cherries, haws and grapes, berries, and nuts of every kind, and the
maples yielded all the sugar they chose to make from them. But it was
long before they had, at any time, the profusion which our modern arts
enable us to enjoy the whole year round, and in the hard beginnings
the orchard and the garden were forgotten for the fields.
When once the settler was housed against the weather, he had the
conditions of a certain rude comfort indoors. If his cabin was not
proof against the wind and rain or snow, its vast fireplace formed the
means of heating, while the forest was an inexhaustible store of fuel.
At first he dressed in the skins and pelts of the deer and fox and
wolf, and his costume could have varied little from that of the red
savage about him, for we often read how he mistook Indians for white
men at first sight, and how the Indians in their turn mistook white
men for their own people.
The whole family went barefoot in the summer, but in winter the
pioneer wore moccasins of buckskin, and buckskin leggins or trousers;
his coat was a hunting shirt belted at the waist and fringed where it
fell to his knees. It was of homespun, a mixture of wool and flax
called linsey-woolsey, and out of this the dresses of his wife and
daughters were made; the wool was shorn from the sheep which were so
scarce that they were never killed for their flesh, except by the
wolves, which were very fond of mutton, but had no use for wool.
For a wedding dress a cotton check was thought superb, and it really
cost a dollar a yard; silks, satins, laces, were unknown. A man never
left his house without his rifle; the gun was a part of his dress, and
in his belt he carried a hunting knife and a hatchet; on his head he
wore a cap of squirrel skin, often with the plume-like tail dangling
from it.
The furniture of the cabins was, like the clothing of the pioneers,
homemade. A bedstead was contrived by stretching poles from forked
sticks driven into the ground, and laying clapboards across them; the
bedclothes were bearskins. Stools, benches, and tables were roughed
out with auger and broadax; the puncheon floor was left bare, and if
the earth formed the floor, no rug ever replaced the grass which was
its first carpet. The cabin had but one room where the whole of life
went on by day; the father and mother slept there at night, and the
children mounted to their chamber in the loft by means of a ladder.
The food was what has been already named. The meat was venison, bear,
raccoon, wild turkey, wild duck, and pheasant; the drink was water, or
rye coffee, or whisky which the little stills everywhere supplied only
too abundantly. Wheat bread was long unknown, and corn cakes of
various makings and bakings supplied its place. The most delicious
morsel of all was corn grated while still in the milk and fashioned
into round cakes eaten hot from the clapboard before the fire, or from
the mysterious depths of the Dutch oven, buried in coals and ashes on
the hearth. There was soon a great flow of milk from the kine that
multiplied in the woods and pastures, and there was sweetening enough
from the maple tree and the bee tree, but salt was very scarce and
very dear, and long journeys were made through the perilous woods to
and from the licks, or salt springs, which the deer had discovered
before the white man or red man knew them.
The bees which hived their honey in the hollow trees were tame bees
gone wild, and with the coming of the settlers, some of the wild
things increased so much that they became a pest. Such were the crows
which literally blackened the fields after the settlers plowed, and
which the whole family had to fight from the corn when it was planted.
Such were the rabbits, and such, above all, were the squirrels which
overran the farms, and devoured every green thing till the people
combined in great squirrel hunts and destroyed them by tens of
thousands. The larger game had meanwhile disappeared. The buffalo and
the elk went first; the deer followed, and the bear, and even the
useless wolf. But long after these the poisonous reptiles lingered,
the rattlesnake, the moccasin, and the yet deadlier copperhead; and it
was only when the whole country was cleared that they ceased to be a
very common danger.
--_From "Stories of Ohio," by William Dean Howells._
HOW THEY BESIEGED THE TOWN.
Charles Reade, in his great romance entitled "The Cloister and the
Hearth," has not only presented us with a story of absorbing interest,
but has given us a vivid and accurate view of manners and customs
during one of the most interesting periods of history. The following
extract is particularly interesting because of its vivid portrayal of
the methods of warfare in vogue at that time. There was a rebellion in
Flanders. More than one knight had broken his oath of fealty to the
Duke of Burgundy, who was the ruler of that country, and some of the
strongest castles were fortified by rebels. To subdue these
dissatisfied spirits and to reduce the country again to subjection,
Counts Anthony and Baldwyn of Burgundy had entered Flanders at the
head of a considerable army and were carrying fire and sword among the
enemies of the Duke. One of their exploits at this time is thus
narrated by the novelist:--
[Illustration: Charles Reade.]
One afternoon they came in sight of a strongly fortified town; and
a whisper went through the little army that this was a disaffected
place. But upon coming nearer they saw that the great gate stood
open, and the towers that flanked it on each side were manned
with a single sentinel apiece. So the advancing force somewhat
broke their array and marched carelessly.
When they were within a furlong, the drawbridge across the moat
rose slowly and creaking till it stood vertical against the fort;
and the very moment it settled, into this warlike attitude, down
rattled the portcullis at the gate, and the towers and curtains
bristled with lances and crossbows.
A stern hum ran through the front rank and spread to the rear.
"Halt!" cried their leader. The word went down the line, and they
halted. "Herald to the gate!"
A herald spurred out of the ranks, and halting twenty yards from
the gate, raised his bugle with his herald's flag hanging down
round it, and blew a summons. A tall figure in brazen armor
appeared over the gate. A few fiery words passed between him and
the herald, which were not audible; but their import was clear,
for the herald blew a single keen and threatening note at the
walls, and came galloping back with war in his face.
The leader moved out of the line to meet him, and their heads had
not been together two seconds ere he turned in his saddle and
shouted, "Pioneers, to the van!" and in a moment hedges were
leveled, and the force took the field and encamped just out of
shot from the walls; and away went mounted officers flying south,
east, and west, to the friendly towns, for catapults, palisades,
mantelets, raw hides, tar barrels, carpenters, provisions, and all
the materials for a siege.
The besiegers encamped a furlong from the walls, and made roads;
kept their pikemen in camp ready for an assault when practicable;
and sent forward their sappers, pioneers, catapultiers, and
crossbowmen. These opened a siege by filling the moat and mining,
or breaching the wall, etc. And as much of their work had to be
done under close fire of arrows, quarrels, bolts, stones, and
little rocks, the above artists "had need of a hundred eyes," and
acted in concert with a vigilance, and an amount of individual
intelligence, daring, and skill that made a siege very
interesting, and even amusing,--to lookers-on.
The first thing they did was to advance their carpenters behind
rolling mantelets, and to erect a stockade high and strong on the
very edge of the moat. Some lives were lost at this, but not many;
for a strong force of crossbowmen, including Denys, rolled their
mantelets[1] up and shot over the workmen's heads at every
besieged person who showed his nose, and at every loophole, arrow
slit, or other aperture, which commanded the particular spot the
carpenters happened to be upon. Covered by their condensed fire,
these soon raised a high palisade between them and the ordinary
missiles from the walls.
But the besieged expected this, and ran out at night their hoards
or wooden penthouses on the top of the curtains. The curtains were
built with square holes near the top to receive the beams that
supported these structures, the true defense of mediæval forts,
from which the besieged delivered their missiles with far more
freedom and variety of range than they could shoot through the
oblique but immovable loopholes of the curtain. On this the
besiegers brought up mangonels, and set them hurling huge stones
at these wood works and battering them to pieces. At the same time
they built a triangular wooden tower as high as the curtain, and
kept it ready for use, and just out of shot.
This was a terrible sight to the besieged. These wooden towers had
taken many a town. They began to mine underneath that part of the
moat the tower stood frowning at; and made other preparations to
give it a warm reception. The besiegers also mined, but at another
part, their object being to get under the square barbican and
throw it down. All this time Denys was behind his mantelet with
another arbalester, protecting the workmen and making some
excellent shots. These ended by earning him the esteem of an
unseen archer, who every now and then sent a winged compliment
quivering into his mantelet. One came and stuck within an inch of
the narrow slit through which Denys was squinting at the moment.
[Illustration: Hoard, or Penthouse.]
"Ha! ha!" cried he, "you shoot well, my friend. Come forth and
receive my congratulations! Shall merit, such as thine, hide its
head? Comrade, it is one of those Englishmen, with his half ell
shaft. I'll not die till I've had a shot at London wall."
On the side of the besieged was a figure that soon attracted great
notice by promenading under fire. It was a tall knight, clad in
complete brass, and carrying a light but prodigiously long lance,
with which he directed the movements of the besieged. And when any
disaster befell the besiegers, this tall knight and his long lance
were pretty sure to be concerned in it.
My young reader will say, "Why did not Denys shoot him?"
Denys did shoot him; every day of his life; other arbalesters shot
him; archers shot him. Everybody shot him. He was there to be
shot, apparently. But the abomination was, he did not mind being
shot. Nay, worse, he got at last so demoralized as not to seem to
know when he was shot. At last the besiegers got spiteful, and
would not waste any more good steel on him.
It was a bright day, clear, but not quite frosty. The efforts of
the besieging force were concentrated against a space of about two
hundred and fifty yards, containing two curtains and two towers,
one of which was the square barbican, the other had a pointed roof
that was built to overlap, and by this means a row of dangerous
crenelets between the roof and the masonry grinned down at the
nearer assailants, and looked not very unlike the grinders of a
modern frigate with each port nearly closed. The curtains were
overlapped with penthouses somewhat shattered by the mangonels,
and other slinging engines of the besiegers.
On the besiegers' edge of the moat was what seemed at first sight
a gigantic arsenal, longer than it was broad, peopled by human
ants, and full of busy, honest industry, and displaying all the
various mechanical science of the age in full operation. Here the
lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there
the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines,
mantelets, and rows of fire barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer
tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling
up with materials.
At the edge of the moat opposite the wooden tower, a strong
penthouse, which they called "a cat," might be seen stealing
towards the curtain, and gradually filling up the moat with
fascines and rubbish, which the workmen flung out at its mouth. It
was advanced by two sets of ropes passing round pulleys, and each
worked by a windlass at some distance from the cat. The knight
burnt the first cat by flinging blazing tar barrels on it. So the
besiegers made the roof of this one very steep, and covered it
with raw hides, and the tar barrels could not harm it.
And now the engineers proceeded to the unusual step of slinging
fifty-pound stones at an individual.
This catapult was a scientific, simple, and beautiful engine, and
very effective in vertical fire at the short ranges of the period.
Imagine a fir tree cut down, and set to turn round a horizontal
axis on lofty uprights, but not in equilibrium; three fourths of
the tree being on the hither side. At the shorter and thicker end
of the tree was fastened a weight of half a ton. This butt end
just before the discharge pointed towards the enemy. By means of a
powerful winch the long tapering portion of the tree was forced
down to the very ground, and fastened by a bolt; and the stone
placed in a sling attached to the tree's nose. But this process of
course raised the butt end with its huge weight high in the air,
and kept it there struggling in vain to come down. The bolt was
now drawn; then the short end swung furiously down, the long end
went as furiously up, and at its highest elevation flung the huge
stone out of the sling with a tremendous jerk. In this case the
huge mass so flung missed the knight, but came down near him on
the penthouse, and went through it like paper, making an awful gap
in roof and floor.
[Illustration: A Catapult.]
"Aha! a good shot!" cried Baldwyn of Burgundy.
The tall knight retired. The besiegers hooted him. He reappeared
on the platform of the barbican, his helmet being just visible
above the parapet. He seemed very busy, and soon an enormous
Turkish catapult made its appearance on the platform, and, aided
by the elevation at which it was planted, flung a twenty-pound
stone two hundred and forty yards in the air. The next stone
struck a horse that was bringing up a sheaf of arrows in a cart,
bowled the horse over dead like a rabbit, and split the cart. It
was then turned at the besiegers' wooden tower, supposed to be out
of shot. Sir Turk slung stones cut with sharp edges on purpose,
and struck it repeatedly, and broke it in several places. The
besiegers turned two of their slinging engines on this monster,
and kept constantly slinging smaller stones on to the platform of
the barbican, and killed two of the engineers. But the Turk
disdained to retort. He flung a forty-pound stone on to the
besiegers' great catapult, and hitting it in the neighborhood of
the axis, knocked the whole structure to pieces, and sent the
engineers skipping and yelling.
The next morning an unwelcome sight greeted the besieged. The cat
was covered with mattresses and raw hides, and fast filling up the
moat. The knight stoned it, but in vain; flung burning tar barrels
on it, but in vain. Then with his own hands he let down by a rope
a bag of burning sulphur and pitch, and stunk them out. But
Baldwyn, armed like a lobster, ran, and bounding on the roof, cut
the string, and the work went on. Then the knight sent fresh
engineers into the mine, and undermined the place and underpinned
it with beams, and covered the beams thickly with grease and tar.
At break of day the moat was filled, and the wooden tower began to
move on its wheels towards a part of the curtain on which two
catapults were already playing, to breach the hoards and clear the
way. There was something awful and magical in its approach without
visible agency, for it was driven by internal rollers worked by
leverage.
On the top was a platform, where stood the first assailing party
protected in front by the drawbridge of the turret, which stood
vertical till lowered on to the wall; but better protected by full
suits of armor. The besieged slung at the tower, and struck it
often, but in vain. It was well defended with mattresses and
hides, and presently was at the edge of the moat. The knight bade
fire the mine underneath it.
Then the Turkish engine flung a stone of half a hundredweight
right amongst the knights, and carried two away with it off the
tower on to the plain.
And now the besieging catapults flung blazing tar barrels, and fired
the hoards on both sides, and the assailants ran up the ladders
behind the tower, and lowered the drawbridge on to the battered
curtain, while the catapults in concert flung tar barrels, and fired
the adjoining works to dislodge the defenders. The armed men on the
platform sprang on the bridge, led by Baldwyn. The invulnerable
knight and his men at arms met them, and a fearful combat ensued, in
which many a figure was seen to fall headlong down off the narrow
bridge. But fresh besiegers kept swarming up behind the tower, and
the besieged were driven off the bridge.
Another minute, and the town would have been taken; but so well
had the firing of the mines been timed, that just at this instant
the underpinnings gave way, and the tower suddenly sank away from
the walls, tearing the drawbridge clear and pouring the soldiers
off it against the masonry and on to the dry moat.
The besieged uttered a fierce shout, and in a moment surrounded
Baldwyn and his fellows; but strange to say, offered them quarter.
While a party disarmed and disposed of these, others fired the
turret in fifty places with a sort of hand grenades. At this work
who so busy as the tall knight? He put fire bags on his long
spear, and thrust them into the doomed structure late so terrible.
To do this, he was obliged to stand on a projecting beam, holding
on by the hand of a pikeman to steady himself. This provoked
Denys; he ran out from his mantelet, hoping to escape notice in
the confusion, and leveling his crossbow missed the knight clean,
but sent his bolt into the brain of the pikeman, and the tall
knight fell heavily from the wall, lance and all.
The knight, his armor glittering in the morning sun, fell
headlong, but turning as he neared the water, struck it with a
slap that sounded a mile off.
None ever thought to see him again. But he fell at the edge of the
fascines, and his spear stuck into them under the water, and by a
mighty effort he got to the side, but could not get out. Anthony
sent a dozen knights with a white flag to take him prisoner. He
submitted like a lamb, but said nothing.
[Footnote 1: For explanation of this and similar terms used in this
selection, see the notes at the end of this book and especially the
word "Castle" in Webster's International Dictionary.]
LOCHINVAR.
LADY HERON'S SONG.
Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west!
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best:
And, save his good broadsword, he weapons had none;
He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He staid not for brake, and he stopped not for stone;
He swam the Esk river, where ford there was none;
But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented--the gallant came late;
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
So boldly he entered the Netherby hall,
Among bridesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all.
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word),
"Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young lord Lochinvar?"
"I long wooed your daughter--my suit you denied;
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide;
And now I am come with this lost love of mine
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."
The bride kissed the goblet, the knight took it up;
He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup;
She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar--
"Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.
So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bridemaidens whispered, "'Twere better by far
To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."
One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croup the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
"She is won! We are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur!
They'll have fleet steeds that follow!" quoth young Lochinvar.
There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran;
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have you e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
--_From "Marmion," by Sir Walter Scott._
ON A TROPICAL RIVER.
"Westward Ho!" is a novel written by Rev. Charles Kingsley, and first
published in 1855. It is a story of the times of Queen Elizabeth, of
the threatened invasion of England by the Spanish Armada, and of wild
adventure on the sea and in the forests of the New World. Several
historical personages are made to appear in the story, such as Sir
Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Hawkins, and others. The
hero is Amyas Leigh, "a Devonshire youth of great bodily strength, of
lively affection and sweet temper, combined with a marked propensity
to combat from his earliest years." Amyas and his companions had
undertaken an expedition to discover the fabled golden city of Manoa,
which was said to exist somewhere in the wilds of South America. They
had been searching more than three years for this city when they
reached the Meta River in canoes, and the following adventure occurred.
[Illustration: Charles Kingsley.]
* * * * *
For three hours or more Amyas Leigh and his companions paddled easily
up the glassy and windless reaches, between two green
flower-bespangled walls of forest, gay with innumerable birds and
insects; while down from the branches which overhung the stream, long
trailers hung to the water's edge, and seemed admiring in the clear
mirror the images of their own gorgeous flowers. River, trees,
flowers, birds, insects,--it was all a fairyland; but it was a
colossal one; and yet the voyagers took little note of it.
It was now to them an everyday occurrence to see trees full two
hundred feet high one mass of yellow or purple blossom to the highest
twigs, and every branch and stem one hanging garden of crimson and
orange orchids or vanillas. Common to them were all the fantastic and
enormous shapes with which Nature bedecks her robes beneath the fierce
suns and fattening rains of the tropic forest. Common were forms and
colors of bird, and fish, and butterfly, more strange and bright than
ever opium eater dreamed.
The long processions of monkeys, who kept pace with them along the
tree tops, and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle and
grunt and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar
of the jaguar and the rustle of the boa had ceased to move their fear;
and when a brilliant green and rose-colored fish, flat-bodied like a
bream, flat-finned like a salmon, and sawtoothed like a shark, leaped
clean on board of the canoe to escape the rush of a huge alligator
(whose loathsome snout, ere he could stop, actually rattled against
the canoe), Jack coolly picked up the fish and said:
"He's four pound weight! If you catch fish for us like that, old
fellow, just keep in our wake, and we'll give you the cleanings for
your wages!"
They paddled onward hour after hour, sheltering themselves as best
they could under the shadow of the southern bank, while on their right
hand the full sun glare lay upon the enormous wall of mimosas, figs,
and laurels, which formed the northern forest, broken by the slender
shafts of bamboo tufts, and decked with a thousand gaudy parasites;
bank upon bank of gorgeous bloom piled upward to the sky, till where
its outline cut the blue, flowers and leaves, too lofty to be
distinguished by the eye, formed a broken rainbow of all hues
quivering in the ascending streams of azure mist, until they seemed to
melt and mingle with the very heavens.