in a row in the diwan. Almost everybody else was puffing away at a
tchibouque or nargileh, and the place was one cloud of smoke. The poor
Jewesses were obliged to decline joining us, for it happened to be
Saturday, and they must not smoke on their Sabbath. They were naturally
much pitied, and some of the young wives did what was possible for them.
Drawing in a long breath of smoke, they puffed it forth in the faces of
the Jewesses, who opened mouth and nostrils eagerly to receive it. Thus
was the Sabbath observed, to shouts of laughter.
"A pretty little blue-eyed girl of seven was the only child," says Miss
Martineau, "we saw. She nestled against her mother, and the mother
clasped her closely, lest we should carry her off to London. She begged
we would not wish to take her child to London, and said, 'she would not
sell her for much money.' One of the wives was pointed out to us as
particularly happy in the prospect of becoming a mother; and we were
taken to see the room which she was to lie in, which was all in
readiness, though the event was not looked for for more than half a
year. She was in the gayest spirits, and sang and danced. While she was
lounging on her cushions, I thought her the handsomest and most
graceful, as well as the happiest, of the party; but when she rose to
dance, the charm was destroyed for ever. The dancing is utterly
disgusting. A pretty Jewess of twelve years old danced, much in the
same way; but with downcast eyes and an air of modesty. While the
dancing went on, and the smoking and drinking coffee and sherbet, and
the singing, to the accompaniment of a tambourine, some hideous old hags
came in successively, looked and laughed, and went away again. Some
negresses made a good background to this thoroughly Eastern picture. All
the while, romping, kissing, and screaming went on among the ladies, old
and young. At first, I thought them a perfect rabble; but when I
recovered myself a little, I saw that there was some sense in the faces
of the elderly women. In the midst of all this fun, the interpreters
assured us that 'there is much jealousy every day;' jealousy of the
favoured wife; that is, in this case, of the one who was pointed out to
us by her companions as so eminently happy, and with whom they were
romping and kissing, as with the rest. Poor thing! even the happiness of
these her best days is hollow, for she cannot have, at the same time,
peace in the harem and her husband's love."[40]
* * * * *
With these specimens we must be content, though we are well aware, as
Hierocles has taught us, that we cannot judge of a house from a single
brick. They fairly illustrate, however, Miss Martineau's style and
manner in her record of Eastern travel--a record which the narratives
of later travellers may have rendered obsolete in some particulars, but
have certainly not superseded.
Her brief career as a traveller terminated with her visit to the East;
but a reference to the incidents of her later life may possibly be
convenient for the reader. In 1849-1850 she published her "History of
England during the Thirty Years' Peace," a thoroughly good bit of
historical work, not less admirable for the general fairness of its tone
than for the lucidity of its narrative. This was followed by her
"Introduction to the History of the Peace, from 1800 to 1815." A careful
English condensation of Comte's "Positive Philosophy" appeared in 1853.
Meanwhile she was a constant contributor to Mr. Charles Dickens's
"Household Words," and to the columns of the "Daily News." In the midst
of all this activity she was suddenly struck down by disease of the
heart, and her doctors announced that she might die at any moment. She
resigned herself to her fate with her usual calm courage, and proceeded
to draw up and print her autobiography. Strange to say, she lived for
twenty years longer; the Damocles' sword suspended over her head forbore
to fall, and as soon as her health was to some extent re-established she
resumed her literary labours. Among her latest works, which present
abundant evidence of the clearness and practical character of her
intellect, we may mention a treatise on "The Factory Controversy," 1853;
a "History of the American Compromise," 1856; a picturesquely-written
historical sketch of "British Rule in India;" also, "England and her
Soldiers;" "Health, Handicraft, and Husbandry;" and "Household
Education."
As years passed by her infirmities increased, but she retained her force
and freshness of intellect almost to the last. It was not until the
beginning of 1876 that her mental condition underwent any serious
change. Even then her strong will seemed to stay and strengthen her
failing mind. She kept her household books and superintended the
household economy to the very end, though suffering under a burden of
pain which weaker natures would have found intolerable. Writing to a
friend six weeks before her death, she exclaims:--"I am _very ill_....
the difficulty and distress to me are the state of the head. I will only
add that the condition grows daily worse, so that I am scarcely able to
converse or read, and the cramp in the hands makes writing difficult or
impossible; so I must try to be content with the few lines I can send,
till the few days become none. We believe that time to be near, and we
shall not attempt to deceive you about it. My brain feels under the
constant sense of being _not myself_, and the introduction of this new
fear into my daily life makes each day sufficiently trying to justify
the longing for death, which grows upon me more and more."
This longing was fulfilled on the 27th of June, 1876, when Harriet
Martineau closed in peace her long and active life.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Harriet Martineau: "Eastern Life," ii., 81, 82.
[40] Harriet Martineau; "Eastern Life," ii. 162-165.
MISS BIRD AND OTHERS.
"The climate of Colorado is the finest in North America; and
consumptives, asthmatics, dyspeptics, and sufferers from nervous
diseases are here in hundreds and thousands, either trying the 'camp
cure' for three or four months, or settling here permanently. People can
safely sleep out of doors for six months of the year. The plains are
from 4,000 to 6,000 feet high, and some of the settled 'parks,' or
mountain valleys, are from 8,000 to 10,000. The air, besides being much
rarefied, is very dry; the rainfall is far below the average, dews are
rare, and fogs nearly unknown. The sunshine is bright and almost
constant, and three-fourths of the days are cloudless."
This is not Eden, but Colorado; yet, seeing it reproduces as nearly as
possible what we may suppose to have been the primary characteristics of
that first Garden, to us dwellers in a land where mists and fogs are
frequent and sunbeams are rare, Miss Bird's description of it reads like
an effort of the imagination. Miss Bird traversed a portion of Colorado
in 1878, on her way to explore the recesses of the Rocky Mountains.
Starting from San Francisco, she travelled by railway to Truckee. Here
she hired a horse, and for greater convenience assumed what she styled
her "Hawaiian riding dress"--that is, a half-fitting jacket, a skirt
reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish trousers gathered into frills,
which fell over the boots--"a thoroughly serviceable and feminine
costume for mountaineering and other rough travelling in any part of the
world." Throwing over these habiliments a dust-cloak, she rode through
Truckee, and then followed up the windings of the Truckee river--a
loud-tongued, rollicking mountain-stream, flowing between ranges of
great castellated and embattled sierras. Through the blue gloom of a
pine-forest she gallantly made her way, charmed by the magic of the
scenery that opened out before her. "Crested blue-jays darted through
the dark pines, squirrels in hundreds scampered through the forest, red
dragon-flies flashed like 'living light,' exquisite chipmonks ran across
the track, but only a dusty blue legion here and there reminded one of
earth's fairer children. Then the river became broad and still, and
mirrored in its transparent depths regal pines, straight as an arrow,
with rich yellow and green lichen clinging to their stems, and firs and
balsam pines filling up the spaces between them. The gorge opened, and
this mountain-girdled lake lay before me, with its margin broken up into
bays and promontories, most picturesquely clothed by huge sugar-pines."
From Lake Tabor Miss Bird returned to Truckee, and started on another
excursion which brought her within view of the Great Salt Lake and the
Mormon town of Ogden, and thence to Cheyenne, in the State of Wyoming.
Having thus crossed the mountain-range of the Sierras and descended into
the plains, she entered upon the region of the "boundless
prairies--great stretches of verdure, generally level, but elsewhere
rolling in long undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen
asleep." Their monotony is broken by large villages of the so-called
prairie dogs, the Wishton-Wish, a kind of marmot, which owes its
misleading name to its short, sharp bark. The villages are composed of
raised circular orifices, about eighteen inches in diameter, from which
a number of inclined passages slope downwards for five or six feet.
"Hundreds of these burrows are placed together. On nearly every rim a
small furry, reddish-buff beast sat on his hind legs, looking, so far as
head went, much like a young seal. These creatures were acting as
sentinels, and sunning themselves. As we passed each gave a warning
yelp, shook its tail, and, with a ludicrous flourish of his hind legs,
dived into its hole. The appearance of hundreds of these creatures, each
eighteen inches long, sitting like dogs begging, with their paws down
and all turned sunwards, is most grotesque."
At Greeley Miss Bird entered Colorado, which she describes, as we have
seen, in such a manner as to suggest that it rivals Dr. Richardson's
imaginary "Hygeia" in all essential particulars. From Greeley she
hastened to Fort Collins, with the grand masses of the Rocky Mountains
facing her as she advanced. Still across the boundless sea-like prairie
struck the indefatigable traveller, until she came to a sort of
tripartite valley, with a majestic crooked canyon, 2,000 feet deep, and
watered by a roaring stream, where in a rude log-cabin she abode for
several days. Having obtained a horse she rode across the highlands, and
striking up the St. Vrain Canyon ascended to Esteo Park, 7,500 feet
above the sea-level. To understand the majesty of the Rocky Mountains,
the reader must think of them as a mass of summits, frequently 200 and
250 miles wide, stretching, with scarcely any interruption of
continuity, almost from the Arctic Circle to the Straits of Magellan. At
the point ascended by Miss Bird their scenery was of the grandest
description--wonderful ascents, wild fantastic views, cool and bowery
shades, romantic glens echoing melodiously with the fall of waters. But
it is only fair that Miss Bird should be heard on her own account:--
"A tremendous ascent among rocks and pines to a height of 9,000 feet
brought us to a passage seven feet wide through a wall of rock, with an
abrupt descent of 2,000 feet, and a yet higher ascent beyond. I never
saw anything so strange as looking back. It was a single gigantic ridge
which we had passed through, standing up knife-like, built up entirely
of great brick-shaped masses of bright-red rock, piled one on another by
Titans. Pitch-pines grew out of these crevices, but there was not a
vestige of soil. Beyond, wall beyond wall of similar construction, and
range above range, rose into the blue sky. Fifteen miles more over great
ridges, along passes dark with shadow, and so narrow that we had to ride
in the beds of the streams which had excavated them, round the bases of
colossal pyramids of rock crested with pines, up into fair upland
'parks' scarlet in patches with the poison oak, parks so beautifully
arranged by nature that I momentarily expected to come upon some stately
mansion; but that afternoon, crested blue jays and chipmonks had them
all to themselves. Here, in the early morning, deer, bighorn, and the
stately elk come down to feed; and there, in the night, prowl and growl
the Rocky Mountain lion, the grizzly bear, and the cowardly wolf. There
were chasms of immense depth, dark with the indigo gloom of pines, and
mountains with snow gleaming on their splintered crests, loveliness to
bewilder and grandeur to awe, and still streams and shady pools, and
cool depths of shadow; mountains again, dense with pines, among which
patches of aspen gleamed like gold; valleys where the yellow cottonwood
mingled with the crimson oak, and so, on and on through the lengthening
shadows till the track, which in places had been hardly legible, became
well defined, and we entered a long gulch with broad swellings of grass
belted with pines."[41]
Long's Peak, the "American Matterhorn," 14,700 feet high, has seldom
been ascended, and Miss Bird is the first woman who has had the courage
and resolution to reach its summit. Her party consisted of herself, two
youths, the sons of a certain Dr. H., and "Mountain Jim," one of the
famous scouts of the plain, an expert in Indian border warfare, who
acted as guide. The ride at first was one long series of glories and
surprises, of peak and glade, of lake and stream, and of mountain upon
mountain, culminating in the shivered pinnacles of Long's Peak. And as
the sun slowly sank, the pines stood out darkling against the golden
sky, the grey peaks took upon their crests a glory of crimson and
purple, a luminous mist of changing colours filled every glen, gorge,
and canyon, while the echoes softly repeated that peculiar sough or
murmur which accompanies the departing day. Our adventurer, with heart
touched by the magical beauty and magnificence of the scene, crossed a
steep wooded incline into a deep hollow, where, embosomed in the
mountain-solitude, slept a lily-covered lake, cradling white, pure
blossoms and broad green leaves, and aptly named "The Lake of the
Lilies." Calm on its amethyst-coloured waters lay the tremulous shadow
of the great dark pine woods.
Thence she and her companions passed again into the leafy wilderness
which clothes the mountain side up to a height of about 11,000 feet,
cheered, as they climbed slowly upwards on their laborious path, by
delightful vistas of "golden atmospheres and rose-lit summits," such as
broke upon the dreams of him who created in his fancy the Garden of
Armida; upward and onward through the dusky shade, which in itself may
well impress a quick imagination. It is the _silence_ of the forest that
makes its mystery. The only sounds are those of the branches swaying in
the breeze, or of a bough crashing to the ground through decay, or the
occasional voices of the wandering birds; and these seem but to increase
the silence by their inadequateness of contrast. Alone in this
profundity of gloom it is difficult for the traveller to resist the
sense and feeling of a supernatural Presence, and he comes to understand
in what way such eerie legends and grim traditions have grown up about
the forest, and why to the early races its still depths seemed haunted
by the creatures of another world.
Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades
Like vaporous shapes half seen;--
and the forest is peopled with the phantoms that are born of Silence and
Twilight.
As they ascended they found that the pines grew smaller and more sparse,
and the last stragglers wore "a tortured, waning look." The forest
threshold was crossed; but yet a little higher a slope of mountain
meadow dipped to the south-west, towards a bright stream trickling under
ice and icicles; and there, in a grove of the beautiful silver spruce,
our travellers resolved to encamp for the night. The trees were small of
size, but so exquisitely arranged that one might well ask what artist's
hand had planted them--scattering them here, grouping them there, and
training their shapely spires towards heaven. "Hereafter," says Miss
Bird, "when I call up memories of the glorious, the view from this
camping-ground will come up. Looking east, gorges opened to the distant
plains, there fading into purple-grey. Mountains with pine-clothed
skirts rose in ranges, or, solitary, uplifted their grey summits; while
close behind, but nearly 3,000 feet above us, towered the bald white
crest of Long's Peak, its huge precipices red with the light of a sun
long lost to our eyes. Close to us, in the caverned side of the peak,
was snow that, owing to its position, is eternal. Soon the after-glow
came on, and before it faded a big half-moon hung out of the heavens,
shining through the silver-blue foliage of the pines on the frigid
background of snow, and turning the whole into fairyland."
This passage shows--what, indeed, is sufficiently evident in every page
of Miss Bird's travel-books--that she possesses, as every traveller
ought to possess, the artist's temperament, and that if she cannot
transfer the scenes she loves to the canvas, she knows how to reproduce
them in words that have the glow of light and life. A sense of the
beautiful, and a power of expressing that sense so as to make it felt by
others, is the primary and indispensable qualification of the traveller.
He must have eyes to see and ears to hear; and that his fellow may be
the wiser, better, and happier for his enterprise, he must have the
faculty of describing what he has seen and heard in language of
adequate force and clearness.
With a great fire of pine-logs to protect them against the rigour
of the night--for the thermometer marked twelve degrees below
freezing-point--our travellers passed the hours of darkness. When the
sun rose, they too arose; and it was well to do so, as sunrise from a
mountain top is such a spectacle of glory as few eyes have the happiness
to look upon. From the chill grey peak above them, with its eternal
snows and pathless forests, down to the plains which spread below like a
cold and waveless sea, everything underwent a strange and marvellously
beautiful transformation; for, as the sun rose above the horizon in all
the fulness of its orbed splendour, the grey of the plains flushed into
purple, the wan peaks gleamed like rubies, the pines shone like so many
columns of gold, and the sky reddened with rose-hues like the blush on a
fair face. After breakfast the party resumed their ascent of the
mountain, and in due time arrived at the "Notch"--a literal gate of
rock--when they found themselves on the knife-like ridge or backbone of
Long's Peak, only a few feet wide, covered with huge boulders, and on
the other side shelving in a snow-patched precipice of 3,000 feet to a
picturesque hollow, brightened by an emerald lake.
"Passing through the 'Notch,'" says Miss Bird, "we looked along the
nearly inaccessible side of the peak, composed of boulders and _debris_
of all shapes and sizes, through which appeared broad, smooth ribs of
reddish-coloured granite, looking as if they upheld the towering
rock-mass above. I usually dislike bird's-eye and panoramic views, but,
though from a mountain, this was not one. Serrated ridges, not much
lower than that on which we stood, rose, one beyond another, far as that
pure atmosphere could carry the vision, broken into awful chasms deep
with ice and snow, rising into pinnacles piercing the heavenly blue with
their cold, barren grey, on, on for ever, till the most distant range
upbore unsullied snow alone. There were fair lakes mirroring the dark
pine woods, canyons dark and blue, black with unbroken expanses of
pines, snow-slashed pinnacles, wintry heights frowning upon lovely
parks, watered and wooded, lying in the lap of summer; North Park
floating off into the blue distance, Middle Park closed till another
season, the sunny slopes of Esteo Park, and winding down among the
mountains the snowy ridge of the Divide (the backbone, or water-shed of
the Rocky Mountains), whose bright waters seek both the Atlantic and the
Pacific Oceans. There, far below, links of diamonds showed where the
grand river takes its rise to seek the mysterious Colorado, with its
still unsolved enigma, and lose itself in the waters of the Pacific; and
nearer, the snow-born Thompson bursts forth from the ice to begin its
journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Nature, rioting in her grandest mood,
exclaimed with voices of grandeur, solitude, sublimity, beauty, and
infinity, 'Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son
of man, that Thou visitest him?'"[42]
At the "Notch" the true character of the enterprise she had undertaken
was forcibly brought home to Miss Bird's consciousness. The Peak towered
above her, two thousand feet of solid rock, with smooth granite sides,
affording scarcely a foothold, and patches of re-frozen snow, presenting
no ordinary obstacle to the advance. She was by no means an expert
mountaineer, having "neither head nor ankles," and, in reality, she was
dragged or hauled up the ascent by the patience, skill, and strength of
"Mountain Jim." Up a deep ravine they attained to the passage of the
"Dog's Lift," through which they emerged on a narrow, rugged shelf,
broken and uneven, forming a kind of terrace or platform, where they
drew breath before attempting the last 500 feet--the terminal peak
itself, a smooth cone of pure granite with almost perpendicular sides.
The only foothold here was in narrow cracks or on minute projections of
the granite. To get a toe in these cracks or on one or other of these
scarcely visible projections, while crawling on hands and knees, weary,
thirst-tortured, and gasping for breath, this was to climb; but at last
the peak was won, and Miss Bird rejoiced in the consciousness of being
the first woman who had ever placed her feet on its lofty summit.
The descent, as far as the "Notch," was not less laborious or painful
than the upward effort had been; and when Miss Bird reached their former
camping-ground she was thoroughly exhausted with fatigue and thirst. But
a night's rest recruited her remarkable energies, and when the morning
dawned she was fresh and vigorous as ever, and happy in the memory of
her successful enterprise--an enterprise such as few women have ever
equalled--and in recollections of the beauty and sublimity of Long's
Peak, which cannot fail to be "joys for ever."
The "parks" of which we have spoken are broad, grassy valleys, lying at
heights which vary from 6,000 to 11,000 feet. They are the favourite
retreats of innumerable animals--wapiti, bighorn, oxen, mountain lions,
the great grizzly, the wary beaver, the evil-smelling skunk, the craven
wolf, cayote and lynx, to say nothing of lesser breeds, such as marten,
wild cat, fox, mink, hare, chipmonk, and squirrel. Their features have
been fully described by Lord Dunraven in his picturesque book, "The
Great Divide."
Miss Bird's animated pages present so many delightful pictures of
mountain scenery that we know not which to choose in illustration of her
remarkable descriptive powers. We have already alluded to her faculty of
pictorial presentment; it is one in which few of her sex surpass her;
she puts a scene before us with as much life and distinctness as a
Constable or a Peter Graham, and the reader, who would form a clear and
well-defined conception of the Rocky Mountains in their picturesque
aspects, cannot do better than study her little but delightful book.
While reading it one seems to feel the pure, keen, mountain air around
one; to see the great peaks rising one above the other like the towers
and spires of some vast cathedral of nature; to watch the ever-shifting
phantasmagoria of gorgeous colour that rolls over the landscape from
sunrise to sunset, and in the hush of the moonlit night disappears
before the silver radiance of the nascent orb; to hear the fall of the
mountain streams, and to catch the breath of the fragrant wind that
comes from the pine-forest loaded with fragrance and freshness and
subtle odours.