"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:

'T was Eden's light on earth awhile, and then no more.

Amid the throng she passed along the meadow-floor;

Spring seemed to smile on earth awhile, and then no more,

But whence she came, which way she went, what garb she wore,

I noted not; I gazed awhile, and then no more.

"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:

'T was Paradise on earth awhile, and then no more.

Ah! what avail my vigils pale, my magic lore?

She shone before mine eyes awhile, and then no more.

The shallop of my peace is wrecked on Beauty's shore;

Near Hope's fair isle it rode awhile, and then no more.

"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:

Earth looked like Heaven a little while, and then no more.

Her presence thrilled and lighted to its inmost core

My desert breast a little while, and then no more.

So may, perchance, a meteor glance at midnight o'er

Some ruined pile a little while, and then no more.

"I saw her once, a little while and then no more:

The earth was Eden-land awhile, and then no more.

O, might I see but once again, as once before,

Through chance or wile, that shape awhile, and then no more!

Death soon would heal my grief: this heart, now sad and sore,

Would beat anew, a little while, and then no more!"

Here, nevertheless, something is sacrificed. The translation is by no

means literal, and lacks the crispness and freshness of Oriental

antithesis. Rueckert, I fear, will never be as fortunate as Hariri of

Bosrah.

When, in 1856, I again visited Germany, I received a friendly message

from the old poet, with a kind invitation to visit him. Late in November

I found him, apparently unchanged in body and spirit,--simple,

enthusiastic, and, in spite of his seclusion, awake to all the movements

of the world. One of his married sons was then visiting him, so that the

household was larger and livelier than usual; but, as he sat, during the

evening, in his favorite arm-chair, with pipe and beer, he fell into the

same brilliant, wise strain of talk, undisturbed by all the cheerful

young voices around him.

The conversation gradually wandered away from the Orient to the modern

languages of Europe. I remarked the special capacity of the German for

descriptions of forest scenery,--of the feeling and sentiment of deep,

dark woods, and woodland solitudes.

"May not that be," said he, "because the race lived for centuries in

forests? A language is always richest in its epithets for those things

with which the people who speak it are most familiar. Look at the many

terms for 'horse' and 'sword' in Arabic."

"But the old Britons lived also in forests," I suggested.

"I suspect," he answered, "while the English language was taking shape,

the people knew quite as much of the sea as of the woods. You ought,

therefore, to surpass us in describing coast and sea-scenery, winds and

storms, and the motion of waves."

The idea had not occurred to me before, but I found it to be correct.

Though not speaking English, Rueckert had a thorough critical knowledge

of the language, and a great admiration of its qualities. He admitted

that its chances for becoming the dominant tongue of the world were

greater than those of any other. Much that he said upon this subject

interested me greatly at the time, but the substance of it has escaped

me.

When I left, that evening, I looked upon his cheerful, faithful wife for

the last time. Five years elapsed before I visited Coburg again, and she

died in the interval. In the summer of 1861 I had an hour's conversation

with him, chiefly on American affairs, in which he expressed the keenest

interest. He had read much, and had a very correct understanding of the

nature of the struggle. He was buried in his studies, in a small house

outside of the village, where he spent half of every day alone, and

inaccessible to every one; but his youngest daughter ventured to summon

him away from his books.

Two years later (in June, 1863) I paid my last visit to Neuses. He had

then passed his seventy-fifth birthday; his frame was still unbent, but

the waves of gray hair on his shoulders were thinner, and his step

showed the increasing feebleness of age. The fire of his eye was

softened, not dimmed, and the long and happy life that lay behind him

had given his face a peaceful, serene expression, prophetic of a gentle

translation into the other life that was drawing near. So I shall always

remember him,--scholar and poet, strong with the best strength of a man,

yet trustful and accessible to joy as a child.

Notwithstanding the great amount of Rueckert's contributions to

literature during his life, he has left behind him a mass of poems and

philological papers (the latter said to be of great interest and value)

which his accomplished son, Professor Rueckert of the University of

Breslau, is now preparing for publication.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] The reader may be curious to see how smoothly and naturally these

dactyls (so forced in the translation) flow in the original:--

"Aus der staubigen

Residenz,

In den laubigen

Frischen Lenz--

Aus dem tosenden

Gassenschwall

Zu dem kosenden

Wasserfall,--

Wer sich rettete,

Dank's dem Glueck,

Wie mich bettete

Mein Geschick!"

PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.

VII.

Concord, _August 5, 1842._--A rainy day,--a rainy day. I am commanded to

take pen in hand, and I am therefore banished to the little

ten-foot-square apartment misnamed my study; but perhaps the dismalness

of the day and the dulness of my solitude will be the prominent

characteristics of what I write. And what is there to write about?

Happiness has no succession of events, because it is a part of eternity;

and we have been living in eternity ever since we came to this old

manse. Like Enoch, we seem to have been translated to the other state of

being, without having passed through death. Our spirits must have

flitted away unconsciously, and we can only perceive that we have cast

off our mortal part by the more real and earnest life of our souls.

Externally, our Paradise has very much the aspect of a pleasant old

domicile on earth. This antique house--for it looks antique, though it

was created by Providence expressly for our use, and at the precise time

when we wanted it--stands behind a noble avenue of balm-of-Gilead trees;

and when we chance to observe a passing traveller through the sunshine

and the shadow of this long avenue, his figure appears too dim and

remote to disturb the sense of blissful seclusion. Few, indeed, are the

mortals who venture within our sacred precincts. George Prescott, who

has not yet grown earthly enough, I suppose, to be debarred from

occasional visits to Paradise, comes daily to bring three pints of milk

from some ambrosial cow; occasionally, also, he makes an offering of

mortal flowers. Mr. Emerson comes sometimes, and has been feasted on our

nectar and ambrosia. Mr. Thoreau has twice listened to the music of the

spheres, which, for our private convenience, we have packed into a

musical box. E---- H----, who is much more at home among spirits than

among fleshly bodies, came hither a few times, merely to welcome us to

the ethereal world; but latterly she has vanished into some other region

of infinite space. One rash mortal, on the second Sunday after our

arrival, obtruded himself upon us in a gig. There have since been three

or four callers, who preposterously think that the courtesies of the

lower world are to be responded to by people whose home is in Paradise.

I must not forget to mention that the butcher comes twice or thrice a

week; and we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that

we generally furnish forth our feasts with portions of some delicate

calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness

of becoming our sustenance. Would that I were permitted to record the

celestial dainties that kind Heaven provided for us on the first day of

our arrival! Never, surely, was such food heard of on earth,--at least,

not by me. Well, the above-mentioned persons are nearly all that have

entered into the hallowed shade of our avenue; except, indeed, a certain

sinner who came to bargain for the grass in our orchard, and another who

came with a new cistern. For it is one of the drawbacks upon our Eden

that it contains no water fit either to drink or to bathe in; so that

the showers have become, in good truth, a godsend. I wonder why

Providence does not cause a clear, cold fountain to bubble up at our

doorstep; methinks it would not be unreasonable to pray for such a

favor. At present we are under the ridiculous necessity of sending to

the outer world for water. Only imagine Adam trudging out of Paradise

with a bucket in each hand, to get water to drink, or for Eve to bathe

in! Intolerable! (though our stout handmaiden really fetches our water).

In other respects Providence has treated us pretty tolerably well; but

here I shall expect something further to be done. Also, in the way of

future favors, a kitten would be very acceptable. Animals (except,

perhaps, a pig) seem never out of place, even in the most paradisiacal

spheres. And, by the way, a young colt comes up our avenue, now and

then, to crop the seldom-trodden herbage; and so does a company of cows,

whose sweet breath well repays us for the food which they obtain. There

are likewise a few hens, whose quiet cluck is heard pleasantly about the

house. A black dog sometimes stands at the farther extremity of the

avenue, and looks wistfully hitherward; but when I whistle to him, he

puts his tail between his legs, and trots away. Foolish dog! if he had

more faith, he should have bones enough.

* * * * *

_Saturday, August 6._--Still a dull day, threatening rain, yet without

energy of character enough to rain outright. However, yesterday there

were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent outpouring.

As to the new cistern, it seems to be bewitched; for, while the spout

pours into it like a cataract, it still remains almost empty. I wonder

where Mr. Hosmer got it; perhaps from Tantalus, under the eaves of whose

palace it must formerly have stood; for, like his drinking-cup in Hades,

it has the property of filling itself forever, and never being full.

After breakfast, I took my fishing-rod, and went down through our

orchard to the river-side; but as three or four boys were already in

possession of the best spots along the shore, I did not fish. This river

of ours is the most sluggish stream that I ever was acquainted with. I

had spent three weeks by its side, and swam across it every day, before

I could determine which way its current ran; and then I was compelled to

decide the question by the testimony of others, and not by my own

observation. Owing to this torpor of the stream, it has nowhere a

bright, pebbly shore, nor is there so much as a narrow strip of

glistening sand in any part of its course; but it slumbers along between

broad meadows, or kisses the tangled grass of mowing-fields and

pastures, or bathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and other

water-loving plants. Flags and rushes grow along its shallow margin. The

yellow water-lily spreads its broad, flat leaves upon its surface; and

the fragrant white pond-lily occurs in many favored spots,--generally

selecting a situation just so far from the river's brink, that it cannot

be grasped except at the hazard of plunging in. But thanks be to the

beautiful flower for growing at any rate. It is a marvel whence it

derives its loveliness and perfume, sprouting as it does from the black

mud over which the river sleeps, and from which the yellow lily likewise

draws its unclean life and noisome odor. So it is with many people in

this world: the same soil and circumstances may produce the good and

beautiful, and the wicked and ugly. Some have the faculty of

assimilating to themselves only what is evil, and so they become as

noisome as the yellow water-lily. Some assimilate none but good

influences, and their emblem is the fragrant and spotless pond-lily,

whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about.... Among

the productions of the river's margin, I must not forget the

pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water, and shoots up

a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large green leaves.

Both the flower and the leaves look well in a vase with pond-lilies, and

relieve the unvaried whiteness of the latter; and, being all alike

children of the waters, they are perfectly in keeping with one

another....

I bathe once, and often twice, a day in our river; but one dip into the

salt sea would be worth more than a whole week's soaking in such a

lifeless tide. I have read of a river somewhere (whether it be in

classic regions or among our Western Indians I know not) which seemed to

dissolve and steal away the vigor of those who bathed in it. Perhaps

our stream will be found to have this property. Its water, however, is

pleasant in its immediate effect, being as soft as milk, and always

warmer than the air. Its hue has a slight tinge of gold, and my limbs,

when I behold them through its medium, look tawny. I am not aware that

the inhabitants of Concord resemble their native river in any of their

moral characteristics. Their forefathers, certainly, seem to have had

the energy and impetus of a mountain torrent, rather than the torpor of

this listless stream,--as it was proved by the blood with which they

stained their river of Peace. It is said there are plenty of fish in it;

but my most important captures hitherto have been a mud-turtle and an

enormous eel. The former made his escape to his native element,--the

latter we ate; and truly he had the taste of the whole river in his

flesh, with a very prominent flavor of mud. On the whole, Concord River

is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so

near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard. Neither is it

without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and

in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green

meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance.

Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over

its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows

the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it.

Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays along the brink,

sometimes sheltering himself behind a tuft of bushes, and trailing his

line along the water, in hopes to catch a pickerel. But, taking the

river for all in all, I can find nothing more fit to compare it with,

than one of the half-torpid earth-worms which I dig up for bait. The

worm is sluggish, and so is the river,--the river is muddy, and so is

the worm. You hardly know whether either of them be alive or dead; but

still, in the course of time, they both manage to creep away. The best

aspect of the Concord is when there is a northwestern breeze curling its

surface, in a bright, sunshiny day. It then assumes a vivacity not its

own. Moonlight, also, gives it beauty, as it does to all scenery of

earth or water.

* * * * *

_Sunday, August 7._--At sunset, last evening, I ascended the hill-top

opposite our house; and, looking downward at the long extent of the

river, it struck me that I had done it some injustice in my remarks.

Perhaps, like other gentle and quiet characters, it will be better

appreciated the longer I am acquainted with it. Certainly, as I beheld

it then, it was one of the loveliest features in a scene of great rural

beauty. It was visible through a course of two or three miles, sweeping

in a semicircle round the hill on which I stood, and being the central

line of a broad vale on either side. At a distance, it looked like a

strip of sky set into the earth, which it so etherealized and idealized

that it seemed akin to the upper regions. Nearer the base of the hill, I

could discern the shadows of every tree and rock, imaged with a

distinctness that made them even more charming than the reality;

because, knowing them to be unsubstantial, they assumed the ideality

which the soul always craves in the contemplation of earthly beauty. All

the sky, too, and the rich clouds of sunset, were reflected in the

peaceful bosom of the river; and surely, if its bosom can give back such

an adequate reflection of heaven, it cannot be so gross and impure as I

described it yesterday. Or if so, it shall be a symbol to me that even a

human breast, which may appear least spiritual in some aspects, may

still have the capability of reflecting an infinite heaven in its

depths, and therefore of enjoying it. It is a comfortable thought, that

the smallest and most turbid mud-puddle can contain its own picture of

heaven. Let us remember this, when we feel inclined to deny all

spiritual life to some people, in whom, nevertheless, our Father may

perhaps see the image of his face. This dull river has a deep religion

of its own: so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though,

perhaps, unconsciously.

The scenery of Concord, as I beheld it from the summit of the hill, has

no very marked characteristics, but has a great deal of quiet beauty, in

keeping with the river. There are broad and peaceful meadows, which, I

think, are among the most satisfying objects in natural scenery. The

heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give,

because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a

meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness

which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills

which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual

ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a

distance on the left, appears to be embosomed among wooded hills. The

verdure of the country is much more perfect than is usual at this season

of the year, when the autumnal hue has generally made considerable

progress over trees and grass. Last evening, after the copious showers

of the preceding two days, it was worthy of early June, or, indeed, of a

world just created. Had I not then been alone, I should have had a far

deeper sense of beauty, for I should have looked through the medium of

another spirit. Along the horizon there were masses of those deep clouds

in which the fancy may see images of all things that ever existed or

were dreamed of. Over our old manse, of which I could catch but a

glimpse among its embowering trees, appeared the immensely gigantic

figure of a hound, crouching down, with head erect, as if keeping

watchful guard while the master of the mansion was away.... How sweet it

was to draw near my own home, after having lived homeless in the world

so long!... With thoughts like these, I descended the hill, and

clambered over the stone wall, and crossed the road, and passed up our

avenue, while the quaint old house put on an aspect of welcome.

* * * * *

_Monday, August 8._--I wish I could give a description of our house, for

it really has a character of its own, which is more than can be said of

most edifices in these days. It is two stories high, with a third story

of attic chambers in the gable roof. When I first visited it, early in

June, it looked pretty much as it did during the old clergyman's

lifetime, showing all the dust and disarray that might be supposed to

have gathered about him in the course of sixty years of occupancy. The

rooms seemed never to have been painted; at all events, the walls and

panels, as well as the huge crossbeams, had a venerable and most dismal

tinge of brown. The furniture consisted of high-backed, short-legged,

rheumatic chairs, small, old tables, bedsteads with lofty posts, stately

chests of drawers, looking-glasses in antique black frames, all of which

were probably fashionable in the days of Dr. Ripley's predecessor. It

required some energy of imagination to conceive the idea of transforming

this ancient edifice into a comfortable modern residence. However, it

has been successfully accomplished. The old Doctor's sleeping apartment,

which was the front room on the ground floor, we have converted into a

parlor; and, by the aid of cheerful paint and paper, a gladsome carpet,

pictures and engravings, new furniture, _bijouterie_, and a daily supply

of flowers, it has become one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in

the whole world. The shade of our departed host will never haunt it; for

its aspect has been changed as completely as the scenery of a theatre.

Probably the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan, and vanished

forever. The opposite room has been metamorphosed into a store-room.

Through the house, both in the first and second story, runs a spacious

hall or entry, occupying more space than is usually devoted to such a

purpose in modern times. This feature contributes to give the whole

house an airy, roomy, and convenient appearance; we can breathe the

freer by the aid of the broad passage-way. The front door of the hall

looks up the stately avenue, which I have already mentioned; and the

opposite door opens into the orchard, through which a path descends to

the river. In the second story we have at present fitted up three rooms,

one being our own chamber, and the opposite one a guest-chamber, which

contains the most presentable of the old Doctor's ante-Revolutionary

furniture. After all, the moderns have invented nothing better, as

chamber furniture, than these chests of drawers, which stand on four

slender legs, and rear an absolute tower of mahogany to the ceiling, the

whole terminating in a fantastically carved summit. Such a venerable

structure adorns our guest-chamber. In the rear of the house is the

little room which I call my study, and which, in its day, has witnessed

the intellectual labors of better students than myself. It contains,

with some additions and alterations, the furniture of my bachelor-room

in Boston; but there is a happier disposal of things now. There is a

little vase of flowers on one of the book-cases, and a larger bronze

vase of graceful ferns that surmounts the bureau. In size the room is

just what it ought to be; for I never could compress my thoughts

sufficiently to write in a very spacious room. It has three windows, two

of which are shaded by a large and beautiful willow-tree, which sweeps

against the overhanging eaves. On this side we have a view into the

orchard, and beyond, a glimpse of the river. The other window is the one

from which Mr. Emerson, the predecessor of Dr. Ripley, beheld the first

fight of the Revolution,--which he might well do, as the British troops

were drawn up within a hundred yards of the house; and on looking forth,

just now, I could still perceive the western abutments of the old

bridge, the passage of which was contested. The new monument is visible

from base to summit.

Notwithstanding all we have done to modernize the old place, we seem

scarcely to have disturbed its air of antiquity. It is evident that

other wedded pairs have spent their honeymoons here, that children have

been born here, and people have grown old and died in these rooms,

although for our behoof the same apartments have consented to look

cheerful once again. Then there are dark closets, and strange nooks and

corners, where the ghosts of former occupants might hide themselves in

the daytime, and stalk forth when night conceals all our sacrilegious

improvements. We have seen no apparitions as yet; but we hear strange

noises, especially in the kitchen, and last night, while sitting in the

parlor, we heard a thumping and pounding as of somebody at work in my

study. Nay, if I mistake not, (for I was half asleep,) there was a sound

as of some person crumpling paper in his hand in our very bedchamber.

This must have been old Dr. Ripley with one of his sermons. There is a

whole chest of them in the garret; but he need have no apprehensions of

our disturbing them. I never saw the old patriarch myself, which I

regret, as I should have been glad to associate his venerable figure at

ninety years of age with the house in which he dwelt.

Externally the house presents the same appearance as in the Doctor's

day. It had once a coat of white paint; but the storms and sunshine of

many years have almost obliterated it, and produced a sober, grayish

hue, which entirely suits the antique form of the structure. To repaint

its reverend face would be a real sacrilege. It would look like old Dr.

Ripley in a brown wig. I hardly know why it is that our cheerful and

lightsome repairs and improvements in the interior of the house seem to

be in perfectly good taste, though the heavy old beams and high

wainscoting of the walls speak of ages gone by. But so it is. The

cheerful paper-hangings have the air of belonging to the old walls; and

such modernisms as astral lamps, card-tables, gilded Cologne-bottles,

silver taper-stands, and bronze and alabaster flower-vases, do not seem

at all impertinent. It is thus that an aged man may keep his heart warm

for new things and new friends, and often furnish himself anew with

ideas; though it would not be graceful for him to attempt to suit his

exterior to the passing fashions of the day.

* * * * *

_August 9._--Our orchard in its day has been a very productive and

profitable one; and we were told, that in one year it returned Dr.

Ripley a hundred dollars, besides defraying the expense of repairing the

house. It is now long past its prime: many of the trees are moss-grown,

and have dead and rotten branches intermixed among the green and

fruitful ones. And it may well be so; for I suppose some of the trees

may have been set out by Mr. Emerson, who died in the first year of the

Revolutionary war. Neither will the fruit, probably, bear comparison

with the delicate productions of modern pomology. Most of the trees seem

to have abundant burdens upon them; but they are homely russet apples,

fit only for baking and cooking. (But we have yet to have practical

experience of our fruit.) Justice Shallow's orchard, with its choice

pippins and leather-coats, was doubtless much superior. Nevertheless, it

pleases me to think of the good minister, walking in the shadows of

these old, fantastically-shaped apple-trees, here plucking some of the

fruit to taste, there pruning away a too luxuriant branch, and all the

while computing how many barrels may be filled, and how large a sum will

be added to his stipend by their sale. And the same trees offer their

fruit to me as freely as they did to him,--their old branches, like

withered hands and arms, holding out apples of the same flavor as they

held out to Dr. Ripley in his lifetime. Thus the trees, as living

existences, form a peculiar link between the dead and us. My fancy has

always found something very interesting in an orchard. Apple-trees, and

all fruit-trees, have a domestic character which brings them into

relationship with man. They have lost, in a great measure, the wild

nature of the forest-tree, and have grown humanized by receiving the

care of man, and by contributing to his wants. They have become a part

of the family; and their individual characters are as well understood

and appreciated as those of the human members. One tree is harsh and

crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another exhausts

itself with its free-hearted bounties. Even the shapes of apple-trees

have great individuality, into such strange postures do they put

themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all

directions. And when they have stood around a house for many years, and

held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened

their hearts so often in the fruitful autumn, then it would seem almost

sacrilege to cut them down.

Besides the apple-trees, there are various other kinds of fruit in close

vicinity to the house. When we first arrived, there were several trees

of ripe cherries, but so sour that we allowed them to wither upon the

branches. Two long rows of currant-bushes supplied us abundantly for

nearly four weeks. There are a good many peach-trees, but all of an old

date,--their branches rotten, gummy, and mossy,--and their fruit, I

fear, will be of very inferior quality. They produce most abundantly,

however,--the peaches being almost as numerous as the leaves; and even

the sprouts and suckers from the roots of the old trees have fruit upon

them. Then there are pear-trees of various kinds, and one or two

quince-trees. On the whole, these fruit-trees, and the other items and

adjuncts of the place, convey a very agreeable idea of the outward

comfort in which the good old Doctor must have spent his life.

Everything seems to have fallen to his lot that could possibly be

supposed to render the life of a country clergyman easy and prosperous.

There is a barn, which probably used to be filled, annually, with his

hay and other agricultural products. There are sheds, and a hen-house,

and a pigeon-house, and an old stone pig-sty, the open portion of which

is overgrown with tall weeds, indicating that no grunter has recently

occupied it.... I have serious thoughts of inducting a new incumbent in

this part of the parsonage. It is our duty to support a pig, even if we

have no design of feasting upon him; and, for my own part, I have a

great sympathy and interest for the whole race of porkers, and should

have much amusement in studying the character of a pig. Perhaps I might

try to bring out his moral and intellectual nature, and cultivate his

affections. A cat, too, and perhaps a dog, would be desirable additions

to our household.

* * * * *

_August 10._--The natural taste of man for the original Adam's

occupation is fast developing itself in me. I find that I am a good deal

interested in our garden, although, as it was planted before we came

here, I do not feel the same affection for the plants that I should if

the seed had been sown by my own hands. It is something like nursing and

educating another person's children. Still, it was a very pleasant

moment when I gathered the first string-beans, which were the earliest

esculent that the garden contributed to our table. And I love to watch

the successive development of each new vegetable, and mark its daily

growth, which always affects me with surprise. It is as if something

were being created under my own inspection, and partly by my own aid.

One day, perchance, I look at my bean-vines, and see only the green

leaves clambering up the poles; again, to-morrow, I give a second

glance, and there are the delicate blossoms; and a third day, on a

somewhat closer observation, I discover the tender young beans, hiding

among the foliage. Then, each morning, I watch the swelling of the pods,

and calculate how soon they will be ready to yield their treasures. All

this gives a pleasure and an ideality, hitherto unthought of, to the

business of providing sustenance for my family. I suppose Adam felt it

in Paradise; and, of merely and exclusively earthly enjoyments, there

are few purer and more harmless to be experienced. Speaking of beans, by

the way, they are a classical food, and their culture must have been the

occupation of many ancient sages and heroes. Summer-squashes are a very

pleasant vegetable to be acquainted with. They grow in the forms of urns

and vases,--some shallow, others deeper, and all with a beautifully

scalloped edge. Almost any squash in our garden might be copied by a

sculptor, and would look lovely in marble, or in china; and, if I could

afford it, I would have exact imitations of the real vegetable as

portions of my dining-service. They would be very appropriate dishes for

holding garden-vegetables. Besides the summer-squashes, we have the

crook-necked winter-squash, which I always delight to look at, when it

turns up its big rotundity to ripen in the autumn sun. Except a pumpkin,

there is no vegetable production that imparts such an idea of warmth and

comfort to the beholder. Our own crop, however, does not promise to be

very abundant; for the leaves formed such a superfluous shade over the

young blossoms, that most of them dropped off without producing the germ

of fruit. Yesterday and to-day I have cut off an immense number of

leaves, and have thus given the remaining blossoms a chance to profit by

the air and sunshine; but the season is too far advanced, I am afraid,

for the squashes to attain any great bulk, and grow yellow in the sun.

We have muskmelons and watermelons, which promise to supply us with as

many as we can eat. After all, the greatest interest of these vegetables

does not seem to consist in their being articles of food. It is rather

that we love to see something born into the world; and when a great

squash or melon is produced, it is a large and tangible existence, which

the imagination can seize hold of and rejoice in. I love, also, to see

my own works contributing to the life and well-being of animate nature.

It is pleasant to have the bees come and suck honey out of my

squash-blossoms, though, when they have laden themselves, they fly away

to some unknown hive, which will give me back nothing in return for what

my garden has given them. But there is much more honey in the world, and

so I am content. Indian corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is

a very beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate plant, and

in a mass in a broad field, rustling, and waving, and surging up and

down in the breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon. We have as many

as fifty hills, I should think, which will give us an abundant supply.

Pray Heaven that we may be able to eat it all! for it is not pleasant to

think that anything which Nature has been at the pains to produce should

be thrown away. But the hens will be glad of our superfluity, and so

will the pigs, though we have neither hens nor pigs of our own. But hens

we must certainly keep. There is something very sociable, and quiet, and

soothing, too, in their soliloquies and converse among themselves; and,

in an idle and half-meditative mood, it is very pleasant to watch a

party of hens picking up their daily subsistence, with a gallant

chanticleer in the midst of them. Milton had evidently contemplated such

a picture with delight.

I find that I have not given a very complete idea of our garden,

although it certainly deserves an ample record in this chronicle, since

my labors in it are the only present labors of my life. Besides what I

have mentioned, we have cucumber-vines, which to-day yielded us the

first cucumber of the season, a bed of beets, and another of carrots,

and another of parsnips and turnips, none of which promise us a very

abundant harvest. In truth, the soil is worn out, and, moreover,

received very little manure this season. Also, we have cabbages in

superfluous abundance, inasmuch as we neither of us have the least

affection for them; and it would be unreasonable to expect Sarah, the

cook, to eat fifty head of cabbages. Tomatoes, too, we shall have by and

by. At our first arrival, we found green peas ready for gathering, and

these, instead of the string-beans, were the first offering of the

garden to our board.

TO J. B.

ON SENDING ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT.

1.

Fit for an Abbot of Theleme,

For the whole Cardinals' College, or

The Pope himself to see in dream

Before his lenten vision gleam,

He lies there,--the sogdologer!

2.

His precious flanks with stars besprent,

Worthy to swim in Castaly!

The friend by whom such gifts are sent,--

For him shall bumpers full be spent,--

His health! be Luck his fast ally!

3.

I see him trace the wayward brook

Amid the forest mysteries,

Where at themselves shy aspens look,

Or where, with many a gurgling crook,

It croons its woodland histories.

4.

I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend

Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude

To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,--

(O, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend,

With amorous solicitude!)

5.

I see him step with caution due,

Soft as if shod with moccasins,

Grave as in church,--and who plies you,

Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew

From all our common stock o' sins.

6.

The unerring fly I see him cast,

That as a rose-leaf falls as soft,--

A flash! a whirl! he has him fast!

We tyros,--how that struggle last

Confuses and appalls us oft!

7.

Unfluttered he; calm as the sky

Looks on our tragicomedies,

This way and that he lets him fly,

A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die

Lands him with cool _aplomb_, at ease.

8.

The friend who gave our board such gust,--

Life's care, may he o'erstep it half,

And when Death hooks him, as he must,

He'll do it featly, as I trust,

And J. H. write his epitaph!

9.

O, born beneath the Fishes' sign,

Of constellations happiest,

May he somewhere with Walton dine,

May Horace send him Massic wine,

And Burns Scotch drink,--the nappiest!

10.

And when they come his deeds to weigh,

And how he used the talents his,

One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay,

(If trout had scales,) and 't will outsway

The wrong side of the balances.

PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.

I.

A year or two ago I published in the Atlantic Monthly, as part of a

series of geological sketches, a number of articles on the glacial

phenomena of the Northern hemisphere. To-day I am led to add a new

chapter to that strange history, taken from the Southern hemisphere, and

even from the tropics themselves.

I am prepared to find that the statement of this new phase of the

glacial period will awaken among my scientific colleagues an opposition

even more violent than that by which the first announcement of my views

on this subject was met. I am, however, willing to bide my time; feeling

sure that, as the theory of the ancient extension of glaciers in Europe

has gradually come to be accepted by geologists, so will the existence

of like phenomena, both in North and South America, during the same

epoch, be recognized sooner or later as part of a great series of

physical events extending over the whole globe. Indeed, when the ice

period is fully understood, it will be seen that the absurdity lies in

supposing that climatic conditions so intense could be limited to a

small portion of the world's surface. If the geological winter existed

at all, it must have been cosmic; and it is quite as rational to look

for its traces in the Western as in the Eastern hemisphere, to the south

of the equator as to the north of it. Impressed by this wider view of

the subject, confirmed by a number of unpublished investigations which I

have made during the last three or four years in the United States, I

came to South America, expecting to find in the tropical regions new

evidences of a by-gone glacial period, though, of course, under

different aspects. Such a result seemed to me the logical sequence of

what I had already observed in Europe and in North America.

On my arrival in Rio de Janeiro,--the port at which I first landed in

Brazil,--my attention was immediately attracted by a very peculiar

formation, consisting of an ochraceous, highly ferruginous sandy clay.

During a stay of three months in Rio, whence I made many excursions into

the neighboring country, I had opportunities of studying this deposit,

both in the province of Rio de Janeiro and in the adjoining province of

Minas Geraes. I found that it rested everywhere upon the undulating

surfaces of the solid rocks in place, was almost entirely destitute of

stratification, and contained a variety of pebbles and boulders. The

pebbles were chiefly quartz, sometimes scattered indiscriminately

throughout the deposit, sometimes lying in a seam between it and the

rock below; while the boulders were either sunk in its mass or resting

loose on the surface. At Tijuca, a few miles out of the city of Rio,

among the picturesque hills lying to the southwest of it, these

phenomena may be seen in great perfection. Near Bennett's Hotel--a

favorite resort, not only with the citizens of Rio, but with all

sojourners there who care to leave the town occasionally for its

beautiful environs--may be seen a great number of erratic boulders,

having no connection whatever with the rock in place, and also a bluff

of this superficial deposit studded with boulders, resting above the

partially stratified metamorphic rock. Other excellent opportunities for

observing this formation, also within easy reach from the city, are

afforded along the whole line of the Railroad of Dom Pedro Segundo,

where the cuts expose admirable sections, showing the red, unstratified,

homogeneous mass of sandy clay resting above the solid rock, and often

divided from it by a thin bed of pebbles. There can be no doubt, in the

mind of any one familiar with similar facts observed in other parts of

the world, that this is one of the many forms of drift connected with

glacial action. I was, however, far from anticipating, when I first met

it in the neighborhood of Rio, that I should afterwards find it

spreading over the surface of the country, from north to south and from

east to west, with a continuity which gives legible connection to the

whole geological history of the continent.

It is true that the extensive decomposition of the underlying rock,

penetrating sometimes to a considerable depth, makes it often difficult

to distinguish between it and the drift; and the problem is made still

more puzzling by the fact that the surface of the drift, when baked by

exposure to the hot sun, often assumes the appearance of decomposed

rock, so that great care is required for a correct interpretation of the

facts. A little practice, however, trains the eye to read these

appearances aright, and I may say that I have learned to recognize

everywhere the limit between the two formations. There is indeed one

safe guide, namely, the undulating line, reminding one of _roches

moutonnees_,[C] and marking the irregular surface of the rock on which

the drift was accumulated; whatever modifications the one or the other

may have undergone, this line seems never to disappear. Another

deceptive feature, arising from the frequent disintegration of the rocks

and from the brittle character of some of them, is the presence of loose

fragments, which simulate erratic boulders, but are in fact only

detached masses of the rock in place. A careful examination of their

structure, however, will at once show the geologist whether they belong

where they are found, or have been brought from a distance to their

present resting-place.

But while the features to which I have alluded are unquestionably drift

phenomena, they present in their wider extension, and especially in the

northern part of Brazil, as will hereafter be seen, some phases of

glacial action hitherto unobserved. Just as the investigation of the ice

period in the United States has shown us that ice-fields may move over

open level plains, as well as along the slopes of mountain valleys, so

does a study of the same class of facts in South America reveal new and

unlooked-for features in the history of the ice period. Some will say,

that the fact of the advance of ice-fields over an open country is by no

means established, inasmuch as many geologists believe all the so-called

glacial traces, viz. striae, furrows, polish, etc., found in the United

States, to have been made by floating icebergs at a time when the

continent was submerged. To this I can only answer, that in the State of

Maine I have followed, compass in hand, the same set of furrows, running

from north to south in one unvarying line, over a surface of one hundred

and thirty miles from the Katahdin Iron Range to the sea-shore. These

furrows follow all the inequalities of the country, ascending ranges of

hills varying from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and

descending into the intervening valleys only two or three hundred feet

above the sea, or sometimes even on a level with it. I take it to be

impossible that a floating mass of ice should travel onward in one

rectilinear direction, turning neither to the right nor to the left, for

such a distance. Equally impossible would it be for a detached mass of

ice, swimming on the surface of the water, or even with its base sunk

considerably below it, to furrow in a straight line the summits and

sides of the hills, and the beds of the valleys. It would be carried

over the depressions without touching bottom. Instead of ascending the

mountains, it would remain stranded against any elevation which rose

greatly above its own basis, and, if caught between two parallel ridges,

would float up and down between them. Moreover, the action of solid,

unbroken ice, moving over the ground in immediate contact with it, is so

different from that of floating ice-rafts or icebergs, that, though the

latter have unquestionably dropped erratic boulders, and made furrows

and striae on the surface where they happened to be grounded, these

phenomena will easily be distinguished from the more connected traces of

glaciers, or extensive sheets of ice, resting directly upon the face of

the country and advancing over it.

There seems thus far to be an inextricable confusion, in the ideas of

many geologists, as to the respective action of currents, icebergs, and

glaciers. It is time they should learn to distinguish between classes of

facts so different from each other, and so easily recognized after the

discrimination has once been made. As to the southward movement of an

immense field of ice, extending over the whole north, it seems

inevitable, the moment we admit that snow may accumulate around the pole

in such quantities as to initiate a pressure radiating in every

direction. Snow, alternately thawing and freezing, must, like water,

find its level at last. A sheet of snow ten or fifteen thousand feet in

thickness, extending all over the northern and southern portions of the

globe, must necessarily lead, in the end, to the formation of a northern

and southern cap of ice, moving toward the equator.

I have spoken of Tijuca and the Dom Pedro Railroad as favorable

localities for studying the peculiar southern drift; but one meets it in

every direction. A sheet of drift, consisting of the same homogeneous,

unstratified paste, and containing loose materials of all sorts and

sizes, covers the country. It is of very uneven thickness,--sometimes

thrown into relief, as it were, by the surrounding denudations, and

rising into hills,--sometimes reduced to a thin layer,--sometimes, as,

for instance, on steep slopes, washed entirely away, leaving the bare

face of the rock exposed. It has, however, remained comparatively

undisturbed on some very abrupt ascents; as, for instance, on the

Corcovado, along the path leading up the mountain, are some very fine

banks of drift,--the more striking from the contrast of their deep red

color with the surrounding vegetation. I have myself followed this sheet

of drift from Rio de Janeiro to the top of the Serra do Mar, where, just

outside the pretty town of Petropolis, the river Piabanha may be seen

flowing between banks of drift, in which it has excavated its bed;

thence I have traced it along the beautiful macadamized road leading to

Juiz de Fora in the province of Minas Geraes, and beyond this to the

farther side of the Serra da Babylonia. Throughout this whole tract of

country, in the greater part of which travelling is easy and

delightful,--an admirable line of diligences, over one of the finest

roads in the world, being established as far as Juiz de Fora,--the drift

may be seen along the roadside, in immediate contact with the native

crystalline rock. The fertility of the land, also, is a guide to the

presence of drift. Wherever it lies thickest over the surface, there are

the most flourishing coffee-plantations; and I believe that a more

systematic regard to this fact would have a most beneficial influence

upon the agricultural interests of the country. No doubt the fertility

arises from the great variety of chemical elements contained in the

drift, and the kneading process it has undergone beneath the gigantic

ice-plough,--a process which makes glacial drift everywhere the most

fertile soil. Since my return from the Amazons, my impression as to the

general distribution of these phenomena has been confirmed by the

reports of some of my assistants, who have been travelling in other

parts of the country. Mr. Frederick C. Hartt, accompanied by Mr.

Copeland, one of the volunteer aids of the expedition, has been making

collections and geological observations in the province of Spiritu

Santo, in the valley of the Rio Doce, and afterwards in the valley of

the Mucury. He informs me that he has found everywhere the same sheet

of red, unstratified clay, with pebbles and occasional boulders,

overlying the rock in place. Mr. Orestes St. John, who, taking the road

through the interior, has visited, with the same objects in view, the

valleys of the Rio San Francisco and the Rio das Velhas, and also the

valley of Piauhy, gives the same account, with the exception that he

found no erratic boulders in these more northern regions. The rarity of

erratic boulders, not only in the deposits of the Amazons proper, but in

those of the whole region which may be considered as the Amazonian

basin, is accounted for, as we shall see hereafter, by the mode of their

formation. The observations of Mr. Hartt and Mr. St. John are the more

valuable, because I had employed them both, on our first arrival in Rio,

in making geological surveys of different sections on the Dom Pedro

Railroad, so that they had a great familiarity with those formations

before starting on their separate journeys. Recently, Mr. St. John and

myself having met at Para on returning from our respective journeys, I

have had an opportunity of comparing on the spot his geological sections

from the valley of the Piauhy with the Amazonian deposits. There can be

no doubt of the absolute identity of the formations in these valleys.

Having arranged the work of my assistants, and sent several of them to

collect and make geological examinations in other directions, I myself,

with the rest of my companions, proceeded up the coast to Para. I was

surprised to find at every step of my progress the same geological

phenomena which had met me at Rio. As the steamer stops for a number of

hours, or sometimes for a day or two, at Bahia, Maceio, Pernambuco,

Parahiba, Natal, Ceara, and Maranham, I had many opportunities for

observation. It was my friend Major Coutinho, already an experienced

Amazonian traveller, who first told me that this formation continued

through the whole valley of the Amazons, and was also to be found on all

of its affluents which he had visited, although he had never thought of

referring it to so recent a period. And here let me interrupt the course

of my remarks to say, that the facts recorded in this article are by no

means exclusively the result of my own investigations. They are in great

part due to this able and intelligent young Brazilian, a member of the

government corps of engineers, who, by the kindness of the Emperor, was

associated with me in my Amazonian expedition. I can truly say that he

has been my good genius throughout the whole journey, saving me, by his

previous knowledge of the ground, from the futile and misdirected

expenditure of means and time often inevitable in a new country, where

one is imperfectly acquainted both with the people and their language.

We have worked together in this investigation; my only advantage over

him being my greater familiarity with like phenomena in Europe and North

America, and consequent readiness in the practical handling of the

facts, and in perceiving their connection. Major Coutinho's assertion,

that on the banks of the Amazons I should find the same red,

unstratified clay as in Rio and along the southern coast, seemed to me

at first almost incredible, impressed as I was with the generally

received notions as to the ancient character of the Amazonian deposits,

referred by Humboldt to the Devonian, and by Martins to the Triassic

period, and considered by all travellers to be at least as old as the

Tertiaries. The result, however, confirmed his report, at least so far

as the component materials of the formation are concerned; but, as will

be seen hereafter, the mode of their deposition, and the time at which

it took place, have not been the same at the north and south; and this

difference of circumstances has modified the aspect of a formation

essentially the same throughout. At first sight, it would indeed appear

that this formation, as it exists in the valley of the Amazons, is

identical with that of Rio; but it differs from it in the rarity of its

boulders, and in showing occasional signs of stratification. It is also

everywhere underlaid by coarse, well-stratified deposits, resembling

somewhat the recife of Bahia and Pernambuco; whereas the unstratified

drift of the south rests immediately upon the undulating surface of

whatever rock happens to make the foundation of the country, whether

stratified or crystalline. The peculiar sandstone on which the Amazonian

clay rests exists nowhere else. Before proceeding, however, to describe

the Amazonian deposits in detail, I ought to say something of the nature

and origin of the valley itself.

The Valley of the Amazons was first sketched out by the elevation of two

tracts of land; namely, the plateau of Guiana on the north, and the

central plateau of Brazil on the south. It is probable that, at the time

these two table-lands were lifted above the sea-level, the Andes did not

exist, and the ocean flowed between them through an open strait. It

would seem (and this is a curious result of modern geological

investigations) that the portions of the earth's surface earliest raised

above the ocean have trended from east to west. The first tract of land

lifted above the waters in North America was also a long continental

island, running from Newfoundland almost to the present base of the

Rocky Mountains. This tendency may be attributed to various causes,--to

the rotation of the earth, the consequent depression of its poles, and

the breaking of its crust along the lines of greatest tension thus

produced. At a later period, the upheaval of the Andes took place,

closing the western side of this strait, and thus transforming it into a

gulf, open only toward the east. Little or nothing is known of the

earlier stratified deposits resting against the crystalline masses first

uplifted in the Amazonian Valley. There is here no sequence, as in North

America, of Azoic, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous formations,

shored up against each other by the gradual upheaval of the continent,

although unquestionably older palaeozoic and secondary beds underlie,

here and there, the later formations. Indeed, Major Coutinho has found

palaeozoic deposits, with characteristic shells, in the valley of the Rio

Tapajos, at the first cascade, and carboniferous deposits have been

noticed along the Rio Guapore and the Rio Marnore. But the first chapter

in the valley's geological history about which we have connected and

trustworthy data is that of the cretaceous period. It seems certain,

that, at the close of the secondary age, the whole Amazonian basin

became lined with a cretaceous deposit, the margins of which crop out at

various localities on its borders. They have been observed along its

southern limits, on its western outskirts along the Andes, in Venezuela

along the shore-line of mountains, and also in certain localities near

its eastern edge. I well remember that one of the first things which

awakened my interest in the geology of the Amazonian Valley was the

sight of some cretaceous fossil fishes from the province of Ceara. These

fossil fishes were collected by Mr. George Gardner, to whom science is

indebted for the most extensive information yet obtained respecting the

geology of that part of Brazil. In this connection, let me say that here

and elsewhere I shall speak of the provinces of Ceara, Piauhy, and

Maranham as belonging geologically to the Valley of the Amazons, though

their shore is bathed by the ocean, and their rivers empty directly into

the Atlantic. But I entertain no doubt, and I hope I may hereafter be

able to show, that, at an earlier period, the northeastern coast of

Brazil stretched much farther seaward than in our day; so far, indeed,

that in those times the rivers of all these provinces must have been

tributaries of the Amazon in its eastward course. The evidence for this

conclusion is substantially derived from the identity of the deposits in

the valleys belonging to these provinces with those of the valleys

through which the actual tributaries of the Amazons flow; as, for

instance, the Tocantins, the Xingu, the Tapajos, the Madura, etc.

Besides the fossils above alluded to from the eastern borders of this

ancient basin, I have had recently another evidence of its cretaceous

character from its southern region. Mr. William Chandless, on his return

from a late journey on the Rio Purus, presented me with a series of

fossil remains of the highest interest, and undoubtedly belonging to the

cretaceous period. They were collected by himself on the Rio Aquiry, an

affluent of the Rio Purus. Most of them were found in place between the

tenth and eleventh degrees of south latitude, and the sixty-seventh and

sixty-ninth degrees of west longitude from Greenwich, in localities

varying from 430 to 650 feet above the sea-level. There are among them

remains of Mososaurus, and of fishes closely allied to those already

represented by Faujas in his description of Maestricht, and

characteristic, as is well known to geological students, of the most

recent cretaceous period.

Thus in its main features the Valley of the Amazons, like that of the

Mississippi, is a cretaceous basin. This resemblance suggests a further

comparison between the twin continents of North and South America. Not

only is their general form the same, but their framework as we may call

it, that is, the lay of their great mountain-chains and of their

table-lands, with the extensive intervening depressions, presents a

striking similarity. Indeed, a zooelogist, accustomed to trace a like

structure under variously modified animal forms, cannot but have his

homological studies recalled to his mind by the coincidence between

certain physical features in the northern and southern parts of the

Western hemisphere. And yet here, as throughout all nature, these

correspondences are combined with a distinctness of individualization,

which leaves its respective character not only to each continent as a

whole, but also to the different regions circumscribed within its

borders. In both, however, the highest mountain-chains, the Rocky

Mountains and Coast Range with their wide intervening table-land in

North America, and the chain of the Andes with its lesser plateaus in

South America, run along the western coast; both have a great eastern

promontory,--Newfoundland in the northern continent, and Cape St. Roque

in the southern;--and though the resemblance between the inland

elevations is perhaps less striking, yet the Canadian range, the White

Mountains, and the Alleghanies may very fairly be compared to the

table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, and the Serra do Mar. Similar

correspondences may be traced among the river systems. The Amazons and

the St. Lawrence, though so different in dimensions, remind us of each

other by their trend and geographical position; and while the one is fed

by the largest river system in the world, the other drains the most

extensive lake surfaces known to exist in immediate contiguity. The

Orinoco, with its bay, recalls Hudson's Bay and its many tributaries,

and the Rio Magdalena may be said to be the South American Mackenzie;

while the Rio de la Plata represents geographically our Mississippi, and

the Paraguay recalls the Missouri. The Parana may be compared to the

Ohio; the Pilcomayo, Vermejo, and Salado rivers, to the River Platte,

the Arkansas, and the Red River in the United States; while the rivers

farther south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, represent the rivers of

Patagonia and the southern parts of the Argentine Republic. Not only is

there this general correspondence between the mountain elevations and

the river systems, but as the larger river basins of North

America--those of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the

Mackenzie--meet in the low tracts extending along the foot of the Rocky

Mountains, so do the basins of the Amazons, the Rio de la Plata, and the

Orinoco join each other along the eastern slope of the Andes.

But while in geographical homology the Amazons compare with the St.

Lawrence, and the Mississippi with the Rio de la Plata, the Mississippi

and the Amazons, as has been said, resemble each other in their local

geological character. They have both received a substratum of cretaceous

beds, above which are accumulated their more recent deposits, so that,

in their most prominent geological features, both may be considered as

cretaceous basins, containing extensive deposits of a very recent age.

Of the history of the Amazonian Valley during the periods immediately

following the Cretaceous, we know little or nothing. Whether the

Tertiary deposits are hidden under the more modern ones, or whether they

are wholly wanting, the basin having, perhaps, been raised above the

sea-level before that time, or whether they have been swept away by the

tremendous inundations in the valley, which have certainly destroyed a

great part of the cretaceous deposit, they have never been observed in

any part of the Amazonian basin. Whatever tertiary deposits are

represented in geological maps of this region are so marked in

consequence of an incorrect identification of strata belonging, in fact,

to a much more recent period.

A minute and extensive survey of the Valley of the Amazons is by no

means an easy task, and its difficulty is greatly increased by the fact

that the lower formations are only accessible on the river margins

during the _vasante_, as it is called, or dry season, when the waters

shrink in their beds, leaving a great part of their banks exposed. It

happened that the first three or four months of my journey, August,

September, October, and November, were those when the waters are

lowest,--reaching their minimum in September and October, and beginning

to rise again in November,--so that I had an excellent opportunity in

ascending the river to observe its geological structure. Throughout its

whole length, three distinct geological formations may be traced, the

two lower of which have followed in immediate succession, and are

conformable with one another, while the third rests unconformably upon

them, following all the inequalities of the greatly denudated surface

presented by the second formation. Notwithstanding this seeming

interruption in the sequence of these deposits, the third, as we shall

presently see, belongs to the same series, and was accumulated in the

same basin. The lowest set of beds of the whole series is rarely

visible, but it seems everywhere to consist of sandstone, or even of

loose sands well stratified, the coarser materials lying invariably

below, and the finer above. Upon this lower set of beds rests everywhere

an extensive deposit of fine laminated clays, varying in thickness, but

frequently dividing into layers as thin as a sheet of paper. In some

localities they exhibit in patches an extraordinary variety of beautiful

colors,--pink, orange, crimson, yellow, gray, blue, and also black and

white. The Indians are very skilful in preparing paints from these

colored clays, with which they ornament their pottery, and the bowls of

various shapes and sizes made from the fruit of the Cuieira-tree. These

clay deposits assume occasionally a peculiar appearance, and one which

might mislead the observer as to their true nature. When their surface

has been long exposed to the action of the atmosphere and to the heat of

the burning sun, they look so much like clay slates of the oldest

geological epochs, that, at first sight, I took them for primary slates,

my attention being attracted to them by a regular cleavage as distinct

as that of the most ancient clay slates. And yet at Tonantins, on the

banks of the Solimoens, in a locality where their exposed surfaces had

this primordial appearance, I found in these very beds a considerable

amount of well-preserved leaves, the character of which proves their

recent origin. These leaves do not even indicate as ancient a period as

the Tertiaries, but resemble so closely the vegetation of to-day, that I

have no doubt, when examined by competent authority, they will be

identified with living plants. The presence of such an extensive clay

formation, stretching over a surface of more than three thousand miles

in length and about seven hundred in breadth, is not easily explained

under any ordinary circumstances. The fact that it is so thoroughly

laminated shows that, in the basin in which it was formed, the waters

must have been unusually quiet, containing identical materials

throughout, and that these materials must have been deposited over the

whole bottom in the same way. It is usually separated from the

superincumbent beds by a glazed crust of hard, compact sandstone, almost

resembling a ferruginous quartzite.

Upon this follow beds of sand and sandstone, varying in the regularity

of their strata, reddish in color, often highly ferruginous, and more or

less nodulous or porous. They present frequent traces of

cross-stratification, alternating with regularly stratified horizontal

beds, with here and there an intervening layer of clay. It would seem as

if the character of the water basin had now changed, and as if the

waters under which this second formation was deposited had vibrated

between storm and calm,--had sometimes flowed more gently, and again had

been tossed to and fro,--giving to some of the beds the aspect of true

torrential deposits. Indeed, these sandstone formations present a great

variety of aspects. Sometimes they are very regularly laminated, or

assume even the appearance of the hardest quartzite. This is usually the

case with the uppermost beds. In other localities, and more especially

in the lowermost beds, the whole mass is honeycombed, as if drilled by

worms or boring shells, the hard parts enclosing softer sands or clays.

Occasionally the ferruginous materials prevail to such an extent, that

some of these beds might be mistaken for bog ore, while others contain a

large amount of clay, more regularly stratified, and alternating with

strata of sandstone, thus recalling the most characteristic forms of the

Old Red or Triassic formations. This resemblance has, no doubt, led to

the identification of the Amazonian deposits with the more ancient

formations of Europe. At Monte Alegre, of which I shall presently speak

more in detail, such a clay bed divides the lower from the upper

sandstone. The thickness of these sandstones is extremely variable. In

the basin of the Amazons proper, they hardly rise anywhere above the

level of high water during the rainy season, while at low water, in the

summer months, they maybe seen everywhere along the river-banks. It will

be seen, however, that the limit between high and low water gives no

true measure of the original thickness of the whole series.

In the neighborhood of Almeirim, at a short distance from the northern

bank of the river, and nearly parallel with its course, there rises a

line of low hills, interrupted here and there, but extending in evident

connection from Almeirim through the region of Monte Alegre to the

heights of Obidos. These hills have attracted the attention of

travellers, not only from their height, which appears greater than it

is, because they rise abruptly from an extensive plain, but also on

account of their curious form, many of them being perfectly level on

top, like smooth tables, and very abruptly divided from each other by

low, intervening spaces.[D] Nothing has hitherto been known of the

geological structure of these hills, but they have been usually

represented as the southernmost spurs of the table-land of Guiana. On

ascending the river, I felt the greatest curiosity to examine them; but

at the time I was deeply engrossed in studying the distribution of

fishes in the Amazonian waters, and in making large ichthyological

collections, for which it was very important not to miss the season of

low water, when the fishes are most easily obtained. I was, therefore,

obliged to leave this most interesting geological problem, and content

myself with examining the structure of the valley so far as it could be

seen on the river-banks and in the neighborhood of my different

collecting stations. On my return, however, when my collections were

completed, I was free to pursue this investigation, in which Major

Coutinho was as much interested as myself. We determined to select Monte

Alegre as the centre of our exploration, the serra in that region being

higher than elsewhere. As I was detained by indisposition at Manaos, for

some days, at the time we had appointed for the excursion, Major

Coutinho preceded me, and had already made one trip to the serra, with

some very interesting results, when I joined him, and we made a second

journey together.

Monte Alegre lies on a side arm of the Amazons, a little off from its

main course. This side arm, called the Rio Gurupatuba, is simply a

channel running parallel with the Amazons, and cutting through from a

higher to a lower point. Its dimensions are, however, greatly

exaggerated in all the maps thus far published, where it is usually made

to appear as a considerable northern tributary of the Amazons. The town

stands on an elevated terrace, separated from the main stream by the Rio

Gurupatuba, and by an extensive flat, consisting of numerous lakes

divided from each other by low alluvial land, and mostly connected by

narrow channels. To the west of the town, this terrace sinks abruptly to

a wide sandy plain called the Campos, covered with a low forest growth,

and bordered on its farther limit by the picturesque serra of Errere.

The form of this mountain is so abrupt, its rise from the plain so bold

and sudden, that it seems more than twice its real height. Judging by

the eye, and comparing it with the mountains I had last seen,--the

Corcovado, the Gavia and Tijuca range in the neighborhood of Rio,--I had

supposed it to be three or four thousand feet high, and was greatly

astonished when our barometric observations showed it to be somewhat

less than nine hundred feet in its most elevated point. This, however,

agrees with Martins's measurement of the Almeirim hills, which he says

are eight hundred feet in height.

Major Coutinho and I reached the serra by different roads; he crossing

the Campos on horseback with Captain Faria, the commander of our

steamer, and one or two other friends from Monte Alegre, who joined our

party, while I went by canoe. The canoe journey is somewhat longer. A

two hours' ride across the Campos brings you to the foot of the

mountain, whereas the trip by boat takes more than twice that time. But

I preferred going by water, as it gave me an opportunity of seeing the

vast variety of animals haunting the river-banks and lakes. As this was

almost the only occasion in all my journey when I passed a day in the

pure enjoyment of nature, without the labor of collecting,--which in

this hot climate, where specimens require such immediate and constant

attention, is very great,--I am tempted to interrupt our geology for a

moment, to give an account of it. I learned how rich a single day may be

in this wonderful tropical world, if one's eyes are only open to the

wealth of animal and vegetable life. Indeed, a few hours so spent in the

field, in simply watching animals and plants, teaches more of the

distribution of life than a month of closet study; for under such

circumstances all things are seen in their true relations. Unhappily, it

is not easy to present the picture as a whole, for all our written

descriptions are more or less dependent on nomenclature, and the local

names are hardly known out of the districts where they belong, while

systematic names are familiar to few.

I started before daylight; but, as the dawn began to redden the sky,

large flocks of ducks, and of the small Amazonian geese, might be seen

flying towards the lakes. Here and there a cormorant sat alone on the

branch of a dead tree, or a kingfisher poised himself over the water,

watching for his prey. Numerous gulls were gathered in large companies

on the trees along the river-shore; alligators lay on its surface,

diving with a sudden plash at the approach of our canoe; and

occasionally a porpoise emerged from the water, showing himself for a

moment and then disappearing again. Sometimes we startled a herd of

capivara, resting on the water's edge; and once we saw a sloth, sitting

upon the branch of an Imbauba (Cecropia) tree, rolled up in its peculiar

attitude, the very picture of indolence, with its head sunk between its

arms. Much of the river-shore consisted of low alluvial land, and was

covered with that peculiar and beautiful grass known as Capim; this

grass makes an excellent pasturage for cattle, and the abundance of it

in this region renders the district of Monte Alegre very favorable for

agricultural purposes. Here and there, where the red clay soil rose

above the level of the water, a palm-thatched cabin stood on the low

bluff, with a few trees about it. Such a house was usually the centre of

a cattle farm, and large herds might be seen grazing in the adjoining

fields. Along the river-banks, where the country is chiefly open, with

extensive low marshy grounds, the only palm to be seen is the Maraja.

After keeping along the Rio Gurupatuba for some distance, we turned to

the right into a narrow stream, which has the character of an Igarape in

its lower course, though higher up it drains the country between the

serra of Errere and that of Tajury, and assumes the appearance of a

small river. It is named after the serra, and is known as the Rio

Errere. This stream, narrow and picturesque, and often so overgrown with

capim that the canoe pursued its course with difficulty, passed through

a magnificent forest of the beautiful fan-palm, called here the Miriti

(_Mauritia flexuosa_). This forest stretched for miles, overshadowing,

as a kind of underbrush, many smaller trees and innumerable shrubs, some

of which bore bright, conspicuous flowers. It seemed to me a strange

spectacle,--a forest of monocotyledonous trees with a dicotyledonous

undergrowth; the inferior plants thus towering above and sheltering the

superior ones. Among the lower trees were many Leguminosae,--one of the

most striking, called Fava, having a colossal pod. The whole mass of

vegetation was woven together by innumerable lianas and creeping vines,

in the midst of which the flowers of the Bignonia, with its open,

trumpet-shaped corolla, were conspicuous. The capim was bright with the

blossoms of the mallow growing in its midst, and was often edged with

the broad-leaved Aninga, a large aquatic Arum.

Through such a forest, where the animal life was no less rich and varied

than the vegetation, our boat glided slowly for hours. The number and

variety of birds struck me with astonishment. The coarse sedgy grasses

on either side were full of water birds, one of the most common of which

was a small chestnut-brown wading bird, the Jacana (Parra), whose toes

are immensely long in proportion to its size, enabling it to run upon

the surface of the aquatic vegetation, as if it were solid ground. It

was in the month of January, their breeding season, and at every turn of

the boat we started them up in pairs. Their flat, open nests generally

contained five flesh-colored eggs, streaked in zigzag with dark brown

lines. The other waders were a snow-white heron, another ash-colored,

smaller species, and a large white stork. The ash-colored herons were

always in pairs, the white one always single, standing quiet and alone

on the edge of the water, or half hidden in the green capim. The trees

and bushes were full of small warbler-like birds, which it would be

difficult to characterize separately. To the ordinary observer they

might seem like the small birds of our woods; but there was one species

among them which attracted my attention by its numbers, and also because

it builds the most extraordinary nest, considering the size of the bird

itself, that I have ever seen. It is known among the country people by

two names, as the Pedreiro or the Forneiro, both names referring, as

will be seen, to the nature of its habitation. This singular nest is

built of clay, and is as hard as stone (_pedra_), while it has the form

of the round mandioca oven (_forno_) in which the country people prepare

their farinha, or flour, made from the mandioca root. It is about a

foot in diameter, and stands edgewise upon a branch, or in the crotch of

a tree. Among the smaller birds, I noticed bright Tanagers, and also a

species resembling the Canary. Besides these, there were the wagtails,

the black and white widow finches, the hang-nests, or Jape, as they are

called here, with their pendent bag-like dwellings, and the familiar

"Bem ti vi." Humming-birds, which we are always apt to associate with

tropical vegetation, were very scarce. I saw but a few specimens.

Thrushes and doves were more frequent, and I noticed also three or four

kinds of woodpeckers. Of these latter there were countless numbers along

our canoe path, flying overhead in dense crowds, and, at times, drowning

every other sound in their high, noisy chatter.

These made a deep impression upon me. Indeed, in all regions, however

far away from his own home, in the midst of a fauna and flora entirely

new to him, the traveller is startled occasionally by the song of a bird

or the sight of a flower so familiar that it transports him at once to

woods where every tree is like a friend to him. It seems as if something

akin to what in our own mental experience we call reminiscence or

association existed in the workings of nature; for though the organic

combinations are so distinct in different climates and countries, they

never wholly exclude each other. Every zooelogical and botanical province

retains some link which binds it to all the rest, and makes it part of

the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow

of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the

thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant

cries of the parrot and paroquet.

Birds of prey, also, were not wanting. Among them was one about the size

of our kite, and called the Red Hawk, which was so tame that, even when

our canoe passed immediately under the low branch on which he was

sitting, he did not fly away. But of all the groups of birds, the most

striking as compared with corresponding groups in the temperate zone,

and the one which reminded me the most directly of the fact that every

region has its peculiar animal world, was that of the gallinaceous

birds. The most frequent is the Cigana, to be seen in groups of fifteen

or twenty, perched upon trees overhanging the water, and feeding upon

berries. At night they roost in pairs, but in the daytime are always in

larger companies. In their appearance they have something of the

character of both the pheasant and peacock, and yet do not closely

resemble either. It is a curious fact, that, with the exception of some

small partridge-like gallinaceous birds, all the representatives of this

family in Brazil, and especially in the Valley of the Amazons, belong to

types which do not exist in other parts of the world. Here we find

neither pheasants, nor cocks of the woods, nor grouse; but in their

place abound the Mutun, the Jacu, the Jacami, and the Unicorn (Crax,

Penelope, Psophia, and Palamedea), all of which are so remote from the

gallinaceous types found farther north, that they remind one quite as

much of the bustard, and other ostrich-like birds, as of the hen and

pheasant. They differ also from Northern gallinaceous birds in the

greater uniformity of the sexes, none of them exhibiting those striking

differences between the males and females which we see in the pheasants,

the cocks of the woods, and in our barn-yard fowls. While birds abounded

in such numbers, insects were rather scarce. I saw but few and small

butterflies, and beetles were still more rare. The most numerous insects

were the dragon-flies,--some with crimson bodies, black heads, and

burnished wings,--others with large green bodies, crossed by blue bands.

Of land shells I saw but one creeping along the reeds; and of water

shells I gathered only a few small Ampullariae.

Having ascended the river to a point nearly on a line with the serra, I

landed, and struck across the Campos on foot. Here I entered upon an

entirely different region,--a dry, open plain, with scanty vegetation.

The most prominent plants were clusters of cactus and curua palms, a

kind of stemless, low palm, with broad, elegant leaves springing

vase-like from the ground. In these dry, sandy fields, rising gradually

toward the serra, I observed in the deeper gullies formed by the heavy

rains the laminated clays which are everywhere the foundation of the

Amazonian strata. They here presented again so much the character of

ordinary clay slates, that I thought I had at last come upon some old

geological formation. Instead of this I only obtained fresh evidence

that, by baking them, the burning sun of the tropics may produce upon

laminated clays of recent origin the same effect as plutonic agents have

produced upon the ancient clays, that is, it may change them into

metamorphic slates. As I approached the serra, I was again reminded how,

under the most dissimilar circumstances, similar features recur

everywhere in nature. I came suddenly upon a little creek, bordered with

the usual vegetation of such shallow water-courses, and on its brink

stood a sand-piper, which flew away at my approach, uttering its

peculiar cry, so like what one hears at home that, had I not seen him, I

should have recognized him by his voice.

After an hour's walk under the scorching sun, I was glad to find myself

at the hamlet of Errere, near the foot of the serra, where I rejoined my

companions. It was already noon, and they had arrived some time before.

They had, however, waited breakfast for me, to which we all brought a

good appetite. Breakfast over, we slung our hammocks under the trees,

and during the heat of the day enjoyed the rest which we had so richly

earned.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] The name consecrated by De Saussure to designate certain rocks in

Switzerland, which have had their surfaces rounded under the action of

the glaciers. Their gently swelling outlines are thought to resemble

sheep resting on the ground, and for this reason the people in the Alps

call them _roches moutonnees_.

[D] The atlas in Martins's "Journey to Brazil," or the sketch

accompanying Bates's description of these hills in his "Naturalist on

the Amazons," will give an idea of their aspect.

A BUNDLE OF BONES.

And a very large bundle it was, as it lay, in _disjecta membra_, before

the astonished eyes of the first learned palaeontologist who gazed, in

wondering delight, on its strange proportions. As it rears its ungainly

form some eighteen feet above us, Madam, you may gather some idea of

what it was in its native forests, I don't know how many hundreds of

thousands of years ago. You need not snuggle up to me so, Tommy. The

creature is not alive, unless it is enjoying Sydney Smith's idea of

comfort, and, having taken off its flesh, is airing itself in its bones.

Megatherium was a very proper name for it, if not a very common one; for

_large animal_ it was, beyond any dispute, and could scarcely have been

much of a pet with the human beings of old, unless "there were giants in

those days," and enormous ones at that. How Owen must have gloated over

that treasure-trove! Captain Kyd's buried booty would have been worse

trash to him than Iago's stolen purse, beside this unearthed deposit of

an antediluvian age. Its missing caudal vertebrae would outweigh now, in

his anatomical scales, all the hidden gains of the whole race of

pirates, past, present, and to come. Think of those bones with all the

original muscle upon them! Why, they would outweigh all the worthy

members of the Boston Society of Natural History together, unless they

are uncommonly obese. Where could Noah have stowed a pair of such

enormous beasts, supposing that they existed as late as when the ark was

launched? Sloth, indeed! I am inclined to think the five or six tons of

flesh these bones must have carried round might reasonably permit the

bearer to rank, on _a priori_ reasons, among the most confirmed of

sluggards, even if Owen and Agassiz and Wyman had not so decided on

strictly scientific, anatomical grounds.

My dear Madam, does it ever occur to you, when you wonderingly gaze on

the strange relics around this hall,--these stony skeletons, these

silent remnants of extinct races, that you are face to face with

rock-buried creatures, who lived and sported and mated, who basked in

the sunlight and breathed in the air of this world, hundreds of

thousands of years before you were thought of? who rested in the shade

of the trees which made the coal that warms you to-day? who trod the

soft mud which now builds in solid strength the dwellings which shelter

you? who darted through the deep waters that foamed over a bed now

raised into snow-capped mountains? who frolicked on a shore now piled

with miles of massive rock? whose bones were petrifactions untold ages

before the race was born which built the Pyramids? Do you really

understand how far back into antiquity these grim fossils bear you? Can

you really conceive of Nature, our dear, kind, gentle mother, in those

early throes of her maternity which brought forth Megatheria and

Ichthyosauri,--when the "firm and rock-built earth" was tilted into

mountain ranges, wrinkled by earthquakes, and ploughed by mighty hills

of moving ice? And yet in those distant days, which have left their

ripple-marks and rain-drops in the weighty stone, there was life, warm,

breathing, sentient life, which, dying, traced its own epitaph on its

massive tomb. Shakespeare, Caesar, Brahma, Noah, Adam, lived but

yesterday compared with these creatures, whose stone-bound bones were

buried in the sands that drifted on the shores of this world centuries

before the first man drew into his nostrils the breath of life. Does the

thought ever occur to you, that, ages hence, some enthusiastic student

of nature may puzzle his brains over the bones of some such humble

individuals as you and I, and wonder to what manner of creature they

belonged? Or that, perched upon the shelves of some museum in the year

500000, they may be treasures of an unknown past to the Owens and Wymans

of that day?

You wish I would not talk so?--Well, Madam, let us leave this mausoleum

of the past, and come forth into the life of 1866; and let us see

whether all the _disjecta membra_ of extinct being are ranged around the

walls of this classic hall, or whether we may not find something akin

near our own snug and comfortable homes. I think I know some hardened

hearts which have ossified around the soft emotions which in earlier

years played therein. And, bless you, Madam, I meet every day, in my

down-town walks, some strange animated fossils, more repellent than any

I ever beheld in the Natural History cabinet. These bear the unfamiliar

look which belongs to a fabulous age, and rest, silent and unobtrusive,

in their half-opened cerements. The others wear a very familiar form,

which belongs to our day, yet they are the exponents of a dead life

which animated the buried bones of barbarism. The innocent Megatheria

and Ichthyosauri crawled and paddled and died in their day; but these

living fossils have the vital forms of the life above ground, while they

bear within the psychical peculiarities of extinct beings. They creep

about on the shores of time with the outward shapes of their fellows,

and, when buried in its rising waves, will leave undistinguishable

remains in their common tomb; and future explorers will never trace

therein the evanescent peculiarities in which the two were so unlike.

Bones! Why, the whole earth is a big bundle of them. They are not only

in graveyards, where "mossy marbles rest"; they are strewn, "unknelled,

uncoffined, and unknown," over the whole surface of the globe, and lie

embosomed in the gulfs of the great, restless ocean. Who knows what

untamed savage rests beneath us here? Don't start, my dear Madam. I have

no doubt that, when Tommy plays bo-peep round the big tree on the

Common, he is tripping over the crania of some Indian sachems.

Goldsmith's seat, "for whispering lovers made," very likely rested on

some venerable, departed Roman; and many a Maypole has gone plump

through the thorax of some defunct Gaul. If the old story be true, that,

when we shudder, somebody is walking over our grave, what a shaking race

of beings our remote ancestors must have been!

My dear Madam, down in the green fields, the flowery meadows, the deep

woods, the damp swamps of the balmy South, are there not spread, to-day,

in grievous numbers, the bones of the noble, true-hearted heroes who

went forth in their strength and manhood to meet a patriot's fate? Will

not the future tread of those they ransomed be light and buoyant in the

long days of freedom yet to come? What will they know of the hallowed

remains over which they bound with glowing, happy hearts? Some little

Peterkin may find a bleached remnant of their heroism, and the Caspar of

that day will surely say, "It was a famous victory." Madam, you and I

would be content to have the children of the future gambol above us, if

we could know their blithesome hearts were emancipated from thraldom by

such deposit of our poor bones under the verdant sod. The stateliest

mausoleum of crowned kings, the Pyramids that mark the resting-place of

Egypt's ancient rulers, are not so proud a monument as the rich, green

herbage that springs from the remains of a fallen hero, and hides the

little feet that trip over him, freed by his fall. Let us rejoice, then,

Madam, that we belong to that nobler race, which no curious explorer of

the far future will rank with Megatheria and Ichthyosauri, or any of the

soulless creatures of past geologic ages.

Backbone is a most important article, Tommy. Professor Wyman will tell

you that backbone is the distinctive characteristic of the highest order

of animals on this earth. When your father used to pry into all sorts of

books, years ago, he found out that he belonged to the Vertebrata,

which, Anglicized, meant backboned creatures. And yet do you know that

there are crowds of men and women whose framework would puzzle the good

Professor, with all his learning,--people who are utterly destitute of

that same essential article? Carry him the first old bone you may find,

and, I warrant you, he will tell, in a jiffy, to what manner of creature

it belonged. But wouldn't he look bewildered upon a cranium and a pelvis

which perambulated the earth without any osseous connection? Backbone is

the grand fulcrum on which human life moves its inertia. But wouldn't

Professor Rogers, _facile princeps_ in physics, rub his nose, and look

in wonder, to see peripatetic motion induced without a sign of a fulcrum

for the lever of life to rest upon? And yet these anomalies are

plentiful. They are everywhere,--in houses, in churches, in stores, in

town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,--extensive

sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the

world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear

and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep

into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them,

and quake at the thunder of his tread. They cling, trembling, to the old

mouldering scaffolding of the past, and look bewildered on the broad,

rising arches of the new temple of thought. They stand quivering in the

blast of opinion. And when Mrs. Grundy passes by, they back, like

hermit-crabs, into the first time-worn old shell of precedent they can

find, and hide there, shaking with dread.

My boy, strengthen well your backbone, that it may bear you upright and

onward in your career. Walk erect in this world with the stature and

aspect of a man. Tread forth alone with fearlessness and conscious

power. Bear up your God-given intelligence with unbending pride, that it

may look afar over the broad expanse of nature, and gaze with even eye

upon the mountain-heights of eternal truth. I am using words too big

for you? Well, one of these days you will understand them all, when your

little backbone has gathered more lime.

Bone has done some remarkable things in this world. There was that

little feat of Samson, in which he flourished the grinding apparatus of

a defunct donkey. It has always seemed to me, Madam, that that same

jaw-bone must have been either prodigiously strong and tough, or else

the Philistine crania must have been of very chartaceous texture. There

are the bones of the eleven thousand virgins,--the remains of ancient

virtue, and loveliness, and faith. Though, if all the stories of

travelled anatomists be true, there must have been some virgin heifers

among them; for many of them are certainly of bovine, and not human,

origin.

And then, Madam, do not the poor bones which have been strewn, for ages,

over the rolling earth, play sometimes a nobler part in their decay than

in their prime? The incrusted fragments, carefully treasured up in halls

of science, reveal to the broadening intelligence of man the story of

earth in its young days of mighty struggle, and tell of the sandy

shores, the rolling waters, the waving woods of a primeval time. Turning

back the stony tablets time has firmly bound, he views upon their

wrinkled sides its nature-printed figures,--relics that have there

remained, locked in the rocky sepulchre, built of crumbling mountains,

washed and worn by tides that ebbed and flowed a million years ago. Now,

opened to the eye of human thought, their crumbling forms bring tidings

of a distant, wondrous past, when they were all in all of sentient life

on earth. The thought they could not know, their dead remains have

wakened in the minds of a far nobler race, which was not born when they

lay down and died.

When travellers over far-reaching deserts are lost in the great waste

that shows no friendly, guiding sign, they sometimes find, half buried

in the shifting sands, the bleaching bones of some poor creature which

has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its

journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the

forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert

do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided

in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose

sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm,

beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. Beauty may lure

to ruin, but, the witching charm removed, decay may waken sober thought

and high resolve. Poor Yorick might have set King Hamlet's table in a

roar and been forgot, if, from his unknown grave, the sexton had not

brought him forth, to teach an unborn age philosophy.

My dear Madam, I am really getting too serious, philosophic, and

melancholic. I had no idea, when I asked you down to the Natural History

Society rooms to see the great Megatherium, that I was either to bury or

resuscitate you in imagination. But I must have my moral, if I draw it

from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave

behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall

cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and

lead him to the bright oasis of eternal life and rest.

AN ENGLISHMAN IN NORMANDY.

A tour in Normandy is a very commonplace thing; and mine was not even a

tour in Normandy. In the six weeks which I spent there, I did not see as

many sights as an ordinary English tourist sees in ten days, or an

American, perhaps, in five. Going abroad in need of rest, I rambled

slowly about, sojourning at each place as long as I found it agreeable,

then moving on to another, avoiding the railroads, the tyranny of the

timetable, the flurry of packing up every morning. My time was divided

between some seven or eight places; and I stayed longest where there was

least, according to the guide-books, to be seen.

Travelling in this way, you at all events see something of the people;

that is, if you will live among them and fall in with their ways.

Normandy--at least the sequestered part of it in which most of my time

was passed--is a good country for a traveller minded as I was. The

scenery is not grand. It does not exact the highest admiration; but it

is, perhaps, not on that account the less suitable for the purpose of

those who seek repose. The country is very like the most rich and

beautiful parts of England. Its lanes and hedge-rows are indeed so

thoroughly English, as to suggest that it was laid out under influences

similar to those which determined the aspect of the country in England,

and unlike those which determined it in other parts of France. It is

well wooded; and as the trees stand not in masses, but in lines along

the hedge-rows, you see distinctly the form of each tree. This is one of

its characteristic features. The number of poplars interspersed with the

trees of rounder outline is another, and very grateful to the eye. The

general greenness rivals that of England. The valleys are wide, and the

views from the hill-tops very extensive. I am speaking chiefly of the

western part of Normandy: the parts about Caen approach more nearly to

the flatness, monotony, and dreary treelessness of ordinary French and

German scenery. The air is pure and bracing,--especially in the little

towns built on old castled heights. Why do we not always build our

towns, when we can, on heights, in what Shakespeare calls nimble and

sweet air?

The Norman towns are full of grand old churches, old castles, historic

memories, shadows of the past. In these, where I spent most of my

holiday, there are no garrisons, no Zouaves, no _fanfares_, no signs of

the presence of the empire, except occasionally the abode of a

_sous-prefet_. The province retains a good deal of its old character. In

the great towns, such as Rouen and Caen, the people are French; but in

the country they are Normans still. The French are sensible of the

difference, and do the Normans the honor (as, if I were a Norman, I

should think it) of acknowledging it by habitual flouts and sneers at

the "heavy" race who inhabit "the land of cider."

If you do not mind outward appearances,--if you have the resolution to

penetrate beyond a very dirty entrance, perhaps through the kitchen,

into the rooms within,--you may make yourself extremely comfortable in a

little Norman inn. You have only to behave to your landlord and landlady

as a guest, not as a customer, and you will find yourself treated with

the utmost civility and kindness. You will get a large, airy room, not

so tidy as an English room, but with a better bed, and excellent fare,

beginning with a delicious cup of _cafe au lait_ in the early

morning,--that is, if you choose to breakfast and dine at the _table

d'hote_; for, if, like many English travellers, you insist on living in

English privacy, and taking your meals at English hours, all the

resources of the little establishment being expended on the public

meals, you will probably pay the penalty of your patriotic and stoical

adherence to the customs of your country.

In my passage from Weymouth to Normandy, I landed at Jersey. The little,

secluded bays of that island are the most perfect poetry of the sea.

They are types of the spot in which Horace, in his poetic mood of

imaginary misanthropy, wished to end his days.

"Oblitusque meorum obliviscendus et illis

Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem."

I was told that the scenery of Guernsey was even more beautiful; but the

rough passage between the two islands is rather a heavy price to pay for

the enjoyment. The islands are curious from their old Norman character,

laws, and customs; their Norman _patois_; their system of small

proprietors, whose little holdings, divided from each other by high

hedges, cut the island into a multitude of paddocks; and the miniature

republicanism and universal suffrage which the inhabitants enjoy, though

under the paternal eye of an English governor, who, if the insects grew

too angry, would no doubt sprinkle a little dust. But all that is native

and original is fast being overlaid by the influx of English

residents,--unhappy victims of genteel pauperism flying from the heavy

taxes of England, which the Channel Islands escape; or, in not a few

cases, persons whose reputation has suffered some damage in their own

country. There are also a few exiles of a more honorable kind,--French

liberals, who have taken refuge from imperial tyranny under the shield

of English law,--the most illustrious of whom is Victor Hugo. The

Emperor would fain get hold of these men, and he is now trying to force

upon us a modification of the extradition treaty for that purpose. But

the sanctity of our asylum is a tradition dear to the English people,

and one which they will not be induced to betray. An attempt to change

the English law for the purposes of the French police was fatal to

Palmerston, at the height of his popularity and power.

The French government employs agents to decoy the refugees into

conspiracies, in order that it may obtain a pretext for criminal

proceedings against them. The fact has fallen under my personal

observation. To estimate the character of these practices, and of the

present attempt to tamper with the extradition treaty, we must remember

that Louis Napoleon himself long enjoyed, as a political refugee, the

shelter of the asylum which he is now endeavoring to subvert.

Jersey is studded with fortifications. England and France frown at each

other in arms from the neighboring coasts. I thought of poor Cobden, and

of the day when his policy shall finally prevail, as it begins to

prevail already, over these national divisions and jealousies; and when

there shall be at once a better and a cheaper security for the peace of

nations than fortresses bristling with the instruments of mutual

destruction. The Norman islands are of no use to England, while they

involve us in a large military expenditure. In a maritime war, we should

find it very difficult to defend dependencies so far from our coast and

so close to that of the enemy. But the people are loyal to England, and

very unwilling to be annexed to France.

Granville, where I landed in Normandy, is a hideous seaport; but its

hideousness was almost turned to beauty, on that golden afternoon, by

the bright French atmosphere, which can do for bad scenery what French

cookery does for bad meat. The royal and imperial roads of France are as

despotically straight as those of the Roman Empire. But it was a

pleasant evening drive to Avranches, through the rich champaign,--the

active little Norman horses trotting the sixteen miles merrily to the

jingling of their bells. The figure of the _gendarme_, in his cocked hat

and imposing uniform, setting out upon his rounds, tells me that I am in

France.

Avranches stands on the steep and towering extremity of a line of hills,

commanding a most magnificent and varied view of land and sea, with

Mont St. Michel in the distance. Its cathedral must have occupied a

site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium.

But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a

stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the

Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of

the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare

area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept

feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned

Huetius lived and wrote, the house of the _sous-prefet_ now stands. The

building of churches, however, is going on actively in Avranches, and

attests the reviving influence of the priests. And one should be glad to

see the revival of any form of religion, however different from one's

own, in France, if it were not that this Church is so intensely

political, and that it presents Christianity as the ally of atheist and

sensualist despotism, and the enemy of morality, liberty, justice, and

the hopes of man. The French Caesars, Napoleon I. and Napoleon III.,

though themselves absolutely devoid of any faith but the self-idolatry

which they call faith in their "star," find it politic, like the Roman

Caesars, to have their official creed and their augurs.

I went to the distribution of prizes at the school of the Christian

Brothers. I had greatly admired the schools of the brotherhood in

Ireland, and felt an interest in their system, notwithstanding their

main object, like that of the famous Jesuit teachers of the sixteenth

century, was rather to proselytize than to educate. The ceremony was

thoroughly French, each boy being crowned with a tinsel wreath, and

kissed by one of the company when he was presented with his prize.

Everything, however, was arranged with the greatest taste and skill; and

the recitations and dialogues, by which the endless distribution of

prizes was relieved, were very cleverly and gracefully performed. Some

of them were comic. The one which made us laugh most was a dialogue

between a barber and a young gentleman who had come into his shop to be

shaved. The barber pausing with the razor in his hand, the young

gentleman asked him, angrily, why he did not begin. "I am waiting,"

replied the barber, "for your beard to grow." Specimens of writing were

handed round, which were good; drawings, which, strange to say, were

detestable. I praised the recitations and dialogues to the gentleman who

sat next me. "Ah! oui," was his reply, "tout cela vient de Paris." So

complete is the centralization of French intellect, even in such little

matters as these! While I was in France, some leading politicians were

attempting to set on foot a movement in favor of political

decentralization. They must begin deeper, if they would hope to succeed.