“‘My friend,’ said he, ‘you have said enough: if you tell me that your friend, or the friend or the enemy of any man, takes the hand of a fair daughter on that ground to-night, an Ioway chief will not offend the Great Spirit by raising the war-cry there. No Ioway can spill the blood of an enemy on the ground where the hands and the hearts of man and woman are joined together. This is the command of the Great Spirit, and an Ioway warrior cannot break it. My friend, these warriors you see around me with myself had sworn to kill the first human being we met on our war excursion; we shall not harm you, so you see that I give you your life. You will therefore keep your lips shut, and we will return in peace to our village, which is far up the river, and we shall hereafter meet our friends, the white people, in the great city,[25] as we have heretofore done, and we have many friends there. We shall do no harm to any one. My face is now blackened, and the night is dark, therefore you cannot know me; but this arrow you will keep—it matches with all the others in my quiver, and by it you can always recognize me, but the meeting of this night is not to be known.’ He gave me the arrow, and with these words turned his canoe, and joining his companions was in a moment out of sight. My arrow being passed under my hat-band, and finding that the current had by this time drifted me down a mile or two below the place where I designed to land, and beyond the power of reaching it with my two awkward logs of wood, I steered my course onward toward St. Louis, rapidly gliding over the surface of the broad river, and arrived safely at the shore in front of the town at a late hour in the night, having drifted a distance of more than thirty-five miles. My two logs were an ample price for a night’s lodging, and breakfast and dinner the next day; and I continued my voyage in a Mackinaw boat on the same day to Vide Pouche, a small French town about twenty miles below, where my business required my presence. The wedding party proceeded undisturbed, and the danger they had been in was never made known to them, as I promised the War-chief, who gave me as the condition of my silence the solemn promise, that he would never carry his feelings of revenge upon innocent persons any farther.
“Thus ends the story of ‘floating down the Mississippi River on the two logs of wood,’ which the War-chief alluded to in the question he put to me this evening. On a subsequent occasion, some two or three years afterwards, while sitting in the office of Governor Clark, the superintendent of Indian affairs in St. Louis, where he was holding ‘a talk’ with a party of Indians, a fine-looking fellow, of six feet or more in stature, fixed his eyes intently upon me, and after scanning me closely for a few moments, advanced, and seating himself on the floor by the side of me, pronounced the word ‘Bobasheela,’ and asked me if ever I had received an arrow from the quiver of an Indian warrior. The mutual recognition took place by my acknowledging the fact, and a shake of the hand, and an amusing conversation about the circumstances, and still the facts and the amusement all kept to ourselves. This step led to the future familiarities of our lives in the various places where the nature of my business led me into his society, and gained for me the regular adoption as Bobasheela (or Brother) and the badge (the she-she-quoin, or Mystery Rattle) alluded to in the previous remarks, and which, it has been already stated, was lost by the sinking of one of my boats on the Cumberland River.”
There was a burst of laughter and mirth amongst the squaws and others of us who had listened to this curious tale, and, as the reader will easily decide, a great deal of pleasure produced by its relation. The supper-table by this time was ready, and Bobasheela took a seat by the side of his old friend. The author was also in the humour, and joined them at their beef-steak and chickabobboo, and so did Mr. Melody and Daniel, and all who had joined in the merriment of the occasion of Bobasheela’s relation of the story of his going to the wedding astride of the two logs of wood. After the supper was over, and while the pipe was passing around, a number of other recitals of adventures in the “Far-West” continued the amusements of the evening to a late hour, when the author retired and left them to their own jokes and their night’s rest.
The next morning after this was an exciting and bustling one, as all were preparing, at an early hour, to visit the great brewery on that day, as had been promised; and on their way back to see the Thames Tunnel, and the treasures of the Tower of London. One will easily see that here was a gigantic day’s work struck out, and that material enough was at hand for my note-book. Bobasheela must be of this party, and therefore was not left behind: with all in (except the two bucks, who habitually went outside), the Indian bus, with four horses, was a travelling music box as it passed rapidly through the streets; and the clouds of smoke issuing from it at times often spread the alarm that “she was all on fire within” as she went by. At the brewery, where they had been invited by the proprietors, servants in abundance were in readiness to turn upon their giant hinges the great gates, and pass the carriage into the court; and at the entrance to the grand fountain of chickabobboo there were servants to receive them and announce their arrival, when they were met, and with the greatest politeness and kindness led by one of the proprietors, and an escort of ladies, through the vast labyrinths and mazes, through the immense halls and courts, and under and over the dry-land bridges and arches of this smoking, steeping, and steaming wonder of the world, as they were sure to call it when they got home. The vastness and completeness of this huge manufactory, or, in fact, village of manufactures, illustrated and explained in all its parts and all its mysterious modes of operation, formed a subject of amazement in our own as well as the Indians’ minds—difficult to be described, and never to be forgotten.
When the poor untutored Indians, from the soft and simple prairies of the Missouri, seated themselves upon a beam, and were looking into and contemplating the immensity of a smoking steeping-vat, containing more than 3000 barrels, and were told that there were 130 others of various dimensions in the establishment—that the whole edifice covered twelve acres of ground, and that there were necessarily constantly on hand in their cellars 232,000 barrels of ale, and also that this was only one of a great number of breweries in London, and that similar manufactories were in every town in the kingdom, though on a less scale, they began, almost for the first time since their arrival, to evince profound astonishment; and the fermentation in their minds, as to the consistency of white man’s teachings of temperance and manufacturing and selling ale, seemed not less than that which was going on in the vast abyss below them. The pipe was lit and passed around while they were in this contemplative mood, and as their ears were open, they got, in the meantime, further information of the wonderful modes and operations of this vast machine; and also, in round numbers, read from a report by one of the proprietors, the quantity of ale consumed in the kingdom annually. Upon hearing this, which seemed to cap the climax of all their astonishment, they threw down the pipe, and leaping into an empty vat, suddenly dissipated the pain of their mental calculations by joining in the Medicine (or Mystery) Dance. Their yells and screaming echoing through the vast and vapouring halls, soon brought some hundreds of maltsmen, grinders, firers, mashers, ostlers, painters, coopers, &c., peeping through and amongst the blackened timbers and casks, and curling and hissing fumes, completing the scene as the richest model for the infernal regions.
Every reader will paint (and must paint) this picture for himself, imagining the steeping vapour everywhere rising in curling clouds of white towards the blackened walls, and timbers, and wheels, and stairways, and arches, and bridges, and casks, and from amongst and between all of these, the blackened faces and glaring eyeballs piercing through the steam, upon the unusual, and to them as yet unaccountable, fermentation going on (to the admiration and amusement of those who were in the secret) in the empty vat! At the end of their dance, a foaming mug of the delicious was passed around, enabling them more easily and lightly to comprehend the wonders of this mighty scene; and after they had finished their round, and seen its varied mysteries, a huge and delicious beefsteak, and foaming mugs of the cream of chickabobboo, prepared for them by the kind lady of one of the proprietors of the establishment, soon smoothed off all the edges of their astonishment; and after the war-dance and the war-whoop, given to please the ladies, they again passed under the huge arches and gateways, and took their omnibus for a visit to the Tower.
The mood in which these good-natured fellows had left the brewery was a very merry one; they had got just ale enough for the present emergency, and seen an abundant and infallible source at the great fountain of chickabobboo to ensure them a constant supply, and seemed, as they passed along the streets, to be pleased with everything they saw. They met the man again with the “big nose,” and succeeded in stopping the bus to take a good look at his wonderful proboscis. As the bus stopped, he, like many others, came up to catch a glimpse of the red skins, and they all declared, on close examination, that his nose at least must have been begot by a potato; for, as the women had before said, they could distinctly see the sprouts, and Jim and the Doctor both insisted, that “if it were planted it would sprout and grow.”
They stopped the bus again to speak with some poor Lascars sweeping the streets; it was difficult to get any interpretation from them, though the Indians tried their own language on both sides, but in vain; they gave them fifteen shillings, and passed on.
The Tower, from its outward appearance, did not seem to excite in them any extravagant expectation of what they were to see within its gloomy walls. They remarked, when going in, that “they were going to prison;” and they were of opinion, no doubt, that it consisted of little else, as they had as yet heard no other description of it than that it was the “Tower of London” and they were going to see it. Poor fellows! they guessed right; they knew not of the illustrious prisoners who had pined within its gloomy walls, nor of the blood that had been shed within and around it. They went to see, and had enough to engage all their thoughts and attention without referring to the events of history. We were kindly conducted through the different rooms, and most of its curiosities explained to us. The “small-arms room,” containing 200,000 muskets, had been burned. The “horse armoury” seemed to afford them much delight; the thousands of various spears and lances, they thought, presented some beautiful models for Indian warfare, and hunting the buffaloes. The beheading block, on which Lords Balmerino, Kilmarnock, and Lovat were beheaded in the Tower in 1746, attracted their attention, and the axe that severed the head of Anne Boleyn.
In the Regalia Room, the crown of her Majesty and four other crowns, the sceptres and staffs, and orbs, swords of justice, swords of mercy, royal spurs, salts, baptismal fonts, &c., in massive gold and brilliant stones, seemed rather to disappoint than to astonish them; and to us, who knew better than they did the meaning and value of these magnificent treasures, there seemed a striking incongruity in the public exhibition of them in so confined and humble an apartment.