'r-i^
P^ 'ii
•J
tsi
PS
n
»
C
sq
T\
A
J
GREATEE BRITAIN
A RECORD OF TRAVEL
IK
ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES
OURINU
1866 AND 1867-
CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE.
■"-.5?-,
IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOL. I.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
31'oiTbon :
MACMILLAN AND CO
1868.
//
V. /
LONDON ;
R. fil.AV, SONS, AND 'I'AVI.OR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
TO
MY EAT HE II
THIS BOOK.
0. W. D.
PUEFACE.
In 1866 and 1867, I followed England round the
world : everywhere I was in English-speaking, or
in English-governed lands. If I remarked that
climate, soil, manners of life, that mixture with
other peoples had modified the blood, I saw, too,
that in essentials the race was always one.
The idea which in all the length of my travels
liJis been at once my fellow and my guide — a key
wherewith to unlock the hidden things of strange
new lands — is a conception, however imperfect, of
the grandeur of our race, already girdling the
earth, which it is destined, perhaps, eventually to
overspread.
In America, the peoples of the world are being
fused together, but they are run into an English
mould : Alfred's laws and Chaucer's tongue are
theirs whether they would or no. There are men
who say that Britain in her age will claim the
glory of having planted greater Englands across
viii PREFACE.
the seas. They fail to perceive that she has clone
more than found plantations of her own — that she
has imposed her institutions upon the offshoots of
Germany, of Ireland, of Scandinavia, and of Spain.
Through America, England is speaking to the
world.
Sketches of Saxondom may be of interest even
upon humbler grounds : the development of the
England of Elizabeth is to be found, not in the
Britain of Victoria, but in half the habitable
globe. If two small islands are by courtesy styled
" Great," America, Australia, India, must form a
Greater Britain.
C. W. D.
76, Sloane Street, S.W.
1st November, 1868.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.
PART I.
CHAP.
I.-VlRGINIA ...
* • 3
II-— The Negro . ,
19
III.— The South . ...
• ^ •••••.... . 32
IV.— The Empire State
■■•■•• 39
V. — Cambridge Commencement
51
VI. — Canada . .
66
VII,— Universitt of Michigan
• • * • ' * . . . . 83
VIIL— The Pacific Railroad
' • • • • . . f . . 94
IX. — Omphalism . .
• • • • • . . . . 103
X.— Letter from Denver
109
XI. —Red India .
122
XII. — Colorado . .
131
XIII.— Rocky Mountains
137
XIV.— Brigham Young
146
X CONTENTS.
XV. — MORMONDOM 153
XVI.— Western Editors , • . . . , ^, . . . , . ; ir-y-j
XVII.— Utah 173
XVIII. — Nameless Alps Ig3
XIX. — Virginia City 19q
XX. — El Dorado 213
XXI. — Lynch Law 22G
XXII. — Golden City 245
XXIII. — Little China 269
XXIV. — California ............... 269
XXV. — Mexico 276
XXVI. — Republican or Democrat 283
XXVII. — Brothers 296
XXVIII. — America 307
PART II.
I. — PiTCAihN Island 32i
II. — HOKITIKA 330
IIL— Polynesians , 347
IV.— Parewanui Pah 355
V. — The Maorir.s 379
VI. — The Two Flies 39q
VII.— The Pacific 398
APPENDIX.
A Maori Dinner 403
LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS.
VIEW FROM THE BULLER e» • • ''*<"=
s< rontispiece.
PROFILE OP "joe smith"
PULL PACE OP "joe smith" ... '/ 180
PORTER ROCKWELL
184
FRIDAY'S STATION-VALLEY OF LAKE TA
310
,^^^r.i ut IjAKB TAHOE ... "V
V.BW ON ™. AM^CVK B.v.a-TH. r..« wnE« OOLB WAS
FIRST FOUND
214
THE BRIDAL VEIL PALL, YO.EMITE VALLEY 2'>4
EL CAPITAN, Y08EMITE VALLEY
270
MAPS.
ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC RAILROAD
94
LEAVENSWORTH TO SALT LAKE OITV
110
SALT LAKE CITY TO SAN FRANCISOO ...
188
NEW ZEALAND
330
■ij>
Amoxq some obvious clerical errors th. r. 7 •
correct the following misprints :- ^' '''1"«^*«^1 '^
f
Page 75, line 12,/,, -'the
» 180 „ 22
» 180 „ 26
» 197 „ 30
" 253 „ 28
navigator's "rcaf^'Mercator's."
., " Taurida."
" "Po^gynists."
.< T. " " P-M."
-B-Dgland" .<v. , ,
.. '"^'iglanders. "
"Riga'
"pojygami.sts'
A.M.
VOL. I.
B
r
f— .
" - £
PAET I.
AMEEICA.
VOL. I. B
GREATER BRITAIN.
CHAPTER I.
VIRGINIA.
Feom the bows of the steamer Saratoga, on the 20th
June, 1866, I caught sight of the low works of Fort
Monroe, as, threading her way between the sand-
banks of Capes Charles and Henry, our ship pressed
on, under sail and steam, to enter Chesapeake Bay.
Our sudden arrival amid shoals of sharks and king-
fish, the keeping watch for flocks of canvas-backed
ducks, gave us enough and to spare of idle work till
we fuUy sighted the Yorktown peninsula, overgrown
with ancient memories— ancient for America. Three
towns of lost grandeur, or their ruins, stand there .
still. WiUiamsburg, the former capital, graced even
to our time hy^ the palaces where once the royal
governors held more than regal state; Yorktown,
where Cornwallis surrendered to the continental
troops; Jamestown, the earliest settlement, founded
in 1607, thii'teen years before old Governor Winthrop
fixed the site of Plymouth, Massachusetts.
B 2
4 OKEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
A bump against the pier of FoH Monroe soon
roused us from our musings, and we found ourselves
invaded by a swarm of stalwart negro troopera,
clothed in tlie cavalry uniform of the United States,
who boarded us for the mails. Not n white man
save those we brought was to be seen upon the pier,
and the blazing sun made me thankful that 1 had
declined an offered letter to Jeff. Davis.
Pushing off again into the stream, we ran the
gauntlet of the Rip-Raps passage, and made for
Norfolk, having on our left the many exits of the
Dismal Swamp Canal. Crossing Hampton Roads — a
grand bay with pleasant grassy shores, destined one
day to become the best known, as by nature it is
the noblest, of Atlantic ports — we nearly ran upon
the wrecks of the Federal frigates Cumhe. ^and and
Congress, sunk by the rebel ram Merrimac in the
first great naval action of the war ; but soon after,
by a sort of poetic justice, we almost drifted into
the black hull of the Merrimac herself. Great gangs
of negroes were labouring laughingly at the removal,
by blasting, of the sunken ships.
When we were securely moored at Norfolk pier, I
set off upon an inspection of the second city of
Virginia. Again not a white man was to be seen,
but hundreds of negroes were working in the heat,
building, repairing, road-making, and happily chatter-
ing the while. At last, turning a corner, I came on
an hotel, and, as a consequence, on a bar and its
crowd of swaggering whites — "Johnny Rebs" all,
you might see by the breadth of their brims, for across
I.] VIRGINIA. 5
the Atlantic a broad-brim denotes less the man of
peace than the ex-member of a Southern guerilla
band, Morgan's, Mosby's, or Stuart's. No Southerner
will wear the Yankee ** stove-pipe " hat; a Panama
or Palmetto for him, he says, though he keeps to the
long black coat that rules from Maine to the Pio
Grande.
These Southerners were all alike — all were upright,
tall, and heavily moustached ; all had long black
hair and glittering eyes, and I looked instinctively
for the baldric and rapier. It needed no second glance
to assure me that as far as the men of Norfolk were
concerned, the saying of our Yankee skipper was not
far from the truth : " The last idea that enters the
mind of a Southerner is that of doing work."
Strangers are scarce in Norfolk, and it was not long
before I found an excuse for entering into conversa-
tion with the " citizens." My first question was not
received with much cordiality by my new acquaint-
ances. " How do the negroes work ? Wall, we spells
nigger with two * g's,' I reckon." (Virginians, I must
explain, are used to reckon as much as New Eng-
landers to " guess," while Western men ' calculate "
as often as they cease to swear.) " How does the
niggers work ? Wall, niggers is darned fools, certain,
but they ain't quite sich fools as to work while the
Yanks will feed 'em. No, sir, not quite sich fools
as that." Hardly deeming it wise to point to the
negroes working in the sun-blaze within a hundred
yards, while we sat rocking ourselves in the verandah
of the inn, I changed my tack, and asked whether
6 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
tilings were settling clown in Norfolk. This query
soon led my friends upon the line I wanted them
to take, and in five minutes we were well through
politics, and plunging into the very war. " You're
a Britisher. Now, all that they tell you's darned
lies. We're just as secesh as we ever was, only so
many's killed that we can't fight — that's all, I
reckon." " We ain't going to fight the North and
West again," said an ex-colonel of rebel infantry ;
" next time we fight, 'twill be us and the West
against the Yanks. We'll keep the old flag then,
and be darned to them." " If it hadn't been for
the politicians, we shouldn't have seceded at all,
I reckon : we should just have kept the old flag
and the constitution, and the Yanks would have
seceded from us. Eeckon we'd have let 'em go."
" Wall, boys, s'pose we liquor," closed in the colonel,
shooting out his old quid, and filling in with
another. "We'd have fought for a lifetime if the
cussed Southerners hadn't deserted like they did." I
asked who these " Southerners " were to whom such
disrespect was being shown. " You didn't think
Virginia was a Southern State over in Britain, did
you ; 'cause Virginia's a border State, sir. We didn't
go to secede at all ; it was them blasted Southerners
that brought it on us. First they wouldn't give a
command to General Eobert E. Lee, then they made
us do all the fighting for 'em, and then, when the
pinch came, they left us in the lurch. Why, sir,
I saw three Mississippi regiments surrender without
a blow — yes, sir : that's right down good whisky ;
1.] VIRGINIA. T
jess you .sample it." Here the steam- whistle of the
Save toga sounded with its deep bray. "Beckon you'll
have to hurry up to make connexions," said one of
my new friends, and I hurried off, not without a fear
lest some of the group should shoot after me, to
avenge the affront of my quitting them before the
mixing of the drinks. They were but a pack of
"mean whites," "North Carolina crackers," but their
views were those which I found dominant in all ranks
at Richmond, and up the country in Virginia.
After all, the South '^.rn planters arc not " The South,"
which for political purposes is composed of the " mean
whites," of the Irish of the towns, and of the South-
western men — Missourians, Kentuckians, and Texans —
fiercely anti-Northern, without being in sentiment what
we should call Southern, certainly not representatives
of the " Southern Chivalry." The " mean whites," or
" poor trash," are the whites who are not planters —
members of the slave-holding race who never held
a slave — white men looked down upon by the negroes.
It is a necessary result of the despotic government of
one race by another that the poor members of the
dominant people are universally despised : the " desti-
tute Europeans" of Bombay, the " white loafers" of the
Punjaub, are familiar cases. "VVhore slavery exists, the
" poor trash" class must inevitably be both large and
wretched : primogeniture is necessary to keep the
plantations sufficiently great to allow for the payment
of overseers and the supporting in luxury of the
planter fariiily, and younger sons and their descendants
are not only left destitute, but debarred from earning
.8 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
their bread by honest industry, for in a slave country
labour is degrading.
The Southern planters were gentlemen, possessed of
many aristocratic virtaes, along with eveiy aristocratic
vice ; but to each planter there were nine " mean
whites," who, though grossly ignorant, full of insolence,
given to the use of the knife and pistol upon the
slightest provocation, were until the election of Lincoln
to the presidency as completely the rulers of America
as they were afterwards the leaders of the rebellion.
At sunset we started up the James on our way to
City Point and Richmond, sailing almost between the
very masts of the famous rebel privateer the Florida,
and seeing her as she lay under the still, grey waters.
She was cut out from a Brazilian port, and when
claimed by the imperial government was to have been
at once surrendered. While the despatches were on
their way to Norfolk, she was run into at her moorings
by a Federal gunboat, and filled and sank directly.
Friends of the confederacy have hinted that the
collision was strangely opportune ; nevertheless, the
fact remains that the commander of the gunboat was
dismissed the navy for his carelessness.
The twilight was beyond description lovely. The
change from the auks and ice-birds of the Atlantic
to the blue-birds and robins of Virginia was not more
sudden than that from winter to tropical warmth and
sensuous indolence ; but the scenery, too, of the river
is beautiful in its very changelessness. Those who
can see no beauty but in boldness, might call the
James as monotonous as the lower Loire.
I.] VIRGINIA. 9
After weeks of bitter cold, warm evenings favour
meditation. The soft air, the antiquity of the forest,
the languor of the sunset breeze, all dispose to dream
and sleep. That oak has seen Powhdtan ; the
founders of Jamestown may have pointed at that
grand old sycamore. In this drowsy humour, we
sighted the far-famed batteries of Newport News, and
turning-in to berth or hammock, lay all night at City
Point, near Petersburg.
A little before sunrise we weighed again, and
sought i, passage through the tremendous Confederate
** obstructions." Kows of iron skeletons, the frame-
works of the wheels of sunken steamers, showed
above the stream, casting gaunt shadows westward,
and varied only by here and there a battered smoke-
stack or a spar. The whole of the steamers that had
plied upon the James and the canals before the war
were lying ^ere in rows, sunk lengthwise along the
stream. Two in the middle of each row had been
raised to let the Government vessels pass, but in the
heat-mist and faint light the navigation was most
difficult. For five-and-twenty miles the rebel forts
were as thick as the hills and points allowed ; yet in
spite of booms and bars, of sunken ships, of batteries
and torpedoes, the Federal Monitors once forced their
way to Fort Darling in the outer works of Kich-
mond. I remembered these things a few weeks
later, when General Grant's first words to me at
"Washington were : " Glad to meet you. What have
you seen V " The Capitol." " Go at once and see
the Monitors." He afterwards said to me, in words
10 GEEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
that photograph not only the Monitors, but Grant :
" You can batter away at those things for a month,
and do no good."
At Dutch Gap, we came suddenly upon, a curious
scene. The river flowed towards us down a long
straight reach, bounded by a lofty hill crowned with
tremendous earthworks; but through a deep trench or
cleft, hardly fifty yards in length, upon our right, we
could see the stream running with violence in a
direction parallel with our course. The lulls about
the gully were hollowed out into caves and bomb-
proofs, evidently meant as shelters from vertical
fire, but the rough graves of a vast cemetery showed
that the protection was sought in vain. Forests of
crosses of unpainted wood rose upon every acre of flat
ground. On the peninsula, all but made an island
by the cleft, was a grove of giant trees, leafless, bai'k-
less, dead, and blanched by a double change in the
level of the stream. There is no sight so sad as that
of a drowned forest, with a turkey-buzzard on each
bough. On the bank upon our left was an iron
scaffold, eight or ten storeys high, — " Butler's Look-
out," as the cleft was " Butler's Dutch Gap Canal."
The canal, unfinished in war, is now to be completed
at State expense for purposes of trade.
As we rounded the extremity of the peninsula, an
eagle was seen to light upon a tree. From every
portion of the ship — main deck, hurricane deck, lower
deck ports — revolvers ready capped and loaded were
brought to bear upon the bird, which sheered off" un-
harmed amid a storm of bullets. After this incident,
I.] VIRGINIA. 11
I was careful in my poJitical discussions with my
shipmates ; disarmament in the Confederacy had
clearly not been extended to private weapons.
The outer and inner lines of fortifications passed,
we came iu view of a many-steepled town, with domes
and spires recalling Oxford, hanging on a bank above
a crimson-coloured foaming stream. In ten minutes
we were alongside the wharf at Eichmond, oikI in
half an hour safelv housed in the " Exchange " Hotel,
kept by the Messrs. Carrington, of whom the father
was a private, the son a colonel, in the rebel Volunteers.
The next day, while the works and obstructions on
the James were still fresh in my mind, I took train
to Petersburg, the city the capture of which by Grant
was the last blow struck by the North at the meltino"
forces of the Confederacy.
The Hne showed the war : here and there the track,
torn up in Northern raids, had barely been repaired ;
the bridges were burnt and broken ; the rails worn
down to an iron thread. The joke " on board," as they
say here for "in the train," was that the engine-
drivers down the line are tolerably 'cute men, who,
when the rails are altogether worn away, understand
how to "go it on the bare wood," and who at all
times " know where to jump."
• From the window of the car we could see that in
the country there were left no mules, no horses, no
roads, no men. The solitude is not all owing to the
war : in the whole five-and-twenty miles from Rich-
mond to Petersburg there was before the war but a
single station; in New England your passage-card
12 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
often gives a station in every two miJes. A careful
look at the underwood on either side the line showed
that this forest is not primeval, that all this country
had once been ploughed.
Virginia stands first among the States for natural
advantages : in climate she is unequalled ; her soil is
fertile ; her mineral wealth in coal, copper, gold, and
iron, enormous and well placed ; her rivers good, and
her great harbour one of tlie best in the world. Vir-
ginia has been planted more than 250 years, and is
as large as England, yet has a free population of only
a million. In every kind of production she is miser-
ably inferior to Missouri or Ohio, in most inferior also
to the infant States of Michigan and Illinois, Only
a quarter of her soil is under cultivation, to half that
of poor starved New England, and the mines are
deserted which were worked by the very dians
who were driven from the land as savages a hundred
years ago.
There is no surer test of the condition of a country
than the state of its highways. In driving on the
main roads round Richmond, in visiting the scene of
McClellan's great defeat on the Chickahominy at
Mechanicsville and Malvern Hill, I myself and an
American gentleman who was with me had to get
out and lay the planks upon the bridges, and then
sit upon them, to keep them down while the black
coachman drove across. The best roads in Virginia
are but ill-kept " corduroys ;" but, bad as are these,
" plank roads " over which artillery has passed,
knocking out every other plank, are worse by far;
r»7 VIRGINIA. 13
yet such is the main road from Kichmond towards
the "West.
There is not only a scarcity of roads, but of rail-
roads. A comparison of the railway system of
Illinois and Indiana with the two lines of Ken-
tucky or the one of Western Virginia or Louisiana, is
a comparison of the South with the North, of slavery
with freedom. Virginia shows already the decay of
age, but is blasted by slavery rather than by war.
Passing through Petersburg, the streets of which
were gay with the feathery-brown blooms of the
Venetian shumach, but almost deserted by human
beings, who have not returned to the city since they
were driven out by the shot and shell of which their
houses show the scars, we were soon in the rebel
works. There are sixty miles of these works in all,
line within line, three deep : alternations of sand-pits
and sand-heaps, with here and there a tree-trunk
pierced for riflemen, and everywhere a double row
of chevaux de frise. The forts nearest this point
were named by t^eir rebel occupants Fort HeU and
Fort Damnation. Tremendous works, but it needed
no long interview with Grant to understand their
capture. I had not been ten minutes in his office
at Washington before I saw that the secret of his
unvarying success lay in his unflinching determi-
nation : theie is pith in the American conceit which
reads in his initials, " U. S. G.," " unconditional-
surrender Grant."
The works defending Kichmond, hardly so strong as
those of Petersburg, were attacked in a novel manner
14 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
in the third year of the war. A strong body of Federal
cavalry on a raid, unsupported by infantry or guns,
came suddenly by night upon the outer lines of Rich-
mond on the west. Something had led them to believe
that the rebels were not in force, and with the strange
aimless daring that animated botl? parties during the
rebellion, they ro 3 straight in along the winding
road, unchallenged, and came up to the inner lines.
There they were met by a volley which emptied a few
saddles, and they retired, without even stopping to
spike the guns in the outer works. Had they known
enough of the troops opposed to them to have con-
tinued to advance, they might have taken Richmond,
and held it long enough to have captured the rebel
president and senate, and burned the great iron-works
and ships. The whole of the rebel army had gone
north, and even the home guard was caniped out
on the Chickahominy. The troops who fired the
volley were a company of the " iron-works battalion,"
boys employed at the foundries, not one of whom had
ever fired a rifle before this night. They confessed
themselves that " one minute more, and they'd have
run ;" but the volley just stopped the enemy in
time. .
The spot where we first struck the re lel lines was
that known as the Crater — the funnel-shaped cavity
formed when Grant sprang his famous mine. 1,500
men are buried in the hollow itself, and the bones of
those smothered by the falling earth are working
through the soil. 5,000 negro troops were killed
in this attack, and arc buried round the hollow
i.j VIRGINIA. ^ 15
where they died, fighting iis gcallantly as they fought
everywhere throughout the war. It is a singuhxr
testimony to the continuousness of the fire, that the
still remaining subterranean passages show that in
countermining the rebels came once within three feet
of the mine, yet failed to hear the working parties.
Thousands of old army shoes were lying on the earth,
and negro boys were digging up bullets for old lead.
Within eighty yards of the Crater are the Federal
investing lines, on which the trumpet flower of our
gardens was growing wild in deep rich masses. The
negroes told me not to gather it, because they believe
it scalds the hand. They call it " poison plant," or
" blister weed." The blue-birds and scarlet tannngers
were playing about the horn-shaped flowers
Just within Grant's earthworks are the ruins of
an ancient church, built, it is said, with bricks that
were brought by the first colonists from England in
1614. About Norfolk, about Petersburg, and the
Shenandoah Valley, you cannot ride twenty miles
through the Virginian forest without bursting in upon
some glade containing a quaint old church, or a
creeper-covered roofless palace of the Culpeppers, the
Kandolphs, or the Scotts. The county names have in
them all a history. Taking the letter " B " alone, we
have Barbour, Bath, Bedford, Berkeley, Boone, Bote-
tourt, Braxton, Brooke, Brunswick, Buchanan, Bucking-
ham. A dozen counties in the State are named from
kings or princes. The slave-owning cavaliers whose
names the remainder bear are the men most truly guilty
of the late attempt made by their descendants to
16 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
create an empire founded on disloyalty and oppres-
sion ; but within sight of this old church of theirs
at Petersburg, thirty-three miles of Federal outworks
stand as a monument of how the attempt was
crushed by the children of their New England brother-
colonists.
The names of streams and hamlets in Virginia
have often a quaint English ring. On the Potomac,
near Harper's Ferry, I once came upon "Sir John's
Run." Upon my asking a tall gaunt fellow who
was fishing whether this was the spot on which the
Knight of Windsor "larded the lean earth," I got
for sole answer: "Wall, don't know 'bout that,
but it's a mighty fine spot for yellow-fin trout."
The entry to Virginia is characteristic. You sail
between capes named from the sons of James I.,
and have fronting you tlie estuaries of two rivers
called after the King and the Duke of York.
The old "F. F. V's," the first famHies of Virginia,
whose founders gave these monarchic names to the
rivers and counties of the State, are far ofi" now in
Texas and California — those, that is, which were
not extinct before the war. The tenth Lord Fairfax
keeps a tiny ranch near San Francisco ; 'some of the
chief Denmans are also to be found in California.
In all such cases of which I heard, the emigration
took place before the war ; Northern conquest could
not be made use of as a plea whereby to escape the
reproaches due to the slave-owning system. There
is a stroke of justice in the fact that the Virginian
oligarchy have ruined themselves in ruining their
I.] VIRGINIA. 1 7
State ; but the gaming hells of Farobankopolis, as
Richmond once was called, have much for which to
answer.
When the " burnt district " comes to be rebuilt,
Richmond will be the most beautiful of all the
Atlantic cities ; while the water-power of the rapids
of the James and its situation at the junction of
canal and river, secure for it a prosperous future.
The superb position of the State House (which
formed the rebel capitol), on the brow of a long hill,
whence it overhangs the city and the James, has
in it something of satire. The Parliament-house of
George Washington's own State, the State House,
contains the famed statue set up by the general
assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia to the
hero's memory. Without the building stands the
still more noteworthy bronze statue of the first
President, erected jointly by all the States in the
then Union. That such monuments should overlook
the battle-fields of the war provoked by the secession
from the Union of AVashington's loved Virginia, is
a fact full of the grim irony of history.
Hollywood, the cemetery of Richmond, is a place
full of touching sad suggestions, and very beautiful,
with deep shades and rippling streams. During
the war, there were hospitals in Richmond for
20,000 men, and " always full," they say. The
Richmond men who were killed in battle were buried
where they fell, but 8,000 who died in hospital
are buried here, and over them is placed a wooden
cross, with the inscription in black paint, " Dead,
VOL. I. ,
^^ GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
but not forgotten." In another spot lie tJbe Union
dead, under the shadow of the flag for which they
died. "^
From Monroe's tomb the evening view is singularly
soft and calm ; the quieter and calmer for the drone
m which are mingled the trills of the mocking-
bird, the hoarse croaking of the bull-frog, the hum
of the myriad fire-flies, that glow like summer
lightning among the trees ; tne distant roar of the
river, of which the rich red water can still be seen
beaten by the rocks into a rosy foam.
With the moment's chiUness of the sunset breeze
the golden glory of the heavens fades into grey
and there comes quickly over them the solemn blue-
ness of the Southern night. Thoughts are springing
up of the many thousand unnamed graves, where the
rebel soldiers lie unknown, when the Federal drums
in Richmond begin sharply beating the rappel
n.J THE NEOBO. \^
CHAPTER ir.
THE NEGRO.
In the back country of Virginia, and on the borders
of North Carolina, it becomes clear that our common
English notions of the negro and of slavery are
nearer the truth than common notions often are.
The London Christy Minstrels are ^ot more given
. to bursts of laughter of the form " Yah ! yah ! "
than are the plantation hands. The negroes upon
the Virginian farms are not maligned by those who
represent them as delighting in the contrasts of
crimson and yellow, or emerald and sky-blae. I
have seen them on a Sunday afternoon, dressed in
scarlet waistcoats and gold-laced cravats, returning
hurriedly from " meetin'," to dance break-downs, and
grin from ear to ear for hours at a time. What
better should we expect from men to whom until
just now it was forbidden, under tremendous penalties,
to teach their letters ?
Nothing can force the planters to treat negro
freedom save from the comic side. To them the
thing is too new for thought, too strange for argu-
ment; the ridiculous lies on the surface, and to
this they turn as a relief. When 1 asked a
c 2
20 (UiEATEIi liRlTAlN. [chav.
pluxiter how the l)hicks prospered under freedom,
his answer was, " Ours don't much like it. You
see, it necessitates monogamy. If I talk about the
' responsibilities of freedom,' Sambo says, * Dunno
'bout that; please, mass' George, me want two
wife.'" Another planter tells me, that the only
change that he can see in the condition of the negroes
since they liave been free, is that formerly the
supervision of the overseer forced them occasionally
to be clean, whereas now nothing on earth can make
them wash. He says that, writing lately to his
agent, he received an answer to which there was
the following postscript : " You ain't sent no sope.
You had better send sope : niggers is certainly
needing sope."
It is easy to treat the negro question in this way ;
easy, on the other hand, to assert that since history
fails us as a guide to the future of the emancipated
blacks, we should see what time will bring, and
meanwhile set down negroes as a monster class of
which nothing is yet known, and, like the compilers
of the Catalan map, say of places of which we have
no knowledge, " Here be giants, cannibals, and
negroes." As long as we possess Jamaica, and are
masters upon the African west coast, the negro
question is one of moment to ourselves. It is one,
too, of mightier import, for it is bound up with
the future of the English in America. It is by
no means a question to be passed over as a joke.
There are five millions of negroes in the United
States ; juries throughout ten States of the Union
ii,] TJ[E NEQRO. 21
are mainly chosen from tlio ])lack race. TIk; matt^^
is not only serious, but full of interest, political,
ethnological, historic.
In the SoutJi you must take nothing upon trust ;
believe notliing you are told. Nowhere in the world
do "facts" appear so differently to those who view
them through spectacles of yellow or of rose. The
old planters tell you that all is ruin, — that they
have but half the hands they need, and from cacli
hand but a half-day's work : the new men, with
Northern energy and Northern capital, tell you that
they get on very well.
The old Southern planters find it hard to rid them-
selves of their traditions ; they cannot understand
free blacks, and slavery makes not only the slaves
but the masters shiftless. They have no cash, and
the Metayer system gives rise to the suspicion of
some fraud, for the negroes are very distrustful of
the honesty of their former masters.
The worst of the evils that must inevitably grow
out of the sudden emancipation of millions of slaves
have not shown themselves as yet, in consequence
of the ^jreat amount of work that has to be done
in the cities of the South, in repairing the ruin
caused during the war by fire and want of care,
and in building places of business for the Northern
capitalists. The negroes of Virginia and North Caro-
lina have flocked down to the towns and ports by
the thou and, and find in Norfolk, Richmond, Wil-
mington, and Fort Monroe employment for the
moment. Their absence from the plantations makes
22 G HE A TEH Britain. [chap.
labour dear up country, and this in itself tempts
the negroes who remain on land to work sturdily
for wages. Seven dollars a month — at the then rat«
equal to one pound — with board and lodging, were
being paid to black field hands on the corn and
tobacco farms near Richmond. It is when the city
works are over that the pressure will come, and it will
probably end in the blacks largely pushing northwards,
and driving the Irish out of hotel service at New
York and Boston, as they have done in Philadelphia
and St. Louis.
Already the negroes are beginning to ask for
land, and they complain loudly that none of the
confiscated lands have been assigned to them. "Ef
yer dun gib us de land, reckon de ole massas
'11 starb de niggahs," was a plfdn, straightforward
summary of the negro view of the \ ^gro question,
given me by a white -bearded old '* uncle " in Richmond,
and backed by every black man within hearing in
a chorus of " Dat's true, for shore ;" but I found up
the country, that the planters are afraid to let the
negroes own or farm for themselves the smallest
plot of land, for fear that they should sell ten times
as much as they grew, stealing their "crop" from
the granaries of their employers.
Upon a farm near Petersburg, owned by a Northern
capitalist, I was told that 1,000 acres, which before
emancipation had been tilled by 100 slaves, now
needed but forty freedmen for its cultivation ; but
when I reached it, I found that the former number
includeu old people and women, while the forty were
ir ] THE NEORO. 23
all hale men. The men were paid upon the tally
system. A card was given them for each day's
work, which was accepted at the plantation store
in payment for goods supplied, and at the end of
the month money was paid for the remaining tickets.
The planters say that the field hands will not
support their old people ; but this means only that,
like white folk, they try to make as much money
as they can, and know that if they plead the
wants of their own wives and children, the whites
will keep their old people.
That the negro slaves were lazy, thriftless, unchaste,
thieves, is true ; but it is as slaves, and not as negroes,
that they were all these things ; and, after all, the
effects of slavery upon the slave are less terrible
than its effects upon the master. The moral condi-
tion to which the planter class had been brought
by slavery, shows out plainly in the speeches of the
rebel leaders. Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President
of the Confederacy, declared in 1861 that "Slavery
is the natural and moral condition of the negro. ... I
cannot permit myself to doubt," he went on, "the
ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle
throughout the civilized and enlightened world. . . .
negro slavery is in its infancy."
There is reason to believe that the American
negroes will justify the hopes of their best friends :
they have made the best of every chance that has
been given them yet ; they made good soldiers, they
are eager to learn their letters, they are steady at
their work : — in Ijarbadoes they are industrious and
24 GREATER BRITAIN. Lcuap.
well-conducted ; in La PLata they arc exemplary
citizens. In America, as yet, the coloured labourer
has had no motive to be industrious.
General Grant assured me of the great aptness at
soldiering shown by the negro troops. In battle
they displayed extraordinary courage, but if their
officers were picked off they could not stand a
charge; no more, he said, could their Southern
masters. The power of standing firm after the loss
of leaders is possessed only by regiments where every
private is as good as his captain and colonel, such as
the North-western and New England volunteers.
Before I left Richmond, I had one morning found
my way into a school for the younger blacks. There
were as many present as the forms would hold —
sixty, perhaps, in all — and three wounded New
England soldiers, with pale thin faces, were patiently
teaching them to write. The boys seemed quick
and apt enough, but they were very raw — only a
week or two in the school. Since the time when
Oberlin first proclaimed the potential equality of the
race, by admitting negroes as freely as white men
and women to the college, the negroes have never
been backward to learn.
It must not be supposed that the negro is wanting
in abilities of a certain kind. Even in the imbecility
of the Congo dance we note his unrivalled mimetic
powers. The religious side of the negro character is
full of weird suggestiveness ; but superstition, every-
where the handmaid of ignorance, is rife among the
black plantation-hands. It is thought that the
II.] THE NEGBO. 25
punishment with which the shameful rites of Obi-
worship have been visited has proved, even in the city
of New Orleans, insufficient to prevent them. Charges
of witchcraft are as common in Vii'ginia as in Orissa :
in the Carolinas as in Central India the use of poison
is often sought to work out the events foretold by
some noted sorceress. In no direction can the matter
be followed out to its conclusions without bringing
us face to face with the sad fact, that the faults of
the plantation negro are every one of them traceable
to the vici's of the slavery system, and that the
Americans of to-day are suffering beyond measure
for evils for which our forefathers are responsible.
We ourselves are not guiltless of wrong-doing in
this matter : if it is still impossible openly to advocate
slavery in England, it has, at least, become a habit
persistently to write down freedom. We are no
longer told that God made the blacks to be slaves,
but we are bade remember that they cannot prosper
under emancipation. All mention of Barbadoes is
suppressed, but we huve daily homilies on the con-
dition of Jamaica. The negro question in America
is briefly this : is there, on the one hand, reason to
fear that, dollars applied to land decreasing while
black mouths to be fed increase, the Southern States
will become an American Jamaica ? is there, on the
other hand, ground for the hope that the negroes
may be found not incapable of the citizenship of the
United States? The former of these two questions
is the more difficult, and to some extent involves the
latter : can cotton, can sugar, can rice, can coffee, can
26 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
tobacco, be raised by white field-hands ? If not, can
they be raised with profit by black free labour ? Can
co-operative planting, directed by negro overlookers,
possibly succeed, or must the farm be ruled by white
capitalists, agents, and overseers ?
It is asserted that the negro will not work with-
out compulsion ; but the same may be said of the
European. There is compulsion of many kinds.
The emancipated negro may still be forced to work
— forced as the white man is forced in this and
other lands, by the alternative, work or starve ! This
forcing, however, may not be confined to that whicn
the laws of natural increase lead us to expect ; it may
be stimulated by bounties on immigration.
The negro is not, it would seem, to have a
monopoly of Southern labour in this continent. This
week we hear of three shiploads of Chinese coolies as
just landed in Louisiana ; and the air is thick with
rumours of labour from Bombay, from Calcutta, from
the Pacific Islands — of Eastern labour in its hundred
shapes — not to speak of competition with the whites,
now commencing with the German immigration into
Tennessee.
The berries of this country are so large, so many,
so full of juice, that alone they form a never-failing
source of nourishment to an idle population. Three
kinds of cranberries, American, pied, and English ;
two blackberries, huckleberries, high-bush and low-
bush blueberries — the latter being the English bilberry
— are among the best-known of the native fruits. No
one in this country, however idle he be, need starve.
u.] THE NEGRO. 27
If he goes farther south, he has the banana, the true
staff of life.
The terrible results of the plentiful possession of
this tree are seen in Ceylon, at Panama, in the coast-
lands of Mexico, at Auckland in New Zealand. At
Pitcairns Island the plantain grove has beaten the
missionary from the field ; there is much lip-
Christianity, but no practice to be got from a people
who possess the fatal plant. The much-abused cocoa-
nut cannot come near it as a devil's agent. The
cocoa-palm is confined to a few islands and coast
tracts — confined, too, to the tropics and sea-level ;
the plantain and banana extend over seventy degrees
of latitude, down to Botany Bay and King George's
Sound, and up as far north as the. Khybcr Pass. The
palm asks labour — not much, it is true ; but still a few
days' hard work in the year in trenching, and climbing
after the nuts. The plantain grows as a weed, and
hangs down its branches of ripe tempting fruit into
your lap, as you lie in its cool shade. The cocoa-nut-
tree has a hundred uses, and urges man to work to
make spirit from its juice, ropes, clothes, matting,
bags from its fibre, oil from the pulp ; it creates an
export trade which appeals to almost all men by their
weakest side, in offering large and quick returns for a
little work. John Ross's '* Isle of Cocoas," to the west
of Java and south of Ceylon, yields him heavy gains ;
there are profits to be made upon the Liberian coast,
and even in Southern India and Ceylon. The
plantain will make nothing ; you can eat it raw or
fried, and that is all; you can eat it every day of
28 GRiiATEB BRITAIN. [chap.
your life without becoming tired of its taste ; without
suffering in your health, you can live on it exclusively.
In the banana groves of Florida and Louisiana there
lurks much trouble and danger to the American Free
States.
The negroes have hardly much chance in Virginia
against the Northern capitalists, provided with white
labour ; but the States of Louisiana, Mississippi,
Florida, and South Carolina promise to be wholly
theirs. Already they are flocking to places in which
they have a majority of the people, and can control
the municipalities and defend themselves, if necessary,
by force ; but even if the Southerners of the coast
desert their country, the negroes will not have it
to themselves, unless nature declares that tliey shall.
New Englanders will pour in with capital and energy,
and cultivate the land by free black or by coolie
labour, if either will pay. If they do pay, competi-
tion will force the remaining blacks to work or
starve.
The friends of the negro are not without a fear
that the labourers will be too many for their work,
for, while the older cotton States appear to be worn
out, the new, such as Texas and Tennessee, will be
reserved by public opinion to the whites. For the
present the negroes will be masters in seven of the
rebel States ; but in Texas, white men — English,
Germans, Danes — are growing cotton with success;
and in Georgia and North Carolina, which contain
mountain districts, the negro power is not likely to
be permanent.
II.
THE NEGIIO. 29
We may, perhaps, lay it down as a general prin-
ciple that, when the negro can fight his way through
opposition, and stand alone as a farmer or labourer,
without the aid of private or State charity, then
he should be protected in the position he has shown
himself worthy to hold, that of a free citizen of an
enlightened and labouring community. Where it is
found that when his circumstances have ceased to
be exceptional the negro cannot live unassisted, there
the Federal Government may fairly and wisely step
in and say, " We will not keep you ; but we will
carry you to Liberia or to Hayti, if you will."
It is clear that the Southern negroes must be given
a decisive voice in the appointment of the legisla-
tures by which they are to be ruled, or that the North
must be prepared to back up by force of opinion, or
if need be, by force of arms, the Federal Executive,
when it insists on the Civil Eights Bill being set in
action at the South. Government througl the negroes
is the only way to avoid Government throve u n army,
which would be dangerous to the freedom of the
North. It is safer for America to trust her slaves
than to trust her rebels — safer to enfranchise than
to pardon.
A reading and writing basis for the suffrage in
the Southern States is an absurdity. Coupled with
pardons to the rebels, it would allow the " boys-in-
grey," — the soldiers of the Confederacy — to control
nine States of the Union ; it would render the educa-
tion of the freemen hopeless. For the moment, it
would entirely disenfranchise the negroes in six
30 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
States, whereas it is exactly for the moment that
negro suffrage is in these States necessary; while,
if the rebels were admitted to vote, and the
negroes excluded from the poll, the Southern repre-
sentatives, united with the Copperhead wing of the
democratic party, might prove to be strong enough
to repudiate the Federal debt. This is one of a dozen
dangers.
An education basis for the suffrage, though pre-
tended to be impartial, would, be manifestly aimed
against the negroes, and would perpetuate the
antipathy of colour to which the war is supposed
to have put an end. To education such a provision
would be a death-blow. If the negroes were to
vote as soon as they could read, it is certain that
the planters would take good care that they never
should read at all.
That men should be able to examine into the
details of politics is not entirely necessary to the
working of representative government. It is suffi-
cient that they should be competent to select men
to do it for them. In the highest form of repre-
sentative government, where all the electors are both
intelligent, educated, and alive to the politics of the
time, then the member returned must tend more
and more to be a delegate. That has always been
the case with the Northern and Western members
in America, but never with those returned by the
Southern ^ ^ates ; and so it will continue, whether
the Southern elections be decided by negroes or by
"mean whites."
"•] THE NEGRO. 32
In Warren county, Mississippi, near Vicksburg,
is a plantation which belongs to Joseph Davis, the'
brother of the rebel President. This he has leased
to Mr. Montgomery— once his slave— in order that
an association of blacks may be formed to cultivate
the plantation on co-operative principles. It is to
be managed by a council, to be elected by the com-
munity at large, and a voluntary poor-rate and
embankment rate are to be levied on the people by
themselves.
It is only a year since the termination of the war,
and the negroes are akeady in possession of schools,'
village corporations, of the Metayer system, of co-
operative farms ; all this tells of rapid advance, and
the conduct and circulation of the Neiv Orleans
Tribune, edited and published by negroes, and selling
10,000 copies daily, and another 10,000 of the weekly
issue, speaks well for the progress of the blacks. If
the Montgomery experiment succeeds, their future is
secure.
32 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
CHAPTER III.
THE SOUTH.
The political forecasts and opinions whicli were
given me upon plantations, wer i, in a great measure,
those indicated in my talk with the Norfolk " loafers."
On the history of the commencement of the rebel-
lion there was singular unanimity. " Virginia never
meant to quit the Union ; we were cheated by
those rascals of the South. When we did go out,
we were left to do all the fighting. Why, sir, IVe
seen a Mississippian division run away from a single
Yankee regiment."
As I heard much the same story from the North
Carolinans that I met, it would seem as though
there was little union among the seceding States.
The legend upon the first of all the secession flags
that were hoisted, was typical of this devotion to
the fortunes of the State : " Death to abolitionists ;
South Carolina goes it alone;" and during the whole
war, it was not the rebel colours, but the palmetto
emblem, or other State devices, that the ladies
wore.
About the war itself but little is said, though
here and there I met a man who would tell camp
1II.J THE SOUTH. 83
stories in the Northern style. One planter who had
been " out" himself, went so far as to say to me :
" Our officers were good, but considering that our
rank and file were just * white- trash,' and that they
had to fight regiments of New England Yankee
volunteers, with all their best blood in the ranks,
and AVestern sharpshooters together, it's only won-
derful how we weren't whipped sooner."
As for the future, the planter's policy is a simple
one : " Eeckon we're whipped, so we go in now for
the old flag ; only those Yankee rogues must give
us the control of our own people." The one result
of the war has been, as they believe, the abolition
of slavery ; otherwise the situation is unchanged.
The war is over, the doctrine of secession is allowed
to fall into the background, and the ex-rebels claim
to step once more into their former place, if, indeed,
they admit that they ever left it.
Every day that you are in the South, you come
more and more to see that the " mean whites " are
the controlling power. The landowners are not only
few in number, but their apathy during the present
crisis is surprising. The men who demand their
re-admission to the government of eleven States are
unkempt, fierce-eyed fellows, not one whit better
than the brancos of Brazil ; the very men, strangely
enough, who themselves, in their " Leavenworth
constitution," first began disfranchisement, declaring
that the qualification for electors in the new State
of Kansas should be the taking oath to uphold
the infamous Fugitive Slave Law.
VOL I. D
34 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
These "mean whites" were the men who brought
about secession. The planters are guiltless of every-
thing but criminal indifference to the acts that were
committed in their name. Secession was the act of a
.pack of noisy demagogues ; but a false idea of honour
brought round a majority of the Southern people,
.and the infection of enthusiasm carried over the
remainder.
When the war sprang up, the old Southern
contempt for the Yankees broke out into a fierce burst
of joy, that the day had come for paying off old
scores. " We hate them, sir," said an old planter to
me. " I wish to God that the Mayflower had sunk
with all hands in Plymouth Bay."
Along with this violence of language, there is a
singular kind of cringing to the conquerors. Time
after time I heard the complaint, " The Yankees treat
us shamefully, I reckon. We come back to the
Union, and give in on every point; we renounce
slavery ; we consent to forget the past ; and yet they
won't restore us to our rights." Whenever I came to
ask what they meant by "rights," I found the same
haziness that everywhere surrounds that word. The
Southerners seem to think that men may rebel and
fight to the death against their country, and then,
being beaten, lay down their arms and walk quietly
to the polls along with law-abiding citizens, secure in
the protection of the Constitution which for years
they had fought to subvert.
At Richmond I had a conversation which may
serve as a specimen of what one hears each moment
MI.] THE SOUTH. 85
from the planters. An old gentleman with whom I
was talking politics opened at me suddenly : " The
Radicals are going to give the ballot to our niggers
to strengthen their party, hut they know better than
to give it to their Northern niggers."
D. — " But surely there's a difference in the cases."
The Planter. — " You're right — there is ; but not
your way. The difference is, that the Northern
niggers can read and write, and even lie with
consistency, and ours can't."
D. — " But there's the wider difference, that negro
suffrage down here is a necessity, unless you are to
rule the country that's just beaten you."
. The Planter. — "Well, there of course we differ.
We rebs say we fought to take our States out of
the Union. The Yanks beat us ; so our States must
still be in the Union. If so, why shouldn't our
representatives be unconditionally admitted V
Nearer to a conclusion we of course did not come,
he declaring that no man ought to vote who had not
education enough to understand the Constitution, I
that this was good primd facie evidence against
letting him vote, but that it might be rebutted by the
proof of a higher necessity for his voting. As a
planter said to me, "The Southerners prefer soldier
rule to nigger rule ;" but it is not a question of what
they prefer, but of what course is necessary for the
safety of the Union which they fought to destroy.
Nowhere in the Southern States did I find any
expectation of a fresh rebellion. It is only English-
men who ask whether "the South" will not fight
D 2
86 OREATEB BRITAIN. [chap.
" once more." The South is dead and gone ; there
can never be a " South " again, but only so many
Southern States. "The South" meant simply the
slave country; and slavery being dead, it is dead.
Slavery gave but two classes besides the negroes —
planters and "mean whites." The great planters were
but a few thousand in number; they are gone to
Canada, England, Jamaica, California, Colorado, Texas.
The " mean whites " — the true South — are impossible
in the face of free labour : they must work or starve.
If they work, they will no longer be " mean whites,"
but essentially Northerners — that is, citizens of a de-
mocratic republic, and not oligarch! sts.
As the Southerners admit that there can be no fur-
ther war, it would be better even for themselves that
they should allow the sad record of their rising to
fade away. Their speeches, their newspapers, continue
to make use of language which nothing could excuse,
and which, in the face of the magnanimity of the
conquerors, is disgraceful. In a Mobile paper I have
seen a leader which describes with hideous minute-
ness Lincoln, Lane, John Brown, and Dostie playing
whist in hell. A Texas cutting which I have is less
blasphemous, but not less vile : " The English lan-
guage no longer affords terms in which to curse a
snivelling weazen-faced piece of humanity generally
denominated a Yankee, We see some about here
sometimes, but they skulk around, like sheep-killing
dogs, and associate mostly with niggers. They whine
and prate, and talk about the judgment of God, as if
God had anything to do with them," The Southerners
III.] THE SOUTH. 37
have not even the wit or grace to admit that the
men who beat them were good soldiers ; ** black-
guards and braggarts," "cravens and thieves," are
common names for the men of the Union army. I
have in my possession an Alabama paper in which
General Sheridan, at that time the commander of the
military division which included the State, is styled
" a short-tailed slimy tadpole of the later spawn,
the blathering disgrace of an honest father, an ever-
lasting libel on his Irish blood, the synonym of
inftimy. and «porn of all brave men." While I was
in Virginia, one of the Richmond papers said :
" This thing of 'loyalty' will not do for the Southern
man."
The very day that I landed in the South, a dinner
was given at Richmond by the " Greys " — a volun-
teer corps which had fought through the rebellion.
After the roll of honour, or list of men killed in
battle, had been read, there were given as toasts, by
rebel officers : " Jeff. Davis- the caged eagle ; the
bars confine his person, but his great spirit soars;"
and " The conquered banner, may its resurrection
at last be as bright and as glorious as theirs —
the dead."
It is in the face of such words as these that
Mr. JoLnson, the most unteachable of mortals, asks
men who have sacrificed their sons to restore the
Union, to admit the ex,-!Febels to a considerable
share in the government of the nation, even if
they are not to monopolize it. as they did before
the war. His conduct seems to need the Western
38 GREATER BRITAIN. s [chap.
editor's defence : " He must be kinder honest-like,
he aire sich a tarnation foolish critter."
It is clear from the occurrence of such dinners,
the publication of such paragraphs and leaders as
those of which I have spoken, that there is no mili-
tary tyranny existing in the South. The country is
indeed administered by military commanders, but it
is not ruled by troops. Before we can give ear to
the stories that are afloat in Europe of the " govern-
ment of major-generals," we must believe that five
millions of Englishmen inhabiting a country as large
as Europe are crushed down by some ten thousand
men — about as many as are needed to keep order
in the single town of Warsaw. The Southerners are
allowed to rule themselves ; the question now at
issue is merely whether they shall also rule their
former slaves, the negroes.
I hardly felt myself out of the reach of slavery
and rebellion till, steaming up the Potomac from
Acquia Creek by the grey dawn, I caught sight of a
grand pile towering over a city from a magnificent
situation on the brow of a long rolling hill. Just at
the moment, the sun, invisible as yet to us below,
struck the marble dome and cupola, and threw the
bright gilding into a golden blaze, till the Greek shape
.«ttood out upon the blue sky, glowing like a second
sun. The city was Washington ; the palace with the
burnished cupola, the Capitol ; and within two hours
I was present at the "hot- weather sitting" of the 39th
Congress of the United States.
IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 39
CHAPTER IV.
THE EMPIEE STATE.
At the far south-east of New York City, where the
Hudson and East River meet to form the inner bay, is
an ill-kept park that might be made the loveliest
garden in the world. Nowhere do the features that
have caused New York to take rank as the first
port of America stand forth more clearly. The soft
evening breeze tells of a climate as good as the world
can show ; the setting sun floods with light a harbour
secure and vast, formed by the confluence of noble
streams, and girt with quays at which huge ships
jostle; the rows of 500-pounder Rodmans at "The
Narrows" are tokens of the nation's strength and
wealth ; and the yachts, as well handled as our own,
racing into port from an ocean regatta, give evidence
that there are Saxons in the land. At the back is the
city, teeming with life, humming with trade, mutter-
ing with the thunder of passage. Opposite, in Jersey
City, people say : " Every New Yorker has come a
good half-hour late into the world, and is trying all
his life to make it up." The bustle is immense.
All is so un-English, so foreign, that hearing men
speaking what Czar Nicholas was used to call "the
40 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
American tongue," I wlieel round, crying — "Dear
me ! if here are not some English folk ! " astonished
as though I had heard French in Australia or Italian
in Timbuctoo.
The Englishman who, coming to America, expects
to find cities that smell of home, soon learns that
Baker Street itself, or Portland Place, would not look
English in the dry air of a continent four thousand
miles across. New York, however, is still less English
than is Boston, Philadelphia, or Chicago — her people
are as little Saxon as her streets. Once Southern,
^j/itli the brand of slavery deeply printed in the fore-
lleads of her foremost men, since the defeat of the
i|ibellion New York has to the eye been cosmopolitan
aj any city of the Levant. All nationless towns are
not /like : Alexandria has a Greek or an Italian
tinge ; San Francisco an English tone, with some-
thing of the heartiness of our Elizabethan times ;
New York has a deep Latin shade, and the democracy
of the empire-state is of the French, not of the
American or English type.
At the back, here, on the city side, are tall gaunt
houses, painted red, like those of the quay at Dort
or of the Boompjes at Rotterdam, the former dwell-
ings of the " Knickerbockers" of New Amsterdam,
the founders of New York, but now forgotten. There
may be a few square yards of painting, red or blue,
upon the houses in Broadway ; there may be here and
there a pagoda summer-house overhanging a canal ;
once in a year you may run across a worthy descendant
of the old Netherlandish families; but in the main
IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 41
the Hollanders in America are as though they had
never been ; to find the memorials of lost Dutch
empire, we must search Cape Colony or Ceylon. The
New York un-English tone is not Batavian. Neither
the sons of the men who once lived in these houses,
nor the Germans whose names are now upon the
doors, nor, for the matter of that, we English, who
claim New York as the second of our towns, are the
to-day's New Yorkers.
Here, on the water's edge, is a ricketty hall, where
Jenny Lind sang when first she landed — now the
spot where strangers of another kind are welcomed
to America. Every true republican has in his heart
the notion that his country is pointed out by God
for a refuge for the distressed of all the nations.
He has sprung himself from men who came to seek
a sanctuary — from the Quakers, or the Catholics, or
the pilgrims of the Mayflower. Even though they
come to take the bread from his mouth, or to destroy
his peace, it is his duty, he believes, to aid the
immigrants. Within the last twenty years there
have lauded at New York alone four million strangers.
Of these two-thirds were Irish.
While the Celtic men Are pouring into New York
and Boston, the New Englanders and New Yorkers,
too, are moving. They are not dying. Facts are
opposed to this portentous theory. They are going
west. The unrest of the Celt is mainly caused by
discontent with his country's present, that of the
Saxon by hope for his private future. The Irish-
man flies to New York because it lies away from
42 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Ireland ; the Englishman takes it upon his road to
California.
Where one race is dominant, immigrants of another
blood soon lose their nationality. In New York
and Boston the Irish continue to be Celts, for these
are Irish cities. In Pittsburg, in Chicago, still more
in the country districts, a few years make the veriest
Paddy English. On the other hand, the Saxons
are disappearing from the Atlantic cities, as the
Spaniards have gone from Mexico. The Irish here
are beating down the English, as the English have
crushed out the Dutch. The Hollander's descendants
in New York are English now ; it bids fair that
the Saxons should be Irish.
As it is, though the Celtic immigration has lasted
only twenty years, the results are already clear : if
you see a Saxon face upon the Broadway, you may
be sure it belongs to a traveller, or to some raw
English lad bound west, just landed from a Plymouth
ship. We need not lay much stress upon the fact
that all New Yorkers have black hair and beard :
men may be swarthy and yet English. The ances-
tors of the Londoners of to-day, we are told, were
yellow-headed roysterers ; yet not one man in fifty
that you meet in Fleet Street or on Tower Hill
is as fair as the average Saxon peasant. Doubt-
less, our English eastern counties were peopled in
the main by low-Dutch and Flemings : the Sussex
eyes and hair are rarely seen in Suiiblk. The
Puritans of New England are sprung from those of
the " associated countries," but the victors of Marston
IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 4^
Moor may have been cousins to those no less sturdy
Protestants, the Hollanders who defended Leyden.
It may be that they were our ancestors, those Dutch-
men that we English crowded out of New Amsterdam
— the very place where we are sharing the fate we
dealt. The fiery temper of the new people of the
American coast towns, their impatience for free
government, are better proofs of Celtic blood than
are the colour of their eyes and beard.
Year by year the towns grow more and more
intensely Irish. Abeady of every four births in
Boston, one only is American. There are 120,000
foreign to 70,000 native voters in New York and
Brooklyn. Montreal and Richmond are fast becomino-
Celtic ; Philadelphia — shades of Penn !— can only be
saved by the aid of its Bavarians. Saxon Protes-
tantism is departing with the Saxons : the revenues
of the empire-state are spent upon Catholic asylums ;
plots of city land are sold at nominp.! rates for
the sites of Catholic cathedrals, by the "city step-
fathers," ;is they are called. Not even in the West
does the Latin Church gain ground more rapidly
than in New York city : there are 80,000 professino-
Catholics in Boston.
When is this drama, of which the first scene is
played in Castle Gardens, to have its close ? The
matter is grave enough already. Ten years ago, the
third and fourth cities of the world, N w York and
Philadelphia, were as English as our London : the one
is Irish now; the other all but German. Not that the
Quaker city will remain Teutonic : the Germans, too,
44 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
are going out upon the land ; the Irish alone pour in
unceasingly. All great American towns will soon be
Celtic, while the country continues English : a fierce
and easily-roused people will throng the cities, while
the law-abiding Saxons who till the land will cease
to rule it. Our relations with America are matters
of small moment by the side of the one great ques-
tion : Who are the Americans to be ?
Our kinsmen are by no means blind to the dangers
that hang over them. The " know-nothing " move-
ment failed, but Protection speaks the same voice in
its opposition to commercial centres. If you ask a
Western man why he, whose interest is clearly in
Free Trade, should advocate Protection, he fires out :
*' Free Trade is good for our American pockets, but
it's death to us Americans. All your Bastiats and
Mills won't touch the fact that to us Free Trade
must mean salt-water despotism, and the ascendancy
of New York and Boston. Which is better for the
country — one New York, or ten contented Pittsburgs
and ten industrious Lowells?"
The danger to our race and to the world from
Irish ascendancy is perhaps less imminent than
that to the republic. In January 1862 the Mayor,
Fernando Wood, the elect of the "Mozart" demo-
cracy, deliberately proposed the secession from the
Union of New York City. Of all the Northern
States, New York alone was a dead weight upon the
the loyal people during the war of the rebellion.
The constituents of Wood were the very Fenians
whom in our ignorance we call "American," It is
IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 45
America that Fenianism invades from Ireland — not
England from America.
It is no unfair attack upon the Irish to represent
them as somewhat dangerous inhabitants for mighty
cities. Of the sixty thousand persons arrested yearly
in New York, three-fourths are alien born : two-thirds
of these are Irish. Nowhere else in all America are
the Celts at present masters of a city government —
nowhere is there such corruption. The purity of the
government of Melbourne — a city more democratic
than New York — proves that the fault does not
lie in democracy : it is the universal opinion of
Americans that the Irish are alone responsible.
The State legislature is falling into the hands 6f
the men who control the city council. Tliey tell a
story of a traveller on the Hudson Eiver Railroad,
who, as the train neared Albany — the capital of New
York — said to a somewhat gloomy neighbour, "Going
to the State legislatur ?" getting for answer, *'No,
sir I It's not come to that with me yet. Only to
the State prison V
Americans are never slow to ridicule the dena-
tionalization of New York. They tell you that
during the war the colonel of one of the city regi-
ments said : " I've the best blood of eight nations
in the ranks." " How's that V' " I've English, Irish,
Welsh, Scotch, French, Italians, Germans." "Guess
that's only seven." " Swedes," suggested some one.
" No, no Swedes," said the colonel. " Ah I I have
it : I've some Americans." Stories such as this the
rich New Yorkers are nothing loath to tell ; but
46 GREATER BRITAIN. Fciiap.
they take no steps to check the denationalization
they lament. Instead of entering upon a reform of
their municipal institutions, they affect to despise
free government ; instead of giving, as the oldest
New England families have done, their time to the
State schools, they keep entirely aloof from school
and State alike. Sending their boys to Cambridge,
Berlin, Heidelberg, anywhere rather than to the
colleges of their native land, they leave it to learned
pious Boston to supj^ly the West with teachers, and
to keep up Yale and Harvard. Indignant if they
are pointed at as "no Americans," they seem to
separate themselves from everything that is American :
they sj)end summers in England, winters in Algeria,
springs in Rome, and Coloradans say with a sneer,
" Good New-Yorkers go to Paris when they die."
Apart from nationality, there is danger to free
government with the growth of New York city, and
in the gigantic fortunes of New Yorkers. The in-
come, they tell me, of one of my merchant friends
is larger than the combined salaries of the Presi-
dent, the Governors, and the whole of the members
pf the legislatures of all the forty-five States and
•territories. As my informant said, " He could keep
;the governments of half-a-dozen States as easily as
I can support my half-dozen children."
There is something, no doubt, of the exaggeration
of political jealousy about the accounts of New
York vice given in New England and down South,
in the shape of terrible philippics. It is to be hoped
.that the over-statement is enormous, for sober men
jv.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 47
are to be found even in New York who will tell you
that this city outdoes Paris in every form of profli-
gacy as completely as the French capital outherods
imperial Eome. There is here no concealment about
•the matter ; each inhabitant at once admits the tmth
of accusations directed against his neighbour. If
the new-men, the " petroleum aristocracy," are second
to none in their denunciations of the Irish, these
in their turn unite with the oldest families in thun-
dering against " Shoddy."
New York life shows but badlv in the summer-
time ; it is seen at its worst when studied at Saratoga.
With ourselves, men have hardly ceased to run
from business and pleasures worse than toil to the
comparative quiet of the country house. Among
New Yorkers there is not even the affectation of a
search for rest ; the flight is from the drives and
restaurants of New York to the gambling halls of
Saratoga ; from winning piles of greenbacks to losing
heaps of gold ; from cotton gambling to roulette or
faro. Long Branch is still more "vulgar in its vice ;
it is the Margate, Saratoga the Homburg, of America.
" Shoddy " is blamed beyond what it deserves
when the follies of New York society are laid in a
body at its door. If it be true that the New York
drawing-rooms are the best guarded in the world,
it is also true that entrance is denied as rigidly
to intellect and eminence as to wealth. If exclu-
siveness be needed, affectation can at least do nothing
towards subduing "Shoddy." Mere cliqueism, dis-
gusting everywhere, is ridiculous in a democratic
48 GREATER BRITAIN, [chap.
town ; its rules of conduct are as out of place as kid
gloves in the New Zealand bush, or gold scabbards on
a battle-field.
Good meat, and drink, and air, give strength to
the men and beauty to the women of a moneyed class ;
but in America these things are the inheritance of
every boy and girl, and give their owners no
advantage in the world. During the rebellion, the
ablest generals and bravest soldiers of the North
sprang, not from the merchant ffimilies, but from the
farmer folk. Without special merit of some kind,
there can be no such thing as aristocracy.
Many American men and women, who have too
little nobility of soul to be patriots, and too little
understanding to see that theirs is already, in many
points, the master country of the globe, come f >
you, and bewail the fate which has caused them
to be born citizens of a republic, and dwellers in a
country where men call vices by their names. The
least educated of their countrymen, the only grossly
vulgar class that America brings forth, they fly to
Europe " to escape democracy," and pass their lives
in Paris, Pau, or Nice, living libels on the country
they are believed to represent.
Out of these discordant elements, Cubans, Knicker-
bockers, Germans, Irish, " first families," " Petroleum,"
and " Shoddy," we are forced to construct our compo-
site idea — Nuw York. The Irish numerically predomi-
nate, but we have no experience as to what should
be the moral features of an Irish city, for Dublin
has always been in English hands ; possibly that
IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 49
which in Now York appears to be cosmopolitan
is merely Celtic. However it may be, this much
is clear, that the humblest township of New England
reflects more truly the America of the past, the
most chaotic village of Nebraska portrays more fully
the hopes and tendencies of the America of the future,
than do this huge State and city. •
If the political figure of New York is not encou-
raging, its natural beauty is singularly great. Those
who say that America has no scenery, forget the
Hudson, while they can never have explored Lake
George, Lake Charaplain, and the Mohawk. That
Poole's exquisite scene from the " Decameron," " Phi-
lomela's Song," could have been realized on earth
I never dreamt until I saw the singers at a New
Yorker's villa on the Hudson grouped in the deep
shades of a glen, from which there was an outlook
upon the basaltic palisades and lake-like Tappan
Zee. It was in some such spot that De Tocqueville
wrote the brightest of his brilliant letters — that
dated " Sing Sing" — for he speaks of himself ^.3 lying
on a hill that overhung the Hudson, watching the
white sails gleaming in the hot sun, and trying in
vain to fancy what became of the river where it
disappeared in the blue " Highlands."
■ That New York City itself is full of beauty the
view from Castle Garden would suflS.ce to show ; and
by night it is not less lovely than by day. The
harbour is illuminated by the coloured lanterns of a
thousand boats, and the steam-whistles tell of a life
that never sleeps. The paddles of steamers seem not
VOL. I. E
50 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
only to beat the water, but to stir the languid air and
so provoke a breeze, and the lime-lights at the Fulton
and Wall Street ferries burn so brightly that in the
warm glare the eye reaches through the still night
to the feathery acacias in the streets of Brooklyn. The
view is as southern as the people : we have not yet
found America.
v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 51
CHAPTER V.
CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT.
" Old Cambridge ! Long may she flourish ! " pro-
posed by a professor in the University of Cambridge,
in America, and drunk standing, with three cheers,'
by the graduates and undergraduates of Harvard, is
a toast that sets one thinkino-.
Cambridge in America is not by any means a
University of to-day. Harvard College, which, being
the only "house," has engrossed the privileges^
funds, and titles of the University, was founded at
Cambridge, Mass., in 1636, only ninety years later
than the greatest and wealthiest college of our
Cambridge in old England. Puritan Harvard was
the sister rather than the daughter of our own
Puritan Emmanuel. Harvard himself, and Dunster,
the first president of Harvard's College, were among
the earliest of the scholars of Emmanuel.
A toast from the Cambridge of new to the Cam-
bridge of old England is one from younger to elder
sister; and Dr. Wendell Holmes, "The Autocrat," said
as much in proposing it at the Harvard alumni
celebration of 1866.
E 2
52 GREATER BRITAIN. [ch>p.
Like other old institutions, Harvard needs a
ten-days' revolution : academic abuses flourish as
luxuriantly upon American as on English soil, and
University difiiculties are much the same in either
country. Here, as at home, the coror)laint is, that
the men come up to the Ur^versity untaught. To
all of them their college is forced for a time to play
the high-school ; to some she is never anything more
than school. At Harvard this is worse than with
ourselves : the average age of entry, though of late
much risen, is still considerably under eighteen.
The college is now aiming at raising gradually the
standard of entry : when once all are excluded save
men, and thinking men, real students, such as those
by whom some of the new Western Universities are
attended, then Harvard hopes to leave drill-teaching
entirely to the schools, and to permit the widest
freedom in the choice of studies to her students.
Harvard is not blameless in this matter. Like
other Universities, she is conservative of bad things
as well as good ; indeed, ten minutes within her walls
would suffice to convince even an Englishman thai
Harvard clings to the times before the Revolution.
Her conservatism is shown in many trivial things
— in the dress of her janitors and porters, in the cut
of the grass-plots and college gates, in the conduct of
the Commencement orations in the chapel. For the
dainty little dames from Boston who came to hear
their friends and brothers recite their disquisitions
none but Latin programmes were provided, and the
poor ladies were condemned to find such names as
V.J CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 53
Bush, Maurice, 7>njamin, Humphrey, and Underwood
among the graduating youths, distorted into Bvsh,
Mavritivs, Beniamin, Hvmphredvs, Vnderwood.
This conservatism of the New England Universities
had just received a sharp attack. In the Commence-
ment oration. Dr. Hedges, one of the leaders of the
Unitarian Church, had strongly pressed the necessity
for a complete freedom of study after entry, a liberty
to take up what line the student would, to be examined
and to graduate in what he chose. He had instanced
the success of Michigan Uni'^^ersity consequent upon
the adoption of this plan ; he had pointed to the fact
that of all the universities in America, Michigan alone
drew her students from every State. President Hill
and ex-President Walker had endorsed his views.
There is a special fitness in the reformers coming
forward at this time. This year is the commencement
of a new era at Harvard, for at the request of the
college staff, the connexion of the University with the
commonwealth of Massachusetts has just been dis-
solved, and the members of the board of overseers
are in future to be elected by the University, instead
of nominated by the State. This being so, the
question had been raised as to whether the Governor
would come in state to Commencement, but he yielded
to the wishes of the graduates, and came with the
traditional pomp, attended by a alafF in uniform,
and escorted by a troop of Volunteer Lancers, whose
scarlet coats and polished hats recalled the times
before the Revolution.
While the ceremony was still in progress, I had
64 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
been introduced to several of the foremost rowing
men among the younger graduates of Harvard, and
at its conclusion I accompanied them to their river.
They were in strict training for their University race
with Yale, which was to come off in a week, and as
Cambridge had been beaten twice running, and this
year had a better crew, they were wishful for
criticisms on their style. Such an opinion as a
stranger could offer was soon given ; they were
dashing, fast, long in their stroke ; strong, considering
their light weights, but terribly overworked. They
have taken for a rule the old English notions as to
training which have long since disappeared at home,
and, looked upon as fanatics by their friends and
tutors, they have all the fanatic's excess of zeal.
Rowing and other athletics, with the exceptions of
skating and base-ball, are both neglected and despised
in America. When the smallest sign of a rea:i:ion
appears in the New England colleges, there comes
at once a cry from Boston that brains are being
postponed to brawn. If New Englanders would look
about them, they would see that their climate has of
itself developed brains at the expense of brawn, and
that, if national degeneracy is to be long prevented,
brawn must in some way be fostered. The high
shoulder, head-voice, and pallor of the Boston men are
not incompatible with the possession of the most
powerful brain, the keenest wit ; but it is not probable
that energy and talent vdll be continued in future
generations sprung from the worn-out men and
women of to-day.
v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 55
The prospect at present is not briglit ; year by year
Americans grow thinner, lighter, and shorter-lived.
iElian's Americans, we may remember, though they
were greatly superior to the Greeks in stature, were
inferior to them in length of life. The women show
even greater signs of weakness than the men, and the
high, undulating tones which are affectation in the
French are natural to the ladies of America; little
can be expected of women whose only exercise is
excessive dancing in over-heated rooms.
The American summer, often tropical in its heat,
has much to answer for, but it is the winter which
makes the saddest havoc among the younger people,
and the boys and girls at school. Cooped up all day
in the close air of the heated school-house, the poor
children are at night made to run straight back to the
furnace-dried atmosphere of home. The thermometer
is commonly raised indoors to 80 or 90 degrees
Fahr. The child is not only baked into paleness
and sweated bit by bit to its death, but fed meantime,
out of mistaken kindness, uj)on the most indigestible
of dainties — pastry, hot dough-nuts, and sweetmeats
taking the place of bread, and milk, and meat — and is
not allowed to take the slightest exercise, except its
daily run to school-house. Who can wonder that
spinal diseases should prevail ?
One reason why Americans are pale and agueish is
that, as a people, they are hewers of primeval forest
and tillers of virgin soil. These are the unhealthiest
employments in the world ; the sun darts down upon
the hitherto unreached mould, and sets free malarious
56 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
gases, against which the new settlers have no
antidotes.
The rowing men of Harvard tell me that their
clubs are still looked on somewhat coldly by the
majority of the professors, who obstinately refuse to
see that improved physical type is not an end, but a
means, towards improvement of the mental faculties,
if not in the present, at least in the next generation.
As for the moral training in the virtues of obedience
and command, for which a boat's crew is the best of
schools, that is not yet understood at Harvard, where
rowing is confined to the half-dozen men who are to
represent the college in the annual race, and the throe
or four more who are being trained to succeed them
in the crew. Eowing in America is what it was till
ten years since at old Cambridge, and is still at
Oxford — not an exercise for the majority of the
students, but a pursuit for a small number. Physical
culture is, however, said to be making some small
progress in the older States, and I myself saw signs of
the tendency in Philadelphia. The war has done
some good in this respect, and so has the influx of
(;)anadians to Chicago. Cricket is stQl almost an
unknown thing, except in some few cities. When I
was coming in to Baltimore by train, we passed a
meadow in which a match was being played. A
Southerner to whom 1 was talking at the time, looked
at the players, and said with surprise : " Reckon
they've got a wounded man ther', front o' them
sticks, sah." I found that he meant the bai;sman,
who was wearing pads.
v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 57
One of the most brilliant of Harvard's thinkers has
taken to carpentering as a relief to his mental toil ;
her most famed professor is often to be found working
in his garden or his farm ; but such change of work
for work is possible only to certain mer The gene-
rality of Americans need not only exercise, but
relaxation ; still, with less physical, they possess
greater mental vitality than ourselves.
On the day that follows Commencement — the chief
ceremony of the academic year — is held once in three
summers the " Alumni Celebration," or meeting of
the past graduates of Harvard — a touching gathering
at all times, but peculiarly so in these times that
follow on the losses of the war.
The American college informal organizations rest
upon the unit of the " class." The " class" is what
at Cambridge is called "men of the same year," —
men who enter together and graduate together at
the end of the regular course. Each class of a large
New England college, such as Harvard, will often
possess an association of its own ; its members will
dine together once in five years, or ten — men re-
turning from Europe and from the Far West to be
present at the gathering.
Harvard is strong in the affections of the New
England people — her faults are theirs ; they love her
for them, and keep her advantages to themselves,
for in the whole list of graduates for this year I
could find only two Irish names.
Here, at the Alumni Celebration, a procession was
marshalled in the library in which the order was by
58 OREATEB BRITAIN. [chap.
classes ; the oldest class of which there were living
members being the first. "Class of 1797!" and
two old white-haired gentlemen tottered from the
crowd, and started on their march down the central
aisle, and out bareheaded into the blaze of one of
the hottest days that America had ever known.
"Class of 1800!" missing two years, in which all
the graduates were di;ad ; and out came one, the
sole survivor. Then came " 1803," and so on, to
the stalwart company of the present year. When
the classes of 1859 and 1860, and of the war-years
Avere called, those who marched out showed many
an empty sleeve.
The present triennial celebration is noteworthy
not only for the efforts of the University reformers,
but also for the foundation of the Memorial Hall
dedicated as a monument to those sons of Harvard
who fell while serving their country in the sup-
pression of the late rebellion. The purity of their
patriotism hardly needed illustration by the fire of
young Everett, the graceful speech of Dr. Holmes.
Even the splendid oratory of Governor Bullock could
do little more than force us to read for ourselves
the Roll of Honour, and see how many of Harvard's
most distinguished younger men died for their
country as privates of Massachusetts Volunteers.
There was a time, as England knows, when the
thinking men of Boston, and the Cambridge pro-
fessors, Emerson, Russell Lowell, Asa Gray, and a
dozen more of almost equal fame, morally seceded from
their country's councils, and were followed in their
V.J CAMBRlDaE CJMMEXCEMEX1\ ji)
secession by the yoiiiigvr men. " The best men in
America stand aloof from politics," it was said.
The country from which these men seceded was
not the America of to-day : it was tlic union which
South Carolina ruled. From it the Cambridge pro-
fessors " cme out," not because they feared to vex
their nerves with the shock of public argument and
action, but because the course of the slaveholders
was not their course. Hating the wrongs they saw
but could not remedy, they separated themselves
from the wrong-doers; — another matter, this, from
the " hating hatred " of our culture class in England.
In 1863 and 1864, there came the reckoning.
When America was first brought to see the things
that had been done in her name, and at her cost, and,
rising in her hitherto unknown strength, struck the
noblest blow for freedom that the world has seen, the
men who had been urging on the movement from
without at once re-entered the national ranks, and
marched to victory. Of the men who sat beneath
Longfellow, and Agassiz, and Emerson, whole batta-
lions went forth to war. From Oberlin almost every
male student and professor marched, and the university
teaching was left in the women's hands. Out of
8,000 school teachers in Pennsylvania, of whom 300
alone were draughted, 3,000 volunteered for the war.
Everywhere the teachers and their students were
foremost among the Volunteers, and from that time
forward America and her thinkers were at one.
The fierce passions of this day of wakening have not
been suflfered to disturb the quiet of the academic
60 GEE A TEE BEITATN. [chap.
town. Our Engliah universities have not about tlicni
the classic repose, the air of study, that Ix'long to
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Those who have seen the
hmes of Leyden, and compared them with the noisy
Oxford High Street, will understand what I mean
when I say that our Cambridge comes nearest to her
daughter-town ; but even the English Cambridge has
a bustling street or two, and a weekly market-day,
while Cambridge in New England is one great
academic grove, buried in the philosophic calm which
our university towns can never rival so long as men
resort to them for other purposes than work.
It is not only in the Harvard precincts that the old-
ness of New England is to be remarked. Although her
people are everywhere in the vanguard of all progress,
their country has a look of gable-ends and steeple-hats,
while their laws seem fresh from the hands of Alfred.
In all England there is no city which has suburbs so
gray and venerable as are the elm-shaded towns round
Boston : — Dorchester, Chelsea, Nahant, and Salem,
each seems more ancient than its fellow ; the people
speak the English of Elizabeth, and joke about us,
" — — speaks good English for an Englishman."
In the country districts, the winsome villages that
nestle in the deUs seem to have been there for ten
A
centuries at least ; and it gives one a shock to light on
such a spot as Bloody Brook, and to be told that only
one hundred and ninety years ago Captain Lathrop
was slain there by Red Indians, with eighty youths,
" the flower of Essex county," as the Puritan history
says.
▼.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 61
The warnings of Dr. Hedges, in reference to tiie
strides of Michigan, have taken the New Englanders
by surprise. Secure, as they believed, in their intel-
lectual supremacy, they forgot that in a federal union
the moral and physical primacy will generally both
reside in the same State. The commonwealth of Mas-
sachusetts, at one time the foremost upholder of the
doctrine of State rights, will soon be seen once more
acting as its champion — this time on behalf of herself
and her five sister States.
Were the six New England commonwealths grouped
together into a single State, it would still have only
three-fourths of the population of New York, and
about an equal number of inhabitants with Pennsyl-
vania. The State of Rhode Island is one-fourth the
size of many a single Californian county. Such facts
as these will not be long lost sight of in the West, and
when a difference of interests springs up, Ohio will
not suffer her voice in the senate to continue to be
neutralised by that of Connecticut or Rhode Island.
Even if the senate be allowed to remain untouched, it
is certain that the redistribution of seats consequent
upon the census of 1870 will completely transfer
political power to the central States. That New Eng-
land will by this change inevitably lose her hold upon
the destinies of the whole If^nion is not so clear. The
influence for good of New England upon the West has
been chiefly seminal ; but not for that the less enor-
mous. Go into a State such as Michigan, where half
the people are immigrants — where, of ube remaining
moiety, the greater part are born Westerners, and
62 BEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
apparently in no way of New England — and you will
find that tlie inhabitants are for the most part earnest,
God-fearing men, with a New England tone of pro-
found manliness and conviction running through
everything they say and do. The colleges in which
they have been reared are directed, you will find, l)y
New England professors, men reared in the classic
schools of Harvard, Yale, or Amherst ; the ministers
under whom they sit are, for the most part, Boston
men ; the books they read are of New England, or
old English of the class from which the writers of the
Puritan States themselves have drawn their inspira-
tion. To New England is chiefly due, in short, the
making of America a godly nation.
It is something in this age to come across a people
who believe strongly in anything, and consistently
act upon their beliefs : the new Englanders are such
a race. Thoroughly God-fearing States are not so
common that we can afibrd to despise them when
found ; and nowhere does religion enter more into
daily life than in Vermont or Massachusetts.
The States of the Union owe so huge a debt of
gratitude to New England, that on this score alone
they may refrain from touching her with sacrilegious
hands. Not to name her previous sacrifices, the single
little State of Massachusetts — one-fourth the size of
Scotland, and but half as populous as Paris— sent
during the rebellion a hundred and fifty regiments
to the field.
It was to Boston that Lincoln telegraphed when,
in 1861, at a minute's notice, he needed men for
V.J CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 63
the defence of Washington. So entirely were South-
erners of the opinion that the New Englanders were
the true supporters of the old flag, that " Yankee"
became a general term for loyali^ , s of any State.
America can never forget the steady heroism of
New England during the great struggle for national
existence.
The unity that has been the chief cause of the
strength of the New England influence is in some
measure sprung from the fact that these six States
are completely shut off" from all America by the
single State of New York, alien from them in
political and moral life. Every Yankee feels his
country bounded by the British, the Irish, and
the sea.
In addition to the homogeneousness of isolation,
the New Englanders, like the Northern Scotch, have
the advantages of a bad climate and a miserable soil.
These have been the true agents in the development
of the energy, the skill, and fortitude of the Yankee
people. In the war, for instance, it was plain that
the children of the poor and ragged North-Eastern
States were not the men to be beaten by the lotus-
eaters of Louisiana when they were doing battle for
what they believed to be a religious cause.
One effect of the poverty of soil with which New
England is afflicted has been that her sons have
wandered from end to end of the known world,
engaged in every trade, and succeeding in all. Some-
times there is in their migrations a religious side.
Mormonism, although it now draws its forces from
64 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Great Britain, was founded in New England. At
Brindisi, on my way home, I met three Yankees
returning from a Maine colony lately founded at
Jaffa, in expectation of the fulfilment of prophecy,
and destruction of the Mohamedan rule. For the
moment they are intriguing for a firman from the
very Government upon the coming fall of which
all their expectations have been based ; and these
fierce fanatics are making money by managing an
hotel. One of them told me that the Jafia colony
is a " religio-commercial speculation."
New England Yankees are not always so filled
with the Puritan spirit as to reject unlawful means
of money-making. Even the Massachusetts common
schools and prim Connecticut meeting-houses turn
out their black sheep into the world. At Centre
Harbour, in New Hampshire, I met with an example
of the "Yankee spawn" in a Maine man — a shrewd,
sailor-looking fellow. He was sitting next me at the
table-d'h6te, and asked me to take a glass of his
champagne. I declined, but chatted, and let out
that I was a Britisher.
"I was subject to your Government once for
sixteen months," my neighbour said.
"Keally! Where?"
"Sierra Leone. I was a prisoner there. And
very lucky too."
"Why so?" I asked.
" Because, if the American Government had caught
me, they would have hanged me for a pirate. But
I wasn't a pirate."
v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 65
With over great energy I struck in, " Of course
not."
My Neighbour.— *' No ; I wets a slaver:'
Idling among the hills of New Hampshire and the
lakes of Maine, it is impossible for a stranger starting
free from prejudice, not to end by loving the pious
people of New England, for he will see that there
could be no severer blow to the cause of freedom
throughout the world than the loss by them of an
influence upon American life and thought which has
been one of unmixed good. Still, New England is
not America.
VOL. I. J,
66 G BEAT ER BRITAIN. [chap.
CHAPTER VL •
CANADA.
There is not in the world a nobler outlook than that
from off the terrace it Quebec. You stand upon a
rock overhanging city and river, and look down
upon the guardship's masts. Acre upon acre of
timber comes floating down the stream above the city,
the Canadian songs just reaching you upon the
heights; and beneath you are fleets of great ships,
English, German, French, and Dutch, embarking the
timber from the floating-docks. The Stars and Stripes
are nowhere to be seen. Such are the distances in
North America, that here, farther from the sea than
is any city in Europe west of Moscow, we have a
seajjort town, with gunboat and three-decker ; morning
and evening guns, and bars oi " God save the Queen,"
to mark the opening and closing of the port.
The St. Lawrence runs in a chasm in a flat table-
land, through which some earlier Niagara seems to
have cut for it a way. Some of the tributaries are
in sight, all falling from a clifl" into the deep still
river. In the distance, seawards, a silver ribbon on
the rock represents the grand falls of Montmorenci.
Long villages of white tiny cots straggle along the
VI.] CANADA. 67
roads that radiate from the city ; the great bhick
cross of the French parish church showing reverently
from all.
On the north, the eye reaches to the rugged outlines
of the Laurentian range, composed of the oldest moun-
tains in the world, at the foot of which is Lake St.
Charles, full of fiord-like northern beauty, where at
a later time I learnt to paddle the Indian canoe of
birch bark.
Leaving the citadel, we are at once in the Euro-
pean middle ages. Gates and posterns, cranky steps
that lead up to lofty gabled houses, with sharp French
roofs of burnished tin, like those of Liege ; processions
of the Host ; altars decked with flowers ; statues of
the Virgin ; sabots ; blouses ; and the scarlet of the
British linesmen — all these are seen in narrow streets
and markets, that are graced with many a Cotentin
lace cap, and all within forty miles of the down-east
Yrxikee State of Maine. It is not far from New
England to old France.
Quebec Lower Town is very like St. Peter Port in
Guernsey. Norman-French inhabitants, guarded by
British troops, step-built streets, thronged fruit-
market, and citadel upon a rock, frowning down upon
the quays, are alike in each. A slight knowledge
of the Upper Normandy patois is not without its
use ; it procured me an offer of a pinch of snuif from
an old hahitante on board one of the river boats.
Her gesture was worthy of the ancien regime.
There has ])een no dying-out of the race among
the French Canadians. They number twenty times
F 2
68 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
the thousands that they did a hundred years ago.
The American soil has left their physical type,
religion, language, laws, and habits absolutely un-
touched. They herd together in their rambling
villages, dance to the fiddle after mass on Sundays, as
gaily as once did their Norman sires, and keep up
the fleur-de-lys and the memory of Montcalm. More
French than the French are the Lower Canadian
hdhitants.
Not only here, but everywhere, a French " depen-
dency " is France transported ; not a double of the
France of to-day, but a mummy of the France of the
time of the " colony's " foundation. In Saigon, you
find Imperial France ; here the France of Louis
Quatorze. The Englishman founds everywhere a New
England — new in thought as in soil ; the Frenchman
carries with him to California, to Japt.n, an undying-
recollection of the Palais Royal. In San Francisco
there lives a great French capitalist, who, since
184.9, has been the originator of every successful
Californian speculation. He cannot speak a word of
English, and his greatest pleasure, in a country of
fruits and wine, is to bid his old French servant
assure him, upon honour, that his whole dessert, from
his claret to his olives, has been brought for him
from France. There is much in the colonizing
instinct of our race, but something, perhaps, in the
consideration that the English are hardly happy
enough at home to be always looking back to what
they have left in the old country.
There is about this old France something of Dutch
VI.] CANADA. 69
sleepiness and content. There is, indeed, some bustle
in the market-place, where the grand old dames in
snowy caps sit selling plums and pears ; there is much
singing made over the lading of the timl^er ships ;
there are rafts in hundreds gliding down the river;
old French carts in dozens, creaking and wheezing on
their lumbering way to town, with much clacking of
whips and clappering of wooden shoes. All these things
there are, but then there are these and more in Dol,
and Quimper, and Morlaix — in all those towns which
in Europe come nearest to old France. There is quiet
bustle, subdued trade, prosperity deep, not noisy ; but
the life is sleepy ; tl^j rafts float, and are not tugged
nor rowed ; the old Norman horses seem to draw the
still older carts without an effort, and the very boys
wear noisy shoes against their will, and make a clatter
simply because they cannot help it.
In such a scene it is impossible to forget that
British troops are here employed as guardians of the
only true French colony in the world against the in-
roads of the English race. *' Nos institutions, notrc
langue, nos lois," is the motto of the habitants. Their
newspapers are filled with church celebrations, village
fetes, speeches of " M. le Curd " at the harvest home,
announcements by the " scherif," speech of M. dirtier
at the consecration of MouLcigneur Laroque, blessings
of bells, of ships ; but of life, nothing — of mention
of what is passing in America, not a word. Ons
corner is given to the world outside America :
" Emprunt Pontifical, Emission Americaine, ciuatrc
milliona de piastres," heads a solid column of holy
70 GREATER BHITAIN. [chap.
fimmce. The pulse-beat of the Continent finds no
echo here.
It is not only in political affairs that there is a want
of energy in French or Lower Canada : in journeying
from Portland to Quebec, the moment the frontier was
passed, we seemed to have come from a land of life to
one of death. No more bustling villages, no more
keen-eyed farmers : a fog of unenterprise hung over
the land ; roads were wanting, houses rude, swamps
undrained, fields unweeded, jjlains untilled.
If the eastern townships and country round Quebec
are a wilderness, they are not a desert. The country
on the Saguenay is both. At Quebec in summer it is
hot — mosquitoes are not unknown : even at Tadousac,
where the Saguenay flows into ' e St. Lawrence, there
is suidight as strong as that of Paris. Once in the
northern river, all is cold, gloomy, arctic — no house,
no boat, no sign of man's existence, no beasts, no
birds, although the St. Lawrence swarms with duck
and loons. The river is a straight, cold, black fiord,
waUed-in by tremendous cliffs, which go sheer down
into depths to which their height above water is a?
nothing ; two walls of rock, and a path of ice-cold,
inky water. Fish there are, seal and salmon — that is
all. The ''whales and porpoises," which are advertised
by the Tadousac folk as certain to "disport them-
selves daily in front of the hotel," are never to be seen
in this earth-crack of the Saguenay.
The cold for summer was intense ; nowhere in the
world does the limit of ever-frozen ground come so fc.r
south as in the longitude of thi- Saguenay. AX> night
VI.] CANADA. 71
we had a wonderful display of northern lights. A
white column, towering to the mid-skies, rose, died
away, and was succeeded by broad white clouds,
stretching from east to west, and sending streamers
northwards. Suddenly there shot up three fresh
silvery columns in the north, north-west, and north-
east, on which all the colours of the rainbow danced
and played. After r^oonrise, the whole seemed
gradually to fade away.
At Ha Ha Bay, the head of navigation, I found a
fur-buying station of the Hudson's Bay Company ;
but that association has enough to answer for without
being charged with the desolation of the Saguenay.
The company has not here, as upon the Red River,
sacrificed colonists to minks and silver-foxes. There
is something more blighting than a monopoly that
oppresses Lower Canada. As I returned to Quebec,
the boat that I was aboard touched at St. Paschal, now
called Riviere du Loup, the St. Lawrence terminus
of the Grand Trunk line : we found there immense
wharves, and plenty of bells and crosses, but not a
single ship, great or small. Even in Virginia I had
seen nothing more disheartening.
North of the St. Lawrence, religion is made to play
as active a part in politics as in the landscape.
Lower Canada, as we have seen, is French and
Catholic; Upper Canada is Scotch and Presbyterian,
though the Episcopalians are strong in wealth and the
Irish Catholics in numbers.
Had the Catholics been united, they might, since
the fusion of the two Canadas, have governed the
72 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
whole country : as it is, the Irish and French neither
worship nor vote together, and of late the Scotch have
had nearly their own way.
Finding themselves steadily losing ground, the
French threw in their lot with the scheme for the
confederation of the provinces, and their clergy took
up the cause with a zeal which they justified to their
flocks by pointing out that the alternative was annex-
ation to America, and possible confiscation of the
Church lands.
Confederation of the provinces means separation of
the Canadas, which regain each its Parliament; and
the Frencii Catholics begin to hope that the Irish of
Upper Canada, now that they arc less completely
overshaded by the more numerous French, will again
act with their co-religionists : the Catholic vote in the
new confederation will be nearly half the whole. In
Toronto, however, the Fenians are strong, and even in
Montreal their presence is not unknown : it is a
question whether the whole of the Canadian Irish are
not disaficcted. The Irish of the chief city have their
Irish priests, their cathedral of St. Patrick, while the
Frencli have theirs upon the Place d'Armes. The
want of union may save the dominion from the
establishment of Catholicism as a State Church.
The confederation of our provinces was necessary,
if British Nortl) America was to have a chance for
life ; but it cannot be said to be accomplished while
British Columbia and the Ecd River tract are not
included. To give Canada an outlet on one side
is something, but communication with the Atlantic is
VI.] CANADA. 73
a small matter by tlic side of communication at once
with Atlantic and Pacific through British territory.
We shall soon have railways from Halifax to Lake
Superior, and thence to the Pacific is hut 1,600 miles.
It is true that the line is far north, and exposed to
heavy snows and bitter cold ; but, on the other hand,
it is well supplied with wood, and, if it possess no such
fertile tracts as that of Kansas and Colorado, it at
least escapes the frightful wilds of Bitter Creek and
Mirage Plains.
We are now even left in doubt how long we shall
continue to possess so much as a route across the
continent on paper. Since the cession of Russian
America to the United States, a map of North
America has been published in which the name of the
Great Republic sprawls across the continent from
Behring's Straits to Mexico, with the "E" in "United"
ominously near Vancouver's Island, and the "T"
actually planted upon British territory. If we take
up the British Columbian, we find the citizens of the
main-land portion of the province proposing to sell
the island for twenty million dollars to the States.
Settled chiefly by Americans from Oregon and
California, and situated, for parposes of reinforce-
ment, immigration, and supply, at a distance of not
less than twenty thousand miles from home, the
British Pacific colonies can hardly be considered
strong in their allegiance to the Crown : we have here
the reductio ad ahsurdum of home government.
Our hindering trade by tolerating the presence
of two sets of custom-houses and two sets of coins
74 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
between Halifax ; nd Lake Superior, was less absurd
than our altogether preventing its existence now.
Under a so-called Confederation of our American
possessions, we have left a country the size of civilized
Europe, and nearly as large as the United States —
lying, too, upon the track of commerce and high
road to China — to be despotically governed by a
company of traders in skins and peltries, and to
remain as long as it so pleases them in the dead
stillness and desertion needed to ensure the presence
of fur-bearing beasts.
*'EedEiver" should be a second Minnesota, Halifax
a second Liverpool, Esquimault a second San Fran-
cisco ; but double government has done its work,
and the outposts of the line of trade are already in
American, not British hands. The gold mines of
Nova Scotia, the coal mines and forests of British
Columbia, are owned in New England and New
York, and the Californians are expecting the pro-
clamation of an American territorial government in
the capital of Vancouver's Island.
As Montana becomes peopled up, we shall hear of
the "colonization" of Red River by citizens of the
United States, such as preceded the hoisting of the
*lone star" in Texas, and the "bear flag" in Cali-
fornia, by Fremont ; and resistance by the Hudson's
\ Bay Company will neither be possible, nor, in the
interests of civilization, desirable.
Even supposing a great popular awakening upon
- Colonial questions, and the destruction of the Hudson's
Bay monopoly, we never could make the Canadian
vi.l CANADA. Tft
dominion strong. With the addition of Columliia
and Red River, British America would hardly be
as powerful or populous as the two north-western
States of Ohio and Illinois, or the single State of
New York — one out of forty-five. •' Help us for
ten years, and then we'll help ourselves," the Cana-
dians say ; *' help us to become ten millions, and
then we will stand alone ; " but this becoming ten
millions is not such an easy thing.
The ideas of most of us as to the size of the
British territories are derived from maps of North
America, made upon the navigator's projection, which
are grossly out in high latitudes, though correct at
the equator. The Canadas are made to appear at
least twice their proper size, and such gigantic pro-
portions are given to the northern parts of the Hudson
territory that we are tempted to believe that in a
co-*ntry so vast there must be some little value.
The true size is no more shown upon the map than is
the nine-months' winter.
To Upper Canada, which is no bad country, it
is not for lack of asking that population fails to
come. Admirably-executed gazettes give the fullest
information about the British possessions in the most
glowing of terms ; offices and agencies are established
in Liverpool, London, Cork, Londonderry, and a dozen
other cities ; Government immigration agents and
information-offices are to be found in every town in
Canada; the Government emigrant is looked after
in health, comfort, and religion ; directions of the
fullest kind are given him in t|ie matters of money,
76 . ORE ATE R BRITAIN. [chap.
clothes, tools, luggage ; Canada, he is told by the
Government pnpers, possesses perfect religious, poli-
tical, and social freedom ; British sul)jects step at once
into the possession of political rights ; the winter is
but bracing, the climate the healthiest in the world.
Millions of acres of surveyed Crown lands are con-
tinually in the market. To one who knows what
the northern forests are there is perhaps something
of satire in the statement that " there is generally
on Crown lands an unlimited supply of the best
fuel." What of that, however ? The intending emi-
grant knows nothing of the struggle with the woods,
and fuel is fuel in Old England. The mining of the
precious metals, the fisheries, petroleum, all are open
to the settler — let him but come. Reading these docu-
ments, we can only rub our eyes, and wonder how it is
that human selfishness allows the Canadian officials to
disclose the wonders of their El Dorado to the outer
world, and invite all men to share blessings which we
should have expected them to keep as a close preserve
for themselves and their nearest and dearest friends.
Taxation in the States, the immigrants are told,
is five and a half times what it is in Canada, two and
a half times the English rate. Labourers by the
thousand, merchants and farmers by the score, are
said to be flocking into Canada to avoid the taxation
of the Radicals. The average duration of life in
Canada is 37 per cent, higher than in the States.
Yet, in the face of all these facts, only twenty or two
and twenty thousand immigrants come to Canada for
three hundred thousand that flock annually to the
VI.] CANADA. 77
States, and of the former many thousands do but
pass through on their way to the Great We^t. Of
the twenty thousand who land at Quebec in each
year, but four and a half thousand remain a year in
Canada; and there are a quarter of a million of
persons bo^n in British America now naturalised in
the United States.
The passage of the immigrants to the Western States
is not for want of warning. The Canadian Govern-
ment advertise every Coloradan duel, every lynching
in Montana, every Opposition speech in Kansas, by
way of teaching the immigrants to respect the country
of which they are about to become free citizens.
It is an unfortunate fact, that these strange state-
ments are not harmless — not harmless to Canada, I
mean. The Provincial Government by these publi-
cations seems to confess to the world that Canada
can live only by running down the great republic.
Canadian sympathy for the rebellion tends to make
us think that the Northern statesmen must not only
share in our old-world confusion of the notions of
right and wrong, but must be sadly short-sighted
into the bargain. It is only by their position that
they arc blinded, for few countries have abler men
than Sir James Macdonald, or sounder statesmen than
Cartier or Gait ; but, like men standing on the edge
of a cliff, Canadian statesmen are always wanting to
jump off. Had Great Britain left them to their own
devices, we should have had war with America in the
spring of 1866.
The position of Canada is in many ways anomalous:
78 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
of the two chief sections of our race — that in Britain
an 1 that in America — the latter is again split in twain,
and one division governed from across the Atlantic.
For such government there is no pretext, except the
wishes of the governed, who gain by the connexion
men for their defence, and the opportunity of gratify-
ing their spite for their neighbours at our expense.
Those who ask why a connexion so one-sided, so
opposed to the best interests of our race, should be
suffered to continue, are answered, now that the
argument of "prestige" is given up, that the Canadians
are loyal, and that they hate the Americans, to whom,
were it not for us, they must inevitably fall. That
the Canadians hate the Americans can be no reason
why we should spend blood and treasure in protecting
them against the consequences of their hate. The
world should have passed the time when local dislikes
can be suffered to affect our policy towards the other
sections of our race ; but even were it otherwise, it is
hard to see how twelve thousand British troops, or a
royal standard hoisted at Ottawa, can protect a frontier
of two thousand miles in length from a nation of
five and thirty millions. Canada, perhaps, can defend
herself, but we most cei lainly cannot defend her : we
provoke much more than we assist.
As for Canadian " loyalty," it appears to consist
merely of hatred towards America, for while we were
fighting China and conquering the rulers of Japan,
that we might spread free trade, our loyal colonists
of Canada set upon our goods protective duties of
20 per cent, which they have now in some degree
V»0 ' CANADA. 70
reiroved, only that they may get into their hands
the smuggling trade carried on in breach of the laws
of our ally, their neighbour. We might, at least,
fairly insist that the connexion should cease, unless
Canada will entirely remove her deities.
At bottom, it would seem as though no one gained
by the retention of our hold on Canada. Were she
independent, her borders would never again be wasted
by Fenian hordes, and she would escape the terrible
danger of being the battle-field in which Eurooean
quarrels are fought out. Canada once republican^ the
Monroe doctrine would be satisfied, and its most
violent partisans would cease to advocate the adop-
tion of other than moral means to merge her territories
m the Union. An independent Canada would not
long delay the railway across the continent to Pucret
Sound, which a British bureau calls impossible
England would be relieved from the fear of a certain
defeat by America in the event of war-a fear always
harmful, even when war seems most unlikely ;— re-
lieved, too, from the cost of such panics as 'those
of 1861 and 1866*.
Did Canada stand alone, no ofi"enee that she could
give America would be likely to unite all sections
of that country in an attempt to conquer her ; while
on the other hand, such an attempt would be resisted
to the death by an armed and brave people, four
milhons strong. As it is, any off-ence towards
America committed by our agents, at any place or
tune, or arising out of the continual changes of policy
and of ministry in Great Britain, united to the stand-
80 GREATER BRITAIN. [ciiAr.
ing offence of maintaining the monarcliical principle
in North Ameiica, will bring uj)on unhappy Canada
the whole American nation, indignant in some cause,
just, or seeming just, and to be met by a people
deceived into putting their trust in a few regiments
of British troops, sufficient at the most to hold Quebec,
and to be backed by reinforcements which could
never come in time, did public opinion in Great
Britain so much as permit tbeir sailing.
On the other hand, in all history there is nothing
stranger than the narrowness of mind that has led us
to see in Canada a piece of England, and in America
a hostile country. There are more sons of British
subjects in America than in Canada, by far ; and the
American looks upon the old country with a pride that
cannot be shared by a man who looks to her to pay
his soldiers.
The independence of Canada would put an imme-
diate end to much of the American jealousy of Great
Britain — a consideration which of itself should out-
weigh any claim to protection which the Canadians
can have on us. The position which we have to set
before us in our external dealings is, that we are no
more fellow-countrymen of the Canadians than of the
Americans of the North or West.
The capital of the new dominion is to be Ottawa,
known as "Hole in the Woods" among the friends
of Toronto and Montreal, and once called By town.
It consists of the huge Parliament House, the Govern-
ment printing-office, some liouseless Avildernesses
meant for streets, and the hotel where the members
VI.] CANADA. 81
of the Legislature " board/' Sucli Avas the senatorial
throng at the moment of my visit, that we were
thrust into a detached building made of half-inch
planks, with wide openings between the boards ; and
as the French Canadian members were excited about
the resignation of Mr. Gait, indescribable chattering
and bawling filled the house.
The view from the Parliament House is even more
thoroughly Canadian than that from the terrace at
Quebec — a view of a land of rapids, of pine forests,
and of lumberers' homes, full of character, but some-
what bleak and dreary ; even on the hottest summer's
day, it tells of winter storms past and to come.
On the far left are the island-filled reaches of the
Upper Ottawa ; nearer, the roaring Chaudiere Falls, a
mile across — a mile of walls of water, of sudden shoots,
of jets, of spray. From the " cauldron" itself, into
which we can hardly see, rises a column of rainbow-
tinted mist, backed by distant ranges and black
woods, now fast falling before the settler's axe. Below
you is the river, swift, and covered with cream-like
foam ; on the right, a gorge — the mouth of the Rideau
Canal.
When surveyed from the fittest points, the Chaudiere
is but little behind Niagara ; but it may be doubted
whether in any fall there is that which can be called
sublimity. Natural causes are too evident : water,
rushing to find its level, falls from a ledge of
rock. How different from a storm upon the coast, or
from a September sunset, where the natural causes
are so remote that you can bring yourself almost to
VOL. I. Q
82 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
see the immediate hand of God. It is excusable in
Americans, who have no sea-coast worthy of the name,
to talk of Niagara as the perfection of the sublime ;•
Init it is strange that a people who have Birling
Gap and Bantry Bay should allow themselves to be
led by such a cry.
Niagara has one beauty in which it is unapproached
by the great Chaudiere : the awesome slowness with
which the deep-green flood, in the centre of the Horse-
shoe Fall, rolls rather than plunges into the gulf.
■I ■ f
• • I * •, I I
^i,-- K. -.v;-
I l-.-r t
Tit.] UmVEBSITY OF MICHIGAN.
.> II f
^; CHAPTER VII.
»''-■--.,'..'■ .■',■'
,' .' UNIVERSITY OP MICHIGAN.
■ 'f ,. ,. ■ , , - >
From the gloom of Buffalo, tlie smoke of Cincinnati,
and the dirt of Pittsburg, I should have been glad
to escape as soon as might be, even had not the death
from cholera of 240 persons in a single day of my
visit at the " Queen City " warned me to fly north.
From a stricken town, with its gutters full of cldoride
of lime, and fires burning in the public streets, to
green Michigan, was a grateful change ; but I wi.^
full of sorrow at leaving that richest and most lovely
of all States — Ohio. There is a charm in the park-like
beauty of the Monongahela valley, dotted with vines
and orchards, that nothing in Eastern America can
rival. The absence at once of stumps in the corn-
fields, and of untilled or unfenced land, gives the
'' buckeye State" a look of age that none of the " old
Eastern States" can show. In corn, in meadow, in
timber-land, Ohio stands alone. Her Indian corn
exceeds in ricLncss that of any other State ; she has
ample stores of iron, and coal is worked upon the
surface in every Alleghany valley. Wool, wine, hops,
tobacco, all are raised ; her Catawba has inspired
poems. Every river side is clothed with groves of
G 2
84 . : GREATER BRITAIN. -. [chap.
oak, of hickory, of sugar-maple, of sycamore, of
poplar, and of buckeye. But, as I said, the change
to the Michigan prairie was full of a delightful relief ;
■ it was Holland after the Rhine, London after Paris.
Where men grow tall theie will maize grow tall,
is a good sound rule : limestone makes both bone
and straw. The North-western States, inhabited by
giant men, are the chosen home of the most useful
and beautiful of plants, the maize — in America
called "corn." For hundreds of miles the railway
track, protected not even by a fence or hedge, runs
through the towering plants, which hide all prospect
save that of their own green pyramids. Maize feeds
the people, it feeds the cattle and the hogs that they
export to feed the cities of the East ; from it is made
yearly, as an Ohio farmer told me, " whisky enough
to float the ark." liice is not more the support of the
Chinese than maize of the Americans.
In the great corn-field of the North-western States,
dwells a people without a history, without tradition,
busy at hewing out of the forest trunks codes and
social usages of its own. The Kansas men have set
themselves to emancipating women ; the " Wol-
verines," as the people of Michigan are called, have
turned their heads to education, and are teaching the
teacheis upon this point.
The rapidity with which intellectual activity is
awakened in the West is inexplicable to the people of
New England. While you are admiring the laws of
Minnesota and Wisconsin, Boston men tell you that
the resemblance of the code of Kansas to that of
VII.] UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 86
Connecticut is consequent only on the fact, that the
framers of the former possessed a copy of this one
New England code, while they had never set eyes
upon the code of any other country in the world.
While Yale and Harvard are trying in vain to keep
pace with the State universities of Michigan and
Kansas, you will meet in Lowell and New Haven
men who apply an old Russian story to the Western
colleges, and tell you that their professors of lan-
guages, when asked wuere they have studied, reply
that they guess they learned to read and write in
Springfield.
One of the difficulties of the New England colleges
has been to reconcile university traditions with demo-
cracy ; but in the Western States there is neither
reconciliation nor tradition, though universities are
plenty. Probably the most democratic school in the
whole world is the State university of Michigan,
situate at Ann Arbor, near Detroit. It is cheap,
large, practical; twelve hundred students, paying
only the ten dollars' entrance fee, and five dollars
a year during residence, and living where they
can in the little to^vn, attend the university to be
prepared to enter with knowledge and resolution
upon the aftairs of their future life. A few only
are educated by having their minds unfolded that
they may become many-sided men ; but all work with
spirit, and with that earnestness which is seen in the
Scotch universities at home. The war with crime, the
war with sin, the war with death — Law, Theology,
Medicine— these are the three foremost of man's
86 G BEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
employments; to these, accordingly, the University
affords her chiefest care, and to one of these the
student, his entrance examination passed, often gives
his entire time. .^^
These things are democratic, but it is not in them
that the essential democracy of the University is to
be seen. There are at Michigan no honour-lists, no
classes in our sense, no orders of merit, no com-
petition. A man takes, or does not take, a certain
degree. The University is governed, not by its
members, not by its professors, but by a parliament
of "regents" ai^pointed by the inhabitants of the
State. Such arc the two great principles of the
democratic University of the West.
It might be supposed that these two strange de-
partures from the systems of older universities were
irregularities, introduced to meet the temporary em-
barrassments incidental to educational establishments
in young States. So far is this from being the case,
that, as I saw at Cambridge, the clearest-sighted men
of the older colleges of America are trying to assimi-
late their teaching system to that of Michigan — at
,. least, in the one point of the absence of competition.
They assert that toil performed under the excitement
of a fierce struggle between man and man is un-
healthy work, different in nature and in results
from the loving labour of men whose hearts are
really in what they do : toil, in short, not very
easily distinguishable from slave-labour.
In the matter of the absence of competition, Michi-
gan is probably but returning to Cue system of the
VII.] UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 87
European universities of the Middle Ages, but the
government by othei- than the members of the Uni-
versity is a still stranger scheme. It is explained
when we look to the sources whence the funds of
the University are drawn — namely, from the tax-
payers of the State. The men who have set up this
corporation in their midst, and who tax themselves
for its support, cannot be called on, as they say, to
renounce its government to their nominees. Pro-
fessors from New England, unconnected with the
State, men of one idea, often quarrelsome, sometimes
" irreligious " — for religious points have been contested
bitterly in the senate of Ann Arbor. There is much
truth in these statements of the case, but it is to be
hoped that the men chosen to serve as " regents " are
of a higher intellectual stamp thaii those appointed
to educational offices in the Canadian backwoods.
A report was put into my hands at Ottawa, in which
a Superintendent of Instruction writes to the Minister
of Education, that he had advised the ratepayers of
Victoria county not in future to elect as school
trustees men who cannot read or write. As Micnigan
grows older, she will, perhaps, seek to conform to
the practice of other universities in this matter of
her government, but in the point of absence of
competition she is likely to continue firm.
Even here some difficulty is found in getting com-
petent school directors; one of them reported 31^
children attending school. Of another district its
superintendent reports : — " Conduct of scholars about
the same as that of 'Young America' in general."
88 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Some of the superintendents aim o,t jocosity, and show
no want of talent in themselves, while their efforts are
to demonstrate its deficiency among the boys. The
superintendent of Grattan says, in answer to some
numbered questions : — " Condition good, improvement
fair ; for ^, of J of the year in school, and fifteen-
sixteenths of the time at play. Male teachers most
successful with the birch ; female, with Cupid's darts.
School-houses in fair whittling order. A])paratus : —
Shovel, none ; tongs, ditto ; poker, one. Conduct of
scholars like that of parents — good, bad, and indif-
ferent. No minister in town — sorry ; no lawyer —
good !" The superintendents of Manlius township
report that Districts 1 and 2 have buildings " fit (in
winter) only for the polar bear, walrus, reindeer,
Kussian sable, or Siberian bat f and they go on to
say, " Our children read everything, from Mr. Noodle's
Essays on Matrimony to Artemus Ward's Lecture on
First Principles of American Government." Another
report from a very new county runs : — " Sunday-
schools afford a little reading-matter to the children.
Character of matter most read — battle, murder, and
sudden death." A third states that the teachers are
meanly paid, and goes on : — " If the teaching is no
better than the pay, it must be like the soup that
the rebels gave the prisoners." A superintendent,
reporting that the success of the teachcis is greater
than their qualifications warrant, says : — " The reason
is to be found in Lhe Yankeeish adaptability of even
Wolverines."
After all, it is hard even to pass jokes at the
vu.] UNIVERSITY OF MICIIIOAN. 89
expense of the North-western people. A population
who would maintain schools on such a footing under
difficulties apparently overwhelming was the source
from which to draw Union Volunteers sucli as those
who, after the war, returned to their Northern homes,
I have been told, shocked and astonished at the
ignorance and debasement of the Southern whites.
The system of elective studies pursued at Michigan
is one to which we are year by year tending in
the English universities. As sciences multiply and
deepen, it becomes more and more impossible that
a "general course" system can produce men fit to
take their places in the world. Cambridge has
attempted to set up both, and, giving her students
the choice, bids them pursue one branch of study
with a view to honours, or take a less-valued degree
requiring some slight proficiency in many things.
Michigan denies that the stimulus of honour exami-
nations should be connected witL the elective system.
With her, men first graduate in science, or in an
arts degree, which bears a close resemblance to the
English " poll," and then pursue their elected study
in a course which leads to no university distinction,
which is free from the struggle for place and honours.
These objections to "honours" rest upon a more
solid foundation than a mere democratic hatred of
inequality of man and man. Repute as a writer, as
a practitioner, is valued by the Ann Arbor man, and
the Wolverines do not follow the Ephesians, and tell
men who excel among them to go and excel elsewhere.
The Michigan Professors say, and Dr. Hedges bears
90 GREATER BRITAIN. .•,:..: [chap.
tliem out, that a far higher average of true work and
real knowledge is obtained under this system of in-
dependent work than is dreamt of in colleges where
competition rules. " A higher average " is all they
say, and they acknowledge frankly that there is here
and there a student to be found to whom competition
would do good. As a rule, they tell us, this is not
the case. Unlimited battle between man and man
for place is sufficiently the bane of the world not to
be made the curse of schools : competition breeds
every evil which it is the aim of education, the duty
of a university, to suppress : pale faces caused by
excessive toil, feverish excitement that prevents true
work, a hatred of the subject on which the toil is
spent, jealousy of best friends, systematic depreciation
of men's talents, rejection of all reading that will not
"pay," extreme unhealthy cultivation of memory,
general degradation of labour — all these evils, and
many more, are charged upon the competition
system. Everything that our Professors have to say
of " cram" these American thinkers ap2:)ly to compe-
tition. Strange doctrines these for Young America !
Of the practical turn which we should naturally
expect to find in the university of a bran-new State
I found evidence v\ the regulation which prescribes
that the degree oi Master of Arts shall not be con-
ferred as a matter of course upon graduates of three
years' standing, but only upon such as have pursued
professional or general scientific studies during^ that
period. Even in these cases an examination before
some one of the faculties is required for the Master's
vn.] UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 91
degree. I was told that for the Medical degree four
years of "reputable" practice is received instead of
certain courses.
In her special and selected studies, Michigan is as
merely practical as Swift's University of Brobdingnag ;
but, standing far above the ordinary arts or scionce
courses, there is a " University course " designed for
those who have already taken the Bachelor's degree.
It is harder to say what thii. course includes than
what it does not. The twenty heads range over philo-
logy, philosophy, art, and science ; there is a branch
of "criticism," one of "arts of design," one of "fine
arts." Astronomy, ethics, and Oriental languages are
all embraced in a scheme brought into working order
within ten years of the time when Michigan was a
wilderness, and the college-yard an Indian hunting-
ground.
Michigan entered upon education-work very early
in her history as a State. In 1850, her legislature
commissioned the Hon. Ira Mayhew to prepare a
work on education for circulation throughout America.
Her progress has been as rapid as her start was good ;
her natural history collection is already one of the
most remarkable in America ; her medical school is
almost unequalled, and students flow to her even
from New England and from Ccilifornia, while from
Kew York she draws a hundred men a year. In only
one point is Ann Arbor anywhere but in the van :
she has hitherto followed the New England colleges
in excluding women. The State university of Kansas
has not shown the same exclusiveness that has charac-
92 GREATER BBTTAIN. [chap.
terised the conduct of the rulers of Michigan : women
are admitted not only to the classes, but to the
Professorships at Lawrence.
This North-western institution at Ann Arbor was
not behind even Harvard in the war ; it supplied the
Union army with 1,000 men. The l7th regiment of
Michigan Volunteers, mainly composed of teachers and
Ann Arbor students, has no cause to fear the rivalry
of any other record ; and such was the eifect of the
war, that in 1860 there were in Michigan 2,600 male
to 5,350 female teachers, whereas now there are but
1,300 men to 7,500 women.
So proud are Michigan men of their roll of honour,
that they publish it at full length in the calendar of
the University. Every "class" from the foundation
of the schools shows some graduates distinguished in
their country's service during the suppression of the
rebellion. The Hon Oramel Hosford, Superintendent
of Public Instruction in Michigan, reports that,
owing to the presence of crowds of returned soldiers,
the schools of the State are filled alm^ost to the limit
of their capacity, while some are compelled to close
their doors against the thronging crowds. Captains,
colonels, generals are among the students now humbly
learning in the Ann Arbor University Schools.
The State of Michigan is peculiar in the form that
she has given to her higher teaching ; but in no way
peculiar in the attention she bestows on education.
Teaching, high and low, is a passion in the West,
and each of these young States has established a
University of the highest order, and placed in every
VII.] UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. §^
to wr ship not only schools, but public libraries, sup-
ported from the rates, and managed by the people.
Not only have the appropriations for educational
purposes by each State been large, but those of the
Federal Government have been upon the most
splendid scale. What has been done in the Eastern
and the Central States no man can tell, but even
west of the Mississippi twenty-two million acres have
already been granted for such purposes, while fifty-six
million more are set aside for similar gifts.
The Americans are not forgetful of their Puritan
traditions.
94 GREATER BRITAIN. , [chap.
-.-.|<^ ■. 4
CHAPTER VIII.
) .»f^t . )' .
THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. ' ''
When the companions of the explorer Cartier found
that the rapids at Montreal were not the end of all
navigation, as they had feared, but that above them
there commenced a second and boundless reach of
deep, still waters, they fancied they had found the
long -looked -for route to China, and cried, "La
Chine ! " So the story goes, and the name has stuck
to the place.
Up to 1861, the Canadians remained in the belief
that they were at least the potential possessors of the
only possible road for the China trade of the future,
for in that year a Canadian government paper
declared that the Rocky Mountains, south of British
territory, were impassable for railroads. Maps showed
that from St. Louis to San Francisco the distance was
twice that from the head of navigation on Lake
Superior to the British Pacific ports.
America has gone through a fiv. years' agony since
that time ; but now, in the first days of peace, we find
that the American Pacific Railroad, growing at the
average rate of two miles a day at one end, and one
mile a day at the other, will stretch from sea to sea in
viii.l THE PACIFIC BAILROAT). 95
1669 or 1370, wliile tlio British line remains a
dream.
Not only have the Rocky Mountains turned out to
be passable, but the engineers have found themselves
compelled to decide on the conflicting claims of passes
without number. Wall-like and frowniig as the
Rocky Mountains are when seen from the plains,,
the rolling gaps are many, and they are easier crossed
by railway lines than the less lofty chains of Europe.
From the heat of the country, the snow-line lies high ;
the chosen pass is in the latitude of Constantinople
or Oporto. The dryness of the air of the centre of
a vast continent prevents the fall of heavy snows or
rains in winter. At eight or nine thousand feet
above the sea, in the Black Hills, or Eastern Pied-
mont, the drivers on the Pacific line will have slighter
snow-drifts to encounter than their brothers on the
Grand Trunk or the Camden and Amboy at the sea-
level. On the other hand, fuel and water are scarce,
and there is an endless succession of smaller snowy
chains which have to be crossed upon the Grand
Plateau, or basin of the Great Salt Lake. Wliatever
the difficulties, in 1869 or 1870 the line will be an
accomplished fact.
In the Act creating the Pacific Railroad Company,
passed in 1862, the company were bound to complete
their line at the rate of a hundred miles a year.
They are completinf^ it at more than three times
that rate.
When the Act is examined, it ceases to be strange
that the road should be pushed with extraordinary
96 . a HEATER BRITAIN. [chap,"
energy and speed, so numerous are the baits offered
to the companies to hasten it3 completion. Money-
is to be advanced them ; land is to be given them for
every mile they finish — on a generous scale while the
line is on the plains, on three times the scale when
it reaches the most rugged tracts. These grants alone
are estimated at twenty millions of acres. Besides
the alternate sections, a width of 400 feet, with
additional room for works and stations, is granted
for the line. The Californian Company is tempted by
similar offers to a race with the Union Pacific, and
each company is struggling to lay the most miles,
an/i get the most land upon the great basin. It is
the interest of the Eastern Company th^it the junc-
tion should be as far as possible to the west ; of the
Western, that it should be as far as possible to the
east. The result is an average laying of three, and
an occasional construction of four, miles a day. If we
look to the progress at both ends, we find as much
sometimes laid in a day as a bullock train could
travel. So fast do the head-quarters " cities " keep
moving forwards, that at the Californian end the
superintendent wished me to believe, that whenever
his chickens heard a wagon pass, they threw them-
selves upon their backs, and held up their legs, that
they might be tied, and thrown into the cart for a fresh
move. " They are true birds of passage," he said.
When the iron trains are at the front, the laying
will for a short time proceed at the rate of nine yards
in every fifteen seconds ; but three or four hundred
tons of rails have to be brought up every day upon
VIII.] THE FACIFin RAILROAD. 97
the single track, and it is in this that the time
is lost.
The advance carriages of the construction-train are
well supplied with rifles hung from the roofs ; but
even when the Indians forget their amaze, and attack
the " city upon wheels," or tear up the track, they
are incapable of destroying the line so fast as the
machinery can lay it down. " Soon," as a Denver
paper said, during my stay in the Mountain City,
" the iron horse will sniff the Alpine breeze upon
the summit of the Black Hills, 9,000 feet above the
sea ; " and upon the plateau, where deer are scarce
and buffalo unknown, the Indians have all but disap-
peared. The worst Indian country is already crossed,
and the red len have sullenly followed the buffalo
to the South, and occupy the country between Kansas
State and Denver, contenting themselves with pre-
venting the construction of the Santa Fe and
Denver routes to California. Both for the end in
view, and the energy with which it is pursued, the
Pacific railroad will stand first among the achieve-
ments of our times.
If the end to be kept in view in the construction
of the first Pacific railroad line were merely the
traffic from China and Japan to Europe, or the
shortest route from San Francisco to Hampton Koads,
the Kansas route through St. Ijouis, Denver, and the
Berthoud Pass would be, perhaps, the best and
shortest of those within the United States; but
the Saskatchewan line through British territory, with
Halifax and Puget Sound for ports, would be still
VOL. I. H
98 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
more advantageous. As it is, the true question seems
to be, not tlie trade between the Paeific and Great
Britain, but between Asia and America., for Penn-
sylvania and Ohio must be the manufacturing
countries of the next fifty years.
Whatever our theory, the fact is plain enough : in
1870 we shall reach San Francisco from London in
less time than by the severest travelling I can reach
it from Denver in 1866.
AVherever, in the States, North and South have met
in conflict. North has won. New York has beaten
Norfolk ; Chicago, in spite of its inferior situation,
has beaten the older St. Louis. In the same way,
Omaha, or cities still farther north, will carry off
the trade from Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Kansas
City. Ultimately Puget Sound may beat San Fran-
cisco in the race for the Pacific trade, and the
Southern cities become still less able to keep their
place than they have been hitherto. Time after time,
Chicago has thrown out intercepting lines, and
diverted from St. Louis trade which seemed of neces-
sity to belong to her ; and the success of the Union
Pacific line, and failure of the Kansas road, is a fresh
proof of the superior energy of the Northern to the
Southern city. This time a fresh element enters into
the calculation, and declares for Chicago. The great
circle route, the true straight line, is in these great
distances shorter by fifty or a hundred miles than
the straight lines of the maps and charts, and the
Platte route becomes not only the natural, bi;t the
shortest route from sea to sea.
vni.] THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. 99
Chicago has a great aflvantagc over St. Louis in
her comparative freedom from the cholera, whicli
yearly attacks the Missoiirian city. During my stay
in St. Louis, the deaths from cholera alone were
lvno^vn to have reached 200 a day, in a population
diminished by flight to 180,000. A quarantine was
established on the river ; the sale of fruit and vege-
tables prohibited ; prisoners released on condition that
they should work at burying the dead ; and funeral
corteges were forbidden. Chicago herself, unreached
by the plague, was scattering handbills on every
Western railroad line, warning immigrants af]fainst
St. Louis.
The Missourians have relied over much upon the
Mississippi river, and have forgotten that railroads are
superseding steamboats every day. Chicago, on the
other hand, which ten yeais ago was the twentieth
city in America, is probably by this time the third.
As a centre of thought, political and religious, she
stands second only to Boston, and her Wabash and
Michigan avenues are among the most beautiful of
streets.
One of the chief causes of the future wealth of
America is to be found in the fact that all her "inland"
towns are ports. The State of Michigan lies between
500 and 900 miles from the ocean, but the single State
has upon the great lakes a coast of 1,500 miles. From
Fort Benton to the sea by water is nearly 4,000 miles,
but the post is a much-used steamboat port, though
more distant, even in the air-line, from the nearest sea
upon the same side the dividing range, than is the
H 2
100 GREATER BRITAIN. [cnAr.
Wliitc Soa from tlic Persian Gulf. Put it in wliich
way you would.. Europe could not hold this
navigation.
A great American city is almost invariahly placed
at a point where an important railroad finds an out-
port on a lake or river. This is no adaptation to rail-
ways of the Limerick saying about rivers — namely,
that Providence has everywhere so placed them as to
pass through the great towns ; for in America j nil ways
precede population, and when mapped out and laid,
they are but tramways in the desert. There is no great
wonder in this when we remember that 158,000,000
acres of land have been up to this time granted to
railroads in America.
One tendency of a costly railroad system is that few
lines will be made, and trade being thus driven into
certain unchanging routes, a small number of cities
will flourish greatly, and, by acting as housing stations
or as ports, will rise to enormous wealth and popula-
tion. Wlierc a system of cheap railways is adopted,
there will be year by year a tendency to multiply lines
of traffic, and consequently to multiply also ports and
seats of trade — a tendency, however, which may be
more than neutralised by any special circumstances
which may cause the lines of transit to converge ra,ther
than run parallel to one another. Of the system of
costly grand trunk lines we have an instance in India,
where we see the creation of Umritsar and the pros-
perity of Calcutta alike due to our single great Bengal
line ; of the converging system we have excellent
instances in Chicago and Bombay ; while we see the
VIII.] TIIE PACIFIC BAILROAD. .101
plan of parallel lines in action licrc in Kansas, and
causing the comi)arativc equality of progress mani-
fested in Leavenworth, in Atchison, in Omaluu The
coasts of India swarmed with ports till our trunk lines
ruined Goa and Surat to advance Bombay, and a
hundred village ports to push our factory at Calcutta,
founded by Charnock as late as 1690, but now grown
to be the third or fourth city of the empire.
Of the dozen chaotic cities which are struggling for
the honour of becoming the future capital of the
West, Leavenworth, with 20,000 people, three daily
papers, an opera house, and 200 drinking saloons, was,
at the time of my visit in 18GG, somewhat ahead of
Omaha, with its 12,000, two papers, and a single
** one-horse" theatre, though the Northern city tied
Leavenworth in the point of " saloons."
Omaha, Leavenworth, Kansas City, Wyandotte,
Atchison, Topeka, Lecompton, and Lawrence, eacn
praises itself, and runs down its neighbour. Leaven-
worth claims to be so healthy that when it lately
became necessary to " inaugurate " the new graveyard,
"they had to shoot a man on purpose" — a change since
the days when the Southern Border Ruffians were in
the habit of parading its streets, bearing the scalps of
Abolitionists stuck on poles. On the other hand, a
Nebraska man, when asked whether the Kansas people
were faiiiy honest, said : " Don't know about honest ;
but they do say as how the folk around take in their
stone fences every night." Lawrence, the State capital,
which is on the dried-up Kansas river, sneeringly says
of all the new towns on the Missouri that the boats
102 ' GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
that ply between them are so dangerous that the fare
is collected m instalments every five minutes through-
out the trip. Next after the jealousy between two
Australian colonies, there is nothing equal to the
hatreds between cities competing for the same trade.
Omaha has now the best chance of becoming the
capital of the Far West, but Leavenworth will no
doubt continue to be the chief town of Kansas.
The progress of the smaller cities is amazing. Pistol-
shots by day and night are frequent, but trade and
development are little interfered with by such inci-
dents as these ; and as the village-cities are peopled
up, the pioneers, shunning their fellows, keep pushing
westwards, seeking new "locations." "You're the
second man I've seen this fall ! Darn me, ef 'tain't
'bout time to varmose out westerly — y," is the standing
joke of the " frontier-bdrs " against each other.
^H ^n ^^ ^p ^^ fl*
At St. Louis I had met my friend Mr. Hepwortli
Dixon, just out from England, and with him I visited
the Kansas towns, and then pushed through Waumego
to Manhattan, the terminus (for the day) of the
Kansas Pacific line. Here we were thrust into what
space remained between forty leathern mail-bags and
the canvas roof of the mule-drawn ambulance, which
was to be at once our prison for six nights, and our
fort upon wheels against the Indians.
IX. J OMPHALISM. 103
CHAPTEE IX.
OMPHALISM.
Dashing through a grove of cottonwood trees draped
in bignonia and ivy, we came out suddenly upon a
charming scene : a range of huts and forts crowning
a long low hill seamed with many a timber-clothed
ravine, while the clear stream, of the Eepublican fork
wreathed itself about the woods and bluffs. The
block-house, over which floated the stars and stripes,
was Fort Riley, the Hyde Park Corner from which
continents are to measure all their miles ; the " capital
of the universe," or " centre of the world." Not that
it has always been so. Geographers will be glad to
learn that not only does the earth gyrate, but that the
centre of its ci'ust also moves : within the last ten
years it has removed westwards Unto Kansas from
Missouri — from Independence to Fort Riley. The
contest for centreship is no new thing. Herodotus
held that Greece was the very middle of the world,
and that the unhappy Orientals were frozen, and the
yet more unfortunate Atlantic Indians baked every
afternoon of their poor lives in order that the sun
might shine on Greece at noon ; London plumes
herself on being the " centre of the terrestrial globe ;"
104 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Boston is the " hub of the hull universe," though the
latter claim is less physical than moral, I believe. In
Fort Riley, the "Western men seem to have found the
physical centre of the United States, but they claim
for the Great Plains as well the intellectual as the
political leadership of the whole continent. These
hitherto untrodden tracts, they tell you, form the
heart of the empire, from which the life-blood must be
driven to the extremities. Geographical and political
centres must ultimately coincide.
• Connected with this belief is another Western
theory — that the powers of the future must be " Con-
tinental." Germany, or else Eussia, is to absorb all
Asia and Europe, except Britain. North America is
already cared for, as the gradual extinction of the
Mexicans and absorption of the Canadians they
consider certain, j^s for South America, the Califor-
nians are already planning an occupation of Western
Brazil, on the ground that the Continental power of
South America must start from the head waters of the
great rivers, and spread seawards down the streams.
Even in the Brazilian climate, they believe that the
Anglo-Saxon is destined to become the dominant
race. • .
The success of this omphalism, this government
from the centre, will be brought about, in the Western
belief, by the necessity under which the natives on
the head waters of all streams will find themselves
of having the outlets in their hands. Even if it be
true that railways are beating rivers, still the railways
must also lead seawards to the ports, and the need
.IX.] OMPHALISM. 105
for their control is still felt by tlie producers in the
centre countries of the continent. The Upper States
must everywhere command the Lower, and salt-water
'despotism find its end. , - .
The Americans of the Valley States, who fought
all the more heartily in the Federal cause from the
fiict that they were battling for the freedom of the
Mississippi against the men who held its mouth, look
forward to the time when they will have to assert,
peaceably but with firmness, their right to the free-
dom of their railways througli the Northern Atlantic
States. Whatever their respect for New England, it
cannot be expected that they are for ever to permit
Illinois and Ohio to be neutralised in the Senate by
Ehode Island and Vermont. If it goes hard with
New England, it will go still harder with New York ;
and the West> ii men look forward to the day when
Washington will be removed, Congress and all, to
Columbus or Fort Riley.
The singular wideness of Western thought, always
verging on extravagance, is traceable to the width
of Western land. The immensity of the continent
produces a kind of intoxication ; there is moral dram-
drinking in the contemplation of the map. No Fourth
of July oration can come up to the plain facts con-
tained in th3 Land Commissioners' report. The public
domain of the United States still consists of one
thousand five hundred millions of acres ; there are
two hundred thousand square miles of coal-lands in
the country, ten times as much as in all the remaining
world. In the AVestern territories not yet States,
106 \QREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
tliere is land sufficient to bear, at the English popula-
tion rate, five hundred and fifty millions of human
beings.
It is strange to see how the Western country dwarfs
the Eastern States. Buffalo is called a "Western
city ;" yet from New York to Buffalo is only three
hundred and fifty miles, and Buffalo is but seven
hundred miles to the west of the most eastern point
in all the United States. On the other hand, from
Buffalo we can go two thousand five hundred miles
westwards without quitting the United States. " The
West" is eight times as wide as the Atlantic States,
and will soon be eight times as strong.
The conformation of North America is widely
different to that of any other continent on the globe.
In Europe, the glaciers of the Alps occupy the
centre point, and shed the waters towards each of
the surrounding seas : confluence is almost unknown.
So it is in Asia : there the Indus flowing into
the Arabian Gulf, the Oxus into the Sea of Aral,
the Ganges into the Bay of Bengal, the Yangtse
Kiang into the Pacific, and the Yenesei into the
Arctic Ocean, all take their rise in the central table-
land. In South America, the mountains form a
wall upon the west, whence the rivers flow east-
wards in parallel lines. In North America alone
are there mountains on each coast, and a trough
between, into which the rivers i.low together, giving
in a single valley 23,000 miles of navigable stream
to be ploughed by steamships. The map proclaims
the essential unity of North America. Political
IX] OMPHALISM. 107
geography miglit be a more interesting study tlian
it lias yet been made.
In reaching Leavenworth, I had crossed two of the
five divisions of America : the other three lie before
me on my way to San Francisco. The eastern slopes
of the AUeghanies, or Atlantic coast ; their western
slopes ; the Great Plains ; the Grand Plateau, and the
Pacific coast — these are the five divisions. Fort Eiley,
the centre of the United States, is upon the border of
the third division, the Great Plains. The Atlantic
coast is poor and stony, but the slight altitude of the
Alleghany chains has prevented it being a hindrance
to the passage of population to the West : the second
of the divisions is now the richest and most powerful
of the five ; but the wave of immigration is crossing
the Mississippi and Missouri into the Great Plains,
and here at Fort Eiley we are upon the limit of
civilization.
This spot is not only the centre of the United States
and of the continent, but, if Denver had contrived to
carry the Pacific railroad by the Berthoud Pass, would
have been the centre station uj^on what Governor
Gilpin of Colorado calls the "Asiatic and European
railway line." As it is, Columbus in Nebraska has
somewhat a better chance of becoming the Washington
of the future than has this blockhouse.
Quitting Fort Riley, we found ourselves at once upon
the Plains. No more sycamore and white-oak and
honey-locust ; no more of the rich deep green of the
Cottonwood groves ; but yellow earth, yellow flowers.
108 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
yellow grass, and here and there groves of giant sun-
flowers with yellow blooms, but no more trees
As the sun set, we came on a body of cavalry
marching slowly from the Plains towards the Fort.
Before them, at some little distance, walked a sad-
faced man on foot, in sober riding dress, with a
repeating carbine slung across his back. It was
Sherman returning from his expedition to Santa Fd.
x] LETTER FROM DENVER. 109
My dear
CHAPTER X.
LETTER FROM DENVER.
Monday, 3rd Sej^temher
Here we are, scalps and all.
On Tuesday last, at sundown, we left Fort Riley,
and supped at Junction City, the extreme point that
" civilization" has reached upon the Plains. Civiliza-
tion means whisky : post-offices don't count.
It was here that it first dawned upon us that we
were being charged 500 dollars to guard the United
States Californian mail, with the compensation of
the chance of being ourselves able to rob it with
impunity. It is at all events the case that we, well
armed as the mail-officers at Leavenworth insisted
on our being, sat inside with forty-two cwt. of mail,
in open bags, and over a great portion of the route
had only the driver with us, without whose know-
ledge we could have read all and stolen most of the
letters, and with whose knowledge, but against whose
will, we could have carried off the whole, leavinjr
hmi gagged, bound, and at the mercy of the Indians^
As it was, a mail-bag fell out one day, without the
knowledge of either Dixon or the driver, who were
110 GBEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
outside, and I had to shout pretty freely before they
would pull up.
On Wednesday we had our last " squar' meal " in
the shape of a breakfast, at Fort Ellsworth, and soon
were out upon the almost unknown Plains. In the
morning Ave caught up and passed long wagon trains,
each wagon drawn by eight oxen, and guarded by
two drivers and one horseman, all armed with breech-
loading rifles and revolvers, or with the new "re-
peaters," before which breech-loaders and revolvers
must alike go down. All day we kept a sharp look-
out for a party of seven American officers, who, in
defiance of the scout's advice, had gone out from the
fort to hunt buffalo upon the track.
About sundown we came into the little station of
Lost Creek. The ranchmen told us that they had,
during the day, been driven in from th^ir work by
a party of Cheyennes, and that they had some doubts
as to the wisdom of the officers in going out to hunt.
They had passed here at mid-day.
Just as we were leaving the station, one of the
officers' horses dashed in riderless, and was caught;
and about two miles from the station we passed
another on its back, ripped up either by a knife or
buffalo horn. The saddle was gone, but there were
no other marks of a fight. We believe that these
officers w< re routed by buffalo, not Cheyennes, but
still we should be glad to hear of them.
The track is marked in many parts of the plams
by stakes, such as those from which the Llano Esta-
cado takes its name ; but this evening we turned
X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. HI
off into devious lines by way of precaution against
aml)uscaclcs, coming round througli the sandy beds
of streams to the ranches for the cliange of mules.
The ranchmen were always ready for us; for, wliilc
we were still a mile away, our driver would put
his hand to his mouth, and give a "Howl howl
how ! how — w ! " the Cheyenne war-whoop.
In the weird glare that follows sunset wc came
upon a pile of rocks, admirably fitted for an am-
bush. As we neared them, the driver said: "It's
'bout an even chance thet wes sculp therM" Wc
could not avoid them, as there was a gully that could
only be crossed at this one point. We dashed down
into the " creek " and up again, past the rocks : there
were no Indians, but the driver was most uneasy
till we reached Big Creek.
Here they could give us nothing whatever to eat,
the Indians having, on Tuesday, robbed them of
everything they had, and ordered them to leave
within fifteen days on pain of death.
For 250 miles westwards from Big Creek, we
found that every station had been warned (and most
plundered) by bands of Cheyennes, on behalf of the
forces of the Confederation encamped near the creek
itself The warning was in all cases that of fire and
death at the end of fifteen days, of which nine days
have expired. We found the horse-keepers of the
Company everywhere leaving their stations, and were,
in consequence, very nearly starved, having been
unsuccessful in our shots from the "coaoL," except,
indeed, at the snakes.
112 ORE I TER BRIT. I IN. [chap.
On Thursday wo passed Big Timber, the only spot
on the plains whore there are trees ; and there the
Indians had counted the trees, and solemnly warned
the men against cutting more : " Fifty-two tree.
You no cut more tree — no more cut. Grass! You
cut grass; grass make hig fire. You good hoy— you
clear out. Fifteen day, wo come : you no gone —
ugh ! " The " ugh " accompanied by an expressive
pantomime.
On Thursday evening we got a meal of buffalo
and prairie dog, the former too strong for my failing
stomach, the latter wholesome nourishment, and fit
for kings — as like our rabbit in flavour as he is in
shape. This was at the horse-station of " The Monu-
ments," a natural temple of awesome grandeur, rising
from the plains like a giant Stonchengo.
On Friday we " breakfasted" at Pond Creek Station,
two miles from Fort Wallis. Here the people had
applied for a guard, and had been answered : " Come
into the fort ; we can't spare a man." So much for
the value of the present forts ; and yet even these
— Wallis and Ellsworth — are 200 miles apart.
We were joined at breakfast by Bill Comstock, in-
terpreter to the fort — a long-haired, wild-eyed half-
breed — who gave us, in an hour's talk, the full history
of the Indian politics that have led to the present
war.
The Indians, to the number of 20,000, have been
in council with the Washington Commissioners all
this summer at Fort I^aramie ; and, after being
clothed, fed, and armed, lately concluded a treaty.
X.] LETTER FHOM DENVER. \V6
allowing" the riiiiiiiiig on the niiiil-roads. 'I'iiey now
assert that this treaty was intended to a|)[tly to the
Platte road (from Oninha and Atehisou through b\)rt
Kearney), and to the Arkansas road, but not to the
Smoky Hill road, which lies between the others, and
runs through the buti'alo country ; but their real
opposition is to the railroad. The Cheyennes (pro-
nounced Shians) have got the Comanches, Appaches,
and Arai)alioes from the south, and the Sioux and
Kiowas from the north, to join them in a c(jnfede-
ration under the leadership of Spotted Dog, the chief
of the Little Dog section of the Cheyennes, and son
of AVhite Antelope — killed at Sand Creek battle by
the Kansas and Colorado Volunteers — who has sworn
to avenge his father.
Soon after leaving Pond Creek, we sighted at a
distance hree mounted " braves," leading some horses ;
and when we reached the next station, we found that
they had been there, openly proclaiming that their
" mounts " had been stolen from a team.
All this day we sat with our revolvers laid upon
the mail-bags in front of us, and our driver also had
his armoury conspicuously displayed, while we swept
the Plains with many an anxious glance. We were
on lofty rolling downs, and to the south the eye often,
ranged overmuch of the 130 miles which lay between
us and Texas. To the north, the view was more
bounded ; still, our chief danger lay near the boulders
which here and there covered the Plains.
All Thursday and Friday we never lost sight of
the buffalo, in herds of about 300, and the " antc-
VOL. I. I
114 OBEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
lope" — the prong-horn, a kind of gazelle — in flocks
of about six or seven. Prairie clogs were abundant,
and wolves and black-tail deer in view every hour
or two.
The most singular of all the sights of the Plains is
the presence every few yards of the skeletons of buffalo
and of horse, of mule and of ox ; the former left by
the hunters, who take but the skin, and the latter th^*
losses of the mails and the waggon-trains through
sunstroke and thirst. We killed a horse on the second
day of our journey.
When we came upon oxen that had not long been
dead, we found that the intense dryness of the air
had made mummies of them : there was no stench,
no putrefaction.
During the day, I made some practice at antelope
with the driver's Ballard; but an antelope at 500 yards
is not a good target. The drivers shot repeatedly at
buffalo at twenty yards, but this only to keep them
away from the horses ; the revolver balls did not seem
to go through their hair and skin, as they merely
shambled on in their usual happy sort of way, after
receiving a discharge or two.
The |)rairie dogs sat barking in thousands on the
tops of their mounds, but we were too grateful to
them for their gaiety to dream of pistol-shots. They
are no " dogs " at all, but rabbits that bark, with all
the coney's tricks and turns, and the same odd way of
rubbing their face with their paws while they con you
from top to toe.
With wolves, buffalo, antelope, deer, skunks, dogs,
X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 115
plover, curlew, dottrel, herons, vultures, ravens, snakes,
and locusts, we never seemed to be without a million
companions in our loneliness.
From Cheyenne Wells, where we changed mules in
the afternoon, we brought on the ranchman's wife,
painfully making room for her at our own expense.
Her husband had been warned by the Cheyennes that
the place would be destroyed : he meant to stay, but
was in fear for her. The Cheyennes had made her
work for them, and our supper had gone down Cheyenne
throats.
Soon after leaving the station, we encountered one
of the great " dirt-storms " of the Plains. About 5 p.m.
we saw a little white cloud growing into a column,
which in half-an-hour turned black as night, and
possessed itself of half the skies. We then saw what
seemed to be a waterspout ; and, though no rain
reached us, I think it was one. When the storm
burst on us, we took it for rain ; and, halting, we drew
down our canvas, and held it against the hurricane.
We ■ soon found that our eyes and mouths were full of
dust; and when I put out my hand, I felt that it
was dirt, not rain, that was falling. In a few minutes
it was pitch dark, and after the fall had continued for
some time, there began a series of flashes of blinding
lightning, in the very centre and midst of which we
seemed to be. Notwithstanding this, there was no
sound of thunder. The " norther " lasted some three
or four hours, and when it ceased, it left us total
darkness, and a wind which froze our marrow, as we
again started on our way. Wlicn Fremont explored
I 2
116 GREATER BRITAIN. (chap.
tlii.s route, he reported that this high ridge between
the Platte and Arkansas was notorious among the
Indians for its tremendous dirt-storms. Sheet light-
ning without thunder accompanies dust-storms in all
great continents : it is as common in the Punjab as in
Australia, in South as in North America.
On Saturday morning, at Lake station, we got"
beyond the Indians, and irxto a land of plenty, or at
all events a land of something, for we got milk from
the station cow, and preserved fruits that had come
round through Denver from Ohio and Kentucky. Not
even on Saturday, though, could we get dinner, and
as I missed the only antelope that came within reach,
our supper was not much heavier than our breakfast.
Rolling through the Arapahoe country, where it is
proposed to make a reserve for the Cheyennes, at eight
o'clock in the morning we had caught sight of the
glittering snows of Pike's Peak, a hundred and fifty
miles away, and all the day we were galloping
towards it, through a country swarming with rattle-
snakes and vultures. T.ate in the evening, when we
were drawing near to tiie first of the Coloradan farms,
we came on a white wolf unconcernedly taking his
evening prowl about the stock-yards. He sneaked
along without taking . ;iy notice of us, and continued
his thief-like walk with a bravery that seemed only to
show that he luid never seen man before : this might
well be the case, if he came from the south, near the
upper forks of the Arkansas.
All this, and the fretpiency of buffalo, I was unpre-
pared for. I imagined that though the Plains were
X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 117
uninhabited, the game had all been killed. On the
contrary, the " Smoky district " was never known so
thronged with buffalo as it is this year. The herds
resort to it because there they are close to the water
of the Platte river, and yet out of the reach of the
traffic of the Platte road. The tracks they make in
travelling to and fro across the Plains are visible for
years after they have ceased to use them. I have
seen them as broad and as straight as the finest of
Roman roads.
On Sunday, at two in the morning, we dashed into
Denver ; and as we reeled and staggered from our
late prison, the aml)ulance, into the "cockroach
corral" which does duty for the bar-room of the
*' Planters' House," we managed to find strength and
words to agree that we would fix no time for meeting
the next day. We expected to sleep for thirty hours ;
as it was, we met at breakfast at seven a.m., less
than five hours from the time at which we parted.
It is to-day that we feel exhausted ; the exhilaration
of the mountain air, and the excitement of frequent
visits, carried us through yesterday. Dixon is sufier-
ing from strange blains and boils, caused by the
unwholesome food.
We have been called upon here by Governor Gilpin
and Governor Cummings, the opposition governors.
The former is the elected governor of the State of
Colorado which is to be, and would have been but for
the fact that the President put his big toe (Western
for veto) upon the bill; the latter, the Washington-
sent governor of the territory. Gilpin is a typical
118 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
pioneer man, and the descendant of a line of Riich.
He comes of one of the original Quaker stocks of
Maryland, and he and his ancestors have ever been
engaged in founding States. He himself, after taking
an active share in the foundation of Kansas, com-
manded a regiment of cavalry in the Mexican war.
After this, he was at the head of the pioneer army
which explored the pares of the Cordilleras and the
territory of Nevada. He it was who hit upon the
glorious idea of placing Colorado half upon each
side of the Sierra Madre. There never in the history
of the world was a grander idea than this. Any
ordinary pioneer or politician would have given Colo-
rado the "natural" frontier, and have tried for the
glory of the foundation of two States instead of one.
The consequence would have been the lasting disunion
between the Pacific and Atlantic States, and a possible
future break-up of the country. As it is, this com-
monwealth, little as it at present is, links sea to sea,
and Liverpool to Hong Kong.
The city swarms with Indians of the bands com-
manded by the chiefs Nevara and Colloreyo. They
are at war with the six confederate tribes, and with
the Pawnees — with all the Plain Indians, in short.
Now, as the Pawnees are also fighting with the six
tribes, there is a pretty triangular war. They came
in to buy arms, and fearful scoundrels they look.
Short, flat-nosed, long-haired, painted in red and blue,
-^ and dressed in a gaudy costume, half Spanish, half
Indian, which makes their filthiness appear more
fdtliy by contrast, and themselves carrying only their
X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 119
Ballard and Smith -and- Wesson, hut forcing the
squaws to carry all their other goods, and papooses
in addition, they present a spectacle of unmixed ruf-
fianism which I never expect to see surpassed. Dixon
and I, hoth of us, left London with " Lo ! the poor
Indian," in all his dignity and hook-nosedness,
elevated on a pedestal of nobility in our hearts. Our
views were shaken in the East, but nothing revo-
lutionised them so rapidly as our three days' risk of
scalping in the Plains. John Howard and Mrs.
Beecher Stowe themseb^es would go in for the
Western " disarm at any price, and exterminate if
necessary" policy if they lived long in Denver. One
of the braves of Nevara's command brought in the
scalp of a Cheyenne chief taken by him last month,,
and to-day it hangs outside the door of a pawnbroker's-
shop, for sale, fingered by every passer-by.
Many of the band were engaged in putting on
their paint, which was bright vermilion, with a
little indigo round the eye. This, with the sort of
pigtail which they wear, gives them the look of the
<niomes in the introduction to a London pantomime.
One of them — Nevara himself, I was told — wore a
sombrero with three scarlet plumes, taken probably
from a Mexican, a crimson jacket, a dark-blue shawl,,
worn round the loins and over the arm in Spanish
dancer fashion, and embroidered mocassins. His
squaw was a vermilion-faced bundle of rags, not more
than four feet high, staggering under buffalo hides,,
bow and arrows, and papoose. They move every-
where on horseback, and in the evening withdraw iii
120 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
military order, with advance and rear guard, to a
camp at some distance from the town.
I inclose some prairie flowers, gathered in my walks
roimd the city. Their names are not suited to their
l)eauty ; the large white one is " the morning blower,"
the most lovely of all, save one, of the flowers of the
Plains. It grows with many branches to a height
of some eighteen inches, and bears from thirty to fifty
blooms. The blossoms are open up to a little after
sunrise, when they close, seldom to open even after
sunset. It is, therefore, peculiarly the early riser's
flower ; and if it be true that Nature doesn't make
tilings in vain, it follows that Nature intended men
— or, at all events, some men — to get up early, which
is a point that I believe was doubtful hitherto.
For the one prairie flower which I think more
beautiful than the blower I cannot find a name. It
rises to about six inches above ground, and spreads in
a circle of a foot across. Its leaf is thin and spare ;
its flower-bloom a white cup, about two inches in
diameter ; and its buds pink and pendulent.
All our garden annuals are to be found in masses
acres in size upon the Plains. Penstemon, coreopsis,
persecaria, yucca, dwarf schumach, marigold, and
sunflower, all are flowering here at once, till the
country is ablaze with gold and red. The coreopsis
of our gardens they call the " rosin-weed," and say
that it forms excellent food for sheep.
The view of the " Cordillera della Sierra Madre,"
the Rocky Mountain main chain, from the outskirts
of Denver is sublime; that from the roof at Milan
X.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 121
does not ai)proacli it. Twelve miles from the city
tlie mountains rise abruptly from tlie Plains. Piled
range above range with step-like regularity, they are
topped by a long white line, sharply relieved against
the indigo colour of the sky. Two hundred and
fifty miles of the mother Sierra are in sight from our
verandah; to the south, Pike's Peak and Spanish
Peak ; Long's Peak to the north ; Mount Lincoln
towering above all. The views are limited only by
the curvature of the earth, such is the marvellous purity
of the Coloradan air, the effect at once of the distance
from the sea and of the bed of limestone which
underlies the Plains.
The site of Denver is heaven-blessed in climate as
well as loveliness. The sky is brilliantly blue, and
cloudless from dawn till noon. In the mid-day heats,
cloud-making in the Sierra begins, and by sunset
the snowy chain is multiplied a hundred times in
curves of white and purple cumuli, while thunder
rolls heavily along the range. "This is a great
country, sir," said a Coloradan to me to-day. " We
make clouds for the whole universe." At dark there
is dust or thunder-storm at the mountain foot, and
then the cold and brilliant night. Summer and
winter, it is the same.
122 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
CHAPTER XI.
EED INDIA.
" These Red Indians are not red," was our first cry
when we saw the Utes in the streets of Denver. They
had come into town to be painted as English ladies
go to London to shop ; and we saw them engaged
within a short time after their coming in daubing
their cheeks with vermilion and blue, and referring to
glasses which the squaws admiringly held. Still, when
we met them with peaceful paintless cheeks, we had
seen that their colour was brown, copper, dirt, any-
thing you please except red.
The Hurons, with whom I had stayed at Indian
Lorette, were French in training if not in blood ;
the Pottawatomies of St. Mary's Mission, the Dcla-
wares of Leavenworth, are tame, not wild : it is
true that they can hardly be called red. But
still I had expected to have found these wild
prairie and mountain Indians of the colour from
which they take their name. Save for paint, I found
them of a colour wholly different from that which
we call red.
Low in stature, yellow-skinned, small-eyed, and
Tartar-faced, the Indians of the Plains are a distinct
XI.] JIED INDIA. 123
people from the tall, hook-nosed warriors of tiie
Eastern States. It is impossible to set eyes on their
women without being reminded of the dwarf skeletons
found in the mounds of Missouri and Iowa ; but, men
or women, the Utes bear no resemblance to the bright-
eyed, graceful people with whom Penn traded and
Standish fought. They are not less inferior in mind
than in body. It was no Shoshon^ no Ute, no
Cheyenne who called the rainbow the "heaven of
flowers," the moon the "night queen," or the tars
"God's eyes." The Plain tribes are as deficient,
too, in heroes as in poetry : they have never even
produced a general, and White Antelope is their
nearest approach to a Tecumseh. Their mode of
life, the natural features of the country in which
they dwell, have nothing in them to suggest a reason
for their debased condition. The reason must lie in
the blood, the race.
All who have seen both the Indians and the Poly-
nesians at home must have been struck with innu-
merable resemblances. The Maori and Eed Indian
wakes for the dead are identical ; the Californian
Indians wear the Maori mat ; the " medicine " of the
Mandan is but the " tapu " of Polynesia ; the New
Zealand dance-song, the Maori tribal sceptre, were
found alike by Strachey in Virginia and Drake in
California; the canoes of the West Indies are the
same as those of Polynesia. Hundreds of argu-
ments, best touched from the farther side of the
Pacific, concur to prove the Indians a Polynesian race.
The canoes that brought to Easter Island the people
124 GREATER BRITAIN. [cuap.
who built their mounds and rock temples there, may as
easily have been carried on by the Chilian breeze and
current to the South American shore. The wave from
Malaya would have spent itself upon the northern
plains. The Utes would seem to be Kamskatkians,
or men of the Amoor, who, fighting their way round
by Behring Straits, and then down south, drove a
wedge between the Polynesians of Appalachia and
California. No theory l)ut this will account for the
sharp contrast between the civilization of ancient
Peru and Mexico, and the degradation in which the
Utes have lived from the earliest recorded times.
Mounds, rock temples, worship, all are alike unknown
to the Indians of the Plains; to the Polynesian
Indians, these were things that had come down to
them from all time.
Curious as is the question of the descent of the
American tribes, it has no bearing on the future of
the country— unless, indeed, in the eyes of those
who assert that D^lawares and Utes, Hurons and
Pawnees, are all one race, with features modified
by soil and climate. If this were so, the handsome,
rollicking, frank-faced Coloradan ** boys " would have
to look forward to the time when their sons' sons
should be as like the Utes as many New Englanders
of to-day are like the Indians they expelled — that,
as the New Englanders are tall, taciturn, and hatchet-
faced, the Coloradans of the next age should be flat-
faced warriors, five feet high. Confidence in the
future of America must be founded on a belief in
the indestructible vitality of race.
XI. J M1]D INDIA. 125
Kamskatkiaiis or Polynesians, Maiuys or sons of
the prairies on which they dwell, the Eed Indians
have no future. In twenty years there will scarcely
be one of pure blood alive within the United States.
In La Plata, the Indians from the inland forests
gradually mingle with the whiter inhabitants of the
coast, and become indistinguishable from the remainder
of the population. In Canada and Tahiti, the French
intermingle with the native race : the Hurons are
French in everything but name. In Kansas, in
Colorado, in New Mexico, miscegenation will never be
brought about. The pride of race, strong in the
English everywhere, in America and Australia is an
absolute bar to intermarriage, and even to lasting
connexions with the aborigines. What has happened
in Tasmania and Victoria is happening in New
Zealand and on the Plains. When you ask a Western
man his views on the Indian question, he says :
" Well, sir, we can destroy them by the laws of war,
or thin 'em out by whiskey ; but the thinning process
is plaguy slow."
There are a good many Southerners out upon the
Plains. One of them, describing to me how in Florida
they had hunted down the Seminoles with blood-
hounds, added, " And sarved the pesky sarpints right,
sail ! " South-western volunteers, campaigning against
the Indians, have been known to hang up in their
tents the scalps of the slain, as we English used to
nail up tho skins of the Danes.
There is in these matters less hypocrisy among the
Americans than wi^h ourselves. In 1840, the British
12G (iUKATEll IIRITAIN. [chap.
Oovcrnmcnt assumed the sovcrcimtv of New Zealand
ill a proclamation which set forth wi.'-h great precision
that it did so for the sole purpose of protecting the
aborigines in the possession of their lands. The
Maories numbered 200,000 then ; they number 20,000
now.
Among the Western men there is no diifercnce of
opinion on the Indian question. Kifle and revolver
are their only policy. The New Englanders, who are
all for Christianity and kindliness in their dealings
with the red men, arc not similarly united in one
fry. Those who are ignorant of the nature of the
Indian, call out for agricultural employment for the
braves ; those who know nothing of the Indian's life
demand that "reserves" be set aside for him, for-
getting that no " reserve" can be hirge enough to
hold the buftalo, and that without the buffalo the
red men must plough or starve.
Indian civilization throudi the means of affricul-
ture is all but a total iiiilure. The Shawnees are
thiiving near Kansas City, the Pottawatomies living
at St. Mary's mission, the Delawares existing at
Leavenworth ; but in all these cases there is a large
infusion of white blood. The Canadian Hurons are
completely civilized ; but then they are completely
French. If you succeed with an Indian to all ap-
pearance, he will suddenly return to his untamed
state, in Indian girl, one of the most orderly of
the pupils at a ladies' school, has been known, on'
feeling herself aggrieved, to withdraw to her room, let
down her back hair, paint her face, and howl. The
XI] ItED INDIA. J 27
same tendency showed itself in the case of the Dela-
ware chief who built himself a white man's house,
and lived in it thirty years, but then suddenly set
up his old wigwam in the dining-room, in disgust.
Another bad case is that of the Pawnee who visitetl
Buchanan, and liehaved so well that when a young
Englishman, who came out soon after, told the Presi-
dent that he was going AVest, he gave him a letter
to the chief, then with his tribe in Northern Kansas.
The Pawnee read the note, oflfered a ])ipe, gravely
protested eternal friendship, slept upon it, and next
morning scalped his visitor with his own hand.
The English everywhere attempt to introduce civili-
zation, or modify that which exists, in a rough and
ready manner which invariably ends in failure or in
the destruction of the native race. A hundred years
of absolute rule, mostly peaceable, have not, under
every advantage, seen the success of our repeated
attempts to establish trial by jury in Bengal. For
twenty years the Maories have mixed with the New
Zealand colonists on nearly equal terms, have almost
universally professed themselves Christians, have
attended English schools, and learnt to speak the
English language, to read and write their own; in
spite of all this, a few weeks of fanatic outburst were
enough to reduce almost the whole race to a condition
of degraded savagery. The Indians of America have
within the few last years been caught and caged,
given acres where they once had leagues, and told to
plough where once they hunted. A pastoral race,
with no conceptioB of property in land, they have been
128 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
inanufiictured into freeholders and tenant ftirmers ;
Western Ishmaelites, sprung of a race which has
wandered since its legendary life begins, they have
been subjected to homestead laws and title registra-
tion. If our experiments in New Zealand, in India,
on the African coast have failed, cautious and costly
as they were, there can be no great wonder in the
unsuccess that has attended the hurried American
exj)eriments. It is not for us, who have the past of
Tasmania and the present of Queensland to account
for, to do more than record the fact that the Americans
are not more successful with the red men of Kansas
than we with the black men of Australia.
The Bosjesman is not a more unpromising subject
for civilization than the red man ; the Ute is not
even gifted with the bii-thright of most savages, the
mimetic power. The black man in his dress, his
farming, his religion, his family life, is always trying
to imitate the white. In the Indian there is none of
this : his ancestors roamed over the plains — he will
roam ; his ancestors hunted — why should not he hunt ?
The American savage, like his Asiatic cousins, is
conservative ; the African changeable, and strong in
imitative faculties of the mind. Just as the Indian
is less versatile than the negro, so, if it were possible
gradua^^"^ to change his mode of life, slowly to brbig
him to the agricultural state, he would probably
become a skilful and laborious cultivator, and worthy
inhabitant of the western soil ; as it is, he is extermi-
nated before he has time to learn. " Sculp em fust,
and then talk to 'em," the Coloradans say.
XI.] BED INDIA. 129
Peace Commissioners are yearly sent from Wash-
ington to treat "svith hostile tribes upon the Plains.
The Indians invariably continue to fight and roll till
winter is at hand ; but when the snows appear, they
send in runners to announce that they are prepared to
make submission. The Commissioners appoint a place,
and the tribe, their relatives, allies, and friends come
down thousands strong, and enter upon debates which
are purposely prolonged till spring. All this time the
Indians are kept in food and drink ; whiskey, even,
is illegally provided them, with the cognisance of the
authorities, under the name of " hatchets." Blankets
and, it is said, powder and revolvers, are supplied to
them as necessary to their existence on the Plains ;
but when the first of the spring flowers begin to peep
up through the snow on the prairies, they take their
leave, and in a few weeks are out again upon the
war-path, plundering and scalping.
Judging from English experience in the north, and
Spanish in Mexico and South America, it would seem
as though the white man and the red cannot exist on
the same soil. Step by step the English have driven
back the braves, till New Englanders now remember
that there were Indians once in Massachusetts, as we
remember that once there were bears in Hampshire.
King Philip's defeat by the Connecticut Volunteers
seems to form part of the early legendary history of
our race ; yet there is still standing, and in good
repair, in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, a frame-
house which m its time has been successfully defended
against Eed Indians. On the other hand, step by
VOL. I. K
130 GREATER BRITAIN. . [chap.
step since tlie days of Cortez, the Indians and half-
bloods have driven out the Spaniards from Mexico
and South America. White men, Spaniards, received
Maximilian at Vera Cruz, but he was shot by full-
blood Indians at Queretaro.
If any attempt is to be made to save the Indians
that remain, it must be worked out in the Eastern
States. Hitherto the whites have but pushed back
the Indians westwards : if they would rescue the
remnant from starvation, they must bring them East,
away from Western men, and Western hunting-
grounds, and let them intermingle with the whites,
living, farming, along with them, intermarrying if
possible. The hunting Indian is too costly a being
for our age; but we are bound to remember that
ours is the blame of having failed to teach him to be
something better.
After all, if the Indian is mentally, morally, and
physically inferior to the white man, it is in every way
for the advantage of the world that the next gene-
ration that inhabits Colorado should consist of whites
instead of reds. That this result should not be
brought about by cruelty or fraud upon the now-exist-
ing Indians is all that we need require. The gradual
extinction of the inferior races is not only a law of
nature, but a blessing to mankind.
The Indian question is not hkely to be one much
longer : before I reached England again, I learnt that
the Coloradan capital offered " twenty dollars apiece
for Indian scalps with ears on."
xii.J COLORADO. 131
CHAPTER XII.
COLORADO.
When you have once set eyes upon tlie never-ending
sweep of tlie Great Plains, you no longer wonder that
America rejects Malthusianism. As Strachey says of
Virginia, " Here is ground enough to satisfy the most
courteous and wide affection." The freedom of these
grand countries was worth the tremendous conflict
in which it was, in reality, the foremost question;
their future is of enormous moment to America.
Travellers soon learn, when making estimates of a
country's value, to despise no feature of the landscape ;
that of the Plains is full of life, full of charm-
lonely, indeed, but never wearisome. Now great
rolling uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless
grassy plains, there is all the grandeur of monotony,
and yet continual change. Sometimes the grand dis-
tances are broken by blue buttes or rugged bluffs.
Over all there is a sparkling atmosphere and never-
failing breeze ; the air is bracing even when most hot ;
the sky is cloudless, and no rain falls. A solitude
which no words can paint, the boundless prairie swell,
conveys an idea of vastness which is the overpowering
feature of the Plains.
K 2
132 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Maps do not remove the impression produced by
views. The Arkansas Eiver, which is born and dies
within the limit of the Plains, is two thousand miles
in length, and is navigable for eight hundred miles.
The Platte and Yellowstone are each of them as long.
Into the Plains and Plateau you could put all India
twice. The impression is not merely one of size.
There is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the
lonely steppe ; no patriotism, no love of home, can
prevent the traveller wishing here to end his days.
To those who love the sea, there is here a double
charm. Not only is the roll of the prairie ap grand
as that of the Atlantic, but the crispness of the wind,
the absence of trees, the multitude of tiny blooms..
upon the sod, all conspire to give a feeling of nearness
to the ocean, the effect of which is we are always
expecting to hail it from off the top of the next hillock.
The resemblance to the Tartar plains has been
remarked by Coloradan writers; it may be traced
much farther than they have carried it. Not only are
the earth, air, and water much alike, but in Colorado,
as in Bokhara, there are oU-wells and mud volcanoes.
The colour of the landscape is, in summer, green and
flowers ; in fall-time, yellow and flowers, but flowers
ever.
The eastern and western portions of the Plains are
not alike. In Kansas the grass is tall and rank ; the
ravines are filled with cottonwood, hickory, and black
walnut ; here and there are square miles of sunflowers,
from seven to nine feet high. As we came west, we
found that the sunflowers dwindled, and at Denver
xii.] COLORADO. 133
they are only from three to nine inches in height,
the oddest little plants in nature, but thorough sun-
flowers for all their smalhiess. AVe found the bufialo
in the eastern plains in the long bunch -grass, but in
the winter they work to the west in search of the
sweet juicy " blue grass," which they rub out from
under the snow in the Coloradan plains. This grass
is so short that, as the story goes, you must lather
it before you can mow it. The "blue grass" has
high vitality: if a wagon train is camped for a
single night among the sun-flowers or tall weeds,
this crisp turf at once springs up, and holds the
ground for ever.
The most astounding feature of these plains is their
capacity to receive millions, and, swallowing them
up, to wait open-mouthed for more. Vast and silent,
-fertile yet waste, field-like yet untilled, they have
room for the Huns, the Goths, the Vandals, for all
the teeming multitudes that have poured and can
pour from the plains of Asia and of Central Europe.
Twice as large as Hindostan, more temperate, more
habitable, nature has been placed here hedgeless,
gateless, free to all— a green field for the support of
half the human race, unclaimed, untouched, awaiting
smiling, hands and plough.
There are two curses upon this land. Here, as in
India, the rivers depend on the melting of distant
snows for their supplies, and in the hot] weather are
represented by beds of parched white sand. So hot
and dry is a great portion of the land, that crops
require irrigation. Water for drinking purposes is
134 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
scarce ; artesian bores succeed, but they are somewhat
costly for the Coloradan purse, and the supply from
common wells is brackish. This, perhaps, may in
part accouiit for the Western mode of " prospecting "
after water, under which it is agreed that if none be
found at ten feet, a trial shall be made at a fresh spot.
The thriftless ranchman had sooner find bad water
at nine feet than good at eleven.
Irrigation by means of dams and reservoirs, such
as those we are building in Victoria, is but a question
of cost and time. The never-failing breezes of the
Plains may be utilized for water-raising, and with
water all is possible. Even in the mountain plateau,
overspread as it is with soda, it has been found, as it
has been by French farmers in Algeria, that, under
irrigrition, the more alkali the better corn-crop.
When fires are held in check by special enactments,
such as those which have been passed in Victoria
and South Australia, and the waters of the winter
streams retained for summer use by tanks and dams ;
when artesian wells are frequent and irrigation
general, belts of timber will become possible upon the
Plains. Once planted, these will in their turn miti-
gate the extremes of climate, and keep alike in check
the forces of evaporation, sun, and wind. Cultivation
itself brings rain, and steam will soon be available
for pumping water out of wells, for there is a great
natural store of brown coal and of oil-bearing shale
near Denver, so that all would be well were it not
for the locusts — the scciirge of the Plains — ^the second
curse. The coming of the chirping hordes is a
XII.] . COLORADO. 135
real calamity in these far-western countries. Their
departure, whenever it occurs, is officially announced
by the governor of the State.
I have seen a field of Indian corn stripped bare
of every leaf and cob by the crickets ; but the owner
told me that he found consolation in the fiict that they
ate up the weeds as well. For the locusts there is no
cure. The plovers may eat a few billions, but, as a
rule, Coloradans must learn to expect that the locusts
will increase with the increase of the crops on which
they feed. The more coi'n, the more locusts — the
more plovers, perhaps ; a clear gain to the locusts
and plovers, but a dead loss to the farmers and
ranchmen.
The Coloradan " boys " are a handsome, intelligent
race. The mixture of Celtic and Saxon blood has
here produced a generous and noble manhood; and
the freedom from wood, and consequent exposure to
wind and rain, has exterminated ague, and driven
away the hatchet-face ; but for all this, the Coloradans
may have to succumb to the locusts. At present
they afiect to despise them. " How may you get on in
Colorado ? " said a Missourian one day to a "boy" that
was up at St. Louis. " Purty Avell, guess, if it warn't
for the insects." " What insects ? Crickets ? "
" Crickets ! Wall, guess not — ^jess insects like : rattle-
snakes, panther, bar, catamount, and sichlike."
" The march of empire stopped by a grasshopper "
would be a good heading for a Denver paper, but
would not represent a fact. The locusts may alter
the step, but not cause a halt. If corn is impossible,
136 QEEATEB BRITAIN, [chap.
cattle are not ; already thousands are pastured round
Denver on the natural grass. For horses, for merino
sheep, these rolling table-lands are peculiarly adapted.
The New Zealand paddock system may be appHed to
the whole of this vast region — Dutch clover, French
lucern, could replace the Indian grasses, and four
sheep to the acre would seem no extravagant estimate
of the carrying capability of the lands. The world
must come here for its tallow, its wool, its hides,
its food.
In this seemingly happy conclusion there lurks a
danger. Flocks and herds are the main props of
great farming, the natural supporters of an aristocracy.
Cattle breeding is inconsistent, if not with republi-
canism, at least with pure democracy. There are
dangerous classes of two kinds — those who have too
many acres, as weU as those who have too few. The
danger at least is real. Nothing short of violence or
special legislation can prevent the Plains from con-
tinuing to be for ever that which under nature's
farming they have ever been — the feeding ground for
mighty flocks, the cattle pasture of the world.
2CIII.1 EOCKY MOUNTAINS. 137
CHAPTER XIII.
EOOKY MOUNTAINS.
" What will I do for you if you stop here among
us ? Wliy, I'll name tliat peak after you in the next
survey," said Governor Gilpin, pointing to a snowy
mountain towering to its 15,000 feet in the direction
of Mount Lincoln. I was not to be tempted, how-
ever ; and as for Dixon, there is already a county
named after him in Nebraska : so off we went along
the foot of the hills on our road to the Great Salt
Lake, following the "Cherokee Trail."
Striking north from Denver by Vasquez Fork and
Cache la Poudre — called " Cash le Powder," just as
Mount Royal has become Montreal, and Sault de
St. Marie, Soo — we entered the Black Mountains, or
Eastern foot-hills, at Beaver Creek. On the second
day, at two in the afternoon, we reached Virginia Dale
for breakfast, without adventure, unless it were the
shooting of a monster rattlesnake that lay " coiled in
our path upon the mountain side." Had we been but
a few minutes later, we should have made it a halt for
"supper" instead of breakfast, as the drivers had
but these two names for our daily meals, at what-
ever hour they took place. Our "breakfasts" varied
138 GREATER BRITAIN. [cnAr.
from 3.30 A.M. to 2 p.m. ; our suppers from 3 p.m.
to 2 A.M.
Here we found the weird red rocks that give to
the river and the territory their name of Colorado,
and came upon the mountain plateau at the spot
where last year the Utes scalped seven men only three
hours after Speaker Colfax and a Congressional party
had passed with their escort.
While trundling over the sandy wastes of Laramie
Plains, we sighted the Wind River chain drawn by
Bierstadt in his great picture of the " Rocky Moun-
tains." The painter has caught the forms, but missed
the atmosphere of the range : the clouds and mists
arc those of Maine and Massachusetts ; there is colour
more vivid, darkness more lurid, in the storms of
Colorado.
This was om' first sight of the main range since
we entered the Black Hills, although we passed
through the gorges at the very foot of Long's Peak.
It was not till we had reached the rolling hills of
"Meridian Bow" — a hundred miles beyond the peak
— that we once more caught sight of it shining in
the rear.
In the night between the second and third days,
the frost was so bitter, at the great altitude to
which we had attained, that we resorted to every
expedient to keep out the cold. While I was trying
to peg down one of the leathern flaps of our ambu-
lance with the pencil from my note -book, my eye
caught the moonlight on the ground, and I drew back
saying, "We are on the snow." The next time
XIII.] BOCKY MOUNTAINS. 139
we lialted, I found that what I had seen was an
impalpable white dust, the much dreaded alkali.
In the morning of the third day we found our-
selves in a country of dazzling white, dotted with here
and there a tuft of sage-brush— an Artemisia akin to
that of the Algerian highlands. At last we were in
the " American desert "—the " Mauvaises terres."
Once only did we escape for a time from alkali and
sage to sweet waters and sweet grass. Near Bridger's
Pass and the " divide " between Atlantic and Pacific
floods, we came on a long valley swept by chilly
breezes, and almost unfit for human habitation from
the rarefaction of the air, but blessed with pasture
ground on which domesticated herds of Himalayan
y^k should one day feed. Settlers in Utah will
find out that this anii al, which would flourish here
at altitudes of from 4,000 to 14,000 feet, and which
bears the most useful of all furs, requires less herbage
in proportion to its weight and size than almost any
animal we know.
This Bridger's Pass route • is that by which the
telegraph line runs, and I was told by the drivers
strange stories of the Indians and their views on this
great Medecine. They never destroy out of mere
wantonness, but have been known to cut the wire
and then lie in ambush in the neighbourhood, in the
expectation that repairing parties would arrive and fall
an easy prey. Having come one morning upon three
armed overlanders lying fast asleep, while a fourth
kept guard, by a fire which coincided with a gap in
the posts, but which was far from any timber or even
140 GREATER BRITAIN. [cnAr.
scrub, I have my doubts as to whether "white
Indiana" have not much to do with the destruction of
the line.
From one of the uplands of the Artemisia barrens
wo sighted at once Fremont's Peak on the north,
and another great snow-dome upon the south. The
unknown mountain was both the more distant and
the loftier of the two, yet the maps mark no chain
within eyeshot to the southward. The country on
either side of this well-worn track is still as little
known as when Captain Stansbury explored it in
1850 ; and when we crossed the Green river, as the
Upper Colorado is called, it was strange to remember
that the stream is here lost in a thousand miles of
undiscovered wilds, to be found again flowing towards
Mexico. Near the ferry is the place where Albert S.
Johnson's mule trains were captured by the Mormons
under Lot Smith.
In the middle of the night we would come some-
times upon mule-trains starting on their march in
order to avoid the mid-day sun, and thus save water,
which they are sometimes forced to carry with them
for as much as fifty miles. When we found them
halted, they were always camped on blufis and in
bends, far from rocks and tufts, behind which the
Indians might creep and stampede the cattle : this
they do by suddenly swooping down with fearful
noises, and riding among the mules or oxen at full
speed. The beasts break away in their fright, and
are driven off before the sentries have time to turn out
the camp.
xni.J EOCKY MOUNTAINS. 141
On the fourth clay from Denver, the scenery was
tame enough, but strange in the extreme. Its cha-
racteristic feature was its breadth. No longer the
rocky defiles of Virginia Dale, no longer the glimpses
of the main range as from Laramie Plains and the
foot hills of Meridian Bow, but great rolling downs
like those of the Plains much magnified. We crossed
one of the highest passes in the world without
seeing snow, but looked back directly we were
through it on snow-fields behind us and all around.
At Elk Mountain we suffered greatly from the
frost, but by mid-day we were taking off our coats,
and the mules hanging their heads in the sun once
more, while those which should have taken their
places were, as the ranchman expressed it, "kickintr
then: heels in pure cussedncss" at a stream some ten
miles away.
While walking before the "hack" through the
burning sand of Bitter Creek, I put up a bird as
big as a turkey, which must, I suppose, have been
a vulture. The sage-brush growing here as much
as three feet high, and as stout and gnarled as cen-
tury-old heather, gave shelter to a few coveys of
sage-hens, at which we shot without much success,
although they seldom ran, and never rose. Their
colour is that of the brush itself— a yellowish grey—
and it is as hard to see them as to pick up a
partridge on a sun-diied fallow at home in England.
Of wolves and rattlesnakes there were plenty, but
of big game we saw but little, only a few black-tails
in the day.
142 QBEATEB BRITAIN. [cnAr.
This track is more travelled by trains than is the
Smoky Hill route, which accounts for the absence
of game on the line ; but that there is plenty about
close at hand is clear from the way we were fed.
Smoky Hill route starvation was forgotten in piles
of steaks of elk and antelope ; but still no fruit,
no vegetable, no bread, no drink save "sage-brush
tea," and that half poisoned with the water of the
alkaline creeks.
Jerked buffalo had disappeared from our meals.
Tho di?Yes never visit the Sierra Madre now, and
scientific books have said that in the mountains
they were ever unknown. In Bridger's Pass we
saw the skulls of not less than twenty bufialo, which
is proof enough that they once were here, though
perhaps long ago. The skin and bones will last
about a year after the beast has died, for the wolves
tear them to pieces to get at the marrow within,
but the skull they never touch; and the oldest
ranchman failed to give me an answer as to how
long skulls and horns might last. "We saw no buffalo
roads like those across the Plains.
From the absence of bufialo, absence of birds, ab-
sence of flowers, absence even of Indians, the Eocky
Mountain plateau is more of a solitude than are
the Plains. It tak'^« days to see this, for you natu-
rally notice it less. On the Plains, the glorious
climate, the masses of rich blooming plants, the
millions of beasts, and insects, and birds, all seem
prepared to the hand of man, and for man you
are continually searching. Each time you round a
XIII.] ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 143
hill, you look for tlic smoke of the farm. Here on ti
mountains you feci as you do on the sea : it is nature's
own lone solitude, but from no fault of ours — the
higher parts of the plateau were not made for man.
Early on the fifth night we dashed suddenly out
of utter darkness into a mountain glen blazing with
fifty fires, and perfumed with the scent of burning
cedar. As many wagons as there were fires were
corralled in an ellipse about the road, and GOO cattle
were pastured within the fire-glow in rich grass
that told of water. Men and women were seated
round the camp-fires praying and singing hymns.
As we drove in, they rose and cheered us "on your
way to Zion." Our Gentile driver yelled back the
war-whoop " How ! How ! How ! How — w ! We'll
give yer love to Brigham ; " and back went the poor
travellers to their prayers again. It was a bull-train
of the Mormon immigration.
Five minutes after we had passed the camp we
were back in civilization, and plunged into poly-
gamous society all at once, with Bishop Myers, the
keeper of Bear Eivcr ranch, drawing water from the
well, while Mrs. Myerc No. 1 cooked the chops, and
Mrs. Myers No. 2 laid the table neatly.
The kind Bishop made us sit before [the fire tiU
we were warm, and filled our " hack " with hay, that
we might continue so, and ofi" we went, inclined to
look favourably on polygamy after such experience
of polygamists.
Leaving Bear River about midnight, at two o'clock
m the morning of the sixth day we commenced the
144 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
descent of Echo Canyon, the grandest of all the gully
passes of the Wasatch Kange. The night was so clear
that I was able to make some outline sketches of the
cliffs from the ranch where we changed mules. Echo
Canyon is the Thermopylae of Utah, the pass that
the Mormons fortified against the United States forces
under Albert S. Johnson at the time of " Buchanan's
raid." Twenty-six miles long, often not more than
a few yards wide at the bottom, and a few hundred
feet at the top, with an overhanging cliff on the
north side, and a mountain wall on the south. Echo
Canyon would be no easy pass to force. Govern-
ment will do well to prevent the Pacific railroad from
following this defile.
After breakfast at Coalville, the Mormon Newcastle,
situated in a smiling valley not unlike that between
Martigny and Saint Maurice, we dashed on past
Kimball's ranch, where we once more hitched horses
instead of mules, and began our descent of seventeen
miles down Big Canyon, the best of all the passes
of the Wasatch. Rounding a spur at the end of our
six-hundredth mile from Denver, we first sighted the
Mormon promised ?and.
The sun was setting over the great dead lake to
our right, lighting up the valley with a silvery gleam
from Jordan River, and the hills with a golden glow
from ofif the snow-fieMs of the many mountain chains
and peaks around. In our front, the Oquirrh, or
Western Range, stood out in sharp purple outlines
upon a sea-coloured sky. To our left were the Utah
mountains, blushing rose, all about our heads the
x"^-] ROCKY MOUNTAINS. I45
Wasatch glowing in orange and gold. From tiie flat
valley in the snowy distance rose the smoke of many
houses, the dust of many droves ; on the bench-land
of Ensign Peak, on the lake side, white houses peeped
from among the trees, modestly, and hinted the
presence of the city.
Here was Plato's table-land of the Atlantic isle-
one great field of corn and wheat, where only twenty
years ago Fremont, the Pathfinder, reported wheat
and corn impossible.
VOL. I.
1 46 GREATER BRITAIN. [ciiAr.
CHAPTER XIV.
BRIGHAM YOUNG.
" I LOOK upon Mahomet and Brigham as the very best
men that God could send as ministers to those unto
whom He sent them," wrote Elder Frederick Evans, of
the " Shaker " village of New Lebanon, in a letter to
us, inclosing another by way of introduction to the
Mormon president.
Credentials from the Shaker to the Mormon chief —
from the great living exponent of the principle of
celibacy to the " most married man " in all xVmerica —
were not to be kept undelivered ; so the moment we
had taken a bath, we posted off to a merchant to whom
we had letters, that we might inquire when his spiritual
chief and military ruler would be home again from
his " trip north." The answer was, " To-morrow."
After watching the last gleams fade from the snow-
fields upon the Wasatch, we parted for the night, as
I had to sleep in a private house, the hotel being filled
even to the balcony. As I entered the drawing-room
of my entertainer, I heard the voice of a lady reading,
and caught enough of what she said to be aware that
it was a defence of polygamy. She ceased when she
saw the stranger ; but I found that it was my host's
XIV.] BRIGHAM YOUNG. 147
first wife reading Belinda Pratt's book to her daugh-
ters — girls just blooming into womanhood.
After an agreeable chat with the ladies, doubly-
pleasant as i+^^ followed upon a long absence from
civilization, I went to my room, which I afterwards
found to be that of the eldest son, a youth of sixteen
years. In one corner stood two Ballard rifles, and
two revolvers and a militia uniform hung from pegs
upon the wall. When I lay down with my hands
underneath the pillow — an attitude instinctively
adopted to escape the sand-flies, I touched something
cold. I felt it — a full-sized Colt, and capped. Such
was my first introduction to Utah Mormonism.
On the r orrow, we had the first and most formal
of our four interviews with the Mormon president^ the
conversation lasting three hours, and all the leading'
men of the Church being present. When we rose to
leave, Brigham said : " Come to see me here again :
Brother Stenhouse will show you everything;" and
then blessed us in these words : " Peace be with you,,
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."
Elder Stenhouse followed us out of the presence,
and somewhat anxiously put the odd question : " Well,
is he a white manf "White" is used in Utah as a
general term of praise : a white man is a man — to
use our corresponding idiom — not so black as he is.
painted. A " white country " is a country with gi*ass
and trees ; just as a white man means a man who.
is morally not a Ute, so a white country is a land!
in which others than Utes can dwell.
We made some complimentary answer to Stenhouse'*
L 2
148 GREATER HTtlTAIN. [chap.
question ; but it was impossible not to feel that the
real point was : Is Brigham sincere ?
Brigham's deeds have been those of a sincere man.
His bitterest opponents cannot dispute the fact that
in 1844, when Nnuvoo was about to be deserted,
owing to the attacks of a ruffianly mob, Brigham
rushed to the front, and took the chief command.
To 1)6 a Mormon leader then was to be a leader of
an outcast people, with a price set on his head, in
a Missourian county in which almost every man who
was not a Mormon was by profession an assassin. In
the sense, too, of believing that he is what he pro-
fesses to be, Brigham is undoubtedly sincere. In the
wider sense of being that which he professes to be
he comes off as well, if only we will read his words
in the way he speaks them. He tells us that he is
a prophet — God's representative on earth ; but when
I asked him whether he was of a wholly different
spiritual rank to that held by other devout men, he
said : " By no means. I am a prophet — one of many.
All good men are prophets ; but God has blessed me
with peculiar favour in revealing His will oftener and
more clearly through me than through other men."
Those who would understand Brigham's revelations
must read Bentham. The leading Mormons are
utilitarian deists. "God's will be done," they, like
other deists, say is to be our rule ; and God's will
they find in written Revelation and in Utility. God
has given men, by the actual hand of angels, the
Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants,
the revelation upon Plural Marriage. When these
XIV.] BlUOHAM YOUNG. 149
are exliaustcrl, man, seeking for God's will, lias to
turn to the principle of Utility : that which is for
the happiness of m-dnklnd~that is, of the Church
— is God's will, and must be done. While Utility
is their only index to God's pleasure, they admit
that the Church must be ruled — that opinions
may differ as to what is the good of the Church,
and therefore the will of God. They meet, then,
annually, in an assembly of the people, and elect-
ing Church officers by popular will and acclamation,
they see God's finger in the ballot-box. They say,
like the Jews in the election of their judges, that
the choice of the people is the choice of God. This
is what men like John Taylor or Daniel Wells appear
to feel; the ignorant are permitted to look upon
Brigham as something more than man, and though
Brigham himself does nothing to confirm this view,
the leaders foster the delusion. When I asked Sten-
house, " Has Brigham's re-election as Prophet ever
been opposed?" he answered sharply, "I should like
to see the man who'd do it."
Brigham's personal position is a strange one : he
calls himself Prophet, declares that he has revelations
from God himself ; but when you ask him quietly
what all this means, you find that for Prophet you
should read Political Philosopher. He sees that a
canal from Utah Lake to Salt Lake Valley would be
of vast utility to the Church and people— that a new
settlement if urgently required. He thinks about
these things till they dominate in his mind — take in
his brain the shape of physical creations. He dreams
150 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
of the canal, the city ; sees them before him in liis
waking moments. That which is so clearly for the
good of God's people, becomes God will. Next
Sunday at the Tabernacle, he steps to the front, and
says : "God has spoken; He has said unto His prophet,
* Get thee up, Brigham, and build Me a city in the
fertile valley to the South, where there is water,
where there are fish, where the sun is strong enough
to ripen the cotton plants, and give raiment as well
as food to My saints on earth/ Brethren willing to
aid God's work should come to me before the Bishops'
meeting." As the Prophet takes his seat again, and
puts on his broad-brimmed hat, a hum of applause
runs round the bowery, and teams and barrows are
freely promised.
Sometimes the canal, the bridge, the city may prove
a failure, but this is not concealed : the Prophet's
human tongue may blunder even when he is commu-
nicating holy things.
"After all," Brigham said to me the day before I
left, "the highest inspiration is good sense — the
knowing what to do, and how to do it."
In all this it is hard for us, with our English hatred
of casuistry and hair-splitting, to see sincerity ; still,
given his foundation, Brigham is sincere. Like other
political-religionists, he must feel himself morally
bound to stick at nothing when the interests of the
Church are at stake. To prefer man's life or property
to the service of God must be a crime in such a
Church. The Mormons deny the truth of the murder-
stories alleged against the Danites, but they avoid
XIV.] BIUQIIAM YOUNG. 161
doing so in sweeping or even general terms — though,
if need were, of course they would be bound to lie as
well as to kill in the name of God and His holy
prophet.
The secret policy which I have sketched gives,
evidently, enormous power to some one man within
the Church ; but the Mormon constitution does not
very clearly point out who that man shall be. With
a view to the possible future failure of leaders of
great personal qualifications, the First Presidency
consists of three members with equal rank ; but to
his place in the Trinity, Brigham unites the office of
Trustee in Trust, which gives him the control of the
funds and tithing, or Church taxation.
All are not agreed as to what should be Brigham's
place in Utah. Stenhouse said one day : " I am one
of those who think that our President should do
everything. He has made this Church and this
country, and should have his way in all things ;
saying so gets me into trouble with some." The
writer of a report of Brigham's tour which appeared
in the Salt Lake Telegrcq^h the day we reached the
city, used the words : " God never spoke through man
more clearly than through President Young."
One day, when Stenhouse was speaking of the
morality of the Mormon people, he said : " Our penalty
for adultery is death." Remembering the Danites,
we were down on him at once : " Do you inflict it ? "
" No ; but — well, not practically ; but really it is so.
A man who commits adultery withers away and
perishes. A man sent away from his wives upon a
162 OREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
mission that may last for years, if he lives not purely
— ify when he returns, he cannot meet the eye of
Brigham, better for him to he at once in hell He
withers."
Brigham himself has spoken in strong words of his
own power over the Mormon people : "Let the talking
folk at Washington say, if they please, that I am
no longer Governor of Utah. I am, and will be
Governor, until God Almighty says, ' Brigham, you
need not be Governor any more.'"
Brigham's head is that of a man who nowhere could
be second.
xv.J MOEMONDOM.
l.')U
CHAPTER XV.
MOItMONDOM.
We had Lceii preseiitetl at court, and favourably
received; asked to call again; admitted to State
secrets of tlie presidency. From this moment our
position in the city was secured. Mormon seats in
the tlieatre were placed at our disposal ; the director
of immigration, the presiding bishop. Colonel Hunter
—a grim, weather-beaten Indian fighter— and his
coadjutors carried us off to see the reception of the
bull-train at the Elephant Corral; we were oifered
a team to take us to the Lake, which we refused
only because we had akeady accepted the loan of
one from a Gentile merchant; presents of peaches
and invitations to lunch, dinner, and supper, ciime
pouring in upon us from all sides. In a single morn-
ing we were visited by four of the Apostles and nine
other leading members of the Church. Ecclesiastical
dignitaries sat upon our single chair and wash-hand-
stand; and one bed groaned under the weight of
George A. Smith, " Church historian," while the o :her
bore iEsop's load— the peaches he had brought.
These growers of fruit from standard trees think but
small things of our English wall-fruit, '' baked on
154 GREATER BRITAIN. [cuap.
one side, and frozen on the other," as tlicy say.
Tliere is a mellowness aljout the Mormon peaches
that would drive our gardeners to despair.
One of our callers was Captain Hooper, the Utah
delegate to Congi-ess. He is an adept at the Western
plan of getting out of a fix by telling you a story.
When we laughingly alluded to his lack of wives, and
the absurdity of a monogamist representing Utah, he
said that the people at Washington all believed that
Utah had sent them a polygamist. There is a rule
that no one with the entry shall take with him more
than one lady to the White House receptions. A
member of Congress was urged by three ladies to
take them with him. He, as men do, said, " The
thing is impossible" — and did it. Presenting him-
self with the bevy at the door, the usher stopped
him : " Can't pass ; only one friend admitted with
each member." " Suppose, sir, that I'm the delegate
from Utah Territory V said the Congress-man. " Oh,
pass in, sir — pass in," was the instant answer of the
usher. The story reminds me of poor Browne's
(Artemus AVard) " family " ticket to his lecture at
Salt Lake City : " Admit the bearer and one wife."
Hooper is said to be under pressure at this moment
on the question of polygamy, for he is a favourite with
the Prophet, who cannot, however, with consistency
promote him to office in the Church on account of a
saying of his own : " A man with one wife is of less
account before God than a man with no wives at all."
Our best opportunity of judging of the Mormon
ladies was at the theatre, which we attended re-
XV.] MORMON DOM. 1 55
gularly, sitting now in Elder Stenhousc's " family "
scats, now with General Wells. Here we saw
all the wives of the leading Churchmen of the
city ; in their houses, we saw only those they chose
to show us : in no case but that of the Clawson
family did wc meet in society all the wives. We
noticed at once that the leading ladies were all
alike — full of taste, full of sense, but full, at the
same time, of a kind of unconscious melancholy.
Everywhere, as you looked round the house, you met
tlie sad eye which I had seen but once before —
among the Shakers at New Lebanon. The women
here, knowing no other state, seem to think them-
selves as happy as the day is long : their eye alone
is there to show the Gentile that they are, if the
expression may be allowed, unhappy without knowing
it. That these Mormon women love their religion
and reverence its ])riests is but a consequence of its
being "their religion" — the system in the midst of
which they have been brought up. Which of us is
there who does not set up some idol in his heart
round which he weaves all that he has of poetry
and devotion in his character? — art, hero-worship,
patriotism are forms of this great tendency. That
the Mormon girls, who are educated as highly as
those of any country in the world — who, like all
American girls, are allowed to wander where they
please — who are certain of protection in any of the
fifty Gentile houses in the city, and absolutely safe
in Camp Douglas at the distance of two miles from
the city-wall — all consent deliberately to enter on
156 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
polygamy — shows clearly enough that they can, as
a rule, have no dislike to it beyond such a feeling
as public opinion will speedily overcome.
Discussion of the institution of plural marriage in
Salt Lake City is fruitless ; all that can be done is
to observe. In assaulting the Mormon citadel, you
strike agninst the air. "Polygamy degrades the
woman," you begin. *' Morally or socially ? " says
the Mormon. " Socially." " Granted," is the reply,
"and that is a most desirable consummation. By
socially lowering, it morally raises the woman. It
makes her a servant, but it makes her pure and
good."
It is always well to remember that if we have one
argument against polygamy which from our Gen die
point of view is unanswerable, it is not necessary
that we should rack our brains for others. All our
modern experience is favourable to ranking woman
as man's equal ; polygamy assume;^, that she shall be
his servant — loving, ftiithful, cheerful, willing, but
still a servant.
The opposite poles upon the women question are
Utah polygamy and Kansas female suffrage.
XVI.] tVESTERN EDITORS. 157
CHAPTER XVI.
WESTERN EDITORS.
The attack upon Mormonclom has been systematized,
and is conducted with military skill, by trench and
parallel. The New England papers having called for
" facts" whereon to base their homibes, General
Connor, of Fenian fame, set up the Union Vadette
in Salt Lake City, and publishes on Saturdays a sheet
expressly intended for Eastern reading. The mantle
of the Sangamo Journcd has fallen on the Vedette^
and John C. Bennett is effaced by Connor. From
this source it is that come the whole of the para-
graphs against Brigham and Mt.»rmondoni which appear
in the Eastern papers, and find their way to London.
The editor has to fill his paper v>dth peppery leaders,
well-spiced telegrams, stinging " facts." Every week
there must be something tluit can be used and quoted
against Brigham. The Eastern remarks upon quota-
tions in turn are quoted at Salt Lake. Under such
circumstanceai, even telegrams can be made to take
a flavour. In to-day's Vedette we have one from
St. Joseph, describing how above one thousand " of
these dirty, filthy dupes of Great Salt Lake iniquity"
are novr squatting round the packet dep6t, awaiting
l.'S GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
transport. Another from Chicago tells us that tho
seven thousand European Mormons who have this
year passed up the Missouri river " are of the lowest
and most ignorant classes." The leader is directed
against Mormons in general, and Stenhouse in par-
ticular, as editor of one of the Mormon papers, and
cx-postmaster of the territory. He has already had
cause to fear the Vedette, as it was through the
exertions of its editor that he lost his office. This
'matter is referred to in the leader of to-day : " When
we found our letters scattered about the streets in
fragments, we succeeded in getting an honest post-
master appointed in place of the editor of the Tele-
graph" — "an organ where even carrots, pumpkins,
and potatoes arc current funds" — " directed by a clique
of foreign writers, who can hardly speak our language,
and who never drew a loyal breath since they came
to Utah." The Mormon tax frauds, and the Mormon
police, likewise come in for their share of abuse,
and the writer concludes with a pathetic plea against
arrest " for quietly indulging in a glass of wine in a
private room with a friend."
Attacks such as these make one understand the
suspiciousness of the ]\Iormon leaders, and the slow-
ness of Stenhouse and his friends to take a joke if
it concerns the Church. Poor Artemus Ward once
wrote to Stenhouse, " Ef you can't take a joke, you'll
1)0 darned, and you oughter ;" but the jest at which
he can laugh has wrought no cure. Hebcr Kimball
said to me one day : " They're all alike. There was
came here to write a book, and we thought
XVI.] WESTERN EDITORS. 159
better of him than of most. I showed him more
kindness than I ever showed a man before or since,
and then he called mc a ' hoary reprobate.' I would
advise him not to pass this way next time."
The suspicion often takes odd shapes. One Sunday
morning, at the tabernacle, I remarked that the
Prophet's daughter, Zina, had on the same dress as
she had worn the evening before at the theatre, in
playing " Mrs. Musket" in the farce of " My Husband's
Ghost." It was a black silk gown, with a Vandyke
flounce of white, impossible to mistake. I pointed
it out in joke to a iMormon friend, when he denied my
assertion in the most emphatic way, although he could
not have known for certain that I was wrong, as ho
sat next to me in the theatre during the whole play.
The Mormons will talk freely of their own suspi-
ciousness. They say that the coldness with which
travellers are usually received at Salt Lake City is
the consequence o''" years of total misrepresentation.
They forget that they are arguing in a circle, and
that this misrepresentation is itself sometimes the
result of their reserve.
The news and advertisements are even more
amusing than the leaders in the Vedette. A para-
graph tells us, for instance, that " ^Irs. Miirtha
Stewart and Mrs. Robertson, of San Antoine, lately
had an impromptu fight with revolvers ; Mrs. Stewart
was badly winged." Nor is this the only reference
in the paper to shooting by ladies, as another para-
graph tells how a young girl, frightened by a sham
ghost, drew on the would-be apparition, and with six
mo GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
barrels sliot him twice through the head, and four
times *' in the region of the heart." A quotation
from the Owyhee Avalanche, speaking of gambling
hells, tells us that " one hurdy shebang,'* in Silver
City, shipped 8,000 dollars as the net proceeds of its
July business. " These leeches corral more clear cash
than most quartz mills," remonstrates the editor.
" Corral," in this sense, is the Mexican cattle inclo-
sure ; the yard where the team mules are ranched ;
the kraal of Cape Colony, which, on the Plains and
the Plateau, serves as a fort for men as well as a fold
for oxen, and resembles the screw of the East. The
word " to corral" means to turn into one of these
pens ; and thence " to pouch," " to pocket," " to bag,"
to get well into hand.
The advertisements are in keeping with the news.
" Everything, from a salamander safe to a Limerick
fish-hook," is offered by one firm. " Fifty-three and
a half and three and three-quarter thimble-skein
Schuttler wagons," is offered ])y another. Again, an
advertiser bids us *' Spike the Guns of Humbug !
and Beware of Deleterious Dyes ! Refuse to have
your Heads Baptized with Liquid Fire ! " Another
says, " If you want a paper free from entanglements
of cliques, and antagonistic to the corrupting evils of
factionism, subscribe to the Montana Radiator."
But nothing beats the following : " Butcher's dead-
shot for bed-bugs ! Curls them up as fire does a
leaf ! Try it, and sleep in peace ! Sold by all live
druggists."
If wc turn, however, to the other Salt Lake papers,
XVI.] WESTERN EDITORS. 161
the Telegraph, an independent Mormon paper, and
the Deseret News, the official journal of the Church,
we find a contrast to the ti-ash of the Vedette.
Brigham's paper, clearly printed and of a pleasant
size, is filled with the best and latest news from the
outlying portions of the territory, and from Europe.
The motto on its head is a simple one — " Truth
and Liberty ; " and twenty-eight columns of solid
news are given us. Among the items is an account
of a fight upon the Smoky Hill route, which
occurred on the day we reached this city, and in
w^liich two teamsters — George Hill and Luke West —
were killed by the Kiowas and Cheyennes. A loyal
Union article from the pen of Albert Carrington, the
editor, is followed by one upon the natural advantages
of Utah, in which the writer complains that the
very men who ridiculed the Mormons for settling
in a desert are now declaiming against their being
allowed to squat upon one of the '* most fertile loca-
tions in the United States." The same paper asserts
that Mormon success is secured only by Mormon
industry, and that as a merely commercial speculation,
apart from the religious impulse, the cultivation of
Utah would not pay : " Utah is no place for the
loafer or the lazy man." An official report, like the
Court Circular of England, is headed, " President
Brigham Young's trip North," and is signed by G. D.
Watt, " Reporter " to the Church. The Old Testa-
ment is not spared. " From what we saw of tlie
timbered mountains," writes one reporter, " we had
no despondencv of Israel ever failing for material to
VOL. I. M
1G2 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
build up, beautify, and adorn pleasant habitations in
that part of Zion." A theatrical criticism is not
wanting, and the Church actors come in for " praise
all around." In another part of the paper are tele-
graphic reports from the captains of the seven immi-
grant trains not yet come in, giving their position,
and details of the number of days' march for which
they have provisions still in hand. One reports
" thirty-eight head of cattle stolen ; " another, " a good
deal of mountain fever ; " but, on the whole, the tele-
grams look well. The editor, speaking of the two
English visitors now in the city, says : " We greet
them to our mountain habitation, and bid them
welcome to our orchard ; and that's considerable for
an editor, especially if he has plural responsibilities to
look after." Bishop Harrington reports from American
Fort that everybody is thriving there, and " doing as
the Mormon creed directs — minding their own busi-
ness." " That's good, Bishop," saj^s the editor. The
" Passenger List of the 2nd Ox Train, Captain J. D.
Holladay," is given at length ; about half the immi-
grants come with wife and family, very many with
five or six children. From Liverpool, the chief office
for Europe, comes a gazette of " Keleases and Ap-
pointments," signed " Brigham Young, Jun., President
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in
the British Isles and Adjacent Countries/' accompanied
by a despatch, in which the " President for England"
gives details of his visits to the Saints in Norway, and
of his conversation with the United States minister at
St. Petersburg. .
XVI. J WESTERN EDITORS. 163
Tlie Daihj Telecjraph, like its editor, is practical,
and docs not deal in extract. All tlie sheet, with the
exception of a few columns, is taken up with business
advertisements ; but these are not the least amusing
part of the paper. A gigantic figure of a man in high
boots and felt hat, standing on a ladder and pasting
up Messrs. Eldredge and Clawson's dry-goods adver-
tisement, occupies nearly half the back page. Mr.
Birch informs "parties hauling wheat from San Pete
county" that his mill at Fort Birch is now running, and
that it is situate at the mouth of Salt Creek Canyon,
just above Neplii City, Juab County, on the direct
road to Pahranagat. A view of the fort, with, posterns,
parapets, embrasures, and a giant flag, heads the
advertisement. But the guts are not always so cheer-
ful : one Far- Western paper fills three-quarters of its
front page with an engraving of a coflin. The editorial
columns contain calls to the "])rethren with teams"
to aid the immigrants, an account of a *"' rather
mixed case" of '' double divorce" (Gentile), and of a
prosecution of a man "for \ iolation of the seventh
commandment." A Mormon poMcc report, is headed
" One drunk at the Calaboose." Defending himself
against charges of "du-ecting bisho])s" and '* steadying
the ark," the editor calls on the bishops to shorten
their sermons : "we may get a crack^for this, but we
can't help it. We like variety, life, and short meet-
ings." In a paragraph about his visitors, our friend
the editor of the Telegraph said, a day or two after
our arrival in the city : " If a stranger can escape the
strychnine clique for three days after arrival, he is for
M 2 ' /■•.._..■■..,;• ..;:..-
164 OREATUR BRITAIN. [chap.
ever afterwards safe. Generally the first twenty-four
liours are sufficient to prostrate even tlie very robust."
In a few words of regret at a change in the Denver
newspaper staff our editor says : " However, a couple
of sentences indicate that George has no intention of
abr.ndoning the tripod. That's right : keep at it, my
boy ; misery likes company."
The day after we reached Denver, the Gazette, com-
menting on this same "George," said : "Captain West
has left the Rocky Mountains News office. We are
not surprised, as we could never see how any respect-
able decent gentleman like George could get along
with Governor Evans' paid hireling and whelp who
edits that delectable sheet." Of the two papers which
exist in every town in the Union, each is always at
work fittempting to "use up" the other. I have seen
the democratic print of Chicago call its republican
opponent " a radical, disunion, disreputable, bankrupt,
emasculated evening newspapti- concern of this city"
— a string of terms by the s.de of which even Western
utterances pale.
A paragraph headed "The Millennium" tells us
that the editors of the Telegraph and Deseret News
were seen yesterday aflerncon walking together
towards the Twentieth Ward. Another paragraph
records the ill success of an expedition against
Indians who had been "raiding" doTrn in "Dixie,"
or South Utah. A general order signed "Lieut.-
General Daniel H. Wells," and dated "head-quarters,
Nauvoo Legion," directs the assembly, for a three days'
*' big drill," of the forces of the various military
XVI.] WESTERN EDITOHS. 165
districts of the territ-^iy. The name of " Territorial
Militia," under which alone the United States can
permit the existence of the legion, is carefully omitted.
This is not the only warlike advertisement in the
paper : fourteen cases of Ballard rifles are offered in
exchange for cattle ; and other firms offer tents and
side-arms to their friends. Amusements are not
forgotten : a cricket match between two Mormon
settlements in Cache county is recorded, " Wellsville
whipping Brigham city with six wickets to go down;'*
and is followed hy an article in which the First Presi-
dent may have had a hand, pointing out that the Salt
Lake Theatre is going to be the greatest of theatres,
and that the favour of its audience is a passport
beyond Wallack's, and equal to Drury Lane or the
Haymarket. In sharp contrast to these signs of pre-
sent prosperity, the First Presidency announce the
annual gathering of the surviving mer^-xbers of Zion's
camp, the association of the first immigrant band.
There is about the Mormon papers much that tells
of long settlement and prosperity. When I showed
Stenhouse the Denver Gazette of our second day in that
town, he said : " Well, Telegraph' shcttcr than that ! "
The Denver sheet is a literary curiosity of the first
order. Printed on chocolate-coloured paper, in ink of
a not much darker hue, it is in parts illegible — to the
reader's regret, for what we were" able to make out
was good enough to make us wish for more.
The difference between the Mormon and Gentile
papers is strongly marked in the advertisements. Thd
Denver Gazette is filled with puffs of quacks and
IGG GREATER BRITAIN. [chap
•wliiskey-sliops. In the column licadccl " Business
Cards," Dr. Ermcrins announces that he may be con-
sulted by his patients in the "French, German, and
English " tongues. Lower down we have the card of
"Dr. Treat, Eclectic Physician and Surgeon," which
is preceded by an advertisement of " sulkies made to
order," and followed by a leaded heading "Know
thy Destiny : Madame Thornton, the English Astro-
logist and Psychomctrician, has located herself at
Hudson, New York ; by the aid of an instrument of
intense power, known as the Psycliomotrope, she
guarantees to produce a lifelike picture of the future
husband or wife of the applicant." There is a strange
turning towards the supernatural among this people.
Astrology is openly professed as a science throughout
the United States ; the success of spiritualism is
amazing. The most sensible men are not exempt
from the weakness : the dupes of the astrologers are
not the uneducated Irish ; they are the strong-minded,
half-educated Western men, shrewd and keen in trade,
brave in war, material and cold in faith, it would be
supposed, but credulous to folly, as wc know, when
personal revelation, the supernaturalism of the present
day, is set before them in the crudest and least attrac-
tive forms. A little lower, " Charley Eyser " and "Gus
Fogus" advertise their bars. The latter announces
"Lager beer at only 10 cents," in a "cool retreat,"
"fitted up with green-growing trees." A returned
warrior heads his announcement, in huge capitals,
" Back Home Again, An Old Hand at the Bellows, The
Soldier Blacksmith : — S. M. Logan." In a country
XVI.] WEiiTERN EDITORS. 1G7
where weights and measures are rather a matter of
practice than of law, Mr. O'Conncll does well to add to
"Lager beer 15 cents," "Glasses hold Two Bushels."
John Morris, of the "Little Giant" or "Theatre
Saloon," asks us to " call and see him ;" while his
rivals of the " Progi'cssive Saloon" offer the "finest
liquors that the East can command." Morris Sigi,
whose " lager is pronounced A No. 1 by all who have
used it," bids us " give him a fair trial, and satisfy
ourselves as to the false reports in circulation." Daniel
Marsh, dealer in " breech-loading guns and revolvers,"
adds, "and anything that may be wanted, from a cradle
to a coffin, both inclusive, made to order. An Lidian
Lodge on view, for sale." This is the man at whose
shop the scalp hangs for sale ; but he fails to name
it in his advertisement : the Utes brought it in too
late for insertion, perhaps.
Advertisements of freight-trains now starting to the
East, of mail coaches to Buckskin Joe — advertisements
slanting, topsy-turvy, and sideways turned — complete
the outer sheet ; but some of them, through bad ink,
printer's errors, strange English, and wilder Latin, are
wholly unintelligible. It is hard to make much of
this, for instance : " Mr. iEsculapius, no offense, I
hope, as this is written extempore and ipso facto.
But, perhaps, I ought not to disregard ex unci disce
omnes."
In an editorial on the English visitors then in-
Denver, the chance of putting into their mouths a
puff of the territory of Colorado was not lost. We
were made to " appreciate the native energy and
168 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
wealth of industry necessary in building up such a
Star of Empire as Colorado." The next paragraph is
communicated from Conejos, in the south of the terri-
tory, and says : " The election has now passed off, and
I am confident that we can beat any ward in Denver,
and give them two in the game, for rascality in
voting." Another leader calls on the people of Denver
to remember that there are two men in the calaboose
for mule-steaHng, and that the last man locked up for
the offence was allowed to escape : some cottonwood
trees still exist, it believes. In former times, there
was for the lynching here hinted at a reason which
no longer exists : a man shut up in gaol built of
adobe, or sun-dried brick, could scratch his way
through the crumbling wall in two days, so the
citizens generally hanged him in one. Now that the
gaols are in brick and stone, the job might safely be
left to the sheriff; but the people of Denver seem
to trust themselves better even than they do their
delegate, Bob Wilson.
A year or two ago, the gaols were so crazy, that
Coloradan criminals, when given their choice whether
they would be hanged in a week, or " as soon after
breakfast to-morrow as shall be convenient to the sheriff
and agreeable, Mr. Prisoner, to you," as the Texan
formula runs, used to elect for the quick delivery, on
the ground that otherwise they would catch their
deaths of cold — c,t least, so the Denver story runs.
They have, however, a method of getting the gaols
inspected here which might be found useful at home :
it consists in the simple plan of giving the governor
XVI.] WESTERN EDITORS. 109
of a gaol an opportunity of seeing tlie practical
working of the system by locking him up inside for
a while.
These Far- Western papers are written or com-
piled under difficulties almost overwhelming. Mr.
Frederick J. Stanton, at Denver, told me th^t often
he had been forced to " set up" and print as well as
"edit" the paper which he owns. Type is not
always to be found. In its early days, the California
Alta once appeared with a paragraph which ran : " I
have no W in my type, as there is none in the
Spanish alphabet. I have sent to the Sandwich
Islands for this letter ; in the meantime we must
use two Vs."
Till I had seen the editors' rooms in Denver, Austin,
and Salt Liake City, I had no conception of the point
to which discomfort could be carried. For all these
hardships, payment is small and slow. It consists
often of little but the satisfaction which it is to the
editor's vanity to be "liquored" by the best man
of the place, treated to an occasional chat with the
governor of the territory, to a chair in the Overland
Mail Office whenever he walks in, to the hand of the
hotel proprietor whenever he comes near the bar, and
to a pistol-shot once or twice in a month.
It must npt be supposed that the Vedette does
the Mormons no harm ; the perpetual reiteration in
the Eastern and English papers of three sets of stories
alone would suffice to break down a flourishing power.
The three lines that are invariably taken as founda-
tions for their stories are these — that the Mormon
170 OBEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
women are wretched, and would fain get away, but
are checked by the Danites ; that the Mormons are
ready to fight with the Federal troops with the hope
of success ; that robbery of the people by the apostles
and elders is at the bottom of Mormonisra— or, as
the Vedette puts it, " on tithing and loaning hang all
the law and the profits."
If the mere fact of the existence of the Vedette
effectually refutes the stories of the acts of the Danites
in these modern days, and therefore disposes of the
first set of stories, the third is equally answered by a
glance at its pages. Columns of paragraphs, sheets of
advertisements, testify to the foundation by industry,
in the most frightful desert on earth, of an agricultural
community which California herseT cannot match.
The Mormons may well call their country "Deseret" —
"land of the bee." The process of fertilization goes
on day b^ day. Six or seven years ago. Southern
Utah was a desert bare as Salt Bush Plains. Irriga-
tion from the fresh-water lake was carried out under
episcopal direction, and the result is the growth of
fifty kinds of grapes alone. Cotton mills and vine-
yards are springing up on every side, and "Dixie"
begins to look down on its parent, the Salt Lake
Valley. Irrigation from the mountain rills has done
this miracle, we say, though the Saints undoubtedly
believe that God's hand is in it, helping miraculously
"His peculiar people."
In face of Mormon prosperity, it is worthy of
notice that Utah was settled on the Wakefieldian
system, though Brigham knows nothing of Wakefield.
XVI,] WESTERN EDITORS. . 171
Town population and country population grew up
side by side in every valley, and the plough was not
allowed to gain on the machine-saw and the shuttle.
It is not only in water and verdure that Utah is
naturally pooi. On the mining-map of the States,
the comitries that lie around Utah — Nevada, Arizona,
Colorado, Montana — arc one blaze of yellow, and blue,
and red, coloured from end to end with the tints that
are used to denote the existence of precious metals.
Utah is blank at present — blank, the Mormons say,
by nature ; Gentiles say, merely through the absence
of survey ; and they do their best to circumvent
mother nature. Every fall the "strychnine" party
raise the cry of gold discoveries in Utah, in the hope
of bringing a. rush of miners down to Salt Lake City,
too late for them to get away again before the snows
begui. The presence of some thousands of broad-
brimmed rowdies in Salt Lake City, for a winter,
would be the death of Mormonism, they believe.
Within the last few days, T am told that prospecting
parties have found " pay dirt" in City Canyon, which,
however, they had first themselves carefully " salted"
with gold-dust. There is coal at the settlement at
which we breakfasted on our way from Welder Kiver
to Salt Lake ; and Stenhouse tells us that the only
difference between the Utah coal and that of "Wales
is, that the latter will " burn," and the former voont !
Poor as Utah is by nature, clear though it be that
whatever value the soil now possesses, represents only
the loving labour bestowed upon it by the Saints, it
is doubtful whether they are to continue to possess
172 QBEATEB BRITAIN. [chap.
it, even though the remaining string of Vedette-hovn
stories assert that Brigham "threatens hell" to the
Gentiles that would expel liim.
The constant, teasing, wasp-like pertinacity of the
Vedette has done some harm to liberty of thought
throughout the world.
XVII.] UTAH. 173
CHAPTER XVII.
UTAH.
'* When you arc driven hence, where shall you go?"
" We take no thought for the morrow ; the Lord
will guide His people," was my rebuke from Elder
Stenhouse, delivered in the half-solemn, half-laughing
manner characteristic of the Saints. " You say mira-
cles are passed and gone," he went on ; " but if God
has ever interfered to protect a Church, he has inter-
posed on our behalf. In 1857, when the whole army
of the United States was let slip at us under Albert
S. Johnson, we were given strength to turn them
aside, and defeat them without a blow. The Lord
permitted us to dictate our own terms of peace.
Asain, when the locusts came in such swarms as to
blacken the whole valley, and fill the air with a
living fog, God sent millions of strange new gulls,
and these devoured the locusts, and saved us from
destruction. The Lord will guide His people."
Often as I discussed the future of Utah and their
Church with Mormons, I could never get from them
any answer but this ; they would never even express
a belief, as will many Western Gentiles, that no
174 GREATER BRITAIN [chap.
tattcmpt will be made to expel them from the
country they now hold. They cannot help seeing
how immediate is the danger : from the American
press there comes a cry, " Let us have this polygamy
put down ; its existence is a disgrace to England
from which it springs, a shame to America in which
it dwells, to the Federal Government whose laws it
outrages and defies. How long will you continue
to tolerate this retrogression from Christianity, this
insult to civilization ?"
With the New Englanders, the question is political
as well as theological, personal as well as political — ■
political, mainly because there is a great likeness
between Mormon expressions of belief in the divine
origin of polygamy and the Southern answers to the
Abolitionists : " Abraham was a slave-owner, and father
of the faithful ;" " David, the best-loved of God, was
a polygamist " — " show us a biblical prohibition of
slavery ;" " show us a denunciation of polygamy, and
we'll believe you." It is this similarity of the de-
fensive positions of Mormonism and slavery which
has led to the present peril of the Salt Lake Church ;
the New Englanders look on the Mormons, not only
as heretics, but as friends to the slave-owners ; on the
other hand, if you hear a man warmly praise the
Mormons, you may set him down as a Southerner,
or at the least a. Democrat.
Another reason for the hostility of New England
is, that while the discredit of Mormonism falls upon
America, the American people have but little share
in its existence : a few of the leaders are New Eng-
xvn.] UTAH. 175
landers and New Yorkers, but of the rank and file,
not one. In every ten immigrants, the missionaries
count upon finding that four come from England,
two from Wales, one from the Scotch Lowlands, one
from Sweden, one from Switzerland, and one from
Prussia : from Catholic countries, none ; from all
America, none. It is through this purely local and
temporary association of ideas that we see the strange
sight of a party of tolerant, large-hearted Churchmen
eager to march their armies against a Church.
If we put aside for a moment the question of the
moral right to crush Mormonism in the name of truth,
we find that it is, at all events, easy enough to do
it. There is no difiiculty in finding legal excuses for
action — no danger in backing the Federal legislation
with military force. The legal point is clear enough
— clear upon a double issue. Congress can legislate
for the territories in social matters — has, in fact,
already done so. Polygamy is at this moment punish-
able in Utah, but the law is, pending the completion
of the railroad, not enforced. Without extraordinary
action, its enforcement would be impossible, for Mor-
mon juries will give no verdict antagonistic to their
Church ; but it is not only in this matter that the
Mormons have been offenders. They have sinned
also against the land-laws of America. The Church,
Brigham, Kimball, all are landholders on a scale not
contemplated by the "Homestead" laws — unless to
be forbidden ; doubly, therefore, are the Mormons at
the mercy of the Federal Congress. There is a loop-
hole open in the matter of polygamy — that adopted
17G GEEATEE BRITAIN. " [c;iap.
by the New York Communists when they chose each
ca woman to be his legal wife, and so put themselves
without the reach of law. This method of escape,
I have been assured by Mormon elders, is one that
nothing could force them to adopt. Kather than
indirectly destroy their Church by any such weak
compliance, they would again renounce their homes,
and make their painful way across the wilderness to
some new Deseret.
It is not likely that New England interference will
hinge upon plurality. A " difficulty " can easily be
made to arise upon the land question, and no breach
of the principle of toleration will, on the surface at
least, be visible. No surveys have been held in the
territory since 1857, no lands within the territorial
limits have been sold by the Federal land-office. Not
only have the limitations of the "Homestead" and
"Pre-emption" laws been disregarded, but Salt Lake
City, with its palace, its theatre, and hotels, is built
upon the public lands of the United States. On the
other hand, Mexican titles are respected in Arizona
and New Mexico ; and as Utah was Mexican soil when,
before the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Mormons
sett' .d on its wastes, it seems hard that their claims
should not be equally respected.
After all, the theory of Spanish authority was a
ridiculous fiction. The Mormons were the first
occupants of the country which now forms the terri-
tories of Utah and Colorado and the State of Nevada,
and the Mormons were thus annexed to the United
States without being in the least degree consulted. It
XVII.] . ' UTAH. 177
is true that they might be said to have occupied the
country as American citizens, and so to have caiiiod
American sovereignty witli them into the wilderness ;
hut this, again, is a European, not an American theory.
American citizens are such, not as men born upon a
certain soil, but as being citizens of a State of the
Union, or an organized Territory ; and though the
Mormons may be said to have accepted their position
as citizens of the Territory of Utah, still they did
so on the understanding that it should continue a
•Mormon country, where Gentiles should at the most
be barely tolerated.
We need not go further into the mazes of public
law, or of ex post facto American enactments. The
Mormons themselves admit that the letter of the law
is against them ; but say that while it is claimed
that Boston and Philadelphia may fitly legislate for
the Mormons three thousand miles away, because
Utah is a Territory, not a State, men forget that it is
Boston and Philadelphia themselves who force Utah
to remain a Territory, although they admitted the less
populou.'^ Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon to their
rights as States. . .
If, wholly excluding morals from the calculation,
there can be no doubt upon the points of law, there
can be as little upon the military question. Of the
fifteen hundred miles of waterless tract or desert that
we crossed, seven hundred have been annihilated :
1869 may see the railroad track in the streets of Salt
Lake City. This not only settles the military
question, but is meant to do so. When men lay
VOL. I. N
178 QMEATEE BRITAIN. [cuap.
four miles of a railroad in a day, and average two
miles a day for a whole year, when a government
bribes high enough to secure so startling a rate of
progress, there is something more than commerce or
settlement in the wind. The Pacific railroad is not
merely meant to be the shortest line from New
York to San Francisco ; but it is meant to put
down Mormonism.
If the Federal government decides to attack these
peaceable citizens of a Territory that should long since
have been a State, they certainly will not fight, and'
they no less surely will not disperse. Polynesia or
Mexico is their goal, and in the Marqutisas or m
Sonora they may, perhaps, for a few years at lc?st, be
let alone, again to prove the forerunner^ of English
civilization — planters of Saxon institutions and the
English to^igue ; once more to perform their mission,
as they performed it in Missouri and in Utah.
When we turn from the siipple legal question, and
the still more simple military one, to the moral point
involved in the forfible suppression of plural mar-
riage in one State by tne force of all the others, we
find the consideration of the matter confused by the
apparent analogy between the so-called crusade against
slavery and the proposed crusade against polygamy.
There is no real resemblance between the cases. In
the strictest sense, th3re was no more a crusade
against slavery than there is a crusade against snakes
on the part of a man who strikes one that bit iiim.
The purest Republicans have never pretended that the
abolition of slavery was the justification of the war.
xviu] UTAH. 179
The South rose in rebellion, and in rising gav^c New
England an opportunity for the destruction in America
of an institution at variance with the rej^ublicau
form of government, and aggressive in its tendencies.
So fiir is polygamy from being opposed in spirit to
democracy, that it is impossible here, in Salt Lake
City, not to see that it is the most levelling of all
social institutions — Aformonism the most democratic
of religions. A rich man in Now York leaves his sons
large j)roperty, and founds a family ; a rich Mormon
leaves his twenty or thirty sons each a miserable
fraction of his money, and each son must trudge out
into the world, and toil for himself. Brigham's sons
— those of them who are not gratuitously employed in
hard service for the Church in foreign parts — are
cattle-drivers, small farmers, ranchmen. One of them
was the only poorly clad boy I saw in Salt Lake City.
A system of polygamy, in which all the wives, and
consequently all the children, are equal before the law,
is a powerful engine of democracy.
The general moral question of whether Mormonism
is to be put down by the sword, because the Latter-
day Saints differ in certain social customs from other
Christians, is one for the preacher and the casuist,
not for a travelling obsei'ver of English-speaking
countries as they are. Mormonism comes under my
observation as the religious and social system of the
most successful of all pioneers of English civilization.
From this point of view it would be an immediate
advantage to the world that they should be driven
out once more into the wilderness, again to found an
N 2
180 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
England in Mexico, in Polynesia, or on Eed Eiver.
It may be an immediate gain to civilization, but
America herself was founded by schismatics upon a
basis of tolerance to all ; and there are still to be
found Americans who think it would be the severest
blow that has been dealt to liberty since the St. Bar-
tholomew, were she to lend her enormous power to
systematic persecution at the cannon's mouth. • ''■
•■ The question of where to draw the line is one of
interest. Great Britain draws it at black faces, and
would hardly tolerate the existence among her white
subjects in London of such a sect as that of the
Maharajas of Bombay. "If you draw the line at
black faces," say the Mormons, " why should you not
let the Americans draw it at two thousand miles from
Washington V -
The moral question cannot be dissociated from that
of Mormon history. The Saints marched from Missouri
and Illinois, into no man's land, intending there to
live out of the reach of those who differed from them,
as do the Eussian dissenters transported in past ages
to the provinces of Eiga and Kherson. It is by no
fan It of theirs, they say, that they are citizens of the
United States.
7. There is in the Far West a fast increasing party who
would leave people to be polygamists, polyandrists.
Free-lovers, Shakers, or monogamists, as they please ;
who would place the social relations as they have
placed religion — out of the reach of the law. I need
hardly say that public opinion has such overwhelming
force in America that it is probable that even under a
O
u
o
P -
c :
A. s'
XVII.] VI AH. 181
system of perfect tolerat^o-i by law, two forms of the
family relation Y;ould never be found existing side
by side. Polygamists would continue to migrate to
Mormon land, Free-lovers to New York, Shakers to
New England. Some will find in this a reason for,
and some a reason against, a change. In any case, a
crusade against Mormonism will hardly draw sym-
pathy from Nebraska, from Michigan, from Kansas.
Many are found who say ; " Leave Mormonism to
itself, and it will die." The Pacific railroad alone,
they think, will kill it. Those Americans who know
Utah best are not of this opinion. Mormonism is no
superstition of the past. There is huge vitality in the
polygamic Church. Emerson once spoke to me of
Unitarianism, Buddhism, and Mormonism as three
religions which, right or wrong, are full of force.
" The Mormons only need to be persecuted," said
Elder Frederick to me, "to become as powerful as
the Mohamedans." It is, indeed, more than doubtful
whether polygamy can endure side by side with
American monogamy — it is certain that Mormon
priestly power and Mormon mysteries cannot in the
long run withstand the presence of a large Gentile
population ; tbut, if Mormon titles to land are re-
spected, and if great muieral wealth is not found
to exist in Utah, Mormonism will not be exposed to
any much larger Gentile intrusion than it has to cope
with now. Settlers who can go to California or to
Colorado "pares" will hardly fix themselves in the
Utah desert. The Mexican table-lands will be annexed
before Gentile immigrants seriously trouble Brigham.
182 QBEATEB BRITAIN. [cnAr.
Gold and New England are the most dreaded foes of
Mormondom. Nothing can save polygamy if lodes
and pla(;ers such as those of all the surrounding States
are found in Utah ; nothing can save it if the New
Englanders df termine to put it down.
Were Congress to enforce the Homestead laws in
Utah, and provide for the presence of an over^i^helm-
ing Gentile population, polygamy would not only
die of itself, but drag Mormonism down in its fall.
Brigham knows more completely than we can the
necessity of isolation. He would not be likely to
await the blow which increased Gentile immigration
would deal to his power.
If New England decides to act, the table-lands of
Mexico will see played once more the sad comedy of
Utah. Again the Mormons will march into Mexican
territory, again to wake some day, and find it
American. Theirs, howe\er, will once more be the
pride of having proved the pioneers of that English
civilization which is destined to overspread the
temperate world. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
annexed Utah to the United States, but Brigham
Young annexed it to Anglo-Saxondom.
xvtii.] NAMELESS ALPS. 183
CHAPTER XVIII. ,
NAMELESS ALPS.
At the Post Office in Main Street, I gave Mr. Dixon
a few last messages for home — he one to me for some
Egyptian friends ; and, with a shake and a wave, we
parted, to meet in London after between us completing
the circuit of the globe.
This time again I was not alone : an Irish miner
from Montana, with a bottle of whiskey, a revolver
and pick, shared the back seat with the mail-bags.
Before we had forded the Jordan, he had sung
"The A\ earing of the Green," and told me the day
and the hour at which the Republic was to be
proclaimed at his native village in Galway. Like a
true Irishman of the South or West, he was happy
only when he could be generous ; and so much joy did
he show when I discovered that the cork had slipped
from my flask, and left me dependent on him for
my escape from the alkaline poison, that I half be-
lieved he had drawn it himself when we stopped to
change horses for mules. Certain it is that he pressed
his whiskey so fast upon me and the various drivers,
that the day we most needed its aid there was none,
and the bottle itself had ended its career by serving as
a target for a trial of breech-loading pistols.
184 GEE A TEE BEITAIN. [chap.
At the sixth ranch from the city, which stands on
the shores of the lake, and close to the foot of the
mountains, we found Porter Rockwell, accredited chief
of the Danites, the "Avenging Angels" of Utah, and
leader, it is said, of the "White Indians" at the
Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Since 1840, there has been no name of greater
terror in the West than Rockwell's; but in I860 his
death was reported in England, and the career of the
great Brother of Gideon was ended, as we thought.
I was told in Salt Lake City that he was still alive
and well, and his portrait was among those that I o-ot
from Mr. Ottinger ; but I am not convinced that the
man I saw, and whose picture I possess, was in fact
the Porter Rockwell who murdered Stephenson in
1842. It may be convenient to have two or three
men to pass by the one name ; and I suspect that this
is so in the Rockwell case.
Under the name of Porter Rockwell some man (or
men) has been the terror of Mississippi Valley, of
Plains, and Plateau, for thirty years. In 1841, Joe
Smith prophesied the death of Governor Boggs, of
Missouri, within six months : within that time he 'was
shot— rumour said, by Rockwell. When the Danite
was publicly charged with having done the deed for
fifty dollars and a wagon team, he swore he'd shoot
any man who said he'd shot Boggs for gain ; " but
if I am charged with shooting him, they'U have to
prove it"— words that looked like guilt. In 1842
Stephenson died by the same hand, it is believed.'
Rockwell was known to be the working chief of the
PORTER ROCKWKLL.
P. 1S4
xviii.] NAMELESS ALPS. 185
band organized in 1838 to defend tlie Fii'st Presidency
by any means whatever, fair or foul, known at various
times as tlie "Big Fan" tJiat should winnow the chaff
from the wheat ; the " Daughter of Zion," the " De-
structives," the "Flying Angels," the "Brother of
Gideon," the "Destroying Angels." "Arise and
thresh, daughter of Zion, for I will make thy horn
iron, and will make thy hoofs brass ; and thou shalt
beat in pieces many people; and I will consecrate
theii" gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto
the lords of the whole earth" — this was the motto
of the band.
Little was heard of the Danites from the time that
the Mormons were lI 'ren from Illinois and Missouri
until 1852, when murder after murder, massacre after
massacre, occurred in the Grand Plateau. Bands of
immigrants, of settbrs on their road to California,
parties of United States officers, escaping Mormons,
were attacked by " Indians," and found scalped
by the next whites who came upon their trail. It
was rumoured in the Eastern States that the red
men were Mormons in disguise, following the tactics
of the Anti-Renters of New York. In the case of
Almon Babbitt, the " Indians" were proved to have
been white.
The atrocities culminated in the Mountain Meadows
Massacre in 1857, when hundreds of men, women,
and children were murdered by men armed and
clothed as Indians, but sworn to by some '.vho escaped
as being whites. Porter Rockwell has had the
infamy of this tremendous slaughter piled on to the
186 GREATER BRITAIN. [chai<.
huge mass of his earlier deeds of blood — whether
. rightly or wrongly, who shall uay ? The man that I
saw was the man that Captain Burton saw in 1860.
His death was solemnly recorded in the autumn of
that year, yet of the identity of the person I saw with
the person described by Captain Burton there can be
no question. The bald, frowning forehead, the sinister
smile, the long grizzly curls falling upon the back, the
red cheek, the coal beard, the grey eye, are not to be
mistaken. EockwcU or not, he is a man capable of
any deed. I had his photograph in my pocket, and
wanted to get him to sign it ; but when, in awe of his
glittering bowie and of his fame, I asked, by way of
caution, the ranchman — a new-come Paddy — ^whether
Kockwell could write, the fellow told me with many
an oath that " the boss" was as innocent of letters as
a babe. " As for writin'," he said, " cuss me if he's
on it. You bet he's not — you bet."
Not far beyond Eockwell's, we di'ove close to the
bench-land ; and I was able to stop for a moment
and examine the rocks. From the verandah of the
Mormon poet Naisbitt's house in Salt Lake City, I
had remarked a double line of terrace running on one
even level round the whole of the great valley to the
south, cut by nature along the base alike of the
Oquirrh and the Wasatch.
I had thought it possible that the terrace was the
result of the varying hardness of the strata ; but, near
Black Kock, on the overland track, I discovered that
where the terrace " lines have crossed the mountain
precipices, they are continued merely by deep stains
xviii.] NAMELESS ALPS. 187
upon the rocks. The inference is that within ex-
tremely recent, if not historic times, the water has
stood at these levels from two to three hundred feet
above the present Great Salt Lake City, itself 4,300
feet above the sea. Tlu-ee days' journey farther west,
on the Eeese's River Eange, I detected similar stains.
Was the whole basin of the Rocky Mountains —
here more than a thousand miles across — once filled
with a huge sea, of which the two Sierras were the
shores, and the Wasatch, Goshoot, Waroja, Toi Abbe,
Humboldt, Washoe, and a hundred other ranges, the
rocks and isles? The Great Salt Lake is but the
largest of many such. T saw one on Mirage Plains
that is Salter than its greater fellow. Carson Sink
is evidently the bed of a smaller bitter lake; and
there are salt pools in dozens scattered through Ruby
and Smoky valleys. The Great Salt Lake itself is
sinking year by year, and the sage-brush is gaining
,y upon the alkali desert throughout the Grand Plateau.
All these signs point to the rapid drying-up of a great
sea, owing to an alteration of climatic conditions.
In the Odd Fellows' Library at San Francisco I
found a map of North Ameiica, signed " John Harvis,
A.M.," and dated " 1605," which shows a great lake
in the country now comprised in the territories of
Utah and Dacotah, with a width of fifteen degrees,
and is named "Thongo or Thoya." It is not likely
that this inland sea is a mere exaggeration of the
present Great Salt Lake, because the views of that
sheet of water are everywhere limited by islands in
such a way as to give to the eye the effect of exceed-
188 GBEATElt JJIilTAIN. [cuap.
ing uan'owucss. It is jJoasiLlc that the Jesuit Fathers,
and other Spanish travellers from California, may have
looked from the Utah mountains on the dwindling
remnant of a great inland sea.
On we jogged and jolted, till we lost sight of the
American dead sea and of its lovely valley, and got
into a canyon floored with huge boulders and slabs of
roughened rock, where I expected each minute to
undergo the fate of that Indian traveller who received
such a jolt that he bit off the tip of his own tongue, or
of Horace Greeley, whose head was Ijumped, it is said,
through the roof of his conveyance. Here, as upon
the Eastern side the Wasatch, the track was marked
by never-ending lines of skeletons of mules and oxen.
On the first evening from Salt Lake, we escaped
once more from man at Stockton, a Gentile mining
settlement in Hush Valley, too small to be called a
village, though possessed of a municipality, and
claiming the title of "city." By night we crossed by
Reynolds' Pass the Parolom or Cedar Eiinge, in a
two-horse "jerky," to which we had been shifted
for speed and safety. Upon the heights the frost
was bitter ; and when we stopj)ed at 3 a.m. for
"supper," in which breakfast was combined, we
crawled into the stable like flies in autumn, half
killed by the sudden chill. My miner spoke but
once all night. " It's right cold," he said ; but fifty
times at least he sang " The Wearing of the Green."
It was his only tune.
Soon after light, we passed the spot where Captain
Gunnison, of the Federal Engineers, who had been in
XVIII.] NAMELESS ALPS. 189
1853 the first explorer of the Smoky Hill route, was
killed "by the Ute Indians." Gunnison was an old
enemy of the Mormons, and the spot is ominously
near to Rockwell's home. Here we came out once
more into the alkali, and our troubles from dust
began. For hours we were in a desert white as snow ;
but for reward we gained a glorious view of the
Goshoot Range, which we crossed by night, climbing
silently on foot for hours in the moonlight. The
walking saved us from the cold.
The third day — a Sunday morning — we were at the
foot of the AVaroja Mountains, with Egan Canyon for
our pass, hewn by nature through the living rock.
You dare swear you see the chisel-marks upon the
stone. A gold mill had years ago been erected here,
and failed. The heavy machinery was lost upon the
road; but the four stone waL.:* contained between
them the wreck of the lighter "plant."
As we jolted and journeyed on across the suc-
ceeding plain, we spied in the. far distance a
group of black dots upon the alkali. Man seems
very small in the infinite expanse of the Grand
Plateau — the roof, as it were, of the world. At the
end of an hour we were upon them — a company of
*' overlanders " "tracking" across the continent with
mules. First came two mounted men, well armed
with Deringers in the belt, and Ballard breech-loaders
on the thigh, prepared for ambush — ready for action
against elk or red-skin. About fifty yards behind
these scowling fellows came the main band of bearded,
red-shirted diggers, in huge boots and felt hats, each
190 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
man riding one mule, and driving another laden with
packs and buckets. As we came up, the main body-
halted, and an interchange of compliments began.
" Say, mister, thet's a slim horse of yourn." " Guess
not — guess he's all sorts of a horse, he air. And
how far might it be to the State of Yarmount ? "
" Wall, guess the boys down to hum will be kinder
joyed to see us, howsomever that may be." Just at
this moment a rattlesnake was spied, and every
revolver discharged with a shout, all hailing the
successful shot with a " Bully for you ; thet hit him
whar he lives." And on, without more ado, we went.
Even the roughest of these overlanders has in him
something more than roughness. As far as appear-
ance goes, every woman of the Far "West is a
duchess, each man a Coriolanus. The royal gait,
the imperial glance and frown, belong to every ranch-
man in Nevada. Every fellow that you meet upon
the track near Stockton or Austin City^ walks as
though he were defying lightning, yet this without
silly strut or braggadocio. Nothing can be more com-
plete than the ranchman's self-command, save in the
one point of oaths ; the strongest, freshest, however,
of their moral features is a grand enthusiasm, amount-
ing sometimes to insanity. As for their oaths, they
tell you it is nothing unless the air is "blue with
cusses." At one of the ranches where there was a
woman, she said quietly to me, in the middle of an
awful burst of swearing, " Guess Bill swears steep ;"
to which I replied, " Guess so " — the only allusion I
ever heard or hazarded to Western swearing.
XVI u.] NAMELESS ALPS. 191
Leaviflg to our north a snowy range — nameless
here, but marked on European maps as the East
Humboldt — we reached the foot of the Ruby Valley
Mountains on the Sunday afternoon in glowing sun-
shine, and crossed them in a snowstorm. In the
night we journeyed up and down the Diamond or
Quartz Range, and morning found us at the foot
of the Pond Chain. At the ranch — where, in the
absence of elk, we ate "bacon," and dreamt we
breakfasted — I chatted with an agent of the Mail
Company on the position of the ranchmen, divisible,
as he told me, into " cooks and hostlers." The cooks,
my experience had taught me, were the aptest scholars,
the greatest politicians ; the hostlers, men of war and
completest masters of the art of Western swearing.
The cooks had a New-England cut ; the hostlers, like
Southerners, wore their h; • all down their backs. I
begged an explanation of the reason for the marked
distinction. " They are picked/' he said, *' from
different classes. When a boy comes to me and
asks for something to do, I give him a look, and see
Avhat kind of stuff he's made of. If he's a gay duck
out for a six-weeks' spree, I send him down here, or
to Bitter Wells ; but if he's a clerk or a poet, or any
such sorter fool as that, why then I set him cooking ;
and plaguy good cooks they make, as you must find."
The drivers on this portion of the route are as odd
fellows as are the ranchmen. Wearing huge jack-boots,
flannel shirts tucked into their trousers, but no coat or
vest, and hats with enormous brims, they have their
hair long, and their beards untrimmed. Their oaths.
192 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
I need hardly s.iy, arc fearful. At night they wrap
themselves in an enormous cloak, drink as much
whiskey as their passengers can spare them, crack
their whips, and yell strange yells. They are quarrel-
some and overbearing, honest probably, but eccentric
in their ways of showing it. They belong chiefly
to the mixed Irish and German race, and have all
been in Australia during the gold rush, and in Cali-
fornia before deep sinking replaced the surface
diggings. They will tell you how they often washed
out and gambled away a thousand ounces in a month,
living like Eoman emperors, then started in digging-
life again upon the charity of their wealthier friends.
They hate men dressed in " biled shirts " or in " store
clothes," and show their aversions in strange ways.
I had no objection myself to build fires and fetch
wood ; but I drew the line at going into the sage-
brush to catch the mules, that not being a business
which I felt competent to undertake. The season
was advanced, the snows had not yet reached the
valleys, which were parched by the drought of all
the summer, feed for the mules was scarce, and they
wandered a long way. Time after time we would
drive into a station, the driver saying, with strange
oaths, " Guess them mules is clared out from this
here ranch ; guess they is into this sage-brush ; " and
it would be an hour before the mules would be dis-
covered feeding in some forgotten valley. Meanwhile
the miner and myself would have revolver practice
at the skeletons and telegraph-posts when sage fowl
failed us, and rattlesnakes grew scarce.
XVIII.] NAMELESS ALPS. 193
After all, it is easy to speak of the eccentricities
of dress and manner displayed by Western men, but
Eastern men and Europeans upon the Plateau are
not the prim creatures of Fifth Avenue or Pall Mall.
From San Francisco I sent home an excellent photo-
graph of myself in the clothes in which I had crossed
the Plateau, tnose being the only ones I had to wear
till my baggage came round from Panama. The
result was, that my oldest friends failed to recognise
the portrait. At the foot I had written " A Border
Ruffian :" they believed not the likeness, but the
legend.
The difficulties of dress upon these mountain ranges
are great indeed. To sit one night exposed to
keen frost and biting wind, and the next day to toil
for hours up a mountain-side, beneath a blazing sun,
are very opposite conditions. I found my dress no
bad one. At night I wore a Canadian fox-fur cap.
Mormon 'coon-skin gloves, two coats, and the whole
of my light silk shirts. By day I took off the coats,
the gloves, and cap, and walked in my shirts, adding
but a Panama hat to my "fit-out."
As we began the ascent to the Pond River Range,
we caught up a bullock-train, which there was not
room to pass. The miner and myself turned out
from the jerky, and lor hours climbed alongside the
wagons. I was struck by the freemasonry of this
mountain travel : Bryant, the miner, had come to
the end of his " solace," as the most famed chewing
tobacco in these parts is called. Going up to the
nearest teamster, he asked for some, and was at once
VOL. I. o
194 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
presented with p. huge cake — enough, I should have
thought, to have hasted a Channel pilot for ten years.
The climb was long enough to give me a dee})
insight into the inner mysteries of bullock-driving.
Each of the great two-storeyed Californian wagons
was drawn by twelve stout oxen ; still, the pace was
not a mile an hour, accomplished, as it seemed to
me, not so much by the aid as in spite of tremendous
flogging. Each teamster carried a short-handled whip
with a twelve-foot leathern lash, which was wielded
with two hands, and, after many a whirl, brought
down along the whole length of the back of each
bullock of the team in turn, the stroke being accom-
panied by a shout of the bullock's name, and followed,
as it was preceded, by a string of the most explosive
oaths. The favourite names for bullocks were those
of noted public characters and of Mormon elders, and
cries were frequent of " Ho, Brlgham !" " Ho, Jdseph!''
"Ho, Grant!" — the blow falling with the accented
syllable. The London Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals would find at Pond Eiver Range
an excellent opening for a mission. The appointed
officer should be supplied with two Deringers and a
well-filled whiskey-barrel.
Through a gap in the mountain crest we sighted
the West Humboldt Range, across an open country
dotted here and there with stunted cedar, and, crossinp-
Smoky Valley, we plunged into a deep pass in the Toi
Abbe Range, and reached Austin — a mining town of
importance, rising two years old — in the afternoon of
the fourth day from Salt Lake City.
xviii.] NAMELESS ALPS. 19;
After dining at an Italian digger's restaurant with
an amount of luxury that recalled our feasts at Salt
Lake City, I started on a stroll, in which I was
stopped at once by a shout from an open bar-room
of " Say ! mister ! " Pulling up sharply, I was sur-
rounded by an eager crowd, asking from all sides the
one question : " flight you be Professor MuUer V
Although flattered to find that I looked less dis-
reputable and ruffianly than I felt, I nevertheless
explained as best I could that I was no professor —
only to be assured that if I was any 2:)rofessor at
all, Muller or other, I should do just as well : a
mule was ready for me to ride to the mine, and
"Jest kinder fix us up about this new lode." If
my new-found friends had not carried an over-
whelming force of pistols, I might have gone to the
mine as Professor Muller, and given my opinion for
what it was worth ; as it was, I escaped only by
" liquoring up " over the error. Cases of mistaken,
identity are not always so pleasant in Austin. They
told me that, a few weeks before, a man riding down
the street heard a shot, saw his hat fall into the mud,
and, picking it up, found a small round hole on each
side. Looking up, he saw a tall miner, revolver
smoking in hand, who smiled grimly, and said :
" Guess that's my muel" Having politely explained
when and where the mule was bought, the miner
professed himself satisfied with a " Guess I was
wrong — let's liquor."
In the course of my walk through Austin, I came
upon a row of neat huts, each with a board, oa
2
196 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
which Wtas painted, " Sang Sing, washing and iron-
ing," or " Mangling by Ah Low." A few paces
farther on was a shop painted red, but adorned with
calmlistic scrawls in black ink ; and farther still was
a tiny joss house. Yellow men in spotless clothes of
dark-green and blue were busy at buying and selling,
at cooking, at washing. Some, at a short trot, were
carrying burthens at the ends of a long bamboo pole.
All were quiet, quick, orderly, and clean. I had at
last come thoroughly among the Chinese people, not
to part with them again till I left Geelong, or even
Suez.
Returning to the room where I had dined, I parted
with Pat Bryant, quitting him, in Western fashion,
after a good "trade" or "swop." He had taken a
fancy to the bigger of my two revolvers. - He wna
going to breed cattle in Oregon, he told me, and
thought it might be useful for shooting his wildest
beasts by riding in the Indian manner, side by side
with them, and shooting at the heart. I answered
by guessing that I " was on the sell ;" and traded
the weapon against one of his that matched my
smaller tool. When I reached Virginia City, I in-
quired prices, and was almost disappointed to find
that I had not been cheated in the " trade."
A few minut 'S after leaving the " hotel" at Austin,
and calling at the post-office for the mails, I again
found myself in the desert — indeed, Austin itself can
hardly be styled oasis : it may have gold, but it has
no green thing within its limits. It is in canyons
and on plains like these, with the skeletons of oxen
xviii.] NAMELEtiS ALPS. 197
every few yards along tho track, that one comes to
comprelicnd the full significance of the terrible entry
in the army route-bool^s — " No grass ; no 'vater."
Descending a succession of tremendous " grades,"
as inclines upon roads and railroads arc called out
West, we came on to. the lava- covered plain of
Reese's River Valley, a wall of snowy mountain rising
grandly in our front. Close to the stream were a
ranch or two, and a double camp, of miners and of
a company of Federal troops. The diggers were
playing with their glistening knives as diggers only
can ; the soldiers — their huge sombreros worn loosely
on one side — were lounging idly in the sun.
Within an hour, we were again in snow and ice
upon the summit of another nameless range.
This evening, after five sleepless nights, I felt most
terribly the peculiar form of fatigue that we had ex-
perienced after six days and nights upon the Plains.
Again the brain seemed divided into two parts, think-
ing independently, and one side putting questions
while the other answered them ; but this time there
was also a sort of half insanity, a not altogether dis-
agreeable wandering of the mind, a replacing of the
actual by an imagined ideal scene.
On and on we journeyed, avoiding the Shoshone
and West Humboldt mountains, but picking our way
along the most fearful ledges that it has been my
fate to cross, and traversing from end to end the
dreadful Mirage Plains. At nightfall we sighted
Mount Davidson and the Washoe Range; at 3 p.m.
I was in bed once more — in Virginia City.
198 QREATElt BRITAIN. [chai-,
CHAPTER XIX.
VIllGINIA CITY.
" Guess the Governor's conskVrable skeert."
"You bet, he's mad."
My sitting down to breakfast at the same small
table seemed to end the talk ; but I had not been out
West for nothing, so explaining that I was only four
hours in Virginia City, I inquired what had occurred,
to fill the Governor of Nevada with vexation and
alarm.
"D'you tell now! only four hours in this great
young city. Wall, guess it's a bully business. You see,
some time back the Governor pardoned a road agent
after the citizens had voted him a rope. Yes, sir !
But that ain't all : yesterday, cuss me if he didn't
refuse ter pardon one of the boys who had jess shot
another in play like. Guess he thinks hisself some
pumpkins." I duly expressed my horror, and my
informant went on : " Wall, guess the citizens paid
him off purty slick. They jess sent him a short
thick bit of rope with a label ' For his Excellency.'
You bet ef he ain't mad — you bet ! Pass us those
molasses, mister."
I was not disappointed : I had not come to Nevada
for nothing. To see Virginia City and Carson, since
xix.J VimiNlA CITY. 199
I first heard their fame in New York, liad been witli
nic a passion, but the deed thus told me in the dining-
room of the "Empire" Hotel was worthy a place in the
annals of " Washoe." Under its former name, th(j
chief town of Nevada was ranked not only the highest,
but the "cussedest" town in the States, its citizens
expecting a "dead man for breakfast" every day,
and its streets ranging from seven to eight thousand
feet above the sea. Its twofold fiime is leaving it :
the Coloradan villages of North Empire and Black
Hawk are nine or ten thousand feet above sea level,
and Austin and Virginia City in Montana beat it in
playful pistolling and vice. Nevertheless, in the point
of "pure cussedness" old Washoe still stands well,
as my first introduction to its ways will show. All
the talk of Nevada reformation applies only to the
surface signs : when a miner tells you that Washoe
is turning pious, and that he intends shortly to
"varmose," he means that, unlike Austin, which is
still in its first state of mule-stealing and montd,
Virginia City has passed through the second period —
that of " vigilance committees " and " historic trees " — •
and is entering the third, the stage of churches and
*' city officers," or police.
The population is still a shifting one. A by-law of
the municipality tells us that the "permanent popu-
lation " consists of those who reside more than a
month within t;he city. At this moment the miners
are pouring into Washoe from north and south and
oast, from Montana, from Arizona, and from Utah,
coming to the gaieties of the largest mining city to
200 QilEATER BlilTAIN. [chap.
spend tliclr money during the fierce short winter.
When I auw Virginia City, it was worse than Austin.
Every other house is a restaurant, a drinking shop,
a gaming hell, or worse. With no one to make beds,
to mend clothes, to cook food — with no house, no
home — men are almost certain to drink and gamble.
The Washoe bar-rooms are the most brilliant in the
States : as we drove in from Austin at 2 a.m., there
was blaze enough for us to see from the frozen
street the portraits of Lola Montez, Ada Menken,
Heenan, and the other Californian celebrities with
which the bar-rooms were adorned.
Although "petticoats," even Chinese, are scarce,
dancing was going on in every house ; but there is
a rule in miners' balls that prevents all difficulties
arising from an over supply of men : every one who
has a patch on the rear portion of his breeches does
duty for a lady in the dance, and as gentlemen are
forced by the custom of the place to treat their
partners at the bar, patches are popular.
Up to eleven in the morning hardly a man was to
be seen : a community that sits up all night, begins
its work in the afternoon. For hours I had the blazing
hills called streets to myself for meditating ground ;
but it did not need hours to bring me to think that a
Vermonter's description of the climate of the moun-
tains was not a bad one when he said : " You rise at
eight, and shiver in your cloak till nine, when you
lay it aside, and wnlk freely in your woollens. At
twelve you come in for your gauze coat and your
Panama; at two jou are in a hammock cursing
XIX, j VniGINIA CITY, 201
tlic licat, but at four you venture out again, and by-
five are in your woollens. At six you begin to shake
witli cold, and shiver on till bedtime, which you
make darned early." Even at this great height, the
thermometer in the afternoon touches 80° Fahr. in the
shade, while from sunset to sunrise there is a bitter
frost.- So it is throughout the Plateau. When
morning after morning we reached a ranch, and
rushed out of the freezing ambulance through the
still colder outer air to the fragrant cedar fire, there to
roll with pain at the thawing of our joints, it was hard
to bear it in mind that by eight o'clock we should be
shutting out the sun, and by noon melting even in
the deepest shade.
As I sat at dinner in a miner's restaurant, my
opposite neighbour, finding that I was not long from
England, informed ' "te he was "the independent editor
of the Nevada Union Gazette" and went on to ask :
" And how might you have left literatooral pursoots ?
How air Tennyson and Thomas T. Carlyle ? " I
assured him that to the best of my belief they were
fairly well, to which his reply was : " Guess them ther
men ken sling ink, they ken." When we parted, he
gave me a copy of his paper, in which I found that
he called a rival editor " a woiking whiskey-bottle''
and "a Fenian imp." The latter phrase reminded me
that, of the two or three dozen American editors that
I had met, this New Englander was the first who was
"native born." Stenhouse, in Salt Lake City, is an
Englishman, so is Stanton of Denver, and the whole
of the remainder of the band were Irishmen. As for
202 GREATER BRITAIN. [chaf.
the earlier assertion in the " editorial," it was not a
wild one, seeing that Virginia City has five hundred
whiskey-shops for a population of ten thousand.
Artemus Ward said of Virginia City, in a farewell
speech to the mhabitants that should have been
published in his works : " I never, gentlemen, was
in a city where I was treated so ivelly nor, I will add,
so often." Through every open door the diggers can
be seen tossing the whiskey down their throats with a
scowl of resolve, as though they were committing
suicide — which, indeed, except in the point of speed,
is probably the case.
The Union Gazette was not the only paper that I
had given me to read that morning, Not a bridge
over a " crick," not even a blacked pair of boots, made
me so thoroughly aware that I had in a measure
returned to civilization as did the gift of a California
Alta containing a report of a debate in the English
Parliament upon the Bank Charter Act. The speeches
were appropriate to my feelings : I had just returned
not only to civilization, but to the European incon-
veniences of gold and silver money. In Utah, gold
and greenbacks circulate indifferently, with a double
set of prices always marked and asked ; in Nevada
and California, greenbacks are as invisible as gold in
New York or Kansas. Nothing can persuade the
Californians that the adoption by the Eastern States of
an inconvertible paper system is anything but the
result of a conspiracy against the Pacific States — one
in which they at least are determined to have no
share. Strongly Unionist in feeling as were California,
xix.] VIRGINIA CITY. 203
Oregon, and Nevada during the rebellion, to liavc
forced greenbacks upon tliem would liave been almost
more than their loyalty would have borne. In the
severest taxation they were prepared to acquiesce ;
but paper-money they believed to be downright
robbery, and the invention of the devil.
To me the reaching gold once more was far from
pleasant, for the advantages of paper-money to the
traveller are enormous : it is light, it wears no holes
in your pockets, it reveals its presence by no untimely
clinking ; when you jump from a coach, every thief
within a mile is not at once aware that you have ten
dollars in your right-hand pocket. The Nevadans
say that forgeries are so common, that their neigh-
bours in Colorado have been forced to agree that any
decent imitation shall be taken as good, it being too
difficult to examine into each case. For my part,
though in rapid travel a good deal of paper passed
through my hands in change, my only loss by forgery
was one half-dollar noLe ; my loss by wear and tear,
the same.
In spite of the gold currency, prices are higher in
Nevada than in Denver. A shave is half a dollar —
gold ; in Washoe, in Atchison, but a paper quarter. A
boot-blacking is fifty cents in gold, instead of ten
cents paper, as in Chicago or St. Louis.
During the war, when fluctuations in the value of
the paper were great and sudden, prices changed from
day to day. Hotel proprietors in the West received
their guests at breakftist, it is said, with " Glorious
news; we've whipped at . Gold's 180; board's
204 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
down half-a-clollar." While I was in tlic country,
gold fluctuated between 140 and 163, but prices
remained unaltered.
Paper money is of some use to a young country in
making the rate of wages appear enormous, and so
attracting immigration. If a Cork bog-trotter is told
that he can get two dollars a day for his work in
America, but only one in Canada, no economic con-
siderations interfere to prevent him, rushing to the
nominally higher rate. Whether the working men of
America have been gainers by the inflation of the
currency, or the reverse, it is hard to say. It has
been stated in the Senate that wages have risen sixty
per cent, and prices ninety per cent. ; but " prices "
is a term of great width. The men themselves believe
that they have not been losers, and no argument
can be so strong as that.
My first afternoon upon Mount Davidson I spent
underground in the Gould and Curry mine, the
wealthiest and largest of those that have tapped the
famous Comstock lode. In this single vein of silver
lies the prosperity not only of the - :y, but of Nevada
State ; its discovery will have hastened the completion
of the overland railway itself by several years. It
is owing to the enormous yield of this one lode that
the United States now stands second only to Mexico
as a silver-producing land. In one year Nevada has
given the world as much silver a& there came from
the mines of all Peru.
The rise of Nevada has been sudden. I was
shown in Virginia City a building block of land that
XIX.] VIRGINIA CITY. 205
rents for ten times what it cost four years ago.
Nothing short of solid silver by the yard would have
brought twenty thousand men to live upon the summit
of Mount Davidson. It is easy here to understand
the mad rush and madder speculation that took
place at the time of the discovery. Every valley in
the Washoe Range was "prospected," and pronounced
paved with silver ; every mountain was a solid mass,
" Cities " were laid out, and town lots sold, wherever
room was afforded by a flat piece of ground. The
publication of the Californian newspapers was sus-
pended, as writers, editors, proprietors, and devils, all
had gone with the rush. San Francisco went clean
mad, and London and Paris were not far behind.
Of the hundred " cities" founded, but one was built ;
of the thousand claims registered, but a hundred
were taken up and worked ; of the companies formed,
but half-a-dozen ever paid a dividend, except that
obtained from the sale of their plant. The silver
of which the whole base of Mount Davidson is
composed has not been traced in the surrounding
hills, though they are covered with a forest of posts,
marking the limits of forgotten " claims :"
" James Thompson, 130 feet N.E. by N."
" Ezra WUliams, 130 feet due E. ;"
and so for miles. The Gould and Curry Company,
on the other hand, is said to have once paid a larger
half-yearly dividend than the sum of tiiC original
capital, and its shares have been quoted at 1,000 per
cent. Such are the differences of a hundred yards.
One of the oddities of mining life is, that the
206 GREATER BRITAIN [chap.
gold-diggers profess a sublime contempt for silver-
miners and tlieir trade. A Coloradan going West
was asked in Nevada if in liis country they could
beat tlie Comstock lode. " Dear, no ! " lie said.
" The boys with us are plaguy discouraged jess at
present." The Nevadans were down upon the word.
" Discouraged, air they ? " " AVliy, yes ! They've
jess found they've got ter dig through three feet Oi
solid silver 'fore ever they come ter gold."
Some of the companies have curious titles. " The
Union Lumber Association" is not bad; but "The
Segregated Belcher Mining Enterprise of Gold Hill
District, Storey Country, Nevada State," is far before
it as an advertising name.
In a real " coach " at last — a coach with windows
and a roof — drawn l)y six " mustangs," we dashed
down Mount Davidson upon a real road, engineered
with grades and bridges — my first since Junction
City. Through the Devil's Gate we burst out upon
a chaotic country. For a hundred miles the eye
ranged over humps and bumps of every size, from
stones to mountains, but no level ground, no field,
no house, no tree, no green. Not even the Sahara
so thoroughly deserves the name of " desert." In
Egypt there is the oasis, in Arabia here and there
a date and a sweet-water well ; here there is nothing,
not even earth. The ground is soda, and the water
and air are full of salt.
This road is notorious for the depredations of
the "road agents," as white 1 ighwaymen are politely
called, red or yellow roltbers being ptill " darned
XTX.1 VIRGINIA CITY. 207
tliieves." At Desert Wells, tlie coacli had been robbed,
a week before I passed, by men who had first tied
up the ranchmen, and taken their places to receive
the driver and passengers when they arrived. The
prime object with the robbers is the treasury box of
" dust," but they generally '^ go through" the pas-
sengers, by way of pastime, after their more regular
work is done. As to firing, they have a rule — a
simple one. If a passenger shoots, every man is
killed. It need not be said that the armed driver
and armed guard never shoot ; they know their
business far too well.
Close here we came on hot and cold springs in
close conjunction, flowing almost from the same
"sink-hole" — the original twofold springs, I hinted
to our driver, that Poseidon planted in the Atlantic
isle. He said that " some of that name " had a ranch
near Carson, so I " concluded " to drop Poseidon,
lest I should say something that might offend.
From Desert Wells the alkali grew worse and
worse, but began to be alleviated at the ranches by
irrigation of the throat with delicious Californian
wine. The plain was stre\vn with erratic boulders,
and here and there I noticed sharp sand-cones, like
those of the Elk Mountain country in Utah.
At last we dashed into the *' city" named after the
notorious Kit Carson, of which an old inhabitant has
lately said, " This here city is growing plaguy mean :
there was only one man shot all yesterday." There
was what is here styled an "altercation" a day or two
ago. The sheriff tried to arrest a man in broad day-
208 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
light in the single street which Carson boasts. The
result was that each fired several shots at the other,
and that both were badly hurt.
The half-deserted mining village and wholly ruined
Mormon settlement stacd grimly on the bare rock,
surrounded by terrible weird-looking depressions of
the earth, the far-famed " sinks," the very bottom of
the Plateau, and goal of all the Plateau streams — in
summer dry, and spread with sheets of salt ; in winter
filled with brine. The Sierra Nevada rises like a wall
from the salt pools, with a fringe of giant leafless
trees hanging stiftly from its heights — the first forest
since I left the Missouri bottoms. The trees made me
feel that I was really across the Continent, within
reach at least of the fogs of the Pacific — on " the other
side ;" that there was still rough cold work to be
done was clear from the great snow-fields that showed
through the pines with that threatening blackness that
the purest of snows wear in the evening when they
face the east.
As I gazed upon the tremendous battlements of the
Sierra, I not only ceased to marvel that for three
hundred years trafiic had gone round by Panama
rather than through these frightful obstacles, but
even wondered that they should be surmounted now.
In this hideous valley it was that the Californian
immigrants wintered in 1848, and killed their Indian
guides for food. For three months more the strongest
of them lived upon the bodies of those who died,
incapable in their weakness of making good their foot-
hold upon the slippery snows of the Sierra. After a
XIX.] VIRGINIA CITY. 209
while, some were cannibals by choice ; but the story
is not one that can be told.
Galloping up the gentle grades of Johnson's Pass,
we began the ascent of the last of fifteen great moun-
tain ranges crossed or Hanked since we had left Salt
Lake City. The thought recalled a passage of arms
that had occurred at Denver between Dixon and
Governor Gilpin. In his grand enthusiastic way, the
Governor, pointing to the Cordilleras, said, " Five
hundred snowy ranges lie between this and San Fran-
cisco." " Peaks," said Dixon. " Kanges !" thundered
Gilpin ; " I've seen them."
Of the fifteen greater ranges to the westward of
Salt Lake, eight at least are named from the rivers or
valleys they contain, or are wholly nameless. Trade has
preceded survey ; the country is not yet thoroughly
explored. The six paper maps by which I travelled —
the best and latest — differed in essential points. The
position and length of the Great Salt Lake itself are
not yet accurately known ; the height of Mount Hood
has been made anything between nine and twenty
thousand feet ; the southern boundary line of Nevada
State passes through untrodden wilds. A rectification
of the limits of California and Nevada was attempted
no great time ago ; the head waters of some stream
which formed a starting-point had been found to be
erroneously laid down.
At the flourishing young city of Aurora, in
Esmeralda county, a court of California was sitting.
A mounted messenger rode up at great pace, and,
throwing his bridle round a stump, dashed in
VOL. T. P
210 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
breathlessly, shouting, "What's this hero court ?"
Being told that it was a Californian court, he said,
" Wall, thct's all wrong : this here's Nevada. We've
been an' rectified this boundary, an' California's a
good ten mile off here." " Wall, Mr. Judge, I move
this court adjourn," said the plaintiff's counsel. " How
can a court adjourn thet's not a court?" replied the
Judge. "Guess I'll go." And off he w^ent. So, if
the court of Aurora luas a court, it must be sitting
now.
The coaching on this line is beyond comparison the
best the world can show. Drawn by six half-bred
mustangs, driven by whips of the fame of the Hank
Monk " who drove Greeley," the mails and pas-
sengers have been conveyed from Virginia City to
the rail at Placerville, 154 miles, in 15 hours and
20 minutes, including a stoppage of half-an-hour for
supper, and sixteen shorter stays to change horses.
In this distance, the Sierra Nevada has to be tra-
versed by a rapid rise of three thousand feet, a
fall of a thousand feet, another rise of the same,
and then a descent of five thousand feet on the
Californian side.
Before the road was made, the passage was one of
extraordinary difficulty. A wagon once started, they
say, from Folsom, bearing " Carson or bust" in large
letters upon the tilt. After ten days, it returned
lamely enough, wdth four of the twelve oxen gone^
and bearing the label " Busted."
AVhen we were nearing Hank Monk's "piece," I
became impatient to see the hero of the famous ride.
KltlDAY'S STATION -VAIXEV OF LAKK TAHOE.
TEAMING UP THE OaAUE AT SLITPEHY FORD, IN THE SIERRA. ., -.^
xix.j VIRGINIA crir. 211
What was 1113' disgust when the drivor of the ecJ-'-r
portion of the road appeared again upon the box in
charge of six magnificent iron-greys. The peremptory
cry of "All aboard" brouglit me without remonstrance
to the coach, but I took care to get upon the box,
although, as we were starting before the orcak of
day, the frost was terrible. To my relief, when I in-
quired after Hank, the driver said that he was at a
ball at a timber ranch in the forest ''six mile on.'
At early light we reached the spot — the summit of
the more eastern of the twin ranges of the Sierra.
Out came Ha^k, amidst the cheers of the half-dozen
men and women of the timber ranch who formed the
" ball," wrapped up to the eyes in furs, and took the
reins without a word. For miles he drove steadily
and. moodily along. I knew these drivers too w^cll
to venture upon speaking first when they were in
the sulks ; at last, however, I lost all patience, and
silently offered him a cigar. He took it without
thanking me, but after a few minutes said : " Thet last
driver, how did he drive ? " I made some shufHing
answer, when he cut in : " Drove as ef he were
skeert ; and so he was. Look at them mustangs.
Yoo — on !" As he yelled, the horses started at what
out here they style "the run;" and when, after ten
minutes, he pulled up, we must have done three miles,
round most violent and narrow turns, with only the
bare precipice at the side, and a fall of often a hundred
feet to the stream at the bottom of the ravine — the
Simplon without its wail. Dropping into the talking
mood, he asked me the usual questions as to my
p 2
212 GREAT Uli BRITAIN. [chap.
business, and wliitlier I was bound. When I told
him I thought of visiting Australia, he said, " D'you
tell now 1 Jess give my love — at Bendigo — to Gump-
tion Dick." Not another word about Australia or
Gumption Dick could I draw from him. 1 asked
at Bendigo for Dick; but not even the officer in
command of the police had ever heard of Hank
Monk's friend.
The sun rose as we dashed through the grand
landscapes of Lake Tahoe. On we went, through
gloomy snow-drifts and still sadder forests of gigantic
pines nearly three hundred feet in height, and down
the canyon of the American Eiver from the second
range. Suddenly we left the snows, and burst through
the pine woods into an open scene. From gloom there
was a change to light ; from sombre green to glowing
red and gold. The trees, no longer hung with icicles,
were draped with Spanish moss. In ten yards we
had come from winter into summer. Alkali was
left behind for ever ; we were in £1 Dorado, on the
Pacific shores— in sunny, dreamy California.
XX.] EL DORADO. 213
CHAPTER XX.
EL DORADO.
The city of the high priest clothed in robes of gold
figures largely in the story of Spanish discovery
in America. The hardy soldiers who crossed the
Atlantic in caravels and cockboats, and toiled in
leathern doublets and plate armour through the jungle
swamp of Panama, were lured on through years of
plague and famine by the dream of a country whose
rivers flowed with gold. Diego do Mendoza found the
land in 1532, but it was not till January 1848 that
James Marshall washed the Golden Sands of El Dorado.
The Spaniards were not the first to place the earthly
paradise in America. Not to speak of New Atlantis,
the Canadian Indians have never ceased to hand down
to their sons a legend of western abodes of bliss, to
which their souls journey after death, through fright-
ful glens and forests. In their mystic chants they
describe minutely the obstacles over which the souls
must toil to reach the regions of perpetual spring.
These stories are no mere dreams, but records of the
great Indian migration from the West : the liquid-eyed
Hurons, not sprung from the Canadian snows, may be
Californian if they are not Malay, the Pacific shores
214 G HEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
tlieir liappy liuii ting-ground, the climate of Los Angeles
their never-ending spring.
Tlic names The Golden State and El Dorado are
doubly applicable to C-alifornia : her light and land-
scape, as well as her soil, are golden. Here, on the
Pacific side. Nature wears a robe of deep rich yellow :
even the distant hills, no longer purple, are wrapt
in golden haze. No more cliffs and canyons — all is
rounded, soft, and warm. The Sierra, which faces
eastwards, with four thousand feet of wall-like rock,
on the west descends gently in vine-clad slopes into
the Californian vales, and trends away in spurs towards
the sea. The scenery of the Nevada side was weird,
but these western foot-hills are unlike anything in the
world. Drake, who never left the Pacific shores,
named the country New Albion, from the whiteness
of a headland on the coast ; but the first viceroys were
less ridiculously misled by patriotic vanity when they
christened it New Spain.
In the warm dry sunlight, we rolled down hills of
rich red loam, and through forests of noble redwood
---the Scfjuoia sempervlrem, brother to the Sequoia
gigantea, or Wellingtonia of our lawns. Dashing at
full gallop through the American Eiver, just below its
falls, where, in 1848, the Mormons first dug that
Californian gold whi ^\ in the interests of their Church
they had better have let alone, we came upon great
gangs of Indians working by proxy upon the Conti-
nental railroad. The Indian's plan for living happily
is a simple one : lie sits and smokes in silence while
his women work, and he thus lives upon the earnings
jj^ajTsi^t-
_ ^ - <
viiow ON rm; AMr.iiKA.N liiviiu-rm, ii..\tt WJitui; fini.i> wak kiknt kiim>.
P Jll
XX.] EL DORADO. 215
of the squaws. Unlike a Mormon patriarch, he con-
trives that polygamy shall pay, and says with the New
Zealand Maori : " A man with one wife may starve,
but a man with many wives grows fat." These fellows
were Shoshonds from the other side of the Plateau ;
for the Pacific Indians, who are black, not red, will
not even force their wives to work, which, in the
opinion of the Western men, is the ultimate form of
degradation in a race. Higher up the hills. Chinamen
alone are employed ; but their labour is too costly to
be thrown a'\ay upon the easier work.
In El Dorado Cit^ we stayed not long enough for
the exploration of the once famous surface gold mines,
now forming one long vineyard, but, rolling on,
were soon among the tents of Placerville, which had
been swept with fire a few months before. All these
valley diggings have been deserted for deep-sinking —
not that they are exhausted yet, but that the yield has
•ceased to be sufficient to tempt the gambling digger.
The men who lived in Placerville and made it
infamous throughout the world some years ago are
scattered now through Nevada, Arizona, Montana,
iind the Frazer country, and Chinamen and digger
Indians have the old workings to themselves, settling •
their rights as against each other by daily battle and
perpetual feud. The digger Indians are the most
degraded of all the aborigines of North America —
outcasts from the other tribes — men under a ban —
*' tapu," as their Maori cousins say — weaponless, naked
savages who live on roots, and pester the industrious
C'hinese.
216 OREATEE BRITAIN. [chap.
It is not with all their foes that the yellow men can
cope so easily. In a tiny Chinese theatre in their
camp near Placerville, I saw a farce which to the
remainder of the audience was no doubt a very solemn
drama, in ^hich the adventures of two Celestials on
the diggings were given to the world. The only
scene in which the pantomime was sufficiently clear
for me to read it without the possibility of error was
one in which a white man — "Melican man" — came to
ask for taxes. The Chinamen had paid their taxes
once before, but the fellow said that didn't matter.
The yellow men consulted together, and at last agreed
that the stranger was a humbug, so the play ended
with a big fight, in which they drove him off their
ground. A Chinaman played the over-'cute Ynnkee,
and did it well.
Perhaps the tax-collectors in the remoter districts
of the States count on the Chinese to make up the
deficiencies in their accounts caused by the non-pay-
ment of their taxes by the whites ; for even in these
days of comparative quiet and civilization, taxes are
not gathered to their full amount in any of the terri-
tories, and the justice of the collector is in Montana
tempered by many a threat of instant lynching if he
proceeds with his assessment. Even in Utah, the
returns are far from satisfactory : the three great
merchants of Salt Lake City should, if their incomes
are correctly stated, contribute a heavier sum than
that returned fo the whole of the population of
the territory.
The white diggers who preceded the Chinese have
XX.] EL DOHA DO. 217
left their traces in the names of lodes and places.
There is no town, indeed, in California with such a
title as the Coloradan city of Buckskin Joe, but
Yankee Jim comes near it. Placerville itself was
formerly known as Hangtown, on account of its being
the city in which lynch-law was inaugurated. Dead
Shot Flat is not far from here, and within easy dis-
tance are Hell's Delight, Jackass Gulch, and Loafer's
Hill. The once famous Plug-ugly Gulch has now
another name ; but of Chucklehead Diggings and
Puppytown I could not find the whereabouts in my
walks and rides. Graveyard Canyon, Gospel Gulch,
and Paint-pot Hill are other Californian names. It
is to be hoped that the English and Spanish names
will live unmutilated in California and Nevada, to hand
down in liquid syllables the history of ca half-for-
gotten conquest, an already perished race. San Fran-
cisco has become " Frisco " in speech if not on paper,
and Sacramento will hardly bear the wear and tear of
Californian life ; but the use of the Spanish tongue
has spread among the Americans who have dealings
with the Mexican country folk of California State,
and, except in mining districts, the local names
will stand.
It is not places only that have strange designations
in America. Out of the Puritan fashion of naming
children from the Old Testament patriarchs has
grown, by a sort of recoil, the custom of following the
heroes of the classics, and when they fail, inventing
strange titles for children. Mahonri Cahoon lives
in Salt Lake City ; Attila Harding was secretary to
218 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
one of the governors of Utali ; Michigan University
has for jjresident Erastus Haven ; for superintendent,
Oramel Hosford ; for professors, Abram Sangoi, Silas
Douglas, Moses Gunn, Zina Pitcher, Alonzo Pitman,
De Volson Wood, Lucius Chapin, and Corydon Ford.
Luman Stevens, Bolivar Barnum, Wyllys Ransom,
Ozora Stearns, and Buel Derby were Michigan officers
■tluring the war, and Epaphroditus Ransom was
formerly governor of the State. Theron Rockwell,
•Oershon AVeston, and Bela Kellogg, are well-known
politicians in Massachusetts, and Colonel Liberty Bil-
lings is equally prominent in Florida. In New
England school-lists it is hard to pick boys from giiis.
AVho shall tell the sex of Lois Lombard, Asahel Mor-
ton, Ginery French, Royal Miller, Thankful Poyne?
A Chicago man, who was lynched in Central Illinois
while I was in the neighbourhood, was named Alonza
Tibbets. Eliphalet Arnould and Velenus Sherman
are ranchmen on the overland road ; Sereno Burt is
an editor in Montana ; Persis Boynton a merchant in
Chicago. Zelotes Terry, Datus Damer, Zeryiah Rain-
forth, Barzcllai Stanton, Sardis Clark, Ozias Williams,
Xenas Phelps, Converse Hopkins, and Hirodshai
Blake, are names with which I have met. Ziiplia,
Huldah, Nabby, Basetha, Minnesota, and Semantha,
are New England ladies ; while one gentleman of
Springfield, lately married, caught a Tartia. One of
the earliest enemies of the Mormons was Palatiah
Allen ; one of their first converts Preserved Harris.
Taking the pedigree of Joe Smith, the Mormon
prophet, as that of a representative New England
XX.] ELDORADO. 219
family, we sliall find that his aunts were Lovisa and
Lovina Mack, Dolly Smith, Eunice and Miranda
Pearce; his uncles, Eoyal, Ira, and Bushrod Smith.
His grandfather's name was Asael ; of his great aunts
one was Hephzibah, another Hypsebeth, and another
Vasta. The prophet's eldest brother's name was
Alvin; his youngest, Don Carlos; his sister, So-
phronia ; and his sister-in-law, Jerusha Smith ; while
a nephew was christened Chilon. One of the nieces
was Levu-a, and another Rizpah. The first wife
of George A. Smith, the prophet's cousin, is Bath-
sheba, and his eldest daughter also bears this
name.
In the smaller towns near Placerville, there is still
a wide field for the discovery of character as well as
gold; but eccentricity among the diggers here seems
chiefly to waste itself on food. The luxury of this
Pacific country is amazing. The restaurants and cafe's
of each petty digging-town put forth bills-of-fare
which the " Trois Freres" could not equal for inge-
nuity ; wine lists such as Delmonico's cannot beat.
The facilities are great : except in the far interior or
on the hills, one even spring reigns unchangeably —
summer in all except the heat ; every fruit and vege-
table of the world is perpetually in season. Fruit is
not named in the hotel bills-of-fare, but all the day lono-
there are piled in strange confusion on the tables. Mis-
sion grapes, the Californian Bartlet pc^rs. Empire apples
from Oregon, melons— English, Spanish, American,
and Musk ; peaches, nectarines, and fresh almonds. All
comers may help themselves, and wash down the fruit
220 GREATER BRITAIN. [cnxv.
with excellent Californian-made Sauternc. If dancing,
gambling, drinking, and still shorter cuts to the devil
have their votaries among the diggers, there is no
employment upon which they so freely spend their cash
as on dishes cunningly prepared by cooks — Chinese,
Italian, Bordelais — who follow every "rush," After
the doctor and the coroner, no one makes money at
the diggings like the cook. The dishes smell of the
Californian soil ; baked rock-cod it la Buena Vista,
broiled Californian quail with Russian River bacon,
Sacramento snipes on toast, Oregon ham with cham-
pagne sauce, and a dozen other toothsome things —
these were the dishes on the Placerville bill-of-fare in
an hotel which had escaped the fire, but whose only
guests were diggers and their friends. A few Atlantic
States dishes were down upon the list : hominy, cod
chowder — hardly equal, I fear, to that of Salem —
sassafras candy, and squash tart, but never a mention
of pork and molasses, dear to the Massachusetts boy.
All these good things the diggers, when "dirt is
plenty," moisten with Clicquot, or Heidsick cabinet;
when returns are small, with their excellent Sonoma
wine.
Even earthquakes fail to interrupt the triumphs
of the cooks. The last "bad shake" was fourteen
days ago, but it is forgotten in the joy called forth
by the discovery of a thirteenth way to cook fresh
oysters, which are brought here from the coast
by train. There is still a something in Placerville
that smacks of the time when tin- tacks were selling
for their weight in gold.
XX.] JSL DORADO. 221
Wandering through the single remaining street
of Placerville before I left for the Southern country,
I saw that grapes were marked *' three cents a pound ;"
but as the lowest coin known on the Pacific shores
is the ten-cent bit, the price exists but upon pa])er.
Three pounds of grapes, however, for *' a bit" is a
practicable pui'chase, in which I indulged when
starting on my journey South : in the towns, you
have always the hotel supply. If the value of the
smallest coin be a test of the prosperity of a country,
California must stand high. Not only is nothing less
than the bit, or fivepence, known, but when fivepence
is deducted from a " quarter," or shilling, fivepence
is all you get or give for change — a gain or loss upon
which Californian shopkeepers look with profound
indifference.
Hearing a greater jingling of glasses from one
bar-room than from all the other hundred whiskey-
shops of Placerville, I turned into it to seek the
cause, and found a Vermonter lecturing on Lincoln
and the war, to an audience of some fifty diggers.
The lecturer and bar-keeper stood together within
the sacred inclosure, the one mixing his drinks, while
the other rounded off" his periods in the inflated
Western style. The audience were critical and cold
till near the close of the oration, when the *' corpse-
revivers" they were drinking seemed to take effect,
and to be at the bottom of the Stentorian shout
" Thet's bully," with which the peroration was
rewarded. The Vermonter told me that he had come
round from Panama, and was on his way to Austin,
222 OEEATEli BRITAIN. [chap.
as Placorvillc was "played out" since its "claims"
had " fizzled."
They have no lecture-room here at present, as it
seems ; but that there are churches, however smalJ,
appears from a paragraph in the Placerville news-
sheet of to-day, which chronicles the removal of a
Methodist meeting-house from Block A to Block 0,
vice a Catholic chapel retired, " having obtained a
superior location."
A few days were all that I could spend in the
valleys that lie between the Sierra and the Contra
Costa Range, basking in a rich sunlight, and unsur-
passed in the world for climate, scenery, and soil.
This single State — one of forty-five — has twice the
area of Great Britain, the most fertile of known soils,
and the sun and sea-breeze of Greece. Western
rhapsodies are the expression of the intoxication
produced by such a spectacle ; but they are outdone
by facts.
For mere charm to the eye, it is hard to give the
palm between the cracks and canyons of the Sierra
and the softer vales of the Coast Eange, where the
hot sun is tempered by the cool Pacific breeze, and
thunder and liohtnino; are unknown.
Coming from the wilds of the Carson desert and
of Mirage Plains, the more sensuous beauty of the
lower dells has for the eye the relief that travellers
from the coast must seek in the loftier heights and
precipices of the Yosemite. The oak-filled valleys of
the Contra Costa Range have all the pensive repose
of the sheltered vales that lie between the Apennines
XX.] El DORADO. 003
and the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona; but Cali-
fornia has the advantage in her skies. Italy has the
blue, but not the golden haze.
Nothing can be more singular than the variety of
beauty that lies hid in these Pacific slopes ; all that
is best in Canada and the Eastern States finds more
than its equal here. The terrible grandeur of Cape
Trinitd on the Saguenay, and the panorama of love-
liness from the terrace at Quebec, are alike outdone.
Americans certainly need not go to Europe to find
scenery ; but neither need they go to California, or
even Colorado. Those who tell us that there is no
such thing as natural beauty west of the Atlantic
can scarcely know the Eastern, while they ignore the
Western and Central States. The world can show few
scenes more winning than Israel's iver Valley in
the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or North
Conway in the southern slopes of the same range.
Nothing can be more full of grandeur than the passage
of the James at Balcony Falls, where the river rushes
through a crack in the Appalachian chain ; the wilder-
ness of Northern New York is unequalled of its
kind, and there are delicious landscapes in the
Adirondacks. As for river scenery, the Hudson is
grander than the Ehine ; the Susquehanna is lovelier
than the Meuse; the Schuylkill prettier than the
Seine ; the Mohawk more enchanting than the Dart..
Of the rivers of North Europe, the Neckar alone is
not beaten in the States.
Americans admit that their scenery is fine, but
pretend that it is wholly wanting in the interest that
224 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap
historic memoriua bestow. So-calltcl Republicans
affect to find a charm in Bishop Hatto's Tower
which is wanting in Irving's "Sunnyside;" the ten
thousand virgins of Cologne live in their fimcy, while
Constitution Island and Fort Washington are for-
gotten names. Americans or Britishers, we Saxons
are all alike — a wandering, discontented race ; we go
4,000 miles to find Sleepy Hollow, or Killian Van
Rensselaer's Castle, or Hiawatha's great red pipe-
stone quarry ; and tlie Americans, who live in the
castle, picnic yearly in the Hollow, and flood the
quarry for a skating rink, come here to England to
visit Burns's house, or to sit in Pope's arm-chair.
Down South I sa^v clearly the truth of a thought
that struck me before T had been ten minutes west
of the Sierra Pass. California is Saxon only in the
looks and. language of the people of its towns. In
Pennsylvania, you nay sometimes fancy yourself in
Sussex ; while in New Ejigland, you seem only to
be in some part of Europe that you have never hap-
pened to light upon before ; in California, you are at
last in a new world. The hills are weirdly peaked
or flattened, the skies are new, the birds and plants
are new ; the atmosphere, crisp though warm, is
unlike any in the world but that of South Australia.
It will be strange if the Pacific coast does not pro-
duce a new school of Saxon poets — painters it has
already given.
Returning to Placerville, after an eventless explo-
ration of the exquisite scenery to the south, I took
the railway once again, the first time since I had left
THK DUIDAL VKll. J.A1.L, VOSKMIIE VAI.I.KV
I'. .21.
XX.] EL DORALO, 225
Manhattan City — 1,800 miles away — and was soon
in Sacramento, the State capital, now recovering
slowly from the flood of 1862. Near the city I made
out Oak Grove — famed for duels between well-known
Calif ornians. Hers it was that General Denver, State
senator, s\ot Mr. Gilbert, the representative in Con-
gress, in a duel fought with rifles. Here, too, it was
that Mr. Thomas, district attorney for Placer county,
killed Dr. Dickson, of the Marine Hospital, in a duel
with pistols in 1854. Records of duels form a serious
part of the State history. At Lone Mountain Ceme-
tery at San Francisco, there is a great marble monu-
ment to the Hon. David Broderick, shot by Chief
Justice Terry, of the Supreme Court, in 1859.
A few hours' quiet steaming in the sunlight down
the Sacramento river, past Rio Vista and Montezuma,
tln"ough the gap in the Contra Costa Range, at which
the grand volcanic peak of Monte Diablo stands
sentinel watching over the Martinez Straits, and
there opened to the south and west a vast mountain-
surrounded bay. Volumes of cloud were rolling in
unceasingly from the ocean, through the Golden Gate,
past the fortified island of Alcatras, and spending
themselves in the opposite shores of San Rafael, Be-
nicia, and Vallejo. At last I was across the continent^
and face to face with the Pacific.
VOL. I.
226 GUEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
CHAPTER XXI.
LYNCH LAW.
" Californians are called the scum of the earth,
yet their great city is the best policed in the world/'
said a New York friend to me, when he heard that
I thought of crossing the continent to San Francisco.
" Them New Yorkers is a sight too fond of looking
after other people's morals," replied an old " Forty-
niner," to whom I repeated this phrase, having first
toned it down, however. " Still," he went on, " our
history's baddish, but it ain't for us to pl;iy showman
to our own worst pints : — let every man skin hi*
own skunk ! "
The story of the early days of San Francisco, as
to which my curiosity was thus excited, is so curious
an instance of the development of an English com-
munity under the most inauspicious circumstances,
that the whole time which I spent in the ciLy itself
I devoted to hearing the tale from those who knew
the actors. Not only is the history of the two-
Yigilance Committees in itself characteristic, but it
works in with what I had gathered in Kansas, and
Illinois, and Colorado as to the operation of the-
claim-clubs ; and the stories, taken together, form a
typical picture of the rise of a New English countr}\
XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 227
The discovery of gold in 1848 brought down
on luckless California the idle, the reckless, the vaga-
bonds first of Polynesia, then of all the woi-ld.
Street fighting, public gaming, masked balls gi\'en
by unknown women and paid for nobody knew
how, but attended by governor, supervisors, and
alcade— all these were minor matters by the side
of the general undefined ruffianism of the place.
Before the end of 1849, San Francisco presented
on a gigantic scale much the same appearance that
Helena in Montana wears in 1866.
Desperadoes poured in from all sides, the l)est of
the bad flocking off" to the mines, while the worst
among the villains — those who lacked energy as
well as moral sense — remained in the city, to raise
by thieving or in the gambling-booth the "pile"
that they were too indolent to earn by pick and
pan. Hundi'eds of "emancipists" from Sydney,
"old lags" from Norfolk Island, the pick of the
criminals of England, still further trained and con-
firmed in vice and crime by the experiences of
Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur, rushed to San
Francisco to continue Ji career which the vigilance
of the convict police made hopeless in Tasmania
and New South Wales. The floating vice of the
Pacific ports of South America soon gathered to
a spot where there were not only men to fleece, bu'
men who, being fleeced, could pay. The police
were necessarily few, for, appoint a man to-day, and
to-morrow he was gone to the Placers with some
new friend ; those who could be prevailed upon to
Q 2
228 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
remain a fortnight in the force were accessible to
bribes from the men they were set to watch. They
themselves admitted their inaction, but ascribed it
to the continual change of place among the criminals,
which prevented the slightest knowledge of their
characters and haunts. The Australian gaol-birds
formed a quarter known as " Sydney Town," which
soon became what the Bay of Islands had been
ten years before — the Alsatia of the Pacific. In
spite of daily murders, not a single criminal was
hanged.
The ruffians did not all agree : there were jea-
lousies among the various bands ; feuds between
the Australians and Chilians ; between the Mexicans
anc'i the New Yorkers. Under the various names,
of " Hounds," " Regulators," " Sydney ducks," and
" Sydney coves," the English convict party organized
themselves in opposition to the Chilenos as well as
to the police and law-abiding citizens. Gangs of
villains, whose sole bond of union was robbery or
murder, marched, armed with bludgeons and revolvers;
every Sunday afternoon to the sound of music un-
hindered through the streets, professing that they
were ''guardians of the community" against the
Spaniards, Mexicans, and South Americans.
At last a movement took place among the mer-
chants and reputable inhabitants which resulted in
the break-up of the Australian gangs. By an
uprising of the American citizens of San Francisco,
in response to a proclamation by T. M. Leavenworth,
the alcade, twenty of the most notorious among the
XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 229
"Hounds" were seized and shipped to China: it
is believed that some were taken south in irons,
and landed near Cape Horn. "Anywhere so that
they could not come back," as my informant said.
For a week or two things went well, but a fresh
inpour of rogues and villains soon swamped the
volunteer police by sheer force of numbers ; and in
February 1851 occurred an instance of united action
among the citizens, which is noticeable as the fore-
runner of the Vigilance Committees. A Mr. Jansen
had been stunned by a blow from a slung shot,
and his person and premises rifled by Australian
thieves. During the exan} '.nation of two prisoners
arrested on suspicion, five tnousand citizens gathered
round the City Hall, and handbills were circulated,
in which it was proposed that the prisoners should
be lynched. In the afternoon, an attempt to seize
the men was made, but repulsed by another section
of the citizens — the Washington guard. A meeting
was held on the Plaza, and a committee appointed
to watch the authorities, and prevent a release. A
well-known citizen, Mr. Brannan, made a speech,
in which he said : " We, the people, are the mayor,
the recorder, and the laws." The alcade addressed
the crowd, and suggested, by way of compromise,
that they should elect a jury which should sit in
the regular court, and try the prisoners. This was
refused, and the people elected not only a jury, but ,
three judges, a sheriff, a clerk, a public prosecutor,
and two counsel for the defence. This court then
tried the prisoners in their absence, and the jury
230 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
failed to agree — nine were for conviction, and three
were doubtful. " Hang 'em, anyhow ; majority rules,"
was the shout, but the popular judges stood firm,
and discharged their jury, while the people acquiesced.
The next day, the prisoners were tried and convicted
by the regular court, although they were ultimately
found to be innocent men.
Matters now went from bad to worse : five times
San Francisco was swept from end to end by fires
known to have been helped on, if not originally
kindled, by incendiaries in the hope of plunder;
and when, by the fires of May and June, 1851,
hardly a house was left untouched, the pious Bos-
tonians held up their hands, and cried " Gomorrah !"
Immediately after the discovery that the June
fire was not accidental, the Vigilance Committee
was formed, being self-appointed, and consisting of
the foremost merchants in the place. This was on
the 7th of June, according to my friend ; on the
9th, according to the Californian histories. It was
rumoured that the Committee consisted of two
hundred citizens ; it was known that they were
supported by the whole of the city press. They
pu])lished a declaration, in which they stated that
there is "no security for life or property under
the . . . law as now administered." This they ascribed
to the " quibbles of the law," the " corruption of
the police/' the "insecurity of prisons," the "laxity
of those who pretend to administer justice." The
secret instructions of the Committee contain a direc-
tion that the members i<hall at once assemble at
XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 231
the committee-room whenever signals consisting of
two taps on a bell are heard at intervals of one minute.
The Committee was organized with President, Vice-
President, Secretary, Treasurer, Sergeant - at - arms,
standing Committee on Qualifications, and standing
Committee of Finance. No one was to be admitted
A member unless he were " a respectable citizen, and
approved by the Committee on Qualifications."
The very night of their organization, according
to the histories, or three nights later, according
to my friend Mr. A , the work of the Committee
began. Some boatmen at Central Wharf saw some-
thing which led them to follow out into the Yerba
Buena cove a man, whom they captured after a
sharp row. As they overhauled him, he threw
overboard a safe, just stolen from a bank, but this
was soon fished out. He was at once carried ofi"
to the committee-room of the Vigilants, and the
bell of the Monumental Engine Company struck at
intervals, as the rule prescribed. Not only the
Committee, but a vast surgmg crowd collected,
although midnight Avas now past. A — — was on the
Plaza, and says that every man was armed, and
-evidently disposed to back up the Committee. Ac-
•cording to the California Alta, the chief of the police
came up a little br'fore 1 a.m., and tried to force an
■entrance to the room ; but he was met, politely enough,
with a show of revolvers sufficient to annihilate his
men, so he judged it prudent to retreat.
At one o'clock, the bell of the engine-house began
to toll, and the crowd became excited. Mr. Brannan
232 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
came out of the committee-room, and, standing on
a mound of sand, addressed the citizens. As wel]
as my friend could remember, his words were thi :
" Gentlemen, the man — Jenkins by name — a Sydney
convict, whose supposed offence you know, has had
a fair trial before eighty gentlemen, and been unani-
mously found guilty by them. I have been deputed
by the Committee to ask whether it is your
pleasure that he be hanged." " Ay ! " from every
man in the crowd. " He will be given an hour to
prepare for death, and the Rev. Mr. Mines has
been already sent for to minister to him. Is this
your pleasure ? " Again a storm of " Ay ! " Nothing
was known in the crowd of the details of the trial,
except that counsel had been heard on the prisoner's
behalf. For another hour the excitement of the
crowd was permitted to continue, but at two o*clock
the doors of the committee-room were thrown open,
and Jenkins Avas seen smoking a cigar. Mr. A
said that he did not believe the prisoner expected a
rescue, but thought that an exhibition of pluck might
make him popular with the crowd, and save him.
A procession of Vigilants with drawn Colts was then
formed, and set off in the moonlight across the four
chief streets to the Plaza. Some of the people shouted
" To the flagstaff ! " but there came a cry, " Don't
desecrate the Liberty Pole. To the old adobe ! the
old adobe ! " and to the old adobe custom-house
the prisoner was dragged. In five minutes he was
hanging from the roof, three hundred citizens lending
a hand at the rope. At six in the, morning, A
XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 233
went home, but he heard that the police cut down
the body about that time, and carried it to the
coroner's house.
An inquest was held next day. The city officers
swore that they had done all they could to prevent
the execution, but they refused to give up the names
of the Vigilance Committee. The members themselves
were less cautious. Mr. Brannan and others came
forward of their own proper motion, and disclosed
all the circumstances of the trial. 140 of the
Committee backed them up by a written protestation
against interference with the Vigilants, to which their
signatures were appended. Protest and evidence
have been published, not only in the newspapers of
the time, but in the San Francisco " Annals." The
coroner's jury found a verdict of " Strangulation,
consequent on the concerted action of a body of
citizens calling themselves a Committee of Vigilance."
An hour after the verdict was given, a mass meeting
of the whole of the respectable inhabitants was held
in the Plaza, and a resolution approving of the action
of the Committee passed by acclamation.
In July 1851, the Committee hanged another man
on the Market-street wharf, and appointed a sub-
committee of thirty to board every ship that crossed
the bar, seize all persons suspected of being " Sydney
coves," and re-ship them to New South Wales.
In August came the great struggle between the
Vigilants and constituted authority. It was sharp
and decisive. Whittaker and M'^Kenzie, two " Sydney
coves," were arrested by the Committee for various
234 QREATElt BllITAIN. [cHAr.
(•rimes, and sentenced to death. Th'^ next day, Sheriff
Hayes seized them on a writ of habeas corpus, in the
looms of the Committee. The bell was tolled ; the
citizens assembled, the Vigilants told their story,
the men were seized once more, and by noon they
were hanging from the loft of the committee-house,
by the ordinary lifting tackle for heavy goods.
Fifteen thousand people were present, and approved.
^' After this," said A , " there could be no mistake
about the citizens supporting the Committee."
By September, the Vigilants had transported all
tlie *' coves " on whom they could lay hands ; so they
issued a proclamation, declaring that for the future
they would confine themselves to aiding the law by
tracing out and guarding criminals ; and in pursuance
<jf their decision, they soon afterwards helped the
authorities in preventing the lynching of a ship-
captain for cruelty to his men.
After the great sweep of 1851, things became
steadily worse again till they culminated in 1855,
ii year to which my friend looked back with horror.
Not counting Indians, there were four hundred persons
died by violence in California in that single year.
Fifty of these were lynched, a dozen were hanged by
law, a couple of dozen shot by the sheriffs and tax-
collectors in the course of their duty. The officers
did not escape scot free. The under-sheriff of San
Francisco was shot in Mission Street, in broad day-
light, by a man upon whom he was trying to execute
i\ writ of ejectment.
Judges, mayors, supervisors, politicians, all were
XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 235
bad alike. The merchants of the city were from
New England, New York, and foreign lands ; but the
men who assumed the direction of public affairs, and
especially of public funds, were Southerners, many of
them *' Border Ruffians" of the most savage stamp —
*' Pikes," as they were called, from Pike's County
in Missouri, from which their leaders came. Instead
of banding themselves together to oppose the laws,
these rogues and ruffians found it easier to control
the making of them. Their favourite method of
defeating their New England foes was by the
simple plan of " stuffing," or filling, the ballot-box
with forged tickets when the elections were concluded.
Two Irishmen — Casey and Sullivan — were their tools
in this shameful work. Werth, a Southerner, the leader
of Casey's gang, had been denounced in the San
Francisco Bulletin as the murderer of a man named
Kittering ; and Casey, meeting James King, editor of
the Bulletin, shot him dead in Montgomery Street in
the middle of the day. Casey and one of his assistants
— a man named Cora — were hanged by the people
as Mr. King's body was being carried to the grave,
and Sullivan committed suicide the same day.
Books were opened for the enrolment of the names
of those who were prepared to support the Committee :
nine thousand grown white males inscribed themselves
within four daj's. Governor Johnson at once declared
that he should suppress the Committee, but the city
of Sacramento prevented this course by offering a
thousand men for the Vigilants' support, the other
Californian cities following suit. The Committee got
236 aUEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
together 6,000 stand of arms and thirty cannon, and
fortified their rooms with earthworks and barricades.
The Governor, having caUed on the general command-
ing the Federal forces at Benicia, who wisely refused
to interfere, marched upon the city, was suiTounded,
and taken prisoner with all his forces without the
striking of a blow.
Ha\ing now obtained the control of the State
government, the Committee proceeded to banish all
the " Pikes " and " Pukes." Four were hanged, forty
transported, and many ran away. This done, the
Committee prepared an elaborate report upon the
property and finances of the State, and then, after a
great parade, ten regiments strong, upon the Plaza
and through the streets, they adjourned for ever, and
"the thirty-three" and their ten thousand backers
retired into private life once more, and put an end to
this singular spectacle of the rebellion of a free people
against rulers nominally elected by itself. As my
friend said, when he finished his long yarn, ** This has
more than archseologic interest : we may live to see
a similar Vigilance Committee in New York."
For my own part, I do not believe that an uprising
against bad government is possible in New York City,
because there the supporters of bad government are a
majority of the people. Their interest is the other
way : in increased city taxes they evidently lose far
more than, as a class, they gain by what is spent among
them in corruption ; but whtn they come to see this,
they will not rebel against their corrupt leaders, but
elect those whom they can trust. In San Francisco,
XX I.J LYNCH LAW. 237
the case was widely different : through the ballot
frauds, a majority of the citizens were being in-
famously misgoverned by a contemptible minority,
and the events of 1856 were only the necessuy acts
of the' majority to regain their power, coupled with
certain exceptional acts of arbitrary transportation of
"Pikes" and Southern rowdies, justified by the ex-
ceptional circumstances of the young community. At
Melbourne, under circumstances somewhat similar,
our English colonists, instead of setting up a com-
mittee, built Pentridge Stockade with walls some
thirty feet high, and created a militn,ry police, with
almost arbitrary power. The difference is one in
terms. The whirl of life in a young gold country
not only prevents the best men entering the political
field, and so forces citizens to exercise their right of
choice only between candidates of equal badness, but
so engrosses the members of the community who
exercise the ballot as to prevent the detection of
fraud till it has ruled for years. Throughout young
countries generally you find men say : " Yes ! we're
robbed, we know ; but no one has time to go into
that." " I'm for the old men," said a Californian
elector once, " for they've plundered us so long that
they're gorged, and can't swallow any more." "No,"
said another, "let's have fresh blood. Give every
man a chance of robbing the State. Share and share
alike." The wonder is, not that in such a State as
California was till lately the machinery of government
should work unevenly, but that it should worli. at all.
Democracy has never endured so rough a test as that
238 GREATER BRITAUT. [chap.
from wliicli it lias triumpliantly emerged in the Golden
State and City.
The public spirit with which the merchants came
forward and gave time and money to the cause of
order is worthy of all praise, and the rcipidity with
which the organization of a new government was
carried through is an instance of the singular power
of our race for building up the machinery of self-
government under conditions the most unpromising.
Instead of the events of 1856 having been a case of
opposition to law and order, they will stand in history
as a remarkable proof of the law-abiding character of
a people who vindicated justice by a demonstration
of overwhelming force, laid down their arms, and
returned in a few weeks to the peaceable routine of
business life. ^
If, in the merchant founders of the Vigilance Com-
mittees of San Francisco we can see the descendants
of the justice-loving Germans of the time of Tacitus,
I found in another class of vigilants the moral off-
spring of Alfred's village aldermen of our own Saxon
age. From Mr. AVilliam M. Byers, now editor of the
Rocky Mountain Nexus, I had heard the story of the
early settlers' land-law in JMissouri ; in Stanton's office
in Denver C^ity, I had seen the records of the Arapahoe
county claim-club, with which he had been connected
at the first settlement of Colorado ; but at San
Josd, I heard details of the settlers' custom-law — the
Californian " grand-co{ltumicr," it might be called —
which convinced me that, in order to find the rudi-
ments of all that, politically speaking, is best and most
XXI.] LYNCH L Air. 231)
vigorous In tlic Saxon mind, you must seek countries
in which Saxon civilization itself is in its infancy.
The greater the difficulties of the situation, the more
racy the custom, the more national the law.
When a new State began to be " settled up " — that
is, its lands entered upon by actual settlers, not land-
sharks — the inhabitants often found themselves in the
wilderness, far in advance of attorneys, courts, and
judges. It was their custom when this occurred to
divide the territory into districts of fifteen or twenty
mxles square, and form for each a "claim-club" to
protect the land-claims, or property of the members.
Whenever a question of title arose, a judge and jury
were chosen from among the members to hear and
determine the case. The occupancy title was invariably
protected up to a certain number of acres, which was
differently fixed by difierent clubs, and varied in
those of which I have heard the rules from 100 to 250
acres, averaging 150. The United States " Home-
stead " and " Pre-emption" laws were foundv^d on the
practice of these clubs. The claim-clul^s interfered
only Tor le protection of their members, but they
never scru]^. cd to hang wilful ofienders against their
rules, v/hethcr members or outsiders. Execution of
the decrees of the club was generally left to the
county sheriflf, if he was a member, and in this case a
certain air of legality waa given to the local action.
It is perhaps not too much to say that a Western
sheriff is an irresponsible official, possessed of gigantic
powers, but seldom known to abuse them. .He is
a Cresar, chosen for his honesty, fearlessness, clean
240 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
shooting, and quick loading, by men who know him
well : if he breaks down, he is soon deposed, axid a
better man chosen for dictator. I have known a
Western paper say : " Frank is our man for sheriff,
next October. See the way he shot one of the fellows
who robbed his store, and followed up the other, and
shot him too the next day. Frank is the boy for us."
In such a state of society as this, the distinction
between law and lynch-law can scarcely be said to
exist, and in the eyes of every Western settler the
claim-club backed by the sheriff's name was as strong
and as full of the majesty of the law as the Supreme
Court of the United States. Mr. Byers told me of a
case of the infliction of death-punishment by a claim-
club which occurred in Kansas after the " Homestead"
law was passed allowing the occupant when he had
tilled and improved the land for five years, to purchase
it at one and a quarter dollars an acre. A man settled
on a piece of land, and laboured on it for some years.
He then " sold it,'' which he had, of course, no power
to do, the land being still the property of the United
States. Having done this, he went and "pre-empted"
it under the Homestead Act, at the government price.
When he attempted to eject the man to whom he had
assumed to sell, the club ordered ihe sheriff to " put
the man away,'' and he was never seen again. Perhaps
Mr. Byers was the sheriff; he seemed to have the
details at his fingers' ends, and his later history in
Denver, where he once had the lynching rope round his
neck for exposing gamblers, testifies to his boldness.
Some of the rascalities which the claim-clul)s were
XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 241
expected to put clown were ingenious enough. Some-
times a man would build a dozen houses on a block of
land, and, going there to enter on possession after they
were complete, would find that in the night the whole
of tliem had disappeared. Fi-auds under the Home-
stead Act were both many and strange. Men were
required to prove that they had on the land a house
of at least ten feet square. They have been known to
whittle out a toy-house with their bowie, and, carrying
it to the land, to measure it in the presence of a friend
— twelve inches by thirteen. In court the pre-emptor,
examining his own witness, would say, " What are
the dimensions of that house v>f mine 1 " " Twelve by
thirteen." " That will do." In Kansas, a log-house of
the regulation size was fitted up on wheels, and let at
ten dollars a day, in order that it might be wheeled on
to different lots, to be sworn to as a house upon the
land. Men have been known to make a window-
sash and frame, and keep them inside of their window-
less huts, to swear that they had a window in their
house — another of the requirements of the Act. It is
a singular mark of deference to the traditions of a
Puritan ancestry that such accomplished liars as the
Western land-sharks should feel it necessary to have
any foundation whntever for their lies ; but not only
in this respect are they a curious race. One of their
peculiarities is that, however wealthy they may be,
they will never place their money out at interest,
never sink it in a speculation, however tempting,
when there is no prospect of almost immediate realiza-
tion. To turn their money over often, at whatever
VOL. I. R
242 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap
risk, is with these men an axiom. The advance-guard
of civilization, they push out into an unknown wilder-
ness, and seize upon the available lots, the streams,
the springs, the river bottoms, the falls or "water-
privileges," and then, using their interest in the terri-
torial legislature — using, perhaps, direct corruption in
some cases — they procure the location of the State
capital upon their lands, or the passage of the railroads
through their valleys. The capital of Nebraska has
been fixed in this manner at a place two hundred and
fifty iTjles from the nearest settlement. A newspaper
appeared suddenly, dated from " Lincoln City, centre
of Nebraska territory," but published in reality in
Omaha. To cope with such fellows, Western sheriffs
need be no ordinary men.
Thanks to the Vigilance Committees, California
stands new before the other Far- Western States.
Rowdyism is being put down as the God-fearing
Northerners gain ground. It may still be dangerous
to stroke your beard in a bar-room at Placerville or
El Dorado ; *' a gentleman in the loafing and chancing
line " may still be met with in Sacramento ; here and
there a Missourian " PiLe," as yet unhung, may boast
that he can whip his weight in wild-cats, but San
Francisco has at least reached the age of outward
decorum, has shut up public gaming-houses, and
supports four Church papers.
In Colorado, Lynch-law is not as yet forgotten :
the day we entered Denver, the editor of the Gazette
expressed, " on historical grounds," his deep regret at
the cutting-down of two fine cotton wood -trees that
stood on Cherry Creek. When we came to talk to
XXI.] LYNCH LAW. 243
him, we found that the " history" alluded to was that
of the " escape up" these trees of many an early inha-
bitant of Denver City. " There's the tree we used to
put the jury under, and that's the one we hanged 'em
on. Put a cart under the tree, and the boy standing
on it, with the rope around him ; give him time for
a pray, then smack the whip, and tlier' you air."
Tn Denver we were reserved upon the subject of
Vigilance Committees for it is dangerous sometimes to
make close inquiries as to their constitution. While I
was in Leavenworth, a man was hanged by the molj
at Council Bluffs for asking the names of the Vigilants
who had hanged a friend of his the year before. We
learnt enousch, however, at Denver to show that the
Committer jn that city still exists ; and in Virginia
.'ind Carson I know that the organizations are con-
tinued ; but offenders are often er shot quietly than
publicly hanged, in order to prevent an outcry, and
avoid tli(^. vengeance of the relatives. The verdict of
the jury never fails to be respected, but acquittal is
almost as unknown as mercy to those convicted.
Innocent men are seldom tried before such juries, for
the case must be clear before the sheriff' will run the
risk of being shot in making the arrest. When the
man's fate is settled, the sheriff" drives out quietly in
his buggy, and next day men say when they meet,
"Poor 's escaped;" or else it is, "The sheriff's
shot. Who'll run for office?" .„^- v.
It will be seen from the history of the Vigilance
Committees, as I heard their stories from Kansas
to California, that they are to be divided into two
R 2
244 aiiEATER BRITAIN. [chai'.
classes, with sluirply-marked charaeteristics — those
where committees, hangings, transportations, warnings,
are alike open to the light of day, such as the Ccm-
mittees of San Francisco in 1856, and the Sandwich
Islands in 18G6, and those — unhappily the vast majo-
rity — where all is secret and irresponsible. Here, in
San Francisco, the Committee was the government ;
elsewhere, the organizations were less wide, and the
members, though always shrewdly guessed at, never
known. Neither class should be necessary, unless
when a gold rush brings down upon a State the
desperadoes of the world ; but there is this encourage-
ment even in the history of Lynch-law : that, although
English settlements often start wild, they never have
been known to go wild.
The men who formed the second Vigilance Com-
mittee of San Francisco are now the governor,
senators, and Congress- men of California, the mayors
and sheriffs of her towns. Nowadays the citizens are
remarkable, even among Americans, for their love of
law and order. Their city, though still subject to a
yearly deluge from the outpourings of all the over-
crowded slums of Europe, is, as the New Yorker said,
the best policed in all America. In politics, too, it is
remarked that party organizations have no power in
this State from the moment that they attempt to
nominate corrupt or time-serving men. The people
break loose from their caucuses and conventions, and
vote in a body for their honest enemies rather than for
corrupt friends. They ha\e the advantage of singular
ability, for there is not an average man in California.
xxirj GOLDEN CITY,
245
CHAPTER XXir.
GOLDEN CITY.
The first letter which I dehvered in San Francisco
was from a Mormon gentleman to a merchant, who,
as he read it, exclaimed : " Ah ! so you want to see'
the lions ? I'll pick you up at three, and take you
there." I wondered, but went, as travellers do.
At the end of a pleasant drive along the best road
in all America, I found myself upon a cliff over-
hanging the Pacific, with a glorious outlook, seawards
towards the Farallones, and northwards to Cape
Benita and the Golden Gate. Beneath, a few hundred
yards from shore, was a conical rock, covered with
shapeless monsters, plashing the water and ro-iring
ceaselessly, while others swam around. These were
" the lions," my acquaintance said— the sea-lions. I
did not enter upon an explanation of our slang
phrase, " the lions/' which the Mormon, himself an
Englishman, no doubt had used, but took the first
opportunity of seeing the remainder of " the lions" of
the Golden City.
The most remarkable spot in all America is Mission
Dolores, in the outskirts of San Francisco City— once a
settlement of the Society of Jesus, and now partly
246 GREATER BRITAIN. . [chap.
blanket factory and partly church. Nowhere has the
conflict between the Saxon and Latin races been so
sharp and so decisive. For eighty or ninety years
California was first old Spanish, then Mexican, then
a half independent Spanish- American republic. The
progress of those ninety years was shown in the
foundation of half-a-dozen Jesuit " missions," who
held each of them a thousand or two tame Indians
as slaves, while a few military settlers and their
friends divided the interior with the savage tribes.
Gold, which had been discovered here by Drake, was
never sought: the fathers, like the Mormon chiefs,
discou^^aged mining ; it interfered with their " tame "
Indians. Here and there, in four cases, perhaps, in
all, a presidio, or castle, had been built for the protec-
tion of the mission, and a puebla, or tiny free town,
had been suffered to grow up, not without remon-
strance from the fathers. Los Angele-. had thus
sprung from the mission of that name, the fishing vil-
lage of Yerba Buena, from Mission Dolores on the bay
of San Francisco, and San Jose, from Santa Clara.
In 1846, Fremont the Pathfinder conquered the
country with forty-two men, nnd now it has a
settled population of nearly half a million ; and San
Francisco is as large as Newcastle or Hull, as flou-
rishing as Liverpool, and the Saxon blanket factory has
replaced the Spanish mission.
The story might have served as a warning to the
French Emperor, when he sent ships and men to
found a " Latin empire in America."
Between the presidio and the Mission Dolores lies
XXII J GOLDEN CITY. 247
Lone Mountain Cemetery, in that solitary calm and
majesty of beauty which befits a home for the dead,
the most lovely of all the cemeteries of America.
Queen Emma, of the Sandwich Islands, who is here
at present, said of it yesterday to a Californian mer-
chant : " How comes it that you Americans, who live
so fast, find time to buiy your dead so beautifully ? "
Lone Mountain is not the only delicious spot that
is given up to the American dead. Laurel Hill, Mount
Auburn, Greenwood, Cypress Grove, Hollywood, Oak
Hill, arc names not more full of poetry than are the
places to which they belong ; but Lone Mountain has
over all an advantage in its giant fuchsias and scarlet
geraniums, of the size and shape of trees ; in the dis-
• tant glimpses, too, of the still Pacific.
San Francisco is ill placed, so far as mere building
facilities are concerned. When the first houses were
built in 1845 and 1846, they stood on a strip of beach
surrounding the sheltered cove of Yerba Buena, and
at the foot of the steep and lofty sand-hills. Dunes
and cove have disappeared together ; the hills have
been shot bodily into the bay, and the former harbour
is now the business quarter of the city. Not a street
can be built without cutting down a hill, or filling
up a glen. Never was a great town built under
heavier difiiculties ; but trade requires it to be exactly
where it is, and there it will remain and grow. Its
former rivals, Vallejo and Benicia, are grass-grown
villages, in spite of their having had the advantage of
" a perfect situation." While the spot on which the
Golden City stands was still occupied by the strug-
248 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
gling village of Yerba Bucnn, Francisc.a was a rising
city, where corner lots were worth their ten or twenty
thousand dollars. When the gold rush came, the
village, shooting to the front, voted itself the name
of its great bay, and Francisca had to change its title
to Benicia, in order not to be thought a mere suburb
of San Francisco. The mouth of the Columbia was
once looked to as the future haven of Western
America, and point of convergence of the railroad
lines ; but the " centre of the universe " has not more
completely removed from Independence to Fort Riley
than Astoria has yielded to San Francisco the claim
to be the port of the Pacific.
The one great danger of this coast all its cities share
in common. Three times within the present century,
the spot on which San Francisco now stands has been
violently disturbed by subterranean forces. The earth-
quake of last 3^ear has left its mark upon Montgomery
Street and the Plaza, for it frightened the San Fran-
ciscans into putting up light wooden cornices to
hotels and banks, instead of the massive stone pro-
jections that are common in the States ; otherwise,
though lesser shocks are daily matters, the San Fran-
ciscans have forgotten the "great scare." A year is
a lonff time in California. There is but little of the
£:.rliest San Francisco left, though the city is only
eighteen years old. Fires have done good work as
well as harm, and it is worth a walk up to the Plaza
to see how prim and starched are the houses which
now occupy a square three sides of which were, in
1850, given up to public gaming-hells.
xxii.] aoLDEN CITY. 249
One of the few remaining bits of old Golden City
life is to be found in the neighl)ourhood of the " What
Cheer House," the resting-place of diggers on their way
from the interior to take ship for New York or Eu-
rope. Here there is no lack of coin, no want of oaths,
no scarcity of drinks. " Mint juleps" are as plentiful
as in Baltimore itself; Yerba Buena, the old name for
San Francisco, means " mint."
If the old character of the city is gone, there are
still odd scenes to be met with in its streets. To-
day I saw a master builder of great wealth with his
coat and waistcoat off, and his hat stowed away on
one side, carefully teacliing a raw Irish lad how to lay
a brick. He told me that the acquisition of the art
would brino; the man an immediate rise in his wages
of from five to ten shillings a day. Unskilled labour,
Mexican and Chinese, is plentiful enough, but white
artisans are scarce. The want of servants is such,
that even the wealthiest inhabitants live with their
wives and families in hotels, to avoid the cost and
trouble of an establishment. Those who have houses
pay rough unkempt Irish girls from £6 to £8 a
month, with board, " outings " when they please, and
"followers'' unlimited.
The hotel boarding has much to do with the some-
what unwomanly manner of a few among the ladies
of the newest States, but the effect upon the children
is more marked than it is upon their mothers. To a
woman of wealth, it matters, perhaps, but little
whether she rules a household of her own, or boards
in the first floor of some gigantic hostelry ; but it docs
250 (iREATEIl BRITAIN. [chap.
matter a great deal to her, children, who, in the one
case, have a home to play and work in, and who,
in the other, play on the stairs or in the corridors, to
the annoyance of every sojourner in the hotel, and
never dream of work out of school-hours, or of solid
reading that is not compulsory. The only one of
the common charges brought against America in
English society and in English books and papers that
is thoroughly true, is the statement that American
children, as a rule, are " forward," ill-mannered, and
immoral. An American can scarcely be found who
does not admit and deplore the facts. With the self-
exposing honesty that is a characteristic of their
nation, American gentlemen will talk by the hour of
the terrible profligacy of the young New Yorkers.
Boys, they tell you, who in England would be safe in
lower school at Eton or in well-managed houses, in
New York or New Orleans are deep gamesters and
God-defying rowdies. In New England, things are
better ; in the West, there is yet time to prevent the
ill arising ; but even ?n the most old-fashioned of
American States, the children are far too full of self-
assurance. Their faults are chiefly faults of manner,
but such in children have a tendency to become
so many vices. On my way home from Egypt, I
crossed the Simplon with a Southerner and a Penn-
sylvanian boy of fourteen or fifteen. An English boy
would have expressed his opinion, and been silent :
this lad's attacks upon the poor Southerner were
unceasing axid unfeeling ; yet I could see that he was
good at bottom. I watched my chance to give him
XX"] ' GOLDEN VITY. .>,)|
my view of liis conduct, and when we jiarted, he
came up and shook hands, saying : " You're not a bad
fellow for a Britisher, after all."
In my walks through the city, I found its climate
agreeable rather for work than idleness. Saunterincr
or lounging is as little possible as it is in London. Thl
summer is not yet ended ; and in the summer at San
Francisco, it is cold after eleven in the day-strangely
cold for the latitude of Athens. The fierce sun
scorches up the valleys of the San Joaquin and the
Sacramento in the early morning ; and the heated air,
rismg from off the ground, leaves its place to be filled
by the cold breeze from the Pacific. The Contra
Costa Eange is unbroken but by the single gap of the
Golden Gate, and through this opening the cold winds
rush in a never-ceasing gale, spreading fan-like as soon
as they have passed the narrows. Hence it is that the
Golden Gate is called " The Keyhole," and the wind
"The Keyhole Breeze." Up country, they make it
raise the water for irrigation. In winter, there is a
calm, and then the city is as sunny as tlie rest of
California.
So puiely local is the bitter gale, that at Benicia,
ten miles from San Francisco, the mean temperature
is ten degrees higher for the year, and nearly twenty
for the summer. I have stood on the shore at Benicia
when the thermometer was at a hundred in the
shade, and seen the clouds pouring in from the Pacific,
and hiding San Francisco in a murky paU, while'
the temperature there was under 70 degrees. This
fog retarded by a hundred years the discovery of San
252 QREATKR BRITAIN. [chap.
Fraucisco Bay. The entrance to the Golden City is
narrow, and the mists hang there all day. Cabrillo,
Drake, Viscaino, sailed past it ^\'itlioiit seeing that
there was a bay, and the great land-locked sea was
first beheld by white men when the missionaries came
upon its arms and creeks, far away inland.
The peculiarity of climate carries with it great
advantages. It is never too hot, never too cold, to
work — a fact which of itself secures a grand future
for San Francisco. The effect upon national type is
marked. At a San Franciscan ball, you see English
faces, not American. Even the lean Western men
and hungry Yankees become plump and rosy in this
temple of the winds. The high metallic ring of the
New England voice is not found in San Francisco.
As for old men, California must have been that
fabled province of Cathay the virtues of which were
such' that, whatever a man's age when he entered it,
he never grew older by a day. To dogs and strangers
there are drav/backs in the absence of winter : dogs
are muzzled all the year round, and musquitoes are
perennial upon the coast.
The city is gay with flags ; every house supports
a Liberty pole upon its roof, for wdien the Union
sentiment sprang up in San Francisco, at the
beginning of the war, public opinion forced every
citizen to make a conspicuous exhibition of the
stars and stripes by way of showing that it was
from no want of loyalty that they refused to
permit the circulation of Federal greenbacks. In
this matter of flags, the sea-gale is of service, for
xxn.] GOLDEN CITY. 253
were it not for its friendly assistance, a short house
between two tall ones could not sport a huge flag with
much efl'ect. As it is, the wind always blowing "^across
the chief streets, and never up or down, the narrowest
and lowest house can flaunt a large ensign without
fear of its ever flapping against the walls of its
proud neighbours.
It is not only in rosy cheeks that the Califor-
nian English have the old-world type. With less
ingenuity than the New England Yankees, they
have far more depth and solidity in their enterprise ;
they do not rack their brain at inventing machines to
peel apples and >idlk cows, but they intend to tunuel
through the mountains to Lake Tahoe, tap it, and
with its waters irrigate the Californian plains. They
share our British love for cash payments aiid good
roads ; they one and all set their faces against repudia-
tion in any shape, and are strongly for what they
call "rolling-up" the debt. Throughout the war,
they quoted paper as depreciated, not gold as risen!
Indeed, there is here the same unreasoning prejudice
against paper-money that I met with in Nevada
After all, what can be expected of a State which still
produces three-eights of all the gold raised yearly in
the world.
^ San Francisco is inhabited, as all American cities
bid fair to be, by a mixed throng of men of all lands
beneath the sun. New England and Enghshmen
predominate in energy, Chinese in numbers. The
French and Italians are stronger here than in any
other city in the States; and the red-skinned Mexi-
254 a RE AT Eli BRIT J IN. [chap.
cans, who own the land, supply the market people
and a small proportion of the townsfolk. Austra-
lians, Polynesians, and Chilians are numerous ; the
Germans and Scandinavians alone are few ; they
prefer to go wliere they have already friends — to
Philadelphia or Milwaukee. In this city — already a
microcosm of the world — the English, British, and
American, are in possession — have distanced the Irish,
beaten down the Chinese by force, and are destined
to physically preponderate in the cross-breed, and
give the tone, political and moral, to the Pacific
shore. New York is Irish, Philadelphia German ;
Milwaukee Norwegian ; Chicago Canadian ; Sault
de St. Marie French ; but in San Francisco — wliere
all the foreign races are strong — none is dominant ;
whence the singular result that California, the most
mixed in population, is also the most English of
the States.
In this strange community, starting more free from
the Puritan influence of New England than has
hitherto done any State ithin the Union, it is
doubtful what religion will predominate. Catholi-
cism is "not fashionable" in America — it is the
creed of the Irish, and that is enough for most
Americans ; so Anglicanism, its critics say, is popular
as being " very proper." Whatever the cause, the
Episcopalian Church is flourishing in California, and
it seems probable that the Church which gains the
day in California will eventually be that of the
wdiole Pacific.
In Montgomery Street are some of the finest
XXII.] GULDEN CITY. 255
buildings in all America ; tlie *' Occidental Hotel," the
" Masonic Hall," tlic " Union Club," and others. The
club has only just been rebuilt after its destruction
by a nitro-glycerine explosion which occurred in the
express office next door. A case, of which no one
knew the contents, was being lifted by two clerks,
Y/hen it exploded, blowing down a portion of the
club, and breaking half the windows in the city.
On examination it was found to be nitro-glycerine
on its way to the mines.
Another accident occurred here yesterday with this
same compound. A sharp report was heard on board
a ship lying in the docks, and the cook was found
dead below ; pieces of a flask had been driven into
his heart and lungs. The deposit on the broken
glass was examined, and found to be common oil ;
but this morning, I find in the Alta a report from
a chemist that traces of nitro-glycerine have been
discovered b}' him upon the glass, and a statement
from one of the hands says that the ship on her way
up had called at Manzanilla, where the cook had
taken the flask from a merchant's office, emptied it
of its contents, the character of which was unknown
to him, and filled it with common vegetable oil.
Since the great explosion at A spin wall, nitro-
glycerine has been the nightmare of Californians.
For earthquakes they care little, but the frejiks of
the devilish oil, which is brought here secretly, for
use in the Nevada mines, have made them ready to
swear that it is itself a demon. They tell you that
it freezes every night, and then the slightest friction
256 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
will explode it — that, on the other hand, it goes off
if heated. If you leave it standing in ordinary-
temperatures, the odds are that it undergoes decom-
position, and then, if you touch it, it explodes ; and
no lapse of time has on its power the smallest
deteriorating effect, but, on the contrary, the oil
will crystallize, and then its strength for harm is
multiplied by ten. If San Francisco is ever destroyed
by earthquake, old Californians will certainly be found
to ascribe the shock to nitro-glycerine.
A day or two after my return from Benicia, I
escaped from the city, and again went South, halting
at San Jose, "The Garden City," and chief town
of the fertile Guadalupe district, on my way to
the quicksilver mines of New Almaden, now the
greatest in the world since they have beaten the
Spanish mines and Idria. From San Jose, I drove
myself to Almaden along a sun-dried valley Avith
a fertile tawny soil, reaching the delicious mountain
stream and the groves it feeds in time to join my
friends at lunch in the shady hacienda. The director
took me through the refining works, in which the
quicksilver may be seen running in streams down
outters from the furnaces, but he was unable to go
with me up the mountain to the mines from which the
cinnabar comes shooting down by its weight. The
superintendent engineer — a meerschaum-equipped Ba-
varian — and myself mounted, at the Hacienda Gate,
upon our savage-looking beasts, and I found myself for
the first time lost in the depths of a Mexican saddle,
and my feet plunged into the boot-stirrups tliat I had
XXI l] golden city. 257
seen used by the Utes in Denver. Tlie riding feats
of the JMexicans and the Californian boys are ex-
plained when you find that their saddle puts it out
of the question that they should be thrown ; but the
fatigue that its size and shape cause to man and
horse, when the man is a stranger to New Spain, and
the horse knows that he is so, outweighs any possible
advantages that it may possess. With their huge
gilt spurs, attached to the stirrup, not to the boot,
the double peak, and the embroidered trappings, the
Mexican saddles are the perfection at once of the
cumbersome and the picturesque.
Silently we half scrambkul, half rode, up a break-
neck path which forms a short cut to the mine, till
all at once a charge of our horses at an almost
perpendicular wall of rock was followed by their
simultaneously commencing to kick and back towards
the cliff. Springing off, we found that the girths had
been slackened by the Mexican groom, and that the
steep bit of mountain had caused the saddles to slip.
This broke the ice, and we speedily found ourselves
discussing miners and mining in French, my German
not being much worse than my Bavarian's English.
After viewing the mines, the walls of which, com-
posed of crimson cinnabar, show bravely in the torch-
glare, we worked our way through the tunnels to the
topmost lode and open air.
Bidding good-bye to what I could see of my Ger-
man in the fog from his meerschaum, I turned to
ride down by the road instead of the path. I had not
gone a furlong, when, turning a corner, there l^urst upon
VOL. r. s
258 GREATER BRITAIN. , [chap.
me a view of the whole valley of tawny California,
now richly golden in the colours of the fall. Looking
from this spur of the Santa Cruz Mountains, with the
Contra Costa Kange before me, and Mount Hamilton
towering from the plain, apart, I could discern below
me the gleam of the Coyote Creek, and of the windows
in the church of Santa Clara — in the distance, the
mountains and waters of San Francisco Bay, from
San Mateo to Alameda and San Pablo, basking in
unhindered sun. The wild-oats dried by the sun
made of the plain a field of gold, dotted here and
there with groups of black oak and bay, and darkened
at the mountain foot with "chapparal." The volcanic
hills were rounded into softness in the delicious
haze, and all nature overspread with a poetic calm.
As I lost the view, the mighty fog was beginning to
pour in through the Golden Gate to refresh America
with dews from the Pacific,
xxiii.] LITTLE CHINA. 259
.y
CHAPTER XXIII.
LITTLE CHINA.
"The Indians begin to be troublesome again in
Trinity County. One man and a Chinaman have
been killed, and a lady crippled for life."
That the antipathy everywhere exhibited by the
English to coloured races was not less strong in
California than in the Carolinaj I had suspected, but
I was hardly prepared for the deliberate distinction
between men and yellow men drawn in this paragraph
from the California Alta of the day of my return to
San Francisco.
A determination to explore Little China, as the
celestial quarter of the city is termed, already arrived
at, was only strengthened by the unconscious humour
of the Alta, and I at once set off in search of two of
the detectives, Edes and Saulsbury, to whom I had
some sort of introduction, and put myself under their
charge for the night.
We had not been half-an-hour in the Chinese
theatre or opera-house before my detectives must
have repented of their offer to " show me round," for,
incomprehensible as it must have seemed to them
with their New England gravity and American con-
s 2
260 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
tem[ t for the Chinese, I was amused beyond measure
with the performance, and fairly lost myself in the
longest laugh that I had enjoyed since I had left
the plantations of Vkginia,
When we entered the house, which is the size of
the Strand Theatre of London, it may have been ten
or eleven o'clock. The performance had begun at
seven, and was likely to last till two a.m. By the
"performance " was meant this particular act or scene,
for the piece had been going on every evening for
a month, and would be still in progress during the
best part of another, it being the principle of the
Chinese drama to take up the hero at an early age,
and conduct him to the grave — which he reaches full
of years and of honour.
The house was crammed with a grinning crowd of
" yellow-boys," while the " China ladies" had a long
gallery to themselves. No sound of applause is to be
heard in a (Jhinese place of amusement, but the crowd
grin delight at the actors, who, for their part, grin
back at the crowd.
The feature of the periormance which struck me at
once was the hearty interest the actors took in the
play, and the chalf that went on between them and
the pit. It is not only from their numbers and the
nature of their trades that the Chinese may be called
the Irish of the Pacific : there was soul in every
gesture.
On the stage, behind the actors, was a band, which
played unceasingly, and so loud, that the performers,
who clearly had not the smallest intention to sub-
^^'"•1 •■ LTTTLE CHINA.
261
ordinate their parts to the music, had to talk in
shrinks in order to be heard. Tlie audience, too, all
talked in their loudest natural tones.
As for the play, a lady made love to an old gentle-
man (probably the hero, as this was the second
month or third act of the play), and, bawling at him
fiercely, was indignantly rejected by him in a piercing
shriek. Relatives, male and female, coming with
many howls to the assistance of the lady, were
ignominiously put to flight, in a high falsetto key. by
the old ft^llow'b footmen, who were in turn routed by
a force of yelling spearmen, apparently the couiity
posse. The soldiers wore paint in rings of various
colours, put on so deftly, that of nose, of eyes, of
mouth, no trace could be discovered ; the fjont face
resembled a target for archery. All this time, a
steady, unceasing uproar was continued by four gongs
and a harp, with various cymbals, pavilions, triangle^'s,
and guitars.
Scenery there was none, but boards were put up in
the Elizabethan way, with hieroglyphics denoting the
supposed locality ; and another archaic point is, that
all the female parts are played by boys. For this I
have the word of the detectives ; my eyes, had I not
long since ceased to believe them, would have given
me proof to the contrary. . .
The acting, as far as I could judge by the grimace,
was excellent. Nowhere could be found greater
spirit, or equal power of facial expression. The stage
fight was full of pantomimic force; the leading
soldier would make his fortune as a London pantaloon"!
2G2 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
When the detectives could no longer contain their
distaste for the performance, we changed our quarters
for a restaurant — the " Hang Heong," the wood of
which was brought from China.
The street along which we had to pass was deco-
rated rather than lit by paper lanterns hung over
every door ; but the " Hang Heong " was brilliantly
illuminated, with a view, no doubt, to attracting the
crowd as they poured out from the theatre at a later
hour. The ground-floor was occupied by shop and
kitchen, the dining-rooms being upstairs. The
counter, which is on the plan of that in the houses
of the Palais Tloyal, was presided over, not by a
smiling Avoman, but by grave and pig-tailed gentle-
men in black, who received our order from the
detective with the decorous solemnity of the head
waiter in an English country inn.
The rooms upstairs were nearly full ; and as the
Chinese by no means follow the Americans in silent
eating, the babel was tremendous. A saucer and a
pair of chopsticks w^ere given each of us, but at our
request a spoon was furnished as a special favour to
the " Melicans."
Tiny cups of a sw^eet spirit were handed us before
supper wai brought up. The liquor was a kind of
shrub, but white, made, I was told, from sugar-canes.
For first course, we had roast duck cut in pieces, and
served in an oil-filled bowl, and some sort of fish ;
tea was then brought in, and followed by shark's fin,
for which I had given a special order; the result
might have been gum-arabic for any flavour I could
XXIII.] LITTLE CHINA. 203
find. Dog was not to be obtained, and Lirds'-nest
soup was beyond the purse of a traveller seven thou-
sand miles from home, and twelve thousand from
his next supplies. A dish of some strange black
fungus stewed in rice, followed by preserves and
cakes, concluded our supper, and were washed down
by our tliird cups of tea.
After paying our respects and our money to the
gentleman in black, who n-unted a lugubrious some-
thing that answered to " good-night," we paid a visit
to the Chinese "bad quarter," which difters only in
degree of badness from the " quartier Mexicain," the
bad pre-eminence being ascribed, even by the pre-
judiced detectives, to the Spaniards and Chilians.
Hurrying on, we reached the Chinese gaming-
houses, just before they closed. Some difficulty was
made about admitting us by the " yellow loafers" who
hung round the gate, as the houses are prohibited by
law ; but as soon as the detectives, who were known,
explained that they came not on business but on
pleasure, we were suffered to pass in among the silent
melancholy gamblers. Not a word was heard, beyond
every now and then a grunt from the croupier. Each
man knew what he was about, and won or lost his
money in the stillness of a dead-house. The game
appeared to be a sort of loto ; but a few minutes of it
was enough, and the detectives pretended to no deep
acquaintance with its principles.
The San Francisco Chinese are not all me^e theatre-
goers, loafers, gamblers ; as a body, they are frugal,
industrious, contented men. I soon grew to think it
264 OBEATEli BRITAIN. [chap.
a pleasure to meet a Chinese- American, so clean and
happy is his look ; not a speck is to be seen upon
the blue cloth of his long coat or baggy trousers. His
hair is combed with care ; the bamboo on which he
and his mate together carry their enormous load
seems as though cleansed a dozen times a day.
It is said to be a peculiarity of the Chinese that
they are all alike : no European car>, without he has
dealings with them, distinguish one celestial from
another. The same, however, may be said of the
Sikhs, the Australian natives, of most coloured races,
in short. The points of difference which distinguish
the yellow men, the red men, the black men with
straight hair, the negroes, from any other race what-
ever, are so much more prominent than the minor
distinctions between Ah Sing and Chi Long, or
between Uncle Ned and Uncle Tom, that the indi-
vidual are sunk and lost in the national distinctions.
To the Chinese in turn all Europeans are alike ; but
beneath these obvious facts, there lies a grain of solid
truth that is worth the hunting out, and which is
connected with the change-of-type question in Ame-
rica and Australasia. Men of similar habits of mind
and body are alike among ourselves in Europe ; noted
instances are the close resemblan^^^. of Pk^e Enfantin,
the St. Simonian chief, to the busts of Epicurus ; of
Bismarck to Cardinal Ximenes. Irish labourers — men
who for the most part work hard, feed little, and
leave their minds entirely unploughed — are all alike ;
Chinamen, who all work hard, and work alike, who
live alike, and who go further, aiid all think alike,
xxiii.] LITTLE CHINA. 265
are, Vy a mere law of nature, indistinguishable one
from the other.
In the course of my wanderings in the Golden
City, I lighted on the house of the Canton Company,
one of the Chinese benevolent societies, the others
being those of Hong Kong, Macao, and Anioy. They
are like the New York Immigration Commission,
and the London " Societe Fran^aise de Bienfaisance,"
combined ; added to a theatre and joss-house, or
temple, and governed on the principles of such clubs
as those of the " whites" or " greens" at Heidelberg,
they are, in short, Chinese trades unions, sheltering
the sick, succouring the distressed, finding work for
the unemployed, receiving the immigrants from China
when they land, and shipping their bones back to
China, ticketed with name and address, when they
die. " Hong Kong, with dead Chinamen," is said to
be a common answer from outward-bounders to a hail
from the guard-ship at the Golden Gate.
Some of the Chinese are wealthy : Tung Yu & Co.,
Chi Sing Tong & Co., Wing Wo Lang & Co., Cliy Lung
& Co., stand high among the merchants of the Golden
City. Honest and wealthy as these men are allowed to
be, they are despised by every white Calif ornian, from
the Governor of the State to the Mexican boy who
cleans his shoes.
In America, as in Australia, there is a violent
prejudice against John Chinaman. He pilfers, we
are told ; he lies, he is dirty, he smokes opium, is full
of bestial vices — a pagan, and — what is far more
important — yellow ! All his sins are to be pardoned
2GG GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
but the last. Californians, when in good humour,
will ndmit that John is sober, patient, peaceable,
and hard-working, that his clothes -at least are
scrupulously clean ; but he is yellow ! Even the
Mexicans, themselves despised, look down upon the
Chinamen, just as the New York Irish affect to have
no dealings with " the naygurs." The Chinese them-
selves pander to the feeling. Their famous appeal
to the Californian Democrats may or may not be
true : " What for Democlat allee timee talkee dam
Chinaman ? Chinaman allee samee Democlat ; no
likee nigger, no likee injun." *' Infernals," " Celes-
tials," and " Greasera " — or black men, yellow men,
and Mexicans — it is hard to say which are most
despised by the American whites in California.
The Chinaman is hated by the rough fellows for
his cowardic>\ Had the Chinese stood to their rights
against the Americans, they would long since have
been driven from California. As it is, here and in
Victoria they invariably give way, and never work
at diggings which are occupied by whites. Yet in
both countries they take out mining licenses from
the State, which is bound to protect them in the
possession of the rights thus gained, but which is
powerless against the rioters of Ballarat, or the
"Anti-Chinese mob" of El Dorado.
The Chinese in California are practically confined
by public opinion, violence, or threats, to inferior
kinds of work, which the " meanest " of the whites
of the Pacific States refuse lO perform. Politically,
this is slavery. All the evils to which slavery has
xxiii.] LITTLE CHINA. on
given rise in the cotton KStates are produced here
by violence, in a less degree only because the Chine£.e
are fewer than wer*^ the negroes.
In sj^ite of a prejudice which recalls the time when
the British Government forbade the American colonist
to employ negroes in the manufacture of hats, on
the ground that white labourers could not stand' the
competition, the yellow men continue to flock to
" Gold Hills," as they call San Francisco. Already
they are the washermen, sv^eepers, and porters of
three States, two territories, and British Columbia.
They are denied civil rights ; their word is not taken
in cases where white men are concerned; a heavy
tax is set upon them on their entry to the State ; a
second tax when they commence to mine— still their
number steadily increase. In 1852, Governor Bigler,
in his message, recommended the prohibition of the
immigration of the Chinese, but they now number
one-tenth of the poiDulation.
The Irish of Asia, the Chinese have commenced to
flow over on to the outer world. Who shall say
where the flood will stop ? Ireland, with now five
millions of people, has in twenty years poured an
equal number out into the world. What is to pre-
vent the next fifty years seeing an emigration of a
couple of hundreds of millions from the rebellion-torn
provinces of Cathay?
Three Chinamen in a temperate climate will do
as much arm-work as two Englishmen, and will eat
or cost less. It looks as though the cheaper would
starve out the dear race, as rabbits drive out stronger
268 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
but hungrier bares. Tbis tendency is already plainly
vibible in our mercantile marine : tbe shipc are
manned witb motley crews of Bombay lascars,
Maories, Negroes, Arabs, Chinamen, Kroomen, and
Malays. There are no British or American seamen
now, except boys who are to be quartermasters some
day, and experienced hands who are quartermasters
already. But there is nothing to regret in this :
Anglo-Saxons are too valuable to be used as ordinary
seamen where lascars will do nearly, and Maories quite
as well. Nature seems to intend the English for a race
of officers, to direct and guide the cheap labour of
the Eastern peopleS:
The serious side of the Chinese problem — ^just
touched on here — will force itself rudely upon our
notice in Australia.
^^iv-J CALIFORNIA,
269
CHAPTER XXIV.
CALIFORNIA.
" In front of San Francisco are 745 millions of hungry
Asiatics, wlio have spices to exchange for meat Tnd
grain."
The words are Governor Gilpin's, made use of by him
m discussing the future of overland trade, and worthy
of notice as showing why it is that, in making fore-
casts of the future of California, we have to look more
to her facilities for trade than to her natural produc-
tions. San Francisco aims at being, not so much the
port of California as one of the chief stations on the
Anglo-Saxon highway round the globe.
Although the chief claim of California to consider-
ation is her position on the Pacific, her fertility and
size alone entitle her to notice. This single State is
750 miles in length-would stretch from Chamouni
to the soutliernmost point of Malta. There are two
capes in California— one nearly in the latitude of
Jerusalexn, the other nearly in the latitude of Rome.
The State has twice the area of Great Britain ; the
single valley of the Joaquin and Sacramento, from
Tulare Lake l.o the great snow-peak of Shasta, is as
large as the three kingdoms. Every useful mineral,
every kind of fertile soil, every variety of helpful
270 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
climate, are to be foiiiul within the State. There are
in th.. Union 45 such states or territories, with an
? verage area equal to that of Britain.
Between the Pacific and the snows of the Sierra are
three great tracts, each with its soil and character.
On the slopes of the Sierra are the forests of giant
timber, the sheltered valleys, and the gold-fields in
which I spent my first week in California. Next
comes the great hot plain of Sacramento, where, with
irrigation, all the best fruits of the tropics grow luxuri-
antly, where water for irrigation is plentiful, and the
Pacific breeze will raise it. Round the valley are vast
tracts for sheep and wheat, and on the Contra Costas
are millions of acres of wild oats growing on the best
of lands for cattle, while the slopes are covered with
young vines. Between the Contra Costa Eange and the
sea is a winterless strip possessing for table vegetables
and flowers the finest soil and climate in the world.
The story goes that Californian boys, when asked
if they believe in a future state, reply : " Guess so ;
California."
Whether San Francisco Vv'ill grow to be a second
Liverpool or New York is an aJl- absorbing question to
those who live on the Pacific scores, and one not with-
out an interest and a moral for ourselves. New York
has waxed rich and huge mainly because she is so
placed as to command one of the best harbours on the
coast of a country which exports enormously of bread-
stufis. Liverpool has thrived as one of the shipping
ports for the manufiicturers of the northern coal
counties of England. San Francisco Bay, as the best
EL CAi'iTAN, vomk.mhk vallkv. p. "^70.
XXIV.] CALIFORNIA. 271
harbour bouth of Puget Sound, is, and will remain,
tiie centre of the export trade of the Pacific States in
wool and cereals. If coal is found in plenty in the
Golden State, populaHon will inc'rease, manufactures
spring up, and the export of wrought articles take the
place of that of raw prod ace. If coal is found in
the Contra Costa Range, San Francisco will continue,
in s})ite of earthcpiakes, to be the foremost port on the
Pacific side ; if, as is more prol)able, the find of coal
is confined to the Monte Diablo district, and is of
trifling value, still the future of San Francisco as the
meetiiig point of the railways, and centre of the import
of manufactured goods, and of the export of the pro-
duce of an agricultural and pastoral interior, is as
certain as it must inevitably be brilliant. Whether
the chief town of the Pacific States will in time
develop into one of the commercial capitals of the
world is a wider and a harder question. That it will
be the converging point of the Pacific railroads both
of Chicago and St. Louis there can be no doubt. That
all the new overland trade from China and Japan will
pass through it seems as clear ; it is the extent of
this trade that is in question. For the moment, land
transit cannot compete on equal terms with water
carriage ; but assuming that, in the long run, this will
cease to be the case, it will be the overland route
across Russia, and not that through the United States,
that will convey the silks and teas of China to Central
and Western Europe. The very arguments of which
the Californian merchants make use to show that the
delicate goods of China need land transport go to prove
272 aUEATEH liRITAIN. (ciiap.
that sliii)ping and uiiHliipjiing in the Pacific, and a
repetition in the Athintic of each process, cannot be
good for them. The political importance to America
of the Pacific railroads docs not admit of over-state-
ment ; but the Russian or English Pacific routes must,
commercially speaking, win the day. For rare and
costly Eastern goods, the English railway through
Southern China, Upper ludia, the Persian coast, and
the Euphrates is no longer now a dream. If Russian
bureaucracy takes too long to move, trade will be
diverted by the Gulf route ; coarser goods and food
will long continue to come by sea, but in no case can
the city of San Francisco become a western outpost of
Europe.
The lustre of the future of San Francisco is not
dimmed by considerations su(di as these ; as the port
of entry for the trade of America, with all the East,
its wealth must become enormous ; and if, as is pro-
bable, Japan, New Zealand, and New South Wales
become great manufiic^-uring communities, San Fran-
cisco must needs in time take rank as a second, if
. not a greater, London. This, however, is the more
distant future. With cheaper labour than the Pacific
States and the BritibJ* colonies possess, with a more
settled government than Japan — Pennsylvania and
Ohio, from the time that the Pacific railroad is com-
• pleted, will take, and for years will keep, the China
trade. As for the colonies, the voyage from San
Francisco to Australia is almost as long and difficult
as that from England, and there is every probability
that Lancashire and Belgium will continue to "upply
XXIV.] CALIFOHNIA. 273
the colonists with clothes and tools, until they them-
selves, possessed as they arc of coal, become competent
to make them. The merchants of San Francisco
will be limited in the main to the trade with
China and Japan. In this direction the future has
no bounds : through California and the Sandwich
Islands, through Japan, fast becoming American, and
China, the coast of which is already British, our race
seems marchir.g westward to universal rule. The
Russian empire itself, with all its passive strength,
cannot stand against the English horde, over pushing
with burning energy towj.rds the setting sun. Russia
and England are said to be nearing each other upon
the Indus ; but long before they can meet there, they
wiU be face to face upon the Amoor.
For a time, the flood may be diverted south or
north : Mexico will doubtless, and British Columbia
will probably, carry off a portion of the thousands
who are pouring west from the bleak rocks of New
England. The Calif ornian expedition of 1853 against
Sonora and Lower California will be repeated with
success, but the tide will be but momentarily stayed.
So entirely are English countries now the mother-
lands of energy and adventure throughout the world,
that no one who has watched what has happened in
California, in British Columbia, and on the west coast
of New Zealand, can doubt that the discovery of
placer gold-fields on any coast or in any sea-giit
country in the world, must now be followed by the
speedy rise there of an English government : were
gold, for instance, found in ^urfticq diggings in Jnpq-n,
VOL. 1. T
274 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Japan would be English in five years. We know
encngli of Chili, of the new Russian country on the
Amoor, of Japan, to l^ aware that such discoveries
are more than likely to occur.
In the face of facts like these, men are to be
found who ask whether a break-up of the Union is
not still probable — whether the Pacific States are not
likely to secede from the Atlantic ; some even contend
for the general principle that "America must go to
pieces — she is too big." It is small powers, not great
ones, that have become impossible : the unification of
Germany is in this respect but the dawn of a new era.
The great countries of to-day are smaller than were
the smallest of a hundred years ago. Lewes was
further from London in 1700 than Edinburgh is now.
New York and San Francisco will in ;'.870 be nearer
to each other than Canton and Pekin. From the
point of view of mere size, there is more likelihood
of England entering the Union than of California
seceding from it.
The material interests of the Pacific States will
always lie in union. The West, sympathising in the
main with the Southerners upon the slavery question,
threw herself into the war, and crushed them, because
she saw the necessity of keeping her outlets under
her own control. The same policy would hold good
for the Pacific States in the case of the continental
railroad. America, of all countries, alone shares the
future of both Atlantic and Pacific, and she knows
her interests too well to allow such an advantage to be
thrown away. Uncalculating rebellion of the Pacific
XXIV.] CALIFORNIA. 275
States upon some sudden heat, is the only danger
to be apprehended, and such a rising could be put
down with ease, owing to the manner in which these
States are commanded from the sea. Throughout
the late rebellion, the Federal navy, though officered
almost entirely by Southerners, was loyal to the flag,
and it would be so again. In these days, loyalty may
be said to be peculiarly the sailor's passion : perhaps
he loves his country because he sees so little of it.
The single danger that looms in the more distant
future is the eventual control of Congress by the
Irish, while the English retain their hold on the Pacific
shores.
« « « « «
California is too British to be typically American : it
would seem that nowhere ix the United States have
we found the true America or the real American.
Except as abstractions, they do not exist ; it is only
by looking carefully at each eccentric and irregular
America — at Irish New York, at Puritan New Eng-
land, at the rowdy South, at the rough and swag-
gering Far West, at the cosmopolitan Pacific States
— that we come to reject the anomalous features, and
to find America in the points they possess in common.
It is when the country is left that there rises in the
mind an image that soars above all local prejudice
— that of the America of the law-abiding^ mighty
people who are imposing English institutions on the
world.
T 2
276 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
CHAPTER XXV.
MEXICO.
In company with a throng of men of all races, all
tongues, and all trades, such as a Californian steamer
can alone collect, I came coasting southwards under
the cliffs of Lower California. Of the thousand pas-
sengers who sought refuge from the stifling heat
upon the upper and hurricane decks, more than half
were diggers returning with a "pile" to their homes
in the Atlantic States. While wo hung over the
bulwarks watching the bonitos and the whales, the
diggers threw "bobs" at the boobies that flew out
to us from the blazing rocks, and brought them
down screaming upon the decks. Threading our way-
through the reefs off the lovely island of Margarita,
where the " Independence " was lost with three hun-
dred human beings, we lay-to at Cape St. Lucas,
and landed his Excellency Don Antonio Pedrin,
Mexican Governor of Lower California, and a Juarez
man, in the very bay where Cavendish lay in wait
for months for the *' great Manilla ship" — the Aca-
pulco galleon.
When Girolamo Benzoni visited the Mexican
Pacific coast, he confused the turtle with the " croco-
xxv.J MEXICO. 277
dile," describing the former under the latter's name ;
but at Manzanilla, the two may be seen lying almost
side by side upon the sands. Separated from the
blue waters of the harbour by a narrow strand there
is a festering lagoon, the banks of which swarm with
the smaller alligators; but a few yards off, upon
the other slope, the townsfolk and the turtles they
had brought down for sale to our ship's purser were
lying, when I saw them, in a confused heap under
an awning of sail-cloth nailed up to the palm-trees.
Alligator, turtle, Mexican, it was hard to say which
was the superior being. A French corvette was in
possession of the port — one of the last of the hold-
ing-places through which the remnants of the army
of occupation were dribbling back to France.
In the land-locked bay of Acapulco, one of the
dozen " i ittest places in the world," we found two
French frigates, whose officers boarded us at once.
They told us that they landed their marines every
morning after breakfast, and re-embarked them be-
fore sunset ; they could get nothing from the shore
but water ; the Mexicans, under Alvarez, occupied
the town at night, and carried off even the fruit.
When I asked about supplies, the answer was sweep-
ing : '* Ah, mon Dieu, monsieur, cette ssacrrreeee
canaille de Alvarez nous vole tout. Nous n'avons
que de I'eau fralche, et Alvarez va nous emporter
la fontaine aussi quelque nuit. Ce sont des voleurs,
voyez-vous, ces Mechicanos." When they granted
us leave to land, it v/as with the proviso that we
should not blame them if we were shot at by the
278 QBEATEB BRITAIN. [chap.
Mexicans as we went ashore, and by themselves as
we came off again. Firing often takes place at
night between Alvarez and the French, but with a
total loss in many months of only two men killed.
The day of my visit to Acapulco was the anni-
versary of the issue, one year before, of Marshal
Bazaine's famous order of the day, directing the
instant execution, as red-handed rebels, of Mexican
prisoners taken by the French. It is a strange com-
mentary upon the Marshal's circular that in a year
from its issue the " Latin empire in America " should
have had a term set to it by the President of the
United States. In Canada, in India, in Egypt, in
New Zealand, the English have met the French
abroad, and in this Mexican affair history does but
repeat itself. There is nothing more singular to the
Londoner than the contempt of the Americans for
France. All Europe seems small when seen from
the United States ; but the opinion of Great Britain
and the strength of Russia are still looked on with
some respect : France alone completely vanishes, and
instead of every one asking, as with us, "What does
the Emperor sayl" no one cares in the least what
Napoleon does or thinks. In a Chicago paper, I
have seen a column of Washington news headed,
" Seward orders Lewis Napoleon to leave Mexico
right away ! Nap. lies badly to get out of the fix ! "
While the Americans are still, in a high degree,
susceptible of affront from England, and would never,
if they conceived themselves purposel} insulted,
stop to weigh the cost of war, towards France they
XXV.] MEXICO. 27i)
only feel, as a Californian said to me, " Is it worth
our while to set to work to whip her 1 " The efifect
of Gettysburg and Sadowa will be that, except Great
Britain, Italy, and Spain, no nations will care much
for the threats or praises of Imperial France.
The true character of the struggle in Mexico has
not been pointed out. It was not a mere conflict
between the majority of the people and a minority
supported by foreign aid, but an uprising of the
Indians of the country against the whites of the
chief town. The Spaniards of the capital were
Maximilian's supporters, and upon them the Indians
and Mestizos have visited their revenge for the
deeds of Cortez and Pizarro. On the west coast
there is to be seen no trace of Spanish blood : in dress,
in language, in religion, the people are Iberian; in
features, in idleness, and in ferocity, undoubtedly Ecd-
Indian.
In the reports of the Argentine Confederation, it is
stated that the Circassian blood comes to the front
in the mixed race ; a few hundred Spanish families
in La Plata are said to have absorbed several hundred
thousand Indians, without sufiering in their whiteness
or other natural characteristics. There is something
of the frog that swallowed the ox in this ; and
the theories of the Argentine officials, themselves
of the mixed race, cannot outweigh the evidence
of our own eyes in the seaport towns c»f Mexico.
There at least it is the Spaniards, not the Indians,
wlio have disappeared ; and the only mixture of
blood that can be traced is that of Ked Indian
280 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
and negro, in the fisher-boys about the ports. They
are lithe lads, with eyes full of art and fire.
The Spaniards of Mexico have become Eed Indians,
as the Turks of Europe have become Albanians or
Circassians. Where the conquering marries into the
conquered race, it ends by being absorbed, and the
mixed breed gradually becomes pure again in the
type of the more numerous race. It would seem that
the North American continent will soon be divided
between the Saxon and the Aztec republics.
In California I once met with a caricature in
which Uncle Sam or Brother Jonathan is • lying on
his back upon Canada and the United States, with
his head in Kussian America, and his feet against
a tumble-down fence, behind which is Mexico. His
knees are bent, and his position cramped. He says,
" Guess I shall soon have to stretch my legs, some ! "
There is not in the United States any strong feeling
in favour of the annexation of the remainder of
the continent, but there is a solemn determination
that no foreign country shall in any way gain fresh
footing or influence upon American soil, and that
monarchy shall not be established in Mexico or
Canada. Further than this, there is a belief that, as
the south central portions of the States become fully
peopled-up, population will pour over into the
Mexican provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora, and
that the annexation of these and some other por-
tions of Mexico to the United States cannot long
be prevented. For such acquisitions of territory
America would pay as she paid in the case of
XXV.] MEXICO. 281
Texas, which she first conquered, and then bought
at a fair price.
In annexing the whole of Mexico, Protestant
Americans would feel that they were losing more
than they could gain. In California and New Mexico,
they have already to deal with a population of Mexi-
can Catholics, and difficulties have arisen in the
matter of the Church lands. The Catholic vote is
powerful not only in California and New York, but
in Maryland, in Louisiana, in Kansas, and even in
Massachusetts. The sons of the Pilgrim Fathers
would scarcely look with pleasure on the admission
to the Union of ten millions of Mexican Catholics,
and, on the other hand, the day-dreams of Leonard
Calvert would not be realized in the triumph of
such a Catholicism as theirs any more than in the
success of that of the Philadelphia Academy, or
New York Tammany Hall.
With the exception of the Irish, the great ma-
jority of Catholic emigrants avoid the United States,
but the migration of European Catholics to South
America is increasing year by year. Just as the
Germans, the Norwegians, and the Irish flow towards
the States, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians
flock into La Plata, Chili, and Brazil. The European
population of La Plata has already reached three
hundred thousand, and is growing fast. The French
" mission " in Mexico was the making of that great
country a further field for the Latin immigration ;
and when the Californians marched to Juarez' help, it
was to save Mexico to North America.
282 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
In all history, nothing can be found more dignified
than the action of America upon the Monroe doctrine.
Since the principle was first laid down in words, in
1823, the national action has been courteous, con-
sistent, firm ; and the language used now that America
is all-powerful, is the same that her statesmen used
during the rebeUion in the hour of her most instant
peril. It will be hard for political philosophers of the
future to assert that a democratic republic can have
no foreign policy.
The Pacific coast of Mexico is wonderfully full of
beauties of a peculiar kind ; the sea is always calm,
and of a deep dull blue, with turtles lying basking on
the surface, and flying-fish skimming lightly over its
expanse, while the shores supply a fringe of bright
yellow sand at once to the ocean blue and to the rich
green of the cactus groves. On every spit or sand-bar
there grows the feathery palm. A low range of jungle-
covered hills is cut by gullies, through which we get
glimpses of lagoons bluer than the sea itself, and
behind them the sharp volcanic peaks rise through
and into cloud. Once in a while, Colima, or other
giant hill, towering above the rest in blue-black gloom,
serves to show that the shores belong to some mightier
continent than Calypso's isle.
XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. 288
CHAPTER XXVI.
REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT.
Among our Californian passengers, we had many-
strong party men, and political conversation never
flagged throughout the voyage. In every discussion
it became more and more clear that the Democratic
is the Constitutional, the Republican the Utilitarian
party— rightly called "Radical," from its habit of
going to the root of things, to see whether they are
good or bad. Such, however, is the misfortune of
America in the possession of a written Constitution,
such the reverence paid to that document on account
of the character of the men who penned it, that
even the extremest Radicals dare not admit in
public that they aim at essential change, and the
party loses, in consequence, a portion of the strength
that attaches to out-spoken honesty.
The President's party at their convention— known
as the " Wigwam"— which met while I was in Phila-
delphia, maintained that the war had but restored
the " Union as it was," with State rights unimpaired.
The Republicans say that they gave their blood, as
they are ready again to shed it— for the " Union as
it was not;" for one nation, and not for thirty-six,
284 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
or forty-five. The Wigwam declarct' that the Wash-
ington Government had no constitutional right to
deny representation in Congress to any State. The
Republicans ask how, if this constitutional provision
is to be observed, the Government of the country is
to be carried on. The Wigwam laid it down as a
principle, that Congress had no power to interfere
with the right possessed by each State to prescribe
qualifications for the elective franchise. The Radicals
say that State sovereignty should have vanished
when slavery went down, and ask how the South
is to be governed consistently with republicanism
unless by negro suffrage, and how this is to be
maintained except by Federal control over the various
States — by abolition, in short, of the old Union, and
creation of a new. The more honest among the
Republicans admit that for the position which they
have taken up they can find no warrant in the Con-
stitution ; that, according to the doctrine which the
'' continental statesmen " and the authors of " The
Federalist " would lay down, were they living, thirty-
five of the States, even if they were unanimous,
could have no right to tamper with the constitution
of the thirty-sixth. The answer to all this can only
be that, were the Constitution to be closely followed,
the result would be the ruin of the land.
The Republican party have been blamed, because
their theory and practice alike tend towards a con-
solidation of power, and a strengthening of the bands
of the Government at Washington. It is in this that
lies their chief claim to support. Local government
XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT, 285
is an excellent thing; it is the greatest of the in-
ventions of our inventive race, the chief security for
continued freedom possessed by a people already free.
This local government is consistent with a powerful
executive ; between the village municipality and
Congress, between the Cabinet and the district council
of select men, there can be no conflict : it is State
sovereignty, and the pernicious heresy of primary
allegiance to the State, that have already j^roved as
costly to the Republic as they are dangerous to her
future.
It has been said that America, under the Federal
system, unites the freedom of the small State with the
power of the great; but though this is true, it is
brought about, not through the federation of the
States, but through that of the townships and districts.
The latter are the true units to which the consistent
Republican owes his secondary allegiance. It is,
perhaps, only in the tiny New England States
that Northern men care much about their common-
wealth ; a citizen of Pennsylvania or New York never
talks of his State, unless to criticise its legislature.
After all, where intelligence and education are all
but universal, where a spirit of freedom has struck
its roots into the national heart of a great race, there
can be no danger in centialization, for the power
that you strengthen is that of the whole people, and
a nation can have nothing to fear from itself.
In watching the measures of the Radicals, we
must remember that they have still to guard their
countiy against great dangers. The war did not
2bG (iUEATEli mUTAlN. [chap.
last long enough to destroy anti-republican ism along
with slavery. The social system of the Carol inas
waa upset; but the political fabric built upon a
slavery foundation in such "free" States as New
York and Maryland is scarcely shaken.
If we look to the record of the Kepublican party
with a view to making a forecast of its future
conduct, we find that at the end of the war the
party had before it the choice between military rule
and negro rule for the South — between a government
caiTied on through generals and provost-marshals,
unknown to the Constitution and to the courts, and
destined to prolong for ages the disruption of the
Union and disquiet of the nation, and, on the other
hand, a rule founded upon the principles of equity
and self-government, dear to our race, and supported
by local majorities, not by foreign bayonets. Although
possessed of the whole military power of the nation,
the Eepublicans refused to endanger their country,
and established a system intended to lead by gradual
steps to equal suffrage in the South. The immediate
interest of the party, as distinguished from that of
the country at large, was the other way. The
Eepublican majority of the presidential elections of
1860 and 1864, had been increased by the success
of the Federal arms, borne mainly by the Eepub-
licans of New England and the West, in a war
conducted to a triumphant issue under the leadership
of Eepublican Congress-men and generals. The apparent
magnanimity of the admission of a portion of the
rebels, warm-handed, to the poll, would still further
XXVI.] REPUBLICAN Oil DEMOCRAT. 287
have strengthened the Republicans in the Westeni and
Border States ; and while the extreme wing would
not have dared to desert the party, the moderate
men would have been conciliated by the refusal of
the franchise to the blacks. A foresight of the
future of the nation happily prevailed over a more
taking policy, and, to the honour of the liepublican
leaders, equal franchise was the result.
The one great issue between the Radicals and the
Democrats since the conclusion of the war is this : the
" Democracy " deny that the re-admission to Congress
of the representatives of the Southern States is a
matter of expediency at all ; to them they declare
that it is a matter of right. There was a rebellion
in certain States which temporarily prevented their
sending representatives ; it is over, and their men
must come. Either the Union is or is not dissolved ;
tix3 Radicals admit that it is not, that all their en-
deavours were to prevent the Union being destroyed
by rebels, and that they succeeded in so doing.
The States, as States, were never in rebellion ; there
was only a powerful rebellion localized in certain
States. " If you admit, then," say the Democrats,
" that the Union is not dissolved, how can you govern
a number of States by major-generals ? " Meanwhile
the Radicals go on, not wasting their time in words,
but passing through the House and over the Presi-
dent's veto the legislation necessary for the recon-
struction of free government — with their illogical,
but thoroughly English, good sense, avoiding all talk
about constitutions thnt are ol)solete, and laws that
288 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
it is impossible to enforce, and pressing on steadily
to the end that they have in view : equal rights for
all men, free government as soon as may be. The
one thing to regret is, that the Kepublicans have
not the courage to appeal to the national exigencies
merely, but that their leaders are forced by public
opinion to keep up the sham of constitutionalism.
No one in America seems to dream that there can
be anything to alter in the " matchless Constitution,"
which was framed by a body of slave-owners filled
with the narrowest aristocratic prejudices, for a
country which has since abolished slavery, and be-
come as democratic as any nation in the world.
The system of presidential election and the con-
stitution of the Senate are matters to which the
Republicans will turn their attention as soon as the
country is rested from the war. It is not impossible
that a lifetime may see the abolition of the Presidency
proposed, and carried by the vote of the whole nation.
If this be not done, the election Mdll come to be made
directly by the people, without the intervention of the
electoral college. The Senate, as now constituted, rests
upon the States, and that State-rights are doomed no
one can doubt who remembers that of the population
of New York State less than half are native-born New
Yorkers. What concern can the cosmopolitan moiety
of her people have with the State-rights of New York ?
"When a system becomes purely artificial, it is on the
road to death ; when State-rights represented the
various sovereign powers which the old States had
allowed to sleep while they entered a federal union,
XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OB DEMOCRAT. f>89
State-rights were historical ; but now that Congress
by a single vote cuts and carves territories as large
as all the old States put together, and founds new
commonwealths in the wilderness, the doctrine is
worn out.
It is not likely that the Republicans will carry all
before them without a check ; but though one Conser-
vative reaction may follow another, although time
after time the Democrats may return victorious from
the Fall elections, in the end Radicalism must inevi-
tably win the day. A party which takes for its
watchword, " The national good," will always beat
the Constitutionajists.
Except during some great crisis, the questions which
come most home at election times in a democratic
country are minor points, in which the party not
in power has always the advantage over the office-
holders: it is on these petty matters that a cry of
jobbery and corruption can be got up, and nothing in
American politics is more taking than such a cry.
"We are a liberal people, sir," said a Californian to
me, "but among ourselves we don't care to see some
men get more than their share of Uncle Sam's money.
It doesn't go down at election time to say that the
Democrats are spoiling the country ; but it's a mighty
strong plank that you've got if you prove that Hank
Andrews has made a million of dollars by the last
Congressional job. We say, ' Smart boy, Hank
Andrews;' but we generally vote for the other man."
It is these small questions, or "side issues," as they
are termed, which cause the position of parties
VOL. I. U
290 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
to fluctuate frequently in certain States. The first
reaction against the now triumphant Radicals will
probably be based upon the indignation excited by
the extension of Maine liquor laws throughout the
whole of the States in which the New Englanders
have the mastery.
Prohibitive laws are not supported in America by
the arguments with which all of us in Britain are
familiar. The New England Radicals concede that
so far as the effects of the use of alcohol are strictly
personal, there is no ground for the interference of
society. They go even further, and say that no
ground for general and indiscriminate interference
with the sale of liquor is to be found in the fact
that drink maddens certain men, and causes them
to commit crime. They are willing to admit that,
were the evils confined to individuals, it would be
their own affair ; but they attempt to show that
the use of alcohol affects the condition, moral and
physical, of the drinker's offspring, and that this is
a matter so bound up with the general weal, that
public interference may be necessary. It is the belief
of a majority * , the thinkers of New England that
the taint of alcoholic poison is hereditary ; that the
children of drunkards will furnish more than the
ordinary proportion of great criminals ; that the
descendants of habitual tipplers will be found to lack
vital force, and will fall into the ranks of pauperism
and dependence : not only are the results of morbid
appetite, they say, transmitted to the children, but
the appetites themselves descend to the offspring
XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. 291
with the hloocl. If this be true, the New Enghtnd
Kadicals urge, the use of alcohol becomes a moral
wrong, a crime even, of which the law might well
take cognizance.
We are often told that party organization has become
so dictatorial, so despotic, in America, that no one not
chosen by the p^'eliminary convention, no one, in short,
whose name is not upon the party ticket, has any
chance of election to an office. To those who reflect
upon the matter, it would seem as though this is but
a consequence of the existence of Party, and of the
system of Local Kepresentation : in England itself
the like abuse is not unknown. Where neither
party possesses overwhelming strength, division is
failure; and some knot or other of pushing men
must be permitted to make the selection of a
candidate, to which, when made, the party must
adhere, or suffer a defeat. As to the composition of
the nominating conventions, the grossest mis-state-
ments have been made to us in England, for we
have been gravely assured that a nation which is
admitted to present the greatest mass of education
and intelligence with the smallest intermixture of
ignorance and vice of which the world has knowledge,
allows itself to be dictated to in the matter of the
choice of its rulers by caucuses and conventions com-
posed of the idlest and most worthless of its popula-
tion. Bribery, we have boen told, reigns supreme in
these assemblies ; the nation's interest is but a phrase ;
individual selfishness the true dictator of each choice ;
the name of party is but a cloak for private ends, and
u 2
292 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
the wire-pullers are equalled in rascality only by their
nominees.
It need hardly be shown that, were these stories
true, a people so full of patriotic sentiment as that
which lately furnished a million and a half of volun-
teers for a national war, would without doubt be led
to see its safety in the destruction of conventions
and their wire-pullers — of party government itself, if
necessary. It cannot be conceived that the American
people would allow its institutions to be stultified
and law itself insulted to secure the temporary
triumph of this party or of that, on any mere
question of the day. *
The secret of the power of caucus and convention
is, general want of time on the part of the community.
Your honest and shrewd Western farmer, not having
himself the leisure to select his candidate, is fain to let
caucus or convention choose for him. In practice,
however, the evil is far from great : the party caucus,
for its own interest, will, on the whole, select the
fittest candidate available, and, 1 ^ any case, dares not,
except perhaps in New York city, fix its choice upon
a man of known bad character. Even where Party is
most despotic, a serious mistake committed by one of
the nominating conventions will seldom fail to lose its
side so many votes as to secure a triumph for the-
opponents.
King Caucus is a great monarch, however ; it would
be a mistake to despise him, and conventions are dear
to the American people — at least, it would seem so,
to judge from their number. Since I have been in
XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. 293
America, there have been sitting, besides doubtless
a hundred others, the names of which I have not
noticed, the Philadelphia " Copper Johnson Wigwam,"
or assembly of the Presidential party (of which the
Radicals say that it is but " the Copperhead organi-
zation with a fresh snout"), a dentists' convention, a
phrenological convention, a pomological congress, a
school-teachers' conveittion, a Fenian convention, an
eight-hour convention, an insurance companies' con-
vention, and a loyal soldiers' convention. One is
tempted to think of the assemblies of '48 in Paris,
and of the caricatures representing the young bloods
of the Paris Jockey Club being addressed by their
President as " Citoyens Vicomtes," whereas, when the
cafe waiters met in their congress, it was " Messieurs
les Gar§ons-limonadiers."
The pomological convention was an extremely
jovial one, all the horticulturists being whiskey-
growers themselves, and having a proper wish to
compare their own with their neighbours " Bourbon "
or " old Rye." Caucuses (or cauci : which is it ?)
of this kind suggest a derivation of this name for
what many consider a low American proceeding, from
an equally low Latin word of similar sound and
spelling. In spite of the phrase " a dry caucus "
being not unknown in the temperance State of Maine,
many might be inclined to think that caucuses, if not
exactly Vessels of grace, were decidedly " drinking
vessels;" but Americans tell you that the word is
derived from the phrase a " caulker's meeting,'*
caulkers being peculiarly given to noise.
294 GMEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
The cry against conventions is only a branch of
that against " politicians," which is continually being
raised by the adherents of the side which happens at
the moment to be Ihc weaker, and which evidently
helps to create the evils against which its authors are
protesting. It is now the New York Democrats who
tell such stories as that of the Columbia District census-
taker going to the Washington house of a wealthy
Boston man to find out his religious tenets. The
door was opened by a black boy, to whom the white
man began: "What's your name?" "Sambo, sah,
am my Christian name/' "Wall, Sambo, is your
master a Christian?" To which Sambo's indignant
answer was : " No, sah ! Mass member ob Congress,
sah ! " When the Democrats were in power, it was
the Eepublicans of Boston and the Cambridge pro-
fessors who threw out sly hints, and violent invectives
too, against the whole tribe of "politicians." Such
unreasoning outcries are to be met only by bare
facts; but were a jury of readers of the debates in
Parliament and in Congress to be empanelled to
decide whether political immorality were not more
rife in England than in America, I should, for my
part, look forward with anxiety to the result.
The organization of the Republican party is hugely
powerful ; it has its branches in every township and
district in the Union ; but it is strong, not in the
wiles of crafty plotters, not in the devices of unknown
politicians, but in the hearts of the loyal people of
the country. If there were nothing else to be said
to Englishmen on the state of parties in America, it
XXVI.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. 296
should be sufficient to point out that, while the
"Democracy" claim the Mozart faction of New
York and the shoddy aristocracy, the pious New
Englanders and their sons in the North- West are, by
a vast majority, Republicans ; and no " side issues"
should be allowed to disguise the fact that the Demo-
cratic is the party of New York, the Republican the
party of America.
2 9 G GEEA TER BRIT A IN.
[chap.
CHAPTER XXVII.
BROTHERS.
I HAD landed in America at the moment of what is
known in Canada as "the great scare"— that is, the
Fenian invasion at Fort Erie. Before going South,
I had attended at New York a Fenian meeting held
to protest against the conduct of the President and
Mr. Seward, who, it was asserted, after deluding the
Irish with promises of aid, had abandoned them,
and even seized their supplies and arms. The
chief speaker of the evening was Mr. Gibbons, of
Philadelphia, "Vice-President of the Irish Republic,"
a grave and venerable man ; no rogue or schemer, but
an enthusiast as evidently convinced of the justice
as of the certainty of the ultimate triumph of the
cause.
At Chicago, I went to the monster meeting at
which Speaker Colfax addressed the Brotherhood ; at
Buffalo, I was present at the "armed picnic" which
gave the Canadian Government so much trouble. On
Lake Michigan, I went on board a Fenian ship ; in
New York, I had a conversation with an ex-rebel
officer, a long-haired Georgian, who was wearing the
Fenian uniform of green-and-gold in the public
XXVII.] BROTHERS. 297
streets. The conclusion to which I came was, that
the Brotherhood has the support of ninety-nine
hundredths of the Irish in the Statee As we are
dealing not with British, but with English politics
and life, this is rather a fact to be borne in mind
than a text upon which to found a homily ; still, the
nature of the Irish antipathy to Britain is worth a
moment's consideration ; and the probable effects of
it upon the future of the race is a matter of the
gravest import.
The Fenians, according to a Chicago member of
the Eoberts' wing, seek to return to the ancient state
of Ireland, of which we find the history in the Brehon
laws — a communistic tenure of land (resembling, no
doubt, that of the Don Cossacks), and a republic or
elective kingship. Such are their objects; nothing
else will in the least conciliate the Irish in America.
No abolition of the Establishment, no reform of land-
laws, no Parliament on College Green, nothing that
England can grant while preserving the shadow of
union, can dissolve the Fenian league.
All this is true, and yet there is another great Irish
nation to which, if you turn, you find that conciliation
may still avail us. The Irish in Ireland are not
Fenians in the American sense : they hate us, perhaps,
but they may be mollified ; they are discontented, but
they may be satisfied ; customs and principles of law,
the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish
soil, can be recognised, and made the basis of legisla-
tion, without bringing about the disruption of the
empire.
298 OREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
The first Irish question that we shall have to set
ourselves to understand is that of land. Permanent
tenure is as natural to the Irish, as freeholding to the
English people. All tluit is needed of our statesmen
is, that they recognise in legislation that which they
cannot but admit \i. private talk — namely, that there
may be essential difterences between race and rax3e.
The results of legislation which proceeds upon this
basis may follow very slowly upon the change of
system, for there is at present no nucleus whatever
for the feeling of amity which we would create.
Even the alliance of the Irish politicians with the
English Radicals is merely temporary ; the Irish
antipathy to the English does not distinguish between
Conservative and Radical. Years of good govern-
ment will be needed to create an alliance against
which centuries of oppression and wrong-doing pro-
test. We may forget, but the Irish will hardly find
themselves able to forget at present, that, while we
make New-Zealand savages British citizens as well
as subjects, protect them in the possession of their
lands, and encourage them to vote at our polling-
booths and take their pkce as constables and officers
of the law, our fathers " planted " Ireland, and declared
it no felony to kill an Irishman on his mother-soil.
In spite of their possession of much political
power, and of the entire city-government of several
great towns, the Irish in America are neither physi-
cally nor morally well-off. Whatever may be the
case at some future day, they still find themselves
politically in English hands. The very language
xxvii.] BROTHERS. 299
that tlicy arc compelled to 'neak is hateful, even to
men who know no other. With an impotent spite
which would be amusing were it not very sad, a
resolution was carried by acclamation through both
houses of the Fenian (congress, at Philadelphia, this
year, " that the word * English ' be unanimously
dropped, and that the words 'American language'
be used in the future."
From the Cabinet, from Congress, from every office,
high or low, not controlled by the Fenian vote, the
Irish are systematically excluded; but it cannot be
American public opinion which has prevented the
Catholic Irish from rising as merchants and traders,
even in New York. Yet, while there are Belfast
names high up on the Atlantic side and in San
Francisco, there are none from Cork, none from the
southern counties. It would seem as though the
true Irishman wants the persev^erance to become a
successful merchant, and thrives best at pure brain-
work, or upon land. Three-fourths of the Irish in
America remain in towns, losing the attachment to the
soil which is the strongest characteristic of the Irish
in Ireland, and finding no new home : disgusted at
their exclusion in America from political life and
power, it is these men who turn to Fenian ism as a
relief Through drink, through gambling, and the
other vices of homeless, thriftless men, they are soon
reduced to beggary ; and, moral as they are by
nature, the Irish are nevertheless supplying America
wit\ that which she never before possessed — a
criminal and pauper class. Of ten thousand people
300 OBEATEIi BRITAIN. [chap.
sent to gaol euch year in Massachusetts, six thousand
are Irish born ; in Chicago, out of the 3,598 con-
victs of last year, only eighty-four were native-born
Americans.
To the Americans, Fenianism has many aspects.
The greater number hate the Irish, but sympathise
profoundly with Ireland. Many are so desirous of
seeing republicanism prevail throughout the world
that they support the Irish republic in any way,
except, indeed, by taking its paper-money, and look
upon its establishment as a first step towards the
erection of a free government that shall include
England and Scotland as well. Some think the
Fenians will burn the Capitol and rob the banks;
some regard them with satisfaction, or the reverse,
from the religious point of view. One of the latter
kind of lookers-on said to me : '• I was glad to see
the Fenian movement, not that I wish success to the
Brotherhood as against you English, but because I
rejoice to &co among Irishmen a powerful centre of
resistance to the Catholic Church. We, in this
country, were being delivered over, bound hand and'
foot, to the Eoman Church, and these Fenians, by
their power and their violence against the priests,
have divided the Irish camp, and rescued us." The
unfortunate Canadians, for their part, ask why they
should be shot and robbed because Britain mal-
treats the Irish; but we must not forget that the
Fi^nian raid on Canada was an exact repetition, almost
on the same ground, of the St. Alban's raid into the
American territory, during the rebellion.
xxvii.] BROTHERS. 301
The Fenians would be as ahsolutcly without
strength in America as they are without credit
were it not for the anti-British traditions of the
Democratic party, and the rankling of the Ala])ama
question, or rather of the remembrance of our general
conduct during the rebellion, in the hearts of the
Republicans. It is impossible to spend much time
in New England without becoming aware that the
people of the six North- Eastern States love us from
the heart. Nothing but this can explain the character
of their feeling towards us on these Alabama claims.
That we should refuse an arbitration upon the whole
question is to them inexplicable, and they grieve with
wondering sorrow at our -^erversity.
It is not here that the legal question need be
raised ; for observers of the present position of the
English race it is enoiigh that there exists between
Britain and America a bar to perfect friendship — a
ground for future quarrel — upon which we refuse to
allow an all-embracing arbitration. We allege that
we are the best judges of a certain portion of the
case, that our dignity would be compromised by arbi-
tration upon these points; but such dignity must
always be compromised by arbitration, for common
friends are called in only when each party to
the dispute has a case, in the justice of which
his dignity is bound up. Arbitration is resorted
to as a means of avoiding wars; and, dignity or
no dignity, everything that can cause war is proper
matter for arbitration. What even if some little
dignity be lost by the affair, in addition to that
302 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
■which has been lost abeady? No such loss can be
set against the frightful hurtfulness to the race and
to the cause of freedom, of war between Britain
and America.
The question comes plainly enough to this point :
we say we are right ; America says we are wrong ;
they offer arbitration, which we refuse upon a point
of etiquette — for on that ground we decline to refer
to arbitration a point which to America appears
essential. It looks to the world as though we offer
to submit to the umpire chosen those points only
on which we are already prepared to admit that we
are in the wrong. America asks us to submit, as we
should do in private life, the whole correspondence
on which the quarrel stands. Even if we, better in-
structed in the precedents of international law than
were the Americans, could not but be in the right,
still, as we know that intelligent and able men in the'
United States think otherwise, and would fancy their
cause the just one in a war which might arise upon
the difficulty, surely there is ground for arbitration.
It would be to the eternal disgrace of civilization
that we should set to work to cut our brothers'
throats upon a point of etiquette ; and, by declining
on the ground of honour to discuss these claims, we
are compromising that honour in the eyes of all
t . world.
In democra(3ies such as America or France, every
citizen feels an insult to his country as an insult to
himself. The Alabama question is in the mouth or
in the heart — which is worse — of every American
XXVII.] BROTHERS. 303
who talks with an Englishman in England or
America.
All nations- commit, at times, the error of acting
as though they think that every people on earth, ex-
cept themselves, are unanimous in their policy. Ne-
glecting the race distinctions and the class distinc-
tions which in England are added to the universal
essential differences of minds, the Americans are
convinced that, during the late war, we thought as
one man, and that, in this present matter of the
Alabama claims, we stand out and act as a united
people.
A New Yorker with whom I stayed at Quebec
— a sbrewd but kindly fellow — was an odd
instance of the American incapacity to under-
stand the British nation, which almost equals our
own inability to comprehend America. Kind and
hospitable to me, as is any American to every
Englishman in all times and places, he detested
British policy, and obstinately refused to see that
there is an England larger than Downing Street, a
nation outside Pall Mall. " England was with the
rebels throughout the war." " Excuse me ; our ruling
classes were so, perhaps, but our rulers don't represent
us any more than your 39th Congress represents
George Washington." In America, where Congress
does fairly represent the nation, and where there has
never been less than a quarter of the body favour-
able to any policy which half the nation supported,
men cannot understand that there should exist a
country which thinks one way, but, through her
304 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
rulers, speaks another. We may disown tlie national
policy, but we suffer for it.
The hospitality to any Englishman of the American
England-hater is extraordinary. An old Southerner
in Eichmond said to me, in a breath : " I'd go and
live in England if I didn't hate it as I do. England,
sir, betrayed us in the most scoundrelly way — talked
of sympathy with the South, and stood by to see
us swallowed up. I hate England, sir! Oome and
stay a week with me at my place in county.
Going South to-day? Well, then, you return this
way next week. Come then! Come on Saturday
week."
When we ask, " Wliy do you press the Alabama
claims against us, and not the Florida, the Georgia, and
the Eappahannock claims against the French?" the
answer is : "Because we don't care about the French,
and what they do and think ; besides, we owe them
some courtesy after bundlmg them out of Mexico in
the way we did." But in truth there is amongst
Americans an exaggerated estimate of the offensive
powers of Great Britain ; and such is the jealousy of
young nations, that this exaggeration becomes, of itself,
a cause of danger. Were the Americans as fully
convinced, as we ourselves are, of our total incapacity
to carry on a land- war with the United States on the
western side of the Atlantic, the bolder spirits among
them would cease to feel themselves under an assumed
necessity to show us our own weakness and their
own strength.
The chief reason why America finds much to offend
XXVII.] BROTHERS. 305
her in our conduct is, that she cares for the opinion
of no other people than the English. America, be-
fore the terrible blow to her confidence and love that
our conduct during the rebellion gave, used morally
to lean on England. Happily for herself, she is now
emancipated from the mental thraldom ; but she still
yearns towards our kindly friendship. A Napoleonic
senator harangues, a French paper declaims, against
America and Americans ; who cares ? But a Times'
leader, or a speech in Parliament from a minister of the
Crown, cuts to the heart, wounding terribly. A nation,
like an individual, never quarrels with a stranger ;
there must be love at bottom for even querulousness
to arise. While I was in Boston, one of the foremost
writers of America said to me in conversation : " I
have no son, but I had a nephew of my own name ;
a grand fellow; young, handsome, winning in his
ways, full of family affections, an ardent student. He
felt it his duty to go to the front as a private in one
of our regiment3 of Massachusetts volunteers, and was
promoted for bravery to a captaincy. All of us here
looked on him as a New England Philip Sidney, the
type of all that was manly, chivalrous and noble. The
very day that I received news of his being killed in
leading his company against a regiment, I was forced
by my duties here to read a leader in one of your
chief papers upon the officering of our army, in which
it was more than hinted that our troops consisted
of German cut-throats and pot-house Irish, led by
sharpers and broker politicians. Can you wonder at
my being bitter ? "
VOL. I. X
3)G ' GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
That tlierc must be in America a profound feeling of
(iffection for our country is shown by the avoidance
of wa;; when we recognised the rebels as belligerents ;
and, again, at the time of the " Trent " aftair, when
tlie surface cry was overwhelmingly for battle, and
the Cabinet only able to tide it over by pro-
mising the West war with England as soon as
tiie rebellion was put down. "One war at a time,
gentlemen," said Lincoln. The man who, of all in
America, had most to lose by war with England, said
to me of the "Trent" affair: "I was written to by
^ to do all I could for peace. I wrote him back
tliat if our Attorney-General decided that our seizure
of the men was lawful, I would spend my last
dollar in the cause."
The Americans, everywhere affectionate towards
the individual Englishman, make no secret of their
feeling that the first advances towards a renewal of
the national friendship ought to come from us. They
might remind us that our Maori subjects have a pro-
verb, " Let friends settle their disputes as friends."
'^-^^'"'•J AMEEICA. 3Q-
CHAPTER XXVJIL
AMEIllCA.
Me arc coasting again, gliding tln-oiigli calm blue
waters, watching the dolphins as they play, and the
boobies as they fly stroke and stroke with the paddles
of the ship. On the right, mountains rise through
the warm misty. air, and form a long towering line
upon the upper skies. Hanging high above us are
the Volcano of Fire and that of Water— twin menacers
of Guatemala City. In the sixteenth century, the
water-mountain drowned it ; in the eighteenth, it was
burnt by the fire-hill. Since then, the city has been
shaken to pieces by earthquakes, and of sixty
thousand men and women, hardly one escaped.
Down the valley, between the peaks, we have
through the mahogany groves an exquisite distant
view towards the city. Once more passing on, we
get peeps, now of West Honduras, and now of the
island coffee plantations of Costa Rica. The heat is
terrible. It was just here, if we arc to believe
Drake, that h^^ fell in with a shower so hot and
scalding, that each drop burnt its hole through his
men's clothes as they hung up to dry. " Steep
stories," it is clear, were known before the planta-
tion of America.
X 2
308 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Now that the time has come for a leave-taking of
the continent, we can begin to reflect upon facts
gleaned during visits to twenty-nine of the forty-
five territories and states — twenty-nine empires the
size of Spain.
A man may see American countries, frora the pine-
wastes of Maine to the slopes of the Sierra ; may talk
with American men and women, from the sober citi-
zens of Boston to digger Indians in Califc>rnia ; may
eat of American dishes, from jerked buffalo in Colo-
rado to clambakes on the shores near Salem ; and yet,
from the time he first "smells the molasses^' at
Nantucket light-ship to the moment when the pilot
quits him at the Golden Gate, may have no idea of
an America. You may have seen the East, the
South, the West, the Pacific States, and yet have
failed to find America. It is not till you have left
her shores that her image grows up in the mind.
The first thing that strikes the Englishman just
landed in New York is the apparent Latinization of
the English in America ; but before he leaves the
country, he comes to see that this is at most a local
fact, and that the true moral of America is the vigour
of the English race — the defeat of the cheaper by the
dearer peoples, the victory of the man whose food
costs four shillings a day over the man whose food
costs four pence. Excluding the Atlantic cities, the
English in America are absorbing the Germans and
the Celts, destroying the Eed Indians, and checking
the advance of 'he Chinese.
The Saxon is the only extirpating race on earth.
xxvin.] AMERICA. 309
Up to the commencement of the now inevitable
destruction of the Red Indians of Central North
America, of the Maories, and of the Australians by
the English colonists, no numerous race had ever been
blotted out by an invader. The Danes and Saxons
amalgamated with the Britons, the Goths and Bur-
gundians with the Gauls: the Spaniards not only
never annihilated a people, but have themselves been
all but completely expelled by the Indians, in Mexico
and South America. The Portuguese in Ceylon, the
Dutch in Java, the French in Canada and Algeria,
have conquered but not killed off the native peoples.
Hitherto it has been nature's rule, that the race that
peopled a country in the earliest historic days should
people it to the end of time. The American problem
is this : Does the law, in a modified shape, hold good,
in spite of the destruction of the native population ?
Is it true that the negroes, now that they are free,
are commencing slowly to die out? that the New
Englanders are dying fast, and their places being
supplied by immigrants? Can the English in
America, in the long run, survive the common fate
of all migrating races? Is it true that, if the
American settlers continue to exist, it will be at
the price of being no longer English, but Red
Indian? It is certain that the English families
long in the land have the features of the extirpated
race ; on the other hand, in the negroes there is at
present no trace of any change, save in their becoming
dark brown instead of black.
The. Maories — an immigrant race — were dying off
310 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
in New Zealand when we landed there. The Rod
Indians of Mexico — another immigrant people— had
themselves undergone decline, numerical and moral,
when we first became acquainted with them. Are
we English in turn to degenerate abroad, under
pressure of a great natural law forbidding change ?
It is easy to say that the English in Old England
are not a native but an immigrant race; that they
show no symptoms of decline. There, however, the
change was slight, the distance short, the difference
of climate small.
The rapidity of the disappearance of iihysical typo
is equalled at least, if not exceeded, by that of the
total alteration of the moral characteristics of the
immigrant races— the entire destruction of eccen-
tricity, in short. The change that comes over those
among the Irish who do not remain in the great
towns is not greater than that which overtakes tho
English handworkerr^ of whom some thousands reach
America each year. Gradually settling down on
land, and finding themselves lost in a sea of intel-
ligence, and freed from the inspiiing obstacles of
antiquated institutions and class prejudice, the
English handicraftsman, ceasing to be roused to
aggressive Radicalism by the opposition of sinister
interests, merges into the contented homestead settler,
or adventurous backwoodsman. Greater even than
this revolution of character is that which falls upon
the Celt. Not only is it a fact known alike to phj--
siologists and statisticians, that the children of Irish
parents born in America are, physically, not . Irish,
xxviii.] AMEBIC J. 311
but Americans, but the like is true of the moral
type: the change in this is at least as sweephig.
The son of Fenian Pat and bright-eyed Biddy is the
normal gannt American, quick of thought, but slow
of speech, whom we have begun to recognise as
the latest product of the Saxon race, when housed
upon the AVestern prairies, or in the pine-woods of
New England.
For the moral change in the British workman ifc
is not difficult to account : the man who will leave
country, home, and friends, to seek new fortunes in
America, is essentially not an ordinary man. As
a rule, he is above the average in intelligence, or, if
defective in this point, he makes up for lack of wit
by the possession of concentrativeness and energy.
Such a man will have pushed himself to the front
in his club, his union, or his shop, before he emi-
grates. In England, he is somebody; in America,
he finds all hands contented, or, if not this, at all .
events too busy to complain of such ills as they
profess to labour under. Among contented men,
his equals both in intelligence and ambition, in a
country of perfect freedom of speech, of manners, of
laws, and of society, the occupation of his mind is
gone, and he comes to think himself what others
seem to think him — a nobody; a man who no
longer is a living force. He settles upon land ;
and when the world knows him no more, his
children are happy corn-growers in his stead.
The shape of North America makes the existence
of distinct peoples within her limits almost impossible.
312 GEE A TEE BEIT A IN. [chap.
All upturned bowl, with <a mountain-rim, from which
the streams run imvard towards the centre, she must
fuse together all the races that settle within her
borders, and the fusion must now be in an Endish
mould.
There are homogeneous foreign populations in
several portions of the United States ; not only the
Irish and Chinese, at whose prospects we have already
glanced, but also Germans in Pennsylvania, Spanish
in Florida, French in Louisiana and at Sault de
S'.? Marie. In Wisconsin there is a Norwegian
population of over a hundred thousand, retaining
their own language and their own architecture, and
presenting the appearance of a tough morsel for the
English to dige'it ; at the same time, the Swedes
were the first settlers of Delaware and New Jersey,
and there they have disappeared.
Milwaukee is a Norwegian town. The houses are
narrow and high, the windows many, with circular
tops ornamented in wood or dark-brown stone, and a
heavy wooden cornice crowns the front. The churches
have the wooden bulb and spire which are charac-
teristic of the Scandinavian public buildings. The
Norwegians will not mix with other races, and
invariably flock to spots where there is already a
large population speaking their own tongue. Those
who enter Canada generally become dissatisfied with
the country, and pass on into Wisconsin, or Min-
nesota, but the Canadian Government has now under
its consideration a plan for foitliding a Norwegian
colony on Lake Huron, The numbers of thia people
xxviii.] AMERICA. 313
are not so great as to make it important to inquire
whether they will ever merge into the general
population. Analogy would lead us to expect that
they will be absorbed ; their existence is not historical,
like that of the French in Lower Canada.
From Burlington, in Iowa, I had visited a spot
the history of which is typical of the development
of America — Nauvoo. Founded in 1840 by Joe
Smith, the Mormon city stood upon a bluff over-
hanging the Des Moines raplda of the Mississippi,
presenting on the land side the aspect of a gentle,
graceful slope surmounted by a plain. After the
fanatical pioneers of English civilization had been
driven from the city, and their temple burnt, there
came Cabet's Icarian band, who tried to found a
new France in the desert ; but in 1856 the leader
died, and his people dispersed themselves about
the states of Iowa and Missouri. Next came the
English settlers, active, thriving, regardless of tra-
dition, and Nauvoo is entering on a new life as the
capital of a wine-growing country. I found Cabet
and the Mormons alike forgotten. The ruins of the
temple have disappeared, and the huge stones have
been used up in cellars, built to contain the Hock
— a pleasant wine, like Zeltinger.
The bearing upon religion of the gradual destruction
of race is of great moment to the world. Christianity
will gain by the change ; but which of its many
branches will receive support is a question which
only admits of an imperfect answer. Arguing
d priori, we should expect to find that, on the one
314 OBEATEK BEIT J IN. [chap.
Ijnnd, a tendency towards unity would manifest itself,
takinr; the slinpe, perhapn, of a gain of strength by
the f'atliolic and Anglican Churches ; on the other
hand, there would bo a contrary and still stronger
tendency towards an infinite muUiplication of beliefs,
till millions of men and women would become each of
them his own Church. C*oming to the actua^ cases
in which we can trace the tendencies that commence
to manifest themselves, we finil that in America the
Anglican Church is gaining ground, especially on the
Pacific side, and that the CVatholics do not seem to
meet with any such success as we should have looked
f<ir ; retaining, ind' 3d, their hold over the Irish
women and a portion of the men, and having their
historic French branches in Louisiana and in Canada,
but not, unless it be in the cities of New York and
liiilo<lelphia, making much way among the English.
Between San Fr.inciseo and Chicaojo, for relio-ious.
puq30ses the most cosmopolitan of cities, we have
to draw disthictions. In the Pacific city, the dis-
turbing cause is the presence of New Yorkers ; in
the metropolis of the North-Western States, it is
the dominance of New^ England ideas : still, we
shall find no two cities so free from local colour,
and from the influence of race. The result of au
examination is not encouraging : in both cities there
is much external shoAV in the shape of church
attendance ; in neither does religion strike its roots
deeply into the hearts of the citizens, except so far
as it is alien and imported.
The Spiritualist and Unitarian Churches are both of
xxvin.] AMEItlCA. 315
them in Chicago extremely .stnjiig: tliey support news-
papers nnd periodicals of their own, and arc led by nicu
<^f remarkable ability and energy, but they are not tlio
less Cambridge Unitarianism, Boston Spiritualism ;
there is nothing of the North-AVest about them. In
San Francisco, on the other hand, Anoliraiiism is
prospering, but it is New York Ei)iseopalianism,
sustained by immigrants and money from the East ;
in no sense is it a Californian Church.
Throughout America, the multiplication of Churdief^
is rapid, but, among the native-born Americans, Sup* r-
naturalism is advancing with great strides. 1'he
Shakers arc strong in thought, the Si)iritualists in
wealth and numbers; Communism gains gTound, 1)ut
not Polygamy — the Mormon is a purely European
C*hurch.
There is just now progressing in America a great
movement, headed by the " Kadical Unitarians,''
towards "free religion," or Church without Creed.
The leaders deny that there is sufficient security for
the spread of religion in each man's individual action ;
they desire collective Avork by all free-thinkers and
liberal religionists in the direction of truth and
purity of life. Christianity is higher than dogma,
we are told : there is no way out of infinite multi-
plication of creeds but by their total extirpation.
Oneness of purpose and a common love for truth
form the members' only tie. Elder Frederick Evans
said to me: "All truth forms part of Shakerism ;"
but these free religionists assure us that in all truili
consists their sole religion.
316 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
The distinctive feature of these American philo-
sophical and religious systems is their gigantic width :
for instance, every human being who admits that
disembodied spirits may in any way hold intercourse
with dwellers upon earth, whatever else he may
believe or disbelieve, is claimed by the Spiritualists
as a member of their Church. They tell us that by
"Spiritualism they understand whatever bears rela-
tion to spirit ; " their system embraces all existence,
brute, human, and divine ; in fact, "the real man is a
spirit." According to these ardenl; proselytizers, every
poet, every man with a grain of imagination in
his nature, is a "Spiritualist." They claim Plato,
Socrates, Milton, Shakespeare, Washington Irving,
Charles Dickens, Luther, Melancthon, Paul, Stephen,
the whole of the Hebrew prophets. Homer, and John
Wesley, among the members of their Church. They
have lately canonized new saints : St. Confucius, St.
Theodore (Parker), St. Kalph (Waldo Emerson), St.
Emma (Hardinge), all figure in their calendar. It is
a noteworthy fact that the saints are mostly resident
in New England.
The tracts published at the Spiritual Clarion
office, Auburn, New York, put forward Spiritualism as
a religion which is to stand towards existing Churches
as did Christianity towards Judaism, and announce a
new dispe: .tion to the peoples of the earth " who
have sown their wild oats in Christianity," but they
spell supersede with a "c."
This strange religion has long since left behind the
rappings and table-turnings in which it took its bjrth.
xxviix.] AMERICA. 317
The secret of its success is that it supplier to every
man the satisfaction of the universal craving for the
supernatural, in any form in which he will receive
it. The Spiritualists claim two millions of active
believers and five million " favourers " in America.
The presence of a large German population is thought
by some to have an important bearing on the religious
future of America, but the Germans have hitherto
kept themselves apart from the intellectual progress of
the nation. They for the most part withdraw from
towns, and, retaining their language and 'supporting
local papers of their own, live out of the world of
American literature, politics, and thought, taking,
however, at rare intervals, a patriotic part in national
affairs, as was notably the case at the time of the
late rebellion. Living thus by themselves, they have
even less influence upon American religious thought
than have the Irish, who, speaking the English tongue
and dwelling almost exclusively in towns, are brought
more into contact with the daily life of the republic.
The Germans in America are in the main pure ma-
terialists under a certain show of deism, but hitherto
there has been no alliance between them and the
powerful Chicago Radical Unitarians, difference of
language having thus far proved a bar to the forma-
tion of a league which would otherwise have been
inevitable.
On the whole, it would seem that for the moment
religious prospects are not bright ; the tendency ia
rather towards intense and unheathily-developed
feeling in the few, and subscription to some one
318 GHEATEB BEITAIN. [ciixvp. xxviii.
of tlie Episcopalian Cliurclies — Catliolic, Anglican,
or Methodist — among tlic many, coupled with real
indifference. Neither the tv^ndency to unity (jf
creeds nor that towards infinite multiplication of
)jeliefs has yet made that progress wliicii abstract
speculation would have led us to expect. So far as
we can judge from the few fiicts before us, there is
much likelihood that multiplication will in the future
[)rove too strong for unity.
After all, there is not in America a greater wonder
than the Englishman himself, for it is to tliis continent
that you must come to find him in full possession
of his powers. Two hundred and fifty millions of
])eople speak or are ruled by those who speak the
English tongue, and inhabit a third of the habitable
globe ; but, at the present rate of increase, in sixty
years there will be t.vo hundred and fifty millions
of Englishmen dwelling in the United States alone.
America has somewhat grown since the time when
it was gravely proposed to call her Alleghania, after
a chain of mountains which, looking from this western
«ide, may be said to skirt her eastern border, and
the loftiest peaks of which are but half the height
of the very passes of the Rocky Mountains.
America is becoming, not English merely, but world-
embracing in the variety of its type ; and, as the
English element has given language and history to
that land, America offers the English race the moral
directorship of the globe, by ruling mankind through
Saxon institutions and the English tongue. Through
America, England is speaking to the world.
PAET 11.
POLYNESIA.
CHAPTER I.
PITCAIRN ISLAND.
Panama is a picturesque time-worn Spanish city, that
rises abmptly from the sea in a confused pile of
decaying bastions and decayed cathedrals, while a
dense jungle of mangrove and bamboo threatens to
bur, it in rich greenery. The forest is fiUed with
baboons and lizards of gigantic size, and is gay with
the bright plumage of the toucans and macaws, while,
within the walls, every housetop bears its livuig load
of hideous turkey-buzzards, foul-winged and bloodshot-
eyed.
It was the rainy season (which here, indeed, lasts
for three-quarters of the year), and each day was
an alternation of shower-bath, and vapour-bath with
sickly sun. On the first night of my stay, there was
a lunar rainbow, which I went on to the roof of the
hotel to watch. The misty sky was white with the
refiected light of the hidden moon, which was obscured
by an inky cloud, that seemed a tunnel through the
heavens. In a few minutes I was driven frem my
post by the tropical rain.
At the railway station, I parted from my Californian
friends, who were bound for Aspinwall, and thence by
VOL. I. Y
322 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
steamer to New York. A stranger scene it lias not
often been my fortune to beliold. There cannot have
been less than a thousand natives, wearing erormous
hats and little else, and selling everything, from linen
suits to the last French novel. A tame jaguar, a
pelican, parrots, monkeys, pearls, shells, flowers, green
cocoa-nuts and turtles, mangoes and wild dogs, were
among the things for sale. The station was guarded
by the army of the RepulDlic of New Granada, con-
sisting of five officers, a bugler, a drummer, and
nineteen men. Six of the men wore red trousers and
dirty shirts for uniform ; the rest dressed as they
pleased, which was generally in Adamic style. Not
even the officers had shoes ; and of the twenty-one
men, one was a full-blooded Indian, some ten were
negroes, and the remainder nondescripts, but among
them was of course an Irishman from Cork or Kil-
kenny. After the train had started, the troops formed,
and marched briskly through the town, the drummer
trotting along some twenty yards before the company,
French-fashion, and beating the retraite. The French
invalids from Acapulco, who were awaiting in Panama
the arrival of an Imperial frigate at Aspinwall, stood
in the streets to see the New Granadans pass, twirling
their moustaches, and smiling grimly. One old drum-
major, lean and worn with fever, turned to me, and,
shrugging his shoulders, pointed to his side : the
Granadans had their bayonets tied on with string.
Whether Panama will continue to hold its present
position as the "gate of the Pacific" is somewhat
doubtful : Nicaragua offers greater advantages to the
'•3 PITCAIRN ISLAND. 323
English, Tehuantepec to the American traders. The
Gulf of Panama and the ocean for a great distance to
the westward from its mouth are notorious for their
freedom from all breezes ; the gulf lies, indeed, in the
equatorial belt of calms, and sailing-vessels can never
make much use of the port of Panama. Aspinwall
or Colon, on the Atlantic side, has no true port what-
ever. As long, however, as the question is merely
one of railroad and steamship traffic, Panama may
hold its own against the other isthmus cities; but
when the canal is cut, the selected spot must be
one that shall be beyond the reach of calms— in
Nicaragua or Mexico.
From Panama I sailed in one of the ships of the
new Colonial Line, for "Wellington, in New Zealand—
, the longest steam-voyage in the world. Our course
was to be a "great circle" to Pitcairn Island, and
another great circle thence to Cape Palliser, near
Wellington— a distance in all of some 6,600 miles;
but our actual course was nearer 7,000. When off
the Galapagos Islands, we met the cold southerly
wind and water, known as the Chilian current, and
crossed the equator in a breeze T\hich forced us all
to wear great-coats, and to dream that, instead of
entering the southern hemisphere, we had come by
mistake within the arctic circle.
After traversing lonely and hitherto unknown seas
and looking in vain for a new guano island, on the
sixteenth day we worked out the ship's position at
noon with more than usual care, if that were possible,
and found that in four hours we ought to be at
Y
o
324 GBEATEB BRITAIN. [chap.
Pitcairn Island. At half-past two o'clock, land was
sighted right ahead ; and by four o'clock, we were
in the bay, such as it is, a1 ^^itcairn.
Although at sea there was a calm, the surf from the
ground-swell beat heavily upon the shore, and we
were fain to content ourselves with the view of the
island from our decks. It consists of a single volcanic
peak, hung with an arras of green creeping plants,
passion-flowers, and trumpet-vines. As for the people,
they came off to us dancing over the seas in their
canoes, and bringing us green oranges and bananas,
while a huge Union Jack was run up on their flag-
staff by those who remained on shore.
As the first man came on deck, he rushed to the
captaii], and, shaking hands violently, cried, in pure
English, entirely free from accent, " How do you do,
captain ? How's Victoria ?" There was no disrespect
in the omission of the title " Queen ; " the question
seemed to come from the heart. The bright-eyed
lads, Adams and Young, descendants of the Bounty
mutineers, who had been the first to climb our sides,
announced the coming of Moses Young, the " magis-
trate" of the Isle, who presently boarded us in state.
He was a grave and gentlemanly man, English in
appearance, but somewhat slightly built, as were,
indeed, the lads. The magistrate came off to lay
before the captain the facts relating to a feud which
exists between two parties of the islanders, and upon
which they require arbitration. He had been under
the impression that we were a man-of-war, as we had
fired two guns on entering the bay, and being received
!•] PITCAIBN ISLAND. 325
by our officers, who wore the cap of the Naval Reserve,
he continued in the belief till the captain explained
what the "Rakaia" was, and why she had called
at Pitcairn.
The case which the captain was to have heard
judicially was laid before us for our advice while
the flues of the ship were being cleaned. When the
British Government removed the Pitcairn Islanders to
Norfolk Island, no return to the old home was con-
templated, but the indolent half-castes found the task
of keeping the Norfolk Island convict roads in good
repair one heavier than they cared to perform, and
fifty-two of them have lately come back to Pitcairn.
A widow who returned with the others claims a
third of the whole island as having been the pro-
perty of her late husband, and is supported in her
demand by half the islanders, while Moses Young
and the remainder of the people admit the facts,
but assert that the desertion of the island was
complete, and operated as an entire abandonment
of titles,, which the re-occupation cannot revive.
The success of the woman's claim, they say, would
be the destruction of the prosperity of Pitcairn.
The case would be an extremely curious one if it
had to be decided upon legal grounds, for it would
raise complicated questions both on the nature of
British citizenship, and the character of the " occu-
pation" title ; but it is probable that the islanders
will abide by the decision of the Governor of New
South Wales, to which colony they consider them-
selves in some decree attached.
326 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
When we had drawn up a case to be submitted to
Sir John Young, our captain made a commercial
treaty with the magistrate, who agreed to supply the
ships of the new line, whenever daylight allowed them
to call at Pitcairn, with oranges, bananas, ducks,
and fowls, for which he was to receive cloth and
tobacco in exchange, tobacco being the money of the
Polynesian Archipelago. Mr. Young told us that his
people had thirty sheep, which were owned by each
of the families in turn, the household taking care of
them, and receiving the profits, for one year. Water,
he said, sometimes falls short in the island, but they
then make use of the juice of the green cocoa-nut.
Their school is excellent ; all the children can read
and write, and in the election of magistrates they have
female suffrage.
When we went on deck again to talk to the
younger men, Adams asked us a new question : " Have
you a Sunday at Home, or a British Workman?"
Our books and papers having been ransacked, Moses
Young prepared to leave the sliip, taking with him
presents from the stores. Besides the cloth, tobacco,
hats, and linen, there was a bottle of brandy ; given
for medicine, as the islanders arc strict teetotallers.
While Young heh^ the bottle in his hand, afraid to
trust the lads with it, Adams read the label and cried
out, " Brandy % How much for a dose ? . . . Oh, yes !
all right — I know : it's good for the women ?" AVhen
they at last left the ship's side, one of the canoes
was filled with a crinoline and blue silk dress for Mrs.
Young, and another with a red-and-brown tartan for
1.] PITCAIRN ISLAND. 327
Mrs. Adams, both given by lady passengers, while the
lads went ashore in dust-eoats and smoking-caps.
Now that the French, with their singular habit of
everywhere annexing countries which other colonizing
nations have rejected, are rapidly occupyhig all the
Polynesian groups except the only ones that are of
value— namely, the Sandwich Islands and New
Zealand — Pitcairn becomes of some interest as a
solitary British post on the very border of the French
dominions, and it has for us the stronger claim to
notice which is raised by the fact that it has figured
for the last few years on the wrong side of our
British budget.
As we stood out from the bay into the lonely seas,
the island peak showed a black outline against a
pale-green sky, but in the west the heavy clouds that
in the Pacific never fail to cumber the horizon were
glowing with a crimson cast by the now-set sun, and
the dancing wavelets were tinted with reflected hues.
The " scarlet shafts," which poets have ascribed to
the tropical sunrise, are common at mnset in the
South Pacific. Almost every night the reclining
sun, sinking behind the louds, throws rays across
the sky — not yellow, as in Europe and America,
but red or rosy pink. On the night after leaving
Pitcairn, I saw a still grander effect of light and
colour. The sun had set, and in the west the clear
greenish sky was hidden by pitch-black thunder-
clouds. Through these were crimson caves.
On the twenty-ninth day of our voyage, we sighted
the frowning cliffs of Palliser, where the bold bluff.
328 GREATER BRITAIN. [chai-.
coming sheer down three thousand feet, receives the
full shock of the South Seas — a fitting introduction
to the gi'and scenery of New Zealand ; and within a
few hours we were running up the great sea-lake
of Port Nicholson towards long lines of steamers at
a whai-f, behind which were the cottages of Wellington,
the ca23ital.
To me, coming from San Francisco and the Ne-
vadan towns, Wellington appeared very English and
extremely quiet; the town is sunny and still, but
with a holiday look ; indeed, I could not help fancy-
ing that it was Sunday. A certain haziness as to
what was the day of the week prevailed among the
passengers and crew, for we had arrived upon our
Wednesday, the New Zealand Thursday, and so,
without losing an hour, lost a day, which, unless by
going round the world the other way, can never be
regained. The bright colours of the painted wooden
houses, the clear air, the rose-beds, and the emerald-
green grass, are the true cause of the holiday look
of the New Zealand towns, and Wellington is the
gayest of them all ; for, owing to the frequency of
earthquakes, the townsfolk are not allowed to build
in brick or stone. The natives say that once in every
month "Ruaimoko turns himself," and sad things
follow to the shaken earth.
It was now November, the New Zealand spring,
and the outskirts of Wellington were gay with the
cherry-trees in full fruiting and English dog-roses
in full bloom, while on every road-side bank the
gorse blazed in its coat of yellow : there was, too,
«•] FITCAIIiN ISLAND. 329
to me, a singular charm in the bright green turf,
after the tawny grass of California.
Without making a long halt, I started for the South
Island, first steaming across Cook's Straits, and up
Queen Charlotte Sound to Picton, and then through
the French Pass— a narrow i3assage filled with fearful
whirlpools— to Nelson, a gem-like little Cornish
village. After a day's " cattle -branding" with an
old college friend at his farm in the valley of the
Maitai, I sailed again for the South, laying for a
night in Massacre Bay, to avoid the worst of a
tremendous rjale, and then coasting down to The
BuUer and Hokitika— the new gold-fields of the
colonies.
330 GREATER BRITAIN. ' [chap.
. • CHAPTER II.
HOKITIKA.
Placed in the very track of storms, and open to the
sweep of rolling seas from every quarter, exposed to
waves that run from pole to pole, or from South
Africa to Cape Horn, the shores of New Zealand are
famed for swell and surf, and her western rivers for
the danger of their bars. Insurances a+ Melbourne
are five times as high for the voyage to Hokitika as
for the longer cruise to Brisbane.
In our little steamer of a hundred tons, built to
cross the bars, we had reached the mouth of the
Hokitika river soon after dark, but lay all night some
ten miles to the south-west of the port. As we
steamed in the early morning from our anchorage
there rose up on the east the finest sumise view on
which it has been my fortune to sot eyes.
A hundred miles of the Southern Alps stood out
upon a pale-blue sky in curves of a gloomy white
that were just beginning to blush with pink, but ended
to the southward in a cone of fire that stood up from
the ocean : it was the snow-dome of Mount Cook
struck by the rising sun. The evergreen bush, flaming
with the crimson of the rata-blooms, hung upon the
NKW ZEAIAND
'>am^'dH (ko^^Sslnff 6' i ^ :7K»/v^ Ch»^ ..oTydifit
Loniiffli & ('umhridgc*. ilacmlUiUi fe C?
".] • HOKITIKA. 331
mountain-side, and covered tlic jilain to the very-
margin of the narrow sands with a dense jungle. It
was one of those sights that haunt men for years, like
the eyes of Mary in Bellini's Milan picture.
On the bar, three ranks of waves appeared to stand
fixed in walls of surf. These huge rollers are sad
destroyers of the New Zealand coasting-ships : a
steamer was lost here a week before my visit, and the
harbour-master's whale-boat dashed in pieces, and two
men drowned.
Lashing everything that was on deck, and battening
down the hatches in case we should ground in crossing,
we prepared to run the gauntlet. The steamers often
ground for an instant while in the trough between
the waves, and the second sea sweeps them from
stem to stern, but carries them into the still water.
"Watching our time, we were borne on a great
rolling white-capped wave into the quiet lakelet that
forms the harbour, just as the sun, coming slowly up
behind the range, was firing the Alps from north to
south ; but it was not till we had lain some minutes
at the wharf that the sun rose to us poor mortals of
the sea and plain. Hokitika Bay is strangely like the
lower portion of the Lago Maggiore, but Mount Rosa
is inferior to Mount Cook.
As I walked up from the quay to the town, looking
for the " Empire " Hotel, which I had heard was the
best in Hokitika, I spied a boy carrying a bundle of
some newspaper. It was the early edition for tJie up-
country coaches, but I asked if he could spare me a
copy. He put one into my hand. " How much ? " I
332 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
asked. " A snapper." " A snapper ? " " Ay — a tizzy."
Understanding this more familiar term, I gave Inm
a shilling. Instead of " change," he cocked up his
knee, slapt the shilling down on it, and said " Cry ! "
I accordingly cried "Woman!" and won, he loyally
returning the coin, and walking off minus a paper.
When I reached that particular gin-palace which
was known as the hotel, I found that all the rooms
were occupied, but that I could, if I pleased, lie down
on a deal side-table in the billiard-room. In our
voyage down the coast from Nelson, we had brought
for The Buller and for Hokitika a cabin full of cut
flowers for bouquets, of which the diggers are extremely
fond. The fact was pretty enough : the store set upon
a single rose — "an English rosebud" — culled from a
plant that had been brought from the old country in a
clipper ship, was still more touching, but the flowers
made sleep below impossible, and it had been blowing
too hard for me to sleep on deck, so that I was glad to
lie down upon my table for an hour's rest. The boards
were rough and fuU of cracks, and I began to dream
th?t, walking on the landing-stage, I ran against a
man, who drew his revolver upon me. In wrench-
ing it from him, I hurt my hand in the lock, and
woke to find my fingers pinched in one of the chinks
of the long table. Despairing of further sleep, I
started to walk through Hokitika, and to explore
the "clearings" which the settlers are making in
the bush.
At Pakihi and The Buller, I had already seen the
places to which the latest gold-digging "rush" had
n.] HOKITIKA. 333
taken place, witli the result of planting there some
thousands of men with nothing to eat but gold — for
diggers, however shrewd, fall always an easy prey to
those who tell them of spots where gold may be had
for the digging, and never stop to think how they shall
live. No attempt is at present made to grow even
vegetables for the diggers' food : every one is engrossed
in the search for gold. It is true that the dense jungle
is being driven back from the diggers' camps by fire
and sword, but the clearing is only made to give room
for tents and houses. At The BuUer, I had found the
forest, which comes down at present to the water's
edge, and crowds upon the twenty shanties and hundred
tents and boweries which form the town, smokino- with
fires on every side, and the parrots chattering with
fright. The fires obstinately refused to spread, but
the tall feathery trees were falling fast under the axes
of some hundred diggers,, who seemed not to have
much romantic sympathy for the sufierings of the
tree-ferns they had uprooted, or of the passion-flowers
they were tearing from the evergreens they had
embraced.
The soil about The Fox, The Buller, The Okitiki,
and the other west-coast rivers on which gold is found,
is a black leaf-mould of extraordinary depth and rich-
ness; but in New Zealand, as in America, the poor
lands are first occupied by the settlers, because the
fat soils "v/ill pay for the clearing only when there is
already a considerable population on the land. On
this we, t coast it rains nearly all the year, and
vegetation has such power, that "rainy Hokitika"
334 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
must long continue to be fed from Christcliurcli and
from Nelson, for it is as hard to keep the land (dear
as it is at the first to clear it.
The profits realized upon ventures from Nelson to
the Gold Coast are enormous ; nothing less than fifty
per cent, will compensate the owners for losses on
the bars. The first cattle imported from Nelson to
The Buller fetched at the latter place double the price
they had cost only two days earlier. One result of
this maritime usury that was told me by the steward
of the steamer in Avhich I came down from Nelson is
worth recording for the benefit of the Economists. They
had on board, he said, a stock of sp ' its, sufficient for
several trips, b it they altered their prices according to
locality ; from Nelson to The Buller, they charged Qd.
a drink, but, once in the river, the price rose to Is.,
at which it remained until the ship left port upon
her return to Nelson, when it fell again to Qd. A
drover coming down in charge of cattle was a great
friend of this steward, and the latter confirmed the
story which he had told me by waking the drover
when we were ofi" The Buller bar : " Say, mister, if
you want a drink, you'd better take it. It'll be shilling
drinks in five minutes."
The Hokitikians flatter themselves that their city
is the " most rising place " on earth, and it must be
confessed that if population alone is to be regarded,
the rapidity of its growth has been amazing. At the
time of my visit, one year and a half had passed since
the settlement was formed by a few diggers, and it
already had a permanent population of ten thousand,
".] HOKITIKA. 335
while no less than sixty thousand diggers and their
friends claimed it for their head-quarters. San Fran-
cisco itself did not rise so fast, Melbourne not much
faster ; but Hokitika, it must be remembered, is not
only a gold-field port, but itself upon the gold-field.
It. is San Francisco and Placerville in one — Ballarat
and Melbourne.
Inferior in its banks and theatres to Virginia City,
or even Austin, there is one point in which Hokitika
surpasses every American mining town that I have
seen — the goodness, namely, of its roads. Working
upon them in the bright morning sun which this day
graced " rainy Hokitika " with its presence, were a gang
of diggers and sailors, dressed in the clothes which every
one must wear in a digging town unless he wishes
to be stared at by every passer-by. Even sailors on
shore "for a run" here wear cord breeches and high
tight-fitting boots, often armed with spurs, though, as
there are no horses except those of the Gold-Coast
Police, they cannot enjoy much riding. The gang
working on the roads were like the people I met about
the town — rough, but not ill-looking fellows. To my
astonishment, I saw, conspicuous among their red
shirts and "jumpers," the bluc-and-whitc uniform
of the mounted police ; and from the way in which
the constables handled their loaded rifles, I came
to the conclusion that the road-menders must be
a gang of prisoners. On inquiry, I found that
all the New Zealand "convicts," including imder
this sweeping title men convicted for mere petty
offences, and sentenced to hard labour fcr a month,
336 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
are made to do good practical work upon the roads :
so much resistance to the police, so much new road
made or old road mended. I was reminded of the
Missourian practice of setting prisoners to dig out the
stumps that cumber the streets of the younger towns :
the sentence on a man for being drunk is said to . be
that he pull up a black walnut stump ; drunk and
disorderly, a large buck-eye ; assaulting the sheriff, a
tough old hickory root, and so on.
The hair and beard of the short-sentence " convicts"
in New Zealand is never cut, and there is nothing
hang-dog in their looks; but their faces are often
bright, and even happy. These cheerful prisoners are
for the most part "runners " — sailors who have broken
their agreements in order to get upon the diggings,
and who bear their punishment philosophically, with
the hope of future " finds " before them.
When the great rush to Melbourne occurred in 1848,
ships by the hundred \7erc left in the Yarra without a
single hand to navigate them. Nuggets in the hand
would not tempt sailors away from the hunt after
the nuggets in the bush. Ships left Hobson's Bay
for Chili with half-a-dozen hands ; and in one case
that came within my knowledge, a captain, his mate,
and three Maories took a brig across the Pacific to
San Francisco. . ;. ..,,_.-.■-::■'.■, r^^-y:-,-
As the morning wore on, I came near seeing some-
thing of more serious crime than that for which these
"runners" were convicted. " Sticking-up," as high-
way robbery is called in the colonies, has always been
common in Australia and New Zealand, but of late
n.] HOKITIKA. 337
the bushrangers, deserting their old tactics, have com-
menced to murder as well as rob. In three months
of 186(), no less than fifty or sixty murders took place
in the South Island of New Zealand, all of them
committed, it was believed, by a gang known as
" The Thugs." Mr. George Dobson, the Government
surveyor. >vas murdered near Hokitika in May, but
it was not till November that the gang was broken
up by the police and volunteers. Levy, Kelly, and
Burgess, three of the most notorious of the villains,
were on their trial at Hokitika while I was there, and
Sullivan, also a member of the b.ind, who had been
taken at Nelson, had volunteenid to give evidence
against them. Sullivan was to come by steamer
from the North, without touching at The BuUer or
The Grey ; and when the ship was signalled, the
excitement of the population became considerable, the
diggers asserting that Sullivan wf >; not only the basest,
but the most guilty of all the gang. As the vessel
ran across the bar and into the bay, the police were
marched down to the landing-place, and a yelling
crowd surrounded them, threatening to lynch the
informer. When the steamer came alongside the
wharf, Sullivan was not to be seen, and it was soon
discovered that he had been landed in a whale-boat
upon the outer beach. Off rushed the crowd, to
intercept the party in the town ; but they found
the gaol gates already shut and barred.
It was hard to say whether it was for Thuggism or
for turning Queen's evidence, that Sullivan was to be
Ijmched : crime is looked at here as leniently as it is
VOL. I. z
338 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
in Texas. I once met a man who had hccn a coroner
at one of the digging towns, who, talking of " old
times," said, quietly enough : " Oh, yes — plenty of
work ; we used to make a good deal of it. You see,
I was paid by fees, so I used generally to manage to
hold four or five inquests on each body. Awful rogues
my assistants were : I shouldn't like to have some of
those men's sins to answer for."
The Gold-Coast Police Force, wliich has been formed
to put a stop to Thuggism and bushranging, is a
splendid body of cavalry, about which many good
stories are told. One digger said to me : " Seen our
policemen ? We don't have no younger sons of British
peers among 'em." Another account says that none
but members of the older English universities are
admitted to the force.
There are here, upon the diggings, many military
men and university graduates, who generally retain
their polish of manner, though, outwardly, they are
often the roughest of the rough. Some of them tell
strange stories. One Cambridge man, who was acting
as a post-office clerk (not at Hokitika), told me that
in 1862, shortly after taking his degree, he went out
to British Columbia to settle upon land. He soon
spent his capital at billiards in Victoria City, and went
as a digger to the Frazer River, There he made a
" pile," which he gambled away on his road back, and
he struggled through the winter of 1863-4 by shooting
and selling game. In 1864, he was attached as a
hunter to the Vancouver's Exploring Expedition,
and in 1865 started with a small sum of money for
II.] nOKITIKA. 331)
Australia. He was wrecked, lost all he had, and was
forced to work his passage down to JMclbourne. From
there he went into South Australia as the driver
of a reaping machine, and was finally, through the
efforts of his friends in England, appointed to a post-
office clerkship in New Zealand, which colony he in-
tended to quit for California or Chili. This was not
the only man of education whom I myself found upon
the diggings, as I met with a Christchurch man, who
however, had left Oxford without a degree, actually
working as a digger in a surface mine.
In the outskirts of Hokitika, I came upon a
palpable Life-Guardsman, cooking for a roadside
station, with his smock worn like a soldier's tunic,
and his cap stuck on one car in Windsor fashion.
A " squatter" from near Christchurch, who was at
The Buller, selling sheep, told me that he had an
ex-captain in the Guards at work for weekly wago^
on his " sheep-run," and that a neighbour had a
lieutenant of Lancers rail-splitting at his " station."
Neither the habits nor the morals of this strange
community are of the best. You never sec a drunkcji
man, but drinking is apparently the chief occupation
of that portion cf the town population which is not
actually employed in digging. The mail-coaches
which run across the island on the great new road,
and along the sands to the other mining settlements,
have singularly short stages, made so, it would seem,
for the benefit of the keepers of the " saloons," for at
every halt one or other of the passengers is expected
to " shout," or " stand," as it would be called at home,
z 2
340 GREATEU BRITAIN. [chap.
"drinks all round." " What'll yer shout?" is the
only question ; and want of coined money need be no
hindrance, for "gold-dust is taken at the bar." One
of the favourite amusements of the diggers at Pakihi,
on the days when the store-schooner arrives from
Nelson, is to fill a bucket with champagne, and drink
till they feel " comfortable." This done, they seat
themselves in the road, with their feet on the window-
sill of the shanty, and, calling to the first passer, ask
him to drink from the bucket. If he consents —
good ; if not, up they jump, and duck his head in the
wine, which remains for the next comer.
When I left Hokitika, it was by the new road,
170 miles in length, which crosses the Alps and the
island, and connects Christchurch, the capital of
Canterbury, with the western parts of the province.
The bush between the sea and mountains is ex-
tremely lovely. The highway is " corduroyed" with
trunks of the tree-fern, and, in the swamps, the
sleepers have commenced to grow at each end, so
that a close-set double row of young tree-ferns is
rising along portions of the road. The bush is densely
matted with an undergrowth of supple-jack and all
kinds of creepers, but here and there one finds a
grove of tree-ferns twenty feet in height, and grown
so thickly as to prevent the existence of underwood
and ground plants.
The peculiarity which makes the New Zealand
west-coast scenery the most beautiful in the world
to those who like more green than California has to
show, is that here alone can you find semi-tropical
II.] HOKITIKA. 341
vegetation growing close up to the eternal snows.
The latitude and the great moisture of the climate
bring the long glaciers very low into the valleys ; and
the absence of all true winter, coupled with the rain-
fall, causes the growth of palm-like ferns upon the
ice-river's very edge. The glaciers of Mount Cook
are the longest in the world, except those at the
sources of the Indus, but close about them have been
found tree-ferns of thirty and forty feet in height.
It is not till you enter the mountains that you escape
the moisture of the coast, and quit for the scenery
of the Alps the scenery of fairy-land.
Bumping and tumbling in the mail-cart through
the rushing blue-grey waters of the Taramakao, I
found myself within the mountains of the Snowy
Eange. In the Otira Gorge, also known as Arthur's
Pass— from Arthur Dobson, brother to the surveyor
murdered by the Thugs — six small glaciers were
in sight at once. The Eocky Mountains opposite to
Denver are loftier and not less snowy than the New
Zealand Alps, but in the Kockies there are no glaciers
south of about 50° N. ; while in New Zealand — a
winterless country — they are common at eight degrees
nearer to the line. The varying amount of moisture
has doubtless caused this difference.
As we journeyed through the pass, there was one
grand view — and only one : the glimpse of the ravine
to the eastward of Mount RoUestone, caught from the
desert shore of Lake Misery — a tarn near the " divide"
of waters. About its banks there grows a plant,
unknown, they say, except at this lonely spot — •
342 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
the Rockwood lily — a bushy plant, with a round,
polished, concave leaf, and a cup-shaped flower of
virgin white, that seems to take its tint from the
encircling snows.
In the evening, we had a view that for gloomy
grandeur cannot w^ell be matched — that from near
IJealey township, where we struck the Waimakiriri
Valley. The river-bed is half a mile in width, the
stream itself not more than ten yards across, but,
like all New Zealand rivers, subject to freshets,
which fill its bed to a great depth with a surging,
foaming flood. Some of the victims of the AVaimakirii^i
{ire buried alongside the road. Dark evergreen bush
.shuts in the river-bed, and is topped on the one
side by dreary frozen peaks, and on the other by
still gloomier mountains of bare rock.
Our road, next morning, from The Cass, where we
had spent the night, lay throagh the eastern foot-
hills and down to Canterbury Plains by way of
Porter's Pass — a narrow track on the top of a
tremendous precipice, but soon to be changed for a
road cut along its face. The plains are one great
sheep-run, open, almost flat, and upon which you
lose all sense of size. At the mountain-foot they
are covered with tall, coarse, native grass, and are
dry, like the Kansas prairie ; about Christchurch,
the English clover and English grasses have usurped
the soil, and all is fresh and gTeen.
New Zealand is at present divided into nine semi-
independent provinces, of which three are large and
powerful, and the remainder comparatively small and
n.J HOKITIKA. 343
poor. Six of the nine are true States, having each
its history as an independent settlement; the remain-
ing three are creations of the Federal government
or of the Crown.
These are not the only difficulties in the way of
New Zealand statesmen, for the provinces themselves
are far from being homogeneous units. Two of the
wealthiest of all the States, which were settled as
colonies with a religious tinge — Otago, Presbyterian;
and Canterbury, Episcopalian — have been blessed or
cursed with the presence of a vast horde of diggers,
of no particular religion, and free from any reverence
for things established. Canterbury Province is not
only politically divided against itself, but geogra-
phically split in twain by the Snowy Pange, and
the diggers hold the west-coast bush, the old settlers
the east-coast plain. East and west, each cries out
that the other side is robbing it. The Christchurch
people say that their money is being spent on West-
land, and the Westland diggers cry out against the
foppery and aristocratic pretence of Christchurch.
A division of the province seems inevitable, unless,
indeed, the " Centralists" gain the day, and bring
about either a closer union of the whole of the
provinces, coupled with a grant of local self-govern-
ment to their sub-divisions, or else the entire
destruction of the provincial system.
The division into provinces was at one time neces-
sary, from the fact that the settlements were histori-
cally distinct, and physically cut off from each other
by the impenetrability of the bush and the absence
344 ' OBEATER BRITAIN. [chap.
of all roads ; but tlie barriers are now surmounted,
and no sufficient reason can be found for keeping
up ten cabinets and ten legislatures for a population
of only 200,000 souls. Such is the costliness of
the provincial system and of Maori wars, that the
taxation of the New Zealanders is nine times as
heavy as that of their brother colonists in Canada.
It is not probable that so costly and so inefficient
a system of go\ernment as that which now obtains
in New Zealand can long continue to exist. It is
'^ot only dear and bad, but dangerous in addition ;
and during my visit to Port Chalmers, the province
of Otago was loudly threatening secession. Like all
other federal constitutions, that of New Zealand
fails to provide a sufficiently strong central power to
meet a divergence of interests between the several
States. The system which failed in Greece, which
failed in Germany, which failed in jl^.merica, has
failed here in the antipodes ; and it may be said
that, in these days of improved communications,
wherever federation is possible, a still closer union
is at least as likely to prove lasting.
New Zealand suffers, not only by the artificial
division into provinces, but also by the physical
division of the country into two great islands, too
far apart to be ever thoroughly homogeneous, too
near together to be wholly independent of each
other. The difficulty has been hitherto increased by
the existence in the North Island of a powerful and
warlike native race, all but extinct in the South
Island. Not only have the Southern people no
«.] . HOKITIKA. 345
native wars, but they have no native claimants from
whom every acre for the settler must be bought,
and they naturally decline to submit to ruinous
taxation to purchase Parewanui from, or to defend
Taranaki against, the Maories. Having been
thwarted by the Home Government in the agitation
for the "separation" of the islands, the Southern
people now aim at " Ultra-Provincialism," declaring
for a system under which the provinces would vir-
tually be independent colonies, connected only by a
confederation of the loosest kind.
The jealousies of the great towns, here as in Italy,
have much bearing upon the political situation.
Auckland is for separation, because in that event it
would of necessity become the seat of the government
of the North Island. In the South, Ohristchurch
and Dunedin have similar claims ; and each of them,
ignoring the other, begs for separation in the hope
of becoming the Southern capital. Wellington and
Nelson alone are for the continuance of the federa-
tion — Wellington because it is already the capital,
and Nelson because it is intriguing to supplant its
neighbour. Although the difficult ies of the moment
mainly arise out of the war expenditure, and will
terminate with the extinction of the Maori race, her
geographical shape almost forbids us to hope that
New Zealaxid will ever form a single country under
a strong central government.
To obtain an adequate idea of the difficulty of
his task, a new governor, on landing in New Zealand,
could not do better than cross the Southern Island.
346 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
On the west side of the mountains, he would find
a restless digger-democracy, likely to be succeeded
in the future by small manufacturers, and spade-
farmers growing root-crops upon small holdings of
fertile loam ; on the east, gentlemen sheep-farmers,
holding their twenty thousand acres each ; supporters
by their j)osition of the existing state of things, or
of an aristocratic republic, in which men of their
own caste would rule.
Christchurch — Episcopalian, dignified — the first
.settlement in the province, and still the capital,
affects to despise Hokitika, already more wealthy
and more populous. Christchurch imports English
rooks to caw in the elm-trees of her cathedral
olose ; Hokitika imports men. Christchurch has not
fallen away from her traditions : every street is named
from an English bishopric, and the society is that
of an English country town.
Returning northward, along the coast, in the shade
of the cold and gloomy mountains of the Kaikoura
Kansre, I found at Wellington two invitations awaitin >•
me to be present at great gatherings of the native
tribes.
The next day, I started for the Manawatu river
and Parewanui Pah.
m.] POLYNESIANS. 347
• CHAPTER in.
POLYNESIANS.
The name "Maori" is said to mean "native," but
the boast on the part of the Maori race contained in
the title "Natives of the Soil" is one which conflicts
with their traditions. These make them out to be
mere interlopers — Tahitians, they themselves say —
who, within historic ages, sailed down island by
island in their war-canoes, massacring the inhabi-
tants, and, finally landing in New Zealand, found a
numerous horde of blacks of the Australian race
living in the forests of the South Island. Favoured
by a year of exceptional drought, they set fire to
the forests, and burnt to the last man, or drove into
the sea, the aboriginal j)ossessors of the soil. Some
ethnologists believe that this account is in the main
correct, but hold that the Maori race is Malay, and
not originally Tahitian : others have tried to show
that the conflict between blacks and browns was not
confined to these two islands, bnt raged througLout
the whole of Polynesia; and that it was terminated
in New Zealand itself, not by the destruction of the
blacks, but by the amalgamation of the opposing
races.
•^48 ' QREATE^i BlilTAIN. [chap.
The legends allege war as the cause for the flight
to Now Zealand. The accounts of some of the migra-
tions are circumstantial in the extreme, and describe
the first planting of the yams, the astonishment of
the people at the new flowers and trees of the
islands, and many such details of the landing. The
names of the chiefs and of the canoes are given
in a sort of "catalogue of ships," and the wars
of the settlers are narrated at length, with the
heroic exaggeration common to the legends of all
lands.
The canoe fleet reached New Zealand in the
fifteenth century, it is believed, and the people
landed chanting a chorus-speech, which is still
preserved :
" We come at last to this fair land— a resting-place ;
Spirit of the Earth, to thee, we, coming from afar,'present our
. hearts for food."
That the Maories are Polynesians there can be no
doubt : a bird with them is " manu," a fish '* ika" (the
Greek txOvs, become with the digamma " piscis" and
"poisson;" and connected with "fisch," and "fish"),
as they are throughout the Malayan archipelago and
Polynesian isles; the Maori "atua," a god, is the
"hotua" of the Friendly Islanders; the " wahrds,"
or native huts, are identical in all the islands ; the
names of the chief deities are the same throughout
Polynesia, and the practice of tattooing, the custom
of carving grotesque squatting figures on tombs,
canoes, and "pahs," and that of tabooing things^.
III.] POLYNESIANS. ' 349
places, times, and persons, prevail from Hawaii to
Stewart's Land, though not everywhere so strictly-
read as in the Tonga isles, where the very ducks
are muzzled to keep them from disturbing by their
quacking the sacred stillness of " tapii time."
Polynesian traditions mostly point to the Malay
peninsula as the cradle of the race, and the personal
resemblance of the Maories to the Malays is very
strong, except in the setting of the eyes ; while the
figures on the gate-posts of the New Zealand pahs have
eyes more oblique than are now found among the
Maori people. Strangely enough, the New Zealand
** pah " is identical with the Burmese " stockade," but
the word " pah " stands both for the palisade and for
the village of wahres which i^^ contains. The Poly-
nesian and Malay tongues have not much in common ;
but that variations of language sufficiently great to
leave no apparent tie spring up in a few centuries,
cannot be denied by us who know for certain that
"visible" and "optician" come from a common root,
and can trace the steps through which "jour" is
derived from " dies."
The tradition of the Polynesians is that they came
from Paradise, which they place, in the southern
islands, to the north ; in the northern islands, to the
westward. This legend indicates a migration from
Asia to the northern islands, and thence southwards
to New Zealand, and accounts for the non-colonization
of Australia by the Polynesians. The sea between
New Zealand and Australia is too rough and wide
to be traversed by canoes, and the wind-chart shows
350 GREATER BRITAIN. [cnAP.
that the track of the Malays must have Lccn eastwards
along the equatorial belt of calms, and then back to
the south-west with the south-cast trade-wind right
abeam to their canoes.
The wanderings of the Polynesian race were, pro-
bably, not confined to the Pacific. Ethnology is as
yet in its infancy : we know nothing of the Tudas
of the Neilgherries ; wc ask in vain who are the
Gonds ; wo are in doubt about the Japanese ; we
are lost in perplexity as to who wc may be ourselves ;
but there i,^ at least as much ground for the state-
ment that wlie Eed Indians are Malays as for the
assertion that we are Saxons.
The resemblances between the Ked Indians and
the Pacific lylandero are innumerable. Strachov's
account of the Indians of Virginia, written in 1612,
needs but a change in the names to fit the Maories :
Powhdtan's hout^e is that of William Thompson.
Cannibalism prevailed in Brazil and along the Pacific
coast of North America at the time of their discovery,
and even the Indians of Chili ate many an early
navigator ; the aborigines of Vancouver's Island are
tattooed ; their canoes resemble those of the Malays,
and the mode of paddling is the same from New
Zealand to Hudson's Bay — from Florida to Singapore.
Jade ornaments of the shape of the Maori " Heitiki"^
(the charm worn about the neck) have been found
by the French in Guadaloupe ; the giant masonry of
Central America is identical with that of Cambodia
and Siam. Small-legged squatting figures, like those
of the idols of China and Japan, not only surmount
"T.] POLYNESIANS. 351
the gate-posts of the New Zealand pahs, Ijut are
found eastwards to Honduras, westwards to Burmah,
to Tartary and to Ceylon. The fibre mats, common
to the Polynesians and Red Indians, are unknown to
savages elsewhere, and the feather head-dresses of
the Maories are almost identical with those of the
Delawares or Huron s.
In the Indians of America and of Polynesia there
is the same hatred of continued toil, and the same
readiness to engage in violent exertion for a time.
Superstition and witchcraft are common to all un-
taught peoples, but in the Malays and red men
they take similar shapes ; and the Indians of Mexico
and Peru had, like all the Polynesians, a sacred lan-
guage, understood only by the priests. The American
altars were one with the temples of the Pacific, and
were not confined to Mexico, for they form the
** mounds" of Ohio and Illinois. There is great like-
ness between the legend of Maui, the Maori hero, and
that of Hiawatha, especiKlly in the history of how
the sun was noosed, and made to move more slowly
through the skies, so as to give men long days for
toil. The resemblance of the Maori "runanga," or
assembly for debate, to the Indian council is ex«
tremely close, and throughout America and Polynesia
a singular blending of poetry and ferocity is charac-
teristic of the Malays.
In colour, the Indians and Polynesians are not
alike ; but colour does not seem to be, ethnologically
speaking, of much account. The Hindoos of Calcutta
have the same features as those of Delhi ; but the
352 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
former are black, the latter brown, or, if high-caste
men, almost white. Exposure to sun, in a damp,
hot climate, seems to blacken every race that it does
not destroy. The races that it will finally destroy,
tropical heat first whitens. The English planters of
Mississippi and Florida are extremely dark, yet there
is not a suspicion of black blood in their veins : it
is the white blood of the slaves to which the Aboli-
tionists refer in their philippics. The Jews at Bombay
and Aden are of a deep brown ; in Morocco they are
swarthy ; in England, nearly white.
Keligious rites and social customs outlast both
physical type and language ; but even were it other-
wise, there is great resemblance even in build and
feature between the Polynesians and many of the
** Red-Indian" tribes. The aboriginal people of New
York State are described by the early navigators not
as tall, grave, hooked-nose men, but as copper-
coloured, pleasant-looking, and with quick, shrewd
eyes ; and the Mexican Indian bears more likeness
to the Sandwich Islander than to the Delaware or
Cherokee.
In reaching South America, there were no distances
to be overcome such as to present insurmountable
difficulties to the Malays. Their canoes have fre-
quently, within the years that we have had our mis-
sionary stations in the islands, made involuntary
voyages of six or seven hundred miles. A Western
editor has said of Columbus that he deserves no
praise for discovering America, as it is so large that
he could not well have missed it ; but Easter Island
I"-] POLYNESIANS. 353
is SO small, that the chances must have been
thousands to one against its being reached by canoes
■sailing even from the nearest land; yet it is an
ascertained fact that Easter Island was peopled by
the Polynesians. Whatever drove canoes to Easter
Island would have driven them from the island to
Chili and Peru. The Polynesian Malays would some-
times be taken out to sea by sudden storms, by war,
by hunger, by love of charore. In war-time, whole
tribes have, within historic .ays, been clajDped into
their boats, and sent to sea by a merciful conqueror
who had dined: this occurs, however, only when the
market is already surfeited with human joints.
In sailiug from America to New Zealand, we met
strong westerly winds before we had gone half-way
across the seas, and, south of the trade-wind region,
these blow constantly to within a short distance of
the American coast, where they are lost upon the
edge of the Chilian current. A canoe blown off from
the southern islands, and running steadily before the
wiud, would be cast on the Peruvian coast near Quito.
When Columbus landed in the Atlantic islands,
he was, perhaps, not mistaken in his belief that it
was " The Indies " that he had found— an India
peopled by the Malay race, till lately the most
widely-scattered of all the nations of the world, but
one wdiich the English s€3m destined to supplant.
The Maories, without doubt, were originally Malays,
emigrants from the winterless climate of the Malay
peninsula and Polynesian archipelago ; and, although
the northernmost portions of New Zealand suited
VOL. I. A A
354 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
them not ill, the cold winters of the South Island
prevented the spread of the hands they planted
there. At all times it has been remarked by eth-
nologists and acclimatizers that it is easier by far to
carry men and beasts from the poles towards the
tropics than from the tropics to the colder regions.
The Malays, in coming to New Zealand, unknowingly
broke one of Nature's laws, and their descendants
are paying the penalty in extinction.
IV.] PA RE WAN UI PAH. 355
CHAPTER IV.
PAREWANUI PAH.
"Here is Petaton^.
This is the 10th of December;
The sun shines, and the birds sing ;
Clear is the water in rivers and streams ;
Bright is the sky, and the sun is high in the air.
This is the 10th of December j
But where is the money?
Three years has this matter in many debates been
discussed,
And here at last is Pdfcaton^ ;
But where is the money?"
A band of Maori women, slowly chanting in a
high, strained key, stood at the gate of a pah, and
met with this song a few Englishmen who were
driving rapidly on to their land.
Our track lay through a swamp of the New Zealand
flax. Huge sword-like leaves and giant flower-stalks
all but hid from view the Maori stockades. To the
left was a village of low wahr^s, fenced round with
a double row of lofty posts, carved with rude images
of gods and men, and having posterns here and there.
On the right were groves of karakas, children of
Tanemahuta, the New Zealand sacred trees — under
A A 2
356 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
their shade, on a hill, a camp and another and larger
pah. In startling contrast to the dense masses of the
oily leaves, there stretched a great extent of light-
green sward, "vvhere there were other camps and a
tall fiag-stafF, from wdiich floated the white flag and
the Union Jaci^, emblems of British sovereignty and
peace.
A thousand kilted Maories dotted the green land-
scape with patches of brilliant tartans and scarlet
cloth. Women lounged about, whiling away the time
with dance and song ; and from all the corners of the
glade the soft cadence of the Maori cry of welcome
came floating to us on the breeze, sweet as the sound
of distant bells.
As we drove quickly on, we found ourselves in the
midst of a thronging crowd of square-built men,
brown in colour, and for the most part not much
darker than l^^paniards, but with here and there a
woolly negro in their ranks. Glancing at them
as we were hurried past, we saw that the men
Avere robust, well limbed, and tall. They greeted us
pleasantly with many a cheerful, open smile, but the
faces of the older people were horribly tattooed in
spiral curves. The chiefs carried battle-clubs of jade
and bone; the women wore strange ornaments. At
the flag-staff we pulled up, and, while the prelimi-
naries of the council were arranged, had time to
discuss with Maori and with "Pakeha" (white man)
the questions that had brought us thither.
The purchase of an enormoi s block of land — that
of the Manawatu — had long been an object wished for
IV.] PAREWANUI PAH. 357
and worked for by the Pro'vincial Government of
Wellingtor. The completio;i of the sale it was that
had brought the Superintendent, £*r. Featherston, and
humbler Pakehas to Parew^anui Pah. It was not
only that the land was wanted by way of room for
the flood of settlers, but purchase by Government was,
moreover, the only means whereby war between the
various native claimants of the land could be pre-
vented. The Pakeha and Maori had agreed upon a
price ; the question that remained for settlement was
how the money should be shared. One tril3e had
owned the land from the earliest times ; another had
conquered some miles of it ; a third had had one of
its chiefs cooked and eaten upon the ground. In the
eye of the Maori law, the last of these titles was the
best : the blood of a chief overrides all mere historic
claims. The two strongest human motives concurred
to make war probable, for avarice and jealousy alike
prevented agreement as to the division of the spoil.
Each of the three tribes claiming had half-a-dozen
allied and related nations upon the ground ; every
man w^as there who had a claim direct or indirect,
or thought he had, to any portion of the block.
Individual ownership and tribal ownership (con-
flicted. The Ngatiapa were well armed ; the Nga-
tiraukawa had their rifles ; the Wanganuis had sent
for theirs. The greatest tact on the part of Dr.
Featherston was needed to prevent a fight such as
would have roused New Zealand from Auckland to
Port Nicholson.
On a signal from the Superintendent, the heralds
358 GEE ATE Jl BRITAIN. [ohap.
went round the camps and pahs to call the tribes to
council. The summons was a long-drawn minor-
descen ding-scale : a plaintive cadence, which at ?
distance blends into a bell-like chord. The words
mean: "Come hither! Come hither! Come! come!
Maories ! Come 1 " and men, women, and children
soon came thror.ging in from every side, the chiefs
bearing sceptres and spears of ceremony, and their
women wearing round their necks the symbol of
nobility, the Heitiki, or greenstone god. These
images, we were told, have pedigrees, and names like
those of men.
We, with the resident magistrate of Wanganui, ^
seated ourselves beneath the flag-staff. A chief, meet-
ing the people as they came up, stayed them with
the gesture that Homer ascribes to Hector, and bade
them sit in a huge circle round the spar.
No sooner were we seated on our mat than there
ran slowly into the centre of the ring a plumed and
kilted chief, with sparlding eyes, the perfection of a
savage. Halting suddenly, he raised himself upon his
toes, frowned, and stood brandishing his short feathered
spear. It was Hunia te Hakek^, the young chief of
the Ngatiapa.
Throwing off his plaid, he commenced to speak,
springing hither and thither with leopard-like freedom
of gait, and sometimes leaping high into the air to
emphasize a word. Fierce as were the gestures, his
speech was conciliatory, and the Maori flowed from
his lips — a soft Tuscan tongue. As, with a movement
full of vigorous grace, he sprang back to the ranks, to
IV.] PAREWANUI PAH. 359
take his se<at, there ran round the ring a hum and
buzz of popular applause.
"Governor" Hunia was followed by a young
Wanganui chief, who wore hunting breeches and high
boots, and a long black mantle over his European
clothes. There was something odd in the shape of
the cloak ; and when we came to look closely at it, we
found that it was the skirt of the riding-habit of iiis
half-caste wife. The great chiefs paid so little heed
to this flippant fellow, as to stand up and harangue
their tribes in the middle of his speech, which came
thus to an untimely end.
A funny old grey-beard, Wait^rd Maru Maru, next
rose, and, smothering down the jocularity of his
face, turned towards us for a moment the typical head
of Peter, as you see it on the windows of every
modern church — for a moment only, for, as he raised
his hand to wave his tribal sceptre, his apostolic
drapery began to slip from off his shoulders, and he
had to clutch at it with the energy of a topman
taking-in a reef in a whole gale. His speech was
full of Nestorian proverbs and wise saws, but he
wandered off into a history of the Wanganui lands,
by which he soon became as wearied as we ourselves
were ; for he stopped short, and, with a twinkle of
the eye, said : " Ah ! Wait^r^ is no longer young :
he is climbing the snow-clad mountain Ruahme ; he
is becoming an old man ; " and down he sat.
Karanama, a small Ngatiraukawa chief with a
white moustache, who looked like an old French con-
cierge, followed Maru Maru, and, with much use of his
3G0 GREATER BRITAIN. [ceat.
sceptro related a dream foretelling, the happy issue
of the negotiations ; for the little man was one of
those "dreamers of dreams" against whom Moses
warned the Israelites.
Karanama's was not the only trance and vision of
which we heard in the course of these debates. The
Maories believe that in their dreams the seers hear
great bands of spirits singing chants : these when
they wake the prophets reveal to all the people ;
but it is remarked that the vision is generally to
the advantage of the seer's tribe.
Karanama's speech was answered by the head-chief
of the Rangitan^ Maories, Te Peeti Te Awe Awe, who,
throwing off his upper clothing as he warmed to his
subject, and strutting pompously round and round the
ring, challenged Karanama to immediate battle, or his
tribe to general encounter ; but he cooled down as he
went on, and in his last sentence showed us that
Maori oratory, however ornate usually, can be made
extremely terse. "It is hot," he said — " it is hot,
and the very birds are loath to sing. We have
talked for a week, and are therefore dry. Let us
take our share — £10,000, or whatever we can get,
and then we shall be dry no more."
The Maori custom of walking about, dancing,
leaping, undressing, running, and brandishing spears
during the delivery of a speech is convenient for all
parties : to the speaker, because it gives him time to
think of what he shall say next ; to the listener,
because it allows him to weigh the speaker's words ; to
the European hearer, because it permits the interpreter
w.] rARIllVANtll PAH. 361
to keep pace witli the orator without an effort. On
this occasion, the resident magistrate of Wanganui,
Mr. LuUer, a Maori scholar of eminence, and the
attached friend of some of the chiefs, interpreted
for Dr. Featherston ; and we were allowed to lean
over him in such a way as to hear every word
that passed. That the able Superintendent of Wel-
lington — the great protector of the Maories, the man
to whom they look as to Queen Victoria's second
in command, should be wholly dependent upon in-
terpreters, however skilled, seems almost too singu-
lar to be believed ; but it is possible that Dr. Fea-
therston may find in pretended want of knowledge
much advantage to the Government. He is able to
collect his thoughts before he replies to a difficult
question ; he can allow an epithet to escape his notice
in the filter of translation ; he can listen and speak
with greater dignity.
The day was wearing on before Te Peeti's speech
was done, and, as the Maories say, our waistbands
began to slip down low; so all now went to lunch,
both Maori and Pakeha, they sitting in circles, each
with his bowl, or flax-blade dish, and wooden spoon, we
having a table and a chair or two in the Mission-
house ; but we were so tempted by Hori Kingi's white-
bait that we begged some of him as we passed. The
Maories boil the little fish in milk, and flavour them
with leeks. Great fish, meat, vegetables, almost all
they eat, in short, save whitebait, is " steamed" in the
underground native oven. A hole is dug, and filled
with wood, and stones are piled upon the wood, a
362 QREATEH BlilTAIN. [chap.
small opening being left for draught. While the
wood is burning, the stones become red-hot, and fall
through into the hole. They are then covered with
damp fern, or else with wet mats of flax, plaited at
the moment ; the meat is put in, and covered with
more mats ; the whole is sprinkled with water, and
then earth is heaped on till tlie vapour ceases to
escape. The joint takes about an hour, and is
delicious. Fish is wrapped in a kind of deck-
leaf, and so steamed.
While the men's eating was thus going on, many of
the women stood idly round, and we were enabled to
judge of Maori beauty. A profusion of long, crisp
curls, a short black pipe thrust between stained lips, a
pair of black eyes gleaming from a tattooed face, denote
the Maori helle, who wears for her only robe a long
bedgown of dirty calico, but whose ears and neck arc
tricked out with greenstone ornaments, the signs of
birth and wealth. Here and there you find a girl
with long, smooth tresses, and almond-shaped black
eyes : these charms often go along with prominent,
thin features, and suggest at once the Jewess and
the gipsy girl. The women smoke continually; the
men, not much.
When at four o'clock we returned to the flag-staff,
we found that the temperature, which during the
morning had been too hot, had become that of a fine
English June — the air light, the trees and grass lit by
a gleaming yellow sunshine that reminded me of
the Californian haze.
During luncheon we had heard that Dr. Featherston's
IV.] rj RE WANUI PA II. 363
proposals as to the division of the purehase-moncy had
been accepted by the Ngatiapa, but not by Hunia
himself, whose vanity would brook no scheme not of
his own conception. We were no sooner returned to
the ring than he burst in upon us with a defiant
speech. " Unjust," he declared, " as was the proposi-
tion of great ' Petatone * (Featherston), he would have
accepted it for the sake of peace had he been allowed
to divide the tril)al share ; but as the Wanganuis
insisted on having a third of his £15,000, and as
Petatont^ seemed to support them in their claim, Ik
should have nothing more to do with the sale."
** The Wanganuis claim as our relatives," he said :
"verily, the pumpkin-shoots spread far."
Karanama, the seer, stood up to answer Hunia, and
began his speech in a tone of ridicule. " Hunia is
like the ti-tree : if you cut him down, he sprouts
again." Hunia sat quietly through a good deal of
this kind of wit, till at last some epithet j^rovoked
him to interrupt the speaker. " What a fine fellow
you are, Karanama ; you'll tell us soon that youVe
two pair of legs." " Sit down ! " shrieked Karanama,
and a word- war ensued, but the abuse was too full
of native raciness and vigour to be fit for English
ears. The chiefs kept dancing round the ring,
threatening each other with their spears. " Why do
not you hurl at me, Karanama?" said Hunia ; " it is
easier to parry spears than lies." At last Hunia sat
down.
Karanama, feinting and making at him with his
spear, reproached Hunia with a serious flaw in his
364 QREATElt BRITAIN. [chap.
pedigree — a blot which is said to account for Huniu's
hatred to the Ngatiraukawa, to whom his mother
was for years a slave. Iliinia, without rising from
the ground, shrieked " Liar ! " Karanama again
spoke the obnoxious word. Springing from the
ground, Hunia snatched his spear from where it stood,
and ran at his enemy as though to strike him. Kara-
nama stood stock-still. Coming up to him at a
charge, Hunia suddenly stoi)ped, raised himself on
tiptoe, shaking his spear, and flung out some con-
temptuous epithet ; then turned, and stalked slowly,
with a springing gait, back to his own corner of the
ring. There he stood, haranguing his people in a
bitter undertone. Karanama did the like with his.
The interpreters could not keep pace with what was
said. We understood that the chiefs were calling
each upon his tribe to support him, if need were, in
war. After a few minutes of this pause, they wheeled
round, as though by a common impulse, and again
began to pour out torrents of abuse. The applause
became frequent, hums quickened into shouts, cheer
followed cheer, till at last the ring was alive with men
and w^omen springing fiom the ground, and crying
out on the opposing leader for a dastard.
We had previously been told to have no fear that
resort would be had to blows. The Maories never
fight upon a sudden quarrel : war is with them a solemn
act, entered upon only after mu^h deliberation. Those
of us who were strangers to New Zealand were
nevertheless not without our doubts, while for half an
hour we lay upon the grass watching the armed
iv.J PAUEWAXUT I'AII. 305
champions running round the ring, ohulhinging each
other to mortal combat on the spot.
The chieftains at last became exhausted, and the
Mission-bell beginning to toll for evenhig chapol,
Hunia broke off in the middle of his abuse : "Ah!
I hear the bell!" and, turning, stalked out of the
ring towards his pah, leaving it to be inferred, by
those who did not know him, that he was going to
attend the service. The meeting broke up in con-
fusion, and the Upper Wanganui tribes at once began
their march towards the mountains, leaving behind
them only a delegation of their chiefs.
As we drove down to the coast, we talked over
the close resemblance of the Maori runanga to the
Homeric council ; it had struck us all. Here, as
in the Greek camp, we had the ring of people, into
which advanced the lance-bearing or sceptre-wearing
chiefs, they alone speaking, and the people backing
them only by a hum : " The block of wood dictates
not to the carver, neither the people to their chiefs,"
is a Maori proverb. The boasting of ancestry, and
bragging of deeds and military exploits, to which
modern wind-bags would only casually allude, was
also thoroughly Homeric. In Hunia we had our
Achilles ; the retreat of Hunia to his wahre was
that of Achilles to his tent ; the cause of quarrel
alone w^as different, though in both cases it arose
out of the division of spoil, in the one case the
result of lucky wars, in the other of the Pakeha's
weakness. The Argive and Maori leaders are one
in fire, figure, port, and mien; alike, too, even in
36 G GREAT EH BRITAIN. [chap.
tliei;- siilkiness. In AVait^re and Aperaliama Tipai
we had two Nestors ; our Thcrsites was Porea, the
jester, a half- mad bufFc "»n, continually mimicking
the chiefs or interrupting them, and being by them
or their messengers as often kicked and cuffed. In
ihe frequency of repetition, the use of proverbs and
of simile, the Maories resemble not Homer's Greeks
so much as Homer's self; but tbe calling together
of the people by the heralds, the secret conclave
of the chiefs, the feast, the conduct of the assembly
— all were the exact repetition of the events re-
corded in the first and second books of the " Iliad "
as having happened on the Trojan plains. The
single point of difference was not in favour of the
Greeks : the Maori women took their place in council
with the men.
As we drove home, a storm came on, and hung
about the coast so long, that it Avas not till
near eleven at night that we were able to take
our swim in the heated waters of the Manawatu
river, and frighten off every duck and heron in the
district.
In the morning, we rose to alarming news. Upon
the pretext of the presence in the neighbourhood, of
the Hau-Hau chief Wi Hapi, with a war party of
200 men, the unarmed Parewanui natives had sent
to Wanganui for their guns, and it was only by a
conciliatory speech at the midnight runanga that Mr.
Buller had succeeded in preventing a complete break-
up of all the camps, if not an intertribal war. There
seemed to be white men behind the scenes who were
IV.] rAREWANUI PAH. 367
not fiicndly to the sale, and the debate had histcd
from dark till dawn.
While we were at breakfast, a Ngatiapa officer of
the native contingent brought down a letter to
Dr. Featherston from Hunia and Hori Kingi, the
tribal chiefs, calling us to a general meeting of the
tribes convened for noon, to be held in the Ngatiapa
Pah. The letter was addressed, " Kia t^ Petatone te
Huperintdne" — " To the Featherston, the Superin-
tendent" — the alterations in the chief words being
made to bring them within the gra^p of Maori
tongues, which cannot sound v's, tK^, nor sibilants
of any kind. The absence of harsh sounds, and the
rule which makes every word end with a vowel,
give s. peculiar softness ai^d charm to the Maori
language. Sugar beconi'^s liuka ; scissors, hikiri ;
sheep, hipi ; and so with all English words adopted
into Maori. The rendering of the Hebrew names
of the Old Testament is often singular : Genesis
becomes Kenehi ; Exodus is altered into Ekoruhe ;
Leviticus is hardly recognisable in Rewitikuha;
Tiuteronomi reads strangely for Deuteronomy, and
Hohua for Joshua ; Jacob, Isaac, Moses, become
Hakopa, Ihaka, and Molii ; Egypt is softened into
Ihipa, Jordan into Horamo. The list of the nations
of Canaan seems to have been a stumbling-block in
the missionaries' way. The success obtained with
Girgashites has not been great ; it stands Kirekahi ;
Gaash is transmuted into Kaaha, and Eleazar into
Ereatara.
When we drove on to the ground, all was at a
368 OliEATElt BlilTAJN. [chap.
dead-lock— the flag-staff bare, the chiefs sleeping in
their wahres, and the common folk whiling away the
hours with haka songs. Dr. Featherston retired from
the ground, declaring that till the Queen's flag was
hoisted he would attend no debate ; but he permitted
us to wander in among the Maories.
We were introduced to Tamiana t6 Eauparaha,
chief of the Ngatitoa branch of the Ngatiraukawa,
and son of the great cannibal chief of the same name,
who murdered Captain Wakefield. Old Rauparaha
it was who hired an English ship to carry him and
his nation to the South Island, where they ate several
tribes, boiling the chiefs, by the captain's consent,
in the ship's coppers, and salting down for future
use the common people. When the captain, on re-
turn to port, claimed his price, Rauparaha told him
to go about his business, or he should be salted too.
The captain took the hint, but he did not escape for
long, as he was finally eaten by the Sandwich Islanders
in Hawaii.
In answ^er to our request for a dance-song, Tamiana
and Horomona Tor^mi replied through an interpreter
that "the hands of the singers should beat time as
fast as the pinions of the wild duck ; " and ir. a
minute we were in the middle of an animated crowd
of boys and women collected by Porea, the buffoon.
As soon as the singers had squatted upon the grass,
the jester began to run slowly up and down between
their ranks as they sat swinging backwards and for-
wards in regular time, groaning in chorus, and looking
upwards Avitli distorted faces.
IV.] PAREWANUI PAH. 369
In a second dance, a girl standing out upon the
grass chanted the air — a kind of capstan song — and
then the " dancers," who were seated in one long row,
joined in chorus, breathing violently in perfect time,
half forming words, but not notes, swinging from side
to side like the howling dervishes, and using frightful
gestures. This strange whisper-roaring went on in-
creasing in rapidity and fierceness, till at last the
singers worked themselves into a frenzy, in which
they rolled their eyes, stiffened the arms and legs,
clutched and clawed with the fingers, and snorted
like maddened horses. Stripping off their clothes,
they looked more like the Maories of thirty years
ago than those who see them only at the mission-
stations would believe. Other song-dances, in which
the singers stood striking their heels at measured in-
tervals non the earth, were taken up with equal
vigour by the boys and women, the gi'own men in
their dignity keeping themselves aloof, although in his
heart every Maori loves mimetic dance and song. We
remarked that in the " haka " the old women seemed
more in earnest than the young, who were alvrays
bursting into laughter, and forgetting words and time.
The savage love for semitones makes ]\Iaori music
somewhat wearisome to the English ear ; so after a
time we began to walk through the pahs and sketch
the Maories, to their great delight. I was drawing the
grand old head of a venerable dame — Oiiuhia te Aka
— when she asked to see what I was about. As soon
as T showed her the sketch, she began to call me names,
and from her gestures I saw that the insult was in
VOL. I. B B
370 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap,
the omission of the tattooing on her chin. When I
inserted the stripes and curves, her delight was such
that I greatly feared she would have embraced me.
Strolling into the karaka groves, we came upon
a Maori wooden tomb, of which the front was carved
with figures three feet high, grotesque and obscene.
Gigantic eyes, hands bearing clubs, limbs witL it
bodies, and bodies without limbs, were figured here
and there among more perfect carvings, and the
whole was of a character which the Maories of to-day
disown as they do cannibalism, wishing to have these
horrid things forgotten. The sudden rise of the
Hau-Hau fanaticism within the last few years has
shown us that the layer of civilization by which the
old Maori habits are overlaid is thin indeed.
The flags remained down all day, and in the after-
noon we returned to the coast to shoot duck and
pukeko, a sort of moor-hen. It was not easy work, for
the birds fell in the flax-swamp, and the giant sword-
like leaves of the Phormium tenax cut our hands as
we pushed our way through its dense clumps and
bushes, while some of the party suffered badly from
the sun : Maui, the Maories say, must have chained
him up too near the earth. After dark, we could see
the glare of the fires in the karaka groves, where the
Maories were in council, and a Government surveyor
came in to report that he had met the dissentient
Wanganuis riding fast towards the hills.
In the morning, we were allowed to stay upon
the coast till ten or eleven o'clock, when a messenger
came down from Mr. Buller to call us to the pah :
»V-] PAREWANUI PAH. 371
the council of the chiefs had agciin sat all night— for
the Maories act upon their proverb that the eyes of
great chiefs should know no rest — and Hunia had
carried everything before him in the debate.
As soon as the ring was formed, Hunia apologized
for the pulling down of the Queen's flag ; it had been
done, he said, as a sign that the sale was broken off,
not as an act of disrespect. Having, in short, had
things entirely his own way, he was disposed to be
extremely friendly both to whites and Maories. The
sale, he said, must be brought about, or the " world
would be on fire with an intertribal war. What is the
good of the mountain-land ? There is nothing to eat
but stones ; granite is a hard but not a strengthening
food; and women and land are the ruin of men."
After congratulatory speeches from other chiefs,
some of the older men treated us to histories of the
deeds that had been wrought upon the block of land.
Some of their speeches — notably those of Aperahama
and Ihakara — were largely built up of legendary
poems; but the orators quoted the poetry as such
only when in doubt how far the sentiments were those
of the assembled people : when they were backed
by the hum which denotes applause, they at once
commenced with singular art to weave the poetry
imo that which was their own.
As soon as the speeches were over, Hunia and
Ihakara marched up to the flag-staff canying between
them the deed -of- sale. Putting it down before
Dr. Featherston, they shook hands with each other
and with him, and swore that for the future there
B B 2
372 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
should be eternal friendsliip between their tribes.
The deed was then signed by many hundred men
and women, and Dr. Featherston started with Ca|)tain
te K^pa, of the native contingent, to fetch the £25,000
from Wanganui town, the Maories firing their rifles
into the air as a salute.
The Superintendent was no sooner gone than a
kind of solemn grief seemed to come over the
assembled people. After all, they were selling the
graves of their ancestors, they argued. The wife of
Hamuera, seizing her husband's greenstone club, ran
out from the ranks of the women, and began to intone
an impromptu song, which was echoed by the wom.en,
in a pathetic chorus-chant : —
" The sun shines, but we quit our land ; we fihanclon for over ity
forests, its mountains, its groves, its lakes, its shores.
All its fair fisheries, here, under the bright sun, for ever we
renounce.
It is a lovely day ; fair will be the children that are born to-day ;
but we quit our land.
In some parts there is forest ; in others, the ground is skimmed
over by the birds in their flight.
Upon the trees there is fruit; in the streams, fish; in the fields,
potatoes j fern-roots in the bush ; but we quit our land."
It is in chorus-speeches of this kind that David's
psalms must have been recited by the Jews ; but on
this occasion there was a good deal of mere acting in
the grief, for the tribes had never occupied the land
that they now sold.
The next day, Dr. Featherston drove into camp
surrounded by a brilliant cavalcade of Maori cavalry,
amid much yelling and firing of pieces skywards.
IV.] FAREWANUI PAR, 373
Himia, in receiving him, declared tliat he would
not have the money paid till the morrow, as the
smi must shine upon the transfer of the lands. It
would take his people all the night, he said, to work
themselves up to the right pitch for a war-dance ;
so he sent down a strong guard to watch the money-
chests, which had been conveyed to the missionary hut.
The Ngatiapa sentry posted inside the room was an
odd cross between savagery and civilization ; he wore
the cap of the native contingent, and nothing else but
a red kilt. He was armed with a short Wilkinson
rifle, for which he had, however, not a round of
ammunition, his cartridges being Enfield and his
piece unloaded. Barbarian or not, he seemed to like
raw gin, with which some Englishman had unlaw-
fully and unfairly tempted him.
In the morning, the money was handed over in the
runanga-house, and a signet-ring presented to Hunia
by Dr. Featherston in pledge of peace, and memory
of the sale ; but owing to the heat, we soon adjourned
to the karaka grove, where Hunia made a congra-
tulatory and somewhat boastful speech, off'ering his
friendship and alliance to Dr. Featherston.
The assembly was soon dismissed, and the chiefs
withdrew to prepare for the grandest war-dance that
had been seen for years, while a party went off to
catch and kill the oxen that were to be " steamed "
whole, just as our friends' fathers would have
steamed us.
A chief was detached by Hunia to guide us to a
hill whence we commanded the whole glade. No
374 QREATER BRITAIN. fciiAiv
sooner had we taken our seats than the Ngatiraukawa
to the number of a hundred fighting-men, armed
with spears, and led by a dozen women bearing
clubs, marched out from their camp, and formed in
column, their chiefs making speeches of exhortation
from the ranks. After a pause, we heard the measured
groaning of a distant haka, and, looking up the glade,
at the distance of a mile saw some two score Wan-
ganui warriors jumping in perfect time, now to one side,
now to the other, grasping their rifles by the barrel,
and raising them as one man each time they jumped.
Presently, bending one knee, but stiffening the other
leg, they advanced, stepping together with a hopping
movement, slapping their hips and thighs, and shout-
ing from the palate, " Hough ! Hough ! " with fearful
emphasis.
A shout from the Ngatiraukawa hailed the ap-
proach of the Ngatiapa, who deployed from the woods
some two hundred strong, all armed with Enfield
rifles. They united with the Wanganuis, and marched
slowly down with their rifles at the " charge," steadily
singing war-songs. When within a hundred yards
of the opposing ranks, they halted, and sent in their
challenge. The Ngatiraukawa and Ngatiapa heralds
passed each other in silence, and each delivered his
message to the hostile chief
"We could see that the allies were led by Hunia
in all the bravery of his war-coetume. In his hair
he wore a heron plume, and another was fastened
near the muzzle of his short carbine ; his limbs were
bare, but about his shoulders he had a pure white
iv.j FAllEWANUI FAH. 375
scarf of satin. His kilt was gauze- silk, of three
colours— pink, emerald, and cherry — arranged in such
a way as to show as much of the green as of the
two other colours. The contrast, which upon a white
skin would have been glaring in its ugliness, was
perfect when backed by the nut-brown of Hunia's
chest and legs. As he ran before his tribe, he was
the ideal savage.
The instant that the heralds had returned, a charge
took place, the forces passing through each other's
ranks as they do upon the stage, but with frightful
yells. After this, they formed two deep, in three
companies, and danced the "musket-exercise war-
dance" in wonderful time, the women leading,
thrusting out their tongues, and shaking their long
pendant breasts. Among them was Hamu^ra's wife,
standing drawn up to her full height, her limbs
stiffened, her head thrown back, her mouth wide
open and tongue protruding, her eyes rolled so as to
show the white, and her arms stretched out in front of
her, as she slowly chanted. The illusion was perfect :
she became for the time a mad prophetess; yet all
the frenzy was assumed at a whim, to be cast aside
in half an hour. The shouts were of the same under-
breath kind 8,s in the haka, but they were aided by
the sounds of horns and conch-shells, and from the
number of men engaged the noise was this time
terrible. After much fierce singing, the musket-dance
was repeated, with furious leaps and gestures, till
the men became utterly exhausted, when the review
was closed by a general discharge of rifles. Running
37G OBEATER EMIT A IN. [chap
with nimble feet, the dancers were soon back within
their pahs, and the feast, beginning now, was, like a
Itussian banquet, prolonged till morning.
It is not hard to understand the conduct of Lord
])urham's settlers, who landed here in 1837. The
friendly natives received the party with a war-dance,
which had upon them such an effect that they
immediately took ship for Australia, where they
remained.
The next day, when we called on Governor Hunia
at his wahr^ to bid him farewell, before our departure
for the capital, he made two speeches to us which
are worth recording as specimens of Maori oratory.
Speaking through Mr. Buller, who had been kind
enough to escort us to the Ngatiapa's wahre, Hunia
said : —
"Hail, guests! You have just now seen the set-
tlement of a great dispute— the greatest of modem
time.
"This was a weighty trouble— a grave difficulty.
''Many Pak^has have tried to settle it— in vain.
For Petatone was it reserved to end it. I have said
that great is our gratitude to Petatone.
"If Petaton^ hath need of me in the future, I
shall be there. If he climbs the lofty tree, I will
climb it with him. If he scales high cliffs, I will
scale them too. If Petatone needeth help, he shall
have it ; and where he leads, there will I follow.
*' Such are the words of Hunia."
To this speech one of us replied, explaining our
position as guests from Britain.
i\-.] rAREWANUI PAH. 377
Huiila then began again to speak : — •
" my guests, a few days since when asked for a
war-dance, I refused. I refused because my people
were sad at heart.
" We were loath to refuse our guests, but the
tribes were grieved ; the people were sorrowful at
heart.
" To-day we are happy, and the war-dance has
taken place.
" my guests, when ye return to our great Queen,
tell her that we will fight for her again as we have
fought before.
" She is our Queen as well as your Queen — Queen
of Maories and Queen of Pakt.'ha.
" Should wars arise, we will take up our rifles, and
march whithersoever she shall direct.
*^ You have heard of the King movement. I was
a Kingite ; but that did not prevent me fighting for
the Queen — I and my chiefs.
** My cousin, Wircmu, Avent to England, and saw
our Queen. He returned ....
" When you landed in this island, he was already
dead. . . .
" He died fighting for our Queen.
** As he died, we will die, if need be — I and all
my chiefs. This do you tell our Queen.
" I have said."
This passage, spoken as Hunia spoke it, was one
of noble eloquence and singular rhetoric art. The
few first words about Wiremu were spoivcn in a half-
indifferent way; but there was a long pause before
378 GREATER BRITAIN. [ciiap.
and lifter the statement that he was dead, and a
sinking of the voice when he related how Wirdmu
had died, followed by a burst of sudden fire in the
" As he died, loe will die— I and all my chiefs."
After a minute or two, Hunia resumed : —
" This is another word.
*' We are all of us glad to see you.
" When we wrote to P^tatond, we asked him that
he would bring with him Pakdhas from England
and from Australia— Pakdhas from all parts of the
Queen's broad lands.
"Pakdhas who should return to tell the Queen
that the Ngatiapa are her liegemen.
"We are much rejoiced that you are here. May
your heart rest here among us ; but if you go once
more to your English home, tell the people that we
are Petatone's faithful subjects and the Queen's.
" I have said."
After pledging Hunia in a cup of wine, we returned
to our temporary home.
v.] THE MAORI ES. 379
CHAPTER V.
THE MAORIES.
Parting with my companions (who were going north-
wards) in order that I might return to Wellington,
and thence take ship to Tatanaki, I started at day-
break on a lovely morning to walk by the sea-shore to
Otaki. As I left the bank of the Manawatu river for
the sands, Mount Egmont near Taranaki, and Mounts
Ruapehu and Tongariro, in the centre of the island,
hung their great snow-domes in the soft blue of the
sky behind me, and seemed to have parted from
their bases.
I soon passed through the flax-swamp where we
for days had shot the pukeko, and coming out upon
the wet sands, which here are glittering and full of
the Taranaki steel, I took off boots and socks, and
trudged the whole distance barefoot, regardless of the
morrow. It was hard to walk without crunching
with the heel shells which would be thought rare at
home, and here and there charming little tern and
other tiny sea-fowl flew at me, and all but pecked
my eyes out for coming near their nests.
. During the day, I forded two large rivers and small
streams innumerable, and swam the Ohau, where
380 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
Dr. Featlierstoii last week lost his dog-cart in the
quicksands, but I managed to reach Otaki before
sunset, in time to revel in a typical New Zealand
view. The foreground was composed of ancient sand-
hills, covered with the native flax, with the deliciously-
scented Manuka ti-tree, brilliant in white flower, and
with giant fern, tuft-grass, and tussac. Farther inland
was the bush, evergreen, bunch-like in its foliage,
and so overladen with parasitic vegetation, that the
true leaves were hidden by usurpers, or crushed to
death in the folds of snake-like creepers. The view
was bounded by bush-clad mountains, rosy with the
sunset tints.
Otaki is Archdeacon Hadfield's church-settlement
of Christian Maories ; but of late there have been
signs of wavering in the tribes, and I found Major
Edwardes, who had been with us at Parcwanui,
engaged in holding, for the Government, a runanga
of Hau-Haus, or anti-Christian Maories, in the Otaki
Pah. Some of these fellows had lately held a meet-
ing, and had themselves re-baptized, but this time
out of instead of into the Church. They received
fresh names, and are said to have politely invited
the Archdeacon to perform the ceremony.
Maori Church of Englandism has proved a failure.
A dozen native clergymen are, it is true, supported
in comfort by their countrymen, but the tribes would
support a hundred such, if necessary, rather than
give up the fertile "reservations," such as that of
Otaki, which their pretended Christianity has secured.
There is much in . the Maori that is tiger-like, and
v.] THE MAORIES. 381
it is in the blood, not to be drawn out of it by a few
years of playing at Christianity.
The labours of the missionaries have been great,
their earnestness and devotion unsui-passed. Up to
the day of the outbreak of Hau-Hauism, their influence
with the natives was thought to be enormous. The
entire Maori race had been baptized, thousands of
natives had attended the schools, hundreds had be-
come communicants and catechists. In a day, the
number of native Christians was reduced from thirty
thousand to some hundreds. Eight and left the
tribes flocked to the bush, deserting mission-stations,
villages, herds, and fields. Those few who dared
not go were there in spirit ; all sympathised, if rot
with the Hau-Hau movement, at least with Kingism.
The Archdeacon and his brethren of the holy calling
were at their wits' ends. Not only did Christianity
disappear : civilization itself accompanied religion in
her flight, and habits of bloodshed and barbarity,
unknown since the nominal renunciation of idolatry,
in a day returned. The fall was terrible, but it went
to show that the apparent success had been fictitious.
The natives had built mills and owned ships ; they
had leamt husbandry and cattle-breeding; they had
invested money, and put acre to acre and house
to house ; but their moral could hardly have kept
pace with their material, or even with their mental
gains.
A magistrate who knows the Maorics well told mo
that their Christianity is only on the surface. He
one day asked Matent^ te Whiwhi, a Ngatiraukawa
382 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
chief, " Which would you soonest eat, Matene — pork,
beef, or Ngatiapa ? " Matene answered, with a turn-
up of his eyes, "Ah! I'm a Christian!" "Never
mind that to me, you know," said the Englishman.
" The flesh of Ngatiapa is sweet," said Matene, with
a smack of the lips that was distinctly audible. The
settlers tell you that when the Maories go to war,
they use up their Bilies for gun-wadding, and then
come on the missionaries for a fresh supply.
The Polynesians, when Christianity is first presented
to them, embrace it with excitement and enthusiasm ;
the " new religion " spreads like wildfire ; the success
of the teachers is amazing. A few years, however,
show a terrible change. The natives find that all
white men are not missionaries ; that if one set of
Englishmen deplore their licentiousness, there are
others to back them in it ; that Christianity requires
self-restraint. As soon as the first flare of the new
religion is over, it commences to decline, and in some
cases it expires. The story of Christianity in Hawaii,
in Otaheite, and in New Zealand, has been much the
same : among th* Tahitians, it was crushed by the
relapse of the converts into extreme licentiousness ;
among the Maories, it was put down by the sudden
rise of the Hau-Hau fanaticism. A return to a better
state of things has in each case followed, but the
missionaries work now in a depressed and saddened
way, which contrasts sternly with the exultation that
inspired them before the fresh outbreak of the demon
which they believed they had exorcised. They re-
luctantly admit that the Polynesians are fickle as
v.] THE MAORIES. 383
well as gross ; not only licentious, but untrustworthy.
There is, they will tell you, no country where it is so
easy to plant or so hard to maintain Christianity.
The Maori religion is that of all the Polynesians —
a vague polytheism, which in their poems seems now
and then to approach to pantheism. The forest
glades, the mountain rocks, the stormy shores, all
swarm with fairy singers, and with throngs of gnomes
and elves. The happy laughing islanders have a
heaven, but no hell in their mytholog}'- ; of "sin"
they have no conception. Hau-Hauism is not a
Polynesian creed, but a political and religious system
based upon the earlier books of the Old Testament ;
even the cannibalism which was added was not of
the Polynesian kind. The Indians of Chili ate human
flesh for pleasure and variety ; those of Virginia
were cannibals only on state occasions, or in reli-
gious ceremonials ; but the Maories seem originally
to have been driven to man-eating by sheer want
of food. Since Cook left pigs upon the islands, the
excuse has been wanting, and the practice has con-
sequently ceased. As revived by the Hau-Haus, the
man-eating was of a ceremonial nature, and, like the
whole of the observances of the Hau-Hau fanaticism,
an inroad upon ancient Maori customs.
There is one great difference which severs the
Maories from the other Polynesians. In New Zea-
land caste is unknown ; every Maori is a gentleman
or a slave. Chiefs are elected by the popular voice,
not, indeed, by a show of hands, but by a sort of
general agreement of the tribe ; but the chief is
384 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
a political, not a social superior. In the windy
climate of New Zealand, men can push themselves
to the front too surely by their energy and toil, to
remain socially in an inferior class. Caste is impos-
sible whcire the climate necessitates activity and work.
The Maories, too, we should remember, are an immi-
grant race; probably no high-caste men came with
them — all started from equal rank.
Like the Tongans, the Maories pay great reverence
to their well-born women ; slave women are of no
account. The Friendly Islanders exclude both man
and woman slave from the Future Life; but the
Maori Rangatira not only admits his followers to
heaven, but his wife to council. A Maori chief is as
obedient to the warlike biddings, and as grateful for
the praising glance or smile of his betrothed, as
a planter-cavalier of Carolina, or a Cretan volunteer ;
and even the ladies of New Orleans cannot have gone
further than the wives of Hunia and Ihakara in
spurring on the men to war. The Maori Andromaches
outdo their European sisters, for they themselves pro-
ceed to battle, and animate their Hectors by songs
and shouts. Even the sceptre of tribal rule — the
greenstone mei^i, or royal club — is often entrusted
them by their warrior husbands, and used to lead the
war-dance or the charge.
The delicacy of treatment shown by the Maories
towards their women may go far to account for
the absence of contempt for the native race among
the English population. An Englishman's respect for
the sex is terribly shocked when he sees a woman
v.] THE MAORI ES. 385
staggering under the weight of the wigwam and the
children of a " brave," who stalks behind her through
the streets of Austin, carrying his rifles and his pistols,
but not another ounce, unless in the shape of a thong
with which to hasten the squaw's steps. What wonder
if the men who sit by smoking while their wives
totter under basketsful of mould on the boulevard
works at Delhi are called lazy scoundrels by the
press of the North- West, or if the Shoshonds, who
eat the bread of idleness themselves, and hire out
their wives to the Pacific Railroad Company, are
looked upon as worse than dogs in Nevada, where
the thing is done? It is the New Zealand native's
treatment of his wife that makes it possible for
an honest Englishman to respect or love an honest
Maori.
In general, the newspaper editors and idle talkers
of the frontier districts of a colony in savage lands
speak with mingled ridicule and contempt of the
men with whom they daily struggle; at best, they
see in them no virtue but ferocious bravery. The
Kansas and Colorado papers call Indians " fiends,"
" devils," or dismiss them laughingly in peaceful
times as " bucks," whose lives are worth, perhaps, a
bufialo's, but who are worthy of notice only as poten-
tial murderers or thieves. Such, too, is the tone of
the Australian press concerning the aboriginal inha-
bitants of Queenslp.nd or Tasmania. Far otherwise
do the New Zealand papers speak of the Maori
warriors. They may sometimes call them grasping,
overreaching traders, or underrate their capability of
VOL. T. c c
38 G GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
receiving civilization of a European kind, but never
do thev affect to think them less than men, or to
advocate the employment towards them of measums
which would be repressed as infamous if applied to
brutes. We should, I think, see in this peculiarity
of conduct, not evidence of the existence in New
Zealand of a spirit more catholic and tolerant towards
savage neighbours than that which the English race
displays in Australia or America, but rather a tribute
to the superiority in virtue, intelligence, and nobility
of mind possessed by the Maori over the Ked Indian
or the Australian Black.
It is not only in their treatment of their women
that the Maories show their chivalry. One of the
most noble traits of this great people is their habit
of " proclaiming " the districts in which lies the
cause of war as the sole fighting-ground, and never
touching their enemies, however defenceless, when
found elsewhere. European nations might take a
lesson from New Zealand Maories in this and other
points.
The Maories are apt at learning, merry, and, unlike
other Polynesians, trustworthy, but also, unlike them,
mercenary. At the time of the Manawatu sale, old
Aperahama used to write to Dr. Featherston almost
every day : " Petaton^ let the price of the block be
£y,999,999 19s. 9c?.," the mysteries of eleven pence
three-farthings being far beyond his comprehension.
The Maories have, too, a royal magnificence in their
ideas of gifts and grants — witness td Heke's bid
of 100,000 acres of land for Governor Fitzroy's-
v.] THE MAORIES. 3g7
hcatl, in answer to the offer, by the Governor, of a
small price for his.
The praises of the Maorics have been sung by so
many writers, and in so many keys, that it is neces-
sary to keep it distinctly before us that they are mere
savages, though brave, shrewd men. There is an
Eastern civilization — that of China and Hindostan—
distinct from that of Europe, and ancient beyond all
count ; in this the Maorics have no share. No
true Hindoo, no Arab, no Chinaman, has suffered
change in one tittle of his dress or manners from
contact with the Western races; of this essential
conservatism there is in the New Zealand savage not
a trace. William Thompson, the Maori ** king-maker,''
used to dre ^s as any Englishman ; Maories on board
our ships wear the uniform of the able-bodied seaman ;
Governor Hunia has ridden as a gentleman-rider in a
steeplechase, equipped in jockey dress.
Savages though they be, in irregular warfare we
arc not their match. At the end of 1865, we had
of regulars and militia seventeen thousand men under
arms in the North Island of New Zealand, including
no less than twelve regiments of the line at their
" war strength," and yet our generals were despondent
as to their chance of finally defeating the warriors
of a people which — men, women, and children —
nimibered but thirty thousand souls.
Men have sought far and wide for the reasons
which led to our defeats in the New Zealand wars.
We were defeated by the Maories, as the Austrians
by the Prussians, and the French by the English iu
c c 2
388 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
old times — ^because the victors were the better men.
Not the braver men, when both sides were brave
alike ; not the stronger ; not, perhaps, taking the
average of our officers and men, the more intelli-
gMit ; but capable of quicker movement, able to
subi^i&t on less, more crafty, more skilled in the
thousand tactics of the bush. Aided by their women,
who, when need was, themselves would lead the
charge, and who at all times dug their fern-root
and caught their fish ; marching where our regiments
could not follow, they had, as have the Indians in
America, the choice of time and place for their
attacks, and while we were crawling about our mili-
tary roads upon the coast, incapable of traversing a
iuile of bush, the JVIaories moved securely and secretly
from one end to the other of the island. Arms they
had, ammunition they could steal, and blockade was
useless with enemies who live on fern-root. When
they found that we burnt their pahs, they ceased to
build them ; that was all. When we brought up
howitzers, they went where ho howitzers could
follow. It should not be hard even for our pride
to allow that such enemies were, man for man, in
their own lands our betters.
All nations fond of horses, it has been said,
flourish and succeed. The Maories love horses and
ride well. All races that delight in sea are equally
certain to prosper, empirical philosophers will tell us.
The Maories own ships by the score, and serve as
sailors whenever they get a chance : as deep-sea
fishermen they have no equals. Their fondness for
V;] THE MAORIES. 380
draughts shows mathematical capacity; in truthfulness
they possess the first of vii-tues. They are shrewd,
thrifty; devoted friends, brave men. VVitli all this,
they die.
" Can you stay the surf which beats on Wanganui
shore 1" say the Maories of our progress ; and, of
themselves : " We are gone — like the 7)ioa."
390 GREATEB BRITAIN. [chap.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TWO FLIES.
"As the Pak<5ha fly has driven out the Maori fly;
As the Pak(5ha grass has killed the Maori grass;
As the Pak6ha rat has slain the Maori rat;
As the Pakdha clover has starved the Maori fern,
So will the Pakeha destroy the Maori."
These are the mournful words of a well-known
Maori song.
That the English daisy, the white clover, the
common thistle, the camomile, the oat, should make
their way rapidly in New Zealand, and put down the
native plants, is in no way strange. If the Maori
grasses that have till lately held undisturbed pos-
session of the New Zealand soil, require for their
nourishment the substances A, B, and C, while the
English clover needs A, B, and D ; from the nature
of things A and B will be the coarser earths or
salts, existing in larger quantities, not easily losing
vigour and nourishing force, and recruiting their
energies from the decay of the very plant that feeds
on them; but C and D will be the more ethereal,
the more easily destroyed or wasted substances. The
Maori grass, having sucked nearly the whole of C
VI.] THE TfFO FLIES. 391
from the soil, is in a w »kly state, when in comes
the English plant, and, finding an abundant store of
untouched D, thrives accordingly, and crushes down
the Maori.
The positions of flies and grasses, of plants and
insects, are, however, not the same. Adapted by
nature to the infinite variety of soils and climates,
there are an infinite number of difi'erent plants and
animals ; but whereas the plant depends upon both
soil and climate, the animal depends chiefly upon
climate, and little upon soil — except so far as his
home or his food themselves depend on soil. Now,
Avliile soil wears out, climate does not. The climate
in the long run remains the same, but certain
apparently trifling constituents of the soil will
wholly disappear. The result of this is, that while
pigs may continue to thrive in New Zealand for
ever and a day, Dutch clover (without manure) will
only last a given and calculable time.
The case of the flies is plain enough. The Maori
and the English fly live on the same food, and require
about the same amount of warmth and moisture : the
one w^iich is best fitted to the common conditions
will gain the day, and drive out the other. The
English fly has had to contend not only against other
English flies, but against every fly of temperate
climates : we having traded with every land, and
brought the flies of every clime to England. The
English fly is the best possible fly of the w^hole world,
. xid wiU naturally beat down and exterminate, or
else starve out, the merely provincial Maori fly. If a
392 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
great singer — to find whom for the London stage
the world has been ransacked — should be led by
the foible of the moment to sing for gain in an
unknown village, where on the same night a rustic
tenor was attempting to sing his best, the London
tenor would send the provincial supperlcss to bed.
So it is with the English and Maori fly.
Natural selection is being conducted by nature
in New Zealand on a grander scale than any we
have contemplated, for the object of it here is man.
In America, in Australia, the white man shoots or
poisons his red or black fellow, and exterminates
him through the workings of superior knowledge ;
but in New Zealand it is peacefully, and without
extraordinary advantages, that the Pak^ha beats his
Maori brother.
That which is true of our animal and vegetable
productions is true also of our man. The English
fly, grass, and man, they and their progenitors before
them, have had to fight for life against their fel-
lows. The Englishman, bringing into his country
from the parts to which he trades all manner of
men, of grass seeds, and of insect germs, has filled
his land with every kind of living thing to which
his soil or climate will afford support. Both old
inhabitants and interlopers have to maintain a
struggle which at once crushes and starves out of
life every weakly plant, man, or insect, and fortifies
the race by continual buffetings. The plants of
civilized man are generally those which will grow best
in the greatest variety of soils and climates ; but in
VI.] THE TIVO FLIES. 393
any ciase, tlio English fauna and flora are peculiarly
fitted to succeed at our antipodes, because the climates
of Great Britain and New Zealand arc almost the
same, and our men, flies, and plants — the "pick"
of the whole world — have not even to encounter the
difficulties of acclimatization in their struggle against
the weaker growths indigenous to the soil.
Nature's work in New Zealand is not the same as
that which she is quickly doing in North America, in
Tasmania, in Queensland. It is not merely that a
hunting and fighting people is being replaced by an
agricultural and pastoral people, and must farm or
die : the Moori does farm ; Maori chiefs own villages,
build houses, which they let to European settlers ; we
have here Maori sheep-farmers, Maori ship-owners,
Maori mechanics, Maori soldiers, Maori rough-riders,
Maori sailors, and even Maori traders. There is
nothing which the average Englishman can do which
the average Maori cannot be taught to do as cheaply
and as well. Nevertheless, the race dies out. The
Red Indian dies because he cannot farm ; the Maori
farms, and dies.
There are certain special features about the advance
of the birds, beasts, and men of Western civiliza-
tion. When the first white man landed in Now
Zealand, all the native quadrupeds save one, and
nearly all the birds and river-fi .hes, were extinct,
though we have their bones, and traditions of their
existence. The Maories themselves were dying
out. The moa and dinoris wore both gone ; there
were few insects, and no reptiles. "The birds die
394 OREATER BRITAIN. [ciiAr.
because the Maories, tlieir companions, die," is the
native saying. Yet the climate is singularly good,
and food for beast and bird so plentiful that Cap-
tain Cook's pigs have planted colonies of " wild
boars" in every part of the islands, and English
pheasants have no sooner been imported than they
have commenced to swarm in every jungle. Even
the Pak^ha flea has come over in the ships, and
wonderfully has he thriven.
The terrible want of food for men that formerly
characterised New Zealand has had its effects upon
the habits of the Maori race. Australia has no native
fruit-trees worthy cultivation, although in the whole
world there is no such climate and soil for fniits ;
still, Australia has kangaroos and other quadrupeds.
The Ladrones were destitute of quadrupeds, and of
birds, except the turtle-dove^ but in the warm damp
climate fruits grew, sufficient to support in comfort a
dense population. In New Zealand, the windy cold of
the winters causes a need for something of a tougher
fibre than the banana or the fern-root. There beinir
no native beasts, the want was supplied by human
flesh, and war, furnishing at once food and the excite-
ment which the chase supplies to peoj)les that have
animals to hunt, became the occupation of the
Maories. Hence in some degree the depopidation
oi the land ; but other causes exist, by the side of
which cannibalism is as nothing.
The British Government has been less guilty than
is commonly believed as regards the destruction
of the Maories. Since the original misdeed of the
VI.] THE TWO FLIES. 3D 5
annexation of the isles, we have done the Maories
no serious "wrong. We recognised the claim of a
handful of natives to the soil of a country as large
as Great Britain, of not one-hundredth part of which
had they ever made the smallest use ; and, disre-
garding the fact that our occupation of the coast was
the very event that gave the land its value, we have
insisted on buying every acre from the tribe. Allow-
ing title by conquest to the Ngatiraukawa, as I saw
at Parewanui Pah, we refuse to claim even the lands
we conquered from the " Kingites."
The Maories have always been a village people,
tilling a little land round their pahs, but incapable
of making any use of the great pastures and wheat
countries which they " own." Had we at first con-
stituted native reserves, on the American system,
we might, without any fighting, and without any
more rapid destruction of the natives than that which
is taking place, have gradually cleared and brought
into the market nearly the whole country, which now
has to be purchased at enormous prices, and at the
continual risk of war.
As it is, the record of our dealings with the Queen's
native subjects in New Zealand has been almost free
from stain, but if we have not committed crimes, wo
have certainly not failed to blunder : our treatment
of William Thompson was at the best a grave mis-
take. If ever there lived a patriot, he was one, and
through him we might have ruled in peace the Maori
race. Instead of receiving the simplest courtesy from
ii people which in India showers honours upon its
396 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
puppet kings and rajahs, he underwent fresh insults
each time that he entered an English town or met
a white magistrate or subaltern, and he died, while
I was in the colonies — according to Pakeha phy-
sicians, of liver-complaint ; according to the Maories,
of a broken heart.
At Parewanui and Otaki, I remarked that the
half-breeds are fine fellows, possessed of much of
the nobility of both the ancestral races, v^hile the
women are famed for grace and loveliness. In mis-
cegenation it would have seemed that there was a
chance for the Maori, who, if destined to die, would
at least have left many of his best features of body
and mind to live in the mixed race, but here comes
in the prejudice of blood, with which we have already
met in the case of the negroes and Chinese. Morality
has so far gained ground as greatly to check the
spread of permanent illegitimate connexions with
native women, while pride prevents intermarriage.
The numbers of the half-breeds are not upon the
increase : a few fresh marriages supply the vacancies
that come of death, but there is no progress, no sign
of the creation of a vigorous mixed race. There is
something more in this than foolish pride, however ;
there is a secret at the bottom at once of the cessa-
tion of mixed marriages and of the dwindling of the
pure Maori race, and it is the utter viciousness of the
native girls. The universal unchastity of the unmar-
ried women, "Christian" as well as heathen, would
be sufficient to destroy a race of gods. The story of
the MaoricS is that of the Tahitians, and is written
VI.] THE TWO FLIES. 397
in the decorations of every gate-post or rafter in
their pahs.
We are more distressed at the present and future
of the Maories than they are themselves. For all
our greatness, we pity not the Maories more pro-
foundly than they do us when, ascribing our morality
to calculation, they bask in the sunlight, and are
happy in their gracelessness. After all, virtue and
arithmetic come from one Greek root.
398 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PACIFIC.
Closely resembling Great Britain in situation, size,
and climate, New Zealand is often styled by the
colonists " The Britain of the South," and many aifect
to believe that her future is destined to be as brilliant
as has been the past of her mother-country. With
the exaggeration of phrase to which the English New
Zealanders are prone, they prophesy a marvellous here-
after for the whole Pacific, in which New Zealand, as
the carrying and manufacturing country, is to play
the foremost part, the Australias following obediently
in her train.
Even if the differences of Separatists, Provincialists,
and Centralists should be healed, the future prosperity
of New Zealand is by no means secure. Her gold-
yield is only about a fifth of that of California or
Victoria. Her area is not sufficient to make her power-
ful as an agricultural or pastoral country, unless she
comes to attract manufactures and carrying trade
from afar, and the prospect of New Zealand succeed-
ing in this effort is but small. Her rivers are almost
useless for manufacturing purposes, owing to their
floods ; the timber-supply of all her forests is not equal
VII.] ' TEE PACIFIC. 399
to that of a single county in the State of Oregon ;
her coal is inferior in quality to that of Vancouver's
Island, in quantity to that of Chili, in both respects to
that of New South "Wales. The harbours of New
Zealand are upon the eastern coasts, but the coal is
chiefly upon the other side, where the river bars make
trade impossible.
The coal that has been found at the Bay of Islands
is said to be plentiful and of good quality, and may
be made largely available for steamers on the coast ;
the steel-sand of Taranaki, smelted by the use of
petroleum, also found within the province, may become
of value ; her own wool, too, New Zealand will doubt-
less one day manufacture into cloth and blankets ; but
these arc comparatively trifling matters : New Zealand
may become rich and populous without being the
great power of the Pacific, or even of the South.
The climate of the North Island is winterless, moist,
and warm, and its effects are already seen in a certain
want of enterprise shown by the Government and
settlers. I remarked that the mail-steamers which
leave Wellington almost every day arc invariably
" detained for despatches : " it looks as though the
officers of the Colonial or Imperial Government com-
mence to write their letters only when the hour for
the sailing of the ship has come. An Englishman
visiting New Zealand was asked in my presence
how long his business at AVanganui would keep
him in the town. His answer was : " In London
it would take me half an hour ; so I suppose about
a week — about a week !"
400 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap.
In Java and the other islands of the Indian archi-
pelago, we find examples of tho effect of the supineness
of dwellers in the tropics upon the economic position
of their countries. Many of the Indian isles possess
both coal and cheap labour, but have failed to become
manufacturing communities on a large scale only
because the natives have not the energy requisite
for the direction of factories and workshops, while
European foremen have to be paid enormous wages,
and, losing their spirit in the damp unchanging
climate of the islands, soon become more indolent
than the natives.
The position of the various stores of coal in the
Pacific is of extreme importance as an index to the
future distribution of power in that portion of the
world ; but it is not enough to know where coal is
to be found without looking also to the quantity,
quality, cheapness of labour, and facility for transport.
In China (in the Si Shan district) and in Borneo, there
are extensive coal-fields, but they lie " the wrong way "
for trade. On the other hand, the Californian coal — >
at Monte Diablo, San Diego, and Monterey — lies well,
but is bad in quality. The Talcahuano bed in Chili
is not good enough for ocean steamers, but might be
made use of for manufactures, although Chili has but
little iron. Tasmania has good coal, but in no great
quantity, and the beds nearest to the coast are formed
of inferior anthracite. The three countries of the
Pacific which must, for a time at least, rise to manu-
facturing great less, are Japan, Vancouver's Island,
and New South Wales, but which of these will become.
▼".] THE PACmC. 401
wealthiest and most powerful depends mainly on the
amount of coal which they respectively possess, so
situated as to be cheaply raised. The deamess of
labour under which Vancouver suffers will be removed
by the opening of the Pacific Railroad, but for the
present New South Wales has the cheaper labour;
and upon her shores at Newcastle are abundant
stores of a coal of good quality for manufacturing
purposes, although for sea use it burns *' dirtily," and
too fast : the colony possesses also ample beds of iron,
copper, and lead. Japan, as far as can. be at present
seen, stands before Vancouver and New South Wales in
almost every point : she has cheap labour, good climate,
excellent harbours, and abundant coal ; cotton can be
grown upon her soil, and this, and that of Queensland,
she can manufacture and export to America and to the
East. Wool from California and from the Australias
might be carried to her to be worked, and her rise to
commercial greatness has already commenced with the
passage of a law allowing Japanese workmen to take
service with European capitalists in the "treaty-
ports." Whether Japan or New South Wales is
destined to become the great wool-manufacturing
country, it is certain that fleeces will not long con-
tinue to be sent half round the world — from Australia
to England — to be worked, and then round the other
half back from England to Australia, to be sold as
blankets.
The future of the Pacific shores is inevitably bril-
liant ; but it is not New Zealand, the centre of the
water-hemisphere, which will occupy the position that
VOL. I. D I)
402 GREATER BRITAIN. [chap. vii.
England has taken in the Atlantic, but some country
such as Japan or Vancouver, jutting out into the
ocean from Asia or from America, as England juts out
from Europe. If New South Wales usurps the posi-
tion, it will be not from her geographical situation,
but from the manufacturing advantages she gains by
the possession of vast mineral wealth.
The power of America is now predominant in the
Pacific : the Sandwich Islands are all but annexed,
Japan all but ruled by her, while the occupation of
British Columbia is but a matter of time, and a
Mormon descent upon the Marquesas is already
planned. The relations of America and Australia
will be the key to the future of the South Pacific.
* * *
On the 26th of December, I left New Zealand for
Australia.
APPENDIX.
A MAORI DINNEE.
For those who would make trial of Maori dishes, here is a native
biU-of-fare, such as can be itijoutod in the South of England : —
HAKAEI MAORI— A MAOEI FEAST.
BILL-OF-FARE.
SOUP.
KoTA KoTA Any shell-fish.
FISH,
Inanga .... Whitebait (boiled in milk, with leeks).
PiHARAU . . .• . Lamprey (stewed).
Tuna Eels (steamed).
MADE-DISHES.
PuKEKO Moor-hen (steamed).
KouRA Craw-fish (boiled).
TuiTui Thrush (roast).
K^R^RU ....... Pigeon (baked in clay).
ROAST,
Pooka Pork {sImH pig).
404 ArPENDIX.
«
GAMfc].
Paukra Wild Duck (roaatoJ on embers).
VEGETABLES.
Pauk^na Pumpkin.
Kamu Kamu Vegetable Marrow.
Kaputi Cabbage (steamed).'
KuMATA Sweet Potatoes.
SWEETS.
Tataramoa .... Cranberries (steamed).
Taua Damsons (steamed with sugar).
DESSERT.
Karamu Currants.
Pikakarika, Dec. 1866,
END OF VOL. T.
K, CLAY, SONS, AND TAYI-Oli, BKEAI) STREET HILL.