He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd,
As it were too peregrinate, as I may call it.
—Shakespeare.
The Anglo-American is apt to boast, and not without reason, that his
nation may claim a descent more truly honourable than that of any other
people whose history is to be credited. Whatever might have been the
weaknesses of the original colonists, their virtues have rarely been
disputed. If they were superstitious, they were sincerely pious, and,
consequently, honest. The descendants of these simple and single-minded
provincials have been content to reject the ordinary and artificial
means by which honours have been perpetuated in families, and have
substituted a standard which brings the individual himself to the
ordeal of the public estimation, paying as little deference as may be
to those who have gone before him. This forbearance, self-denial, or
common sense, or by whatever term it may be thought proper to
distinguish the measure, has subjected the nation to the imputation of
having an ignoble origin. Were it worth the enquiry, it would be found
that more than a just proportion of the renowned names of the
mother-country are, at this hour, to be found in her ci-devant
colonies; and it is a fact well known to the few who have wasted
sufficient time to become the masters of so unimportant a subject, that
the direct descendants of many a failing line, which the policy of
England has seen fit to sustain by collateral supporters, are now
discharging the simple duties of citizens in the bosom of this
republic. The hive has remained stationary, and they who flutter around
the venerable straw are wont to claim the empty distinction of
antiquity, regardless alike of the frailty of their tenement and of the
enjoyments of the numerous and vigorous swarms that are culling the
fresher sweets of a virgin world. But as this is a subject which
belongs rather to the politician and historian than to the humble
narrator of the homebred incidents we are about to reveal, we must
confine our reflections to such matters as have an immediate relation
to the subject of the tale.
Although the citizen of the United States may claim so just an
ancestry, he is far from being exempt from the penalties of his fallen
race. Like causes are well known to produce like effects. That tribute,
which it would seem nations must ever pay, by way of a weary probation,
around the shrine of Ceres, before they can be indulged in her fullest
favours, is in some measure exacted in America, from the descendant
instead of the ancestor. The march of civilisation with us, has a
strong analogy to that of all coming events, which are known “to cast
their shadows before.” The gradations of society, from that state which
is called refined to that which approaches as near barbarity as
connection with an intelligent people will readily allow, are to be
traced from the bosom of the States, where wealth, luxury and the arts
are beginning to seat themselves, to those distant, and ever-receding
borders which mark the skirts, and announce the approach, of the
nation, as moving mists precede the signs of day.
Here, and here only, is to be found that widely spread, though far from
numerous class, which may be at all likened to those who have paved the
way for the intellectual progress of nations, in the old world. The
resemblance between the American borderer and his European prototype is
singular, though not always uniform. Both might be called without
restraint; the one being above, the other beyond the reach of the
law—brave, because they were inured to dangers—proud, because they were
independent, and vindictive, because each was the avenger of his own
wrongs. It would be unjust to the borderer to pursue the parallel much
farther. He is irreligious, because he has inherited the knowledge that
religion does not exist in forms, and his reason rejects mockery. He is
not a knight, because he has not the power to bestow distinctions; and
he has not the power, because he is the offspring and not the parent of
a system. In what manner these several qualities are exhibited, in some
of the most strongly marked of the latter class, will be seen in the
course of the ensuing narrative.
Ishmael Bush had passed the whole of a life of more than fifty years on
the skirts of society. He boasted that he had never dwelt where he
might not safely fell every tree he could view from his own threshold;
that the law had rarely been known to enter his clearing, and that his
ears had never willingly admitted the sound of a church bell. His
exertions seldom exceeded his wants, which were peculiar to his class,
and rarely failed of being supplied. He had no respect for any learning
except that of the leech; because he was ignorant of the application of
any other intelligence than such as met the senses. His deference to
this particular branch of science had induced him to listen to the
application of a medical man, whose thirst for natural history had led
him to the desire of profiting by the migratory propensities of the
squatter. This gentleman he had cordially received into his family, or
rather under his protection, and they had journeyed together, thus far
through the prairies, in perfect harmony: Ishmael often felicitating
his wife on the possession of a companion, who would be so serviceable
in their new abode, wherever it might chance to be, until the family
were thoroughly “acclimated.” The pursuits of the naturalist frequently
led him, however, for days at a time, from the direct line of the route
of the squatter, who rarely seemed to have any other guide than the
sun. Most men would have deemed themselves fortunate to have been
absent on the perilous occasion of the Sioux inroad, as was Obed Bat,
(or as he was fond of hearing himself called, Battius,) M.D. and fellow
of several cis-Atlantic learned societies—the adventurous gentleman in
question.
Although the sluggish nature of Ishmael was not actually awakened, it
was sorely pricked by the liberties which had just been taken with his
property. He slept, however, for it was the hour he had allotted to
that refreshment, and because he knew how impotent any exertions to
recover his effects must prove in the darkness of midnight. He also
knew the danger of his present situation too well to hazard what was
left in pursuit of that which was lost. Much as the inhabitants of the
prairies were known to love horses, their attachment to many other
articles, still in the possession of the travellers, was equally well
understood. It was a common artifice to scatter the herds, and to
profit by the confusion. But Mahtoree had, as it would seem in this
particular undervalued the acuteness of the man he had assailed. The
phlegm with which the squatter learned his loss, has already been seen,
and it now remains to exhibit the results of his more matured
determinations.
Though the encampment contained many an eye that was long unclosed, and
many an ear that listened greedily to catch the faintest evidence of
any new alarm, it lay in deep quiet during the remainder of the night.
Silence and fatigue finally performed their accustomed offices, and
before the morning all but the sentinels were again buried in sleep.
How well these indolent watchers discharged their duties, after the
assault, has never been known, inasmuch as nothing occurred to confirm
or to disprove their subsequent vigilance.
Just as day, however, began to dawn, and a grey light was falling from
the heavens, on the dusky objects of the plain, the half startled,
anxious, and yet blooming countenance of Ellen Wade was reared above
the confused mass of children, among whom she had clustered on her
stolen return to the camp. Arising warily she stepped lightly across
the recumbent bodies, and proceeded with the same caution to the utmost
limits of the defences of Ishmael. Here she listened, as if she doubted
the propriety of venturing further. The pause was only momentary,
however; and long before the drowsy eyes of the sentinel, who
overlooked the spot where she stood, had time to catch a glimpse of her
active form, it had glided along the bottom, and stood on the summit of
the nearest eminence.
Ellen now listened intently anxious to catch some other sound, than the
breathing of the morning air, which faintly rustled the herbage at her
feet. She was about to turn in disappointment from the enquiry, when
the tread of human feet making their way through the matted grass met
her ear. Springing eagerly forward, she soon beheld the outlines of a
figure advancing up the eminence, on the side opposite to the camp. She
had already uttered the name of Paul, and was beginning to speak in the
hurried and eager voice with which female affection is apt to greet a
friend, when, drawing back, the disappointed girl closed her salutation
by coldly adding—“I did not expect, Doctor, to meet you at this unusual
hour.”
“All hours and all seasons are alike, my good Ellen, to the genuine
lover of nature,”—returned a small, slightly made, but exceedingly
active man, dressed in an odd mixture of cloth and skins, a little past
the middle age, and who advanced directly to her side, with the
familiarity of an old acquaintance; “and he who does not know how to
find things to admire by this grey light, is ignorant of a large
portion of the blessings he enjoys.”
“Very true,” said Ellen, suddenly recollecting the necessity of
accounting for her own appearance abroad at that unseasonable hour; “I
know many who think the earth has a pleasanter look in the night, than
when seen by the brightest sunshine.”
“Ah! Their organs of sight must be too convex! But the man who wishes
to study the active habits of the feline race, or the variety, albinos,
must, indeed, be stirring at this hour. I dare say, there are men who
prefer even looking at objects by twilight, for the simple reason, that
they see better at that time of the day.”
“And is this the cause why you are so much abroad in the night?”
“I am abroad at night, my good girl, because the earth in its diurnal
revolutions leaves the light of the sun but half the time on any given
meridian, and because what I have to do cannot be performed in twelve
or fifteen consecutive hours. Now have I been off two days from the
family, in search of a plant, that is known to exist on the tributaries
of La Platte, without seeing even a blade of grass that is not already
enumerated and classed.”
“You have been unfortunate, Doctor, but—”
“Unfortunate!” echoed the little man, sideling nigher to his companion,
and producing his tablets with an air in which exultation struggled,
strangely, with an affectation of self-abasement. “No, no, Ellen, I am
any thing but unfortunate. Unless, indeed, a man may be so called,
whose fortune is made, whose fame may be said to be established for
ever, whose name will go down to posterity with that of Buffon—Buffon!
a mere compiler: one who flourishes on the foundation of other men’s
labours. No; pari passu with Solander, who bought his knowledge with
pain and privations!”
“Have you discovered a mine, Doctor Bat?”
“More than a mine; a treasure coined, and fit for instant use,
girl.—Listen! I was making the angle necessary to intersect the line of
your uncle’s march, after my fruitless search, when I heard sounds like
the explosion produced by fire arms—”
“Yes,” exclaimed Ellen, eagerly, “we had an alarm—”
“And thought I was lost,” continued the man of science too much bent on
his own ideas, to understand her interruption. “Little danger of that!
I made my own base, knew the length of the perpendicular by
calculation, and to draw the hypothenuse had nothing to do but to work
my angle. I supposed the guns were fired for my benefit, and changed my
course for the sounds—not that I think the sense more accurate, or even
as accurate as a mathematical calculation, but I feared that some of
the children might need my services.”
“They are all happily—”
“Listen,” interrupted the other, already forgetting his affected
anxiety for his patients, in the greater importance of the present
subject. “I had crossed a large tract of prairie—for sound is conveyed
far where there is little obstruction—when I heard the trampling of
feet, as if bisons were beating the earth. Then I caught a distant view
of a herd of quadrupeds, rushing up and down the swells—animals, which
would have still remained unknown and undescribed, had it not been for
a most felicitous accident! One, and he a noble specimen of the whole!
was running a little apart from the rest. The herd made an inclination
in my direction, in which the solitary animal coincided, and this
brought him within fifty yards of the spot where I stood. I profited by
the opportunity, and by the aid of steel and taper, I wrote his
description on the spot. I would have given a thousand dollars, Ellen,
for a single shot from the rifle of one of the boys!”
“You carry a pistol, Doctor, why didn’t you use it?” said the half
inattentive girl, anxiously examining the prairie, but still lingering
where she stood, quite willing to be detained.
“Ay, but it carries nothing but the most minute particles of lead,
adapted to the destruction of the larger insects and reptiles. No, I
did better than to attempt waging a war, in which I could not be the
victor. I recorded the event; noting each particular with the precision
necessary to science. You shall hear, Ellen; for you are a good and
improving girl, and by retaining what you learn in this way, may yet be
of great service to learning, should any accident occur to me. Indeed,
my worthy Ellen, mine is a pursuit, which has its dangers as well as
that of the warrior. This very night,” he continued, glancing his eye
behind him, “this awful night, has the principle of life, itself, been
in great danger of extinction!”
“By what?”
“By the monster I have discovered. It approached me often, and ever as
I receded, it continued to advance. I believe nothing but the little
lamp, I carried, was my protector. I kept it between us, whilst I
wrote, making it serve the double purpose of luminary and shield. But
you shall hear the character of the beast, and you may then judge of
the risks we promoters of science run in behalf of mankind.”
The naturalist raised his tablets to the heavens, and disposed himself
to read as well as he could, by the dim light they yet shed upon the
plain; premising with saying—
“Listen, girl, and you shall hear, with what a treasure it has been my
happy lot to enrich the pages of natural history!”
“Is it then a creature of your forming?” said Ellen, turning away from
her fruitless examination, with a sudden lighting of her sprightly blue
eyes, that showed she knew how to play with the foible of her learned
companion.
“Is the power to give life to inanimate matter the gift of man? I would
it were! You should speedily see a Historia Naturalis Americana, that
would put the sneering imitators of the Frenchman, De Buffon, to shame!
A great improvement might be made in the formation of all quadrupeds;
especially those in which velocity is a virtue. Two of the inferior
limbs should be on the principle of the lever; wheels, perhaps, as they
are now formed; though I have not yet determined whether the
improvement might be better applied to the anterior or posterior
members, inasmuch as I am yet to learn whether dragging or shoving
requires the greatest muscular exertion. A natural exudation of the
animal might assist in overcoming the friction, and a powerful momentum
be obtained. But all this is hopeless—at least for the present!”—he
added, raising his tablets again to the light, and reading aloud; “Oct.
6, 1805. that’s merely the date, which I dare say you know better than
I—Mem. _Quadruped;_ seen by star-light, and by the aid of a
pocket-lamp, in the prairies of North America—see Journal for Latitude
and Meridian. Genus—unknown; therefore named after the discoverer, and
from the happy coincidence of being seen in the evening—_Vespertilio
Horribilis, Americanus. Dimensions_ (by estimation)—_greatest length_,
eleven feet; _height_, six feet; _head_, erect; _nostrils_, expansive;
_eyes_, expressive and fierce; _teeth_, serrated and abundant; _tail_,
horizontal, waving, and slightly feline; _feet_, large and hairy;
_talons_, long, curvated, dangerous; _ears_, inconspicuous; _horns_,
elongated, diverging, and formidable; _colour_, plumbeous-ashy, with
fiery spots; _voice_, sonorous, martial, and appalling; _habits_,
gregarious, carnivorous, fierce, and fearless. There,” exclaimed Obed,
when he had ended this sententious but comprehensive description,
“there is an animal, which will be likely to dispute with the lion his
title to be called the king of the beasts!”
“I know not the meaning of all you have said, Doctor Battius,” returned
the quick-witted girl, who understood the weakness of the philosopher,
and often indulged him with a title he loved so well to hear; “but I
shall think it dangerous to venture far from the camp, if such monsters
are prowling over the prairies.”
“You may well call it prowling,” returned the naturalist, nestling
still closer to her side, and dropping his voice to such low and
undignified tones of confidence, as conveyed a meaning still more
pointed than he had intended. “I have never before experienced such a
trial of the nervous system; there was a moment, I acknowledge, when
the _fortiter in re_ faltered before so terrible an enemy; but the love
of natural science bore me up, and brought me off in triumph!”
“You speak a language so different from that we use in Tennessee,” said
Ellen, struggling to conceal her laughter, “that I hardly know whether
I understand your meaning. If I am right, you wish to say you were
chicken-hearted.”
“An absurd simile drawn from an ignorance of the formation of the
biped. The heart of a chicken has a just proportion to its other
organs, and the domestic fowl is, in a state of nature, a gallant bird.
Ellen,” he added, with a countenance so solemn as to produce an
impression on the attentive girl, “I was pursued, hunted, and in a
danger that I scorn to dwell on—what’s that?”
Ellen started; for the earnestness and simple sincerity of her
companion’s manner had produced a certain degree of credulity, even on
her buoyant mind. Looking in the direction indicated by the Doctor, she
beheld, in fact, a beast coursing over the prairie, and making a
straight and rapid approach to the very spot they occupied. The day was
not yet sufficiently advanced to enable her to distinguish its form and
character, though enough was discernible to induce her to imagine it a
fierce and savage animal.
“It comes! it comes!” exclaimed the Doctor, fumbling, by a sort of
instinct, for his tablets, while he fairly tottered on his feet under
the powerful efforts he made to maintain his ground. “Now, Ellen, has
fortune given me an opportunity to correct the errors made by
star-light,—hold,—ashy-plumbeous,—no ears,—horns, excessive.” His voice
and hand were both arrested by a roar, or rather a shriek from the
beast, that was sufficiently terrific to appal even a stouter heart
than that of the naturalist. The cries of the animal passed over the
prairie in strange cadences, and then succeeded a deep and solemn
silence, that was only broken by an uncontrolled fit of merriment from
the more musical voice of Ellen Wade. In the mean time the naturalist
stood like a statue of amazement, permitting a well-grown ass, against
whose approach he no longer offered his boasted shield of light, to
smell about his person, without comment or hinderance.
“It is your own ass,” cried Ellen, the instant she found breath for
words; “your own patient, hard working, hack!”
The Doctor rolled his eyes from the beast to the speaker, and from the
speaker to the beast; but gave no audible expression of his wonder.
“Do you refuse to know an animal that has laboured so long in your
service?” continued the laughing girl. “A beast, that I have heard you
say a thousand times, has served you well, and whom you loved like a
brother!”
“Asinus Domesticus!” ejaculated the Doctor, drawing his breath like one
who had been near suffocation. “There is no doubt of the genus; and I
will always maintain that the animal is not of the species, equus. This
is undeniably Asinus himself, Ellen Wade; but this is not the
Vespertilio Horribilis of the prairies! Very different animals, I can
assure you, young woman, and differently characterized in every
important particular. That, carnivorous,” he continued, glancing his
eye at the open page of his tablets; “this, granivorous; habits,
fierce, dangerous; habits, patient, abstemious; ears, inconspicuous;
ears, elongated; horns, diverging, &c., horns, none!”
He was interrupted by another burst of merriment from Ellen, which
served, in some measure, to recall him to his recollection.
“The image of the Vespertilio was on the retina,” the astounded
enquirer into the secrets of nature observed, in a manner that seemed a
little apologetic, “and I was silly enough to mistake my own faithful
beast for the monster. Though even now I greatly marvel to see this
animal running at large!”
Ellen then proceeded to explain the history of the attack and its
results. She described, with an accuracy that might have raised
suspicions of her own movements in the mind of one less simple than her
auditor, the manner in which the beasts burst out of the encampment,
and the headlong speed with which they had dispersed themselves over
the open plain. Although she forebore to say as much in terms, she so
managed as to present before the eyes of her listener the strong
probability of his having mistaken the frightened drove for savage
beasts, and then terminated her account by a lamentation for their
loss, and some very natural remarks on the helpless condition in which
it had left the family. The naturalist listened in silent wonder,
neither interrupting her narrative nor suffering a single exclamation
of surprise to escape him. The keen-eyed girl, however, saw that as she
proceeded, the important leaf was torn from the tablets, in a manner
which showed that their owner had got rid of his delusion at the same
instant. From that moment the world has heard no more of the
Vespertilio Horribilis Americanus, and the natural sciences have
irretrievably lost an important link in that great animated chain which
is said to connect earth and heaven, and in which man is thought to be
so familiarly complicated with the monkey.
When Dr. Bat was put in full possession of all the circumstances of the
inroad, his concern immediately took a different direction. He had left
sundry folios, and certain boxes well stored with botanical specimens
and defunct animals, under the good keeping of Ishmael, and it
immediately struck his acute mind, that marauders as subtle as the
Siouxes would never neglect the opportunity to despoil him of these
treasures. Nothing that Ellen could say to the contrary served to
appease his apprehensions, and, consequently, they separated; he to
relieve his doubts and fears together, and she to glide, as swiftly and
silently as she had just before passed it, into the still and solitary
tent.