daughter of the Alcayde. She was arrayed, it is true, in a dress that
might have been worn before the flood; but then, she had a melting black
Andalusian eye, that was perfectly irresistible. Her voice, too, her
manner, her movements, all smacked of Andalusia, and showed how female
fascination may be transmitted from age to age, and clime to clime,
without ever losing its power, or going out of fashion. Those who know
the witchery of the sex, in that most amorous region of old Spain, may
judge what must have been the fascination to which Don Fernando
was exposed, when seated beside one of the most captivating of its
descendants. He was, as has already been hinted, of an inflammable
temperament; with a heart ready to get in a light blaze at every
instant. And then he had been so wearied by pompous, tedious old
cavaliers, with their formal bows and speeches; is it to be wondered at
that he turned with delight to the Alcayde's daughter, all smiles, and
dimples, and melting looks, and melting accents? Beside, for I wish to
give him every excuse in my power, he was in a particularly excitable
mood, from the novelty of the scene before him, and his head was almost
turned with this sudden and complete realization of all his hopes and
fancies; and then, in the flurry of the moment, he had taken frequent
draughts at the wine-cup, presented him at every instant by officious
pages, and all the world knows the effect of such draughts in giving
potency to female charms. In a word, there is no concealing the matter,
the banquet was not half over, before Don Fernando was making love,
outright, to the Alcayde's daughter. It was his cold habitude,
contracted long before his matrimonial engagement. The young lady hung
her head coyly; her eye rested upon a ruby heart, sparkling in a ring on
the hand of Don Fernando, a parting gage of love from Serafina. A blush
crimsoned her very temples. She darted a glance of doubt at the
ring, and then at Don Fernando. He read her doubt, and in the giddy
intoxication of the moment, drew off the pledge of his affianced bride,
and slipped it on the finger of the Alcayde's daughter.
At this moment the banquet broke up. The chamberlain with his lofty
demeanor, and his lack-lustre eyes, stood before him, and announced that
the barge was waiting to conduct him back to the caravel. Don Fernando
took a formal leave of the Alcayde and his dignitaries, and a tender
farewell of the Alcayde's daughter, with a promise to throw himself at
her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the
same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old
ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had
seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected
his temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on
his bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and
incoherent. How long he slept he knew not, but when he awoke he found
himself in a strange cabin, with persons around him of whom he had no
knowledge. He rubbed his eyes to ascertain whether he were really awake.
In reply to his inquiries, he was informed that he was on board of a
Portuguese ship, bound to Lisbon; having been taken senseless from a
wreck drifting about the ocean.
Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing
distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities,
and until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel
been driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people
about him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to
them of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him
there. They regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their
honest solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to
drop the subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.
At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city
of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his
ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and
when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information
concerning them.
He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled
by the bright eyes of the Alcayde's daughter had long since burnt itself
out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its
fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often
serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself
at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised
his arms toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and
hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his
flirtation with the Alcayde's daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt
of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed up-stairs, and entering
the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and
took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.
"What mean you, Sir," cried the latter, "by this intrusion?"
"What right have you," replied Don Fernando, "to ask the question?"
"The right of an affianced suitor!"
Don Fernando started, and turned pale. "Oh, Serafina! Serafina!" cried
he in a tone of agony, "is this thy plighted constancy?"
"Serafina?--what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady you
intend, her name is Maria."
"Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?" cried Don
Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.
"Holy Virgin!" cried the young lady; "he is talking of my
great-grandmother!"
An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which
plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might
believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might
believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features,
perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.
His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine,
and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven
Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing
of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had
undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and
had received a regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This
must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the
department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the
attention of an old, gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool,
at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin,
pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered
and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he
had almost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory
was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was
little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time
from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he
put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard
something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in
question, but then it had sailed during the reign of Don Ioam II., and
he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond
dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do Tombo, that sepulchre of
old Portuguese documents, were diligently searched, and a record was
found of a contract between the crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the
discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured
to him as Adelantado of the country he might discover.
"There!" cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, "there you have proof, before
your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified
in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am
entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract."
The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best
of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the
bloom of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century
previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was
set down for a mad man.
The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles,
shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool,
took the pen from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal
task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic
folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to
their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung
out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.
In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion
of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under
which the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the
Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her
tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there
lay her husband beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there
knelt, on each side, the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that
she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the
lapse of time, for the hands of her husband, which were folded as if in
prayer, had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina
was noseless.
Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this
monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could
expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence?
And what right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed
between him and the Alcayde's daughter? The unfortunate cavalier
performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of
Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the
tomb.
He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had
skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the
Island of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his
native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he
wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet
halls, where he had been so courteously received; and now that the once
young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in
marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he
recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde's daughter, who doubtless,
like himself, was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a
secret wish that he were seated by her side.
He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own
expense, to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were
exhausted. He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting
forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience
furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to
his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked
man. He persisted in his efforts; holding forth in all places and
all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the
light-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of
insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the
title of "The Adelantado of the Seven Cities."
Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took
shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former
cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he
found ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of
those parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all
the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a
common occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of
the head, observed, "He has been at the Island of St. Brandan."
They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of
the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their
islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made
in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma,
from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they
pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been
seen.
Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that
this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of
the Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence
connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events
of a night occupy the space of a century.
He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at
discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible.
Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself
deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of
his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to
the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in
hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the
horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but
ready to resume his post on the following morning.
His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt;
and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in
the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used
to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the
enchanted island.
* * * * *
NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that
some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink
under the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely "Nicodemused
into nothing." I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or
ignoble _Christian_ name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted
on him in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give
him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had
arrived at years of discretion.
I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the
very haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity,
by some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck
or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country.
Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but
some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of
remaining for ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations
totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is
deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to
places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes.
This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit,
content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast-off clothes of
Europe.
Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue
of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical
Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the
names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the
most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the
day scattered over the land, as if they were the real "salt of the
earth," with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when these
official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo unto
us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
direction.
Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore,
Mr. Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately
perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be
awakened on this subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken
up, it will not be readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a
country, to remedy and reform much of what has been done, and to release
many of our rising towns and cities, and our noble streams, from names
calculated to vulgarize the land.
I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of
originality, and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as
reliques of the native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had
disappeared. Many of these names may easily be regained, by reference to
old title deeds, and to the archives of states and counties. In my own
case, by examining the records of the county clerk's office, I have
discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the
neighborhood, and have found them infinitely superior to the trite,
poverty-stricken names which had been given by the settlers. A beautiful
pastoral stream, for instance, which winds for many a mile through one
of the loveliest little valleys in the state, has long been known by the
common-place name of the "Saw-mill River." In the old Indian grants, it
is designated as the Neperan. Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which
winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum
name of Mill Creek: in the Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious
title of the Pocantico.
Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry
and vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and
Cow Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of
vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at
a distance.
It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies,
which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps
executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the
Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact,
it appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of
sufficient importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or
rather, a corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of
all parts of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and
composed, comprising especially all the literary talent of the country,
though it might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet
would have the all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in
nomenclature which it might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant
writers in prose and poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the
country, would ultimately pass into popular currency.
Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its
attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective _New_ prefixed
to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country.
I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a
second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the
end of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live
to be an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that
our cities, when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall
still be dubbed _New_-York, and _New_-London, and _new_ this and _new_
that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the
oldest bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield's horse,
which continued to be called "the colt," until he died of old age.
Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with
some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our
state and city. The writer proposes to substitute for the present names,
those of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in
his suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of
New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do
not, nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its
significance. As to its _significance_, the very adjective _new_ gives
to our great commercial metropolis a second-hand character, as if
referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which
it was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole
name commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of
York, made in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country
which did not belong to him. As to the _sound_, what can you make of it,
either in poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the
fate of Troy itself; to suffer a ten years' siege, and be sacked and
plundered; no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to
epic dignity.
Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears
with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern
shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being
completely embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one
of the Indian names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would
furnish an excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called
Manhatta, as it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan
used as the adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive,
and "Manhattanese," which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of
his writings, would be a very good appellation for a citizen of the
commercial metropolis.
A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL
NAME. We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the
poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to
our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words,
"The United States of North America," down the swelling tide of song,
and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now
speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this
republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas,
each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a
citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still
it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central
America; and heaven knows how many "United States" may spring up under
the Proteus changes of Spanish America.
This may appear matter of small concernment; but any one that has
travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment
and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly
distinct and explicit national appellation. In France, when I have
announced myself as an American, I have been supposed to belong to one
of the French colonies; in Spain, to be from Mexico, or Peru, or some
other Spanish-American country. Repeatedly have I found myself involved
in a long geographical and political definition of my national identity.
Now, Sir, meaning no disrespect to any of our co-heirs of this great
quarter of the world, I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is
to mingle us up with the riff-raff colonies and off-sets of every nation
of Europe. The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the
world to which I belong, the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may
call himself a European; but I want my own peculiar national name to
rally under. I want an appellation that shall tell at once, and in a
way not to be mistaken, that I belong to this very portion of America,
geographical and political, to which it is my pride and happiness to
belong; that I am of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon
empire in the wilderness; and that I have no part or parcel with any
other race or empire, Spanish, French, or Portuguese, in either of the
Americas. Such an appellation, Sir, would have magic in it. It would
bind every part of the confederacy together as with a keystone; it would
be a passport to the citizen of our republic throughout the world.
We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national
appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of our country;
from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back-bone, and ran
through the "old confederacy," when it first declared our national
independence. I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains. We
might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present
titles. We might still use the phrase, "The United States," substituting
Appalachia, or Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of
America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce
us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic.
Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered,
designating the United States of Alleghania.