The guide continued to hold me back, for I felt, so to speak, drawn on

by the stream, and I had an involuntary longing to fling myself in. At

one time, I would turn my eyes up the river, to the banks; at another,

down to the island which divided the waters. Here the waters suddenly

failed, as though cut off in the sky.

After a quarter of an hour of vague and perplexed admiration, I

went on to the falls. The reader will find in the _Essai sur les

révolutions_[487] and in _Atala_[488] the two descriptions which I have

written of the scene. Today, high-roads run to the cataract; there

are inns on the American side and on the English side, and mills and

factories overhang the chasm.

I was unable to utter the thoughts that stirred me at the sight of so

sublime a disorder. In the desert of my early life, I was obliged to

invent persons to adorn it; I drew from my own substance beings whom

I did not find elsewhere and whom I carried within myself. In the

same way, I have placed memories of Atala and René on the edge of the

cataract of Niagara, as the expression of its sadness. What meaning

has a cascade which falls eternally in the unfeeling sight of heaven

and earth, if human nature be not there, with its destinies and its

misfortunes? To be steeped in this solitude of water and mountains and

not to know with whom to speak of that great spectacle! To have the

waves, the rocks, the woods, the torrents to one's self alone! Give the

soul a companion, and the smiling verdure of the hill-slopes, the cool

breath of the water, will all turn into charm: the journey by day, the

sweetest repose at the end of the day's march, the gliding over the

billows, the sleeping upon the moss, will call forth from the heart its

deepest tenderness. I have seated Velléda upon the shores of Armorica,

Cymodocea beneath the porticoes of Athens, Blanca in the halls of the

Alhambra. Alexander created towns wheresoever he hastened: I have left

dreams behind me wherever I have dragged my life.

I have seen the cascades of the Alps with their chamois and those of

the Pyrenees with their izards; I did not go sufficiently high up the

Nile to meet its cataracts, which are reduced to rapids; I will not

speak of the azure zones of Terni or of Tivoli, graceful fragments of

ruins or subjects for the poet's song:

Et præceps Anio ac Tiburni lucus[489].

Niagara eclipses everything. I gazed upon the cataract the existence

of which was revealed to the old world, not by puny travellers like

myself, but by missionaries who, seeking solitude for the love of God,

flung themselves upon their knees at the sight of some marvel of nature

and received martyrdom while completing their hymn of admiration. Our

priests greeted the fine sites of America and consecrated them with

their blood; our soldiers clapped their hands at the ruins of Thebes

and presented arms to Andalusia: the whole genius of France lies in the

double army of our camps and of our altars.

[Sidenote: Two hair-breadth escapes.]

I was holding my horse's bridle twisted round my arm; a rattlesnake

came and rustled in the bushes. The startled horse reared and backed

towards the falls. I was unable to release my arm from the reins; the

horse, still more terrified, was dragging me after it. Already its

fore-feet were off the ground; cowering over the edge of the abyss,

it maintained its position only by the strength of its loins. It was

all up with me, when the animal, itself astonished at its fresh peril,

gave a sudden turn and vaulted inwards. Had my soul left my body amidst

the Canadian woods, would it have carried to the Supreme Tribunal the

sacrifices, the good works, the virtues of the Pères Jogues[490] and

Lallemant[491], or empty days and wretched idle fancies?

This was not the only danger I encountered at Niagara. A ladder of

creepers was used by the savages to climb down to the lower basin;

it was at that time broken. Wishing to see the falls from below, I

ventured, in the face of my guide's representations, down the side of

an almost perpendicular rock. In spite of the roar of the water which

seethed below me, I kept my head and climbed down to within forty feet

of the bottom. When I had reached so far, the bare and vertical rock

gave me nothing to lay hold of; I was left hanging by one hand to the

last root, feeling my fingers open beneath the weight of my body: few

men have spent two such minutes, as I counted them. My tired hand let

go; I fell. By an unparalleled stroke of good fortune, I found myself

upon the pointed back of a rock upon which I ought to have been smashed

into a thousand pieces, and yet I felt no great hurt; I was at half

a foot from the abyss and had not rolled into it; but when the cold

and the damp began to penetrate me, I saw that I had not come off so

cheaply: my left arm was broken above the elbow. The guide, who was

watching me from above and saw my signals of distress, ran off to fetch

some savages. They hoisted me with ropes along an otter's path, and

carried me to their village. I had only a simple fracture: two splints,

a bandage and a sling were enough to effect my cure.

*

I stayed twelve days with my surgeons, the Niagara Indians. I saw

tribes pass which had come down from Detroit or from the districts

lying south and east of Lake Erie. I inquired into their usages; in

return for small presents, I was given representations of their former

customs, for the customs themselves no longer exist. Nevertheless, at

the commencement of the War of American Independence, the savages still

ate the prisoners, or rather the killed: an English captain, helping

himself to soup with a ladle from an Indian stew-pot, drew out a hand.

The practices attendant upon birth and death have lost least, because

these do not pass lightly like the life which divides them; they are

not things of fashion that come and go. The Indians still bestow upon

the new-born, in order to do him honour, the name of the oldest person

under his roof: his grandmother, for instance; for the names are

always taken in the maternal line. From that time forward, the child

fills the place of the woman whose name it has taken; in speaking to

it, they give it the degree of relationship which the name revives;

thus an uncle might address his nephew by the title of "grandmother."

This apparently ludicrous custom is nevertheless touching. It restores

the old dead to life; it reproduces the weakness of the last in the

weakness of the earliest years; it brings closer the two extremities of

life, the commencement and the end of the family; it confers a kind of

immortality upon the ancestors and implies that they are present in the

midst of their posterity.

[Sidenote: The Niagara indians.]

In what regards the dead, it is easy to find motives for the savage's

attachment to sacred relics. Civilized nations are able to preserve the

memory of their country by means of the mnemonics of literature and

the arts: they have cities, palaces, towers, columns, obelisks; they

have the track of the plough in fields once cultivated; their names are

carved in marble and brass, their actions recorded in the chronicles.

The desert peoples have none of these advantages: their names are not

written upon the trees; their huts, built in a few hours, disappear

in a few moments; the butt of their ploughing only grazes the ground,

and is not able even to raise a furrow. Their traditional songs perish

with the last memory which retains them, and die away with the last

voice which repeats them. The tribes of the New World, therefore, have

but one monument: the tomb. Take away from savages the bones of their

fathers, and you take away their history, their laws, and their very

gods; you rob those men, in the future generations, of the proofs both

of their existence and of their annihilation.

I wished to hear my hosts' songs. A little Indian girl of fourteen,

called Mila and very pretty (the Indian women are pretty only at that

age) sang something very pleasant. Was it not perchance the canzonet

quoted by Montaigne? "Adder stay, stay good adder, that my sister may

by the patterne of thy partie-coloured coat drawe the fashion and

worke of a rich lace, for me to give unto my love; so may thy beautie,

thy nimblenesse or disposition be ever preferred before all other

serpents[492]."

The author of the _Essaies_ saw Iroquois at Rouen, who, according to

him, were "not verie ill; but what," he adds, "of that? They weare no

kinde of breeches nor hosen[493]!"

If ever I publish the Στρωματεὶς or patchwork of my youth, to talk like

St. Clement of Alexandria[494] you shall there see Mila[495].

The Canadians are no longer the same as when they were described by

Cartier, Champlain[496], La Hontan[497], Lescarbot[498], Lafitau[499],

Charlevoix[500], and the _Lettres édifiantes_; the sixteenth century

and the commencement of the seventeenth were still the time of a

boundless imagination and ingenuous customs: the marvel of the first

reflected a virgin nature, and the candour of the second reproduced the

simplicity of the savage. Champlain tells us at the end of his first

journey to Canada, in 1603, that "near Chaleur Bay, verging to the

south, there is an island where dwells a frightful monster which the

savages call Gougou."

Canada had its giant as well as the Cape of Storms. Homer is the true

father of all these inventions; it is always the Cyclopes, Scylla and

Charybdis, ogres or _gougous._

The savage population of North America, not including the Mexicans and

Esquimaux, does not today amount to four hundred thousand souls on

either side of the Rocky Mountains; there are travellers who put it

so low as one hundred and fifty thousand. The degradation of Indian

manners has kept pace with the depopulation of the tribes. Their

religious traditions have become confused; the instruction spread by

the Canadian Jesuits has mixed foreign ideas with the inborn ideas

of the natives: through their rude fables, one sees the Christian

beliefs disfigured; the majority of the savages wear crosses by way

of ornaments, and the Protestant traders sell them what the Catholic

missionaries give them. Let us say at once, to the honour of our

country and to the glory of our religion, that the Indians had become

greatly attached to us; that they never cease to regret us; and that a

"black robe," or missionary, is still an object of veneration in the

forests of America. The savage continues to love us under the tree

where we were his first guests, on the soil which we have trod, where

we have left tombs in his care.

When the Indian was naked or clad in skins, he had something great

and noble about him; at present, rags of European clothing, without

covering his nakedness, bear witness to his destitution: he is a beggar

at the door of a counting-house, he is no longer the savage in his

forest

Lastly, a kind of hybrid people has been formed, born of colonial

fathers and Indian mothers. These men, called "Burnt-woods," because of

the colour of their skin, act as brokers between the authors of their

dual origin. They speak the language of their fathers and of their

mothers, and have the vices of both races. These bastards of civilized

and of savage nature sell themselves to the Americans and the English

by turns, to hand over to them the monopoly of the fur-trade; they

keep alive the rivalry between the English companies, the Hudson's Bay

Company and the North-West Fur Company, and the American companies, the

Columbian American Fur Company, the Missouri Fur Company and others:

they themselves go hunting for account of the traders and with hunters

paid by the companies.

[Sidenote: The Wars of the Companies.]

The great war of American Independence is the only one which people

know of. They are ignorant of the fact that blood has been shed on

behalf of the paltry interests of a handful of merchants. The Hudson's

Bay Company in 1811 sold to Lord Selkirk[501] a tract of land on the

bank of the Red River. The North-West or Canadian Company took umbrage

at this transaction. The two companies, allied to various Indian

tribes and seconded by the "Burnt-woods," came to blows. This domestic

conflict, so horrible in its details, took place on the frozen wastes

of Hudson's Bay. Lord Selkirk's colony was destroyed in the month

of June 1815[502], at the exact period of the Battle of Waterloo.

Upon those two theatres, one so brilliant, the other so obscure, the

misfortunes of the human species were the same.

Seek no longer in America the skillfully constructed political

constitutions of which Charlevoix has written the history: the monarchy

of the Hurons, the republic of the Iroquois. A somewhat similar

destruction has been accomplished and is still being accomplished

in Europe under our very eyes; a Prussian poet, at a banquet of the

Teutonic Order, held about the year 1400, sang in old Prussian the

heroic deeds of the ancient warriors of his country: no one present

understood him, and he received one hundred empty walnuts by way of

recompense. Today, the language of Lower Brittany, the Basque and

Gaelic languages, are dying out from cottage to cottage, keeping pace

with the deaths of the goatherds and husbandmen.

In the English County of Cornwall, the language of the natives became

extinct about the year 1676. A fisherman said to some travellers:

"I know hardly more than four or five persons who speak Cornish, and

they are old folk like myself, between sixty and eighty years of age;

none of the young people know a word of it."

Whole tribes of the Orinoco have ceased to exist; of their dialect

there remain but a dozen words articulated in the tree-tops by parrots

that have regained their freedom, like Agrippina's thrush, which

warbled Greek words upon the balustrades of the Roman palaces. This,

sooner or later, will be the fate of our modern jargons, the remains

of Latin and Greek. Some raven escaped from the cage of the last

Franco-Gallic curate will say, from the top of a ruined steeple, to

peoples that shall be foreign to our successors:

"Accept these last strains of a voice once known to you; you will put

an end to all this talk."

It is well worth while to be Bossuet, so that, in the ultimate event,

your masterpiece may survive, in the recollection of a bird, your

language and your memory among men!

*

When speaking of Canada and Louisiana, when considering on the old maps

the extent of the former French colonies in America, I asked myself

how the government of my country could have suffered the loss of those

colonies, which would be an inexhaustible source of prosperity for us

at this day.

From Arcadia[503] and Canada to Louisiana, from the mouth of the

St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, the territory of "New

France" surrounded what formed the confederation of the first thirteen

United States: the eleven others[504], together with the District of

Columbia, the North-Western Territory, the Territories of Michigan,

Missouri, Oregon, and Arkansas either belonged to us or would now

belong to us, as they belong to the United States by the cessions of

the English and Spaniards, our successors in Canada and Louisiana[505].

The country enclosed by the Atlantic on the north-east, the Arctic

Ocean on the north, the Pacific Ocean and the Russian possessions on

the north-west, and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, in other words

more than two-thirds of North America, would now be recognizing the

laws of France.

[Sidenote: Former French possessions.]

I fear that the Restoration will ruin itself through holding ideas

contrary to those which I have here expressed: the mania for adhering

to the past, a mania which I never cease impugning, would be in

no sense fatal if it subverted only myself, by robbing me of the

Sovereign's favour; but it may yet subvert the Throne. Political

stagnation is impossible; it is absolutely necessary to keep pace

with human intelligence. Let us respect the majesty of time; let us

reverentially contemplate past centuries, rendered sacred by the memory

and the footsteps of our fathers: but let us not try to go back to

them, for they no longer possess a vestige of our real nature, and if

we endeavoured to seize hold of them, they would fade away. The Chapter

of Our Lady of Aix-la-Chapelle caused the tomb of Charlemagne[506] to

be opened, we are told, about the year 1450. The Emperor was found

seated in a gilt chair, holding in his skeleton hands the Book of the

Gospels written in letters of gold; before him were laid his sceptre

and his golden buckler; by his side hung his sword "Joyeuse," sheathed

in a golden scabbard. He was clad in the imperial robes. On his head,

which was held erect by a golden chain, was a winding-sheet covering

what had been his face and surmounted by a crown. They touched the

phantom: it crumbled into dust.

We once possessed vast countries beyond the seas: they offered a

refuge for our surplus population, markets for our commerce, stations

for our navy. We are now excluded from the new world in which the human

race is beginning life afresh: in Africa, Asia, Oceania, in the South

Sea Islands, on the continent of North and South America, the English,

Portuguese, and Spanish languages serve to interpret the thoughts of

many millions of men; and we, disinherited of the conquests of our

valour and our genius, scarce hear the tongue of Colbert and Louis

XIV. spoken in some petty market-town of Louisiana or Canada, under a

foreign government: it lingers there only as a witness to the reverses

of our fortune and the errors of our policy.

And who is the king whose dominion now succeeds the dominion of the

King of France in the forests of Canada? He who yesterday caused this

note to be sent to me:

"Royal Lodge, Windsor,

"4 _June_ 1822.

"Monsieur le Vicomte,

"I am commanded by the King to invite Your Excellency to dine

and sleep here on Thursday the 6th instant.

"Your Excellency's most humble and obedient servant,

"Francis Conyngham[507]."

It was fated that I should be plagued by princes. I lay down my pen;

I recross the Atlantic; I mend my arm broken at Niagara; I take off

my bearskin; I resume my gold-laced coat; I leave the wigwam of an

Iroquois to repair to the Royal Lodge of His Britannic Majesty, King of

the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Lord of the Indies;

I leave my hosts with the exposed ears and my little girl-savage with

her bead: wishing Lady Conyngham[508] the charm of Mila, together with

the age which as yet belongs only to the earliest spring-time, to the

days which precede the month of May and which our Gallic poets called

the _avrillée_, the April shower.

*

The tribe of the little girl with the bead departed; my guide, the

Dutchman, refused to accompany me beyond the cataract; I paid him

and joined a party of traders who were leaving to go down the Ohio;

before setting out, I took a glance at the Canadian lakes. There is

nothing so mournful as the aspect of these lakes. The liquid plains

of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean open highways to the nations,

and their shores are, or were, inhabited by civilized, numerous, and

powerful peoples; the lakes of Canada display only the nakedness of

their waters, which, in its turn, is joined to a bare soil: they are

deserts dividing other deserts. Shores devoid of inhabitants look upon

seas devoid of ships; you alight from the unfrequented waves upon

unfrequented coasts.

[Sidenote: Lake Erie.]

Lake Erie is over one hundred leagues in circumference. The nations of

the water-side were exterminated by the Iroquois two centuries ago. It

is an appalling thing to see the Indians venturing in their birch-bark

wherries upon this lake famed for its tempests, in which myriads of

serpents swarmed in former days. These Indians hang their manitous upon

the prow of their canoes and dart into the midst of the eddies among

the heaving waves. The waves, level with the aperture of the canoes,

seem ready to swallow them up. The hunters' dogs, with their front-paws

resting on the side, utter loud barks, while their masters, preserving

a profound silence, beat the waves in cadence with their paddles. The

canoes proceed in Indian file: in the prow of the first stands a chief

who repeats the diphthong _oah_: _o_ in a long, dull note, _ah_ in a

short, sharp tone. In the last canoe is another chief, who also stands

up, and works an oar by way of rudder. The other braves squat upon

their heels at the bottom of the well. Across the mist and the winds

one perceives nothing save the plumes adorning the Indians' heads, the

outstretched necks of the baying dogs, and the shoulders of the two

sachems, the pilot and the augur: as it were the gods of these lakes.

The rivers of Canada play no part in the history of the world of

antiquity: how different from the destiny of the Ganges, the Euphrates,

the Nile, the Danube, and the Rhine! What changes have not these beheld

upon their banks! How much sweat and blood has been poured forth by

conquerors to cross, in their current, waters over which, at their

source, a goatherd passes with a single step!

*

Leaving the lakes of Canada, we came to Pittsburg at the confluence

of the Kentucky and Ohio rivers; here the landscape unfolds an

extraordinary stateliness. Nevertheless, this magnificent country is

called Kentucky after its river, whose name means "river of blood." It

owes this name to its beauty: for more than two centuries the nations

on the side of the Cherokees and of the Iroquois nations fought for the

possession of its hunting-fields.

Will the European generations be more virtuous and more free upon those

banks than were the exterminated American generations? Shall slaves

not till the soil beneath the lash of their masters, in these deserts

of man's primeval independence? Shall prisons and gallows not fill the

places of the open hut and the tall tulip-tree where the bird builds

its nest? Shall the richness of the soil not cause new wars to burst

forth? Shall Kentucky cease to be the "Land of Blood," and shall the

monuments of the arts beautify the banks of the Ohio to better purpose

than the monuments of nature?

After passing the Wabash, the Cypress, the Cumberland, the Cherokee,

or Tennessee, the Yellowbank, one comes to a tongue of land often

submerged beneath the mighty waters: here is formed the confluence

of the Ohio and the Mississippi in latitude 36° 51'. The two rivers

oppose an equal resistance to one another and relax the force of their

currents; for some miles they sleep side by side without mingling in

the same bed, like two great peoples at first of different origins and

then combining to form but one race; like two illustrious combatants

sharing the same couch after a battle; like a husband and wife born of

hostile blood, who at first have but little inclination to mingle their

destinies in the nuptial bed.

And I, too, even as the mighty urns of the rivers, have poured forth my

life's small current, now on this, now on that side of the mountain;

capricious in my straying, but never malignant; preferring the poor

glens to the rich plains, stopping at the flowers rather than at the

palaces. For that matter, I was so charmed with my rambles that I gave

scarce a further thought to the Pole. A party of traders, who had come

from among the Creeks, in Florida, gave me leave to accompany them.

We set out for the countries known at that time by the general name

of the Floridas, today divided into the States of Alabama, Georgia,

South Carolina, and Tennessee. We followed, more or less closely, paths

now connected by the high-road which runs from Natchez to Nashville,

through Jackson and Florence, and which enters Virginia by way of

Knoxville and Salem: a country very little frequented at that time,

although Bartram[509] had explored its lakes and sites. The planters

of Georgia and Florida proper went to the various tribes of the Creeks

to buy horses and half-wild cattle, which multiplied indefinitely in

the savannahs pierced by the wells at whose edges I placed Atala and

Chactas. They even extended their journey as far as Ohio.

[Sidenote: I sail up the Ohio River.]

We ran before a stiff breeze. The Ohio, swollen by a hundred rivers,

passed now through the lakes which opened out before us, now through

the woods. Islands stood out in the middle of the lakes. We made sail

for one of the largest of these: we came alongside at eight in the

morning.

I crossed a meadow strewn with ragwort with its yellow flowers,

hollyhocks with their pink plumes, and obelarias with purple egrets.

An Indian ruin struck my eyes. The contrast between this ruin and the

youth of nature, this monument of men in a desert, caused a great

emotion. What people dwelt upon this island? Its name, its race, the

time of its passing? Did it live at the time when the world in whose

midst it lay hidden was as yet unknown to the three other quarters of

the globe? The silence of this people was perhaps contemporaneous with

the fame of some great nations that have in their turn lapsed into

silence[510].

Sandy anfractuosities, ruins or _tumuli_ issued from amid poppies with

red flowers hanging at the end of bent, pale-green stalks. The stem and

the flower have an aroma which clings to the fingers when one touches

the plant. The perfume which outlives the flower is an image of the

memory of a life spent in solitude.

I observed the nymphæa: it was preparing to hide its white lily beneath

the surface at the close of day; the "tree of sadness[511]" was

awaiting the night before unfolding its own: the wife retires to bed at

the hour when the courtesan rises.

The pyramidal œnothera, which is seven or eight feet high, with

pale leaves dentated with dark green, has other habits and another

destiny: its yellow flower begins to half-open in the evening, during

the space of time which Venus occupies in descending below the horizon;

it continues to expand by the light of the stars; the dawn discovers it

in all its brilliancy; midway through the morning it fades; it falls at

noonday. It lives for but a few hours; but it despatches those hours

beneath a placid sky, between the breaths of Venus and Aurora: what

matters, then, the shortness of life?

A streamlet trickled through a garland of dionæas; a multitude of

day-flies buzzed all around. There were also humming-birds and

butterflies which, decked in their brightest gauds, rivalled the motley

flowers in splendour.

In the midst of these walks and studies, I was often struck by their

futility. What! Did the Revolution, which already weighed down upon

me and drove me into the woods, inspire me with no graver thoughts

than these? What! Was the time of my country's confusion that which I

chose to occupy myself with descriptions of plants, and butterflies,

and flowers? The individuality of mankind serves as a measure of the

littleness of great events. How many men are indifferent to those

events! To how many others do they remain unknown! The aggregate

population of the globe is estimated at from eleven to twelve hundred

millions; a man dies every second: thus in each minute of our

existence, of our smiles, of our joys, sixty men expire, sixty families

moan and weep. Life is a permanent pestilence. The chain of mourning

and funerals that winds us about is never broken, grows ever longer:

we ourselves form one of its links. And then tell us to magnify the

importance of the catastrophes of which seven-eighths of the world will

never hear speak! To pant for a fame which will spread its wings at but

a few leagues from our tomb! To plunge into the ocean of a felicity of

which each minute slips away between sixty graves incessantly renewed!

Nam nox Nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est Quæ non

audierit mixtos vagitibus ægris Ploratus, mortis comites et

funeris atri.

The savages of Florida tell of an island in the middle of a lake

where live the most beautiful women in the world. The Muskhogulges

have repeatedly attempted its conquest; but this Eden flees before

the canoes, a natural image of the chimeras which retreat before our

desires. The country also contained a fountain of youth: who would wish

to rise from the dead?

But little was wanting to make these fables assume a semblance of

reality in my eyes. At a moment when we least expected it, we saw a

flotilla of canoes come out of a bay, some with oars, others with

sails. They landed at our island. They were two families of Creeks, of

which one consisted of Seminoles, the other of Muskhogulges, including

some Cherokees and Burnt-woods. I was struck with the grace of these

savages, who in no respect resemble those of Canada.

[Sidenote: Two fair Floridans.]

The Seminoles and Muskhogulges are fairly tall, and, by an unusual

contrast, their mothers, wives, and daughters are the smallest race

of women known in America. The Indian women who landed near us, born

of mixed Cherokee and Castilian blood, were tall in stature. Two of

them were like the creoles of San Domingo and Mauritius, but yellow

and delicate as the women of the Ganges. These two Floridan women,

cousins on the father's side, served as my models, one for Atala, the

other for Céluta: they excelled the portraits I drew of them only

by that variable and fugitive truth of nature, that physiognomy of

race and climate which I was not able to express. There was something

indefinable in that oval visage, in that shaded complexion, which one

seemed to see through a light, orange-tinted smoke, in that hair so

black and soft, those eyes so long, half-hidden beneath the veil of

two satiny eyelids that opened indolently; in short, in the two-fold

seduction of the Indian and the Spanish woman.

The meeting with our hosts occasioned a certain alteration in our

movements: our trading agents began to inquire about horses; it was

decided that we should go to fix ourselves in the neighbourhood of

the studs. The plain in which our camp stood was covered with bulls,

cows, horses, bisons, buffaloes, cranes, turkeys, pelicans: these birds

mottled the green background of our savannah with white, black, and

pink stains.

Our traders and hunters were stirred by many passions: not passions of

race, education, or prejudice, but natural passions, full and absolute,

making straight for their object, having for witnesses a tree fallen

in the depths of an unknown forest, a nameless stream. The relations

between the Spaniards and the Creek women formed the ground-work of

the adventures; the "Burnt-woods" played the principal part in those

romances. One story was famous: that of a trader in strong waters

seduced and ruined by a "painted woman" or courtesan. This story, put

into Seminole verse with the title of _Tabamica_, was sung in passing

through the woods[512]. Carried off in their turn by the colonists, the

Indian women soon died forsaken at Pensacola[513]: their misfortunes

went to swell the _Romanceros_ and to be numbered among the ballads of

Ximenes.

*

The earth is a charming mother; we issue from her womb: in childhood,

she holds us to her breasts swollen with milk and honey; in youth and

old age, she lavishes upon us her refreshing waters, her harvests and

her fruits; she offers us, wherever we may go, a shade, a bath, a table

and a bed; she opens her entrails again to receive us after death, and

throws a coverlet of herbs and flowers over our remains, while she

secretly transforms us into her own substance, to reproduce us under

some graceful shape. That is what I said to myself on waking, when my

first look fell upon the sky, the canopy of my bed.

The hunters had set out for the work of the day; I remained behind

with the women and children. I never left the side of my two sylvan

goddesses: one was proud, the other sad. I did not understand a word

of what they said to me, and they did not understand me; but I went to

fetch water for their cup, shoots for their fire, mosses for their bed.

They wore the petticoat and the wide, slashed sleeves of the Spanish

women, the body and cloak of the Indian women. Their bare legs were

cross-gartered with a lace-work of birch. They plaited their hair with

posies or filaments of rushes; they mailed themselves in chains and

necklaces of glass beads. From their ears hung purple berries; they

had a fine talking paroquet: the bird of Armida; they fastened it on

their shoulder like an emerald, or carried it hooded on their hand, as

the great ladies of the tenth century carried their hawks. To harden

their breasts and arms, they rubbed themselves with the apoya, or

American gallingale. In Bengal the nautch-girls chew the betel-nut,

and in the Levant the almes suck the mastic of Chio: the Floridan

maidens pounded, between their teeth of a bluey whiteness, tears of

liquid-amber and roots of _libanis_, which blended the fragrance of

angelica, cedrat, and vanilla. They lived in an atmosphere of perfumes

emanating from themselves, like orange-trees and flowers living in

the pure exhalations from their leaves and chalices. I amused myself

by placing a little ornament upon their heads: they submitted, gently

dismayed; witches themselves, they thought I was working a charm upon

them. One of them, the "proud" one, often prayed; she seemed to me half

a Christian. The other sang in a voice of velvet, uttering at the end

of each phrase a note that troubled one. Sometimes they spoke hastily

to each other: I thought I could recognize the accents of jealousy, but

the "sad" one wept, and silence was restored.

Weak as I was, I sought examples of weakness, in order to encourage

myself. Had not Camoëns in the Indies loved a black Barbary slave,

and might not I in America do homage to two young jonquil sultanas?

Had Camoëns not addressed _endechas_, or stanzas, to his _Barbaru

escrava?_[514]

*

A fishing-party was arranged. The sun was nearing its setting. In the

foreground appeared sassafras, tulip-trees, catalpas, and oaks, from

whose boughs hung skeins of white moss. Behind this foreground rose the

most charming of trees, the papaw, which might have been taken for a

chased silver style, surmounted by a Corinthian urn. In the background

reigned balsam-trees, magnolias, and liquid-ambers.

[Sidenote: An exquisite landscape.]

The sun dropped behind that curtain: a ray piercing through the crown

of a thicket sparkled like a carbuncle set in the sombre foliage; the

light diverging between the trunks and branches projected heightening

columns and mobile arabesques upon the sward. Below were lilacs,

azaleas, annulated creepers with gigantic sheaves; above, the clouds,

some fixed, like promontories or old towers, others fleeting, like

rosy vapours or carded silk. By means of successive transformations,

one saw the mouths of furnaces opening up in those clouds, heaps of

embers piling themselves up, streams of lava flowing: all was dazzling,

radiant, gilded, opulent, saturated with light.

After the Morean insurrection in 1770, some Greek families took refuge

in Florida; they could still believe themselves in that Ionian climate

which seems to have relented, together with men's passions: at Smyrna,

in the evening, nature sleeps like a courtesan wearied with love.

On our right were ruins belonging to the great fortifications that

were found on the Ohio, on our left an old savage camp. The island on

which we were, pictured in the water and reproduced by a mirage, poised

its double perspective before us. In the east, the moon rested upon

distant hills; in the west, the vault of the sky was melted into a sea

of diamonds and sapphires, in which the sun, half-immersed, appeared to

be dissolving. The animals of creation were keeping watch; the earth,

in adoration, seemed to offer incense to the sky, and the amber exhaled

from its bosom fell back upon it in the form of dew, as prayers fall

back upon those who pray.

Abandoned by my companions, I lay resting by the edge of a clump of

trees: its darkness, glazed with light, formed the penumbra in which

I sat. Fire-flies gleamed among the crape-covered shrubs and became

obscured when they passed through the irradiations of the moon. I

heard the sounds made by the rise and fall of the lake, the leap of the

gold-fish, and the rare cry of the diver. My eyes were fixed upon the

water; I gradually lapsed into the state of drowsiness known to men who

travel the world's highways: I lost all clearness of recollection; I

felt myself living and vegetating with nature in a kind of pantheism.

I leant back against the trunk of a magnolia-tree and fell asleep; my

slumbers floated upon a vague surface of hope.

When I emerged from this Lethe, I found myself between two women: the

odalisks had returned; they did not wish to arouse me; they had sat

down silently by my side; whether they had feigned sleep or had really

slumbered, their heads had fallen on my shoulders.

A breeze blew through the grove and deluged us in a shower of

rose-leaves from the magnolia. Then the younger of the Seminoles began

to sing: let whomsoever is not sure of his life beware of ever thus

exposing himself! No one knows the strength of the passion that glides

with melody into a man's breast. A rude and jealous voice replied: a

" Burnt-wood" was calling the two cousins; they started and rose: the

dawn was beginning to break.

In the absence of Aspasia alone, I have since repeated this scene

on the shores of Greece: ascending to the columns of the Parthenon

with the dawn, I saw the Cithæron, Mount Hymettus, the Acropolis of

Corinth, the tombs, the ruins, bathed in a dew of golden, transparent,

shimmering light, reflected by the seas and wafted like a perfume by

the zephyrs from Salamis and Delos.

We finished on the bank our voyage without words. At noon, we broke up

the camp to inspect the horses which the Creeks wished to sell and the

traders to buy. Women and children, all were summoned as witnesses,

according to the custom in solemn bargains. Stallions of every age

and colour, foals and mares, with bulls, cows and heifers, began to

scamper and gallop around us. Amid this confusion, I became separated

from the Creeks. A thick group of men and horses gathered on the

skirt of a wood. Suddenly, in the distance, I perceived my two fair

Floridans; vigorous hands seated them upon the cruppers of two barbs

ridden bare-backed by a "Burnt-wood" and a Seminole. O Cid, why had

not I thy swift Babieça that I might overtake them! The mares galloped

off, the immense squadron followed them. The horses rushed, jumped,

bounded, neighed, amid the horns of the bulls and buffaloes, their

hoofs clashed in mid-air, their tails and manes flew blood-stained.

A whirlwind of voracious insects swarmed about this wild cavalry. My

Floridans disappeared from sight like Ceres' daughter, snatched by the

god of the nether world.

[Sidenote: End of my Floridan romance.]

Thus does everything prove abortive in my life, thus is nought left

me save pictures of what has passed so quickly: I shall descend to

the Elysian Fields with more shades than mortal man has ever taken

with him. The fault lies with my organization: I am never able to take

advantage of any piece of good fortune; I can never take an interest in

anything whatever that interests others. Putting religion aside, I have

no beliefs. Shepherd or king, what should I have done with my sceptre

or my crook? I should have wearied equally of glory or genius, work or

leisure, prosperity or misfortune. Everything tires me: laboriously I

tow my weariness after my days, and, wherever I go, I yawn away my life.

*

Ronsard[515] shows us Mary Stuart[516] ready to set out for Scotland

after the death of François II[517]. Was I like Mary Stuart wandering

through Fontainebleau, when I wandered about my savannah after my

widowerhood? One thing is certain, that my mind, if not my person, was

wrapped in "a long crape, subtil and flowing," as Ronsard also says,

that old poet of the new school.

The devil having flown away with the Muskhogulge damsels, I was told

by the guide that a "Burnt-wood," who was in love with one of the two

women, was jealous of me and had resolved with a Seminole, the brother

of the other cousin, to carry Atala and Céluta off from me. The guides

spoke of them bluntly as "painted girls," which shocked my vanity.

I felt the more humiliated in that the "Burnt-wood," my favoured

rival, was a lean, ugly, dark-skinned mosquito, possessing all the

characteristics of the insects which, according to the entomologists of

the Grand Lama, are animals whose flesh is inside their bones. Solitude

appeared empty to me after my misadventure. I gave the cold shoulder

to my sylph, who generously hastened to console her faithless lover,

like Julie when she forgave Saint-Preux his Parisian Floridans[518]. I

lost no time in quitting the desert in which I have since resuscitated

the drowsy companions of my night. I know not whether I gave back to

them the life they gave me: at least I made a virgin of one, a virtuous

spouse of the other, by way of expiation.

We again crossed the Blue Mountains, and approached the European

clearings in the neighbourhood of Chillicothe. I had gathered no light

upon the principal object of my enterprise; but I was escorted by a

world of poetry:

Comme une jeune abeille aux roses engagée

Ma muse revenait de son butin chargée[519].

On the bank of a stream I saw an American house: at one end a

farm-house, at the other a mill. I went in, asked for food and shelter,

and was well received.

My hostess led me by a ladder to a room above the shaft of the

hydraulic apparatus. My little casement-window, festooned with ivy and

cobæas with iris bells, opened above the stream which flowed, narrow

and solitary, between two thick borders of willows, elms, sassafras,

tamarinds, and Carolina poplars. The moss-grown mill-wheel turned

beneath their shade and let fall long ribands of water. Perch and trout

leapt in the foam of the eddy; water-wagtails flew from bank to bank,

and various kinds of kingfishers fluttered their blue wings above the

current.

How happy should I have been there with the "sad" one, had she been

faithful to me, seated dreaming at her feet, my head laid upon her

knees, listening to the noise of the weir, the rotations of the wheel,

the rolling of the mill-stone, the sifting of the bolter, the even

beating of the clapper, breathing the freshness of the water and the

scent from the husks of the pearl-barley.

Night came. I went down to the sitting-room of the farm-house. It was

lighted only by maize-straw and husks of beans blazing in the hearth.

The fire-arms of the master of the house, lying horizontally in the

gun-rack, gleamed in the reflections from the fireplace. I sat down

upon a stool in the chimney-corner, near a squirrel, which jumped from

the back of a large dog to the shelf of a spinning-wheel and back

again. A kitten installed itself upon my knee to watch this sport. The

miller's wife put a large stew-pot on the fire, the flames of which

played round the pot's black bottom like a radiant golden crown. While

I watched the sweet potatoes boiling for my supper, I amused myself by

reading by the firelight, with lowered head, an English newspaper which

had fallen on the floor between my legs. Printed in large letters I

read the words:

FLIGHT OF THE KING.

It was the story of the flight of Louis XVI., and the arrest of the

unfortunate monarch at Varennes[520]. The paper also described the

progress of the emigration and the gathering of the officers of the

army around the flag of the French Princes.

A sudden conversion took place within my mind. Rinaldo beheld his

weakness in the mirror of honour in Armida's gardens; I was not Tasso's

hero, but the same looking-glass showed me my image in the midst of an

American orchard. The clash of arms, the world's tumult resounded in

my ears under the thatch of a mill hidden in unknown woods. I abruptly

interrupted my travels, and said to myself:

"Go back to France."

Thus it happened that my sense of duty upset my early plans, and

occasioned the first of the revolutions that have marked my career.

The Bourbons no more needed that a cadet of Brittany should return

from across the seas to offer them his obscure devotion than they have

needed his services since he has emerged from his obscurity. Had I lit

my pipe with the newspaper which changed the course of my life, and

continued my journey, no one would have remarked my absence; my life

was at that time as unknown and weighed as little as the smoke from my

calumet. A simple contest between myself and my conscience flung me

upon the world's stage. I could have acted as I pleased, since I alone

was a witness of the struggle; but, of all witnesses, that is the one

before whose eyes I should most fear to blush.

Why is it that the solitudes of Erie and Ontario present themselves to

my thoughts today with a charm which the brilliant spectacle of the

Bosphorus is not able to possess in my memory? It is because, at the

time of my journey in the United States, I was full of illusions: the

troubles of France commenced at the same time as the commencement of my

existence; nothing was complete in myself or in the land of my birth.

Those days are dear to me because they recall to me the innocence of

sentiments inspired by the family and the pleasures of youth.

Fifteen years later, after my journey in the Levant, the Republic,

swollen with ruins and tears, had discharged itself like a torrent from

the deluge into despotism. I no longer deluded myself with chimeras; my

recollections, thenceforth taking their source in society and passions,

lacked candour. Deceived in both my pilgrimages to the West and to the

East, I had failed to discover the passage to the Pole, I had failed to

snatch glory on the banks of Niagara, where I had gone in search of it,

and I had left it seated on the ruins of Athens.

After setting out to be a traveller in America and returning to be a

soldier in Europe, I did not go the whole length of either of those

careers: an evil genius snatched the staff and the sword from my hand,

and put the pen there in its stead. Fifteen more years have elapsed

since, finding myself at Sparta, and contemplating the sky during the

night, I recalled the countries that had already witnessed my peaceful

or troubled sleep: on the commons of England, in the plains of Italy,

upon the high-seas, in the Canadian forests, I had already saluted the

same stars which I saw shine upon the land of Helen and Menelaus. But

what would it avail me to complain to the stars, the fixed witnesses

of my vagrant destinies? One day their gaze will cease to tire itself

by pursuing me; meantime, indifferent to my fate, I will not ask those

stars to move it with a gentler influence nor to restore to me that

portion of life which the traveller leaves behind in the places at

which he touches.

Were I to revisit the United States today, I should no longer recognize

them: there where I left forests, I should find tilled fields; there

where I traced a path for myself across the thickets, I should travel

on the high-roads; at Natchez, instead of Céluta's hut, stands a town

of some five thousand inhabitants; Chactas might today be sent to

Congress. I have lately received a pamphlet printed among the Cherokees

and addressed to myself, in the interests of those savages, as "the

defender of the liberty of the press."

In the land of the Muskhogulges, the Seminoles, the Chickasaws, we find

a city of Athens, another of Marathon, another of Carthage, another of

Memphis, another of Sparta, another of Florence; there is a County of

Columbia and a County of Marengo: the glory of every country has placed

a name in the same wastes where I met Father Aubry and the obscure

Atala. Kentucky exhibits a Versailles; a territory called Bourbon has

a Paris for its capital.

All the exiles, all the fugitives from oppression who have taken refuge

in America have carried there the memory of their country.

Falsi Simoentis ad undam

Libabat cineri Andromache[521].

The United States offer in their bosom, under the protection of

liberty, an image and a memory of the greater part of the famous spots

of antiquity and of modern Europe: the Emperor Hadrian caused copies

of the monuments of his empire to be placed in his garden in the Roman

Campagna.

[Sidenote: American progress.]

Thirty-three high-roads run out of Washington, as formerly the Roman

roads started from the Capitol; spreading asunder, they end at the

circumference of the United States and trace a circulation of 25,747

miles. Posting-stations are established on a large number of these

roads. One now takes the coach for the Ohio or Niagara as in my time

one took a guide or an Indian interpreter. The means of transport are

two-fold: lakes and rivers abound, and are connected by canals; you

can travel alongside of the high-roads in rowing or sailing-boats,

barges or steamers. Fuel is inexhaustible, since immense forests cover

coal-mines level with the surface.

The population of the United States has increased in every decade

from 1790 to 1820 at the rate of 35 per cent. It is calculated that

in 1830 the population will amount to 12,875,000 souls. Continuing to

double every twenty-five years, it should amount in 1855 to 25,750,000

souls, and twenty-five years later, in 1880, it should exceed fifty

millions[522].

This human sap causes the wilderness to thrive on every side. The

Canadian lakes, on which lately no sail was to be seen, now resemble

docks in which frigates, corvettes, cutters and barks pass Indian

pirogues and canoes, in the same way in which the big ships and galleys

mix with the pinks, sloops and caiques in the waters of Constantinople.

The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio no longer pursue a solitary

course: three-masters ascend their currents; over two hundred

steam-boats enliven their banks. This immense inland navigation, which

alone would ensure the prosperity of the United States, does not

lessen their distant expeditions. Their vessels sail all the seas,

engage in all forms of enterprise, carry the Stars and Stripes from the

horizon of the setting sun to the shores where the sun rises, shores

that have never known aught but slavery.

To complete this surprising scene, one must picture to one's self

cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston,

Savannah, New Orleans, lighted at night, filled with horses and

carriages, adorned with coffee-houses, museums, libraries, ball-rooms,

theatres, displaying all the enjoyments of luxury.

At the same time, the United States must not be searched for that which

distinguishes man above the other beings of creation, for that which

constitutes his certificate of immortality and the ornament of his

days: literature is unknown in the new republic, although called for

by a multitude of institutions. The American has replaced intellectual

by positive operations. Do not impute to him as an inferiority his

mediocrity in the arts, for it is not in that direction that he has

turned his attention. Cast through various causes upon a desert soil,

he made agriculture and commerce the first objects of his cares: before

thinking, one must live; before planting trees, one must fell them, in

order to till the ground.

The primitive colonists, it is true, their minds steeped in religious

controversy, carried the passion for disputation into the very heart

of the forests; but it was necessary for them first to shoulder their

axes and march to the conquest of the desert: their sole pulpit, in

the intervals between their labours, was the elm they were engaged

in squaring. The Americans have not passed through the ages of other

nations: they left their childhood and their youth in Europe; the

artless words of the cradle were unknown to them; they enjoyed the

delights of home only through the medium of their regrets for a native

land which they had never seen, and of which they mourned the eternal

absence and the charm they had heard of from others.

The new continent has no classical literature, nor romantic literature,

nor Indian literature: for the classical, the Americans have no models;

for the romantic, no middle-ages; I for the Indian, the Americans

despise the savages and loathe the sight of the woods as of a prison to

which they were once condemned.

And thus it comes that literature as a thing apart, literature

properly so-called, does not exist in America; what one finds is

applied literature, answering to the different needs of society: the

literature of workmen, merchants, sailors, farmers. Americans succeed

in mechanics and science, because science has its material side.

Franklin[523] and Fulton[524] took possession of lightning and steam

for the benefit of mankind. It fell to America to endow the world with

the discovery, thanks to which no continent can henceforward escape the

mariner's search.

Poetry and imagination, the portion of a very small number of idlers,

are regarded in the United States as puerilities appertaining to the

first and to the last age of life. The Americans have had no childhood

and have as yet had no old age.

[Sidenote: The American presidents.]

Hence it follows that men engaged upon serious studies have necessarily

been obliged to take part in the affairs of their country in order to

become acquainted with them, and in the same way they inevitably found

themselves actors in their revolution. But one melancholy fact must be

observed, which is the prompt degeneration of talent, from the first

men, who figured in the American troubles, down to the men of these

latter days; and yet those men all touch. The old presidents of the

Republic have a religious, simple, lofty, calm character, of which we

find no trace in the blood-stained tumults of our own Republic and

Empire. The solitude with which the Americans were surrounded reacted

upon their nature; they achieved their liberty in silence.

General Washington's farewell address[525] to the people of the United

States might have been uttered by the gravest characters of antiquity:

"How far in the discharge of my official duties," says the

General, "I have been guided by the principles which have

been delineated, the public records and other evidence of my

conduct must witness to you, and to the world. To myself,

the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least

believed myself to be guided by them....

"Though, in reviewing the incidents of my Administration, I

am unconscious of intentional error--I am nevertheless too

sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may

have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently

beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which

they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my

country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and

that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its

service, with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent

abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon

be to the mansions of rest."

Jefferson[526] in his house at Monticello, wrote, after the death of

one of his two children:

"The loss which I have experienced is a really great one.

Others may lose of that which they possess in abundance,

but I, of my whole portion, have now to deplore the loss of

one-half. The declining years of my life are now held up by

the slender thread of one human life. Perhaps I am destined

to see the last tie of a father's affection broken!"

Philosophy, which is rarely touching, is here touching in the highest

degree. And this is not the idle grief of a man who had played no part

in life. Jefferson died on the 4th of July 1826, in the eighty-fourth

year of his age, and the fifty-fourth year of the independence of his

country. His remains lie covered with a stone, having for sole epitaph

the words:

THOMAS JEFFERSON,

AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Pericles and Demosthenes pronounced the funeral oration of the young

Greeks who had fallen for a people that disappeared soon after

themselves: in 1817, Brackenridge[527] celebrated the death of the

young Americans whose blood gave birth to a nation.

We have a national gallery of portraits of distinguished Americans, in

four volumes octavo, and what is more singular, a biography containing

the lives of over one hundred of the principal Indian chiefs.

Logan[528], the Virginian chief, uttered these words before Lord

Dunmore[529]:

"Colonel Cresap[530], the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked,

murdered all the relations of Logan. There runs not a drop of my blood

in the veins of any living creature that called on me for revenge. I

have sought it; I have killed many.... Who is there to mourn for Logan?

Not one."

Without loving nature, the Americans have applied themselves to the

study of natural history. Townsend[531] set out from Philadelphia

and traversed on foot the regions separating the Atlantic from the

Pacific Ocean, jotting down numerous observations in his journal.

Thomas Say[532], who travelled in Florida and in the Rocky Mountains,

has published a work on American entomology. Wilson[533], a weaver who

became an author, has left some rather finished pictures.

[Sidenote: American literature.]

To turn to literature proper, although it does not amount to much,

there are, nevertheless, a few writers to be mentioned among the

novelists and poets. Brown[534], the son of a Quaker, is the author

of _Wieland_, which is the source and model of the novels of the new

school. Unlike his fellow-countrymen:

"I prefer," said Brown, "roaming in the forests to thrashing corn."

Wieland, the hero of the novel, is a Puritan whom Heaven has commanded

to kill his wife:

"'I have brought thee hither,' says he to her, 'to fulfil a divine

command. I am appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must.'

"Saying this, I seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavoured

to free herself from my grasp....

"'Wieland.... Am I not thy wife? And wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt

not; oh!... Spare me-spare-help, help--'

"Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help-for mercy."

*

Wieland strangles his wife, and experiences unspeakable delights by the

side of her dead corpse. The horror of our modern inventions is here

surpassed. Brown had trained his mind by reading _Caleb Williams_[535],

and in _Wieland_ he copied a scene from _Othello._

At the present day, the American novelists Cooper[536] and Washington

Irving[537] are obliged to take refuge in Europe to find chronicles

and a public. The language of the great English writers has been

"creolized," "provincialized," "barbarized," without gaining anything

in energy in the midst of a virgin nature; it has become necessary to

draw up catalogues of American expressions.

As to the American poets, their language has charm, but they rarely

rise above the common-place. Still, the _Ode to the Evening Breeze_,

the _Sunrise on the Mount_, the _Torrent_, and some other poems,

deserve a passing glance. Halleck[538] has sung the death of Bozzaris,

and George Hill[539] has wandered among the Ruins of Athens:

Alas! for her, the beautiful, but lone,

Dethroned queen[540]!...

And again:

There sits the queen of temples[541]--grey and lone.

She, like the last of an imperial line,

Has seen her sister structures, one by one,

To time their gods and worshippers resign[542].

It pleases me, a traveller on the shores of Hellas and Atlantis, to

hear the independent voice of a land unknown to antiquity lamenting the

lost liberty of the old world.

[Sidenote: American politics.]

But will America preserve her form of government? Will the States not

become divided? Has not a representative of Virginia already maintained

the theory of ancient liberty with slaves, the result of paganism,

against a representative of Massachusetts, defending the cause of

modern liberty without slaves, as Christianity made it? Are not the

Northern and Southern States opposed in mind and interests? Will not

the Western States, so far removed from the Atlantic, wish to have a

separate government? On the one hand, is the federal bond sufficiently

powerful to maintain the union, and to compel each State to draw closer

to it? On the other hand, if the presidential power be increased, will

not despotism come with the guards and privileges of the dictator?

The isolation of the United States has permitted them to spring into

being and to increase: it is doubtful whether they would have been able

to exist and grow in Europe. Federal Switzerland subsists in our midst;

but why? Because she is small, poor, cantoned in the bosom of the

mountains, a nursery of soldiers for kings, a goal for travellers.

Separated from the old world, the population of the United States still

inhabits the solitude: its deserts have been its liberty; but already

the conditions of its existence are altering.

The existence of the democracies of Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Chile,

Buenos Ayres, always troubled as they are, constitute a danger. When

the United States had nothing near them except the colonies of a

Transatlantic kingdom, no serious war was probable; now, are there not

rivalries to be dreaded? Let men on both sides have recourse to arms,

let the military spirit seize upon the children of Washington, and a

great captain may rise to the throne: glory loves crowns.

I have said that the Northern, Southern, and Western States were

divided in interests; that is common knowledge: if these States break

up the union, will they be reduced by force of arms? In that case,

what a leaven of hatred will be spread through the social body! Will

the dissenting States maintain their independence? In that case, what

discords will not break out among those emancipated States! Those

republics across the sea, once uncoupled, would no longer form aught

save feeble units without weight in the social balance, where they

would be successively subjugated by one of their number (I leave on

one side the serious question of alliances and foreign intervention).

Kentucky, peopled as it is with a race of men bred in the open air,

harder and more soldier-like, would seem destined to become the

conquering State. In this State devouring the others, the power of one

would soon rise upon the ruins of the power of all.

I have spoken of the danger of war; I must point out the dangers of

a long peace. Since their emancipation, the United States have, with

the exception of a few months, enjoyed the most profound tranquillity;

while Europe was shaken with a hundred battles, the United States

tilled their fields in safety. Hence we find an overflowing population

and riches, with all the drawbacks of a superabundance of riches and

population. If hostilities came unexpectedly upon an unwarlike people,

would it be able to offer resistance? Would its fortunes and habits

consent to sacrifices? How could it give up the bland usages, the

comfort, the indolent well-being of life? China and India, asleep in

their muslin draperies, have constantly endured the foreign yoke. That

which is best suited to the complexion of a free society is a state of

peace moderated by war, and a state of war tempered with peace. The

Americans have already worn the olive-crown too long continuously: the

tree that provides it is not a native of their shores.

The commercial spirit is beginning to take possession of them;

self-interest is becoming their national vice. Already the speculations

of the banks of the different States clash with one another, and

bankruptcies threaten the fortunes of the community. So long as liberty

produces gold, an industrial republic does wonders; but when the gold

is acquired or exhausted, it loses its love of independence, which is

not based upon a moral sentiment, but arises from the thirst for gain

and the passion for trade.

Moreover, it is difficult to create a mother-country among States which

have nothing in common in religion or interests, which, issuing from

various sources and at various times, live on a different soil and

under a different sun. What connection is there between a Frenchman of

Louisiana, a Spaniard of Florida, a German of New York, an Englishman

of New England, Virginia, Carolina, Georgia, who are all reckoned as

Americans? One is thoughtless and a duelist; the next a Catholic,

lazy and haughty; the other a Lutheran, a husbandman, with no slaves;

another, an Anglican and a planter, with negroes; yet another, a

Puritan and a merchant: how many centuries will be needed to make these

elements homogeneous?

A chrysogenous[543] aristocracy is ready to appear with the love of

distinctions and the passion for titles. Men think that a general level

prevails in the United States: that is a complete mistake. There are

sets in their society which despise one another and refuse to mix;

there are houses in which the arrogance of the master exceeds that of

a German prince with sixteen quarterings. These plebeian nobles aspire

to form a caste in the face of the progress in enlightenment which made

them equal and free. Some of them speak of nothing but their ancestors,

proud barons, bastards apparently and companions of William the

Bastard. They display the knightly blazons of the Old World, enriched

with the serpents, lizards, and parrots of the New. A Gascon younger

son, landing on the republican shores with nothing but his nobility and

his umbrella, becomes a person of consideration on the steam-boats, if

he will only take care to call himself "marquis."

[Sidenote: American manners.]

The enormous inequality of fortunes threatens still more seriously to

kill the spirit of equality. There are Americans with incomes of one

or two millions a year; and already the Yankees of high society are no

longer able to live as Franklin did: the true "gentleman," disgusted

with his new country, goes to Europe in search of the old; one meets

him at the inns, making "tours" in Italy like the English, tours marked

by extravagance or spleen. These ramblers from Carolina or Virginia

buy ruined abbeys in France, and lay out English gardens with American

trees at Melun. Naples sends its singers and perfumers to New York,

Paris its fashions and dancers, London its grooms and prize-fighters:

exotic delights which do not add to the gaiety of the Union. There

they amuse themselves by jumping into the Falls of Niagara, amid the

applause of fifty thousand planters, semi-savages whose merriment is

with difficulty aroused by the sight of death.

And what is so extraordinary is that, at the very time when the

inequality of fortunes is extending and an aristocracy is springing

into being, the great levelling movement outside obliges the industrial

or landed proprietors to hide their luxury, to dissimulate their

wealth, for fear of being knocked on the head by their neighbours.

These refuse to recognize the executive power; they dismiss the local

authorities whom they have chosen at will, and elect others in their

stead. This in no way disturbs order; practical democracy is observed,

while the laws laid down by the same democracy in theory are laughed

at. The family spirit scarcely exists; so soon as the child is fit to

work, he has to fly with his own wings, like the newly-fledged bird.

Out of these generations emancipated in a premature orphanage, and out

of the emigrants arriving from Europe, are formed nomadic companies

which clear the land, dig canals, and carry their trade in every

direction without becoming attached to the soil; they run up houses in

the desert in which the transient owner will live scarce a few days.

A cold and hard egotism reigns in the towns; piastres and dollars,

bank-notes and silver, the rise and fall of stocks, these form the sole

subject of conversation: one imagines one's self on 'Change or in the

counting-house of a large shop. The newspapers, huge in dimensions, are

filled with business articles or scurrilous gossip. Could the Americans

be unconsciously submitting to the law of a climate in which vegetable

nature seems to have benefited at the expense of living nature, a law

combated by some distinguished minds, and yet not put entirely out of

court by its refutation? It might be worth while to inquire whether the

American has not been too soon used up in philosophic liberty, as the

Russian has been in civilized despotism.

To sum up, the United States give the idea of a colony, not of a parent

country; they have no past, their manners owe their existence to the

laws. These citizens of the New World took rank among the nations at

the moment when political ideas were entering upon an upward phase:

this explains why they change with such extraordinary rapidity. A

permanent form of society seems to become impracticable in their case,

thanks, on the one hand, to the extreme weariness of individuals; on

the other, to the impossibility of remaining in one spot, the necessity

for movement, by which they are dominated: for one is never very firmly

fixed where the household gods are wandering gods. Placed on the ocean

road, at the head of progressive opinions as new as his country, the

American seems to have received from Columbus a mission to discover

fresh worlds rather than to create them.

*

On returning to Philadelphia from the desert, as I have already said,

having hurriedly written on the road "what I have just related," like

the old man in La Fontaine, I did not find the remittances I expected:

this was the commencement of the pecuniary difficulties in which I have

been plunged ever since. Fortune and I conceived a mutual dislike at

first sight. According to Herodotus, certain Indian ants used to heap

together piles of gold; according to Athenæus, the sun gave Hercules a

golden ship in which to accost the island of Erythia, the home of the

Hesperides: ant though I be, I have not the honour to belong to the

great Indian family; and navigator though I be, I have never crossed

the sea, save in a wooden bark. It was a vessel of this kind which

brought me back to Europe from America. The captain gave me my passage

on credit. On the 10th of December 1791, I embarked with several of

my fellow-countrymen who were returning to France, like myself, for

various reasons. The ship's destination was the Havre.

[Sidenote: I return to Europe.]

A westerly gale caught us at the mouth of the Delaware and drove us

right across the Atlantic in seventeen days. Often, scudding under

bare poles, we were scarcely able to bring to. The sun did not appear

a single time. The vessel, steering by a dead reckoning, flew before

the waves. I crossed the ocean among shadows; never had it looked to me

so sad. I myself, sadder still, was returning deceived, after my first

step taken in life:

"Palaces are not built upon the sea," says the Persian poet

Feryd-Eddyn[544].

I felt a vague heaviness of heart, as at the approach of a great

misfortune. Turning my eyes over the waves, I asked them to tell me my

destiny, or else I used to write, more inconvenienced by their motion

than troubled by their threats.

So far from calming, the tempest increased the nearer we came to

Europe; but it blew steadily: the uniformity of its raging produced

a sort of furious lull in the wan sky and leaden sea. The captain,

having no means of taking the altitude, was uneasy; he climbed into

the shrouds and scanned each point of the horizon through a telescope.

A look-out was placed on the bowsprit, another in the main-top-mast

cross-trees. The sea became choppy, and the colour of the water

changed, signs that we were approaching land: what land? The Breton

sailors have a proverb, "Who sees Belle-Isle sees his isle; who sees

Groie sees his joy; who sees Ouessant's shore sees his gore."

I had spent two nights in walking the deck, to the hissing of the

waves in the dark, the moaning of the wind in the rigging, and the

constant dashing of the sea which swept the decks: the waves rioted

all around us. Tired with the shocks and jerks of the vessel, I went

below early on the third night. The weather was terrible; my hammock

creaked and rocked with the blows of the sea, which, breaking over

the vessel, threatened to dislocate her very planks. Soon I heard

men running from one end of the deck to the other, and coils of rope

falling: I experienced the motion which one feels when a vessel is put

about. The hatch of the steerage ladder was thrown open; a frightened

voice called for the captain: that voice, in the middle of the night

and the tempest, sounded tremendous. I listened; I thought I heard

sailors discussing the lie of a coast. I tumbled out of my hammock; a

sea drove in the quarter-deck, flooded the captain's room, knocked over

and rolled pell-mell tables, mattresses, chests, furniture, and arms; I

made my way on deck half-drowned.

When I put my head out of the steerage, a splendid sight met my eyes.

The ship had tried to put about; but, failing in this attempt she had

become embayed under the stress of the wind. By the light of the moon,

her horns broken by the clouds, from beneath which she emerged only

to be hidden by them again, we discovered on either side of the ship,

through a yellow fog, a coast bristling with rocks. The sea threw

up waves like mountains in the channel in which we found ourselves

engulfed: now they scattered into foam and spray; again they presented

merely an oily and vitreous surface, mottled with black, coppery, or

greenish stains, according to the colour of the bottom over which they

roared. During two or three minutes, the moaning of the abyss and that

of the wind would be confused; the next moment, one distinguished the

ripple of the currents, the hissing on the reefs, the voice of the

distant surge. From the hold of the ship issued sounds which made the

hearts of the stoutest sailors beat faster. The stem of the vessel cut

through the thick mass of waves with a hideous crash, and, at the helm,

torrents of water flowed away eddying as from the mouth of a sluice.

Amid all this uproar, nothing was so alarming as a certain dull,

murmuring sound, like that of a vase filling.

Lighted by a ship's lantern and held down by weights, harbour-books,

charts, and log-books lay spread out upon a hen-coop. A gust of wind

had put out the binnacle-lamp. Every one was at variance about the

land. We had entered the Channel without noticing it; the vessel,

staggering under each wave, was drifting between the islands of

Guernsey and Alderney. Our shipwreck appeared inevitable, and the

passengers put up their valuables to save them.

The crew included some French seamen; one of them, in the absence

of a chaplain, raised the hymn to "Our Lady of Succour," the first

thing I had learnt as a child; I repeated it in sight of the coast

of Brittany, almost under my mother's eyes. The American Protestant

sailors joined in chorus in the song of their French Catholic mates:

danger teaches men their weakness and unites their prayers. All,

passengers and sailors, were on deck, one clinging to the rigging,

another to the sides, another to the capstan, others to the bills

of the anchors, in order not to be swept away by the sea or thrown

overboard by the heaving of the ship. The captain shouted, "An axe! an

axe!" to cut away the masts; and the rudder, of which the tiller had

been forsaken, swung from side to side with a harsh sound.

[Sidenote: And I am nearly shipwrecked.]

One experiment remained to be tried: the lead marked only four fathoms

on a sand-bank which crossed the channel; it was just possible that the

swell might enable us to clear this bank and carry us into deep water;

but who would dare to seize the helm and charge himself with the common

safety? One false turn of the tiller, and we were lost.

One of those men who spring from events and who are the spontaneous

children of danger was found: a New York sailor took the post deserted

by the steersman. I seem still to see him in his shirt and canvas

trousers, his bare feet, his tangled streaming hair, holding the tiller

in his powerful grasp, while, with turned head, he looked over the

stern at the sea which was to save or sink us. See that great wave

coming, embracing the whole width of the channel, rolling high without

breaking, as it were a sea invading the billows of another sea: large

white birds go before with a calm flight, like the birds of death.

The ship touched and struck; there was a complete silence; every face

turned pale. The swell came: at the moment when it touched us, the

sailor put down the helm; the vessel, just ready to fall on her side,

turned her stern, and the swell, which seemed about to swallow us,

lifted her. The lead was heaved; it registered twenty-seven fathoms. A

cheer rose to the sky, and we added a shout of "Long live the King!"

God did not hear it for Louis XVI.; it benefited none save ourselves.

Although clear of the two islands, we were not out of danger; we were

unable to run up above the coast of Granville. At last the ebbing

tide carried us out, and we doubled Cape La Hougue. I experienced no

agitation during the semi-shipwreck and felt no delight at being saved.

Better to give up possession of one's life while young than to be

evicted from it by time.

The next day we entered the Havre. The whole population had come out

to see us. Our top-masts were broken, our boats carried away, our

quarter-deck cut down, and we shipped water at every pitch of the

vessel. I landed on the jetty. On the 2nd of January 1792, I once more

trod my native soil, which was soon again to slip from under ray feet I

brought with me no Esquimaux from the Polar regions, but two savages of

an unknown species: Chactas and Atala.

[427] This book was written in London between April and September 1822,

and revised December 1846.--T.

[428] The 5th of April was the date of Chateaubriand's arrival in

London. He landed at Dover from the French packet Antigone, on the

evening of the 4th (_Moniteur_, 11 April 1822).--B.

[429] This should read the Ship Inn, also known as Wright's Hotel.--T.

[430] Baron A. Billing, _attaché_ to the French Embassy in London

(1822), and afterwards _chargé d'affaires_ at Naples (1834).--B.

[431] The Comte Georges de Caraman, son of the Duc de Caraman,

Ambassador to Vienna.--B.

[432] Marie Louis Jean André Charles Demartin du Tyrac, Comte de

Marcellus (1795-1865). While secretary of embassy in 1820, he

discovered the Venus of Milo, now at the Louvre. He was _chargé

d'affaires_ in London during Chateaubriand's absence at the Congress

of Verona, and was appointed Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs

in the Polignac Ministry. Marcellus was the author of, among other

works, a valuable volume on the subject of these Memoirs, entitled,

_Chateaubriand et son temps._--B.

[433] François Adolphe Comte de Bourqueney (1799-1869). Here signed

upon Chateaubriand's dismissal in 1824. In 1840 he was again secretary

of embassy in London, _chargé d'affaires_ in 1841, Ambassador to

Constantinople in 1844, and Ambassador to Vienna under the Second

Empire. Louis-Philippe created him a baron (1842), and Napoleon III. a

count (1859).--B.

[434]

"Ah, my Lord, how your Lordship's life,

In which such honours now are rife,

Differs from those happy days!"

--T.

[435] The Duc Decazes was French Ambassador in London from 17 February

1820 to 9 February 1822.--B.

[436] George IV. (1762-1850) came to the throne in 1820, after being

Prince Regent since 1811.--T.

[437] Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool (1770-1828),

Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827.--T.

[438] Chateaubriand refers to the statue of James II., not Charles II.,

which stood until recent years in Whitehall Gardens, behind Whitehall,

and was entirely hidden from view by the United Service Institute.

This very beautiful statue has now been placed in a more conspicuous

position in a garden standing back from the Whitehall pavement, beside

Gwydyr House.--T.

[439] Marie Antoinette was guillotined 16 October 1793; 21 January was

the date of the execution of Louis XVI.--T.

[440] Robert Stewart, second Marquess of Londonderry, K.G. (1769-1822),

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Liverpool Ministry. He

bore the title of Viscount Castlereagh until the death of his father

in 1821. He cut his throat on the 13th of August of this same year

1822.--T.

[441] Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, K.G. (1769-1852)

became Premier in 1828.--T.

[442] George Canning (1770-1827) became Foreign Secretary upon the

suicide of Castlereagh.--T.

[443] Sarah Child Villiers, Countess of Jersey (1787-1867), was Lady

Sarah Fane, eldest daughter of the tenth Earl of Westmorland, and

grand-daughter of Robert Child the banker, whose fortune she inherited.

She married George Villiers, fourth Earl of Jersey, who assumed the

additional surname of Child in 1812, and became one of the reigning

queens of London society.--T.

[444] Henry Brougham, first Lord Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868), had

lately made his name as counsel for Queen Caroline at her trial (1820).

He became Lord Chancellor and a peer in 1834.--T.

[445] Priscilla Barbara Elizabeth Lady Gwydyr (1761-1828) _née_ Bertie,

widow of the first Lord Gwydyr, and Baroness Willoughby de Eresby in

her own right.--T.

[446] Louisa Murray, Countess of Mansfield (_d._ 1843), was the

Honourable Louisa Cathcart, daughter of the ninth Baron Cathcart, and

became Countess of Mansfield in her own right. In 1776 she married her

cousin David, seventh Viscount Stormont and second Earl of Mansfield.

He died in 1793, and in 1797 she married the Honourable Fulke Greville,

retaining her title as Countess of Mansfield.--T.

[447] Almack's, the ball-room in King Street, St. James's, retained its

vogue from 1765 to 1840. Lady Mansfield was one of the lady patronesses

of Almack's.--T.

[448] Julie Récamier (1777-1849), _née_ Bernard, wife of Récamier the

banker. A woman of great beauty and charm; she was painted by David and

Gérard, and sat to Canova for his bust of Beatrix. Chateaubriand became

and remained until his death the most intimate and assiduous of her

friends.--T.

[449] Captain James Cook (1728-1779). His discoveries were still fresh

in the public mind in 1792.--T.

[450] Chateaubriand met François Tulloch in 1826, after writing this

portion of his Memoirs. He does not tell us much about him even in the

_Essai sur les Révolutions_, where he speaks of Tulloch at some length.

It would appear, according to Chateaubriand, that he was the son of an

English father and a Scotch mother, and that he did not eventually take

orders, but remained in the world and married.--T.

[451] VIR., _Æ._ I. 164. The correct quotation runs: _Æquora tuta

silent._--T.

[452] The Azores were known to the Carthaginians, but fell out of the

map until rediscovered in 1431.--T.

[453] GEN. i. 10.--T.

[454] Agostino Pantaleone Giustiniani (1470-1531), Bishop of Nebbis in

Corsica, and author of the _Psalterium hebraicum, græcum, arabicum,

chaldaicum, cum tribus latinis interpretationibus et glossis_, the

first work of its kind published. Giustiniani was drowned in crossing

from Genoa to Corsica.--T.

[455] Ps. XVIII.--T.

[456] _Ibid._ 6.--T.

[457] Luiz de Camoëns (1517 or 1525-1579), author of the _Lusiad_ which

treats of the exploits of Vasco da Gama, spent many years in India and

in exile in Macao, where he wrote his principal poem. On his return

from banishment, he was wrecked off the coast of Cochin China, where

he is said to have lost all he possessed, except the manuscript of the

_Lusiad._--T.

[458] Guillaume le Breton (_circa_ 1165-_circa_ 1220), the historian

of Philip Augustus. The quotation is from his chronicle entitled,

_Philippidos libri duodecime, sive Gesta Philippi Augusti, versibus

heroïcis descripta._--T.

[459] Ps. CVII. 27.--T.

[460]

"Burning with immortal ardour,

'Tis to God my hopes are turned."--T.

[461] TASSO, _Gerusalemme Liberata_, XV. 27.--B.

[462] Jacques Cartier (1494--_circa_ 1554), the discoverer of

Newfoundland and of the greater part of Canada.--T.

[463] _Génie du Christianisme_, Part I. book V. chap. 12: _Deux

perspectives de la Nature._--B.

[464] William Penn (1644-1718), the Quaker. He commuted a claim upon

the Crown for a grant of land in North America, where he founded

the colony of Pennsylvania (1682), laying out Philadelphia as the

capital.--T.

[465] Bonaparte died 5 May 1821.--T.

[466] Alonso d'Ercilla y Zuffiga (_circa_ 1525-_circa_ 1600), a famous

Spanish poet and warrior. He began life as a page to Philip II., whom

he accompanied in his travels to France, Italy, Germany, and England.

In 1547 he joined the Chilean expedition, covered himself with glory in

the campaign against the Araucanians, and celebrated his own exploits

in the _Araucana_, an epic poem of very great merit.--T.

[467] Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de La Mauvissière (_circa_ 1520-1592),

was five times Ambassador to England under Charles IX. and Henry III.

His Memoirs run from 1559 to 1570.--T.

[468] CORNEILLE, _Attila_, Act I. scene I.:

"Ils ne sont pas venus, nos deux rois; qu'on leur die

Qu'ils se font trop attendre, et qu'Attila s'ennuie."

"Our two kings have not come; go out to them and say

That Attila is wearied, and brooks not such delay."--T.

[469] These measurements have since been rectified as being too high in

both cases.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1832).

[470] George Vancouver (1750-1798) accompanied Cook in his second and

third voyages round the world, and subsequently served under Rodney. He

was despatched on the expedition in question in 1790--T.

[471] This appears to be an error for Lake Athabasca, on which Fort

Chippeway is situated, and which communicates by means of the Slave

River with Great Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River.--T.

[472] Chateaubriand, in a footnote to the _Itinéraire_, confesses his

mistake in searching for the stone lion which, according to Herodotus,

marks the tomb of Leonidas and his companions, at Sparta instead of at

Thermopylæ.--B.

[473] Sir Charles Asgill (1760-1823), an English general serving

under Cornwallis. He was taken prisoner by the insurgents and picked

out by lot to be shot by way of reprisals. He was saved through the

intervention of the French Government, and an act of the American

Congress revoked the sentence of death. Asgill visited Versailles to

thank Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, who had actively interceded on

his behalf. The episode furnished a subject for a number of popular

novels and plays.--B.

[474] Jean Baptiste Donatien de Viveur, Comte de Rochambeau

(1725-1807), was sent to America with 6000 men to assist the insurgents

and contributed towards effecting the capitulation of Cornwallis in

1781. He returned to France when peace was declared, became Governor

of Picardy and Artois, and was created a Marshal of France in 1791,

and given the command of the Northern Army. He vainly endeavoured to

restore discipline and resigned his command in 1792. He was condemned

to death by Robespierre, but made his escape.--T.

[475] JOB, XXXIX. 19-25.--T.

[476] The Abbé Paul François Velly (1709-1759) wrote the first seven

or eight volumes of the History of France in thirty volumes known as

the _Histoire de Velly, Villaret et Garnier._ These first eight volumes

which cover the period to the reign of Philip the Fair, are the weakest

of the whole compilation, especially the two first, which embrace the

history of the Frankish kings.--T.

[477] Khilpérick or Chilperic I. (_d._ 584), King of Soissons, later

King of the Franks, youngest son of Clotaire I., King of the Franks.--T.

[478] _Cf._ Plutarch's Life of Phocion.--B.

[479] _Odyssey_, VII.--B.

[480] Louis Joseph Marquis de Montcalm (1712-1759), entrusted with the

defense of Canada against the English in 1756.--T.

[481] John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudon (1705-1782),

Governor-General of Virginia and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in

America (1756), but recalled in 1757.--T.

[482] Sir Robert Abercromby (1740-1827), younger brother of the more

famous Sir Ralph Abercromby. He had distinguished himself, as a

volunteer, by his gallantry at the battle of Ticonderoga in 1758, after

which he was appointed an ensign, and was present at the Battle of

Niagara and the capture of Montreal.--T.

[483] General James Wolfe (1727-1759), although only thirty-two years

of age at the time of his glorious death, had been present at the

battles of Dettingen, Fontenoy, Falkirk, and Culloden, and served in

the expedition against Rochefort.--T.

[484] Giovanni Paisiello (1741-1816), composer of a number of operas,

most of which were written during his long residence at St Petersburg,

and of some meritorious sacred music.--T.

[485] Domenico Cimarosa (1754-1801), composer of over 120 grand and

comic operas, of which the _Matrimonio segreto_ is the best known.--T.

[486] _Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem_, Book II.--B.

[487] _Essai sur les révolutions_: Book I. Part ii. chap. 23.--B.

[488] _Atala_: Epilogue.--B.

[489] HOR., _Od._ I. 7.--T.

[490] Isaac Jogues (1607-1646), a Jesuit priest placed at the head of

the Canadian Mission in 1636. He suffered martyrdom at the hands of the

Mohawks ten years later.--B.

[491] Jerome Lallemant (1593-1673), also a Jesuit father, preached the

Gospel to the savages of Canada for nearly forty years. He died at

Quebec as Superior-General of the Canadian Mission.--B.

[492] Florio's MONTAIGNE, I. 30: _Of the Caniballes._--T.

[493] _Ibid._--T.

[494] St Clement of Alexandria (_d._ 217) does not figure in the

Roman Calendar. The work in question, the Στρωματεὶς, is a medley or

patchwork of philosophical maxims and Christian thoughts set down at

random, without order or connection, as the title implies.--T.

[495] She appears in the _Natches_, which was published in 1826, four

years after the above was written.--B.

[496] Samuel Champlain (_circa_ 1570-1635) explored a part of Canada,

in 1608 founded the city of Quebec, and in 1620 became governor of

the province. He was attacked by the English in 1627, and obliged to

capitulate; in 1629 Canada was restored to France and Champlain resumed

his command, which he retained until his death.--T.

[497] Armand Louis de Delondarce, Baron de La Hontan (_circa_

1667-1715) served in Canada in 1703 and was subsequently the King of

France's lieutenant in Newfoundland; he was accused of peculation

and fled to Portugal and thence to Denmark. In 1705 he published his

_Voyages dans l'Amérique septentrionale._--T.

[498] Marc Lescarbot (_circa_--_circa_ 1630) served in Florida under

Admiral Coligny. He annotated an edition of Champlain's Voyages.--T.

[499] Père Joseph François Lafitau (1670-1740), a Jesuit priest of

the Canadian Mission, author of the _Mœurs des sauvages américains

comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps_ (1723), &c.--T.

[500] Père Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761), another

Jesuit, author of the _Histoire de la Nouvelle-France._ (1744)--T.

[501] Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk (1771-1820). This tract of

land covered forty-five million acres, and comprised large portions of

what are now Manitoba and Minnesota.--T.

[502] The date of the defeat of the Hudson's Bay Company by the

North-West Company and their half-breed allies was 10 June 1815.--T.

[503] The French name for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.--T.

[504] The original thirteen United States, in the order of their

ratification of the National Constitution, were Delaware, Pennsylvania,

New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South

Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode

Island. The eleven others, completing the twenty-four existing at

the time at which Chateaubriand was writing, were Vermont (detached

from New York, 1791), Tennessee (detached from North Carolina, 1796),

Kentucky (detached from Virginia, 1796), Ohio (created, 1802),

Louisiana (purchased from France in 1803 and raised into a State in

1812), Indiana (created, 1816), Mississippi (separated from Georgia,

1817), Illinois (created, 1818), Alabama (detached from Georgia, 1819),

Maine (detached from Massachusetts, 1820), and Missouri (detached from

Louisiana, 1821).--T.

[505] The western portion of Louisiana was ceded to Spain in 1763, but

restored to the French in 1800. In 1803 Bonaparte, despairing of being

able to hold it against the English, sold it to the United States for

80,000,000 francs.--T.

[506] Charles I., King of France and Emperor of the West (742-814),

known as Charlemagne, had been dead for more than six centuries when

this experiment was made.--T.

[507] Lord François Nathaniel Conyngham (1797-1876), second son of the

first Marquess Conyngham, and first groom of the Bedchamber and Master

of the Robes to George IV. He succeeded to the Marquisate in 1832.--T.

[508] Elizabeth Marchioness Conyngham (1769-1861), _née_ Dennison,

married in 1794 to the third Lord Conyngham, Lord Steward of the

Household to George IV., and created successively Viscount Conyngham,

Earl of Conyngham, and Marquess Conyngham by that monarch. She was

George IV.'s mistress, and presented a complete contrast to Mila in

other respects than age alone.--T.

[509] William Bartram (1739-1823), an American traveller and

naturalist, author of _Travels through North and South Carolina, East

and West Florida, the Cherokee country_, &c.--T.

[510] The ruins of Mitla and Palenque in Mexico prove today that the

New World rivals the Old in antiquity.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1834).

[511] _Arbor tristis_, the nyctanthes or night-jasmine.--T.

[512] I have quoted it in my Travels.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1832).

The story of _Tabamica_ is told in the _Voyage en Amérique_, where it

is called the Song of the Pale-face.--B.

[513] The Spanish capital of Florida.--T.

[514] I omit a quotation from Camoëns.--T.

[515] I omit a quotation from Ronsard.--T.

[516] Mary Stuart (1542-1 £87), Queen of Scots, was married in 1558

to the Dauphin of France, who in 1559 became king, with the title of

Francis II. She was left a widow eighteen months after marriage, in the

seventeenth year of her age.--T.

[517] François II., King of France (1544-1560).--T.

[518] _Cf._ ROUSSEAU, _La Nouvelle Héloïse._--T.

[519]

"Like a young bee which among the roses toils,

My muse returned to me all laden with rich spoils."--T.

[520] Louis XVI. was arrested at Varennes on the 22nd of June 1791.--T.

[521] VIR., _Æn._, I. 302-303.--B.

[522] These predictions have been verified with wonderful accuracy.

According to the census of 1 June 1880, the population of the United

States on that day amounted to 50,445,336 inhabitants.--B.

[523] Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), discoverer of the identity of

lightning and electricity.--T.

[524] Robert Fulton (1765-1815), one of the first to apply steam to

the propulsion of vessels; he built a steamboat to navigate the Hudson

River in 1807; it made five miles an hour.--T.

[525] Issued 17 September 1796, before his retirement from his second

presidency.--T.

[526] Thomas Jefferson (1743-1816), third President of the United

States, 1801-1805, and again, 1805-1809. Jefferson died at Monticello,

Virginia, on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July

1826. John Adams, the second President of the United States, died at

Quincy, Massachusetts, on the same day.--T.

[527] Henry M. Brackenridge (1786-1871), author of, among other works,

the _History of the late War between the United States and Great

Britain._ Baltimore, 1817.--T.

[528] Tah-Gah-Jute (_circa_ 1725-1780), a famous Cayuga chief,

named John Logan, after James Logan, secretary of Pennsylvania. The

famous speech was not spoken in person, but sent by an interpreter

in October 1774. Logan was eventually shot by an Indian through a

misunderstanding.--T.

[529] John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore (1732-1809), Governor of

Virginia at the outbreak of the American Revolution.--T.

[530] Captain Michael Cresap (1742-1775). His memory was attacked by

Thomas Jefferson, and vindicated by his son-in-law, J. J. Jacob.--T.

[531] John K. Townsend (1809-1861), author of _Narrative of a Journey

across the Rocky Mountains and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chile_,

&c., 1833-37 (1839).--T.

[532] Thomas Say (1787-1834), author of an _American Entomology_ (1824)

and an _American Conchiliology_ (1830).--B.

[533] Alexander Wilson (1766-1813), a Scotsman by birth, emigrated at

an early age to America. He was by turns a weaver, a schoolmaster, and

a pedlar. He applied himself to the study of birds, and eventually

published his _American Ornithology_ in seven volumes, containing the

finished illustrations referred to by Chateaubriand.--T.

[534] Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), author of several novels, of

which _Wieland_ was the most popular.--B.

[535] _Caleb Williams_, by William Godwin (1756-1836), father of Mary

Wollstonecraft, Shelley's second wife, appeared in 1794, one year

before the publication of _Wieland._--T.

[536] James Fenimore Cooper (1780-1851), probably the most popular of

American novelists.--T.

[537] Washington Irving (1783-1859). He was American Minister in Madrid

for a short period (1842).--T.

[538] Fitz-Greene Halleck (1795-1867), author of _Marco Bozuaris._ The

curious will find a criticism of his work in Poe's _Literati of New

York._--T.

[539] George Hill (_b._ 1796), author of the _Ruins of Athens_, and a

few shorter poems.--T.

[540] _Ruins of Athens_, II.--T.

[541] The Parthenon.--T.

[542] _Ruins of Athens_, XVII.--T.

[543] Chateaubriand coins the word _chrysogène_ to express the idea of

being born in wealth: I have ventured to retain it.--T.

[544] Feryd-Eddyn-Atthar (_circa_ 1226--_circa_ 1280), author of the

_Pend-Nâmek_, or Book of Counsels.--T.

END OF VOL. I