Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885

by Various

The list which had been so civilly put in the Topekan lady's hands was a long one, and ran as follows: "Chawcolate, pawk, hawrid, cawd, squrl, stoopid, winder, lemmy, gimmy, years (for ears), 'cute, edgercation, conchienchous," etc., etc.

The fingers that held it trembled with rage long before it was finished, for the Topekan lady had wealth and social aspiration, if not "edgercation;" and when Mrs. Sykes broke in with, "Well, what do you say to that?" she had a good deal to say, and said it very forcibly, in such English as she could command, after which she swelled in speechless anger opposite for the remainder of their journey.

"There it is again. If I say the least thing to these Americans they fly out like that," complained Mrs. Sykes to Miss Noel.

But for sheer ill humor nothing could have surpassed her conduct when they had "done" San Francisco, which she declared to be "a dull, dirty, windy place, with a harbor of which entirely too much is made,—ridiculously over-praised, in fact," and got under way for the Yosemite. The roads, the rough vehicle, the country, could not be sufficiently abused. However, when the spot was reached, she relented, as she had done at Niagara, and, looking up at the giant trees, graciously conceded that they also were "quite up to the mark."

It was a pleasant spectacle to see Sir Roberts enthusiasm. Such gazing and neck-craning and measuring and speculating! Such critical inspection of bark, leaves, soil, lichens! Such questioning of the guides! Such keen delight, wonder, remeasuring, recraning, theories, calculations, endless contemplation! The enjoyment of the others was as nothing, compared to his,—for if there was a thing that he loved it was a fine tree, and had he not some of the best timber in England, which he knew as some generals have known their soldiers and some shepherds their sheep? "Stupendous! Prodigious! Wonderful!" burst from his lips as he walked slowly around them and rode between them as in a dream, perfectly entranced. He could scarcely be dragged away, and at last was only moved by the thought that there was so much that he "must positively see" in the surrounding country which was waiting to be considered volcanically, botanically, geologically, and otherwise. It was one of his vexations that nature, art, science, history, commerce, were so long, and time and a voraciously intelligent but mortal and limited baronet so fleeting. He would have liked to spend several months on the Pacific coast, looking into a thousand things with unflagging zeal and interest. It was really afflicting to turn his back upon the early Spanish settlers, the Jesuit missions, the grape and olive production, mining interests, earthquake statistics, the Chinese problem, annual rainfall on the great plateau, study of the Sierra Nevada range, and last, most alluring of all, that of the Santa Barbara Islands, described by a companion of Drake as densely populated by a white race with light hair and ruddy cheeks. When Sir Robert thought of that people and of all the bliss of investigation, he almost decided to make a winter of it in California and solve that mystery or perish. But he had still much to accomplish, and he had fixed the day for sailing before leaving England. So back the party came to St. Louis, where they found a mountain of mail-matter from the four quarters of the globe. There were five voluminous epistles from Mrs. Vane to Miss Noel, and others from that household; a simple domestic chronicle from Mabel, describing her daily round and stating her fears and anxieties about "Boy," who was getting "sadly wilful and unruly," and, like a youthful Ajax, had lately "defied husband;" and one of Mr. Ketchum's characteristic epistles:

"I send you a letter of introduction to my friend Fry in New Orleans (to whom my double-and-twisted), since you will go there. He will put you through all right. But I warn you that you will be nobody and won't be able to hold up your head there at all. No one can after an epidemic, unless he has lost half of his relations and had the other half given up by the doctors and prepared for burial. This reminds me that Brown's scapegrace of a brother has turned up here with a handsome Mexican wife and a million, and has deodorized his reputation by giving large sums to the yellow-fever sufferers, while I am thinking of colonizing all the mothers-in-law of these United there before another season opens, unless business improves. Fairfield has a Benedicts' Club now, and I chose the motto for it, 'Here the women cease from troubling and the wicked are at rest:' so when you want a little peace and comfort you will know where to come. My wife will have nothing less than her love sent you; but I am all the same your friend, J. K."

Having seen a certificate that New Orleans was entirely free from fever, "signed by all the medical men of eminence in the city," Sir Robert was determined not to be frightened out of his visit there altogether. But it was only November, and he did not wish to run any foolish risks, and the ladies were very nervous on this score. He was still undecided what course to take, when he one day picked up a paper and read an account of the Indian Territory that interested him beyond measure. In an hour he had got out his maps and time-tables and arranged to "put in a week" at Tahlequah, the Falls of St. Anthony, and the Mammoth Cave. As none of the party cared for the first except himself, he went there alone, and felt fully repaid for the effort. Great was his joy at finding "a purely Indian legislative body" and assisting at their deliberations, his lorgnon glued now to one chief and now to another. And then to talk to them, to get their "views," to sketch them, to have a copy of their constitution and laws and a newspaper in their own tongue and characters in which an affinity to the Egyptian, Arabic, Chinese, or any other might perhaps be traced! And then how full his letters to his friends in England were of his "visit to a Choctaw gentleman's plantation,—a most deeply interesting, well-educated man;" "the first-fruits of the new civilization;" "the opinion of a Seminole person on the Indian policy of the American government;" "the beauty of a young Chickasaw female" whom he had seen at one of the schools, and "the extraordinary progress made by some of the other scholars, showing that there is absolutely no limit to the intellectual development of the once-despised savage;" "the crystal clearness of the beautiful rivers, the lovely, fertile plains, framed by the Mozark Mountains, the balmy, delightful climate, and the brutality and wicked greed of an American of the lower class," who had told him that "the country was a million times too good for redskins, who ought all to be exterminated, as 'Indians was p'ison wherever found.'" And then, while the glow of this interest still flushed his mind, he took up the Mississippi River, which was a career in itself and beckoned him on to fresh conquests. He went up to the Falls of St. Anthony, which, after Niagara and the Yosemite, was accounted "tame and overrated" by Mrs. Sykes, but over which he pondered deeply. Before he left there the river had got a strong hold on his imagination that grew ever greater and greater. He spent all his time on the boat studying it. He talked to the pilot about it,—or rather made the pilot talk, and listened with all his ears; he took up the methods now practised for preventing the banks from caving in and forcing the Great Father to lie in the bed he has made, instead of driving honest folk out of theirs by scurvy turns and bends that break up thousands of homes. He drew diagrams of the pile-driving and wattling and willow mattrasses in the diary, with the improvements he thought advisable, and some very scientific suggestions by which the river could be made to checkmate itself, like an automaton chess-player. He hung over the guards continually, observing all that was to be observed, and recorded the same under separate headings, such as "currents," "velocity," "flood-rises," with statistics without end showing that the carrying-trade of the great water highway would amount in 1950 to something so colossal that there is no room for it here, while a future for the cities that stud its banks was predicted that would satisfy their most ambitious citizens.

His heart was not in Louisville nor in the Mammoth Cave, though he went over the first religiously and examined the latter carefully, collected specimens, and even thrilled faintly over an eyeless fish, which aroused considerable enthusiasm in Mr. Heathcote. He was not really himself until he was again on the river, doing a little dredging and sounding on his own account. At Cairo he expanded almost as much as his subject, and for a long while afterward was never weary of tracing the blue and yellow currents that fuse so reluctantly and imperfectly that out in the Gulf of Mexico, it is said, one comes upon patches of the Missouri of the most jaundiced, angry hue.

The sombre majesty of the stream was quite lost upon Mrs. Sykes, who saw in it only "an ugly, wicked-looking river, with a lot of dirty-white villages along its mud banks." Her attention was given to the passengers and the clerk,—especially the latter. "A clerk that talks to the ladies in the cabin about literature and the dramar! Only fency!" she said to Miss Noel. "And such comical blackies, that the ladies call 'aunty,' and that call me 'honey' and 'child.' As like as not you'll see a snag coming up through the bottom of the boat presently, and you had better try one of the life-preservers on and see how it works; though, after all, we may be blown up instead. Of course we are racing. I am sure of it."

"Dear, dear! How very dreadful! How did you discover that? It should really be made known. I shall speak to the captain. I really can't consent to being raced with," replied Miss Noel, who did not make sufficient allowance for Mrs. Sykes's love of the sensational. "Robert must call a meeting and protest, or something."