Of course pity was the first feeling; but, by the time Mrs. Gaunt
revived, her fainting, so soon after Mr. Atkins's proposal, had produced
a sinister effect on the minds of all present; and every face showed it,
except the wary Houseman's.
On her retiring, it broke out first in murmurs, then in plain words.
As for Mr. Atkins, he now showed the moderation of an able man who feels
he has a strong cause.
He merely said, "I think there should be constables about, in case of an
escape being attempted; but I agree with Mr. Houseman that your
worships will be quite justified in taking bail, provided the _corpus
delicti_ should not be found. Gentlemen, you were most of you neighbors
and friends of the deceased, and are, I am sure, lovers of justice; I do
entreat you to aid me in searching that piece of water, by the side of
which the deceased gentleman was heard to cry for help; and, much I
fear, he cried in vain."
The persons thus appealed to entered into the matter with all the ardor
of just men, whose curiosity as well as justice is inflamed.
A set of old, rusty drags was found on the premises; and men went
punting up and down the mere, and dragged it.
Rude hooks were made by the village blacksmith, and fitted to
cart-ropes; another boat was brought to Hernshaw in a wagon; and all
that afternoon the bottom of the mere was raked, and some curious things
fished up. But no dead man.
The next day a score of amateur dragsmen were out; some throwing their
drags from the bridge; some circulating in boats, and even in large
tubs.
And, meantime, Mr. Atkins and his crew went steadily up and down,
dragging every foot of those placid waters.
They worked till dinner-time, and brought up a good copper pot with two
handles, a horse's head, and several decayed trunks of trees, which had
become saturated, and sunk to the bottom.
At about three in the afternoon, two boys, who, for want of a boat, were
dragging from the bridge, found something heavy but elastic at the end
of their drag: they pulled up eagerly, and a thing like a huge turnip,
half gnawed, came up, with a great bob, and blasted their sight.
They let go, drags and all, and stood shrieking, and shrieking.
Those who were nearest them called out, and asked what was the matter;
but the boys did not reply, and their faces showed so white, that a
woman, who saw them, hailed Mr. Atkins, and said she was sure those boys
had seen something out of the common.
Mr. Atkins came up, and found the boys blubbering. He encouraged them,
and they told him a fearful thing had come up; it was like a man's head
and shoulders all scooped out and gnawed by the fishes, and had torn the
drags out of their hands.
Mr. Atkins made them tell him the exact place; and he was soon upon it
with his boat.
The water here was very deep; and though the boys kept pointing to the
very spot, the drags found nothing for some time.
But at last they showed, by their resistance, that they had clawed hold
of something.
"Draw slowly," said Mr. Atkins: "and, _if it is_, be men, and hold
fast."
The men drew slowly, slowly, and presently there rose to the surface a
Thing to strike terror and loathing into the stoutest heart.
The mutilated remains of a human face and body.
The greedy pike had cleared, not the features only, but the entire flesh
off the face; but had left the hair, and the tight skin of the forehead,
though their teeth had raked this last. The remnants they had left made
what they had mutilated doubly horrible; since now it was not a skull,
not a skeleton; but a face and a man gnawed down to the bones and hair
and feet. These last were in stout shoes, that resisted even those
voracious teeth; and a leathern stock had offered some little protection
to the throat.
The men groaned, and hid their faces with one hand, and pulled softly to
the shore with the other; and then, with half-averted faces, they drew
the ghastly remains and fluttering rags gently and reverently to land.
Mr. Atkins yielded to nature, and was violently sick at the sight he had
searched for so eagerly.
As soon as he recovered his powers, he bade the constables guard the
body (it was a body, in law), and see that no one laid so much as a
finger on it until some magistrate had taken a deposition. He also sent
a messenger to Mr. Houseman, telling him the _corpus delicti_ was found.
He did this, partly to show that gentleman he was right in his judgment,
and partly out of common humanity; since, after this discovery, Mr.
Houseman's client was sure to be tried for her life.
A magistrate soon came, and viewed the remains, and took careful notes
of the state in which they were found.
Houseman came, and was much affected both by the sight of his dead
friend, so mutilated, and by the probable consequences to Mrs. Gaunt.
However, as lawyers fight very hard, he recovered himself enough to
remark that there were no marks of violence before death, and insisted
on this being inserted in the magistrate's notes.
An inquest was ordered next day, and, meantime, Mrs. Gaunt was told she
could not quit the upper apartments of her own house. Two constables
were placed on the ground-floor night and day.
Next day the remains were removed to the little inn where Griffith had
spent so many jovial hours; laid on a table, and covered with a white
sheet.
The coroner's jury sat in the same room, and the evidence I have already
noticed was gone into, and the finding of the body deposed to. The jury,
without hesitation, returned a verdict of wilful murder.
Mrs. Gaunt was then brought in. She came, white as a ghost, leaning upon
Houseman's shoulder.
Upon her entering, a juryman, by a humane impulse, drew the sheet over
the remains again.
The coroner, according to the custom of the day, put a question to Mrs.
Gaunt, with the view of eliciting her guilt. If I remember right, he
asked her how she came to be out of doors so late on the night of the
murder. Mrs. Gaunt, however, was in no condition to answer queries. I
doubt if she even heard this one. Her lovely eyes, dilated with horror,
were fixed on that terrible sheet, with a stony glance. "Show me," she
gasped, "and let me die too."
The jurymen looked, with doubtful faces, at the coroner. He bowed a
grave assent.
The nearest juryman withdrew the sheet. The belief was not yet extinct
that the dead body shows some signs of its murderer's approach. So every
eye glanced on her and on It by turns; as she, with dilated,
horror-stricken eyes, looked on that awful Thing.
LONDON FORTY YEARS AGO.
FROM THE MEMORANDA OF A TRAVELLER.
The Court of Chancery.--Feeling a desire to see for myself the highest
embodiment of English law where it lurked--a huge and bloated
personification of all that was monstrous and discouraging to
suitors--in the secret place of thunder, just behind the altar of
sacrifice, forever spinning the web that for hundreds of years hath
enmeshed and overspread the mightiest empire upon earth with
entanglement, perplexity, and procrastination, till estates have
disappeared and families have died out, sometimes, while waiting for a
decision,--I dropped into the Court of Chancery.
The first thing I saw was the Lord Chancellor himself,--Lord Eldon,--the
mildest, wisest, slowest, and most benignant of men,--milder than
Byron's Ali Pacha, wiser than Lord Bacon himself; and, if not altogether
worthy of being called "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," like
his prototype, yet great enough as a lawyer to set people wondering what
he would say next. He was quite capable of arguing a question on both
sides, and then of deciding against himself; and so patient, withal,
that he had just then finished a sitting of three whole days to Sir
Thomas Lawrence, for a portrait of his hand,--a beautiful hand, it must
be acknowledged, though undecided and womanish, as if he had never quite
made up his mind whether to keep it open or shut.
And the next thing I took notice of, after a hurried glance at the
carved ceiling and painted windows, and over the array of bewigged and
powdered solicitors and masters,--a magnificent bed of cauliflowers, in
appearance, with some of the finest heads I ever saw in my life--out of
a cabbage-garden,--was a large, dark, heavy picture of Paul before
Felix, by Hogarth, representing these great personages at the moment
when Felix, that earliest of Lord Chancellors, having heard Paul
through, says: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient
season, I will call for thee." Lord Eldon was larger than I supposed
from the portrait above mentioned. And this is the more extraordinary,
because the heads of Lawrence, like those of ancient statuary, are
always smaller than life, to give them an aristocratic, high-bred air,
and the bodies are larger. The expression of countenance, too, was
benignity itself,--just such as Titian would have been delighted
with,--calm, clear, passionless, without a prevailing characteristic of
any strength. "Felix trembled," they say. Whatever Felix may have done,
I do not believe that Lord Eldon would have trembled till he had put on
his night-cap and weighed the whole question by himself at his chambers.
* * * * *
_Kean._--Wishing to see how this grotesque but wonderful actor--a
mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth--would play at home
after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles
Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than
with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is
one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by
Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, and the whole
business of the play suspended, for the Justice to make speeches. But
the last scene was capital,--prodigious,--full of that dark, dismal,
despairing energy you would look for in a dethroned spirit, baffled,
like Mephistopheles, at the very moment his arm is outstretched, and his
long, lean fingers are clutching at the shoulder of his victim. Being
about to cross blades with his adversary, in a paroxysm of rage he
plucks at the hilt of his sword, and stops suddenly, as if struck with
paralysis, pale, and gasping for breath, and says,--in that far-off,
moaning voice we all remember in his famous farewell to the "big wars
that make ambition virtue,"--"The widow sits upon my arm, and the
wronged orphan's tear glues it to the scabbard,--it will _not_ be
drawn," etc., etc.,--or something of the sort. It was not so much a
thrilling as a curdling you felt.
* * * * *
_Young, in Sir Pertinax._--Very good, though full of stage trick, or
what they call, when they get bothered, or would like to bother you,
stage _business_;--as where he throws his pocket-handkerchief before him
on leaving the stage, somewhat after the style of Macready in Hamlet,
which Forrest called _le pas a mouchoir_, and took the liberty of
hissing. Good Scotch, generally, with a few wretched blunders, though
his "booin', and booin', and booin'," and his vehement snuff-taking, and
the declaration that "he could never stand oopright in the presence of a
great mon in a' his life," were evidently copied from, or suggested by,
George Frederick Cooke, who borrowed both from Macklin, if we may trust
surviving contemporaries.
* * * * *
_Robert Owen._--Breakfasted with Robert Owen, after having attended a
conference of the brotherhood, where they talked a world of nonsense,
and argued for a whole hour, without coming to a conclusion, about
whether we are governed by circumstances or circumstances are governed
by us. You would swear Owen was a Yankee, born and bred. He has the
shrewd, inquisitive look, the spare frame, the sharp features, of a
Connecticut farmer, and constantly reminds me of Henry Clay when he
moves about. He is evidently sincere; but such a visionary! and so
thoroughly satisfied that the world is coming to an end just as he would
have it, that he allows no misgivings to trouble him, and never loses
his temper, nor "bates one jot of heart or hope," happen what may. The
last time we met--only three days ago--his great project was coming up
before Parliament, and he told me, in confidence, that he was sure of a
favorable result,--that he had counted noses, and had the most
comfortable assurances from all the great leaders of the day,--and in
short, between ourselves, that grass would be growing on the London
Exchange within two years. The petition came up on the day appointed,
and was allowed to drop out of the tail end of the cart, almost without
a remark. But so far was he from being disheartened, that he lost no
time in preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, which he had long had
in contemplation, but was hindered from taking by the hopes he had been
persuaded to entertain from his friends in Parliament, and by the
business at Lanark,--a manufacturing place which he had built up of
himself in Scotland, with eminent success, and most undoubted practical
wisdom.
Wishing to leave a record with me for future ages, he wrote as follows
in my album, with a cheerfulness, an imperturbability, a serene
self-confidence, past all my conceptions of a visionary or enthusiast.
"I leave this country with a deep impression that my visit to
America will be productive of permanent benefit to the Indian
tribes, to the negro race, and to the whole population of the
Western Continent, North and South, and to Europe.
"ROBERT OWEN.
"LONDON, 4th September, 1824."
What a magnificent scheme! How comprehensive and how vast! But nothing
came of it, beyond the translation of his son, Robert Dale Owen, to this
country,--a very clever, well-educated, and earnest, though rather
awkward and sluggish young man, who has achieved a large reputation
here, and will be yet more distinguished if he lives, being well
grounded and rooted in the foundation principles of government, and both
conscientious and fearless.
* * * * *
_Old Bailey._--This and other like places, of which we have all read so
much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions,
at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I lost no time in
seeing.
I found the court-room small, much smaller than the average with us,
badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He
was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey
lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it
amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to ascertain
"whether it had been used or _not_"; and, as there were two sides to it,
which side had become dirty from being carried in the pocket, and which
from legitimate use. Before the prisoner was a toilet-glass, in which he
could not help seeing his own pale, haggard, frightened face whenever he
looked up,--a refinement of barbarism I was not prepared for in a
British court of justice. I occupied a seat in the gallery, surrounded
by professional pickpockets, burglars, and highwaymen, I dare say; for
they talked freely of the poor fellow's chances, and like experts.
* * * * *
_Joanna Baillie._--"Here," said Lady Bentham, wife of General Sir
Samuel Bentham, the originator of that Panopticon, which was the germ
of all our prison discipline as well as of all penitentiary
improvements, the world over,--"Here is an autograph you will think
worth having, I am sure, after what I have heard you say of the writer,
and of her tragedies, and I want you to see her";--handing me, as she
spoke, the following brief note, written upon a bit of coarse paper
about six inches by four.
"If you are perfectly disengaged this evening, Agnes and I will
have the pleasure of taking tea with you, if you give us leave.
"J. BAILLIE."
Now, if there was a woman in the world I wanted to see, or one that I
most heartily reverenced, it was Joanna Baillie. Her "De Montfort" I had
always looked upon as one of the greatest tragedies ever written,--equal
to anything of Shakespeare's for strength of delineation, simplicity,
and effect, however inferior it might be in the superfluities of genius,
in the overcharging of character and passion, of which we find so much
in Shakespeare; and, on the whole, not unlike that wonderful Danish
drama, "Dyveke," or a part of "Wallenstein."
My great desire was now to be satisfied. We met, and I passed one of the
pleasantest evenings of my life with _Mrs._ Baillie, as they called her,
Lady Bentham, her most intimate if not her oldest friend, and "sister
Agnes."
I found Mrs. Baillie wholly unlike the misrepresentations I had seen of
her. She was rather small,--though far from being diminutive, like her
sister Agnes,--with a charming countenance, full of placid serenity,
almost Quakerish, beautiful eyes, and gray hair, nearly white indeed,
combed smoothly away from her forehead. We talked freely together,
avoiding the shop, and the impression she left on my mind was that of a
modest, unpretending gentlewoman, full of quiet strength and shrewd
pleasantry, with a Scottish flavor, but altogether above being brilliant
or showy, even in conversation with a stranger and an author. She
questioned me closely about my country and about the people, and
appeared to take much interest in our doings and prospects. Her sister
Agnes never opened her mouth, to the best of my recollection and belief,
though she listened with her eyes and ears to the conversation, and
appeared to enjoy it exceedingly; and as for Lady Bentham, though a
clever woman of large experience and great resources, such was her
self-denial and her generous admiration of the "queenly stranger," as I
had called her friend in sport,--remembering how it was applied to the
magnificent Siddons, when she represented Jane de Montfort,--that she
did nothing more and said nothing more than what was calculated to bring
out her friend to advantage. There was nothing said, however, from which
a person unacquainted with the writings of Joanna Baillie would have
inferred her true character,--no flashing lights, no surprises, no
thunder-bursts. The conversation was, at the best, but sociable and
free, as if we were all of the same neighborhood or household; but
knowing her by her great work on the Passions, I was profoundly
impressed, nevertheless, and left her well satisfied with her
revelations of character.
* * * * *
_Catalani._--What a magnificent creature! How majestic and easy and
graceful! And then what a voice! One would swear she had a nest of
nightingales and a trumpet obligato in her throat. No wonder she sets
the great glass chandeliers of the Argyle rooms ringing and rattling
when she charges in a bravura.
That she is, in some passages, a little--not vulgar--but almost vulgar,
with a dash of the contadina, is undeniable; and she certainly has not a
delicate ear, and often sings false; yet, when that tempestuous warbling
in her throat breaks forth, and the flush of her heart's blood hurries
over her face and empurples her neck, why then "bow the high banners,
roll the answering drums," and shut up, if you wouldn't be torn to
pieces by a London mob.
Say what you will, you must acknowledge--you _must_--that you never
heard such a voice before, if there ever was one like it on earth,--so
full and so impassioned, so rich and sympathetic. More educated, more
brilliant organs there may be, like those of Pasta or Velluti, poor
fellow!--more satisfying to the ear,--but none, I believe, so satisfying
to the heart; none that so surely lifts you off your feet, and blinds
and deafens you to all defects, and sets you wandering far away through
the empyrean of musical sounds, till you are lost in a labyrinth of
triumphant harmonies. The sad, mournful intonations of Velluti may bring
tears into your eyes, but you are never transported beyond yourself by
his piteous wailing.
And yet, if you will believe me, this woman has just been called out of
bed to a London audience, who, instead of paying a guinea or half a
guinea to hear her in opera, are paying only 2_s._ 6_d._ a head to hear
her let off "God s_h_ave the King!" like a roll of musical thunder. She
appears "in _dish-abille_" as they call it here, and in _tears_. And why
is she summoned? Because the _sufferin'_ people, having understood that
she shares the house, insist on having their half-crowns and sixpences
returned. It has been quite impossible to hear a word, ever since they
were informed that she had been taken suddenly ill, and was not allowed
to appear by her medical attendants. But what of that? Dead or alive, a
British audience must have her out. And so a great banner was lifted on
which was inscribed "Catalani sent for!" and then, after a while, as the
uproar continued, and the outcries grew more violent, and the white
handkerchiefs more and more stormy and threatening, another inscription
appeared, "Catalani coming!" And lo! she comes! and comes weeping. But
the people refuse to be comforted. And why? Because of their
disappointment? Because of their passion for music? No indeed; but
because they are told that she is to go snacks with the manager; and,
her parsimony being proverbial, they are determined to rebuke it in a
liberal spirit. Pshaw!
These people pretend to love music, and to love it with such a devouring
passion that nothing less than the very best will satisfy them, cost
what it may. Yet the opera-house, with the patronage of the royal
family, the nobility, and the gentry, and open only twice a week, is
never full even at the representation of the finest works of genius; and
when such an artist as Catalani is engaged at one of the theatres, and
the people are admitted for theatre prices, the first thing they do,
after crowding the house to suffocation, is to call for "God save the
King," or, if Braham is out, for "Kelvin Grove." Enthusiasts
indeed,--carried away, and justly, by "Black-eyed Susan," or "Cherry
Ripe," which they do understand, feel, and enjoy,--they are all ready to
swear, and expect you to believe, that their passion is for opera
music,--Italian or German, the Barber of Seville, or _Der Freischuetz_.
And therefore I say again, Pshaw!
* * * * *
_John Dunn Hunter._--This luckiest and boldest of humbugs, whose book,
by the merest accident, has obtained for him the favor of the Duke of
Sussex, and, through the Duke, access to the highest nobility, has just
been presented at Court, and is not a little mortified that his Majesty,
on receiving a copy of the book, Hunter's "Captivity among the Indians,"
did not inquire after his health or make him a speech. He does not so
much mind paying five guineas for the loan of a court suit, consisting
of a single-breasted claret coat with steel buttons, a powdered tie,
small-clothes, white-silk stockings, and a dress sword,--with
instructions on which side it is to be worn, and how it is to be managed
in backing out so as not to get between his legs and trip him up,--nor
the having to pay for being mentioned in the Court Journal by a fellow
who is called the King's Reporter; but then he will have the worth of
his money, and so takes it out in grumbling and sulking. Not long ago
he sent a note through the penny-post, sealed with a wafer, directed to
the Marchioness of Conyngham, the king's mistress, in reply to an
invitation from her ladyship, which he accepted, to meet the king! At
least, such was the interpretation he put upon it. And now, after all
this, to be fobbed off with a bow by "Gentleman George," the "fat
friend" of poor Brummell, was indeed a little too bad.
Nothing he can say or do, however, will undeceive these people. Though
he cannot shout decently, cannot bear fatigue or pain, is so far from
being swift of foot that he is not even a good walker, talks little or
no Indian, and is continually outraging all the customs of society after
getting well acquainted with them, and doing all this by calculation, as
in the case of the note referred to above, they persist in believing his
story. I shall have to expose him.--P. S. I have exposed him.
While speaking just now of his acquaintance with the Duke of Sussex, who
was very kind to him, and a believer to the last, I said that it was
obtained for him by accident. It was in this way. At the house where he
lodged a Mr. Norgate of Norfolk--not far from Holkham, the seat of Mr.
Coke afterward Earl of Leicester--was also a lodger. Mr. Norgate invited
Hunter down to his father's, and they went over to Holkham together. And
there they met the Duke of Sussex, a great friend of Mr. Coke, both
being Liberals and Oppositionists. His Royal Highness took a great fancy
to Hunter, got him to sit to Chester Harding for his picture, gave him a
gold watch and lots of agricultural tools to subdue the Indians with,
and stuck to him through thick and thin, till I found it necessary to
tear off the fellow's mask.
On separating from me, before I had got possession of the facts which
soon after appeared in the "London Magazine," he wrote in my album the
following sententious and pithy apothegm, which, of course, only went to
show the marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances which would
naturally characterize the man, if his story were true. It was in this
way his dupes reasoned. If he sealed a letter with a wafer, and sent it
through the penny-post to a woman of rank, that proved his neglected
education or a natural disregard of polite usage, and of course that he
had been carried off in childhood by the Indians, and knew not where to
look for father or mother, sister or brother,--while, on the contrary,
if he used wax, and set the seal upon it which had been given to him by
the Duke of Sussex, that showed, of course, the sagacity and readiness
of adaptation which ought to characterize the hero of Hunter's
narrative. In short, he was another Princess Caraboo, or young
Chatterton, or Cagliostro, or Count Eliorich, all of whom were made
great impostors by the help of others, the over-credulous and the
over-confident in themselves.
"He who would do great actions," writes our enormous bug-a-boo,
"must learn to _empoly_ his powers to the least possible loss.
The possession of brilliant and extraordinary talents" (this
was probably meant for me, as he had been trying to prevail
upon my "brilliant and extraordinary talents" to return to
America with him, and go among the savages about the
neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, and there establish a
confederacy of our own) "is not always the most valuable to its
possessor. Moderate talents, properly directed, will enable one
to do a great deal; and the most distinguished gifts of nature
may be thrown away by an unskilful application of them.
"J. D. HUNTER.
"LONDON, 15th May, 1824."
* * * * *
_Kean at a Public Dinner._--A terrible outcry just now, in consequence
of certain exposures and a published correspondence. At a public dinner,
he says he is going to America. The Duke of York, who presides, cries
out, "No, no!" Shouts follow and the rattling of glasses, and men leap
on the chairs and almost on the tables, repeating the Duke's "No, no!"
till at last Kean promises to make an apology from the stage,--a
perilous experiment, he will find, after which he cannot stay here. The
object of Price, who has engaged him, is to kill off Cooper. The best
actors now get fifty guineas a week, or twenty-five pounds a night for
so many nights, play or pay, with a benefit.
* * * * *
_Architecture._--I have seen no greater barbarisms anywhere than I find
here. The screen of Carleton House,--a long row of double columns, with
a heavy entablature supporting the arms of Great Britain,--"that and
nothing more"; the doings of Inigo Jones in his water-gates and arches,
with two or three orders intermixed; and the late achievements of Mr.
Nash along Regent Street,--with the church spire, which has the
attractiveness and symmetry of an exaggerated marlin-spike, for a
vanishing point,--are of themselves enough to show that the people here
have no taste, and no feeling for this department of the Fine Arts,
however much they may brag and bluster.
But I have just returned from a visit to one of Sir Christopher Wren's
masterpieces, which has greatly disturbed my equanimity, and obliges me
to modify my opinion. It is a church back of the Mansion House; and is
the original of Godefroy's Unitarian church at Baltimore, beyond all
question: the dome rests on arches, and springs into the air, as if
buoyed up and aspiring of itself. Bad for the music, however. Here I
find West's picture of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, with a figure which
he has repeated in "Christ Healing the Sick," and a woman,--or young
man, you do not feel certain which,--weeping upon the hand of the
martyr, precisely as in a painting in Baltimore Cathedral by Renou, who
must have borrowed or stolen it from West, if West did not borrow or
steal it from him.
* * * * *
_Drawings._--I have just returned from visiting a collection of drawings
by the old masters,--Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Titian, &c.,
&c. Wonderful, to be sure! There is a pen-and-ink drawing by Munro, of
uncommon merit; another from a capital old engraving by Tiffen, hardly
to be distinguished from an elaborate line engraving, full of good faces
and straight lines, with nothing picturesque. A moonlight and cottage by
Gainsborough, very fine. Jackson's and Robinson's miniatures, and
sketches in water-colors,--charming. Leslie's designs, with Stothard's
on the same subject, are delightfully contrasted: Leslie's, neatly
finished and full of individuality; Stothard's, a beautiful, free
generalization, without finish. (But the engraver understands him, and
finishes for him, adding the hands and feet in his own way.) It is a
representation of Jeanie Deans's interview with the Queen. Leslie's
figure is standing; Stothard's, kneeling: yet both are expressive and
helpful to our conceptions. Here, too, I saw Rembrandt's celebrated
"Battle of Death," with a skeleton blowing a horn, and helmeted and
plumed, and having a thigh-bone for a battle-axe,--shadows on the
shoulders of horsemen, and skeleton feet;--on the whole, a monstrous
nightmare, such as you might expect from Fuseli after a supper on raw
beef, but never from such a painter as Rembrandt.
* * * * *
_Phrenology._--There must be something in this new science,--for they
persist in calling it a science,--though I cannot say how much. Just
returned from a visit to De Ville, in the Strand, in company with
Chester Harding, Robert M. Sully, the painter, and Humphries, the
engraver,--each differing from the others in character and purpose; yet,
after manipulating our crania, this man says of each what all the rest
acknowledge to be true, and what, said of any but the particular person
described, would be preposterous. Why are the busts of Socrates and
Solon what they should be, according to this theory of Gall and
Spurzheim? Were they modelled from life, or from characters resembling
them? Compared the head of a Greek boy with that of a young Hottentot.
One was largely developed in the intellectual region, the other in the
animal region, and the latter cries whenever his home or his mother is
mentioned. Both are at school here. Thurtell's head is a great
confirmation, which anybody can judge of. I must find time for a
thorough investigation.
P. S.--I have kept my promise, and am thoroughly satisfied. Phrenology
deserves to be called a science, and one of the greatest and best of
sciences, notwithstanding all the quackery and self-delusion that I find
among the professors. I have now studied it and experimented upon it for
more than thirty years, and have no longer any misgivings upon the
subject, so far as the great leading principles are involved.
* * * * *
_Manners._--If we do not record our first impressions they soon
disappear; and the greatest novelties are overlooked or forgotten.
Already I begin to see women with heavily-laden wheel-barrows, without
surprise. I have now learned, I hope, that a postman's rap is _one_,
_two_, and no more; a servant's, _one_; while a footman gives from four
to twenty, as hard as he can bang, so as to startle the whole
neighborhood and make everybody run to the windows. Eating fish with a
knife said to be fatal. Great personages give you a finger to shake. I
did not know this when I took the forefinger of a cast-off mistress, the
original of Washington Irving's Lady Sillicraft, a painted and withered
old vixen, who meant to signify her liking for me, as I had reason to
believe. Moles are reckoned such a positive beauty here that my
attention has been called to them, as to fine eyes or a queenly bearing.
A _fine_ woman here means a large woman, tall, dignified, and showy,
like a fine horse or a fine bullock.
Never shall I forget the looks and tones of a bashful friend, in
describing his embarrassment. He was at Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke,
our Revolutionary champion, who, being in Parliament at the time, moved,
session after session, the acknowledgment of our independence,--am I
right here?--and actually gave the health of George Washington at a
large dinner-party while the Revolutionary fires were raging. There was
a large company at dinner, but for his life my friend did not know what
to do with the ladies nor with his hands. Goes through room after room
to get his dinner; is called upon to serve a dish he has never seen
before, and knows not how to manage. Asked to take wine, and wants to
ask somebody else, but cannot recall the name of a single person within
reach, and whispers to the servant for relief, while his eye travels up
and down both sides of the long table; is reminded of the guest who said
to himself, loud enough to be overheard by the waiter behind his chair,
"I wish I had some bread," to which the waiter replied without moving,
"I wish you had." Durst not offer his arm to a lady, lest he should
violate some of the multitudinous every-day usages of society, and so,
instead of enjoying his dinner, just nibbled and choked and watched how
others ate of the dishes he had never seen before. Yet this man was no
fool, he was not even a blockhead; but he was frightened out of all
propriety nevertheless. Poor fellow! Soon after this he went to Paris,
and, having picked up a few French sentences, undertook to pass off one
upon a servant who took his cloak as he entered the hotel of a French
celebrity in a violent rainstorm. He flung the phrase off with an air,
saying, "Mauvais temps," whereupon the word was passed up from mouth to
mouth, and, to his unutterable horror, he was introduced to the company
as M. Mauvais Temps.
* * * * *
_Painting._--I have just been to see Mulready's famous "Lion and Lamb."
He is a Royal Academician; and, spite of the cleverness we see in every
touch, we are reminded of Pison's reply to the Academician, who asked
what he was,--"I? O, I am nobody; not even an Academician." The picture
is about eighteen by twenty-two inches, and belongs to his Majesty,
George the Fourth. It represents two boys, a little child, a woman, and
a dog. One boy has broken the strap of his trousers, and, bracing
himself up for a clinch, is evidently encroaching on the other with his
foot. He stands with his legs on the straddle, both fists made up for
mischief, and head turned away in profile, with hat and books flung down
upon the turf; while the other--the lamb--keeps his satchel in his hand,
with one arm raised to parry the blow he is expecting. He has a meek,
boyish face, and we have it in full. The back of the child is towards
you, the mother terribly frightened; parts very fine, but as a whole the
picture is not worthy of its reputation, to say nothing of the
extravagant price paid for it,--some hundreds of guineas, they say.
* * * * *
_Greenwich Fair._--Having read so much in story-books and novels, from
my earliest childhood,--at one time in the gilt-covered publication of
E. Newbury, St. Paul's Church Yard, and after that in larger books,--of
the rioting at Greenwich Fair (another Donnybrook in its way), I
determined to see for myself, and went down for the purpose, April 19th,
1824. Universal decorum characterized the whole proceedings till the day
was over, after which there was a large amount of dancing and frolicking
and sight-seeing and beer-drinking, but no drunkenness and no
quarrelling. The people were saucy, but good-natured, like the Italian
rabble, with their plaster confectionery, at a carnival. Women and girls
would run down the long green slope together, which it is said the
cockneys believe to be the highest land in the world, after Richmond
Hill; and many of them stumble and slip and roll to the bottom,
screaming and laughing as they go. This I understand to be a favorite
pastime with people who are big enough to know better; for a part of the
fun, and that which all seem to enjoy most, is in tripping one another
up. Plenty of giants and dwarfs to be seen for a penny, with white
Circassians, silver-haired, and actors of all sorts and sizes. "Walk in,
ladies and gentlemen! walk in! Here's the rope-dancing and juggling,
with lots of gilt gingerbread,--and all for sixpence! Here is the great
Numidian lion!"--leading forth a creature not larger than a
moderate-sized English mastiff,--"with a throat like a turnpike gate,
and teeth like mile-stones, and every hair on his mane as big as a
broomstick!" It was worth sixpence to see the fellow's face when he said
this; but most of the people round me seemed to believe what they heard
rather than what they saw. Actors and actresses turn out and dance and
strut before the curtain.
Went into the Hospital, of which we have all heard so much, and into the
Chapel. Here is the best picture West ever painted, I think. It is the
shipwreck of St. Paul, with the viper and the fire: rocks rather crowded
and confused; on the right are two figures, frequently, I had almost
said always, to be found in his pictures, and always together. Old man
on the right, capital!--Roof of the Hospital highly ornamented, though
chaste, with painted pilasters, fluted; ceiling done by Sir James
Thornhill, and is really a grand affair, not only for coloring and
drawing, but for composition and general treatment. Architecture of the
building, once a palace, worthy of the highest commendation, though it
needs a back part to correspond with the two wings. Cupolas made to
correspond, but seem rather out of place,--not wanted.
Had quite an adventure before I got away. I saw a young girl running
down hill by herself. She fell, and stained her white frock all over one
hip of a grass-green. She seemed to be much hurt and near fainting. I
found her young, pretty, and modest, as you may readily infer from what
follows,--usually if you hear of a woman being run over in the street,
you may be sure she is neither young nor pretty,--and so seeing her
greatly distressed about the figure she cut, and companionless, I took
pity on her, and going with her found, after some search, an old woman
in a garret with a husband, child, and grandchild, all huddled and
starving in one room together. The husband was a waterman. He had
"stove" his boat some years before, and was never able to get another;
had two sons at sea; paid two shillings a week for the room, which they
said was one shilling too dear, being only large enough to allow of two
or three chairs, a table, and a turn-up bed. Poor Sarah took off her
frock and washed it before me, without a sign of distress or
embarrassment; and then we went off together and had a bit of a
dance,--a rough-and-tumble fore-and-after,--at the nearest booth. With
her bonnet off, and neat cap, her beautiful complexion and dark hair and
eyes, how happened it that she was really modest and well-behaved? And
how came she there? After some resolute questioning, I determined to see
her home, at least so far as to set her down in safety in the
neighborhood where she lived. The coach was crowded with strangers. It
was late, and they were silent, and I thought sulky. Just as we were
passing a lamp, after we had entered a wide thoroughfare, I saw a man's
face under a woman's bonnet. Though not absolutely frightened, I was
rather startled, and more and more unwilling to leave the poor girl to
the mercy of strangers; for I saw, or thought I saw, signs of
intelligence between two of the party; and in short, I never left her
till the danger was over.
There were mountebanks and fortune-tellers and gypsies at every turn.
The prettiest I met with told my fortune. "You are liked better by the
women," said she, "than by the men." Very true. "You are loved by a
widow named Mary." My landlady was a widow, and her name was Mary.
"Which do you like best, Mary or Bessie?" In addition to Mary, there was
another pleasant friend, supposed to be a natural daughter of George
IV., named Bessie. But how the plague did the little gypsy know this? I
found out, I believe, long after the whole affair was forgotten. There
was present, without my knowledge, a man who was always full of such
tricks, who knew me well, and who threw the gypsy in my way and put her
up to all she knew. This was Humphries the engraver.
There was a great ball too,--a magnificent ball,--one shilling entrance.
More than fifty couples stood up for a contra-dance, and tore down the
middle and up outside, and cast off, as if they were all just out of a
lunatic hospital. And yet, as I have said before, I believe, there was
no drunkenness and no quarrelling.
* * * * *
_Shooting the Bridge._--Wanting to go to the Tower, I took a boat above
London Bridge at the wrong time of the tide, in spite of all
remonstrances, and came near being swamped. Not being a good swimmer,
and aware that people were often drowned there, I cannot understand what
possessed me; but as the watermen were not afraid, and asked no
questions, why should I be troubled? For aught they knew, I might be
made of cork, or have a swimming-jacket underneath my coat, or a pocket
life-preserver ready to be blown up at a moment's notice; and they were
sure of the fee. At the mouth of the St. John's River, New Brunswick,
they have a fall both ways, at a certain time of tide, through which and
up and down which boats and rafts plunge headlong so as to take away
your breath, while you are watching them from the bridge; but really,
this little pitch of not more than three or four feet under London
Bridge I should think more dangerous, and the people seem to think so
too, for they are always on the watch after the tide turns, and swarm
along the parapets, and rush from one side to the other, as the wherry
shoots through the main arch, with a feeling akin to that of the man who
followed Van Amburgh month after month to see him "chawed up" by the
lion or tiger.
* * * * *
_Major Cartwright._--Another fast friend of our country and the
institutions of our country, and always ready to take up the
quarter-staff in our defence. A great reformer, and honest as the day is
long. Wrote much in favor of American independence in 1774, and, with
Sir Francis Burdett and others, who chose to meddle with the British
Constitution wherever they found a fragment large enough to talk about,
has been visited by the government, and tried and imprisoned. His book
on the British Constitution is, though somewhat visionary, both original
and ingenious. He is six feet high, with a very broad chest; wears a fur
cap and blue cotton-velvet dressing-gown in the sultriest weather; is a
great admirer of Jeremy Bentham, Mrs. Wheeler, and Fanny Wright, by the
way.
* * * * *
_Woolwich._--After spending a day here under special advantages, I have
succeeded in seeing whatever was worth seeing for my purpose, and in
getting a fine sketch of a Woolwich Pensioner by Sully,--Robert M.
Sully, nephew of Thomas Sully, and a capital draughtsman,--to serve as a
companion piece for the Greenwich Pensioner by the same artist. The man
had served against us in the Revolutionary War, and participated in the
"affair" of Bunker Hill. The shovel hats, the long chins and retreating
mouths of these aged men at Greenwich, are wonderfully hit off by
Cruikshank, with a mere flourish of the pen. I have a scene in a
watch-house, with half a score of heads, thoroughly Irish, drunk or
sleepy, and as many more of these shovel hats, which the clever artist
amused himself with scratching off,--as we sat talking together at a
table,--on a little bit of waste paper, which fluttered away in the
draft from a window, and fell upon the floor.
Saw a prodigious quantity of guns to be "let loose" in the dock-yard, to
which I was admitted as a great privilege. When Alexander of Russia and
the king of Prussia were admitted after the war, they were greatly
disappointed and mortified, I was told, at seeing such a vast
accumulation of warlike material. They supposed England to be exhausted.
The English artillery is far superior in details to the French, though
not half so abundant. Where the French bring eighty pieces at once into
the field, the English never have more than twenty pieces. The English
lost only two guns in the whole Peninsular war; the French lost nearly
eleven hundred, Waterloo included.
At Woolwich there are two or three hundred acres full of machinery, with
saw-mills, planing-mills, &c. Saw, among other inventions and
improvements, anchor shanks made largest about one third of the distance
from the crown, where they always bend or break; an original
screw-cutter of uncommon merit; and a perpetual capstan for drawing in
wood for the mill.
* * * * *
_Illuminations._--His Majesty's birthday. By one odd arrangement of
colored lamps, which was intended for George IV., it reads thus,
_Giver_, being G. IV. R. The populace break windows which are not
lighted up. The king's tradesmen are most astonishing in their
manifestations of loyalty; and, among others, I see an establishment
with this inscription: "Bug Destroyer to his Majesty."
* * * * *
_Chimney-Sweeps._--May 1. The little monsters appear in cocked hats and
gilt paper, with their faces painted, and with dancing and music, and a
very pretty girl pirouetting in a hogshead of cut paper, with large boys
about her, like trees dancing. Of course, we are constantly reminded of
Edward Wortley Montagu, and of his delightful experience with the
chimney-sweeps.
* * * * *
_John Randolph._--This madman is full of his vagaries here; says the
most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not
gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor
whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius and a humorist.
Sir Robert Inglis says, publicly, that Mr. Randolph "on these boards"
claimed for Virginia the first attempt at abolition. "And I am disposed
to believe the gentleman correct," adds Sir Robert, "because of his
opportunities for knowledge." Whatever related to the United States was
received better than anything else in the proceedings of to-day at the
Freemasons' Tavern. Very comfortable and gratifying.
* * * * *
_Marquis of Stafford's Gallery._--Here I find about three hundred fine
pictures, most of them by the old masters, and a large part worthy of
enthusiastic admiration. Thirty-eight in the National Gallery cost sixty
thousand pounds. What, then, are these worth as a collection?
* * * * *
_Cary, the Translator of Dante._--Met him at Mr. Griffith's,--Sylvanus
Urban's,--another great friend of our country, who insisted on my
occupying the seat which Dr. Franklin used to sit in, and after him Lord
Byron. Mr. Cary has a good, sensible face, is about five feet seven in
height, and forty-six years old, very moderate of speech, and talks with
a low voice. Among the guests were Captain Brace, who was with Lord
Exmouth when he put through the Dey of Algiers after the fashion of our
Preble. He seemed about sixty, with gray hair, and a youthful
countenance.
* * * * *
_Horticultural Exhibition._--Great show and surprising. No sales made.
Pears better than ours; peaches nearly as good, and sell from a shilling
to one and sixpence apiece. They resemble not our New Jersey or Maryland
peaches, but such as grow about Boston. Grapes fine, nectarines capital;
gooseberries, plums, mulberries, currants, all better than ours; apples
wretched, "not fit to give the pigs," liked all the better for being
hard, or ligneous.
I have just understood here, on the best authority, that Mr. Coke, of
Norfolk, did move for an abandonment of the war, session after session,
and finally gave the casting vote as mover. He did also give
Washington's health at his own table once, with a large company of
leading men about him, in the hottest part of the struggle. He looks
like one of Trumbull's generals or statesmen, of the old Revolutionary
type, and not unlike Washington himself, or General Knox.
* * * * *
_Duke of Sussex._--Prodigious; even Chester Harding, who is a large man,
over six feet, appears under-sized alongside of his Royal Highness. Went
to a meeting for the encouragement of the arts. The Duke presided, and,
being popular and willing so to continue, he made a speech. "Ladies and
gentlemen," said he, "it affords me gratification to see, to recognize,
so many persons assembled for the encouragement of what I may say is one
of the best institutions of the country. Good deal of business coming
up. I shall therefore reserve myself for the conclusion, and now call
upon the Secretary to read the proceedings." Effect of the show seems to
be very good. Some persons, girls and women, received three prizes.
* * * * *
_Theatre._--Munden's farewell. Dosey and Sir Robert Bramble; among the
finest pieces of acting I ever saw,--rich, warm, and full of
unadulterated strength. Terrible crush at the entrance, the corners
being neither stuffed nor rounded. Great screaming and screeching. "Take
care o' that corner!" "Mind there!" "Oh! oh! you'll kill me!" "There
now, lady's killed!" And it was indeed about as much as a woman's life
was worth to venture into such a brutal mob. No consideration for women,
as usual. They are pushed, crowded, overthrown sometimes, and sometimes
trampled on without remorse or shame, as at the Duke of York's funeral.
* * * * *
_Washington Irving._--Met him for the second time, and had more reason
than ever for believing that, with all his daintiness and
fastidiousness, he is altogether a man, hearty and generous, and his
books, with all their shifting shadows, but a transcript of himself and
of his unacknowledged visions and meditations. His pleasantry, too, is
delightful; and, as you cannot question his truthfulness, he gains upon
you continually, even while you pity his girlish sensitiveness. I do not
see any picture of him that satisfies me, or does him justice. Newton
cannot paint a portrait, nor indeed can Leslie; and the result is, that
what we have foisted off upon us for portraits are only
misunderstandings.
A YEAR IN MONTANA.
Where the Wind River Chain of the Rocky Mountains stretches far away to
the east, and the Bitter Root Range far away to the northwest, like
giant arms holding in their embrace the fertile valleys whence the
myriad springs which form the two great rivers of the continent take
their rise,--on the northern border of the United States, and accessible
only through leagues of desert,--lie the gold fields of Montana. Four
years ago all this region was _terra incognita_. In 1805, Lewis and
Clarke passed through it; but beyond a liberal gift of geographical
inaccuracies, they have left only a few venerable half-breeds as relics
of their journey. Among the Indians, what they did and said has passed
into tradition; and the tribes of which they speak, the Ke-heet-sas,
Minnetarees, Hohilpoes, and Tus-he-pahs, are as extinct as the dodo.
Later explorers have added little to the scanty stock of information,
save interesting descriptions of rich valleys and rough mountain scenery
and severe hardships in the winters. For the most part, it was a country
unexplored and unknown, and held by the various Indian tribes in the
Northwest as a common hunting-ground.
One bright morning in August, 1864, after a brief rest at Salt Lake, we
left Brigham's seraglios for this new El Dorado. We had taken the long
trip of twelve hundred miles on the overland stage, which Mr. Bowles
describes in his admirable book "Across the Continent." But his was the
gala-day excursion of Speaker Colfax and his party, so full of studied
and constant attention as to lead Governor Bross to tell the good people
of Salt Lake, a little extravagantly, that the height of human happiness
was to live in one of Holladay's stages. This life loses its rose-color
when nine inside passengers, to fortune and to fame unknown, are viewed
as so much freight, and transported accordingly.
It is four hundred miles due north from Salt Lake City to Montana. The
low canvas-covered Concord hack, in which we travel, is constructed with
an eye rather to safety than comfort, and, like a city omnibus, is never
full. Still, our passengers look upon even their discomforts as a joke.
They are most of them old miners, hard-featured but genial and kindly,
and easily distinguished from men reared in the easy life of cities. Mr.
Bowles describes them as characterized by a broader grasp and more
intense vitality. I could not but notice, particularly, their freedom
from all the quarrels and disagreements sometimes known among travellers
in the States. The heavy revolver at every man's belt, and the miner's
proverbial love of fair play, keep in every one's mind a clear
perception of the bounds of _meum_ and _tuum_.
I must hurry over our four days' journey and its many objects of
interest. All the first day we ride through brisk Mormon villages,
prosperous in their waving cornfields and their heavy trade with the
mines. At a distance is the Great Salt Lake,--properly an inland sea,
like the Caspian and Sea of Aral,--having a large tributary, the Bear
River, and no outlet. Crossing Bear River, and the low mountains beyond,
we follow down the Portneuf Canon to Snake River, or Lewis's Fork of the
Columbia, along which and its affluents lies the rest of our journey.
Hurrying past the solitary station-houses, and over here and there a
little creek, our fourth night brings us to a low hill, which we need to
be told is a pass of the Rocky Mountains. We cross this during the
night, and morning dawns upon us in a level prairie among the network of
brooks which form the extreme sources of the Missouri. Here, more than
sixty years ago, Lewis and Clarke followed the river up to the "tiny
bright beck," so narrow that "one of the party in a fit of enthusiasm,
with a foot on each side, thanked God that he had lived to bestride the
Missouri." It is called Horse Prairie, from the circumstance that they
here bartered for horses with the Shoshonee Indians. They had often seen
the men, mounted on fleet steeds, watching them like timid antelopes at
a distance, but never allowing this distance to lessen. No signs or
proffered presents could induce a near approach. One lucky day, however,
Captain Lewis surprised a chattering bevy of their squaws and made
prisoner a belle of the tribe. Finding all effort to escape hopeless,
the woman held down her head as if ready for death. There was among them
the same effeminate fear of capture and the same heroic fortitude when
death seemed inevitable, that Clive and Hastings found in the Bengalee.
But the Captain gallantly painted her tawny cheeks with vermilion, and
dismissed her loaded with presents. It is hardly necessary to add, that
captures of Shoshonee Sabines were not long matters of difficult
accomplishment. Very soon all the chiefs followed, with a rather
exuberant cordiality towards the party, and with forced smiles the
explorers "received the caresses and no small share of the grease and
paint of their new friends."
Lewis and Clarke called Horse Prairie by the prettier name of Shoshonee
Cove. But the names they gave have passed into as deep oblivion as the
forgotten great man, Rush, whose pills they publish to the world as a
sovereign specific in bilious fevers. Of all the names on their map only
those of the three forks of the Missouri, from President Jefferson and
his Secretaries Madison and Gallatin, remain. The unpoetical miner has
invented a ruder nomenclature; and on the rivers which they called
Wisdom, Philosophy, and Philanthropy, he bestows the barbarous names of
Big Hole, Willow Creek, and Stinking Water.
A few hours' ride brings us to Grasshopper Creek, another affluent of
the Missouri, and, like them all, a crooked little stream of clear cold
water, fringed with alders and willows, and with a firm pebbly bed,
along which the water tinkles a merry tune. What a pity that these pure
mountain children should develop to such a maturity as the muddy
Missouri! Parallel with this little stream, where it winds into a narrow
chasm between abrupt mountain walls, winds a crooked street, with a
straggling row of log-cabins on either side, and looking from the
mountain-tops very much like the vertebrae of a huge serpent. This is
Bannack, so called from the Indian tribe whose homes were in the
vicinity. These were the bravest, the proudest, and the noblest looking
Indians of the mountains till the white man came. Yet seldom has there
been a stronger illustration of the inexorable law, that when a superior
and inferior race come in contact the lower is annihilated. Every step
of the white man's progress has been a step of the red man's decay. And
now this tribe, once so warlike, is a nation of spiritless beggars,
crouching near the white settlements for protection from their old
foes, over whom in times past they were easy victors.
At Bannack, in the summer of 1862, a party of Colorado miners, lost on
their way to Gold Creek in the Deer Lodge Valley, discovered the first
rich placer diggings of Montana. A mining town grew up straightway; and
ere winter a nondescript crowd of two thousand people--miners from the
exhausted gulches of Colorado, desperadoes banished from Idaho, bankrupt
speculators from Nevada, guerilla refugees from Missouri, with a very
little leaven of good and true men--were gathered in. Few of them speak
with pleasant memories of that winter. The mines were not extensive, and
they were difficult to work. Scanty supplies were brought in from Denver
and Salt Lake, and held at fabulous prices. An organized band of
ruffians, styled Road Agents, ruled the town. Street murders were daily
committed with impunity, and travellers upon the road were everywhere
plundered. Care was not even taken to conceal the bodies of the victims,
which were left as food for the wolves by the roadside.
Next year, the discovery of richer mines at Virginia left Bannack a
deserted village of hardly two hundred people. It is a dull town for the
visitor; but the inhabitants have all Micawber's enthusiastic trust in
the future, and live in expectation of the wealth which is to turn up in
the development of the quartz lodes. We visited the most famous of these
lodes,--the Dacotah,--almost every specimen from which is brilliant with
little shining stars of gold. And deep down in the shaft of this lode
has been found a spacious cave full of stones of a metallic lustre,
sending out all the tints of the rainbow, and many-colored translucent
crystallizations, varying from the large stalactites to the fragile
glass-work that crumbles at the touch.
Leaving Bannack, the road ascends a very lofty range of mountains, and
passes by much wild and picturesque scenery. Mountaineers call these
ranges, where they separate two streams, by the name of "divides." They
have a scanty but nutritious herbage, and are for many months in the
year covered with snow. On many of them a stunted growth of hybrid pines
and cedars flourishes in great abundance. These, with the quaking ash
and cottonwood along the streams, are the only woods of Montana. None of
the harder woods, such as oak or maple, are found. It is inconceivably
grand from the top of this range to look out upon the endless succession
of vast peaks rolling away on every side, like waves in the purple
distance. High above them all towers Bald Mountain,--the old Indian
landmark of this section,--like Saul among his brethren. I have crossed
this range in the gray of a February morning, with the thermometer at
thirty-five below zero, and I never felt such a sense of loneliness as
in gazing out from our sleigh--little atom of life as it seemed--upon
this boundless ocean of snow, whose winters had been unbroken solitude
through all the centuries.
Over this divide we pass among a low range of hills seamed with veins of
silver, having already a more than local reputation. The hills embosom a
clear little creek called after the yellow rattlesnake, which is almost
as plentiful a luxury in these wilds as the grasshopper. It is, however,
less venomous than its Eastern brethren, for not even the oldest
inhabitant can instance a death from its bite. Nervous people avoid it
studiously, but it has many friends among the other animals. The
prairie-dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake live a happy family in one
burrow, and the serpent has another fast friend in the turtle-dove.
These doves are called the rattlesnake's brothers-in-law, and there runs
a pretty legend, that when an Indian kills one of them, or mocks their
plaintive cry, they tell the rattlesnake, who lies in wait and avenges
the wrong by a deadly sting. And when one of the snakes is killed, the
turtle-doves watch long over his dead body and chant mournful dirges at
his funeral.
The road to Virginia passes through the basin in which lie the
tributaries of Jefferson Fork. It is a barren waste. Being in the rich
mineral section of the country, its agricultural resources are
proportionally deficient. Providence does not sprinkle the gold among
the grain lands, but, by the wise law of compensation, apportions it to
remote and volcanic regions which boast of little else. Along the
water-courses is a narrow belt of cottonwood, and then rise the low
table-lands, too high for irrigation, and with a parched, alkaline soil
which produces only the wild sage and cactus. Miners curse this
sprawling cactus most heartily, and their horses avoid its poisonous
porcupine thorns with great care. All through these brown wastes one
sees no shelter for the herds, no harvests of grain or hay, and wonders
not a little how animal life--as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and
deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros--is
preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter. But even when
the mountains are impassable, there is seldom snow in the valleys; and
along the sides of the hills grow stunted tufts of bunch-grass, full of
sweetness and nutriment. Horses always hunt for it in preference to the
greener growth at the water's edge. And it is not an annual, but a
perennial, preserving its juices during the winters, and drawing up sap
and greenness into the old blades in the first suns of spring. This
bunch-grass grows in great abundance, and it is only in winters of
extreme severity that animals suffer from a lack of nourishing food.
Specks of gold may be found in a pan of dirt from any of these streams,
followed back to the mountain chasm of its source. Upon one of them, in
June, 1863, a party of gold-hunters stopped to camp on their return to
Bannack, after an unsuccessful trip to the Yellowstone. While dinner was
being cooked, one of them washed out a pan of dirt and obtained more
than a dollar. Further washings showed even greater richness; and,
hurrying to Bannack, they returned at once with supplies and friends,
and formed a mining district. In the absence of law, the miners frame
their own law; and so long as its provisions are equal and impartial, it
is everywhere recognized. The general principle of such laws is to grant
a number of linear feet up and down the gulch or ravine to the first
squatter, upon compliance with certain conditions necessary for mutual
benefit. In deliberations upon these laws, technicalities and ornament
are of little weight, and only the plainest common-sense prevails.
Prominent among their conditions was a provision--for the exorcism of
drones--that every claim must be worked a fixed number of days in each
week, or else, in the miners' expressive vocabulary, it should be
considered "jumpable." Compliance with law was never more rigidly
exacted by Lord Eldon than by the miners' judges and courts, and in the
first days of this legislation a hundred revolvers, voiceless before any
principle of justice, yet too ready before any technicality, fixed the
construction of every provision beyond all cavil.
This was the beginning of Virginia Gulch, from which twenty-five
millions of dollars in gold have been taken, and which has to-day a
population of ten thousand souls. The placer proved to be singularly
regular, almost every claim for fifteen miles being found profitable.
From the mouth of the canon to its very end, among snows almost
perpetual, are the one-storied log-cabins, gathered now and then into
clusters, which are called cities, and named by the miner from his old
homes in Colorado and Nevada. In travelling up the crazy road, with
frowning mountains at our left, and yawning pit-holes at our right, we
pass seven of these cities,--Junction, Nevada, Central, Virginia,
Highland, Pine Grove, and Summit.
Virginia, the chief of the hamlets, has since developed into an
organized city, and the capital of the Territory. Its site was certainly
not chosen for its natural beauty. Along the main gulch are the
mines,--huge piles of earth turned up in unsightly heaps. At one side
of the mines, and up a ravine which crosses the gulch at right angles,
lies the city. In shape it was originally like the letter T, but its
later growth has forced new streets and houses far up the hillsides. Not
so much regard was paid, in laying the foundations of the new city, to
its future greatness, as Penn gave when he planned Philadelphia. The
miner only wanted a temporary shelter, and every new-comer placed a
log-cabin of his own style of architecture next the one last built.
Where convenience required a street, lo! a street appeared. There were
no gardens, for beyond the narrow centre of the ravine only sage-brush
and cactus would grow. But the mines thrived, and also grew and thrived
the little city and its vices.