VOL. XII.—NOVEMBER, 1863.—NO. LXXIII.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
[THE SPANIARD AND THE HERETIC.]
[WEARINESS.]
[MRS. LEWIS.]
[THE FORMATION OF GLACIERS.]
[TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL.]
[NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.]
[ANDANTE.]
[THE BROTHERS.]
[THE SAM ADAMS REGIMENTS IN THE TOWN OF BOSTON.—CONCLUDED.]
[WET-WEATHER WORK.]
[THE FRENCH STRUGGLE FOR NAVAL AND COLONIAL POWER.]
[SOMETHING LEFT UNDONE.]
[THE GREAT INSTRUMENT.]
[THE KING'S WINE.]
[MONOGRAPH FROM AN OLD NOTE-BOOK; WITH A POSTSCRIPT.]
[REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.]
[RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS]
THE SPANIARD AND THE HERETIC.
[In the August number of the "Atlantic," under the title of "The Fleur-de-Lis in Florida," will be found a narrative of the Huguenot attempts to occupy that country, which, exciting the jealousy of Spain, gave rise to the crusade whose history is recorded below.]
The monk, the inquisitor, the Jesuit, these were the lords of Spain,—sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed and fed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed and fed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to bigotry, dark, blind, inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that day a scourge as dire as ever fell on man.
Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope, freedom, pierced with vitalizing ray the clouds and the miasma that hung so thick over the prostrate Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a foul image of decay and death. Kindled with new life, the nations teemed with a progeny of heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above all, it was so in France; and while within her bounds there was a semblance of peace, the national and religious rage burst forth on a wilder theatre. Thither it is for us to follow it, where, on the shores of Florida, the Spaniard and the Frenchman, the bigot and the Huguenot, met in the grapple of death.
In a corridor of the Escurial, Philip II. was met by a man who had long stood waiting his approach, and who with proud reverence placed a petition in the hand of the pale and sombre King. The petitioner was Pedro Menendez de Aviles, one of the ablest and most distinguished officers of the Spanish marine. He was born of an ancient Asturian family. His boyhood had been wayward, ungovernable, and fierce. He ran off at eight years of age, and when, after a search of six months, he was found and brought back, he ran off again. This time he was more successful, escaping on board a fleet bound against the Barbary corsairs, when his precocious appetite for blood and blows had reasonable contentment. A few years later, he found means to build a small vessel in which he cruised against the corsairs and the French, and, though still little more than a boy, displayed a singular address and daring. The wonders of the New World now seized his imagination. He made a voyage thither, and the ships under his charge came back freighted with wealth. War with France was then at its height. As captain-general of the fleet, he was sent with troops to Flanders, and to their prompt arrival was due, it is said, the victory of St. Quentin, Two years later, he commanded the luckless armada which bore back Philip to his native shore, and nearly drowned him in a storm off the port of Laredo. This mischance, or his own violence and insubordination, wrought to the prejudice of Menendez. He complained that his services were ill repaid. Philip lent him a favoring ear, and despatched him to the Indies as general of the fleet and army. Here he found means to amass vast riches; and, in 1561, returning to Spain, charges were brought against him of a nature which his too friendly biographer does not explain. The Council of the Indies arrested him. He was imprisoned and sentenced to a heavy fine, but, gaining his release, hastened to Madrid to throw himself on the royal clemency.
His petition was most graciously received. Philip restored his command, but remitted only half his fine, a strong presumption of his guilt.
Menendez kissed the royal hand; he had still a petition in reserve. His son had been wrecked near the Bermudas, and he would fain go thither to find tidings of his fate. The pious King bade him trust in God, and promised that he should be despatched without delay to the Bermudas and to Florida with a commission to make an exact survey of those perilous seas for the profit of future voyagers; but Menendez was ill content with such an errand. He knew, he said, nothing of greater moment to His Majesty than the conquest and settlement of Florida. The climate was healthful, the soil fertile; and, worldly advantages aside, it was peopled by a race sunk in the thickest shades of infidelity. "Such grief," he pursued, "seizes me, when I behold this multitude of wretched Indians, that I should choose the conquest and settling of Florida above all commands, offices, and dignities which your Majesty might bestow." Those who think this hypocrisy do not know the Spaniard of the sixteenth century.
The King was edified by his zeal. An enterprise of such spiritual and temporal promise was not to be slighted, and Menendez was empowered to conquer and convert Florida at his own cost. The conquest was to be effected within three years. Menendez was to take with him five hundred men, and supply them with five hundred slaves, besides horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs. Villages were to be built, with forts to defend them; and sixteen ecclesiastics, of whom four should be Jesuits, were to form the nucleus of a Floridian church. The King, on his part, granted Menendez free trade with Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Cuba, and Spain, the office of Adelantado of Florida for life, joined to the right of naming his successor, and large emoluments to be drawn from the expected conquest.
The compact struck, Menendez hastened to his native Asturias to raise money among his relatives. Scarcely was he gone, when tidings for the first time reached Madrid that Florida was already occupied by a colony of French Protestants, and that a reinforcement, under Ribaut, was on the point of sailing thither. A French historian of high authority declares that these advices came from the Catholic party at the French court, in whom all sense of the national interest and honor was smothered under their hatred of Coligny and the Huguenots. Of this there can be little doubt, though information also came from the buccaneer Frenchmen captured in the West Indies.
Foreigners had invaded the territory of Spain. The trespassers, too, were heretics, foes of God and liegemen of the Devil. Their doom was fixed. But how would France endure an assault, in time of peace, on subjects who had gone forth on an enterprise sanctioned by the crown, undertaken in its name, and under its commission?
The throne of France, where the corruption of the nation seemed gathered to a head, was trembling between the two parties of the Catholics and the Huguenots, whose chiefs aimed at royalty. Flattering both, caressing both, betraying both, playing one against the other, Catherine de Médicis, by a thousand crafty arts and expedients of the moment, sought to retain the crown on the heads of her weak and vicious sons. Of late her crooked policy had drawn her towards the Catholic party, in other words, the party of Spain; and already she had given ear to the savage Duke of Alva, urging her to the course which, seven years later, led to the carnage of St. Bartholomew. In short, the Spanish policy was ascendant, and no thought of the national interest or honor could restrain that basest of courts from consigning by hundreds to the national enemy those whom, itself, it was meditating to immolate by thousands.
Menendez was summoned back in haste to the court. There was counsel, deep and ominous, in the chambers of the Escurial. His force must be strengthened. Three hundred and ninety-four men were added at the royal charge, and a corresponding number of transport and supply ships. It was a holy war, a crusade, and as such was preached by priest and monk along the western coasts of Spain. All the Biscayan ports flamed with zeal, and adventurers crowded to enroll themselves; since to plunder heretics is good for the soul as well as the purse, and broil and massacre have double attraction, when promoted to a means of salvation: a fervor, deep and hot, but not of celestial kindling; nor yet that buoyant and inspiring zeal, which, when the Middle Age was in its youth and prime, glowed in the soul of Tancred, Godfrey, and St. Louis, and which, when its day was long since past, could still find its home in the great heart of Columbus. A darker spirit urged the new crusade,—born, not of hope, but of fear, slavish in its nature, the creature and the tool of despotism. For the typical Spaniard of the sixteenth century was not in strictness a fanatic; he was bigotry incarnate.
Heresy was a plague-spot, an ulcer to be eradicated with fire and the knife, and this foul abomination was infecting the shores which the Vicegerent of Christ had given to the King of Spain, and which the Most Catholic King had given to the Adelantado. Thus would countless heathen tribes be doomed to an eternity of flame, shut out from that saving communion with Holy Church, to which, by the sword and the whip and the fagot, dungeons and slavery, they would otherwise have been mercifully driven, to the salvation of their souls, and the greater glory of God. And, for the Adelantado himself, should the vast outlays, the vast debts, of his bold Floridian venture be all in vain? Should his fortunes be wrecked past redemption through these tools of Satan? As a Catholic, as a Spaniard, as an adventurer, his course was clear. Woe, then, to the Huguenot in the gripe of Pedro Menendez!
But what was the scope of this enterprise, and the limits of the Adelantado's authority? He was invested with power almost absolute, not merely over the peninsula which now retains the name of Florida, but over all North America, from Labrador to Mexico,—for this was the Florida of the old Spanish geographers, and the Florida designated in the commission of Menendez. It was a continent which he was to conquer and occupy out of his own purse. The impoverished King contracted with his daring and ambitious subject to win and hold for him the territory of the future United States and British Provinces. His plan, as subsequently developed and exposed at length in his unpublished letters to Philip II., was, first, to plant a garrison at Port Royal, and next to fortify strongly on Chesapeake Bay, called by him St. Mary's. He believed that this bay was an arm of the sea, running northward and eastward, and communicating with the Gulf of St. Lawrence, thus making New England, with adjacent districts, an island. His proposed fort on the Chesapeake, giving access, by this imaginary passage, to the seas of Newfoundland, would enable the Spaniards to command the fisheries, on which both the French and the English had long encroached, to the great prejudice of Spanish rights. Doubtless, too, these inland waters gave access to the South Sea, and their occupation was necessary to prevent the French from penetrating thither; for that ambitious people, since the time of Cartier, had never abandoned their schemes of seizing this portion of the dominions of the King of Spain. Five hundred soldiers and one hundred sailors must, he urges, take possession, without delay, of Port Royal and the Chesapeake.
Preparation for his enterprise was pushed with a furious energy. His force amounted to two thousand six hundred and forty-six persons, in thirty-four vessels, one of which, the San Pelayo, bearing Menendez himself, was of more than nine hundred tons' burden, and is described as one of the finest ships afloat. There were twelve Franciscans and eight Jesuits, besides other ecclesiastics; and many knights of Galicia, Biscay, and the Asturias bore part in the expedition. With a slight exception, the whole was at the Adelantado's charge. Within the first fourteen months, according to his admirer, Barcia, the adventure cost him a million ducats.
Before the close of the year, Sancho de Arciniega was commissioned to join Menendez with an additional force of fifteen hundred men.
Red-hot with a determined purpose, he would brook no delay. To him, says the chronicler, every day seemed a year. He was eager to anticipate Ribaut, of whose designs and whose force he seems to have been informed to the minutest particular, but whom he hoped to thwart and ruin by gaining Fort Caroline before him. With eleven ships, then, he sailed from Cadiz on the 29th of June, 1565, leaving the smaller vessels of his fleet to follow with what speed they might. He touched first at the Canaries, and on the eighth of July left them, steering for Dominica. A minute account of the voyage has come down to us from the pen of Mendoza, chaplain of the expedition, a somewhat dull and illiterate person, who busily jots down the incidents of each passing day, and is constantly betraying, with a certain awkward simplicity, how the cares of this world and the next jostle each other in his thoughts.
On Friday, the twentieth of July, a storm fell upon them with appalling fury. The pilots lost head, the sailors gave themselves up to their terrors. Throughout the night, they beset Mendoza for confession and absolution, a boon not easily granted, for the seas swept the crowded decks in cataracts of foam, and the shriekings of the gale in the rigging drowned the exhortations of the half-drowned priest. Cannon, cables, spars, water-casks, were thrown overboard, and the chests of the sailors would have followed, had not the latter, despite their fright, raised such a howl of remonstrance that the order was revoked. At length day dawned. At least there was light to die by. Plunging, reeling, half submerged, quivering under the crashing shock of the seas, whose mountain ridges rolled down upon her before the gale, the ship lay in deadly jeopardy from Friday till Monday noon. Then the storm abated; the sun broke forth; and again she held her course.
They reached Dominica on Sunday, the fifth of August. The chaplain tells us how he went on shore to refresh himself,—how, while his Italian servant washed his linen at a brook, he strolled along the beach and picked up shells,—and how he was scared, first, by a prodigious turtle, and next by a vision of the cannibal natives, which caused his prompt retreat to the boats.
On the tenth, they anchored in the harbor of Porto Rico, where they found two of their companion-ships, from which they had parted in the storm. One of them was the San Pelayo, with Menendez on board. Mendoza informs us that in the evening the officers came on board his ship, when he, the chaplain, regaled them with sweetmeats, and that Menendez invited him not only to supper that night, but to dinner the next day, "for the which I thanked him, as reason was," says the gratified churchman.
Here thirty men deserted, and three priests also ran off, of which Mendoza bitterly complains, as increasing his own work. The motives of the clerical truants may perhaps be inferred from a worldly temptation to which the chaplain himself was subjected. "I was offered the service of a chapel where I should have got a peso for every mass I said, the whole year round; but I did not accept it, for fear that what I hear said of the other three would be said of me. Besides, it is not a place where one can hope for any great advancement, and I wished to try whether, in refusing a benefice for the love of the Lord, He will not repay me with some other stroke of fortune before the end of the voyage; for it is my aim to serve God and His blessed Mother."
The original design had been to rendezvous at Havana, but, with the Adelantado, the advantages of despatch outweighed every other consideration. He resolved to push directly for Florida. Five of his scattered ships had by this time rejoined company, comprising, exclusive of officers, a force of about five hundred soldiers, two hundred sailors, and one hundred colonists. Bearing northward, he advanced by an unknown and dangerous course along the coast of Hayti and through the intricate passes of the Bahamas. On the night of the twenty-sixth, the San Pelayo struck three times on the shoals; "but," says the chaplain, "inasmuch as our enterprise was undertaken for the sake of Christ and His blessed Mother, two heavy seas struck her abaft, and set her afloat again."
At length the ships lay becalmed in the Bahama Channel, slumbering on the dead and glassy sea, torpid with the heats of a West-Indian August. Menendez called a council of the commanders. There was doubt and indecision. Perhaps Ribaut had already reached the French fort, and then to attack the united force would be a stroke of desperation. Far better to await their lagging comrades. But the Adelantado was of another mind; and, even had his enemy arrived, he was resolved that he should have no time to fortify himself.
"It is God's will," he said, "that our victory should be due, not to our numbers, but to His all-powerful aid. Therefore has He stricken us with tempests and scattered our ships." And he gave his voice for instant advance.
There was much dispute; even the chaplain remonstrated; but nothing could bend the iron will of Menendez. Nor was a sign of celestial approval wanting. At nine in the evening, a great meteor burst forth in mid-heaven, and, blazing like the sun, rolled westward towards the Floridian coast. The fainting spirits of the crusaders were kindled anew. Diligent preparation was begun. Prayers and masses were said; and, that the temporal arm might not be wanting, the men were daily practised on deck in shooting at marks, in order, says the chronicle, that the recruits might learn not to be afraid of their guns.
The dead calm continued. "We were all very tired," says the chaplain, "and I above all, with praying to God for a fair wind. To-day, at about two in the afternoon, He took pity on us, and sent us a breeze." Before night they saw land,—the faint line of forest, traced along the watery horizon, that marked the coast of Florida. But where in all this vast monotony was the lurking-place of the French? Menendez anchored, and sent fifty men ashore, who presently found a band of Indians in the woods, and gained from them the needed information. He stood northward, till, on the afternoon of Tuesday, the fourth of September, he descried four ships anchored near the mouth of a river. It was the river St. John's, and the ships were four of Ribaut's squadron. The prey was in sight. The Spaniards prepared for battle, and bore down upon the Lutherans; for, with them, all reformers alike were branded with the name of the arch-heretic. Slowly, before the faint breeze, the ships glided on their way; but while, excited and impatient, the fierce crews watched the decreasing space, and while they were still three leagues from their prize, the air ceased to stir, the sails flapped against the mast, a black cloud with thunder rose above the coast, and the warm rain of the South descended on the breathless sea. It was dark before the wind moved again, and the ships resumed their course. At half past eleven they reached the French. The San Pelayo slowly moved to windward of Ribaut's flag-ship, the Trinity, and anchored very near her. The other ships took similar stations. While these preparations were making, a work of two hours, the men labored in silence, and the French, thronging their gangways, looked on in equal silence. "Never, since I came into the world," writes the chaplain, "did I know such a stillness."
It was broken, at length, by a trumpet from the deck of the San Pelayo. A French trumpet answered. Then Menendez, "with much courtesy," says his Spanish eulogist, demanded, "Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"
"From France," was the reply.
"What are you doing here?" pursued the Adelantado.
"Bringing soldiers and supplies for a fort which the King of France has in this country, and for many others which he soon will have."
"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"
Many voices cried together, "Lutherans, of the new religion"; then, in their turn, they demanded who Menendez was, and whence he came. The latter answered,—
"I am Pedro Menendez, General of the fleet of the King of Spain, Don Philip the Second, who have come to this country to hang and behead all Lutherans whom I shall find by land or sea, according to instructions from my King, so precise that I have power to pardon none whomsoever; and these commands I shall fulfil, as you shall know. At daybreak I shall board your ships, and if I find there any Catholic, he shall be well treated; but every heretic shall die."
The French with one voice raised a cry of wrath and defiance.
"If you are a brave man, don't wait till day. Come on now, and see what you will get!"
And they assailed the Adelantado with a shower of scoffs and insults.
Menendez broke into a rage, and gave the order to board. The men slipped the cables, and the sullen black hulk of the San Pelayo drifted down upon the Trinity. The French by no means made good their defiance. Indeed, they were incapable of resistance, Ribaut with his soldiers being ashore at Fort Caroline. They cut their cables, left their anchors, made sail, and fled. The Spaniards fired, the French replied. The other Spanish ships had imitated the movement of the San Pelayo; "but," writes the chaplain, Mendoza, "these devils run mad are such adroit sailors, and manœuvred so well, that we did not catch one of them." Pursuers and pursued ran out to sea, firing useless volleys at each other.
In the morning Menendez gave over the chase, turned, and, with the San Pelayo alone, ran back for the St. John's. But here a welcome was prepared for him. He saw bands of armed men drawn up on the beach, and the smaller vessels of Ribaut's squadron, which had crossed the bar several days before, anchored behind it to oppose his landing. He would not venture an attack, but, steering southward, skirted the coast till he came to an inlet which he named St. Augustine.
Here he found three of his ships, already debarking their troops, guns, and stores. Two officers, Patiño and Vicente, had taken possession of the dwelling of Seloy, an Indian chief, a huge barn-like structure, strongly framed of entire trunks of trees, and thatched with palmetto-leaves. Around it they were throwing up intrenchments of fascines and sand. Gangs of negroes, with pick, shovel, and spade, were toiling at the work. Such was the birth of St. Augustine, the oldest town of the United States, and such the introduction of slave-labor upon their soil.
On the eighth, Menendez took formal possession of his domain. Cannon were fired, trumpets sounded, and banners displayed, as, at the head of his officers and nobles, he landed in state. Mendoza, crucifix in hand, came to meet him, chanting, "Te Deum laudamus," while the Adelantado and all his company, kneeling, kissed the cross, and the congregated Indians gazed in silent wonder.
Meanwhile the tenants of Fort Caroline were not idle. Two or three soldiers, strolling along the beach in the afternoon, had first seen the Spanish ships and hastily summoned Ribaut. He came down to the mouth of the river, followed by an anxious and excited crowd; but, as they strained their eyes through the darkness, they could see nothing but the flashes of the distant guns. The returning light showed them at length, far out at sea, the Adelantado in hot chase of their flying comrades. Pursuers and pursued were soon out of sight. The drums beat to arms. After many hours of suspense, the San Pelayo reappeared, hovering about the mouth of the river, then bearing away towards the south. More anxious hours ensued, when three other sail came in sight, and they recognized three of their own returning ships. Communication was opened, a boat's crew landed, and they learned from Captain Cosette, that, confiding in the speed of his ship, he had followed the Spaniards to St. Augustine, reconnoitred their position, and seen them land their negroes and intrench themselves.
In his chamber at Fort Caroline, Laudonnière lay sick in bed, when Ribaut entered, and with him La Grange, Ste. Marie, Ottigny, Yonville, and other officers. At the bedside of the displaced commandant they held their council of war. There were three alternatives: first, to remain where they were and fortify; next, to push overland for St. Augustine, and attack the invaders in their intrenchments; and, finally, to embark, and assail them by sea. The first plan would leave their ships a prey to the Spaniards; and so too, in all likelihood, would the second, besides the uncertainties of an overland march through an unknown wilderness. By sea, the distance was short and the route explored. By a sudden blow they could capture or destroy the Spanish ships, and master the troops on shore before their reinforcements could arrive, and before they had time to complete their defences.
Such were the views of Ribaut, with which, not unnaturally, Laudonnière finds fault, and Le Moyne, judging by results, echoes the censures of his chief. And yet the plan seems as well-conceived as it was bold, lacking nothing but success. The Spaniards, stricken with terror, owed their safety to the elements, or, as they affirm, to the special interposition of the Holy Virgin. Let us be just to Menendez. He was a leader fit to stand with Cortés and Pizarro; but he was matched with a man as cool, skilful, prompt, and daring as himself. The traces that have come down to us indicate, in Ribaut, one far above the common stamp: "a distinguished man, of many high qualities," as even the fault-finding Le Moyne calls him, devout after the best spirit of the Reform, and with a human heart under his steel breastplate.
La Grange and other officers took part with Laudonnière and opposed the plan of an attack by sea; but Ribaut's conviction was unshaken, and the order was given. All his own soldiers fit for duty embarked in haste, and with them went La Caille, Arlac, and, as it seems, Ottigny, with the best of Laudonnière's men. Even Le Moyne, though wounded in the fight with Outina's warriors, went on board to bear his part in the fray, and would have sailed with the rest, had not Ottigny, seeing his disabled condition, ordered him back to the fort.
On the tenth, the ships, crowded with troops, set sail. Ribaut was gone, and with him the pith and sinew of the colony. The miserable remnant watched his receding sails with dreary foreboding, a foreboding which seemed but too just, when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than the Indians had ever known, howled through the forest and lashed the ocean into fury, Most forlorn was the plight of these exiles, left, it might be, the prey of a band of ferocious bigots more terrible than the fiercest hordes of the wilderness. And when night closed on the stormy river and the gloomy waste of pines, what dreams of terror may not have haunted the helpless women who crouched under the hovels of Fort Caroline!
The fort was in a ruinous state, the palisade on the water side broken down, and three breaches in the rampart. In the driving rain, urged by the sick Laudonnière, the men, bedrenched and disheartened, labored as they might to strengthen their defences. Their muster-roll shows but a beggarly array. "Now," says Laudonnière, "let them which have bene bold to say that I had men ynongh left me, so that I had meanes to defend my selfe, give care a little now vnto mee, and if they have eyes in their heads, let them see what men I had." Of Ribaut's followers left at the fort, only nine or ten had weapons, while only two or three knew how to use them. Four of them were boys, who kept Ribaut's dogs, and another was his cook. Besides these, he had left a brewer, an old crossbow-maker, two shoemakers, a player on the spinet, four valets, a carpenter of threescore—Challeux, no doubt, who has left us the story of his woes,—and a crowd of women, children, and eighty-six camp-followers. To these were added the remnant of Laudonnière's men, of whom seventeen could bear arms, the rest being sick or disabled by wounds received in the fight with Outina.
Laudonnière divided his force, such as it was, into two watches, over which he placed two officers, St. Cler and La Vigne, gave them lanterns to go the rounds, and an hour-glass to set the time; while he himself, giddy with weakness and fever, was every night at the guard-room.
It was the night of the nineteenth of September; floods of rain bedrenched the sentries on the rampart, and as day dawned on the dripping barracks and deluged parade, the storm increased in violence. What enemy could have ventured forth on such a night? La Vigne, who had the watch, took pity on the sentries and on himself, dismissed them, and went to his quarters. He little knew what mortal energies, urged by ambition, avarice, bigotry, desperation, will dare and do.
To return to the Spaniards at St. Augustine. On the morning of the eleventh, the crew of one of their smaller vessels, lying outside the bar, saw through the twilight of early dawn two of Ribaut's ships close upon them. Not a breath of air was stirring. There was no escape, and the Spaniards fell on their knees in supplication to Our Lady of Utrera, explaining to her that the heretics were upon them, and begging her to send them a little wind. "Forthwith," says Mendoza, "one would have said that Our Lady herself came down upon the vessel." A wind sprang up, and the Spaniards found refuge behind the bar. The returning day showed to their astonished eyes all the ships of Ribaut, their decks black with men, hovering off the entrance of the port; but Heaven had them in its charge, and again they experienced its protecting care. The breeze sent by Our Lady of Utrera rose to a gale, then to a furious tempest; and the grateful Adelantado saw through rack and mist the ships of his enemy tossed wildly among the raging waters as they struggled to gain an offing. With exultation at his heart the skilful seaman read their danger, and saw them in his mind's eye dashed to utter wreck among the sand-bars and breakers of the lee-shore.
A bold thought seized him. He would march overland with five hundred men and attack Fort Caroline while its defenders were absent. First he ordered a mass; then he called a council. Doubtless, it was in that great Indian lodge of Seloy, where he had made his head-quarters; and here, in this dim and smoky concave, nobles, officers, priests, gathered at his summons. There were fears and doubts and murmurings, but Menendez was desperate. Not the mad desperation that strikes wildly and at random, but the still red heat that melts and burns and seethes with a steady, unquenchable fierceness. "Comrades," he said, "the time has come to show our courage and our zeal. This is God's war, and we must not flinch. It is a war with Lutherans, and we must wage it with blood and fire."
But his hearers would not respond. They had not a million of ducats at stake, and were nowise ready for a cast so desperate. A clamor of remonstrance rose from the circle. Many voices, that of Mendoza among the rest, urged waiting till their main forces should arrive. The excitement spread to the men without, and the swarthy, black-bearded crowd broke into tumults mounting almost to mutiny, while an officer was heard to say that he would not go on such a hare-brained errand to be butchered like a beast. But nothing could move the Adelantado. His appeals or his threats did their work at last; the confusion was quelled, and preparation was made for the march.
Five hundred arquebusiers and pikemen were drawn up before the camp.
To each was given a sack of bread and a flagon of wine. Two Indians and a renegade Frenchman, called François Jean, were to guide them, and twenty Biscayan axe-men moved to the front to clear the way. Through floods of driving rain, a hoarse voice shouted the word of command, and the sullen march began.
With dire misgiving, Mendoza watched the last files as they vanished in the tempestuous forest. Two days of suspense ensued, when a messenger came back with a letter from the Adelantado announcing that he had nearly reached the French fort, and that on the morrow, September twentieth, at sunrise, he hoped to assault it. "May the Divine Majesty deign to protect us, for He knows that we have need of it," writes the scared chaplain; "the Adelantado's great zeal and courage make us hope he will succeed, but for the good of His Majesty's service he ought to be a little less ardent in pursuing his schemes."
Meanwhile the five hundred had pushed their march through forest and quagmire, through swollen streams and inundated savannas, toiling knee-deep through mud, rushes, and the rank, tangled grass,—hacking their way through thickets of the yucca or Spanish bayonet, with its clumps of dagger-like leaves, or defiling in gloomy procession through the drenched forest, to the moan, roar, and howl of the storm-racked pines. As they bent before the tempest, the water trickling from the rusty headpiece crept clammy and cold betwixt the armor and the skin; and when they made their wretched bivouac, their bed was the spongy soil, and the exhaustless clouds their tent.
The night of Wednesday, the nineteenth, found their vanguard in a deep forest of pines, less than a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low hills which extended in its rear, and formed a continuation of St. John's Bluff. All around was one great morass. In pitchy darkness, knee-deep in weeds and water, half starved, worn with toil and lack of sleep, drenched to the skin, their provision spoiled, their ammunition wet, their spirit chilled out of them, they stood in shivering groups, cursing the enterprise and the author of it. Menendez heard an ensign say aloud to his comrades,—
"This Asturian corito, who knows no more of war on shore than an ass, has ruined us all. By ——, if my advice had been followed, he would have had his deserts the day he set out on this cursed journey!"
The Adelantado pretended not to hear.
Two hours before dawn he called his officers about him. All night, he said, he had been praying to God and the Virgin.
"Señores, what shall we resolve on? Our ammunition and provisions are gone. Our case is desperate." And he urged a bold rush on the fort.
But men and officers alike were disheartened and disgusted. They listened coldly and sullenly; many were for returning at every risk; none were in a mood for fight. Menendez put forth all his eloquence, till at length the dashed spirits of his followers were so far rekindled that they consented to follow him.
All fell on their knees in the marsh; then, rising, they formed their ranks and began to advance, guided by the renegade Frenchman, whose hands, to make sure of him, were tied behind his back. Groping and stumbling in the dark among trees, roots, and underbrush, buffeted by wind and rain, and slashed in the face by the recoiling boughs which they could not see, they soon lost their way, fell into confusion, and came to a stand, in a mood more savagely desponding than before. But soon a glimmer of returning day came to their aid, and showed them the dusky sky, and the dark columns of the surrounding pines. Menendez ordered the men forward on pain of death. They obeyed, and presently, emerging from the forest, could dimly discern the ridge of a low hill, behind which, the Frenchman told them, was the fort. Menendez, with a few officers and men, cautiously mounted to the top. Beneath lay Fort Caroline, three gunshots distant; but the rain, the imperfect light, and a cluster of intervening houses prevented his seeing clearly, and he sent two officers to reconnoitre. Descending, they met a solitary Frenchman, a straggler from the fort. They knocked him down with a sheathed sword, took him prisoner, then stabbed him in cold blood. This done, and their observations made, they returned to the top of the hill, behind which, clutching their weapons in fierce expectancy, all the gang stood waiting.
"Santiago!" cried Menendez. "At them! God is with us!"
And, shouting their hoarse war-cries, the Spaniards rushed down the slope like starved wolves.
Not a sentry was on the rampart. La Vigne, the officer of the guard, had just gone to his quarters, but a trumpeter, who chanced to remain, saw, through sheets of rain, the black swarm of assailants sweeping down the hill. He blew the alarm, and at his shrill summons a few half-naked soldiers ran wildly out of the barracks. It was too late. Through the breaches, over the ramparts, the Spaniards came pouring in.
"Santiago! Santiago! Down with the Lutherans!"
Sick men leaped from their beds. Women and children, blind with fright, darted shrieking from the houses. A fierce gaunt visage, the thrust of a pike or blow of a rusty halberd,—such was the greeting that met all alike. Laudonnière snatched his sword and target, and ran towards the principal breach, calling to his soldiers. A rush of Spaniards met him; his men were cut down around him; and he, with a soldier named Bartholomew, was forced back into the courtyard of his house. Here a tent was pitched, and as the pursuers stumbled among the cords, he escaped behind Ottigny's house, sprang through the breach in the western rampart, and fled for the woods.
Le Moyne had been one of the guard. Scarcely had he thrown himself into a hammock which was slung in his room, when a savage shout, and a wild uproar of shrieks, outcries, and the clash of weapons, brought him to his feet. He rushed past two Spaniards in the door-way, ran behind the guard-house leaped through an embrasure into the ditch, and escaped to the forest.
Challeux, the carpenter, was going betimes to his work, a chisel in his hand. He was old, but pike and partisan brandished at his back gave wings to his flight. In the ecstasy of his terror, he leaped upward at the top of the palisade, and, clutching it, threw himself over with the agility of a boy. He ran up the hill, no one pursuing, and as he neared the edge of the forest, turned and looked back. From the high ground where he stood he could see the butchery, the fury of the conquerors, the agonized gestures of the victims. He turned again in horror, and plunged into the woods. As he tore his way through the briers and thickets, he met several fugitives, escaped like himself. Others presently came up, haggard and wild, like men broke loose from the jaws of fate. They gathered and consulted together. One of them, in great repute for his knowledge of the Bible, was for returning and surrendering to the Spaniards. "They are men," he said; "perhaps when their fury is over they will spare our lives, and even if they kill us, it will only be a few moments' pain. Better so than to starve here in the woods or be torn to pieces by wild beasts."
The greater part of the naked and despairing company assented, but Challeux was of a different mind. The old Huguenot quoted Scripture, and called up the names of prophets and apostles to witness, that, in direst extremity, God would not abandon those who rested their faith in Him. Six of the fugitives, however, still held to their desperate purpose. Issuing from the woods, they descended towards the fort, and as with beating hearts their comrades watched the result, a troop of Spaniards rushed forth, hewed them down with swords and halberds, and dragged their bodies to the brink of the river, where the victims of the massacre were already flung in heaps.
Le Moyne, with a soldier named Grandchemin, whom he had met in his flight, toiled all day through the woods, in the hope of reaching the small vessels anchored behind the bar. Night found them in a morass. No vessels could be seen, and the soldier, in despair, broke into angry upbraidings against his companion,—saying that he would go back and give himself up. Le Moyne at first opposed him, then yielded. But when they drew near the fort, and heard the howl of savage revelry that rose from within, the artist's heart failed him. He embraced his companion, and the soldier advanced alone. A party of Spaniards came out to meet him. He kneeled, and begged for his life. He was answered by a death-blow; and the horrified Le Moyne, from his hiding-place in the thickets, saw his limbs hacked apart, thrust on pikes, and borne off in triumph.
Meanwhile, Menendez, mustering his followers, had offered thanks to God for their victory; and this pious butcher wept with emotion as he recounted the favors which Heaven had showered upon their enterprise. His admiring historian gives it in proof of his humanity, that, after the rage of the assault was spent, he ordered that women, infants, and boys under fifteen should thenceforth be spared. Of these, by his own account, there were about fifty. Writing in October to the King, he says that they cause him great anxiety, since he fears the anger of God, should he now put them to death, while, on the other hand, he is in dread lest the venom of their heresy should infect his men.
A hundred and forty-two persons were slain in and around the fort, and their bodies lay heaped together on the shore. Nearly opposite was anchored a small vessel, called the Pearl, commanded by James Ribaut, son of the Admiral. The ferocious soldiery, maddened with victory and drunk with blood, crowded to the beach, shouting insults to those on board, mangling the corpses, tearing out their eyes, and throwing them towards the vessel from the points of their daggers. Thus did the Most Catholic Philip champion the cause of Heaven in the New World.
It was currently believed in France, and, though no eye-witness attests it, there is reason to think it true, that among those murdered at Fort Caroline there were some who died a death of peculiar ignominy. Menendez, it is affirmed, hanged his prisoners on trees, and placed over them the inscription, "I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans."
The Spaniards gained a great booty: armor, clothing, and provision. "Nevertheless," says the devout Mendoza, after closing his inventory of the plunder, "the greatest profit of this victory is the triumph which our Lord has granted us, whereby His holy gospel will be introduced into this country, a thing so needful for saving so many souls from perdition." Again, he writes in his journal,—"We owe to God and His Mother, more than to human strength, this victory over the adversaries of the holy Catholic religion."
To whatever influence, celestial or other, the exploit may best be ascribed, the victors were not yet quite content with their success. Two small French vessels, besides that of James Ribaut, still lay within range of the fort. When the storm had a little abated, the cannon were turned on them. One of them was sunk, but Ribaut, with the others, escaped down the river, at the mouth of which several light craft, including that bought from the English, had been anchored since the arrival of his father's squadron.
While this was passing, the wretched fugitives were flying from the scene of massacre through a tempest, of whose pertinacious violence all the narratives speak with wonder. Exhausted, starved, half-clothed,—for most of them had escaped in their shirts,—they pushed their toilsome way amid the ceaseless howl of the elements. A few sought refuge in Indian villages; but these, it is said, were afterwards killed by the Spaniards. The greater number attempted to reach the vessels at the mouth of the river. Of the latter was Le Moyne, who, despite his former failure, was toiling through the maze of tangled forests when he met a Belgian soldier with the woman described as Laudonnière's maid-servant, the latter wounded in the breast, and, urging their flight towards the vessels, they fell in with other fugitives, among them Laudonnière himself. As they struggled through the salt-marsh, the rank sedge cut their naked limbs, and the tide rose to their waists. Presently they descried others, toiling like themselves through the matted vegetation, and recognized Challeux and his companions, also in quest of the vessels. The old man still, as he tells us, held fast to his chisel, which had done good service in cutting poles to aid the party to cross the deep creeks that channelled the morass. The united band, twenty-six in all, were relieved at length by the sight of a moving sail. It was the vessel of Captain Mallard, who, informed of the massacre, was standing along-shore in the hope of picking up some of the fugitives. He saw their signals, and sent boats to their rescue; but such was their exhaustion, that, had not the sailors, wading to their armpits among the rushes, borne them out on their shoulders, few could have escaped. Laudonnière was so feeble that nothing but the support of a soldier, who held him upright in his arms, had saved him from drowning in the marsh.
Gaining the friendly decks, the fugitives counselled together. One and all, they sickened for the sight of France.
After waiting a few days, and saving a few more stragglers from the marsh, they prepared to sail. Young Ribaut, though ignorant of his father's fate, assented with something more than willingness; indeed, his behavior throughout had been stamped with weakness and poltroonery. On the twenty-fifth of September, they put to sea in two vessels; and, after a voyage whose privations were fatal to many of them, they arrived, one party at Rochelle, the other at Swansea, in Wales.
In suspense and fear, hourly looking seaward for the dreaded fleet of John Ribaut, the chaplain Mendoza and his brother priests held watch and ward at St. Augustine, in the Adelantado's absence. Besides the celestial guardians whom they ceased not to invoke, they had as protectors Bartholomew Menendez, the brother of the Adelantado, and about a hundred soldiers. Day and night, the latter toiled to throw up earthworks and strengthen their position.
A week elapsed, when they saw a man running towards their fort, shouting as he ran.
Mendoza went out to meet him.
"Victory! Victory!" gasped the breathless messenger. "The French fort is ours!" And he flung his arms about the chaplain's neck.
"To-day," writes the latter in his journal, "Monday, the twenty-fourth, came our good general himself, with fifty soldiers, very tired, like all those who were with him. As soon as they told me he was coming, I ran to my lodging, took a new cassock, the best I had, put on my surplice, and went out to meet him with a crucifix in my hand; whereupon he, like a gentleman and a good Christian, kneeled down with all his followers, and gave the Lord a thousand thanks for the great favors he had received from Him."
In solemn procession, four priests in front chanting the Te Deum, the victors entered St. Augustine in triumph.
On the twenty-eighth, when the weary Adelantado was taking his siesta under the sylvan roof of Seloy, a troop of Indians came in with news that quickly roused him from his slumbers. They had seen a French vessel wrecked on the coast towards the south. Those who escaped from her were some four leagues off, on the banks of a river or arm of the sea, which they could not cross.
Menendez instantly sent forty or fifty men in boats to reconnoitre. Next, he called the chaplain,—for he would fain have him at his elbow to countenance the devilish deeds he meditated,—and embarked, with him, twelve soldiers, and two Indian guides, in another boat. They rowed along the channel between Anastasia Island and the main shore; then landed, struck across the country on foot, traversed plains and marshes, readied the sea towards night, and searched along-shore till ten o'clock to find their comrades who had gone before. At length, with mutual joy, the two parties met, and bivouacked together on the sands. Not far distant they could see lights. They were the camp-fires of the shipwrecked French.
And now, to relate the fortunes of these unhappy men. To do so with precision is impossible, for henceforward the French narratives are no longer the narratives of eye-witnesses.
It has been seen how, when on the point of assailing the Spaniards of St. Augustine, John Ribaut was thwarted by a gale which the former hailed as a divine interposition. The gale rose to a tempest of strange fury. Within a few days, all the French ships were cast on shore, the greater number near Cape Canaveral. According to the letter of Menendez, many of those on board were lost, but others affirm that all escaped but the captain, La Grange, an officer of high merit, who was washed from a floating mast. One of the ships was wrecked at a point farther northward than the rest, and it was her company whose camp-fires were seen by the Spaniards at their bivouac among the sands of Anastasia Island. They were endeavoring to reach Fort Caroline, of whose fate they knew nothing, while Ribaut with the remainder was farther southward, struggling through the wilderness towards the same goal. What befell the latter will appear hereafter. Of the fate of the former party there is no French record. What we know of it is due to three Spanish writers, Mendoza, Doctor Solis de las Meras, and Menendez himself. Solis was a priest, and brother-in-law to Menendez. Like Mendoza, he minutely describes what he saw, and, like him, was a red-hot zealot, lavishing applause on the darkest deeds of his chief. Before me lie the long despatches, now first brought to light from the archives of Seville, which Menendez sent from Florida to the King, a cool record of atrocities never surpassed, and inscribed on the back with the royal indorsement,—"Say to him that he has done well."
When the Adelantado saw the French fires in the distance, he lay close in his bivouac, and sent two soldiers to reconnoitre. At two in the morning they came back and reported that it was impossible to get at the enemy, since they were on the farther side of an arm of the sea, probably Matanzas Inlet. Menendez, however, gave orders to march, and before daybreak reached the hither bank, where he hid his men in a bushy hollow. Thence, as it grew light, they could discern the enemy, many of whom were searching along the sands and shallows for shell-fish, for they were famishing. A thought struck Menendez, an inspiration, says Mendoza, of the Holy Spirit. He put on the clothes of a sailor, entered a boat which had been brought to the spot, and rowed towards the shipwrecked men, the better to learn their condition. A Frenchman swam out to meet him. Menendez demanded what men they were.
"Followers of Ribaut," answered the swimmer, "Viceroy of the King of France."
"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"
"All Lutherans."
A brief dialogue ensued, during which the Adelantado declared his name and character. The Frenchman swam back to his companions, but soon returned, and asked safe conduct for his captain and four other gentlemen who wished to hold conference with the Spanish general. Menendez gave his word for their safety, and, returning to the shore, sent his boat to bring them over. On their landing, he met them very courteously. His followers were kept at a distance, so disposed behind hills and clumps of bushes as to give an exaggerated idea of their force,—a precaution the more needful as they were only about sixty in number, while the French, says Solis, were above two hundred, though Menendez declares that they did not exceed a hundred and forty. The French officer told him the story of their shipwreck, and begged him to lend them a boat to aid them in crossing the rivers which lay between them and a fort of their King, whither they were making their way.
Then came again the ominous question,—
"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"
"We are Lutherans."
"Gentlemen," pursued Menendez, "your fort is taken, and all in it put to the sword." And in proof of his declaration he caused articles plundered from Fort Caroline to be shown to the unhappy petitioners. He then left them, to breakfast with his officers, first ordering food to be placed before them. His repast over, he returned to them.
"Are you convinced now," he asked, "that what I have told you is true?"
The French captain assented, and implored him to lend them ships in which to return home. Menendez answered, that he would do so willingly, if they were Catholics, and if he had ships to spare, but he had none. The supplicants then expressed the hope, that, at least, they and their followers would be allowed to remain with the Spaniards till ships could be sent to their relief, since there was peace between the two nations, whose kings were friends and brothers.
"All Catholics," retorted the Spaniard, "I will befriend; but as you are of the New Sect, I hold you as enemies, and wage deadly war against you; and this I will do with all cruelty [crueldad] in this country, where I command as Viceroy and Captain-General for my King. I am here to plant the holy gospel, that the Indians may be enlightened and come to the knowledge of the holy Catholic faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Roman Church teaches it. If you will give up your arms and banners, and place yourselves at my mercy, you may do so, and I will act towards you as God shall give me grace. Do as you will, for other than this you can have neither truce nor friendship with me."
Such were the Adelantado's words, as reported by a by-stander, his admiring brother-in-law; and that they contain an implied assurance of mercy has been held, not only by Protestants, but by Catholics and Spaniards. The report of Menendez himself is more brief and sufficiently equivocal:—
"I answered, that they could give up their arms and place themselves under my mercy,—that I should do with them what our Lord should order; and from that I did not depart, nor would I, unless God our Lord should otherwise inspire."
One of the Frenchmen recrossed to consult with his companions. In two hours he returned, and offered fifty thousand ducats to secure their lives; but Menendez, says his brother-in-law, would give no pledges. On the other hand, expressions in his own despatches point to the inference that a virtual pledge was given, at least to certain individuals.
The starving French saw no resource but to yield themselves to his mercy. The boat was again sent across the river. It returned, laden with banners, arquebuses, swords, targets, and helmets. The Adelantado ordered twenty soldiers to bring over the prisoners by tens at a time. He then took the French officers aside behind a ridge of sand, two gunshots from the bank. Here, with courtesy on his lips and murder reeking at his heart, he said,—
"Gentlemen, I have but few men, and you are so many, that, if you were free, it would be easy for you to take your satisfaction on us for the people we killed when we took your fort. Therefore it is necessary that you should go to my camp, four leagues from this place, with your hands tied."
Accordingly, as each party landed, they were led out of sight behind the sand-hill, and their hands tied at their backs with the match-cords of the arquebuses,—though not before each had been supplied with food. The whole day passed before all were brought together, bound and helpless, under the eye of the inexorable Adelantado. But now Mendoza interposed. "I was a priest," he says, "and had the bowels of a man." He asked, that, if there were Christians, that is to say Catholics, among the prisoners, they should be set apart. Twelve Breton sailors professed themselves to be such; and these, together with four carpenters and calkers, "of whom," writes Menendez, "I was in great need," were put on board the boat and sent to St. Augustine. The rest were ordered to march thither by land.
The Adelantado walked in advance till he came to a lonely spot, not far distant, deep among the bush-covered hills. Here he stopped, and with his cane drew a line in the sand. The sun was set when the captive Huguenots, with their escort, reached the fatal goal thus marked out. And now let the curtain drop; for here, in the name of Heaven, the hounds of hell were turned loose, and the savage soldiery, like wolves in a sheepfold, rioted in slaughter. Of all that wretched company, not one was left alive.
"I had their hands tied behind their backs," writes the chief criminal, "and themselves passed under the knife. It appeared to me, that, by thus chastising them, God our Lord and your Majesty were served; whereby in future they will leave us more free from their evil sect, to plant the gospel in these parts."
Again Menendez returned triumphant to St. Augustine, and behind him marched his band of butchers, steeped in blood to the elbows, but still unsated. Great as had been his success, he still had cause for anxiety. There was ill news of his fleet. Some of the ships were lost, others scattered, or lagging tardily on their way. Of his whole force, but a fraction had reached Florida, and of this a large part was still at Fort Caroline. Ribaut could not be far off; and whatever might be the condition of his shipwrecked company, their numbers would make them formidable, unless taken at advantage. Urged by fear and fortified by fanaticism, Menendez had well begun his work of slaughter; but rest for him there was none; a darker deed was behind.
On the next day, Indians came with the tidings that at the spot where the French had been found was now another party, still larger. This murder-loving race looked with great respect on Menendez for his wholesale butchery of the night before,—an exploit rarely equalled in their own annals of massacre. On his part, he doubted not that Ribaut was at hand. Marching with a hundred and fifty men, he reached the inlet at midnight, and again, like a savage, ambushed himself on the bank. Day broke, and he could plainly see the French on the farther side. They had made a raft, which lay in the water, ready for crossing. Menendez and his men showed themselves, when, forthwith, the French displayed their banners, sounded drums and trumpets, and set their sick and starving ranks in array of battle. But the Adelantado, regardless of this warlike show, ordered his men to seat themselves at breakfast, while he with three officers walked unconcernedly along the shore. His coolness had its effect. The French blew a trumpet of parley, and showed a white flag. The Spaniards replied. A Frenchman came out upon the raft, and, shouting across the water, asked that a Spanish envoy should be sent over.
"You have a raft," was the reply; "come yourselves."
An Indian canoe lay under the bank on the Spanish side. A French sailor swam to it, paddled back unmolested, and presently returned, bringing with him La Caille, Ribaut's sergeant-major. He told Menendez that the French were three hundred and fifty in all, on their way to Fort Caroline; and, like the officers of the former party, begged for boats to aid them in crossing the river.
"My brother," said Menendez, "go and tell your general, that, if he wishes to speak with me, he may come with four or six companions, and that I pledge my word he shall go back safe."
La Caille returned; and Ribaut, with eight gentlemen, soon came over in the canoe. Menendez met them courteously, caused wine and preserved fruits to be placed before them,—he had come with well-stocked larder on his errand of blood,—and next led Ribaut to the reeking Golgotha, where, in heaps upon the sands, lay the corpses of his slaughtered followers. Ribaut was prepared for the spectacle; La Caille had already seen it; but he would not believe that Fort Caroline was taken till a part of the plunder was shown him. Then, mastering his despair, he turned to the conqueror.
"What has befallen us," he said, "may one day befall you." And, urging that the kings of France and Spain were brothers and close friends, he begged, in the name of that friendship, that the Spaniard would aid him in conveying his followers home. Menendez gave him the same equivocal answer that he had given the former party, and Ribaut returned to consult with his officers. After three hours of absence, he came back in the canoe, and told the Adelantado that some of his people were ready to surrender at discretion, but that many refused.
"They can do as they please," was the reply.
In behalf of those who surrendered Ribaut offered a ransom of a hundred thousand ducats.
"It grieves me much," said Menendez, "that I cannot accept it; for I have great need of it."
Ribaut was much encouraged. Menendez could scarcely forego such a prize, and he thought, says the Spanish narrator, that the lives of his followers would now be safe. He asked to be allowed the night for deliberation, and at sunset recrossed the river. In the morning he reappeared among the Spaniards and reported that two hundred of his men had retreated from the spot, but that the remaining one hundred and fifty would surrender. At the same time he gave into the hands of Menendez the royal standard and other flags, with his sword, dagger, helmet, buckler, and his official seal, given him by Coligny. Menendez directed an officer to enter the boat and bring over the French by tens. He next led Ribaut among the bushes behind the neighboring sand-hill, and ordered his hands to be bound fast. Then the scales fell from the prisoner's eyes. Face to face his hideous fate rose up before him. He saw his followers and himself entrapped,—the dupe of words artfully framed to lure them to their ruin. The day wore on; and, as band after band of prisoners was brought over, they were led behind the sand-hill, out of sight from the farther shore, and bound like their general. At length the transit was complete. With bloodshot eyes and weapons bared, the fierce Spaniards closed around their victims.
"Are you Catholics or Lutherans? and is there any one among you who will go to confession?"
Ribaut answered,—
"I and all here are of the Reformed Faith."
And he recited the Psalm, "Domine, memento mei."
"We are of earth," he continued, "and to earth we must return; twenty years more or less can matter little"; and, turning to the Adelantado, he bade him do his will.
The stony-hearted bigot gave the signal; and those who will may paint to themselves the horrors of the scene. A few, however, were spared.
"I saved," writes Menendez, "the lives of two young gentlemen of about eighteen years of age, as well as of three others, the fifer, the drummer, and the trumpeter; and I caused Jean Ribaut with all the rest to be passed under the knife, judging this to be expedient for the service of God our Lord, and of your Majesty. And I consider it great good fortune that he (Jean Ribaut) should be dead, for the King of France could effect more with him and five hundred ducats than with other men and five thousand, and he would do more in one year than another in ten, for he was the most experienced sailor and naval commander ever known, and of great skill in this passage to the Indies and the coast of Florida. He was, besides, greatly liked in England, in which kingdom his reputation is such that he was appointed Captain-General of all the British fleet against the French Catholics in the war between England and France some years ago."
Such is the sum of the Spanish accounts,—the self-damning testimony of the author and abettors of the crime. A picture of lurid and awful coloring; and yet there is reason to believe that the truth was more hideous still. Among those spared was one Christophe le Breton, who was carried to Spain, escaped to France, and told his story to Challeux. Among those struck down in the carnage was a sailor of Dieppe, stunned and left for dead under a heap of corpses. In the night he revived, contrived to draw his knife, cut the cords that bound his hands, and make his way to an Indian village. The Indians, though not without reluctance, abandoned him to the Spaniards. The latter sold him as a slave; but on his way in fetters to Portugal, the ship was taken by the Huguenots, the sailor set free, and his story published in the narrative of Le Moyne. When the massacre was known in France, the friends and relatives of the victims sent to the King, Charles IX., a vehement petition for redress; and their memorial recounts many incidents of the tragedy. From these three sources is to be drawn the French version of the story. The following is its substance:—
Famished and desperate, the followers of Ribaut were toiling northward to seek refuge at Fort Caroline, when they found the Spaniards in their path. Some were filled with dismay; others, in their misery, almost hailed them as deliverers. La Caille, the sergeant-major, crossed the river. Menendez met him with a face of friendship, and protested that he would spare the lives of the shipwrecked men, sealing the promise with an oath, a kiss, and many signs of the cross. He even gave it in writing, under seal. Still, there were many among the French who would not place themselves in his power. The most credulous crossed the river in a boat. As each successive party landed, their hands were bound fast at their backs; and thus, except a few who were set apart, they were all driven towards the fort, like cattle to the shambles, with curses and scurrilous abuse. Then, at sound of drums and trumpets, the Spaniards fell upon them, striking them down with swords, pikes, and halberds. Ribaut vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his oath. By the latter's order, a soldier plunged a dagger into his heart; and Ottigny, who stood near, met a similar fate. Ribaut's beard was cut off, and portions of it sent in a letter to Philip II. His head was hewn into four parts, one of which was displayed on the point of a lance at each corner of Fort St. Augustine. Great fires were kindled, and the bodies of the murdered burned to ashes.
Such is the sum of the French accounts. The charge of breach of faith contained in them was believed by Catholics as well as Protestants, and it was as a defence against this charge that the narrative of the Adelantado's brother-in-law was published. That Ribaut, a man whose good sense and bravery were both reputed high, should have submitted himself and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety is scarcely credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a miscreant so savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim, current among the bigots of the day, that faith ought not to be kept with heretics.
It was night when the Adelantado again entered St. Augustine. Some there were who blamed his cruelty; but many applauded. "Even if the French had been Catholics,"—such was their language,—"he would have done right, for, with the little provision we have, they would all have starved; besides, there were so many of them that they would have cut our throats."
And now Menendez again addressed himself to the despatch, already begun, in which he recounts to the King his labors and his triumphs, a deliberate and business-like document, mingling narratives of butchery with recommendations for promotions, commissary details, and petitions for supplies; enlarging, too, on the vast schemes of encroachment which his successful generalship had brought to nought. The French, he says, had planned a military and naval depot at Los Martires, whence they would make a descent upon Havana, and another at the Bay of Ponce de Leon, whence they could threaten Vera Cruz. They had long been encroaching on Spanish rights at Newfoundland, from which a great arm of the sea—the St. Lawrence—would give them access to the Moluccas and other parts of the East Indies. Moreover, he adds in a later despatch, by this passage they may reach the mines of Zacatecas and St. Martin, as well as every part of the South Sea. And, as already mentioned, he urges immediate occupation of Chesapeake Bay, which, by its supposed water-communication with the St. Lawrence, would enable Spain to vindicate her rights, control the fisheries of Newfoundland, and thwart her rival in her vast designs of commercial and territorial aggrandizement. Thus did France and Spain dispute the possession of North America long before England became a party to the strife.
Some twenty days after Menendez returned to St. Augustine, the Indians, enamored of carnage, and exulting to see their invaders mowed down, came to tell him that on the coast southward, near Cape Canaveral, a great number of Frenchmen were intrenching themselves. They were those of Ribaut's party who had refused to surrender. Retreating to the spot where their ships had been cast ashore, they were endeavoring to build a vessel from the fragments of the wrecks.
In all haste Menendez despatched messengers to Fort Caroline,—named by him San Mateo,—ordering a reinforcement of a hundred and fifty men. In a few days they came. He added some of his own soldiers, and, with a united force of two hundred and fifty, set forth, as he tells us, on the second of November, pushing southward along the shore with such merciless energy that some of his men dropped dead with wading night and day through the loose sands. When, from behind their frail defences, the French saw the Spanish pikes and partisans glittering into view, they fled in a panic, and took refuge among the hills. Menendez sent a trumpet to summon them, pledging his honor for their safety. The commander and several others told the messenger that they would sooner be eaten by the savages than trust themselves to Spaniards; and, escaping, they fled to the Indian towns. The rest surrendered; and Menendez kept his word. The comparative number of his own men made his prisoners no longer dangerous. They were led back to St. Augustine, where, as the Spanish writer affirms, they were well treated. Those of good birth sat at the Adelantado's table, eating the bread of a homicide crimsoned with the slaughter of their comrades. The priests essayed their pious efforts, and, under the gloomy menace of the Inquisition, some of the heretics renounced their errors. The fate of the captives may be gathered from the indorsement, in the handwriting of the King, on the back of the despatch of Menendez of December twelfth.
"Say to him," writes Philip II., "that, as to those he has killed, he has done well, and as for those he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys."
Thus did Spain make good her claim to North America, and crush the upas of heresy in its germ. Within her bounds the tidings were hailed with acclamation, while in France a cry of horror and execration rose from the Huguenots, and found an echo even among the Catholics. But the weak and ferocious son of Catherine de Médicis gave no response. The victims were Huguenots, disturbers of the realm, followers of Coligny, the man above all others a thorn in his side. True, the enterprise was a national enterprise, undertaken at the national charge, with royal commission, and under the royal standard. True, it had been assailed in time of peace by a power professing the closest amity. Yet Huguenot influence, had prompted and Huguenot hands executed it. That influence had now ebbed low; Coligny's power had waned; and the Spanish party was ascendant. Charles IX., long vacillating, was fast subsiding into the deathly embrace of Spain, for whom, at last, on the bloody eve of St. Bartholomew, he was destined to become the assassin of his own best subjects.
In vain the relatives of the slain petitioned him for redress; and had the honor of the nation rested in the keeping of her king, the blood of hundreds of murdered Frenchmen would have cried from the ground in vain. But it was not so to be. Injured humanity found an avenger, and outraged France a champion. Her chivalrous annals may be searched in vain for a deed of more romantic daring than the vengeance of Dominic de Gourgue.
WEARINESS.
O little feet, that such long years
Must wander on through doubts and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load!
I, nearer to the way-side inn
Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
Am weary, thinking of your road.
O little hands, that, weak or strong,
Have still to serve or rule so long,
Have still so long to give or ask!
I, who so much with book and pen
Have toiled among my fellow-men,
Am weary, thinking of your task.
O little hearts, that throb and beat
With such impatient, feverish heat,
Such limitless and strong desires!
Mine, that, so long has glowed and burned,
With passions into ashes turned,
Now covers and conceals its fires.
O little souls, as pure and white
And crystalline as rays of light
Direct from heaven, their source divine!
Refracted through the mist of years,
How red my setting sun appears,
How lurid looks this soul, of mine!
MRS. LEWIS.
A STORY IN THREE PARTS.
PART III.
XI.
When we returned from our journey, Lulu was among the first to greet us, and with a cordial animation quite unlike the gentle, dawdling way she used to have. Indeed, I was struck the first evening with a new impulse, and a healthful mental current, that gave glow and freshness to everything she said. Mr. Lewis was gone to Cuba, she told us, and would be away a month more, but "George" was with her continually, and the days were all too short for what they had to do. She seemed to have attacked all the arts and sciences simultaneously, and with an eagerness very amusing to see. George had begun a numismatic collection for her, and she had made out an historic table from the coins, writing down all that was most important under each king's reign. George had brought home some fine specimens of stones, and had interested her much in mineralogy. George liked riding, and had taught her to ride; and she now perpetually made her appearance in her riding-habit and little jockey-cap, wishing she could do something for me here or there. George moulded, and taught her to mould; and she was dabbling in clay and plaster of Paris all the morning. George painted beautifully in water-colors, and taught her to sketch from Nature, which she often did now, in their rides, when the days were pleasant enough. George not only thrummed a Spanish guitar, but liked singing; so music went on with wonderful force and improvement. Nothing that George liked better than botany, metaphysics, and micrology. And now Lulu was screaming at dreadful dragons' heads on a pin's point, or delighted with diamond-beetles and spiders' eyes. She fairly revelled in the new worlds that were opened to her eager eye and hungry mind. No more long, tiresome mornings now. Every hour was occupied. Intelligent smiles dimpled her beautiful mouth; the weary, unoccupied, childish look vanished from her eyes; and her talk was animated and animating. For though she might not tell much that was new, she told it in a new way and with the fresh light of recent experience. Thus she became in a wonderfully short time a quite different woman from the Lulu of the early winter.
We acknowledged that she was become an agreeable companion. In a few weeks of home-education her soul had expanded to a tropical and rich growth. This we were talking over one night, when Lulu had been with us, and when George had come for her and extinguished us with his great hearty laugh and abundant health and activity, as the sun's effulgence does a house-candle.
"I don't like that Remington, either," said the minister, after we were left in this state of darkness.
"But, surely, he has given Lulu's mind a most desirable impulse and direction. How glad Mr. Lewis will be to see her so happy, so animated, and so sensible, when he comes home!"
"If that makes him happy, he could have had it before, I suppose. But do you notice anything unhealthy in this mental cultivation,—anything forced in this luxuriant flowering? Now the light of heaven expands the whole nature, I hold, into healthy and proportioned beauty. If anything is lacking or exuberant, the influence is not heavenly, be sure. What do you think of this statement?"
"Very sensible, but very Hebrew to me."
"I never thought Lulu's were 'household eyes,'—but now she never speaks of husband or children, of house or home. Now that is not a suitable mental condition. Let us hope that this intellectual effervescence will subside, and leave her some thoughtfulness and care for others, and the meditation which will make her accomplishments something to enrich and strengthen, rather than excite and overrun her mind."
"Ah! well, it is only a few weeks, not more than six, since she found out she had a soul. No wonder she feels she has been such a laggard in the race, she must keep on the gallop now to make up for lost time."
"But,—about the husband and children?"
"Oh, they will come in in due time and take their true place. She is a young artist, and hasn't got her perspectives arranged. Be sure they will be in the foreground presently," said I, cheerfully.
"Let us hope so. For a wife, mother, and house-mistress to be racing after so many ologies, and ignoring her daily duties, is a spectacle of doubtful utility to me."
To tell the truth, this want of domestic interest had often struck me also. One day, as we were talking about my children, Lulu had said that she believed herself destitute of the maternal instinct; for although she liked to see the children, of course, yet she did not miss them when away from her. And after the death of young Lewis, which happened while they were at Cuba, and which distressed my Johnnie so much that he could not for a long time bear either books or play, for want of his beloved playmate, his mother, apparently, did not lament him at all.
"I never liked to have him with me," she said to me,—"partly, I suppose, because he reminded me of Montalli, and of a period of great suffering in my life. I should be glad never to think of him again. But William seemed to love and pity him always. Gave him his name, and always treated him like an only and elder son. And William is fond of the little girls, too. I don't mean that I am not fond of them, but not as he is. He will go and spend a week at a time playing and driving with them."
Indeed, she very often reminded me of Undine in her soulless days.
As she scarcely went into society, during the absence of Mr. Lewis, Lulu had time for all this multifarious culture that I have been describing, and she was gradually coming also to reason and reflect on what she read and heard, though her appetite for knowledge continued with the same keenness. Her artistic eye, which naturally grouped and arranged with taste whatever was about her, stood her in good stead of experience; and with a very little instruction, she was able to do wonders in both a plastic and pictorial way.
One day she showed me a fine drawing of the Faun of Praxiteles, with some verses written beneath. The lines seemed to me full of vigor and harmony. They implied and breathed, too, such an intimacy with classical thought, that I was astonished when, in answer to my inquiry, she told me she wrote them herself.
"How delighted Mr. Lewis will be with this!" I exclaimed, looking at the beautifully finished drawing; "to think how you have improved, Lulu!"
"You think so?" she answered, with glistening eyes. "I, too, feel that I have, and am so happy!"
"I am sure Mr. Lewis will be so, too," I continued, persistently.
She answered in a sharp tone, dropping her eyes, and, as it were, all the joy out of them,—
"Surely, I have told you often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his belle-idéale; failing that, a housekeeper and drudge."
I cannot describe the scorn with which she said this. She changed the subject, however, at once, instead of pursuing it as she would formerly have done, and soon after left me for a drive over Milton Hills with George, with a hammer and sketch-book in the chaise.
Mr. Lewis's business in Cuba was prolonged into May. He had estates there, and desired to dispose of them, Lulu said, so that they might for the future live entirely at the North, which they both liked better.
I could not help seeing that her affections drifted farther and farther every week from their lawful haven, and I wished Mr. Lewis safe back again and overlooking his Northern estates. I guessed how, through her pride of awakened intellect, Lulu's gratitude had wrought a deep interest in her cousin. He had rescued her from the idleness and inanity of her daily life, pointed out to her the broad fields of literary enjoyment and excellence, and inevitably associated his own image with all the new and varied occupations with which her now busy days were filled. The poetry she read he brought to her; the songs she sang were of his selection. His mind and taste, his observations and reflections, were all written over every page she read, over every hour of her life. She had been on a desert island in her intellectual loneliness. She could hardly help loving the hand that had guided her to the palm-tree and the fountain, especially when she glanced back at the long sandy reach of her life.
Naturally enough, I watched and distrusted Mr. Remington, who was a man of the world, and knew very well what he was about. Of all things, he dearly loved to be excited, occupied, and amused. Of course, I was not disturbed about his heart, nor seriously supposed he would get into any entanglement of the affections and the duties of life, but I thought he might do a great deal of harm for all that.
At last, in the middle of May, Mr. Lewis returned, having failed in his desired arrangement for a permanent residence in New England. The first evening I saw them together without company, I perceived that he was struck with the new life in Lulu's manner and conversation. He watched and listened to her with an astonishment which he could not conceal.
I never saw anything like jealousy in Mr. Lewis's manner, either at this time, or before. He was always tender and dignified, when speaking to or of her. If he felt any uneasiness now, he did not betray it. In looking back, I am sure of this. Afterwards, in company, where he might be supposed to be proud of his wife, he often looked at her with the same astonishment, and sometimes with unaffected admiration. He could not help seeing the great change in her,—that the days were taken up with rational and elegant pursuits, and that the hours were vocal with poetry and taste. The illuminating mind had brought her tulip beauty into a brighter and more gorgeous glow, and her movements were full of graceful meaning. Everything was touched and inspired but the heart. I don't know that he felt this, or that he missed anything. She had the same easy self-possession in his presence which she had always had,—the same pet names of endearment. It was always "Willie, dear," or "Yes, my love," which makes the usual matrimonial vocabulary, and which does not reward study. But he always looked at her with a calm delight, perfectly satisfied with all she said and did, and with a Southern indolence of mind and body, that precluded effort. I think he never once lost entire confidence in her, or was jealous of the hand that had unlocked such mental treasures for her.
Meanwhile her eager lip quaffed the bright cup so cautiously presented, and drained it with ever new delight. If it was mingled with delicate flattery, it only sparkled more merrily; and if there were poison there, I am sure she never guessed it, even when it burnt in her cheek or thrilled in her dancing veins.
XII.
The Lewises, with Mr. Remington and a large party of pleasure-seekers, went about this time on a tour to Quebec and the Falls of Montmorency. They decided to shut their house in Boston, and Lulu asked me if I would employ and look after a protégée of hers, in whom she took some interest. The woman was a tolerable seamstress, she said, and would come to me the next day. She knew nothing about her except that she was poor and could sew.
When the woman came in, I was puzzled to think where I could have seen her, which I was sure I had done somewhere, though I could not recall the where or when. In answer to my particular inquiries, as she could give me no references, she told me her husband was living, but was sick and could do nothing for his family,—in fact, that she and three children were kept alive by her efforts of various sorts. These were, sewing when she could get it, washing and scrubbing when she could not. She was very poorly dressed, but had a Yankee, go-ahead expression, as if she would get a living on the top of a bare rock.
Still puzzling over the likeness in her face to somebody I had known, I continued to ask questions and to observe face, manner, and voice, in hope to catch the clue of which I was in search. When she admitted that her husband's intemperance had lost him his place and forbade his getting another, and said his name was Jim Ruggles, "a light broke in upon my brain." I remembered my vision of the fresh young girl who had sprung out on our path like a morning-glory, on our way to New York seven years before. The poor morning-glory was sadly trodden in the dust. It hadn't done "no good," as the driver had remarked, to forewarn her of the consequences of marrying a sponge. She had accepted her lot, and, strangely enough, was quite happy in it. There could be no mistake in the cheerful expression of her worn face. Whatever Jim might be to other people, she said, he was always good to her and the children; and she pitied him, loved him, and took care of him. It wasn't at all in the fashion the Temperance Society would have liked; for when I first went to the house, I found her pouring out a glass of strong waters for him, and handing it to his pale and trembling lips herself. As soon as I was seated, she locked bottle and glass carefully. Before I left her, she had given him stimulants of various sorts from the same source, which he received with grateful smiles, and then went on coughing as before.
"It's no time now for him to be forming new habits," said she, in answer to my open-eyed surprise; "and it's best he should have all the comfort and ease he can get. As long as I can get it for him, he shall have it."
She spoke very quietly, but very much as if the same will of her own which had led her to marry Jim Ruggles, when a gay, dissipated fellow, kept her determined to give him what he wanted, even to the doubtful extreme I saw. So she struggled bravely on during the next four weeks of Jim's existence, keeping herself and her three children on hasty pudding, and buying for Jim's consumptively craving appetite rich mince-pies and platefuls of good rich food from an eating-house hard by. At the end of the four weeks he died most peacefully and suddenly, having not five minutes before swallowed a glass of gin sling, prepared by the loving hand of his wife, and saying to her, with a firm, clear voice, and a grateful smile, "Good Amy! always good!" So the weak man's soul passed away. And as Amy told me about it, with sorrowful sobs, I was not ready to say or think she had done wrong, although both her conduct and my opinion were entirely uncanonical.
Before Mrs. Lewis returned, Amy was one day at my room and asked me when I expected her back.
"Is Mr. Lewis with her, Ma'am?" said she, hesitatingly.
"Of course; at least, I suppose so. Why, what makes you ask?" said I, with surprise at her downcast eyes and flushed face.
"I heard he had gone away. And that—that Mr. Remington was there with her. But you know about it, most likely."
"No, I know nothing about it, Amy."
"It was their old cook told me, Mrs. Butler. And she said,—oh! all sorts of things, that I am sure couldn't be true, for Mrs. Lewis is such a kind, beautiful woman! I couldn't believe a word she said!"
In my quality of minister's wife, and with a general distrust of cooks' opinions, I told Amy that there was always scandal enough, and it was a waste of time to listen to it. But after she left me, I confess to a whole hour wasted in speculations and anxious reflections on Amy's communication, and also to having taken the Dominie away from his sermon for a like space of time to consider the matter fully.
I was relieved when the whole party came back, and when the blooming, happy face of Lulu showed that she, at least, had neither thought nor done anything very bad.
The summer was becoming warm and oppressive in Boston, and we prepared to take the children and go to Weston for a few weeks. While we should be among the mountains, the Lewises proposed a voyage to Scotland, and we hoped that sometime in the early autumn we should all be together once more. The evening before our departure Mr. Remington and Lulu spent with us, Mr. Lewis coming in at a later hour. I remember vividly the conversation during the whole of that last evening we ever passed together.
XIII.
While Mrs. Lewis and I were chatting in one corner on interests specially feminine, the Dominie had got Mr. Remington into a metaphysical discussion of some length. From time to time we heard, "Pascal's idea seems to be," and then, "The notion of Descartes and all that school of thinkers"; and feeling that they were plunging quite beyond our depth, we continued babbling of dry goods, and what was becoming, till Mr. Remington leaned back laughing to us, and said,—
"What do you think, ladies? or are you of the opinion of somebody who said of metaphysics, 'Whoever troubles himself to skin a flint should have the skin for his pains'?"
"But that is a most unfair comparison!" said the minister, eagerly, "and what I will by no means allow. By so much more as the mind is better than the body, nay, because the mind is all that is worth anything about a man, metaphysics is the noblest science, and most worthy"—
"I give in! I am down!" said Remington.
"But what are you disputing about?" said I.
"Oh, only Infinity!" said Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no cause that may not be an effect."
"Nor of infinite space, nor of infinite time?" said the minister.
"No,—of nothing that cannot be divided, and nothing that cannot be extended."
"Very good. Perhaps you can't. I suppose we cannot comprehend infinity, because we are essentially finite ourselves. But it by no means follows that we cannot apprehend and believe in attributes which we are unable to comprehend. We can certainly do that."
"No. After you reach your limit of comprehension, you may say, all beyond that is infinite,—but you only push the object of your thought out of view. After you have reiterated the years till you are tired, you say, beyond that is infinite. You only mean that you are tired of computing and adding."
"Then you cannot believe in an Infinite Creator?" said the minister.
"I can believe in nothing that is not founded on reason. I should be very glad to believe in an Infinite Creator, only it is entirely impossible, you see, for the mind to conceive of a being who is not himself created."
"Yet you can believe in a world that is not created?" said the minister. "You can believe that a world full of adaptations, full of signs of intelligence and design, could be uncreated. How do you make that out?"
"There remains no greater difficulty to me," said Remington, "in believing in an uncreated world than you have in believing in an uncreated God. Why is it stranger that Chaos should produce harmony than that Nothing should produce God?"
He looked at us, smiling as he said this, which he evidently considered unanswerable.
"You are quite right," said my husband, gravely. "It is impossible that nothing should produce God, and therefore I say God is eternal. It is not impossible that something should produce the world, and therefore I believe the world is not eternal. That point is the one on which the whole argument hangs in my mind."
"It does not become me to dispute a clergyman," said Mr. Remington, smiling affectedly, as if only courtesy prevented his coming in with an entirely demolishing argument.
To my great surprise Lulu instantly answered, and with an intelligence that showed she had followed the argument entirely,—
"I am certain, George, that Mr. Prince has altogether the best of it. Yours is merely a technical difficulty,—merely words. You can conceive a thousand things which you can never fully comprehend. And this, too, is a proof of the Infinite Father in our very reasoning,—that, if we could comprehend Him, we should be ourselves infinite. As it is, we can believe and adore,—and, more than that, rejoice that we cannot in this finite life of ours do more."
"If we believed we could comprehend Him," said I, "we should soon begin to meddle with God's administration of affairs."
"Yes,—and in fatalism I have always thought there was a profound reverence," said Lulu.
"Oh, are you going into theological mysteries, too?" said Remington, with a laugh in which none of us joined; "what care you, Lulu, for the quiddities of Absolute Illimitation and Infinite Illimitation? After all, what matters it whether one believes in a God, who you allow to be the personation of all excellence, if only one endeavors to act up to the highest conceivable standard of perfection,—I mean of human perfection,—leaving, of course, a liberal margin for human frailties and defects? One wouldn't like to leave out mercy, you know."
Whatever might be the real sentiments of the man, there was an air of levity in his mode of treating the most important subjects of thought which displeased me, especially when he said, "You adore the Incomprehensible; I am contented to adore, with silent reverence, the lovely works of His hand." He pointed his remark without hesitation at LuLu, who sat looking into the fire, and did not notice him or it.
"You are quite right, Mr. Prince, and my cousin, is quite wrong," said she, looking up with a docile, childlike expression, at the minister. "One feels that all through, though one may not be able to reason or argue about it."
"And the best evidence of all truth, my dear," answered the delighted Dominie, "is that intuition which is before all reasoning, and by which we must try reasoning itself. The moral is before the intellectual; and that is why we preachers continually insist on faith as an illuminator of the reason."
"You mean that we should cultivate faith," I said.
"Yes: not the faith that is blind, but the faith that sees, that is positive; that which leads, not that which follows; the faith that weighs argument and decides on it; in short, the native intuitions which are a necessary part of the mind."
"I see, and I shall remember," said Lulu. "I shall never forget all you say, Mr. Prince."
It was this sweet frankness, and the clearness with which her lately developed intellect acted, that made us begin to respect Lulu as well as to love her. She seemed to be getting right-minded at last.
When Mr. Lewis came, the conversation turned on other subjects; but it was quite late at night before we were willing to part with our friends. The shadow of misgiving which hangs over even short separations was deeper than usual with me from the thought of the voyage. Lulu had been so many times across the sea that she had no fear of it; and she went up-stairs with me to say last words and give last commissions with her usual cheerfulness. Notwithstanding the relief which I had felt during the evening from her expressions of a moral and religious kind, I yet had a brooding fear of the effect of association with a mind so lively and so full of error as Remington's. What help or what sustaining power for her there might be in her husband I could not tell; but be it more or less, I feared she would not avail herself of it. Indeed, I feared that she was daily becoming more alienated from him, as she pursued onward and upward the bright mental track on which she had entered. And it was seeing that she had not yet begun to con the alphabet of true knowledge, that disturbed me most. If I could have seen her thoughtful for others, humble in her endeavor after duty, I should have hailed, rejoicingly, her intellectual illumination. As it was, I could not help saying to her, anxiously, before we went downstairs,—
"I don't like Mr. Remington's notions at all, my dear!—I don't mean merely his theological notions, but his ideas of life and duty seem to me wrong and poor. You will forgive me, if I say, you cannot be too careful how you allow his views to act on your own sense of right and wrong."
"What!—George? Oh, dear friend, it is only his nonsense! He will take any side for the time, only to hear himself talk. But he is the best fellow that ever breathed. Oh, if you only knew his excellence as well as I do!"
"My dear Lulu!" I expostulated, greatly pained to see her glowing face and the almost tearful sparkle of her eyes, as she defended her cousin, "your husband is a great deal the best guide for you,—in action, and I presume in opinion. At all events, you are safest under the shadow of his wing. There is the truest peace for a wife."
Whether she guessed what was in my mind I don't know; I did not try much to conceal it. But she shook her curls away from her face as if irritated, and answered in a tone from which all the animation had been quenched,—
"No. I have been a child. I am one no longer. Don't ask me to go back. I am a living, feeling, understanding woman! George himself allows it is perfectly shocking to be treated as I am,—a mere toy! a plaything!"
George again! I could scarcely restrain my impatience. Yet how to make her understand?
"Don't you see, Lulu, that George ought never to have dared to name the subject of your and your husband's differences? and do you not see that you can never discuss the subject with anybody with propriety? If, unhappily, all is not as you, as we, wish it, let us hope for the effect of time and right feeling in both; but don't, don't allow any gentleman to talk to you of your husband's treatment of you!"
Lulu listened in quiet wonderment, while, with agitated voice and trembling mouth, I addressed her as I had never before done. I had constantly avoided speaking to her on the subject. She looked at me now with clear, innocent eyes, (I am so glad to remember them!) and placed her two hands affectionately on my shoulders.
"I know what you mean,—and what you fear. That I shall say something, or do something undignified, or possibly wrong. But that, with God's help, I shall never do. Such happiness as I can procure, aside from my husband, and which I had a right to expect through him,—such enjoyment as comes from intellectual improvement and the exercise of my faculties, this is surely innocent pleasure, this I shall have. And George,—you must not blame him for being indignant, when he sees me treated so unworthily,—or for calling Lewis a Pacha, as he always does. You must think, my dear, that it isn't pleasant to be treated only like a Circassian slave, and that one may have something better to do in life than to twirl jewelled armlets, or to light my lord's chibouk!"
She looked all radiant with scorn, as she said this,—her eyes flashing, and her very forehead crimson. I could see she was remembering long months and years in that moment of indignant anger. Seeing them with her eyes, I could not say she was unjust, or that her estrangement was unnatural.
"Now, then, good friend, good bye! Don't look anxious. Don't fear for me. I am not happy, but I shall know how to keep myself from misery. You and your excellent husband have done more for me than you know or think; and I shall try to keep right."
She left me with this, and we parted from both with a lingering sweet friendliness that dwells still in our memories.
"It would be horrible to be on these terms, if she loved him," said the minister, that night, after I had told him of our parting interview.
"Well, she don't, you see. Did she ever?"
"With such mind and heart as she had, I suppose. On the other hand, what did he marry?"
"Grace and beauty—and promise. Of course, like every man in love, he took everything good for granted."
"The sweetest flower in my garden," said the minister, "should perfume no stranger's vase, however, nor dangle at a knave's button-hole."
"Because you would watch it and care for it, water and train it, and make it doubly your own. But if you did neither?"
"I should deserve my fate," said he, sorrowfully.
XIV.
The first letter we received from Mrs. Lewis was from the North of Scotland, where the party of three, increased to one much larger, were making the tour of the Hebrides. I cannot say much for either the penmanship or the orthography of the letter, which was incorrect as usual; but the abundant beauty of her descriptions, and the fine sense she seemed to have of lofty and wild scenery, made her journey a living picture. All her keen sense of external life was brought into activity, and she projected on the paper before her groups of people, or groups of mountains, with a vividness that showed she had only to transfer them from the retina: they had no need of any additional processes. She made no remarks on society, or inferences from what she saw in the present to what had been in the past or might be in the future. It was simply a power of representation, unequalled in its way, and yet more remarkable to us for what it failed of doing than for what it did.
We could not but perceive two things. One, that she never spoke of home-ties, or children, or husband: not an allusion to either. The other, that every hill and every vale, the mounting mist and the resting shadow, all that gave life and beauty to her every-day pursuits, which seemed, indeed, all pictorial,—all these were informed and permeated, as it were, with one influence,—that of Remington. An uncomfortable sense of this made me say, as I finished the letter,—
"I am sorry for the poor bird!"
"So am I," answered the minister, with a clouded brow; "and the more, as I think I see the bird is limed."
"How?" I said, with a sort of horrified retreat from the expressed thought, though the thought itself haunted me.
My husband seemed thinking the matter over, as if to clear it in his own mind before he spoke again.
"I suppose there is a moral disease, which, through its connection with a newly awakened and brilliant intellect, does not enervate the whole character. I mean that this connection of moral weakness with the intellect gives a fatal strength to the character,—do you take me?"
"Yes, I think so," said I.
"She is lofty, self-poised,—confident in what never yet supported any one. Pride of character does not keep us from falling. Humility would help us in that way. Unfortunately, that, too, is often bought dearly. I mean that this virtue of humbleness, which makes us tender of others and afraid for ourselves, is at the expense of sorrowful and humiliating experience."
"You speak as if you feared more for her than I do," said I, struck by the foreboding look in his face.
"You women judge only by your own hearts, or by solitary instances; and you forget the inevitable downward course of wrong tendencies. Besides, she has neither lofty principle nor a strong will. You will think I mistake here; but I don't mean she has not wilfulness enough. A strong will generally excludes wilfulness,—and the converse."
This conversation made me nervous.
I had such an intense anxiety for her now, that I could not avoid expressing it often and strongly in my letters to her. I wondered Lewis was not more open-eyed. I blamed him for letting her run on so heedlessly into habits which might compromise her reputation for dignity and discretion, if no worse. Then I would recall her manner the last evening she was with us, when, although her want of self-regulation was very apparent, not less so was the native nobleness and purity of her soul. I could not think of this "unsphered angel wofully astray" without inward tears that dimmed the vision of my foreboding heart.
Could Lewis mistake her indifference? Could he avoid suffering from it? Could he, for a moment, accept her conventional expletives in place of the irrepressible and endearing tokens of a real love? Could he see what had weaned her from him, and was still, like a baleful star, wiling her farther and farther on its treacherously lighted path? Could he see,—feel?—had he a heart? These questions I incessantly asked myself.
In the last days of summer we went with the children to Nantasket Beach.
We had walked to a point of rocks at some distance from the bay, above which we lodged, and were sitting in the luxury of quiet companionship, gazing out on the water.
The ineffable, still beauty of Nature, separated from the usual noises of actual life,—the brilliant effect of the long reaches of color from the plunging sun, as it dipped, and reappeared, and dipped again, as loath to leave its field of beauty,—then the still plash against the rocks, and the subsidence in murmurs of the retiring wave, with all its gathered treasure of pebbles and shells,—all these sounds and sights of reposeful life suggested unspeakable thoughts and memories that clung to silence. We had not been without so much sorrow in life as does not well afford to dwell on its own images; and we rose to retrace our steps to the measure of the eternal and significant psalm of the sea.
As we turned away, we both perceived at once a sail in the distance, against the western sky. It had just rounded the nearest point and was coming slowly in with a gentle breeze, when it suddenly tacked and put out to sea again. It had come so near, however, that with our glass we saw that it was a small boat, holding two persons, and with a single sail.
Immediately after, a dead calm succeeded the light wind which had before rippled the distant waves, and we watched the boat, lying as if asleep and floating lazily on the red water against the blazing sky,—or rather, itself like a cradle, so pavilioned was it with gorgeous cloud-curtains, and fit home for the two water-sprites lying in the slant sunbeams.
Walking slowly borne, we felt the air to be full of oppressive languor, and turned now and then to see if the distant sail were yet lightened by the coming breeze. When we reached the inner bay, we mounted a rock, from which, with the lessened interval between us, I could distinctly see the boat. One of the occupants—a lady—wore a dark hat with a scarlet plume drooping from it. She leaned over the gunwale, dipping her hands in the blazing water and holding them up against the light, as if playing rainbows in the sunset. The other figure was busy in fastening up the sail, ready to catch the first breath of wind.
As we stood looking, the water, which during the last few minutes had changed from flaming red to the many-colored hues of a dolphin's back, suddenly turned slate-colored, almost black. Then a low scud crept stealthily and quickly along the surface, bringing with it a steady breeze, for perhaps five minutes. We watched the little boat, as it yielded gracefully to the welcome impetus, and swept rapidly to the shore. Fearing, however, from the sudden change of weather, that it would soon rain, we cast a parting look at the boat, and started on a rapid walk to the house.
This last glimpse of the boat showed us a tall figure standing upright against the mast, and fastening or holding something to it, while the lady still played with the water, bending her head so low that the red plume in her hat almost touched it. She seemed in a pleasant reverie, and rocked softly with the rocking waves. It was a peaceful picture,—the sail set, and full of heaven's breath, as it seemed.
Before we could grasp anything,—even if there had been anything to grasp on the level sand,—we were both taken at once off our feet and thrown violently to the ground. I had felt the force of water before, but never that of wind, and had no idea of the utter helplessness of man or woman before a wind that is really in earnest. It was with a very novel sense of more than childish incapacity that I suffered the Dominie to gather up capes, canes, hats, and shawls, and, last of all, an astonished woman, and put them on their way homewards. However, long before we reached the house-door we were drenched to the skin. The rain poured in blinding sheets, and the thunder was like a hundred cannon about our ears. It was so sudden and so frightful to me that I had but one idea, that of getting into the piazza, where was comparative safety. Having reached it, we turned to face the elements. Nothing could be seen through the thick deluge. The ocean itself, tossing and tumbling in angry darkness, seemed fighting with the other ocean that poured from the black wall above, and all was one tumult of thunderous fury. This elemental war lasted but a short time, and gave place to a quiet as sudden as its angry burst. It was my first experience of a squall. It is always difficult for me to feel that a storm is a natural occurrence,—so that I have a great reverence for a Dominie who stands with head uncovered, with calm eyes, looking tranquilly out on the loudest tempest.
"Beautiful! wonderful!" he murmured, as the lightning fiercely shot over us, and the roar died away in long billows of heavy sound.
Afterwards he told me he had the same unbounded delight in a great storm as he had at the foot of Niagara, or in looking at the stars on a winter night: that it stirred in his soul all that was loftiest,—that for the time he could comprehend Deity, and that "the noise of the thundering of His waters" was an anthem that struck the highest chords of his nature. What is really sublime takes us out of ourselves, so that we have no room for personal terror, and we mingle with the elemental roar in spirit as with something kindred to us. I guessed this, and meditated on it, while I stopped my ears and shut my eyes and trembled with overwhelming terror myself. Clearly, I am a coward, in spite of my admiration of the sublime. The Dominie, being as good as he is great, does not require a woman to be sublime, luckily; and I think, as I like him all the better for his strength, he really does not object to a moderate amount of weakness on my part, which is unaffected and not to be helped. When animal magnetism becomes a science, it will be seen why some spirits revel and soar, and some cower and shrink, at the same amount of electricity. So the Dominie says now; and then—he said nothing.
XV.
In the fright, excitement, and thorough wetting, I forgot about the boat,—or rather, no misgiving seized me as to its safety. But, on coming to breakfast the next morning, we felt that there was a great commotion in the house. Everybody was out on the piazza, and a crowd was gathered a short distance off. Somebody had taken off the doors from the south entrance, and there was a sort of procession already formed on each side of these two doors. We went out in front of the house to listen to a rough fisherman who described the storm in which the little boat capsized. He had stood on the shore and just finished fastening his own boat, for he well knew the signs of the storm, when he caught sight of the little sail scudding with lightning-speed to the landing. Suddenly it stopped short, shook all over as if in an ague, and capsized in an instant. The storm broke, and although he tried to discern some traces of the boat or its occupants, nothing could be seen but the white foam on the black water, glistening like a shark's teeth when he has seized his prey. In the early morning he had found two bodies on the sand. The water, he said, must have tossed them with considerable force,—yet not against the rocks at all, for they were not disfigured, nor their clothing much torn. As the man ceased relating the story, the bodies were brought past us, covered by a piano-cloth which somebody had considerately snatched up and taken to the shore. They were placed in the long parlor on a table.
My husband beckoned to me to come to him. Turning down the cloth, he showed me the faces I dreamily expected to see. I don't know when I thought of it, but suppose I recognized the air and movement so familiar, even in the distant dimness. No matter how clearly and fully death is expected, when it comes it is with a death-shock,—how much more, coming as this did, as if with a bolt from the clear sky!
In their prime,—in their beauty,—in their pride of youth,—in their pleasure, they died. What was the strong man or the smiling woman,—what was the smooth sea, the shining sail,—what was strength, skill, loveliness, against the great and terrible wind of the Lord?
So here they lay, white and quiet as sculptured stone, and as placid as if they had only fallen asleep in the midst of the tempestuous uproar. All the clamor and talking about the house had subsided in the real presence of death; and every one went lightly and softly around, as if afraid of wakening the sleepers.
She had never looked so beautiful, even in her utmost pride of health and bloom. Her dark luxuriant hair lay in masses over brow and bosom, and her face expressed the unspeakable calm and perfect peace which are suggested only by the sleep of childhood. The long eyelashes seemed to say, in their close adherence to the cheek, how gladly they shut out the tumult of life; and the whole cast of the face was so elevated by death as to look rather angelic than mortal.
His face was quiet, too,—the manliness and massive character of the features giving a majestic and severe cast to the whole countenance, far more elevated than it had while living.
We could only weep over these relics. But where was the deepest mourner? No one had even seen these two before, or could give any account of them.
On making stricter inquiry and looking at the books, we found that Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had arrived first. Mr. Lewis had taken his gun and a boat, and gone out at once to shoot. The lady had been in her room but a short time, when another gentleman arrived, wrote his name, and ordered a boat. She had scarcely seen any one, but the boatman saw her step into the boat, and described her dress.
A message was at once sent to "the Glades," where Mr. Lewis had gone, and where he was detained, as we had supposed, by the storm. Before he reached the house, however, all necessary arrangements were completed for removing any associations of suffering. No confusion remained; the room was gently darkened, and the bodies, robed in white, lay in such peaceful silence as soothes and quiets the mourner.
As the carriage drew up to the door, we both hastened to meet Mr. Lewis, to take him by the hand, and to lead him, by our evident sympathy, to accept his terrible affliction with something like composure. In our entire uncertainty as to his feelings, we could only weep silently, and hold his hands, which were as cold as death.
He looked surprised a little at seeing us, but otherwise his face was like stone. His eyes,—they, too, looked stony, and as if all the expression and life were turned inward. Outwardly, there seemed hardly consciousness. He sat down between us, while we related all the particulars of the accident, which he seemed greedy to hear,—turning, as one ceased, to the other, with an eager, hungry look, most painful to witness. He made us describe, repeatedly, our last glimpse of the unconscious victims, and then, pressing our hands with a vice-cold grip, said, in a dry whisper,—
"Where are they?"
We led him to the door. He went in, and we softly closed it after him. As we went up-stairs to our own room we heard deep groans of anguish. We knew that his heart could not relieve itself by tears. My husband read the "prayer for persons in great affliction," and then we sat silently looking out on the peaceful sea. In the great stillness of the house, we heard the calm wave plash up on the smiling sands, and watched the silver specks in the distance as they hovered over the blue sea. So soft, so still, it had been the day before,—and where we now saw the placid wave we had seen it then. Yet there had two lives gone out, as suddenly as one quenches a lamp.
Thinking, but not speaking, we waited. The report of a pistol in the house struck us to the heart. I believe we felt sure, both of us, of what it must be. He had loved her so much! And now we were sure, that in the tension of his grief, reason had given way. When we saw them next, there were three where two had been, in the marble calm of death.
THE FORMATION OF GLACIERS.
The long summer was over. For ages a tropical climate had prevailed over a great part of the earth, and animals whose home is now beneath the Equator roamed over the world from the far South to the very borders of the Arctics. The gigantic quadrupeds, the Mastodons, Elephants, Tigers, Lions, Hyenas, Bears, whose remains are found in Europe from its southern promontories to the northernmost limits of Siberia and Scandinavia, and in America from the Southern States to Greenland and the Melville Islands, may indeed be said to have possessed the earth in those days. But their reign was over. A sudden intense winter, that was also to last for ages, fell upon our globe; it spread over the very countries where these tropical animals had their homes, and so suddenly did it come upon them that they were embalmed beneath masses of snow and ice, without time even for the decay which follows death. The Elephant whose story was told at length in the preceding article was by no means a solitary specimen; upon further investigation it was found that the disinterment of these large tropical animals in Northern Russia and Asia was no unusual occurrence. Indeed, their frequent discoveries of this kind had given rise among the ignorant inhabitants to the singular superstition already alluded to, that gigantic moles lived under the earth, which crumbled away and turned to dust as soon as they came to the upper air. This tradition, no doubt, arose from the fact, that, when in digging they came upon the bodies of these animals, they often found them perfectly preserved under the frozen ground, but the moment they were exposed to heat and light they decayed and fell to pieces at once. Admiral Wrangel, whose Arctic explorations have been so valuable to science, tells us that the remains of these animals are heaped up in such quantities in certain parts of Siberia that he and his men climbed over ridges and mounds consisting entirely of the bones of Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc. From these facts it would seem that they roamed over all these northern regions in troops as large and numerous as the Buffalo herds that wander over our Western prairies now. We are indebted to Russian naturalists, and especially to Rathke, for the most minute investigations of these remains, in which even the texture of the hair, the skin, and flesh has been subjected by him to microscopic examination as accurate as if made upon any living animal.
We have as yet no clue to the source of this great and sudden change of climate. Various suggestions have been made,—among others, that formerly the inclination of the earth's axis was greater, or that a submersion of the continents under water might have produced a decided increase of cold; but none of these explanations are satisfactory, and science has yet to find any cause which accounts for all the phenomena connected with it. It seems, however, unquestionable that since the opening of the Tertiary age a cosmic summer and winter have succeeded each other, during which a Tropical heat and an Arctic cold have alternately prevailed over a great portion of the globe. In the so-called drift (a superficial deposit subsequent to the Tertiaries, of the origin of which I shall speak presently) there are found far to the south of their present abode the remains of animals whose home now is in the Arctics or the coldest parts of the Temperate Zones. Among them are the Musk-Ox, the Reindeer, the Walrus, the Seal, and many kinds of Shells characteristic of the Arctic regions. The northernmost part of Norway and Sweden is at this day the southern limit of the Reindeer in Europe; but their fossil remains are found in large quantities in the drift about the neighborhood of Paris, where their presence would, of course, indicate a climate similar to the one now prevailing in Northern Scandinavia. Side by side with the remains of the Reindeer are found those of the European Marmot, whose present home is in the mountains, about six thousand feet above the level of the sea. The occurrence of these animals in the superficial deposits of the plains of Central Europe, one of which is now confined to the high North, and the other to mountain-heights, certainly indicates an entire change of climatic conditions since the time of their existence. European Shells now confined to the Northern Ocean are found as fossils in Italy,—showing, that, while the present Arctic climate prevailed in the Temperate Zone, that of the Temperate Zone extended much farther south to the regions we now call sub-tropical. In America there is abundant evidence of the same kind; throughout the recent marine deposits of the Temperate Zone, covering the low lands above tide-water on this continent, are found fossil Shells whose present home is on the shores of Greenland. It is not only in the Northern hemisphere that these remains occur, but in Africa and in South America, wherever there has been an opportunity for investigation, the drift is found to contain the traces of animals whose presence indicates a climate many degree colder than that now prevailing there.
But these organic remains are not the only evidence of the geological winter. There are a number of phenomena indicating that during this period two vast caps of ice stretched from the Northern pole southward and from the Southern pole northward, extending in each case far toward the Equator,—and that ice-fields, such as now spread over the Arctics, covered a great part of the Temperate Zones, while the line of perpetual ice and snow in the tropical mountain-ranges descended far below its present limits. As the explanation of these facts has been drawn from the study of glacial action, I shall devote this and subsequent articles to some account of glaciers and of the phenomena connected with them.
The first essential condition for the formation of glaciers in mountain-ranges is the shape of their valleys. Glaciers are by no means in proportion to the height and extent of mountains. There are many mountain-chains as high or higher than the Alps, which can boast of but few and small glaciers, if, indeed, they have any. In the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, the Pyrenees, the Caucasus, the few glaciers remaining from the great ice-period are insignificant in size. The volcanic, cone-like shape of the Andes gives, indeed, but little chance for the formation of glaciers, though their summits are capped with snow. The glaciers of the Rocky Mountains have been little explored, but it is known that they are by no means extensive. In the Pyrenees there is but one great glacier, though the height of these mountains is such, that, were the shape of their valleys favorable to the accumulation of snow, they might present beautiful glaciers. In the Tyrol, on the contrary, as well as in Norway and Sweden, we find glaciers almost as fine as those of Switzerland, in mountain-ranges much lower than either of the above-named chains. But they are of diversified forms, and have valleys widening upward on the slope of long crests. The glaciers on the Caucasus are very small in proportion to the height of the range; but on the northern side of the Himalaya there are large and beautiful ones, while the southern slope is almost destitute of them. Spitzbergen and Greenland are famous for their extensive glaciers, coming down to the sea-shore, where huge masses of ice, many hundred feet in thickness, break off and float away into the ocean as icebergs. At the Aletsch in Switzerland, where a little lake lies in a deep cup between the mountains, with the glacier coming down to its brink, we have these Arctic phenomena on a small scale; a miniature iceberg may often be seen to break off from the edge of the larger mass, and float out upon the surface of the water. Icebergs were first traced back to their true origin by the nature of the land-ice of which they are always composed, and which is quite distinct in structure and consistency from the marine ice produced by frozen sea-water, and called "ice-flow" by the Arctic explorers, as well as from the pond or river ice, resulting from the simple congelation of fresh water.
Water is changed to ice at a certain temperature under the same law of crystallization by which any inorganic bodies in a fluid state may assume a solid condition, taking the shape of perfectly regular crystals, which combine at certain angles with mathematical precision. The frost does not form a solid, continuous sheet of ice over an expanse of water, but produces crystals, little ice-blades, as it were, which shoot into each other at angles of thirty or sixty degrees, forming the closest net-work. Of course, under the process of alternate freezing and thawing, these crystals lose their regularity, and soon become merged in each other. But even then a mass of ice is not continuous or compact throughout, for it is rendered completely porous by air-bubbles, the presence of which is easily explained. Ice being in a measure transparent to heat, the water below any frozen surface is nearly as susceptible to the elevation of the temperature without as if it were in immediate contact with it. Such changes of temperature produce air-bubbles, which float upward against the lower surface of the ice and are stranded there. At night there may come a severe frost; new ice is then formed below the air-bubbles, and they are thus caught and imprisoned, a layer of air-bubbles between two layers of ice, and this process may be continued until we have a succession of such parallel layers, forming a body of ice more or less permeated with air. These air-bubbles have the power also of extending their own area, and thus rendering the whole mass still more porous; for, since the ice offers little or no obstacle to the passage of heat, such an air-bubble may easily become heated during the day; the moment it reaches a temperature above thirty-two degrees, it melts the ice around it, thus clearing a little space for itself, and rises through the water produced by the action of its own warmth. The spaces so formed are so many vertical tubes in the ice, filled with water, and having an air-bubble at the upper extremity.
Ice of this kind, resulting from the direct congelation of water, is easily recognized under all circumstances by its regular stratification, the alternate beds varying in thickness according to the intensity of the cold, and its continuance below the freezing-point during a longer or shorter period. Singly, these layers consist of irregular crystals confusedly blended together, as in large masses of crystalline rocks in which a crystalline structure prevails, though regular crystals occur but rarely. The appearance of stratification is the result of the circumstances under which the water congeals. The temperature varies much more rapidly in the atmosphere around the earth than in the waters upon its surface. When the atmosphere above any sheet of water sinks below the freezing-point, there stretches over its surface a stratum of cold air, determining by its intensity and duration the formation of the first stratum of ice. According to the alternations of temperature, this process goes on with varying activity until the sheet of ice is so thick that it becomes itself a shelter to the water below, and protects it, to a certain degree, from the cold without. Thus a given thickness of ice may cause a suspension of the freezing process, and the first ice-stratum may even be partially thawed before the cold is renewed with such intensity as to continue the thickening of the ice-sheet by the addition of fresh layers. The strata or beds of ice increase gradually in this manner, their separation being rendered still more distinct by the accumulation of air-bubbles, which, during a hot and clear day, may rise from a muddy bottom in great numbers. In consequence of these occasional collections of air-bubbles, the layers differ, not only in density and closeness, but also in color, the more compact strata being blue and transparent, while those containing a greater quantity of air-bubbles are opaque and whitish, like water beaten to froth.
A cake of pond-ice, such as is daily left in summer at our doors, if held against the light and turned in different directions, will exhibit all these phenomena very distinctly, and we may learn still more of its structure by watching its gradual melting. The process of decomposition is as different in fresh-water ice and in land-or glacier-ice and that of their formation. Pond-ice, in contact with warm air, melts uniformly over its whole surface, the mass being thus gradually reduces from the exterior till it vanishes completely. If the process be slow, the temperature of the air-bubbles contained in it may be so raised as to form the vertical funnels or tubes alluded to above. By the anastomosing of these funnels, the whole mass may be reduced to a collection of angular pyramids, more or less closely united by cross-beams of ice, and it finally falls to pieces when the spaces in the interior have become for numerous as to render it completely cavernous. Such a breaking-up of ice is always caused by the enlargement of the open spaces produces by the elevated temperature of the air-bubbles, these spaces being necessarily more or less parallel with one another, and vertical in their position, owing to the natural tendency of the air-bubbles to work their way upward till they reach the surface, where they escape. A sheet of ice, of this kind, floating upon water, dissolves in the same manner, melting wholly from the surface, if the process be sufficiently rapid, or falling to pieces, if the air-bubbles are gradually raised in their temperature sufficiently to render the whole mass cavernous and incoherent. If we now compare these facts with what is known of the structure of land-ice, we shall see that the mode of formation in the two cases differs essentially.
Land-ice, of which both the ice-fields of the Arctics and glaciers consist, is produced by the slow and gradual transformation of snow into ice; and though the ice thus formed may eventually be as clear and transparent as the purest pond- or river-ice, its structure is nevertheless entirely distinct. We may trace these different processes during any moderately cold winter in the ponds and snow-meadows immediately about us. We need not join an Arctic exploring expedition, nor even undertake a more tempting trip to the Alps, in order to investigate these phenomena for ourselves, if we have any curiosity to do so. The first warm day after a thick fall of light, dry snow, such as occurs in the coldest of our winter weather, is sufficient to melt its surface. As this snow is porous, the water readily penetrates it, having also a tendency to sink by its own weight, so that the whole mass becomes more or less filled with moisture in the course of the day. Daring the lower temperature of the night, however, the water is frozen again, and the snow is now filled with new ice-particles. Let this process be continued long enough, and the mass of snow is changed to a kind of ice-gravel, or, if the grains adhere together, to something like what we call pudding-stone, allowing, of course, for the difference of material; the snow, which has been rendered cohesive by the process of partial melting and regelation, holding the ice-globules together, just as the loose materials of the pudding-stone are held together by the cement which unites them.
Within this mass, air is intercepted and held inclosed between the particles of ice. The process by which snow-flakes or snow-crystals are transformed into grains of ice, more or less compact, is easily understood. It is the result of a partial thawing, under a temperature maintained very nearly at thirty-two degrees, falling sometimes a little below, and then rising a little above the freezing-point, and thus producing constant alternations of freezing and thawing in the same mass of snow. This process amounts to a kind of kneading of the snow, and when combined with the cohesion among the particles more closely held together in one snow-flake, it produces granular ice. Of course, the change takes place gradually, and is unequal in its progress at different depths in the same bed of recently fallen snow. It depends greatly on the amount of moisture infiltrating the mass, whether derived from the melting of its own surface, or from the accumulation of dew or the falling of rain or mist upon it. The amount of water retained within the mass will also be greatly affected by the bottom on which it rests and by the state of the atmosphere. Under a certain temperature, the snow may only be glazed at the surface by the formation of a thin, icy crust, an outer membrane, as it were, protecting the mass below from a deeper transformation into ice; or it may be rapidly soaked throughout its whole bulk, the snow being thus changed into a kind of soft pulp, what we commonly call slosh, which, upon freezing, becomes at once compact ice; or, the water sinking rapidly, the lower layers only may be soaked, while the upper portion remains comparatively dry. But, under all these various circumstances, frost will transform the crystalline snow into more or less compact ice, the mass of which will be composed of an infinite number of aggregated snow-particles, very unequal in regularity of outline, and cemented by ice of another kind, derived from the freezing of the infiltrated moisture, the whole being interspersed with air. Let the temperature rise, and such a mass, rigid before, will resolve itself again into disconnected ice-particles, like grains more or less rounded. The process may be repeated till the whole mass is transformed into very compact, almost uniformly transparent and blue ice, broken only by the intervening air-bubbles. Such a mass of ice, when exposed to a temperature sufficiently high to dissolve it, does not melt from the surface and disappear by a gradual diminution of its bulk, like pond-ice, but crumbles into its original granular fragments, each one of which melts separately. This accounts for the sudden disappearance icebergs, which, instead of slowly dissolving into the ocean, are often seen to fall to pieces and vanish at once.
Ice of this kind may be seen forming every winter on our sidewalks, on the edge of the little ditches which drain them, or on the summits of broad gateposts when capped with snow. Of such ice glaciers are composed; but, in the glacier, another element comes in which we have not considered as yet,—that of immense pressure in consequence of the vast accumulations of snow within circumscribed spaces. We see the same effects produced on a small scale, when snow is transformed into a snowball between the hands. Every boy who balls a mass of snow in his hands illustrates one side of glacial phenomena. Loose snow, light and porous, and pure white from the amount of air contained in it, is in this way presently converted into hard, compact, almost transparent ice. This change will take place sooner, if the snow be damp at first,—but if dry, the action of the hand will presently produce moisture enough to complete the process. In this case, mere pressure produces the same effect which, in the cases we have been considering above, was brought about by alternate thawing and freezing,—only that in the latter the ice is distinctly granular, instead of being uniform throughout, as when formed under pressure. In the glaciers we have the two processes combined. But the investigators of glacial phenomena have considered too exclusively one or the other: some of them attributing glacial motion wholly to the dilatation produced by the freezing of infiltrated moisture in the mass of snow; others accounting for it entirely by weight and pressure. There is yet a third class, who, disregarding the real properties of ice, would have us believe, that, because tar, for instance, is viscid when it moves, therefore ice is viscid because it moves. We shall see hereafter that the phenomena exhibited in the onward movement of glaciers are far more diversified than has generally been supposed.
There is no chain of mountains in which the shape of the valleys is more favorable to the formation of glaciers than the Alps. Contracted at their lower extremity, these valleys widen upward, spreading into deep, broad, trough-like depressions. Take, for instance, the valley of Hassli, which is not more than half a mile wide where you enter it above Meyringen; it opens gradually upward, till, above the Grimsel, at the foot of the Finster-Aarhorn, it measures several miles across. These huge mountain-troughs form admirable cradles for the snow, which collects in immense quantities within them, and, as it moves slowly down from the upper ranges, is transformed into ice on its way, and compactly crowded into the narrower space below. At the lower extremity of the glacier the ice is pure, blue and transparent, but, as we ascend, it appears less compact, more porous and granular, assuming gradually the character of snow, till in the higher regions the snow is as light, as shifting, and incoherent, as the sand of the desert. A snow-storm on a mountain-summit is very different from a snow-storm on the plain, on account of the different degrees of moisture in the atmosphere. At great heights, there is never dampness enough to allow the fine snow-crystals to coalesce and form what are called "snow-flakes." I have even stood on the summit of the Jungfrau when a frozen cloud filled the air with ice-needles, while I could see the same cloud pouring down sheet of rain upon Lauterbrunnen below. I remember this spectacle as one of the most impressive I have witnessed in my long experience of Alpine scenery. The air immediately about me seemed filled with rainbow-dust, for the ice-needles glittered with a thousand hues under the decomposition of light upon them, while the dark storm in the valley below offered a strange contract to the brilliancy of the upper region in which I stood. One wonder where even so much vapor as may be transformed into the finest snow should come from at such heights. But the warm winds, creeping up the sides of the valleys, the walls of which become heated during the middle of the day, come laden with moisture which is changed to a dry snow like dust as soon as it comes into contact with the intense cold above.
Currents of warm air affect the extent of the glaciers, and influence also the line of perpetual snow, which is by no means at the same level even in neighboring localities. The size of glaciers, of course, determines to a great degree the height at which they terminate, simply because a small mass of ice will melt more rapidly, and at a lower temperature, than a larger one. Thus, the small glaciers, such as those of the Rothhorn or of Trift, above the Grimsel, terminate at a considerable height above the plain, while the Mer de Glace, fed from the great snow-caldrons of Mont Blanc, forces its way down to the bottom of the valley of Chamouni, and the glacier of Grindelwald, constantly renewed from the deep reservoirs where the Jungfrau hoards her vast supplies of snow, descends to about four thousand feet above the sea-level. But the glacier of the Aar, though also very large, comes to a pause at about six thousand feet above the level of the sea; for the south wind from the other side of the Alps, the warm sirocco of Italy, blows across it, and it consequently melts at a higher level than either the Mer de Glace or the Grindelwald. It is a curious fact, that in the valley of Hassli the temperature frequently rises instead of falling as you ascend; at the Grimsel, the temperature is at times higher than at Meyringen below, where the warmer winds are not felt so directly. The glacier of Aletsch, on the southern slope of the Jungfrau, and into which many other glaciers enter, terminates also at a considerable height, because it turns into the valley of the Rhone, through which the southern winds blow constantly.
Under ordinary conditions, vegetation fades in these mountains at the height of six thousand feet, but, in consequence of prevailing winds, and the sheltering influence of the mountain-walls, there is no uniformity in the limit of perpetual snow and ice. Where currents of warm air are very constant, glaciers do not occur at all, even where other circumstances are favorable to their formation. There are valleys in the Alps far above six thousand feet which have no glaciers, and where perpetual snow is seen only on their northern sides. These contrasts in temperature lead to the most wonderful contrasts in the aspect of the soil; summer and winter lie side by side, and bright flowers look out from the edge of snows that never melt. Where the warm winds prevail, there may be sheltered spots at a height of ten or eleven thousand feet, isolated nooks opening southward where the most exquisite flowers bloom in the midst of perpetual snow and ice; and occasionally I have seen a bright little flower with a cap of snow over it that seemed to be its shelter. The flowers give, indeed, a peculiar charm to these high Alpine regions. Occurring often in beds of the same kind, forming green, blue or yellow patches, they seem nestled close together in sheltered spots, or even in fissures and chasms of the rock, where they gather in dense quantities. Even in the sternest scenery of the Alps some sign of vegetation lingers; and I remember to have found a tuft of lichen growing on the only rock which pierced through the ice on the summit of the Jungfrau. The absolute solitude, the intense stillness of the upper Alps is most impressive; no cattle, no pasturage, no bird, nor any sound of life,—and, indeed, even if there were, the rarity of the air in these high regions is such that sound is hardly transmissible. The deep repose, the purity of aspect of every object, the snow, broken only by ridges of angular rocks, produce an effect no less beautiful than solemn. Sometimes, in the midst of the wide expanse, one comes upon a patch of the so-called red snow of the Alps. At a distance, one would say that such a spot marked some terrible scene of blood, but, as you come nearer, the hues are so tender and delicate, as they fade from deep red to rose, and so die into the pure colorless snow around, that the first impression is completely dispelled. This red snow is an organic growth, a plant springing up in such abundance that it colors extensive surfaces, just as the microscopic plants dye our pools with green in the spring. It is an Alga well known in the Arctics, where it forms wide fields in the summer. With the above facts before us concerning the materials of which glaciers are composed, we may now proceed to consider their structure more fully in connection with their movements and the effects they produce on the surfaces over which they extend. It has already been stated that the ice of the glaciers has not the same appearance everywhere, but differs according to the level at which it stands. In consequence of this we distinguish three very distinct regions in these frozen fields, the uppermost of which, upon the sides of the steepest and highest slopes of the mountain-ridges, consists chiefly of layers of snow piled one above another by the successive snowfalls of the colder seasons, and which would remain in uniform superposition but for the change to which they are subjected in consequence of a gradual downward movement, causing the mass to descend by slow degrees, while new accumulations in the higher regions annually replace the snow which has been thus removed to an inferior level. We shall consider hereafter the process by which this change of position is brought about. For the present it is sufficient to state that such a transfer, by which a balance is preserved in the distribution of the snow, takes place in all glaciers, so that, instead of increasing indefinitely in the upper regions, where on account of the extreme cold there is little melting, they permanently preserve about the same thickness, being yearly reduced by their downward motion in a proportion equal to their annual increase by fresh additions of snow. Indeed, these reservoirs of snow maintain themselves at the same level, much as a stream, into which many rivulets empty, remains within its usual limits in consequence of the drainage of the average supply. Of course, very heavy rains or sudden thaws at certain seasons or in particular years may cause an occasional overflow of such a stream; and irregularities of the same kind are observed during certain years or at different periods of the same year in the accumulations of snow, in consequence of which the successive strata may vary in thickness. But in ordinary times layers from six to eight feet deep are regularly added annually to the accumulation of snow in the higher regions,—not taking into account, of course, the heavy drifts heaped up in particular localities, but estimating the uniform average increase over wide fields. This snow is gradually transformed into more or less compact ice, passing through an intermediate condition analogous to the slosh of our roads, and in that condition chiefly occupies the upper part of the extensive troughs into which these masses descend from the loftier heights. This region is called the region of the névé. It is properly the birthplace of the glaciers, for it is here that the transformation of the snow into ice begins. The névé ice, though varying in the degree of its compactness and solidity, is always very porous and whitish in color, resembling somewhat frozen slosh, while lower down in the region of the glacier proper the ice is close, solid, transparent, and of a bluish tint.
But besides the differences in solidity and in external appearance, there are also many other important changes taking place in the ice of these different regions, to which we shall return presently. Such modifications arise chiefly from the pressure to which it is subjected in its downward progress, and to the alterations, in consequence of this displacement, in the relative position of the snow- and ice-beds, as well as to the influence exerted by the form of the valleys themselves, not only upon the external aspect of the glaciers, but upon their internal structure also. The surface of a glacier varies greatly in character in these different regions. The uniform even surfaces of the upper snow-fields gradually pass into a more undulating outline, the pure white fields become strewn with dust and sand in the lower levels, while broken bits of stone and larger fragments of rock collect upon them, which assume a regular arrangement, and produce a variety of features most startling and incomprehensible at first sight, but more easily understood when studied in connection with the whole series of glacial phenomena. They are then seen to be the consequence of the general movement of the glacier, and of certain effects which the course of the seasons, the action of the sun, the rain, the reflected heat from the sides of the valley, or the disintegration of its rocky walls, may produce upon the surface of the ice. In the next article we shall consider in detail all these phenomena, and trace them in their natural connection. Once familiar with these facts, it will not be difficult correctly to appreciate the movement of the glacier and the cause of its inequalities. We shall see, that, in consequence of the greater or less rapidity in the movement of certain portions of the mass, its centre progressing faster than its sides, and the upper, middle, and lower regions of the same glacier advancing at different rates, the strata which in the higher ranges of the snow-fields were evenly spread over wide expanses, become bent and folded to such a degree that the primitive stratification is nearly obliterated, while the internal mass of the ice has also assumed new features under these new circumstances. There is, indeed, as much difference between the newly formed beds of snow in the upper region and the condition of the ice at the lower end of a glacier as between a recent deposit of coral sand or a mud-bed in an estuary and the metamorphic limestone or clay slate twisted and broken as they are seen in the very chains of mountains from which the glaciers descend. A geologist, familiar with all the changes to which a bed of rock may be subjected from the time it was deposited in horizontal layers up to the time when it was raised by Plutonic agencies along the sides of a mountain-ridge, bent and distorted in a thousand directions, broken through the thickness of its mass, and traversed by innumerable fissures which are themselves filled with new materials, will best be able to understand how the stratification of snow may be modified by pressure and displacement so as finally to appear like a laminated mass full of cracks and crevices, in which the original stratification is recognized only by the practical student. I trust in my next article I shall be able to explain intelligibly to my readers even these extreme alterations in the condition of the primitive snow of the Alpine summits.
TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL.
SCENE I.—Near a Castle in Germany.
'Twere no hard task, perchance, to win
The popular laurel for my song;
'Twere only to comply with sin,
And own the crown, though snatched by wrong:
Rather Truth's chaplet let me wear,
Though sharp as death its thorns may sting;
Loyal to Loyalty, I bear
No badge but of my rightful king.
Patient by town and tower I wait,
Or o'er the blustering moorland go;
I buy no praise at cheaper rate,
Or what faint hearts may fancy so:
For me, no joy in lady's bower,
Or hall, or tourney, will I sing,
Till the slow stars wheel round the hour
That crowns my hero and my king.
While all the land runs red with strife,
And wealth is won by peddler-crimes,
Let who will find content in life
And tinkle in unmanly rhymes:
I wait and seek; through dark and light,
Safe in my heart my hope I bring,
Till I once more my faith may plight
To him my whole soul owns her king.
When power is filched by drone and dolt,
And, with caught breath and flashing eye,
Her knuckles whitening round the bolt,
Vengeance leans eager from the sky,—
While this and that the people guess,
And to the skirts of praters cling,
Who court the crowd they should compress,—
I turn in scorn to seek my king.
Shut in what tower of darkling chance
Or dungeon of a narrow doom,
Dream'st thou of battle-axe and lance
That for the cross make crashing room?
Come! with strained eyes the battle waits
In the wild van thy mace's swing;
While doubters parley with their fates,
Make thou thine own and ours, my king!
Oh, strong to keep upright the old,
And wise to buttress with the new,
Prudent, as only are the bold,
Clear-eyed, as only are the true,
To foes benign, to friendship stern,
Intent to imp Law's broken wing,—
Who would not die, if death might earn
The right to kiss thy hand, my king?
SCENE II.—An Inn near the Château of Chalus.
Well, the whole thing is over, and here I sit
With one arm in a sling and a milk-score of gashes,
And this flagon of Cyprus must e'en warm my wit,
Since what's left of youth's flame is a head flecked with ashes.
I remember I sat in this very same inn,—
I was young then, and one young man thought I was handsome,—
I had found out what prison King Richard was in,
And was spurring for England to push on the ransom.
How I scorned the dull souls that sat guzzling around,
And knew not my secret nor recked my derision!
Let the world sink or swim, John or Richard be crowned,
All one, so the beer-tax got lenient revision.
How little I dreamed, as I tramped up and down,
That granting our wish one of Fate's saddest jokes is!
I had mine with a vengeance,—my king got his crown,
And made his whole business to break other folks's.
I might as well join in the safe old tum, tum:
A hero's an excellent loadstar,—but, bless ye,
What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come
And your only too palpable hero in esse!
Precisely the odds (such examples are rife)
'Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we make show of,
'Twixt the boy's morning dream and the wake-up of life,
'Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I know of!
But the world's better off, I'm convinced of it now,
Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny,
To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow,
And just care for themselves. Well, God cares for the many;
And somehow the poor old Earth blunders along,
Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness,
And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong,
Gets to port, as the next generation will witness.
You think her old ribs have come all crashing through,
If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your cobweb asunder;
But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you,
And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand from under.
Better one honest man who can wait for God's mind,
In our poor shifting scene here, though heroes were plenty!
Better one bite, at forty, of truth's bitter rind
Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty!
I see it all now: when I wanted a king,
'Twas the kingship that failed in myself I was seeking,—
'Tis so much less easy to do than to sing,
So much simpler to reign by a proxy than be king!
Yes, I think I do see: after all's said and sung,
Take this one rule of life and you never will rue it,—
'Tis but do your own duty and hold your own tongue,
And Blondel were royal himself, if he knew it!
NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.
Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another side of Nature. I have done so.
According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites, "wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon." My journal for the last year or two has been selenitic in this sense.
Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,—to penetrate to the shores of its Lake Tchad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are there to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the Black Nile that concerns us.
I shall be a benefactor, if I conquer some realms from the night,—if I report to the gazettes anything transpiring about us at that season worthy of their attention,—if I can show men that there is some beauty awake while they are asleep,—if I add to the domains of poetry.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. I soon discovered that I was acquainted only with its complexion; and as for the moon, I had seen her only as it were through a crevice in a shutter, occasionally. Why not walk a little way in her light?
Suppose you attend to the suggestions which the moon makes for one month, commonly in vain, will it not be very different from anything in literature or religion? But why not study this Sanscrit? What if one moon has come and gone, with its world of poetry, its weird teachings, its oracular suggestions,—so divine a creature freighted with hints for me, and I have not used her,—one moon gone by unnoticed?
I think it was Dr. Chalmers who said, criticizing Coleridge, that for his part he wanted ideas which he could see all round, and not such as he must look at away up in the heavens. Such a man, one would say, would never look at the moon, because she never turns her other side to us. The light which comes from ideas which have their orbit as distant from the earth, and which is no less cheering and enlightening to the benighted traveller than that of the moon and stars, is naturally reproached or nicknamed as moonshine by such. They are moonshine, are they? Well, then, do your night-travelling when there is no moon to light you; but I will be thankful for the light that reaches me from the star of least magnitude. Stars are lesser or greater only as they appear to us so. I will be thankful that I see so much as one side of a celestial idea, one side of the rainbow and the sunset sky.
Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities very well, and despised them,—as owls might talk of sunshine. None of your sunshine!—but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand, which they are abed and asleep to, however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.
It must be allowed that the light of the moon, sufficient though it is for the pensive walker, and not disproportionate to the inner light we have, is very inferior in quality and intensity to that of the sun. But the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends to us, but also by her influence on the earth and its inhabitants. "The moon gravitates toward the earth, and the earth reciprocally toward the moon." The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence. I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts from the current distractions of the day. I would warn my hearers that they must not try my thoughts by a daylight standard, but endeavor to realize that I speak out of the night. All depends on your point of view. In Drake's "Collection of Voyages," Wafer says of some Albinos among the Indians of Darien,—"They are quite white, but their whiteness is like that of a horse, quite different from the fair or pale European, as they have not the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion.... Their eyebrows are milk-white, as is likewise the hair of their heads, which is very fine.... They seldom go abroad in the daytime, the sun being disagreeable to them, and causing their eyes, which are weak and poring, to water, especially if it shines towards them; yet they see very well by moonlight, from which we call them mooneyed."
Neither in our thoughts in these moonlight walks, methinks, is there "the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion," but we are intellectually and morally Albinos,—children of Endymion,—such is the effect of conversing much with the moon.
I complain of Arctic voyages that they do not enough remind us of the constant peculiar dreariness of the scenery, and the perpetual twilight of the Arctic night. So he whose theme is moonlight, though he may find it difficult, must, as it were, illustrate it with the light of the moon alone.
Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season. Take a July night, for instance. About ten o'clock,—when man is asleep, and day fairly forgotten,—the beauty of moonlight is seen over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding. On all sides novelties present themselves. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars; instead of the wood-thrush, there is the whippoorwill; instead of butterflies in the meadows, fire-flies, winged sparks of fire!—who would have believed it? What kind of cool, deliberate life dwells in those dewy abodes associated with a spark of fire? So man has fire in his eyes, or blood, or brain. Instead of singing-birds, the half-throttled note of a cuckoo flying over, the croaking of frogs, and the intenser dream of crickets,—but above all, the wonderful trump of the bull-frog, ringing from Maine to Georgia. The potato-vines stand upright, the corn grows apace, the bushes loom, the grain-fields are boundless. On our open river-terraces, once cultivated by the Indian, they appear to occupy the ground like an army,—their heads nodding in the breeze. Small trees and shrubs are seen in the midst, overwhelmed as by an inundation. The shadows of rocks and trees and shrubs and hills are more conspicuous than the objects themselves. The slightest irregularities in the ground are revealed by the shadows, and what the feet find comparatively smooth appears rough and diversified in consequence. For the same reason the whole landscape is more variegated and picturesque than by day. The smallest recesses in the rocks are dim and cavernous; the ferns in the wood appear of tropical size. The sweet-fern and indigo in overgrown wood-paths wet you with dew up to your middle. The leaves of the shrub-oak are shining as if a liquid were flowing over them. The pools seen through the trees are as full of light as the sky. "The light of the day takes refuge in their bosoms," as the Purana says of the ocean. All white objects are more remarkable than by day. A distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on a hill-side. The woods are heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. You see the moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if she selected what to shine on. These small fractions of her light remind one of the plant called moon-seed,—as if the moon were sowing it in such places.
In the night the eyes are partly closed, or retire into the head. Other senses take the lead. The walker is guided as well by the sense of smell. Every plant and field and forest emits its odor now,—swamp-pink in the meadow, and tansy in the road; and there is the peculiar dry scent of corn which has begun to show its tassels. The senses both of hearing and smelling are more alert. We hear the tinkling of rills which we never detected before. From time to time, high up on the sides of hills, you pass through a stratum of warm air: a blast which has come up from the sultry plains of noon. It tells of the day, of sunny noon-tide hours and banks, of the laborer wiping his brow and the bee humming amid flowers. It is an air in which work has been done,—which men have breathed. It circulates about from wood-side to hill-side, like a dog that has lost its master, now that the sun is gone. The rocks retain all night the warmth of the sun which they have absorbed. And so does the sand: if you dig a few inches into it, you find a warm bed.
You lie on your back on a rock in a pasture on the top of some bare hill at midnight, and speculate on the height of the starry canopy. The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show. A companion with whom I was sailing, one very windy, but bright moonlight night, when the stars were few and faint, thought that a man could get along with them, though he was considerably reduced in his circumstances,—that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never failed.
No wonder that there have been astrologers,—that some have conceived that they were personally related to particular stars. Du Bartas, as translated by Sylvester, says he'll
"not believe that the Great Architect
With all these fires the heavenly arches decked
Only for shew, and with these glistering shields,
'T awake poor shepherds, watching in the fields,"—
he'll
"not believe that the least flower which pranks
Our garden-borders or our common banks,
And the least stone that in her warming lap
Our Mother Earth doth covetously wrap,
Hath some peculiar virtue of its own,
And that the glorious stars of heaven have none."
And Sir Walter Raleigh well says, "The stars are instruments of far greater use than to give an obscure light, and for men to gaze on after sunset"; and he quotes Plotinus as affirming that they "are significant, but not efficient"; and also Augustine as saying, "Deus regit inferiora corpora per superiora": God rules the bodies below by those above. But best of all is this, which another writer has expressed: "Sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum quemadmodum agricola terræ naturam": A wise man assisteth the work of the stars as the husbandman helpeth the nature of the soil.
It does not concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very important to the traveller, whether the moon shines brightly or is obscured. It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth, when she commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been abroad alone in moonlight nights. She seems to be waging continual war with the clouds in your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be her foes also. She comes on magnifying her dangers by her light, revealing, displaying them in all their hugeness and blackness,—then suddenly casts them behind into the light concealed, and goes her way triumphant through a small space of clear sky.
In short, the moon traversing, or appearing to traverse, the small clouds which lie in her way, now obscured by them, now easily dissipating and shining through them, makes the drama of the moonlight night to all watchers and night-travellers. Sailors speak of it as the moon eating up the clouds. The traveller all alone, the moon all alone, except for his sympathy, overcoming with incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above the forests and lakes and hills. When she is obscured, he so sympathizes with her that he could whip a dog for her relief, as Indians do. When she enters on a clear field of great extent in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad. And when she has fought her way through all the squadron of her foes, and rides majestic in a clear sky unscathed, and there are no more any obstructions in her path, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his heart, and the cricket also seems to express joy in its song.
How insupportable would be the days, if the night, with its dews and darkness, did not come to restore the drooping world! As the shades begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey of the intellect.
Richter says, that "the earth is every day overspread with the veil of night for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened, namely, that we may the more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought in the hush and quiet of darkness. Thoughts which day turns into smoke and mist stand about us in the night as light and flames; even as the column which fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius in the daytime appears a pillar of cloud, but by night a pillar of fire."
There are nights in this climate of such serene and majestic beauty, so medicinal and fertilizing to the spirit, that methinks a sensitive nature would not devote them to oblivion, and perhaps there is no man but would be better and wiser for spending them out of doors, though he should sleep all the next day to pay for it, should sleep an Endymion sleep, as the ancients expressed it,—nights which warrant the Grecian epithet ambrosial, when, as in the land of Beulah, the atmosphere is charged with dewy fragrance, and with music, and we take our repose and have our dreams awake,—when the moon, not secondary to the sun,
"gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime."
Diana still hunts in the New-England sky.
"In heaven queen she is among the spheres;
She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure;
Eternity in her oft change she bears;
She Beauty is; by her the fair endure.
"Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide;
Mortality below her orb is placed;
By her the virtues of the stars down slide;
By her is Virtue's perfect image cast."
The Hindoos compare the moon to a saintly being who has reached the last stage of bodily existence.
Great restorer of antiquity, great enchanter! In a mild night, when the harvest or hunter's moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our village, whatever architect they may have had by day, acknowledge only a master. The village street is then as wild as the forest. New and old things are confounded. I know not whether I am sitting on the ruins of a wall, or on the material which is to compose a new one. Nature is an instructed and impartial teacher, spreading no crude opinions, and flattering none; she will be neither radical nor conservative. Consider the moonlight, so civil, yet so savage!
The light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of day. It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated moments are.
"In such a night let me abroad remain
Till morning breaks, and all's confused again."
Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.
When Ossian, in his address to the Sun, exclaims,—
"Where has darkness its dwelling?
Where is the cavernous home of the stars,
When thou quickly followest their steps,
Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,—
Thou climbing the lofty hills,
They descending on barren mountains?"
who does not in his thought accompany the stars to their "cavernous home," "descending" with them "on barren mountains"?
Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black; for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are revelling.