I.

"STRANGE COUNTRIES FOR TO SEE"

Now, the very first book was called "Infancy"; and, having finished it,

I closed it with a bang! I was just twelve. 'Tis thus the

twelve-year-old is apt to close most books. Within those pages--perhaps

some day to be opened to the kindly inquiring eye--lie the records of a

quiet life, stirred at intervals by spasms of infantile intensity. There

are more days than one in a life that can be written of, and when the

clock strikes twelve the day is but half over.

The clock struck twelve! We children had been watching and waiting for

it. The house had been stripped bare; many cases of goods were awaiting

shipment around Cape Horn to California. California! A land of fable! We

knew well enough that our father was there, and had been for two years

or more; and that we were at last to go to him, and dwell there with the

fabulous in a new home more or less fabulous,--yet we felt that it must

be altogether lovely. We said good-bye to everybody,--getting friends

and fellow-citizens more or less mixed as the hour of departure from our

native city drew near. We were very much hugged and very much kissed and

not a little cried over; and then at last, in a half, dazed condition,

we left Rochester, New York, for New York city, on our way to San

Francisco by the Nicaragua route. This was away back in 1855, when San

Francisco, it may be said, was only six years old.

It seemed a supreme condescension on the part of our maternal

grandfather that he, who did not and could not for a moment countenance

the theatre, should voluntarily take us, one and all, to see an alleged

dramatic representation at Barnum's Museum--at that time one of the

features of New York city, and perhaps the most famous place of

amusement in the land. Four years later, when I was sixteen, very far

from home and under that good gentleman's watchful supervision, I asked

leave to witness a dramatic version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," enacted by a

small company of strolling players in a canvas tent. There were no

blood-hounds in the cast, and mighty little scenery, or anything else

alluring; but I was led to believe that I had been trembling upon the

verge of something direful, and I was not allowed to go. What would that

pious man have said could he have seen me, a few years later, strutting

and fretting my hour upon the stage?

Well, we all saw "Damon and Pythias" in Barnum's "Lecture Room," with

real scenery that split up the middle and slid apart over a carpet of

green baize. And 'twas a real play, played by real players,--at least

they were once real players, but that was long before. It may be their

antiquated and failing art rendered them harmless. And, then, those

beguiling words "Lecture Room" have such a soothing sound! They seemed

in those days to hallow the whole function, which was, of course, the

wily wish of the great moral entertainer; and his great moral

entertainment was even as "the cups that cheer but not inebriate." It

came near it in our case, however. It was our first matinee at the

theatre, and, oh, the joy we took of it! Years afterward did we children

in our playroom, clad in "the trailing garments of the night" in lieu of

togas, sink our identity for the moment and out-rant Damon and his

Pythias. Thrice happy days so long ago in California!

There is no change like a sea change, no matter who suffers it; and

one's first sea voyage is a revelation. The mystery of it is usually not

unmixed with misery. Five and forty years ago it was a very serious

undertaking to uproot one's self, say good-bye to all that was nearest

and dearest, and go down beyond the horizon in an ill-smelling,

overcrowded, side-wheeled tub. Not a soul on the dock that day but fully

realized this. The dock and the deck ran rivers of tears, it seemed to

me; and when, after the lingering agony of farewells had reached the

climax, and the shore-lines were cast off, and the Star of the West

swung out into the stream, with great side-wheels fitfully revolving, a

shriek rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting from a

son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her emotion,

was borne away, frantically raving in the delirium of grief. I have

never forgotten that agonizing scene, or the despairing wail that was

enough to pierce the hardest heart. I imagined my heart was about to

break; and when we put out to sea in a damp and dreary drizzle, and the

shore-line dissolved away, while on board there was overcrowding, and

confusion worse confounded in evidence everywhere,--perhaps it did

break, that overwrought heart of mine and has been a patched thing ever

since.

We were a miserable lot that night, pitched to and fro and rolled from

side to side as if we were so much baggage. And there was a special

horror in the darkness, as well as in the wind that hissed through the

rigging, and in the waves that rushed past us, sheeted with foam that

faded ghostlike as we watched it,--faded ghostlike, leaving the

blackness of darkness to enfold us and swallow us up.

Day after day for a dozen days we ploughed that restless sea. There were

days into which the sun shone not; when everybody and everything was

sticky with salty distillations; when half the passengers were sea-sick

and the other half sick of the sea. The decks were slimy, the cabins

stuffy and foul. The hours hung heavily, and the horizon line closed in

about us a gray wall of mist.

Then I used to bury myself in my books and try to forget the world, now

lost to sight, and, as I sometimes feared, never to be found again. I

had brought my private library with me; it was complete in two volumes.

There was "Rollo Crossing the Atlantic," by dear old Jacob Abbot; and

this book of juvenile travel and adventure I read on the spot, as it

were,--read it carefully, critically; flattering myself that I was a lad

of experience, capable of detecting any nautical error which Jacob, one

of the most prolific authors of his day, might perchance have made. The

other volume was a pocket copy of "Robinson Crusoe," upon the fly-leaf

of which was scrawled, in an untutored hand, "Charley from

Freddy,"--this Freddy was my juvenile chum. I still have that little

treasure, with its inscription undimmed by time.

Frequently I have thought that the reading of this charming book may

have been the predominating influence in the development of my taste and

temper; for it was while I was absorbed in the exquisitely pathetic

story of Robinson Crusoe that the first island I ever saw dawned upon my

enchanted vision. We had weathered Cape Sable and the Florida Keys. No

sky was ever more marvellously blue than the sea beneath us. The density

and the darkness that prevail in Northern waters had gone out of it; the

sun gilded it, the moon silvered it, and the great stars dropped their

pearl-plummets into it in the vain search for soundings.

Sea gardens were there,--floating gardens adrift in the tropic gale;

pale green gardens of berry and leaf and long meandering vine, rocking

upon the waves that lapped the shores of the Antilles, feeding the

current of the warm Gulf Stream; and, forsooth, some of them to find

their way at last into the mazes of that mysterious, mighty, menacing

sargasso sea. Strange sea-monsters, more beautiful than monstrous,

sported in the foam about our prow, and at intervals dashed it with

color like animated rainbows. From wave to wave the flying fish skimmed

like winged arrows of silver. Sometimes a land-bird was blown across the

sky--the sea-birds we had always with us,--and ever the air was spicy

and the breeze like a breath of balm.

One day a little cloud dawned upon our horizon. It was at first pale

and pearly, then pink like the hollow of a sea-shell, then misty

blue,--a darker blue, a deep blue dissolving into green, and the green

outlining itself in emerald, with many a shade of lighter or darker

green fretting its surface, throwing cliff and crest into high relief,

and hinting at misty and mysterious vales, as fair as fathomless. It

floated up like a cloud from the nether world, and was at first without

form and void, even as its fellows were; but as we drew nearer--for we

were steaming toward it across a sea of sapphire,--it brooded upon the

face of the water, while the clouds that had hung about it were

scattered and wafted away.

Thus was an island born to us of sea and sky,--an island whose peak was

sky-kissed, whose vales were overshadowed by festoons of vapor, whose

heights were tipped with sunshine, and along whose shore the sea sang

softly, and the creaming breakers wreathed themselves, flashed like

snow-drifts, vanished and flashed again. The sea danced and sparkled;

the air quivered with vibrant light. Along the border of that island the

palm-trees towered and reeled, and all its gardens breathed perfume such

as I had never known or dreamed of.

For a few hours only we basked in its beauty, rejoiced in it, gloried in

it; and then we passed it by. Even as it had risen from the sea it

returned into its bosom and was seen no more. Twilight stole in between

us, and the night blotted it out forever. Forever?

I wonder what island it was? A pearl of the Antilles, surely; but its

name and fame, its history and mystery are lost to me. Its memory lives

and is as green as ever. No wintry blasts visit it; even the rich dyes

of autumn do not discolor it. It is perennial in its rare beauty,

unfading, unforgotten, unforgettable; a thing immutable, immemorial--I

had almost said immortal.

Whence it came and whither it has gone I know not. It had its rising and

its setting; its day from dawn to dusk was perfect. Doubtless there are

those whose lives have been passed within its tranquil shade: from

generation to generation it has known all that they have known of joy or

sorrow. All the world that they have knowledge of has been compassed by

the far blue rim of the horizon. That sky-piercing peak was ever the

centre of their universe, and the wandering sea-bird has outflown their

thoughts.

All this came to me as a child, when the first island "swam into my

ken." It was a great discovery--a revelation. Of it were born all the

islands that have been so much to me in later life. And even then I

seemed to comprehend the singular life that all islanders are forced to

live: the independence of that life--for a man's island is his fortress,

girded about with the fathomless moat of the sea; and the dependence of

it--for what is that island but an atom dotting watery space and so

easily cut off from communication with the world at large? Drought may

visit the islander, and he may be starved; the tornado may desolate his

shore; fever and famine and thirst may lie in wait for him; sickness and

sorrow and death abide with him. Thus is he dependent in his

independence.

And he is insecluded in his seclusion, for he can not escape from the

intruder. He should have no wish that may not be satisfied, provided he

be native born; what can he wish for that is beyond the knowledge he has

gained from the objects within his reach? The world is his, so far as he

knows it; yet if he have one wish that calls for aught beyond his

limited horizon he rests unsatisfied.

All that was lovely in that tropic isle appealed to me and filled me

with a great longing. I wanted to sing with the Beloved Bard:

Oh, had we some bright little isle of our own,

In the blue summer ocean, far off and alone!

And yet even then I felt its unutterable loneliness, as I have felt it a

thousand times since; the loneliness that starves the heart, tortures

the brain, and leaves the mind diseased; the loneliness that is

exemplified in the solitude of Alexander Selkirk.

Robinson Crusoe lived in very truth for me the moment I saw and

comprehended that summer isle. He also is immortal. From that hour we

scoured the sea for islands: from dawn to dark we were on the watch. The

Caribbean Sea is well stocked with them. We were threading our way among

them, and might any day hear the glad cry of "Land ho!" But we heard it

not until the morning of the eleventh day out from New York. The sea

seemed more lonesome than ever when we lost our, island; the monotony of

our life was almost unbroken. We began to feel as prisoners must feel

whose _time_ is near out. Oh, how the hours lagged!--but deliverance was

at hand. At last we gave a glad shout, for the land was ours again; we

were to disembark in the course of a few hours, and all was bustle and

confusion until we dropped anchor off the Mosquito Shore.