PART III.

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XII.--NOVEMBER, 1863.--NO. LXXIII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND

FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of

Massachusetts.

* * * * *

THE SPANIARD AND THE HERETIC.

[In the August number of the "Atlantic," under the title of "The

Fleur-de-Lis in Florida," will be found a narrative of the Huguenot

attempts to occupy that country, which, exciting the jealousy of Spain,

gave rise to the crusade whose history is recorded below.]

The monk, the inquisitor, the Jesuit, these were the lords of

Spain,--sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed and fed the

dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed and fed

the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy,

and given over a noble nation to bigotry, dark, blind, inexorable as the

doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a

rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of

that day a scourge as dire as ever fell on man.

Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope, freedom, pierced with

vitalizing ray the clouds and the miasma that hung so thick over the

prostrate Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a foul image of decay

and death. Kindled with new life, the nations teemed with a progeny of

heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened

Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,--a monastic cell, an

inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of

the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat

in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was

the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish

party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above all, it was so

in France; and while within her bounds there was a semblance of peace,

the national and religious rage burst forth on a wilder theatre. Thither

it is for us to follow it, where, on the shores of Florida, the Spaniard

and the Frenchman, the bigot and the Huguenot, met in the grapple of

death.

In a corridor of the Escurial, Philip II. was met by a man who had long

stood waiting his approach, and who with proud reverence placed a

petition in the hand of the pale and sombre King. The petitioner was

Pedro Menendez de Aviles, one of the ablest and most distinguished

officers of the Spanish marine. He was born of an ancient Asturian

family. His boyhood had been wayward, ungovernable, and fierce. He ran

off at eight years of age, and when, after a search of six months, he

was found and brought back, he ran off again. This time he was more

successful, escaping on board a fleet bound against the Barbary

corsairs, when his precocious appetite for blood and blows had

reasonable contentment. A few years later, he found means to build a

small vessel in which he cruised against the corsairs and the French,

and, though still little more than a boy, displayed a singular address

and daring. The wonders of the New World now seized his imagination. He

made a voyage thither, and the ships under his charge came back

freighted with wealth. War with France was then at its height. As

captain-general of the fleet, he was sent with troops to Flanders, and

to their prompt arrival was due, it is said, the victory of St. Quentin,

Two years later, he commanded the luckless armada which bore back Philip

to his native shore, and nearly drowned him in a storm off the port of

Laredo. This mischance, or his own violence and insubordination, wrought

to the prejudice of Menendez. He complained that his services were ill

repaid. Philip lent him a favoring ear, and despatched him to the Indies

as general of the fleet and army. Here he found means to amass vast

riches; and, in 1561, returning to Spain, charges were brought against

him of a nature which his too friendly biographer does not explain. The

Council of the Indies arrested him. He was imprisoned and sentenced to a

heavy fine, but, gaining his release, hastened to Madrid to throw

himself on the royal clemency.

His petition was most graciously received. Philip restored his command,

but remitted only half his fine, a strong presumption of his guilt.

Menendez kissed the royal hand; he had still a petition in reserve. His

son had been wrecked near the Bermudas, and he would fain go thither to

find tidings of his fate. The pious King bade him trust in God, and

promised that he should be despatched without delay to the Bermudas and

to Florida with a commission to make an exact survey of those perilous

seas for the profit of future voyagers; but Menendez was ill content

with such an errand. He knew, he said, nothing of greater moment to His

Majesty than the conquest and settlement of Florida. The climate was

healthful, the soil fertile; and, worldly advantages aside, it was

peopled by a race sunk in the thickest shades of infidelity. "Such

grief," he pursued, "seizes me, when I behold this multitude of wretched

Indians, that I should choose the conquest and settling of Florida above

all commands, offices, and dignities which your Majesty might bestow."

Those who think this hypocrisy do not know the Spaniard of the sixteenth

century.

The King was edified by his zeal. An enterprise of such spiritual and

temporal promise was not to be slighted, and Menendez was empowered to

conquer and convert Florida at his own cost. The conquest was to be

effected within three years. Menendez was to take with him five hundred

men, and supply them with five hundred slaves, besides horses, cattle,

sheep, and hogs. Villages were to be built, with forts to defend them;

and sixteen ecclesiastics, of whom four should be Jesuits, were to form

the nucleus of a Floridian church. The King, on his part, granted

Menendez free trade with Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Cuba, and Spain, the

office of Adelantado of Florida for life, joined to the right of naming

his successor, and large emoluments to be drawn from the expected

conquest.

The compact struck, Menendez hastened to his native Asturias to raise

money among his relatives. Scarcely was he gone, when tidings for the

first time reached Madrid that Florida was already occupied by a colony

of French Protestants, and that a reinforcement, under Ribaut, was on

the point of sailing thither. A French historian of high authority

declares that these advices came from the Catholic party at the French

court, in whom all sense of the national interest and honor was

smothered under their hatred of Coligny and the Huguenots. Of this there

can be little doubt, though information also came from the buccaneer

Frenchmen captured in the West Indies.

Foreigners had invaded the territory of Spain. The trespassers, too,

were heretics, foes of God and liegemen of the Devil. Their doom was

fixed. But how would France endure an assault, in time of peace, on

subjects who had gone forth on an enterprise sanctioned by the crown,

undertaken in its name, and under its commission?

The throne of France, where the corruption of the nation seemed gathered

to a head, was trembling between the two parties of the Catholics and

the Huguenots, whose chiefs aimed at royalty. Flattering both, caressing

both, betraying both, playing one against the other, Catherine de

Médicis, by a thousand crafty arts and expedients of the moment, sought

to retain the crown on the heads of her weak and vicious sons. Of late

her crooked policy had drawn her towards the Catholic party, in other

words, the party of Spain; and already she had given ear to the savage

Duke of Alva, urging her to the course which, seven years later, led to

the carnage of St. Bartholomew. In short, the Spanish policy was

ascendant, and no thought of the national interest or honor could

restrain that basest of courts from consigning by hundreds to the

national enemy those whom, itself, it was meditating to immolate by

thousands.

Menendez was summoned back in haste to the court. There was counsel,

deep and ominous, in the chambers of the Escurial. His force must be

strengthened. Three hundred and ninety-four men were added at the royal

charge, and a corresponding number of transport and supply ships. It was

a holy war, a crusade, and as such was preached by priest and monk along

the western coasts of Spain. All the Biscayan ports flamed with zeal,

and adventurers crowded to enroll themselves; since to plunder heretics

is good for the soul as well as the purse, and broil and massacre have

double attraction, when promoted to a means of salvation: a fervor, deep

and hot, but not of celestial kindling; nor yet that buoyant and

inspiring zeal, which, when the Middle Age was in its youth and prime,

glowed in the soul of Tancred, Godfrey, and St. Louis, and which, when

its day was long since past, could still find its home in the great

heart of Columbus. A darker spirit urged the new crusade,--born, not of

hope, but of fear, slavish in its nature, the creature and the tool of

despotism. For the typical Spaniard of the sixteenth century was not in

strictness a fanatic; he was bigotry incarnate.

Heresy was a plague-spot, an ulcer to be eradicated with fire and the

knife, and this foul abomination was infecting the shores which the

Vicegerent of Christ had given to the King of Spain, and which the Most

Catholic King had given to the Adelantado. Thus would countless heathen

tribes be doomed to an eternity of flame, shut out from that saving

communion with Holy Church, to which, by the sword and the whip and the

fagot, dungeons and slavery, they would otherwise have been mercifully

driven, to the salvation of their souls, and the greater glory of God.

And, for the Adelantado himself, should the vast outlays, the vast

debts, of his bold Floridian venture be all in vain? Should his fortunes

be wrecked past redemption through these tools of Satan? As a Catholic,

as a Spaniard, as an adventurer, his course was clear. Woe, then, to the

Huguenot in the gripe of Pedro Menendez!

But what was the scope of this enterprise, and the limits of the

Adelantado's authority? He was invested with power almost absolute, not

merely over the peninsula which now retains the name of Florida, but

over all North America, from Labrador to Mexico,--for this was the

Florida of the old Spanish geographers, and the Florida designated in

the commission of Menendez. It was a continent which he was to conquer

and occupy out of his own purse. The impoverished King contracted with

his daring and ambitious subject to win and hold for him the territory

of the future United States and British Provinces. His plan, as

subsequently developed and exposed at length in his unpublished letters

to Philip II., was, first, to plant a garrison at Port Royal, and next

to fortify strongly on Chesapeake Bay, called by him St. Mary's. He

believed that this bay was an arm of the sea, running northward and

eastward, and communicating with the Gulf of St. Lawrence, thus making

New England, with adjacent districts, an island. His proposed fort on

the Chesapeake, giving access, by this imaginary passage, to the seas of

Newfoundland, would enable the Spaniards to command the fisheries, on

which both the French and the English had long encroached, to the great

prejudice of Spanish rights. Doubtless, too, these inland waters gave

access to the South Sea, and their occupation was necessary to prevent

the French from penetrating thither; for that ambitious people, since

the time of Cartier, had never abandoned their schemes of seizing this

portion of the dominions of the King of Spain. Five hundred soldiers and

one hundred sailors must, he urges, take possession, without delay, of

Port Royal and the Chesapeake.

Preparation for his enterprise was pushed with a furious energy. His

force amounted to two thousand six hundred and forty-six persons, in

thirty-four vessels, one of which, the San Pelayo, bearing Menendez

himself, was of more than nine hundred tons' burden, and is described as

one of the finest ships afloat. There were twelve Franciscans and eight

Jesuits, besides other ecclesiastics; and many knights of Galicia,

Biscay, and the Asturias bore part in the expedition. With a slight

exception, the whole was at the Adelantado's charge. Within the first

fourteen months, according to his admirer, Barcia, the adventure cost

him a million ducats.

Before the close of the year, Sancho de Arciniega was commissioned to

join Menendez with an additional force of fifteen hundred men.

Red-hot with a determined purpose, he would brook no delay. To him, says

the chronicler, every day seemed a year. He was eager to anticipate

Ribaut, of whose designs and whose force he seems to have been informed

to the minutest particular, but whom he hoped to thwart and ruin by

gaining Fort Caroline before him. With eleven ships, then, he sailed

from Cadiz on the 29th of June, 1565, leaving the smaller vessels of his

fleet to follow with what speed they might. He touched first at the

Canaries, and on the eighth of July left them, steering for Dominica. A

minute account of the voyage has come down to us from the pen of

Mendoza, chaplain of the expedition, a somewhat dull and illiterate

person, who busily jots down the incidents of each passing day, and is

constantly betraying, with a certain awkward simplicity, how the cares

of this world and the next jostle each other in his thoughts.

On Friday, the twentieth of July, a storm fell upon them with appalling

fury. The pilots lost head, the sailors gave themselves up to their

terrors. Throughout the night, they beset Mendoza for confession and

absolution, a boon not easily granted, for the seas swept the crowded

decks in cataracts of foam, and the shriekings of the gale in the

rigging drowned the exhortations of the half-drowned priest. Cannon,

cables, spars, water-casks, were thrown overboard, and the chests of the

sailors would have followed, had not the latter, despite their fright,

raised such a howl of remonstrance that the order was revoked. At length

day dawned. At least there was light to die by. Plunging, reeling, half

submerged, quivering under the crashing shock of the seas, whose

mountain ridges rolled down upon her before the gale, the ship lay in

deadly jeopardy from Friday till Monday noon. Then the storm abated; the

sun broke forth; and again she held her course.

They reached Dominica on Sunday, the fifth of August. The chaplain

tells us how he went on shore to refresh himself,--how, while his

Italian servant washed his linen at a brook, he strolled along the beach

and picked up shells,--and how he was scared, first, by a prodigious

turtle, and next by a vision of the cannibal natives, which caused his

prompt retreat to the boats.

On the tenth, they anchored in the harbor of Porto Rico, where they

found two of their companion-ships, from which they had parted in the

storm. One of them was the San Pelayo, with Menendez on board. Mendoza

informs us that in the evening the officers came on board his ship, when

he, the chaplain, regaled them with sweetmeats, and that Menendez

invited him not only to supper that night, but to dinner the next day,

"for the which I thanked him, as reason was," says the gratified

churchman.

Here thirty men deserted, and three priests also ran off, of which

Mendoza bitterly complains, as increasing his own work. The motives of

the clerical truants may perhaps be inferred from a worldly temptation

to which the chaplain himself was subjected. "I was offered the service

of a chapel where I should have got a _peso_ for every mass I said, the

whole year round; but I did not accept it, for fear that what I hear

said of the other three would be said of me. Besides, it is not a place

where one can hope for any great advancement, and I wished to try

whether, in refusing a benefice for the love of the Lord, He will not

repay me with some other stroke of fortune before the end of the voyage;

for it is my aim to serve God and His blessed Mother."

The original design had been to rendezvous at Havana, but, with the

Adelantado, the advantages of despatch outweighed every other

consideration. He resolved to push directly for Florida. Five of his

scattered ships had by this time rejoined company, comprising, exclusive

of officers, a force of about five hundred soldiers, two hundred

sailors, and one hundred colonists. Bearing northward, he advanced by an

unknown and dangerous course along the coast of Hayti and through the

intricate passes of the Bahamas. On the night of the twenty-sixth, the

San Pelayo struck three times on the shoals; "but," says the chaplain,

"inasmuch as our enterprise was undertaken for the sake of Christ and

His blessed Mother, two heavy seas struck her abaft, and set her afloat

again."

At length the ships lay becalmed in the Bahama Channel, slumbering on

the dead and glassy sea, torpid with the heats of a West-Indian August.

Menendez called a council of the commanders. There was doubt and

indecision. Perhaps Ribaut had already reached the French fort, and then

to attack the united force would be a stroke of desperation. Far better

to await their lagging comrades. But the Adelantado was of another mind;

and, even had his enemy arrived, he was resolved that he should have no

time to fortify himself.

"It is God's will," he said, "that our victory should be due, not to our

numbers, but to His all-powerful aid. Therefore has He stricken us with

tempests and scattered our ships." And he gave his voice for instant

advance.

There was much dispute; even the chaplain remonstrated; but nothing

could bend the iron will of Menendez. Nor was a sign of celestial

approval wanting. At nine in the evening, a great meteor burst forth in

mid-heaven, and, blazing like the sun, rolled westward towards the

Floridian coast. The fainting spirits of the crusaders were kindled

anew. Diligent preparation was begun. Prayers and masses were said; and,

that the temporal arm might not be wanting, the men were daily practised

on deck in shooting at marks, in order, says the chronicle, that the

recruits might learn not to be afraid of their guns.

The dead calm continued. "We were all very tired," says the chaplain,

"and I above all, with praying to God for a fair wind. To-day, at about

two in the afternoon, He took pity on us, and sent us a breeze." Before

night they saw land,--the faint line of forest, traced along the watery

horizon, that marked the coast of Florida. But where in all this vast

monotony was the lurking-place of the French? Menendez anchored, and

sent fifty men ashore, who presently found a band of Indians in the

woods, and gained from them the needed information. He stood northward,

till, on the afternoon of Tuesday, the fourth of September, he descried

four ships anchored near the mouth of a river. It was the river St.

John's, and the ships were four of Ribaut's squadron. The prey was in

sight. The Spaniards prepared for battle, and bore down upon the

Lutherans; for, with them, all reformers alike were branded with the

name of the arch-heretic. Slowly, before the faint breeze, the ships

glided on their way; but while, excited and impatient, the fierce crews

watched the decreasing space, and while they were still three leagues

from their prize, the air ceased to stir, the sails flapped against the

mast, a black cloud with thunder rose above the coast, and the warm rain

of the South descended on the breathless sea. It was dark before the

wind moved again, and the ships resumed their course. At half past

eleven they reached the French. The San Pelayo slowly moved to windward

of Ribaut's flag-ship, the Trinity, and anchored very near her. The

other ships took similar stations. While these preparations were making,

a work of two hours, the men labored in silence, and the French,

thronging their gangways, looked on in equal silence. "Never, since I

came into the world," writes the chaplain, "did I know such a

stillness."

It was broken, at length, by a trumpet from the deck of the San Pelayo.

A French trumpet answered. Then Menendez, "with much courtesy," says his

Spanish eulogist, demanded, "Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"

"From France," was the reply.

"What are you doing here?" pursued the Adelantado.

"Bringing soldiers and supplies for a fort which the King of France has

in this country, and for many others which he soon will have."

"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"

Many voices cried together, "Lutherans, of the new religion"; then, in

their turn, they demanded who Menendez was, and whence he came. The

latter answered,--

"I am Pedro Menendez, General of the fleet of the King of Spain, Don

Philip the Second, who have come to this country to hang and behead all

Lutherans whom I shall find by land or sea, according to instructions

from my King, so precise that I have power to pardon none whomsoever;

and these commands I shall fulfil, as you shall know. At daybreak I

shall board your ships, and if I find there any Catholic, he shall be

well treated; but every heretic shall die."

The French with one voice raised a cry of wrath and defiance.

"If you are a brave man, don't wait till day. Come on now, and see what

you will get!"

And they assailed the Adelantado with a shower of scoffs and insults.

Menendez broke into a rage, and gave the order to board. The men slipped

the cables, and the sullen black hulk of the San Pelayo drifted down

upon the Trinity. The French by no means made good their defiance.

Indeed, they were incapable of resistance, Ribaut with his soldiers

being ashore at Fort Caroline. They cut their cables, left their

anchors, made sail, and fled. The Spaniards fired, the French replied.

The other Spanish ships had imitated the movement of the San Pelayo;

"but," writes the chaplain, Mendoza, "these devils run mad are such

adroit sailors, and manoeuvred so well, that we did not catch one of

them." Pursuers and pursued ran out to sea, firing useless volleys at

each other.

In the morning Menendez gave over the chase, turned, and, with the San

Pelayo alone, ran back for the St. John's. But here a welcome was

prepared for him. He saw bands of armed men drawn up on the beach, and

the smaller vessels of Ribaut's squadron, which had crossed the bar

several days before, anchored behind it to oppose his landing. He would

not venture an attack, but, steering southward, skirted the coast till

he came to an inlet which he named St. Augustine.

Here he found three of his ships, already debarking their troops, guns,

and stores. Two officers, Patiño and Vicente, had taken possession of

the dwelling of Seloy, an Indian chief, a huge barn-like structure,

strongly framed of entire trunks of trees, and thatched with

palmetto-leaves. Around it they were throwing up intrenchments of

fascines and sand. Gangs of negroes, with pick, shovel, and spade, were

toiling at the work. Such was the birth of St. Augustine, the oldest

town of the United States, and such the introduction of slave-labor upon

their soil.

On the eighth, Menendez took formal possession of his domain. Cannon

were fired, trumpets sounded, and banners displayed, as, at the head of

his officers and nobles, he landed in state. Mendoza, crucifix in hand,

came to meet him, chanting, "_Te Deum laudamus_," while the Adelantado

and all his company, kneeling, kissed the cross, and the congregated

Indians gazed in silent wonder.

Meanwhile the tenants of Fort Caroline were not idle. Two or three

soldiers, strolling along the beach in the afternoon, had first seen the

Spanish ships and hastily summoned Ribaut. He came down to the mouth of

the river, followed by an anxious and excited crowd; but, as they

strained their eyes through the darkness, they could see nothing but the

flashes of the distant guns. The returning light showed them at length,

far out at sea, the Adelantado in hot chase of their flying comrades.

Pursuers and pursued were soon out of sight. The drums beat to arms.

After many hours of suspense, the San Pelayo reappeared, hovering about

the mouth of the river, then bearing away towards the south. More

anxious hours ensued, when three other sail came in sight, and they

recognized three of their own returning ships. Communication was opened,

a boat's crew landed, and they learned from Captain Cosette, that,

confiding in the speed of his ship, he had followed the Spaniards to St.

Augustine, reconnoitred their position, and seen them land their negroes

and intrench themselves.

In his chamber at Fort Caroline, Laudonnière lay sick in bed, when

Ribaut entered, and with him La Grange, Ste. Marie, Ottigny, Yonville,

and other officers. At the bedside of the displaced commandant they held

their council of war. There were three alternatives: first, to remain

where they were and fortify; next, to push overland for St. Augustine,

and attack the invaders in their intrenchments; and, finally, to embark,

and assail them by sea. The first plan would leave their ships a prey to

the Spaniards; and so too, in all likelihood, would the second, besides

the uncertainties of an overland march through an unknown wilderness. By

sea, the distance was short and the route explored. By a sudden blow

they could capture or destroy the Spanish ships, and master the troops

on shore before their reinforcements could arrive, and before they had

time to complete their defences.

Such were the views of Ribaut, with which, not unnaturally, Laudonnière

finds fault, and Le Moyne, judging by results, echoes the censures of

his chief. And yet the plan seems as well-conceived as it was bold,

lacking nothing but success. The Spaniards, stricken with terror, owed

their safety to the elements, or, as they affirm, to the special

interposition of the Holy Virgin. Let us be just to Menendez. He was a

leader fit to stand with Cortés and Pizarro; but he was matched with a

man as cool, skilful, prompt, and daring as himself. The traces that

have come down to us indicate, in Ribaut, one far above the common

stamp: "a distinguished man, of many high qualities," as even the

fault-finding Le Moyne calls him, devout after the best spirit of the

Reform, and with a human heart under his steel breastplate.

La Grange and other officers took part with Laudonnière and opposed the

plan of an attack by sea; but Ribaut's conviction was unshaken, and the

order was given. All his own soldiers fit for duty embarked in haste,

and with them went La Caille, Arlac, and, as it seems, Ottigny, with the

best of Laudonnière's men. Even Le Moyne, though wounded in the fight

with Outina's warriors, went on board to bear his part in the fray, and

would have sailed with the rest, had not Ottigny, seeing his disabled

condition, ordered him back to the fort.

On the tenth, the ships, crowded with troops, set sail. Ribaut was gone,

and with him the pith and sinew of the colony. The miserable remnant

watched his receding sails with dreary foreboding, a foreboding which

seemed but too just, when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than

the Indians had ever known, howled through the forest and lashed the

ocean into fury, Most forlorn was the plight of these exiles, left, it

might be, the prey of a band of ferocious bigots more terrible than the

fiercest hordes of the wilderness. And when night closed on the stormy

river and the gloomy waste of pines, what dreams of terror may not have

haunted the helpless women who crouched under the hovels of Fort

Caroline!

The fort was in a ruinous state, the palisade on the water side broken

down, and three breaches in the rampart. In the driving rain, urged by

the sick Laudonnière, the men, bedrenched and disheartened, labored as

they might to strengthen their defences. Their muster-roll shows but a

beggarly array. "Now," says Laudonnière, "let them which have bene bold

to say that I had men ynongh left me, so that I had meanes to defend my

selfe, give care a little now vnto mee, and if they have eyes in their

heads, let them see what men I had." Of Ribaut's followers left at the

fort, only nine or ten had weapons, while only two or three knew how to

use them. Four of them were boys, who kept Ribaut's dogs, and another

was his cook. Besides these, he had left a brewer, an old

crossbow-maker, two shoemakers, a player on the spinet, four valets, a

carpenter of threescore--Challeux, no doubt, who has left us the story

of his woes,--and a crowd of women, children, and eighty-six

camp-followers. To these were added the remnant of Laudonnière's men, of

whom seventeen could bear arms, the rest being sick or disabled by

wounds received in the fight with Outina.

Laudonnière divided his force, such as it was, into two watches, over

which he placed two officers, St. Cler and La Vigne, gave them lanterns

to go the rounds, and an hour-glass to set the time; while he himself,

giddy with weakness and fever, was every night at the guard-room.

It was the night of the nineteenth of September; floods of rain

bedrenched the sentries on the rampart, and as day dawned on the

dripping barracks and deluged parade, the storm increased in violence.

What enemy could have ventured forth on such a night? La Vigne, who had

the watch, took pity on the sentries and on himself, dismissed them, and

went to his quarters. He little knew what mortal energies, urged by

ambition, avarice, bigotry, desperation, will dare and do.

To return to the Spaniards at St. Augustine. On the morning of the

eleventh, the crew of one of their smaller vessels, lying outside the

bar, saw through the twilight of early dawn two of Ribaut's ships close

upon them. Not a breath of air was stirring. There was no escape, and

the Spaniards fell on their knees in supplication to Our Lady of Utrera,

explaining to her that the heretics were upon them, and begging her to

send them a little wind. "Forthwith," says Mendoza, "one would have said

that Our Lady herself came down upon the vessel." A wind sprang up, and

the Spaniards found refuge behind the bar. The returning day showed to

their astonished eyes all the ships of Ribaut, their decks black with

men, hovering off the entrance of the port; but Heaven had them in its

charge, and again they experienced its protecting care. The breeze sent

by Our Lady of Utrera rose to a gale, then to a furious tempest; and the

grateful Adelantado saw through rack and mist the ships of his enemy

tossed wildly among the raging waters as they struggled to gain an

offing. With exultation at his heart the skilful seaman read their

danger, and saw them in his mind's eye dashed to utter wreck among the

sand-bars and breakers of the lee-shore.

A bold thought seized him. He would march overland with five hundred men

and attack Fort Caroline while its defenders were absent. First he

ordered a mass; then he called a council. Doubtless, it was in that

great Indian lodge of Seloy, where he had made his head-quarters; and

here, in this dim and smoky concave, nobles, officers, priests, gathered

at his summons. There were fears and doubts and murmurings, but Menendez

was desperate. Not the mad desperation that strikes wildly and at

random, but the still red heat that melts and burns and seethes with a

steady, unquenchable fierceness. "Comrades," he said, "the time has come

to show our courage and our zeal. This is God's war, and we must not

flinch. It is a war with Lutherans, and we must wage it with blood and

fire."

But his hearers would not respond. They had not a million of ducats at

stake, and were nowise ready for a cast so desperate. A clamor of

remonstrance rose from the circle. Many voices, that of Mendoza among

the rest, urged waiting till their main forces should arrive. The

excitement spread to the men without, and the swarthy, black-bearded

crowd broke into tumults mounting almost to mutiny, while an officer was

heard to say that he would not go on such a hare-brained errand to be

butchered like a beast. But nothing could move the Adelantado. His

appeals or his threats did their work at last; the confusion was

quelled, and preparation was made for the march.

Five hundred arquebusiers and pikemen were drawn up before the camp.

To each was given a sack of bread and a flagon of wine. Two Indians and

a renegade Frenchman, called François Jean, were to guide them, and

twenty Biscayan axe-men moved to the front to clear the way. Through

floods of driving rain, a hoarse voice shouted the word of command, and

the sullen march began.

With dire misgiving, Mendoza watched the last files as they vanished in

the tempestuous forest. Two days of suspense ensued, when a messenger

came back with a letter from the Adelantado announcing that he had

nearly reached the French fort, and that on the morrow, September

twentieth, at sunrise, he hoped to assault it. "May the Divine Majesty

deign to protect us, for He knows that we have need of it," writes the

scared chaplain; "the Adelantado's great zeal and courage make us hope

he will succeed, but for the good of His Majesty's service he ought to

be a little less ardent in pursuing his schemes."

Meanwhile the five hundred had pushed their march through forest and

quagmire, through swollen streams and inundated savannas, toiling

knee-deep through mud, rushes, and the rank, tangled grass,--hacking

their way through thickets of the _yucca_ or Spanish bayonet, with its

clumps of dagger-like leaves, or defiling in gloomy procession through

the drenched forest, to the moan, roar, and howl of the storm-racked

pines. As they bent before the tempest, the water trickling from the

rusty headpiece crept clammy and cold betwixt the armor and the skin;

and when they made their wretched bivouac, their bed was the spongy

soil, and the exhaustless clouds their tent.

The night of Wednesday, the nineteenth, found their vanguard in a deep

forest of pines, less than a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low

hills which extended in its rear, and formed a continuation of St.

John's Bluff. All around was one great morass. In pitchy darkness,

knee-deep in weeds and water, half starved, worn with toil and lack of

sleep, drenched to the skin, their provision spoiled, their ammunition

wet, their spirit chilled out of them, they stood in shivering groups,

cursing the enterprise and the author of it. Menendez heard an ensign

say aloud to his comrades,--

"This Asturian _corito_, who knows no more of war on shore than an ass,

has ruined us all. By ----, if my advice had been followed, he would have

had his deserts the day he set out on this cursed journey!"

The Adelantado pretended not to hear.

Two hours before dawn he called his officers about him. All night, he

said, he had been praying to God and the Virgin.

"Señores, what shall we resolve on? Our ammunition and provisions are

gone. Our case is desperate." And he urged a bold rush on the fort.

But men and officers alike were disheartened and disgusted. They

listened coldly and sullenly; many were for returning at every risk;

none were in a mood for fight. Menendez put forth all his eloquence,

till at length the dashed spirits of his followers were so far rekindled

that they consented to follow him.

All fell on their knees in the marsh; then, rising, they formed their

ranks and began to advance, guided by the renegade Frenchman, whose

hands, to make sure of him, were tied behind his back. Groping and

stumbling in the dark among trees, roots, and underbrush, buffeted by

wind and rain, and slashed in the face by the recoiling boughs which

they could not see, they soon lost their way, fell into confusion, and

came to a stand, in a mood more savagely desponding than before. But

soon a glimmer of returning day came to their aid, and showed them the

dusky sky, and the dark columns of the surrounding pines. Menendez

ordered the men forward on pain of death. They obeyed, and presently,

emerging from the forest, could dimly discern the ridge of a low hill,

behind which, the Frenchman told them, was the fort. Menendez, with a

few officers and men, cautiously mounted to the top. Beneath lay Fort

Caroline, three gunshots distant; but the rain, the imperfect light, and

a cluster of intervening houses prevented his seeing clearly, and he

sent two officers to reconnoitre. Descending, they met a solitary

Frenchman, a straggler from the fort. They knocked him down with a

sheathed sword, took him prisoner, then stabbed him in cold blood. This

done, and their observations made, they returned to the top of the hill,

behind which, clutching their weapons in fierce expectancy, all the gang

stood waiting.

"Santiago!" cried Menendez. "At them! God is with us!"

And, shouting their hoarse war-cries, the Spaniards rushed down the

slope like starved wolves.

Not a sentry was on the rampart. La Vigne, the officer of the guard, had

just gone to his quarters, but a trumpeter, who chanced to remain, saw,

through sheets of rain, the black swarm of assailants sweeping down the

hill. He blew the alarm, and at his shrill summons a few half-naked

soldiers ran wildly out of the barracks. It was too late. Through the

breaches, over the ramparts, the Spaniards came pouring in.

"Santiago! Santiago! Down with the Lutherans!"

Sick men leaped from their beds. Women and children, blind with fright,

darted shrieking from the houses. A fierce gaunt visage, the thrust of a

pike or blow of a rusty halberd,--such was the greeting that met all

alike. Laudonnière snatched his sword and target, and ran towards the

principal breach, calling to his soldiers. A rush of Spaniards met him;

his men were cut down around him; and he, with a soldier named

Bartholomew, was forced back into the courtyard of his house. Here a

tent was pitched, and as the pursuers stumbled among the cords, he

escaped behind Ottigny's house, sprang through the breach in the western

rampart, and fled for the woods.

Le Moyne had been one of the guard. Scarcely had he thrown himself into

a hammock which was slung in his room, when a savage shout, and a wild

uproar of shrieks, outcries, and the clash of weapons, brought him to

his feet. He rushed past two Spaniards in the door-way, ran behind the

guard-house leaped through an embrasure into the ditch, and escaped to

the forest.

Challeux, the carpenter, was going betimes to his work, a chisel in his

hand. He was old, but pike and partisan brandished at his back gave

wings to his flight. In the ecstasy of his terror, he leaped upward at

the top of the palisade, and, clutching it, threw himself over with the

agility of a boy. He ran up the hill, no one pursuing, and as he neared

the edge of the forest, turned and looked back. From the high ground

where he stood he could see the butchery, the fury of the conquerors,

the agonized gestures of the victims. He turned again in horror, and

plunged into the woods. As he tore his way through the briers and

thickets, he met several fugitives, escaped like himself. Others

presently came up, haggard and wild, like men broke loose from the jaws

of fate. They gathered and consulted together. One of them, in great

repute for his knowledge of the Bible, was for returning and

surrendering to the Spaniards. "They are men," he said; "perhaps when

their fury is over they will spare our lives, and even if they kill us,

it will only be a few moments' pain. Better so than to starve here in

the woods or be torn to pieces by wild beasts."

The greater part of the naked and despairing company assented, but

Challeux was of a different mind. The old Huguenot quoted Scripture, and

called up the names of prophets and apostles to witness, that, in direst

extremity, God would not abandon those who rested their faith in Him.

Six of the fugitives, however, still held to their desperate purpose.

Issuing from the woods, they descended towards the fort, and as with

beating hearts their comrades watched the result, a troop of Spaniards

rushed forth, hewed them down with swords and halberds, and dragged

their bodies to the brink of the river, where the victims of the

massacre were already flung in heaps.

Le Moyne, with a soldier named Grandchemin, whom he had met in his

flight, toiled all day through the woods, in the hope of reaching the

small vessels anchored behind the bar. Night found them in a morass. No

vessels could be seen, and the soldier, in despair, broke into angry

upbraidings against his companion,--saying that he would go back and

give himself up. Le Moyne at first opposed him, then yielded. But when

they drew near the fort, and heard the howl of savage revelry that rose

from within, the artist's heart failed him. He embraced his companion,

and the soldier advanced alone. A party of Spaniards came out to meet

him. He kneeled, and begged for his life. He was answered by a

death-blow; and the horrified Le Moyne, from his hiding-place in the

thickets, saw his limbs hacked apart, thrust on pikes, and borne off in

triumph.

Meanwhile, Menendez, mustering his followers, had offered thanks to God

for their victory; and this pious butcher wept with emotion as he

recounted the favors which Heaven had showered upon their enterprise.

His admiring historian gives it in proof of his humanity, that, after

the rage of the assault was spent, he ordered that women, infants, and

boys under fifteen should thenceforth be spared. Of these, by his own

account, there were about fifty. Writing in October to the King, he says

that they cause him great anxiety, since he fears the anger of God,

should he now put them to death, while, on the other hand, he is in

dread lest the venom of their heresy should infect his men.

A hundred and forty-two persons were slain in and around the fort, and

their bodies lay heaped together on the shore. Nearly opposite was

anchored a small vessel, called the Pearl, commanded by James Ribaut,

son of the Admiral. The ferocious soldiery, maddened with victory and

drunk with blood, crowded to the beach, shouting insults to those on

board, mangling the corpses, tearing out their eyes, and throwing them

towards the vessel from the points of their daggers. Thus did the Most

Catholic Philip champion the cause of Heaven in the New World.

It was currently believed in France, and, though no eye-witness attests

it, there is reason to think it true, that among those murdered at Fort

Caroline there were some who died a death of peculiar ignominy.

Menendez, it is affirmed, hanged his prisoners on trees, and placed over

them the inscription, "I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to

Lutherans."

The Spaniards gained a great booty: armor, clothing, and provision.

"Nevertheless," says the devout Mendoza, after closing his inventory of

the plunder, "the greatest profit of this victory is the triumph which

our Lord has granted us, whereby His holy gospel will be introduced into

this country, a thing so needful for saving so many souls from

perdition." Again, he writes in his journal,--"We owe to God and His

Mother, more than to human strength, this victory over the adversaries

of the holy Catholic religion."

To whatever influence, celestial or other, the exploit may best be

ascribed, the victors were not yet quite content with their success. Two

small French vessels, besides that of James Ribaut, still lay within

range of the fort. When the storm had a little abated, the cannon were

turned on them. One of them was sunk, but Ribaut, with the others,

escaped down the river, at the mouth of which several light craft,

including that bought from the English, had been anchored since the

arrival of his father's squadron.

While this was passing, the wretched fugitives were flying from the

scene of massacre through a tempest, of whose pertinacious violence all

the narratives speak with wonder. Exhausted, starved, half-clothed,--for

most of them had escaped in their shirts,--they pushed their toilsome

way amid the ceaseless howl of the elements. A few sought refuge in

Indian villages; but these, it is said, were afterwards killed by the

Spaniards. The greater number attempted to reach the vessels at the

mouth of the river. Of the latter was Le Moyne, who, despite his former

failure, was toiling through the maze of tangled forests when he met a

Belgian soldier with the woman described as Laudonnière's maid-servant,

the latter wounded in the breast, and, urging their flight towards the

vessels, they fell in with other fugitives, among them Laudonnière

himself. As they struggled through the salt-marsh, the rank sedge cut

their naked limbs, and the tide rose to their waists. Presently they

descried others, toiling like themselves through the matted vegetation,

and recognized Challeux and his companions, also in quest of the

vessels. The old man still, as he tells us, held fast to his chisel,

which had done good service in cutting poles to aid the party to cross

the deep creeks that channelled the morass. The united band, twenty-six

in all, were relieved at length by the sight of a moving sail. It was

the vessel of Captain Mallard, who, informed of the massacre, was

standing along-shore in the hope of picking up some of the fugitives. He

saw their signals, and sent boats to their rescue; but such was their

exhaustion, that, had not the sailors, wading to their armpits among the

rushes, borne them out on their shoulders, few could have escaped.

Laudonnière was so feeble that nothing but the support of a soldier, who

held him upright in his arms, had saved him from drowning in the marsh.

Gaining the friendly decks, the fugitives counselled together. One and

all, they sickened for the sight of France.

After waiting a few days, and saving a few more stragglers from the

marsh, they prepared to sail. Young Ribaut, though ignorant of his

father's fate, assented with something more than willingness; indeed,

his behavior throughout had been stamped with weakness and poltroonery.

On the twenty-fifth of September, they put to sea in two vessels; and,

after a voyage whose privations were fatal to many of them, they

arrived, one party at Rochelle, the other at Swansea, in Wales.

In suspense and fear, hourly looking seaward for the dreaded fleet of

John Ribaut, the chaplain Mendoza and his brother priests held watch and

ward at St. Augustine, in the Adelantado's absence. Besides the

celestial guardians whom they ceased not to invoke, they had as

protectors Bartholomew Menendez, the brother of the Adelantado, and

about a hundred soldiers. Day and night, the latter toiled to throw up

earthworks and strengthen their position.

A week elapsed, when they saw a man running towards their fort, shouting

as he ran.

Mendoza went out to meet him.

"Victory! Victory!" gasped the breathless messenger. "The French fort is

ours!" And he flung his arms about the chaplain's neck.

"To-day," writes the latter in his journal, "Monday, the twenty-fourth,

came our good general himself, with fifty soldiers, very tired, like all

those who were with him. As soon as they told me he was coming, I ran to

my lodging, took a new cassock, the best I had, put on my surplice, and

went out to meet him with a crucifix in my hand; whereupon he, like a

gentleman and a good Christian, kneeled down with all his followers, and

gave the Lord a thousand thanks for the great favors he had received

from Him."

In solemn procession, four priests in front chanting the _Te Deum_, the

victors entered St. Augustine in triumph.

On the twenty-eighth, when the weary Adelantado was taking his _siesta_

under the sylvan roof of Seloy, a troop of Indians came in with news

that quickly roused him from his slumbers. They had seen a French vessel

wrecked on the coast towards the south. Those who escaped from her were

some four leagues off, on the banks of a river or arm of the sea, which

they could not cross.

Menendez instantly sent forty or fifty men in boats to reconnoitre.

Next, he called the chaplain,--for he would fain have him at his elbow

to countenance the devilish deeds he meditated,--and embarked, with him,

twelve soldiers, and two Indian guides, in another boat. They rowed

along the channel between Anastasia Island and the main shore; then

landed, struck across the country on foot, traversed plains and marshes,

readied the sea towards night, and searched along-shore till ten o'clock

to find their comrades who had gone before. At length, with mutual joy,

the two parties met, and bivouacked together on the sands. Not far

distant they could see lights. They were the camp-fires of the

shipwrecked French.

And now, to relate the fortunes of these unhappy men. To do so with

precision is impossible, for henceforward the French narratives are no

longer the narratives of eye-witnesses.

It has been seen how, when on the point of assailing the Spaniards of

St. Augustine, John Ribaut was thwarted by a gale which the former

hailed as a divine interposition. The gale rose to a tempest of strange

fury. Within a few days, all the French ships were cast on shore, the

greater number near Cape Canaveral. According to the letter of Menendez,

many of those on board were lost, but others affirm that all escaped but

the captain, La Grange, an officer of high merit, who was washed from a

floating mast. One of the ships was wrecked at a point farther northward

than the rest, and it was her company whose camp-fires were seen by the

Spaniards at their bivouac among the sands of Anastasia Island. They

were endeavoring to reach Fort Caroline, of whose fate they knew

nothing, while Ribaut with the remainder was farther southward,

struggling through the wilderness towards the same goal. What befell the

latter will appear hereafter. Of the fate of the former party there is

no French record. What we know of it is due to three Spanish writers,

Mendoza, Doctor Solis de las Meras, and Menendez himself. Solis was a

priest, and brother-in-law to Menendez. Like Mendoza, he minutely

describes what he saw, and, like him, was a red-hot zealot, lavishing

applause on the darkest deeds of his chief. Before me lie the long

despatches, now first brought to light from the archives of Seville,

which Menendez sent from Florida to the King, a cool record of

atrocities never surpassed, and inscribed on the back with the royal

indorsement,--"Say to him that he has done well."

When the Adelantado saw the French fires in the distance, he lay close

in his bivouac, and sent two soldiers to reconnoitre. At two in the

morning they came back and reported that it was impossible to get at the

enemy, since they were on the farther side of an arm of the sea,

probably Matanzas Inlet. Menendez, however, gave orders to march, and

before daybreak reached the hither bank, where he hid his men in a bushy

hollow. Thence, as it grew light, they could discern the enemy, many of

whom were searching along the sands and shallows for shell-fish, for

they were famishing. A thought struck Menendez, an inspiration, says

Mendoza, of the Holy Spirit. He put on the clothes of a sailor, entered

a boat which had been brought to the spot, and rowed towards the

shipwrecked men, the better to learn their condition. A Frenchman swam

out to meet him. Menendez demanded what men they were.

"Followers of Ribaut," answered the swimmer, "Viceroy of the King of

France."

"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"

"All Lutherans."

A brief dialogue ensued, during which the Adelantado declared his name

and character. The Frenchman swam back to his companions, but soon

returned, and asked safe conduct for his captain and four other

gentlemen who wished to hold conference with the Spanish general.

Menendez gave his word for their safety, and, returning to the shore,

sent his boat to bring them over. On their landing, he met them very

courteously. His followers were kept at a distance, so disposed behind

hills and clumps of bushes as to give an exaggerated idea of their

force,--a precaution the more needful as they were only about sixty in

number, while the French, says Solis, were above two hundred, though

Menendez declares that they did not exceed a hundred and forty. The

French officer told him the story of their shipwreck, and begged him to

lend them a boat to aid them in crossing the rivers which lay between

them and a fort of their King, whither they were making their way.

Then came again the ominous question,--

"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"

"We are Lutherans."

"Gentlemen," pursued Menendez, "your fort is taken, and all in it put to

the sword." And in proof of his declaration he caused articles plundered

from Fort Caroline to be shown to the unhappy petitioners. He then left

them, to breakfast with his officers, first ordering food to be placed

before them. His repast over, he returned to them.

"Are you convinced now," he asked, "that what I have told you is true?"

The French captain assented, and implored him to lend them ships in

which to return home. Menendez answered, that he would do so willingly,

if they were Catholics, and if he had ships to spare, but he had none.

The supplicants then expressed the hope, that, at least, they and their

followers would be allowed to remain with the Spaniards till ships could

be sent to their relief, since there was peace between the two nations,

whose kings were friends and brothers.

"All Catholics," retorted the Spaniard, "I will befriend; but as you are

of the New Sect, I hold you as enemies, and wage deadly war against you;

and this I will do with all cruelty [_crueldad_] in this country, where

I command as Viceroy and Captain-General for my King. I am here to plant

the holy gospel, that the Indians may be enlightened and come to the

knowledge of the holy Catholic faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the

Roman Church teaches it. If you will give up your arms and banners, and

place yourselves at my mercy, you may do so, and I will act towards you

as God shall give me grace. Do as you will, for other than this you can

have neither truce nor friendship with me."

Such were the Adelantado's words, as reported by a by-stander, his

admiring brother-in-law; and that they contain an implied assurance of

mercy has been held, not only by Protestants, but by Catholics and

Spaniards. The report of Menendez himself is more brief and sufficiently

equivocal:--

"I answered, that they could give up their arms and place themselves

under my mercy,--that I should do with them what our Lord should order;

and from that I did not depart, nor would I, unless God our Lord should

otherwise inspire."

One of the Frenchmen recrossed to consult with his companions. In two

hours he returned, and offered fifty thousand ducats to secure their

lives; but Menendez, says his brother-in-law, would give no pledges. On

the other hand, expressions in his own despatches point to the inference

that a virtual pledge was given, at least to certain individuals.

The starving French saw no resource but to yield themselves to his

mercy. The boat was again sent across the river. It returned, laden with

banners, arquebuses, swords, targets, and helmets. The Adelantado

ordered twenty soldiers to bring over the prisoners by tens at a time.

He then took the French officers aside behind a ridge of sand, two

gunshots from the bank. Here, with courtesy on his lips and murder

reeking at his heart, he said,--

"Gentlemen, I have but few men, and you are so many, that, if you were

free, it would be easy for you to take your satisfaction on us for the

people we killed when we took your fort. Therefore it is necessary that

you should go to my camp, four leagues from this place, with your hands

tied."

Accordingly, as each party landed, they were led out of sight behind the

sand-hill, and their hands tied at their backs with the match-cords of

the arquebuses,--though not before each had been supplied with food. The

whole day passed before all were brought together, bound and helpless,

under the eye of the inexorable Adelantado. But now Mendoza interposed.

"I was a priest," he says, "and had the bowels of a man." He asked,

that, if there were Christians, that is to say Catholics, among the

prisoners, they should be set apart. Twelve Breton sailors professed

themselves to be such; and these, together with four carpenters and

calkers, "of whom," writes Menendez, "I was in great need," were put on

board the boat and sent to St. Augustine. The rest were ordered to march

thither by land.

The Adelantado walked in advance till he came to a lonely spot, not far

distant, deep among the bush-covered hills. Here he stopped, and with

his cane drew a line in the sand. The sun was set when the captive

Huguenots, with their escort, reached the fatal goal thus marked out.

And now let the curtain drop; for here, in the name of Heaven, the

hounds of hell were turned loose, and the savage soldiery, like wolves

in a sheepfold, rioted in slaughter. Of all that wretched company, not

one was left alive.

"I had their hands tied behind their backs," writes the chief criminal,

"and themselves passed under the knife. It appeared to me, that, by thus

chastising them, God our Lord and your Majesty were served; whereby in

future they will leave us more free from their evil sect, to plant the

gospel in these parts."

Again Menendez returned triumphant to St. Augustine, and behind him

marched his band of butchers, steeped in blood to the elbows, but still

unsated. Great as had been his success, he still had cause for anxiety.

There was ill news of his fleet. Some of the ships were lost, others

scattered, or lagging tardily on their way. Of his whole force, but a

fraction had reached Florida, and of this a large part was still at Fort

Caroline. Ribaut could not be far off; and whatever might be the

condition of his shipwrecked company, their numbers would make them

formidable, unless taken at advantage. Urged by fear and fortified by

fanaticism, Menendez had well begun his work of slaughter; but rest for

him there was none; a darker deed was behind.

On the next day, Indians came with the tidings that at the spot where

the French had been found was now another party, still larger. This

murder-loving race looked with great respect on Menendez for his

wholesale butchery of the night before,--an exploit rarely equalled in

their own annals of massacre. On his part, he doubted not that Ribaut

was at hand. Marching with a hundred and fifty men, he reached the inlet

at midnight, and again, like a savage, ambushed himself on the bank. Day

broke, and he could plainly see the French on the farther side. They had

made a raft, which lay in the water, ready for crossing. Menendez and

his men showed themselves, when, forthwith, the French displayed their

banners, sounded drums and trumpets, and set their sick and starving

ranks in array of battle. But the Adelantado, regardless of this warlike

show, ordered his men to seat themselves at breakfast, while he with

three officers walked unconcernedly along the shore. His coolness had

its effect. The French blew a trumpet of parley, and showed a white

flag. The Spaniards replied. A Frenchman came out upon the raft, and,

shouting across the water, asked that a Spanish envoy should be sent

over.

"You have a raft," was the reply; "come yourselves."

An Indian canoe lay under the bank on the Spanish side. A French sailor

swam to it, paddled back unmolested, and presently returned, bringing

with him La Caille, Ribaut's sergeant-major. He told Menendez that the

French were three hundred and fifty in all, on their way to Fort

Caroline; and, like the officers of the former party, begged for boats

to aid them in crossing the river.

"My brother," said Menendez, "go and tell your general, that, if he

wishes to speak with me, he may come with four or six companions, and

that I pledge my word he shall go back safe."

La Caille returned; and Ribaut, with eight gentlemen, soon came over in

the canoe. Menendez met them courteously, caused wine and preserved

fruits to be placed before them,--he had come with well-stocked larder

on his errand of blood,--and next led Ribaut to the reeking Golgotha,

where, in heaps upon the sands, lay the corpses of his slaughtered

followers. Ribaut was prepared for the spectacle; La Caille had already

seen it; but he would not believe that Fort Caroline was taken till a

part of the plunder was shown him. Then, mastering his despair, he

turned to the conqueror.

"What has befallen us," he said, "may one day befall you." And, urging

that the kings of France and Spain were brothers and close friends, he

begged, in the name of that friendship, that the Spaniard would aid him

in conveying his followers home. Menendez gave him the same equivocal

answer that he had given the former party, and Ribaut returned to

consult with his officers. After three hours of absence, he came back in

the canoe, and told the Adelantado that some of his people were ready to

surrender at discretion, but that many refused.

"They can do as they please," was the reply.

In behalf of those who surrendered Ribaut offered a ransom of a hundred

thousand ducats.

"It grieves me much," said Menendez, "that I cannot accept it; for I

have great need of it."

Ribaut was much encouraged. Menendez could scarcely forego such a prize,

and he thought, says the Spanish narrator, that the lives of his

followers would now be safe. He asked to be allowed the night for

deliberation, and at sunset recrossed the river. In the morning he

reappeared among the Spaniards and reported that two hundred of his men

had retreated from the spot, but that the remaining one hundred and

fifty would surrender. At the same time he gave into the hands of

Menendez the royal standard and other flags, with his sword, dagger,

helmet, buckler, and his official seal, given him by Coligny. Menendez

directed an officer to enter the boat and bring over the French by

tens. He next led Ribaut among the bushes behind the neighboring

sand-hill, and ordered his hands to be bound fast. Then the scales fell

from the prisoner's eyes. Face to face his hideous fate rose up before

him. He saw his followers and himself entrapped,--the dupe of words

artfully framed to lure them to their ruin. The day wore on; and, as

band after band of prisoners was brought over, they were led behind the

sand-hill, out of sight from the farther shore, and bound like their

general. At length the transit was complete. With bloodshot eyes and

weapons bared, the fierce Spaniards closed around their victims.

"Are you Catholics or Lutherans? and is there any one among you who will

go to confession?"

Ribaut answered,--

"I and all here are of the Reformed Faith."

And he recited the Psalm, "_Domine, memento mei_."

"We are of earth," he continued, "and to earth we must return; twenty

years more or less can matter little"; and, turning to the Adelantado,

he bade him do his will.

The stony-hearted bigot gave the signal; and those who will may paint to

themselves the horrors of the scene. A few, however, were spared.

"I saved," writes Menendez, "the lives of two young gentlemen of about

eighteen years of age, as well as of three others, the fifer, the

drummer, and the trumpeter; and I caused Jean Ribaut with all the rest

to be passed under the knife, judging this to be expedient for the

service of God our Lord, and of your Majesty. And I consider it great

good fortune that he (Jean Ribaut) should be dead, for the King of

France could effect more with him and five hundred ducats than with

other men and five thousand, and he would do more in one year than

another in ten, for he was the most experienced sailor and naval

commander ever known, and of great skill in this passage to the Indies

and the coast of Florida. He was, besides, greatly liked in England, in

which kingdom his reputation is such that he was appointed

Captain-General of all the British fleet against the French Catholics in

the war between England and France some years ago."

Such is the sum of the Spanish accounts,--the self-damning testimony of

the author and abettors of the crime. A picture of lurid and awful

coloring; and yet there is reason to believe that the truth was more

hideous still. Among those spared was one Christophe le Breton, who was

carried to Spain, escaped to France, and told his story to Challeux.

Among those struck down in the carnage was a sailor of Dieppe, stunned

and left for dead under a heap of corpses. In the night he revived,

contrived to draw his knife, cut the cords that bound his hands, and

make his way to an Indian village. The Indians, though not without

reluctance, abandoned him to the Spaniards. The latter sold him as a

slave; but on his way in fetters to Portugal, the ship was taken by the

Huguenots, the sailor set free, and his story published in the narrative

of Le Moyne. When the massacre was known in France, the friends and

relatives of the victims sent to the King, Charles IX., a vehement

petition for redress; and their memorial recounts many incidents of the

tragedy. From these three sources is to be drawn the French version of

the story. The following is its substance:--

Famished and desperate, the followers of Ribaut were toiling northward

to seek refuge at Fort Caroline, when they found the Spaniards in their

path. Some were filled with dismay; others, in their misery, almost

hailed them as deliverers. La Caille, the sergeant-major, crossed the

river. Menendez met him with a face of friendship, and protested that he

would spare the lives of the shipwrecked men, sealing the promise with

an oath, a kiss, and many signs of the cross. He even gave it in

writing, under seal. Still, there were many among the French who would

not place themselves in his power. The most credulous crossed the river

in a boat. As each successive party landed, their hands were bound fast

at their backs; and thus, except a few who were set apart, they were all

driven towards the fort, like cattle to the shambles, with curses and

scurrilous abuse. Then, at sound of drums and trumpets, the Spaniards

fell upon them, striking them down with swords, pikes, and halberds.

Ribaut vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his oath. By the

latter's order, a soldier plunged a dagger into his heart; and Ottigny,

who stood near, met a similar fate. Ribaut's beard was cut off, and

portions of it sent in a letter to Philip II. His head was hewn into

four parts, one of which was displayed on the point of a lance at each

corner of Fort St. Augustine. Great fires were kindled, and the bodies

of the murdered burned to ashes.

Such is the sum of the French accounts. The charge of breach of faith

contained in them was believed by Catholics as well as Protestants, and

it was as a defence against this charge that the narrative of the

Adelantado's brother-in-law was published. That Ribaut, a man whose good

sense and bravery were both reputed high, should have submitted himself

and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety is scarcely

credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a miscreant so

savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim,

current among the bigots of the day, that faith ought not to be kept

with heretics.

It was night when the Adelantado again entered St. Augustine. Some there

were who blamed his cruelty; but many applauded. "Even if the French had

been Catholics,"--such was their language,--"he would have done right,

for, with the little provision we have, they would all have starved;

besides, there were so many of them that they would have cut our

throats."

And now Menendez again addressed himself to the despatch, already begun,

in which he recounts to the King his labors and his triumphs, a

deliberate and business-like document, mingling narratives of butchery

with recommendations for promotions, commissary details, and petitions

for supplies; enlarging, too, on the vast schemes of encroachment which

his successful generalship had brought to nought. The French, he says,

had planned a military and naval depot at Los Martires, whence they

would make a descent upon Havana, and another at the Bay of Ponce de

Leon, whence they could threaten Vera Cruz. They had long been

encroaching on Spanish rights at Newfoundland, from which a great arm of

the sea--the St. Lawrence--would give them access to the Moluccas and

other parts of the East Indies. Moreover, he adds in a later despatch,

by this passage they may reach the mines of Zacatecas and St. Martin, as

well as every part of the South Sea. And, as already mentioned, he urges

immediate occupation of Chesapeake Bay, which, by its supposed

water-communication with the St. Lawrence, would enable Spain to

vindicate her rights, control the fisheries of Newfoundland, and thwart

her rival in her vast designs of commercial and territorial

aggrandizement. Thus did France and Spain dispute the possession of

North America long before England became a party to the strife.

Some twenty days after Menendez returned to St. Augustine, the Indians,

enamored of carnage, and exulting to see their invaders mowed down, came

to tell him that on the coast southward, near Cape Canaveral, a great

number of Frenchmen were intrenching themselves. They were those of

Ribaut's party who had refused to surrender. Retreating to the spot

where their ships had been cast ashore, they were endeavoring to build a

vessel from the fragments of the wrecks.

In all haste Menendez despatched messengers to Fort Caroline,--named by

him San Mateo,--ordering a reinforcement of a hundred and fifty men. In

a few days they came. He added some of his own soldiers, and, with a

united force of two hundred and fifty, set forth, as he tells us, on

the second of November, pushing southward along the shore with such

merciless energy that some of his men dropped dead with wading night and

day through the loose sands. When, from behind their frail defences, the

French saw the Spanish pikes and partisans glittering into view, they

fled in a panic, and took refuge among the hills. Menendez sent a

trumpet to summon them, pledging his honor for their safety. The

commander and several others told the messenger that they would sooner

be eaten by the savages than trust themselves to Spaniards; and,

escaping, they fled to the Indian towns. The rest surrendered; and

Menendez kept his word. The comparative number of his own men made his

prisoners no longer dangerous. They were led back to St. Augustine,

where, as the Spanish writer affirms, they were well treated. Those of

good birth sat at the Adelantado's table, eating the bread of a homicide

crimsoned with the slaughter of their comrades. The priests essayed

their pious efforts, and, under the gloomy menace of the Inquisition,

some of the heretics renounced their errors. The fate of the captives

may be gathered from the indorsement, in the handwriting of the King, on

the back of the despatch of Menendez of December twelfth.

"Say to him," writes Philip II., "that, as to those he has killed, he

has done well, and as for those he has saved, they shall be sent to the

galleys."

Thus did Spain make good her claim to North America, and crush the upas

of heresy in its germ. Within her bounds the tidings were hailed with

acclamation, while in France a cry of horror and execration rose from

the Huguenots, and found an echo even among the Catholics. But the weak

and ferocious son of Catherine de Médicis gave no response. The victims

were Huguenots, disturbers of the realm, followers of Coligny, the man

above all others a thorn in his side. True, the enterprise was a

national enterprise, undertaken at the national charge, with royal

commission, and under the royal standard. True, it had been assailed in

time of peace by a power professing the closest amity. Yet Huguenot

influence, had prompted and Huguenot hands executed it. That influence

had now ebbed low; Coligny's power had waned; and the Spanish party was

ascendant. Charles IX., long vacillating, was fast subsiding into the

deathly embrace of Spain, for whom, at last, on the bloody eve of St.

Bartholomew, he was destined to become the assassin of his own best

subjects.

In vain the relatives of the slain petitioned him for redress; and had

the honor of the nation rested in the keeping of her king, the blood of

hundreds of murdered Frenchmen would have cried from the ground in vain.

But it was not so to be. Injured humanity found an avenger, and outraged

France a champion. Her chivalrous annals may be searched in vain for a

deed of more romantic daring than the vengeance of Dominic de Gourgue.

* * * * *

WEARINESS.

O little feet, that such long years

Must wander on through doubts and fears,

Must ache and bleed beneath your load!

I, nearer to the way-side inn

Where toil shall cease and rest begin,

Am weary, thinking of your road.

O little hands, that, weak or strong,

Have still to serve or rule so long,

Have still so long to give or ask!

I, who so much with book and pen

Have toiled among my fellow-men,

Am weary, thinking of your task.

O little hearts, that throb and beat

With such impatient, feverish heat,

Such limitless and strong desires!

Mine, that, so long has glowed and burned,

With passions into ashes turned,

Now covers and conceals its fires.

O little souls, as pure and white

And crystalline as rays of light

Direct from heaven, their source divine!

Refracted through the mist of years,

How red my setting sun appears,

How lurid looks this soul, of mine!

* * * * *

MRS. LEWIS.

A STORY IN THREE PARTS.

PART III.

XI.

When we returned from our journey, Lulu was among the first to greet us,

and with a cordial animation quite unlike the gentle, dawdling way she

used to have. Indeed, I was struck the first evening with a new impulse,

and a healthful mental current, that gave glow and freshness to

everything she said. Mr. Lewis was gone to Cuba, she told us, and would

be away a month more, but "George" was with her continually, and the

days were all too short for what they had to do. She seemed to have

attacked all the arts and sciences simultaneously, and with an eagerness

very amusing to see. George had begun a numismatic collection for her,

and she had made out an historic table from the coins, writing down all

that was most important under each king's reign. George had brought home

some fine specimens of stones, and had interested her much in

mineralogy. George liked riding, and had taught her to ride; and she now

perpetually made her appearance in her riding-habit and little

jockey-cap, wishing she could do something for me here or there. George

moulded, and taught her to mould; and she was dabbling in clay and

plaster of Paris all the morning. George painted beautifully in

water-colors, and taught her to sketch from Nature, which she often did

now, in their rides, when the days were pleasant enough. George not only

thrummed a Spanish guitar, but liked singing; so music went on with

wonderful force and improvement. Nothing that George liked better than

botany, metaphysics, and micrology. And now Lulu was screaming at

dreadful dragons' heads on a pin's point, or delighted with

diamond-beetles and spiders' eyes. She fairly revelled in the new worlds

that were opened to her eager eye and hungry mind. No more long,

tiresome mornings now. Every hour was occupied. Intelligent smiles

dimpled her beautiful mouth; the weary, unoccupied, childish look

vanished from her eyes; and her talk was animated and animating. For

though she might not tell much that was new, she told it in a new way

and with the fresh light of recent experience. Thus she became in a

wonderfully short time a quite different woman from the Lulu of the

early winter.

We acknowledged that she was become an agreeable companion. In a few

weeks of home-education her soul had expanded to a tropical and rich

growth. This we were talking over one night, when Lulu had been with us,

and when George had come for her and extinguished us with his great

hearty laugh and abundant health and activity, as the sun's effulgence

does a house-candle.

"I don't like that Remington, either," said the minister, after we were

left in this state of darkness.

"But, surely, he has given Lulu's mind a most desirable impulse and

direction. How glad Mr. Lewis will be to see her so happy, so animated,

and so sensible, when he comes home!"

"If that makes him happy, he could have had it before, I suppose. But do

you notice anything unhealthy in this mental cultivation,--anything

forced in this luxuriant flowering? Now the light of heaven expands the

whole nature, I hold, into healthy and proportioned beauty. If anything

is lacking or exuberant, the influence is not heavenly, be sure. What do

you think of this statement?"

"Very sensible, but very Hebrew to me."

"I never thought Lulu's were 'household eyes,'--but now she never speaks

of husband or children, of house or home. Now that is not a suitable

mental condition. Let us hope that this intellectual effervescence will

subside, and leave her some thoughtfulness and care for others, and the

meditation which will make her accomplishments something to enrich and

strengthen, rather than excite and overrun her mind."

"Ah! well, it is only a few weeks, not more than six, since she found

out she had a soul. No wonder she feels she has been such a laggard in

the race, she must keep on the gallop now to make up for lost time."

"But,--about the husband and children?"

"Oh, they will come in in due time and take their true place. She is a

young artist, and hasn't got her perspectives arranged. Be sure they

will be in the foreground presently," said I, cheerfully.

"Let us hope so. For a wife, mother, and house-mistress to be racing

after so many ologies, and ignoring her daily duties, is a spectacle of

doubtful utility to me."

To tell the truth, this want of domestic interest had often struck me

also. One day, as we were talking about my children, Lulu had said that

she believed herself destitute of the maternal instinct; for although

she liked to see the children, of course, yet she did not miss them

when away from her. And after the death of young Lewis, which happened

while they were at Cuba, and which distressed my Johnnie so much that he

could not for a long time bear either books or play, for want of his

beloved playmate, his mother, apparently, did not lament him at all.

"I never liked to have him with me," she said to me,--"partly, I

suppose, because he reminded me of Montalli, and of a period of great

suffering in my life. I should be glad never to think of him again. But

William seemed to love and pity him always. Gave him his name, and

always treated him like an only and elder son. And William is fond of

the little girls, too. I don't mean that I am not fond of them, but not

as he is. He will go and spend a week at a time playing and driving with

them."

Indeed, she very often reminded me of Undine in her soulless days.

As she scarcely went into society, during the absence of Mr. Lewis, Lulu

had time for all this multifarious culture that I have been describing,

and she was gradually coming also to reason and reflect on what she read

and heard, though her appetite for knowledge continued with the same

keenness. Her artistic eye, which naturally grouped and arranged with

taste whatever was about her, stood her in good stead of experience; and

with a very little instruction, she was able to do wonders in both a

plastic and pictorial way.

One day she showed me a fine drawing of the Faun of Praxiteles, with

some verses written beneath. The lines seemed to me full of vigor and

harmony. They implied and breathed, too, such an intimacy with classical

thought, that I was astonished when, in answer to my inquiry, she told

me she wrote them herself.

"How delighted Mr. Lewis will be with this!" I exclaimed, looking at the

beautifully finished drawing; "to think how you have improved, Lulu!"

"You think so?" she answered, with glistening eyes. "I, too, feel that I

have, and am so happy!"

"I am sure Mr. Lewis will be so, too," I continued, persistently.

She answered in a sharp tone, dropping her eyes, and, as it were, all

the joy out of them,--

"Surely, I have told you often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary

women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any

intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal

thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his _belle-idéale_; failing

that, a housekeeper and drudge."

I cannot describe the scorn with which she said this. She changed the

subject, however, at once, instead of pursuing it as she would formerly

have done, and soon after left me for a drive over Milton Hills with

George, with a hammer and sketch-book in the chaise.

Mr. Lewis's business in Cuba was prolonged into May. He had estates

there, and desired to dispose of them, Lulu said, so that they might for

the future live entirely at the North, which they both liked better.

I could not help seeing that her affections drifted farther and farther

every week from their lawful haven, and I wished Mr. Lewis safe back

again and overlooking his Northern estates. I guessed how, through her

pride of awakened intellect, Lulu's gratitude had wrought a deep

interest in her cousin. He had rescued her from the idleness and inanity

of her daily life, pointed out to her the broad fields of literary

enjoyment and excellence, and inevitably associated his own image with

all the new and varied occupations with which her now busy days were

filled. The poetry she read he brought to her; the songs she sang were

of his selection. His mind and taste, his observations and reflections,

were all written over every page she read, over every hour of her life.

She had been on a desert island in her intellectual loneliness. She

could hardly help loving the hand that had guided her to the palm-tree

and the fountain, especially when she glanced back at the long sandy

reach of her life.

Naturally enough, I watched and distrusted Mr. Remington, who was a man

of the world, and knew very well what he was about. Of all things, he

dearly loved to be excited, occupied, and amused. Of course, I was not

disturbed about his heart, nor seriously supposed he would get into any

entanglement of the affections and the duties of life, but I thought he

might do a great deal of harm for all that.

At last, in the middle of May, Mr. Lewis returned, having failed in his

desired arrangement for a permanent residence in New England. The first

evening I saw them together without company, I perceived that he was

struck with the new life in Lulu's manner and conversation. He watched

and listened to her with an astonishment which he could not conceal.

I never saw anything like jealousy in Mr. Lewis's manner, either at this

time, or before. He was always tender and dignified, when speaking to or

of her. If he felt any uneasiness now, he did not betray it. In looking

back, I am sure of this. Afterwards, in company, where he might be

supposed to be proud of his wife, he often looked at her with the same

astonishment, and sometimes with unaffected admiration. He could not

help seeing the great change in her,--that the days were taken up with

rational and elegant pursuits, and that the hours were vocal with poetry

and taste. The illuminating mind had brought her tulip beauty into a

brighter and more gorgeous glow, and her movements were full of graceful

meaning. Everything was touched and inspired but the heart. I don't know

that he felt this, or that he missed anything. She had the same easy

self-possession in his presence which she had always had,--the same pet

names of endearment. It was always "Willie, dear," or "Yes, my love,"

which makes the usual matrimonial vocabulary, and which does not reward

study. But he always looked at her with a calm delight, perfectly

satisfied with all she said and did, and with a Southern indolence of

mind and body, that precluded effort. I think he never once lost entire

confidence in her, or was jealous of the hand that had unlocked such

mental treasures for her.

Meanwhile her eager lip quaffed the bright cup so cautiously presented,

and drained it with ever new delight. If it was mingled with delicate

flattery, it only sparkled more merrily; and if there were poison there,

I am sure she never guessed it, even when it burnt in her cheek or

thrilled in her dancing veins.

XII.

The Lewises, with Mr. Remington and a large party of pleasure-seekers,

went about this time on a tour to Quebec and the Falls of Montmorency.

They decided to shut their house in Boston, and Lulu asked me if I would

employ and look after a _protégée_ of hers, in whom she took some

interest. The woman was a tolerable seamstress, she said, and would come

to me the next day. She knew nothing about her except that she was poor

and could sew.

When the woman came in, I was puzzled to think where I could have seen

her, which I was sure I had done somewhere, though I could not recall

the where or when. In answer to my particular inquiries, as she could

give me no references, she told me her husband was living, but was sick

and could do nothing for his family,--in fact, that she and three

children were kept alive by her efforts of various sorts. These were,

sewing when she could get it, washing and scrubbing when she could not.

She was very poorly dressed, but had a Yankee, go-ahead expression, as

if she would get a living on the top of a bare rock.

Still puzzling over the likeness in her face to somebody I had known, I

continued to ask questions and to observe face, manner, and voice, in

hope to catch the clue of which I was in search. When she admitted that

her husband's intemperance had lost him his place and forbade his

getting another, and said his name was Jim Ruggles, "a light broke in

upon my brain." I remembered my vision of the fresh young girl who had

sprung out on our path like a morning-glory, on our way to New York

seven years before. The poor morning-glory was sadly trodden in the

dust. It hadn't done "no good," as the driver had remarked, to forewarn

her of the consequences of marrying a sponge. She had accepted her lot,

and, strangely enough, was quite happy in it. There could be no mistake

in the cheerful expression of her worn face. Whatever Jim might be to

other people, she said, he was always good to her and the children; and

she pitied him, loved him, and took care of him. It wasn't at all in the

fashion the Temperance Society would have liked; for when I first went

to the house, I found her pouring out a glass of strong waters for him,

and handing it to his pale and trembling lips herself. As soon as I was

seated, she locked bottle and glass carefully. Before I left her, she

had given him stimulants of various sorts from the same source, which he

received with grateful smiles, and then went on coughing as before.

"It's no time now for him to be forming new habits," said she, in answer

to my open-eyed surprise; "and it's best he should have all the comfort

and ease he can get. As long as I can get it for him, he shall have it."

She spoke very quietly, but very much as if the same will of her own

which had led her to marry Jim Ruggles, when a gay, dissipated fellow,

kept her determined to give him what he wanted, even to the doubtful

extreme I saw. So she struggled bravely on during the next four weeks of

Jim's existence, keeping herself and her three children on hasty

pudding, and buying for Jim's consumptively craving appetite rich

mince-pies and platefuls of good rich food from an eating-house hard by.

At the end of the four weeks he died most peacefully and suddenly,

having not five minutes before swallowed a glass of gin sling, prepared

by the loving hand of his wife, and saying to her, with a firm, clear

voice, and a grateful smile, "Good Amy! always good!" So the weak man's

soul passed away. And as Amy told me about it, with sorrowful sobs, I

was not ready to say or think she had done wrong, although both her

conduct and my opinion were entirely uncanonical.

Before Mrs. Lewis returned, Amy was one day at my room and asked me when

I expected her back.

"Is Mr. Lewis with her, Ma'am?" said she, hesitatingly.

"Of course; at least, I suppose so. Why, what makes you ask?" said I,

with surprise at her downcast eyes and flushed face.

"I heard he had gone away. And that--_that_ Mr. Remington was there with

her. But you know about it, most likely."

"No, I know nothing about it, Amy."

"It was their old cook told me, Mrs. Butler. And she said,--oh! all

sorts of things, that I am sure couldn't be true, for Mrs. Lewis is such

a kind, beautiful woman! I couldn't believe a word she said!"

In my quality of minister's wife, and with a general distrust of cooks'

opinions, I told Amy that there was always scandal enough, and it was a

waste of time to listen to it. But after she left me, I confess to a

whole hour wasted in speculations and anxious reflections on Amy's

communication, and also to having taken the Dominie away from his sermon

for a like space of time to consider the matter fully.

I was relieved when the whole party came back, and when the blooming,

happy face of Lulu showed that she, at least, had neither thought nor

done anything very bad.

The summer was becoming warm and oppressive in Boston, and we prepared

to take the children and go to Weston for a few weeks. While we should

be among the mountains, the Lewises proposed a voyage to Scotland, and

we hoped that sometime in the early autumn we should all be together

once more. The evening before our departure Mr. Remington and Lulu

spent with us, Mr. Lewis coming in at a later hour. I remember vividly

the conversation during the whole of that last evening we ever passed

together.

XIII.

While Mrs. Lewis and I were chatting in one corner on interests

specially feminine, the Dominie had got Mr. Remington into a

metaphysical discussion of some length. From time to time we heard,

"Pascal's idea seems to be," and then, "The notion of Descartes and all

that school of thinkers"; and feeling that they were plunging quite

beyond our depth, we continued babbling of dry goods, and what was

becoming, till Mr. Remington leaned back laughing to us, and said,--

"What do you think, ladies? or are you of the opinion of somebody who

said of metaphysics, 'Whoever troubles himself to skin a flint should

have the skin for his pains'?"

"But that is a most unfair comparison!" said the minister, eagerly, "and

what I will by no means allow. By so much more as the mind is better

than the body, nay, because the mind is all that is worth anything about

a man, metaphysics is the noblest science, and most worthy"--

"I give in! I am down!" said Remington.

"But what are you disputing about?" said I.

"Oh, only Infinity!" said Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does

not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go

back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea,

why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no

cause that may not be an effect."

"Nor of infinite space, nor of infinite time?" said the minister.

"No,--of nothing that cannot be divided, and nothing that cannot be

extended."

"Very good. Perhaps you can't. I suppose we cannot comprehend infinity,

because we are essentially finite ourselves. But it by no means follows

that we cannot apprehend and believe in attributes which we are unable

to comprehend. We can certainly do that."

"No. After you reach your limit of comprehension, you may say, all

beyond that is infinite,--but you only push the object of your thought

out of view. After you have reiterated the years till you are tired, you

say, beyond that is infinite. You only mean that you are tired of

computing and adding."

"Then you cannot believe in an Infinite Creator?" said the minister.

"I can believe in nothing that is not founded on reason. I should be

very glad to believe in an Infinite Creator, only it is entirely

impossible, you see, for the mind to conceive of a being who is not

himself created."

"Yet you can believe in a world that is not created?" said the minister.

"You can believe that a world full of adaptations, full of signs of

intelligence and design, could be uncreated. How do you make that out?"

"There remains no greater difficulty to me," said Remington, "in

believing in an uncreated world than you have in believing in an

uncreated God. Why is it stranger that Chaos should produce harmony than

that Nothing should produce God?"

He looked at us, smiling as he said this, which he evidently considered

unanswerable.

"You are quite right," said my husband, gravely. "It is impossible that

nothing should produce God, and therefore I say God is eternal. It is

not impossible that something should produce the world, and therefore I

believe the world is not eternal. That point is the one on which the

whole argument hangs in my mind."

"It does not become me to dispute a clergyman," said Mr. Remington,

smiling affectedly, as if only courtesy prevented his coming in with an

entirely demolishing argument.

To my great surprise Lulu instantly answered, and with an intelligence

that showed she had followed the argument entirely,--

"I am certain, George, that Mr. Prince has altogether the best of it.

Yours is merely a technical difficulty,--merely words. You can conceive

a thousand things which you can never fully comprehend. And this, too,

is a proof of the Infinite Father in our very reasoning,--that, if we

could comprehend Him, we should be ourselves infinite. As it is, we can

believe and adore,--and, more than that, rejoice that we cannot in this

finite life of ours do more."

"If we believed we could comprehend Him," said I, "we should soon begin

to meddle with God's administration of affairs."

"Yes,--and in fatalism I have always thought there was a profound

reverence," said Lulu.

"Oh, are you going into theological mysteries, too?" said Remington,

with a laugh in which none of us joined; "what care you, Lulu, for the

quiddities of Absolute Illimitation and Infinite Illimitation? After

all, what matters it whether one believes in a God, who you allow to be

the personation of all excellence, if only one endeavors to act up to

the highest conceivable standard of perfection,--I mean of human

perfection,--leaving, of course, a liberal margin for human frailties

and defects? One wouldn't like to leave out mercy, you know."

Whatever might be the real sentiments of the man, there was an air of

levity in his mode of treating the most important subjects of thought

which displeased me, especially when he said, "You adore the

Incomprehensible; I am contented to adore, with silent reverence, the

lovely works of His hand." He pointed his remark without hesitation at

LuLu, who sat looking into the fire, and did not notice him or it.

"You are quite right, Mr. Prince, and my cousin, is quite wrong," said

she, looking up with a docile, childlike expression, at the minister.

"One feels that all through, though one may not be able to reason or

argue about it."

"And the best evidence of all truth, my dear," answered the delighted

Dominie, "is that intuition which is before all reasoning, and by which

we must try reasoning itself. The moral is before the intellectual; and

that is why we preachers continually insist on faith as an illuminator

of the reason."

"You mean that we should cultivate faith," I said.

"Yes: not the faith that is blind, but the faith that sees, that is

positive; that which leads, not that which follows; the faith that

weighs argument and decides on it; in short, the native intuitions which

are a necessary part of the mind."

"I see, and I shall remember," said Lulu. "I shall never forget all you

say, Mr. Prince."

It was this sweet frankness, and the clearness with which her lately

developed intellect acted, that made us begin to respect Lulu as well as

to love her. She seemed to be getting right-minded at last.

When Mr. Lewis came, the conversation turned on other subjects; but it

was quite late at night before we were willing to part with our friends.

The shadow of misgiving which hangs over even short separations was

deeper than usual with me from the thought of the voyage. Lulu had been

so many times across the sea that she had no fear of it; and she went

up-stairs with me to say last words and give last commissions with her

usual cheerfulness. Notwithstanding the relief which I had felt during

the evening from her expressions of a moral and religious kind, I yet

had a brooding fear of the effect of association with a mind so lively

and so full of error as Remington's. What help or what sustaining power

for her there might be in her husband I could not tell; but be it more

or less, I feared she would not avail herself of it. Indeed, I feared

that she was daily becoming more alienated from him, as she pursued

onward and upward the bright mental track on which she had entered. And

it was seeing that she had not yet begun to con the alphabet of true

knowledge, that disturbed me most. If I could have seen her thoughtful

for others, humble in her endeavor after duty, I should have hailed,

rejoicingly, her intellectual illumination. As it was, I could not help

saying to her, anxiously, before we went downstairs,--

"I don't like Mr. Remington's notions at all, my dear!--I don't mean

merely his theological notions, but his ideas of life and duty seem to

me wrong and poor. You will forgive me, if I say, you cannot be too

careful how you allow his views to act on your own sense of right and

wrong."

"What!--George? Oh, dear friend, it is only his nonsense! He will take

any side for the time, only to hear himself talk. But he _is_ the best

fellow that ever breathed. Oh, if you only knew his excellence as well

as I do!"

"My dear Lulu!" I expostulated, greatly pained to see her glowing face

and the almost tearful sparkle of her eyes, as she defended her cousin,

"your husband is a great deal the best guide for you,--in action, and I

presume in opinion. At all events, you are safest under the shadow of

his wing. There is the truest peace for a wife."

Whether she guessed what was in my mind I don't know; I did not try much

to conceal it. But she shook her curls away from her face as if

irritated, and answered in a tone from which all the animation had been

quenched,--

"No. I have been a child. I am one no longer. Don't ask me to go back. I

am a living, feeling, understanding woman! George himself allows it is

perfectly shocking to be treated as I am,--a mere toy! a plaything!"

George again! I could scarcely restrain my impatience. Yet how to make

her understand?

"Don't you see, Lulu, that George ought never to have dared to name the

subject of your and your husband's differences? and do you not see that

you can never discuss the subject with anybody with propriety? If,

unhappily, all is not as you, as we, wish it, let us hope for the effect

of time and right feeling in both; but don't, don't allow any gentleman

to talk to you of your husband's treatment of you!"

Lulu listened in quiet wonderment, while, with agitated voice and

trembling mouth, I addressed her as I had never before done. I had

constantly avoided speaking to her on the subject. She looked at me now

with clear, innocent eyes, (I am so glad to remember them!) and placed

her two hands affectionately on my shoulders.

"I know what you mean,--and what you fear. That I shall say something,

or do something undignified, or possibly wrong. But that, with God's

help, I shall never do. Such happiness as I can procure, aside from my

husband, and which I had a right to expect through him,--such enjoyment

as comes from intellectual improvement and the exercise of my faculties,

this is surely innocent pleasure, this I shall have. And George,--you

must not blame him for being indignant, when he sees me treated so

unworthily,--or for calling Lewis a Pacha, as he always does. You must

think, my dear, that it isn't pleasant to be treated only like a

Circassian slave, and that one may have something better to do in life

than to twirl jewelled armlets, or to light my lord's _chibouk!_"

She looked all radiant with scorn, as she said this,--her eyes flashing,

and her very forehead crimson. I could see she was remembering long

months and years in that moment of indignant anger. Seeing them with her

eyes, I could not say she was unjust, or that her estrangement was

unnatural.

"Now, then, good friend, good bye! Don't look anxious. Don't fear for

me. I am not happy, but I shall know how to keep myself from misery. You

and your excellent husband have done more for me than you know or think;

and I shall try to keep right."

She left me with this, and we parted from both with a lingering sweet

friendliness that dwells still in our memories.

"It would be horrible to be on these terms, if she loved him," said the

minister, that night, after I had told him of our parting interview.

"Well, she don't, you see. Did she ever?"

"With such mind and heart as she had, I suppose. On the other hand, what

did he marry?"

"Grace and beauty--and promise. Of course, like every man in love, he

took everything good for granted."

"The sweetest flower in my garden," said the minister, "should perfume

no stranger's vase, however, nor dangle at a knave's button-hole."

"Because you would watch it and care for it, water and train it, and

make it doubly your own. But if you did neither?"

"I should deserve my fate," said he, sorrowfully.

XIV.

The first letter we received from Mrs. Lewis was from the North of

Scotland, where the party of three, increased to one much larger, were

making the tour of the Hebrides. I cannot say much for either the

penmanship or the orthography of the letter, which was incorrect as

usual; but the abundant beauty of her descriptions, and the fine sense

she seemed to have of lofty and wild scenery, made her journey a living

picture. All her keen sense of external life was brought into activity,

and she projected on the paper before her groups of people, or groups of

mountains, with a vividness that showed she had only to transfer them

from the retina: they had no need of any additional processes. She made

no remarks on society, or inferences from what she saw in the present to

what had been in the past or might be in the future. It was simply a

power of representation, unequalled in its way, and yet more remarkable

to us for what it failed of doing than for what it did.

We could not but perceive two things. One, that she never spoke of

home-ties, or children, or husband: not an allusion to either. The

other, that every hill and every vale, the mounting mist and the resting

shadow, all that gave life and beauty to her every-day pursuits, which

seemed, indeed, all pictorial,--all these were informed and permeated,

as it were, with one influence,--that of Remington. An uncomfortable

sense of this made me say, as I finished the letter,--

"I am sorry for the poor bird!"

"So am I," answered the minister, with a clouded brow; "and the more, as

I think I see the bird is limed."

"How?" I said, with a sort of horrified retreat from the expressed

thought, though the thought itself haunted me.

My husband seemed thinking the matter over, as if to clear it in his own

mind before he spoke again.

"I suppose there is a moral disease, which, through its connection with

a newly awakened and brilliant intellect, does not enervate the whole

character. I mean that this connection of moral weakness with the

intellect gives a fatal strength to the character,--do you take me?"

"Yes, I think so," said I.

"She is lofty, self-poised,--confident in what never yet supported any

one. Pride of character does not keep us from falling. Humility would

help us in that way. Unfortunately, that, too, is often bought dearly. I

mean that this virtue of humbleness, which makes us tender of others and

afraid for ourselves, is at the expense of sorrowful and humiliating

experience."

"You speak as if you feared more for her than I do," said I, struck by

the foreboding look in his face.

"You women judge only by your own hearts, or by solitary instances; and

you forget the inevitable downward course of wrong tendencies. Besides,

she has neither lofty principle nor a strong will. You will think I

mistake here; but I don't mean she has not wilfulness enough. A strong

will generally excludes wilfulness,--and the converse."

This conversation made me nervous.

I had such an intense anxiety for her now, that I could not avoid

expressing it often and strongly in my letters to her. I wondered Lewis

was not more open-eyed. I blamed him for letting her run on so

heedlessly into habits which might compromise her reputation for dignity

and discretion, if no worse. Then I would recall her manner the last

evening she was with us, when, although her want of self-regulation was

very apparent, not less so was the native nobleness and purity of her

soul. I could not think of this "unsphered angel wofully astray" without

inward tears that dimmed the vision of my foreboding heart.

Could Lewis mistake her indifference? Could he avoid suffering from it?

Could he, for a moment, accept her conventional expletives in place of

the irrepressible and endearing tokens of a real love? Could he see what

had weaned her from him, and was still, like a baleful star, wiling her

farther and farther on its treacherously lighted path? Could he

see,--feel?--had he a heart? These questions I incessantly asked myself.

In the last days of summer we went with the children to Nantasket Beach.

We had walked to a point of rocks at some distance from the bay, above

which we lodged, and were sitting in the luxury of quiet companionship,

gazing out on the water.

The ineffable, still beauty of Nature, separated from the usual noises

of actual life,--the brilliant effect of the long reaches of color from

the plunging sun, as it dipped, and reappeared, and dipped again, as

loath to leave its field of beauty,--then the still plash against the

rocks, and the subsidence in murmurs of the retiring wave, with all its

gathered treasure of pebbles and shells,--all these sounds and sights of

reposeful life suggested unspeakable thoughts and memories that clung to

silence. We had not been without so much sorrow in life as does not well

afford to dwell on its own images; and we rose to retrace our steps to

the measure of the eternal and significant psalm of the sea.

As we turned away, we both perceived at once a sail in the distance,

against the western sky. It had just rounded the nearest point and was

coming slowly in with a gentle breeze, when it suddenly tacked and put

out to sea again. It had come so near, however, that with our glass we

saw that it was a small boat, holding two persons, and with a single

sail.

Immediately after, a dead calm succeeded the light wind which had before

rippled the distant waves, and we watched the boat, lying as if asleep

and floating lazily on the red water against the blazing sky,--or

rather, itself like a cradle, so pavilioned was it with gorgeous

cloud-curtains, and fit home for the two water-sprites lying in the

slant sunbeams.

Walking slowly borne, we felt the air to be full of oppressive languor,

and turned now and then to see if the distant sail were yet lightened by

the coming breeze. When we reached the inner bay, we mounted a rock,

from which, with the lessened interval between us, I could distinctly

see the boat. One of the occupants--a lady--wore a dark hat with a

scarlet plume drooping from it. She leaned over the gunwale, dipping her

hands in the blazing water and holding them up against the light, as if

playing rainbows in the sunset. The other figure was busy in fastening

up the sail, ready to catch the first breath of wind.

As we stood looking, the water, which during the last few minutes had

changed from flaming red to the many-colored hues of a dolphin's back,

suddenly turned slate-colored, almost black. Then a low scud crept

stealthily and quickly along the surface, bringing with it a steady

breeze, for perhaps five minutes. We watched the little boat, as it

yielded gracefully to the welcome impetus, and swept rapidly to the

shore. Fearing, however, from the sudden change of weather, that it

would soon rain, we cast a parting look at the boat, and started on a

rapid walk to the house.

This last glimpse of the boat showed us a tall figure standing upright

against the mast, and fastening or holding something to it, while the

lady still played with the water, bending her head so low that the red

plume in her hat almost touched it. She seemed in a pleasant reverie,

and rocked softly with the rocking waves. It was a peaceful

picture,--the sail set, and full of heaven's breath, as it seemed.

Before we could grasp anything,--even if there had been anything to

grasp on the level sand,--we were both taken at once off our feet and

thrown violently to the ground. I had felt the force of water before,

but never that of wind, and had no idea of the utter helplessness of man

or woman before a wind that is really in earnest. It was with a very

novel sense of more than childish incapacity that I suffered the Dominie

to gather up capes, canes, hats, and shawls, and, last of all, an

astonished woman, and put them on their way homewards. However, long

before we reached the house-door we were drenched to the skin. The rain

poured in blinding sheets, and the thunder was like a hundred cannon

about our ears. It was so sudden and so frightful to me that I had but

one idea, that of getting into the piazza, where was comparative safety.

Having reached it, we turned to face the elements. Nothing could be seen

through the thick deluge. The ocean itself, tossing and tumbling in

angry darkness, seemed fighting with the other ocean that poured from

the black wall above, and all was one tumult of thunderous fury. This

elemental war lasted but a short time, and gave place to a quiet as

sudden as its angry burst. It was my first experience of a squall. It is

always difficult for me to feel that a storm is a natural

occurrence,--so that I have a great reverence for a Dominie who stands

with head uncovered, with calm eyes, looking tranquilly out on the

loudest tempest.

"Beautiful! wonderful!" he murmured, as the lightning fiercely shot over

us, and the roar died away in long billows of heavy sound.

Afterwards he told me he had the same unbounded delight in a great storm

as he had at the foot of Niagara, or in looking at the stars on a winter

night: that it stirred in his soul all that was loftiest,--that for the

time he could comprehend Deity, and that "the noise of the thundering of

His waters" was an anthem that struck the highest chords of his nature.

What is really sublime takes us out of ourselves, so that we have no

room for personal terror, and we mingle with the elemental roar in

spirit as with something kindred to us. I guessed this, and meditated on

it, while I stopped my ears and shut my eyes and trembled with

overwhelming terror myself. Clearly, I am a coward, in spite of my

admiration of the sublime. The Dominie, being as good as he is great,

does not require a woman to be sublime, luckily; and I think, as I like

him all the better for his strength, he really does not object to a

moderate amount of weakness on my part, which is unaffected and not to

be helped. When animal magnetism becomes a science, it will be seen why

some spirits revel and soar, and some cower and shrink, at the same

amount of electricity. So the Dominie says now; and then--he said

nothing.

XV.

In the fright, excitement, and thorough wetting, I forgot about the

boat,--or rather, no misgiving seized me as to its safety. But, on

coming to breakfast the next morning, we felt that there was a great

commotion in the house. Everybody was out on the piazza, and a crowd was

gathered a short distance off. Somebody had taken off the doors from the

south entrance, and there was a sort of procession already formed on

each side of these two doors. We went out in front of the house to

listen to a rough fisherman who described the storm in which the little

boat capsized. He had stood on the shore and just finished fastening his

own boat, for he well knew the signs of the storm, when he caught sight

of the little sail scudding with lightning-speed to the landing.

Suddenly it stopped short, shook all over as if in an ague, and capsized

in an instant. The storm broke, and although he tried to discern some

traces of the boat or its occupants, nothing could be seen but the white

foam on the black water, glistening like a shark's teeth when he has

seized his prey. In the early morning he had found two bodies on the

sand. The water, he said, must have tossed them with considerable

force,--yet not against the rocks at all, for they were not disfigured,

nor their clothing much torn. As the man ceased relating the story, the

bodies were brought past us, covered by a piano-cloth which somebody had

considerately snatched up and taken to the shore. They were placed in

the long parlor on a table.

My husband beckoned to me to come to him. Turning down the cloth, he

showed me the faces I dreamily expected to see. I don't know when I

thought of it, but suppose I recognized the air and movement so

familiar, even in the distant dimness. No matter how clearly and fully

death is expected, when it comes it is with a death-shock,--how much

more, coming as this did, as if with a bolt from the clear sky!

In their prime,--in their beauty,--in their pride of youth,--in their

pleasure, they died. What was the strong man or the smiling woman,--what

was the smooth sea, the shining sail,--what was strength, skill,

loveliness, against the great and terrible wind of the Lord?

So here they lay, white and quiet as sculptured stone, and as placid as

if they had only fallen asleep in the midst of the tempestuous uproar.

All the clamor and talking about the house had subsided in the real

presence of death; and every one went lightly and softly around, as if

afraid of wakening the sleepers.

She had never looked so beautiful, even in her utmost pride of health

and bloom. Her dark luxuriant hair lay in masses over brow and bosom,

and her face expressed the unspeakable calm and perfect peace which are

suggested only by the sleep of childhood. The long eyelashes seemed to

say, in their close adherence to the cheek, how gladly they shut out the

tumult of life; and the whole cast of the face was so elevated by death

as to look rather angelic than mortal.

His face was quiet, too,--the manliness and massive character of the

features giving a majestic and severe cast to the whole countenance, far

more elevated than it had while living.

We could only weep over these relics. But where was the deepest mourner?

No one had even seen these two before, or could give any account of

them.

On making stricter inquiry and looking at the books, we found that Mr.

and Mrs. Lewis had arrived first. Mr. Lewis had taken his gun and a

boat, and gone out at once to shoot. The lady had been in her room but a

short time, when another gentleman arrived, wrote his name, and ordered

a boat. She had scarcely seen any one, but the boatman saw her step into

the boat, and described her dress.

A message was at once sent to "the Glades," where Mr. Lewis had gone,

and where he was detained, as we had supposed, by the storm. Before he

reached the house, however, all necessary arrangements were completed

for removing any associations of suffering. No confusion remained; the

room was gently darkened, and the bodies, robed in white, lay in such

peaceful silence as soothes and quiets the mourner.

As the carriage drew up to the door, we both hastened to meet Mr. Lewis,

to take him by the hand, and to lead him, by our evident sympathy, to

accept his terrible affliction with something like composure. In our

entire uncertainty as to his feelings, we could only weep silently, and

hold his hands, which were as cold as death.

He looked surprised a little at seeing us, but otherwise his face was

like stone. His eyes,--they, too, looked stony, and as if all the

expression and life were turned inward. Outwardly, there seemed hardly

consciousness. He sat down between us, while we related all the

particulars of the accident, which he seemed greedy to hear,--turning,

as one ceased, to the other, with an eager, hungry look, most painful

to witness. He made us describe, repeatedly, our last glimpse of the

unconscious victims, and then, pressing our hands with a vice-cold grip,

said, in a dry whisper,--

"Where are they?"

We led him to the door. He went in, and we softly closed it after him.

As we went up-stairs to our own room we heard deep groans of anguish. We

knew that his heart could not relieve itself by tears. My husband read

the "prayer for persons in great affliction," and then we sat silently

looking out on the peaceful sea. In the great stillness of the house, we

heard the calm wave plash up on the smiling sands, and watched the

silver specks in the distance as they hovered over the blue sea. So

soft, so still, it had been the day before,--and where we now saw the

placid wave we had seen it then. Yet there had two lives gone out, as

suddenly as one quenches a lamp.

Thinking, but not speaking, we waited. The report of a pistol in the

house struck us to the heart. I believe we felt sure, both of us, of

what it must be. He had loved her so much! And now we were sure, that in

the tension of his grief, reason had given way. When we saw them next,

there were three where two had been, in the marble calm of death.

* * * * *

THE FORMATION OF GLACIERS.

The long summer was over. For ages a tropical climate had prevailed over

a great part of the earth, and animals whose home is now beneath the

Equator roamed over the world from the far South to the very borders of

the Arctics. The gigantic quadrupeds, the Mastodons, Elephants, Tigers,

Lions, Hyenas, Bears, whose remains are found in Europe from its

southern promontories to the northernmost limits of Siberia and

Scandinavia, and in America from the Southern States to Greenland and

the Melville Islands, may indeed be said to have possessed the earth in

those days. But their reign was over. A sudden intense winter, that was

also to last for ages, fell upon our globe; it spread over the very

countries where these tropical animals had their homes, and so suddenly

did it come upon them that they were embalmed beneath masses of snow and

ice, without time even for the decay which follows death. The Elephant

whose story was told at length in the preceding article was by no means

a solitary specimen; upon further investigation it was found that the

disinterment of these large tropical animals in Northern Russia and Asia

was no unusual occurrence. Indeed, their frequent discoveries of this

kind had given rise among the ignorant inhabitants to the singular

superstition already alluded to, that gigantic moles lived under the

earth, which crumbled away and turned to dust as soon as they came to

the upper air. This tradition, no doubt, arose from the fact, that, when

in digging they came upon the bodies of these animals, they often found

them perfectly preserved under the frozen ground, but the moment they

were exposed to heat and light they decayed and fell to pieces at once.

Admiral Wrangel, whose Arctic explorations have been so valuable to

science, tells us that the remains of these animals are heaped up in

such quantities in certain parts of Siberia that he and his men climbed

over ridges and mounds consisting entirely of the bones of Elephants,

Rhinoceroses, etc. From these facts it would seem that they roamed over

all these northern regions in troops as large and numerous as the

Buffalo herds that wander over our Western prairies now. We are

indebted to Russian naturalists, and especially to Rathke, for the most

minute investigations of these remains, in which even the texture of the

hair, the skin, and flesh has been subjected by him to microscopic

examination as accurate as if made upon any living animal.

We have as yet no clue to the source of this great and sudden change of

climate. Various suggestions have been made,--among others, that

formerly the inclination of the earth's axis was greater, or that a

submersion of the continents under water might have produced a decided

increase of cold; but none of these explanations are satisfactory, and

science has yet to find any cause which accounts for all the phenomena

connected with it. It seems, however, unquestionable that since the

opening of the Tertiary age a cosmic summer and winter have succeeded

each other, during which a Tropical heat and an Arctic cold have

alternately prevailed over a great portion of the globe. In the

so-called drift (a superficial deposit subsequent to the Tertiaries, of

the origin of which I shall speak presently) there are found far to the

south of their present abode the remains of animals whose home now is in

the Arctics or the coldest parts of the Temperate Zones. Among them are

the Musk-Ox, the Reindeer, the Walrus, the Seal, and many kinds of

Shells characteristic of the Arctic regions. The northernmost part of

Norway and Sweden is at this day the southern limit of the Reindeer in

Europe; but their fossil remains are found in large quantities in the

drift about the neighborhood of Paris, where their presence would, of

course, indicate a climate similar to the one now prevailing in Northern

Scandinavia. Side by side with the remains of the Reindeer are found

those of the European Marmot, whose present home is in the mountains,

about six thousand feet above the level of the sea. The occurrence of

these animals in the superficial deposits of the plains of Central

Europe, one of which is now confined to the high North, and the other to

mountain-heights, certainly indicates an entire change of climatic

conditions since the time of their existence. European Shells now

confined to the Northern Ocean are found as fossils in Italy,--showing,

that, while the present Arctic climate prevailed in the Temperate Zone,

that of the Temperate Zone extended much farther south to the regions we

now call sub-tropical. In America there is abundant evidence of the same

kind; throughout the recent marine deposits of the Temperate Zone,

covering the low lands above tide-water on this continent, are found

fossil Shells whose present home is on the shores of Greenland. It is

not only in the Northern hemisphere that these remains occur, but in

Africa and in South America, wherever there has been an opportunity for

investigation, the drift is found to contain the traces of animals whose

presence indicates a climate many degree colder than that now prevailing

there.

But these organic remains are not the only evidence of the geological

winter. There are a number of phenomena indicating that during this

period two vast caps of ice stretched from the Northern pole southward

and from the Southern pole northward, extending in each case far toward

the Equator,--and that ice-fields, such as now spread over the Arctics,

covered a great part of the Temperate Zones, while the line of perpetual

ice and snow in the tropical mountain-ranges descended far below its

present limits. As the explanation of these facts has been drawn from

the study of glacial action, I shall devote this and subsequent articles

to some account of glaciers and of the phenomena connected with them.

The first essential condition for the formation of glaciers in

mountain-ranges is the shape of their valleys. Glaciers are by no means

in proportion to the height and extent of mountains. There are many

mountain-chains as high or higher than the Alps, which can boast of but

few and small glaciers, if, indeed, they have any. In the Andes, the

Rocky Mountains, the Pyrenees, the Caucasus, the few glaciers remaining

from the great ice-period are insignificant in size. The volcanic,

cone-like shape of the Andes gives, indeed, but little chance for the

formation of glaciers, though their summits are capped with snow. The

glaciers of the Rocky Mountains have been little explored, but it is

known that they are by no means extensive. In the Pyrenees there is but

one great glacier, though the height of these mountains is such, that,

were the shape of their valleys favorable to the accumulation of snow,

they might present beautiful glaciers. In the Tyrol, on the contrary, as

well as in Norway and Sweden, we find glaciers almost as fine as those

of Switzerland, in mountain-ranges much lower than either of the

above-named chains. But they are of diversified forms, and have valleys

widening upward on the slope of long crests. The glaciers on the

Caucasus are very small in proportion to the height of the range; but on

the northern side of the Himalaya there are large and beautiful ones,

while the southern slope is almost destitute of them. Spitzbergen and

Greenland are famous for their extensive glaciers, coming down to the

sea-shore, where huge masses of ice, many hundred feet in thickness,

break off and float away into the ocean as icebergs. At the Aletsch in

Switzerland, where a little lake lies in a deep cup between the

mountains, with the glacier coming down to its brink, we have these

Arctic phenomena on a small scale; a miniature iceberg may often be seen

to break off from the edge of the larger mass, and float out upon the

surface of the water. Icebergs were first traced back to their true

origin by the nature of the land-ice of which they are always composed,

and which is quite distinct in structure and consistency from the marine

ice produced by frozen sea-water, and called "ice-flow" by the Arctic

explorers, as well as from the pond or river ice, resulting from the

simple congelation of fresh water.

Water is changed to ice at a certain temperature under the same law of

crystallization by which any inorganic bodies in a fluid state may

assume a solid condition, taking the shape of perfectly regular

crystals, which combine at certain angles with mathematical precision.

The frost does not form a solid, continuous sheet of ice over an expanse

of water, but produces crystals, little ice-blades, as it were, which

shoot into each other at angles of thirty or sixty degrees, forming the

closest net-work. Of course, under the process of alternate freezing and

thawing, these crystals lose their regularity, and soon become merged in

each other. But even then a mass of ice is not continuous or compact

throughout, for it is rendered completely porous by air-bubbles, the

presence of which is easily explained. Ice being in a measure

transparent to heat, the water below any frozen surface is nearly as

susceptible to the elevation of the temperature without as if it were in

immediate contact with it. Such changes of temperature produce

air-bubbles, which float upward against the lower surface of the ice and

are stranded there. At night there may come a severe frost; new ice is

then formed below the air-bubbles, and they are thus caught and

imprisoned, a layer of air-bubbles between two layers of ice, and this

process may be continued until we have a succession of such parallel

layers, forming a body of ice more or less permeated with air. These

air-bubbles have the power also of extending their own area, and thus

rendering the whole mass still more porous; for, since the ice offers

little or no obstacle to the passage of heat, such an air-bubble may

easily become heated during the day; the moment it reaches a temperature

above thirty-two degrees, it melts the ice around it, thus clearing a

little space for itself, and rises through the water produced by the

action of its own warmth. The spaces so formed are so many vertical

tubes in the ice, filled with water, and having an air-bubble at the

upper extremity.

Ice of this kind, resulting from the direct congelation of water, is

easily recognized under all circumstances by its regular

stratification, the alternate beds varying in thickness according to the

intensity of the cold, and its continuance below the freezing-point

during a longer or shorter period. Singly, these layers consist of

irregular crystals confusedly blended together, as in large masses of

crystalline rocks in which a crystalline structure prevails, though

regular crystals occur but rarely. The appearance of stratification is

the result of the circumstances under which the water congeals. The

temperature varies much more rapidly in the atmosphere around the earth

than in the waters upon its surface. When the atmosphere above any sheet

of water sinks below the freezing-point, there stretches over its

surface a stratum of cold air, determining by its intensity and duration

the formation of the first stratum of ice. According to the alternations

of temperature, this process goes on with varying activity until the

sheet of ice is so thick that it becomes itself a shelter to the water

below, and protects it, to a certain degree, from the cold without. Thus

a given thickness of ice may cause a suspension of the freezing process,

and the first ice-stratum may even be partially thawed before the cold

is renewed with such intensity as to continue the thickening of the

ice-sheet by the addition of fresh layers. The strata or beds of ice

increase gradually in this manner, their separation being rendered still

more distinct by the accumulation of air-bubbles, which, during a hot

and clear day, may rise from a muddy bottom in great numbers. In

consequence of these occasional collections of air-bubbles, the layers

differ, not only in density and closeness, but also in color, the more

compact strata being blue and transparent, while those containing a

greater quantity of air-bubbles are opaque and whitish, like water

beaten to froth.

A cake of pond-ice, such as is daily left in summer at our doors, if

held against the light and turned in different directions, will exhibit

all these phenomena very distinctly, and we may learn still more of its

structure by watching its gradual melting. The process of decomposition

is as different in fresh-water ice and in land-or glacier-ice and that

of their formation. Pond-ice, in contact with warm air, melts uniformly

over its whole surface, the mass being thus gradually reduces from the

exterior till it vanishes completely. If the process be slow, the

temperature of the air-bubbles contained in it may be so raised as to

form the vertical funnels or tubes alluded to above. By the anastomosing

of these funnels, the whole mass may be reduced to a collection of

angular pyramids, more or less closely united by cross-beams of ice, and

it finally falls to pieces when the spaces in the interior have become

for numerous as to render it completely cavernous. Such a breaking-up of

ice is always caused by the enlargement of the open spaces produces by

the elevated temperature of the air-bubbles, these spaces being

necessarily more or less parallel with one another, and vertical in

their position, owing to the natural tendency of the air-bubbles to work

their way upward till they reach the surface, where they escape. A sheet

of ice, of this kind, floating upon water, dissolves in the same manner,

melting wholly from the surface, if the process be sufficiently rapid,

or falling to pieces, if the air-bubbles are gradually raised in their

temperature sufficiently to render the whole mass cavernous and

incoherent. If we now compare these facts with what is known of the

structure of land-ice, we shall see that the mode of formation in the

two cases differs essentially.

Land-ice, of which both the ice-fields of the Arctics and glaciers

consist, is produced by the slow and gradual transformation of snow into

ice; and though the ice thus formed may eventually be as clear and

transparent as the purest pond- or river-ice, its structure is

nevertheless entirely distinct. We may trace these different processes

during any moderately cold winter in the ponds and snow-meadows

immediately about us. We need not join an Arctic exploring expedition,

nor even undertake a more tempting trip to the Alps, in order to

investigate these phenomena for ourselves, if we have any curiosity to

do so. The first warm day after a thick fall of light, dry snow, such as

occurs in the coldest of our winter weather, is sufficient to melt its

surface. As this snow is porous, the water readily penetrates it, having

also a tendency to sink by its own weight, so that the whole mass

becomes more or less filled with moisture in the course of the day.

Daring the lower temperature of the night, however, the water is frozen

again, and the snow is now filled with new ice-particles. Let this

process be continued long enough, and the mass of snow is changed to a

kind of ice-gravel, or, if the grains adhere together, to something like

what we call pudding-stone, allowing, of course, for the difference of

material; the snow, which has been rendered cohesive by the process of

partial melting and regelation, holding the ice-globules together, just

as the loose materials of the pudding-stone are held together by the

cement which unites them.

Within this mass, air is intercepted and held inclosed between the

particles of ice. The process by which snow-flakes or snow-crystals are

transformed into grains of ice, more or less compact, is easily

understood. It is the result of a partial thawing, under a temperature

maintained very nearly at thirty-two degrees, falling sometimes a little

below, and then rising a little above the freezing-point, and thus

producing constant alternations of freezing and thawing in the same mass

of snow. This process amounts to a kind of kneading of the snow, and

when combined with the cohesion among the particles more closely held

together in one snow-flake, it produces granular ice. Of course, the

change takes place gradually, and is unequal in its progress at

different depths in the same bed of recently fallen snow. It depends

greatly on the amount of moisture infiltrating the mass, whether derived

from the melting of its own surface, or from the accumulation of dew or

the falling of rain or mist upon it. The amount of water retained within

the mass will also be greatly affected by the bottom on which it rests

and by the state of the atmosphere. Under a certain temperature, the

snow may only be glazed at the surface by the formation of a thin, icy

crust, an outer membrane, as it were, protecting the mass below from a

deeper transformation into ice; or it may be rapidly soaked throughout

its whole bulk, the snow being thus changed into a kind of soft pulp,

what we commonly call slosh, which, upon freezing, becomes at once

compact ice; or, the water sinking rapidly, the lower layers only may be

soaked, while the upper portion remains comparatively dry. But, under

all these various circumstances, frost will transform the crystalline

snow into more or less compact ice, the mass of which will be composed

of an infinite number of aggregated snow-particles, very unequal in

regularity of outline, and cemented by ice of another kind, derived from

the freezing of the infiltrated moisture, the whole being interspersed

with air. Let the temperature rise, and such a mass, rigid before, will

resolve itself again into disconnected ice-particles, like grains more

or less rounded. The process may be repeated till the whole mass is

transformed into very compact, almost uniformly transparent and blue

ice, broken only by the intervening air-bubbles. Such a mass of ice,

when exposed to a temperature sufficiently high to dissolve it, does not

melt from the surface and disappear by a gradual diminution of its bulk,

like pond-ice, but crumbles into its original granular fragments, each

one of which melts separately. This accounts for the sudden

disappearance icebergs, which, instead of slowly dissolving into the

ocean, are often seen to fall to pieces and vanish at once.

Ice of this kind may be seen forming every winter on our sidewalks, on

the edge of the little ditches which drain them, or on the summits of

broad gateposts when capped with snow. Of such ice glaciers are

composed; but, in the glacier, another element comes in which we have

not considered as yet,--that of immense pressure in consequence of the

vast accumulations of snow within circumscribed spaces. We see the same

effects produced on a small scale, when snow is transformed into a

snowball between the hands. Every boy who balls a mass of snow in his

hands illustrates one side of glacial phenomena. Loose snow, light and

porous, and pure white from the amount of air contained in it, is in

this way presently converted into hard, compact, almost transparent ice.

This change will take place sooner, if the snow be damp at first,--but

if dry, the action of the hand will presently produce moisture enough to

complete the process. In this case, mere pressure produces the same

effect which, in the cases we have been considering above, was brought

about by alternate thawing and freezing,--only that in the latter the

ice is distinctly granular, instead of being uniform throughout, as when

formed under pressure. In the glaciers we have the two processes

combined. But the investigators of glacial phenomena have considered too

exclusively one or the other: some of them attributing glacial motion

wholly to the dilatation produced by the freezing of infiltrated

moisture in the mass of snow; others accounting for it entirely by

weight and pressure. There is yet a third class, who, disregarding the

real properties of ice, would have us believe, that, because tar, for

instance, is viscid when it moves, therefore ice is viscid because it

moves. We shall see hereafter that the phenomena exhibited in the onward

movement of glaciers are far more diversified than has generally been

supposed.

There is no chain of mountains in which the shape of the valleys is more

favorable to the formation of glaciers than the Alps. Contracted at

their lower extremity, these valleys widen upward, spreading into deep,

broad, trough-like depressions. Take, for instance, the valley of

Hassli, which is not more than half a mile wide where you enter it above

Meyringen; it opens gradually upward, till, above the Grimsel, at the

foot of the Finster-Aarhorn, it measures several miles across. These

huge mountain-troughs form admirable cradles for the snow, which

collects in immense quantities within them, and, as it moves slowly down

from the upper ranges, is transformed into ice on its way, and compactly

crowded into the narrower space below. At the lower extremity of the

glacier the ice is pure, blue and transparent, but, as we ascend, it

appears less compact, more porous and granular, assuming gradually the

character of snow, till in the higher regions the snow is as light, as

shifting, and incoherent, as the sand of the desert. A snow-storm on a

mountain-summit is very different from a snow-storm on the plain, on

account of the different degrees of moisture in the atmosphere. At great

heights, there is never dampness enough to allow the fine snow-crystals

to coalesce and form what are called "snow-flakes." I have even stood on

the summit of the Jungfrau when a frozen cloud filled the air with

ice-needles, while I could see the same cloud pouring down sheet of rain

upon Lauterbrunnen below. I remember this spectacle as one of the most

impressive I have witnessed in my long experience of Alpine scenery. The

air immediately about me seemed filled with rainbow-dust, for the

ice-needles glittered with a thousand hues under the decomposition of

light upon them, while the dark storm in the valley below offered a

strange contract to the brilliancy of the upper region in which I stood.

One wonder where even so much vapor as may be transformed into the

finest snow should come from at such heights. But the warm winds,

creeping up the sides of the valleys, the walls of which become heated

during the middle of the day, come laden with moisture which is changed

to a dry snow like dust as soon as it comes into contact with the

intense cold above.

Currents of warm air affect the extent of the glaciers, and influence

also the line of perpetual snow, which is by no means at the same level

even in neighboring localities. The size of glaciers, of course,

determines to a great degree the height at which they terminate, simply

because a small mass of ice will melt more rapidly, and at a lower

temperature, than a larger one. Thus, the small glaciers, such as those

of the Rothhorn or of Trift, above the Grimsel, terminate at a

considerable height above the plain, while the Mer de Glace, fed from

the great snow-caldrons of Mont Blanc, forces its way down to the bottom

of the valley of Chamouni, and the glacier of Grindelwald, constantly

renewed from the deep reservoirs where the Jungfrau hoards her vast

supplies of snow, descends to about four thousand feet above the

sea-level. But the glacier of the Aar, though also very large, comes to

a pause at about six thousand feet above the level of the sea; for the

south wind from the other side of the Alps, the warm sirocco of Italy,

blows across it, and it consequently melts at a higher level than either

the Mer de Glace or the Grindelwald. It is a curious fact, that in the

valley of Hassli the temperature frequently rises instead of falling as

you ascend; at the Grimsel, the temperature is at times higher than at

Meyringen below, where the warmer winds are not felt so directly. The

glacier of Aletsch, on the southern slope of the Jungfrau, and into

which many other glaciers enter, terminates also at a considerable

height, because it turns into the valley of the Rhone, through which the

southern winds blow constantly.

Under ordinary conditions, vegetation fades in these mountains at the

height of six thousand feet, but, in consequence of prevailing winds,

and the sheltering influence of the mountain-walls, there is no

uniformity in the limit of perpetual snow and ice. Where currents of

warm air are very constant, glaciers do not occur at all, even where

other circumstances are favorable to their formation. There are valleys

in the Alps far above six thousand feet which have no glaciers, and

where perpetual snow is seen only on their northern sides. These

contrasts in temperature lead to the most wonderful contrasts in the

aspect of the soil; summer and winter lie side by side, and bright

flowers look out from the edge of snows that never melt. Where the warm

winds prevail, there may be sheltered spots at a height of ten or eleven

thousand feet, isolated nooks opening southward where the most exquisite

flowers bloom in the midst of perpetual snow and ice; and occasionally I

have seen a bright little flower with a cap of snow over it that seemed

to be its shelter. The flowers give, indeed, a peculiar charm to these

high Alpine regions. Occurring often in beds of the same kind, forming

green, blue or yellow patches, they seem nestled close together in

sheltered spots, or even in fissures and chasms of the rock, where they

gather in dense quantities. Even in the sternest scenery of the Alps

some sign of vegetation lingers; and I remember to have found a tuft of

lichen growing on the only rock which pierced through the ice on the

summit of the Jungfrau. The absolute solitude, the intense stillness of

the upper Alps is most impressive; no cattle, no pasturage, no bird, nor

any sound of life,--and, indeed, even if there were, the rarity of the

air in these high regions is such that sound is hardly transmissible.

The deep repose, the purity of aspect of every object, the snow, broken

only by ridges of angular rocks, produce an effect no less beautiful

than solemn. Sometimes, in the midst of the wide expanse, one comes upon

a patch of the so-called red snow of the Alps. At a distance, one would

say that such a spot marked some terrible scene of blood, but, as you

come nearer, the hues are so tender and delicate, as they fade from deep

red to rose, and so die into the pure colorless snow around, that the

first impression is completely dispelled. This red snow is an organic

growth, a plant springing up in such abundance that it colors extensive

surfaces, just as the microscopic plants dye our pools with green in the

spring. It is an _Alga_ well known in the Arctics, where it forms wide

fields in the summer. With the above facts before us concerning the

materials of which glaciers are composed, we may now proceed to

consider their structure more fully in connection with their movements

and the effects they produce on the surfaces over which they extend. It

has already been stated that the ice of the glaciers has not the same

appearance everywhere, but differs according to the level at which it

stands. In consequence of this we distinguish three very distinct

regions in these frozen fields, the uppermost of which, upon the sides

of the steepest and highest slopes of the mountain-ridges, consists

chiefly of layers of snow piled one above another by the successive

snowfalls of the colder seasons, and which would remain in uniform

superposition but for the change to which they are subjected in

consequence of a gradual downward movement, causing the mass to descend

by slow degrees, while new accumulations in the higher regions annually

replace the snow which has been thus removed to an inferior level. We

shall consider hereafter the process by which this change of position is

brought about. For the present it is sufficient to state that such a

transfer, by which a balance is preserved in the distribution of the

snow, takes place in all glaciers, so that, instead of increasing

indefinitely in the upper regions, where on account of the extreme cold

there is little melting, they permanently preserve about the same

thickness, being yearly reduced by their downward motion in a proportion

equal to their annual increase by fresh additions of snow. Indeed, these

reservoirs of snow maintain themselves at the same level, much as a

stream, into which many rivulets empty, remains within its usual limits

in consequence of the drainage of the average supply. Of course, very

heavy rains or sudden thaws at certain seasons or in particular years

may cause an occasional overflow of such a stream; and irregularities of

the same kind are observed during certain years or at different periods

of the same year in the accumulations of snow, in consequence of which

the successive strata may vary in thickness. But in ordinary times

layers from six to eight feet deep are regularly added annually to the

accumulation of snow in the higher regions,--not taking into account, of

course, the heavy drifts heaped up in particular localities, but

estimating the uniform average increase over wide fields. This snow is

gradually transformed into more or less compact ice, passing through an

intermediate condition analogous to the slosh of our roads, and in that

condition chiefly occupies the upper part of the extensive troughs into

which these masses descend from the loftier heights. This region is

called the region of the _névé_. It is properly the birthplace of the

glaciers, for it is here that the transformation of the snow into ice

begins. The _névé_ ice, though varying in the degree of its compactness

and solidity, is always very porous and whitish in color, resembling

somewhat frozen slosh, while lower down in the region of the glacier

proper the ice is close, solid, transparent, and of a bluish tint.

But besides the differences in solidity and in external appearance,

there are also many other important changes taking place in the ice of

these different regions, to which we shall return presently. Such

modifications arise chiefly from the pressure to which it is subjected

in its downward progress, and to the alterations, in consequence of this

displacement, in the relative position of the snow- and ice-beds, as

well as to the influence exerted by the form of the valleys themselves,

not only upon the external aspect of the glaciers, but upon their

internal structure also. The surface of a glacier varies greatly in

character in these different regions. The uniform even surfaces of the

upper snow-fields gradually pass into a more undulating outline, the

pure white fields become strewn with dust and sand in the lower levels,

while broken bits of stone and larger fragments of rock collect upon

them, which assume a regular arrangement, and produce a variety of

features most startling and incomprehensible at first sight, but more

easily understood when studied in connection with the whole series of

glacial phenomena. They are then seen to be the consequence of the

general movement of the glacier, and of certain effects which the course

of the seasons, the action of the sun, the rain, the reflected heat from

the sides of the valley, or the disintegration of its rocky walls, may

produce upon the surface of the ice. In the next article we shall

consider in detail all these phenomena, and trace them in their natural

connection. Once familiar with these facts, it will not be difficult

correctly to appreciate the movement of the glacier and the cause of its

inequalities. We shall see, that, in consequence of the greater or less

rapidity in the movement of certain portions of the mass, its centre

progressing faster than its sides, and the upper, middle, and lower

regions of the same glacier advancing at different rates, the strata

which in the higher ranges of the snow-fields were evenly spread over

wide expanses, become bent and folded to such a degree that the

primitive stratification is nearly obliterated, while the internal mass

of the ice has also assumed new features under these new circumstances.

There is, indeed, as much difference between the newly formed beds of

snow in the upper region and the condition of the ice at the lower end

of a glacier as between a recent deposit of coral sand or a mud-bed in

an estuary and the metamorphic limestone or clay slate twisted and

broken as they are seen in the very chains of mountains from which the

glaciers descend. A geologist, familiar with all the changes to which a

bed of rock may be subjected from the time it was deposited in

horizontal layers up to the time when it was raised by Plutonic agencies

along the sides of a mountain-ridge, bent and distorted in a thousand

directions, broken through the thickness of its mass, and traversed by

innumerable fissures which are themselves filled with new materials,

will best be able to understand how the stratification of snow may be

modified by pressure and displacement so as finally to appear like a

laminated mass full of cracks and crevices, in which the original

stratification is recognized only by the practical student. I trust in

my next article I shall be able to explain intelligibly to my readers

even these extreme alterations in the condition of the primitive snow of

the Alpine summits.

* * * * *

TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL.