CHAPTER XVII.--The Third Cruise of the Wave

‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:

Man marks the earth with ruin--his control

Stops with the shore,--upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

Byron, Childe Harold, IV 1603--11.

I had been invited to breakfast on board the corvette, on the morning

after this; and Captain Transom, Mr Bang, and myself, were comfortably

seated at our meal on the quarterdeck, under the awning, skreened off by

flags from the view of the men. The ship was riding to a small westerly

breeze, that was rippling up the bight. The ports on each quarter, as

well as the two in the stern, were open, through which we had an

extensive view of Port-au-Prince, and the surrounding country.

“Now, Transom,” said our amigo Massa Aaron, “I am quite persuaded that

the town astern of us there must always have been, and is now,

exceedingly unhealthy. Only reflect on its situation; it fronts the

west, with the hot sickening afternoon’s sun blazing on it every

evening, along the glowing mirror of the calm bight, under whose

influence the fat black mud that composes the beach must send up most

pestilent effluvia; while in the forenoon it is shut out from the

influence of the regular easterly sea-breeze, or trade-wind, by the

high land behind. However, as I don’t mean to stay here longer than I

can help, it is not my affair; and as Mr. S----will be waiting for us,

pray order your carriage, my dear fellow, and let us go on shore.”

The carriage our friend spoke of, was the captain’s gig, by this time

alongside, ready manned, each of the six seamen who composed her crew,

with his oar resting between his knees, the blade pointed upwards

towards the sky. We all go in “Shove off” dip fell the oars into the

water “Give way, men” the good ash staves groaned, and cheeped, and the

water buzzed, and away we shot towards the wharf. We landed, and having

proceeded to Mr S---‘s, we found horses ready for us, to take our

promised ride into the beautiful plain of the Cul de Sac, lying to the

northward and eastward of the town; the cavalcade being led by Massa

Aaron and myself, while Mr S----rode beside Captain Transom.

Aforetime, from the estates situated on this most magnificent plain,

(which extends about fifteen miles into the interior, while its width

varies from ten to five miles, being surrounded by hills on three

sides,) there used to be produced no less than thirty thousand hogsheads

of sugar. This was during the ancient regime; whereas, now, I believe,

the only articles it yields beyond plantains, yams, and pot herbs for

the supply of the town, are a few gallons of syrup, and a few puncheons

of tafla, a very inferior kind of rum. The whole extent of the sea

like plain, for there is throughout scarcely any inequality higher than

my staff, was once covered with well-cultivated fields and happy homes;

but now, alas! with brushwood from six to ten feet high,--in truth, by

one sea of jungle, through which you have to thread your difficult way

along narrow, hot, sandy bridle-paths, (with the sand flies and

musquittoes flaying you alive,) which every now and then lead you to

some old ruinous court-yard, with the ground strewed with broken

boilers and mill-rollers, and decaying hardwood timbers, and crumbling

bricks; while, a little further on, you shall find the blackened

roofless walls of what was most probably an unfortunate planter’s once

happy home, where the midnight brigand came and found peace and comfort,

and all the elegancies of life, and left-blood and ashes; with the wild

flowers growing on the window sills, and the prickly pear on the tops

of the walls, while marble steps, and old shutters, and window hinges,

and pieces of china, are strewn all about; the only tenant now being

most likely an old miserable negro who has sheltered himself in a

coarsely thatched hut, in a corner of what had once been a gay and well

furnished saloon.

After having extended our ride, under a hot broiling sun, until two

o’clock in the afternoon, we hove about, and returned towards the town.

We had not ridden on our homeward journey above three miles, when we

overtook a tall good-looking negro, dressed in white Osnaburg trowsers,

rolled up to his knees, and a check shirt. He wore neither shoes nor

stockings, but his head was bound round with the usual handkerchief,

over which he wore a large glazed cocked hat, with a most conspicuous

Haytian blue-and-red cockade. He was goading on a jackass before him,

loaded with a goodly burden apparently; but what it was we could not

tell, as the whole was covered by a large sheepskin, with the wool

outermost. I was pricking past the man, when Mr S----sung out to me to

shorten sail, and the next moment he startled me by addressing the

pedestrian as Colonel Gabaroche. The colonel returned the salute, and

seemed in no way put out from being detected in this rather unmilitary

predicament. He was going up to Port-au-Prince to take his turn of

duty with his regiment. Presently up came another half-naked black

fellow, with the same kind of glazed hat and handkerchief under it; but

he was mounted, and his nag was not a bad one by any means. It was

Colonel Gabaroche’s Captain of Grenadiers, Papotiere by name. He was

introduced to us, and we all moved jabbering along. At the time I write

of, the military force of the Haytian Republic was composed of one

third of the whole male population capable of bearing arms, which third

was obliged to be on permanent duty for four months every year; but the

individuals of the quota were allowed to follow their callings as

merchants, planters, or agriculturists, during the remaining eight

months; they were, I believe, fed by Government during their four months

of permanent duty. The weather, by the time we had ridden a couple of

miles farther, began to lower, and presently, large heavy drops of rain

fell, and preserving their globular shape, rolled like peas, or rather

like bullets, amidst the small finely pulverized dust of the sandy path.

“Umbrella” was the word--but this was a luxury unknown to our military

friends. However, the colonel immediately unfurled a blanket from

beneath the sheepskin, and sticking his head through a hole in the

centre of it, there he stalked like a herald in his tabard, with the

blanket hanging down before and behind him. As for the captain he

dismounted, disencumbered himself of his trowsers, which he crammed

under the mat that served him for a saddle, and taking off his shirt, he

stowed it away in the capacious crown of his cocked hat, while he once

more bestrid his Bucephalus in puris naturalibus, but conversing with

all the ease in the world, and the most perfect sangfroid, while the

thunder shower came down in bucketfuls. In about half an hour, we

arrived at the skirt of the brushwood or jungle, and found on our left

hand some rice fields, which from appearance we could not have

distinguished from young wheat; but on a nearer approach, we perceived

that the soil, if soil it could be called on which there was no walking,

was a soft mud, the only passages through the fields, and along the

ridges, being by planks, on which several of the labourers were standing

as we passed, one of whom turning to look at us, slipped off, and

instantly sunk amidst the rotten slime up to his waist. The

neighbourhood of these rice swamps is generally extremely unhealthy. At

length we got on board the Firebrand, drenched to the skin, to a late

dinner, after which it was determined by Captain Transom--of which

intention, by the by, with all his familiarity, I had not the smallest

previous notice--that I should cross the island to Jacmel, in order to

communicate with the merchant-ships loading there; and by the time I

returned, it was supposed the Firebrand would be ready for sea, when I

was to be detached in the Wave, to whip in the craft at the different

out ports, after which we were all to sail in a fleet to Port Royal.

“I say, skipper,” quoth Mr Bang, “I have a great mind to ride with Tom

what say you?”

“Why, Aaron, you are using me ill; that shaver is seducing you

altogether; but come, you won’t be a week away, and if you want to go, I

see no objection.”

It was fixed accordingly, and on the morrow Mr Bang and I completed our

arrangements, hired horses, and a guide, and all being in order, clothes

packed, and every thing else made ready for the cruise, we rode out

along with Mr S----(we were to dine and sleep at his house) to view the

fortifications on the hill above the town, the site of Christophe’s

operations when he besieged the place; and pretty hot work they must

have had of it, for in two different places the trenches of the

besiegers had been pushed on to the very crest of the glacis, and in one

the counterscarp had been fairly blown into the ditch, disclosing the

gallery of the mine behind, as if it had been a cave, the crest of the

glacis having remained entire. We walked into it, and Mr S----pointed

out where the President’s troops, in Fort Republicain, had countermined,

and absolutely entered the other chamber from beneath, after the

explosion, and, sword in hand, cut off the storming party, (which had by

this time descended into the ditch,) and drove them up through the

breach into the fort, where they were made prisoners.

The assault had been given three times in one night, and he trembled for

the town; however, Petion’s courage and indomitable resolution saved

them all. For by making a sally from the south gate at grey dawn, even

when the firing on the hill was hottest, and turning the enemy’s flank,

he poured into the trenches, routed the covering party, stormed the

batteries, spiked the guns, and that evening’s sun glanced on the

bayonets of King Henry’s troops as they raised the siege, and fell back

in great confusion on their lines, leaving the whole of their battering

train, and a great quantity of ammunition, behind them.

Next morning we were called at daylight, and having accoutred ourselves

for the journey, we descended and found two stout ponies, the biggest

not fourteen hands high, ready saddled, with old fashioned demi piques,

and large holsters at each of the saddlebows. A very stout mule was

furnished for Monsieur Pegtop; and our black guide, who had contracted

for our transit across the island, was also in attendance, mounted on a

very active, well-actioned horse. We had coffee, and started. By the

time we reached Leogane, the sun was high and fierce. Here we

breakfasted in a low one--story building, our host being no smaller man

than Major L----of the Fourth Regiment of the line. We got our

chocolate, and eggs, and fricasseed fowl, and roasted yam, and in fact

made, even according to friend Aaron’s conception of matters, an

exceedingly comfortable breakfast.

Mr Bang here insisted on being paymaster, and tendered a sum that the

black major thought so extravagantly great, considering the

entertainment we had received, that he declined taking more than one

half. However, Mr Bang, after several unavailing attempts to press the

money on the man, who, by the by, was simply a good looking blackamoor,

dressed in a check shirt, coarse but clean white duck trowsers, with the

omnipresent handkerchief bound round his head, and finding that he could

not persist without giving offence, was about pocketing the same, when

Pegtop audibly whispered him, “Massa, you ever shee black niger refuse

money before? but don’t take it to heart, massa; me, Pegtop, will pocket

him, if dat foolis black person won’t.”

“Thank you for nothing, Master Pegtop,” said Aaron.

We proceeded, and rode across the beautiful plain, gradually sloping up

from the mangrove--covered beach, until it swelled into the first range

of hills that formed the pedestal of the high precipitous ridge that

intersected the southern prong of the island, winding our way through

the ruins of sugar plantations, with fragments of the machinery and

implements employed in the manufacture scattered about, and half sunk

into the soil of the fields, which were fast becoming impervious jungle,

and interrupting our progress along the narrow bridle-paths. At length

we began to ascend, and the comparative coolness of the climate soon

evinced that we were rapidly leaving the hot plains, as the air became

purer, and thinner, at every turn. After a long, hot, hot ride, we

reached the top of the ridge, and turning back had a most magnificent

view of the whole Bight of Leogane, and of the Horseshoe, and Aaron’s

Frog; even the tops of the mountains above the Mole, which could not

have been nearer than seventy miles, were visible, floating like islands

or blue clouds in the misty distance. Aaron took off his hat, reined

up, and turning the head of his Bucephalus towards the placid waters we

had left, stretched forth his hand:

‘Ethereal air, and ye swift-winged winds,

Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye waves

That o’er the interminable ocean wreathe

Your crisped smiles, thou all-producing Earth,

And thee, bright Sun, I call, whose flaming orb

Views the wide world beneath. See!’

Nearly got a stroke of the sun, Tom--what Whiffle would call a cul de

sac by taking off my chapeau in my poetical frenzy so shove on.

We continued our journey through most magnificent defiles, and under

long avenues of the most superb trees, until, deeply embosomed in the

very heart of the eternal forest, we came to a shady clump of bamboos,

overhanging, with their ostrich-feather-like plumes, a round pool of

water, mantled or creamed over with a bright green coating, as if it had

been vegetable velvet, but nothing akin to the noisome scum that

ferments on a stagnant pool in England. It was about the time we had

promised ourselves dinner, and in fact our black guide and Pegtop had

dismounted, to make their preparations.

“Why, we surely cannot dine here? you don’t mean to drink of that

stagnant pool, my dear sir?”

“Siste paulisper, my boy,” said Mr Bang, as he stooped down, and skimmed

off the green covering with his hand, disclosing the water below, pure

and limpid as a crystal-clear fountain. We dined on the brink, and

discussed a bottle of vin-de-grave a-piece, and then had a small pull

at brandy and water; but we ate very little, although I was very hungry,

but Mr Bang would not let me feed largely.

“Now, Tom, you really do not understand things. When one rides a

goodish journey on end--say seventy miles or so--on the same horse, one

never feeds the trusty creature with half a bushel of oats; at least if

any wooden spoon does, the chances are he knocks him up. No, no--you

give him a mouthful of corn, but plenty to drink, little meal and water

here, and a bottle of porter in water there, and he brings you in

handsomely. Zounds! how would you yourself, Tom, like to dine on turtle

soup and venison, in the middle of a hissing hot ride of sixty miles,

thirty of them to be covered after the feed? Lord! what between the

rich food and the punch, you would have fermented like a brewer’s vat

before you reached the end of the journey; and if you had not a boll

imperial measure of carbonate of soda with you, the chances are you

would explode like a catamaran, your head flying through some old

woman’s window, and capsizing her teapot on the one hand, while on the

other your four quarters are scattered north, south, east, and west. But

Gaudeamus, sweet is pleasure after pains Tom, and all you sailors and

tailors--I love to class you together--are tender--not hearted

creatures. Strange now that there should be three classes of his

Majesty’s subjects, who never can be taught to ride,--to whom riding is,

in fact, a physical impossibility; and these three are the aforesaid

sailors and tailors, and dragoon officers. However, hand me the brandy

bottle; and, Pegtop, spate me that black jack that you are rinsing--so.

Useful commodity, a cup of this kind.” here our friend dashed in a large

qualifier of cognac, “it not only conceals the quality of the water, for

you can sometimes perceive the animalculae hereabouts without a

microscope, but also the strength of the libation. So--a piece of

biscuit now, and the smallest morsel of that cold tongue--your health,

Thomas”--a long pull--“speedy promotion to you, Thomas.” Here our friend

rested the jug on his knee. “Were you ever at a Gaudeamus of

Presbyterian clergymen on the Monday after the Sacrament Sunday, Tom,

that is, at the dinner at the manse?”

“No, my dear sir; you know I am an Episcopalian.”

“And I am a Roman Catholic. What then? I have been at a Gaudeamus, and

why might not you have been at one too? Oh the fun of such a meeting!

the feast of reason, and the flow of Ferintosh, I and the rich stories,

ay, fatter than ever I would venture on, and the cricket-like chirps of

laughter of the probationer, and the loud independent guffaw of the

placed minister, and the sly innuendos about the land round the Jordan,

when our freens get half foo. Oh how I honour a Gaudeamus! And why,”

he continued, “should the excellent men not rejoice, Tom? Are they not

the very men who should be happy? Is a minister to be for ever boxed up

in his pulpit--for ever to be wagging his pow, bald, black, or grizzled

as it may be, beneath his sounding board, like a bullfrog below a

toadstool. And like the aforesaid respectable quadruped or biped (it

has always puzzled me which to call it), is he never to drink any thing

stronger than water? Hath not a minister eyes? hath not a minister

hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the

same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,

healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and

summer, that another man is? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If

you tickle them, do they not laugh? And shall we grudge them a

Caudeamus now and then? Shall opera peracta ludemus be in the mouths of

an mankind, from the dirty little greasy-faced schoolboy, who wears a

red gown and learns the Humanities and Whiggery in the Nineveh of the

West, I as the Bailie glories to call it, to the King upon his throne,

and a dead letter, as well as a dead language, to them, and them only?

Forbid it, the Honourable the Lord Provost--forbid it, the Honourable

the Lord Provost and all the Bailies, and those who sit in Council with

them! Forbid it,--the whole august aggregate of terror to evildoers,

and praise of them who do well! Forbid it, the Devil and Dr Faustus!”

By this time I had smuggled the jug out of our amigo’s claw, and had

done honour to his pledge. “Do you know, my dear Mr Bang, I have always

been surprised that a man of your strong intellect, and clear views of

most matters, should continue, in profession at least, a Roman

Catholic?”

Aaron looked at me with a seriousness, an unaffected seriousness in his

manner, that possessed me with the notion that I had taken an

unwarrantable liberty. “Profession,” at length said he, slowly and

deliberately, apparently weighing every word carefully as it fell from

him, as one is apt to do when approaching an interesting subject, on

which you desire not to be misunderstood--“Profession--what right have

you to assume this of me or any man, that my mode of faith is but

profession?” and then the kind-hearted fellow, perceiving that his

rebuke had mortified me, altering his tone, continued, but still with a

strong tinge of melancholy in his manner--“Alas! Tom, how often will

weak man, in his great arrogance, assume the prerogative of his Maker,

and attempt to judge--honestly, we will even allow, according to his

conception--of the heart and secret things of another, but too often, in

reality, by the evil scale of his own! Shall the potsherd say to his

frail fellow, Thou art weak, but I am strong? Shall the moudiewort say

to his brother mole--(I say, Quashie, mind that mule of yours don’t

snort in the water, will ye?)--Blind art thou, but lo, I see? Ah, Tom,

I am a Roman Catholic; but is it thou who shalt venture down into the

depths of my heart, and then say, whether I be so in profession only, or

in stern unswerving sincerity?”

I found I had unwittingly touched a string that vibrated to his heart.

“I am a Roman Catholic, but, I humbly trust, not a bigoted one; for were

it not against the canons of both our churches, I fear I should incline

to the doctrine of Pope.”

‘He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’

“My fathers, Tom, were all Catholics before me; they may have been wrong;

but I am only my father’s son--not a better, and, I fear, I fear, not

so wise a man.--Pray, Tom, did you ever hear of even a good Jew, who,

being converted, did not become a bad Christian? Have you not all your

life had a repugnance to consort with a sinner converted from the faith

of his fathers, whether they were Jews or Gentiles, Hindoos or

Mahomedans, dwellers in Mesopotamia, or beyond Jordan? You have such a

repugnance, Tom, I know; and I have it too.”

“Well,” I proceeded, on the strength of the brandy grog, “in the case of

an unenlightened, or ignorant, or half-educated man, I might indeed

suspect duplicity, or even hypocrisy, at the bottom of the abjuration of

his fathers creed; but in a gentleman of your acquirements and

knowledge....”

“There again now, Cringle, you are wrong. The clodhopper might be

conscientious in a change of creed, but as to the advantage I have over

him from superior knowledge!--Knowledge, Tom! what do I know--what does

the greatest and the best of us know--to venture on a saying somewhat of

the tritest--but that he knows nothing? Oh, my dear boy, you and I have

hitherto consorted together on the deck of life, so to speak, with the

bright joyous sun sparkling, and the blue heavens laughing overhead, and

the clear green sea dancing under foot, and the merry breeze buzzing

past us right cheerily. We have seen but the fair-weather side of each

other, Thomas, without considering that all men have their deep

feelings, that lie far, far down in the hold of their hearts, were they

but stirred up. Ay, you smile at my figures, but I repeat it--in the

deep hold of their hearts; and may I not follow out the image with

verity and modesty, and say that those feelings, often too deep for

tears, are the ballast that keeps the whole ship in trim, and without

which we should be every hour of our existence liable to be driven out

of our heavenward course, yea, to broach--to and founder, and sink for

ever, under one of the many squalls in this world of storms? And here,

in this most beautiful spot, with the deep, dark, crystal-clear pool at

our feet, fringed with the velvet grass, and the green quivering leaf

above flickering between us and the bright blue cloudless sky, and the

everlasting rocks, with those diamond-like tears trickling down their

rugged cheeks, impending over us,--and those gigantic gnarled trees,

with their tracery of black withes fantastically tangled, whose naked

roots twist and twine amongst the fissures, like serpents trying to

shelter themselves from the scorching rays of the vertical sun, and

those feather-like bamboos high arching overhead, and screening us

under their noble canopy,--and the cool plantains, their broad ragged

leaves bending under the weight of dew-spangles, and the half-opened

wild-flowers,--yea, even here, the ardent noontide sleeping on the

hill, when even the quickeyed lizard lies still, and no longer rustles

through the dry grass, and there is not a breath of air strong enough

out of heaven to stir the gossamer that floats before us, or to wave

that wild flower on its hair like stem, or to ruffle the fairy plumage

of the humming-bird, that, against the custom of its kind, is now

quietly perched thereon; and while the bills of the chattering

paroquets, that are peering at us from the branches above, are closed,

and the woodpecker interrupts his tapping to look down upon us, and the

only sound we hear is the moaning of the wood-pigeon, and the lulling

buzz of myriads of happy insects booming on the ear, loud as the rushing

of a distant waterfall--(Confound these musquittoes, though!)--Even

here, on this:”

‘So sweet a spot of earth, you might, I ween,

Have guessed some congregation of the elves,

To sport by summer moons, had shaped it for themselves.’

Even in such a place could I look forward without a shudder, to set up

my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle

my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked

here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in

Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects--I am a

barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my

epitaph. Quiero Paz--‘Cursed be he who stirs these bones.’ Did not even

Shakspeare write it? What poetry in this spot, Thomas! Oh,

‘There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.’

“Yes, even here where nature is all beautiful and every thing, and man

abject and nothing even here, Tom, amidst the loneliness of earth,

rugged and half-mad as you must sometimes have thought me, a fellow

wholly made up of quips and jests,--even I at this moment could, like an

aboriginal Charibl of the land, ‘lift up my voice to the Great Spirit,’

and kneel, and weep, and pray.”

I was much moved.

“You have spoken of knowledge, Tom. Knowledge--what do I know? Of

myself I know as little as I do of any other grub that crawls on the

surface of this world of sin and suffering; and what I do know, adds

little to my self-esteem, Tom, and affords small encouragement to

enquire further.--Knowledge, say you? How is that particle of sand

here? I cannot tell. How grew that blade of grass? I do not know.

Even when I look into that jug of brandy grog, (I’ll trouble you for it,

Thomas,) all that I know is, that if I drink it, it will make me drunk,

and a more desperately wicked creature, if that were possible, than I am

already. And when I look forth on the higher and more noble objects of

the visible creation, abroad on this beautiful earth, above on the

glorious universe studded with shining orbs, without number numberless,

what can I make of them? Nothing absolutely nothing--yet they are all

creatures like myself. But--if I try--audaciously try--to strain my

finite faculties, in the futile attempt to take in what is infinite--if

I aspiringly, but hopelessly, grapple with the idea of the immensity of

space, for instance, which my reason yet tells me must of necessity be

boundless--do I not fall fluttering to the earth again, like an owl

flying against the noontide sun? Again, when I venture to think of

eternity--ay, when, reptile as I feel myself to be, I even look up

towards heaven, and bend my erring thoughts towards the Most High, the

Maker of all things, who was, and is, and is to come; whose flaming

minister, even while I speak, is pouring down a flood of intolerable day

on one half of the dry earth, and all that therein is; and when I

reflect on what this tremendous, this inscrutable Being has done for me

and my sinful race, so beautifully shown forth in both our creeds, what

do I know? but that I am a poor miserable worm, crushed before the moth,

whose only song should be the miserere, whose only prayer ‘God be

merciful to me a sinner!”

There was a long pause, and I began to fear that my friend was shaken in

his mind, for he continued to look steadfastly into the clear black

water, where he had skimmed off the green velvet coating with his stick.

“Ay, and is it even so? and is it Tom Cringle who thinks and says that I

am a man likely to profess to believe what he knows in his heart to be a

lie? A Roman Catholic! Had I lived before the Roman Conquest I would

have been a Druid, for it is not under the echoing domes of our

magnificent cathedrals, with all the grandeur of our ritual, the flaming

tapers, and bands of choristers, and the pealing organ, and smoking

censers, and silver-toned bells, and white-robed priests, that the

depths of my heart are stirred up. It is here, and not in a temple made

with hands, however gorgeous--here, in the secret places of the

everlasting forest,--it is in such a place as this that I feel the

immortal spark within me kindling into a flame, and wavering up

heavenward. I am superstitious, Thomas, I am superstitious, when left

alone in such a scene as this. I can walk through a country churchyard

at midnight, and stumble amongst the rank grass that covers the graves

of those I have lived with and loved, even if they be ‘green in death,

and festering in their shrouds,’ with the wind moaning amongst the

stunted yew-trees, and the rain splashing and scattering on the moss

covered tombstones, and the blinding blue lightning flashing, while the

headstones glance like an array of sheeted ghosts, and the thunder is

grumbling overhead, without a qualm-direness of this kind cannot once

daunt me; it is here and now, when all nature sleeps in the ardent

noontide, that I become superstitious, and would not willingly be left

alone. Thoughts too deep for tears!--ay, indeed, and there be such

thoughts, that, long after time has allowed them to subside, and when,

to the cold eye of the world, all is clear and smooth above, will, when

stirred up, like the sediment of this fountain of the wood, discolour

and embitter the whole stream of life once more, even after the lapse of

long long years. When my heart crushing loss was recent--when the wound

was green, I could not walk abroad at this to me witching time of day,

without a stock or a stone, a distant mark on the hill-side, or the

outline of the grey cliff above, taking the very fashion of her face, or

figure, on which I would gaze, and gaze, as if spell-bound, until I

knew not whether to call it a grouping of the imagination, or a reality

from without--or her, with whom I fondly hoped to have travelled the

weary road of life. Friends approved--fortune smiled--one little month,

and we should have been one; but it pleased Him, to whom in my present

frame of mind I dare not look up, to blight my beautiful flower, to

canker my rose-bud, to change the fair countenance of my Elizabeth, and

send her away. She drooped and died, even like that pale flower under

the scorching sun; and I was driven forth to worship Mammon, in these

sweltering climes; but the sting remains, the barbed arrow sticks fast.”

Here the cleared surface of the water, into which he was steadfastly

looking, was gradually contracted into a small round spot about a foot

in diameter, by the settling back of the green floating matter that he

had skimmed aside. His countenance became very pale; he appeared even

more excited than he had hitherto been.

“By heavens! look in that water, if the green covering of it has not

arranged itself round the clear spot into the shape of a medallion into

her features! I had dreamed of such things before, but now it is a

palpable reality--it is her face--her straight nose--her Grecian upper

lip--her beautiful forehead, and her very bust!--even,”

‘As when years apace had bound her lovely waist with woman’s zone.’

“Oh, Elizabeth--Elizabeth!”

Here his whole frame shook with the most intense emotion, but at length,

tears, unwonted tears, did come to his relief, and he hid his face in

his hands, and wept bitterly. I was now convinced he was mad, but I

durst not interrupt him. At length he slowly removed his hands, by

which time, however, a beautiful small black diver, the most minute

species of duck that I ever saw--it was not so big as my fist--but which

is common in woodland ponds in the West Indies, had risen in the centre

of the eye of the fountain, while all was so still that it floated

quietly like a leaf on the water, apparently without the least fear of

us.

“The devil appeared in Paradise under the shape of a cormorant,” said Mr

Bang, half angrily, as he gazed sternly at the unlooked for visitor;

“what imp art thou?”

Tip--the little fellow dived; presently it rose again in the same place,

and lifting up its little foot, scratched the side of its tiny yellow

bill and little red-spotted head, shook its small wings, bright and

changeable as shot silk, with a snow-white pen-feather in each, and

then tipped up its little purple tail, and once more disappeared.

Aaron’s features were gradually relaxing; a change was coming over the

spirit of his dream. The bird appeared for the third time, looked him

in the face, first turning up one little sparkling eye, and then

another, with its neck changing its hues like a pigeon’s. Aaron began

to smile; he gently raised his stick--“Do you cock your fud at me, you

tiny thief, you?”--and thereupon he struck at it with his stick. Tip

the duck dived, and did not rise again; and all that he got was a

sprinkling shower in the face, from the water flashing up at his blow,

and once more the green covering settled back again, and the bust of his

dead love, or what he fancied to be so, disappeared. Aaron laughed

outright, arose, and began to shout to the black guide, who, along with

Pegtop, had taken the beasts into the wood in search of provender.

“Ayez le bont de donnez moi mon cheval? Bring us the horsos, Massa

Bungo-venga los quadrupedos--make haste, vite, mucho, mucho.”

Come, there is my Massa Aaron once more, at all events, thought I; but

oh, how unlike the Aaron of five minutes ago!

“So now let us mount, my boy,” said he, and we shoved along until the

evening fell, and the sun bid us good-by very abruptly. “Cheep,

Cheep,” sung the lizards--“chirp, chirp,” sung the crickets, “snore,

snore,” moaned the tree-toad--and it was night.

“Dame Nature shifts the scene without much warning here, Thomas,” said

Massa Aaron; “we must get along, Doechez, mon cher--doechez, diggez

votre spurs into the flankibus of votre cheval, mon ami,” shouted Aaron

to our guide.

“Oui, monsieur,” replied the man, ‘mais’

I did not like this ominous “but,” nevertheless we rode on. No more did

Massa Aaron. The guide repeated his mais again. “Mais, mon filo,” said

Bang, “mais--que meanez vous by baaing comme un sheep, eh? Que vizzy

vous, eh?”

We were at this time riding in a bridle-road, to which the worst sheep

paths in Westmoreland would have been a railway, with our horses every

now and then stumbling and coming down on their noses on the deep red

earth, while we as often stood a chance of being pitched bodily against

some tree on the path-side. But we were by this time all alive again,

the dullness of repletion having evaporated; and Mr Bang, I fancied,

began to peer anxiously about him, and to fidget a good deal, and to

murmur and grumble something in his gizzard about “arms--no arms,” as,

feeling in his starboard holster, he detected a regular long cork of

claret, where he had hoped to clutch a pistol, while in the larboard, by

the praiseworthy forethought of our guide, a good roasted capon was

ensconced. “I say, Tom tohoo mind I don’t shoot you,” presenting the

bottle of claret. “If it had been soda water, and the wire not all the

stronger, I might have had a chance in this climate--but we are somewhat

caught here, my dear we have no arms.”

“Poo,” said I, “never mind--no danger at hand, take my word for it.”

“May be not, may be not--but, Pegtop, you scoundrel, why did you not

fetch my pistols?”

“Eigh, you go fight, massa?”

“Fight! no, you booby; but could not your own numscull--the fellow’s a

fool--so come--ride on, ride on.”

Presently we came to an open space, free of trees, where the moon shone

brightly; it was a round precipitous hollow, that had been excavated

apparently by the action of a small clear stream or spout of water, that

sparkled in the moonbeams like a web of silver tissue, as it leaped in a

crystal arch over our heads from the top of a rock about twenty feet

high, that rose on our right hand, the summit clearly and sharply

defined against the blue firmament, while, on the left, was a small

hollow or ravine, down which the rivulet gurgled and vanished; while

ahead the same impervious forest prevailed, beneath which we had been

travelling for so many hours.

The road led right through this rugged hollow, crossing it about the

middle, or, if any thing, nearer the base of the cliff; and the whole

clear space between the rock and the branches of the opposite trees

might have measured twenty yards. In front of us, the path took a turn

to the left, as if again entering below the dark shadow of the wood; but

towards the right, with the moon shining brightly on it, there was a

most beautiful bank, clear of underwood, and covered with the finest

short velvet grass that could be dreamed of as a fitting sward to be

pressed by fairy feet. We all halted in the centre of the open space.

“See how the moonlight sleeps on yonder bank!” said I.

“I don’t know what sleeps there, Tom,” said Aaron; “but does that figure

sleep, think you?” pointing to the dark crest of the precipitous

eminence of the right hand, from which the moonlight rill was gushing,

as if it had been smitten by the rod of the Prophet.

I started, and looked--a dark half--naked figure, with an enormous cap

of the shaggy skin of some wild creature, was kneeling on one knee, on

the very pinnacle with a carabine resting across his thigh. I noticed

our guide tremble from head to foot, but he did not speak.

“Vous avez des arms?” said Bang, as he continued with great fluency, but

little grammar; “ayez le bonte de cockez votre pistolettes?”

The man gave no answer. We heard the click of the carabine lock.

“Zounds!” said Aaron, with his usual energy when excited, “if you won’t

use them, give them to me;” and forthwith he snatched both pistols from

our guide’s holsters. “Now, Tom, get on. Shove t’other blackie a-head

of you, Pegtop, will you? Confound you for forgetting my Mantons, you

villain. I will bring up the rear.”

“Well, I will get on,” said I. “but here, give me a pistol.”

“Ridez vous en avant, blackimoribus ambos--en avant, you black rascals

laissez le Capitan and me pour fightez”--shouted Bang, as the black

guide, guessing his meaning, spurred his horse against the moonlight

bank.

“Ah--ah!” exclaimed the man, as he wheeled about after he had ridden a

pace or two under the shadow of the trees--“Voila ces autres brigands

la.”

“Where?” said I.

“There,” said the man in an ecstasy of fear--“there”--and peering up

into the forest, where the checkering dancing moonlight was flickering

on the dun, herbless soil, as the gentle night-breeze made the leaves

of the trees twinkle to and fro, I saw three dark figures advancing upon

us.

“Here’s a catastrophe, Tom, my boy” quoth Aaron, who, now that he had

satisfied himself that the pistols were properly loaded and primed, had

resumed all his wonted coolness in danger. “Ask that fellow who is

enacting the statue on the top of the rock what he wants. I am a

tolerable shot, you know; and if he means evil, I shall nick him before

he can carry his carabine to his shoulder, take my word for it.”

“Who is there, and what do you want?” No answer, the man above us

continued as still as if he had actually been a statue of bronze.

Presently one of the three men in the wood sounded a short snorting note

on a bullock’s horn.

It would seem that until this moment their comrade above us had not been

aware of their vicinity, for he immediately called out in the patois of

St Domingo, “advance, and seize the travellers;” and thereupon was in

the act of raising his piece to his shoulder, when crack--Bang tired his

pistol. The man uttered a loud hah, but did not fall.

“Missed him, by all that is wonderful!” said my companion. “Now, Tom,

it is your turn.”

I levelled, and was in the very act of pulling the trigger, when the

dark figure fell over slowly and stiffly on his back, and then began to

struggle violently, and to cough loudly, as if he were suffocating. At

length he rolled over and down the face of the rock, where he was caught

by a strong clump of brushwood, and there he hung, while the coughing

and crowing increased, and I felt a warm shower, as of heated water,

sputter over my face. It was hot hot and salt--God of my fathers! it

was blood. But there was no time for consideration; the three figures

by this had been reinforced by six more, and they now, with a most

fiendish yell, jumped down into the hollow basin, and surrounded us.

“Lay down your arms,” one of them shouted.

“No,” I exclaimed; “we are British officers, and armed, and determined

to sell our lives dearly; and if you do succeed in murdering us, you may

rest assured you shall be hunted down by bloodhounds.”

I thought the game was up, and little dreamed that the name of Briton

would, amongst the fastnesses of Haiti, have proved a talisman; but it

did so. “We have no wish to injure you, but you must follow us, and see

our general,” said the man who appeared to take the lead amongst them.

Here two of the men scrambled up the face of the rock, and brought their

wounded comrade down from where he hung, and laid him on the bank; he

had been shot through the lungs, and could not speak. After a minute’s

conversation, they lifted him on their shoulders; and as our guide and

Monsieur Pegtop had been instantly bound, we were only two to nine armed

men, and accordingly had nothing for it but to follow the bearers of the

wounded man, with our horses tumbling and scrambling up the river

course, into which, by their order, we had now turned.

We proceeded in this way for about half a mile, when it was evident that

the jaded beasts could not travel farther amongst the twisted trunks of

trees and fragments of rock with which the river-course was now

strewed. We therefore dismounted, and were compelled to leave them in

charge of two of the brigands, and immediately began to scramble up the

hill-side, through a narrow footpath, in one of the otherwise most

impervious thickets that I had ever seen. Presently a black savage,

half-naked like his companions, hailed, and told us to stand. Some

password that we could not understand was given by our captors, and we

proceeded, still ascending, until, turning sharp off to the left, we

came suddenly round a pinnacle of rock, and looked down into a deep

dell, with a winding path leading to the brink of it. It was a round

cockpit of a place, surrounded with precipitous limestone-rocks on all

sides, from the fissures of which large trees and bushes sprung, while

the bottom was a level piece of ground, covered with long hay-like

grass, evidently much trodden down. Close to the high bank, right

opposite, and about thirty yards from us, a wood-fire was sparkling

cheerily against the grey rock; while, on the side next us, the roofs of

several huts were visible, but there was no one moving about that we

could see. The moment, however, that the man with the horn sounded a

rough and most unmelodious blast, there was a buzz and a stir below, and

many a short grunt arose out of the pit, and long yawns, and eigh,

eighs! while a dozen splinters of resinous wood were instantly lit, and

held aloft, by whose light I saw fifty or sixty half-naked, but well

armed blacks, gazing up at us from beneath, their white eyes and whiter

teeth glancing. Most of them had muskets and long knives, and several

wore the military shake, while others had their heads bound round with

the never-failing handkerchief. At length a fierce-looking fellow,

dressed in short drawers, a round blue jacket, a pair of epaulets, and a

most enormous cocked hat, placed a sort of rough ladder, a prank with

notches cut in it with a hatchet, against the bank next us, and in a

loud voice desired us to descend. I did so with fear and trembling, but

Mr Bang never lost his presence of mind for a moment; and, in answer to

the black chief’s questions, I again rested our plea on our being

British officers, despatched on service from a squadron (and as I used

the word, the poor little Wave and solitary corvette rose up before me)

across the island to Jacmel, to communicate with another British force

lying there. The man heard me with great patience; but when I looked

round the circle of tatterdemalions, for there was ne’er a shirt in the

whole company--Falstaff’s men were a joke to them--with their bright

arms sparkling to the red glare of the torches, that flared like tongues

of flame overhead, while they grinned with their ivory teeth, and glared

fiercely with their white eyeballs on us--I felt that our lives were not

worth an hour’s purchase.

At length the leader spoke--“I am General Sanchez, driven to dispute

President Petion’s sway by his injustice to me--but I trust our quarrel

is not hopeless; will you, gentlemen, on your return to Port-au-Prince,

use your influence with him to withdraw his decree against me?”

This was so much out of the way the idea of our being deputed to

mediate between such great personages as President Petion and one of his

rebel generals, was altogether so absurd, that, under other

circumstances, I would have laughed in the black fellow’s face.

However, a jest here might have cost us our lives; so we looked serious,

and promised.

“Upon your honours”--said the poor fellow.

“Upon our words of honour”--we rejoined.

“Then embrace me”--and the savage thereupon, stinking of tobacco and

cocoa-nut oil, hugged me, and kissed me on both cheeks, and then did

the agreeable in a similar way to Mr Bang. Here the coughing and

moaning of the wounded man broke in upon the conference.

“What is that?” said Sanchez. One of his people told him. “Ah!” said

he, with a good deal of savageness in his tone--“A--ha! blood?”

We promptly explained how it happened;--for a few moments, I did not

know how he might take it.

“But I forgive you,” at length said he--“however, my men may revenge

their comrade. You must drink and eat with them.”

This was said aside to us, as it were. He ordered some roasted

plantains to be brought, and mixed some cruel bad tafia with water in an

enormous gourd. He ate, and then took a pull himself we followed,--and

he then walked round the circle, and carefully observed that every one

had tasted also. Being satisfied on this head, he abruptly ordered us

to ascend the ladder, and to pass on our way.

The poor fellow was mad, I believe. However, some time afterwards, the

President hunted him down, and got hold of him, but I believe he never

punished him. As for the wounded man, whether he did live or die, Tom

Cringle does not know.

We were reconducted by our former escort to where we left our horses,

remounted, and without farther let or hinderance arrived by day dawn at

the straggling town of Jacmel. The situation is very beautiful, the

town being built on the hillside, looking out seaward on a very safe

roadstead, the anchorage being defended to the southward by bright blue

shoals, and white breakers, that curl and roar over the coral reefs and

ledges. As we rode up to Mr S----‘s, the principal merchant in the

place, and a Frenchman, we were again struck with the dilapidated

condition of the houses, and the generally ruinous state of the town.

The brown and black population appeared to be lounging about in the most

absolute idleness; and here, as at Port-au-Prince, every second man

you met was a soldier. The women sitting in their little shops, nicely

set out with a variety of gay printed goods, and the crews of the

English vessels loading coffee, were the only individuals who seemed to

be capable of any exertion.

“I say, Tom,” quoth Massa Aaron, “do you see that old fellow there?”

“What? that old grey-headed negro sitting in the arbour there?”

“Yes--the patriarch is sitting under the shadow of his own Lima bean.”

And so in very truth he was. The stem was three inches in diameter, and

the branches had been trained along and over a sparred arch, and were

loaded with pods.

“I shall believe in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, henceforth and

for ever,” said I.

We were most kindly entertained by Mr S----, and spent two or three days

very happily. The evening of the day on which we arrived, we had

strolled out about nine o’clock to take the air--our host and his clerks

being busy in the counting-house--and were on our way home, when we

looked in on them at their desks, before ascending to the apartments

above. There were five clerks and Mr S----, all working away on the top

of their tall mahogany tripods, by the light of their brown home-made

wax candles, while three masters of merchantmen were sitting in a

corner, comparing bills of lading, making up manifests, and I do not

know what beside.

“It is now about time to close,” said Mr S----; “have you any objection

to a little music, gentlemen? or are you too much fatigued?”

“Music--music,” said Mr Bang, “I delight in good music, but”--He was

cut short by the whole bunch, the clerks and their master, closing their

ledgers, and journals, and day-books, and cashbooks with a bang, while

one hooked up a fiddle, another a clarionet, another a flute, &c, while

Mr S----offered, with a smile, his own clarionet to Massa Aaron, and

holding out at the same time, with the true good-breeding of a

Frenchman, a span-new reed. To my unutterable surprise he took it

sucked in his lips--wet the reed in his mouth; then passing his hand

across his muzzle, coolly asked Mr S----what the piece was to be?

“Adeste fideles, if you please,” said S----, rather taken aback. Mr

Bang nodded--sounded a bar or two gave another very scientific flourish,

and then calmly awaited the opening. He then tendered a fiddle to me

altogether beyond my compass--but I offered to officiate on the

kettledrum, the drummer being competent to something else. At a signal

from our host away they all launched in full crash, and very melodious

it was too, let me tell you, Aaron’s instrument telling most famously.

The next day we went to visit a tafia property in the neighbourhood. On

our way we passed a dozen miserable-looking blacks, cleaning canes,

followed by an ugly Turk of a brown man, almost naked, with the

omnipresent glazed cocked-hat, and a drawn cutlass in his hand. He was

abusing the poor devils most lustily as we rode along, and stood so

pertinaciously in the path, that I could not for the life of me pass

without jostling him. “Le vous demands pardon,” said I, with a most

abject salaam to my saddle-bow. He knit his brows and shut his teeth

hard, as he ground out between the glancing ivory, “Sacre!--voila ces

foutres blancs la,”--clutching the hilt of his couteau firmly all the

while. I thought he would have struck me. But Mr S----coming up,

mollified the savage, and we rode on.

The tafia estate was a sore affair. It had once been a prosperous sugar

plantation, as the broken panes and ruined houses, blackened by fire,

were melancholy vouchers for; but now the whole cultivation was reduced

to about a couple of acres of wiry sugar canes, and the boiling and

distilling was carried on in a small unroofed nook of the original

works.

Two days after this we returned to Port-au-Prince, and I could not

help admiring the justness of Aaron’s former description; for noisome

exhalations were rising thick, as the evening sun shone hot and sickly

on the long bank of fat black mud that covers the beach beneath the

town. We found Captain Transom at Mr S----‘s. I made my report of the

state of the merchantmen loading on the south side of the island, and

returned to rest, deucedly tired and stiff with my ride. Next morning

Bang entered my room.

“Hillo, Tom--the skipper has been shouting for you this half hour--get

up, man--get up.”

“My dear sir, I am awfully tired.”

“Oh!” sung Bang--“‘I have a silent sorrow here’ eh?”

It was true enough; no sailor rides seventy miles on end with impunity.

That same evening we bid adieu to our excellent host Mr S----, and the

rising moon shone on us under weigh for Kingston, where two days after

we safely anchored with the homeward bound trade. “The roaring seas Is

not a place of ease,” says a Point ditty. No more is the command of a

small schooner in the West Indies. We had scarcely anchored, when the

boarding officer from the flag-ship brought me a message to repair

thither immediately. I did so. As I stepped on deck, the lieutenant was

leaning on the drumhead of the capstan, with the signal-book open

before him, while the signal-man was telling off the semaphore, which

was rattling away at the Admiral’s pen, situated about five miles off.

“Ah! Cringle,” said he, without turning his head, “how are you? glad to

see you--wish you joy, my lad. Here, lend me a hand, will you? it

concerns you.” I took the book, and as the man reported, I pieced the

following comfortable sentence together.

“Desire--Wave--fit--wood--water--instantly--to take convoy to Spanish

Main--to-morrow morning--Mr Cringle--remain on board--orders will be

sent--evening.”

“Heigh ho, says Rowley,” sang I Thomas, in great wrath and bitterness of

spirit. “D----d hard--am I a duck, to live in the water altogether,

entirely?”

“Tom, my boy,” sung out a voice from the water. It was Aaron Bang’s,

who, along with Transom, had seen me go on board the receiving ship.

“Come along, man--come along--Transom is going to make interest to get

you a furlough on shore; so come along, and dine with us in Kingston.”

“I am ordered to sea to-morrow morning, my dear sir,” said I, like to

cry.--“No!”--“Too true, too true.” So no help for it, I took a sad

farewell of my friends, received my orders, laid in my provisions and

water, hauled out into the fairway, and sailed for Santa Martha next

morning at daybreak, with three merchant schooners under convoy one for

Santa Martha--another for Carthagena--and the third for Porto-Bello.

We sailed on the 24th of such a month, and, after a pleasant passage,

anchored at Santa Martha, at 8 AM, on the 31st. When we came to

anchor, we saluted, which seemed to have been a somewhat unexpected

honour, as the return was fired from the fort after a most primitive

fashion. A black fellow appeared with a shovel of live embers, one of

which another sans culotte caught up in his hand, chucking it from one

palm to another, until he ran to the breech of the first gun, where,

clapping it on the touch-hole, he fired it off, and so on seriatim,

through the whole battery, until the required number of guns were given,

several of which, by the by, were shotted, as we could hear the balls

whiz overhead. The town lies on a small plain, at the foot of very high

mountains, or rather on a sand-bank, formed from the washings from

these mountains. The summit of the highest of them, we could see from

the deck, was covered with snow, which at sunrise, in the clear light of

the cool grey dawn, shone, when struck by the first rays of the sun,

like one entire amethyst. Oh, how often I longed for the wings of the

eagle, to waft me from the hot deck of the little vessel, where the

thermometer in the shade stood at 95, far up amongst the shining

glaciers, to be comforted with cold!

One striking natural phenomenon is exhibited here, arising out of the

vicinity of this stupendous prong of the Cordilleras. The sea breeze

blows into the harbour all day, but in the night, or rather towards

morning, the cold air from the high regions rushes down, and blows with

such violence off the land, that my convoy and myself were nearly blown

out to sea the first night after we arrived; and it was only by

following the practice of the native craft, and anchoring close under

the lee of the beach--in fact, by having an anchor high and dry on the

shore itself--the player, as the Spaniards call it--that we could count

on riding through the night with security or comfort.

There are several small islands at the entrance of the harbour, on the

highest of which is a fort, that might easily be rendered impregnable;

it commands both the town and harbour. The place itself deserves little

notice; the houses are mean, and interspersed with negro huts, but there

is one fine church, with several tolerable paintings in it. One struck

me as especially grotesque, although I had often seen queer things in

Roman Catholic churches in Europe. It was a representation of Hell,

with Old Nicholas, under the guise of a dragon, entertaining himself

with the soul of an unfortunate heretic in his claws, who certainly

appeared far from comfortable; while a lot of his angels were washing

the sins off a set of fine young men, as you would the dirt off scabbit

potatoes, in a sea of liquid fire. But their saints!--I often rejoiced

that Aaron Bang was not with me; we should unquestionably have

quarrelled; for as to the manner in which they were dressed and

decorated, the most fantastic mode a girl ever did up her doll in, was a

joke to it. Still these wooden deities are treated with such

veneration; that I do believe their ornaments, which are of massive gold

and silver, are never, or very rarely, stolen.

On the evening of the 2nd of the following month we sailed again, but

having been baffled by calms and light winds, it was the 4th before we

anchored off the St Domingo gate at Carthagena, and next morning we

dropped down to Boca Chica, and saw our charge, a fine dashing schooner

of 150 tons, safe into the harbour. About 9 AM, we had weighed, but

we had scarcely got the anchor catted, when it came on to blow great

guns from the northwester most unusual thing hereabouts--so it was down

anchor again; and as I had made up my mind not to attempt it again

before morning, I got the gig in the water with all convenient speed;

and that same forenoon I reached the town, and immediately called on the

Viceroy, but under very different circumstances from the time Mr

Splinter and I had entered it along with the conquering army.

We dined with the magnate, and found a very large party assembled.

Amongst others, I especially recollect that the Inquisidor--General was

conspicuous; but every one, with the exception of the Captain General

and his immediate staff, was arrayed in gingham jackets; so there was

not much style in the affair.

I had before dinner an opportunity to inspect the works of Carthagena at

my leisure. It is unquestionably a very strong place, the walls, which

are built of solid masonry, being armed with at least three hundred

pieces of brass cannon, while the continued ebb and flow of the tide in

the ditch creates a current so strong, that it would be next to

impossible to fill it up, as fascines would be carried away by the

current--so that, were the walls even breached, it would be

impracticable to storm them. The appearance of Carthagena from the sea,

that is, from a vessel anchored off the St Domingo gate, is very

beautiful, and picturesque. It is situated on a sandy island, or rather

a group of islands; and the beach here shoals so gradually, that boats

of even very small draught of water cannot approach within musket-shot.

The walls and numerous batteries have a very commanding appearance. The

spires and towers on the churches are numerous, and many of them were

decorated with flags when we were there; and the green trees shooting up

amidst the red-tiled houses afforded a beautiful relief to the

prospect. A little behind the town, on a gentle acclivity, is the

citadel, or fort San Felipe, whose appearance conveys an idea of

impregnable strength; (but all this sort of thing, is it not written in

Roderick Random?) and on the ship like hill beyond it, the only other

eminence in the neighbourhood, stands the convent of the Popa, like a

poop lantern on the high stern of a ship, from which indeed it takes its

name. This convent had been strongly fortified; and, commanding San

Felipe, was of great use to Morillo, who carried it by assault during

the siege, and held it until the insurgents shelled him out from the

citadel. The effect, when I first saw it, was increased by the whole

scene--city, and batteries, and Popa--being reflected in the calm smooth

sea, as distinctly as if it had been glass; so clear, in fact, was the

reflection, that you could scarcely distinguish the shadow from the

reality. We weighed next morning--that is on the sixth of the month,

and arrived safe at Porto-Bello on the 11th, after a tedious passage,

during which we had continual rains, accompanied with vivid lightning

and tremendous thunder. I had expected to have fallen in with one of

our frigates here; but I afterwards learned that, although I had slid

down cheerily along shore, the weather current that prevailed farther

out at sea had swept her away to the eastward; so I ran in and anchored,

and immediately waited on the Governor, who received me in what might

once have been a barn, although it did not now deserve the name.

Porto--Bello was originally called Nombre de Dios, having received the

former name from the English when we took it. It is a miserable, dirty,

damp hole, surrounded by high forest-clad hills, round which

everlasting mists curl and obscure the sun, whose rays, at any chance

moment when they do reach the steamy swamp on which it is built or the

waters of the lead-coloured, land-locked cove that constitutes the

harbour, immediately exhale the thick sickly moisture, in clouds of

sluggish white vapours, smelling diabolically of decayed vegetables, and

slime, and mud. I will venture a remark that will be found, I am

persuaded, pretty near the truth, that there were twenty carrion crows

to be seen in the streets for every inhabitant--the people seem every

way worthy of such an abode, saffron, dingy, miserable, emaciated

looking devils. As for the place itself, it appeared to my eyes one

large hospital, inhabited by patients in the yellow fever. During the

whole of the following day, there was still no appearance of the

frigate, and I had in consequence now to execute the ulterior part of my

orders, which were, that if I did not find her at anchor when I arrived,

or if she did not make her appearance within forty eight hours

thereafter, I was myself to leave the Wave in Porto--Bello, and proceed

overland across the isthmus to Panama, and to deliver, on board of H. M.

S. Bandera, into the Captain’s own hands, a large packet with despatches

from the Government at home, as I understood, of great importance,

touching the conduct of our squadron, with reference to the vagaries of

some of the mushroom American Republics on the Pacific. But if I fell

in with the frigate, then I was to deliver the said packet to the

Captain, and return immediately in the Wave to Port Royal.

Having, therefore, obtained letters from the Governor of Porto--Bello to

the Commandant at Chagres, I chartered a canoe with four stout canoemen

and a steersman, or patron, as he is called, to convey me to Cruzes; and

having laid in a good stock of eatables and drinkables, and selected the

black pilot, Peter Mangrove, to go as my servant, accompanied by his

never-failing companion, Sneezer, and taking my hammock and double

barrelled gun, and a brace of pistols with me, we shoved off at Six A.M.

on the morning of the 14th.

It was a rum sort of conveyance this said canoe of mine. In the first

place, it was near forty feet long, and only five broad at the broadest,

being hollowed out of one single wild cotton-tree; how this was to be

pulled through the sea on the coast, by four men, I could not divine.

However, I was assured by the old thief who chartered it to me, that it

would be all right; whereas, had my innocence not been imposed on, I

might, in a caiuco, or smaller canoe, have made the passage in one half

the time it took me.

About ten feet of the after part was thatched with palm leaves, over a

framework of broad ash hoops; which awning, called the toldo, was open

both towards the steersman that guided us with a long broad-bladed

paddle in the stern, and in the direction of the men forward, who, on

starting, stripped themselves stark naked, and, giving a loud yell every

now and then, began to pull their oars, or long paddles, after a most

extraordinary fashion. First, when they lay back to the strain, they

jumped backwards and upwards on to the thwart with their feet, and then,

as they once more feathered their paddles again, they came crack down on

their bottoms with a loud skelp on the seats, upon which they again

mounted at the next stroke, and so on.

When we cleared the harbour it was fine and serene, but about noon it

came on to blow violently from the northeast. All this while we were

coasting it along about pistol-shot from the white coral beach, with

the clear light green swell on our right hand, and beyond it the dark

and stormy waters of the blue rolling ocean; and the snow-white roaring

surf on our left. By the time I speak of, the swell had been lashed up

into breaking waves, and after shipping more salt water than I had

bargained for, we were obliged, about four PM, to shove into a cove

within the reef, called Naranja.

Along this part of the coast there is a chain of salt-water lagoons,

divided from the sea by the coral beach, the crest of which is covered

here and there with clumps of stunted mangroves.

This beach, strangely enough, is higher than the land immediately behind

it, as if it had been a dike, or natural breakwater, thrown up by the

sea. Every here and there, there were gaps in this natural dike, and it

was through one of these we shoved, and soon swung to our grapnel in

perfect security, but in a most outlandish situation certainly.

As we rode to the easterly breeze, there was the beach as described,

almost level with the water, on our left hand, the land or lee side of

it covered with most beautiful white sand and shells, with whole warrens

of land-crabs running out and in their holes like little rabbits, their

tiny green bodies seeming to roll up and down, for I was not near enough

to see their feet, or the mode of their locomotion, like bushels of

grapeshot trundling all about on the shining white shore. Beyond, the

roaring surf was flashing up over the clumps of green bushes, and

thundering on the seaward face. On the right hand, ahead of us, and

astern of us, the prospect was shut in by impervious thickets of

mangroves, while in the distance the blue hills rose glimmering and

indistinct, as seen through the steamy atmosphere. We were anchored in

a stripe of clear water, about three hundred yards long by fifty broad.

There, was a clear space abeam of us landward, of about half an acre in

extent, on which was built a solitary Indian hut close to the water’s

edge, with a small canoe drawn up close to the door. We had not been

long at anchor when the canoe was launched, and a monkey--looking naked

old man paddled off, and brought us a most beautiful chicken turtle,

some yams, and a few oranges. I asked him his price. He rejoined, “Por

amor de Dios”--that it was his saint’s day, and he meant it as a gift.

However, he did not refuse a dollar when tendered to him before he

paddled away.

That night, when we were all at supper, master and men, I heard and felt

a sharp crack against the side of the canoe. “Hillo, Peter, what is

that?” said I.

“Nothing, sir,” quoth Peter, who was enjoying his scraps abaft, with the

headman, patron, or whatever you may call him, of my crew. There was a

blazing fire kindled on a bed of white sand, forward in the bow of the

canoe, round which the four bogas, or canoemen, were seated, with three

sticks stuck up triangularly over the fire, from which depended an

earthen pot, in which they were cooking their suppers.

I had rigged my hammock between the foremost and aftermost hoops of the

toldo, and as I was fatigued and sleepy, and it was now getting late, I

desired to betake myself to rest; so I was just flirting with a piece of

ham, preparatory to the cold grog, when I again felt a similar thump and

rattle against the side of the canoe. There was a small aperture in the

palm thatch, right opposite to where I was sitting, on the outside of

which I now heard a rustling noise, and presently a long snout was

thrust through, and into the canoe, which kept opening and shutting with

a sharp rattling noise. It was more like two long splinters of mud

covered and half-decayed timber, than any thing I can compare it to;

but as the lower jaw was opened, like a pair of Brobdignag scissors, a

formidable row of teeth was unmasked, the snout from the tip to the eyes

being nearly three feet long. The scene at this moment was exceedingly

good, as seen by the light of a small, bright, silver lamp, fed with

spirits of wine, that I always travelled with, which hung from one of

the hoops of the toldo. First, there was our friend Peter Mangrove,

cowering in a corner under the after part of the awning, covered up with

a blanket, and shaken as if with an ague-fit, with the patron peering

over his shoulder, no less alarmed. Sneezer, the dog, was sitting on

end, with his black nose resting on the table, waiting patiently for his

crumbs; and the black boatmen were forward in the bow of the canoe,

jabbering, and laughing, and munching, as they clustered round a

sparkling fire. When I first saw the apparition of the diabolical

looking snout, I was in a manner fascinated, and could neither speak nor

move. Mangrove and the patron were also paralysed with fear, and the

others did not see it; so Sneezer was the only creature amongst us,

aware of the danger, who seemed to have his wits about him, for the

instant he noticed it, he calmly lifted his nose off the table, and gave

a short startled bark, and then crouched and drew himself back as if in

the act to spring, glancing his eyes from the monstrous jaws to my face,

and nuzzling and whining with a laughing expression, and giving a small

yelp now and then, and again riveting his eyes with intense earnestness

on the alligator, telling me as plainly as if he had spoken it--“If you

choose, master, I will attack it, as in duty bound, but really such a

customer is not at all in my way.” And not only did he say this, but he

shewed his intellect was clear, and no way warped through fear, for he

now stood on his hind legs, and holding on the hammock with his fore

paws, he thrust his snout below the pillow, and pulled out one of my

pistols, which always garnished the head of my bed, on such expeditions

as the present.

My presence of mind returned at witnessing the courage and sagacity of

my noble dog. I seized the loaded pistol, and as by this time the eyes

of the alligator were inside of the toldo, I clapped the muzzle to the

larboard one, and fired. The creature jerked back so suddenly and

convulsively, that part of the toldo was tom away: and as the dead

monster fell off, the canoe rolled as if in a seaway. My crew shouted

“Que es esto?” Peter Mangrove cheered--Sneezer barked and yelled at a

glorious rate, and could scarcely be held in the canoe--and looking

overboard, we saw the monster, twelve feet long at least, upturn his

white belly to the rising moon, struggle for a moment with his short

paws, and after a solitary heavy lash of his scaly tale, he floated away

astern of us, dead and still. To proceed poor Peter Mangrove, whose

nerves were consumedly shaken by this interlude, was seized during the

night with a roasting fever, brought on in a great measure, I believe,

by fear, at finding himself so far out of his latitude; and that he had

grievous doubts as to the issue of our voyage, and as to where we were

bound for, was abundantly evident. I dosed him most copiously with salt

water, a very cooling medicine, and no lack of it at hand.

We weighed at grey dawn, on the morning of the 15th, and at 11 o’clock,

AM arrived at Chagres, a more miserable place, were that credible, even

than Porto--Bello. The eastern side of the harbour is formed by a small

promontory that runs out into the sea about five hundred yards, with a

bright little bay to windward; while a long muddy mangrove-covered spit

forms the right hand bank as you enter the mouth or estuary of the river

Chagres on the west. The easternmost bluff is a narrow saddle, with a

fort erected on the extreme point facing the sea, which, so far as

situation is concerned, is, or ought to be, impregnable, the rock being

precipitous on three faces, while it is cut off to landward by a deep

dry ditch, about thirty feet wide, across which a movable drawbridge is

let down, and this compartment of the defences is all very regular, with

scarp and counterscarp, covered--way and glacis. The brass guns mounted

on the castle were numerous and beautiful, but every thing was in

miserable disrepair; several of the guns, for instance, had settled down

bodily on the platform, having fallen through the crushed rotten

carriages. I found an efficient garrison in this stronghold of three old

negroes, who had not even a musket of any kind, but the commandant was

not in the castle when I paid my visit; however, one of the invincibles

undertook to pilot me to El Senor Torre’s house, where his honour was

dining. The best house in the place this was, by the by, although only

a thatched hut; and here I found his Excellency the Commandant, a little

shrivelled insignificant-looking creature. He was about sitting down

to his dinner, of which he invited me to partake, and as I was very

hungry, I contrived to do justice to the first dish, but my stomach was

grievously offended at the second, which seemed to me to be a compound

of garlic, brick dust, and train oil, so that I was glad to hurry on

board of my canoe, to settle all with a little good Madeira.

At four P.m. I proceeded up the river, which is here about a hundred

yards across, and very deep; it rolls sluggishly along through a low

swampy country, covered to the water’s edge with thick sedges and

underwood, below which the water stagnates, and generates myriads of

musquittoes, and other troublesome insects, and sends up whole clouds of

noxious vapours, redolent of yellow fever, and ague, and cramps, and all

manner of comfortable things.

At ten P.M. we anchored by a grapnel in the stream, and I set Peter

Mangrove forthwith to officiate in his new capacity of cook, and really

he made a deuced good one. I then slung my hammock under the toldo, and

lighting a slow match, at the end of it forwards, to smoke away the

musquittoes, having previously covered the aftermost end with a mat, I

wrapped myself in my cloak, and turned in to take my snooze. We weighed

again about two in the morning. As the day dawned the dull grey steamy

clouds settled down on us once more, while the rain fell in a regular

waterspout. It was anything but a cheering prospect to look along the

dreary vistas of the dull brimful Lethe-like stream, with nothing to be

seen but the heavy lowering sky above, the red swollen water beneath,

and the gigantic trees high towering overhead, and growing close to the

water’s edge, laced together with black snake-like withes, while the

jungle was thick and impervious, and actually grew down into the water,

for beach, or shore, or cleared bank, there was none,--all water and

underwood, except where a heavy soft slimy steaming black bank of mud

hove its shining back from out the dead waters near the shore, with one

or more monstrous alligators sleeping on it, like dirty rotten logs of

wood, scarcely deigning to lift their abominable long snouts to look at

us as we passed, or to raise their long scaly tails, with the black mud

sticking to the scales in great lumps--oh--horrible--most horrible! But

the creatures, although no beauties certainly, are harmless after all.

For instance, I never heard a well-authenticated case of their

attacking a human being hereabouts; pigs and fowls they do tithe,

however, like any parson. I don’t mean to say that they would not make

free with a little fat dumpling of a piccaniny, if he were thrown to

them, but they seem to have no ferocious propensities. I shot one of

them; he was about twelve feet long; the bullet entered in the joints of

the mail, below the shoulder of the fore paw, where the hide was tender;

but if you fire at them with the scale, that is, with the monster

looking at you, a musket ball will glance. I have often in this my log

spoken of the Brobdignag lizards, the guanas. I brought down one this

day, about three feet long, and found it, notwithstanding its dragon

like appearance, very good eating. At eleven AM on the 18th, we

arrived at the village of Cruzes, the point where the river ceases to be

navigable for canoes, and from whence you take horse, or rather mule,

for Panama. For about fifteen or twenty miles below Cruzes, the river

becomes rapid, and full of shoals, when the oars are laid aside, and the

canoes are propelled by long poles.

The Town, as it is called, is a poor miserable place, composed chiefly

of negro huts; however, a Spanish trader of the name of Villaverde, who

had come over in the Wave as a passenger, and had preceded me in a

lighter canoe, and to whom I had shown some kindness, now repaid it, as

far as lay in his power.

He lodged me for the night, and hired mules for me to proceed to Panama

in the morning; so I slung my hammock in an old Spanish soldier’s house,

who keeps a kind of posada, and was called by my friend Villaverde at

daydawn, whose object was, not to tell me to get ready for my journey,

but to ask me if I would go and bathe before starting. Rather a rum

sort of request, it struck me; nevertheless, a purification, after the

many disagreeables I had endured, could not come amiss; and slipping on

my trowsers, and casting my cloak on my shoulders, away we trudged to a

very beautiful spot, about a mile above Cruzes, where, to my surprise, I

found a score of Crusafios, all Altering in the water, puffing and

blowing and shouting. Now an alligator might pick and choose, thought

I; however, no one seemed in the least afraid, so I dashed amongst them.

Presently, about pistol-shot from us, a group of females appeared.

Come, thought I, rather too much for a modest young man this too; and

deuce take me, as I am a gentleman, if the whole bevy did not disrobe in

cold blood, and squatter, naked as their mother Eve was in the garden of

Eden, before she took to the herbage, right into the middle of the

stream, skirting and laughing, as if not even a male musquitto had been

within twenty miles. However, my neighbour took no notice of them; it

seemed all a matter of course. But let that pass. About eight o’clock

A.M. I got under weigh, with Peter Mangrove, on two good stout mules,

and a black guide running before me with a long stick, with which he

sprung over the sloughs and stones in the road with great agility; I

would have backed him against many a passable hunter, to do four miles

over a close country in a steeple-chase.

Panama is distant from Cruzes about seven leagues. The road is somewhat

like what the Highland ones must have been before General Wade took them

in hand, and only passable for mules; indeed, in many places where it

had been hewn out of the rock in zigzags on the face of the hill, it is

scarcely passable for two persons meeting. But the scenery on each side

is very beautiful, as it winds, for the most part, amongst steep rocks,

over shadowed by magnificent trees, amongst which birds of all sizes,

and of the most beautiful plumage, are perpetually glancing, while a

monkey, every here and there, would sit grimacing, and chattering, and

scratching himself in the cleft of a tree.

I should think, judging from my barometer--but I may have made an

inaccurate calculation, and I have not Humboldt by me--that the ridge of

the highest is fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, so that

it would be next to impossible to join the two seas at this point by a

canal with water in it. However, I expect to see a joint Stock Company

set a-going some fine day yet for the purpose of cutting it, that is,

when the national capital next accumulates (and Lord knows when that

will be) to a plethora, and people’s purses become so distended that

they require bleeding.

After travelling about twenty miles, the scene gradually opens, and one

begins to dream about Vasco Nunez and the enthusiastic first explorers

of the Isthmus; but my first view of the Pacific was through a drenching

shower of rain, that wet me to the skin, and rather kept my imagination

under, for this said imagination of mine is like a barn-door chuckey

brisk and crouse enough when the sun shines, and the sky is blue, and

plenty of grub at hand, but I can’t write poetry when I am could, and

hungry, and drooked. Still, when I caught my first glimpse of the

distant Pacific, I felt that, even through a miserable drizzle, it was a

noble prospect.

As you proceed, you occasionally pass through small open savannahs,

which become larger, and the clear spaces wider, until the forest you

have been travelling under gradually breaks into beautiful clumps of

trees, like those in a gentleman’s park, and every here and there a

placid clear piece of water spreads out, full of pond turtle, which I

believe to be one and the same with the tortoise, and eels; the latter

of which, by the by, are very sociable creatures, for in the clear

moonlight nights, with the bright sparkling dew on the short moist

grass, they frequently travel from one pond to another, wriggling along

the grass like snakes. I have myself found them fifty yards from the

water; but whether the errand was love or war, or merely to drink tea

with some of the slippery young females in the next pool, and then

return again, the deponent sayeth not.

As you approach the town, the open spaces before-mentioned become more

frequent, until at length you gain a rising ground, about three miles

from Panama, where, as the sun again shone out, the view became truly

enchanting.

There lay the town of Panama, built on a small tongue of land, jutting

into the Pacific, surrounded by walls, which might have been a

formidable defence once, but I wish my promotion depended on my rattling

the old bricks and stones about their ears, with one single frigate, if

I could only get near enough; but in the impossibility of this lies the

strength of the place, as the water shoals so gradually, that the tide

retires nearly a mile and a half from the walls, rising, I consider,

near eighteen feet at the springs, while, on the opposite side of the

Isthmus, at Chagres for instance, there is scarcely any at all, the gulf

stream neutralizing it almost entirely.

On the right hand a hill overhangs the town, rising precipitously to the

height of a thousand feet or thereabouts, on the extreme pinnacle of

which is erected a signal station, called the Vigia, which, at the

instant I saw it, was telegraphing to some craft out at sea. As for the

city, to assume our friend Mr Bang’s mode of description, it was shaped

like a tadpole, the body representing the city, and the suburb the tail;

or a stewpan, the city and its fortifications being the pan, while the

handle, tending obliquely towards us, was the Raval, or long street,

extending Savannahward, without the walls. At the distance from which

we viewed it, the red-tiled houses, cathedral, with its towers, and the

numerous monasteries and nunneries, seemed girt in with a white ribbon,

while a series of black spots here and there denoted the cannon on the

batteries. To the left of the town, there was a whole flotilla of small

craft, brigs, schooners, and vegetable boats; while farther out at sea,

beyond the fortifications, three large ships rode at anchor; and beyond

them again, the beautiful group of islands lying about five miles off

the town, appeared to float on and were reflected in the calm, glasslike

expanse of the Pacific, like emeralds chased in silver, while the ocean

itself, towards the horizon, seemed to rise up like a scene in a

theatre, or a burnished bright silver wall, growing more and more blue,

and hazy and indistinct, as it ascended, until it melted into the

cloudless heaven, so that no one could tell where water and sky met.

“Thou glorious mirror, in all time,

Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving boundless, endless, and sublime,

The image of Eternity--the throne

Of the Invisible.”

While a sperm whale every now and then rose between us and the islands,

and spouted up a high double jet into the air, like a blast of steam,

and then, with a heavy flounder of his broad tail, slowly sank again;

and a boat here and there glided athwart the scene, and a sleepy sail

arose with a slow motion and a fitful rattle, and a greasy cheep, on the

mast of some vessel, getting all ready to weigh, while small floating

trails of blue smoke were streaming away astern from the tiny cabooses

of the craft at anchor, and a mournful distant “yo heave oh” came

booming past us on the light air, and the everlasting tinkle of the

convent bells sounded cheerily, and the lowing of the kine around us

called up old associations in my bosom, as I looked forth on the

glorious spectacle from beneath a magnificent bower of orange-trees and

shaddocks, while all manner of wild-flowers blossomed and bloomed

around us.

We arrived at Panama about three PM, covered to the eyes with mud, and

after some little difficulty, I found out Senor Hombrecillo Justo’s

house, who received me very kindly. Next morning I waited on the

Governor, made my bow and told him my errand. He was abundantly civil;

professing himself ready to serve me in any way, and promising to give

me the earliest intelligence of the arrival of the Bandera. I then

returned to mine host’s, to whom I had strong letters of introduction

from some Kingston friends.

I soon found that I had landed amongst a family of originals. Mine host

was a little thin withered body, with a face that might have vied with

the monkey whom the council of Aberdeen took for a sugar planter. He

wore his own grey hair in a long greasy queue, and his costume, when I

first saw him, was white cotton stockings, white jean small clothes and

waistcoat, and a little light-blue silk coat; he wore large solid gold

buckles in his shoes, and knee-buckles of the same. His voice was

small and squeaking, and when heated in argument, or crossed by any

member of family,--and he was very touchy--it became so shrill and

indistinct that it pierced the ear without being in the least

intelligible. In those paroxysms he did not walk, but sprung from place

to place like a grasshopper, with unlooked-for agility, avoiding the

chairs and tables and other movables with great dexterity. I often

thought he would have broken whatever came in his way; but although his

erratic orbit was small, he performed his evolutions with great

precision and security. His general temper, however, was very kind,

humane, and good-humoured, and he seldom remained long under the

influence of passion. His character, both as a man and a merchant, was

unimpeachable, and, indeed, proverbial in the place. His better half

appeared to be some years older, and also a good deal of an original.

She was a little short thick woman; but, stout as she was when I had the

honour of an embrace, she must have been once much stouter, for her skin

appeared from the colour and texture to have come to her at second

hand, and to have originally belonged to a much larger person, for it

bagged and hung in flaps about her jowls and bosom, like an ill-cut

maintopsail, which sits clumsily about the clews. I think I could have

reefed her with advantage, below the chin.

Her usual dress was a shift, with a whole sailroom of frills about the

sleeves and bosom, and a heavy pink taffeta petticoat, (gowns being only

worn by these fair ones as you put on a greatcoat, that is, when they go

abroad,) and a small round apron like a flap of black silk. Over these

she wore a Spanish aroba, or twenty-five pounds weight of gold chains,

saints, and crucifixes, and a large black velvet patch, of the size of a

wafer, on each temple, which I found, by the by, to be an ornament very

much in fashion amongst the fair of Panama. Her hair, or rather the

scanty remnant thereof, was plaited into two grizzled braids, with a

black bow of ribbon at the end of each, and hung straight down her back.

Like may excellent wives, she loved to circulate her spouse’s blood by a

little well-timed opposition now and then; but she never tried her

strength too far, and she always softened down in proportion as he waxed

energetic, and began to accelerate his motions, so that by the time he

had given one or two hops, she had either fairly given in, or moved out.

They had no children, but had in a manner adopted a little black

creature about four years old, which, being a female, the lady had

christened by the familiar diminutive of Diablita.

Another curiosity was the maternal aunt of Don Hombrecillo, a little

superannuated woman about four feet high, if she could have stood erect,

but old age had long since bent her nearly double; she was on the verge

of eighty-five years of age, and had outlived all her faculties. This

poor old creature, in place of being respectably lodged and taken care

of, was allowed to go about the house, tame, without any fixed abode so

far as I could learn; nor did she always meet with that attention, I am

sorry to say it, from the family, or even from the servants, that she

was entitled to from her extreme helplessness. She had a droll custom

of eating all her meals walking, and it was her practice to move around

the dinner-table in this her dotage, and to commit pranks, that,

against my will, made me laugh, and even in despite of the feelings of

pity and self-humiliation that arose in my bosom at the sight of such

miserable imbecility in a fellow-creature. Thus keeping on the wing as

I have described, it was her practice to cruise about behind the chairs,

occasionally snatching pieces of food from before the guests, so slyly,

that the first intimation of her intentions was the appearance of her

yellow shrivelled birdlike claw in your plate.

The brother of our host was a little stout man, but still very like

Senor Justo himself. For instance, I always gloried in likening the

latter to a dried prune; then, to conceive of his plump brother, imagine

him boiled, and so swell out the creases in his skin, and there you have

him.

This little dumpling was very asthmatic, and used to blow like a

porpoise by the time he reached the top of the stairs. The only time he

had ever been out of Panama was whilst he made a short visit to Lima,

the wonders of which he used to chant unceasingly. But the continual

cause of my annoyance--I fear I must write disgust--was the stepmother

of mine host, a large fat dirty old woman. She had a pouch under her

chin like a pelican, while her complexion, from the quantity of oil and

foul feeding in which she delighted, was a greasy mahogany. She

despised the unnatural luxuries of knives and forks, constantly

devouring her meat with her fingers, whatever its consistency might be;

if flesh, she tore it with both hands; if soup, she--bah! and, as the

devil would have it, the venerable beauty chose to take a fancy to me.

Oh, she was a balloon! I have often expected to see her rise to the

roof.

These polished personages may be called Senor Justo’s family, but it was

occasionally increased by various others; none of whom, however, can I

heave-to to describe at present.

The day after my arrival, the operation of covering dollar boxes with

wet hides had been going on in the dinner saloon the whole forenoon,

which drove me forth to look about me; but I returned about half-past

two, this being the hour of dinner, and found all the family, excepting

mine hostess, assembled, and my appearance was the signal for dinner

being ordered in. I may mention here, that this worthy family were all

firmly impressed with the idea, that an Englishman was an ostrich,

possessing a stomach capable of holding and digesting four times as much

as any other person; and under this belief they were so outrageously

kind, that I was often literally stuffed to suffocation when I first

came amongst them; and when at length I resolutely refused to be

immolated after this fashion, they swore I was sick, or did not like my

food, which was next door to insulting them. El Senor Justo’s fat

dumpling of a brother thought medical advice ought to be taken, for when

he was in Lima several seamen belonging to an English whaler had died,

and he had remarked, the twaddling body, that they had invariably lost

their appetites previous to their dissolution.

But to return. Dinner being ordered, was promptly placed on the table,

and mine host insisted on planting me at the foot thereof, while he sat

on my left hand; so the party sat down; but the chair opposite, that

ought to have been filled by Madama herself, was still vacant.

“Adonde esta su ama,” quoth Don Hombrecillo to one of the black waiting

wenches. The girl said she did not know, but she would go and see. It

is necessary to mention here that the worthy Senor’s counting-house was

in a back building, separated from the house that fronted the street by

a narrow court, and in a small closet off this counting-house, my

quatre had been rigged the previous night, and there had my luggage been

deposited. Amongst other articles in my commissariat, there was a

basket with half-a-dozen of champagne, and some hock, and a bottle of

brandy, that I had placed under Peter Mangrove’s care to comfort us in

the wilderness. We all lay back in our chairs to wait for the lady of

the house, but neither did she nor Tomassa, the name of the handmaiden

who had been despatched in search of her, seem inclined to make their

appearance. Don Hombrecillo became impatient.

“Josefa,”--to another of the servants--“run and desire your mistress to

come here immediately.” Away she flew, but neither did this second

pigeon return. Mine host now lost his temper entirely, and spluttered

out, as loud as he could roar, “Somos comiendo, Panchita, somos

comiendo;” and forthwith, as if in spite, he began to fork up his food,

until he had nearly choked himself. Presently a short startled scream

was heard from the counting-house, then a low suppressed laugh, then a

loud shout, a long uproarious peal of laughter, and the two black

servants came thundering across the wooden gangway or drawbridge, that

connected the room where we sat with the outhouse, driven onwards by

their mistress herself. They flew across the end of the dining room

into the small balcony fronting the lane and began without ceremony to

shout across the narrow street to a Carmelite priest, who was in a

gallery of the opposite monastery, “that their mistress was possessed.”

Presently in danced our landlady, in propria persona, jumping and

screaming and laughing, and snapping her fingers, and spinning round

like a Turkish dervish, “mira el fandango, mira el fandangodexa me

baylar, dexa me baylar--See my fandango, see my fandangolet me dance

let me dance--ha, ha, ha.”

“Panchita,” screamed Justo, in extreme wrath, “tu es loco, you are mad

sit down, por amor de Dios--seas decente--be decent.”

She continued gamboling about, “loven soy y virgin--I am young and a

virgin--y tu Viejo diablo que queres tu,--and you, old devil, what do

you want, eh?--Una virgin por Dios soy--I am young,” and seizing a

boiled fowl from the dish, she let fly at her husband’s head, but missed

him, fortunately; whereupon she made a regular grab at him with her paw,

but he slid under the table, in all haste, roaring out,--“Ave Maria, que

es esso--manda por el Padre--Send for the priest, y trae una puerco, en

donde echar el demonio, manda, manda--send for a priest, and a pig, into

which the demon may be cast,--send--” “Dexa me, dexa me baylar”

continued the old dame--“tu no vale, Bobo viejo, you are of no use, you

old blockhead--you are a forked radish, and not a man--let me catch you,

let me catch you,” and here she made a second attempt, and got hold of

his queue, by which she forcibly dragged him from beneath the table,

until fortunately, the ribbon that tied it slid off in her hand, and the

little Senor instantly ran back to this burrow, with the speed of a

rabbit, while his wife sung out, “tu gastas calzones, eh? para que,

damelos damelos, yo los quitare?” and if she had caught the worthy man,

I believe she would really have shaken him out of his garments, peeled

him on the spot, and appropriated them to herself as her threat ran. “I

am a cat, a dog, and the devilhoo--hoo--hoo--let me catch you, you

miserable wretch, you forked radish, and if I don’t peel off your

breeches,--I shall wear them, I shall wear them,--Ave Maria.” Here she

threw herself into a chair, being completely blown; but after a gasp or

two, she started to her legs again, dancing and singing and snapping her

fingers, as if she had held castanets between them, “Venga--Venga--dexa

me baylar Dankee, Dankee la--Dankee, Dankee la--mi guitarra--mi

guitarra Dankee, Dankee la--ha, ha, ha,”--and away she trundled down

stairs again, where she met the priest who had been sent for, in the

lower hall, who happened to be very handsome young man. Seeing the

state she was in, and utterly unable to account for it, he bobbed, as

she threw herself on him, eluded her embraces, and then bolted up

stairs, followed by Mrs Potiphart at full speed.--“Padre, father,” cried

she, “stop till I peel that forked radish there, and I will give you his

breeches--Dankee, Dankee.” All this while, Don Hombrecillo was squeaking

out from his lair, at the top of his pipe--“Padre, padre, trae el

puerco, venga el puerco--echar el demonio--echar el demonio bring the

pig, the pig, and cast out the devil.”--“Mi guitarra, canta, canta y

bayle, viejo diablito, canta o yo te matarras--Bring my guitar, dance,

dance and sing, you little old devil you, or I’ll murder you, dankee,

dankee.”

In fine, I was at length obliged to lend a hand, and she was bodily laid

hold of, and put to bed, where she soon fell into a sound sleep, and

next morning awoke in her sound senses, totally unconscious of all that

had passed, excepting that she remembered having taken a glass of the

Englishman’s small beer.

Now the secret was out. The worthy woman, like most South American

Spaniards, was distractedly fond of cervesa blanca, or small beer, and

seeing the champagne bottles with their wired corks (beer requiring to

be so secured in hot climates,) in my basket, she could not resist

making free with a bottle, and, as I charitably concluded, small beer

being a rarity in those countries, she did not find out the difference

until it was made evident by the issue; however, I have it from

authority, that she never afterwards ventured on any thing weaker than

brandy, and from that hour, utterly eschewed that most dangerous liquor,

cervesa blanca.