The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875

by Various

Burke And The Revolution.

Bacon's grand testamentary vindication of his life, “bequeathing his name and memory to foreign nations and his own countrymen after some time be passed over,” might have been written with even greater justice of himself—because free from any imputation of moral weakness—by the master-mind of the XVIIIth century in England in the domain of political philosophy—Edmund Burke, the illustrious orator and statesman, the author of Reflections on the Revolution in France. To-day, when France, “incessantly agitated by a propaganda of the most pernicious doctrines,”[201] still vindicates the sagacity which foresaw the disastrous course of the Revolution, while England, which he saved from the same propaganda, uninterruptedly illustrates the “beneficial influence of the regular action of the public powers,” it may not be amiss to recall some of the opinions to which he gave utterance at the beginning of the storm. Burke's genius, like Bacon's, was indeed too refulgent not to be acknowledged even in his own day. But the burning questions upon the discussion of which and their solution, so far as human reason can go, he has built up an enduring fame—monumentum ære perennius—lighted up passions too gigantic and furious in the tremendous conflict then inaugurated to allow of contemporary justice being done to his labors. Nor did their negatory influence upon his fame end with his death; two allied causes have conspired to partially obscure the clear and immortal flame of his genius, even to our time:

First, the jealousy of the political and literary followers of Charles James Fox.

Second, the inimical spirit of the Revolution.

Burke, as it is well known, had to contend, during his parliamentary career, not only against the Tory prejudices of the country party, represented by such men as William Lord Bagot and Col. Onslow, but also against the ill-concealed jealousy and oligarchical exclusiveness of his nominal allies, the Whig aristocracy. But this influence of caste, which in his lifetime placed over his head his political pupil, Charles Fox, as the representative of the Whig family compacts, has [pg 824] been succeeded since his death by a more acrimonious spirit of personal jealousy in defence of the fame of his younger rival. The partisans of Fox have never been able to forgive Burke's renunciation of his alliance with the eloquent Whig leader; and so large a share of literary and political criticism during the last half-century has come from the pens of that small but popular band of writers who took their inspiration from the traditions of Holland House, that the acknowledgment of Burke's profound and prophetic genius has been unduly circumscribed by the desire of elevating the “great man” of the family. Macaulay and Earl Russell have given expression to this feeling; the former by covertly insinuating a doubt of Burke's judgment, while lavishly extolling the splendor of his imagination; the latter by open denunciation of his course at the outbreak of the Revolution; Earl Russell with unconscious self-satire quoting these lines from La Fontaine:

“L'homme est de feu pour le mensonge

Il est de glace pour la vérité.”

The efforts of a powerful literary and family connection to elevate its idol, Charles Fox, at the expense of Burke, have had, however, but small effect in limiting the measure of the latter's fame, compared with the hostile spirit of revolution animating the current periodical literature of England and America. If the apostles of the Revolution, who steal Burke's thunder without acknowledgment, when it suits their purpose, against the despotism of power, could bury out of sight his protests against that worse despotism of unchained human passions, which is their ideal of liberty, they would gladly place him in their Pantheon. But the mind of the great political philosopher was too grandly comprehensive to be narrowed within the grooves of that fashionable “liberalism” which covers even the basest tyranny, if directed against the Catholic Church. His humanity was too broad and true not to be aroused into flaming denunciation of the abuse of power, whether it assumed the shape of “opulent oppression” in India or democratic priest-slaughter in France. Hence it is that Burke holds but a half-allegiance of the Liberal party; that his fame has been, as it were, truncated, so far as they have been able to effect it; and that his magnificent vindications of the cause of liberty, bounded by no limitations of race, government, or creed, are circumscribed in their minds by his ante-revolutionary labors.

But it is not in the power of any class of critics, least of all of the light artillery of “liberalism,” to narrow or permanently diminish Burke's kingdom over human thought. His fame will not be dependent upon the fashion of this or any single age. The consensus of humanity has crowned him among the Immortals. When Macaulay and Russell shall have become obscure names, the works of Burke will endure as monuments of our civilization. His place will be with Demosthenes and Cicero, and in the estimation of a more remote posterity he will probably overtop them both.

The long, lean figure, with spectacles on nose, once familiar to the caricaturists of the third George's reign, has faded a good deal from the eyes of the present generation. We now turn over with a smile the prints of the “concealed Jesuit” from S. Omer's, barrette on head, and long soutane clinging to his heels; or the more portly figure of [pg 825] the highwayman, blunderbuss in hand, waylaying, in company with North and Fox, the “savior of India” (Warren Hastings); or the “Watchman” of the constitution, in heavy cloak, lantern in hand, and spectacles on the formidable nose, ferreting out the revolutionary preacher, Dr. Price, in his midnight study. The gravers of Gilray and Sayer have yielded to those of the caricaturists for Punch. The figures of Gladstone, Disraeli, and Bright have supplanted those of Pitt, Fox, and Burke. The great orator and statesman has taken his place as a classic on the shelves of all libraries, but is popularly known only by a few rounded extracts from his speeches, or by Macaulay's description of the entrance on the parliamentary stage of Lord Rockingham's young Irish secretary, “who to an eloquence surpassing the eloquence of Pitt, and an industry that shamed the industry of Grenville, united an amplitude of comprehension to which neither Pitt nor Grenville could lay claim.” But if Burke has shared the fate of all great writers not strictly popular in being conventionally admired but practically neglected by the general reader, no political author is more diligently studied by the “middlemen” of thought, the makers and leaders of public opinion. He is the private tutor of public teachers; the vade mecum of the orator and politician. Most of the questions of political ethics which have been the subjects of discussion during the present century have been profoundly treated of by him. Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, the freedom of the press, ministerial responsibility, the relations of church and state, the abolition of the slave trade, the amelioration of the criminal law—all have received from him their most ample and brilliant illustration.

Of all the events of his time, however, the Revolution of 1789 gave the chief exercise to his powers. Born in 1730, he was then at the zenith of his fame, in the full maturity of his massive yet acute intellect. Earl Russell's senile complaint in his life of Fox of “the wreck of his (Burke's) judgment” betrays only the dotage of his own. Advancing age had better fitted him for the contest. His mind had, as Macaulay truly says, bloomed late into flower, although the rhetoric of the essayist has caricatured the sterility of his youth. The giant trunk was now crowned with a luxuriant and graceful foliage, which added to its beauty, while it detracted nothing from its strength. The experience of “his long and laborious life,” the accumulated stores of his prodigious industry, furnished him with weapons of finest temper and irresistible force. Thus armed, stepping to the front as the champion of civilization and religion against the Giant Despair which had broken its bonds in Europe, it was with striking appropriateness that his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, applied to him, at the moment of his rupture with Fox and the opposition, the lines written under the engraving of 1790 from the portrait of 1775—lines in which Milton describes the faithful Abdiel striding forth, solitary, from amid the rebel host:

“So spake the fervent angel, but his zeal

None seconded: .....

...... Unmoved,

Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,

His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;

Nor number nor example with him wrought

To move from truth, or change his constant mind,

Though single. From amidst forth he passed

Long way through hostile scorn, nor of violence feared aught;

And with retorting scorn, his back he turned

On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.”

The efforts of Burke's single mind at this critical moment decided the course of events in England. His speeches in Parliament and the publication of his Reflections on the Revolution in France aroused a national feeling that all the efforts of the revolutionary propagandists were unable to stem; which Pitt followed rather than led; and which enabled England to carry on without flinching, to a triumphant close, the long and bloody war in national self-defence into which she was driven by the aggressive spirit of the Revolution. Pitt only gave utterance to the national feeling when he declared at the close of Burke's speech on the Army Estimates, in which he flung down the gauntlet to the Revolution, “that not only the present generation but the latest posterity would revere his name for the decided part he had that day taken.”

It was Burke's fortune to witness the temporary triumph, but not the succeeding repulse, of the first outbreak of the Revolution. He died at the full tide of its fury. Yet the tremendous blows he dealt its principles, single-handed, before all that was mortal of him was laid at rest at Beaconsfield, undoubtedly saved England from succumbing to its influence in his own day, and their conservative force is still felt in the government of that country. “This man,” said Schlegel, “has been to his own country and to all Europe—and, in a particular manner, to all Germany—a new light of political wisdom and moral experience. He corrected his age when it was at the height of its revolutionary fury; and without maintaining any system of philosophy, he seems to have seen further into the true nature of society, and to have more clearly comprehended the effect of religion in connecting individual security with national welfare, than any philosopher or any system of philosophy of any preceding age.” True words, and worthy of attention at this moment, when Germany has entered on a new and dangerous course of political action.

From the first mutterings of the revolutionary storm Burke had distrusted its character and future violence. Alarmed by what he had seen of the undisguised levity and scepticism of Parisian society during his visit to France in 1772, he had taken occasion in one of his speeches, as early as 1773, to point out “this conspiracy of atheism to the watchful eyes of European governments.” The outrages in the name of liberty which were simultaneous with its outburst determined his course, although his keen political vision had long before penetrated the hollowness of its professions. The old political gladiator, “in whose breast,” as he proudly and truly said of himself, “no anger, durable or vehement, had ever been kindled but by what he considered as tyranny”; whose potent voice had re-echoed across the Western ocean in support of the American colonist, had pleaded for the African slave and Hindoo laborer, and had instilled fresh hope, in the broken heart of the Irish “Papist,” roused himself now to his last and most powerful effort in defence of the fugitive French “aristocrat” and hunted priest.

“I have struggled,” he said, “to the best of my power against two great evils, growing out of the most sacred of all things—liberty and authority. I have struggled against the licentiousness of freedom, I have contended against the tyranny [pg 827] of power.” Nearly ten years before, in his speech on the Marriage Act, defending himself against the charges of “aristocrat” and “radical” which had been alternately levelled against him, he had predicted his course in these noble words:

“When indeed the smallest rights of the poorest people in the kingdom are in question, I would set my face against any act of pride countenanced by the highest that are in it; and if it should come to the last extremity, and a contest of blood, my course is taken. I would take my fate with the poor, and low, and feeble. But if these people come to turn their liberty into a cloak for mischievousness, and to seek a privilege of exemption, not from power, but from the rules of morality and virtuous discipline, I would join my hand to make them feel the force which a few united in a good cause have over a multitude of the profligate and ferocious.”

Burke's theory of true reform, illustrated by the honorable labors of his whole public career, was in fact so radically opposed to that of the French constitution makers that no standing-ground common to both could be found. He foresaw plainly enough what were the secret aims and aspirations of the revolutionary leaders from the first, whatever might be their humanitarian professions; that whatever their changes of leaders or watchwords, their goal would always be the same—the destruction of existing society; not reparation, but ruin. He would have seen in M. Gambetta's programme of a nouvelle couche sociale, enunciated at Grenoble in 1872, only a new reading of M. Marat's schemes of universal confiscation in 1792. Neither would have found more favor in his eyes than in those of any English reformer from S. Thomas à Becket to Hampden. He believed with Bacon that there could be no wise design of reform which did not set out with the determination “to weed, to prune, and to graft, rather than to plough up and plant all afresh.” Sixty years afterwards another writer, after an elaborate and prolonged study of the ancien régime, and a lifetime's experience of the results of the Revolution, arrived at the point from which Burke started. The writer was Alexis de Tocqueville. Those who are familiar only with the Democracy in America, the work of his inexperienced youth, would do well to read his Memoir and Letters by De Beaumont. Writing to M. Freslon in 1853, after the events of 1848-51 had pretty well cured him of liberalism, he said:

“When one examines, as I am doing at Tours, the archives of an ancient provincial government, one finds a thousand reasons for hating the ancien régime, but few for loving the Revolution; for one sees that the ancien régime was rapidly sinking under the weight of years and a gradual change of ideas and manners, so that, with a little patience and good conduct, it might have been reformed without destroying indiscriminately all that was good in it with all that was bad. It is curious to see how different was the government of 1780 from that of 1750. One does not recognize the government or the governed. The Revolution broke out not when evils were at their worst, but when reform was beginning. Halfway down the staircase we threw ourselves out of the window, in order to get sooner to the bottom” (Memoir and Remains, vol. ii. pp. 242, 243, Eng. ed.)

Burke had an invincible distrust of the crude theories and rash speculations of the doctrinaires of the Revolution. “Follow experience and common sense,” he says in a hundred different ways; “these are the arguments of statesmen! Leave the rest to the schools, where only they may be debated with—safety.” [pg 828] “In politics,” he says, “the most fallacious of all things is geometrical demonstration.” Again: “The majors make a pompous figure in the battle, but the victory of truth depends upon the little minors of circumstances.” He compares the socialist theorist ready to plunge into the volcano of revolutionary experiment to the Sicilian sophist—ardentem frigidus Ætnam insiluit. The atrocious principles of the literary and philosophical guides of the Revolution seemed to him almost more portentous than the brutalities of the mob. “Never before this time,” he says, “was a set of literary men converted into a gang of robbers and assassins. Never before did a den of bravoes and banditti assume the garb and tone of an academy of philosophers.”

Remarkable sayings then, and true of experience anterior to his time. But had Burke lived in our day, he would have witnessed with astonishment the full development of the spirit he denounced, in the terrible spectacle of an aggressive infidel philosophy, and an almost universal infidel press, sometimes truculent, sometimes frivolous, but always shamelessly boastful of its pagan principles. He would have seen a school of pseudo-philosophy professing its open design to destroy the foundations of revealed religion; filled with the spirit of the apostate Julian; as audacious and boastful as he, but destined to meet as shameful an end.

Let us compare, then, Burke's theory of true liberty, and his opinion of what France might have gained by a large and loyal measure of reform, with the desperate counsels and futile outrages which followed the surrender of the movement by the French conservatives into the hands of the Jacobins. “You would,” he says, had such a course as he recommended been pursued, “have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed despotism from the earth by showing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but, as when well disciplined it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and recognize that happiness is to be found by virtue in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walks of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality which it never can remove.”

Burke's frequent definitions of true liberty are as beautiful as they are true. “You hope, sir,” he says, writing to De Menonville, “that I think the French deserving of liberty. I certainly do. I certainly think all men who desire it deserve it. It is not the reward of our merit or the acquisition of our industry. It is our inheritance. It is the birthright of our species. We cannot forfeit our right to it but by what forfeits our title to the privileges of our kind. I mean the abuse or oblivion of our natural faculties, and a ferocious indocility which is prompt to wrong or violence, destroys our social nature, and transforms us into something a little better than a description of wild beast. To men so degraded a state of strong restraint is a sort of necessary substitute for freedom, since, bad as it is, it may deliver them in some measure from the worst of all slavery, that is, the despotism of their own blind and brutal [pg 829] passions. You have kindly said that you began to love freedom from your intercourse with me. Permit me, then, to continue our conversation, and to tell you what that freedom is that I love. It is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish liberty. It is social freedom. It is that state of things in which the liberty of no man and no body of men is in a condition to trespass on the liberty of any person or any description of persons in society. The liberty, the only liberty, I mean, is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with virtue and order, but which cannot exist without them.”

“Am I,” he asks, in answer to the shibboleth of the “rights of man,”—“am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the case of the criminals condemned to the galleys and their heroic deliverer, the knight of the 'sorrowful countenance.'”

If we turn from Burke's satire upon the revolutionary actors to his opinions on its probable onward course and changing fortunes, we shall find a series of the most remarkable political prophecies on record. At a time when Fox and the opposition hailed the Revolution as already accomplished, with nothing before it but a future of ideal progress and happiness; when Pitt and the government seemed lulled into a still more fatal inaction, Burke proclaimed in decisive tones that the contest between socialism and all constituted governments had only begun. We group together a few of these remarkable predictions, which time has so amply verified: “He proposed to prove,” he said in his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, “that the present state of things in France is not a transient evil, productive, as some have too favorably supposed, of a lasting good; but that the present evil is only the means of producing future and, if that were possible, worse evils. That this is not an undigested, imperfect, and crude scheme of liberty, which may be gradually mellowed and ripened into an orderly and social freedom; but that it is so fundamentally wrong as to be incapable of correcting itself by any length of time.” Again: “We are not at the end of our struggle or near it. Let us not deceive ourselves; we are at the beginning of great troubles.” Predicting the changing features of the Revolution, he said: “In its present form it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may have to pass, as one of our poets says, 'through great varieties of untried being,' and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and sword.” The very spirit of the Commune is thus foreshadowed in a letter to M. de Menonville, 1790: “But if the same ends should hereafter require the same course which had been already pursued, there is no doubt but the same ferocious delight in murder and the same savage cruelty will be again renewed.” Tous les évêques a la lanterne was the watchword of both outbreaks of the Revolution.

Compare with these sayings the remarks, fifty years later, of another observer, of great acuteness, but moulded in less heroic proportions than Burke. “This day fifty-one years,” writes De Tocqueville, the author of Democracy in America, “the French Revolution commenced, and, after the destruction of so many men and institutions, we may say it is still going on. Is not this reassuring to the nations that [pg 830] are only just beginning theirs?”[202] De Tocqueville, it is well known, during the early part of his career, was tainted with the prevalent liberal Catholicism of his day in France. He wished to unite the church with the Revolution—chimerical task, of which advancing years and experience convinced him of the sinful folly! Happily for himself, he died a good Catholic in the bosom of the church.

“I scarcely dare hope,” he says, “to see a regular government, strong and at the same time liberal, established in our country. This ideal was, as you know, the dream of my youth, and likewise of the portion of my mature age that has passed. Is it possible still to believe in its realization? For a long time I thought (but long before February this belief had been much shaken) that we had been making our way over a stormy sea, on which we were still tossing, but that the port was at hand. Was I not wrong? Are we not on a rolling sea that has no shore? Or is not the land so distant, so unknown, that our lives and those of our children may pass away before it is reached, or, at least, before any settlement is made upon it?... I am indeed alarmed at the state of the public mind. It is far from betokening the close of a revolution. At the time it was said, and to this day it is commonly repeated, that the insurgents of June were the dregs of the populace; that they were all outcasts of the basest description, whose only motive was lust for plunder. Such, of course, were many of them. But it is not true that they were all of this kind; would to God that they had been! Such wretches are always a small minority; they never prevail; they are imprisoned or executed, and all is over. In the insurrection of June, besides bad passions, there were, what are far more dangerous, false opinions. Many of the men who attempted to overthrow the most sacred rights were carried away by an erroneous notion of right. They sincerely believed that society was based upon injustice, and they wished to give it another foundation. [Compare Gambetta's nouvelle couche sociale.] Our bayonets and our cannon will never destroy this revolutionary fanaticism. It will create for us dangers and embarrassments without end. Finally, I begin to ask myself whether anything solid or durable can be built on the shifting basis of our society? Whether it will support even a despotism, which many people, tired of storms, would, for want of a better, hail as a haven? We did not see this great revolution in human society begin; we shall not see it end. If I had children, I should always be repeating this to them, and should tell them that in this age and in this country one ought to be fit for everything, and prepared for everything, for no one can count on the future.”[203]

A conversation apropos of a Benedictine survivor of 1789, given from Mr. Senior's Journal (Memoir, vol. ii. p. 1), illustrates the final opinion of the author of Democracy in America upon the Revolution. It took place only one year before his death:

“And what effect,” I asked, “has the contemplation of seventy years of revolution produced on him (the Benedictine)? Does he look back, like Talleyrand, to the ancien régime as a golden age?” “He admits,” said Tocqueville, “the material superiority of our own age, but he believes that intellectually and morally we are far inferior to our grandfathers. And I agree with him. These seventy years of revolution have destroyed our courage, our hopefulness, our self-reliance, our public spirit, and, as respects by far the majority of our higher classes, our passions, except the vulgarest and most selfish ones, vanity and covetousness. Even ambition seems extinct. The men who seek power seek it not for itself, not as a means of doing good to their country but as a means of getting money and flatterers.”[204]

What more remarkable testimony to Burke's prophetic vision could be offered?

If any were needed, it would be found in an opposite quarter, in the revelations of Cluseret and his accomplices [pg 831] as to the premeditated burning of Paris and the destruction of the Vendôme Column in 1871, viewed in connection with Burke's positive and reiterated assertions that the worst excesses of 1789 were not the result of sudden passion, nor accidental, “as some believed or pretended to believe, but were systematically designed from the beginning.” It is known that among his correspondents in 1789-90 were the notorious Tom Paine and the eccentric cosmopolite, Anacharsis Baron de Clootz, both of whom strove to enlist Burke in the defence of the revolutionary cause before he had decisively pronounced himself. Paine and Clootz, congenial birds of prey, had both flown to Paris (anticipating the course of their disciples in 1871), smelling the approaching carnage afar off; and from them there is reason to believe Burke gathered ample hints of the full measure of the revolutionary programme. Striking also is Burke's remark that the revolutionary subdivision of France would induce a demand for communal or cantonal independence. “These commonwealths,” he says, “will not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris”—a prediction wonderfully verified by the attitude of Lyons and Marseilles during the late war and the period of the Commune, as well as by the cantonal programme of the Spanish revolutionists.

Burke's theory of the true basis of government was as moderate and well conceived as the revolutionary schemes were destructive and unsound. “We know,” he says, “and, what is better, we feel, that religion is the basis of society and the source of all good and all comfort. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than as he finds it; but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing constitution of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.” His defence of the cause of religion in France, and his glowing tribute to the virtue and learning of the French clergy, then, as now, the mark of the deadliest shafts of the Revolution, are eloquent and inspiring, but too long to quote in this article.

Equally remarkable with Burke's prophetic warnings of the successive crimes and follies of the Revolution and its offspring, the Commune, are his speculations on a supposed restoration of the monarchy. More than a quarter of a century after his death their wisdom was illustrated in the events of the inglorious reign of Charles X. His words are almost startling in their applicability to the present posture of French affairs, the Septennate, and the conflicting aspirations of the Comte de Chambord and the Prince Imperial:

“What difficulties,” he says, referring to a Restoration, in his letter on the policy of the allies, “will be met with in a country, exhausted by the taking of its capital, and among a people in a manner trained and actively disciplined to anarchy, rebellion, disorder, and impiety, may be conceived by those who know what Jacobin France is; who may have occupied themselves in revolving in their minds what they were to do if it fell to their lot to re-establish the affairs of France. What support or what limitations the restored monarchy must have may be a doubt, or how it will settle or pitch at last; but one thing I conceive to be far beyond a doubt—that the settlement cannot be immediate, but that it [pg 832]must be preceded by some sort of power equal, at least in vigor, vigilance, promptness, and decision, to a military government. For such a preparatory government no slow-paced, methodical, formal, lawyer-like system; still less that of a showy, artificial, trifling, intriguing court, guided by cabals of ladies, or men like ladies; least of all a philosophic, theoretic, disputatious school of sophistry—none of these ever will, or ever can, lay the foundations of an order that will last.”

“A judicious, well-tempered, and manly severity in the support of law and order”—this was Burke's advice to princes. He advocated freedom of the press as understood in England; “but they indeed,” he said, “who seriously write upon a principle of levelling, ought to be answered by the magistrate, and not by the speculatist.” We conclude our quotations by the following portrait of the “Legitimate Prince”:

“Whoever,” says Burke, “claims a right by birth to govern there, must find in his breast, or conjure up in it, an energy not always to be expected, not always to be wished, in well-ordered states. The lawful prince must have in everything but crime the character of an usurper. He is gone if he imagines himself the quiet possessor of a throne. He is to contend for it as much after an apparent conquest as before. His task is to win it. He must leave posterity to adorn and enjoy it. No velvet cushions for him. He is to be always—I speak nearly to the letter—on horseback. This opinion is the result of much patient thinking on the subject, which I conceive no event is likely to alter.”

Burke's tremendous onslaught on the Revolution drew forth swarms of opponents in his own day, most of whom are now forgotten. More than emulating the besotted conceit of those early apologists of anarchy, “liberal” writers are still to be found so infatuated with hostility to the Catholic Church, so purblind to the experience of nearly a hundred years—of the bloody chapters of 1793, of 1830, of 1848, of 1851, of 1871—so unawakened by the ruin the same accursed spirit has wrought in Spain, as to be heard chanting the glories of the Revolution and bewailing the possibility of “a priestly reaction” as the “destruction of all that has been gained by the national agonies of the last century.” What has been gained which would not have been gained in the gradual progress of society? What rather has not been lost in national honor and domestic virtue and happiness which would have been retained “if men had not been quite shrunk,” as Burke said, “from their natural dimensions by a degrading and sordid philosophy”? Let a witness like De Tocqueville answer!

The great political philosopher's warnings against the real spirit of the Revolution are still worthy the attention of all governments. Time has added to their value, not diminished it. “Against these, their ‘rights of men,’ let no government,” he says, “look for security in the length of its continuance or in the justice and lenity of its administration. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but on a question of competency and a question of title.”

His advice is vigorous and plain. “Never,” he says, “succumb to the enemy. It is a struggle for your national existence. If you must die, die with the sword in your hand! But I have no fear for the result!”

Robert Cavelier De La Salle. Concluded.

On the 6th of April La Salle discovered that the river was running through three channels. The following day he divided his company into three parties, of which he led the one that followed the western channel; the Sieur de Tonty, accompanied by Father Membré, took the middle channel, and the Sieur Dautray took the eastern channel. Father Membré relates that these channels appeared to them “beautiful and deep.” The water began to get brackish; then two leagues further down it became perfectly salt; and now, O glorious sight!

“The sea! the sea! the open sea,

The blue, the fresh, the ever free,”

was spread out before the eager and enchanted eyes of those brave and noble voyagers. Their first impulse was to return thanks to the King of kings for the protecting arm of his providence, that had thus guided them safely to this glorious consummation of their hopes; their second was to honor the King of France for his favor and protection. For these purposes, on the 9th of April, a cross and a column were erected with appropriate ceremonies. The entire company, under arms, joined with the minister of religion in chanting the hymn of the church, Vexilla Regis, and the Te Deum, and then followed a discharge of their muskets and shouts of “Long live the King!” The column bore the following inscription: “Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, reigns; the 9th of April, 1682.” At the foot of a tree La Salle caused a leaden plate to be buried, bearing the arms of France and a Latin inscription commemorative of the first navigation of the Mississippi, from the Illinois to its mouth, by La Salle, Tonty, Membré, and twenty Frenchmen. An authentic act, in the form of a procès verbal, was drawn up by La Metairie, the notary of the expedition, and signed by La Salle, Father Membré, Tonty, and the other principal members of the company. La Salle took formal possession of the country, which he was the first to call Louisiana, for the King of France; also of the natives and people residing therein, the seas, harbors, and all the streams flowing into the Mississippi. The great river itself he called the St. Louis.

In the midst of their rejoicings they were suffering for food. They found some dried meat prepared by the Indians, of which they partook with relish, and, as the good missionary says, “It was very good and delicate.” What must have been their feelings when they discovered that they had partaken of human flesh! Scarcity of food compelled them to turn their canoes up-stream. La Salle paid a visit to the hostile Quinipissas, with whom he resorted to his usual address to propitiate their friendship, and, though invited to a banquet, his men partook of it with their guns at their sides. A treacherous treaty of peace was entered into, but was used as a cover for an attack next morning upon the Europeans. But the ever-watchful La Salle was prepared for [pg 834] them. The two parties were engaged in a contest of two hours, in which the Quinipissas were worsted, and sustained a loss of ten men killed and many wounded. This is the only occasion in which the hostile dispositions of the natives did not yield to skill and diplomacy. His men, exasperated at the conduct of the treacherous natives, urged him to allow them to burn their village; but he adopted the wiser and more humane policy of refraining from alienating still more by unnecessary cruelty those whom he wished to make devout worshippers of the King of heaven and loyal subjects of the King of France. During the remainder of the return voyage, with the exception of the Koroas, who had now become allies of the Quinipissas, he met with the same hospitable treatment from the tribes on the banks of the river as he had received while going down. They were now regaled on the fresh green corn of the fields. La Salle with two canoes pushed forward from the Arkansas, in advance of his party, as far as Fort Prudhomme. Here he became dangerously ill, and could advance no further, and on the 2d of June was joined by the entire company. His malady became so violent that he was compelled to send Tonty forward to convey early information to the Comte de Frontenac of the great discovery. Father Membré remained with La Salle, doing all in his power to alleviate the sufferings of his cherished leader, whose illness continued forty days. The expedition by slow advances reached the Miami late in September, where they learned of several of Tonty's military expeditions undertaken after he left the main body. Intending to make the voyage of the Mississippi again in the spring, and plant colonies along its shores, La Salle appointed Father Membré his messenger to the king; and this zealous man, accepting the commission with promptness, proceeded to Quebec, and on the 2d of October sailed for France, to lay before the French court accurate information of La Salle's discoveries. During the next ten or twelve months La Salle remained in the Illinois country, cementing his friendly alliances with the Indians, and pushing forward his trading interests. Having seen Fort St. Louis completed, he left Tonty in command of it, and for his plan of colonization he substituted the project of applying to the French government for co-operation in a much more extensive one. He reached Quebec early in November, and sailed for France to render an account of his fulfilment of the royal orders, and to enlist the good offices of the government in his future plans, and landed at Rochelle on the 23d of December, 1683.

The following allusion to La Salle's services to France in extending the province of New France by the exploration of the Mississippi, by Gov. Dongan, of the rival English province of New York, is interesting. Alluding to a map of the country which he was sending home to his superiors, Gov. Dongan writes: “Also, it points out where there's a great river discovered by one Lassal, a Frenchman from Canada, who thereupon went into France, and, as it's reported, brought two or three vessels with people to settle there, which (if true) will prove very inconvenient to us, but to the Spanish also (the river running all along from our lakes by the back of Virginia and Carolina into the Bay of Mexico); and it's believed Nova Mexico cannot be far from the mountains adjoining it, that [pg 835] place being in 36° North Latitude. If your lordships thought it fit, I could send a sloop or two from this place to discover that river.”[205]

La Salle now conceived the plan of approaching the mouth of the Mississippi by sea, exploring the country, and founding powerful colonies therein. The evil reports of his enemies had preceded him to France, and these were strengthened by the disparaging representations which De La Barre, Frontenac's successor as Governor of Canada, had been sending home. But the Marquis de Seignelay, the son of the deceased minister Colbert, again favored La Salle's enterprises, and secured for them the favor of the king. The government provided a fleet of four vessels for the expedition: the Joly, a royal ship, a frigate of thirty-six tons, commanded by Capt. de Beaujeu, a Norman gentleman, who was also commander of the squadron; the Belle, of six tons, a present from the king to La Salle; the Aimable, a store-ship of three hundred tons burden, on board of which were the goods, implements, and effects of the expedition; and the St. Francis, a ketch containing munitions and merchandise for San Domingo. M. de Chevalier d'Aire was lieutenant to Capt. de Beaujeu, and the Sieur de Hamel, a young gentleman full of fire and courage, his ensign. Father Le Clercq, the narrator of the expedition, exclaims: “Would to God the troops and rest of the crew had been as well chosen!”

A new commission was issued to La Salle, by which he was authorized to found colonies in Louisiana, and to govern the vast country and its inhabitants from Lake Michigan to the borders of Mexico. The commander of the squadron was to be subject to his orders, except in navigating the ships at sea—an arrangement which the jealous and sensitive mind of Beaujeu permitted to embitter him against La Salle, and which led to difficulties between them. Besides marines and one hundred soldiers, the company to embark in the expedition amounted to about two hundred and eighty persons, amongst whom were several persons of consideration. The Sieur Moranget, and the Sieur Cavelier, nephews of La Salle, the latter only fourteen years old; Planterose, Thibault, Ory, Joutel, Talon, a Canadian gentleman with his family, and some other families, consisting of men and young women, also joined the expedition as volunteers. One of La Salle's first cares was to provide for the spiritual wants of his followers and colonists and the conversion of the heathen nations he expected to visit. For ten years the zealous Recollect Fathers had seconded and promoted the efforts of La Salle to Christianize the natives of the New World, and he now made it an essential point to obtain some of these holy men to accompany his great expedition. His application to their superior, the Rev. Father Hyacinth le Febvre, was cordially complied with, and accordingly Fathers Zenobe Membré, Anastace Donay, and Maxime Le Clercq were selected from this order for the task. M. Tronçon, superior of the Sulpitians, was not behind the Recollects in zeal for the good work, and accordingly three secular priests, Cavelier, the brother of La Salle, Chefdeville his relative, and Majulle, were chosen. These constituted the ecclesiastical corps of the expedition. Nothing was left undone, either by the superiors of the Recollects or [pg 836] of the Sulpitians, nor by the Holy See, for carrying the faith of Christ to those remote and benighted regions. Ample powers and privileges were conferred upon the good missionaries, so as to relieve them from the necessity in emergencies of resorting to the distant ordinary of Quebec.

But in selecting soldiers, artisans, and laborers, the most culpable disregard of duty was chargeable to the agents of La Salle, who, while he was engaged at Paris, filled up the ranks by receiving from the streets of Rochelle worthless vagabonds and beggars, who were wholly ignorant of the trades for which they were chosen. La Salle was only partially able to remedy this evil before sailing. Bancroft thus describes the composition of this part of the expedition: “But the mechanics were poor workmen, ill-versed in their art; the soldiers, though they had for commander Joutel, a man of courage and truth, and afterwards the historian of the grand enterprise, were themselves spiritless vagabonds, without discipline and without experience; the volunteers were restless with indefinite expectations; and, worst of all, the naval commander, Beaujeu, was deficient in judgment, incapable of sympathy with the magnanimous heroism of La Salle, envious, self-willed, and foolishly proud.” La Salle arrived at Rochelle on the 28th of May, 1684, and during his stay of some weeks the unhappy misunderstanding between him and the commander of the squadron, which proved so great a drawback on the enterprise, began to manifest itself. The four vessels sailed from Rochelle on the 24th of July, but the breaking of one of the masts of the Joly in a storm caused them to put in at Chef-de-Bois, and finally, on the 1st of August, they set sail again, steering for San Domingo. During the voyage to San Domingo, La Salle and Beaujeu could not proceed together with cordiality or harmony, and the former was unfortunate in gaining the ill-will of the subordinate officers and sailors by interfering to protect his own men from what he regarded as an absurd and unnecessary procedure. It was the custom among sailors to require all who had not before crossed the tropic to submit to the penalty of being plunged into a tub of water by their veteran companions for the amusement of others, or pay liberally for a commutation of the penalty. La Salle peremptorily forbade his men being subjected to this alternative; hence the hostility of those who failed to realize the usual fun or fine at their expense. After a prosperous voyage a storm overtook the squadron as they approached San Domingo. It was agreed that the Joly should put in at Port de Paix in the north of the island; but Beaujeu changed his course of his own will, and carried her to Petit Gonave, far to the south. In four days the Belle and Aimable, which had been separated from her by the storm, joined her there. The St. Francis was surprised and captured by two Spanish pirogues, which was a serious loss to the expedition and a sore affliction to La Salle.

At Petit Gonave La Salle did all in his power for the relief of the sick. He was, however, stricken down himself by a violent illness that for a while rendered his recovery hopeless. He recovered in time sufficiently to attend to the prosecution of the voyage. He and Fathers Membré and Donay, Cavelier, Chefdeville, and Joutel, were transferred to the Aimable, [pg 837] and thus the two commanders were happily separated. In their misunderstanding Beaujeu was greatly at fault in accepting a command inferior to that of La Salle, as he well knew it to be, and in embarrassing by his petulant and jealous course an undertaking which his instructions and his obvious duty obliged him to promote. La Salle, too, would have acted more wisely and discreetly in conciliating one whose good-will and co-operation were so necessary to his success. The squadron, now reduced to three vessels, sailed from Petit Gonave on the 25th of November.

After pursuing their course safely along the Cayman Isles, and anchoring at the Isle of Peace (pines), where they stopped to take in water, and at Port San Antonio, in the Island of Cuba, they entered the Gulf of Mexico on the 12th of December. Sailing ten days longer, they descried land at once from the Belle and Aimable. So utterly unknown was the latitude of the coasts, and so erroneous the sailing information given to them at San Domingo, that no one could tell where they were; but it was conjectured after much consultation that they must be in the Bay of Appalachee, which is nearly three hundred miles east of the Mississippi. On the contrary, they were near Atchafalaya Bay, about one hundred miles west of the main mouth of the Mississippi. Guided by the general opinion as to their locality, they now coasted to the westward, going still further from the object of their search. No information could be obtained from the natives on the shore, and finally, after twenty days' sailing, it was ascertained that they were approaching the borders of Mexico, near Magdalen River and the Bay of Espiritu Santo. The Joly now came up, and the unfortunate misunderstanding between La Salle and Beaujeu was renewed, in consequence of the latter charging that he had been designedly left behind. The superior sailing capacity of the Joly, and Beaujeu's evident indifference about keeping company with the other vessels, flatly contradicted this irritating charge. All now desired to return in the direction of the Mississippi, except Beaujeu, who would not go without a new supply of provisions. La Salle offered a supply of fifteen days, the best he could do; but Beaujeu rejected the offer as insufficient. In the meantime the vessels proceeded twenty miles along the coast, reaching the outlet of the Bay of St. Bernard, to which La Salle gave the name of St. Louis, now called Matagorda Bay. Joutel and Moranget were sent to explore the bay, and afterwards La Salle joined them at a river they could not cross without a boat. The pilots having reported insufficient depth of water, the Aimable was lightened and her captain ordered to run her into the bay. The pilot of the Belle, knowing the harbor, was sent to his assistance; but the captain of the Aimable refused him admittance on board, saying that he knew how to manage his own ship. The Aimable was soon upon a shoal. She bilged, and was a ruin. A portion of the cargo was saved, Beaujeu himself sending his boats to assist, but most of the implements and tools intended for the colony were lost. There was no doubt, says Joutel, of the treachery of the captain of the Aimable in this affair. La Salle from the shore had the mortification of seeing all his orders disobeyed, and witnessed this deplorable accident [pg 838] to the store-ship. He was embarking, in order to remedy the false movements of his vessels, when over a hundred Indians made their appearance. First putting them to flight, and then offering them the calumet, he made them his friends. He also gave them presents, purchased some of their canoes, and all seemed to promise a lasting friendship, from which great advantages would have resulted to the expedition. But, alas! all upon whom La Salle had to depend did not possess his prudence nor always follow his injunctions. By the imprudence of some of his men a serious difficulty sprang up with the Indians. A bale of blankets from the wreck of the store-ship was thrown ashore and seized by the Indians. La Salle ordered his men to recover it by peaceable means; but they pursued just the opposite course, by demanding its restoration with pointed muskets. They became alarmed and fled, but returned at night, and, finding the sentinel asleep, attacked the camp, killing the Sieurs Ory and Desloges, two of La Salle's most valued friends, two cadets, and dangerously wounding Moranget. This and the numerous other disasters which they encountered caused many a heart that started out full of hope and courage to falter or despond, and many talked of abandoning the enterprise. But La Salle's example of calm determination and unflagging spirit sustained them under the appalling gloom and ill-luck that seemed to hang over the adventure. But Beaujeu, whose hostility to La Salle and his enterprise increased with the misfortunes of the latter, now resolved to return to France. All the cannon-balls were in his vessel, and he refused to deliver them, because it would be necessary to remove a part of his cargo in order to get them out. Thus the cannons were left with the colony, and the balls carried back to France. He took on board the treacherous captain and crew of the Aimable, and the 12th of March sailed for France. In the meantime the company left at the fort sustained a severe loss in the death of the Sieur de Gros from the bite of a rattle-snake. Also, a conspiracy was set on foot in the fort, with the design of murdering Joutel, and then escaping with such effects as they could carry off. But the designs of these traitors were discovered in time to be defeated. The colony now consisted of about one hundred and eighty persons besides the crew of the Belle, and their own faithful guns were their only means of obtaining food in that vast and distant wild. A temporary fort was erected with the débris of the Aimable for their protection, and Moranget was left in command of it. La Salle, accompanied by Fathers Membré and Le Clercq, started out with fifty men to explore the shores of the bay, ordering the Belle to sail along to make soundings. Anchoring opposite a point—where a post was established, to which Hurier gave his own name (being appointed to the command of it), serving as an intermediate station between the naval camp and that which La Salle intended to establish further on—in their course a large river was discovered, to which La Salle gave the name of Vaches, or Cow River, from the great number of cows he saw on its banks; and here the intended station was erected. Holy Week and Easter intervening, were celebrated with solemnity and fervor by these Christian colonists in the wilderness, [pg 839] “each one,” as Father Membré remarks, “receiving his Creator.” About the middle of July the entire colony, with their effects and whatever could be of service, were transferred to this encampment from those of Moranget and Hurier, which were destroyed. Here the men were employed in cultivating the soil and in sowing seeds brought from France, which, however, did not succeed, either because they had been injured by the salt water or because the season was not suitable. They were next engaged in erecting a habitation and fort, which was a work of huge labor and hardship, as the trees for the timber had to be cut three miles off and dragged to the spot, and many of the men sank under the toil. The Sieur de Villeperdy and thirty others were carried off within a few days by disease contracted at San Domingo, and among them was the master-carpenter, whose services could not well be spared. While under these calamities the spirits of all around him were sinking, La Salle remained firm and cheerful. Setting them the example himself, he kept all the healthy men at work. He took the place of architect and chief carpenter upon himself, marked out the beams, tenons, and mortises, and prepared the timbers for the workmen. The fort occupied an advantageous position, was soon finished, mounted with twelve pieces of cannon, and supplied with a magazine under ground. It was called St. Louis, and placed under the command of Joutel. The insolence of the Indians compelled La Salle to give them a proof of his power. For this purpose he waged war upon them, but only with sufficient rigor to make them respect him and his companions. Among the captives was a very young girl, who was baptized, and died a few days afterwards; of whom Father Le Clercq said: “The first-fruits of this mission, and a sure conquest sent to heaven.”

Detained some time by the sickness of his brother, La Salle did not resume his exploration of the bay till towards the last of October, when, putting his clothes, papers, and other effects on the Belle, he ordered the captain to sail along the western shore in concert with his movements. Wishing to ascertain how near the shore the Belle could approach, he sent the pilot and five men to make soundings, with instructions that all should return on board at night. Attracted by the peaceful beauty of the country, and proposing to cook and enjoy the supper on shore, the pilot and five men, leaving their arms and canoe at low water, advanced a gun-shot on the upland. After their supper they fell asleep. La Salle, becoming uneasy at their absence, went in search of them, and to his horror found them all lying on the ground murdered, their bodies half devoured by wild animals, and their arms and canoe destroyed. It was with sad hearts that the survivors paid the last honors to their slaughtered companions; for disasters followed in such quick succession that no one could foresee the time or circumstances of his own fate. Of the colony now described Bancroft remarks: “This is the settlement which made Texas a part of Louisiana. In its sad condition it had yet saved from the wreck a good supply of arms and bars of iron for the forge. Even now this colony possessed from the bounty of Louis XIV., more than was contributed [pg 840] by all the English monarchs together for the twelve English colonies on the Atlantic. Its number still exceeded that of Smith in Virginia, or of those who embarked in the Mayflower. France took possession of Texas; her arms were carved on its stately forest-trees; and by no treaty or public document, except the general cessions of Louisiana, did she ever after relinquish the right to the province as colonized under her banners, and made still more surely a part of her territory because the colony found there its grave.”

La Salle now determined to seek the mouth of the Mississippi by land around the eastern part of the bay. Leaving provisions for six, he set out with his brother, the Sieur Cavelier, and twenty men. He explored in canoes every stream that might prove an outlet of the great river, and was enchanted with the beautiful region which he traversed. But all was in vain. After an absence of four months, and satisfying himself that none of the outlets of the Mississippi emptied into the bay, and after losing twelve or thirteen of his men, he returned in rags to Fort St. Louis. He now sent out a party in search of the Belle, whose long absence caused him great uneasiness; for in her were centred all his hopes of reaching the mouth of the Mississippi by sea, of procuring assistance from San Domingo, or of sending information of their forlorn condition to France, or, perhaps, in his extremest necessity, of saving his colony from a horrid death by famine or at the hands of the savages.

La Salle, with his characteristic courage and perseverance, now resolved to undertake a journey to the distant Illinois, in order to obtain relief from the faithful Tonty, whom he had stationed there on departing for France. He selected as his companions on this dangerous and toilsome journey his brother, Cavelier, Father Anastasius Donay, Father Le Clercq, Moranget, Behorel, Hurier, Heins, a German surgeon who joined him at San Domingo, and Nika, the Indian hunter, who was ever at his side, and others, making in all twenty persons. The preparations for this great journey consisted of four pounds of powder, four pounds of lead, two axes, two dozen knives, as many awls, some beads, and two kettles. They first repaired to the chapel, where the Divine Mysteries were celebrated and the blessing of heaven invoked upon their undertaking. Committing the colony left behind to the care of Joutel, La Salle and his companions set out on the 22d of April, 1686, from Fort St. Louis. Their route lay in a northeasterly direction and through a country of immense prairies and mighty rivers, inhabited by various Indian tribes, who were exceedingly friendly and hospitable; even the women, who were usually timid and undemonstrative, coming forward to greet the wayworn, mysterious travellers. In some instances they found that the Indians had had some intercourse with the Spaniards. La Salle and the zealous Father Donay endeavored on every occasion to instil into their minds some knowledge of the one true God. It is supposed by some that La Salle was attracted in this direction by the fame of the rich mines of Santa Barbara, the El Dorado of Northern Mexico. They found large quantities of wild cattle, which supplied them with meat. They crossed numerous rivers, such as [pg 841] the Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity, which they knew by different titles, and upon which they bestowed new names in honor of members of the party. They endured incredible exposure, hardship, and toil, and many faltered and gave out under their sufferings. In crossing the Brazos (which they called the river Misfortune) on a raft of canoes, with one-half of his party, including his brother, La Salle and his companions were hurried violently down the current, and almost immediately disappeared from sight. The interval between this and evening was one of intense anxiety to those who witnessed the accident; but at nightfall the raft and its occupants were discovered safely disembarked on the opposite bank, their onward course having been providentially arrested by the branches of a large tree in the river. Those who remained on the other side had to cross over and join La Salle on a raft of canes, the men having to wade into the water and draw the raft ashore. Father Donay says: “I was obliged to put my Breviary in my cowl, because it got wet in my sleeve.” He also says: “We had not eaten all day, but Providence provided for us by letting two eaglets fall from a cedar-tree; we were ten at this meal.” The manner in which they crossed these mighty rivers was to make one of the men swim to the other side and fell trees across the stream, while those who remained did the same, so that the trees from the opposite sides, meeting in the centre, formed a bridge, upon which they crossed. This was done more than thirty times during their journey. The Indians were in most instances friendly and hospitable, and La Salle's discernment and prudence always enabled him either to conciliate their friendship in the first instance, or to overcome by force of character and courage any hostile feeling they might exhibit. Many of the tribes displayed evidences of civilization in their dress, implements, and dwellings, and in the ease and cordiality with which they received and entertained strangers. Horses were abundant among them, and La Salle procured several, which proved of great service. Among the Coenis Indians they found Spanish dollars and smaller coins, silver spoons, lace, and clothes of European styles. One of the Indians became so enamored with Father Donay's cowl that he offered the father a horse in exchange, but the good religious preferred to walk rather than to part with the cherished habit of S. Francis. After crossing the Trinity River La Salle and his nephew, the Sieur Moranget, were attacked by a violent fever, which brought them very low and greatly retarded their march. Just before this four of the party, unable to endure the fatigues and hardships of the journey, deserted and retired to the Nassonis Indians; another was swallowed by a crocodile while crossing a river; and Behorel was lost. Their powder now began to give out; they had not advanced more than one hundred and fifty leagues in a straight line, and one thousand miles of travel lay before them; sickness, delay, and desertions had impaired their ability to proceed; and they had no food except what the chase afforded. Under these circumstances La Salle resolved to return to Fort St. Louis. The extreme terminus of their travel is supposed to have been midway between the Trinity and Red Rivers, near the head-waters of the Sabine, and fifty or sixty miles northwest of Nacogdoches. On the return the [pg 842] party were greatly assisted by the horses procured from the Indians. After a full month's march they arrived on the 17th of October, the feast of S. Bernard, and were welcomed by their friends at the fort with mingled feelings of joy and sadness. Father Donay remarks: “It would be difficult to find in history courage more intrepid or more invincible than that of the Sieur de La Salle; in adversity he was never cast down, and always hoped with the help of heaven to succeed in his enterprises, despite all the obstacles that rose against him.”

Sad events awaited La Salle on his return. In a few days he saw to his astonishment a canoe approaching in which were Chefdeville, Sablonnière, and some others from the Belle. In this fact he read the sad story of the vessel's destruction, which was soon confirmed by their own lips. That vessel, his last hope, had, by the negligence of the pilot, stranded on the beach of the southern coast of the bay. The returning men, providentially finding a canoe on the shore, were able to escape. In the Belle were lost thirty-six barrels of flour, a quantity of wine, the clothes, trunks, linens, and most of the tools. Among the few things saved were the papers and clothes of La Salle. The good Father Le Clercq closes his narrative of this sad accident, which completely disconcerted all of La Salle's plans, with the remark: “His great courage, even, could not have borne up had not God aided him by the help of extraordinary grace.” “Heaven and man,” says Bancroft, “seemed his enemies; and, with the giant energy of an indomitable will, having lost his hopes of fortune, his hopes of fame; with his colony reduced to about forty, among whom discontent had given birth to plans of crime; with no Europeans nearer than the river Panuco, no French nearer than Illinois, he resolved to travel on foot to his countrymen at the north, and return from Canada to renew his colony in Texas.”

During his absence Joutel had been under the necessity of guarding against savage attacks upon his hunting parties from without, and against disaffection from those within, the fort. The false Duhaut returned to the fort, where he incited the men to mutiny—a task of no great difficulty among men who had endured so many disappointments and hardships. And though Joutel succeeded in suppressing the mutiny, disaffection lurked behind. But the routine of the fort was occasionally relieved by gayety and merriment, as was the case on the marriage of the Sieur Barbier to one of the young women who came out with the expedition. The gentleness, prudence, and experience of Father Membré went far to ameliorate the condition of the company and make easy the duties of Joutel. Before leaving them, La Salle provided for the greater comfort and accommodation of those at the fort. As he was about to depart he was again stricken down with illness, and was retarded ten weeks.

On his recovery La Salle selected from seventeen to twenty companions, amongst whom were Father Donay, Cavelier the priest, young Cavelier the nephew, Joutel, Moranget, Duhaut, Larcheveque, Heins, Liotel, Toten, De Marle, Teissier, Saget, and the Indian hunter Nika. La Salle addressed them in thrilling and encouraging words, and, as Father Donay says, “with that engaging way which was so natural to him,” and on the 12th of January, [pg 843] 1687, their simple preparations being made, it only remained for them to turn their steps northward,

“And, like some low and mournful spell,

To whisper but one word—farewell.”

As they journeyed on they had to cross many large rivers—resorting to the same means as in their trip towards New Mexico—and to traverse vast prairies, to visit and be entertained by the Indian tribes on the route, to conciliate their friendship, to secure most of their food by hunting, and, in fine, encounter similar scenes and incidents as on their previous excursions. On the 15th of March they arrived at a place where La Salle had caused a quantity of Indian corn and beans to be buried, and he sent Duhaut, Heins, Liotel, Larcheveque, Teissier, Nika, and his footman, Saget, for it. The corn and beans had disappeared, discovered, probably, by the unerring scent of the Indians; but the gun of Nika supplied their place with two buffaloes. They sent Saget to request La Salle to allow them horses to bring the meat, and he accordingly despatched Moranget, De Marle, and Saget with two horses for that purpose. On arriving at the scene Moranget found that the meat, though quite fresh, had been smoked, and that the men had selected certain parts of it and set them aside for their own enjoyment, as was usual with them. In a moment of anger Moranget reproved them, took away both the smoked meat and reserved pieces, and threatened to do as he pleased with it. Duhaut, in whose heart an old grudge against Moranget still survived, became enraged, and adopted the guilty resolve of ridding himself of his enemy. He enticed Liotel and Heins into a conspiracy to murder not only Moranget, but also Saget and Nika, whose faithful gun had so often saved them from famine. Liotel was the willing instrument to do the horrid deed; at night, while they were buried in sleep, he despatched his victims. A blow extinguished the life of Nika; a second that of Saget; but Moranget lingered for two hours, “giving every mark of a death precious in the sight of God, pardoning his murderers, and embracing them,” till De Marle, who was not in the plot, was compelled to complete the bloody tragedy.

“Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

To cry, Hold! hold!”

The bloodthirsty desperadoes did not, alas! stop at this triple murder; adding treason to their horrid purposes, they resolved upon the death of their commander, the great and good La Salle, who had ever been to them a father no less than a leader. Three days elapsed, and the dark purpose was only the more firmly fixed in their guilty souls. In the meantime La Salle became alarmed for the safety of Moranget, and, as if anticipating what had happened, he asked in the encampment if Duhaut and his associates had not shown signs of disaffection. He resolved at once to go in search of his faithful friend. The remainder of this bloody tragedy we will give in the language of Father Donay, who was an eyewitness of it:

“Asking me to accompany him, he took two Indians and set out. All the way he conversed with me of matters of piety, grace, and predestination; expatiating on all his obligations to God for having saved him from so many dangers during the last twenty years that he had traversed America. He seemed to me particularly penetrated with a sense of God's benefits to him. Suddenly I saw him plunged into a deep melancholy, for [pg 844]which he himself could not account; he was so troubled that I did not know him any longer. As this state was far from being usual, I roused him from his lethargy. Two leagues after we found the bloody cravat of his lackey (Saget), he perceived two eagles flying over his head, and at the same time perceived some of his people on the edge of the river, which he approached, asking them what had become of his nephew. They answered us in broken words, showing us where we should find him. We proceeded some steps along the bank to the fatal spot where two of these murderers were hidden in the grass, one on each side, with guns cocked; one missed M. de La Salle, the other at the same time shot him in the head. He died an hour after, on the 19th of March, 1687.

“I expected the same fate; but this danger did not occupy my thoughts, penetrated with grief at so cruel a spectacle. I saw him fall a step from me, with his face all full of blood; I watered it with my tears, exhorting him to the best of my power to die well. He had confessed and fulfilled his devotions just before we started; he had still time to recapitulate a part of his life, and I gave him absolution. During his last moments he elicited all the acts of a good Christian, grasping my hand at every word I suggested, and especially at that of pardoning his enemies. Meanwhile his murderers, as much alarmed as I, began to strike their breasts and detest their blindness. I could not leave the spot where he had expired without having buried him as well as I could, after which I raised a cross over his grave.

“Thus died our wise commander; constant in adversity, intrepid, generous, engaging, dexterous, skilful, capable of everything. He who for twenty years had softened the fierce temper of countless savage tribes was massacred by the hands of his own domestics, whom he had loaded with caresses. He died in the prime of life, in the midst of his course and labors, without having seen their success.”

It has not been precisely ascertained where the place of La Salle's death is located; but it is supposed to have been on one of the streams flowing into the Brazos, about forty or fifty miles north of the present town of Washington, in the State of Texas.

As soon as Father Donay re-entered the encampment, the good and apostolical Cavelier, the brother of the deceased, read the sad tragedy in his friend's countenance, and exclaimed: “Oh! my poor brother is dead.” The grief of Cavelier, Joutel, and the other faithful companions of La Salle was uncontrollable. When the assassins entered the encampment to plunder the effects of their murdered commander, they found these faithful men on their knees, prepared for death. But the sight of the venerable Cavelier, and perhaps some regret at the deed they had committed, stayed their bloody work; and these were spared, on condition that they would not return to France, though they several times afterwards heard the murderers say among themselves that they must get rid of them, in order to save themselves from the avenging arm of justice. The assassins seized upon the effects of La Salle, elected Duhaut their leader, and resolved to return to the Coenis Indians. During several days they travelled together, these wretches treating the missionaries and friends of La Salle as servants, imposing upon them every hardship in crossing the many rivers they encountered. “Meanwhile,” says Father Donay, “the justice of God accomplished the punishment of these men, in default of human punishment.” A dispute arose between Duhaut and Heins over the stolen property of La Salle, in which the various guilty members of their party took the one side or the other. Heins, two days afterwards, seizing the opportunity, shot Duhaut through the heart with a pistol in the presence of the whole company. He died upon [pg 845] the spot. At the same moment Ruter shot Liotel, the murderer of Moranget, who survived several hours; and, while thus lingering, another fired a blank cartridge near his head, which set fire to his hair and clothes, and he expired amidst the flames. Heins now assumed command, and would have killed Larcheveque, a third member of the band of assassins, but for the intercession of Joutel. On reaching the Coenis camp they found these warriors about to start with a large army against the Kanoatins, and Heins, dressed in the rich mantle of La Salle, to the great disgust of his surviving relatives and friends, went with them to join in fresh deeds of carnage and crime. Father Donay, Cavelier the priest, Cavelier the nephew of La Salle, Joutel, De Marie, Teissier, and a young Parisian named Barthelemy, now took their departure for the Illinois, and, after journeying till the 24th of July, they were greatly relieved at beholding on the opposite side of the river a large cross and log hut, at the junction of the Illinois and Mississippi, and in a few moments they were united with a small detachment stationed there by Tonty. After remaining a few days for rest and refreshment, they started again on the 1st of August, and on the 14th arrived at Fort Crevecœur, where they were led immediately to the chapel, and chanted the Te Deum, in thanksgiving for their safe deliverance from so many dangers, to which others had fallen victims. Tonty was absent from the fort on their arrival, on a visit to the Illinois; but on his return he received them with great kindness, and supplied them with every assistance. They concealed from the faithful and devoted Tonty the death of his beloved friend and commander. In the spring of 1688 they left the fort for Quebec, whence they sailed for France in August, arriving there in October.

The fort in St. Bernard's Bay was, after the death of La Salle, attacked by the Indians, and the whole company massacred except three sons and a daughter of Talon and a young Frenchman named Eustace de Breman, who were led into captivity. The Spaniards also, hearing of La Salle's movements and of the presence of Frenchmen among the Coenis Indians, sent out a military force, who captured Larcheveque and Grollet, who were sent to Spain, where for some time they were confined in prison, and afterwards sent to Mexico to work in the mines. The Talons were rescued and sent to Mexico. The two elder brothers entered the Spanish navy, but were afterwards restored to their country by the capture of their vessel. The younger brother and his sister were retained some time in the service of the Viceroy of Mexico, and afterwards accompanied him to Spain. Nothing further is known of Breman and the others who were taken captives by the Indians.

The will of La Salle, bearing date the 11th of August, 1681, leaves his property to his cousin, M. François Plet, in gratitude for his kindness and the assistance he rendered to the great explorer in his expeditions.

The following notice of La Salle is given by a Catholic writer:

“Robert Cavelier de La Salle, the first explorer who navigated Ontario, Erie, Michigan, and Huron, deserves to be enumerated among the great captains. A native of Rouen, early employed in the colonies, he had been instigated by [pg 846]the reports of missionaries to seek, through the northern lakes, a passage to the Gulf of Mexico. Building a schooner on the Cayuga Creek, he ascended the lakes in 1679, chanting the Te Deum Laudamus. Carrying his boats over land from the Miami to a branch of the Illinois River, he forced or found his way into the upper Mississippi. For many years, with most heroic constancy, this soul of fire and frame of iron was devoted to the task of opening routes between the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and of Mexico, until he perished in his enterprise by the hands of two of his own unworthy followers, on an excursion into Texas, in 1687. The Catholic character of La Salle is marked in every act of his life. He undertook nothing without fortifying himself by religion; he completed nothing without giving the first-fruits of the glory to God. He planted the cross wherever he landed, even for an hour; he made the western desert vocal with songs, hymns of thanksgiving and adoration. He is the worthy compeer of De Soto and Marquette; he stood, sword in hand, under the banner of the cross, the tutelary genius of those great States which stretch away from Lake Ontario to the Rio Grande. Every league of that region he trod on foot, and every league of its water he navigated in frail canoes or crazy schooners. Above his tomb the northern pine should tower; around it the Michigan rose and the southern myrtle should mingle their hues and unite their perfumes.”[206]

In reviewing the history of the last great enterprise of this remarkable man, we can but recognize three principal reasons of its failure: first, the inferior character of the men selected at Rochelle by his agents to accompany the expedition—a cause of disaster which the virtues and capacity of a Tonty, Joutel, and Moranget could not neutralize; second, the hostility and narrow-minded jealousy of Beaujeu, upon whose co-operation so much depended; and, third, the misinformation in regard to the Gulf of Mexico which he received at San Domingo, and the prevailing ignorance of the times of the bearings of the coast and of the latitudes, which caused his expedition to miss the object of its search. Mr. Sparks, while according to him the possession of the highest qualities of mind and soul, considered him wanting in those qualities which are necessary in order to secure the hearty co-operation of men, to win their affections as well as their obedience, and, by yielding a little to their weaknesses, secure the benefit of their faithful services. It may be said, however, that no man ever had more faithful, self-sacrificing, and devoted followers than he, and those who did not sympathize with him were too ignorant and sordid to appreciate his noble character or his magnificent plans. The learned historian at the same time remarks that La Salle labors under the disadvantage of having to be judged from the accounts of others, not all of whom were his friends, and knew little of his plans; for “not a single paper from his own hand, not so much as a private letter or a fragment of his official correspondence, has ever been published, or even consulted by the writers on whose authority alone we must rely for the history of the transactions in which he was concerned.”

Mr. Sparks then pays the following well-merited and eloquent tribute to the character and services of the illustrious commander:

“On the other hand, his capacity for large designs and for devising the methods and procuring the resources to carry them forward, has few parallels among the most eminent discoverers. He has been called the Columbus of his age; and if his success had been equal to his ability and the compass of his plans this distinction might justly be awarded to him. As in great battles, so in enterprises, success crowns the commander [pg 847]with laurels, defeat covers him with disgrace, and perhaps draws upon him the obloquy of the world, although he might have fought as bravely and manœuvred as adroitly in one case as in the other. Fortune turns the scale and baffles the efforts of human skill and prowess. In some of the higher attributes of character, such as personal courage and endurance, undaunted resolution, patience under trials, and perseverance in contending with obstacles and struggling through embarrassments that might appall the stoutest heart, no man surpassed the Sieur de La Salle. Not a hint appears in any writer that has come under notice that casts a shade upon his integrity or honor. Cool and intrepid at all times, never yielding for a moment to despair, or even to despondency, he bore the heavy burden of his calamities manfully to the end and his hopes expired only with his last breath. To him must be mainly ascribed the discovery of the vast regions of the Mississippi Valley, and the subsequent occupation and settlement of them by the French; and his name justly holds a prominent place among those which adorn the history of civilization in the New World.”

The Log Chapel On The Rappahannock.

Erected A.D. 1570—The First Christian Shrine In The Old Dominion.

Virginia is proud of her antiquity. She assumes the title of Old Dominion; she was long styled the Mother of Presidents. But really her antiquity is greater than many know. Before the English settlers landed on the shores of the James, Stephen Gomez and other Spanish navigators had entered the waters of the Chesapeake and consecrated that noble sheet of water to the Virgin daughter of David's line, as the Bay of St. Mary, or the Bay of the Mother of God.

The soldier of the cross followed hard on the steps of the explorer. As early as in 1536 St. Mary's Bay is laid down on Spanish maps. Oviedo mentions it in 1537, and from that time pilots ranged the coast, David Glavid, an Irishman, being recorded as one who knew it best. All agree as to its latitude, its two capes, the direction of the bay, and the rivers entering into it, identifying beyond all peradventure our modern Chesapeake with the St. Mary's Bay of the early Spanish explorers. Though his attention was called to it, the latest historian of Virginia, misled by a somewhat careless guide, robs his State of the glory which we claim for her. The sons of S. Dominic first planted the cross on the shores of the Chesapeake, and bore away to civilized shores the brother of the chief of Axacan or Jacan, a district not far from the Potomac. Reaching Mexico, this chief attracted the notice of Don Luis de Velasco, the just, upright, disinterested Viceroy of New Spain—one of those model rulers who, amid a population spurred on by a fierce craving for wealth, never bent the knee to Mammon, but lived so poor that he died actually in debt. This good man had the Virginian chief instructed in the Christian faith, and, when his dispositions seemed to justify the belief in his sincerity and faith, the chieftain of the Rappahannock was baptized, amid all the pomp and splendor [pg 848] of Mexico, in the cathedral of that city, the viceroy being his god-father, and bestowing upon him his own name, Don Luis de Velasco, by which the Virginia chief is always styled in Spanish annals.

Meanwhile, Coligny's French Huguenots attempted to settle Florida, but their colony, which was doomed to early extinction from its very material and utter want of religious organization or any tie but a mere spirit of adventure, was crushed with ruthless cruelty by Pedro Melendez, a brave but stern Spanish navigator and warrior, in whose eyes every Frenchman on the sea was a pirate. Soon after accomplishing his bloody work, which left Spain in full possession of the southern Atlantic coast, Melendez, who had sent out vessels to explore the coast, began his preparations for occupying St. Mary's Bay. The form of the northern continent was not then known; much indeed of the eastern coast had been explored, but so little was the line of the western coast understood that on maps and globes the Pacific was shown as running nearly into the Atlantic coast, as may be seen in a curious copper globe possessed by the New York Historical Society, but which once belonged to Pope Marcellus II. Believing that the Chesapeake, by the rivers running into it, would easily lead to the western ocean, Melendez spent the winter of 1565 studying out the subject with the aid of Don Luis de Velasco and Father Urdaneta, a missionary just arrived from China by the overland route across Mexico. Combining all the information, he was led to believe that, by ascending for eighty leagues a river flowing into the bay, it was necessary only to cross a mountain range to find two arms of the sea, one leading to the French at Newfoundland, the other to the Pacific. To many this will seem wild; but it is evident that Don Luis referred to the great trail leading from the Huron country through the territory of the Five Nations to the land of the Andastes on the Susquehanna, by which the last-named tribe sold furs on the upper lakes, which went down to the French at Brest on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while the upper lakes were the arm of the sea stretching westward, as was supposed, to China. An adventurous Frenchman, Stephen Brulé, some few years later followed this trail from the St. Lawrence to the Susquehanna. Melendez, however, misinterpreted it. To his mind the upper waters of the Chesapeake, the Potomac and Susquehanna, then known as the Espiritu Santo and Salado, were to be the great carrying place of eastern trade.

Anxious to secure for his own country so important a pass, Melendez, in 1566, despatched to St. Mary's Bay a vessel bearing thirty soldiers and two Dominican Fathers to begin a station in Axacan or Jacan, near the Chesapeake. These pioneers of the faith were escorted or guided by Don Luis de Velasco. Of these missionaries we seek in vain the names. Perhaps their fellow-religious now laboring on the banks of the Potomac will be stimulated to trace up these early labors of the sons of S. Dominic; though we must admit that Spanish chronicles do not speak of them with praise. In fact, they assert that these missionaries, corrupted by an easy life in Peru, had no taste for a laborious mission in Virginia, though perhaps they learned the real state of affairs in that land, and, taught by Father Cancer's fate, felt that the attempt would be fatal [pg 849] to all. Certain it is that the whole party took alarm. They forced the captain to weigh anchor, and, leaving the capes on either hand, steer straight to Spain. The Dominican missions in Spanish Florida, which began with the glorious epic of Father Cancer's devoted heroism, closed with this feeble effort to plant the Gospel on the shores of the Chesapeake; yet they, too, like the earlier discoverers, undoubtedly consecrated to Mary and the Rosary the land which in its names, Virginia and Maryland, yet recalls the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the bay was first consecrated.

Four years later saw Melendez himself in Spain, full of his projects, and bent on carrying them out. The sons of S. Ignatius Loyola, full of the early vigor of their institute, were in Florida. The new mission, begun in 1566, had already a martyr in Father Peter Martinez, of Celda, in the Diocese of Saragossa, who was shipwrecked on the coast, and put to death by the Indians not far from St. Augustine. It had its devoted laborers in Father John Rogel, of Pamplona, Father Sedeño, and Brother Villareal, who sought to win to Christ the Indians near St. Augustine and Port Royal, and who had established an Indian school at Havana to help the great work, Brother Baez being the first to compile a grammar. To extend these missions as far as the Chesapeake was a subject which Melendez laid before S. Francis Borgia, then recently made general of the order, after having acted as commissary of the Spanish missions. A letter of S. Pius V. encouraged Melendez, and with the co-operation of these two saints the projected mission to the Chesapeake took form at last. Perhaps some of the clergy in Maryland and Virginia remember the personal interest of these saints in the field where they are now laboring; but we fear that the fact has been forgotten. Let us trust that more than one church of S. Pius V. will be monuments of his interest in the land where the next pope that bore his name established the first episcopal see on the coast—that of Baltimore—and religion has taken such gigantic steps under the fostering care of Popes Pius VII. and Pius IX.

When the founder of Florida was thus earnestly engaged in Spain in promoting the spiritual welfare of the colony, Don Luis de Velasco, the Virginian chief, was still beyond the Atlantic, a grave, intelligent man of fifty, well versed in Spanish affairs, to all appearance a sincere and correct Christian and a friend of the Spaniards. With every mark of joy he offered to return to his native land of Axacan, and there do all in his power to further the labors of the missionaries who should be sent to instruct his brother's tribe. So powerful a coadjutor was welcomed by all, and ere long Don Luis stood on the deck of a staunch Spanish ship, with a band of Jesuits destined to reinforce those already laboring on the Florida mission. This pious party consisted of Father Luis de Quiros, a native of Xerez de la Frontera, in Andalusia, with Brothers Gabriel Gomez, of Granada, and Sancho de Zevallos, of Medina de Rio Seco, all selected for the great work by S. Francis Borgia himself. In November the vessel anchored before the Spanish fort Santa Elena, which stood on the island of South Carolina's famous Port Royal, that still bears the name of the sainted mother of Constantine.

The Jesuit mission of Florida had been erected into a vice-province [pg 850] under Father John Baptist Segura. This estimable religious was a native of Toledo, who had, while pursuing his theological course of study, entered the Society of Jesus at Alcalà on the 9th of April, 1566. S. Francis, who knew him well, entertained the highest esteem for Segura's virtues and personal merit, and took him from the rectorship of the College of Vallisoleta in 1568 to assume the direction of the vice-province of Florida. For two years had he labored with sad discouragement in the forbidding field among the Floridian tribes, cheered by letters of his superiors rather than by any hope of success that as yet seemed to dawn on his exertions.

He was at Santa Elena when Father Quiros arrived, bearing the instructions for the establishment of the new mission on the shores of the Chesapeake.

That missionary had become discouraged and disheartened. All his labors and those of his associate missionaries among the Calos Indians, on the southern coast of Florida, had proved utterly unavailing. No impression could be made on the flinty hearts of those treacherous and cruel tribes, which, indeed, to the end resisted the calls of divine grace. The labors of the Jesuit missionaries on the coast of South Carolina were scarcely more encouraging. The attempts to civilize and convert found hearers only as long as food and presents were given.

Father Segura resolved for a time to abandon the unpromising field, and turn all their energies to an Indian school at Havana, where children from the Florida tribes could be carefully instructed, so as to form a nucleus for future Christian bands in their native tribes. But the voice of S. Francis recalled him to sterner labors, and he resolved to go in person to the new field opened to them in Axacan, where the influence of Don Luis and the character of the tribes seemed to promise more consoling results. He accordingly directed the experienced Father Rogel to remain at Santa Elena in charge of the missions there, and selected eight associates for his new mission. These were Father Luis de Quiros, Brothers Gabriel Gomez and Sancho Zevallos, already mentioned, with Brother Peter de Linares and John Baptist Mendez, Christopher Redondo, and Gabriel de Solis, who with Alphonsus, destined to be the sole survivor, seem to have been four Indian boys from their school at Havana, and regarded as novices, trained already to mission work as catechists. Such was the missionary party that was to plant the cross in Axacan and open the way for Christianity to China by a new route.

With the influence and support of Don Luis they would need no Spanish aid; and as experience had shown them that soldiers were sometimes a detriment to the mission they were intended to protect, these devoted missionaries determined to trust themselves entirely, alone and unprotected, in the hands of the Indians.

On his side Don Luis made every promise as to the security of the persons of the missionaries confided to his care by the adelantado of Florida. “They shall lack nothing,” he declared. “I will always be at hand to aid them.”

On the 5th of August, 1570, this little mission colony sailed from Santa Elena, and in that enervating heat must have crept slowly enough along the coast and up the Chesapeake; [pg 851] for it was not till the 10th of September that they reached the country of Don Luis, which is styled in Spanish accounts Axacan or Jacan.

Where was the spot termed “La Madre de Dios de Jacan”?—Our Lady of Axacan (or, as we should write it, Ahacan or Hacan). Precisely where no map or document has yet been found to show. It was evidently near the Susquehanna (Salado) or the Potomac (Espiritu Santo), the two rivers at the head of the bay known to Melendez, and by which he hoped to reach China. That it could not have been the Susquehanna seems clear from the fact that, being to the eastward, it would not naturally be the shortest route; and, moreover, that river was in those days, and till far in the ensuing century, held by a warlike tribe of Huron origin, living in palisaded towns, while the tribe of Don Luis, who dwelt at Axacan, were evidently nomads of the Algonquin race.

We are therefore led to look for it on the Potomac, the Espiritu Santo of the early Spanish navigators. The vessel that bore the devoted Vice-Provincial Father Segura and two other Spanish vessels some time afterwards ascended this river for a considerable distance to a point whence they proceeded to the country of Don Luis, which, as letters show, lay on a river six miles off, and which they might have reached directly by ascending that river, though it was always passed by the pilots, being regarded, apparently, as less navigable and safe. The Rappahannock at once suggests itself as answering the conditions required to explain the Spanish accounts.

On the Potomac there is to this day a spot called Occoquan, which is near enough to the Spanish Axacan to raise a suspicion of their identity. Not far below it the Potomac and Rappahannock, in their sinuous windings, approach so closely as to increase the resemblance to the country described.

The land that met the eyes of the missionary pioneers in the wilderness of Virginia was not one to raise fond hopes or sustain delusions. A long sterility had visited Florida and extended even to the Chesapeake. Its effects were even more striking. Of all that the descriptions of Don Luis had prepared them to find in Axacan there was absolutely nothing to be seen. Just come from Florida and its vicinity, with its rich, luxuriant vegetation, with fruits of spontaneous growth, they beheld a less favored land, bare and parched with a six years' sterility, with the starving remnants of decimated and thrice decimated tribes. The wretched inhabitants looked upon Don Luis, their countryman, as if sent from heaven, and, seeing him treated with honor, they received the Spaniards with every demonstration of goodwill, though they were so destitute that they could not offer the newcomers any fruit or maize.

With the winter fast approaching, it seemed almost madness for Father Segura and his companions to attempt to establish themselves in this unpromising land; but the previous failure of the Dominican Fathers, the almost chiding words of S. Francis Borgia, and the deep interest manifested by Melendez in the success of the attempt, apparently decided the question against all ideas of expediency or mere worldly prudence.

The researches of the late Buckingham Smith in the Spanish archives not only brought to light many [pg 852] points tending to fix the position of Axacan, but were also rewarded by finding two letters written at this point by these early apostles of Virginia. The father provincial wrote to the king; his associate, Father Quiros, addressed his letters to Melendez, and Father Segura added a few words, urging prompt relief. These last have fortunately thus reached us. Father Quiros wrote: “Seeing, then, the good-will which this people displayed—although, on the other hand, as I said, they are so famished that all expected to perish of hunger and cold this winter, as many did in preceding winters, because it is very hard for them to find the roots on which they usually sustain themselves—the great snows which fall in this land preventing their search—seeing also the great hope there is of the conversion of this people and the service of our Lord and his Majesty, and a way to the mountains and China, etc., it seemed to the Provincial Father Segura that we should venture to remain with so few ship-stores and provisions, though we ate on the way two of the four barrels of biscuit and the little flour they gave us for the voyage.”

They resolved to stay, seeing no danger except that of famine; for they urged speedy relief. “It is very necessary that you should endeavor, if possible, to supply us with all despatch; and if it be impossible to do so in winter, at least it is necessary that in March, or, at the furthest, early in April, a good supply be sent, so as to give all these people wherewith to plant.”

The pilot of the vessel, short of provisions from the time lost on reaching Axacan, put the missionaries hastily ashore on the 11th of September, and the next day sailed, “leaving us in this depopulated land with the discomforts already described,” say the missionaries.

It was arranged between the missionaries and this pilot that, about the time of his expected return, they would have Indians on the lookout, apparently at the mouth of the river, who were to build signal-fires to attract attention. On seeing these beacons he was to give them a letter for the missionaries.

The little band of Christians beheld the vessel hoist her sail and glide down the river. They stood alone in a wild land, far from aid and sympathy. Two priests, three religious, Don Luis, and four other Indian converts, formed the little Christendom. But their destination was not yet reached. Guided by Don Luis, they took up their march for the river six miles off, Indians bearing some of their scanty supplies, the missionaries themselves carrying their chapel service, books, and other necessaries. After this portage they embarked on the river—which they might have ascended, and which seems evidently the Rappahannock—and thus penetrated some two leagues or more further into the country to the villages of the tribe.

Yet, even before they left the banks of the Potomac they were called upon to commence their ministry. “The cacique, brother of Don Luis, having,” says Father Quiros, “a son three years old very sick, who was seven or eight leagues from here, as it seemed to him to be on the point of death, he was instant that we should go to baptize it; wherefore it occurred to the vice-principal to send one of us by night to baptize it, as it was very near death.”

The Indians on the Rappahannock did not dwell in palisaded towns, like the Conestogas on the [pg 853] Susquehanna, and their kindred, the Five Nations, in New York. From the Spanish accounts they dwelt in scattered bands, each forming a little hamlet of a few cabins, each house in the midst of its rude garden; for they cultivated little ground, depending on the spontaneous productions of the earth: acorns, nuts, berries, and roots. Such were they when Smith described them thirty years later, when Powhatan, residing on the James, ruled over the scattered bands as far as the Rappahannock. It was evidently among that tribe, so well known to us by Smith's descriptions, that Father Segura and his companions began their labors, and Powhatan may well have been a son of the cacique, brother of Don Luis.

The accounts of the subsequent proceedings of the little mission colony are derived from Alphonsus, one of the Indian boys, and are somewhat obscure. They make the journey to the hamlets of the tribe a weary one through wood and desert and marsh, loaded with their baggage, and living on roots, and not the short journey which Father Quiros anticipated. His letter stated that the Indian canoes were all broken; it was probably found impossible to attempt to repair them, and the whole party trudged on by the riverside to their destination.

The hamlet first reached was a wretched one, tenanted only by gaunt and naked savages, who bore the famine imprinted on their whole forms. Here amid the tent-like lodges of the Indians, made of poles bound together and covered with mats and bark, Father Segura and his companions erected a rude house of logs, the first white habitation in that part of America—first church of the living God, first dwelling-place of civilized men; for one end was devoted to their chapel, while the other was their simple dwelling. Here doubtless, before the close of September, 1570, the little community recited their Office together, and, under the tuition of Don Luis, began to study the language. Here, at this modest altar, the Holy Sacrifice was for the first time offered by the two priests. Nowhere on the continent to the northward were the sacred rites then heard, unless, indeed, at Brest, in Canada. Greenland, with its bishop and clergy and convents, was a thing of the past; Cartier's colony, on the St. Lawrence, had been abandoned. The Chapel of the Mother of God, at Jacan, was the church of the frontier, the outpost of the faith.

As Father Segura had foreseen that he must winter there, and might not receive any supplies before March or April, he doubtless began, like his Indian neighbors, to lay up a store of provisions for the long winter. Acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, and chinquapins were regularly gathered by the natives, as well as persimmons and a root like a potato, growing in the swampy lands. Game must have been scarce on that narrow peninsula between two rivers, and they had no means of hunting. Though the rivers of Virginia teemed with fish, we find no indication that the missionaries were supplied with means of deriving any food from that source.

For a time Don Luis remained with them, showing all deference and respect to Father Segura. In his letter to Melendez Father Quiros gives the impression he had made upon them up to that time, and from which it is evident that they had no suspicion of his treachery. “Don Luis,” says he, “acts [pg 854] well, as was expected of him, and is very obedient to all that the father enjoins on him, with much respect as well for the provincial as for the rest of us that are here, and he commends himself earnestly to your worship, to all his other friends and masters.”

This good disposition may have been sincere at first, but, as too often happens in such cases, old habits returned; he became Indian with the Indians, rather than Spanish with the Spaniards. Ere long he abandoned the missionaries altogether, and went off to another hamlet, distant from it a day's journey and a half.

The mission party were not yet sufficiently versed in the language to dispense with the aid of Don Luis as interpreter, and his influence was constantly needed among the lawless natives. Feeling this, Father Segura several times sent one of the young men to urge Don Luis to return, but he put them off constantly with false statements or unmeaning promises. In this way the winter wore away, with gloomy forebodings in the hearts of the pioneer priests in the log chapel on the Rappahannock. The only hope that cheered and sustained them was that the ship would speedily return from Santa Elena with the supplies they needed for themselves and the seed-corn for the natives, whom they hoped to persuade to cultivate more, and depend less on the precarious means of sustenance. Meanwhile, as January, 1571, was drawing to a close, Father Segura resolved to make a last effort to move the heart of the recreant Don Luis. He sent Father Quiros, with Brothers de Solis and Mendez, to the hamlet where he resided, to make a last appeal. The priest, who had so long known him, endeavored to recall him to higher and better feelings. The unhappy man made many excuses for his absence, and continued to beguile the missionary with promises; but his heart was given up to deadly malice. He had renounced Christianity, and doomed its envoys to death. As Father Quiros and his two companions turned sadly away to depart from the place and rejoin their suffering companions, a shower of arrows whizzed through the air. Quiros and his companions fell, pierced by the sharp flinty arrows of the apostate and his followers. Virginia had its first martyrs of Christ. Their bodies were at once stripped and subjected to all the mutilations that savage fancy inspired.

Father Segura, with the three brothers and two other Indian youths, had spent the interval in prayer, anxiety deepening as no sign of Father Quiros appeared. On the fourth day the yells and cries that were borne on the chilly air announced the approach of a large party, and in a short time Don Luis appeared, arrayed in the cassock of Father Quiros, attended by his brother, the cacique, and a war party armed with clubs and bows. He sternly demanded from the missionaries their knives and axes used for chopping wood, knowing that with them alone could they make any defence. These were surrendered without remonstrance. Father Segura saw that the end was come. The long-delayed ship would be too late. He prepared his companions to die. They doubtless gathered around the altar where the Holy Sacrifice had just been offered. Then the apostate gave a signal, and his warriors rushed upon the defenceless and unresisting mission party, and slaughtered [pg 855] all but Alphonsus, who was protected by a brother of Don Luis, more humane than that fallen man.

The bodies of his victims, Father Segura, Brothers Gomez, Linares, and Zevallos, and the Indian novice, Christopher Redondo, were then, we are told, buried beneath their chapel-house. The shrine of the Mother of God was doubtless pillaged, perhaps demolished; the lamp of Christian light was extinguished, and pagan darkness again prevailed in the land.

As nearly as could be ascertained, the martyrdom of Father Quiros occurred on Sunday, the 4th of February, 1571; that of Father Segura a few days later.

Why had their countrymen in Florida so cruelly neglected them, in spite of the urgent letters taken back by the pilot? It was probably because, Melendez being absent, the letters were sent to Spain, and the pilot did not fully reveal the destitute condition in which he had left the mission colony. Brother Vincent Gonzalez was urgent to bear relief to the vice-provincial, but he was put off with the pretext that no pilot could be found to run along the coast from Port Royal to the Chesapeake. It was not till spring that the good brother succeeded in getting a vessel and some Spaniards to proceed to the relief of his superior, as to whose welfare great anxiety was now felt. They ran up the Potomac, and reached the spot where Segura had landed. Indian runners had descried the vessel when it entered the river, and, when the Spanish craft came to anchor, Indians were there to meet them, and the garb of the missionaries was seen in the distance. But the treacherous red men failed to lure them ashore with this device, although some came forward, crying, “See the fathers who came to us. We have treated them well; come and see them, and we will treat you likewise.”

On the contrary, suspecting treachery from the fact that the pretended fathers did not hasten down to meet them, the Spaniards not only avoided landing, but, seizing two of the treacherous natives, sailed back to Port Royal.

Melendez, soon after returning from Spain, heard their report, and with characteristic energy resolved to punish the crime. Taking a small but staunch and fleet vessel, with a sufficient force, he sailed in person to the Chesapeake in 1572, bearing with him Father Rogel and Brother Villareal. He evidently ran up the Potomac, as the other vessel had done, to the spot already familiar to the pilots. Here he landed the Spanish soldiers, and unfurled the standard of Spain on the soil of Virginia. Marching inland, this determined man soon captured several Indians. They were interrogated, and at once confessed that the whole mission party had been cruelly murdered, but they laid the blame of the terrible crime on the apostate Don Luis. Apparently, by one of them Melendez sent word to the tribe that he would not harm the innocent, but he insisted on their delivering up Don Luis. But that false Christian, on seeing the Spanish vessel, fled with his brother, the cacique, and all attempts to arrest them failed. The brother who had saved the Indian boy Alphonsus, however, came forward to meet Melendez, bringing to him the only survivor of Father Segura's pious band. The adelantado received him with every mark of pleasure.

From this boy was obtained a detailed account of all that had [pg 856] happened after the departure of the vessel which left the missionaries on the bank of the Potomac. The statement is, of course, the basis of all the accounts we possess of the fate of the log chapel on the Rappahannock and the little Jesuit community gathered to serve it.

The Spanish commander arrested a number of Indians; and when Alphonsus had pointed out those concerned in the tragedy, Melendez hung eight of them at the yard-arm of his vessel. Father Rogel prepared them all for death, instructing them, we presume, by the aid of the young survivor, and had the consolation of baptizing them.

After this summary act of retributive justice, the founder of St. Augustine, with his mail-clad force, embarked, and the Spanish flag floated for the last time over the land of Axacan.

Father Rogel was loath to leave the country without bearing with him the precious remains of his martyred brethren; but Melendez could not venture so far from his ship, and his force was too small to divide. The Jesuit Father could bear away, as a relic, only a crucifix which had been in the log chapel. Divine vengeance is said to have overtaken those who profaned the sacred vessels, and especially an attempt to injure this crucifix; first one, then two others, having been struck dead. It was subsequently placed by Father Rogel in the College of Guayala.

Some thirty-five years later an English colony entered a river, to which they gave the name of Mary Stuart's son. The Indians from that river to the Rappahannock were ruled by Powhatan; and it is worthy of remark that Raphe Hamor, one of the earliest settlers, states that Powhatan's tribe were driven from their original abode by the Spaniards. They were Algonquins, and did not come from Florida. They were, in all probability, the very tribe among whom Father Segura laid down his life. Powhatan, represented as then a man of sixty, might, at twenty-five, have witnessed or taken part in the martyrdom.

Such is the history of the first community of the Society of Jesus in the Old Dominion, of which they were the first white occupants. Dominicans began the work by converting Don Luis, Jesuits followed it up by actual possession, by erecting a chapel, by instituting a regular community life, by instructing, baptizing, and hallowing the land by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The flag of Spain and the flag of England have alike passed away, but on the banks of the Potomac Jesuit and Dominican are laboring side by side three hundred years after the martyrdom of Segura, Quiros, and their companions.

Fredericksburg, which cannot be far from the early Chapel of the Mother of God, revives its name in her Church of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception; and other churches of the same invocation seem to declare that, as of old, so now we may say, “This is indeed the Blessed Virgin's land.”