"Remorse is a dreadful thing," thought Anthony; "I can feel it gnawing at my belt and I am terribly ashamed." He turned back to the commandant: "I suppose the question is, shall we ask alms of our nearest neighbors, our worst enemies, those cruel Spaniards at Pensacola?"
As it was quite impossible to send an armed force from the little group of impoverished, sick, and famished colonists to enforce a request, Anthony offered to go alone and beg.
The carelessness and short-sightedness of men in prosperity has never ceased to be a marvel. It is equaled only by the endurance and courage of the same men in trouble. Every one of the miserable colonists offered to take the voyage in Anthony's place. So it was arranged that if he should fail to return others were to follow on the same mission, since Louisiana—which was the name of nearly half of North America—had come to such a pass that she must say, "Give me food or I may die in savagery."
"Let me take as attendant that Chickasaw boy the scouts brought in this morning," was Anthony's only demand. "I can understand a little of his speech and perhaps on the voyage I may coax from him some news of the tribes north and learn why he is unfriendly toward us."
The captive spy was promised his freedom if he would serve Anthony as far as Pensacola, and he went sullenly enough with the only man whose words he knew. Anthony trusted to the intimacy of two days and a night to learn from the Chickasaw all he knew that might serve the French in their distress.
So Anthony, beautifully groomed and dressed and taking his Chickasaw valet, rigged a sail to his canoe and started for Pensacola. In the bow he set his clay stove, some precious pounded corn in a bowl, and a porous jar which kept drinking-water cool by evaporation. Nobody then and nobody now in the neighborhood of the Mississippi can get along without a crock.
A vein of earth, a perfect potter's clay, outcrops on the lower reaches of the Great River. The fingers of prehistoric Indian children itched to mold splendid mud-pies just like the scarcely more skilful children of our times do on those same shores. No one knows who turned the first dish, dried it or baked it and painted it with stripes of color.
A primitive clay stove sails up and down the river and into the Gulf in almost every fisherman's boat to-day, just as it did on Anthony's trip. Big crocks in prosaic trucks now go merchandizing over the same Mississippi regions where once they traveled by picturesque Indian pick-a-back. On many southern window-sills the water-jars are still cooling in a draught.
Bricks for building houses on the river, tiles for roofing them and terra-cotta for ornamenting them, began to be manufactured early in the history of the colony. In the city of New Orleans are potteries which have raised the making of mud-pies into a beautiful art. Here and there throughout the Mississippi system are talented dreamers who turn the clay into inspiring groups of the sculptor's art.