BOOK VI[427]

In London as Ambassador--I cross the ocean--François

Tulloch--Christopher Columbus--Camoëns--The Azores--The isle of

Graciosa--Sports on board ship--The isle of Saint-Pierre--The shores of

Virginia--Sunset--Danger and escape--I land in America--Baltimore--The

passengers separate--Tulloch--Philadelphia--General

Washington--Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte--Journey from

Philadelphia to New York and Boston--Mackenzie--The Hudson River--Song

of the lady passenger--Mr. Swift--I set out for the Falls of Niagara

with a Dutch guide--M. Violet--My savage outfit--Hunting--Wolverine

and Canadian Fox--Musk-rat--Fishing dogs--Insects--Montcalm and

Wolfe--Encampment on the shore of the Onondaga Lake--Arabs--The Indian

woman and her cow--An Iroquois--The Onondaga chief--Velly and the

Franks--Ceremonies of hospitality--The ancient Greeks--Journey from

the Onondaga Lake to the Genesee River--Clearings--Hospitality--My

bed--The enchanted rattle-snake--Niagara Falls--The rattle-snake--I

fall to the edge of the abyss--Twelve days in a hut--Change of

manners among the savages--Birth and death--Montaigne-Song of the

adder--The little Indian girl, the original of Mila--Incidents--Old

Canada--True civilisation spread by religion--False civilisation

introduced by commerce--Traders--Agents--Hunts--Half-breeds or

Burnt-woods--Wars of the companies--The Indian languages dying out--The

old French possessions in America--Regrets--A note from Lord François

Conyngham--The Canadian lakes--A fleet of Indian canoes--The American

rivers--Legends--Muscogulges and Siminoles--Our camp--Two Floridan

beauties--Ruins on the Ohio--What the Muscogulge damsels were--Arrest

of the King at Varennes--I interrupt my journey to go back to

Europe--Dangers for the United States--Return to Europe--Shipwreck.

One-and-thirty years after embarking, as a simple sub-lieutenant, for

America, I embarked for London with a passport conceived in these terms:

"Pass His Lordship the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Peer of France,

Ambassador of the King to His Britannic Majesty," and so on.

No description: my greatness was such as to make my face known wherever

I went. A steamboat chartered for my sole use conveyed me from Calais

to Dover. On setting foot upon English soil, on the 5th of April

1822[428], I was saluted by the guns of the fort. An officer came on

behalf of the commandant to offer me a guard of honour. On alighting

at the Shipwright Inn[429], the landlord and waiters received me with

hanging arms and bareheaded. The Mayoress invited me to an evening

party in the name of the fairest ladies of the town. M. Billing[430],

who was attached to my embassy, awaited me. A dinner of huge fishes

and enormous pieces of beef restored Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, who had

no appetite and was not at all fatigued. The crowd gathered beneath my

windows rent the air with hurrahs. The officer returned and, despite my

wishes, posted sentries at my door. The next morning, after lavishly

distributing the money of the King my master, I set out for London, to

the roar of artillery, in a light carriage drawn by four fine horses

driven at full trot by two smart postillions. My staff followed in

other coaches; couriers wearing my livery accompanied the cavalcade. We

passed through Canterbury, attracting the eyes of John Bull and of the

occupants of the vehicles we passed. At Blackheath, a common formerly

haunted by highwaymen, I found a newly-built village. Soon there loomed

before me the immense cap of smoke which covers the city of London.

[Sidenote: In London as Ambassador.]

Plunging into the gulf of black mist, as though into one of the

jaws of Tartarus, and crossing the entire town, whose streets I

recognized, I reached the Embassy in Portland Place. The _chargé

d'affaires_, M. le Comte Georges de Caraman[431], the secretaries of

embassy, M. le Vicomte de Marcellus[432], M. le Baron E. de Cazes,

M. de Bourqueney[433], and the _attachés_ of the embassy received me

with dignified politeness. All the ushers, doorkeepers, footmen, and

flunkeys of the house stood gathered upon the pavement. I was handed

the cards of the English ministers and of the foreign ambassadors, who

had been informed beforehand of my coming.

On the 17th of May in the year of grace 1793, I disembarked at

Southampton for London, an obscure and humble traveller from Jersey.

No mayoress took note of my passage; the mayor of the town, William

Smith, handed me on the 18th a way-bill for London to which was added

an extract from the Alien Bill. My description ran in English:

"François de Chateaubriand, French officer in the emigrant army, five

feet four inches high, thin shape, brown hair and whiskers."

I modestly shared the cheapest conveyance with some sailors on leave; I

changed horses at the meanest inns; poor, sick, and unknown, I entered

a wealthy and famous city in which Mr. Pitt held sway; I took a lodging

at six shillings a month under the laths of a garret which a cousin

from Brittany had prepared for me at the end of a little street off the

Tottenham Court Road.

Ah! _Monseigneur_, que votre vie,

D'honneurs aujourd'hui si remplie,

Diffère de ces heureux temps[434].

Still an obscurity of another kind envelopes me in London. My political

position casts into shade my literary fame: not a fool in the three

kingdoms but prefers the ambassador of Louis XVIII. to the author of

the _Génie du Christianisme_. I shall see how the matter turns after

my death, or when I shall have ceased to fill M. le Duc Decazes'[435]

place at the Court of George IV.[436], a succession as incongruous as

the rest of my life.

Now that I have arrived in London as French Ambassador, one of my

chief pleasures is to leave my carriage at the corner of some square,

and on foot to traverse the back-streets which I frequented in former

days, the cheap popular suburbs, where misfortune takes refuge under

the protection of a kindred suffering, the nameless shelters which I

haunted with my companions in distress, not knowing whether I should

have bread to eat on the morrow, I whose table today is covered with

three or four courses. At all those narrow and necessitous doors which

were once open to me, I see none but strange faces. I no longer meet my

fellow-countrymen roaming, recognizable by their gestures, their gait,

the shape and age of their clothes. I no longer perceive those martyred

priests, wearing the clerical collar, the big three-cornered hat, the

long, black, threadbare frock, whom the English used to salute as they

passed. Wide streets, lined with palaces, have been cut, bridges built,

walks planted with trees: Regent's Park, near Portland Place, occupies

the space of the old meadows filled with herds of cows. A cemetery

which formed the prospect from the dormer-window of one of my attics

has disappeared within the circumference of a factory. When I call upon

Lord Liverpool[437], I find it difficult to pick out the spot where

stood the scaffold of Charles I.; new buildings, closing in upon the

statue of Charles II.[438], have come forward, with forgetfulness, to

cover up memorable events.

[Sidenote: And as an emigrant.]

How much do I regret, in the midst of my insipid grandeur, that world

of tribulations and tears, those times in which I mingled my sorrows

with those of a colony of unfortunates! It is true, then, that all

changes, that misfortune itself comes to an end, like prosperity!

What has become of my brothers in emigration? Some are dead, others

have undergone various destinies: they have, like me, beheld the loss

of their kinsmen and friends; they are less happy in the land of

their birth than they were on foreign soil. Had we not on that soil

our meetings, our amusements, our merry-makings, and, above all, our

youth? Mothers of families and young girls commencing life in adversity

brought the weekly fruit of their toil, to revel in some dance of

their country. Attachments were formed in the course of the evening

chit-chat after work, on the grass at Hampstead or Primrose Hill. In

chapels adorned with our own hands, in old tumble-down buildings, we

prayed on the 21st of January and on the anniversary of the Queen's

death[439], and were much moved by a funeral oration pronounced by the

emigrant curate of our village. We strolled beside the Thames, now to

see the vessels laden with the world's riches entering dock, and again

to admire the country-houses at Richmond, we so poor, we who had lost

the shelter of the paternal roof-tree: all these things constitute true

happiness!

When I come home in 1822, instead of being received by my friend,

shivering with cold, who opens the door of our garret to me, calls me

"thee" and "thou," sleeps on a pallet beside mine, covering himself

with his thin coat and having the moonlight for a lamp, I pass by the

light of candles between two rows of lackeys, ending in half-a-dozen

respectful secretaries. Overwhelmed along my road with the words,

"Monseigneur, my Lord, your Excellency, _Monsieur l'Ambassadeur_," I

come to a drawing-room upholstered in silk and gold.

"I beg you, gentlemen, to leave me! A truce to these my lords! What

use do you think I have for you? Go and laugh in the chancelleries

as though I were not here. Do you imagine you will make me take this

masquerade seriously? Do you think me fool enough to believe that I

have changed my nature by changing my coat? The Marquess of Londonderry

is coming, you say[440]; the Duke of Wellington[441] has asked for me;

Mr. Canning[442] is looking for me; Lady Jersey[443] expects me to

dinner, to meet Mr. Brougham[444]; Lady Gwydyr[445] hopes to see me at

ten o'clock in her box at the Opera; Lady Mansfield[446] at midnight at

Almack's[447]?"

Mercy! Where can I hide? Who will deliver me? Who will save me from

this persecution? Return to me, fair days of misery and loneliness!

Come back to life, companions of my exile! Come, old comrades of the

pallet and the camp-bed, let us go into the country, into the little

garden of some despised tavern, and drink a cup of bad tea on a wooden

bench, while we talk of our mad hopes and our ungrateful country,

discuss our troubles, and seek means to assist each other or to succour

one of our kinsmen in yet worse plight than ourselves!

[Sidenote: Kensington Gardens.]

That is how I feel, that is how I speak to myself in these first days

of my embassy in London. I escape from the melancholy which besets

me beneath my roof only by saturating myself with a less weighty

melancholy in Kensington Gardens. These gardens, at least, have not

changed; the trees alone have grown taller; in them, ever solitary, the

birds build their nests in peace. It is no longer even the fashion to

meet there, as in the days when the loveliest of Frenchwomen, Madame

Récamier[448], used to walk there followed by the crowd. From the edge

of the deserted lawns of Kensington, I love to watch, across Hyde

Park, the crowd of horses, the carriages of the fashionable world,

among which figures my empty tilbury; while I, once more a poor little

emigrant noble, walk along the path in which the exiled confessor was

wont to say his breviary.

It was in Kensington Gardens that I projected the _Essai historique_;

that, on reading over the diary of my travels beyond sea, I drew from

it the loves of _Atala_; it was there too, after wandering far away

in the fields beneath a lowering sky, which assumed a golden hue and

became, as it were pervaded with polar light, that I jotted down in

pencil the first sketch of the passions of _René._ At night I deposited

in the _Essai historique_ and the _Natchez_ the harvest of my dreams of

the day. The two manuscripts marched abreast, although I often wanted

money to buy paper for them, and was obliged, for lack of thread, to

fasten the sheets together with splinters torn from the mantel-boards

of my garret.

These spots where I received my first inspirations impress me with a

sense of their power; they reflect upon my present the gentle light of

my recollections; I feel in the mood to resume my pen. So many hours

are wasted in embassies! I have as much spare time here as in Berlin to

continue my Memoirs, the edifice which I am building up out of ruins

and dead bones. My secretaries in London ask leave to go to picnics in

the morning, to balls at night: by all means! The men in their turn,

Peter, Valentine, Lewis, go to the ale-house, and the maids, Rose,

Peggy, Mary, for a walk through the streets: I am delighted. They leave

me the key of the hall-door: _monsieur l'ambassadeur_ is left in charge

of his own house; if any one knocks, he will open the door. Everybody

has gone out; I am alone: let us get to work.

Twenty-two years ago, as I said, I was sketching, in London, the

outlines of the _Natchez_ and of _Atala_; I have now, in my Memoirs,

come to just the period of my travels in America: that fits in

perfectly. Let us wipe out those two-and-twenty years, as they are,

in fact, wiped out from my life, and start for the forests of the New

World: the story of my embassy shall come at its own date when God

pleases; but provided I remain here a few months, I shall have the

pleasure of coming from the Falls of Niagara to the army of the Princes

in Germany, and from the army of the Princes to my retirement in

England. The Ambassador of the King of France will be able to tell the

story of the French Emigrant in the very spot where the latter spent

his exile.

*

The last book ended with my embarkation at Saint-Malo. Soon we left

the Channel, and the immense swell from the west told us that we had

reached the Atlantic.

It is difficult for people who have never been to sea to imagine the

feelings which one experiences when looking over the side of a ship

and seeing nothing but the grave face of the deep on every hand. The

dangerous life of the sailor has about it an independence which comes

from the absence of land: the passions of mankind are left behind on

shore; between the world which one is quitting and that for which one

is making, one has no love and no country save the element upon which

one is borne. No more duties to fulfill, no more visits to pay, no

more newspapers, no more politics. The very language of the sailors is

not the ordinary language: it is the language spoken by the ocean and

the sky, the calm and the tempest. You inhabit a watery universe among

creatures whose garments, tastes, manners, and faces are different from

those of the auto-chthonic peoples; they combine the rudeness of the

sea-wolf with the lightness of the bird. The cares of society are not

seen upon their brow; the wrinkles which cross it resemble the folds

of the lowered sail and are hollowed out less by age than by the north

wind, as in the waves. The skin of these creatures, impregnated with

salt, is red and hard, like the surface of the surge-swept rock.

[Sidenote: Nautical talk.]

The sailors become enamoured of their ship; they weep with regret on

leaving her, with affection on rejoining her. They are unable to stay

at home with their families; after swearing a hundred times that they

will not again expose themselves to the sea, they find it impossible to

live without it, like a youth who is unable to tear himself from the

arms of a moody and faithless mistress.

In the docks of London and Plymouth, it is not unusual to find sailors

born on board ship: from their childhood to their old age they have

never set foot on shore; spectators of the world which they have never

entered, they have seen the land only from the side of their floating

cradle. In this life reduced to so small a space, beneath the clouds

and upon the depths, all things become life-like to the mariner: an

anchor, a sail, a mast, a gun are persons that excite his attachment

and that have each their history.

The sail was torn off the coast of Labrador; the master sail-maker put

in that patch which you see there.

The anchor saved the ship when she had dragged her other anchors among

the coral-reefs of the Sandwich Islands.

The mast was broken in a squall off the Cape of Good Hope; it was all

in one piece; it is much stronger since it has consisted of two pieces.

The gun is the only one which was not dismounted in the fight of the

_Chesapeake._

The news on board is most interesting: they have just heaved the log;

the ship is making ten knots.

The sky is clear at mid-day: they have taken the altitude; we are at

latitude so-and-so.

We have taken our reckoning: we have made so many miles in our course.

The variation of the compass is so many degrees: we have gone up north.

The sand is running badly through the hour-glass: we shall have rain.

They have seen stormy petrels in the wake of the vessel: we must look

out for a squall.

Flying-fish have been showing in the south: the weather will settle

down.

A clear spot has formed in the clouds in the west: that's a sign of

wind; the wind will blow from that side tomorrow.

The water has changed colour; pieces of wood and wrack have been seen

floating by; there were ducks and gulls in sight; a small bird came

and perched on the yards: we must heave to sea, for we are approaching

land, and it is not good to come alongside at night.

In the hen-coop is a favourite and, so to speak, sacred cock, which has

survived all the others; he is famous for having crowed during a fight,

as though he were in a farm-yard in the midst of his hens. Below decks

lives a cat: a greenish tabby, with a hairless tail and bushy whiskers,

firm on his paws, able to bring a back-balance and side-balance to play

against the pitching and the rolling of the ship; he has been twice

round the world and has saved himself from shipwreck by climbing on a

barrel. The ship-boys give the cock biscuits soaked in wine, and Tom

has the privilege of sleeping, when he pleases, in the second mate's

fur-coat.

The old sailor is like the old plough-man. True, their manner of

harvesting is different: the sailor has led a wandering life, the

plough-man has never left his fields; but they both know the stars and

foretell the future while ploughing their furrows. Both have their

prophets: one, the lark, the redbreast, the nightingale; the other,

the petrel, the curlew, the halcyon. They retire to rest at night, one

in his cabin, the other in his hut: frail dwelling-houses in which the

hurricane which shakes them does not disturb peaceful consciences.

If the wind a tempest's blowing,

Still no danger they descry;

The guiltless heart, its boon bestowing,

Soothes them with its lullaby.

The sailor does not know where Death will overtake him, upon what shore

he will leave his life: perhaps, when he has mingled his last breath

with the wind, he will be cast into the bosom of the waves, fastened

to two oars, to continue his voyage; perhaps he will be buried on a

desert island, which none shall ever see again, and sleep as he slept

in mid-ocean, in his lonely hammock.

The vessel is a sight in herself: sensible to the smallest movement of

the helm, winged horse or hippogriff that she is, she obeys the hand

of the pilot as a horse does that of its rider. The grace of the masts

and rigging, the nimbleness of the sailors laying out on the yards, the

various aspects under which the ship displays herself, whether listing,

borne down by a contrary blast, or scudding before a favourable wind,

cause this intelligent machine to become one of the marvels of human

genius. At one time the swell and its foam break and burst against

the keel; at another the peaceful waves separate submissively before

the stem. The flags, the pennants, the sails complete the beauty of

this palace of Neptune: the courses, spread in their width, swell out

like huge cylinders; the topsails, confined at their waist, resemble a

siren's breasts. Driven by a stiff breeze, the ship noisily ploughs the

seas with her keel as with a plough-share.

[Sidenote: Life at sea.]

On this ocean highway, along which one sees no trees, nor villages, nor

towns, nor towers, nor steeples nor tombstones; on this road without

posts or milestones, which has no boundaries save the waves, no relays

save the winds, no lights save the stars, the finest adventure, when

one is not travelling in search of unknown lands and seas, is the

meeting of two vessels. They are mutually discovered on the horizon

through the spy-glass; they turn each in the direction of the other.

The crew and the passengers hasten on deck. The two ships approach each

other, hoist their ensigns, clew up some of their sails, heave-to. When

all is silence, the two captains take their stand upon the quarter-deck

and hail each other through the speaking-trumpet:

"The ship's name? From what port? Name of the captain? Where is he

from? How many days out? What is the latitude and longitude? Good-bye,

let go!"

They let go the reefs; the sails fall down again. The sailors and

passengers of the two ships watch each other flee from sight, without

a word: one crew goes to seek the sun of Asia, the other the sun of

Europe, both of which will see them die. Time carries off and separates

travellers on earth even more rapidly than the wind carries them off

and separates them on the ocean; they make a sign to each other at a

distance:

"God speed you, and a prosperous journey!"

The common port is Eternity.

And what if the vessel encountered were that of Cook[449] or La Pérouse?

*

The boatswain of my Saint-Malo ship was an old super-cargo called

Pierre Villeneuve, whose very name pleased me, because of the good

Villeneuve of my childhood. He had served in India, under the Bailli

de Suffren, and in America under the Comte d'Estaing; he had been

present at a number of engagements. Leaning against the bow of the

ship, near the bowsprit, like a veteran seated under the vine-arbour

of his little garden in the moat of the Invalides, Pierre, chewing a

plug of tobacco which filled out his cheek like a swelling, described

to me the clearing of the decks, the effect of the gun-fire below

decks, the damage done by the cannon-balls in ricochetting against

the gun-carriages, the guns, the timber-work. I made him talk of the

Indians, the negroes, the planters. I asked him how the people were

dressed, how the trees were shaped, what was the colour of the earth

and sky, the taste of the fruits; whether pine-apples were better than

peaches, palm-trees finer than oaks. He explained all this by means

of comparisons taken from things I knew: the palm-tree was a large

cabbage; the robe worn by a Hindoo was like my grandmother's; the

camels were like a humpbacked donkey; all the peoples of the East, and

notably the Chinese, were cowards and robbers. Villeneuve came from

Brittany, and we never failed to end with praises of the incomparable

beauty of our native country.

The bell interrupted our conversations; it struck the watches, the

time for dressing, for the roll-call, for meals. In the morning, at a

signal, the crew mustered on deck, stripped off their blue shirts, and

put on others which were drying in the shrouds. The discarded shirts

were forthwith washed in tubs in which this school of seals also soaped

their brown faces and tarred paws. At the mid-day and evening meals,

the sailors, seated in a circle around the mess-platters, one after

the other, regularly and without any attempt at fraud, dipped their

tin spoons into the soup which splashed to the roll of the ship. Those

who were not hungry sold their ration of biscuit or salt junk to their

messmates for a screw of tobacco. The passengers took their meals in

the captain's room. In fine weather, a sail was spread over the stern

of the vessel, and we dined in sight of a blue sea, flecked here and

there with white marks where it had been struck by the breeze.

Wrapped in my cloak, I stretched myself at night upon deck. My eyes

contemplated the stars above my head. The inflated sail threw back

upon me the coolness of the breeze which rocked me beneath the dome of

heaven: half dozing and pushed on by the wind, I was wafted towards new

skies and new dreams.

The passengers on board ship afford a different sort of society from

that of the crew: they belong to another element; their destinies are

of the land. Some travel in search of fortune, others of rest; these

are returning home, those leaving it; others cross the seas in order

to become acquainted with the manners of nations, to study science and

art. People have time to know one another in this wandering hostelry

which travels with the traveller, to have many adventures, to breed

antipathies, to contract friendships. When those young women come and

go, born of mixed English and Indian blood, who add to the beauty of

Clarissa the delicacy of Sacontala, then are formed chains which are

bound and unbound by the fragrant breezes of Ceylon, sweet and light as

themselves.

*

[Sidenote: Francis Tulloch.]

Among my fellow-passengers was an Englishman. François Tulloch[450] had

served in the artillery: he was a painter, a musician, a mathematician;

he spoke several languages. The Abbé Nagault, Superior of the

Sulpicians, had met the Anglican officer and made him a Catholic: he

was taking his neophyte to Baltimore.

I became intimate with Tulloch: as I was at that time a profound

"Philosopher," I invited him to return to his parents. The spectacle

that lay before our eyes transported him with admiration. We used to

rise at night, when the deck was given up to the officer of the watch

and a few sailors who smoked their pipes in silence: _Tuta aequora

silent._[451] The vessel rolled at the will of the slow and silent

waves, while gleams of fire ran with a white foam along her sides.

Thousands of stars shining in the sombre azure of the celestial dome,

a boundless sea, infinity in the sky and on the waves! Never has God

confused me with His greatness more than during those nights when I had

immensity over my head and immensity beneath my feet.

Westerly winds, interspersed with calms, delayed our progress. On the

4th of May, we had reached only the level of the Azores. On the 6th,

at about eight o'clock in the morning, we came in sight of the Isle of

the Peak; this volcano long commanded unnavigated seas[452]: a useless

beacon by night, an unseen landmark by day.

There is something magical in seeing the land rise from the depths of

the sea. Christopher Columbus, surrounded by a mutinous crew, preparing

to return to Europe without having attained the object of his voyage,

perceives a small light upon a beach which the darkness had hidden

from him. The flight of the birds had guided him to America; the gleam

from the hut of a savage reveals to him the presence of a new world.

Columbus must have experienced the sort of feeling which the Scriptures

attribute to the Creator when, having out of nothing brought forth

the world, He saw that His work was good: "And God saw that it was

good[453]." Columbus created a world. One of the first lives of the

Genoese pilot is that which Giustiniani[454], when editing a Hebrew

psalter, placed in the form of a "note" at the foot of the psalm,

_Cœli enarrant gloriam Dei._[455]

Vasco da Gama must have marvelled no less when, in 1498, he approached

the coast of Malabar. Thereupon all things change on the face of the

globe: a new revelation of nature is given; the curtain which for

thousands of ages has concealed one part of the earth is raised,

discovering the birthplace of the sun, the spot whence he issues each

morning "as a bridegroom, as a giant[456];" we see in all its nudity

the wise and brilliant East, whose mysterious history was intermixed

with the journeys of Pythagoras, the conquests of Alexander, the memory

of the Crusades, and whose perfumes came to us across the plains of

Arabia and the seas of Greece. Europe sent to the East a poet to salute

it: the Swan of Tagus made his sad and beautiful voice heard upon the

shores of India; Camoëns[457] borrowed their lustre, their fame and

their misfortune; he left them only their riches.

When Gonzalo Villo, Camoëns' maternal grandfather, discovered a portion

of the Archipelago of the Azores, he ought, had he foreseen the future,

to have reserved for himself a concession of six feet of ground to

cover the bones of his grandson.

We anchored in a bad roadstead, with a rocky bottom, in five-and-forty

fathoms of water. The island of Graciosa, before which we were moored,

displayed its hills a little swollen in outline like the ellipses of

an Etruscan amphora; they were draped in the green of their cornfields

and emitted an agreeable odour of wheat peculiar to the harvests of

the Azores. In the midst of these carpets, one saw the dividing lines

of the fields, formed of volcanic stones, half black and half white,

piled one upon the other. On the summit of a mound stood an abbey, the

monument of an old world upon new soil; at the foot of this mound, the

red roofs of the town of Santa-Cruz were mirrored in a pebbly creek.

The whole island, with its indentations of bays, capes, bights and

promontories, reflected its inverted landscape in the sea. For outer

girdle it had a belt of rocks jutting from the surface of the waves.

In the background of the picture, the cone of the volcano of the Peak,

planted upon a cupola of clouds, pierced the perspective of the air

beyond Graciosa.

[Sidenote: The isle of Graciosa.]

Tulloch, the second mate and I decided to go on land; the long-boat was

lowered and rowed towards the shore, which lay about two miles away.

We saw some movement on the beach; a pram put out in our direction.

So soon as she had come within speaking distance, we distinguished a

number of monks. They hailed us in Portuguese, in Italian, in English,

in French, and we replied in all four languages. Alarm prevailed,

our vessel was the first ship of large tonnage that had ventured to

anchor in the dangerous roadstead where we were going with the tide.

On the other hand, the islanders now saw the tricolour flag for the

first time; they did not know whether we hailed from Tunis or Algiers:

Neptune had not recognized the standard so gloriously borne by Cybele.

When they saw that we had human shapes and that we understood what was

said to us, their delight was extreme. The monks took us up in their

boat, and we rowed merrily towards Santa-Cruz, where we landed with

some difficulty because of a rather violent surf.

The whole island came running up. Four or five _alguazils_, armed with

rusty pikes, took possession of us. His Majesty's uniform attracted

the honours in my direction, and I was taken for the leading member

of the deputation. We were led to the Governor's house, or hovel,

where His Excellency, dressed in a worn green uniform, which had once

been gold-laced, received us in solemn audience: he gave us leave to

replenish our stores of provisions.

Our monks took us to their convent, a roomy and well-lighted building,

surrounded with balconies. Tulloch had discovered a fellow-countryman:

the principal brother, who did all the bustling about for us, was

a sailor from Jersey whose ship had gone down with all hands off

Graciosa. The solitary survivor of the shipwreck, and not lacking

in intelligence, he had become an apt pupil of the catechists; he

learnt Portuguese and a few words of Latin; the fact of his being an

Englishman militated in his favour, and they converted him and made a

monk of him. The Jersey sailor found it much pleasanter to be lodged,

boarded, and clothed at the altar than to take in the top-gallant sail

in a storm. He had not forgotten his old trade: it was long since he

had heard his language spoken, and he was delighted to meet some one

who knew it; he laughed and swore like a true pilot's apprentice. He

showed us over the island.

The houses in the villages, built of wood and stone, were adorned

with outer galleries which gave an air of neatness to these cottages,

because of the quantity of light that prevailed. The peasants, almost

all vine-dressers, were half-naked and bronzed by the sun; the women,

short, yellow as mulattoes, but sprightly, were frank coquettes, with

their posies of syringa-blossoms and their beads worn by way of crowns

or chains.

The hill-slopes glowed with vine-stocks, the wine from which resembled

that of Fayal. Water was scarce, but wherever a spring welled, there

grew a fig-tree, there rose an oratory with a frescoed portico. The

ogives of the portico framed views of the island and portions of the

sea. On one of these fig-trees, I saw a flock of blue teal settle, not

of the web-footed variety. The tree had no leaves, but bore red fruit

set like crystals. When adorned with the cerulean birds, which let fall

their wings, its fruits appeared to be of a brilliant purple, while the

tree seemed suddenly to have shot forth an azure foliage.

It is probable that the Azores were known to the Carthaginians; it

is certain that Phœnician coins have been dug up in the island of

Corvo. The modern navigators who first landed at this island are said

to have found an equestrian statue pointing with outstretched arm

to the west, provided always that this statue is not the imaginary

engraving which adorns the old books of seaports.

In the manuscript of the _Natchez_, I have made Chactas, returning

from Europe, land at the island of Corvo, where he comes across the

mysterious statue. He thus expresses the feelings which filled my mind

at Graciosa, when I recalled the legend:

"I approached that extraordinary monument. On its base, bathed by the

foam of the ocean, were carved unknown characters: the moss and the

saltpetre of the sea corroded the surface of the time-honoured bronze;

the halcyon, perched upon the helmet of the colossus, uttered at

intervals its plaintive note; shell-fish clung to the courser's flanks

and mane of brass, and one's ear, when approached to its open nostrils,

seemed to hear confused murmurs."

*

[Sidenote: Supper with the monks.]

We were served with a good supper by the monks after our excursion, and

we spent the night in drinking with our hosts. The next day, at noon,

our provisions having been taken on board, we returned to the ship. The

monks took charge of our letters for Europe. The vessel had been in

danger through the rising of a stiff south-easterly wind. We heaved the

anchor; but it was caught in the rocks, and we lost it, as we expected.

We set sail: the wind continued to freshen, and we had soon passed the

Azores.

Fac pelagus me scire probes, quo carbasa laxo.

"Muse, help me to show that I know the sea over which I

spread my sails."

Thus, six hundred years ago, wrote Guillaume-le-Breton[458], my

fellow-countryman. Restored to the sea, I began anew the contemplation

of my solitude; but across the ideal world of my dreams, stern monitors

appeared to me: France and the events of reality. My lurking-place

during the day, when I wished to avoid my fellow-passengers, was the

main-top, to which I climbed nimbly amid the applause of the sailors. I

there sat and commanded the waves.

The vast expanse, doubly hung with azure, had the appearance of a

canvas prepared to receive the future creations of a mighty painter.

The colour of the water was like that of liquid glass. Long and steep

undulations opened within their hollows vistas of the ocean deserts:

those wavering landscapes made clear to my eyes the comparison drawn

in the Scriptures of the earth reeling before the Lord, like a drunken

man[459]. Sometimes one might have pronounced the space narrow and

restricted, for want of a vanishing point; but if a wave happened to

raise its crest, a billow to curve in imitation of a distant coast, a

shoal of dog-fish to pass along the horizon, then one had a scale to

measure by. The expanse was revealed still more when a mist, creeping

to the ocean's surface, seemed to enlarge the very immensity.

On descending from the eyrie of the mast, as when, in former days, ever

reduced to a solitary existence, I climbed down from my nest in the

willow-tree, I supped on a ship-biscuit, a little sugar, and a lemon; I

then lay down, either wrapped in my cloak on deck, or in my cot below:

I had but to stretch my arm to reach from my bed to my coffin.

The wind compelled us to bear to the North, and we came alongside of

the bank of Newfoundland. Floating icebergs roamed in the midst of a

pale, cold mist.

The men of the trident have sports which are handed down to them from

their ancestors: when you cross the Line, you must make up your mind

to receive "baptism;" the same ceremony occurs beneath the Tropics,

the same ceremony on the bank of Newfoundland, and whatever the spot,

the leader of the masquerade is always "the Old Man of the Tropics."

To the sailors, tropical and hydropical are interchangeable terms:

the Old Man of the Tropics therefore has an enormous paunch; he is

dressed, even when beneath his native Tropics, in all the sheepskins

and all the furred jackets that the crew can supply. He sits squatting

in the main-top and roaring from time to time. Every one looks at him

from below: he begins to climb down the shrouds, moving heavily like a

bear, and stumbling like Silenus. As he sets foot on deck, he utters

fresh roars, gives a bound, seizes a pail, fills it with sea-water, and

empties it over the chief of those who have not crossed the Equator

or who have not reached the line of ice. You fly beneath the decks,

you spring upon the hatches, you clamber up the masts: Old Father

Tropics is after you; all this ends in a generous gift of drink-money:

games of Amphitrite which Homer would have celebrated, even as he sang

Proteus, if old Oceanus had been known in his entirety in the time of

Ulysses; but, in those days, only his head was visible at the Pillars

of Hercules: his body lay hidden and covered the world.

We steered for the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, in search of

a new port. When we came in sight of the former, one morning between

ten and twelve o'clock, we were almost upon it; its coast showed like a

black hump through the fog.

We anchored in front of the capital of the island: we could not see it,

but we heard the sounds on land. The passengers hastened to disembark;

the Superior of Saint-Sulpice, who had been constantly racked with

sea-sickness, was so weak that he had to be carried on shore. I took a

separate lodging; I waited until a gust of wind tore the mist asunder

and showed me the place in which I was living and, so to speak, the

faces of my hosts in this land of shadows.

[Sidenote: The Isle of Saint-Pierre.]

The port and roadstead of Saint-Pierre are situated between the east

coast of the island and a long-shaped islet called the _Île aux

Chiens_, or Isle of Dogs. The port, known as the _Barachois_, or Little

Inlet, cuts into the land and ends in a brackish pool. Small, barren

mountains crowd together in the centre of the island; some are detached

and overhang the coast; others have at their feet a skirt of flat and

turfy moorland. The look-out hill is visible from the market-town.

The Governor's house faces the wharf. The church, the vicarage, the

provision warehouse are situated at the same spot; next come the houses

of the naval commissary and the harbour-master. From there, the one

street of the town runs over the shingles along the beach.

I dined two or three times with the Governor, a very polite and

obliging officer. On a sloping bank he grew a few European vegetables.

After dinner he showed me what he called his garden. A delicate

and fragrant odour of heliotrope was exhaled from a small patch of

flowering beans; it was not wafted to us by a gentle breeze from home,

but by a wild Newfoundland wind, having no connection with the exiled

plant, no sympathy of remembrance or delight. In this perfume no longer

inhaled by beauty, purified in its breast, or diffused upon its path,

in this perfume of a changed dawn, cultivation and world, lurked all

the several melancholies of regrets, absence, and youth.

From the garden we mounted towards the hills, and stopped at the foot

of the flag-staff of the look-out. The new French flag waved over

our heads; like Virgil's women, we looked at the sea, _flentes_:

it separated us from our native land! The Governor was uneasy: he

belonged to the defeated opinion; he was bored, moreover, in this

sequestered spot, which was suited to a visionary like myself, but

which was a thankless habitation for a man interested in affairs and

not endowed with the all-filling passion which causes the rest of the

world to disappear from view. My host inquired after the Revolution;

I asked him for news of the North-West Passage. He was in the van of

the wilderness, but he knew nothing of the Esquimaux and from Canada

received nothing save partridges.

One morning I had gone alone to the _Cap-à-l'Aigle_, or Eagle Head, to

see the sun rise in the direction of France. There, a wintry brook

formed a cascade which with its last leap reached the sea. I sat down

upon a projecting rock, my feet hanging over the water which broke

into foam at the bottom of the cliff. A young fisher-girl appeared

on the upper slopes of the hill-side; she was bare-legged, in spite

of the cold, and walked in the dew. Her black hair was carelessly

twisted under the figured silk kerchief bound round her head; over this

kerchief she wore a hat made out of the reed-grass of the country and

shaped like a cradle or boat. A bunch of purple heather peeped out from

her bosom, which was outlined beneath the white material of her shift.

From time to time she stooped to gather the leaves of an aromatic plant

known in the island as "homegrown tea." With one hand she dropped

these leaves into a basket which she carried in the other. She saw

me: without being frightened, she came and sat down by me, placed her

basket within reach, and began like myself to look at the sun, her legs

swinging over the sea.

[Sidenote: The fisher-girl.]

We remained some minutes without speaking; at last I proved myself the

bolder, and asked:

"What are you gathering there? The season for bilberries and atocas is

over."

She opened two large, dark, shy, but proud eyes, and answered:

"I was picking tea."

She showed me her basket.

"Are you taking the tea home to your father and mother?"

"My father is away fishing with Guillaumy."

"What do you do in the island in the winter?"

"We make nets; we fish in the lakes by breaking the ice; on Sundays we

go to Mass and Vespers or we sing hymns; and then we play in the snow

and watch the boys hunting the polar bears."

"Will your father be back soon?"

"Oh no: the skipper is taking the ship to Genoa with Guillaumy."

"But Guillaumy will come home again?"

"Oh yes, next season, when the fishermen return. He is going to bring

me a striped silk bodice in his stock, a muslin skirt, and a black

necklace."

"And you will be decked out for the wind, the mountains, and the sea.

Would you like me to send you a bodice, a skirt, and a necklace?"

"Oh no!"

She rose, took up her basket, and ran down a steep path, along a

fir-grove. In a loud voice she sang a Mission hymn:

Tout brillant d'une ardeur immortelle,

C'est vers Dieu que tendent mes désirs[460].

She scattered to flight, as she went, those pretty birds called egrets,

from the tuft on their heads; she looked as though she were one of

their number. When she reached the sea, she leapt into a boat, unfurled

the sail, and seated herself at the rudder; one might have taken her

for Fortune; she sailed away from me.

"Oh yes; oh no; Guillaumy:" the picture of the young sailor seated on

a yard among the winds changed the hideous rock of Saint-Pierre into a

land of delights:

L'isole di Fortuna, ora vedete[461].

We spent a fortnight in the island. From its desolate shores one

discerns the yet more desolate coasts of Newfoundland. The hills in the

interior put out diverging chains of which the highest extends towards

Rodriguez Creek. In the dales, the granite rock, mixed with red and

green mica, is covered with a thick cushion of sphagnum, lichens, and

dicranum.

Small lakes are nourished by the tribute brought by the streams

from the _Vigie_, or Look-Out; the Courval; the _Pain-de-Sucre_, or

Sugarloaf; the Kergariou; the _Tête-Galante_, or Gallant Head. These

pools are known by the names of the _Étangs-du-Savoyard_, or Savoyard's

Ponds; the _Cap-Noir_, or Black Head; the Ravenel; the _Colombier_,

or Dove-cot; the _Cap-à-l'Aigle_, or Eagle Head. When the whirlwinds

strike upon these pools, they rend the shallow waters, laying bare, in

places, portions of submarine meadows, which are as suddenly covered

over by the newly-woven veil of the waters.

The _flora_ of Saint-Pierre is the same as that of Lapland and

Magellan's Straits. The number of plants diminishes as one proceeds

towards the Pole; in Spitzbergen we find only forty species of

phanerogamous plants. In changing their habitation, races of plants

become extinct: some which dwell in the frozen steppes in the North

become daughters of the mountain in the South; others which thrive in

the peaceful atmosphere of the thickest forests decrease in strength

and size until at last they expire on the stormy strands of the ocean.

At Saint-Pierre, the marsh myrtle (_vaccinium fugilinosum_) is reduced

to the condition of creeping grasses; it will soon be buried in the

wadding and cushions of the mosses which serve as its soil. Myself

a passenger plant, I have taken my precautions to disappear by the

sea-shore, the site of my birth.

The slope of the hillocks of Saint-Pierre is laid over with

balsam-trees, medlars, dwarf palms, larches, black firs, the gems of

which are used for brewing an antiscorbutic beer. These trees do not

exceed a man's stature. The ocean wind pollards them, shakes them,

bends them like so many ferns; then, gliding beneath these forests

of shrubs, it raises them again; but it finds no trunks there, nor

branches, nor arches, nor echoes to wail among, and it makes no more

noise than on a heath.

These rickety woods form a contrast with the great forests of

Newfoundland, whose fir-trees bear a silver lichen (_alectoria

trichodes_): the polar bears seem to have torn their fur against the

branches of those trees, of which they are the strange creepers. The

swamps of Jacques Cartier's[462] island contain roads beaten by these

bears: it is as though one saw rustic footpaths in the neighbourhood of

a sheep-fold. The whole night reechoes with the cries of these famished

beasts; the traveller is comforted only by the no less mournful sound

of the sea: those waves, so unsociable and so rude, become friends and

companions.

The northernmost point of Newfoundland touches the latitude of Cape

Charles I. in Labrador; a few degrees higher, the polar landscape

commences. If we are to believe the travellers, a charm lies upon

those regions: in the evening the sun, touching the earth, seems to

stay motionless, and subsequently reascends the sky instead of sinking

beneath the horizon. The snow-clad mountains, the valleys carpeted

with white moss upon which the reindeer browse, the seas covered with

whales and strewn with ice-bergs, this whole scene glitters, lighted as

it were at one time by the gleam of the setting sun and the light of

dawn: one knows not whether he is assisting at the creation or the end

of the world. A little bird, similar to that which sings in our woods

at night, utters a plaintive warbling. Then love leads the Esquimaux

to the icy rock where his mate awaits him: those human nuptials at the

extreme boundaries of the earth lack neither dignity nor happiness.

*

[Sidenote: We leave Saint-Pierre.]

When we had shipped stores and replaced the anchor which we had lost

at Graciosa, we left Saint-Pierre. Sailing south before the wind, we

reached the latitude of 38°. The calm delayed us at a short distance

from the coasts of Maryland and Virginia. The misty sky of the

northerly regions had been succeeded by the clearest weather; the land

was not in sight, but the odour of the pine-forests was wafted to our

nostrils. The dawn and the early morning, the rising and setting sun,

the twilight and the night were alike admirable. I was never satisfied

with gazing at Venus, whose rays seemed to envelop me like the tresses

of my sylph of former days.

One day I was reading in the captain's room; the bell struck for

prayers; I went and mingled my prayers with those of my companions. The

officers and passengers filled the quarter-deck; the chaplain, book

in hand, stood a little before them, near the helm; the sailors were

crowded promiscuously on deck; we stood with our faces turned towards

the ship's bows. All sails were furled. The disk of the sun, preparing

to plunge into the sea, appeared through the rigging of the vessel in

the midst of the boundless space: it was as though, with the rocking of

the poop, the radiant luminary at each moment changed its horizon. When

I drew this picture, which you can see in its entirety in the _Génie du

Christianisme_[463], my religious sentiments were in harmony with the

scene; but alas, when I was present at it in person, I had not yet put

off the old man: it was not God alone that I contemplated in the waves,

in all the magnificence of His works. I beheld an unknown woman and

the miracles worked by her smile; the beauties of the heavens seemed

to open out at her breath; I would have bartered Eternity for one of

her caresses. I pictured her to myself throbbing behind the veil of the

universe which hid her from my gaze. Ah, why was it not in my power to

tear aside that curtain to press the idealized woman to my heart, to

be consumed upon her breast with that love which was the source of my

inspirations, of my despair, and of my life! While I abandoned myself

to these impulses so well suited to my future career as a _coureur des

bois_, an accident occurred which very nearly put an end to my plans

and to my dreams.

The heat was overpowering; the vessel, lying in a dead calm, with

furled sails and overweighted by the masts, rolled heavily: burning

upon deck and wearied by the motion, I longed to bathe, and although

we had no boat out, I dived into the sea from the bowsprit. All went

well at first, and several passengers followed my example. I swam

without looking at the ship; but when I came to turn my head, I saw

that the current had dragged her some distance. The sailors, alarmed,

had slipped a rope to the other swimmers. Sharks appeared in the ship's

waters, and the men fired at them to drive them away. The swell was so

heavy that it delayed my return by exhausting my strength. I had an

eddy below me, and at any moment the sharks might carry off one of my

arms or legs. On board, the boatswain was trying to lower a boat, but

it was necessary to fix the tackling, and all this took time.

By the greatest good fortune, an almost imperceptible breeze sprang up;

the vessel answered her helm a little and approached me; I was just

able to catch hold of the rope, but my companions in rashness were

clinging to it; when we were pulled to the ship's side, I was at the

extremity of the line, and they bore upon me with all their weight. We

were thus fished up one by one, which took long. The rolling continued;

at each roll, we were either plunged six or seven feet into the water,

or hung up as many feet in the air, like fish at the end of a line:

at the last immersion, I felt ready to faint away; one roll more and

it would have been over. I was hoisted on deck half dead: had I been

drowned, what a good riddance for me and the rest!

Two days after this accident, we came in sight of land. My heart beat

fast when the captain pointed it out to me: America! It was barely

indicated by the crowns of a few maple-trees standing above the water.

The palms at the mouth of the Nile have since indicated the coast of

Egypt for me in the same manner. A pilot came on board; we entered

Chesapeake Bay. In the evening a boat was sent on shore to fetch fresh

provisions.

I joined the party, and soon trod American soil.

Turning my looks around me, I remained for some moments motionless.

This continent, perhaps unknown during the whole course of antiquity

and a large number of modern centuries; the first wild destinies

of that continent and its second destinies after the arrival of

Christopher Columbus; the sway of the European monarchies shaken in

this new world; the old society ending in young America; a republic of

a hitherto unknown character ushering in a change in the human mind;

the part which my country had played in these events; those seas and

shores owing their independence in part to French blood and the French

flag; a great man issuing from the midst of discord and the desert;

Washington inhabiting a flourishing city in the same spot where William

Penn[464] had bought a patch of forestland; the United States handing

on to France the revolution which France had supported with her arms;

lastly, my own destinies, the virgin muse which I had come to abandon

to the passion of a new revelation of nature; the discoveries which

I desired to attempt in the deserts which still extended their broad

kingdom behind the narrow empire of a foreign civilization: such were

the thoughts that revolved through my mind.

[Sidenote: Chesapeake Bay.]

We walked towards a dwelling-house. Woods of balsam-trees and Virginian

cedars, mocking-birds and cardinal-birds proclaimed by their aspect

and shade, their song and colour, that we were in a new clime. The

house, which we reached in half-an-hour, combined the characteristics

of an English farm-house and a West-Indian cabin. Herds of European

cattle grazed in pastures surrounded by glades, in which played

striped squirrels. Blacks were sawing logs of wood, whites cultivating

tobacco-plants. A negress of thirteen or fourteen years of age, nearly

naked and of singular beauty, opened the gate of the enclosure to us,

like a young figure of Night. We bought cakes of Indian corn, chickens,

eggs, milk, and returned to the ship with our demi-johns and baskets. I

gave my silk handkerchief to the little African: a slave welcomed me to

the soil of liberty.

We weighed anchor in order to make the roads and port of Baltimore: as

we approached, the waters grew narrow; they were smooth and motionless;

we appeared to be ascending a lazy stream lined with avenues. Baltimore

presented itself to us as though at the further end of a lake. Opposite

the town rose a wooded hill, at the foot of which they were commencing

to build. We moored alongside the quay. I slept on board and did not go

on shore till the next day. I went to stay at the inn with my luggage;

the seminarists retired to the establishment prepared for them, whence

they have since dispersed over America.

What became of François Tulloch? The following letter was handed to me

in London on the 12th of April 1822:

"Thirty years have elapsed, my dear viscount, since the

'epoch' of our journey to Baltimore, and it is very doubtful

whether you will remember as much as my name; but if I may

judge from the feelings of my heart, which has always been

loyal and true to you, this is not so, and I flatter myself

that you would not be displeased to see me again. Although

we are living almost opposite each other (as you will see by

the date of this letter), I am only too well aware how many

things separate us. But should you show the smallest wish

to see me, I shall be eager to prove to you, in so far as I

can, that I am ever, as I always have been, your faithful and

devoted,

"FRANCIS TULLOCH.

"P.S.--The distinguished rank which you have won and which

you have earned by so many claims has not escaped me; but

the memory of the Chevalier de Chateaubriand is so dear

to me that I cannot write to you (this time, at least) as

Ambassador, &c., &c. So pardon the style for the sake of our

old alliance.

"30 Portland Place,

_Friday_, 12 _April._"

And so Tulloch was in London; he did not become a priest; he is

married; his romance ended as did mine. This letter testifies to the

truthfulness of my Memoirs and the faithfulness of my recollections.

Who would have given evidence of the "alliance" and "friendship" formed

thirty years ago upon the sea, if the other contracting party had not

appeared upon the scene? And what a sad and retrogressive perspective

this letter unfolds before me! Tulloch, in 1822, was again living in

the same city as myself, in the same street; the door of his house was

opposite mine, as when we met on the same ship, upon the same deck,

cabin facing cabin. How many of my other friends I shall never meet

again! Every night, on retiring to rest, a man can count his losses:

there is naught save his years that does not leave him, although these

pass; when he reviews them and calls their numbers, they reply, "Here!"

Not one but answers the roll-call.

*

Baltimore, like all the other capitals of the United States, had not

the dimensions which it now possesses: it was a pretty little Catholic

town, neat and lively, with customs and a society closely resembling

the customs and society of Europe. I paid the captain my passage-money

and gave him a farewell dinner. I booked my seat in the stage-coach

which ran three times a week to Pennsylvania. I climbed up to it

at four o'clock in the morning, and found myself rolling along the

high-roads of the New World.

The road we followed was marked out rather than made, and crossed a

somewhat flat tract of country: there were hardly any trees, some

straggling farms, and thinly-scattered villages. The climate was

French: swallows flew over the water as on the pond at Combourg.

[Sidenote: Philadelphia.]

As we drew nearer to Philadelphia, we met country-folk going to market,

public carriages and private carriages. Philadelphia struck me as a

fine town, with wide streets, some of which were planted with trees,

intersecting each other at right angles in regular order from north

to south and east to west. The Delaware runs parallel to the street

which follows its west bank. This river would be considered a large

one in Europe: it is not spoken of in America; its banks are low and

unattractive.

At the period of my journey (1791), Philadelphia had not yet spread as

far as the Schuylkill; the ground running towards that tributary was

divided into lots, upon which houses were being built at intervals.

Philadelphia presents a monotonous aspect. In general, the Protestant

cities of the United States fall short in great works of architecture:

the Reformation, young in years, and sacrificing nothing to the

imagination, has rarely erected those domes, those aerial naves, those

twin towers with which the old Catholic religion has crowned Europe. No

monument, in Philadelphia, in New York; at Boston, one pyramid rising

above the mass of walls and roofs: the eye is saddened by this uniform

level.

First alighting at an inn, I next took a room in a boarding-house in

which were staying planters from San Domingo and Frenchmen who had

emigrated with other ideas than mine. A land of liberty offered an

asylum to those who were fleeing from liberty: nothing better proves

the high value of generous institutions than this voluntary exile of

the partisans of absolute power in a pure democracy.

A man who had landed in the United States as I had, filled with

enthusiasm for the classic races, a colonist who sought on every

side the rigidity of the early Roman manners, was necessarily much

scandalized to find on every hand the luxury of private carriages,

frivolity of conversation, inequality of fortunes, the immorality of

banking and gaming-houses, the excitement of theatres and ball-rooms.

In Philadelphia I might have thought myself in Liverpool or Bristol The

appearance of the inhabitants was agreeable: the Quakeresses with their

grey gowns, their uniform little bonnets and their pale features seemed

attractive.

At that period of my life, I had a great admiration for republics,

although I did not believe them possible at the stage of the world's

history which we had reached: my idea of liberty was that conceived

by the ancients, liberty the daughter of the manners of a new-born

society; but I knew nothing of the liberty which is the daughter of

enlightenment and of an old civilization, a form of liberty which the

representative republic has proved to be real: God grant that it may be

lasting! A man, to be free, is not obliged himself to plough his small

field, to storm at arts and sciences, to wear hooked nails and a dirty

beard.

General Washington was not in Philadelphia when I arrived there; I was

obliged to wait a week. I saw him go past in a carriage drawn by four

prancing horses, driven four-in-hand. Washington, according to my then

ideas, was necessarily Cincinnatus; Cincinnatus in a chariot somewhat

upset my republic of 296 B.C. Could Washington the Dictator be anything

save a boor, driving his oxen with a goad and holding the tail of his

plough? But when I went to carry my letter of recommendation to him, I

found once more the simplicity of the ancient Roman.

A small house, resembling the neighbouring houses, was the palace of

the President of the United States: no sentries, no footmen even. I

knocked, and a young maid-servant opened the door. I asked if the

general was at home; she replied that he was in. I said I had a letter

for him. The servant asked my name, which is difficult to pronounce in

English and which she could not remember. She then said softly, "Walk

in, sir," and led the way down one of those narrow passages which serve

as an entrance-hall to English houses: she showed me into a parlour

where she asked me to wait until the general came.

I felt no agitation; greatness of mind or fortune in no way overawe

me: I admire the first without being crushed by it; the second calls

forth my pity rather than my respect: no man's countenance will ever

disconcert me.

[Illustration: General Washington.]

After a few minutes, the general entered the room: tall in stature, of

a calm and cold rather than noble bearing, he resembled his engraved

portraits. I handed him my letter in silence; he opened it and

glanced at the signature which he read aloud, exclaiming:

"Colonel Armand!"

This was the name by which he knew the Marquis de La Rouërie and by

which the latter had signed himself.

We sat down. I explained to him as best I could the object of my

journey. He replied in monosyllables in English and French, and

listened to me with a sort of astonishment. I remarked this and said to

him, with some little animation:

"But it is less difficult to discover the North-West Passage than to

create a people, as you have done."

"Well, well, young man!" he exclaimed, giving me his hand.

He invited me to dinner for the next day, and we parted.

[Sidenote: General Washington.]

I took care to keep the appointment. We were only five or six guests at

table. The conversation turned upon the French Revolution. The general

showed us a key from the Bastille. These keys, as I have already said,

were rather silly toys which passed from hand to hand at that time. The

consigners of locksmiths' wares might, three years later, have sent

to the President of the United States the bolt of the prison of the

monarch who bestowed liberty upon France and America. If Washington

had seen the "victors of the Bastille" disporting themselves in the

gutters of Paris, he would have felt less respect for his relic. The

seriousness and strength of the Revolution did not spring from those

blood-stained orgies. At the time of the revocation of the Edict

of Nantes, in 1685, the same mob from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine

demolished the Protestant temple at Charenton with as much ardour as

when it laid waste the church of Saint-Denis in 1793.

I left my host at ten o'clock in the evening, and never saw him again;

he went away the next day, and I continued my journey.

Such was my meeting with the citizen soldier, the liberator of a

world. Washington descended to the grave before a vestige of fame

had become attached to my footsteps; I passed before him as the most

unknown of beings; he was in all his lustre, I in all my obscurity; my

name perhaps did not linger one whole day in his memory: well for me,

nevertheless, that his looks fell upon me! I have felt warmed by them

for the rest of my life: there is virtue in a great man's looks.

*

Bonaparte is but lately dead[465]. As I have just knocked at

Washington's door, it is natural that the parallel between the founder

of the United States and the Emperor of the French should occur to my

mind: the more so since, at the time when I am writing these lines,

Washington himself is no more. Ercilla[466], singing and battling in

Chile, stops in the middle of his journey to describe the death of

Dido; why should not I stop at the commencement of my ramble through

Pennsylvania to compare Washington with Bonaparte? I might have delayed

my notice of them until I came to the time at which I met Napoleon;

but should I happen to sink into the grave before reaching the year

1814 in my chronicle, the reader would never know what I had to say on

the subject of the two mandataries of Providence. I remember the case

of Castelnau[467]: he was Ambassador to England like myself, and like

me wrote a part of his life in London. On the last page of Book VII.,

he says to his son, "I will treat of this fact in the Eighth Book,"

and the Eighth Book of Castelnau's Memoirs does not exist: that is a

warning to me to take advantage of life while it lasts.

Washington does not, like Bonaparte, belong to the race that surpasses

human stature. There is nothing astonishing attached to his person; he

is not placed upon a vast stage; he is not engaged in a struggle with

the ablest captains and the most powerful monarchs of the time; he

does not rush from Memphis to Vienna, from Cadiz to Moscow: he defends

himself with a handful of citizens in a land not yet famous, within the

narrow circle of the domestic hearth. He delivers none of those battles

in which the triumphs of Arbela and Pharsalia are renewed; he overturns

no thrones to build up others from their ruins; he does not send word

to the kings at his gate:

Qu'ils se font trop attendre, et qu'Attila s'ennuie[468].

A certain silence covers the actions of Washington; he acts slowly; it

is as though he felt that he was entrusted with the liberty of the

future and feared to compromise it. It is not his own destiny that

a hero of this kind carries in his hand: it is that of his country;

he does not suffer himself to stake that which does not belong to

him; but from this profound humility see how great a light arises!

Seek the woods in which flashed Washington's sword: what do you find?

Tombstones? No: a world! Washington left the United States as a trophy

on his battle-field.

*

[Sidenote: Washington and Bonaparte.]

Bonaparte has none of the features of this grave American: he fights

noisily upon an old world; he seeks to create nothing but his fame; he

entrusts himself with nothing but his own lot. He seems to know that

his mission will be short, that the torrent which descends from so

great a height will soon flow away; he hastens to enjoy and to misuse

his glory, as though it were a fleeting season of youth. Like Homer's

gods, he wishes to reach the end of the world in four steps. He appears

on every shore; precipitously he inscribes his name upon the annals

of every nation; he tosses crowns to his family and his soldiers; he

makes haste with his monuments, his laws, his victories. Bending over

the world, with one hand he fells the kings to the ground, while with

the other he lays low the revolutionary giant; but in crushing anarchy,

he stifles liberty, and ends by losing his own upon his last field of

battle.

Each is rewarded according to his works: Washington raises a nation

to independence; a peaceful magistrate, he falls asleep beneath his

roof-tree amid the regrets of his fellow-countrymen and the veneration

of the nations. Bonaparte robs a nation of its independence: a fallen

emperor, he is hurled into exile, where the affrighted earth does not

think him sufficiently closely imprisoned, even when guarded by the

ocean. He dies: the news, posted on the gate of the palace before which

the conqueror has caused so many funerals to be proclaimed, does not

delay nor astonish the passer-by: what had the citizens to mourn for?

Washington's republic is in existence; Bonaparte's empire is destroyed.

Washington and Bonaparte issued from the bosom of democracy: both were

born of liberty; the first was faithful to her, the second betrayed her.

Washington was the representative of the needs, the ideas, the

judgment, the opinions of his day; he seconded, rather than opposed,

the changes in men's minds; he desired what he was bound to desire,

the very thing for which he had been called: hence the coherent and

perpetual character of his work. This man who strikes the imagination

little, because he is in proportion, merged his existence in that of

his country: his glory is civilization's inheritance; his fame towers

like one of those public sanctuaries from which flows a fertile and

inexhaustible spring.

Bonaparte had it equally in his power to enrich the commonwealth; he

worked upon the most intelligent, the most gallant, the most brilliant

nation on earth. How high would be the rank held by him today, if he

had added magnanimity to the heroism which was his, if, Washington and

Bonaparte in one, he had appointed liberty the universal legatee of

his glory! But this giant did not link his destinies with those of his

contemporaries; his genius belonged to modern times: his ambition was

of a by-gone age; he did not perceive that the miracles of his life

surpassed a diadem in value, and that that Gothic ornament would become

him badly. Now he flung himself into the future, again he drew back

towards the past; and according to whether he reascended or followed

the course of time, thanks to his prodigious force, he drew with him

or pushed back the waves. Men, in his eyes, were but a means of power;

no sympathy was established between their happiness and his; he had

promised to deliver them, and he enchained them; he isolated himself

from them, and they withdrew from him. The Kings of Egypt placed their

funeral pyramids, not among thriving pastures, but in the midst of

barren deserts; those great tombs rise like eternity in the solitude:

Bonaparte built the monument of his fame in their image,

*

I was impatient to continue my journey. I had not come to see the

Americans, but something quite different from the men I knew, something

more in harmony with the habitual order of my ideas; I burned to throw

myself into an enterprise for which I had nothing prepared except my

imagination and my courage.

At the time when I formed the project of discovering the North-West

Passage, it was not known whether North America extended towards

the Pole and joined Greenland, or whether it terminated in some sea

adjoining Hudson's Bay and Behring's Straits. In 1772, Hearne had

discovered the sea at the mouth of the Copper Mine River in latitude

71° 15' N. and longitude 119° 15' W. of Greenwich[469].

On the Pacific coast, the efforts of Captain Cook and subsequent

travellers had left doubts. In 1787, a vessel was said to have entered

an inland sea of North America; according to the story told by the

captain of this ship, all that had been taken for uninterrupted coast

to the north of California consisted merely of a closely-knit chain

of islands. The British Admiralty sent Vancouver[470] to verify these

reports, which proved to be false. Vancouver had not yet made his

second voyage.

[Sidenote: Arctic exploration.]

In 1791, people in the United States were beginning to discuss the

road taken by Mackenzie: starting from Fort Chippeway on Mountains

Lake[471], 3 June 1789, he descended to the Arctic Ocean by the river

to which he gave his name.

This discovery might have changed my direction and caused me to take my

route due north; but I should have scrupled to alter the plans agreed

upon between M. de Malesherbes and myself. I proposed, therefore, to

travel westwards, so as to strike the north-west coast above the Gulf

of California; from there, following the outline of the continent,

and always keeping the sea in sight, I intended to explore Behring's

Straits, double the northernmost cape of America, descend on the east

along the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and return to the United States

by way of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Canada.

What means had I to carry out this prodigious peregrination? None

at all. Most of the French travellers have been isolated men, left

entirely to their own resources; it is but rarely that the government

or any company has employed or assisted them. Englishmen, Americans,

Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, thanks to the concurrence of the

national volition, have accomplished the things which, with us,

destitute individuals have begun in vain. Mackenzie and many others

after him have, to the profit of the United States and Great Britain,

made conquests upon the immensity of America, with which I had dreamed

of aggrandizing my native land. In case of success, I should have had

the honour of bestowing French names upon unknown regions, of endowing

my country with a colony upon the Pacific Ocean, of taking away the

rich fur-trade from a rival Power, and of preventing that Power from

opening out a shorter road to the Indies, by placing France herself in

possession of that road. I have stated these projects in the _Essai

historique_, published in London in 1796, and these projects were taken

from the manuscript of my Travels written in 1791. These dates prove

that I was ahead, both in thought and work, of the latest explorers of

the Arctic ice-fields.

I received no encouragement in Philadelphia. I foresaw from then

that the object of this first journey would be missed, and that my

expedition would be but the precursor of a second and longer journey.

I wrote in this sense to M. de Malesherbes, and while looking forward

to the future, I promised to poetry what should be lost to science. In

fact, if I did not find in America what I had come to seek, the Arctic

world, I did find there a new muse.

A stage-coach, similar to that which brought me from Baltimore, took

me from Philadelphia to New York, a gay, populous, commercial town,

which was nevertheless far from being what it is today, far from what

it will be in a few years; for the United States grow faster than does

this manuscript. I made a pilgrimage to Boston to salute the first

battlefield of American liberty. I saw the plains of Lexington; I there

sought, as I since sought at Sparta, the tomb of the warriors who died

"in obedience to the sacred laws of their country[472]." A noteworthy

instance of the concatenation of human affairs: a finance bill passed

by the English Parliament in 1765 erects a new empire upon the earth in

1782, and causes one of the oldest kingdoms of Europe to disappear from

the world in 1789!

*

I embarked at New York in the packet which sailed for Albany, situated

on the upper reaches of the Hudson River. The company was numerous. On

the evening of the first day we were served with a collation consisting

of fruits and milk; the women sat on the benches on deck, the men on

the deck at their feet. Conversation was not long maintained: at the

sight of a beautiful natural picture, one involuntarily lapses into

silence. Suddenly some one or other exclaimed:

"There is the place where Asgill[473] was arrested."

A Quakeress from Philadelphia was asked to sing the ballad known as

_Asgill._ We were passing between mountains; the fair passenger's

voice died away on the water, or rang out when we hugged the bank more

closely. The fate of a young soldier, a lover, a poet and a hero,

honoured by the interest of Washington and the generous intervention

of an unfortunate queen, lent additional charm to the romance of

the scene. The friend whom I have lost, M. de Fontanes, let fall

some courageous words in memory of Asgill at the time when Bonaparte

was preparing to ascend the throne upon which Marie Antoinette had

sat. The American officers appeared touched by the song of the fair

Pennsylvanian: the memory of the past troubles of their country made

them appreciate more highly the calm of the present moment. They gazed

with emotion upon those spots but lately filled with troops, resounding

with the clash of arms, and now wrapped in profound peace; those spots

gilded with the fading light of day, enlivened with the singing of

the cardinal-birds, the cooing of the ring-doves, the song of the

mocking-birds, while the inhabitants, leaning against their fences

fringed with trumpet-flowers, watched our bark pass below them.

[Sidenote: I arrive at Albany.]

On arriving at Albany I went in search of a Mr. Swift, for whom I had

been given a letter. This Mr. Swift traded in furs with the Indian

tribes enclosed in the territory ceded to the United States by England;

for the civilized Powers in America, republican and monarchical alike,

unceremoniously share among themselves land which does not belong to

them. After listening to what I had to say, Mr. Swift made some very

reasonable objections. He told me that I could not undertake a journey

of this importance at first sight, alone, without assistance, without

support, without letters of recommendation to the English, American,

and Spanish stations by which I should be obliged to pass; that if I

had the good fortune to cross so many solitary tracts of country, I

should arrive at frozen regions where I should perish of hunger; he

advised me to begin by acclimatizing myself, suggested that I should

learn the Sioux, Iroquois, and Esquimaux languages, and live among the

coureurs and the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having gained this

preliminary experience, I might then, in four or five years, with the

assistance of the French Government, proceed on my hazardous mission.

This advice, whose justice, in my heart of hearts, I admitted, annoyed

me. Had I trusted to my own judgment, I should have set out then and

there to go to the Pole, as I might go from Paris to Pontoise. I

concealed my vexation from Mr. Swift, and asked him to find me a guide

and horses to take me to Niagara and Pittsburg: from Pittsburg I would

go down the Ohio and gather ideas for my future plans. I still had my

first project in my head. Mr. Swift engaged a Dutchman on my behalf,

who spoke several Indian dialects. I bought two horses and left Albany.

The whole stretch of country between the territory surrounding

that town and Niagara is now inhabited and cleared; the New York

Canal crosses it; but at that time a great part of the district was

unfrequented. When, after crossing the Mohawk, I entered woods which

had never known the axe, I was seized with a sort of intoxication of

independence; I went from tree to tree, left and right, saying to

myself:

"Here are no more roads, no more cities, no more monarchies, no more

republics, no more presidents, no more kings, no more men!"

And, in order to test whether I was really reinstated in my original

rights, I indulged in acts of will which infuriated my guide, who in

his heart believed me mad.

Alas, I imagined myself to be alone in that forest in which I was

carrying my head so high! Suddenly I almost broke my nose against

a shed. Under that shed, my amazed eyes beheld the first savages I

had seen in my life. There were a score of them, men and women, all

bedaubed like wizards, with half-naked bodies, slit ears, crows'

feathers on their heads, and rings through their nostrils. A little

Frenchman, all powdered and curled, in an apple-green coat, a drugget

vest, and a muslin frill and ruffles, was scraping a pocket fiddle and

making those Iroquois dance _Madelon Friquet._ M. Violet (that was his

name) was the savages' dancing-master. They paid him for his lessons

in beaver-skins and bear's hams. He had been a scullion in the service

of General Rochambeau[474] during the American War. He remained in New

York after the departure of our army, and resolved to instruct the

Americans in the fine arts. His views widened with success, and the new

Orpheus carried civilization to the savage hordes of the New World. In

speaking to me of the Indians, he always said:

"Those savage ladies and gentlemen."

He took great pride in the nimbleness of his pupils; indeed I never

saw such capers before or since. M. Violet, holding his little violin

between his chest and his chin, tuned the fatal instrument; he cried to

the Iroquois:

"Take your places!"

And the whole troop leaped about like a band of demons.

Was it not an overwhelming thing for a disciple of Rousseau, this

introduction to savage life through a ball which General Rochambeau's

late scullion was giving to the Iroquois? I had a great longing to

laugh, but I felt cruelly humiliated.

*

I bought a complete outfit of the Indians: two bearskins, one to serve

as a demi-toga, the other as a bed. I added to my new equipment the red

ribbed-cloth cap, the cloak, the belt, the horn to call in the dogs,

the bandoleer of the _coureurs des bois._ My hair hung over my bare

neck; I wore a long beard: I had something of the savage, the hunter,

and the missionary. I was invited to a hunt which was to take place the

next day to track a wolverine.

[Sidenote: Life in Canada.]

This race of animals is almost entirely destroyed in Canada, as are the

beavers. We took boat before daybreak to go up a river which issued

from the wood in which the wolverine had been seen. There were some

thirty of us, both Indians and American and Canadian _coureurs_: one

part of the troop walked alongside of the flotilla with the dogs, and

the women carried our provisions. We did not find the wolverine; but we

killed lynxes and musk-rats. Formerly the Indians used to go into deep

mourning when they had inadvertently killed any of the latter animals;

for the female of the musk-rat is, as everybody knows, the mother of

the human race. The Chinese, with their finer powers of observation,

know to a certainty that the rat changes into a quail, the mole into a

loriot.

Our table was abundantly furnished with river-side birds and fish. The

dogs are trained to dive; when they are not hunting, they go fishing:

they plunge into the streams and seize the fish down at the bottom of

the water. The women prepared our meals at a large fire around which we

took our places. We had to lie flat down, with our faces against the

ground, to protect our eyes from the smoke, the clouds of which floated

above our heads and indifferently preserved us from the stings of the

mosquitoes.

Seen through the microscope, the various carnivorous insects are

formidable animals; they were once perhaps those winged dragons whose

skeletons are sometimes found: decreasing in size in proportion as

their matter decreased in energy, these hydras, griffins and others

would today be reduced to the condition of insects. The antediluvian

giants are the little men of our time.

*

M. Violet offered me his credentials for the Onondagas, the remnant

of one of the six Iroquois nations. I first came to the Lake of the

Onondagas. The Dutchman selected a suitable spot at which to pitch our

camp: a river issued from the lake; our gear was set up in the curve of

the river. We drove two forked stakes into the ground, at a distance

of six feet one from the other; in the forks of these stakes we hung,

horizontally, a long pole. Strips of birch bark, one end resting on the

ground, the other on the transversal pole, formed the sloping roof of

our mansion. Our saddles served as pillows, our cloaks as blankets. We

fastened bells to our horses' necks and turned them loose in the woods

near our camp: they did not wander far.

Fifteen years later, when I was bivouacking in the sand of the Saba

Desert, at a few steps from the Jordan on the banks of the Dead Sea,

our horses, those swift sons of Araby, looked as though they were

listening to the tales of the sheik and taking part in the story of

Antar and of the horse in Job[475].

It was hardly four o'clock in the afternoon when we were hutted. I

took my gun and went for a stroll round about There were few birds.

A solitary, pair alone fluttered before my eyes, like the birds

which I had followed in my paternal woods; by the colour of the

male, I recognised the white sparrow, the _passer nivalis_ of the

ornithologists. I also heard the osprey, very clearly characterized by

its note. The flight of the "screamer" had led me to a dale hemmed in

by tall and rocky heights; on a mountain-side stood a poor hut; a lean

cow roamed in a field below.

I like small shelters: "_A chico pajarillo chico nidillo_: a little

bird, a little nest." I sat down on the slope facing the hut planted on

the hillside opposite. In a few minutes, I heard voices in the valley:

three men were driving five or six fat cows; they put them to graze

and drove away the lean cow with blows of a switch. An Indian woman

came out of the hut, went towards the frightened beast, and called it.

The cow ran to her, stretching out its neck with a little low. The

planters shook their fists at the Indian woman, who returned to her

hut The cow followed her.

[Sidenote: The Indian woman.]

I got up, climbed down the declivity of the hillside, crossed the glen,

and climbing the opposite hill, reached the hut. I uttered the greeting

I had been taught:

"_Siegoh!_ I have come!"

The Indian woman, instead of returning my greeting by the customary

repetition, "You have come," made no reply. Then I petted the cow: the

Indian woman's yellow and saddened face showed signs of softening.

I was touched by these mysterious relations of misfortune: there is

sweetness in lamenting ills that none have lamented beside.

My hostess looked at me a little longer, with a remnant of doubt

lingering in her eyes, and then came forward and passed her hand over

the forehead of her companion in misery and solitude. Encouraged by

this mark of confidence, I said in English, for I had exhausted my

Indian:

"She is very lean."

The Indian woman replied, in broken English:

"She eats very little."

"They drove her away roughly," I added.

And the woman replied:

"We are both accustomed to that."

I asked:

"Does not this meadow belong to you then?"

She answered:

"This meadow belonged to my husband, who is dead. I have no children,

and the pale-faces drive their cows into my meadow."

I had nothing to offer this creature of God. We parted. My hostess

said a number of things to me which I did not understand; they were

doubtless wishes for prosperity; if they have not been heard by Heaven,

it is not the fault of her who prayed, but the infirmity of him for

whom the prayer was offered. All souls have not an equal aptitude for

happiness, just as all lands do not bear equal harvests.

I returned to my wigwam, where a collation consisting of potatoes and

Indian corn awaited my arrival. The evening was splendid: the lake,

smooth as a flawless mirror, showed not a ripple; the murmuring river

bathed our peninsula, which the calycanthuses perfumed with the scent

of apple-blossom. The whip-poor-will uttered its song: we heard it, now

nearer, now farther away, according as the bird changed the spot of its

amorous calls. No one called me. Weep, poor Will!

The next day I went to pay a visit to the sachem of the Onondagas;

I reached his village at ten o'clock in the morning. I was at once

surrounded by young savages, who spoke to me in their language, mixed

with English phrases and a few words of French; they were very noisy

and wore an air of light-heartedness, like the first Turks whom I saw,

later, at Koroni, when landing on the soil of Greece. These Indian

tribes, enclosed in the clearings made by the whites, own horses and

cattle; their huts are filled with utensils purchased at Quebec,

Montreal, Niagara, and Detroit on the one side, and in the markets of

the United States on the other.

The explorers of the interior of North America found in a state of

nature, among the different savage tribes, the several forms of

government known to the peoples of civilization. The Iroquois belonged

to a race which seemed destined to conquer the Indian races, if

strangers had not come to exhaust his veins and stop the progress of

his genius. That fearless man was not astonished at fire-arms when

these were first used against him; he stood fast amid the hiss of the

bullets and the roar of the cannon, as though he had heard them all his

life; he seemed to pay no more heed to them than to the storm. So soon

as he was able to procure a musket, he made better use of it than the

European. He did not abandon for it the tomahawk, the scalping-knife,

the bow and arrow; but to these he added the carbine, the pistol, the

dagger, and the axe: he seemed never to have enough arms to satisfy his

valour. Doubly equipped with the murderous instruments of Europe and

America, his head decked with plumes, his ears slit, his face streaked

with various colours, his arms tattooed and smeared with blood, this

champion of the New World became as redoubtable in appearance as in

battle, on the shores which he defended foot by foot against the

invaders.

The Onondaga chief was an old Iroquois in the fullest sense of the

word; he kept up in his person the ancient traditions of the desert.

The English narratives never fail to speak of the Indian sachem as

"the old gentleman." Now, the old gentleman is perfectly naked; he

wears a feather or a fish-bone in his pierced nostrils, and sometimes

covers his head, which is smooth and round as a cheese, with a laced

three-cornered hat, as an European sign of honour. Has not Velly[476]

depicted history with the same veracity? The Frankish chieftain

Khilpérick[477] rubbed his hair in sour butter, _infundens acido comam

butyro_, stained his cheeks with woad, and wore a party-coloured jerkin

or a greatcoat made of the skin of some beast; he is represented by

Velly as a prince magnificent to the point of ostentation in his

furniture and equipage, voluptuous to the point of debauchery, and

scarcely believing in God, whose ministers formed the subject of his

raillery.

[Sidenote: With the Onondagas.]

The sachem of the Onondagas received me well and made me sit down

on a mat. He spoke English and understood French; my guide knew

Iroquois: conversation was easy. Among other things, the old man told

me that, although his nation had always been at war with mine, he had

always respected it. He complained of the Americans; he thought them

greedy and unjust, and regretted that, in the division of the Indian

territories his tribe had not gone to swell the lot of the English. The

women served us with a meal. Hospitality is the last virtue left to

the savages in the midst of European civilization; their hospitality

is well known of old; the hearth had all the power of the altar.

When a tribe was driven from its woods, or when a man came to demand

hospitality, the stranger began what was called the dance of the

supplicant. The child touched the door-sill and said:

"Here is the stranger."

And the chief replied:

"Child, bring the man into the hut."

The stranger entered, under the protection of the child, and sat down

by the ashes on the hearth. The women sang the song of consolation:

The stranger has found a mother and a wife; the sun will rise

and set for him as of old.

These customs seem borrowed from the Greeks: Themistocles, visiting

Admetus, kisses the Penates and his host's young son (I have possibly

at Megara trod upon the poor wife's hearthstone beneath which Phocion's

cinerary urn lay concealed[478]); and Ulysses, visiting Alcinous,

implores Arete:

"Noble Arete, daughter of Rhexenor, after suffering cruel ills, I throw

myself at your feet[479]."

Having spoken these words, the hero goes towards the hearth and seats

himself by the ashes.

I took leave of the old chief. He had been present at the capture of

Quebec. In the shameful years of the reign of Louis XV., the episode of

the Canadian War comes to our consolation as though it were a page from

our ancient history discovered in the Tower of London.

Montcalm[480], left to defend Canada unaided against forces often

relieved and four times his own in number, fights successfully for two

whole years; he defeats Lord Loudon[481] and General Abercromby[482].

At last fortune forsakes him; he falls wounded beneath the walls of

Quebec, and two days later breathes his last: his Grenadiers bury him

in a hole dug by a shell, a grave worthy of the honour of our arms! His

noble enemy Wolfe[483] dies facing him; he pays with his own life for

Montcalm's life and for the glory of expiring upon a few French flags.

Once more my guide and I mounted our horses. Our road became more

difficult and was marked only by some felled trees. The trunks of these

trees served as bridges over the streams or as hurdles in the bogs.

The American population was at that time moving towards the Genesee

grants. These grants were sold at prices more or less high according

to the goodness of the soil, the quality of the trees, the current and

abundance of the water.

It has been observed that colonists are often preceded in the woods

by bees: these are the van-guard of the tillers of the soil, and the

symbols of the industry and civilization whose coming they proclaim.

Foreign to America, these peaceful conquerors came in the wake of

Columbus' sails, and have robbed a new world of flowers of those

treasures only of whose use the natives were ignorant; nor have they

employed those treasures other than to enrich the soil whence they

derived them.

The clearings along both sides of the road which I travelled displayed

a curious mixture of the state of nature and the state of civilization.

In one comer of a wood which had never known any sound save the yells

of the savage and the belling of the stag, one came across a ploughed

field; one saw from the same point of view the wigwam of an Indian and

the dwelling of a planter. Some of these dwellings, when completed,

reminded one of the neatness of the Dutch farm-houses; others were only

half finished, and had nothing but the sky for a roof.

[Sidenote: Indians and settlers.]

I was welcomed in these dwellings, the results of a morning's work;

often I would find a family displaying European elegancies, mahogany

furniture, a piano, carpets, mirrors, at a few steps from the hut of an

Iroquois. In the evening, when the farm-servants returned from working

in the woods or fields with the axe or the hoe, the windows were

opened. My host's daughters, with their beautiful fair hair dressed in

ringlets, would sing, to the accompaniment of the piano, the duet from

Paisiello's[484] _Pandolfetto_ or some _cantabile_ by Cimarosa[485],

all in full view of the wilderness, and sometimes to the murmuring

sound of a waterfall.

Small market-towns rose in the better districts. The spire of a new

steeple shot up from the midst of an old forest. The English are

accompanied by English customs wherever they go: after crossing

districts containing no trace of habitation, I came upon the sign of an

inn swinging from the bough of a tree. Hunters, planters, and Indians

mingled at these caravansaries: the first time I rested there, I swore

that it should be the last.

It so happened that, on entering one of these hostelries, I stood

dumfoundered at the sight of a huge bed set up in a circle around a

post: each traveller took a place in this bed, with his feet against

the post in the centre and his head on the circumference of the circle,

so that the sleepers were arranged symmetrically, like the spokes of

a wheel or the sticks of a fan. After a momentary hesitation, I got

into this affair because I saw no one there. I was just falling asleep,

when I felt something sliding against me: it was the leg of my big

Dutchman; I never in my life experienced a greater fright. I sprang

out of the hospitable work-basket, cordially cursing the customs of

our good ancestors. I went and slept in my cloak by the moonlight:

this companion of the traveller's bed had at least nothing but was

agreeable, and fresh, and sweet.

On the bank of the Genesee we found a ferry-boat. A troop of colonials

and Indians crossed the river with us. We camped in meadows bright

with butterflies and flowers. With our varied costumes, grouped around

our several fires, and our horses tethered or grazing, we looked like

a caravan. I there first met the rattlesnake, which allows itself to

be bewitched by the sound of a flute. The Greeks would have turned my

Canadian into Orpheus; the flute into a lyre; the snake into Cerberus,

or, possibly, Eurydice.

*

We rode towards Niagara. When we had come within a distance of eight

or nine leagues of our destination, we perceived, in an oak grove, the

camp-fire of some savages, who had settled down on the bank of a stream

where we ourselves were thinking of bivouacking. We took advantage of

their preparations: after grooming our horses and dressing ourselves

for the night, we accosted the band. With legs crossed tailor-wise, we

sat down among the Indians around the blazing pile, and began to roast

our maize cakes.

The family consisted of two women, two infants at the breast, and three

braves. The conversation became general, that is to say, interspersed

with a few words on my side and many gestures; after that, each fell

asleep in the place where he sat I alone remained awake, and went to

sit by myself on a root trailing by the bank of the stream.

[Sidenote: The Falls of Niagara.]

The moon showed above the tops of the trees; a balmy breeze, which

the Queen of the Night brought with her from the East, seemed to go

before her through the forests, as though it were her cool breath. The

solitary luminary climbed higher and higher in the sky, now pursuing

her even way, again surmounting clusters of clouds, which resembled

the summits of a snow-clad mountain-chain. All would have been silence

and repose, but for the fall of a few leaves, the passing of a sudden

gust of wind, the hooting of the wood-owl; in the distance was heard

the dull roar of the Falls of Niagara, which, in the calm of night,

extended from waste to waste and expired in the lonely forests. It was

during those nights that an unknown muse appeared to me; I gathered

some of her accents; I marked them on my tables, by the light of the

stars, as a vulgar musician might write down the notes dictated to him

by some great master of harmony.

The next day, the Indians armed themselves, the women collected the

baggage. I distributed a little gunpowder and vermilion among my hosts.

We parted, touching our foreheads and breasts; the braves shouted the

order to march and walked in front; the women went behind, carrying

the children, who, slung in furs on their mothers' backs, turned their

heads to look at us. I followed this progress with my eyes until the

whole band had disappeared among the trees of the forest.

The savages of the Falls of Niagara in the English dominion were

entrusted with the police service of the frontier on that side. This

outlandish constabulary, armed with bows and arrows, prevented our

passage. I was obliged to send the Dutchman to the fort of Niagara for

a permit in order to enter the territory of the British government.

This saddened my heart a little, for I remembered that formerly France

had ruled in both Upper and Lower Canada. My guide returned with the

permit: I still have it; it is signed, "Captain Gordon." Is it not

strange that I should have found the same English name on the door of

my cell in Jerusalem? "Thirteen pilgrims had inscribed their names

on the door and walls of the chamber: the first was called Charles

Lombard, who visited Jerusalem in 1669; the last was John Gordon, and

the date of his passage is 1804[486]."

*

I stayed two days in the Indian village, whence I wrote another letter

to M. de Malesherbes. The Indian women busied themselves with different

occupations; their nurslings were slung in nets from the branches of a

tall purple beech. The grass was covered with dew, the wind issued all

perfumed from the woods, and the cotton-plants of the country, throwing

back their capsules, looked like white rose-trees. The breeze rocked

the cradles in mid-air with an almost imperceptible movement; the

mothers stood up from time to time to see if their children were asleep

and had not been awakened by the birds.

From the Indian village to the cataract was some three or four leagues:

it took my guide and me as many hours to reach it. Already at six

miles' distance, a column of vapour indicated the situation of the weir

to my eyes. My heart beat with joy mingled with terror, as I entered

the wood that concealed from my view one of the grandest spectacles

which nature has offered to mankind.

We dismounted. Leading our horses by the bridle, we passed through

heaths and thickets until we came to the bank of the Niagara River,

seven or eight hundred paces above the falls. As I never ceased going

forward, the guide caught me by the arm; he stopped me on the very

edge of the water, which passed with the swiftness of an arrow. It did

not seethe, but glided in one sole mass to the slope of the rock; its

silence before its fall contrasted with the uproar of the fall itself.

The Scriptures often compare a people to the mighty waters: here it was

a dying people which, deprived of its voice by the agony of death, went

to hurl itself into the abyss of eternity.