"I went againe to the ruines, for it was no longer a Citty"--the
Drive by Moonlight--Through the Ruins--After the Fire--A City of
Ashes--The Buried Silver--The Sentinel Chimneys--The Home of
Luxuriance--A Recollection--The Moon and the Church--Back Again.
Shelley's white-orbed maiden sits in the sky, and already her pale torch
is silvering the peaks of the ruins. Let us take a carriage, and drive
round the desolate city, slowly and softly, and view the giant wreck
which the fire has made. There is no better time than the present. The
moon is up, and quietness reigns. It is as light as day. We will drive
first to the barrack-ground, and look up the long hills. Three days have
passed, and the first excitement is now over. A thousand weary pilgrims
have made the journey to this desert of desolation a hundred times since
the fire, and vainly dug on the site where their homes once were, for
relics, or perhaps something more. Why, look there! it is past midnight,
and those three men you see working by that blackened wall, seem so
wrapped up in their occupation, that they scarcely speak to one another,
or note the presence of any one but themselves. See, they are carrying
away the still hot bricks, and throwing into the street bits of iron and
charred wood. Look, watch them for a moment--witness how they--
"Dig, dig, dig, amid earth, and mortar, and stone,
And dig, dig, dig, among ruins overthrown;
Spade, and basket, and pick, the toiling Arabs ply."
How monotonous the work appears, and how strangely weird everything
looks. To speak now, and hail these men, would break the charm--would
interrupt the gaunt and gloomy silence of the place. But the presence of
these excavators, at such an hour as this, arouses our curiosity. We
know that the standard authorities tell us, that no matter how deeply
men may dig for the pirate's buried treasure, if any one speaks during
the performance of the work, the spell becomes broken, the enchantment
passes away, and the iron box of doubloons vanishes. We have no means of
disputing this, and wouldn't if we could. We have no desire to attempt
to prove the contrary, but rather incline to the belief that the
authorities are right, for we have it on the word of a gentleman who
once owned a mineral rod, and whose word is undoubted, that a certain
Miss Pitts, who was engaged all her life in digging about the gardens of
her neighbours, and who never found anything up to the day of her death,
confessed to him during her last illness, that her tongue had spoiled
all. Had she but kept quiet when her spade struck the iron-box, all
would have been well. But her joy was so great at the sight of the
treasure, that she couldn't contain herself longer, and giving utterance
to her feelings she spoke, and the box of course, immediately sank. The
truth of this narrative can be established by excellent witnesses, and
Miss Pitts, whatever her other faults might be, had always a splendid
reputation for veracity. She made and sold mineral rods too, and, in
explaining their miraculous properties, gave out the advice that, by a
judicious and constant use of her peculiar make of mineral rod, the
whole world might speedily become rich, and at very trifling cost, thus
exhibiting a vein of disinterestedness, as generous as it was rare. We
say then, in the face of all this, and at the risk of destroying what
happiness yet remained in the minds of the men who were thus toiling
through the ghostly hour of twelve, we drew rein and hailed them. We
couldn't help it. Our curiosity got the better of us, and we asked them
what they were digging for. They were hunting for treasures, truly, not
the pirate's though, but their own. During the fire, and unable to hire
a team at any price, they had dug a deep hole in the cellar of the house
and buried there, what jewelry and silver-ware they could scrape
together. They were now hunting for it, and eventually they found it, in
not even a discoloured state.
But let us go on. A very pleasant wind is fanning our foreheads, and
there is a charm about this drive which we never experienced before. A
grim charm truly, but nevertheless, a charm after all. Are we not going
to see the ruins. The ruins which came to us in a night--the heritage of
the fire. We have a Dunga and a Dugga, and a Carthage of our own. In a
few brief hours we had a desolation here, which, in other lands it took
great centuries to create. We have crumbling ruins, and shapeless masses
of stone in the very heart of a community which boasted, but a short
time before, of a civilization and an enterprise unsurpassed the world
over. Let the eye wander as we pass along the deserted streets, and take
in the full view as it appears. What a fascination there is about this
district of sorrow. Why is it we pause, and wonder if Troy ever looked
like this; or the ruins of Sodom stood out against the sky like that
house there, this edifice here or that once noble structure beyond. All,
all is desolation, all blackness, despair, decay and misery. Look at
those ponderous walls, which defied the flames to the last. See they are
still standing, broken it is true, but standing proudly and defiantly
for all that. See, the moon is throwing her light upon that church
yonder. See how she dances, now high, now low, look, she disappears
behind the tall wall, and all we see for a moment is a dark shadow. Now
there she is again. Here comes the glittering Cynthia with her robes of
white. She is coming along up, up, up by that angle there. Now she is
soaring along the sky. Now she seems to stand right over our heads. How
light it is. How bright and beautiful the moon is to-night. How playful
the mad thing is, how merrily and joyously she disports herself in the
heavens, and yet how kindly she turns her sympathetic face on the vale
below. She sails along, casting lingering and tearful glances on the
havoc-stricken land.
We will drive over to that eminence there and look at the squares of
ruins, and notice the fragments of columns which remain. Turn your head
round, and look at those sentinel chimneys standing so erect, and so
regularly in line. Ah, that is where the old barrack stood, and those
chimneys, no doubt, heard many a well-told tale of the bivouac and the
battle-field. Could they but speak to-night, what reminiscence would
they relate of Lucknow and Cawnpore, of the Heights of Alma, and bloody
plain of Inkerman. What stories would they tell you of the gallant
fellows who on bleak winter nights gathered round their base, and
chatted and talked of battles fought and won, and the great deeds of
bravery they had seen. These high chimneys have many bits of history
locked within them which the world shall never know. They stood there
when the city was almost as bare of houses as it is now. They have seen
the busy workman, and heard the sound of his axe and saw; they have seen
the city grow more and more strong and beautiful; they have watched its
growth from a mere hamlet to a metropolis; they have witnessed the
erection of noble structures on sites where trees and bushes flourished
before; they have seen St. John on the morning of the 20th June
prosperous, enterprising, and full of energy and life; and they have
seen her again before the sun went down, stricken to the earth, with her
buildings in ruins, and the work of almost a hundred years in ashes. The
old sentries keep guard to-night, blackened and bared.
Turn the horse a little this way. Now look up the street. Do you see
that pile of bricks and mortar and those heavy stones lying near? That
_debris_ is all that is left of a house where in my youth, I spent many
happy hours. I must take you into my confidence and tell you that the
owner of that house is to-day a poor man. The day before the fire he was
comparatively comfortable, rich I should call it, but the way wealth is
computed now-a-days, I will content myself with saying that he was
comfortably off. He had his carriage and horses--such splendid drivers,
and how well he kept them--he had a library, and such books, and he knew
what was in them too. History, belles-lettres, biography, science, all
departments were here. You could read if you chose on an idle afternoon,
in that alcove off the library, over there, a few feet from those
bricks, anything your fancy dictated. I used to love to sit there and
pull down his books--not to read them always, but merely to skim the
cream off a dozen or so of them of an afternoon. He had some charming
old books which he always kept in the extreme corner of his case. I
remember with what awe I used to approach this section, and take down
from the shelf his luxuriant copy of Milton, printed early in the
eighteenth century, and illustrated with a grand old portrait of the
blind bard. I read Pope's Homer here for the first time, and actually
waded through the Chesterfield Letters. I used to sit over towards the
left of where we are now, just close to that old stove-pipe which you
can just see peeping through the bricks. I may live many years, or I may
pass away to-night, but I shall never forget that dear old house, and
the many happy, happy hours I spent there. Come away. Something seems to
choke me, and one wants all his strength these days. Continue along in
this direction. We shall see all that is left of many beautiful houses
from here. There's the Wiggins' Orphan Asylum. The tower and the walls
are there. What exquisite ruins they are. Let us look at them awhile.
One can almost fancy he has seen somewhere a picture of the remains of
an edifice that looked like this. I can almost hear the guide tapping
his cane on the walls, and telling me to note how excellently preserved
the building is, and how admirably the builders put it up. See how solid
and strong it is, and hardly a discoloration marks its handsome front.
That dingy and dismal-looking old wooden building near at hand is the
Marine Hospital--that was saved all right.
Did you notice the jagged, fringe-like edges of that building which we
passed just now, in that bend near the road? How intense the heat must
have been there to wear it down like that. And did you observe that
wooden door lying in the vestibule scarcely touched by the flames, while
everything around it was burned to a crisp? What odd freaks the fire
takes sometimes. Drive a little faster keep well to the left. The
streets are full of stones and broken brick yet. We are now coming past
Queen Square, and let us look in a moment on Mecklenburg Street. What a
beautiful sight those burning coals make in Mr. Vaughan's house. You can
see better by the left, there, now stop. See the pale light is above,
the deep blood-red light is below. What a curious meeting. You can
scarcely see the dividing line between them. Drive through the street to
Carmarthen, take in on the way Mr. Nicholson's Castle, and the houses
of Messrs. Magee on the left, and before you turn up the street look at
that immense mass of burning coals belonging to the Gas Company, blazing
away like some volcano in a state of eruption. There are smouldering
fires all round the city, and ruins upon ruins meet us at every turn. My
heart sickens at the sight. Let us drive home. We have visited the ruins
by moonlight.