[Illustration:
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 137.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]
THE DEATH-ROLL OF MONT BLANC.
In these days, when it is the fashion to decry Mont Blanc, in company
with a good many other old institutions, there is one thing about the
mountain which is apt to be lost sight of, and that is how very fatal
it has been to mountaineers. It is quite possible that the proportion
of killed to those who succeed in the ascent—and the same will hold
good in respect of any other Alpine peak—would not be found to be
great, for probably more people have gone up Mont Blanc than any other
high mountain; but no number of successful ascents will minimise the
fact that there can be very real danger on Mont Blanc. The causes of
danger are not far to seek. The mountain is regarded, and in fact is,
comparatively easy of ascent; and from the days when Albert Smith did
so much to dispel the awe with which it was once the fashion to regard
it, the popularity of the expedition has grown year by year, till quite
a considerable percentage of those who now go to Chamouni consider but
the half of their visit accomplished if they fail to ‘do’ Mont Blanc.
Thus it comes to pass that a great number of individuals are allowed
to ascend who ought not to go on the mountain at all, and who, under
certain conditions, may easily become a source of danger to themselves
and to those who accompany them.
But the danger from this cause is as nothing compared with that which
exists in the inferior quality of many of the guides. At Chamouni,
every one who styles himself a guide must belong to a kind of
trades-union society called the ‘Compagnie des Guides,’ and presided
over by a ‘Guide-chef.’ All who enter the ‘Compagnie des Guides,’
good, bad, and indifferent, enter it on the same footing, and are
compelled to take their turn for an engagement on a register kept at
the office of the ‘Guide-chef’ for the purpose. Thus, a traveller who
wishes to engage a guide, is not allowed—except under very special
circumstances—to choose his man, but must take him whose name stands
first on the list; and it may so happen that quite an incompetent
individual is given charge of a party wishing to ascend Mont Blanc,
while a really good guide is told off to carry a knapsack over the Col
de Balme.
It is easy to imagine what may result from a system such as this. For
one thing, it has had the effect of utterly demoralising Chamouni
guides as a body; and it has been the means, as we shall see presently,
of some of the worst accidents that have ever happened in the Alps.
It is usual nowadays for members of Alpine Clubs to bring to Chamouni
their own guides from other districts, rather than trust to the local
men; and so it has come about that Chamouni guides have been reduced
to taking casual parties up Mont Blanc, with the result, that very
few of them are of any use out of their own particular district, and
as regards the more difficult peaks of the range, very little even
in it. In fact, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the really
good Chamouni men may now be counted on the fingers. The grave scandal
occasioned by the desertion of the Russian, Professor Fedchenko, by his
guides—two inexperienced boys—and his subsequent death on the Mer de
Glace, called forth a severe protest against the Chamouni guide system
on the part of the Alpine Club; but beyond some slight modification of
the rules as regards the choosing of special men, very little has been
done; and to this day the Rules and Regulations of the ‘Compagnie des
Guides’ of Chamouni remain a byword with all mountaineers.
Finally, there is the danger—and this perhaps greatest of all—from
weather. Easy though Mont Blanc may be as long as the weather is good,
there is not a mountain in all the Alps which can become so dangerous
in a storm. Every one who has had experience of climbing, knows how
weather can affect a mountain, and how an ascent which is easy enough
one day, may become dangerous if not impossible the next. It is quite
a mistake to suppose that because a mountain offers no _physical_
difficulties, that there is no risk attending the ascent. We have Mont
Blanc as a case in point. Easiest of all the Great mountains, he has
proved himself the most fatal of any.
The first accident within our knowledge which occurred on Mont Blanc
was that to Dr Hamel’s party in 1820, and being the first accident to
Alpine climbers, it created at the time an immense sensation. From
accounts published by the survivors, it seems clear that the accident
was caused by ignorance of the state of the snow—ignorance excusable
enough in those days, when as a matter of fact the art of climbing was
very little understood. On August 18, 1820, a Russian professor, Dr
Hamel; two Oxonians, Messrs Durnford and Henderson; a Genevese named
Sellique; and twelve guides, left Chamouni, and in twelve hours—about
double the time now taken—reached the rocks of the Grands Mulets. Here
they pitched a tent which they had brought with them, and passed the
night. Bad weather came on after sunset; and as it did not clear next
morning in time for them to start, they had to pass another night in
the tent. It came on to rain again in the evening; but the following
morning, August 20, was fine, and it was determined to make a push for
the summit. At this juncture, M. Sellique was overcome with ‘scruples’
on the subject of making the ascent, and declined to accompany the
others, so he was left behind in charge of two of the guides. The
rest of the party set out at five A.M. The weather kept fine; but
the snow—to quote one of the survivors—was found to be ‘rather too
soft.’ They would appear to have followed the line of ascent usually
adopted in these days, until opposite the Dome du Goûté, and on a level
with it, when they branched off sharply to the left, and commenced
to traverse a steep snow-slope, directing their course straight for
the Mont Maudit. They were not roped, and were apparently proceeding
in Indian file, when suddenly the snow gave beneath their feet, and
carried them away bodily down the slope. They were all carried a great
distance—some accounts say twelve hundred feet—and then the whole
avalanche buried itself in a great crevasse. The three leading guides
were completely overwhelmed; but the rest of the party stopped short
of the crevasse, and were saved. The survivors made frantic efforts to
rescue their unfortunate companions; but the poor fellows must have
been buried under many tons of snow, and these efforts were unavailing.
It was scarcely thought probable that trace of them would ever
again be found; but after the lapse of nearly half a century, the
glacier yielded up its dead. In 1863, or forty-three years after the
catastrophe, portions of human bodies, the débris of a lantern and
Alpenstock, and the leaves of a Latin book, were found imbedded in the
ice on the surface of the Glacier des Bossons and near its foot. They
were recognised as belonging to the lost guides of Dr Hamel’s party.
Further discoveries were made in the two following years; and of the
relics thus brought to light, some are preserved to this day by the
Alpine Club in their rooms at St Martin’s Place.
This accident afforded strong evidence in favour of the fact of
glacier motion, for the remains were found to have been carried by the
ice a distance of nearly five miles from the spot where the catastrophe
occurred.
Almost simultaneously with the finding of the relics of Dr Hamel’s
ill-fated expedition, occurred another accident on Mont Blanc.
On August 9, 1864, a young porter named Ambroise Couttet, while
accompanying two Austrian gentlemen in the ascent of Mont Blanc, fell
into a crevasse on the Grand Plateau. This was an accident attributable
entirely to carelessness, for it appears that at the moment of the
catastrophe Couttet was walking apart from the others and quite
unattached. His companions did their best to effect a rescue; but the
crevasse was of such great depth that they could not come near him. A
party of guides subsequently went out with the object of recovering
the body; but although two of their number descended ninety feet into
the crevasse, they failed to reach it. It is almost certain, from the
terrible nature of the fall, that the unfortunate man’s death must have
been instantaneous.
There were two sad accidents on Mont Blanc in 1866. The precise cause
of the first is somewhat obscure, but the facts as far as they are
known are these. Sir George Young and his two brothers, unaccompanied
by guides, set out to ascend Mont Blanc on August 23, and succeeded
in reaching the summit in safety. They had not proceeded far in the
descent, when, for some reason unexplained, one of the party slipped
and dragged down the other two. They slid for a short distance, then
fell a height of twenty feet or so, and were finally stopped by soft
snow. Sir George and his second brother escaped serious injury; but the
youngest brother, Mr Bulkeley Young, was found to have broken his neck.
The accident to Captain Arkwright’s party was of a different
description, and in many respects bears a close resemblance to
that in which Dr Hamel’s guides lost their lives. On the 13th of
October—unusually late in the year for such an expedition—Captain
Arkwright with one guide, Michel Simond, and two porters, started from
the Grands Mulets to ascend Mont Blanc. At a little distance they were
followed by the landlord of the _Pierre Pointue_, Silvain Couttet, and
a porter—these two having apparently come for their own pleasure—on a
separate rope. The guides, probably by reason of its being a shorter
route, and, as such, likely to save time—an important matter at that
season of the year—chose the route adopted by Dr Hamel’s party, and
which had come to be known by the name of the Ancien Passage. They had
almost reached the spot where the disaster of 1820 occurred, when the
roar of an avalanche was heard. Couttet and his companion, realising
the danger, fled for their lives. They were a little way behind the
others, and were so fortunate as to escape; but Captain Arkwright and
his guides were caught by the avalanche and swept away. This accident
arose from precisely the same cause as that which happened to Dr
Hamel’s party—ignorance of the state of the snow; but it differed
in one respect: whereas Dr Hamel’s party started the avalanche, the
avalanche which proved fatal to Captain Arkwright and his guides fell
from above.
The fact of a second accident occurring at the same place and from a
similar cause, has given to the Ancien Passage the reputation of being
essentially unsafe. It is not necessarily more dangerous than other
routes, and indeed it may even be the safest route from Chamouni up
Mont Blanc. It is only really dangerous when the snow is in bad order;
and this is a point upon which a guide is—or should be—competent to
give an opinion. On the day of the accident, the snow was not in proper
condition, and it was because a right discretion was not used, that
Captain Arkwright and his companions lost their lives.
We now come to an accident which ranks as by far the most terrible
which has ever happened to Alpine climbers, for it resulted in the
loss of no fewer than eleven lives. On September 5, 1870, a party
consisting of two American gentlemen, Messrs Beane and Randall, and a
Mr MacCorkendale, with eight guides and porters—with one exception, all
Chamouni men—left Chamouni with the intention of ascending Mont Blanc.
They passed the night at the Grands Mulets, and next morning started
for the summit. Early in the afternoon, a violent storm burst over Mont
Blanc; and as the weather became very bad and they did not return, it
was resolved to send out a search-party from Chamouni. The weather,
however, continued for some days of such an unfavourable character
that it was not until the 17th, and when all hope had been abandoned
of finding any of the lost party alive, that a discovery was made.
The dead bodies of Mr MacCorkendale and two of the porters were first
found. They were lying on the snow quite uninjured, head uppermost, a
little way above the Mur de la Côte; and from the torn condition of
their clothes, it seemed probable that they had slid some distance
to the spot where they were discovered. Higher up, lay the bodies of
Mr Beane and another porter, with the greater portion of the baggage
beside them. Of the remaining six, no trace could be seen. A few small
articles which must have belonged to them were picked up subsequently
in the direction of the Brenva Glacier; but that was all. To this day
their fate remains a mystery.
The only light thrown upon the catastrophe was that which could be
gathered from the pages of a diary found on Mr Beane, and written by
him. Some doubt at first was cast upon the authenticity of the entry,
but there seems no reason at all for disbelieving its genuineness.
What it told was as follows: ‘_Tuesday, September 6._—I have made the
ascent of Mont Blanc with ten persons—eight guides, Mr Corkendale,
and Mr Randall. We arrived at the summit at half-past two o’clock.
Immediately after leaving it, I was enveloped in clouds of snow. We
passed the night in a grotto excavated out of the snow, affording
very uncomfortable shelter, and I was ill all night. _September 7
(morning)._—Intense cold, much snow, which falls uninterruptedly,
guides restless. _September 7 (evening)._—We have been on Mont Blanc
for two days in a terrible snowstorm; we have lost our way, and are
in a hole scooped out of the snow, at a height of fifteen thousand
feet. I have no hope of descending. Perhaps this book may be found
and forwarded.... We have no food; my feet are already frozen, and I
am exhausted; I have only strength to write a few words. I die in the
faith of Jesus Christ, with affectionate thoughts of my family; my
remembrances to all. I trust we may meet in heaven.’
The diary ended with instructions to his family as to his private
affairs.
It is to be regretted that poor Mr Beane gives us so little information
of any practical value; but meagre as his diary is, it sheds light on
one or two points. First, we gather that the party actually reached the
summit; and next, that it was about half-past two in the afternoon, and
immediately after leaving it, that the storm caught them. Now, how was
it, we may fairly ask, that so little progress was made on the downward
path?—for the ice-grotto of which Mr Beane speaks was constructed at an
altitude of fifteen thousand feet, or only seven hundred and eighty-one
feet below the summit. How was it that the guides failed completely
to find a way back over ground which they had traversed so recently?
Mr Beane does not tell us if any attempts were made on the 6th and
7th to find the way down—what little evidence we have tends to prove
that there were none—he merely says, ‘We have lost our way.’ To sit
down and wait where they were, as they appear to have done, showed a
want of judgment which, without being better acquainted than we are
with the facts of the case, seems quite inexplicable. Nothing is more
common in the high Alps than to be overtaken by bad weather; but out
of the Chamouni district there has not been an instance of a whole
party perishing from this special cause. It is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that the guides were not equal to their task, that they lost
their heads at the very approach of danger, and gave themselves up
for lost at the moment when they should have made the most determined
effort to escape.
There was another circumstance, too, which was held at the time to
reflect somewhat upon the conduct of the guides—not one of their bodies
was found. The five bodies recovered were those of the _heaviest_
members of the party, and there can be little doubt that they must have
been left behind, while the rest made an effort to save themselves.
Mr Beane, however, makes no mention of any division of the party,
and it is charitable to suppose that no division actually took place
until after the weaker members had succumbed to the exposure. What led
to the division, will never be known; neither will it be known what
motive impelled the guides to act in such an utterly incomprehensible
manner. That the leaders of the party _ought_ to have been thoroughly
up to their work, is emphasised by the fact, that neither Mr Beane,
Mr Randall, nor Mr MacCorkendale had had previous experience of
mountaineering, and were quite incapable of giving advice of any
practical value when difficulties arose. As a matter of fact, it does
not appear that any one of the guides held a foremost place in his
profession. Judging by their actions, they certainly proved themselves
singularly wanting in many of the most important qualities of good
guides; and it is impossible to believe that they could have been other
than very second-rate. But should the blame of the disaster be laid to
their charge? Should it not rather attach to a system which rendered
such an accident only too probable?
In the same year (1870) there was yet another accident on Mont Blanc.
A gentleman and two ladies, accompanied by a guide and a porter, were
out on the mountain; and the gentleman wishing to go further than the
ladies cared to, took the guide, and left them in charge of the porter.
With what object, it is not known, the porter promptly proceeded to
conduct his charges across a snow-field which was well known to be
honeycombed with concealed crevasses. Under these circumstances,
it would have been only wonderful if an accident had not occurred,
and unfortunately that took place which might have been predicted.
The porter had given his arm to one of the ladies, and was leading
her across, when the snow gave way beneath them, and they both fell
headlong into a deep crevasse. Here was a case of two lives wantonly
sacrificed. That any one calling himself a guide should have shown such
gross ignorance of the very first principles of mountaineering as this
porter did, is almost inconceivable. It is perfectly clear that he did
not understand his business, and was certainly not a fit person to have
been sent on expeditions above the snow-line.
A still later accident on Mont Blanc took place on the south side. On
the 30th August 1874, Mr J. A. G. Marshall, with two Oberland guides,
Johann Fischer and Ulrich Almer, left Courmayeur with a view to
attempting the ascent of Mont Blanc by way of the Brouillard Glacier,
an ascent which had not at that time been effected. They camped out
upon the mountain at a height of about ten thousand feet, and the
following day worked their way a considerable distance upwards till
they found themselves finally stopped by an impassable wall of rock.
This occurred somewhat late in the afternoon, too late, indeed, to
attempt any other route, and accordingly they turned back. The descent
was difficult, and night overtook them before they reached the spot
where they had bivouacked the previous evening. They were crossing the
last bit of glacier, when Fischer inquired the time, and Mr Marshall
drew out his watch, while the others came up to him with a light. As
they stood thus close together, the snow gave way beneath them. Fischer
fell first into a crevasse which at this point was some thirty feet
deep and five feet in width; and Mr Marshall was dragged on to him;
while Almer alighted upon a hummock of snow but a few feet below the
mouth of the crevasse. Mr Marshall’s head came in contact with the side
of the crevasse, and in his case, death must have been instantaneous;
while Fischer’s injuries were of such a character that he, too, could
not have lived for any time after the fall. Almer escaped with a
severe shaking, but was rendered insensible by the shock of the fall.
Upon coming to himself, he found that both his companions were beyond
help; and as soon as there was sufficient light, he struggled down to
Courmayeur with the intelligence of the accident. The dead bodies were
recovered the same evening, and brought back the next day to Courmayeur.
Of all the accidents which have happened on Mont Blanc, this was
perhaps the one most deserving the term. Mr Marshall and his guides
were first-rate mountaineers, and it was scarcely from any fault
of their own that the catastrophe occurred. From a sketch of the
spot taken by M. Loppé the artist a few days after the occurrence,
the crevasse looks curiously narrow, and if the party had only been
standing but a few paces to right or left, they would have been in
perfect safety. Moreover, the scene of the catastrophe was not five
minutes’ walk from the moraine.
Thus Mont Blanc is responsible for the loss of no fewer than
twenty-four lives; but it is when we compare him with other mountains
that we realise how much more fatal he has been than any of his
fellows. The following table, compiled from the _Alpine Journal_, will
best bring home this fact:
Accidents. Lives lost.
Mont Blanc 7 24
Matterhorn 3 6
Lyskamm 2 6
Monte Rosa 2 4
Monte Cevedale 1 4
Dent Blanche 1 3
Haut de Cri 1 2
Titlis 1 2
Jungfrau 1 2
Wetterhorn 1 2
Aiguille Blanche 1 2
Single lives have been lost upon each of the following mountains:
Riffelhorn, Gross Venedeger, Schreckhorn, Piz Tschierva, Diablerets,
Blumlis Alp, Piz Bernina, Grandes Jorasses, Meije.
Of accidents which may fairly come under the head of Alpine accidents,
such as accidents upon glaciers and subsidiary peaks, there appear to
have been thirty-five—making a total loss since 1859, when climbing
became a recognised form of amusement, of ninety-eight lives, or,
inclusive of Dr Hamel’s accident, one hundred and one. When we come to
consider that Mont Blanc is responsible for nearly one-fourth of the
whole, we may well question whether the depreciation of the mountain is
quite justified. Is it not rather a case of underrating the enemy?
No reasonable person can deny that there is at times danger on Mont
Blanc, and when we consider from what a variety of causes it may
arise—from weather, from the state of the snow, from the unfitness of
many of those who attempt the ascent, and last, but not least, from the
guide system of Chamouni—we feel inclined to wonder not, indeed, that
the loss of life has been great, but rather that the death-roll is not
much greater.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XL.
Even as Delgado stood there still on the steps of the piazza at Orange
Grove, waving his blood-stained cutlass fiercely about his head, and
setting his foot contemptuously on Mr Dupuy’s prostrate and bleeding
body, Harry Noel tore up the path that led from Dick Castello’s house
at Savannah Garden, and halted suddenly in blank amazement in front of
the doorway—Harry Noel, in evening dress, hatless and spurless; just as
he had risen in horror from his dinner, and riding his new mare without
even a saddle, in his hot haste to see the cause of the unexpected
tumult at the Dupuys’ estate. The fierce red glare of the burning
cane-houses had roused him unawares at Savannah Garden in the midst of
his coffee; and the cries of the negroes and the sound of pistol-shots
had cast him into a frantic fever of anxiety for Nora’s safety. ‘The
niggers have risen, by Jove!’ Dick Castello cried aloud, as the flames
rose higher and higher above the blazing cane-houses. ‘They must be
attacking old Dupuy; and if once their blood’s up, you may depend upon
it, Noel, they won’t leave him until they’ve fairly murdered him.’
Harry Noel didn’t wait a moment to hear any further conjectures of his
host’s on the subject, but darting round to the stables bareheaded,
clapped a bit forthwith into his mare’s mouth, jumped on her back just
as she stood, in a perfect frenzy of fear and excitement, and tore
along the narrow winding road that led by tortuous stretches to Orange
Grove as fast as his frightened horse’s legs could possibly carry him.
As he leaped eagerly from his mount to the ground in the midst of all
that hideous din and uproar and mingled confusion, Delgado was just
calling on his fellow-blacks to follow him boldly into the house and
to ‘kill de missy;’ and the Orange Grove negroes, cowed and terrified
now that their master had fallen bodily before them, were beginning
to drop back, trembling, into the rooms behind, and allow the frantic
and triumphant rioters to have their own way unmolested. In a moment,
Harry took in the full terror of the scene—saw Mr Dupuy’s body lying,
a mass of hacked and bleeding wounds, upon the wooden floor of the
front piazza; saw the infuriated negroes pressing on eagerly with
their cutlasses lifted aloft, now fairly drunk with the first taste
of buckra blood; and Delgado in front of them all, leaping wildly,
and gesticulating in frantic rage with arms and hands and fingers, as
he drove back the terrified servants through the heavy old mahogany
doorway of the great drawing-room into the room that opened out behind
toward Nora’s own little sacred boudoir.
Harry had no weapon of any sort with him except the frail riding-whip
he carried in his hand; but without waiting for a second, without
thinking for one instant of the surrounding danger, he rushed up the
piazza steps, pushed the astonished rioters to right and left with
his powerful arms, jumped over the senseless planter’s prostrate
body, swept past Delgado into the narrow doorway, and there stood
confronting the savage ringleader boldly, his little riding-whip
raised high above his proud head with a fierce and threatening angry
gesture. ‘Stop there!’ he cried, in a voice of stern command, that
even in that supreme moment of passion and triumph had its full effect
upon the enraged negroes. ‘Stop there, you mean-spirited villains and
murderers! Not a step further—not a step further, I tell you! Cowards,
cowards, every one of you, to kill a poor old man like that upon his
own staircase, and to threaten a helpless innocent lady.’
As he spoke, he laid his hand heavily upon Louis Delgado’s bony
shoulder, and pushed the old negro steadily backward, out of the
doorway and through the piazza, to the front steps, where Mr Dupuy’s
body was still lying untended and bleeding profusely. ‘Stand back,
Delgado!’ he cried out fiercely and authoritatively. ‘Stand back this
minute, and put down your cutlass! If you want to fight the whites, you
cowardly scoundrels you, why don’t you fight the men like yourselves,
openly and straightforward, instead of coming by night, without note or
warning, burning and hacking and killing and destroying, and waging war
against defenceless old men and women and children?’
The negroes fell back a little grudgingly, as he spoke, and answered
him only by the loud and deep guttural cry—an inarticulate, horribly
inhuman gurgle—which is their sole possible form of speech in the
very paroxysm of African passion. Louis Delgado held his cutlass half
doubtfully in his uplifted hand: he had tasted blood once now; he had
laid himself open to the fierce vengeance of the English law; he was
sorely tempted in the whirlwind of the moment to cut down Harry Noel
too, as he had cut down the white-headed old planter the minute before.
But the innate respect of the essentially fighting negro for a resolute
opponent held him back deliberating for a moment; and he drew down his
cutlass as quickly as he had raised it, divided in mind whether to
strike or to permit a parley.
Noel seized the occasion with intuitive strategy. ‘Here you, my
friends,’ he cried boldly, turning round towards the cowering Orange
Grove servants—‘is this the way you defend your master? Pick him up,
some of you—pick him up this minute, I tell you, and lay him out
decently on the sofa over yonder.—There, there; don’t be afraid. Not
one of these confounded rogues and cowards dares to touch you or come
one pace nearer you as long as you’re doing it. If he does! cutlass
or no cutlass, I’ll break this riding-whip to pieces, I tell you,
across his black head as soon as look at him.’ And he brandished
the whip angrily in front of him, towards the mad and howling group
of angry rioters, held at bay for the moment on the piazza steps by
that solitary, undismayed, young Englishman with his one frail and
ridiculous weapon.
The rioters howled all the louder at his words, and leaped and
grinned and chattered and gesticulated like wild beasts behind an
iron railing; but not one of them ventured to be the first in aiming
a blow with his deadly implement at Harry Noel. They only yelled once
more incomprehensibly in their deep gutturals, and made hideous wild
grimaces, and waved their cutlasses frantically around them with
horrible inarticulate negro imprecations.
But Harry stood there firm and unyielding, facing the maddened crowd
with his imperious manner, and overawing them in spite of themselves
with that strange power of a superior race over the inferior in such
critical moments of intense passion.
The Orange Grove servants, having fresh courage put into their
failing breasts once more by the inspiring presence of a white man
at their sides, and being true at heart to their poor master, as
negro house-servants always are and always have been in the worst
extremities, took advantage of the momentary lull in the storm to do as
Harry told them, and lift Mr Dupuy’s body up from the ground, laying
it carefully on the piazza sofa. ‘That’s better,’ Harry said, as they
finished their task.—‘Now, we must go on and drive away these murderous
rascals. If we don’t drive them away, my good friends, they’ll kill
Miss Nora—they’ll kill Miss Nora. Would you have it said of you that
you let a parcel of murderous plantation rioters kill your own dead
master’s daughter right before your very faces?’
As he spoke, he saw a pale face, pale, not with fear, but with terrible
anger, standing mutely and immovably beside him; and next moment he
heard Nora Dupuy’s voice crying out deeply, in the very echo of his own
angry words: ‘Cowards, cowards!’
At the sight of the hated Dupuy features, the frenzied plantation
hands seemed to work themselves up into a fresh access of ungovernable
fury. With indescribable writhings and mouthings and grimaces, their
hatred and vengeance found articulate voice for a moment at least, and
they cried aloud like one man: ‘Kill her—kill her! Kill de missy! Kill
her—kill her!’
‘Give me a pistol,’ Harry Noel exclaimed wildly to the friendly negroes
close behind his back: ‘a gun—a knife—a cutlass—anything!’
‘We got nuffin, sah,’ Uncle ’Zekiel answered, blankly and whiningly,
now helpless as a child before the sudden inundation of armed rioters,
for without his master he could do nothing.
Harry looked around him desperately for a moment, then, advancing
a step with hasty premeditation, he wrenched a cutlass suddenly by
an unexpected snatch from one of the foremost batch of rioters, and
stepped back with it once more unhurt, as if by miracle, into the
narrow pass of the mahogany doorway.
‘Stand away, Miss Dupuy!’ he cried to her earnestly. ‘If you value your
life, stand back, I beg of you. This is no place for you to-night. Run,
run! If you don’t escape, there’ll be more murder done presently.’
‘I shall not go,’ Nora answered, clenching her fist hard and knitting
her brow sternly, ‘as long as one of these abominable wretches dares to
stop without permission upon my father’s piazza.’
‘Then stand away, you there!’ Harry shouted aloud to the surging mob;
‘stand away this moment, every one of you! Whoever steps one single
step nearer this lady behind me, that step shall be his last.’
Delgado stood still and hesitated once more, with strange
irresolution—he didn’t like to hit the brown man—but Isaac Pourtalès,
lifting his cutlass wildly above his head, took a step in front and
brought it down with a fierce swish towards Harry’s skull, in spite
of kinship. Harry parried it dexterously with his own cutlass, like a
man who has learned what fencing means; and then, rushing, mad with
rage, at the astonished Isaac before he knew what to look for, brought
down a heavy blow upon his right shoulder, that disabled his opponent
forthwith, and made him drop at once his useless weapon idly by his
side. ‘Take that, you nigger dog!’ Harry hissed out fiercely through
his close-set teeth; ‘and if any other confounded nigger among you all
dares to take a single step nearer in the same direction, he’ll get
as much and more, too, than this insolent fellow here has got for his
trouble.’
The contemptuous phrase once more roused all the negroes’ anger. ‘Who
you call nigger, den?’ they cried out fiercely, leaping in a body like
wild beasts upon him. ‘Kill him—kill him! Him doan’t fit to lib. Kill
him—kill him, dis minute—kill him!’
But Delgado, some strange element of compassion for the remote blood
of his own race still rising up instinctively and mysteriously within
him, held back the two or three foremost among the pressing mass with
his sinewy arm. ‘No, no, me fren’s,’ he shouted angrily, ‘doan’t kill
him, doan’t kill him. Tiger no eat tiger, ole-time folk say; tiger
no eat tiger. Him is nigger himself. Him is Isaac Pourtalès’ own
cousin.—Doan’t kill him. His mudder doan’t nobody, I tell you, me
fren’s, but coloured gal, de same as yours is—coloured gal from ole
Barbadoes. I sayin’ to you, me fren’s, ole-time folk has true proverb,
tiger no eat tiger.’
The sea of angry black faces swelled up and down wildly and dubiously
for a moment, and then, with the sudden fitful changefulness of negro
emotion, two or three voices, the women’s especially, called aloud,
with sobs and shrieks: ‘Doan’t kill him!—doan’t kill him! Him me
brudder—him me brudder. Doan’t kill him! Hallelujah!’
Harry looked at them savagely, with knit brows and firm-set teeth, his
cutlass poised ready to strike in one hand, and his whole attitude that
of a forlorn-hope at bay against overwhelming and irresistible numbers.
‘You black devils!’ he cried out fiercely, flinging the words in their
faces, as it were, with a concentrated power of insult and hatred, ‘I
won’t owe my life to that shameful plea. Perhaps I may have a drop or
two of your black blood flowing somewhere in my veins, and perhaps I
mayn’t; but whether I have or whether I haven’t, I wouldn’t for dear
life itself acknowledge kindred with such a pack of cowardly vagabonds
and murderers as you, who would hack an old man brutally to death like
that, before his own daughter’s face, upon his own staircase.’
‘Mr Noel,’ Nora echoed, in a clear defiant tone, nothing trembling,
from close behind him, ‘that was well said—that was bravely spoken! Let
them come on and kill us if they will, the wretches. We’re not afraid
of them, we’re not afraid of them.’
‘Miss Dupuy,’ Harry cried earnestly, looking back towards her with
a face of eager entreaty, ‘save yourself! for God’s sake, save
yourself. There’s still time even now to escape—by the garden-gate—to
Hawthorn’s—while these wretches here are busy murdering me.’
At the word, Louis Delgado sprang forward once more, cutlass in hand,
no longer undecided, and with one blow on the top of the head felled
Harry Noel heavily to the ground.
Nora shrieked, and fell fainting to the ground.
‘Him doan’t dead yet,’ Delgado yelled aloud in devilish exultation,
lifting his cutlass again with savage persistence. ‘Hack him to pieces,
dar—hack him to pieces! Him doan’t dead yet, I tellin’ you, me fren’s.
Hack him to pieces! An’ when him dead, we gwine to carry him an’ de
missy an’ Massa Dupuy out behind dar, an’ burn dem all in a pile
togedder on de hot ashes ob de smokin’ cane-house!’
COUNTRY JOTTINGS.
The British Islands were formerly covered with vast forests.
Robber-bands at one time infested the woods, of whom Robin Hood of
Sherwood Forest is the most noted. A continually increasing population
and the advancement of science have changed the aspect; these places
have now become the abodes of peaceful, civilised, and friendly men;
the desert and impenetrable forest are changed into marts of industry,
cultivated fields, rich gardens, and magnificent cities. The towns and
cities of the Britons were generally built in valleys upon the margin
of a stream or river, for the convenience of water and security from
winds. Surrounded by impervious woods, and secured by a rampart and
fosse, they were sufficiently strong to resist the ordinary attacks of
their enemies. The Roman soldiers were as much accustomed to the use of
the plough as the shield, and were as industrious in peace as they were
brave in war. When they had fixed their camps, they availed themselves
of the advantages the surrounding country presented, in order to secure
to themselves the necessary supplies. Woods were cut down, the ground
cleared and ploughed up; and roads were constructed from station to
station, to facilitate the conveyance of goods, and collect their
forces together with more ease and expedition on any sudden emergency.
The Roman custom of grazing in Italy was adopted in the remotest parts
of their widely extended empire. The dry ground of the hills and the
moist meadows of the vale were successively the pasture of their flocks
and herds. During the summer, they confined them to the marshes and low
grounds; and on the approach of winter they drove them up to the hills.
Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers in the forests of oak and beech reared
large numbers of sheep and swine, and in the rich pastures and open
downs of the south and west.
Uncivilised man, impelled rather by his wants than allured by pleasure,
ardently pursues the beasts of the forest. Hunting may be considered
as his necessary employment, and the game caught by his dexterity and
cunning, as being the chief part of his subsistence. This employment,
toilsome as it is, yields, however, but a precarious and uncertain
support; and when man has been taught to supply his wants by the
cultivation of the ground, if it be not wholly relinquished, it will
only be pursued as an amusement or as a healthful exercise. The ancient
Britons lived on milk and the produce of the chase. In the present
day, the Hottentot and Bushman partly live on the larvæ of insects and
the refuse of animals killed by the colonists. In Australia proper,
some natives eat reptiles, and even insects and vermin. The Oceanic
negroes have no fixed habitation, but they live in the hollows of trees
and rocks. Many of the inhabitants of the Marquesas, Fiji, and other
islands, are cannibals. Among a tribe in Sumatra, criminals condemned
are eaten alive, each one, according to his rank, taking that portion
of flesh from the living victim he prefers, and devouring it on the
spot either raw or cooked. Agriculture amongst these tribes is in a
very backward state, and hunting is one of their principal means of
subsistence.
Ancient chronicles state that King Edgar attempted to extirpate the
wolves in England by commuting the punishments for certain offences
into the acceptance of a certain number of wolves’ tongues from each
criminal; and in Wales, by converting the tax of gold and silver into
an annual tribute of three hundred wolves’ heads. In subsequent times,
their destruction was promoted by certain rewards, and some lands were
held on condition of destroying the wolves which infested the parts of
the kingdom in which they were situated. In 1281 these animals troubled
several of the English counties, but after that period our records
make no mention of them. The last wolf known in Scotland was killed in
1680; and in Ireland, one was killed in 1701. Very fearful accounts
are on record of the ravages committed by wolves when in hard weather
they associate in immense flocks. So lately as 1760, such terror is
said to have been excited in France by ravages of wolves that public
prayers were offered for their destruction. Since India became so much
the country of Europeans, the race of tigers has been much thinned, and
ere long it is probable that they will be driven to the most remote and
impenetrable districts.
The wolf in these islands was hunted by an animal known under various
appellations, as the Irish wolf-dog, the Irish greyhound, the Highland
deerhound, and the Scotch greyhound. There appears to be no doubt that
all the dogs thus denominated were essentially of the same breed. Its
original home is supposed to have been Ireland, whence, during the
proud days of ancient Rome, it was frequently conveyed in iron cages to
assist in the sports of the city on the Tiber. Buffon observes: ‘The
Irish greyhounds are of a very ancient race, and still exist (though
their number is small) in their original climate; they were called by
the ancients, dogs of Epirus and Albanian dogs.’ Holinshed, in his
_Description of Ireland and the Irish_, written in 1586, says: ‘They
are not without wolves and greyhounds to hunt them, bigger of bone and
limb than a colt.’ In Anglo-Saxon times, a nobleman never went out
unaccompanied by some of these dogs and his hawk; and so highly were
they esteemed, that by the forest laws of Canute it was ordered that no
person under the rank of a gentleman should keep one.
Until after the Norman Conquest, the chase was always, even in England,
pursued on foot; the nobles of the Conqueror’s train introduced the
custom of hunting on horseback. As cultivation increased, and the
most formidable objects of chase, the wolves, decreased in England,
the breed degenerated in size and strength; whilst the quality
now more desiderated, speed, was, on the other hand, still more
strongly developed. The result is the present race of greyhounds. In
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, the rugged character of the country
kept up for a much longer time the ancient deer-hunts in all their
essential features. Boar-hunting, ages ago, was practised in England.
Fitzstephen, in his description of England, written in the reign of
Henry II., in the latter part of the twelfth century, states that the
forest by which London was then surrounded was frequented by boars as
well as various other wild animals. In Scotland, a tract of country now
forming one of the extremities of the county of Fife, was anciently
called Muckross, which in Celtic signifies the Boar-promontory. The
tradition is that it was a famous haunt of boars. A district forming
a portion of the same country, designated by the name of the Boar
Hills, lies in the vicinity of St Andrews, in the cathedral church
of which city it is said that there were to be seen before the
Reformation, attached by a chain to the high-altar, two boars’ tusks of
the extraordinary length of sixteen inches each, the memorials of an
enormous specimen which had been slaughtered by the inhabitants after
having long infested the neighbourhood. The wild-boar was undoubtedly
an inhabitant of these islands, as mention is made of it in the
laws of Hoel-Dda, a celebrated Welsh legislator, who permitted his
grand-huntsman to chase that animal from the middle of November to the
beginning of December. William the Conqueror punished with loss of life
such as were guilty of killing the wild-boar.
Some remarkable occurrences have taken place with regard to the tame
kinds. A gamekeeper actually educated a black sow to find game. Slut,
the name he gave her, was rendered as staunch as any pointer. This
pig-pointer was sold by auction for a very large sum of money. A
gentleman had a sow which was taught to hunt, quarter the ground, and
to back the other pointers. As a reward for her labours, the keeper
carried bread in his pocket. In the island of Minorca, hogs are
converted into beasts of draught; a cow, a sow, and two young horses
have been seen yoked together, and of the four, the cow drew the least.
Nothing can more strongly establish the passionate devotion of the
Normans to the sports of the field than the conduct of the Conqueror
who laid waste the county of Hampshire and made it a forest for wild
beasts. The nobles, like their leader, within their domains inclosed
extensive districts to preserve the _feræ naturæ_, to afford them the
pleasures of the chase. Parks have been defined forests inclosed,
and were called _haiæ dominicales_. This word _haiæ_ appears in the
composition of a variety of English local names under the dialectical
difference of _hey_, _hay_, _how_, _haigh_. It is the Saxon _haeg_,
and means a hedge. To our royal and baronial castles usually belonged
two parks—one inclosed with a wall for fallow-deer, and the other for
red-deer, fenced around with a hedge. Free warren was a franchise
granted for preservation or custody of beasts and fowls of warren,
which, being _feræ naturæ_, every one had a right to kill as he could;
but upon the introduction of the Forest Laws at the Norman Conquest,
these animals being looked upon as royal game and the sole property
of our savage monarchs, this franchise of free warren was invented
to protect them, by giving the grantee a sole and exclusive power of
killing such game as far as his warren extended, on condition of his
preventing other persons. Nanwood informs us that the hare, the cony,
the pheasant, and the partridge were beasts and fowls of warren and no
other. Sir Edward Coke mentions as beasts and fowls of warren, roes,
rails, and quails, woodcocks, mallards, and herons. Free warren gave
to the lord of a manor an exclusive right to hunt and kill the game
therein.
An attempt was made some years ago to introduce the reindeer upon
an extensive scale into the colder parts of England and Scotland.
Those that were turned out upon the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh—a
situation which was considered peculiarly favourable—all died. A few
appeared to do well in a park near Dublin, but then died. The Duke of
Athole had previously placed a herd of reindeer in the mountains of his
estate; but the experiment failed. Several fine species of the wapiti,
an American deer, were turned into Windsor park some years ago: none of
them lived more than a year. The migratory disposition of those animals
is perhaps the reason of their not thriving in any inclosed country.
The timber of our woods in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was plentiful,
nor did the navy, the pride of Britain, consume one-thousandth part
of the timber which was found requisite. Though the country is now
shorn of its stately oaks, other countries are ready to cut down their
forests and exchange them for British industry. Ireland was formerly
called the Island of Woods, and the trunks of large trees are still
found in the bogs. A vast quantity of timber is exported from Germany.
In some parts of Austria, peat is used as fuel, wood being scarce; yet
the mountains of Transylvania and the neighbouring south countries
abound in extensive forests. Such is the abundance of oak, that above
two hundred thousand bushels of oak-apples are exported annually. The
forests of Greece are considerable. The quantity of timber sent from
Norway and Sweden is very great. The resources of Russia lie in its
immense forests, its mines, and the fertility of its soil. Some of
the gum-trees of Tasmania are three hundred and fifty feet high. The
baobab of Africa is said to live five thousand years, and one trunk
has measured one hundred and four feet in circumference. So thick and
uninterrupted are the forests which cover the plains of South America
between the Orinoco and the Amazon, that were it not for intervening
rivers, the monkeys, almost the only inhabitants, might pass along
the tops of the trees for several hundred miles without touching the
earth. Sir Francis Head says that the backwoods of North America are
being cleared in the following way. The mosquitoes torment the bisons
and other wild animals to such an intolerable degree that they run with
eagerness into any smoke they can reach, as their little tormentors
will not follow them there. The Indians, then, instead of hunting for
game, set fire to the forests; this brings the animals about them, and
they are easily shot. This is favourable to the white agriculturist,
but destructive to the poor Indian, at least as long as he continues a
mere hunter.