindanao=. At the =Ponghou Isles=. At the =Five Islands=. =Dampier's= Account of the =Five Islands=. They are named the =Bashee Islands=._ [Sidenote: 1687. January. South Coast of Mindanao.] It was on the 14th of January the Cygnet sailed from before the _River Mindanao_. The crew chose one John Reed, a Jamaica man, for their Captain. They steered Westward along the coast of the South side of the Island, 'which here tends WbS, the land of a good height, with high hills in the country.' The 15th, they were abreast a town named _Chambongo_ [in the charts _Samboangan_] which Dampier reckoned to be 30 leagues distant from the _River of Mindanao_. The Spaniards had formerly a fort there, and it is said to be a good harbour. 'At the distance of two or three leagues from the coast, are many small low Islands or Keys; and two or three leagues to the Southward of these Keys is a long Island stretching NE and SW about twelve leagues[81].' [Sidenote: Among the Philippine Islands.] When they were past the SW part of _Mindanao_, they sailed Northward towards _Manila_, plundering the country vessels that came in their way. What was seen here of the coasts is noticed slightly and with uncertainty. They met two Mindanao vessels laden with silks and calicoes; and near _Manila_ they took some Spanish vessels, one of which had a cargo of rice. [Sidenote: March. Pulo Condore.] From the _Philippine Islands_ they went to the Island _Pulo Condore_, where two of the men who had been poisoned at _Mindanao_, died. 'They were opened by the surgeon, in compliance with their dying request, and their livers were found black, light, and dry, like pieces of cork.' [Sidenote: In the China Seas.] From _Pulo Condore_ they went cruising to the _Gulf of Siam_, and to different parts of the _China Seas_. What their success was, Dampier did not think proper to tell, for it would not admit of being palliated under the term Buccaneering. Among their better projects and contrivances, one, which could only have been undertaken by men confident in their own seamanship and dexterity, was to search at the _Prata Island and Shoal_, for treasure which had been wrecked there, the recovery of which no one had ever before ventured to attempt. In pursuit of this scheme, they unluckily fell too far to leeward, and were unable to beat up against the wind. [Sidenote: July. Ponghou Isles. The Five Islands.] In July they went to the _Ponghou Islands_, expecting to find there a port which would be a safe retreat. On the 20th of that month, they anchored at one of the Islands, where they found a large town, and a Tartar garrison. This was not a place where they could rest with ease and security. Having the wind at SW, they again got under sail, and directed their course to look for some Islands which in the charts were laid down between _Formosa_ and _Luconia_, without any name, but marked with the figure 5 to denote their number. These Buccaneers, or rather pirates, had no other information concerning the _Five Islands_ than seeing them on the charts, and hoped to find them without inhabitants. Dampier's account of the _Five Islands_ would lose in many respects if given in any other than his own words, which therefore are here transcribed. [Sidenote: Dampier's Description of the Five Islands.] 'August the 6th, We made the _Islands_; the wind was at South, and we fetched in with the Westernmost, which is the largest, on which we saw goats, but could not get anchor-ground, therefore we stood over to others about three leagues from this, and the next forenoon anchored in a small Bay on the East side of the Easternmost Island in fifteen fathoms, a cable's length from the shore; and before our sails were furled we had a hundred small boats aboard, with three, four, and some with six men in them. [Sidenote: August 7th.] There were three large towns on the shore within the distance of a league. Most of our people being aloft (for we had been forced to turn in close with all sail abroad, and when we anchored, furled all at once) and our deck being soon full of Indian natives, we were at first alarmed, and began to get our small-arms ready; but they were very quiet, only they picked up such old iron as they found upon our deck. At last, one of our men perceived one of them taking an iron pin out of a gun-carriage, and laid hold of him, upon which he bawled out, and the rest leaped into their boats or overboard, and they all made away for the shore. But when we perceived their fright, we made much of him we had in hold, and gave him a small piece of iron, with which we let him go, and he immediately leaped overboard and swam to his consorts, who hovered near the ship to see the issue. Some of the boats came presently aboard again, and they were always afterward very honest and civil. We presently after this, sent our canoe on shore, and they made the crew welcome with a drink they call Bashee, and they sold us some hogs. We bought a fat goat for an old iron hoop, a hog of 70 or 80 _lbs._ weight for two or three pounds of iron, and their bashee drink and roots for old nails or bullets. Their hogs were very sweet, but many were meazled. We filled fresh water here at a curious brook close by the ship. 'We lay here till the 12th, when we weighed to seek for a better anchoring place. We plied to windward, and passed between the South end of this Island and the North end of another Island South of this. These Islands were both full of inhabitants, but there was no good riding. We stopped a tide under the Southern Island. The tide runs there very strong, the flood to the North, and it rises and falls eight feet. It was the 15th day of the month before we found a place we might anchor at and careen, which was at another Island not so big as either of the former. [Illustration: Map of the BASHEE Islands.] 'We anchored near the North East part of this smaller Island, against a small sandy bay, in seven fathoms clean hard sand, a quarter of a mile from the shore. We presently set up a tent on shore, and every day some of us went to the towns of the natives, and were kindly entertained by them. Their boats also came on board to traffic with us every day; so that besides provision for present use, we bought and salted 70 or 80 good fat hogs, and laid up a good stock of potatoes and yams. [Sidenote: Names given to the Islands. Orange Island.] 'These Islands lie in 20° 20' N.[82] As they are laid down in the charts marked only with a figure of 5, we gave them what names we pleased. The Dutchmen who were among us named the Westernmost, which is the largest, the _Prince of Orange's Island_. It is seven or eight leagues long, about two leagues wide, and lies almost North and South. _Orange Island_ was not inhabited. It is high land, flat and even at the top, with steep cliffs against the sea; for which reason we could not go ashore there, as we did on all the rest. [Sidenote: Grafton Island.] 'The Island where we first anchored, we called the _Duke of Grafton's Isle_, having married my wife out of his Dutchess's family, and leaving her at Arlington House at my going abroad. _Grafton Isle_ is about four leagues long, stretching North and South, and one and a half wide. [Sidenote: Monmouth Island.] 'The other great Island our seamen called the _Duke of Monmouth's Island_. It is about three leagues long, and a league wide. [Sidenote: Goat Island. Bashee Island. The Drink called Bashee.] 'The two smaller Islands, which lie between _Monmouth_, and the South end of _Orange Island_; the Westernmost, which is the smallest, we called _Goat Island_, from the number of goats we saw there. The Easternmost, at which we careened, our men unanimously called _Bashee Island_, because of the plentiful quantity of that liquor which we drank there every day. This drink called Bashee, the natives make with the juice of the sugar-cane, to which they put some small black berries. It is well boiled, and then put into great jars, in which it stands three or four days to ferment. Then it settles clear, and is presently fit to drink. This is an excellent liquor, strong, and I believe wholesome, and much like our English beer both in colour and taste. Our men drank briskly of it during several weeks, and were frequently drunk with it, and never sick in consequence. [Sidenote: The whole group named the Bashee Islands.] The natives sold it to us very cheap, and from the plentiful use of it, our men called all these Islands the _Bashee Islands_. [Sidenote: Rocks or small Islands North of the Five Islands.] 'To the Northward of the Five Islands are two high rocks.' [These rocks are not inserted in Dampier's manuscript Chart, and only one of them in the published Chart; whence is to be inferred, that the other was beyond the limit of the Chart.] [Sidenote: Natives described.] 'These Islanders are short, squat, people, generally round visaged with thick eyebrows; their eyes of a hazel colour, small, yet bigger than those of the Chinese; they have short low noses, their teeth white; their hair black, thick, and lank, which they wear short: their skins are of a dark copper colour. They wear neither hat, cap, nor turban to keep off the sun. The men had a cloth about their waist, and the women wore short cotton petticoats which reached below the knee. These people had iron; but whence it came we knew not. The boats they build are much after the fashion of our Deal yawls, but smaller, and every man has a boat, which he builds himself. They have also large boats, which will carry 40 or 50 men each. 'They are neat and cleanly in their persons, and are withal the quietest and civilest people I ever met with. I could never perceive them to be angry one with another. I have admired to see 20 or 30 boats aboard our ship at a time, all quiet and endeavouring to help each other on occasion; and if cross accidents happened, they caused no noise nor appearance of distaste. When any of us came to their houses, they would entertain us with such things as their houses or plantations would afford; and if they had no bashee at home, would buy of their neighbours, and sit down and drink freely with us; yet neither then nor sober could I ever perceive them to be out of humour. 'I never observed them to worship any thing; they had no idols; neither did I perceive that one man was of greater power than another: they seemed to be all equal, only every man ruling in his own house, and children respecting and honouring their parents. Yet it is probable they have some law or custom by which they are governed; for whilst we lay here, we saw a young man buried alive in the earth, and it was for theft, as far as we could understand from them. There was a great deep hole dug, and abundance of people came to the place to take their last farewell of him. One woman particularly made great lamentations, and took off the condemned person's ear-rings. We supposed her to be his mother. After he had taken leave of her, and some others, he was put into the pit, and covered over with earth. He did not struggle, but yielded very quietly to his punishment, and they crammed the earth close upon him, and stifled him. [Sidenote: Situations of their Towns.] _Monmouth_ and _Grafton Isles_ are very hilly with steep precipices; and whether from fear of pirates, of foreign enemies, or factions among their own clans, their towns and villages are built on the most steep and inaccessible of these precipices, and on the sides of rocky hills; so that in some of their towns, three or four rows of houses stand one above another, in places so steep that they go up to the first row with a ladder, and in the same manner ascend to every street upwards. _Grafton_ and _Monmouth Islands_ are very thick set with these hills and towns. [Sidenote: Bashee Islands.] The two small Islands are flat and even, except that on _Bashee Island_ there is one steep craggy hill. The reason why _Orange Island_ has no inhabitants, though the largest and as fertile as any of these Islands, I take to be, because it is level and exposed to attack; and for the same reason, _Goat Island_, being low and even, hath no inhabitants. We saw no houses built on any open plain ground. Their houses are but small and low, the roofs about eight feet high. The vallies are well watered with brooks of fresh water. The fruits of these Islands are plantains, bananas, pine-apples, pumpkins, yams and other roots, and sugar-canes, which last they use mostly for their bashee drink. Here are plenty of goats, and hogs; and but a few fowls. They had no grain of any kind. [Sidenote: September. 26th.] 'On the 26th of September, our ship was driven to sea, by a strong gale at NbW, which made her drag her anchors. Six of the crew were on shore, who could not get on board. The weather continued stormy till the 29th. [Sidenote: October.] The 1st of October, we recovered the anchorage from which we had been driven, and immediately the natives brought on board our six seamen, who related that after the ship was out of sight, the natives were more kind to them than they had been before, and tried to persuade them to cut their hair short, as was the custom among themselves, offering to each of them if they would, a young woman to wife, a piece of land, and utensils fit for a planter. These offers were declined, but the natives were not the less kind; on which account we made them a present of three whole bars of iron.' Two days after this reciprocation of kindness, the Buccaneers bid farewell to these friendly Islanders. CHAP. XXII. _The =Cygnet=. At the =Philippines=, =Celebes=, and =Timor=. On the Coast of =New Holland=. End of the =Cygnet=._ [Sidenote: 1687. October.] From the _Bashee Islands_, the Cygnet steered at first SSW, with the wind at West, and on that course passed 'close to the Eastward of certain small Islands that lie just by the North end of the Island _Luconia_.' [Sidenote: Island near the SE end of Mindanao. Candigar.] They went on Southward by the East of the _Philippine Islands_. On the 14th, they were near a small low woody Island, which Dampier reckoned to lie East 20 leagues from the SE end of _Mindanao_. The 16th, they anchored between the small Islands _Candigar_ and _Sarangan_; but afterwards found at the NW end of the Eastern of the two Islands, a good and convenient small cove, into which they went, and careened the ship. They heard here that Captain Swan and those of the crew left with him, were still at the _City of Mindanao_. [Sidenote: December. 27th. Near the SW end of Timor.] The Cygnet and her restless crew continued wandering about the Eastern Seas, among the _Philippine Islands_, to _Celebes_, and to _Timor_. December the 27th, steering a Southerly course, they passed by the West side of _Rotte_, and by another small Island, near the SW end of _Timor_. Dampier says, 'Being now clear of all the Islands, and having the wind at West and WbN, we steered away SSW,[83] intending to touch at _New Holland_, to see what that country would afford us.' The wind blew fresh, and kept them under low sail; sometimes with only their courses set, and sometimes with reefed topsails. [Sidenote: 31st.] The 31st at noon, their latitude was 13° 20' S. About ten o'clock at night, they tacked and stood to the Northward for fear of a shoal, which their charts laid down in the track they were sailing, and in latitude 13° 50' S. [Sidenote: 1688. January. Low Island and Shoal, SbW from the West end of Timor.] At three in the morning, they tacked again and stood SbW and SSW. As soon as it was light, they perceived a low Island and shoal right ahead. This shoal, by their reckoning, is in latitude 13° 50', and lies SbW from the West end of _Timor_.[84] 'It is a small spit of sand appearing just above the water's edge, with several rocks about it eight or ten feet high above water. It lies in a triangular form, each side in extent about a league and a half. We could not weather it, so bore away round the East end, and stood again to the Southward, passing close by it and sounding, but found no ground. [Sidenote: NW Coast of New Holland.] This shoal is laid down in our drafts not above 16 or 20 leagues from _New Holland_; but we ran afterwards 60 leagues making a course due South, before we fell in with the coast of _New Holland_, which we did on January the 4th, in latitude 16° 50' S.' Dampier remarks here, that unless they were set Westward by a current, the coast of _New Holland_ must have been laid down too far Westward in the charts; but he thought it not probable that they were deceived by currents, because the tides on that part of the coast were found very regular; the flood setting towards the NE. [Sidenote: In a Bay on the NW Coast of New Holland.] The coast here was low and level, with sand-banks. The Cygnet sailed along the shore NEbE 12 leagues, when she came to a point of land, with an Island so near it that she could not pass between. A league before coming to this point, that is to say, Westward of the point, was a shoal which ran out from the main-land a league. Beyond the point, the coast ran East, and East Southerly, making a deep bay with many Islands in it. On the 5th, they anchored in this bay, about two miles from the shore, in 29 fathoms. The 6th, they ran nearer in and anchored about four miles Eastward of the point before mentioned, and a mile distant from the nearest shore, in 18 fathoms depth, the bottom clean sand. People were seen on the land, and a boat was sent to endeavour to make acquaintance with them; but the natives did not wait. Their habitations were sought for, but none were found. The soil here was dry and sandy, yet fresh water was found by digging for it. They warped the ship into a small sandy cove, at a spring tide, as far as she would float, and at low water she was high aground, the sand being dry without her half a mile; for the sea rose and fell here about five fathoms perpendicularly. During the neap tides, the ship lay wholly aground, the sea not approaching nearer than within a hundred yards of her. Turtle and manatee were struck here, as much every day as served the whole crew. Boats went from the ship to different parts of the bay in search of provisions. [Sidenote: Natives.] For a considerable time they met with no inhabitants; but at length, a party going to one of the Islands, saw there about forty natives, men, women, and children. 'The Island was too small for them to conceal themselves. The men at first made threatening motions with lances and wooden swords, but a musket was fired to scare them, and they stood still. The women snatched up their infants and ran away howling, their other children running after squeaking and bawling. Some invalids who could not get away lay by the fire making a doleful noise; but after a short time they grew sensible that no mischief was intended them, and they became quiet.' Those who had fled, soon returned, and some presents made, succeeded in rendering them familiar. Dampier relates, 'we filled some of our barrels with water at wells, which had been dug by the natives, but it being troublesome to get to our boats, we thought to have made these men help us, to which end we put on them some old ragged clothes, thinking this finery would make them willing to be employed. We then brought our new servants to the wells, and put a barrel on the shoulders of each; but all the signs we could make were to no purpose, for they stood like statues, staring at one another and grinning like so many monkies. These poor creatures seem not accustomed to carry burthens, and I believe one of our ship-boys of ten years old would carry as much as one of their men. So we were forced to carry our water ourselves, and they very fairly put off the clothes again and laid them down. They had no great liking to them at first, neither did they seem to admire any thing that we had.' 'The inhabitants of this country are the most miserable people in the world. The Hottentots compared with them are gentlemen. They have no houses, animals, or poultry. Their persons are tall, straight-bodied, thin, with long limbs: they have great heads, round foreheads, and great brows. Their eyelids are always half closed to keep the flies out of their eyes, for they are so troublesome here that no fanning will keep them from one's face, so that from their infancy they never open their eyes as other people do, and therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their heads as if they were looking at something over them. They have great bottle noses, full lips, wide mouths: the two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them: neither have they any beards. Their hair is black, short, and curled, and their skins coal black like that of the negroes in _Guinea_. Their only food is fish, and they constantly search for them at low water, and they make little weirs or dams with stones across little coves of the sea. At one time, our boat being among the Islands seeking for game, espied a drove of these people swimming from one Island to another; for they have neither boats, canoes, nor bark-logs. We always gave them victuals when we met any of them. But after the first time of our being among them, they did not stir for our coming.' It deserves to be remarked to the credit of human nature, that these poor people, in description the most wretched of mankind in all respects, that we read of, stood their ground for the defence of their women and children, against the shock and first surprise at hearing the report of fire-arms. [Sidenote: March.] The Cygnet remained at this part of _New Holland_ till the 12th of March, and then sailed Westward, for the West coast of _Sumatra_. [Sidenote: 28th. An Island in Lat. 10° 20' S.] On the 28th, they fell in with a small woody uninhabited Island, in latitude 10° 20' S, and, by Dampier's reckoning, 12° 6' of longitude from the part of _New Holland_ at which they had been. There was too great depth of water every where round the Island for anchorage. A landing-place was found near the SW point, and on the Island a small brook of fresh water; but the surf would not admit of any to be taken off to the ship. Large craw-fish, boobies, and men-of-war birds, were caught, as many as served for a meal for the whole crew. [Sidenote: April. End of the Cygnet.] April the 7th, they made the coast of _Sumatra_. Shortly after, at the _Nicobar Islands_, Dampier and some others quitted the Cygnet. Read, the Captain, and those who yet remained with him, continued their piratical cruising in the Indian Seas, till, after a variety of adventures, and changes of commanders, they put into _Saint Augustine's_ Bay in the Island of _Madagascar_, by which time the ship was in so crazy a condition, that the crew abandoned her, and she sunk at her anchors. Some of the men embarked on board European ships, and some engaged themselves in the service of the petty princes of that Island. Dampier returned to _England_ in 1691. CHAP. XXIII. _French Buccaneers under =François Grogniet= and =Le Picard=, to the Death of =Grogniet=._ [Sidenote: The French Buccaneers, from July 1685.] Having accompanied the Cygnet to her end, the History must again be taken back to the breaking up of the general confederacy of Buccaneers which took place at the Island _Quibo_, to give a connected narrative of the proceedings of the French adventurers from that period to their quitting the _South Sea_. [Sidenote: Under Grogniet.] Three hundred and forty-one French Buccaneers (or to give them their due, privateers, war then existing between _France_ and _Spain_) separated from Edward Davis in July 1685, choosing for their leader Captain François Grogniet. They had a small ship, two small barks, and some large canoes, which were insufficient to prevent their being incommoded for want of room, and the ship was so ill provided with sails as to be disqualified for cruising at sea. They were likewise scantily furnished with provisions, and necessity for a long time confined their enterprises to the places on the coast of _New Spain_ in the neighbourhood of _Quibo_. The towns of _Pueblo Nuevo_, _Ria Lexa_, _Nicoya_, and others, were plundered by them, some more than once, by which they obtained provisions, and little of other plunder, except prisoners, from whom they extorted ransom either in provisions or money. [Sidenote: November.] In November, they attacked the town of _Ria Lexa_. Whilst in the port, a Spanish Officer delivered to them a letter from the Vicar-General of the province of _Costa Rica_, written to inform them that a truce for twenty years had been concluded between _France_ and _Spain_. The Vicar-General therefore required of them to forbear committing farther hostility, and offered to give them safe conduct over land to the _North Sea_, and a passage to _Europe_ in the galeons of his Catholic Majesty to as many as should desire it. This offer not according with the inclinations of the adventurers, they declined accepting it, and, without entering into enquiry, professed to disbelieve the intelligence. [Sidenote: Point de Burica.] November the 14th, they were near the _Point Burica_. Lussan says, 'we admired the pleasant appearance of the land, and among other things, a walk or avenue, formed by five rows of cocoa-nut trees, which extended in continuation along the coast 15 leagues, with as much regularity as if they had been planted by line.' [Sidenote: 1686. January. Chiriquita.] In the beginning of January 1686, two hundred and thirty of these Buccaneers went in canoes from _Quibo_ against _Chiriquita_, a small Spanish town on the Continent, between _Point Burica_ and the Island _Quibo_. _Chiriquita_ is situated up a navigable river, and at some distance from the sea-coast. 'Before this river are eight or ten Islands, and shoals on which the sea breaks at low water; but there are channels between them through which ships may pass[85].' The Buccaneers arrived in the night at the entrance of the river, unperceived by the Spaniards; but being without guides, and in the dark, they mistook and landed on the wrong side of the river. They were two days occupied in discovering the right way, but were so well concealed by the woods, that at daylight on the morning of the third day they came upon the town and surprised the whole of the inhabitants, who, says Lussan, had been occupied the last two days in disputing which of them should keep watch, and go the rounds. Lussan relates here, that himself and five others were decoyed to pursue a few Spaniards to a distance from the town, where they were suddenly attacked by one hundred and twenty men. He and his companions however, he says, played their parts an hour and a half '_en vrai Flibustiers_,' and laid thirty of the enemy on the ground, by which time they were relieved by the arrival of some of their friends. They set fire to the town, and got ransom for their prisoners: in what the ransom consisted, Lussan has not said. [Sidenote: At Quibo.] Their continuance in one station, at length prevailed on the Spaniards to collect and send a force against them. They had taken some pains to instil into the Spaniards a belief that they intended to erect fortifications and establish themselves at _Quibo_. Their view in this it is not easy to conjecture, unless it was to discourage their prisoners from pleading poverty; for they obliged those from whom they could not get money, to labour, and to procure bricks and materials for building to be sent for their ransom. On the 27th of January, a small fleet of Spanish vessels approached the Island _Quibo_. The buccaneer ship was without cannon, and lay near the entrance of a river which had only depth sufficient for their small vessels. The Buccaneers therefore took out of the ship all that could be of use, and ran her aground; and with their small barks and canoes took a station in the river. [Sidenote: February.] The Spaniards set fire to the abandoned ship, and remained by her to collect the iron-work; but they shewed no disposition to attack the French in the river; and on the 1st of February, they departed from the Island. The Buccaneers having lost their ship, set hard to work to build themselves small vessels. In this month of February, fourteen of their number died by sickness and accidents. [Sidenote: March.] They had projected an attack upon _Granada_ but want of present subsistence obliged them to seek supply nearer, and a detachment was sent with that view to the river of _Pueblo Nuevo_. Some vessels of the Spanish flotilla which had lately been at _Quibo_, were lying at anchor in the river, which the Flibustiers mistook for a party of the English Buccaneers. [Sidenote: Unsuccessful attempt at Pueblo Nuevo.] In this belief they went within pistol-shot, and hailed, and were then undeceived by receiving for answer a volley of musketry. They fired on the Spaniards in return, but were obliged to retreat, and in this affair they lost four men killed outright, and between 30 and 40 were wounded. Preparatory to their intended expedition against _Granada_, they agreed upon some regulations for preserving discipline and order, the principal articles of which were, that cowardice, theft, drunkenness, or disobedience, should be punished with forfeiture of all share of booty taken. On the evening of the 22d, they were near the entrance of the _Gulf of Nicoya_, in a little fleet, consisting of two small barks, a row-galley, and nine large canoes. A tornado came on in the night which dispersed them a good deal. At daylight they were surprised at counting thirteen sail in company, and before they discovered which was the strange vessel, five more sail came in sight. [Sidenote: Grogniet is joined by Townley.] They soon joined each other, and the strangers proved to be a party of the Buccaneers of whom Townley was the head. Townley had parted company from Swan not quite two months before. His company consisted of 115 men, embarked in a ship and five large canoes. Townley had advanced with his canoes along the coast before his ship to seek provisions, he and his men being no better off in that respect than Grogniet and his followers. On their meeting as above related, the French did not forget Townley's former overbearing conduct towards them: they, however, limited their vengeance to a short triumph. Lussan says, 'we now finding ourselves the strongest, called to mind the ill offices he had done us, and to shew him our resentment, we made him and his men in the canoes with him our prisoners. We then boarded his ship, of which we made ourselves masters, and pretended that we would keep her. We let them remain some time under this apprehension, after which we made them see that we were more honest and civilized people than they were, and that we would not profit of our advantage over them to revenge ourselves; for after keeping possession about four or five hours, we returned to them their ship and all that had been taken from them.' The English shewed their sense of this moderation by offering to join in the attack on _Granada_, which offer was immediately accepted. [Sidenote: April. Expedition against the City of Granada.] The city of _Granada_ is situated in a valley bordering on the _Lake of Nicaragua_, and is about 16 leagues distant from _Leon_. The Buccaneers were provided with guides, and to avoid giving the Spaniards suspicion of their design, Townley's ship and the two barks were left at anchor near _Cape Blanco_, whilst the force destined to be employed against _Granada_ proceeded in the canoes to the place at which it was proposed to land, directions being left with the ship and barks to follow in due time. [Sidenote: 7th.] The 7th of April, 345 Buccaneers landed from the canoes, about twenty leagues NW-ward of _Cape Blanco_, and began their march, conducted by the guides, who led them through woods and unfrequented ways. They travelled night and day till the 9th, in hopes to reach the city before they were discovered by the inhabitants, or their having landed should be known by the Spaniards. The province of _Nicaragua_, in which _Granada_ stands, is reckoned one of the most fertile in _New Spain_. The distance from where the Buccaneers landed, to the city, may be estimated about 60 miles. Yet they expected to come upon it by surprise; and in fact they did travel the greater part of the way without being seen by any inhabitant. Such a mark of the state of the population, corresponds with all the accounts given of the wretched tyranny exercised by the Spaniards over the nations they have conquered. The Buccaneers however were discovered in their second day's march, by people who were fishing in a river, some of whom immediately posted off with the intelligence. The Spaniards had some time before been advertised by a deserter that the Buccaneers designed to attack _Granada_; but they were known to entertain designs upon so many places, and to be so fluctuating in their plans, that the Spaniards could only judge from certain intelligence where most to guard against their attempts. [Sidenote: 9th.] On the night of the 9th, fatigue and hunger obliged the Buccaneers to halt at a sugar plantation four leagues distant from the city. One man, unable to keep up with the rest, had been taken prisoner. [Sidenote: 10th.] The morning of the 10th, they marched on, and from an eminence over which they passed, had a view of the _Lake of Nicaragua_, on which were seen two vessels sailing from the city. These vessels the Buccaneers afterwards learnt, were freighted with the richest moveables that at short notice the inhabitants had been able to embark, to be conveyed for security to an Island in the Lake which was two leagues distant from the city. _Granada_ was large and spacious, with magnificent churches and well-built houses. The ground is destitute of water, and the town is supplied from the Lake; nevertheless there were many large sugar plantations in the neighbourhood, some of which were like small towns, and had handsome churches. _Granada_ was not regularly fortified, but had a place of arms surrounded with a wall, in the nature of a citadel, and furnished with cannon. The great church was within this inclosed part of the town. [Sidenote: The City of Nueva Granada taken;] The Buccaneers arrived about two o'clock in the afternoon, and immediately assaulted the place of arms, which they carried with the loss of four men killed, and eight wounded, most of them mortally. The first act of the victors, according to Lussan, was to sing _Te Deum_ in the great church; and the next, to plunder. Provisions, military stores, and a quantity of merchandise, were found in the town, the latter of which was of little or no value to the captors. [Sidenote: 11th.] The next day they sent to enquire if the Spaniards would ransom the town, and the merchandise. It had been rumoured that the Buccaneers would be unwilling to destroy _Granada_, because they proposed at some future period to make it their baiting place, in returning to the _North Sea_, and the Spaniards scarcely condescended to make answer to the demand for ransom. [Sidenote: And Burnt.] The Buccaneers in revenge set fire to the houses. 'If we could have found boats,' says Lussan, 'to have gone on the lake, and could have taken the two vessels laden with the riches of _Granada_, we should have thought this a favourable opportunity for returning to the _West Indies_.' [Sidenote: 15th.] On the 15th, they left _Granada_, to return to the coast, which journey they performed in the most leisurely manner. They took with them a large cannon, with oxen to draw it, and some smaller guns which they laid upon mules. The weather was hot and dry, and the road so clouded with dust, as almost to stifle both men and beasts. Sufficient provision of water had not been made for the journey, and the oxen all died. The cannon was of course left on the road. Towards the latter part of the journey, water and refreshments were procured at some villages and houses, the inhabitants of which furnished supplies as a condition that their dwellings should be spared. On the 26th, they arrived at the sea and embarked in their vessels, taking on board with them a Spanish priest whom the Spaniards would not redeem by delivering up their buccaneer prisoner. Most of the men wounded in the Granada expedition died of cramps. [Sidenote: 28th, At Ria Lexa. May.] The 28th, they came upon _Ria Lexa_ unexpectedly, and made one hundred of the inhabitants prisoners. By such means, little could be gained more than present subsistence, and that was rendered very precarious by the Spaniards removing their cattle from the coast. It was therefore determined to put an end to their unprofitable continuance in one place; but they could not agree where next to go. All the English, and one half of the French, were for sailing to the _Bay of Panama_. The other half of the French, 148 in number, with Grogniet at their head, declared for trying their fortunes North-westward. Division was made of the vessels and provisions. The whole money which the French had acquired by their depredations amounted to little more than 7000 dollars, and this sum they generously distributed among those of their countrymen who had been lamed or disabled. [Sidenote: Grogniet and Townley part Company. Buccaneers under Townley.] May the 19th, they parted company. Those bound for the _Bay of Panama_, of whom Townley appears to have been regarded the head, had a ship, a bark, and some large canoes. Townley proposed an attack on the town of _Lavelia_ or _La Villia_, at which place the treasure from the Lima ships had been landed in the preceding year, and this proposal was approved. [Sidenote: June.] Tornadoes and heavy rains kept them among the _Keys of Quibo_ till the middle of June. On the 20th of that month, they arrived off the _Punta Mala_, and during the day, they lay at a distance from the land with sails furled. At night the principal part of their force made for the land in the canoes; but they had been deceived in the distance. Finding that they could not reach the river which leads to _Lavelia_ before day, they took down the sails and masts, and went to three leagues distance from the land, where they lay all the day of the 21st. Lussan, who was of this party of Buccaneers, says that they were obliged to practise the same manoeuvre on the day following. In the middle of the night of the 22d, 160 Buccaneers landed from the canoes at the entrance of the river. [Sidenote: 23d. Lavelia taken.] They were some hours in marching to _Lavelia_, yet the town was surprised, and above 300 of the inhabitants made prisoners. This was in admirable conformity with the rest of the management of the Spaniards. The fleet from _Lima_, laden with treasure intended for _Panama_, had, more than a year before, landed the treasure and rich merchandise at _Lavelia_, as a temporary measure of security against the Buccaneers, suited to the occasion. The Government at _Panama_, and the other proprietors, would not be at the trouble of getting it removed to _Panama_, except in such portions as might be required by some present convenience; and allowed a great part to remain in _Lavelia_, a place of no defence, although during the whole time Buccaneers had been on the coast of _Veragua_, or _Nicaragua_, to whom it now became an easy prey, through indolence and a total want of vigilance, as well in the proprietors as in those whom they employed to guard it. Three Spanish barks were riding in the river, one of which the crews sunk, and so dismantled the others that no use could be made of them; but the Buccaneers found two boats in serviceable condition at a landing-place a quarter of a league below the town. The riches they now saw in their possession equalled their most sanguine expectations, and if secured, they thought would compensate for all former disappointments. The merchandise in _Lavelia_ was estimated in value at a million and a half of piastres. The gold and silver found there amounted only to 15,000 piastres. The first day of being masters of _Lavelia_, was occupied by the Buccaneers in making assortments of the most valuable articles of the merchandise. The next morning, they loaded 80 horses with bales, and a guard of 80 men went with them to the landing-place where the two boats above mentioned were lying. In the way, one man of this escort was taken by the Spaniards. The two prize boats were by no means large enough to carry all the goods which the Buccaneers proposed to take from _Lavelia_; and on that account directions had been dispatched to the people in the canoes at the entrance of the river to advance up towards the town. These directions they attempted to execute; but the land bordering the river was woody, which exposed the canoes to the fire of a concealed enemy, and after losing one man, they desisted from advancing. For the same cause, it was thought proper not to send off the two loaded boats without a strong guard, and they did not move during this day. The Buccaneers sent a letter to the Spanish Alcalde, to demand if he would ransom the town, the merchandise, and the prisoners; but the Alcalde refused to treat with them. [Sidenote: The Town set on fire.] In the afternoon therefore, they set fire to the town, and marched to the landing-place where the two boats lay, and there rested for the night. [Sidenote: River of Lavelia.] The river of _Lavelia_ is broad, but shallow. Vessels of forty tons can go a league and a half within the entrance. The landing-place is yet a league and a half farther up, and the town is a quarter of a mile from the landing-place[86]. [Sidenote: 25th.] On the morning of the 25th, the two boats, laden as deep as was safe, began to fall down the river, having on board nine men to conduct them. The main body of the Buccaneers at the same time marched along the bank on one side of the river for their protection. A body of Spaniards skreened by the woods, and unseen by the Buccaneers, kept pace with them on the other side of the river, at a small distance within the bank. The Buccaneers had marched about a league, and the boats had descended as far, when they came to a point of land on which the trees and underwood grew so thick as not to be penetrated without some labour and expence of time, to which they did not choose to submit, but preferred making a circuit which took them about a quarter of a mile from the river. The Spaniards on the opposite side were on the watch, and not slow in taking advantage of their absence. They came to the bank, whence they fired upon the men in the laden boats, four of whom they killed, and wounded one; the other four abandoned the boats and escaped into the thicket. The Spaniards took possession of the boats, and finding there the wounded Buccaneer, they cut off his head and fixed it on a stake which they set up by the side of the river at a place by which the rest of the Buccaneers would necessarily have to pass. The main body of the Buccaneers regained the side of the river in ignorance of what had happened; and not seeing the boats, were for a time in doubt whether they were gone forward, or were still behind. The first notice they received of their loss was from the men who had escaped from the boats, who made their way through the thicket and joined them. Thus did this crew of Buccaneers, within a short space of time, win by circumspection and adroitness, and lose by negligence, the richest booty they had ever made. If quitting the bank of the river had been a matter of necessity, and unavoidable, there was nothing but idleness to prevent their conveying their plunder the remainder of the distance to their boats by land. In making their way through the woods, they found the rudder, sails, and other furniture of the Spanish barks in the river; the barks themselves were near at hand, and the Buccaneers embarked in them; but the flood tide making, they came to an anchor, and lay still for the night. [Sidenote: June 26th.] The next morning, as they descended the river, they saw the boats which they had so richly freighted, now cleared of their lading and broken to pieces; and near to their wreck, was the head which the Spaniards had stuck up. This spectacle, added to the mortifying loss of their booty, threw the Buccaneers into a frenzy, and they forthwith cut off the heads of four prisoners, and set them on poles in the same place. In the passage down the river, four more of the Buccaneers were killed by the firing of the Spaniards from the banks. [Sidenote: 27th.] The day after their retreat from the river of _Lavelia_, a Spaniard went off to them to treat for the release of the prisoners, and they came to an agreement that 10,000 pieces of eight should be paid for their ransom. Some among them who had wives were permitted to go on shore that they might assist in procuring the money; but on the 29th, the same messenger again went off and acquainted them that the _Alcalde Major_ would not only not suffer the relations of the prisoners to send money for their ransom, but that he had arrested some of those whom the Buccaneers had allowed to land. On receiving this report, these savages without hesitation cut off the heads of two of their prisoners, and delivered them to the messenger, to be carried to the _Alcalde_, with their assurance that if the ransom did not speedily arrive, the rest of the prisoners would be treated in the same manner. The next day the ransom was settled for the remaining prisoners, and for one of the captured barks; the Spaniards paying partly with money, partly with provisions and necessaries, and with the release of the Buccaneer they had taken. In the agreement for the bark, the Spaniards required a note specifying that if the Buccaneers again met her, they should make prize only of the cargo, and not of the vessel. After the destruction of _Lavelia_, it might be supposed that the perpetrators of so much mischief would not be allowed with impunity to remain in the _Bay of Panama_; but such was the weakness or negligence of the Spaniards, that this small body of freebooters continued several months in this same neighbourhood, and at times under the very walls of the City. On another point, however, the Spaniards were more active, and with success; for they concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with the Indians of the _Isthmus_, in consequence of which, the passage overland through the Darien country was no longer open to the Buccaneers; and some small parties of them who attempted to travel across, were intercepted and cut off by the Spaniards, with the assistance of the natives. [Sidenote: July.] The Spaniards had at _Panama_ a military corps distinguished by the appellation of Greeks, which was composed of Europeans of different nations, not natives of _Spain_. Among the atrocities committed by the crew under Townley, they put to death one of these Greeks, who was also Commander of a Spanish vessel, because on examining him for intelligence, they thought he endeavoured to deceive them; and in aggravation of the deed, Lussan relates the circumstance in the usual manner of his pleasantries, 'we paid him for his treachery by sending him to the other world.' [Sidenote: August.] On the 20th of August, as they were at anchor within sight of the city of _Panama_, they observed boats passing and repassing between some vessels and the shore, and a kind of bustle which had the appearance of an equipment. [Sidenote: Battle with Spanish armed Ships.] The next day, the Buccaneers anchored near the Island _Taboga_; and there, on the morning of the 22d, they were attacked by three armed vessels from _Panama_. The Spaniards were provided with cannon, and the battle lasted half the day, when, owing to an explosion of gunpowder in one of the Spanish vessels, the victory was decided in favour of the Buccaneers. Two of the three Spanish vessels were taken, as was also one other, which during the fight arrived from _Panama_ as a reinforcement. In the last mentioned prize, cords were found prepared for binding their prisoners in the event of their being victorious; and this, the Buccaneers deemed provocation sufficient for them to slaughter the whole crew. This battle, so fatal to the Spaniards, cost the Buccaneers only one man killed outright, and 22 wounded. Townley was among the wounded. Two of the prizes were immediately manned from the canoes, the largest under the command of Le Picard, who was the chief among the French of this party. They had many prisoners; and one was sent with a letter to the President of _Panama_, to demand ransom for them; also medicines and dressings for the wounded, and the release of five Buccaneers who they learnt were prisoners to the Spaniards. The medicines were sent, but the President would not treat either of ransom, or of the release of the buccaneer prisoners. The Buccaneers dispatched a second message to the President, in which they threatened that if the five Buccaneers were not immediately delivered to them, the heads of all the Spaniards in their possession, should be sent to him. The President paid little attention to this message, not believing that such a threat would be executed; but the Bishop of _Panama_, regarding what had recently happened at _Lavelia_ as an earnest of what the Buccaneers were capable, was seriously alarmed. He wrote a letter to them which he sent by a special messenger, in which he exhorted them in the mildest terms not to shed the blood of innocent men, and promised if they would have patience, to exert his influence to procure the release of the buccaneer prisoners. His letter concluded with the following remarkable paragraph, which shews the great hopes entertained by the Roman Catholics respecting _Great Britain_ during the Reign of King James the IId. '_I have information_,' says the Bishop, '_to give you, that the English are all become Roman Catholics, and that there is now a Catholic Church at Jamaica_.' The good Prelate's letter was pronounced by the Buccaneers to be void of truth and sincerity, and an insult to their understanding. They had already received the price of blood, shed not in battle nor in their own defence; and now, devoting themselves to their thirst for gain, they would not be diverted from their sanguinary purpose, but came to the resolution of sending the heads of twenty Spaniards to the President, and with them a message purporting that if they did not receive a satisfactory answer to all their demands by the 28th of the month, the heads of the remaining prisoners should answer for it. Lussan says, 'the President's refusal obliged us, though with some reluctance, to take the resolution to send him twenty heads of his people in a canoe. This method was indeed a little violent, but it was the only way to bring the Spaniards to reason[87].' What they had resolved they put into immediate execution. The President of _Panama_ was entirely overcome by their inhuman proceedings, and in the first shock and surprise, he yielded without stipulation to all they had demanded. On the 28th, the buccaneer prisoners (four Englishmen and one Frenchman) were delivered to them, with a letter from the President, who said he left to their own conscience the disposal of the Spanish prisoners yet remaining in their hands. To render the triumph of cruelty and ferocity more complete, the Buccaneers, in an answer to the President, charged the whole blame of what they had done to his obstinacy; in exchange for the five Buccaneers, they sent only twelve of their Spanish prisoners; and they demanded 20,000 pieces of eight as ransom of the remainder, which demand however, they afterwards mitigated to half that sum and a supply of refreshments. On the 4th of September, the ransom was paid, and the prisoners were released. [Sidenote: September. Death of Townley.] September the 9th, the buccaneer commander, Townley, died of the wound he received in the last battle. The English and French Buccaneers were faithful associates, but did not mix well as comrades. In a short time after Townley's death, the English desired that a division should be made of the prize vessels, artillery, and stores, and that those of their nation should keep together in the same vessels: and this was done, without other separation taking place at the time. [Sidenote: November.] In November, they left the _Bay of Panama_, and sailed Westward to their old station near the _Point de Burica_, where, by surprising small towns, villages, and farms, a business at which they had become extremely expert, they procured provisions; and by the ransom of prisoners, some money. [Sidenote: 1687. January.] In January (1687) they intercepted a letter from the Spanish Commandant at _Sonsonnate_ addressed to the President of _Panama_, by which they learnt that Grogniet had been in _Amapalla Bay_, and that three of his men had been taken prisoners. The Commandant remarked in his letter, that the peace made with the _Darien_ Indians, having cut off the retreat of the Buccaneers, would drive them to desperation, and render them like so many mad dogs; he advised therefore that some means should be adopted to facilitate their retreat, that the Spaniards in the _South Sea_ might again enjoy repose. '_They have landed_,' he says, '_in these parts ten or twelve times, without knowing what they were seeking; but wheresoever they come, they spoil and lay waste every thing_.' A few days after intercepting this letter, they took prisoner a Spanish horseman. Lussan says, 'We interrogated him with the usual ceremonies, that is to say, we gave him the torture, to make him tell us what we wanted to know.' Many such villanies were undoubtedly committed by these banditti, more than appear in their Narratives, or than they dared to make known. Lussan, who writes a history of his voyage, not before the end of the second year of his adventures in the _South Sea_, relates that they put a prisoner to the torture; and it would have appeared as an individual instance, if he had not, probably through inadvertence, acknowledged it to have been their established practice. Lussan on his return to his native land, pretended to reputation and character; and he found countenance and favour from his superiors; it is therefore to be presumed, that he would suppress every transaction in which he was a participator, which he thought of too deep a nature to be received by his patrons with indulgence. A circumstance which tended to make this set of Buccaneers worse than any that had preceded them, was, its being composed of men of two nations between which there has existed a constant jealousy and emulation. They were each ambitious to outdo the other in acts of daringness, and were thereby instigated to every kind of excess. [Sidenote: Grogniet rejoins them.] On the 20th, near _Caldera Bay_, they met Grogniet with sixty French Buccaneers in three canoes. Grogniet had parted from Townley at the head of 148 men. They had made several descents on the coast. At the _Bay of Amapalla_, they marched 14 leagues within the coast to a gold-mine, where they took many prisoners, and a small quantity of gold. Grogniet wished to return overland to the West-Indian Sea, but the majority of his companions were differently inclined, and 85 quitted him, and went to try their fortunes towards _California_. Grogniet nevertheless persevered in the design with the remainder of his crew, to seek some part of the coast of _New Spain_, thin of inhabitants, where they might land unknown to the Spaniards, and march without obstruction through the country to the shore of the _Atlantic_, without other guide than a compass. The party they now met with, prevailed on them to defer the execution of this project to a season of the year more favourable, and in the mean time to unite with them. [Sidenote: February. They divide.] In February, they set fire to the town of _Nicoya_. Their gains by these descents were so small, that they agreed to leave the coast of _New Spain_ and to go against _Guayaquil_; but on coming to this determination, the English and the French fell into high dispute for the priority of choice in the prize vessels which they expected to take, insomuch that upon this difference they broke off partnership. [Sidenote: Both Parties sail for the Coast of Peru.] Grogniet however, and about fifty of the French, remained with the English, which made the whole number of that party 142 men, and they all embarked in one ship, the canoes not being safe for an open sea navigation. The other party numbered 162 men, all French, and embarked in a small ship and a _Barca longa_. The most curious circumstance attending this separation was, that both parties persevered in the design upon _Guayaquil_, without any proposal being made by either to act in concert. They sailed from the coast of _New Spain_ near the end of February, not in company, but each using all their exertions to arrive first at the place of destination. [Sidenote: They meet again, and reunite.] They crossed the Equinoctial line separately, but afterwards at sea accidentally fell in company with each other again, and at this meeting they accommodated their differences, and renewed their partnership. [Sidenote: April.] April the 13th, they were near _Point Santa Elena_, on the coast of _Peru_, and met there a prize vessel belonging to their old Commander Edward Davis and his Company, but which had been separated from him. She was laden with corn and wine, and eight of Davis's men had the care of her. They had been directed in case of separation, to rendezvous at the Island _Plata_; but the uncertainty of meeting Davis there, and the danger they should incur if they missed him, made them glad to join in the expedition against _Guayaquil_, and the provisions with which the vessel was laden, made them welcome associates to the Buccaneers engaged in it. [Sidenote: Attack on Guayaquil.] Their approach to the City of _Guayaquil_ was conducted with the most practised circumspection and vigilance. On first getting sight of _Point Santa Elena_, they took in their sails and lay with them furled as long as there was daylight. In the night they pursued their course, keeping at a good distance from the land, till they were to the Southward of the _Island Santa Clara_. [Sidenote: 15th.] Two hundred and sixty men then (April the 15th) departed from the ships in canoes. They landed at _Santa Clara_, which was uninhabited, and at a part of the _Island Puna_ distant from any habitation, proceeding only during the night time, and lying in concealment during the day. [Sidenote: 18th.] In the night of the 17th, they approached the _River Guayaquil_. At daylight, they were perceived by a guard on watch near the entrance, who lighted a fire as a signal to other guards stationed farther on; by whom, however, the signal was not observed. The Buccaneers put as speedily as they could to the nearest land, and a party of the most alert made a circuit through the woods, and surprised the guard at the first signal station, before the alarm had spread farther. They stopped near the entrance till night. [Sidenote: 19th. 20th.] All day of the 19th, they rested at an Island in the river, and at night advanced again. Their intention was to have passed the town in their canoes, and to have landed above it, where they would be the least expected; but the tide of flood with which they ascended the river did not serve long enough for their purpose, and on the 20th, two hours before day, they landed a short distance below the town, towards which they began to march; but the ground was marshy and overgrown with brushwood. Thus far they had proceeded undiscovered; when one of the Buccaneers left to guard the canoes struck a light to smoke tobacco, which was perceived by a Spanish sentinel on the shore opposite, who immediately fired his piece, and gave alarm to the Fort and Town. This discovery and the badness of the road caused the Buccaneers to defer the attack till daylight. The town of _Guayaquil_ is built round a mountain, on which were three forts which overlooked the town. [Sidenote: The City taken.] The Spaniards made a tolerable defence, but by the middle of the day they were driven from all their forts, and the town was left to the Buccaneers, detachments of whom were sent to endeavour to bring in prisoners, whilst a chosen party went to the Great Church to chant _Te Deum_. Nine Buccaneers were killed and twelve wounded in the attack. The booty found in the town was considerable in jewels, merchandise, and silver, particularly in church plate, besides 92,000 dollars in money, and they took seven hundred prisoners, among whom were the Governor and his family. Fourteen vessels lay at anchor in the Port, and two ships were on the stocks nearly fit for launching. On the evening of the day that the city was taken, the Governor (being a prisoner) entered into treaty with the Buccaneers, for the City, Fort, Shipping, himself, and all the prisoners, to be redeemed for a million pieces of eight, to be paid in gold, and 400 packages of flour; and to hasten the procurement of the money, which was to be brought from _Quito_, the Vicar General of the district, who was also a prisoner, was released. [Sidenote: 21st.] The 21st, in the night, by the carelessness of a Buccaneer, one of the houses took fire, which communicated to other houses with such rapidity, that one third of the city was destroyed before its progress was stopped. It had been specified in the treaty, that the Buccaneers should not set fire to the town; 'therefore,' says Lussan, 'lest in consequence of this accident, the Spaniards should refuse to pay the ransom, we pretended to believe it was their doing.' Many bodies of the Spaniards killed in the assault of the town, remained unburied where they had fallen, and the Buccaneers were apprehensive that some infectious disorder would thereby be produced. [Sidenote: 24th. At the Island Puna.] They hastened therefore to embark on board the vessels in the port, their plunder and 500 of their prisoners, with which, on the 25th, they fell down the River to the _Island Puna_, where they proposed to wait for the ransom. [Sidenote: May. Grogniet dies.] On the 2d of May, Captain Grogniet died of a wound he received at _Guayaquil_. Le Picard was afterwards the chief among the French Buccaneers. The 5th of May had been named for the payment of the ransom, from which time the money was daily and with increasing impatience expected by the Buccaneers. It was known that Spanish ships of war were equipping at _Callao_ purposely to attack them; and also that their former Commander, Edward Davis, with a good ship, was near this part of the coast. They were anxious to have his company, and on the 4th, dispatched a galley to seek him at the Island _Plata_, the place of rendezvous he had appointed for his prize. The 5th passed without any appearance of ransom money; as did many following days. The Spaniards, however, regularly sent provisions to the ships at _Puna_ every day, otherwise the prisoners would have starved; but in lieu of money they substituted nothing better than promises. The Buccaneers would have felt it humiliation to appear less ferocious than on former occasions, and they recurred to their old mode of intimidation. They made the prisoners throw dice to determine which of them should die, and the heads of four on whom the lot fell were delivered to a Spanish officer in answer to excuses for delay which he had brought from the Lieutenant Governor of _Guayaquil_, with an intimation that at the end of four days more five hundred heads should follow, if the ransom did not arrive. [Sidenote: 14th.] On the 14th, their galley which had been sent in search of Davis returned, not having found him at the Island _Plata_; but she brought notice of two strange sail being near the Cape _Santa Elena_. [Sidenote: Edward Davis joins Le Picard.] These proved to be Edward Davis's ship, and a prize. Davis had received intelligence, as already mentioned, of the Buccaneers having captured _Guayaquil_, and was now come purposely to join them. He sent his prize to the Buccaneers at _Puna_, and remained with his own ship in the offing on the look-out. The four days allowed for the payment of the ransom expired, and no ransom was sent; neither did the Buccaneers execute their sanguinary threat. It is worthy of remark, that intreaty or intercession made to this set of Buccaneers, so far from obtaining remission or favour, at all times produced the opposite effect, as if reminding them of their power, instigated them to an imperious display of it. The Lieutenant Governor of _Guayaquil_ was in no haste to fulfil the terms of the treaty made by the Governor, nor did he importune them with solicitations, and the whole business for a time lay at rest. The forbearance of the Buccaneers may not unjustly be attributed to Davis having joined them. [Sidenote: 23d.] On the 23d, the Spaniards paid to the Buccaneers as much gold as amounted in value to 20,000 pieces of eight, and eighty packages of flour, as part of the ransom. The day following, the Lieutenant Governor sent word, that they might receive 22,000 pieces of eight more for the release of the prisoners, and if that sum would not satisfy them, they might do their worst, for that no greater would be paid them. Upon this message, the Buccaneers held a consultation, whether they should cut off the heads of all the prisoners, or take the 22,000 pieces of eight, and it was determined, not unanimously, but by a majority of voices, that it was better to take a little money than to cut off many heads. Lussan, his own biographer and a young man, boasts of the pleasant manner in which he passed his time at _Puna_. 'We made good cheer, being daily supplied with refreshments from _Guayaquil_. We had concerts of music; we had the best performers of the city among our prisoners. Some among us engaged in friendships with our women prisoners, who were not hard hearted.' This is said by way of prelude to a history which he gives of his own good fortune; all which, whether true or otherwise, serves to shew, that among this abandoned crew the prisoners of both sexes were equally unprotected. [Sidenote: 26th.] On the 26th, the 22,000 pieces of eight were paid to the Buccaneers, who selected a hundred prisoners of the most consideration to retain, and released the rest. The same day, they quitted their anchorage at _Puna_, intending to anchor again at Point _Santa Elena_, and there to enter afresh into negociation for ransom of prisoners: but in the evening, two Spanish Ships of War came in sight. The engagement which ensued, and other proceedings of the Buccaneers, until Edward Davis parted company to return homeward by the South of _America_, has been related. [Sidenote: See pp. 196 to 200.] It remains to give an account of the French Buccaneers after the separation, to their finally quitting the _South Sea_. CHAP. XXIV. _Retreat of the =French Buccaneers= across =New Spain= to the =West Indies=. All the =Buccaneers= quit the =South Sea=._ [Sidenote: 1687. June. Le Picard and Hout.] The party left by Davis consisted of 250 Buccaneers, the greater number of whom were French, the rest were English, and their leaders Le Picard and George Hout. They had determined to quit the _South Sea_, and with that view to sail to the coast of _New Spain_, whence they proposed to march over land to the shore of the _Caribbean Sea_. [Sidenote: July. On the Coast of New Spain.] About the end of July, they anchored in the _Bay of Amapalla_, and were joined there by thirty French Buccaneers. These thirty were part of a crew which had formerly quitted Grogniet to cruise towards _California_. Others of that party were still on the coast to the North-West, and the Buccaneers in _Amapalla Bay_ put to sea in search of them, that all of their fraternity in the _South Sea_ might be collected, and depart together. In the search after their former companions, they landed at different places on the coast of _New Spain_. Among their adventures here, they took, and remained four days in possession of, the Town of _Tecoantepeque_, but without any profit to themselves. At _Guatulco_, they plundered some plantations, and obtained provisions in ransom for prisoners. Whilst they lay there at anchor, they saw a vessel in the offing, which from her appearance, and manner of working her sails, they believed to contain the people they were seeking; but the wind and sea set so strong on the shore at the time, that neither their vessels nor boats could go out to ascertain what she was; and after that day, they did not see her again. [Sidenote: December. In Amapalla Bay.] In the middle of December they returned to the _Bay of Amapalla_, which they had fixed upon for the place of their departure from the shores of the _South Sea_. Their plan was, to march by the town of _Nueva Segovia_, which had before been visited by Buccaneers, and they now expected would furnish them with provisions. According to Lussan's information, the distance they would have to travel by land from _Amapalla Bay_, was about 60 leagues, when they would come to the source of a river, by which they could descend to the _Caribbean Sea_, near to _Cape Gracias a Dios_. Whilst they made preparation for their march, they were anxious to obtain intelligence what force the Spaniards had in their proposed route, but the natives kept at a distance. On the 18th, seventy Buccaneers landed and marched into the country, of which adventure Lussan gives the account following. They travelled the whole day without meeting an inhabitant. They rested for the night, and next morning proceeded in their journey, but all seemed a desert, and about noon, the majority were dissatisfied and turned back. Twenty went on; and soon after came to a beaten road, on which they perceived three horsemen riding towards them, whom they way-laid so effectually as to take them all. [Sidenote: Chiloteca.] By these men they learnt the way to a small town named _Chiloteca_, to which they went and there made fifty of the inhabitants prisoners. [Sidenote: Massacre of Prisoners.] They took up their quarters in the church, where they also lodged their prisoners, and intended to have rested during the night; but after dark, they heard much bustle in the town, which made them apprehensive the Spaniards were preparing to attack them, and the noise caused in the prisoners the appearance of a disposition to rise; upon which, the Buccaneers slew them all except four, whom they carried away with them, and reached the vessels without being molested in their retreat. The prisoners were interrogated; and the accounts they gave confirmed the Buccaneers in the opinion that they had no better chance of transporting themselves and their plunder to the _North Sea_, than by immediately setting about the execution of the plan they had formed. [Sidenote: The Buccaneers burn their Vessels.] To settle the order of the march, they landed their riches and the stores necessary for their journey, on one of the Islands in the Bay; and that their number might not suffer diminution by the defection of any, it was agreed to destroy the vessels, which was executed forthwith, with the reserve of one galley and the canoes, which were necessary for the transport of themselves and their effects to the main land. They made a muster of their force, which they divided into four companies, each consisting of seventy men, and every man having his arms and accoutrements. Whilst these matters were arranging, a detachment of 100 men were sent to the main land to endeavour to get horses. They had destroyed their vessels, and had not removed from the Island, when a large Spanish armed ship anchored in _Amapalla Bay_; but she was not able to give them annoyance, nor in the least to impede their operations. [Sidenote: 1688. January.] On the 1st of January, 1688, they passed over, with their effects, to the main land, and the same day, the party which had gone in search of horses, returned, bringing with them sixty-eight, which were divided equally among the four companies, to be employed in carrying stores and provisions, as were eighty prisoners, who besides being carriers of stores, were made to carry the sick and wounded. Every Buccaneer had his particular sack, or package, which it was required should contain his ammunition; what else, was at his own discretion. Many of these Buccaneers had more silver than themselves were able to carry. There were also many who had neither silver nor gold, and were little encumbered with effects of their own: these light freighted gentry were glad to be hired as porters to the rich, and the contract for carrying silver, on this occasion, was one half; that is to say, that on arriving at the _North Sea_, there should be an equal division between the employer and the carrier. Carriage of gold or other valuables was according to particular agreement. Lussan, who no doubt was as sharp a rogue as any among his companions, relates of himself, that he had been fortunate at play, and that his winnings added to his share of plunder, amounted to 30,000 pieces of eight, the whole of which he had converted into gold and jewels; and that whilst they were making ready for their march, he received warning from a friend that a gang had been formed by about twenty of the poorer Buccaneers, with the intention to waylay and strip those of their brethren, who had been most fortunate. On considering the danger and great difficulty of having to guard against the machinations of hungry conspirators who were to be his fellow-travellers in a long journey, and might have opportunities to perpetrate their mischievous intentions during any fight with the Spaniards, Lussan came to the resolution of making a sacrifice of part of his riches to insure the remaining part, and to lessen the temptation to any individual to seek his death. To this end he divided his treasure into a number of small parcels, which he confided to the care of so many of his companions, making agreement with each for the carriage. [Sidenote: Retreat of the Buccaneers over land to the West Indian Sea.] January the 2d, in the morning, they began their march, an advanced guard being established to consist of ten men from each company, who were to be relieved every morning by ten others. At night they rested at four leagues distance, according to their estimation, from the border of the sea. The first part of Lussan's account of this journey has little of adventure or description. The difficulties experienced were what had been foreseen, such as the inhabitants driving away cattle and removing provisions, setting fire to the dry grass when it could annoy them in their march; and sometimes the Buccaneers were fired at by unseen shooters. They rested at villages and farms when they found any in their route, where, and also by making prisoners, they obtained provisions. When no habitations or buildings were at hand, they generally encamped at night on a hill, or in open ground. Very early in their march they were attended by a body of Spanish troops at a small distance, the music of whose trumpets afforded them entertainment every morning and evening; 'but,' says Lussan, 'it was like the music of the enchanted palace of Psyche, which was heard without the musicians being visible.' On the forenoon of the 9th, notwithstanding their vigilance, the Buccaneers were saluted with an unexpected volley of musketry which killed two men; and this was the only mischance that befel them in their march from the Western Sea to _Segovia_, which town they entered on the 11th of January, without hindrance, and found it without inhabitants, and cleared of every kind of provisions. [Sidenote: Town of New Segovia.] 'The town of _Segovia_ is situated in a vale, and is so surrounded with mountains that it seems to be a prisoner there. The churches are ill built. The place of arms, or parade, is large and handsome, as are many of the houses. It is distant from the shore of the _South Sea_ forty leagues: The road is difficult, the country being extremely mountainous.' On the 12th, they left _Segovia_ and without injuring the houses, a forbearance to which they had little accustomed themselves; but present circumstances brought to their consideration that if it should be their evil fortune to be called to account, it might be quite as well for them not to add the burning of _Segovia_ to the reckoning. The 13th, an hour before sunset, they ascended a hill, which appeared a good station to occupy for the night. When they arrived at the summit, they perceived on the slope of the next mountain before them, a great number of horses grazing (Lussan says between twelve and fifteen hundred), which at the first sight they mistook for horned cattle, and congratulated each other on the near prospect of a good meal; but it was soon discovered they were horses, and that a number of them were saddled: intrenchments also were discerned near the same place, and finally, troops. This part of the country was a thick forest, with deep gullies, and not intersected with any path excepting the road they were travelling, which led across the mountain where the Spaniards were intrenched. On reconnoitring the position of the Spaniards, the road beyond them was seen to the right of the intrenchments. The Buccaneers on short consultation, determined that they would endeavour under cover of the night to penetrate the wood to their right, so as to arrive at the road beyond the Spanish camp, and come on it by surprise. This plan was similar to that which they had projected at _Guayaquil_, and was a business exactly suited to the habits and inclinations of these adventurers, who more than any other of their calling, or perhaps than the native tribes of _North America_, were practised and expert in veiling their purpose so as not to awaken suspicion; in concealing themselves by day and making silent advances by night, and in all the arts by which even the most wary may be ensnared. Here, immediately after fixing their plan, they began to intrench and fortify the ground they occupied, and made all the dispositions which troops usually do who halt for the night. This encampment, besides impressing the Spaniards with the belief that they intended to pass the night in repose, was necessary to the securing their baggage and prisoners. Rest seemed necessary and due to the Buccaneers after a toilsome day's march, and so it was thought by the Spanish Commander, who seeing them fortify their quarters, doubted not that they meant to do themselves justice; but an hour after the close of day, two hundred Buccaneers departed from their camp. The moon shone out bright, which gave them light to penetrate the woods, whilst the woods gave them concealment from the Spaniards, and the Spaniards kept small lookout. Before midnight, they were near enough to hear the Spaniards chanting Litanies, and long before daylight were in the road beyond the Spanish encampment. They waited till the day broke, and then pushed for the camp, which, as had been conjectured, was entirely open on this side. Two Spanish sentinels discovered the approach of the enemy, and gave alarm; but the Buccaneers were immediately after in the camp, and the Spanish troops disturbed from their sleep had neither time nor recollection for any other measure than to save themselves by flight. They abandoned all the intrenchments, and the Buccaneers being masters of the pass, were soon joined by the party who had charge of the baggage and prisoners. In this affair, the loss of the Buccaneers was only two men killed, and four wounded. In the remaining part of their journey, they met no serious obstruction, and were not at any time distressed by a scarcity of provisions. Lussan says they led from the Spanish encampment 900 horses, which served them for carriage, for present food, and to salt for future provision when they should arrive at the sea shore. [Sidenote: Rio de Yare, or Cape River.] On the 17th of January, which was the 16th of their journey, they came to the banks of a river by which they were to descend to the _Caribbean Sea_. This river has its source among the mountains of _Nueva Segovia_, and falls into the sea to the South of _Cape Gracias a Dios_ about 14 leagues, according to D'Anville's Map, in which it is called _Rio de Yare_. Dampier makes it fall into the sea something more to the Southward, and names it the _Cape River_. The country here was not occupied nor frequented by the Spaniards, and was inhabited only in a few places by small tribes of native Americans. The Buccaneers cut down trees, and made rafts or catamarans for the conveyance of themselves and their effects down the stream. On account of the falls, the rafts were constructed each to carry no more than two persons with their luggage, and every man went provided with a pole to guide the raft clear of rocks and shallows. In the commencement of this fresh-water navigation, their maritime experience, with all the pains they could take, did not prevent their getting into whirlpools, where the rafts were overturned, with danger to the men and frequently with the loss of part of the lading. When they came to a fall which appeared more than usually dangerous, they put ashore, took their rafts to pieces, and carried all below the fall, where they re-accommodated matters and embarked again. The rapidity of the stream meeting many obstructions, raised a foam and spray that kept every thing on the rafts constantly wet; the salted horse flesh was in a short time entirely spoilt, and their ammunition in a state not to be of service in supplying them with game. Fortunately for them the banks of the river abounded in banana-trees, both wild and in plantations. When they first embarked on the river, the rafts went in close company; but the irregularity and violence of the stream, continually entangled and drove them against each other, on which account the method was changed, and distances preserved. This gave opportunity to the desperadoes who had conspired against their companions to commence their operations, which they directed against five Englishmen, whom they killed and despoiled. The murderers absconded in the woods with their prey, and were not afterwards seen by the company. [Sidenote: February, 1688.] The 20th of February they had passed all the falls, and were at a broad deep and smooth part of the river, where they found no other obstruction than trees and drift-wood floating. As they were near the sea, many stopped and began to build canoes. Some English Buccaneers who went lower down the river, found at anchor an English vessel belonging to _Jamaica_, from which they learnt that the French Government had just proclaimed an amnesty in favour of those who since the Peace made with _Spain_ had committed acts of piracy, upon condition of their claiming the benefit of the Proclamation within a specified time. A similar proclamation had been issued in the year 1687 by the English Government; but as it was not clear from the report made by the crew of the _Jamaica_ vessel, whether it yet operated, the English Buccaneers would not embark for _Jamaica_. They sent by two Mosquito Indians, an account of the news they had heard to the French Buccaneers, with notice that there was a vessel at the mouth of the river capable of accommodating not more than forty persons. Immediately on receiving the intelligence, above a hundred of the French set off in all haste for the vessel, every one of whom pretended to be of the forty. Those who first arrived on board, took up the anchor as speedily as they could, and set sail, whilst those who were behind called loudly for a decision by lot or dice; but the first comers were content to rest their title on possession. The English Buccaneers remained for the present with the Mosquito Indians near _Cape Gracias a Dios_, 'who,' says Lussan, 'have an affection for the English, on account of the many little commodities which they bring them from the Island of _Jamaica_.' The greater part of the French Buccaneers went to the French settlements; but seventy-five of them who went to _Jamaica_, were apprehended and detained prisoners by the Duke of Albemarle, who was then Governor, and their effects sequestrated. They remained in prison until the death of the Duke, which happened in the following year, when they were released; but neither their arms nor plunder were returned to them. The _South Sea_ was now cleared of the main body of the Buccaneers. A few stragglers remained, concerning whom some scattered notices are found, of which the following are the heads. [Sidenote: La Pava.] Seixas mentions an English frigate named _La Pava_, being wrecked in the _Strait of Magalhanes_ in the year 1687; and that her loss was occasioned by currents[88]. By the name being Spanish (signifying the Hen) this vessel must have been a prize to the Buccaneers. [Sidenote: Captain Straiton.] In the Narrative of the loss of the Wager, by Bulkeley and Cummins, it is mentioned that they found at _Port Desire_ cut on a brick, in very legible characters, "Captain Straiton, 16 cannon, 1687." Most probably this was meant of a Buccaneer vessel. [Sidenote: Le Sage.] At the time that the English and French Buccaneers were crossing the _Isthmus_ in great numbers from the _West Indies_ to the _South Sea_, two hundred French Buccaneers departed from _Hispaniola_ in a ship commanded by a Captain Le Sage, intending to go to the _South Sea_ by the _Strait of Magalhanes_; but having chosen a wrong season of the year for that passage, and finding the winds unfavourable, they stood over to the coast of _Africa_, where they continued cruising two years, and returned to the _West Indies_ with great booty, obtained at the expence of the Hollanders. [Sidenote: Small Crew of Buccaneers at the Tres Marias.] The small crew of French Buccaneers in the _South Sea_ who were a part of those who had separated from Grogniet to cruise near _California_, and for whom Le Picard had sought in vain on the coast of _New Spain_, were necessitated by the smallness of their force, and the bad state of their vessel, to shelter themselves at the _Tres Marias Islands_ in the entrance of the _Gulf of California_. [Sidenote: Their Adventures, and Return to the West Indies.] It is said that they remained four years among those Islands, at the end of which time, they determined, rather than to pass the rest of their lives in so desolate a place, to sail Southward, though with little other prospect or hope than that they should meet some of their former comrades; instead of which, on looking in at _Arica_ on the coast of _Peru_, they found at anchor in the road a Spanish ship, which they took, and in her a large quantity of treasure. The Buccaneers embarked in their prize, and proceeded Southward for the _Atlantic_, but were cast ashore in the _Strait of Magalhanes_. Part of the treasure, and as much of the wreck of the vessel as served to construct two sloops, were saved, with which, after so many perils, they arrived safe in the _West Indies_. [Sidenote: Story related by Le Sieur Froger.] Le Sieur Froger, in his account of the Voyage of M. de Gennes, has introduced a narrative of a party of French Buccaneers or Flibustiers going from _Saint Domingo_ to the _South Sea_, in the year 1686; which is evidently a romance fabricated from the descriptions which had been given of their general courses and habits. These _protegés_ of Le Sieur Froger, like the Buccaneer crew from the _Tres Marias Islands_ just mentioned, were reduced to great distress,--took a rich prize afterwards on the coast of _Peru_,--were returning to the _Atlantic_, and lost their ship in the _Strait of Magalhanes_. They were ten months in the _Strait_ building a bark, which they loaded with the best of what they had saved of the cargo of their ship, and in the end arrived safe at _Cayenne_[89]. Funnel also mentions a report which he heard, of a small crew of French Buccaneers, not more than twenty, whose adventures were of the same cast; and who probably were the _Tres Marias_ Buccaneers. It has been related that five Buccaneers who had gamed away their money, unwilling to return poor out of the _South Sea_, landed at the Island _Juan Fernandez_ from Edward Davis's ship, about the end of the year 1687, and were left there. In 1690, the English ship Welfare, commanded by Captain John Strong, anchored at _Juan Fernandez_; of which voyage two journals have been preserved among the MSS in the Sloane Collection in the British Museum, from which the following account is taken. The Farewell arrived off the Island on the evening of October the 11th, 1690. In the night, those on board were surprised at seeing a fire on an elevated part of the land. Early next morning, a boat was sent on shore, which soon returned, bringing off from the Island two Englishmen. These were part of the five who had landed from Davis's ship. They piloted the Welfare to a good anchoring place. [Sidenote: Buccaneers who lived three years on the Island Juan Fernandez.] In the three years that they had lived on _Juan Fernandez_, they had not, until the arrival of the Welfare, seen any other ships than Spaniards, which was a great disappointment to them. The Spaniards had landed and had endeavoured to take them, but they had found concealment in the woods; one excepted, who deserted from his companions, and delivered himself up to the Spaniards. The four remaining, when they learnt that the Buccaneers had entirely quitted the _South Sea_, willingly embarked with Captain Strong, and with them four servants or slaves. Nothing is said of the manner in which they employed themselves whilst on the Island, except of their contriving subterraneous places of concealment that the Spaniards should not find them, and of their taming a great number of goats, so that at one time they had a tame stock of 300. CHAP. XXV. _Steps taken towards reducing the =Buccaneers= and =Flibustiers= under subordination to the regular Governments. War of the Grand Alliance against =France=. The Neutrality of the =Island Saint Christopher= broken._ Whilst these matters were passing in the _Pacific Ocean_, small progress was made in the reform which had been begun in the _West Indies_. The English Governors by a few examples of severity restrained the English Buccaneers from undertaking any enterprise of magnitude. With the French, the case was different. The number of the Flibustiers who absented themselves from _Hispaniola_, to go to the _South Sea_, alarmed the French Government for the safety of their colonies, and especially of their settlements in _Hispaniola_, the security and defence of which against the Spaniards they had almost wholly rested on its being the place of residence and the home of those adventurers. To persist in a rigorous police against their cruising, it was apprehended would make the rest of them quit _Hispaniola_, for which reason it was judged prudent to relax in the enforcement of the prohibitions; the Flibustiers accordingly continued their courses as usual. [Sidenote: 1686.] In 1686, Granmont and De Graaf prepared an armament against _Campeachy_. M. de Cussy, who was Governor of _Tortuga_ and the French part of _Hispaniola_, applied personally to them to relinquish their design; but as the force was collected, and all preparation made, neither the Flibustiers nor their Commanders would be dissuaded from the undertaking, and De Cussy submitted. [Sidenote: Campeachy burnt.] _Campeachy_ was plundered and burnt. A measure was adopted by the French Government which certainly trenched on the honour of the regular military establishments of _France_, but was attended with success in bringing the Flibustiers more under control and rendering them more manageable. This was, the taking into the King's service some of the principal leaders of the Flibustiers, and giving them commissions of advanced rank, either in the land service or in the French marine. [Sidenote: Granmont.] A commission was made out for Granmont, appointing him Commandant on the South coast of _Saint Domingo_, with the rank of Lieutenant du Roy. But of Granmont as a Buccaneer, it might be said in the language of sportsmen, that he was game to the last. Before the commission arrived, he received information of the honour intended him, and whilst yet in his state of liberty, was seized with the wish to make one more cruise. He armed a ship, and, with a crew of 180 Flibustiers in her, put to sea. This was near the end of the year 1686; and what afterwards became of him and his followers is not known, for they were not again seen or heard of. [Sidenote: 1687.] In the beginning of 1687, a commission arrived from _France_, appointing De Graaf Major in the King's army in the _West Indies_. He was then with a crew of Flibustiers near _Carthagena_. In this cruise, twenty-five of his men who landed in the _Gulf of Darien_, were cut off by the Darien Indians. De Graaf on his return into port accepted his commission, and when transformed to an officer in the King's army, became, like Morgan, a great scourge to the Flibustiers and _Forbans_. [Sidenote: Proclamation against Pirates.] In consequence of complaints made by the Spaniards, a Proclamation was issued at this time, by the King of _Great Britain_, James the IId, specified in the title to be 'for the more effectual reducing and suppressing of Pirates and Privateers in _America_, as well on the sea as on the land, who in great numbers have committed frequent robberies, which hath occasioned great prejudice and obstruction to Trade and Commerce.' [Sidenote: 1688.] A twenty years truce had, in the year 1686, been agreed upon between _France_ and _Spain_, but scarcely a twentieth part of that time was suffered to elapse before it was broken in the _West Indies_. [Sidenote: Danish Factory robbed by the Buccaneers.] The Flibustiers of _Hispaniola_ did not content themselves with their customary practice: in 1688 they plundered the Danish Factory at the Island _St. Thomas_, which is one of the small Islands called _the Virgins_, near the East end of _Porto Rico_. This was an aggression beyond the limits which they had professed to prescribe to their depredatory system, and it is not shewn that they had received injury at the hands of the Danes. Nevertheless, the French West-India histories say, 'Our Flibustiers (_nos Flibustiers_), in 1688, surprised the Danish Factory at _St. Thomas_. The pillage was considerable, and would have been more if they had known that the chief part of the cash was kept in a vault under the hall, which was known to very few of the house. They forgot on this occasion their ordinary practice, which is to put their prisoners to the torture to make them declare where the money is. It is certain that if they had so done, the hiding-place would have been revealed to them, in which it was believed there was more than 500,000 livres.' Such remarks shew the strong prepossession which existed in favour of the Buccaneers, and an eagerness undistinguishing and determined after the extraordinary. Qualities the most common to the whole of mankind were received as wonderful when related of the Buccaneers. One of our Encyclopedias, under the article Buccaneer, says, 'they were transported with an astonishing degree of enthusiasm whenever they saw a sail.' In this same year, 1688, war broke out in Europe between the French and Spaniards, and in a short time the English joined against the French. [Sidenote: 1689. July.] _England_ and _France_ had at no period since the Norman conquest been longer without serious quarrel. On the accession of William the IIId. to the crowns of _Great Britain_, it was generally believed that a war with _France_ would ensue. [Sidenote: The English driven from St. Christopher.] The French in the _West Indies_ did not wait for its being declared, but attacked the English part of _St. Christopher_, the Island on which by joint agreement had been made the original and confederated first settlements of the two Nations in the _West Indies_. [Sidenote: See p. 38.] The English inhabitants were driven from their possessions and obliged to retire to the Island _Nevis_, which terminated the longest preserved union which history can shew between the English and French as subjects of different nations. In the commencement it was strongly cemented by the mutual want of support against a powerful enemy; that motive for their adherence to each other had ceased to exist: yet in the reigns of Charles the IId. and James the IId. of _England_, an agreement had been made between _England_ and _France_, that if war should at any time break out between them, a neutrality should be observed by their subjects in the _West Indies_. This war continued nearly to the end of King William's reign, and during that time the English and French Buccaneers were engaged on opposite sides, as auxiliaries to the regular forces of their respective nations, which completely separated them; and it never afterwards happened that they again confederated in any buccaneer cause. They became more generally distinguished by different appellations, not consonant to their present situations and habits; for the French adventurers, who were frequently occupied in hunting and at the _boucan_, were called the Flibustiers of _St. Domingo_, and the English adventurers, who had nothing to do with the _boucan_, were called the Buccaneers of _Jamaica_. [Sidenote: 1690. July. The English retake St. Christopher.] The French had not kept possession of _St. Christopher_ quite a year, when it was taken from them by the English. This was an unfortunate year for the French, who in it suffered a great defeat from the Spaniards in _Hispaniola_. Their Governor De Cussy, and 500 Frenchmen, fell in battle, and the Town of _Cape François_ was demolished. The French Flibustiers at this time greatly annoyed _Jamaica_, making descents, in which they carried off such a number of negroes, that in derision they nicknamed _Jamaica 'Little Guinea_.' The principal transactions in the _West Indies_, were, the attempts made by each party on the possessions of the other. In the course of these services, De Graaf was accused of misconduct, tried, and deprived of his commission in the army; but though judged unfit for command in land service, out of respect to his maritime experience he was appointed Captain of a Frigate. No one among the Flibustiers was more distinguished for courage and enterprise in this war than Jean Montauban, who commanded a ship of between 30 and 40 guns. He sailed from the _West Indies_ to _Bourdeaux_ in 1694. In February of the year following, he departed from _Bourdeaux_ for the coast of _Guinea_, where in battle with an English ship of force, both the ships were blown up. Montauban and a few others escaped with their lives. This affair is not to be ranked among buccaneer exploits, _Great Britain_ and _France_ being at open War, and Montauban having a regular commission. CHAP. XXVI. _Seige and Plunder of the City of =Carthagena= on the =Terra Firma=, by an Armament from =France= in conjunction with the =Flibustiers= of =Saint Domingo=._ [Sidenote: 1697.] In 1697, at the suggestion of M. le Baron de Pointis, an officer of high rank in the French Marine, a large armament was fitted out in _France_, jointly at the expence of the Crown, and of private contributors, for an expedition against the Spaniards in the _West Indies_. The chief command was given to M. de Pointis, and orders were sent out to the Governor of the French Settlements in _Hispaniola_ (M. du Casse) to raise 1200 men in _Tortuga_ and _Hispaniola_ to assist in the expedition. The king's regular force in M. du Casse's government was small, and the men demanded were to be supplied principally from the Flibustiers. The dispatches containing the above orders arrived in January. It was thought necessary to specify to the Flibustiers a limitation of time; and they were desired to keep from dispersing till the 15th of February, it being calculated that M. de Pointis would then, or before, certainly be at _Hispaniola_. [Sidenote: March.] De Pointis, however, did not arrive till the beginning of March, when he made _Cape François_, but did not anchor there; preferring the Western part of _Hispaniola_, 'fresh water being better and more easy to be got at _Cape Tiburon_ than at any other part.' M. du Casse had, with some difficulty, kept the Flibustiers together beyond the time specified, and they were soon dissatisfied with the deportment of the Baron de Pointis, which was more imperious than they had been accustomed to from any Commander. [Sidenote: Character of the Buccaneers by M. de Pointis.] M. de Pointis published a history of his expedition, in which he relates that at the first meeting between him and M. du Casse, he expressed himself dissatisfied at the small number of men provided; 'but,' says he, 'M. du Casse assured me that the Buccaneers were at this time collected, and would every man of them perform wonders. It is the good fortune of all the pirates in these parts to be called Buccaneers. These freebooters are, for the most part, composed of those that desert from ships that come upon the coast: the advantage they bring to the Governors, protects them against the prosecution of the law. All who are apprehended as vagabonds in _France_, and can give no account of themselves, are sent to these Islands, where they are obliged to serve for three years. The first that gets them, obliges them to work in the plantations; at the end of the term of servitude, somebody lends them a gun, and to sea they go a buccaneering.' It is proper to hint here, that when M. de Pointis published his Narrative, he was at enmity with the Buccaneers, and had a personal interest in bringing the buccaneer character into disrepute. Many of his remarks upon them, nevertheless, are not less just than characteristic. He continues his description; 'They were formerly altogether independent. Of late years they have been reduced under the government of the coast of _St. Domingo_: they have commissions given them, for which they pay the tenth of all prizes, and are now called the King's subjects. The Governors of our settlements in _Saint Domingo_ being enriched by them, do mightily extol them for the damages they do to the Spaniards. This infamous profession which an impunity for all sorts of crimes renders so much beloved, has within a few years lost us above six thousand men, who might have improved and peopled the colony. At present they are pleased to be called the King's subjects; yet it is with so much arrogance, as obliges all who are desirous to make use of them, to court them in the most flattering terms. This was not agreeable to my disposition, and considering them as his Majesty's subjects which the Governor was ordered to deliver to me, I plainly told them that they should find me a Commander to lead them on, but not as a companion to them.' The expedition, though it was not yet made known, or even yet pretended to be determined, against what place it should be directed, was expected to yield both honour and profit. The Buccaneers would not quarrel with a promising enterprise under a spirited and experienced commander, for a little haughtiness in his demeanour towards them; but they demanded to have clearly specified the share of the prize money and plunder to which they should be entitled, and it was stipulated by mutual agreement 'that the Flibustiers and Colonists should, man for man, have the same shares of booty that were allowed to the men on board the King's ships.' As so many men were to embark from M. du Casse's government, he proposed to go at their head, and desired to know of M. de Pointis what rank would be allowed him. M. du Casse was a mariner by profession, and had the rank of Captain in the French Navy. De Pointis told him that the highest character he knew him in, was that which he derived from his commission as _Capitaine de Vaisseau_, and that if he embarked in the expedition, he must be content to serve in that quality according to his seniority. M. du Casse nevertheless chose to go, though it was generally thought he was not allowed the honours and consideration which were his due as Governor of the French Colonies at _St. Domingo_, and Commander of so large a portion of the men engaged in the expedition. It was settled, that the Flibustiers should embark partly in their own cruising vessels, and partly on board the ships of M. de Pointis' squadron, and should be furnished with six weeks provisions. A review was made, to prevent any but able men of the Colony being taken; negroes who served, if free, were to be allowed shares like other men; if slaves and they were killed, their masters were to be paid for them. Two copies of the agreement respecting the sharing of booty were posted up in public places at _Petit Goave_, and a copy was delivered to M. du Casse, the Governor. M. de Pointis consulted with M. du Casse what enterprise they should undertake, but the determination wholly rested with M. de Pointis. 'There was added,' M. de Pointis says, 'without my knowledge, to the directions sent to Governor du Casse, that he was to give assistance to our undertaking, without damage to, or endangering, his Colony. This restriction did in some measure deprive me of the power of commanding his forces, seeing he had an opportunity of pretending to keep them for the preservation of the Colony.' M. du Casse made no pretences to withhold, but gave all the assistance in his power. He was an advocate for attacking the City of _San Domingo_. This was the wish of most of the colonists, and perhaps was what would have been of more advantage to _France_ than any other expedition they could have undertaken. But the armament having been prepared principally at private expence, it was reasonable for the contributors to look to their own reimbursement. To attack the City of _San Domingo_ was not approved; other plans were proposed, but _Carthagena_ seems to have been the original object of the projectors of the expedition, and the attack of that city was determined upon. Before the Flibustiers and other colonists embarked, a disagreement happened which had nearly made them refuse altogether to join in the expedition. The officers of De Pointis' fleet had imbibed the sentiments of their Commander respecting the Flibustiers or Buccaneers, and followed the example of his manners towards them. The fleet was lying at _Petit Goave_, and M. de Pointis, giving to himself the title of General of the Armies of _France_ by Sea and by Land in _America_, had placed a guard in a Fort there. M. du Casse, as he had received no orders from _Europe_ to acknowledge any superior within his government, might have considered such an exercise of power to be an encroachment on his authority which it became him to resist; but he acted in this, and in other instances, like a man overawed. The officer of M. de Pointis who commanded the guard on shore, arrested a Flibustier for disorderly behaviour, and held him prisoner in the fort. The Flibustiers surrounded the fort in a tumultuous manner to demand his release, and the officer commanded his men to fire upon them, by which three of the Flibustiers were killed. It required some address and civility on the part of M. de Pointis himself, as well as the assistance of M. du Casse, to appease the Flibustiers; and the officer who had committed the offence was sent on board under arrest. The force furnished from M. du Casse's government, consisted of nearly 700 Flibustiers, 170 soldiers from the garrisons, and as many volunteer inhabitants and negroes as made up about 1200 men. The whole armament consisted of seven large ships, and eleven frigates, besides store ships and smaller vessels; and, reckoning persons of all classes, 6000 men. [Sidenote: April. Siege of Carthagena by the French.] The Fleet arrived off _Carthagena_ on April the 13th, and the landing was effected on the 15th. It is not necessary to relate all the particulars of this siege, in which the Buccaneers bore only a part. That part however was of essential importance. M. de Pointis, in the commencement, appointed the whole of the Flibustiers, without any mixture of the King's troops, to a service of great danger, which raised a suspicion, of partiality and of an intention to save the men he brought with him from _Europe_, as regarding them to be more peculiarly his own men. An eminence about a mile to the Eastward of the City of _Carthagena_, on which was a church named _Nuestra Senora de la Poupa_, commands all the avenues and approaches on the land side to the city. 'I had been assured,' says M. de Pointis, 'that if we did not seize the hill _de la Poupa_ immediately on our arrival, all the treasure would be carried off. To get possession of this post, I resolved to land the Buccaneers in the night of the same day on which we came to anchor, they being proper for such an attempt, as being accustomed to marching and subsisting in the woods.' M. de Pointis takes this occasion to accuse the Buccaneers of behaving less heroically than M. du Casse had boasted they would, and that it was not without murmuring that they embarked in the boats in order to their landing. It is however due to them on the score of courage and exertion, to remark, though in some degree it is anticipation, that no part of the force under M. de Pointis shewed more readiness or performed better service in the siege than the Buccaneers. There was uncertainty about the most proper place for landing, and M. de Pointis went himself in a boat to examine near the shore to the North of the city. The surf rolled in heavy, by which his boat was filled, and was with difficulty saved from being stranded on a rock. The proposed landing was given up as impracticable, and M. de Pointis became of opinion that _Carthagena_ was approachable only by the lake which makes the harbour, the entrance to which, on account of its narrowness, was called the _Bocca-chica_, and was defended by a strong fort. The Fleet sailed for the _Bocca-chica_, and on the 15th some of the ships began to cannonade the Fort. The first landing was effected at the same time by a corps of eighty negroes, without any mixture of the King's troops. This was a second marked instance of the Commander's partial attention to the preservation of the men he brought from _France_. M. de Pointis despised the Flibustiers, and probably regarded negroes as next to nothing. He was glad however to receive them as his companions in arms, and it was an honour due from him to all under his command, as far as circumstances would admit without injury to service, to share the dangers equally, or at least without partiality. The 16th, which was the day next after the landing, the Castle of _Bocca-chica_ surrendered. This was a piece of good fortune much beyond expectation, and was obtained principally by the dexterous management of a small party of the Buccaneers; which drew commendation even from M. de Pointis. 'Among the chiefs of these Buccaneers,' he says, 'there may be about twenty men who deserve to be distinguished for their courage; it not being my intention to comprehend them in the descriptions which I make of the others.' [Sidenote: May. The City capitulates.] De Pointis conducted the siege with diligence and spirit. The _Nuestra Senora de la Poupa_ was taken possession of on the 17th; and on the 3d of May, the City capitulated. The terms of the Capitulation were, That all public effects and office accounts should be delivered to the captors. That merchants should produce their books of accounts, and deliver up all money and effects held by them for their correspondents. That every inhabitant should be free to leave the city, or to remain in his dwelling. That those who retired from the city should first deliver up all their property there to the captors. That those who chose to remain, should declare faithfully, under penalty of entire confiscation, the gold, silver, and jewels, in their possession; on which condition, and delivering up one half, they should be permitted to retain the other half, and afterwards be regarded as subjects of _France_. That the churches and religious houses should be spared and protected. The French General on entering the Town with his troops, went first to the cathedral to attend the _Te Deum_. He next sent for the Superiors of the convents and religious houses, to whom he explained the meaning of the article of the capitulation promising them protection, which was, that their houses should not be destroyed; but that it had no relation to money in their possession, which they were required to deliver up. Otherwise, he observed, it would be in their power to collect in their houses all the riches of the city. He caused it to be publicly rumoured that he was directed by the Court to keep possession of _Carthagena_, and that it would be made a French Colony. To give colour to this report, he appointed M. du Casse to be Governor of the City. He strictly prohibited the troops from entering any house until it had undergone the visitation of officers appointed by himself, some of which officers it was supposed, embezzled not less than 100,000 crowns each. A reward was proclaimed for informers of concealed treasure, of one-tenth of all treasure discovered by them. 'The hope of securing a part, with the fear of bad neighbours and false friends, induced the inhabitants to be forward in disclosing their riches, and Tilleul who was charged with receiving the treasure, was not able to weigh the specie fast enough.' M. du Casse, in the exercise of what he conceived to be the duties of his new office of Governor of _Carthagena_, had begun to take cognizance of the money which the inhabitants brought in according to the capitulation; but M. de Pointis was desirous that he should not be at any trouble on that head. High words passed between them, in consequence of which, Du Casse declined further interference in what was transacting, and retired to a house in the suburbs. This was quitting the field to an antagonist who would not fail to make his advantage of it; whose refusal to admit other witnesses to the receipt of money than those of his own appointment, was a strong indication, whatever contempt he might profess or really feel for the Flibustiers, that he was himself of as stanch Flibustier principles as any one of the gentry of the coast. Some time afterwards, however, M. du Casse thought proper to send a formal representation to the General, that it was nothing more than just that some person of the colony should be present at the receipt of the money. The General returned answer, that what M. du Casse proposed, was in itself a matter perfectly indifferent; but that it would be an insult to his own dignity, and therefore he could not permit it. The public collection of plunder by authority did not save the city from private pillage. In a short time all the plate disappeared from the churches. Houses were forcibly entered by the troops, and as much violence committed as if no capitulation had been granted. M. de Pointis, when complained to by the aggrieved inhabitants, gave orders for the prevention of outrage, but was at no pains to make them observed. It appears that the Flibustiers were most implicated in these disorders. Many of the inhabitants who had complied with the terms of the capitulation, seeing the violences every where committed, hired Flibustiers to be guards in their houses, hoping that by being well paid they would be satisfied and protect them against others. Some observed this compact and were faithful guardians; but the greater number robbed those they undertook to defend. For this among other reasons, De Pointis resolved to rid the city of them. On a report, which it is said himself caused to be spread, that an army of 10,000 Indians were approaching _Carthagena_, he ordered the Flibustiers out to meet them. Without suspecting any deception, they went forth, and were some days absent seeking the reported enemy. As they were on the return, a message met them from the General, purporting, that he apprehended their presence in the city would occasion some disturbance, and he therefore desired them to stop without the gates. On receiving this message, they broke out into imprecations, and resolved not to delay their return to the city, nor to be kept longer in ignorance of what was passing there. When they arrived at the gates they found them shut and guarded by the King's troops. Whilst they deliberated on what they should next do, another message, more conciliating in language than the former, came to them from M. de Pointis, in which he said that it was by no means his intention to interdict them from entering _Carthagena_; that he only wished they would not enter so soon, nor all at one time, for fear of frightening the inhabitants, who greatly dreaded their presence. The Flibustiers knew not how to help themselves, and were necessitated to take up their quarters without the city walls, where they were kept fifteen days, by which time the collection of treasure from the inhabitants was completed, the money weighed, secured in chests, and great part embarked. De Pointis says, 'as fast as the money was brought in, it was immediately carried on board the King's ships.' The uneasiness and impatience of the Flibustiers for distribution of the booty may easily be imagined. On their re-admission to the city, the merchandise was put up to sale by auction, and the produce joined to the former collection; but no distribution took place, and the Flibustiers were loud in their importunities. M. de Pointis assigned as a reason for the delay, that the clerks employed in the business had not made up the accounts. He says in his Narrative, 'I was not so ill served by my spies as not to be informed of the seditious discourses held by some wholly abandoned to their own interest, upon the money being carried on board the King's ships.' To allay the ferment, he ordered considerable gratifications to be paid to the Buccaneer captains, also compensations to the Buccaneers who had been maimed or wounded, and rewards to be given to some who had most distinguished themselves during the siege;--and he spoke with so much appearance of frankness of his intention, as soon as ever he should receive the account of the whole, to make a division which should be satisfactory to all parties, that the Buccaneers were persuaded to remain quiet. [Sidenote: Value of the Plunder.] The value of the plunder is variously reported. Much of the riches of the city had been carried away on the first alarm of the approach of an enemy. De Pointis says 110 mules laden with gold went out in the course of four days. 'Nevertheless, the honour acquired to his Majesty's arms, besides near eight or nine millions that could not escape us, consoled us for the rest.' Whether these eight or nine millions were crowns or livres M. de Pointis' account does not specify. It is not improbable he meant it should be understood as livres. Many were of opinion that the value of the booty was not less than forty millions of livres; M. du Casse estimated it at above twenty millions, besides merchandise. M. de Pointis now made known that on account of the unhealthiness of the situation, he had changed his intention of leaving a garrison and keeping _Carthagena_, for that already more Frenchmen had died there by sickness than he had lost in the siege. He ordered the cannon of the _Bocca-chica Castle_ to be taken on board the ships, and the Castle to be demolished. On the 25th of May, orders were issued for the troops to embark; and at the same time he embarked himself without having given any previous notice of his intention so to do to M. du Casse, from whom he had parted but a few minutes before. The ships of the King's fleet began to take up their anchors to move towards the entrance of the harbour, and M. de. Pointis sent an order to M. du Casse for the Buccaneers and the people of the Colony to embark on board their own vessels. M. du Casse sent two of his principal officers to the General to demand that justice should be done to the Colonists. Still the accounts were said not to be ready; but on the 29th, the King's fleet being ready for sea, M. du Pointis sent to M. du Casse the Commissary's account, which stated the share of the booty due to the Colonists, including the Governor and the Buccaneers, to be 40,000 crowns. What the customary manner of dividing prize money in the French navy was at that time, is not to be understood from the statement given by De Pointis, which says, 'that the King had been pleased to allow to the several ships companies, a tenth of the first million, and a thirtieth part of all the rest.' Here it is not specified whether the million of which the ships companies were to be allowed one-tenth, is to be understood a million of _Louis_, a million crowns, or a million livres. The difference of construction in a large capture would be nearly as three to one. It requires explanation likewise what persons are meant to be included in the term 'ships companies.' Sometimes it is used to signify the common seamen, without including the officers; and for them, the one-tenth is certainly not too large a share. That in any military service, public or private, one-tenth of captures or of plunder should be deemed adequate gratification for the services of all the captors, officers included, seems scarcely credible. In the _Carthagena_ expedition it is also to be observed, that the dues of the crown were in some measure compromised by the admission of private contributions towards defraying the expence. The Flibustiers had contributed by furnishing their own vessels to the service. Du Casse when he saw the account, did not immediately communicate it to his Colonists, deterred at first probably by something like shame, and an apprehension that they would reproach him with weakness for having yielded so much as he had all along done to the insulting and imperious pretensions of De Pointis. Afterwards through discretion, he delayed making the matter public until the Colonists had all embarked and their vessels had sailed from the city. He then sent for the Captains, and acquainted them with the distribution intended by M. de Pointis, and they informed their crews. CHAP. XXVII. _Second Plunder of =Carthagena=. Peace of =Ryswick, in 1697=. Entire Suppression of the =Buccaneers= and =Flibustiers=._ [Sidenote: 1697. May.] The share which M. de Pointis had allotted of the plunder of _Carthagena_ to the Buccaneers, fell so short of their calculations, and was felt as so great an aggravation of the contemptuous treatment they had before received, that their rage was excessive, and in their first transports they proposed to board the Sceptre, a ship of 84 guns, on board which M. de Pointis carried his flag. This was too desperate a scheme to be persevered in. After much deliberation, one among them exclaimed, 'It is useless to trouble ourselves any farther about such a villain as De Pointis; let him go with what he has got; he has left us our share at _Carthagena_, and thither we must return to seek it.' The proposition was received with general applause by these remorseless robbers, whose desire for vengeance on De Pointis was all at once obliterated by the mention of an object that awakened their greediness for plunder. They got their vessels under sail, and stood back to the devoted city, doomed by them to pay the forfeit for the dishonesty of their countryman. The matter was consulted and determined upon without M. du Casse being present, and the ship in which he had embarked was left by the rest without company. When he perceived what they were bent upon, he sent orders to them to desist, which he accompanied with a promise to demand redress for them in _France_; but neither the doubtful prospect of distant redress held out, nor respect for his orders, had any effect in restraining them. M. du Casse sent an officer to M. de Pointis, who had not yet sailed from the entrance of _Carthagena Harbour_, to inform him that the Buccaneers, in defiance of all order and in breach of the capitulation which had been granted to the city, were returning thither to plunder it again; but M. de Pointis in sending the Commissary's account had closed his intercourse with the Buccaneers and with the Colonists, at least for the remainder of his expedition. M. du Casse's officer was told that the General was so ill that he could not be spoken with. The Officer went to the next senior Captain in command of the fleet, who, on being informed of the matter, said, 'the Buccaneers were great rogues, and ought to be hanged;' but as no step could be taken to prevent the mischief, without delaying the sailing of the fleet, the chief commanders of which were impatient to see their booty in a place of greater security, none was taken, and [Sidenote: June.] on the 1st of June the King's fleet sailed for _France_, leaving _Carthagena_ to the discretion of the Buccaneers. M. de Pointis claims being ignorant of what was transacting. 'On the 30th of May,' he says, 'I was taken so ill, that all I could do, before I fell into a condition that deprived me of my intellect, was to acquaint Captain Levi that I committed the care of the squadron to him.' If M. de Pointis acted fairly by the people who came from _France_ and returned with him, it must be supposed that in his sense of right and wrong he held the belief, that 'to rob a rogue is no breach of honesty.' But it was said of him, '_Il etoit capable de former un grand dessein, et de rien epargner pour le faire réussir_;' the English phrase for which is, 'he would stick at nothing.' On the 1st of June, M. du Casse also sailed from _Carthagena_ to return to _St. Domingo_. Thus were the Flibustiers abandoned to their own will by all the authorities whose duty it was to have restrained them. The inhabitants of _Carthagena_ seeing the buccaneer ships returning to the city, waited in the most anxious suspense to learn the cause. The Flibustiers on landing, seized on all the male inhabitants they could lay hold of, and shut them up in the great church. They posted up a kind of manifesto in different parts of the city, setting forth the justice of their second invasion of _Carthagena_, which they grounded on the perfidy of the French General De Pointis ('_que nous vous permettons de charger de toutes les maledictions imaginables_,') and on their own necessities. Finally, they demanded five millions of livres as the price of their departing again without committing disorder. It seems strange that the Buccaneers could expect to raise so much money in a place so recently plundered. Nevertheless, by terrifying their prisoners, putting some to the torture, ransacking the tombs, and other means equally abhorrent, in four days time they had nearly made up the proposed sum. It happened that two Flibustiers killed two women of _Carthagena_ in some manner, or under some circumstances, that gave general offence, and raised indignation in the rest of the Flibustiers, who held a kind of trial and condemned them to be shot, which was done in presence of many of the inhabitants. The Buccaneer histories praise this as an act of extraordinary justice, and a set-off against their cruelties and robberies, such as gained them the esteem even of the Spaniards. The punishment, however merited, was a matter of caprice. It is no where pretended that they ever made a law to themselves to forbid their murdering their prisoners; in very many instances they had not refrained, and in no former instance had it been attended with punishment. The putting these two murderers to death therefore, as it related to themselves, was an arbitrary and lawless act. If the women had been murdered for the purpose of coming at their money, it could not have incurred blame from the rest. These remarks are not intended in disapprobation of the act, which was very well; but too highly extolled. Having almost completed their collection, they began to dispute about the division, the Flibustiers pretending that the more regular settlers of the colony (being but landsmen) were not entitled to an equal share with themselves, when a bark arrived from _Martinico_ which was sent expressly to give them notice that a fleet of English and Dutch ships of war had just arrived in the _West Indies_. This news made them hasten their departure, and shortened or put an end to their disputes; for previous to sailing, they made a division of the gold and silver, in which each man shared nearly a thousand crowns; the merchandise and negroes being reserved for future division, and which it was expected would produce much more. The Commanders of the English and Dutch squadrons, on arriving at _Barbadoes_, learnt that the French had taken _Carthagena_. They sailed on for that place, and had almost reached it, when they got sight of De Pointis' squadron, to which they gave chase, but which escaped from them by superior sailing. [Sidenote: An English and Dutch Squadron fall in with the Buccaneers.] On the 3d or 4th of June, the Flibustiers sailed from _Carthagena_ in nine vessels, and had proceeded thirty leagues of their route towards _Hispaniola_, when they came in sight of the English and Dutch fleet. They dispersed, every one using his best endeavours to save himself by flight. The two richest ships were taken; two were driven on shore and wrecked, one of them near _Carthagena_, and her crew fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who would have been justified in treating them as pirates; but they were only made to work on the fortifications. The five others had the good fortune to reach _Isle Avache_. To conclude the history of the Carthagena expedition, a suit was instituted in _France_ against M. de Pointis and the _armateurs_, in behalf of the Colonists and Flibustiers, and a decree was obtained in their favour for 1,400,000 livres; but the greater part of the sum was swallowed up by the expenses of the suit, and the embezzlements of agents. The Carthagena expedition was the last transaction in which the Flibustiers or Buccaneers made a conspicuous figure. It turned out to their disadvantage in many respects; but chiefly in stripping them of public favour. [Sidenote: September. Peace of Ryswick.] In September 1697, an end was put to the war, by a Treaty signed at _Ryswick_. By this treaty, the part of the Island _St. Christopher_ which had belonged to the French was restored to them. In earlier times, peace, by releasing the Buccaneers from public demands on their services, left them free to pursue their own projects, with an understood license or privilege to cruise or form any other enterprise against the Spaniards, without danger of being subjected to enquiry; but the aspect of affairs in this respect was now greatly altered. [Sidenote: Causes which led to the suppression of the Buccaneers.] The Treaty of 1670 between _Great Britain_ and _Spain_, with the late alliance of those powers against _France_, had put an end to buccaneering in _Jamaica_; the scandal of the second plunder of _Carthagena_ lay heavy on the Flibustiers of _St. Domingo_; and a circumstance in which both _Great Britain_ and _France_ were deeply interested, went yet more strongly to the entire suppression of the cruisings of the Buccaneers, and to the dissolution of their piratical union; which was, the King of _Spain_, Charles the IId. being in a weak state of health, without issue, and the succession to the crown of _Spain_ believed to depend upon his will. On this last account, the kings of _Great Britain_ and _France_ were earnest in their endeavours to give satisfaction to _Spain_. Louis XIV. sent back from _France_ to _Carthagena_ the silver ornaments of which the churches there had been stripped; and distinction was no longer admitted in the French Settlements between Flibustier and Pirate. The Flibustiers themselves had grown tired of preserving the distinction; for after the Peace of _Ryswick_ had been fully notified in the _West Indies_, they continued to seize and plunder the ships of the English and Dutch, till complaint was made to the French Governor of _Saint Domingo_, M. du Casse, who thought proper to make indemnification to the sufferers. Fresh prohibitions and proclamations were issued, and _encouragement_ was given to the adventurers to become planters. The French were desirous to obtain permission to trade in the Spanish ports of the _Terra Firma_. Charlevoix says, 'the Spaniards were charmed by the sending back the ornaments taken from the churches at _Carthagena_, and it was hoped to gain them entirely by putting a stop to the cruisings of the Flibustiers. The commands of the King were strict and precise on this head; that the Governor should persuade the Flibustiers to make themselves inhabitants, and in default of prevailing by persuasion, to use force.' Many Flibustiers and Buccaneers did turn planters, or followed their profession of mariner in the ships of merchants. Attachment to old habits, difficulties in finding employment, and being provided with vessels fit for cruising, made many persist in their former courses. The evil most grievously felt by them was their proscribed state, which left them no place in the _West Indies_ where they might riot with safety and to their liking, in the expenditure of their booty. Not having the same inducement as formerly to limit themselves to the plundering one people, they extended their scope of action, and robbed vessels of all nations. Most of those who were in good vessels, quitted the West Indian Seas, and went roving to different parts of the world. Mention is made of pirates or buccaneers being in the _South Sea_ in the year 1697, but their particular deeds are not related; and Robert Drury, who was shipwrecked at _Madagascar_ in the year 1702, relates, 'King Samuel's messenger then desired to know what they demanded for me? To which, Deaan Crindo sent word that they required two _buccaneer_ guns.' At the time of the Peace of _Ryswick_, the Darien Indians, having quarrelled with the Spaniards, had become reconciled to the Flibustiers, and several of the old Flibustiers afterwards settled on the _Isthmus_ and married Darien women. [Sidenote: Providence Island.] One of the _Lucayas_, or _Bahama Islands_, had been settled by the English, under the name of _Providence Island_. It afforded good anchorage, and the strength of the settlement was small, which were conveniencies to pirates that induced them to frequent it; and, according to the proverbial effect of evil communication, the inhabitants were tempted to partake of their plunder, and assist in their robberies, by purchasing their prize goods, and supplying them with all kinds of stores and necessaries. This was for several years so gainful a business to the Settlement, as to cause it to be proverbial in the _West Indies_; that 'Shipwrecks and Pirates were the only hopes of the _Island Providence_.' [Sidenote: 1700-1. Accession of Philip Vth. to the Throne of Spain.] In three years after the Peace of _Ryswick_, Charles the IId of Spain died, and a Prince of the House of Bourbon mounted the Spanish Throne, which produced a close union of interests between _France_ and _Spain_. The ports of Spanish America, both in the _West Indies_ and in the _South Sea_, were laid open to the merchants of _France_. The _Noticia de las Expediciones al Magalhanes_ notices the great resort of the French to the _Pacific Ocean_, 'who in an extraordinary manner enriched themselves during the war of the Spanish succession.' In the French Settlements in the _West Indies_ the name of Flibustier, because it implied enmity to the Spaniards, was no longer tolerated. On the breaking out of the war between _Great Britain_ and _France_ which followed the Spanish succession, the English drove the French out of _St. Christopher_, and it has since remained wholly to _Great Britain_. M. le Comte de Gennes, a Commander in the French Navy, who a few years before had made an unsuccessful voyage to the _Strait of Magalhanes_, was the Governor of the French part of the Island at the time of the surrender[90]. During this war, the Governors of _Providence_ exercised their authority in granting commissions, or _letters of reprisal_; and created Admiralty Courts, for the _condemnation_ of captured vessels: for under some of the Governors no vessels brought to the adjudication of the Court escaped that sentence. These were indirect acts of piracy. The last achievement related of the Flibustiers, happened in 1702, when a party of Englishmen, having commission from the Governor of _Jamaica_, landed on the _Isthmus_ near the _Samballas Isles_, where they were joined by some of the old Flibustiers who lived among the Darien Indians, and also by 300 of the Indians. They marched to some mines from which they drove the Spaniards, and took 70 negroes. They kept the negroes at work in the mines twenty-one days; but in all this exploit they obtained no more than about eighty pounds weight of gold. Here then terminates the History of the Buccaneers of _America_. Their distinctive mark, which they undeviatingly preserved nearly two centuries, was, their waging constant war against the Spaniards, and against them only. Many peculiarities have been attributed to the Buccaneers in other respects, some of which can apply only to their situation as hunters of cattle, and some existed rather in the writer's fancy than in reality. Mariners are generally credited for being more eccentric in their caprices than other men; which, if true, is to be accounted for by the circumstances of their profession; and it happens that they are most subjected to observation at the times when they are fresh in the possession of liberty and money, earned by long confinement and labour. It may be said of the Buccaneers that they were, in general, courageous according to the character of their leader; often rash, alternately negligent and vigilant, and always addicted to pleasure and idleness. It will help to illustrate the manners and qualifications of the Buccaneers in the _South Sea_, to give an extract from the concluding part of Dampier's manuscript journal of his Voyage round the World with the Buccaneers, and will also establish a fact which has been mentioned before only as a matter surmised[91]. Dampier says, [Sidenote: Extract from Dampier.] 'September the 20th, 1691, arrived in the _Downs_ to my great joy and satisfaction, having in my voyage ran clear round the Globe.--I might have been master of the ship we first sailed in if I would have accepted it, for it was known to most men on board that I kept a Journal, and all that knew me did ever judge my accounts were kept as correct as any man's. Besides, that most, if not all others who kept journals in the voyage, lost them before they got to _Europe_, whereas I preserved my writing. Yet I see that some men are not so well pleased with my account as if it came from any of the Commanders that were in the _South Sea_, though most of them, I think all but Captain Swan, were incapable of keeping a sea journal, and took no account of any action, neither did they make any observations. But I am only to answer for myself, and if I have not given satisfaction to my friends in what I have written, the fault is in the meanness of my information, and not in me who have been faithful as to what came to my knowledge.' Countenanced as the Buccaneers were, it is not in the least surprising that they became so numerous. With the same degree of encouragement at the present time, the Seas would be filled with such adventurers. It was fortunate for the Spaniards, and perhaps for the other maritime Nations of _Europe_, that the Buccaneers did not make conquest and settlement so much their object as they did plunder; and that they took no step towards making themselves independent, whilst it was in their power. Among their Chiefs were some of good capacity; but only two of them, Mansvelt and Morgan, appear to have contemplated any scheme of regular settlement independent of the European Governments, and the time was then gone by. Before _Tortuga_ was taken possession of for the Crown of _France_, such a project might have been undertaken with great advantage. The English and French Buccaneers were then united; _England_ was deeply engaged and fully occupied by a civil war; and the jealousy which the Spaniards entertained of the encroachments of the French in the _West Indies_, kept at a distance all probability of their coalescing to suppress the Buccaneers. If they had chosen at that time to have formed for themselves any regular mode of government, it appears not very improbable that they might have become a powerful independent State. In the history of so much robbery and outrage, the rapacity shewn in some instances by the European Governments in their West-India transactions, and by Governors of their appointment, appears in a worse light than that of the Buccaneers, from whom, they being professed ruffians, nothing better was expected. The superior attainments of Europeans, though they have done much towards their own civilization, chiefly in humanising their institutions, have, in their dealings with the inhabitants of the rest of the globe, with few exceptions, been made the instruments of usurpation and extortion. After the suppression of the Buccaneers, and partly from their relicks, arose a race of pirates of a more desperate cast, so rendered by the increased danger of their occupation, who for a number of years preyed upon the commerce of all nations, till they were hunted down, and, it may be said, exterminated. Of one crew of pirates who were brought before a Court of Justice, fifty-two men were condemned and executed at one time, in the year 1722. FINIS. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Lebreles de pressa._ [2] The name _Saint Domingo_ was afterwards applied to the whole Island by the French, who, whilst they contested the possession with the Spaniards, were desirous to supersede the use of the name _Española_ or _Hispaniola_. [3] _Historia General de las Indias_, por _Gonç. Hernandez de Oviedo_, lib. 19. cap. 13. Also _Hakluyt_, vol. iii. p. 499, edit. 1600. [4] _Camden's Elizabeth_, A. D. 1680. [5] _Hist. des Antilles, par P. du Tertre._ Paris, 1667. Tome I. p. 415. [6] _La Rochefort, sur le Repas des Carribes._ [7] _History of Brasil, by Robert Southey_, p. 17. [8] In some of the English accounts the name is written _Bucanier_; but uniformity in spelling was not much attended to at that time. Dampier wrote _Buccaneer_, which agrees with the present manner of pronouncing the word, and is to be esteemed the best authority. [9] The French account says, that after taking possession of _Tortuga_, the Adventurers divided into three classes: that those who occupied themselves in the chase, took the name of Boucaniers; those who went on cruises, the name of Flibustiers; and a third class, who cultivated the soil, called themselves _Habitans_ (Inhabitants.) See _Histoire des Avanturiers qui se sont signalez dans les Indes. Par. Alex. Ol. Oexmelin_. Paris 1688, vol. i. p. 22. [10] The Governor or Admiral, who granted the commission, claimed one tenth of all prizes made under its authority. [11] It is proper to mention, that an erroneously printed date, in the English edition of the _Buccaneers of America_, occasioned a mistake to be made in the account given of Narbrough's Voyage, respecting the time the Buccaneers kept possession of _Panama_. See Vol. III. of _Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea_, p. 374. [12] _Theatro Naval Hydrographico._ Cap. xi. See also of Peche, in Vol. III. of _South Sea Voyages and Discoveries_, p. 392. [13] _Not. de las Exp. Magal._ p. 268, of _Ult. Viage al Estrecho_. [14] _Buccaneers of America_, Part III. Ch. xi. [15] 'They never forfeit their word. The King has his commission from the Governor of _Jamaica_, and at every new Governor's arrival, they come over to know his pleasure. The King of the Mosquitos was received by his Grace the Duke of Portland (Governor of _Jamaica_, A. D. 1722-3) with that courtesy which was natural to him, and with more ceremony than seemed to be due to a Monarch who held his sovereignty by commission.'--'The Mosquito Indians had a victory over the Spanish Indians about 30 years ago, and cut off a number; but gave a Negro who was with them, his life purely on account of his speaking English.' _History of Jamaica._ London 1774. Book i. Ch, 12. And _British Empire in America_, Vol. II. pp. 367 & 371. [16] _Case of His Majesty's Subjects upon the Mosquito Shore, most humbly submitted_, &c. London, 1789. [17] _Narrative by Basil Ringrose_, p. 5. [18] _De Rochfort_ describes this animal under the name _Javaris_. _Hist. Nat. des Isles Antilles_, p. 138, edit. 1665. It is also described by _Pennant_, in his _Synopsis of Quadrupeds_, Art. _Mexican Wild Hog_. [19] _Ringrose._ _Buccaneers of America_, Part IV. p. 10. The early morning drum has, in our time, been called the _Reveiller_. Either that or _a travailler_ seems applicable; for according to _Boyer_, _travailler_ signifies to trouble, or disturb, as well as to work; and it is probable, from the age of the authority above cited, that the original term was _à travailler_. [20] _Narrative by Basil Ringrose_, p. 3. [21] _Ringrose_, p. 11. [22] _Ringrose_, Chap. ix. [23] No. 48 in the same collection is a manuscript copy of Ringrose's Journal, but varied in the same manner from the Original as the printed Narrative. [24] _Ringrose_, p. 44. [25] _Ringrose_ and _Sharp_. [26] _Sharp's Journal_, p. 72. [27] _Buccaneers of America_, Part III, p. 80. [28] Nos. 239. and 44. in the _Sloane Collection of Manuscripts_ in the _British Museum_, are probably the charts and translation spoken of above. No. 239. is a book of Spanish charts of the sea-coast of _New Spain_, _Peru_, and _Chili_, each chart containing a small portion of coast, on which is drawn a rude likeness of the appearance of the land, making it at the same time both landscape and chart. They are generally without compass, latitude, or divisions of any kind by lines, and with no appearance of correctness, but apparently with knowledge of the coast.--No. 44. is a copy of the same, or of similar Spanish charts of the same coast, and is dedicated to King Charles II. by Bartholomew Sharp. [29] _Sharp's Manuscript Journal. Brit. Mus._ [30] Morgan continued in office at _Jamaica_ during the remainder of the reign of King Charles the IId.; but was suspected by the Spaniards of connivance with the Buccaneers, and in the next reign, the Court of _Spain_ had influence to procure his being sent home prisoner from the _West Indies_. He was kept three years in prison; but without charge being brought forward against him. [31] _British Empire in America_, Vol. II. p. 319. [32] _Dampier_, Vol. I, p. 73. [33] In the Sloane Collection, _Brit. Mus._ [34] _Cowley's MS. Journal. Sloane Collection_, No. 54. [35] See also _Pernety's Journal_, p. 179, English translation. [36] _Dampier's Manuscript Journal_, No. 3236, _Sloane Collection, British Museum_. [37] The writer of Commodore Anson's Voyage informs us that Juan Fernandez resided some time on the Island, and afterwards abandoned it. [38] _Dampier's Voyages_, Vol. I, Chap. 5. [39] The latter part of the above extract is from Cowley's Manuscript.--Captain Colnet when at the _Galapagos_ made a similar remark. He says, 'I was perplexed to form a conjecture how the small birds which appeared to remain in one spot, supported themselves without water; but some of our men informed me that as they were reposing beneath a prickly pear-tree, they observed an old bird in the act of supplying three young ones with drink, by squeezing the berry of a tree into their mouths. It was about the size of a pea, and contained a watery juice of an acid and not unpleasant taste. The bark of the tree yields moisture, and being eaten allays the thirst. The land tortoise gnaw and suck it. The leaf of this tree is like that of the bay-tree, the fruit grows like cherries; the juice of the bark dies the flesh of a deep purple.' _Colnet's Voyage to the South Sea_, p. 53. [40] _Dampier_, Vol. I, p. 112. [41] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 5. This description does not agree with the Spanish Charts; but no complete regular survey appears yet to have been made of the Coast of _New Spain_. [42] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 5. [43] _Ibid._ [44] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 6. [45] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 6. To search for this wreck with a view to recover the treasure in her, was one of the objects of an expedition from _England_ to the _South Sea_, which was made a few years subsequent to this Buccaneer expedition. [46] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 6. [47] _Manuscript Journal in the Sloane Collection._ [48] See _Cowley's Voyage_, p. 34. Also, Vol. III. of _South Sea Discoveries_, p. 305. [49] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 6. [50] Dampier. [51] _Wafer's Voyages_, p. 196. [52] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 7. [53] _Journal du Voyage au Mer du Sud, par Rav. de Lussan_, p. 25. [54] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 8. [55] _Dampier._ [56] _Voyage and Description_, &c. _by Lionel Wafer_, p. 191, and seq. London, 1699. [57] _Dampier. Manuscript Journal._ [58] _Wafer's Voyages_, p. 208. [59] _Colnet's Voyage to the Pacific_, pp. 156-7. [60] _Journal of a Cruize to the Pacific Ocean, by Captain David Porter, in the years 1812-13 & 1814._ [61] _Cruising Voyage round the World, by Captain Woodes Rogers, in the years 1708 to 1711_, pp. 211 and 265, 2d edition. London, 1718. [62] _Wafer's Voyages_, p. 214 & seq. [63] _Dampier_, Vol. I. Chap. 13, p. 352. [64] _Wafer's Voyages_, p. 220. [65] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 8. [66] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 9. [67] Late Observations place _Acapulco_ in latitude 16° 50' 41'' N, and longitude 100° 0' West of _Greenwich_. [68] _Dampier._ [69] See Chart in Spilbergen's Voyage. [70] _Dampier's Manuscript Journal._ [71] _Dampier_, Vol. I, p. 257. [72] In some old manuscript Spanish Charts, the _Chametly Isles_ are laid down SE-1/2S about 12 leagues distant from _Cape Corrientes_. [73] According to Captain Vancouver, _Point Ponteque_ and _Cape Corrientes_ are nearly North and South of each other. Dampier was nearest in-shore. [74] The Manuscript says, the farthest of the _Chametlan Isles_ from the main-land is not more than four miles distant. [75] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 9. [76] _Manuscript Journal._ [77] Dampier's Reckoning made the difference of longitude between _Cape Corrientes_ and the _Island Guahan_, 125 degrees; which is 16 degrees more than it has been found by modern observations. [78] _Dampier._ _Manuscript Journal_, and Vol. I, Chap. 10. of his printed Voyages. [79] The Ladrone flying proa described in Commodore Anson's voyage, sailed with the belly or rounded side and its small canoe to windward; by which it appears that these proas were occasionally managed either way, probably according to the strength of the wind; the little parallel boat or canoe preserving the large one upright by its weight when to windward, and by its buoyancy when to leeward. [80] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 11. [81] _Dampier_, Vol. I, Chap. 14. The long Island is named _Basseelan_ in the charts; but the shape there given it does not agree well with Dampier's description. [82] M. de Surville in 1769, and much more lately Captain A. Murray of the English E. I. Company's Service, found the South end of _Monmouth Island_ to be in 20° 17' N. [83] _Manuscript Journal._ [84] In the printed Voyage, the shoal is mistakenly said to lie SbW from the East end of _Timor_. The Manuscript Journal, and the track of the ship as marked in the charts to the 1st volume of _Dampier's Voyages_, agree in making the place of the shoal SbW from the West end of _Timor_; whence they had last taken their departure, and from which their reckoning was kept. [85] _A Voyage by Edward Cooke_, Vol. I, p. 371. London, 1712. [86] _Raveneau de Lussan_, p. 117. [87] _'Ce moyen êtoit a la verité un peu violent, mais c'etoit l'unique pour mettre les Espagnols à la raison.'_ [88] _Theatro Naval._ fol. 61, 1. [89] _Relation du Voyage de M. de Gennes_, p. 106. Paris, 1698. [90] Père Labat relates a story of a ridiculous effort in mechanical ingenuity, in which M. de Gennes succeeded whilst he was Governor at _Saint Christopher_. 'He made an Automaton in the likeness of a soldier, which marched and performed sundry actions. It was jocosely said that M. de Gennes might have defended his government with troops of his own making. His automaton soldier eat victuals placed before it, which he digested, by means of a dissolvent,'--_P. Labat_, Vol. V. p. 349. [91] See p. 207, near the bottom. * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Illustrations have been moved. Some sidenotes have been moved, separated or merged. Some repetitive sidenotes have been deleted. The following changes were made in the transcription of this work: to settle what constitues[constitutes] occupancy. recommended to King Ferdinand to recal[recall] Ovando. Pere[Père] Labat describes first cruisers againt[against] the Spaniards were English ['Camoes de Gama': Macron on e in Camoes is now omitted.] Vattel has decribed[described] this case. during a time of peace betwen[between] apppearance[appearance] of the land and was no[not] otherwise clad than the rest of his sqadron[squadron] The fruit is like the sea chesnut[chestnut] The same kind of maoeuvring[manoeuvring] of the _S[ta] Maria de l'Aguada_ and it was in[an] honour due from him who granted the commisson[commission] at _Saint Christopher_. [']He made an Automaton by means of a dissolvent,[']--_P. Labat_, [oe ligatures: ligature now omitted.] * * * * * 
13405	----	THE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF MONSIEUR VIOLET IN _California, Sonora, and Western Texas_ BY CAPTAIN MARRYAT AUTHOR OF "KING'S OWN," "PACHA OF MANY TALES," "VALERIE," "SETTLERS IN CANADA," "MASTERMAN READY," "POOR JACK," ETC., ETC. _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS LONDON: BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL NEW YORK: 9 LAFAYETTE PLACE [Illustration: "Spying through an opera-glass at the majestic animals which he could not approach."] TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF MONSIEUR VIOLET CHAPTER I. The Revolution of 1830, which deprived Charles the Tenth of the throne of France, like all other great and sudden changes, proved the ruin of many individuals, more especially of many ancient families who were attached to the Court, and who would not desert the exiled monarch in his adversity. Among the few who were permitted to share his fortunes was my father, a noble gentleman of Burgundy, who at a former period and during a former exile, had proved his unchangeable faith and attachment to the legitimate owners of the crown of France. The ancient royal residence of Holyrood having been offered, as a retreat, to his unhappy master, my father bade an eternal adieu to his country; and with me, his only son, then but nine years of age, followed in the suite of the monarch, and established himself in Edinburgh. Our residence in Scotland was not long. Charles the Tenth decided upon taking up his abode at Prague. My father went before him to make the necessary arrangements; and as soon as his master was established there, he sought by travel to forget his griefs. Young as I was, I was his companion. Italy, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land were all visited in the course of three years, after which time we returned to Italy; and being then twelve years old, I was placed for my education in the Propaganda at Rome. For an exile who is ardently attached to his country there is no repose. Forbidden to return to his beloved France, there was no retreat which could make my father forget his griefs, and he continued as restless and as unhappy as ever. Shortly after that I had been placed in the Propaganda, my father fell in with an old friend, a friend of his youth, whom he had not met with for years, once as gay and as happy as he had been, now equally suffering and equally restless. This friend was the Italian Prince Seravalle, who also had drank deep of the cup of bitterness. In his youth, feeling deeply the decadence, both moral and physical, of his country, he had attempted to strike a blow to restore it to its former splendour; he headed a conspiracy, expended a large portion of his wealth in pursuit of his object, was betrayed by his associates, and for many years was imprisoned by the authorities in the Castle of San Angelo. How long his confinement lasted I know not, but it must have been a long while, as in after-times, when he would occasionally revert to his former life, all incidents he related were for years "when he was in his dungeon, or in the courtyard prison of the Capitol," where many of his ancestors had dictated laws to nations. At last the Prince was restored to freedom, but captivity had made no alteration in his feelings or sentiments. His love for his country, and his desire for its regeneration, were as strong as ever, and he very soon placed himself at the head of the Carbonari, a sect which, years afterwards, was rendered illustrious by the constancy and sufferings of a Maroncelli, a Silvio Pellico, and many others. The Prince was again detected and arrested, but he was not thrown into prison. The government had been much weakened and the well-known opinions and liberality of the Prince had rendered him so popular with the Trasteverini, or northern inhabitants of the Tiber, that policy forbade either his captivity or destruction. He was sentenced to be banished for (I think) ten years. During his long banishment, the Prince Seravalle wandered over various portions of the globe, and at last found himself in Mexico. After a residence at Vera Cruz, he travelled into the interior, to examine the remains of the ancient cities of the Western World; and impelled by his thirst for knowledge and love of adventure, he at last arrived on the western coast of America, and passing through California, fell in with the Shoshones, or Snake Indians, occupying a large territory extending from the Pacific to nearly the feet of the Rocky Mountains. Pleased with the manners and customs and native nobility of this tribe of Indians, the Prince remained with them for a considerable time, and eventually decided that he would return once more to his country, now that his term of banishment had expired; not to resettle in an ungrateful land, but to collect his property and return to the Shoshones, to employ it for their benefit and advancement. There was, perhaps, another feeling, even more powerful, which induced the Prince Seravalle to return to the Indians with whom he had lived so long. I refer to the charms and attraction which a wild life offers to the man of civilization, more particularly when he has discovered how hollow and heartless we become under refinement. Not one Indian who has been brought up at school, and among the pleasures and luxuries of a great city, has ever wished to make his dwelling among the pale faces; while, on the contrary, many thousands of white men, from the highest to the lowest stations in civilization, have embraced the life of the savage, remaining with and dying among them, although they might have accumulated wealth, and returned to their own country. This appears strange, but it is nevertheless true. Any intelligent traveller, who has remained a few weeks in the wigwams of well-disposed Indians, will acknowledge that the feeling was strong upon him even during so short a residence. What must it then be on those who have resided with the Indians for years? It was shortly after the Prince's return to Italy to fulfil his benevolent intentions, that my father renewed his old friendship-a friendship of early years, so strong that their adverse politics could not weaken it. The Prince was then at Leghorn; he had purchased a vessel, loaded it with implements of agriculture and various branches of the domestic arts; he had procured some old pieces of artillery, a large quantity of carabines from Liége, gunpowder, &c.; materials for building a good house, and a few articles of ornament and luxury. His large estates were all sold to meet these extraordinary expenses. He had also engaged masons, smiths, and carpenters, and he was to be accompanied by some of his former tenants, who well understood the cultivation of the olive-tree and vine. It was in the autumn of 1833 when he was nearly ready to start, that he fell in with my father, told him his adventures and his future plans, and asked him to accompany him. My father, who was tired and disgusted with everything, _blasé au fond_, met the Prince more than half-way. Our property in France had all been disposed of at a great sacrifice at the time of the Revolution. All my father possessed was in money and jewels. He resolved to risk all, and to settle with the Prince in this far-distant land. Several additions were consequently made to the cargo and to the members composing the expedition. Two priests had already engaged to act as missionaries. Anxious for my education, my father provided an extensive library, and paid a large sum to the Prior of a Dominican convent to permit the departure with us of another worthy man, who was well able to superintend my education. Two of the three religious men who had thus formed our expedition had been great travellers, and had already carried the standard of the cross east of the Ganges in the Thibetian and Burman empires. In order to avoid any difficulties from the government, the Prince Seravalle had taken the precaution to clear the vessel out for Guatemala, and the people at Leghorn fully believed that such was his object. But Guatemala and Acapulco were left a long way south of us before we arrived at our destination. At last everything was prepared. I was sent for from the Propaganda--the stock of wines, &c., were the last articles which were shipped, and the _Esmeralda_ started on her tedious; and by no means certain voyage. CHAPTER II. I was very young then--- not thirteen years old; but if I was young, I had travelled much, and had gained that knowledge which is to be obtained by the eye--perhaps the best education we can have in our earlier years. I shall pass over the monotony of the voyage of eternal sky and water. I have no recollection that we were in any imminent danger at any time, and the voyage might have been styled a prosperous one. After five months we arrived off the coast, and with some difficulty we gained the entrance of a river falling into Trinity Bay, in lat. 41° north and long. 124° 28' west. We anchored about four miles above the entrance, which was on the coast abreast of the Shoshones' territory, and resorted to by them on their annual fishing excursions. In memory of the event, the river was named by the Indians--"Nu elejé sha wako;" or, the Guide of the Strangers. For many weeks it was a strange and busy scene. The Prince Seravalle had, during his former residence with the Shoshones, been admitted into their tribe as a warrior and a chief, and now the Indians flocked from the interior to welcome their pale-faced chief, who had not forgotten his red children. They helped our party to unload the vessel, provided us with game of all kinds, and under the directions of the carpenter, they soon built a large warehouse to protect our goods and implements from the effect of the weather. As soon as our cargo was housed, the Prince and my father, accompanied by the chiefs and elders of the tribe, set off on an exploring party, to select a spot fit for the settlement. During their absence, I was entrusted to the care of one of the chief's squaws, and had three beautiful children for my play-mates. In three weeks the party returned; they had selected a spot upon the western banks of the Buona Ventura River, at the foot of a high circular mountain, where rocks covered with indurated lava and calcined sulphur, proved the existence of former volcanic eruptions. The river was lined with lofty timber; immense quarries of limestone were close at hand, and the minor streams gave us clay which produced bricks of an excellent quality. The Spaniards had before visited this spot, and had given the mountain the name of St. Salvador; but our settlement took the Indian appellation of the Prince, which was--"Nanawa ashta jueri ê;" or, the Dwelling of the Great Warrior. As the place of our landing was a great resort of the Indians during the fishing season, it was also resolved that a square fort and store, with a boat-house, should be erected there; and for six or seven months all was bustle and activity, when an accident occurred which threw a damp upon our exertions. Although the whole country abounds in cattle, and some other tribes, of which I shall hereafter make mention, do possess them in large herds, the Shoshones did not possess any. Indeed, so abundant was the game in this extensive territory, that they could well dispense with them; but as the Prince's ambition was to introduce agriculture and more domestic habits among the tribe, he considered it right that they should be introduced. He therefore despatched the _Esmeralda_ to obtain them either at Monterey or Santa Barbara. But the vessel was never more heard of; the Mexicans stated that they had perceived the wreck of a vessel off Cape Mendocino, and it was but natural to suppose that these were the remains of our unfortunate brig. All hands on board perished, and the loss was very heavy to us. The crew consisted of the captain, his son, and twelve men; and there were also on board five of our household, who had been despatched upon various commissions, Giuseppe Polidori, the youngest of our missionaries, one of our gunsmiths, one of our masons, and two Italian farmers. Melancholy as was this loss, it did not abate the exertions of those who were left. Fields were immediately cleared--gardens prepared; and by degrees the memory of this sad beginning faded away before the prospect of future happiness and comfort. As soon as we were completely established, my education commenced. It was novel, yet still had much affinity to the plan pursued with the students of the Military Colleges in France, inasmuch as all my play-hours were employed in the hardier exercises. To the two excellent missionaries I owe much, and with them I passed many happy hours. We had brought a very extensive and very well selected library with us, and under their care I soon became acquainted with the arts and sciences of civilization; I studied history generally, and they also taught me Latin and Greek, and I was soon master of many of the modern languages. And as my studies were particularly devoted to the history of the ancient people of Asia, to enable me to understand their theories and follow up their favourite researches upon the origin of the great ruins in Western and Central America, the slight knowledge which I had gained at the Propaganda of Arabic and Sanscrit was now daily increased. Such were my studies with the good fathers; the other portion of my education was wholly Indian. I was put under the charge of a celebrated old warrior of the tribe, and from him I learned the use of the bow, the tomahawk, and the rifle; to throw the lasso, to manage the wildest horse, to break in the untamed colt; and occasionally I was permitted to accompany them in their hunting and fishing excursions. Thus for more than three years did I continue to acquire knowledge of various kinds, while the colony gradually extended its fields, and there appeared to be every chance of gradually reclaiming the wild Shoshones to a more civilized state of existence. But "l'homme propose et Dieu dispose." Another heavy blow fell upon the Prince, which eventually proved the ruin of all his hopes. After the loss of the vessel, we had but eight white men in the colony, besides the missionaries and ourselves; and the Prince, retaining only my father's old servant, determined upon sending the remainder to purchase the cattle which we had been so anxious to obtain. They departed on this mission, but never returned. In all probability, they were murdered by the Apaches Indians; although it is not impossible that, tired of our simple and monotonous life, they deserted us to establish themselves in the distant cities of Mexico. This second catastrophy weighed heavy upon the mind of the good old Prince. All his hopes were dashed to the ground--the illusions of the latter part of his life were destroyed for ever. His proudest expectations had been to redeem his savage friends from their wild life, and this could only be effected by commerce and agriculture. The farms round the settlement had for now nearly four years been tilled by the squaws and young Indians, under the direction of the white men; and although the occupation was by no means congenial to their nature, the Prince had every anticipation that with time and example, the Shoshones would perceive the advantages, and be induced to till the land for themselves. Before our arrival, the winter was always a season of great privation to that portion of the Indians who could not repair to the hunting grounds; while now, Indian corn, potatoes, and other vegetables were in plenty, at least for those who dwelt near to the settlement. But now that we had lost all our white cultivators and mechanics, we soon found that the Indians avoided the labour. All our endeavours proved useless: the advantages had not yet been sufficiently manifest: the transition attempted had been too short; and the good, although proud and lazy, Shoshones abandoned the tillage, and relapsed into their former apathy and indifference. Mortified at this change, the Prince and my father resolved to make an appeal to the whole nation, and try to convince them how much happier they would be if they would cultivate the ground for their support. A great feast was given, the calumet was smoked; after which the Prince rose and addressed them after their own fashion. As I had, a short time previous, been admitted as a chief and warrior, I, of course, was present at the meeting. The Prince spoke:-- "Do you not want to become the most powerful nation of the West? You do. If then such is the case, you must ask assistance from the earth, which is your mother. True, you have prairies abounding in game, but the squaws and the children cannot follow your path when hunting. "Are not the Crows, the Bannaxas, the Flat Heads, and the Umbiquas, starving during the winter? They have no buffalo in their land, and but few deer. What have they to eat? A few lean horses, perchance a bear; and the stinking flesh of the otter or beaver they may entrap during the season. "Would they not be too happy to exchange their furs against the corn, the tobacco, and good dried fish of the Shoshones? Now they sell their furs to the Yankees, but the Yankees bring them no food. The Flat Heads take the fire-water and blankets from the traders, but they do so because they cannot get anything else, and their packs of furs would spoil if they kept them. "Would they not like better to barter them with you, who are so near to them, for good food to sustain them and their children during the winter--- to keep alive their squaws and their old men during the long snow and the dreary moons of darkness and gloom? "Now if the Shoshones had corn and tobacco to give for furs, they would become rich. They would have the best saddles from Mexico, and the best rifles from the Yankees, the best tomahawks and blankets from the Canadians. Who then could resist the Shoshones? When they would go hunting, hundreds of the other natives would clear for them the forest path, or tear with their hands the grass out of their track in the prairie. I have spoken." All the Indians acknowledged that the talk was good and full of wisdom: but they were too proud to work. An old chief answered for the whole tribe. "Nanawa Ashta is a great chief: he is a brave! The Manitou speaks softly to his ears, and tells him the secret which makes the heart of a warrior big or small; but Nanawa has a pale face--his blood is a strange blood, although his heart is ever with his red friends. It is only the white Manitou that speaks to him, and how could the white Manitou know the nature of the Indians? He has not made them; he don't call them to him; he gives them nothing; he leaves them poor and wretched; he keeps all for the pale faces. "It is right he should do so. The panther will not feed the young of the deer, nor will the hawk sit upon the eggs of the dove. It is life, it is order, it is nature. Each has his own to provide for and no more. Indian corn is good; tobacco is good, it gladdens the heart of the old men when they are in sorrow; tobacco is the present of chiefs to chiefs. The calumet speaks of war and death; it discourses also of peace and friendship. The Manitou made the tobacco expressly for man--it is good. "But corn and tobacco must be taken from the earth; they must be watched for many moons, and nursed like children. This is work fit only for squaws and slaves. The Shoshones are warriors and free; if they were to dig in the ground, their sight would become weak, and their enemies would say they were moles and badgers. "Does the just Nanawa wish the Shoshones to be despised by the Crows or the horsemen of the south? No! he had fought for them before he went to see if the bones of his fathers were safe; and since his return, has he not given to them rifles and powder, and long nets to catch the salmon, and plenty of iron to render their arrows feared alike by the buffaloes and the Umbiquas? "Nanawa speaks well, for he loves his children: but the spirit that whispers to him is a pale-face spirit, that cannot see under the skin of a red warrior; it is too tough: nor in his blood; it is too dark. "Yet tobacco is good, and corn too. The hunters of the Flat Heads and Pierced Noses would come in winter to beg for it; their furs would make warm the lodges of the Shoshones. And my people would become rich and powerful; they would be masters of all the country, from the salt waters to the big mountains; the deer would come and lick their hands, and the wild horses would graze around their wigwams. 'Tis so that the pale faces grow rich and strong; they plant corn, tobacco, and sweet melons; they have trees that bear figs and peaches; they feed swine and goats, and tame buffaloes. They are a great people. "A red-skin warrior is nothing but a warrior; he is strong, but he is poor; he is not a wood-chunk, nor a badger, nor a prairie dog; he cannot dig the ground; he is a warrior, and nothing more. I have spoken." Of course the tenor of this speech was too much in harmony with Indian ideas not to be received with admiration. The old man took his seat, while another rose to speak in his turn. "The great chief hath spoken; his hair is white like the down of the swan; his winters have been many; he is wise; why should I speak after him, his words were true? The Manitou touched my ears and my eyes when he spoke (and he spoke like a warrior); I heard his war-cry, I saw the Umbiquas running in the swamps, and crawling like black snakes under the bushes. I spied thirty scalps on his belt, his leggings and mocassins were sewn with the hair of the Wallah Wallahs[1]. [Footnote 1: Indians living on the Columbian river, two hundred miles above Fort Vancouver, allied to the Nez Percés, and great supporters of the Americans.] "I should not speak; I am young yet and have no wisdom; my words are few, I should not speak. But in my vision I heard a spirit, it came upon the breeze, it entered within me. "Nanawa is my father, the father to all, he loves us, we are his children; he has brought with him a great warrior of the pale faces, who was a mighty chief in his tribe; he has given us a young chief who is a great hunter; in a few years he will be a great warrior, and lead our young men in the war-path on the plains of the Wachinangoes[2], for Owato Wanisha[3] is a Shoshone, though his skin is paler than the flower of the magnolia. [Footnote 2: Name given to the half-breeds by the Spaniards, but by Indians comprehending the whole Mexican race.] [Footnote 3: The "spirit of the young beaver;" a name given to me when I was made a warrior.] "Nanawa has also given to us two Makota Konayas[4], to teach wisdom to our young men; their words are sweet, they speak to the heart; they know everything and make men better. Nanawa is a great chief, very wise; what he says is right, what he wishes must be done, for he is our father, and he gave us strength to fight our enemies." [Footnote 4: Two priests, literally two black gowns.] "He is right; the Shoshones must have their lodges full of corn and tobacco. The Shoshones must ever be what they are, what they were, a great nation. But the chief of many winters hath said it; the hedge-hogs and the foxes may dig the earth, but the eyes of the Shoshones are always turned towards their enemies in the woods, or the buffaloes in the plains." "Yet the will of Nanawa must be done, but not by a Shoshone. We will give him plenty of squaws and dogs; we will bring him slaves from the Umbiquas, the Cayuses, and the Wallah Wallahs. They shall grow the corn and the tobacco while we hunt; while we go to fetch more slaves, even in the big mountains, or among the dogs of the south, the Wachinangoes. I will send the vermilion[5] to my young warriors, they will paint their faces and follow me on the war-path. I have spoken!" [Footnote 5: When a chief wishes to go to war, he sends to his warriors some leaves of tobacco covered with vermilion. It is a sign that they must soon be prepared.] Thus ended the hopes of making agriculturists of the wild people among whom we lived; nor did I wonder; such as they were, they felt happy. What could they want besides their neat conical skin lodges, their dresses, which were good, comfortable, and elegant, and their women, who were virtuous, faithful, and pretty? Had they not the unlimited range of the prairies? were they not lords over millions of elks and buffaloes?--they wanted nothing, except tobacco. And yet it was a pity we could not succeed in giving them a taste for civilization. They were gentlemen by nature; as indeed almost all the Indians are, when not given to drinking. They are extremely well bred, and stamped with the indubitable seal of nobility on their brow. The council was broken up, as both Christianity and his own peculiar sentiments would not permit the Prince Seravalle to entertain the thought of extending slavery. He bowed meekly to the will of Providence, and endeavoured by other means to effect his object of enlightening the minds of this pure and noble, yet savage race of men. CHAPTER III. This breaking up, for the time, of our agricultural settlement took place in the year 1838. Till then, or a few months before, I had passed my time between my civilized and uncivilized instructors. But although educated, I was an Indian, not only in my dress but in my heart. I mentioned that in the council called by the Prince I was present, having been admitted as a chief, being then about seventeen years old. My admission was procured in the following manner: when we received intelligence of the murder, or disappearance of our seven white men, whom the Prince had sent to Monterey to procure cattle, a party was sent out on their track to ascertain what had really taken place, and at my request the command of that party was confided to me. We passed the Buona Ventura, and followed the track of our white men for upwards of 200 miles, when we not only could trace it no further, but found our small party of fifteen surrounded by about eighty of our implacable enemies, the Crows. By stratagem, we not only broke through them, but succeeded in surprising seven of their party. My companions would have put them to death, but I would not permit it. We secured them on their own horses, and made all the haste we could, but the Crows had discovered us and gave chase. It was fifteen days' travelling to our own country, and we were pursued by an enemy seven or eight times superior to us In numbers. By various stratagems, which I shall not dwell upon, aided by the good condition of our horses, we contrived to escape them, and to bring our prisoners safe into the settlement. Now, although we had no fighting, yet address is considered a great qualification. On my return I was therefore admitted as a chief, with the Indian name Owato Wanisha, or "spirit of the beaver," as appropriate to my cunning and address. To obtain the rank of a warrior chief, it was absolutely requisite that I had distinguished myself on the field of battle. Before I continue my narration, I must say a little more relative to the missionaries, who were my instructors. One of them, the youngest, Polidori, was lost in the Esmeralda, when she sailed for Monterey to procure cattle. The two others were Padre Marini and Padre Antonio. They were both highly accomplished and learned. Their knowledge in Asiatic lore was unbounded, and it was my delight to follow them in their researches and various theories concerning the early Indian emigration across the waters of the Pacific. They were both Italians by birth. They had passed many years of their lives among the nations west of the Ganges, and in their advanced years had returned to sunny Italy, to die near the spot where they had played as little children. But they had met with Prince Seravalle, and when they heard from him of the wild tribes with whom he had dwelt, and who knew not God, they considered that it was their duty to go and instruct them. Thus did these sincere men, old and broken, with one foot resting on their tombs, again encounter difficulties and danger, to propagate among the Indians that religion of love and mercy which they were appointed to make known. Their efforts, however, to convert the Shoshones were fruitless. Indian nature would seem to be a nature apart and distinct. The red men, unless in suffering or oppression, will not listen to what they call "the smooth honey words of the pale-faced sages;" and even when they do so, they argue upon every dogma and point of faith, and remain unconvinced. The missionaries, therefore, after a time, contented themselves with practising deeds of charity, with alleviating their sufferings when able, from their knowledge of medicine and surgery, and by moral precepts, softening down as much as they could the fierce and occasionally cruel tempers of this wild untutored race. Among other advantages which the Shoshones derived from our missionaries, was the introduction of vaccination. At first it was received with great distrust, and indeed violently opposed, but the good sense of the Indians ultimately prevailed: and I do not believe that there is one of the Soshones born since the settlement was formed who has not been vaccinated: the process was explained by the Padres Marini and Polidori to the native medical men, and is now invariably practised by them. I may as well here finish the histories of the good missionaries. When I was sent upon an expedition to Monterey, which I shall soon have to detail, Padre Marini acccompanied me. Having failed with the Shoshones, he considered that he might prove useful by locating himself in the Spanish settlements of California. We parted soon after we arrived at Monterey, and I have never seen or heard of him since. I shall, however, have to speak of him again during our journey and sojourn at that town. The other, Padre Antonio, died at the settlement previous to my journey to Monterey, and the Indians still preserve his robes, missal, and crucifix, as the relics of a good man. Poor Padre Antonio! I would have wished to have known the history of his former life. A deep melancholy was stamped upon his features, from some cause of heart-breaking grief, which even religion could but occasionally assuage, but not remove. After his death, I looked at his missal. The blank pages at the beginning and the end were filled up with pious reflections, besides some few words, which spoke volumes as to one period of his existence. The first words inscribed were; "Julia, obiit A.D. 1799. Virgo purissima, Maris Stella. Ora pro me." On the following leaf was written: "Antonio de Campestrina, Convient. Dominicum. in Româ, A.D. 1800." Then he had embraced a monastic life upon the death of one dear to him--perhaps his first and only love. Poor man! many a time have I seen the big burning tears rolling fast down his withered cheeks. But he is gone, and his sorrows are at rest On the last page of the missal were also two lines, written in a tremulous hand, probably a short time previous to his death: "I, nunc anima anceps; sitque tibi Deus misericors." The Prince Seravalle did not, however, abandon his plans; having failed in persuading the Shoshones, at the suggestion of my father, it was resolved that an attempt should be made to procure a few Mexicans and Canadians to carry on the agricultural labours; for I may here as well observe, that both the Prince and my father had long made up their minds to live and die among the Indians. This expedition was to be undertaken by me. My trip was to be a long one. In case I should not succeed in Monterey in enlisting the parties required, I was to proceed on to Santa Fé, either with a party of Apaches Indians, who were always at peace with the Shoshones, or else with one of the Mexican caravans. In Santa Fé there were always a great number of French and Canadians, who came every year from St. Louis, hired by the Fur Companies; so that we had some chance of procuring them. If, however, my endeavours should prove fruitless, as I should already have proceeded too far to return alone, I was to continue on from Santa Fé with the fur traders, returning to St. Louis, on the Mississippi, where I was to dispose of some valuable jewels, hire men to form a strong caravan, and return to the settlement by the Astoria trail. As my adventures may be said but to commence at my departure upon this commission, I will, before I enter upon my narrative, give the reader some insight into the history and records of the Shoshones, or Snake Indians, with whom I was domiciled, and over whom, although so young, I held authority and command. CHAPTER IV. The Shoshones, or Snake Indians, are a brave and numerous people, occupying a large and beautiful tract of country, 540 miles from east to west, and nearly 300 miles from north to south. It lies betwixt 38° and 43° north latitude, and from longitude 116° west of Greenwich to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, which there extend themselves to nearly the parallel of 125° west longitude. The land is rich and fertile, especially by the sides of numerous streams, where the soil is sometimes of a deep red colour, and at others entirely black. The aspect of this region is well diversified, and though the greatest part of it must be classified under the denomination of rolling prairies, yet woods are very abundant, principally near the rivers and in the low flat bottoms: while the general landscape is agreeably relieved from the monotony of too great uniformity by numerous mountains of fantastical shapes and appearance, entirely unconnected with each other, and all varying in the primitive matter of their conformation. Masses of native copper are found at almost every step, and betwixt two mountains which spread from east to west in the parallel of the rivers Buona Ventura and Calumet, there are rich beds of galena, even at two or three feet under ground; sulphur and magnesia appear plentiful in the northern districts; while in the sand, of the creeks to the south gold dust is occasionally collected by the Indians. The land is admirably watered by three noble streams--the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and the Nú elejé sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers of inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of moskito-grass, blue grass, and clover, in which innumerable herds of buffaloes, and mustangs, or wild horses, graze, except during the hunting season, in undisturbed security. The Shoshones[6] are indubitably a very ancient people. It would be impossible to say how long they may have been settled on this portion of the continent. Their cast of features proves them to be of Asiatic origin, and their phraseology, elegant and full of metaphors, assumes all the graceful variety of the brightest pages of Saadi. [Footnote 6: The American travellers (even Mr. Catlin, who is generally correct) have entirely mistaken the country inhabited by the Shoshones. One of them represents this tribe as "the Indians who inhabit that part of the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and Green River branches of the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great Bear River, and the hospitable shores of the Great Salt Lakes." It is a great error. That the Shoshones may have been seen in the above-mentioned places is likely enough, as they are a great nation, and often send expeditions very far from their homes; but their own country lies, as I have said, betwixt the Pacific Ocean and the 116th degree of west longitude. As to the "hospitable" shores of the Great Salt Lake. I don't know what it means, unless it be a modern Yankee expression for a tract of horrid swamps with deadly effluvia, tenanted by millions of snakes and other "such hospitable reptiles." The lake is situated on the western country of the Crows, and I doubt if it has ever been visited by any Shoshone.] A proof of their antiquity and foreign extraction is, that but few of their records and traditions are local; they refer to countries on the other side of the sea, countries where the summer is perpetual, the population numberless, and the cities composed of great palaces, like the Hindoo traditions, "built by the good genii, long before the creation of man." There is no doubt, indeed it is admitted by the other tribes that the Shoshone is the parent tribe of the Comanches, Arrapahoes, and Apaches--the Bedouins of the Mexican deserts. They all speak the same beautiful and harmonious language, have the same traditions; and indeed so recent have been their subdivisions, that they point out the exact periods by connecting them with the various events of Spanish inland conquest in the northern portion of Sonora. It is not my intention to dwell long upon speculative theory, but I must observe, that if any tradition is to be received with confidence it must proceed from nations, or tribes, who have long been stationary. That the northern continent of America was first peopled from Asia, there can be little doubt, and if so, it is but natural to suppose that those who first came over would settle upon the nearest and most suitable territory. The emigrants who, upon their landing, found themselves in such a climate and such a country as California, were not very likely to quit it in search of a better. That such was the case with the Shoshones, and that they are descendants from the earliest emigrants, and that they have never quitted the settlement made by their ancestors, I have no doubt, for all their traditions confirm it. We must be cautious how we put faith in the remarks of missionaries and travellers upon a race of people little known. They seldom come into contact with the better and higher classes, who have all the information and knowledge; and it is only by becoming one of them, not one of their tribes, but one of their chiefs, and received into their aristocracy, that any correct intelligence can be gained. Allow that a stranger was to arrive at Wapping, or elsewhere, in Great Britain, and question those he met in such a locality as to the religion, laws, and history of the English, how unsatisfactory would be their implies; yet missionaries and travellers among these nations seldom obtain farther access. It is therefore among the better classes of the Indians that we must search for records, traditions, and laws. As for their religion, no stranger will ever obtain possession of its tenets, unless he is cast among them in early life and becomes one of them. Let missionaries say what they please in their reports to their societies, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretended ones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are outcasts from their tribes. The traditions of the Shoshones fully bear out my opinion that they were among the earliest of the Asiatic emigrants; they contain histories of subsequent emigrations, in which they had to fight hard to retain their lands; of the dispersion of the new emigrants to the north and south; of the increase of numbers, and breaking up of portions of the tribes, who travelled away to seek subsistence in the East. We find, as might be expected, that the traditions of the Eastern tribes, collected as they have occasionally been previous to their extinction, are trifling and absurd; and why so? because, driven away to the east, and finding other tribes of Indians, who had been driven there before them, already settled there, they have immediately commenced a life of continual hostility and change of domicile. When people have thus been occupied for generations in continual warfare and change, it is but natural to suppose that in such a life of constant action they have had no time to transmit then traditions, and that ultimately they have been lost to the tribe. We must then look for records in those quarters where the population has remained stationary for ages. It must be in the south-west of Oregon, and in the northern parts of Upper California and Sonora, that the philosopher must obtain the eventful history of vast warlike nations, of their rise and of their fall. The western Apaches or the Shoshones, with their antiquities and ruins of departed glory, will unfold to the student's mind long pages of a thrilling interest, while in their metaphors and rich phraseology, the linguist, learned in Asiatic lore, will easily detect their ancient origin. It is remarkable to observe, how generally traditions and records will spread and be transmitted among nations destitute of the benefits of the art of printing. In Europe, the mass were certainly better acquainted with their ancient history before this great discovery that they are in our days, as traditions were then handed down from family to family--it was a duty, a sacred one, for a father to transmit them to his son, unadulterated, such, in fact, as he had received them from his ancestors. It is the same case with the Indians, who have remained stationary for a long period. It is in the long evenings of February, during the hunting seasons that the elders of the tribe will reveal to the young warriors all the records of their history; and were a learned European to assist at one of these "lectures upon antiquity," he would admit that, in harmony, eloquence, strength of argument, and deduction, the red-coloured orator could not easily be surpassed. The Shoshones have a clear and lucid recollection of the far countries whence they have emigrated. They do not allude to any particular period, but they must have been among the first comers, for they relate with great topographical accuracy all the bloody struggles they had to sustain against newer emigrants. Often beaten, they were never conquered, and have always occupied the ground which they had selected from the beginning. Unlike the great families of the Dahcotahs and Algonquins, who yet retain the predominant characteristics of the wandering nations of South-west Asia, the Shoshones seem to have been in all ages a nation warlike, though stationary. It is evident that they never were a wealthy people, nor possessed any great knowledge of the arts and sciences. Their records of a former country speak of rich mountainous districts, with balmy breezes, and trees covered with sweet and beautiful fruits; but when they mention large cities, palaces, temples, and gardens, it is always in reference to other nations, with whom they were constantly at war; and these traditions would induce us to believe that they are descendants of the Mancheoux Tartars. They have in their territory on both sides of the Buona Ventura river many magnificent remains of devastated cities; but although connected with a former period of their history, they were not erected by the Shoshones. The fountains, aqueducts, the heavy domes, and the long graceful obelisks, rising at the feet of massive pyramids, show indubitably the long presence of a highly civilized people; and the Shoshones' accounts of these mysterious relics may serve to philosophers as a key to the remarkable facts of thousands of similar ruins found everywhere upon the continent of America. The following is a description of events at a very remote period, which was related by an old Shoshone sage, in their evening encampment in the prairies, during the hunting season:-- "It is a long, long while! when the wild horses were unknown in the country[7], and when the buffalo alone ranged the vast prairies then huge and horrid monsters existed. The approaches of the mountains and forests were guarded by the evil spirits[8], while the seashore, tenanted by immense lizards,[9] was often the scene of awful conflicts between man, the eldest son of light, and the mighty children of gloom and darkness. Then, too, the land we now live in had another form; brilliant stones were found in the streams; the mountains had not yet vomited their burning bowels, and the great Master of Life was not angry with his red children. [Footnote 7: Horses were unknown until the arrival of the Spaniards.] [Footnote 8: Skeletons of the mammoth are often found whole at the foot of the Grand Serpent, a long rugged mountain which runs for 360 miles under the parallel of 40 degrees north latitude. It extends from the centre of the Shoshone territory to the very country of the Crows, that is to say, from the 119th to the 113th degree west longitude. It is possible that this race may not have been yet quite extinct in the middle of the 17th century; for, indeed, in their family records, aged warriors will often speak of awful encounters, in which their great-great-grandfathers had fought against the monster. Some of them have still in their possession, among other trophies of days gone by, teeth and bones highly polished, which belong indubitably to this animal, of which so little is known. Mr. Ross Cox, in the relation of his travels across the Rocky Mountains, says, "that the Upper Crees, a tribe who inhabit the country in the vicinity of the Athabasca river, have a curious tradition with respect to these animals They allege 'that these animals were of frightful magnitude, that they formerly lived in the plains, a great distance in the south, where they had destroyed all the game, after which they retired to the mountains. They killed everything, and if their agility had been equal to their size and ferocity, they would have destroyed all the Indians. One man asserted that his great-grandfather told him he saw one of those animals in a mountain pass, where he was hunting, and that on hearing its roar, which he compared to loud thunder, the sight almost left his eyes, and his heart became as small as that of a child's.'"] [Footnote 9: A few miles from the Pacific Ocean, and at the foot of a mountain called by the Shoshones the Dwelling of the Monster, were found the remains of an immense lizard belonging to an extinct family of the saurian species. Within a few inches of the surface, and buried in a bed of shells and petrified fish, our old missionary, Padre Antonio, digged up fifty-one vertebræ quite whole and well preserved. They were mostly from twelve to eighteen inches in length and from eight to fourteen inches in diameter, measuring in all more than fifteen feet in length. Of the tail and neck but few vertebræ were found, but there were many fragments of the ribs and of the leg-bones. All the vertebræ were discovered in a continuous line, nearly joined together. The head, to correspond with other parts of the animal, must have been twelve or fourteen feet long, which would have given to the monster the almost incredible length of eighty feet. The Prince Seravalle, while digging, in the fall of the year 1834, for an ammunition store on the western banks of the Buona Ventura, picked up a beautiful curved ivory tusk, three feet long, which, had it not been for its jet black colour, would have been amazingly alike to that of a large elephant. Some pieces of it (for unhappily it was sawn into several parts) are now in the possession of the governor of Monterey and Mr. Lagrange, a Canadian trader, who visited the territory in 1840.] "One summer, and it was a dreadful one, the moon (_i.e._ the sun) remained stationary for a long time; it was of a red blood colour, and gave neither night nor days. Takwantona, the spirit of evil, had conquered Nature, and the sages of the Shoshones foresaw many dire calamities. The great _Medecines_ declared that the country would soon be drowned in the blood of their nation. They prayed in vain, and offered, without any success, two hundred of their fairest virgins in sacrifice on the altars of Takwantona. The evil spirit laughed, and answered to them with his destructive thunders. The earth was shaken and rent asunder; the waters ceased to flow in the rivers, and large streams of fire and burning sulphur rolled down from the mountains, bringing with them terror and death. How long it lasted none is living to say; and who could? There stood the bleeding moon; 'twas neither light nor obscurity; how could man divide the time and the seasons? It may have been only the life of a worm; it may have been the long age of a snake. "The struggle was fearful, but at last the good Master of Life broke his bonds. The sun shone again. It was too late! the Shoshones had been crushed and their heart had become small; they were poor and had no dwellings; they were like the deer of the prairies, hunted by the hungry panther. "And a strange and numerous people landed on the shores of the sea: they were rich and strong; they made the Shoshones their slaves, and built large cities, where they passed all their time. Ages passed: the Shoshones were squaws; they hunted for the mighty strangers; they were beasts, for they dragged wood and water to their great wigwams; they fished for them, and they themselves starved in the midst of plenty. Ages again passed: the Shoshones could bear no more; they ran away to the woods, to the mountains, and to the borders of the sea; and, lo! the great Father of Life smiled again upon them; the evil genii were all destroyed, and the monsters buried in the sands. "They soon became strong, and great warriors; they attacked the strangers, destroyed their cities, and drove them like buffaloes, far in the south, where the sun is always burning, and from whence they did never return. "Since that time, the Shoshones have been a great people. Many, many times strangers arrived again; but being poor and few, they were easily compelled to go to the east and to the north, in the countries of the Crows, Flat-heads, Wallah Wallahs, and Jal Alla Pujees (the Calapooses)." I have selected this tradition out of many, as, allowing for metaphor, it appears to be a very correct epitome of the history of the Shoshones in former times. The very circumstance of their acknowledging that they were, for a certain period, slaves to that race of people who built the cities, the ruins of which still attest their magnificence, is a strong proof of the outline being correct. To the modern Shoshones, and their manners and customs, I shall refer in a future portion of my narrative. CHAPTER V. Every point having been arranged, I received my final instructions, and letters for the Governor of Monterey, to which was added a heavy bag of doubloons for my expenses. I bade farewell to the Prince and my father, and with six well-armed Indians and the Padre Marini, I embarked in a long canoe on the Buona Ventura river, and carried away by the current, soon lost sight of our lonesome settlement. We were to follow the stream to the southern lakes of the Buona Ventura, where we were to leave our Indians, and join some half-bred Wachinangoes, returning to Monterey, with the mustangs, or wild horses, which they had captured in the prairies. It was a beautiful trip, just at the commencement of the spring; both shores of the river were lined with evergreens; the grass was luxuriant and immense herds of buffaloes and wild horses were to be seen grazing in every direction. Sometimes a noble stallion, his long sweeping mane and tail waving to the wind, would gallop down to the water's edge, and watch us as if he would know our intentions. When satisfied, he would walk slowly back, ever and anon turning round to look at us again, as if not quite so convinced of our peaceful intentions. On the third night we encamped at the foot of an obelisk, in the centre of some noble ruins. It was a sacred spot with the Shoshones. Their traditions told them of another race, who had formerly lived there, and which had been driven by them to the south. It must have been ages back, for the hand of time, so lenient in this climate, and the hand of man, so little given to spoil, had severely visited this fated city. We remained there the following day, as Padre Marini was anxious to discover any carvings or hieroglyphics from which he might draw some conclusions; but our endeavours were not successful, and we could not tarry longer, as we were afraid that the horse-hunters would break up their encampments before we arrived. We, therefore, resumed our journey, and many were the disquisitions and conjectures which passed between me and the holy father, as to the high degree of civilization which must have existed among the lost race who had been the architects of such graceful buildings. Four days more brought us to the southern shore of the St. Jago lake. We arrived in good time, dismissed our Indians, and having purchased two excellent mules, we proceeded on our journey, in company with the horse-hunters, surrounded by hundreds of their captives, who were loudly lamenting their destiny, and showed their sense of the injustice of the whole proceeding by kicking and striking with their fore-feet at whatever might come within the reach of their hoofs. Notwithstanding the very unruly conduct of the prisoners, we arrived at Monterey on the sixth evening. The reader will discover, as he proceeds, that my adventures are about to commence from this journey to Monterey; I therefore wish to remind him that I was at this time not eighteen years old. I had a remembrance of civilization previous to my arrival among the Indians, and as we enjoyed every comfort and some luxuries at the settlement, I still had a remembrance, although vague, of what had passed in Italy and elsewhere. But I had become an Indian, and until I heard that I was to under-take this journey, I had recollected the former scenes of my youth only to despise them. That this feeling had been much fostered by the idea that I should never again rejoin them, is more than probable; for from the moment that I heard that I was to proceed to Monterey, my heart beat tumultuously and my pulse was doubled in its circulation. I hardly know what it was that I anticipated, but certainly I had formed the idea of a terrestrial paradise. If not exactly a paradise, Monterey is certainly a sweet place; 'tis even now a fairy spot in my recollection, although sobered down, and, I trust, a little wiser than I was at that time. There certainly is an air of happiness spread over this small town. Every one is at their ease, everybody sings and smiles, and every hour is dedicated to amusement or repose. None of your dirty streets and sharp pavements; no manufactories with their eternal smoke; no policemen looking like so many knaves of clubs; no cabs or omnibuses splashing the mud to the right and to the left; and, above all, none of your punctual men of business hurrying to their appointments, blowing like steam-engines, elbowing everybody, and capsizing the apple-stalls. No; there is none of these at Monterey. There is a bay, blue and bottomless, with shores studded with tall beautiful timber. There is a prairie lawn, spread like a carpet in patterns composed of pretty wild flowers. Upon it stand hundreds of cottage-built tenements, covered with the creeping vine. In the centre, the presidio, or government-house; on one side the graceful spire of a church, on the other the massive walls of a convent. Above all, is a sky of the deepest cobalt blue, richly contrasting with the dark green of the tall pines, and the uncertain and indescribable tints on the horizon of these western prairies. Even the dogs are polite at Monterey, and the horses which are always grazing about, run up to you and appear as if they would welcome you on your arrival; but the fact is that every traveller carries a bag of salt at his saddle-bow, and by their rubbing their noses against it, it is clear that they come to beg a little salt, of which they are very fond. Everybody and every animal is familiar with you, and, strange to say, the English who reside there are contented, and still more strange, the Americans are almost honest. What a beautiful climate it must be at Monterey! Their hospitality is unbounded. "The holy Virgin bless thee," said an old man who watched our coming; "tarry here and honour my roof." Another came up, shook us by the hand, his eye sparkling with kind feelings. A third took our mules by the bridles and led us to his own door, when half-a-dozen pretty girls, with flashing dark eyes and long taper fingers, insisted on undoing our leggings and taking off our spurs. Queen city of California! to me there is poetry in thy very name, and so would it be to all who delight in honesty, bonhommie, simplicity and the dolce far niente. Notwithstanding the many solicitations we received, Padre Marini went to the convent, and I took up my quarters with the old governor. All was new to me, and pleasant too, for I was not eighteen; and at such a time one has strange dreams and fancies of small waists, and pretty faces, smiling cunningly. My mind had sometimes reverted to former scenes, when I had a mother and a sister. I had sighed for a partner to dance or waltz with on the green, while our old servant was playing on his violin some antiquated en avant deux. Now I had found all that, and a merry time I had of it. True, the sack of doubloons helped me wonderfully. Within a week after my arrival, I had a magnificent saddle embossed with silver, velvet breeches instead of cloth leggings, a hat and feathers, glossy pumps, red sash, velvet round-about, and the large cape or cloak, the eternal, and sometimes the only garment of a western Mexican grandee, in winter or in summer, by night or by day. I say it was a merry time, and it agreed well with me. Dance I did! and sing and court too. My old travelling companion, the missionary, remonstrated a little, but the girls laughed at him, and I clearly pointed out to him that he was wrong. If my English readers only knew what a sweet, pretty little thing is a Monterey girl, they would all pack up their wardrobes to go there and get married. It would be a great pity, for with your mistaken ideas of comforts, with your love of coal-fire and raw beef-steak, together with your severe notions of what is proper or improper, you would soon spoil the place, and render it as stiff and gloomy as any sectarian village of the United States, with its nine banks, eighteen chapels, its one "a-b-c" school, and its immense stone jail, very considerately made large enough to contain its whole population. The governor was General Morreno, an old soldier, of the genuine Castilian stock; proud of his blood, proud of his daughters, of himself, of his dignitaries, proud of everything--but withal, he was benevolence and hospitality personified. His house was open to all (that is to say, all who could boast of having white blood), and the time passed there in continual fiestas, in which pleasure succeeded to pleasure, music to dancing; courting with the eyes to courting with the lips, just as lemonade succeeded to wine, and creams to grapes and peaches. But unhappily, nature made a mistake in our conformation, and, alas! man must repose from pleasure as he does from labour. It is a great pity, for life is short, and repose is so much time lost; at least so thought I at eighteen. Monterey is a very ancient city; it was founded in the seventeenth century by some Portuguese Jesuits, who established a mission there. To the Jesuits succeeded the Franciscans, who were a good, lenient, lazy, and kind-hearted set of fellows, funny, yet moral, thundering against vice and love, and yet giving light penances and entire absolution. These Franciscans were shown out of doors by the government of Mexico, who wished to possess their wealth. It was unfortunate, as for the kind, hospitable, and generous monks, the government substituted agents and officers from the interior, who, not possessing any ties at Monterey, cared little for the happiness of the inhabitants. The consequence is, that the Californians are heartily tired of these agents of extortion; they have a natural antipathy against custom-house officers; and, above all, they do not like the idea of giving their dollars to carry on the expenses of the Mexican wars, in which they feel no interest. Some morning (and they have already very nearly succeeded in so doing) they will haul down the Mexican flag from the presidio, drive away the commissaries and custom-house receivers, declare their independence of Mexico, and open their ports to all nations. Monterey contains about three thousand souls, including the half-breeds and Indians acting as servants in the different dwellings. The population is wealthy, and not having any opportunity to throw away their money, as in the eastern cities (for all their pleasures and enjoyments are at no expense), they are fond of ornamenting their persons, and their horses and saddles, with as much wealth as they can afford. A saddle of 100_l_. in value is a common thing among the richer young men, who put all their pride in their steeds and accoutrements. The women dress richly and with an admirable taste; the unmarried girls in white satin, with their long black hair falling upon their shoulders; their brows ornamented with rich jewels when at home, and when out, their faces covered with a long white veil, through which their dark eyes will shine like diamonds. The married women prefer gaudy colours, and keep their hair confined close to their head, by a large comb. They have also another delightful characteristic, which indeed the men share with them; I mean a beautiful voice, soft and tremulous among the women, rich, sonorous, and majestic among their lords. An American traveller has said: "a common bullock-driver on horseback, delivering a message, seemed to speak like an ambassador to an audience. In fact, the Californians appear to be a people on whom a curse had fallen, and stripped them of everything but their pride, their manners and their voices." There is always much amusement in Monterey; and what betwixt cockfighting, racing, fandangoing, hunting, fishing, sailing, and so forth, time passes quickly away. Its salubrity is remarkable; there has never been any disease--indeed sickness of any kind is unknown. No toothache nor other malady, and no spleen; people die by accident or from old age; indeed the Montereyans have an old proverb, "El que quiere morir que se vaya del pueblo"--that is to say, "He who wishes to die must leave the city." While remaining there I had rather a perilous adventure. I had gone with some of my friends to a great fishing party at the entrance of the bay, which, by-the-bye, is one of the finest in the world, being twenty-four miles in length and eighteen in breadth. The missionary, Padre Marini, not being very well, had an idea that the sea-air would do him good, and joined our company. We had many boats; the one in which the Padre and I embarked was a well-shaped little thing, which had belonged to some American vessel. It was pulled with two oars, and had a small mast and sail. Our fishing being successful, we were all in high glee, and we went on shore to fry some of our victims for our afternoon's meal. During the conversation, somebody spoke of some ancient ruins, fifteen miles north, at the entrance of a small creek. The missionary was anxious to see them, and we agreed that our companions should return to Monterey while he and I would pass the night where we were, and proceed the next morning on an exploring expedition to the ruins. We obtained from another boat a large stone jug of water, two blankets, and a double-barrelled gun. As soon as our companions quitted us, we pulled the boat round to the northern point of the bay, and having selected proper quarters for the night, we made a kind of shelter on the beach with the oars, mast and sail, and lighted a fire to make ourselves more comfortable. It was one of those beautiful mild evenings which can be found only in the Bay of Monterey; the gentle and perfumed breeze softly agitated the foliage around and above us, and as night came on, with its myriads of stars and its silvery moon, the missionary having, for some time, raised his eyes above in silent contemplation, reverted to scenes of the past, and of other climes. He spoke of Hurdwar, a far distant mission in the north of India, close to the Himalayas. The Hindoos call It the "City of a Thousand Palaces;" they say it was built by the genii on the very spot where Vishnu had reposed himself for a few weeks, after one of his mystic transmutations, in which he had conquered Siva, or Sahavedra, the spirit of evil. Though not so well known, Hurdwar is a place still more sacred than Benares; people assemble there once a year from all parts, and consecrate several days to their ablutions in the purifying waters of the Ganges. In this noble city is also held one of the greatest fairs of India, indeed of all the world; and as its time is fixed upon the same month as that in which the Hindoo devotees arrive at the city, numerous caravans from Persia, Arabia, Cashmere, and Lahore, repair to the spot, and erect their bazaars along the banks of the river, forming a street of many miles. The concourse collected at these times has been ascertained to number more than one million of souls. There the Padre Marini had remained as a missionary for some years, all alone. His flock of converts was but a small one; he had little to do, and yet his mind could not be arrested by the study of all the wonders around him; his heart was sad; for years he had had a sorrow which weighed heavily upon him, and he was wretched. Before he had embraced the solitude of a monastic life, he had with him a younger brother, of whom he was very fond. The young man was a student in medicine, with fair capacity and an energy which promised to advance him in his profession. When Marini entered the convent, his brother went to Turkey, where men of his profession were always certain of a good reception, and for a long time was never heard of. At last, when the missionary was ready to start for a distant mission, he learned that which proved so destructive to his peace of mind. From Constantinople, his brother had gone to Persia, where he was residing in easy circumstances; but, ambitious of advancement, he had abjured the faith of his fathers and become a follower of Mahommed. It was a melancholy intelligence, and many were the tears of the good monk. The first year of his arrival at Hurdwar, he met with a Jewish merchant who had accompanied a Persian caravan. That man knew his brother, the renegade, and informed the Padre that his brother had fallen into disgrace, and as a punishment of his apostacy, was now leading a life of privation and misery. Deep and fervent were now the monk's prayers to heaven; he implored forgiveness for his brother, and offered penance for him. Poor man! he thought if he could but see him and talk to him, he would redeem him from his apostacy; but, alas! his duty was in Hurdwar, he was bound there and could not move. One day (it was during the fair) he had wandered at a distance from the river, that he might not witness the delusions of paganism, and his mind was intensely absorbed in prayer. Anon, unusual sounds broke on his ears; sounds well known, sounds reminding him of his country, of his beautiful Italy. They came from a little bower ten steps before him; and as past scenes rushed to his memory, his heart beat tremulously in his bosom; the monk recognized a barcarole which he had often sung in his younger days: but although the air was lively, the voice which sung it was mournful and sad. Stepping noiselessly, he stood at the entrance of the bower. The stranger started and arose! Their separation had been a long one, but neither the furrowed cheeks and sallow complexion of the one, nor the turbaned head of the other, could deceive them; and the two brothers fell in each others arms. On its return, the Persian caravan had one driver the less, for the apostate was on his death-bed in the humble dwelling of his brother. Once more a Christian, again reconciled to his God, he calmly awaited his summons to a better world. For two weeks he lingered on, repenting his error and praying for mercy. He died, and in the little jessamine bower where he had met with the Mussulman, the monk buried the Christian; he placed a cross upon his grave and mourned him long; but a heavy load had been removed from his breast, and since that time he had felt happy, having no weight on his mind to disturb him in the execution of his sacred ministry. Having narrated this passage in his history, the Padre Marini bid me good night, and we prepared to sleep. I went to the boat, where, stretching myself at the bottom, with my face turned towards the glittering canopy above, I remained pensive and reflecting upon the narrative of the monk, until at last I slept. CHAPTER VI. I felt chilly, and I awoke. It was daylight. I stood on my feet and looked around me. I found myself floating on the deep sea, far from the shore, the outline of which was tinged with the golden hues of morn. The rope and stick to which the boat had been made fast towed through the water, as the land-breeze, driving me gently, increased my distance from the land. For some moments I was rather scared; the oars were left on shore, and I had no means of propelling my little skiff. In vain did I paddle with my hands and the stick which I had taken on board. I turned and turned again round to all the points of the compass, but to no purpose. At last I began to reflect. The sea was smooth and quiet; so I was in no immediate danger. The Padre, when he awoke in the morning, would discover my accident, and perhaps see the boat; he would hasten to town, but he would not arrive till the evening; for he was an old man, and had to walk twenty-five miles. Boats would be despatched after me; even the Mexican schooner which lay in the bay. The next morning I was certain to be rescued, and the utmost of my misfortune would amount to a day of fast and solitude. It was no great matter; so I submitted to my fate, and made a virtue of necessity. Happily for me, the boat belonged to an American exceedingly fond of fishing; and consequently it contained many necessaries which I had before overlooked. Between the foremost thwart and the bow there was half a barrel filled with ashes, some pieces of charcoal, and some dried wood; under the stern-sheets was a small locker, in which I discovered a frying-pan, a box with salt in it, a tin cup, some herbs used instead of tea by the Californians, a pot of honey, and another full of bear's grease. Fortunately, the jar of water was also on board as well as my lines, with baits of red flannel and white cotton. I threw them into the water, and prepared to smoke my cigarito. In these countries no one is without his flint, steel, tinder, and tobacco. Hours passed so. My fishing being successful, I lighted a fire, and soon fried a few fine mackerel; but by-and-bye the sun reached its highest position, and the scorching became so intolerable that I was obliged to strip and spread my clothes, and even my shirt, upon the benches, to obtain a shelter. By that time I had lost sight of land, and could only perceive now and then some small black points, which were the summits of the tall pines. As soon as my meal was finished, I don't know why, but instead of sleeping a decent siesta of two hours, the Spanish tonic to digest a dinner, I never awoke before sunset; and only then because I began to feel a motion which was far from being pleasant. In fact, the waves were beginning to rise in sharp ridges, covered with foam; the mild land-breeze had changed into a cool sharp westerly wind. A fair wind, however, was a comfort, and as I put on my clothes, I began to think that by making a proper use of the helm and standing upright in the boat, my body would serve as a small sail, when "He, he, hoe!" shouted twenty voices, on the larboard side of me. I started with astonishment, as may be imagined, and turning round, perceived, fifty yards from me, a large boat driving before the waves, impelled on by ten oars. It was filled with men, casks, and kegs, and one at the helm was making signals, apparently inviting me to stop. A few minutes after, we were close to each other; and I daresay our astonishment was mutual,--theirs to see me alone and without oars; mine, to behold such a wretched spectacle. They were evidently the crew of a wrecked vessel, and must have undergone frightful privations and fatigues, so emaciated was their appearance. No time, however, was to be lost. All of them asked for water, and pointed to the horizon, to know in which direction they should go. My stone jug was full; I handed it to the man at the helm, who seemed to be the captain; but the honest and kind-hearted fellow, pouring out a small quantity in the cup, gave some to all his companions before he would taste any himself. The jug was a large one, containing two gallons or more, but of course was soon emptied. I gave them a fried mackerel, which I had kept for my supper; they passed it to the captain, and, in spite of his generous denial, they insisted upon his eating it immediately. Seeing which, I showed them nine or ten other raw fishes, two or three of which were heavy, and proposed to cook them. They sang and laughed: cook the fish! No; little cooking is wanted when men are starving. They divided them brotherly; and this supply, added to the honey for the captain and the bear's grease for the sailors, seemed to have endowed them with new life. The captain and four of the men, with oars, stepped into my skiff. At that moment the stars were beginning to appear; and pointing out to him one in the east as a guide, we ploughed our way towards the shore, greatly favoured both by the wind and the waves. In a singular mixture of English, French, Italian, and Latin, the captain made me comprehend that his vessel had been a Russian brig, bound from Asitka, in Russian America, to Acapulco, in Mexico, for a supply of grain, tallow, and spirits; that it had been destroyed by fire during the night, scarcely allowing time for the men to launch the long-boat. No provisions could be procured; the boxes and kegs that had been taken in the hurry were of no use; that they had been rowing forty-eight hours without food or water, and were ignorant of their distance from the shore; and, finally, that they had perceived my skiff a good half-hour before I awoke; thought it at first empty, but saw me rising, and called to me, in the hope that I would guide them to a landing-place. In return I explained to him my adventure as well as I could, and made him promises of plenty for the next day; but I might have talked for ever to no purpose; the poor fellow, overpowered with fatigue, and now feeling secure, had sunk into a deep sleep. At the break of day we made the land, at the entrance of a small river and close to some find old ruins. It was the very spot where I had intended to go with the Padre. There were a few wild horses rambling in the neighbourhood; I cleaned my gun, loaded it again, and killed one; but not before the tired and hungry crew, stretched on the strand, proved by their nasal concerts that for the present their greatest necessity was repose after their fatigues. There were twenty of them, including the captain. I had led too much of an Indian life, not to know how to bear fatigue, and to be rapid in execution. The sun was not more than three hours high, when I had already cooked the best part of the horse. All the unfortunates were still asleep, and I found it was no easy matter to awake them. At last, I hit upon an expedient which did not fail; I stuck the ramrod of my gun into a smoking piece of meat, and held it so that the fumes should rise under their very noses. No fairy wand was ever more effective; in less than two minutes they were all chewing and swallowing their breakfast, with an energy that had anything but sleep in it. It is no easy matter to satisfy twenty hungry Russians; but still there is an end to everything. One of them knelt before me and kissed my feet. Poor fellow! he thought that I had done a great deal for him and his companions, forgetting that perhaps I owed my own life to them. The men were tired: but when they heard that they could reach a city in the afternoon, they made preparation for departure with great alacrity. We pulled slowly along the coast, for the heat was intense, and the rowers fast losing their strength. At one o'clock I landed at my former encampment. The padre had, of course, left the oars, sail, and blankets. My skiff was rigged in a moment; and out of the blankets, those in the long-boat managed to make a sail, an oar and a long pole tied together answering for a mast. In doubling the northern point of the bay, I perceived the Mexican schooner and many boats, pretty far at sea. No doubt they were searching for me. At six o'clock in the evening we landed at Monterey, amidst the acclamations of a wondering crowd. I was a general favourite, and my loss had occasioned much alarm; so that when I landed I was assailed with questions from every quarter. The women petted me, some kissed me (by-the-bye, those were d'un certain âge), and all agreed that I should burn half a dozen of candles on the altar of the Virgin Mary. There was one, however, who had wept for me; it was Isabella, a lovely girl of fifteen, and daughter to the old Governor. The General, too, was glad to see me; he liked me very much, because we played chess while smoking our cigars, and because I allowed him to beat me, though I could have given him the queen and the move. I will confess, sotto voce, that this piece of policy had been hinted to me by his daughters, who wished me to find favour in his sight. "Dios te ayuda niño," said the Governor to me; I feared we should never play chess any more. "Que tonteria, andar a dormir in una barca, quando se lo podia sobre tierra firma!" (What folly to go sleep in a boat, when it can be done upon solid ground!) I told him the story of the poor Russians, and in spite of his pride, the tears started in his eye, for he was kind-hearted. He took the captain into his own house, and gave orders concerning the accommodation of the crew; but the universal hospitality had not waited for commands to show itself, and the poor fellows, loaded with attention and comforts, soon forgot the dangers which they had escaped. Fifteen days after they were sent on board the Mexican schooner, to the bay of St. Francisco, where a Russian brig of war, bound to Asitka, had just arrived. However, they did not part from us with empty hands. The Montereyans having discovered their passionate love for tallow and whiskey, had given them enough of these genteel rafraîchissements, to drown care and sorrow for a long while. As to the captain, he received the attention which his gallant conduct entitled him to, and on the eve of his departure he was presented with a trunk, of tolerable dimensions, well filled with linen and clothes. A merry night was passed to celebrate my escape. Guns had been fired, flags hoisted to recall the boats, and at ten o'clock in the night, the whole population was gamboling on the lawn, singing, dancing, and feasting, as if it was to have been our last day of pleasure during life. Thus passed away four weeks, and I must admit to my shame, I had willingly missed two chances of going to Santa Fé. One morning, however, all my dreams of further pleasure were dispelled. I was just meditating upon my first declaration of love, when our old servant arrived with four Indian guides. He had left the settlement seven days, and had come almost all the way by water. He had been despatched by my father to bring me home, if I had not yet left Monterey. His intelligence was disastrous; the Prince had been murdered by the Crows; the Shoshones had gone on a war expedition to revenge the death of the Prince; and my father himself, who had been daily declining, expected in a short time to rejoin his friend in a better world. Poor Isabella! I would have added, poor me! but the fatal news brought had so excited me, that I had but few thoughts to give to pleasure and to love. My immediate return was a sacred duty, and, besides, the Shoshones expected me to join with them on my first war-path. The old Governor judged it advisable that I should return home by sea, as the Arrapahoes Indians were at that moment enemies of the Shoshones, and would endeavour to cut me off if I were to ascend the Buona Ventura. Before my departure I received a visit from an Irishman, a wild young fellow of the name of Roche, a native of Cork, and full of fun and activity. He had deserted on the coast from one of the American vessels, and in spite of the promised reward of forty dollars, he was never discovered, and his vessel sailed without him. General Morreno was at first angry, and would have sent the poor devil to jail, but Roche was so odd and made so many artful representations of the evils he had suffered on board on account of his being a Catholic, that the clergy, and, in fact, all Monterey, interfered. Roche soon became a valuable acquisition to the community; he was an indefatigable dancer, and a good fiddler. Besides, he had already accustomed himself to the Mexican manners and language, and in a horse or buffalo hunt none were more successful. He would tell long stories to the old women about the wonders of Erin, the miracles of St. Patrick, and about the stone at Blarney. In fact, he was a favourite with every one, and would have become rich and happy, could he have settled. Unfortunately for him, his wild spirit of adventure did not allow him to enjoy the quiet of a Montereyan life, and hearing that there was a perspective of getting his head broken in the "Settlement of the Grandees," he asked permission to join my party. I consented that Roche should accompany me: with my servant and the Indians, we embarked on board of the schooner. Many were the presents I received from the good people; what with pistols, powder, horses, fusils, knives, and swords, I could have armed a whole legion. The Governor, his daughters, and all those that could get room in the boats, accompanied me as far as the northern part of the bay, and it was with a swelling heart that I bade my farewell to them all. CHAPTER VII. Nothing could have been more fortunate than our proceeding by sea. On the fourth day we were lying to, at a quarter of a mile from the shore, exactly under the parallel of 39° north latitude, and at the southern point of a mountain called the Crooked Back-bone. The Indians first landed in a small canoe we had provided ourselves with, to see if the coast was clear; and in the evening the schooner was far on her way back, while we were digging a cachette to conceal the baggage, which we could not carry. Even my saddle was wrapped up in a piece of canvas, and deposited in a deep bed of shale. Among other things presented to me in Monterey, were two large boxes covered with tin, and containing English fire-works, which, in the course of events, performed prodigies, and saved many scalps when all hope of succour had been entirely given up. The Montereyans are amazingly fond of these fire-works, and every vessel employed in the California trade for hides has always a large supply of them. When all our effects were concealed, we proceeded first in an easterly, and next in a north-westerly direction, in the hope of coming across some of the horses belonging to the tribe. We had reckoned right. At the break of day we entered a natural pasture of clover, in which hundreds of them were sleeping and grazing; but as we had walked more than thirty miles, we determined to take repose before we should renew our journey. I had scarcely slept an hour when I was roused by a touch on my shoulder. At first, I fancied it was a dream, but as I opened my eyes, I saw one of my Indians with his fingers upon his lips to enjoin me to silence, while his eyes were turned towards the open prairie. I immediately looked in that direction, and there was a sight that acted as a prompt anti-soporific. About half a mile from us stood a band of twenty Indians, with their war-paint and accoutrements, silently and quietly occupied in tying the horses. Of course they were not of our tribe, but belonged to the Umbiquas, a nation of thieves on our northern boundary, much given to horse-stealing, especially when it was not accompanied by any danger. In the present instance they thought themselves safe, as the Shoshones had gone out against the Crows, and they were selecting at their leisure our best animals. Happily for us, we had encamped amidst thick bushes, upon a spot broken and difficult of access to quadrupeds, otherwise we should have been discovered, and there would have been an end to my adventures. We awoke our companions, losing no time in forming a council of war. Fight them we could not; let them depart with the horses was out of the question. The only thing to be done was to follow them, and wait an opportunity to strike a decisive blow. At mid-day, the thieves having secured as many of the animals as they could well manage, turned their backs to us, and went on westward, in the direction of the fishing station where we had erected our boat-house; the place where we had first landed on coming from Europe. We followed them the whole day, eating nothing but the wild plums of the prairies. At evening, one of my Indians, an experienced warrior, started alone to spy into their camp, which he was successful enough to penetrate, and learn the plan of their expedition, by certain tokens which could not deceive his cunning and penetration. The boat-house contained a large sailing-boat, besides seven or eight skiffs. There also we had in store our stock of dried fish and fishing apparatus, such as nets, &c. As we had been at peace for several years, the house or post, had no garrison, except that ten or twelve families of Indians were settled around it. Now, the original intention of the Umbiquas had been only to steal horses; but having discovered that the half a dozen warriors, belonging to these families, had gone to the settlement for firearms and ammunition, they had arranged to make an attack upon the post, and take a few scalps before returning home by sea and by land, with our nets, boats, fish, &c. This was a serious affair. Our carpenter and smith had disappeared, as I have said before; and as our little fleet had in consequence become more precious, we determined to preserve it at any sacrifice. To send an Indian to the settlement would have been useless, inasmuch as it would have materially weakened our little force, and, besides, help could not arrive in time. It was better to try and reach the post before the Umbiquas; where, under the shelter of thick logs, and with the advantage of our rifles, we should be an equal match for our enemies, who had but two fusils among their party, the remainder being armed with lances, and bows and arrows. Our scout had also gathered, by overhearing their conversation, that they had come by sea, and that their canoes were hid somewhere on the coast, in the neighbourhood of the post. By looking over the map, the reader will perceive the topography of the country. Fifty miles north from us were the forks of the Nu-eleje-sha-wako river, towards which the Umbiquas were going, to be near to water, and also to fall upon the path from the settlement to the post. Thus they would intercept any messenger, in case their expedition should have been already discovered. Their direct road to the post was considerably shorter, but after the first day's journey, no sweet grass nor water was to be found. The ground was broken and covered with thick bushes, which would not allow them to pass with the horses. Besides this reason, an Indian always selects his road where he thinks he has nothing to fear. We determined to take the direct road to the post, and chance assisted us in a singular manner. The Indians and my old servant were asleep, while I was watching with the Irishman Roche, I soon became aware that something was moving in the prairie behind us, but what, I could not make out. The buffaloes never came so far west, and it was not the season for the wolves. I crawled out of our bush, and after a few minutes found myself in the middle of a band of horses who had not allowed themselves to be taken, but had followed the tracks of their companions, to know what had become of them. I returned, awoke the Indians, and told them; they started with their lassoes, while I and Roche remained to sleep. Long before morn the Indian scout guided us to three miles westward, behind a swell of the prairie. It was an excellent precaution, which prevented any Umbiqua straggler from perceiving us, a rather disagreeable event, which would have undoubtedly happened, as we were camped only two miles from them, and the prairie was flat until you came to the swell just mentioned. There we beheld seven strong horses, bridled with our lassoes. We had no saddles; but necessity rides without one. The Indians had also killed a one-year-old colt, and taken enough of the meat to last us two days; so that when we started (and we did so long before the Umbiquas began to stir) we had the prospect of reaching the fishing-post thirty hours before them. [Illustration: "We halted on the bank of a small river."] We knew that they would rest two hours in the day, as they were naturally anxious to keep their stolen horses in good condition, having a long journey before them ere they would enter into their own territory. With us, the case was different, there were but forty miles, which we could travel on horseback, and we did not care what became of the animals afterwards. Consequently, we did not spare their legs; the spirited things, plump as they were, having grazed two months without any labour, carried us fast enough. When we halted on the bank of a small river, to water them and let them breathe, they did not appear much tired, although we had had a run of twenty-eight miles. At about eleven o'clock we reached the confines of the rocky ground; here we rested for three hours, and took a meal, of which we were very much in want, having tasted nothing but berries and plums since our departure from the schooner, for we had been so much engrossed by the digging of the cachette that we had forgotten to take with us any kind of provision. Our flight, or, to say better, our journey, passed without anything remarkable. We arrived, as we had expected, a day and a half before the Umbiquas: and, of course, were prepared for them. The squaws, children, and valuables were already in the boat-house with plenty of water, in case the enemy should attempt to fire it. The presence of a hostile war-party had been singularly discovered two days before; three children having gone to a little bay at a short distance from the post, to catch some young seals, discovered four canoes secured at the foot of a rock, while, a little farther, two young men were seated near a fire cooking comfortably one of the seals they had taken. Of course the children returned home, and the only three men who had been left at the post (three old men) went after their scalps. They had not returned when we arrived; but in the evening they entered the river with the scalps of the two Umbiquas, whom they had surprised, and the canoes, which were safely deposited in the store. Our position was indeed a strong one. Fronting us to the north we had a large and rapid river; on the south we were Banked by a ditch forty feet broad and ten feet deep, which isolated the building from a fine open ground, without my bush, tree, or cover; the two wings were formed by small brick towers twenty feet high, with loop-holes, and a door ten feet from the ground; the ladder to which, of course, we took inside. The only other entrance, the main one, in fact, was by water: but it could be approached only by swimming. The fort was built of stone and brick, while the door, made of thick posts, and lined with sheets of copper, would have defied, for a long time, the power of their axes or fire. Our only anxiety was about the inflammable quality of the roof, which was covered with pine shingles. Against such an accident, however, we prepared ourselves by carrying water to the upper rooms, and we could at any time, if it became necessary, open holes in the roof, for we greater facility of extinguishing the fire. In the meantime we covered it with a coat of clay in the parts which were most exposed. We were now ten men, seven of us armed with firearms and pretty certain of our aim: we had also sixteen women and nine children, boys and girls, to whom various posts were assigned, in case of a night attack. The six warriors who had gone to the settlement for firearms would return in a short time, and till then we had nothing to do but to be cautious, to wait for the enemy, and even bear their first attack without using our firearms, that they might not suspect our strength inside. One of the old men, a cunning fellow, who had served his time as a. brave warrior, hit upon a plan which we followed. He proposed that another man should accompany him to the neighbourhood of the place where the canoes had been concealed, and keep up the fires, so that the smoke should lull all suspicion. The Umbiquas, on their arrival before the post, would indubitably send one of their men to call the canoe-keepers; this one they would endeavour to take alive, and bring him to the post. One of the canoes was consequently launched in the river, and late in the evening the two Indians, well armed with fusils, started on this expedition. CHAPTER VIII. The Umbiquas came at last; their want of precaution showed their certainty of success. At all events, they did not suspect there were any firearms in the block-house, for they halted within fifty yards from the eastern tower, and it required more than persuasion to prevent Roche from firing. The horses were not with them, but before long we saw the animals on the other side of the river, in a little open prairie, under the care of two of their party, who had swam them over, two or three miles above, for the double purpose of having them at hand in case of emergency, and of giving them the advantage of better grazing than they could possibly find on our side. This was an event which we had not reckoned upon, yet, after all, it proved to be a great advantage to us. The savages, making a very close inspection of the outer buildings, soon became convinced of the utter impossibility of attacking the place by any ordinary means. They shot some arrows, and once fired with a fusil at the loop-holes, to ascertain if there were any men within capable of fighting; but as we kept perfectly quiet, their confidence augmented; and some followed the banks of the river, to see what could be effected at the principal entrance. Having ascertained the nature of its material, they seemed rather disappointed, and retired to about one hundred yards to concert their plans. It was clear that some of them were for firing the building; but, as we could distinguish by their gestures, these were comparatively few. Others seemed to represent that, by doing so, they would indubitably consume the property inside, which they were not willing to destroy, especially as there was so little danger to be feared from within. At last one who seemed to be a chief pointed first with his fingers in the direction where the canoes had been left; he pointed also to the river, and then behind him to the point of the horizon where the sun rises. After he had ceased talking, two of his men rose, and went away to the south-west. Their plan was very evident. These two men, joined with the two others that had been left in charge, were to bring the canoes round the point and enter the river. It would take them the whole night to effect this, and at sunrise they would attack and destroy the front door with their tomahawks. With the darkness of night a certain degree of anxiety came over us, for we knew not what devilish plan the Indians might hit upon; I placed sentries in every corner of the block-house, and we waited in silence; while our enemies, having lighted a large fire, cooked their victuals, and though we could not hear the import of their words, it was evident that they considered the post as in their power. Half of them, however, laid down to sleep, and towards midnight the stillness was uninterrupted by any sound, whilst their half-burnt logs ceased to throw up their bright flames. Knowing how busy we should be in the morning, I thought that till then I could not do better than refresh myself by a few hours' repose. I was mistaken. I had scarcely closed my eyes when I heard the dull regular noise of the axe upon trees. I looked cautiously; the sounds proceeded from the distance, and upon the shores of the river, and behind the camp of the savages, dark forms were moving in every direction, and we at last discovered that the Umbiquas were making ladders to scale the upper doors of our little towers. This, of course, was to us a matter of little or no consideration, as we were well prepared to receive them: yet we determined not to let them know our strength within until the last moment, when we should be certain with our firearms to bring down five of them at the first discharge. Our Indians took their bows and selected only such arrows as were used by their children when fishing, so that the hostile party might attribute their wounds and the defence of their buildings to a few bold and resolute boys. At morn, the Umbiquas made their appearance with two ladders, each carried by three men, while others were lingering about and giving directions, more by sign than word. They often looked towards the loop-holes, but the light of day was yet too faint for their glances to detect us; and besides, they were lulled into perfect security by the dead silence we had kept during the whole night. Indeed, they thought the boat-house had been deserted, and the certain degree of caution with which they proceeded was more the effect of savage cunning and nature than the fear of being seen or of meeting with any kind of resistance. The two ladders were fixed against one of the towers, and an Indian ascended upon each; at first they cast an inquisitive glance through the holes upon both sides of the door, but we concealed ourselves. Then all the Umbiquas formed in a circle round the ladders, with their bows and spears, watching the loop-holes. At the chiefs command, the first blows were struck, and the Indians on the ladders began to batter both doors with their tomahawks. While in the act of striking for the third time, the Umbiqua on the eastern door staggered and fell down the ladder; his breast had been pierced by an arrow. At the same moment, a loud scream from the other tower showed that there also we had had the same success. The Umbiquas retired precipitately with their dead, uttering a yell of disappointment and rage, to which three of our boys, being ordered so to do, responded with a shrill war-whoop of defiance. This made the Umbiquas quite frantic, but they were now more prudent. The arrows that had killed their comrades were children-arrows; still there could be no doubt but that they had been shot by warriors. They retired behind a projecting rock on the bank of the river, only thirty yards in our front, but quite protected from our missiles. There they formed a council of war, and waited for their men and canoes, which they expected to have arrived long before. At that moment, the light fog which had been hovering over the river was dispersed, and the other shore became visible, and showed us a sight which arrested our attention. There, too, the drama of destruction was acting, though on a smaller scale. Just opposite to us was a canoe, the same in which our two Indians had gone upon their expedition the day before. The two Umbiquas keeping the stolen horses were a few yards from it; they had apparently discovered it a few minutes before, and were uncertain what course to pursue; they heard both the war-whoop and the yell of their own people, and were not a little puzzled; but as soon as the fog was entirely gone they perceived their party, where they had sheltered themselves, and probably in obedience to some signals from it, they prepared to cross the river. At the very moment they were untying the canoe, there was a flash and two sharp reports; the Indians fell down--they were dead. Our two scouts, who were concealed behind some bushes, then appeared, and began coolly to take the scalps, regardless of a shower of arrows from the yelling and disappointed Umbiquas. Nor was this all: in their rage and anxiety, our enemies had exposed themselves beyond the protection of the rock; they presented a fair mark, and just as the chief was looking behind him to see if there was any movement to fear from the boat-house, four more of his men fell under our fire. The horrible yells which followed, I can never describe, although the events of this my first fight are yet fresh in my mind. The Umbiquas took their dead and turned to the east, in the direction of the mountains, which they believed would be their only means of escaping destruction. They were now reduced to only ten men, and their appearance was melancholy and dejected. They felt that they were doomed never more to return to their own home. We gathered from our scouts opposite that the six warriors of the post had returned from the settlement, and lay somewhere in ambush; this decided us. Descending by the ladders which the Indians had left behind them, we entered the prairie path, so as to bar their retreat in every direction. Let me wind up this tale of slaughter. The Umbiquas fell headlong on the ambush, by which four more of them were killed; the remainder dispersed in the prairie, where they tried in vain to obtain a momentary refuge in the chasms. Before mid-day they were all destroyed, except one, who escaped by crossing the river. However, he never saw his home again; for, a long time afterwards, the Umbiquas declared that not one ever returned from that fatal horse-stealing expedition. Thus ended my first fight; and yet I had not myself drawn a single trigger. Many a time I took a certain aim; but my heart beat quick, and I felt queer at the idea of taking the life of a man. This did not prevent me from being highly complimented; henceforward Owato Wanisha was a warrior. The next day I left the boat-house with my own party, I mean the seven of us who had come from Monterey. Being all well mounted, we shortly reached the settlement, from which I had been absent more than three months. Events had turned out better than I had anticipated. My father seemed to recover rapidly from the shock he had received. Our tribe, in a fierce inroad upon the southern country of the Crows, had inflicted upon them a severe punishment Our men returned with a hundred and fifty scalps, four hundred horses, and all the stock of blankets and tobacco which the Crows had a short time before obtained from the Yankees in exchange for their furs. For a long time, the Crows were dispirited and nearly broken down, and this year they scarcely dared to resort to their own hunting-grounds. The following is a narrative of the death of the Prince Seravalle, as I heard it from individuals who were present. The year after we had arrived from Europe, the Prince had an opportunity of sending letters to St. Louis, Missouri, by a company of traders homeward bound. More than three years had elapsed without any answer; but a few days after my departure for Monterey, the Prince having heard from a party of Shoshones, on their return from Fort Hall, that a large caravan was expected there, he resolved to proceed to the fort himself, for the double purpose of purchasing several articles of hardware, which we were in need of, and also of forwarding other instructions to St. Louis. Upon his arrival at the fort, he was agreeably surprised at finding, not only letters for him, together with various bales of goods, but also a French savant, bound to California, whither he had been sent by some scientific society. He was recommended to us by the Bishop and the President of the college at St. Louis, and had brought with him as guides five French trappers, who had passed many years of their lives rambling from the Rocky Mountains to the southern shores of Lower California. The Prince left his Shoshones at the fort, to bring on the goods at a fitting occasion, and, in company with his new guests, retraced his steps towards our settlement. On the second day of their journey they met with a strong war-party of the Crows, but as the Shoshones were then at peace with all their neighbours, no fear had been entertained. The faithless Crows, however, unaware, as well as the Prince, of the close vicinity of a Shoshone hunting-party, resolved not to let escape an opportunity of obtaining a rich booty without much danger. They allowed the white men to pursue their way, but followed them at a distance, and in the evening surprised them in their encampment so suddenly that they had not even time to seize their arms. The prisoners, with their horses and luggage, were conducted to the spot where their captors had halted, and a council was formed immediately. The Prince, addressing the chief, reproached him bitterly with his treachery; little did he know of the Crows, who are certainly the greatest rascals among the mountains. The traders and all the Indian tribes represent them as "thieves never known to keep a promise or to do an honourable act." None but a stranger will ever trust them. They are as cowardly as cruel. Murder and robbery are the whole occupation of their existence, and woe to the traders or trappers whom they may meet with during their excursions, if they are not at least one-tenth of their own number. A proof of their cowardice is that once Roche, myself, and a young Parisian named Gabriel, having by chance fallen upon a camp of thirteen Crows and three Arrapahoes, they left us their tents, furs, and dried meats; the Arrapahoes alone showing some fight, in which one of them was killed; but to return to our subject. The chief heard the Prince Seravalle with a contemptuous air, clearly showing that he knew who the Prince was, and that he entertained no good-will towards him. His duplicity, however, and greediness, getting the better of his hatred, he asked the prisoners what they would give to obtain their freedom. Upon their answer that they would give two rifles, two horses, with one hundred dollars, he said that all which the prisoners possessed when taken, being already his own, he expected much more than that. He demanded that one of the Canadians should go to Fort Hall, with five Crows, with an order from the Prince to the amount of sixty blankets, twenty rifles, and ten kegs of powder. In the meantime the prisoners were to be carried into the country of the Crows, where the goods were to follow them as soon as obtained; upon the reception of which, the white men should be set at liberty. Understanding now the intention of their enemies, and being certain that, once in the strongholds of the Crows, they would never be allowed to return, the Prince rejected the offer; wishing, however, to gain time, he made several others, which, of course, were not agreed upon. When the chief saw that he was not likely to obtain anything more than that which he had already become master of, he threw away his mask of hypocrisy, and resuming at once his real character, began to abuse his victims. "The Pale-faces," he said, "were base dogs, and too great cowards to fight against the Crows. They were less than women, concealing themselves in the lodges of the Shoshones, and lending them their rifles, so that having now plenty of arms and ammunition, that tribe had become strong, and feared by all. But now they would kill the Pale-faces, and they would see what colour was the blood of cowards. When dead, they could not give any more rifles, or powder, to the Shoshones, who would then bury themselves like prairie dogs in their burrows, and never again dare to cross the path of a Crow." The Prince replied to the chief with scorn. "The Crows," he said, "ought not to speak so loud, lest they should be heard by the Shoshone braves, and lies should never be uttered in open air. What were the Crows before the coming of the white men, on the shores of the Buona Ventura? They had no country of their own, for one part of it had been taken by the Black-feet, and the other by the Arrapahoes and the Shoshones. Then the Crows were like doves hunted by the hawks of the mountains. They would lie concealed in deep fissures of the earth, and never stir but during night, so afraid were they of encountering a Shoshone. But the white men assembled the Shoshones around their settlements, and taught them to remain at peace with their neighbours. They had been so for four years; the Crows had had time to build other wigwams. Why did they act like wolves, biting their benefactors, instead of showing to them their gratitude?" The Prince, though an old man, had much mettle in him, especially when his blood was up. He had become a Shoshone in all except ferocity; he heartily despised the rascally Crows. As to the chief, he firmly grasped the handle of his tomahawk, so much did he feel the bitter taunts of his captive. Suddenly, a rustling was heard, then the sharp report of a rifle, and one of the Crows, leaping high in the air, fell down a corpse. "The chief hath spoken too loud," said the Prince; "I hear the step of a Shoshone; the Crows had better run away to the mountains, or their flesh will fatten the dogs of our village." An expression of rage and deep hatred shot across the features of the chief, but he stood motionless, as did all his men, trying to catch the sounds, to ascertain in which direction they should fly from the danger. "Fear has turned the Crows into stones," resumed the Prince, "what has become of their light feet? I see the Shoshones." "The dog of a Pale-face will see them no more," replied the savage, as he buried his tomahawk in the skull of the unfortunate nobleman, who was thus doomed to meet with an inglorious death in a distant land. The other prisoners, who were bound, could of course offer no resistance. The French savant and two of his guides were butchered in an instant, but before the remainder of the party could be sacrificed, a well-directed volley was poured upon the compact body of the Crows, who rushed immediately to the woods for cover, leaving behind them twenty dead and wounded besides their cruel chief. Then from the thickets behind appeared thirty Shoshones, who immediately gave chase, leaving only one of their men to free the three remaining trappers, and watch over the body of their murdered friend and legislator. A sharp tiralleur fire from their respective covers was carried on between the Shoshones and Crows for half an hour, in which the Crows lost ten more scalps, and having at length reached a rugged hill full of briars and bushes, they took fairly to their heels, without even attempting to answer the volleys poured after them. The victims were carried to the settlement, and the very day they were consigned to their grave, the Shoshones started for the land of the Crows. The results of the expedition I have mentioned already. With my father I found the three trappers; two of whom were preparing to start for California, but the third, a young Parisian, who went by the name of Gabriel, preferred remaining with us, and never left me until a long time afterwards, when we parted upon the borders of the Mississippi, when I was forcing my way towards the Atlantic Ocean. He and Roche, when I parted with them, had directed their steps back to the Shoshones; they delighted too much in a life of wild and perilous adventure to leave it so soon, and the Irishman vowed that if he ever returned within the pale of civilization, it would be to Monterey, the only place where, in his long wanderings, he had found a people congenial to his own ideas. When, in the meeting of a great council, I apprised the tribe of the attack made upon the boat-house by the Umbiquas, and of its results, there was a loud burst of satisfaction. I was made a War-Chief on the spot; and it was determined that a party should immediately proceed to chastise the Umbiquas. My father did not allow me to join it, as there was much to be done in settling the affairs of the Prince, and paying the debts he had contracted at Fort Hall; consequently, I led a clerk's life for two months, writing accounts, &c.--rather a dull occupation, for which I had not the smallest relish. During this time, the expedition against the Umbiquas had been still more successful than that against the Crows, and, in fact, that year was a glorious one for the Shoshones, who will remember it a long while, as a period in which leggings and moccasins were literally sewn with human hair, and in which the blanched and unburied bones of their enemies, scattered on the prairie, scared even the wolves from crossing the Buena Ventura. Indeed, that year was so full of events, that my narration would be too much swelled if I were to enumerate them all. I had not forgotten the cachette at our landing-place. Every thing was transferred to the boat-house, and the hot days of summer having already begun to render the settlement unpleasant, we removed to the sea-shore, while the major part of the tribe went to hunt in the rolling prairies of the south. The presents of the good people of Monterey proved to be a great acquisition to my father. There were many books, which he appropriated to himself; being now too aged and infirm to bear the fatigues of Indian life, he had become fond of retirement and reading. As to Gabriel and Roche, we became inseparable, and though in some points we were not on an equality, yet the habit of being constantly together and sharing the same tent united us like brothers. As my readers will eventually discover, many daring deeds did we perform together, and many pleasant days did we pass, both in the northern cities of Mexico and western prairies of Texas, hunting with the Comanches, and occasionally unmasking some rascally Texans, who, under the paint of an Indian, would commit their murders and depredations upon the remote settlements of their own countrymen. CHAPTER IX. In the remarks which I am about to make relative to the Shoshones, I may as well observe that the same observations will equally apply to the Comanches, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, as they are but subdivisions and offsets from the original stock--the Shoshones. The Wakoes, who have not yet been mentioned, or even seen, by any other travellers, I shall hereafter describe. I may as well here observe, that although the Shoshones are always at peace with the Comanches and Apaches, they had for a long while been at war with their descendants, the Arrapahoes, as well as the whole of the Dacotah and Algonquin tribes, as the Crows and Rickarees, Black-feet, Nez-percés, and others. First, as to their religion--a question highly interesting, and perhaps throwing more light upon their origin than can be collected from tradition, manners, and customs. From my knowledge of the Indians, I believe them, if not more religious, most certainly to be more conscientious, than most Christians. They all believe in one God--Manitou, the author of good, and worship him as such; but believing that human nature is too gross to communicate with the Arbitrator of all things, they pray generally through the intervention of the elements or even of certain animals, in the same manner that the Catholics address themselves to their saints. The great Manitou is universal among this family, and indeed among all the savage tribes of North America. The interceding spirit alone varies, not with the tribe and nation, but according to individual selection. Children are taught to know "Kishe Manito" (the Almighty), but no more. When the boy is verging upon manhood, he selects his own personal deity, or household god, which is made known to him in his dreams. When he states his intention of seeking the spirit, the parents of the young man order him to fast for three days; then they take away his bow and arrows, and send him far into the woods, the mountains, or the prairies, to wait for the visitation. An empty stomach and inaction in the lone wilderness are certain to produce reveries and waking dreams. If the young man is thirsty, he thinks of water; of fire or sunshine, if he feels cold; of buffalo or fish, if he is hungry. Sometimes he meets with some reptile, and upon any one of these or other natural causes or productions, his imagination will work, until it becomes wholly engrossed by it. Thus fire and water, the sun or the moon, a star, a buffalo, or a snake--any one of them, will become the subject of his thoughts, and when he sleeps, he naturally dreams of that object which he has been brooding over. He then returns home, engraves upon a stone, a piece of wood, or a skin, the form of this "spirit" which his dream has selected for him, wears it constantly on his person, and addresses it, not as a god, but as an intercessor, through which his vows must pass before they can reach the fearful Lord of all things. Some men among the Indians acquire, by their virtues and the regularity of their lives, the privilege of addressing the Creator without any intervention, and are admitted into the band, headed by the masters of ceremonies and the presidents of the sacred lodges, who receive neophytes and confer dignities. Their rites are secret; none but a member can be admitted. These divines, as of old the priest of Isis and Osiris, are deeply learned; and truly their knowledge of natural history is astonishing. They are well acquainted with astronomy and botany, and keep the records and great transactions of the tribes, employing certain hieroglyphics, which they paint in the sacred lodges, and which none but their caste or order can decipher. Those few who, in their journey in the wilderness, have "dreamt" of a snake and made it their "spirit," become invariably "Medecines." This reptile, though always harmless in the western countries (except in some parts of the mountains on the Columbia, where the rattlesnake abounds), has ever been looked upon with dread by the Indians, who associate it with the evil spirit. When "Kishe Manito" (the good God) came upon earth, under the form of a buffalo, to alleviate the sufferings of the red man, "kinebec" (the serpent), the spirit of evil gave him battle. This part of their creed alone would almost establish their Brahminic origin. The "Medecine" inspires the Indian with awe and dread; he is respected, but he has no friends, no squaws, no children. He is the man of dark deeds, he that communes with the spirit of evil; he takes his knowledge from the earth, from the fissures of the rocks, and knows how to combine poisons; he alone fears not "Anim Teki" (thunder). He can cure disease with his spells, and with them he can kill also; his glance is that of the snake, it withers the grass, fascinates birds and beasts, troubles the brain of man, and throws in his heart fear and darkness. The Shoshone women, as well as the Apache and Arrapahoe, all of whom are of the Shoshone race, are very superior to the squaws of the Eastern Indians. They are more graceful in their forms, and have more personal beauty, I cannot better describe them than by saying that they have more similitude to the Arabian women than any other race. They are very clean in their persons and in their lodges; and all their tribes having both male and female slaves, the Shoshone wife is not broken down by hard labour, as are the squaws of the eastern tribes; to their husbands they are most faithful, and I really believe that any attempt upon their chastity would prove unavailing. They ride as bravely as the men, and are very expert with the bow and arrow, I once saw a very beautiful little Shoshone girl, about ten years old, the daughter of a chief, when her horse was at full speed, kill, with her bow and arrow, in the course of a minute or two, nine out of a flock of wild turkeys which she was in chase of. Their dress is both tasteful and chaste. It is composed of a loose shirt, with tight sleeves, made of soft and well-prepared doe-skin, almost always dyed blue or red; this shirt is covered from the waist by the toga, which falls four or six inches below the knee, and is made either of swan-down, silk, or woollen stuff; they wear leggings of the same material as the shirt, and cover their pretty little feet with beautifully-worked moccasins; they have also a scarf, of a fine rich texture, and allow their soft and long raven hair to fall luxuriantly over their shoulder, usually ornamented with flowers, but sometimes with jewels of great value; their ankles and wrists are also encircled by bracelets; and indeed to see one of these young and graceful creatures, with her eyes sparkling and her face animated with the exercise of the chase, often recalled to the mind a nymph of Diana, as described by Ovid[10]. [Footnote 10: The Comanches women very much resemble the common squaws, being short and broad in figure. This arises from the Comanches secluding the women and not permitting them air and exercise.] Though women participate not in the deeper mysteries of religion, some of them are permitted to consecrate themselves to the divinity, and to make vows of chastity, as the vestals of Paganism or the nuns of the Catholic convents. But there is no seclusion. They dress as men, covered with leather from head to foot, a painting of the sun on their breasts. These women are warriors, but never go out with the parties, remaining always behind to protect the villages. They also live alone, are dreaded, but not loved. The Indian hates anything or any body that usurps power, or oversteps those bounds which appear to him as natural and proper, or who does not fulfil what he considers as their intended destiny. The fine evenings of summer are devoted, by the young Indian, to courtship. When he has made his choice, he communicates it to his parents, who take the business into their hands. Presents are carried to the door of the fair one's lodge; if they are not accepted, there is an end to the matter, and the swain must look somewhere else; if they are taken in, other presents are returned, as a token of agreement. These generally consist of objects of women's workmanship, such as garters, belts, moccasins, &c.; then follows a meeting of the parents, which terminates by a speech from the girl's father, who mentions his daughter as the "dove," or "lily," or "whisper of the breeze," or any other pretty Indian name which may appertain to her. She has been a good daughter, she will be a dutiful wife, her blood is that of a warrior's; she will bear noble children to her husband, and sing to them his great deeds, &c. The marriage day arrives at last; a meal of roots and fruits is prepared; all are present except the bridegroom, whose arms, saddles, and property are placed behind the fair one. The door of the lodge is open, its threshold lined with flowers; at sunset the young man presents himself, with great gravity of deportment. As soon as he has taken a seat near the girl, the guests begin eating, but in silence; but soon a signal is given by the mothers, each guest rises, preparatory to retiring. At that moment, the two lovers cross their hands, and the husband speaks for the first time, interrogatively:--"Faithful to the lodge, faithful to the father, faithful to his children?" She answers softly: "Faithful, ever faithful, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death"--"Penir, penir-asha, sartir nú cohta, lebeck nú tanim." It is the last formula,--the ceremony is accomplished. This may seem very simple and ridiculous; to me it appeared almost sublime. Opinions depend upon habits and education. The husband remains a whole year with his father-in-law, to whom belongs by right the produce of his hunting, both skins and flesh. The year expired, his bondage Is over, and he may if he wishes it, retire with his wife to his own father's, or construct a lodge for his own use. The hunter brings his game to his door, except when a heavy animal; there ends his task; the wife skins and cuts it; she dries the skin and cures the meat. Yet if the husband is a prime hunter, whose time is precious, the woman herself, or her female relations, go out and seek the game where It has been killed. When a man dies, his widow wears mourning during two or four years; the same case happens with the widower, only his duties are not so strict as that of a woman; and it often happens that, after two years, he marries his sister-in-law, if there is any. The Indians think it a natural thing; they say that a woman will have more care of her sister's children than of those of a stranger. Among the better classes of Indians, children are often affianced to each other, even at the age of a few months. These engagements are sacred, and never broken. The Indians in general have very severe laws against murder, and they are pretty much alike among the tribes; they are divided into two distinct sections--murder committed in the nation and out of the nation. When a man commits a murder upon his own people, he runs away from his tribe, or delivers himself to justice. In this latter case, the nearest relation of the victim kills him openly, in presence of all the warriors. In the first case, he is not pursued, but his nearest relation is answerable for the deed, and suffers the penalty, if by a given time he has not produced the assassin. The death Is instantaneous, from the blow of a tomahawk. Often the chief will endeavour to make the parties smoke the pipe of peace; if he succeeds, all ends here; If not, a victim must be sacrificed. It is a stern law, which sometimes brings with its execution many great calamities. Vengeance has often become hereditary, from generation to generation; murders have succeeded murders, till one of the two families has deserted the tribe. It is, no doubt, owing to such circumstances that great families, or communities of savages bearing the same type and speaking the same tongue, have been subdivided into so many distinct tribes. Thus it has been with the Shoshones, whose emigrant families have formed the Comanches, the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes. The Tonquewas have since sprung from the Comanches, the Lepans and the Texas[11] (now extinct) from the Apaches, and the Navahoes from the Arrapahoes. Among the Nadowessies or Dacotahs, the subdivision has been still greater, the same original tribe having given birth to the Konsas, the Mandans, the Tetons, the Yangtongs, Sassitongs, Ollah-Gallahs, the Siones, the Wallah Wallahs, the Cayuses, the Black-feet, and lastly the Winnebagoes. [Footnote 11: Formerly there was a considerable tribe of Indians, by the name of Texas, who have all disappeared, from continual warfare.] The Algonquin species, or family, produced twenty-one different tribes: the Micmacs, Etchemins, Abenakis, Sokokis, Pawtuckets, Pokanokets, Narragansets, Pequods, Mohegans, Lenilenapes, Nanticokes, Powatans, Shawnees, Miamis, Illinois, Chippewas, Ottawas, Menomonies, Sacs, Foxes, and the Kickapoos, which afterwards subdivided again into more than a hundred nations. But, to return to the laws of murder:--It often happens that the nephew, or brother of the murderer, will offer his life in expiation. Very often these self-sacrifices are accepted, principally among the poorer families, but the devoted is not put to death; he only loses his relationship and connection with his former family; he becomes a kind of slave or bondsman for life in the lodges of the relations of the murdered. Sometimes, too, the guilty man's life is saved by a singular and very ancient law; it, however, happens but rarely. If the murdered leaves a widow with children, this widow may claim the criminal as her own, and he becomes her husband nominally, that is to say, he must hunt and provide for the subsistence of the family. When the murderer belongs to a hostile tribe, war is immediately declared; if, on the contrary, he belongs to a friendly nation, the tribe will wait three or four months till the chiefs of that nation come to offer excuses and compensation. When they do this, they bring presents, which they leave at the door of the council lodge, one side of which is occupied by the relations of the victims, the other by the chiefs and warriors of the tribe, and the centre by the ambassadors. One of these opens the ceremony by pronouncing a speech of peace, while another offers the pipe to the relations. If they refuse it, and the great chief of the tribe entertains a particular regard for the other nation, he rises and offers himself to the relations the calumet of conciliation. If refused still, all the children and babes of the murdered one's family are called into the lodge, and the pipe passed a third time in that part of the lodge. Then if a child even two or three months old touches it, the Indians consider the act as a decision of the great Master of Life, the pipe goes round, the presents are carried in, and put at the feet of the plaintiffs. When on the contrary, the calumet passes untouched, the murderer's life alone can satisfy the tribe. When the chiefs of the tribe of the murderer leave their village to come and offer excuses, they bring with them the claimed victim, who is well armed. If he is held in high estimation, and has been a good warrior and a good man, the chiefs of his tribe are accompanied by a great number of their own warriors, who paint their faces before entering the council lodge; some in black with green spots, some all green (the pipe of peace is always painted green). The relations of the murdered man stand on one side of the lodge, the warriors of the other tribe opposite to them. In the centre is the chief, who is attended by the bearer of the pipe of peace on one side of him, and the murderer on the other. The chief then makes a speech, and advances with the pipe-bearer and the murderer towards the relatives of the deceased; he entreats them, each man separately, to smoke the pipe which is offered by the pipe-bearer, and when refused, offered to the next of the relatives. During this time the murderer, who is well armed, stands by the chiefs side, advancing slowly, with his arrow or his carbine pointed, ready to fire at any one of the relations who may attempt to take his life before the pipe has been refused by the whole of them. When such is the case, if the chiefs want peace, and do not care much for the murderer, they allow him to be killed without interference; if, on the contrary, they value him and will not permit his death, they raise the war-whoop, their warriors defend the murderer's life, and the war between the two tribes may be said to have commenced. Most usually, however, the pipe of peace is accepted, in preference to proceeding to such extremities. I will now mention the arms and accoutrement of the Shoshone warriors, observing, at the same time, that my remarks refer equally to the Apaches, the Arrapahoes, and the Comanches, except that the great skill of the Shoshones turns the balance in their favour. A Shoshone is always on horseback, firmly sitting upon a small and light saddle of his own manufacture, without any stirrups, which indeed they prefer not to have, the only Indians using them being chiefs and celebrated warriors, who have them as a mark of distinction, the more so that a saddle and stirrups are generally trophies obtained in battle from a conquered enemy. They have too good a taste to ornament their horses as the Mexicans, the Crows, or the Eastern Indians do; they think that the natural grace and beauty of the animal are such that anything gaudy would break its harmony; the only mark of distinction they put upon their steeds (and the chiefs only can do so) is a rich feather or two, or three quills of the eagle, fixed to the rosette of the bridle, below the left ear; and as a Shoshone treats his horse as a friend, always petting him, cleaning him, never forcing or abusing him, the animal is always in excellent condition, and his proud eyes and majestic bearing present to the beholder the beau ideal of the graceful and the beautiful. The elegant dress and graceful form of the Shoshone cavalier, harmonizes admirably with the wild and haughty appearance of the animal. The Shoshone allows his well-combed locks to undulate with the wind, only pressed to his head by a small metal coronet, to which he fixes feathers or quills, similar to those put to his horse's rosette. This coronet is made either of gold or silver, and those who cannot afford to use these metals make it with swan-down or deer-skin, well-prepared and elegantly embroidered with porcupine quills; his arms are bare and his wrists encircled with bracelets of the same material as the coronet; his body, from the neck to the waist, is covered with a small, soft deer-skin shirt, fitting him closely without a single wrinkle; from the waist to the knee he wears a many-folded toga, of black, brown, red, or white woollen or silk stuff, which he procures at Monterey or St. Francisco, from the Valparaiso and China traders; his leg from the ankle to the hip is covered by a pair of leggings of deer-skin, dyed red or black with some vegetable acids, and sewed with human hair, which hangs flowing, or in tresses, on the outward side; these leggings are fastened a little above the foot by other metal bracelets, while the foot is encased in an elegantly finished mocassin, often edged with small beautiful round crimson shells, no bigger than a pea, and found among the fossil remains of the country. Round his waist, and to sustain the toga, he wears a sash, generally made by the squaws out of the slender filaments of the silk-tree, a species of the cotton-wood, which is always covered with long threads, impalpable, though very strong. These are wove together, and richly dyed. I am sure that in Paris or in London, these scarfs, which are from twelve to fifteen feet long, would fetch a large sum among the ladies of the haut ton. I have often had one of them shut up in my hand so that it was scarcely to be perceived that I had anything enclosed in my fist. Suspended to this scarf, they have the knife on the left side and the tomahawk on the right. The bow and quiver are suspended across their shoulders by bands of swan-down three inches broad, while their long lance, richly carved, and with a bright copper or iron point, is carried horizontally at the side of the horse. Those who possess a carbine have it fixed on the left side by a ring and a hook, the butt nearly close to the sash, and the muzzle protruding a little before the knee. The younger warriors, who do not possess the carbine, carry in its stead a small bundle of javelins (the jerrid of the Persians), with which they are very expert, for I have often seen them, at a distance of ten feet, bury one more than two feet deep in the flanks of a buffalo. To complete their offensive weapons, they have the lasso, a leather rope fifty feet long, and as thick as a woman's little finger, hanging from the pommel of their saddles; this is a terrible arm, against which there is but little possibility of contending, even if the adversary possess a rifle, for the casting of the lasso is done with the rapidity of thought, and an attempt to turn round and fire would indubitably seal his fate: the only means to escape the fatal noose is to raise the reins of your horse to the top of your head, and hold any thing diagonally from your body, such as the lance, the carbine, or anything except the knife, which you must hold in your right hand, ready for use. The chances then are: if the lasso falls above your head, it must slip, and then it is a lost throw, but if you are quick enough to pass your knife through the noose, and cut it as it is dragged back, then the advantage becomes yours, or, at least is equally divided, for then you may turn upon your enemy, whose bow, lance, and rifle, for the better management of his lasso, have been left behind, or too firmly tied about him to be disengaged and used in so short a time. He can only oppose you with the knife and tomahawk, and if you choose, you may employ your own lasso; in that case the position is reversed; still the conquest belongs to the most active of the two. It often happens, that after having cut the lasso and turned upon his foe, an Indian, without diminishing the speed of his horse, will pick up from the ground, where he has dropped it, his rifle or his lance; then, of course, victory is in his hands. I escaped once from being lassoed in that way. I was pursued by a Crow Indian; his first throw failed, so did his second and his third; on the fourth I cut the rope, and wheeling round upon him, I gave chase, and shot him through the body with one of my pistols. The noose at every cast formed such an exact circle, and fell with such precision, the centre above my head, and the circumference reaching from the neck to the tail of my horse, that if I had not thrown away my rifle, lance, bow, and quiver, I should immediately have been dragged to the ground. All the western Indians and Mexicans are admirably expert in handling this deadly weapon. Before the arrival of the Prince Seravalle, the Shoshones had bucklers, but they soon cast them aside as an incumbrance: the skill which was wasted upon the proper management of this defensive armour being now applied to the improved use of the lance. I doubt much, whether, in the tournaments of the days of chivalry, the gallant knights could show to their ladye-love greater skill than a Shoshone can exhibit when fighting against an Arrapahoe or a Crow[12]. [Footnote 12: The Crows, our neighbours, who are of the Dacotah race, are also excellent horsemen, most admirably dressed and fond of show, but they cannot be compared to the Shoshones; they have not the same skill, and, moreover, they abuse and change their horses so often that the poor brutes are never accustomed to their masters.] But the most wonderful feat of the Shoshone, and also of the Comanche and Apache, is the facility with which he will hang himself alongside his horse in a charge upon an enemy, being perfectly invisible to him, and quite invulnerable, except through the body of his horse. Yet in that difficult and dangerous position he will use any of his arms with precision and skill. The way in which they keep their balance is very simple; they pass their right arm, to the very shoulder, through the folds of the lasso, which, as I have said, is suspended to the pommel or round the neck of the horse; for their feet they find a support in the numerous loops of deer-skin hanging from the saddle; and thus suspended, the left arm entirely free to handle the bow, and the right one very nearly so, to draw the arrow, they watch their opportunity, and unless previously wounded, seldom miss their aim. I have said that the Shoshones threw away their bucklers at the instigation of the Prince Seravalle, who also taught them the European cavalry tactics. They had sense enough to perceive the advantage they would gain from them, and they were immediately incorporated, as far as possible, with their own. The Shoshones now charge in squadrons with the lance, form squares, wheel with wonderful precision, and execute many difficult manoeuvres; but as they combine our European tactics with their own Indian mode of warfare, one of the most singular sights is to witness the disappearance behind their horses, after the Indian fashion, of a whole body of perhaps five hundred horse when in full charge. The effect is most strange; at one moment, you see the horses mounted by gallant fellows, rushing to the conflict; at a given signal, every man has disappeared, and the horses, in perfect line appear as if charging, without riders, and of their own accord, upon the ranks of the enemy. I have dwelt perhaps too long upon the manners and habits of these people; I cannot help, however, giving my readers a proof of the knowledge which the higher classes among them really possess. I have said that they are good astronomers, and I may add that their intuitive knowledge of geometry is remarkable. I once asked a young chief what he considered the height of a lofty pine. It was in the afternoon, about three o'clock. He walked to the end of the shadow thrown by the pine-tree, and fixed his arrow in the ground, measured the length of the arrow, and then the length of the shadow thrown by it; then measuring the shadow of the pine, he deducted from it in the same proportion as the difference between the length of the arrow, and the length of its shadow, and gave me the result. He worked the Rule of Three without knowing it. But the most remarkable instance occurred when we were about to cross a wide and rapid river, and required a rope to be thrown across, as a stay to the men and horses. The question was, what was the length of the rope required; _i.e._, what was the width of the river? An old chief stepped his horse forward, to solve the problem, and he did it as follows:--He went down to the side of the river, and fixed upon a spot as the centre; then he selected two trees, on the right and left, on the other side, as near as his eye could measure equidistant from where he stood. Having so done, he backed his horse from the river, until he came to where his eye told him that he had obtained the point of an equilateral triangle. Thus, in the diagram he selected the two trees, A and B, walked back to E, and there fixed his lance. He then fell back in the direction E D, until he had, as nearly as he could tell, made the distance from A E equal to that from E D, and fixed another lance. The same was repeated to E C, when the last lance was fixed. He then had a parallelogram; and as the distance from F to E was exactly equal to the distance from E to G, he had but to measure the space between the bank of the river and E, and deduct it from E G, and he obtained the width of the river required. [Illustration] I do not think that this calculation, which proved to be perfectly correct, occupied the old chief more than three minutes; and it must be remembered that it was done in the face of the enemy. But I resume my own history. CHAPTER X. In narrating the unhappy death of the Prince, I have stated that the Crows bore no good-will to the white men established among the Shoshones. That feeling, however, was not confined to that tribe; it was shared by all the others within two or three hundred miles from the Buona Ventura river, and it was not surprising! Since our arrival, the tribe had acquired a certain degree of tactics and unity of action which was sufficient in itself to bear down all their enemies, independent of the immense power they had obtained from their quantity of fire-arms and almost inexhaustible ammunition. All the other nations were jealous of their strength and resources, and this jealousy being now worked up to its climax, they determined to unite and strike a great blow, not only to destroy the ascendancy which the Shoshones had attained, but also to possess themselves of the immense wealth which they foolishly supposed the Europeans had brought with them to the settlement. For a long time previous to the Crow and Umbiqua expedition, which I have detailed, messengers had been passing between tribe and tribe, and, strange to say, they had buried all their private animosities to form a league against the common enemy, as were considered the Shoshones. It was, no doubt, owing to this arrangement that the Crows and Umbiquas showed themselves so hardy; but the prompt and successful retaliation of the Shoshones cooled a little the war spirit which was fomenting around us. However, the Arrapahoes having consented to join the league, the united confederates at once opened the campaign, and broke upon our country in every direction. We were taken by surprise; for the first three weeks they carried everything before them, for the majority of our warriors were still hunting. But having been apprised of the danger, they returned in haste, and the aspect of affairs soon changed. The lost ground was regained inch by inch. The Arrapahoes having suffered a great deal, retired from the league, and having now nothing to fear from the south, we turned against our assailants on our northern boundaries. Notwithstanding the desertion of the Arrapahoes, the united tribes were still three times our number, but they wanted union, and did not act in concert. They mustered about fifteen thousand warriors, from the Umbiquas, Callapoos, Cayuses, Nez-percés, Bonnaxes, Flat-heads, and some of the Crows, who had not yet gained prudence from their last "brushing." The superiority of our arms, our tactics, discipline, and art of intrenchment, together with the good service of two clumsy old Spanish four-pounders, enabled us not only in a short time to destroy the league, but also to crush and annihilate for ever some of our treacherous neighbours. As it would be tedious to a stranger to follow the movements of the whole campaign, I will merely mention that part of it in which I assisted[13]. [Footnote 13: The system of prairie warfare is so different from ours, that the campaign I have just related will not be easily understood by those acquainted only with European military tactics. When a European army starts upon an expedition, it is always accompanied by waggons, carrying stores of provisions and ammunition of all kinds. There is a commissariat appointed for the purpose of feeding the troops. Among the Indians there is no such thing, and except a few pieces of dried venison, a pound weight of powder, and a corresponding quantity of lead, if he has a rifle, but if not, with his lance, bow, arrows, and tomahawk, the warrior enters the war-path. In the closer country, for water and fuel, he trusts to the streams and to the trees of the forests or mountains; when in the prairie, to the mud holes and chasms for water, and to the buffalo-dung for his fire. His rifle and arrows will always give him enough of food. But these supplies would not, of course, be sufficient for a great number of men; ten thousand for example. A water-hole would be drained by the first two or three hundred men that might arrive, and the remainder would be obliged to go without any. Then, unless perchance they should fall upon a large herd of buffaloes, they would never be able to find the means of sustaining life. A buffalo, or three or four deer can be killed every day, by hunters out of the tract of an expedition; this supply would suffice for a small war party, but it would never do for an army. Except in the buffalo ranges, where the Comanches, the Apaches, and the Southern Shoshones will often go by bands of thousands, the generality of the Indians enter the path in a kind of _echelonage_; that is to say, supposing the Shoshones to send two thousand men against the Crows, they would be divided into fifteen or twenty bands, each commanded by an inferior chief. The first party will start for reconnoitering. The next day the second band, accompanied by the great chiefs, will follow, but in another track; and so on with a third, till three hundred or three hundred and fifty are united together. Then they will begin their operations, new parties coming to take the place of those who have suffered, till they themselves retire to make room for others. Every new comer brings a supply of provisions, the produce of their chase in coming, so that those who are fighting need be in no fear of wanting the necessaries of life. By this the reader will see that a band of two thousand warriors, only four or five hundred are effectually fighting, unless the number of warriors agreed upon by the chiefs prove too small, when new reinforcements are sent forward.] We were divided into four war parties: one which acted against the Bonnaxes and the Flat-heads, in the north-east; the second, against the Cayuses and Nez-percés, at the forks of the Buona Ventura and Calumet rivers; the third remained near the settlement, to protect it from surprise; while the fourth, a very small one, under my father's command, and to which I was attached, remained in or about the boat-house, at the fishing station. Independent of these four parties, well-armed bands were despatched into the Umbiqua country both by land and sea. In the beginning, our warfare on the shores of the Pacific amounted merely to skirmishes, but by-and-bye, the Callapoos having joined the Umbiquas with a numerous party, the game assumed more interest. We not only lost our advantages in the Umbiqua country, but were obliged little by little to retire to the Post; this, however, proved to be our salvation. We were but one hundred and six men, whilst our adversaries mustered four hundred and eighty, and yet full one-fifth of their number were destroyed in one afternoon, during a desperate attack which they made upon the Post, which had been put into an admirable state of defence. The roof had been covered with sheets of copper, and holes had been opened in various parts of the wall for the use of the cannon, of our possession of which the enemy was ignorant The first assault was gallantly conducted, and every one of the loopholes was choked with their balls and arrows. On they advanced, in a close and thick body, with ladders and torches, yelling like a million of demons. When at the distance of sixty yards, we poured upon them the contents of our two guns; they were heavily loaded with grape-shot, and produced a most terrible effect. The enemy did not retreat; raising their war-whoop, on they rushed with a determination truly heroical. The guns were again fired, and also the whole of our musketry, after which a party of forty of our men made a sortie. This last charge was sudden and irresistible; the enemy fled in every direction, leaving behind their dead and wounded. That evening we received a reinforcement of thirty-eight men from the settlement, with a large supply of buffalo meat and twenty fine young fat colts. This was a great comfort to us, as, for several days we had been obliged to live upon our dried fish. During seven days we saw nothing of the enemy; but our scouts scoured in every direction, and our long-boat surprised, in a bay opposite George Point, thirty-six large boats, in which the Callapoos had come from their territory. The boats were destroyed, and their keepers scalped. As the heat was very intense, we resolved not to confine ourselves any more within the walls of the Post; we formed a spacious camp, to the east of the block-house, with breastworks of uncommon strength. This plan probably saved us from some contagious disease; indeed, the bad smell of the dried fish, and the rarefied air in the building, had already begun to affect many of our men, especially the wounded. At the end of a week our enemy reappeared, silent and determined. They had returned for revenge or for death; the struggle was to be a fearful one. They encamped in the little open prairie on the other side of the river, and mustered about six hundred men. The first war-party had overthrown and dispersed the Bonnaxes, as they were on their way to join the Flat-heads; and the former tribe not being able to effect the intended junction, threw itself among the Cayuses and Nez-percés. These three combined nations, after a desultory warfare, gave way before the second war-party; and the Bonnaxes, being now rendered desperate by their losses and the certainty that they would be exterminated if the Shoshones should conquer, joined the Callapoos and Umbiquas, to make one more attack upon our little garrison. Nothing could have saved us, had the Flat-heads held out any longer; but the Black-feet, their irreconcilable enemies, seizing the opportunity, had entered their territory. They sued to us for peace, and then detachments from both war-parties hastened to our help. Of this we were apprised by our runners; and having previously concerted measures with my father, I started alone to meet these detachments, in the passes of the Mineral Mountains. The returning warriors were seven hundred strong, and had not lost more than thirteen men in their two expeditions; they divided into three bands, and succeeded, without discovery, in surrounding the prairie in which the enemy were encamped; an Indian was then sent to cross the river, a few miles to the east, and carry a message to my father. The moon rose at one in the morning. It was arranged that, two hours before its rising, the garrison of the block-house, which had already suffered a great deal, during four days of a close siege, were to let off the fireworks that I had received from the Mexicans at Monterey, and to watch well the shore on their side of the river; for we were to fall upon the enemy during their surprise, occasioned by such an unusual display. All happened as was intended. At the first rocket, the Bonnaxes, Callapoos, and Umbiquas were on the alert; but astonishment and admiration very soon succeeded their fear of surprise, which they knew could not be attempted from their opponents in front. The bombs burst, the wheels threw their large circles of coloured sparks, and the savages gazed in silent admiration. But their astonishment was followed by fear of supernatural agency; confusion spread among them, and their silence was at last broken by hundreds of loud voices! The moment had now come; the two Shoshone war-parties rushed upon their terrified victims, and an hour afterwards, when the moon rose and shone above the prairie, its mild beams were cast upon four hundred corpses. The whole of the Bonnax and Umbiqua party were entirely destroyed. The Callapoos suffered but little, having dispersed, and run towards the sea-shore at the beginning of the affray. Thus ended the great league against the Shoshones, which tradition will speak of in ages yet to come. But these stirring events were followed by a severe loss to me. My father, aged as he was, had shown a great deal of activity during the last assault, and he had undergone much privation and fatigue: his high spirit sustained him to the very last of the struggle; but when all was over, and the reports of the rifles no longer whizzed to his ears, his strength gave way, and, ten days after the last conflict, he died of old age, fatigue, and grief. On the borders of the Pacific Ocean, a few miles inland, I have raised his grave. The wild flowers that grow upon it are fed by the clear waters of the Nú elejé sha wako, and the whole tribe of the Shoshones will long watch over the tomb of the Pale-face from a distant land, who was once their instructor and their friend. As for my two friends, Gabriel and Roche, they had been both seriously wounded, and it was a long time before they were recovered. We passed the remainder of the summer in building castles in the air for the future, and at last agreed to go to Monterey to pass the winter. Fate, however, ordered otherwise, and a succession of adventures, the current of which I could not oppose, forced me through many wild scenes and countries, which I have yet to describe. CHAPTER XI. At the beginning of the fall, a few months after my father's death, I and my two comrades, Gabriel and Roche, were hunting in the rolling prairies of the South, on the eastern shores of the Buona Ventura. One evening we were in high spirits, having had good sport. My two friends had entered upon a theme which they could never exhaust, one pleasantly narrating the wonders and sights of Paris, the other describing with his true native eloquence the beauties of his country, and repeating the old local Irish legends, which appeared to me quaint and highly poetical. Of a sudden we were surrounded by a party of sixty Arrapahoes; of course, resistance or flight was useless. Our captors, however, treated us with honour, contenting themselves with watching us closely and preventing our escape. They knew who we were, and though my horse, saddle, and rifle were in themselves a booty for any chief, nothing was taken on us. I addressed the chief, whom I knew: "What have I done to the Morning Star of the Arrapahoes, that I should be taken and watched like a sheep of the Watchinangoes?" The chief smiled and put his hand upon my shoulders. "The Arrapahoes," said he, "love the young Owato Wanisha and his pale-faced brothers, for they are great warriors, and can beat their enemies with beautiful blue fires from the heavens. The Arrapahoes know all; they are a wise people. They will take Owato Wanisha to their own tribe that he may show his skill to them, and make them warriors. He shall be fed with the fattest and sweetest dogs. He will become a great warrior among the Arrapahoes. So wish our prophets. I obey the will of the prophets and of the nation." "But," answered I, "my Manitou will not hear me if I am a slave. The Pale-face Manitou has ears only for free warriors. He will not lend me his fires unless space and time be my own." The chief interrupted me:--"Owato Wanisha is not a slave, nor can he be one. He is with his good friends, who will watch over him, light his fire, spread their finest blankets in his tent, and fill it with the best game of the prairie. His friends love the young chief, but he must not escape from them, else the evil spirit would make the young Arrapahoes drunk as a beastly Crow, and excite them in their folly to kill the Pale-faces." As nothing could be attempted for the present, we submitted to our fate, and were conducted by a long and dreary journey to the eastern shores of the Rio Colorado of the West, until at last we arrived at one of the numerous and beautiful villages of the Arrapahoes. There we passed the winter in a kind of honourable captivity. An attempt to escape would have been the signal of our death, or, at least, of a harsh captivity. We were surrounded by vast sandy deserts, inhabited, by the Clubs (Piuses), a cruel race of people, some of them cannibals. Indeed, I may as well here observe that most of the tribes inhabiting the Colorado are men-eaters, even including the Arrapahoes, on certain occasions. Once we fell in with a deserted camp of Clubmen, and there we found the remains of about twenty bodies, the bones of which had been picked with apparently as much relish as the wings of a pheasant would have been by a European epicure. This winter passed gloomily enough, and no wonder. Except a few beautiful groves, found here and there, like the oases in the sands of the Sahara, the whole country is horribly broken and barren. Forty miles above the Gulf of California, the Colorado ceases to be navigable, and presents from its sources, for seven hundred miles, nothing but an uninterrupted series of noisy and tremendous cataracts, bordered on each side by a chain of perpendicular rocks, five or six hundred feet high, while the country all around seems to have been shaken to its very centre by violent volcanic eruptions. Winter at length passed away, and with the first weeks of spring were renovated our hopes of escape. The Arrapahoes, relenting in their vigilance, went so far as to offer us to accompany them in an expedition eastward. To this, of course, we agreed, and entered very willingly upon the beautiful prairies of North Sonora. Fortune favoured us; one day, the Arrapahoes, having followed a trail of Apaches and Mexicans, with an intent to surprise and destroy them, fell themselves into a snare, in which they were routed, and many perished. We made no scruples of deserting our late masters, and, spurring our gallant steeds, we soon found that our unconscious liberators were a party of officers bound from Monterey to Santa Fé, escorted by two-and-twenty Apaches and some twelve or fifteen families of Ciboleros. I knew the officers, and was very glad to have intelligence from California. Isabella was as bright as ever, but not quite so light-hearted. Padre Marini, the missionary, had embarked for Peru, and the whole city of Monterey was still laughing, dancing, singing, and love-making, just as I had left them. The officers easily persuaded me to accompany them to Santa Fé, from whence I could readily return to Monterey with the next caravan. A word concerning the Ciboleros may not be uninteresting. Every year, large parties of Mexicans, some with mules, others with ox-carts, drive out into these prairies to procure for their families a season's supply of buffalo beef. They hunt chiefly on horseback, with bow and arrow, or lance, and sometimes the fusil, whereby they soon load their carts and mules. They find no difficulty in curing their meat even in midsummer, by slicing it thin, and spreading or suspending it in the sun; or, if in haste, it is slightly barbecued. During the curing operation, they often follow the Indian practice of beating the slices of meat with their feet, which they say contributes to its preservation. Here the extraordinary purity of the atmosphere of these regions is remarkably exemplified. A line is stretched from corner to corner along the side of the waggon body, and strung with slices of beef, which remain from day to day till they are sufficiently cured to be packed up. This is done without salt, and yet the meat rarely putrefies. The optic deception of the rarefied and transparent atmosphere of these elevated plains is truly remarkable. One might almost fancy oneself looking through a spy-glass; for objects often appear at scarce one-fourth of their real distance--frequently much magnified, and more especially much elevated. I have often seen flocks of antelopes mistaken for droves of elks or wild horses, and when at a great distance, even for horsemen; whereby frequent alarms are occasioned. A herd of buffaloes upon a distant plain often appear so elevated in height, that they would be mistaken by the inexperienced for a large grove of trees. But the most curious, and at the same time the most tormenting phenomenon occasioned by optical deception, is the "mirage," or, as commonly called by the Mexican travellers, "the lying waters." Even the experienced prairie hunter is often deceived by these, upon the arid plains, where the pool of water is in such request. The thirsty wayfarer, after jogging for hours under a burning sky, at length espies a pond--yes, it must be water--it looks too natural for him to be mistaken. He quickens his pace, enjoying in anticipation the pleasures of a refreshing draught; but, as he approaches, it recedes or entirely disappears; and standing upon its apparent site, he is ready to doubt his own vision, when he finds but a parched sand under his feet. It is not until he has been thus a dozen times deceived, that he is willing to relinquish the pursuit, and then, perhaps, when he really does see a pond, he will pass it unexamined, from fear of another disappointment. The philosophy of these false ponds I have never seen satisfactorily explained. They have usually been attributed to a refraction, by which a section of the bordering sky is thrown below the horizon; but I am convinced that they are the effect of reflection. It seems that a gas (emanating probably from the heated earth and its vegetable matter) floats upon the elevated flats, and is of sufficient density, when viewed obliquely, to reflect the objects beyond it; thus the opposing sky being reflected in the pond of gas, gives the appearance of water. As a proof that it is the effect of reflection, I have often observed the distant knolls and trees which were situated near the horizon beyond the mirage, distinctly inverted in the "pond." Now, were the mirage the result of refraction, these would appear on it erect, only cast below the surface. Many are the singular atmospheric phenomena observable upon the plains, and they would afford a field of interesting researches for the curious natural philosopher. We had a pleasant journey, although sometimes pressed pretty hard by hunger. However, Gabriel, Roche, and I were too happy to complain. We had just escaped from a bitter and long slavery, besides which, we were heartily tired of the lean and tough dogs of the Arrapahoes, which are the only food of that tribe during the winter. The Apaches, who had heard of our exploits, showed us great respect; but what still more captivated their good graces, was the Irishman's skill in playing the fiddle. It so happened that a Mexican officer having, during the last fall, been recalled from Monterey to Santa Fé, had left his violin. It was a very fine instrument, an old Italian piece of workmanship, and worth, I am convinced, a great deal of money. At the request of the owner, one of the present officers had taken charge of the violin and packed it up, together with his trunks, in one of the Cibolero's waggons. We soon became aware of the circumstance, and when we could not get anything to eat, music became our consolation. Tired as we were, we would all of us, "at least the Pale-faces," dance merrily for hours together, after we had halted, till poor Roche, exhausted, could no longer move his fingers. We were at last relieved of our obligatory fast, and enabled to look with contempt upon the humble prickly pears, which for many a long day had been our only food. Daily now we came across herds of fat buffaloes, and great was our sport in pursuing the huge lord of the prairies. One of them, by-the-bye, gored my horse to death, and would likely have put an end to my adventures, had it not been for the certain aim of Gabriel. I had foolishly substituted my bow and arrows for the rifle, that I might show my skill to my companions. My vanity cost me dear; for though the bull was a fine one, and had seven arrows driven through his neck, I lost one of the best horses of the West, and my right leg was considerably hurt. Having been informed that there was a large city or commonwealth of prairie dogs directly in our route, I started on ahead with my two companions, to visit these republicans. We had a double object in view: first, a desire to examine one of the republics about which prairie travellers have said so much; and, secondly, to obtain something to eat, as the flesh of these animals was said to be excellent. Our road for six or seven miles wound up the sides of a gently ascending mountain. On arriving at the summit, we found a beautiful table-land spread out, reaching for miles in every direction before us. The soil appeared to be uncommonly rich, and was covered with a luxurious growth of musqueet trees. The grass was of the curly musquito species, the sweetest and most nutritious of all the different kinds of that grass, and the dogs never locate their towns or cities except where it grows in abundance, as it is their only food. We had proceeded but a short distance after reaching this beautiful prairie, before we came upon the outskirts of the commonwealth. A few scattered dogs were seen scampering in, and, by their short and sharp yelps, giving a general alarm to the whole community. The first cry of danger from the outskirts was soon taken up in the centre of the city, and now nothing was to be seen in any direction but a dashing and a scampering of the mercurial and excitable citizens of the place, each to his lodge or burrow. Far as the eye could reach was spread the city, and in every direction the scene was the same. We rode leisurely along until we had reached the more thickly settled portion of the city, when we halted, and after taking the bridles from our horses to allow them to graze, we prepared for a regular attack upon its inhabitants. The burrows were not more than fifteen yards apart, with well-trodden paths leading in different directions, and I even thought I could discover something like regularity in the laying out of the streets. We sat down upon a bank under the shade of a musqueet tree, and leisurely surveyed the scene before us. Our approach had driven every one in our immediate vicinity to his home; but some hundred yards off, the small mound of earth in front of a burrow was each occupied by a dog sitting straight up on his hinder legs, and coolly looking about him to ascertain the cause of the recent commotion. Every now and then some citizen, more venturous than his neighbour, would leave his lodge on a flying visit to a companion, apparently to exchange a few words, and then scamper back as fast as his legs would carry him. By-and-bye, as we kept perfectly still, some of our nearer neighbours were seen cautiously poking their heads from out their holes and looking cunningly, and at the same time inquisitively, about them. After some time, a dog would emerge from the entrance of his domicile, squat upon his looking-out place, shake his head, and commence yelping. For three hours we remained watching the movements of these animals, and occasionally picking one of them off with our rifles. No less than nine were obtained by the party. One circumstance I will mention as singular in the extreme, and which shows the social relationship which exists among these animals, as well as the regard they have one for another. One of them had perched himself directly upon the pile of earth in front of his hole, sitting up, and offering a fair mark, while a companion's head, too timid, perhaps, to expose himself farther, was seen poking out of the entrance. A well-directed shot carried away the entire top of the head of the first dog, and knocked him some two or three feet from his post, perfectly dead. While reloading, the other daringly came out, seized his companion by one of his legs, and before we could arrive at the hole, had drawn him completely out of reach, although we tried to twist him out with a ramrod. There was a feeling in this act--a something human, which raised the animals in my estimation; and never after did I attempt to kill one of them, except when driven by extreme hunger. The prairie dog is about the size of a rabbit, heavier, perhaps, more compact, and with much shorter legs. In appearance, it resembles the ground hog of the north, although a trifle smaller than that animal. In their habits, the prairie dogs are social, never live alone like other animals, but are always found in villages or large settlements. They are a wild, frolicsome set of fellows when undisturbed, restless, and ever on the move. They seem to take especial delight in chattering away the time, and visiting about, from hole to hole, to gossip and talk over one another's affairs; at least, so their actions would indicate. Old hunters say that when they find a good location for a village, and no water is handy, they dig a well to supply the wants of the community. On several occasions I have crept up close to one of their villages, without being observed, that I might watch their movements. Directly in the centre of one of them I particularly noticed a very large dog, sitting in front of his door, or entrance to his burrow, and by his own actions and those of his neighbours, it really looked as though he was the president, mayor, or chief; at all events, he was the "big dog" of the place. For at least an hour I watched the movements of this little community; during that time, the large dog I have mentioned received at least a dozen visits from his fellow-dogs, who would stop and chat with him a few moments, and then run off to their domiciles. All this while he never left his post for a single minute, and I thought I could discover a gravity in his deportment not discernible in those by whom he was addressed. Far be it from me to say that the visits he received were upon business, or having anything to do with the local government of the village; but it certainly appeared as if such was the case. If any animal is endowed with reasoning powers, or has any system of laws regulating the body politic, it is the prairie dog. In different parts of the village the members of it were seen gambolling, frisking, and visiting about, occasionally turning heels over head into their holes, and appearing to have all sorts of fun among themselves. Owls of a singular species were also seen among them; they did not appear to join in their sports in any way, but still seemed to be on good terms, and as they were constantly entering and coming out of the same holes, they might be considered as members of the same family, or, at least, guests. Rattlesnakes, too, dwell among them; but the idea generally received among the Mexicans, that they live upon terms of companion ship with the dogs, is quite ridiculous, and without any foundation. The snakes I look upon as _loafers_, not easily shaken off by the regular inhabitants, and they make use of the dwellings of the dogs as more comfortable quarters than they could find elsewhere. We killed one a short distance from a burrow, which had made a meal of a little pup; although I do not think they can master full-grown dogs. This town, which we visited, was several miles in length, and at least a mile in width. Around and in the vicinity were smaller villages, suburbs to the town. We kindled a fire, and cooked three of the animals we had shot; the meat was exceeding sweet, tender, and juicy, resembling that of the squirrel, only that there was more fat upon it. CHAPTER XII. Among these Apaches, our companions, were two Comanches, who, fifteen years before, had witnessed the death of the celebrated Overton. As this wretch, for a short time, was employed as an English agent by the Fur Company, his wild and romantic end will probably interest the many readers who have known him; at all events, the narrative will serve as a specimen of the lawless career of many who resort to the western wilderness. Some forty-four years ago, a Spanish trader had settled among a tribe of the Tonquewas[14], at the foot of the Green Mountains. He had taken an Indian squaw, and was living there very comfortably, paying no taxes, but occasionally levying some, under the shape of black mail, upon the settlements of the province of Santa Fé. In one excursion, however, he was taken and hung, an event soon forgotten both by Spaniards and Tonquewas. He had left behind him, besides a child and a squaw, property to a respectable amount; the tribe took his wealth for their own use, but cast away the widow and her offspring. She fell by chance into the hands of a jolly, though solitary Canadian trapper, who, not having the means of selecting his spouse, took the squaw for better and for worse. [Footnote 14: The Tonquewas tribe sprang from the Comanches many years ago.] In the meantime the young half-breed grew to manhood, and early displayed a wonderful capacity for languages. The squaw died, and the trapper, now thinking of the happy days he had passed among the civilized people of the East, resolved to return thither, and took with him the young half-breed, to whom by long habit he had become attached. They both came to St. Louis, where the half-breed soon learned enough of English to make himself understood, and one day, having gone with his "father-in-law" to pay a visit to the Osages, he murdered him on the way, took his horse, fusil, and sundries, and set up for himself. For a long time he was unsuspected, and, indeed, if he had been, he cared very little about it. He went from tribe to tribe, living an indolent life, which suited his taste perfectly; and as he was very necessary to the Indians as an interpreter during their bartering transactions with the Whites, he was allowed to do just as he pleased. He was, however, fond of shifting from tribe to tribe, and the traders seeing him now with the Pawnies or the Comanches, now with the Crows or the Tonquewas, gave him the surname of "Turn-over," which name, making a somersault, became Over-turn, and, by corruption, Overton. By this time everybody had discovered that Overton was a great scoundrel, but as he was useful, the English company from Canada employed him, paying him very high wages. But his employers having discovered that he was almost always tipsy, and not at all backward in appropriating to himself that to which he had no right, dismissed him from their service, and Overton returned to his former life. By-and-bye, some Yankees made him proposals, which he accepted; what was the nature of them no one can exactly say, but everybody may well fancy, knowing that nothing is considered more praiseworthy than cheating the Indians in their transactions with them, through the agency of some rascally interpreter, who, of course, receives his _tantum quantum_ of the profits of his treachery. For some time the employers and employed agreed amazingly well, and as nothing is cheaper than military titles in the United States, the half-breed became Colonel Overton, with boots and spurs, a laced coat, and a long sword. Cunning as were the Yankees, Overton was still more so; cheating them as he had cheated the Indians. The holy alliance was broken up; he then retired to the mountains, protected by the Mexican government, and commenced a system of general depredation, which for some time proved successful. His most ordinary method was to preside over a barter betwixt the savages and the traders. When both parties had agreed, they were of course in good humour, and drank freely. Now was the time for the Colonel. To the Indians he would affirm that the traders only waited till they were asleep, to butcher them and take back their goods. The same story was told to the traders, and a fight ensued, the more terrible as the whole party was more or less tipsy. Then, with some rogues in his own employ, the Colonel, under the pretext of making all safe, would load the mules with the furs and goods, proceed to Santa Fé, and dispose of his booty for one-third of its value. None cared how it had been obtained; it was cheap, consequently it was welcome. His open robberies and tricks of this description were so numerous that Overton became the terror of the mountains. The savages swore that they would scalp him; the Canadians vowed that they would make him dance to death; the English declared that they would hang him; and the Yankees, they would put him to Indian torture. The Mexicans, not being able any more to protect their favourite, put a price upon his head. Under these circumstances, Overton took an aversion to society, concealed himself, and during two years nothing was heard of him, when, one day, as a party of Comanches and Tonquewas were returning from some expedition, they perceived a man on horseback. They knew him to be Overton, and gave chase immediately. The chase was a long one. Overton was mounted upon a powerful and noble steed, but the ground was broken and uneven; he could not get out of the sight of his pursuers. However, he reached a platform covered with fine pine trees, and thought himself safe, as on the other side of the wood there was a long level valley extending for many miles; and there he would be able to distance his pursuers, and escape. Away he darted like lightning, their horrible yell still ringing in his ears; he spurred his horse, already covered with foam, entered the plain, and, to his horror and amazement, found that between him and the valley there was a horrible chasm, twenty-five feet in breadth and two hundred feet in depth, with acute angles of rocks, as numerous as the thorns upon a prickly pear. What could he do? His tired horse refused to take the leap, and he could plainly hear the voice of the Indians encouraging each other in the pursuit. Along the edge of the precipice there lay a long hollow log, which had been probably dragged there with the intention of making a bridge across the chasm. Overton dismounted, led his horse to the very brink, and pricked him with his knife the noble animal leaped, but his strength was too far gone for him to clear it; his breast struck the other edge, and he fell from crag to crag into the abyss below. This over, the fugitive crawled to the log, and concealed himself under it, hoping that he would yet escape. He was mistaken, for he had been seen; at that moment, the savages emerged from the wood, and a few minutes more brought them around the log. Now certain of their prey, they wished to make him suffer a long moral agony, and they feigned not to know where he was. "He has leaped over," said one; "it was the full jump of a panther. Shall we return, or encamp here?" The Indians agreed to repose for a short time; and then began a conversation. One protested, if he could ever get Overton, he would make him eat his own bowels. Another spoke of red-hot irons and of creeping flesh. No torture was left unsaid, and horrible must have been the position of the wretched Overton. "His scalp is worth a hundred dollars," said one. "We will get it some day," answered another. "But since we are here, we had better camp and make a fire; there is a log." Overton now perceived that he was lost. From under the log he cast a glance around him: there stood the grim warriors, bow in hand, and ready to kill him at his first movement. He understood that the savages had been cruelly playing with him, and enjoying his state of horrible suspense. Though a scoundrel, Overton was brave, and had too much of the red blood within him not to wish to disappoint his foes--he resolved to allow himself to be burnt, and thus frustrate the anticipated pleasure of his cruel persecutors. To die game to the last is an Indian's glory, and under the most excruciating tortures, few savages will ever give way to their bodily sufferings. Leaves and dried sticks soon surrounded and covered the log--fire was applied, and the barbarians watched in silence. But Overton had reckoned too much upon his fortitude. His blood, after all, was but half Indian, and when the flames caught his clothes he could bear no more. He burst out from under the fire, and ran twice round within the circle of his tormentors. They were still as the grave, not a weapon was aimed at him, when, of a sudden, with all the energy of despair, Overton sprang through the circle and took the fearful leap across the chasm. Incredible as it may appear, he cleared it by more than two feet; a cry of admiration burst from the savages; but Overton was exhausted, and he fell slowly backwards. They crouched upon their breasts to look down--for the depth was so awful as to giddy the brain--and saw their victim, his clothes still in flames, rolling down from rock to rock till all was darkness. Had he kept his footing on the other side of the chasm, he would have been safe, for a bold deed always commands admiration from the savage, and at that time they would have scorned to use their arrows. Such was the fate of Colonel Overton! CHAPTER XIII. At last we passed the Rio Grande, and a few days more brought us to Santa Fé. Much hath been written about this rich and romantic city, where formerly, if we were to believe travellers, dollars and doubloons were to be had merely for picking them up; but I suspect the writers had never seen the place, for it is a miserable, dirty little hole, containing about three thousand souls, almost all of them half-bred, naked, and starved. Such is Santa Fé. You will there witness spectacles of wretchedness and vice hardly to be found elsewhere--harsh despotism; immorality carried to its highest degree, with drunkenness and filth. The value of the Santa Fé trade has been very much exaggerated. This town was formerly the readiest point to which goods could be brought overland from the States to Mexico; but since the colonization of Texas it is otherwise. The profits also obtained in this trade are far from being what they used to be. The journey from St. Louis (Missouri) is very tedious, the distance being about twelve hundred miles, nor is the journey ended when you reach Santa Fé, as they have to continue to Chihuahua. Goods come into the country at a slight duty, compared to that payable on the coast, five hundred dollars only (whatever may be the contents), being charged upon each waggon; and it is this privilege which supports the trade. But the real market commences at Chihuahua; north of which nothing is met with by the traveller, except the most abject moral and physical misery. Of course, our time passed most tediously; the half-breeds were too stupid to converse with, and the Yankee traders constantly tipsy. Had it not been that Gabriel was well acquainted with the neighbourhood, we should positively have died of _ennui_. As it was, however, we made some excursions among the _rancheros_, or cattle-breeders, and visited several Indian tribes, with whom we hunted, waiting impatiently for a westward-bound caravan. One day, I had a rather serious adventure. Roche and Gabriel were bear-hunting, while I, feeling tired, had remained in a rancho, where, for a few days, we had had some amusement; in the afternoon, I felt an inclination to eat some fish, and being told that at three or four miles below, there was a creek full of fine basses, I went away with my rifle, hooks, and line. I soon found the spot, and was seeking for some birds or squirrels, whose flesh I could use as bait. As, rifle in hand, I walked, watching the branches of the trees along the stream, I felt something scratching my leggings and moccasins; I looked down, and perceived a small panther-cub frisking and frolicking around my feet, inviting me to play with it. It was a beautiful little creature, scarcely bigger than a common cat. I sat down, put my rifle across my knees, and for some minutes caressed it, as I would have done an ordinary kitten; it became very familiar, and I was just thinking of taking it with me, when I heard behind me a loud and well-known roar, and, as the little thing left me, over my head bounded a dark heavy body. It was a full-grown panther, the mother of the cub. I had never thought of her. I rose immediately. The beast having missed the leap, had fallen twelve feet before me. It crouched, sweeping the earth with its long tail, and looking fiercely at me. Our eyes met; I confess it, my heart was very small within me. I had my rifle, to be sure, but the least movement to poise it would have been the signal for a spring from the animal. At last, still crouching, it crept back, augmenting the distance to about thirty feet. Then it made a circle round me, never for a moment taking its eyes off my face, for the cub was still playing at my feet. I have no doubt that if the little animal had been betwixt me and the mother, she would have snatched it and run away with it. As it was, I felt very, very queer; take to my heels I could not, and the panther would not leave her cub behind; on the contrary, she continued making a circle round me, I turning with her, and with my rifle pointed towards her. As we both turned, with eyes straining at each other, inch by inch I slowly raised my rifle, till the butt reached my shoulder; I caught the sight and held my breath. The cub, in jumping, hurt itself, and mewed; the mother answered by an angry growl, and just as she was about to spring, I fired; she stumbled backwards, and died without a struggle. My ball, having entered under the left eye, had passed through the skull, carrying with it a part of the brain. It was a terrific animal; had I missed it, a single blow from her paw would have crushed me to atoms. Dead as it was, with its claws extended, as if to seize its prey, and its bleeding tongue hanging out, it struck me with awe. I took off the skin, hung it to a tree, and securing the cub, I hastened home, having lost my appetite for fishing or a fish-supper for that evening. A week after this circumstance, a company of traders arrived from St. Louis. They had been attacked by Indians, and made a doleful appearance. During their trip they had once remained six days without any kind of food, except withered grass. Here it may not be amiss to say a few words about the origin of this inland mercantile expedition, and the dangers with which the traders are menaced. In 1807, Captain Pike, returning from his exploring trip in the interior of the American continent, made it known to the United States merchants that they could establish a very profitable commerce with the central provinces of the north of Mexico; and in 1812, a small party of adventurers. Millar, Knight, Chambers, Beard, and others, their whole number not exceeding twelve, forced their way from St. Louis to Santa Fé, with a small quantity of goods. It has always been the policy of the Spaniards to prevent strangers from penetrating into the interior of their colonies. At that period, Mexico being in revolution, strangers, and particularly Americans, were looked upon with jealousy and distrust. These merchants were, consequently, seized upon, their goods confiscated, and themselves shut up in the prisons of Chihuahua, where, during several years, they underwent a rigorous treatment. It was, I believe, in the spring of 1821, that Chambers, with the other prisoners, returned to the United States, and shortly afterwards a treaty with the States rendered the trade lawful. Their accounts induced one Captain Glenn, of Cincinnati, to join them in a commercial expedition, and another caravan, twenty men strong, started again for Santa Fé. They sought a shorter road, to fall in with the Arkansas river, but their enterprise failed; for, instead of ascending the stream of the Canadian fork, it appears that they only coasted the great river to its intersection by the Missouri road. There is not a drop of water in this horrible region, which extends even to the Cimaron river, and in this desert they had to suffer all the pangs of thirst. They were reduced to the necessity of killing their dogs and bleeding their mules to moisten their parched lips. None of them perished; but, quite dispirited, they changed their direction and turned back to the nearest point of the river Arkansas, where they were at least certain to find abundance of water. By this time their beasts of burden were so tired and broken down that they had become of no use. They were therefore obliged to conceal their goods, and arrived without any more trouble at Santa Fé, when, procuring other mules, they returned to their cachette. Many readers are probably unaware of the process employed by the traders to conceal their cargo, their arms, and even their provisions. It is nothing more than a large excavation In the earth, in the shape of a jar, in which the objects are stored; the bottom of the cachette having been first covered with wood and canvas, so as to prevent anything being spoiled by the damp. The important science of cachaye (Canadian expression) consists in leaving no trace which might betray it to the Indians; to prevent this, the earth taken from the excavation is put into blankets and carried to a great distance. The place generally selected for a cachette is a swell in the prairie, sufficiently elevated to be protected from any kind of inundation, and the arrangement is so excellent, that it is very seldom that the traders lose anything in their cachette, either by the Indians, the changes of the climate, or the natural dampness of the earth. In the spring of 1820, a company from Franklin, in the west of Missouri, had already proceeded to Santa Fé, with twelve mules loaded with goods. They crossed prairies where no white man had ever penetrated, having no guides but the stars of Heaven, the morning breeze from the mountains, and perhaps a pocket compass. Daily they had to pass through hostile nations; but spite of many other difficulties, such as ignorance of the passes and want of water, they arrived at Santa Fé. The adventurers returned to Missouri during the fall; their profit had been immense, although the capital they had employed had been very small. Their favourable reports produced a deep sensation, and in the spring of the next year, Colonel Cooper and some associates, to the number of twenty-two, started with fourteen mules well loaded. This time the trip was a prompt and a fortunate one; and the merchants of St. Louis getting bolder and bolder, formed, in 1822, a caravan of seventy men, who carried with them goods to the amount of forty thousand dollars. Thus began the Santa Fé trade, which assumed a more regular character. Companies started in the spring to return in the fall, with incredible benefits, and the trade increasing, the merchants reduced the number of their guards, till, eventually, repeated attacks from the savages obliged them to unite together, in order to travel with safety. At first the Indians appeared disposed to let them pass without any kind of interruption; but during the summer of 1826 they began to steal the mules and the horses of the travellers; yet they killed nobody till 1828. Then a little caravan, returning from Santa Fé, followed the stream of the north fork of the Canadian river. Two of the traders, having preceded the company in search of game, fell asleep on the edge of a brook. These were espied by a band of Indians, who surprised them, seized their rifles, took their scalps and retired before the caravan had reached the brook, which had been agreed upon as the place of rendezvous. When the traders arrived, one of the victims still breathed. They carried him to the Cimaron, where he expired, and was buried according to the prairie fashion. Scarcely had the ceremony been terminated, when upon a neighbouring hill appeared four Indians, apparently ignorant of what had happened. The exasperated merchants invited them into their camp, and murdered all except one, who, although wounded, succeeded in making his escape. This cruel retaliation brought down heavy punishment. Indeed from that period the Indians vowed an eternal war--a war to the knife, "in the forests and the prairies, in the middle of rivers and lakes, and even among the mountains covered with eternal snows." Shortly after this event another caravan was fallen in with and attacked by the savages, who carried off with them thirty-five scalps, two hundred and fifty mules, and goods to the amount of thirty thousand dollars. These terrible dramas were constantly reacted in these vast western solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown, until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being, covered with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone had escaped. In 1831, Mr. Sublette and his company crossed the prairies with twenty-five waggons. He and his company were old pioneers among the Rocky Mountains, whom the thirst of gold had transformed into merchants. They went without guides, and no one among them had ever performed the trip. All that they knew was that they were going from such to such a degree of longitude. They reached the Arkansas river, but from thence to the Cimaron there is no road, except the numerous paths of the buffaloes, which, intersecting the prairie, very often deceive the travellers. When the caravan entered this desert the earth was entirely dry, and the pioneers mistaking their road, wandered during several days exposed to all the horrors of a febrile thirst under a burning sun. Often they were seduced by the deceitful appearance of a buffalo-path, and in this perilous situation Captain Smith, one of the owners of the caravan, resolved to follow one of these paths, which he considered would indubitably lead him to some spring of water or to a marsh. He was alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and if but half of what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man! after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to bleach upon the desert sands. He was about twelve miles from his comrades, when, turning round a small hill, he perceived the long-sought object of his wishes. A small stream glided smoothly in the middle of the prairie before him. It was the river Cimaron. He hurried forward to moisten his parched lips, but just as he was stooping over the water he fell, pierced by ten arrows. A band of Comanches had espied him, and waited there for him. Yet he struggled bravely. The Indians have since acknowledged that, wounded as he was, before dying, Captain Smith had killed three of their people. Such was the origin of the Santa Fé trade, and such are the liabilities which are incurred even now, in the great solitudes of the West. CHAPTER XIV. Time passed away till I and my companions were heartily tired of our inactivity: besides, I was home-sick, and I had left articles of great value at the settlement, about which I was rather fidgety. So one day we determined that we would start alone, and return to the settlement by a different road. We left Santa Fé and rode towards the north, and it was not until we had passed Taos, the last Mexican settlement, that we became ourselves again and recovered our good spirits. Gabriel knew the road; our number was too small not to find plenty to eat, and as to the hostile Indians, it was a chance we were willing enough to encounter. A few days after we had quitted Santa Fé, and when In the neighbourhood of the Spanish Peaks and about thirty degrees north latitude, we fell in with a numerous party of the Comanches. It was the first time we had seen them in a body, and it was a grand sight. Gallant horsemen they were and well mounted. They were out upon an expedition against the Pawnee[15] Loups, and they behaved to us with the greatest kindness and hospitality. The chief knew Gabriel, and invited us to go in company with them to their place of encampment. The chief was a tall, fine fellow, and with beautiful symmetry of figure. He spoke Spanish well, and the conversation was carried on in that tongue until the evening, when I addressed him in Shoshone, which beautiful dialect is common to the Comanches, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, and related to him the circumstances of our captivity on the shores of the Colorado of the West. As I told my story the chief was mute with astonishment, until at last, throwing aside the usual Indian decorum, he grasped me firmly by the hand. He knew I was neither a Yankee nor a Mexican, and swore that for my sake every Canadian or Frenchman falling in their power should be treated as a friend. After our meal we sat comfortably round the fires, and listened to several speeches and traditions of the warriors. [Footnote 15: The word Pawnee signifies "_exiled_;" therefore it does not follow that the three tribes bearing the same name belong to the same nation. The Grand Pawnees, the tribe among whom Mr. Murray resided, are of Dahcotah origin, and live along the shores of the river Platte; the Pawnee Loups are of the Algonquin race, speaking quite another language, and occupying the country situated between the northern forks of the same river. Both tribes are known among the trappers to be the "Crows of the East;" that is to say, thieves and treacherous. They cut their hair short except on the scalp, as is usual among the nations which they have sprung from. The third tribe of that name is called Pawnee Pict; these are of Comanche origin and Shoshone race, wearing their hair long, and speaking the same language as all the western great prairie tribes. They live upon the Red River, which forms the boundary betwixt North Texas and the Western American boundary, and have been visited by Mr. Catlin, who mentions them in his work. The Picts are constantly at war with the two other tribes of Pawnees; and though their villages are nearly one thousand miles distant from those of their enemy, their war-parties are continually scouring the country of the "Exiles of the East"--"_Pa-wah-nêjs_."] One point struck me forcibly during my conversation with that noble warrior. According to his version, the Comanches were in the beginning very partial to the Texans, as they were brave, and some of them generous. But he said that afterwards, as they increased their numbers and established their power, they became a rascally people, cowards and murderers. One circumstance above all fire the blood of the Comanches, and since that time it has been and will be with them a war of extinction against the Texans. An old Comanche, with a daughter, had separated himself from their tribe. He was a chief, but he had been unfortunate, and being sick, he retired to San Antonio to try the skill of the great pale-face médecin. His daughter was a noble and handsome girl of eighteen, and she had not been long in the place before she attracted the attention of a certain doctor, a young man from Kentucky, who had been tried for murder in the States. He was the greatest scoundrel in the world, but being a desperate character, he was feared, and, of course, courted by his fellow Texans. Perceiving that he could not succeed in his views so long as the girl was with her father, he contrived to throw the old man into gaol, and inducing her to come to his house to see what could be done to release him, he abused her most shamefully, using blows and violence to accomplish his purpose, to such a degree, that he left her for dead. Towards the evening, she regained some strength, and found a shelter in the dwelling of some humane Mexican. The old Indian was soon liberated: he found his daughter, but it was on her death-bed, and then he learned the circumstances of the shameful transaction, and deeply vowed revenge. A Mexican gentleman, indignant at such a cowardly deed, in the name of outraged nature and humanity, laid the cause before a jury of Texans. The doctor was acquitted by the Texan jury, upon the ground that the laws were not made for the benefit of the Comanches. The consequences may be told in a few words. One day Dr. Cobbet was found in an adjoining field stabbed to the heart and scalped. The Indian had run away, and meeting with a party of Comanches, he related his wrongs and his revenge. They received him again into the tribe, but the injury was a national one, not sufficiently punished: that week twenty-three Texans lost their scalps, and fourteen women were carried into the wilderness, there to die in captivity. The Comanche chief advised us to keep close to the shores of the Rio Grande, that we might not meet with the parties of the Pawnee Loups; and so much was he pleased with us, that he resolved to turn out of his way and accompany us with his men some thirty miles farther, when we should be comparatively out of danger. The next morning we started, the chief and I riding close together and speaking of the Shoshones. We exchanged our knives as a token of friendship, and when we parted, he assembled all his men and made the following speech:-- "The young chief of the Shoshones Is returning to his brave people across the rugged mountains. Learn his name, so that you may tell your children that they have a friend in Owato Wanisha. He Is neither a Shakanath (an Englishman) nor a Kishemoc Comoanak (a long knife, a Yankee). He Is a chief among the tribe of our great-grandfathers, he is a chief, though he is very, very young." At this moment all the warriors came, one after the other, to shake hands with me, and when this ceremony was terminated, the chief resumed his discourse. "Owato Wanisha, we met as strangers, we part as friends. Tell your young warriors you have been among the Comanches, and that we would like to know them. Tell them to come, a few or many, to our _waikiams_ (lodges); they will find the moshkotaj (buffalo) in plenty. "Farewell, young chief, with a pale face and an Indian heart; the earth be light to thee and thine. May the white Manitou clear for thee the mountain path, and may you never fail to remember _Opishka Toaki_ (the White Raven), who is thy Comanche friend, and who would fain share with thee his home, his wealth, and his wide prairies. I have said: young brother, farewell." The tears stood in our eyes as gallantly the band wheeled round. We watched them till they had all disappeared in the horizon. And these noble fellows were Indians; had they been Texans, they would have murdered us to obtain our horses and rifles. Two days after, we crossed the Rio Grande, and entered the dreary path of the mountains In the hostile and Inhospitable country of the Navahoes and the Crows[16]. [Footnote 16: The Crows are gallant horsemen; but although they have assumed the manners and customs of the Shoshones, they are of the Dahcotah breed. There is a great difference between the Shoshone tribes and the Crows. The latter want that spirit of chivalry so remarkable among the Comanches, the Arrapahoes, and the Shoshones--that nobility of feeling which scorns to take an enemy at a disadvantage, I should say that the Shoshone tribes are the lions and the Crows the tigers of these deserts.] We had been travelling eight days on a most awful stony road, when at last we reached the head waters of the Colorado of the West, but we were very weak, not having touched any food during the last five days, except two small rattlesnakes, and a few berries we had picked up on the way. On the morning we had chased a large grizzly bear, but to no purpose; our poor horses and ourselves were too exhausted to follow the animal for any time, and with its disappearance vanished away all hopes of a dinner. It was evening before we reached the river, and, by that time, we were so much maddened with hunger, that we seriously thought of killing one of our horses. Luckily, at that instant, we espied smoke rising from a camp of Indians in a small valley. That they were foes we had no doubt; but hunger can make heroes, and we determined to take a meal at their expense. The fellows had been lucky, for around their tents they had hung upon poles large pieces of meat to dry. They had no horses, and only a few dogs scattered about the camp. We skirted the plain in silence, and at dark we had arrived at three hundred yards from them, concealed by the projecting rocks which formed a kind of belt around the camp. Now was our time. Giving the Shoshone war-whoop, and making as much noise as we could, we spurred on our horses, and in a few moments each of us had secured a piece of meat from the poles. The Crows (for the camp contained fifteen Crows and three Arrapahoes), on hearing the war-whoop, were so terrified that they had all run away without ever looking behind them; but the Arrapahoes stood their ground, and having recovered from their first surprise, they assaulted us bravely with their lances and arrows. Roche was severely bruised by his horse falling, and my pistol, by disabling his opponent, who was advancing with his tomahawk, saved his life. Gabriel had coolly thrown his lasso round his opponent, and had already strangled him, while the third had been in the very beginning of the attack run over by my horse. Gabriel lighted on the ground, entered the lodges, cut the strings of all the bows he could find, and, collecting a few more pieces of the meat, we started at a full gallop, not being inclined to wait till the Crows should have recovered from their panic. Though our horses were very tired, we rode thirteen miles more that night, and, about ten o'clock, arrived at a beautiful spot with plenty of fine grass and cool water, upon which both we and our horses stretched ourselves most luxuriously even before eating. Capital jokes were passed round that night while we were discussing the qualities of the mountain-goat flesh, but yet I felt annoyed at our feat; the thing, to be sure, had been gallantly done, still it was nothing better than highway robbery. Hunger, however, is a good palliative for conscience, and, having well rubbed our horses, who seemed to enjoy their grazing amazingly, we turned to repose, watching alternately for every three hours. The next day at noon we met with unexpected sport and company. As we were going along, we perceived two men at a distance, sitting close together upon the ground, and apparently in a vehement conversation. As they were white men, we dismounted and secured our horses, and then crept silently along until we were near the strangers. They were two very queer-looking beings; one long and lean, the other short and stout. "Bless me," the fat one said, "bless me, Pat Swiney, but I think the Frenchers will never return, and so we must die here like starved dogs." "Och," answered the thin one, "they have gone to kill game. By St. Patrick, I wish it would come, raw or cooked, for my bowels are twisting like worms on a hook." "Oh, Pat, be a good man; can't you go and pick some berries? my stomach is like an empty bag." "Faith, my legs ain't better than yours," answered the Irishman, patting his knee with a kind of angry gesture. And for the first time we perceived that the legs of both of them were shockingly swollen. "If we could only meet with the Welsh Indians or a gold mine," resumed the short man. "Botheration," exclaimed his irascible companion. "Bother them all--the Welsh Indians and the Welsh English." [Illustration: "Faith, my legs ain't better than yours."] We saw that hunger had made the poor fellows rather quarrelsome, so we kindly interfered with a tremendous war-whoop. The fat one closed his eyes, and allowed himself to fall down, while his fellow in misfortune rose up in spite of the state of his legs. "Come," roared he, "come, ye rascally red devils, do your worst without marcy, for I am lame and hungry." There was something noble in his words and pathetic in the action. Roche, putting his hand on his shoulder, whispered some Irish words in his ear, and the poor fellow almost cut a caper. "Faith," he said, "if you are not a Cork boy you are the devil; but devil or no, for the sake of the old country, give us something to eat--to me and that poor Welsh dreamer. I fear your hellish yell has taken the life out of him." Such was not the case. At the words "something to eat," the fellow opened his eyes with a stare, and exclaimed-- "The Welsh Indians, by St. David!" We answered him with a roar of merriment that rather confused him, and his companion answered-- "Ay! Welsh Indians or Irish Indians, for what I know. Get up, will ye, ye lump of flesh, and politely tell the gentlemen that we have tasted nothing for the last three days." Of course, we lost no time in lighting a fire and bringing our horses. The meat was soon cooked, and it was wonderful to see how quickly it disappeared in the jaws of our two new friends. We had yet about twelve pounds of it, and we were entering a country where game would be found daily, so we did not repine at their most inordinate appetites, but, on the contrary, encouraged them to continue. When the first pangs of hunger were a little soothed, they both looked at us with moist and grateful eyes. "Och," said the Irishman, "but ye are kind gentlemen, whatever you may be, to give us so good a meal when, perhaps, you have no more." Roche shook him by the hand. "Eat on, fellow," he said, "eat on, and never fear. We will afterwards see what can be done for the legs." As to the Welshman, he never said a word for a full half-hour. He would look, but could neither speak nor hear, so intensely busy was he with an enormous piece of half-raw flesh, which he was tearing and swallowing like a hungry wolf. There is, however, an end to everything, and when satiety had succeeded to want, they related to us the circumstance that had led them where they were. They had come as journeymen with a small caravan going from St. Louis to Astoria. On the Green River they had been attacked by a war-party of the Black-feet, who had killed all except them, thanks to the Irishman's presence of mind, who pushed his fat companion into a deep fissure of the earth, and jumped after him. Thus they saved their bacon, and had soon the consolation of hearing the savages carrying away the goods, leading the mules towards the north. For three days they had wandered south, in the hope of meeting with some trappers, and this very morning they had fallen in with two French trappers, who told them to remain there and repose till their return, as they were going after game. While they were narrating their history, the two trappers arrived with a fat buck. They were old friends, having both of them travelled and hunted with Gabriel. We resolved not to proceed any further that day, and they laughed a great deal when we related to them our prowess against the Crows. An application of bruised leaves of the Gibson weed upon the legs of the two sufferers immediately soothed their pain, and the next morning they were able to use Roche's and Gabriel's horses, and to follow us to Brownhall, an American fur-trading port, which place we reached in two days. There we parted from our company, and rapidly continued our march towards the settlement. Ten days did we travel thus in the heart of a fine country, where game at every moment crossed our path. We arrived in the deserted country of the Bonnaxes, and were scarcely two days' journey from the Eastern Shoshone boundary, when, as ill-luck would have it, we met once more with our old enemies the Arrapahoes. This time, however, we were determined not to be put any more on dog's meat allowance, and to fight, if necessary, in defence of our liberty. We were surrounded, but not yet taken; and space being ours and our rifles true, we hoped to escape, not one of our enemies having, as we well knew, any firearms. They reduced their circle smaller and smaller, till they stood at about a hundred and fifty yards from us; their horses fat and plump, but of the small wild breed, and incapable of running a race with our tall and beautiful Mexican chargers. At that moment Gabriel raised his hand, as if for a signal; we all three darted like lightning through the line of warriors, who were too much taken by surprise even to use their bows. They soon recovered from their astonishment, and giving the war-whoop, with many ferocious yells of disappointment, dashed after us at their utmost speed. Their horses, as I have said, could not run a race with ours, but in a long chase their hardy little animals would have had the advantage, especially as our own steeds had already performed so long a journey. During the two first hours we kept them out of sight, but towards dark, as our beasts gave in, we saw their forms in the horizon becoming more and more distinct, while, to render our escape less probable, we found ourselves opposed in front by a chain of mountains, not high, but very steep and rugged. "On, ahead, we are safe!" cried Gabriel. Of course, there was no time for explanation, and ten minutes more saw us at the foot of the mountain. "Not a word, but do as I do," again said my companion. We followed his example by unsaddling our animals and taking off the bridles, with which we whipped them. The poor things, though tired, galloped to the south, as if they were aware of the impending danger. "I understand, Gabriel," said I; "the savages cannot see us in the shades of these hills; they will follow our horses by the sounds." Gabriel chuckled with delight. "Right," said he, "right enough, but it is not all. I know of a boat on the other side of the mountain, and the Ogden river will carry us not far from the Buona Ventura." I started. "A mistake," I exclaimed, "dear friend, a sad mistake; we are more than thirty miles from the river." "From the main river, yes," answered he, shaking my hand, "but many an otter have I killed in a pretty lake two miles from here, at the southern side of this hill. There I have a boat well concealed, as I hope; and it is a place where we may defy all the Arrapahoes, and the Crows to back them. From that lake to the river it is but thirty miles' paddling in a smooth canal, made either by nature or by a former race of men." I need not say how cheerfully we walked these two miles, in spite of the weight of our saddles, rifles, and accoutrements. Our ascent was soon over, and striking into a small tortuous deer-path, we perceived below us the transparent sheet of water, in which a few stars already reflected their pale and tremulous light. When we reached the shore of the lake, we found ourselves surrounded by vast and noble ruins, like those on the Buona Ventura, but certainly much more romantic. Gabriel welcomed us to his trapping-ground, as a lord in his domain, and soon brought out a neat little canoe from under a kind of ancient vault. "This canoe," said he, "once belonged to one of the poor fellows that was murdered with the Prince Seravalle. We brought it here six years ago with great secrecy; it cost him twenty dollars, a rifle, and six blankets. Now, in the middle of this lake there is an island, where he and I lived together, and where we can remain for months without any fear of Indians or starvation." We all three entered the canoe, leaving our saddles behind us, to recover them on the following day. One hour's paddling brought us to the island, and it was truly a magnificent spot. It was covered with ruins; graceful obelisks were shaded by the thick foliage of immense trees, and the soft light of the moon, beaming on the angles of the ruined monuments, gave to the whole scenery the hue of an Italian landscape. "Here we are safe," said Gabriel, "and to-morrow you will discover that my old resting-place is not deficient in comfort." As we were very tired, we lay down and soon slept, forgetting in this little paradise the dangers and the fatigues of the day. Our host's repose, however, was shorter than mine, for long before morn he had gone to fetch our saddles. Roche and I would probably have slept till his return, had we not been awakened by the report of a rifle, which came down to us, repeated by a thousand echoes. An hour of intense anxiety was passed, till at last we saw Gabriel paddling towards us. The sound of the rifle had, however, betrayed our place of concealment, and as Gabriel neared the island, the shore opposite to us began to swarm with our disappointed enemies, who in all probability had camped in the neighbourhood. As my friend landed, I was beginning to scold him for his imprudence in using his rifle under our present circumstances, when a glance showed me at once he had met with an adventure similar to mine near Santa Fé. In the canoe lay the skin of a large finely-spotted jaguar, and by it a young cub, playing unconsciously with the scalping-knife, yet reeking in its mother's blood. "Could not help it,--self-defence!" exclaimed he, jumping on shore. "Now the red devils know where we are, but it is a knowledge that brings them little good. The lake is ten fathoms in depth, and they will not swim three miles under the muzzles of our rifles. When they are tired of seeing us fishing, and hearing us laughing, they will go away like disappointed foxes." So it proved. That day we took our rifles and went in the canoe to within eighty yards of the Indians, on the mainland, we fishing for trouts, and inviting them to share in our sport. They yelled awfully, and abused us not a little, calling us by all the names their rage could find: squaws, dogs of Pale-faces, cowards, thieves, &c. At last, however, they retired in the direction of the river, hoping yet to have us in their power; but so little had we to fear, that we determined to pass a few days on the island, that we might repose from our fatigues. When we decided upon continuing our route, Gabriel and Roche were obliged to leave their saddles and bridles behind, as the canoe was too small for ourselves and luggage. This was a misfortune which could be easily repaired at the settlement, and till then, saddles, of course, were useless. We went on merrily from forty-five to fifty miles every day, on the surface of the most transparent and coolest water in the world. During the night we would land and sleep on the shore. Game was very plentiful, for at almost every minute we would pass a stag or a bull drinking; sometimes at only twenty yards, distance. During this trip on the Ogden river, we passed four other magnificent lakes, but not one of them bearing any marks of former civilization, as on the shores of the first one which had sheltered us. We left the river two hundred and forty miles from where we had commenced our navigation, and, carrying our canoe over a portage of three miles, we launched it again upon one of the tributaries of the Buona Ventura, two hundred miles north-east from the settlement. The current was now in our favour, and in four days more we landed among my good friends, the Shoshones, who, after our absence of nine months, received us with almost a childish joy. They had given us up for dead, and suspecting the Crows of having had a hand in our disappearance, they had made an invasion into their territory. Six days after our arrival our three horses were perceived swimming across the river; the faithful animals had also escaped from our enemies, and found their way back to their masters and their native prairies. CHAPTER XV. During my long absence and captivity among the Arrapahoes, I had often reflected upon the great advantages which would accrue if, by any possibility, the various tribes which were of Shoshone origin could be induced to unite with them in one confederacy; and the more I reflected upon the subject, the more resolved I became, that if ever I returned to the settlement, I would make the proposition to our chiefs in council. The numbers composing these tribes were as follows:--The Shoshones amounting to about 60,000, independent of the mountain tribes, which we might compute at 10,000 more; the Apaches, about 40,000; the Arrapahoes, about 20,000; the Comanches and the tribes springing from them, at the lowest computation, amounting to 60,000 more. Speaking the same language, having the same religious formula, the same manners and customs; nothing appeared to me to be more feasible. The Arrapahoes were the only one tribe which was generally at variance with us, but they were separated from the Shoshones much later than the other tribes, and were therefore even more Shoshone than the Apaches and Comanches. Shortly after my return, I acted upon my resolution. I summoned all the chiefs of our nation to a great council, and in the month of August, 1839, we were all assembled outside of the walls of the settlement. After the preliminary ceremonies, I addressed them:-- "Shoshones! brave children of the Grand Serpent! my wish is to render you happy, rich, and powerful. During the day I think of it; I dream of it in my sleep. At last, I have had great thoughts--thoughts proceeding from the Manitou. Hear now the words of Owato Wanisha; he is young, very young; his skin is that of a Pale-face, but his heart is a Shoshone's. "When you refused to till the ground, you did well, for it was not in your nature--the nature of man cannot be changed like that of a moth. Yet, at that time, you understood well the means which give power to a great people. Wealth alone can maintain the superiority that bravery has asserted. Wealth and bravery make strength--strength which nothing can break down, except the great Master of Life. "The Shoshones knew this a long time ago; they are brave, but they have no wealth; and if they still keep their superiority, it is because their enemies are at this time awed by the strength and the cunning of their warriors. But the Shoshones, to keep their ground, will some day be obliged to sleep always on their borders, to repel their enemies. They will be too busy to fish and to hunt. Their squaws and children will starve! Even now the evil has begun. What hunting and what fishing have you had this last year? None! As soon as the braves had arrived at their hunting-ground, they were obliged to return back to defend their squaws and to punish their enemies. "Now, why should not the Shoshones put themselves at once above the reach of such chances? why should they not get rich? They object to planting grain and tobacco. They do well, as other people can do that for them; but there are many other means of getting strength and wealth. These I will teach to my tribe! "The Shoshones fight the Crows, because the Crows are thieves; the Flat-heads, because they are greedy of our buffaloes; the Umbiquas, because they steal horses. Were it not for them, the children of the Grand Serpent would never fight; their lodges would fill with wealth, and that wealth would purchase all the good things of the white men from distant lands. These white men-come to the Watchinangoes (Mexicans), to take the hides of their oxen, the wool of their sheep. They would come to us, if we had anything to offer them. Let us then call them, for we have the hides of thousands of buffaloes; we have the furs of the beaver and the otter; we have plenty of copper in our mountains, and of gold in our streams. "Now, hear me. When a Shoshone chief thinks that the Crows will attack his lodge, he calls his children and his nephews around him. A nation can do the same. The Shoshones have many brave children in the prairies of the South; they have many more on the borders of the Yankees. All of them think and speak like their ancestors, they are the same people. Now would it not be good and wise to have all these brave grand-children and grand-nephews as your neighbours and allies, instead of the Crows, the Cayuses, and the Umbiquas? Yes, it would. Who would dare to come from the north across a country inhabited by the warlike Comanches, or from the south and the rising sun, through the wigwams of the Apaches? The Shoshones would then have more than 30,000 warriors; they would sweep the country, from the sea to the mountains, from the river of the north (Columbia) to the towns of the Watchinangoes. When the white men would come in their big canoes, as traders and friends, we would receive them well; if they come as foes, we will laugh at them, and whip them like dogs. These are the thoughts which I wanted to make known to the Shoshones. "During my absence, I have seen the Apaches and the Comanches. They are both great nations. Let us send some wise men to invite them to return to their fathers; let our chiefs offer them wood, land, and water. I have said." As long as I spoke, the deepest silence reigned over the whole assembly; but as soon as I sat down, and began smoking, there was a general movement, which showed me that I had made an impression. The old great chief rose, however, and the murmurs were hushed. He spoke:-- "Owato Wanisha has spoken. I have heard. It was a strange vision, a beautiful dream. My heart came young again, my body lighter, and my eyes more keen. Yet I cannot see the future; I must fast and pray, I must ask the great Master of Life to lend me his wisdom. "I know the Comanches, I know the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes. They are our children; I know it. The Comanches have left us a long, long time, but the Apaches and Arrapahoes have not yet forgotten the hunting-grounds where their fathers were born. When I was but a young hunter, they would come every snow to the lodge of our Manitou, to offer their presents. It was long before any Pale-face had passed the mountains. Since that the leaves of the oaks have grown and died eighty times. It is a long while for a man, but for a nation it is but as yesterday. "They are our children,--it would be good to have them with us; they would share our hunts; we would divide our wealth with them. Then we would be strong. Owato Wanisha has spoken well; he hath learned many mysteries with the _Macota Conaya_ (black robes, priests); he is wise. Yet, as I have said, the red-skin chiefs must ask wisdom from the Great Master. He will let us know what is good and what is bad. At the next moon we will return to the council. I have said." All the chiefs departed, to prepare for their fasting and ceremonies, while Gabriel, Roche, my old servant, and myself, concerted our measures so as to insure the success of my enterprise. My servant I despatched to Monterey, Gabriel to the nearest village of the Apaches, and as it was proper, according to Indian ideas, that I should be out of the way during the ceremonies, so as not to influence any chief, I retired with Roche to the boat-house, to pass the time until the new moon. Upon the day agreed upon, we were all once more assembled at the council-ground on the shores of the Buona Ventura, The chiefs and elders of the tribe had assumed a solemn demeanour, and even the men of dark deeds (the Médecins) and the keepers of the sacred lodges had made their appearance, in their professional dresses, so as to impress upon the beholders the importance of the present transaction. One of the sacred lodge first arose, and making a signal with his hand, prepared to speak:-- "Shoshones," said he, "now has come the time in which out nation must either rise above all others, as the eagle of the mountains rises above the small birds, or sink down and disappear from the surface of the earth. Had we been left such as we were before the Pale-faces crossed the mountains, we would have needed no other help but a Shoshone heart and our keen arrows to crush our enemies; but the Pale-faces have double hearts as well as a double tongue; they are friends or enemies as their thirst for wealth guides them. They trade with the Shoshones, but they also trade with the Crows and the Umbiquas. The young chief, Owato Wanisha, hath proposed a new path to our tribe; he is young, but he has received his wisdom from the Black-gowns, who, of all men, are the most wise. I have heard, as our elders and ancient chiefs have also heard, the means by which he thinks we can succeed: we have fasted, we have prayed to the Master of Life to show unto us the path which we must follow. Shoshones, we live in a strange time! Our great Manitou bids us Red-skins obey the Pale-face, and follow him to conquer or die. I have said! The chief of many winters will now address his warriors and friends!" A murmur ran through the whole assembly, who seemed evidently much moved by this political speech from one whom they were accustomed to look upon with dread, as the interpreter of the will of heaven. The old chief, who had already spoken in the former council, now rose and spoke with a tremulous yet distinct voice. "I have fasted, I have prayed, I have dreamed. Old men, who have lived almost all their life, have a keener perception *to read the wishes of the Master of Life concerning the future. I am a chief, and have been a chief during sixty changes of the season. I am proud of my station, and as I have struck deepest in the heart of our enemies, I am jealous of that power which is mine, and would yield it to no one, if the great Manitou did not order it. When this sun will have disappeared behind the salt-water, I shall no longer be a chief! Owato Wanisha will guide our warriors, he will preside in council, for two gods are with him--the Manitou of the Pale-faces and the Manitou of the Red-skins. "Hear my words, Shoshones! I shall soon join my father and grandfather in the happy lands, for I am old! Yet, before my bones are buried at the foot of the hills, it would brighten my heart to see the glory of the Shoshones, which I know must be in a short time. Hear my words! Long ages ago some of our children, not finding our hunting-grounds wide enough for the range-of their arrows, left us. They first wandered in the south, and in the beautiful prairies of the east, under a climate blessed by the good spirits. They grew and grew in number till their families were as numerous as ours, and as they were warriors and their hearts big, they spread themselves, and, soon crossing the big mountains, their eagle glance saw on each side of their territory the salt-water of the sunrise and the salt-water of the sunset. These are the Comanches, a powerful nation. The Comanches even now have a Shoshone heart, a Shoshone tongue. Owato Wanisha has been with them; he says they are friends, and have not forgotten that they are the children of the Great Serpent. "Long, long while afterwards, yet not long enough that I should escape the memory and the records of our holy men, some other of our children, hearing of the power of the Comanches of their wealth, of their beautiful country, determined also to leave us and spread to the south. These are the Apaches From the top of the big mountains, always covered with snow they look towards the bed of the sun. They see the green grass of the prairie below them, and afar the blue salt-water Their houses are as numerous as the stars in heaven, their warriors as thick as the shells in the bottom of our lakes. They are brave; they are feared by the Pale-faces--by all; and they too, know that we are their fathers; their tongue is our tongue their Manitou our Manitou; their heart a portion of our heart and never has the knife of a Shoshone drunk the blood of a Apache, nor the belt of an Apache suspended the scalp of Shoshone. "And afterwards, again, more of our children left us. By that time they left us because we were angry. They were few families of chiefs who had grown strong and proud. They wished to lord over our wigwams, and we drove them away, as the panther drives away her cubs, when their claws and teeth have been once turned against her. These are the Arrapahoes They are strong and our enemies, yet they are a noble nation. I have in my lodge twenty of their scalps; they have many ours. They fight by the broad light of the day, with the lane bow, and arrows; they scorn treachery. Are they not although rebels and unnatural children, still the children, of the Shoshones? Who ever heard of the Arrapahoes entering the war-path in night? No one! They are no Crows, no Umbiquas, no Flat-heads! They can give death; they know how to receive it,--straight and upright, knee to knee, breast to breast, and their eye drinking the glance of their foe. "Well, these Arrapahoes are our neighbours; often, very often, too much so (as many of our widows can say), when they unbury their tomahawk and enter the war-path against the Shoshones. Why; can two suns light the same prairie, or two male eagles cover the same nest? No. Yet numerous stars appear during night, all joined together, and obedient to the moon. Blackbirds and parrots will unite their numerous tribes and take the same flight to seek altogether a common rest a shelter for a night; it is a law of nature. The Red-skin knows none but the laws of nature. The Shoshone is an eagle on the hills, a bright sun in the prairie, so is an Arrapahoe; they must both struggle and fight till one sun is thrown into darkness, or one eagle, blind and winged, falls down the rocks and leaves the whole nest to its conqueror. The Arrapahoes would not fight a cowardly Crow, except for self-defence, for he smells of carrion; nor would a Shoshone. "Crows, Umbiquas, and Flat-heads, Cayuses, Bonnaxes, and Callapoos can hunt all together and rest together; they are the blackbirds and the parrots; they must do so, else the eagle should destroy them during the day, or the hedgehog during the night. "Now, Owato Wanisha, or his Manitou, has offered a bold thing. I have thought of it, I have spoken of it to the spirits of the Red-skin; they said it was good; I say it is good! I am a chief of many winters; I know what is good, I know what is bad! Shoshones, hear me! my voice is weak, come nearer; hearken to my words, hist! I hear a whisper under the ripples of the water, I hear it in the waving of the grass, I feel it on the breeze!--hist, it is the whisper of the Master of Life,--hist!" At this moment the venerable chief appeared abstracted, his face flushed; then followed a trance, as if he were communing with some invisible spirit. Intensely and silently did the warriors watch the struggles of his noble features; the time had come in which the minds of the Shoshones were freed of their prejudices, and dared to contemplate the prospective of a future general domination over the Western continent of America. The old chief raised his hand, and he spoke again:-- "Children, for you are my children! Warriors, for you are all brave! Chiefs, for you are all chiefs! I have seen a vision. It was a cloud, and the Manitou was upon it. The cloud gave way, and behind I saw a vast nation, large cities, rich wigwams, strange boats, and great parties of warriors, whose trail was so long that I could not see the beginning nor the end. It was in a country which I felt within me was extending from the north, where all is ice, down to the south, where all is fire! Then a big voice was heard! It was not a war-whoop, it was not the yell of the fiends, it was not the groan of the captive tied to the stake; it was a voice of glory, that shouted the name of the Shoshones--for all were Shoshones. There were no Pale-faces among them--none! Owato Wanisha was there, but he had a red skin, and his hair was black; so were his two fathers, but they were looking young; so was his aged and humble friend, but his limbs seemed to have recovered all the activity and vigour of youth; so were his two young friends, who have fought so bravely at the Post, when the cowardly Umbiquas entered our grounds. This is all what I have heard, all what I have seen; and the whisper said to me, as the vision faded away, 'Lose no time, old chief, the day has come! Say to thy warriors, Listen to the young Pale-face. The Great Spirit of the Red-skin will pass into his breast, and lend him some words that the Shoshone will understand.' "I am old and feeble; I am tired; arise, my grandson Owato Wanisha; speak to my warriors; tell them the wishes of the Great Spirit. I have spoken." Thus called upon, I advanced to the place which the chief had left vacant, and spoke in my turn:-- "Shoshones, fathers, brothers, warriors,--I am a Pale-face, but you know all my heart is a Shoshone's. I am young, but no more a child. It is but a short time since that I was a hunter; since that time the Manitou has made me a warrior, and led me among strange and distant tribes, where he taught me what I should do to render the Shoshones a great people. Hear my words, for I have but one tongue; it is the tongue of my heart, and in my heart now dwells the Good Spirit. Wonder not, if I assume the tone of command to give orders; the orders I will give are the Manitou's. "The twelve wisest heads of the Shoshones will go to the Arrapahoes. With them they will take presents; they will take ten sons of chiefs, who have themselves led men on the war-path; they will take ten young girls, fair to look at, daughters of chiefs, whose voices are soft as the warbling of the birds in the fall. At the great council of the Arrapahoes, the ten girls will be offered to ten great chiefs, and ten great chiefs will offer their own daughters to our ten young warriors; they will offer peace for ever; they will exchange all the scalps, and they will say that their fathers, the Shoshones, will once more open their arms to their brave children. Our best hunting-ground shall be theirs; they will fish the salmon of our rivers; they will be Arrapahoes Shoshones; we will become Shoshones Arrapahoes. I have already sent to the settlement of the Watchinangoes my ancient Pale-face friend of the stout heart and keen eye; shortly we will see at the Post a vessel with arms, ammunition, and presents for the nation. I will go myself with a party of warriors to the prairies of the Apaches, and among the Comanches. "Yet I hear within me a stout voice, which I must obey. My grandfather, the old chief, has said he should be no more a chief. It was wrong, very wrong; the Manitou is angry. Is the buffalo less a buffalo when he grows old, or the eagle less an eagle when a hundred winters have whitened his wings? No! their nature cannot change, not more than that of a chief and that chief, a chief of the Shoshones! "Owato Wanisha will remain what he is; he is too young to be the great chief of the whole of a great nation. His wish is good, but his wisdom is of yesterday; he cannot rule. To rule belongs to those who have deserved doing so, by long experience. No! Owato Wanisha will lead his warriors to the war-path, or upon the trail of the buffalo; he will go and talk to the grandchildren of the Shoshones; more he cannot do! "Let now the squaws prepare the farewell meal, and make ready the green paint; to-morrow I shall depart, with fifty of my young men. I have spoken." The council being broken up, I had to pass through the ceremony of smoking the pipe and shaking hands with those who could call themselves warriors. On the following morning, fifty magnificent horses, richly caparisoned, were led to the lawn before the council lodge. Fifty warriors soon appeared, in their gaudiest dresses, all armed with the lance, bow, and lasso, and rifle suspended across the shoulder. Then there was a procession of all the tribe, divided into two bands, the first headed by the chiefs and holy men; the other, by the young virgins. Then the dances commenced; the elders sang their exploits of former days, as an example to their children; the voting men exercised themselves at the war-post; and the matrons, wives, mothers, or sisters of the travellers painted their faces with green and red, as a token of the nature of their mission. When this task was performed, the whole of the procession again formed their ranks, and joined in a chorus, asking the Manitou for success, and bidding us farewell. I gave the signal; all my men sprang up in their saddles, and the gallant little band, after having rode twice round the council lodge, galloped away into the prairie. Two days after us, another party was to start for the country of the Arrapahoes, with the view of effecting a reconciliation between our two tribes. CHAPTER XVI. At this time, the generally bright prospects of California were clouding over. Great changes had taken place in the Mexican government, new individuals had sprung into power, and their followers were recompensed with dignities and offices. But, as these offices had been already filled by others, it was necessary to remove the latter, and, consequently, the government had made itself more enemies. Such was the case in California; but that the reader may understand the events which are to follow, it is necessary to draw a brief sketch of the country. I have already said that California embraces four hundred miles of sea-coast upon the Pacific Ocean. On the east, it is bounded by the Californian gulf, forming, in fact, a long peninsula. The only way of arriving at it by land, from the interior of Mexico, is to travel many hundred miles north, across the wild deserts of Sonora, and through tribes of Indians which, from the earliest records down to our days, have always been hostile to the Spaniards, and, of course, to the Mexicans. Yet far as California is--too far indeed for the government of Mexico to sufficiently protect it, either from Indian inroads or from the depredations of pirates, by which, indeed, the coast has much suffered--it does not prevent the Mexican government from exacting taxes from the various settlements--taxes enormous in themselves, and so onerous, that they will ever prevent these countries from becoming what they ought to be, under a better government. The most northerly establishment of Mexico on the Pacific Ocean is San Francisco; the next, Monterey; then comes San Barbara, St. Luis Obispo, Buona Ventura, and, finally, St. Diego; besides these seaports, are many cities in the interior, such as St. Juan Campestrano, Los Angelos, the largest town in California, and San Gabriel. Disturbances, arising from the ignorance and venality of the Mexican dominion, very often happen in these regions; new individuals are continually appointed to rule them; and these individuals are generally men of broken fortunes and desperate characters, whose extortions become so intolerable that, at last, the Californians, in spite of their lazy dispositions, rise upon their petty tyrants. Such was now the case at Monterey. A new governor had arrived; the old General Morreno had, under false pre-texts, been dismissed, and recalled to the central department, to answer to many charges preferred against him. The new governor, a libertine of the lowest class of the people, half monk and half soldier, who had carved his way through the world by murder, rapine, and abject submission to his superiors, soon began to stretch an iron hand over the townspeople. The Montereyans will bear much, yet under their apparent docility and moral apathy there lurks a fire which, once excited, pours forth flames of destruction. Moreover, the foreigners established in Monterey had, for a long time, enjoyed privileges which they were not willing to relinquish; and as they were, generally speaking, wealthy, they enjoyed a certain degree of influence over the lower classes of the Mexicans. Immediately after the first extortion of the new governor, the population rose _en masse_, and disarmed the garrison. The presidio was occupied by the insurgents, and the tyrant was happy to escape on board an English vessel, bound to Acapulco. However, on this occasion the Montereyans did not break their fealty to the Mexican government; they wanted justice, and they took it into their own hands. One of the most affluent citizens was unanimously selected governor _pro tempore,_ till another should arrive, and they returned to their usual pleasures and apathy, just as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The name of the governor thus driven away was Fonseca. Knowing well that success alone could have justified his conduct, he did not attempt to return to Mexico, but meeting with some pirates, at that time ravaging the coasts in the neighbourhood of Guatimala, he joined them, and, excited by revenge and cupidity, he conceived the idea of conquering California for himself. He succeeded in enlisting into his service some 150 vagabonds from all parts of the earth--runaway sailors, escaped criminals, and, among the number, some forty Sandwich Islanders, brave and desperate fellows, who were allured with the hopes of plunder. I may as well here mention, that there is a great number of these Sandwich Islanders swarming all along the coast of California, between which and the Sandwich Islands a very smart trade is carried on by the natives and the Americans. The vessels employed to perform the voyage are always double manned, and once on the shores of California, usually half of the crew deserts. Accustomed to a warm climate and to a life of indolence, they find themselves perfectly comfortable and happy in the new country. They engage themselves now and then as journeymen, to fold the hides, and, with their earnings, they pass a life of inebriety singularly contrasting with the well-known abstemiousness of the Spaniards. Such men had Fonseca taken into his service, and having seized upon a small store of arms and ammunition, he prepared for his expedition. In the meanwhile, the governor of Sonora having been apprized of the movements at Monterey, took upon himself to punish the outbreak, imagining that his zeal would be highly applauded by the Mexican government. Just at this period, troops having come from Chihuahua, to quell an insurrection of the conquered Indians, he took the field in person, and advanced towards California. Leaving the ex-governor Fonseca and the governor of Sonora for awhile, I shall return to my operations among the Indians. I have stated that upon the resolution of the Shoshones to unite the tribes, I had despatched my old servant to Monterey, and Gabriel to the nearest Apache village. This last had found a numerous party of that tribe on the waters of the Colorado of the West, and was coming in the direction which I had myself taken, accompanied by the whole party. We soon met; the Apaches heard with undeniable pleasure the propositions I made unto them, and they determined that one hundred of their chiefs and warriors should accompany me on my return to the Shoshones, in order to arrange with the elders of the tribe the compact of the treaty. On our return we passed through the Arrapahoes, who had already received my messengers, and had accepted as well as given the "brides," which were to consolidate an indissoluble union. As to the Comanches, seeing the distance, and the time which must necessarily be lost in going and returning, I postponed* my embassy to them, until the bonds of union between the three nations, Shoshones, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, should be so firmly cemented as not to be broken. The Arrapahoes followed the example of the Apaches; and a hundred warriors well mounted and equipped, joined us to go and see the fathers, the Shoshones, and, smoke with them the calumet of* eternal peace. We were now a gallant band, two hundred and fifty strong and in order to find game sufficient for the subsistence of many individuals, we were obliged to take a long range to the south, so as to fall upon the prairies bordering the Buona Ventura.* Chance, however, led us into a struggle, in which became afterwards deeply involved. Scarcely had we reached the river when we met with a company of fifteen individuals composed of some of my old Monterey friends. They were on their way to the settlement, to ask my help against the governor of Sonora; and the Indians being all unanimous in their desire to chastise him, and to acquire the good-will of the wealthy people of Monterey, I yielded to circumstance and altered our course to the south. My old servant had come with the deputation, and from him I learnt the whole of the transaction. It appears that the governor of Sonora declared that he would whip like dogs, and hang the best part of the population of Monterey, principally the Anglo-Saxon settlers, the property of whom he intended to confiscate for his own private use If he could but have kept his own counsel, he would of a certainty have succeeded, but the Montereyans were aware of his intentions, even before he had reached the borders of California. Deputations were sent to the neighbouring towns, and immediately a small body of determined men started to occupy the passes through which the governor had to proceed. There they learnt with dismay that the force they would have to contend with was at least ten times more numerous than their own; they were too brave, however, to retire without a blow in defence of their independence, and remembering the intimacy contracted with me, together with the natural antipathy of the Indians against the Watchinangoes, or Mexicans, they determined to ask our help, offering in return a portion of the wealth they could command in cattle, arms, ammunition, and other articles of great value among savages. The governor's army amounted to five hundred men, two hundred of them soldiers in uniform, and the remainder half*d stragglers, fond of pillage, but too cowardly to fight for it. It was agreed that I and my men, being all on horseback, would occupy the prairie, where we would conceal ourselves in an ambush. The Montereyans and their friends were to make way at the approach of the governor, as if afraid of disclosing the ground; and then, when the whole of the hostile enemy should be in full pursuit, we were to charge them in break and put them to rout. All happened as was anticipated; We mustered about three hundred and fifteen men, acting under one single impulse, and sanguine as to success. On came the governor with his heroes. A queer sight it was, and a noisy set of fellows they were; nevertheless, we could see that they were rather afraid of meeting with opposition, for they stopped at the foot of the hill, and perceiving some eight or ten Montereyans at the top of the pass, they despatched a white flag, to see if it were not possible to make some kind of compromise. Our friends pretended to be much terrified, and retreated down towards the prairie. Seeing this, our opponents became very brave. They marched, galloped, and rushed on without order, till they were fairly in our power; then we gave the war-whoop, which a thousand echoes rendered still more terrible. We fired not a bullet, we shot not an arrow, yet we obtained a signal victory. Soldiers and stragglers threw themselves on the ground to escape from death; while the governor, trusting to his horse's speed, darted away to save himself. Yet his cowardice cost him his life, for his horse tumbling down, he broke his neck. Thus perished the only victim of this campaign. We took the guns and ammunition of our vanquished opponents, leaving them only one fusil for every ten men, with a number of cartridges sufficient to prevent their starving on their return home. Their leader was buried where he had fallen, and thus ended this mock engagement. Yet another battle was to be fought, which, though successful, did not terminate in quite so ludicrous a manner. By this time Fonseca was coasting along the shore, but the south-easterly winds preventing him from making Monterey, he entered the Bay of St. Francisco. This settlement is very rich, its population being composed of the descendants of English and American merchants, who had acquired a fortune in the Pacific trade; it is called _Yerba buena_ (the good grass), from the beautiful meadows of wild clover which extend around it for hundreds of miles. There Fonseca had landed with about two hundred rascals of his own stamp; and his first act of aggression had been to plunder and destroy the little city. The inhabitants, of course, fled in every direction; and on meeting us, they promised the Indians half of the articles which had been plundered from them if we could overpower the invaders and recapture them. I determined to surprise the rascals in the midst of their revellings. I divided my little army into three bands, giving to Gabriel the command of the Apaches, with orders to occupy the shores of the bay and destroy the boats, so that the pirates should not escape to their vessels. The Arrapahoes were left in the prairie around the city to intercept those who might endeavour to escape by land. The third party I commanded myself. It consisted of fifty well-armed Shoshones and fifty-four Mexicans from the coast, almost all of them sons of English or American settlers. Early in the morning we entered into what had been, a few days before, a pretty little town. It was now nothing but a heap of ruins, among which a few tents had been spread for night shelter. The sailors and pirates were all tipsy, scattered here and there on the ground, in profound sleep. The Sandwichers, collected in a mass, lay near the tents. Near them stood a large pile of boxes, kegs, bags, &c.; it was the plunder. We should have undoubtedly seized upon the brigands without any bloodshed had not the barking of the dogs awakened the Sandwichers, who were up in a moment. They gave the alarm, seized their arms, and closed fiercely and desperately with my left wing, which was composed of the white men. These suffered a great deal, and broke their ranks, but I wheeled round and surrounded the fellows with my Shoshones, who did not even use their rifles, the lance and tomahawk performing their deadly work in silence, and with such a despatch in ten minutes but few of the miserable islanders lived to complain of their wounds. My Mexicans, having rallied, seized upon Fonseca, and destroyed many of the pirates in their beastly state of intoxication. Only a few attempted to fight, the greater number staggering towards the beach to seek shelter in their boats. But the Apaches had already performed their duty; the smallest boats they had dragged on shore, the largest they had scuttled and sunk. Charging upon the miserable fugitives, they transfixed them with their spears, and our victory was complete. The pirates remaining on board the two vessels, perceiving how matters stood, saluted us with a few discharges of grape and canister, which did no execution; the sailors, being almost all of them runaway Yankees, were in all probability as drunk as their companions on shore. At last they succeeded in heaving up their anchors, and, favoured by the land breeze, they soon cleared the bay. Since that time nothing has been heard of them. Fonseca, now certain of his fate, proved to be as mean and cowardly as he had been tyrannical before his defeat. He made me many splendid offers if I would but let him go and try his fortune elsewhere: seeing how much I despised him, he turned to the Mexicans, and tried them one and all; till, finally, perceiving that he had no hope of mercy, he began to blaspheme so horribly that I was obliged to order him to be gagged. The next morning two companies arrived from Monterey, a council was convened, twenty of the citizens forming themselves into a jury. Fonseca was tried and condemned, both as a traitor and a pirate; and as shooting would have been too great an honour for such a wretch, he was hanged in company with the few surviving Sandwichers. Our party had suffered a little in the beginning of the action, three Mexicans had been killed and eighteen wounded, as well as two Apaches. Of my Shoshones, not one received the smallest scratch; and the Arrapahoes, who had been left to scour the prairie, joined us a short time after the battle with a few scalps. The people of San Francisco were true to their promise; the rescued booty was divided into two equal parts, one of which was offered to the Indians, as had been agreed upon. On the eve of our departure, presents were made to us as a token of gratitude, and of course the Indians, having at the first moment of their confederation, made such a successful and profitable expedition, accepted it as a good presage for the future. Their services being no longer required, they turned towards the north, and started for the settlement under the command of Roche, to follow up their original intentions of visiting the Shoshones. As for me, I remained behind at San Francisco. CHAPTER XVII. Up to the present portion of my narrative, I have lived and kept company with Indians and a few white men who had conformed to their manners and customs. I had seen nothing of civilized life, except during my short sojourn at Monterey, one of the last places in the world to give you a true knowledge of mankind. I was as all Indians are, until they have been deceived and outraged, frank, confiding, and honest. I knew that I could trust my Shoshones, and I thought that I could put confidence in those who were Christians and more civilized. But the reader must recollect that I was but nineteen years of age, and had been brought up as a Shoshone. My youthful ardour had been much inflamed by our late successful conflicts. Had I contented myself with cementing the Indian confederation, I should have done well, but my ideas now went much farther. The circumstances which had just occurred raised in my mind the project of rendering the whole of California Independent, and it-was my ambition to become the liberator of the country. Aware of the great resources of the territory, of the impassable barriers presented to any large body of men who would invade it from the central parts of Mexico; the more I reflected, the more I was convinced of the feasibility of the undertaking. I represented to the Californians at San Francisco that, under existing circumstances, they would not be able successfully to oppose any force which the government might send by sea from Acapulco; I pointed out to them that their rulers, too happy in having a pretext for plundering them, would show them no mercy, after what had taken place; and I then represented, that if they were at once to declare their independence, and open their ports to strangers, they would, in a short time, become sufficiently wealthy and powerful to overthrow any expedition that might be fitted out against them. I also proposed, as they had no standing troops, to help them with a thousand warriors; but if so, I expected to have a share in the new government that should be established. My San Francisco friends heard me with attention, and I could see they approved the idea; yet there were only a few from among the many who spoke out, and they would not give any final answer until they had conferred with their countrymen at Monterey. They pledged their honour that immediately on their arrival in that city, they would canvas the business, dispatch messengers to the southern settlements, and let me know the result. As it was useless for me to return to the settlement before I knew their decision, I resolved upon taking up my residence at one of the missions on the bay, under the charge of some jolly Franciscan monks. In the convent, or mission, I passed my time pleasantly; the good fathers were all men of sound education, as indeed they all are in Mexico. The holy fathers were more than willing to separate California from the Mexican government; indeed they had many reasons for their disaffection; government had robbed them of their property, and had levied nearly two hundred per cent upon all articles of Californian produce and manufacture. Moreover, when they sold their furs and hides to the foreign traders, they were bound to give one-half of the receipts to the government, while the other half was already reduced to an eighth, by the Mexican process of charging 200 per cent duty upon all goods landed on the shore. They gave me to understand that the missions would, if necessary for my success, assist me with 15, 20, nay 30,000 dollars. I had a pleasant time with these Padres, for they were all _bon vivants_. Their cellars were well filled with Constantia wine, their gardens highly cultivated, their poultry fat and tender, and their game always had a particular flavour. Had I remained there a few months more, I might have taken the vows myself, so well did that lazy, comfortable life agree with my taste; but the Californians had been as active as they had promised to be, and their emissaries came to San Francisco to settle the conditions under which I was to lend my aid. Events were thickening; there was no retreat for me, and I prepared for action. After a hasty, though hearty, farewell to my pious and liberal entertainers, I returned to the settlement, to prepare for the opening of the drama, which would lead some of us either to absolute power or to the scaffold. Six weeks after my quitting San Francisco, I was once more in the field, and ready for an encounter against the troops dispatched from St. Miguel of Senora, and other central garrisons. On hearing of the defeat of the two governors, about 120 Californians, from Monterey and San Francisco, had joined my forces, either excited by their natural martial spirit, or probably with views of ambition similar to my own. I had with me 1,200 Indians, well equipped and well mounted; but, on this occasion, my own Shoshones were in greater numbers than our new allies. They numbered 800, forming two squadrons, and their discipline was such as would have been admired at the military parades of Europe. Besides them, I had 300 Arrapahoes and 100 Apaches. As the impending contest assumed a character more serious than our two preceding skirmishes, I made some alteration in the command, taking under my own immediate orders a body of 250 Shoshones, and the Mexican company, who had brought four small field-pieces. The remainder of my Indians were subdivided into squadrons of 100, commanded by their own respective chiefs. Gabriel, Roche, and my old servant, with two or three clever young Californians, I kept about me, as aides-de-camp. We advanced to the pass, and found the enemy encamped on the plain below. We made our dispositions; our artillery was well posted behind breastworks, in almost an impregnable position, a few miles below the pass, where we had already defeated the governor of Senora. We found ourselves in presence of an enemy inferior in number, but well disciplined, and the owners of four field-pieces heavier than ours. They amounted to about 950, 300 of which were cavalry, and the remainder light infantry, with a small company of artillery. Of course, in our hilly position our cavalry could be of no use, and as to attacking them in the plain, it was too dangerous to attempt it, as we had but 600 rifles to oppose to their superior armament and military discipline. Had it been in a wood, where the Indians could have been under cover of trees, we would have given the war-whoop, and destroyed them without allowing them time to look about them; but as it was, having dismounted the Apaches, and feeling pretty certain of the natural strength of our position, we determined to remain quiet till a false movement or a hasty attack from the enemy should give us the opportunity of crushing them at a blow. I was playing now for high stakes, and the exuberancy of spirit which had formerly accompanied my actions had deserted me, and I was left a prey to care, and, I must confess, to suspicion; but it was too late to retrace my steps, and, moreover, I was too proud not to finish what I had begun, even if it should be at the expense of my life. Happily, the kindness and friendship of Gabriel and Roche threw a brighter hue upon my thoughts. In them I knew I possessed two friends who would never desert me in misfortune, whatever they might do in prosperity; we had so long lived and hunted together, shared the same pleasures and the same privations, that our hearts were linked by the strongest ties. The commander who opposed us was an old and experienced officer, and certainly we should have had no chance with him had he not been one of those individuals who, having been appreciated by the former government, was not in great favour with, or even trusted by, the present one. Being the only able officer in the far west, he had of a necessity been intrusted with this expedition, but only _de nomine_; in fact, he had with him agents of the government to watch him, and who took a decided pleasure in counteracting all his views; they were young men, without any kind of experience, whose only merit consisted in their being more or less related to the members of the existing government. Every one of them wished to act as a general, looking upon the old commander as a mere convenience upon whom they would throw all the responsibility in case of defeat, and from whom they intended to steal the laurels, if any were to be obtained. This commander's name was Martinez; he had fought well and stoutly against the Spaniards during the war of Independence; but that was long ago, and his services had been forgotten. As he had acted purely from patriotism, and was too stern, too proud, and too honest to turn courtier and bow to upstarts in power, he had left the halls of Montezuma with disgust; consequently he had remained unnoticed, advancing not a step, used now and then in time of danger, but neglected when no longer required. I could plainly perceive how little unity there was prevailing among the leaders of our opponents. At some times the position of the army showed superior military genius, at others the infantry were exposed, and the cavalry performing useless evolutions. It was evident that two powers were struggling with each other; one endeavouring to maintain regular discipline, the other following only the impulse of an unsteady and overbearing temper. This discovery, of course, rendered me somewhat more confident, and it was with no small pride I reflected that in my army I alone commanded. It was a pretty sight to look at my Shoshones, who already understood the strength gained by simultaneous action. The Apaches, too, in their frequent encounters with the regular troops, had acquired a certain knowledge of cavalry tactics. All the travellers in Mexico who have met with these intrepid warriors have wondered at their gallant and uniform bearing. The Californians also, having now so much at stake, had assumed a demeanour quite contrary to their usual indolent natures, and their confidence in me was much increased since our success against Fonseca, and the comparison they could now make between the disposition and arrangement of the opposed forces. So elated indeed were they, and so positive of success, that they frequently urged me to an immediate attack. But I determined upon a line of conduct to which I adhered. The Arrapahoes showed themselves a little unruly; brave, and such excellent horsemen, as almost to realize the fable of the Centaurs, charging an enemy with the impetuosity of lightning and disappearing with the quickness of thought, they requested me every moment to engage; but I knew too well the value of regular infantry, and how ineffectual would be the efforts of light cavalry against their bayonets. I was obliged to restrain their ardour by every argument I could muster, principally by giving them, to understand that by a hasty attack we should certainly lose the booty. The moment came at last The prudence of the old commander having been evidently overruled by his ignorant coadjutors, the infantry were put in motion, flanked on one side by the cavalry and on the other by the artillery. It was indeed a pitiful movement, for which they paid dearly. I despatched the Arrapahoes to out-flank and charge the cavalry of the enemy when a signal should be made; the Apaches slowly descended the hill in face of the infantry, upon which we opened a destructive fire with our four field-pieces. The infantry behaved well; they never flinched, but stood their ground as brave soldiers should do. The signal to charge was given to the Arrapahoes, and at that moment, the Shoshones, who till then had remained inactive with me on the hill, started at full galop to their appointed duty. The charge of the Arrapahoes was rapid and terrific, and, when the smoke and dust had cleared away, I perceived them in the plain a mile off, driving before them the Mexican cavalry, reduced to half its number. The Shoshones, by a rapid movement, had broken through between the infantry and artillery, forcing the artillery-men to abandon their pieces; then, closing their ranks and wheeling, they attacked fiercely the right flank of the infantry. When I gave the signal to the Arrapahoes to charge, the Apaches quickened their speed and charged the enemy in front; but they were checked by the running fire of the well-disciplined troops, and, in spite of their determination and gallantry, they found in the Mexican bayonets a barrier of steel which their lances could not penetrate. The chances, however, were still ours: the Mexican artillery was in our power, their cavalry dispersed and almost out of sight, and the infantry, though admirably disciplined, was very hardly pressed both in flank and in front. At this juncture I sent Gabriel to bring back the Arrapahoes to the scene of the conflict, for I knew that the Mexican cavalry would never form again until they had reached the borders of Senora. Of course, the coadjutors of Martinez had disappeared with the fugitive cavalry, leaving the old general to regain the lost advantage and to bear the consequences of their own cowardice and folly. Now left master of his actions, this talented officer did not yet despair of success. By an admirable manoeuvre he threw his infantry into two divisions, so as to check both bodies of cavalry until he could form them into a solid square, which, charging with impetuosity through the Shoshones, regained possession of their pieces of artillery, after which, retreating slowly, they succeeded in reaching, without further loss, the ground which they had occupied previous to their advance, which, from its more broken and uneven nature, enabled the infantry to resist a charge of cavalry with considerable advantage. This manoeuvre of the old general, which extricated his troops from their dangerous position and recovered his field-pieces, had also the advantage of rendering our artillery of no further service, as we could not move them down the hill. As the battle was still to be fought, I resolved to attack them before they had time to breathe, and while they were yet panting and exhausted with their recent exertions. Till then the Californians had been merely spectators of the conflict. I now put myself at their head and charged the Mexicans' square in front, while the Shoshones did the same on the left, and the Apaches on the right. Five or six times were we repulsed, and we repeated the charge, the old commander everywhere giving directions and encouraging his men. Roche and I were both wounded, fifteen of the Californians dead, the ranks of Shoshones much thinned by the unceasing fire of the artillery, and the Apaches were giving way in confusion. I was beginning to doubt of success, when Gabriel, having succeeded in recalling the Arrapahoes from their pursuit of the fugitive cavalry, re-formed them, made a furious charge upon the Mexicans on the only side of the square not already assailed, and precisely at the moment when a last desperate effort of the Shoshones and my own body of Californians had thrown the ranks opposed to us into confusion. The brave old commander, perceiving he could no longer keep his ground, retreated slowly, with the intention of gaining the rugged and broken ground at the base of the mountains behind him, where our cavalry could no longer assail him. Perceiving his intention, and determining, if possible, to prevent his retreat, the Arrapahoes having now rejoined us, we formed into one compact body and made a final and decisive charge, which proved irresistible. We broke through their ranks and dispersed them. For a time my command and power ceased; the Indians were following their own custom of killing without mercy, and scalping the dead. One-half of the enemy were destroyed; but Martinez succeeded the remainder in reaching his intended position. But the Mexican troops considered it useless to contend any more, and shortly afterwards the old general himself rode towards us with a flag, to ascertain the conditions under which we would accept his surrender. Poor man! He was truly an estimable officer. The Indians opened their ranks to let him pass, while all the Californians, who felt for his mortification, uncovered themselves as a mark of respect. The old general demanded a free passage back to Senora, and the big tears were in his eyes as he made the proposal. Speaking of his younger associates, he never used a word to their disparagement, though the slight curl of his lip showed plainly how bitter were his feelings; he knew too that his fate was sealed, and that he alone would bear the disgrace of the defeat. So much was he respected by the Californians, that his request was immediately granted, upon his assurance that, under no circumstance, he would return to California as a foe. As Martinez departed, a Shoshone chief, perceiving that his horse was seriously wounded, dismounted from his own, and addressed him:-- "Chief of the Watchinangoes (Mexicans) and brother, brave warrior! a Shoshone can honour as well as fight an enemy: take this horse; it has been the horse of a Red-skin warrior, it will be faithful to the Pale-face." The general bowed upon his saddle, and descended, saying, in few words, that he now learned to esteem the Indian warriors who had overpowered him on that fated day, both by their gallantry and generosity. When the Indian proceeded to change the saddles, Martinez stopped him: "Nay, brother," said he; "keep it with the holsters and their contents, which are more suitable to a conqueror and a young warrior than to a vanquished and broken-hearted old man." Having said this, he spurred his new horse, and soon rejoined his men. We returned to the encampment, and two hours afterwards we saw the Mexicans in full retreat towards the rising sun. That night was one of mourning; our success had been complete, but dearly purchased. The Arrapahoes alone had not suffered. The Apaches had lost thirty men, the Shoshones one hundred and twelve, killed and wounded, and the Montereyans several of their most respected young citizens. On the following day we buried our dead, and when our task was over, certain that we should remain unmolested for a considerable time, we returned to St. Francisco--the Indians to receive the promised bounty, and I to make arrangements for our future movements. By the narrative I have given, the reader may have formed an accurate idea of what did take place in California. I subsequently received the Mexican newspapers, containing the account of what occurred; and as these are the organs through which the people of Europe are enlightened as to the events of these distant regions, I shall quote the pages, to show how truth may be perverted. "_Chihuahua--News of the West--Californian Rebellion_.--This day arrived in our city a particular courier from the Bishop of Senora, bearer of dispatches rather important for the welfare of our government. The spirit of rebellion is abroad; Texas already has separated from our dominions; Yucatan is endeavouring to follow the pernicious example, and California has just now lighted the flambeau of civil war. "It appears that, excited by the bad advices of foreigners, the inhabitants of Monterey obliged the gallant governor to leave his fireside. This warlike officer found the means of forwarding dispatches to Senora, while he himself, uniting a handful of brave and faithful citizens, landed in the bay of St. Francisco, in order to punish the rebels. By this time the governor of Senora, with the _élite_ of the corps of the army under his orders, having advanced to his help, was decoyed into the rebels' camp under some peaceful pretext, and shamefully murdered. "It is yet a glory to think that even a Mexican rebel could not have been guilty of so heinous a crime. The performer of that cowardly deed was a Frenchman, living among the Indians of the west, who, for the sake of a paltry sum of gold, came to the aid of the rebels with many thousands of the savages. His next step was to enter St. Francisco, and there the horrors he committed recall to our mind the bloody deeds performed in his country during the great revolution. But what could be expected from a Frenchman? Fonseca was executed as a malefactor, the city plundered, the booty divided among the red warriors; besides an immense sum of money which was levied upon the other establishments, or, to say better, extorted, upon the same footing as the buccaneers of old. "The news having reached the central government of the west, General Martinez assumed upon himself the responsibility of an expedition, which, under the present appearances, showed his want of knowledge, and his complete ignorance of military tactics. He was met by ten thousand Indians, and a powerful artillery served by the crews of many vessels upon the coast--vessels bearing rather a doubtful character. Too late he perceived his error, but had not the gallantry of repairing it and dying as a Mexican should. He fled from the field almost in the beginning of the action, and had it not been for the desperate efforts of the cavalry, and truly wonderful military talents displayed by three or four young officers who had accompanied him, the small army would have been cut to pieces. We numbered but five hundred men in all, and had but a few killed and wounded, while the enemy left behind them on the field more than twelve hundred slain. "The gallant young officers would have proceeded to St. Francisco, and followed up their conquest, had the little army been in possession of the necessary provisions and ammunition; but General Martinez, either from incapacity or treachery, had omitted these two essential necessaries for an army. We are proud and happy to say that Emanuel Bustamente, the young distinguished officer, of a highly distinguished family, who conducted himself so well in Yucatan during the last struggle, commanded the cavalry, and it is to his skill that we Mexicans owe the glory of having saved our flag from a deep stain. "Postscriptum.--We perceive that the cowardly and mercenary Martinez has received the punishment his treachery so well deserved; during his flight he was met by some Indians and murdered. May divine Providence thus punish all traitors to the Mexican government!" I regret to say that the last paragraph was true. The brave Martinez, who had stood to the last, who had faced death in many battles, had been foully murdered, but not, as was reported, by an Indian; he had fallen under the knife of an assassin--- but it was a Mexican who had been bribed to the base deed. Up to the present all had prospered. I was called "The Liberator, the Protector of California." Splendid offers were made to me, and the independence of California would have been secured, had I only had two small vessels to reduce the southern seaports which had not yet declared themselves, either fearing the consequences of a rebellion, or disliking the idea of owing their liberation to a foreign condottiere, and a large force of savages. The Apaches returned homes with eighty mules loaded with their booty; so did the Arrapahoes with pretty nearly an equal quantity. My Shoshones I satisfied with promises, and returned with them to the settlement, to prepare myself for forthcoming events. A few chapters backwards I mentioned that I had despatched my old servant to Monterey. He had taken with him a considerable portion of my jewels and gold to make purchases, which were firmly to establish my power over the Indian confederacy. A small schooner, loaded with the goods purchased, started from Monterey; but, never being seen afterwards, it is probable that she fell into the hands of the pirate vessels which escaped from San Francisco. I had relied upon this cargo to satisfy the just demands of my Indians upon my arrival at the settlement The loss was a sad blow to me. The old chief had just died, the power had devolved entirely upon me, and it was necessary, according to Indian custom, that I should give largess, and show a great display of liberality on my accession to the command of the tribe; so necessary, indeed, was it, that I determined upon returning to Monterey, _viâ_ San Francisco, to provide what was requisite. This step was a fatal one, as will be shown when I narrate the circumstances which had occurred during my absence. Upon hearing the news of our movements In the west, the Mexican government, for a few days, spoke of nothing but extermination. The state of affairs, however, caused them to think differently; they had already much work upon their hands, and California was very far off. They hit upon a plan, which, if it showed their weakness, proved their knowledge of Human nature. While I was building castles in the air, agents from Mexico privately came to Monterey and decided the matter. They called together the Americans domiciled at Monterey, who were the wealthiest and the most influential of the inhabitants, and asked them what it was that they required from the government? Diminution of taxes, answered they. It was agreed. What next? Reduction of duty on foreign goods. Agreed again. And next? Some other privileges and dignities. All these were granted. In return for this liberality, the Mexican agents then demanded that two or three of the lower Mexicans should be hung up for an example, and that the Frenchman and his two white companions should be decoyed and delivered up to the government. This was consented to by these honest domiciliated Americans, and thus did they arrange to sacrifice me who had done so much for them. Just as everything had been arranged upon between them and the agents, I most unfortunately made my appearance, with Gabriel and Roche, at the mission at San Francisco. As soon as they heard of our arrival, we were requested to honour them with our company at a public feast, in honour of our success!! It was the meal of Judas. We were all three seized and handed over to the Mexican agents. Bound hand and foot, under an escort of thirty men, the next morning we set off to cross the deserts and prairies of Sonora, to gain the Mexican capital, where we well knew that a gibbet was to be our fate. Such was the grateful return we received from those who had called us to their assistance[17]. Such was my first lesson in civilized life! [Footnote 17: Americans, or Europeans, who wish to reside in Mexico, are obliged to conform to the Catholic religion, or they cannot hold property and become resident merchants. These were the apostates for wealth who betrayed me.] CHAPTER XVIII. As circumstances, which I have yet to relate, have prevented my return to the Shoshones, and I shall have no more to say of their movements in these pages, I would fain pay them a just tribute before I continue my narrative. I wish the reader to perceive how much higher the Western Indians are in the scale of humanity than the tribes of the East, so well described be Cooper and other American writers. There is a chivalrous spirit in these rangers of the western prairies not to be exceeded in history or modern times. The four tribes of Shoshones, Arrapahoes, Comanches, and Apaches never attempt, like the Dacotah and Algonquin, and other tribes of the East, to surprise an enemy; they take his scalp, it is true, but they take it in the broad day; neither will they ever murder the squaws, children, and old men, who may be left unprotected when the war-parties are out. In fact, they are honourable and noble foes, sincere and trustworthy friends. In many points they have the uses of ancient chivalry among them, so much so as to induce me to surmise that they may have brought them over with them when they first took possession of the territory. Every warrior has his nephew, who is selected as his page: he performs the duty of a squire, in ancient knight errantry, takes charge of his horse, arms, and accoutrements; and he remains in this office until he is old enough to gain his own spurs. Hawking is also a favourite amusement, and the chiefs ride out with the falcon, or small eagle, on their wrist or shoulder. Even in their warfare, you often may imagine that you were among the knights of ancient days. An Arrapahoe and a Shoshone warrior armed with a buckler and their long lances, will single out and challenge each other; they run a tilt, and as each has warded off the blow, and passed unhurt, they will courteously turn back and salute each other, as an acknowledgment of their enemy's bravery and skill. When these challenges take place, or indeed in any single combat without challenge, none of these Indians will take advantage of possessing a superior weapon. If one has a rifle and knows that his opponent has not, he will throw his rifle down, and only use the same weapon as his adversary. I will now relate some few traits of character, which will prove the nobility of these Indians[18]. [Footnote 18: There is every prospect of these north-western tribes remaining in their present primitive state, indeed of their gradual improvement, for nothing can induce them to touch spirits. They know that the eastern Indians have been debased and conquered by the use of them, and consider an offer of a dram from an American trader as an indirect attempt upon their life and honour.] Every year during the season dedicated to the performing of the religious ceremonies, premiums are given by the holy men and elders of the tribe to those among the young men who have the most distinguished themselves. The best warrior receives a feather of the black eagle; the most successful hunter obtains a robe of buffalo-skin, painted inside, and representing some of his most daring exploits; the most virtuous has for his share a coronet made either of gold or silver; and these premiums are suspended in their wigwams, as marks of honour, and handed down to their posterity. In fact, they become a kind of _écusson_, which ennobles a family. Once during the distribution of these much-coveted prizes, a young man of twenty-two was called by the chiefs to receive the premium of virtue. The Indian advanced towards his chiefs, when an elder of the tribe rising, addressed the whole audience. He pointed the young man out, as one whose example should be followed, and recorded, among many other praiseworthy actions, that three squaws, with many children, having been reduced to misery by the death of their husbands in the last war against the Crows, this young man, although the deceased were the greatest foes of his family, undertook to provide for their widows and children till the boys, grown up, would be able to provide for themselves and their mothers. Since that time, he had given them the produce of his chase, reserving to himself nothing but what was strictly necessary to sustain the wants of nature. This was a noble and virtuous act, one that pleased the Manitou. It was an example which all the Shoshones should follow. The young man bowed, and as the venerable chief was stooping to put the coronet upon his head, he started back and, to the astonishment of all, refused the premium. "Chiefs, warriors, elders of the Shoshones, pardon me! You know the good which I have done, but you know not in what I have erred. My first feeling was to receive the coronet, and conceal what wrong I had done; but a voice in my heart forbids my taking what others have perchance better deserved. "Hear me, Shoshones! the truth must be told; hear my shame! One day, I was hungry; it was in the great prairies. I had killed no game, and I was afraid to return among our young men with empty hands. I remained four days hunting, and still I saw neither buffaloes nor bears. At last, I perceived the tent of an Arrapahoe. I went in; there was no one there, and it was full of well-cured meat. I had not eaten for five days; I was hungry, and I became a thief, I took away a large piece, and ran away like a cowardly wolf. I have said: the prize cannot be mine." A murmur ran through the assembly, and the chiefs, holy men, and elders consulted together. At last, the ancient chief advanced once more towards the young man, and took his two hands between his own. "My son," he said, "good, noble, and brave; thy acknowledgment of thy fault and self-denial in such a moment make thee as pure as a good spirit in the eyes-of the great Manitou. Evil, when confessed and repented of, is forgotten; bend thy head, my son, and let me crown thee. The premium is twice deserved and twice due." A Shoshone warrior possessed a beautiful mare; no horse in the prairie could outspeed her, and in the buffalo or bear hunt she would enjoy the sport as much as her master, and run alongside the huge beast with great courage and spirit. Many propositions were made to the warrior to sell or exchange the animal, but he would not hear of it. The dumb brute was his friend, his sole companion; they had both shared the dangers of battle and the privations of prairie travelling; why should he part with her? The fame of that mare extended so far, that in a trip he made to San Francisco, several Mexicans offered him large sums of money; nothing, however, could shake him in his resolution. In those countries, though horses will often be purchased at the low price of one dollar, it often happens that a steed, well known as a good hunter or a rapid pacer, will bring sums equal to those paid in England for a fine racehorse. One of the Mexicans, a wild young man, resolved to obtain the mare, whether or no. One evening, when the Indian was returning from some neighbouring plantation, the Mexican laid down in some bushes at a short distance from the road, and moaned as if in the greatest pain. The good and kind-hearted Indian having reached the spot, heard his cries of distress, dismounted from his mare, and offered any assistance: it was nearly dark, and although he knew the sufferer to be a Pale-face, yet he could not distinguish his features. The Mexican begged for a drop of water, and the Indian dashed into a neighbouring thicket to procure it for him. As soon as the Indian was sufficiently distant, the Mexican vaulted upon the mare, and apostrophized the Indian:-- "You fool of a Red-skin, not cunning enough for a Mexican: you refused my gold; now I have the mare for nothing, and I will make the trappers laugh when I tell them how easily I have outwitted a Shoshone." The Indian looked at the Mexican for a few moments in silence, for his heart was big, and the shameful treachery wounded him to the very core. At last, he spoke:-- "Pale-face," said he, "for the sake of others, I may not kill thee. Keep the mare, since thou art dishonest enough to steal the only property of a poor man; keep her, but never say a work how thou earnest by her, lest hereafter a Shoshone, having learned distrust, should not hearken to the voice of grief and woe. Away, away with her! let me never see her again, or in an evil hour the desire of vengeance may make a bad man of me." The Mexican was wild, inconsiderate, and not over-scrupulous, but not without feeling: he dismounted from the horse, and putting the bridle in the hand of the Shoshone, "Brother," said he, "I have done wrong, pardon me! from an Indian I learn virtue, and for the future, when I would commit any deed of injustice, I will think of thee." Two Apaches loved the same girl; one was a great chief, the other a young warrior, who had entered the war-path but a short time. Of course, the parents of the young girl rejected the warriors suit, as soon as the chief proposed himself. Time passed, and the young man, broken-hearted, left all the martial exercises, in which he had excelled. He sought solitude, starting early in the morning from the wigwam, and returning but late in the night, when the fires were out. The very day on which he was to lead the young girl to his lodge, the chief went bear-hunting among the hills of the neighbourhood. Meeting with a grizzly bear, he fired at him: but at the moment he pulled the trigger his foot slipped, and he fell down, only wounding the fierce animal, which now, smarting and infuriated with pain, rushed upon him. The chief had been hurt in his fall, he was incapable of defence, and knew that he was lost. He shut his eyes, and waited for his death-blow, when the report of a rifle and the springing of the bear in the agonies of death made him once more open his eyes; he started upon his feet, there lay the huge monster, and near him stood the young warrior who timely rescued him. The chief recognized his rival, and his gratitude overpowering all other feelings, he took the warrior by the hand, and grasped it firmly. "Brother," he said, "thou hast saved my life at a time when It was sweet, more so than usual. Let us be brothers." The young man's breast heaved with contending passions; but he, too, was a noble fellow. "Chief," answered he, "when I saw the bear rushing upon thee, I thought It was the Manitou who had taken compassion on my sufferings, my heart for an instant felt light and happy; but as death was near thee, very near, the Good Spirit whispered his wishes, and I have saved thee for happiness. It is I who must die! I am nothing, have no friends, no one to care for me, to love me, to make pleasant in the lodge the dull hours of night. Chief, farewell!" He was going, but the chief grasped him firmly by the arm,-- "Where dost thou wish to go? Dost thou know the love of a brother? Didst thou ever dream of one? I have said we must be brothers to each other. Come to the wigwam." They returned to the village in silence, and when they arrived before the door of the council lodge, the chief summoned everybody to hear what he had to communicate, and ordered the parents to bring the young girl. "Flower of the magnolia," said he, taking her by the hand, "wilt thou love me less as a brother than as a husband? Speak! Whisper thy thought to me! Didst thou ever dream of another voice than mine, a younger one, breathing of love and despair?" Then leading the girl to where the young warrior stood,-- "Brother," said he, "take thy wife and my sister." Turning towards the elders, the chief extended his right arm, so as to invite general attention. "I have called you," said he, "that an act of justice may be performed. Hear my words:-- "A young antelope loved a lily, standing under the shade of a sycamore, by the side of a cool stream. Dally he came to watch it as it grew whiter and more beautiful. He loved it very much, till one day a large bull came and picked up the lily. Was it good? No! The poor antelope fled towards the mountains, never wishing to return any more under the cool shade of the sycamore. One day he met the bull down, and about to be killed by a big bear. He saved him. He heard only the whisper of his heart. He saved the bull, although the bull had taken away the pretty lily from where it stood, by the cool stream. It was good, it was well! The bull said to the antelope, 'We shall be brothers, in joy and in sorrow!' and the antelope said there could be no joy for him since the lily was gone. The bull considered. He thought that a brother ought to make great sacrifices for a brother, and he said to the antelope, 'Behold, there is the lily, take it before it droops away. Wear it in thy bosom and be happy.' Chiefs, sages, and warriors, I am the bull: behold my brother the antelope. I have given unto him the flower of the magnolia. She is the lily that grew by the side of the stream, and under the sycamore. I have done well, I have done much, yet not enough for a great chief, not enough for a brother, not enough for justice! Sages, warriors, hear me all. The Flower of the Magnolia can lie but upon the bosom of a chief. My brother must become a chief. He is a chief, for I divide with him the power I possess: my wealth, my lodge, are his own; my horses, my mules, my furs, and all! A chief has but one life, and it is a great gift that cannot be paid too highly. You have heard my words. I have said!" This sounds very much like a romance, but it is an Apache story, related of one of their great chiefs, during one of their evening encampments. An Apache having, in a moment of passion, accidentally killed one of the tribe, hastened to the chiefs to deliver himself up to justice. On his way he was met by the brother of his victim, upon whom, according to Indian laws, fell the duty of revenge and retaliation. They were friends, and shook hands together. "Yet I must kill thee, friend," said the brother. "Thou wilt!" answered the murderer, "it is thy duty; but wilt thou not remember the dangers we have passed together, and provide and console those I leave behind in my lodge?" "I will," answered the brother. "Thy wife shall be my sister during her widowhood; thy children will never want game, until they can themselves strike the bounding deer." The two Indians continued their way in silence, till at once the brother of the murdered one stopped. "We shall soon reach the chiefs," said he; "I to revenge a brother's death, thou to quit for ever thy tribe and thy children, Hast thou a wish? Think, whisper!" The murderer stood irresolute; his glance furtively took the direction of his lodge. The brother continued,-- "Go to thy lodge. I shall wait for thee till the setting of the sun, before the council door. Go! thy tongue is silent, but I know the wish of thy heart. Go!" Such traits are common in Indian life. Distrust exists not among the children of the wilderness, until generated by the conduct of white men. These stories, and thousand others, all exemplifying the triumph of virtue and honour over baseness and vice, are every day narrated by the elders, in presence of the young men and children. The evening encampment is a great school of morals, where the red-skin philosopher embodies in his tales the sacred precepts of virtue. A traveller, could he understand what was said, as he viewed the scene, might fancy some of the sages of ancient Greece inculcating to their disciples those precepts of wisdom which have transmitted their name down to us bright and glorious, through more than twenty centuries. I have stated that the holy men among the Indians, that is to say, the keepers of the sacred lodges, keep the records of the great deeds performed in the tribe; but a tribe will generally boast more of the great virtues of one of its men than of the daring of its bravest warriors. "A virtuous man," they say, "has the ear of the Manitou, he can tell him the sufferings of Indian nature, and ask him to soothe them." Even the Mexicans, who, of all men, have had most to suffer, and suffer daily from the Apaches[19], cannot but do them the justice they so well deserve. The road betwixt Chihuahua and Santa Fé is almost entirely deserted, so much are the Apaches dreaded; yet they are not hated by the Mexicans half as much as the Texans or the Americans. The Apaches are constantly at war with the Mexicans, it is true; but never have they committed any of those cowardly atrocities which have disgraced every page of Texan history. With the Apaches there are no murders in cold blood, no abuse of the prisoners. A captive knows that he will either suffer death or be adopted in the tribe; but he has never to fear the slow fire and the excruciating torture so generally employed by the Indians in the United States territories. [Footnote 19: What I here say of the Apaches applies to the whole Shoshone race.] Their generosity is unbounded; and by the treatment I received at their hands the reader may form an idea of that brave people. They will never hurt a stranger coming to them. A green bough in his hand is a token of peace. For him they will spread the best blankets the wigwam can afford; they will studiously attend to his wants, smoke with him the calumet of peace, and when he goes away, whatever he may desire from among the disposable wealth of the tribe, if he asks for it, it is given. Gabriel was once attacked near Santa Fé, and robbed of his baggage, by some honest Yankee traders. He fell in with a party of Apaches, to whom he related the circumstance. They gave him some blankets, and left him with their young men at the hunting-lodges they had erected. The next day they returned with several Yankee captives, all well tied, to prevent any possibility of escape. These were the thieves; and what they had taken of Gabriel was, of course, restored to him, one of the Indians saying, that the Yankees, having blackened and soiled the country by theft, should receive the punishment of dogs, and as it was beneath an Apache to strike them, cords were given to them, with orders that they should chastise each other for their rascality. The blackguards were obliged to submit, and the dread of being scalped was too strong upon them to allow them to refuse. At first they did not seem to hurt each other much; but one or two of them, smarting under the lash, returned the blows in good earnest, and then they all got angry, and beat each other so unmercifully that, in a few minutes, they were scarcely able to move. Nothing could exceed the ludicrous picture which Gabriel would draw out of this little event. There is one circumstance which will form a particular datum in the history of the Western wild tribes,--I mean the terrible visitation of the small-pox. The Apaches, Comanches, the Shoshones, and Arrapahoes are so clean and so very nice in the arrangement of their domestic comforts, that they suffered very little, or not at all; at least, I do not remember a single case which brought death in these tribes; indeed, as I have before mentioned, the Shoshones vaccinate. But such was not the case with the Club Indians of the Colorado of the West, with the Crows, the Flat-heads, the Umbiquas, and the Black-feet. These last suffered a great deal more than any people in the world ever suffered from any plague or pestilence. To be sure, the Mandans had been entirely swept from the surface of the earth; but they were few, while the Black-feet were undoubtedly the most numerous and powerful tribe in the neighbourhood of the mountains. Their war-parties ranged the country from the northern English posts on the Slave Lake down south to the very borders of the Shoshones, and many among them had taken scalps of the Osages, near the Mississippi, and even of the great Pawnees. Between the Red River and the Platte they had once one hundred villages, thousands and thousands of horses. They numbered more than six thousand warriors. Their name had become a by-word of terror on the northern continent, from shore to shore, and little children in the eastern states, who knew not the name of the tribes two miles from their dwellings, had learned to dread even the name of a Black-foot. Now the tribe has been reduced to comparative insignificancy by this dreadful scourge. They died by thousands; whole towns and villages were destroyed; and even now, the trapper, coming from the mountains, will often come across numberless lodges in ruins, and the blanched skeletons of uncounted and unburied Indians. They lost ten thousand individuals in less than three weeks. Many tribes but little known suffered pretty much in the same ratio. The Club Indians I have mentioned, numbering four thousand before the pestilence, are now reduced to thirty or forty Individuals; and some Apaches related to me that happening at that time to along the shores of the Colorado, they met the poor fellows dying by hundreds on the very edge of the water, where they had dragged themselves to quench their burning thirst, there not being among them one healthy or strong enough to help and succour the others. The Navahoes, living in the neighbourhood of the Club Indians, have entirely disappeared; and, though late travellers have mentioned them in their works, there is not one of them living now. Mr. Farnham mentions them In his "Tour on the Mountains"; but he must have been mistaken, confounding one tribe with another, or perhaps deceived by the ignorance of the trappers; for that tribe occupied a range of country entirely out of his track, and never travelled by American traders or trappers. Mr. Farnham could not have been in their neighbourhood by at least six hundred miles. The villages formerly occupied by the Navahoes are deserted, though many of their lodges still stand; but they serve only to shelter numerous tribes of dogs, which, having increased wonderfully since there has been no one to kill and eat them, have become the lords of vast districts, where they hunt in packs. So numerous and so fierce have they grown, that the neighbouring tribes feel great unwillingness to extend their range to where they may fall in with these canine hunters. This disease, which has spread north as far as the Ohakallagans, on the borders of the Pacific Ocean, north of Fort Vancouver, has also extended its ravages to the western declivity of the Arrahuac, down to 30° north lat., where fifty nations that had a name are now forgotten, the traveller, perchance, only reminded that they existed when he falls in with heaps of unburied bones. How the Black-feet caught the infection it is difficult to say, as their immediate neighbours in the east escaped; but the sites of their villages were well calculated to render the disease more general and terrible; their settlements being generally built in some recess, deep in the heart of the mountains, or in valleys surrounded by lofty hills, which prevent all circulation of the air; and it is easy to understand that the atmosphere, once becoming impregnated with the effluvia, and having no issue, must have been deadly. On the contrary, the Shoshones, the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes, have the generality of their villages built along the shores of deep and broad rivers. Inhabiting a warm clime, cleanness, first a necessity, has become a second nature. The hides and skins are never dried in the immediate vicinity of their lodges, but at a great distance, where the effluvia can hurt no one. The interior of their lodges is dry, and always covered with a coat of hard white clay, a good precaution against insects and reptiles, the contrast of colour immediately betraying their presence. Besides which, having always a plentiful supply of food, they are temperate in their habits, and are never guilty of excess; while the Crows, Black-feet, and Clubs, having often to suffer hunger for days, nay, weeks together, will, when they have an opportunity, eat to repletion, and their stomachs being always in a disordered state (the principal and physical cause of their fierceness and ferocity), it is no wonder that they fell victims, with such predispositions to disease. It will require many generations to recover the number of Indians which perished in that year; and, as I have said, as long as they live, it will form an epoch or era to which they will for centuries refer. CHAPTER XIX. In the last chapter but one I stated that I and my companions, Gabriel and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be hanged as an example to all liberators. This escort was commanded by two most atrocious villains, Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz. They evidently anticipated that they would become great men in the republic, upon the safe delivery of our persons to the Mexican Government, and every day took good care to remind us that the gibbet was to be our fate on our arrival. Our route lay across the central deserts of Sonora, until we arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande, and so afraid were they of falling in with a hostile party of Apaches, that they took long turns out of the general track, and through mountainous passes, by which we not only suffered greatly from fatigue, but were very often threatened with starvation. It was sixty-three days before we crossed the Rio Grande at Christobal, and we had still a long journey before us. This delay, occasioned by the timidity of our guards, proved our salvation. We had been but one day on our march in the swamp after leaving Christobal, when the war-whoop pierced our ears, and a moment afterwards our party was surrounded by some hundred Apaches, who saluted us with a shower of arrows. Our Mexican guards threw themselves down on the ground, and cried for mercy, offering ransom. I answered the war-whoop of the Apaches, representing my companions and myself as their friends, and requesting their help and protection, which were immediately given. We were once more unbound and free. I hardly need say that this was a most agreeable change in the state of affairs; for I have no doubt that had we arrived at our destination, we should either have been gibbeted or died (somehow or other) in prison. But if the change was satisfactory to us, it was not so to Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz, who changed their notes with their change of condition. The scoundrels; who had amused themselves with reminding us that all we had to expect was an ignominious death, were now our devoted humble servants, cleaning and brushing their own mules for our use, holding the stirrup, and begging for our interference in their behalf with the Apaches. Such wretches did not deserve our good offices; we therefore said nothing for or against them, leaving the Apaches to act as they pleased. About a week after our liberation the Apaches halted, as they were about to divide their force into two bands, one of which was to return home with the booty they had captured, while the other proceeded to the borders of Texas. I have stated that the Shoshones, the Arrapahoes, and Apaches had entered into the confederation, but the Comanches were too far distant for us to have had an opportunity of making the proposal to them. As this union was always uppermost in my mind, I resolved that I would now visit the Comanches, with a view to the furtherance of my object. The country on the east side of the Rio Grande is one dreary desert, in which no water is to be procured. I believe no Indian has ever done more than skirt its border; indeed, as they assert that it is inhabited by spirits and demons, it is clear that they cannot have visited it. To proceed to the Comanches country it was therefore necessary that we should follow the Rio Grande till we came to the Presidio of Rio Grande, belonging to the Mexicans, and from there cross over and take the road to San Antonio de Bejar, the last western city of Texas, and proceed through the Texan country to where the Comanches were located. I therefore decided that we would join the band of Apaches who were proceeding towards Texas. During this excursion, the Apaches had captured many horses and arms from a trading party which they had surprised near Chihuahua, and, with their accustomed liberality, they furnished us with steeds, saddles, arms, blankets, and clothes; indeed, they were so generous that we could easily pass ourselves off as merchants returning from a trading expedition in case we were to fall in with any Mexicans, and have to undergo an examination. We took our leave of the generous Apache chiefs, who were returning homewards. Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz were, with the rest of the escort, led away as captives, and what became of them I cannot say. We travelled with the other band of Indians, until we had passed the Presidio del Rio Grande, a strong Mexican fort, and the day afterwards took our farewell of them, having joined a band of smugglers who were on their way to Texas. Ten days afterwards, we entered San Antonio de Bejar, and had nothing more to fear, as we were now clear of the Mexican territory. San Antonio de Bejar is by far the most agreeable residence in Texas. When in the possession of the Mexicans, it must have been a charming place. The river San Antonio, which rises at a short distance above the city, glides gracefully through the suburbs; and its clear waters, by numerous winding canals, are brought up to every house. The temperature of the water is the same throughout the year, neither too warm nor too cold for bathing; and not a single day passes without the inhabitants indulging in the favourite and healthy exercise of swimming, which is practised by everybody, from morning till evening; and the traveller along the shores of this beautiful river will constantly see hundreds of children, of all ages and colour, swimming and diving like so many ducks. The climate is pure, dry, and healthy. During summer the breeze is fresh and perfumed; and as it never rains, the neighbouring plantations are watered by canals, which receive and carry in every direction the waters of the San Antonio. Formerly the city contained fifteen thousand inhabitants, but the frequent revolutions and the bloody battles which have been fought within its walls have most materially contributed to diminish its number; so much indeed, that, in point of population, the city of San Antonio de Bejar, with its bishopric and wealthy missions, has fallen to the rank of a small English village. It still carries on a considerable trade, but its appearance of prosperity is deceptive; and I would caution emigrants not to be deceived by the Texan accounts of the place. Immense profits have been made, to be sure; but now even the Mexican smugglers and banditti are beginning to be disgusted with the universal want of faith and probity. The Mexicans were very fond of gardens and of surrounding their houses with beautiful trees, under the shade of which they would pass most of the time which could be spared from bathing. This gives a fresh and lively appearance to the city, and you are reminded of Calabrian scenery, the lightness and simplicity of the dwellings contrasting with the grandeur and majesty of the monastic buildings in the distance. Texas had no convents, but the Spanish missions were numerous, and their noble structures remain as monuments of former Spanish greatness. Before describing these immense establishments, it is necessary to state that soon after the conquest of Mexico, one of the chief objects of Spanish policy was the extension of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. The conversion of the Indians and the promulgation of Christianity were steadily interwoven with the desire of wealth; and at the time that they took away the Indian's gold, they gave him Christianity. At first, force was required to obtain proselytes, but cunning was found to succeed better; and, by allowing the superstitions of the Indians to be mixed up with the rites of the Church, a sort of half-breed religion became general, upon the principle, I presume, that half a loaf is better than no bread. The anomalous consequences of this policy are to be seen in the Indian ceremonies even to this day. To afford adequate protection to the Roman Catholic missionaries, settlements were established, which still bear the name of missions. They are very numerous throughout California, and there are several in Texas. The Alamo, at San Antonio, was one of great importance; there were others of less consideration in the neighbourhood; as the missions of Conception, of San Juan, San Jose, and La Espada. All these edifices are most substantially built; the walls are of great thickness, and from their form and arrangement they could be converted into frontier fortresses. They had generally, though not always, a church at the side of the square, formed by the high walls, through which there was but one entrance. In the interior they had a large granary, and the outside wall formed the back to a range of buildings, in which the missionaries and their converts resided. A portion of the surrounding district was appropriated to agriculture, the land being, as I before observed, irrigated by small canals, which conducted the water from the river. The Alamo is now in ruins, only two or three of the houses of the inner square being inhabited. The gateway of the church was highly ornamented, and still remains, although the figures which once occupied the niches have disappeared. But there is still sufficient in the ruins to interest the inquirer into its former history, even if he could for a moment forget the scenes which have rendered it celebrated in the history of Texan independence. About two miles lower down the San Antonio river is the mission of Conception. It is a very large stone building, with a fine cupola, and though a plain building, is magnificent in its proportions and the durability of its construction. It was here that Bowie fought one of the first battles with the Mexican forces, and it has not since been inhabited. Though not so well known to fame as other conflicts, this battle was that which really committed the Texans, and compelled those who thought of terms and the maintenance of a Mexican connection to perceive that the time for both had passed. The mission of San Jose is about a mile and a half further down the river. It consists, like the others, of a large square, and numerous Mexican families still reside there. To the left of the gateway is the granary. The church stands apart from the building; it is within the square, but unconnected. The west door is decorated with the most elaborated carvings of flowers, images of angels, and figures of the apostles; the interior is plain. To the right is a handsome tower and belfry, and above the altar a large stone cupola. Behind the church is a long range of rooms for the missionaries, with a corridor of nine arches in front. The Texan troops were long quartered here, and, although always intoxicated, strange to say, the stone carvings have not been injured. The church has since been repaired, and divine service is performed in it. About half a mile further down is the mission of San Juan. The church forms part of the sides of the square, and on the north-west corner of the square are the remains of a small stone tower. This mission, as well as that of La Espada, is inhabited. The church of La Espada, however, is in ruins, and but two sides of the square, consisting of mere walls, remain entire; the others have been wantonly destroyed. The church at San Antonio de Bejar was built in the year 1717; and although it has suffered much from the many sieges which the city has undergone, it is still used as a place of public worship. At the time that San Antonio was attacked and taken by Colonel Cooke, in 1835, several cannon-shots struck the dome, and a great deal of damage was done; in fact, all the houses in the principal square of the town are marked more or less by shot. One among them has suffered very much; it is the "Government-house," celebrated for one of the most cowardly massacres ever committed by a nation of barbarians, and which I shall here relate. After some skirmishes betwixt the Comanches and the Texans, in which the former had always had the advantage, the latter thought it advisable to propose a treaty of alliance. Messengers, with flags of truce, were despatched among the Indians, inviting all their chiefs to a council at San Antonio, where the representatives of Texas would meet them and make their proposals for an eternal peace. Incapable of treachery themselves, the brave Comanches never suspected it in others; at the time agreed upon, forty of their principal chiefs arrived in the town, and, leaving their horses in the square, proceeded to the "Government-house." They were all unarmed, their long flowing hair covered with a profusion of gold and silver ornaments; their dresses very rich and their blankets of that fine Mexican texture which commands in the market from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars a-piece. Their horses were noble animals, and of great value, their saddles richly embossed with gold and silver. The display of so much wealth excited all the worst propensities of the Texan populace, who resolved at any price to obtain possession of so splendid a booty. While the chiefs were making their speeches of peace and amity, a few hundred Texan blackguards rushed into the room with their pistols and knives, and began their work of murder. All the Indians fell, except one, who succeeded in making his escape; but though the Comanches were quite unarmed, they sold their lives dearly, for eighteen Texans were found among the slain. I will close this chapter with a few remarks upon the now acknowledged republic of Texas. The dismemberment of Texas from Mexico was effected by the reports of extensive gold-mines, diamonds, &c., which were to be found there, and which raised the cupidity of the eastern speculators and land-jobbers of the United States. But in all probability this appropriation would never have taken place if it had not been that the southern states of America had, with very different views, given every encouragement to the attempt. The people of Louisiana and the southern states knew the exact value of the country, and laughed at the idea of its immense treasures. They acted from a deep, although it eventually has turned out to have been a false, policy. They considered that Texas, once wrested from Mexico, would be admitted into the Union, subdivided into two or three states, every one of which would, of course, be slave-holding states, and send their members to Congress. This would have given the slave-holding states the preponderance in the Union. Events have turned out differently, and the planters of the south now deplore their untoward policy and want of foresight, as they have assisted in raising up a formidable rival in the production of their staple commodity, injurious to them even in time of peace, and in case of a war with England, still more inimical to their interests. It is much to be lamented that Texas had not been populated by a more deserving class of individuals; it might have been, even by this time, a country of importance and wealth; but it has from the commencement been the resort of every vagabond and scoundrel who could not venture to remain in the United States; and, unfortunately, the Texan character was fixed and established, as a community wholly destitute of principle or probity, before the emigration of more respectable settlers had commenced. The consequences have been most disastrous, and it is to be questioned whether some of them will ever be removed. At the period of its independence, the population of Texas was estimated at about forty thousand. Now, if you are to credit the Texan Government, it has increased to about seventy-five thousand. Such, however, is not the fact, although it, of course, suits the members of the republic to make the assertion. Instead of the increase stated by them, the population of Texas has decreased considerably, and is not now equal to what it was at the Independence. This may appear strange, after so many thousands from the United States, England, and Germany have been induced to emigrate there; but the fact is, that, after having arrived in the country, and having discovered that they were at the mercy of bands of miscreants, who are capable of any dark deed, they have quitted the country to save the remainder of their substance, and have passed over into Mexico, the Southern United States, or anywhere else where they had some chance of security for life and property. Among the population of Texas were counted many thousand Mexicans, who remained in the country, trusting that order and law would soon be established: but, disappointed in their expectations, they have emigrated to Mexico. Eight thousand have quitted San Antonio de Bejar, and the void has been filled up by six or seven hundred drunkards, thieves, and murderers. The same desertion has taken place in Goliad, Velasco, Nacogdoches, and other towns, which were formerly occupied by Mexican families. It may give the reader some idea of the insecurity of life and property in Texas, when I state, that there are numerous bands of robbers continually on the look-out, to rifle and murder the travellers, and that it is of frequent occurrence for a house to be attacked and plundered, the women violated, and every individual afterwards murdered by these miscreants, who, to escape detection, dress and paint themselves as Indians. Of course, what I have now stated, although well known to be a fact, is not likely to be mentioned in the Texan newspapers. Another serious evil arising from this lawless state of the country is, that the Indians, who were well inclined towards the Texans, as being, with them, mutual enemies of the Mexicans, are now hostile, to extermination. I have mentioned the murder of the Comanche chiefs, in the government-house of San Antonio, which, in itself, was sufficient. But such has been the disgraceful conduct of the Texans towards the Indians, that the white man is now considered by them as a term of reproach; they are spoken of by the Indians as "dogs," and are generally hung or shot whenever they are fallen in with. Centuries cannot repair this serious evil, and the Texans have made bitter and implacable foes of those who would have been their friends. No distinction is made between an American and a Texan, and the Texans have raised up a foe to the United States, which may hereafter prove not a little troublesome. In another point, Texas has been seriously injured by this total want of probity and principle. Had Western Texas been settled by people of common honesty, it would, from its topographical situation, have soon become a very important country, as all the mercantile transactions with the north central provinces of Mexico would have been secured to it. From the Presidio del Rio Grande there is an excellent road to San Antonio de Bejar; to the south of San Antonio lies Chihuahua; so that the nearest and most accessible route overland, from the United States to the centre of Mexico, is through San Antonio. And this overland route can be shortened by discharging vessels at Linville, or La Bacca, and from thence taking the goods to San Antonio, a distance of about one hundred and forty miles. The western boundary line of Texas, at the time of the declaration of its independence, was understood to be the river Nueces; and if so, nothing could have prevented San Antonio from becoming an inland depot of much commercial importance. Numerous parties of Mexican traders have long been accustomed to come to San Antonio from the Rio Grande. They were generally very honest in their payments, and showed a very friendly spirit. Had this trade been protected, as it should have been, by putting down the bands of robbers, who rendered the roads unsafe by their depredations and atrocities, it would have become of more value than any trade to Santa Fé. Recognized or unrecognized, Texas could have carried on the trade; merchants would have settled in the West, to participate in it; emigrants would have collected in the district, where the soil is rich and the climate healthy. It is true, the trade would have been illicit; but such is ever the inevitable consequence of a high and ill-regulated tariff. It would, nevertheless, have been very profitable, and would have conciliated the population of Rio Grande towards the Texans, and in all probability have forced upon the Mexican government the establishment of friendly relations between the two countries. But this trade has been totally destroyed; the Indians now seize and plunder every caravan, either to or from San Antonio; the Texan robbers lie in wait for them, if they escape the Indians; and should the Mexican trader escape with his goods from both, he has still to undergo the chance of being swindled by the _soi-disant_ Texan merchant. If ever there was a proof, from the results of pursuing an opposite course, that honesty is the best policy, it is to be found in the present state of Texas. CHAPTER XX. Happily for me and my two companions, there still remained two or three gentlemen in San Antonio. These were Colonel Seguin and Messrs. Novarro, senior and junior, Mexican gentlemen, who, liberal in their ideas and frank in their natures, had been induced by the false representations of the Texans not to quit the country after its independence of Mexico; and, as they were men of high rank, by so doing they not only forfeited their rights as citizens of Mexico, but also incurred the hatred and animosity of that government. Now that they had discovered their error, it was too late to repair it; moreover, pride and, perhaps, a mistaken sense of honour, would not permit them to remove to Mexico, although severed from all those ties which render life sweet and agreeable. Their own sorrows did not, however, interfere with their unbounded hospitality: in their house we found a home. We formed no intimacy with the Texans; indeed, we had no contact whatever with them, except that one day Roche thrashed two of them with his shillalah for ill-treating an old Indian. Inquiries were made by Colonel Seguin as to where the Comanches might be found, and we soon ascertained that they were in their great village, at the foot of the Green Mountain, upon the southern fork of the head-waters of the Rio Roxo. We made immediate preparations for departure, and as we proposed to pass through Austin, the capital of Texas, our kind entertainers pressed five hundred dollars upon us, under the plea that no Texan would ever give us a tumbler of water except it was paid for, and that, moreover, it was possible that after passing a few days among the gallant members of Congress, we might miss our holsters or stirrups, our blankets, or even one of our horses. We found their prediction, in the first instance, but too true. Six miles from Austin we stopped at the farm of the Honourable Judge Webb, and asked leave to water our horses, as they had travelled forty miles under a hot sun without drawing bit. The honourable judge flatly refused, although he had a good well, besides a pond, under fence, covering several acres; his wife, however, reflecting, perhaps, that her stores were rather short of coffee or salt, entered into a rapid discussion with her worse half, and by-and-bye that respectable couple of honourables agreed to sell water to us at twenty-five cents a bucket. When we dismounted to take the bridles off our horses, the daughters arrived, and perceiving we had new silk sashes and neckerchiefs and some fine jewels, they devoured us with their eyes, and one of them, speaking to her papa, that most hospitable gentleman invited us to enter his house. By that time we were once more upon our saddles and ready to start. Roche felt indignant at the meanness of the fellow who had received our severity-five cents for the water before he invited us into the house. We refused, and Roche told him that he was an old scoundrel to sell for money that which even a savage will never refuse to his most bitter enemy. The rage of the honourable cannot be depicted: "My rifle!" he vociferated, "my rifle! for God's sake, Betsey--Juliet, run for my rifle!" The judge then went into the house; but, as three pistols were drawn from our holsters, neither he nor his rifle made their appearance, so we turned our horses' heads and rode on leisurely to Austin. In Austin we had a grand opportunity of seeing the Texans under their true colours. There were three hotels in the town, and every evening, after five o'clock, almost all of them, not excluding the president of the republic, the secretaries, judges, ministers, and members of Congress, were more or less tipsy, and in the quarrels which ensued hardly a night passed without four or five men being stabbed or shot, and the riot was continued during the major portion of the night, so that at nine o'clock in the morning everybody was still in bed. So buried in silence was the town, that one morning at eight o'clock, I killed a fine buck grazing quietly before the door of the Capitol. It is strange that this capital of Texas should have been erected upon the very northern boundary of the state. Indians have often entered it and taken scalps not ten steps from the Capitol. While we were in Austin we made the acquaintance of old Castro, the chief of the Lepan Indians, an offset of the Comanche tribe. He is one of the best-bred gentlemen in the world, having received a liberal and military education, first in Mexico, and subsequently in Spain. He has travelled in France, Germany, England, and, in fact, all over Europe. He speaks and writes five or six languages, and so conscious is he of his superiority over the Texans, that he never addresses them but with contempt. He once said to them in the legislature-room of Matagorda-- "Never deceive yourselves, Texans. I fight with you against the Mexicans, because betwixt them and me there is an irreconcilable hatred. Do not then flatter yourselves that it is through friendship towards you. I can give my friendship only to those who are honourable both in peace and in war; you are all of you liars, and many of you thieves, scoundrels, and base murderers. Yes, dogs, I say true; yelp not, bark not, for you know you dare not bite, now that my two hundred warriors are surrounding this building: be silent, I say." Castro was going in the same direction as ourselves to join his band, which was at that moment buffalo-hunting, a few journeys northward. He had promised his company and protection to two foreign gentlemen, who were desirous of beholding the huge tenant of the prairies. We all started together, and we enjoyed very much this addition to our company. The first day we travelled over an old Spanish military road, crossing rich rolling prairies, here and there watered by clear streams, the banks of which are sheltered by magnificent oaks. Fifteen miles from Austin there is a remarkable spot, upon which a visionary speculator had a short time before attempted to found a city. He purchased an immense tract of ground, had beautiful plans drawn and painted, and very soon there appeared, upon paper, one of the largest and handsomest cities in the world. There were colleges and public squares, penitentiaries, banks, taverns, whisky-shops, and fine walks. I hardly need say, that this town-manufacturer was a Yankee, who intended to realize a million by selling town-lots. The city (in prospective) was called Athens, and the silly fellow had so much confidence in his own speculation, that he actually built upon the ground a very large and expensive house. One day, as he, with three or four negroes, were occupied in digging a well, he was attacked by a party of Yankee thieves, who thought he had a great deal of money. The poor devil ran away from his beloved city and returned no more. The house stands as it was left. I even saw near the well the spades and pickaxes with which they had been working at the time of the attack. Thus modern Athens was cut off in the bud, which was a great pity, as a few Athenian sages and legislators are sadly wanted in Texas. Early one morning we were awakened by loud roars in the prairie. Castro started on his feet, and soon gave the welcome news, "The Buffaloes." On the plain were hundreds of dark moving spots, which increased in size as we came nearer; and before long we could clearly see the shaggy brutes galloping across the prairie, and extending their dark, compact phalanxes even to the line of the horizon. Then followed a scene of excitement The buffaloes, scared by the continual reports of our rifles, broke their ranks and scattered themselves in every direction. The two foreigners were both British, the youngest being a young Irishman of a good family, and of the name of Fitzgerald. We had been quite captivated by his constant good humour and vivacity of spirits; he was the life of our little evening encampments, and, as he had travelled on the other side of the Pacific, we would remain till late at night listening to his interesting and beautiful narratives of his adventures in Asiatic countries. He had at first joined the English legion in Spain, in which he had advanced to the rank of captain; he soon got tired of that service and went to Persia, where he entered into the Shah's employ as an officer of artillery. This after some time not suiting his fancy, he returned to England, and decided upon visiting Texas, and establishing himself as a merchant at San Antonio. But his taste for a wandering life would not allow him to remain quiet for any length of time, and having one day fallen in with an English naturalist, who had come out on purpose to visit the north-west prairies of Texas, he resolved to accompany him. Always ready for any adventure, Fitz. rushed madly among the buffaloes. He was mounted upon a wild horse of the small breed, loaded with saddlebags, water calabashes, tin and coffee-cups, blankets, &c.; but these encumbrances did not stop him in the least. With his bridle fastened to the pommel of his saddle and a pistol in each hand, he shot to the right and left, stopping now and then to reload and then starting anew. During the hunt he lost his hat, his saddlebags, with linen and money, and his blankets: as he never took the trouble to pick them up, they are probably yet in the prairie where they were dropped. The other stranger was an English savant, one of the queerest fellows in the world. He wished also to take his share in the buffalo-hunt, but his steed was a lazy and peaceable animal, a true nag for a fat abbot, having a horror of anything like trotting or galloping; and as he was not to be persuaded out of his slow walk, he and his master remained at a respectable distance from the scene of action. What an excellent caricature might have been made of that good-humoured savant, as he sat on his Rosinante, armed with an enormous doubled-barrelled gun, loaded but not primed, some time, to no purpose, spurring the self-willed animal, and then spying through an opera-glass at the majestic animals which he could not approach. We killed nine bulls and seven fat calves, and in the evening we encamped near a little river, where we made an exquisite supper of marrow and tongue, two good things, which can only be enjoyed in the wild prairies. The next day, at sunset, we received a visit from an immense herd of mustangs (wild horses). We saw them at first ascending one of the swells of the prairie, and took them for hostile Indians; but having satisfied their curiosity, the whole herd wheeled round with as much regularity as a well-drilled squadron, and with their tails erect and long manes floating to the wind, were soon out of sight. Many strange stories have been related by trappers and hunters, of a solitary white horse which has often been met with near the Cross Timbers and the Red River. No one ever saw him trotting or galloping; he only racks, but with such rapidity that no steed can follow him. Immense sums of money have been offered to any who could catch him, and many have attempted the task, but without success. The noble animal still runs free in his native prairies, always alone and unapproachable. We often met with the mountain goat, an animal which participates both of the deer and the common goat, but whose flesh is far superior to either. It is gracefully shaped--long-legged and very fleet. One of them, whose fore-leg I had broken with a rifle-ball, escaped from our fleetest horse (Castro's), after a chase of nearly thirty minutes. The mountain goat is found on the great platforms of the Rocky Mountains, and also at the broad waters of the rivers Brasos and Colorado. Though of a very timid nature they are superlatively inquisitive, and can be easily attracted within rifle-range by agitating, from behind a tree, a white or red handkerchief. We were also often visited, during the night, by rattlesnakes, who liked amazingly the heat and softness of our blankets. They were unwelcome customers, to be sure; but yet there were some others of which we were still more in dread: among them I may class, as the ugliest and most deadly, the prairie tarantula, a large spider, bigger than a good-sized chicken egg, hairy, like a bear, with small blood-shot eyes and little sharp teeth. One evening, we encamped near a little spring, two miles from the Brasos. Finding no wood to burn near to us, Fitzgerald started to fetch some. As I have said, his was a small wild horse; he was imprudent enough to tie to its tail a young tree, which he had cut down. The pony, of course, got angry, and galloped furiously towards the camp, surrounded by a cloud of dust. At this sight, the other horses began to show signs of terror; but we were fortunate enough to secure them all before it was too late, or we should have lost them for ever. It is astonishing to witness in the prairies how powerfully fear will act, not only upon the buffaloes and mustangs, but also upon tame horses and cattle. Oxen will run farther than horses, and some of them have been known, when under the influence of the estampede, or sudden fright, to run forty miles without ever stopping, and when at last they halted, it was merely because exhausted nature would not allow them to go further. The Texan expedition, on its way to Santa Fé, once lost ninety four horses by an estampede. I must say that nothing can exceed the grandeur of the sight, when a numerous body of cattle are under its influence. Old nags, broken by age and fatigue, who have been deserted on account of their weakness, appear as wild and fresh as young colts. As soon as they are seized with that inexplicable dread which forces them to fly, they appear to regain in a moment all the powers of their youth; with head and tail erect, and eyes glaring with fear, they rush madly on in a straight line; the earth trembles under their feet; nothing can stop them--trees, abysses, lakes, rivers, or mountains--they go over all, until nature can support it no more, and the earth is strewed with their bodies. Even the otherwise imperturbable horse of our savant would sometimes have an estampede after his own fashion; lazy and self-willed, preferring a slow walk to any other kind of motion, this animal showed in all his actions that he knew how to take care of number one, always selecting his quarters where the water was cool and the grass tender. But he had a very bad quality for a prairie travelling nag, which was continually placing his master in some awkward dilemma. One day that we had stopped to refresh ourselves near a spring, we removed the bridles from our horses, to allow them to graze a few minutes, but the savant's cursed beast took precisely that opportunity of giving us a sample of his estampede. Our English friend had a way, quite peculiar to himself, of crowding upon his horse all his scientific and culinary instruments. He had suspended at the pommel of the saddle a thermometer, a rum calabash, and a coffee-boiler, while behind the saddle hung a store of pots and cups, frying-pan, a barometer, a sextant, and a long spy-glass. The nag was grazing, when one of the instruments fell down, at which the beast commenced kicking, to show his displeasure. The more he kicked, the greater was the rattling of the cups and pans; the brute was now quite terrified; we first secured our own steeds, and then watched the singular and ridiculous movements of this estampedero. He would make ten leaps, and then stop to give as many kicks, then shake himself violently and start off full gallop. At every moment, some article, mathematical or culinary, would get loose, fall down, and be trampled upon. The sextant was kicked to pieces, the frying-pan and spy-glass were put out of shape, the thermometer lost its mercury, and at last, by dint of shaking, rolling, and kicking, the brute got rid of his entire load and saddle, and then came quietly to us, apparently very well satisfied with himself and with the damage he had done. It was a most ludicrous scene, and defies all power of description; so much did it amuse us, that we could not stop laughing for three or four hours. The next day, we found many mineral springs, the waters of which were strongly impregnated with sulphur and iron. We also passed by the bodies of five white men, probably trappers, horribly mangled, and evidently murdered by some Texan robbers. Towards evening, we crossed a large fresh Indian trail, going in the direction of the river Brasos, and, following it, we soon came up with the tribe of Lepans, of which old Castro was the chief. CHAPTER XXI. The Lepans were themselves going northwards, and for a few days we skirted, in company with them, the western borders of the Cross Timbers. The immense prairies of Texas are for hundreds and hundreds of miles bordered on the east by a belt of thick and almost impenetrable forests, called the Cross Timbers. Their breadth varies from seventy to one hundred miles. There the oak and hiccory grow tall and beautiful, but the general appearance of the country is poor, broken, and rugged. These forests abound with deer and bears, and sometimes the buffalo, when hotly pursued by the Indians in the prairies, will take refuge in its closest thickets. Most of the trees contain hives of bees full of a very delicate honey, the great luxury of the pioneers along these borders. We now took our leave of the Lepans and our two white friends, who would fain have accompanied us to the Comanches had there been a chance of returning to civilization through a safe road; as it was, Gabriel, Roche, and I resumed our journey alone. During two or three days we followed the edge of the wood, every attempt to penetrate into the interior proving quite useless, so thick were the bushes and thorny briers. Twice or thrice we perceived on some hills, at a great distance, smoke and fires, but we could not tell what Indians might be there encamped. We had left the Timbers, and had scarcely advanced ten miles in a westerly direction, when a dog of a most miserable appearance joined our company. He was soon followed by two others as lean and as weak as himself. They were evidently Indian dogs of the wolf breed, and miserable, starved animals they looked, with the ribs almost bare, while their tongues, parched and hanging downwards, showed clearly the want of water in these horrible regions. We had ourselves been twenty-four hours without having tasted any, and our horses were quite exhausted. We were slowly descending the side of a swell in the prairie, when a buffalo passed at full speed, ten yards before us, closely pursued by a Tonquewa Indian (a ferocious tribe), mounted upon a small horse, whose graceful form excited our admiration. This savage was armed with a long lance, and covered with a cloak of deer-skin, richly ornamented, his long black hair undulating with the breeze. A second Indian soon followed the first, and they were evidently so much excited with the chase as not to perceive us, although I addressed the last one, who passed not ten yards from me. The next day we met with a band of Wakoes Indians, another subdivision of the Comanches or of the Apaches, and not yet seen or even mentioned by any traveller. They were all mounted upon fine tall horses, evidently a short time before purchased at the Mexican settlements, for some of them had their shoes still on their feet. They immediately offered us food and water, and gave us fresh steeds, for our own were quite broken down, and could scarcely drag themselves along. We encamped with them that day on a beautiful spot, where our poor animals recovered a little. We bled them freely, an operation which probably saved them to share with us many more toils and dangers. The next day we arrived at the Wakoe village, pleasantly-situated upon the banks of a cold and clear stream, which glided through a romantic valley, studded here and there with trees just sufficient to vary the landscape, without concealing its beauties. All around the village were vast fields of Indian corn and melons; further off numerous herds of cattle, sheep, and horses were grazing; while the women were busy drying buffalo meat. In this hospitable village we remained ten days, by which time we and our beasts had entirely recovered from our fatigues. This tribe is certainly far superior in civilization and comforts to all other tribes of Indians, the Shoshones not excepted. The Wakoe wigwams are well built, forming long streets, admirable for their cleanness and regularity. They are made of long posts, neatly squared, firmly fixed into the ground, and covered over with tanned buffalo-hides, the roof being formed of white straw, plaited much finer than the common summer hats of Boston manufacture. These dwellings are of a conical form, thirty feet in height and fifteen in diameter. Above the partition-walls of the principal room are two rows of beds, neatly arranged, as on board of packet-ships. The whole of their establishment, in fact, proves that they not only live at ease, but also enjoy a high degree of comfort and luxury. Attached to every wigwam is another dwelling of less dimensions, the lower part of which is used as a provision-store. Here is always to be found a great quantity of pumpkins, melons, dried peaches, grapes, and plums, cured vension, and buffalo tongues. Round the store is a kind of balcony, leading to a small room above it. What it contained I know not, though I suspect it is consecrated to the rites of the Wakoe religion. Kind and hospitable as they were, they refused three or four times to let us penetrate in this sanctum sanctorum, and of course we would not press them further. The Wakoes, or, to say better, their villages, are unknown, except to a few trappers and hunters, who will never betray the kind hospitality they have received by showing the road to them. There quiet and happiness have reigned undisturbed for many centuries. The hunters and warriors themselves will often wander in the distant settlements of the Yankees and Mexicans to procure seeds, for they are very partial to gardening; they cultivate tobacco; in fact, they are, I believe, the only Indians who seriously occupy themselves with agriculture, which occupation does not prevent them from being a powerful and warlike people. As well as the Apaches and the Comanches, the Wakoes are always on horseback; they are much taller and possess more bodily strength than either of these two nations, whom they also surpass in ingenuity. A few years ago, three hundred Texans, under the command of General Smith, met an equal party of the Wakoes hunting to the east of the Cross Timbers. As these last had many fine horses and an immense provision of hides and cured meat, the Texans thought that nothing could be more easy than routing the Indians and stealing their booty. They were, however, sadly mistaken; when they made their attack, they were almost all cut to pieces, and the unburied bones of two hundred and forty Texans remain blanching in the prairie, as a monument of their own rascality and the prowess of the Wakoes. Comfortable and well treated as we were by that kind people, we could not remain longer with them; so we continued our toilsome and solitary journey. The first day was extremely damp and foggy; a pack of sneaking wolves were howling about, within a few yards of us, but the sun came out about eight o'clock, dispersing the fog and also the wolves. We still continued our former course, and found an excellent road for fifteen miles, when we entered a singular tract of land, unlike anything we had ever before seen. North and south, as far as the eye could reach, nothing could be seen but a sandy plain, covered with dwarf oaks two and three feet high, and bearing innumerable acorns of a large size. This desert, although our horses sank to the very knee in the sand, we were obliged to cross; night came on before the passage was effected, and we were quite tired with the fatigues of the day. We were, however, fortunate enough to find a cool and pure stream of running water, on the opposite side of which the prairie had been recently burnt, and the fresh grass was just springing up; here we encamped. We started the next morning, and ascended a high ridge, we were in great spirits, little anticipating the horrible tragedy in which we should soon have to play our parts. The country before us was extremely rough and broken: we pushed on, however, buffeting, turning, and twisting about until nearly dark, crossing and recrossing deep gullies, our progress in one direction impeded by steep hills, and in another by, yawning ravines, until, finally, we encamped at night not fifteen miles from where we had started in the morning. During the day, we had found large plum patches, and had picked a great quantity of this fruit, which we found sweet and refreshing after our toil. On the following morning, after winding about until noon among the hills, we at length reached a beautiful table-land, covered with musqueet trees. So suddenly did we leave behind us the rough and uneven tract of country and enter a level valley, and so instantaneous was the transition, that the change of scenery in a theatre was brought forcibly to our minds; it was turning from the bold and wild scenery of Salvator Rosa to dwell upon the smiling landscape of a Poussin or Claude Lorrain. On starting in the morning, nothing was to be seen but a rough and rugged succession of hills before us, piled one upon another, each succeeding hill rising above its neighbour. At the summit of the highest of these hills, the beautiful and fertile plain came suddenly to view, and we were immediately upon it, without one of us anticipating anything of the kind. The country between the Cross Timbers and the Rocky Mountains rises by steps, if I may so call them. The traveller journeying west meets, every fifty or sixty miles, with a ridge of high hills; as he ascends these, he anticipates a corresponding descent upon the opposite side, but in most instances, on reaching this summit, he finds before him a level and fertile prairie. This is certainly the case south of the Red River, whatever it may be to the northward of it. We halted an hour or two on reaching this beautiful table-land, to rest ourselves and give our horses an opportunity to graze. Little villages of prairie dogs were scattered here and there, and we killed half a dozen of them for our evening meal. The fat of these animals, I have forgotten to say, is asserted to be an infallible remedy for the rheumatism. In the evening, we again started, and encamped, an hour after sun-down, upon the banks of a clear running stream. We had, during the last part of our journey, discovered the tops of three or four high mountains in the distance; we knew them to be "The Crows," by the description of them given to us by the Wakoes. Early the next morning we were awakened by the warbling of innumerable singing birds, perched among the bushes along the borders of the stream. Pleasing as was the concert, we were obliged to leave it behind and pursue our weary march. Throughout the day we had an excellent road, and when night came we had travelled about thirty-five miles. The mountains, the summits of which we had perceived the evening before were now plainly visible, and answered to the descriptions of the Wakoes as those in the neighbourhood of the narrows of the Red River. We now considered that we were near the end of our journey. That night we swallowed a very scanty supper, lay down to sleep, and dreamed of beaver-tail and buffalo-hump and tongues. The next day, at noon, we crossed the bed of a stream, which was evidently a large river during the rainy season. At that time but little water was found in it, and that so salt, it was impossible even for our horses to drink it. Towards night, we came to the banks of a clear stream, the waters of which were bubbling along, over a bed of golden sand, running nearly north and south, while at a distance of some six miles, and to our left, was the chain of hills I had previously mentioned; rising above the rest were three peaks, which really deserved the name of mountains. We crossed the stream, and encamped on the other side. Scarcely had we unsaddled our horses, when we perceived coming towards us a large party of savages, whose war-paint, with the bleeding scalps hanging to their belts, plainly showed the errand from which they were returning. They encamped on the other side of the stream, within a quarter of a mile from us. That night we passed watching, shivering, and fasting, for we dared not light a fire in the immediate vicinity of our neighbours, whom we could hear singing and rejoicing. The next morning, long before dawn, we stole away quietly, and trotted briskly till noon, when we encountered a deep and almost impassable ravine. There we were obliged to halt, and pass the remainder of the day endeavouring to discover a passage. This occupied us till nightfall, and we had nothing to eat but plums and berries. Melancholy were our thoughts when we reflected upon the difficulties we might shortly have to encounter, and gloomy were our forebodings as we wrapt ourselves in our blankets, half starved, and oppressed with feelings of uncertainty as to our present position and our future destinies. The night passed without alarm; but the next morning we were sickened by a horrible scene which was passing about half a mile from us. A party of the same Indians whom we had seen the evening before were butchering some of their captives, while several others were busy cooking the flesh, and many were eating it. We were rooted to the spot by a thrill of horror we could not overcome; even our horses seemed to know by instinct that something horrible was acting below, for they snuffed the air, and with their ears pointed straight forward, trembled so as to satisfy us that for the present we could not avail ourselves of their services. Gabriel crept as near as he could to the party, leaving us to await his return in a terrible state of suspense and anxiety. When he rejoined us, it appeared our sight had not deceived us. There were nine more prisoners, who would probably undergo the same fate on the following day; four, he said, were Comanches, the other five Mexican females,--two young girls and three women. The savages had undoubtedly made an inroad upon San Miguel or Taos, the two most northern settlements of the Mexicans, not far from the Green Mountains, where we were ourselves going. What could we do? We could not fight the cannibals, who were at least one hundred in number, and yet we could not go away, and leave men and women of our own colour to a horrible death, and a tomb in the stomach of these savages. The idea could not be borne, so we determined to remain and trust to chance or Providence. After their abominable meal, the savages scattered about the prairie in every direction, but not breaking up their camp, where they left their prisoners, under the charge of twelve of their young warriors. Many plans did we propose for the rescue of the poor prisoners, but they were all too wild for execution; at last chance favoured us, although we did not entirely succeed in our enterprise. Three or four deer galloped across the prairie, and passed not fifty yards from the camp. A fine buck came in our direction, and two of the Indians who were left in charge started after him. They rushed in among us, and stood motionless with astonishment at finding neighbours they had not reckoned upon. We, however, gave them no time to recover from their surprise, our knives and tomahawks performed quickly and silently the work of death, and little remorse did we feel, after the scene we had witnessed in the morning. We would have killed, if possible, the whole band, as they slept, without any more compunction than we would have destroyed a nest of rattlesnakes. The deer were followed by a small herd of buffaloes. We had quickly saddled and secured our horses to some shrubs, in case it should be necessary to rim for our lives, when we perceived the ten remaining Indians, having first examined and ascertained that their captives were well bound, start on foot in chase of the herd of buffaloes; indeed there were but about twenty horses in the whole band, and they had been ridden away by the others. Three of these Indians we killed without attracting the attention of the rest, and Gabriel, without being discerned, gained the deserted encampment, and severed the thongs which bound the prisoners. The Mexican women refused to fly; they were afraid of being captured and tortured; they thought they would be spared, and taken to the wigwams of the savages, who, we then learned, belonged to the tribe of the Cayugas. They told us that thirteen Indian prisoners had already been eaten, but no white people. The Comanche prisoners armed themselves with the lances, bows, and arrows left in the camp, and in an hour after the passage of the buffaloes, but two of the twelve Indians were alive; these, giving the war-whoop to recall their party, at last discovered that their comrades had been killed. At that moment the prairie became animated with buffaloes and hunters; the Cayugas on horseback were coming back, driving another herd before them. No time was to be lost if we wished to save our scalps; we gave one of our knives (so necessary an article in the wilderness) to the Comanches, who expressed what they felt in glowing terms, and we left them to their own cunning and knowledge of the localities, to make their escape. We had not overrated their abilities, for some few days afterwards we met them safe and sound in their own wigwams. We galloped as fast as our horses could go for fifteen miles, along the ravine which had impeded our journey during the preceding day, when we fell in with a small creek. There we and our horses drank incredible quantities of water, and as our position was not yet very safe, we again resumed our march at a brisk trot. We travelled three or four more miles along the foot of a high ridge, and discovered what seemed to be an Indian trail, leading in a zigzag course up the side of it. This we followed, and soon found ourselves on the summit of the ridge. There we were again gratified at finding spread out before us a perfectly level prairie, extending as far as the eye could reach, without a tree to break the monotony of the scene. We halted a few minutes to rest our horses, and for some time watched what was passing in the valley we had left, now lying a thousand feet below us. All we could perceive at the distance which we were, was that all was in motion, and we thought that our best plan was to leave as much space between us and the Cayugas as possible. We had but little time to converse with the liberated Comanches, yet we gained from them that we were in the right direction, and were not many days from our destination. At the moment we were mounting our horses, all was quiet again in the valley below. It was a lovely panorama, and, viewing it from the point where we stood, we could hardly believe that, some hours previous, such a horrible tragedy had been there peformed. Softened down by the distance, there was a tranquillity about it which appeared as if it never had been broken. The deep brown skirting of bushes, on the sides of the different water-courses, broke and varied the otherwise vast extent of vivid green. The waters of the river, now reduced to a silver thread, were occasionally brought to view by some turn in the stream, and again lost to sight under the rich foliage on the banks. We continued our journey, and towards evening we descried a large bear within a mile of us, and Roche started in chase. Having gained the other side of the animal, he drove it directly towards me. Cocking a pistol, I rode a short distance in front, to meet him, and while in the act of taking deliberate aim at the bear, then not more than eight yards from me, I was surprised to see him turn a somerset and commence kicking with his hind legs. Unseen by me, Gabriel had crept up close on the opposite side of my horse, and had noosed the animal with his lasso, just as I was pulling the trigger of my pistol; Bruin soon disengaged himself from the lasso, and made towards Roche, who brought him down with a single shot below the ear. Gabriel and I then went on ahead, to select a place for passing the night, leaving our friend behind to cut up the meat; but we had not gone half a mile, when our progress was suddenly checked by a yawning abyss, or chasm, some two hundred yards across, and probably six hundred feet in depth. The banks, at this place, were nearly perpendicular, and from the sides projected sharp rocks, and, now and then, tall majestic cedars. We travelled a mile or more along the banks, but perceiving it was too late to find a passage across, we encamped in a little hollow under a cluster of cedars. There we were soon joined by Roche, and we were indebted to Bruin for an excellent repast. The immense chasm before us ran nearly north and south, and we perceived that the current of the stream, or rather torrent, below us, ran towards the former point. The next morning, we determined to direct our steps to the northward, and we had gone but a few miles before large buffalo or Indian trails were seen running in a south-west direction, and as we travelled on, others were noticed bearing more to the west. Obliged to keep out some distance from the ravine, to avoid the small gullies emptying into it and the various elbows which it made, about noon we struck upon a large trail, running directly west; this we followed, and on reaching the main chasm, found that it led to the only place where there was any chance of crossing. Here, too, we found that innumerable trails joined, coming from every direction--proof conclusive that we must cross here or travel many weary miles out of our way. Dismounting from our animals, we looked at the yawning abyss before us, and our first impression was, that the passage was impracticable. That buffaloes, mustangs, and, very probably, Indian horses, had crossed here, was evident enough, for a zigzag path had been worn down the rocky and precipitous sides; but our three horses were unused to sliding down or climbing precipices, and they drew back on being led to the brink of the chasm. After many unsuccessful attempts, I at last persuaded my steed to take the path; the others followed. In some places they went along the very verge of rocky edges, where a false step would have precipitated them hundreds of feet down, to instant death; in others, they were compelled to slide down passes nearly perpendicular. Gabriel's horse was much bruised, but after an hour's severe toil, we gained the bottom, without sustaining any serious injury. Here we remained a couple of hours, to rest our weary animals and find the trail leading up the opposite side. This we discovered, and, after great exertions, succeeded in clambering up to the top, where we again found ourselves upon a smooth and level prairie. On looking backs I shuddered to behold the frightful chasm we had so successfully passed, and thought it a miracle that we had got safely across; but a very short time afterwards, I was convinced that the feat we had just accomplished was a mere nothing. After giving our animals another rest, we resumed our journey across the dreary prairie. Not a tree or bush could be seen in any direction. A green carpeting of short grass was spread over the vast scene, with naught else to relieve the sight. People may talk of the solitude of forests as much as they please, but there is a company in trees which one misses upon the prairie. It is in the prairie, with its ocean-like waving of grass, like a vast sea without landmarks, that the traveller feels a sickly sensation of loneliness. There he feels as if not in the world, although not out of it; there he finds no sign or trace to tell him that there are, beyond or behind him, countries where millions of his own kindred are living and moving. It is in the prairie that man really feels that he is--alone. We rode briskly along till sun-down, and encamped by the side of a small water-hole, formed by a hollow in the prairie. The mustangs, as well as the deer and antelopes, had left this part of the prairie, driven out, doubtless, by the scarcity of water. Had it not been for occasional showers, while travelling through this dreary waste, we should most inevitably have perished, for even the immense chasms had no water in them, except that temporarily supplied by the rains. CHAPTER XXII. The morning broke bright and cloudless, the sun rising from the horizon in all his majesty. Having saddled our horses, we pursued our journey in a north-east direction; but we had scarcely proceeded six miles before we suddenly came upon an immense rent or chasm in the earth, far exceeding in depth the one we had so much difficulty in crossing the day before. We were not aware of its existence until we were immediately upon its brink, when a spectacle exceeding in grandeur anything we had previously witnessed burst upon our sight Not a tree or bush, no outline whatever, marked its position or course, and we were lost in amazement and wonder as we rode up and peered into the yawning abyss. In depth it could not have been less than one thousand feet, in width from three to five hundred yards, and at the point where we first struck it, its sides were nearly perpendicular. A sickly sensation of dizziness was felt by all three of us, as we looked down, as it were, into the very bowels of the earth. Below, an occasional spot of green relieved the eye, and a stream of water, now visible, now concealed behind some huge rock, was bubbling and foaming along. Immense walls, columns, and, in some places, what appeared to be arches, filled the ravine, worn by the water undoubtedly, but so perfect in form, that we could with difficulty be brought to believe that the hand of men or genii had not been employed in raising them. The rains of centuries, failing upon the extended prairie, had here found a reservoir and vent, and their sapping and undermining of the different veins of earth and stone had formed these strange and fanciful shapes. Before reaching the chasm, we had crossed numerous large trails leading a little more to the westward than we had been travelling, and we were at once convinced that they all centred in a common crossing close at hand. In this conjecture we were not disappointed; half-an-hour's trotting brought us into a large road, the thoroughfare for years of millions of Indians, buffaloes, and mustangs. Perilous as the descent appeared, we well knew there was no other near. My horse was again started ahead while the two others followed. Once in the narrow path, which led circuitously down the deep descent, there was no possibility of turning back, and our maddened animals finally reached the bottom in safety. Several large stones were loosened from under our feet during this frightful descent. They would leap, dash, and thunder down the precipitous sides, and strike against the bottom far below us with a terrific crash. We found a running stream at the bottom, and on the opposite side of it a romantic dell covered with short grass and a few scattered cotton-wood trees. A large body of Indians had encamped on this very spot but a few days previous; the _blazed_ limbs of the trees and other "signs" showing that they had made it a resting-place. We, too, halted a couple of hours to give our horses an opportunity to graze and rest themselves, The trail which led up to the prairie on the opposite side was discovered a short distance above us to the south. As we journeyed along this chasm, we were struck with admiration at the strange and fanciful figures made by the washing of the waters during the rainy season. In some places, perfect walls, formed of a reddish clay, were to be seen standing; in any other locality it would have been impossible to believe but that they had been raised by the hand of man. The strata of which these walls were composed was regular in width, hard, and running perpendicularly; and where the softer sand which had surrounded them had been washed away, the strata still remained, standing in some places one hundred feet high, and three or four hundred in length. Here and there were columns, and such was their architectural regularity, and so much of chaste grandeur was there about them, that we were lost in admiration and wonder. In other places the breastworks of forts would be plainly visible, then again the frowning turrets of some castle of the olden time. Cumbrous pillars, apparently ruins of some mighty pile, formerly raised to religion or royalty, were scattered about; regularity and perfect design were strangely mixed up with ruin and disorder, and nature had done it all. Niagara has been considered one of her wildest freaks; but Niagara falls into insignificance when compared with the wild grandeur of this awful chasm. Imagination carried me back to Thebes, to Palmyra, and the Edomite Paetra, and I could not help imagining that I was wandering among their ruins. Our passage out of this chasm was effected with the greatest difficulty. We were obliged to carry our rifles and saddle-bags in our hands, and, in clambering up a steep precipice, Roche's horse, striking his shoulder against a projecting rock, was precipitated some fifteen or twenty feet, falling upon his back. We thought he must be killed by the fall; but, singular enough, he rose immediately, shook himself, and a second effort in climbing proved more successful. The animal had not received the slightest apparent injury. Before evening we were safely over, having spent five or six hours in passing this chasm. Once more we found ourselves upon the level of the prairie, and after proceeding some hundred yards, on looking back, not a sign of the immense fissure was visible. The waste we were then travelling over was at least two hundred and fifty miles in width, and the two chasms I have mentioned were the reservoirs, and at the same time the channels of escape for the heavy rains which fall upon it during the wet season. This prairie is undoubtedly one of the largest in the world, and the chasm is in perfect keeping with the size of the prairie. At sundown we came upon a water-hole, and encamped for the night By this time we were entirely out of provisions, and our sufferings commenced. The next day we resumed our journey, now severely feeling the cravings of hunger. During our journey we saw small herds of deer and antelopes, doubtless enticed to the water courses by the recent rains, and towards night we descried a drove of mustangs upon a swell of the prairie half a mile ahead of us. They were all extremely shy, and although we discharged our rifles at them, not a shot was successful. In the evening we encamped near a water-hole, overspreading an area of some twenty acres, but very shallow. Large flocks of Spanish curlews, one of the best-flavoured birds that fly, were hovering about, and lighting on it on all sides. Had I been in possession of a double-barrelled gun, with small shot, we could have had at least one good meal; but as I had but a heavy rifle and my bow and arrows, we were obliged to go to sleep supperless. About two o'clock the next morning we saddled and resumed our travel, journeying by the stars, still in a north-east direction. On leaving the Wakoes, we thought that we could be not more than one hundred miles from the Comanche encampment. We had now ridden much more than that distance, and were still on the immense prairie. To relieve ourselves from the horrible suspense we were in--to push forward, with the hope of procuring some provisions--to get somewhere, in short, was now our object, and we pressed onward, with the hope of finding relief. Our horses had, as yet, suffered less than ourselves, for the grazing in the prairie had been good; but our now hurried march, and the difficult crossing of the immense chasms, began to tell upon them. At sunrise we halted near a small pond of water, to rest the animals and allow them an hour to feed. While stretched upon the ground, we perceived a large antelope slowly approaching--now stopping, now walking a few steps nearer, evidently inquisitive as to who, or rather what, we might be. His curiosity cost him his life: with a well-directed shot, Gabriel brought him down, and none but a starved man could appreciate our delight. We cooked the best part of the animal, made a plentiful dinner, and resumed our journey. For three days more, the same dreary spectacle of a boundless prairie was still before us. Not a sign was visible that we were bearing its edge. We journeyed rapidly on till near the middle of the afternoon of the third day, when we noticed a dark spot a mile and a half ahead of us. At first we thought it to be a low bush, but as we gradually neared it, it had more the appearance of a rock, although nothing of the kind had been seen from the time we first came on the prairie, with the exception of those at the chasms. "A buffalo" cried Roche, whose keen eye at last penetrated the mystery: "a buffalo, lying down and asleep." Here, then, was another chance for making a good meal, and we felt our courage invigorated. Gabriel went ahead on foot, with his rifle, in the hope that he should at least get near enough to wound the animal, while Roche and I made every preparation for the chase. Disencumbering our horses of every pound of superfluous weight, we started for the sport, rendered doubly exciting by the memory of our recent suffering from starvation. For a mile beyond where the buffalo lay, the prairie rose gradually, and we knew nothing of the nature of the ground beyond. Gabriel crept till within a hundred and fifty yards of the animal, which _now_ began to move and show signs of uneasiness. Gabriel gave him a shot: evidently hit, he rose from the ground, whisked his long tail, and looked for a moment inquiringly about him. I still kept my position a few hundred yards from Gabriel, who reloaded his piece. Another shot followed: the buffalo again lashed his sides, and then started off at a rapid gallop, directly towards the sun, evidently wounded, but not seriously hurt. Roche and I started In pursuit, keeping close together, until we had nearly reached the top of the distant rise in the prairie. Here my horse, being of a superior mettle, passed that of Roche, and, on reaching the summit, I found the buffalo still galloping rapidly, at a quarter of a mile's distance. The descent of the prairie was very gradual, and I could plainly see every object within five miles. I now applied the spurs to my horse, who dashed madly down the declivity. Giving one look behind, I saw that Roche, or at least his horse, had entirely given up the chase. The prairie was comparatively smooth, and although I dared not to spur my horse to his full speed, I was soon alongside of the huge animal. It was a bull of the largest size, and his bright, glaring eyeballs, peering out from his shaggy frontlet of hair, showed plainly that he was maddened by his wounds and the hot pursuit. It was with the greatest difficulty, so fierce did the buffalo look, that I could get my horse within twenty yards of him, and when I fired one of my pistols at that distance, my ball did not take effect. As the chase progressed, my horse came to his work more kindly, and soon appeared to take a great interest in the exciting race. I let him fall back a little, and then, by dashing the spurs deep into his sides, brought him up directly alongside, and within three or four yards of the infuriated beast. I fired my other pistol, and the buffalo shrank as the ball struck just behind the long hair on his shoulders. I was under such headway when I fired, that I was obliged to pass the animal, cutting across close to his head, and then again dropping behind. At that moment I lost my rifle, and I had nothing left but my bow and arrows; but by this time I had become so much excited by the chase, that I could not think of giving it up. Still at full speed, I strung my bow, once more put my spurs to my horse, he flew by the buffalo's right side, and I buried my arrow deep into his ribs. The animal was now frothing and foaming with rage and pain. His eyes were like two deep red balls of fire, his tongue was out and curling upwards, his long tufted tail curled on high, or lashing madly against his sides. A more wild, and at the same time a more magnificent picture of desperation I had never witnessed. By this time my horse was completely subjected to my guidance. He no longer pricked his ears with fear, or sheered off as I approached the monster, but, on the contrary, ran directly up, so that I could almost touch the animal while bending my bow. I had five or six more arrows left, but I resolved not to shoot again unless I were certain of touching a vital part, and succeeded at last in hitting him deep betwixt the shoulder and the ribs. This wound caused the maddened beast to spring backwards, and I dashed past him as he vainly endeavoured to gore and overthrow my horse. The chase was now over, the buffalo stopped and soon rolled on the ground perfectly helpless. I had just finished him with two other arrows, when, for the first time, I perceived that I was no longer alone. Thirty or forty well-mounted Indians were quietly looking at me in an approving manner, as if congratulating me on my success. They were the Comanches we had been so long seeking for. I made myself known to them, and claimed the hospitality which a year before had been offered to me by their chief, "the white raven." They all surrounded me and welcomed me in the most kind manner. Three of them started to fetch my rifle and to join my companions, who were some eight or nine miles eastward, while I followed my new friends to their encampment, which was but a few miles distant. They had been buffalo hunting, and had just reached the top of the swell when they perceived me and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the subject of my recent chase. The Comanches are a noble and most powerful nation. They have hundreds of villages, between which they are wandering all the year round. They are well armed, and always move in bodies of some hundreds, and even thousands; all active and skilful horsemen, living principally by the chase, and feeding occasionally, during their distant excursions, upon the flesh of the mustang, which, after all, is a delightful food, especially when fat and young. A great council of the whole tribe is held once a year, besides which there are quarterly assemblies, where all important matters are discussed. They have long been hostile to the Mexicans, but are less so now; their hatred having been concentrated upon the Yankees and Texans whom they consider as brigands. They do not apply themselves to the culture of the ground as the Wakoes, yet they own innumerable herds of horses, cattle, and sheep, which graze in the northern prairies, and they are indubitably one of the wealthiest people in the world. They have a great profusion of gold, which they obtain from the neighbourhood of the San Seba hills, and work it themselves into bracelets, armlets, diadems, as well as bits for their horses, and ornaments to their saddles. Like all the Shoshones' tribe, they are most elegant horsemen, and by dint of caresses and good treatment render the animals so familiar and attached to them, that I have often seen some of them following their masters like dogs, licking their hands and shoulders. The Comanche young women are exquisitely clean, good-looking, and but slightly bronzed; indeed the Spaniards of Andalusia and the Calabrians are darker than they are. Their voice is soft, their motions dignified and graceful: their eyes dark and flashing, when excited, but otherwise mild, with a soft tinge of melancholy. The only fault to be found in them is that they are inclined to be too stout, arising from their not taking exercise. The Comanches, like all the tribes of the Shoshone breed, are generous and liberal to excess. You can take what you please from the wigwam--horses, skins, rich furs, gold, anything, in fact, except their arms and their females, whom they love fondly. Yet they are not jealous; they are too conscious of their own superiority to fear anything, and besides, they respect too much the weaker sex to harbour any injurious suspicion. It is a very remarkable fact, that all the tribes who claim any affinity with the Shoshones, the Apaches, the Comanches, and the Pawnies Loups, have always rejected with scorn any kind of spirits when offered to them by the traders. They say that "Shoba-wapo" (the fire-water) is the greatest enemy of the Indian race, and that the Yankees, too cowardly to fight the Indians as men, have invented this terrible poison to destroy them without danger. "We hated once the Spaniards and the Watchinangoes (Mexicans)," they say, "but they were honourable men compared with the thieves of Texas. The few among the Spanish race who would fight, did so as warriors; and they had laws among them which punished with death those who would give or sell this poison to the Indians." The consequence of this abstinence from spirits is, that these Western nations improve and increase rapidly; while, on the contrary, the Eastern tribes, in close contact with the Yankees, gradually disappear. The Sioux, the Osage, the Winnebego, and other Eastern tribes, are very cruel in disposition; they show no mercy, and consider every means fair, however treacherous, to conquer an enemy. Not so with the Indians to the west of the Rocky Mountains. They have a spirit of chivalry, which prevents them taking any injurious advantage. As I have before observed, an Indian will never fire his rifle upon an enemy who is armed only with his lance, bow, and arrows; or if he does, and kills him, he will not take his scalp, as it would constantly recall to his mind that he had killed a defenceless foe. Private encounters with their enemies, the Navahoes and Arrapahoes, are conducted as tournaments in the days of yore. Two Indians will run full speed against each other with their well-poised lance; on their shield, with equal skill, they will receive the blow; then, turning round, they will salute each other as a mark of esteem from one brave foe to another. Such incidents happen daily, but they will not be believed by the Europeans, who have the vanity of considering themselves alone as possessing "le sentiment du chevalresque et du beau;" besides, they are accustomed to read so many horrible accounts of massacres committed by the savages, that the idea of a red skin is always associated in their mind with the picture of burning stakes and slow torture. It is a mistake, and a sad one; would to God that our highly civilized nations of Europe had to answer for no more cruelties than those perpetrated by the numerous gallant tribes of Western America. I was present one day when a military party came from Fort Bent, on the head of the Arkansa, to offer presents and make proposals of peace to the Comanche council. The commander made a long speech, after which he offered I don't know how many hundred gallons of whisky. One of the ancient chiefs had not patience to hear any more, and he rose full of indignation. His name was Auku-wonze-zee, that is to say, "he who is superlatively old." "Silence," he said; "speak no more, double-tongued Oposh-ton-ehoc (Yankee). Why comest thou, false-hearted, to pour thy deceitful words into the ears of my young men? You tell us you come for peace, and you offered to us poison. Silence, Oposh-ton-ehoc, let me hear thee no more, for I am an old man; and now that I have one foot in the happy grounds of immortality, it pains me to think that I leave my people so near a nation of liars. An errand of peace! Does the snake offer peace to the squirrel when he kills him with the poison of his dreaded glance? does an Indian say to the beaver, he comes to offer peace when he sets his traps for him? No! a pale-faced Oposh-ton-ehoc? or a '_Kish emok comho-anac_' (the beast that gets drunk and lies, the Texan), can alone thus he to nature--but not a red-skin, nor even a girlish Wachinangoe, nor a proud '_Shakanah_' (Englishman), nor a '_Mahamate kosh ehoj_' (open-heart, open-handed Frenchman). "Be silent, then, man with the tongue of a snake, the heart of a deer, and the ill-will of a scorpion; be silent, for I and mine despise thee and thine. Yet, fear not; thou mayest depart in peace, for a Comanche is too noble not to respect a white flag, even when carried by a wolf or a fox. Till sunset eat, but alone; smoke, but not in our calumets; repose in two or three lodges, for we can burn them after pollution; and then depart, and say to thy people, that the Comanche, having but one tongue and one nature, can neither speak with nor understand an Oposh-ton-ehoc. "Take back thy presents; my young men will have none of them, for they can accept nothing except from a friend; and if thou look'st at their feet, thou shalt see their mocassins, their leggings, even their bridles, are braided with the hair of thy people, perhaps of thy brothers. Take thy 'Shoba-wapo' (fire-water), and give it to drink to thy warriors, that we may see them raving and tumbling like swine. Silence, and away with thee. Our squaws will follow ye on your trail for a mile, to burn even the grass ye have trampled upon near our village. Away with you all, now and for ever! I have said!!!" The American force was numerous and well armed, and a moment, a single moment, deeply wounded by these bitter taunts, they looked as if they would fight and die to resent the insult; but it was only a transient feeling; for they had their orders, and they went away, scorned and humiliated. Perhaps, too, an inward voice whispered to them that they deserved their shame and humiliation; perhaps the contrast of their conduct with that of the savages awakened in them some better feeling, which had a long time remained dormant, and they were now disgusted with themselves and their odious policy. As it was, they departed in silence, and the last of their line had vanished under the horizon before the Indians could smother the indignation and resentment which the strangers had excited within their hearts. Days, however, passed away, and with them the recollection of the event. Afterwards, I chanced to meet, in the Arkansas, with the Colonel who commanded. He was giving a very strange version of his expedition; and as I heard facts so distorted, I could not help repeating to myself the words of Auku-wonze-zee, "The Oposh-ton-ehoc is a double-tongued liar!" CHAPTER XXIII. One morning, Roche, Gabriel, and myself were summoned to the great council lodge; there we met with the four Comanches whom we had rescued some days before, and it would be difficult to translate from their glowing language their warm expressions of friendship and gratitude. We learned from them, that before the return of the Cayugas from the prairie they had concealed themselves in some crevices of the earth until night, when they contrived to seize upon three of the horses, and effect their escape. At the passage of the great chasm they had found the old red sash of Roche, which they produced, asking at the same time permission to keep it as a token from their Pale-face brothers. We shook hands and exchanged pipes. How noble and warm is an Indian in his feelings. In the lodge we also perceived our friend of former days, "Opishka Koaki" (the White Raven); but as he was about to address the assembly, we restrained from renewing our acquaintance, and directed all our attention to what was transacting. After the ordinary ceremonies, Opishka Koaki commenced:-- "Warriors, I am glad you have so quickly understood my messages; but when does a Comanche turn his back on receiving the vermilion from his chief? Never! You know I called you for war, and you have come. 'Tis well. Yet, though I am a chief, I am a man. I may mistake; I may now and then strike a wrong path. I will do nothing, attempt nothing, without knowing the thoughts of my brave warriors. Then hear me! "There live under the sun a nation of Reds-kins, whose men are cowards, never striking an enemy but when his back is turned, or when they number a hundred to one. This nation crawls in the prairies about the great chasms; they live upon carrion, and have no other horses but those they can steal from the deer-hearted Watchinangoes. Do my warrior? know such a people? Let them speak! I hear!" At that moment a hundred voices shouted the name of Cayugas. "I knew it!" exclaimed the chief, "there is but one such a people with a red skin; my warriors are keen-sighted, they cannot be mistaken. Now, we Comanches never take the scalp of a Cayuga any more than that of a hedge-hog; we kick them out of our way when they cross our path; that's all. Hear me, my braves, and believe me, though I will speak strange words: these reptiles have thought that because we have not killed them as toads and scorpions, it was because we were afraid of their poison. One thousand Cayugas, among other prisoners, have taken eight Comanches; they have eaten four of them, they would have eaten them all, but the braves escaped; they are here. Now, is an impure Cayuga a fit tomb for the body of a Comanche warrior? No! I read the answer in your burning eyes. What then shall we do? Shall we chastise them and give their carcases to the crows and wolves? What say my warriors; let them speak? speak? I hear?" All were silent, though it was evident that their feelings had been violently agitated. At last, an old chief rose and addressed Opishka:-- "Great chief," said he, "why askest thou? Can a Comanche and warrior think in any way but one? Look at them! See you not into their hearts? Perceive you not how fast the blood runs into their veins? Why ask? I say; thou knowest well their hearts' voice is but the echo of thine own. Say but a word, say, 'Let us go the Cayugas!' Thy warriors will answer: 'We are ready, show us the path!' Chief of a mighty nation, thou hast heard my voice, and in my voice are heard the thousand voices of thy thousand warriors." Opishka Koaki rose again. "I knew it, but I wanted to hear it, for it does my heart good; it makes me proud to command so many brave warriors. Then to-morrow we start, and we will hunt the Cayugas even to the deepest of their burrows. I have said!" Then the four rescued prisoners recounted how they had been taken, and what sufferings they had undergone. They spoke of their unfortunate companions and of their horrible fate, which they should have also shared had it not been for the courage of the three Pale-face brothers, who killed five Cayugas, and cut their bonds; they themselves killed five more of their cowardly foes and escaped, but till to-day they had had no occasion of telling to their tribe the bravery and generosity of the three Pale-faces. At this narrative all the warriors, young and old, looked as though they were personally indebted to us, and would have come, one and all, to shake our hands, had it not been for the inviolable rules of the council lodge, which forbids any kind of disorder. It is probable that the scene had been prepared beforehand by the excellent chief, who wished to introduce us to his warriors under advantageous circumstances. He waved his hand to claim attention, and spoke again. "It is now twelve moons, it is more! I met Owato Wanisha and his two brothers. He is a chief of the great Shoshones, who are our grandfathers, far--far under the setting of the sun beyond the big mountains. His two brothers are two great warriors from powerful nations far in the east and beyond the Sioux, the Chippewas beyond the 'Oposh-ton-ehoc[20],' even beyond the deep salt-water. One is a 'Shakanah' (Englishman), the other a 'Naimewa' from the 'Maha-mate-kosh-ehoj' (an exile from the French). They are good and they are brave: they have learned wisdom from the 'Macota Konayas' (priests), and Owato Wanisha knows how to build strong forts, which he can better defend than the Watchinangoes have defended theirs. I have invited him and his brother to come and taste the buffalo of our prairies, to ride our horses, and smoke the calumet of friendship. They have come, and will remain with us till we ourselves go to the big stony river (the Colorado of the West). They have come; they are our guests; the best we can command is their own already; but they are chiefs and warriors. A chief is a chief everywhere. We must treat them as chiefs, and let them select a band of warriors for themselves to follow them till they go away from us. [Footnote 20: Americans.] "You have heard what our scouts have said; they would have been eaten by the Cayugas, had it not been for our guests, who have preserved not only the lives of four men--that is nothing--but the honour of the tribe. I need say no more; I know my young men; I know my warriors; I know they will love the strangers as chiefs and brothers. I have said." Having thus spoken, he walked slowly out of the lodge, which was immediately deserted for the green lawn before the village. There we were sumptuously entertained by all the principal chiefs and warriors of the tribe, after which they conducted us to a new tent, which they had erected for us in the middle of their principal square. There we found also six magnificent horses, well caparisoned, tied to the posts of the tent; they were the presents of the chiefs. At a few steps from the door was an immense shield, suspended upon four posts, and on which a beaver, the head of an eagle, and the claws of a bear were admirably painted--the first totem for me, the second for Gabriel, and the third for Roche. We gratefully thanked our hospitable hosts, and retired to rest in our rich and elegant dwelling. The next morning we awoke just in time to witness the ceremony of departure; a war party, already on horseback, was waiting for their chief. At the foot of our shield were one hundred lances, whose owners belonged to the family and kindred of the Indians whom we had rescued from the Cayugas. A few minutes afterwards, the owners of the weapons appeared in the square, well mounted and armed, to place themselves at our entire disposal. We could not put our authority to a better use than by joining our friends in their expedition, so when the chief arrived, surrounded by the elders of the tribe, Gabriel advanced towards him. "Chief," he said, "and wise men of a brave nation, you have conferred upon us a trust of which we are proud. To Owato Wanisha, perhaps, it was due, for he is mighty in his tribe; but I and the Shakanah are no chiefs. We will not decline your favour, but we must deserve it. The young beaver will remain in the village, to learn the wisdom of your old men, but the eagle and the bear must and will accompany you in your expedition. You have given them brave warriors, who would scorn to remain at home; we will follow you." This proposition was received with flattering acclamations, and the gallant army soon afterwards left the village on its mission of revenge. The Cayugas were, before that expedition, a powerful tribe, about whom little or nothing had ever been written or known. In their customs and manners of living they resemble in every way the Club Indians of the Colorado, who were destroyed by the small-pox. They led a wandering prairie life, but generally were too cowardly to fight well, and too inexpert in hunting to surround themselves with comforts, even in the midst of plenty. Like the Clubs, they are cannibals, though, I suspect, they would not eat a white man. They have but few horses, and these only when they could be procured by stealth, for, almost always starving, they could not afford to breed them, always eating the colts before they could be useful. Their grounds lie in the vicinity of the great fork of the Rio Puerco, by lat. 35 degrees and long. 105 degrees from Greenwich. The whole nation do not possess half-a-dozen of rifles, most all of them being armed with clubs, bows, and arrows. Some old Comanches have assured me that the Cayuga country abounds with fine gold. While I was with the Comanches, waiting the return of the expedition, I had an accident which nearly cost me my life. Having learned that there were many fine basses to be fished in a stream some twenty miles off, I started on horseback, with the view of passing the night there. I took with me a buffalo-hide, a blanket, and a tin cup, and two hours before sunset I arrived at the spot. As the weather had been dry for some time, I could not pick any worms, so I thought of killing some bird or other small animal, whose flesh would answer for bait. Not falling in with any birds, I determined to seek for a rabbit or a frog. To save time, I lighted a fire, put my water to boil, spread my hide and blanket, arranged my saddle for a pillow, and then went in search of bait, and sassafras to make tea with. While looking for sassafras, I perceived a nest upon a small oak near to the stream. I climbed to take the young ones, obtained two, which I put in my round jacket, and looked about me to see where I should jump upon the ground. After much turning about, I suspended myself by the hands from a hanging branch, and allowed myself to drop down. My left foot fell flat, but under the soft sole of my right mocassin I felt something alive, heaving or rolling. At a glance, I perceived that my foot was on the body of a large rattle-snake, with his head just forcing itself from under my heel. Thus taken by surprise, I stood motionless and with my heart throbbing. The reptile worked itself free, and twisting round my leg, almost in a second bit me two or three times. The sharp pain which I felt from the fangs recalled me to consciousness, and though I felt convinced that I was lost, I resolved that my destroyer should die also. With my bowie-knife I cut its body into a hundred pieces; walked away very sad and gloomy, and sat upon my blanket near the fire. How rapid and tumultuous were my thoughts! To die so young, and such a dog's death! My mind reverted to the happy scenes of my early youth, when I had a mother, and played so merrily among the golden grapes of sunny Frances and when later I wandered with my father in the Holy Land, in Italy and Egypt. I also thought of the Shoshones, of Roche and Gabriel, and I sighed. It was a moral agony; for the physical pain had subsided, and my leg was almost benumbed by paralysis. The sun went down, and the last carmine tinges of his departed glory reminded me how soon my sun would set; then the big burning tears smothered me, for I was young, very young, and I could not command the courage and resignation to die such a horrible death. Had I been wounded in the field, leading my brave Shoshones, and hallooing the war-whoop, I would have cared very little about it; but thus, like a dog! It was horrible! and I dropped my head upon my knees, thinking how few hours I had now to live. I was awakened from that absorbing torpor by my poor horse, who was busy licking my ears. The faithful animal suspected something was wrong, for usually at such a time I would sing Spanish ditties or some Indian war-songs. Sunset was also the time when I brushed and patted him. The intelligent brute knew that I suffered, and, in its own way, showed me that it participated in my affliction. My water, too, was boiling on the fire, and the bubbling of the water seemed to be a voice raised on purpose to divert my gloomy thoughts. "Aye, boil, bubble, evaporate," exclaimed I; "what do I care for water or tea now?" Scarcely had I finished these words, when, turning suddenly my head round, my attention was attracted by an object before me, and a gleam of hope irradiated my gloomy mind: close to my feet I beheld five or six stems of the rattlesnake master weed. I well knew the plant, but I had been incredulous as to its properties. Often had I heard the Indians speaking of its virtues, but I had never believed them. "A drowning man will seize at a floating straw." By a violent effort I got up on my legs, went to fetch my knife, which I had left near the dead snake, and I commenced digging for two or three of the roots, with all the energy of despair. These roots I cut into small slices, and threw them in the boiling water. It soon produced a dark green decoction, which I swallowed; it was evidently a powerful alkali, strongly impregnated with a flavour of turpentine. I then cut my mocassin, for my foot was already swollen to twice its ordinary size, bathed the wounds with a few drops of the liquid, and, chewing some of the slices, I applied them as a poultice, and tied them on with my scarf and handkerchief. I then put some more water to boil, and, half an hour afterwards, having drank another pint of the bitter decoction, I drew my blanket over me. In a minute or less after the second draught, my brain whirled, and a strange dizziness overtook me, which was followed by a powerful perspiration, and soon afterwards all was blank. The next morning I was awakened by my horse again licking me. He wondered why I slept so late. I felt my head ache dreadfully, and I perceived that the burning rays of the sun for the last two hours had been darting upon my uncovered face. It was some time before I could collect my thoughts, and make out where I was. At last the memory of the dreadful incident of the previous evening broke upon my mind, and I regretted I had not died during my unconsciousness; for I thought that the weakness I felt was an effect of the poison, and that I should have to undergo an awful lingering death. Yet all around me, nature was smiling. Thousands of birds were singing their morning concert, and, at a short distance, the low and soft murmuring of the stream reminded me of my excessive thirst. Alas! well hath the Italian bard sung,-- "Nessun maggior dolore Che riccordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria!"--DANTE. As I lay and reflected upon my utter helplessness, again my heart swelled and my tears flowed freely. Thirst, however, gave me the courage which the freshness and beauty of nature had not been able to inspire me with. I thought of attempting to rise to fetch some water; but first I slowly passed my hand down my thigh, to feel my knee. I thought the inflammation would have rendered it as thick as my waist. My hand was upon my knee, and so sudden was the shock that my heart ceased to beat. Joy can be most painful; for I felt an acute pang through my breast, as from a blow of a dagger. When I moved my finger across the cap of my knee, it was quite free from inflammation, and perfectly sound. Again there was a reaction. "Ay," thought I, "'tis all on the ankle. How can I escape? Is not the poison a deadly one?" I dared not throw away the blanket and investigate further. I felt weaker and weaker, and again covered my head to sleep. I did sleep, and when I awoke this time I felt myself a little invigorated, though my lips and tongue were quite parched. I remembered everything; down my hand slided; I could not reach my ankle, so I put up my knee. I removed the scarf and the poultice of master weed. My handkerchief was full of a dried, green, glutinous matter, and the wounds looked clean. Joy gave me strength. I went to the stream, drank plentifully, and washed. I still felt very feverish; and, although I was safe from the immediate effects of the poison, I knew that I had yet to suffer. Grateful to Heaven for my preservation, I saddled my faithful companion, and, wrapping myself closely in my buffalo-hide, I set off to the Comanche camp. My senses had left me before I arrived there. They found me on the ground, and my horse standing by me. Fifteen days afterwards I awoke to consciousness, a weak and emaciated being. During this whole time I had been raving under a cerebral fever, death hovering over me. It appears that I had received a coup-de-soleil, in addition to my other mischances. When I returned to consciousness, I was astonished to see Gabriel and Roche by my side; the expedition had returned triumphant. The Cayugas' villages had been burnt, almost all their warriors destroyed, and those who remained had sought a shelter in the fissures of the earth, or in the passes of the mountains unknown to any but themselves. Two of the Mexican girls had also been rescued, but what had become of the others they could not tell. The kindness and cares of my friends, with the invigorating influence of a beautiful clime, soon restored me to comparative health, but it was a long time before I was strong enough to ride and resume my former exercise. During that time Gabriel made frequent excursions to the southern and even to the Mexican settlements, and on the return from his last trip he brought up news which caused the Indians, for that year, to forsake their hunting, and remain at home. General Lamar and his associates had hit upon a plan not only treacherous, but in open defiance of all the laws of nations. But what, indeed, could be expected from a people who murdered their guests, invited by them, and under the sanction of a white flag. I refer to the massacre of the Comanche chiefs at San Antonio. The President of Mexico, Bustamente, had a view to a cessation of hostilities with Texas. The Texans had sent ambassadors to negotiate a recognition and treaty of alliance and friendship with other nations; they had despatched Hamilton to England to supplicate the cabinet of St. James to lend its mighty influence towards the recognition of Texas by Mexico; and while these negotiations were pending, and the peace with Mexico still in force, Lamar, in defiance of all good faith and honour, was secretly preparing an expedition, which, under the disguise of a mercantile caravan, was intended to conquer Santa Fé and all the northern Mexican provinces. This expedition of the Texans, as it would pass through the territory of the Comanches, whose villages, &c., if unprotected, would, in all probability, have been plundered, and their women and children murdered, induced the Comanches to break up their camp, and return home as speedily as possible. CHAPTER XXIV. During my convalescence, my tent, or I should say, the lawn before it, became a kind of general divan, where the warriors and elders of the tribe would assemble, to smoke and relate the strange stories of days gone by. Some of them appeared to me particularly beautiful; I shall, therefore, narrate them to the reader. One old chief began as follows:-- "I will tell ye of the Shkote-nah Pishkuan, or the boat of fire, when I saw it for the first time. Since that, the grass has withered fifteen times in the prairies, and I have grown weak and old. Then I was a warrior, and many scalps have I taken on the eastern shores of the Sabine. Then, also, the Pale-faces living in the prairies were good; we fought them because we were enemies, but they never stole anything from us, nor we from them. "Well, at that time, we were once in the spring hunting the buffalo. The Caddoes, who are now a small tribe of starved dogs, were then a large powerful nation, extending from the Cross Timbers to the waters of the great stream, in the East, but they were gamblers and drunkards; they would sell all their furs for the; 'Shoba-wapo' (fire-water), and return to their villages to poison their squaws, and make brutes of their children. Soon they got nothing more to sell; and as they could not now do without the 'Shoba-wapo,' they began to steal. They would steal the horses and oxen of the Pale-faces, and say 'The Comanches did it.' When they killed trappers or travellers, they would go to the fort of the Yankees and say to them, 'Go to the wigwams of the Comanches, and you will see the scalps of your friends hanging upon long poles.' But we did not care for we knew it was not true. "A long time passed away, when the evil spirit of the Cad does whispered to them to come to the villages of the Comanches while they were hunting, and to take away with them all that they could. They did so, entering the war-path as foxes and owls, during night. When they arrived, they found nothing but squaws, old women, and little children. Yet these fought well, and many of the Caddoes were killed before they abandoned their lodges. They soon found us out in the hunting-ground; and our great chief ordered me to start with five hundred warriors, and never return until the Caddoes should have no home, and wander like deer and starved wolves in the open prairie. "I followed the track. First, I burnt their great villages in the Cross Timbers, and then pursued them in the swamps and cane-brakes of the East, where they concealed themselves among the long lizards of the water (the alligators). We, however, came up with them again, and they crossed the Sabine, to take shelter among the Yankees, where they had another village, which was their largest and their richest. We followed, and on the very shores of their river, although a thousand miles from our own country, and where the waters are dyed with the red clay of the soil, we encamped round their wigwams and prepared to conquer. "It was at the gloomy season, when it rains night and day; the river was high, the earth damp, and our young braves shivering, even under their blankets. It was evening, when, far to the south, above one of the windings of the stream, I saw a thick black smoke rising as a tall pine among the clouds, and I watched it closely. It came towards us; and as the sky darkened and night came on, sparks of fire showed the progress of the strange sight. Soon noises were heard, like those of the mountains when the evil spirits are shaking them; the sounds were awful, solemn, and regular, like the throbs of a warrior's heart; and now and then a sharp, shrill scream would rend the air and awake other terrible voices in the forest. "It came, and deer, bears, panthers were passing among us, madly flying before the dreaded unknown. It came, it flew, nearer and nearer, till we saw it plainly with its two big mouths, spitting fire like the burning mountains of the West. It rained very hard, and yet we saw all. It was like a long fish, shaped like a canoe, and its sides had many eyes, full of bright light as the stars above. "I saw no one with the monster; he was alone, breaking the waters and splashing them with his arms, his legs, or his fins. On the top, and it was very high, there was a square lodge. Once I thought I could see a man in it, but it was a fancy; or perhaps the soul of the thing, watching from its hiding-place for a prey which it might seize upon. Happily it was dark, very dark, and being in a hollow along the banks, we could not be perceived; and the dreadful thing passed. "The Caddoes uttered a loud scream of fear and agony, their hearts were melted. We said nothing, for we were Comanches and warriors; and yet I felt strange, and was fixed to where I stood. A man is but a man, and even a Red-skin cannot struggle with a spirit. The scream of the Caddoes, however, frightened the monster; its flanks opened and discharged some tremendous Anim Tekis (thunders) on the village. I heard the crashing of the logs, the splitting of the hides covering the lodges, and when the smoke was all gone, it left a smell of powder; the monster was far, far off and there was no trace of it left, except the moans of the wounded and the lamentation of the squaws among the Caddoes. "I and my young men soon recovered our senses; we entered the village, burnt everything, and killed the warriors. They would not fight; but as they were thieves, we destroyed them. We returned to our own villages, every one of us with many scalps, and since that time the Caddoes have never been a nation; they wander from north to south, and from east to west; they have huts made with the bark of trees, or they take shelter in the burrows of the prairie dogs, with the owls and the snakes; but they have no lodges, no wigwams, no villages. Thus may it be with all the foes of our great nation." This an historical fact. The steamboat "Beaver" made its first exploration upon the Red River, some eighty miles above the French settlement of Nachitochy, just at the very time that the Comanches were attacking the last Caddoe village upon the banks of the Red River. These poor savages yelled with terror when the strange mass passed thus before them, and, either from wanton cruelty or from fear of an attack, the boat fired four guns, loaded with grape-shot, upon the village, from which they were not a hundred yards distant. The following is a narrative of events which happened in the time of Mosh Kohta (buffalo), a great chief, hundreds of years ago, when the unfortunate "La Salle" was shipwrecked upon the coast of Texas, while endeavouring to discover the mouth of the Mississippi. Such records are very numerous among the great prairie tribes; they bear sometimes the Ossianic type, and are related every evening during the month of February, when the "Divines" and the elders of the nation teach to the young men the traditions of former days. "It was in the time of a chief, a great chief, strong, cunning, and wise, a chief of many bold deeds. His name was Mosh Kohta. "It is a long while! No Pale-faces dwelt in the land of plenty (the translation of the Indian word 'Texas'); our grandfathers had just received it from the Great Spirit, and they had come from the setting of the sun across the big mountains to take possession. We were a great nation--we are so now, we have always been so, and we will ever be. At that time, also, our tribe spread all along the western shores of the great stream Mississippi, for no Pale-face had yet settled upon it. We were a great people, ruled by a mighty chief; the earth, the trees, the rivers, and the air know his name. Is there a place in the mountains or the prairies where the name of Mosh Kohta has not been pronounced and praised? "At that time a strange warlike people of the Pale-Faces broke their big canoes along our coasts of the South, and they all landed on the shore, well armed with big guns and long rifles, but they had nothing to eat. These were the 'Mahamate-kosh-ehoj' (the French); their chief was a good man, a warrior, and a great traveller; he had started from the northern territories of the Algonquins, to go across the salt water in far distant lands, and bring back with him many good things which the Red-skins wanted:--warm blankets to sleep upon, flints to strike a fire, axes to cut the trees, and knives to skin the bear and the buffalo. He was a good man, and loved the Indians, for they also were good, and good people will always love each other. "He met with Mosh Kohta; our warriors would not fight the strangers, for they were hungry, and their voices were soft; they were also too few to be feared, though their courage seemed great under misfortune, and they would sing and laugh while they suffered. We gave them food, we helped them to take from the waters the planks of their big canoe, and to build the first wigwam in which the Pale-faces ever dwelt in Texas. Two moons they remained hunting the buffalo with our young men, till at last their chief and his bravest warriors started in some small canoes of ours, to see if they could not enter the great stream, by following the coast towards the sunrise. He was gone four moons, and when he returned, he had lost half of his men, by sickness, hunger, and fatigue; yet Mosh Kohta bade him not despair; the great chief promised the Pale-faces to conduct them in the spring to the great stream, and for several more moons we lived all together, as braves and brothers should. Then, for the first time also, the Comanches got some of their rifles, and others knives. Was it good--was it bad? Who knows? Yet the lance and arrows killed as many buffaloes as lead and black dust (powder), and the squaws could take off the skin of a deer or a beaver without knives. How they did it, no one knows now; but they did it, though they had not yet seen the keen and sharp knives of the Pale-faces. "However, it was not long time before many of the strangers tired of remaining so far from their wigwams: their chief every morning would look for hours towards the rising of the sun, as if the eyes of his soul could see through the immensity of the prairies; he became gloomy as a man of dark deeds (a Médecin), and one day, with half of his men, he began a long inland trail across prairies, swamps, and rivers, so much did he dread to die far from his lodge. Yet he did die: not of sickness, not of hunger, but under the knife of another Pale-face; and he was the first one from strange countries whose bones blanched without burial in the waste. Often the evening breeze whispers his name along the swells of the southern plains, for he was a brave man, and no doubt he is now smoking with his great Manitou. "Well, he started. At that time the buffalo and the deer were plentiful, and the men went on their trail gaily till they reached the river of many forks (Trinity River), for they knew that every day brought them nearer and nearer to the forts of their people, though it was yet a long way--very long. The Pale-face chief had a son with him; a noble youth, fair to look upon, active and strong: the Comanches loved him. Mosh Kohta had advised him to distrust two of his own warriors; but he was young and generous, incapable of wrong or cowardice; he would not suspect it in others, especially among men of his own colour and nation, who had shared his toils, his dangers, his sorrows, and his joys. "Now these two warriors our great chief had spoken of were bad men and very greedy; they were ambitious too, and believed that, by killing their chief and his son, they would themselves command the band. One evening, while they were all eating the meal of friendship, groans were heard--a murder had been committed. The other warriors sprang up; they saw their chief dead, and the two warriors coming towards them; their revenge was quick--quick as that of the panther: the two base warriors were killed. "Then there was a great fight among the Pale-face band, in which many were slain; but the young man and some other braves escaped from their enemies, and, after two moons, reached the Arkansas, where they found their friends and some Makota Conayas (priests--black-gowns). The remainder of the band who left us, and who murdered their chief, our ancestors destroyed like reptiles, for they were venomous and bad. The other half of the Pale-faces, who had remained behind in their wood wigwams, followed our tribe to our great villages, became Comanches, and took squaws. Their children and grandchildren have formed a good and brave nation; they are paler than the Comanches, but their heart is all the same; and often in the hunting-grounds they join our hunters, partake of the same meals, and agree like brothers. These are the nation of the Wakoes, not far in the south, upon the trail of the Cross Timbers. But who knows not the Wakoes?--even children can go to their hospitable lodges." This episode is historical. In the early months of 1684, four vessels left La Rochelle, in France, for the colonization of the Mississippi, bearing two hundred and eighty persons. The expedition was commanded by La Salle, who brought with him his nephew, Moranget. After a delay at Santo Domingo, which lasted two years, the expedition, missing the mouth of the Mississippi, entered the Bay of Matagorda, where they were shipwrecked. "There," says Bancroft in his History of America, "under the suns of June, with timber felled in an inland grove, and dragged for a league over the prairie grass, the colonists prepared to build a shelter, La Salle being the architect, and himself making the beams, and tenons, and mortises." This is the settlement which made Texas a part of Louisiana. La Salle proposed to seek the Mississippi in the canoes of the Indians, who had showed themselves friendly, and, after an absence of about four months, and the loss of thirty men, he returned in rags, having failed to find "the fatal river." The eloquent American historian gives him a noble character:--"On the return of La Salle," says he, "he learned that a mutiny had broken out among his men, and they had destroyed a part of the colony's provisions. Heaven and man seemed his enemies, and, with the giant energy of an indomitable will, having lost his hopes of fortune, his hopes of fame, with his colony diminished to about one hundred, among whom discontent had given birth to plans of crime--with no European nearer than the river Pamuco, and no French nearer than the northern shores of the Mississippi, he resolved to travel on foot to his countrymen in the North, and renew his attempts at colonization." It appears that La Salle left sixty men behind him, and on the 20th of March, 1686, after a buffalo-hunt, he was murdered by Duhaut and L'Archevêque, two adventurers, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. They had long shown a spirit of mutiny, and the malignity of disappointed avarice so maddened them that they murdered their unfortunate commander. I will borrow a page of Bancroft, who is more explicit than the Comanche chroniclers. "Leaving sixty men at Fort St. Louis, in January, 1687, La Salle, with the other portion of his men, departed for Canada. Lading their baggage on the wild horses from the Cenis, which found their pasture everywhere in the prairies, in shoes made of green buffalo-hides; for want of other paths, following the track of the buffalo, and using skins as the only shelter against rain, winning favour with the savages by the confiding courage of their leader--they ascended the streams towards the first ridges of highlands, walking through beautiful plains and groves, among deer and buffaloes, now fording the clear rivulets, now building a bridge by felling a giant tree across a stream, till they had passed the basin of the Colorado, and in the upland country had reached a branch of the Trinity River. "In the little company of wanderers there were two men, Duhaut and L'Archevêque, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. Of these, Duhaut had long shown a spirit of mutiny; the base malignity of disappointed avarice, maddened by sufferings and impatient of control, awakened the fiercest passions of ungovernable hatred. Inviting Moranget to take charge of the fruits of a buffalo-hunt, they quarrelled with him and murdered him. "Wondering at the delay of his nephew's return, La Salle, on the 20th of March, went to seek him. At the brink of the river he observed eagles hovering, as if over carrion, and he fired an alarm-gun. Warned by the sound, Duhaut and L'Archevêque crossed the river; the former skulked in the prairie grass; of the latter, La Salle asked, 'Where is my nephew?' At the moment of the answer, Duhaut fired; and, without uttering a word, La Salle fell dead. 'You are down now, grand bashaw! You are down now!' shouted one of the conspirators, as they despoiled his remains, which were left on the prairie, naked and without burial, to be devoured by wild beasts. "Such was the end of this daring adventurer. For force of will and vast conceptions; for various knowledge, and quick adaptation of his genius to untried circumstances; for a sublime magnanimity, that resigned itself to the will of Heaven, and yet triumphed over affliction by energy of purpose and unfaltering hope,--he had no superior among his countrymen. He had won the affection of the Governor of Canada, the esteem of Colbert, the confidence of Seignelay, the favour of Louis XIV. After beginning the colonization of Upper Canada, he perfected the discovery of the Mississippi from the falls of St. Anthony to its mouth; and he will be remembered through all times as the father of colonization in the great central valley of the West." Jontel, with the brother and son of La Salle, and others, but seven in all, obtained a guide from the Indians for the Arkansas, and, fording torrents, crossing ravines, making a ferry over rivers with rafts or boats of buffalo-hides, without meeting the cheering custom of the calumet, till they reached the country above the Red River, and leaving an esteemed companion in a wilderness grave, on the 24th of July, came upon a branch of the Mississippi. There they beheld on an island a large cross. Never did Christians gaze on that emblem with more deep-felt emotion. Near it stood a log hut, tenanted by two Frenchmen. A missionary, of the name of Tonti, had descended that river, and full of grief at not finding La Salle, had established a post near the Arkansas. As the reader may perceive, there is not much difference between our printed records and the traditions of the Comanches. CHAPTER XXV. It was during my convalescence that the fate of the Texan expedition to Santa Fé was decided; and as the real facts have been studiously concealed, and my intelligence, gained from the Indians, who were disinterested parties, was afterwards fully corroborated by an Irish gentleman who had been persuaded to join it, I may as well relate them here. Assuming the character of friendly traders, with some hundred dollars' worth of goods, as a blind to their real intentions, which were to surprise the Mexicans during the neutrality which had been agreed upon, about five hundred men were collected at Austin, for the expedition. Although the report was everywhere circulated that this was to be a trading experiment, the expedition, when it quitted Austin, certainly wore a very different appearance. The men had been supplied with uniforms; generals, and colonels, and majors were dashing about in every direction, and they quitted the capital of Texas with drums beating and colours flying. Deceived by the Texans, a few respectable Europeans were induced to join this expedition, either for scientific research or the desire to visit a new and unexplored country, under such protection, little imagining that they had associated themselves with a large band of robbers, for no other name can be given to these lawless plunderers. But if the force made a tolerable appearance on its quitting the capital, a few hours' march put an end to all discipline and restraint. Although the country abounded with game, and it was killed from mere wantonness, such was their improvidence, that they were obliged to resort to their salt pork and other provisions; and as, in thirty days, forty large casks of whisky were consumed, it is easy to suppose, which was indeed the fact, that every night that they halted, the camp was a scene of drunkenness and riot. During the last few days of the march through the game country they killed more than a hundred buffaloes, yet, three days after they had quitted the prairies, and had entered the dreary northern deserts, they had no provisions left, and were compelled to eat their worn-out and miserable horses. A true account of their horrible sufferings would beggar all description; they became so weak and utterly helpless that half a dozen Mexicans, well mounted, could have destroyed them all. Yet, miserable as they were, and under the necessity of conciliating the Indians, they could not forego their piratical and thieving propensities. They fell upon a small village of the Wakoes, whose warriors and hunters were absent, and, not satisfied with taking away all the eatables they could carry, they amused themselves with firing the Indian stores and shooting the children, and did not leave until the village was reduced to a heap of burning ashes. This act of cowardice sealed the fate of the expedition, which was so constantly harassed by the Wakoe warriors, and had lost already so many scalps, that afterwards meeting with a small party of Mexicans, they surrendered to them, that they might escape the well deserved and unrelenting vengeance of the warlike Wakoes. Such was the fate of the Texan expedition; but there is another portion of the history which has been much talked of in the United States; I mean the history of their captivity and sufferings, while on their road from Santa Fé to Mexico. Mr. Daniel Webster hath made it a government question, and Mr. Pakenham, the British Ambassador in Mexico, has employed all the influence of his own position to restore to freedom the half-dozen of Englishmen who had joined the expedition. Of course, they knew nothing of the circumstances, except from the report of the Texans themselves. Now, it is but just that the Mexicans' version should be heard also. The latter is the true one--at least, so far as I can judge by what I saw, what I heard upon the spot, and from some Mexican documents yet In my possession. The day before their capture the Texans, who for the last thirteen days had suffered all the pangs of hunger, came suddenly upon a flock of several thousand sheep, belonging to the Mexican government. As usual, the flock was under the charge of a Mexican family, living in a small covered waggon, in which they could remove from spot to spot, shifting the pasture-ground as required. In that country but very few individuals are employed to keep the largest herds of animals; but they are always accompanied by a number of noble dogs, which appear to be particularly adapted to protect and guide the animals. These dogs do not run about, they never bark or bite, but, on the contrary, they will walk gently up to any one of the flock that happens to stray, take it carefully by the ear, and lead it back to its companions. The sheep do not show the least fear of these dogs, nor is there any occasion for it. These useful guardians are a cross of the Newfoundland and St. Bernard breed, of a very large size, and very sagacious. Now, if the Texans had asked for a hundred sheep, either for money or in barter (a sheep is worth about sixpence), they would have been supplied directly; but as soon as the flock was perceived one of the Texan leaders exclaimed, with an oath, "Mexicans' property, and a welcome booty; upon it, my boys, upon it, and no mercy," One of the poor Mexicans who had charge was shot through the head; the others succeeded In escaping by throwing themselves down among the thick ranks of the affrighted animals, till out of rifle-distance; then began a carnage without discrimination, and the Texans never ceased firing until the prairie was for miles covered with the bodies of their victims. Yet this grand victory was not purchased without a severe loss, for the dogs defended the property intrusted to their care; they scorned to run away, and before they could all be killed they had torn to pieces half a dozen of the Texans, and dreadfully lacerated as many more. The evening was, of course, spent in revelry; the dangers and fatigues, the delays and vexations of the march were now considered over, and high were their anticipations of the rich plunder in perspective. But this was the only feat accomplished by this Texan expedition: the Mexicans had not been deceived; they had had intelligence of the real nature of the expedition, and advanced parties had been sent out to announce its approach. Twenty-four hours after they had regaled themselves with mutton, one of these parties, amounting to about one hundred men, made its appearance. All the excitement of the previous evening had evaporated, the Texans sent out a flag of truce, and three hundred of them surrendered themselves unconditionally to this small Mexican force. On one point the European nations had been much deceived, which is as to the character of the Mexican soldier, who appears to be looked upon with a degree of contempt. This is a great mistake, but it has arisen from the false reports and unfounded aspersions of the Texans, as to the result of many of their engagements. I can boldly assert (although opposed to them) that there is not a braver individual in the world than the Mexican; in my opinion, far superior to the Texan, although probably not equal to him in the knowledge and use of firearms. One great cause of the Mexican army having occasionally met with defeat is that the Mexicans, who are of the oldest and best Castile blood, retain the pride of the Spanish race to an absurd degree. The sons of the old nobility are appointed as officers; they learn nothing, know nothing of military tactics--they know how to die bravely, and that is all. The battle of St. Jacinta, which decided the separation of Texas, has been greatly cried up by the Texans; the fact is, it was no battle at all. The Mexicans were commanded by Santa Anna, who has great military talent, and the Mexicans reposed full confidence in him. Santa Anna feeling very unwell, went to a farm-house, at a small distance, to recover himself, and was captured by half-a-dozen Texan robbers, who took him on to the Texan army. The loss of the general with the knowledge that there was no one fit to supply his place, dispirited the Mexicans, and they retreated; but since that time they have proved to the Texans how insecure they are, even at this moment England and other European governments have thought proper, very hastily, to recognize Texas, but Mexico has not, and will not. The expedition to Santa Fé, by which the Texans broke the peace, occurred in the autumn of 1841; the Mexican army entered Texas in the spring of 1842, sweeping everything before them, from San Antonio de Bejar to the Colorado; but the Texans had sent emissaries to Yucatan, to induce that province to declare its independence. The war in Yucatan obliged the Mexican army to march back in that direction to quell the insurrection, which it did, and then returned to Texas, and again took possession of San Antonio de Bejar in September of the same year, taking many prisoners of consequence away with them. It was the intention of the Mexicans to have returned to Texas in the spring of the year, but fresh disturbances in Yucatan prevented Santa Anna from executing his projects. Texas is, therefore, by no means secure, its population is decreasing, and those who had respectability attached to their character have left it. I hardly need observe that the Texan national debt, now amounting to thirteen millions of dollars, may, for many reasons, turn out to be not a very profitable investment[21]. [Footnote 21: Perhaps the English reader will find it extraordinary that Santa Anna, once freed from his captivity, should not have re-entered Texas with an overwhelming force. The reason is very simple: Bustamente was a rival of Santa Anna for the presidency; the general's absence allowed him to intrigue, and when the news reached the capital that Santa Anna had fallen a prisoner, it became necessary to elect a new president. Bustamente had never been very popular, but having promised to the American population of the seaports that nothing should be attempted against Texas if he were elected, these, through mercantile interest, supported him, not only with their influence but also with their money. When, at last, Santa Anna returned to Mexico, his power was lost, and his designs upon Texas were discarded by his successor. Bustamente was a man entirely devoid of energy, and he looked with apathy upon the numerous aggressions made by the Texans upon the borders of Mexico. As soon, however, as the Mexicans heard that the Texans, in spite of the law of nations, had sent an expedition to Santa Fé, at the very time that they were making overtures for peace and recognition of their independence, they called upon Bustamente to account for his culpable want of energy. Believing himself secure against any revolution, the president answered with harsh measures, and the soldiery, now exasperated, put Santa Anna at their head, forcing him to re-assume the presidency. Bustamente ran away to Paris, the Santa Fé expedition was soon defeated, and, as we have seen, the president, Santa Anna, began his dictatorship with the invasion of Texas (March, 1842).] But to return to the Santa Fé expedition. The Texans were deprived of their arms and conducted to a small village, called Anton Chico, till orders should have been received as to their future disposition, from General Armigo, governor of the province. It is not to be supposed that in a small village of about one hundred government shepherds, several hundred famished men could be supplied with all the necessaries and superfluities of life. The Texans accuse the Mexicans of having starved them in Anton Chico, forgetting that every Texan had the same ration of provisions as the Mexican soldier. Of course the Texans now attempted to fall back upon the original falsehood, that they were a trading expedition, and had been destroyed and plundered by the Indians; but, unfortunately, the assault upon the sheep and the cowardly massacre of the shepherds were not to be got over. As Governor Armigo very justly observed to them, if they were traders, they had committed murder; if they were not traders, they were prisoners of war. After a painful journey of four months, the prisoners arrived in the old capital of Mexico, where the few strangers who had been induced to join the expedition, in ignorance of its destination, were immediately restored to liberty; the rest were sent, some to the mines, to dig for the metal they were so anxious to obtain, and some were passed over to the police of the city, to be employed in the cleaning of the streets. Many American newspapers have filled their columns with all manner of histories relative to this expedition; catalogues of the cruelties practised by the Mexicans have been given, and the sympathizing American public have been called upon to relieve the unfortunate men who had escaped. I will only give one instance of misrepresentation in the New Orleans _Picayune_, and put in juxta-position the real truth. It will be quite sufficient. Mr. Kendal says:-- "As the sun was about setting, those of us who were in front were startled by the report of two guns, following each other in quick succession. We turned to ascertain the cause, and soon found that a poor, unfortunate man, named Golpin, a merchant, and who had started upon the expedition with a small amount of goods, had been shot by the rear-guard, for no other reason than that he was too sick and weak to keep up. He had made a bargain with one of the guard to ride his mule a short distance, for which he was to pay him his only shirt! While in the act of taking it off, Salazar (the commanding officer) ordered a soldier to shoot him. The first ball only wounded the wretched man, but the second killed him instantly, and he fell with his shirt still about his face. Golpin was a citizen of the United States, and reached Texas a short time before the expedition. He was a harmless, inoffensive man, of most delicate constitution, and, during a greater part of the time we were upon the road, was obliged to ride in one of the waggons." This story is, of course, very pathetic; but here we have a few lines taken from the _Bee_, a New Orleans newspaper:-- "_January_, 1840. HORRIBLE MURDER!--Yesterday, at the plantation of William Reynolds, was committed one of those acts which revolt human nature. Henry Golpin, the overseer, a Creole, and strongly suspected of being a quadroone, had for some time acted improperly towards Mrs. Reynolds and daughters. A few days ago, a letter from W.R. was received from St. Louis, stating that he would return home at the latter end of the week; and Golpin, fearing that the ladies would complain of his conduct and have him turned out, poisoned them with the juice of some berries poured into their coffee. Death was almost instantaneous. A pretty mulatto girl of sixteen, an attendant and _protégée_ of the young ladies, entering the room where the corpses were already stiff, found the miscreant busy in taking off their jewels and breaking up some recesses, where he knew that there were a few thousand dollars, In specie and paper, the produce of a recent sale of negroes. At first, he tried to coax the girl, offering to run away and marry her, but she repulsed him with indignation, and, forcing herself off his hold, she ran away to call for help. Snatching suddenly a rifle, he opened a window, and as the honest girl ran across the square towards the negroes' huts, she fell quite dead, with a ball passing across her temples. The Governor and police of the first and second municipalities offer one thousand dollars reward for the apprehension of the miserable assassin, who, of course, has absconded." This is the "_harmless and inoffensive man of delicate constitution, a citizen of the United States,_" which Mr. Kendal would give us as a martyr of Mexican barbarism. During the trip across the prairie, every man, except two or three, had shunned him, so well did every one know his character: and now I will describe the events which caused him to be shot in the way above related. Two journeys after they had left Santa Fé they passed the night in a little village, four men being billeted in every house under the charge of one soldier. Golpin and another of his stamp were, however, left without any guard in the house of a small retailer of aguardiente, who, being now absent, had left his old wife alone in the house. She was a good hospitable soul, and thought it a Christian duty to administer to the poor prisoners all the relief she could afford. She gave them some of her husband's linen, bathed their feet with warm water mixed with whisky, and served up to them a plentiful supper. Before they retired to rest, she made them punch, and gave them a small bottle of liquor, which they could conceal about them and use on the road. The next morning the sounds of the drums called the prisoners in the square to get ready for their departure. Golpin went to the old woman's room, insisting that she should give them more of the liquor. Now the poor thing had already done much. Liquor in these far inland countries, where there are no distilleries, reaches the enormous price of from sixteen to twenty dollars a gallon. So she mildly but firmly refused, upon which Golpin seized from the nail, where it was hung, a very heavy key, which he knew to be that of the little cellar underground, where the woman kept the liquor. She tried to regain possession of it, but during the struggle Golpin beat her brains out with a bar of iron that was in the room. This deed perpetrated, he opened the trap-door to the cellar, and among the folds of his blanket and that of his companion concealed as many flasks as they could carry. They then shut the street-door and joined their companions. Two hours afterwards, the husband returned, and knocked in vain; at last, he broke open the door, and beheld his help-mate barbarously mangled. A neighbour soon told him about the two Texan guests, and the wretched man having made his depositions to an alcade, or constable, they both started upon fresh horses, and at noon overtook the prisoners. The commanding officers soon ascertained who were the two men that had been billeted at the old woman's, and found them surrounded by a group of Texans, making themselves merry with the stolen liqnor. Seeing that they were discovered, to save his life, Golpin's companion immediately peached, and related the whole of the transaction. Of course the assassin was executed. CHAPTER XXVI. At that time, the Pawnee Picts, themselves an offset of the Shoshones and Comanches, and speaking the same language--tribe residing upon the northern shores of the Red River, and who had always been at peace with their ancestors, had committed some depredations upon the northern territory of the Comanches. The chiefs, as usual, waited several moons for reparation to be offered by the offenders, but as none came, it was feared that the Picts had been influenced by the American agents to forget their long friendship, and commence hostilities with them. It was, therefore, resolved that we should enter the war path, and obtain by force that justice which friendship could no longer command. The road which we had to travel, to arrive at the town of the Pawnee Picts, was rough and uneven, running over hills and intersected by deep gullies. Bad as it was, and faint and tired as were our horses, in ten days we reached a small prairie, within six miles of the river, on the other side of which lay the principal village of the Pawnee Picts. The heavens now became suddenly overcast, and a thunder-storm soon rendered it impossible for even our best warriors to see their way. A halt was consequently ordered; and, not withstanding a tremendous rain, we slept soundly till morn, when a drove of horses, numbering some hundreds, was discovered some distance to our left. In all appearance they were tame animals, and many thought they could see the Pawnee warriors riding them. Four of us immediately started to reconnoitre, and we made our preparations for attack; as we gradually approached there appeared to be no little commotion among the herd, which we now plainly perceived to be horses without any riders. When we first noticed them, we discerned two or three white spots, which Gabriel and I mistook for flags; a nearer view convinced us that they were young colts. We continued our route. The sun had scarcely risen when we arrived on the shore of the river, which was lined with hundreds of canoes, each carrying green branches at their bows and white flags at their sterns. Shortly afterwards, several chiefs passed over to our side, and invited all our principal chiefs to come over to the village and talk to the Pawnee Picts, who wished to remain brothers with their friends--the Comanches. This was consented to, and Gabriel, Roche, and I accompanied them. This village was admirably protected from attack on every side; and in front, the Red River, there clear and transparent, rolls its deep waters. At the back of the village, stony and perpendicular mountains rise to the height of two thousand feet, and their ascent is impossible, except by ladders and ropes, or where steps have been cut into the rock. The wigwams, one thousand in number, extend, for the space of four miles, upon a beautiful piece of rich alluvial soil in a very high state of cultivation; the fields were well fenced and luxuriant with maize, pumpkins, melons, beans, and squashes. The space between the mountains and the river, on each side of the village, was thickly planted with close ranks of prickly pear, impassable to man or beast, so that the only way in which the Pawnees could be attacked was in front, by forcing a passage across the river, which could not be effected without a great loss of life, as the Pawnees are a brave people and well supplied with rifles, although in their prairie hunts they prefer to use their lances and their arrows. When we entered the great council lodge, the great chief, Wetara Sharoj, received us with great urbanity, assigned to us places next to him, and gave the signal for the Pawnee elders to enter the lodge. I was very much astonished to see among them some white men, dressed in splendid military uniforms; but the ceremonies having begun, and it being the Indian custom to assume indifference, whatever your feelings may be, I remained where I was. Just at the moment that the pipe-bearer was lighting the calumet of peace, the venerable Pawnee chief advanced to the middle of the lodge, and addressed the Comanches:-- "My sight is old, for I have seen a hundred winters, and yet I can recognize those who once were friends. I see among you Opishka Koaki (the White Raven), and the leader of a great people; Pemeh-Katey (the Long Carbine), and the wise Hah-nee (the Old Beaver). You are friends, and we should offer you at once the calumet of peace, but you have come as foes; as long as you think you have cause to remain so, it would be mean and unworthy of the Pawnees to sue and beg for what perchance they may obtain by their courage. Yet the Comanches and the Pawnees have been friends too long a time to fall upon each other as a starved wolf does upon a wounded buffalo. A strong cause must excite them to fight against each other, and then, when it comes, it must be a war of extermination, for when a man breaks with an old friend, he becomes more bitter in his vengeance than against an utter stranger. Let me hear what the brave Comanches have to complain of, and any reparation, consistent with the dignity of a Pawnee chief, shall be made, sooner than risk a war between brothers who have so long hunted together and fought together against a common enemy. I have said." Opishka Koaki ordered me to light the Comanche calumet of peace, and advancing to the place left vacant by the ancient chief, he answered:-- "I have heard words of great wisdom; a Comanche always loves and respects wisdom; I love and respect my father, Wetara Sharoj; I will tell him what are the complaints of our warriors, but before, as we have come as foes, it is but just that we should be the first to offer the pipe of peace; take it, chief, for we must be friends; I will tell our wrongs, and leave it to the justice of the great Pawnee to efface them, and repair the loss his young men have caused to a nation of friends." The pipe was accepted, and the "talk" went on. It appeared that a party of one hundred Pawnee hunters had had their horses estampeded one night, by some hostile Indians. For five days they forced their way on foot, till entering the northern territory of the Comanches, they met with a drove of horses and cattle. They would never have touched them, had it not been that, a short time afterwards, they met with another very numerous party of their inveterate enemies--the Kiowas, by whom they were pressed so very hard, that they were obliged to return to the place where the Comanche herds of horse were grazing, and to take them, to escape their foes. So far, all was right; it was nothing more than what the Comanches would have clone themselves in the land of the Pawnees; but what had angered the Comanche warriors was, that the hundred horses thus borrowed in necessity, had never been returned, although the party had arrived at the village two moons ago. When the Pawnees heard that we had no other causes for complaint, they showed, by their expressions of friendship, that the ties of long brotherhood were not to be so easily broken; and indeed the Pawnees had, some time before, sent ten of their men with one hundred of their finest horses, to compensate for those which they had taken and rather ill-treated, in their hurried escape from the Kiowas. But they had taken a different road from that by which we had come, and consequently we had missed them. Of course, the council broke up, and the Indians, who had remained on the other side of the river, were invited in the village to partake of the Pawnee hospitality. Gabriel and I soon accosted the strangely-dressed foreigners. In fact, we were seeking each other, and I learned that they had been a long time among the Pawnees, and would have passed over to the Comanches, in order to confer with me on certain political matters, had it not been that they were aware of the great antipathy the chiefs of that tribe entertained against the inhabitants of the United States. The facts were as follows:--These people were emissaries of the Mormons, a new sect which had sprung up in the States, and which was rapidly increasing in numbers. This sect had been created by a certain Joseph Smith. Round the standard of this bold and ambitious leader, swarms of people crowded from every part, and had settled upon a vast extent of ground on the eastern shores of the Mississippi, and there established a civil, religious, and military power, as anomalous as it was dangerous to the United States. In order to accomplish his ulterior views, this modern apostle wished to establish relations of peace and friendship with all the Indians in the great western territories, and had for that purpose sent messengers among the various tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. Having also learned, by the St. Louis trappers, that strangers, long established among the Shoshones of the Pacific Ocean, were now residing among the Comanches, Smith had ordered his emissaries among the Pawnees to endeavour to meet us, and concert together as to what measures could be taken so as to secure a general league, defensive and offensive, against the Americans and the Texans, and which was to extend from the Mississippi to the western seas. Such a proposition of course could not be immediately answered. I therefore obtained leave from the Comanches to take the two strangers with us, and we all returned together. It would be useless to relate to the reader that which passed between me and the emissaries of the Mormons; let it suffice to say, that after a residence of three weeks in the village, they were conducted back to the Pawnees. With the advice of Gabriel, I determined to go myself and confer with the principal Mormon leaders; resolving in my own mind that if our interview was not satisfactory, I would continue on to Europe, and endeavour either to engage a company of merchants to enter into direct communication with the Shoshones or to obtain the support of the English government, in furtherance of the objects I had in view for the advantage of the tribe. As a large portion of the Comanches were making preparations for their annual migration to the east of Texas, Roche, Gabriel, and I joined this party, and having exchanged an affectionate farewell with the remainder of the tribe, and received many valuable presents, we started, taking the direction of the Saline Lake, which forms the head-waters of the southern branch or fork of the river Brazos. There we met again with our old friends the Wakoes, and learned that there was a party of sixty or seventy Yankees or Texans roaming about the upper forks of the Trinity, committing all sorts of depredations, and painting their bodies like the Indians, that their enormities might be laid to the account of the savages. This may appear strange to the reader, but it has been a common practice for some time. There have always been in the United States a numerous body of individuals, who, having by their crimes been compelled to quit the settlements of the east, have sought shelter out of the reach of civilization. These individuals are all desperate characters, and, uniting themselves in small bands, come fearlessly among the savages, taking squaws, and living among them till a sufficient period has elapsed to enable them to venture, under an assumed name and in a distant state, to return with impunity and enjoy the wealth acquired by plunder and assassination. This is the history of the major portion of the western pioneers, whose courage and virtues have been so much celebrated by American writers. As they increased in numbers, these pioneers conceived a plan by which they acquired great wealth. They united together, forming a society of land privateers or buccaneers, and made incursions into the very heart of the French and Spanish settlements of the west, where, not being expected, they surprised the people and carried off great booty. When, however, these Spanish and French possessions were incorporated into the United States, they altered their system of plunder; and under the name of Border's Buggles, they infested the states of the Mississippi and Tennessee, where they obtained such a dreaded reputation that the government sent out many expeditions against them, which, however, were useless, as all the principal magistrates of these states had contrived even themselves to be elected members of the fraternity. The increase of population broke up this system, and the "Buggles" were compelled to resort to other measures. Well acquainted with Indian manners, they would dress and paint themselves as savages, and attack the caravans to Mexico. The traders, in their reports, would attribute the deed to some tribe of Indians, probably, at the moment of the attack some five or six hundred miles distant from the spot. This land pirating is now carried to a greater extent than ever. Bands of fifty or sixty pioneers steal horses, cattle, and slaves from the west of Arkansas and Louisiana, and sell them in Texas, where they have their agents; and then, under the disguise of Indian warriors, they attack plantations in Texas, carrying away with them large herds of horses and cattle, they drive to Missouri, through the lonely mountain passes of the Arkansas, or to the Attalapas and Opelousas districts of Western Louisiana, forcing their way through the lakes and swamps on both shores of the river Sabine. The party mentioned by the Wakoes was one of this last description. We left our friends, and, after a journey of three days, we crossed the Brazos, close to a rich copper mine, which has for ages been worked by the Indians, who used, as they do now, this metal for the points of their arrows and lances. Another three days' journey brought us to one of the forks of the Trinity, and there we met with two companies of Texan rangers and spies, under the command of a certain Captain Hunt, who had been sent from the lower part of the river to protect the northern plantations. With him I found five gentlemen, who, tired of residing in Texas had taken the opportunity of this military escort to return to the Arkansas. As soon as they heard that I was going there myself, they offered to join me, which I agreed to, as it was now arranged that Gabriel and Roche should not accompany me further than to the Red River[22]. [Footnote 22: It may appear singular to the reader that the Comanches, being always at war with the Texans, should not have immediately attacked the party under the orders of Hunt. But we were merely a hunting-party; that is to say, our band was composed chiefly of young hunters, not yet warriors. On such occasions there is frequently, though not always, an ancient warrior for every eight hunters, just to show to them the crafts of Indian mode of hunting. These parties often bring with them their squaws and children, and never fight but when obliged to do so.] The next morning I received a visit from Hunt and two or three inferior officers, to advise upon the following subject. An agricultural company from Kentucky had obtained from the Texan government a grant of lands on the upper forks of the Trinity. There twenty-five or thirty families had settled, and they had with them numerous cattle, horses, mules, and donkeys of a very superior breed. On the very evening I met with the Texan rangers, the settlement had been visited by a party of ruffians, who stole everything, murdering sixty or seventy men, women and children, and firing all the cottages and log-houses of this rising and prosperous village. All the corpses were shockingly mangled and scalped, and as the assailants were painted in the Indian fashion, the few inhabitants who had escaped and gained the Texan camp declared that the marauders were Comanches. This I denied stoutly, as did the Comanche party, and we all proceeded with the Texan force to Lewisburg, the site of the massacre. As soon as I viewed the bodies, lying here and there, I at once was positive that the deed had been committed by white men. The Comanche chief could scarcely restrain his indignation; he rode close to Captain Hunt and sternly said to him-- "Stoop, Pale-face of a Texan, and look with thy eyes open; be honest if thou canst, and confess that thou knowest by thine own experience that this deed is that of white men. What Comanche ever scalped women and children? Stoop, I say, and behold--a shame on thy colour and race--a race of wolves, preying upon each other; a race of jaguars, killing the female after having forced her--stoop and see. "The bodies of the young women have been atrociously and cowardly abused--seest thou? Thou well knowest the Indian is too noble and too proud to level himself to the rank of a Texan or of a brute." Twenty of our Comanches started on the tracks, and in the evening brought three prisoners to the camp. They were desperate blackguards, well known to every one of the soldiers under Captain Hunt, who, in spite of their Indian disguise, identified them immediately. Hunt refused to punish them, or to make any further pursuit, under the plea that he had received orders to act against Indian depredators, but not against white men. "If such is the case," interrupted the Comanche chief, "retire immediately with thy men, even to-night, or the breeze of evening will repeat thy words to my young men, who would give a lesson of justice to the Texans. Away with thee, if thou valuest thy scalp: justice shall be done by Indians; it is time they should take it into their own hands, when Pale-faces are afraid of each other." Captain Hunt was wise enough to retire without replying, and the next morning the Indians armed with cords and switches, gave a severe whipping to the brigands, for having assumed the Comanche paint and war-whoop. This first part of their punishment being over, their paint was washed off, and the chief passed them over to us, who were, with the addition I have mentioned, now eight white men. "They are too mean," said the chief, "to receive a warrior's death; judge them according to your laws; justice must be done." It was an awful responsibility; but we judged them according to the laws of the United States and of Texas: they were condemned to be hanged, and at sunset they were executed. For all I know, their bodies may still hang from the lower branches of the three large cotton-wood trees upon the head waters of the Trinity River. CHAPTER XXVII. We remained a few days where we were encamped to repose our horses and enable them to support the fatigues of our journey through the rugged and swampy wilderness of North-east Texas. Three days after the execution of the three prisoners, some of our Indians, on their return from a buffalo chase, informed us that several Texan companies, numbering two hundred men, were advancing in our direction, and that probably they were out upon an expedition against the Indians of the Cross Timbers, as they had with them many waggons evidently containing nothing but provisions and ammunition. We were encamped in a strong position, and of course did not think of retiring. We waited for the Texan army, determined to give them a good drubbing if they dared to attempt to molest us. Notwithstanding the security of our position, we kept a good watch during the night, but nothing happened to give us alarm. The next morning, two hours after sunrise, we saw the little army halting two miles from us, on the opposite shore of a deep stream, which they must necessarily pass to come to us. A company of the Comanches immediately darted forward to dispute the passage; but some flags of truce being displayed by the Texans, five or six of them were allowed to swim over unmolested. These worthies who came over were Captain Hunt, of whom I have before made mention, and General Smith, commanding the Texan army, who was a certain butcher from Indiana, who had been convicted of having murdered his wife and condemned to be hanged. He had, however, succeeded in escaping from the gaol, and making his way to Texas. The third eminent personage was a Colonel Hookley, and the other two were interpreters. As an Indian will never hurt a foe who comes with a flag of truce, the Comanches brought these gentlemen up to the camp. As soon as General Smith presented himself before the Comanche chief, he commenced a bullying harangue, not stating for what purpose he had come, telling us gratuitously that he was the greatest general in the land, and that all the other officers were fools; that he had with him an innumerable number of stout and powerful warriors, who had no equal in the world; and thus he went on for half an hour, till, breath failing him, he was obliged to stop. After a silence of a few minutes, he asked the Comanche chief what he could answer to that? The chief looked at him and replied, with the most ineffable contempt: "What should I answer?" said he; "I have heard nothing but the words of a fool abusing other fools. I have heard the howl of the wolf long before the buffalo was wounded; there can be no answer to no question; speak, if thou canst; say what thou wishest, or return from whence thou comest, lest the greatest warrior of Texas should be whipped by squaws and boys." The ex-butcher was greatly incensed at the want of breeding and manners of the "poor devil of a savage," but at last he condescended to come to the point. First of all, having learned from Captain Hunt the whole transaction at Lewisburg, and that the Comanches had detained the prisoners, he wished to have them restored to him. Next he wanted to get the three young Pale-faces, who were with the Comanches (meaning me, Gabriel, and Roche). They were three thieves, who had escaped from the gaols, and he, the general, wanted to punish them. After all, they were three vagabonds, d----d strangers, and strangers had nothing to do in Texas, so he must have them. Thirdly and lastly, he wanted to have delivered unto him the five Americans who had left Captain Hunt to join us. He suspected them to be rascals or traitors, or they would not have joined the Indians. He, the great general, wished to investigate closely into the matter, and so the Comanches had better think quick about it, for he was in a hurry. I should here add, that the five Americans, though half-ruined by the thefts of the Texans, had yet with them four or five hundred dollars in good bank-notes, besides which each had a gold watch, well-furnished saddle-bags, a good saddle, and an excellent travelling horse. The chief answered him: "Now I can answer, for I have heard words having a meaning, although I know them to be great lies. I say first, thou shalt not have the prisoners who murdered those of thine own colour, for they are hung yonder upon the tall trees, and there they shall remain till the vultures and the crows have picked their flesh. "I say, secondly, that the three young Pale-faces are here and will answer for themselves, if they will or will not follow thee; but I see thy tongue can utter big lies; for I know they have never mixed with the Pale-faces of the south. As to the five Yankees, we cannot give them back to thee, because we can give back only what we have taken. They are now our guests, and, in our hospitality, they are secure till they leave us of their own accord. I have said!" Scarcely were these words finished, when the general and his four followers found themselves surrounded by twenty Comanches, who conducted them back to the stream in rather an abrupt manner. The greatest officer of the land swore revenge, but as his guides did not understand him, he was lucky enough to reserve his tongue for more lies and more swearing at a more fitting time. He soon rejoined his men, and fell back with them about a mile, apparently to prepare for an attack upon our encampment. In the evening, Roche and some five or six Indians passed the stream a few miles below, that they might observe what the Texans were about; but unfortunately they met with a party of ten of the enemy hunting, and Roche fell heavily under his horse, which was killed by a rifle-shot. One of the Comanches immediately jumped from his horse, rescued Roche from his dangerous position, and, notwithstanding that the Texans were at that instant charging, he helped Roche to his own saddle and bade him fly. Roche was too much stupefied by his fall that he could not reflect, or otherwise his generous nature would never have permitted him to save his life at the expense of that of the noble fellow who was thus sacrificing himself. As it was, he darted away, and his liberator, receiving the shock of the assailants, killed two of them, and fell pierced with their rifle-balls[23]. [Footnote 23: So sacred are the laws of hospitality among these Indians, that a dozen lives would be sacrificed if required, to save that of a guest. In sacrificing himself for Roche, the Comanche considered that he was doing a mere act of duty.] [Illustration: "They galloped across the plain, dragging after them three mangled bodies."] The report of the rifles recalled Roche to his senses, and joining once more the three remaining Indians, he rushed madly upon the hunters, and, closing with one of them, he ripped him up with his knife, while the Comanches had each of them successfully thrown their lassoes, and now galloped across the plain, dragging after them three mangled bodies: Roche recovered his saddle and holsters, and taking with him the corpse of the noble-minded Indian, he gave to his companions the signal for retreat, as the remaining hunters were flying at full speed towards their camp, and succeeded in giving the alarm. An hour after, they returned to us, and, upon their report, it was resolved that we should attack the Texans that very night. About ten o'clock we started, divided into three bands of seventy men each, which made our number about equal to that of the Texans; Roche, who was disabled, with fifteen Indians and the five Americans remaining in the camp. Two of the bands went down the river to cross it without noise, while the third, commanded by Gabriel and me, travelled up the stream for two miles, where we safely effected our passage. We had left the horses ready, in case of accident, under the keeping of five men for every band. The plan was to surprise the Texans, and attack them at once in front and in rear; we succeeded beyond all expectations, the Texans, as usual, being all more or less intoxicated. We reached their fires before any alarm was given. We gave the war-whoop and rushed among the sleepers. Many, many were killed in their deep sleep of intoxication, but those who awoke and had time to seize upon their arms fought certainly better than they would have done had they been sober. The gallant General Smith, the bravest of the brave and ex-butcher, escaped at the very beginning of the affray, but I saw the Comanche chief cleaving the skull of Captain Hunt with his tomahawk. Before their onset, the Indians had secured almost all the enemy's waggons and horses, so that flight to many became impossible. At that particular spot the prairie was undulatory and bare, except on the left of the encampment, where a few bushes skirted the edge of a small stream; but these were too few and too small to afford a refuge to the Texans, one hundred of whom were killed and scalped. The remainder of the night was passed in giving chase to the fugitives, who, at last, halted at a bend of the river, in a position that could not be forced without great loss of life; so the Indians left them, and, after having collected all the horses and the booty they thought worth taking away, they burnt the waggons and returned to their own camp. As we quitted the spot, I could not help occasionally casting a glance behind me, and the spectacle was truly magnificent. Hundreds of barrels, full of grease, salt pork, gin, and whisky, were burning, and the conflagration had now extended to the grass and the dry bushes. We had scarcely crossed the river when the morning breeze sprung up, and now the flames extended in every direction, gaining rapidly upon the spot where the remaining Texans had stood at bay. So fiercely and abruptly did the flames rush upon them, that all simultaneously, men and horses, darted into the water for shelter against the devouring element. Many were drowned in the whirlpools, and those who succeeded in reaching the opposite shore were too miserable and weak to think of anything, except of regaining, if possible, the southern settlements. Though protected from the immediate reach of the flames by the branch of the river upon the shore of which we were encamped, the heat had become so intense, that we were obliged to shift farther to the west. Except in the supply of arms and ammunition, we perceived that our booty was worth nothing. This Texan expedition must have been composed of a very beggarly set, for there was not a single yard of linen, nor a miserable worn-out pair of trousers, to be found in all their bundles and boxes. Among the horses taken, some thirty or forty were immediately identified by the Comanches as their own property, many of them, during the preceding year, having been stolen by a party of Texans, who had invited the Indians to a grand council. Gabriel, Roche, and I, of course, would accept none of the booty; and as time was now becoming to me a question of great importance, we bade farewell to our Comanche friends, and pursued our journey east, in company with the five Americans. During the action, the Comanches had had forty men wounded and only nine killed. Yet, two months afterwards, I read in one of the American newspapers a very singular account of the action. It was a report of General Smith, commandant of the central force of Texas, relative to the glorious expedition against the savages, in which the gallant soldiers of the infant republic had achieved the most wonderful exploits. It said, "That General Smith having been apprised, by the unfortunate Captain Hunt, that five thousand savages had destroyed the rising city of Lewisburg, and murdered all the inhabitants, had immediately hastened with his intrepid fellows to the neighbourhood of the scene; that there, during the night, and when every man was broken down with fatigue, they were attacked by the whole force of the Indians, who had with them some twenty half-breeds and French and English traders. In spite of their disadvantages, the Texans repulsed the Comanches with considerable loss, till the morning, when the men were literally tired with killing, and the prairie was covered with the corpses of two thousand savages; the Texans themselves having lost but thirty or forty men, and these people of little consequence, being emigrants recently arrived from the States. During the day, the stench became so intolerable, that General Smith caused the prairie to be set on fire, and crossing the river, returned home by slow marches, knowing it would be quite useless to pursue the Comanches in the wild and broken prairies of the north. Only one Texan of note had perished during the conflict--the brave and unfortunate Captain Hunt; so that, upon the whole, considering the number of the enemy, the republic may consider this expedition as the most glorious enterprise since the declaration of Texan independence." The paragraph went on in this manner till it filled three close columns, and as a finale, the ex-butcher made an appeal to all the generous and "liberty-loving" sons of the United States and Texas, complaining bitterly against the cabinets of St. James and the Tuileries, who, jealous of the prosperity and glory of Texas, had evidently sent agents (trappers and half-breeds) to excite the savages, through malice, envy, and hatred of the untarnished name and honour of the great North American Republic. The five Americans who accompanied us were of a superior class, three of them from Virginia, and two from Maryland, Their history was that of many others of their countrymen, Three of them had studied the law, one divinity, and the other medicine. Having no opening for the exercise of their profession at home, they had gone westward, to carve a fortune in the new States; but there everything was in such a state of anarchy that they could not earn their subsistence; they removed farther west, until they entered Texas, "a country sprung up but yesterday, and where an immense wealth can be made." They found, on their arrival at this anticipated paradise, their chances of success in their profession still worse than in their own country. The lawyers discovered that, on a moderate computation, there were not less than ten thousand attorneys in Texas, who had emigrated from the Eastern States; the president, the secretaries, constables, tavern-keepers, generals, privates, sailors, porters, and horse-thieves were all of them originally lawyers, or had been brought up to that profession. As to the doctor, he soon found that the apologue of the "wolf and the stork" had been written purposely for medical practice in Texas, for as soon as he had cured a patient (picked the bone out of his throat), he had to consider himself very lucky if he could escape from half-a-dozen inches of the bowie-knife, by way of recompense; moreover, every visit cost him his pocket-handkerchief or his 'bacco-box, if he had any. I have to remark here, that kerchief-taking is a most common joke in Texas, and I wonder very much at it, as no individual of the male species, in that promised land, will ever apply that commodity to its right use, employing for that purpose the pair of snuffers which natural instinct has supplied him with. At the same time, it must be admitted that no professional man can expect employment, without he can flourish a pocket-handkerchief. As for the divine, he soon found that religion was not a commodity required in so young a country, and that he might just as well have speculated in sending a cargo of skates to the West Indies, or supplying Mussulmans with swine. The merits of the voluntary system had not been yet appreciated in Texas; and if he did preach, he had to preach by himself, not being able to obtain a clerk to make the responses. As we travelled along the dreary prairies, these five Eldorado seekers proved to be jovial fellows, and there was about them an elasticity of temper which did not allow them to despond. The divine had made up his mind to go to Rome, and convert the Pope, who, after all, was a clever old _bon vivant_; the doctor would go to Edinburgh, and get selected, from his superior skill, as president of the Surgical College; one of the lawyers determined he would "run for legislature," or keep a bar (a whisky one); the second wished to join the Mormons, who were a set of clever blackguards; and the third thought of going to China, to teach the celestial brother of the sun to use the Kentucky rifle and "brush the English." Some individuals in England have reproached me with indulging too much in building castles in the air; but certainly, compared to those of a Yankee in search after wealth, mine have been most sober speculations. Each of our new companions had some little Texan history to relate, which they declared to be the most rascally, but _smartish_ trick in the world. One of the lawyers was once summoned before a magistrate, and a false New Orleans fifty-dollar bank-note was presented to him, as the identical one he had given to the clerk of Tremont House (the great hotel at Galveston), in payment of his weekly bill. Now, the lawyer had often dreamed of fifties, hundreds, and even of thousands; but fortune had been so fickle with him, that he had never been in possession of bank-notes higher than five or ten dollars, except one of the glorious Cairo Bank twenty-dollar notes, which his father presented to him in Baltimore, when he advised him most paternally to try his luck in the West. By the bye, that twenty-dollar Cairo note's adventures should be written in gold letters, for it enabled the traveller to eat, sleep, and drink, free of cost, from Louisville to St. Louis, through Indiana and Illinois; any tavern-keeper preferring losing the price of a bed, or of a meal, sooner than run the risk of returning good change for bad money. The note was finally changed in St. Louis for a three-dollar, bank of Springfield, which being yet current, at a discount of four cents to the dollar, enabled the fortunate owner to take his last tumbler of port-wine sangaree before his departure for Texas. Of course, the lawyer had no remorse of conscience, in swearing that the note had never been his, but the tavern-keeper and two witnesses swore to his having given it, and the poor fellow was condemned to recash and pay expenses. Having not a cent, he was allowed to go, for it so happened that the gaol was not built for such vagabonds, but for the government officers, who had their sleeping apartments in it. This circumstance occasioned it to be remarked by a few commonly honest people of Galveston, that if the gates of the gaol were closed at night, the community would be much improved. Three days afterwards, a poor captain, from a Boston vessel, was summoned for the very identical bank-note, which he was obliged to pay, though he had never set his foot into the Tremont Hotel. There is in Galveston a new-invented trade, called "the rag-trade," which is very profitable. I refer to the purchasing and selling of false bank-notes, which are, as in the lawyer's case, palmed upon any stranger suspected of having money. On such occasions, the magistrate and the plaintiff share the booty. I may as well here add a fact which is well known in France and the United States. Eight days after the Marquis de Saligny's (French chargé d'affaires) arrival in Houston, he was summoned before a magistrate, and upon the oaths of the parties, found guilty of having passed seven hundred dollars in false notes to a land speculator. He paid the money, but as he never had had in his possession any money, except French gold and notes of the Banque de France, he complained to his government; and this specimen of Texan honesty was the principal cause why the banker (Lafitte) suddenly broke the arrangement he had entered into with General Hamilton (chargé d'affaires from Texas to England and France) for a loan of seven millions of dollars. CHAPTER XXVIII. We had now entered a tract of land similar to that which we had travelled over when on our route from the Wakoes to the Comanches. The prairie was often intersected by chasms, the bottoms of which were perfectly dry, so that we could procure water but once every twenty-four hours, and that, too often so hot and so muddy, that even our poor horses would not drink it freely. They had, however, the advantage over us in point of feeding, for the grass was sweet and tender, and moistened during night by the heavy dews; as for ourselves, we were beginning to starve in earnest. We had anticipated regaling ourselves with the juicy humps of the buffaloes which we should kill, but although we had entered the very heart of their great pasture-land, we had not met with one, nor even with a ground-hog; a snake, or a frog. One evening, the pangs of hunger became so sharp that we were obliged to chew tobacco and pieces of leather to allay our cravings; and we determined that if, the next day at sunset we had no better fortune, we would draw lots to kill one of our horses. That evening we could not sleep, and as murmuring was of no avail, the divine entertained us with a Texan story, just, as he said, to pump the superfluous air out of his body. I shall give it in his own terms:-- "Well, I was coming down the Wabash River (Indiana), when, as it happens nine times out of ten, the steam-boat got aground, and that so firmly, that there was no hope of her floating again till the next flood; so I took my wallet, waded for two hundred yards, with the water to my knees, till I got safe on shore, upon a thick-timbered bank, full of rattle-snakes, thorns of the locust-tree, and spiders' webs, so strong, that I was obliged to cut them with my nose, to clear the way before me. I soon got so entangled by the vines and the briars that I thought I had better turn my back to the stream till I should get to the upland, which I could now and then perceive through the clearings opened between the trees by recent thunder-storms. Unhappily, between the upland and the little ridge on which I stood there was a wide river bottom[24], into which I had scarcely advanced fifty yards when I got bogged. Well, it took me a long while to get out of my miry hole, where I was as fast as a swine in its Arkansas sty; and then I looked about for my wallet, which I had dropped. I could see which way it had gone, for, close to the yawning circle from which I had just extricated myself, there was another smaller one two yards off, into which my wallet had sunk deep, though it was comfortably light; which goes to illustrate the Indiana saying, that there is no conscience so light but will sink in the bottom of the Wabash. Well, I did not care much, as in my wallet I had only an old coloured shirt and a dozen of my own sermons, which I knew by heart, having repeated them a hundred times over. [Footnote 24: River bottom is a space, sometimes of many miles in width, on the side of the river, running parallel with it. It is always very valuable and productive land, but unhealthy, and dangerous to cross, from its boggy nature.] "Being now in a regular fix, I cut a stick, and began wittling and whistling, to lighten my sorrows, till at last I perceived at the bank of the river, and five hundred yards ahead, one of those large rafts, constructed pretty much like Noah's ark, in which a Wabash farmer embarks his cargo of women and fleas, pigs and chickens, corn, whisky, rats, sheep, and stolen niggers; indeed, in most cases, the whole of the cargo is stolen, except the wife and children, the only portion whom the owner would very much like to be rid of; but these will stick to him as naturally as a prairie fly to a horse, as long as he has spirits to drink, pigs to attend to, and breeches to mend. "Well, as she was close to the bank, I got in. The owner was General John Meyer, from Vincennes, and his three sons, the colonel, the captain, and the judge. They lent me a sort of thing, which many years before had probably been a horse-blanket. With it I covered myself, while one of the *'boys spread my clothes to dry, and, as I had nothing left in the world, except thirty dollars in my pocket-book, I kept that constantly in my hand till the evening, when, my clothes being dried, I recovered the use of my pocket. The general was free with his 'Wabash water' (western appellation for whisky), and, finding me to his taste, as he said, he offered me a passage gratis to New Orleans, if I could but submit myself to his homely fare; that is to say, salt pork, with plenty of gravy, four times a day, and a decoction of burnt bran and grains of maize, going under the name of coffee all over the States--the whisky was to be _ad libitum_. "As I considered the terms moderate, I agreed, and the hospitable general soon entrusted me with his plans. He had gone many times to Texas; he loved Texas--it was a free country, according to his heart; and now he had collected all his own (he might have said, 'and other people's too'), to go to New Orleans, where his pigs and corn, exchanged against goods, would enable him to settle with his family in Texas in a gallant style. Upon my inquiring what could be the cause of a certain abominable smell which pervaded the cabin, he apprized me that, in a small closet adjoining, he had secured a dozen of runaway negroes, for the apprehension of whom he would be well rewarded. "Well, the next morning we went on pretty snugly, and I had nothing to complain of, except the fleas and the 'gals,' who bothered me not a little. Three days afterwards we entered the Ohio, and the current being very strong, I began to think myself fortunate, as I should reach New Orleans in less than forty days, passage free. We went on till night, when we stopped, three or four miles from the junction with the Mississippi. The cabin being very warm, and the deck in possession of the pigs, I thought I would sleep ashore, under a tree. The general said it was a capital plan, and, after having drained half a dozen cups of 'stiff, true, downright Yankee No. 1,' we all of us took our blankets (I mean the white-skinned party), and having lighted a great fire, the general, the colonel, the major, and the judge lay down,--an example which I followed as soon as I had neatly folded up my coat and fixed it upon a bush, with my hat and boots, for I was now getting particular, and wished to cut a figure in New Orleans; my thoughts running upon plump and rich widows, which you know are the only provision for us preachers. "Well, my dreams were nothing but the continuation of my thoughts during the day. I fancied I was married, and the owner of a large sugar plantation. I had a good soft bed, and my pious wife was feeling about me with her soft hands, probably to see if my heart beat quick, and if I had good dreams;--a pity I did not awake then, for I should have saved my dollars, as the hand which I was dreaming of was that of the hospitable general searching for my pocket-book. It was late when I opened my eyes--and, lo! the sleepers were gone, with the boat, my boots, my coat, my hat, and, I soon found, with my money. I had been left alone, with a greasy Mackinaw blanket, and as in my stupefaction I gazed all round, and up and down, I saw my pocket-book empty, which the generous general had humanely left to me to put other notes in, 'when I could get any.' I kicked it with my foot, and should indubitably have been food for cat-fish, had I not heard most _à propos_ the puffing of a steam-boat coming down the river." At that moment the parson interrupted his narrative, by observing: "Well, I'd no idea that I had talked so long; why, man, look to the east, 'tis almost daylight." And sure enough the horizon of the prairie was skirted with that red tinge which always announces the break of day in these immense level solitudes. Our companions had all fallen asleep, and our horses, looking to the east, snuffed the air and stamped upon the ground, as if to express their impatience to leave so inhospitable a region, I replied to the parson:-- "It is now too late for us to think of sleeping; let us stir the fire, and go on with your story." We added fuel to the nearly consumed pile, and shaking our blankets, which were heavy with the dew, my companion resumed his narrative:-- "Well, I reckon it was more than half an hour before the steam-boat came in sight, and as the channel of the river ran close in with the shore, I was soon picked up. The boat was going to St. Louis, and as I had not a cent left to pay my passage, I was obliged, in way of payment, to relate my adventure. Everybody laughed. All the men declared the joke was excellent, and that General Meyer was a clever rascal; they told me I should undoubtedly meet him at New Orleans, but it would be of no use. Everybody knew Meyer and his pious family, but he was so smart, that nothing could be done against him. Well, the clerk was a good-humoured fellow; he lent me an old coat and five dollars; the steward brought me a pair of slippers, and somebody gave me a worn-out loose cap. This was very good, but my luck was better still. The cause of my own ruin had been the grounding of a steam-boat; the same accident happening again set me on my legs. Just as we turned the southern point of Illinois, we buried ourselves in a safe bed of mud. It was so common an occurrence, that nobody cared much about it, except a Philadelphian going to Texas; he was in a great hurry to go on westward, and no wonder. I learned afterwards that he had absconded from the bank, of which he was a cashier, with sixty thousand dollars. "Well, as I said, we were bogged; patience was necessary, laments were of no use, so we dined with as much appetite as if nothing had happened, and some of the regular 'boys' took to 'Yooka,' to kill the time. They were regular hands, to be sure, but I was myself trump No. 1. Pity we have no cards with us; it would be amusing to be the first man introducing that game into the western prairies. Well, I looked on, and by-and-bye, I got tired of being merely a spectator. My nose itched, my fingers too. I twisted my five-dollar bill in all senses, till a sharp took me for a flat, and he proposed kindly to pluck me out-and-out. I plucked him in less than no time, winning eighty dollars at a sitting; and when we left off for tea, I felt that I had acquired consequence, and even merit, for money gives both. During the night I was so successful, that when I retired to my berth I found myself the owner of four hundred and fifty dollars, a gold watch, a gold pin, and a silver 'bacco-box. Everything is useful in this world, even getting aground. Now, I never repine at anything. "The next day another steam-boat passed, and picked us up. It was one of those light crafts which speculate upon misfortune; they hunt after stranded boats, as a wolf after wounded deer--they take off the passengers, and charge what they please. From Cincinnati to St. Louis the fare was ten dollars, and the unconscious wreck-seeker of a captain charged us twenty-five dollars each for the remainder of the trip--one day's journey. However, I did not care. "An Arkansas man, who had no more money, sold me, for fifteen dollars, his wallet, a fine great-coat, two clean shirts, and a hat; from another I purchased a pair of bran-new, Boston-made, elegant black breeches, so that when I landed at St. Louis I cut a regular figure, went to Planter's Hotel, and in the course of a week made a good round sum by three lectures upon the vanities of the world and the sin of desponding. Well, to cut matters short--by the bye, there must be something wrong stirring in the prairie; look at our horses, how uneasy they seem to be. Don't you hear anything?" Our horses, indeed, were beginning to grow wild with excitement, and thinking that their instinct had told them that wolves were near, I tied them closer to where we bivouacked, and then applied my ears to the ground, to try and catch any sound. "I hear no noise," said I, "except the morning breeze passing through the withered grass. Our horses have been smelling wolves, but the brutes will not approach our fire." The parson, who had a great faith in my "white Indian nature," resumed the thread of his narrative:-- "To cut the matter short, I pass over my trip to New Orleans and Galveston. Suffice it to say, that I was a gentleman preacher, with plenty of money, and that the Texans, president, generals, and all, condescended to eat my dinners, though they would not hear my sermons; even the women looked softly upon me, for I had two trunks, linen in plenty, and I had taken the precaution in Louisiana of getting rid of my shin-plasters for hard specie. I could have married anybody, if I had wished, from the president's old mother to the barmaid at the tavern. I had money, and to me all was smiles and sunshine. One day I met General Meyer; the impudent fellow came immediately to me, shook my hand in quite a cordial manner, and inquired how my health had been since he had seen me last. That was more than my professional meekness could endure, so I reproached him with his rascality and abuse of hospitality towards me, adding that I expected he would now repay me what he had so unceremoniously taken from me while I was asleep. General Meyer looked perfectly aghast, and calling me a liar, a scoundrel, and a villain, he rushed upon me with his drawn bowie-knife, and would have indubitably murdered me, had he not been prevented by a tall powerful chap, to whom, but an hour before, I had lent, or given, five dollars, partly from fear of him and partly from compassion for his destitution. "The next day I started for Houston, where I settled, and preached to old women, children, and negroes, while the white male population were getting drunk, swearing, and fighting, just before the door of the church. I had scarcely been there a month when a constable arrested me on the power of a warrant obtained against me by that rascally Meyer. Brought up before the magistrate, I was confronted with the blackguard and five other rascals of his stamp, who positively took their oaths that they had seen me taking the pocket-book of the general, which he had left accidentally upon the table in the bar of Tremont's. The magistrate said, that out of respect for the character of my profession he would not push the affair to extremities, but that I must immediately give back the two hundred dollars Meyer said I had stolen from him, and pay fifty dollars besides for the expenses. In vain I remonstrated my innocence; no choice was left to me but to pay or go to gaol. "By that time I knew pretty well the character of the people among whom I was living; I knew there was no justice to whom I could apply; I reckoned also that, if once put in gaol, they would not only take the two hundred and fifty dollars, but also the whole I possessed. So I submitted, as it was the best I could do; I removed immediately to another part of Texas, but it would not do. Faith, the Texans are a very ugly set of gents." "And Meyer," I interrupted, "what of him?" "Oh!" replied the parson, "that is another story. Why, he returned to New Orleans, where, with his three sons, he committed an awful murder upon the cashier of the legislature; he was getting away with twenty thousand dollars, but being caught in the act, he was tried, sentenced, and hanged, with all his hopeful progeny, and the old negro hangman of New Orleans had the honour of making, in one day, a close acquaintance with a general, a colonel, a major, and a judge." "What, talking still!" exclaimed the doctor, yawning: he had just awoke. "What the devil can you have babbled about during the whole blessed night? Why, 'tis morn." Saying this, he took up his watch, looked at it, applied it to his ear, to see if it had not stopped, and exclaimed:-- "By jingo, but I am only half-past one." The parson drew out his also, and repeated the same, "half-past one." At that moment the breeze freshened, and I heard the distant and muffled noise, which in the West announces either an earthquake, or an "estampede" of herds of wild cattle and other animals. Our horses, too, were aware of some danger, for now they were positively mad, struggling to break the lassoes and escape. "Up!" I cried, "up! Gabriel, Roche, up!--up, strangers, quick! saddle your beasts! run for your lives! the prairie is on fire, and the buffaloes are upon us." They all started upon their feet, but not a word was exchanged; each felt the danger of his position; speed was our only resource, if it was not already too late. In a minute our horses were saddled, in another we were madly galloping across the prairie, the bridles upon the necks of our steeds, allowing them to follow their instinct. Such had been our hurry, that all our blankets were left behind, except that of Gabriel; the lawyers had never thought of their saddle-bags, and the parson had forgotten his holsters and his rifle. For an hour we dashed on with undiminished speed, when we felt the earth trembling behind us, and soon afterwards the distant bellowing, mixed up with the roaring and sharper cries of other animals, were borne down unto our ears. The atmosphere grew oppressive and heavy, while the flames, swifter than the wind, appeared raging upon the horizon. The fleeter game of all kinds now shot past us like arrows; deer were bounding over the ground, in company with wolves and panthers; droves of elks and antelopes passed swifter than a dream; then a solitary horse or a huge buffalo-bull. From our intense anxiety, although our horses strained every nerve, we almost appeared to stand still. The atmosphere rapidly became more dense, the heat more oppressive, the roars sounded louder and louder in our ears; now and then they were mingled with terrific howls and shrill sounds, so unearthly that even our horses would stop their mad career and tremble, as if they considered them supernatural; but it was only for a second, and they dashed on. A noble stag passed close to us, his strength was exhausted; three minutes afterwards, we passed him--dead. But soon, with the rushing noise of a whirlwind, the mass of heavier and less speedy animals closed upon us: buffaloes and wild horses, all mixed together, an immense dark body, miles in front, miles in depth; on they came, trampling and dashing through every obstacle. This phalanx was but two miles from us. Our horses were nearly exhausted; we gave ourselves up for lost; a few minutes more, and we should be crushed to atoms. At that moment, the sonorous voice of Gabriel was heard, firm and imperative. He had long been accustomed to danger, and now he faced it with his indomitable energy, as if such scenes were his proper element:--"Down from your horses," cried he; "let two of you keep them steady. Strip off your shirts, linen, anything that will catch fire; quick, not a minute is to be lost." Saying this, he ignited some tinder with the pan of his pistol, and was soon busy in making a fire with all the clothes we now threw to him. Then we tore up withered grass and Buffalo-dung, and dashed them on the heap. Before three minutes had passed, our fire burned fiercely. On came the terrified mass of animals, and perceiving the flame of our fire before them, they roared with rage and terror, yet they turned not, as we had hoped. On they came, and already we could distinguish their horns, their feet, and the white foam; our fuel was burning out, the flames were lowering; the parson gave a scream, and fainted. On came the maddened myriads, nearer and nearer; I could see their wild eyes glaring; they wheeled not, opened not a passage, but came on like messengers of death--nearer--nearer--nearer still. My brain reeled, my eyes grew dim; it was horrible, most horrible! I dashed down with my face covered, to meet my fate. At that moment I heard an explosion, then a roar, as if proceeding from ten millions of buffalo-bulls--so stunning, so stupifying was the sound from the mass of animals, not twenty yards from us. Each moment I expected the hoofs which were to trample us to atoms; and yet, death came not. I only heard the rushing as of a mighty wind and the trembling of the earth. I raised my head and looked. Gabriel at the critical moment had poured some whisky upon the flames, the leathern bottle had exploded, with a blaze like lightning, and, at the expense of thousands crushed to death, the animals had swerved from contact with the fierce, blue column of fire which had been created. Before and behind, all around us, we could see nothing but the shaggy wool of the huge monsters; not a crevice was to be seen in the flying masses, but the narrow line which had been opened to avoid our fire. In this dangerous position we remained for one hour, our lives depending upon the animals not closing the line: but Providence watched over us, and after what appeared an eternity of intense suspense, the columns became thinner and thinner, till we found ourselves only encircled with the weaker and more exhausted animals which brought up the rear. Our first danger was over, but we had still to escape from one as imminent--the pursuing flame, now so much closer to us. The whole prairie behind us was on fire, and the roaring element was gaining on us with a frightful speed. Once more we sprang upon our saddles, and the horses, with recovered wind and with strength tenfold increased by their fear, soon brought us to the rear of the buffaloes. It was an awful sight! a sea of fire roaring in its fury, with Its heaving waves and unearthly hisses, approaching nearer and nearer, rushing on swifter than the sharp morning breeze. Had we not just escaped so unexpectedly a danger almost as terrible, we should have despaired and left off an apparently useless struggle for our lives. Away we dashed, over hills and down declivities; for now the ground had become more broken. The fire was gaining fast upon us, when we perceived that, a mile ahead, the immense herds before us had entered a deep, broad chasm, into which they dashed, thousands upon thousands, tumbling headlong into the abyss. But now, the fire rushing quicker, blazing fiercer than before, as if determined not to lose its prey, curled its waves above our heads, smothering us with its heat and lurid smoke. A few seconds more we spurred in agony; speed was life; the chasm was to be our preservation or our tomb. Down we darted? actually borne upon the backs of the descending mass, and landed, without sense or motion, more than a hundred feet below. As soon as we recovered from the shock, we found that we had been most mercifully preserved; strange to say, neither horse nor rider had received any serious injury. We heard, above our heads, the hissing and cracking of the fire; we contemplated with awe the flames, which were roaring along the edge of the precipice--now rising, now lowering, just as if they would leap over the space and annihilate all life in these western solitudes. We were preserved; our fall had been broken by the animals, who had taken a leap a second before us, and by the thousands of bodies which were heaped up as a hecatomb, and received us as a cushion below. With difficulty we extricated ourselves and horses, and descending the mass of carcasses, we at last succeeded in reaching a few acres of clear ground. It was elevated a few feet above the water of the torrent, which ran through the ravine, and offered to our broken-down horses a magnificent pasture of sweet blue grass. But the poor things were too terrified and exhausted, and they stretched themselves down upon the ground, a painful spectacle of utter helplessness. We perceived that the crowds of flying animals had succeeded in finding, some way further down an ascent to the opposite prairie; and as the earth and rocks still trembled, we knew that the "estampede" had not ceased, and that the millions of fugitives had resumed their mad career. Indeed there was still danger, for the wind was high, and carried before it large sheets of flames to the opposite side, where the dried grass and bushes soon became ignited, and the destructive element thus passed the chasm and continued its pursuit. We congratulated ourselves upon having thus found security, and returned thanks to heaven for our wonderful escape; and as we were now safe from immediate danger, we lighted a fire and feasted upon a young buffalo-calf, every bone of which we found had been broken into splinters[25]. [Footnote 25: I have said, at a venture, that we descended more than a hundred feet into the chasm before we fairly landed on the bodies of the animals. The chasm itself could not have been less than two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet deep at the part that we plunged down. This will give the reader some idea of the vast quantity of bodies of animals, chiefly buffaloes, which were there piled up. I consider that this pile must have been formed wholly from the foremost of the mass, and that when formed, it broke the fall of the others, who followed them, as it did our own: indeed, the summit of the heap was pounded into a sort of jelly.] CHAPTER XXIX. Two days did we remain in our shelter, to regain our strength and to rest our horses. Thus deeply buried in the bosom of the earth, we were safe from the devastating elements. On the second day we heard tremendous claps of thunder; we knew that a storm was raging which would quench the fire, but we cared little about what was going on above. We had plenty to eat and to drink, our steeds were recovering fast, and, in spite of the horrors we had just undergone, we were not a little amused by the lamentations of the parson, who, recollecting the destruction of his shirts, forgot his professional duty, and swore against Texas and the Texans, against the prairies, the buffaloes, and the fire: the last event had produced so deep an impression upon his mind, that he preferred shivering all night by the banks of the torrent to sleeping near our comfortable fire; and as to eating of the delicate food before him, it was out of the question; he would suck it, but not masticate nor swallow it; his stomach and his teeth refused to accomplish their functions upon the abhorred meat; and he solemnly declared that never again would he taste beef--cow or calf--- tame or wild--even if he were starving. One of the lawyers, too, was loud in his complaints, for although born in the States, he had in his veins no few drops of Irish blood, and could not forget the sacrifice Gabriel had made of the whisky. "Such stuff!" he would exclaim, "the best that ever came into this land of abomination, to be thrown in the face of dirty buffaloes: the devil take them! Eh! Monsheer Owato Wanisha,--queer outlandish name, by-the-bye,--please to pass me another slice of the varmint (meaning the buffalo-calf). Bless my soul, if I did not think, at one time, it was after the liquor the brutes were running!" Upon the morning of the third day, we resumed our journey, following the stream down for a few miles, over thousands of dead animals, which the now foaming torrent could not wash away. We struck the winding path which the "estampedados" had taken; and as it had been worked by the millions of fugitives into a gentle ascent, we found ourselves long before noon, once more upon the level of the prairie. What a spectacle of gloom and death! As far as the eye could reach, the earth was naked and blackened. Not a stem of grass, not a bush, had escaped the awful conflagration; and thousands of half-burnt bodies of deer, buffaloes, and mustangs covered the prairie in every direction. The horizon before us was concealed by a high and rugged ridge of the rolling prairie, towards which we proceeded but slowly, so completely was the track made by the buffaloes choked by burnt bodies of all descriptions of animals. At last we reached the summit of the swell, and perceived that we were upon one of the head branches of the Trinity River, forming a kind of oblong lake, a mile broad, but exceedingly shallow; the bottom was of a hard white sandy formation, and as we crossed this beautiful sheet of clear water, the bottom appeared to be studded with grains of gold and crystals. This brought round the characteristic elasticity of temper belonging to the Americans, and caused the doctor to give way to his mental speculations:--He would not go to Edinburgh; it was nonsense; here was a fortune made. He would form a company in New York, capital one million of dollars--the Gold, Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire, and Amethyst Association, in ten thousand shares, one hundred dollars a-piece. In five years he would be the richest man in the world; he would build ten cities on the Mississippi, and would give powder and lead to the Comanches for nothing, so that they could at once clear the world of Texans and buffaloes. He had scarcely finished, when we reached the other side of the lake; there we had to pass over a narrow ridge, covered with green bushes, but now torn and trampled down; the herds had passed over there, and the fire had been extinguished by the waters of this "fairy lake," for so we had baptized it. Half an hour more brought us clear out from the cover, and a most strange and unusual sight was presented to our eyes. On a rich and beautiful prairie, green and red, the wild clover and the roses, and occasionally a plum-tree, varying the hues were lying prostrate, as far as the eye could reach, hundreds of thousands of animals of all species, some quietly licking their tired limbs, and others extending their necks, without rising, to graze upon the soft grass around them. The sight was beautiful above all description, and recalled to mind the engravings of the creation affixed to the old Bibles. Wolves and panthers were lying but a few paces from a small flock of antelopes; buffaloes, bears, and horses were mixed together, every one of them incapable of moving from the spot on which they had dropped from exhaustion and fatigue. We passed a large jaguar, glaring fiercely at a calf ten feet from him; on seeing us, he attempted to rise, but, utterly helpless, he bent his body so as to form a circle, concealing his head upon his breast under his huge paws, and uttered a low growl, half menacing, half plaintive. Had we had powder to waste, we would certainly have rid the gramnivorous from many of their carnivorous neighbours, but we were now entering a tract of country celebrated for the depredations of the Texans and Buggles free bands, and every charge of powder thrown away was a chance the less, in case of a fight. As by this time our horses were in want of rest, we took off their saddles, and the poor things feasted better than they had done for a long while. As for us, we had fortunately still a good supply of the cold calf, for we felt a repugnance to cut the throats of any of the poor broken-down creatures before us. Close to us there was a fine noble stag, for which I immediately took a fancy. He was so worn out that he could not even move a few inches to get at the grass, and his dried, parched tongue showed plainly how much he suffered from the want of water. I pulled up two or three handfuls of clover, which I presented to him; but though he tried to swallow it, he could not. As there was a water-hole some twenty yards off, I took the doctor's fur cap, and filling it with water, returned to the stag. What an expressive glance! What beautiful eyes! I sprinkled at first some drops upon his tongue, and then, putting the water under his nose, he soon drained it up. My companions became so much interested with the sufferings of the poor animals, that they took as many of the young fawns as they could, carrying them to the edge of the water-hole, that they might regain their strength and fly away before the wolves could attack them. Upon my presenting a second capful of water to the stag, the grateful animal licked my hands, and, after having drunk, tried to rise to follow me, but its strength failing, its glances followed me as I was walking to and fro; they spoke volumes; I could understand their meaning. I hate to hear of the superiority of man! Man is ungrateful as a viper, while a horse, a dog, and many others of the "soulless brutes," will never forget a kindness. I wondered what had become of our three lawyers, who had wandered away without their rifles, and had been more than two hours absent. I was about to propose a search after them when they arrived, with their knives and tomahawks, and their clothes all smeared with blood. They had gone upon a cruise against the wolves, and had killed the brutes until they were tired and had no more strength to use their arms. The reader, comfortably seated in his elbow-chair, cannot comprehend the hatred which a prairie traveller nourishes against the wolves. As soon as we found out what these three champions of the wilderness had been about, we resolved to encamp there for the night, that we might destroy as many as we could of these prairie sharks. Broken-down as they were, there was no danger attending the expedition, and, tightening on our belts, and securing our pistols, in case of an attack from a recovering panther, we started upon our butchering expedition. On our way we met with some fierce-looking jaguars, which we did not think it prudent to attack, so we let them alone, and soon found occupation enough for our knives and tomahawks among a close-packed herd of wolves. How many of these detested brutes we killed I cannot say, but we did not leave off until our hands had become powerless from exhaustion, and our tomahawks were so blunted as to be rendered of no use. When we left the scene of massacre, we had to pass over a pool of blood ankle-deep, and such was the howling of those who were not quite dead, that the deer and elk were in every direction struggling to rise and fly[26]. We had been employed more than four hours in our work of destruction, when we returned to the camp, tired and hungry. Roche had picked up a bear-cub, which the doctor skinned and cooked for us while we were taking our round to see how our _protégés_ were going on. All those that had been brought up to the water-hole were so far recovered that they were grazing about, and bounded away as soon as we attempted to near them. My stag was grazing also, but he allowed me to caress him, just as if we had been old friends, and he never left the place until the next morning, when we ourselves started. [Footnote 26: The prairie wolf is a very different animal from the common wolf and will be understood by the reader when I give a description of the animals found in California and Texas.] The doctor called us for our evening meal, to which we did honour, for, in addition to his wonderful culinary talents, he knew some plants, common in the prairies, which can impart even to a bear's chop a most savoury and aromatic flavour. He was in high glee, as we praised his skill, and so excited did he become, that he gave up his proposal of the "Gold, Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire, and Amethyst Association, in ten thousand shares," and vowed he would cast away his lancet and turn cook in the service of some _bon vivant_, or go to feed the padres of a Mexican convent. He boasted that he could cook the toughest old woman, so as to make the flesh appear as white, soft, and sweet as that of a spring chicken; but upon my proposing to send him, as a _cordon bleu_, to the Cayugas, in West Texas, or among the Club Indians, of the Colorado of the West, he changed his mind again, and formed new plans for the regeneration of the natives of America. After our supper, we rode our horses to the lake, to water and bathe them, which duty being performed, we sought that repose which we were doomed not to enjoy; for we had scarcely shut our eyes when a tremendous shower fell upon us, and in a few minutes we were drenched to the skin. The reader may recollect that, excepting Gabriel, we had all of us left our blankets on the spot where we had at first descried the prairie was in flames, so that we were now shivering with cold, and, what was worse, the violence of the rain was such, that we could not keep our fire alive. It was an ugly night, to be sure; but the cool shower saved the panting and thirsty animals, for whose sufferings we had felt so much. All night we heard the deer and antelopes trotting and scampering towards the lake; twice or thrice the distant roars of the panthers showed that these terrible animals were quitting our neighbourhood, and the fierce growling of the contending wolves told us plainly that, if they were not strong enough to run, they could at least crawl and prey upon their own dead. It has been asserted that wolves do not prey upon their own species, but it is a mistake, for I have often seen them attacking, tearing, and eating each other. The warm rays of the morning sun at last dispersed the gloom and clouds of night; deer, elks, and antelopes were all gone except my own stag, to which I gave a handful of salt, as I had some in my saddle-bags. Some few mustangs and buffaloes were grazing, but the larger portion, extending as far as the eye could reach, were still prostrate on the grass. As to the wolves, either from their greater fatigue they had undergone, or from their being glutted with the blood and flesh of their companions, they seemed stiffer than ever. We watered our horses, replenished our flasks, and, after a hearty meal upon the cold flesh of the bear, we resumed our journey to warm ourselves by exercise and dry our clothes, for we were wet to the skin, and benumbed with cold. The reader may be surprised at these wild animals being in the state of utter exhaustion which I have described; but he must be reminded that, in all probability, this prairie fire had driven them before it for hundreds of miles, and that at a speed unusual to them, and which nothing but a panic could have produced. I think it very probable that the fire ran over an extent of five hundred miles; and my reason for so estimating it is, the exhausted state of the carnivorous animals. A panther can pass over two hundred miles or more at full speed without great exhaustion; so would a jaguar, or, indeed an elk. I do not mean to say that all the animals, as the buffaloes, mustangs, deer, &c., had run this distance; of course, as the fire rolled on, the animals were gradually collected, till they had formed the astounding mass which I have described, and thousands had probably already perished, long before the fire had reached the prairie where we were encamped; still I have at other times witnessed the extraordinary exertions which animals are capable of when under the influence of fear. At one estampede, I knew some oxen, with their yokes on their necks, to accomplish sixty miles in four hours. On another occasion, on the eastern shores of the Vermilion Sea, I witnessed an estampede, and, returning twelve days afterwards, I found the animals still lying in every direction on the prairie, although much recovered from their fatigue. On this last occasion, the prairie had been burnt for three hundred miles, from east to west, and there is no doubt but that the animals had estampedoed the whole distance at the utmost of their speed. Our horses having quite recovered from their past fatigue, we started at a brisk canter, under the beams of a genial sun, and soon felt the warm blood stirring in our veins. We had proceeded about six or seven miles, skirting the edge of the mass of buffaloes reclining on the prairie, when we witnessed a scene which filled us with pity. Fourteen hungry wolves, reeling and staggering with weakness, were attacking a splendid black stallion, which was so exhausted, that he could not get up upon his legs. His neck and sides were already covered with wounds, and his agony was terrible. Now, the horse is too noble an animal not to find a protector in man against such bloodthirsty foes; so we dismounted and despatched the whole of his assailants; but as the poor stallion was wounded beyond all cure, and would indubitably have fallen a prey to another pack of his prairie foes, we also despatched him with a shot of a rifle. It was an act of humanity, but still the destruction of this noble animal in the wilderness threw a gloom over our spirits. The doctor perceiving this, thought it advisable to enliven us with the following story:-- "All the New York amateurs of oysters know well the most jovial tavern-keeper in the world, old Slick Bradley, the owner of the 'Franklin,' in Pearl-street. When you go to New York, mind to call upon him, and if you have any relish for a cool sangaree, a mint-julep, or a savoury oyster-soup, none can make it better than Slick Bradley. Besides, his bar is snug, his little busy wife neat and polite, and if you are inclined to a spree, his private rooms up-stairs are comfortable as can be. "Old Slick is good-humoured and always laughing; proud of his cellar, of his house, of his wife, and, above all, proud of the sign-post hanging before his door; that is to say, a yellow head of Franklin, painted by some bilious chap, who looked in the glass for a model. "Now Slick has kept house for more than forty years, and though he has made up a pretty round sum, he don't wish to leave off the business. No! till the day of his death he will remain in his bar, smoking his Havanas, and mechanically playing with the two pocket-books in his deep waistcoat pockets--one for the ten-dollar notes and above, the other for the fives, and under. Slick Bradley is the most independent man in the world; he jokes familiarly with his customers, and besides their bill of fare, he knows how to get more of their money by betting, for betting is the great passion of Slick; he will bet anything, upon everything: contradict him in what he says, and down come the two pocket-books under your nose. 'I know better,' he will say, 'don't I? What will you bet--five, ten, fifty, hundred? Tush! you dare not bet, you know you are wrong;' and with an air of superiority and self-satisfaction, he will take long strides over his well-washed floor, repeating, 'I know better.' "Slick used once to boast that he had never lost a bet; but since a little incident which made all New York laugh at him, he confesses that he did once meet with his match, for though he certainly won the bet, he had paid the stakes fifty times over. Now, as I heard the circumstance from the jolly landlord himself, here it goes, just as I had it, neither more nor less. "One day, two smart young fellows entered the Franklin; they alighted from a cab, and were dressed in the tip-top of fashion. As they were new customers, the landlord was all smiles and courtesy, conducted them into saloon No. 1, and making it up in his mind that his guests could be nothing less than Wall street superfines, he resolved that they should not complain of his fare. "A splendid dinner was served to them, with sundry bottles of old wines and choice Havanas, and the worthy host was reckoning in his mind all the items he could decently introduce in the bill, when ding, ding, went the bell, and away he goes up stairs, capering, jumping, smiling, and holding his two hands before his bow window in front. "'Eh, old Slick,' said one of the sparks, 'capital dinner, by Jove; good wine, fine cigars; plenty of customers, eh?' "Slick winked; he was in all his glory, proud and happy. "'Nothing better in life than a good dinner,' resumed the spark No. 1; 'some eat only to live--they are fools; I live only to eat, that is the true philosophy. Come, old chap, let us have your bill, and mind, make it out as for old customers, for we intend to return often; don't we?' "This last part of the sentence was addressed to spark No. 2, who, with his legs comfortably over the corner of the table, was picking his teeth with his fork. "'I shall, by jingo!' slowly drawled out No. 2, 'dine well here! d---d comfortable; nothing wanted but the champagne.' "'Lord, Lord! gentlemen,' exclaimed Slick, 'why did you not say so? Why, I have the best in town.' "'Faith, have you?' said No. 1, smacking his lips; 'now have you the real genuine stuff? Why then bring a bottle, landlord, and you must join us; bring three glasses; by Jove, we will drink your health.' "When Slick returned, he found his customers in high glee, and so convulsive was their merriment that they were obliged to hold their sides. Slick laughed too, yet losing no time; in a moment he presented the gentlemen with the sparkling liquor. They took their glasses, drank his health, and then recommenced their mirth. "'And so you lost the wager?' asked No. 2. "'Yes, by Heaven, I paid the hundred dollars, and, what was worse, was laughed at by everybody.' "Slick was sadly puzzled; the young men had been laughing, they were now talking of a bet, and he knew nothing of it. He was mightily inquisitive; and knowing, by experience, that wine opens the heart and unlooses the tongue, he made an attempt to ascertain the cause of the merriment. "'I beg your pardon, gentlemen, if I make too bold; but please, what was the subject of the wager, the recollection of which puts you in so good a humour?' "'I'll tell you,' exclaimed No. 1, 'and you will see what a fool I have made of myself. You must know that it is impossible to follow the pendulum of the clock with the hand, and to repeat "Here she goes--there see goes," just as it swings to and fro, that is when people are talking all round you, as it puts you out. One day I was with a set of jolly fellows in a dining-room, with a clock just like this in your room; the conversation fell upon the difficulty of going on "Here she goes," and "there she goes," for half an hour, without making a mistake. Well, I thought it was the easiest thing in the world to do it; and upon my saying so, I was defied to do it: the consequence was the bet of a hundred dollars, and, having agreed that they could talk to me as much as they pleased, but not touch me, I posted myself before the clock and went on--"Here she goes, there she goes," while some of my companions began singing, some shouting, and some laughing. Well, after three minutes I felt that the task was much more difficult than I had expected; but yet I went on, till I heard somebody saying, "As I am alive there is Miss Reynolds walking arm-in-arm with that lucky dog, Jenkins." Now, you must know, landlord, that Miss Reynolds was my sweetheart, and Jenkins my greatest enemy, so I rushed to the window to see if it was true, and at that moment a roar of laughter announced to me that I had lost the bet.' "Now, Slick Bradley, as I have said, was very fond of betting. Moreover, he prided himself not a little upon his self-command, and as he had not any mistress to be jealous of, as soon as the gentleman had finished his story he came at once to the point. "'Well,' said he, 'you lost the wager, but it don't signify. I think myself, as you did, that it is the easiest thing in the world. I am sure I could do it half an hour, aye, and an hour too.' "The gentlemen laughed, and said they knew better, and the now excited host proposed, if the liberty did not offend them, to make any bet that he could do it for half an hour. At first they objected, under the plea that they would not like to win his money, as they were certain he had no chance; but upon his insisting, they consented to bet twenty dollars; and Slick, putting himself face to face with his great grandfather's clock, began following the pendulum with his hand, repeating 'Here she goes, there she goes.' "The two gentlemen discovered many wonderful things through the window: first a sailor had murdered a woman, next the stage had just capsized, and afterwards they were sure that the shop next door was on fire. Slick winked and smiled complacently, without leaving his position. He was too old a fox to be taken by such childish tricks. All at once, No. 2 observed to No. 1, that the bet would not keep good, as the stakes had not been laid down, and both addressed the host at the same time, 'Not cunning enough for me,' thought Slick; and poking his left hand into the right pocket of his waistcoat, he took out his pocket-book containing the larger notes, and handed it to his customers. "'Now,' exclaimed No. 2 to his companion, 'I am sure you will lose the wager; the fellow is imperturbable; nothing can move him.' "'Wait a bit; I'll soon make him leave off,' whispered the other, loud enough for Slick to hear him. "'Landlord,' continued he, 'we trust to your honour to go on for half an hour; we will now have a talk with bonny Mrs. Slick.' Saying this, they quitted the room without closing the door. "Slick was not jealous; not he. Besides, the bar was full of people; it was all a trick of the gents, who were behind the door watching him. After all, they were but novices, and he would win their money: he only regretted that the bet had not been heavier. "Twenty minutes had fairly passed, when Slick's own little boy entered the room. 'Pa,' said he, 'there is a gemman what wants you below in the bar.' "'Another trick,' thought the landlord; 'they shan't have me, though.--Here she goes, there she goes.' And as the boy approached near to him to repeat his errand, Slick gave him a kick. 'Get away. Here she goes, there she goes.' "The boy went away crying, and soon returned with Mrs. Slick, who cried in an angry tone, 'Now, don't make a fool of yourself; the gentleman you sold the town-lot to is below with the money.' "'They shan't have me, though,' said Slick to himself. And to all the invectives and reproaches of Mrs. Slick he answered only with, 'Here she goes? there she goes.' At last the long needle marked the half hour, and the landlord, having won the wager, turned round. "'Where are they?' said he to his wife. "'They?-who do you mean?' answered she. "'The two gentlemen, to be sure.' "'Why, they have been gone these last twenty minutes,' "Slick was thunderstruck. 'And the pocket-book?' he uttered, convulsively. "His wife looked at him with ineffable contempt. "'Why, you fool, you did not give them your money, did you?' "Slick soon discovered that he was minus five hundred dollars, besides the price of the two dinners. Since that time he never bets but cash down, and in the presence of witnesses." CHAPTER XXX. We continued our route for a few days after we had left the buffaloes, and now turned our horses' heads due east. Having left behind the localities frequented by the wild herds, we soon became exposed to the cravings of hunger. Now and then we would fall in with a prairie hen, a turkey, or a few rattlesnakes, but the deer and antelopes were so shy, that though we could see them sporting at a distance, we could never come within a mile of them. The ground was level, and the grass, although short, was excellent pasture, and richly enamelled with a variety of flowers. It was a beautiful country. We had fine weather during the day, but the nights were exceedingly cold, and the dew heavy. Having lost our blankets, we passed miserable nights. There was no fuel with which we could light our fire; even the dung of animals was so scarce that we could not, during seven days, afford to cook our scanty meals more than thrice, and the four last grouse that we killed were eaten raw. About the middle of the eighth day a dark line was seen rising above the horizon, far in the south-east, and extending as far as the eye could reach. We knew it was a forest, and that when we gained it we were certain of having plenty to eat; but it was very far off, at least twenty miles, and we were much exhausted. In the evening we were almost driven to desperation by hunger, and we found that the approach to the forest would prove long and difficult, as it was skirted by a bed of thick briars and prickly pears, which in breadth could not be less than three leagues, and that a passage must be forced through this almost impassable barrier. The forest was undoubtedly the commencement of that extended line of noble timber which encircles as a kind of natural barrier the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. By reaching it we should soon leave privation and fatigue behind us, whereas, on the contrary, travelling to the north would have added to our sufferings, as the same level and untenanted prairie extended to the very shores of the Red River. We consequently determined to force our way through the thorns and briars, even if we were obliged to cut a road with our knives and tomahawks. We journeyed on till sunset, when we came to a deep dry gully, on the very edge of the prickly pear barrier, and there we encamped for the night. To go farther without something to eat was impossible. The wild and haggard looks of my companions, their sunken eyes, and sallow, fleshless faces, too plainly showed that some subsistence must be speedily provided more nutritious than the unripe and strongly acidulated fruit presented to us. We drew lots, and the parson's horse was doomed; in a few minutes, his hide was off, and a part of the flesh distributed. The meat of a young mustang is excellent, but that of an old broken-down horse is quite another affair. It was as tough as india-rubber, and the more a piece of it was masticated, the larger it became in the mouth. A man never knows what he can eat, until driven to desperation by a week's starving, and the jolly parson, who had pledged himself never to eat even calf's meat, fiercely attacked the leathery remains of his faithful ambler. The next morning we directed our steps in a south course, and crossing the gully, we entered in what appeared to be a passage, or a bear's path through the prickly pears; but after travelling some six or eight miles, we found our further progress cut off by a deep and precipitous chasm, lined with impassable briars. To return was our only alternative, and, at noon we again found ourselves near to the point from whence we had started in the morning. A consultation was now held as to our future course. The lawyers and Roche proposed to go farther south, and make another attempt, but recollecting, that on the morning of the preceding day we had passed a large, though shallow, sandy stream, Gabriel and I thought it more advisable to return to it. This stream was evidently one of the tributaries of the Red River, and was running in an easterly direction, and we were persuaded that it must flow through the chasm, and enter into the forest. Our proposal was agreed to, and without any more loss of time, each of us taking with him a piece of horse-flesh, we retraced our steps. The parson was on foot, and though I proposed many times that we should ride alternately, he always refused, preferring now to travel on foot, as he was heartily tired of riding. Indeed, I never saw a better walker in my life; the man had evidently mistaken his profession, for he would, have gained more money with his legs as an Indian runner, or a scout, than he had any chance of obtaining in the one to which he belonged, and for which he was most unqualified. The next day, at noon, we encamped on the stream, and though with little hope of success, I threw in my fishing-line, baiting my hook with horse-flies and grasshoppers. My hooks had scarcely sunk in the water, when the bait was taken, and to my astonishment and delight, I soon dragged out of the water two very large trout. I shouted to my companions, who were soon round me, and we resolved to pass the night there, as we considered that a good meal or two would enable us so much better to continue our fatiguing journey. A little above us was also discovered a large quantity of drift timber, left dry upon the sand, and in a short time every one of us were actively employed in preparing for a jovial meal. Gabriel, being the best marksman, started for game, and I continued fishing, to the great delight of the doctor and the parson, the first one taking under his care the cooking department, and the last scouring the prairie to catch grasshoppers and horse-flies. In less than three hours I had twenty large trout, and a dozen cat-fish, and Gabriel returned with two Canadian geese. Invigorated by an abundant meal and a warm fire, we soon regained our spirits, and that night we slept sound, and made up for our former watching and shivering. The next morning, after breakfast, we filled our saddle-bags with the remainder of our provisions, and following the stream for ten miles, with water to our horses' shoulders, as both sides of the river were covered with briars. The parson had been obliged to ride behind one of the lawyers, who had a strong built, powerful horse; and great was our merriment when one of our steeds stumbled into a hole, and brought down his master with him. For nine miles more we continued wading down the river, till at last the prickly pears and briars receding from the banks, allowed us once more to regain the dry ground: but we had not travelled an hour upon the bank, when our road was interrupted by a broken range of hills. After incredible fatigue to both horses and men, for we were obliged to dismount and carry our arms and saddle-bags, the ascent was finally achieved. When we arrived at the summit, we found below us a peaceful and romantic valley, through the centre of which the river winded its way, and was fed by innumerable brooks, which joined it in every direction. Their immediate borders were fringed with small trees, bushes of the deepest green, while the banks of the river were skirted with a narrow belt of timber, of larger and more luxuriant growth. This valley was encircled by the range of hills we had ascended, so far as to the belt of the forest. We led our horses down the declivity, and in less than an hour found ourselves safe at the bottom. A brisk ride of three or four miles through the valley brought us to the edge of the forest, where we encamped near a small creek, and after another good night's rest, we pushed on through a mass of the noblest maple and pine-trees I had ever seen. Now game abounded; turkeys, bears, and deer, were seen almost every minute, and, as we advanced, the traces of mules and jackasses were plainly visible. A little further on, the footprints of men were also discovered, and from their appearance they were but a few hours' old. This sight made us forget our fatigues, and we hurried on, with fond anticipations of finding a speedy termination to all our sufferings. Late in the afternoon, I killed a very fat buck, and although we were anxious to follow the tracks, to ascertain what description of travellers were before us, our horses were so tired, and our appetites so sharpened, that upon reflection, we thought it desirable to remain where we were. I took this opportunity of making myself a pair of mocassins, with the now useless saddle-bags of the parson. That evening we were in high glee, thinking that we had arrived at one of the recent settlements of western emigration, for, as I have observed, we had seen tracks of jackasses, and these animals are never employed upon any distant journey. We fully expected the next morning to find some log houses, within ten or fifteen miles, where we should be able to procure another horse for the parson, and some more ammunition, as we had scarcely half a pound of balls left between us. The lawyer enjoyed, by anticipation, the happiness of once more filling his half-gallon flask, and the doctor promised to give us dishes of his own invention, as soon as he could meet with a frying-pan. In fine, so exuberant were our spirits, that it was late before we laid down to sleep. At about two o'clock in the morning, feeling a pressure upon my breast, I opened my eyes, and saw Gabriel with a finger upon his lips, enjoining me to silence. He then informed me, in a whisper, that a numerous party of thieves were in our neighbourhood, and that they had already discovered our horses. Taking with us only our knives and tomahawks, we crawled silently till we came to a small opening in the forest, when we saw some twenty fellows encamped, without any light or fire, but all armed to the teeth. Three or four of them appeared animated in their conversation, and, being favoured by the darkness, we approached nearer, till we were able to hear every word. "All sleeping sound," said one of them, "but looking mighty wretched; not a cent among them, I am sure; if I can judge by their clothing, three of them are half-breeds." "And the horses?" said another voice. "Why, as to them, they have only seven," replied the first voice, "and they are broken down and tired, although fine animals. They would sell well after a three weeks' grazing." "Take them away, then; are they tied?" "Only two." "Break the halters then, and start them full speed, as if they were frightened; it will not awaken their suspicion." "Why not settle the matter with them all at once? we would get their saddles." "Fool! suppose they are a vanguard of General Rusk's army, and one of them should escape? No; to-morrow at sunrise they will run upon the tracks of their horses, and leave their saddles and saddle-bags behind; three men shall remain here, to secure the plunder, and when the ducks (travellers) are fairly entangled in the forest, being on foot, we can do what we please." Others then joined the conversation, and Gabriel and I returned to our friends as silently as we left them. Half an hour afterwards we heard the galloping of our horses, in a southerly direction, and Gabriel going once more to reconnoitre, perceived the band taking another course, towards the east, leaving, as they had proposed, three of their men behind them. For a few minutes he heard these men canvassing as to the best means of carrying the saddles, and having drank pretty freely from a large stone jug, they wrapped themselves in their blankets, and crawled into a sort of a burrow, which had probably been dug out by the brigands as a cachette for their provisions and the booty which they could not conveniently carry. By the conversation of the three fellows, Gabriel conjectured that the band had gone to a place of rendezvous, on the bank of some river, and that the party who had carried away our horses was to proceed only six miles south, to a stream where the track of the horses would be effaced and lost in case of our pursuit. As soon as they considered that we were far enough from our encampment, they were to return by another road, and rejoin the three men left behind. Gabriel conjectured that only four men had gone away with the horses. After a little consultation, we awoke our comrades, and explaining to them how matters stood, we determined upon a counterplot. It was at first proposed to shoot the three scoundrels left for our saddle-bags, but reflecting that they were better acquainted than we were with the locality, and that the report of one of their fire-arms would excite the suspicion of those who had charge of our horses; we determined upon another line of conduct. Before daylight, I took my bow and arrows and succeeded in reaching a secure position, a few yards from the burrow where the thieves were concealed. Gabriel did the same, in a bush halfway between the burrow and our encampment. In the meantime, Roche, with the five Americans played their part admirably--walking near to the burrow swearing that our horses had been frightened by some varmin and escaped, and started upon the tracks, with as much noise as they could make; to deceive the robbers the more, they left their rifles behind. As soon as they were gone, the thieves issued from their places of concealment, and one arming himself with his rifle, "went," as he said, "to see if the coast was clear," He soon returned with two of our rifles and a blazing piece of wood, and the worthies began laughing together at the success of their ruse. They lighted a fire, took another dram, and while one busied himself with preparing coffee, the other two started, with no other weapon but their knives, to fetch the saddle-bags and saddles. They had not been gone five minutes when I perceived an enormous rattlesnake, ready to spring, at not half a yard from me. Since my snake adventure among the Comanches, I had imbibed the greatest dread of that animal, and my alarm was so great, that I rushed out of my concealment, and, at a single bound; found myself ten yards from the fellow, who was quietly blowing his fire and stirring his coffee. He arose immediately, made two steps backwards, and, quite unnerved by so sudden an apparition, he extended his hand towards a tree, against which the rifles had been placed. That movement decided his fate, for not choosing to be shot at, nor to close with a fellow so powerful that he could have easily crushed my head between his thumb and finger, I drew at him; though rapid, my aim was certain, and he fell dead, without uttering a single word, the arrow having penetrated his heart. I then crawled to Gabriel, to whom I explained the matter, and left him, to take my station near the two remaining brigands. I found them busy searching the saddle-bags, and putting aside what they wished to secrete for their own use. After they had been thus employed for half an hour, one of them put three saddles upon his head, and, thus loaded, returned to the burrow, desiring his companion to come along, and drink his coffee while it was hot. Some five minutes afterwards, the noise of a heavy fall was heard (it was that of the thief who had just left, who was killed by the tomahawk of Gabriel), and the remaining robber, loading himself with the saddle-bags, prepared to follow, swearing aloud against his companion, "who could not see before his eyes, and would break the pommels of the saddles." I had just drawn my bow, and was taking my aim, when Gabriel, passing me, made a signal to forbear, and rushing upon the thief, he kicked him in the back, just as he was balancing the saddles upon his head. The thief fell down, and attempted to struggle, but the prodigious muscular strength of Gabriel was too much for him; in a moment he laid half strangled and motionless. We bound him firmly hand and foot, and carried him to his burrow; we laid the two bodies by his side, stowed our luggage in the burrow, and having destroyed all traces of the struggle, we prepared for the reception of the horse-thieves. Chance befriended us. While we were drinking the coffee thus left as a prize to the conquerors, we heard at a distance the trampling of horses. I seized one of the rifles, and Gabriel, after a moment of intense listening, prepared his lasso, and glided behind the bushes. It was not long before I perceived my own horse, who, having undoubtedly thrown his rider, was galloping back to the camp. He was closely pursued by one of the rascals, mounted upon Gabriel's horse, and calling out to the three robbers, "Stop him; Russy, Carlton--stop him!" At that moment, Gabriel's lasso fell upon his shoulders, and he fell off the horse as dead as if struck by lightning: his neck was broken. Having gained our horses, we saddled them, and took our rifles, not doubting but that we would easily capture the remaining rascals, as the speed of our two steeds was very superior to that of the others. After half an hour's hard riding, we fell in with Roche and our companions, who had been equally fortunate. It appeared that the fellow who had been riding my horse had received a severe fall against a tree; and while one of his companions started in chase of the animal, who had galloped off, the two others tied their horses to the trees, and went to his assistance. When thus occupied, they were surprised, and bound hand and foot by Roche and his party. We brought back our prisoners, and when we arrived at the burrow, we found that, far from having lost anything by the robbers, we had, on the contrary, obtained articles which we wanted. One of the lawyers found in the stone jug enough of whisky to fill his flask; the parson got another rifle, to replace that which he had lost in the prairie, and the pouches and powder-horns of the three first robbers were found well supplied with powder and balls. We also took possession of four green Mackinau blankets and a bag of ground coffee. We heartily thanked Providence, who had thrown the rascals in our way, and, after a good meal, we resumed our journey in a southern direction, each of the three lawyers leading, by a stout rope, one of the brigands, who were gagged and their hands firmly bound behind their backs. During the whole day, the parson amused himself with preaching honesty and morality to our prisoners, who, seeing now that they had not the least chance to escape, walked briskly alongside of the horses. Towards evening we encamped in one of those plains, a mile in circumference, which are so frequently met with in the forests of the west. We had performed a journey of twenty miles, and that, with the forced ride which our beasts had performed in the morning, had quite tired them out. Besides, having now four men on foot, we could not proceed so fast as before. We lighted a fire and fed our prisoners, putting two of them in the centre of our circles, while the two others, who were much braised by their falls of the morning, took their station near the fire, and we covered them with a blanket. Though we believed we had nothing to fear from our prisoners, the two first being bound hand and foot, and the two last being too weak to move, we nevertheless resolved that a watch should be kept, and as Gabriel and I had not slept during the night before, we appointed Roche to keep the first watch. When I awoke, I felt chilly, and to my astonishment I perceived that our fire was down. I rose and looked immediately for the prisoners. The two that we had put within our circle were still snoring heavily, but the others, whose feet we had not bound on account of their painful bruises, were gone. I looked for the watch, and found that it was one of the lawyers, who, having drank too freely of the whisky, had fallen asleep. The thieves had left the blanket; I touched it; I perceived that it was yet warm, so that I knew they could not have been gone a long while. The day was just breaking, and I awoke my companions, the lawyer was much ashamed of himself, and offered the humblest apologies, and as a proof of his repentance, he poured on the ground the remainder of the liquor in his flask. As soon as Gabriel and Roche were up, we searched in the grass for the foot-prints, which we were not long in finding, and which conducted us straight to the place where we had left our horses loose and grazing. Then, for the first time, we perceived that the horses which were shod, and which belonged to the three lawyers, had had their shoes taken off, when in possession of the thieves the day before. By the foot-prints, multiplied in every direction, it was evident that the fugitives had attempted, though in vain, to seize upon some of our horses. Following the foot-marks a little farther, brought us to a small sandy creek, where the track was lost; and on the other side, to our great astonishment, we saw plainly (at least the appearance seemed to imply as much), that help had been at hand, and that the thieves had escaped upon a tall American horse, ambling so lightly, that the four shoes of the animal were comparatively but feebly marked on the ground. It seemed, also, that the left foreleg of the animal had been at some time hurt, for the stopping was not regular, being sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, and now and then deviating two or three inches from the line. I thought immediately that we had been discovered by another roving party of the brigands, and that they had gone to get a reinforcement to overpower us, but upon a closer examination of the track, I came at once to the solution of the mystery. I remarked that on the print left by the shoes, the places upon which the head of the nails should have pressed deeper, were, on the contrary, convex, the shoes were, therefore, not fixed by nails; and my suspicions being awakened, I soon spied upon a soft sandy spot, through which the track passed, that there was something trailing from the left hind foot, and I satisfied myself that this last slight mark was made by a piece of twine. A little afterwards I remarked that on the softer parts of the ground, and two or three inches behind and before the horse-shoe prints, were two circular impressions, which I ascertained to be the heel and the toe-marks left by a man's mocassins. The mystery was revealed. We had never searched our prisoners, one of whom must have had some of the shoes taken off the horses, which shoes, in these districts, are very valuable, as they cannot be replaced. Having tried in vain to catch some of our horses, they had washed out the tracks in the creek, and had fixed the horse-shoes to their own feet with pieces of twine; after which, putting themselves in a line at the required distance one from the other, they had started off, both with the same foot, imitating thus the pacing of a swift horse. The plan was cunning enough, and proved that the blackguards were no novices in their profession, but they had not yet sufficiently acquired that peculiar tact natural to savage life. Had they been Indians, they would have fixed small pieces of wood into the holes of the shoe to imitate the nails, and they would then have escaped. We returned to the camp to arm ourselves, and the lawyers, wishing to recover our confidence, entreated that they might be permitted to chase and recapture the fellows. At noon they returned quite exhausted, but they had been successful; the prisoners were now bound hand and foot, and also tied by the waist to a young pine, which we felled for the purpose. It was useless to travel further on that day, as the lawyers' horses were quite blown, and having now plenty of ammunition, some of us went in pursuit of turkeys and pheasants, for a day or two's provisions. All my efforts to obtain information from the prisoners were vain. To my inquiries as to what direction lay the settlements, I received no answer. Towards evening, as we were taking our meal, we were visited by a band of dogs, who, stopping ten yards from us, began to bark most furiously. Thinking at first they belonged to the band of robbers, who employed them to follow travellers, we hastily seized our arms, and prepared for a fight; but Gabriel asserting the dogs were a particular breed belonging to the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and other tribes of half-civilized Indians, established upon the Red River, we began shouting and firing our rifles, so as to guide towards us the Indians, who, we presumed, could not be far behind their dogs. We did not wait long, for a few minutes afterwards a gallant band of eighty Cherokees dashed through the cover, and reined up their horses before us. All was explained in a moment. A system of general depredation had been carried on, for a long while with impunity, upon the plantations above the great bend of the Red River. The people of Arkansas accused the Texans, who, in their turn, asserted that the parties were Indians. Governor Yell, of the Arkansas, complained to Ross, the highly talented chief of the Cherokees, who answered that the robbers were Arkansas men and Texans, and, as a proof of his assertion, he ordered a band to scour the country, until they had fallen in with and captured the depredators. For the last two days, they had been following some tracks, till their dogs, having crossed the trail left by the lawyers and their prisoners, guided the warriors to our encampments. We gave them all our prisoners, whom we were very glad to get rid of; and the Indian leader generously ordered one of his men to give up his horse and saddle to the parson. To this, however, we would not consent, unless we paid for the animal; and each of us subscribing ten dollars, we presented the money to the man, who certainly did not lose by the bargain. The next morning, the leader of the Cherokee party advised me to take a southern direction, till we should arrive at the head waters of the river Sabine, from whence, proceeding either northward or eastward, we should, in a few days, reach the Red River, through the cane-brakes and the clearings of the new settlers. Before parting, the Indians made us presents of pipes and tobacco, of which we were much in want; and after a hearty breakfast, we resumed our journey. CHAPTER XXXI. The Cherokee Indians, a portion of whom we had just met on such friendly terms, are probably destined to act no inconsiderable part in the future history of Texas. Within the last few years they have given a severe lesson to the governments of both Texas and the United States. The reader is already aware that, through a mistaken policy, the government of Washington have removed from several southern states those tribes of half-civilized Indians which indubitably were the most honourable and industrious portion of the population of these very states. The Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Choctaws, among others, were established on the northern banks of the Red River, in the territory west of the Arkansas. The Cherokees, with a population of twenty-four thousand individuals; the Creeks, with twenty thousand, and the Choctaws, with fifteen, as soon as they reached their new country, applied themselves to agriculture, and as they possessed wealth, slaves, and cattle, their cotton plantations soon became the finest west from the Mississippi, and latterly all the cotton grown by the Americans and the Texans, within one hundred miles from the Indian settlements, has been brought up to their mills and presses, to be cleaned and put into bales, before it was shipped to New Orleans. Some years before the independence of Texas, a small number of these Cherokees had settled as planters upon the Texan territory, where, by their good conduct and superior management of their farms, they had acquired great wealth, and had conciliated the goodwill of the warlike tribes of Indians around them, such as the Cushates, the Caddoes, and even the Comanches. As soon as the Texans declared their independence, their rulers, thinking that no better population could exist in the northern districts than that of the Cherokees, invited a few hundred more to come from the Red River, and settle among them; and to engage them so to do, the first session of congress offered them a grant of two or three hundred thousand acres of land, to be selected by them in the district they would most prefer. Thus enticed, hundreds of wealthy Cherokee planters migrated to Texas, with their wealth and cattle. Such was the state of affairs until the presidency of Lamar, a man utterly unequal to the task of ruling over a new country. Under his government, the Texans, no longer restrained by the energy and honourable feelings of an Austin or a Houston, followed the bent of their dispositions, and were guilty of acts of barbarism and cruelty which, had they, at the time, been properly represented to the civilized people of Europe, would have caused them to blot the name of Texas out of the list of nations. I have already related the massacre of the Comanches in San Antonio, and the miserable pilfering expedition to Santa Fé, but these two acts had been preceded by one still more disgraceful. The Cherokees, who had migrated to Texas, were flourishing in their new settlement, when the bankruptcy of the merchants in the United States was followed by that of the planters. The consequence was, that from Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, hundreds of planters smuggled their negroes and other property into Texas, and as they dared not locate themselves too far west, from their dread of the Mexicans and Indians, they remained in the east country, upon the rivers of which only, at that time, navigation had been attempted. These new comers, however, had to struggle with many difficulties; they had to clear the ground, to build bridges, to dry up mud-holes and swamps; and, moreover, they found that they could not enter into competition with the Cherokees, who having been established there for a longer time, and raising abundant crops of maize, cotton, and tobacco, were enabled to sell their provisions at one-half the price which the white planter wished to realize. The Europeans, of course, preferred to settle near the Cherokees, from whom they could obtain their Indian corn at fifty cents a bushel, while the American planters demanded two dollars, and sometimes three. In a short time, the Cherokee district became thickly settled, possessing good roads, and bridges and ferries upon every muddy creek; in short, it was, in civilization, full a century ahead of all the other eastern establishments of Texas. The Texan planters from the United States represented to the government that they would have no chance of cultivating the country and building eastern cities, as long as the Cherokees were allowed to remain; and, moreover, they backed their petition with a clause showing that the minimum price the Cherokee land would be sold at to new comers from the United States was ten dollars an acre. This last argument prevailed, and in spite of the opposition of two or three honest men, the greedy legislators attacked the validity of the acts made during the former presidency; the Cherokees' grant was recalled, and notice given to them that they should forthwith give up their plantations and retire from Texas. To this order the Cherokees did not deign to give an answer, and, aware of the character of the Texans, they never attempted to appeal for justice; but, on the contrary, prepared themselves to defend their property from any invasion. Seeing them so determined, the Texans' ardour cooled a little, and they offered the Indians twelve cents an acre for their land, which proposition was not attended to; and probably the Cherokees, from the fear which they inspired, would never have been molested had it not been for an act of the greatest cowardice on the part of the Texan government, and a most guilty indifference on that of the United States. In Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas, labour had fallen so low, that thousands of individuals had abandoned their farms to become horse-thieves and negro smugglers. Many among them had gone to sell the produce of their depredations to the Cherokees, who not only did not condescend to deal with them, but punished them with rigour, subjecting them to their own code of laws. These ruffians nurtured plans of vengeance which they dared not themselves execute, but, knowing the greedy spirit of their countrymen, they spread the most incredible stories of Cherokee wealth and comforts. The plan succeeded well, for as soon as the altercation between the Texans and Cherokee Indians was made known to the Western States, several bands were immediately formed, who, in the expectation of a rich booty, entered Texas, and offered the Congress to drive away the Cherokees. As soon as this was known, representations were made by honourable men to the government of the United States, but no notice was taken, and the Western States, probably to get rid at once of the scum of their population, gave every encouragement to the expedition. For a few months the Cherokees invariably discomfited their invaders, destroying their bands as soon as they were newly formed, and treating them as common robbers; but, being farmers, they could not fight and cultivate their ground at the same time, and they now thought of abandoning so unhospitable a land; the more so as, discovering that the Cherokees were more than a match for them in the field, a system of incendiarism and plunder was resorted to, which proved more disastrous to the Cherokees than the previous open warfare. The Cherokees wisely reflected, that as long as the inhabitants of the Western States would entertain the hope of plunder and booty, they would constantly pour upon them their worthless population. They, therefore, destroyed their farms and their bridges; and collecting their horses and cattle, they retreated upon the Red River among their own people. The Cherokee campaign is a topic of much boasting among the Texans, as they say they expelled the Indians from their country; but a fact, which they are not anxious to publish, is, that for every Cherokee killed, twenty Texans bit the dust. Since that period the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks have had several war councils, and I doubt not that they are only waiting for an opportunity to retaliate, and will eventually sweep off the entire eastern population of Texas. The fact is, that a democratic form of government is powerless when the nation is so utterly depraved. Austin, the father of Texan colonization, quitted the country in disgust. Houston, whose military talents and well-known courage obtained for him the presidency, has declared his intention to do the same, and to retire to the United States, to follow up his original profession of a lawyer. Such is the demoralized state of Texas at the present moment; what it may hereafter be is in the womb of Time. CHAPTER XXXII. We had now entered the white settlements of the Sabine river, and found, to our astonishment, that, far from arriving at civilization, we were receding from it; the farms of the Wakoes and well-cultivated fields of the Pawnee-Picts, their numerous cattle and comfortable dwellings, were a strong contrast to the miserable twelve-feet-square mud-and-log cabins we passed by. Every farmer we met was a perfect picture of wretchedness and misery; their women dirty and covered with rags, which could scarcely conceal their nudity; the cattle lean and starving; and the horses so weak that they could scarcely stand upon their legs. Where was the boasted superiority of the Texans over the Indian race? or were these individuals around us of that class of beings who, not daring to reside within the jurisdiction of the law, were obliged to lead a borderer's life, exposed to all the horrors of Indian warfare and famine? Upon inquiry, we discovered that these frontier men were all, more or less, eminent members of the Texan Republic, one being a general, another a colonel; some speakers of the House of Representatives; and many of them members of Congress, judges, and magistrates. Notwithstanding their high official appointments, we did not think it prudent to stop among them, but pushed on briskly, with our rifles across the pommels of our saddles; indeed, from the covetous eyes which these magistrates and big men occasionally cast upon our horses and saddle-bags, we expected at every moment that we should be attacked. A smart ride of two hours brought us to a second settlement, which contrasted most singularly with the first. Here, all the houses were neat and spacious, with fine barns and stables; the fields were well enclosed, and covered with a green carpet of clover, upon which were grazing cattle and horses of a superior breed. This sight of comfort and plenty restored our confidence in civilization, which confidence we had totally lost at the first settlement we had fallen in with; and perceiving, among others, a dwelling surrounded with gardens arranged with some taste, we stopped our horses and asked for accommodation for ourselves and beasts. Three or four smart young boys rushed out, to take care of our horses, and a venerable old man invited us to honour his hearth. He was a Mormon, and informed us that hundreds of farmers belonging to that sect had established themselves in East Texas, at a short distance from each other, and that, if we were going to travel through the Arkansas, and chose to do so, we could stop every other day at a Mormon farm, until we arrived at the southern borders of the state of Missouri. We resolved to avail ourselves of this information, anticipating that every Mormon dwelling would be as clean and comfortable as the one we were in; but we afterwards found out our mistake, for, during the fifteen days' journey which we travelled between the Sabine and a place called Boston, we stopped at six different Mormon farms, either for night or for noon meals, but, unlike the first, they were anything but comfortable or prosperous. One circumstance, however, attracted particularly our attention; it was, that, rich or poor, the Mormon planters had superior cattle and horses, and that they had invariably stored up in their granaries or barns the last year's crop of everything that would keep. Afterwards I learned that these farmers were only stipendiary agents of the elders of the Mormons, who, in the case of a westward invasion being decided upon by Joe Smith and his people, would immediately furnish their army with fresh horses and all the provisions necessary for a campaign. One morning we met with a Texan constable going to arrest a murderer. He asked us what o'clock it was, as he had not a _watch_, and told us that a few minutes' ride would bring us to Boston, a new Texan city. We searched in vain for any vestiges which could announce our being in the vicinity of even a village; at last, however, emerging from a swamp, through which we had been forcing our way for more than an hour, we descried between the trees a long building, made of the rough logs of the black pine, and as we advanced, we perceived that the space between the logs (about six inches) had not been filled up, probably to obtain a more free circulation of air. This building, a naked negro informed us, was Ambassadors' Hall, the great and only hotel of Texan Boston. Two hundred yards farther we perceived a multitude of individuals swarming around another erection of the same description, but without a roof, and I spurred on my horse, believing we should be in time to witness some cockfighting or a boxing-match; but my American fellow-travellers, better acquainted with the manners and customs of the natives, declared it was the "Court-House." As we had nothing to do there, we turned our horses' heads towards the tavern, and the barking of a pack of hungry dogs soon called around us a host of the Bostonians. It is strange that the name of city should be given to an unfinished log-house, but such is the case in Texas; every individual possessing three hundred acres of land calls his lot a city, and his house becomes at once the tavern, the post-office, the court-house, the gaol, the bank, the land-office, and, in fact, everything. I knew a man near the Red River, who had obtained from government an appointment of postmaster, and during the five years of his holding the office, he had not had a single letter in his hand. This city mania is a very extraordinary disease in the United States, and is the cause of much disappointment to the traveller. In the Iowa territory, I once asked a farmer my way to Dubuque. "A stranger, I reckon," he answered; "but no matter, the way is plain enough. Now, mind what I say. After you have forded the river, you will strike the military road till you arrive in the prairie; then you ride twenty miles east, till you arrive at Caledonia city; there they will tell you all about it." I crossed the river, and, after half an hour's fruitless endeavours, I could not find the military road, so I forded back, and returned to my host. "Law!" he answered; "why, the trees are blazed on each side of the road." Now, if he had told me that at first, I could not have mistaken, for I had seen the blazing of a bridle-path; but as he had announced a military road, I expected, what it imported, a military road. I resumed my journey and entered the prairie. The rays of the sun were very powerful, and, wishing to water my horse, I hailed with delight a miserable hut, sixteen feet square, which I saw at about half a mile from the trail. In a few minutes I was before the door, and tied my horse to a post, upon which was a square board bearing some kind of hieroglyphics on both sides. Upon a closer inspection, I saw upon one side "Ice," and upon the other, "POSTOFF." "A Russian, a Swede, or a Norwegian," thought I, knowing that Iowa contained eight or ten thousand emigrants of these countries. "Ice--well, that is a luxury rarely to be found by a traveller in the prairie, but it must be pretty dear; no matter, have some I must." I entered the hut, and saw a dirty woman half-naked, and slumbering upon a stool, by the corner of the chimney. "Any milk?" I inquired, rousing her up. She looked at me and shook her head; evidently she did not understand me; however, she brought me a stone jug full of whisky, a horn tumbler, and a pitcher of water. "Can you give my horse a pail of water?" I asked again. The woman bent down her body, and dragging from under the bed a girl of fourteen, quite naked, and with a skin as tough as that of an alligator, ordered her to the well with a large bucket. Having thus provided for my beast, I sat upon a stump that served for a chair, and once more addressed my hostess. "Now, my good woman, let us have the ice." "The what?" she answered. As I could not make her understand what I wanted, I was obliged to drink the whisky with water almost tepid, and my horse being refreshed, I paid my fare and started. I rode for three hours more, and was confident of having performed twice the distance named by mine host of the morning, and yet the prairie still extended as far as the eye could reach, and I could not perceive the city of Caledonia. Happily, I discovered a man at a distance riding towards me: we soon met. "How far," said I, "to Caledonia city?" "Eighteen miles," answered the traveller. "Is there no farm on the way?" I rejoined, "for my horse is tired." The horseman stared at me in amazement "Why, Sir," he answered, "you turn your back to it; you have passed it eighteen miles behind." "Impossible!" I exclaimed: "I never left the trail, except to water my horse at a little hut." "Well," he answered, "that was at General Hiram Washington Tippet's; he keeps the post-office--why, Sir, that was Caledonia city." I thanked him, unsaddled my horse, and bivouacked where I was, laughing heartily at my mistake in having asked for _ice_, when the two sides of the board made _post-office._ But I must return to Boston and its court-house. As it was the time of the assizes, some fifty or sixty individuals had come from different quarters, either to witness the proceedings, or to swap their horses, their saddles, their bowie-knife, or anything; for it is while law is exercising its functions that a Texan is most anxious to swap, to cheat, to gamble, and to pick pockets and quarrel under its nose, just to show his independence of all law. The dinner-bell rang a short time after our arrival, and for the first time in my life I found myself at an American _table-d'hôte_. I was astonished, as an Indian well might be. Before my companions and self had had time to sit down and make choice of any particular dish, all was disappearing like a dream. A general opposite to me took hold of a fowl, and in the twinkling of an eye, severed the wings and legs. I thought it was polite of him to carve for others as well as himself, and was waiting for him to pass over the dish after he had helped himself, when, to my surprise, he retained all he had cut off, and pushed the carcase of the bird away from him. Before I had recovered from my astonishment, his plate was empty. Another seized a plate of cranberries, a fruit I was partial to, and I waited for him to help himself first and then pass the dish over to me; but he proved to be more greedy than the general, for, with an enormous horn spoon, he swallowed the whole. The table was now deserted by all except by me and my companions, who, with doleful faces, endeavoured to appease our hunger with some stray potatoes. We called the landlord, and asked him for something to eat; it was with much difficulty that we could get half a dozen of eggs and as many slices of salt pork. This lesson was not thrown away upon me; and afterwards, when travelling in the States, I always helped myself before I was seated, caring nothing for my neighbours. Politeness at meals may be and is practised in Europe, or among the Indians, but among the Americans it would be attended with starvation. After dinner, to kill time, we went to the court-house, and were fortunate enough to find room in a position where we could see and hear all that was going on. The judge was seated upon a chair, the frame of which he was whittling with such earnestness that he appeared to have quite forgotten where he was. On each side of him were half a dozen of jurymen, squatted upon square blocks, which they were also whittling, judge and jurymen having each a cigar in the mouth, and a flask of liquor, with which now and then they regaled themselves. The attorney, on his legs, addressing the jury, was also smoking, as well as the plaintiff, the defendant, and all the audience. The last were seated, horseback-fashion, upon parallel low benches, for their accommodation, twenty feet long, all turned towards the judge, and looking over the shoulders of the one in front of him, and busily employed in carving at the bench between his thigh and that of his neighbour. It was a very singular _coup d'oeil,_ and a new-comer from Europe would have supposed the assembly to have been a "whittling club." [Illustration: "The attorney, on his legs, addressing the jury, was also smoking."] Having surveyed the company, I then paid attention to the case on trial, and, as I was just behind the defendant, I soon learned how justice was executed in Texas, or, at least, in Texan Boston. It appeared that the defendant was the postmaster and general merchant of the country. Two or three weeks back, the son of the plaintiff had entered his shop to purchase his provision of coffee, sugar, and flour, and had given him to change a good one-hundred-dollar bill of one of the New Orleans banks. The merchant had returned to him a fifty-dollar note and another of ten. Two hours afterwards, the young man, having swapped his horse, carriole, and twenty dollars, for a waggon and two couple of oxen, presented the fifty-dollar note, which was refused as being counterfeited. The son of the plaintiff returned to the merchant, and requested him to give him a good note. The merchant, however, would not: "Why did you take it?" said he; "I be d----d if I give you any other money for it." Upon which the young man declared it was shameful swindling, and the merchant, throwing at him an iron weight of nine pounds, killed him on the spot. The attorney, who was now pleading for the defendant, was trying to impress upon the jury that the murder had been merely accidental, inasmuch as the merchant had thrown the missile only in sport, just to scare away the fellow who was insulting him in his own house; but, strange to say, no mention was made at all of the note, though everybody knew perfectly well that the merchant had given it, and that it was a part of his trade to pass forged notes among his inexperienced customers. As soon as the lawyer had ended the defence, the merchant was called upon by the judge to give his own version of what occurred. He rose: "Why," said he, "it was just so as has been said. I wished not to hurt the fellow; but he called me a swindler. Well, I knew the man was in a passion, and I did not care. I only said, 'How dare you, Sir?' and I threw the piece of iron just to frighten him. Well, to be sure, the blackguard fell down like a bull, and I thought it was a humbug. I laughed and said, 'None of your gammon;' but he was dead. I think the thing must have struck something on the way, and so swerved against his head. I wished not to kill the fellow--I be damned if I did." The jurymen looked at each other with a significant and approving air, which could be translated as accidental death. Gabriel touched the merchant upon the shoulder, "You should have said to him, that you merely wished to kill a musquito upon the wall." "Capital idea," cried the defendant "I be d----d if it was not a musquito eating my molasses that I wished to kill, after all." At that moment one of the jurymen approached the merchant, and addressed him in a low voice; I could not hear what passed, but I heard the parting words of the juryman, which were, "All's right!" To this dispenser of justice succeeded another; indeed, all the jurymen followed in succession, to have a little private conversation with the prisoner. At last the judge condescended to cease his whittling, and come to make his own bargain, which he did openly: "Any good saddles, Fielding? mine looks rather shabby." "Yes, by Jingo, a fine one, bound with blue cloth, and silver nails--Philadelphia-made--prime cost sixty dollars." "That will do," answered the judge, walking back to his seat. Ten minutes afterwards the verdict of manslaughter was returned against the defendant, who was considered, in a speech from the judge, sufficiently punished by the affliction which such an accident must produce to a generous mind. The court broke up, and Fielding, probably to show how deep was his remorse, gave three cheers, to which the whole court answered with a hurrah, and the merchant was called upon to treat the whole company: of course he complied, and they all left the court-house. Gabriel and I remained behind. He had often tried to persuade me to abandon my ideas of going to the States and Europe, pointing out to me that I should be made a dupe and become a prey to pretended well-wishers. He had narrated to me many incidents of his own life, of his folly and credulity, which had thrown him from an eminent station in civilized society, and had been the cause of our meeting in the Western World. He forewarned me that I should be disappointed in my expectations, and reap nothing but vexation and disappointment. He knew the world too well. I knew nothing of it, and I thought that he was moved by bitterness of spirit to rail so loud against it. He would fain persuade me to return with him to my own tribe of Shoshones, and not go in search of what I never should obtain. He was right, but I was obstinate. He did not let pass this opportunity of giving me a lesson. "You have now witnessed," said he, "a sample of justice in this _soi-disant_ civilized country. Two hundred dollars perhaps, have cleared a murderer; ten millions would not have done it among the Shoshones." "But Texas is not Europe," replied I. "No," said Gabriel, "it is not; but in Europe, as in Texas, with money you can do anything, without money nothing." At that moment we perceived a man wrapt in his blanket, and leaning against a tree. He surveyed the group receding to the tavern, and the deepest feelings of hatred and revenge were working evidently within him. He saw us not, so intense were his thoughts. It was the plaintiff whose son had been murdered. Gabriel resumed. "Now, mark that man; he was the plaintiff, the father of the young fellow so shamefully plundered and murdered; he is evidently a poor farmer, or the assassin would have been hung. He is now brooding over revenge; the law gave not justice, he will take it into his own hands, and he will probably have it to-night, or to-morrow. Injustice causes crime, and ninety-nine out of a hundred are forced into it by the impotency of the law; they suffer once, and afterwards act towards others as they have been acted by. That man may have been till this day a good, industrious, and hospitable farmer; to-night he will be a murderer, in a week he will have joined the free bands, and will then revenge himself upon society at large, for the injustice he has received from a small portion of the community." Till then I had never given credit to my friend for any great share of penetration, but he prophesied truly. Late in the night the father announced his intention of returning to his farm, and entered the general sleeping-room of the hotel to light a cigar. A glance informed him of all that he wished to know. Forty individuals were ranged sleeping in their blankets, alongside of the walls, which, as I have observed, were formed of pine logs, with a space of four or six inches between each: parallel with the wall, next to the yard, lay the murderer Fielding. The father left the room, to saddle his horse. An hour afterwards the report of a rifle was heard, succeeded by screams and cries of "Murder! help! murder!" Every one in the sleeping-room was up in a moment, lights were procured, and the judge was seen upon his knees with his hands upon his hinder quarters; his neighbour Fielding was dead, and the same ball which had passed through his back and chest had blazed the bark off the nether parts of this pillar of Texan justice. When the first surprise was over, pursuit of the assassin was resolved upon, and then it was discovered that, in his revenge, the father had not lost sight of prudence. All the horses were loose; the stable and the court-house, as well as the bar and spirit-store of the tavern, were in flames. While the Bostonians endeavoured to steal what they could, and the landlord was beating his negroes, the only parties upon whom he could vent his fury, our companions succeeded in recovering their horses, and at break of day, without any loss but the gold watch of the doctor, which had probably been stolen from him during his sleep, we started for the last day's journey which we had to make in Texas. As we rode away, nothing remained of Texan Boston except three patches of white ashes, and a few half-burnt logs, nor do I know if that important city has ever been rebuilt. CHAPTER XXXIII. We were now about twenty miles from the Red River, and yet this short distance proved to be the most difficult travelling we had experienced for a long while. We had to cross swamps, lagoons, and canebrakes, in which our horses were bogged continually; so that at noon, and after a ride of six hours, we had only gained twelve miles. We halted upon a dry knoll, and there, for the first time since the morning, we entered into conversation; for, till then, we had been too busy scrutinizing the ground before our horses' feet. I had a great deal to say both to Gabriel and to Roche; we were to part the next morning,--they to return to the Comanches and the Shoshones, I to go on to the Mormons, and perhaps to Europe. I could not laugh at the doctor's _bon mots_, for my heart was full; till then, I had never felt how long intercourse, and sharing the same privations and dangers, will attach men to each other; and the perspective of a long separation rendered me gloomier and gloomier, as the time we still had to pass together became shorter. Our five American companions had altered their first intention of travelling with me through the Arkansas. They had heard on the way, that some new thriving cities had lately sprung up on the American side of the Red River; the doctor was already speculating upon the fevers and agues of the ensuing summer; the parson was continually dreaming of a neat little church and a buxom wife, and the three lawyers, of rich fees from the wealthy cotton planters. The next day, therefore, I was to be alone, among a people less hospitable than the Indians, and among whom I had to perform a journey of a thousand miles on horseback, constantly on the outskirts of civilization, and consequently exposed to all the dangers of border travelling. When we resumed our march through the swampy cane-brake, Gabriel, Roche, and I kept a little behind our companions. "Think twice, whilst it is yet time," said Gabriel to me, "and believe me, it is better to rule over your devoted and attached tribe of Shoshones than to indulge in dreams of establishing a western empire; and, even if you will absolutely make the attempt, why should we seek the help of white men? what can we expect from them and their assistance but exorbitant claims and undue interference? With a few months' regular organization, the Comanches, Apaches, and Shoshones can be made equal to any soldiers of the civilized world, and among them you will have no traitors." I felt the truth of what he said, and for a quarter of an hour I remained silent. "Gabriel," replied I at last, "I have now gone too far to recede, and the plans which I have devised are not for my own advantage, but for the general welfare of the Shoshones and of all the friendly tribes. I hope to live to see them a great nation, and, at all events, it is worth a trial." My friend shook his head mournfully; he was not convinced, but he knew the bent of my temper, and was well aware that all he could say would now be useless. The natural buoyancy of our spirits would not, however, allow us to be grave long; and when the loud shouts of the doctor announced that he had caught a sight of the river, we spurred our horses, and soon rejoined our company. We had by this time issued from the swampy canebrakes, and were entering a lane between two rich cotton-fields, and at the end of which flowed the Red River; not the beautiful, clear, and transparent stream running upon a rocky and sandy bed, as in the country inhabited by the Comanches and Pawnee Picts, and there termed the Colorado of the West; but a red and muddy, yet rapid stream. We agreed that we should not ferry the river that evening, but seek a farm, and have a feast before parting company. We learned from a negro, that we were in a place called Lost Prairie, and that ten minutes' ride down the bank of the stream would carry us to Captain Finn's plantation. We received this news with wild glee, for Finn was a celebrated character, one whose life was so full of strange adventures in the wilderness, that it would fill volumes with hair-breadth encounters and events of thrilling interest. Captain Finn received us with a cordial welcome, for unbounded hospitality is the invariable characteristic of the older cotton planters. A great traveller himself, he knew the necessities of a travelling life, and, before conducting us to the mansion, he guided us to the stables, where eight intelligent slaves, taking our horses, rubbed them down before our eyes, and gave them a plentiful supply of fodder and a bed of fresh straw. "That will do till they are cool," said our kind host; "to-night they will have their grain and water; let us now go to the old woman and see what she can give us for supper." A circumstance worthy of remark is, that, in the western states, a husband always calls his wife the old woman, and she calls him the old man, no matter how young the couple may be. I have often heard men of twenty-five sending their slaves upon some errand "to the old woman," who was not probably more than eighteen years old. A boy of ten years calls his parents in the same way. "How far to Little Rock?" I once asked of a little urchin; "I don't know," answered he, "but the old ones will tell you." A few yards farther I met the "old ones;" they were both young people, not much more than twenty. In Mrs. Finn we found a stout and plump farmer's wife, but she was a lady in her manners. Born in the wilderness, the daughter of one bold pioneer and married to another, she had never seen anything but woods, canebrakes, cotton, and negroes, and yet, in her kindness and hospitality, she displayed a refinement of feeling and good breeding. She was daughter of the celebrated Daniel Boone, a name which has acquired a reputation even in Europe. She immediately ransacked her pantry, her hen-roost, and garden, and when we returned from the cotton-mill, to which our host, in his farmer's pride, had conducted us, we found, upon an immense table, a meal which would have satisfied fifty of those voracious Bostonians whom we had met with the day before at the _table d'hôte_. Well do I recollect her, as she stood before us on that glorious evening, her features beaming with pleasure, as she witnessed the rapidity with which we emptied our plates. How happy she would look when we praised her chickens, her honey, and her coffee; and then she would carve and cut, fill again our cups, and press upon us all the delicacies of the Far West borders, delicacies unknown in the old countries; such as fried beaver-tail, smoked tongue of the buffalo-calf, and (the _gourmand's_ dish _par excellence_) the Louisiana gombo. Her coffee, too, was superb, as she was one of the few upon the continent of America who knew how to prepare it. After our supper, the captain conducted us under the piazza attached to the building, where we found eight hammocks suspended, as white as snow. There our host disinterred from a large bucket of ice several bottles of Madeira, which we sipped with great delight: the more so as, for our cane pipes and cheap Cavendish, Finn substituted a box of genuine Havanna cazadores. After our fatigues and starvation, it was more than comfortable--it was delightful. The doctor vowed he would become a planter, the parson asked if there were any widows in the neighbourhood, and the lawyers inquired if the planters of the vicinity were any way litigious. By the bye, I have observed that Captain Finn was a celebrated character. As we warmed with the _Madère frappé à glace_, we pressed him to relate some of his wild adventures, with which request he readily complied; for he loved to rehearse his former exploits, and it was not always that he could narrate them to so numerous an assembly. As the style he employed could only be understood by individuals who have rambled upon the borders of the Far West, I will relate the little I remember in my own way, though I am conscious that the narrative must lose much when told by any one but Finn himself. When quite an infant, he had been taken by the Indians and carried into the fastnesses of the West Virginian forests: there he had been brought up till he was sixteen years old, when, during an Indian war, he was recaptured by a party of white men. Who were his parents, he could never discover, and a kind Quaker took him into his house, gave him his name, and treated him as his own child, sending him first to school, and then to the Philadelphia college. The young man, however, was little fit for the restrictions of a university; he would often escape and wander for days in the forests, until hunger would bring him home again. At last, he returned to his adopted father, who was now satisfied that his thoughts were in the wilderness, and that, in the bustle of a large city and restraint of civilized life, he would not live, but linger on till he drooped and died. This discovery was a sad blow to the kind old man, who had fondly anticipated that the youngster would be a kind and grateful companion to him, when age should make him feel the want of friendship; but he was a just man, and reflecting that perhaps a short year of rambling would cure him, he was the first to propose it. Young Finn was grateful; beholding the tears of his venerable protector, he would have remained and attended him till the hour of his death; but the Quaker would not permit him, he gave him his best horse, and furnished him with arms and money. At that time the fame of Daniel Boone had filled the Eastern States, and young Finn had read with avidity the adventures of that bold pioneer. Hearing that he was now on the western borders of Kentucky, making preparations for emigration farther west, into the very heart of the Indian country, he resolved to join him and share the dangers of his expedition. The life of Boone is too well known for me to describe this expedition. Suffice it to say, that, once in Missouri, Finn conceived and executed the idea of making alone a trip across the Rocky Mountains, to the very borders of the Pacific Ocean. Strange to say, he scarcely remembers anything of that first trip, which lasted eleven months. The animals had not yet been scared out of the wilderness; water was found twice every day; the vine grew luxuriantly in the forests, and the caravans of the white men had not yet destroyed the patches of plums and nuts which grew wild in the prairies. Finn says he listened to the songs of the birds, and watched the sport of the deer, the buffaloes, and wild horses, in a sort of dreaming existence, fancying that he heard voices in the streams, in the foliage of the trees, in the caverns of the mountains; his wild imagination sometimes conjuring up strange and beautiful spirits of another world, who were his guardians, and who lulled him asleep every evening with music and perfumes. I have related this pretty nearly in the very terms of our host, and many of his listeners have remarked, at different times, that when he was dwelling upon that particular portion of his life, he became gloomy and abstracted, as if still under the influence of former indelible impressions. Undoubtedly Captain Finn is of a strong poetical temperament, and any one on hearing him narrate would say the same; but it is supposed that, when the captain performed this first solitary excursion, his brain was affected by an excited and highly poetical imagination. After eleven months of solitude, he reached the Pacific Ocean, and awoke from his long illusion in the middle of a people whose language he could not understand; yet they were men of his colour, kind and hospitable; they gave him jewels and gold, and sent him back east of the mountains, under the protection of some simple and mild-hearted savages. The spot where Finn had arrived was at one of the missions, and those who released him and sent him back were the good monks of one of the settlements in Upper California. When Finn returned to the Mississippi, his narrative was so much blended with strange and marvellous stories that it was not credited; but when he showed and produced his stock of gold dust in bladders, and some precious stones, fifty different proposals were made to him to guide a band of greedy adventurers to the new western Eldorado. Finn, like Boone, could not bear the society of his own countrymen; he dreaded to hear the noise of their axes felling the beautiful trees; he feared still more to introduce them, like so many hungry wolves, among the good people who knew so well the sacred rites of hospitality. After a short residence with the old backwoodsman, Finn returned to Virginia, just in time to close the eyes of the kind old Quaker. He found that his old friend had expected his return, for he had sold all his property, and deposited the amount in the hands of a safe banker, to be kept for Finn's benefit. The young wanderer was amazed; he had now ten thousand dollars, but what could he do with so much money? He thought of a home, of love and happiness, of the daughter of old Boone, and he started off to present her with his newly acquired wealth. Finn entered Boone's cottage, with his bags and pocket-books in each hand, and casting his burden into a corner, he entered at once upon the matter. "Why, I say, old man, I am sure I love the gal." "She Is a comely and kind girl," said the father. "I wish she could love me." "She does." "Does she? well, I tell you what, Boone, give her to me, I'll try to make her happy." "I will, but not yet," said the venerable patriarch. "Why, you are both of you mere children; she can't get a house, and how could you support her?" Finn jumped up with pride and glee. "Look," said he, while he scattered on the floor his bank-notes, his gold, and silver, "that will support her bravely; tell me, old father, that will keep her snug, won't it?" The pioneer nodded his head. "Finn," answered he, "you are a good young man, and I like you; you think like me; you love Polly, and Polly loves you; mind, you shall have her when you are both old enough; but remember, my son, neither your pieces of money nor your rags of paper will ever keep a daughter of mine. No, no! you shall have Polly, but you must first know how to use the rifle and the axe." A short time after this interview, Finn started upon another trip to unknown lands, leaving old Boone to make the most he could of his money. Now, the old pioneer, although a bold hunter, and an intrepid warrior, was a mere child in matters of interest, and in less than two months he had lost the whole deposit, the only "gentleman" he ever trusted having suddenly disappeared with the funds. In the meanwhile Finn had gone down the Mississippi, to the thirty-second degree of north latitude, when, entering the western swamps, where no white man had ever penetrated, he forced his way to the Red River, which he reached a little above the old French establishment of Nachitoches. Beyond this point, inland navigation had never been attempted, and Finn, procuring a light dug-out, started alone, with his arms and his blanket, upon his voyage of discovery. During four months he struggled daily against the rapid stream, till he at last reached, in spite of rafts and dangerous eddies, its source at the Rocky Mountains. On his return, a singular and terrible adventure befel him: he was dragging his canoe over a raft, exactly opposite to where now stands his plantation, when, happening to hurt his foot, he lost hold of his canoe. It was on the very edge of the raft, near a ruffled eddy: the frail bark was swamped in a moment, and with it Finn lost his rifle, all his arms, and his blanket[27]. [Footnote 27: Rafts are an assemblage of forest trees, which have been washed down to the river, from the undermining of its banks. At certain points they become interlaced and stationary, stretching right across the river, prevailing the passage of even a canoe.] Now that cotton grown on the Red River has been acknowledged to be the best in the States, speculators have settled upon both sides of it as far as two hundred miles above Lost Prairie; but at the time that Finn made his excursion, the country was a wilderness of horrible morasses, where the alligators basked unmolested. For months Finn found himself a prisoner at Lost Prairie, the spot being surrounded with impenetrable swamps, where the lightest foot would have sunk many fathoms below the surface. As to crossing the river, it was out of the question, as it was more than half a mile broad, and Finn was no swimmer: even now, no human being or animal can cross it at this particular spot, for so powerful are the eddies, that, unless a pilot is well acquainted with the passage, a boat will be capsized in the whirlpools. Human life can be sustained upon very little, for Finn managed to live for months upon a marshy ground six miles in extent, partially covered with prickly pears, sour grapes, and mushrooms. Birds he would occasionally kill with sticks; several times he surprised tortoises coming on shore to deposit their eggs, and once, when much pressed by hunger, he gave battle to a huge alligator. Fire he had none; his clothes had long been in rags; his beard had grown to a great length, and his nails were sharp as the claws of a wild beast. At last there was a flood in the river, and above the raft Finn perceived two immense pine trees afloat in the middle of the stream. Impelled by the force of the current, they cut through the raft, where the timber was rotten, and then grounded. This was a chance which Finn lost no time in profiting by; out of the fibrous substance of the prickly pear, he soon manufactured sufficient rope to lash the two trees together, with great labour got them afloat, and was carried down the stream with the speed of an arrow. He succeeded in landing many miles below, on the eastern bank, but he was so bruised, that for many days he was unable to move. One day a report was spread in the neighbourhood of Port Gibson, that a strange monster, of the ourang-outang species, had penetrated the canebrakes upon the western banks of the Mississippi. Some negroes declared to have seen him tearing down a brown bear; an Arkansas hunter had sent to Philadelphia an exaggerated account of this recently discovered animal, and the members of the academies had written to him to catch the animal, if possible, alive, no matter at what expense. A hunting expedition was consequently formed, hundreds of dogs were let loose in the canebrakes, and the chase began. The hunters were assembled, waiting till the strange animal should break cover, when suddenly he burst upon them, covered with blood, and followed closely by ten or fifteen hounds. He was armed with a heavy club, with which he now and then turned upon the dogs, crushing them at a blow. The hunters were dumb with astonishment; mounting their horses, they sprang forward to witness the conflict; the brute, on seeing them, gave a loud shout; one of the hunters, being terrified, fired at him with his rifle; the strange animal put one of its hairy paws upon its breast, staggered, and fell; a voice was heard: "The Lord forgive you this murder!" On coming near, the hunters found that their victim was a man, covered with hair from head to foot; he was senseless, but not dead. They deplored their fatal error, and resolved that no expense or attention should be spared upon the unfortunate sufferer. This hunted beast, this hairy man, was Finn. The wound, not being mortal, was soon cured; but he became crazy, and did not recover his reason for eight months. He related his adventures up to his quitting the Lost Prairie: after which all was a blank. His narrative soon spread all over the States, and land speculators crowded from every part to hear Finn's description of the unknown countries. The government became anxious to establish new settlements in these countries, and Finn was induced to commence the work of colonization by the gift of the "Lost Prairie." Money was also supplied to him, that he might purchase slaves; but before taking possession of his grant, he went to Missouri to visit his old friend, and claim his bride. Her father had been dead for some time, but the daughter was constant. With his wife, his brother-in-law, his negroes, and several waggons loaded with the most necessary articles, Finn forced his way to Little Rock, on the Arkansas River, whence, after a short repose, he again started in a S.S.W. direction, through a hilly and woody country never before travelled. At last he reached the "Lost Prairie," nothing was heard of him for two years, when he appeared at Nachitoches in a long _cow_[28] laden with produce. [Footnote 28: A cow is a kind of floating raft peculiar to the western rivers of America, being composed of immense pine-trees tied together, and upon which a log cabin is erected.] From Nachitoches Finn proceeded to New Orleans, where the money received for his cotton, furs, and honey enabled him to purchase two more negroes and a fresh supply of husbandry tools. A company was immediately formed, for the purpose of exploring the Red River, as far as it might prove navigable, and surveying the lands susceptible of cultivation. A small steamboat was procured, and its command offered to Finn, who thus became a captain. Although the boat could not proceed higher than Lost Prairie, the result of the survey induced hundreds of planters to settle upon the banks of the river, and Captain Finn lived to become rich and honoured by his countrymen; his great spirit of enterprise never deserted him, and it was he who first proposed to the government to cut through the great rafts which impeded the navigation. His plans were followed, and exploring steamboats have since gone nearly a thousand miles above Captain Finn's plantation at Lost Prairie. CHAPTER XXXIV. The next morning our American companions bade us farewell, and resumed their journey; but Captain Finn insisted that Gabriel, Roche, and I should not leave him so soon. He pointed out that my steed would not be able to travel much farther, if I did not give him at least two or three days' repose; as for the horses of my two companions, they had become quite useless, and our host charged himself with procuring them others, which would carry them back to the Comanches. Captain Finn's hospitality was not, however, so heavily taxed, for during the day a flotilla of fifteen canoes stopped before the plantation, and a dozen of French traders came up to the house. They were intimate friends of the captain, who had known them for a long time, and it fortunately happened that they were proceeding with goods to purchase the furs of the Pawnee Picts. They offered a passage to Gabriel and Roche, who, of course, accepted the welcome proposition. They embarked their saddles with sundry provisions, which the good Mrs. Finn forced upon them, while her hospitable husband, unknown to them, put into the canoes a bale of such articles as he thought would be useful to them during their long journey. The gift, as I afterwards learned, was composed of pistols and holsters, a small keg of powder, bars of lead, new bits and stirrups, and of four Mackinaw blankets. At last the moment arrived when I was to part with my friends. I felt a bitter pang, and I wept when I found myself alone. However, I consoled myself with the reflection that our separation was not to be a long one, and, cheered up by the captain, I soon overcame the bitterness of the separation. Yet, for months afterwards, I felt lonely and tired of myself; I had never had an idea how painful it is to part from the only few individuals who are attached to you. My worthy host showed much interest in my welfare. As he had some business to transact at the Land Office in the Arkansas, he resolved that he would accompany me two or three days on my journey. Five days after the departure of Gabriel and Roche, we crossed the Red River, and soon arrived at Washington, the only place of any importance in the west of Arkansas. From Washington to Little Rock, the capital of the state, there is a mail-road, with farms at every fifteen or twenty miles; but the captain informed me they were inhabited by the refuse from other states, and that west of the Mississippi (except in Louisiana and Missouri) it was always safer to travel through the wilderness, and camp out. We accordingly took the back-wood trail, across a hilly and romantic country, entirely mineral, and full of extinct volcanoes. The quantity of game found in these parts is incredible; every ten minutes we would start a band of some twenty turkeys. At all times, deer were seen grazing within rifle-shot, and I don't think that, on our first day's journey over the hills, we met less than twenty bears. Independent of his love for the wilderness, and his hatred of bowie-knife men, Captain Finn had another reason for not following the mail-road. He had business to transact at the celebrated hot springs, and he had to call on his way upon one of his brothers in-law, a son of Boone, and a mighty hunter, who had settled in the very heart of the mountains, and who made it a rule to take a trip every spring to the Rocky Mountains. The second day, at noon, after a toilsome ascent of a few thousand feet, we arrived at a small clearing on the top of the mountains, where the barking of the dogs and the crowing of the fowls announced the vicinity of a habitation, and, ere many minutes had elapsed, we heard the sharp report of a rifle. "Young Boone's own, I declare," exclaimed Finn; "'twas I that gave him the tool. I should know its crack amidst a thousand. Now mark me, chief, Boone never misses; he has killed a deer or a bear; if the first, search for a hole between the fifth and sixth rib; if a bear, look in the eye. At all events, the young chap is a capital cook, and we arrive in good time. Did I not-say so? By all the alligators in the swamps! Eh, Boone, my boy, how fares it with ye?" We had by this time arrived at the spot where the buck lay dead, and near the body was standing the gaunt form of a man, about forty years old, dressed in tanned leather, and standing six feet nine in his mocassins. Though we were within a yard of him, he reloaded his rifle with imperturbable gravity, and it was only when he had finished that job that I could perceive his grim features beaming with a smile. "Welcome, old boy; welcome, stranger; twice welcome to the hunter's home. I knew somebody was coming, because I saw the pigeons were flying up from the valley below; and as dried venison won't do after a morning trip, why, I took the rifle to kill a beast out of my _flock_" The hunter grinned at his conceit. "You see," he continued, "this place of mine is a genuine spot for a hunter. Every morning, from my threshold, I can shoot a deer, a bear, or a turkey. I can't abide living in a country where an honest man must toil a whole day for a mouthful of meat; it would never do for me. Down Blackey, down Judith, down dogs. Old boy, take the scalping-knife and skin the beast under the red oak." This second part of the sentence was addressed to a young lad of sixteen, an inmate of the hunter's cabin; and the dogs, having come to the conclusion that we were not robbers, allowed us to dismount our horses. The cabin was certainly the _ne plus ultra_ of simplicity, and yet it was comfortable. Four square logs supported a board--it was the table; many more were used _fauteuils_; and buffalo and bear hides, rolled in a corner of the room, were the bedding. A stone jug, two tin cups, and a large boiler completed the furniture of the cabin. There was no chimney: all the cooking was done outside. In due time we feasted upon the hunter's spoil, and, by way of passing the time, Boone related to us his first grizzly bear expedition. While a very young man, he had gone to the great mountains of the West with a party of trappers. His great strength and dexterity in handling the axe, and the deadly precision of his aim with the rifle, had given him a reputation among his companions, and yet they were always talking to him as if he were a boy, because he had not yet followed the Red-skins on the war-path, nor fought a grizzly bear, which deed is considered quite as honourable and more perilous. Young Boone waited patiently for an opportunity, when one day he witnessed a terrible conflict, in which one of these huge monsters, although wounded by twenty balls, was so closely pursuing the trappers, his companions, that they were compelled to seek their safety by plunging into the very middle of a broad river. There, fortunately, the strength of the animal failed, and the stream rolled him away. It had been a terrible fight, and for many days the young man would shudder at the recollection; but he could no longer bear the taunts which were bestowed upon him, and, without announcing his intention to his companions, he resolved to leave them and bring back with him the claws of a grizzly bear, or die in the attempt. For two days he watched in the passes of the mountains, till he discovered, behind some bushes, the mouth of a dark cave, under a mass of rocks. The stench which proceeded from it and the marks at the entrance were sufficient to point out to the hunter that it contained the object of his search; but, as the sun had set, he reflected that the beast was to a certainty awake, and most probably out in search of prey. Boone climbed up a tree, from which he could watch the entrance of the cave; having secured himself and his rifle against a fall, by thongs of leather, with which a hunter is always provided, fatigue overpowered him, and he slept. At morn he was awakened by a growl and a rustling noise below; it was the bear dragging to his abode the carcase of a buck. When he thought that the animal was glutted with flesh, and sleeping, Boone descended the tree, and, leaning his rifle against the rock, he crawled into the cave to reconnoitre. It must have been a terrible moment; but he had made up his mind, and he possessed all the courage of his father: the cave was spacious and dark. The heavy grunt of the animal showed that he was asleep. By degrees, the vision of Boone became more clear, and he perceived the shaggy mass at about ten feet from him and about twenty yards from the entrance of the cave. The ground under him yielded to his weight, for it was deeply covered with the bones of animals, and more than once he thought himself lost, when rats, snakes, and other reptiles, disturbed by him from their meal, would start away, in every direction, with loud hissing and other noises. The brute, however, never awoke, and Boone, having finished his survey, crawled out from this horrid den to prepare for the attack. He first cut a piece of pitch-pine, six or seven feet long, then, taking from his pouch a small cake of bees-wax, he wrapped it round one end of the stick, giving it at the extremity the shape of a small cup, to hold some whisky. This done, he re-entered the cavern, turned to his left, fixed his new kind of flambeau upright against the wall, poured the liquor in the wax cup, and then went out again to procure fire. With the remainder of his wax and a piece of cotton twine, he made a small taper, which he lighted, and crawled in again over the bones, shading his light with one hand, till he had applied the flame to the whisky. The liquor was above proof, and as Boone returned and took up his position nearer the entrance, with his rifle, it threw up a vivid flame, which soon ignited the wax and the pitch-pine itself. The bear required something more than light to awake him from his almost lethargic sleep, and Boone threw bone after bone at him, till the brute woke up, growled with astonishment at the unusual sight before him, and advanced lazily to examine it. The young man had caught up his rifle by the barrel; he took a long and steady aim, as he knew that he must die if the bear was only wounded; and as the angry animal raised his paw to strike down the obnoxious torch, he fired. There was a heavy fall, a groan and a struggle,--the light was extinguished, and all was dark as before. The next morning Boone rejoined his companions as they were taking their morning meal, and, throwing at their feet his bleeding trophies, he said to them, "Now, who will dare to say that I am not a man?" The history of this bold deed spread in a short time to even the remotest tribes of the North, and when, years afterwards, Boone fell a prisoner to the Black-feet Indians, they restored him to liberty and loaded him with presents, saying that they could not hurt the great brave who had vanquished in his own den the evil spirit of the mountains. At another time, Boone, when hardly pressed by a party of the Flat-head Indians, fell into a crevice and broke the butt of his rifle. He was safe, however, from immediate danger; at least he thought so, and resolved he would remain where he was till his pursuers should abandon their search. On examining the place which had afforded him so opportune a refuge, he perceived it was a spacious natural cave, having no other entrance than the hole or aperture through which he had fallen. He thanked Providence for this fortunate discovery, as, for the future, he would have a safe place to conceal his skins and provisions while trapping; but as he was prosecuting his search, he perceived with dismay that the cave was already inhabited. In a corner he perceived two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain; the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous situation, he heard a roar, which summoned all his energy; he rolled a loose mass of rock to the entrance; made it as firm as he could, by backing it with other stones; tied his knife to the end of his rifle-barrel, and calmly waited for the issue. A minute passed, when a tremendous jaguar dashed against the rock, and Boone needed all his giant's strength to prevent it from giving way. Perceiving that main force could not clear the passage, the animal began scratching and digging at the entrance, and its hideous roars were soon responded to by the cubs, which threw themselves upon Boone. He kicked them away, but not without receiving several ugly scratches, and, thrusting the blade of his knife through the opening between the large stone and the solid rock, he broke it in the shoulder of the female jaguar, which, with a yell, started away. This respite was fortunate, as by this time Boone's strength was exhausted; he profited by the suspension of hostility, so as to increase the impediments, in case of a new attack; and reflecting that the mewings of the cubs attracted and enraged the mother, he knocked their brains out with the barrel of his rifle. During two hours he was left to repose himself after his exertions, and he was beginning to think the animal had been scared away, when another terrible bound against the massive stone forced it a few inches into the cave. For an hour he struggled, till the jaguar, itself tired, and not hearing the mewings of her cubs, retired with a piteous howl. Night came, and Boone began to despond. Leaving the cave was out of question, for the brute was undoubtedly watching for him; and yet remaining was almost as dangerous, as long watching and continual exertion weighed down his eyelids and rendered sleep imperative. He decided to remain where he was, and after another hour of labour in fortifying the entrance, he lay down to sleep, with the barrel of his rifle close to him, in case of attack. He had slept about three or four hours, when he was awakened by a noise close to his head. The moon was shining, and shot her beams through the crevices at the mouth of the cave. A foreboding of danger would not allow Boone to sleep any more; he was watching with intense anxiety, when he observed several of the smaller stones he had placed round the piece of rock rolling towards him, and that the rays of light streaming into the cave were occasionally darkened by some interposed body. It was the jaguar, which had been undermining the rock: one after the other, the stones gave way; Boone rose, grasped his heavy rifle-barrel, and determined to await the attack of the animal. In a second or two, the heavy stone rolled a few feet into the cave; the jaguar advanced her head, then her shoulders, and at last, a noiseless bound brought her within four feet of Boone, who at that critical moment collecting all his strength for a decisive blow, dashed her skull to atoms. Boone, quite exhausted, drank some of her blood to allay his thirst, pillowed his head upon her body, and fell into a deep sleep. The next morning Boone, after having made a good meal off one of the cubs, started to rejoin his companions, and communicated to them his adventure and discovery. A short time afterwards, the cave was stored with all the articles necessary to a trapper's life, and soon became the rendezvous of all the adventurous men from the banks of the river Platte to the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Since Boone had settled in his present abode, he had had a hand-to-hand fight with a black bear, in the very room where we were sitting. When he had built his log cabin, it was with the intention of taking to himself a wife. At that time he courted the daughter of one of the old Arkansas settlers, and he wished to have "a place and a crop on foot" before he married. The girl was killed by the fall of a tree, and Boone, in his sorrow, sent away the men whom he had hired to help him in "turning his field," for he wished to be alone. Months elapsed, and his crop of corn promised an abundant harvest; but he cared not. He would take his rifle and remain sometimes for a month in the woods, brooding over his loss. The season was far advanced, when, one day returning home, he perceived that the bears, the squirrels, and the deer had made rather free with the golden ears of his corn. The remainder he resolved to save for the use of his horse, and as he wished to begin harvest next morning, he slept that night in the cabin, on his solitary pallet. The heat was intense, and, as usual in these countries during summer, he had left his door wide open. It was about midnight, when he heard something tumbling in the room; he rose in a moment, and, hearing a short and heavy breathing, he asked who it was, for the darkness was such, that he could not see two yards before him. No answer being given, except a kind of half-smothered grunt, he advanced, and, putting out his hand, he seized the shaggy coat of a bear. Surprise rendered him motionless, and the animal giving him a blow in the chest with his terrible paw, threw him down outside the door. Boone could have escaped, but, maddened with the pain of his fall, he only thought of vengeance, and, seizing his knife and tomahawk, which were fortunately within his reach, he darted furiously at the beast, dealing blows at random. Great as was his strength, his tomahawk could not penetrate through the thick coat of the animal, which, having encircled the body of his assailant with his paws, was pressing him in one of those deadly embraces which could only have been resisted by a giant like Boone. Fortunately, the black bear, unlike the grizzly, very seldom uses his claws and teeth in fighting, contenting himself with smothering his victim. Boone disentangled his left arm, and with his knife dealt a furious blow upon the snout of the animal, which, smarting with pain, released his hold. The snout is the only vulnerable part in an old black bear. Even at forty yards, the ball of a rifle will flatten against his skull, and if in any other part of the body, it will scarcely produce any serious effect. Boone, aware of this, and not daring to risk another hug, darted away from the cabin. The bear, now quite angry, followed and overtook him near the fence. Fortunately the clouds were clearing away, and the moon threw light sufficient to enable the hunter to strike with a more certain aim: chance also favoured him; he found on the ground one of the rails made of the blue ash, very heavy, and ten feet in length; he dropped his knife and tomahawk, and seizing the rail, he renewed the fight with caution, for it had now become a struggle for life or death. Had it been a bull or a panther, they would have had their bones shivered to pieces by the tremendous blows which Boone dealt upon his adversary with all the strength of despair; but Bruin is by nature an admirable fencer, and, in spite of his unwieldy shape, there is not in the world an animal whose motions are more rapid in a close encounter. Once or twice he was knocked down by the force of the blows, but generally he would parry them with a wonderful agility. At last, he succeeded in seizing the other end of the rail, and dragged it towards him with irresistible force. Both man and beast fell, Boone rolling to the place where he had dropped his arms, while the bear advanced upon him; the moment was a critical one, but Boone was accustomed to look at and brave death under every shape, and with a steady hand he buried his tomahawk in the snout of his enemy, and, turning round, he rushed to his cabin, believing he would have time to secure the door. He closed the latch, and applied his shoulders to it; but it was of no avail, the terrible brute dashed in head foremost, and tumbled in the room with Boone and the fragments of the door. The two foes rose and stared at each other; Boone had nothing left but his knife, but Bruin was tottering and unsteady, and Boone felt that the match was more equal: once more they closed. A few hours after sunrise, Captain Finn, returning home from the Legislature at Little Rock, called upon his friend, and, to his horror, found him apparently lifeless on the floor, and alongside of him, the body of the bear. Boone soon recovered, and found that the lucky blow which had saved him from being crashed to death had buried the whole blade of his knife, through the left eye, in the very brain of the animal[29]. [Footnote 29: The black bear does not grow to any great size in the eastern and northern parts of America, but in Arkansas and the adjacent States it becomes, from its size and strength, almost as formidable an antagonist as a grizzly bear. It is very common to find them eight hundred weight, but sometimes they weigh above a thousand pounds.] CHAPTER XXXV. The next morning, we all three started, and by noon we had crossed the Washita River. It is the most beautiful stream I know of, being cool and transparent, averaging a depth of eight or ten feet, and running upon a hard sandy bottom. While we were crossing, Boone told us that as soon as we arrived at the summit of the woody hills before us, if we looked sharp, we should see some bears, for he had never passed that way without shooting one or two. We forded the stream, and entered into a noble forest of maple trees, the ground now rising in gentle swells for several miles, when the fir-pines, succeeding to the maple, told us that we had reached the highest point of the hills. Hearing some trampling and rustling at a distance, I spurred my horse to take the lead and have the first chance of a shot, when I perceived to my left, not twenty yards from me and in a small patch of briars, a large she-bear playing with her cub. I was just raising my rifle to fire, when Boone's voice called me back, and I perceived that he and Finn had just dismounted and entered a thicket. Knowing that they must have an object in view, I joined them, and asked them what was the matter. "Rare sport," answered Finn, extending his hand towards a precipitous and rocky part of the mountain. It was sport, and of a very singular description. A large deer was running at full speed, closely pursued by a puma. The chase had already been a long one, for as they came nearer and nearer, I could perceive both their long parched tongues hanging out of their mouths, and their bounding, though powerful, was no longer so elastic as usual. The deer, having now arrived within two hundred yards of the bear, stopped a moment to sniff the air; then coming still nearer, he made a bound, with his head extended, to ascertain if Bruin was still near him. As the puma was closing with him, the deer wheeled sharp round, and turning back almost upon his own trail, passed within thirty yards of his pursuer, who, not being able at once to stop his career, gave an angry growl and followed the deer again, but at a distance of some hundred yards; hearing the growl, Bruin drew his body half out of the briars, remaining quietly on the look-out. "Gone," I exclaimed. "Wait a bit," answered Boone; "here he comes again." He was right; the deer again appeared, coming towards us, but his speed was much reduced, and as he approached us, it was evident that the animal was calculating his distance with precision. The puma, now expecting to seize his prey, followed about thirty yards behind; the bear, aware of the close vicinity of her enemy, cleared the briars and squared herself for action, when the deer, with a beautiful and powerful spring, passed the bear's head and disappeared. At the moment he took the leap, the puma was close upon him, and was just balancing himself for a spring, when he perceived, to his astonishment, that now he was faced by a formidable adversary, not the least disposed to fly. He crouched, lashing his flanks with his long tail, while the bear, about five yards from him, remained like a statue looking at the puma with his little glaring eyes. One minute they remained thus; the puma, its sides heaving with exertion, agitated, and apparently undecided; the bear, perfectly calm and motionless. Gradually the puma crawled backwards, till at a right distance for a spring, when, throwing all its weight upon its hind parts, to increase its power, it darted upon the bear like lightning, and fixed its claws into her back. The bear, with irresistible force, seized the puma with her two fore-paws, pressing it with all the weight of her body and rolling over it. We heard a heavy grunt, a plaintive howl, a crashing of bones, and the puma was dead. The cub of the bear came to ascertain what was going on, and after a few minutes' examination of the victim, it strutted down the slope of the hill, followed by its mother, which was apparently unhurt. We did not attempt to prevent their retreat, for among real hunters in the wilds, there is a feeling which restrains them from attacking an animal which has just undergone a deadly strife. This is a very common practice of the deer, when chased by a puma--that of leading him to the haunt of a bear; I have oftened witnessed it, although I never before knew the deer to turn, as it did in this instance. This incident reminds me of another, which was witnessed by Gabriel, a short time before the murder of the Prince Seravalle. Gabriel had left his companions, to look after game, and he soon came upon the track of a wild boar, which led to a grove of tall persimon trees; then, for the first time, he perceived that he had left his pouch and powder-horn in the camp; but he cared little about it, as he knew that his aim was certain. When within sixty yards of the grove, he spied the boar at the foot of one of the outside trees: the animal was eating the fruit which had fallen. Gabriel raised his eyes to the thick-leaved branches of the tree, and perceived that there was a large black bear in the tree, also regaling himself with the fruit. Gabriel approached to within thirty yards, and was quite absorbed with the novelty of the sight. At every motion of Bruin, hundreds of persimons would fall down, and these, of course were the ripest. This the bear knew very well, and it was with no small jealousy that he witnessed the boar below making so luxurious a meal at his expense, while he could only pick the green fruit, and that with difficulty, as he dared not trust his body too far upon the smaller limbs of the tree. Now and then he would growl fiercely, and put his head down, and the boar would look at him with a pleased and grateful motion of the head, answering the growl by a grunt, just as to say, "Thank you; very polite to eat the green ones and send me the others." This Bruin understood, and he could bear it no longer; he began to shake the tree violently, till the red persimons fell like a shower around the boar; then there was a duet of growls and grunts--angry and terrific from the bear above, denoting satisfaction and pleasure on the part of the boar below. Gabriel had come in pursuit of the boar, but now he changed his mind, for, considering the present angry mood of Bruin, he was certain to be attacked by him if discovered. As to going away, it was a thing he would not think of, as long as his rifle was loaded; so he waited and watched, until the bear should give him an opportunity of aiming at a vital part. This he waited for in vain, and, on reflection, he determined to wound the bear: for, knowing the humour of the animal, he felt almost positive it would produce a conflict between him and the boar, which the bear would attack in his wrath. He fired; the bear was evidently wounded, although but slightly, and he began roaring and scratching his neck in a most furious manner, and looking vindictively at the boar, which, at the report of the rifle, had merely raised his head for a moment, and then resumed his meal. Bruin was certainly persuaded that the wound he had received had been inflicted by the beast below. He made up his mind to punish him, and, to spare the trouble and time of descending, dropped from the tree, and rushed upon the boar, which met him at once, and, notwithstanding Bruin's great strength, he proved to him that a ten years' old wild boar, with seven-inch tusks, was a very formidable antagonist. Bruin soon felt the tusks of the boar ripping him up; ten or twelve streams of blood were rushing from his sides, yet he did not give way; on the contrary, he grew fiercer and fiercer, and at last the boar was almost smothered under the huge paws of his adversary. The struggle lasted a few minutes more, the grunting and growling becoming fainter and fainter, till both combatants lay motionless. They were dead when Gabriel came up to them; the bear horribly mangled, and the boar with every bone of his body broken. Gabriel filled his hat with the persimons which were the cause of this tragedy, and returned to the camp for help and ammunition. Finn, Boone, and I resumed our journey, and after a smart ride of two hours we entered upon a beautiful spot, called "Magnet Cove." This is one of the great curiosities of the Arkansas, and there are few planters who do not visit it at least once in their lives, even if they have to travel a distance of one hundred miles. It is a small valley surrounded by rocky hills, one or two hundred feet high, and forming a belt, in the shape of a horse-shoe. From these rocks flow hundreds of sulphuric springs, some boiling and some cold, all pouring into large basins, which their waters have dug out during their constant flow of so many centuries. These mineral springs are so very numerous in this part of the country, that they would scarcely be worth mentioning, were it not that in this valley, for more than a mile in circumference, the stones and rocks, which are of a dull black colour and very heavy, are all magnetic. It is a custom for every visitor to bring with him some pieces of iron, to throw against the rocks: the appearance is very strange; old horse-shoes, forks, knives, bars of iron, nails, and barrels of pistols, are hanging from the projecting stones, the nails standing upright, as if they were growing. These pieces of iron have themselves become very powerfully magnetic. I picked up a horse-shoe, which I afterwards found lifted a bar of steel of two pounds weight. Half a mile from this singular spot dwelt another old pioneer, a friend of my companions, and at his cabin we stopped to pass the night. Our host was only remarkable for his great hospitality and greater taciturnity; he had always lived in the wilds, quite alone, and the only few words he would utter were incoherent. It appeared as if his mind was fixed upon scenes of the past. In his early life he had been one of the companions of the celebrated pirate La Fitte, and after the defence of New Orleans, in which the pirates played no inconsiderable part (they had the management of the artillery), he accepted the free pardon of the President, and forcing his way through the forests and swamps of Louisiana, was never heard of for five or six years. Subsequently, circumstances brought about an intimacy between him and my two companions, but, contrary to the habits of pioneers and trappers, he never reverted to his former adventures, but always evaded the subject. There were mysterious rumours afloat about treasure which had been buried by the pirates in Texas, known only to him; a thing not improbable, as the creeks, lagoons, and bays of that country had always been a favourite resort of these freebooters; but nothing had ever been extracted from him relative to the question. He was now living with an Indian woman of the Flat-head tribe, by whom he had several children, and this was also a subject upon which the western farmers had much to say. Had the squaw been a Creek, a Cherokee, or an Osage woman, it would have created no surprise; but how came he in possession of a woman belonging to so distant a tribe? Moreover, the squaw looked so proud, so imperious, so queenly; there was a mystery, which every one was anxious, but unable to solve. We left our host early in the morning, and arrived at noon at the hot springs, where I was to part company with my entertaining companions. I was, however, persuaded to remain till the next morning, as Finn wished to give me a letter for a friend of his in South Missouri. Of the hot springs of the Arkansas, I can give no better description, than by quoting the following lines from a Little Rock newspaper:-- "The warm springs are among the most interesting curiosities of our country: they are in great numbers. One of them, the central one, emits a vast quantity of water; the ordinary temperature is that of boiling water. When the season is dry, and the volume of water somewhat diminished, the temperature of the water increases. "The waters are remarkably limpid and pure, and are used by the people who resort there for health, for culinary purposes. They have been analyzed, and exhibit no mineral properties beyond common spring water. Their efficacy, then, for they are undoubtedly efficacious to many invalids that resort there, results from the shades of the adjacent mountains, and from the cool and oxygenated mountain breeze; the convenience of warm and tepid bathing; the novelty of fresh and mountain scenery, and the necessity of temperance, imposed by the poverty of the country and the difficulty of procuring supplies. The cases in which the waters are supposed to be efficacious, are those of rheumatic affection, general debility, dyspepsia, and cutaneous complaints. At a few yards from the hot springs is one strongly sulphuric and remarkable for its coldness. In the wild and mountain scenery of this lonely region, there is much of grandeur and novelty to fix the curiosity of the lover of nature." The next morning I bade farewell to Finn and Boone, and set off on my journey. I could not help feeling a strange sensation of loneliness, as I passed hill after hill, and wood after wood. It seemed to me as if something was wrong; I talked to myself, and often looked behind to see if any one was coming my way. This feeling, however, did not last long, and I soon learned that, west of the Mississippi, a man with a purse and a good horse must never travel in the company of strangers, without he is desirous to lose them and his life to boot. I rode without stopping the forty-five miles of dreary road which leads from the hot springs to Little Rock, and I arrived in that capital early at noon. Foreigners are constantly visiting every part of the United States, and yet very few, if any, have ever visited the Arkansas. They seem all to be frightened away by the numerous stories of Arkansas murders, with which a tourist is always certain to be entertained on board one of the Mississippi steam-boats. Undoubtedly these reports of murders and atrocities have been, as all things else are in the United States, much exaggerated, but none can deny that the assizes of Arkansas contain more cases of stabbing and shooting than ten of the other States put together. The very day I arrived at Little Rock I had an opportunity of witnessing two or three of these Arkansas incidents, and also to hear the comments made upon them. Legislature was then sitting. Two of the legislators happened to be of a contrary opinion, and soon abused each other. From words they came to blows, and one shot the other with one of Colt's revolving six-barrel pistols. This event stopped legislative business for that day; the corpse was carried to the tavern where I had just arrived, and the murderer, having procured bail for two thousand dollars, ran away during the night, and nobody ever thought of searching for him. The corpse proved to be a bonus for my landlord, who had it deposited in a room next to the bar, and as the news spread, all the male population of Little Rock came in crowds to see with their own eyes, and to give their own opinion of the case over a bottle of wine or a glass of whisky. Being tired, I went to bed early, and was just dozing, in spite of the loud talking and swearing below, when I heard five or six shots fired in rapid succession, and followed by yells and screams. I got up and stopped a negro girl, as she was running up-stairs, a picture of terror and despair. "What is the matter, Blackey?" said I, "are they shooting in the bar?" "Oh, yes, Massa," she answered, "they shoot terrible. Dr. Francis says, Dr. Grey is a blackguard; Dr. Grey says, Dr. Francis is a ruffian; Dr. Francis shoots with big pistols and kills Dr. Grey; Dr. Grey shoots with other pistols and kills Dr. Francis." "What," I exclaimed, "after he was dead?" "Oh no, Massa, before he was dead; they shoot together--pan, pan, pan." I went downstairs to ascertain the circumstances attending this double murder. A coroner's inquest had been held upon the body of the legislator killed in the morning, and the two surgeons, who had both drunk freely at the bar, had quarrelled about the direction which the ball had taken. As they did not agree, they came to words; from words to blows; ending in the grand _finale_ of shooting each other. I was so sickened and disgusted with the events of one day, that I paid my bill, saddled my horse myself, and got a man to ferry me over the Arkansas river, a noble, broad, and rapid stream, on the southern bank of which the capital is situated. I rode briskly for a short hour, and camped in the woods alone, preferring their silence and dreariness to remaining to witness, under a roof, further scenes of bloodshed and murder. North of the Arkansas river, the population, though rough and "not better than it should be," is less sanguinary and much more hospitable; that is to say, a landlord will show you civility for your money, and in Batesville, a city (fifty houses, I think) upon the northern bank of the White River, I found thirty generals, judges, and majors, who condescended to show me every bar in the place, purchasing sundry dozens of Havannahs and drinking sundry long toasts in iced wine, which wine and tobacco, although ordered and consumed by themselves, they left me to pay for, which I was willing to do, as I was informed that these gentlemen always refrain from paying anything when a stranger is present, from fear of wounding his delicacy. It was in Batesville that I became enlightened as to the western paper currency, which was fortunate, as I purchased one hundred and forty dollars in "shin plasters," as they call them, for an English sovereign; and for my travelling expenses they answered just as well. In the White River ferry-boat I met with one of those itinerant Italian pedlars, who are found, I think, everywhere under heaven, selling pins, needles, and badly-coloured engravings, representing all the various passages of William Tell's history, and the combats during the "three days" in 1830. Although not a refined companion, the Genevese spoke Italian, and I was delighted to converse in that soft tongue, not a word of which I had spoken since the death of Prince Seravalle. I invited my companion to the principal tavern, and called at the bar for two tumblers of iced-mint tulip. "How much?" I asked from the bar-keeper. "Five dollars," he answered. I was quite thunderstruck, and, putting my money back in my pocket, I told him I would not pay him at all. The man then began to swear I was a queer sort of a chap, and wondered how a _gentleman_ could drink at a bar and not pay for his liquor. "I always pay," I answered, "what others pay; but I will not submit to such a swindling, and give five dollars for what Is only worth twenty-five cents." The host then came to me, with a smile. "Why, Sir, we don't charge more to you than to others. Five dollars in 'shin-plasters,' or twenty-five cents in specie." All was thus explained, and the next morning. I satisfied my bill of twenty-two dollars, with one dollar and twelve cents in silver. This may appear strange to the English reader, who prefers bank-notes to gold; but he must reflect that England is not Arkansas, and that the Bank of England is not the "Real Estate Bank of Arkansas," capital two millions of dollars. Notwithstanding the grandeur of the last five words, I have been positively informed that the bank never possessed five dollars, and had not been able to pay the poor Cincinnati engraver who made the notes. The merchants of Little Rock, who had set up the bank, were the usual purchasers of the produce from the farmer; but the credit of the bank was so bad, that they were obliged to offer three dollars in their notes for a bushel of wheat, which, in New York, commanded only eighty-four cents in specie. The farmers, however, were as sharp as the merchants, and, compelled to deal with them, they hit upon a good plan. The principal landholders of every county assembled, and agreed that they would also have a farmers' bank, and a few months afterwards the country was inundated with notes of six-and-a-quarter, twelve-and-a-half, twenty-five, and fifty cents, with the following inscription: "We, the freeholders and farmers of such county, promise to pay (so much) in Real Estate Bank of Arkansas notes, but not under the sum of five dollars." The bankers were caught in their own snares. They were obliged to accept the "shin plasters" for the goods in their stores, with the pleasing perspective of being paid back with their own notes, which made their faces as doleful as the apothecary who was obliged to swallow his own pills. CHAPTER XXXVI. From Batesville to the southern Missouri border, the road continues for a hundred miles through a dreary solitude of rocky mountains and pine forests, full of snakes and a variety of game, but without the smallest vestige of civilization. There is not a single blade of grass to be found, except in the hollows, and these are too swampy for a horse to venture upon. Happily, small clear and limpid brooks are passed every half-hour, and I had had the precaution to provide myself, at a farm, with a large bag of maize for my horse. After all, we fared better than we should have done at the log huts, and my faithful steed, at all events, escaped the "ring." What the "ring" is, I will explain to the reader. In these countries, it always requires a whole day's smart riding to go from one farm to another; and when the traveller is a "raw trotter" or a "green one" (Arkansas denomination for a stranger), the host employs all his cunning to ascertain if his guest has any money, as, if so, his object is to detain him as long as he can. To gain this information, although there are always at home half-a-dozen strong boys to take the horses, he sends a pretty girl (a daughter, or a niece) to show you the stable and the maize-store. This nymph becomes the traveller's attendant; she shows him the garden and the pigs, and the stranger's bedroom, &c. The consequence is, that the traveller becomes gallant, the girl insists upon washing his handkerchief and mending his jacket before he starts the next morning, and by keeping constantly with him, and continual conversation, she is, generally speaking, able to find out whether the traveller has money or not, and reports accordingly. Having supped, slept, and breakfasted, he pays his bill and asks for his horse. "Why, Sir," answers the host, "something is wrong with the animal--he is lame." The traveller thinks it is only a trifle; he starts, and discovers, before he has made a mile, that his beast cannot possibly go on; so he returns to the farm, and is there detained, for a week perhaps, until his horse is fit to travel. I was once cheated in this very manner, and had no idea that I had been tricked; but, on leaving another farm, on the following day, I found my horse was again lame. Annoyed at having been delayed so long, I determined to go on, in spite of my horse's lameness. I travelled on for three miles, till at last I met with an elderly man also on horseback. He stopped and surveyed me attentively, and then addressed me:-- "I see youngster, you are a green one." Now I was in uncommon bad temper that morning, and I answered his question with a "What do you mean, you old fool?" "Nay, pardon me," he resumed; "I would not insult a stranger. I am Governor Yell, of this state, and I see that some of my 'clever citizens' have been playing a trick upon you. If you will allow me, I will cure the lameness of your horse in two minutes." At the mention of his name, I knew I was speaking to a gentleman. I apologized for my rough rejoinder, and the governor, dismounting, then explained to me the mystery of the "ring." Just above my horse's hoof, and well concealed under the hair, was a stout silken thread, tied very tight; this being cut, the horse, in a moment, got rid of his lameness. As the governor and I parted, he gave me this parental advice:-- "My dear young man," said he, "I will give you a hint, which will enable you to travel safely through the Arkansas. Beware of pretty girls, and honest, clever people; never say you are travelling further than from the last city to the nearest, as a long journey generally implies that you have cash; and, if possible, never put your horse in a stable. Farewell." The soil in the Arkansas is rocky and mountainous as far as to the western border of the state, when you enter upon the great American desert, which continues to the other side of the Cimarron, nearly to the foot of the Cordilleras. The eastern portion of Arkansas, which is watered by the Mississippi, is an unknown swamp, for there the ground is too soft even for the light-footed Indian; and, I may say, that the whole territory contained between the Mississippi and the St. Francis river is nothing but a continued river-bottom. It is asserted, on the authority of intelligent residents, that the river-bottoms of the St. Francis were not subject to be overflowed previous to the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, when an extensive tract in the valley of that river sank to a considerable depth. According to Stoddart, who knew nothing of the shocks of 1811, earthquakes have been common here from the first settlement of the country; he himself experienced several shocks at Kaskaskia, in 1804, by which the soldiers stationed there were aroused from sleep, and the buildings were much shaken and disjointed. Oscillations still occur with such frequency as to be regarded with indifference by the inhabitants, who familiarly call them _shakes_. But the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, which were felt from New England to New Orleans, are the only ones known to have left permanent traces, although there is every probability that this part of the valley of the Mississippi has been much convulsed at former periods. In 1812 the earth opened in wide chasms, from which columns of water and sand burst forth; hills disappeared, and their sites were occupied by lakes; the beds of the lakes were raised, and their waters flowed off, leaving them dry; the courses of the streams were changed by the elevation of their beds and the falling of their banks; for one whole hour the current of the Mississippi was turned backwards towards its source, until its accumulated waters were able to break through the barrier which had dammed them up; boats were dashed on the banks, or suddenly left dry in the deserted channel, or hurried backwards and forwards with the surging eddies; while in the midst of these awful changes, electric fires, accompanied by loud rumblings, flashed through the air, which was darkened with clouds and vapour. In some places, submerged forests and cane-brakes are still visible at a great depth, on the bottom of lakes, which were then formed. That the causes of these convulsions were not local, as some have imagined, is evident enough from the fact, that the Azores, the West India Islands, and the northern coast of South America were unusually agitated at the same time, and the cities of Carracas, Laguayra, and some others were totally destroyed. I had been advised not to stop at any house on the borders, and would have proceeded on to Missouri, bivouacking during the night, had it not been that the rainy season had just commenced, and it was far from pleasant to pass the night exposed to the most terrific showers of rain that could be imagined. When I arrived upon the St. Francis river, I found myself compelled by the state of the weather to stop at a parson's--I don't know what particular sect he professed to belong to; but he was reputed to be the greatest hypocrite in the world, and the "smartest scoundrel" in the Arkansas. My horse was put into the stable, my saddle into the hall, and I brought my saddle-bags into the sitting-room. Then, as usual, I went to the well for a purification after my day's ride. To my astonishment, I found, on my return, that my saddlebags had already disappeared. I had in them jewels and money to rather a considerable amount for a person in my position, and I inquired of a woman cooking in the next room what had become of them. She answered she did not know, but that probably her father had put them out of the way. I waited a long while, standing at the door, with no small anxiety, till at last I perceived the parson crossing an Indian-corn field, and coming towards the house. I went to meet him, and asked what he had done with my saddle-bags; to which question he answered angrily, he did not know what I meant; that I had no saddle-bags when I came to his house; that he suspected I was a knowing one, but could not come round so old a fox as he was. As by that time I was perfectly _au fait_ to all the tricks of Arkansas smartness, I returned to the hall, took my pistols from the holsters, placed them in my belt, and, seizing my rifle, I followed his trail upon the soft ground of the fields. It led me to a corn-house, and there, after an hour's search, I found my lost saddle-bags. I threw them upon my shoulders, and returned to the house just as a terrible shower had commenced. When within fifteen yards from the threshold, the parson, with his wife and daughter, a pretty girl of sixteen, in tears, came up to me to apologize. The mother declared the girl would be the death of her, and the parson informed me, with great humility, that his daughter, having entered the room, and seeing the saddle-bags, had taken and hidden them, believing that they belonged to her sweetheart, who was expected on a visit. Upon this, the girl cried most violently, saying she only wished to play a trick to Charley. She was an honest girl, and no thief. I thought proper to pretend to be satisfied with this explanation and ordered my supper, and, shortly afterwards, to my great relief, new guests arrived; they were four Missourian planters, returning home from a bear-hunt in the swamps of the St. Francis. One of them was a Mr. Courtenay, to whom I had a letter from Captain Finn, and, before the day had closed, I received a cordial invitation to go and stay with him for at least a week. As he spoke French, I told him, in that language, my saddle-bag adventure; he was not surprised, as he was aware of the character of our host. It was arranged that Mr. Courtenay and I should sleep in a double-bedded room on the first floor; the other hunters were accommodated in another part of the house. Before retiring for the night, they all went to visit their horses, and the young girl took that opportunity to light me to the room. "Oh, Sir," she said to me, after she had closed the door, "pray do not tell the other travellers what I did, or they would all say that I am courting Charley, and my character would be lost." "Mark me," replied I, "I have already told the story, and I know the Charley story is nothing but a--what your father ordered you to say. When I went to the corn-house, the tracks I followed were those made by your father's heavy boots, and not by your light pumps and small feet. The parson is a villain; tell him that; and if it were not too much trouble, I would summon him before some magistrate." The girl appeared much shocked, and I repented my harshness, and was about to address her more kindly, when she interrupted me. "Spare me, Sir," she said, "I know all; I am so unhappy; if I had but a place to go to, where I could work for bread, I would do it in a minute, for here I am very, very miserable." At that moment the poor girl heard the footsteps of the hunters, returning from the stable, and she quitted me in haste. When Mr. Courtenay entered the room, he told me he expected that the parson was planning some new iniquity, for he had seen him just then crossing the river in a dug-out. As everything was to be feared from the rascal, after the circumstance of the saddle-bags, we resolved that we would keep a watch; we dragged our beds near the window, and lay down without undressing. To pass away the time, we talked of Captain Finn and of the Texans. Mr. Courtenay related to me a case of negro-stealing by the same General John Meyer, of whom my fellow companion, the parson, had already talked so much while we travelling in Texas. One winter, Mr. Courtenay, returning from the East, was stopped In Vincennes (Indiana) by the depth of the snow, which for a few days rendered the roads impassable. There he saw a very fine breed of sheep, which he determined to introduce upon his plantation; and hearing that the general would be coming down the river in a large flat boat as soon as the ice would permit, he made an agreement with him that he should bring a dozen of the animals to the plantation, which stood a few miles below the mouth of the Ohio, on the other side of the Mississippi. Meyer made his bargain, and two months afterwards delivered the live stock, for which he received the price agreed upon. Then he asked permission to encamp upon Mr. Courtenay's land, as his boat had received some very serious injury, which could not be repaired under five or six days. Mr. Courtenay allowed Meyer and his people to take shelter in a brick barn, and ordered his negroes to furnish the boat-men with potatoes and vegetables of all descriptions. Three or four days afterwards he was astonished by, several of his slaves informing him the general had been tampering with them, saying they were fools to remain slaves, when they could be as free as white men, and that if they would come down the river with him, he would take them to Texas, where he would pay them twenty dollars a month for their labour. Courtenay advised them, by all means, to seem to accede to the proposition, and gave them instructions as to how they were to act. He then despatched notes to some twenty neighbours, requesting them to come to the plantation, and bring their whips with them, as they would be required. Meyer having repaired his boats, came to return thanks, and to announce his departure early on the following morning. At eleven o'clock, when he thought everybody in the house was asleep, he hastened, with two of his sons, to a lane, where he had made an appointment with the negroes to meet him and accompany him to his boat, which was ready to start. He found half-a-dozen of the negroes, and, advising them not to speak before they were fairly off the plantation, desired them to follow him to the boat; but, to his astonishment, he soon discovered that the lane was occupied with other negroes and white men, armed with the much-dreaded cow-hides. He called out to his two sons to fly, but it was too late. The general and his two sons were undoubtedly accustomed to such disasters, for they showed amazing dexterity in taking advantage of the angles of the fences, to evade the lashes: but, in spite of all their devices, they were cruelly punished, as they had nearly a quarter of a mile of gauntlet to run through before they were clear of the lane. In vain they groaned, and swore, and prayed; the blows fell thicker and thicker, principally from the hands of the negroes, who, having now and then tasted of the cow-hide, were in high glee at the idea of flogging white men. The worshipful general and his dutiful sons at last arrived at their boat, quite exhausted, and almost fainting under the agony of the well-applied lashes. Once on board, they cut their cable, and pushed into the middle of the stream; and although Meyer had come down the river at least ten times since, he always managed to pass the plantation during night, and close to the bank of the opposite shore. I told Mr. Courtenay what I knew myself about General John Meyer; while I was talking, his attention was attracted by a noise near the stables, which were situated at the bottom of a lane, before our windows. We immediately suspected that there would be an attempt to steal our horses; so I handed my rifle to my companion, who posted himself in a position commanding the lane, through which the thief or thieves must necessarily pass. We waited thus in suspense for a few minutes, till Mr. Courtenay desired me to take his place, saying,-- "If any one passes the lane with any of our horses, shoot him; I will go down myself and thrash the blackguard, for I suspect the parson will turn them into the swamps, where he is pretty certain of recovering them afterwards." Saying this, he advanced to the door, and was just putting has hand upon the latch, when we heard a most terrific yell, which was followed by a neighing, which I recognized as that of my horse. Taking our pistols and bowie-knives, we hurried down the lane. We found that our two horses, with a third, belonging to one of the hunters, were out of the stable, and tied neck and tail, so as to require only one person to lead them. The first one had the bridle on, and the last, which was mine, was in a state of excitement, as if something unusual had happened to him. On continuing our search, we found the body of a young man, most horribly mangled, the breast being entirely open, and the heart and intestines hanging outside. It appeared that my faithful steed, which had already shown, in Texas, a great dislike to being taken away from me, had given the thief the terrible kick, which had thrown him ten or fifteen yards, as I have said a mangled corpse. By this time, the other hunters came out to us; lights were procured, and then we learned that the victim was the parson's eldest son, newly married, and settled on the east side of the St. Francis. The parson was not long himself in making his appearance; but he came from an opposite direction to that of the house, and he was dressed as on the evening before: he had evidently not been to bed during that night. As soon as he became aware of the melancholy circumstance, he raved and swore that he would have the lives of the damned Frenchman and his damnation horse; but Mr. Courtenay went to him, and said-- "Hold your tongue, miserable man! See your own work, for you have caused this death. It was to fetch your son, to help you to steal the horses, that you crossed the river in the dug-out. Be silent, I say; you know me; look at your eldest-born, villain that you are! May the chain of your future misery be long, and the last link of it the gibbet, which you deserve!" The parson was silent, even when his sobbing wife reproached him. "I warned thee, husband," she said; "even now has this come, and I fear that worse is still to come. Unlucky was the hour we met: still more so when the child was born;" and, leaning against the fence, she wept bitterly. I will pass over the remainder of this melancholy scene. We all felt for the mother and the poor girl, who stood by with a look of despair. Saddling our horses, Mr. Courtenay and I resumed our journey, the hunters remaining behind till the arrival of the magistrate, whom we promised to send. To procure one, we were obliged to quit the high road, and, after a ride of several miles, having succeeded in finding his house, we woke him, gave him the necessary directions, and, at sunrise, forded the river. CHAPTER XXXVII. At last we arrived at the plantation of Mr. Courtenay: the house was one of the very few buildings in the United States in which taste was displayed. A graceful portico, supported by columns; large verandahs, sheltered by jessamine; and the garden so green and so smiling, with its avenues of acacias and live fences of holly and locust, all recalled to my mind the scenes of my childhood in Europe. Every thing was so neat and comfortable; the stables so airy, the dogs so well housed, and the slaves so good-humoured-looking, so clean and well dressed. When we descended from our horses, a handsome lady appeared at the portico, with joy and love beaming in her face, as five or six beautiful children, having at last perceived our arrival, left their play to welcome and kiss their father. A lovely vision of youth and beauty also made its appearance--one of those slender girls of the South, a woman of fifteen years old, with her dark eyelashes and her streaming ebony hair; slaves of all ages--mulattoes and quadroon girls, old negroes and boy negroes, all calling together--"Eh! Massa Courtenay, kill plenty bear, dare say; now plenty grease for black family, good Massa Courtenay." Add to all this, the dogs barking and the horses neighing, and truly the whole _tableau_ was one of unbounded affection and happiness, I doubt if, in all North America, there is another plantation equal to that of Mr. Courtenay. I soon became an inmate of the family, and for the first time enjoyed the pleasures of highly-polished society. Mrs. Courtenay was an admirable performer upon the harp; Miss Emma Courtenay, her niece, was a delightful pianist; and my host himself was no mean amateur upon the flute. Our evenings would pass quickly away, in reading Shakspeare, Corneille, Racine, Metastasio, or the modern writers of English literature: after which we would remain till the night had far advanced, enjoying the beautiful compositions of Beethoven, Gluck, and Mozart, or the brilliant overtures of Donizetti, Bellini, and Meyerbeer. Thus my time passed like a happy dream, and as, from the rainy season having just set in, all travelling was impossible. I remained many weeks with my kind entertainers, the more willingly, that the various trials I had undergone had, at so early an age, convinced me that, upon earth, happiness was too scarce not to be enjoyed when presented to you. Yet in the midst of pleasure I did not forget the duty I owed to my tribe, and I sent letters to Joe Smith, the Mormon leader at Nauvoo, that we might at once enter into an arrangement. Notwithstanding the bad season, we had some few days of sunshine, in which pretty Miss Emma and I would take long rambles in the woods; and sometimes, too, my host would invite the hunters of his neighbourhood, for a general _battue_ against bears, deer, and wild cats. Then we would encamp out under good tents, and during the evening, while smoking near our blazing fires, I would hear stories which taught me more of life in the United States than if I had been residing there for years. "Dis-moi qui tu fréquentes, je te dirai qui tu es," is the old French proverb. Mr. Courtenay never chose his companions but among the more intellectual classes of the society around him, and, of course, these stories were not only well told, but interesting in their subject. Often the conversation would fall upon the Mormons, and perceiving how anxious I was to learn anything about this new sect, my host introduced me to a very talented gentleman, who had every information connected with their history. From him I learned the particulars which gave rise to Mormonism, undoubtedly the most extraordinary imposition of the nineteenth century. There existed years ago a Connecticut man, named Solomon Spalding, a relation of the one who invented the wooden nut-megs. By following him through his career, the reader will find him a Yankee of the true stock. He appears at first as a law student; then as a preacher, a merchant, and a bankrupt; afterwards he becomes a blacksmith in a small western village: then a land speculator and a county schoolmaster; later still, he becomes the owner of an iron-foundry; once more a bankrupt; at last a writer and a dreamer. As might be expected, he died a beggar somewhere in Pennsylvania, little thinking that, by a singular coincidence, one of his productions (the "Manuscript found"), redeemed from oblivion by a few rogues, would prove in their hands a powerful weapon, and be the basis of one of the most anomalous, yet powerful secessions which has ever been experienced by the Established Church. We find, under the title of the "Manuscript found," an historical romance of the first settlers of America, endeavouring to show that the American Indians are the descendants of the Jews, or the lost tribes. It gives a detailed account of their journey from Jerusalem, by land and by sea, till they arrived in America, under the command of Nephi and Lehi. They afterwards had quarrels and contentions, and separated into two distinct nations, one of which is denominated Nephites, and the other Lamanites. Cruel and bloody wars ensued, in which great multitudes were slain. They buried their dead in large heaps, which caused the mounds now so commonly found on the continent of America. Their knowledge in the arts and sciences, and their civilization, are dwelt upon, in order to account for all the remarkable ruins of cities and other curious antiquities, found in various parts of North and South America. Solomon Spalding writes in the biblic style, and commences almost every sentence with, "And it came to pass,"--"Now, it came to pass." Although some powers of imagination, and a degree of scientific information are displayed throughout the whole romance, it remained for several years unnoticed, on the shelves of Messrs. Patterson and Lambdin, printers, in Pittsbourg. Many years passed, when Lambdin the printer, having failed, wished _to raise the wind by some book speculation_. Looking over the various manuscripts then in his possession, the "Manuscript found," venerable in its dust, was, upon examination, looked upon as a gold mine, which would restore to affluence the unfortunate publisher. But death summoned Lambdin away, and put an end to the speculation, as far as his interests were concerned. Lambdin had intrusted the precious manuscript to his bosom friend, Sidney Rigdon, that he might embellish and alter it, as he might think expedient. The publisher now dead, Rigdon allowed this _chef-d'oeuvre_ to remain in his desk, till, reflecting upon his precarious means, and upon his chances of obtaining a future livelihood, a sudden idea struck him. Rigdon well knew his countrymen, and their avidity for the marvellous; he resolved to give to the world the "_manuscript found_," not as a mere work of imagination or disquisition, as its writer had intended it to be, but as a new code of religion, sent down to man, as of yore, on awful Sinai, the tables were given unto Moses. For some time, Rigdon worked very hard, studying the Bible, altering his book, and preaching every Sunday. As the reader may easily imagine, our Bible student had been, as well as Spalding, a Jack-of-all-trades, having successively filled the offices of attorney, bar keeper, clerk, merchant, waiter, newspaper editor, preacher, and, finally, a hanger-on about printing-offices, where he could always pick up some little job in the way of proof correcting and so forth. To us this variety of occupations may appear very strange, but among the unsettled and ambitious population of the United States, men at the age of fifty have been, or at least have tried to be everything, not in gradation, from the lowest up to the highest, but just as it may happen--doctor yesterday and waiter to-day--the Yankee philosopher will to-morrow run for a seat in legislature; if he fails, he may turn a Methodist preacher, a Mormon, a land speculator, a member of the "Native American Society," or a mason--that is to say, a journeyman mason. Two words more upon Rigdon, before we leave him in his comparative insignificance! He is undoubtedly the father of Mormonism, and the author of the "Golden Book," with the exception of a few subsequent alterations made by Joe Smith. It was easy for him, from the first planning of his intended imposture to publicly discuss, in the pulpit, many strange points of controversy, which were eventually to become the corner-stones of the structure which he wished to raise. The novelty of the discussions was greedily received by many, and, of course, prepared them for that which was coming. Yet, it seems that Rigdon soon perceived the evils which his wild imposture would generate, and he recoiled from his task, not, because there remained lurking in his breast some few sparks of honesty, but because he wanted courage; he was a scoundrel, but a timorous one, and always in dread of the penitentiary. With him, Mormonism was a mere money speculation, and he resolved to shelter himself behind some fool who might bear the whole odium, while he would reap a golden harvest, and quietly retire before the coming of a storm. But, as is often the case, he reckoned without his host; for it so happened that, in searching for a tool of this description, he found in Joe Smith one not precisely what he had calculated upon. He wanted a compound of roguery and folly as his tool and slave; Smith was a rogue and an unlettered man, but he was what Rigdon was not aware of--a man of bold conception, full of courage and mental energy, one of those unprincipled, yet lofty, aspiring beings, who, centuries past, would have succeeded as well as Mahomet, and who has, even in this more enlightened age, accomplished that which is wonderful to contemplate. When it was too late to retract, Rigdon perceived with dismay that, instead of acquiring a silly bondsman, he had subjected himself to a superior will; he was now himself a slave, bound by fear and interest, his two great guides through life. Smith consequently became, instead of Rigdon, "the elect of God," and is now at the head of thousands, a great religious and political leader. From the same gentleman, I also learned the history of Joseph Smith; and I will lay before the reader what, from various documents, I have succeeded in collecting concerning this remarkable impostor, together with a succinct account of the rise and progress of this new sect, as it is a remarkable feature in the history of nations. CHAPTER XXXVIII. My readers have already been made acquainted with the history of the "Book," upon which the imposture of Mormonism has been founded, and of the acquaintance which took place between Rigdon and Joe Smith, whose career I shall now introduce. The father of Joe was one of a numerous class of people who are termed, in the west, "money diggers," living a sort of vagrant life, imposing upon the credulous farmers by pretending that they knew of treasure concealed, and occasionally stealing horses and cattle. Joseph Smith was the second son, and a great favourite of his father, who stated everywhere that Joe had that species of second sight, which enabled him to discover where treasure was hidden. Joe did certainly turn out very smart, and it was prophesied by the "old ones" that, provided he was not hung, Joe would certainly become a general, if he did not gain the office of President of the United States. But Joe's smartness was so great, that Palmyra, where his father usually resided, became too small for the exercise of his talents, and our hero set off on his travels. Some time afterwards Joe was again heard of. In one of his rambles, he had gone to Harmony (Pennsylvania), and there formed an acquaintance with a young woman. In the fall of 1826, being then at Philadelphia, he resolved to go and get married to her, but, being destitute of means, he now set his wits to work to raise some money and get a recommendation, so as to obtain the fair one of his choice. He went to a man named Lawrence, and stated that he had discovered in Pennsylvania, on the bank of the Susquehanna river, a very rich mine of silver, and if he, Lawrence, would go there with him, he might have a share in the profits; that it was near high water mark, and that they could put the silver into boats, and take it down the river to Philadelphia, and dispose of it. Lawrence asked Joseph if he was not deceiving him. "No," replied Joe, "for I have been there and seen it with my own eyes, and if you do not find it is so when we get there, I will bind myself to be your servant for three years." By oaths, asseverations, and fair promises, Lawrence was induced to believe in Joe's assertion, and agreed to go with him; and as Joseph was out of money, Lawrence had to defray the whole expenses of the journey. When they arrived at Harmony, Joseph was strongly recommended by Lawrence, who was well known to the parents of the young woman; after which, they proceeded on their journey to the silver mine, made a diligent search, and of course found nothing. Thus Lawrence had his trouble for his pains, and returned home with his pockets lighter than when he started, whilst honest Joe had not only his expenses paid, but a good recommendation to the father of his fair one. Joe now proposed to marry the girl, but the parents were opposed to the match. One day, when they happened to be from home, he took advantage of the opportunity, went off with her, and the knot was tied. Being still destitute of money, he now again set his wits to work to contrive to get back to Manchester, at that time his place of residence, and he hit upon the following plan, which succeeded. He went to an honest old Dutchman, by the name of Stowel, and told him that he had discovered on the banks of the Black River, in the village of Watertown (Jefferson County, N.Y.), a cave, in which he found a bar of gold as big as his leg, and about three or four feet long; that he could not get it out alone on account of its great weight; and if Stowel would frank him and his wife to Manchester (N.Y.), they would then go together to the cave, and Stowel should share the prize with him. The good Dutchman consented. A short time after their arrival at Manchester, Stowel reminded Joseph of his promise, but he coolly replied that he could not go just then, as his wife was amongst strangers, and would be very lonesome if he quitted her. Mr. Stowel was, like Mr. Lawrence, obliged to return without any remuneration, and with less money than he came. I mention these two freaks of Joe Smith, as they explain the money-digger's system of fraud. It would hardly be believed that, especially among the cunning Yankees, such "mines and treasures" stories should be credited; but it is a peculiar feature in the U.S. that the inhabitants, so difficult to over-reach in other matters, will greedily take the bait when "mines" or "hidden treasure" are spoken of. In Missouri and Wisconsin, immense beds of copper ore and lead have been discovered in every direction. Thousands of poor, ignorant farmers, emigrants from the East, have turned diggers, miners, and smelters. Many have accumulated large fortunes in the space of a few years, and have returned "wealthy gentlemen" to their own native state, much to the astonishment of their neighbours. Thus has the "mining spirit" been kept alive, and impostors of every variety have reaped their harvest, by speculating upon the well-known avidity of the "_people of America!_" It was in the beginning of 1827, that Joe, in a trip to Pittsburg, became acquainted with Rigdon. A great intimacy took place betwixt them, and they paid each other alternate visits--Joe coming to Pittsburg and Rigdon going to the Susquehanna, _for pleasure excursions, at a friend's_. It was also during the year that the Smith family assumed a new character. In the month of June, Joseph Smith, sen., went to a wealthy, but credulous farmer, and related the following story:-- "That some years ago, a spirit had appeared to Joe, his son, and, in a vision, informed him that in a certain place there was a record on plates of gold, and that he was the person who must obtain them, and this he must do in the following manner:--On the 22nd of September, he must repair to the place where these plates of gold were deposited, dressed in black clothes, and riding a black horse, with a switch tail, and demand the plates in a certain name; and, after obtaining them, he must immediately go away, and neither lay them down nor look behind him." The farmer gave credit to old Smith's communication. He accordingly fitted out Joseph with a suit of black clothes, and borrowed a black horse. Joe (by his own account) repaired to the place of deposit, and demanded the plates, which were in a stone box, unsealed, and so near the surface of the ground that he could see one end of it; raising the lid up, he took out the plates of gold; but fearing some one might discover where he got them, he laid them down, to replace the top stone as he had found it; when, turning round, to his surprise, there were no plates to be seen. He again opened the box, and saw the plates in it; he attempted to take them out, but was not able. He perceived in the box something like a toad, which gradually assumed the appearance of a man, and struck him on the side of his head. Not being discouraged at trifles, Joe again stooped down and attempted to take the plates, when the spirit struck him again, knocked him backwards three or four rods, and hurt him very much: recovering from his fright, he inquired of the spirit, why he could not take the plates; to which the spirit made reply, "Because you have not obeyed your orders." He then inquired when he could have them, and was answered thus: "Come one year from this day, and bring with you your eldest brother; then you shall have them." "This spirit," said the elder Joseph Smith, "was the spirit of the prophet who wrote this book, and who was sent to Joe Smith, jun., to make known these things to him. Before the expiration of the year, the eldest brother died; which," the old man said, "was a decree of Providence." He also added-- "Joe went one year from that day to demand the plates, and the spirit inquired for his brother, and Joe replied that he was dead. The spirit then commanded him to come again in one year from that day, and bring a man with him. On asking who might be the man, he was answered that he would know him when he saw him." Thus, while Rigdon was concocting his Bible and preaching new doctrines, the Smith family were preparing the minds of the people for the appearance of something wonderful; and although Joe Smith was well known to be a drunken vagabond, he succeeded in inspiring, in hundreds of uneducated farmers, a feeling of awe which they could not account for. I must here stop in my narrative, to make a few observations. In the great cities of Europe and America, civilization, education, and the active bustle of every-day life, have, to a great degree, destroyed the superstitious feelings so common among the lower classes, and have completely removed the fear of evil geniuses, goblins, and spirits. But such is not the case in the Western country of the United States, on the borders of the immense forests and amidst the wild and broken scenery of glens and mountains, where torrents roll with impetuosity through caves and cataracts; where, deprived of the amusements and novelties which would recreate his imagination, the farmer allows his mind to be oppressed with strange fancies, and though he may never avow the feeling, from the fear of not meeting with sympathy, he broods over it, and is a slave to the wild phantasmagoria of his brain. The principal cause of this is, the monotony and solitude of his existence. At these confines of civilization, the American is always a hunter, and those who dwell on the smaller farms, at the edges of forests, often depend, for their animal food, upon the skill of the male portion of their community. In the fall of the year, the American shoulders his rifle, and goes alone into the wilds, to "see after his pigs, horses, and cows." Constantly on the look-out for deer and wild bees, he resorts to the most secluded spots, to swamps, mountain ridges, or along the bushy windings of some cool stream. Constant views of nature in her grandeur, the unbroken silence of his wanderings, causes a depression of the mind, and, as his faculties of sight and hearing are ever on the stretch, it affects his nervous system. He starts at the falling of a dried leaf, and, with a keen and painful sensation, he scrutinizes the withered grass before him, aware that at every step he may trample upon some venomous and deadly reptile. Moreover, in his wanderings, he is often pressed with hunger, and is exposed to a great deal of fatigue. "Fast in the wilds, and you will dream of spirits," is an Indian axiom, and a very true one. If to the above we add, that his mind is already prepared to receive the impressions of the mysterious and marvellous, we cannot wonder at their becoming superstitious. As children, they imbibe a disposition for the marvellous; during the long evenings of winter, when the snow is deep, and the wild wind roars through the trees, the old people will smoke their pipes near huge blazing logs, and relate to them some terrible adventure. They speak of unearthly noises heard near some caves, of hair-breadth escapes in encounters with evil spirits, under the form of wild animals; and many will whisper, that at such a time of night, returning from some neighbouring market, they have met with the evil one in the forest, in such and such a spot, where the two roads cross each other, or where the old oak has been blasted by lightning. The boy grows to manhood, but these family traditions are deeply engraved in his memory, and when alone, in the solitude, near the "haunted places," his morbid imagination embodies the phantoms of his diseased brain. No wonder, then, that such men should tamely yield to the superior will of one like Joe Smith, who, to their knowledge, wanders alone by moon-light in the solitude of forests, and who, in their firm belief, holds communication with spirits of another world. For, be it observed, Smith possesses all the qualities and exercises all the tricks of the necromancers during the middle ages. His speech is ambiguous, solemn, and often incomprehensible--a great proof to the vulgar of his mystical vocation. Cattle and horses, lost for many months, have been recovered through the means of Joe, who, after an inward prayer, looked through a sacred stone, "the gift of God," as he has asserted, and discovered what he wished to know. We need not say that, while the farmer was busy at home with his crop, Smith and his gang, ever rambling in woods and glens, were well acquainted with every retired, shady spot, the usual abode of wild as well as of tame animals, who seek there, during the summer, a shelter against the hot rays of the sun. Thus, notwithstanding his bad conduct, Smith had spread his renown for hundreds of miles as that of a "strange man;" and when he started his new religion, and declared himself "a prophet of God," the people did not wonder. Had Rigdon, or any other, presented himself, instead of Joe, Mormonism would never have been established; but in the performer of _mysterious deeds_, it seemed a natural consequence. As the stone we have mentioned did much In raising Joe to his present high position, I will here insert an affidavit made relative to Joe Smith's obtaining possession of this miraculous treasure. "Manchester, Ontario County, N.Y., 1833. "I became acquainted with the Smith family, known as the authors of the Mormon Bible, in the year 1820. At that time they were engaged in the money-digging business, which they followed until the latter part of the season of 1827. In the year 1822, I was engaged in digging a well; I employed Joe Smith to assist me. After digging about twenty feet below the surface of the earth, we discovered a singular-looking stone, which excited my curiosity. I brought it to the top of the well, and as we were examining it, Joseph laid it in the crown of his hat, and then put his face into the top of his hat. It has been said by Smith, that he got the stone from God, but this is false. "The next morning Joe came to me, and wished to obtain the stone, alleging that he could see in it; but I told him I did not wish to part with it, on account of its being a curiosity, but would lend it. After obtaining the stone, he began to publish abroad what wonders he could discover by looking in it, and made so much disturbance among the credulous part of the community, that I ordered the stone to be returned to me again. He had it in his possession about two years. I believe, some time in 1825, Hiram Smith (Joe's brother) came to me, and wished to borrow the same stone, alleging that they wanted to accomplish some business of importance, which 'could not very well be done without the aid of the stone.' I told him it was of no particular worth to me, but I merely wished to keep it as a curiosity, and if he would pledge me his word and honour that I should have it when called for, he Might have it; which he did, and took the stone. I thought I could rely on his word at this time, as he had made a profession of religion; but in this I was disappointed, for he disregarded both his word and honour. "In the fall of 1826, a friend called upon me, and wished to see that stone about which so much had been said; and I told him, if he would go with me to Smith's (a distance of about half a mile), he might see it. To my surprise, however, on asking Smith for the stone, he said, 'You cannot have it.' I told him it belonged to me; repeated to him the promise he had made me at the time of obtaining the stone; upon which he faced me with a malignant look, and said, '_I don't care who the devil it belongs to; you shall not have it_.' "Col. NAHUM HOWARD." CHAPTER XXXIX. I must pass over many details interesting in themselves, but too long to insert in this work. It must suffice to say, that after a time Joe Smith stated that he had possession of the golden plates, and had received from heaven a pair of spectacles by means of which the unknown characters could be decyphered by him. It may appear strange that such absurd assertions should be credited, but the reader must call to mind the credence given in this country to Joanna Southcote, and the infatuation displayed by her proselytes to the very last. The origin of Mormonism deserves peculiar examination from the success which has attended the imposture, and the prospects which it has of becoming firmly established as a new creed. At its first organization, which took place at the time that the golden plates were translating, which the reader may suppose was nothing more than the contents of the book that Rigdon had obtained possession of, and which had been originally written by S. Spalding, there were but six members of the new creed. These first members, consisting mostly of persons who were engaged with Smith in the translation of the plates, forthwith applied themselves with great zeal to building up the church Their first efforts were confined to Western New York and Pennsylvania, where they met with considerable success. Alter a number of converts had been made, Smith received a revelation that he and all his followers should go to Kirkland, in Ohio, and there take up their abode. Many obeyed this command, selling their possessions, and helping each other to settle on the spot designated. This place was the head-quarters of the Church and the residence of the prophets until 1838; but it does not appear that they ever regarded it as a permanent settlement; for, in the Book of Covenants, it is said, in speaking of Kirkland, "I consecrate this land unto them for a little season, until I the Lord provide for them to go home." In the spring of 1831, Smith, Rigdon, and others declared themselves directed by revelation to go on a journey to Missouri, and there the Lord was to show them the place of the New Jerusalem. This journey was accordingly taken, and when they arrived, a revelation was received, pointing out the town of Independence, in Jackson County, as the central spot of the land of promise, where they were directed to build a temple, &c., &c. Shortly after their return to Kirkland, a number of revelations were received, commanding the saints throughout the country to purchase and settle in this land of promise. Accordingly, many went and began to build up "Zion," as they called it. In 1831, a consecration law was established in the church by revelation. It was first published in the Book of Covenants, in the following words:--"If thou lovest me, thou shalt keep my commandments, and thou shalt consecrate all thy properties onto me with a covenant and deed which cannot be broken." This law, however, has been altered since that time. As modified, it reads thus:--"If thou lovest me, thou shalt serve and keep all of my commandments, and, behold, thou shalt remember the poor, and consecrate of thy properties for their support that which thou hast to impart unto them, with a covenant and a deed which cannot be broken." In April, 1832, a firm was established by revelation, ostensibly for the benefit of the church, consisting of the principal members in Kirkland and Independence. The members of this firm were bound together by an oath and covenant to manage the affairs of the poor, and all things pertaining to the church, both in Zion (Missouri) and in Shinakar (Kirkland). In June, 1833, another revelation was received to lay off Kirkland in lots, and the proceeds of the sale were to go to this firm. In 1834 or 1835, the firm was divided by revelation, so that those in Kirkland continued as one firm, and those in Missouri as another. In the same revelation they are commanded to divide the consecrated property between the individuals of the firm, which each separately were to manage as stewards. Previous to this (1833), a revelation was received to build a temple, which was to be done by the consecrated funds, which were under the control of the firm. In erecting this building the firm involved itself in debt to a large amount; to meet which, in the revelation last mentioned, the following appears: "Inasmuch as ye are humble and faithful, and call on my name, behold, I will give you the victory. I give unto you a promise that you shall be delivered this once out of your bondage, inasmuch as you obtain a chance to loan money by hundreds and thousands, even till you have obtained enough to deliver yourselves out of bondage." This was a command to borrow money, in order to free themselves from the debt that oppressed them. They made the attempt, but failed to get sufficient to meet their exigencies. This led to another expedient. In 1835, Smith, Rigdon, and others, formed a mercantile house, and purchased goods in Cleveland and in Buffalo to a very large amount, on a credit of six months. In the fall other houses were formed, and goods purchased in the eastern cities to a still greater amount. A great part of the goods of these houses went to pay the workmen on the temple, and many were sold on credit, so that when the notes came due the house was not able to meet them. Smith, Rigdon, and Co., then attempted to borrow money, by issuing their notes, payable at different periods after date. This expedient not being effectual, the idea of a bank suggested itself. Accordingly, in 1837, the far-famed Kirkland bank was put into operation, without any charter. This institution, by which so many have been swindled, was formed after the following manner. Subscribers for stock were allowed to pay the amount of their subscriptions in town lots, at five or six times their real value; others paid in personal property at a high valuation; and some paid the cash. When the notes were first issued, they were current in the vicinity, and Smith took advantage of their credit to pay off with them the debts he and the brethren had contracted in the neighbourhood for land and other purchases. The eastern creditors, however, refused to take their notes. This led to the expedient of exchanging them for the notes of other banks. Accordingly, the elders were sent off the country to barter Kirkland money, which they did with great zeal, and continued the operation until the notes were not worth sixpence to the dollar. As might have been expected, this institution exploded after a few months, involving Smith and his brethren in inextricable difficulties. The consequence was that he and most of the members of the church set off. In the spring of 1838, for Missouri, pursued by their creditors, but to no effect. We must now go back for a short period to state another circumstance. In 1836 an endowment meeting, or solemn assembly, was called, to be held in the temple at Kirkland. It was given out that those who were in attendance at the meeting should receive an endowment or blessing similar to that experienced by the disciples of Christ on the day of Pentecost. When the day arrived, great numbers convened from the different churches in the country. They spent the day In fasting and prayer, and in washing and perfuming their bodies; they also washed their feet and anointed their heads with what they called holy oil, and pronounced blessings. In the evening they met for the endowment; the fast was then broken, by eating light wheat bread, and drinking as much wine as they thought proper. Smith knew well how to infuse the spirit which they expected to receive; so he encouraged the brethren to drink freely, telling them that the wine was consecrated, and would not make them drank. As may be supposed, they drank to some purpose; after this, they began to prophesy, pronouncing blessings upon their friends and curses upon their enemies; after which the meeting adjourned. We now return to Missouri. The Mormons who had settled in and about Independence, in the year 1831, having become very arrogant, claiming the land as their own, saying, the Lord had given it to them, and making the most haughty assumptions, so exasperated the old citizens, that a mob was raised in 1833, and expelled the whole Mormon body from the county. They fled to Clay county, where the citizens permitted them to live in quiet till 1836, when a mob spirit began to manifest itself, and the Mormons retired to a very thinly settled district of the country, where they began to make improvements. This district was at the session of 1836-7 of the Missouri legislature, erected into a county by the name of Caldwell, with Far-West for its capital. Here the Mormons remained in quiet until after the bank explosion in Kirkland, in 1838, when Smith, Rigdon, and others of the heads of the sect arrived. Shortly after this, the Danite Society was organised, the object of which, at first, was to drive the dissenters out of the county. The members of this society were bound by an oath and covenant, with the penalty of death attached to a breach of it, to defend the presidency, and each other, unto death, right or wrong. They had their secret signs, by which they knew each other, either by day or night; and were divided into bands of tens and fifties, with a captain over each band, and a general over the whole. After this body was formed, notice was given to several of the Dissenters to leave the county, and they were threatened severely in case of disobedience. The effect of this was that many of the dissenters left. Among these were David Whitmer, John Whitmer, Hiram Page, and Oliver Cowdery, all witnesses to the Book of Mormon; also Lyman Johnson, one of the twelve apostles. The day after John Whitmer left his house in Far-West, it was taken possession of by Sidney Rigdon. About this time Rigdon preached his famous "Salt Sermon." The text was--"Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." He informed the Mormons that the Church was the salt; that dissenters were the salt that had lost its savour; and that they were literally to be trodden under the foot of the Church, until their bowels should gush out. In one of the meetings of the Danite band, one of the leaders informed them that the time was not far distant when the elders of the Church should go forth to the world with swords at their sides, and that they would soon have to go through the State of Missouri, and slay every man, woman, and child! They had it in contemplation at one time to prophesy a dreadful pestilence in Missouri, and then to poison the waters of the State, to bring it about, and thus to destroy the inhabitants. In the early part of the fall of the year 1838, the last disturbance between the Mormons and the Missourians commenced. It had its origin at an election in Davies county, some of the Mormons had located. A citizen of Davies, in a conversation with a Mormon, remarked that the Mormons all voted one way. This was denied with warmth; a violent contest ensued, when, at last, the Mormon called the Missourian a liar. They came to blows, and the quarrel was followed by a row between the Mormons and the Missourians. A day or two after this, Smith, with a company of men from Far-West, went into Davies county, for the purpose, as they said, of quelling the mob; but when they arrived, the mob had dispersed. The citizens of Davies gathered in their turn; however, the Mormons soon collected a force to the amount of five hundred men, and compelled the citizens to retire; they fled, leaving the country deserted for many miles around. At this time, the Mormons killed between two and three hundred hogs, and a number of cattle; took at least forty or fifty stands of honey, and at the same time destroyed several fields of corn. The word was given out that the Lord had consecrated, through the Church, the spoils unto His host. All this was done when they had plenty of their own, and previous to the citizens in that section of the country taking anything from them. They continued these depredations for near a week, when the Clay County Militia was ordered out. The contest was a bloody one: suffice it to say that, finally, Smith, Rigdon, and many others were taken, and, at a court of inquiry, were remanded over for trial. Rigdon was afterwards discharged on _habeas corpus_, and Smith and his comrades, after being in prison several months, escaped from their guards, and reached Quincy, Illinois. The Mormons had been before ordered to leave the State, by direction of the governor, and many had retired to Illinois previous to Smith's arrival. The Mormons, as a body, arrived in Illinois in the early part of the year 1839, in a state of great destitution and wretchedness. Their condition, with their tales of persecutions and privations, wrought powerfully upon the sympathies of the citizens, and caused them to be received with the greatest hospitality and kindness. After the arrival of Smith, the greater part of them settled at Commerce, situated upon the Mississippi river, at the lower rapids, just opposite the entrance of the river Des Monies, a site equal in beauty to any on the river. Here they began to build, and in the short time of four years they have raised a city. At first, as was before said, on account of their former sufferings, and also from the great political power which they possessed, from their unity, they were treated by the citizens of Illinois with great respect; but subsequent events have turned the tide of feeling against them. In the winter of 1840, they applied to the legislature of the State for several charters; one for the city of Nauvoo, the name Smith had given to the town of Commerce; one for the Nauvoo legion, a military body; one for manufacturing purposes, and one for the Nauvoo University. The privileges which they asked for were very extensive, and such was the desire to secure their political support, that all were granted for the mere asking; indeed, the leaders of the American legislature seemed to vie with each other in sycophancy towards this body of fanatical strangers, so anxious was each party to do them some favour that would secure their gratitude. This tended to produce jealousy in the minds of the neighbouring citizens, and fears were expressed lest a body so united, religiously and politically, might become dangerous to liberal institutions. The Mormons had at every election voted in a body with their leaders; this alone made them formidable. The legion of Mormons had been amply supplied with arms by the state, and the whole body was under the strictest military discipline. These facts, together with complaints similar to those which were made in Missouri, tended to arouse a strong feeling against them, and at last, in the early part of the summer of 1841, the citizens of Illinois organized a strong force in opposition; the Mormons were beaten in the contest. The disposition now manifested by the citizens appears to be to act upon the defensive, but at all hazards to maintain their rights. As regards the pecuniary transactions of the Mormons since they have been in Illinois, Smith still uses his power for his own benefit. His present arrangements are to purchase land at a low rate, lay it off into town lots, which he sells to his followers at a high price; thus lots that scarcely cost him a dollar, are frequently sold for a thousand. He has raised several towns in this manner, both in Illinois and in Iowa. During the last year, he has made two proclamations to his followers abroad, to come and settle in the county of Hancock. These proclamations have been obeyed to a great extent, and, strange to say, hundreds have been flocking in from the great manufacturing cities of England. What Is to be the result of all this, it is impossible to tell; but one thing Is certain, that, in a political point of view, the Mormons are already powerful, and that the object of Smith Is evidently to collect all his followers Into one focus, and thus concentrate all his power and wealth. The designs of Smith and his coadjutors, at the time of the first publication of the Book of Mormon, was, doubtlessly, nothing more than pecuniary aggrandizement. We do not believe they expected at that time that so many could ever be duped to be converted; when, however, the delusion began to spread, the publishers saw the door opened not only for wealth, but also for extensive power, and their history throughout shows that they have not been remiss in their efforts to acquire both. The extent of their desires is now by no means limited, for their writings and actions show a design to pursue the same path, and attain the same end by the same means, as did Mahomet. The idea of a second Mahomet arising in the nineteenth century may excite a smile, but when we consider the steps now taken by the Mormons to concentrate their numbers, and their ultimate design to unite themselves with the Indians, it will not be at all surprising, if scenes unheard of since the days of feudalism should soon be re-enacted. I will here submit to my readers a letter directed to Mr. Courtenay in 1842, by a superior officer of the United States artillery. "Yesterday (July the 10th) was a great day among the Mormons; their legion, to the number of three thousand men, was reviewed by Generals Smith, Bennet, and others, and certainly made a very noble and imposing appearance; the evolutions of the troops commanded by Joe would do honour to any body of regular soldiers In England. France, or Prussia. What does this mean? Why this exact discipline of the Mormon corps? Do they intend to conquer Missouri, Illinois, Mexico? It Is true they are part of the militia of the state of Illinois, by the charter of their legion, but then there are no troops In the States like them in point of discipline and enthusiasm; and led on by ambitious and talented officers, what may not be effected by them? perhaps the subversion of the constitution of the United States; and If this should be considered too great a foreign conquest will most certainly be attempted. The northern provinces of Mexico will fall into their hands, even if Texas should first take possession of them. "These Mormons are accumulating, like a snow-ball rolling down an inclined plane. They are also enrolling among their officers some of the first talent in the country, by titles which they give and by money which they can command. They have appointed Captain Henry Bennet, late of the United States army, Inspector-General of their legion, and he is commissioned as such by Governor Carlin. This gentleman is known to be well skilled in fortification, gunnery, and military engineering generally; and I am assured that he is receiving regular pay, derived from the tithing of this warlike people. I have seen his plans for fortifying Nauvoo, which are equal to any of Vauban's. "General John C. Bennet (a new England man) is the prophet's great gun. They call him, though a man of diminutive stature, the 'forty-two pounder.' He might have applied his talents in a more honourable cause; but I am assured that he is well paid for the important services he is rendering this people, or, I should rather say, rendering the prophet. This gentleman exhibits the highest degree of field military talent (field tactics), united with extensive learning. He may yet become dangerous to the states. He was quartermaster-general of the state of Illinois, and, at another time, a professor in the Erie University. It will, therefore, be seen that nothing but a high price could have secured him to these fanatics. Only a part of their officers and professors are Mormons: but then they are united by a common interest, and will act together on main points to a man. Those who are not Mormons when they come here, very soon become so, either from interest or conviction. "The Smiths are not without talent; Joe, the chief, is a noble-looking fellow, a Mahomet every inch of him; the postmaster, Sidney Rigdon, is a lawyer, a philosopher, and a saint. The other generals are also men of talent, and some of them men of learning. I have no doubt they are all brave, as they are most unquestionably ambitious, and the tendency of their religious creed is to annihilate all other sects. We may, therefore, see the time when this gathering host of religious fanatics will make this country shake to its centre. A western empire is certain. Ecclesiastical history presents no parallel to this people, inasmuch as they are establishing their religion on a learned basis. In their college, they teach all the sciences, with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish; the mathematical department is under an extremely able professor, of the name of Pratt; and a professor of Trinity College, Dublin, is president of their university. "I arrived there, incog., on the 1st inst., and, from the great preparations for the military parade, was induced to stay to see the turn-out, which, I confess, has astonished and filled me with fears for the future consequences. The Mormons, it is true, are now peaceable, but the lion is asleep. Take care, and don't rouse him. "The city of Nauvoo contains about fifteen thousand souls, and is rapidly increasing. It is well laid out, and the municipal affairs appear to be well conducted. The adjoining country is a beautiful prairie. Who will say that the Mormon prophet is not among the great spirits of the age? "The Mormons number, in Europe and America, about one hundred and fifty thousand, and are constantly pouring into Nauvoo and the neighbouring country. There are probably in and about this city, at a short distance from the river, not far from thirty thousand of these warlike fanatics, and it is but a year since they have settled in the Illinois." CHAPTER XL. While I was at Mr. Courtenay's plantation I had a panther adventure, a circumstance which, in itself, would be scarcely worth mentioning, were it not that this fierce animal was thought to have entirely left the country for more than twenty years. For several days there had been a rapid diminution among the turkeys, lambs, and young pigs in the neighbourhood, and we had unsuccessfully beaten the briars and cane-brakes, expecting at every moment to fall in with some large tiger-cat, which had strayed from the southern brakes. After much fruitless labour, Mr. Courtenay came to the conclusion that a gang of negro marroons were hanging about, and he ordered that a watch should for the future be kept every night. It happened that the whole family was one day invited to a wedding on the other side of the river. Not having any clothes fit for a party, I remained at home, and at mid-day started on horseback alone, with all the dogs, for a battue. The day was sultry, although windy; as the roar of the wind in the canes prevented me from hearing the barking of the dogs, having arrived at one of our former hunting camping-places, fifteen miles from the house, I threw myself upon the ground, and allowed my horse to graze. I had scarcely been half-an-hour occupied in smoking my pipe, when all the dogs, in full cry, broke from the briars, and rushed into the cane-brakes, passing me at a distance of thirty yards. I knew it was neither bear nor deer that they were running after, and as I had observed a path through the canes, I leaped upon my saddle, and followed the chase, wondering what it could be, as, had the animal been any of the smaller feline species, it would have kept to the briars, where dogs have never the least chance against them. I rode briskly till I arrived at a large cypress swamp, on the other side of which I could perceive through the openings another cane-brake, higher and considerably thicker. I fastened my horse, giving him the whole length of the lasso, to allow him to browse upon the young leaves of the canes, and with my bowie knife and rifle entered the swamp, following the trail of the dogs. When I came to the other cane-brake, I heard the pack before me barking most furiously, and evidently at bay, I could only be directed by the noise, as it was impossible for me to see anything; so high and thick were the canes, that I was obliged to open a way with my knife, and it was with much trouble and fatigue that I arrived within twenty yards of the dogs. I knew that I was once more approaching a swamp, for the canes were becoming thinner; raising my eyes, I perceived that I was in the vicinity of a large cotton-tree, at the foot of which probably the dogs were standing. Yet I could not see them, and I began to examine with care the upper limbs of the tree, to ascertain if any tiger-cat had lodged itself upon some of the forks. But there was nothing that I could discover; cutting the canes on the left and the right, I advanced ten yards more, when, to my surprise, I perceived, thirty feet above me, a large panther embracing the trunk of a tree with its huge paws, and looking angrily below at the dogs. I would have retired, but I dared not, as I feared that the least noise would attract the attention of the animal, who would spring upon me from its elevated position. The dogs barked louder and louder; twice I raised my rifle, but did not fire, my nerves were too much agitated, and my arms shook. At last I regained my self-command, and reflecting that among the pack there were some dogs almost a match for the terrible animal, I rested my rifle upon the limb of one of the heavy canes, and fired: my aim was true, the brute fell mortally wounded, though not dead; half of the dogs were upon it in a moment, but, shaking them off, the animal attempted to re-ascend the tree. The effort, however, was above its strength, and, after two useless springs, it attempted to slip away. At that moment the larger dogs sprang upon the animal, which could struggle no longer, as life was ebbing fast with the stream of blood. Ere I had time to reload my rifle, it was dead. When I approached, all the dogs were upon the animal, except a fierce little black bitch, generally the leader of the pack; I saw her dart through the canes with her nose on the ground, and her tail hanging low. The panther was a female, very lean, and of the largest size; by her dugs I knew she had a cub which could not be far off, and I tried to induce the pack to follow the bitch, but they were all too busy in tearing and drinking the blood of the victim, and it was not safe to use force with them. For at least ten minutes I stood contemplating them, waiting till they would be tired. All at once I heard a bark, a growl, and a plaintive moan. I thought at first that the cub had been discovered, but as the dogs started at full speed, following the chase for more than twenty minutes, I soon became convinced that it must be some new game, either a boar or a bear. I followed, but had not gone fifty steps, when a powerful rushing through the canes made me aware that the animal pursued had turned back on its trail, and, twenty yards before me, I perceived the black bitch dead and horribly mangled. I was going up to her, when the rushing came nearer and nearer; I had just time to throw myself behind a small patch of briars, before another panther burst out from the cane-brakes. [Illustration: "With a long and light spring it broke out of the canes."] I had never seen before so tremendous, and, at the same time, so majestic and so beautiful an animal, as with a long and light spring it broke out of the canes. It was a male; his jaws were covered with foam and blood; his tail was lashing through the air, and at times he looked steadily behind, as if uncertain if he would run or fight his pursuers. At last his eyes were directed to the spot where the bitch lay dead, and with a single bound he was again upon the body, and rolled it under his paws till it had lost all shape. As the furious animal stood thus twenty yards before me, I could have fired, but dared not do so, while the dogs were so far off. However, they soon emerged from the brake, and rushed forward. A spirited young pup, a little ahead of the others, was immediately crushed by his paw, and making a few bounds towards a large tree, he climbed to the height of twenty feet, where he remained, answering to the cries of the dogs with a growl as loud as thunder. I fired, and this time there was no struggle. My ball had penetrated through the eye to the brain, yet the brute in its death struggle still clung on. At last the claws relaxed from their hold, and it fell down a ponderous mass, terrible still in death. The sun had already set, and not wishing to lose any time in skinning the animal, I merely cut off its long tail, which I secured as a trophy round my waist. My adventures, however, were not yet terminated, for while I was crossing the short width of cane-brake which was between me and where the she-panther laid dead, the dogs again gave tongue, and, in less than three minutes, had tracked another animal. Night was coming on pretty fast, and I was beginning to be alarmed. Till now I had been successful, each time having destroyed, with a single ball, a terrible enemy, whom even the boldest hunters fear to attack alone; but should I have the same good luck in a third encounter? It was more than I could expect, especially as the darkness would render it more difficult to take a certain aim. I therefore allowed the dogs to bark as much as they pleased, and forced my way to my first victim, the tail of which I also severed, as a proof of my prowess. It, however, occurred to me that if there were many more panthers in the cover, it would be very unsafe to return alone to where I had left my horse. I therefore made sure that my rifle was in good order, and proceeded towards the place where the dogs were still baying. There I beheld another panther, but this time it was a sport unattended by any danger, for the animal was a very young cub, who had taken refuge fifteen feet from the ground upon a tree which had been struck by lightning, and broken off about three yards from its roots. The animal was on the broken part which had its summit entangled in the lower branches of another tree. It was truly a pretty sight, as the little animal's tail, hanging down, served as a _point de mire_ to all the dogs, who were jumping up to catch it. The cub was delighted, mewing with high glee, sometimes running up, sometimes down, just to Invite his playfellows to come to him. I felt great reluctance to kill so graceful and playful an animal, but it became a necessity, as no endeavours of mine could have forced the dogs to leave it. I shot him, and, tying him round my neck, I now began to seek, with some anxiety, for the place where I had left my horse. There is but little twilight in America, in the spring of the year especially; great was my hurry, and consequently less was my speed. I lost my trail, bogged myself in a swamp, tore my hands and face with the briars, and, after an hour of severe fatigue, at last heard my horse, who was impatient at being left alone, neighing loudly. Though my distance to the house was only eighteen miles and the road quite safe, I contrived to lose myself three or four times, till, _en désespoir_, I threw the bridle on my horse's neck, trusting to his instinct to extricate me from my difficulties. It was nearly midnight when I approached the back fences of Mr. Courtenay's plantation, and I wondered very much at seeing torches glaring in every direction. I galloped rapidly through the lane, and learned from a negro that the family had long returned home, and that supper had been, as usual, served at eight o'clock; that they had been anxiously waiting for me, and that Mr. Courtenay, fearing some accident had happened, had resolved to go himself in search of me with the major portion of his negroes. Leaving my horse to the care of the slave, I ran towards the house, where the dogs had already announced my arrival. The family came under the portico to welcome me, and simultaneously asked me what could have detained me so long. "I have caught the robbers," replied I, approaching the group, "I have killed them and lost two dogs; here are my _spolia opima_." My host was thunderstruck; he was too much of a hunter not to be able to estimate the size of the animals by the tokens I had brought with me, and he had believed that for the last twenty or thirty years, not one of these terrible animals was actually living in the country. The fact was so very remarkable, that he insisted on going himself that very night with his negroes to skin the animals; and, after a hasty meal, he left us to fulfil his intentions. Relating my adventures to my kind hostess and her niece, I had the satisfaction of feeling that my narrative excited emotions which could only arise from a strong interest in my welfare. This panther story got wind, and nothing could convince the neighbouring farmers but the very sight of the skins. All the western newspapers related the matter, and for two months at least I was quite a "lion." A few days after that adventure, the _Caroline_, the largest and finest steamboat upon the Mississippi, struck a snag in coming down the stream, and sank immediately. The river, however, being very low, the upper decks remained above water, and help coming down from the neighbouring plantations, all the passengers were soon brought on shore without any loss of life. Three hundred sheep, one hundred hogs, eighty cows, and twelve horses were left to their fate, and it was a painful sight to witness the efforts of the poor brutes struggling against the powerful current and looking towards the people on shore, as if to implore for help. Only one pig, two cows, and five horses ever reached the bank of the river, many disappearing under the repeated attacks of the gar-fish, and other monsters, and the remainder carried by the stream to feed the alligators and the cawanas of the south. But very few objects on board were insured, and hundreds of hogsheads of Missouri tobacco and barrels of Kentucky flour were several days afterwards picked up by the Arkansas and Tennessee wreckers. Articles thus lost by shipwreck upon the Mississippi are seldom reclaimed, as the principal owners of the goods, on hearing the news, generally collect all the property which they can, run away, change their names, and enter upon new speculations in another state. Among the passengers on board, Mr. Courtenay recognized several of his friends, whom he directly invited into the mansion, while temporary sheds were erected for the others, till steamboat should pass and take them off. So sudden had been the catastrophe, that no luggage of any kind had been saved, and several Englishmen, travelling to purchase cotton and minerals, suffered very serious loss. As to the Americans themselves, though they complained very loudly, vowing they would bring an action against the river, the steamboats, against every boat, and every thing, for I don't know how many millions of dollars, their losses were very trifling, as it is the custom for a man in the Western States to carry all his money in his pocket-book, and his pocket-book in his pocket; as to luggage, he never has any except a small valise, two feet long, in which are contained a shirt, two bosoms, three frills, a razor, and a brush, which may serve for his head, clothing, boots, and perhaps teeth. It was amusing to hear all the complaints that were made and to enumerate the sums which were stated to have been lost; there was not one among the travellers, even among those who had taken a deck-passage, who had not lost from ten to fifty thousand dollars, with which he was going to purchase a cotton plantation, a steamboat, or a whole cargo of Havannah cigars. What made it more ridculous was the facility with which everybody found a witness to certify his loss, "I had five thousand dollars," one would say; "ask the general, he will tell you if it is true." "True, as I am an honest man," would answer the general, "to wit, that I swapped with the judge my eastern notes for his southern ones." It would be impossible to explain to a sober Englishman the life that is led on, and the numerous tricks that are played in, a Mississippi steamboat. One I will mention, which will serve as a sample. An itinerant preacher, well known as a knave upon both banks, and the whole length of the river, used (before he was sent to the Penitentiary for picking pockets) to live comfortably in the steamboats without ever paying a farthing. From St. Louis he would book for New Orleans, and the passage-money never being asked in the West but at the termination of the trip, the preacher would go on shore at Vicksburg, Natches, Bayou, Sarah, or any other such station in the way. Then he would get on board any boat bound to the Ohio, book himself for Louisville, and step on shore at Memphis. He had no luggage of any kind except a green cotton umbrella; but, in order to lull all suspicion, he contrived always to see the captain or the clerk in his office, and to ask them confidentially if they knew the man sleeping in the upper bed, if he was respectable, as he, the preacher, had in his trunks considerable sums intrusted to him by some societies. The consequence was, that, believing him rich, the captain and officers would pay him a great deal of attention, inviting him to wine and liquor. When he disappeared, they would express how sorry they were to have been obliged to leave the gentleman behind, but they hoped they would see him at St. Louis, New Orleans, or Louisville, or hear from him, so as to know where to direct his trunks. But they would soon ascertain that there were no trunks left behind, that there had never been any brought on board, and that they had been duped by a clever sharper. In less than twenty-four hours almost all the passengers had got on board some other boats, but those who had been invited by Mr. Courtenay tarried a few days with us, for we were on the eve of a great fishing party on the lake, which in the Far-West is certainly a very curious scene. Among the new guests were several cotton planters from the South, and English cotton-brokers. One of them had passed a short time among the Mormons, at Nauvoo, and had many amusing stories to tell of them. One I select among many, which is the failure of an intended miracle by Joe Smith. Towards the close of a fine summer's day, a farmer of Ioway found a respectable-looking man at his gate, who requested permission to pass the night under his roof. The hospitable farmer readily complied; the stranger was invited into the house, and a warm and substantial supper set before him. After he had eaten, the farmer, who appeared to be a jovial, warm-hearted, humorous, and withal a shrewd old man, passed several hours in conversation with his guest, who seemed to be very ill at ease, both in body and mind; yet, as if desirous of pleasing his entertainer, he replied courteously and agreeably to whatever was said to him. Finally, he pleaded fatigue and illness as an excuse for retiring to rest, and was conducted by the farmer to an upper chamber where he went to bed. About the middle of the night, the farmer and his family were awakened by dreadful groans, which they soon ascertained proceeded from the chamber of the traveller. On going to ascertain the cause, they found that the stranger was dreadfully ill, suffering the most acute pains and uttering the most doleful cries apparently quite unconscious of what was passing around him. Everything that kindness and experience could suggest was done to relieve the sick man; but all efforts were in vain, and, to the consternation of the farmer and his family, their guest, in the course of a few hours, expired. At an early hour in the morning, in the midst of their trouble and anxiety, two travellers came to the gate, and requested entertainment. The farmer told them that he would willingly offer them hospitality, but that just now his household was in the greatest confusion, on account of the death of a stranger, the particulars of which he proceeded to relate to them. They appeared to be much surprised and grieved at the poor man's calamity, and politely requested permission to see the corpse. This, of course, the farmer readily granted, and conducted them to the chamber in which laid the dead body. They looked at it for a few minutes in silence, and then the oldest of the pair gravely told the farmer that they were elders of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and were empowered by God to perform miracles, even to the extent of raising the dead; and that they felt quite assured they could bring to life the man who laid dead before them! The farmer was, of course, "pretty considerably," astonished at the quality and powers of the persons who addressed him, and, rather incredulously asked if they were quite sure that they could perform all which they professed. "O certainly! not a doubt of it. The Lord has commissioned us expressly to work miracles, in order to prove the truth of the prophet Joseph Smith, and the inspiration of the books and doctrines revealed to him. Send for all your neighbours, that, in the presence of a multitude, we may bring the dead man to life, and that the Lord and his church may be glorified to all men." The farmer, after a little consideration, agreed to let the miracle-workers proceed, and, as they desired, sent his children to his neighbours, who, attracted by the expectation of a miracle, flocked to the house in considerable numbers. The Mormon elders commenced their task by kneeling and praying before the body with uplifted hands and eyes, and with most stentorian lungs. Before they had proceeded far with their prayer, a sudden idea struck the farmer, who quietly quitted the house for a few minutes, and then returned, and waited patiently by the bedside, until the prayer was finished, and the elders ready to perform their miracle. Before they began, he respectfully said to them, that, with their permission, he wished to ask them a few questions upon the subject of this miracle. They replied that they had no objection. The farmer then asked,-- "You are quite certain that you can bring this man to life again?" "We are." "How do you know that you can?" "We have just received a revelation from the Lord, informing us that we can." "Are you quite sure that the revelation was from the Lord?" "Yes; we cannot be mistaken about it." "Does your power to raise this man to life again depend upon the particular nature of his disease? or could you now bring any dead man to life?" "It makes no difference to us; we could bring any corpse to life." "Well, if this man had been killed, and one of his arms cut off, could you bring him to life, and also restore to him his arm?" "Certainly! there is no limit to the power given us by the Lord. It would make no difference, even if both his arms and legs were cut off." "Could you restore him, if his head had been cut off?" "Certainly we could!" "Well," said the farmer, with a quiet smile upon his features "I do not doubt the truth of what such holy men assert; but I am desirous that my neighbours here should be fully converted, by having the miracle performed in the completest manner possible. So, by your leave, if it makes no difference whatever, I will proceed to cut off the head of this corpse." Accordingly, he produced a huge and well-sharpened broad axe from beneath his coat, which he swung above his head, and was, apparently, about to bring it down upon the neck of the corpse, when, lo and behold! to the amazement of all present, the dead man started up in great agitation, and swore that, "by hell and jingo," he would not have his head cut off, in any consideration whatever! The company immediately seized the Mormons, and soon made them confess that the pretended dead man was also a Mormon elder, and that they had sent him to the farmer's house, with directions to die there at a particular hour, when they would drop in, as if by accident, and perform a miracle that would astonish everybody. The farmer, after giving the impostors a severe chastisement, let them depart to practise their _humbug_ in some other quarter. These two "_Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints_", were honest Joe and his worthy _compeer_ and coadjutor, Sidney Rigdon. CHAPTER XLI. The day of the fishing at length arrived; our party of ladies and gentlemen, with the black cooks and twenty slaves, started two hours before sunrise, and, after a smart ride of some twelve miles, we halted before a long row of tents, which had been erected for the occasion, on the shores of one of these numerous and beautiful western lakes. Fifty negroes were already on the spot, some cutting wood for fuel, some preparing breakfast, while others made ready the baits and lines, or cleaned empty barrels, in which our intended victims were to be salted. We scarcely had had time to look around us, when, from twenty different quarters, we beheld the approach of as many parties, who had been invited to share the sport. We greeted them planter fashion;--"Are you hungry, eh, eh?--Sam, Napoleon, Washington, Caesar--quick--the breakfast." For several days previous, all the creeks of the neighbourhood had been drained of their cray-fish, minnows, and shell-fish. All the dug-outs and canoes from every stream thirty miles round had also been dragged to the lake, and it was very amusing to see a fleet of eighty boats and canoes of every variety, in which we were about to embark to prosecute our intentions against the unsuspecting inhabitants of the water. After a hearty, though somewhat hasty meal, we proceeded to business; every white man taking with him a negro, to bait his line and unhook the fish; the paddles were soon put in motion, and the canoes, keeping a distance of fifty yards from each other, having now reached the deepest part of the lake, bets were made as to who would pull up the first fish, the ladies on shore watching the sport, and the caldrons upon the fire ready to receive the first victims. I must not omit to mention, that two of the larger canoes, manned only by negroes, were ordered to pull up and down the line of fishing-boats and canoes, to take out the fish as they were captured. At a signal given by the ladies, the lines were thrown into the lake, and, almost at the same moment, a deafening hurrah of a hundred voices announced that all the baits had been taken before reaching the bottom, every fisherman imagining that he had won his bet. The winner, however, could never be ascertained, and nobody gave it a second thought all being now too much excited with the sport. The variety of the fish was equal to the rapidity with which they were taken: basses, perch, sun-fish, buffaloes, trouts, and twenty other sorts. In less than half an hour my canoe was full to sinking: and I should certainly have sunk with my cargo, had it not been most opportunely taken out by one of the spare boats. All was high glee on shore and on the lake, and the scene was now and then still diversified by comic accidents, causing the more mirth, as there was no possibility of danger. The canoe next to me was full to the gunwale, which was not two inches above water: it contained the English traveller and a negro, who was quite an original in his way. As fish succeeded to fish, their position became exceedingly ludicrous: the canoe was positively sinking, and they were lustily calling for assistance. The spare boat approached rapidly, and had neared them to within five yards, when the Englishman's line was suddenly jerked by a very heavy fish, and so unexpectedly, that the sportsman lost his equilibrium and fell upon the larboard side of the canoe. The negro, wishing to restore the equilibrium, threw his weight on the opposite side; unluckily, this had been the simultaneous idea of his white companion, who also rolled over the fish to starboard. The canoe turned the turtle with them, and away went minnows, crawfish, lines, men, and all. Everybody laughed most outrageously, as the occupants of the canoe reappeared upon the surface of the water, and made straight for the shore, not daring to trust to another canoe after their ducking. The others continued fishing till about half-past nine, when the rays of the sun were becoming so powerful as to compel us to seek shelter in the tents. If the scene on the lake had been exciting, it became not less so on-shore, when all the negroes, male and female, crowding together, began to scale, strip, and salt the fish. Each of them had an account to give of some grand fishery, where a monstrous fish, a mile in length, had been taken by some fortunate "Sambo" of the South. The girls gaped with terror and astonishment, the men winking and trying to look grave, while spinning these yarns, which certainly beat all the wonders of the veracious Baron Munchausen. The call to renew the sport broke off their ludicrous inventions. Our fortune was as great as in the forenoon, and at sunset we returned home, leaving the negroes to salt and pack the fish in barrels, for the supply of the plantation. A few days afterwards, I bade adieu to Mr. Courtenay and his delightful family, and embarked myself and horse on board of one of the steamers bound to St. Louis, which place I reached on the following morning. St. Louis has been described by so many travellers, that it is quite useless to mention anything about this "queen city of the Mississippi." I will only observe, that my arrival produced a great sensation among the inhabitants, to whom the traders in the Far West had often told stories about the wealth of the Shoshones. In two or three days, I received a hundred or more applications from various speculators, "to go and kill the Indians in the West, and take away their treasures;" and I should have undoubtedly received ten thousand more, had I not hit upon a good plan to rid myself of all their importunities. I merely sent all the notes to the newspapers as fast as I received them; and it excited a hearty laugh amongst the traders, when thirty letters appeared in the columns, all of them written in the same tenour and style. One evening I found at the post-office a letter from Joseph Smith himself, in which he invited me to go to him without any loss of time, as the state of affairs having now assumed a certain degree of importance, it was highly necessary that we should at once come to a common understanding. Nothing could have pleased me more than this communication, and the next morning I started from St. Louis, arriving before noon at St. Charles, a small town upon the Missouri, inhabited almost entirely by French Creoles, fur-traders, and trappers. There, for the first time, I saw a steam-ferry, and, to say the truth, I do not understand well how horses and waggons could have been transported over before the existence of steamboats, as, in that particular spot, the mighty stream rolls its muddy waters with an incredible velocity, forming whirlpools, which seem strong enough to engulf anything that may come into them. From St. Charles I crossed a hilly land, till I arrived once more upon the Mississippi; but there "the father of the waters," (as the Indians call it) presented an aspect entirely new: its waters, not having yet mixed with those of the Missouri, were quite transparent; the banks, too, were several hundred feet high, and recalled to my mind the countries watered by the Buona Ventura River. For two days I continued my road almost always in sight of the stream, till at last, the ground becoming too broken and hilly, I embarked upon another steam ferry at Louisiana, a rising and promising village, and landed upon the shores of Illinois, where the level prairies would allow of more rapid travelling. The state of Missouri, in point of dimensions, is the second state of the Union, being inferior in extent only to Virginia. It extends from 36° to 40° 35' N. lat, and from 89° 20' to 95° W. long., having an area of about 68,500 square miles. Its boundaries, as fixed by the Constitution, are a line drawn from a point in the middle of the Mississippi, in 36° N. lat., and along that parallel, west to its intersection, a meridian line passing through the mouth of the Kansas. Thence, the western boundary was originally at that meridian: but, by act of Congress in 1836, the triangular tract between it and the Missouri, above the mouth of the Kansas, was annexed to the state. On the north, the parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the River Desmoines, forms the boundary between that river and the Missouri. The surface of that portion of the state which lies north of the Missouri is, in general, moderately undulating, consisting of an agreeable interchange of gentle swells and broad valleys, and rarely, though occasionally, rugged, or rising into hills of much elevation. With the exception of narrow strips of woodland along the water-courses, almost the whole of this region is prairie, at least nine-tenths being wholly destitute of trees. The alluvial patches or river-bottoms are extensive, particularly on the Missouri, and generally of great fertility; and the soil of the upland is equal, if not superior, to that of any other upland tract in the United States. The region south of the Missouri River and west of the Osage, is of the same description; the northern and western Missouri country is most delightful, a soil of inexhaustible fertility, and a salubrious climate, rendering it a most desirable and pleasant residence; but south-east of the latter river, the state is traversed by numerous ridges of the Ozark mountains, and the surface is here highly broken and rugged. This mountainous tract has a breadth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles; but although it often shoots up into precipitous peaks, it is believed that they rarely exceed two thousand feet in height; no accurate measurements of their elevation have, however, been made, and little is known of the course and mutual relations of the chains. The timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, &c., indicative of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state, hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, &c., are the prevailing growth; and in river-bottoms, the cotton-tree, sycamore, or button-wood, maple, ash, walnut, &c., predominate. The south-eastern corner of the state, below Cape Girardeau, and east of the Black River, is a portion of the immense inundated region which borders the Arkansas. A considerable part of this tract is indeed above the reach of the floods, but these patches are isolated and inaccessible, except by boats, during the rise of the waters. My friend, Mr. Courtenay, penetrated these swamps with three Indians and two negroes. His companions were bogged and lost; he returned, having killed seven fine elks, and two buffaloes. Some of these mighty animals have been breeding there for a long while, undisturbed by man. The state of Missouri is abundantly supplied with navigable channels, affording easy access to all parts. The Mississippi washes the eastern border, by the windings of the stream, for a distance of about four hundred and seventy miles. Above St. Genevieve, it flows for the most part between high and abrupt cliffs of limestone, rising to an elevation of from one hundred to four hundred feet above the surface of the river; sometimes separated from it by bottoms of greater or less width, and at others springing up abruptly from the water's edge. A few miles below Cape Girardeau, and about thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Ohio, are the rocky ledges, called the Little and Grand Chain; and about half-way between that point and St. Genevieve, is the Grand Tower, one of the wonders of the Mississippi. It is a stupendous pile of rocks, of a conical form, about one hundred and fifty feet high, and one hundred feet in circumference at its base, rising up out of the bed of the river. It seems, in connection with the rocky shores on both sides, to have been opposed, at some former period, as a barrier to the flow of the Mississippi, which must here have had a perpendicular fall of more than one hundred feet. The principal tributaries of the Mississippi, with the exception of the Missouri, are the Desmoines, Wyacond, Fabius, Salt, and Copper Rivers, above that great stream, and the Merrimac, St. Francis and White River below; the two last passing into Arkansas. Desmoines, which is only a boundary stream, is navigable one hundred and seventy miles, and Salt River, whose northern sources are in Iowa, and southern in Boone county, and which takes its name from the salt licks or salines on its borders, may be navigated by steamboats up to Florida (a small village); that is to say, ninety-five or a hundred miles. The Rivière au Cuivre, or Copper River, is also a navigable stream; but the navigation of all these rivers is interrupted by ice in winter, and by shoals and bars in the dry season. The Missouri river flows through the state for a distance of about six hundred miles; but although steamboats have ascended it two thousand five hundred miles from its mouth, its navigation is rendered difficult and dangerous by sand-bars, falling banks, snags, and shifting channels. The bank of the Mississippi river, on the Illinois side, is not by far so picturesque as the country I have just described, but its fertility is astonishing. Consequently, the farms and villages are less scattered, and cities, built with taste and a great display of wealth, are found at a short distance one from the other. Quincy I may mention, among others, as being a truly beautiful town, and quite European in its style of structure and neatness. Elegant fountains are pouring their cool waters at the end of every row of houses; some of the squares are magnificent, and, as the town is situated upon a hill several hundred feet above the river, the prospect is truly grand. At every place where I stopped between St. Louis and Quincy, I always heard the Mormons abused and spoken of as a set of scoundrels, but from Quincy to Nauvoo the reports were totally different. The higher or more enlightened classes of the people have overlooked the petty tricks of the Mormon leaders, to watch with more accuracy the advance and designs of Mormonism. In Joe Smith they recognize a great man, a man of will and energy, one who has the power of carrying everything before him, and they fear him accordingly. On leaving Quincy, I travelled about seventy miles through a country entirely flat, but admirably cultivated. I passed through several little villages and at noon of the second day I reached my destination. CHAPTER XLII. Nauvoo, the holy city of the Mormons, and present capital of their empire, is situated in the north-western part of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi, in lat. 40° 35' N.; it is bounded on the north, south, and west by the river, which there forms a large curve, and is nearly two miles wide. Eastward of the city is a beautiful undulating prairie; it is distant ten miles from Fort Madison, in Iowa, and more than two hundred from St. Louis. Before the Mormons gathered there, the place was named _Commerce_, as I have already said, and was but a small and obscure village of some twenty houses; so rapidly, however, have they accumulated, that there are now, within four years of their first settlement, upwards of fifteen thousand inhabitants in the city, and as many more in its immediate vicinity. The surface of the ground upon which Nauvoo is built is very uneven, though there are no great elevations. A few feet below the soil is a vast bed of limestone, from which excellent building material can be quarried, to almost any extent. A number of _tumuli_, or ancient mounds, are found within the limits of the city, proving it to have been a place of some importance with the former inhabitants of the country. The space comprised within the city limits is about four miles in its extreme length, and three in its breadth; but is very irregular in its outline, and does not cover so much ground as the above measurement would seem to indicate. The city is regularly laid out, the streets crossing each other at right angles, and generally of considerable length, and of convenient width. The majority of the houses are still nothing more than log cabins, but lately a great number of plank and brick houses have been erected. The chief edifices of Nauvoo are the temple, and an hotel, called the Nauvoo House, but neither of them is yet finished; the latter is of brick, upon a stone foundation, and presents a front of one hundred and twenty feet, by sixty feet deep, and is to be three stories high, exclusive of the basement. Although intended chiefly for the reception and entertainment of strangers and travellers, it contains, or rather will contain, a splendid suite of apartments for the particular accommodation of the prophet Joe Smith, and his heirs and descendants for ever. The privilege of this accommodation he pretends was granted to him by the Lord, in a special revelation, on account of his services to the Church. It is most extraordinary that the Americans, imbued with democratic sentiments and with such an utter aversion to hereditary privileges of any kind, could for a moment be blinded to the selfishness of the prophet, who thus easily provided for himself and his posterity a palace and a maintenance. The Mormon temple is a splendid structure of stone, quarried within the bounds of the city; its breadth is eighty feet, and its length one hundred and forty, independent of an outer court of thirty feet, making the length of the whole structure one hundred and seventy feet. In the basement of the temple is the baptismal font, constructed in imitation of the famous brazen sea of Solomon; it is supported by twelve oxen, well modelled and overlaid with gold. Upon the sides of the font, in panels, are represented various scriptural subjects, well painted. The upper story of the temple will, when finished, be used as a lodge-room for the Order Lodge and other secret societies. In the body of the temple, where it is intended that the congregation shall assemble, are two sets of pulpits, one for the priesthood, and the other for the grandees of the church. The cost of this noble edifice had been defrayed by tithing the whole Mormon church. Those who reside at Nauvoo and are able to labour, have been obliged to work every tenth day in quarrying stone, or upon the building of the temple itself. Besides the temple, there are in Nauvoo two steam saw-mills, a steam flour-mill, a tool-factory on a large scale, a foundry, and a company of considerable wealth, from Staffordshire, have also established there a manufacture of English china. The population of the holy city itself is rather a mixed kind. The general gathering of the saints has, of course, brought together men of all classes and characters. The great majority of them are uneducated and unpolished people, who are undoubtedly sincere believers in the prophet and his doctrines. A great proportion of them consist of converts from the English manufacturing districts, who were easily persuaded by Smith's missionaries to exchange their wretchedness at home for ease and plenty in the promised land. These men are devotedly attached to the prophet's will, and obey his orders as they would those of God himself. These aliens can, by the law of Illinois, vote after six months' residence in the state, and they consequently vote blindly, giving their votes according to the will of Joe Smith. To such an extent does his will influence them, that at the election in Nauvoo (1842) there were but six votes against the candidates he supported. Of the Mormons, I believe the majority to be ignorant, deluded men, really and earnestly devoted to their new religion. But their leaders are men of intellect, who profess Mormonism because of the wealth, titles[30], rank, and power which it procures them. [Footnote 30: As I have mentioned the word _titles_, I must make myself understood. There are certain classes of individuals in the United States who, by their own fortune, education, and social position, could not be easily brought over to Mormonism. Joe Smith, as a founder of a sect, has not only proved himself a great man, but that he perfectly understands his countrymen, and, above all, their greediness for any kind of distinction which can nominally raise them above the common herd, for it is a fact that no people hate the word equality more than the American. Joe Smith has instituted titles, dignities, and offices corresponding to those of the governments in the Old World. He has not yet dared to make himself a king, but he has created a nobility that will support him when he thinks proper to assume the sovereign title. Thus he has selected individuals expressly to take care of the Church; these form the order of the Templars, with their grand masters, &c., &c. He has organised a band of soldiers, called _Danites_, a sacred battalion--the _celeres_ of Romulus--these are all _comites_ or counts; their chiefs are _conductors_, or dukes. Then follow the pontiffs, the bishops, &c., &c. This plan has proved to answer well, as it has given to Mormonism many wealthy individuals from the Eastern States, who accepted the titles and came over to Europe to act as emissaries from Joe, under the magnificent titles of Great Commander, Prince of Zion, Comte de Jerusalem, Director of the Holy College, &c., &c.] As a military position, Nauvoo, garrisoned by twenty or thirty thousand fanatics, well armed and well supplied with provisions, would be most formidable. It is unapproachable upon any side but the east, and there the nature of the ground (boggy) offers great obstacles to any besieging operations. It is Smith's intention to congregate his followers there, until he accumulates a force that can defy anything that can be brought against him. Nauvoo is a Hebrew word, and signifies a beautiful habitation for a man, carrying with it the idea of rest. It is not, however, considered by the Mormons as their final home, but as a resting-place; they only intend to remain there till they have gathered a force sufficient to enable them to conquer Independence (Missouri), which, according to them, _is one of the most fertile, pleasant, and desirable countries on the face of the earth, possessing a soil unsurpassed by any region_. Independence they consider their Zion, and they there intend to rear their great temple, the corner stone of which is already laid. There is to be the great gathering-place for all the saints, and, in that delightful and healthy country, they expect to find their Eden, and build their New Jerusalem. What passed between Joe Smith and myself I feel not at liberty to disclose; in fact, publicity would interfere with any future plans. I will only say, that the prophet received me with the greatest cordiality, and confirmed the offers which his agents had made to me when I was among the Comanches. When, however, I came to the point, and wished to ascertain whether the Mormons would act up to the promises of their leaders, I perceived, to my great disappointment, that the "means" at least for the present--the operative means--were not yet ready to be put in motion. According to him, the Foxes, Osages, Winnebegoes, Sioux, and Mennonionie Indians would act for him at a moment's notice; and, on my visiting the Foxes to ascertain the truth of these assertions, I discovered that they had indeed promised to do so, provided that, previously, the Mormons should have fulfilled certain promises to them, the performance of which I knew was not yet in the power of the Mormons. In the meanwhile, I heard from Joe Smith himself how God had selected him to obtain and be the keeper of the divine bible; and the reader will form his own idea of Joe Smith by the narrative. The day appointed was the 22nd of September, and Joe told me that on that day-- "He arose early in the morning, took a one-horse waggon of some one that had stayed overnight at his house, and, accompanied by his wife, repaired to the hill which contained the book. He left his wife in the waggon by the road, and went alone to the hill, a distance of thirty or forty rods. He then took the book out of the ground, hid it in a tree top, and returned home. The next day he went to work for some time in the town of Macedon, but about ten days afterwards, it having been suggested that some one had got his book, his wife gave him notice of it; upon which, hiring a horse, he returned home in the afternoon, stayed just time enough to drink a cup of tea, went in search of his book, found it safe, took off his frock, wrapt it round his treasure, put it under his arm, and ran all the way home, a distance of about two miles. He said he should think that, being written on plates of gold, if weighed sixty pounds, but, at all events, was sure it was not less than forty. On his return he was attacked by two men in the woods, knocked them both down, made his escape, and arrived safe at home with his burden." The above were the exact words of Smith, to which he adds, somewhere in his translation of the book, that had it not been for the supernatural virtues of the stone he carried with him, virtues which endowed him with divine strength and courage, he would never have been able to undergo the fatigues and conquer the obstacles he encountered during that frightful night. Thus Smith gets possession of his precious manuscript. But, alas! 'tis written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Joe calls to his assistance the wonderful stone, "the gift of God," and peeping hastily through it, he sees an angel pointing somewhere towards _a miraculous pair of spectacles!!!_ Yes, two polished pieces of crystal were the humble means by which the golden plates were to be rendered comprehensible. By the bye, the said spectacles are a heavy, ugly piece of workmanship of the last century; they are silver-mounted, and bear the maker's name, plainly engraved, "Schneider, Zurich." The Book of Mormon was published in the year 1830, Since that period its believers and advocates have propagated its doctrines and absurdities with a zeal worthy of a better cause. Through every State of the Union, and in Canada, the apostles of this wild delusion have disseminated its principles and duped thousands to believe it true. They have crossed the ocean, and in England have made many converts: recently some of their missionaries have been sent to Palestine. Such strenuous exertions having been, and still being made, to propagate the doctrines of this book, and such fruits having already appeared from the labours of its friends, it becomes a matter of some interest to investigate the history of this strange delusion, and, although it does not deserve it, treat the subject seriously. The Book of Mormon purports to be the record or history of a certain people who inhabited America previous to its discovery by Columbus. According to the book, this people were the descendants of one Lehi, who crossed the ocean from the eastern continent to that of America. Their history and records, containing prophecies and revelations, were engraven, by the command of God, on small plates, and deposited in the hill Comora, which appears to be situated in Western New York. Thus was preserved an account of this race (together with their religious creed) up to the period when the descendants of Laman, Lemuel, and Sam, who were the three eldest sons of Lehi, arose and destroyed the descendants of Nephi, who was the youngest son. From this period the descendants of the eldest sons "dwindled in unbelief," and "became a dark, loathsome, and filthy people." These last-mentioned are the present American Indians. The plates above-mentioned remained in their depository until 1827, when they were found by Joseph Smith, jun., who was directed in the discovery by the angel of the Lord. On these plates were certain hieroglyphics, said to be of the Egyptian character, which Smith, by the direction of God, being instructed by Inspiration as to their meaning, proceeded to translate. It will be here proper to remark, that a narrative so extraordinary as that contained in the Book of Mormon, translated from hieroglyphics, of which even the most learned have but a limited knowledge, and that too, by an ignorant man, who pretended to no other knowledge of the characters than what he derived from inspiration, requires more than ordinary evidence to substantiate it. It will, therefore, be our purpose to inquire into the nature and degree of testimony which has been given to the world to substantiate the claims of this extraordinary book. In the first place, the existence of the plates themselves has ever since their alleged discovery been in dispute. On this point it would be extremely easy to give some proofs, by making an exhibition of them to the world. If they are so ancient as they are claimed to be, and designed for the purpose of transmitting the history of a people, and if they have lain for ages deposited In the earth, their appearance would certainly indicate the fact. What evidence, then, have we of the _existence_ of these plates? Why, none other than the mere _dictum_ of Smith himself and the certificates of eleven other individuals, who say that they have seen them; and upon this testimony we are required to believe this most extraordinary narrative. Now, even admitting, for the sake of argument, that these witnesses are all honest and credible men, yet what would be easier than for Smith to deceive them? Could he not easily procure plates and inscribe thereon a set of characters, no matter what, and exhibit them to the intended witnesses as genuine? What would be easier than thus to impose on their credulity and weakness? And if it were necessary to give them the appearances of antiquity, a chemical process could effect the matter. But we do not admit that these witnesses were honest; for six of them, after having made the attestation to the world that they had seen the plates, left the Church, thus contradicting that to which they had certified. And one of these witnesses, Martin Harris, who is frequently mentioned In the Book of Covenants--who was a high-priest of the Church--who was one of the most infatuated of Smith's followers--who even gave his property in order to procure the publication of the Book of Mormon, afterwards seceded from the Church. Smith, in speaking of him in connection with others, said that they were so far beneath contempt, that a notice of them would be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make. Some of the Mormons have said that a copy of the plates was presented to Professor Anthon, a gentleman standing in the first rank as a classical scholar, and that he attested to the faithfulness of the translation of the Book of Mormon. Now, let us read what the professor himself has to say on this matter. In a letter recently published he expresses himself thus:-- "Many years ago, the precise date I do not now recollect, a plain-looking countryman called upon me, with a letter from Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, requesting me to examine and give my opinion upon a certain paper, marked with various characters, which the doctor confessed he could not decipher, and which the bearer of the note was very anxious to have explained. A very brief examination of the paper convinced me that it was not only a mere hoax, but a very clumsy one. The characters were arranged in columns, like the Chinese mode of writing, and presented the most singular medley I ever beheld. Greek, Hebrew, and all sorts of letters, more or less distorted, either through unskilfulness or from actual design, were intermingled with sundry delineations of half-moons, stars, and other natural objects, and the whole ended in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac. The conclusion was irresistible, that some cunning fellow had prepared the paper in question, for the purpose of imposing upon the countryman who brought it, and I told the man so, without any hesitation. He then proceeded to give me the history of the whole affair, which convinced me that he had fallen into the hands of some sharper, while it left me in great astonishment at his simplicity." The professor also states that he gave his opinion in writing to the man, that "the marks on the paper appeared to be merely an imitation of various alphabetic characters, and had no meaning at all connected with them." The following letter, which I received, relative to the occupation of Joe Smith, as a treasure-finder, will probably remind the reader of the character of Dousterswivel, in Walter Scott's tale of the Antiquary. One could almost imagine that either Walter Scott had borrowed from Joe, or that Joe had borrowed from the great novelist. "I first became acquainted with Joseph Smith, senior, and his family, in 1820. They lived at that time in Palmyra, about one mile and a half from my residence. A great part of their time was devoted to digging for money; especially in the night-time, when, they said, the money could be most easily obtained. I have heard them tell marvellous tales respecting the discoveries they have made in their peculiar occupation of money-digging. They would say, for instance, that in such and such a place, in such a hill, or a certain man's farm, there were deposited kegs, barrels, and hogsheads of coined silver and gold, bars of gold, golden images, brass kettles filled with gold and silver, gold candlesticks, swords, &c., &c. They would also say, that nearly all the hills in this part of New York were thrown by human hands, and in them were large caves, which Joseph, jun., could see, by placing a stone of singular appearance in his hat, in such a manner as to exclude all light; at which time they pretended he could see all things within and under the earth; that he could spy within the above-mentioned caves large gold bars and silver plates; that he could also discover the spirits in whose charge these treasures were, clothed in ancient dresses. At certain times, these treasures could be obtained very easily; at others, the obtaining of them was difficult. The facility of approaching them depended in a great measure on the state of the moon. New moon and Good Friday, I believe, were regarded as the most favourable times for obtaining these treasures. These tales, of course, I regarded as visionary. However, being prompted by curiosity, I at length accepted their invitation to join them in their nocturnal excursions. I will now relate a few incidents attending these nocturnal excursions. "Joseph Smith, sen., came to me one night, and told me that Joseph, jun., had been looking in his stone, and had seen, not many rods from his house, two or three kegs of gold and silver, some feet under the surface of the earth, and that none others but the elder Joseph and myself could get them. I accordingly consented to go, and early in the evening repaired to the place of deposit. Joseph, sen., first made a circle, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter: 'This circle,' said he, 'contains the treasure.' He then stuck in the ground a row of witch-hazel sticks around the said circle, for the purpose of keeping off the evil spirits. Within this circle he made another, of about eight or ten feet in diameter. He walked around three times on the periphery of this last circle, muttering to himself something I could not understand. He next stuck a steel rod in the centre of the circles, and then enjoined profound silence, lest we should arouse the evil spirit who had the charge of these treasures. After we had dug a trench of about five feet in depth around the rod, the old man, by signs and motions, asked leave of absence, and went to the house to inquire of the son the cause of our disappointment. He soon returned, and said, that Joe had remained all the time in the house, looking in his stone and watching the motions of the evil spirit; that he saw the spirit come up to the ring, and as soon as it beheld the cone which we had formed around the rod, it caused the money to sink. We then went into the house, and the old man observed that we had made a mistake in the commencement of the operation; 'If it had not been for that,' said he, 'we should have got the money.' "At another time, they devised a scheme by which they might satiate their hunger with the flesh of one of my sheep. They had seen in my flock of sheep a large, fat, black wether. Old Joseph and one of the boys came to me one day, and said, that Joseph, jun., had discovered some very remarkable and valuable treasures, which could be procured only in one way. That way was as follows:--that a black sheep should be taken on the ground where the treasures were concealed; that, after cutting its throat, it should be led around a circle while bleeding; this being done, the wrath of the evil spirit would be appeased, the treasures could then be obtained, and my share of them would be four-fold. To gratify my curiosity, I let them have the sheep. They afterwards informed me that the sheep was killed pursuant to commandment; but, as there was some mistake in the process, it did not have the desired effect. This, I believe, is the only time they ever made money-digging a profitable business. They, however, had constantly around them a worthless gang, whose employment it was to dig for money at night, and who, during day, had more to do with mutton than money. "When they found that the better classes of people of this vicinity would no longer put any faith in their schemes for digging money, they then pretended to find a gold bible, of which they said the Book of Mormon was only an introduction. This latter book was at length fitted for the press. No means were taken by any individual to suppress its publication; no one apprehended danger from a book originating with individuals who had neither influence, honesty, nor honour. The two Josephs and Hiram promised to show me the plates after the Book of Mormon was translated; but afterwards, they pretended to have received an express commandment, forbidding them to show the plates. Respecting the manner of obtaining and translating the Book of Mormon, their statements were always discordant. The elder Joseph would say, that he had seen the plates, and that he knew them to be gold; at other times he would say, they looked like gold; and at other times he asserted he had not seen the plates at all. "I have thus briefly stated a few of the facts, in relation to the conduct and character of this family of Smiths; probably sufficient has been stated without my going into detail. "WILLIAM STAFFORD." The following is a curious document from one of the very individuals who printed the Mormon Bible:-- "Having noticed in a late number of the _Signs of the Times_ a notice of a work entitled 'Mormon Delusions and Monstrosities,' it occurred to me that it might, perhaps, be of service to the cause of truth to state one circumstance, relative to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, which occurred during its publication, at which time I was engaged in the office where it was printed, and became familiar with the men and their principles, through whose agency it was 'got up.' "The circumstance alluded to was as follows!--We had heard much said by Martin Harris, the man who paid for the printing, and the only one in the concern worth any property, about the wonderful wisdom of the translators of the mysterious plates, and we resolved to test their wisdom. Accordingly, after putting one sheet in type? we laid it aside, and told Harris it was lost, and there would be a serious defection in the book in consequence, unless another sheet, like the original, could be produced. The announcement threw the old gentleman into great excitement; but, after a few moments reflection, he said he would try to obtain another. After two or three weeks, another sheet was produced, but no more like the original than any other sheet of paper would have been, written over by a common schoolboy, after having read, as they had, the manuscript preceding and succeeding the lost sheet. As might be expected, the disclosure of this trick greatly annoyed the authors, and caused no little merriment among those who were acquainted with the circumstance. As we were none of us _Christians_, and only laboured for the 'gold that perisheth,' we did not care for the delusion, only so far as to be careful to avoid it ourselves and enjoy the hoax. _Not one_ of the hands in the office where the wonderful book was printed ever became a convert to the system, although the writer of this was often assured by Harris, that if he did not, he would be destroyed in 1832. "T.N.S. TUCKER." GROTON, MAY 23, 1842. CHAPTER XLIII. Let us now examine into the political views of the Mormons, and follow Smith in his lofty and aspiring visions of sovereignty for the future. He is a rogue and a swindler,--no one can doubt that; yet there is something grand in his composition. Joe, the mean, miserable, half-starved money-digger of western New York, was, as I have before observed, cast in the mould of conquerors, and out of that same clay which Nature had employed for the creation of a Mahomet. His first struggle was successful; the greater portion of his followers surrounded him in Kirkland, and acknowledged his power, as that of God's right hand; while many individuals from among the better classes repaired to him, attracted by the ascendancy of a bold genius, or by the expectation of obtaining a share in his fame, power, and glory. Kirkland, however, was an inland place; there, on every side, Smith had to contend with opposition; his power was confined and his plans had not sufficient room for development He turned his mind towards the western borders of Missouri: it was but a thought; but with him, rapid action was as much a natural consequence of thought as thunder is of lightning Examine into the topography of that country, the holy Zion and promised land of the Mormons, and it will be easy to recognize the fixed and unchangeable views of Smith, as connected with the formation of a vast empire. For the last twelve or fifteen years the government of the United States has, through a mistaken policy been constantly engaged in sending to the western borders all the eastern Indian tribes that were disposed to sell their land, and also the various tribes who, having rebelled against their cowardly despotism, had been overpowered and conquered during the struggle. This gross want of policy is obvious. Surrounded and demoralized by white men, the Indian falls into a complete state of _décadence_ and _abrutissement_. Witness the Choctaw tribes that hover constantly about Mobile and New Orleans; the Winnibegoes, who have of late come into immediate contact with the settlers of Wisconsin; the Pottawatomies, on both shores of Lake Michigan; the Miamis of North Indiana, and many more. On the contrary, the tribes on the borders, or in the wilderness, are on the increase. Of course, there are a few exceptions, such as the Kanzas, or the poor Mandans, who have lately been almost entirely swept away from the earth by the small-pox. Some of the smaller tribes may be destroyed by warfare, or they may incorporate themselves with others, and thus lose their name and nationality; but the increase of the Indian population is considerable among the great uncontrolled nations; such as the Chippewas and Dahcotahs (Siouxes), of the north United States; the Comanches and the Pawnees, on the boundaries, or even in the very heart of Texas; the Shoshones (Snakes), on the southern limits of Oregon; and the brave Apaches of Sonora, those bold Bedouins of the Mexican deserts, who, constantly on horseback, wander, in immense phalanxes, from the eastern shores of the Gulf of California to the very waters of the Rio Grande. Admitting, therefore, as a fact, that the tribes on the borders do increase, in the same ratio with their material strength, grows also their invincible, stern, and unchangeable hatred towards the American. In fact, more or less, they have all been ill-treated and abused, and every additional outrage to one tribe is locked up in the memory of all, who wait for the moment of retaliation revenge. In the Wisconsin war (Black Hawk, 1832), even after the poor starved warriors had surrendered themselves by treaty, after a noble struggle, more than two hundred old men, women, and children were forced by the Americans to cross the river without boats or canoes. The poor things endeavoured to pass it with the help of their horses; the river there was more than half a mile broad, and while these unfortunates were struggling for life against a current of nine miles an hour, they were shot in the water. This fact is known to all the tribes--even to the Comanches, who are so distant. It has satisfied them as to what they may expect from those who thus violate all treaties and all faith. The remainder of that brave tribe is now dwelling on the west borders of Iowa, but their wrongs are too deeply dyed with their own blood to be forgotten even by generations, and their cause is ready to be espoused by every tribe, even those who have been their hereditary enemies; for what is, after all, their history, but the history of almost every Indian nation transplanted on the other side of the Mississippi? This belt of Indian tribes, therefore, is rather an unsafe neighbour, especially in the event of a civil war or of a contest with England. Having themselves, by a mistaken policy, collected together a cordon of offended warriors, the United States will some day deplore, when too late, their former greediness, and cruelty towards the natural owners of their vast territories. It is among these tribes that Joe Smith wishes to lay the foundation of his future empire; and settling at Independence, he was interposing as a neutral force between two opponents, who would, each of them, have purchased his massive strength and effective energy with the gift of supremacy over an immense and wealthy territory. As we have seen, chance and the fortune of war have thrown Smith and the Mormons back on the eastern shores of the Mississippi, opposite the entrance of Desmoines river; but when forced back, the Mormons were an unruly and turbulent crowd, without means or military tactics; now, such is not the case. Already, the prophet has sent able agents over the river; the Sacs and Foxes, the same tribe we have just spoken of as the much-abused nation of Wisconsin, and actually residing at about eighty miles N.N.W. from Nauvoo, besides many others, are on a good understanding with the Latter-day Saints. A few bold apostles of Mormonism have also gone to the far, far west, among the unconquered tribes of the prairies, to organize an offensive power, ever ready for action. Thus, link after link, Smith extends his influence, which is already felt in Illinois, in Iowa, in Missouri, at Washington, and at the very foot of the Rocky Mountains. Moreover, hundreds of Mormons, without avowing their creed, have gone to Texas, and established themselves there. They save all their crops, and have numerous cattle and droves of horses, undoubtedly to feed and sustain a Mormon army on any future invasion. Let us now examine further into this cunning and long-sighted policy, and we shall admire the great genius that presides over it. We are not one of those, so common in these days, who have adopted the _nil admirari_ for their motto. Genius, well or ill guided, is still genius; and if we load with shame the former life of Smith and his present abominable religious impositions, still we are bound to do justice to that conquering spirit which can form such vast ideas, and work such a multitude to his will. The population of Texas does not amount to seventy thousand souls, among whom there are twenty-five different forms of religion. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are scoundrels, who have there sought a refuge against the offended laws of their country. They are not only a curse and a check to civilization, but they reflect dishonour upon the remaining third portion of the Texans, who have come from distant climes for the honest purposes of trade and agriculture. This mongrel and mixed congregation of beings, though firmly united in one point (war with Mexico, and that in the expectation of a rich plunder), are continually at variance on other points. Three thousand Texans would fight against Mexico, but not two hundred against the Mormons; and that for many reasons: government alone, and not an individual, would be a gainer by a victory; in Texas, not a soul cares for anything but himself. Besides, the Mormons are Yankees, and can handle a rifle, setting aside their good drilling and excellent discipline. In number, they would also have the advantage; while I am now writing, they can muster five thousand well-drilled soldiers, and, in the event of an invasion of Texas, they could easily march ten thousand men from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, from the Red River to the Gulf of Mexico. Opposition they will not meet. A year after the capture, the whole of Texas becomes Mormon, while Joe--king, emperor, Pharaoh, judge or regenerator--rules over a host of two hundred and fifty thousand devoted subjects. Let our reader observe that these are not the wild Utopias of a heated imagination. No; we speak as we do believe, and our intercourse with the Mormons during our travels has been sufficiently close to give us a clear insight into their designs for the future. Joe's policy is, above all, to conciliate the Indians, and that once done, there will not be in America a power capable of successfully opposing him. In order to assist this he joins them in his new faith. In admitting the Indians to be the "right, though guilty," descendants of the sacred tribes, he flatters them with an acknowledgment of their antiquity, the only point on which a white can captivate and even blind the shrewd though untutored man of the wilds. In explanation of the plans and proceedings of Joe Smith and the Mormons, it may not be amiss to make some remarks upon the locality which he has designed as the seat of his empire and dominion, and where he has already established his followers, as the destined instruments of his ambition. According to the Mormon prophets, the whole region of country between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies was, at a period of about thirteen hundred years ago, densely peopled by nations descended from a Jewish family, who emigrated from Jerusalem in the time of the prophet Jeremiah, some six or seven hundred years before Christ; immense cities were founded, and sumptuous edifices reared, and the whole land overspread with the results of a high and extensive civilization. The Book of Mormon speaks of cities with stupendous stone walls, and of battles, in which hundreds of thousands were slain. The land afterwards became a waste and howling wilderness, traversed by a few straggling bands or tribes of savages, descended from a branch of the aforesaid Jewish family, who, in consequence, of their wickedness, had their complexion changed from white to red; but the emigrants from Europe and their descendants, having filled the land, and God having been pleased to grant a revelation by which is made known the true history of the past in America, and the events which are about to take place, he has also commanded the Saints of the Latter Day to assemble themselves together there, and occupy the land which was once held by the members of the true church. The states of Missouri and Illinois, and the territory of Iowa, are the regions to which the prophet has hitherto chiefly directed his schemes of aggrandizement, and which are to form the nucleus of the Mormon empire. The remaining states are to be _licked up_ like salt, and fall before the sweeping falchion of glorious prophetic dominion, like the defenceless lamb before the mighty king of the forest. I have given the results of my notes taken relative to the Mormons, not, perhaps, in very chronological order, but as I gathered them from time to time. The reader will agree with me, that the subject is well worth attention. Absurd and ridiculous as the creed may be, no creed ever, in so short a period, obtained so many or such devoted proselytes. From information I have since received, they may now amount to three hundred thousand; and they have wealth, energy, and unity--they have everything--in their favour; and the federal government has been so long passive, that I doubt if it has the power to disperse them. Indeed, to obtain their political support, they have received so many advantages, and, I may say, such assistance, that they are now so strong, that any attempt to wrest from them the privileges which have been conceded would be the signal for a general rising. They have fortified Nauvoo; they can turn out a disciplined force as large as the States are likely to oppose to them, and, if successful, can always expect the co-operation of seventy thousand Indians, or, if defeated, a retreat among them, which will enable them to coalesce for a more fortunate opportunity of action. Neither do I imagine that the loss of their leader, Joe Smith, would now much affect their strength; there are plenty to replace him, equally capable, not perhaps to have formed the confederacy, religious and political, which he has done, but to uphold it, now that it is so strong. The United States appear to me to be just now in a most peculiar state of progression, and very soon the eyes of the whole world will be directed towards them and the result of their institutions. A change is about to take place; what that change will be, it is difficult to say; but a few years will decide the question. CHAPTER XLIV. Having now related the principal events which I witnessed, or in which I was an actor, both in California and in Texas, as these countries are still new and but little known (for, indeed, the Texans themselves know nothing of their inland country), I will attempt a topographical sketch of these regions, and also make some remarks upon the animals which inhabit the immense prairies and mountains of the wilderness. Along the shores of the Pacific Ocean, from the 42° down to the 34° North, the climate is much the same; the only difference between the winter and summer being that the nights of the former season are a little chilly. The causes of this mildness in the temperature are obvious. The cold winds of the north, rendered sharper still by passing over the snows and ices of the great northern lakes, cannot force their passage across the rocky chain south of the latitude 44° N., being prevented by a belt of high mountains or by impenetrable forests. To the eastward, on the contrary, they are felt very severely; not encountering any kind of obstacles, they sweep their course to the very shores of the Gulf of Mexico, so that in 26° N. latitude, on the southern boundaries of Texas, winter is still winter; that is to say, fire is necessary in the apartments during the month of January, and flannel and cloth dresses are worn; while, on the contrary, the same month on the shores of the Pacific, up to 40°, is mild enough to allow strangers from the south, and even the Sandwich islanders, to wear their light nankeen trowsers and gingham round-abouts. There is also a wide difference between the two coasts of the continent during summer. In Upper California and the Shoshone territory, although the heat, from the rays of the sun, is intense, the temperature is so cooled both by the mountain and sea-breeze, as never to raise the mercury to more than 95° Fahrenheit, even in St. Diego, which lies under the parallel of 32° 39'; while in the east, from 27° in South Texas, and 30° at New Orleans, up to 49° upon Lake Superior, the mercury rises to 100° every year, and frequently 105°, 107° in St Louis, in Prairie du Chien, Green Bay, St. Anthony's Falls, and the Lake Superior. The _résumé_ of this is simply that the climate of the western coast of America is the finest in the world, with an air so pure, that during the intense heat of summer a bullock, killed, cleansed, and cut into slices, will keep for months without any salting nor smoking. Another cause which contributes to render these countries healthy and pleasant to live in is, that there are, properly speaking, no swamps, marshes, nor bayous, as in the United States, and in the neighbourhood of Acapulco and West Mexico. These lakes and bayous drying during summer, and exposing to the rays of the sun millions of dead fish, impregnate the atmosphere with miasma, generating typhus, yellow fever, dysenteries, and pulmonary diseases. If the reader will look over the map I have sketched of the Shoshone country, he will perceive how well the land is watered; the lakes are all transparent and deep, the rivers run upon a rocky bottom as well as all the brooks and creeks, the waters of which are always cool and plentiful. One more observation to convince the reader of the superiority of the clime is, that, except a few ants in the forest, there are no insects whatever to be found. No mosquitoes, no prairie horse-flies, no beetles, except the ceconilla or large phosphoric fly of California, and but very few worms and caterpillars; the consequence is, that there are but two or three classes of the smaller species of carnivorous birds; the large ones, such as the common and red-headed vulture and crow, are very convenient, fulfilling the office of general scavengers in the prairies, where every year thousands of wild cattle die, either from fighting, or, when in the central deserts, from the want of water. On the western coast, the aspect of the country, in general, is gently diversified; the monotony of the prairies in the interior being broken by _islands_ of fine timber, and now and then by mountains projecting boldly from their bases. Near the sea-shore the plains are intersected by various ridges of mountains, giving birth to thousands of small rapid streams, which carry their cool and limpid waters to the many tributaries of the sea, which are very numerous between the mouth of the Calumet and Buonaventura. Near to the coast lies a belt of lofty pines and shady odoriferous magnolias, which extends in some places to the very beach and upon the high cliffs, under which the shore is so bold that the largest man-of-war could sail without danger. I remember to have once seen, above the bay of San Francisco, the sailors of a Mexican brig sitting on the ends of their topsail yards, and picking the flowers from the branches of the trees as they glided by. In that part of the country, which is intersected by mountains, the soil is almost everywhere mineral, while the mountains themselves contain rich mines of copper. I know of beds of gallena extending for more than a hundred miles; and, in some tracts, magnesian earths cover an immense portion of the higher ridges. Most of the sandy streams of the Shoshone territory contain a great deal of gold-dust, which the Indians collect twice a year and exchange away with the Mexicans, and also with the Arrapahoes. The principal streams containing gold are tributaries to the Buonaventura, but there are many others emptying into small lakes of volcanic formation. The mountains in the neighbourhood of the Colorado of the West, and in the very country of the Arrapahoes, are full of silver, and perhaps no people in the world can show a greater profusion of this bright metal than these Indians. The Shoshone territory is of modern formation, at least in comparison with the more southern countries where the Cordillieres and the Andes project to the very shores of the ocean. It is evident that the best portion of the land, west of the Buonaventura, was first redeemed from the sea by some terrible volcanic eruption. Until about two centuries ago, or perhaps less, these subterranean fires have continued to exercise their ravages, raising prairies into mountains, and sinking mountains and forests many fathoms below the surface of the earth; their sites now marked by lakes of clear and transparent water, frequently impregnated with a slight, though not unpleasant, taste of sulphur; while precious stones, such as topazes, sapphires, large blocks of amethysts, are found every day in the sand and among the pebbles on their borders. In calm days I have often seen, at a few fathoms deep, the tops of pine trees still standing in their natural perpendicular position. In the southern streams are found emeralds of very fine water; opals also are very frequently met with. The formation of the rocks is in general basaltic, but white, black, and green marble, red porphyry, jaspar, red and grey granite, abound east of the Buonaventura. Quartz, upon some of the mountains near the sea-shore, is found in immense blocks, and principally in that mountain range which is designated in the map as the "Montagne du Monstre," at the foot of which were dug up the remains of the huge Saurian lizard. The greater portion of the country is, of course, prairie; these prairies are covered with blue grass, muskeet grass, clovers, sweet prairie hay, and the other grasses common to the east of the continent of America. Here and there are scattered patches of plums of the greengage kind, berries, and a peculiar kind of shrub oaks, never more than five feet high, yet bearing a very large and sweet acorn; ranges of hazel nuts will often extend thirty or forty miles, and are the abode of millions of birds of the richest and deepest dyes. Along the streams which glide through the prairies, there is a luxuriant growth of noble timber, such as maple, magnolia, blue and green ash, red oak, and cedar, around which climb vines loaded with grapes. Near the sea-shores, the pine, both black and white, becomes exceedingly common, while the smaller plains and hills are covered with that peculiar species of the prickly pear upon which the cochineal insect feeds. All round the extinguished volcano, and principally in the neighbourhood of the hill Nanawa Ashta jueri è, the locality of our settlement upon the banks of the Buonaventura, the bushes are covered with a very superior quality of the vanilla bean. The rivers and streams, as well as the lakes of the interior, abound with fish; in the latter, the perch, trout, and carp are very common; in the former, the salmon and white cat-fish, the soft-shelled tortoise, the pearl oyster, the sea-perch (Lupus Maritimes), the ecrivisse, and hundred families of the "crevette species," offer to the Indian a great variety of delicate food for the winter. In the bays along the shore, the mackarel and bonita, the turtle, and, unfortunately, the sharks, are very numerous; while on the shelly beach, or the fissures of the rocks, are to be found lobsters, and crabs of various sorts. The whole country offers a vast field to the naturalist; the most common birds of prey are the bald, the white-headed eagle, the black and the grey, the falcon, the common hawk, the epervier, the black and red-headed vulture, the raven and the crow. Among the granivorous, the turkey, the wapo (a small kind of prairie ostrich), the golden and common pheasant, the wild peacock, of a dull whitish colour, and the guinea-fowl; these two last, which are very numerous, are not indigenous to this part of the country, but about a century ago escaped from the various missions of Upper California, at which they had been bred, and since have propagated in incredible numbers; also the grouse, the prairie hen, the partridge, the quail, the green parrot, the blackbird, and many others which I cannot name, not knowing their generic denomination. The water-fowls are plentiful, such as swans, geese, ducks of many different species, and the Canadian geese with their long black necks, which, from November to March, graze on the prairies in thousands. The quadrupeds are also much diversified. First in rank, among the grazing animals, I may name the mustangs, or wild horses, which wander in the natural pastures in herds of hundreds of thousands. They vary in species and size, according to the country where they are found, but those found in California, Sonora, and the western district of Texas, are the finest breed in the world. They were imported from Andalusia by the Spaniards, almost immediately after the conquest of Grenada, the Bishop of Leon having previously, by his prayers, "exorcised the devil out of their bodies." Mr. Catlin says, that in seeing the Comanche horse, he was much disappointed; it is likely, Mr. Catlin having only visited the northern borders of Texas, and the poorest village of the whole Comanche tribe. If, however, he had proceeded as far as the Rio Puerco, he would have seen the true Mecca breed, with which the Moslems conquered Spain. He would have also perceived how much the advantages of a beautiful clime and perpetual pasture has improved these noble animals, making them superior to the primitive stock, both in size, speed, and bottom. With one of them I made a journey of five thousand miles, and on arriving in Missouri, I sold him for eight hundred dollars. He was an entire horse, as white as snow, and standing seventeen and a half hands high. One thousand pounds would not have purchased him in England. Next, the lordly buffaloes, the swift wild-goat, the deer, the antelope, the elk, the prairie dogs, the hare, and the rabbits. The carnivorous are the red panther, or puma[31], the spotted leopard, the ounce, the jaguar, the grizzly black and brown bear, the wolf, black, white and grey; the blue, red, and black fox, the badger, the porcupine, the hedgehog, and the coati (an animal peculiar to the Shoshone territory, and Upper California), a kind of mixture of the fox and wolf breed, fierce little animals with bushy tails and large heads, and a quick, sharp bark. [Footnote 31: The puma, or red panther, is also called "American lion, cougar," and in the western States, "catamount." It was once spread all over the continent of America, and is even now found, although very rarely, as far north as Hudson's Bay. No matter under what latitude, the puma is a sanguinary animal; but his strength, size, and thirst of blood, vary with the clime. I have killed this animal in California, in the Rocky Mountains, in Texas, and in Missouri; in each of these places it presented quite a different character. In Chili it has the breadth and limbs approaching to those of the African lion; to the far north, it falls away in bulk, until it is as thin and agile as the hunting leopard. In Missouri and Arkansas, the puma will prey chiefly upon fowls and young pigs; it will run away from dogs, cows, horses, and even from goats. In Louisiana and Texas it will run from man, but it fights the dogs, tears the horse, and kills the cattle, even the wild buffalo, merely for sport. In the Anahuar, Cordillieres, and Rocky Mountains, it disdains to fly, becomes more majestic in its movements, and faces its opponents, from the grizzly bear to a whole company of traders; yet it will seldom attack unless when cubbing. In Sonora and California, it is even more ferocious. When hungry, it will hunt by the scent, like the dog, with its nose on the ground. Meeting a trail, it follows it at the rate of twenty miles an hour, till it can pounce upon a prey; a single horseman, or an army, a deer, or ten thousand buffaloes, it cares not, it attacks everything. I did not like to interrupt my narrative merely to relate a puma adventure, but during the time that I was with the Comanches, a Mexican priest, who had for a long time sojourned as instructor among the Indians, arrived in the great village on his way to St. Louis, Mi., where he was proceeding on clerical affairs. The Comanches received him with affection, gave him a fresh mule, with new blankets, and mustered a small party to accompany him to the Wakoes Indians. The Padre was a highly talented man, above the prejudices of his cast; he had lived the best part of his life in the wilderness among the wild tribes on both sides of the Anahuar, and had observed and learned enough to make him love "these children of nature." So much was I pleased with him, that I offered to command the party which was to accompany him. My request was granted, and having provided ourselves with a long tent and the necessary provisions, we started on our journey. Nothing remarkable happened till we arrived at the great chasm I have already mentioned, when, our provisions being much reduced, we pitched the tent on the very edge of the chasm, and dedicated half a day to hunting and grazing our horses. A few deer were killed, and to avoid a nocturnal attack from the wolves, which were very numerous, we hung the meat upon the cross-pole inside of the tent. The tent itself was about forty feet long, and about seven in breadth; large fires were lighted at the two ends, piles of wood were gathered to feed them during the night, and an old Indian and I took upon us the responsibility of keeping the fires alive till the moon should be up. These arrangements being made, we spread our buffalo-hides, with our saddles for pillows, and, as we were all exhausted, we stretched ourselves, if not to sleep, at least to repose. The _padre_ amused me, during the major portion of my watch, in relating to me his past adventures, when he followed the example of all the Indians, who were all sound asleep, except the one watching at the other extremity of the tent. This Indian observed to me, that the moon would rise in a couple of hours, and that, if we were to throw a sufficient quantity of fuel on the fire, we could also sleep without any fear. I replenished the fuel, and, wrapping myself in my blanket, I soon fell asleep. I awoke suddenly, thinking I had heard a rubbing of some body against the canvas outside of the tent. My fire was totally extinguished, but, the moon having risen, gave considerable light. The hour of danger had passed. As I raised my head, I perceived that the fire at the other opening of the tent was also nearly extinguished; I wrapt myself still closer, as the night had become cool, and soon slept as soundly as before. Once more I was awakened, but this time there was no delusion of the senses, for I felt a heavy pressure on my chest. I opened my eyes, and could scarcely refrain from crying out, when I perceived that the weight which had thus disturbed my sleep was nothing less than the hind paw of a large puma. There he stood, his back turned to me, and seeming to watch with great avidity a deer-shoulder suspended above his head. My feelings at that moment were anything but pleasant; I felt my heart beating high; the smallest nervous movement, which perhaps I could not control, would divert the attention of the animal, whose claws would then immediately enter my flesh. I advanced my right hand towards the holster, under my head, to take one of my pistols, but the holsters were buttoned up, and I could not undo them, as this would require a slight motion of my body. At last I felt the weight sliding down my ribs till it left me; and I perceived, that in order to take a better leap at the meat, the puma had moved on a little to the left, but in so doing one of his fore paws rested upon the chest of the _padre_. I then obtained one of the pistols, and was just in the act of cocking it under my blanket, when I heard a mingled shriek and roar. Then succeeded a terrible scuffling. A blanket was for a second rolled over me; the canvas of the tent was burst open a foot above me; I heard a heavy fall down the chasm; the _padre_ screamed again; by accident I pulled the trigger and discharged my pistol; and the Indians, not knowing what was the matter, gave a tremendous war-whoop. The scene I have described in so many lines was performed in a few seconds. It was some time before we could recover our senses and inquire into the matter. It appeared, that at the very moment the puma was crouching to take his leap, the _padre_ awaking, gave the scream; this terrified the animal, who dashed through the canvas of the tent above me with the _padre's_ blanket entangled in his claws. Poor _padre_! he had fainted, and continued senseless till daylight, when I bled him with my penknife. Fear had produced a terrible effect upon him, and his hair, which the evening before was as black as jet, had now changed to the whiteness of snow. He never recovered, notwithstanding the attention shown to him by the Indians who accompanied him to St. Louis. Reason had forsaken its seat, and, as I learned some time afterwards, when, being in St. Louis, I went to the mission to inquire after him, he died two days after his arrival at the Jesuits' college. As to the puma, the Indians found it dead at the bottom of the chasm, completely wrapped in the blanket, and with most of its bones broken.] The amphibious are the beaver, the fresh-water and sea-otter, the musk-rat, and a species of long lizard, with sharp teeth, very like the cayman as regards the head and tail, but with a very short body. It is a very fierce animal, killing whatever it attacks, dwelling in damp, shady places, in the juncks, upon the borders of some lakes, and is much dreaded by the Indians; fortunately, it is very scarce. The Shoshones have no particular name for it, but would sooner attack a grizzly bear than this animal, which they have a great dread of, sometimes calling it the evil spirit, sometimes the scourge, and many other such appellations. It has never yet been described by any naturalist, and I never yet saw one dead, although I have heard of their having been killed. In Texas, the country presents two different aspects, much at variance with each other, the eastern borders, and sea-coast being only a continuation of the cypress swamps, mud creeks, and cane-brakes of south Arkansas, and west Louisiana; while, on the contrary, the north and west offer much the same topography as that of the countries I have just delineated. The climate in Texas is very healthy two hundred miles from the sea, and one hundred west of the Sabine, which forms the eastern boundary of Texas; but to the east and south the same diseases and epidemics prevail as in Louisiana, Alabama, and the Floridas. The whole of Texas is evidently of recent formation, all the saline prairies east of the Rio Grande being even now covered with shells of all the species common to the Gulf of Mexico, mixed up with skeletons of sharks, and now and then with petrified turtle, dolphin, rock fish, and bonitas. A few feet below the surface, and hundreds of miles distant from the sea, the sea-sand is found; and although the ground seems to rise gradually as it recedes from the shores, the southern plains are but a very little elevated above the surface of the sea until you arrive at thirty degrees north, when the prairies begin to assume an undulating form, and continually ascend till, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, they acquire a height of four and five thousand feet above the level of the sea. Texas does not possess any range of mountains with the exception that, one hundred miles north from San Antonio de Bejar, the San Seba hills rise and extend themselves in a line parallel with the Rocky Mountains, as high as the green peaks in the neighbourhood of Santa Fé. The San Seba hills contain several mines of silver, and I doubt not that this metal is very common along the whole range east of the Rio Grande. Gold is also found in great quantities in all the streams tributary to the Rio Puerco, but I have never heard of precious stones of any kind. Excepting the woody districts which border Louisiana and Arkansas, the greater proportion of Texas is prairie; a belt of land commences upon one of the bends of the river Brasos, spreads northward to the very shores of the Red River, and is called by the Americans "The Cross Timbers;" its natural productions, together with those of the prairies, are similar to those of the Shoshone country. Before the year 1836, and I dare say even now, the great western prairies of Texas contained more animals and a greater variety of species than any other part of the world within the same number of square miles; and I believe that the Sunderbunds in Bengal do not contain monsters more hideous and terrible than are to be found in the eastern portion of Texas, over which nature appears to have spread a malediction. The myriads of snakes of all kinds, the unaccountable diversity of venomous reptiles, and even the deadly tarantula spider or "vampire" of the prairies, are trifles, compared with the awful inhabitants of the eastern bogs swamps, and muddy rivers. The former are really dangerous only during two or three months of the year, and, moreover, a considerable portion of the trails are free from their presence, owing to the fires which break out in the dry grass almost every fall. There the traveller knows what he has to fear, and, independent of the instinct and knowledge of his horse, he himself keeps an anxious look-out, watching the undulating motion of the grass, and ever ready with his rifle or pistols in the event of his being confronted with bears, pumas, or any other ferocious quadruped. If he is attacked, he can fight, and only few accidents have ever happened in these encounters, as these animals always wander alone with the exception of the wolf, from whom, however, there is but little to fear, as, in the prairies, this animal is always glutted with food and timid at the approach of man. As the prairie wolf is entirely different from the European, I will borrow a page of Ross Cox, who, having had an opportunity of meeting it, gives a very good description of its manners and ways of living. Yet as this traveller does not describe the animal itself, I will add, that the general colour of the prairie wolf is grey mixed with black, the ears are round and straight, it is about forty inches long, and possesses the sagacity and cunning of the fox. "The prairie wolves," says Cox, "are much smaller than those which inhabit the woods. They generally travel together in numbers, and a solitary one is seldom met with. Two or three of us have often pursued from fifty to one hundred, driving them before us as quickly as our horses could charge. "Their skins are of no value, and we do not therefore waste much powder and ball in shooting them. The Indians, who are obliged to pay dear for their ammunition, are equally careful not to throw it away on objects that bring no remunerating value. The natural consequence is, that the wolves are allowed to multiply; and some parts of the country are completely overrun by them. The Indians catch numbers of them in traps, which they set in the vicinity of those places where their tame horses are sent to graze. The traps are merely excavations covered over with slight switches and hay, and baited with meat, &c., into which the wolves fall, and being unable to extricate themselves, they perish by famine or the knife of the Indian. These destructive animals annually destroy numbers of horses, particularly during the winter season, when the latter get entangled in the snow, in which situation they become an easy prey to their light-footed pursuers, ten or fifteen of which will often fasten on one animal, and with their long fangs in a few minutes separate the head from the body. If, however, the horses are not prevented from using their legs, they sometimes punish the enemy severely; as an instance of this, I saw one morning the bodies of two of our horses which had been killed the night before, and around were lying eight dead and maimed wolves; some with their brains scattered about, and others with their limbs and ribs broken by the hoofs of the furious animals in their vain attempts to escape from their assailants." Although the wolves of America are the most daring of all the beasts of prey on that continent, they are by no means so courageous or ferocious as those of Europe, particularly in Spain or the south of France, in which countries they commit dreadful ravages both on man and beast; whereas a prairie wolf, except forced by desperation, will seldom or never attack a human being. I have said that the danger that attends the traveller in the great prairies is trifling; but it is very different in the eastern swamps and mud-holes, where the enemy, ever on the watch, is also always invisible, and where the speed of the horse and the arms of the rider are of no avail, for they are then swimming in the deep water, or splashing, breast-deep, in the foul mud. Among these monsters of the swamps and lagoons of stagnant waters, the alligator ranks the first in size and voracity; yet man has nothing to fear from him; and though there are many stories among the cotton planters about negroes being carried away by this immense reptile, I do firmly believe that few human beings have ever been seized alive by the American alligator. But although harmless to man, the monster is a scourge to all kinds of animals, and principally to dogs and horses. It often happens that a rider loses his track through a swamp or a muddy cane-brake, and then, if a new comer in East Texas, he is indubitably lost. While his poor steed is vainly struggling in a yielding mass of mud, he will fall into a hole, and before he can regain his footing, an irresistible force will drag him deeper and deeper, till smothered. This force is the tail of the alligator, with which this animal masters its prey, no matter how strong or heavy, when once within its reach. M. Audubon has perfectly described its power: I will repeat his words:-- "The power of the alligator is in its great strength, and the chief means of its attack or defence is its large tail, so well contrived by nature to supply his wants, or guard him from danger, that it reaches, when curved into a half-circle, to his enormous mouth. Woe be to him who goes within the reach of this tremendous thrashing instrument; for, no matter how strong or muscular, if human, he must suffer greatly, if he escape with life. The monster, as he strikes with this, forces all objects within the circle towards his jaws, which, as the tail makes a motion, are opened to their full stretch, thrown a little sideways to receive the object, and, like battering-rams, to bruise it shockingly in a moment." Yet, as I have said, the alligator is but little formidable to man. In Western Louisiana and Eastern Texas, where the animal is much hunted for the sake of his grease, with which the planters generally oil the machinery of their mills, little negroes are generally sent into the woods, during the fall, "grease-making," as at that season the men are better employed in cotton-picking or storing the maize. No danger ever happens to the urchins during these expeditions, as, keeping within the sweep of the tail, they contrive to chop it off with an axe. M. Audubon says:-- "When autumn has heightened the colouring of the foliage of our woods, and the air feels more rarified during the nights and the early part of the day, the alligators leave the lakes to seek for winter-quarters, by burrowing under the roots of trees, or covering themselves simply with earth along their edges. They become then very languid and inactive, and, at this period, to sit or ride on one would not be more difficult than for a child to mount his wooden rocking-horse. The negroes, who now kill them, put all danger aside by separating at one blow with an axe, the tail from the body. They are afterwards cut up in large pieces, and boiled whole in a good quantity of water, from the surface of which the fat is collected with large ladles. One single man kills oftentimes a dozen or more of large alligators in the evening, prepares his fire in the woods, where he has erected a camp for the purpose, and by morning has the oil extracted." As soon as the rider feels his horse sinking, the first movement, if an inexperienced traveller, is to throw himself from the saddle, and endeavour to wade or to swim to the cane-brakes, the roots of which give to the ground a certain degree of stability. In that case, his fate is probably sealed, as he is in immediate danger of the "cawana." This is a terrible and hideous monster, with which, strange to say, the naturalists of Europe are not yet acquainted, though it is too well known to all the inhabitants of the streams and lagoons tributary to the Red River. It is an enormous turtle or tortoise, with the head and tail of the alligator, not retractile, as is usual among the different species of this reptile: the shell is one inch and a half thick, and as impenetrable as steel. It lies in holes in the bottom of muddy rivers or in the swampy cane-brakes, and measures often ten feet in length and six in breadth over the shell, independent of the head and tail, which must give often to this dreadful monster the length of twenty feet. Such an unwieldy mass is not, of course, capable of any rapid motion; but in the swamps I mention they are very numerous, and the unfortunate man or beast going astray, and leaving for a moment the small patches of solid ground, formed by the thicker clusters of the canes, must of a necessity come within the reach of one of these powerful creature's jaws, always extended and ready for prey. Cawanas of a large size have never been taken alive, though often, in draining the lagoons, shells have been found measuring twelve feet in length. The planters of Upper Western Louisiana have often fished to procure them for scientific acquaintances, but, although they take hundreds of the smaller ones, they could never succeed to drag on shore any of the large ones after they have been hooked, as these monsters bury their claws, head, and tail so deep in the mud, that no power short of steam can make them relinquish their hold. Some officers of the United States army and land surveyors, sent on the Red River by the government at Washington for a month, took up their residence at Captain Finn's. One day, when the conversation had fallen upon the cawana, it was resolved that a trial should be made to ascertain the strength of the animal. A heavy iron hand-pike was transformed by a blacksmith into a large hook, which was fixed to an iron chain belonging to the anchor of a small-boat, and as that extraordinary fishing-tackle was not of a sufficient length, they added to it a hawser, forty fathoms in length and of the size of a woman's wrist. The hook was baited with a lamb a few days old, and thrown into a deep hole ten yards from the shore, where Captain Finn knew that one of the monsters was located; the extremity of the hawser was made fast to an old cotton-tree. Late in the evening of the second day, and as the rain poured down in torrents, a negro slave ran to the house to announce that the bait had been taken, and every one rushed to the river side. They saw that, in fact, the hawser was in a state of tension, but the weather being too bad to do anything that evening, they put it off till the next morning. A stout horse was procured, who soon dragged the hawser from the water till the chain became visible, but all further attempts of the animal were in vain; after the most strenuous exertion, the horse could not conquer the resistance or gain a single inch. The visitors were puzzled, and Finn then ordered one of the negroes to bring a couple of powerful oxen, yoked to a gill, employed to drag out the stumps of old trees. For many minutes the oxen were lashed and goaded in vain; every yarn of the hawser was strained to the utmost, till, at last, the two brutes, uniting all their strength in one vigorous and final pull, it was dragged from the water, but the monster had escaped. The hook had straightened, and to its barb were attached pieces of thick bones and cartilages, which must have belonged to the palate of the monster. The unfortunate traveller has but little chance of escaping with life, if, from want of experience, he is foundered in the swampy canebrakes. When the horse sinks and the rider leaves the saddle, the only thing he can do is to return back upon his track; but let him beware of these solitary small patches of briars, generally three or four yards in circumference, which are spread here and there on the edges of the canebrakes, for there he will meet with deadly reptiles and snakes unknown in the prairies; such as the grey-ringed water mocassin, the brown viper, the black congo with red head and the copper head, all of whom congregate and it may be said make their nests in these little dry oases, and their bite is followed by instantaneous death. These are the dangers attending travellers in the swamps, but there are many others to be undergone in crossing lagoons, rivers, or small lakes. All the streams, tributaries of the Sabine and of the Red River below the great bend (which is twenty miles north of the Lost Prairie), have swampy banks and muddy bottoms, and are impassable when the water is too low to permit the horses to swim. Some of these streams have ferries, and some lagoons have floating bridges in the neighbourhood of the plantations; but as it is a new country, where government has as yet done nothing, these conveniences are private property, and the owner of a ferry, not being bound by a contract, ferries only when he chooses and at the price he wishes to command. I will relate a circumstance which will enable the reader to understand the nature of the country, and the difficulties of overland travelling in Texas. The great Sulphur Fork is a tributary of the Red River, and it is one of the most dangerous. Its approach can only be made on both sides through belts of swampy canebrakes, ten miles in breadth, and so difficult to travel over, that the length of the two swamps, short as it is, cannot be passed by a fresh and strong horse in less than fourteen hours. At just half-way of this painful journey the river is to be passed, and this cannot be done without a ferry, for the moment you leave the canes, the shallow water begins, and the bottom is so soft, that any object touching it must sink to a depth of several fathoms. Till 1834, no white man lived in that district, and the Indians resorted to it only during the shooting season, always on foot and invariably provided with half-a-dozen of canoes on each side of the stream for their own use or for the benefit of travellers. The Texans are not so provident nor so hospitable. As the white population increased in that part of the country, a man of the name of Gibson erected a hut on the southern bank of the stream, constructed a flat-boat, and began ferrying over at the rate of three dollars a head. As the immigration was very extensive, Gibson soon grew independent, and he entered into a kind of partnership with the free bands which were already organized. One day, about noon, a land speculator presented himself on the other side of the river, and called for the ferry. At that moment the sky was covered with dark and heavy clouds, and flashes of lightning succeeded each other in every direction; in fact, everything proved that the evening would not pass without one of those dreadful storms so common in that country during the months of April and May. Gibson soon appeared in his boat, but instead of casting it loose, he entered into a conversation. "Where do you come from, eh?" "From the settlements," answered the stranger. "You've a ticklish, muddish kind of river to pass." "Aye," replied the other, who was fully aware of it. "And a blackish, thunderish, damned storm behind you, I say." The traveller knew that too, and as he believed that the conversation could as well be carried on while crossing over, he added: "Make haste, I pray, my good man; I am in a hurry, and I should not like to pass the night here in these canes for a hundred dollars." "Nor I, for a thousand," answered Gibson. "Well, stranger, what will you give me to ferry you over?" "The usual fare, I suppose--two or three dollars." "Why, that may do for a poor man in fine weather, and having plenty of time to spare, but I be blessed if I take you for ten times that money now that you are in so great a hurry and have such a storm behind." The traveller knew at once he had to deal with a blackguard, but as he was himself an Arkansas man of the genuine breed, he resolved to give him a "Roland for an Oliver." "It is a shameful imposition," he cried; "how much do you want after all?" "Why, not a cent less than fifty dollars." The stranger turned his horse round, as if he would go back; but, after a few moments, he returned again. "Oh," he cried, "you are a rogue, and take the opportunity of my being in so great a hurry. I'll give you what you want, but mind I never will pass this road again, and shall undoubtedly publish your conduct in the Arkansas newspapers." Gibson chuckled with delight; he had humbugged a stranger, and did not care a fig for all the newspapers in the world; so he answered, "Welcome to do what you please;" and, untying the boat, he soon crossed the stream. Before allowing the stranger to enter the ferry, Gibson demanded the money, which was given to him under the shape of five ten-dollar notes, which he secured in his pocket, and then rowed with all his might. On arriving on the other side, the stranger led his horse out of the boat, and while Gibson was stooping down to fix the chain, he gave him a kick on the temple, which sent him reeling and senseless in his boat; then taking back his own money, he sprung upon his saddle, and passing before the cabin, he gently advised Gibson's wife to "go and see, for her husband had hurt himself a little in rowing." These extortions are so very frequent, and now so well known, that the poorer classes of emigrants never apply for the ferries, but attempt the passage just as they can, and when we call to mind that the hundreds of cases which are known and spoken of must be but a fraction of those who have disappeared without leaving behind the smallest clue of their former existence and unhappy fate, the loss of human life within the last four or five years must have been awful. Besides the alligator and the cawana, there are in these rivers many other destructive animals of a terrible appearance, such as the devil jack diamond fish, the saw fish, the horn fish, and, above all, the much dreaded gar. The first of these is often taken in summer in the lakes and bayous, which, deprived of water for a season, are transformed into pastures; these lakes, however, have always a channel or deeper part, and there the devil jack diamond has been caught, weighing four hundred pounds and upwards. The saw fish is peculiar to the Mississippi and its tributaries, and varies in length from four to eight feet. The horn fish is four feet long, with a bony substance on his upper jaw, strong, curved, and one foot long, which he employs to attack horses, oxen, and even alligators, when pressed by hunger. But the gar fish is the most terrible among the American ichthyology, and a Louisiana writer describes it in the following manner:-- "Of the gar fish there are numerous varieties. The alligator gar is sometimes ten feet long, and is voracious, fierce, and formidable, even to the human species. Its dart in rapidity equals the flight of a bird; its mouth is long, round, and pointed, thick set with sharp teeth; its body is covered with scales so hard as to be impenetrable by a rifle-bullet, and which, when dry, answers the purposes of a flint in striking fire from steel; its weight is from fifty to four hundred pounds, and its appearance is hideous; it is, in fact, the shark of rivers, but more terrible than the shark of the sea, and is considered far more formidable than the alligator himself." It is, in fact, a most terrible animal. I have seen it more than once seizing its prey, and dragging it down with the rapidity of an arrow. One day while I was residing at Captain Finn's upon the Red River, I saw one of these monsters enter a creek of transparent water. Following him for curiosity, I soon perceived that he had not left the deep water without an inducement, for just above me there was an alligator devouring an otter. As soon as the alligator perceived his formidable enemy, he thought of nothing but escape to the shore; he dropped his prey and began to climb, but he was too slow for the gar fish, who, with a single dart, closed upon it with extended jaws, and seized it by the middle of the body. I could see plainly through the transparent water, and yet I did not perceive that the alligator made the least struggle to escape from the deadly fangs; there was a hissing noise as that of shells and bones crushed, and the gar fish left the creek with his victim in his jaws, so nearly severed in two, that the head and tail were towing on each side of him. Besides these, the traveller through rivers and bayous has to fear many other enemies of less note, and but little, if at all, known to naturalists. Among these is the mud vampire, a kind of spider leech, with sixteen short paws round a body of the form and size of the common plate; the centre of the animal (which is black in any other part of the body) has a dark vermilion round spot, from which dart a quantity of black suckers, one inch and a half long, through which they extract the blood of animals: and so rapid is the phlebotomy of this ugly reptile, that though not weighing more than two ounces in its natural state, a few minutes after it is stuck on, it will increase to the size of a beaver hat, and weigh several pounds. Thus leeched in a large stream, a horse will often faint before he can reach the opposite shore, and he then becomes a prey to the gar fish; if the stream is but small and the animal is not exhausted, he will run madly to the shore and roll to get rid of his terrible blood-sucker, which, however, will adhere to him, till one or the other of them dies from exhaustion, or from repletion. In crossing the Eastern Texas bayous, I used always to descend from my horse to look if the leeches had stuck; the belly and the breast are the parts generally attacked, and so tenacious are these mud vampires, that the only means of removing them is to pass the blade of a knife under them and cut them off. But let us leave these disgusting animals, and return to the upland woods and prairies, where nature seems ever smiling, and where the flowers, the birds, and harmless quadrupeds present to the eye a lively and diversified spectacle. One of the prettiest _coups-d'oeil_ in the world is to witness the gambols and amusements of a herd of horses, or a flock of antelopes. No kitten is more playful than these beautiful animals, when grazing undisturbed in the prairies; and yet those who, like the Indian, have time and opportunity to investigate, will discover vices in gregarious animals hitherto attributed solely to man. It would appear that, even among animals, where there is a society, there is a tyrant and paria. On board vessels, in a school, or any where, if man is confined in space, there will always be some one lording over the others, either by his mere brutal strength or by his character; and, as a consequence, there is also another, who is spurned, kicked, and beaten by his companions, a poor outcast, whom everybody delights in insulting and trampling upon; it is the same among gregarious brutes. Take a flock of buffaloes or horses, or of antelopes; the first glance is always sufficient to detect the two contrasts. Two of the animals will stand apart from the herd, one proudly looking about, the other timid and cast down; and every minute some will leave their grazing, go and show submission, and give a caress to the one, and a kick or a bite to the other. Such scenes I have often observed, and I have also witnessed the consequence, which is, that the outcast eventually commits suicide, another crime supposed to be practised only by reasoning creatures like ourselves. I have seen horses, when tired of their prairie life, walk round and round large trees, as if to ascertain the degree of hardness required; they have then measured their distance, and darting with furious speed against it, fractured their skull, and thus got rid of life and oppression. I remember a particular instance; it was at the settlement. I was yet a boy, and during the hotter hours of the day, I used to take my books and go with one of the missionaries to study near a torrent, under the cool shade of a magnolia.¸ All the trees around us were filled with numerous republics of squirrels, scampering and jumping from branch to branch, and, forgetful of everything else, we would sometimes watch their sport for hours together. Among them we had remarked one, who kept solitary between the stems of an absynth shrub, not ten yards from our usual station. There he would lie motionless for hours basking in the sun, till some other squirrels would perceive him. Then they would jump upon him, biting and scratching till they were tired, and the poor animal would offer no resistance, and only give way to his grief by plaintive cries. At this sight, the good padre did not lose the opportunity to inculcate a lesson, and after he had finished speaking, he would strike his hands together to terrify the assailants. "Yes," observed I, using his own words, "it is nature." "Alas! no," he would reply; "'tis too horrible to be nature; it is only one of the numerous evils generated from society." The padre was a great philosopher, and he was right. One day, while we were watching this paria of a squirrel, we detected a young one slowly creeping through the adjoining shrubs; he had in his mouth a ripe fruit, a parcimon, if I remember right. At every moment he would stop and look as if he were watched, just as if he feared detection. At last he arrived near the paria, and deposited before him his offering to misery and old age. We watched this spectacle with feelings which I could not describe; there was such a show of meek gratitude in the one and happiness in the other, just as if he enjoyed his good action. They were, however, perceived by the other squirrels, who sprang by dozens upon them; the young one with two bounds escaped, the other submitted to his fate. I rose, all the squirrels vanished except the victim; but that time, contrary to his habits, he left the shrub and slowly advanced to the bank of the river, and ascended a tree. A minute afterwards we observed him at the very extremity of a branch projecting over the rapid waters, and we heard his plaintive shriek. It was his farewell to life and misery; he leaped into the middle of the current, which in a moment carried him to the shallow water a little below. In spite of his old age, the padre waded into the stream and rescued the suicide. I took it home with me, fed it well, and in a short time its hair had grown again thick and glossy. Although left quite free, the poor animal never attempted to escape to the woods, and he had become so tame, that every time I mounted my horse, he would jump upon me and accompany me on my distant excursions. Eight or ten months afterwards he was killed by a rattle-snake, who surprised him sleeping upon my blanket, during one of our encampments. THE END.