The Project Gutenberg eBook of Captains of adventure
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Captains of adventure
Author: Roger Pocock
Release date: November 20, 2023 [eBook #72176]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1913
Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE ***
Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional
notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE
[Illustration: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE]
CAPTAINS
OF ADVENTURE
_By_
ROGER POCOCK
_Author of_
A Man in the Open, etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1913
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
ADVENTURERS
What is an adventurer? One who has adventures? Surely not. A person
charged by a wild rhinoceros is having an adventure, yet however wild
the animal, however wild the person, he is only somebody wishing
himself at home, not an adventurer. In dictionaries the adventurer
is “one who seeks his fortune in new and hazardous or perilous
enterprises.” But outside the pages of a dictionary, the man who seeks
his fortune, who really cares for money and his own advantage, sits
at some desk deriding the fools who take thousand-to-one chances in a
gamble with Death. Did the patron saint of adventurers, Saint Paul, or
did Saint Louis, or Francis Drake, or Livingstone, or Gordon seek their
own fortune, think you? In real life the adventurer is one who seeks,
not his fortune, but the new and hazardous or perilous enterprises.
There are holy saints and scoundrels among adventurers, but all the
thousands I have known were fools of the romantic temperament, dealing
with life as an artist does with canvas, to color it with fierce and
vivid feeling, deep shade and radiant light, exulting in the passions
of the sea, the terrors of the wilderness, the splendors of sunshine
and starlight, the exaltation of battle, fire and hurricane.
All nations have bred great adventurers, but the living nation
remembers them sending the boys out into the world enriched with
memories of valor, a heritage of national honor, an inspiration to
ennoble their manhood. That is the only real wealth of men and of
peoples. For such purposes this book is written, but so vast is the
theme that this volume would outgrow all reasonable size unless we set
some limit. A man in the regular standing forces of his native state
is not dubbed adventurer. When, for example, the immortal heroes Tromp
and De Ruyter fought the British generals at sea, Blake and Monk, they
were no more adventurers than are the police constables who guard our
homes at night. Were Clive and Warren Hastings adventurers? They would
turn in their graves if one brought such a charge. The true type of
adventurer is the lone-hand pioneer.
It is not from any bias of mine that the worthies of Switzerland, the
Teutonic empires and Russia, are shut out of this poor little record;
but because it seems that the lone-hand oversea and overland pioneers
come mainly from nations directly fronting upon the open sea. As far
as I am prejudiced, it is in favor of old Norway, whose heroes have
entranced me with the sheer glory of their perfect manhood. For the
rest, our own English-speaking folk are easier for us to understand
than any foreigners.
As to the manner of record, we must follow the stream of history if we
would shoot the rapids of adventure.
Now as to the point of view: My literary pretensions are small and
humble, but I claim the right of an adventurer, trained in thirty-three
trades of the Lost Region, to absolute freedom of speech concerning
frontiersmen. Let history bow down before Columbus, but as a foremast
seaman, I hold he was not fit to command a ship. Let history ignore
Captain John Smith, but as an ex-trooper, I worship him for a leader,
the paladin of Anglo-Saxon chivalry, and very father of the United
States. Literature admires the well advertised Stanley, but we
frontiersmen prefer Commander Cameron, who walked across Africa without
blaming others for his own defects, or losing his temper, or shedding
needless blood. All the celebrities may go hang, but when we take the
field, send us leaders like Patrick Forbes, who conquered Rhodesia
without journalists in attendance to write puffs, or any actual deluge
of public gratitude.
The historic and literary points of view are widely different from that
of our dusty rankers.
When the Dutchmen were fighting Spain, they invented and built the
first iron-clad war-ship--all honor to their seamanship for that! But
when the winter came, a Spanish cavalry charge across the ice captured
the ship--and there was fine adventure. Both sides had practical men.
In the same wars, a Spanish man-at-arms in the plundering of a city,
took more gold than he could carry, so he had the metal beaten into
a suit of armor, and painted black to hide its worth from thieves.
From a literary standpoint, that was all very fine, but from our
adventurer point of view, the man was a fool for wearing armor useless
for defense, and so heavy he could not run. He was killed, and a good
riddance.
We value most the man who knows his business, and the more practical
the adventurer, the fewer his misadventures.
From that point of view, the book is attempted with all earnestness;
and if the results appear bizarre, let the shocked reader turn to
better written works, mention of which is made in notes.
As to the truthfulness of adventurers, perhaps we are all more or less
truthful when we try to be good. But there are two kinds of adventurers
who need sharply watching. The worst is F. C. Selous. Once he lectured
to amuse the children at the Foundling Hospital, and when he came to
single combats with a wounded lion, or a mad elephant he was forced
to mention himself as one of the persons present. He blushed. Then
he would race through a hair-lifting story of the fight, and in an
apologetic manner, give all the praise to the elephant, or the lion
lately deceased. Surely nobody could suspect him of any merit, yet
all the children saw through him for a transparent fraud, and even we
grown-ups felt the better for meeting so grand a gentleman.
The other sort of liar, who does not understate his own merits, is
Jim Beckwourth. He told his story, quite truthfully at first, to a
journalist who took it down in shorthand. But when the man gaped with
admiration at the merest trifles, Jim was on his mettle, testing this
person’s powers of belief, which were absolutely boundless. After that,
of course he hit the high places, striking the facts about once in
twenty-four hours, and as one reads the book, one can catch the thud
whenever he hit the truth.
Let no man dream that adventure is a thing of the past or that
adventurers are growing scarce. The only difficulty of this book
was to squeeze the past in order to make-space for living men worthy
as their forerunners. The list is enormous, and I only dared to
estimate such men of our own time as I have known by correspondence,
acquaintance, friendship, enmity, or by serving under their leadership.
Here again, I could only speak safely in cases where there were
records, as with Lord Strathcona, Colonel S. B. Steele, Colonel Cody,
Major Forbes, Captain Grogan, Captain Amundsen, Captain Hansen, Mr.
John Boyes. Left out, among Americans, are M. H. de Hora who, in a
Chilian campaign, with only a boat’s crew, cut out the battle-ship
_Huascar_, plundered a British tramp of her bunker coal, and fought H.
M. S. _Shah_ on the high seas. Another American, Doctor Bodkin, was
for some years prime minister of Makualand, an Arab sultanate. Among
British adventurers, Caid Belton, is one of four successive British
commanders-in-chief to the Moorish sultans. Colonel Tompkins was
commander-in-chief to Johore. C. W. Mason was captured with a shipload
of arms in an attempt to make himself emperor of China. Charles Rose
rode from Mazatlan in Mexico to Corrientes in Paraguay. A. W. V.
Crawley, a chief of scouts to Lord Roberts in South Africa, rode out of
action after being seven times shot, and he rides now a little askew in
consequence.
To sum up, if one circle of acquaintances includes such a group to-day,
the adventurer is not quite an extinct species, and indeed, we seem not
at the end, but at the beginning of the greatest of all adventurous
eras, that of the adventurers of the air.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA 1
II THE CRUSADERS 7
III THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA 18
IV THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE 25
V COLUMBUS 32
VI THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 37
VII THE CONQUEST OF PERU 44
VIII THE CORSAIRS 50
IX PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES 55
X RAJAH BROOKE 62
XI THE SPIES 69
XII A YEAR’S ADVENTURES 81
XIII KIT CARSON 88
XIV THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD 100
XV THE GREAT FILIBUSTER 106
XVI BUFFALO BILL 112
XVII THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT 123
XVIII THE HERO-STATESMAN 131
XIX THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 138
XX LORD STRATHCONA 142
XXI THE SEA HUNTERS 148
XXII THE BUSHRANGERS 156
XXIII THE PASSING OF THE BISON 162
XXIV GORDON 173
XXV THE OUTLAW 179
XXVI A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE 186
XXVII JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN 194
XXVIII THE COWBOY PRESIDENT 202
XXIX THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 208
XXX JOHN HAWKINS 215
XXXI FRANCIS DRAKE 219
XXXII THE FOUR ARMADAS 223
XXXIII SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT 231
XXXIV SIR WALTER RALEIGH 234
XXXV CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 237
XXXVI THE BUCCANEERS 246
XXXVII THE VOYAGEURS 252
XXXVIII THE EXPLORERS 260
XXXIX THE PIRATES 266
XL DANIEL BOONE 272
XLI ANDREW JACKSON 280
XLII SAM HOUSTON 282
XLIII DAVY CROCKETT 285
XLIV ALEXANDER MACKENZIE 292
XLV THE WHITE MAN’S COMING 298
XLVI THE BEAVER 302
XLVII THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES 307
XLVIII WOMEN 315
XLIX THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA 321
L THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON 327
LI THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 333
LII RISING WOLF 340
LIII SIMON BOLIVAR 350
LIV THE ALMIRANTE COCHRANE 357
LV THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS 363
LVI A TALE OF VENGEANCE 371
CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE
CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE
I
A. D. 984
THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA
A reverent study of heroes in novels, also in operas and melodramas,
where one may see them for half-a-crown, has convinced me that they
must be very trying to live with. They get on people’s nerves. Hence
the villains.
Now Harold of the Fair Hair was a hero, and he fell in love with a
lady, but she would not marry him unless he made himself king of
Norway. So he made himself the first king of all Norway, and she had to
marry him, which served her right.
But then there were the gentlemen of his majesty’s opposition who did
not want him to be king, who felt that there was altogether too much
Harold in Norway. They left, and went to Iceland to get away from the
hero.
Iceland had been shown on the map since the year A. D. 115, and when
the vikings arrived they found a colony of Irish monks who said they
had come there “because they desired for the love of God to be in a
state of pilgrimage, they recked not where.”
Perhaps the vikings sent them to Heaven. Later on it seems they found
a little Irish settlement on the New England coast, and heard of great
Ireland, a colony farther south. That is the first rumor we have about
America.
The Norsemen settled down, pagans in Christian Iceland. They earned
a living with fish and cattle, and made an honest penny raiding the
Mediterranean. They had internecine sports of their own, and on the
whole were reasonably happy. Then in course of trade Captain Gunbjorn
sighted an unknown land two hundred fifty miles to the westward. That
made the Icelanders restless, for there is always something which calls
to Northern blood from beyond the sea line.
Most restless of all was Red Eric, hysterical because he hated a
humdrum respectable life; indeed, he committed so many murders that he
had to be deported as a public nuisance. He set off exultant to find
Gunbjorn’s unknown land. So any natural born adventurer commits little
errors of taste unless he can find an outlet. It is too much dog-chain
that makes biting dogs.
When he found the new land it was all green, with swaths of wild
flowers. I know that land and its bright lowlands, backed by sheer
walled mountains, with splintered pinnacles robed in the splendors
of the inland ice. The trees were knee high, no crops could possibly
ripen, but Eric was so pleased that after two winters he went back
to Iceland advertising for settlers to fill his colony. Greenland
he called the place, because “Many will go there if the place has
a fair name.” They did, and when the sea had wiped out most of the
twenty-five ships, the surviving colonists found Greenland commodious
and residential as the heart could wish.
They were not long gone from the port of Skalholt when young Captain
Bjarni came in from the sea and asked for his father. But father
Heljulf had sailed for Greenland, so the youngster set off in pursuit
although nobody knew the way. Bjarni always spent alternate yuletides
at his father’s hearth, so if the hearth-stone moved he had to find it
somehow. These vikings are so human and natural that one can follow
their thought quite easily. When, for instance, Bjarni, instead of
coming to Greenland, found a low, well timbered country, he knew he had
made a mistake, so it was no use landing. Rediscovering the American
mainland was a habit which persisted until the time of Columbus, and
not a feat to make a fuss about. A northerly course and a pure stroke
of luck carried Bjarni to Greenland and his father’s house.
Because they had no timber, and driftwood was scarce, the colonists
were much excited when they heard of forests, and cursed Bjarni for
not having landed. Anyway, here was a fine excuse for an expedition
in search of fire-wood, so Leif, the son of Red Eric, bought Bjarni’s
ship. Being tall and of commanding presence he rallied thirty-five of
a crew, and, being young, expected that his father would take command.
Eric indeed rode a distance of four hundred feet from his house against
the rock, which was called Brattelid, to the shore of the inlet, but
his pony fell and threw him, such a bad omen that he rode home again.
Leif Ericsen, therefore, with winged helmet and glittering breastplate,
mounted the steerboard, laid hands on the steer-oar and bade his men
shove off. The colonists on rugged dun ponies lined the shore to cheer
the adventurers, and the ladies waved their kerchiefs from the rock
behind the house while the dragon ship, shield-lines ablaze in the
sun, oars thrashing blue water, and painted square-sail set, took the
fair wind on that famous voyage. She discovered Stoneland, which is
the Newfoundland-Labrador coast, and Woodland, which is Nova Scotia.
Then came the Further Strand, the long and wonderful beaches of
Massachusetts, and beyond was Narragansett Bay, where they built winter
houses, pastured their cattle, and found wild grapes. It was here that
Tyrkir, the little old German man slave who was Leif’s nurse, made wine
and got most gorgeously drunk. On the homeward passage Leif brought
timber and raisins to Greenland.
Leif went away to Norway, where as a guest of King Olaf he became a
Christian, and in his absence his brother Thorwald made the second
voyage to what is now New England. After wintering at Leif’s house in
Wineland the Good he went southward and, somewhere near the site of New
York, met with savages. Nine of them lay under three upturned canoes on
the beach, so the vikings killed eight just for fun, but were fools,
letting the ninth escape to raise the tribes for war. So there was a
battle, and Thorwald the Helpless was shot in the eye, which served him
right. One of his brothers came afterward in search of the body, which
may have been that same seated skeleton in bronze armor that nine
hundred years later was dug up at Cross Point.
Two or three years after Thorwald’s death his widow married a visitor
from Norway, Eric’s guest at Brattelid, the rich Thorfin Karlsefne. He
also set out for Vinland, taking Mrs. Karlsefne and four other women,
also a Scottish lad and lass (very savage) and an Irishman, besides a
crew of sixty and some cattle. They built a fort where the natives came
trading skins for strips of red cloth, or to fight a battle, or to be
chased, shrieking with fright, by Thorfin’s big red bull. There Mrs.
Karlsefne gave birth to Snorri the Firstborn, whose sons Thorlak and
Brand became priests and were the first two bishops of Greenland.
After Karlsefne’s return to Greenland the next voyage was made by one
of Eric’s daughters; and presently Leif the Fortunate came home from
Norway to his father’s house, bringing a priest. Then Mrs. Leif built a
church at Brattelid, old Eric the Red being thoroughly disgusted, and
Greenland and Vinland became Christian, but Eric never.
As long as Norway traded with her American colonies Vinland exported
timber and dried fruit, while Greenland sent sheepskins, ox hides,
sealskins, walrus-skin rope and tusks to Iceland and Europe. In return
they got iron and settlers. But then began a series of disasters, for
when the Black Death swept Europe, the colonies were left to their
fate, and some of the colonists in despair renounced their faith to
turn Eskimo. In 1349 the last timber ship from Nova Scotia was lately
returned to Europe when the plague struck Norway. There is a gap of
fifty-two years in the record, and all we know of Greenland is that
the western villages were destroyed by Eskimos who killed eighteen
Norsemen and carried off the boys. Then the plague destroyed two-thirds
of the people in Iceland, a bad winter killed nine tenths of all their
cattle, and what remained of the hapless colony was ravaged by English
fishermen. No longer could Iceland send any help to Greenland, but
still there was intercourse because we know that seven years later the
vicar of Garde married a girl in the east villages to a young Icelander.
Meanwhile, in plague-stricken England, Bristol, our biggest seaport,
had not enough men living even to bury the dead, and labor was so
scarce that the crops rotted for lack of harvesters. That is why an
English squadron raided Iceland, Greenland, perhaps even Vinland, for
slaves, and the people were carried away into captivity. Afterward
England paid compensation to Denmark and returned the folk to their
homes, but in 1448 the pope wrote to a Norse bishop concerning their
piteous condition. And there the story ends, for in that year the
German merchants at Bergen in Norway squabbled with the forty master
mariners of the American trade. The sailors had boycotted their
Hanseatic League, so the Germans asked them to dinner, and murdered
them. From that time no man knew the way to lost America.
II
A. D. 1248
THE CRUSADERS
In the seventh century of the reign of Our Lord Christ, arose the
Prophet Mahomet. To his followers he generously gave Heaven, and
as much of the earth as they could get, so the true believers made
haste to occupy goodly and fruitful possessions of Christian powers,
including the Holy Land. The owners were useful as slaves.
Not having been consulted in this matter, the Christians took offense,
making war upon Islam in seven warm campaigns, wherein they held and
lost by turns the holy sepulcher, so that the country where our Lord
taught peace, was always drenched with blood. In the end, our crusades
were not a success.
About Saint Louis and the sixth crusade:
At the opening of the story, that holy but delightful king of France
lay so near death that his two lady nurses had a squabble, the one
pulling a cloth over his face because he was dead, while the other
snatched it away because he was still alive. At last he sent the pair
of them to fetch the cross, on which he vowed to deliver the Holy Land.
Then he had to get well, so he did, sending word to his barons to roll
up their men for war.
Among the nobles was the young Lord of Joinville, seneschal of
Champagne--a merry little man with eight hundred pounds a year of
his own. But then, what with an expensive mother, his wife, and some
little worries, he had to pawn his lands before he could take the
field with his two knights-banneret, nine knights, their men-at-arms,
and the servants. He shared with another lord the hire of a ship from
Marseilles, but when they joined his majesty in Cyprus he had only a
few pounds left, and the knights would have deserted but that the king
gave him a staff appointment at eight hundred pounds a year.
The king was a holy saint, a glorious knight errant, full of fun,
but a thoroughly incompetent general. Instead of taking Jerusalem by
surprise, he must needs raid Egypt, giving the soldan of Babylon the
Less (Cairo) plenty of time to arrange a warm reception. The rival
armies had a battle on the beach, after which Saint Louis sat down in
front of Damietta, where he found time to muddle his commissariat.
On the other hand, the soldan was not at all well, having been poisoned
by a rival prince, and paid no heed to the carrier pigeons with their
despairing messages from the front. This discouraged the Moslems, who
abandoned Damietta and fled inland, hotly pursued by the French. As a
precaution, however, they sent round their ships, which collected the
French supplies proceeding to the front. The Christians had plenty
of fighting and a deal of starving to do, not to mention pestilence
in their ill-managed camps. So they came to a canal which had to be
bridged, but the artful paynim cut away the land in front of the
bridge head, so that there was no ground on which the French could
arrive. In the end the Christians had to swim and, as they were heavily
armored, many were drowned in the mud. Joinville’s party found a dry
crossing up-stream, and their troubles began at the enemy’s camp whence
the Turks were flying.
“While we were driving them through their camp, I perceived a Saracen
who was mounting his horse, one of his knights holding the bridle. At
the moment he had his two hands on the saddle to mount, I gave him
of my lance under the armpit, and laid him dead. When his knight saw
that, he left his lord and the horse, and struck me with his lance as
I passed, between the two shoulders, holding me so pressed down that
I could not draw the sword at my belt. I had, therefore, to draw the
sword attached to my horse, and when he saw that he withdrew his lance
and left me.”
Here in the camp Joinville’s detachment was rushed by six thousand
Turks, “who pressed upon me with their lances. My horse knelt under the
weight, and I fell forward over the horse’s ears. I got up as soon as
ever I could with my shield at my neck, and my sword in my hand.
“Again a great rout of Turks came rushing upon us, and bore me to the
ground and went over me, and caused my shield to fly from my neck.”
So the little party gained the wall of a ruined house, where they were
sorely beset: Lord Hugh, of Ecot, with three lance wounds in the face,
Lord Frederick, of Loupey, with a lance wound between the shoulders,
so large that the blood flowed from his body as from the bung hole
of a cask, and my Lord of Sivery with a sword-stroke in the face, so
that his nose fell over his lips. Joinville, too badly wounded to
fight, was holding horses, while Turks who had climbed to the roof were
prodding from above with their lances. Then came Anjou to the rescue,
and presently the king with his main army. The fight became a general
engagement, while slowly the Christian force was driven backward upon
the river. The day had become very hot, and the stream was covered with
lances and shields, and with horses and men drowning and perishing.
Near by De Joinville’s position, a streamlet entered the river, and
across that ran a bridge by which the Turks attempted to cut the king’s
retreat. This bridge the little hero, well mounted now, held for hours,
covering the flight of French detachments. At the head of one such
party rode Count Peter, of Brittany, spitting the blood from his mouth
and shouting “Ha! by God’s head, have you ever seen such riffraff?”
“In front of us were two of the king’s sergeants; ... and the Turks
... brought a large number of churls afoot, who pelted them with lumps
of earth, but were never able to force them back upon us. At last they
brought a churl on foot, who thrice threw Greek fire at them. Once
William of Boon received the pot of Greek fire on his target, for if
the fire had caught any of his garments he must have been burnt alive.
We were all covered with the darts that failed to hit the sergeants.
Now, it chanced that I found a Saracen’s quilted tunic lined with tow;
I turned the open side towards me, and made a shield ... which did me
good service, for I was only wounded by their darts in five places, and
my horse in fifteen.... The good Count of Soissons, in that point of
danger, jested with me and said,
“‘Seneschal, let these curs howl! By God’s bonnet we shall talk of this
day yet, you and I, in ladies’ chambers!’”
So came the constable of France, who relieved Joinville and sent him to
guard the king.
“So as soon as I came to the king, I made him take off his helmet, and
lent him my steel cap so that he might have air.”
Presently a knight brought news that the Count of Artois, the king’s
brother, was in paradise.
“Ah, Sire,” said the provost, “be of good comfort herein, for never did
king of France gain so much honor as you have gained this day. For in
order to fight your enemies you have passed over a river swimming, and
you have discomfited them and driven them from the field, and taken
their engines, and also their tents wherein you will sleep this night.”
And the king replied: “Let God be worshiped for all He has given me,”
and then the big tears fell from his eyes.
That night the captured camp was attacked in force, much to the grief
of De Joinville and his knights, who ruefully put on chain mail over
their aching wounds. Before they were dressed De Joinville’s chaplain
engaged eight Saracens and put them all to flight.
Three days later came a general attack of the whole Saracen army upon
the Christian camp, but thanks to the troops of Count William, of
Flanders, De Joinville and his wounded knights were not in the thick of
the fray.
“Wherein,” he says, “God showed us great courtesy, for neither I nor my
knights had our hawberks (chain shirts) and shields, because we had all
been wounded.”
You see De Joinville had the sweet faith that his God was a gentleman.
After that the sorrowful army lay nine days in camp till the bodies of
the dead floated to the surface of the canal, and eight days more while
a hundred hired vagabonds cleared the stream. But the army lived on
eels and water from that canal, while all of them sickened of scurvy,
and hundreds died. Under the hands of the surgeons the men of that
dying army cried like women. Then came an attempt to retreat in ships
to the coast, but the way was blocked, the little galleys were captured
one by one, the king was taken, and what then remained of the host were
prisoners, the sick put to death, the rich held for ransom, the poor
sold away into slavery.
Saint Louis appeared to be dying of dysentery and scurvy, he was
threatened with torture, but day after day found strength and courage
to bargain with the soldan of Babylon for the ransom of his people.
Once the negotiations broke down because the soldan was murdered by his
own emirs, but the king went on bargaining now with the murderers. For
his own ransom he gave the city of Damietta, for that of his knights he
paid the royal treasure that was on board a galley in the port, and for
the deliverance of the common men, he had to raise money in France.
So came the release, and the emirs would have been ashamed to let their
captive knights leave the prison fasting. So De Joinville’s party had
“fritters of cheese roasted in the sun so that worms should not come
therein, and hard boiled eggs cooked four or five days before, and
these, in our honor, had been painted with divers colors.”
After that came the counting of the ransom on board the royal galley,
with the dreadful conclusion that they were short of the sum by thirty
thousand livres. De Joinville went off to the galley of the marshal of
the Knights Templars, where he tried to borrow the money.
“Many were the hard and angry words which passed between him and me.”
For one thing the borrower, newly released from prison, looked like
a ragged beggar, and for the rest, the treasure of the Templars was
a trust fund not to be lent to any one. They stood in the hold in
front of the chest of treasure, De Joinville demanding the key, then
threatening with an ax to make of it the king’s key.
“We see right well,” said the treasurer, “that you are using force
against us.” And on that excuse yielded the key to the ragged beggar,
tottering with weakness, a very specter of disease and famine.
“I threw out the silver I found therein and went, and sat on the prow
of our little vessel that had brought me. And I took the marshal of
France and left him with the silver in the Templars’ galley and on the
galley I put the minister of the Trinity. On the galley the marshal
handed the silver to the minister, and the minister gave it over to me
on the little vessel where I sat. When we had ended and came towards
the king’s galley, I began to shout to the king.
“‘Sire! Sire! see how well I am furnished!’
“And the saintly man received me right willingly and right joyfully.”
So the ransom was completed, the king’s ransom and that of the greatest
nobles of France, this group of starving ragged beggars in a dingey.
Years followed of hard campaigning in Palestine. Once Saint Louis was
even invited by the soldan of Damascus to visit as a pilgrim that Holy
City which he could never enter as a conqueror. But Saint Louis and his
knights were reminded of a story about Richard the Lion-Hearted, king
of England. For Richard once marched almost within sight of the capital
so that a knight cried out to him:
“Sire, come so far hither, and I will show you Jerusalem!”
But the Duke of Burgundy had just deserted with half the crusading
army, lest it be said that the English had taken Jerusalem. So when
Richard heard the knight calling he threw his coat armor before his
eyes, all in tears, and said to our Savior,
“Fair Lord God, I pray Thee suffer me not to see Thy Holy City since I
can not deliver it from the hands of thine enemies.”
King Louis the Saint followed the example of King Richard the Hero, and
both left Palestine broken-hearted because they had not the strength
to take Jerusalem.
Very queer is the tale of the queen’s arrival from France.
“When I heard tell that she was come,” said De Joinville, “I rose from
before the king and went to meet her, and led her to the castle, and
when I came back to the king, who was in his chapel, he asked me if
the queen and his children were well; and I told him yes. And he said,
‘I knew when you rose from before me that you were going to meet the
queen, and so I have caused the sermon to wait for you.’ And these
things I tell you,” adds De Joinville, “because I had then been five
years with the king, and never before had he spoken to me, nor so far
as ever I heard, to any one else, of the queen, and of his children;
and so it appears to me, it was not seemly to be thus a stranger to
one’s wife and children.”
To do the dear knight justice, he was always brutally frank to the
king’s face, however much he loved him behind his back.
The return of the king and queen to France was full of adventure, and
De Joinville still had an appetite for such little troubles as a wreck
and a sea fight. Here is a really nice story of an accident.
“One of the queen’s bedwomen, when she had put the queen to bed, was
heedless, and taking the kerchief that had been wound about her head,
threw it into the iron stove on which the queen’s candle was burning,
and when she had gone into the cabin where the women slept, below the
queen’s chamber, the candle burnt on, till the kerchief caught fire,
and from the kerchief the fire passed to the cloths with which the
queen’s garments were covered. When the queen awoke she saw her cabin
all in flames, and jumped up quite naked and took the kerchief and
threw it all burning into the sea, and took the cloths and extinguished
them. Those who were in the barge behind the ship cried, but not very
loud, ‘Fire! fire!’ I lifted up my head and saw that the kerchief still
burned with a clear flame on the sea, which was very still.
“I put on my tunic as quickly as I could, and went and sat with the
mariners.
“While I sat there my squire, who slept before me, came to me and
said that the king was awake, and asked where I was. ‘And I told
him,’ said he, ‘that you were in your cabin; and the king said to me,
“Thou liest!”’ While we were thus speaking, behold the queen’s clerk
appeared, Master Geoffrey, and said to me, ‘Be not afraid, nothing has
happened.’ And I said, ‘Master Geoffrey, go and tell the queen that the
king is awake, and she should go to him, and set his mind at ease.’
“On the following day the constable of France, and my Lord Peter the
chamberlain, and my Lord Gervais, the master of the pantry, said to the
king, ‘What happened in the night that we heard mention of fire?’ and I
said not a word. Then said the king, ‘What happened was by mischance,
and the seneschal (De Joinville) is more reticent than I. Now I will
tell you,’ said he, ‘how it came about that we might all have been
burned this night,’ and he told them what had befallen, and said to
me, ‘I command you henceforth not to go to rest until you have put out
all fires, except the great fire that is in the hold of the ship.’
(Cooking fire on the ship’s ballast). ‘And take note that I shall not
go to rest till you come back to me.’”
It is pleasant to think of the queen’s pluck, the knight’s silence, the
king’s tact, and to see the inner privacies of that ancient ship. After
seven hundred years the gossip is fresh and vivid as this morning’s
news.
The king brought peace, prosperity and content to all his kingdom, and
De Joinville was very angry when in failing health Saint Louis was
persuaded to attempt another crusade in Africa.
“So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him in my
arms from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre to the abbey of the
Franciscans.”
So went the king to his death in Tunis, a bungling soldier, but a saint
on a throne, the noblest of all adventurers, the greatest sovereign
France has ever known.
Long afterward the king came in a dream to see De Joinville:
“Marvelously joyous and glad of heart, and I myself was right glad to
see him in my castle. And I said to him, ‘Sire, when you go hence, I
will lodge you in a house of mine, that is in a city of mine, called
Chevillon.’ And he answered me laughing, and said to me, ‘Lord of
Joinville, by the faith I owe you, I have no wish so soon to go hence.’”
It was at the age of eighty-five De Joinville wrote his memoirs, still
blithe as a boy because he was not grown up.
NOTE. From _Memoirs of the Crusaders_, by Villehardouine and De
Joinville. Dent & Co.
III
A. D. 1260
THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA
THE year 1260 found Saint Louis of France busy reforming his kingdom,
while over the way the English barons were reforming King Henry III on
the eve of the founding of parliament, and the Spaniards were inventing
the bull fight by way of a national sport. Our own national pastime
then was baiting Jews. They got twopence per week in the pound for the
use of their money, but next year one of them was caught in the act of
cheating, a little error which led to the massacre of seven hundred.
That year the great Khan Kublai came to the throne of the Mongol
Empire, a pastoral realm of the grass lands extending from the edge
of Europe to the Pacific Ocean. Kublai began to build his capital,
the city of Pekin, and in all directions his people extended their
conquests. The looting and burning of Bagdad took them seven days and
the resistless pressure of their hordes was forcing the Turks upon
Europe.
Meanwhile in the dying Christian empire of the East, the Latins held
Constantinople with Beldwin on the throne, but next year the Greek army
led by Michael Paleologus crept through a tunnel and managed to capture
the city.
Among the merchants at Constantinople in 1260 were the two Polo
brothers, Nicolo and Matteo, Venetian nobles, who invested the whole of
their capital in gems, and set off on a trading voyage to the Crimea.
Their business finished, they went on far up the Volga River to the
court of a Mongol prince, and to him they gave the whole of their gems
as a gift, getting a present in return with twice the money. But now
their line of retreat was blocked by a war among the Mongol princes, so
they went off to trade at Bokhara in Persia where they spent a year.
And so it happened that the Polo brothers met with certain Mongol
envoys who were returning to the court of their Emperor Kublai. “Come
with us,” said the envoys. “The great khan has never seen a European
and will be glad to have you as his guests.” So the Polos traveled
under safe conduct with the envoys, a year’s journey, until they
reached the court of the great khan at Pekin and were received with
honor and liberality.
Now it so happened that Kublai sought for himself and his people the
faith of Christ, and wanted the pope to send him a hundred priests, so
he despatched these Italian gentlemen as his ambassadors to the court
of Rome. He gave them a passport engraved on a slab of gold, commanding
his subjects to help the envoys upon their way with food and horses,
and thus, traveling in state across Asia, the Polos returned from a
journey, the greatest ever made up to that time by any Christian men.
At Venice, Nicolo, the elder of the brothers, found that his wife had
died leaving to him a son, then aged sixteen, young Marco Polo, a
gallant, courageous, hardy lad, it seems, and very truthful, without
the slightest symptoms of any sense of humor.
The schoolboy who defined the Vatican as a great empty space without
air, was perfectly correct, for when the Polos arrived there was a sort
of vacuum in Rome, the pope being dead and no new appointment made
because the electors were squabbling. Two years the envoys waited,
and when at last a new pope was elected, he proved to be a friend
of theirs, the legate Theobald on whom they waited at the Christian
fortress of Acre in Palestine.
But instead of sending a hundred clergymen to convert the Mongol
empire, the new pope had only one priest to spare, who proved to be a
coward, and deserted.
Empty handed, their mission a failure, the Polos went back, a three and
one-half years’ journey to Pekin, taking with them young Marco Polo, a
handsome gallant, who at once found favor with old Kublai Khan. Marco
“sped wondrously in learning the customs of the Tartars, as well as
their language, their manner of writing, and their practise of war ...
insomuch that the emperor held him in great esteem. And so when he
discerned Mark to have so much sense, and to conduct himself so well
and beseemingly, he sent him on an embassage of his, to a country which
was a good six months’ journey distant. The young gallant executed
his commission well and with discretion.” The fact is that Kublai’s
ambassadors, returning from different parts of the world, “were able
to tell him nothing except the business on which they had gone, and
that the prince in consequence held them for no better than dolts and
fools.” Mark brought back plenty of gossip, and was a great success,
for seventeen years being employed by the emperor on all sorts of
missions. “And thus it came about that Messer Marco Polo had knowledge
of or had actually visited a greater number of the different countries
of the world than any other man.”
In the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty there is record in 1277 of
one Polo nominated a second-class commissioner or agent attached to
the privy council. Marco had become a civil servant, and his father
and uncle were both rich men, but as the years went on, and the aged
emperor began to fail, they feared as to their fate after his death.
Yet when they wanted to go home old Kublai growled at them.
“Now it came to pass in those days that the Queen Bolgana, wife of
Argon, lord of the Levant (court of Persia), departed this life. And in
her will she had desired that no lady should take her place, or succeed
her as Argon’s wife except one of her own family (in Cathay). Argon
therefore despatched three of his barons ... as ambassadors to the
great khan, attended by a very gallant company, in order to bring back
as his bride a lady of the family of Queen Bolgana, his late wife.
“When these three barons had reached the court of the great khan,
they delivered their message explaining wherefore they were come. The
khan received them with all honor and hospitality, and then sent for
a lady whose name was Cocachin, who was of the family of the deceased
Queen Bolgana. She was a maiden of seventeen, a very beautiful and
charming person, and on her arrival at court she was presented to the
three barons as the lady chosen in compliance with their demand. They
declared that the lady pleased them well.
“Meanwhile Messer Marco chanced to return from India, whither he had
gone as the lord’s ambassador, and made his report of all the different
things that he had seen in his travels, and of the sundry seas over
which he had voyaged. And the three barons, having seen that Messer
Nicolo, Messer Matteo and Messer Marco were not only Latins but men of
marvelous good sense withal, took thought among themselves to get the
three to travel to Persia with them, their intention being to return
to their country by sea, on account of the great fatigue of that long
land journey for a lady. So they went to the great khan, and begged as
a favor that he would send the three Latins with them, as it was their
desire to return home by sea.
“The lord, having that great regard that I have mentioned for those
three Latins, was very loath to do so. But at last he did give them
permission to depart, enjoining them to accompany the three barons and
the lady.”
In the fleet that sailed on the two years’ voyage to Persia there were
six hundred persons, not counting mariners; but what with sickness and
little accidents of travel, storms for instance and sharks, only eight
persons arrived, including the lady, one of the Persian barons, and the
three Italians. They found the handsome King Argon dead, so the lady
had to put up with his insignificant son Casan, who turned out to be a
first-rate king. The lady wept sore at parting with the Italians. They
set out for Venice, arriving in 1295 after an absence of twenty-seven
years.
There is a legend that two aged men, and one of middle age, in ragged
clothes, of very strange device, came knocking at the door of the
Polo’s town house in Venice, and were denied admission by the family
who did not know them. It was only when the travelers had unpacked
their luggage, and given a banquet, that the family and their guests
began to respect these vagrants. Three times during dinner the
travelers retired to change their gorgeous oriental robes for others
still more splendid. Was it possible that the long dead Polos had
returned alive? Then the tables being cleared, Marco brought forth the
dirty ragged clothes in which they had come to Venice, and with sharp
knives they ripped open the seams and welts, pouring out vast numbers
of rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds and emeralds, gems to the
value of a million ducats. The family was entirely convinced, the
public nicknamed the travelers as the millionaires, the city conferred
dignities, and the two elder gentlemen spent their remaining years in
peace and splendor surrounded by hosts of friends.
Three years later a sea battle was fought between the fleets of Genoa
and Venice, and in the Venetian force one of the galleys was commanded
by Marco Polo. There Venice was totally defeated, and Marco was one
of the seven thousand prisoners carried home to grace the triumph of
the Genoese. It was in prison that he met the young literary person
to whom he dictated his book, not of travel, not of adventure,
but a geography, a description of all Asia, its countries, peoples
and wonders. Sometimes he got excited and would draw the long bow,
expanding the numbers of the great khan’s armies. Sometimes his marvels
were such as nobody in his senses could be expected to swallow, as
for instance, when he spoke of the Tartars as burning black stones to
keep them warm in winter. Yet on the whole this book, of the greatest
traveler that ever lived, awakened Europe of the Dark Ages to the
knowledge of that vast outer world that has mainly become the heritage
of the Christian Powers.
See the Book of Sir Marco Polo, translated and edited by Colonel
Sir Henry Yule. John Murray.
IV
A. D. 1322
THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE
“I, John Maundeville, Knight, all be it I am not worthy, that was born
in England, in the town of St. Allans, passed the sea in the year of
our Lord 1322 ... and hitherto have been long time on the sea, and have
seen and gone through many diverse lands ... with good company of many
lords. God be thankful!”
So wrote a very gentle and pious knight. His book of travels begins
with the journey to Constantinople, which in his day was the seat of
a Christian emperor. Beyond was the Saracen empire, whose sultans
reigned in the name of the Prophet Mahomet over Asia Minor, Syria, the
Holy Land and Egypt. For three hundred years Christian and Saracen had
fought for the possession of Jerusalem, but now the Moslem power was
stronger than ever.
Sir John Maundeville found the sultan of Babylon the Less at his
capital city in Egypt, and there entered in his service as a soldier
for wars against the Arab tribes of the desert. The sultan grew to love
this Englishman, talked with him of affairs in Europe, urged him to
turn Moslem, and offered to him the hand of a princess in marriage.
But when Maundeville insisted on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his
master let him go, and granted him letters with the great seal, before
which even generals and governors were obliged to prostrate themselves.
Sir John went all over Palestine, devoutly believing everything he was
told. Here is his story of the Field Beflowered. “For a fair maiden was
blamed with wrong, and slandered ... for which cause she was condemned
to death, and to be burnt in that place, to the which she was led. And
as the fire began to burn about her, she made her prayers to our Lord,
that as certainly as she was not guilty of that sin, that he would help
her, and make it to be known to all men of his merciful grace. And when
she had thus said she entered into the fire, and anon was the fire
quenched and out; and the brands which were burning became red rose
trees, and the brands that were not kindled became white rose trees
full of roses. And these were the first rose trees and roses, both
white and red, which ever any man saw.”
All this part of his book is very beautiful concerning the holy places,
and there are nice bits about incubators for chickens and the use of
carrier pigeons. But it is in the regions beyond the Holy Land that Sir
John’s wonderful power of believing everything that he had heard makes
his chapters more and more exciting.
“In Ethiopia ... there be folk that have but one foot and they go so
fast that it is a marvel. And the foot is so large that it shadoweth
all the body against the sun when they will lie and rest them.”
Beyond that was the isle of Nacumera, where all the people have
hounds’ heads, being reasonable and of good understanding save that
they worship an ox for their god. And they all go naked save a little
clout, and if they take any man in battle anon they eat him. The
dog-headed king of that land is most pious, saying three hundred
prayers by way of grace before meat.
Next he came to Ceylon. “In that land is full much waste, for it is
full of serpents, of dragons and of cockodrills, so that no man may
dwell there.
“In one of these isles be folk as of great stature as giants. And they
be hideous to look upon. And they have but one eye, and that is in the
middle of the forehead. And they eat nothing but raw flesh and raw
fish. And in another isle towards the south dwell folk of foul stature
and of cursed nature that have no heads. And their eyes be in their
shoulders and their mouths be round shapen, like an horseshoe, amidst
their breasts. And in another isle be men without heads, and their eyes
and mouths be behind in their shoulders. And in another isle be folk
that have the face all flat, all plain, without nose and without mouth.
But they have two small holes, all round, instead of their eyes, and
their mouth is flat also without lips. And in another isle be folk of
foul fashion and shape that have the lip above the mouth so great that
when they sleep in the sun they cover all the face with that lip.”
If Sir John had been untruthful he might have been here tempted to tell
improbable stories, but he merely refers to these isles in passing
with a few texts from the Holy Scriptures to express his entire
disapproval. His chapters on the Chinese empire are a perfect model
of veracity, and he merely cocks on a few noughts to the statistics.
In outlying parts of Cathay he feels once more the need of a little
self-indulgence. One province is covered with total and everlasting
darkness, enlivened by the neighing of unseen horses and the crowing of
mysterious cocks. In the next province he found a fruit, which, when
ripe, is cut open, disclosing “a little beast in flesh and bone and
blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both
the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. Of that fruit have
I eaten, although it were wonderful, but that I know well that God is
marvelous in all his works. And nevertheless I told them of as great a
marvel to them, that is amongst us, and that was of the barnacle geese:
for I told them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that
become birds flying, and those that fall on the water live, and they
that fall on the earth die anon, and they be right good to man’s meat,
and thereof had they so great marvel that some of them trowed it were
an impossible thing to be.”
This mean doubt as to his veracity must have cut poor Maundeville
to the quick. In his earnest way he goes on to describe the people
who live entirely on the smell of wild apples, to the Amazon nation
consisting solely of women warriors, and so on past many griffins,
popinjays, dragons and other wild fowl to the Adamant Rocks of
loadstone which draw all the iron nails out of a ship to her great
inconvenience. “I myself, have seen afar off in that sea, as though it
had been a great isle full of trees and bush, full of thorns and briers
great plenty. And the shipmen told us that all that was of ships that
were drawn thither by the Adamants, for the iron that was in them.”
Beyond that Sir John reports a sea consisting of gravel, ebbing and
flowing in great waves, but containing no drop of water, a most awkward
place for shipping.
So far is Sir John moderate in his statements, but when he gets to the
Vale Perilous at last he turns himself loose. That vale is disturbed by
thunders and tempests, murmurs and noises, a great noise of “tabors,
drums and trumps.” This vale is all full of devils, and hath been
alway. In that vale is great plenty of gold and silver.
“Wherefore many misbelieving men and many Christian men also go in
oftentime to have of the treasure that there is; but few come back
again, and especially of the misbelieving men, nor of the Christian men
either, for they be anon strangled of devils. And in the mid place of
that vale, under a rock, is an head and the visage of a devil bodily,
full horrible and dreadful to see ... for he beholdeth every man so
sharply with dreadful eyes, that be evermore moving and sparkling like
fire, and changeth and stareth so often in diverse manner, with so
horrible countenance that no man dare draw nigh towards him. And from
him cometh smoke and stink and fire, and so much abomination, that
scarcely any man may there endure.
“And ye shall understand that when my fellows and I were in that vale
we were in great thought whether we durst put our bodies in adventure
to go in or not.... So there were with us two worthy men, friars
minors, that were of Lombardy, that said that if any man would enter
they would go in with us. And when they had said so upon the gracious
trust of God and of them, we made sing mass, and made every man to be
shriven and houseled. And then we entered fourteen persons; but at
our going out we were only nine.... And thus we passed that perilous
vale, and found therein gold and silver and precious stones, and rich
jewels great plenty ... but whether it was as it seemed to us I wot
never. For I touched none.... For I was more devout then, than ever I
was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends, that I saw in
diverse figures, and also for the great multitude of dead bodies, that
I saw there lying by the way ... and therefore were we more devout a
great deal, and yet we were cast down and beaten many times to the hard
earth by winds, thunder and tempests ... and so we passed that perilous
vale.... Thanked be Almighty God!
“After this beyond the vale is a great isle where the folk be great
giants ... and in an isle beyond that were giants of greater stature,
some of forty-five foot or fifty foot long, and as some men say of
fifty cubits long. But I saw none of these, for I had no lust to go to
those parts, because no man cometh neither into that isle nor into the
other but he be devoured anon. And among these giants be sheep as great
as oxen here, and they bear great wool and rough. Of the sheep I have
seen many times ... those giants take men in the sea out of their ships
and bring them to land, two in one hand and two in another, eating them
going, all raw and all alive.
“Of paradise can not I speak properly, for I was not there. It is far
beyond. And that grieveth me. And also I was not worthy.”
So, regretting that he had not been allowed into paradise, the hoary
old liar came homeward to Rome, where he claims that the pope absolved
him of all his sins, and gave him a certificate that his book was
proved for true in every particular, “albeit that many men list not to
give credence to anything but to that that they have seen with their
eye, be the author or the person never so true.” Yet, despite these
unkind doubts as to its veracity, Maundeville’s book lives after five
hundred years, and ranks as the most stupendous masterpiece in the art
of lying.
V
A. D. 1492
COLUMBUS
Columbus was blue-eyed, red-haired and tall, of a sunny honesty, humane
and panic-proof. In other words he came of the Baltic and not of the
Mediterranean stock, although his people lived in Italy and he was born
in the suburbs of Genoa. By caste he was a peasant, and by trade, up to
the age of twenty-eight, a weaver, except at times when his Northern
blood broke loose and drove him to sea for a voyage. He made himself a
scholar and a draftsman, and when at last he escaped from an exacting
family, he earned his living by copying charts at Lisbon. A year later,
as a navigating officer, he found his way, via the wine trade, to
Bristol. There he slouched dreaming about the slums, dressed like a
foreign monk. He must needs pose to himself in some ideal character,
and was bound to dress the part. The artistic temperament is the
mainspring of adventure.
In our own day we may compare Boston, that grand old home of the dying
sailing ship, with New York, a bustling metropolis for the steam
liners. In the days of Columbus Genoa was an old-fashioned, declining,
but still splendid harbor of the oared galleys, while Lisbon was the
up-to-date metropolis of the new square-rigged sailing ships.
From these two greatest seaports of his age, Columbus came to Bristol,
the harbor of England, in the Middle Ages, of the slow, scholarly,
artistic, stately English. They were building that prayer in stone,
Saint Mary Redcliffe, a jewel of intricate red masonry, the setting for
Portuguese stained glass which glowed like precious gems.
“In the month of February,” says Columbus, “and in the year 1477, I
navigated as far as the Island of Tile (Thule is Iceland) a hundred
leagues, and to this island which is as large as England, the English,
especially those of Bristol, go with merchandise. And at the time that
I was there the sea was not frozen over, although there were very high
tides.”
Here, then, is the record of Columbus himself that in his long inquiry
concerning the regions beyond the Atlantic, he actually visited
Iceland. A scholar himself, he was able to converse with the learned
Icelanders in Latin, the trade jargon of that age. From them he surely
must have known how one hundred thirty years ago the last timber ship
had come home from Nova Scotia, and twenty-nine years since, within his
own lifetime, the Greenland trade had closed. The maps of the period
showed the American coast as far south as the Carolines,--the current
geography book was equally clear:
“From Biameland (Siberia) the country stretches as far as the desert
regions in the north until Greenland begins. From Greenland lies
southerly Helluland (Labrador and Newfoundland), then Markland (Nova
Scotia); thence it is not far from Vinland (New England), which some
believe goes out from Africa. England and Scotland are one island, yet
each country is a kingdom by itself. Ireland is a large island, Iceland
is also a large island north of Ireland.” Indeed Columbus seems almost
to be quoting this from memory when he says of Iceland, “this island,
which is as large as England.” I strongly suspect that Columbus when in
Iceland, took a solemn oath not to “discover” America.
The writers of books have spent four centuries in whitewashing,
retouching, dressing up and posing this figure of Columbus. The
navigator was indeed a man of powerful intellect and of noble
character, but they have made him seem a monumental prig as well as an
insufferable bore. He is the dead and helpless victim, dehumanized by
literary art until we feel that we really ought to pray for him on All
Prigs’ Day in the churches.
Columbus came home from his Icelandic and Guinea expeditions with two
perfectly sound ideas. “The world is a globe, so if I sail westerly I
shall find Japan and the Indies.” For fifteen bitter years he became
the laughing-stock of Europe.
[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS]
Now note how the historians, the biographers and the commentators, the
ponderous and the mawkish, the smug and the pedantic alike all fail to
see why their hero was laughed at. His name was Cristo-fero Colombo,
to us a good enough label for tying to any man, but to the Italians
and all educated persons of that age, a joke. The words mean literally
the Christ-Carrying Dove. Suppose a modern man with some invention or
a great idea, called himself Mr. Christ-Carrying Dove, and tried to
get capitalists in New York or London to finance his enterprise! In the
end he changed his name to Cristoval Colon and got himself financed,
but by that time his hair was white, and his nerve was gone, and his
health failing.
In the ninth century the vikings sailed from Norway by the great circle
course north of the gulf stream. They had no compass or any instruments
of navigation, and they braved the unknown currents, the uncharted
reefs, the unspeakable terrors of pack-ice, berg-streams and fog on
Greenland’s awful coast. They made no fuss.
But Columbus sailing in search of Japan, had one Englishman and one
Irishman, the rest of the people being a pack of dagoes. In lovely
weather they were ready to run away from their own shadows.
From here onward throughout the four voyages which disclosed the West
Indies and the Spanish Main, Columbus allowed his men to shirk their
duties, to disobey his orders, to mutiny, to desert and even to make
war upon him.
Between voyages he permitted everybody from the mean king downward,
to snub, swindle, plunder and defame himself and all who were loyal
to him in misfortune. Because Columbus behaved like an old woman, his
swindling pork contractor, Amerigo Vespucci, was allowed to give his
name to the Americas. Because he had not the manhood to command, the
hapless red Indians were outraged, enslaved and driven to wholesale
suicide, leaping in thousands from the cliffs. For lack of a master
the Spaniards performed such prodigies of cowardice and cruelty as the
world has never known before or since, the native races were swept out
of existence, and Spain set out upon a downward path, a moral lapse
beyond all human power to arrest.
Yet looking back, how wonderful is the prophecy in that name,
Christ-Carrying Dove, borne by a saintly and heroic seaman whose
mission, in the end, added two continents to Christianity.
This text mainly contradicts a _Life of Columbus_, by Clements R.
Markham, C. B. Phillip & Son, 1892.
[Illustration: AMERICUS VESPUCCIUS]
VI
A. D. 1519
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO
“Hernando Cortes spent an idle and unprofitable youth.”
So did I. And every other duffer is with me in being pleased with
Cortes for setting an example. We, not the good boys, need a little
encouragement.
He was seven years old when Columbus found the Indies. That was a time
when boys hurried to get grown up and join the search for the Fountain
of Youth, the trail to Eldorado. All who had time to sleep dreamed
tremendous dreams.
Cortes became a colonist in Cuba, a sore puzzle to the rascal in
command. When he clapped Cortes in irons the youngster slipped free and
defied him. When he gave Cortes command of an expedition the fellow
cheeked him. When he tried to arrest him the bird had flown, and was
declared an outlaw.
The soldiers and seamen of the expedition were horrified by this
adventurer who landed them in newly discovered Mexico, then sank the
ships lest they should wish to go home. They stood in the deadly mists
of the tropic plains, and far above them glowed the Star of the Sea,
white Orizaba crowned with polar snows. They marched up a hill a mile
and a half in sheer height through many zones of climate, and every
circumstance of pain and famine to the edge of a plateau crowned by
immense volcanoes, a land of plenty, densely peopled, full of opulent
cities. They found that this realm was ruled by an emperor, famous
for his victorious wars, able, it seemed, to place a million warriors
in the field, and hungry for captives to be first sacrificed to the
gods, and afterward eaten at the banquets of the nobility and gentry.
The temples were actually fed with twenty thousand victims a year. The
Spanish invading force of four hundred men began to feel uncomfortable.
Yet if this Cortes puzzled the governor of Cuba, and horrified his men,
he paralyzed the Emperor Montezuma. Hundreds of years ago a stranger
had come to Mexico from the eastern sea, a bearded man who taught the
people the arts of civilized life. Then birds first sang and flowers
blossomed, the fields were fruitful and the sun shone in glory upon
that plateau of eternal spring. The hero, Bird-Serpent, was remembered,
loved and worshiped as a god. It was known to all men that as he had
gone down into the eastern sea so he would return again in later ages.
Now the prophecy was fulfilled. He had come with his followers, all
bearded white men out of the eastern sea in mysterious winged vessels.
Bird-Serpent and his people were dressed in gleaming armor, had weapons
that flashed lightning, were mounted on terrible beasts--where steel
and guns and horses were unknown; and Montezuma felt as we should do if
our land were invaded by winged men riding dragons. To the supernatural
visitors the emperor sent embassy after embassy, loaded with treasure,
begging the hero not to approach his capital.
Set in the midst of Montezuma’s empire was the poor valiant republic
of Tlascala, at everlasting war with the Aztec nation. Invading this
republic Cortes was met by a horde of a hundred thousand warriors, whom
he thrashed in three engagements, and when they were humbled, accepted
as allies against the Aztecs. Attended by an Tlascalan force he entered
the ancient Aztec capital, Cholula, famed for its temple. This is a
stone-faced mound of rubble, four times the size and half the height of
the Great Pyramid, a forty-acre building larger by four acres than any
structure yet attempted by white men.
By the emperor’s orders the Cholulans welcomed the Spaniards, trapped
them within their city, and attacked them. In reply, Cortes used their
temple as the scene of a public massacre, slaughtered three thousand
men, and having thus explained things, marched on the City of Mexico.
In those days a salt lake, since drained, filled the central hollow
of the vale of Mexico, and in the midst of it stood the city built
on piles, and threaded with canals, a barbaric Venice, larger,
perhaps even grander than Venice with its vast palace and gardens,
and numberless mound temples whose flaming altars lighted the town at
night. Three causeways crossed the lake and met just as they do to-day
at the central square. Here, on the site of the mound temple, stands
one of the greatest of the world’s cathedrals, and across the square
are public buildings marking the site of Montezuma’s palace, and that
in which he entertained the Spaniards. The white men were astonished
at the zoological gardens, the aviary, the floating market gardens on
the lake, the cleanliness of the streets, kept by a thousand sweepers,
and a metropolitan police which numbered ten thousand men, arrangements
far in advance of any city of Europe. Then, as now, the place was a
great and brilliant capital.
Yet from the Spanish point of view these Aztecs were only barbarians to
be conquered, and heathen cannibals doomed to hell unless they accepted
the faith. To them the Cholula massacre was only a military precaution.
They thought it right to seize their generous host the emperor, to hold
him as a prisoner under guard, and one day even to put him in irons.
For six months Montezuma reigned under Spanish orders, overwhelmed with
shame. He loved his captors because they were gallant gentlemen, he
freely gave them his royal treasure of gems, and gold, and brilliant
feather robes. Over the plunder--a million and a half sterling in gold
alone--they squabbled; clear proof to Montezuma that they were not all
divine. Yet still they were friends, so he gave them all the spears
and bows from his arsenal as fuel to burn some of his nobles who had
affronted them.
It was at this time that the hostile governor of Cuba sent Narvaes
with seventeen ships and a strong force to arrest the conqueror
for rebellion. The odds were only three to one, instead of the
usual hundred to one against him, so Cortes went down to the coast,
gave Narvaes a thrashing, captured him, enrolled his men by way of
reinforcements, and returned with a force of eleven hundred troops.
He had left his friend, Alvarado, with a hundred men to hold the
capital and guard the emperor. This Alvarado, so fair that the natives
called him Child of the Sun, was such a fool that he massacred six
hundred unarmed nobles and gentlefolk for being pagans, violated the
great temple, and so aroused the whole power of the fiercest nation on
earth to a war of vengeance. Barely in time to save Alvarado, Cortes
reentered the city to be besieged. Again and again the Aztecs attempted
to storm the palace. The emperor in his robes of state addressed them
from the ramparts, and they shot him. They seized the great temple
which overlooked the palace, and this the Spaniards stormed. In face of
awful losses day by day the Spaniards, starving and desperate, cleared
a road through the city, and on the night of Montezuma’s death they
attempted to retreat by one of the causeways leading to the mainland.
Three canals cut this road, and the drawbridges had been taken away,
but Cortes brought a portable bridge to span them. They crossed the
first as the gigantic sobbing gong upon the heights of the temple
aroused the entire city.
Heavily beset from the rear, and by thousands of men in canoes, they
found that the weight of their transport had jammed the bridge which
could not be removed. They filled the second gap with rocks, with their
artillery and transport, with chests of gold, horses, and dead men.
So they came to the third gap, no longer an army but as a flying mob
of Spaniards and Tlascalan warriors bewildered in the rain and the
darkness by the headlong desperation of the attacking host. They were
compelled to swim, and at least fifty of the recruits were drowned by
the weight of gold they refused to leave, while many were captured to
be sacrificed upon the Aztec altars. Montezuma’s children were drowned,
and hundreds more, while Cortes and his cavaliers, swimming their
horses back and forth convoyed the column, and Alvarado with his rear
guard held the causeway.
Last in the retreat, grounding his spear butt, he leaped the chasm,
a feat of daring which has given a name forever to this place as
Alvarado’s Leap. And just beyond, upon the mainland there is an ancient
tree beneath which Cortes, as the dawn broke out, sat on the ground
and cried. He had lost four hundred fifty Spaniards, and thousands of
Tlascalans, his records, artillery, muskets, stores and treasure in
that lost battle of the Dreadful Night.
A week later the starved and wounded force was beset by an army of two
hundred thousand Aztecs. They had only their swords now, but, after
long hours of fighting, Cortes himself killed the Aztec general, so by
his matchless valor and leadership gaining a victory.
The rest is a tale of horror beyond telling, for, rested and
reinforced, the Spaniards went back. They invested, besieged, stormed
and burned the famine-stricken, pestilence-ridden capital, a city
choked and heaped with the unburied dead of a most valiant nation.
Afterward, under the Spanish viceroys, Mexico was extended and enlarged
to the edge of Alaska, a Christian civilized state renowned for mighty
works of engineering, the splendor of her architecture, and for such
inventions as the national pawn-shop, as a bank to help the poor. One
of the so-called native “slaves” of the mines once wrote to the king
of Spain, begging his majesty to visit Mexico and offering to make a
royal road for him, paving the two hundred fifty miles from Vera Cruz
to the capital with ingots of pure silver as a gift to Spain.
VII
A. D. 1532
THE CONQUEST OF PERU
Pizarro was reared for a swineherd; long years of soldiering made
him no more than a captain, and when at the age of fifty he turned
explorer, he discovered nothing but failure.
For seven years he and his followers suffered on trails beset by snakes
and alligators, in feverish jungles haunted by man-eating savages, to
be thrown at last battered, ragged and starving on the Isle of Hell.
Then a ship offered them passage, but old Pizarro drew a line in the
dust with his sword. “Friends,” said he, “and comrades, on that side
are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion and death;
on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here
Panama and its poverty. Choose each man, what best becomes a brave
Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.”
Thirteen of all his people crossed the line with Pizarro, the rest
deserting him, and he was seven months marooned on his desert isle in
the Pacific. When the explorer’s partners at last were able to send a
ship from Panama, it brought him orders to return, a failure. He did
not return but took the ship to the southward, his guide the great
white Andes, along a coast no longer of horrible swamps but now more
populous, more civilized than Spain, by hundreds of miles on end of
well-tilled farms, fair villages and rich cities where the temples
were sheathed with plates of pure red gold. As in the Mexico of eight
years ago, the Spaniards were welcomed as superhuman, their ship, their
battered armor and their muskets accounted as possessions of strayed
gods. They dined in the palaces of courtly nobles, rested in gardens
curiously enriched with foliage and flowers of beaten gold and silver,
and found native gentlemen eager to join them in their ship as guests.
So with a shipload of wonders to illustrate this discovery they went
back to Panama, and Pizarro returned home to seek in Spain the help
of Charles V. There, at the emperor’s court, he met Cortes, who came
to lay the wealth of conquered Mexico at his sovereign’s feet, and
Charles, with a lively sense of more to come, despatched Pizarro to
overthrow Peru.
Between the Eastern and the Western Andes lies a series of lofty plains
and valleys, in those days irrigated and farmed by an immense civilized
population. A highway, in length 1,100 miles, threaded the settlements
together. The whole empire was ruled by a foreign dynasty, called the
Incas, a race of fighting despots by whom the people had been more or
less enslaved. The last Inca had left the northern kingdom of Quito to
his younger son, the ferocious Atahuallpa, and the southern realm of
Cuzco to his heir, the gentle Huascar.
These brothers fought until Atahuallpa subdued the southern kingdom,
imprisoned Huascar, and reigned so far as he knew over the whole
world. It was then that from outside the world came one hundred
sixty-eight men of an unknown race possessed of ships, horses, armor
and muskets--things very marvelous, and useful to have. The emperor
invited these strangers to cross the Andes, intending, when they came,
to take such blessings as the Sun might send him. The city of Caxamalca
was cleared of its people, and the buildings enclosing the market place
were furnished for the reception of the Spaniards.
The emperor’s main army was seven hundred miles to the southward, but
the white men were appalled by the enormous host attending him in his
camp, where he had halted to bathe at the hot springs, three miles from
their new quarters. The Peruvian watch fires on the mountain sides were
as thick as the stars of heaven.
The sun was setting next day when a procession entered the Plaza
of Caxamalca, a retinue of six thousand guards, nobles, courtiers,
dignitaries, surrounding the litter on which was placed the gently
swaying golden throne of the young emperor.
Of all the Spaniards, only one came forward, a priest who, through an
interpreter, preached, explaining from the commencement of the world
the story of his faith, Saint Peter’s sovereignty, the papal office,
and Pizarro’s mission to receive the homage of this barbarian. The
emperor listened, amused at first, then bored, at last affronted,
throwing down the book he was asked to kiss. On that a scarf waved and
the Spaniards swept from their ambush, blocking the exits, charging
as a wolf-pack on a sheepfold, riding the people down while they
slaughtered. So great was the pressure that a wall of the courtyard
fell, releasing thousands whose panic flight stampeded the Incas’ army.
But the nobles had rallied about their sovereign, unarmed but with
desperate valor clinging to the legs of the horses and breaking the
charge of cavalry. They threw themselves in the way of the fusillades,
their bodies piled in mounds, their blood flooding the pavement. Then,
as the bearers fell, the golden throne was overturned, and the emperor
hurried away a prisoner. Two thousand people had perished in the
attempt to save him.
The history of the Mexican conquest was repeated here, and once more a
captive emperor reigned under Spanish dictation.
This Atahuallpa was made of sterner stuff than Montezuma, and had his
defeated brother Huascar drowned, lest the Spaniards should make use of
his rival claim to the throne. The Peruvian prince had no illusions as
to the divinity of the white men, saw clearly that their real religion
was the adoration of gold, and in contempt offered a bribe for his
freedom. Reaching the full extent of his arm to a height of nine feet,
he boasted that to that level he would fill the throne room with gold
as the price of his liberty, and twice he would fill the anteroom with
silver. So he sent orders to every city of his empire commanding that
the shrines, the temples, palaces and gardens be stripped of their
gold and silver ornaments, save only the bodies of the dead kings, his
fathers. Of course, the priests made haste to bury their treasures,
but the Spaniards went to see the plunder collected and when they had
finished no treasures were left in sight save a course of solid golden
ingots in the walls of the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and certain
massive beams of silver too heavy for shipment. Still the plunder of an
empire failed to reach the nine-foot line on the walls of the throne
room at Caxamalca, but the soldiers were tired of waiting, especially
when the goldsmiths took a month to melt the gold into ingots. So the
royal fifth was shipped to the king of Spain, Pizarro’s share was set
apart, a tithe was dedicated to the Church, and the remainder divided
among the soldiers according to their rank, in all three and a half
millions sterling by modern measurement, the greatest king’s ransom
known to history. Then the emperor was tried by a mock court-martial,
sentenced to death and murdered. It is comforting to note that of all
who took part in that infamy not one escaped an early and a violent
death.
Pizarro had been in a business partnership with the schoolmaster
Luque of Panama cathedral, and with Almagro, a little fat, one-eyed
adventurer, who now arrived on the scene with reinforcements. Pizarro’s
brothers also came from Spain. So when the emperor’s death lashed the
Peruvians to desperation, there were Spaniards enough to face odds of
a hundred to one in a long series of battles, ending with the siege of
the adventurers who held Cuzco against the Inca Manco for five months.
The city, vast in extent, was thatched, and burned for seven days with
the Spaniards in the midst. They fought in sheer despair, and the
Indians with heroism, their best weapon the lasso, their main hope that
of starving the garrison to death. No valor could possibly save these
heroic robbers, shut off from escape or from rescue by the impenetrable
rampart of the Andes. They owed their salvation to the fact that the
Indians must disperse to reap their crops lest the entire nation perish
of hunger, and the last of the Incas ended his life a fugitive lost in
the recesses of the mountains.
Then came a civil war between the Pizarros, and Almagro, whose share
of the plunder turned out to be a snowy desolation to the southward.
It was not until after this squalid feud had been ended by Almagro’s
execution and Pizarro’s murder, that the desolate snows were uncovered,
revealing the incomparable treasures of silver Potosi, Spain’s share of
the plunder.
VIII
A. D. 1534
THE CORSAIRS
In 1453 Constantinople was besieged and stormed by the Turks, the
Christian emperor fell with sixty thousand of his men in battle, and
the Caliph Mahomet II raised the standard of Islam over the last ruins
of the Roman empire.
Four years later a sailorman, a Christian from the Balkan States,
turned Moslem and was banished from the city. He married a Christian
widow in Mitylene and raised two sons to his trade. At a very tender
age, Uruj, the elder son, went into business as a pirate, and on his
maiden cruise was chased and captured by a galley of the Knights of
Saint John who threw him into the hold to be a slave at the oars.
That night a slave upon the nearest oar-bench disturbed the crew by
groaning, and to keep him quiet was thrown overboard. Not liking his
situation or prospects, Uruj slipped his shackles, crept out and
swam ashore. On his next voyage, being still extremely young, he was
captured and swam ashore again. Then the sultan’s brother fitted him
out as a corsair at the cost of five thousand ducats, to be paid by
the basha of Egypt, and so, thanks to this act of princely generosity,
Uruj was able to open a general practise. His young brother Khizr,
also a pirate, joined him; the firm was protected by the sultan of
Tunis who got a commission of twenty per cent. on the loot; and being
steady, industrious and thrifty, by strict application to business,
they made a reputation throughout the Middle Sea. Indeed the Grand Turk
bestowed upon Khizr the title “Protector of Religion,” a distinction
never granted before or since to any professional robber. Once after
a bitter hard fight the brothers captured a first-rate ship of war,
_The Galley of Naples_, and six lady passengers besides three hundred
men were marched ashore into slavery. “See,” said the sultan of Tunis,
“how Heaven recompenses the brave!” Uruj, by the way, was laid up some
months for repairs, and in his next engagement, a silly attack on a
fortress, happened to lose an arm as part of his recompense.
By this time the brothers were weary of that twenty per cent.
commission to the unctuous sultan of Tunis, and by way of cheating him,
took to besieging fortresses, or sacking towns, Christian or Moslem as
the case might be, until they had base camps of their own, Uruj as king
of Tlemcen, and Khizr as king of Algiers. Then Uruj fell in battle,
and Khizr Barbarossa began to do business as a wholesale pirate with a
branch kingdom of Tunis, and fleets to destroy all commerce, to wreck
and burn settlements of the Christian powers until he had command of
the sea as a first-class nuisance. The gentle Moors, most civilized
of peoples, expelled from Spain (1493) by the callous ill-faith of
Ferdinand and Isabella, and stranded upon North Africa to starve,
manned Barbarossa’s fleets for a bloody vengeance upon Christian
Europe. Then Charles V brought the strength of Spain, Germany and Italy
to bear in an expedition against Barbarossa, but his fleet was wrecked
by a storm, clear proof that Allah had taken sides with the strong
pirate king. Barbarossa then despatched his lieutenant Hassan to ravage
the coast of Valencia.
It was upon this venture that Hassan met a transport merchantman with
a hundred veteran Spanish infantry, too strong to attack; so when this
lieutenant returned to Algiers deep-laden with spoil and captives from
his raid, he found King Barbarossa far from pleased. The prisoners
were butchered, and Hassan was flogged in public for having shirked an
engagement. That is why Hassan joined with Venalcadi, a brother officer
who was also in disgrace, and together they drove Barbarossa out of
Algeria. Presently the king came back with a whole fleet of his fellow
corsairs, brother craftsmen, the Jew, and Hunt-the-Devil, Salærrez and
Tabas, all moved to grief and rage by the tears of a sorely ill-treated
hero. With the aid of sixty captive Spanish soldiers, who won their
freedom, they captured Algiers, wiped out the mutineers, and restored
the most perfect harmony. Indeed, by way of proof that there really was
no trouble among the corsairs, King Barbarossa sent off Hunt-the-Devil
with seventeen ships to burn Spain. Ever in blood and tears, their
homes in flames, their women ravished, their very children enslaved,
the Spaniards had to pay for breaking faith with the Moors of Granada.
Barbarossa was not yet altogether king of Algiers. For twenty years the
Peñon, a fortress fronting that city, had been held by Martin de Vargas
and his garrison. Worn out with disease and famine these Spaniards
now fought Barbarossa to the last breath, but their walls went down in
ruin, the breach was stormed, and all were put to the sword. De Vargas,
taken prisoner, demanded the death of a Spaniard who had betrayed
him. The traitor was promptly beheaded, but Barbarossa turned upon De
Vargas. “You and yours,” he said, “have caused me too much trouble,”
and he again signed to the headsman. So De Vargas fell.
Terrible was the rage of Charles V, emperor of half Europe, thus defied
and insulted by the atrocious corsair. It was then that he engaged the
services of Andrea Doria, the greatest Christian admiral of that age,
for war against Barbarossa. And at the same time the commander of the
faithful, Suleiman the Magnificent, sent for King Barbarossa to command
the Turkish fleet.
He came, with gifts for the calif: two hundred women bearing presents
of gold or silver; one hundred camels laden with silks and gold; then
lions and other strange beasts; and more loads of brocades, or rich
garments, all in procession through Constantinople, preceding the
pirate king on his road to the palace. The sultan gave him not only a
big fleet, but also vice-regal powers to make war or peace. Next summer
(1534) eleven thousand Christian slaves, and a long procession of ships
loaded with the plunder of smoking Italy were sent to the Golden Horn.
Incidentally, Barbarossa seized the kingdom of Tunis for himself, and
slaughtered three thousand of the faithful, just to encourage the rest.
It was to avenge the banished King Hassan, and these poor slaughtered
citizens that the Emperor Charles V, attended by his admiral, Andrea
Doria, came with an army and a mighty fleet to Tunis.
He drove out Barbarossa, a penniless, discredited fugitive; and his
soldiers slaughtered thirty thousand citizens of Tunis to console them
for the pirate’s late atrocities.
Poor old Barbarossa, past seventy years of age, had lost a horde of
fifty thousand men, his kingdom of Tunis, fleet and arsenal; but he
still had fifteen galleys left at Bona, his kingdom of Algiers to fall
back upon, and his Moorish seamen, who had no trade to win them honest
bread except as pirates. “Cheer up,” said he, to these broken starving
men, and after a little holiday they sacked the Balearic Isles taking
five thousand, seven hundred slaves, and any amount of shipping. Then
came the building of a Turkish fleet; and with one hundred twenty sail,
Barbarossa went to his last culminating triumph, the defeat of Andrea
Doria, who had at Prevesa one hundred ninety-five ships, sixty thousand
men, and two thousand, five hundred ninety-four guns. With that victory
he retired, and after eight years of peace, he died in his bed, full of
years and honors. For centuries to come all Turkish ships saluted with
their guns, and dipped their colors whenever they passed the grave of
the King of the Sea.
_Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean_, Commander E. Hamilton Currey,
R.N. John Murray.
IX
A. D. 1542
PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES
It was Italian trade that bought and paid for the designs of Raphael,
the temples of Michelangelo, the sculptures of Cellini, the inventions
of Da Vinci, for all the wonders, the glories, the splendors of
inspired Italy. And it was not good for the Italian trade that
Barbarossa, and the corsairs of three centuries in his wake, beggared
the merchants and enslaved their seamen. But Italian commerce had its
source in the Indian Seas, and the ruin of Italy began when the sea
adventures of Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope to rob, to trade,
to govern and convert at the old centers of Arabian business.
Poverty is the mother of labor, labor the parent of wealth and genius.
It is the poverty of Attica, and the Roman swamps, of sterile Scotland,
boggy Ireland, swampy Holland, stony New England, which drove them to
high endeavor and great reward. Portugal, too, had that advantage of
being small and poor, without resources, or any motive to keep the
folk at home. So the fishermen took to trading and exploration led by
Cao who found the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama who smelt out the
way to India, Almeida who gained command of the Indian Seas, Cabral
who discovered Brazil, Albuquerque who, seizing Goa and Malacca,
established a Christian empire in the Indies, and Magellan, who showed
Spain the way to the Pacific.
Of these the typical man was Da Gama, a noble with the motives of a
crusader and the habits of a pirate, who once set fire to a shipload
of Arab pilgrims, and watched unmoved while the women on her blazing
deck held out little babies in the vain hope of mercy. On his first
voyage he came to Calicut, a center of Hindu civilization, a seat of
Arab commerce, and to the rajah sent a present of washing basins, casks
of oil, a few strings of coral, fit illustration of the poverty of his
brave country, accepted as a joke in polished, wealthy, weary India.
The king gave him leave to trade, but seized the poor trade goods until
the Portuguese ships had been ransacked for two hundred twenty-three
pounds in gold to pay the customs duties. The point of the joke was
only realized when on his second voyage Da Gama came with a fleet,
bombarded Calicut, and loaded his ships with spices, leaving a trail of
blood and ashes along the Indian coast. Twenty years later he came a
third time, but now as viceroy to the Portuguese Indies. Portugal was
no longer poor, but the richest state in Europe, bleeding herself to
death to find the men for her ventures.
Now these arrogant and ferocious officials, military robbers, fishermen
turned corsairs, and ravenous traders taught the whole East to hate
and fear the Christ. And then came a tiny little monk no more than
five feet high, a white-haired, blue-eyed mendicant, who begged the
rice he lived on. Yet so sweet was his temper, so magical the charm,
so supernatural the valor of this barefoot monk that the children
worshiped him, the lepers came to him to be healed, and the pirates
were proud to have him as their guest. He was a gentleman, a Spanish
Basque, by name Francis de Xavier, and in the University of Paris had
been a fellow student with the reformer Calvin, then a friend and
follower of Ignatius de Loyola, helping him to found the Society of
Jesus. Xavier came to the Indies in 1542 as a Jesuit priest.
Once on a sea voyage Xavier stood for some time watching a soldier
at cards, who gambled away all his money and then a large sum which
had been entrusted to his care. When the soldier was in tears and
threatening suicide, Xavier borrowed for him the sum of one shilling
twopence, shuffled and dealt for him, and watched him win back all
that he had lost. At that point Saint Francis set to work to save
the soldier’s soul, but this disreputable story is not shown in the
official record of his miracles.
From his own letters one sees how the heathen puzzled this little
saint, “‘Was God black or white?’ For as there is so great variety of
color among man, and the Indians are themselves black, they esteem
their own color most highly, and hold that their gods are also black.”
He does not say how he answered, indeed it was hardly by words that
this hidalgo of Spain preached in the many languages he could never
learn. Once when his converts were threatened by a hostile army he went
alone to challenge the invaders, and with uplifted crucifix rebuked
them in the name of God. The front ranks wavered and halted. Their
comrades and leaders vainly pressed them to advance, but no man dared
pass the black-robed figure which barred the way, and presently the
whole force retreated.
Once in the Spice Islands while he was saying mass on the feast of
the Archangel Saint Michael a tremendous earthquake scattered the
congregation. The priest held up the shaking altar and went on with
mass, while, as he says, “Perhaps Saint Michael, by his heavenly power,
was driving into the depths of hell all the wicked spirits of the
country who were opposing the worship of the true God.”
Such was the apostle of the Indies, and it is a pleasant thing to trace
the story of his mission in Japan in the _Peregrination_, a book by a
thorough rogue.
Fernão Mendes Pinto was a distant relative of Ananias. He sailed for
India in 1537 “meanly accommodated.” At Diu he joined an expedition
to watch the Turkish fleet in the Red Sea, and from Massawa was sent
with letters to the king of Abyssinia. That was great luck, because
the very black and more or less Christian kingdom was supposed to be
the seat of the legendary, immortal, shadowy, Prester John. On his way
back to Massawa the adventurer was wrecked, captured by Arabs, sold
into slavery, bought by a Jew, and resold in the commercial city of
Ormus where there were Christian buyers. He found his way to Goa, the
capital of the Portuguese Indies, thence to Malacca, where he got a job
as political agent in Sumatra. With this ended the dull period of his
travels.
[Illustration: FRANCIS XAVIER]
In those days there were ships manned by Portuguese rogues very good in
port, but unpleasant to meet with at sea. They were armed with cannon,
pots of wild fire, unslaked lime to be flung in the Chinese manner,
stones, javelins, arrows, half-pikes, axes and grappling irons,
all used to collect toll from Chinese, Malay, or even Arab merchants.
Pinto found that this life suited him, and long afterward, writing as a
penitent sinner, described the fun of torturing old men and children:
“Made their brains fly out of their heads with a cord” or looked on
while the victims died raving “like mad dogs.” It was great sport to
surprise some junk at anchor, and fling pots of gunpowder among the
sleeping crew, then watch them dive and drown. “The captain of one such
junk was ‘a notorious Pyrat,’ and Pinto complacently draws the moral
‘Thus you see how it pleased God, out of His Divine justice to make the
arrogant confidence of this cursed dog a means to chastise him for his
cruelties.’”
So Christians set an example to the heathen.
Antonio de Faria, Pinto’s captain, had vowed to wipe out Kwaja Hussain,
a Moslem corsair from Gujerat in Western India. In search of Hussain he
had many adventures in the China seas, capturing pirate crews, dashing
out their brains, and collecting amber, gold and pearls. Off Hainan he
so frightened the local buccaneers that they proclaimed him their king
and arranged to pay him tribute.
Luckily for them Faria’s ship was cast away upon a desert island. The
crew found a deer which had been left by a tiger, half eaten; their
shouts would scare the gulls as they flew overhead, so that the birds
dropped such fish as they had captured; and then by good luck they
discovered a Chinese junk whose people, going ashore, had left her
in charge of an old man and a child. Amid the clamors of the Chinese
owners Faria made off with this junk. He was soon at the head of a
new expedition in quest of that wicked pirate, Kwaja Hussain. This
ambition was fulfilled, and with holds full of plunder the virtuous
Faria put into Liampo. Back among the Christians he had a royal
welcome, but actually blushed when a sermon was preached in his honor.
The preacher waxed too eloquent, “whereupon some of his friends plucked
him three or four times by the surplice, for to make him give over.” It
seems that even godly Christian pirates have some sense of humor.
Once in the Malay states, Pinto and a friend of his, a Moslem, were
asked to dine with a bigwig, also a True Believer. At dinner they spoke
evil about the local rajah, who got wind of the slander. Pinto watched
both of these Moslem gentlemen having their feet sawn off, then their
hands, and finally their heads. As for himself, he talked about his
rich relations, claiming Dom Pedro de Faria, a very powerful noble, as
his uncle. He said the factor had embezzled his uncle’s money and fully
deserved his fate. “All this,” says Pinto, “was extemporized on the
spur of the moment, not knowing well what I said.” The liar got off.
Pinto’s career as a pirate ended in shipwreck, capture, slavery and a
journey in China where he was put to work on the repairing of the Great
Wall. He was at a city called Quinsay in 1544 when Altan Khan, king of
the Tumeds--a Mongolian horde--swept down out of the deserts.
The Mongols sacked Quinsay, and Pinto as a prisoner was brought before
Altan Khan who was besieging Pekin. When the siege was raised he
accompanied the Mongol army on its retreat into the heart of Asia. In
time he found favor with his masters and was allowed to accompany
an embassy to Cochin China. On this journey he saw some cannon with
iron breeches and wooden muzzles made, he was told, by certain Almains
(Germans) who came out of Muscovy (Russia), and had been banished by
the king of Denmark. Then comes Pinto’s account of Tibet, of Lhasa,
and the Grand Lama, and so to Cochin China, and the sea. If it is
true, Pinto made a very great journey, and he claims to have been
afterward with Xavier in Japan. In the end he returned to Lisbon after
twenty-one years of adventure in which he was five times shipwrecked,
and seventeen times sold as a slave.
It is disheartening to have so little space for the great world of
Portuguese adventure in the Indies, where Camoens, one of the world’s
great poets, wrote the immortal _Lusiads_.
However ferocious, these Portuguese adventurers were loyal, brave
and strong. They opened the way of Europe to the East Indies, they
Christianized and civilized Brazil. Once, at sea, a Portuguese lady
spoke to me of England’s good-humored galling disdain toward her
people. “Ah, you English!” she cried. “What you are, we were once! what
we are, you will be!”
_Vasco da Gama and his Successors_, by K. G. Jayne. Methuen.
X
A. D. 1841
RAJAH BROOKE
Borneo is a hot forest about five hundred miles long, and as wide,
inhabited by connoisseurs called Dyaks, keen collectors. They collect
human heads and some of their pieces are said to be very valuable. They
are a happy little folk with most amusing manners and customs. Here is
their ritual for burial of the dead:
“When a man dies his friends and relations meet in the house and take
their usual seats around the room. The deceased is then brought in
attired in his best clothes, with a cigar fixed in his mouth; and,
being placed on the mat in the same manner as when alive, his betel box
is set by his side. The friends go through the form of conversing with
him, and offer him the best advice concerning his future proceedings,
and then, having feasted, the body is deposited in a large coffin and
kept in the house for several months.”
The habits of the natives have been interfered with by the Malays, who
conquered most of them and carved their island up into kingdoms more or
less civilized, but not managed at all in the interests of the Dyaks.
These kingdoms were decayed and tumbling to pieces when the Dutch came
in to help, and helped themselves to the whole of Borneo except the
northwestern part. They pressingly invited themselves there also, but
the Malay rajah kept putting them off with all sorts of polite excuses.
While the rajah’s minister was running short of excuses to delay the
Dutch an English yacht arrived in Sarawak. The owner was Mr. James
Brooke, who had been an officer in the East India Company, but being
hit with a slug in the lungs during the first Burma war, was retired
with a pension of seventy pounds for wounds. Afterward he came into a
fortune of thirty thousand pounds, took to yachting, traveled a great
deal in search of adventure, and so in 1839 arrived in Sarawak on the
lookout for trouble.
An Englishman of gentle birth is naturally expected to tell the truth,
to be clean in all his dealings, to keep his temper, and not to show
his fears. Not being a beastly cad, Brooke as a matter of course
conformed to the ordinary standards and, having no worries, was able
to do so cheerfully. One may meet men of this stock, size and pattern
by thousands the world over, but in a decayed Malay state, at war with
the Dyaks ashore and the pirates afloat, Brooke was a phenomenon just
as astonishing as a first-class comet, an earthquake eruption, or a
cyclone. His arrival was the only important event in the whole history
of North Borneo. The rajah sought his advice in dealing with the Dutch,
the Dyaks and the pirates. The Malays, Dyaks, pirates and everybody
else consulted him as to their dealings with the rajah. On his second
visit he took a boat’s crew from his yacht and went to the seat of war.
There he tried to the verge of tears to persuade the hostile forces
either to fight or make friends, and when nobody could be induced to
do anything at all, he, with his boat’s crew and one native warrior,
stormed the Dyak position, putting the enemy to total rout and flight.
Luckily, nobody was hurt, for even a cut finger would have spoiled the
perfect bloodlessness of Brooke’s victory. Then the Dyaks surrendered
to Brooke. Afterward the pirate fleet appeared at the capital, not to
attack the rajah, but to be inspected by Brooke, and when he had patted
the pirates they went away to purr. Moreover the rajah offered to hand
over his kingdom to Brooke as manager, and the Englishman expected him
to keep his word. Brooke brought a shipload of stores in payment for a
cargo of manganese, but the rajah was so contented with that windfall
that he forgot to send to his mines for the ore.
Further up the coast a British ship was destroyed by lightning, and
her crew got ashore where they were held as captives pending a large
ransom. Even when the captain’s wife had a baby the local bigwig
thereabouts saw a new chance of plunder, and stole the baby-clothes.
Then the shipwrecked mariners sent a letter to Brooke appealing for his
help; but nothing on earth could induce the spineless boneless rajah to
send the relief he had promised. Then Brooke wrote to Singapore whence
the East India Company despatched a war-ship which rescued the forty
castaways.
The rajah’s next performance was to arrange for a percentage with two
thousand, five hundred robbers who proposed to plunder and massacre his
own subjects. Brooke from his yacht stampeded the raiders with a few
rounds from the big guns--blank of course. Brooke was getting rather
hard up, and could not spare ball ammunition on weekdays.
So King Muda Hassim lied, cheated, stole, betrayed, and occasionally
murdered--a mean rogue, abject, cringing to Brooke, weeping at the
Englishman’s threats to depart, holding his throne so long as the white
yacht gave him prestige; but all this with pomp and circumstance,
display of gems and gold, a gorgeous retinue, plenty of music, and
royal salutes on the very slightest pretext. But all the population was
given over to rapine and slaughter, and the forest was closing in on
ruined farms. The last and only hope of the nation was in Brooke.
Behind every evil in the state was Makota, the prime minister, a polite
and gentlemanly rascal, and at the end of two years he annoyed Brooke
quite seriously by putting arsenic in the interpreter’s rice. Brooke
cleared his ship for action, and with a landing party under arms
marched to the palace gates. In a few well-chosen words he explained
Makota’s villainy, showed that neither the rajah’s life nor his own was
safe, and that the only course was to proclaim Brooke as governor.
No shot was fired, no blow was struck, but Makota’s party vanished, the
villain fled, the rajah began to behave, the government of the country
was handed over to the Englishman amid great popular rejoicings. “My
darling mother,” he wrote, “I am very poor, but I want some things from
home very much; so I must trust to your being rich enough to afford
them to me. Imprimis, a circle for taking the latitude; secondly, an
electrifying machine of good power; thirdly, a large magic lantern;
fourthly, a rifle which carries fifty balls; and last, a peep-show.
The circle and rifle I want very much; and the others are all for
political purposes.” Did ever king begin his reign with such an act as
that letter?
But then, look at the government he replaced: “The sultan and his
chiefs rob all classes of Malays to the utmost of their power; the
Malays rob the Dyaks, and the Dyaks hide their goods as much as they
dare, consistent with the safety of their wives and children.” Brooke
found his private income a very slender fund when he had to pay the
whole expense of governing a kingdom until the people recovered from
their ruin.
February the first, 1842, a pirate chief called to make treaty with
the new king. “He inquired, if a tribe pirated on my territory what
I intended to do. My answer was ‘to enter their country and lay it
waste.’ ‘But,’ he asked me again, ‘you will give me--your friend--leave
to steal a few heads occasionally?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I shall have a
hundred Sakarran heads for every one you take here!’ He recurred to
this request several times--‘just to steal one or two’-as a schoolboy
asks for apples.”
Brooke used to give the pirates his laughing permission to go to
Singapore and attack the English.
[Illustration: SIR JAMES BROOKE]
“The Santah River,” he wrote, “is famous for its diamonds. The
workers seem jealous and superstitious, disliking noise, particularly
laughter, as it is highly offensive to the spirit who presides over the
diamonds.... A Chinese Mohammedan with the most solemn face requested
me to give him an old letter; and he engraved some Chinese characters,
which, being translated signify ‘Rajah Muda Hassim, James Brooke,
and Hadju Ibrahim present their compliments to the spirit and request
his permission to work at the mine.’”
There were great doings when the sultan of Borneo had Mr. Brooke
proclaimed king in Sarawak. Then he went off to the Straits
Settlements, where he made friends with Henry Keppel, captain of
H. M. S. _Dido_, a sportsman who delighted in hunting pirates, and
accepted Brooke’s invitation to a few days’ shooting. Keppel describes
the scene of Brooke’s return to his kingdom, received by all the chiefs
with undisguised delight, mingled with gratitude and respect for their
newly-elected ruler. “The scene was both novel and exciting, presenting
to us--just anchored in a large fresh water river, and surrounded by
a densely wooded jungle--the whole surface of the water covered with
canoes and boats dressed with colored silken flags, filled with natives
beating their tom-toms, and playing on wind instruments, with the
occasional discharge of firearms. To them it must have been equally
striking to witness the _Dido_ anchored almost in the center of their
town, her mastheads towering above the highest trees of that jungle,
the loud report of her heavy thirty-two-pounder guns, the manning
aloft to furl sails of one hundred fifty seamen in their clean white
dresses, and with the band playing. I was anxious that Mr. Brooke
should land with all the honors due to so important a personage, which
he accordingly did, under a salute.”
It was a little awkward that the _Dido_ struck a rock and sank, but
she chose a convenient spot just opposite Mr. Brooke’s house, so that
Brooke’s officers and those of the ship formed one mess there, a
band of brothers, while the damage was being repaired. Then came the
promised sport, a joint boat expedition up all sorts of queer back
channels and rivers fouled by the pirates with stakes and booms under
fire of the artillery in their hill fortresses. The sportsmen burst the
booms, charged the hills, stormed the forts, burned out the pirates and
obtained their complete submission. Brooke invited them all to a pirate
conference at his house and, just as with the land rogues, charmed them
out of their skins. He fought like a man, but his greatest victories
were scored by perfect manners.
The next adventure was a visit from the Arctic explorer, Sir Edward
Belcher, sent by the British government to inspect Brooke’s kingdom,
now a peaceful and happy country.
Later came Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane with a squadron to smash up a
few more pirates, and the smashing of pirates continued for many years
a popular sport for the navy. The pirate states to the northward became
in time the British colonies of Labuan, and North Borneo, but Sarawak
is still a protected Malay state, the hereditary kingdom of Sir James
Brooke and his descendants. May that dynasty reign so long as the sun
shines.
XI
A. D. 1842
THE SPIES
I
From earliest childhood Eldred Pottinger was out of place in crowded
England. Gunpowder is good exciting stuff to play with, and there could
be no objection to his blowing up himself and his little brother,
because that was all in the family; but when he mined the garden wall
and it fell on a couple of neighbors, they highly took offense; and
when his finely invented bomb went off at Addiscombe College he rose
to the level of a public nuisance. On the whole it must have been a
relief to his friends when he went to India. There he had an uncle, the
president in Scinde, a shrewd man who shipped young Pottinger to the
greatest possible distance in the hinder parts of Afghanistan.
The political situation in Afghanistan was the usual howling chaos of
oriental kingdoms, and the full particulars would bore the reader just
as they bored me. It was Pottinger’s business to find out and report
the exact state of affairs at a time when any white man visiting the
country was guaranteed, if and when found, to have his throat cut.
Being clever at native languages, with a very foxy shrewdness, the
young spy set off, disguised as a native horse dealer, and reached
Cabul, the Afghan capital.
The reigning ameer was Dost Mahomet, who was not on speaking terms with
Kamran, king of Herat, and Pottinger’s job was to get through to Herat
without being caught by Dost. The horse-copper disguise was useless
now, so Pottinger became a Mahomedan _syed_, or professional holy man.
He sent his attendants and horses ahead, slipped out of the capital on
foot by night and made his way to his camp. So he reached the country
of the Hazareh tribes where his whole expedition was captured by the
principal robber Jakoob Beg, who did a fairly good business in selling
travelers, as slaves, except when they paid blackmail. “The chief,”
says Pottinger, “was the finest Hazareh I had seen, and appeared a
well-meaning, sensible person. He, however, was quite in the hands of
his cousin--an ill-favored, sullen and treacherous-looking rascal. I,
by way of covering my silence, and to avoid much questioning, took to
my beads and kept telling them with great perseverance, much to the
increase of my reputation as a holy personage.”
The trouble was that Pottinger and his devout followers were of the
Sounee faith, whereas the robber castle was of the Sheeah persuasion.
The difference was something like that between our Catholics and
Protestants, and Pottinger was like a Methodist minister trying to
pass himself off for a cardinal without knowing the little points
of etiquette. The prisoners prompted one another into all sorts
of ridiculous blunders, so that the ill-favored cousin suspected
Pottinger of being a fraud. “Why he may be a Feringhee himself,” said
the cousin. “I have always heard that the Hindustanees are black,
and this man is fairer than we are.” But then the Feringhees--the
British--were supposed to be monsters, and Pottinger was in no way
monstrous to look at, so that he managed to talk round the corner, and
at the end of a week ransomed his party with the gift of a fine gun to
the chief. They set off very blithely into the mountains, but had not
gone far when the chief’s riders came romping in pursuit, and herded
them back, presumably to have their throats cut according to local
manners and customs. The chief, it turned out, had been unable to make
the gun go off, but finding it worked all right if handled properly
dismissed the spy with his blessing. Eighteen days’ journey brought
him to Herat, where he felt perfectly safe, strolling unarmed in the
country outside the walls, until a gang of slave catchers made him an
easy prey. His follower, Synd Ahmed, scared them off by shouting to an
imaginary escort.
Shah Kamran with his vizier Yar Mahomed had been out of town, but on
their return to Herat, Pottinger introduced himself to the king as a
British officer, and his gift of a brace of pistols was graciously
accepted.
Not long afterward a Persian army came up against Herat, and with that
force there were Russian officers. For once the Heratis could look for
no help from Afghanistan; and for once this mighty fortress, the key
to the gates of India, was guarded by a cur. If Herat fell the way was
open for Russia, the ancient road to India of all the conquerors.
There is the reason why the British had sent a spy to Herat.
The Heratis were quick to seek the advice of the British officer who
organized the defense and in the end took charge, the one competent
man in the garrison. Shah Kamran sent him with a flag of truce to the
Persian army. The Persian soldiers hailed him with rapture, thinking
they would soon get home to their wives and families; they patted his
legs, they caressed his horse, they shouted “Bravo! Bravo! Welcome! The
English were always friends of the king of kings!”
So Pottinger was brought before the shah of Persia, who would accept no
terms except surrender, which the Englishman ridiculed. He went back to
the city, and the siege went on for months.
A shell burst the house next door to his quarters, but he took no
harm. One day he leaned against a loophole in the ramparts, watching a
Persian attempt to spring a mine, and as he moved away his place was
taken by a eunuch who at once got a ball in the lungs. He had narrow
escapes without end.
At the end of six months, June twenty-fourth, 1838, the Persians
tried to carry the place by assault. “At four points the assault was
repulsed, but at the fifth point the storming column threw itself
into the trench of the lower fausse-braye. The struggle was brief
but bloody. The defenders fell at their posts to a man, and the work
was carried by the besiegers. Encouraged by this first success, the
storming party pushed on up the slope, but a galling fire from the
garrison met them as they advanced. The officers and men of the column
were mown down; there was a second brief and bloody struggle, and the
upper fausse-braye was carried, while a few of the most daring of the
assailants, pushing on in advance of their comrades, gained the head of
the breach. But now Deen Mahomed came down with the Afghan reserve, and
thus recruited the defenders gathered new heart, so that the Persians
in the breach were driven back. Again and again with desperate courage
they struggled to effect a lodgment, only to be repulsed and thrown
back in confusion upon their comrades, who were pressing on behind. The
conflict was fierce, the issue doubtful. Now the breach was well-nigh
carried; and now the stormers, recoiling from the shock of the defense,
fell back upon the exterior slope of the fausse-braye.
“Startled by the noise of the assault Yar Mahomed (the vizier) had
risen up, left his quarters, and ridden down to the works. Pottinger
went forth at the same time and on the same errand. Giving instructions
to his dependents to be carried out in the event of his falling in the
defense, he hastened to join the vizier.... As they neared the point
of the attack the garrison were seen retreating by twos and threes;
others were quitting the works on the pretext of carrying off the
wounded.... Pottinger was eager to push on to the breach; Yar Mahomed
sat himself down. The vizier had lost heart; his wonted high courage
and collectedness had deserted him. Astonished and indignant ...
the English officer called upon the vizier again and again to rouse
himself. The Afghan chief rose up and advanced further into the works,
and neared the breach where the conflict was raging.... Yar Mahomed
called upon his men in God’s name to fight; but they wavered and stood
still. Then his heart failed him again. He turned back, said he would
go for aid.... Alarmed by the backwardness of their chief the men were
now retreating in every direction.” Pottinger swore.
Yar roused himself, again advanced, but again wavered, and a third
time Pottinger by word and deed put him to shame. “He reviled, he
threatened, he seized him by the arm and dragged him forward to the
breach.” Now comes the fun, and we can forsake the tedious language of
the official version. Yar, hounded to desperation by Pottinger, seized
a staff, rushed like a wildcat on the retreating soldiers, and so
horrified them that they bolted back over the breach down the outside
into the face of the Persians. And the Persians fled! Herat was saved.
An envoy came from the Persian army to explain that it was infamous of
the Shah Kamran to have an infidel in charge of the defense. “Give him
up,” said the Persians, “and we’ll raise the siege.” But the shah was
not in a position to surrender Pottinger. That gentleman might take it
into his head to surrender the shah of Herat.
Another six months of siege, with famine, mutiny and all the usual
worries of beleaguered towns finished Pottinger’s work, the saving of
Herat.
II
Now we take up the life of another spy, also an army officer, old
Alexander Burnes. At eighteen he had been adjutant of his regiment and
rose very steadily from rank to rank until he was sent as an envoy
to Runjeet Singh, the ruler of Punjab, and to the ameers of Scinde.
In those days Northwestern India was an unknown region and Burnes was
pioneer of the British power.
In 1832 he set out on his second mission through Afghanistan, Bokhara
and Persia. See how he wrote from Cabul: “I do not despair of reaching
Istamboul (Constantinople) in safety. They may seize me and sell me for
a slave, but no one will attack me for my riches.... I have no tent, no
chair or table, no bed, and my clothes altogether amount to the value
of one pound sterling. You would disown your son if you saw him. My
dress is purely Asiatic, and since I came into Cabul has been changed
to that of the lowest orders of the people. My head is shaved of its
brown locks, and my beard dyed black grieves ... for the departed
beauty of youth. I now eat my meals with my hands, and greasy digits
they are, though I must say in justification, that I wash before and
after meals.... I frequently sleep under a tree, but if a villager
will take compassion on me I enter his house. I never conceal that I
am a European, and I have as yet found the character advantageous to
my comfort. The people know me by the name of Sekunder, which is the
Persian for Alexander.... With all my assumed poverty I have a bag
of ducats round my waist, and bills for as much money as I choose to
draw.... When I go into company I put my hand on my heart, and say
with all humility to the master of the house, ‘Peace be unto thee,’
according to custom, and then I squat myself down on the ground. This
familiarity has given me an insight into the character of the people
... kind-hearted and hospitable, they have no prejudices against a
Christian and none against our nation. When they ask me if I eat pork,
I of course shudder, and say that it is only outcasts that commit such
outrages. God forgive me! for I am very fond of bacon.... I am well
mounted on a good horse in case I should find it necessary to take to
my heels. My whole baggage on earth goes on one mule, which my servant
sits supercargo.... I never was in better spirits.”
After his wonderful journey Burnes was sent to England to make his
report to the government, and King William IV must needs hear the whole
of the story at Brighton pavilion.
The third journey of this great spy was called the commercial mission
to Cabul. There he learned that the Persian siege of Herat was being
more or less conducted by Russian officers. Russians swarmed at the
court of Dost Mahomed, and an ambassador from the czar was there trying
to make a treaty.
Great was the indignation and alarm in British India, and for fear of
a Russian invasion in panic haste the government made a big famous
blunder, for without waiting to know how Dost was fooling the Russians,
an army was sent through the terrible Bolan Pass. That sixty-mile abyss
with hanging walls belongs to the Pathans, the fiercest and wildest
of all the tribes of men. The army climbed through the death trap,
marched, starving, on from Quetta to Candahar and then advanced on
Cabul. But Dost’s son Akbar held the great fortress of Ghuznee, a quite
impregnable place that had to be taken.
One night while a sham attack was made on the other side of the
fortress, Captain Thomson placed nine hundred pounds of gunpowder at
the foot of a walled-up gate, and then touched off the charge. The
twenty-first light infantry climbed over the smoking ruins and at the
head of his storming column Colonel Dennie, in three hours’ fighting,
took the citadel. Dost Mahomed fled, and the British entered Cabul to
put a puppet sovereign on the throne.
Cabul was a live volcano where English women gave dances. There were
cricket matches, theatricals, sports. The governor-general in camp
gave a state dinner in honor of Major Pottinger, who had come in from
the siege of Herat. During the reception of the guests a shabby Afghan
watched, leaning against a door-post, and the court officials were
about to remove this intruder when the governor-general approached
leading his sister. “Let me present you,” said Lord Auckland, “to
Eldred Pottinger, the hero of Herat.” This shabby Afghan was the guest
of honor, but nobody would listen to his warnings, or to the warnings
of Sir Alexander Burnes, assistant resident. Only the two spies knew
what was to come. Then the volcano blew up.
Burnes had a brother staying with him in Cabul, also his military
secretary; and when the mob, savage, excited, bent on massacre, swarmed
round his house he spoke to them from the balcony. While he talked
Lieutenant Broadfoot fell at his side, struck by a ball in the chest.
The stables were on fire, the mob filled his garden. He offered to
pay then in cash for his brother’s life and his own, so a Cashmiri
volunteered to save them in disguise. They put on native clothes,
they slipped into the garden, and then their guide shouted, “This is
Sekunder Burnes!” The two brothers were cut to pieces.
Pottinger was political agent at Kohistan to the northward, and when
the whole Afghan nation rose in revolt his fort was so sorely beset
that he and his retinue stole away in the dark, joining a Ghoorka
regiment. But the regiment was also beset, and its water supply cut
off. Pottinger fought the guns; the men repelled attacks by night
and day until worn out; dying of thirst in an intolerable agony the
regiment broke, scattering into the hills. Only a few men rallied round
Pottinger to fight through to Cabul, and he was fearfully wounded,
unable to command. Of his staff and the Ghoorka regiment only five men
were alive when they entered Cabul.
Our officer commanding at Cabul was not in good health, but his death
was unfortunately delayed while the Afghans murdered men, women and
children, and the British troops, for lack of a leader, funked. Envoys
waited on Akbar Khan, and were murdered. The few officers who kept
their heads were without authority, blocked at every turn by cowards,
by incompetents. Then the council of war made treaty with Akbar, giving
him all the guns except six, all the treasure, three officers as
hostages, bills drawn on India for forty thousand rupees, the honor of
their country, everything for safe conduct in their disgrace. Dying of
cold and hunger, the force marched into the Khoord-Cabul Pass, and at
the end of three days the married officers were surrendered with their
wives and children. Of the sixteen thousand men three-fourths were
dead when the officer commanding and the gallant Brigadier Skelton
were given up as hostages to Akbar. The survivors pushed on through
the Jugduluk Pass, which the Afghans had barricaded, and there was the
final massacre. Of the whole army, one man, Doctor Brydon, on a starved
pony, sinking with exhaustion, rode in through the gates of Fort
Jellalabad.
The captured general had sent orders for the retreat of the Jellalabad
garrison through the awful defiles of the Khyber Pass in face
of a hostile army, and in the dead of winter; but General Sale,
commanding, was not such a fool. For three months he had worked his
men to desperation rebuilding the fortress, and now when he saw the
white tents of Akbar’s camp he was prepared for a siege. That day
an earthquake razed the whole fortress into a heap of ruins, but
the garrison rebuilt the walls. Then they sallied and, led by Henry
Havelock, assaulted Akbar’s camp, smashed his army to flying fragments,
captured his guns, baggage, standards, ammunition and food. Nine days
later the bands of the garrison marched out to meet a relieving army
from India. They were playing an old tune, _Oh, but ye’ve been lang o’
comin’_.
Meanwhile the British prisoners, well treated, were hurried from
fort to fort, with some idea of holding them for sale at so much a
slave, until they managed to bribe an Afghan chief. The bribed man
led a revolt against Akbar, and one chief after another joined him,
swearing on the Koran allegiance to Eldred Pottinger. When Akbar fell,
Pottinger marched as leader of the revolted chiefs on the way to Cabul.
One day, as the ladies and children were resting in an old fort for
shelter during the great heat of the afternoon, they heard the tramp of
horsemen, and in the dead silence of a joy and gratitude too great for
utterance, received the relieving force.
XII
A. D. 1842
A YEAR’S ADVENTURES
A thousand adventures are taking place every day, all at once in the
several continents and the many seas. A few are reported, many are
noted in the private journals of adventurers, most of them are just
taken as a matter of course in the day’s work, but nobody has ever
attempted to make a picture of all the world’s adventures for a day or
a year.
Let us make magic. Any date will do, or any year. Here for instance is
a date--the twelfth of September, 1842--that will serve our purpose as
well as any other.
In Afghanistan a British force of twenty-six thousand people had
perished, an army of vengeance had marched to the rescue of Major
Pottinger, Lady Sale, Lady McNaughton and other captives held by the
Afghan chiefs. On September twelfth they were rescued.
In China the people had refused to buy our Indian opium, so we
carefully and methodically bombarded all Chinese seaports until she
consented to open them to foreign trade. Then Major Pottinger’s uncle,
Sir Henry, made a treaty which the Chinese emperor signed on September
eighth.
In the Malacca Straits Captain Henry Keppel of H. M. S. _Dido_ was busy
smashing up pirates.
In Tahiti poor little Queen Pomaré, being in childbed, was so bullied
by the French admiral that she surrendered her kingdom to France on
September ninth. Next morning her child was born, but her kingdom was
gone forever.
In South Africa Captain Smith made a disgraceful attack upon the Boers
at Port Natal, and on June twenty-sixth they got a tremendous thrashing
which put an end to the republic of Natalia. In September they began to
settle down as British subjects, not at all content.
Norfolk Island is a scrap of paradise, about six miles by four, lying
nine hundred miles from Sydney, in Australia. In 1842 it was a convict
settlement, and on June twenty-first the brig _Governor Philip_ was to
sail for Sydney, having landed her stores at the island. During the
night she stood off and on, and two prisoners coming on deck at dawn
for a breath of air noticed that discipline seemed slack, although
a couple of drowsy sentries guarded their hatchway. Within a few
minutes the prisoners were all on deck. One sentry was disarmed, the
other thrown overboard. Two soldiers off duty had a scuffle with the
mutineers, but one took refuge in the main chains, while the other was
drowned trying to swim ashore. The sergeant in charge ran on deck and
shot a mutineer before he was knocked over, stunned. As to the seamen,
they ran into the forecastle.
The prisoners had now control of the ship, but none of them knew how
to handle their prize, so they loosed a couple of sailors and made
them help. Woolfe, one of the convicts, then rescued a soldier who was
swimming alongside. The officers and soldiers aft were firing through
the grated hatches and wounded several convicts, until they were
allayed with a kettle of boiling water. So far the mutiny had gone off
very nicely, but now the captain, perched on the cabin table, fired
through the woodwork at a point where he thought a man was standing.
By luck the bullet went through the ringleader’s mouth and blew out
the back of his head, whereon a panic seized the mutineers, who fled
below hatches. The sailor at the wheel released the captain, and the
afterguard recaptured the ship. One mutineer had his head blown off,
and the rest surrendered. The whole deck was littered with the wounded
and the dying and the dead, and there were not many convicts left. In
the trial at Sydney, Wheelan, who proved innocent, was spared, also
Woolfe for saving a soldier’s life, but four were hanged, meeting their
fate like men.
It was in August that the sultan of Borneo confirmed Mr. James Brooke
as rajah of Sarawak, and the new king was extremely busy executing
robbers, rescuing shipwrecked mariners from slavery, reopening old
mines for diamonds, gold and manganese. “I breathe peace and comfort to
all who obey,” so he wrote to his mother, “and wrath and fury to the
evil-doer.”
* * * * *
Captain Ross was in the Antarctic, coasting the great ice barrier. Last
year he had given to two tall volcanoes the names of his ships, the
_Erebus_ and _Terror_. This year on March twelfth in a terrific gale
with blinding snow at midnight the two ships tried to get shelter under
the lee of an iceberg, but the _Terror_ rammed the _Erebus_ so that her
bow-sprit, fore topmast and a lot of smaller spars were carried away,
and she was jammed against the wall of the berg totally disabled. She
could not make sail and had no room to wear round, so she sailed out
backward, one of the grandest feats of seamanship on record; then,
clear of the danger, steered between two bergs, her yard-arms almost
scraping both of them, until she gained the smoother water to leeward,
where she found her consort.
* * * * *
In Canada the British governor set up a friendship between the French
Canadians and our government which has lasted ever since. That was on
the eighth of September, but on the fifth another British dignitary
sailed for home, having generously given a large slice of Canada to the
United States.
* * * * *
In Hayti there was an earthquake, in Brazil a revolution; in Jamaica
a storm on the tenth which wrecked H. M. S. _Spitfire_, and in the
western states Mount Saint Helen’s gave a fine volcanic eruption.
Northern Mexico was invaded by two filibustering expeditions from the
republic of Texas, and both were captured by the Mexicans. There were
eight hundred fifty prisoners, some murdered for fun, the rest marched
through Mexico exposed to all sorts of cruelty and insult before they
were lodged in pestilence-ridden jails. Captain Edwin Cameron and his
people on the way to prison overpowered the escort and fled to the
mountains, whence some of them escaped to Texas. But the leader and
most of his men being captured, President Santa Ana arranged that they
should draw from a bag of beans, those who got black beans to be shot.
Cameron drew a white bean, but was shot all the same. One youth, G. B.
Crittenden, drew a white bean, but gave it to a comrade saying, “You
have a wife and children; I haven’t, and I can afford to risk another
chance.” Again he drew white and lived to be a general in the great
Civil War.
General Green’s party escaped by tunneling their way out of the castle
of Perot, but most of the prisoners perished in prison of hunger and
disease. The British and American ministers at the City of Mexico won
the release of the few who were left alive.
* * * * *
In 1842 Sir James Simpson, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company,
with his bell-topper hat and his band, came by canoe across the
northern wilds to the Pacific Coast. From San Francisco he sailed
for Honolulu in the Sandwich Islands, where the company had a large
establishment under Sir John Petty. On April sixteenth he arrived in
the H. B. ship _Cowlitz_ at the capital of Russian America. “Of all
the drunken as well as the dirty places,” says he, “that I had ever
visited, New Archangel was the worst. On the holidays in particular,
of which, Sundays included, there are one hundred sixty-five in the
year, men, women and even children were to be seen staggering about in
all directions drunk.” Simpson thought all the world, though, of the
Russian bishop.
The Hudson’s Bay Company had a lease from the Russians of all the
fur-trading forts of Southeastern Alaska, and one of these was the
Redoubt Saint Diogenes. There Simpson found a flag of distress, gates
barred, sentries on the bastions and two thousand Indians besieging the
fort. Five days ago the officer commanding, Mr. McLoughlin, had made
all hands drunk and ran about saying he was going to be killed. So one
of the voyagers leveled a rifle and shot him dead. On the whole the
place was not well managed.
From New Archangel (Sitka) the Russian Lieutenant Zagoskin sailed
in June for the Redoubt Saint Michael on the coast of Behring Sea.
Smallpox had wiped out all the local Eskimos, so the Russian could get
no guide for the first attempt to explore the river Yukon. A day’s
march south he was entertained at an Eskimo camp where there was a
feast, and the throwing of little bladders into the bay in honor
of Ug-iak, spirit of the sea. On December ninth Zagoskin started
inland--“A driving snow-storm set in blinding my eyes ... a blade of
grass seventy feet distant had the appearance of a shrub, and sloping
valleys looked like lakes with high banks, the illusion vanishing upon
nearer approach. At midnight a terrible snow-storm began, and in the
short space of ten minutes covered men, dogs and sledges, making a
perfect hill above them. We sat at the foot of a hill with the wind
from the opposite side and our feet drawn under us to prevent them from
freezing, and covered with our parkas. When we were covered up by the
snow we made holes with sticks through to the open air. In a short time
the warmth of the breath and perspiration melted the snow, so that a
man-like cave was formed about each individual.” So they continued for
five hours, calling to one another to keep awake, for in that intense
cold to sleep was death. There we may as well leave them, before we
catch cold from the draft.
* * * * *
Fremont was exploring from the Mississippi Valley a route for emigrants
to Oregon, and in that journey climbed the Rocky Mountains to plant Old
Glory on one of the highest peaks. He was a very fine explorer, and not
long afterward conquered the Mexican state of California, completing
the outline of the modern United States. But Fremont’s guide will be
remembered long after Fremont is forgotten, for he was the greatest of
American frontiersmen, the ideal of modern chivalry, Kit Carson. Of
course he must have a chapter to himself.
XIII
A.D. 1843
KIT CARSON
Once Colonel Inman, an old frontiersman, bought a newspaper which had a
full page picture of Kit Carson. The hero stood in a forest, a gigantic
figure in a buckskin suit, heavily armed, embracing a rescued heroine,
while at his feet sprawled six slain Indian braves, his latest victims.
“What do you think of this?” said the colonel handing the picture to a
delicate little man, who wiped his spectacles, studied the work of art,
and replied in a gentle drawl, “That may be true, but I hain’t got no
recollection of it.” And so Kit Carson handed the picture back.
He stood five feet six, and looked frail, but his countrymen, and all
the boys of all the world think of this mighty frontiersman as a giant.
At seventeen he was a remarkably green and innocent boy for his years,
his home a log cabin on the Missouri frontier. Past the door ran the
trail to the west where trappers went by in buckskin, traders among the
Indians, and soldiers for the savage wars of the plains.
One day came Colonel S. Vrain, agent of a big fur-trading company,
with his long train of wagons hitting the Santa Fe trail. Kit got a
job with that train, to herd spare stock, hunt bison, mount guard and
fight Indians. They were three weeks out in camp when half a dozen
Pawnee Indians charged, yelling and waving robes to stampede the herd,
but a brisk fusillade from the white men sent them scampering back
over the sky-line. Next day, after a sixteen mile march the outfit
corraled their wagons for defense at the foot of Pawnee Rock beside the
Arkansas River. “I had not slept any of the night before,” says Kit,
“for I stayed awake watching to get a shot at the Pawnees that tried to
stampede our animals, expecting they would return; and I hadn’t caught
a wink all day, as I was out buffalo hunting, so I was awfully tired
and sleepy when we arrived at Pawnee Rock that evening, and when I was
posted at my place at night, I must have gone to sleep leaning against
the rocks; at any rate, I was wide enough awake when the cry of Indians
was given by one of the guard. I had picketed my mule about twenty
paces from where I stood, and I presume he had been lying down; all I
remember is, that the first thing I saw after the alarm was something
rising up out of the grass, which I thought was an Indian. I pulled the
trigger; it was a center shot, and I don’t believe the mule ever kicked
after he was hit!”
At daylight the Pawnees attacked in earnest and the fight lasted nearly
three days, the mule teams being shut in the corral without food or
water. At midnight of the second day they hitched up, fighting their
way for thirteen miles, then got into bad trouble fording Pawnee Fork
while the Indians poured lead and arrows into the teams until the
colonel and Kit Carson led a terrific charge which dispersed the
enemy. That fight cost the train four killed and seven wounded.
It was during this first trip that Carson saved the life of a wounded
teamster by cutting off his arm. With a razor he cut the flesh, with
a saw got through the bone, and with a white-hot king-bolt seared the
wound, stopping the flow of blood.
In 1835 Carson was hunter for Bent’s Fort, keeping the garrison of
forty men supplied with buffalo meat. Once he was out hunting with six
others and they made their camp tired out. “I saw,” says Kit, “two big
wolves sneaking about, one of them quite close to us. Gordon, one of my
men, wanted to fire his rifle at it, but I would not let him for fear
he would hit a dog. I admit that I had a sort of idea that these wolves
might be Indians; but when I noticed one of them turn short around and
heard the clashing of his teeth as he rushed at one of the dogs, I felt
easy then, and was certain that they were wolves sure enough. But the
red devil fooled me after all, for he had two dried buffalo bones in
his hands under the wolf-skin and he rattled them together every time
he turned to make a dash at the dogs! Well, by and by we all dozed
off, and it wasn’t long before I was suddenly aroused by a noise and a
big blaze. I rushed out the first thing for our mules and held them.
If the savages had been at all smart, they could have killed us in a
trice, but they ran as soon as they fired at us. They killed one of my
men, putting five shots in his body and eight in his buffalo robe. The
Indians were a band of snakes, and found us by sheer accident. They
endeavored to ambush us the next morning, but we got wind of their
little game and killed three of them, including the chief.”
It was in his eight years as hunter for Bent’s Fort that Kit learned
to know the Indians, visiting their camps to smoke with the chiefs and
play with the little boys. When the Sioux nation invaded the Comanche
and Arrapaho hunting-grounds he persuaded them to go north, and so
averted war.
In 1842 when he was scout to Fremont, he went buffalo hunting to get
meat for the command. One day he was cutting up a beast newly killed
when he left his work in pursuit of a large bull that came rushing
past him. His horse was too much blown to run well, and when at last
he got near enough to fire, things began to happen all at once. The
bullet hitting too low enraged the bison just as the horse, stepping
into a prairie-dog hole, shot Kit some fifteen feet through the air.
Instead of Kit hunting bison, Mr. Buffalo hunted Kit, who ran for all
he was worth. So they came to the Arkansas River where Kit dived while
the bison stayed on the bank to hook him when he landed. But while the
bison gave Kit a swimming lesson, one of the hunters made an unfair
attack from behind, killing the animal. So Kit crawled out and skinned
his enemy.
One of his great hunting feats was the killing of five buffalo with
only four bullets. Being short of lead he had to cut out the ball from
number four, then catch up, and shoot number five.
On another hunt, chasing a cow bison down a steep hill, he fired just
as the animal took a flying leap, so that the carcass fell, not to the
ground, but spiked on a small cedar. The Indians persuaded him to
leave that cow impaled upon a tree-top because it was big magic; but to
people who do not know the shrubs of the southwestern desert, it must
sound like a first-class lie.
One night as the expedition lay in camp, far up among the mountains,
Fremont sat for hours reading some letters just arrived from home, then
fell asleep to dream of his young wife. Presently a soft sound, rather
like the blow of an ax made Kit start broad awake, to find Indians in
camp. They fled, but two of the white men were lying dead in their
blankets, and the noise that awakened Carson was the blow of a tomahawk
braining his own chum, the voyageur, La Jeunesse.
In the following year Carson was serving as hunter to a caravan
westward bound across the plains, when he met Captain Cooke in camp,
with four squadrons of United States Cavalry. The captain told him that
following on the trail was a caravan belonging to a wealthy Mexican and
so richly loaded that a hundred riders had been hired as guards.
Presently the Mexican train came up and the majordomo offered Carson
three hundred dollars if he would ride to the Mexican governor at
Santa Fe and ask him for an escort of troops from the point where they
entered New Mexico. Kit, who was hard up, gladly accepted the cash,
and rode to Bent’s Fort. There he had news that the Utes were on the
war-path, but Mr. Bent lent him the swiftest horse in the stables. Kit
walked, leading the horse by the rein, to have him perfectly fresh in
case there was need for flight. He reached the Ute village, hid, and
passed the place at night without being seen. So he reached Taos, his
own home in New Mexico, whence the alcalde sent his message to the
governor of the state at Santa Fe.
The governor had already sent a hundred riders but these had been
caught and wiped out by a force of Texans, only one escaping, who,
during the heat of the fight, caught a saddled Texan pony and rode off.
Meanwhile the governor--Armijo--sent his reply for Carson to carry to
the caravan. He said he was marching with a large force, and he did so.
But when the survivor of the lost hundred rode into Armijo’s camp with
his bad news, the whole outfit rolled their tails for home.
Carson, with the governor’s letter, and the news of plentiful trouble,
reached the Mexican caravan, which decided not to leave the protecting
American cavalry camped on the boundary-line. What with Texan raiders,
border ruffians, Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and other little drawbacks,
the caravan trade on the Santa Fe trail was never dull for a moment.
During these years one finds Kit Carson’s tracks all over the West
about as hard to follow as those of a flea in a blanket.
Here, for example, is a description of the American army of the Bear
Flag republic seizing California in 1846. “A vast cloud of dust
appeared first, and thence, a long file, emerged this wildest wild
party. Fremont rode ahead--a spare, active-looking man, with such an
eye! He was dressed in a blouse and leggings and wore a felt hat.
After him came five Delaware Indians, who were his body-guard, and
have been with him through all his wanderings; they had charge of
the baggage horses. The rest, many of them blacker than the Indians,
rode two and two, the rifle held in one hand across the pommel of the
saddle. Thirty-nine of them there are his regular men, the rest are
loafers picked up lately; his original men are principally backwoodsmen
from the state of Tennessee, and the banks of the upper waters of the
Missouri.... The dress of these men was principally a long loose coat
of deerskin, tied with thongs in front; trousers of the same, which
when wet through, they take off, scrape well inside with a knife, and
put on as soon as dry. The saddles were of various fashions, though
these and a large drove of horses, and a brass field gun, were things
they had picked up about California. They are allowed no liquor; this,
no doubt, has much to do with their good conduct; and the discipline,
too, is very strict.”
One of these men was Kit Carson, sent off in October to Washington on
the Atlantic, three thousand miles away, with news that California
was conquered for the United States, by a party of sixty men. In New
Mexico, Kit met General Kearney, and told him that the Californians
were a pack of cowards. So the general sent back his troops, marching
on with only one hundred dragoons. But the Californians were not
cowards, they had risen against the American invasion, they were
fighting magnificently, and Fremont had rather a bad time before he
completed the conquest.
It was during the Californian campaign that Carson made his famous
ride, the greatest feat of horsemanship the world has ever known. As
a despatch rider, he made his way through the hostile tribes, and
terrific deserts from the Missouri to California and back, a total of
four thousand, four hundred miles. But while he rested in California,
before he set out on the return, he joined a party of Californian
gentlemen on a trip up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
Two of the six men had a remount each, but four of them rode the six
hundred miles without change of horses in six days. Add that, and
the return to Kit Carson’s journey, and it makes a total of five
thousand, six hundred miles. So for distance, he beats world records
by one hundred miles, at a speed beyond all comparison, and in face of
difficulties past all parallel.
For some of us old western reprobates who were cow hands, despising a
sheep man more than anything else alive, it is very disconcerting to
know that Carson went into that business. He became a partner of his
lifelong friend, Maxwell, whose rancho in New Mexico was very like a
castle of the Middle Ages. The dinner service was of massive silver,
but the guests bedded down with a cowhide on the floor. New Mexico was
a conquered country owned by the United States, at intervals between
the Mexican revolts, when Kit settled down as a rancher. The words
settled down, mean that he served as a colonel of volunteers against
the Mexicans, and spent the rest of the time fighting Apaches, the most
ferocious of all savages.
Near Santa Fe, lived Mr. White and his son who fell in defense of their
ranch, having killed three Apaches, while the women and children of the
household met with a much worse fate than that of death. The settlers
refused to march in pursuit until Carson arrived, but by mistake he was
not given command, a Frenchman having been chosen as leader.
The retreat of the savages was far away in the mountains, and well
fortified. The only chance of saving the women and children was to
rush this place before there was time to kill them, and Carson dashed
in with a yell, expecting all hands to follow. So he found himself
alone, surrounded by the Apaches, and as they rushed, he rode, throwing
himself on the off side of his horse, almost concealed behind its neck.
Six arrows struck his horse, and one bullet lodged in his coat before
he was out of range. He cursed his Mexicans, he put them to shame,
he persuaded them to fight, then led a gallant charge, killing five
Indians as they fled. The delay had given them time to murder the women
and children.
Once, after his camp had been attacked by Indians, Carson discovered
that the sentry failed to give an alarm because he was asleep. The
Indian punishment followed, and the soldier was made for one day to
wear the dress of a squaw.
[Illustration: KIT CARSON]
We must pass by Kit’s capture of a gang of thirty-five desperadoes for
the sake of a better story. The officer, commanding a detachment of
troops on the march, flogged an Indian chief, the result being war.
Carson was the first white man to pass, and while the chiefs were
deciding how to attack his caravan, he walked alone into the council
lodge. So many years were passed since the Cheyennes had seen him
that he was not recognized, and nobody suspected that he knew their
language, until he made a speech in Cheyenne, introducing himself,
recalling ancient friendships, offering all courtesies. As to their
special plan for killing the leader of the caravan, and taking his
scalp, he claimed that he might have something to say on the point.
They parted, Kit to encourage his men, the Indians to waylay the
caravan; but from the night camp he despatched a Mexican boy to ride
three hundred miles for succor. When the Cheyennes charged the camp
at dawn, he ordered them to halt, and walked into the midst of them,
explaining the message he had sent, and what their fate would be if the
troops found they had molested them. When the Indians found the tracks
that proved Kit’s words, they knew they had business elsewhere.
In 1863 Carson was sent with a strong military force to chasten the
hearts of the Navajo nation. They had never been conquered, and the
flood of Spanish invasion split when it rolled against their terrific
sand-rock desert. The land is one of unearthly grandeur where natural
rocks take the shapes of towers, temples, palaces and fortresses of
mountainous height blazing scarlet in color. In one part a wave of rock
like a sea breaker one hundred fifty feet high and one hundred miles
in length curls overhanging as though the rushing gray waters had been
suddenly struck into ice. On one side lies the hollow Painted Desert,
where the sands refract prismatic light like a colossal rainbow, and
to the west the walls of the Navajo country drop a sheer mile into the
stupendous labyrinth of the Grand Cañon. Such is the country of a race
of warriors who ride naked, still armed with bow and arrows, their
harness of silver and turquoise....
They are handsome, cleanly, proud and dignified. They till their
fields beside the desert springs, and their villages are set in native
orchards, while beyond their settlements graze the flocks and herds
tended by women herders.
The conquest was a necessity, and it was well that this was entrusted
to gentle, just, wise, heroic Carson. He was obliged to destroy their
homes, to fell their peach trees, lay waste their crops, and sweep away
their stock, starving them to surrender. He herded eleven thousand
prisoners down to the lower deserts, where the chiefs crawled to him on
their bellies for mercy, but the governor had no mercy, and long after
Carson’s death, the hapless people were held in the Boique Redondo. A
fourth part of them died of want, and their spirit was utterly broken
before they were given back their lands. It is well for them that the
Navajo desert is too terrible a region for the white men, and nobody
tries to rob their new prosperity.
In one more campaign Colonel Carson was officer commanding and gave a
terrible thrashing to the Cheyennes, Kiowas and Comanches.
Then came the end, during a visit to a son of his who lived in
Colorado. Early in the morning of May twenty-third, 1868, he was
mounting his horse when an artery broke in his neck, and within a few
moments he was dead.
But before we part with the frontier hero, it is pleasant to think of
him still as a living man whose life is an inspiration and his manhood
an example.
Colonel Inman tells of nights at Maxwell’s ranch. “I have sat there,”
he writes, “in the long winter evenings when the great room was
lighted only by the crackling logs, roaring up the huge throats of
its two fireplaces ... watching Maxwell, Kit Carson and half a dozen
chiefs silently interchange ideas in the wonderful sign language, until
the glimmer of Aurora announced the advent of another day. But not a
sound had been uttered during the protracted hours, save an occasional
grunt of satisfaction on the part of the Indians, or when we white men
exchanged a sentence.”
XIV
A. D. 1845
THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD
John Nicholson was a captain in the twenty-seventh native infantry of
India. He was very tall, gaunt, haggard, with a long black beard, a
pale face, lips that never smiled, eyes which burned flame and green
like those of a tiger when he was angry. He rarely spoke.
Once in a frontier action he was entirely surrounded by the enemy
when one of his Afghans saw him in peril from a descending sword. The
Pathan sprang forward, received the blow, and died. In a later fight
Nicholson saw that warrior’s only son taken prisoner, and carried
off by the enemy. Charging alone, cutting a lane with his sword, the
officer rescued his man, hoisted him across the saddle, and fought
his way back. Ever afterward the young Pathan, whose father had died
for Nicholson, rode at the captain’s side, served him at table with a
cocked pistol on one hand, slept across the door of his tent. By the
time Nicholson’s special service began he had a personal following of
two hundred and fifty wild riders who refused either to take any pay or
to leave his service.
So was he guarded, but also a sword must be found fit for the hand of
the greatest swordsman in India. The Sikh leaders sent out word to
their whole nation for such a blade as Nicholson might wear. Hundreds
were offered and after long and intricate tests three were found
equally perfect, two of the blades being curved, one straight. Captain
Nicholson chose the straight sword, which he accepted as a gift from a
nation of warriors.
This man was only a most humble Christian, but the Sikhs, observing
the perfection of his manhood, supposed him to be divine, and offered
that if he would accept their religion they would raise such a temple
in his honor as India had never seen. Many a time while he sat at work
in his tent, busy with official papers, a dozen Sikh warriors would
squat in the doorway silent, watching their god. He took no notice,
but sometimes a worshiper, overcome with the conviction of sin, would
prostrate himself in adoration. For this offense the punishment was
three dozen lashes with the cat, but the victims liked it. “Our god
knew that we had been doing wrong, and, therefore, punished us.”
There is no need to explain the Indian mutiny to English readers. It is
burned deep into our memory that in 1857 our native army, revolting,
seized Delhi, the ancient capital, and set up a descendant of the Great
Mogul as emperor of India. The children, the women, the men who were
tortured to death, or butchered horribly, were of our own households.
Your uncle fought, your cousin fell, my mother escaped. Remember
Cawnpore!
Nicholson at Peshawur seized the mails, had the letters translated,
then made up his copies into bundles. At a council of officers the
colonels of the native regiments swore to the loyalty of their men,
but Nicholson dealt out his packages of letters to them all, saying,
“Perhaps these will interest you.”
The colonels read, and were chilled with horror at finding in their
trusted regiments an abyss of treachery. Their troops were disarmed and
disbanded.
To disarm and disperse the native army throughout Northwestern India a
flying column was formed of British troops, and Nicholson, although he
was only a captain, was sent to take command of the whole force with
the rank of brigadier-general. There were old officers under him, yet
never a murmur rose from them at that strange promotion.
Presently Sir John Lawrence wrote to Nicholson a fierce official
letter, demanding, “Where are you? What are you doing? Send instantly a
return of court-martial held upon insurgent natives, with a list of the
various punishments inflicted.”
Nicholson’s reply was a sheet of paper bearing his present address,
the date, and the words, “The punishment of mutiny is death.” He
wanted another regiment to strengthen his column, and demanded the
eighty-seventh, which was guarding our women and children in the hills.
Lawrence said these men could not be spared. Nicholson wrote back,
“When an empire is at stake, women and children cease to be of any
consideration whatever.” What chance had they if he failed to hold this
district?
[Illustration: GENERAL NICHOLSON]
Nicholson’s column on the march was surrounded by his own wild guards
riding in couples, so that he, their god, searched the whole country
with five hundred eyes. After one heart-breaking night march he drew up
his infantry and guns, then rode along the line giving his orders:
“In a few minutes you will see two native regiments come round that
little temple. If they bring their muskets to the ‘ready,’ fire a
volley into them without further orders.”
As the native regiments appeared from behind the little temple,
Nicholson rode to meet them. He was seen to speak to them and then they
grounded their arms. Two thousand men had surrendered to seven hundred,
but had the mutineers resisted Nicholson himself must have perished
between two fires. He cared nothing for his life.
Only once did this leader blow mutineers from the guns, and then it
was to fire the flesh and blood of nine conspirators into the faces of
a doubtful regiment. For the rest he had no powder to waste, but no
mercy, and from his awful executions of rebels he would go away to hide
in his tent and weep.
He had given orders that no native should be allowed to ride past
a white man. One morning before dawn the orderly officer, a lad of
nineteen, seeing natives passing him on an elephant, ordered them
sharply to dismount and make their salaam. They obeyed--an Afghan
prince and his servant, sent by the king of Cabul as an embassy to
Captain Nicholson. Next day the ambassador spoke of this humiliation.
“No wonder,” he said, “you English conquer India when mere boys obey
orders as this one did.”
Nicholson once fought a Bengal tiger, and slew it with one stroke of
his sword; but could the English subdue this India in revolt? The
mutineers held the impregnable capital old Delhi--and under the red
walls lay four thousand men--England’s forlorn hope--which must storm
that giant fortress. If they failed the whole population would rise.
“If ordained to fail,” said Nicholson, “I hope the British will drag
down with them in flames and blood as many of the queen’s enemies
as possible.” If they had failed not one man of our race would have
escaped to the sea.
Nicholson brought his force to aid in the siege of Delhi, and now he
was only a captain under the impotent and hopeless General Wilson. “I
have strength yet,” said Nicholson when he was dying, “to shoot him if
necessary.”
The batteries of the city walls from the Lahore Gate to the Cashmere
Gate were manned by Sikh gunners, loyal to the English, but detained
against their will by the mutineers. One night they saw Nicholson
without any disguise walk in at the Lahore Gate, and through battery
after battery along the walls he went in silence to the Cashmere Gate,
by which he left the city. At the sight of that gaunt giant, the man
they believed to be an incarnate god, they fell upon their faces. So
Captain Nicholson studied the defenses of a besieged stronghold as
no man on earth had ever dared before. To him was given command of
the assault which blew up the Cashmere Gate, and stormed the Cashmere
breach. More than half his men perished, but an entry was made, and in
six days the British fought their way through the houses, breaching
walls as they went until they stormed the palace, hoisted the flag
above the citadel, and proved with the sword who shall be masters of
India.
But Nicholson had fallen. Mortally wounded he was carried to his tent,
and there lay through the hot days watching the blood-red towers and
walls of Delhi, listening to the sounds of the long fight, praying
that he might see the end before his passing.
Outside the tent waited his worshipers, clutching at the doctors as
they passed to beg for news of him. Once when they were noisy he
clutched a pistol from the bedside table, and fired a shot through the
canvas. “Oh! Oh!” cried the Pathans, “there is the general’s order.”
Then they kept quiet. Only at the end, when his coffin was lowered into
the earth, these men who had forsaken their hills to guard him, broke
down and flung themselves upon the ground, sobbing like children.
Far off in the hills the Nicholson fakirs--a tribe who had made him
their only god--heard of his passing. Two chiefs killed themselves that
they might serve him in another world; but the third chief spoke to the
people: “Nickelseyn always said that he was a man like as we are, and
that he worshiped a God whom he could not see, but who was always near
us. Let us learn to worship Nickelseyn’s God.” So the tribe came down
from their hills to the Christian teachers at Peshawur, and there were
baptized.
XV
A. D. 1853
THE GREAT FILIBUSTER
William Walker, son of a Scotch banker, was born in Tennessee,
cantankerous from the time he was whelped. He never swore or drank,
or loved anybody, but was rigidly respectable and pure, believed in
negro slavery, bristled with points of etiquette and formality, liked
squabbling, had a nasty sharp tongue, and a taste for dueling. The
little dry man was by turns a doctor, editor and lawyer, and when he
wanted to do anything very outrageous, always began by taking counsel’s
opinion. He wore a black tail-coat, and a black wisp of necktie even
when in 1853 he landed an army of forty-five men to conquer Mexico.
His followers were California gold miners dressed in blue shirts, duck
trousers, long boots, bowie knives, revolvers and rifles. After he had
taken the city of La Paz by assault, called an election and proclaimed
himself president of Sonora, he was joined by two or three hundred more
of the same breed from San Francisco. These did not think very much of
a leader twenty-eight years old, standing five feet six, and weighing
only nine stone four, so they merrily conspired to blow him up with
gunpowder, and disperse with what plunder they could grab. Mr. Walker
shot two, flogged a couple, disarmed the rest without showing any sign
of emotion. He could awe the most truculent desperado into abject
obedience with one glance of his cool gray eye, and never allowed his
men to drink, play cards, or swear. “Our government,” he wrote, “has
been formed upon a firm and sure basis.”
The Mexicans and Indians thought otherwise, for while the new president
of Sonora marched northward, they gathered in hosts and hung like
wolves in the rear of the column, cutting off stragglers, who were
slowly tortured to death. Twice they dared an actual attack, but
Walker’s grim strategies, and the awful rifles of despairing men, cut
them to pieces. So the march went on through hundreds of miles of
blazing hot desert, where the filibusters dropped with thirst, and blew
their own brains out rather than be captured. Only thirty-four men were
left when they reached the United States boundary, the president of
Sonora, in a boot and a shoe, his cabinet in rags, his army and navy
bloody, with dried wounds, gaunt, starving, but too terrible for the
Mexican forces to molest. The filibusters surrendered to the United
States garrison as prisoners of war.
Just a year later, with six of these veterans, and forty-eight other
Californians, Walker landed on the coast of Nicaragua. This happy
republic was blessed at the time with two rival presidents, and the one
who got Walker’s help very soon had possession of the country. As hero
of several brilliant engagements, Walker was made commander-in-chief,
and at the next election chosen by the people themselves as president.
He had now a thousand Americans in his following, and when the native
statesmen and generals proved treacherous, they were promptly shot.
Walker’s camp of wild desperadoes was like a Sunday-school, his
government the cleanest ever known in Central America, and his dignity
all prickles, hard to approach. He depended for existence on the
services of Vanderbilt’s steamship lines, but seized their warehouse
for cheating. He was surrounded by four hostile republics, Costa
Rica, San Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, and insulted them all.
He suspended diplomatic relations with the United States, demanded
for his one schooner-of-war salutes from the British navy, and had no
sense of humor whatsoever. Thousands of brave men died for this prim
little lawyer, and tens of thousands fell by pestilence and battle in
his wars, but with all his sweet unselfishness, his purity, and his
valor, poor Walker was a prig. So the malcontents of Nicaragua, and the
republics from Mexico to Peru, joined the steamship company, the United
States and Great Britain to wipe out his hapless government.
The armies of four republics were closing in on Walker’s capital, the
city of Granada. He marched out to storm the allies perched on an
impregnable volcano, and was carrying his last charge to a victorious
issue, when news reached him that Zavala with eight hundred men had
jumped on Granada. He forsook his victory and rushed for the capital
city.
There were only one hundred and fifty invalids and sick in the Granada
garrison to man the church, armory and hospital against Zavala, but
the women loaded rifles for the wounded and after twenty-two hours of
ghastly carnage, the enemy were thrown out of the city. They fell back
to lie in Walker’s path as he came to the rescue. Walker saw the trap,
carried it with a charge, drove Zavala back into the city, broke him
between two fires, then sent a detachment to intercept his flight. In
this double battle, fighting eight times his own force, Walker killed
half the allied army.
But the pressure of several invasions at once was making it impossible
for Walker to keep his communication open with the sea while he held
his capital. Granada, the most beautiful of all Central American
cities, must be abandoned, and, lest the enemy win the place, it must
be destroyed. So Walker withdrew his sick men to an island in the big
Lake Nicaragua; while Henningsen, an Englishman, his second in command,
burned and abandoned the capital.
But now, while the city burst into flames, and the smoke went up as
from a volcano, the American garrison broke loose, rifled the liquor
stores and lay drunk in the blazing streets, so the allied army swooped
down, cutting off the retreat to the lake. Henningsen, veteran of the
Carlist and Hungarian revolts, a knight errant of lost causes, took
three weeks to fight his way three miles, before Walker could cover
his embarkment on the lake. There had been four hundred men in the
garrison, but only one hundred and fifty answered the roll-call in
their refuge on the Isle of Omotepe. In the plaza of the capital city
they had planted a spear, and on the spear hung a rawhide with this
inscription:--
“Here was Granada!”
In taking that heap of blackened ruins four thousand out of six
thousand of the allies had perished; but even they were more fortunate
than a Costa Rican army of invasion, which killed fifty of the
filibusters, at a cost of ten thousand men slain by war and pestilence.
It always worked out that the killing of one filibuster cost on the
average eight of his adversaries.
Four months followed of confused fighting, in which the Americans
slowly lost ground, until at last they were besieged in the town of
Rivas, melting the church bells for cannon-balls, dying at their posts
of starvation. The neighboring town of San Jorge was held by two
thousand Costa Ricans, and these Walker attempted to dislodge. His
final charge was made with fifteen men into the heart of the town. No
valor could win against such odds, and the orderly retreat began on
Rivas. Two hundred men lay in ambush to take Walker at a planter’s
house by the wayside, and as he rode wearily at the head of his men
they opened fire from cover at a range of fifteen yards. Walker reined
in his horse, fired six revolver-shots into the windows, then rode on
quietly erect while the storm of lead raged about him, and saddle after
saddle was emptied. A week afterward the allies assaulted Rivas, but
left six hundred men dead in the field, so terrific was the fire from
the ramparts.
It was in these days that a British naval officer came under flag of
truce from the coast to treat for Walker’s surrender.
“I presume, sir,” was the filibuster’s greeting, “that you have come to
apologize for the outrage offered to my flag, and to the commander of
the Nicaraguan schooner-of-war _Granada_.”
“If they had another schooner,” said the Englishman afterward, “I
believe they would have declared war on Great Britain.”
Then the United States navy treated with this peppery little lawyer,
and on the first of May, 1857, he grudgingly consented to being rescued.
During his four years’ fight for empire, Walker had enlisted three
thousand five hundred Americans--and the proportion of wounds was one
hundred and thirty-seven for every hundred men. A thousand fell. The
allied republics had twenty-one thousand soldiers and ten thousand
Indians--and lost fifteen thousand killed.
Two years later, Walker set out again with a hundred men to conquer
Central America, in defiance of the British and United States
squadrons, sent to catch him, and in the teeth of five armed republics.
He was captured by the British, shot by Spanish Americans upon a sea
beach in Honduras, and so perished, fearless to the end.
XVI
A. D. 1857
BUFFALO BILL
The Mormons are a sect of Christians with some queer ideas, for they
drink no liquor, hold all their property in common, stamp out any
member who dares to think or work for himself, and believe that the
more wives a man has the merrier he will be. The women, so far as I met
them are like fat cows, the men a slovenly lot, and not too honest, but
they are hard workers and first-rate pioneers.
Because they made themselves unpopular they were persecuted, and fled
from the United States into the desert beside the Great Salt Lake.
There they got water from the mountain streams and made their land a
garden. They only wanted to be left alone in peace, but that was a poor
excuse for slaughtering emigrants. Murdering women and children is not
in good taste.
The government sent an army to attend to these saints, but the soldiers
wanted food to eat, and the Mormons would not sell, so provisions had
to be sent a thousand miles across the wilderness to save the starving
troops. So we come to the herd of beef cattle which in May, 1857, was
drifting from the Missouri River, and to the drovers’ camp beside the
banks of the Platte.
A party of red Indians on the war-path found that herd and camp; they
scalped the herders on guard, stampeded the cattle and rushed the
camp, so that the white men were driven to cover under the river bank.
Keeping the Indians at bay with their rifles, the party marched for the
settlements wading, sometimes swimming, while they pushed a raft that
carried a wounded man. Always a rear guard kept the Indians from coming
too near. And so the night fell.
“I, being the youngest and smallest,” says one of them, “had fallen
behind the others.... When I happened to look up to the moonlit sky,
and saw the plumed head of an Indian peeping over the bank.... I
instantly aimed my gun at his head, and fired. The report rang out
sharp and loud in the night air, and was immediately followed by an
Indian whoop; and the next moment about six feet of dead Indian came
tumbling into the river. I was not only overcome with astonishment, but
was badly scared, as I could hardly realize what I had done.”
Back came Frank McCarthy, the leader, with all his men. “Who fired that
shot?”
“I did.”
“Yes, and little Billy has killed an Indian stone-dead--too dead to
skin!”
At the age of nine Billy Cody had taken the war-path.
In those days the army had no luck. When the government sent a herd
of cattle the Indians got the beef, and the great big train of
seventy-five wagons might just as well have been addressed to the
Mormons, who burned the transport, stole the draft oxen and turned the
teamsters, including little Billy, loose in the mountains, where they
came nigh starving. The boy was too thin to cast a shadow when in the
spring he set out homeward across the plains with two returning trains.
One day these trains were fifteen miles apart when Simpson, the wagon
boss, with George Woods, a teamster, and Billy Cody, set off riding
mules from the rear outfit to catch up the teams in front. They were
midway when a war party of Indians charged at full gallop, surrounding
them, but Simpson shot the three mules and used their carcasses to make
a triangular fort. The three whites, each with a rifle and a brace of
revolvers were more than a match for men with bows and arrows, and the
Indians lost so heavily that they retreated out of range. That gave
the fort time to reload, but the Indians charged again, and this time
Woods got an arrow in the shoulder. Once more the Indians retired to
consult, while Simpson drew the arrow from Woods’ shoulder, plugging
the hole with a quid of chewing tobacco. A third time the Indians
charged, trying to ride down the stockade, but they lost a man and a
horse. Four warriors had fallen now in this battle with two men and a
little boy, but the Indians are a painstaking, persevering race, so
they waited until nightfall and set the grass on fire. But the whites
had been busy with knives scooping a hole from whence the loose earth
made a breastwork over the dead mules, so that the flames could not
reach them, and they had good cover to shoot from when the Indians
charged through the smoke. After that both sides had a sleep, and at
dawn they were fresh for a grand charge, handsomely repulsed. The
redskins sat down in a ring to starve the white men out, and great was
their disappointment when Simpson’s rear train of wagons marched to the
rescue. The red men did not stay to pick flowers.
It seems like lying to state that at the age of twelve Billy Cody began
to take rank among the world’s great horsemen, and yet he rode on the
pony express, which closed in 1861, his fourteenth year.
The trail from the Missouri over the plains, the deserts and the
mountains into California was about two thousand miles through a
country infested with gangs of professional robbers and hostile Indian
tribes. The gait of the riders averaged twelve miles an hour, which
means a gallop, to allow for the slow work in mountain passes. There
were one hundred ninety stations at which the riders changed ponies
without breaking their run, and each must be fit and able for one
hundred miles a day in time of need. Pony Bob afterward had contracts
by which he rode one hundred miles a day for a year.
Now, none of the famous riders of history, like Charles XII, of Sweden;
Dick, King of Natal, or Dick Turpin, of England, made records to beat
the men of the pony express, and in that service Billy was counted a
hero. He is outclassed by the Cossack Lieutenant Peschkov, who rode one
pony at twenty-eight miles a day the length of the Russian empire, from
Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, and by Kit Carson who with one horse
rode six hundred miles in six days. There are branches of horsemanship,
too, in which he would have been proud to take lessons from Lord
Lonsdale, or Evelyn French, but Cody is, as far as I have seen, of all
white men incomparable for grace, for beauty of movement, among the
horsemen of the modern world.
But to turn back to the days of the boy rider.
“One day,” he writes, “when I galloped into my home station I found
that the rider who was expected to take the trip out on my arrival had
gotten into a drunken row the night before, and had been killed.... I
pushed on ... entering every relay station on time, and accomplished
the round trip of three hundred twenty-two miles back to Red Buttes
without a single mishap, and on time. This stands on the record as
being the longest pony express journey ever made.”
One of the station agents has a story to tell of this ride, made
without sleep, and with halts of only a few minutes for meals. News had
leaked out of a large sum of money to be shipped by the express, and
Cody, expecting robbers, rolled the treasure in his saddle blanket,
filling the official pouches with rubbish. At the best place for an
ambush two men stepped out on to the trail, halting him with their
muskets. As he explained, the pouches were full of rubbish, but the
road agents knew better. “Mark my words,” he said as he unstrapped,
“you’ll hang for this.”
“We’ll take chances on that, Bill.”
“If you will have them, take them!” With that he hurled the pouches,
and as robber number one turned to pick them up, robber number two had
his gun-arm shattered with the boy’s revolver-shot. Then with a yell he
rode down the stooping man, and spurring hard, got out of range unhurt.
He had saved the treasure, and afterward both robbers were hanged by
vigilantes.
Once far down a valley ahead Cody saw a dark object above a boulder
directly on his trail, and when it disappeared he knew he was caught
in an ambush. Just as he came into range he swerved wide to the right,
and at once a rifle smoked from behind the rock. Two Indians afoot
ran for their ponies while a dozen mounted warriors broke from the
timbered edge of the valley, racing to cut him off. One of these had a
war bonnet of eagle plumes, the badge of a chief, and his horse, being
the swiftest, drew ahead. All the Indians were firing, but the chief
raced Cody to head him off at a narrow pass of the valley. The boy was
slightly ahead, and when the chief saw that the white rider would have
about thirty yards to spare he fitted an arrow, drawing for the shot.
But Cody, swinging round in the saddle, lashed out his revolver, and
the chief, clutching at the air, fell, rolling over like a ball as he
struck the ground. At the chief’s death-cry a shower of arrows from the
rear whizzed round the boy, one slightly wounding his pony who, spurred
by the pain, galloped clear, leaving the Indians astern in a ten mile
race to the next relay.
After what seems to the reader a long life of adventure, Mr. Cody had
just reached the age of twenty-two when a series of wars broke out
with the Indian tribes, and he was attached to the troops as a scout.
A number of Pawnee Indians who thought nothing of this white man,
were also serving. They were better trackers, better interpreters and
thought themselves better hunters. One day a party of twenty had been
running buffalo, and made a bag of thirty-two head when Cody got leave
to attack a herd by himself. Mounted on his famous pony Buckskin Joe
he made a bag of thirty-six head on a half-mile run, and his name was
Buffalo Bill from that time onward.
That summer he led a squadron of cavalry that attacked six hundred
Sioux, and in that fight against overwhelming odds he brought down a
chief at a range of four hundred yards, in those days a very long shot.
His victim proved to be Tall Bull, one of the great war leaders of
the Sioux. The widow of Tall Bull was proud that her husband had been
killed by so famous a warrior as Prairie Chief, for that was Cody’s
name among the Indians.
There is one very nice story about the Pawnee scouts. A new general had
taken command who must have all sorts of etiquette proper to soldiers.
It was all very well for the white sentries to call at intervals of the
night from post to post: “Post Number One, nine o’clock, all’s well!”
“Post Number Two, etc.”
But when the Pawnee sentries called, “Go to hell, I don’t care!” well,
the practise had to be stopped.
Of Buffalo Bill’s adventures in these wars the plain record would only
take one large volume, but he was scouting in company with Texas Jack,
John Nelson, Belden, the White Chief, and so many other famous frontier
heroes, each needing at least one book volume, that I must give the
story up as a bad job. At the end of the Sioux campaign Buffalo Bill
was chief of scouts with the rank of colonel.
[Illustration: COLONEL CODY
(“Buffalo Bill”)]
In 1876, General Custer, with a force of nearly four hundred cavalry,
perished in an attack on the Sioux, and the only survivor was his
pet boy scout, Billy Jackson, who got away at night disguised as an
Indian. Long afterward Billy, who was one of God’s own gentlemen,
told me that story while we sat on a grassy hillside watching a great
festival of the Blackfeet nation.
After the battle in which Custer--the Sun Child--fell, the big Sioux
army scattered, but a section of it was rounded up by a force under the
guidance of Buffalo Bill.
“One of the Indians,” he says, “who was handsomely decorated with all
the ornaments usually worn by a war chief ... sang out to me ‘I know
you, Prairie Chief; if you want to fight come ahead and fight me!’
“The chief was riding his horse back and forth in front of his men, as
if to banter me, and I accepted the challenge. I galloped toward him
for fifty yards and he advanced toward me about the same distance, both
of us riding at full speed, and then when we were only about thirty
yards apart I raised my rifle and fired. His horse fell to the ground,
having been killed by my bullet. Almost at the same instant my horse
went down, having stepped in a gopher-hole. The fall did not hurt me
much, and I instantly sprang to my feet. The Indian had also recovered
himself, and we were now both on foot, and not more than twenty paces
apart. We fired at each other simultaneously. My usual luck did not
desert me on this occasion, for his bullet missed me, while mine struck
him in the breast. He reeled and fell, but before he had fairly touched
the ground I was upon him, knife in hand, and had driven the keen-edged
weapon to its hilt in his heart. Jerking his war-bonnet off, I
scientifically scalped him in about five seconds....
“The Indians came charging down upon me from a hill in hopes of
cutting me off. General Merritt ... ordered ... Company K to hurry
to my rescue. The order came none too soon.... As the soldiers came
up I swung the Indian chieftain’s topknot and bonnet in the air, and
shouted: ‘The first scalp for Custer!’”
Far up to the northward, Sitting Bull, with the war chief Spotted Tail
and about three thousand warriors fled from the scene of the Custer
massacre. And as they traveled on the lonely plains they came to a
little fort with the gates closed. “Open your gates and hand out your
grub,” said the Indians.
“Come and get the grub,” answered the fort.
So the gates were thrown open and the three thousand warriors stormed
in to loot the fort. They found only two white men standing outside a
door, but all round the square the log buildings were loopholed and
from every hole stuck out the muzzle of a rifle. The Indians were
caught in such a deadly trap that they ran for their lives back to camp.
Very soon news reached the Blackfeet that their enemies the Sioux were
camped by the new fort at Wood Mountain, so the whole nation marched to
wipe them out, and Sitting Bull appealed for help to the white men. “Be
good,” said the fort, “and nobody shall hurt you.”
So the hostile armies camped on either side, and the thirty white men
kept the peace between them. One day the Sioux complained that the
Blackfeet had stolen fifty horses. So six of the white men were sent
to the Blackfoot herd to bring the horses back. They did not know which
horses to select so they drove off one hundred fifty for good measure
straight at a gallop through the Blackfoot camp, closely pursued by
that indignant nation. Barely in time they ran the stock within the
fort, and slammed the gates home in the face of the raging Blackfeet.
They were delighted with themselves until the officer commanding fined
them a month’s pay each for insulting the Blackfoot nation.
The winter came, the spring and then the summer, when those thirty
white men arrived at the Canada-United States boundary where they
handed over three thousand Sioux prisoners to the American troops. From
that time the redcoats of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police of Canada
have been respected on the frontier.
And now came a very wonderful adventure. Sitting Bull, the leader
of the Sioux nation who had defeated General Custer’s division and
surrendered his army to thirty Canadian soldiers, went to Europe to
take part in a circus personally conducted by the chief of scouts of
the United States Army, Buffalo Bill. Poor Sitting Bull was afterward
murdered by United States troops in the piteous massacre of Wounded
Knee. Buffalo Bill for twenty-six years paraded Europe and America
with his gorgeous Wild West show, slowly earning the wealth which he
lavished in the founding of Cody City, Wyoming.
Toward the end of these tours I used to frequent the show camp much
like a stray dog expecting to be kicked, would spend hours swapping
lies with the cowboys in the old Deadwood Coach, or sit at meat with
the colonel and his six hundred followers. On the last tour the old man
was thrown by a bad horse at Bristol and afterward rode with two broken
bones in splints. Only the cowboys knew, who told me, as day by day I
watched him back his horse from the ring with all the old incomparable
grace.
He went back to build a million dollar irrigation ditch for his little
city on the frontier, and shortly afterward the newspapers reported
that my friends--the Buffalo Creek Gang of robbers--attacked his bank,
and shot the cashier. May civilization never shut out the free air of
the frontier while the old hero lives, in peace and honor, loved to the
end and worshiped by all real frontiersmen.
XVII
A. D. 1860
THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT
I
When the Eternal Father was making the earth, at one time He filled the
sea with swimming dragons, the air with flying dragons, and the land
with hopping dragons big as elephants; but they were not a success, and
so He swept them all away. After that he filled the southern continents
with a small improved hopping dragon, that laid no eggs, but carried
the baby in a pouch. There were queer half-invented fish, shadeless
trees, and furry running birds like the emu and the moa. Then He
swamped that southern world under the sea, and moved the workshop to
our northern continents. But He left New Zealand and Australia just as
they were, a scrap of the half-finished world with furry running birds,
the hopping kangaroo, the shadeless trees, and half-invented fish.
So when the English went to Australia it was not an ordinary voyage,
but a journey backward through the ages, through goodness only knows
how many millions of years to the fifth day of creation. It was like
visiting the moon or Mars. To live and travel in such a strange land a
man must be native born, bush raised, and cunning at that, on pain of
death by famine.
The first British settlers, too, were convicts. The laws were so bad in
England that a fellow might be deported merely for giving cheek to a
judge; and the convicts on the whole were very decent people, brutally
treated in the penal settlements. They used to escape to the bush,
and runaway convicts explored Australia mainly in search of food. One
of them, in Tasmania, used, whenever he escaped, to take a party with
him and eat them one by one, until he ran short of food and had to
surrender.
Later on gold was discovered, and free settlers drifted in, filling the
country, but the miners and the farmers were too busy earning a living
to do much exploration. So the exploring fell to English gentlemen,
brave men, but hopeless tenderfeet, who knew nothing of bushcraft and
generally died of hunger or thirst in districts where the native-born
colonial grows rich to-day.
Edgar John Eyre, for instance, a Yorkshireman, landed in Sydney at the
age of sixteen, and at twenty-five was a rich sheep-farmer, appointed
by government protector of the black fellows. In 1840 the colonists
of South Australia wanted a trail for drifting sheep into Western
Australia, and young Eyre, from what he had learned among the savages,
said the scheme was all bosh, in which he was perfectly right. He
thought that the best line for exploring was northward, and set out
to prove his words, but got tangled up in the salt bogs surrounding
Torrens, and very nearly lost his whole party in an attempt to wade
across. After that failure he felt that he had wasted the money
subscribed in a wildcat project, so to make good set out again to find
a route for sheep along the waterless south coast of the continent. He
knew the route was impossible, but it is a poor sort of courage that
has to feed on hope, and the men worth having are those who leave their
hopes behind to march light while they do their duty.
Eyre’s party consisted of himself and his ranch foreman Baxter, a
favorite black boy Wylie, who was his servant, and two other natives
who had been on the northward trip. They had nine horses, a pony, six
sheep, and nine weeks’ rations on the pack animals.
The first really dry stage was one hundred twenty-eight miles without
a drop of water, and it was not the black fellows, but Eyre, the
tenderfoot, who went ahead and found the well that saved them. The
animals died off one by one, so that the stores had to be left behind,
and there was no food but rotten horse-flesh which caused dysentery, no
water save dew collected with a sponge from the bushes after the cold
nights. The two black fellows deserted, but after three days came back
penitent and starving, thankful to be reinstated.
These black fellows did not believe the trip was possible, they wanted
to go home, they thought the expedition well worth plundering, and so
one morning while Eyre was rounding up the horses they shot Baxter,
plundered the camp and bolted. Only Eyre and his boy Wylie were left,
but if they lived the deserters might be punished. So the two black
fellows, armed with Baxter’s gun, tried to hunt down Eyre and his boy
with a view to murder. They came so near at night that Eyre once heard
them shout to Wylie to desert. Eyre and the boy stole off, marching so
rapidly that the murderers were left behind and perished.
A week later, still following the coast of the Great Bight, Wylie
discovered a French ship lying at anchor, and the English skipper fed
the explorers for a fortnight until they were well enough to go on.
Twenty-three more days of terrible suffering brought Eyre and his boy,
looking like a brace of scarecrows, to a hilltop overlooking the town
of Albany. They had reached Western Australia, the first travelers to
cross from the eastern to the western colonies.
In after years Eyre was governor of Jamaica.
II
Australia, being the harshest country on earth, breeds the hardiest
pioneers, horsemen, bushmen, trackers, hunters, scouts, who find
the worst African or American travel a sort of picnic. The bushie
is disappointing to town Australians because he has no swank, and
nothing of the brilliant picturesqueness of the American frontiersman.
He is only a tall, gaunt man, lithe as a whip, with a tongue like a
whip-lash; and it is on bad trips or in battle that one finds what he
is like inside, a most knightly gentleman with a vein of poetry.
Anyway the Melbourne people were cracked in 1860 when they wanted an
expedition to cross Australia northward, and instead of appointing
bushmen for the job selected tenderfeet. Burke was an Irishman, late
of the Hungarian cavalry, and the Royal Irish Constabulary, serving as
an officer in the Victorian police. Wills was a Devon man, with some
frontier training on the sheep runs, but had taken to astronomy and
surveying. There were several other white men, and three Afghans with a
train of camels.
They left Melbourne with pomp and circumstance, crossed Victoria
through civilized country, and made a base camp on the Darling River
at Menindie. There Burke sacked two mutinous followers and his doctor
scuttled in a funk, so he took on Wright, an old settler who knew
the way to Cooper’s Creek four hundred miles farther on. Two hundred
miles out Wright was sent back to bring up stores from Menindie, while
the expedition went on to make an advanced base at Cooper’s Creek.
Everything was to depend on the storage of food at that base.
While they were waiting for Wright to come up with their stores, Wills
and another man prospected ninety miles north from Cooper’s Creek to
the Stony Desert, a land of white quartz pebbles and polished red
sandstone chips. The explorer Sturt had been there, and come back
blind. No man had been beyond.
Wills, having mislaid his three camels, came back ninety miles afoot
without water, to find the whole expedition stuck at Cooper’s Creek,
waiting for stores. Mr. Wright at Menindie burned time, wasting six
weeks before he attempted to start with the stores, and Burke at last
could bear the delay no longer. There were thunder-storms giving
promise of abundant water for once in the northern desert, so Burke
marched with Wills, King and Gray, taking a horse and six camels.
William Brahe was left in charge at the camp at Cooper’s Creek, to
remain with ample provisions until Wright turned up, but not to leave
except in dire extremity.
Burke’s party crossed the glittering Stony Desert, and watching the
birds who always know the way to water, they came to a fine lake, where
they spent Christmas day. Beyond that they came to the Diamantina and
again there was water. The country improved, there were northward
flowing streams to cheer them on their way, and at last they came to
salt water at the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. They had crossed the
continent from south to north.
With blithe hearts they set out on their return, and if they had to
kill the camels for food, then to eat snakes, which disagreed with
them, still there would be plenty when they reached Cooper’s Creek.
Gray complained of being ill, but pilfering stores is not a proper
symptom of any disease, so Burke gave him a thrashing by way of
medicine. When he died, they delayed one day for his burial; one day
too much, for when they reached Cooper’s Creek they were just nine
hours late. Thirty-one miles they made in the last march and reeled
exhausted into an empty camp ground. Cut in the bark of a tree were the
words “Dig, 21 April 1861.” They dug a few inches into the earth where
they found a box of provisions, and a bottle containing a letter.
“The depot party of the V. E. E. leave this camp to-day to return to
the Darling. I intend to go S. E. from camp sixty miles to get into our
old track near Bulloo. Two of my companions and myself are quite well;
the third, Patten, has been unable to walk for the last eighteen days,
as his leg has been severely hurt when thrown from one of the horses.
No person has been up here from Darling. We have six camels and twelve
horses in good working condition. William Brahe.”
It would be hopeless with two exhausted camels to try and catch up
with that march. Down Cooper’s Creek one hundred fifty miles the South
Australian Mounted Police had an outpost, and the box of provisions
would last out that short journey.
They were too heart-sick to make an inscription on the tree, but left
a letter in the bottle, buried. A few days later Brahe returned with
the industrious Mr. Wright and his supply train. Here is the note in
Wright’s diary:--
“May eighth. This morning I reached the Cooper’s Creek depot and found
no sign of Mr. Burke’s having visited the creek, or the natives having
disturbed the stores.”
Only a few miles away the creek ran out into channels of dry sand
where Burke, Wills and King were starving, ragged beggars fed by the
charitable black fellows on fish and a seed called nardoo, of which
they made their bread. There were nice fat rats also, delicious baked
in their skins, and the natives brought them fire-wood for the camp.
Again they attempted to reach the Mounted Police outpost, but the
camels died, the water failed, and they starved. Burke sent Wills back
to Cooper’s Creek. “No trace,” wrote Wills in his journal, “of any one
except the blacks having been here since we left.” Brahe and Wright had
left no stores at the camp ground.
Had they only been bushmen the tracks would have told Wills of help
within his reach, the fish hooks would have won them food in plenty.
It is curious, too, that Burke died after a meal of crow and nardoo,
there being neither sugar nor fat in these foods, without which they
can not sustain a man’s life. Then King left Burke’s body, shot three
crows and brought them to Wills, who was lying dead in camp. Three
months afterward a relief party found King living among the natives
“wasted to a shadow, and hardly to be distinguished as a civilized
being but by the remnants of the clothes upon him.”
“They should not have gone,” said one pioneer of these lost explorers.
“They weren’t bushmen.” Afterward a Mr. Collis and his wife lived four
years in plenty upon the game and fish at the Innaminka water-hole
where poor Burke died of hunger.
Such were the first crossings from east to west, and from south to
north of the Australian continent.
XVIII
A. D. 1867
THE HERO-STATESMAN
There is no greater man now living in the world than Diaz the
hero-statesman, father of Mexico. What other soldier has scored
fourteen sieges and fifty victorious battles? What other statesman,
having fought his way to the throne, has built a civilized nation out
of chaos?
This Spanish-red Indian half-breed began work at the age of seven
as errand boy in a shop. At fourteen he was earning his living as a
private tutor while he worked through college for the priesthood. At
seventeen he was a soldier in the local militia and saw his country
overthrown by the United States, which seized three-fourths of all her
territories. At the age of twenty-one, Professor Diaz, in the chair of
Roman law at Oaxaca, was working double tides as a lawyer’s clerk.
In the Mexican “republic” it is a very serious offense to vote for the
Party-out-of-office, and the only way to support the opposition is to
get out with a rifle and fight. So when Professor Diaz voted at the
next general election he had to fly for his life. After several months
of hard fighting he emerged from his first revolution as mayor of a
village.
The villagers were naked Indians, and found their new mayor an
unexpected terror. He drilled them into soldiers, marched them to his
native city Oaxaca, captured the place by assault, drove out a local
usurper who was making things too hot for the citizens, and then amid
the wild rejoicings that followed, was promoted to a captaincy in the
national guards.
Captain Diaz explained to his national guards that they were fine men,
but needed a little tactical exercise. So he took them out for a gentle
course of maneuvers, to try their teeth on a rebellion which happened
to be camped conveniently in the neighborhood. When he had finished
exercising his men, there was no rebellion left, so he marched them
home. He had to come home because he was dangerously wounded.
It must be explained that there were two big political parties, the
clericals, and the liberals--both pledged to steal everything in sight.
Diaz was scarcely healed of his wound, when a clerical excursion came
down to steal the city. He thrashed them sick, he chased them until
they dropped, and thrashed them again until they scattered in helpless
panic.
The liberal president rewarded Colonel Diaz with a post of such eminent
danger, that he had to fight for his life through two whole years
before he could get a vacation. Then Oaxaca, to procure him a holiday,
sent up the young soldier as member of parliament to the capital.
Of course the clerical army objected strongly to the debates of a
liberal congress sitting in parliament at the capital. They came and
spoiled the session by laying siege to the City of Mexico. Then the
member for Oaxaca was deputed to arrange with these clericals.
He left his seat in the house, gathered his forces, and chased that
clerical army for two months. At last, dead weary, the clericals had
camped for supper, when Diaz romped in and thrashed them. He got that
supper.
So disgusted were the clerical leaders that they now invited Napoleon
III to send an army of invasion. Undismayed, the unfortunate liberals
fought a joint army of French and clericals, checked them under the
snows of Mount Orizaba, and so routed them before the walls of Puebla
that it was nine months before they felt well enough to renew the
attack. The day of that victory is celebrated by the Mexicans as their
great national festival.
In time, the French, forty thousand strong, not to mention their
clerical allies, returned to the assault of Puebla, and in front of
the city found Diaz commanding an outpost. The place was only a large
rest-house for pack-trains, and when the outer gate was carried,
the French charged in with a rush. One man remained to defend the
courtyard, Colonel Diaz, with a field-piece, firing shrapnel, mowing
away the French in swathes until his people rallied from their panic,
charged across the square, and recovered the lost gates.
The city held out for sixty days, but succumbed to famine, and the
French could not persuade such a man as Diaz to give them any parole.
They locked him up in a tower, and his dungeon had but a little
iron-barred window far up in the walls. Diaz got through those bars,
escaped, rallied a handful of Mexicans, armed them by capturing a
French convoy camp, raised the southern states of Mexico, and for two
years held his own against the armies of France.
President Juarez had been driven away into the northern desert, a
fugitive, the Emperor Maximilian reigned in the capital, and Marshal
Bazaine commanded the French forces that tried to conquer Diaz in the
south. The Mexican hero had three thousand men and a chain of forts.
Behind that chain of forts he was busy reorganizing the government of
the southern states, and among other details, founding a school for
girls in his native city.
Marshal Bazaine, the traitor, who afterward sold France to the Germans,
attempted to bribe Diaz, but, failing in that, brought nearly fifty
thousand men to attack three thousand. Slowly he drove the unfortunate
nationalists to Oaxaca and there Diaz made one of the most glorious
defenses in the annals of war. He melted the cathedral bells for
cannon-balls, he mounted a gun in the empty belfry, where he and his
starving followers fought their last great fight, until he stood alone
among the dead, firing charge after charge into the siege lines.
Once more he was cast into prison, only to make such frantic attempts
at escape that in the end he succeeded in scaling an impossible wall.
He was an outlaw now, living by robbery, hunted like a wolf, and yet on
the second day after that escape, he commanded a gang of bandits and
captured a French garrison. He ambuscaded an expedition sent against
him, raised an army, and reconquered Southern Mexico.
[Illustration: PORFIRIO DIAZ]
It was then (1867) that the United States compelled the French to
retire. President Juarez marched from the northern deserts, gathering
the people as he came, besieged Querétaro, captured and shot the
Emperor Maximilian. Diaz marched from the south, entered the City of
Mexico, handed over the capital to his triumphant president, resigned
his commission as commander-in-chief, and retired in deep contentment
to manufacture sugar in Oaxaca.
For nine years the hero made sugar. Over an area in the north as large
as France, the Apache Indians butchered every man, woman and child
with fiendish tortures. The whole distracted nation cried in its agony
for a leader, but every respectable man who tried to help was promptly
denounced by the government, stripped of his possessions and driven
into exile. At last General Diaz could bear it no longer, made a few
remarks and was prosecuted. He fled, and there began a period of the
wildest adventures conceivable, while the government attempted to hunt
him down. He raised an insurrection in the north, but after a series
of extraordinary victories, found the southward march impossible. When
next he entered the republic of Mexico, he came disguised as a laborer
by sea to the port of Tampico.
At Vera Cruz he landed, and after a series of almost miraculous escapes
from capture, succeeded in walking to Oaxaca. There he raised his last
rebellion, and with four thousand followers ambuscaded a government
army, taking three thousand prisoners, the guns and all the transport.
President Lerdo heard the news, and bolted with all the cash. General
Diaz took the City of Mexico and declared himself president of the
republic.
Whether as bandit or king, Diaz has always been the handsomest man
in Mexico, the most courteous, the most charming, and terrific as
lightning when in action. The country suffered from a very plague of
politicians until one day he dropped in as a visitor, quite unexpected,
at Vera Cruz, selected the eleven leading politicians without the
slightest bias as to their views, put them up against the city wall and
shot them. Politics was abated.
The leading industry of the country was highway robbery, until the
president, exquisitely sympathetic, invited all the principal robbers
to consult with him as to details of government. He formed them into
a body of mounted police, which swept like a whirlwind through the
republic and put a sudden end to brigandage. Capital punishment not
being permitted by the humane government, the robbers were all shot for
“attempting to escape.”
Next in importance was the mining of silver, and the recent decline in
its value threatened to ruin Mexico. By the magic of his finance, Diaz
used that crushing reverse to lace the country with railroads, equip
the cities with electric lights and traction power far in advance of
any appliances we have in England, open great seaports, and litter all
the states of Mexico with prosperous factories. Meanwhile he paid off
the national debt, and made his coinage sound.
He never managed himself to speak any other language than his own
majestic, slow Castilian, but he knew that English is to be the tongue
of mankind. Every child in Mexico had to go to school to learn English.
And this greatest of modern sovereigns went about among his people the
simplest, most accessible of men. “They may kill me if they want to,”
he said once, “but they don’t want to. They rather like me.” So one
might see him taking his morning ride, wearing the beautiful leather
dress of the Mexican horsemen, or later in the day, in a tweed suit
going down to the office by tram car, or on his holidays hunting the
nine-foot cats which we call cougar, or of a Sunday going to church
with his wife and children. On duty he was an absolute monarch, off
duty a kindly citizen, and it seemed to all of us who knew the country
that he would die as he had lived, still in harness. One did not expect
too much--the so-called elections were a pleasant farce, but the
country was a deal better governed than the western half of the United
States. Any fellow entitled to a linen collar in Europe wore a revolver
in Mexico, as part of the dress of a gentleman, but in the wildest
districts I never carried a cartridge. Diaz had made his country a land
of peace and order, strong, respected, prosperous, with every outward
sign of coming greatness. Excepting only Napoleon and the late Japanese
emperor, he was both in war and peace the greatest leader our world has
ever known. But the people proved unworthy of their chief; to-day he is
a broken exile, and Mexico has lapsed back into anarchy.
XIX
A. D. 1870
THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
A lady who remembers John Rowlands at the workhouse school in Denbigh
tells me that he was a lazy disagreeable boy. He is also described as a
“full-faced, stubborn, self-willed, round-headed, uncompromising, deep
fellow. He was particularly strong in the trunk, but not very smart
or elegant about the legs, which were disproportionately short. His
temperament was unusually secretive; he could stand no chaff nor the
least bit of humor.”
Perhaps that is why he ran away to sea; but anyway a sailing ship
landed him in New Orleans, where a rich merchant adopted him as a son.
Of course a workhouse boy has nothing to be patriotic about, so it was
quite natural that this Welsh youth should become a good American, also
that he should give up the name his mother bore, taking that of his
benefactor, Henry M. Stanley. The old man died, leaving him nothing,
and for two years there is no record until the American Civil War gave
him a chance of proving his patriotism to his adopted country. He was
so tremendously patriotic that he served on both sides, first in the
confederate army, then in the federal navy. He proved a very brave man,
and after the war, distinguished himself as a special correspondent
during an Indian campaign in the West. Then he joined the staff of the
New York _Herald_ serving in the Abyssinian War, and the civil war in
Spain. He allowed the _Herald_ to contradict a rumor that he was a
Welshman. “Mr. Stanley,” said the paper, “is neither an Ap-Jones, nor
an Ap-Thomas. Missouri and not Wales is his birthplace.”
Privately he spent his holidays with his mother and family in Wales,
speaking Welsh no doubt with a strong American accent. The whitewashed
American has always a piercing twang, even if he has adopted as his
“native” land, soft-voiced Missouri, or polished Louisiana.
In those days Doctor Livingstone was missing. The gentle daring
explorer had found Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, and to the westward
of them, a mile wide river, the Lualaba, which he supposed to be
headwaters of the Nile. He was slowly dying of fever, almost penniless,
and always when he reached the verge of some new discovery, his
cowardly negro carriers revolted, or ran away, leaving him to his fate.
No word of him had reached the world for years. England was anxious
as to the fate of one of her greatest men, so there were various
attempts to send relief, delayed by the expense, and not perhaps
handled by really first-rate men. To find Livingstone would be a most
tremendous world-wide advertisement, say for a patent-pill man, a soap
manufacturer, or a newspaper. All that was needed was unlimited cash,
and the services of a first-rate practical traveler, vulgar enough to
use the lost hero as so much “copy” for his newspaper. The New York
_Herald_ had the money, and in Stanley, the very man for the job.
Not that the _Herald_, or Stanley cared twopence about the fate of
Livingstone. The journal sent the man to make a big journey through
Asia Minor and Persia on his way to Zanzibar. The more Livingstone’s
rescue was delayed the better the “ad” for Stanley and the _Herald_.
As to the journey, Stanley’s story has been amply advertised, and
we have no other version because his white followers died. He found
Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, and had the grace to
reverence, comfort and succor a dying man.
As to Stanley’s magnificent feat of exploring the great lakes, and
descending Livingstone’s river to the mouth of the Congo, again his
story is well exploited while the version of his white followers is
missing, because they gave their lives.
In Stanley’s expedition which founded the Congo State, and in his
relief of Emin Pasha, the white men were more fortunate, and some
lived. It is rumored that they did not like Mr. Stanley, but his negro
followers most certainly adored him, serving in one journey after
another. There can be no doubt too, that with the unlimited funds that
financed and his own fine merits as a traveler, Stanley did more than
any other explorer to open up the dark continent, and to solve its
age-long mysteries. It was not his fault that Livingstone stayed on in
the wilderness to die, that the Congo Free State became the biggest
scandal of modern times, or that Emin Pasha flatly refused to be
rescued from governing the Soudan.
[Illustration: HENRY M. STANLEY]
Stanley lived to reap the rewards of his great deeds, to forget that
he was a native of Missouri and a freeborn American citizen, to accept
the honor of knighthood and to sit in the British parliament. Whether
as a Welshman, or an American, a confederate, or a federal, a Belgian
subject or a Britisher, he always knew on which side his bread was
buttered.
XX
A. D. 1871
LORD STRATHCONA
It is nearly a century now since Lord Strathcona was born in a Highland
cottage. His father, Alexander Smith, kept a little shop at Forres,
in Elgin; his mother, Barbara Stewart, knew while she reared the lad
that the world would hear of him. His school, founded by a returned
adventurer, was one which sent out settlers for the colonies, soldiers
for the army, miners for the gold-fields, bankers for England, men
to every corner of the world. As the lad grew, he saw the soldiers,
the sailors, the adventurers, who from time to time came tired home
to Forres, and among these was his uncle, John Stewart, famous in
the annals of the Canadian frontier, rich, distinguished, commending
all youngsters to do as he had done. When Donald Smith was in his
eighteenth year, this uncle procured him a clerkship in the Hudson’s
Bay Company.
Canada was in revolt when in 1837 the youngster reached Montreal, for
Robert Nelson had proclaimed a Canadian republic and the British troops
were busy driving the republicans into the United States. So there
was bloodshed, the burning of houses, the filling of the jails with
rebels to be convicted presently and hanged. Out of all this noise
and confusion, Donald Smith was sent into the silence of Labrador,
the unknown wilderness of the Northeast Territory, where the first
explorer, McLean, was searching for tribes of Eskimos that might be
induced to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. “In September (1838),”
wrote McLean, “I was gratified by the arrival of despatches from Canada
by a young clerk appointed to the district. By him we received the
first intelligence of the stirring events which had taken place in the
colonies during the preceding year.” So Smith had taken a year to carry
the news of the Canadian revolt to that remote camp of the explorers.
Henceforward, for many years there exists no public record of Donald
Smith’s career, and he has flatly refused to tell the story lest he
should appear to be advertising. His work consisted of trading with
the savages for skins, of commanding small outposts, healing the sick,
administering justice, bookkeeping, and of immense journeys by canoe
in summer, or cariole drawn by a team of dogs in winter. The winter is
arctic in that Northeast Territory, and a very pleasant season between
blizzards, but the summer is cursed with a plague of insects, black
flies by day, mosquitoes by night almost beyond endurance. Like other
men in the service of the company, Mr. Smith had the usual adventures
by flood and field, the peril of the snow-storms, the wrecking of
canoes. There is but one story extant. His eyesight seemed to be
failing, and after much pain he ventured on a journey of many months to
seek the help of a doctor in Montreal. Sir George Simpson, governor of
the company, met him in the outskirts of the city.
“Well, young man,” he said, “why are you not at your post?”
“My eyes, sir; they got so bad, I’ve come to see a doctor.”
“And who gave you permission to leave your post?”
“No one, sir.” It would have taken a year to get permission, and his
need was urgent.
“Then, sir,” answered the governor, “if it’s a question between your
eyes, and your service in the Hudson’s Bay Company, you’ll take my
advice, and return this instant to your post.”
Without another word, without a glance toward the city this man turned
on his tracks, and set off to tramp a thousand miles back to his duty.
The man who has learned to obey has learned to command, and wherever
Smith was stationed, the books were accurate, the trade was profitable.
He was not heard of save in the return of profits, while step by step
he rose to higher and higher command, until at the age of forty-eight
he was appointed governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, sovereign from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, reigning over a country nearly as large as
Europe. To his predecessors this had been the crowning of an ambitious
life; to him, it was only the beginning of his great career.
The Canadian colonies were then being welded into a nation and the
first act of the new Dominion government was to buy from the Hudson’s
Bay Company the whole of its enormous empire, two thousand miles wide
and nearly five thousand miles long. Never was there such a sale of
land, at such a price, for the cash payment worked out at about two
shillings per square mile. Two-thirds of the money went to the sleeping
partners of the company in England; one-third--thanks to Mr. Smith’s
persuasion--was granted to the working officers in Rupert’s Land. Mr.
Smith’s own share seems to have been the little nest egg from which his
fortune has hatched.
When the news of the great land sale reached the Red River of the
north, the people there broke out in revolt, set up a republic, and
installed Louis Riel as president at Fort Garry.
Naturally this did not meet the views of the Canadian government,
which had bought the country, or of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which
owned the stolen fort. Mr. Smith, governor of the company, was sent
at once as commissioner for the Canadian government to restore the
settlement to order. On his arrival the rebel president promptly put
him in jail, and openly threatened his life. In this awkward situation,
Mr. Smith contrived not only to stay alive, but to conduct a public
meeting, with President Riel acting as his interpreter to the French
half-breed rebels. The temperature at this outdoor meeting was twenty
degrees below zero, with a keen wind, but in course of five hours’
debating, Mr. Smith so undermined the rebel authority that from that
time it began to collapse. Afterward, although the rebels murdered
one prisoner, and times were more than exciting, Mr. Smith’s policy
gradually sapped the rebellion, until, when the present Lord Wolseley
arrived with British troops, Riel and his deluded half-breeds bolted.
So, thanks to Mr. Smith, Fort Garry is now Winnipeg, the central city
of Canada, capital of her central province, Manitoba.
But when Sir Donald Smith had resigned from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s
service, and became a politician, he schemed, with unheard-of daring,
for even greater ends. At his suggestion, the Northwest Mounted Police
was formed and sent out to take possession of the Great Plains. That
added a wheat field to Canada which will very soon be able to feed the
British empire. Next he speculated with every dollar he could raise,
on a rusty railway track, which some American builders had abandoned
because they were bankrupt. He got the rail head into Winnipeg, and
a large trade opened with the United States. So began the boom that
turned Manitoba into a populous country, where the buffalo had ranged
before his coming. Now he was able to startle the Canadian government
with the warning that unless they hurried up with a railway, binding
the whole Dominion from ocean to ocean, all this rich western country
would drift into the United States. When the government had failed in
an attempt to build the impossible railway, Sir Donald got Montreal
financiers together, cousins and friends of his own, staked every
dollar he had, made them gamble as heavily, and set to work on the
biggest road ever constructed. The country to be traversed was almost
unexplored, almost uninhabited except by savages, fourteen hundred
miles of rock and forest, a thousand miles of plains, six hundred miles
of high alps.
The syndicate building the road consisted of merchants in a provincial
town not bigger then than Bristol, and when they met for business it
was to wonder vaguely where the month’s pay was to come from for their
men. They would part for the night to think, and by morning, Donald
Smith would say, “Well, here’s another million--that ought to do for
a bit.” On November seven, 1885, he drove the last spike, the golden
spike, that completed the Canadian Pacific railway, and welded Canada
into a living nation.
Since then Lord Strathcona has endowed a university and given a big
hospital to Montreal. At a cost of three hundred thousand pounds he
presented the famous regiment known as Strathcona’s Horse, to the
service of his country, and to-day, in his ninety-third year is working
hard as Canadian high commissioner in London.
XXI
A. D. 1872
THE SEA HUNTERS
The Japanese have heroes and adventurers just as fine as our own, most
valiant and worthy knights. Unhappily I am too stupid to remember their
honorable names, to understand their motives, or to make out exactly
what they were playing at. It is rather a pity they have to be left
out, but at least we can deal with one very odd phase of adventure in
the Japan seas.
The daring seamen of old Japan used to think nothing of crossing
the Pacific to raid the American coast for slaves. But two or three
hundred years ago the reigning shogun made up his mind that slaving was
immoral. So he pronounced an edict by which the builders of junks were
forbidden to fill in their stern frame with the usual panels. The junks
were still good enough for coastwise trade at home, but if they dared
the swell of the outer ocean a following sea would poop them and send
them to the bottom. That put a stop to the slave trade; but no king
can prevent storms, and law or no law, disabled junks were sometimes
swept by the big black current and the westerly gales right across the
Pacific Ocean. The law made only one difference, that the crippled
junks never got back to Japan; and if their castaway seamen reached
America the native tribes enslaved them. I find that during the first
half of the nineteenth century the average was one junk in forty-two
months cast away on the coasts of America.
Now let us turn to another effect of this strange law that disabled
Japanese shipping. Northward of Japan are the Kuril Islands in a region
of almost perpetual fog, bad storms and bitter cold, ice pack, strong
currents and tide rips, combed by the fanged reefs, with plenty of
earthquakes and eruptions to allay any sense of monotony. The large and
hairy natives are called the Ainu, who live by fishing, and used to
catch sea otter and fur seal. These furs found their way via Japan to
China, where sea-otter fur was part of the costly official winter dress
of the Chinese mandarins. As to the seal, their whiskers are worth two
shillings a set for cleaning opium pipes, and one part of the carcass
sells at a shilling a time for medicine, apart from the worth of the
fur.
Now the law that disabled the junks made it impossible for Japan to do
much trade in the Kurils, so that the Russians actually got there first
as colonists.
But no law disabled the Americans, and when the supply of sea otter
failed on the Californian coast in 1872 a schooner called the _Cygnet_
crossed the Pacific to the Kuril Islands. There the sea-otters were
plentiful in the kelp beds, tame as cats and eager to inspect the
hunters’ boats. Their skins fetched from eighty to ninety dollars.
When news came to Japan of this new way of getting rich, a young
Englishman, Mr. H. J. Snow, bought a schooner, a hog-backed relic
called the _Swallow_ in which he set out for the hunting. Three days
out, a gale dismasted her, and putting in for shelter she was cast away
in the Kuriles. Mr. Snow’s second venture was likewise cast away on
a desert isle, where the crew wintered. “My vessels,” he says, “were
appropriately named. The _Swallow_ swallowed up part of my finances,
and the _Snowdrop_ caused me to drop the rest.”
During the winter another crew of white men were in quarters on a
distant headland of the same Island Yeturup, and were cooking their
Christmas dinner when they met with an accident. A dispute had arisen
between two rival cooks as to how to fry fritters, and during the
argument a pan of boiling fat capsized into the stove and caught
alight. The men escaped through the flames half dressed, their clothes
on fire, into the snow-clad wilderness and a shrewd wind. Then they set
up a shelter of driftwood with the burning ruin in front to keep them
warm, while they gravely debated as to whether they ought to cremate
the cooks upon the ashes of their home and of their Christmas dinner.
To understand the adventures of the sea hunters we must follow the
story of the leased islands. The Alaska Commercial Company, of San
Francisco, leased the best islands for seal and otter fishing. From
the United States the company leased the Pribilof Islands in Bering
Sea, a great fur-seal metropolis with a population of nearly four
millions. They had armed native gamekeepers and the help of an American
gunboat. From Russia the company leased Bering and Copper Islands off
Kamchatka, and Cape Patience on Saghalian with its outlier Robber
Island. There also they had native gamekeepers, a patrol ship, and the
help of Russian troops and gunboats. The company had likewise tame
newspapers to preach about the wickedness of the sea hunters and call
them bad names. As a rule the sea hunters did their hunting far out
at sea where it was perfectly lawful. At the worst they landed on the
forbidden islands as poachers. The real difference between the two
parties was that the sea hunters took all the risks, while the company
had no risks and took all the profits.
In 1883 Snow made his first raid on Bering Island. Night fell while his
crew were busy clubbing seals, and they had killed about six hundred
when the garrison rushed them. Of course the hunters made haste to
the boats, but Captain Snow missed his men who should have followed
him, and as hundreds of seals were taking to the water he joined them
until an outlying rock gave shelter behind which he squatted down,
waist-deep. When the landscape became more peaceful he set off along
the shore of boulders, stumbling, falling and molested by yapping
foxes. He had to throw rocks to keep them off. When he found the going
too bad he took to the hills, but sea boots reaching to the hips are
not comfy for long walks, and when he pulled them off he found how
surprisingly sharp are the stones in an Arctic tundra. He pulled them
on again, and after a long time came abreast of his schooner, where he
found one of the seamen. They hailed and a boat took them on board,
where the shipkeeper was found to be drunk, and the Japanese bos’n much
in need of a thrashing. Captain Snow supplied what was needed to the
bos’n and had a big supper, but could not sail as the second mate was
still missing. He turned in for a night’s rest.
Next morning bright and early came a company’s steamer with a Russian
officer and two soldiers who searched the schooner. There was not
a trace of evidence on board, but on general principles the vessel
was seized and condemned, all her people suffering some months of
imprisonment at Vladivostok.
In 1888, somewhat prejudiced against the virtuous company, Captain
Snow came with the famous schooner _Nemo_, back to the scene of his
misadventure. One morning with three boats he went prospecting for
otter close along shore, shot four, and his hunters one, then gave
the signal of return to the schooner. At that moment two shots rang
out from behind the boulders ashore, and a third, which peeled some
skin from his hand, followed by a fusillade like a hail storm. Of the
Japanese seamen in Snow’s boat the boat steerer was shot through the
backbone. A second man was hit first in one leg, then in the other,
but went on pulling. The stroke oar, shot in the calf, fell and lay,
seemingly dead, but really cautious. Then the other two men bent down
and Snow was shot in the leg.
So rapid was the firing that the guns ashore must have heated partly
melting the leaden bullets, for on board the boat there was a distinct
perfume of molten lead. Three of the bullets which struck the captain
seem to have been deflected by his woolen jersey, and one which
got through happened to strike a fold. It had been noted in the
Franco-Prussian War that woolen underclothes will sometimes turn
leaden bullets.
“I remember,” says Captain Snow, “weighing the chances ... of swimming
beside the boat, but decided that we should be just as liable to be
drowned as shot, as no one could stand the cold water for long. For the
greater part of the time I was vigorously plying my paddle ... and only
presenting the edge of my body, the left side, to the enemy. This is
how it was that the bullets which struck me all entered my clothing on
the left side. I expected every moment to be shot through the body, and
I could not help wondering how it would feel.”
With three dying men, and three wounded, he got the sinking boat under
sail and brought her alongside the schooner.
Of course it was very good of the Alaska Commercial Company to preserve
the wild game of the islands, but even gamekeepers may show excess of
zeal when it comes to wholesale murder. To all of us who were in that
trade it is a matter of keen regret that the officers ashore took such
good cover. Their guards, and the Cossacks, were kindly souls enough,
ready and willing--in the absence of the officers to sell skins to the
raiders or even, after some refreshments, to help in clubbing a few
hundred seals. It was rather awkward, though, for one of the schooners
at Cape Patience when in the midst of these festivities a gunboat came
round the corner.
The American and the Japanese schooners were not always quite good
friends, and there is a queer story of a triangular duel between three
vessels, fought in a fog. Mr. Kipling had the _Rhyme of the Three
Sealers_, he told me, from Captain Lake in Yokohama. I had it from
the mate of one of the three schooners, _The Stella_. She changed
her name to _Adele_, and the mate became master, a little, round,
fox-faced Norseman, Hans Hansen, of Christiania. In 1884 the _Adele_
was captured by an American gunboat and taken to San Francisco. Hansen
said that he and his men were marched through the streets shackled, and
great was the howl about pirates, but when the case came up for trial
the court had no jurisdiction, and the ship was released. From that
event dates the name “Yokohama Pirates,” and Hansen’s nickname as the
Flying Dutchman. Because at the time of capture he had for once been a
perfectly innocent deep sea sealer, he swore everlasting war against
the United States, transferred his ship to the port of Victoria,
British Columbia, and would hoist by turns the British, Japanese,
German, Norwegian or even American flag, as suited his convenience.
Once when I asked him why not the Black Flag, he grinned, remarking
that them old-fashioned pirates had no business sense. Year after
year he raided the forbidden islands to subvert the garrisons, rob
warehouses, or plunder the rookeries, while gunboats of four nations
failed to effect his capture. In port he was a pattern of innocent
virtue, at sea his superb seamanship made him as hard to catch as a
ghost, and his adventures beat the _Arabian Nights_. I was with him
as an ordinary seaman in the voyage of 1889, a winter raid upon the
Pribilof Islands. At the first attempt we clawed off a lee shore in a
hurricane, the second resulted in a mutiny, and the third landing was
not very successful, because the boats were swamped, and the garrison
a little too prevalent ashore. On the voyage of 1890 the _Adele_ took
four hundred skins, but in 1891 was cast away on the North Island
of the Queen Charlotte group, without any loss of life. The Flying
Dutchman took to mining on the outer coast of Vancouver, where he
rescued a shipwrecked crew, but afterward perished in the attempt to
save a drowning Indian.
Quite apart from the so-called Yokohama pirates, a large fleet of
law-abiding Canadian schooners hunted the fur seal at sea, a matter
which led to some slight unpleasantness between the American and the
British governments. There was hunting also in the seas about Cape
Horn; but the Yokohama schooners have left behind them by far the
finest memories. Captain Snow says that from first to last some fifty
white men’s schooners sailed out of Yokohama. Of five there is no
record, two took to sealing when the sea otter no longer paid, and four
were sold out of the business. The Russians sank one, captured and lost
two, captured and condemned three, all six being a dead loss to their
owners. For the rest, twenty-two were cast away, and twelve foundered
with all hands at sea, so that the total loss was forty ships out of
fifty. For daring seamanship and gallant adventure sea hunting made a
school of manhood hard to match in this tame modern world, and war is a
very tame affair to those who shared the fun.
XXII
A. D. 1879
THE BUSHRANGERS
It is a merit to love dumb animals, but to steal them is an excess of
virtue that is sure to cause trouble with the police. All Australians
have a passion for horses, but thirty years ago, the Australian bushmen
developed such a mania for horse-stealing, that the mounted police
were fairly run off their legs. The feeling between bushmen and police
became so exceedingly bitter that in 1878 a constable, attempting
to make arrests, was beset and wounded. The fight took place in the
house of a Mrs. Kelly, who got penal servitude, whereas her sons, Ned
and Dan, who did the actual shooting, escaped to the hills. A hundred
pounds were offered for their arrest.
Both of Mrs. Kelly’s sons were tainted, born and raised thieves. At
the age of sixteen Ned had served an apprenticeship in robbery under
arms with Power the bushranger, who described him as a cowardly young
brute. Now, in his twenty-fifth year he was far from brave. Dan, aged
seventeen, was a ferocious young wolf, but manly. As the brothers
lurked in hiding they were joined by Joe Byrne, aged twenty-one,
a gallant and sweet-tempered lad gone wrong, and by Steve Hart, a
despicable little cur. All four were superb as riders, scouts and
bushmen, fairly good shots, intimate with every inch of the country,
supported by hundreds of kinsmen and the sympathy of the people
generally in the war they had declared against the police.
In October, Sergeant Kennedy and three constables patroling in search
of the gang, were surprised by the outlaws in camp, and, as they showed
fight, Ned and Dan Kelly attacked them. Only one trooper escaped. At
this outrage, Byrne was horrified, Hart scared, but the Kellys forced
them to fire into Sergeant Kennedy’s corpse that they might share the
guilt. Then Ned Kelly, touched by the gallantry with which the sergeant
had fought, brought a cloak and reverently covered his body.
In December, the outlaws stuck up a sheep station, and robbed the bank
at Euroa.
In February, 1879, they surprised the police station at Jerilderie,
locked two policemen in the cells, disguised themselves as constables,
captured the town, imprisoning a crowd of people in the hotel, then
sacked the bank, and rode away shouting and singing with their plunder.
By this time the rewards offered for their capture amounted to eight
thousand pounds, and the whole strength of the Victoria police was
engaged, with native trackers, in hunting them. Had these wicked
robbers ever showed rudeness to a woman, or plundered a poor man, or
behaved meanly with their stolen wealth, they would have been betrayed
at once to the police, but the Australians are sportsmen, and there is
a gallantry in robbery under arms that appeals to misguided hearts.
The four bad men were so polite to all women, so kindly to unarmed
citizens, so humorous in their methods, so generous with their gold, so
daring in making war against a powerful British state, that they were
esteemed as heroes. Even bad heroes are better than none at all, and
they were not betrayed even by poor folk to whom the rewards would have
been a fortune. For two years they outwitted the whole force of police,
scouts and trackers at a cost to the state of one hundred fifteen
thousand pounds.
But with all this the best of Australian manhood was engaged in the
hunt, and the real heroes of this adventure were the police, who
made no moan through months of outrageous labor and suffering in the
mountains.
Superintendent Hare, in charge of the hunt, made friends with a kinsman
of the outlaws, a young horse-thief, named Aaron Sherritt. This lad
knew all the secrets of the outlaws, was like a brother to them, and
yet, so worshiped Mr. Hare that he served with the police as a spy.
In treachery to his kinsmen, he was at least faithful to his master,
knowing that he went to his own death.
He expected the outlaws to come by night to the house of Joe Byrne’s
mother, and led Mr. Hare’s patrol, which lay for the next month in
hiding upon a hill overlooking the homestead. Aaron was engaged to
Byrne’s sister, was daily at the house and slowly a dim suspicion
dawned on the outlaw’s mother. Then the old woman, uneasily searching
the hills, stumbled into the police bivouac, and saw Aaron Sherritt,
the spy, asleep in that company. His dress betrayed him to her, a
white shirt, breeches and long boots, impossible to mistake. And when
he knew what had happened, the lad turned white. “Now,” he muttered, “I
am a dead man.”
Mrs. Byrne sent the news of Aaron’s treachery to her outlawed son in
the hills. On June twenty-sixth, the spy was called out of his mother’s
cabin by some one who cried that he had lost his way. Aaron opened the
door, and Joe Byrne shot him through the heart.
So the outlaws had broken cover after months of hiding, and at once
Superintendent Hare brought police and trackers by a special train that
they might take up the trail of their retreat back to the mountains.
The outlaws, foreseeing this movement, tore up the railway track, so
that the train, with its load of police, might be thrown into a gully,
and all who survived the wreck were to be shot down without mercy.
This snare which they set for their enemies was badly planned. Instead
of tearing up the tracks themselves, they brought men for the job from
Glenrowan station close by; and then, to prevent their presence from
being reported, they had to hold the village instead of mounting guard
upon the trap. They cut the wires, secured the station and herded all
the villagers into the Glenrowan hotel some two hundred yards from the
railway. Then they had to wait for the train from three o’clock on
Monday morning all through the long day, and the dreary night, guarding
sixty prisoners and watching for the police. They amused the prisoners,
men, women and children with an impromptu dance in which they shared
by turns, then with raids upon outlying houses, and with athletic
feats, but always on the alert lest any man escape to give the alarm,
or the police arrive unobserved. The strain was beyond human endurance.
So Byrne, fresh from the murder of his chum Aaron Sherritt, relieved
his mind by getting drunk, Ned Kelly kept up his courage by bragging
of the death prepared for his enemies, and, worst of all, the local
schoolmaster was allowed to take his sick wife home.
The schoolmaster had been most sympathetic all day long, helping the
outlaws until he won their confidence; but now, escaped to his house,
he made haste to prepare a lantern covered with a red shawl with which
to signal the train. He stood upon the track waving the red light,
when in the pitchy darkness before dawn, the train-load of police came
blindly straight for the death-trap. The train slowed, stopped and was
saved.
Out of plowshares and scrap iron, a blacksmith had forged for each of
the outlaws a cuirass and helmet of plate armor, and now at the sound
of the approaching train they dressed in this bullet-proof harness. Ned
Kelly’s suit weighed ninety-seven pounds, and the others were similar,
so clumsy that the wearer could neither run to attack nor mount a horse
to escape. Moreover, with a rifle at the shoulder, it was impossible to
see for taking aim. So armed, the robbers had got no farther than the
hotel veranda when the police charged, and a fierce engagement began.
The prisoners huddled within the house had no shelter from its frail
board walls, and two of the children were wounded.
Byrne was drinking at the bar when a bullet struck him dead. Ned Kelly,
attempting to desert his comrades, made for the yard, but finding that
all the horses had been shot, strolled back laughing amid a storm of
lead. Every bullet striking his armor made him reel, and he had been
five times wounded, but now he began to walk about the yard emptying
his revolvers into the police. Then a sergeant fired at his legs and
the outlaw dropped, appealing abjectly for his life.
The escape of the panic-stricken prisoners had been arranged, but for
hours the fight went on until toward noon the house stood a riddled
and ghastly shell, with no sign of life. A bundle of straw was lighted
against the gable end, and the building was soon ablaze. Rumors now
spread that an old man lay wounded in the house, and a priest gallantly
led in a rush of police to the rescue. The old man was saved, and under
the thick smoke, Dan Kelly and Hart were seen lying dead upon the floor
in their armor.
Ned Kelly died as he had lived, a coward, being almost carried to the
gallows, and that evening his sister Kate exhibited herself as a show
in a music-hall at Melbourne. So ended this bloody tragedy in hideous
farce, and with the destruction of the outlaws closed a long period of
disorder. Except in remote regions of the frontier, robbery under arms
has ceased forever in the Australasian states.
XXIII
A. D. 1883
THE PASSING OF THE BISON
May I recommend a better book than this? If anybody wants to feel the
veritable spirit of adventure, let him read _My Life as an Indian_, by
F. W. Schultz. His life is an example in manliness, his record the best
we have of a red Indian tribe, his book the most spacious and lovely in
frontier literature.
The Blackfeet got their name from the oil-dressed, arrow-proof leather
of their moccasins (skin shoes) which were dark in color. They were
profoundly religious, scrupulously clean--bathing daily, even through
thick ice, fastidiously moral, a gay light-hearted people of a temper
like the French, and even among Indians, the most generous race in the
world, they were famed for their hospitality. The savage is to the
white man, what the child is to the grown-up, of lesser intellect, but
much nearer to God.
When the white men reached the plains, the Blackfeet mustered about
forty thousand mounted men, hunters. The national sport was stealing
horses and scalps, but there was no organized war until the pressure
of the whites drove the tribes westward, crowding them together, so
that they had to fight for the good hunting grounds. Then there were
wars in which the Blackfeet more than held their own. Next came the
smallpox, and afterward the West was not so crowded. Whole nations were
swept away, and those that lived were sorely reduced in numbers. After
that came white frontiersmen to trade, to hunt, or as missionaries.
The Indians called them Hat-wearers, but the Blackfeet had another
name--the Stone-hearts. The whites were nearly always welcomed, but
presently they came in larger numbers, claiming the land for mining
camps and ranching, which drove away the game. The Indians fought
the whites, fought for their land and their food, their liberty; but
a savage with bow and arrows has no chance against a soldier with a
rifle. For every white man killed a hundred would come to the funeral,
so the Blackfeet saw that it was no use fighting.
In 1853 they made a treaty that secured them their hunting ground,
forever free. The Great Father at Washington pledged his honor, and
they were quite content. It was the same with every western tribe that
the United States was pledged by solemn treaty which the Indians kept,
and the white men always broke. Troops drove the settlers off, but went
away and the settlers came back. So young warriors broke loose from the
chiefs to scalp those settlers and burn their homes; and the army would
break vengeance. Such were the conditions when Schultz, a green New
England boy of nineteen, came by steamer up the Missouri to Fort Benton.
The truly respectable reader will be shocked to learn that this
misguided youth went into partnership with a half-breed trader,
selling water with a flavoring of whisky at very high prices to the
Indians. In other words, he earned his living at a very risky trade.
He married a Blackfoot girl, becoming a squaw-man, which, as everybody
knows, is beneath contempt. In other words, he was honest enough to
marry a most charming woman instead of betraying her to ruin. He went
on guilty expeditions to snatch scalps and steal horses. He shared the
national sports and so learned the inmost heart of a brave people.
When our own countrymen get too self-righteous, bigoted, priggish, smug
and generally beyond bearing, what a blessing it would be if we had a
few wild Indians to collect their scalps!
Schultz had a chum, a Blackfoot warrior called Wolverine, who taught
him the sign language and a deal of bush craft. At times this Wolverine
was unhappy, and once the white man asked him what was wrong. “There is
nothing troubling me,” answered the Indian, then after a long pause: “I
lied. I am in great trouble. I love Piks-ah’-ki, and she loves me, but
I can not have her; her father will not give her to me.”
The father, Bull’s Head, was a Gros Ventre, and hated Wolverine for
being a Blackfoot.
“I am going,” said Wolverine, “to steal the girl. Will you go with me?”
So one evening the pair stole away from the Blackfoot camp, rode
eastward across the plains, marching by night, hiding by day. Once, at
a river crossing they discovered the trails of a large war party of
Crees on the way to the Gros Ventre camp. “I knew,” said Wolverine,
laughing happily, “that my medicine would not desert me, and see, the
way is clear before us. We will ride boldly into camp, to the lodge of
the great chief, Three Bears. I will say that our chief sent me to warn
him of a war party working this way. I will say that we ourselves have
seen their tracks along the bars of the river. Then the Gros Ventres
will guard their horses; they will ambush the enemy; there will be a
big fight, big excitement. All the men will rush to the fight, and that
will be my time. I will call Piks-ah’-ki, we will mount our horses and
fly.” So riding hard, they came in sight of the Gros Ventre camp. “Ah!”
said Wolverine, “there is the camp. Now for the big lie.” Then more
seriously, “Pity me, great Sun! Pity me, you under water creatures of
my dream! Help me to obtain that which I seek here.”
So they came to the lodge of Three Bears, presented tobacco as a
present from the chief Big Lake and were welcomed with a special feast
of boiled dog, which had to be eaten, no matter how sick they felt.
Gros Ventres believed the enemy were coming and kept close watch on
their herd, but Bull’s Head sat in the chief’s lodge, sneering at the
visitors, “To-night,” he said, “I shall sit in my lodge and watch for
women stealers, and my gun will be loaded.”
So he got up, and flounced out of the lodge.
That night all happened as Wolverine had said, for the Cree war party
attempted to stampede the herd, and all the Gros Ventres, including
Bull’s Head, ran out of camp for the battle. Wolverine and Schultz
found Bull’s Head’s daughter ready but crying in her mother’s arms at
parting. They mounted, they rode, they thought they were clear of the
battle-field, when suddenly a gun exploded in front of Wolverine, and
down he went with his horse. Then the girl screamed, “They have killed
him! Help, white man, they have killed him!”
But Wolverine fired his gun at something that moved in the sage brush,
and a deep groan followed. Wolverine clubbed something three of four
times with his rifle. Then stooping, he picked up the gun which had
been fired at him. “I count a coup,” he laughed, and handed the enemy’s
weapon to Schultz.
At that moment Bull’s Head appeared, and in a frightful passion
seized his daughter’s horse by the head attempting to drag her from
the saddle. She shrieked, while Wolverine sprang at her father, threw
him, disarmed him and flung away his gun. Then the young lover leaped
lightly behind the girl upon her pony, and the father raged astern
while they fled.
Four days’ ride brought them home to the Blackfoot camp, but Bull’s
Head got there first, and whined about his poverty until Wolverine gave
him ten ponies, also the captured gun. It was not much to pay for a
beautiful woman who became a faithful and loving wife.
One day news reached the three main camps of the Blackfoot nation that
a white buffalo had been sighted in the herds. Midwinter as it was, the
hunters turned out, for the man who killed a white buffalo was held to
have the especial favor of the Sun, and not only he, but his tribe. The
head chief of a nation has been known to use the robe for a seat, but
it could never be sold, and at the next building of a temple to the Sun
it was offered up as a national sacrifice.
Great was the hunting through many days of bitter cold, until at last
the white buffalo was found by a lone horseman who brought it down with
his arrows “When we rode up,” says Schultz, “the hunter was standing
over it, hands raised, fervently praying, promising the Sun the robe
and tongue of the animal.... Medicine Weasel was so excited, he
trembled so that he could not use his knife ... and some of our party
took off the hide for him, and cut out the tongue, he standing over
them all the time and begging them to be careful, to make no gashes,
for they were doing the work for the Sun. None of the meat was taken.
It was considered a sacrilege to eat it; the tongue was to be dried and
given to the Sun with the robe.”
Only one more white buffalo was ever taken, in 1881, two years before
the last herds were destroyed.
Heavy Breast and Schultz were once out hunting, and the chief’s saddle
was newly loaded with mountain sheep meat, when the hunters met a
first-class grizzly bear. He sat up, fifty yards distant and wriggled
his nose as he sniffed the air. Both men fired and with a hair-lifting
roar old sticky mouth rolled over, biting and clawing his wound, then
sprang up and charged, open mouthed. The hunters rode hard, Schultz
firing backward a couple of shots while the bear with long bounds,
closed upon the Indian. “I fired again, and made another miss and just
then Heavy Breast, his saddle and his sheep meat parted company with
the fleeing pony. The cinch, an old worn rawhide band, had broken.
“‘Hai Ya, my friend,’ he cried pleadingly, as he soared up in the
air, still astride the saddle. Down they came with a loud thud not
two strides in front of the onrushing bear. And that animal, with a
dismayed and frightened ‘woof,’ turned sharply about and fled back
toward the timber, I after him. I kept firing and firing, and finally a
lucky shot broke his backbone.
“‘Do not laugh, my friend,’ said Heavy Breast; ‘surely the Sun listened
to my prayer. I promised to sacrifice to him, intending to hang up that
fine white blanket I have just bought. I will hang up the blanket and
my otter-skin cap.’”
There was no end of trouble about that bear, for Mrs. Schultz dared not
skin a sacred animal until she had sacrificed her best blue frock, also
one of her husband’s revolvers--the same being out of order. And when
the skin was dressed, nobody dared to visit the lodge until it had been
hidden.
I want to copy out the whole book, for every paragraph contains some
fresh delight, but these two or three stories must have shown something
at least of Blackfoot character. I knew, and loved these people.
It was in January, 1870, that Colonel Baker was sent with a force
of United States regular troops to chasten a band of Blackfeet who
had killed a trader. The band accused of the crime, belonged to the
Northern Blackfeet of Canada, whose camp at the time was on Belly
River, two hundred miles north of the boundary. The band found by Baker
belonged to the Piegans, a southern tribe camped on their own lands in
Montana. There were eighty families in camp, but the men were nearly
all away hunting buffalo when Baker’s force attacked at the break of
dawn. The chief, Bear’s Head, ran toward the white men, waving a
paper, a certificate of good character. He fell. Then the slaughter
began in cold blood: Fifteen fighting men, eighteen elder men, ninety
women, fifty-five little children, and when the last wounded mothers
and their babies had been put out of their misery, the soldiers piled
the corpses upon the wreckage before they burned the camp.
The whisky traders, like Schultz, have been blamed for the ruin of the
Blackfeet; but since they had to die, it seems to me that the liquor
gave them a certain amount of fun and excitement not so bad for them
as Baker, or smallpox, or their Indian agent, or the white robbers who
slaughtered their herds of buffalo, and stole their treaty lands. In
1874, Schultz was one of fifty-seven white men hunting or trading with
the Canadian or Northern Blackfeet. They had trading forts at Whoop-up,
Standoff, Slideout, the Leavings, all in Canada. But the Hudson’s
Bay Company and the Canadian wolfers made complaint against these
American rivals; and so the Canadian government raised the Northwest
Mounted Police. Three hundred men were sent across the plains to take
possession and run the American traders out of the country. But the
police were only tenderfeet in those days, eastern Canadians unused to
the western ways, who came hungry through the countless herds of the
bison. A band of hunters brought news to the Blackfeet. “Some men are
coming,” they said, “who wear red coats, and they are drawing a cannon.”
“Oh,” said the Blackfeet, “these must be Hudson’s Bay.” For in old
times the company’s officers are said to have worn red coats when they
administered justice, so that the color was a sign of honest dealing.
So the police were not attacked by the Blackfeet, and they were
welcomed by the American traders, who sold them food in abundance.
The liquor trade ceased altogether but the police and the traders
became fast friends, while the police and the Northern Blackfeet have
been loyal allies ever since. After the buffalo vanished, the tribes
were fed by the Canadian government and not lavishly, perhaps rather
stingily, helped to learn the important arts of ranching.
Meanwhile far away to the southward, the white men were slaughtering
buffalo for their hides, and in Kansas alone during ten years,
thirty-five million carcasses were left to rot on the plains. The bison
herds still seemed as large as ever, the country black with them as
far as the eye could reach. But men like Schultz who had brains, had
news that away from these last migrating herds, the plains were empty
for thousands of miles. I remember the northern plains like a vast
graveyard, reaching in all directions to the sky-line, bare save for
its tombstones, the bleached skulls of millions of bison. Afterward the
sugar refiners sent wagons and took them all away.
In 1880, the whole of the prairie nations surrounded the last herds,
and white men took a hundred thousand robes leaving the carcasses to
rot as usual. The Indians slaughtered also but sold the robes for
groceries, and dried the whole of the meat for winter food.
“We are near the end of it,” said Red Bird’s Tail. “I fear that this is
our last buffalo hunt. Are you sure,” he asked Schultz, “that the white
men have seen all the land between the two salt waters?”
“There is no place,” answered the trader, “where the white men have
not traveled, and none of them can find buffalo.”
“That being the case,” said the chief with a deep sigh, “misery and
death are at hand for me and mine.”
The Indians were compelled to strip the plains of every living
creature, the Blackfeet, despite their religion, to eat fish and birds.
Then came the winter; Schultz and his wife rode at dusk to the camp of
Lodge-Pole chief.
“Hurry,” he commanded his women, “cook a meal for our friends. They
must be hungry after their long ride.”
His wives brought out three small potatoes and two little trout, which
they boiled. “’Tis all we have,” said one of them, brushing the tears
from her eyes, and then the chief broke down.
“We have nothing,” he said haltingly. “There are no more buffalo. The
Great Father sends us but a little food, gone in a day. We are very
hungry. There are fish, to be sure, forbidden by the Gods, unclean. We
eat them, but they do not give us any strength, and I doubt not we will
be punished for eating them. It seems as if our gods had forsaken us.”
Mrs. Schultz went out and brought back a sack of food, and they made a
feast, merry as in the days of plenty, which were gone forever.
Schultz came from the starving camps to write a letter to a New York
paper, but it was never printed--a matter of politics. Then he advised
the Indians to kill their agent, but they remembered Colonel Baker’s
visit.
In his next annual report the agent wrote much about the Blackfeet,
whose “heathenish rites were most deplorable.” And then came the
Winter of Death, when a chief, Almost-a-dog, checked off daily the fate
of a starving people. Women crowded round the windows of the agent’s
office, holding out skinny children. “Go,” he would say; “go away! I
have nothing for you!”
The thirty thousand dollars provided for their food had all been
stolen, but there was plenty of corn to fatten fifty chickens, some
geese and ducks.
Wolf Head, once known as Wolverine, rode south to Schultz’s trading
post where he and his partner were feeding hosts of people, but when
they heard his story of death after death, one by one they stole away
out into the darkness, sitting upon the frozen ground where they wailed
for their dead.
That night Schultz wrote to a friend of his in New York, known to the
Indians as Fisher Cap. Then he rode hard and far to consult with Father
Prando, a Jesuit priest, who had also been writing letters. Thanks
to Fisher Cap, perhaps, or to Father Prando, the government sent an
inspector, and one day he drove into the agency. “Where is that chicken
house?” he yelled, and when he found the place, kicked it open. “Here
you!” he called to the Indians, and they did the rest.
Next, he kicked open the agent’s office. “You -------- ----,” said he.
Since then some agents have been honest, but the Piegan tribe has never
recovered from the Winter of Death, for in their weakness, they fell a
prey to disease, and only a remnant is left of that ruined people. But
for Schultz, the despised squaw-man, not one would be left alive.
XXIV
A. D. 1885
GORDON
During the Crimean war, when our men in the trenches before Sebastopol
crowded under their earthworks to escape the Russian fire, one of the
subalterns showed fear unbecoming an officer. The young chap meant
no harm, but as he had to be taught manners, a lieutenant slightly
his senior, invited him up upon the ramparts. There, arm in arm, the
two walked up and down, the senior making amusing remarks about the
weather, while the storm of lead swept round them, and the Tommies
watched horror-struck, expecting both to fall. That officer who gave
lessons in courage, was Charles George Gordon.
After eight years of varied service in many lands, Major Gordon came
to Shanghai, where the British officer commanding had need of such a
man. The Taiping rebels at war with the Chinese government numbered
one million five hundred thousand, holding impregnable cities, and
threatening the British merchants of Shanghai. These had raised a
force of four thousand Chinese with white officers, known as the Ever
Victorious Army because they were always thrashed, and Gordon took
over the command. He was helped by Li Hung Chang, commander-in-chief
of the Chinese armies, but no great impression had as yet been made
upon fifteen hundred thousand rebels, trenched in the impregnable rock
cities, which stood as islands over flat lands laced with canals.
Those channels made the land impassable for troops, but Gordon brought
steamers, and where a city fronted him with hundreds of guns and tier
upon tier of unscalable walls, he steamed round the canals, cut off the
line of communications, then dropped in, unexpected, in the rear. His
attack was always a most unpleasant surprise to the rebels, beginning
with gunnery that battered down the walls, until up a slope of ruins
the storming party charged. The Taipings, led by white adventurers,
defended the breach with desperation, and Gordon would weep because
of the slaughter, his gentle spirit shocked at the streams of blood.
“Two men,” he says, “of the Thirty-first Regiment were on the breach
at Fort San, as Taiping leaders for the defense. One was killed, the
other, struck by a shell splinter, was taken prisoner. ‘Mr. Gordon, Mr.
Gordon, you will not let me be killed!’
“‘Take him down to the river and shoot him!’ And aside: ‘Put him in my
boat, let the doctor attend him, and send him down to Shankhai.’”
Gordon not only saved the poor adventurers, but where he captured
garrisons of Taipings, he would arm his prisoners, drill them,
and lead them on to attack fresh cities in the march of the Ever
Victorious Army. The odds were slightly against him, three hundred and
seventy-five to one--an army against three hundred and seventy-five
armies--but his third siege reduced the rebel capital, which he starved
into surrender. The Taiping generals laid down their arms to Gordon
because he gave them their lives. Then Li Hung Chang jumped in and
murdered the whole gang of generals, and Gordon, sorely annoyed, for
the only time in his life carried a gun. For a whole day, revolver in
hand, he hunted the Chinese commander-in-chief through the streets of
Soo Chow, but Li was too sly for him, and hid under some matting in a
boat until Gordon’s rage cooled down.
This Scotchman who, with forty men in a steamer, destroyed a Taiping
army near Quin San, had only one weapon for his personal use--a little
bamboo swagger cane, such as Tommy carries in the street. It was
known to the Chinese as his Magic Wand of Victory, with which he had
overthrown an army seven times as big as that of Great Britain.
The Chinese emperor sent an imperial decree conferring four thousand
pounds and all sorts of honors. Gordon wrote on the back of the
parchment: “Regret that owing to the circumstances which occurred since
the capture of Soo Chow, I am unable to receive any mark of his majesty
the emperor’s recognition.” So he sent the thing back--a slap in the
face for China. The emperor sent a gold medal, but Gordon, scratching
out the inscription, gave it to a charity bazaar. The emperor made him
a prince of the Chinese empire, and with the uniform of that rank as a
curio in his trunk, he returned to England.
In China he was prince and conqueror; in Gravesend Major Gordon did
garrison duty and kept ducks, which he delighted to squirt with the
garden syringe.
He was a Sunday-school teacher, and reared slum boys to manhood, he was
lady bountiful in the parish, he was cranky as an old maid, full of
odd whims, a little man, with tender gray eyes, and a voice like a peal
of bells. For six years he rotted in Gravesend, then served a couple
of years as British commissioner on the Danube, and then in 1874 was
borrowed by Egypt to be viceroy of the equatorial provinces. There he
made history.
The Turkish empire got its supply of slaves from this big Soudan, a
tract the size of Europe, whose only trade was the sale of human flesh.
If Gordon stopped the selling of slaves, the savages ate them. But the
Egyptian government wanted money, so Gordon’s work was to stop the
slave trade, get the people prosperous, and tax them. To aid him he had
Egyptian officials, whose only interest in the job was the collecting
of bribes, plunder and slaves for their private use; also a staff of
Europeans, all of whom died of fever within the first few months.
Moreover, the whole native population was, more or less, at war with
the Egyptian government.
Gordon had a swift camel, and a reputation for sorcery, because leaving
his escort days astern in the desert, he would ride alone into the
midst of a hostile nation, dressed in a diplomatic uniform consisting
of gold lace and trousers, quite unarmed, but compelling everybody to
obey his orders. He was so tired that he wanted to die, and when the
tribes disobeyed he merely cut off their whole supply of water until
they learned to behave. So for five years, the only honest man in all
that region fought the Soudanese, the Egyptian government and the
British ministry, to put an end to slavery. He failed.
[Illustration: CHARLES GEORGE GORDON]
Long chapters would be required for the story of Gordon’s work in
Bessarabia, Armenia, India, South Africa, or the second period in China.
In 1884, England, having taken charge of Egypt, was responsible for
the peace of Soudan. But the Arabs, united for once, and led by their
prophet--the Mahdi--had declared a holy war against everybody, and
wiped out an Egyptian army. So England said, “This is very awkward; let
us pray”; and the government made up its mind to scuttle, to abandon
the whole Soudan. Of course the Egyptians in the Soudan, officials,
troops and people, would all get their throats cut, so our government
had a qualm of conscience. Instead of sending an army to their rescue,
they sent Gordon, with orders to bring the Egyptians to the coast. With
a view to further economies they then let the Arabs cut off Gordon’s
retreat to the coast. England folded her hands and left him to perish.
As soon as Gordon reached Khartoum, he began to send away the more
helpless of the Egyptian people, and before the siege closed down some
two thousand five hundred women, children and servants escaped from the
coming death. At the last moment he managed to send the Englishmen, the
Europeans and forty-five soldiers down the Nile. They were saved, and
he remained to die with his soldiers. “May our Lord,” he wrote, “not
visit us as a nation for our sins; but may His wrath fall on me.”
He could not believe in England’s cowardice, but walled his city with
ramp and bastion, planned mines and raids, kept discipline while his
troops were starving to death, and the Union Jack afloat above the
palace, praying for his country in abasement, waiting for the army
which had been sent too late. So for nine months the greatest of all
England’s engineers held at bay an army of seventy-five thousand
fighting Arabs. And when the city fell, rallying the last fifty men
of his garrison, he went to his death, glad that he was not doomed to
outlive England’s honor.
Year after year our army fought through the burning deserts, to win
back England’s honor, to make amends for the death of her hero-saint,
the knightliest of modern men, the very pattern of all chivalry. And
then his grave was found, a heap of bloodstained ashes, which once had
been Khartoum.
Now, in Trafalgar Square, men lay wreaths at the base of his statue,
where with his Magic Wand of Victory, that Prince of the Chinese
Empire and Viceroy of the African Equatorial Provinces, stands looking
sorrowfully on a people who were not worthy to be his countrymen. But
there is a greater monument to Gordon, a new Soudan, where men live at
peace under the Union Jack, and slavery is at an end forever.
XXV
A. D. 1896
THE OUTLAW
Dawn was breaking of a summer’s day in 1896, when
Green-Grass-growing-in-the-water, a red Indian scout, came trotting
into Fort MacLeod with a despatch from Standoff for Superintendent
Steele, of the Mounted Police. He brought news that the body of a Blood
warrior, Medicine-Pipe-Stem, shot through the skull, and three weeks
dead, had been found in an empty cabin.
The Blood tribe knew how Bad-Young-Man, known to the whites as
Charcoal, had three weeks before come home from a hunting trip to his
little cabin where his wife, the Marmot, lived. He had found his wife
in the arms of Medicine-Pipe-Stem, and by his warrior’s right to defend
his own honor, had shot the intruder down. Charcoal had done justice,
and the tribe was ready to take his part, whatever the agent might say
or the Mounted Police might do for the white man’s law.
A week had passed of close inquiry, when one of the scouts rode up
to the ration house, where the people were drawing their supplies of
beef, and gave warning that Charcoal was betrayed to the Mounted
Police. Charcoal demanded the name of his betrayer, and learned that
Mr. Wilson, the agent, was his enemy. That evening Charcoal waited
outside the agent’s house, watching the lighted windows, where, on the
yellow blinds there were passing shadows cast by the lamp within, as
various members of the household went about their business. At last he
saw Mr. Wilson’s shadow on the blind, fired and shot the agent through
the thigh. The household covered the lamps, closed the shutters, sent
for help and hid the wounded man on a couch behind the front door,
well out of range from the windows. Next morning, in broad daylight,
Charcoal went up to the house with a rifle to finish Wilson, walked in
and looked about him, but failed to discover his victim behind the open
door. He turned away and rode for the hills. The Mounted Police, turned
out for the pursuit, were misled by a hundred rumors.
D Troop at the time numbered one hundred seventy men, the pick of
the regiment, including some of the greatest riders and teamsters in
North America, and led by Colonel S. B. Steele, the most distinguished
of all Canadian frontiersmen. After he had posted men to guard all
passes through the Rocky Mountains, he had a district about ninety
miles square combed over incessantly by strong patrols, so that
Charcoal’s escape seemed nearly impossible. The district however, was
one of foothills, bush, winding gorges, tracts of boulders, and to the
eastward prairie, where the whole Blood and Piegan tribes were using
every subtlety of Indian craft to hide the fugitive.
Inspector Jervis, with twenty police and some scouts, had been seventy
hours in the saddle, and camped at Big Bend exhausted, when a rider
came flying in reporting Charcoal as seen at Kootenai. The white men
rallied for the twenty-eight-mile march, but the Indians lay, and were
kicked, done for, refusing to move. The white men scrambled to their
saddles, and reeled off on the trail, unconquerable.
One day a Mormon settler brought news to Mr. Jervis that while cutting
fence rails, he had seen Charcoal creep out from the bush and make off
with his coat. So this Mormon led them to a little meadow, where they
found and surrounded a tent. Then Mr. Jervis took two men and pulled
aside the door, while they covered the place with their revolvers. Two
Mormons were brought out, shaking with fright, from the tent.
Further on in the gray dawn, they came to another clearing, and a
second tent, which they surrounded. Some noise disturbed the Marmot,
who crept sleepily to the door, looked out, then with a scream, warned
her husband. Charcoal slashed with his knife through the back of the
tent, crept into the bush, and thence fired, his bullet knocking the
cap from the officer’s head; but a volley failed to reach the Indian.
The tent was Charcoal’s winter quarters, stored with a carcass of beef,
five sacks of flour, bacon, sugar and deerskin for his shoes, and there
the Marmot was taken, with a grown daughter, and a little son called
Running Bear, aged eight.
So far, in many weeks of the great hunt Charcoal had his loyal wife to
ride with him, and they used to follow the police patrols in order to
be sure of rest when the pursuers camped. Two police horses, left half
dead, were taken up and ridden by this couple an extra forty miles.
An officer and a buck were feeding at Boundary Creek detachment when
Mr. and Mrs. Charcoal stole their chargers out of the stable. But now
Charcoal had to face the prospect of a lone fight, and with the loss
of his family, fell into blind despair. Then all his kinsfolk to the
number of thirty-seven, were arrested and lodged in prison.
Since his raid on the horses at Boundary Creek, all police stables were
locked, and visited frequently at night. Corporal Armour, at Lee’s
Creek came out swinging his lantern, sniffing at the night, bound for
the stable, when he saw a sudden blaze revealing an Indian face behind
the horse trough, while a bullet whisked through his sleeve. He bolted
for the house, grabbed his gun and returned, only to hear a horse
galloping away into the night. Charcoal for once, had failed to get a
remount. Sergeant Wilde was universally loved by the tribes. The same
feeling caused his old regiment, the Blues, at Windsor, to beg for
Black Prince, his charger, after his death, and sent the whole body of
the Northwest Mounted Police into mourning when he fell. Tradition made
him a great aristocrat under an assumed name, and I remember well how
we recruits, in the olden times, were impressed by his unusual physical
beauty, his stature, horsemanship and singular personal distinction.
Ambrose attended him when he rode out for the last time on Black
Prince, followed by an interpreter and a body of Indian scouts. They
were in deep snow on a plain where there stands a line of boulders,
gigantic rocks, the subject of weird legends among the tribes. Far off
against the sky was seen riding fast, an Indian who swerved at the
sight of the pursuit and was recognized for Charcoal. Wilde ordered
Ambrose to gallop the twenty miles to Pincher Creek, turn the people
out in the queen’s name, send a despatch to Fort Macleod, and return
at once. The Indians tried for Charcoal at long range, but their new
rifles were clogged with factory grease hard frozen, so that the pin
failed of its impact, and they all missed fire. Wilde’s great horse was
drawing ahead of the ponies, and he called back:--
“Don’t fire, or you’ll hit me by mistake!”
As he overtook Charcoal he drew his revolver, the orders being to fire
at sight, then laid the weapon before him, wanting for the sake of a
great tradition, to make the usual arrest--the taking of live outlaws
by hand. Charcoal’s rifle lay across the saddle, and he held the reins
Indian fashion with the right hand, but when Wilde grabbed at his
shoulder, he swerved, touching the trigger with his left. The bullet
went through Wilde’s body, then deflecting on the bone of the right
arm, traversed the forearm, came out of the palm, and dropped into his
gauntlet where it was found.
Wilde rolled slowly from the saddle while Black Prince went on and
Charcoal also, but then the outlaw turned, galloped back and fired
straight downward into the dying man. Black Prince had stopped at
a little distance snorting, and when the Indian came grabbing at
his loose rein, he struck with his forefeet in rage at his master’s
murderer. Charcoal had fired to disable Wilde as the only way left him
of escaping “slavery”; now he had to conquer the dead man’s horse to
make his escape from the trackers.
Some three weeks ago, Charcoal’s brothers, Left Hand and Bear Paw,
had been released from jail, with the offer of forty pounds from
the government and ten pounds from the officer commanding, if they
could capture the outlaw. The tribes had decided that Charcoal’s body
belonged of right to the police, and after Wilde’s death he could
expect no mercy on earth, no help or succor from any living man. From
the slaying, like a wounded beast to his lair, he rode direct for home,
came to the little cabin, tied Black Prince to a bush and staggered
toward the door. Out of the house came Left Hand, who ran toward him,
while the outlaw, moved by some brute instinct, fled for the horse. But
Left Hand, overtaking his brother, threw his arms about him, kissing
him upon both cheeks, and Bear Paw, following, cast his rope over the
helpless man, throwing him down, a prisoner. The brothers carried
Charcoal into the cabin, pitched him down in a corner, then Left Hand
rode for the police while Bear Paw stayed on guard.
It was Sergeant Macleod who came first to the cabin where Bear Paw
squatted waiting, and Charcoal lay to all appearance dead in a great
pool of blood upon the earthen floor. He had found a cobbler’s awl
used in mending skin shoes, and opened the arteries of his arm, that
he might take refuge from treachery in death. From ankle to groin his
legs were skinned with incessant riding, and never again was he able to
stand upon his feet.
For four months Charcoal had been hunted as an enemy by D Troop, now
for a like time he was nursed in the guard-room at Fort Macleod, and,
though he lay chained to the floor in mortal pain, his brothers of the
guard did their best. As he had been terrible in the field, so this
poor hero was brave in suffering--humble, and of so sweet a disposition
that he won all men’s hearts. Once he choked himself with a blanket;
once poisoned himself with a month’s collection of cigarette stubs;
each time nearly achieving his purpose, but he never flinched, never
gave utterance even to a sigh, except for the moaning in his sleep.
At the trial his counsel called no witnesses, but read the man’s own
defense, a document so sad, so wonderfully beautiful in expression,
that the court appealed to the crown for mercy, where mercy had become
impossible.
When he was taken out to die, the troop was on guard surrounding the
barracks, the whole of the tribes being assembled outside the fence.
The prisoner sat in a wagon face to face with the executioner, who wore
a mask of black silk, and beside him was the priest. Charcoal began to
sing his death song.
“Stay,” said the priest, “make no cry. You’re far too brave a man for
that.” The song ceased, and Charcoal died as he had lived.
XXVI
A. D. 1898
A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE
When a boy has the sea in his blood, when he prays in church for
plague, pestilence and famine, for battle and murder and sudden death,
his parents will do well to thrash him tame. For then if he can be
tamed he may turn out well as a respectable clerk; but if he has the
force of character to get what he wants he will prove himself and be,
perhaps, like John Boyes, of Hull, a king at twenty-five.
Boyes ran away to sea, and out of the tame humdrum life of the modern
merchant service made for himself a world of high adventure. As a
seaman he landed at Durban, then earned his way up-country in all
sorts of trades until he enlisted in the Matabeleland Mounted Police,
then fought his way through the second Matabele war. Afterward he was
a trader, then an actor, next at sea again, and at Zanzibar joined an
Arab trading dhow. When the dhow was wrecked, and the crew appealed to
Allah, Boyes took command, so coming to Mombasa. From here the crown
colony was building a railway to Uganda, a difficult job because the
lions ate all the laborers they could catch, and had even the cheek to
gobble up white officials. Up-country, the black troops were enjoying
a mutiny, the native tribes were prickly, the roads were impossible and
there was no food to be had. Boyes was very soon at the head of a big
transport company, working with donkey carts and native carriers to
carry food for the authorities.
Northward of the railway was Mount Kenia, a lofty snow-clad volcano;
and round his foothills covering a tract the size of Yorkshire or
of Massachusetts lived the Kikuyu, a negro people numbering half a
million, who always made a point of besieging British camps, treating
our caravans to volleys of poisoned darts, and murdering every visitor
who came within their borders. Boyes went into that country to buy food
to supply to the railway workers (1898).
He went with an old Martini-Henry rifle, and seven carriers, over a
twelve thousand foot pass of the hills, and down through bamboo forest
into a populous country, where at sight of him the war cry went from
hill to hill, and five hundred warriors assembled for their first look
at a white man. Through his interpreter he explained that he came to
trade for food. Presently he showed what his old rifle could do, and
when the bullet bored a hole through a tree he told them that it had
gone through the mountain beyond and out at the other side. A man with
such a gun was worthy of respect, especially when his drugs worked
miracles among the sick. Next day the neighbors attacked this tribe
which had received a white man instead of killing him, but Boyes with
his rifle turned defeat to victory, and with iodoform treated the
wounded. The stuff smelt so strong that there could be no doubt of its
magic.
The white man made a friend of the Chief Karuri, and through the
adventures which followed they were loyal allies. Little by little he
taught the tribesmen to hold themselves in check, to act together. He
began to drill them in military formation, a front rank of spearmen
with shields touching, a rear rank of bowmen with poisoned arrows.
So when they were next attacked they captured the enemy’s chief, and
here again the white man’s magic was very powerful--“Don’t waste
him,” said Boyes. The captive leader was put to ransom, released, and
made an ally, a goat being clubbed to death in token that the tribes
were friends. Then a night raid obtained thirty rifles and plenty of
ammunition, and a squad of picked men with modern arms soon formed the
nucleus of the white man’s growing army. When the Masai came up against
him Boyes caught them in ambush, cut their line of retreat, killed
fifty, took hundreds of prisoners and proved that raiding his district
was an error. He was a great man now, and crowds would assemble when he
refreshed himself with a dose of fruit salts that looked like boiling
water. His district was at peace, and soon made prosperous with a
carrier trade supplying food to the white men.
Many attempts were made by the witch doctors against his life, but he
seemed to thrive on all the native poisons. It was part of his clever
policy to take his people by rail drawn by a railway engine, which
they supposed to be alive, in a fever, and most frightfully thirsty.
He took them down to the sea at Mombasa, even on board a ship, and
on his return from all these wonders he rode a mule into the Kikuyu
country--“Some sort of lion,” the natives thought. It impressed the
whole nation when they heard of the white man riding a lion. He had
a kettle too, with a cup and saucer to brew tea for the chiefs, and
a Union Jack at the head of his marching column, and his riflemen
in khaki uniform. All that was good stage management, but Boyes had
other tricks beyond mere bluff. A native chief defied him and had five
hundred warriors in line of battle; but Boyes, with ten followers
only, marched up, clubbed him over the head, and ordered the warriors
to lay down their arms on pain of massacre. The five hundred supposed
themselves to be ambushed, and obeyed. It was really a great joke.
So far the adventurer had met only with little chiefs, but now at the
head of a fairly strong caravan he set forth on a tour of the whole
country, sending presents to the great Chiefs Karkerrie and Wagomba,
and word that he wanted to trade for ivory. Karkerrie came to call
and was much excited over a little clock that played tunes to order,
especially when a few drops of rain seemed to follow the music. “Does
it make rain?” asked Karkerrie.
“Certainly, it makes rain all right,” answered Boyes.
But it so happened that rain was very badly needed, and when Boyes
failed to produce a proper downpour the folk got tired of hearing
his excuses. They blamed him for the drought, refused to trade and
conspired with one of his men to murder him. Boyes’ camp became a fort,
surrounded by several thousands of hostile savages. One pitch-dark
evening the war cry of the tribe ran from village to village and there
was wailing among the women and children. The hyenas, knowing the signs
of a coming feast, howled, and all through the neighborhood of the
camp the warriors were shouting, “Kill the white man!”
As hour by hour went by the sounds and the silences got on the white
man’s nerves. It was always very difficult to keep Kikuyu sentries
awake, and as he kept on his rounds, waiting the inevitable storming
of his camp at dawn, Boyes felt the suspense become intolerable. At
last, hearing from one of his spies that Karkerrie was close at hand
disposing his men for the assault, Boyes stole out with a couple of
men, and by a miracle of luck kidnaped the hostile chief, whom he
brought back into the fort a prisoner. Great was the amazement of the
natives when at the gray of dawn, the very moment fixed for their
attack, they heard Karkerrie shouting from the midst of the fort orders
to retreat, and to disperse. A revolver screwed into his ear hole had
converted the Chief Karkerrie. Within a few days more came the copious
rains brought by the white chief’s clock, and he became more popular
than ever.
Boyes made his next journey to visit Wakamba, biggest of all the
chiefs, whose seat was on the foothills of the great snow mountain.
This chief was quite friendly, and delightfully frank, describing the
foolishness of Arabs, Swahili and that class of travelers who neglected
to take proper precautions and deserved their fate. He was making quite
a nice collection of their rifles. With his camp constantly surrounded
and infested by thousands of savages, Boyes complained to Wakamba about
the cold weather, said he would like to put up a warm house, and got
plenty of help in building a fort. The chief thought this two-storied
tower with its outlying breastworks was quite a good idea. “What a
good thing,” said he, “to keep a rush of savages out.”
After long negotiations, Boyes managed to bring the whole of the
leading chiefs of the nation together in friendly conference. The fact
that they all hated one another like poison may explain some slight
delay, for the white man’s purpose was nothing less than a solemn
treaty of blood-brotherhood with them all.
The ceremony began with the cutting into small pieces of a sheep’s
heart and liver, these being toasted upon a skewer, making a mutton
Kabob. Olomondo, chief of the Wanderobo, a nation of hunters, then took
a sharp arrow with which he cut into the flesh of each Blood-Brother
just above the heart. The Kabob was then passed round, and each chief,
taking a piece of meat, rubbed it in his own blood and gave it to his
neighbor to be eaten. When Boyes had eaten blood of all the chiefs, and
all had eaten his, the peace was sealed which made him in practise king
of the Kikuyu. He was able at last to take a holiday, and spent some
months out hunting among the Wanderobo.
While the Kikuyu nation as a whole fed out of the white chief’s hand,
he still had the witch doctors for his enemies, and one very powerful
sorcerer caused the Chinga tribes to murder three Goa Portuguese. These
Eurasian traders, wearing European dress, were mistaken for white men,
and their death showed the natives that it would be quite possible to
kill Boyes, who was now returning toward civilization with an immense
load of ivory. Boyes came along in a hurry, riding ahead of his slow
caravan with only four attendants and these he presently distanced,
galloping along a path between two hedges among the fields of a
friendly tribe--straight into a deadly native ambush. Then the mule
shied out of the path, bolted across the fields and saved his life.
Of the four attendants behind, two were speared. Moreover the whole
country was wild with excitement, and five thousand fighting men were
marching against Boyes. He camped, fenced his position and stood to
arms all night, short of ammunition, put to the last, the greatest of
many tests. Once more his nerves were overstrung, the delay terrified
him, the silence appalled him waiting for dawn, and death. And as usual
he treated the natives to a new kind of surprise, taking his tiny force
against the enemy’s camp: “They had not thought it necessary to put any
sentries out.”
“Here,” says Boyes, “we found the warriors still drinking and feasting,
sitting round their fires, so engrossed in their plans for my downfall
that they entirely failed to notice our approach; so, stealthily
creeping up till we were close behind them, we prepared to complete our
surprise.... Not a sound had betrayed our advance, and they were still
quite ignorant of our presence almost in the midst of them. The echoing
crack of my rifle, which was to be the signal for the general attack,
was immediately drowned in the roar of the other guns as my men poured
in a volley that could not fail to be effective at that short range,
while accompanying the leaden missiles was a cloud of arrows sent by
that part of my force which was not armed with rifles. The effect of
this unexpected onslaught was electrical, the savages starting up with
yells of terror in a state of utter panic. Being taken so completely
by surprise, they could not at first realize what had happened, and
the place was for a few minutes a pandemonium of howling niggers,
who rushed about in the faint light of the camp-fires, jostling each
other and stumbling over the bodies of those who had fallen at the
first volley, but quite unable to see who had attacked them; while,
before they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, my men had
reloaded, and again a shower of bullets and arrows carried death into
the seething, disorganized mass. This volley completed the rout, and
without waiting a moment longer the whole crowd rushed pell-mell into
the bush, not a savage who could get away, remaining in the clearing,
and the victory was complete.”
It had taken Boyes a year to fight his way to that kingdom which had
no throne, and for another eighteen months of a thankless reign he
dealt with famine, smallpox and other worries until one day there came
two Englishmen, official tenderfeet, into that big wild land which
Boyes had tamed. They came to take possession, but instead of bringing
Boyes an appointment as commissioner for King Edward they made him
prisoner in presence of his retinue of a thousand followers, and sent
him to escort himself down-country charged with “dacoity,” murder,
flying the Union Jack, cheeking officials, and being a commercial
bounder. At Mombasa there was a comedy of imprisonment, a farce of
trial, an apology from the judge, but never a word of thanks to the
boyish adventurer who had tamed half a million savages until they were
prepared to enter the British Peace.
XXVII
A. D. 1898
JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN
From the Right Honorable Cecil Rhodes to Ewart S. Grogan in the year
1900:--
“I must say I envy you, for you have done that which has been for
centuries the ambition of every explorer, namely, to walk through
Africa from South to North. The amusement of the whole thing is that
a youth from Cambridge during his vacation should have succeeded in
doing that which the ponderous explorers of the world have failed to
accomplish. There is a distinct humor in the whole thing. It makes me
the more certain that we shall complete the telegraph and railway,
for surely I am not going to be beaten by the legs of a Cambridge
undergraduate.”
It took death himself to beat Rhodes. Two years after that letter was
written news went out through the army in South Africa that he was
dead. We were stunned; we felt too sick to fight. For a moment the guns
were hushed, and silence fell on the veldt after years of war. That
silence was the herald of lasting peace for British Africa, united by
stronger bonds than rail or telegraph.
* * * * *
Grogan was an undergraduate not only of Cambridge, but also of the
bigger schools called War and Adventure, for he had traveled in the
South Seas, climbed in the Alps, and fought in the Matabele campaigns,
before he made his holiday walking tour from the Cape to Cairo. He
was not the usual penniless adventurer, but, reckoned by frontier
standards, a man of means, with the good manners that ease the way for
any traveler. From the Cape to the Zambesi he had no need to tread
old trails again, and far into the heart of Africa there were already
colonies with steamers to speed the journey up to Lake Tanganyika,
where his troubles really began. Through two-thirds of the journey
Grogan had a partner, Mr. A. H. Sharp, but they were seldom in company,
for one would explore ahead while the other handled their caravan of
one hundred fifty negro carriers, or one or both went hunting, or lay
at the verge of death with a dose of fever.
Their route lay along the floor of a gash in the continent, a deep
abyss called the Great Rift, in which lies a chain of lakes: Nyassa,
Tanganyika, Kevu, Albert Edward, and Albert, whence the Nile flows down
into distant Egypt. This rift is walled and sometimes blocked by live
volcanoes, fouled with swamps, gigantic forests and new lava floods,
reeking with fever, and at the time of the journey was beset by tribes
of hostile cannibals. This pleasant path led to Khartoum, held in
those days by the Khalifa with his dervish army. The odds were about
a thousand to one that these two British adventurers were marching
straight to death or slavery. Their attempt was madness--that divine
madness that inspires all pioneers.
Now for a glimpse into this great adventure:
“I had shot a zebra ... and turning out at five-thirty A. M. crept up
within sixty yards.... I saw in the middle of a circle of some two
hundred vultures a grand old lion, leisurely gnawing the ribs, and
behind, four little jackals sitting in a row.... Behind stretched
the limitless plain, streaked with mists shimmering in the growing
light of the rising sun, clumps of graceful palms fenced in a sandy
arena where the zebra had fallen and round his attenuated remains,
and just out of reach of the swish of the monarch’s tail, the solid
circle of waiting vultures, craning their bald necks, chattering and
hustling one another, and the more daring quartette within the magic
circle like four little images of patience, while the lion in all his
might and matchless grandeur of form, leisurely chewed and scrunched
the titbits, magnificently regardless of the watchful eyes of the
encircling canaille.... I watched the scene for fully ten minutes, then
as he showed signs of moving I took the chance afforded of a broadside
shot and bowled him over with the .500 magnum. In inserting another
cartridge the gun jammed, and he rose, but after looking round for the
cause of the interruption, without success, started off at a gallop.
With a desperate effort I closed the gun and knocked him over again. He
was a fine black-maned lion and as he lay in a straight line from tip
to top ten feet, four inches, a very unusual length.”
Among the volcanoes near Lake Kivo, Grogan discovered a big one that
had been thrown up within the last two years, and there were vast new
floods of lava, hard to cross. One day, while searching out a route
for the expedition, he had just camped at a height of nine thousand
feet in the forest when he found the fresh tracks of a bull elephant,
and the spoor was much larger than he had ever seen. When he overtook
this giant the jungle was so dense that only the ridge of his back was
visible, and for some time he watched the animal picking the leaves off
a tree. When fodder ran short he tore down a tree whose trunk was two
feet thick, and fearing he might move on, Grogan fired. The elephant
fell, but recovered and clashed away, so that there were some hours of
tracking before the hunter could catch up again. And now on a flaw of
wind the giant scented him.
“The noise was terrific, and it suddenly dawned upon me that so far
from moving off he was coming on. I was powerless to move--a fall would
have been fatal--so I waited; but the forest was so dense that I never
saw him till his head was literally above me, when I fired both barrels
of the .500 magnum in his face. The whole forest seemed to crumple
up, and a second later I found myself ten feet above the ground, well
home in a thorn bush, while my gun was lying ten yards away in the
opposite direction; and I heard a roar as of thunder disappearing into
the distance. A few seconds later the most daring of my boys, Zowanji,
came hurrying along with that sickly green hue that a nigger’s face
assumes in moments of fear, and with his assistance I descended from
my spiky perch. I was drenched with blood, which fortunately proved to
be not mine, but that of the elephant; my gun, which I recovered, was
also covered with blood, even to the inside of the barrels. The only
damage I sustained was a slightly twisted knee. I can not say whether
the elephant actually struck me, or whether I was carried there by the
rush of the country.”
Following up, Grogan found enormous pools of blood, and half a mile
farther on heard grunts that showed that the elephant had scented
him. The animal rushed about with terrifying shrieks, devastated half
an acre of forest, and then moved on again. Several times the hunter
caught up, but the elephant moved on at an increasing pace, until
sunset put an end to Grogan’s hopes.
This part of the Rift has belts of forest, and close beside them are
patches of rich populous country where black nations live in fat
contentment. But for five years there had been trouble to the westward
where the Congo army had chased out the Belgian officials and run the
country to suit themselves. Still worse, there were certain cannibal
tribes moving like a swarm of locusts through Central Africa, eating
the settled nations. Lately the swarm had broken into the Rift, and as
Grogan explored northward he found the forest full of corpses. Here and
there lurked starving fugitives, but despite their frantic warnings
he moved on until he came to a wide province of desolated farms and
ruined villages. Seeing that he had but a dozen followers a mob of
cannibals attacked at night; but as they rushed, six fell to the white
man’s rifle, and when the rest fled he picked them off at the range
of a mile, as long as he could find victims. Then he entered a house
where they had been feasting. “A cloud of vultures hovering over, the
spot gave me an inkling of what I was about to see; but the realization
defies description; it haunts me in my dreams, at dinner it sits on my
leg-of-mutton, it bubbles in my soup, in fine, Watonga (the negro gun
bearer) would not eat the potatoes that grew in the same country.”
Grogan fled, and starved, for the mountain streams were choked with
corpses, the woods were a nightmare horror, to eat and sleep were alike
impossible. He warned his partner and the expedition marched by another
route.
Two very queer kinds of folk he met in the forests: the pygmies and the
ape-men. The pygmies are little hunters and not more than three feet
tall, but sturdy and compact, immensely strong, able to travel through
the pig-runs of the jungle, and brave enough to kill elephants with
their tiny poisoned arrows. He found them kindly, clever little folk,
though all the other explorers have disliked them.
The ape-men were tall, with hanging paunch and short legs, a small
skull and huge jaws, face, body and legs covered with wiry hair. The
hang of the long powerful arms, the slight stoop of the trunk, and the
hunted vacant expression of the face were marked. The twenty or thirty
of them Grogan met were frightened at first but afterward became very
friendly, proud to show him their skill in making fire with their fire
sticks.
Once in the forest he found the skeleton of an ape of gigantic size.
The natives explained that such apes were plentiful, although no white
man has ever seen one. They have a bad habit of stealing negro women.
At the northern end of the Rift, where the country flattens out
toward the Nile, Grogan and Sharp met with the officials of British
Uganda, which was then in a shocking muddle of mutinous black troops,
raids from the Congo, drought and famine. There Mr. Sharp left the
expedition, making his way to Mombasa; the carriers were sent back home
as a good riddance, and Mr. Grogan, with only five faithful attendants,
pushed on down the Nile Valley. The river was blocked with a weed
called the sudd, which a British expedition was trying to clear away,
and Grogan was forced to the eastward through horrible marshlands. He
had in all only fourteen men when he came to the Dinka country, and met
that queer race of swamp folk. They are very tall, some even gigantic,
beautifully built, but broad-footed, walking with feet picked up high
and thrust far forward--the gait of a pelican. At rest they stand on
one leg like a wading bird, the loose leg akimbo with its foot on the
straight leg’s knee. They are fierce, too, and one tribe made an attack
on Grogan’s party. His men threw down their loads, screaming that they
were lost, and the best Congo soldier fell stabbed to the heart, while
two others went down with cracked skulls.
“I took the chief,” says Grogan, “and his right-hand man with the
double barrel, then, turning round, found that my boy had bolted with
my revolver. At the same moment a Dinka hurled his spear at me; I
dodged it, but he rushed in and dealt me a swinging blow with his club,
which I fortunately warded with my arm, receiving no more damage than a
wholesome bruise. I poked my empty gun at his stomach, and he turned,
receiving a second afterwards a dum-dum in the small of his back. Then
they broke and ran, my army with eight guns having succeeded in firing
two shots. I climbed up an ant hill that was close by, and could see
them watching at about three hundred yards for our next move, which
was an unexpected one, for I planted a dum-dum apparently in the
stomach of one of the most obtrusive ruffians, whom I recognized by his
great height. They then hurried off and bunched at about seven hundred
yards, and another shot, whether fatal or not I could not see, sent
them off in all directions.”
The battle was finished, and Grogan toiled on with his wounded men,
famished, desperate, almost hopeless. One day in desert country he came
to the camp of Captain Dunn, a British officer.
“Captain Dunn: ‘How do you do?’
“I: ‘Oh, very fit, thanks; how are you? Had any sport?’
“Dunn: ‘Oh, pretty fair, but there is nothing here. Have a drink?’
“Then we washed, lunched, discussed the war, (South Africa), and
eventually Dunn asked where the devil I had come from.”
The battle of Omdurman had destroyed the dervish power, and opened the
Nile so that Grogan went on in ease and comfort by steamer to Khartoum,
to Cairo, and home. Still he heard in his sleep the night melody of the
lions--“The usual cry is a sort of vast sigh, taken up by the chorus
with a deep sob, sob, sob, or a curious rumbling noise. But the pukka
roar is indescribable ... it seems to permeate the whole universe,
thundering, rumbling, majestic: there is no music in the world so
sweet.”
It is hard to part with this Irish gentleman, whose fourteen months’
traverse of the Dark Continent is the finest deed in the history of
African exploration.
XXVIII
A. D. 1900
THE COWBOY PRESIDENT
Let others appraise the merits of this great American gentleman as
governor of New York, secretary of the United States Navy, colonel of
the Rough Riders, historian of his pet hero, Oliver Cromwell, and,
finally, president of the republic. He had spent half his life as
an adventurer on the wild frontier breaking horses, punching cows,
fighting grizzly bears, before he ever tackled the politicians, and he
had much more fun by the camp-fire than he got in his marble palace.
Here is his memory of a prairie fire:--“As I galloped by I saw that
the fire had struck the trees a quarter of a mile below me, in the
dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a giant, and roared in a
thunderous monotone as it swept up the coulée. I galloped to the hill
ridge ahead, saw that the fire line had already reached the divide,
and turned my horse sharp on his haunches. As I again passed under the
trees the fire, running like a race horse in the bush, had reached the
road; its breath was hot in my face; tongues of quivering flame leaped
over my head, and kindled the grass on the hillside fifty yards away.”
Thus having prospected the ground he discovered means of saving
himself, his companions, and his camp from the rushing flames. It
is an old artifice of the frontier to start a fresh fire, burn a
few acres, and take refuge on the charred ground while the storm of
flame sweeps by on either hand. But this was not enough. The fire
was burning the good pasture of his cattle and, unless stayed, might
sweep away not only leagues of grass, but ricks and houses. “Before
dark,” he continues, “we drove to camp and shot a stray steer, and
then split its carcass in two length ways with an ax. After sundown
the wind lulled--two of us on horseback dragging a half carcass bloody
side down, by means of ropes leading from our saddle-horns to the
fore and hind legs, the other two following on foot with slickers
and wet blankets. There was a reddish glow in the night air, and the
waving bending lines of flame showed in great bright curves against
the hillside ahead of us. The flames stood upright two or three feet
high. Lengthening the ropes, one of us spurred his horse across the
fire line, and then wheeling, we dragged the carcass along it, one
horseman being on the burnt ground, the other on the unburnt grass,
while the body of the steer lay lengthwise across the line. The weight
and the blood smothered the fire as we twitched the carcass over the
burning grass, and the two men following behind with their blankets
and slickers (oilskins) readily beat out any isolated tufts of flame.
Sometimes there would be a slight puff of wind, and then the man on the
grass side of the line ran the risk of a scorching.
“We were blackened with smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our thighs,
while at times the plunging horses tried to break or bolt. It was worse
when we came to some deep gully or ravine--we could see nothing, and
simply spurred our horses into it anywhere, taking our chances. Down
we would go, stumbling, sliding and pitching, over cut banks and into
holes and bushes, while the carcass bounded behind, now catching on
a stump, and now fetching loose with a ‘pluck’ that brought it full
on the horses’ haunches, driving them nearly crazy with fright. By
midnight the half carcass was worn through, but we had stifled the fire
in the comparatively level country to the eastwards. Back we went to
camp, drank huge drafts of muddy water, devoured roast ox-ribs, and
dragged out the other half carcass to fight the fire in the west. There
was some little risk to us who were on horseback, dragging the carcass;
we had to feel our way along knife-like ridges in the dark, one ahead
and the other behind while the steer dangled over the precipice on one
side, and in going down the buttes and into the cañons only by extreme
care could we avoid getting tangled in the ropes and rolling down in
a heap.” So at last the gallant fight was abandoned, and looking back
upon the fire which they had failed to conquer: “In the darkness it
looked like the rush of a mighty army.”
Short of cowboys and lunatics, nobody could have imagined such a feat
of horsemanship. Of that pattern is frontier adventure--daring gone
mad; and yet it is very rarely that the frontiersman finds the day’s
work worth recording, or takes the trouble to set down on paper the
stark naked facts of an incident more exciting than a shipwreck, more
dangerous than a battle, and far transcending the common experience of
men.
[Illustration: THEODORE ROOSEVELT]
Traveling alone in the Rockies, Colonel Roosevelt came at sundown to a
little ridge whence he could look into the hollow beyond--and there he
saw a big grizzly walking thoughtfully home to bed. At the first shot,
“he uttered a loud moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop,
while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off. After going a few
hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket ... which he did not leave....
As I halted I heard a peculiar savage whine from the heart of the
brush. Accordingly I began to skirt the edge standing on tiptoe, and
gazing earnestly in to see if I could not get a glimpse of his hide.
When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket he suddenly left it
directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the
hillside a little above. He turned his head stiffly toward me, scarlet
strings of froth hung from his lips, his eyes burned like embers in the
gloom. I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered
the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly
the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing
the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white
fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding
through the laurel bushes so that it was hard to aim.
“I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it
with a ball which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his
body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did
not know that I had struck him. He came unsteadily on, and in another
moment was close upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet
went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw, and going
into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled trigger, and
through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made
a vicious side blow at me. The rest of his charge carried him past. As
he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his
muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three
jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the
magazine, my rifle only holding four, all of which I had fired. Then he
tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed to give way, his
head drooped, and he rolled over--each of my first three bullets had
inflicted a mortal wound.”
This man who had fought grizzly bears came rather as a surprise among
the politicians in silk hats who run the United States. He had all the
gentry at his back because he is the first man of unquestioned birth
and breeding who has entered the political bear-pit since the country
squires who followed George Washington. He had all the army at his back
because he had charged the heights at Santiago de Cuba with conspicuous
valor at the head of his own regiment of cowboys. He had the navy at
his back because as secretary for the navy he had successfully governed
the fleet. But he was no politician when he came forward to claim the
presidency of the United States. Seeing that he could not be ignored
the wire-puller set a trap for this innocent and gave him the place of
vice-president. The vice-president has little to do, can only succeed
to the throne in the event of the president’s death, and is, after a
brief term, barred for life from any further progress. “Teddy” walked
into the trap and sat down.
But when President McKinley was murdered the politicians found that
they had made a most surprising and gigantic blunder. By their own
act the cowboy bear fighter must succeed to the vacant seat as chief
magistrate of the republic. President Roosevelt happened to be away at
the time, hunting bears in the Adirondack wilderness, and there began a
frantic search of mountain peaks and forest solitudes for the missing
ruler of seventy million people. When he was found, and had paid the
last honors to his dead friend, William McKinley, he was obliged to
proceed to Washington, and there take the oaths. His women folk had
a terrible time before they could persuade him to wear the silk hat
and frock coat which there serve in lieu of coronation robes, but he
consented even to that for the sake of the gorgeous time he was to have
with the politicians afterward.
XXIX
A. D. 1905
THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Once upon a time the Foul Fiend wanted a death-trap that would pick
out all the bravest men and destroy them, so he invented the Northwest
Passage.
So when Europe needed a short route to China round the north end of the
Americas our seamen set out to find a channel, and even when they knew
that any route must lie through the high Arctic, still they were not
going to be beaten. Our white men rule the world because we refuse to
be beaten.
The seamen died of scurvy, and it was two hundred years before they
found out how to stay alive on salted food, by drinking lime juice.
Safe from scurvy, they reached the gate of the passage at Lancaster
Sound, but there the winter caught them, so that their ships were
squashed in driving ice, and the men died of cold and hunger. Then
the explorers got ships too strong to be crushed; they copied the
dress of the Eskimo to keep them warm; and they carried food enough
to last for years. Deeper and deeper they forced their way into the
Arctic, but now they neared the magnetic pole where the compass is
useless, in belts of drifting fog darker than midnight. Still they
dared to go on, but the inner channels of the Arctic were found to be
frozen until the autumn gales broke up the ice-fields, leaving barely
six weeks for navigation before the winter frosts. At that rate the
three-thousand-mile passage would take three years. Besides, the ship
must carry a deck load of sledge dogs with their food, so that the men
might escape overland in case they were cast away. Only a big ship
could carry the supplies, but once again the seamen dared to try. And
now came the last test to break men’s hearts--the sea lane proved to
be so foul with shoals and rocks that no large vessel could possibly
squeeze through. At last, after three hundred years, the British seamen
had to own defeat. Our explorers had mapped the entire route, but no
ship could make the passage because it was impossible to raise money
for the venture.
Why should we want to get through this useless channel? Because it was
the test for perfect manhood free from all care for money, utterly
unselfish, of the highest intellect, patience, endurance and the last
possible extremity of valor.
And where the English failed a Norseman, Nordenskjöld made the
Northeast passage round the coast of Asia. Still nobody dared to broach
the Northwest passage round America, until a young Norse seaman solved
the riddle. Where no ship could cross the shoals it might be possible
with a fishing boat drawing only six feet of water. But she could not
carry five years’ supplies for men and dogs. Science came to the rescue
with foods that would pack into a tenth part of their proper bulk, and
as to the dog food, one might risk a deck load big as a haystack, to
be thrown off if the weather got too heavy. Still, how could a fishing
boat carry twenty men for the different expert jobs? Seven men might
be discovered each an expert in three or four different trades; the
captain serving as the astronomer and doctor, the cook as a naturalist
and seaman. So Roald Amundsen got Doctor Nansen’s help, and that
great explorer was backed by the king. Help came from all parts of
Scandinavia, and a little from Great Britain.
The _Gjöa_ was a forty-seven ton herring boat with a thirteen
horse-power motor for ship’s pet, loaded with five years’ stores for a
crew of seven men, who off duty were comrades as in a yachting cruise.
In 1903 she sailed from Christiania and spent July climbing the north
current in full view of the Greenland coast, the Arctic wonderland.
At Godhaven she picked up stores, bidding farewell to civilization,
passed Upernivik the last village, and Tassinssak, the last house on
earth, then entered Melville Bay with its three-hundred-mile frontage
of glacier, the most dangerous place in the Arctic. Beyond, near Cape
York, she found a deck load of stores left for her by one of the
Dundee whalers. There the people met the last white men, three Danish
explorers whose leader, Mylius Erichsen, was making his way to death
on the north coast of Greenland. So, like a barge with a hayrick, the
overload _Joy_ crossed from the Greenland coast to Lancaster Sound,
the gate of the Northwest passage, whose gatepost is Beechey Island,
sacred to the memory of Sir John Franklin, and the dead of the Franklin
search. The _Joy_ found some sole leather better than her own, a heap
of useful coal and an anvil, among the litter of old expeditions;
made the graves tidy; left a message at Franklin’s monument, and went
on. For three hundred years the channels ahead were known to have been
blocked; only by a miracle of good fortune could they be free from ice;
and this miracle happened, for the way was clear.
* * * * *
“I was sitting,” writes Amundsen on August thirty-first, “entering the
day’s events in my journal, when I heard a shriek--a terrific shriek,
which thrilled me to the very marrow. It takes something to make a
Norseman shriek, but a mighty flame with thick suffocating smoke was
leaping up from the engine room skylight. There the tanks held two
thousand two hundred gallons of petroleum, and close beside them a
pile of soaked cotton waste had burst with a loud explosion. If the
tanks got heated the ship would be blown into chips, but after a hard
fight the fire was got under. All hands owed their lives to their fine
discipline.”
A few days later the _Joy_ grounded in a labyrinth of shoals, and
was caught aground by a storm which lifted and bumped her until the
false keel was torn off. The whole of the deck load had to be thrown
overboard. The only hope was to sail over the rocks, and with all her
canvas set she charged, smashing from rock to rock until she reached
the farther edge of the reef which was nearly dry. “The spray and sleet
were washing over the vessel, the mast trembled, and the _Gjöa_ seemed
to pull herself together for a last final leap. She was lifted up and
flung bodily on the bare rocks, bump, bump, with terrific force.... In
my distress I sent up (I honestly confess it) an ardent prayer to the
Almighty. Yet another bump worse than ever, then one more, and we slid
off.”
The shock had lifted the rudder so that it rested with the pintles on
the mountings, and she would not steer; then somehow the pins dropped
back into their sockets, the steersmen regained control and the _Joy_
was saved, after a journey across dry rocks which ought to have smashed
any ship afloat. She did not even leak.
Near the south end of King William’s Land a pocket harbor was found,
and named Joy Haven. There the stores were landed, cabins were built,
the ship turned into a winter house, and the crew became men of
science. For two years they were hard at work studying the magnetism
of the earth beside the Magnetic Pole. They collected fossils and
natural history specimens, surveyed the district, studied the heavens
and the weather, hunted reindeer for their meat and clothing, fished,
and made friends with the scented, brave and merry Eskimos. During the
first winter the thermometer dropped to seventy-nine degrees below
zero, which is pretty near the world record for cold, but as long as
one is well fed, with bowels in working order, and has Eskimo clothes
to wear, the temperature feels much the same after forty below zero.
Below that point the wind fails to a breathless calm, the keen dry air
is refreshing as champagne, and one can keep up a dog-trot for miles
without being winded. It is not the winter night that people dread,
but the summer day with its horrible torment of mosquitoes. Then there
is in spring and autumn, a hot misty glare upon the snow-fields which
causes blindness with a deal of pain. The Arctic has its drawbacks, but
one remembers afterward the fields of flowers, the unearthly beauty of
the northern lights, the teeming game, and those long summer nights
when the sun is low, filling the whole sky with sunset colors.
The greatest event of the first year was the finding of an Eskimo
hunter to carry letters, who came back in the second summer, having
found in Hudson’s Bay an exploring vessel of the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police of Canada. Major Moody, also the captain of the Arctic,
and the Master of an American whaler, sent their greetings, news of the
outer world, some useful charts, and a present of husky dogs.
The second summer was over. The weather had begun to turn cold before
a northerly gale smashed the ice, and sea lanes opened along the
Northwest passage. On August thirteenth the _Joy_ left her anchorage,
under sail and steam, to pick her way without compass through blinding
fog, charging and butting through fields of ice, dodging zigzag
through shoals, or squeezing between ice-fields and the shore. There
was no sleep for anybody during the first three nights, but racking
anxiety and tearing overstrain until they reached known waters, a
channel charted by the old explorers. They met an American whaler, and
afterward had clear open water as far as the mouths of the Mackenzie
River. A few miles beyond that the ice closed in from the north and
piled up-shore so that the passage was blocked and once more the _Joy_
went into winter quarters. But not alone. Ladies must have corsets
ribbed with whalebone from the bowhead whale. Each whale head is
worth two thousand pounds, so a fleet of American whalers goes hunting
in the Arctic. Their only port of refuge is Herschel Island off the
Canadian coast, so there is an outpost of the Northwest Mounted Police,
a mission station and a village of Eskimos.
The _Joy_ came to anchor thirty-six miles to the east of Herschel
Island, beside a stranded ship in charge of her Norse mate, and daily
came passengers to and fro on the Fort Macpherson trail. From that post
runs a dog-train service of mails connecting the forts of the Hudson’s
Bay Company all the way up the Mackenzie Valley to Edmonton on the
railway within two thousand miles. The crew of the _Joy_ had company
news, letters from home, and Captain Amundsen went by dog-train to the
mining camps on the Yukon where at Eagle City he sent telegrams.
At last in the summer of 1906 the _Joy_ sailed on the final run of her
great voyage, but her crew of seven was now reduced to six, and at
parting she dipped her colors to the cross on a lone grave. The ice
barred her passage, but she charged, smashing her engines, and charged
again, losing her peak which left the mainsail useless. So she won past
Cape Prince of Wales, completing the Northwest passage, and entering
Bering Sea called at Cape Nome for repairs. There a thousand American
gold miners welcomed the sons of the vikings with an uproarious
triumph, and greeted Captain Amundsen with the Norse national anthem.
XXX
A. D. 1588
JOHN HAWKINS
Master John Hawkins, mariner, was a trader’s son, familiar from
childhood with the Guinea coast of Africa. Worshipful merchants of
London trusted him with three ridiculously small ships, the size of our
fishing smacks, but manned by a hundred men. With these, in 1562--the
“spacious times” of great Elizabeth--he swooped down on the West
African coast, and horribly scared were his people when they saw the
crocodiles. The nature of this animal “is ever when he would have his
prey, to sob and cry like a Christian bodie, to provoke them to come to
him, and then he snatcheth at them.” In spite of the reptiles, Master
Hawkins “got into his possession, partly by the sword, and partly by
other means,” three hundred wretched negroes.
The king of Spain had a law that no Protestant heretic might trade with
his Spanish colonies of the West Indies, so Master Hawkins, by way of
spitting in his majesty’s eye, went straight to Hispaniola, where he
exchanged his slaves with the settlers for a shipload of hides, ginger,
sugar and pearls.
On his second voyage Master Hawkins attempted to enslave a whole city,
hard by Sierra Leone, but the Almighty, “who worketh all things for
the best, would not have it so, and by Him we escaped without danger,
His name be praised for it.” Hawkins had nearly been captured by the
negroes, and was compelled to make his pious raids elsewhere. Moreover,
when he came with a fleet loaded with slaves to Venezuela, the Spanish
merchants were scared to trade with him. Of course, for the sake of his
negroes, he had to get them landed somehow, so he went ashore, “having
in his greate boate two falcons of brasse, and in the other boates
double bases in their noses.” Such artillery backed by a hundred men in
plate armor, convinced the Spaniards that it would be wise to trade.
On his third voyage, Master Hawkins found the Spaniards his friends
along the Spanish main, but the weather, a deadly enemy, drove him for
refuge and repair to San Juan d’Ullua, the port of Mexico. Here was an
islet, the only shelter on that coast from the northerly gales. He sent
a letter to the capital for leave to hold that islet with man and guns
while he bought provisions and repaired his ships. But as it happened,
a new viceroy came with a fleet of thirteen great ships to claim that
narrow anchorage, and Hawkins must let them in or fight. “On the faith
of a viceroy” Don Martin de Henriquez pledged his honor before Hawkins
let him in, then set his ships close aboard those of England, trained
guns to bear upon them, secretly filled them with troops hid below
hatches, and when his treason was found out, sounded a trumpet, the
signal for attack. The Englishmen on the isle were massacred except
three, the queen’s ship _Jesus_, of Lubeck, was so sorely hurt that
she had to be abandoned, and only two small barks, the _Minion_ and
the _Judith_, escaped to sea. The Spaniards lost four galleons in that
battle.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN HAWKINS]
As to the English, they were in great peril, and parted by a storm. The
Judith fared best, commanded by a man from before the mast, one Francis
Drake, who brought the news to England that Hawkins had more than two
hundred people crowded upon the _Minion_ without food or water. “With
many sorrowful hearts,” says Hawkins, “we wandered in an unknown sea by
the span of fourteen dayes, till hunger forced us to seeke the lande,
for birdes were thought very goode meate, rattes, cattes, mise and
dogges.”
It was then that one hundred fourteen men volunteered to go ashore and
the ship continued a very painful voyage.
These men were landed on the coast of Mexico, unarmed, to be stripped
naked presently by red Indians, and by the Spaniards marched as slaves
to the city of Mexico, where after long imprisonment those left alive
were sold. The Spanish gentlemen, the clergy and the monks were kind
to these servants, who earned positions of trust on mines and ranches,
some of them becoming in time very wealthy men though still rated as
slaves. Then came the “Holy Hellish Inquisition” to inquire into the
safety of their souls. All were imprisoned, nearly all were tortured
on the rack, and flogged in public with five hundred lashes. Even the
ten gentlemen landed by Hawkins as hostages for his good faith shared
the fate of the shipwrecked mariners who, some in Mexico and some in
Spain, were in the end condemned to the galleys. And those who kept
the faith were burned alive. From that time onward, whatever treaties
there might be in Europe, there was never a moment’s peace for the
Spanish Indies. All honest Englishmen were at war with Spain until the
Inquisition was stamped out, and the British liberators had helped to
drive the Spaniards from the last acre of their American empire.
When Hawkins returned to England, Mary, Queen of Scots, was there a
prisoner. The sailor went to Elizabeth’s minister, Lord Burleigh, and
proposed a plot. By this plot he entered into a treaty with the queen
of Scots to set her on the throne. He was to join the Duke of Alva
for the invasion and overthrow of England. So pleased was the Spanish
king that he paid compensation to Hawkins for his losses at San Juan
d’Ullua and restored to freedom such of the English prisoners as could
be discovered. Then Hawkins turned loyal again, and Queen Elizabeth
knighted him for fooling her enemies.
XXXI
A. D. 1573
FRANCIS DRAKE
The _Judith_ had escaped from San Juan d’Ullua and her master, Francis
Drake, of Devon, was now a bitter vengeful adversary, from that time
onward living to be the scourge of Spain. Four years he raided,
plundered, burned along the Spanish main, until the name Drake was
changed to Dragon in the language of the dons.
Then in 1573 he sailed from Plymouth with five little ships to carry
fire and sword into the South Seas, where the flag of England had never
been before. When he had captured some ships near the Cape de Verde
Islands, he was fifty-four days in unknown waters before he sighted
the Brazils, then after a long time came to Magellan’s Straits, where
he put in to refresh his men. One of the captains had been unfaithful
and was now tried by a court-martial, which found him guilty of mutiny
and treason against the admiral. Drake offered him a ship to return
to England and throw himself on the queen’s mercy, or he might land
and take his chance among the savages, or he could have his death,
and carry his case to the Almighty. The prisoner would not rob the
expedition of a ship, nor would he consort with the degraded tribes of
that wild Land of Fire, but asked that he might die at the hands of his
countrymen because of the wrong he had done them. So the date was set
for his execution, when all the officers received the holy communion,
the prisoner kneeling beside the admiral. After that they dined
together for the last time, and when they had risen from table, shook
hands at parting, the one to his death, the others to their voyage. May
England ever breed such gentlemen!
The squadron had barely got clear of the straits and gained the Pacific
Ocean, when bad weather scattered all the ships. Drake went on alone,
and on the coast of Chili, met with an Indian in a canoe, who had news
of a galleon at Santiago, laden with gold from Peru. The Spaniards were
not at all prepared for birds of Drake’s feather on the South Seas, so
that when he dropped in at Santiago they were equally surprised and
annoyed.
The galleon’s crew were ashore save for six Spaniards and three
negroes, so bored with themselves that they welcomed the visitors by
beating a drum and setting out Chilian wine. But when Master Moon
arrived on board with a boat’s crew, he laid about him outrageously
with a large sword, saying, “Down, dog!” to each discomfited Spaniard,
until they fled for the hold. Only one leaped overboard, who warned the
town, whereat the people escaped to the bush, leaving the visitors to
enjoy themselves. The cargo of gold and wine must have been worth about
fifty thousand pounds, while Santiago yielded a deal of good cheer
besides, Master Fletcher, the parson, getting for his “spoyle” a silver
chalice, two cruets and an altar cloth.
[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE]
Greatly refreshed, the English went on northward, carefully inspecting
the coast. At one place a sleeping Spaniard was found on the beach
with thirteen bars of silver. “We took the silver and left the man.”
Another place yielded a pack-train of llamas, the local beast of
burden, with leather wallets containing eight hundred pounds’ weight of
silver. Three small barks were searched next, one of them being laden
with silver; then twelve ships at anchor, which were cut adrift; and a
bark with eighty pounds’ weight of gold, and a golden crucifix set with
emeralds. But best of all was the galleon _Cacafuego_, overtaken at
sea, and disabled at the third shot, which brought down her mizzenmast.
Her cargo consisted of “great riches, as jewels and precious stones,
thirteen chests full of royals of plate, four score pounds weight
of golde, and six and twentie tunne of silver.” The pilot being the
possessor of two nice silver cups, had to give one to Master Drake, and
the other to the steward, “because hee could not otherwise chuse.”
Every town, every ship was rifled along that coast. There was neither
fighting nor killing, but much politeness, until at last the ship had
a full cargo of silver, gold and gems, with which she reached England,
having made a voyage round the world. When Queen Elizabeth dined in
state on board Drake’s ship at Greenwich, she struck him with a sword
and dubbed him knight. Of course he must have armorial bearings now,
but when he adopted the three wiverns--black fowl of sorts--of the
Drake family, there were angry protests against his insolence. So the
queen made him a coat-of-arms, a terrestrial globe, and a ship thereon
led with a string by a hand that reached out of a cloud, and in the
rigging of the said ship, a wivern hanged by the neck.
It was Parson Fletcher who wrote the story of that illustrious voyage,
but he does not say how he himself fell afterward from grace, being
solemnly consigned by Drake to the “devil and all his angells,”
threatened with a hanging at the yard-arm, and made to bear a posy on
his breast with these frank words, “Francis Fletcher, ye falsest knave
that liveth.”
Drake always kept his chaplain, and dined “alone with musick,” did all
his public actions with large piety and gallant courtesy, while he led
English fleets on insolent piracies against the Spaniards.
From his next voyage he returned leaving the Indies in flames, loaded
with plunder, and smoking the new herb tobacco to the amazement of his
countrymen.
Philip II was preparing a vast armada against England, when Drake
appeared with thirty sail on the Spanish coast, destroyed a hundred
ships, swept like a hurricane from port to port, took a galleon laden
with treasure off the western islands, and returned to Plymouth with
his enormous plunder.
Next year Drake was vice-admiral to Lord Howard in the destruction of
the Spanish armada.
In 1589 he led a fleet to deliver Portugal from the Spaniards, wherein
he failed.
Then came his last voyage in company with his first commander, Sir John
Hawkins. Once more the West Indies felt the awful weight of his arm,
but now there were varying fortunes of defeat, of reprisals, and at the
end, pestilence, which struck the fleet at Nombre de Dios, and felled
this mighty seaman. His body was committed to the sea, his memory to
the hearts of all brave men.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH]
XXXII
A. D. 1587
THE FOUR ARMADAS
Here let us call a halt. We have come to the climax of the great
century, the age of the Renaissance, when Europe was born again; of the
Reformation, when the Protestants of the Baltic fought the Catholics of
the Mediterranean for the right to worship in freedom; and of the sea
kings who laid the foundations of our modern world.
Islam had reached her fullest flood of glory with the fleets of
Barbarossa, the armies of the Sultan Suleiman, and all the splendors of
Akbar the Magnificent, before her ebb set downward into ruin.
Portugal and Spain, under one crown, shared the plunder of the Indies
and the mastery of the sea.
Then, as the century waned, a third-class power, the island state of
England, claimed the command of the sea, and planted the seeds of an
empire destined to overshadow the ruins of Spain, as well as the wreck
of Islam.
Here opened broad fields of adventure. There were German and English
envoys at the court of Russia; English merchants seeking trade in
India, Dutch gunners in the service of eastern princes, French
fishermen finding the way into Canada, seamen of all these nations as
slaves in Turkish galleys or in Spanish mines; everywhere sea fights,
shipwrecks, trails of lost men wandering in unknown lands, matters of
desert islands, and wrecked treasures with all the usual routine of
plague, pestilence and famine, of battle, of murder and of sudden death.
In all this tangle we must take one thread, with most to learn, I
think, from a Hollander, Mynheer, J. H. van Linschoten, who was clerk
to the Portuguese archbishop of the Indies and afterward in business at
Terceira in the Azores, where he wrote a famous book on pilotage. He
tells us about the seamanship of Portuguese and Spaniards in terms of
withering contempt as a mixture of incompetence and cowardice, enough
to explain the downfall and ruin of their empires.
The worst ships, he says, which cleared from Cochin were worth, with
their cargo, one million, eight hundred thousand pounds of our modern
money. Not content with that, the swindlers in charge removed the
ballast to make room for more cinnamon, whereby the _Arreliquias_
capsized and sank.
The _San Iago_, having her bottom ripped out by a coral reef, her
admiral, pilot, master and a dozen others entered into a boat, keeping
it with naked rapiers until they got clear, and deserted. Left without
any officers, the people on the wreck were addressed by an Italian
seaman who cried, “Why are we thus abashed?” So ninety valiant mariners
took the longboat and cleared, hacking off the fingers, hands and arms
of the drowning women who held on to her gunwale.
As to the pilot who caused this little accident, he afterward had
charge of the _San Thomas_ “full of people, and most of the gentility
of India,” and lost with all hands.
But if the seamanship of the Portuguese made it a miracle if they
escaped destruction, that of the Spaniards was on a much larger scale.
Where Portugal lost a ship Spain bungled away a fleet, and never was
incompetence more frightfully punished than in the doom of the four
armadas.
Philip II was busy converting Protestant Holland, and in 1587 he
resolved to send a Catholic mission to England also, but while he was
preparing the first armada Drake came and burned his hundred ships
under the guns of Cadiz.
A year later the second, the great armada, was ready, one hundred
thirty ships in line of battle, which was to embark the army in
Holland, and invade England with a field force of fifty-three thousand
men, the finest troops in Europe.
Were the British fleet of to-day to attack the Dutch the situation
would be much the same. It was a comfort to the English that they had
given most ample provocation and to spare, but still they felt it was
very awkward. They had five million people, only the ninth part of
their present strength; no battle-ships, and only thirty cruisers. The
merchant service rallied a hundred vessels, the size of the fishing
smacks, the Flemings lent forty, and nobody in England dared to hope.
To do Spain justice she made plenty of noise, giving ample warning.
Her fleet was made invincible by the pope’s blessing, the sacred
banners and the holy relics, while for England’s spiritual comfort
there was a vicar of the inquisition with his racks and thumbscrews.
Only the minor details were overlooked: that the cordage was rotten,
the powder damp, the wine sour, the water putrid, the biscuits and the
beef a mass of maggots, while the ship’s drainage into the ballast
turned every galleon into a floating pest-house. The admiral was a
fool, the captains were landlubbers, the ships would not steer, and
the guns could not be fought. The soldiers, navigators, boatswains
and quartermasters were alike too proud to help the short-handed,
overworked seamen, while two thousand of the people were galley slaves
waiting to turn on their masters. Worst of all, this sacred, fantastic,
doomed armada was to attack from Holland, without pilotage to turn our
terrific fortifications of shoals and quicksands.
Small were our ships and woefully short of powder, but they served the
wicked valiant queen who pawned her soul for England. Her admiral was
Lord Howard the Catholic, whose squadron leaders were Drake, Hawkins
and Frobisher. The leaders were practical seamen who led, not drove,
the English. The Spanish line of battle was seven miles across, but
when the armada was sighted, Drake on Plymouth Hoe had time to finish
his game of bowls before he put to sea.
From hill to hill through England the beacon fires roused the men, the
church bells called them to prayer, and all along the southern coast
fort echoed fort while guns and trumpets announced the armada’s coming.
The English fleet, too weak to attack, but fearfully swift to eat up
stragglers, snapped like a wolf-pack at the heels of Spain. Four days
and nights on end the armada was goaded and torn in sleepless misery,
no longer in line of battle, but huddled and flying. At the Straits
they turned at bay with thirty-five hundred guns, but eight ships bore
down on fire, stampeding the broken fleet to be slaughtered, foundered,
burned or cast away, strewing the coast with wreckage from Dover to
Cape Wrath and down the Western Isles. Fifty-three ruined ships got
back to Spain with a tale of storms and the English which Europe has
never forgotten, insuring the peace of English homes for three whole
centuries.
A year passed, and the largest of all the armadas ventured to sea, this
time from the West Indies, a treasure fleet for Spain. Of two hundred
twenty ships clearing not more than fifteen arrived, the rest being
“drowned, burst, or taken.” Storms and the English destroyed that third
armada.
The fourth year passed, marked by a hurricane in the Western Isles,
and a great increase of England’s reckoning, but the climax of Spain’s
undoing was still to come in 1591, the year of the fourth armada.
To meet and convoy her treasure fleet of one hundred ten sail from
the Indies, Spain sent out thirty battle-ships to the Azores. There
lay an English squadron of sixteen vessels, also in waiting for the
treasure fleet, whose policy was not to attack the escort, which
carried no plunder worth taking. Lord Howard’s vice-admiral was Sir
Richard Grenville, commanding Drake’s old flagship, the _Revenge_, of
seven hundred tons. This Grenville, says Linschoten, was a wealthy man,
a little eccentric also, for dining once with some Spanish officers
he must needs play the trick of crunching wine-glasses, and making
believe to swallow the glass while blood ran from his lips. He was
“very unquiet in his mind, and greatly affected to war,” dreaded by the
Spaniards, detested by his men. On sighting the Spanish squadron of
escort, Howard put to sea but Grenville had a hundred sick men to bring
on board the _Revenge_; his hale men were skylarking ashore. He stayed
behind, when he attempted to rejoin the squadron the Spanish fleet of
escort was in his way.
On board the _Revenge_ the master gave orders to alter course for
flight until Grenville threatened to hang him. It was Grenville’s
sole fault that he was presently beset by eight ships, each of them
double the size of the _Revenge_. So one small cruiser for the rest
of the day and all night fought a whole fleet, engaging from first
to last thirteen ships of the line. She sank two ships and well-nigh
wrecked five more, the Spaniards losing four hundred men in a fight
with seventy. Only when their admiral lay shot through the head, and
their last gun was silenced, their last boarding pike broken, the sixty
wounded men who were left alive, made terms with the Spaniards and laid
down their arms.
Grenville was carried on board the _Flagship_, where the officers of
the Spanish fleet assembled to do him honor, and in their own language
he spoke that night his last words: “Here die I, Richard Grenville,
with a joyful and quiet mind, for I have ended my life as a true
soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country, queen, religion
and honor; whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body;
and shall leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true
soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.”
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE]
With that he died, and his body was committed to the sea. As to those
who survived of his ship’s company, the Spaniards treated them with
honor; sending them as free men home to England. But they believed that
the body of Grenville being in the sea raised that appalling cyclone
that presently destroyed the treasure fleet and its escort, in all one
hundred seven ships, including the _Revenge_.
So perished the fourth armada, making within five years a total loss
of four hundred eighty-nine capital ships, in all the greatest sea
calamity that ever befell a nation. Hear then the comment of Linschoten
the Dutchman. The Spaniards thought that “Fortune, or rather God, was
wholly against them. Which is a sufficient cause to make the Spaniards
out of heart; and on the contrary to give the Englishmen more courage,
and to make them bolder. For they are victorious, stout and valiant;
and all their enterprises do take so good an effect that they are,
hereby, become the lords and masters of the sea.”
* * * * *
The Portuguese were by no means the first seamen to round the Cape of
Good Hope. About six hundred years B. C. the Pharaoh of Egypt, Niko,
sent a Phœnician squadron from the Red Sea, to find their way round
Africa and through Gibraltar Strait, back to the Nile. “When autumn
came they went ashore, wherever they might happen to be, and having
sown a tract of land with corn, waited till the grain was fit to eat.
Having reaped it, they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that
two whole years went by, and it was not until the third year that they
doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage home. On
their return, they declared--for my part, do not believe them, but
perhaps others may--that in sailing round Lybia (Africa), they had the
sun on their right hand” (i. e. in the northern sky). _Herodotus_.
XXXIII
A. D. 1583
SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT
“He is not worthy to live at all, that for any fear of danger of death,
shunneth his countrey’s service and his own honor.”
This message to all men of every English nation was written by a man
who once with his lone sword covered a retreat, defending a bridge
against twenty horsemen, of whom he killed one, dismounted two and
wounded six.
In all his wars and voyages Sir Humphrey Gilbert won the respect of
his enemies, and even of his friends, while in his writings one finds
the first idea of British colonies overseas. At the end of his life’s
endeavor he commanded a squadron that set out to found a first British
colony in Virginia, and on the way he called at the port of Saint
Johns in Newfoundland. Six years after the first voyage of Columbus,
John Cabot had rediscovered the American mainland, naming and claiming
this New-found Land, and its port for Henry VII of England. Since then
for nearly a hundred years the fishermen of Europe had come to this
coast for cod, but the Englishmen claimed and held the ports where the
fish were smoked. Now in 1583 Gilbert met the fishermen, English and
strangers alike, who delivered to him a stick of the timber and a turf
of the soil in token of his possession of the land, while he hoisted
the flag of England over her first colony, by this act founding the
British empire.
When Gilbert left Saint Johns, he had a secret that made him beam with
joy and hint at mysterious wealth. Perhaps his mining expert had found
pyrites and reported the stuff as gold, or glittering crystals that
looked like precious stones. Maybe it was the parcel of specimens for
which he sent his page boy on board the _Delight_, who, failing to
bring them, got a terrific thrashing.
When the _Delight_, his flagship, was cast away on Sable Island, with a
hundred men drowned and the sixteen survivors missing, Gilbert mourned,
it was thought, more for his secret than for ship or people. From
that time the wretchedness of his men aboard the ten-ton frigate, the
_Squirrel_, weighed upon him. They were in rags, hungry and frightened,
so to cheer them up he left his great ship and joined them. The
Virginia voyage was abandoned, they squared away for England, horrified
by a walrus passing between the ships, which the mariners took for a
demon jeering at their misfortunes.
They crossed the Atlantic in foul weather, with great seas running, so
that the people implored their admiral no longer to risk his life in
the half-swamped _Squirrel_.
“I will not forsake my little company,” was all his answer. The seas
became terrific and the weird corposants, Saint Elmo’s electric fires
“flamed amazement,” from masts and spars, sure harbinger of still more
dreadful weather.
A green sea filled the _Squirrel_ and she was near sinking, but as she
shook the water off, Sir Humphrey Gilbert waved his hand to the _Golden
Hind_. “Fear not, my masters!” he shouted, “we are as near to Heaven by
sea as by land.”
As the night fell, he was still seen sitting abaft with a book in his
hand.
Then at midnight all of a sudden the frigate’s lights were out, “for
in that moment she was devoured, and swallowed up by the sea,” and the
soul of Humphrey Gilbert passed out of the great unrest.
XXXIV
A. D. 1603
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
To its nether depths of shame and topmost heights of glory, the
sixteenth century is summed up in Sir Walter Raleigh. He was Gilbert’s
young half-brother, thirteen years his junior, and a kinsman of Drake,
Hawkins and Grenville, all men of Devon.
He played the dashing young gallant, butchering Irish prisoners of war;
he played the leader in the second sack of Cadiz; he played the knight
errant in the Azores, when all alone he stormed the breached walls of a
fort; he played the hero of romance in a wild quest up the Orinoco for
the dream king El Dorado, and the mythical golden city of Manoa. Always
he played to the gallery, and when he must dress the part of Queen
Elizabeth’s adoring lover, he let it be known that his jeweled shoes
had cost six thousand pieces of gold. He wrote some of the noblest
prose in our language besides most exquisite verse, invented distilling
of fresh water from the sea, and paid for the expeditions which founded
Virginia.
[Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH]
So many and varied parts this mighty actor played supremely well,
holding the center of the stage as long as there was an audience
to hiss, or to applaud him. Only in private he shirked heights of
manliness that he saw but dared not climb and was by turns a sneak,
a toady, a whining hypocrite whose public life is one of England’s
greatest memories, and his death of almost superhuman grandeur.
When James the Cur sat on the throne of great Elizabeth, his courtiers
had Raleigh tried and condemned to death. The charge was treason in
taking Spanish bribes, not a likely act of Spain’s great enemy, one of
the few items omitted from Sir Walter’s menu of little peccadillos.
James as lick-spittle and flunkey-in-chief to the king of Spain, kept
Raleigh for fifteen years awaiting execution in the tower of London.
Then Raleigh appealed to the avarice of the court, talked of Manoa and
King El Dorado, offered to fetch gold from the Orinoco, and got leave,
a prisoner on parole, to sail once more for the Indies.
They say that the myth of El Dorado is based on the curious mirage of
a city which in some kinds of weather may still be seen across Lake
Maracaibo. Raleigh and his people found nothing but mosquitoes, fever
and hostile Spaniards; the voyage was a failure, and he came home, true
to his honor, to have his head chopped off.
“I have,” he said on the scaffold, “a long journey to take, and must
bid the company farewell.”
The headsman knelt to receive his pardon. Testing with his finger the
edge of the ax, Raleigh lifted and kissed the blade. “It is a sharp and
fair medicine,” he said smiling, “to cure me of all my diseases.”
Then the executioner lost his nerve altogether, “What dost thou fear?”
asked Raleigh. “Strike, man, strike!”
“Oh eloquent, just, and mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast
persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world
hath flattered, thou hast cast out of the world and despised:
“Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the
pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these
two narrow words, _Hic jacet_.”
[Illustration: JAMES I]
XXXV
A. D. 1608
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
The sentence just quoted, the most beautiful perhaps in English prose,
is copied from the _History of the World_, which Raleigh wrote when a
prisoner in the tower, while wee James sat on the throne. It was then
that a gentleman and adventurer, Captain John Smith, came home from
foreign parts.
At the age of seventeen Mr. Smith was a trooper serving with the Dutch
in their war with Spain. As a mariner and gunner he fought in a little
Breton ship which captured one of the great galleons of Venice. As an
engineer, his inventions of “flying dragons” saved a Hungarian town
besieged by the Turks, then captured from the infidel the impregnable
city of Stuhlweissenburg. So he became a captain, serving Prince
Sigismund at the siege of Reigall. Here the attack was difficult and
the assault so long delayed “that the Turks complained they were
getting quite fat for want of exercise.” So the Lord Turbishaw, their
commander, sent word that the ladies of Reigall longed to see some
courtly feat of arms, and asked if any Christian officer would fight
him for his head, in single combat. The lot fell to Captain Smith.
In presence of the ladies and both armies, Lord Turbishaw entered the
lists on a prancing Arab, in shining armor, and from his shoulders
rose great wings of eagle feathers spangled with gold and gems. Perhaps
these fine ornaments marred the Turk’s steering, for at the first onset
Smith’s lance entered the eye-slit of his visor, piercing between the
eyes and through the skull. Smith took the head to his general and kept
the charger.
Next morning a challenge came to Smith from the dead man’s greatest
friend, by name Grualgo. This time the weapons were lances, and these
being shattered, pistols, the fighting being prolonged, and both men
wounded, but Smith took Grualgo’s head, his horse and armor.
As soon as his wound was healed, at the request of his officer
commanding, Smith sent a letter to the ladies of Reigall, saying he
did not wish to keep the heads of their two servants. Would they
please send another champion to take the heads and his own? They sent
an officer of high rank named Bonni Mulgro. This third fight began
with pistols, followed by a prolonged and well-matched duel with
battle-axes. Each man in turn reeled senseless in the saddle, but the
fight was renewed without gain to either, until the Englishman, letting
his weapon slip, made a dive to catch it, and was dragged from his
horse by the Turk. Then Smith’s horse, grabbed by the bridle, reared,
compelling the Turk to let go, and giving the Christian time to regain
his saddle. As Mulgro charged, Smith’s falchion caught him between the
plates of his armor, and with a howl of anguish the third champion
fell. So it was that Smith won for his coat of arms the three Turks’
heads erased.
After the taking and massacre of Reigall, Smith with his nine English
comrades, and his fine squadron of cavalry, joined an army, which was
presently caught in the pass of Rothenthurm between a Turkish force
and a big Tartar horde. By Smith’s advice, the Christian cavalry got
branches of trees soaked in pitch and ablaze, with which they made a
night charge, stampeding the Turkish army. Next day the eleven thousand
Christians were enclosed by the Tartars, the pass was heaped with
thirty thousand dead and wounded men, and with the remnant only two
Englishmen escaped. The pillagers found Smith wounded but still alive,
and by his jeweled armor, supposed him to be some very wealthy noble,
worth holding for ransom. So he was sold into slavery, and sent as a
gift by a Turkish chief to his lady in Constantinople. This lady fell
in love with her slave, and sent him to her brother, a pasha in the
lands north of the Caucasus, begging for kindness to the prisoner until
he should be converted to the Moslem faith. But the pasha, furious
at his sister’s kindness to a dog of a Christian, had him stripped,
flogged, and with a spiked collar of iron riveted on his neck, made
servant to wait upon four hundred slaves.
One day the pasha found Smith threshing corn, in a barn some three
miles distant from his castle. For some time he amused himself flogging
this starved and naked wretch who had once been the champion of a
Christian army; but Smith presently caught him a clip behind the ear
with his threshing bat, beat his brains out, put on his clothes,
mounted his Arab horse, and fled across the steppes into Christian
Russia. Through Russia and Poland he made his way to the court of
Prince Sigismund, who gave him a purse of fifteen thousand ducats. As
a rich man he traveled in Germany, Spain and Morocco, and there made
friends with Captain Merstham, whose ship lay at Saffee. He was dining
on board one day when a gale drove the ship to sea, and there fell in
with two Spanish battle-ships. From noon to dusk they fought, and in
the morning Captain Merstham said, “The dons mean to chase us again
to-day. They shall have some good sport for their pains.”
“Oh, thou old fox!” cried Smith, slapping him on the shoulders. So
after prayers and breakfast the battle began again, Smith in command
of the guns, and Merstham pledging the Spaniards in a silver cup of
wine, then giving a dram to the men. Once the enemy managed to board
the little merchantman, but Merstham and Smith touched off a few bags
of powder, blowing away the forecastle with thirty or forty Spaniards.
That set the ship on fire, but the English put out the flames and
still refused to parley. So afternoon wore into evening and evening
into night, when the riddled battle-ships sheered off at last, their
scuppers running with blood.
When Captain Smith reached England he was twenty-five years old, of
singular strength and beauty, a learned and most rarely accomplished
soldier, a man of saintly life with a boy’s heart. I doubt if in the
long annals of our people, there is one hero who left so sweet a memory.
Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement in Virginia had been wiped out by
the red Indians, so the second expedition to that country had an
adventurous flavor that appealed to Captain Smith. He gave all that he
had to the venture, but being somewhat masterful, was put in irons
during the voyage to America, and landed in deep disgrace, when every
man was needed to work in the founding of the colony. Had all the
officers of the expedition been drowned, and most of the members left
behind, the enterprise would have had some chance of success, for it
was mainly an expedition of wasters led by idiots. The few real workers
followed Captain Smith in the digging and the building, the hunting
and trading; while the idlers gave advice, and the leaders obstructed
the proceedings. The summer was one of varied interest, attacks by the
Indians, pestilence, famine and squabbles, so that the colony would
have come to a miserable end but that Captain Smith contrived to make
friends with the tribes, and induced them to sell him a supply of
maize. He was up-country in December when the savages managed to scalp
his followers and to take him prisoner. When they tried to kill him he
seemed only amused, whereas they were terrified by feats of magic that
made him seem a god. He was taken to the king--Powhatan--who received
the prisoner in state, gave him a dinner, then ordered his head to be
laid on a block and his brains dashed out. But before the first club
crashed down a little Indian maid ran forward, pushed the executioners
aside, taking his head in her arms, and holding on so tightly that she
could not be pulled away. So Pocahontas, the king’s daughter, pleaded
for the Englishman and saved him.
King Powhatan, with an eye to business, would now give the prisoner his
liberty, provided that he might send two messengers with Smith for a
brace of the demi-culverins with which the white men had defended the
bastions of their fort. So the captain returned in triumph to his own
people, and gladly presented the demi-culverins. At this the king’s
messengers were embarrassed, because the pair of guns weighed four and
a half tons. Moreover, when the weapons were fired to show their good
condition, the Indians were quite cured of any wish for culverins, and
departed with glass toys for the king and his family. In return came
Pocahontas with her attendants laden with provisions for the starving
garrison.
The English leaders were so grateful for succor that they charged
Captain Smith with the first thing that entered their heads, condemned
him on general principles, and would have hanged him, but that he
asked what they would do for food when he was gone, then cheered the
whole community by putting the prominent men in irons and taking sole
command. Every five days came the Indian princess and her followers
with a load of provisions for Captain Smith. The people called her the
Blessed Pocahontas, for she saved them all from dying of starvation.
During the five weeks of his captivity, Smith had told the Indians
fairy tales about Captain Newport, whose ship was expected soon with
supplies for the colony. Newport was the great Merowames, king of the
sea.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH]
When Newport arrived he was fearfully pleased at being the great
Merowames, but shared the disgust of the officials at Captain Smith’s
importance. When he went to trade with the tribes he traveled in state,
with Smith for interpreter, and began by presenting to Powhatan a red
suit, a hat, and a white dog--gifts from the king of England. Then to
show his own importance he heaped up all his trading goods, and
offered them for such maize as Powhatan cared to sell, expecting tons
and getting exactly four bushels. Smith, seeing that the colony would
starve, produced some bright blue beads, “very precious jewels,” he
told Powhatan, “composed of a most rare substance, and of the color of
the skies, of a sort, indeed, only to be worn by the greatest kings of
the world.”
After hard bargaining Powhatan managed to get a very few beads for a
hundred bushels of grain.
The Virginia Company sent out more idlers from England, and some
industrious Dutchmen who stole most of their weapons from the English
to arm the Indian tribes; James I had Powhatan treated as a brother
sovereign, and crowned with all solemnity, so that he got a swollen
head and tried to starve the settlement. The colonists swaggered,
squabbled and loafed, instead of storing granaries; but all parties
were united in one ambition--planning unpleasant surprises for Captain
Smith.
Once his trading party was trapped for slaughter in a house at
Powhatan’s camp, but Pocahontas, at the risk of her life, warned her
hero, so that all escaped. Another tribe caught Smith in a house where
he had called to buy grain of their chief. Smith led the chief outside,
with a pistol at his ear-hole, paraded his fifteen musketeers, and
frightened seven hundred warriors into laying down their arms. And then
he made them load his ship with corn. This food he served out in daily
rations to working colonists only. After the next Indian attempt on his
life, Smith laid the whole country waste until the tribes were reduced
to submission. So his loafers reported him to the company for being
cruel to the Indians, and seven shiploads of officials and wasters
were sent out from England to suppress the captain.
This was in September of the third year of the colony, and Smith, as
it happened, was returning to Jamestown from work up-country. He lay
asleep in the boat against a bag of powder, on which one of the sailors
was pleased to knock out the ashes of his pipe. The explosion failed
to kill, but almost mortally wounded Captain Smith, who was obliged to
return to England in search of a doctor’s aid. After his departure, the
colony fell into its customary ways, helpless for lack of leadership,
butchered by the Indians, starved, until, when relief ships arrived,
there were only sixty survivors living on the bodies of the dead. The
relieving ships brought Lord Delaware to command, and with him, the
beginnings of prosperity.
When the great captain was recovered, his next expedition explored the
coast farther north, which he named New England. His third voyage was
to have planted a colony, but for Smith’s capture, charged with piracy,
by a French squadron. His escape in a dingey seems almost miraculous,
for it was on that night that the flagship which had been his prison
foundered in a storm, and the squadron was cast away on the coast of
France.
Meanwhile, the Princess Pocahontas, had been treacherously captured as
a hostage by the Virginian colonists, which led to a sweet love story,
and her marriage with Master John Rolfe. With him she presently came on
a visit to England, and everywhere the Lady Rebecca Rolfe was received
with royal honors as a king’s daughter, winning all hearts by her
beauty, her gentleness and dignity. In England she again met Captain
Smith, whom she had ever reverenced as a god. But then the bitter
English winter struck her down, and she died before a ship could take
her home, being buried in the churchyard in Gravesend.
The captain never again was able to adventure his life overseas, but
for sixteen years, broken with his wounds and disappointment, wrote
books commending America to his countrymen. To the New England which
he explored and named, went the Pilgrim Fathers, inspired by his works
to sail with the _Mayflower_, that they might found the colony which
he projected. Virginia and New England were called his children, those
English colonies which since have grown into the giant republic. So the
old captain finished such a task as “God, after His manner, assigns to
His Englishmen.”
XXXVI
A. D. 1670
THE BUCCANEERS
It is only a couple of centuries since Spain was the greatest nation
on earth, with the Atlantic for her duck pond, the American continents
for her back yard, and a notice up to warn away the English, “No dogs
admitted.”
England was a little power then, Charles II had to come running when
the French king whistled, and we were so weak that the Dutch burned our
fleet in London River. Every year a Spanish fleet came from the West
Indies to Cadiz, laden deep with gold, silver, gems, spices and all
sorts of precious merchandise.
Much as our sailors hated to see all that treasure wasted on Spaniards,
England had to keep the peace with Spain, because Charles II had his
crown jewels in pawn and no money for such luxuries as war. The Spanish
envoy would come to him making doleful lamentations about our naughty
sailors, who, in the far Indies, had insolently stolen a galleon or
sacked a town. Charles, with his mouth watering at such a tale of loot,
would be inexpressibly shocked. The “lewd French” must have done this,
or the “pernicious Dutch,” but not our woolly lambs--our innocent
mariners.
The buccaneers of the West Indies were of many nations besides the
British, and they were not quite pirates. For instance, they would
scorn to seize a good Protestant shipload of salt fish, but always
attacked the papist who flaunted golden galleons before the nose of
the poor. They were serious-minded Protestants with strong views on
doctrine, and only made their pious excursions to seize the goods of
the unrighteous. Their opinions were so sound on all really important
points of dogmatic theology that they could allow themselves a little
indulgence in mere rape, sacrilege, arson, robbery and murder, or fry
Spaniards in olive oil for concealing the cash box. Then, enriched by
such pious exercises, they devoutly spent the whole of their savings on
staying drunk for a month.
The first buccaneers sallied out in a small boat and captured a
war-ship. From such small beginnings arose a pirate fleet, which,
under various leaders, French, Dutch, Portuguese, became a scourge to
the Spanish empire overseas. When they had wiped out Spain’s merchant
shipping and were short of plunder, they attacked fortified cities,
held them to ransom, and burned them for fun, then in chase of the
fugitive citizens, put whole colonies to an end by sword and fire.
Naturally only the choicest scoundrels rose to captaincies, and the
worst of the lot became admiral. It should thrill the souls of all
Welshmen to learn that Henry Morgan gained that bad eminence. He had
risen to the command of five hundred cutthroats when he pounced down on
Maracaibo Bay in Venezuela. At the entrance stood Fort San Carlos, the
place which has lately resisted the attack of a German squadron. Morgan
was made of sterner stuff than these Germans, for when the garrison
saw him coming, they took to the woods, leaving behind them a lighted
fuse at the door of the magazine. Captain Morgan grabbed that fuse
himself in time to save his men from a disagreeable hereafter.
Beyond its narrow entrance at Fort San Carlos, the inlet widens to an
inland sea, surrounded in those days by Spanish settlements, with the
two cities of Gibraltar and Maracaibo. Morgan sacked these towns and
chased their flying inhabitants into the mountains. His prisoners, even
women and children, were tortured on the rack until they revealed all
that they knew of hidden money, and some were burned by inches, starved
to death, or crucified.
These pleasures had been continued for five weeks, when a squadron of
three heavy war-ships arrived from Spain, and blocked the pirates’ only
line of retreat to the sea at Fort San Carlos. Morgan prepared a fire
ship, with which he grappled and burned the Spanish admiral. The second
ship was wrecked, the third captured by the pirates, and the sailors of
the whole squadron were butchered while they drowned. Still Fort San
Carlos, now bristling with new guns, had to be dealt with before the
pirates could make their escape to the sea. Morgan pretended to attack
from the land, so that all the guns were shifted to that side of the
fort ready to wipe out his forces. This being done, he got his men on
board, and sailed through the channel in perfect safety.
[Illustration: SIR HENRY MORGAN]
And yet attacks upon such places as Maracaibo were mere trifling, for
the Spaniards held all the wealth of their golden Indies at Panama.
This gorgeous city was on the Pacific Ocean, and to reach it, one
must cross the Isthmus of Darien by the route in later times of
the Panama railway and the Panama Canal, through the most unwholesome
swamps, where to sleep at night in the open was almost sure death
from fever. Moreover, the landing place at Chagres was covered by a
strong fortress, the route was swarming with Spanish troops and wild
savages in their pay, and their destination was a walled city esteemed
impregnable.
By way of preparing for his raid, Morgan sent four hundred men who
stormed the castle of Chagres, compelling the wretched garrison to jump
off a cliff to destruction. The English flag shone from the citadel
when Morgan’s fleet arrived. The captain landed one thousand two
hundred men and set off up the Chagres River with five boats loaded
with artillery, thirty-two canoes and no food. This was a mistake,
because the Spaniards had cleared the whole isthmus, driving off
the cattle, rooting out the crops, carting away the grain, burning
every roof, and leaving nothing for the pirates to live on except the
microbes of fever. As the pirates advanced they retreated, luring them
on day by day into the heart of the wilderness. The pirates broiled
and ate their sea boots, their bandoleers, and certain leather bags.
The river being foul with fallen timber, they took to marching. On
the sixth day they found a barn full of maize and ate it up, but only
on the ninth day had they a decent meal, when, sweating, gasping and
swearing, they pounced upon a herd of asses and cows, and fell to
roasting flesh on the points of their swords.
On the tenth day they debouched upon a plain before the City of Panama,
where the governor awaited with his troops. There were two squadrons
of cavalry and four regiments of foot, besides guns, and the pirates
heartily wished themselves at home with their mothers. Happily the
Spanish governor was too sly, for he had prepared a herd of wild bulls
with Indian herders to drive into the pirate ranks, which bulls, in
sheer stupidity, rushed his own battalions. Such bulls as tried to fly
through the pirate lines were readily shot down, but the rest brought
dire confusion. Then began a fierce battle, in which the Spaniards lost
six hundred men before they bolted. Afterward through a fearful storm
of fire from great artillery, the pirates stormed the city and took
possession.
Of course, by this time, the rich galleons had made away to sea with
their treasure, and the citizens had carried off everything worth
moving, to the woods. Moreover, the pirates were hasty in burning
the town, so that the treasures which had been buried in wells or
cellars were lost beyond all finding. During four weeks, this splendid
capital of the Indies burned, while the people hid in the woods; and
the pirates tortured everybody they could lay hands on with fiendish
cruelty. Morgan himself, caught a beautiful lady and threw her into
a cellar full of filth because she would not love him. Even in their
retreat to the Atlantic, the pirates carried off six hundred prisoners,
who rent the air with their lamentations, and were not even fed until
their ransoms arrived.
Before reaching Chagres, Morgan had every pirate stripped to make sure
that all loot was fairly divided. The common pirates were bitterly
offended at the dividend of only two hundred pieces of eight per man,
but Morgan stole the bulk of the plunder for himself, and returned a
millionaire to Jamaica.
Charles II knighted him and made him governor of Jamaica as a reward
for robbing the Spaniards. Afterwards his majesty changed his mind, and
Morgan died a prisoner in the tower of London as a punishment for the
very crime which had been rewarded with a title and a vice-royalty.
XXXVII
A. D. 1682
THE VOYAGEURS
This chapter must begin with a very queer tale of rivers as adventurers
exploring for new channels.
Millions of years ago the inland seas--Superior, Michigan and
Huron--had their overflow down the Ottawa Valley, reaching the Saint
Lawrence at the Island of Montreal.
But, when the glaciers of the great ice age blocked the Ottawa Valley,
the three seas had to find another outlet, so they made a channel
through the Chicago River, down the Des Plaines, and the Illinois, into
the Mississippi.
And when the glaciers made, across that channel, an embankment which is
now the town site of Chicago, the three seas had to explore for a new
outlet. So they filled the basin of Lake Erie, and poured over the edge
of Queenstown Heights into Lake Ontario. The Iroquois called that fall
the “Thunder of Waters,” which in their language is Niagara.
All the vast region which was flooded by the ice-field of the great
ice age became a forest, and every river turned by the ice out of its
ancient channel became a string of lakes and waterfalls. This beautiful
wilderness was the scene of tremendous adventures, where the red
Indians fought the white men, and the English fought the French, and
the Americans fought the Canadians, until the continent was cut into
equal halves, and there was peace.
Now let us see what manner of men were the Indians. At the summit of
that age of glory--the sixteenth century--the world was ruled by the
despot Akbar the Magnificent at Delhi, the despot Ivan the Terrible
at Moscow, the despot Phillip II at Madrid, and a little lady despot,
Elizabeth of the sea.
Yet at that time the people in the Saint Lawrence Valley, the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas and, in the middle, the Onondagas, were free
republics with female suffrage and women as members of parliament.
Moreover the president of the Onondagas, Hiawatha, formed these five
nations into the federal republic of the Iroquois, and they admitted
the Tuscaroras into that United States which was created to put an end
to war. In the art of government we have not yet caught up with the
Iroquois.
They were farmers, with rich fisheries, had comfortable houses, and
fortified towns. In color they were like outdoor Spaniards, a tall,
very handsome race, and every bit as able as the whites. Given horses,
hard metals for their tools, and some channel or mountain range to keep
off savage raiders, and they might well have become more civilized than
the French, with fleets to attack old Europe, and missionaries to teach
us their religion.
Their first visitor from Europe was Jacques Cartier and they gave him a
hearty welcome at Quebec. When his men were dying of scurvy an Indian
doctor cured them. But to show his gratitude Cartier kidnaped the
five principal chiefs, and ever after that, with very brief intervals,
the French had reason to fear the Iroquois. Like many another Indian
nation, driven away from its farms and fisheries, the six nation
republic lapsed to savagery, lived by hunting and robbery, ravaged the
white men’s settlements and the neighbor tribes for food, outraged and
scalped the dead, burned or even ate their prisoners.
The French colonies were rather over-governed. There was too much
parson and a great deal too much squire to suit the average peasant,
so all the best of the men took to the fur trade. They wore the Indian
dress of long fringed deerskin, coon cap, embroidered moccasins,
and a French sash like a rainbow. They lived like Indians, married
among the tribes, fought in their wars; lawless, gay, gallant, fierce
adventurers, the voyageurs of the rivers, the runners of the woods.
With them went monks into the wilderness, heroic, saintly Jesuits and
Franciscans, and some of the quaintest rogues in holy orders. And
there were gentlemen, reckless explorers, seeking a way to China. Of
this breed came La Salle, whose folk were merchant-princes at Rouen,
and himself pupil and enemy of the Jesuits. At the time of the plague
and burning of London he founded a little settlement on the island of
Mount Royal, just by the head of the Rapids. His dream was the opening
of trade with China by way of the western rivers, so the colonists,
chaffing him, gave the name La Chine to his settlement and the rapids.
To-day the railway trains come swirling by, with loads of tea from
China to ship from Montreal, but not to France.
During La Salle’s first five years in the wilderness he discovered
the Ohio and the Illinois, two of the head waters of the Mississippi.
The Indians told him of that big river, supposed to be the way to
the Pacific. A year later the trader Joliet, and the Jesuit Saint
Marquette descended the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas. So La Salle
dreamed of a French empire in the west, shutting the English between
the Appalachians and the Atlantic, with a base at the mouth of the
Mississippi for raiding the Spanish Indies, and a trade route across
the western sea to China. All this he told to Count Frontenac, the new
governor general, a man of business who saw the worth of the adventure.
Frontenac sent La Salle to talk peace with the Iroquois, while he
himself founded Fort Frontenac at the outlet of Lake Ontario. From here
he cut the trade routes of the west, so that no furs would ever reach
the French traders of Montreal or the English of New York. The governor
had not come to Canada for his health.
La Salle was penniless, but his mind went far beyond this petty
trading; he charmed away the dangers from hostile tribes; his heroic
record won him help from France. Within a year he began his adventure
of the Mississippi by buying out Fort Frontenac as his base camp. Here
he built a ship, and though she was wrecked he saved stores enough to
cross the Niagara heights, and build a second vessel on Lake Erie.
With the _Griffin_ he came to the meeting place of the three upper
seas--Machilli-Mackinac--the Jesuit headquarters. Being a good-natured
man bearing no malice, it was with a certain pomp of drums, flags
and guns that he saluted the fort, quite forgetting that he came as
a trespasser into the Jesuit mission. A Jesuit in those days was a
person with a halo at one end and a tail at the other, a saint with
modest black draperies to hide cloven hoofs, who would fast all the
week, and poison a guest on Saturday, who sought the glory of martyrdom
not always for the faith, but sometimes to serve a devilish wicked
political secret society. Leaving the Jesuit mission an enemy in his
rear, La Salle built a fort at the southern end of Lake Michigan, sent
off his ship for supplies, and entered the unknown wilderness. As
winter closed down he came with thirty-three men in eight birchbark
canoes to the Illinois nation on the river Illinois.
Meanwhile the Jesuits sent Indian messengers to raise the Illinois
tribes for war against La Salle, to kill him by poison, and to persuade
his men to desert. La Salle put a rising of the Illinois to shame, ate
three dishes of poison without impairing his very sound digestion, and
made his men too busy for revolt; building Fort Brokenheart, and a
third ship for the voyage down the Mississippi to the Spanish Indies.
Then came the second storm of trouble, news that his relief ship from
France was cast away, his fort at Frontenac was seized for debt, and
his supply vessel on the upper lakes was lost. He must go to Canada.
The third storm was still to come, the revenge of the English for the
cutting of their fur trade at Fort Frontenac. They armed five hundred
Iroquois to massacre the Illinois who had befriended him in the
wilderness.
[Illustration: ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE]
At Fort Brokenheart La Salle had a valiant priest named Hennepin,
a disloyal rogue and a quite notable liar. With two voyageurs Pere
Hennepin was sent to explore the river down to the Mississippi, and
there the three Frenchmen were captured by the Sioux. Their captors
took them by canoe up the Mississippi to the Falls of Saint Anthony, so
named by Hennepin. Thence they were driven afoot to the winter villages
of the tribe. The poor unholy father being slow afoot, they mended his
pace by setting the prairie afire behind him. Likewise they anointed
him with wildcat fat to give him the agility of that animal. Still
he was never popular, and in the end the three wanderers were turned
loose. Many were their vagabond adventures before they met the explorer
Greysolon Du Luth, who took them back with him to Canada. They left La
Salle to his fate.
Meanwhile La Salle set out from Fort Brokenheart in March, attended by
a Mohegan hunter who loved him, and by four gallant Frenchmen. Their
journey was a miracle of courage across the unexplored woods to Lake
Erie, and on to Frontenac. There La Salle heard that the moment his
back was turned his garrison had looted and burned Fort Brokenheart;
but he caught these deserters as they attempted to pass Fort Frontenac,
and left them there in irons.
Every man has power to make of his mind an empire or a desert. At
this time Louis the Great was master of Europe, La Salle a broken
adventurer, but it was the king’s mind which was a desert, compared
with the imperial brain of this haughty, silent, manful pioneer. The
creditors forgot that he owed them money, the governor caught fire
from his enthusiasm, and La Salle went back equipped for his gigantic
venture in the west.
The officer he had left in charge at Fort Brokenheart was an Italian
gentleman by the name of Tonty, son of the man who invented the tontine
life insurance. He was a veteran soldier whose left hand, blown off,
had been replaced with an iron fist, which the Indians found to be
strong medicine. One clout on the head sufficed for the fiercest
warrior. When his garrison sacked the fort and bolted, he had two
fighting men left, and a brace of priests. They all sought refuge in
the camp of the Illinois.
Presently this pack of curs had news that La Salle was leading an army
of Iroquois to their destruction, so instead of preparing for defense
they proposed to murder Tonty and his Frenchmen, until the magic of
his iron fist quite altered their point of view. Sure enough the
Iroquois arrived in force, and the cur pack, three times as strong,
went out to fight. Then through the midst of the battle Tonty walked
into the enemy’s lines. He ordered the Iroquois to go home and behave
themselves, and told such fairy tales about the strength of his curs
that these ferocious warriors were frightened. Back walked Tonty to
find his cur pack on their knees in tears of gratitude. Again he went
to the Iroquois, this time with stiff terms if they wanted peace, but
an Illinois envoy gave his game away, with such extravagant bribes
and pleas for mercy that the Iroquois laughed at Tonty. They burned
the Illinois town, dug up their graveyard, chased the flying nation,
butchered the abandoned women and children, and hunted the cur pack
across the Mississippi. Tonty and his Frenchmen made their way to their
nearest friends, the Pottawattomies, to await La Salle’s return.
And La Salle returned. He found the Illinois town in ashes, littered
with human bones. He found an island of the river where women and
children by hundreds had been outraged, tortured and burned. His fort
was a weed-grown ruin. In all the length of the valley there was no
vestige of human life, or any clue as to the fate of Tonty and his
men. For the third time La Salle made that immense journey to the
settlements, wrung blood from stones to equip an expedition, and coming
to Lake Michigan rallied the whole of the native tribes in one strong
league, a red Indian colony with himself as chief, for defense from the
Iroquois. The scattered Illinois returned to their abandoned homes,
tribes came from far and wide to join the colony and in the midst, upon
Starved Rock, La Salle built Fort Saint Louis as their stronghold. When
Tonty joined him, for once this iron man showed he had a heart.
So, after all, La Salle led an expedition down the whole length of the
Mississippi. He won the friendship of every tribe he met, bound them to
French allegiance, and at the end erected the standard of France on the
shores of the Gulf of Mexico. “In the name of the most high, mighty,
invincible and victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God,
King of France and of Navarre,” on the nineteenth of April, 1682. La
Salle annexed the valley of the Mississippi from the Rocky Mountains
to the Appalachians, from the lakes to the gulf, and named that empire
Louisiana.
As to the fate of this great explorer, murdered in the wilderness by
followers he disdained to treat as comrades, “his enemies were more in
earnest than his friends.”
XXXVIII
A. D. 1741
THE EXPLORERS
From the time of Henry VII of England down to the present day, the
nations of Europe have been busy with one enormous adventure, the
search for the best trade route to India and the China seas. For four
whole centuries this quest for a trade route has been the main current
of the history of the world. Look what the nations have done in that
long fight for trade.
Portugal found the sea route by Magellan’s Strait, and occupied Brazil;
the Cape route, and colonized the coasts of Africa. She built an empire.
Spain mistook the West Indies for the real Indies, and the red men for
the real Indians, found the Panama route, and occupied the new world
from Cape Horn up to the southern edge of Alaska. She built an empire.
France, in the search of a route across North America, occupied
Canada and the Mississippi Valley. She built an empire. That lost,
she attempted under Napoleon to occupy Egypt, Palestine and the whole
overland road to India. That failing, she has dug the Suez Canal and
attempted the Panama, both sea routes to the Indies.
Holland, searching for a route across North America, found Hudson’s Bay
and occupied Hudson River (New York). On the South Sea route she built
her rich empire in the East Indian Islands.
Britain, searching eastward first, opened up Russia to civilization,
then explored the sea passage north of Asia. Searching westward, she
settled Newfoundland, founded the United States, built Canada, which
created the Canadian Pacific route to the Indies, and traversed the sea
passage north of America. On the Panama route, she built a West Indian
empire; on the Mediterranean route, her fortress line of Gibraltar,
Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Adon. By holding all routes, she holds her Indian
empire. Is not this the history of the world?
But there remains to be told the story of Russia’s search for routes
to India and China. That story begins with Martha Rabe, the Swedish
nursery governess, who married a dragoon, left him to be mistress of a
Russian general, became servant to the Princess Menchikoff, next the
lover, then the wife of Peter the Great, and finally succeeded him
as empress of all the Russias. To the dazzling court of this Empress
Catherine came learned men and travelers who talked about the search of
all the nations for a route through North America to the Indies. Long
ago, they said, an old Greek mariner, one Juan de Fuca, had bragged on
the quays of Venice, of his voyages. He claimed to have rounded Cape
Horn, and thence beat up the west coast of America, until he came far
north to a strait which entered the land. Through this sea channel he
had sailed for many weeks, until it brought him out again into the
ocean. One glance at the map will show these straits of Juan de Fuca,
and how the old Greek, sailing for many weeks, came out again into the
ocean, having rounded the back of Vancouver’s Island. But the legend as
told to Catherine the Great of Russia, made these mysterious straits of
Anian lead from the Pacific right across North America to the Atlantic
Ocean. Here was a sea route from Russia across the Atlantic, across
North America, across the Pacific, direct to the gorgeous Indies. With
such a possession as this channel Russia could dominate the world.
Catherine set her soothsayers and wiseacres to make a chart, displaying
these straits of Anian which Juan de Fuca had found, and they marked
the place accordingly at forty-eight degrees of north latitude on the
west coast of America. But there were also rumors and legends in those
days of a great land beyond the uttermost coasts of Siberia, an island
that was called Aliaska, filling the North Pacific. All such legends
and rumors the astrologers marked faithfully upon their map until
the thing was of no more use than a dose of smallpox. Then Catherine
gave the precious chart to two of her naval officers, Vitus Bering,
the Dane--a mighty man in the late wars with Sweden and a Russian
lieutenant--Tschirikoff--and bade them go find the straits of Anian.
The expedition set out overland across the Russian and Siberian plains,
attended by hunters who kept the people alive on fish and game until
they reached the coasts of the North Pacific. There they built two
ships, the _Stv Petr_ and the _Stv Pavl_, and launched them, two years
from the time of their outsetting from Saint Petersburg. Thirteen years
they spent in exploring the Siberian coast, northward to the Arctic,
southward to the borders of China, then in 1741 set out into the
unknown to search for the Island of Aliaska, and the Straits of Anian
so plainly marked upon their chart.
Long months they cruised about in quest of that island, finding
nothing, while the crews sickened of scurvy, and man after man died in
misery, until only a few were left.
The world had not been laid out correctly, but Bering held with fervor
to his faith in that official chart for which his men were dying. At
last Tschirikoff, unable to bear it any longer, deserted Bering, and
sailing eastward many days, came at last to land at the mouth of Cross
Straits in Southern Alaska.
Beyond a rocky foreshore and white surf, forests of pine went up to
mountains lost in trailing clouds. Behind a little point rose a film of
smoke from some savage camp-fire. Tschirikoff landed a boat’s crew in
search of provisions and water, which vanished behind the point and was
seen no more. Heart-sick, he sent a second boat, which vanished behind
the point and was seen no more, but the fire of the savages blazed
high. Two days he waited, watching that pillar of smoke, and listened
to a far-off muttering of drums, then with the despairing remnant
of his crew, turned back to the lesser perils of the sea, and fled
to Siberia. Farther to the northward, some three hundred miles, was
Bering in the _Stv Petr_, driving his mutinous people in a last search
for land. It was the day after Tschirikoff’s discovery, and the ship,
flying winged out before the southwest wind, came to green shallows of
the sea, and fogs that lay in violet gloom ahead, like some mysterious
coast crowned with white cloud heights towering up the sky. At sunset,
when these clouds had changed to flame color, they parted, suddenly
revealing high above the mastheads the most tremendous mountain in the
world. The sailors were terrified, and Bering, called suddenly to the
tall after-castle of the ship, went down on his knees in awestruck
wonder. By the Russian calendar, the day was that of the dread Elijah,
who had been taken up from the earth drawn by winged horses of flame
in a chariot of fire, and to these lost mariners it seemed that this
was no mere mountain of ice walls glowing rose and azure through a rift
of the purple clouds, but a vision of the translation of the prophet.
Bering named the mountain Saint Elias.
There is no space here for the detail of Bering’s wanderings thereafter
through those bewildering labyrinths of islands which skirt the Alps
of Saint Elias westward, and reach out as the Aleutian Archipelago the
whole way across the Pacific Ocean. The region is an awful sub-arctic
wilderness of rock-set gaps between bleak arctic islands crowned by
flaming volcanoes, lost in eternal fog. It has been my fate to see the
wonders and the terrors of that coast, which Bering’s seamen mistook
for the vestibule of the infernal regions. Scurvy and hunger made
them more like ghosts of the condemned than living men, until their
nightmare voyage ended in wreck on the last of the islands, within two
hundred miles of the Siberian coast.
Stellar, the German naturalist, who survived the winter, has left
record of Bering laid between two rocks for shelter, where the sand
drift covered his legs and kept him warm through the last days, then
made him a grave afterward. The island was frequented by sea-cows,
creatures until then unknown, and since wholly extinct, Stellar’s being
the only account of them. There were thousands of sea otter, another
species that will soon become extinct, and the shipwrecked men had
plenty of wild meat to feed on while they passed the winter building
from the timbers of the wreck, a boat to carry them home. In the spring
they sailed with a load of sea-otter skins and gained the Chinese
coast, where their cargo fetched a fortune for all hands, the furs
being valued for the official robes of mandarins.
At the news of this new trade in sea-otter skins, the hunters of
Siberia went wild with excitement, so that the survivors of Bering’s
crew led expeditions of their own to Alaska. By them a colony was
founded, and though the Straits of Anian were never discovered, because
they did not exist, the czars added to their dominions a new empire
called Russian America. This Alaska was sold in 1867 to the United
States for one million, five hundred thousand pounds, enough money to
build such a work as London Bridge, and the territory yields more than
that by far in annual profits from fisheries, timber and gold.
XXXIX
A. D. 1750
THE PIRATES
There are very few pirates left. The Riff Moors of Gibraltar Straits
will grab a wind-bound ship when they get the chance; the Arabs of
the Red Sea take stranded steamers; Chinese practitioners shipped as
passengers on a liner, will rise in the night, cut throats, and steal
the vessel; moreover some little retail business is done by the Malays
round Singapore, but trade as a whole is slack, and sea thieves are apt
to get themselves disliked by the British gunboats.
This is a respectable world, my masters, but it is getting dull.
It was very different in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
when the Sallee rovers, the Algerian corsairs, buccaneers of the West
Indies, the Malays and the Chinese put pirate fleets to sea to prey on
great commerce, when Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Bartholomew, Roberts,
Lafitte, Avery and a hundred other corsairs under the Jolly Roger could
seize tall ships and make their unwilling seamen walk the plank. They
and their merry men went mostly to the gallows, richly deserved the
same, and yet--well, nobody need complain that times were dull.
There were so many pirates one hardly knows which to deal with,
but Avery was such a mean rogue, and there is such a nice confused
story--well, here goes! He was mate of the ship _Duke_, forty-four
guns, a merchant cruiser chartered from Bristol for the Spanish
service. His skipper was mightily addicted to punch, and too drunk to
object when Avery, conspiring with the men, made bold to seize the
ship. Then he went down-stairs to wake the captain, who, in a sudden
fright, asked, “What’s the matter?” “Oh, nothing,” said Avery. The
skipper gobbled at him, “But something’s the matter,” he cried. “Does
she drive? What weather is it?” “No, no,” answered Avery, “we’re at
sea.” “At sea! How can that be?”
“Come,” says Avery, “don’t be in a fright, but put on your clothes,
and I’ll let you into the secret--and if you’ll turn sober and mind
your business perhaps, in time, I may make you one of my lieutenants,
if not, here’s a boat alongside, and you shall be set ashore.” The
skipper, still in a fright, was set ashore, together with such of the
men as were honest. Then Avery sailed away to seek his fortune.
On the coast of Madagascar, lying in a bay, two sloops were found,
whose seamen supposed the _Duke_ to be a ship of war and being rogues,
having stolen these vessels to go pirating, they fled with rueful faces
into the woods. Of course they were frightfully pleased when they found
out that they were not going to be hanged just yet, and delighted when
Captain Avery asked them to sail in his company. They could fly at big
game now, with this big ship for a consort.
Now, as it happened, the Great Mogul, emperor of Hindustan, was sending
his daughter with a splendid retinue to make pilgrimage to Mecca and
worship at the holy places of Mahomet. The lady sailed in a ship with
chests of gold to pay the expenses of the journey, golden vessels for
the table, gifts for the shrines, an escort of princes covered with
jewels, troops, servants, slaves and a band to play tunes with no
music, after the eastern manner. And it was their serious misfortune to
meet with Captain Avery outside the mouth of the Indus. Avery’s sloops,
being very swift, got the prize, and stripped her of everything worth
taking, before they let her go.
It shocked Avery to think of all that treasure in the sloops where it
might get lost; so presently, as they sailed in consort, he invited the
captains of the sloops to use the big ship as their strong room. They
put their treasure on board the _Duke_, and watched close, for fear
of accidents. Then came a dark night when Captain Avery mislaid both
sloops, and bolted with all the plunder, leaving two crews of simple
mariners to wonder where he had gone.
Avery made off to the New England colonies, where he made a division of
the plunder, handing the gold to the men, but privily keeping all the
diamonds for himself. The sailors scattered out through the American
settlements and the British Isles, modestly changing their names. Mr.
Avery went home to Bristol, where he found some honest merchants to
sell his diamonds, and lend him a small sum on account. When, however,
he called on them for the rest of the money, he met with a most
shocking repulse, because the merchants had never heard, they said, of
him or his diamonds, but would give him to the justices as a pirate
unless he shut his mouth. He went away and died of grief at Bideford
in Devon, leaving no money even to pay for his coffin.
Meanwhile the Great Mogul at Delhi was making such dismal lamentations
about the robbery of his daughter’s diamonds that the news of Avery’s
riches spread to England. Rumor made him husband to the princess, a
reigning sovereign, with a pirate fleet of his own--at the very time he
was dying of want at Bideford.
We left two sloops full of pirates mourning over the total depravity
of Captain Avery. Sorely repenting his sins, they resolved to amend
their lives, and see what they could steal in Madagascar. Landing on
that great island they dismantled their sloops, taking their plentiful
supply of guns and powder ashore, where they camped, making their sails
into tents. Here they met with another party of English pirates who
were also penitent, having just plundered a large and richly-laden ship
at the mouth of the Red Sea. Their dividend was three thousand pounds
a man, and they were resolved to settle in Madagascar instead of going
home to be hanged. The two parties, both in search of a peaceful and
simple life, made friends with the various native princes, who were
glad of white men to assist in the butchering of adjacent tribes.
Two or three pirates at the head of an attacking force would put the
boldest tribes to flight. Each pirate acquired his own harem of wives,
his own horde of black slaves, his own plantations, fishery and hunting
grounds, his kingdom wherein he reigned an absolute monarch. If a
native said impudent words he was promptly shot, and any attack of the
tribes on a white man was resented by the whole community of pirate
kings. Once the negroes conspired for a general rising to wipe out
their oppressors at one fell swoop, but the wife of a white man getting
wind of the plot, ran twenty miles in three hours to alarm her lord.
When the native forces arrived they were warmly received. After that
each of their lordships built a fortress for his resting place with
rampart and ditch set round with a labyrinth of thorny entanglements,
so that the barefoot native coming as a stranger by night, trod on
spikes, and sounded a loud alarm which roused the garrison.
Long years went by. Their majesties grew stout from high feeding and
lack of exercise, hairy, dressed in skins of wild beasts, reigning each
in his kingdom with a deal of dirty state and royalty.
So Captain Woods found them when he went in the ship _Delicia_, to
buy slaves. At the sight of his forty-gun ship they hid themselves in
the woods, very suspicious, but presently learned his business, and
came out of the woods, offering to sell their loyal negro subjects by
hundreds in exchange for tobacco and suits of sailor clothes, tools,
powder, and ball. They had now been twenty-five years in Madagascar,
and, what with wars, accidents, sickness, there remained eleven sailor
kings, all heartily bored with their royalty. Despite the attachments
of their harems, children and swarms of grandchildren and dependents,
they were sick for blue water, hungry for a cruise. Captain Woods
observed that they got very friendly with his seamen, and learned that
they were plotting to seize the ship, hoist the black flag, and betake
themselves once more to piracy on the high seas.
After that he kept their majesties at a distance, sending officers
ashore to trade with them until he had completed his cargo of slaves.
So he sailed, leaving eleven disconsolate pirate kings in a mournful
row on the tropic beach, and no more has ever transpired as to them
or the fate of their kingdoms. Still, they had fared much better than
Captain Avery with his treasure of royal diamonds.
XL
A. D. 1776
DANIEL BOONE
As a matter of unnatural history the British lion is really and truly
a lioness with a large and respectable family. When only a cub she
sharpened her teeth on Spain, in her youth crushed Holland, and in her
prime fought France, wresting from each in turn the command of the sea.
She was nearing her full strength when France with a chain of forts
along the Saint Lawrence and the Mississippi attempted to strangle the
thirteen British cubs in America. By the storming of Quebec the lion
smashed that chain; but the long and world-wide wars with France had
bled her dry, and unless she could keep the sea her cubs were doomed,
so bluntly she told them they must help.
The cubs had troubles of their own and could not help. Theirs was the
legal, hers the moral right, but both sides fell in the wrong when they
lost their tempers. Since then the mother of nations has reared her
second litter with some of that gentleness which comes of sorrow.
So far the French in Canada were not settlers so much as gay
adventurers for the Christ, or for beaver skins, living among the
Indians, or in a holiday mood leading the tribes against the surly
British.
So far the British overseas were not adventurers so much as dour
fugitives from injustice at home, or from justice, or merely deported
as a general nuisance, to join in one common claim to liberty, the
fanatics of freedom.
Unlike the French and Spaniards, the northern folk--British or Dutch,
German or Scandinavian--had no mission, except by smallpox to convert
the heathen. Nothing cared they for glory or adventure, but only for
homes and farms. Like a hive of bees they filled the Atlantic coast
lands with tireless industry until they began to feel crowded; then
like a hive they swarmed, over the Appalachian ranges, across the
Mississippi, over the Rocky Mountains, and now in our own time to lands
beyond the sea.
Among the hard fierce colonists a very few loved nature and in
childhood took to the wilds. Such was the son of a tame Devon Quaker,
young Daniel Boone, a natural marksman, axman, bushman, tracker and
scout of the backwoods who grew to be a freckled ruddy man, gaunt as a
wolf, and subtle as a snake from his hard training in the Indian wars.
When first he crossed the mountains on the old warrior trail into
Kentucky, hunting and trapping paid well in that paradise of noble
timber and white clover meadows. The country swarmed with game, a merry
hunting ground and battle-field of rival Indian tribes.
There Boone and his wife’s brother Stuart were captured by Shawnees,
who forced the prisoners to lead the way to their camp where the other
four hunters were taken. The Indians took their horses, rifles, powder,
traps and furs, all lawful plunder, but gave them food to carry them
to the settlements with a warning for the whites that trespassers
would be prosecuted. That was enough for four of the white hunters,
but Boone and Stuart tracked the Indians and stole back some of their
plunder, only to be trailed in their turn and recaptured. The Shawnees
were annoyed, and would have taken these trespassers home to be burned
alive, but for Boone’s queer charm of manner which won their liking,
and his ghostlike vanishing with Stuart into the cane brakes. The
white men got away with rifles, bullets and powder, and they were wise
enough not to be caught again. Still it needed some courage to stay in
Kentucky, and after Stuart got scalped Boone said he felt unutterably
lonely. Yet he remained, dodging so many and such varied perils that
his loneliness must really have been a comfort, for it is better to be
dull in solitude than scalped in company. He owed money for his outfit,
and would not return to the settlements until he had earned the skins
that paid his debt.
At the moment when the big colonial hive began to swarm Boone led a
party of thirty frontiersmen to cut a pack-trail over the mountains
into the plains of Kentucky. This wilderness trail--some two hundred
miles of mud-holes, rocks and stumps--opened the way for settlement
in Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground, for white invaders. At a cost
of two or three scalps Boone’s outfit reached this land, to build a
stockaded village named for the leader, Boonesborough, and afterward
he was very proud that his wife and daughters were the first women to
brave the perils of that new settlement.
Under a giant elm the settlers, being British, had church and
parliament, but only on one Sunday did the parson pray for King George
before the news came that congress needed prayers for the new republic
at war with the motherland.
Far to the northwest of Kentucky the forts of Illinois were held by a
British officer named Hamilton. He had with him a handful of American
Tories loyal to the king, some newly conquered French Canadians not
much in love with British government, and savage Indian tribes. All
these he sent to strike the revolting colonies in their rear, but the
whole brunt of the horror fell upon poor Kentucky. The settlements
were wrecked, the log cabins burned, and the Indians got out of hand,
committing crimes; but the settlers held four forts and cursed King
George through seven years of war.
It was in a lull of this long storm that Boone led a force of thirty
men to get salt from the salt-licks frequented by the buffalo and deer,
on the banks of Licking River. One day while he was scouting ten miles
from camp, and had just loaded his horse with meat to feed his men, he
was caught, in a snow-storm, by four Shawnees. They led him to their
camp where some of the hundred warriors had helped to capture Boone
eight years before. These, with much ceremony and mock politeness,
introduced him to two American Tories, a brace of French Canadians,
and their Shawnee chiefs. Then Boone found out that this war party was
marching on Fort Boonesborough where lived his own wife and children
and many women, but scarcely any men. But knowing the ways of the
redskins Boone saw that if he let them capture his own men in camp at
the salt-licks they would go home without attacking Boonesborough. He
must risk the fighting men to save the fort; he must guide the enemy to
his own camp and order his men to surrender; and if they laid down all
their lives for the sake of their women and children--well, they must
take their chance. Boone’s men laid down their arms.
A council followed at which fifty-nine Indians voted to burn these
Americans at the stake against sixty-one who preferred to sell them
to Hamilton as prisoners of war. Saved by two votes, they marched on
a winter journey dreadful to the Indians as well as to the prisoners;
but all shared alike when dogs and horses had to be killed for food.
Moreover the savages became so fond of Boone that they resolved to
make an Indian of him. Not wanting to be an Indian he pleaded with
Hamilton the Hair Buyer, promising to turn loyalist and fight the
rebels, but when the British officer offered a hundred pounds for this
one captive it was not enough for these loving savages. They took Boone
home, pulled out his hair, leaving only a fine scalp-lock adorned with
feathers, bathed him in the river to wash all his white blood out,
painted him, and named him Big Turtle. As the adopted son of the chief,
Black Fish, Boone pretended to be happy, and in four months had become
a popular chief, rather closely watched, but allowed to go out hunting.
Then a large Indian force assembled to march against Fort Boonesborough.
[Illustration: DANIEL BOONE]
Boone easily got leave to go out hunting, and a whole day passed before
his flight was known. Doubling on his course, setting blind trails,
wading along the streams to hide his tracks, sleeping in thickets or
in hollow logs, starving because he dared not fire a gun to get food,
his clothes in rags, his feet bloody, he made his way across country,
and on the fifth day staggered into Fort Boonesborough.
The enemy were long on the way. There was time to send riders for
succor and scouts to watch, to repair the fort, even to raid the
Shawnee country before the invaders arrived--one hundred Canadians and
four hundred Indians, while Boone’s garrison numbered fifty men and
boys, with twenty-five brave women.
By Hamilton’s orders there must be no bloodshed, and he sent forty
horses for the old folks, the women and children to ride on their way
northward as prisoners of war.
Very solemn was Boone, full of negotiations for surrender, gaining day
after day with talk, waiting in a fever for expected succor from the
colonies. Nine commissioners on either side were to sign the treaty,
but the Indians--for good measure--sent eighteen envoys to clasp the
hands of their nine white brothers, and drag them into the bush for
execution. The white commissioners broke loose, gained the fort,
slammed the gates and fired from the ramparts.
Long, bitter and vindictive was the siege. A pretended retreat failed
to lure Boone’s men into ambush. The Indians dug a mine under the
walls, but threw the dirt from the tunnel into the river where a streak
of muddy water gave their game away. Torches were thrown on the roofs,
but women put out the flames. When at last the siege was raised and
the Indians retreated, twenty-four hours lapsed before the famished
garrison dared to throw open their gates.
In these days a Kentucky force, led by the hero George Rogers Clark,
captured the French forts on the Illinois, won over their garrisons,
and marched on the fortress of Vincennes through flooded lands, up to
their necks in water, starving, half drowned. They captured the wicked
Hamilton and led him away in chains.
Toward the end of the war once more a British force of Frenchmen and
Indians raided Kentucky, besieging Logan’s fort, and but for the valor
of the women, that sorely stricken garrison would have perished. For
when the tanks were empty the women took their buckets and marched out
of the gates, laughing and singing, right among the ambushed Indians,
got their supply of water from the spring, and returned unhurt because
they showed no fear.
With the reliefs to the rescue rode Daniel Boone and his son Israel,
then aged twenty-three. At sight of reinforcements the enemy bolted,
hotly pursued to the banks of Licking River. Boone implored his people
not to cross into the certainty of an ambush, but the Kentuckians took
no notice, charging through the river and up a ridge between two bushed
ravines.
From both flanks the Wyandots charged with tomahawks, while the
Shawnees raked the horsemen with a galling fire, and there was pitiless
hewing down of the broken flying settlers. Last in that flight came
Boone, bearing in his arms his mortally wounded son, overtaken, cut
off, almost surrounded before he struck off from the path, leaping from
rock to rock. As he swam the river Israel died, but the father carried
his body on into the shelter of the forest.
With the ending of the war of the Revolution, the United States spread
gradually westward, and to the close of his long life old Daniel Boone
was ever at the front of their advance, taking his rest at last beyond
the Mississippi. To-day his patient and heroic spirit inspires all
boys, leads every frontiersman, commands the pioneers upon the warrior
trails, the ax-hewn paths, the wilderness roads of marching empire.
XLI
A. D. 1813
ANDREW JACKSON
The Nations were playing a ball game: “Catch!” said France, throwing
the ball to Spain, who muffed it. “Quick!” cried Napoleon, “or England
will get it--catch!” “Caught!” said the first American republic, and
her prize was the valley of the Mississippi.
Soon afterward the United States in the name of freedom joined Napoleon
the Despot at war with Great Britain; and the old lion had a wild beast
fight against a world-at-arms. In our search for great adventure let us
turn to the warmest corner of that world-wide struggle, poor Spanish
Florida.
Here a large Indian nation, once civilized, but now reduced to
savagery, had taken refuge from the Americans; and these people, the
Creeks and Seminoles, fighting for freedom themselves, gave shelter to
runaway slaves from the United States. A few pirates are said to have
lurked there, and some Scottish gentlemen lived with the tribes as
traders. Thanks perhaps to them, Great Britain armed the Creeks, who
ravaged American settlements to the north, and at Fort Minns butchered
four hundred men.
Northward in Tennessee the militia were commanded by Andrew Jackson,
born a frontiersman, but by trade a lawyer, a very valiant man of high
renown, truculent as a bantam.
Without orders he led two thousand, five hundred frontiersmen to avenge
Fort Minns by chasing the Spanish governor (in time of peace) out of
Pensacola, and a British garrison from Fort Barrancas, and then (after
peace was signed) expelled the British from New Orleans, while his
detachment in Florida blew up a fort with two hundred seventy-five
refugees, including the women and children. Such was the auspicious
prelude to Jackson’s war with the Creeks, who were crushed forever at
the battle of Horseshoe Bend.
XLII
A. D. 1836
SAM HOUSTON
Serving in Jackson’s force was young Sam Houston, a hunter and a
pioneer from childhood. Rather than be apprenticed to a trade he ran
away and joined the Cherokees, and as the adopted son of the head chief
became an Indian, except of course during the holidays, when he went to
see his very respectable mother. On one of these visits home he met a
recruiting sergeant, and enlisted for the year of 1812. At the age of
twenty-one he had fought his way up to the rank of ensign, serving with
General Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.
The Creeks held a line of breastworks, and the Americans were charging
these works when an arrow struck deep into young Houston’s thigh. He
tried to wrench it out but the barb held, and twice his lieutenant
failed. “Try again,” said Houston, “and if you fail I’ll knock you
down.” The lieutenant pulled out the arrow, and streaming with blood,
the youngster went to a surgeon who dressed his wound. General Jackson
told him not to return to the front, but the lad must needs be at the
head of his men, no matter what the orders.
Hundreds of Creeks had fallen, multitudes were shot or drowned
attempting to swim the river, but still a large party of them held a
part of the breastwork, a sort of roof spanning a gully, from which,
through narrow port-holes, they kept up a murderous fire. Guns could
not be placed to bear on this position, the warriors flatly refused all
terms of surrender, and when Jackson called for a forlorn hope Houston
alone responded. Calling his platoon to follow him he scrambled down
the steep side of the gully, but his men hesitated, and from one of
them he seized a musket with which he led the way. Within five yards
of the Creeks he had turned to rally his platoon for a direct charge
through the port-holes, when two bullets struck his right shoulder. For
the last time he implored his men to charge, then in despair walked
out of range. Many months went by before the three wounds were healed,
but from that time, through very stormy years he had the constant
friendship of his old leader, Andrew Jackson, president of the United
States.
Houston went back to the West and ten years after the battle was
elected general of the Tennessee militia. Indeed there seemed no
limit to his future, and at thirty-five he was governor of the state,
when his wife deserted him, and ugly rumors touched his private life.
Throwing his whole career to the winds he turned Indian, not as a
chief, but as Drunken Sam, the butt of the Cherokees.
It is quite natural for a man to have two characters, the one
commanding while the other rests. Within a few months the eyes of
Houston the American statesman looked out from the painted face of
Drunken Sam, the savage Cherokee. From Arkansas he looked southward
and saw the American frontiersmen, the Texas pioneers, trying to earn
a living under the comic opera government of the Mexicans. They would
soon sweep away that anarchy if only they found a leader, and perhaps
Drunken Sam in his dreams saw Samuel Houston leading the Texas cowboys.
Still dressed as a Cherokee warrior he went to Washington, called on
his old friend President Jackson, begged for a job, talked of the
liberation of Texas--as if the yankees of the North would ever allow
another slave state of the South to enter the Union!
Houston went back to the West and preached the revolt against Mexico.
There we will leave him for a while, to take up the story of old Davy
Crockett.
XLIII
A. D. 1836
DAVY CROCKETT
Far off on his farm in Tennessee, old Davy Crockett heard of the war
for freedom. Fifty years of hunting, trapping and Indian warfare had
not quenched his thirst for adventure, or dulled his love of fun; but
the man had been sent to Washington as a member of congress, and came
home horrified by the corruption of political life. He was angry and in
his wrath took his gun from over the fireplace. He must kill something,
so he went for those Mexicans in the West.
His journey to the seat of war began by steamer down the Mississippi
River, and he took a sudden fancy to a sharper who was cheating the
passengers. He converted Thimblerig to manhood, and the poor fellow,
like a lost dog, followed Davy. So the pair were riding through Texas
when they met a bee hunter, riding in search of wild honey--a gallant
lad in a splendid deerskin dress, who led them to his home. The bee
hunter must join Davy too, but his heart was torn at parting with Kate,
the girl he loved, and he turned in the saddle to cheer her with a
scrap of song for farewell:
“Saddled and bridled, and booted rode he,
A plume in his helmet, a sword at his knee.”
But the girl took up the verse, her song broken with sobbing:
“But toom’ cam’ the saddle, all bluidy to see,
And hame cam’ the steed, but hame never cam’ he.”
There were adventures on the way, for Davy hunted buffalo, fought a
cougar--knife to teeth--and pacified an Indian tribe to get passage.
Then they were joined by a pirate from Lafitte’s wicked crew, and a
young Indian warrior. So, after thrashing a Mexican patrol, the party
galloped into the Alamo, a Texan fortress at San Antonio.
One thousand seven hundred Mexicans had been holding that fort, until
after a hundred and twenty hours fighting, they were captured by two
hundred and sixteen Americans. The Lone Star flag on the Alamo was
defended now by one hundred and fifty white men.
Colonel Travis commanded, and with him was Colonel Bowie, whose broken
sword, used as a dagger, had given the name to the “bowie knife.”
Crockett, with his followers, Thimblerig, the bee hunter, the pirate
and the Indian, were warmly welcomed by the garrison.
February twenty-third, 1836, the Mexican president, Santa Anna, brought
up seventeen hundred men to besiege the Alamo, and Travis sent off the
pirate to ride to Goliad for help.
On the twenty-fourth the bombardment commenced, and thirty cowboys
broke in through the Mexican lines to aid the garrison.
On the twenty-eighth, here is a scrap from Davy’s private diary: “The
settlers are flying ... leaving their possessions to the mercy of the
ruthless invader ... slaughter is indiscriminate, sparing neither age,
sex, nor condition. Buildings have been burned down, farms laid waste
... the enemy draws nigher to the fort.”
On the twenty-ninth: “This business of being shut up makes a man
wolfish--I had a little sport this morning before breakfast. The enemy
had planted a piece of ordnance within gunshot of the fort during
the night, and the first thing in the morning they commenced a brisk
cannonade pointblank against the spot where I was snoring. I turned
out pretty smart and mounted the rampart. The gun was charged again,
a fellow stepped forth to touch her off, but before he could apply
the match I let him have it, and he keeled over. A second stepped up,
snatched the match from the hand of the dying man, but Thimblerig, who
had followed me, handed me his rifle, and the next instant the Mexican
was stretched upon the earth beside the first. A third came up to the
cannon, my companion handed me another gun, and I fixed him off in like
manner. A fourth, then a fifth seized the match, but both met with
the same fate, and then the whole party gave it up as a bad job, and
hurried off to the camp, leaving the cannon ready charged where they
had planted it. I came down, took my bitters and went to breakfast.
Thimblerig told me the place from which I had been firing was one of
the snuggest stands in the whole fort, for he never failed picking off
two or three stragglers before breakfast.”
March third.--“We have given over all hope.”
March fourth.--“Shells have been falling into the fort like hail during
the day, but without effect. About dusk in the evening we observed a
man running toward the fort, pursued by about a dozen Mexican cavalry.
The bee hunter immediately knew him to be the old hunter who had gone
to Goliad, and calling to the two hunters, he sallied out to the relief
of the old man, who was hard pressed. I followed close after. Before
we reached the spot the Mexicans were close on the heels of the old
man who stopped suddenly, turned short upon his pursuers, discharged
his rifle, and one of the enemy fell from his horse. The chase was
renewed, but finding that he would be overtaken and cut to pieces,
he now turned again, and to the amazement of the enemy became the
assailant in turn. He clubbed his gun, and dashed among them like a
wounded tiger, and they fled like sparrows. By this time we reached the
spot, and in the ardor of the moment followed some distance before we
saw that our retreat to the fort was cut off by another detachment of
cavalry. Nothing was to be done but to fight our way through. We were
all of the same mind. ‘Go ahead!’ cried I; and they shouted, ‘Go ahead,
Colonel!’ We dashed among them, and a bloody conflict ensued. They were
about twenty in number, and they stood their ground. After the fight
had continued about five minutes a detachment was seen issuing from the
fort to our relief, and the Mexicans scampered off, leaving eight of
their comrades dead upon the field. But we did not escape unscathed,
for both the pirate and the bee hunter were mortally wounded, and I
received a saber cut across the forehead. The old man died without
speaking, as soon as we entered the fort. We bore my young friend to
his bed, dressed his wounds, and I watched beside him. He lay without
complaint or manifesting pain until about midnight, when he spoke, and
I asked him if he wanted anything.
“‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Poor Kate!’ His eyes filled with tears as he
continued: ‘Her words were prophetic, Colonel,’ and then he sang in a
low voice.
“‘But toom’ cam’ the saddle, all bluidy to see,
And hame cam’ the steed, but hame never cam’ he.’
“He spoke no more, and a few minutes after, died. Poor Kate! who will
tell this to thee?”
March fifth: “Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom! throughout the day--no time
for memorandums now--go ahead. Liberty and independence forever!”
[Illustration: DAVID CROCKETT]
* * * * *
So ends Davy’s journal. Before dawn of the sixth a final assault of the
Mexican force carried the lost Alamo, and at sunrise there were only
six of the defenders left alive. Colonel Crockett was found with his
back to the wall, with his broken rifle and his bloody knife. Before
him lay Thimblerig, his dagger to the hilt in a Mexican’s throat, his
death grip fastened in the dead man’s hair.
The six prisoners were brought before Santa Anna, who stood surrounded
by his staff amid the ruins. General Castrillon saluted the president.
“Sir, here are six prisoners I have taken alive; how shall I dispose to
them?”
“Have I not told you before how to dispose of them--why do you bring
them to me?”
The officers of the staff fell upon the prisoners with their swords,
but like a tiger Davy sprang at Santa Anna’s throat. Then he fell with
a dozen swords through his body.
Up with your banner, Freedom.
Thy champions cling to thee.
They’ll follow where’er you lead ’em--
To death or victory.
Up with your banner, Freedom!
Tyrants and slaves are rushing
To tread thee in the dust;
Their blood will soon be gushing
And stain our knives with rust,
But not thy banner, Freedom!
While Stars and Stripes are flying
Our blood we’ll freely shed;
No groan will ’scape the dying,
Seeing thee o’er his head.
Up with your banner, Freedom!
Let us return to Sam Houston. His life of cyclone passions and
whirling change--a white boy turned Indian, then hero of a war against
the redskins; lawyer, commander-in-chief and governor of a state, a
drunken savage, a broken man begging a job at Washington, an obscure
conspirator in Texas--had made him leader of the liberators.
The fall of the Alamo filled the Texans with fury, but when that
was followed by the awful massacre of Goliad they went raving mad.
Houston, their leader, waited for reinforcements until his men wanted
to murder him, but when he marched it was to San Jacinto where, with
eight hundred Texans, he scattered one thousand six hundred Mexicans,
and captured Santa Anna. He was proclaimed president of the Lone Star
republic, which is now the largest star in the American constellation.
XLIV
A. D. 1793
ALEXANDER MACKENZIE
The very greatest events in human annals are those which the historian
forgets to mention. Now for example, in 1638 Louis XIV was born; the
Scots set up their solemn league and covenant; the Turks romped into
poor old Bagdad and wiped out thirty thousand Persians; Van Tromp, the
Dutchman, whopped a Spanish fleet; the English founded Madras, the
corner-stone of our Indian empire; but the real event of the year, the
greatest event of the seventeenth century, was the hat act passed by
the British parliament. Hatters were forbidden to make any hats except
of beaver felt. Henceforth, for two centuries, slouch hats, cocked
hats, top hats, all sorts of hats, were to be made of beaver fur felt,
down to the flat brimmed Stetson hat, which was borrowed from the
cowboys by the Northwest Mounted Police, adopted by the Irregular Horse
of the Empire, and finally copied in rabbit for the Boy Scouts. The
hatter must buy beaver, no matter what the cost, so Europe was stripped
to the last pelt. Then far away to east and west the hunters and
trappers explored from valley to valley. The traders followed, building
forts where they dealt with the hunters and trappers, exchanging
powder and shot, traps and provisions, for furs at so much a “castor”
or beaver skin, and skins were used for money, instead of gold. Then
came the settlers to fill the discovered lands, soldiers to guard them
from attack by savages, judges and hangmen, flag and empire.
The Russian fur trade passed the Ural Hills, explored Siberia and
crossed to Russian America.
Westward the French and British fur trade opened up the length and
breadth of North America.
By the time the hatter invented the imitation “beaver,” our silk hat,
this mad hat trade had pioneered the Russian empire, the United States
and the Dominion of Canada, belting the planet with the white man’s
power.
Now in this monstrous adventure the finest of all the adventurers were
Scotch, and the greatest Scot of them all was Alexander MacKenzie, of
Stornoway, in the Scotch Hebrides. At the age of seventeen he landed in
Montreal, soon after Canada was taken by the British, and he grew up
in the growing fur trade. In those days the Hudson’s Bay Company was a
sleepy old corporation with four forts, but the Nor’westers of Montreal
had the aid of the valiant French Canadian voyageurs as guides and
canoe men in the far wilderness.
Their trade route crossed the upper lakes to Thunder Bay in Lake
Superior, where they built Fort William; thence by Rainy River to the
Lake of the Woods, and Rat Portage; thence up Lake Winnipeg to the
Grand Saskatchewan. There were the forts where buffalo hunters boiled
down pemmican, a sort of pressed beef spiced with service berries, to
feed the northern posts. Northward the long trail, by lake and river,
reached à la Crosse, which gave its name to a famous Indian ball game,
and so to the source of the Churchill River at Lac la Loche, from
whence the Methye portage opened the way into the Great Unknown.
When MacKenzie reached Clear-water River, Mr. Peter Pond of the
Nor’westers had just shot Mr. Ross of the X. Y. Company. MacKenzie
took charge, and he and his cousin moved the trade down to the meeting
of the Athabasca and the Peace, at an inland sea, the Athabasca Lake,
where they built the future capital of the North, Fort Chipewyan. From
here the Slave River ran down to Great Slave Lake, a second inland sea
whose outlet was unknown. MacKenzie found that outlet six miles wide.
The waters teemed with wild fowl, the bush with deer, and the plains on
either side had herds of bison.
MacKenzie took with him four French voyageurs, a German and some
Indians, working them as a rule from three A. M. till dusk, while they
all with one accord shied at the terrors ahead, the cataracts, the
savage tribes, the certainty of starvation. The days lengthened until
there was no night, they passed coal fields on fire which a hundred
years later were still burning, then frozen ground covered with grass
and flowers, where the river parted into three main branches opening on
the coast of an ice-clad sea. The water was still fresh, but there were
seaweeds, they saw whales, the tides would wash the people out of camp,
for this was the Arctic Ocean. So they turned back up that great river
which bears MacKenzie’s name, six thousand miles of navigable waters
draining a land so warm that wheat will ripen on the Arctic circle, a
home for millions of healthy prosperous people in the days to come.
MacKenzie’s second journey was much more difficult, up the Peace River
through the Rocky Mountains, then by a portage to the Fraser Valley,
and down Bad River. All the rivers were bad, but the birch bark canoe,
however much it smashes, can be repaired with fresh sheets of bark,
stuck on with gum from the pine trees. Still, after their canoe was
totally destroyed in Bad River and the stock of bullets went to the
bottom, the Indians sat down and wept, while the Frenchmen, after a
square meal with a lot of rum, patched up the wreck to go on. Far down
the Fraser Valley there is a meadow of tall grass and flowers with
clumps of wild fruit orchard and brier rose, gardens of tiger lilies
and goldenrod. Nobody lived there in my time, but the place is known
as Alexandria in memory of Alexander Mackenzie and of the only moment
in his life when he turned back, beaten. Below Alexandria the Fraser
plunges for two hundred miles through a range of mountains in one long
roaring swoop.
So the explorers, warned by friendly Indians, climbed back up-stream
to the Blackwater River; and if any big game hunter wants to shoot
mosquitoes for their hides that valley would make a first-class hunting
ground. The journey from here to the coast was made afoot with heavy
loads by a broad Indian trail across the coast range to the Bilthqula
River, and here the explorers were the guests of rich powerful tribes.
One young chief unclasped a splendid robe of sea-otter skins, and
threw it around MacKenzie, such a gift as no king could offer now.
They feasted on salmon, service berries in grease, and cakes of inner
hemlock bark sprinkled with oil of salmon, a three-hour banquet,
followed by sleep in beds of furs, and blankets woven from wool of the
mountain sheep. The houses were low-pitched barns of cedar, each large
enough to seat several hundred people, and at the gable end rose a
cedar pole carved in heraldic sculpture gaily painted, with a little
round hole cut through for the front door.
Each canoe was a cedar log hollowed with fire, then spread with boiling
water, a vessel not unlike a gondola. One such canoe, the _Tillicum_,
has made a voyage round the world, but she is small compared with the
larger dugouts up to seven tons burden. An old chief showed MacKenzie a
canoe forty-five feet in length, of four foot beam painted with white
animals on a black hull, and set with ivory of otter teeth. In this
he had made a voyage some years before, when he met white men and saw
ships, most likely those of the great Captain Cook. MacKenzie’s account
of the native doctors describes them to the life as they are to-day.
“They blew on the patient, and then whistled; they rubbed him violently
on the stomach; they thrust their forefingers into his mouth, and
spouted water into his face.” MacKenzie, had he only waited, would have
seen them jump on the patient’s stomach to drive the devils out.
He borrowed canoes for the run down the Bilthqula to Salt Water at the
head of one of British Columbia’s giant fiords. There the explorer
heard that only two moons ago Captain Vancouver’s boats had been in
the inlet. An Indian chief must have been rude, for one officer fired
upon him, while another struck him with the flat of a sword. For this
the chief must needs get even with Alexander MacKenzie as he wandered
about the channels in search of the open sea. He never found the actual
Pacific, but made his final camp upon a rock at the entrance of Cascada
inlet. Here is Vancouver’s description of the place. “The width of the
channel did not anywhere exceed three-quarters of a mile; its shores
were bounded by precipices much more perpendicular than any we had
yet seen during this excursion; and from the summits of the mountains
that overlooked it ... there fell several large cascades. These were
extremely grand, and by much the most tremendous of any we had ever
beheld.”
Those cataracts, like lace, fell from the cornice glaciers through belt
after belt of clouds, to crash through the lower gloom in deafening
thunder upon black abysmal channels. The eagles swirl and circle far
above, the schools of porpoises are cleaving and gleaming through the
white-maned tide. In such a place, beset by hostile Indians, as the
dawn broke the great explorer mixed vermilion and grease to paint upon
the precipice above him:
“Alexander MacKenzie, from Canada by land 22nd July, 1793.”
He had discovered one of the world’s great rivers, and made the first
crossing of North America.
XLV
THE WHITE MAN’S COMING
It is our plain duty here to take up the story of Vancouver, an English
merchant seaman from before the mast, who rose to a captaincy in the
royal navy, and was sent to explore the British Columbian coast. He was
to find “the Straits of Anian leading through Meta Incognita to the
Atlantic,” the famous Northwest passage for which so many hundreds of
explorers gave their lives. His careful survey proved there was no such
strait.
Of course it is our duty to follow Vancouver’s dull and pompous log
book, and show what savage tribes he met with in the wilds. But it will
be much more fun to give the other side, the story of Vancouver’s visit
as told by the Indians whose awful fate it was to be “discovered” by
the white man with his measles, his liquor and his smallpox.
In the winter of 1887–8 I was traveling on snowshoes down the Skeena
Valley from Gaat-a-maksk to Gaet-wan-gak, which must be railway
stations now on the Grand Trunk Pacific. My packer was Willie-the-Bear,
so named because a grizzly had eaten off half his face, the side of
his face, in fact, which had to be covered with a black veil. We were
crossing some low hills when I asked him about the coming of the
white men. Promptly he told me of the first ship--a Spaniard; the
second--Vancouver’s; and the third--an American, all in correct order
after a hundred years. Who told him? His mother. And who told her? Her
mother, of course.
So, living as I was among the Indians, and seeing no white man’s face
for months on end, I gathered up the various memories of the people.
At Massett, on the north coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the
Haidas were amazed by a great bird which came to rest in front of the
village. When she had folded her wings a lot of little birds shot out
from under her, which came to the beach and turned out to be full of
men. They were as fair of color as the Haidas, some even more so, and
some red as the meat of salmon. The people went out in their dugouts to
board the bird, which was a vast canoe. All of them got presents, but
there was one, a person of no account, who got the finest gift, better
than anything received by the highest chiefs, an iron cooking-pot.
In those days the food was put with water into a wooden trough and
red-hot stones thrown in until it boiled. The people had copper, but
that was worth many times the present price of gold, not to be wasted
on mere cooking pots. So the man with the iron pot, in his joy, called
all the people to a feast, and gave away the whole of his property,
which of course was the right thing to do. The chiefs were in a rage
at his new importance, but they came, as did every one else. And at
the feast the man of no account climbed the tall pole in front of his
house, the totem pole carved with the arms of his ancestors, passing a
rope over the top by which he hauled up the iron pot so that it might
be seen by the whole tribe. “See,” he said, “what the great chief has
given me, the Big Spirit whose people have tails stiff as a beaver tail
behind their heads, whose canoe is loaded with thunder and lightning,
the mother of all canoes, with six young canoes growing up, whose
medicine is so strong that one dose makes you sick for three days,
whose warriors are so brave that one got two black eyes and did not run
away, who have a little dog which scratches and says meaou!
“This great chief has given us presents according to our rank, little
no-account presents to the common people; but when I came he knew I was
his brother, his equal, and to me, to me alone, he gave this pot which
sits upon the fire and does not burn, this pot which boils the water,
and will not break!”
But as the man bragged he kept twitching the rope, and down fell the
pot, smash on the ground, and broken all to pieces.
Now as to the first white man who came up Skeena River:
A very old man of Kitzelash remembered that when he was a boy he stood
on the banks of the cañon and there came a canoe with a white man, a
big chief called Manson, a Spaniard, and a black man, all searching for
gold. He remembered that first one man sang a queer song and then they
all took it up and sang, laughing together.
A middle-aged man of Gaet-wan-gak remembered that in his childhood a
canoe came up the river full of Indians, and with two white men. Nobody
had ever seen the like, and they took the strangers for ghosts, so
that the women ran away and hid. The ghosts gave them bread, but they
spat it out because it was ghost food and had no taste. They offered
tea, but the people spat it out, because it was like earth water out of
graves. Rice, too, they would not touch, for it was like--perhaps one
should not say what that was like.
XLVI
THE BEAVER
In the heart of the city of Victoria I once found an old log barn, the
last remnant of Fort Camosun, and climbing into the loft, kicked about
in a heap of rubbish from which emerged some damp rat-gnawed manuscript
books. From morning to evening, and far into the dusk, I sat reading
there the story of a great adventuress, a heroine of tonnage and
displacement, the first steamer which ever plied on the Pacific Ocean.
Her builders were Messrs. Boulton and Watt, and Watt was the father
of steam navigation. She was built at Blackwall on London River in
the days of George IV. She was launched by a duchess in a poke bonnet
and shawl, who broke a bottle of wine against the ship’s nose and
christened her the _Beaver_. Then the merchant adventurers of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, in bell toppers, Hessian boots and white chokers,
gave three hearty cheers.
The _Beaver_ was as ugly as it was safe to make her, but built of
honest oak, and copper bolted, her engines packed in the hold, and her
masts brigantine-rigged for the sailing voyage round Cape Horn. She
went under convoy of the barque _Columbia_, a slow and rather helpless
chaperon, who fouled and nearly wrecked her at Robinson Crusoe’s
Island. Her master, to judge by the ship’s books, was a peppery little
beast, who logged the mate for a liar: “Not correct D. Home;” drove his
officers until they went sick, quarreled with the _Columbia’s_ doctor,
found his chief engineer “in a beastly state of intoxication,” and
finally, at the Columbia River, hounded his crew into mutiny.
“Mr. Phillips and Mr. Wilson behaved,” says the mate, “in a most
mutinous manner.” So the captain had all hands aft to witness their
punishment with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Phillips called on the crew to
rescue him, and they went for the captain. Calling for his sword, the
skipper defended himself like a man, wounding one seaman in the head.
Then he “succeeded in tying up Phillips, and punishing him with two
dozen lashes with a rope’s end over his clothes,” whereupon William
Wilson demanded eleven strokes for himself, so sharing the fun, for
better or worse, with a shipmate.
Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, an old stockade of the
Nor’westers, was at this time the Hudson’s Bay Company’s capital on the
Pacific coast, where reigned the great Doctor McLauchlan, founder of
Oregon. Here the _Beaver_ shipped her paddles, started up her engines,
and gave an excursion trip for the ladies. So came her voyage under
steam out in the open Pacific of eight hundred miles to her station on
the British Columbian coast. She sailed on the last day of May in 1836,
two years before the Atlantic was crossed under steam. On the Vancouver
coast she discovered an outcrop of steam coal, still the best to be had
on the Pacific Ocean.
In her days of glory, the _Beaver_ was a smart little war-ship trading
with the savages, or bombarding their villages, all the way from Puget
Sound to Alaska. In her middle age she was a survey vessel exploring
Wonderland. In her old age the boiler leaked, so that the engineer had
to plug the holes with a rag on a pointed stick. She was a grimy tug
at the last, her story forgotten; and after fifty-two years of gallant
service, was allowed to lie a weed-grown wreck within a mile of the
new City of Vancouver, until a kindly storm gave her the honor of sea
burial.
It was in 1851 that the _Beaver_ brought to the factor at Fort Simpson
some nuggets of the newly discovered Californian gold. At first he
refused to take the stuff in trade, next bought it in at half its
value, and finally showed it to Edenshaw, head chief of the Haida
nation. As each little yellow pebble was worth a big pile of blankets,
the chief borrowed a specimen and showed it to his tribe in the Queen
Charlotte Islands.
There is a legend that in earlier days a trader found the Haidas using
golden bullets with their trade guns, which they gladly exchanged for
lead. Anyway an old woman told Edenshaw that she knew where to find the
stuff, so next day she took him in a small dugout canoe to the outer
coast. There she showed him a streak seven inches wide, and eighty feet
in length, of quartz and shining gold, which crossed the neck of a
headland. They filled a bushel basket with loose bits, and left them in
the canoe while they went back for more. But in the stern of the canoe
sat Edenshaw’s little son watching the dog fish at play down in the
deeps. When the elders came back Charlie had thrown their first load of
gold at the dog fish, and later on in life he well remembered the hands
of blessing laid on by way of reward.
Still, enough gold was saved to buy many bales of blankets. Edenshaw
claimed afterward that, had he only known the value of his find, he
would have gone to England and married the queen’s daughter.
News spread along the coast and soon a ship appeared, the H. B. C.
brigantine _Una_. Her people blasted the rocks, while the Indians,
naked and well oiled, grabbed the plunder. The sailors wrestled, but
could not hold those oily rogues. In time the _Una_ sailed with a load
of gold, but was cast away with her cargo in the Straits of Fuca.
Next year Gold Harbor was full of little ships, with a gunboat to
keep them in order while they reaped a total harvest of two hundred
eighty-nine thousand dollars. H. M. S. _Thetis_ had gone away when the
schooner _Susan Sturgis_ came back for a second load, the only vessel
to brave the winter storms. One day while all hands were in the cabin
at dinner the Indians stole on board, clapped on the hatches and made
them prisoners. They were marched ashore and stripped in the deep snow,
pleading for their drawers, but only Captain Rooney and the mate were
allowed that luxury. The seamen were sold to the H. B. Company at Fort
Simpson, but the two officers remained in slavery. By day they chopped
fire-wood under a guard, at night crouched in a dark corner of a big
Indian house, out of sight of the fire in the middle, fed on such
scraps of offal as their masters deigned to throw them.
Only one poor old woman pitied the slaves, hiding many a dried clam
under the matting within their reach. Also they made a friend of Chief
Bearskin’s son; and Bearskin himself was a good-hearted man, though
Edenshaw proved a brute. Rooney was an able-bodied Irishman, Lang
a tall broad-shouldered Scot, though this business turned his hair
gray. For after the schooner was plundered and broken up, a dispute
arose between Bearskin and Edenshaw as to their share of the captives.
Edenshaw would kill Lang rather than surrender him to Bearskin, and
twice the Scotchman had his head on the block to be chopped off before
Bearskin gave in to save his life. At last both slaves were sold to
Captain McNeill, who gave them each a striped shirt, corduroy trousers
and shoes, then shipped them aboard the _Beaver_. Now it so happened
that on the passage southward the _Beaver_ met with the only accident
in her long life, for during a storm the steering gear was carried
away. Lang was a ship’s carpenter, and his craftsmanship saved the
little heroine from being lost with all hands that night. This rescued
slave became the pioneer ship-builder of Western Canada.
XLVII
A. D. 1911
THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES
The North Pole is only a point on the earth’s surface, a point which
in itself has no length, breadth or height, neither has it weight nor
any substance, being invisible, impalpable, immovable and entirely
useless. The continents of men swing at a thousand miles an hour round
that point, which has no motion. Beneath it an eternal ice-field slowly
drifts across the unfathomed depths of a sea that knows no light.
Above, for a night of six months, the pole star marks the zenith round
which the constellations swing their endless race; then for six months
the low sun rolls along the sky-line on his level rounds; and each day
and night are one year.
The attempt to reach that point began in the reign of Henry VIII of
England, when Master John Davis sailed up the Greenland coast to a big
cliff which he named after his becker, Sanderson’s Hope. The cliff is
sheer from the sea three thousand four hundred feet high, with one
sharp streak of ice from base to summit. It towers above Upernivik, the
most northerly village in the world, and is one thousand one hundred
twenty-eight miles from the Pole.
In 1594 Barentz carried the Dutch flag a little farther north but
soon Hudson gave the lead back to Great Britain, and after that, for
two hundred seventy-six years the British flag unchallenged went on
from victory to victory in the conquest of the North. At last in 1882
Lieutenant Greely of the United States Army beat us by four miles at
a cost of nearly his whole expedition, which was destroyed by famine.
Soon Doctor Nansen broke the American record for Norway, to be beaten
in turn by an Italian prince, the Duke d’Abruzzi. But meanwhile Peary,
an American naval officer, had commenced his wonderful course of
twenty-three years’ special training; and in 1906 he broke the Italian
record. His way was afoot with dog-trains across the ice of the Polar
sea, and he would have reached the North Pole, but for wide lanes of
open sea, completely barring the way. At two hundred twenty-seven miles
from the Pole he was forced to retreat, and camp very near to death
before he won back to his base camp.
Peary’s ship was American to the last detail of needles and thread,
but the vessel was his own invention, built for ramming ice-pack. The
ship’s officers and crew were all Newfoundlanders, trained from boyhood
in the seal fishery of the Labrador ice-pack. They were, alas! British,
but that could not be helped. To make amends the exploring officers
were Americans, but they were specially trained by Peary to live and
travel as Eskimos, using the native dress, the dog-trains and the snow
houses.
Other explorers had done the same, but Peary went further, for he hired
the most northerly of the Eskimo tribes, and from year to year educated
the pick of the boys, who grew up to regard him as a father, to obey
his orders exactly, and to adopt his improvements on their native
methods. So he had hunting parties to store up vast supplies of meat,
and skins of musk-ox, ice-bear, reindeer, fox, seal and walrus, each
for some special need in the way of clothing. He had women to make the
clothes. He had two hundred fifty huskie dogs, sleds of his own device,
and Eskimo working parties under his white officers. In twenty-three
years he found out how to boil tea in ten minutes, and that one detail
saved ninety minutes a day for actual marching--a margin in case
of accident. Add to all that Peary’s own enormous strength of mind
and body, in perfect training, just at the prime of life. He was so
hardened by disaster that he had become almost a maniac, with one idea,
one motive in life, one hope--that of reaching the Pole. Long hours
before anything went wrong an instinct would awaken him out of the
soundest sleep to look out for trouble and avert calamity.
A glance at the map will show how Greenland, and the islands north
of Canada, reach to within four hundred miles of the Pole. Between
is a channel leading from Baffin’s Bay into the Arctic Ocean. The
_Roosevelt_, Peary’s ship, forced a passage through that channel, then
turned to the left, creeping and dodging between the ice-field and the
coast of Grant Land. Captain Bartlett was in the crow’s-nest, piloting,
and Peary, close below him, clung to the standing rigging while the
ship butted and charged and hammered through the floes. Bartlett would
coax and wheedle, or shout at the ship to encourage her, “Rip ’em,
Teddy! Bite ’em in two! Go it! That’s fine, my beauty! Now again! Once
more!”
Who knows? In the hands of a great seaman like Bartlett a ship seems to
be a living creature, and no matter what slued the _Roosevelt_ she had
a furious habit of her own, coming to rest with her nose to the north
for all the world like a compass. Her way was finally blocked just
seventy-five miles short of the most northerly headland, Cape Columbia,
and the stores had to be carried there for the advanced base. The
winter was spent in preparation, and on March first began the dash for
the Pole.
No party with dog-trains could possibly carry provisions for a return
journey of eight hundred miles. If there had been islands on the route
it would have been the right thing to use them as advanced bases for a
final rush to the Pole. But there were no islands, and it would be too
risky to leave stores upon the shifting ice-pack. There was, therefore,
but one scheme possible. Doctor Goodsell marched from the coast to
Camp A, unloaded his stores and returned. Using the stores at Camp A,
Mr. Borup was able to march to Camp B, where he unloaded and turned
back. With the stores at Camp B, Professor Marvin marched to Camp C and
turned back. With the stores at Camp C, Captain Bartlett marched to
Camp D and turned back. With the stores at Camp D, Peary had his sleds
fully loaded, with a selection, besides, of the fittest men and dogs
for the last lap of the journey, and above all not too many mouths to
feed.
It was a clever scheme, and in theory the officers, turned back with
their Eskimo parties, were needed to pilot them to the coast. All the
natives got back safely, but Professor Marvin was drowned. If Peary had
not sent all his officers back, would he have been playing the game in
leaving his Eskimo parties without navigating officers to guide them in
the event of a storm? There is no doubt that his conduct was that of a
wise and honorable man. But the feeling remains--was it sportsman-like
to send Captain Bartlett back--the one man who had done most for his
success, denied any share in the great final triumph? Bartlett made
no complaint, and in his cheery acceptance of the facts cut a better
figure than even Commander Peary.
With his negro servant and four Eskimos, the leader set forth on the
last one hundred thirty-three miles across the ice. It was not plain
level ice like that of a pond, but heaved into sharp hills caused by
the pressure, with broken cliffs and labyrinthine reefs. The whole pack
was drifting southward before the wind, here breaking into mile-wide
lanes of black and foggy sea, there newly frozen and utterly unsafe.
Although the sun did not set, the frost was sharp, at times twenty and
thirty degrees below zero, while for the most part a cloudy sky made
it impossible to take observations. Here great good fortune awaited
Peary, for as he neared the Pole, the sky cleared, giving him brilliant
sunlight. By observing the sun at frequent intervals he was able to
reckon with his instruments until at last he found himself within five
miles of ninety degrees north--the Pole. A ten-mile tramp proved he had
passed the apex of the earth, and five miles back he made the final
tests. Somewhere within a mile of where he stood was the exact point,
the north end of the axis on which the earth revolves. As nearly as
he could reckon, the very point was marked for that moment upon the
drifting ice-field by a berg-like hill of ice, and on this summit he
hoisted the flag, a gift from his wife which he had carried for fifteen
years, a tattered silken remnant of Old Glory.
“Perhaps,” he writes, “it ought not to have been so, but when I knew
for a certainty that I had reached the goal, there was not a thing
in the world I wanted but sleep. But after I had a few hours of it,
there succeeded a condition of mental exaltation which made further
rest impossible. For more than a score of years that point on the
earth’s surface had been the object of my every effort. To obtain it
my whole being, physical, mental and moral, had been dedicated. The
determination to reach the Pole had become so much a part of my being
that, strange as it may seem, I long ago ceased to think of myself
save as an instrument for the attainment of that end.... But now I had
at last succeeded in planting the flag of my country at the goal of
the world’s desire. It is not easy to write about such a thing, but
I knew that we were going back to civilization with the last of the
great adventure stories--a story the world had been waiting to hear for
nearly four hundred years, a story which was to be told at last under
the folds of the Stars and Stripes, the flag that during a lonely and
isolated life had come to be for me the symbol of home and everything I
loved--and might never see again.”
Here is the record left at the North Pole:--
“90 N. Lat., North Pole,
“April 6th, 1909.
“I have to-day hoisted the national ensign of the United States of
America at this place, which my observations indicate to be the
North Polar axis of the earth, and have formally taken possession
of the entire region, and adjacent, for and in the name of the
president of the United States of America.
“I leave this record and United States flag in possession.
“ROBERT E. PEARY,
“United States Navy.”
Before the hero of this very grand adventure returned to the world,
there also arrived from the Arctic a certain Doctor Cook, an American
traveler who claimed to have reached the Pole. The Danish Colony in
Greenland received him with joy, the Danish Geographical Society
welcomed him with a banquet of honor, and the world rang with his
triumph. Then came Commander Peary out of the North, proclaiming that
this rival was a liar. So Doctor Cook was able to strike an attitude
of injured innocence, hinting that poor old Peary was a fraud; and the
world rocked with laughter.
In England we may have envied the glory that Peary had so bravely won
for his flag and country, but knew his record too well to doubt his
honor, and welcomed his triumph with no ungenerous thoughts. The other
claimant had a record of impudent and amusing frauds, but still he
was entitled to a hearing, and fair judgment of his claim from men of
science. Among sportsmen we do not expect the runners, after a race,
to call one another liars, and were sorry that Peary should for a
moment lapse from the dignity expected of brave men.
It is perhaps ungenerous to mention such trifling points of conduct,
and yet we worship heroes only when we are quite sure that our homage
is not a folly. And so we measure Peary with the standard set by his
one rival, Roald Amundsen, who conquered the Northwest passage, then
added to that immortal triumph the conquest of the South Pole. In
that Antarctic adventure Amundsen challenged a fine British explorer,
Captain Scott. The British expedition was equipped with every costly
appliance wealth could furnish, and local knowledge of the actual
route. The Norseman ventured into an unknown route, scantily equipped,
facing the handicap of poverty. He won by sheer merit, by his greatness
as a man, and by the loyal devotion he earned at the hands of his
comrades. Then he returned to Norway, they say, disguised under an
assumed name to escape a public triumph, and his one message to the
world was a generous tribute to his defeated rival. The modern world
has no greater hero, no more perfect gentleman, no finer adventurer
than Roald Amundsen.
XLVIII
WOMEN
Two centuries ago Miss Mary Read, aged thirteen, entered the Royal Navy
as a boy. A little later she deserted, and still disguised as a boy,
went soldiering, first in a line regiment, afterward as a trooper.
She was very brave. On the peace of Ryswick, seeing that there was to
be no more fighting, she went into the merchant service for a change,
and was bound for the West Indies when the ship was gathered in by
pirates. Rather than walk the plank, she became a pirate herself and
rose from rank to rank until she hoisted the black flag with the grade
of captain. So she fell in with Mrs. Bonny, widow of a pirate captain.
The two amiable ladies, commanding each her own vessel, went into a
business partnership, scuttling ships and cutting throats for years
with marked success.
In the seventeenth century an escaped nun did well as a seafaring man
under the Spanish colors, ruffled as a gallant in Chili, and led a
gang of brigands in the Andes. On her return to Spain as a lady, she
was very much petted at the court of Madrid. The last of many female
bandits was Miss Pearl Hart, who, in 1890, robbed a stage-coach in
Arizona.
Mr. Murray Hall, a well-known Tammany politician and a successful
business man, died in New York, and was found to be a woman.
But of women who, without disguise, have excelled in adventurous
trades, I have known in Western Canada two who are gold miners and two
who are cowboys. Mrs. Langdon, of California, drove a stage-coach for
years. Miss Calamity Jane was a noted Montana bull-whacker. Miss Minnie
Hill and Miss Collie French are licensed American pilots. Miss Evelyn
Smith, of Nova Scotia, was a jailer. Lady Clifford holds Board of Trade
certificates as an officer in our mercantile marine. A distinguished
French explorer, Madame Dieulafoy, is an officer of the Legion of
Honor, entitled to a military salute from all sentries, and has the
singular right by law of wearing the dress of a man. Several English
ladies have been explorers. Miss Bird explored Japan, conquered Long’s
Peak, and was once captured by Mountain Jim, the Colorado robber.
Lady Florence Dixie explored Patagonia, Miss Gordon-Cumming explored
a hundred of the South Sea Isles, put an end to a civil war in Samoa
and was one of the first travelers on the Pamirs. Mrs. Mulhall has
traced the sources of the Amazons. Lady Baker, Mrs. Jane Moir, and Miss
Kingsley rank among the great pioneers of Africa. Lady Hester Stanhope,
traveling in the _Levant_, the ship being loaded with treasure, her
own property, was cast away on a desert island near Rhodes. Escaping
thence she traversed the Arabian deserts, and by a gathering of forty
thousands of Arabs was proclaimed queen of Palmyra. This beautiful
and gifted woman reigned through the first decades of the nineteenth
century from her palace on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Two other
British princesses in wild lands were Her Highness Florence, Maharanee
of Patiala, and the sherifa of Wazan, whose son is reverenced by the
Moslems in North Africa as a sacred personage.
Among women who have been warriors the greatest, perhaps, were the
British Queen Boadicea, and the saintly and heroic Joan of Arc, burned,
to our everlasting shame, at Rouen. Frances Scanagatti, a noble Italian
girl, fought with distinction as an officer in the Austrian army, once
led the storming of a redoubt, and after three years in the field
against Napoleon, went home, a young lady again, of sweet and mild
disposition.
Doctor James Barry, M. D., inspector-general of hospitals in the
British Army, a duelist, a martinet, and a hopelessly insubordinate
officer, died in 1865 at the age of seventy-one, and was found to be a
woman.
Apart from hosts of adventurous camp followers there have been
disguised women serving at different times in nearly every army. Loreta
Velasquez, of Cuba, married to an American army officer, dressed up in
her husband’s clothes, raised a corps of volunteers, took command, was
commissioned in the Confederate Army during the Civil War of 1861–5,
and fought as Lieutenant Harry Buford. She did extraordinary work as a
spy in the northern army. After the war, her husband having fallen in
battle, she turned gold miner in California.
Mrs. Christian Davies, born in 1667 in Dublin, was a happy and
respectable married woman with a large family, when her life was
wrecked by a sudden calamity, for her husband was seized by a press
gang and dragged away to serve in the fleet. Mrs. Davis, crazy with
grief, got her children adopted by the neighbors, and set off in
search of the man she loved. When she returned two years later as a
soldier, she found her children happy, the neighbors kind, and herself
utterly unknown. She went away contented. She served under the Duke of
Marlborough throughout his campaigns in Europe, first as an infantry
soldier, but later as a dragoon, for at the battles of Blenheim and
Fontenoy she was a squadron leader of the Scots Grays. The second
dragoon guards have many curious traditions of “Mother Ross.” When
after twelve years military service, she ultimately found her husband,
he was busy flirting with a waitress in a Dutch inn, and she passed by,
saying nothing. In her capacity as a soldier she was a flirt herself,
making love to every girl she met, a gallant, a duelist, and notably
brave. At last, after a severe wound, her sex was discovered and she
forgave her husband. She died in Chelsea Hospital at the age of one
hundred eight, and her monument may be seen in the graveyard.
Hannah Snell left her home because her husband had bolted with another
woman, and she wanted to find and kill him. In course of her search,
she enlisted, served as a soldier against the Scots rebellion of 1745,
and once received a punishment of five hundred lashes. A series of
wonderful adventures led her into service as a marine on board H. M. S.
_Swallow_. After a narrow escape from foundering, this vessel joined
Admiral Boscawen’s fleet in the East Indies. She showed such extreme
gallantry in the attack on Mauritius and in the siege of Areacopong,
that she was chosen for special work in a forlorn hope. In this fight
she avenged the death of a comrade by killing the author of it with her
own hands. At the siege of Pondicherry she received eleven wounds in
the legs, and a ball in the body which she extracted herself for fear
of revealing the secret of her sex. On her return voyage to England she
heard that she need not bother about killing her husband, because he
had been decently hanged for murder. So on landing at Portsmouth she
revealed herself to her messmates as a woman, and one of them promptly
proposed to her. She declined and went on the stage, but ultimately
received a pension of thirty pounds a year, and set up as a publican at
the sign of the Women in Masquerade.
Anna Mills, able seaman on board the _Maidstone_ frigate in 1740, made
herself famous for desperate valor.
Mary Ann, youngest of Lord Talbot’s sixteen natural children, was the
victim of a wicked guardian who took her to the wars as his foot-boy.
As a drummer boy she served through the campaigns in Flanders, dressing
two severe wounds herself. Her subsequent masquerade as a sailor led
to countless adventures. She was a seaman on a French lugger, powder
monkey on a British ship of the line, fought in Lord Howe’s great
victory and was crippled for life. Later she was a merchant seaman,
after that a jeweler in London, pensioned for military service, and was
last heard of as a bookseller’s housemaid in 1807.
Mary Dixon did sixteen years’ service, and fought at Waterloo. She was
still living fifty years afterward, “a strong, powerful, old woman.”
Phœbe Hessel fought in the fifth regiment of foot, and was wounded in
the arm at Fontenoy. After many years of soldiering she retired from
service and was pensioned by the prince regent, George IV. A tombstone
is inscribed to her memory in the old churchyard at Brighton.
In this bald record there is no room for the adventures of such
military and naval heroines as prisoners of war, as leaders in
battle, as victims of shipwreck, or as partakers in some of the most
extraordinary love-affairs ever heard of.
Hundreds of stories might be told of women conspicuous for valor,
meeting hazards as great as ever have fallen to the lot of men. In
one case, the casting away of the French frigate _Medusa_, the men,
almost without exception, performed prodigies of cowardice, while
two or three of the women made a wonderful journey across the Sahara
Desert to Senegambia, which is the one bright episode in the most
disgraceful disaster on record. In the defenses of Leyden and Haarlem,
besieged by Spanish armies, the Dutch women manned the ramparts with
the men, inspired them throughout the hopeless months, and shared the
general fate when all the survivors were butchered. And the valor of
Englishwomen during the sieges of our strongholds in India, China and
South Africa, has made some of the brightest pages of our history.
XLIX
THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA
Only the other day, the king of England was proclaimed emperor of
India, and all the princes and governors of that empire presented
their swords in homage. This homage was rendered at Delhi, the ancient
capital of Hindustan; and it is only one hundred and ten years since
Delhi fell, and Hindustan surrendered to the British arms. We have to
deal with the events that led up to the conquest of India.
The Moslem sultans, sons of the Great Mogul, had long reigned over
Hindustan, but in 1784 Shah Alam, last of these emperors, was driven
from Delhi. In his ruin he appealed for help to Madhoji Scindhia, a
Hindu prince from the South, who kindly restored the emperor to his
palace, then gave him into the keeping of a jailer, who gouged out the
old man’s eyes. Still Shah Alam, the blind, helpless, and at times very
hungry prisoner, was emperor of Northern India, and in his august name
Scindhia led the armies to collect the taxes of Hindustan. No tax was
collected without a battle.
Scindhia himself was one of many turbulent Mahratta princes subject to
the peshwa of Poona, near Bombay. He had to sit on the peshwa’s head
at Poona, and the emperor’s head at Delhi, while he fought the whole
nobility and gentry of India, and kept one eye cocked for British
invasions from the seaboard. The British held the ocean, surrounded
India, and were advancing inland. Madhoji Scindhia was a very busy man.
He had never heard of tourists, and when De Boigne, an Italian
gentleman, came up-country to see the sights, his highness, scenting
a spy, stole the poor man’s luggage. De Boigne, veteran of the French
and Russian armies, and lately retired from the British service, was
annoyed at the loss of his luggage, and having nothing left but his
sword, offered the use of that to Scindhia’s nearest enemy. In those
days scores of Europeans, mostly French, and scandalous rogues as a
rule, were serving in native armies. Though they liked a fight, they
so loved money that they would sell their masters to the highest
bidder. Scindhia observed that De Boigne was a pretty good man, and the
Savoyard adventurer was asked to enter his service.
De Boigne proved honest, faithful to his prince, a tireless worker, a
glorious leader, the very pattern of manliness. The battalions which he
raised for Scindhia were taught the art of war as known in Europe, they
were well armed, fed, disciplined, and paid their wages; they were led
by capable white men, and always victorious in the field. At Scindhia’s
death, De Boigne handed over to the young prince Daulat Rao, his heir,
an army of forty thousand men, which had never known defeat, together
with the sovereignty of India.
The new Scindhia was rotten, and now the Italian, broken down with
twenty years of service, longed for his home among the Italian
vineyards. Before parting with his highness, he warned him rather to
disband the whole army than ever be tempted into conflict with the
English. So De Boigne laid down the burden of the Indian empire, and
retired to his vineyards in Savoy. There for thirty years he befriended
the poor, lived simply, entertained royally, and so died full of years
and honors.
While De Boigne was still fighting for Scindhia, a runaway Irish sailor
had drifted up-country, and taken service in one of the native states
as a private soldier. George Thomas was as chivalrous as De Boigne,
with a great big heart, a clear head, a terrific sword, and a reckless
delight in war. Through years of rough and tumble adventure he fought
his way upward, until with his own army of five thousand men he invaded
and conquered the Hariana. This district, just to the westward of
Delhi, was a desert, peopled by tribes so fierce that they had never
been subdued, but their Irish king won all their hearts, and they
settled down quite peacefully under his government. His revenue was
eighteen hundred thousand pounds a year. At Hansi, his capital town,
he coined his own money, cast his own cannon, made muskets and powder,
and set up a pension fund for widows and orphans of his soldiers. All
round him were hostile states, and whenever he felt dull he conquered
a kingdom or so, and levied tribute. If his men went hungry, he
starved with them; if they were weary, he marched afoot; the army
worshiped him, and the very terror of his name brought strong cities
to surrender, put legions of Sikh cavalry to flight. All things seemed
possible to such a man, even the conquest of great Hindustan.
De Boigne had been succeeded as commander-in-chief under Scindhia by
Perron, a runaway sailor, a Frenchman, able and strong. De Boigne’s
power had been a little thing compared with the might and splendor of
Perron, who actually reigned over Hindustan, stole the revenues, and
treated Scindhia’s orders with contempt. Perron feared only one man on
earth, this rival adventurer, this Irish rajah of the Hariana, and sent
an expedition to destroy him.
The new master of Hindustan detested the English, and degrading the
capable British officers who had served De Boigne, procured Frenchmen
to take their place, hairdressers, waiters, scalawags, all utterly
useless. Major Bourguien, the worst of the lot, was sent against Thomas
and got a thrashing.
But Thomas, poor soul, had a deadlier enemy than this coward, and
now lay drunk in camp for a week celebrating his victory instead of
attending to business. He awakened to find his force of five thousand
men besieged by thirty thousand veterans. There was no water, spies
burned his stacks of forage, his battalions were bribed to desert, or
lost all hope. Finally with three English officers and two hundred
cavalry, Thomas cut his way through the investing army and fled to his
capital.
The coward Bourguien had charge of the pursuing force that now invested
Hanei. Bourguien’s officers breached the walls and took the town by
storm, but Thomas fell back upon the citadel. Then Bourguien sent spies
to bribe the garrison that Thomas might be murdered, but his officers
went straight to warn the fallen king. To them he surrendered.
That night Thomas dined with the officers, and all were merry when
Bourguien proposed a toast insulting his prisoner. The officers turned
their glasses down refusing to drink. Thomas burst into tears; but
then he drew upon Bourguien, and waving the glittering blade, “One
Irish sword,” he cried, “is still sufficient for a hundred Frenchmen!”
Bourguien bolted.
Loyal in the days of his greatness, the fallen king was received with
honors at the British outposts upon the Ganges. There he was giving
valuable advice to the governor-general when a map of India was laid
before him, the British possessions marked red. He swept his hand
across India: “All this ought to be red.”
It is all red now, and the British conquest of India arose out of the
defense made by this great wild hero against General Perron, ruler of
Hindustan. Scindhia, who had lifted Perron from the dust, and made him
commander-in-chief of his army, was now in grave peril on the Deccan,
beset by the league of Mahratta princes. In his bitter need he sent to
Perron for succor. Perron, busy against his enemy in the Hariana, left
Scindhia to his fate.
Perron had no need of Scindhia now, but was leagued with Napoleon to
hand over the Indian empire to France. He betrayed his master.
Now Scindhia, had the Frenchmen been loyal, could have checked the
Mahratta princes, but these got out of hand, and one of them, Holkar,
drove the Mahratta emperor, the peshwa of Poona, from his throne. The
peshwa fled to Bombay, and returned with a British army under Sir
Arthur Wellesley. So came the battle of Assaye, wherein the British
force of four thousand five hundred men overthrew the Mahratta army
of fifty thousand men, captured a hundred guns, and won Poona, the
capital of the South. Meanwhile for fear of Napoleon’s coming, Perron,
his servant, had to be overthrown. A British army under General Lake
swept Perron’s army out of existence and captured Delhi, the capital
of the North. Both the capital cities of India fell to English arms,
both emperors came under British protection, and that vast empire was
founded wherein King George now reigns. As to Perron, his fall was
pitiful, a freak of cowardice. He betrayed everybody, and sneaked away
to France with a large fortune.
And Arthur Wellesley, victor in that stupendous triumph of Assaye,
became the Iron Duke of Wellington, destined to liberate Europe at
Waterloo.
L
A. D. 1805
THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON
This story is from the memoirs of Robert Guillemard, a conscript in
the Grand Army of France, and to his horror drafted for a marine on
board the battle-ship _Redoubtable_. The Franco-Spanish fleet of
thirty-three battle-ships lay in Cadiz, and Villeneuve, the nice old
gentleman in command, was still breathless after being chased by Lord
Nelson across the Atlantic and back again. Now, having given Nelson the
slip, he had fierce orders from the Emperor Napoleon to join the French
channel fleet, for the invasion of England. The nice old gentleman knew
that his fleet was manned largely with helpless recruits, ill-paid,
ill-found, most scandalously fed, sick with a righteous terror lest
Nelson come and burn them in their harbor.
Then Nelson came, with twenty-seven battle-ships, raging for a fight,
and Villeneuve had to oblige for fear of Napoleon’s anger.
The fleets met off the sand-dunes of Cape Trafalgar, drawn up in
opposing lines for battle, and when they closed, young Guillemard’s
ship, the _Redoubtable_, engaged Lord Nelson’s _Victory_, losing thirty
men to her first discharge.
Guillemard had never been in action, and as the thunders broke from
the gun tiers below, he watched with mingled fear and rage the rush of
seamen at their work on deck, and his brothers of the marines at their
musketry, until everything was hidden in trailing wreaths of smoke,
from which came the screams of the wounded, the groans of the dying.
Some seventy feet overhead, at the caps of the lower masts, were
widespread platforms, the fighting tops on which the best marksmen were
always posted. “All our topmen,” says Guillemard, “had been killed,
when two sailors and four soldiers, of whom I was one, were ordered to
occupy their post in the tops. While we were going aloft, the balls
and grapeshot showered around us, struck the masts and yards, knocked
large splinters from them, and cut the rigging to pieces. One of my
companions was wounded beside me, and fell from a height of thirty feet
to the deck, where he broke his neck. When I reached the top my first
movement was to take a view of the prospect presented by the hostile
fleets. For more than a league extended a thick cloud of smoke, above
which were discernible a forest of masts and rigging, and the flags,
the pendants and the fire of the three nations. Thousands of flashes,
more or less near, continually penetrated this cloud, and a rolling
noise pretty similar to the sound of thunder, but much stronger, arose
from its bosom.”
Guillemard goes on to describe a duel between the topmen of the
_Redoubtable_ and those of the _Victory_ only a few yards distant,
and when it was finished he lay alone among the dead who crowded the
swaying platform.
“On the poop of the English vessel was an officer covered with orders
and with only one arm. From what I had heard of Nelson I had no
doubt that it was he. He was surrounded by several officers, to whom
he seemed to be giving orders. At the moment I first perceived him
several of his sailors were wounded beside him by the fire of the
_Redoubtable_. As I had received no orders to go down, and saw myself
forgotten in the tops, I thought it my duty to fire on the poop of the
English vessel, which I saw quite clearly exposed, and close to me.
I could even have taken aim at the men I saw, but I fired at hazard
among the groups of sailors and officers. All at once I saw great
confusion on board the _Victory_; the men crowded round the officer
whom I had taken for Nelson. He had just fallen, and was taken below
covered with a cloak. The agitation shown at this moment left me no
doubt that I had judged rightly, and that it really was the English
admiral. An instant afterward the _Victory_ ceased from firing, the
deck was abandoned.... I hurried below to inform the captain.... He
believed me the more readily as the slackening of the fire indicated
that an event of the highest importance occupied the attention of the
English ship’s crew.... He gave immediate orders for boarding, and
everything was prepared for it in a moment. It is even said that young
Fontaine, a midshipman ... passed by the ports into the lower deck of
the English vessel, found it abandoned, and returned to notify that
the ship had surrendered.... However, as a part of our crew, commanded
by two officers, were ready to spring upon the enemy’s deck, the fire
recommenced with a fury it had never had from the beginning of the
action.... In less than half an hour our vessel, without having hauled
down her colors, had in fact, surrendered. Her fire had gradually
slackened and then had ceased altogether.... Not more than one hundred
fifty men survived out of a crew of about eight hundred, and almost all
those were more or less severely wounded.”
When these were taken on board the _Victory_, Guillemard learned
how the bullet which struck down through Lord Nelson’s shoulder and
shattered the spine below, had come from the fighting tops of the
_Redoubtable_, where he had been the only living soul. He speaks of his
grief as a man, his triumph as a soldier of France, who had delivered
his country from her great enemy. What it meant for England judge now
after nearly one hundred years, when one meets a bluejacket in the
street with the three white lines of braid upon his collar in memory of
Nelson’s victories at Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafalgar, and the black
neckcloth worn in mourning for his death.
It seemed at the time that the very winds sang Nelson’s requiem, for
with the night came a storm putting the English shattered fleet in
mortal peril, while of the nineteen captured battle-ships not one was
fit to brave the elements. For, save some few vessels that basely ran
away before the action, both French and Spaniards had fought with
sublime desperation, and when the English prize-crews took possession,
they and their prisoners were together drowned. The _Aigle_ was cast
away, and not one man escaped; the _Santissima Trinidad_, the largest
ship in the world, foundered; the _Indomitable_ sank with fifteen
hundred wounded; the _Achille_, with her officers shooting themselves,
her sailors drunk, went blazing through the storm until the fire
caught her magazine. And so with the rest of eighteen blood-soaked
wrecks, burned, foundered, or cast away, while only one outlived that
night of horror.
[Illustration: LORD NELSON]
When the day broke Admiral Villeneuve was brought on board the
_Victory_, where Nelson lay in state, for the voyage to England.
Villeneuve, wounded in the hand, was unable to write, and sent
among the French prisoners for a clerk. For this service Guillemard
volunteered as the only uninjured soldier who could write. So
Guillemard attended the admiral all through the months of their
residence at Arlesford, in Devon, where they were at large on parole.
The old man was treated with respect and sympathy.
Prisoners of war are generally released by exchange between fighting
powers, rank for rank, man for man; but after five months Villeneuve
was allowed to return to France. He pledged his honor that unless duly
exchanged he would surrender again on the English coast at the end of
ninety days. So, attended by Guillemard and his servant, he crossed the
channel, and from the town of Rennes--the place where Dreyfus had his
trial not long ago--he wrote despatches to the government in Paris.
He was coming, he said in a private letter, to arraign most of his
surviving captains on the charge of cowardice at Trafalgar.
Of this it seems the captains got some warning, and decided that for
the sake of their own health Villeneuve should not reach Paris alive.
Anyway, Guillemard says that while the admiral lay in the Hotel de
Bresil, at Rennes, five strangers appeared--men in civilian dress, who
asked him many questions about Villeneuve. The secretary was proud of
his master, glad to talk about so distinguished a man, and thought no
evil when he gave his answers. The leader of the five was a southern
Frenchman, the others foreigners, deeply tanned, who wore mustaches--in
those days an unusual ornament.
That night the admiral had gone to bed in his room on the first floor
of the inn, and the secretary was asleep on the floor above. A cry
disturbed him, and taking his sword and candle, he ran down-stairs
in time to see the five strangers sneak by him hurriedly. Guillemard
rushed to the admiral’s room “and saw the unfortunate man, whom the
balls of Trafalgar had respected, stretched pale and bloody on his bed.
He ... breathed hard, and struggled with the agonies of death.... Five
deep wounds pierced his breast.”
So it was the fate of the slayer of Nelson to be alone with Villeneuve
at his death.
When he reached Paris the youngster was summoned to the Tuileries, and
the Emperor Napoleon made him tell the whole story of the admiral’s
assassination. Yet officially the death was announced as suicide,
and Guillemard met the leader of the five assassins walking in broad
daylight on the boulevards.
The lad kept his mouth shut.
Guillemard lived to fight in many of the emperor’s battles, to be one
of the ten thousand prisoners of the Spaniards on the desert island of
the Cabrera, whence he made a gallant escape; to be a prisoner of the
Russians in Siberia; to assist in King Murat’s flight from France; and,
finally, after twenty years of adventure, to return with many wounds
and few honors to his native village.
LI
A. D. 1812
THE FALL OF NAPOLEON
The greatest of modern adventurers, Napoleon Bonaparte, was something
short of a gentleman, a person of mean build, coarse tastes, odious
manners and defective courage, yet gifted with Satanic beauty of face,
charm that bewitched all fighting men, stupendous genius in war and
government. Beginning as a penniless lieutenant of French artillery,
he rose to be captain, colonel, general, commander-in-chief, consul of
France, emperor of the French, master of Europe, almost conqueror of
the world--and he was still only thirty-three years of age, when at
the height of his glory, he invaded Russia. His army of invasion was
gathered from all his subject nations--Germans, Swiss, Italians, Poles,
Austrians, numbering more than half a million men, an irresistible and
overwhelming force, launched like a shell into the heart of Russia.
The Russian army could not hope to defeat Napoleon, was routed again
and again in attempting to check his advance, yet in retreating laid
the country waste, burned all the standing harvest, drove away the
cattle, left the towns in ashes. Napoleon’s host marched through a
desert, while daily, by waste of battle, wreckage of men left with
untended wounds, horrors of starvation, and wolf-like hordes of
Cossacks who cut off all the stragglers, the legions were swept away.
In Lithuania alone Napoleon lost a hundred thousand men, and that only
a fourth part of those who perished before the army reached the gates
of Moscow.
That old city, hallowed by centuries of brave endeavor, stored with the
spoils of countless victories, that holy place at the very sight of
which the Russian traveler prostrated himself in prayer, had been made
ready for Napoleon’s coming. Never has any nation prepared so awful a
sacrifice as that which wrenched a million people from their homes.
The empty capital was left in charge of a few officers, then all the
convicts were released and provided with torches. Every vestige of food
had been taken away, but the gold, the gems, the silver, the precious
things of treasuries, churches and palaces, remained as bait.
Despite the horrors of the march, Napoleon’s entry was attended by all
the gorgeous pageantry of the Grand Army, a blaze of gold and color,
conquered Europe at the heels of the little Corsican adventurer with
waving flags and triumphal music. The cavalry found cathedrals for
stabling, the guard had palaces for barracks, where they could lie at
ease through the winter; but night after night the great buildings
burst into flames, day after day the foraging parties were caught in
labyrinths of blazing streets, and the army staled on a diet of wine
and gold in the burning capital.
In mortal fear the emperor attempted to treat for peace, but Russia
kept him waiting for a month, while her troops closed down on the line
of escape, and the winter was coming on--the Russian winter.
From the time when the retreat began through a thousand miles of naked
wilderness, not a single ration was issued to the starving army. The
men were loaded with furs, brocades, chalices, ingots of silver, bars
of gold and jewels, but they had no food. The transport numbered
thousands of carts laden with grain, but the horses died because there
was no forage, so all the commissariat, except Napoleon’s treasure
train, was left wrecked by the wayside.
Then the marching regiments were placed in the wake of the cavalry,
that they might get the dying horses for food, but when the cold came
there was no fuel to cook the frozen meat, and men’s lips would bleed
when they tried to gnaw that ice. So the wake of the army was a wide
road blocked with broken carts, dead horses, abandoned guns, corpses
of men, where camp followers remained to murder the dying, strip the
dead and gather the treasures of Moscow, the swords, the gold lace, the
costly uniforms, until they were slaughtered by the Cossacks. Then came
the deep snow which covered everything.
No words of mine could ever tell the story, but here are passages from
the _Memoirs_ of Sergeant Burgogne (Heineman). I have ventured to
condense parts of his narrative, memories of the lost army, told by one
who saw. He had been left behind to die:--
“At that moment the moon came out, and I began to walk faster. In this
immense cemetery and this awful silence I was alone, and I began to cry
like a child. The tears relieved me, gradually my courage came back,
and feeling stronger, I set out again, trusting to God’s mercy, taking
care to avoid the dead bodies.
“I noticed something I took for a wagon. It was a broken canteen cart,
the horses which had drawn it not only dead, but partly cut to pieces
for eating. Around the cart were seven dead bodies almost naked, and
half covered with snow; one of them still covered with a cloak and a
sheepskin. On stooping to look at the body I saw that it was a woman. I
approached the dead woman to take the sheepskin for a covering, but it
was impossible to move it. A piercing cry came from the cart. ‘Marie!
Marie! I am dying!’
“Mounting on the body of the horse in the shafts I steadied myself
by the top of the cart. I asked what was the matter. A feeble voice
answered, ‘Something to drink!’
“I thought at once of the frozen blood in my pouch, and tried to get
down to fetch it, but the moon suddenly disappeared behind a great
black cloud, and I as suddenly fell on top of three dead bodies. My
head was down lower than my legs, and my face resting on one of the
dead hands. I had been accustomed for long enough to this sort of
company, but now--I suppose because I was alone--an awful feeling of
terror came over me--I could not move, and I began screaming like a
madman--I tried to help myself up by my arm, but found my hand on a
face, and my thumb went into its mouth. At that moment the moon came
out.
“But a change came over me now. I felt ashamed of my weakness, and a
wild sort of frenzy instead of terror took possession of me. I got up
raving and swearing, and trod on anything that came near me ... and I
cursed the sky above me, defying it, and taking my musket, I struck at
the cart--very likely I struck also at the poor devils under my feet.”
Such was the road, and here was the passing of the army which Burgogne
had overtaken.
“This was November twenty-five, 1812, perhaps about seven o’clock in
the morning, and as yet it was hardly light. I was musing on all that I
had seen, when the head of the column appeared. Those in advance seemed
to be generals, a few on horseback, but the greater part on foot. There
were also a great number of other officers, the remnant of the doomed
squadron and battalion formed on the twenty-second and barely existing
at the end of three days. Those on foot dragged themselves painfully
along, almost all of them having their feet frozen and wrapped in rags,
and all nearly dying of hunger. Afterward came the small remains of
the cavalry of the guard. The emperor came next on foot, carrying a
baton, Murat walked on foot at his right, and on his left, the Prince
Eugene, viceroy of Italy. Next came the marshals--Berthier, Prince of
Neuchâtel, Ney, Mortier, Lefevre, with other marshals and generals
whose corps were nearly annihilated. Seven or eight hundred officers
and non-commissioned officers followed walking in order, and perfect
silence, and carrying the eagles of their different regiments which
had so often led them to victory. This was all that remained of sixty
thousand men. After them came the imperial guard. And men cried at
seeing the emperor on foot.”
So far the army had kept its discipline, and at the passage of the
River Berezina the engineers contrived to build a bridge. But while
the troops were crossing, the Russians began to drive the rear guard,
and the whole herd broke into panic. “The confusion and disorder went
on increasing, and reached their full height when Marshal Victor was
attacked by the Russians, and shells and bullets showered thickly
upon us. To complete our misery, snow began to fall, and a cold wind
blew. This dreadful state of things lasted all day and through the
next night, and all this time the Berezina became gradually filled
with ice, dead bodies of men and horses, while the bridge got blocked
up with carts full of wounded men, some of which rolled over the edge
into the water. Between eight and nine o’clock that evening, Marshal
Victor began his retreat. He and his men had to cross the bridge over a
perfect mountain of corpses.”
Still thousands of stragglers had stayed to burn abandoned wagons, and
make fires to warm them before they attempted the bridge. On these the
Russians descended, but it was too late for flight, and of the hundreds
who attempted to swim the river, not one reached the farther bank. To
prevent the Russians from crossing, the bridge was set on fire, and
so horror was piled on horror that it would be gross offense to add
another word.
Of half a million men who had entered Russia, there were only
twenty-five thousand left after that crossing of the Berezina. These
were veterans for the most part, skilled plunderers, who foraged for
themselves, gleaning a few potatoes from stripped fields, shooting
stray Cossacks for the food they had in their wallets, trading with
the Jews who lurked in ruined towns, or falling back at the worst on
frozen horse-flesh. Garrisons left by Napoleon on his advance fell
in from time to time with the retreating army, but unused to the new
conditions, wasted rapidly. The veterans found their horses useful for
food, and left afoot, they perished.
Even to the last, remnants of lost regiments rallied to the golden
eagles upon their standards, but these little clusters of men no
longer kept their ranks, for as they marched the strong tried to help
the weak, and often comrades would die together rather than part. All
were frozen, suffering the slow exhaustion of dysentery, the miseries
of vermin and starvation, and those who lived to the end were broken
invalids, who never again could serve the emperor.
From Smorgony, Napoleon went ahead, traveling rapidly to send the
relief of sleighs and food which met the survivors on the German
border. Thence he went on to Paris to raise a new army; for now there
was conspiracy in France for the overthrow of the despot, and Europe
rose to destroy him. So on the field of Leipsic, in the battle of the
nations, Napoleon was overwhelmed.
Once again he challenged fate, escaped from his island prison of
Elba, and with a third army marched against armed Europe. And so came
Waterloo, with that last banishment to Saint Helena, where the great
adventurer fretted out his few sore years, dreaming of glories never to
be revived and that great empire which was forever lost.
LII
A. D. 1813
RISING WOLF
This is the story of Rising Wolf, condensed from the beautiful
narrative in _My Life as an Indian_, by J. B. Schultz.
“I had heard much of a certain white man named Hugh Monroe, and in
Blackfoot, Rising Wolf. One afternoon I was told that he had arrived in
camp with his numerous family, and a little later met him at a feast
given by Big Lake. In the evening I invited him over to my lodge and
had a long talk with him while he ate bread and meat and beans, and
smoked numerous pipefuls of tobacco.” White man’s food is good after
years without any. “We eventually became firm friends. Even in his old
age Rising Wolf was the quickest, most active man I ever saw. He was
about five feet six in height, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and his firm
square chin and rather prominent nose betokened what he was, a man of
courage and determination. His father, Hugh Monroe, was a colonel in
the British army, his mother a member of the La Roches, a noble family
of French émigrés, bankers of Montreal and large land owners in that
vicinity.
“Hugh, junior, was born on the family estate at Three Rivers (Quebec)
and attended the parish school just long enough to learn to read and
write. All his vacations and many truant days from the class room were
spent in the great forest surrounding his home. The love of nature, of
adventure and wild life were born in him. He first saw the light in
July, 1798. In 1813, when but fifteen years of age, he persuaded his
parents to allow him to enter the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company
and started westward with a flotilla of that company’s canoes that
spring. His father gave him a fine English smoothbore, his mother a
pair of the famous La Roche dueling pistols and a prayer book. The
family priest gave him a rosary and cross and enjoined him to pray
frequently. Traveling all summer, they arrived at Lake Winnipeg in the
autumn and wintered there. As soon as the ice went out in the spring
the journey was continued and one afternoon in July, Monroe beheld
Mountain Fort, a new post of the company’s not far from the Rocky
Mountains.
“Around about it were encamped thousands of Blackfeet waiting to trade
for the goods the flotilla had brought up and to obtain on credit
ammunition, fukes (trade guns), traps and tobacco. As yet the company
had no Blackfoot interpreter. The factor perceiving that Monroe was
a youth of more than ordinary intelligence at once detailed him to
live and travel with the Piegans (a Blackfoot tribe) and learn their
language, also to see that they returned to Mountain Fort with their
furs the succeeding summer. Word had been received that, following
the course of Lewis and Clarke, American traders were yearly pushing
farther and farther westward and had even reached the mouth of the
Yellowstone. The company feared their competition. Monroe was to do
his best to prevent it.
“‘At last,’ Monroe told me, ‘the day came for our departure, and I
set out with the chiefs and medicine men at the head of the long
procession. There were eight hundred lodges of the Piegans there, about
eight thousand souls. They owned thousands of horses. Oh, but it was
a grand sight to see that long column of riders and pack animals, and
loose horses trooping over the plains. We traveled on southward all
the long day, and about an hour or two before sundown we came to the
rim of a valley through which flowed a cotton wood-bordered stream. We
dismounted at the top of the hill, and spread our robes intending to
sit there until the procession passed by into the bottom and put up
the lodges. A medicine man produced a large stone pipe, filled it and
attempted to light it with flint and steel and a bit of punk (rotten
wood), but somehow he could get no spark. I motioned him to hand it to
me, and drawing my sunglass from my pocket, I got the proper focus and
set the tobacco afire, drawing several mouthfuls of smoke through the
long stem.
“‘As one man all those round about sprang to their feet and rushed
toward me, shouting and gesticulating as if they had gone crazy. I also
jumped up, terribly frightened, for I thought they were going to do me
harm, perhaps kill me. The pipe was wrenched out of my grasp by the
chief himself, who eagerly began to smoke and pray. He had drawn but a
whiff or two when another seized it, and from him it was taken by still
another. Others turned and harangued the passing column; men and women
sprang from their horses and joined the group, mothers pressing close
and rubbing their babes against me, praying earnestly meanwhile. I
recognized a word that I had already learned--Natos--Sun--and suddenly
the meaning of the commotion became clear; they thought that I was
Great Medicine; that I had called upon the Sun himself to light the
pipe, and that he had done so. The mere act of holding up my hand above
the pipe was a supplication to their God. They had perhaps not noticed
the glass, or if they had, had thought it some secret charm or amulet.
At all events I had suddenly become a great personage, and from then on
the utmost consideration and kindness was accorded to me.
“‘When I entered Lone Walker’s lodge that evening--he was the chief,
and my host--I was greeted by deep growls from either side of the
doorway, and was horrified to see two nearly grown grizzly bears acting
as if about to spring upon me. I stopped and stood quite still, but
I believe that my hair was rising; I know that my flesh felt to be
shrinking. I was not kept in suspense. Lone Walker spoke to his pets,
and they immediately lay down, noses between their paws, and I passed
on to the place pointed out to me, the first couch at the chief’s
left hand. It was some time before I became accustomed to the bears,
but we finally came to a sort of understanding with one another. They
ceased growling at me as I passed in and out of the lodge, but would
never allow me to touch them, bristling up and preparing to fight if I
attempted to do so. In the following spring they disappeared one night
and were never seen again.’
“Think how the youth, Rising Wolf, must have felt as he journeyed
southward over the vast plains, and under the shadow of the giant
mountains which lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for he
knew that he was the first of his race to behold them.” We were born a
little too late!
“Monroe often referred to that first trip with the Piegans as the
happiest time of his life.”
In the moon of falling leaves they came to Pile of Rocks River, and
after three months went on to winter on Yellow River. Next summer
they wandered down the Musselshell, crossed the Big River and thence
westward by way of the Little Rockies and the Bear Paw Mountains to the
Marias. Even paradise has its geography.
“Rifle and pistol were now useless as the last rounds of powder and
ball had been fired. But what mattered that? Had they not their bows
and great sheaves of arrows? In the spring they had planted on the
banks of the Judith a large patch of their own tobacco which they would
harvest in due time.
“One by one young Rising Wolf’s garments were worn out and cast aside.
The women of the lodge tanned deerskins and bighorn (sheep) and from
them Lone Walker himself cut and sewed shirts and leggings, which he
wore in their place. It was not permitted for women to make men’s
clothing. So ere long he was dressed in full Indian costume, even
to the belt and breech-clout, and his hair grew so that it fell in
rippling waves down over his shoulders.” A warrior never cut his hair,
so white men living with Indians followed their fashion, else they were
not admitted to rank as warriors. “He began to think of braiding it.
Ap-ah’-ki, the shy young daughter of the chief, made his footwear--thin
parfleche (arrow-proof)--soled moccasins (skin-shoes) for summer,
beautifully embroidered with colored porcupine quills; thick, soft warm
ones of buffalo robe for winter.
“‘I could not help but notice her,’ he said, ‘on the first night
I stayed in her father’s lodge.... I learned the language easily,
quickly, yet I never spoke to her nor she to me, for, as you know, the
Blackfeet think it unseemly for youths and maidens to do so.
“‘One evening a man came into the lodge and began to praise a certain
youth with whom I had often hunted; spoke of his bravery, his kindness,
his wealth, and ended by saying that the young fellow presented to Lone
Walker thirty horses, and wished, with Ap-ah’-ki, to set up a lodge of
his own. I glanced at the girl and caught her looking at me; such a
look! expressing at once fear, despair and something else which I dared
not believe I interpreted aright. The chief spoke: “Tell your friend,”
he said, “that all you have spoken of him is true; I know that he is a
real man, a good, kind, brave, generous young man, yet for all that I
can not give him my daughter.”
“‘Again I looked at Ap-ah’-ki and she at me. Now she was smiling and
there was happiness in her eyes. But if she smiled I could not. I had
heard him refuse thirty head of horses. What hope had I then, who did
not even own the horse I rode? I, who received for my services only
twenty pounds a year, from which must be deducted the various articles
I bought. Surely the girl was not for me. I suffered.
“‘It was a little later, perhaps a couple of weeks, that I met her in
the trail, bringing home a bundle of fire-wood. We stopped and looked
at each other in silence for a moment, and then I spoke her name. Crash
went the fuel on the ground, and we embraced and kissed regardless of
those who might be looking.
“‘So, forgetting the bundle of wood, we went hand in hand and stood
before Lone Walker, where he sat smoking his long pipe, out on the
shady side of the lodge.
“‘The chief smiled. “Why, think you, did I refuse the thirty horses?”
he asked, and before I could answer: “Because I wanted you for my
son-in-law, wanted a white man because he is more cunning, much wiser
than the Indian, and I need a counselor. We have not been blind,
neither I nor my women. There is nothing more to say except this: be
good to her.”
“‘That very day they set up a small lodge for us, and stored it with
robes and parfleches of dried meat and berries, gave us one of their
two brass kettles, tanned skins, pack saddles, ropes, all that a lodge
should contain. And, not least, Lone Walker told me to choose thirty
horses from his large herd. In the evening we took possession of our
house and were happy.’
“Monroe remained in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company a number of
years, raising a large family of boys and girls, most of whom are alive
to-day. The oldest, John, is about seventy-five years of age, but still
young enough to go to the Rockies near his home every autumn, and
kill a few bighorn and elk, and trap a few beavers. The old man never
revisited his home; never saw his parents after they parted with him
at the Montreal docks. He intended to return to them for a brief visit
some time, but kept deferring it, and then came letters two years old
to say that they were both dead. Came also a letter from an attorney,
saying that they had bequeathed him a considerable property, that he
must go to Montreal and sign certain papers in order to take possession
of it. At the time the factor of Mountain Fort was going to England
on leave; to him, in his simple trustfulness Monroe gave a power of
attorney in the matter. The factor never returned, and by virtue of
the papers he had signed the frontiersman lost his inheritance. But
that was a matter of little moment to him then. Had he not a lodge
and family, good horses and a vast domain actually teeming with game
wherein to wander? What more could one possibly want?
“Leaving the Hudson’s Bay Company, Monroe sometimes worked for the
American Fur Company, but mostly as a free trapper, wandered from the
Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone and from the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg.
The headwaters of the South Saskatchewan were one of his favorite
hunting grounds. Thither in the early fifties he guided the noted
Jesuit Father, De Smet, and at the foot of the beautiful lakes just
south of Chief Mountain they erected a huge wooden cross and named the
two bodies of water Saint Mary’s Lakes.” Here the Canada and United
States boundary climbs the Rocky Mountains.
“One winter after his sons John and François had married they were
camping there for the season, the three lodges of the family, when one
night a large war party of Assiniboins attacked them. The daughters
Lizzie, Amelia and Mary had been taught to shoot, and together they
made a brave resistance, driving the Indians away just before daylight,
with the loss of five of their number, Lizzie killing one of them as he
was about to let down the bars of the horse corral.
“Besides other furs, beaver, fisher, marten and wolverine, they killed
more than three hundred wolves that winter by a device so unique, yet
simple, that it is well worth recording. By the banks of the outlet of
the lakes they built a long pen twelve by sixteen feet at the base, and
sloping sharply inward and upward to a height of seven feet. The top
of the pyramid was an opening about two feet six inches wide by eight
feet in length. Whole deer, quarters of buffalo, any kind of meat handy
was thrown into the pen, and the wolves, scenting the flesh and blood,
seeing it plainly through the four to six inch spaces between the logs
would eventually climb to the top and jump down through the opening.
But they could not jump out, and there morning would find them uneasily
pacing around and around in utter bewilderment.
“You will remember that the old man was a Catholic, yet I know that
he had much faith in the Blackfoot religion, and believed in the
efficiency of the medicine-man’s prayers and mysteries. He used often
to speak of the terrible power possessed by a man named Old Sun. ‘There
was one,’ he would say, ‘who surely talked with the gods, and was
given some of their mysterious power. Sometimes of a dark night he
would invite a few of us to his lodge, when all was calm and still.
After all were seated his wives would bank the fire with ashes so that
it was as dark within as without, and he would begin to pray. First to
the Sun-chief, then to the wind maker, the thunder and the lightning.
As he prayed, entreating them to come and do his will, first the lodge
ears would begin to quiver with the first breath of a coming breeze,
which gradually grew stronger and stronger till the lodge bent to the
blasts, and the lodge poles strained and creaked. Then thunder began to
boom, faint and far away, and lightning dimly to blaze, and they came
nearer and nearer until they seemed to be just overhead; the crashes
deafened us, the flashes blinded us, and all were terror-stricken. Then
this wonderful man would pray them to go, and the wind would die down,
and the thunder and lightning go on rumbling and flashing into the far
distance until we heard and saw them no more.’”
LIII
A. D. 1819
SIMON BOLIVAR
Once at the stilted court of Spain young Ferdinand, Prince of the
Asturias, had the condescension to play at tennis with a mere colonial;
and the bounder won.
Long afterward, when Don Ferdinand was king, the colonial challenged
him to another ball game, one played with cannon-balls. This time the
stake was the Spanish American empire, but Ferdinand played Bolivar,
and again the bounder won.
“Now tell me,” a lady said once, “what animal reminds one most of the
Señor Bolivar?”
And Bolivar thought he heard some one say “monkey,” whereat he flew
into an awful passion, until the offender claimed that the word was
“sparrow.” He stood five feet six inches, with a bird-like quickness,
and a puckered face with an odd tang of monkey. Rich, lavish, gaudy,
talking mock heroics, vain as a peacock, always on the strut unless he
was on the run, there is no more pathetically funny figure in history
than tragical Bolivar; who heard liberty, as he thought, knocking at
the door of South America, and opened--to let in chaos.
“I don’t know,” drawled a Spaniard of that time, “to what class of
beasts these South Americans belong.”
They were dogs, these Spanish colonials, treated as dogs, behaving
as dogs. When they wanted a university Spain said they were only
provided by Providence to labor in the mines. If they had opinions
the Inquisition cured them of their errors. They were not allowed to
hold any office or learn the arts of war and government. Spain sent
officials to ease them of their surplus cash, and keep them out of
mischief. Thanks to Spain they were no more fit for public affairs than
a lot of Bengali baboos.
They were loyal as beaten dogs until Napoleon stole the Spanish crown
for brother Joseph, and French armies promenaded all over Spain closely
pursued by the British. There was no Spain left to love, but the
colonials were not Napoleon’s dogs. Napoleon’s envoys to Venezuela
were nearly torn to pieces before they escaped to sea, where a little
British frigate came and gobbled them up. The sea belonged to the
British, and so the colonials sent ambassadors, Bolivar and another
gentleman, to King George. Please would he help them to gain their
liberty? George had just chased Napoleon out of Spain, and said he
would do his best with his allies, the Spaniards.
In London Bolivar unearthed a countryman who loved liberty and had
fought for Napoleon, a real professional soldier. General Miranda was
able and willing to lead the armies of freedom, until he actually saw
the Venezuelan troops. Then he shied hard. He really must draw the line
somewhere. Yes, he would take command of the rabble on one condition,
that he got rid of Bolivar. To get away from Bolivar he would go
anywhere and do anything. So he led his rabble and found them stout
fighters, and drove the Spaniards out of the central provinces.
The politicians were sitting down to draft the first of many
comic-opera constitutions when an awful sound, louder than any thunder,
swept out of the eastern Andes, the earth rolled like a sea in a storm,
and the five cities of the new republic crashed down in heaps of ruin.
The barracks buried the garrisons, the marching troops were totally
destroyed, the politicians were killed, and in all one hundred twenty
thousand people perished. The only thing left standing in one church
was a pillar bearing the arms of Spain; the only districts not wrecked
were those still loyal to the Spanish government. The clergy pointed
the moral, the ruined people repented their rebellion, and the Spanish
forces took heart and closed in from every side upon the lost republic.
Simon Bolivar generously surrendered General Miranda in chains to the
victorious Spaniards.
So far one sees only, as poor Miranda did, that this man was a
sickening cad. But he was something more. He stuck to the cause for
which he had given his life, joined the rebels in what is now Colombia,
was given a small garrison command and ordered to stay in his fort.
In defiance of orders, he swept the Spaniards out of the Magdalena
Valley, raised a large force, liberated the country, then marched into
Venezuela, defeated the Spanish forces in a score of brilliant actions,
and was proclaimed liberator with absolute power in both Colombia and
Venezuela. One begins to marvel at this heroic leader until the cad
looms out. “Spaniards and Canary islanders!” he wrote, “reckon on death
even if you are neutral, unless you will work actively for the liberty
of America. Americans! count on life even if you are culpable.”
Bolivar’s pet hobbies were three in number: Resigning his job as
liberator; writing proclamations; committing massacres. “I order you,”
he wrote to the governor of La Guayra, “to shoot all the prisoners in
those dungeons, and _in the hospital_, without any exception whatever.”
So the prisoners of war were set to work building a funeral pyre.
When this was ready eight hundred of them were brought up in batches,
butchered with axes, bayonets and knives, and their bodies thrown on
the flames. Meanwhile Bolivar, in his office, refreshed himself by
writing a proclamation to denounce the atrocities of the Spaniards.
Southward of the Orinoco River there are vast level prairies called
Llanos, a cattle country, handled by wild horsemen known as the
Llaneros. In Bolivar’s time their leader called himself Boves, and
he had as second in command Morales. Boves said that Morales was
“atrocious.” Morales said that “Boves was a man of merit, but too
blood-thirsty.” The Spaniards called their command “The Infernal
Division.” At first they fought for the Revolution, afterward for
Spain, but they were really quite impartial and spared neither age nor
sex. This was the “Spanish” army which swept away the second Venezuelan
republic, slaughtering the whole population save some few poor starving
camps of fugitives. Then Boves reported to the Spanish general, “I
have recovered the arms, ammunition, and the honor of the Spanish flag,
which your excellency lost at Carabobo.”
From this time onward the situation was rather like a dog fight, with
the republican dog somewhere underneath in the middle. At times Bolivar
ran like a rabbit, at times he was granted a triumph, but whenever he
had time to come up and breathe he fired off volleys of proclamations.
In sixteen years a painstaking Colombian counted six hundred ninety-six
battles, which makes an average of one every ninth day, not to mention
massacres; but for all his puny body and feeble health Bolivar was
always to be found in the very thick of the scrimmage.
Europe had entered on the peace of Waterloo, but the ghouls who
stripped the dead after Napoleon’s battles had uniforms to sell which
went to clothe the fantastic mobs, republican and royalist, who
drenched all Spanish America with blood. There were soldiers, too,
whose trade of war was at an end in Europe, who gladly listened to
Bolivar’s agents, who offered gorgeous uniforms and promised splendid
wages--never paid--and who came to join in the war for “liberty.”
Three hundred Germans and nearly six thousand British veterans joined
Bolivar’s colors to fight for the freedom of America, and nearly all
of them perished in battle or by disease. Bolivar was never without
British officers, preferred British troops to all others, and in his
later years really earned the loyal love they gave him, while they
taught the liberator how to behave like a white man.
It was in 1819 that Bolivar led a force of two thousand five hundred
men across a flooded prairie. For a week they were up to their
knees, at times to their necks in water under a tropic deluge of
rain, swimming a dozen rivers beset by alligators. The climate and
starvation bore very heavily upon the British troops. Beyond the flood
they climbed the eastern Andes and crossed the Paramo at a height of
thirteen thousand feet, swept by an icy wind in blinding fog--hard
going for Venezuelans.
An Irishman, Colonel Rook, commanded the British contingent. “All,”
he reported, “was quite well with his corps, which had had quite a
pleasant march” through the awful gorges and over the freezing Paramo.
A Venezuelan officer remarked here that one-fourth of the men had
perished.
“It was true,” said Rook, “but it really was a very good thing, for
the men who had dropped out were all the wastrels and weaklings of the
force.”
Great was the astonishment of the royalists when Bolivar dropped on
them out of the clouds, and in the battle of Boyacá they were put
to rout. Next day Colonel Rook had his arm cut off by the surgeons,
chaffing them about the beautiful limb he was losing. He died of the
operation, but the British legion went on from victory to victory,
melting away like snow until at the end negroes and Indians filled
its illustrious companies. Colombia, Venezuela and Equador, Peru and
Bolivia were freed from the Spanish yoke and, in the main, released by
Bolivar’s tireless, unfailing and undaunted courage. But they could
not stand his braggart proclamations, would not have him or any man
for master, began a series of squabbles and revolutions that have
lasted ever since, and proved themselves unfit for the freedom Bolivar
gave. He knew at the end that he had given his life for a myth. On
the eighth December, 1830, he dictated his final proclamation and on
the tenth received the last rites of the church, being still his old
braggart self. “Colombians! my last wishes are for the welfare of the
fatherland. If my death contributes to the cessation of party strife,
and to the consolidation of the Union, I shall descend in peace to the
grave.” On the seventeenth his troubled spirit passed.
LIV
A. D. 1812
THE ALMIRANTE COCHRANE
When Lieutenant Lord Thomas Cochrane commanded the brig of war
_Speedy_, he used to carry about a whole broadside of her cannon-balls
in his pocket. He had fifty-four men when he laid his toy boat
alongside a Spanish frigate with thirty-two heavy guns and three
hundred nineteen men, but the Spaniard could not fire down into his
decks, whereas he blasted her with his treble-shotted pop-guns. Leaving
only the doctor on board he boarded that Spaniard, got more than he
bargained for, and would have been wiped out, but that a detachment of
his sailors dressed to resemble black demons, charged down from the
forecastle head. The Spaniards were so shocked that they surrendered.
For thirteen months the _Speedy_ romped about, capturing in all fifty
ships, one hundred and twenty-two guns, five hundred prisoners. Then
she gave chase to three French battle-ships by mistake, and met with a
dreadful end.
In 1809, Cochrane, being a bit of a chemist, and a first-rate mechanic,
was allowed to make fireworks hulks loaded with explosives--with which
he attacked a French fleet in the anchorage at Aix. The fleet got into
a panic and destroyed itself.
And all his battles read like fairy tales, for this long-legged,
red-haired Scot, rivaled Lord Nelson himself in genius and daring.
At war he was the hero and idol of the fleet, but in peace a demon,
restless, fractious, fiendish in humor, deadly in rage, playing
schoolboy jokes on the admiralty and the parliament. He could not be
happy without making swarms of powerful enemies, and those enemies
waited their chance.
In February, 1814, a French officer landed at Dover with tidings that
the Emperor Napoleon had been slain by Cossacks. The messenger’s
progress became a triumphal procession, and amid public rejoicings he
entered London to deliver his papers at the admiralty. Bells pealed,
cannon thundered, the stock exchange went mad with the rise of prices,
while the messenger--a Mr. Berenger--sneaked to the lodgings of an
acquaintance, Lord Cochrane, and borrowed civilian clothes.
His news was false, his despatch a forgery, he had been hired by
Cochrane’s uncle, a stock-exchange speculator, to contrive the whole
blackguardly hoax. Cochrane knew nothing of the plot, but for the mere
lending of that suit of clothes, he was sentenced to the pillory, a
year’s imprisonment, and a fine of a thousand pounds. He was struck
from the rolls of the navy, expelled from the house of commons, his
banner as a Knight of the Bath torn down and thrown from the doors
of Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster. In the end he was driven to
disgraceful exile and hopeless ruin.
Four years later Cochrane, commanding the Chilian navy, sailed from
Valparaiso to fight the Spanish fleet. Running away from his mother, a
son of his--Tom Cochrane, junior--aged five, contrived to sail with the
admiral, and in his first engagement, was spattered with the blood and
brains of a marine.
“I’m not hurt, papa,” said the imp, “the shot didn’t touch me. Jack
says that the ball is not made that will hurt mama’s boy.” Jack proved
to be right, but it was in that engagement that Cochrane earned his
Spanish title, “The Devil.” Three times he attempted to take Callao
from the Spaniards, then in disgusted failure dispersed his useless
squadron, and went off with his flag ship to Valdivia. For lack of
officers, he kept the deck himself until he dropped. When he went below
for a nap, the lieutenant left a middy in command, but the middy went
to sleep and the ship was cast away.
Cochrane got her afloat; then, with all his gunpowder wet, went off
with his sinking wreck to attack Valdivia. The place was a Spanish
stronghold with fifteen forts and one hundred and fifteen guns.
Cochrane, preferring to depend on cold steel, left the muskets behind,
wrecked his boats in the surf, let his men swim, led them straight at
the Spaniards, stormed the batteries, and seized the city. So he found
some nice new ships, and an arsenal to equip them, for his next attack
on Callao.
He had a fancy for the frigate, _Esmeralda_, which lay in
Callao--thought she would suit him for a cruiser. She happened to be
protected by a Spanish fleet, and batteries mounting three hundred
guns, but Cochrane did not mind. El Diablo first eased the minds of
the Spaniards by sending away two out of his three small vessels,
but kept the bulk of their men, and all their boats, a detail not
observed by the weary enemy. His boarding party, two hundred and forty
strong, stole into the anchorage at midnight, and sorely surprised the
_Esmeralda_. Cochrane, first on board, was felled with the butt end of
a musket, and thrown back into his boat grievously hurt, in addition
to which he had a bullet through his thigh before he took possession
of the frigate. The fleet and batteries had opened fire, but El Diablo
noticed that two neutral ships protected themselves with a display of
lanterns arranged as a signal, “Please don’t hit me.” “That’s good
enough for me,” said Cochrane and copied those lights which protected
the neutrals. When the bewildered Spaniards saw his lanterns also, they
promptly attacked the neutrals. So Cochrane stole away with his prize.
Although the great sailor delivered Chili and Peru from the Spaniards,
the patriots ungratefully despoiled him of all his pay and rewards.
Cochrane has been described as “a destroying angel with a limited
income and a turn for politics.” Anyway he was misunderstood, and
left Chili disgusted, to attend to the liberation of Brazil from the
Portuguese. But if the Chilians were thieves, the Brazilians proved to
be both thieves and cowards. Reporting to the Brazilian government that
all their cartridges, fuses, guns, powder, spars and sails, were alike
rotten, and all their men an encumbrance, he dismantled a squadron to
find equipment for a single ship, the _Pedro Primeiro_. This he manned
with British and Yankee adventurers. He had two other small but fairly
effective ships when he commenced to threaten Bahia. There lay thirteen
Portuguese war-ships, mounting four hundred and eighteen guns, seventy
merchant ships, and a garrison of several thousand men. El Diablo’s
blockade reduced the whole to starvation, the threat of his fireworks
sent them into convulsions, and their leaders resolved on flight to
Portugal. So the troops were embarked, the rich people took ship with
their treasure, and the squadron escorted them to sea, where Cochrane
grinned in the offing. For fifteen days he hung in the rear of that
fleet, cutting off ships as they straggled. He had not a man to spare
for charge of his prizes, but when he caught a ship he staved her water
casks, disabled her rigging so that she could only run before the wind
back to Bahia, and threw every weapon overboard. He captured seventy
odd ships, half the troops, all the treasure, fought and out-maneuvered
the war fleet so that he could not be caught, and only let thirteen
wretched vessels escape to Lisbon. Such a deed of war has never been
matched in the world’s annals, and Cochrane followed it by forcing the
whole of Northern Brazil to an abject surrender.
Like the patriots of Chili and Peru, the Brazilians gratefully rewarded
their liberator by cheating him out of his pay; so next he turned
to deliver Greece from the Turks. Very soon he found that even the
Brazilians were perfect gentlemen compared with the Greek patriots, and
the heart-sick man went home.
England was sorry for the way she had treated her hero, gave back
his naval rank and made him admiral with command-in-chief of a
British fleet at sea, restored his banner as a Knight of the Bath in
Henry VII’s chapel, granted a pension, and at the end, found him a
resting-place in the Abbey. On his father’s death, he succeeded to
the earldom of Dundonald, and down to 1860, when the old man went
to his rest, his life was devoted to untiring service. He was among
the first inventors to apply coal gas to light English streets and
homes; he designed the boilers long in use by the English navy; made
a bitumen concrete for paving; and offered plans for the reduction of
Sebastopol which would have averted all the horrors of the siege. Yet
even to his eightieth year he was apt to shock and terrify all official
persons, and when he was buried in the nave of the Abbey, Lord Brougham
pronounced his strange obituary. “What,” he exclaimed at the grave
side, “no cabinet minister, no officer of state to grace this great
man’s funeral!” Perhaps they were still scared of the poor old hero.
LV
A.D. 1823
THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS
Far back in the long ago time New Zealand was a crowded happy land. Big
Maori fortress villages crowned the hilltops, broad farms covered the
hillsides; the chiefs kept a good table, cooking was excellent, and
especially when prisoners were in season, the people feasted between
sleeps, or, should provisions fail, sacked the next parish for a supply
of meat. So many parishes were sacked and eaten, that in the course of
time the chiefs led their tribes to quite a distance before they could
find a nice fat edible village, but still the individual citizen felt
crowded after meals, and all was well.
Then came the Pakehas, the white men, trading, with muskets for sale,
and the tribe that failed to get a trader to deal with was very soon
wiped out. A musket cost a ton of flax, and to pile up enough to buy
one a whole tribe must leave its hill fortress to camp in unwholesome
flax swamps. The people worked themselves thin to buy guns, powder
and iron tools for farming, but they cherished their Pakeha as a
priceless treasure in special charge of the chief, and if a white man
was eaten, it was clear proof that he was entirely useless alive, or a
quite detestable character. The good Pakehas became Maori warriors, a
little particular as to their meat being really pig, but otherwise well
mannered and popular.
Now of these Pakeha Maoris, one has left a book. He omitted his name
from the book of _Old New Zealand_, and never mentioned dates, but
tradition says he was Mr. F. C. Maning, and that he lived as a Maori
and trader for forty years, from 1823 to 1863 when the work was
published.
In the days when Mr. Maning reached the North Island a trader was
valued at twenty times his weight in muskets, equivalent say, to the
sum total of the British National Debt. Runaway sailors however, were
quite cheap. “Two men of this description were hospitably entertained
one night by a chief, a very particular friend of mine, who, to pay
himself for his trouble and outlay, ate one of them next morning.”
Maning came ashore on the back of a warrior by the name of Melons, who
capsized in an ebb tide running like a sluice, at which the white man,
displeased, held the native’s head under water by way of punishment.
When they got ashore Melons wanted to get even, so challenged the
Pakeha to a wrestling match. Both were in the pink of condition, the
Maori, twenty-five years of age, and a heavy-weight, the other a boy
full of animal spirits and tough as leather. After the battle Melons
sat up rather dazed, offered his hand, and venting his entire stock of
English, said “How do you do?”
But then came a powerful chief, by name Relation-eater. “Pretty work
this,” he began, “_good_ work. I won’t stand this not at all! not at
all! not at all!” (The last sentence took three jumps, a step and a
turn round, to keep correct time.) “Who killed the Pakeha? It was
Melons. You are a nice man, killing _my_ Pakeha ... we shall be called
the ‘Pakeha killkillers’; I shall be sick with shame; the Pakeha will
run away; what if you had killed him dead, or broken his bones”....
(Here poor Melones burst out crying like an infant). “Where is the hat?
Where the shoes? The Pakeha is robbed! he is murdered!” Here a wild
howl from Melons.
The local trader took Mr. Maning to live with him, but it was
known to the tribes that the newcomer really and truly belonged to
Relation-eater. Not long had he been settled when there occurred a
meeting between his tribe and another, a game of bluff, when the
warriors of both sides danced the splendid Haka, most blood-curdling,
hair-lifting of all ceremonials. Afterward old Relation-eater singled
out the horrible savage who had begun the war-dance, and these two
tender-hearted individuals for a full half-hour, seated on the ground
hanging on each other’s necks, gave vent to a chorus of skilfully
modulated howling. “So there was peace,” and during the ceremonies
Maning came upon a circle of what seemed to be Maori chiefs, until
drawing near he found that their nodding heads had nobody underneath.
Raw heads had been stuck on slender rods, with cross sticks to carry
the robes, “Looking at the ’eds, sir?” asked an English sailor. “’Eds
was _werry_ scarce--they had to tattoo a slave a bit ago, and the
villain ran away, tattooin’ and all!”
“What!”
“Bolted before he was fit to kill,” said the sailor, mournful to think
how dishonest people could be.
Once the head chief, having need to punish a rebellious vassal, sent
Relation-eater, who plundered and burned the offending village. The
vassal decamped with his tribe.
“Well, about three months after this, about daylight I was aroused by
a great uproar.... Out I ran at once and perceived that M--’s premises
were being sacked by the rebellious vassal who ... was taking this
means of revenging himself for the rough handling he had received from
our chief. Men were rushing in mad haste through the smashed windows
and doors, loaded with everything they could lay hands upon.... A large
canoe was floating near to the house, and was being rapidly filled with
plunder. I saw a fat old Maori woman who was washerwoman, being dragged
along the ground by a huge fellow who was trying to tear from her
grasp one of my shirts, to which she clung with perfect desperation.
I perceived at a glance that the faithful old creature would probably
save a sleeve.
“An old man-of-war’s man defending _his_ washing, called out, ‘Hit out,
sir! ... our mob will be here in five minutes!’
“The odds were terrible, but ... I at once floored a native who was
rushing by me.... I then perceived that he was one of our own people
... so to balance things I knocked down another! and then felt myself
seized round the waist from behind.
“The old sailor was down now but fighting three men at once, while his
striped shirt and canvas trousers still hung proudly on the fence.
“Then came our mob to the rescue and the assailants fled.
“Some time after this a little incident worth noting happened at my
friend M--’s place. Our chief had for some time back a sort of dispute
with another magnate.... The question was at last brought to a fair
hearing at my friend’s house. The arguments on both sides were very
forcible; so much so that in the course of the arbitration our chief
and thirty of his principal witnesses were shot dead in a heap before
my friend’s door, and sixty others badly wounded, and my friend’s house
and store blown up and burnt to ashes.
“My friend was, however, consoled by hundreds of friends who came in
large parties to condole with him, and who, as was quite correct in
such cases, shot and ate all his stock, sheep, pigs, ducks, geese,
fowls, etc., all in high compliment to himself; he felt proud.... He
did not, however, survive these honors long.”
Mr. Maning took this poor gentleman’s place as trader, and earnestly
studied native etiquette, on which his comments are always deliciously
funny. Two young Australians were his guests when there arrived one
day a Maori desperado who wanted blankets; and “to explain his views
more clearly knocked both my friends down, threatened to kill them both
with his tomahawk, then rushed into the bedroom, dragged out all the
bedclothes, and burnt them on the kitchen fire.”
A few weeks later, Mr. Maning being alone, and reading a year-old
Sydney paper, the desperado called. “‘Friend,’ said I; ‘my advice to
you is to be off.’
“He made no answer but a scowl of defiance. ‘I am thinking, friend,
that this is my house,’ said I, and springing upon him I placed my
foot to his shoulder, and gave him a shove which would have sent most
people heels over head.... But quick as lightning ... he bounded from
the ground, flung his mat away over his head, and struck a furious blow
at my head with his tomahawk. I caught the tomahawk in full descent;
the edge grazed my hand; but my arm, stiffened like a bar of iron,
arrested the blow. He made one furious, but ineffectual attempt to
wrest the tomahawk from my grasp; and then we seized one another round
the middle, and struggled like maniacs in the endeavor to dash each
other against the boarded floor; I holding on for dear life to the
tomahawk ... fastened to his wrist by a strong thong of leather.... At
last he got a lock round my leg; and had it not been for the table on
which we both fell, and which in smashing to pieces, broke our fall,
I might have been disabled.... We now rolled over and over on the
floor like two mad bulldogs; he trying to bite, and I trying to stun
him by dashing his bullet head against the floor. Up again! another
furious struggle in course of which both our heads and half our bodies
were dashed through the two glass windows, and every single article
of furniture was reduced to atoms. Down again, rolling like made, and
dancing about among the rubbish--wreck of the house. Such a battle it
was that I can hardly describe it.
“By this time we were both covered with blood from various wounds....
My friend was trying to kill me, and I was only trying to disarm and
tie him up ... as there were no witnesses. If I killed him, I might
have serious difficulties with his tribe.
“Up again; another terrific tussle for the tomahawk; down again with a
crash; and so this life and death battle went on ... for a full hour
... we had another desperate wrestling match. I lifted my friend high
in my arms, and dashed him, panting, furious, foaming at the mouth--but
beaten--against the ground. His God has deserted him.
“He spoke for the first time, ‘Enough! I am beaten; let me rise.’
“I, incautiously, let go his left arm. Quick as lightning he snatched
at a large carving fork ... which was lying among the debris; his
fingers touched the handle and it rolled away out of his reach; my life
was saved. He then struck me with all his remaining fire on the side
of the head, causing the blood to flow out of my mouth. One more short
struggle and he was conquered.
“But now I had at last got angry ... I must kill my man, or sooner
or later he would kill me.... I told him to get up and die standing.
I clutched the tomahawk for the _coup de grace_. At this instant a
thundering sound of feet ... a whole tribe coming ... my friends!...
He was dragged by the heels, stamped on, kicked, and thrown half dead,
into his canoe.
“All the time we had been fighting, a little slave imp of a boy
belonging to my antagonist had been loading the canoe with my goods and
chattels.... These were now brought back.”
In the sequel this desperado committed two more murders “and also
killed in fair fight, with his own hand the first man in a native
battle ... which I witnessed.... At last having attempted to murder
another native, he was shot through the heart ... so there died.”
Mr. Maning was never again molested, and making full allowance for
their foibles, speaks with a very tender love for that race of
warriors.
LVI
A.D. 1840
A TALE OF VENGEANCE
In the days of the grandfathers, say ninety years ago, the Americans
had spread their settlements to the Mississippi, and that river was
their frontier. The great plains and deserts beyond, all speckled now
with farms and glittering with cities, belonged to the red Indian
tribes, who hunted the buffalo, farmed their tobacco, played their
games, worshiped the Almighty Spirit, and stole one another’s horses,
without paying any heed to the white men. For the whites were only a
little tribe among them, a wandering tribe of trappers and traders who
came from the Rising Sun Land in search of beaver skins. The beaver
skins were wanted for top hats in the Land of the Rising Sun.
These white men had strange and potent magic, being masters of fire,
and brought from their own land the fire-water and the firearms which
made them welcome among the tribes. Sometimes a white man entered the
tribes and became an Indian, winning his rank as warrior, marrying,
setting up his lodge, and even rising to the grade of chief. Of such
was Jim Beckwourth, part white, part negro, a great warrior, captain
of the Dog Soldier regiment in the Crow nation. His lodge was full of
robes; his wives, by whom he allied himself to the leading families,
were always well fed, well dressed, and well behaved. When he came home
with his Dog Soldiers he always returned in triumph, with bands of
stolen horses, scalps in plenty.
Long afterward, when he was an old man, Jim told his adventures to a
writer, who made them into a book, and in this volume he tells the
story of Pine Leaf, an Indian girl. She was little more than a child,
when, in an attack of the Cheyennes upon the village, her twin brother
was killed. Then, in a passion of rage and grief, she cut off one of
her fingers as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, and took oath that she
would avenge her brother’s death, never giving herself in marriage
until she had taken a hundred trophies in battle. The warriors laughed
when she asked leave to join them on the war-path, but Jim let her come
with the Dog Soldiers.
Rapidly she learned the trade of war, able as most of the men with bow,
spear and gun, running like an antelope, riding gloriously; and yet
withal a woman, modest and gentle except in battle, famed for lithe
grace and unusual beauty.
“Please marry me,” said Jim, as she rode beside him.
“Yes, when the pine leaves turn yellow.”
Jim thought this over, and complained that pine leaves do not turn
yellow.
“Please!” he said.
“Yes,” answered Pine Leaf, “when you see a red-headed Indian.”
Jim, who had wives enough already as became his position, sulked for
this heroine.
She would not marry him, and yet once when a powerful Blackfoot had
nigh felled Jim with his battle-ax, Pine Leaf speared the man and saved
her chief. In that engagement she killed four warriors, fighting at
Jim’s side. A bullet cut through his crown of eagle plumes. “These
Blackfeet shoot close,” said Pine Leaf, “but never fear; the Great
Spirit will not let them harm us.”
In the next fight, a Blackfoot’s lance pierced Jim’s legging, and
then transfixed his horse, pinning him to the animal in its death
agony. Pine Leaf hauled out the lance and released him. “I sprang
upon the horse,” says Jim, “of a young warrior who was wounded. The
heroine then joined me, and we dashed into the conflict. Her horse
was immediately after killed, and I discovered her in a hand-to-hand
encounter with a dismounted Blackfoot, her lance in one hand and her
battle-ax in the other. Three or four springs of my steed brought me
upon her antagonist, and striking him with the breast of my horse when
at full speed, I knocked him to the earth senseless, and before he
could recover, she pinned him to the earth and scalped him. When I had
overturned the warrior, Pine Leaf called to me, ‘Ride on, I have him
safe now.’”
She was soon at his side chasing the flying enemy, who left ninety-one
killed in the field.
In the next raid, Pine Leaf took two prisoners, and offered Jim one of
them to wife. But Jim had wives enough of the usual kind, whereas now
this girl’s presence at his side in battle gave him increased strength
and courage, while daily his love for her flamed higher.
At times the girl was sulky because she was denied the rank of warrior,
shut out from the war-path secret, the hidden matters known only to
fighting men. This secret was that the warriors shared all knowledge in
common as to the frailties of women who erred, but Pine Leaf was barred
out.
There is no space here for a tithe of her battles, while that great
vengeance for her brother piled up the tale of scalps. In one
victorious action, charging at Jim’s side, she was struck by a bullet
which broke her left arm. With the wounded arm nursed in her bosom she
grew desperate, and three warriors fell to her ax before she fainted
from loss of blood.
Before she was well recovered from this wound, she was afield again,
despite Jim’s pleading and in defiance of his orders, and in an
invasion of the Cheyenne country, was shot through the body.
“Well,” she said afterward, as she lay at the point of death, “I’m
sorry that I did not listen to my chief, but I gained two trophies.”
The very rescue of her had cost the lives of four warriors.
While she lay through many months of pain, tended by Jim’s head wife,
her bosom friend, and by Black Panther, Jim’s little son, the chief was
away fighting the great campaigns, which made him famous through all
the Indian tribes. Medicine Calf was his title now, and his rank, head
chief, for he was one of two sovereigns of equal standing, who reigned
over the two tribes of the Crow nation.
While Pine Leaf sat in the lodge, her heart was crying, but at last
she was able to ride again to war. So came a disastrous expedition,
in which Medicine Calf and Pine Leaf, with fifty Crow warriors and an
American gentleman named Hunter, their guest, were caught in a pit on
a hillside, hemmed round by several hundred Blackfeet. They had to cut
their way through the enemy’s force, and when Hunter fell, the chief
stayed behind to die with him. Half the Crows were slain, and still the
Blackfeet pressed hardly upon them. Medicine Calf was at the rear when
Pine Leaf joined him. “Why do you wait to be killed?” she asked. “If
you wish to die, let us return together. I will die with you.”
They escaped, most of them wounded who survived, and almost dying of
cold and hunger before they came to the distant village of their tribe.
Jim’s next adventure was a horse-stealing raid into Canada, when he was
absent fourteen months, and the Crows mourned Medicine Calf for dead.
On his triumphant return, mounted on a piebald charger the chief had
presented to her, Pine Leaf rode with him once more in his campaigns.
During one of these raids, being afoot, she pursued and caught a young
Blackfoot warrior, then made him her prisoner. He became her slave, her
brother by tribal law, and rose to eminence as her private warrior.
Jim had founded a trading post for the white men, and the United
States paid him four hundred pounds a year for keeping his people from
slaughtering pioneers. So growing rich, he tired of Indian warfare,
and left his tribe for a long journey. As a white man he came to the
house of his own sisters in the city of Saint Louis, but they seemed
strangers now, and his heart began to cry for the wild life. Then news
came that his Crows were slaying white men, and in haste he rode to the
rescue, to find his warriors besieging Fort Cass. He came among them,
their head chief, Medicine Calf, black with fury at their misdeeds,
so that the council sat bewildered, wondering how to sue for his
forgiveness. Into that council came Pine Leaf. “Warriors,” she cried,
“I make sacrifice for my people!” She told them of her brother’s death
and of her great vengeance, now completed in that she had slain a
hundred men to be his servants in the other world. So she laid down
her arms. “I have hurled my last lance; I am a warrior no more. To-day
Medicine Calf has returned. He has returned angry at the follies of his
people, and they fear that he will again leave them. They believe that
he loves me, and that my devotion to him will attach him to the nation.
I, therefore, bestow myself upon him; perhaps he will be contented with
me and will leave us no more. Warriors, farewell!”
So Jim Beckwourth, who was Medicine Calf, head chief of the Crow
nation, was wedded to Pine Leaf, their great heroine.
Alas for Jim’s morals, they did not live happily ever after, for the
scalawag deserted all his wives, titles and honors, to become a mean
trader, selling that fire-water which sapped the manhood of the warrior
tribes, and left them naked in the bitter days to come. Pine Leaf and
her kindred are gone away into the shadows, and over their wide lands
spread green fields, now glittering cities of the great republic.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and
outside quotations.
The pages in the introductory chapter “Adventurers” were not numbered.
Transcriber did so with Roman numbers.
Page 210: “the overload Joy” may be a misprint for “the overloaded Joy”.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
