"Without entering into any of these considerations, I shall

confine myself now to that which occupies us from the dread

of seeing ourselves exposed to dangers from the new power

which we have just recognized in a country where there is no

other in condition to arrest its progress. _This Federal

Republic is born a pygmy_, so to speak. It required the

support and the forces of two powers as great as Spain and

France in order to attain independence. _A day will come

when it will be a giant, even a colossus formidable in these

countries._ It will then forget the benefits which it has

received from the two powers, and will dream of nothing but

to organize itself. _Liberty of conscience, the facility for

establishing a new population on immense lands, as well as

the advantages of the new government, will draw thither

agriculturists and artisans from all the nations; for men

always run after fortune. And in a few years we shall see

with true grief the tyrannical existence of this same

colossus of which I speak._

"The first movement of this power, when it has arrived at

its aggrandizement, will be to obtain possession of the

Floridas, in order to dominate the Gulf of Mexico. After

having rendered commerce with New Spain difficult for us, it

will aspire to the conquest of this vast empire, which it

will not be possible for us to defend against a formidable

power established on the same continent, and in its

neighborhood. These fears are well founded, Sire; they will

be changed into reality in a few years, if, indeed, there

are not other disorders in our Americas still more fatal.

This observation is justified by what has happened in all

ages, and with all nations which have begun to rise. Man is

the same everywhere; the difference of climate does not

change the nature of our sentiments; he who finds the

opportunity of acquiring power and of aggrandizing himself,

profits by it always. How then can we expect the Americans

to respect the kingdom of New Spain, when they shall have

the facility of possessing themselves of this rich and

beautiful country? A wise policy counsels us to take

precautions against evils which may happen. This thought has

occupied my whole mind, since, as Minister Plenipotentiary

of your Majesty, and conformably to your royal will and

instructions, I signed the Peace of Paris. I have considered

this important affair with all the attention of which I am

capable, and after much reflection drawn from the knowledge,

military as well as political, which I have been able to

acquire in my long career, I think that, in order to escape

the great losses with which we are threatened, there remains

nothing but the means which I am about to have the honor of

exhibiting to your Majesty.

"Your Majesty must relieve yourself of all your possessions

on the continent of the two Americas, _preserving only the

islands of Cuba and Porto Rico_ in the northern part, and

some other convenient one in the southern part, to serve as

a seaport or trading-place for Spanish commerce.

"In order to accomplish this great thought in a manner

becoming to Spain, three infantas must be placed in

America,--one as king of Mexico, another as king of Peru,

and the third as king of the Terra Firma. Your Majesty will

take the title of Emperor."

I have sometimes heard this remarkable memoir called apocryphal, but

without reason, except because its foresight is so remarkable. The

Mexican historian Alaman treats it as genuine, and, after praising it,

informs us that the proposition of Count d'Aranda to the king was not

taken into consideration, which, according to him, was "disastrous to

all, and especially to the people of America, who in this way would have

obtained independence, without struggle or anarchy."[85] Meanwhile all

the American possessions of the Spanish crown, except Cuba and Porto

Rico, have become independent, as predicted, and the new power, known as

the United States, which at that time was a "pygmy," has become a

"colossus."

D'Aranda was not alone in surprise at the course of Spain. The English

traveller Burnaby, in his edition of 1796, mentions this as one of the

reasons for the success of the colonists, and declares that he had not

supposed, originally, "that Spain would join in a plan inevitably

leading by slow and imperceptible steps to the final loss of all her

rich possessions in America."[86] This was not an uncommon idea. One of

John Adams's Dutch correspondents, under date of 14th September, 1780,

writes he has heard it said twenty times, that, "if America becomes

free, it will some day give the law to Europe; it will seize our islands

and our colonies of Guiana; it will seize all the West Indies; it will

swallow Mexico, even Peru, Chili, and Brazil; it will take from us our

freighting commerce; it will pay its benefactors with ingratitude."[87]

Mr. Adams also records in his diary, under date of 14th December, 1779,

on his landing at Ferrol in Spain, that, according to the report of

various persons, "the Spanish nation in general have been of opinion

that the Revolution in America was of bad example to the Spanish

colonies, and dangerous to the interests of Spain, as the United States,

should they become ambitious, and be seized with the spirit of conquest,

might aim at Mexico and Peru."[88] All this is entirely in harmony with

the memoir of the Count d'Aranda.

BURNS.--1788.

From Count d'Aranda to Robert Burns,--from the rich and titled minister,

faring sumptuously in the best house of Paris, to the poor ploughboy

poet, struggling in a cottage,--what a contrast! Of the poet I shall say

nothing, except that he was born 25th January, 1759, and died 21st July,

1796, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

There is only a slender thread of Burns to be woven into this web, and

yet, coming from him, it must not be neglected. In a letter _dated 8th

November, 1788_, after saying a friendly word for the unfortunate house

of Stuart, he thus prophetically alludes to our independence:--

"I will not, I cannot, enter into the merits of the cause, but I dare

say the American Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to be as able and as

enlightened as the English Convention was in 1688; _and that their

posterity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance from us, as

duly and sincerely as we do ours from the oppressive measures of the

house of Stuart_."[89]

The year 1788, when these words were written, was a year of

commemoration, being the hundredth from the famous revolution by which

the Stuarts were excluded from the throne of England. The "centenary" of

our independence is not yet completed; but long ago the commemoration

began. On the coming of that hundredth anniversary, the prophecy of

Burns will be more than fulfilled.

FOX.--1794.

In quoting from Charles James Fox, the statesman, minister, and orator,

I need add nothing, except that he was born 24th January, 1749, and died

13th September, 1806, and that he was an early friend of our country.

Many words of his, especially during our Revolution, might be introduced

here; but I content myself with a single passage of a later date, which,

besides its expression of good-will, is a prophecy of our power. It will

be found in a speech on his motion for putting an end to war with France

in the House of Commons, _30th May, 1794_.

"It was impossible to dissemble that we had a serious dispute with

America, and although we might be confident that the wisest and best man

of his age, who presided in the government of that country, would do

everything that became him to avert a war, it was impossible to foresee

the issue. America had no fleet, no army; but in case of war she would

find various means to harass and annoy us. Against her we could not

strike a blow that would not be as severely felt in London as in

America, so identified were the two countries by commercial intercourse.

_To a contest with such an adversary he looked as the greatest possible

misfortune._ If we commenced another crusade against her, we might

destroy her trade, and check the progress of her agriculture, but we

must also equally injure ourselves. Desperate, therefore, indeed, must

be that war in which each wound inflicted on our enemy would at the same

time inflict one upon ourselves. He hoped to God that such an event as a

war with America would not happen."[90]

All good men on both sides of the ocean must join with Fox, who thus

early deprecated a war between the United States and England, and

portrayed the consequences. Time, which has enlarged and multiplied the

relations between the two countries, makes his words more applicable now

than when he first uttered them.

GEORGE CANNING.--1826.

George Canning was a successor of Fox, in the House of Commons, as

statesman, minister, and orator; he was born 11th April, 1770, and died

8th August, 1827, in the beautiful villa of the Duke of Devonshire, at

Chiswick, where Fox had died before. Unlike Fox in sentiment for our

country, he is nevertheless associated with a leading event of our

history, and is the author of prophetic words.

The Monroe Doctrine, as it is now familiarly called, proceeded from

Canning. He was its inventor, promoter, and champion, at least so far as

it bears against European intervention in American affairs. Earnestly

engaged in counteracting the designs of the Holy Alliance for the

restoration of the Spanish colonies to Spain, he sought to enlist the

United States in the same policy, and when Mr. Rush, who was at the time

our Minister at London, replied that any interference with European

politics was contrary to the traditions of our government, he argued

that, however just such a policy might have been formerly, it was no

longer applicable,--that the question was new and complicated,--that it

was "full as much American as European, to say no more,"--that it

concerned the United States under aspects and interests as immediate and

commanding as those of any of the states of Europe,--that "they were the

first power on that continent, and confessedly the leading power"; and

he then asked, "Was it possible that they could see with indifference

their fate decided upon by Europe? Had not a new epoch arrived in the

relative position of the United States toward Europe, which Europe must

acknowledge? _Were the great political and commercial interests_ which

hung upon the destinies of the new continent to be canvassed and

adjusted in this hemisphere, without the co-operation, or even the

knowledge, of the United States?" With mingled ardor and importunity the

British Minister pressed his case. At last, after much discussion in the

Cabinet at Washington, President Monroe, accepting the lead of Mr.

Canning, put forth his famous declaration, where, after referring to the

radical difference between the political systems of Europe and America,

he says, that "we should consider any attempt on their part to extend

their systems to any portion of this hemisphere as _dangerous to our

peace and safety_," and that, where governments have been recognized by

us as independent, "we could not view any interposition for the purpose

of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by

any European power, in any other light than as _a manifestation of an

unfriendly disposition toward the United States_."[91]

The message of President Monroe was received in England with

enthusiastic congratulations. It was upon all tongues; the press was

full of it; the securities of Spanish America rose in the market; the

agents of Spanish America were happy.[92] Brougham exclaimed, in

Parliament, that "no event had ever dispersed greater joy, exultation,

and gratitude over all the freemen of Europe." Mackintosh rejoiced in

the coincidence of England and the United States, "the two great

commonwealths, for so he delighted to call them; and he heartily prayed

that they may be forever united in the cause of justice and

liberty."[93] The Holy Alliance abandoned their purposes on this

continent, and the independence of the Spanish colonies in America was

established. Some time afterwards, on the occasion of assistance to

Portugal, when Mr. Canning felt called to review and vindicate his

foreign policy, he assumed the following lofty strain. This was in the

House of Commons, _12th December, 1826_:--

"It would be disingenuous not to admit that the entry of the French army

into Spain was, in a certain sense, a disparagement,--an affront to our

pride,--a blow to the feelings of England. But I deny that, questionable

or censurable as the act may be, it was one that necessarily called for

our direct and hostile opposition. Was nothing then to be done? If

France occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the

consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz? No. I

looked another way. I sought materials for compensation in another

hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, I

resolved that, if France had Spain, it should not be Spain 'with the

Indies.' _I called the New World into existence to resist the balance of

the Old._"[94]

The republics of Spanish America, thus called into independent

existence, were to redress the balance of the Old World. If they have

not contributed the weight thus vaunted, the growing power of the United

States is ample to compensate any deficiencies on this continent. There

is no balance of power which it cannot redress, if occasion requires.

RICHARD COBDEN.--1849.

Coming to our own day, we meet a familiar name, now consecrated by

death,--Richard Cobden; born 3d June, 1804, and died 2d April, 1865. In

proportion as truth prevails among men, his character will shine with

increasing glory until he is recognized as the first Englishman of his

time. Though thoroughly English, he was not insular, and he served

mankind as well as England.

His masterly faculties and his real goodness made him a prophet always.

He saw the future, and strove to hasten its promises. The elevation and

happiness of the human family were his daily thought. He knew how to

build as well as to destroy. Through him disabilities upon trade and

oppressive taxes were overturned; also a new treaty was negotiated with

France, quickening commerce and intercourse. He was never so truly

eminent as when bringing his practical sense and enlarged experience to

commend the cause of Permanent Peace in the world by the establishment

of a refined system of International Justice, and the disarming of the

nations. To this great consummation all his later labors tended. I have

before me a long letter, dated at _London, 7th November, 1849_, where he

says much on this absorbing question, from which, by an easy transition,

he passes to speak of the proposed annexation of Canada to the United

States. As what he says on the latter topic concerns America, and is a

prophetic voice, I have obtained permission to copy it for this

collection.

"Race, religion, language, traditions, are becoming bonds of union, and

not the parchment title-deeds of sovereigns. These instincts maybe

thwarted for the day, but they are too deeply rooted in nature and in

usefulness not to prevail in the end. I look with less interest to these

struggles of races to live apart for what they want to undo, than for

what they will prevent being done in future. _They will warn rulers that

henceforth the acquisition of fresh territory, by force of arms, will

only bring embarrassments and civil war_, instead of that increased

strength which, in ancient times, when people were passed, like flocks

of sheep, from one king to another, always accompanied the incorporation

of new territorial conquests.

"This is the secret of the admitted doctrine, that we shall have no more

wars of conquest or ambition. In this respect _you_ are differently

situated, having vast tracts of unpeopled territory to tempt that

cupidity which, in respect of landed property, always disposes

individuals and nations, however rich in acres, to desire more. This

brings me to the subject of Canada, to which you refer in your letters.

"I agree with you, that _nature has decided that Canada and the United

States must become one, for all purposes of free intercommunication_.

Whether they also shall be united in the same federal government must

depend upon the two parties to the union. I can assure you that there

will be no repetition of the policy of 1776, on our part, to prevent our

North American colonies from pursuing their interest in their own way.

If the people of Canada are tolerably unanimous in wishing to sever the

very slight thread which now binds them to this country, I see no reason

why, if good faith and ordinary temper be observed, it should not be

done amicably. I think it would be far more likely to be accomplished

peaceably, _if the subject of annexation were left as a distinct

question_. I am quite sure that _we_ should be gainers, to the amount of

about a million sterling annually, if our North American colonists would

set up in life for themselves and maintain their own establishments, and

I see no reason to doubt that they might be also gainers by being thrown

upon their own resources.

"The less your countrymen mingle in the controversy, the better. It will

only be an additional obstacle in the path of those in this country who

see the ultimate necessity of a separation, but who have still some

ignorance and prejudice to contend against, which, if used as political

capital by designing politicians, may complicate seriously a very

difficult piece of statesmanship. It is for you and such as you, who

love peace, to guide your countrymen aright in this matter. You have

made the most noble contributions of any modern writer to the cause of

peace; and as a public man I hope you will exert all your influence to

induce Americans to hold a dignified attitude and observe a 'masterly

inactivity' in the controversy which is rapidly advancing to a solution

between the mother country and her American colonies."

A prudent patriotism among us will appreciate the wisdom of this

counsel, which is more needed now than when it was written. The

controversy which Cobden foresaw "between the mother country and her

American colonies" is yet undetermined. The recent creation of what is

somewhat grandly called "The Dominion of Canada" marks one stage in its

progress.

LUCAS ALAMAN.--1852.

From Canada I pass to Mexico, and close this list with Lucas Alaman, the

Mexican statesman and historian, who has left on record a most pathetic

prophecy with regard to his own country, intensely interesting to us at

this moment.

Little can be gathered here with regard to this remarkable character.

His name does not appear in any biographical or bibliographical

dictionary,--not in the late editions of Michaud or Brunet,--although

his public life and his literary labors might claim for him a place in

biography and bibliography. From the title-page of one of his volumes it

appears that, besides being a member of the Mexican Society of Geography

and Statistics, and also of the Fine Arts, he was a corresponding member

of several foreign societies, among which were the Royal Academy of

History at Madrid, the Royal Institute of Sciences in Bavaria, the

Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and the Massachusetts Historical

Society. It is only in the dearth of authentic information with regard

to him that I mention these circumstances. It does not appear when he

died. The Preface to the last volume of his History is dated 18th

November, 1852; and, as his name is not noticed in Mexican affairs since

then, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he died shortly after this

date, although his death first appears in the Transactions of the

Massachusetts Historical Society for 1861.

Alaman figured in the Mexican Cortes, and also as Minister of Foreign

Affairs, especially under President Bustamente. In the latter capacity

he inspired the respect of foreign diplomatists. One of these, who had

occasion to know him officially, says of him, in answer to my inquiries,

that he "was the greatest statesman which Mexico has produced since her

independence." His portrait, as engraved in one of his volumes,

resembles the late Mr. Clayton of Delaware. He was one of the few

persons in any country who have been able to unite literature with

public life, and obtain honors in each department.

His first work was "Dissertations on the History of the Mexican

Republic," _Disertaciones sobre la Historia de la Republica Megicana_,

in three volumes, published at Mexico, 1844. In these he considers the

original conquest by Cortez; its consequences; the conqueror and his

family; the propagation of the Christian religion in New Spain; the

formation of the city of Mexico; the history of Spain and the house of

Bourbon. All these topics are treated somewhat copiously. Then followed

the "History of Mexico, from the First Movements which prepared its

Independence in 1808, to the present Epoch," (_Historia de Mejico desde

los primeros Movimientos que prepararon á su Independencia en el Año de

1808 hasta la Época presente_,) in five volumes, published at Mexico,

the first bearing date 1849, and the fifth 1852. From the Preface to the

first volume, it appears that the author was born in Guanajuato, and

witnessed there the beginning of the Mexican revolution in 1810, under

Don Miguel Hidalgo, the curate of Dolores; that he was personally

acquainted with the curate and with many of those who had a principal

part in the successes of that time; that he was experienced in public

affairs, as deputy and as member of the cabinet; and that he had known

directly the persons and things of which he wrote. His last volume

embraces the government of Iturbide as Emperor, and also his unfortunate

death, ending with the establishment of the Mexican Federal Republic in

1824. The work is careful and well considered. The eminent diplomatist

already mentioned, who had known the author officially, writes that "no

one was better acquainted with the history and causes of the incessant

revolutions in his unfortunate country, and that his work on this

subject is considered by all respectable men in Mexico a

_chef-d'oevre_ for purity of sentiments and patriotic convictions."

It is on account of the valedictory words of this History that I have

introduced the name of Alaman on this occasion. They are as follows:--

"Mexico will be, without doubt, a land of prosperity from its natural

advantages, _but it will not be so for the races which now inhabit it_.

As it seemed the destiny of the peoples who established themselves

therein at different and remote epochs to perish from the face of it,

leaving hardly a memory of their existence; even as the nation which

built the edifices of Palenque, and those which we admire in the

peninsula of Yucatan, was destroyed without its being known what it was

nor how it disappeared; _even as the Toltecs perished by the hands of

barbarous tribes coming from the North_, no record of them remaining but

the pyramids of Cholulu and Teotihuacan; and, finally, even as the

ancient Mexicans fell beneath the power of the Spaniards, _the country

gaining infinitely by this change of dominion, but its ancient masters

being overthrown_;--so likewise its present inhabitants shall be ruined

and hardly obtain the compassion they have merited, and the Mexican

nation of our days shall have applied to it what a celebrated Latin poet

said of one of the most famous personages of Roman history, STAT MAGNI

NOMINIS UMBRA,[95]--nothing more remains than the shadow of a name

illustrious in another time.

"May the Almighty, in whose hands is the fate of nations, and who by

ways hidden from our sight abases or exalts them, according to the

designs of his providence, be pleased to grant unto ours the protection

by which he has so often deigned to preserve it from the dangers to

which it has been exposed."[96]

Most affecting words of prophecy! Considering the character of the

author as statesman and historian, it could have been only with

inconceivable anguish that he made this terrible record with regard to

the land whose child and servant he was. Born and reared in Mexico,

honored by its important trusts, and writing the history of its

independence, it was his country, having for him all that makes a

country dear; and yet thus calmly he consigns the present people to

oblivion, while another enters into those happy places where nature is

so bountiful. Thus does a Mexican leave the door open to the foreigner.

CONCLUSION.

Such are some of the prophetic voices about America, differing in

character and importance, but all having one augury, and opening one

vista, illimitable in extent and vastness. Farewell to the idea of

Montesquieu, that a republic can exist only in a small territory.

Ancient prophecy foretold another world beyond the ocean, which in the

mind of Christopher Columbus was nothing less than the Orient with its

inexhaustible treasures. Then came the succession of prophets, who

discerned the future of this continent, beginning with that rare genius,

Sir Thomas Browne, who, in the reign of Charles II., while the

settlements were in their infancy, predicted their growth in power and

civilization; and then that rarest character, Bishop Berkeley, who, in

the reign of George I., while the settlements were still feeble and

undeveloped, heralded a Western empire as "Time's noblest offspring."

These voices are general. Others more precise followed. Turgot, the

philosopher and minister, saw in youth, with the vision of genius, that

all colonies must at their maturity drop from the parent stem, like ripe

fruit. John Adams, one of the chiefs of our own history, in a youth

illumined as that of Turgot, saw the predominance of the Colonies in

population and power followed by the transfer of empire to America; then

the glory of Independence and its joyous celebration by grateful

generations; then the triumph of our language; and, finally, the

establishment of our republican institutions over all North America.

Then came the Abbé Galiani, the Neapolitan Frenchman, who, writing from

Naples while our struggle was still undecided, gayly predicts the total

downfall of Europe, the transmigration to America, and the consummation

of the greatest revolution of the globe by establishing the reign of

America over Europe. There is also Adam Smith, the illustrious

philosopher, who quietly carries the seat of government across the

Atlantic. Meanwhile Pownall, once a Colonial Governor and then a member

of Parliament, in successive works of great detail, foreshadows

independence, naval supremacy, commercial prosperity, immigration from

the Old World, and a new national life, destined to supersede the

systems of Europe and arouse the "curses" of royal ministers. Hartley,

also a member of Parliament, and the British negotiator who signed the

definitive treaty of Independence, bravely announces in Parliament that

the New World is before the Colonists, and that liberty is theirs; and

afterwards, as diplomatist, instructs his government that, through the

attraction of our public lands, immigration will be quickened beyond

precedent and the national debt cease to be a burden. D'Aranda, the

Spanish statesman and diplomatist, predicts to his king that the United

States, though born a "pygmy," will soon be a "colossus," under whose

influence Spain will lose all her American possessions except only Cuba

and Porto Rico. Burns, the truthful poet, looks forward a hundred years,

and beholds our people rejoicing in the centenary of their independence.

Fox, the liberal statesman, foresees the increasing might and various

relations of the United States, so that a blow aimed at them must have a

rebound as destructive as itself. Canning, the brilliant orator, in a

much-admired flight of eloquence, discerns the New World, with its

republics just called into being, redressing the balance of the old.

Cobden, whose fame will be second only to that of Adam Smith among all

in this catalogue, calmly predicts the separation of Canada from the

mother country by peaceable means. Alaman, the Mexican statesman and

historian, announces that Mexico, which has already known so many

successive races, will hereafter be ruled by yet another people, who

will take the place of the present possessors; and with these prophetic

words, he draws a pall over his country.

All these various voices, of different times and countries, mingle and

intertwine in representing the great future of our Republic, which from

small beginnings has already become great. It was at first only a grain

of mustard-seed, "which is, indeed, the least of all seeds; but when it

is grown, it is the greatest among herbs and becomes a tree, so that the

birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." Better still,

it was only a little leaven, but it is fast leavening the whole

continent. Nearly all who have prophesied speak of "America" or "North

America," and not of any limited circle, colony, or state. It was so, at

the beginning, with Sir Thomas Browne, and especially with Berkeley.

During our Revolution the Colonies, struggling for independence, were

always described by this continental designation. They were already

"America," or "North America," thus incidentally foreshadowing that

coming time when the whole continent, with all its various States, shall

be a Plural Unit, with one Constitution, one Liberty, and one Destiny.

The theme was also taken up by the poet, and popularized in the often

quoted lines:--

"No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,

But the whole boundless continent is yours."[97]

Such grandeur may justly excite anxiety rather than pride, for duties

are in corresponding proportion. There is occasion for humility also, as

the individual considers his own insignificance in the transcendent

mass. The tiny polyp, in its unconscious life, builds the everlasting

coral; each citizen is little more than the industrious insect. The

result is accomplished by continuous and combined exertion. Millions of

citizens, working in obedience to nature, can accomplish anything. Of

course, war is an instrumentality which a true civilization disowns.

Here some of our prophets have erred. Sir Thomas Browne was so much

overshadowed by his own age, that his vision was darkened by "great

armies," and even "hostile and piratical attacks" on Europe. It was

natural that D'Aranda, schooled in worldly affairs, should imagine the

new-born power ready to seize the Spanish possessions. Among our own

countrymen, Jefferson looked to war for the extension of dominion. The

Floridas, he says on one occasion, "are ours on the first moment of war,

and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us."[98] Happily

they were acquired in another way. Then again, while declaring that no

constitution was ever before so calculated as ours for extensive empire

and self-government, and insisting upon Canada as a component part, he

calmly says that "this would be, of course, in the first war."[99]

Afterwards, while confessing a longing for Cuba, "as the most

interesting addition that could ever be made to our system of States,"

he says that "he is sensible this can never be obtained, even with her

own consent, without war."[100] Thus at each stage is the baptism of

blood. In much better mood the good Bishop recognized empire as moving

gently in the pathway of light. All this is much clearer now than when

he prophesied. It is easy to see that empire obtained by force is

unrepublican, and offensive to that first principle of our Union

according to which all just government stands only on the consent of the

governed. Our country needs no such ally as war. Its destiny is mightier

than war. Through peace it will have everything. This is our talisman.

Give us peace, and population will increase beyond all experience;

resources of all kinds will multiply infinitely; arts will embellish the

land with immortal beauty; the name of Republic will be exalted, until

every neighbor, yielding to irresistible attraction, will seek a new

life in becoming a part of the great whole; and the national example

will be more puissant than army or navy for the conquest of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Seneca, Medea, Act II. v. 371.

[2] Humboldt, _Examen critique de la Géographie_, Tome I. pp. 101, 162.

See also Humboldt, _Kosmos_, Vol. II. pp. 516, 556, 557, 645.

[3] Strabo, Lib. I. p. 65; Lib. II. p. 118.

[4] Pulci, _Morgante Maggiore_, Canto XXV. st. 229, 230.

[5] Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. II. pp. 117, 118.

[6] Leigh Hunt, Stories from the Italian Poets, p. 171.

[7] Browne, Works, Pickering's edition. Vol. IV. p. 81.

[8] Johnson, Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

[9] Browne, Works, Vol. IV. pp. 232, 233.

[10] Browne, Works, Vol. IV. p. 236.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., p. 231, note.

[13] Berkeley, Works, Vol. I., Life prefixed, p. 53.

[14] Ibid., p. 53.

[15] Berkeley. Works, Vol. II. p. 443.

[16] Ibid., Vol. I., Life prefixed, p. 15.

[17] Grahame, History of the United States, Vol. IV. pp. 136, 448.

[18] Galt, Life of West, Vol. I. pp. 116, 117.

[19] John Adams, Works Vol. IX. pp. 597-599.

[20] Burnaby, Travels, p. 115.

[21] Ibid., Preface, p. 21.

[22] Turgot, _Oeuvres_, Tome II. p. 66. See also Condorcet, _Oeuvres_,

Tome IV., _Vie de Turgot_; Louis Blanc, _Histoire de la Révolution

Française_, Tome I. pp. 527-533.

[23] John Adams, Works, Vol. I. p. 23. See also Vol. IX. pp. 591, 592.

[24] Ibid., Vol. I. pp. 24, 25.

[25] John Adams, Works, Vol. I. pp. 230, 232.

[26] Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 227.

[27] Ibid., p. 250.

[28] John Adams, Works, Vol. IX. p. 510.

[29] Keith Johnston, Physical Atlas p. 114.

[30] John Adams, Works, Vol. VIII. p. 322.

[31] Ibid. p. 33.

[32] John Adams, Works, Vol. IV. p. 293.

[33] _Biographie Universelle_ of Michaud; also of Didot; Louis Blanc,

_Histoire de la Révolution Française_, Tome I. pp. 390, 545-551.

[34] Galiani, Correspondence, Tome II. p. 221. See also Grimm,

Correspondence, Tome IX. p. 282.

[35] Galiani, Tome II. p. 203; Grimm, Tome IX. p. 285.

[36] Galiani, Tome II. p. 275.

[37] Galiani, TOME II. p. 275.

[38] Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book IV. cap. 7, part 3.

[39] Hildreth, History of the United States, Vol. II. p. 476.

[40] John Adams, Works, Vol. X. p. 241.

[41] Pownall, Administration of the Colonies, Appendix, P. 7.

[42] Pownall, Administration of the Colonies, Appendix, p. 6.

[43] Ibid., p. 9.

[44] Pownall, Colonies, pp. 9, 10, 164.

[45] Pownall, Administration of the Colonies, p. 165.

[46] Ibid., p. 164.

[47] Parliamentary History, Vol. XIX. pp. 527, 528. See also p. 1137.

[48] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 4, 5.

[49] Ibid., p. 43.

[50] Ibid., p. 56.

[51] Ibid., p. 69.

[52] Pownall. Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 74, 77.

[53] Ibid., p. 82.

[54] Ibid., p. 83.

[55] Ibid., p. 85.

[56] Ibid., p. 87.

[57] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 80, 97.

[58] Ibid., p. 78.

[59] Ibid., p. 93.

[60] Ibid., p. 91.

[61] Franklin, Works, Vol. IX. p. 491.

[62] John Adams, Works, Vol. VIII. p. 179.

[63] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of America, pp. 5, 6.

[64] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, p. 83.

[65] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of America, p. 55.

[66] John Adams, Works, Vol. IX. p. 517.

[67] Ibid., Vol. III. p. 137.

[68] Ibid., Vol. VIII. p. 54.

[69] Ibid., Vol. III. p. 363.

[70] Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 226.

[71] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 553.

[72] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 556.

[73] Ibid., p. 846.

[74] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 1050.

[75] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 1356.

[76] Parliamentary History, Vol. XIX. pp. 259, 260.

[77] Ibid., p. 315.

[78] Ibid., p. 904.

[79] Ibid., p. 1190.

[80] Franklin, Works, Vol. VIII. p. 194.

[81] Franklin, Works, Vol. IX. p. 350.

[82] John Adams, Works, Vol. III. p. 379.

[83] Jay, Life of John Jay, Vol. I. p. 140; Vol. II. p. 101

[84] Alaman, _Disertaciones sobre la Historia de la Republica Megicana_,

Tomo III. pp. 351, 352.

[85] Alaman, _Disertaciones_, Tomo III. p. 333.

[86] Burnaby, Travels in North America, Preface, p. 10.

[87] John Adams, Works, Vol. VII p. 484

[88] John Adams, Works, Vol. III. p. 234.

[89] Currie, Life and Works of Burns, p. 266, Grahame, History of United

States, Vol. IV. p. 462.

[90] Parliamentary History, Vol. XXXI. p. 627.

[91] Annual Message to Congress of 2d December, 1823.

[92] Rush, Memoranda of Residence at London, Vol. II. p. 458: Wheaton,

Elements of International Law, pp. 97-112, Dana's note.

[93] Stapleton, Life of Canning, Vol. II. pp. 46, 47.

[94] Canning, Speeches, Vol. VI. pp. 108, 109.

[95] In the original text of Alaman this is printed in large capitals,

and it is explained in a note as said by Lucan in his Pharsalia, with

regard to Pompey.

[96] Alaman, _Historia_, Tomo V. pp. 954, 955.

[97] By Jonathan M. Sewall, in an epilogue to Addison's tragedy of

"Cato," written in 1778 for the Bow Street Theatre, Portsmouth, N. H.

[98] Jefferson's Works, Vol. V. p. 444.

[99] Jefferson's Works, Vol. V. p. 444.

[100] Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 316. See also pp. 288, 299.

SUNSHINE AND PETRARCH.

Near my summer home there is a little cove or landing by the bay, where

nothing larger than a boat can ever anchor. I sit above it now, upon the

steep bank, knee-deep in buttercups, and amid grass so lush and green

that it seems to ripple and flow instead of waving. Below lies a tiny

beach, strewn with a few bits of driftwood and some purple shells, and

so sheltered by projecting walls that its wavelets plash but lightly. A

little farther out, the sea breaks more roughly over submerged rocks,

and the waves lift themselves, ere breaking, in an indescribable way, as

if each gave a glimpse through a translucent window, beyond which all

ocean's depths might be clearly seen. On the right side of my retreat a

high wall limits the view, while on the left the crumbling parapet of

Fort Greene stands out into the foreground, its grassy scarp so relieved

against the blue water, that each inward-bound schooner seems to sail

into a cave of grass. In the middle distance is a white lighthouse, and

beyond lie the round tower of old Fort Louis and the soft low hills of

Conanicut.

Behind me an oriole chirrups in triumph amid the birch-trees which wave

around the house of the haunted window; before me a kingfisher pauses

and waits, and a darting blackbird shows the scarlet on his wings. From

the mossy and water-worn stones of the fort the bright-eyed rats peep

out, or, emerging, swim along the beach, with a motion made graceful, as

is all motion, by contact with the water. Sloops and schooners

constantly come and go, careening in the wind, and their white sails

taking, if remote enough, a vague blue mantle from the delicate air.

Sailboats glide in the distance,--each a mere white wing of canvas,--or

coming nearer, and glancing suddenly into the cove, are put as suddenly

on the other tack, and almost in an instant seem far away. There is

to-day such a live sparkle on the water, such a luminous freshness on

the grass, that it seems, as is so often the case in early June, as if

all history were a dream, and the whole earth were but the creation of a

summer's day.

If Petrarch still knows and feels the consummate beauty of these earthly

things, it may seem to him some repayment for the sorrows of a lifetime

that one reader, after all this lapse of years, should choose his

sonnets to match this grass, these blossoms, and the soft lapse of these

blue waves. Yet any longer or more continuous poem would be out of place

to-day. I fancy that this narrow cove prescribes the proper limits of a

sonnet; and when I count the lines of ripple within yonder projecting

wall, there proves to be room for just fourteen. Nature meets our whims

with such little fitnesses. The words which build these delicate

structures are as soft and fine and close-textured as the sands upon

this tiny beach, and their monotone, if such it be, is the monotone of

the neighboring ocean. Is it not possible, by bringing such a book into

the open air, to separate it from the grimness of commentators, and

bring it back to life and light and Italy? The beautiful earth is the

same as when this poetry and passion were new; there is the same

sunlight, the same blue water and green grass; yonder pleasure-boat

might bear, for aught we know, the friends and lovers of five centuries

ago; Petrarch and Laura might be there, with Boccaccio and Fiammetta as

comrades, and with Chaucer as their stranger guest. It bears, at any

rate, if I know its voyagers, eyes as lustrous, voices as sweet. With

the world thus young, beauty eternal, fancy free, why should these

delicious Italian pages exist but to be tortured into grammatical

examples? Is there no reward to be imagined for a delightful book that

can match Browning's fantastic burial of a tedious one? When it has

sufficiently basked in sunshine, and been cooled in pure salt air, when

it has bathed in heaped clover, and been scented, page by page, with

melilot, cannot its beauty once more blossom, and its buried loves

revive?

Emboldened by such influences, at least let me translate a sonnet, and

see if anything is left after the sweet Italian syllables are gone.

Before this continent was discovered, before English literature existed,

when Chaucer was a child, these words were written. Yet they are to-day

as fresh and perfect as these laburnum-blossoms that droop above my

head. And as the variable and uncertain air comes freighted with

clover-scent from yonder field, so floats through these long centuries,

a breath of fragrance, the memory of Laura.

SONNET 129.

"_Lieti fiori e felici._"

O joyous, blossoming, ever-blessed flowers!

'Mid which my queen her gracious footstep sets;

O plain, that keep'st her words for amulets

And hold'st her memory in thy leafy bowers!

O trees, with earliest green of spring-time hours,

And spring-time's pale and tender violets!

O grove so dark, the proud sun only lets

His blithe rays gild the outskirts of your towers!

O pleasant country-side! O purest stream,

That mirrorest her sweet face, her eyes so clear,

And of their living light can catch the beam!

I envy you her haunts so close and dear.

There is no rock so senseless but I deem

It burns with passion that to mine is near.

Goethe compared translators to carriers, who convey good wine to market,

though it gets unaccountably watered by the way. The more one praises a

poem, the more absurd becomes one's position, perhaps, in trying to

translate it. If it is so perfect,--is the natural inquiry,--why not let

it alone? It is a doubtful blessing to the human race, that the instinct

of translation still prevails, stronger than reason; and after one has

once yielded to it, then each untranslated favorite is like the trees

round a backwoodsman's clearing, each of which stands, a silent

defiance, until he has cut it down. Let us try the axe again. This is to

Laura singing.

SONNET 134.

"_Quando Amor i begli occhi a terra, inclina._"

When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline,

And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh

Soft as his touch, and leads a minstrelsy

Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,

He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine,

And to my thoughts brings transformation high,

So that I say, "My time has come to die,

If fate so blest a death for me design."

But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound

Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven,

It holds my spirit back to earth as well.

And thus I live; and thus is loosed and wound

The thread of life which unto me was given

By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.

As I look across the bay, there is seen resting over all the hills, and

even upon every distant sail, an enchanted veil of palest blue, that

seems woven out of the very souls of happy days,--a bridal veil, with

which the sunshine weds this soft landscape in summer. Such and so

indescribable is the atmospheric film that hangs over these poems of

Petrarch's; there is a delicate haze about the words, that vanishes when

you touch them, and reappears as you recede. How it clings, for

instance, around this sonnet!

SONNET 191.

"_Aura che quelle chiome._"

Sweet air, that circlest round those radiant tresses,

And floatest mingled with them, fold on fold,

Deliciously, and scatterest that fine gold,

Then twinest it again, my heart's dear jesses,

Thou lingerest on those eyes, whose beauty presses

Stings in my heart that all its life exhaust,

Till I go wandering round my treasure lost,

Like some scared creature whom the night distresses.

I seem to find her now, and now perceive

How far away she is; now rise, now fall;

Now what I wish, now what is true, believe.

O happy air! since joys enrich thee all,

Rest thee; and thou, O stream too bright to grieve!

Why can I not float with thee at thy call?

The airiest and most fugitive among Petrarch's love-poems, so far as I

know,--showing least of that desperate earnestness which he has somehow

imparted to almost all,--is this little ode or madrigal. It is

interesting to see, from this, that he could be almost conventional and

courtly in moments when he held Laura farthest aloof; and when it is

compared with the depths of solemn emotion in his later sonnets, it

seems like the soft glistening of young birch-leaves against a

background of pines.

CANZONE XXIII.

"_Nova angeletta sovra l'ale accorta._"

A new-born angel, with her wings extended,

Came floating from the skies to this fair shore,

Where, fate-controlled, I wandered with my sorrows.

She saw me there, alone and unbefriended.

She wove a silken net, and threw it o'er

The turf, whose greenness all the pathway borrows.

Then was I captured; nor could fears arise,

Such sweet seduction glimmered from her eyes.

The following, on the other hand, seems to me one of the Shakespearian

sonnets; the successive phrases set sail, one by one, like a yacht

squadron; each spreads its graceful wings and glides away. It is hard to

handle this white canvas without soiling. Macgregor, in the only version

of this sonnet which I have seen, abandons all attempt at rhyme; but to

follow the strict order of the original in this respect is a part of the

pleasant problem which one cannot bear to leave out. And there seems a

kind of deity who presides over this union of languages, and who

sometimes silently lays the words in order, after all one's own poor

attempts have failed.

SONNET 128.

"_O passi sparsi; o pensier vaghi e pronti._"

O wandering steps! O vague and busy dreams!

O changeless memory! O fierce desire!

O passion strong! heart weak with its own fire;

O eyes of mine! not eyes, but living streams;

O laurel boughs! whose lovely garland seems

The sole reward that glory's deeds require;

O haunted life! delusion sweet and dire,

That all my days from slothful rest redeems;

O beauteous face! where Love has treasured well

His whip and spur, the sluggish heart to move

At his least will; nor can it find relief.

O souls of love and passion! if ye dwell

Yet on this earth, and ye, great Shades of Love!

Linger, and see my passion and my grief.

Yonder flies a kingfisher, and pauses, fluttering like a butterfly in

the air, then dives toward a fish, and, failing, perches on the

projecting wall. Doves from neighboring dove-cotes alight on the parapet

of the fort, fearless of the quiet cattle who find there a breezy

pasture. These doves, in taking flight, do not rise from the ground at

once, but, edging themselves closer to the brink, with a caution almost

ludicrous in such airy things, trust themselves upon the breeze with a

shy little hop, and at the next moment are securely on the wing.

How the abundant sunlight inundates everything! The great clumps of

grass and clover are imbedded in it to the roots; it flows in among

their stalks, like water; the lilac-bushes bask in it eagerly; the

topmost leaves of the birches are burnished. A vessel sails by with

plash and roar, and all the white spray along her keel is sparkling with

sunlight. Yet there is sorrow in the world, and it reached Petrarch even

before Laura died,--when it reached her. This exquisite sonnet shows

it:--

SONNET 123.

"_I' vidi in terra angelici costumi._"

I once beheld on earth celestial graces,

And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known,

Whose memory lends nor joy nor grief alone,

But all things else bewilders and effaces.

I saw how tears had left their weary traces

Within those eyes that once like sunbeams shone,

I heard those lips breathe low and plaintive moan,

Whose spell might once have taught the hills their places.

Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth,

Made in their mourning strains more high and dear

Than ever, wove sweet sounds for mortal ear;

And Heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth

The very leaves upon the boughs to soothe,

Such passionate sweetness filled the atmosphere.

These sonnets are in Petrarch's earlier manner; but the death of Laura

brought a change. Look at yonder schooner coming down the bay, straight

toward us; she is hauled close to the wind, her jib is white in the

sunlight, her larger sails are touched with the same snowy lustre, and

all the swelling canvas is rounded into such lines of beauty as nothing

else in the world--not even the perfect outlines of the human form--can

give. Now she comes up into the wind, and goes about with a strong

flapping of the sails, which smites our ears at a half-mile's distance;

and she then glides off on the other tack, showing us the shadowed side

of her sails, until she reaches the distant zone of haze. So change the

sonnets after Laura's death, growing shadowy as they recede, until the

very last seems to merge itself in the blue distance.

SONNET 251.

"_Gli occhi di ch' io parlai._"

Those eyes, 'neath which my passionate rapture rose,

The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile

Could my own soul from its own self beguile,

And in a separate world of dreams enclose,

The hair's bright tresses, full of golden glows,

And the soft lightning of the angelic smile

Which changed this earth to some celestial isle,

Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows.

And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,

Left dark without the light I loved in vain,

Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn;

Dead is the source of all my amorous strain,

Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn,

And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.

"And yet I live!" What immeasurable distances of time and thought are

implied in the self-recovery of those words. Shakespeare might have

taken from them his "Since Cleopatra died,"--the only passage in

literature which has in it the same wide spaces of emotion. There is a

vastness of transition in each, which, if recited by Fanny Kemble, would

take one's breath away.

The next sonnet seems to me the most stately and concentrated of the

whole volume. It is the sublimity of all hopelessness, destined to

deliverance, but unable to foresee it.

SONNET 253.

"_Soleasi nel mio cor._"

She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine,

A noble lady in a humble home,

And now her time for heavenly bliss has come,

'Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine.

The soul that all its blessings must resign,

And love whose light no more on earth finds room

Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,

Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;

They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf

Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,

And naught remains to me save mournful breath.

Assuredly but dust and shade we are,

Assuredly desire is blind and brief,

Assuredly its hope but ends in death.

In the next he has risen to that dream which is more than earth's

realities.

Sonnet 261

"_Levommi il mio pensiero._"

Dreams bore my fancy to that region where

She dwells whom here I seek, but cannot see.

'Mid those who in the loftiest heaven be

I looked on her, less haughty and more fair.

She touched my hand, she said "Within this sphere,

If hope deceive not, thou shall dwell with me:

I filled thy life with war's wild agony;

Mine own day closed ere evening could appear.

My bliss no human brain can understand;

I wait for thee alone, and that fair veil

Of beauty thou dost love shall wear again."

Why was she silent then, why dropped my hand

Ere those delicious tones could quite avail

To bid my mortal soul in heaven remain?

In the next sonnet visions multiply upon visions. Would that one could

transfer into English the delicious way in which the sweet Italian

rhymes recur and surround and seem to embrace each other, and are woven

and unwoven and interwoven, like the heavenly hosts that gathered around

Laura!

SONNET 302.

"_Cli angeli cletti._"

The holy angels and the spirits blest,

Celestial bands, upon that day serene

When first my love went by in heavenly mien,

Came thronging, wondering at the gracious guest.

"What light is here, in what new beauty drest?"

They said among themselves; "for none has seen

Within this age come wandering such a queen

From darkened earth into immortal rest."

And she, contented with her new-found bliss,

Ranks with the purest in that upper sphere,

Yet ever and anon looks back on this,

To watch for me, as if for me she stayed.

So strive my thoughts, lest that high path I miss.

I hear her call, and must not be delayed.

These odes and sonnets are all but parts of one vast symphony, leading

us through a passion strengthened by years and only purified by death,

until at last the graceful lay becomes an anthem and a _Nunc dimittis_.

In the closing sonnets he withdraws from the world, and they seem like a

voice from a cloister, growing more and move solemn till the door is

closed. This is one of the very last:--

SONNET 309.

"_Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio._"

Oft by my faithful mirror I am told,

And by my mind outworn and altered brow,

My earthly powers impaired and weakened now,--

"Deceive thyself no more, for thou art old!"

Who strives with Nature's laws is over-bold,

And Time to his commandments bids us bow.

Like fire which waves have quenched, I calmly vow

In life's long dream no more my sense to fold.

And while I think, our swift existence flies,

And none can live again earth's brief career,--

Then in my deepest heart the voice replies

Of one who now has left this mortal sphere,

But walked alone through earthly destinies,

And of all women is to fame most dear.

How true this was! Who can wonder that women prize beauty, and are

intoxicated by their own fascinations, when these fragile gifts are yet

strong enough to outlast all the memories of statesmanship and war? Next

to the immortality of genius is that which genius may confer upon the

object of its love. Laura, while she lived, was simply one of a hundred

or a thousand beautiful and gracious Italian women; she had her little

loves and aversions, joys and griefs; she cared dutifully for her

household, and embroidered the veil which Petrarch loved; her memory

appeared as fleeting and unsubstantial as that woven tissue. After five

centuries we find that no armor of that iron age was so enduring. The

kings whom she honored, the popes whom she revered, are dust, and their

memory is dust, while literature is still fragrant with her name. An

impression which has endured so long is ineffaceable; it is an earthly

immortality.

"Time is the chariot of all ages to carry men away, and beauty cannot

bribe this charioteer." Thus wrote Petrarch in his Latin essays; but his

love had access to a treasury more potent, and for Laura the chariot

stayed.

CANADIAN WOODS AND WATERS.

The monotony so characteristic generally of the woodlands of Upper

Canada is mitigated, to a great extent, by the pleasant waters with

which many of the tracts of that country are intersected. Away back from

the great lakes, chains of smaller lakes glisten in the bosom of the

immense forest. Rivers take their course from these, narrow at first,

but noisy, rushing along by sparse settlements and lonely Indian camps

to their junction with the big lakes, where mills, and factories, and

ships, and human dross in general, soon pollute with unclean contact

their fair waters. Many of the early settlers of these regions were of a

stamp far different from that of the rough pioneers by whom new

settlements have generally been opened in the United States and their

territories. Here and there throughout Upper Canada there are

communities--some of them progressive, if not actually flourishing,

others yet in a backward state--which were founded by men whose early

lives had been passed amid the highest refinements of Old World

civilization. Among these, retired officers of the army and navy were

very frequently to be met with. They were generally married men, with

incomes wretchedly inadequate to the support of themselves and their

families on the "European plan." Land in Canada was to be acquired in

fee for a mere song, and it was something for the cadet of a landed

family to become the squire of a thousand acres upon some remote

Canadian lake or river, even although six hundred of his acres might be

nothing but cedar swamp. The native British keenness for the pursuit of

wild creatures had much to do with the choice of locality by the

adventurers, who generally set up their log-houses in districts where

game and fish were to be had in abundance. Communication by road, until

within the last twenty years or so, was so imperfect in many of these

tracts, that but little intercourse existed between one settlement and

another. On this account agricultural operations were very limited,

being confined, generally, to the raising of sufficient grain for family

use. In these communities somebody was always found to build a mill; and

as the gentleman settlers themselves were not above doing carpenter and

blacksmith work, no matter how bunglingly, things were made to look

shapely enough in the course of time, and thus were founded villages,

some of which have since expanded into towns of considerable size and

local importance.

Strangely grotesque, with their half-civilization, were these places in

their earlier days. Characters which would not have been out of place at

a _bal masqué_ were frequently to be met with in all of them. Blanket

coats in winter, adorned with beaded epaulets, scarlet woollen stockings

pulled up over the legs to fend off the snow, and Indian moccasons, were

considered quite the proper thing. Once, as I was travelling by sleigh

in a comparatively settled part of the country, a young man, who was

driving rapidly in the opposite direction, pulled up to greet my

companion, with whom he was acquainted. He was coming to the town, from

his residence in the heart of the woods, thirty or forty miles from

where we met him, and certainly I was astonished--being then newly

arrived in the country--at the extreme slenderness of the outfit of one

who was bound to do the "man about town" for a few days, and that in

midwinter too. He was in his shirt-sleeves, having no coat with him

whatever. His black velvet waistcoat, now foxy and threadbare with much

use, might once have been a _chef-d'oevre_ from the hand of some

London tailor whose gossip was of Guardsmen and their measurement. The

rest of his costume consisted of a pair of buckskin breeches fastened at

the knee with pearl buttons, heavy woollen stockings, and pegged

boots,--the latter indebted for their lustre more to the rind of pork

than to the blacking-brush. Singularly incongruous with this get-up was

the kid-gloved hand with which he removed the black pipe from his mouth;

nor was his straw hat exactly the sort of head-dress that one might have

expected to meet with during a Canadian sleigh-ride. But it was only

when he rose to his feet on the little rough sleigh, three feet by two,

on which he had been sitting, that the full splendor of his wardrobe

became revealed to us; for then he threw around his shoulders a

magnificent cloak, made, I think, of some kind of Siberian fur, and

which, folded up, had served him for a cushion on his journey. I

frequently afterwards met this exquisite of the backwoods, wrapped in

that showy mantle, walking in the streets of the little wooden town,

where his appearance, so strange to me, did not seem to excite any

particular comment. In those parts, men would often come into the towns,

in winter, dressed in blanket coats, with the rather inappropriate

accompaniment of white duck trousers and straw hats. Residents did not

appear to see anything eccentric in this; but in the mind of a stranger

a sense of the ludicrous was naturally excited by it.

Contrasts were ever to be observed among the striking features of these

queer settlements. In one very remote township of which I have memories,

there dwelt a family whose eccentricities of costume and manner of life

entitle them to some brief record here. A retired officer of the army,

with a large troop of well-grown sons and daughters, had built himself a

log-house in this dreary wilderness, the roads leading to which were

impassable for four months in the year. The girls of this family were of

a beauty that may truthfully be described as magnificent. No painter

that I know of ever gave to the world a Diana on canvas at all

comparable in beauty of face and form to the eldest of these. The

family, although English, had been brought up, I think, in the Greek

Archipelago, with the language and dialects of which they were

familiar. At home these young wood-nymphs always went barefooted in

summer. Their costume, whether in the woods or when they visited the

more advanced settlements, was of the Oriental style. Ahead of Mrs.

Bloomer, whose note of reform had not yet ruffled the sweeping skirts of

the period, they walked fearlessly abroad in loose trousers, fastened at

the ankle. Close-fitting bodices, with narrow skirts falling a little

below the knee, completed their costume, and the luxuriant masses of

their golden-brown hair fell in natural curls to their shoulders from

beneath their wide-brimmed straw hats. It was strange thus to find a

leaf from "Eothen" amid the black-ash swamps and rickety "corduroy"

causeways of one of the dreariest districts of Canada.

In the social life of these places, where rough hospitality is often

curiously mingled with a strain of former luxury, incidents of a

humorous character will sometimes attract the notice of the visitor. I

remember being told by an acquaintance about a visit once made by him to

the family of an English gentleman, who had settled upon a small

clearing in the depth of the forest. The young men of the family were

engaged in burning brushwood when my informant arrived, and he, anxious

to win their approbation, set to work with a will, and toiled with them

until the distant horn announced that dinner-time had arrived. Ablution

became necessary before the visitor, who by this time was as black as a

charcoal-burner, could venture to greet the ladies of the household, and

pails of water were accordingly furnished hard by the gable end of the

house. There was no towel visible, however, and the visitor, with his

hands and face dripping from recent immersion, was pained to see that

some difficulty had arisen out of his request for one. Then, with sudden

impulse, one of the young men went away, and returned in a minute or two

with a long and richly embroidered scarf, the golden web interwoven with

which, as well as the deep lace border, stamped it as a tissue of price.

Assured by the young men that this brocade was inured to duty as the

regular family towel, the visitor made use of it as such. The texture of

it, as he told me, was not pleasant to the face, and it abraded a good

deal of the skin from his nose. It went the rounds after he had used it,

and the party adjourned to the dinner-table, where some remark was made

as to the non-appearance of the daughter of the house. Presently that

young lady entered, however, and took her place at the dinner-table. She

had evidently bestowed some extra care upon her toilet in honor of the

guest from beyond the "timber limits"; but what chiefly attracted his

notice in her costume was a curious, gold-embroidered scarf, with deep

lace edges, the folds of which, although artfully cast, revealed here

and there the smudges of soiled hands. Indeed, my informant--who was a

little given to exaggeration, perhaps--used to aver that he recognized

upon the mystic garment, just at the point where it was crossed upon the

bosom of the lovely sylvan damsel, a portion of the cuticle of his own

Roman nose.

In another of these settlements,--it was remote, then, though now it has

a great line of railway running through it,--things used to be carried

to an extreme just the opposite of that above noticed. It was a little

English colony, several of the members of which were persons of

tolerably good means, with influential family connections at home.

Engaged, mostly, in agricultural pursuits, they could chop down trees,

and drive oxen, and plough, and mow, as well as any lout in the country

round, and some of them built their own houses and made furniture for

them. They had been swells, though, before they became "hawbucks," and

they brought some of their standard manners and customs with them. It

was considered proper in this community to dine at the fashionable hour

of six, when every person was expected to be precise in the matter of

costume,--the ladies _décolletées_ to the admissible extent, and the

gentlemen in black dress-coats and white "chokers." The necessity of

supporting the position suggested by this attempt at style, though,

induced extravagance. Many of the swells became bankrupt. Their farms

passed into more homespun hands. Their black dress-coats have long since

become rusty and out of the mode, and the mortiferous whiskey of the

country now tantalizes such of them as it has not killed with melancholy

remembrances of the Burgundy that was.

The simple faith and primitive arrangements that existed in some of

these clearings before the advent of the iron horse were peculiarities

that never failed to impress visitors from far-off cities and

settlements of older growth. Bolts and bars were the last things that a

settler would think about, when fitting up his house. A man would leave

his rifle in the canoe, upon the river's bank, for days together,

without the least misgiving as to its being spirited away. Rust would

not touch it, the climate of Western Canada being singularly free from

moisture; and the roving Indians who traversed these woods were

dependent in a great measure upon the white man, and had learned to look

upon his property with respect. Looking over one of my note-books, I

recall the picture of a deserted old shanty that stood in a meadow by

the margin of a bright and swift river. The gentleman who had formerly

occupied this weather-stained hut had built himself a larger and more

ambitious mansion upon the opposite bank of the stream. For some time

after he had moved into this, the interior of the house remained in an

unfinished state, and he had no accommodation for his books. Of these he

had a choice collection, and they were left in their large wooden cases,

for two years or so, on the upper floor of the old shanty, the doors of

which had already parted from their hinges, and the windows yielded to

the autumnal blasts. To this most curious of circulating libraries the

owner accorded free access to the few neighbors who occupied the

clearings around. Many a time I have swung myself up by the crazy ladder

that led to the attic where the books were; and in summer I would often

sit there for hours, reading Cooper's novels, which had then an

attraction enhanced by the circumstances and place. In winter I would

take books away. If it was the season for wild ducks I would have a gun

beside me, to get a shot at them from the attic window as they flew

along the course of the stream. So lonely was the hut, that the mink

would often haunt it in search of such small plunder as attracts his

kind; and once I encountered upon the threshold of it a milk-snake about

five feet long, which disappeared through the chinks of the flooring

before I could administer to it the _coup de grâce_ by which man feels

it to be his stern duty to cut short the serpentine career.

There is a wonderful fascination in these grand old Canadian woods for

sportsmen, whose wildest experiences of their craft, previous to their

essay in it there, had been associated with stalking deer upon Highland

mountains, or shooting grouse upon the moors. The solitude of woods is

of a more impressive character, I think, than that of bare

mountains,--in countries, at least, where one may expect to find traces

of civilized man. From mountain peaks there is a wide range of view, in

which some points of guidance to the traveller are usually visible.

Wandering in the woods is much like groping one's way in the dark; and I

know by experience how easy it is for an explorer not well accustomed to

them to keep moving in circles, until, after hours of what he imagined

to be a straight course, he finds himself back again at some wood-mark

long since passed, instead of the place for which he was bound. There is

something decidedly sensational in this, especially in winter, as

anybody who has ever experienced it will allow. The sounds of the forest

are impressive, too, while its stillness, at times almost absolute, is

painful. In the mystery of its voices lies a good deal of the

fascination of the wood. In the clear, frosty air of winter the cry of

the great black woodpecker rings out like an elfin laugh, as he wings

his curved way through the gray stems in quest of some skeleton tree.

Explosions caused by the frost are heard among the branches of the

trees. They are sometimes as loud as pistol-shots, and--as I can aver

from my own observation--the deer, after they have become accustomed to

them, will not bound away at the crack of a rifle, and the hunter will

often get several shots at one herd, by keeping close in his ambush. But

the slightest sound of a twig beneath his moccason, or the tinkle of the

powder-flask against the muzzle of the rifle as he reloads, will send

the herd crashing and flashing away. In the stillness of a summer

evening there is something very weird in the cry of the loon, or great

Northern diver, as it comes vibrating over the surface of a woodland

lake. Where the woods are very thick and dark and lonely, the hooting of

owls is commonly to be heard in the daytime. Once only--it was in early

summer--I heard the wild turkey-cock utter his vehement call. I made my

way in the direction whence the sound came, until I was stopped by a

river, on the farther side of which I saw a magnificent "gobbler,"

strutting with drooped wings and expanded tail along the strip of

greensward that lay between the water and the woods, while he issued, in

very loud and imperious tones, his orders for the ladies of his seraglio

to attend. This action, in the case of the domestic turkey, is always

provocative of ridicule; but it was absolutely grand and striking as

displayed by the large-feathered free bird, parading to and fro there

upon the river-bank. I watched him for a while, expecting to see the

hen-birds come, but they did not; and so the noble Mormon of the

thickets furled his tail at last, and, tucking up his wings, strode

moodily into the bush, as if to search for the truants.

To hunters who are accustomed to glide through the forest observantly

and with caution, most interesting little scenes of animal life are

sometimes revealed. One day, in the snow-time, as I was roaming the

woods close by a Canadian river, after wild-turkeys, I noticed a flock

of mergansers,--thereabouts usually called saw-billed ducks, or

sheldrakes,--swimming in a small air-hole that had remained open in the

frozen surface of the river. There were four or five ducks, and the pool

might have been about ten feet by six in size. I watched them for some

time, as they kept stemming the current, but without any intention of

wasting ammunition upon them. My attention was attracted elsewhere for a

moment, and I was surprised, on again looking towards them, to see a

splendid red fox sitting at the upper edge of the little pool, where he

could not have been more than a couple of yards from the nearest of the

ducks. Presently he jumped up, and, running to the other end of the

pool, stretched out a paw, as if to seize one of them; but they were too

quick for him, placing themselves well beyond his reach with a few

strokes of their paddles. He was far too cunning to plunge into the

water and risk being carried under the ice by the current; and the ducks

appeared to be quite aware of this, for they did not make any attempt to

rise, nor indeed did they seem to be at all uneasy at the proximity of

their natural enemy. It was exceedingly interesting, not to say amusing,

to watch the many stratagems of the fox to get at them. Sometimes he

would lie down upon the snow and lash about him with his bushy tail,

whimpering in a querulous and imbecile manner at being thus outwitted by

simple water-fowl. Then a new idea would take possession of him, and he

would start up and run round and round the pool at a tremendous pace,

probably to try and get a chance at the ducks by flurrying them; but

they knew too much for Master Reynard, and always edged away from him

just at the right moment. Tired at last of watching these manoeuvres,

I "drew a bead" upon the fox; but my hands were numbed from keeping

still so long, so that, instead of hitting him in a vital spot, as I had

intended, I only broke one of his forelegs, and away he went into the

woods on three paws with amazing speed, while the ducks rose into the

air at the report of the rifle, and flew up the course of the river in

search of lonelier water. I followed the track of the fox for a mile or

more, but had to give up the chase at last. The snow was flecked with

spots of blood where he ran; and although the fox is not usually an

object of sympathy around Canadian borders, yet I regretted much that I

had not missed this one altogether, instead of maiming him, after all

the amusement he had just afforded me by his curious pranks. This little

incident of fox and ducks might offer a good subject for the pencil of

an animal painter, and I hereby present it either to Mr. W. H. Beard or

to Mr. Hays,--whichever of them may first happen to glance over these

pages.

In some of the districts where game is yet plentiful, and where the

maskinonge--prince of the pike tribe--reigns supreme in the woodland

lakes, and the speckled trout haunts the eddies of the clear streams,

men who cannot be called settlers, in the proper sense of the word, are

often to be met with. They have been attracted thither by the free, wild

romance of the forester's life, the Bohemianism of which is a kind by

itself, although based, like other phases of that philosophy, upon

impatience of the formalities by which society is cramped. On one of

these lakes, in a picturesque and not very remote part of Upper Canada,

there was generally a little knot of such men to be found,--men who had

forsworn the gay world, and come from beyond the sea to live among

Indians and make havoc of the wild beasts and birds that still abounded

in the region. Sometimes they would come to the cities, and return for a

brief time to the usages of civilized life. After their arrival, their

affectation was to despise such luxuries as chairs and beds. Of an

evening they spread blankets on the floor, and sat there with their

pipes and "fire-water," like gentle savages as they were. I have met

with several who, for the first few nights, declined to avail themselves

of either house or bed, resorting in preference to some open shed or

garden, where they wrapped themselves in their inevitable blankets, and

slept the sleep of wild men upon the hard ground, with their knives and

rifles at hand, ready to resist any attack that might be made upon them

by hostile tribes during the night. Once in the streets of a city I

remarked a couple of Indian stragglers, such as are common in Canadian

towns. They were dressed in blanket coats, handsomely ornamented, and

bound at the waist with sashes of gay colors, in which long knives and

tobacco-pouches of marten fur were stuck, and they smoked black pipes as

they strolled leisurely along. One of them was a Chippewa of the

half-breed stamp, and rather a good specimen of his caste. His

companion, who wore a Scotch bonnet, was far too light in complexion to

be an Indian, for, though his face was tanned to a healthy brown by

exposure to the weather, his hair, which fell down in long ringlets to

his shoulders, was of a fair, yellowish hue, and I observed, besides,

that he did not turn his toes inward when walking, as Indians invariably

do. On inquiry I found that this romantic young man was an English

baronet of moderate fortune, who had been living among the Indians at

the lake for two or three years. He had been a Guardsman in his time,

and a man about the clubs, and, having drained society to the dregs, had

taken to Canadian woods and waters as a change from the comforts and

inconveniences of too much civilization. Some time afterwards I saw him

again, but in far different guise. He was once more a swell, and was

driving a smart English "trap," with a handsome team, in the streets of

the same town. Not long after this he returned to England, I believe,

and is none the worse, probably, for his adventures by the shores of

the pleasant lake of the woods.

Farther down the St. Lawrence, where Lower Canada stretches away to the

northeast until it reaches melancholy Labrador, lies an immense field of

exploration. More picturesque in its features than the upper or western

province, this offshoot of old France offers peculiar attractions to

persons who would escape, for a while, from the turmoils and cares of

the too-busy world. On the south side of the river, within thirty or

forty miles of the picturesque fortress of Quebec, moose are still

plentiful, and during the winter months their venison is always to be

found in the markets of the old town. The caribou haunts the

wildernesses of timbered mountains that rise away back from the north

shore. Parties of hardy sportsmen set out every winter from Quebec for

the chase of these noble deer. It is only upon snow-shoes, the

_raquettes_ of the French Canadians, that this sport can be pursued; the

snow generally lying to the depth of three or four feet on the level in

the woods. The practice of walking upon these contrivances is general

throughout Lower Canada. On fine afternoons, when the snow is well

packed, hundreds of young men, and not unfrequently young ladies, may be

seen scudding across the country, in every direction, outside the walls

of Quebec. The fences are covered by the snow, so that no obstacles are

offered to pedestrians unless they are bold enough to enter the woods.

Walking upon snow-shoes is a regular part of the training of soldiers in

garrison here and at Montreal. There are snow-shoe clubs, which have

races during the season, sometimes over hurdles three feet high. I have

seen a good performer jump higher than that upon his snow-shoes. This

training enables the sportsman to range the forest with ease, and to

follow the tracks of the moose until he brings it to bay,--for the

animal is heavy, and sinks deep into the snow at every plunge. With the

caribou it is not so easy to come up, the hoofs of that animal being so

arranged as to spread out and offer some resistance to the snow. When

the hunter goes about his work in earnest, the hardship and fatigue

attending this kind of sport are very great. In the little churchyard at

Rivière-du-Loup, one hundred and twenty miles below Quebec, there is a

tombstone to the memory of Captain Turner, an English officer who went

there many years ago to hunt moose. I made inquiries about him from the

people of the village, who told me that his death was caused by

over-fatigue in running down moose, and afterwards conveying the

venison, together with the immense heads and horns, on _trebogans_

through miles of the wild bush. One of two Indians whom he had with him

as guides died from the same cause. Sometimes hunters are seized with

what is called by Canadians the _mal-aux-raquettes_, which is a kind of

cramp caused by the pressure of the snow-shoe thongs near the instep,

not unfrequently obliging the sufferer to set up camp and rest for

several days before resuming his journey.

But summer is, after all, the season in which to enjoy best the wild

scenery and sports of the Lower St. Lawrence. On the north shore,

especially, rivers of wondrous grandeur succeed each other at intervals

all along the rock-bound coast. About one hundred and thirty miles below

Quebec the savage, gloomy Saguenay rolls between its walls of rock into

the St. Lawrence, which here is nearly twenty miles in width. A wild and

beautiful spot is the little bay of Tadousac at the mouth of the

Saguenay, with its curved beach of white sand. When I last visited the

place there was a post of the Hudson's Bay Company there, established

chiefly for the purpose of the salmon fishery. Since that time, however,

all these rivers have been taken under the immediate protection of the

government. Laws have been passed for the protection of the fish, and

they are rigidly enforced, too, under the direction of a Superintendent

of Fisheries. The result of this is, that within a few years the salmon

have gradually returned to many splendid rivers from which they had been

driven. The system of netting has been regulated so as to favor the

fish, although, as I am informed, there is much room for improvement in

this respect yet. It is incumbent upon owners of saw-mills now to

furnish their dams with "passes" of peculiar construction, up which the

fish can travel by a succession of leaps. The Indians are forbidden to

devastate the waters with the destructive _negogue_, or fish-spear; with

which weapon they used to mutilate more fish than they killed. One dark

night, as I lay on the bank of the Escoumain, one of the most beautiful

of these rivers, I was surprised to see a number of lights flashing out

suddenly over the dark pool below the lower fall. A horde of Milicete

Indians had silently paddled their canoes past us under cover of night,

and were now busily engaged in spearing the salmon. It was a curious and

beautiful sight to see these ragged savages, by the light of their

torches, darting their long spears into the water with wonderful

quickness and precision, bringing up every now and then a bright-sided

salmon, and knocking it off the barbs into the canoe. The perfect

wildness and remoteness of the place added much to the impressive

character of the scene. But it was mortifying to think of the wholesale

slaughter that was going on, and of our incapacity to put a stop to it,

for our party consisted of but four, and would have been of no avail

against twenty red savages armed with rifles and spears. It is true that

we had brought with us a letter from the agent of the Hudson's Bay

Company at Tadousac to the net-keeper at the Escoumain, enjoining that

functionary to give us every assistance and information in his power.

One of the instructions contained in that missive ran, as I remember,

"_chasses les sauvages_"; but the chase of twenty armed savages by one

small and smoke-dried old Canadian, like the net-keeper, would have been

a futile, not to say ridiculous, proceeding. And so the Indians had the

pool to themselves on that dark July night, and at gray dawn they

drifted past us down the stream, their canoes loaded with salmon, to

which we had fondly, though delusively, fancied that we had an exclusive

right.

One of the "gamest" and most beautiful fish for which angler ever busked

artificial fly is the sea-trout that comes up with the summer tides into

all these tributaries of the Lower St. Lawrence. Seldom under one pound

in weight, and often weighing as much as four pounds, these fish are so

similar in appearance to the common brook-trout, that many experienced

fishermen declare them to be one and the same species, the slight

difference between the two being accounted for by the influence of the

salt water and the peculiar feeding to be found in it. In color they are

rather more silvery than the brook-trout, but they are marked, like that

fish, with brilliant spots of red and blue along the sides. The best

place to fish for them is where the sea-tide meets the clear, fresh

water of the river, near its mouth. There are times when the salmon

becomes unaccountably reserved, and will not condescend to reply to the

line of invitation wafted to him by the angler across the eddies of the

pool. It is then that the sea-trout is found to be a valuable substitute

for his larger congener of the river, to whom he is only second in

affording excellent sport. In casting for the trout it is advisable to

use but one fly. Once, in the Saguenay, I used a casting-line with three

flies attached to it, as for ordinary trout-fishing. At the first cast

three sea-trout, each apparently over a pound in weight, were upon my

tackle at once, and the consequence was a tangle which resulted in the

loss of my casting-line and flies.

But for the mosquitoes and black-flies, which are very troublesome in

all this region, there can be no pleasanter summer resort for the angler

and the overworked city man. In winter there must be an awful, arctic

dreariness upon the place, and I can hardly imagine any person not a

French Canadian or an Esquimau taking up his abode there. And yet upon

one of the most savage of these rivers--the Mingan, I think--an angler

with whom I am acquainted fell in with a man of ancient Scottish family.

He bore a distinguished name, and had probably once been an ornament to

the social circles in which he moved. When my informant saw him, he had

ceased to be ornamental in any sense of the word, and had long been a

dweller in the wilderness. In appearance he differed but little from the

dirty half-breeds of the coast. Like them, he lived in a wigwam, with a

squaw, and had around him a family of children so numerous and dirty

that they were a wonder to see. He had been there for many years, and

did not seem to think that he should ever go back to England again.

Society had galled him with its harness, and the "raw" was visible yet.

He was in occasional communication with his relatives at home, had a

small, but independent income, and was heir, I think, to a much larger

one. Occasionally he would make his way to the nearest settlement or

Hudson's Bay post, where he sometimes found letters and newspapers

awaiting him; so that, although a little backward as to dates, he had

still some general idea of how matters were going on in the great world.

Strong indeed must be the fascination of the free Indian life, thus to

work its spells upon a man of education and refinement like this

eccentric dweller by the waters of the rugged Mingan.

Among the creatures that visit the Lower St. Lawrence is the white

whale,--_beluga_ of the naturalists. On a fine summer's day, when the

water is blue and calm, these curious rovers of the deep may be seen

basking with their backs just over the surface, looking so like small

icebergs that they convey an agreeable sense of coolness to the

observer. At other times, and especially just about nightfall, they are

very active, tumbling and splashing and spouting in every direction, as

if in play. Often have I been startled by one as it rose, suddenly, and

with a loud snort, close by the little yacht, while we lay at anchor for

the night. I was told here, that the calf, or young, of this whale

utters a kind of bleating cry, and that the mother whales frequently

carry their young ones upon their backs. Some few years ago I had an

opportunity of verifying the truth of these statements by observing the

habits of a white whale and her calf that were exhibited by Mr. Cutter,

of Boston, at Jones's Wood, near New York. The calf used to throw itself

upon the back of its dam, with a peculiar squeal, and remain there till

carried several times round the tank. Brush wears are built by the

inhabitants of these coasts for the capture of this kind of whale, which

is generally called the white porpoise here. These wears are merely

hedges of stiff brushwood, arranged so as to enclose a wedge-like space,

with its wide end open to the river. The whales wander up into them,

when they soon become embarrassed by the obstacles on either side,

losing their reckoning at last, and "coming to grief" by being stranded

upon the beach when the tide ebbs. They are not uncommonly from sixteen

to twenty feet in length, and specimens have occasionally been captured

which had attained the great length of forty feet. One of average size

will yield about a hundred gallons of oil. A soft and excellent leather,

well adapted for shoemakers' and other work, is now manufactured from

their skins, which were first discovered to be available for this

purpose by an enterprising Canadian named Têtu, residing, I think, at

Kamouraska, on the southern bank of the river.

The chase of the _pourcil_--a small species of whale, not often

exceeding five or six feet in length, and of a sooty color--affords good

sport, hereabouts, to those who are skilful and hardy enough to follow

it. In calm, clear weather only the hunter dares to pursue this creature

in his frail canoe, and even then he runs the risk of being caught in

one of the squalls that arise so suddenly on this part of the St.

Lawrence. One hunter sits in the stern of the canoe, and paddles, while

the other, armed with a long duck-gun, loaded with buck-shot, kneels in

the bow. Now and then the _pourcil_ emerges partly from the water, and

the canoe is kept swiftly upon his course until a chance offers for a

shot. Sometimes the creature is killed by the shot, but more frequently

only stunned, so as to enable the hunters to approach near enough to

despatch him with their harpoons.

Seals in great numbers haunt the mouths of the tributaries here,

attracted by the travelling salmon, upon which they commit sad

depredations, often following them even into the fishermen's nets. The

hunting of seals is carried on chiefly in the winter time, when the

great river is partially blocked up with ice. About twenty-five years

ago, at a place called Trois Pistoles, on the south bank, an immense

number of seals made their appearance upon the ice just after it had

become fixed along the shore. Seals are reckoned valuable game in those

parts, and the inhabitants of the parish, armed with clubs, turned out

to chase them, under the direction of six priests. They had killed some

four hundred, when suddenly the ice parted from the shore, and went

drifting down with the tide, priests, _habitans_, seals, and all. Down

they drifted, past dreary shores, the sparse inhabitants of which did

all they could to aid them, but succeeded in taking off only a few in

their canoes. On, on, still they floated, past other parishes, where

people knelt and prayed loudly for them on the shore; then past other

parishes, again, where the canoe-men were more adventurous, and picked

the poor fellows off the ice in detail, until every one of them was

brought safely to land, yet not before they had suffered great hardship

from cold and fright. The old French Canadian from whom I heard this was

one of the hunters on the occasion; and although he expressed exceeding

gratitude to _le bon Dieu_ for the rescue of himself and his companions,

yet he had words of lamentation for the loss of the seals, not one of

which was recovered.

A primitive and interesting race are the French Canadians of these

coasts. Many of their villages, and churches--the latter with very steep

roofs, generally painted red--have a quaint, antiquated air, and some of

the settlements hereabouts are really of very remote date. Wind-bound

for a couple of days at one of the oldest and queerest of these

villages, on a forlorn little bay, not far from the Saguenay, I went

ashore to observe the manners and customs of the place. By the threshold

of every house there lay two or three pair of huge wooden clogs, looking

almost like "dug-out" canoes, and into these the people popped their

feet when the roads were muddy, and their occupations obliged them to go

out of doors. A large wooden crucifix stood by the roadside near the

entrance of the village, with a small space around it enclosed by a

wooden railing. Young girls in wide-brimmed straw hats were kneeling at

the foot of it, and I noticed that they had left their clogs outside the

railing. Presently an old woman came along, and she too deposited her

dug-outs reverently outside the little sanctuary before she entered.

These roadside crosses are to be met with everywhere in the French

Canadian settlements, many of them curiously fitted up as shrines, and

decorated with votive offerings. The valley in which this little village

stood had a pastoral appearance, but the hills to the north of it were

of a wild and dreary character, suggesting endless tracts of wilderness

beyond their dark ridges.

At this place, near the margin of the little bay, there stood a frame

house of better appearance than the ordinary dwellings of the village.

It had a weird and weather-stained look, nevertheless, which was in

keeping with the clump of stunted and sea-blighted pines by which it was

partially sheltered. The garden belonging to it appeared to have been

once well stocked, but it had run much to weeds and tangle now, and the

fence had rotted away in places, and left it open to the road. From this

house there came, as I strolled past, an old man, whose appearance was

at once so singular, and so different from, that of the ordinary

inhabitants of the place, that my curiosity impelled me to stop and

speak to him as he saluted me in passing. He was tall and very thin,

and, though apparently between seventy and eighty years of age, walked

with an erect carriage, leaning but slightly upon the cane he carried.

His face, which was remarkably small, looked like shrivelled parchment,

and his iron-gray hair hung straight down to his shoulders, like that of

an Indian. He was dressed, not in the gray cloth of the country, but in

an old-fashioned suit, which might once have been black, but was now

faded to a dingy greenish hue, and there was about him a decided air of

tarnished gentility very much out of character with the place and its

inhabitants. Speaking excellent English, he invited me to accompany him

to his house; and as dinner was nearly ready when we entered, he pressed

me to remain and partake of it. The table was spread by an old lady

quite as faded and decayed as himself. She was his sister, he told me;

adding that she was very deaf, and so nervous that he hoped I would

excuse her for not joining us at the repast. And so we two sat down

quite companionably together to a dinner consisting of boiled pork and

excellent potatoes and milk, with wild strawberries for a dessert.

The record of this old man's life was a strange one. He was born at

Quebec, of Swiss parents, who took him with them, while he was yet a

child, to Switzerland, in which country and in France he received his

education and passed the earlier years of his life. Returning to Canada

when a grown-up young man, he became a trader among the Indians, and was

for some time in charge of a frontier post hard by where the city of

Detroit now stands. After various ups and downs in life, he joined his

brothers at this old settlement, where they had a mill and a country

store. That was nearly fifty years before, and he had never been out of

the place since. His brothers were all dead, and the sister to whom I

have referred was the only one of the family besides himself now left.

Another sister had died only two months previously, and this accounted

for the bit of black crape twisted round the old gentleman's little

gallipot-shaped glazed hat, which he had lifted so politely when I met

him on the road. One of his brothers was drowned by accident, and

another had committed suicide,--a fact which he communicated to me in a

hollow whisper, as we sat there in the dim old room. Fourteen members of

his family were buried, he told me, under the shade of the pine-trees

near the house. Two more graves must have been added to the row long

since; and that is the end of a family which evidently had once enjoyed

good social position, judging from the cultivated manners and

conversation of the strange old man, who had been fossilizing for nearly

half a century in this remote place.

Among the reminiscences imparted to me by the old man of the bay, I have

note of the following.

While he was at the frontier post near Detroit, engaged in commerce with

the savage tribes and pioneering trappers, there was a gathering of

warriors at the place,--a sort of carnival in celebration of some event

interesting to the red men. One day the Indians got drunker than usual,

and, having exhausted their stock of liquor, a deputation of them

entered the store of the trader, and demanded a fresh supply on credit,

which was refused. Upon this the savages became insolent and abusive,

and the trader's partner, a man of great determination and personal

strength, struck down the leader of them with an axe-handle, just as the

tomahawks began to gleam. The savages were now leaping forward to cut

down the white man, who had intrenched himself among some barrels, when

a fiendish yell rang through the building, seeming to paralyze them like

an electric shock, and a short, thickset Indian, of very dark

complexion, suddenly made his appearance in the midst of them. Raising

his tomahawk aloft, and uttering a few words in his native tongue, the

dark-faced warrior pointed to the door, through which the cowed savages

filed sullenly away and sought their wigwams. This was the renowned

Tecumseh, and such was the influence he exercised over his people, even

when they were maddened by drink.

From the rough and sterile nature of the country through which many of

these north-shore Canadian rivers run, it seems unlikely that their

solitudes will ever be converted into fields for the permanent

civilization that agriculture alone can establish. Lumbering operations

and the fisheries constitute their only inducements for settlers, and

these branches of industry are chiefly carried on by a nomadic

population, nearly as wild in their ways of life as the aborigines of

the region. Sportsmen will be glad to know, however, that of late years

the facilities for reaching these rivers have been much improved.

Steamers now ply regularly upon the St. Lawrence, at least as far down

as the Saguenay. Landing-piers have been built at many points where it

was necessary, not many years ago, for passengers to wade ashore from

their boats; and the roads over the capes and highlands--where any roads

have yet been made--are of a less impracticable and aggravating

character than formerly. The right of leasing the rivers for fly-fishing

is vested in the government, from whose Superintendent of Fisheries at

Quebec all desired information on the subject can be obtained.

It is from Upper Canada that the curious old-time features of the

country are passing rapidly away with the grand old woods. Within the

present century the celebrated Joseph Brant, called Thayendenegea by the

red men, held his half-barbaric court, as Chief of the Six Nations, at

the very spot on the Grand River where the thriving town of Brantford

now stands. Brant had seen European civilization, and was the friend and

companion of English statesmen; and he curiously grafted that

civilization upon the Six Nations' manners and customs when he returned

to his strong-hold on the Grand River. Old men in Upper Canada yet spin

yarns about the entertainments given by this chief at his hospitable

mansion, where the guests were waited on by negro servants dressed in

liveries of green and gold, and a gigantic Indian with a barrel-organ

used to be stationed in the hall, to enhance the pleasures of the

banquet with sweet music. This condition of things can never exist

again, for which people have reason to be thankful, perhaps; but away

into the past with the Indian and his gauds are vanishing the deer, and

the wild-turkeys, and the creatures that men covet for their fur. Many

of the deep, cold brooks, in which the speckled trout used to abound,

are evaporating to mere threads as the country is cleared. Others have

been poisoned by manufactures or choked up with the _débris_ of

saw-mills, to the extinction of the fish; and Upper Canada, on the

whole, offers but a cheerless prospect now to the blighted young man of

leisure who would forswear society and seek to live primitively in

backwoods solitudes on the produce of his rod and gun.

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY.

"Come forth!" my cat-bird calls to me,

"And hear me sing a cavatina,

That, in this old familiar tree,

Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

"These buttercups shall brim with wine

Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic;

May not New England be divine?

My ode to ripening Summer, classic?

"Or, if to me you will not hark,

By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing,

Till all the alder-coverts dark

Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

"Come out beneath the unmastered sky,

With its emancipating spaces,

And learn to sing as well as I,

Unspoiled by meditated graces.

"What boot your many-volumed gains,

Those withered leaves forever turning,

To win, at best, for all your pains,

A nature mummy-wrapped in learning?

"The leaves wherein true wisdom lies

On living trees the sun are drinking,

Those white clouds drowsing through the skies

Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

"Come out! with me the oriole cries,

Escape the demon that pursues you!

And, hark, the cuckoo weather wise,

Still hiding, further onward wooes you."

"Ah, dear old friend, that, all my days,

Hast poured from that syringa thicket

The quaintly discontinuous lays

To which I hold a season ticket,--

"A season ticket cheaply bought

With a dessert of pilfered berries,--

And who so oft my soul hast caught,

With morn and evening voluntaries,--

"Deem me not faithless, if all day

Among my dusty books I linger,

Nor am, like thee, June's pipe to play

With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.

"A bird is singing in my brain,

And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies,

Gay, tragic, rapt,--right heart of Spain

Fed with the sap of old romances.

"I ask no ampler skies than those

His magic music vaults above me,

No falser friends, no truer foes,--

And does not Doña Clara love me?

"Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars,

A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing,

Then silence deep with breathless stars,

And overhead a white hand flashing.

"O, music of all moods and climes,

Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly,

Where still between the Christian chimes

The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

"Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale

To his, my singer of all weathers,

My Calderon, my nightingale,

My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

"Yes, friend, these singers dead so long,

And still, perhaps, in purgatory,

Give its best sweetness to all song,

To Nature's self her better glory."

HOSPITAL MEMORIES.

II.

In March, the first fresh fragrance of the Southern spring, and the

merry songs of birds in the evergreen-trees, filled the soft air with a

delusive promise that summer was near at hand. But cold, stormy weather

tediously delayed its coming, and resulted calamitously for the soldiers

of the Ninth Army Corps, who came from the bravely borne hardships and

well-earned honors of the siege of Knoxville, as well as for many other

regiments that joined them at Annapolis before starting on the last

campaign of the war. Indeed, throughout the war, it seemed as if the

inception of an expedition was a signal for the elements to lash

themselves into a fury in some remarkable manner. Sleet, snow, and

bitter blasts did their worst for many weeks at this time; and pneumonia

in its most fearful forms, and rheumatism, attacked hundreds in their

unavoidable exposure.

About seventy colored men, many Indians, and scores of others were

brought into the hospital. I think that no one regiment sent more

patients than the First Michigan Sharpshooters, who had come from

Chicago in a violent storm in partially open cars. Their

lieutenant-colonel lay in a critical state for several days with typhoid

pneumonia. The officers and men of the regiment were continually coming

in to inquire for him, and their words of interest and esteem bore

witness to the beauty of a character of which his noble face was alone

sufficient assurance. The disease of which he was apparently dying

needs, perhaps more than any other, the closest watchfulness and good

judgment. The doctors were indefatigable in their consultations. Ice

held constantly in the mouth was the only nourishment he could take.

When medicine had done its utmost, Dr. Vanderkeift sadly said, he feared

that he must die. During five days and nights sleep had not at all

calmed his delirious ravings, and nature seemed exhausted. "But you are

determined that he shall not die," said one of the doctors to the lady

in charge of the ward. "Not if good care can save his life," she

answered. (And here let me record the uniform courtesy and respect with

which suggestions from the ladies were received by the doctors. Their

wishes were always acceded to, if possible, with a gentlemanly deference

which showed they were not considered intrusive.) Life, however, seemed

almost gone, and hope at an end for our patient, when at nightfall a

group of doctors whispered together that there was no use in doing

anything more,--that he could not live till morning. Then, with a

pertinacity which could not yield, the lady in charge requested that a

blister might be applied to the back of his neck. "It will do no harm,

and, if it will be the slightest gratification to you, it shall be put

on; but," added the doctors, "you had better make up your mind to lose

him, for he must die." With what intense satisfaction, at five o'clock

the next morning, was the doctor welcomed in the ward, and told that

four hours of refreshing sleep had followed the application of the

blister! He was surprised even to find the patient alive, and with joy

pronounced him much better. He ordered the strongest beef essence, with

a fresh egg lightly beaten mixed with it, to be given by the teaspoonful

every twenty minutes, alternating it with brandy and water. There was a

wonderful improvement that day, and before his friends arrived on the

next, the sick man was quite out of danger.

One of the most highly prized of all the various gifts which were

offered in grateful remembrance to the ladies in the hospital was a

volume of Autograph Leaves of American Authors from this patient. On the

blank page was written:--

"---- ---- ----:--I owe you a better memento, but here is

one that I know your good taste will appreciate.

"I met you first in my delirium; and knew you only in the

purest and sweetest character a woman can exhibit,--a true

and faithful Florence Nightingale, supporting and

encouraging the weary, bathing the feverish brow of the

brave soldier dying far from other friends.

"I never can forget, and I trust you never will, how you

night and day kept watch over me when wife and father were

yet far away, when fever and delirium were racking my brain

and sapping life from my lungs,--how you bore with every

impatience of mine, or kindly answered every severe word.

"Please accept this book from

"Your devoted friend,

"---- ---- ---- ----."

There was a general commotion and eager haste in the hospital the day

before the Ninth Army Corps left. The convalescents assured the doctors

of their ability to go, but the doctors, differing in opinion, made many

a brave man unhappy. One old soldier, John Paul, chief saddler of the

Third Division of the Corps, insisted stoutly on the necessity of his

joining his command. If the whole success of the undertaking had rested

upon his shoulders, he could not have felt the responsibility more. At

the last moment he was allowed to go.