CHAPTER XXXIII.

Transcriber's Notes:

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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._

NOVEMBER, 1880.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J. B.

LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at

Washington.

CONTENTS

THE RUINS OF THE COLORADO VALLEY. Alfred Terry Bacon. 521

THE ARTS OF INDIA. Jennie J. Young. 521

ADAM AND EVE. 547

CHAPTER XXXIII. 547

CHAPTER XXXIV. 552

CHAPTER XXXV. 556

A PIVOTAL POINT 559

THE MISTAKES OF TWO PEOPLE. Margaret Bertha Wright. 567

LIMOGES, AND ITS PORCELAIN. George L. Catlin. 576

THREE ROSES. Julia C.R. Dorr. 585

THE PRACTICAL HISTORY OF A PLAY. William H. Rideing. 586

HOW SHE KEPT HER VOW: A NARRATIVE OF FACTS. S.G.W. Benjamin. 594

HEINRICH HEINE. A. Parker. 604

DAWN. John B. Tabb. 612

MRS. MARCELLUS. Olive Logan. 613

AUTOMATISM. H.C. Wood, M.D. 627

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP. C. B. T. 637

PEOPLE'S HOUSES: A DIALOGUE. L.W. 640

"TIME TURNS THE TABLES." 642

SEEING IS BELIEVING. A. T. 642

LITERATURE OF THE DAY. 645

BOOKS RECEIVED. 648

THE RUINS OF THE COLORADO VALLEY.

[Illustration: HOUSE OF A MOQUI CHIEF.]

It was about seventy years before our English race gained a foothold

on the eastern coast of America that, far away in the West, the seeds

of another form of Eastern civilization began to fall upon ground

which now belongs to our national territory. In the wilderness near

the western border of New Mexico there stands a great crag, torn into

curious shapes by the wear of ages, bearing on its summit a ruined

fortress of a forgotten people and on its side hieroglyphic writing

which no one can decipher. The same smooth sandstone surface which

invited the picture-writing of the ancients has also tempted later

passers-by to perpetuate their names. A long series of inscriptions

in Spanish, begun before the first English had landed at Jamestown,

tells how explorers, conquerors, government emissaries and missionaries

of the Cross, passing that way, paused to leave their names on the

enduring rock. That imperishable monument bears record to all time that

this remotest region of our country, the last which the new life of the

nineteenth century penetrates, was the first point to be touched by

European civilization, if we except one old Florida fort. It is three

hundred and forty years since the Spaniards entered New Mexico. There,

almost at the centre of the continent, in the valleys of the Rio Grande

and Colorado, the old Spanish life has remained, as unprogressive as

a Chinese province, continuing to the middle of this century a kind

of modified feudal system. But this old declining civilization of the

South-west is new in comparison with that which the Spanish conquerors

found existing in the country when they entered it. A remnant of that

old half-civilized life lingers still, almost unchanged by contact with

white men, in the seven citadels of the Moquis perched on the high

_mesas_ of Arizona, while in the Pueblo villages of New Mexico we find

it more affected by the Spanish influence.

The attraction which drew the conquerors of Mexico forty-five days'

journey away into the North was the fame which had reached them of the

Seven Cities of Cibola (the buffalo), great in wealth and population,

lying in the valley of the Rio de Zuñi. To the grief of the invaders,

they found not cities, but rather villages of peaceful agricultural

people dwelling in great pueblos three and four stories high, and they

searched in vain for the rumored stores of gold. At that time the

pueblos held a large population skilled in many arts of civilization.

They cultivated large tracts of ground, wove fabrics of cotton and

produced ornate pottery. Their stone-masonry was admirable. But even

three hundred years ago it seems that the people were but a remnant of

what they had once been. Even then the conquerors wondered at the many

ruins which indicated a decline from former greatness. The people have

not now the same degree of skill in their native arts which the race

once had, and it is probable that when the Spaniards came and found

them declining in numbers the old handicrafts were already on the wane.

In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of

kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the

Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of

the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah,

Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of

the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people.

On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their

villages--rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large

circular _estufas_, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of

the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the cañons are scattered in

every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which

give us the name "Cliff-dwellers" to distinguish this long-forgotten

people. And on commanding points, seen far away down the cañons or

across the mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might

signal to the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians.

It is only a few years since Mr. John Ruskin rejected a suggestion that

he should visit the United States, urging among other reasons that it

would be impossible for him to exist even for a short time in a country

where there are no old castles. We Americans were disposed to resent

this slap at our country, and not a few newspaper editors relieved

their minds by intimating that we could get along quite comfortably

without old castles and without Mr. Ruskin. But, after all, it is a

consolation for our national pride to know that the fault is not in

our country, but in Mr. Ruskin's ignorance of American archæology.

We have old castles without number in the Western Territories--ruined

fortifications and dwellings of an unknown antiquity, perhaps as old as

Warwick or Bangor, as impregnable as the highest cliff-built castle of

the Rhine, as grand in situation as the Drachenfels or Dover Castle.

Only the more eastern part of the great domain held by that ancient

people has yet been examined thoroughly with reference to its

antiquities. Within the last decade Mr. W H. Jackson of the United

States Geological Survey has brought to notice, by his admirable

photographs and descriptions, the remains in the cliffs and cañons

of South-western Colorado and the adjacent region. Thirty years ago

Lieutenant Simpson described the ruined pueblos of New Mexico. But

in regard to the ruins farther west, seen by Major Powell in his

headlong course down the Colorado River, and the innumerable remains

of cities, fortresses and canals mentioned by visitors to Arizona,

but little careful investigation has been made. I believe that few

richer fields for an antiquary can be found in the world than this

south-western region of our own country. I cannot doubt that a thorough

comparative examination of these remains would throw a new light upon

the relationship between the ancient and modern civilized tribes, and

upon their connection with their far more civilized Aztec neighbors of

the South. As yet, hardly an attempt at excavation has been made in the

Colorado Valley.

[Illustration: GUALPI.]

There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so

great a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers' ruined works as the

cañon of the Little Rio Mancos[1] in South-western Colorado. The stream

rises in a spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp

called Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open

valley, it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound cañon

which cuts for nearly thirty miles through a tableland called the

Mesa Verde. The cañon is wide enough to permit the old inhabitants to

plant their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either

side to a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and

grooved and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata

and the projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities

for building fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence.

Therefore the whole length of the cañon is filled with ruins, and

for fifteen miles beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the

river meets the Rio San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the

ancient occupation. The scenery of the cañon is wild and imposing in

the highest degree. In the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or

weather-stains to dull the brightness of the strata to the universal

hoariness of moister climates: the vertical cliffs, standing above

long slopes of débris, are colored with the brilliant tints of

freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of green follows the course of the

rivulet winding down through the cañon till it is lost to sight in the

vista of crags. The utter silence and solitude of the wilderness reigns

through the valley. It is not occupied by any savage tribe, and only a

few white men within the last few years have passed through it and told

of its wonders; and yet its whole length is but one series of houses

and temples that were forsaken centuries ago. I can hardly imagine a

more exciting tour of exploration than that which Mr. Jackson's party

made on first entering this cañon in 1874.

Above the entrance of the cañon the evidences of pre-historic

life begin. On the bottom-land, concealed by shrubbery, are the

half-obliterated outlines of square and circular buildings. The houses

were of large size, and were plainly no temporary dwelling-places,

for an accumulation of decorated pottery fills the ground about them,

indicating long occupation. No doubt they were built of adobe--masses

of hard clay dried in the sun--which the wear of ages has reduced to

smoothly-rounded mounds. For some miles down the cañon remains of this

sort occur at short intervals, and at one point there stands a wall

built of squared sandstone blocks. Along the ledges of the cliffs on

the right bits of ruinous masonry are detected here and there, but for

a time there is nothing to excite close attention. At last a watchful

eye is arrested by a more interesting object perched at a tremendous

height on the western wall of the cañon. It is a house built upon a

shelf of rock between the precipices, but, standing seven hundred feet

above the stream and differing not at all in color from the crags about

it, only the sharpest eyesight can detect the unusual form of the

building and the windows marking the two stories. The climb up to the

house-platform is slow and fatiguing, but the trouble is repaid by a

sight of one of the most curious ruins on this continent. Before the

door of the house, part of the ledge has been reserved for a little

esplanade, and to make it broader three small abutments of stone, which

once supported a floor, are built on the sloping edge of the rock.

Beyond this the house is entered by a small aperture which served as a

door. It is the best specimen of a Cliff-dweller's house that remains

to our time. The walls are admirably built of squared stones laid in a

hard white mortar. The house is divided into two stories of three rooms

each. Behind it a semicircular cistern nearly as high as the house is

built against the side of it, and a ladder is arranged for descending

from an upper window to the water-level. The floor of the second story

was supported by substantial cedar timbers, but only fragments of

them remain. The roof, too, has entirely disappeared, but the canopy

of natural rock overhanging serves to keep out the weather. The front

rooms in both stories are the largest and are most carefully finished.

Perhaps they were the parlor and "best bedroom" of some pre-historic

housewife. They are plastered throughout with fine smooth mortar,

and even in that remote age the mania for household decoration had a

beginning: floor, walls and ceiling were colored a deep red, surrounded

by a broad border of white.

The same cliff on which this house stands has on its side many other

ruins--some half destroyed by gradual decay, some crushed by falling

rocks, none so perfect as the one described; but all are crowded into

the strangest unapproachable crevices of the cañon-wall, like the

crannies which swallows choose to hold their nests, far removed from

the possibility of depredation. Some are so utterly inaccessible that

the explorers, with all their enthusiasm and activity, have never been

able to reach them. How any beings not endowed with wings could live at

such points it is hard to conceive: it makes one suspicious that the

Cliff-dwellers had not quite outgrown the habits of monkey ancestors.

As the cañon widens with the descent of the stream, the ruins in the

western wall increase in number. One fearful cliff a thousand feet in

height is chinked all over its face with tiny houses of one room each,

but only a few of them can be detected with the naked eye. One, which

was reached by an explorer at the peril of his life, stands intact:

ceiling and floor are of the natural rock, and the wall is built in a

neat curve conforming to the shape of the ledge.

[Illustration: RUINS IN THE CAÑON OF THE MANCOS.]

A mile farther down the stream there is a most interesting group of

houses. Eight hundred feet above the valley there is a shelf in the

cliff sixty feet in length that is quite covered by a house. The

building contains four large rooms, a circular sacred apartment and

smaller rooms of irregular shape. It was called by its discoverers

"The House of the Sixteen Windows." Behind this house the cliff-side

rises smooth and perpendicular thirty feet, but it can be scaled by an

ancient stairway cut into it which ascends to a still higher ledge.

The stairs lead to the very door of another house filling a niche a

hundred and twenty feet long. A great canopy of solid rock overarches

the little fortress, reaching far forward beyond the front wall, while

from below it is absolutely unapproachable except by the one difficult

stairway of niches cut in the rock. In time of war it must have been

impregnable. These dwellings have given more ideas about their interior

furnishing than any of the others. Among the accumulated rubbish were

found corn and beans stored away. In the lower house were two large

water-jars of corrugated pottery standing on a floor covered with

neatly-woven rush matting. In a house not far above were found a bin

of charred corn, and a polished hatchet of stone made with remarkable

skill.

From this point onward both the valley and the cliffs are filled with

the traces of a numerous population, every mile of travel bringing many

fresh ones into sight. Among the cliff-houses there is of necessity

a variety in form and size as great as the differences of the caves

and crevices that hold them; but among the buildings of the low

ground there is more uniformity, not only in this cañon, but in all

the valleys of the region. Most of them may be classed as aggregated

dwellings or pueblos with rectangular rooms, round watch-towers and

large circular buildings. To these must be added a few which seem to

have been built only for defence. The straight walls have generally

fallen, except the parts supported by an angle of a building; but, as

usual in old masonry, the circular walls have much better resisted

decay.

About midway down the cañon the curved wall of a large ruin rises

above the thicket. It is a building of very curious design. The outer

wall was an exact circle of heavy masonry a hundred and thirty feet in

circumference. Within, there is another circular wall, concentric with

the outer, enclosing one round room with a diameter of twenty feet.

The annular space between the two walls was divided by partitions into

ten small apartments. Other buildings of the same type occur in this

region, some of much larger size and with triple walls. Even in this

one, which is comparatively well preserved, the original height is

uncertain, though the ruin still stands about fifteen feet high. The

vast quantity of débris about some of them indicates that they were

of no insignificant height, and their perfect symmetry of form, the

careful finish of the masonry, the large dimensions and great solidity,

made them the most imposing architectural works of that ancient people.

I find no reason to doubt that they were their temples, and the

presumption is very strong that they were temples for sun-worship. The

occurrence of a circular room in connection with nearly every group of

buildings is of special interest, as seeming to link the Cliff-dwellers

to the modern Pueblo tribes in their religious customs.

Most striking and picturesque of all the ruins are the round

watch-towers. On commanding points in the valley, and on the highest

pinnacles of the cliffs overlooking the surface of the mesa, they occur

with a frequency which is almost pathetic as an indication of the

life of eternal vigilance which was led by that old race through the

years, perhaps centuries, of exterminating warfare which the savage red

men from the North waged upon them. To us the suffering of frontier

families at the hands of the same bloodthirsty savages is heartrending.

What was it to those who saw year by year their whole race's life

withering away, crushed by those wild tribes?

Near the lower end of the cañon stands one of the most perfect of these

towers, rising sixteen feet above the mound on which it is built. It

was once attached to an oblong stone building which seems to have

been a strongly-fortified house. The rectangular walls, as usual, are

prostrate, and have left the tower standing as solitary and picturesque

and as full of mystery as the round-towers of Ireland.

After the stream breaks from its long confinement out into the open

plain of the San Juan Valley the traces of old life are still abundant,

but they present no features very different from those above. At the

cañon's mouth an Indian trail strikes away toward the north-west. It

passes a remarkable group of ruins at a spot called Aztec Springs, and

continues to the McElmo, the next _arroya_, or dry stream-bed, west of

the Rio Mancos. Aztec Springs no longer deserve the name, for within

a short time the last trace of water has disappeared from the spot,

showing that the slow drying up of the great South-west country,

which has been going forward for ages, and which starved out the old

inhabitants, is still progressing. In the dry season there is no water

within many miles of this spot, though it is strewn with the remains

of stone buildings covering several acres and indicating a large

population of industrious people who must have lived by agriculture.

Until a long comparative study has been made of all the remains of this

race it is mere guesswork to estimate the age of the ruins; but when

the prostrate condition of these walls is compared with the state in

which the Chaco ruins of New Mexico are found, and when we consider

that the latter have no doubt been deserted for at least three hundred

and fifty years, it is reasonable to suppose an age of a thousand years

for these massive walls at Aztec Springs. Many other great structures

of this region, which seem to be coeval with these, are situated many

miles away from any perennial water, and the time which has elapsed

since those sites were suitable for large farming-towns must be counted

by centuries. In this group are two large quadrangular buildings with

walls still fifteen feet high, two of the circular estufas, besides a

multitude of half-distinguishable walls of dwellings. It is the largest

group of ruins in Colorado.

[Illustration: CIRCULAR RUIN IN THE CAÑON OF THE MANCOS.]

Not many miles beyond these so-called springs the trail leads into

the dry bed of the McElmo near its head, and another long succession

of antiquities is entered upon, but to enumerate them further would

be tedious, for the ruins of the Mancos are good representatives of

all those which are found along the courses of the Animas, La Plata,

McElmo, Montezuma, Chelley and other tributary valleys of the San Juan.

Nevertheless, there are a few buildings here and there of some unusual

interest which cannot be passed by without mention. On the verge of a

little side-cañon of the McElmo there is a curious instance of the keen

ingenuity of this people in taking every advantage of the fantastic,

castle-like shapes which Nature has formed out of the cañon-walls.

High on the edge of the mesa appears the ragged outline of a ruinous

watch-tower sharply drawn against the clear, unvarying blue of the sky.

It seems to be a tower of unusual height, but a closer view shows it

to be half of Nature's building. A tall fragment of rock, torn from

its bed, has rolled down the slope to the edge of the steep descent.

This rock the old builders have chosen to crown with a little round

tower where a sentinel, guarding the village behind him from stealthy

attacks, could command a wide sweep of country. The same thing on a

larger scale is found at another point where the dry McElmo meets with

the drier Hovenweep--a tributary without tribute. In this position

stands an enormous rock nearly cubical in shape. Its high sides make

it a natural fortress strong against an enemy without artillery, and

to its natural strength the Cliff-dwellers have added a battlement of

masonry. But among all the ruined strongholds of the region that which

is called the Legendary Rock has a pre-eminent interest on account of

the Moqui romance or tradition which clings to it. The rock is a grand

and solitary crag standing on a plateau of sandstone from which the

soil is washed away. It is far from water: a garrison must have been

dependent wholly on the very precarious rain-supply. About it runs an

outer rampart of stone, and on the rock itself is built a fortress. It

is several years since an aged member of the Moqui tribe first confided

to a white man versed in his language the legend of this rock. It has

been widely published, and considered of much significance. The Moqui

patriarch related how his people in the old time were many. Their tribe

dwelt in the North-east. One year they were visited by strangers from

the North, who came peaceably at first, but came again another year,

and year by year encroached and grew more warlike. At last the Northern

strangers gained the mastery and drove them from their homes. In a

long, slow struggle the Moqui forefathers gradually lost their ground,

till at last they made one final, desperate fight for their old homes

at the fortress of the Legendary Rock. They conquered their besiegers,

but with such fearful carnage that the rocks bear still the stains

of the blood-streams that flowed in that battle, and the remnant of

the besieged were glad to make an unmolested retreat to the mesas of

Arizona, where they dwell to this day.

The story is an interesting one, and has been honored by the explorers

with a place in their government report, for it shows a belief among

the Moquis that those old builders were their kinsmen. But, considering

the fact that the first Spanish discoverers found the Moqui tribe

in nearly the same condition as we see it now, and that this story

therefore must have been handed down for at least three hundred years

among an unlettered people, I am as much disposed to distrust the other

details of it as I am to doubt that the red iron-stains in the rock

were caused by the blood of their ancestors.

In the neighboring Montezuma Cañon, just beyond the State border, there

are some remains built after an unusual manner with stones of great

size. One building of many rooms, nearly covering a little solitary

mesa, is constructed of huge stone blocks not unlike the pre-historic

masonry of Southern Europe. In the same district there is a ruined line

of fortification from which the smaller stones have fallen away and

are crumbling to dust, leaving only certain enormous upright stones

standing. They rise to a height of seven feet above the soil, and the

lower part is buried to a considerable depth. Their resemblance to the

hoary Druidical stones of Carnac and Stonehenge is striking, and there

is nothing in their appearance to indicate that they belong to a much

later age than those primeval monuments of Europe.

All the certain knowledge that we have of the history and manners of

the Cliff-dwellers may be very briefly told, for there is no written

record of their existence except their own rude picture-writing

cut or painted on the cañon-walls, and it is not likely that those

hieroglyphics will ever be deciphered. But much may be inferred from

their evident kinship to the Moquis of our time; and the resemblance

of the ancient architecture and ceramics to the arts as they are

still practised in the degenerate pueblos of Arizona gives us many

intimations in regard to the habits of the Cliff-dwellers.

It was centuries ago--how long a time no one will ever know--when that

old race was strong and numerous, filling the great region from the Rio

Grande to the Colorado of the West, and from the San Juan Mountains

far down into Northern Mexico. They must have numbered many hundreds

of thousands, perhaps millions. It is not probable that they were

combined under one government or that they were even closely leagued

together, but that they were essentially one in blood and language is

strongly indicated by the similarity of their remains. That they were

sympathetic in a common hostility to the dangerous savage tribes about

them can hardly be doubted. They were of peaceful habits and lived by

agriculture, having under cultivation many thousands of acres in the

rich river-bottoms, which they knew well how to irrigate from streams

swollen in summer by the melting snows of the high mountain-ranges.

We read of their dry canals in Arizona, so deep that a mounted

horseman can hide in them. We know that they raised crops of corn

and beans, and in the south cotton, which they skilfully wove. That

they had commercial dealings across their whole country is shown by

the quantity of shell-ornaments brought from the Pacific coast which

are found in their Colorado dwellings. They did not understand the

working of metals, but their implements of stone are of most excellent

workmanship. Their weapons indicate the practice of hunting, and while

the race was still numerous their forts and their sharp obsidian arrows

made easy their resistance to the wandering savage hordes.

[Illustration: RUINS AT AZTEC SPRINGS.]

I believe that no instance can be cited of a people still in their

Stone Age who have surpassed that old race in the mason's art: indeed,

I doubt if any such people has even approached their skill in that

respect. The difficulty of constructing a great work of well-squared,

hammer-dressed stones is enormously increased if the masons must work

only with stone implements. Imagine the infinite, toilsome patience of

a people who in such a way could rear the ancient Pueblo Bonito of New

Mexico, five hundred and forty feet long, three hundred and fourteen

wide and four stories high! In one wall of a neighboring building of

stone less carefully dressed it is estimated that there were originally

no less than thirty million pieces, which were transported, fashioned

and laid by men without a beast of burden or a trowel, chisel or hammer

of metal.

Nothing marks more strikingly the vast advance which these people had

made from the condition of their savage neighbors than their evident

efforts not only for household comfort, but even for the beautifying

of their homes. I have referred to the rush-carpeted floor of the

"House of the Sixteen Windows" and the decorated walls of the two-story

house on the Mancos; but they, like other semicivilized peoples,

found the first expression for their love of the beautiful in the

ceramic art. The variety of graceful forms and decorations found in

their pottery is endless. In some regions the country for miles is

strewn with the fragments of their earthenware. The ware is usually

pale gray shading to white: the decoration is in black or red, often

in the angular designs commonly called "Greek patterns." The Moquis

of our time produce a handsome ware closely resembling that of the

ancient people. But the old cliff-painters and the modern potters often

sacrificed beauty to a passion for producing the most wildly-grotesque

forms. There is a certain general resemblance, which often strikes me

forcibly, but which is almost indefinable, between the ceramic and

sculptured forms of the Mississippi Mound-builders, the Pueblo tribes

and the ancient Mexicans. The resemblance seems to lie partly in a

certain capacity which those peoples possessed in common of producing

the most frightfully-grotesque forms ever evolved by the human

imagination--forms plainly intended to suggest living beings, yet not

at all transgressing the injunction against "anything that is in the

heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters

under the earth." The resemblance seems to me very significant.

At the time of the Spanish conquest the Pueblo tribes were worshippers

of the sun and fire, like all the races of this continent which were

above barbarism. To-day, even in those pueblos where a corrupted form

of the Roman faith is accepted, there are traces of the old sun-worship

mingled with it, and in all pueblos there are large circular rooms

called estufas reserved for councils and for worship. The invariable

appearance of estufas among the ruined towns, and even on the ledges

of the cliffs, shows what sacredness was attached to the circular room,

which perhaps was symbolic of the sun's orb: it indicates a unity of

religious faith between the ancients and moderns.

The priest who chronicled the events of the first expedition to New

Mexico was impressed with the great ruined towns which they saw

even before crossing the desert of Arizona. There is good reason to

believe that the cliff-dwellings, the last retreats of a persecuted

people, were abandoned before that time. But how could a people so

numerous, intelligent and civilized fall a prey to stupid, roving

savages? The wild tribes never could have won the fight against their

more quick-witted neighbors if the ancients had not begun their own

destruction.

The story which they have left recorded on the face of the country

is of this sort. At some very remote time they began agriculture in

the valleys of the South-west. They found the rainfall of the region

too limited for farming without irrigation, but the whole country

was intersected by streams fed through summer by the snows of the

mountain-tops and the abundant springs of the wooded slopes and

uplands. Thus their crops were watered and yielded increase with a

regularity unknown to farmers who must look to the summer rainfall

for success. The people prospered, multiplied and spread over a wide

country. In every green valley rose their great common dwellings and

circular temples. By superior numbers and intelligence they were

strong against their enemies. But the spreading population required a

great wood-supply. The finest of the trees were felled for timbering

their houses, and whole forests were swept away to give them fuel and

perhaps to feed perpetual sacred fires. The country was all too little

watered at the best, and the mountain-sides, once stripped of their

covering, oftentimes dried up and no new growth of trees appeared. Old

men began to observe that the streams did not maintain their even flow

through the whole year as when they were young, and lamented the good

old times when there was no lack of water for irrigation. The streams

began to be swollen with disastrous floods in spring and winter, and

to dwindle away alarmingly in summer. So through centuries the gradual

destruction of the wood brought ever-increasing drought, and drought

led in its train famine, disease and wholesale death. The people were

decimated and discouraged, and on the northern frontier began to be at

the mercy of savage raiders. They fled from their pleasant valley-homes

to hide in caves and dens of the earth, and built the cliff-dwellings.

There a remnant lingered in unceasing fear of the foes who coveted the

fruits of their toil; but even from these refuges they were driven

ages ago. Where they used to build villages and cultivate fields

are now barren gulches where two or three times a year a resistless

flood rushes down from the mountains that can no longer retain their

moisture. Thus ended their national suicide.

[Illustration: RUINS IN MONTEZUMA CAÑON.]

It was a strange ignorance that led them to their own destruction, was

it not? Yet we as a nation from Maine to California are recklessly

working the same ruin. We are stripping our mountains a hundred times

more rapidly than they, but who cares whether the forests are restored?

As a child I played and bathed in a pretty tumbling brook among the

Litchfield hills, and wondered that so small a stream but fifty years

before had given power to all the mills now ruined on its banks. Twenty

years more have passed, and now in the heat of summer there is hardly

water for a child to bathe. The hills are stripped, the stream has

dwindled, but the spring floods tear through the valley like a deluge.

Even the larger streams that still turn the mill-wheels and make the

wealth of Connecticut are not the trusty servants that they once were.

In summer they grow weak and must be supplemented with steam, and at

times they rise in fury and carry destruction before them. It is the

beginning of woes, but our Atlantic slope with its heavy rainfall

cannot easily be changed to a desert. In the far West it is different.

Colorado, Nevada and California, with a less regular rainfall and

with greater floods and smaller streams, would soon find the desert

encroaching on the habitable land. But in these very States the waste

of timber is most extravagant. Mining-camps and cities devour the

woods about them, and in every dry summer many hundred square miles

are burned by the recklessness of Indians and white men. Where the

Californian mountains have been cleared, the browsing millions of sheep

keep down all new growth, and, bringing great wealth in our age, they

threaten to impoverish posterity.

The dreary experiment has been tried by the ancient races of both

continents. Why should we repeat it? The question should command the

earnest attention of State and national governments. In our own land

already one old race has wrought its own destruction in this same way.

ALFRED TERRY BACON.

[Footnote 1: In studying the ruins of the Mancos and neighboring cañons

I have made constant use of the reports of explorations by Mr. W.

H. Jackson and Mr. W. H. Holmes in _Bulletins of U. S. Geolog. and

Geograph. Survey_, Second Series, No. 1, and _Annual Report_ of the

same survey for 1876.]

THE ARTS OF INDIA.

[Illustration: BUDDHIST RELIC-CASKET.]

The study of the industrial arts of India, if the warnings of learned

Orientalists are to be of any avail, is not a matter to be rashly

undertaken. All Indian art must be viewed in reference to Indian

religion. Forms, materials and colors have meanings that can only be

caught by familiar acquaintance with a symbolism both intricate and

obscure. Little decorative touches that to the untaught Western eye are

introduced merely to give an artistic finish to an involved design, or

to give room for bringing in the bit of color demanded by the sense of

harmony, have all a meaning not necessarily connected with art. While

in the West the problems of art are dealt with by men whose eyes are

bent on art alone, the Oriental artist solves these problems while

keeping his eyes fixed upon religion. The maturity of Indian religious

life was reached several centuries before our era began: it then took

a form which it still retains. There is no secular life from which it

can be distinguished. When a domestic utensil is examined, the first

question to be answered is, What religious meaning attaches to it?

This is an appalling fact, for it means that the arts of India cannot

be appreciated as the Hindus appreciate them until we have mastered an

accumulation of mythological and legendary lore such as possibly no

other country has amassed.

[Illustration: HINDU WOMAN REELING SILK.]

To appreciate the full extent of a task that already seems to hang

like a shadow over the whole of what yet remains of one's life, it

may be pointed out that the Vedas form only one of four groups of

sacred writings, that there are four Vedas, and that each one of the

four consists of four parts. Then there are Upa-Vedas, Ved-Angas and

Upangas; and under the last-named fall the epics of the _Ramayana_,

of ninety-six thousand lines, and the _Mahabharata_, of two hundred

and twenty thousand long lines, not to mention others. These are mere

glimpses into a vista long and dark, and it seems a little odd that

one should be called upon to go through so much in order to appreciate

a specimen of carving from Vizagapatam, an inlaid table-top from

Agra, a box of Cashmere lacquer or a panel of carved sandal-wood from

Canara. The fact is, that the matter may be looked at from another

point of view--that taken up by those who decline to see anything in

a painting but canvas and paint--who care for nothing in the shape

of sentiment or story, but have a single eye to art. In this way the

beauty and harmony of Oriental coloring, the delicacy and wonderful

finish in all manner of carvings, the skill displayed in inlaying and

chasing--in a word, all the points of industrial art in India--may be

both enjoyed and understood without a reference to the Puranas or the

Code of Manu, or without the observer's being able to enumerate the

avatars of Vishnu. The inquirer is thus borne up against the deterrent

influence of specialists, with the plaintive notes of whose voice he

has become in all probability elsewhere familiar. It is the same voice,

to all intents and purposes, that haunts the graves of Egypt, the

ruins of Rhag[oe], the tombs of Etruria and Magna Græcia, the workshops

of King-teh-chin and the mounds of Pachacamac. It is heard, in short,

all round the world, and its burden is ever the same: "Understand the

religion of a people before peering into their arts." The obvious

answer comes: Life is short and art is long: if to art religion be

prefixed, all knowledge of art is at an end. It would be pleasant, no

doubt, to tell at a glance what legend or myth is represented on a

Greek vase, but meantime we can admire the form. It would be equally

pleasant to be able to interpret the painting on a Chinese historical

vase, but meantime we can admire the colors. So with Egypt, Persia and

Peru: it will be well for the many to get at the industrial secrets of

these countries if they never obtain even a glimpse of the underlying

religious idea of the craftsman.

It is merely thrown out as a suggestion by the way, and without any

intention of belittling the importance of studying the superstitions

and philosophies of the world or of aiming at something more than a

strictly industrial view of industrial art, that so much attention may

be bestowed upon religions as the sources of ideas as to obscure the

form and manner of their expression in art. Possibly the formation of

an Indian museum at South Kensington may be productive of a longing

desire to become acquainted with Rama and the lovely Sita, the strong

Arjuna and the beauteous Draupadi; but it is hardly likely that

this was the object of its formation or that it will lead to the

acquisition of any more abstruse knowledge than such as comprises

the weaving of rich textures, the blending of gay colors, or the

industrial arts of damascening, carving and working in gold and silver

and precious stones. In what has here to be said, at all events, only

such references will be made to religion and legend as are absolutely

necessary to a general understanding of the conditions under which

Indian art has developed, and of the forms under which it is most

frequently seen.

The Indian Museum--or rather the collection forming the Indian section

of the South Kensington Museum--is of very recent formation. It may

be said to have grown without developing. Its nucleus was formed in

the days of the East India Company, and was stored in a little museum

in Leadenhall street. There it long remained, and one of its chief

attractions was Tippoo's tiger, now occupying a place of honor near

the musical instruments, to which it bears some kind of a relation.

The "tiger" is a wooden animal of ferocious aspect represented in the

act of tearing a prostrate European soldier dressed in the military

red coat and wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat of decidedly civil make.

It was taken at the fall of Seringapatam, and was probably made by

some European artificer for the delectation of the Tippoo Sultan. If

not symbolical it was undoubtedly suggestive of pleasant thoughts to

Tippoo, although as a musical instrument it could never have been

much of a success. To tickle the sultan's ear the tiger when wound up

emitted startling roars and groans, while its victim feebly moaned.

But on a certain festive occasion after the "tiger" was brought to

England the winding-up was unfortunately overdone, and long afterward

the soldier stoically declined to moan. The odd musical toy has been

brightened up to suit its new home, and its internal construction has

also received proper attention to such purpose that the roaring can

be reduced to something like method by merely passing the hand over a

keyboard, and the resuscitated struggling red-coat moans as lustily as

he did in the palmy days at Seringapatam.

Such is the instrument which played an important part in the Leadenhall

Street Museum. When the East India Company passed away and the British

government assumed the direct control of India, the tiger and all the

other curiosities were sent first to Fife House, and thence to the

India Office. The latter step was possibly taken on the advice of

some utilitarian who wished to bring within reach of the officials an

opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of India. Any such object was

frustrated.

[Illustration: GOLD EMBROIDERY ON VELVET: MURSHEDABAD.]

The director and curator were the only individuals known to visit

the collection. It was then sent to South Kensington and placed in a

temporary building, but still nobody looked in upon the tiger and the

jade, the carvings and Bidri-work. They were still under the control of

the India Office, and at length became a burden to it. Their failure

to interest the public naturally led to a desire to transfer the

responsibility of guardianship. This is not to be wondered at. The

collection had, as has already been pointed out, merely grown in bulk.

It was promiscuous in the worst sense. It consisted of a fortuitous

concourse of articles taken in war or bought upon no ostensible system

in peace. To these old Indian officers occasionally made testamentary

additions of things picked up in their travels or acquired by

inheritance or otherwise. International exhibitions have always been

good for museums. The unsalable is often valuable, and exhibitions have

been a source from which the Indian collection has reaped many solid

benefits. Thus the accumulation increased in bulk and intrinsic value,

but practically it still continued valueless. It was neither arranged

nor inventoried. It continued to illustrate little more than the manner

of its accumulation. Very naturally, the India Office in looking for

relief from a useless burden turned first to the Science and Art

Department under which South Kensington was flourishing. Its offer of a

transfer was at first declined, but the authorities at the India Office

would take no refusal. Their object was at once to get rid of the

collection and of the cost of maintaining it, and at the same time to

preserve its representative character and such individual identity as

it possessed. They ultimately succeeded in both respects, though their

success was not perfect. A part, including the collections of economic

botany of wild Indian silk and lac, went to Kew. The zoological

collection is in the hands of the trustees of the British Museum, and

will eventually take its place in the new Natural History Museum at

South Kensington. To the British Museum have gone the Indian Buddhist

sculptures, but casts of these may hereafter be placed in the Indian

Museum: certainly, in view of the influence of architectural decoration

upon industrial art, they seem necessary to its completeness. All else

was on the first of January last handed over to the Science and Art

Department, and came under the management and control of Sir Philip

Cunliffe-Owen, K. E. M. G., C. B. and director at South Kensington.

It was characteristic of Sir Philip that he should undertake to have

within six months a collection arranged and ready for public inspection

which had not for twenty years been seen in anything like order. It

had never before been catalogued, and had never before been so placed

that it could be seen intelligently or at one view. The first thing

to be done was the drawing up of an inventory. This work occupied six

weeks, and on its completion the discovery was made that the collection

was altogether inadequate to its purpose. It represented neither the

arts nor the industries of India, and gave a very disjointed view of

the resources of that country. The work, however, went on. Sir Philip

used all his influence, both personal and official, to supplement

defective departments. He made purchases and applied for loans. Her

Majesty, the prince of Wales and the duke of Edinburgh made selections

from their magnificent collections, and others were not slow to follow

their example. The result was that in his race against time Sir Philip

won by more than a month, making allowance for what has yet to be done

with the contributions still being made. Few other men could have won

a victory so complete with such apparent ease, because there are not

many who could have imbued contributors with similar confidence or so

thoroughly inspired an entire department with his own spirit of energy

and well-regulated activity. A word or two may be said of his career.

His father was Charles Cunliffe-Owen, a captain in the royal navy, and

at the age of twelve Philip entered the same service. He served for

five years in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, and at seventeen

was obliged by ill health to retire, but taking with him the habits a

naval career was well calculated to engender or develop of promptitude

and decision. After a rest of a few years he was appointed to the

Science and Art Department, and gradually won the notice and confidence

of his superiors. He was quick of apprehension, prompt in action and

accurate in execution. Sir Henry Cole recognized these qualities in

him, and entrusted him with the post of one of the superintendents

of the Paris Exhibition of 1855. A few years took him upward through

the rank of deputy-general superintendent of South Kensington Museum

to that of assistant director in 1860. At subsequent international

exhibitions he filled various offices as follows: at London, in

1862, director of the foreign sections; at Paris, in 1867, assistant

executive commissioner; at Vienna, in 1873, secretary to the royal

British commission; at Philadelphia, in 1876, executive commissioner;

and at Paris, in 1878, secretary of the royal British commission.

Meanwhile, in 1873, he was created a Companion of the Bath, and was

advanced to the directorship of the South Kensington and Bethnal Green

Museums on its becoming vacant by the retirement of Sir Henry Cole. In

1878 he received the honor of knighthood.

A good linguist and possessing rare tact and wonderful executive

ability, Sir Philip has succeeded where many of his countrymen

fail--namely, in making a favorable impression upon foreigners.

Prepossessing in appearance and manner, he can dash through business

at a speed calculated to astonish men of less energy and of a lower

vitality, and he does it, moreover, without the faintest taint of the

_brusquerie_ which almost as a rule bristles all over the less capable

official. Red tape he abhors, and is as easy of access as a republican.

He transacts his business as it arises, knows nothing of arrears, keeps

nobody waiting, rises early, works incessantly, drinks nothing stronger

than tea, has no office-hours and no rules--making both subservient to

the business in hand, instead of following the example of the greater

part of the world in fitting business to rule and time--and is only a

little forgetful of social engagements. Such is the man to whom more

than any other the credit is due of India's being first fairly if not

fully represented in Europe by a museum containing specimens of all its

native arts and industries.

[Illustration: R. REID. DEL.

SANDAL-WOOD CARVING AT TRAVANCORE.]

Certain general impressions will be received from a walk through the

galleries and from a hurried view of the sculptures, textile fabrics,

arms, pottery, jewelry, furniture, lacquer and metal-work. Forms,

combinations and decorative styles will catch the eye which seem not

new, but merely changed from something seen elsewhere, as the ear will

catch a well-known melody running through a profusion of intricate

variations. The alternative questions occur: Is India the home of all

the arts? or, Has it no original art? In one place stands a small

table of Cashmere lacquer in which a great part of the decoration is

surely Chinese: a small gold cup has a sculpturesque decoration as

surely Greek. Here is a coffee-pot of Mongolian type, and a parcel-gilt

vase of Greek: there are gold dishes after the Saracenic, inlaid-work

decidedly Persian, and mosaic-work most certainly Florentine.

It is long since the connoisseur of Indian art awakened from the dream

that India has been an isolated country. The fact is, that it lies in

the way of all commerce between the far East and the West, and that

it can be, and has been, approached as easily from land as from the

sea. It has a long legendary history, but a comparatively short real

history. The immigration of the Aryan race is said to have taken place

about B.C. 3101, but from that period until the rise of Buddhism,

in the sixth century B.C., there is nothing to guide us but legend.

Putting aside what may have been learned of India by the Greeks from

the troops from the Panjab and Afghanistan which swelled the gigantic

army of Xerxes, Alexander's invasion of India (B.C. 327) may be

said to have really opened the way to the acquisition by the Greeks

of something like an exact though partial knowledge of the country

pronounced by Herodotus the wealthiest and most populous in the world.

In truth, the writings of Greeks who accompanied Alexander, and of

Chinese pilgrims, and some temple-inscriptions, constitute the basis of

Indian history. The commerce of India at a very early period extended

far and wide. Arrian, an Alexandrian merchant of the second century,

mentions the muslins of the Ganges, cloths of all sorts, colored shawls

and sashes, purple goods, gold embroidery, lac, steel, jewels, perfumes

and spices. How long this trade had been going on we cannot say. It

was, however, encouraged by the Ptolemies, who established a port on

the Red Sea and organized a system of conveyance by means of caravans

to the Nile, and so to Alexandria. In this way Indian manufactures

reached Europe, while the Persians were at the same time carrying on an

extensive trade in the same materials. The Indians further contributed

to the advance of commerce by becoming road-builders, and thus bringing

the manufacturing places along the valley of the Ganges into connection

with the Panjab in the north-west and with ports and trading-stations

in the west and south. Thus, Egypt and Assyria were brought into

commercial intercourse with the eastern tract of the valley of the

Ganges--that lying between the modern Allahabad and Calcutta. That

commerce spread in other directions there can be no doubt. Within three

centuries of the foundation of Buddhism it had penetrated to Ceylon,

and reached Tibet and China in the first century of our era. Let us

look at one stupendous fact as indicative of international intercourse

with India--namely, that Buddhism, which has all but disappeared from

the land of its birth, is at the present moment the religion of about

five hundred millions of human beings occupying the continent of Asia

from the Caspian to the Pacific, from Tartary to China and Japan.

Leaving both religion and commerce aside--the latter of which might

have been brought down to the opening of maritime intercourse between

Europe and the far East by way of the Cape--there have yet to be taken

into consideration the several invasions of India, which afford yet

another possible explanation of the manner in which its arts may have

been affected by contact with foreigners.

[Illustration: SHIELD DAMASCENED IN GOLD: PANJAB.]

There were many schisms among the Buddhists between the sixth and third

centuries before our era, but in power their community grew year by

year. Asoka brought all Northern India under his power, and, becoming

a good Buddhist, sent missionaries all over India from Cashmere

to Ceylon. After his death India was for some centuries under the

Indo-Scythians, until the fourth century of our era. From that time

Buddhism declined rapidly. The Brahmans were ever its enemies, and

toward the eighth century began to push northward from the retreats

they had sought when Brahmanism, a thousand years before, had given

way to Buddhism. About the same time began the Arab invasions which

ultimately led to the establishment of Mohammedan rule. This was the

beginning of about twelve hundred years of war. The Arabs came first

in A.D. 664, and again in 711. The Turkomans entered the Panjab in

976, and the Afghan dynasties of Mahmud of Gazni and Mohammed of Ghor

followed in the tenth and twelfth centuries. The third Afghan dynasty

established its rule at Delhi in the thirteenth century. With this

century we approach the conquests of Chingis Khan in Central Asia and

of Hulaku Khan, and then in rapid succession came the Mohammedan

incursions into the Dekkan and the Mongolian subjugation of India,

which was begun in 1298, carried on by Tamerlane in 1398, and completed

in 1526 by Sultan Baber. The Mogul period ended with the British

conquests of 1803 and 1817.

If the rise and fall of these various tides of commerce and war are

followed, it will be seen that not only has India not been an isolated

country, but, on the contrary, through a hundred channels it has held

communication with the world beyond the Himalayas. Its art has no doubt

been affected by such intercourse. The effect of architectural forms

upon the decorations made use of in industrial art has already been

referred to; and when we find that the Buddhists acquired a knowledge

of the use of stone in building from the Greeks and Persians, we at

once see why Doctor Leitner's collection of fragments of sculpture from

Peshawur in the north of the Panjab, and now in the museum, should be

called Græco-Buddhistic. Indian architecture is based upon Greek, and

the influence of the latter lasted so long that Mr. Fergusson, who has

made a special study of Hindu temples, says that he could not find

anywhere in Cashmere the slightest trace of the bracketed capital of

the Hindus, but that the Doric or quasi-Doric column is found all along

the valley in temples dating from the eighth to the twelfth century.

Doctor Birdwood, again, has succeeded in tracing the inlaid woodwork or

marquetry of India from Shiraz in Persia to Sindh, Bombay and Surat.

Further, the mosaic-work of Agra is of Florentine extraction, having

been introduced by Austin de Bordeaux in the seventeenth century, and

recently revived.

[Illustration: NATIVE GOLD JEWELRY OF POONA, BOMBAY.]

Let these examples suffice to show that India did not originate all the

arts it now practises. Unfortunately, all that has been borrowed by it

has not been to its advantage--such as the Dutch black-wood carving

at Bombay--and it is scarcely possible that Anglo-Indian art will add

anything to the laurels won by the workmen of the same presidency. It

is moreover to be feared that the machine-made dry goods of England,

the French patterns of Cashmere, the introduction of machinery, the

absorption of hand-weavers by factories, and, above all other things,

the establishment of art-schools, may ultimately break down the

barriers which for two thousand years and more have, in spite of war,

commerce and the introduction of new arts, preserved in the work of the

art-craftsmen of India an element essentially indigenous.

Many conservative agencies were no doubt at work in preserving to

Indian art a distinctively national character. Amongst these the

religious epics and the Code of Manu come first. Of the former, those

already referred to, the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_, show what

the art and life of the Hindus were between the fifth and the third

centuries before Christ. The Code gave them a form which they preserve

to-day in at least all essential respects. The arts have been handed

down from father to son for countless generations, and traditional

skill has reached its high perfection chiefly by the village-system

of the Code. The centre of the political interest of the Hindu is his

own village. In our sense of the word he has no country, but he has a

village home, and his loyalty is absorbed by the administrators of that

home's affairs. He is unmoved either by conquest or commerce. His life

has crystallized into a certain form. It is the life his forefathers

led, and it is the life his children will lead. His village is to all

intents and purposes an independent community. This is the account of

a traveller: "Outside the entrance, on an exposed rise of ground, the

hereditary potter sits by his wheel moulding the swift-revolving clay

by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of the houses which

form the low irregular street there are two or three looms at work in

blue and scarlet and gold, the frames hanging between the acacia trees,

the yellow flowers of which drop fast on the webs as they are being

woven. In the streets the brass- and copper-smiths are hammering away

at their pots and pans; and farther down, in the veranda of the rich

man's house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold mohrs into fair

jewelry--gold and silver ear-rings and round tires like the moon,

bracelets and nose-rings and tablets, and tinkling ornaments for the

feet--taking his designs from the fruits and flowers around him or from

the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the

great temple which rises above the groves of mangoes and palms at the

end of the street above the lotus-covered village-tank." By and by the

work-day closes with feasting and music and the songs chosen from the

religious epics. In the morning the same routine begins again: the same

sounds are heard, the same sights seen, the same pleasures indulged in.

It is the life of the Code and of the great epics--a happy, contented,

frugal and, in a sense, cultured life, based upon a religion which

gave it expression and form long before our era began, and fenced it

in from the influences of external change. All its conquerors have

succumbed to the social and religious life of India. They came and

found themselves within a magic circle. All that they brought of art

was Indianized. A new art meant nothing more than a new illustration of

Hindu religion. We have seen the craftsmen at work, and the fountain

of their inspiration is not far to seek when we are told that the

stories of the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_ are told nightly all

over India to listening millions. Let us suppose the village-festival

is approaching its close. Then "a reverend Brahman steps upon the scene

with the familiar bundle of inscribed palm-leaves in his hands, and,

sitting down and opening them one by one upon his lap, slow and lowly

begins his antique chant, and late into the starry night holds his

hearers, young and old, spellbound by the story of the pure loves of

Rama and Sita, or of Draupadi who too dearly loved the bright Arjuna,

and the doom of the froward sons of Dhritarashtra."

[Illustration: COPPER-GILT SACRIFICIAL VASE: MADURA.]

Can we wonder, then, that from these legends of the heroic age are

taken figures for the sculptor, scenes for the carver and the graver,

and subjects for the jeweller and the worker in ivory? Religion is thus

the greater conservator of Indian art as it appeared in its earlier

forms, and reduces into conformity with it all that comes from abroad.

Further agencies toward the same end are the caste-system, in the large

cities trade-guilds--or, as we would call them, trades unions--and,

finally, hereditary offices in both village and city. Under the

village-system artisans may be said to have undergone successive

generations of training, and the result is that in a country where

_manufacture_ means, literally, "making by hand," any object of

industrial art represents the development of hereditary skill. His

craftsmanship is the father's richest legacy to his son.

One point more deserves consideration. In America and Europe nearly

everything is done by machinery: in India nearly everything is made by

hand. Whatever is done, therefore, is the expression of a thought; and

that art in the East is not trammelled by tradition may be inferred

not less from the variety of its productions than from the Indianizing

process to which foreign arts are subjected. The hand leaves almost

unconsciously the impress of the workman's individuality. There is room

there for patronage to lead to superexcellence. The saving of time

and rapidity of output are not important objects when a prince lends

his encouragement to art and his influence to its elevation. In the

East--in China, in Persia and in India--artisans have worked directly

under the imperial power. All that was asked of them was good work. In

India offices of this kind were, in the imperial workshop as in the

villages, hereditary; and without trouble about subsistence, without

a thought of time, without limit in expense--without, in short, one

disturbing element--the art-workers labored only for their art and for

the approval of their king or chief. In the museum is a rug of silk

woven by deft fingers which have for possibly three centuries been

still. Four hundred knots occupy every square inch, and the size of the

rug leads to the total of three and a half millions of knots, between

every two of which the pattern demanded a change in the treadles of

the loom. We turn from this to a bowl of jade beautifully engraved

upon which were expended the labors of three generations of workers in

the employ of the emperors of Delhi. It is in this way the best work

of all kinds is produced to-day. Spinning, weaving and embroidering

are, moreover, practised all over the country in the homes of the rich

and in the dwellings of the poor. "Every house in India," says Doctor

Birdwood, "is a nursery of the beautiful." The words are suggestive.

They imply that correct taste is best formed by practice. We who

have lectures on decorative art and technological schools live in

too fast an age ever to rival the industrial art of India, and shall

in our hurry do well if we arrive at something like an understanding

appreciation of the works of the villagers of Hindostan.

[Illustration: PIERCED AND REPOUSSÉE SILVER SHRINE-SCREEN: MADURA,

MADRAS.]

The general attributes of Indian art as displayed in the museum

are richness of decoration, great manipulative skill, good taste,

brilliancy, harmony of color, intricacy of decorative forms, and the

due subserviency of both color and design to decorative effect. Nearly

all these qualities are illustrated by the textile fabrics, the dresses

and turbans, the horse and elephant caparisons, the carpets and the

rich canopies of the howdahs. These are the tissues that spread the

fame of India on every side. It is not known how long it has possessed

the art of weaving. Possibly it originated in the Valley of Roses or by

the banks of the sacred Ganges. The weaving of silk India appears to

have borrowed from China, but when or how it first wove silk we cannot

tell, any more than we can tell when first it wove its marvellous gold

brocades or gauzy muslins. It was weaving cotton in times beyond the

realm of history, and continues weaving it to-day all over the Panjab,

Sindh, Rajputana, Oudh, Bengal, the Central Provinces, in Assam, Bombay

and Madras. The prince of Wales obtained a few pieces of the famous

muslin of Dacca, requiring about six yards to weigh an ounce. Of this

kind one was called _shabnam_, or "dew of the evening," because if laid

upon the grass it became undistinguishable from the dew; another was

called _bafthowa_, or "woven air;" a third was called _abrawan_, or

"running water," because when placed in water it became invisible. Even

the prince's pieces weigh nearly twice as much as the older tissues.

Indian lace in gold or silver, cotton or silk, is in texture and design

the highest representative of that most beautiful fabric. The brocades

are glories of color and rich with glittering flowers of gold, and the

embroidery on velvet, silk, wool or cotton is both pleasing and rich.

The museum contains several examples of the gorgeous embroideries

of the Dekkan, and we find in one or two of the costumes and some of

the fans a beautiful embroidery of shining green beetle-wings and

gold. As to the carpets, they are as a rule satisfying to the eye and

possess a general simplicity of design blended with richness of color.

In all the more brilliant textile fabrics of India warmth is secured

without violence of contrast; and one fact it will be well for Western

manufacturers to study--namely, that floral or animal decoration is

invariably flat.

[Illustration: SARAI DAMASCENED IN SILVER: HYDERABAD, IN THE DEKKAN.]

In furniture the Hindus do not follow the prevailing American rule:

with them, the less furniture the better. There are, however, specimens

from Bombay of their works upon forms supplied by Europe--as, for

example, two sofas and a high-backed chair, the backs of which are so

perforated that they seem as cool and light as cane. A sideboard from

Bombay has its top and panels so perforated that one wonders how long

a time it took to weave the endless flower-stems of the design and to

carve the fruits and flowers and the griffin-like monsters that support

the upper shelf. Some of the heavy, deep-cut flower-stands are less

pleasing. On the other hand, a dark wood stand from Ahmedabad is carved

in a fine, close and perforated pattern which is altogether appropriate

and admirable. It seems to have been made in parts. The bottom or

stand is solid and deeply cut in twining snakes and leaves: to this is

fastened the lowest section, hollow and perforated in a floral design;

above this is another of a different design; a third section supports

the vase and cover, which are also perforated. The work throughout is

elaborate and exquisite. A good deal of the furniture and many of the

tables, trays and boxes or coffers are variously lacquered and colored,

but when color is used lavishly it is never inharmonious. Ivory is

frequently employed in conjunction with ebony, and the effect is often

striking. The carving of ivory is practised in many parts of India, and

the Berhampore stately state-barges with their rowers all in position,

and the elephants with howdahs on their finely-modelled backs, are all

that need be mentioned, though there are numberless objects that come

from Bombay carved in low relief or perforated. Even after the small

ivories and the larger chess-tables, cots and palanquins in which ivory

is employed, the sandal-wood carving is amongst the most attractive in

the museum. There is a model of a doorway from Ahmedabad cut after a

microscopic pattern, and all around are designs, some mythological and

others purely naturalistic. The low-relief foliated ornamentation of

Bombay seems more attractive than the mythological designs of Canara

and Mysore, or than the mixed foliated and mythological designs of

Ahmedabad, possibly because the Western mind finds less to sympathize

with in the figures of the Hindu Pantheon than in the exuberant wealth

of India's gorgeous flowers and shady groves.

There are many carvings in horn and tortoise-shell from Vizagapatam and

Belgaum; pots, vases, bowls and bottles in marble of various colors,

solid, mottled and variegated; in soapstone, flowers, and notably a

model of a tomb, in which the most minute details are reproduced;

and specimens of the original Florentine inlaid marble-work of Agra.

In the latter we find white marble inlaid after various designs

with agate, chalcedony, topaz, jasper, garnet, lapis-lazuli, coral,

crystal, carnelian, and even with pearls, turquoises, amethysts and

sapphires. It demands judgment in the selection of the stones, skill

in their handling and taste in their arrangement in order to be what

may worthily be called artistic. It is ever too easy to perpetrate the

grossest crimes against good taste in the richest materials, and it is

the crowning glory of the industrial art of India that mere richness

of effect is never sought at the expense of taste.

[Illustration: ENAMELLED HUKU-STAND OF MOGUL PERIOD.]

Lac is used in an endless variety of ways--from making lacquered

walking-sticks, boxes, toys and bangles to bracelets and beads. The

best work is found in house-decoration and furniture. In the case of

some of the Sindh boxes the decorative design is worked out by covering

the box with successive layers of variously-colored lacquer and then

cutting away the pattern to the depth required by the color-treatment.

Sometimes metal rings appear to be let into incisions, and again the

decoration consists exclusively of surface-painting in bright colors.

The latter is found upon the _papier-mâché_ of Cashmere, which ranks

with the best lac-work of India.

We pass the pottery, merely noting the beauty of the colors, and

especially of the turquoise-blue, and the graceful simplicity of some

of the early forms, the trappings and caparisons, and glance round the

magnificent collection of arms, from the rough robbers' clubs bound

with serrated iron to the finest chain-mail and rifles inlaid with

gold. From Sindh comes a flintlock gun having the barrel inlaid and

plated with gold at the muzzle and breech, and bearing an inscription

inlaid in gold. Round the muzzle are set nine uncut rubies, and an

emerald forms the "sight." The stock is rosewood, curved and expanding

at the butt, enriched with mounts of chased gold, and attached to the

barrel by three perforated and chased gold bands. In some cases the

woodwork is almost obscured by the gold ornaments. On all sides are

weapons richly chased and damascened in gold. Weapons are there of

the steel that Persia, and even Damascus, never equalled, and they

come, as to a masquerade of the dread weapons of war, with handles

of crystal, of jade set with rubies and emeralds, of gold and green

enamel set all over with table diamonds, and sheathed in green velvet

scabbards gleaming with diamonds and fitted with cap, band and chape of

green-enamelled gold.

If this people carried such arms, what must their jewelry be? An

answer is found in the museum. We again find jade set with emeralds

and rubies. From Trichinopoly are gold chains of the snake pattern so

finely wrought that the scales are almost invisible, and the chain

doubles like thread, or chains and bracelets of rose open-work, most

minute and beautiful. From Madras and Delhi comes granulated gold

made into ear-drops or set as bosses in open-work. About everything

there is a lightness as far removed as possible from Western ideas of

handsome solidity and valuable weight. In the museum a model stands for

the purpose of showing how the woman of India wears jewelry. She has

not only "rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," but in nose and

ears, on her hand, dropping over her bosom, round her arms and waist,

and loading her ankles, are stringed gems and hoops of gold.

Akin to the jewelry is the gold and silver plate. The cup, or Buddhist

relic-casket, already mentioned, is interesting as being one of the

oldest examples found in India, and its age, about two thousand years,

only tells how much India art-work in the precious metals has been

destroyed or lost. There are many excellent examples of the parcel-gilt

work of Cashmere, and one shrine-screen of silver, pierced and

repoussée, is exceptionally fine in design and treatment. There are

tinned brass vessels with incised decorations, sculptured vessels of

brass, brass incrusted with copper and copper incrusted with silver,

but which can be called the baser and which the richer metals when

all assume shapes of such wondrous beauty as the _lotas_ and _sarais_,

and are decorated with designs so pleasing and with a skill so perfect

with damascened work, incrustations or enamel? The metal excipient is

forgotten in the art. The enamelled huku-stand in the illustration

belongs to the best Mogul period of transparent enamelling, and is

painted in green and blue enamels. At Jaipur red, blue and green

enamels are laid upon pure gold, and the richness and brilliancy of the

result have raised the enamels of that place to the first rank among

those of all the East.

Here our round of inspection may close, and as the doors shut behind us

a remarkable fact presents itself: that in no branch of industrial art,

either in metal-work, weaving or carving, can the science of Europe

cope with the plodding industry of the East.

JENNIE J. YOUNG.

ADAM AND EVE.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

While the small party of soldiers were employed in attracting the

attention of the inhabitants to the meaningless parade of taking down

the offer of reward and replacing it by the announcement of discovery,

the larger portion of their company had already entered Uncle Zebedee's

house and seized upon Jerrem, their object being to avoid any defence

on the part of the neighbors, which Adam, with a view of preventing

further search being made in the house, had assured them was certain to

take place unless they could find a means of very speedily effecting

their purpose. Although little disposed to be influenced by any of

his suggestions, the force of this one was greatly strengthened by

the necessity of dividing themselves into two parties, one of which

must take Adam on, while the other returned to Polperro to seize the

prisoner. And this they managed with such promptitude that in less than

ten minutes they had entered the house and had dragged out Jerrem, who,

half stupefied, was pinioned and marched off before he was sufficiently

aroused to thoroughly comprehend or realize his situation.

The tattoo of the drums announced to the men on the quay that the

capture was effected, and the party, hurrying off by the Warren, had

joined their comrades, already half up Talland lane, before those who

had been spectators of one calamity could exchange their evil tidings

with those who had witnessed the other.

Yes, Jerrem was gone--led off to disgrace, maybe to death, through the

treachery of his shipmate, his comrade, his--all but in blood--brother.

What would come next? Ghastly fears crowded in upon all present.

Vengeance grew rank, hatred spread out on all sides: the earth thirsted

for his blood, and the air was thick with curses showered on his name.

Even Joan turned relentless and flung pity from her heart; while

old Zebedee, stung to the quick by the odium brought upon his name,

disowned Adam for his son and took God to witness that so long as life

remained every farthing he possessed should be spent in saving Jerrem.

At early dawn of the next day, Joan, at the instance of her uncle and

in company with several trusty friends, set off first for Liskeard, and

then, if need be, to get on to Plymouth or to Bodmin, at one of which

places Jerrem, they said, was certain to be tried. Bodmin jail and

Plymouth clink had both been familiar in days gone by to many who still

lived to tell their tales and give their experience, and schemes were

already abroad to put the larger boats on wheels, so that, if Bodmin

were selected, conveyances might be supplied by which the mass of the

people could be transported there and see fair play dealt out to their

comrade.

But days went by without Joan coming back, and Eve, who was left behind

to look after Uncle Zebedee, had to sit and listen to the terrible

outpourings of wrath against his son to which the old man gave vent in

the presence of his neighbors, and see the more heartrending desolation

of spirit which bowed him to the ground when no strange eye was near to

witness his weight of woe.

So entirely had the chain of circumstances overpowered Eve that this

climax of disaster seemed to have sealed up the flow of her emotions,

and listening to and looking at the tears, exclamations, sighs and

groans with which the excitable, sympathetic Cornish folk expressed

their anguish and their indignation, she asked herself, "Had all

feeling left her? Did she no longer care what happened to herself

or anybody around her? Was it nothing to her that her life was, as

it were, at an end, her future blighted, her hopes dead, her lover

disgraced, reviled, disowned and denounced by his own father and his

own family?" Any way, she could find no tears to bewail her sad fate

in, no sighs to relieve her burdened heart, no groans to ease her

desolate spirit: all was chaos, over which two dark shadows moved--the

spectral forms of herself and Adam.

"Uncle, what do you think's become of him? where can he have gone

to?" Eve asked one night as, no longer afraid of his neighbors seeing

him, the old man tore off the armor under which in their presence he

concealed every softer feeling.

"To bottom o' sae, clane gone out o' the warld, I hope, where I wishes

I was too," groaned Zebedee. "Awh! to think e'er a boy o' mine should

ha' sarved us so!--that he us counted 'bove all other flesh and blood

should ha' bin the whiles carryin' 'bout the heart of a fausse Judas in

his body!"

"Perhaps he was mad," said Eve, dropping her voice in terror of the

suggestion.

"Lord send I could see un ravin'!" cried Zebedee. "Why," he added, his

voice breaking under the pictured joy, "I'd thraw mysel' 'pon un and

hug un to me close, though he tored out my heart 'pon the spot for 't.

Naw, lass, naw," he sighed, "he ain't mad: 'tis the devil has seazed

hold on un somehow: that's what's brought un to this."

"Didn't he say nothing that seems now as if he'd told you that night

what he meant to do?" urged Eve.

"Naw, nothin'."

"And you didn't say anything to him, did you?"

"Iss, there 'tis: that's what sticks by me and shaws me plain the

vengeance that was in un, 'cos I tawld un that us was tryin' to dale

double, so as to manage for Jerrem to stale away."

"You didn't tell him about the soldier?" faltered Eve. "No, you

couldn't, because you didn't know anything about it yourself, did you?"

"Iss, I did. Jerrem tawld--he allays tawld me everything Jerrem

did--and I ups and tells Adam."

An icy grip seized Eve by the heart. "Oh, uncle!" she groaned, "could

it be because of that--that he thought about me?"

"What damon's in the maid now?" cried the old man, starting to his feet

and standing before her with clenched hands and quivering limbs. "Do

'ee give heed to what 'tis you'm sayin' of? Doan't 'ee knaw that if I

thought that 'twas you was the cause of it I'd scat out yer brains on

the planchin' where you'm standing to?"

Eve shrank back in terror, while Zebedee, after a minute's pause,

his outburst ended, sank down into his former despondent attitude,

muttering, "There! there! let be! let be! Awh, I wander what 'tis a

keepin' o' Joan so? Things is all bottom side upmost when her's out o'

hailin'-distance."

But two days more passed before Joan returned, bringing with her the

startling intelligence that, instead of Bodmin or Plymouth, Jerrem was

to be tried in London, to which place report said Adam had already

been removed. But, though every one thirsted for news, beyond the bare

facts Joan had little with which to satisfy them: she had failed in her

endeavor to see Jerrem, of whose present whereabouts even no one could

speak with certainty; she could learn no positive tidings of Adam,

neither had she been able to ascertain any trustworthy account of the

betrayal, only that it was in every one's mouth that Adam had done it,

and had meant to do it from the first moment he found that the shot

fired against his will would bring them all to trouble. Mr. Macey, the

lawyer at Fowey, who had always managed Uncle Zebedee's money-business,

had said 'twas a terrible job of it, and though he couldn't take it

himself he'd see 'twas carried through by somebody sharper at such work

than he was; and he'd sent Uncle Zebedee word that not a stone should

be left unturned or a guinea unspent while hope was left that Jerrem's

life might be saved; but he also sent a solemn warning to him and to

all the Lottery's crew to keep quiet and out of sight until 'twas

seen whether they meant to carry their vengeance further, or whether

Jerrem's life alone would serve to content them.

"Wa-al," sighed Zebedee, who had listened eagerly to the whole of

Joan's details and patiently to old Mr. Macey's friendly warning,

"they'm fair words and kindly spoken, and, so far as they goes, I'll

bide by 'em. But hark 'ee here, Joan: if the warst comes to warst, mind

this--though they strings me up with un and we swings together, I'll

stand yet wance more face to face with Jerrem afore he dies."

"And that you shall," said Joan; "and so will I too, for while in life

us cherished un, so while life lasts us 'll never desert un."

"And as for t' other wan," said the stricken old man, his wrinkled face

growing pinched and sharp, "may the wound that he's planted in my heart

rankle and fester in his own! May he live to know the want o' they he's

cast hisself off from, and die a stranger in a furrin land, and be

buried where none who knawed un here can point to the grave that holds

un!"

"Uncle!" cried Eve, thrusting her fingers into her ears to keep out

these terrible words from falling on them--"uncle!" But Joan's upraised

hand warned her to keep silent, and turning she saw that a sudden

change had fallen upon Zebedee: his features had relaxed, his stretched

eyelids were half closed over his glazed eyes, his head drooped low and

was sunk down upon his breast.

For some minutes the two girls stood anxiously gazing at him, until

Joan, terrified by the ashen pallor which had blanched his usually

ruddy cheeks, ventured to speak, and at length succeeded in so far

rousing him that he allowed himself to be persuaded to go to bed, and

the two girls were left alone.

"You're wanting to run up to your mother's, Joan, ain't you?" said Eve.

"I'll sit and watch Uncle Zebedee while you're gone."

"No, never mind for to-night," said Joan wearily.

"Then let me go," said Eve: "'twon't take me any time, and I want a

breath of fresh air;" and she rose from her seat as she spoke.

But Joan intercepted. "No, now sit down," she said hurriedly: "there

ain't no call for neither to go; 'sides which, 'tis too late. I don't

wan't 'ee to go wanderin' 'bout in the dark: you'm too much given to

goin' out by yourself. It won't do now: 'tain't safe, you knaw."

Eve stared: "Not safe, Joan? Why not?"

"Well, now, I'd rather you didn't. Sit down now, like a dear."

Eve sat down, but, her curiosity awakened by Joan's agitated, nervous

manner, she said, "Joan, what is it? I'm sure you've heard something.

Tell me, what makes you say we oughtn't to go out by ourselves, eh?"

Joan hesitated. "I wonder," she said, "whether I'd best tell 'ee or

not? It may be nothin' but a passel o' mazed talk, only I wouldn't have

a finger o' harm laid 'pon 'ee for warlds."

"Why, what is it, Joan?"

"Well, my dear, you see, I've see'd Jonathan. Through Adam's tellin'

he was tooked off too and lodged in Plymouth clink; but findin' they

couldn't make un spake a word o' sense, when they carr'd Adam away they

left Jonathan bide; and there he is, and there I hopes he'll stay."

"You do? What for?" asked Eve, amazed.

"Why, 'cos o' you, Eve. Iss," she said, answering her look of surprise,

"he's for all the world like anybody ravin' mad agen you."

"Against me? But why against me?"

"He will have that you'm the cause of it all," said Joan; "and 't

seems now he let out to Adam 'bout the letter that Jerrem writ and he

broffed, and then he drove un further mad by a passel o' lies he's

somehow got tagged on t' it--that you'd ha' told the sergeant, and

through that he dropped a bit o' paper, tellin' of it all, into the

rendevoos winder; for, seemin', that was how they got scent o' the

Lottery's landin'."

"And Adam believed him?" gasped Eve.

"He must have," sobbed Joan; "and then I reckon somethin' he see'd or

heerd that night finished un."

"Oh, Joan!" cried Eve, flinging herself down and burying her head on

Joan's lap.

"Iss: don't it seem as if us all must have some hand in tightenin' the

rope that's round that poor sawl's neck?"

"And Adam could believe that I would betray them--would betray him?"

and, clasping her hands, Eve looked up as if making an appeal to some

unseen presence--"him," she said, "for whom I would have given my

life--for whom," she cried, breaking down, "oh, Joan, I would give my

life now!"

"Iss, I know you would," said Joan, hugging her close to her. "Why,

haven't I called un everything bad before 'ee, o' purpose 'cos I should

see 'ee flare up agen me for doin' it? and haven't I blessed 'ee in my

heart for stickin' to un through thick and thin? Awh, Eve, my dear,

don't 'ee judge me hard for keeping all to Jerrem's side. 'Tain't only

love for Jerrem makes me do it, but that Adam sha'n't never be fouled

by havin' the stain o' blood restin' 'pon un. If 'twas only for that

I'd spend my last breath to save Jerrem from hangin'."

"They think they'll try to hang him?" said Eve in a faltering voice.

"Iss, for certain they'll try; and, though I didn't say so to uncle,

all Mr. Macey fears is that wan life won't content 'em, neither."

"Could Adam have known that?" whispered Eve.

"He knawed 'twas death to whoever was took, and a free pardon to

whoever told on 'em, or else why didn't he take and knock him on the

head hisself? Jonathan says," she added after a minute's pause, "that

when he'd told un 'bout you he sprung on un like a tiger and shook un

like a rat; and after, when it comed to 'bout the letter, he roared out

like a bull belvin', and then fell flat down 'pon his face like one

struck for death."

"Oh, why, why did Jerrem send that letter?" moaned Eve, wringing her

hands in desperation.

"Iss, why indeed?" said Joan. "Though that could have had nothin' to

do with the findin's out, that I can see; for, if 'twas the last word

I spoked, I could take an oath to never havin' quitted a word 'bout it

to a single livin' sawl; and as to you meetin' the sergeant, why, you

never stirred from this, did 'ee?--Let's see: what did us do that day?"

she added, trying to recall the past events; while Eve, sensible of

having concealed her meeting with Reuben May, averted her face so that

Joan might not perceive its terrible pallor.

Over and over again had Eve endeavored to screw up her courage to

tell Joan of this meeting, since which one misfortune after another

had crowded so thickly upon them as to make each endeavor seem

inopportune. For days after the interview she had every now and again

been seized with terror lest Reuben should make his appearance, and

great was her relief when, as time went on, she began to be released

from this anxiety. But no suspicion that he could in any way have

been connected with the betrayal had ever entered her mind until now,

when, as Joan spoke of her being the supposed betrayer, a sudden dart

of terror seemed to strike her. Was it possible? Could she have said

anything that Reuben had laid hold of against them? For an instant Eve

wrestled with the doubt and tried to crush it, but so vividly did it

rise up before her that at any cost she felt it must be set at rest,

and seizing Joan's hand she blurted out, "Joan, there's one thing

I've never told you of--that the day we expected them all back, after

Jerrem's letter had come, I went out for a bit by Talland way, and

there, just down before you come to the Warren stile, I met--"

"Not he! No, doan't 'ee tell me you see'd the sergeant!" cried Joan,

forcing her hands up to Eve's mouth as if to keep back the words.

"The sergeant? no!" said Eve indignantly; "but the young man I told you

of from London--Reuben May."

"Reuben May, Eve? Why, however did he come down 'long this ways? What

broffed un here, eh?"

"He was coming to see me," said Eve. "He had come in Capen Triggs's

vessel because of something he'd heard about us, and the minute he

saw me he began about uncle and Adam, calling them both thieves and

robbers, and I can't tell what."

"But that wouldn't make 'ee tell un nothin' 'bout their landin'?" said

Joan.

"No: I feel sure I never mentioned that. I told him they were expected

home, because I feared he'd want to come that night and see you all;

but then we fell to quarrelling again, and parted in such anger that I

said I hoped never to see his face again."

"But whatever made 'ee keep it to yourself and never spake of it till

now?" said Joan, turning her eyes upon Eve with a look of anxious

scrutiny.

"I never meant to keep it from you, Joan," said Eve earnestly; "and

only that your mother and Mrs. Climo and the rest were here, I should

have told you the minute I got back: then, when they were gone, I

said, 'I'll tell her as soon as we come down from the cliff;' but what

happened there put everything else out of my head for that night,

and since then, though I've had it on my lips to say twenty times,

something has always come up to hinder me from speaking."

"I'd a made sure you'd never cast eyes on any man outside the place,"

said Joan, perplexed by this new opening-out of difficulties.

"I wish now, more than ever, that it had never happened," sighed Eve.

"Still, Joan, the more I think of it the more certain I feel that

Reuben May had no hand in it, unless it could be that anybody might

have watched us together. That's not impossible, although I never met a

single soul, coming or going."

Joan made no comment: for a minute she seemed to struggle and debate

with her thoughts; then, suddenly looking up, she said, "Eve, you'll

have to go back home to wance: it 'ull never do to have 'ee stayin'

here now."

"But why, Joan? Has what I have told you made you think ill of me?

Don't you believe that I am speaking the truth when I say that what

kept me silent were the bitter words that Reuben May spoke? I meant to

tell you of it, because I had spoken of him to you before, but I could

never have told Adam that one I had counted as my greatest friend had

called him a thief over whose head the gallows was dangling;" and at

the remembrance of how near those words seemed now to the truth Eve

burst into a passion of tears.

"Now, don't 'ee go for to cry like that," exclaimed Joan, dashing

away the drops which were blinding her own eyes. "Whatever 'tis, I

loves 'ee too well to think harm of 'ee for it; and whether 'twas he

or some other man, t' mischief's done now and can't be set straight

agen. But, Eve, us mustn't let more harm come to us if we can hinder

it; and I tawld 'ee that I didn't like the angry words and the manin'

looks o' Jonathan, and he gived two or three twists o' hisself while he

was spakin' that made me turn as cold as death, and 't seemed as if I

couldn't draw my eyes away from the glarin' roll he was lookin' about

un with."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of Jonathan," said Eve, trying to brave down

the tremor of nervous fear which was creeping through her--"a poor

half-witted creature, who says one thing this minute and forgets all

about it the next."

"Awh, my dear, don't 'ee sneer at Jonathan," said Joan reprovingly:

"he's a bitter foe, I'll warn 'ee. And when," she added, dropping her

voice to a whisper, "he talks of maidens who loves to stand gazin' 'pon

the sea growin' dizzy and fallin' in, and o' folks bein' 'ticed fro'

their homes and never comin' back 'longs agen, 'tis time to steer clear

of un, Eve, for there's devilry in his words and mischief broodin' in

his mind."

"Why, Joan," gasped Eve, "surely he wouldn't--you don't think he'd

murder me?" and as the words came trembling out her very lips turned

white with horror.

"I wouldn't like to lave 'ee in his way," faltered Joan.

"But he'd be afraid, wouldn't he?"

"Wa-al, if so be he could get free to tell his story there's no knawin'

what might come of it. I had to dale double with un as it was, and

manage so that neither wan but me got in to see un; and 'fore he gets

set free altogether, Eve, you must put miles atween you and they who,

when they'd listened to his story, would awnly be too quick to shut

their eyes to what they wasn't axed to take part in."

"Of course, in that case," said Eve, "'tis best I should go back by

myself again to London."

And as the words came slowly dragging forth, the narrow street, the

obscured sky, the stifling air weighed down upon her, and crushed her

with a sense of gloom unknown before when her thirst for freedom was

but a want unsatisfied. Her whole being revolted against the cruel

exchange: her nature cried out in protest, but in vain.

The more they discussed the point the more convinced they both became

that there was no other possible alternative; and the money for her

journey being supplied by Uncle Zebedee, under pretence of accompanying

Jochabed Giles in one of her stolen visits to Plymouth Eve set off late

one afternoon, intending to rest by the way, and get on the next day to

Plymouth, whence she would take coach to London.

There was to be no leavetaking, for no one must know that she was going

away. So, with only a nod of good-bye to Uncle Zebedee and a moment's

desperate clinging to Joan, Eve left the house, and in silent sadness

followed Jochabed down the street, past the Warren, and away along

by the cliff-path until they came to the jutting point which, once

past, shuts out all view of Polperro from beyond. Here Eve paused, and

motioning Jochabed to go on she turned and bade her eyes gaze round

upon the scene and look their last farewell.

The sun, which all day long had shone hot and fierce, had run its

course and sunk to rest, leaving its trail of glory to tip the hills

above and be reflected down in crimson glow upon the sea below. The

mist of heat which all day long had hung over the land, though rolled

away from there, still floated in filmy clouds before the harbor's

mouth, veiling the little haven and casting broad shadows on the rugged

cliffs, up whose steep sides the white-faced houses clung, higher and

higher still, till they were lost amid the tangle of the ridge which

crowns the valley's sides.

Like an echo awakened by some tuneful strain which jars on the ear and

smites the heart because the voice which gave it melody is still and

hushed for ever, the sunset calm of that peaceful scene jarred on the

misery of her who stood stricken and desolate. Involuntarily she shut

her eyes, that through them at least her heart should be no longer

pierced; and when she opened them again a mist of gathering tears

obscured her view and blotted out the prospect from her sight. Then,

slowly turning, Eve went her way, knowing that while this life should

last the face of that fair portion of earth would never meet her eyes

again.