1841-1842
I left Cherbourg for Newfoundland on May 19th, 1841. It had been
arranged that I was to go by the North Sea, to put into the Texel, and
to go to the Hague to pay my respects in person to the King of the
Netherlands. Almost as soon as I had disembarked at the Helder, I went
on board the royal yacht, which was to take me to Alkmaar by the Noord
Holland Canal. This yacht, commanded by a very pleasant fellow, a naval
lieutenant, M. Dedel, was really charming. She had been built in the
seventeenth century, and had been used by Admirals Van Ruyter and Van
Tromp when they went to take up their commands. She was covered all
over with gilt carvings, the deckhouse in the stern especially, and
looked as if she had started freshly painted out of one of Backhuysen's
pictures. Once on board her, a legion of horses towed her along, full
trot, and I went to bed. When I awoke, I found the yacht moored beside
the quay at Alkmaar, the city of cheeses, whence a carriage took me to
Haarlem and Amsterdam, along the Haarlem Zee, which has been drained
dry since then, and transformed into splendid meadow land, as the
Zuider Zee will some day be. At Amsterdam I rushed to the museum, where
I was received by M. Apostol, the director, who had known the
Scheffers' father intimately at Rotterdam. Oh that museum! Oh those
prints! But M. de Bois-le-Comte, the French Minister, was pitiless. He
tore me away from all those masterpieces, and forced me to follow the
millround of the programme he had laid out for me. He dragged me off to
Zaandam (Saardam in French). This pretty Japanese-looking village, in
the midst of a wide polder, surrounded by over five hundred windmills,
looking like a row of gigantic sharpshooters, is a resort of pilgrims,
and the holy spot is the hut of Peter the Great. The wretched wooden
house, shut up in a sort of casemate, was the property of the Queen,
sister of the Emperor Nicholas, and the shanty was never mentioned by
her or to her but in the most feeling manner. Flectamus genua!
Leva...ate! Amongst other inscriptions there, I found the names of two
French actors, Dormeuil and Monval, which recall anything but pious
memories to my mind.
From Zaandam I went to the palace, to Van Ruyter's tomb, to the
pelicans in the Zoological Gardens, and then I escaped from the furious
Bois-le-Comte, who would have liked me never to go about except in a
glass case labelled "Ecce the Prince de Joinville." Very kind and very
witty he was, all the same, one of those finished diplomatists of the
old school--a disciple of M. de Talleyrand. He had been everywhere,
seen everything, observed everything, and he kept me under the charm of
his conversation all through my hasty trip in Holland. During the last
preceding years he had represented France in Portugal and Spain
successively, and had been with the two Queens--my future
sister-in-law--Dona Maria in Portugal, and the Regent Christina in
Spain, through all the most violent disturbances, struggles, and
dangers of the military conspiracies in those countries. He never tired
of talking about the courage of these two ladies, the nature of which
was very different in each case. The courage of the Queen of Portugal,
he said, was resolute, but mournful and gloomy. The example she set was
good, but she cast a chill on officers and men alike. Queen
Christina--passionate, a woman to her finger tips, careless of danger,
but shedding tears of nervous excitement when the bullets smashed her
windows and flew hither and thither about the apartments--magnetised
her defenders. In the one case you cried "Welcome, Death!" in the other
you shouted "Forward!" Very interesting indeed was the description
Bois-le-Comte gave me of the La Granja conspiracy. How, having been
warned in the middle of the night of the danger threatening Queen
Christina and her daughters, he got up in haste to hurry to their
assistance, but desired, first of all, to warn the British Minister and
carry him along with him. How, when he reached the house of the
minister, Mr. Villiers, afterwards Lord Clarendon, he rushed without
meeting a soul into his bedroom, where the bed-curtains shook
convulsively at the noise of his entrance, and the head alone of the
minister appeared, saying, "I'll follow you," while a soft voice tried
to detain him, with all the tenderest appeals in the Spanish language.
"I took myself off double quick," said Bois-le-Comte to me; "but I had
recognised the voice."
From Amsterdam we went to the Hague, and as soon as I got there I asked
to see the King. "Let him come at once" was the reply.
King William, young-looking still, with a graceful figure and a kindly
engaging face, framed with a fringe of grizzling beard, had a loud
voice and a hearty laugh. He was witty in conversation. The Queen, whom
I never saw laugh, nor even smile, talked cleverly too, but she picked
her words too obviously. Her daughter, the young Princess Sophia, now
Grand-Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, was clever too. I was watching her dance
at a ball one night, wearing a pretty gown, the chief adornment of
which was an eastern scarf, when her father, to whom I was talking,
said, "Marmotte (her pet name in the family) looks like a Bayadere
to-day." And indeed she had all the grace and charm of one.
My stay at the Hague was one succession of gatherings, dinners, balls,
at which the cordiality of my reception never failed for one minute. It
touched me much, and I have kept a grateful memory of it, for there was
some merit, on the King's part, in its being so. Had we not largely
contributed by our support of the Belgian revolution to lessening his
kingdom by one half? And there had been yet another wound to his
vanity. In his youth King William, then Prince of Orange, full of eager
bravery, had gone to serve in Spain under the Duke of Wellington. He
had been wounded in the ranks of the British army at Waterloo, and on
the strength of these antecedents he had offered himself in 1815 as a
candidate for the hand of Princess Charlotte, heir-presumptive to the
Crown of England. He had been ousted. And by whom? By Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg, whom we had just made King of the Belgians. In spite of
these causes for coldness, at all events, the welcome I was given by
the King, his family, and by every class of that honest and
well-behaved Dutch race, was marked by a constantly increasing
kindliness, which filled Bois-le-Comte and his very witty secretary, La
Rosiere, with delight. Just at the moment of parting, the King made me
a present of an admirable copy in reduced size of Rembrandt's Anatomy
Lesson, which hung in his study, saying, "You are going to
Newfoundland; you shall bring me back a dog in exchange," which
commission I faithfully executed.
To finish up my visit to Holland, I paid a visit to the Naval Arsenal
at Flushing, and as I passed through Zeeland I saw from afar, and not
without emotion, the belfry towers of Bergen-op-Zoom, a town which
witnessed the performance of two of the most brilliant exploits in our
annals. The first--the taking of the stronghold by assault, by Marshal
de Lowendal's army, in 1747. The second--the assault delivered on it on
the 8th and 9th of March, 1814, by the whole English army, and
triumphantly repulsed by a handful of soldiers and sailors commanded by
General Bizannet. The assault under Marshal de Lowendal has been
commemorated first of all in a celebrated song, and later by an
admirable drawing in body colour by Van Blarenberg, which is to be seen
in the Versailles Museum. But the exploit of 1814 has been almost lost
sight of amid our disasters and the subsequent invasion. Very few
people are aware that the British army made a forcible attack on
Bergen-op-Zoom, getting into the town by the port at low tide, and
scaling the ramparts, led and backed up by the inhabitants, who had
risen in favour of the House of Orange, and that the enemy's columns
got as far as the middle of the town, whence, after twelve hours'
fighting, they were driven over the ramparts by the resolute bravery of
the defending force, leaving more prisoners in its hands than its own
fighting men numbered. The details of this splendid page of military
history should be read as told by Colonel Legrand of the Engineers, who
commanded under General Bizannet. In them, among other dramatic
incidents, will be found an episode about a bellringer, which is almost
identical with the one Sardou has incorporated in his fine play Patrie.
From the Texel, or, to be more exact, from Neu-Diep to Newfoundland, by
the north coast of Scotland, the passage, though we made it without
disaster, was terribly trying to both our crews and our ships, which
last were much damaged, and lost nearly all their sails. An incessant
series of gales kept us under green seas nearly all the time. Upon
these followed thick fogs, and finally we fell among numberless
icebergs. So it was with a lively sense of relief that I found myself
anchored at last within the haven of Le Croc, the headquarters of our
squadron during the fishing season. The haven was itself so obstructed
with ice that on the very night of my arrival, with the help of my cook
and some tins of jam, I was able to serve up Neapolitan ices to my
staff, like Tortoni himself.
There was very near being a serious breach of discipline on board the
frigate during our passage. A sailor refused to obey, and threatened
one of the midshipmen--a serious act of insubordination, which,
according to the laws then in force, entailed corporal punishment on
its perpetrator. I immediately called a court-martial, which, having
heard witnesses and defendant, according to regulations, sentenced the
man to a certain number of strokes with the rope's end. The hour for
carrying out the sentence came, the crew was mustered, the officers in
their places and under arms. I was in my cabin, just buckling on my
sword, when my second in command came in like a whirlwind. "They are
going to ask for mercy," he cried; "it's your own fault. The men know
your hatred of corporal punishment. They are going to presume on it. I
beg you'll give me leave to run the first man that opens his mouth
through with my sword." Up till that time I had avoided the use of
corporal punishment, a matter which had been made all the easier for me
by the good feeling and quiet behaviour of the crew I had had under my
command. But this time the scandal had been notorious, the punishment
must be exemplary, and the law applied without mercy. What would become
of the authority of an isolated handful of officers, on the high seas,
among hundreds of seamen, if they had no possible recourse to force, to
punishment drill, or to long terms of imprisonment? What, again, would
become of that purely moral influence, which is indispensable on board
a ship which is practically always at sea, if the maintenance of
discipline was ever liable to the slightest failure? Filled as I was
with even more than the ordinary sense of the imperious claims of duty
on the officer in command, I reassured my subordinate. "Make your mind
easy," I told him. "I would be brayed in a mortar sooner than tolerate
one moment's hesitation in carrying out the sentence. I shall stand at
the head of the crew, and have the punishment carried out in front of
me. The men will read my countenance and nobody will stir, I'll answer
for it!" And so it was. I took my place, all eyes turned on me, and
everything passed off according to rule--To say the scene was not a
painful one to me would be to tell a lie. But duty has to come first.
As my second in command had said, I had a horror of corporal punishment
as laid down by the Convention, a relic of another age, when navy crews
were recruited amongst a set of vagabonds picked up in all quarters. I
thought it degrading. Often, among my brother officers, I had blamed
the unmeasured use I had seen made of it on board ships I did not
command. And glad indeed I was when it was done away with. A commanding
officer invested, and justly so, with unlimited authority on board his
own ship, is sure by intelligence, firmness, and sense of duty, to find
other means than the lash of making the saving law of absolute
obedience to superiors respected, without going such lengths as the
captain of an American warship, who, on his own responsibility, hanged
one of his midshipmen, nearly related to the Minister for Naval
Affairs, who had been guilty of attempted mutiny, from the yardarm.
I will not enlarge here on what has become the Newfoundland Question,
which I have naturally had to study in all its aspects. Suffice it to
recall the fact that when the Island of Newfoundland became British
territory, the conquerors ceded the exclusive right of fishing on half
the coast to France, with the reservation that we were only to remain
temporarily, during the fishing season, and have no permanent
establishments on the island. When these fishing rights were conceded
to us (and they soon became very important, employing as they did over
twenty thousand sailors, and turning the Newfoundland fisheries into
one of the chief training grounds for our service sailors) the island
was well-nigh uninhabited. There are no opportunities for conflict in a
desert country. But little by little the island grew populous. On the
part where we had the fishing rights, the "French Shore," a very
limited, almost insignificant, English population gathered, and, oddly
enough, we ourselves brought it there, desirous as we were to leave
caretakers to look after and keep in order, from one season to the
other, the indispensable establishments for the curing, drying, and
salting of the codfish, which we ourselves could not occupy
permanently. Everywhere, during my cruise, I found this English
population, living by us, and on excellent terms with our
Newfoundlanders. To such a pitch was the excellence of these terms
occasionally carried, that paying a visit one day to a worthy
sea-captain from St. Malo, who had laid up his ship during the fishing
season, and settled on shore, in an English house, I saw two chubby
children burst in, shouting "Papa, papa!" while a young and pretty
Englishwoman, sitting by, never lifted her eyes from her work. "The
little geese," said the worthy Breton, "see me so often, they've got
into the habit of calling me papa!"
This entente cordiale would no doubt have continued indefinitely, and
nobody would have heard any mention of a Newfoundland Question,
endangering the international relations between the two countries, if
the southern portion of the island, entirely English as it was, and
with a temperate climate, had not increased so rapidly in population as
to have a constitution, liberal institutions, a Parliament, and the
consequent elections. The electioneering agents forthwith found they
needed a sensational popular platform, and this platform has ended by
becoming something like the "Irredenta" movement in Italy, a claim for
national rights over the national soil. "Newfoundland for the
Newfoundlanders." There lies the whole of the Newfoundland Question.
Locally, nobody bothers their head about it, but in the press, and on
the phantom-haunted ground of electoral politics, it has kindled many
passions, and may very likely engender ruin and bloodshed some of these
days. These facts taken for granted, I return to my personal
recollections. Unlike most of my brother officers, I found my stay in
Newfoundland (in the summer months, during which we were stationed
there, be it understood) very pleasant. The island is a hilly one,
covered with pine forests. Where the woods fail, there are lakes and
rivers, admirably clear, and swarming with salmon and trout. There was
plenty of game, and all this in the midst of the uninhabited region
where every one can enjoy the completest liberty, with no limits but
those imposed by his own tastes and endurance. If there were no
drawback to all these advantages, Newfoundland in the summer-time would
be a paradise, and there is no such thing as that upon our globe. The
drawback is the flies, little black ones, called the "black fly," the
pest of all northern countries, against which one is quite defenceless.
They get in everywhere; no preservative stops them; no ointment nor any
daubing repels them. During a hunting excursion I made to the Isle of
Groix, so christened by some native of L'Orient, which is about eight
miles off Le Croc, I saw some of my comrades with their heads swelled
up like a hydrocephalous patient's, so that their eyes had disappeared,
half mad with pain from the stings of that infernal fly, and one of our
sailor servants lay on the ground, refusing to move, and begging us
with tears to put a rifle to his head and end his agony.
This Isle of Groix swarmed with creatures that had come over the ice
from the mainland in the winter season. Its steep edges, covered with
an impenetrable arborescent growth, enclosed a great treeless plateau,
a "lande." We used to get on to this lande by walking up the bed of a
rivulet, and once on it we had perfect massacres of winged game,
especially of that sort of gray grouse called ptarmigan by the English.
It was these birds' pairing season. They never flew away, and when we
killed one the other would ruffle up its feathers in a fury and fly
pecking at our legs. The wooded sides of the island must have been full
of reindeer, to judge by the quantities of tracks to be seen on every
side. If we had had one or two hounds to send into the thickets we
might have made hecatombs of them.
From Le Croc I went round all our neighbouring fishing stations--Saint
Julien, the Baie Rouge, &c. Cod were extraordinarily numerous that
year. One haul of the seine at the Baie Rouge brought in eighty-four
thousand cod-fish in one day. It was the golden age of the fishery. Now
the fish have deserted the eastern coast of Newfoundland. Our fishermen
have to take their boats and anchor on the big bank, and there they
stay for months, tossed about by every tempest. They go out
line-fishing in small boats, which are frequently lost in the fog and
never heard of again. Often, too, the fishing vessel herself is cut in
two, in fog or darkness, by some transatlantic liner steaming seventeen
knots an hour, which is out of sight in a few seconds, while the
unlucky boat founders with all hands. A hard and a risky life our bank
fishermen lead. But they come back men, and well-seasoned men too!
From the eastern coast of the island the Bette-Poule took her way to
the western side, passing through the Straits of Belleisle, a narrow
channel which parts Newfoundland from Labrador. The amount of difficult
navigation we met with going through the straits was really
extraordinary. The channel was full of ice-floes, either stranded or
driven about by the currents. A thick fog came down on us, with
zenithal aurora borealis, the electric action of which threw out every
compass, standard and otherwise, on board. No seeing, no steering!
After having been in a very critical position at the entrance of
Forteau Bay, a point on the Labrador coast celebrated for wrecks, I
took the frigate into the haven of Ingornachoix, where we made some
considerable stay, necessitated by the condition of my crew's health.
For some time it had been suffering from the exceptional fatigues of
the cruise. During our stay in Le Croc, in spite of its being a
breathing time, and of every kind of care, many men had been ailing,
and the sickness ended by taking the form of a somewhat serious
epidemic of smallpox. The best thing we could do to stop the mischief
and prevent it from increasing and becoming permanent (which would have
resulted in closing almost all foreign ports to us) was to isolate the
sick. I therefore lost no time in having a hospital constructed on a
pretty wooded isle, which lay just at the entrance to the place where
we were anchored, and in it I settled all my sick men, doing everything
in my power to dry and disinfect the frigate meanwhile. This double
measure was successful, and when we left the bay my crew was completely
restored to health and vigour.
I learnt several things during this long period in harbour, the first
of which was the discovery of the immense quantity of lobsters
frequenting the coast. The first day my men went to walk on shore they
brought back nine hundred, which they had caught among the rocks, and
that without the least difficulty. I do not know whether the
Ingornachoix lobster was like Bayard, without reproach, but without
fear he most certainly was. It was quite enough, when one caught sight
of him in shallow water, to poke a stick at him. He instantly sprang
furiously forth, laid hold of it with his claws, and absolutely refused
to let go. This abundance of lobsters, turned to commercial account
later, when it became known, gave rise to the Lobster Fisheries
Question, one of the stalking-horses of the English Irredentists.
Furthermore, I discovered that since the codfish were becoming rare on
the French Shore of the Straits of Belleisle, our fishermen, to remedy
the scarcity, went over and poached on the English coast of
Labrador--the principal drawback to which contravention of the
agreement was that it gave the English a pretext for doing the same
thing. As the English cruisers not unnaturally shut their eyes to
irregularities which created precedents that might be harmful to us,
our ships of war had either to sanction them by their presence, or, by
opposing them, to exercise in a foreign country a right of keeping
order which was questionable, to say the least of it; both of them
things to be avoided, if possible. And our orders, in fact, were never
to be seen at Labrador. This regulation I conformed to; but behold, one
fine day, a schooner from our local station at St. Pierre Miquelon
casts anchor alongside of me, and the following colloquy ensues between
the lieutenant in command and myself:--
"Where are you going?"
"To Labrador."
"But you know the state of things. There are the gravest objections to
taking one of our warships there."
"I know; but I have special and precise orders from the Minister for
Naval Affairs."
"What orders?"
"I have been ordered to go to Labrador to buy a dog for one of the
secretaries to the minister."
"That's what you have been sent from St. Pierre Miquelon for?"
"Yes."
I had to bow to this. I could not set up my authority as
commander-in-chief against that of the minister, so let the schooner go
on her compromising mission. Soon after, and not without regret, I set
sail to continue our cruise Time had passed swiftly by, between the
attention of every kind the health of the crew had necessitated, the
drill of every sort we had devoted ourselves to, and the gun practice
in the virgin forest, during which the ancient trees had been mown down
by our projectiles We had lived a Robinson Crusoe sort of life on the
largest scale--it is a sort of life I have always had a weakness for.
After building our hospital, we had made limekilns for disinfecting the
frigate, we had been wood-cutters, and charcoal burners, and
carpenters. We had made ourselves spare masts and spars. We had drained
ponds too; explored in all directions, hunting and fishing, and
discovered lakes and rivers.
Though we made good bags during these excursions, they consisted of
small game only. Once I fired at, and to my deep regret I missed, a
silver fox--the animal dressed by nature in the richest and rarest of
all her furs. There were abundant tracks of bear and caribou. We caught
sight once of a huge gray wolf, striped like a zebra. But none of these
larger beasts fell to our guns. We could not have got at them even with
hounds, so continuously far stretching and impenetrable the forest was,
and the only thing we had to help us was Fox, the ship's dog, an
excellent pointer by the way, the pet of everybody on board. He fell
into the sea one day when there was a strong breeze, and was picked up,
still swimming sturdily along to catch up the frigate, on board of
which he had a regular ovation when he got back.
We wound up our Newfoundland cruise with St. George's Bay, the last on
the French Shore, and the only point at which any difficulty was raised
about the exercise of our rights. We there found, in fact, a large
fast-growing and increasingly prosperous Anglo-Canadian village, and in
the presence of its inhabitants we went through the ceremony of
formally forbidding them to fish, which ceremony was greeted by
protests both amicable and bantering. Amicable, because half the
population were French Canadians, talking our own language with a
strong St. Malo accent, and in spite of everything else, the similarity
of origin, language, religion, and habits, established friendly
relations between us and them. Bantering, because first of all our
fishermen no longer frequented St. George, and secondly, because the
prohibition, which was compulsory during the four or five days in the
year during which our warships were present, became simply a dead
letter during the other three hundred and six days of the year. It was
easy, of course, to see that our exclusive right to fish could not be
maintained when once a sufficient indigenous population had settled
there, but it was no less easy to judge that some local arrangement
concerning these exceptional places, conciliating every interest, might
easily be made. Would that be possible nowadays, when electioneering
palaver has embittered the whole business? After leaving St. George, we
spent a long time hunting for our colony of St. Pierre Miquelon in
continuous fogs, and only succeeded in finding it by means of a plan of
my own invention. The weather happening to be moderate, I had several
triangular soundings made while we were under sail, and then
endeavoured to make the mathematical triangle thus obtained tally as to
depth and nature of bottom with Captain Lavaud's chart of the
Newfoundland soundings. So excellent is the chart in question, that the
plan was successful, and gave us bearings by which we got a direct line
for the shore. St. Pierre Miquelon is a bare, wild, hideous islet, but
with a first-class port. Admirable as a victualling station and mart
for our fishermen, its military value as far as our trade is concerned
is absolutely nil. Whatever may be done for it, it will always be at
the mercy of whoever is master of the seas in time of war.
At Halifax, whither I went to meet the officer commanding the British
naval station, we were put into quarantine on account of three
convalescents, relics of the epidemic we had been suffering from. But
it was taken off, thanks to the generous intervention of the
Governor-General of Nova Scotia, Lord Falkland, a splendid-looking man,
well known in Parisian society. Nobody could have been more obliging
nor kinder than this "grand seigneur" and his wife, the daughter of
William IV., were to us.
If Nova Scotia as seen from the sea, with its gloomy coast guarded by
numberless black reefs, recalls that of Brittany, the same resemblance
strikes the traveller who pushes towards the interior of the country,
through its deep and smiling bays; and Halifax Bay in particular, when
its fresh and verdant surroundings are lighted up by brilliant
sunshine, leaves nothing to be desired in the way of charm. I saw it
thus when I arrived, in all the excitement of a regatta, with the
peculiar feature of a race for birch-bark canoes, paddled with
incredible vigour by Mic Mac squaws, or Indian women, in blue blouses
and floating black hair. What a splendid colony Nova Scotia is, too!
The advance post of the huge Canadian territory, protected by its
almost insular position from the rigours of the northern climate, with
all its ports open (not only Halifax, where the fleets of the whole
world could find absolute safety, maritime and strategic, at once, but
Sydney too, surrounded by immense beds of coal), while the St Lawrence
is still choked with ice.
Our short stay in port was wound up by a great dinner given by my
gunroom officers to those of the English frigate Winchester. The meal
was of the merriest, if I may judge by the toasts, the cheers, and the
songs I heard; and the merriment continued on shore, whither the young
people betook themselves together. One of the English midshipmen, a
good-looking lad with a thick crop of carroty hair, returned on board
his own ship with beautiful jet black locks, to the great astonishment
of the first lieutenant; while I beheld two of my cadets appear at a
ball given by the officers of the garrison and indulge in such a
remarkable style of dancing, that I was forced to give them immediate
orders to return on board the Belle-Poule. One of these cadets, by the
way, was a Turk, called Saly. His story was rather a strange one. He
was the son of Saly Pasha, the pasha of Athens, and was a child in his
mother's arms when the city was carried by assault by the Greeks and
their philhellenic supporters, in I know not which year of the Greek
insurrection. All the defenders were put to the sword, and in the
excitement of the fight Saly's mother was murdered, but she had
strength, as she died, to throw her infant into the arms of a
Wurtembergian officer. He, much embarrassed by the gift, passed the
child on, having previously christened it Gottlieb, to a French naval
lieutenant of the name of Quernel, who commanded a vessel off that
coast. When Quernel returned to Toulon, my Aunt Adelaide heard the
incident mentioned. She interested herself in the little Turk, and had
him brought up amongst us. The boy turned out well, entered the navy,
and was a post captain when he died. From Halifax we went to New York,
the frantic bustle and stir in which place contrasted strangely, in my
eyes, with the calm of the Newfoundland deserts and the placidity of
the Blue Noses, as the inhabitants of Nova Scotia are nicknamed. We
were at New York to do some indispensable revictualling, consequent on
the exceptionally rough voyage we had had. Besides much other damage,
we had lost all our sails; they had been carried away one after the
other, and it was absolutely necessary to have at least one set in good
trim, instead of the patched rags still remaining to us, before
undertaking our winter voyage across the ocean.
I took advantage of the time these repairs took up to go and pay my
respects to the President at Washington and thence to make a rapid dash
into the West, in the footsteps of our ancient pioneers, and up to the
farthest limits of civilisation (as they were then, in 1841).
The thing that strikes one most on arriving in the United States, and
in New York in particular, as I have already said, is the extraordinary
bustle that reigns everywhere, and which really stuns one at first. One
feels so bewildered that any idea of a picturesque description
disappears. The only thing one is aware of is bustle. Bustle on land,
where everybody seems to rush as if they were demented--bustle on the
water, where one keeps wondering why the ships of all sizes passing at
full speed in every direction do not collide every other minute. In
complete contrast to our boulevards, Broadway, when you walk along it,
does not seem to contain a single idler. Are there any idle men in
America? Yes, there are some millionaires, who pull up when they have
made their fortunes. Their fellow-citizens assert that they are always
ill at ease, amidst the general activity, and that they go and settle
down in their idleness in Paris, among people like themselves, whose
frivolity they end by copying. They are looked upon as "demoralised
Americans." But they are few in number. As each man has only himself to
reckon on, as he has no hoped-for inheritance to wait for and discount
in idleness, seeing the man in possession owes nothing to his children,
nor to anybody else, and is free to dispose of his property as he
chooses, everybody being free to make his will as he likes, so each man
feels that if he wants to get on he must work. And is not this the
chief cause of the vigour and energy of the great American nation? If
Broadway is a tumult of business, that in the port of New York is worth
seeing too. This port is at the confluence of two arms of the sea, in
front of the public walk called the Battery. Here, towards five o'clock
in the evening, when the steamboats start, the huge floating palaces
may be seen shooting off in every direction, shrieking hoarsely. It is
a maritime pandemonium. In it the American is in his element. Dressed
in black, with a stove-pipe hat, the quid in his cheek causing him to
look as though he grinned sardonically, with one hand on the steering
wheel and the other on the engine-room bell, he drives his ship full
speed through the throng with an audacity, decision, and coolness which
made me shiver at first!
In this manner I left New York and passed along the coast of New Jersey
on my way to Washington, but not without receiving a very friendly
welcome from the naval officer commanding there, Commodore Perry, a
remarkable man, who, half by persuasion and half by force, concluded
the first treaty with Japan, thus opening up that interesting
country--I will not say to civilisation (for I do not know that Japan
has progressed on that account), but to trade, and intercourse with
nations of European origin.
In the very first train I got into I found myself opposite a big man
wearing a moustache and imperial, with a huge walking stick between his
legs, and was told he was the King, or rather Prince, Murat. Next we
passed a fine country property belonging to King Joseph Buonaparte, and
involuntarily I thought of a certain passage in the works of Voltaire,
where Candide meets all the dethroned kings at Venice. There were
others even then whose names I might have added to those of Murat and
Joseph, and the number was to be increased before long. "Special line
of Paris goods," we might almost say, in commercial phrase! Has this
sort of export trade answered with us?
I saw Philadelphia once more, as charming as ever. There was a fine
performance, that night, in the Chestnut Street Theatre, and I had sent
to take places for it. But when I arrived I saw a huge poster over the
door--"Prince de Joinville at 8.30," and beat an instant and hasty
retreat. As soon as I got to Washington I repaired to the White House
to pay my respects to General Tyler. He was a blunt-spoken man with a
big nose, who had successively filled the posts of governor of his own
State (Virginia) and of President of the United States, in each case in
consequence of the death of the actual incumbents, whose deputy he was.
He could not have done better in a hereditary monarchy! Our time at
Washington was taken up with an interchange of compliments of all
sorts. A dinner at the President's, visits to and from the diplomatic
corps, a huge reception, at which I shook hands at least three thousand
times, at the White House. And bouquets, too, in the "language of
flowers!"
We paid a visit, too, to the Naval Arsenal. A very nice little arsenal
it was, in a bad situation, but admirably arranged, and only put in
that particular place to serve as a sort of school of elementary
instruction to the ignorance of Congress, and interest its members in
naval matters. When I say Congress, I should rather say the Chamber of
Representatives. In the United States the Senate is the body which has
the real power, and which actually governs. This assembly, very few in
numbers, especially at the time of which I speak, chosen by the
Chamber, and of which the members were almost invariably re-elected,
had leisure to learn the necessities of administrative government and
to become a permanent body, whose action was both lasting and
intelligent, like the Council of Ten at Venice or the committee of the
Comedie Franjaise. But the Representative Chamber, full as it was of
journalists, who had never studied anything beyond the art of
attracting subscriptions to their papers, knew nothing whatever.
Luckily it only formed a second wheel in the Constitution, but, in
spite of that fact, anything likely to add to its enlightenment was
useful.
I left Washington highly gratified with my reception, but glad to have
got it over, and carried away a most agreeable recollection of our
minister, M. de Bacourt, a most delightfully witty man--a family
virtue, it would seem, to judge by his niece and grand-niece, Madame de
Mirabeau and Madame de Martel (Gyp).
From Washington I went to Buffalo, the train running off the rails on
the way, and that, too, on a viaduct, on which the engine, having
broken through the roadway, was hung up in the framework, like a fly in
a spider's web. I was anxious to go, via the great lakes, to Green Bay
on Lake Michigan, and thence starting from Mackinaw, the old Indian
Michillimackinac, to follow up the track of our officers and soldiers
and missionaries, who pushed on till they discovered the Mississippi.
[Illustration: a large ship on a river]
It was in 1672 that Talon, the Superintendent of "La Nouvelle France,"
having heard from the Indians of the existence of a great river, sent
out an expedition to discover it under Father Marquette, who had great
influence over the Indian tribes. Crossing the great lakes, he landed
at Green Bay, and pushing westwards, he soon reached the "Father of
Waters." It was for Green Bay that I too embarked, at Buffalo, on Lake
Erie, on board the staunch steamer Columbus, the last boat to go to
that place so late in the season (in mid-winter). Our boat was staunch
indeed, some consolation for the slowness of her pace. Of this she soon
gave us proof, for she ran with an awful shock, going eight knots an
hour in the dark, on to a reef of rocks, stopped short, and heeled
over. A big wave caught her and lifted her a second time; there was
another bump. But with the third wave she got across the reef. I rushed
towards the engine, thinking everything must be smashed and the side of
the ship gaping open. But no, not at all!
The captain, who had been taken aback for a moment, merely sent his
quid from one cheek to the other, without saying a word. The whole
thing was over. And, indeed, that was not the only unforeseen incident
during our voyage. We spent one whole night aground in the St. Clair
Lake. Nothing I can say will give any idea of the recklessness with
which the ship was navigated. To begin with, there were no charts; you
went at haphazard, according to information that had come down by
tradition, and yet these lakes are really small oceans, with currents,
and fogs, and squalls coming off the coasts, just like the sea. The
navigation must have been just the same in 1679, when Lassalle, an
officer in the Canadian army, launched the first ship, which he called
the Griffon, in honour of the griffin in the arms of his commanding
officer, the Marquis de Frontenac.
To danger by sea must be added danger by fire for our staunch Columbus.
The boilers were heated with wood--aloewood--out of which pencils and
cigar-boxes are made. It made a very pleasant smell, but being piled up
pell mell in the hold, against the furnaces, it caught fire several
times in my presence, and the stokers would just throw a little water
on it to put it out. On the deck the very high pressure engine worked
exposed and unprotected, amidst sheep and oxen and packages of all
kinds, which were frequently shot against it by the roll of the waves,
and above the whole there rose two stories of cabins, built of light
planking, as thin as paper, quite incapable of standing against the
most moderate seas, but which caught the wind, and made the ship
exceedingly unsteady. During a squall, luckily for us a short one,
which caught us on Lake Michigan, in the middle of the night, the whole
fabric began to give way. I was woke by the water coming in and the
crackling sound of the damage going on in all directions. So I got up,
and found all the Americans on board wearing lifebelts, and greeting me
with the remark, "Sir, you are a sailor, but there are more risks on
our lakes than on the ocean!" and quite right they were.
It was a long passage, and we put in to several places on our way.
First into Detroit, formerly the French Fort Pontchartrain, and now
become the capital of Michigan State. Opposite Detroit runs the
Canadian shore, to which we are borne by a steam ferry boat, and where
the same contrast strikes me as at Niagara. On the American side I find
a very pretty town, with all the comforts of civilisation, a scene of
hard-working activity. On the Canadian shore I see a village of poor
cottages, surrounded with apple orchards, like a village in Normandy,
in front of which the red sentry marches up and down, as stiff as an
automaton. The inhabitants of the said village, French both in feature
and appearance, hurried up in delight when they heard us speaking the
language of their forefathers. "It's the only tongue we know. We don't
want our children to learn any other!" And yet they have been English
for over a century! A strange contrast, indeed, this fidelity to the
memory of their national origin, to their not less sincere fidelity to
the conquering regime, which assures to them the right of willing their
property as they choose, and has freed them from the administrative
tyranny which seems, unfortunately, to cling to us under every regime.
From Detroit we went up the St. Clair River to Lake Huron. The great
river was a magnificent sight, with its banks covered with mighty
forests in all the splendour of their autumnal colouring. Here and
there, on the American side, stood some log cabin, an emigrant's first
shelter. Then we would come on a sawmill, that first of all necessaries
in such a country. On the British side now and again, we saw Indian
wigwams, Huron or Chippewa. At the entrance of Lake Huron bad weather
came on; it snowed, and we took shelter in a bay, where we moored the
ship to the shore close to one of those American forts that fringe the
Indian frontier. They are all alike, these forts; a battlemented wall
of thick planks, with banquettes for riflemen, and loopholed for
heavier guns. Within each are the barracks and the officers' quarters.
This particular fort was called Fort Gratiot. In 1688 its name was Fort
St. Joseph, and it had a French garrison, commanded by Baron de Houtou.
During this stoppage we had an amusing adventure. Our only fellow
passengers on the Columbus, some five or six in number, were an
American officer on his way to take command at Fort Winnepeg; a
Methodist missionary and his wife, who spent the day singing hymns
together, and retired to their cabin at night with all the eagerness of
the most enthusiastic fondness; a young dressmaker going to join her
family at Green Bay; and finally, Miss Mary, the chambermaid, a
handsome, fair, freckled girl, liked by everybody on board. Tired of
being on shipboard, the whole band of passengers, male and female, and
Miss Mary into the bargain, went off to walk and amuse themselves on
shore. Suddenly the people in the fort got wind of our presence. The
major commanding and his officers hastened up, asking where the prince
was, and invited us all into the fort, to rest and refresh ourselves
with them. It was impossible to refuse such a kind and cordial
invitation. It was equally impossible to break up our party--that would
have been unmannerly, and contrary to American ideas of propriety and
equality alike. So we entered a drawing-room, in which the wives and
daughters of the officers quartered in the fort were assembled. They
seemed to falter for a moment, when they beheld our lady companions.
They scanned the Methodist and his wife, and took their measure at once
But the dressmaker and Miss Mary, hanging on the arms of two of my
companions, seemed to puzzle them. Anyhow they hastened towards them,
took them by the hand, led them to the place of honour on the sofa, and
began the conversation with "Do you speak English?" I don't recollect
now how it all went off, but I know we were soon back on board, Miss
Mary and all, under a salute of twenty-one guns.
Mackinaw, a small wooded island, with high shores, and a fort over
which the stars and stripes of the Union floated, looked very
picturesque as we approached it. There was a ruin on one side of the
American guard-house, to which we lost no time in climbing through the
woods. It was the old French fort, and our hearts swelled at the
thought that the French flag was the first to float over this little
Gibraltar, when, some hundred and sixty years previously, our officers
took possession of this magnificent country in the name of their king.
Once more, with the eye of fancy, we saw our white-coated soldiers
mounting guard on those ramparts, whence their gaze must have wandered
over the confluence of the three great lakes and the immense empire
they had won for France, while the Indian tribes hurried from all
quarters to bend the knee to the Great Chief of the Pale Faces. It was
a great and glorious epoch; and what traveller would not feel deeply
stirred when he comes upon such bitter memories of the vanished
grandeur of his country?
Our good ship Columbus got to Green Bay at last, and, stirring up the
mud which obstructs the entrance to Fox River, bore us up that fine
stream and deposited us in front of a large store, surrounded by fifty
houses, there or thereabouts. This settlement was not in the United
States, but on Wisconsin Territory, an embryo State, not populous
enough as yet, nor sufficiently organised, to be called a State, nor
have a voice in the deliberations of the American Union. The country on
the left bank of the Fox River was not even a Territory; it was a
No-Man's Land, where any man might settle where and how he pleased.
Like all the places I had passed through, Green Bay, the "Baie Verte"
of our forefathers (and it still deserves its title) was occupied in
the first instance by the French. After Father Marquette's exploring
journey, twenty soldiers, two sergeants, and four bandsmen, under the
command of Lieutenant du Roussel, were sent thither in 1684 by M. de
Beauchamptrelle, commanding the king's troops at Mackinaw. Now, as I
have said, it possessed a hotel and about fifty houses, inhabited for
the most part by merchants trading with the Redskins. Everybody talked
French, and everybody hastened forward when the boat arrived to ask for
news from the civilised world.
A few Indians, silent and motionless, wrapped in their blankets, looked
on indifferently at the bustle. Squaws shod with moccasins, and the
toes of their little feet turned in, passed by without raising their
heads, their papooses sitting astride on their backs. The somewhat
numerous Indian tribes inhabiting the country were the Menomenis, the
Winnepeg Indians, and the Iroquois, which last had emigrated from
Canada to escape the English yoke. I much regretted not having time to
pay a visit to their wigwams. To the very last they were our most
devoted allies in our wars with the English. I had a talk with one of
the chiefs sons, who told me he still had Montcalm's sword in his
possession, and preserved it as a sacred relic. According to his story,
during the battle of Quebec, probably just at the moment when Montcalm
was mortally wounded, his sword was hung up in a tree, whence it was
taken by one of his faithful Indian followers, and it has always
remained with his tribe. After a great deal of difficulty we succeeded
in procuring saddle horses for ourselves, and a farmer's waggon for our
baggage, and we set forth for the Mississippi. The whole journey was
most interesting. There were no roads--the merest track through woods
interspersed with prairies--along which we went to the lake and fort of
Winnepeg. Beyond that lake we knew there would be nothing but prairie,
stretching far and wide, over which we must steer as though we were at
sea, or else be guided by the mysterious instinct of some trapper. We
met many Redskins in the woods, all busy hunting. Game was very
abundant--waterfowl on the streams, flights of prairie hens (a sort of
grouse), and herds of buck, which constantly crossed our line of march
Here and there was a clearing or first attempt at cultivation, round a
squatter's log cabin.
We were following the first skirmishing line of that army of
civilisation which is overrunning in its steady advance all that wild
country which was once the Indian's sole domain. When this advance
guard collects at any given point, a hotel rises, and beside it the
store where a trader will deal in every kind of merchandise, and
especially in brandy, that most destructive of poisons to all
indigenous races. After the hotel will come the bank, and then the
church and school, and before long the whole will grow into a village
or town, of which the United States will take possession by law. As for
the original squatters, they will make over their log cabins and their
bits of cultivation to new arrivals, of more sedentary tastes than
their own, and will move on further, with their wives and children, to
make a fresh settlement, often exchanging rifle shots with the Redskins
the while, in some spot where they can find that absolute independence
which they prize above all other goods. Thus does the tide of
civilisation, which shall soon cover the whole American continent, move
ceaselessly onward.
But on our own particular road we had got no further than the
squatters, and of them, after the day's march was over, we asked a
hospitality which was always cordially granted.
They were an energetic and a singular race. Here you might come on a
pupil from West Point (the military and polytechnic school of the
United States), a former captain in the army, who had married an Indian
wife, and had to learn French to make himself understood by her and the
other Indians in the neighbourhood, who could speak no other language.
A whole family of little half-breeds, more red than white, swarmed
about him. There again, both father and mother would be white-skinned,
witn splendid children, whom the mother rocked to sleep in the
intervals of preparing an excellent dinner for us with a haunch of
venison we had bought from an Indian who had just killed a buck. Their
log cabin, like all the others, indeed, consisted of one large room
below, with a big fireplace on which perfect tree trunks were burning,
and a loft above it. In these lofts passing travellers like ourselves
slept. And they were not over warm, for the doors and windows only
fitted tolerably, and the weather was frosty. In the evening the sons
of the house--huge fellows who crushed your hand when they shook it,
and who used their axes as well as they used their guns--would come in
from work, and the evenings would be spent sitting smoking and talking
round the fire.
"There are a great many Indians still," I was told, "and they are
rather turbulent; they killed a white man quite lately. The squatters
are very far apart too. But then we haven't to bother our heads or put
ourselves out because of anybody."
At one place, called Fond du Lac, the house was somewhat less primitive
than at our previous halting-places. Our host was a doctor of
cultivated mind, living alone with his family, of whom two, girls, were
very pretty. They made us a cranberry tart, on the memory of which my
grateful palate lingers yet. The worthy doctor was armed to the teeth,
for he had no white neighbours, and over two hundred Indians, so he
told me, prowling around him. He lent me a gun, with which I went out
shooting, and as a matter of fact I did meet a considerable number of
Redskins. As long as they can find game, and here it was plentiful,
they are, as a rule, tolerably inoffensive. Yet these were the remnant
of warlike tribes which had never been thoroughly subjugated, and there
was a hill, not very far off, called "Deadman's Butts," in memory of a
fight waged between them and the French army, backed by three thousand
Chippewa Indians, which ended in a terrible massacre. Notwithstanding
the presence of such neighbours, my host had chosen the spot where he
had pitched his tent right well, for I saw on a map of Wisconsin, which
I chanced to look at many years later, that Fond du Lac had become a
town, with railways running to and from it.
Leaving Fond du Lac, we found ourselves on the prairie, stretching wide
as far as the eye could see; dry yellowish grass (it was the end of
October) covered the slightly undulating plain, with here and there a
scanty clump of trees. It constitutes the plateau (not a very high one)
which separates the Mississippi river system from that of the St.
Lawrence. Our horses cantered gaily over the frozen ground. All at once
we saw a big animal running away from us at a kind of amble. We urged
forward our mounts in pursuit, and got up just in time to see it enter
a clump of brushwood, not fifty paces across. An Indian, who acted as
our guide, went into the thicket after it, gun in hand. A dreadful
roar, which terrified our horses, was followed by the appearance of the
infuriated animal. It was a puma, or panther without spots, which
galloped in a circle round M. de Montholon's horse, and then retreated
into a larger clump of trees, where we thought it prudent to leave it,
as our only arm was a single-barrelled small-bore rifle. Somewhat
further on we saw a big cloud gather on the horizon and rapidly
approach us. The prairie was on fire. We then took the well-known plan
of setting it on fire ourselves just where we were. Within less than
five minutes our fire had run a mile before the wind, going as fast as
a horse can gallop, with a noise like a distant rattle of musketry. We
and our horses entered the space we had set on fire ourselves, while
the big conflagration in the distance, finding no food in front, fled
away to our right and left. I afterwards saw the same sight at night.
It was most beautiful.
As we neared the Mississippi we got into less wild country. I remember
the first hotel where the host said to me, "You have come just in good
time. You'll have something out of the common for dinner. We have been
killing a sheep." Since leaving Green Bay we had been living
exclusively on venison and prairie hens and wild duck. A sheep was a
great rarity. We came upon the Mississippi at Galena in Illinois, so
called on account of its lead mines. When I say mines, I use an
expression which was quite inappropriate at the time of my visit, for
the galena, or lead-ore, lay on the surface of the soil. You saw its
metallic brightness shining out everywhere, and so rich was the ore,
that it yielded seventy-five per cent. of lead, even under the most
summary of processes. Added to this fact, the expense of transport
being infinitesimal, as the huge artery of the Mississippi River ran a
few paces from the beds, the working of them was so profitable that
nobody took the trouble to extract the silver from it. But the result
of this mineral wealth was that everything one eat and drank at Galena
was impregnated with lead, so much so, indeed, that one of my
companions had a fainting fit, caused by the sediment which the eau de
Botot he used for his toilet deposited in his glass. He thought he had
been poisoned. I had not time, when I got to the Mississippi, to go
down it to New Orleans, like our soldiers and explorers, when they made
their first journey across this splendid country, and by it united a
French Canada with a French Louisiana. The journey I had just taken had
lasted longer than I had thought for, and as my duty as a sailor
recalled me imperiously to my ship, my only thought was to rejoin her
as soon as possible. But means of communication in the West were few
and far between--railroads were unknown, roads hardly laid out. We were
fain to go down the Mississippi to where the Ohio falls into it, go up
that river to Cincinnati, and thence get by mail-coach to the railroads
in the older Atlantic States. This return journey was not altogether
uneventful. Our boat, ran aground several times during the descent of
the Upper Mississippi. On one of these occasions we were delayed for
some time near the confluence of that stream with the DesMoines River,
flowing through an exquisite country called Iowa, which in those days
had not yet been annexed by the Union. It swarmed with game. I remember
one shooting expedition I made with the ship's engineer, a young
Kentuckian of colossal stature. We flushed thousands of prairie hens
and other creatures, on whom we poured a hot but harmless fire. In our
own justification I must add that the Kentuckian was shooting with a
bullet, using a huge carbine, so heavy that it took him half a minute
to aim with it, and I with a single-barrelled gun, lent me by a
bar-keeper, with this information, "The barrel is all twisted. You must
aim three or four yards to the right, if you want to hit anything!"
The territory of Iowa was still disputed for by squatters and Indians.
These latter, who exceeded the whites in number, belonged to a great
tribe, both turbulent and warlike, the Saxes and the Foxes. They were
at peace with the Government at the time I speak of, but a deputation
of their chiefs, numbering thirty or forty, came on board our boat, on
their way to Washington, where they desired to lay their grievances
before the President. They arrived on board in full war paint, their
faces painted half red and half yellow, and their heads dressed, like a
cuirassier's helmet, with horsehair and big feathers, their bodies
naked, but hung about with baubles, their legs thrust into leather
breeches, and big blankets over all. Their squaws were with them. They
were ugly, but the men were splendid, with the most resolute and
impassive countenances. They behaved with the greatest dignity while on
board, and never showed any excitement except just as we were passing
by the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. Whether it was
some superstitious feeling that attached itself to that spot, or the
impression made on them by the grandeur of the scene, the meeting of
the two great rivers forming a sort of lake, lighted up by a splendid
sunset, I know not, but they all assembled in the stern of the boat,
and repeated a sort of invocatory prayer. It was a perfect picture.
I did no more than pass through St. Louis, already a large town and the
capital of Ohio. An accident happened to us as we were going up the
Ohio ("La Belle Riviere" of our forefathers), such as does not occur
nowadays, when the Federal Government has caused the engineer
regiments, which add to their other functions those of our "ponts et
chaussees," a simple and economical plan, worthy of general imitation,
to clear the rivers of their different obstructions. We were snagged.
Herewith I explain the expression and the fact. As a consequence of
inundations and falling in of banks and such like, many big trees had,
from time immemorial, been carried down the American rivers. Many of
these trees had ended by catching in the river beds by their roots.
Stripped of their branches, and sharpened to a point by the action of
the water, and bent sloping by the current, they formed, as it were,
huge invisible subaqueous chevaux de frise, on which steamers going up
stream frequently impaled themselves, and this often to the destruction
of the ship and great loss of life. We ran against one of these trees,
somewhat sideways luckily for us, but it stood up on end, and amid a
frightful noise, and a little momentary consternation, carried away one
paddle box and wheel. A snag is only one of the numerous sources of
accident in American river navigation. But one soon gets accustomed to
the carelessness of danger which characterises the Americans, and on
the whole travelling on their river steamers is very pleasant. The
sleeping cabins are invariably clean and comfortable. On certain boats
some are very elegant. I have seen wedding cabins, that is to say
cabins decorated all over with mirrors and brilliantly lighted up,
intended for couples on their wedding journey. And truth compels me to
state that the strict regularity of these honeymoon couples is not too
severely inquired into.
At Cincinnati, the city of porkers, I took to the stage, at Pittsburg
to the canal. Across the Alleghanies I travelled in a coach crammed
with passengers of both sexes. It was a merry journey, during which I
was ceaselessly haunted by memories of the little Danaids, and Pere
Lournois and his forty sons-in-law, getting out of the Auxerre coach to
the sound of the chimes of Dunkirk. "Tutu ... tutu ... mon pere." At
New York I found the Belle-Poule done up as good as new, thanks to the
excellent care of my second in command, M. Charner. But before setting
sail I had to get through a certain number of banquets, followed by
toasts, and even to go to Boston for a great ball in the old town hall,
called the Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American Independence. I made my
entry at that ball preceded and surrounded by an army of solemn
stewards, wearing huge wigs, and with rather a good-looking woman, whom
nobody knew, on my arm. She called herself America Vespuccia, and she
began to swear like any heathen when somebody spilt a glass of lemonade
over her fine velvet gown.
The Belle-Poule weighed anchor at last, but before we got past Sandy
Hook a snowstorm came on. We could not see a yard ahead, and in a few
minutes we had a foot of snow on deck. The rest of our return voyage
was to match, in other words, it was awful. We ran, during its course,
one of those totally unforeseen risks of which a sailor's life is full,
and which, once past, constitutes one of its chief charms. Let my
readers try the following experiment:--Put two small bits of paper in a
basin of water, and disturb the liquid. By what learned men call
capillary attraction the two scraps of paper draw nearer to each other
and finally join together. It was this same capillary attraction which
nearly lost me my frigate and another battleship, the Cassard, which
was our consort. A violent south-easterly squall had come down on us,
and the sea was very heavy. All at once, just as night fell, over a sky
as black as ink and an angry-looking sea, the wind suddenly dropped.
The Cassard, driven by the last puff of wind, and drawn too by
capillary attraction, had got very near us, and soon this nearness
became alarming. We could not get about, for there was not a breath
stirring. We could not launch boats in such a sea to try and tow the
ships apart. Soon the frigate and her consort were tossing convulsively
in the heavy sea, with only the breadth of one wave between them. In
another moment they must crash into each other, and that at night, in
mid-ocean, far from any succour. It was a solemn moment. Although one
watch had been sent to turn in, nobody had cared to stay below. All
were on deck, men and officers alike, with serious faces. The only
sound to be heard was the noise of the sails flapping wildly against
the masts and my voice as I gave the other ship's captain his orders in
case a puff of wind should come from this quarter or that. Night had
come on, and in our heart of hearts we were both of us beginning to
despair, when the longed-for breath of wind came, and the ships drew
apart. Two hours later we were at the mercy of another gale, a
north-westerly one this time, with a bitter frost, which would not have
left a timber of the Belle-Poule and the Cassard if they had been in
collision, but which gave me occasion once more to admire our brave
sailors' courage and devotion. We had to set all sail so as to catch
the first puffs of wind. When the gale came on it became necessary to
furl them again. But having been soaked by the rain of the
south-easterly storm, they had turned under the action of the frost
into perfect icicles. They cracked like glass, cutting the men's
fingers and tearing out their nails. It was a frightfully difficult job
to take in the maintop sail--a very heavy hempen one--which I had kept
out as long as possible, and which had to be furled just when the storm
was at its worst. I watched my poor fellows clinging to the yard for
over half an hour, shaken by the terrible gusts, and still not able to
manage it.
At midnight, when the watch changed, fearing that with limbs benumbed
by the cold as theirs were, they would not be able even to continue
holding on, I sent them orders to come on deck and let fresh men take
their places. But no! they would not! and slowly, surely, they finished
their work. Only when they got down from aloft they came on to the
quarterdeck cap in hand, with bleeding, swollen hands and faces,
saying, "Captain, we have taken the maintop sail in," with that
indefinable but touching look that a man has who has done his duty to
the very end in spite of danger.
My brave sailors, I could have kissed them! But I did what they
appreciated more than that! I had good hot mulled wine ready for them,
and sent them to bed on it! Some days afterwards, in another gale,
between two snow-showers, I saw that rare electric phenomenon called
St. Elmo's fire--jets of electric fire appearing at the points of all
the ship's masts and yards. A spontaneous, unexpected, and most
effective illumination.
And then we entered Toulon harbour, where we saluted the flag of
Admiral Hugon, commanding the squadron to which the Belle-Poule was
about to be attached.